by Warhammer
As he made his way down the opposite side of the ridge, the warriors that had followed him spreading out behind, he imagined that night’s victory feast. He had considered sending a messenger ahead, so a proper celebration could be held on his return, but had dismissed the idea in favour of telling his father the news himself. He wanted to see the appreciation in the Ashen King’s eyes when he discovered his son had started the Skullbrands’ march to a new-found glory.
He took a deep breath, savouring the cooler air of the vale. The surrounding hills channelled a constant wind from the north, following the line of the river that wound down the centre of the broad valley. Deposits washed down from the mountains far to the north gave the river a ruddy tint, and from that came the name by which the Skullbrands knew it: the Bloodwater. It was safe enough to drink and fish, the majority of the colouring being in the sediment, but the stain spread through the surroundings so that the earth and the plants had an orange cast to them.
The same was not true of the Skullbrands’ settlement. Built mainly from pale timber felled on the forested eastern slopes, Ashabarq stood upon three broad islands in the middle of the Bloodwater. They formed a rough line following the flow of the river, descending in size from Ashakort to Ashaban and finally Ashalat. No bridges linked the islands, but at this time of the year the waters were at their lowest and a causeway linked Ashakort to Ashaban; the water was fordable between Ashaban and Ashalat.
Each island was protected by its own gated wall of plastered timbers, a rampart and parapet atop. Six sturdy towers protected the riverbanks on each side; a dozen in total. It was a regret to the Ashen King and his people that they had lacked the numbers to properly man the outer towers in recent years, though it was not known outside the tribe. A token force of a handful of warriors manned each tower so that any casual observer might think them a sturdier defence than was true.
The islands were wooded in places, for generations past had recognised that the great root systems of the arboreal behemoths were key to holding the islands together. High, narrow houses populated the clearings, each visible as a pale spread among the darker canopy, forming roughly circular districts around the central hall of each island. They were roofed with clay tiles of dark grey. It had been almost three days exactly since Threx’s victory and the settlement shone bright in the glare of the mid-morning sun.
‘Shall I announce our return?’ asked Vourza, patting the long horn that hung from her belt.
Threx remembered the old tales, from when the Skullbrands had ruled from the Asha Vale to the Carcass Coast. Many a hero had returned to these waters with the ringing blast of the horn to summon forth their kin, and many an enemy had heard that sound before their doom fell upon them.
He nodded and Vourza raised the instrument to her lips to let forth a long, rising note.
‘Hold aloft my banner, so that all can see who returns in triumph!’ Threx called to Foraza, signalling with his hand. The standard bearer lifted up the banner pole with a grin.
There seemed little reaction in the settlement and so Vourza let out another horn blast. Still no answering call was returned. Threx’s enthusiasm dimmed a little as they continued down into the vale, confused by the lack of response.
‘What if something is wrong?’ asked Nerxes.
‘What could be wrong?’ Threx replied.
The spirits of the warband dampened further as they approached the nearest tower. Threx could see the sentries on the rampart but no hailing cry came from the warriors. Instead they glared down at the war-leader, passing silent judgement for some unknown crime. Others noticed this reaction and disturbed mutters broke out here and there. A few called up demands for explanation as they walked past the towers but nothing was forthcoming.
‘The peaklands are empty,’ remarked Nerxes, pointing towards the upper region of the opposite valley side where usually herds of goats were kept. Others on the lower fields were visible, the herders moving through them with staves, guiding them up the slope.
Threx had no explanation to offer and continued in silence.
At the riverside the ferries were waiting for them, two dozen barges drawn along ropes connected to waterwheels on the islands. A lone figure stood before them, wrapped in the grey cloak of the royal family. Threx recognised his uncle, Atraxas, arms folded across his sizeable chest, face shadowed in his hood.
‘Wait there,’ snapped the old warrior, pointing a finger to the ground at Threx’s feet. He pulled back his hood to reveal a broad face, cheekbones marked with lines of painted ash. Another blackened his brow. ‘The rest of you, back to your homes.’
Cowed by Atraxas’ tone, the others drifted away immediately, most forming groups around the closest ferries. Around a third of the warriors moved downriver to the smaller boats that would take them to the other islands. As though for the first time, Threx saw those that were bandaged or limping, some helped by their companions. The dead, ninety in total, had been carried from the battlefield and left to be returned to the world in the woods between the Asha Vale and the lands of the Korchians, but there were several times that number that would live to pay a different price for the battle.
‘What is–’ began Threx.
‘Shut up.’ The words were spoken harshly but quietly, an injunction far more effective than a bellow.
Threx waited impatiently while his army dispersed, fighting the urge to speak again. His uncle stared flatly at him, blinking occasionally but showing no signs of his thoughts. It took some time and three trips for the barges to carry the army back across to Ashakort. Only when the last group had embarked did Atraxas open his mouth again.
‘Give me your axe.’
Threx hesitated but a glare from his uncle conveyed that the demand would not be repeated. With reluctance Threx slid his weapon from its loop on his back and handed it to Atraxas.
Without warning, Atraxas stepped forward and hammered the handle into Threx’s face, breaking his nose. Blood and snot flew as he fell backwards, pain lancing into his brain.
‘Idiot!’ snarled his uncle, directing a kick into Threx’s ribs, causing him to double up as fresh pain surged through the wound in his side. He threw his arms over his head as Atraxas raised the axe for another blow, but it did not fall. Instead the king’s brother stepped back, lip curled in disgust.
‘Get up.’
Anger flushed through Threx. His expression must have betrayed his intent for Atraxas pointed the axe handle at him with a warning look.
‘Slowly.’
Threx pushed himself to his knees and then his feet. Crimson once more stained his tunic and leg, though more a trickle than a flow. Atraxas noticed this, eyes widening, and then his gaze softened.
‘You’re hurt? Sigmar help you, Threx.’ He stepped forward, offering an arm and shoulder in support, Threx’s axe in his other hand. ‘Let’s get that seen to by Mexilia before you see your father.’
‘I walked all the way here, I can make it to the Hall of the Pyre,’ Threx growled.
‘If you want,’ said Atraxas, the sympathy fading from his expression. He pointed towards the riverside with the confiscated axe. ‘Loun is waiting to take us across.’
Threx’s cousin gave him cold welcome as they reached the quay to which the small boat was roped. She stood up, saw his wound and offered a hand, but Threx ignored the assistance and clambered into the boat by himself, taking up a place near the bow, resisting the urge to put a hand to his damaged ribs. He was a returning war hero; he would show no weakness.
‘I’ll not ask you to row,’ said Atraxas as he stepped after Threx and sat down on the middle board.
His uncle took up the oars while Loun steered, guiding them after the retreating shapes of the ferries. When they were almost a third of the way across the channel they changed direction, heading upstream while the course of the ferries continued towards the wharfs at the downstream point of the island.
The curtain wall ringed the island save for a few boat gates that led to stor
ehouses located just inside. These river gates were made of heavy wood, supported by ropes that could be cut in the face of attack, and locked with bars on the inside. A few were open to allow traders to come and go, but there was little traffic. Such was the story of the last few years as the fortunes of the Skullbrand tribe had dwindled. The fish did not breed in the same numbers, the river levels never quite returned after each long season of sun.
It was a slow death, and one that the Ashen King still thought avoidable. The Skullbrands had extended invitations to tribeless hill farmers to join them, bringing their herds to the pastures on the upper slopes. There were many that were appalled by thought of outsider blood mixing with Skullbrand lineage, Threx among them. He had been arguing for a more aggressive answer to their problems – to return to the raiding ways that had earned the Skullbrands their name.
With the thought came regret. Threx wished he’d taken fire and tongs to mark Yourag as dishonoured. He smiled at the thought of the Korchian chief crying out as the shame-rune was burned into his flesh. Yes, the old ways should return, and bring back the fear and respect the Skullbrands deserved.
‘What are you smirking about?’ said Loun.
‘Just imagining the better days to come, cousin,’ said Threx.
‘I can’t believe Nerxes went along with this,’ she continued. ‘My brother is such a–’
‘Enough!’ snapped Atraxas. ‘The Ashen King will deal with this.’
‘With what?’ demanded Threx. The boat wobbled as he turned on the board to face them properly. Atraxas heaved at the oars, face reddening as he pulled against the current. ‘What will my father deal with? Why haven’t I been welcomed back in victory? The Korchians have been made to pay the price of their crime. Our honour is restored.’
‘Our honour?’ Atraxas stopped rowing, face twisted in anger. ‘Our…’
With visible effort he restrained himself and set to the oars once more.
They continued in silence, coming around the head of the island to the sloping shore of the upriver bank. Here the timber wall overlapped, creating a double gate that opened before them, giving them entry to a lagoon beyond.
The island had been carved away to create the feature, the sides near vertical and twice as tall as Threx. There was no way up but for a single set of steps that ended in a sturdy door that would admit only one person at a time; all else was solid rock. The top of the stone face was lined with long metal spikes. Once they had been adorned with the heads of those that displeased the Ashen King, but now it was not blood that reddened the shafts, only rust.
Loun angled them towards the small quay at the bottom of the steps and leapt nimbly from the boat with rope in hand as Atraxas shipped the oars. They docked with a thump that shuddered pain through Threx’s wound and he winced, a hand clasped to his side.
‘Up,’ commanded Atraxas while Loun secured the boat.
Threx directed a surly glance at his uncle but did as he was told, fearful of another blow. More gingerly than his cousin, he set foot on the stone, feelings mixed. He knew that he had returned in triumph, the honour of the Skullbrand tribe restored, but he was being brought through the hidden way as though it would be shameful for him to return to the Ashen King’s hall through the town.
Guards beyond the gate spied them through narrow ports on either side of the door, so that it swung out to admit them before they reached the top of the worn steps.
A torchlit corridor, wide enough for two abreast, stretched into the heart of the island, five men and women standing ready just within. They parted at Loun’s approach, heads bowed in salute. Dagger glares met Threx.
‘I am a royal son,’ he snarled at them. ‘Show some respect to your prince.’
‘Keep going,’ growled Atraxas, nudging Threx in the back with the haft of the axe. To be herded with his own weapon stretched Threx’s patience further, but the throbbing pain in his nose cautioned him against further confrontation with his uncle.
The corridor brought them to another stair carved from naked stone, which switched back and forth three times before bringing them to another door. Murder holes for pouring lime, hot sand or boiling liquid perforated the timber-raftered ceiling. Never had the defences of Ashakort been tested. Threx thought that they never would be. When he became Ashen King such cowardly tricks would be pointless; not a foe would ever reach the walls.
Bolts slid back and the door creaked open, light from a windowed room spilling forth. Threx blinked as Atraxas and Loun escorted him into Ashabarq’s Hall of the Pyre.
A short gallery lined with narrow windows on each side brought them to the main hall, a long chamber five times a warrior’s height and three hundred paces long. Its walls were dug from the flesh of the island, the roof a mighty construction of beams and complex slat mechanisms that could be opened and closed by means of levers along the length of the wall. The windows were open to the morning, filling the hall with light, a gentle breeze stirring the handful of ancient banners that hung from the rafters.
The gallery door opened about halfway along the upriver wall, just a few dozen strides from the throne of the Ashen King. The Pyre itself ran for nearly a third of the hall’s length in front of the throne dais, twenty paces wide.
It was full of blackened bones, piles of them atop a deep layer of light grey ash.
Threx stiffened as soon as he entered the hall, feeling the heat from the Pyre, the charred smell of its burning filling his nostrils. The long pit gleamed with fitful light, like dying embers, though the Pyre had no natural flame.
‘Who–’ he began.
Atraxas grunted and nudged Threx forward again.
The Ashen King sat upon a throne of wood pale as bone. He was naked save for a short kilt of black, and a loincloth beneath, his forearms bound in sturdy black leather vambraces. He was on the older end of middle-aged but his body was a taut mass of muscle, his skin invisible beneath a layer of grey ash that had been painted upon it. His scalp was shaven and also ash-covered, as was his face, his eyes closed.
The right side of his head was a contorted whorl of fleshy ridges, the rune of kingship seared upon him when he had succeeded his father. He had been the last to bear the Skullbrand before declaring it ignorant savagery, banning the practice as his first act as king. Only a handful of the tribe were old enough to carry the symbol on their flesh.
A coterie of the Ashen King’s advisors waited near the throne, dressed in a mixture of robes and mail coats. Threx saw his mother, the Sigmar-spoken, Soreas, the chain of her hammer talisman wrapped around her fingers as she idly spun the amulet. She turned slowly towards him, eyes as hard as flint.
With her was Joraxi, another of Threx’s cousins barely of age, from Soreas’ side of the family. A band of ogors had orphaned him a few years ago, the boy taken in by the Ashen King as a ward. The ogors had never been hunted down, another slight against the Skullbrands that burned at Threx’s pride. Next to Joraxi was the Keeper of the Pyre, the diminutive Kexas. Dwarfed by most folk of the Skullbrands he was nevertheless one of the most dominating presences in the tribe. As much as Soreas bound the Skullbrands to the Lord Sigmar, Kexas was the agent of the Pyre and by extension the Asha Vale itself. It was by his word that the Pyre was lit and the bodies of the honoured fallen consumed. With this offering the Asha Vale was appeased and the Skullbrands allowed to continue in relative prosperity.
Until recent events, it seemed. The Asha Vale had been besmirched and the fortunes of the Skullbrands waned almost daily.
The floor was carpeted with fresh rushes from the river bank, Threx’s tread soft as he crossed the hall flanked by his uncle and cousin. The Ashen King’s companions watched him with a mixture of apathy and hostility but the ruler kept his eyes closed, though the twitch of his fingers on the arms of the throne testified to his wakefulness.
With a sinking sensation Threx realised that his father could not bring himself to look at his son.
His eyes raced back to the Pyre.
‘
Not family,’ Kexas said quietly, cutting off the question before it was asked.
‘Four herd guards,’ explained Joraxi.
‘Herd guards?’ Threx turned back to the group, confused. ‘Since when did the honour of the Pyre’s embrace apply to children?’
‘Since they died trying to do what a warrior was meant to,’ snapped Kexas.
‘They had names, Threx.’ His father’s solemn words hung in the air. ‘Notras. Daxota. Ard. Ordrasea.’
Slowly the Ashen King opened his eyes, staring directly at Threx. A flicker of firelight burned in the pupils; a stranger might think it a trick, a reflection of the dimming Pyre but Threx knew better. His father was the Ashen King, the living flame of the Asha Vale.
And he was angry.
Not the roaring, consuming inferno of anger that he had once been on the battlefield. A raging but brief explosion. This was the slow burning ire that would consume a whole world before it spent itself.
‘Did you think your jaunt would go unobserved?’ The Ashen King’s unblinking gaze pinned Threx to the spot. ‘A thousand warriors could leave the Asha Vale, and our rivals would not notice?’
Threx opened his mouth to argue but the words stuck in his throat.
‘The Fireborn came, two days after you left. Fifteen hundred warriors. The herd guards did not run. They tried to fight, against armoured soldiers, with staves and knives.’
‘Killed one, in fact,’ said Soreas with a hint of pride.
‘I did not take–’
‘What was I meant to do?’ growled the Ashen King. ‘Send out unseasoned fighters against an army? For goats?’
‘Lennok herself led them,’ added Joraxi. ‘Came down to the towers and taunted us. She said she’d not starve us, only take what she was due…’
‘You had warriors!’ Threx jabbed a finger at the Ashen King. ‘It wasn’t goats that they took, it was our honour. Our pride! You should have fought them. Fireborn are cowards – they’d not die for some goats.’
