by Warhammer
‘You weakened us, Threx,’ said Atraxas, stepping past. He presented Threx’s axe to the Ashen King, who shook his head. Threx’s uncle dismissively tossed the weapon aside as though it were a piece of smithy waste.
‘I…? You were already weak!’ Threx stepped forward, throwing off Atraxas’ questing fingers as his uncle attempted to hold him back. ‘Not just these last days, but for seasons now we’ve let others test us without revenge. When you were younger, mention of the Skullbrand tribe was a curse upon our enemies, whispered in case the very naming of it called our wrath. Now we are a joke. They say we brand goats not skulls!’
‘Enough!’ Soreas intercepted Threx as he advanced on the throne. ‘The Skullbrands would be dead if we had continued. How many enemies can one tribe make and survive?’
The question went unanswered. Threx met the stare of his mother, matching her belligerence with unflinching defiance. Neither moved; neither would back down.
‘Where did you take my army?’
‘To Wendhome,’ Threx replied, still not looking away. His next words were directed at his mother, body quivering with emotion, his voice strained. ‘I made Yourag grovel like a dog in the dirt for what he said about you.’
‘For me?’ His mother stepped back.
‘Yes, I made him regret the day he ever thought to insult my mother.’
Her hand moved as fast as a striking serpent, fist connecting with his chin. For the second time that day Threx was sent falling to his backside. Soreas loomed over him, fists clenched.
‘For me?’ she yelled. ‘How many died for my name? How many on top of the four children we burned yesterday? How dare you! How dare you shed their blood without asking me first.’
‘He said–’ Threx flinched as Soreas raised her hand again.
‘It isn’t for you to be insulted on my behalf,’ she snapped, face reddening. ‘Yourag’s words are worth less than goat farts to me, but you decided they were important. It wasn’t the insult to me you wanted to avenge.’
‘He called you–’
‘He called your mother some bad words?’ Her voice trembled with scorn as she shook her head. ‘They died for your pride, not my name.’
She turned away and Threx started back to his feet, but fell back when she rounded on him again, an accusing finger aimed squarely at his face.
‘How dare you?’ she snarled again. ‘It’s you that has insulted me, thinking you would do what I wasn’t prepared to.’
‘It isn’t like that,’ protested Threx.
‘It’s exactly like that,’ she said. ‘If I wanted Yourag shamed I would have demanded it of the Ashen King. Did I ask you to defend me? Am I too weak to pick my own battles?’
Threx struggled for words, squirming back across the floor under her verbal onslaught.
‘Throw him in the Pyre,’ laughed Loun.
‘I would not dishonour the flames with his rotten carcass,’ Kexas said with a sneer.
Regaining his feet, Threx faced them down, eyes moving from one judge to the next. He walked forward, heading towards his axe, daring any of them to step into his path. He was about to reach down to retrieve the weapon when his father’s voice stopped him.
‘Leave it. You must earn the right to carry a weapon again.’
‘Earn? I am Threx Skullbrand, bloodied in battle. The axe is my birthright.’
‘Not any more,’ said the Ashen King. He folded his arms, a look of disdain etched into his features. ‘Because of your actions four herd guards became warriors. You and your friends will replace them until a time when you have proven yourselves capable of being trusted again.’
Threx could not believe the evidence of his ears. He looked at the axe and then back to his father. The Ashen King read his defiant intent and his brow furrowed.
‘If you, Vourza, Foraza or Nerxes are seen carrying anything grander than a hunting knife, you’ll all lose your blade-hands.’ Threx gasped, horrified by the thought of such a punishment, the greatest humiliation the Skullbrands could inflict upon one of their own. His father continued, as relentless as the current of the Asha river. ‘You will tell the others of my will. Your first watch will begin at noon.’
‘I wouldn’t wear that mail, cousin,’ said Loun. ‘It gets so hot on the upper slopes in the early afternoon…’
‘Laugh now, while you can,’ Threx snarled back.
‘Any further argument and I’ll have you whipped first,’ the Ashen King said.
He approached, wiping fingers across his chest to gather the ash paint. With the flames dancing in his eyes, he drew a grey line down Threx’s brow and nose, onto his chin.
The visible judgement of the Ashen King. For a moment it felt as though the ash was still hot, searing the skin.
Marked with shame, Threx trembled with indignity. But he could not match that fiery stare and his gaze dropped to the floor. Shoulders slumped, the wound in his side nagging at him, he turned away and trudged from the hall.
Panting, low branches whipping at his face and shoulders, the painter ran. The lowing calls of the gor-folk surged from the thunder of his pulse in his ears and the raging of breath in and out of his lungs. A coarse horn sounded, answered by dog-like snarling.
He dared not look back; a moment’s inattention would see him sent sprawling by a root or rock or sprinting full speed into a tree.
He came to a rivulet of water winding between moss-slicked boulders and vaulted across it, barely losing speed. On landing, the slap of the sack on his thigh brought his attention to the trapped kill he still carried with him.
Skidding to a stop, the painter dragged the dead rodent from the bag. He turned and hurled it as far as he could across the water and upstream, its thudding impact leaving a smear of blood on the rocks.
Letting the blood-soaked sack drop into the water, he set off again, heading downstream. The momentary pause brought a semblance of coherence back to his cascading thoughts. The painter continued to run but not at quite the same headlong pace that had carried him from the warherd crashing through the woods behind him. He knew his first burst of action had taken him directly away from the gor-folk, but it had also meant running away from the sanctuary of the cave.
He ducked beneath a low-hanging branch and fell as his foot went into the mouth of an animal burrow beyond. His ankle twisted badly but he clamped his teeth against the shout of pain. Scrabbling through a drift of dead leaves, he clawed his way upright with the aid of an ancient tree with bark the colour of bleached bone, his fingers finding purchase in the thick creases.
Putting weight off the foot, he found that he was able to stand, though pain stabbed up through his leg to do so. He hobbled on for a bit longer, aware that the clamour of pursuit had died down slightly, though he could hear the splash of the gor-folk reaching the river just a couple of hundred paces behind.
He turned right, along the slope of the great mound. Ankle flaring with each step, he limped through the arboreal twilight, wincing not with pain but every crack of twig underfoot and dislodged stone that rolled through the piled leaves.
It was obvious that he couldn’t outrun the gor-folk for much longer. The further he went on, the greater the distance back to the cave, and the beast-headed hunters were not the only dangerous creatures in the woods. He desperately needed to get back to the seclusion of the cave. Somehow he would have to turn back, perhaps circle around the pursuing pack.
He wanted to stop and think but fear kept him moving, the need to keep distance between him and the grunting half-beasts pushing him onward through every surge of burning pain from his leg.
Memories crowded into his thoughts, brought back to vivid life by his predicament. He felt again the blows of fists against his back, the lash of leather belts on the backs of his legs, the wetness of spittle on bruised and bleeding skin.
His ears did not ring with the baying calls of the gor-folk but with the curses and accusations of his own family.
Kinslayer! Murderer! Animal!
He struggled for focus, finally stopping to catch his breath with his back pressed hard against the bole of a tree. His eyes strayed upwards, for a moment considering the refuge offered by the branches above.
It was a false hope. Even if he could climb out of sight his body was running with sweat, his scent strong on the air. The gor-folk were savage but they were not stupid. And even if he remained hidden long enough for them to grow bored of the hunt, the journey back to the cave would grow more dangerous as dusk and then night approached.
Without a good idea of exactly where the gor-folk were he had little chance of navigating a route around them. His best chance, probably his only chance, was to try to go back through them without being seen and hope that they would not think to double back on the trail.
With this in mind he pushed himself away from the tree and turned back up the long slope. Keeping low, he limped back through the bushes, thorns scratching at his skin, the uneven ground threatening to turn his injured ankle again.
He skirted from tree to tree, keeping to the deeper shadows where he could, until he saw the glint of the stream a short distance ahead. Most of the noise of pursuit came from his right, almost level with where he was, as far as he could tell – the trees made it hard to pinpoint the origin of the snapping wood and snarls of the gor-folk.
He would have to ford the water again. Rather than leave a second trail, it made sense to do so where he had crossed the stream before. His scent would mix with the smells already there and if he then roughly followed his own route back he might elude detection altogether.
Almost numb to the pain in his ankle now he crept closer to the bank of the stream, moving from the cover of a tree to the large rocks that guided the water’s course. Spray speckled the warm stone and he stopped to dip a hand into the water, quietly drinking from the stream’s edge.
He was some distance still from where he had crossed and he edged upstream, heading into the breeze that sighed through the foliage above. He caught the beast stench of the gor-folk and wondered how they could pick out his scent from amongst their own terrible odour.
About twenty paces short of where he had thrown the rodent carcass he halted again, readying himself to scramble across the wet rocks to the other side.
It was unlikely that anyone had been left to guard for his return but he was loath to expose himself any more than needed. He had survived in the wastes and the woods for long enough to know that there was no such thing as being too cautious. Grimacing as he pushed his weight onto his damaged ankle, the painter slid between two boulders, scraping skin from his chest and shoulders.
His foot slipped on a patch of wet moss and he slid down the rock, eliciting a hiss of pain.
Forcing himself up again, for the briefest of moments, no more than two heartbeats, his head rose above the level of the rocks and he could see clearly along the curving course of the stream.
His gaze first fell upon the body of another small gor-man, its skin paler and rougher than the creature he had killed. It was draped across one of the rocks, the side of its skull smashed it where it had slipped.
Next his eye fell upon the dozen and more crows and other carrion birds already tearing at the corpse, their black feathers slicked with blood, beaks gleaming in the light that dappled through the swaying canopy.
In the next moment the flock erupted, alarmed by his sudden presence. An avian whirl exploded from the corpse, their cawing and shrieks deafening the painter as fresh panic sent him lurching into the water, splashing across the stream in a bid to escape the scene of his discovery.
He reached the far bank in a few strides. Losing his footing again, he clawed his way onto the firmer ground, pushing through the long grass at the stream’s edge.
The carrion flock was still screaming its annoyance, their calls picked up by other birds in the surrounding trees so that a chorus of alarm seemed to hoot and trill from every direction.
A gruffer noise broke through the cacophony even as the painter drew himself up. In the dimness across the stream he spied the vague shapes of gor-folk. Several had turned at the commotion and were calling out to their companions.
He became aware of warmth on his scalp and shoulders and realised that he stood beneath a break in the foliage. Shadow no longer concealed him; he was as visible in the sunlight as though someone shone a lantern upon him.
Not waiting to see if they had noticed him or not, he bounded away from the stream, diving headlong into the grass. Slithering as fast as he could, he headed for the nearest bushes of sufficient size to conceal him.
From this vantage point he peered back, in time to see a handful of smaller gor-folk approaching the stream, clearly sent back by their larger cousins to find out what was happening.
The feeling of security offered by the bushes lasted only a heartbeat, just until his gaze fell to the flattened trail through the grass, a red smear from his grazes and cuts glistening on the bent stems.
His blood. His fresh scent.
The painter hesitated no longer and bolted into the woods once more.
CHAPTER SIX
Keeping to the balls of his feet, Athol moved first to the left and then the right, watching to see how well Serleon moved in his bulky armour. The Aquitan advanced slightly crouched, blades held before him, eyes on the tip of Athol’s spear. The spear-carrier took his weapon in both hands, extending it towards his armoured foe.
Serleon struck, lunging forward, the edge of his blade crashing against the shaft of Athol’s spear. A flicker of annoyance showed in the champion’s eyes as the sword bounced from the ironwood shaft leaving barely a mark. He retreated with two quick steps but Athol had made no effort to counter-attack.
Humekhta’s champion started to circle to the right, spear pointed unwaveringly at his foe’s face. Serleon advanced a step and then another, blade tips weaving circles past each other. He took another pace, trying to force his way into the centre of the bladespace, turning to keep Athol directly in front of him.
The Khul warrior continued his deliberate manoeuvre, perfectly balanced, moving without effort. Every time Serleon adjusted his footing or twisted, Athol watched the plate armour slide, seeking the gaps formed at groin and armpit and elbow, learning how the all-encompassing suit had been engineered.
He darted forward, spear tip flicking towards Serleon’s chest. The Bataari champion knocked the weapon aside with one blade and swung the other at Athol’s arm. He had been expecting the blow and rolled beneath it, coming to his feet behind the heavily armoured man. Here there was more visible cloth beneath the steel, more weak points to exploit.
Athol backed away for a moment, encouraging the other warrior to come on to him, a slight dip of the shoulder feigning poor positioning. The ruse convinced Serleon, who took two quick steps and swung a sword towards Athol’s ribs, a metallic shout ringing from his helm. The spear-carrier caught the blow on his weapon’s shaft, and the next, and the third, turning each aside with the least amount of effort required.
An overhead swing almost caught him off-guard and he ducked aside, leaping high to avoid a following cut aimed at his exposed calf. He landed, spun the spear towards Serleon’s midriff to force him to halt his advance, and then danced back several steps, opening up the gap between them once more.
‘Are you to bore to death?’ called Williarch with a derisive laugh. To Athol’s dismay he heard a few answering chuckles from the watching court.
Serleon of Aquita was worthy of his byname – Peerless Blade – for he saw the moment of Athol’s irritation and attacked, both of his blades coming fast; one high, one low. Athol turned his spear just in time, blocking both, but was forced back a step towards the boundary rope. Serleon pressed his advantage, swinging strike after strike, alternating left and right with considerable speed. Athol made no attempt to attack but weathered the storm, shifting his feet a little at a time until he saw an opening to spring aside, rolling on his shoulder before he came spinning to the balls of his feet once more.
The weight of the other warrior’s armour was finally taking a toll. Athol could see sweat running down his face inside the visor, and his steps were a little laboured, the surge of energy that had powered his last attack dissipated by the nakar-hau’s evasion.
‘Finish!’ bleated Williarch and there was again a grumble of answer from the watching Aridians. This time Athol did not allow himself to be distracted but attacked instead, catching the Bataari champion as he moved his weight forward to advance. Serleon barely deflected the tip of Athol’s spear with a hurried swipe of his blade. Athol slashed the spear downward as he stepped back, the gleaming head raking across his opponent’s chest. Steel peeled like the skin of a fruit beneath the enchanted metal.
Inside his helm, Serleon’s eyes widened with shock.
Fear powered the next flurry of attacks, as Serleon tried to bull his way through Athol’s defences with slower, more powerful swings. Every few heartbeats, the nakar-hau struck back, nicking a pauldron, scoring across the armoured gut and, finally, slashing the crest from the Bataari’s helm.
The murmur of the crowd grew louder but Athol barely noticed. His whole focus was centred on the armoured figure standing before him. Serleon’s hands hung a little lower, his stance more upright as the muscles of his back protested the prolonged engagement. Athol barely felt the breastplate and vambraces he wore and his breath came as easily as if he were taking a walk along the riverbank with Eruil.
‘What he doing? What he doing?’ demanded Williarch. ‘This is fight, not dance.’
Athol parried a few more blows and then stepped back, spear raised to a guard position. He kept his gaze on Serleon’s, seeing the other warrior blinking sweat from his eyes, the resignation growing.
Reluctantly, Serleon lowered to one knee. He threw aside first one sword and then the other, eyes still fixed upon the spear-carrier.
‘He wrong!’ cried Williarch. ‘He fight! Fight, dog! Fight!’
‘Do you yield the bladespace?’ asked Athol, advancing until his spear tip was within striking distance of his opponent’s throat.
