The Red Feast - Gav Thorpe

by Warhammer

  The last few days had been unsettling, and Orhatka’s behaviour was untoward; first in sending the midnight messenger and then Rosati to hurry him also. The lawsmith had always displayed care and patience, but although Rosati’s unease might be a product of his own temperament Athol suspected that it was likely much of his hasty demeanour had been transmitted from his master’s mood.

  He headed into the city, picking up the pace as he did so. If Orhatka was distressed by what was happening, perhaps there was good reason not to delay.

  In his slumber, the painter dreamed anew.

  A city falls, and from its rubbled corpse arises something beautiful and horrifying. The land itself screams with the agony of the birth, great welts opening like wounds in the cobbled streets, abyssal pits with stalactite fangs roaring into being. Stone runs like molten flesh, forming twisted arches and towering spires. The bones of the dead spring forth with new vigour, sloughing away the flesh of their former owners to cavort together into macabre erections of skeletal magnificence. Dead eye sockets gleam with an energy that is living but not life, the animus instilled by a hand not bound by mortal restriction. Teeth chattering, the skulls of the Everking’s victims screech without tongues and lips, hailing the lord of lords.

  Yet this is not what he would paint.

  This is just the background, the setting of the drama yet to unfold.

  Points of detail surface, splashes of colour among the monochrome. A blood-red slaughter leaves the plaza of a broken temple awash with crimson, the bear-fur-clad priests of its deity dismembered upon the steps. A spellwielder in blue robes who stalks through the ruin, cyan and yellow energies flickering about the tip of her gilded staff. There is a streak of green, the stem of a writhing vine, its thorns glinting with silvery venom as it winds snake-like through the shattered window of an overrun palace.

  But always more red.

  A river cuts a foam through the wasteland of a city and upon the great bridge that spans it waits an army. They stand beneath banners blazoned with stylised eagles and bear motifs, ranks of halberds held in readiness, and beyond them on the far bank a multitude of other soldiery. Some wear blood-stained uniforms; others are clad in more individual style, with fur-trimmed helms and heavy hide coats. It is not the cloth nor the bared steel of their weapons that catches the eye.

  Their faces tell a story behind the defiance.

  There is terror here, buried deep by a sense of resigned duty. The painter feels it, the overwhelming dread of what they have witnessed burning into the fabric of their souls. None of them expects to live. In truth, none of them wants to live, for the torment of carrying the memory of the previous days has pushed them all to the edge of madness.

  It is this madness that makes them stay. The revelation that there is no escape – not from this conqueror, not from his countless horde and not from the powers he serves.

  Those who were weak of spirit have already killed themselves. Others have given in to the temptation offered by service and turned on their companions, to be cut down or flee to bolster the ranks of the attackers under the cover of darkness and devastation. The impossibility of what has been unleashed, the unreality that has become the lives of the city’s defenders, has brought with it a defining truth.

  This foe can never be defeated.

  The warriors can be slain, the sorcerers purged, the beasts and incorporeal servants of the unknowable powers banished back to their realm. But all of this counts for nought. The immortal minds that brought about this living nightmare will gather their strength over lifetimes and come again. The struggle itself fuels them. A moment of vainglory, the unending wars, the ambitions of those that desire to rule and the despair at those left behind by life are the meat and drink of mankind’s destroyers.

  Better to die than live with the knowledge that survival was a lie.

  How to capture that feeling in an image? What singular scene would impress itself upon the painter’s thoughts and be brought back to the waking world?

  He groaned in his sleep, frustrated and fatigued. Rolling over, the painter awoke with a grunt, cheek pressed against the hard floor of the cave. The impetus of creation filled him and he bounded to his feet, tired of limb but filled with an irrepressible need.

  Taking his pigment bowls, he found a patch of virgin stone and began to paint. Flesh came to life, a face as high as he could reach, spattered with blood. The eyes. He worked on the eyes the most, for it was there he had seen the reflection.

  The image that captured the essence of inevitable doom.

  White, a greenish blue for the iris, black for the pupil, itself wider than his outstretched fingers. The painter paused and closed his eyes to remember what he had seen; what the man upon the bridge had been looking at. The robber of sanity reflected in the eye of a doomed mortal.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘It’s this or death,’ Threx reminded his friends. He stooped beneath a brick arch, the flame of the brand he held fluttering as a fresh breeze blew down the water tunnel. ‘I can’t go to Wendhome. Yourag will kill me.’

  ‘And who do you think will be sent with you to Wendhome?’ said Nerxes. ‘This isn’t just about you.’

  Foraza grunted his agreement with this sentiment.

  ‘The Korchian’s message said he just wanted the axe,’ said Vourza. ‘If he kills you it’d be a stain on his honour.’

  ‘Nobody cares about honour any more.’ Threx glanced back at them. ‘Nobody but us.’

  Something splashed in the water ahead and they froze, peering into the dark semicircle of the tunnel. The current pulled at their ankles, run off from the waterwheels of Ashakort. It was night and the sluices upstream were closed, the river following its natural course around the island. Had it been daytime the tunnel would have been full nearly to the roof with raging water.

  ‘Rat,’ suggested Foraza, with a tone that suggested he didn’t consider this news preferable to one of the Hall Guards.

  ‘This way,’ said Nerxes, waving his torch to the left. Pieces of ash fell onto the sluggish stream.

  ‘You sure?’ Threx jabbed his brand ahead. ‘The royal chambers are this way.’

  ‘But we’d have to go past the guard room at the bottom of the upriver tower to get there. This way leads to the upper kitchens. Nobody will be around until sunrise.’

  ‘Fine.’ Threx splashed across the flow and into the side tunnel. It was narrower than the main branch, forcing them to continue in single file, Threx at the front, Nerxes behind whispering further directions. Foraza followed, with Vourza bringing up the rear, glancing back every now and then to ensure they weren’t being followed.

  ‘How do you know the Ashen King won’t be sleeping with your mother?’ she asked, voice pitched just high enough to carry over the echoing slosh of the water.

  ‘They’ve not shared a bed for years.’ Threx cleared his throat, ill at ease with the topic. ‘I don’t know why. But that’s the point, I’ll be able to talk to him without her getting in the way.’

  ‘I still don’t think he’ll listen. And she certainly hasn’t put a hex on the Ashen King.’ Nerxes sniffed derisively at the thought.

  ‘I have to try something,’ Threx said.

  A little further on, the brickwork gave way to bare rock, bored through smoothly by countless generations of the river’s passage. It was a natural funnel that had been lengthened and widened to create the island’s network of water-driven engines. The ancient drop-off where it plunged deep below the island had been filled and the resultant flow redirected to twenty wheels spread across the downstream area of the island.

  ‘We’re under the oldest part of Ashabarq,’ Nerxes explained to the others. ‘Threx and I used to play down here when we were young.’

  ‘I swam from the leeward sluice all the way to the undergate, once,’ Threx told them, remembering the pride he’d felt on accomplishing the seemingly impossible.

  ‘Nearly drowned though, didn’t you?’ his cousin added. Nerxes pushed past an
d pointed to a circular door in the wall, just large enough for a person to crawl through. ‘We had to drag you out of the gate basin, coughing up lungfuls of water.’

  ‘Still did it,’ muttered Threx, shouldering his cousin aside.

  There was a brace on the wall next to the door and he dropped his torch into it. A large wheel was set into the weathered timber, duardin-wrought like most of the water-and-wheels system. Threx pushed aside the thought that such engineering wouldn’t have been possible in the time of constant raids and counter-raids that had prevailed before the coming of Sigmar.

  The wheel spun easily, withdrawing a bolt from the wall. It opened outwards and Threx briefly closed it to allow Nerxes to squeeze past and get on the correct side for climbing through.

  ‘Nobody about, right?’ said Foraza. ‘But what if we meet someone?’

  ‘There won’t be,’ insisted Nerxes.

  ‘Just keep watch,’ said Threx as he pushed through the doorway.

  It was dark but the light coming through the open door was enough to reveal his immediate surroundings. On the far side was a small tunnel, high enough for the duardin masons that had carved it but forcing Threx to advance at a crouch. As a child the navigation tunnels had been a lot easier to traverse. They ran left, towards the kitchens, and to the right, following the flow of the river. He heard the others grunting and puffing as they came after him, and the thump of the door plunged them into darkness – there certainly was no space for a torch without the risk of setting someone alight.

  ‘Twenty paces, I think,’ he said over his shoulder to Nerxes.

  ‘Yes, twenty paces and then there should be a ladder above us.’

  Threx pressed on, legs and back protesting at his awkward stance, but it was better than crawling on the unforgiving stone. Twice he had to stop and adjust the knife hanging from his belt, disentangling it from the leather slats of his kilt.

  He felt cooler air touching his neck and raised a hand. They met nothing. Swinging it forwards, his fingers came upon cold metal embedded into the side of a shaft a little wider than the tunnel. He slowly stood up, expecting to crack his head against the edge, but encountered no such mishap.

  ‘It’s here,’ he said as Nerxes almost shuffled into his legs.

  The rungs of the ladder had not aged well – rust flaked off their surface at his touch, though the metal within seemed solid enough. He climbed a short distance, perhaps his own height again, before his knuckles brushed against wood. Fingers questing in the dark he came upon a bolt, which he drew back with a shrill protest from the old metal. Wincing, he lifted the trapdoor, letting in flickering lantern light from the room above.

  ‘Quiet,’ he whispered to the others. Their panting ceased and he strained to hear anything from above. The creak of a poorly fitted shutter and occasional thud against its frame. The low crackle and pop of the dying kitchen fire.

  No breathing. No footsteps.

  He opened the trapdoor to its fullest extent, lowering it to the reddish flagstones as he pushed himself up the last two rungs. There was plenty of space for his shoulders to clear the gap – duardin were smaller in height but greater in girth.

  He was in a store cupboard, the walls lined with deep shelves holding various clay jars and wooden boxes. He could smell spices and wax. A faint aroma of the stew last prepared in the kitchen wafted below the curtain. He moved to the drape, stepping slowly on tiptoe, and eased it aside.

  The kitchen was also empty, a high window to his right slightly ajar, the root of the knocking and the breeze. The firepit dominated the centre, and the arrangement of spits and roasting tins above it, the ceiling open to the large chimney that ran up along the upstream side of the hall. Like the subterranean engineering, much of the upper storeys had been laid down by duardin at some lost time, though whether paid for or usurped, the history of the Skullbrands did not specify.

  ‘It’s clear,’ he told the others, stooping back to the opening with a beckoning hand.

  He found a loaf in a countertop bin and pulled off a hunk to chew while he waited. When his companions had emerged, he gathered them close and spoke in a whisper.

  ‘Foraza, close the trapdoor. I want you to stay here and make sure nobody finds our way out.’

  ‘I can do that,’ his standard bearer replied. ‘How long should I wait?’

  Threx hadn’t considered the possibility of being delayed, or not returning at all.

  ‘There’s a gong at sunrise. If you hear that, get back into the tunnel, the one with water in, and turn right. You’ll come to a gate that will bring you out over the royal quay. The Hall Guard might find you but just say you got lost or something. Chances are it’ll have all gone wrong if we have to wait that long anyway.’

  ‘What about the water tunnels?’

  ‘No, the gates will be open just after dawn. You’ll be drowned if you try to go back the way we came.’

  ‘All right. Down. Turn right. Out the gate.’

  ‘That’s it. Vourza, you come with us and watch the foot of the stairs beside my father’s chambers. Nerxes, lead the way.’

  With a last nod of understanding between him and Foraza, Threx followed Nerxes and Vourza out of the kitchens, coming upon a narrow passageway that ran most of the length of the Hall of the Pyre, just below the main floor. They turned left and quickly came upon a set of spiral stairs. They ascended one floor and then Threx told Vourza to wait.

  ‘If you hear any doors opening, or footsteps, it’s the thralls getting ready to light the kitchen fires and open the sluice gates. Come up to the top landing and warn Nerxes – he’ll come and get me.’

  She signalled her understanding and turned back to face the lower steps, head cocked to one side. Nerxes continued up, Threx on his heel, passing two more landings before they came to the uppermost storey. A broad, iron-bound door led onto a gallery overlooking the main hall.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been up here in years,’ said Nerxes.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Threx, casting his gaze over the sculpted wooden rail. The hall was dim, lit by starlight and moonlight, a few torches in sconces at the near end casting a reddish-yellow gleam on the rush-covered floor. He saw a figure reclining on the throne of his father. ‘By the ashes…’

  ‘What?’ Nerxes came up beside him and looked. ‘Is that the Ashen King?’

  ‘Yes. Why’s he sleeping down there?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘This is better,’ announced Threx, as much to himself as Nerxes. ‘Better than skulking around in a person’s bedchamber.’

  The two of them descended until they came to Vourza again.

  ‘Change of plan,’ Threx told her. ‘My father is in the Pyre Hall. You go down the steps. Nerxes, wait here.’

  As Vourza disappeared around the bend, Threx lifted the latch on the door and pushed. It opened silently, the hinges greased recently, and he stepped within.

  Threx eased the door shut again, taking a few moments to steady himself. He would not lose his temper. He would not shout, or accuse his father, or do anything except calmly explain his worries. A short speech had been running through his head again and again since he had been escorted from his father’s presence earlier that day. Impassioned but not angry, he told himself. Appeal to his pride as a ruler, don’t attack him as a man.

  Nerxes had given him the advice, as soon as Threx had confided what had occurred, the ultimatum from Yourag and what he intended to do about it. He had expected more resistance from his friends, but was glad that not one of them had argued that he should meekly accept the Korchians’ demands. There was a reason the four of them were close, and that was their shared outlook on life. They were of the generation that had seen most visibly the decline of the Skullbrands, the first to be barred from taking hot iron to their flesh or the flesh of their enemies. In his father’s day…

  His ruminations were interrupted by a movement in the shadows to his left. He could not see his father; the back of the throne hid him from this
direction, but was sure he had not left his chair.

  By the dim light of the torches a shorter figure appeared.

  ‘Kexas?’ Threx whispered.

  ‘Threx?’ The Keeper of the Pyre sounded surprised but not alarmed. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘To speak to the Ashen King.’

  ‘At midnight?’ The small man’s eyes roved up and down Threx, inspecting him.

  ‘I have no weapons, if that’s what you’re looking for.’

  ‘I wasn’t, and your reassurance concerns me more.’

  The two of them regarded each other in silence. Threx’s heart beat faster, but he fought to control his emotions. The words of Nerxes drifted back to him, telling him not to take insult where there was none intended.

  ‘Why is my father asleep in the hall?’ Threx said, breaking the stillness.

  ‘He does not sleep well in his chambers,’ Kexas replied softly, a glance back towards the throne. ‘He has many cares, and you have brought him even more burdens to carry.’

  ‘Burdens he could share, or throw aside if he were brave enough,’ Threx replied quickly.

  ‘Burdens you cannot understand. Will not understand, until you become the Ashen King.’

  ‘My father is going to disown me. He said it earlier.’

  Kexas’ ensuing silence was heavier than earlier, his manner more ill at ease. Threx did not think it was his presence that worried the Keeper of the Pyre, but the topic of discussion.

  ‘He is, isn’t he? He’ll name one of my cousins as the Heir to the Pyre.’

  Kexas said nothing, but was clearly struggling with something. His face went through several conflicted expressions.

  ‘I want to speak to the Ashen King without my mother around. Without the words of the Hammer-spoken twisting his thoughts. You understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Kexas stepped closer, eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw earlier. She thinks you’re irrelevant, or soon will be.’