Larger ships, with two, three or even four banks of oars remained in the deeper water offshore, w hile the smaller longships rode the waves onto the beach, like killer whales hurling themselves onto land to snatch at seals basking there.
A dozen longships had already been dragged up onto the beach, and in the moment before the clouds once again obscured the view , Rolan could see scores of Norscan butchers making their w ay up the tw isting paths from the beachhead.
Eyes w ild, Rolan spun back tow ards the half dozen giants closing in around him, brandishing his pitchfork. It looked useless next to the heavy, spiked and bladed w eapons of the raiders, and he doubted that he w ould be able to even land a blow before the end came for him.
Stories of the bloody sacrifices performed by these northern monsters came back to him, stories of still beating hearts ripped from chests, and all manner of agonising tortures performed on their victims before the release of death was granted. He took another step backw ards, and felt the edge of the cliff beneath his heels.
He glanced dow n again. Better to be dashed upon those rocks than be butchered in the name of some infernal daemon-god. The pitchfork dropped from his fingers, spinning end over end tow ards the jutting rocks below. With a shuddering breath, Rolan closed his eyes and stepped backw ards into open space.
A mailed fist grabbed him by his shirt front. Feet dangling out over the cliff-face, Rolan gasped. He w as hurled to the ground aw ay from the cliffs edge, tossed through the air one-handed as if he weighed no more than a newborn lamb. There he cow ered, shaking like a leaf in a storm, looking up at the Norscans with wide, wild eyes. One of them grabbed him by his hair and hauled him roughly to his feet. With the haft of his axe, another then struck the back of his legs hard, breaking the bones and forcing him to his knees.
Rolan cried out as his head w as reefed backw ards. His eyes bulged as an axe w as buried in his throat.
Overhead, the gods rumbled their approval.
* * *
HIGH JARL EGIL Styrbjorn placed one heavy boot on the prostrate, dying priestess and yanked the blade of his axe free. Splintered ribs protruded from the chest w ound, blood bubbling around them. The dying woman's eyes were wide, her mouth open in silent agony, but the jarl gave her no further notice - just another w eakling southerner, a pitiful wretch that he earned no honour from slaying. Spinning an axe around in each hand, he continued up the steps tow ards the abbey's smashed doors, leaving the woman to die, alone and ignored.
The axes that the Skaeling warlord w ielded were ancient, hellforged weapons, heavy w ith infernal magicks, their blades shaped in the likeness of wolf heads. A gleaming blood-red ruby w as inset into the hafts of the axes, representing the eyes of the great w olves, and they blazed w ith inner fire. The axes were named Garmr and Gormr, in honour of the great w olves that accompany Kharnath on his bloody hunts across the heavens. They were holy artefacts of the Skaelings, handed down through the generations.
The air w as rich with smoke and the sounds of butchery - the screams of the dying, the clash of w eapons, the roaring of his men. At the top of the stairs, Styrbjorn paused, looking back tow ards the sea.
The burning enemy tow nship grew like a malignant tumour around the abbey.
Scattered pockets of resistance remained, but the enemy w ere weak, and Styrbjorn felt no particular desire to join the slaughter. These were not worthy foes, not like the Graelings, the Vargs, or any other Norscan tribes, nor the Kvelligs and Tahmaks of the Kurgan. The slant-eyed Hung tribesmen too w ere enemies that you could be proud to fight and kill, men that knew not the meaning of fear or panic.
But these soft-bellied southerners, they were hardly men at all. Few stood even to the Norscan's shoulders, and they were as w eak in spirit as they were in body. Almost universally, it seemed, they were a race of malformed runts; pathetic, wretched and honourless. Any one of them would have been killed at birth had he been born of a Skaeling w oman, for any mother would have been shamed to bear such a stunted w retch. Only the ruling class had any backbone at all, and even they would have been regarded as lesser men had they been born into any Norscan tribe.
Scores of longships could be seen in the harbour of the burning tow nship, though it w as only a fraction of the fleet that had accompanied him from Norsca. Fully half of his ships had beached unseen on the north side of the island, and their warriors had closed in on this tow n under the cover of darkness. When the first of his longships had been seen approaching the town, the terrified inhabitants found that their escape w as already cut off from behind. None had been spared - not man, w oman or child. Even the dogs of the enemy were butchered like vermin. Bands of his w arriors still roamed the tow n, hunting down the last survivors. Some dragged screaming w omen by the hair from burning buildings, to be used and slaughtered in the name of the true gods, w hile others ransacked the more wealthy structures for plunder.
Even as he w atched he saw more of the enemy cut dow n by his men, smashed from their feet by axe, sw ord and spear. He saw heads hewn from shoulders and lifted high into the air for the gods to see, before being rammed onto spikes or hung from belts. He saw w eeping terrified men have their throats slashed before being kicked face dow n into the streets and spat upon for their cowardice. He saw shaggy-furred w arhounds w orrying at the bodies of the fallen, tearing apart flesh and crushing bone w ith their powerful jaw s.
Styrbjorn w histled sharply and two of the hounds lifted their blood-smeared snouts from the belly of their latest kill.
The w arhounds, brothers of the same litter, were massive beasts the size of small ponies. Their back legs and flanks were scaled like a lizard, the skin tough and leathery. Their heavy shoulders, forelegs and heads were covered in thick black fur.
Bony spurs ran dow n their backs, and tusks like those of a boar jutted from their toothy maw s. Around their necks were thick, spiked collars, and Styrbjorn's rune w as branded into their flesh. They slunk away from their kill, growling and swinging their heavy heads from side to side, and a curt command from Styrbjorn brought them loping tow ards him.
Flanked by the w arhounds, Jarl Styrbjorn stalked inside the abbey. Its doors had been smashed off their hinges and lay in splinters, and he stepped over bodies spraw led across the floor. The stink of blood made his eyes dilate and his heart beat a little quicker. It w as clear to Styrbjorn that many people had fled here to the abbey for protection. The notion that any god w ould offer succour to those w ho cowered from their enemies rather than fight them was laughable.
Guttural laughter accompanied a cry of agony that echoed through the interior of the abbey and Styrbjorn strode dow n the central aisle towards its origin. A cluster of his elite huskarl w arriors were gathered on the dais at the head of the abbey, surrounding a figure spraw led on the floor. Encased in ornate armour of Chaos, these w arriors had the mark of the gods about them, a palpable aura that made the skin tingle. Still, Styrbjorn w as god-touched himself, and he wore the favour of his w arlike deities like a cloak.
Styrbjorn's huskarls stepped aside, bow ing their heads, and he saw that the figure that occupied their attentions was an elderly w oman, perhaps someone of holy significance. She w as garbed in a long green dress, and a silver amulet resembling a three-petalled flower hung from a fine chain around her neck.
Bjarki, the Skaeling seer, stood before the holy woman, clutching a curved sacrificial blade. He w as grinning.
Blood w as streaming dow n the woman's cheeks. Her eyes had been cut out, Styrbjorn saw . Her fingers and thumbs had been hacked off as w ell, and she groped around her blindly, leaving bloody smears on the stone floor.
Bjarki had long been in the jarl's ear, urging him to strike against the lands of the southern horsemen, the lands called Bretonnia in the indecipherable southern tongue. Long had the seer desired to see w reck and ruin come to these lands, and his excitement that his dreams of devastation w ere now starting to come to fruition w as abundantly clear.
Almost tw enty years ago, St
yrbjorn had been aboard the longship that had come across the tiny fishing coracle, adrift in the middle of the sea that divided Norsca from the southern lands. There had been two people aboard that tiny boat - an old man, and a young boy no more than six w inters old. From their dress and the indecipherable babble that they spoke it w as clear that they w ere southerners, and know ing the currents of the seas in that region as well as any living man, Styrbjorn knew that they had come from Bretonnia.
Laughing, Styrbjorn had nailed the old man to the mast of his longship, and a similar fate w ould have befallen the boy, had the Norscans not seen the witch-light in his eyes. Defiant and unafraid, the small boy stood his ground, his fists clenched as he stared dow n the longship full of Norscans, and every Skaeling there could see as clear as day that the boy w as god-touched.
Impressed w ith his bravery in the face of death, the Norscans had instantly dubbed the boy Bjarki - ' little bear' in the Skaeling dialect. Styrbjorn had taken the child into his household, feeding and clothing him and teaching him the ways of the Norse.
He had taught him how to hunt sabretusk and blood-bear, to kill w ith axe and blade, to honour the gods w ith your actions and taught him the meaning of pride and honour.
The boy never talked of w hy he was adrift on a coracle accompanied by no one but an old bondsman, and Styrbjorn never pressed him. It was clear that the child had renounced any ties to his birth land and embraced the w ay of the Skaeling w holeheartedly. That he harboured a burning hatred for Bretonnia was obvious, and Styrbjorn encouraged this emotion, knowing that it w ould fuel the youngster's grow ing strength.
It mattered not at all that Bjarki w as not of Norse blood - the pow er of the gods w as w ith him, and no tribesman would be foolish enough to incur the wrath of the gods by doing him harm.
Styrbjorn's seer at that time, old Skaelabran, had been a w ithered ancient w ho had all but despaired of finding a successor. For a decade the old seer clung to life as he taught the secret w ays to the young Bjarki, and many w ere the scars and beatings that the youngster endured under his harsh tutorship.
When Bjarki had been w ith the Skaelings a little over a year he had first voiced his desire to see Bretonnia burn. Four times Styrbjorn had raided its coastlines during Bjarki's childhood, and the boy had raged and stamped his feet w hen he had not been allow ed to accompany him, to w itness the slaughter first-hand. Styrbjorn w as impressed w ith the youngster's enthusiasm, but his decision would not be changed.
Bjarki w as much smaller than the Skaeling boys his age, and Styrbjorn w ould not risk incurring the wrath of the gods by taking him on a raid before he w as ready for it.
It w as not old age and senility that eventually did for old Skaelabran. Little more than a skeletal husk held together by bitterness and diabolic will, his life was finally ended w ith a knife thrust to the heart, care of his young apprentice. Having learnt all he could, Bjarki saw no further use for the vicious old Norscan. It had been a proud day for Styrbjorn, w ho regarded Bjarki as his blood-kin.
The seasons flowed into each other and the years turned, and for the last five years Bjarki had accompanied Styrbjorn on his raids. Those had been fruitful years of plenty, and much w ealth and favour had been garnered in raids against the Empire, the Kurgan and other Norse tribes. Much of their successes had been attributed to Bjarki, and Styrbjorn w as past the point of feeling any jealousy or anger when these w hispers reached his ears. Still, in that time Styrbjorn had not chosen to pitch himself against the Bretonnians.
'Only a foolish hunter returns to the same hunting ground every day,' he remembered his grandfather telling him. 'A w ise hunter varies his hunts, so as not to hunt any one of his prey-flocks to extinction.'
He remembered the w ords w ell, and after a half-decade of raiding the Bretonnian coastlines every season, he had then directed his men elsewhere for a further five years, allow ing the Bretonnians to grow weak and complacent.
The tortured priestess on the ground - for Styrbjorn w as certain now that she was a holy w oman - looked up at him, despite her lack of eyes, and he felt certain that she perceived him. She began to talk, spouting a stream of garbled nonsense that he knew was directed at him in particular.
'What does she say?' the jarl asked.
Bjarki licked his lips, his eyes filled with bloodlust and hunger.
'She says that w e defile this place with our presence,' said the seer, smirking. 'That the Lady w ill strike us down.'
'The Lady?' questioned Styrbjorn, nodding his head tow ards a pristine marble statue at the rear of the dais.
Bjarki turned his head tow ards the statue and gave a curt nod.
'The patron goddess of this land,' he said. He spat tow ards the statue. 'A minor deity of little true pow er.'
Styrbjorn knelt dow n before the woman on the floor. She could not see him, but recoiled from his closeness. It was not something that Styrbjorn w as unfamiliar w ith
- there w ere few even amongst the Skaelings who were able to remain close to him for long w ithout experiencing discomfort, even pain. The eyes of the gods were on him, and just to be in his vicinity was to catch a measure of their gaze. Those of particular w eakness were even known to fall to the ground in his presence, their bodies becoming instantly warped and altered as the gods gifted them the blessing of change.
The tortured priestess tried to grasp the totemic amulet around her neck, but w ithout fingers, the movement was pathetic and useless, making Styrbjorn smile. He reached out and closed his ow n large hand around the amulet, ignoring the pain it caused and the stink of burning flesh. With a sharp yank, he broke the chain, and hurled the offending amulet aw ay from him.
The priestess tried to pull aw ay, her face a grimace of loathing, but he reached down and grabbed her by the throat, his fingers almost encircling her neck. It was like the neck of a sw an, delicate and fragile, and it would take no more than a tw ist to end her life. Exerting little effort, he dragged her towards him, so that her face was no more than a foot from his ow n.
'Before you perish, know that your death shall not be meaningless. The lord of skulls shall feast on your heart and drink of your blood, w oman. And know that in the times of Darkness that w ill soon come to engulf the world, the gods themselves will w alk the lands, leading their legions in the battle to end all battles. And in those End Times, great Kharnath will cut dow n your Lady, hacking her head from her shoulders and great shall be the lamentation. Your goddess will perish - she knows this. And now you too know the truth.'
It didn't matter to him that she could not understand his words; he could see that they pained her, and that was all that he wished.
Sobbing and babbling, Styrbjorn allow ed her to pull aw ay from him as he rose back to his full height.
'Do w ith her what you w ill,' he said to his men, and stepped past them, moving tow ards the statue of the goddess. Styrbjorn shook his head derisively. If this was w ho they prayed to, then no wonder they w ere weak. This was no god to be feared and respected; not like the gods of the north.
The goddess was tall and slender, w ith flowing hair entwined with ivy and leaves. In her hands she bore a chalice. Tears ran down her cheeks, dripping rhythmically into the goblet, and Styrbjorn touched a finger to her face. The tears appeared to be real, pooling in eyes that were far too expressive to be carved of mere marble.
Behind the Skaeling jarl, the agonised cries of the priestess faded into a strangled, gargling sound, and he knew that Bjarki had slashed her throat. Still staring into the statue's eyes, he saw that the salty tears of the goddess suddenly turned red. She w ept blood tears for her defiled priestess, and Styrbjorn chuckled.
Turning back tow ards his warriors, Styrbjorn held out his hand.
'Give me your hammer,' he ordered one of his huskarls, who immediately handed over the massive double-handed w eapon to his lord. Indeed, had Styrbjorn calmly ordered him to kill himself, or any of his comrades, the man would have done so w ithout a second thought. Styrbjorn smiled.
It was good to have such devotion.
The Norscan chieftain was in good spirits as he swung the hammer around in a pow erful arc. The blow smashed the goddess's head from her shoulders. Stepping forw ard, Styrbjorn slammed the flat of his foot into the statue's midsection, tipping it backw ards. It broke in tw o as it struck the back w all, and he swung the hammer again, shattering goblets and chalices carefully arrayed along the ledges set into the w alls to smithereens.
'Will you not strike me dow n?' Styrbjorn sneered down at face of the goddess, whose head had rolled so that it had come to rest looking up at him, blood tears still trickling from its eyes.
Nothing happened, and he smirked, shaking his head.
How could he respect a people whose very god was not w orthy of respect?
IT WAS THREE hours later, and the sky was lightening with the approaching daw n.
Styrbjorn sat upon his throne, which had been brought up from his longship and placed upon the dais w here the statue of the Bretonnian goddess had once stood.
Impaled figures surrounded him. Not all were dead, and many tw itched and moaned as they slid further down the spikes. Only cowards faced such a death - w arriors who stood and fought, even w eakling southern warriors such as they had encountered, w ere given honourable deaths, killed by the blade and the axe. Those who fled in panic and cow ardice, who soiled themselves in fear, or dropped their weapons mid-battle - they w ere given no such respect.
Bjarki squatted at his feet, a savage grin on his blood-smeared face. The shaman had enjoyed the night's work, though Styrbjorn sensed this bloodletting had merely w hetted his appetite.
Warhammer - Knight of the Realm Page 7
