The room was suddenly quiet and still. The three elves listened for several seconds to discover whether the girl’s screams had prompted any investigation from the neighbouring buildings on the narrow street, but they could hear nothing. In the backstreets and alleyways of the slums of most great cities, people pretended not to hear screams.
‘Pick yourself up, boy, and take the old man out of the way,’ Gilead said to Laban. ‘I… I’m sorry…’ said Laban, bowing his head to his better. ‘It was… The rain was so…’
‘You’ve done enough,’ said Gilead, dismissing Laban. ‘Clean up Mondelblatt so we can get him back to his rooms and get out of this place.’
‘We must tend to the girl,’ said Fithvael. ‘She fought so hard, she has broken her hands on me.’
Gilead looked at the girl and then at Fithvael. He raised an eyebrow, almost as impressed as his friend was by the girl’s will to fight against the odds.
‘You’ll have to do it fast and alone,’ said Gilead. ‘And you’ll have to keep him out of it.’ He gestured at the innkeeper, still unconscious on the floor.
Laban tried to pick Mondelblatt up, but the old man waved him off and the elf was content not to have to deal with the professor’s urine- and beer-soaked clothes.
Mondelblatt rubbed at his chin, which had a startling red spot on it but was not blackening.
‘I’m going nowhere,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘except where you go.’
‘You’ll tell us what we need to know, and you’ll go back to the university where you belong,’ said Gilead.
‘Then who will help you?’ asked Mondelblatt. ‘Who will school you in the ways of your enemies? Who will lecture you in the mysteries of the sands?’
‘You speak in riddles, old man,’ said Gilead.
‘Aye,’ said Mondelblatt, ‘and riddles will be your undoing if you do not heed me.’
Fithvael looked at Mondelblatt, remembering the conversation between the two students in the alleyway earlier that evening.
‘Listen to him, te tuin,’ said Fithvael quietly. ‘The old man knows what it is. He knows what the stone can do. He knows who wields its power, and he knows why.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ said Mondelblatt.
‘Then what would you say, old man?’ asked Gilead.
‘I’d say that I know where to begin,’ said Mondelblatt.
LET THE GREAT AXE FALL
Part One
Graham McNeill
In the end, they counted eighty-eight skulls in the pile at the heart of the village: the skulls of children, no larger than a fist, all the way to those of fully grown men and women. The entire settlement had been wiped out in a single act of slaughter. Such feasts of death would usually attract the attention of carrion birds, but the sky above Heofonum was empty of scavengers.
Stacked in a pyramid, with the smallest at the top, the skulls were coated in sticky blood that had run down the bony ridges of empty eye sockets and jawbones to pool beneath this grim shrine to man’s mortality. The wooden homes of the villagers lay in ruins, smashed apart as though a herd of bulls had been driven through them. Even the stone hall at the edge of the settlement had been destroyed.
Their hunting party had ridden the length and breadth of Heofonum, turning over every fallen timber, digging through every collapsed home and raking the debris of its abandoned barns, but they had found nothing of its inhabitants save their fleshless skulls. This was the third such village they had found, and with each bloodied pile of skulls laid before them like monstrous altars of worship, the mood of the hunters darkened still further.
Wenyld leaned against the stone wall of what had been the village alderman’s home. The stonework was simple, imitating the style of Sigmar’s great hall in Reikdorf, but this building had not been crafted by the mountain folk, but by the hands of men and was nowhere near as grand or finely made. It had been built to last, with dutiful care and a cunning eye for defence, but that had not been enough to thwart the monster that had razed Heofonum. Having listened to Leodan’s account of its ferocious strength, Wenyld doubted any wall, no matter whether wrought by man or dwarf, could withstand such dreadful power.
Wenyld pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders as a chill blast of wind scudded through the ruined hall. Ever since he’d taken a dead man’s spear to the belly in the last moments of the battle to save the Empire from the necromancer’s undead legions, he’d found it next to impossible to keep the cold at bay. Only perched on a bondsman’s bench at a blazing firepit would any hint of warmth touch him. With winter blowing in over the Vaults to the south, Wenyld knew he was in for a painful season of snow and misery, with aching bones and frost-touched marrow.
‘Great Ulric, you favour the snows, but I’ll be glad to see your brother again with the spring,’ he said with a respectful nod to the ice-white skies of the north.
‘Careful,’ said Cuthwin, emerging from the trees on the far side of the ruined hall. ‘I’d rather we didn’t offend Ulric before we head into the mountains.’
‘Into the mountains?’ said Wenyld, irritated he hadn’t even suspected his friend was near.
Cuthwin had always been the better huntsman, but still it irked Wenyld that he hadn’t heard so much as a broken twig or brittle leaf being crushed underfoot.
‘That’s where the tracks lead,’ said Cuthwin, moving around the building. Clad in worn leather buckskin and a dappled cloak of faded green and brown, he blended with the landscape. His bow was strung, and his long-bladed hunting knife was loose in its sheath.
Wenyld looked up to the blackened, snow-capped summits of the mountains to the south, their craggy peaks like serrated teeth gnawing at the clouds. The Vaults were the edge of the world as far as Wenyld was concerned, a battleground where two vast ranges of mountains met and threw up treacherous valleys, gorges and shadowed canyons.
He didn’t like being too close to the mountains; orcs, goblins and worse made their lairs in the mountains, and no good ever came of going anywhere near such places. Leave such terrain to the Merogens, they were welcome to them.
‘You’re sure?’ he asked, though he knew Cuthwin was never wrong about these things.
‘I’m sure.’
Wenyld sighed. ‘Ah, good. Just what I was looking forward to, a climb into the mountains at the onset of winter.’
‘Could be worse,’ said Cuthwin brightly.
‘Really?’ asked Wenyld. ‘How could it possibly be worse?’
‘You could be doing it without me to guide you.’
‘Aye, there’s that,’ he conceded. ‘You know your way around this terrain. Are you sure there’s not some mountain goat in your family history? Is there some shameful tryst you’ve kept secret all these years?’
‘Only that one night with Ebba,’ returned Cuthwin with a sly wink.
They both smiled. Ebba was a notorious Reikdorf harridan, a mother of ten and as broad as she was tall. She was married to Bryni, a baker of such willowy proportions that it amazed everyone who knew them that they had produced such healthy children, and that he had survived the ordeal.
‘Thank you for that image,’ said Wenyld. ‘Suddenly the idea of hunting a living dead champion of a Norsii blood god doesn’t seem so bad.’
‘There, you see? Told you it could be worse.’
Cuthwin threw his arm over Wenyld’s shoulder as they made their way back to the centre of Heofonum, where the men and horses of their hunting party awaited their leader’s word to move out. Thirty horsemen, clad in gleaming mail shirts and heavy furs, with half-helms of bronzed steel – these were among the finest warriors in all of Reikdorf. Over their armour, they wore white cloaks secured at the neck by a torq stamped with the four-armed cross the former Marshal of the Reik had taken as an informal symbol of their brotherhood.
Many were seasoned veterans, men who had stood in the heav
ing press of a sword line and lived, which marked them as both skilful and favoured by the gods. A few were little more than youths, the rise of the dead having forced them to manhood before their time.
All were volunteers, none had wives and none had fathered any children.
Sigmar wanted no new orphans and widows in Reikdorf; the war against the dead had created enough already.
One warrior stood apart from the others, a tall, shaven-headed man with a stripe of hair running across his crown to the base of his neck that then became a long, dangling scalp lock, similar to those worn by the Ostagoths. This was Leodan, a horse-warrior of the Taleutens whose Red Scythes rode with Sigmar’s army at the River Reik and who had very nearly met his end at the great axe of the monster they hunted.
Like Wenyld, his wounding had been grievous, and few had expected him to see the dawn. But Taleutens are tougher than seasoned oak, and the horseman’s shattered bones had knitted whole, though he would forever walk with a pronounced limp. Alone of his Red Scythes, Leodan had lived through that hellish night of war-making, and the loss of his brother riders was a wound that could not be healed by poultices and stitches.
Sigmar had once remarked that there was something missing in Leodan, some part of him that wasn’t entirely normal. Wenyld had sensed it too on those few occasions he had cause to speak to the embittered Taleuten. Leodan had remained in Reikdorf following the defeat of the necromancer, a sullen presence at the fire whose shame kept him from returning home and whose pride drove him to relearn his skills as a rider. When Sigmar had asked for volunteers to ride with him, Leodan had been first to offer his lance.
Wenyld and Cuthwin nodded to the warriors as they tightened saddle cinches and fed grain from their panniers to the horses. They all knew that this was likely the last stop before they reached the mountains, and a well-fed horse was a sure-footed horse. None of them had ridden the trails of the Vaults, and Wenyld saw their wariness at venturing into such a hostile environment. The mountains offered a whole host of ways for a warrior to die, none of them glorious. To die falling from a cliff or crushed in a rockslide was no way to enter the eternal hall of Ulric’s kingdom.
Leodan limped over to Cuthwin, his scarred face and ice-blue eyes cold as the grave.
‘What sign?’ he asked.
‘South,’ said Cuthwin. ‘Into the mountains.’
Leodan nodded and turned away, returning to his horse and hauling himself into the saddle with the aid of his lance and an awkwardness the men of Reikdorf pretended not to see. With Leodan gone, two of the younger riders approached, Gorseth and Teon, lads barely old enough to have reached their Blood Night and whose chins were scuffed with only the faintest scraps of beard.
Though they had seen only sixteen summers, Teon had ridden into battle alongside Alfgeir, and earned great renown by standing against the blood drinker that had once been Count Markus of the Menogoths. Gorseth had fought for the Emperor too, standing in the spear line against a host of black riders, and sported a long scar along his shoulder where a rabid corpse-wolf had raked him with its claws.
Both were lads of heart, but they were so young it only reminded Wenyld how old he felt.
‘Did you find any bodies this time?’ asked Teon.
‘No, lad,’ said Cuthwn. ‘We did not.’
‘Where do you think they are?’ said Gorseth. ‘What does the monster do with them?’
‘Best not to think of it,’ said Wenyld. ‘It would give you nightmares that’ll have you weeping at your mother’s teat.’
Gorseth glared at Wenyld. ‘I earned my blooding,’ he said. ‘Same as every man here.’
‘Maybe so, lad,’ snapped Wenyld, suddenly angry. ‘And when you’ve seen more than one battle or can grow more than thistledown on that chin of yours, maybe I’ll treat you as an equal. Until then, stay out of my way and stop asking stupid questions.’
Gorseth’s face flushed ruddy with colour, but he bit down on his anger and turned away. Teon followed his friend without comment, but Wenyld could see the disappointment in the lad’s eyes. He sighed, irked that his temper had got the better of him. Gorseth hadn’t deserved such ire.
‘You were harsh on the boy, Wenyld,’ said Cuthwin, as the two youngsters mounted their horses. ‘Seems like only yesterday we were as inexperienced as him.’
Wenyld grunted. ‘Maybe to you,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember my bones aching in winter so much or feeling the stiffness in my joints yesterday.’
‘Age comes to us all, my friend,’ said Cuthwin.
Wenyld said nothing, his heart heavy. Cuthwin was only a single cycle of the moons younger than him, but a stranger could be forgiven for thinking that a decade or more separated them. War and wounds age men, thought Wenyld, but Cuthwin had somehow avoided the worst ravages of both.
‘How long do you think before they get here?’ asked Wenyld, shielding his eyes against the low sun and looking to the east. ‘I don’t like the idea of too many nights in the open waiting for them.’
Cuthwin shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Not long, I’d hope.’
‘You’d think it would take them longer,’ said Wenyld. ‘What with the shorter legs.’
‘They don’t travel like we do,’ said Cuthwin. ‘They damn near outpaced the Asoborns of Three Hills on the march to Reikdorf.’
Wenyld nodded. He’d heard the story often enough from Wolfgart, the new Marshal’s voice swelling with his pride as he told how his wife and kinfolk had stood fast against the blood drinker’s army on that tree-lined hillside.
‘Aye, and we’ll damn well outpace you and your fancy horses when we get up into the Vaults, manling,’ said a voice from the brush behind Wenyld. He reached for the heavy-bladed sword strapped to his hip. Cuthwin’s hand kept him from drawing the blade, as a stocky figure encased in layered plates of burnished gromril and shimmering links of mail emerged from the scrub as though from thin air. Silver wings flared from the cheek plates of his full-faced helm, and he carried a great axe across his shoulders, with butterfly-winged blades and an edge sharper than even Govannon could fashion to a weapon.
‘Master Alaric,’ said Cuthwin, with a short bow.
‘Cuthwin, isn’t it?’ said the dwarf, his hands planted on his hips. ‘You younglings all look the same to me.’
‘Maybe if you took your helmet off you’d get a better view,’ said Wenyld.
‘Listen to him,’ said Alaric with grim amusement. ‘You’d think with that cook pot he calls a helmet on his head he’d have the good sense to keep his flapping tongue silent about someone else’s armour.’
‘At least my cook pot lets me see who I’m talking to.’
Alaric took a step forward, and a dozen dwarfs in heavy mail shirts with round, steel-rimmed shields stepped from the brush behind him. Each of the mountain folk were like metal statues, and the threat of violence contained in each one was palpable.
Alaric laughed and lifted the visor of his helm and held out his hand.
‘Good to see you again, Wenyld,’ said Alaric. ‘Grungni knows, you’ve lost none of your charm and good manners.’
‘I had few enough to begin with,’ said Wenyld. ‘But at least I had some.’
‘Never had much use for manners, boy,’ said Alaric. ‘Manners only clutter up what I need to say to someone with pretty words and hot air. And what damn use is that?’
‘None at all, master dwarf,’ said Wenyld, taking Alaric’s hand.
Wenyld had met Alaric in the wake of the battle against the necromancer, when Sigmar had carried his wounded body to the Great Hall at the centre of Reikdorf. The healer Elswyth had been swamped with wounded men, and thus it had been Master Alaric of the dwarfs who had stitched his wounds closed. Even one-handed, he had been steadier than most human surgeons, and Wenyld knew he owed the dwarf his life.
‘Is Sigmar here?’ asked Alaric with his c
ustomary abruptness.
Cuthwin nodded. ‘He is. The Emperor set out from Reikdorf as soon as he received word from Karaz-a-Karak.’
‘Good to see a manling king still understands the value of an oath,’ grunted Alaric. ‘Take me to him. There’s killing to be done.’
Sigmar knelt with his head bowed beside beside the small stone shrine, one hand over his heart, the other clasping the haft of Ghal-maraz. The plates of the Emperor’s burnished armour shone like silver, and the thickly-furred pelt of a great bear hung from his shoulders. A short-bladed sword was strapped to his side, and his anger at the death of his people hung over him like a lightning-shot thunderstorm.
The shrine itself was a small structure of four stone columns with a pitched roof of grey slate. It stood beside the shattered northern gateway of the village, and Sigmar knew it was lucky to have escaped destruction when the gates had been smashed asunder. No walls enclosed the shrine and at its heart was a statue of the wolf god in his bearded, barbarian aspect. A pair of wolves sat by his side, and he carried his mighty two-handed warhammer over his shoulder, a warrior who has never known his equal and never would.
Sigmar did not pray for himself: he petitioned the god of the northern winds and wolves to look kindly on his subjects that had been murdered in Heofonum.
‘Great Ulric,’ said Sigmar. ‘Your people died here, and they come before you as victims of a terrible evil, one which has escaped Morr’s judgement more than once. I would ask you to welcome them to your halls, where the beer is cold and the roasted meat is always hot. I ask this not for me, but for your loyal people.’
Sigmar received no response, nor had he expected one, for Ulric was a god who rarely answered prayers. His lessons were harsh, and taught a man self-reliance.
A hard god to follow, but a worthy one.
Sigmar stood as he heard someone approaching. From the heavy, mechanical rhythm of the footsteps he had a good idea who that might be. Sigmar did not turn around, and gently touched the heavy, rune-inscribed head of Ghal-maraz to the carved hammer of Ulric with a nod of respect.
Hammer and Bolter: Issue 23 Page 7
