Hammer and Bolter: Issue 23

by Christian Dunn

  ‘Praying to the Wolf God can wait. There’s a grudge to be settled,’ said a voice he knew could only belong to one dwarf.

  ‘Greetings, Alaric,’ said Sigmar, finally turning and descending the short steps of the shrine to the ground. Alaric was just as he remembered him: stout, immovable and utterly dependable. His armour was gold and bronze and silver, and he was not surprised to see the hand he had lost in the battle was restored with a mechanical gauntlet.

  ‘I see you got yourself a new hand,’ said Sigmar.

  ‘Aye, lad,’ said the dwarf, flexing a bronzed gauntlet of articulated digits that moved just like a limb of flesh and blood. ‘Can’t have a one-handed dwarf smith, sounds too much like an elf god for my liking.’

  ‘And that would never do,’ smiled Sigmar, but a moment of melancholy touched him as he was put in mind of the silver fingers the dwarf had crafted for Pendrag. His fallen friend’s replacement hand had been a miracle, but this artefact was clearly of much greater sophistication. None among the dwarfs were as skilled in the craft of the smith or the forging of runes as Alaric, and this piece was a masterpiece of the metalworking arts.

  ‘They already call me mad,’ said Alaric, his gruff tones not quite concealing his irritation at the name. ‘Can’t have them thinking I’m an elf-friend too. I’d need to shave my head and find the nearest daemon to kill me.’

  ‘A daemon?’ said Sigmar with a shudder, remembering the terrible creature he had fought atop the Fauschlag rock of Middenheim. He shook his head. ‘I would not be in too much of a hurry to meet such a beast. Even a hero like you might struggle to defeat a daemon.’

  ‘Maybe so, lad, maybe so,’ agreed Alaric. ‘And we’ve a bastard hard fight ahead of us as it is. Even that bumbling smith of yours couldn’t put him down fully with the baragdonnaz he’d rebuilt. A dwarf-built one might have done it, but he put it together like a blind apprentice with a hangover.’

  ‘It didn’t kill the monster, but it hurt it.’

  ‘That it did, lad, that it did,’ conceded Alaric. ‘And if we can hurt it, we can kill it.’

  Sigmar nodded slowly, offering a hand to Alaric, who accepted his warrior’s grip and shook it with a grin of real pleasure.

  ‘Just once it would be pleasant to see you when there’s not killing to be done,’ said Alaric.

  ‘That it would, my friend, but these are not the times we live in.’

  ‘There’s truth in that,’ agreed Alaric, striding back to the centre of the village with Sigmar at his side. ‘And I’m glad to see you’ve honoured your oath.’

  ‘You are my sworn oath-brother, you and King Kurgan both,’ said Sigmar. ‘You should know I would never break my word.’

  ‘There’s them among your kind don’t know the value of an oath,’ said Alaric. ‘They’d break a promise as soon as break wind, and with just as much thought for those around them. It’s easy to forget sometimes that you’re not all the same.’

  ‘I’ll try not to be offended by that,’ said Sigmar with a wry grin.

  The dwarf looked genuinely puzzled, but said nothing as they reached the centre of the village. Sigmar’s riders stood by their mounts, ready to ride at a moment’s notice, and nine armoured dwarfs stood in a small square by a fallen signpost.

  Alaric rejoined his dwarfs and turned to survey the warriors Sigmar had brought with him with a critical eye. Apparently satisfied, the runesmith addressed his words to every one of them.

  ‘You all know why we’re here,’ he said. ‘There’s a grudge that needs settling, and we’ve all been wronged by the monster that did this killing. These aren’t the first folk its killed, not by a long shot, and my people know that better than anyone. I can see there’s some among you manlings know it too.’

  Alaric stared hard at Leodan, and the scarred Taleuten gave a slow nod.

  ‘Now this monster is more than just a dead thing that’s been lifted from the grave, it’s a monster that’s been steeped in blood for longer than any of you can remember. Longer than a lot of my kin can remember, and that’s saying something.

  ‘It’s got a name, and names are powerful things. Knowing a thing’s name breaks its hold on you. Once you know its name, you’re not so afraid of it. Well this thing’s called Krell, and he was reaving and slaying in the name of the Blood God centuries before this new Empire of yours was a glint in young Sigmar’s eye. Before your distant kin even came across the mountains, Krell was spilling blood and taking skulls for the Blood God. Grungni alone knows how many dwarfs and men fell before his axe, too many, and every one of those that died needs avenging. Back in my hold, there’s a book. We know it as the Dammaz Kron, what you’d call a Book of Grudges, and everyone and everything that’s done my people wrong is remembered. We dwarfs never forget an insult, and even if it takes a thousand years or more, we get even.’

  Alaric paused, his mechanical fingers clattering as he made a bronze fist.

  ‘Krell’s done your kind great wrong too,’ said the runesmith. ‘He killed your warriors at the River Reik, and he’s butchered hundreds more now that he’s recovered his strength. Wherever it was he hid his dead face these last months, I don’t know. Probably in some dank barrow in the deepest part of the forest or some worm-infested cave beneath the earth. It doesn’t matter, all that’s important is that he’s shown his face again and we can end his slaughters right now.’

  ‘How do we fight a thing like that?’ asked Teon. Sigmar had been wondering the same thing. He did not see Krell on the battlefield, but had heard the terrible stories of his power and murderous fury. The undead champion of the Dark Gods would not be a foe easily bested.

  Alaric unsheathed his axe and brandished it over his head.

  ‘We fight with heart and courage,’ he said, turning the weapon so that all could see the glittering, frosted sigils on its shimmering blade. ‘And with master runes.’

  Alaric swept the axe in the direction of the mountains to the south, and his dwarfs followed him as he set off with a mile-eating stride. Sigmar had seen dwarfs on the march and knew they would be able to maintain that pace for days on end. There would be no danger of the horsemen leaving the foot-slogging dwarfs behind.

  Wenyld led a dun gelding to him, the muscular steed that had faithfully borne him into battle against the necromancer. Sigmar had sought the horse out with the dawn, knowing that a horse of such courage and heart was a rare beast indeed. He had found it grazing by a patch of untouched grass at the northern end of the city, and it had welcomed him with a stamp of its hooves. The horse was named Taalhorsa and tossed his mane as Sigmar climbed into the saddle and secured his boots in the stirrups.

  With the Emperor atop his steed, the rest of the warriors mounted and awaited the signal to move. Wenyld unfurled the Emperor’s banner, its bright cloth woven anew by the women of Reikdorf in the aftermath of the great victory against the dead. It rippled with gold and blue and crimson, the armoured warrior and wolves adorning the fabric given wondrous animation by the stiff breeze.

  Sigmar flicked his reins and Taalhorsa set off after the dwarfs. Wenyld, Leodan and Cuthwin rode alongside the Emperor; his banner bearer, lancer and scout. Leaving Heofonum behind, they rode along little-used and overgrown paths that led inexorably up to the cold, shadow-haunted tracks of the mountains. Sigmar glanced down at the village’s fallen signpost as he passed.

  It had once pointed to Reikdorf in the north and somewhere illegible in the east. Though Reikdorf was hundreds of miles away, Sigmar was heartened by what it represented. It showed that even people distant from his capital actively thought of him as their Emperor.

  It also reminded him of how he had failed them.

  He had promised these people protection, but what protection was there from a monstrous champion of the living dead whose damned soul was sworn to the Blood God?

  The ground quickly began to rise in choppy waves of rock-strew
n ridges, tree-lined gorges and rough slopes of loose stone that cascaded downhill as the horses trudged ever upward. The dwarfs quickly outpaced the mounted men, but Alaric had the sense to order his warriors to slow their stride and allow the riders to keep up. As chafing to the dwarfs as such a delay was, they knew it would be madness to allow their forces to become separated.

  Krell was not the only danger in the mountains.

  Alaric had spoken darkly of a tribe of greenskins known as the Necksnappers, and the spoor of rats and the sound of their scuttling claws on rock stretched everyone’s nerves wire-taut. Cuthwin caught the scent of something repellent, and soon came upon signs of its passing – footprints of splayed claws and sharp talons. He had no idea what this beast might be. Sometimes it walked on two legs, sometimes on all four, but its stride was long and its prints deep, which was enough of a reason to stay out of its way.

  Krell’s passing was easy enough to discern.

  The Vaults had long been a place where the kings of old and their long-vanished tribes had laid their dead to rest. Overgrown barrows, so ancient they had been obscured by rockfalls and the growth of hardy mountains scrub, lay broken open and emptied. Piles of discoloured, dusty bones lay at their entrances and the musty, stagnant air of the darkened tombs was the reek of a spoiled storehouse. Rusted weapons and verdigris-stained armour lay strewn about, as though Krell had thought to loot the tombs and been disappointed by the lack of anything of worth inside. The higher they climbed, the more of these broken barrows they saw, and each one gave Sigmar a shudder of unease as he stared into the darkness beyond their shattered portals. He had stared death in the face, and could not forget the chilling touch of mortality on his soul. Sigmar was a proud man, but he liked to think he was not egotistical. He knew he would not live forever, that he would one day stand before the judgement of Morr in the slabbed necropolis of the dead.

  As a warrior and an Emperor, his was a life steeped in battle and blood, and to think that he would live forever was foolish indeed. But as he stared deep into the bleak, emptiness of the cairns of these long forgotten kings, he was touched by an altogether greater worry. He chuckled softly to himself, dispelling the gloom that had crept on him with every step Taalhorsa had taken.

  ‘Sire?’ asked Wenyld, twisting in his saddle. ‘Did you say something?’

  ‘No, it’s nothing,’ said Sigmar. ‘I was merely amused by my vanity.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Sigmar pointed to a barrow with a yawning entrance and a crumpled skeleton lying in a heap of brittle bones. ‘I look at these violated tombs and my greatest fear is not dying. Do you know what my greatest fear is, Wenyld?’

  ‘No, sire.’

  ‘I fear being forgotten.’

  ‘You will never be forgotten, my lord,’ Wenyld assured him. ‘How could you be? You are the first Emperor, the founder of the Empire and the ruler of the lands. You and the Empire are one and the same. Without you, there is no Empire.’

  Sigmar smiled and said, ‘I imagine the kings buried in these tombs thought the same, but do any of us remember them? Do the saga poets still sing of their mighty deeds? What is left of them but dust and bones? No, Wenyld, it is only the vanity of men that allows us to think we will always be remembered.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Cuthwin. ‘These men may have been kings, but what did they do of note? Did they found an empire? Did they save the race of men from extinction time and time again? Their names and deeds may have been forgotten, but armies will march with your name on their lips for as long as there are men to speak it.’

  As Sigmar listened to Cuthwin, the image of the vast column of men with bloodied halberds and red swords the necromancer had shown him in the final moments of their battle returned to him. Those men had carried banners with his name emblazoned upon them, and bore talismans of the twin-tailed comet as they marched from a scene of wanton slaughter.

  ‘You should not speak of such things,’ said Leodan, surprising everyone. The horseman was taciturn at the best of times, but he had barely spoken since they had ridden from Reikdorf all those weeks ago.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You bring the notice of the gods by speaking of immortality,’ said Leodan. ‘Men should not dream of it, for immortality is for the gods alone and they are jealous of their eternal lives.’

  ‘We weren’t talking about immortality,’ said Cuthwin.

  ‘Yes, you were,’ said Leodan, raking back his spurs and riding to the head of the snaking trail of mounted men with his lance-tip glittering in the sun.

  ‘What was that about?’ wondered Wenyld.

  Sigmar had no answer for him and they lapsed into silence as the day wore on and the terrain became ever more difficult. The ground grew rougher and steeper, the path through the tree-shawled gorges getting narrower and narrower. These were mountains that did not suffer living things to move freely through their deep valleys and forests without effort.

  At every turn in the path Sigmar felt as though a hundred eyes were upon the hunting party, hidden spies stalking them on the cliffs above or malevolent observers watching from behind every crag or in every shadow. The sense of threat and imminent danger was palpable, and he knew he wasn’t the only one feeling it. Many times, horses stumbled and men cried out as they swung out over towering drops when they took their gaze from the path to seek out what might be a lurking enemy above.

  A chill wind howled down through the gorge, a knifing cold that sought out every gap in a cloak or every thin patch of cloth covering a man’s bare skin. Sigmar shivered in his armour and wished he’d worn the padded undershirt Count Marius had sent from Marburg. Ostentatiously decorated with embroidered stitching and needlepoint images of hammers and comets, Wolfgart had laughed at the sight of it, but it was undeniably warm and of sublime quality. Say what you wanted about Marius, he understood the value of quality goods.

  Thinking of Wolfgart brought a rueful smile to Sigmar’s lips. He missed his old friend, and dearly wished Wolfgart could have accompanied him on this ride into the mountains. The rogue had wanted to come, but one look at Maedbh’s eyes and her swollen belly had convinced him that to leave Reikdorf would be a mistake. The old women who knew of such things had told Maedbh she was to bear a son, and Wolfgart’s joy was complete. The boy would be born within three cycles of the moon, and Wolfgart had made Sigmar swear he would return in time for his son’s birth.

  In any case, Wolfgart had no choice but to remain in Reikdorf. With the departure of Alfgeir into the snow-wilds of the north, someone had to assume the mantle of Marshal of the Reik. Though Wolfgart had protested, Sigmar had known there was no one else who could follow the example Alfgeir had set. In a solemn ceremony, attended by no less than three of the Empire’s counts, Sigmar had presented the glittering sword of the Marshal to his oldest friend, who had grinned like it was his Blood Night all over again.

  A clatter of falling rock from ahead shook Sigmar from his nostalgic reverie. He looked for the source of the sound, seeing a scree of loose stone tumbling from the cliffs above them. Sigmar’s eyes narrowed as he saw a flitting shadow in the thick brush that clustered at the edge of the high cliff like the bushy eyebrows of an old man.

  Sigmar heard the creak of seasoned yew and looked over to see Cuthwin had his bowstring pulled back and a goose-feathered arrow nocked. The huntsman scanned the clifftop, but eventually eased the string back, but did not replace the arrow in his quiver.

  ‘What did you see?’ asked Sigmar.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Cuthwin. ‘Maybe a coney or a fox.’

  ‘Or something more dangerous perhaps?’

  Cuthwin nodded, and Sigmar saw how it irked him to be unsure of anything.

  ‘Keep a wary eye out,’ said Sigmar and Cuthwin nodded, keeping one eye on the narrow path and one on the cliffs above them.

  The path continued to wind up the angled sl
ope of a white cliff that glittered with golden dust embedded in the rocks, and Sigmar wondered why none of the dwarf holds had constructed some iron structure to hew it from the cliff. Perhaps it was too dangerous or perhaps it wasn’t even gold. Sigmar was no miner, and the fact that none of Alaric’s dwarfs had given the cliff so much as a second glance told him that it probably wasn’t gold.

  Alaric was waiting for him at a bend in the track, where a jutting boulder with a flat face projected out into space. Alaric stood with his hands braced on his hip, standing at the very tip of the boulder, with nothing to prevent him from falling thousands of feet to his death. The winds howled around the dwarf, but he seemed not to notice.

  ‘Hard going,’ said Sigmar, drawing in the reins.

  ‘This?’ said Alaric with a distracted air. ‘This is a gentle stroll compared to some of the galleries below Karaz-a-Karak. At least there you have good stone above your head, and not this damned empty sky.’

  ‘It’s hard going to us,’ said Sigmar.

  ‘Aye, you’re only manlings, it’s true,’ agreed Alaric. ‘You like your land flat and covered with trees and growing things.’

  ‘What are you doing out there on that rock?’

  Alaric looked around, as though he’d been unaware of where he was standing. He stamped down on the boulder, and Sigmar winced, half expecting it to shear off and carry the dwarf to his doom. Alaric saw his face and grinned.

  ‘I forget your kind doesn’t know stone like we do,’ he said. ‘I was reading the stone ahead of us, lad.’

  ‘What is it saying?’ asked Sigmar, who knew not to mock such statements.

  ‘Hard to say,’ replied Alaric. ‘They don’t speak quietly here. These mountains didn’t just rise up nice and calm. No, they were brought into the world with violence and fire and earthquakes that would split your Empire into shards if they happened now. I still hear the echoes of that.’