Old hatreds, made the more intense by being restrained by the discipline of the army, were suddenly unfettered.
Kurt smiled. Khorne would devour many souls this day.
He brought his weapon to bear on the rest of the commanders and pulled the trigger. Two more died under its withering beam before it was smashed from his hand by an axe.
“Blood for the Blood God!” roared Kurt, drawing his sword and hewing around two-handed. He hacked his way to the centre of the group of warriors and seized up the standard. He knew that by instinct the force would rally around its bearer.
Now, as never before, he felt the presence of Khorne. As he touched the banner the laughter of the Blood God seemed to ring in his ears, the shadow of his passing darkened the sky. He was giving his master mighty offerings. Not the weak twisted souls of stunted slaves or mewling men but the spirits of warriors, mighty champions who had much blood on their hands.
He could tell Khorne was pleased.
The sweep of his sword cut down any who came within its arc. He was tireless. Energy seemed to flood into him through the standard, amplifying his strength a hundredfold. He became an engine of destruction driven by daemonic rage. Bodies piled up around him as he destroyed all opposition.
He laughed and the sound of his mirth bubbled out over the battlefield. All who heard it became infected by its madness. In frenzy, they fought anyone near, throwing away shields, ignoring incoming blows in their lust to slay.
Kurt bounded over the pile of bodies and found himself face to face with the four remaining champions, the mightiest warriors of the host: Dieter, Avarone Bloodhawk, Kilgore and Tazelle She-Devil.
With a single blow he beheaded the ogre. He saw the look of astonishment freeze on its face even as it died. Tazelle and Avarone came at him, one from each side. He clubbed Avarone down with the standard, as the woman’s blow chopped into the armoured plate of his arm. He felt no pain. It was transmuted into raw energy, a fire that burned in the core of his being. He felt as if his insides were fusing in the heat, that he was being purified in the crucible of battle.
The return sweep of the standard sent Tazelle flying through the air like a broken doll. Within Kurt’s chest the searing power seemed to be reforming into something tangible and heavy. He felt himself slowing.
He rushed towards Dieter, seeking to impale him on the horned skull on top of the standard. Dieter stepped aside and let the momentum of Kurt’s rush carry him onto his blade. Sparks flew as Dieter’s long slender sword bored through Kurt’s armour and into his heart.
Kurt stopped and looked down, astonished, at the blade protruding from his chest. Lancing pain passed through him, then he reached out, with a reflex as instinctive as the sting of a dying wasp, and with one twist broke the Unchanging Prince’s neck.
“Truly thou art the chosen of Khorne,” he heard Dieter say before he fell to the ground.
Agony lanced through Kurt, pulsing outwards from his chest. It seemed as if molten lead boiled through his veins. Even the energy flowing from the standard was not enough to sustain him. Black spots danced before his eyes and he staggered, holding onto the banner for support.
The sounds of battle receded into the distance and Dieter’s words echoed within his head until it seemed that they were echoed by a chanting chorus of bestial voices. At least it was ending, thought the submerged part of him that was still human.
For a moment everything seemed clear and the red fury that had clouded his mind lifted. He looked with fading sight on a battlefield where nothing human stood. Men who had reduced themselves to beasts fought on a plain running with rivers of blood.
Overhead in the sky loomed a titanic figure, larger than mountains, which looked down with a hunger no mortal could comprehend, drinking in the spectacle of its playthings at war, feeding on it, becoming strong.
The chorus of voices in his head became one. It was a voice which held a vast weariness and a vast lust; a voice older than the stars.
“Truly, Kurt, you are the chosen of Khorne,” it said. Blackness flowed over him and a wave of elemental fury drowned his mind. He felt the change begin in his body. The black alien being that had nestled within him, like a wasp’s larvae within a caterpillar, was emerging, entering the world through the husk of his body.
The black armour creaked and split asunder. His chest and skull exploded. Wings emerged from the remains of his body like those of a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Shaking the blood and filth from itself, the new-born daemon gazed adoringly up at its master and pledged itself to an eternity of carnage.
With a mighty leap it soared into the sky. Beneath it, small clusters of warriors still battled on. It drank in the delicious scent of their souls as it rose. Soon it looked down on tiny figures lost in the vast panorama of a landscape laid waste by war and Chaos. It turned north towards the Gates, beyond which lay its new home.
Somewhere in the furthest recesses of its mind, the thing that had once been Kurt von Diehl screamed, knowing that he was truly damned. He was as much a part of the daemon as it had been part of him. He was trapped in the prison of its being, forever.
In the sky the dark god laughed.
THE REAVERS
AND THE DEAD
by Charles Davidson
Helmut Kerzer realized that he was going to die when he saw the ship. He’d seen the sail long before the ship itself was visible, but somehow it had lacked immediacy; it was an abstract warning, not the reality itself. Here be reavers. But now the ship itself was visible, a dark hull slicing through the waves less than a mile offshore. The day’s catch was still in the nets of the fishing boats, and the village was five scant minutes inland. Helmut felt his guts turn to water as he saw what was about to happen.
The worst element of the situation was the most obvious. Helmut couldn’t cover the short distance to the village to warn them, couldn’t sound the alarm, and buy time to disperse the young and the ancient into the forest. Because—he gritted his teeth—if he did warn them they would only ask what he had been doing up on Wreckers’ Point. And when they found out they would kill him.
The practice of necromancy was not popular in these parts.
Not that Helmut was anything like a full-blown corpse raiser—oh no. He grinned humourlessly at the thought, as he watched the black sail of the pirates draw closer. Dead mice and bats! It was the unhealthy hobby of a youth who would have better spent his time mending nets, not the studied malevolence of a follower of dark knowledge. He looked down and saw, between his feet, the little contraption of skin and ivory that paraded there. The creature had died days ago; it seemed so unfair that it might cost Helmut his home or his life. His cheek twitched in annoyance and the vole fell over, slack and lifeless as any other corpse.
Death. Here on the edge of the Sea of Claws they knew about death. It stared his father in the face every time he put out to sea to snare a living by the whim of Manann; it had taken his grandfather and uncles in a single gulp, to cough them up again, bloated and putrid on the beach three days later.
He’d been a child at the time, too young for the nets and ropes; he’d hidden behind his mother’s skirts as she and his father stood stony-faced in the graveyard when they laid three-quarters of the family’s menfolk in the ground. It had been then that he’d wondered, for the first time: what if death was like sleep? What if it was possible to return from it, as if awakening to another grey, sea-spumed dawn? But he already knew that they had a word for such thoughts, and he stayed silent.
Wreckers’ Point was thickly wooded; shrouded by a dense tangle of trees and dark undergrowth that stretched south towards the great forest.
It was a place of ill omen. In times gone by the wreckers had worked here, lighting beacons to guide rich traders onto the rocks of the headland. They were long departed, hounded by the baron and his men of yesteryear, but the spirit remained; a tight-minded malaise that seemed to turn the day into a washout of greyness, waiting for the night and the lighting of de
adly fires. Rumour now had it that the hill was haunted—and the worse for any child who might wander up there.
Helmut gritted his teeth in frustration as he thought about it. His dilemma. That Father Wolfgang might wonder what he was doing, and summon the witch hunters. That some lad might follow him, to see what he did alone and unseen in the undergrowth. That if such a thing happened he might never learn… Fingernails dug into his palms. The anger of denial.
The ship was plainly visible now, rounding the headland and turning towards the beach where the boats lay. Any advantage had been squandered by the beating of his heart. Suddenly he realized that he was terrified; a cold sweat glued his shirt to his back as he thought about red-stained swords glinting in the light of the burning buildings. Reavers! If one of them should look up… could he see me? Feeling exposed, Helmut turned and pushed his way back into the tree-line.
Where was it? Ah yes. The path. A run, really, perhaps the work of a wild boar some time since—there was no spoor, or else Helmut’s surreptitious use had scared the animals away.
The path led downhill, at an angle that would miss the village clearing and the highway by more than a bowshot. Helmut trotted, trying to duck and brush beneath the branches in silence. Afraid of betrayal. If anyone sees me… he reminded himself. Warning ritual, a prayer to whatever nameless god watched over him. Going to live forever. Which meant not getting caught.
Another fear gripped him: sick anticipation. That he should not warn the village, that the raiders might catch them all unawares and kill them. He would see his mother and father and young sisters gutted, wall-eyed, flies crawling over black-sticky blood. His family he might spare, but some of the others…
A memory rose to haunt him: Heinrich. Heinrich was a year older than he, and had marched off to join the baron’s guard two summers past. Heinrich and two nameless youths tormenting him. Bright light of spring in a meadow back of the inn. Face pointed to the midden as they held his hands behind him. Childish chanting: “Helmut, Helmut, weakling no-man, eating flies and telling lies, sell his soul to Nurgle’s hole.”
Did they mean it? No more than children ever did. But they’d made his life a misery.
The other two meant nothing; but Heinrich had persisted, had appointed himself the dark messenger from the gods, sent to torment Helmut for sins unremembered.
Then he arrived at the far end of the path, and slowed, panting slightly, to look carefully around for intruders. No one else would normally visit this place… but it did no harm to check. He looked around.
No, the graveyard was deserted.
To call it a graveyard was to call the village shrine a cathedral; overstating the facts a little. Tilted, crudely-hacked slabs of slate bore mute witness to the cost of life on the edge of the sea. Moss-grown, age-cracked stones abutted new chunks hacked from the cliff face. Wee remember Ras Bormann and hys crew, lost these ten days at see. Canted away from its neighbour by subsidence and the gulf of decades. There was a small, decrepit shrine at one end, and a low wall around it, but nobody came here except for a funeral. Nobody wanted to be reminded. Other than Helmut.
He glanced round swiftly, furtively, then made a dash for the shrine. It was little more than a hovel, with an altar and a rough table on which to lay the coffin; such vestments as the village possessed were kept by Father Wolfgang. But beneath the altar—which now, wheezing slightly, he struggled to move—Helmut had made covert alterations. He’d been twelve when he discovered the ancient priest’s hole and found it to his liking. Since then…
Ragnar One-Eye glared more effectively than many a whole-sighted man, even with his patch in place. When he chose to remove it, the contrast—livid wound and burning eye—rooted strong warriors in their boots like grass before a scythe. He was not known as Ten-Slayer for nothing among his followers. He leaned on his axe-haft and waited, knowing where the Rage would take him; red and fast and furious, a tunnel running from his ship to the village of the fisher-folk by way of severed necks and gutted peasants and blood everywhere.
Where Ragnar trod, his bondsmen shivered, the whites of their eyes showing beneath the shadows of their helmets. Wolf-fur cloak and an axe that had shed rivers of gore, and a tread that had made many a foeman’s blood turn to water. He stood in the bows as the fast, clinker-built raider ran for the shore, and turned to face his men.
He raised his axe. “Listen!”
The rays of the twilight sun caught the edge of his blade, flashing feverish highlights in their eyes. “We go to war, as ever. We will fight, we will loot, we will take honour and booty home when we leave, and the wailing of their women will be nothing in our ears. But this time is not the same.”
He paused. Before him, the shaman was readying his infusion, oblivious to the tension in the warriors around him. The cauldron bubbled as he stirred a handful of ground warpstone into the brew of battle. Ragnar felt a great hollowness in his chest, a lightness in his head as he inhaled the fumes.
“Listen!” he shouted hoarsely. “The fisher-rats have gone too far. Their desecration offends the gods. Their dark magic has brought famine to our coasts; the fish rot in our nets and the enemies of Ulric walk in the lands of man. This time is different! Let our swords be red and our arms strong as we punish them for their evil!”
A roar answered him. If any of the soldiers had reservations they kept them well concealed. And soon, as soon as the shaman was finished, they would have none.
Ragnar looked down with his one eye, and the shaman looked up. Black eyes glittered in the man’s thin, pinched face; he opened his mouth and spoke impassively. “The sacred brew is ready, lord and master. Will you officiate?”
Ragnar grunted impatiently. “Yes, by Ulric’s blood. Now!”
The priest wordlessly held up the bowl, and a long, small spoon. Ragnar took both, and holding them, intoned: “Blessed are they who drink the brew of Ulric, for they shall reign supreme in the field of battle, and dying shall experience the delights of heaven. Banish fear and doubt from our hearts and inner reins; make strong our hands to smite the enemy. Let us commence. Wulf!”
Wulf, a hulking lieutenant, stepped forwards. Ragnar raised the spoon to his face; wordlessly Wulf sipped from it, and turned away. A queue formed, in rigid order of rank. Presently, all had drunk from the bowl, and the ship was running through the breakers. Ragnar raised the pot to his face and, glaring out towards the beach, drained the mouthful remaining in it. The slaughter was about to begin.
Maria Kerzer was not a happy woman. She was not old, but time had attacked her savagely. Married young, she had given her husband only one son before the sea stripped his family from him; and that one had grown up sickly and introverted. And her husband’s lot had sunk, for when the ship bearing his father and brothers was lost, so was much of their fortune. So he drank, and brooded, and Maria raised chickens and geese and vegetables and prayed that she might yet bear him another son; and meanwhile the years stole up on her with the harsh, scouring winds of the coast.
That evening he returned from the beach early, stern-faced and angry. “Where’s that layabout son of yours?” he demanded, seating himself heavily on the stool by the fireplace where Maria did her spinning.
She shrugged. “He does as he will, that lad. What’s he done now?”
Klaus cast a black look at the door. “He was to have mended the trawls, but I’ve not seen hide nor hair of him since noon. Doubtless the dolt’s in hiding somewhere. If the net’s not sewn he’ll not eat, I promise you.”
Maria cast a critical eye at the hearth and poked it with an iron. “Needs more wood,” she observed.
“Then fetch it yourself. I’ll not be trifled with by the whelp!” His indignation vast, he settled down on the stool until it creaked.
Maria wordlessly opened the door and went outside. A few moments later she returned, bearing an armload of branches from the store.
“I smell smoke,” she said. “Can you believe some man be burning wood outdoors at this time of year?”
Her shoulders hunched in disapproval, she bent to place a length of kindling on the fire.
Klaus sighed. “Woman,” he said, in an altogether softer tone of voice than he had used previously, “how long have we been married?”
She answered without turning round, “Twill be a score years next summer.” Still bent, she stirred the kettle of fish soup that hung on chains above the range.
“Tis long enough that I forget the oath that bound me to thee. The boy casts a long shadow.” Maria turned, to see a distraught look cross her husband’s face. It gave her pause to wonder. Gloom she saw there often—but sorrow?
He stood up and reached out to take her hands. “Forgive me,” he said roughly, “I should not blame you. But the boy.”
“The boy,” she said, “worries me as well. Not the scribin’ stuff he had from Father Wolfgang, but the other.” She shivered. “Wanderings at night and never there when you call. That fever the other year. And then,” she paused in recollection, “when we laid the stone for your father. His face itself might have been rock.” She looked up to meet her husband’s gaze. “Good sir, I might rather he’d been some other’s than mine.”
Klaus hugged her gently. “Be that as it may, there might be others yet. And—what’s that?”
They stood apart. Carried plainly on the wind was the noise of one bell tolling. There was only one bell in the village; and it only tolled for one reason. Danger.
Helmut fumbled the flint but caught it before it hit the damp floor. A scrape, a spark and there was a brief flare of light from the tinder that settled down into the thin, yellow glow of a candle. It smoked in the damp air of the crypt. The halo of light caught Helmut’s face, casting stark shadows on the walls. He reached up and pulled the altar back into place with a tug; now there was no sign to betray his presence. Gingerly he ducked forwards, then inched down the time-worn steps that led into the bowels of the earth.
The Laughter of Dark Gods Page 3
