Hammer and Bolter: Issue 20

by Christian Dunn

  The Count glanced unblinking, up at the mound, and locked eyes for a moment with the Rat King. He knew instinctively what the creature was, but felt nothing more than idle loathing for it. The skaven could not, did not, defend themselves against his sword and blade, and he did not need a shield at all. They fell away to left and right, yet more climbed over their kin to fall at the Count’s hand. There was an array of dozens, scores, hundreds of dead behind him in a great wake, but bodies were falling harder and faster, so that they were beginning to fall one on top of another until they were two, three or four deep in places. The Vampire Count was literally up to his waist in bloody bodies.

  The Vampire Count did not relish the exercise of slaughter, nor did he care who he killed, or how, or how many. He had but one objective, to face the warrior elf, to kill him or die at his hand. There was almost nothing left of the great knight that he had once been, but there was just enough to drive him onward. His one ambition to die, his one hope to meet his match, to meet Gilead and battle to the death.

  The mound was being assaulted from all sides, but the ground was shifting, and part of the dais fell away, taking a score of skaven with it. A fissure opened in the ground, wide enough for clumsy, skittering ratmen to fall foul of its edge and find themselves swallowed into the earth beneath.

  Gilead felt the movement in the earth and took his fight to the slope furthest from the Rat King’s antechamber. He remembered the silty earth trickling from the ceiling and saw, in his mind’s eye, the niche in the wall collapsing under the pressure of the vibrations. There was no stamping now, no wall of sound, but the worst of the damage was already done and Gilead knew how fragile the underground structures had become.

  As he dropped his shoulder and brought his sword-hand up from his knee, through flesh and air and out above his head, raking through a ratman diagonally from hip to shoulder, Gilead caught the flash of light bouncing off his blade and up into the vaulted ceiling above. The crystal forms scintillated back at him, and the elf was reminded of the gem that the Rat King had worn as an amulet, from which he had cast the magic that had altered the structure of the underground chamber. He remembered the niches and the things they contained, and he knew all and everything that the Rat King had done to preserve his life-force indefinitely.

  Gilead planted his feet squarely as he turned his body, swinging his sword at waist-height, carving the blade through the spines of two more ratmen. So much had been lost to the Rat King’s ambition, ambition that Gilead knew could never be realised. The Rat King was not capable of sustaining a long life with all that entailed. It was not a matter of a body outliving its usefulness, it was a matter of the mind. The Rat King had not the mental capacity to learn or to understand. The creature could not stand the beat of its own heart, or the blood-flow to its brain, an organ it had never used for anything more complex than a reaction, an instinct.

  Gilead could never forgive such a monster. He could not forgive him for ravaging human history, for unravelling magical nature, for sullying ancient races and their achievements; but most of all, he could not forgive him for crumbling under the weight of his stolen longevity. Time had been a curse to Gilead for much of his long life, but whether it felt like a curse or not, it was always a responsibility, a responsibility that those who understood it took seriously.

  Gilead turned and wove in a dance around the Rat King, making smaller and smaller circles around the great bulk of the stationary figure, clad in its coat of white hair, staring, catatonic into the crowd.

  At every completion of the circle, Gilead cast his gaze once more out over the heads of the remaining skaven, looking for Fithvael, looking for the Count. With every turn of the circle the elf locked eyes with the Vampire Count, for the merest moment. Gilead knew that the Count understood. He understood a term of years, the sentence of a long life spent alone with thoughts raked up and processed over a millennium or even longer. There was sorrow in his heart for the undead monster, sorrow and sympathy.

  As Gilead let his eyes return to the battle, to the next skaven sacrifice and the next, and the one after that, the mound shook once more and the earth began to slip from its sides, reducing its height dramatically. Then came another great crash, not the sound of falling earth but the rumble of masonry dislodged, an avalanche of dressed stone and old brick that burst into the chamber from Gilead’s right, cutting off another exit, filling the chamber with more of everything, more dust, more sound, more debris, and more dead bodies.

  Fewer than one in three of the skaven still lived. They were the weakest and the most cowardly. They had kept to the edges of the crowd, their eyes and ears closed as much as possible. They had moved when the crowds moved them, but ducked under arms and crawled between legs so as not to come face to face with any adversary, even their own kind.

  They were running now, searching out the few remaining exits, trying not to encounter each other at close quarters, running and squealing. They emerged from under bodies where they had twitched and sniffled, hoping beyond hope not to be noticed. They were desperate now and climbed on each other’s backs to find routes out of the chamber. Another tunnel collapsed, and another; the vaulted ceiling seemed to shimmy and then spread, lowering the surface. Fault lines began to appear in the sparkling black surface. The air shifted in the chamber once more as the steps to the antechamber collapsed, sucking air and dirt and bodies into a hole in the ground that was several yards across. The turbulence made the lanterns swing, then blew them out in a stinking miasma of some combination of gases that was barely breathable.

  Gilead tore a rag from his sleeve and wrapped it around the lower part of his face.

  Somehow, the elf knew not how, the Rat King was still standing. His kin had given up attacking him. There was nothing left to fight for if they were going to have to dig themselves out, one at a time, over hours or days, simply to survive.

  Fithvael and Laban ran through the last of the skaven, the few remaining who, finally understanding their plight, turned to the Fell Ones for their salvation. Fithvael tried not to pity them as he ran them through, but Laban could not countenance killing the ragged, sorry creatures at all, and it was Fithvael and the Vampire Count who finished the last of them, humanely with single killing strokes.

  The Vampire Count shifted slightly in his armour and began to stride the last few yards to where the mound had once stood, with Gilead upon it.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asked Laban.

  ‘He plans to challenge Gilead, of course,’ said Fithvael, matter-of-fact.

  Laban shrugged, speechless.

  ‘After all we have been through?’ he asked. ‘After all the killing?’

  ‘The death of the many means nothing to a warrior such as our beleaguered knight,’ said Fithvael. ‘The death of the one is all that will satisfy him.’

  ‘He must die,’ said Laban, slowly. ‘He must die, and Gilead must kill him.’

  Fithvael looked up, as if at the heavens, but the black firmament with almost no light in it felt oppressively close to their heads, despite what little light there was still sparking off the diamond crystals.

  ‘We shall all die,’ he said, ‘if we don’t get out of here.’

  Gilead stepped between the Rat King and the Vampire Count. He stepped close to the ratman, so close that the skaven could do nothing but blink long and hard, and then look into the elf’s eyes.

  ‘You have come,’ said the skaven.

  ‘I have come,’ said Gilead.

  ‘I cannot live forever,’ said the skaven.

  ‘No,’ said Gilead.

  Gilead drew his sword and looked hard along the length of the blade. It was in imperfect condition, having been well-used over the last few hours, and for the many hours before that, it had been left to rot, thrust into the haphazard web of weapons that made up the skaven throne. This king would not sit on that throne again.

  The Rat King watched as Gilead pulled his blade through a strip of cloth and looked at it once more. It looke
d clean to the Rat King, he wondered at its cleanliness. He wondered how anything might be kept clean. He wondered how he might keep himself clean. Then he saw the blade coming towards him. He had nothing but time. He had the time to step away from the blade as it sliced through the air towards him, but he did not use the time to take a step. He used the time to wonder why he had wanted to live forever. He used the time that Gilead took to arc his blade through the air, horizontally, on its path towards the Rat King’s throat… towards his own, white-furred throat… He used the time to wonder that he knew nothing, and that it was right that he should never know anything.

  The blade of Gilead’s sword connected with the fur of the Rat King’s neck a mere inch or two below his snout, for he had no chin to speak of. The blade cut through the fur and shards of the stuff, less than half an inch long fell to the floor, drifting through the air, heavier than feathers, but not so heavy as to fall quite vertically. Then the blade touched flesh and cleaved a path through skin, parting the layers of the dermis, almost bloodlessly. Still the Rat King did not flinch. He knew that the skin of his neck was being parted by the blade, not because he felt it, because he felt nothing, but only because he knew it must be so.

  The first and last thing that the Rat King felt was the blade cutting the artery in his neck. He felt the cold of the elf-folded steel, and the heat of his skaven blood. He thought that his blood smelled somehow unclean, but he did not know why.

  The Vampire Count stopped two or three yards from Gilead, who had his back turned to him. The Count could see the Rat King’s eyes, but they were no longer staring at him. He had never been the Rat King’s foe, not as the Fell One had been. He would not interfere. He knew the outcome of this encounter. He knew that this was an execution, and, as much as he could relish anything, the Vampire Count relished the thought that the elf was capable of executing the rat-monster; for if he could execute one beast, he could surely execute another.

  The Vampire Count waited for the Rat King’s head and body to fall. They fell separately, the head to his left, bouncing and rolling several yards from his foot. The body fell hard and suddenly to the right. It did not bounce or roll, but landed with a thud, throwing up a low cloud of dust.

  Gilead nodded to Fithvael and cocked a questioning head at Laban. Then he looked directly at the Vampire Count, and sheathed his sword.

  ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

  Fithvael and Laban looked at each other and then back at Gilead, who had crouched and placed his hand flat on the floor. He stayed there for a moment or two and then darted a look towards the collapsed antechamber. He stood and pointed.

  ‘We must leave,’ he said. ‘This way.’

  The Talon of Khorne

  Frank Cavallo

  Fog drifted through the fjord, the sickly mist swallowing the Norscan shore in the first rays of dawn and shrouding the jetties and the little boats moored among the rocky inlets. Haze crept up over craggy scrublands, spreading ghostly fingers through the dying forest of bare pines that hugged the coastline.

  A scattering of hardscrabble dwellings clung to the rough terrain, overlooking the harbour. Dozens of stone huts topped with weak thatch huddled in the lee of the hillside, dominated by a long-house of roughly-hewn granite blocks and moss-stained oak.

  The village of Volfskul roused from its slumber in slow, halting steps. Grey-bearded fishermen emerged first; half-starved old men who’d weathered the night upon the wind-scoured rocks along the coast, guarding their nearly-empty hardfiskur racks from prowling, mangy wolf packs or the scavenging of scrawny sea-birds.

  Maidens in tattered, flea-infested shrouds doused the thin torches while older women beat the soot from mammoth-hide blankets, stained with dark patches by generations of household midwifery. Looking out from their doorways, watching the unforgiving hills vanish under the grey, they were the first to notice when the Norscan morning turned foul.

  It began with the wind.

  A gust rippled through the fog, cascading down from the icy peaks that towered above the village. But it was not a frozen gale. The air smouldered, crackling with cinders.

  Another fitful blast followed, and then a third, each howling more loudly than the last.

  The villagers abandoned their chores at the first sign of trouble, whispering prayers to the dark gods. But they had little chance to steel themselves against the rising tide.

  The morning mist churned, congealing into filthy, dark smog. Brimstone fumes thickened into a rank stench that choked every hint of nature from the air. Lightning tore across the suddenly-roiling sky in blood-red streaks, the crimson flashes casting eerie shadows upon the rocks; shades that seemed to slink and slither of their own accord.

  Thunder shook the heavens above and the ground underfoot. It soon gave way to a heavier rumble, a quaking of the earth: the clatter of iron on stone, the din of hooves stomping forwards like a living storm.

  Tugging on his mother’s mammoth-hide cloak, a young boy cried out in fear, his innocent voice signalling the arrival of their doom. All eyes followed the boy’s call, turning to the hill pass that wound down from the crags of Broken-Axe Peak, to see a phalanx of faceless, armoured horsemen galloping out from the swirling haze.

  At its head there rode a giant among giants, the Chaos warrior that legend knew as Ruaddon. Man and steed alike thundered forth in a nightmarish cacophony that announced him as no herald could ever have.

  Like his men, mounted on thick-necked warhorses adorned in iron-studded armour, he betrayed little hint of mortal weakness. His pauldrons and gauntlets boasted wicked rows of iron spikes, and brass and gold engravings were splashed across his hell-forged cuirass with ruinous scrawls, some obscured by the dents and slashes of old battles. A helm crowned with twisted daemon horns and a ghostly circlet of bleached human skulls announced his profane intent.

  Behind him the lances and raised battleaxes of his men mixed with wooden pikes bearing tusk-framed battle flags, towering above them in a moving forest of ivory and sharpened steel.

  Ruaddon slowed his pace as the black cadre fell into a double column, two-score strong; a malevolent parade that drew the attention of everyone in the village.

  Lifting his crimson visor to reveal a face twisted with scars and permanent stitches, Ruaddon looked out upon the townsfolk, who now assembled as if in silent welcome… or protest. Though a bane to any land upon whose soil they trod, the black riders did not provoke so much as a flinch from the steely-eyed villagers of Volfskul. The Norscans held their ground even as more dark warriors streamed down from the hill pass to fill the centre of the village, their mounts growling and belching vile odours as they followed Ruaddon’s lead.

  They did not flee, or seek cover. Instead they stood outside the doorways of every humble structure. Some clenched bone totems to their hearts. Others scrawled runes in charcoal and blood upon their pale flesh. A scattering of men, some limping or hobbling on gnarled canes, intermingled with them.

  Aside from those few weakened elders, there was not a man between fifteen and fifty summers among them.

  Frost-blue eyes met Ruaddon’s gaze at every turn, looking back at him with a fearless resolve. Even the children returned his soulless stare, silent and defiant. For a long moment everything fell still.

  Once he had scanned the place, Ruaddon raised his arm – as if in response, a final gust of hot, volcanic wind broke the momentary respite. It came with a deeper howling, a predator’s roar.

  It was only as the feral echo died away that a final rider emerged out of the reeking black fog. The other horsemen moved aside as he rode forth, clearing a path for their master: the Chaos lord Vhorgath, Bane of the North.

  Seated high upon a snarling black battle-stallion, he wore armour forged in the most ghastly baroque fashion – daemonic skulls glowered from his every joint, and bronze barbs sparkled along the edge of his steel plate. Like Ruaddon, his face was bared to the cold Norscan dawn, but his was a cadaverous complexion of bloodless skin, as white
as whalebone. He grew neither hair nor whiskers and his deep-set eyes burned violet under a heavy brow. The flesh of his throat seemed fused to the steel of his gorget; man and armour merged into one.

  He declared himself in a peculiar baritone, every word echoing as though chanted by the whispers of a phantom chorus.

  ‘I am Vhorgath.’

  When the mere sound of his name produced no reply, no reaction at all from the townsfolk, he studied them more closely, and like his lieutenant he soon noted the absence of any healthy men.

  ‘We have come under the banners of the dark gods, not to bring sword and flame to this place, but glory,’ he continued. ‘A new army is forming, a horde that will spread the shadow of the daemon-lords upon the world once more. The name of your tribe has long been a scourge to the weaklings of the southlands. For centuries the deeds of the sons of Ironpelt have been sung by the light of bonfires in halls across the north.

  ‘But among you I see no warriors, no men to wield the axes and hammers of Chaos that so many legends recall. For months we have scoured these forsaken lands, where snow falls even in summer, yet no sign of such greatness has revealed itself to us.’

  Again, he was met with stony silence. Nothing but the relentless stares of a hundred gaunt women and their emaciated young, steady and seemingly without hint of fear.

  He motioned to Ruaddon, who had taken up his usual place beside the great warlord.

  ‘Choose one,’ he said.

  The hulking warrior grinned to himself, and wasted no time. Ruaddon scanned the gathered masses and settled upon the nearest thing to an able-bodied man he could find – an aged but barrel-chested individual whose beard still clung to reddish strands among the grey. Spurring his steed onwards, Ruaddon sidled up to the man, reached down and clamped his fist around his throat.

  Again he faced no resistance, as he lifted the man and brought him before Vhorgath.

  The Chaos lord smiled cruelly as he looked over the old man. Though his face swelled and flushed as Ruaddon held him, he stared back with no less tenacity. Vhorgath addressed him directly, his voice even more threatening in a whisper than in a shout.