Valkia the Bloody

by Sarah Cawkwell

  One of the immense beasts lowered its drooling muzzle to sniff at the wounded warrior and a tectonic rumble sounded deep in its cavernous chest. Crimson lips peeled back to expose fangs as long as a man’s arm and its tiny eyes glittered with undisguised malice.

  ‘My attentions will be... swifter, to say the least,’ Valkia purred.

  ‘I will... never...’ He began to speak, and with a faintly bored expression, Valkia exerted extra weight on her foot. The villager heard the bone at the top of his spine crack loudly. The pain, which followed a split second later, was excruciating. He had so little strength that he could not even scream and a gasp of agony left his mouth. Moments later, a barely comprehensible stream of words was uttered.

  ‘Caves. They’re in the caves.’

  ‘Of course they are.’ With a nonchalant movement, Valkia stamped down on the man’s spine. His back broke in two instantly and the body arched backwards at an unnatural angle. The light in his eyes died out slowly and she savoured it. After a few moments, she stood clear of the corpse.

  ‘Kormak.’ She beckoned her champion close. ‘There are matters I must attend to in preparation for the slaughter that awaits us. Therefore, I leave this hunt to you. Find the caves. It should not be too difficult given the stench of weakness that seeps from these soft creatures.’ She indicated some of the more feral amongst her army. More beast than man, they were burying their snouts in the gore and viscera that was on offer. ‘Find the survivors and spill their blood in my name.’ She gave him a radiant smile. ‘Spare none.’

  The champion nodded his understanding and set off to carry out his mistress’s bidding. The daemon princess looked around at the camp, its tents and layout so reminiscent of things that she had pressed far into her memory, and a sneer marred her features.

  ‘Burn it,’ she said. ‘Burn it all.’

  The rumours became reality in a far shorter space of time than Edan could ever have feared. The initial claims that a daemonic army was moving south had been shrugged off as overreaction. But the scout currently standing before the Circle brought different news.

  ‘Speak.’ Edan waved a hand in an indifferent manner towards the young man who was noticeably pink in the face from his exertions. The youth inclined his head respectfully.

  ‘The Red Hawks are no more,’ he said. Edan sat up a little straighter at this news. The Red Hawk tribe had been one of their former allies, in times past. They had been one of the first to break their ties following Valkia’s death and had resumed their own independence. They had never been opposed to the Schwarzvolf, but there had always been a faint suspicion that they could turn at any time.

  ‘When you say “no more”,’ Edan asked, voicing the question with obvious care, ‘do you mean that they have been driven off their lands?’

  ‘No, Godspeaker.’ The scout accepted a cup of water gratefully and downed it. ‘Two of our fastest runners have been sent to check over their camp. But word is that they have been slaughtered to a man. None have been left alive.’

  ‘We will wait to hear from our men then,’ declared Edan. ‘This could be a trap on their part to draw us in.’ Eris, sitting beside him, nodded her agreement at this.

  ‘Foolish rumours can get out of hand too quickly,’ she acknowledged, reaching an accord with her uncle for once. ‘The question we should be addressing now is what we should do if these tales have any truth to them? We must track whoever carried out such an attack.’

  Edan did not reply. If the Red Hawks, a fierce war band in their own right had truly been obliterated, then the Schwarzvolf faced a deadly enemy. But for now, these were unsubstantiated claims. He said nothing in response to Eris’s rhetorical question and she answered it for him.

  ‘I do not think that it would harm us to prepare for war. Just in case.’ Around the tent, the other members of the Circle nodded eagerly. Eris glanced at the Godspeaker, but Edan was lost in his own thoughts. His dreams had come to haunt him again, only this time it seemed that the whispered promise that his death was imminent was moving uncomfortably towards reality.

  ‘I… do not feel well,’ said Edan, rising from Valkia’s throne. ‘I must go and rest.’ Indeed, he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. An army was moving south, an army that showed no mercy. And if his dreams held any truth, he had a terrible suspicion that he knew who marched at their head.

  It wasn’t possible, he told himself repeatedly. She was dead. Hepsus had watched her die. She was gone. She could not hurt him.

  Nonetheless, Edan did not sleep that night, afraid of what dreams may come to torment his darkest hours.

  But the dreams came anyway.

  ‘Release me, Valkia.’

  She ignored the whispering voice that tickled the very edges of thought and focused instead on the way ahead. Her army travelled with speed and purpose. The slaughter of the Red Hawks had slaked their thirst for blood for a short time, but it was a desire that could never truly be satisfied.

  The warrior queen flew through the air above her surging army, although to call them an army was something of a misnomer. Somewhere in the dark recesses of her memory, she recalled organisation, ranks of warriors arranged according to their skills. The mob that crossed the snowy wastes beneath her was haphazard at best. There was little cohesion but for their shared desire to kill.

  Other than the human warriors, the berserkers who stood as her vanguard, none of the creatures of Chaos served her. Not truly. They served Khorne without hesitation and to Valkia it mattered little. Blood would flow and more skulls would pile at the foot of the brass throne. The god would be pleased and his power would swell still further.

  ‘Release me.’

  The whisper came again and she glanced down at Locephax. The daemon prince was awake, his ethereal eyes glowing a virulent green.

  ‘You keep asking me to do that, slave. And yet I have not done it. You are mine now. And you will do my bidding.’ Her leathery wings flapped, bearing her further aloft. ‘You offered me a reward and I refused then as I refuse you now. It is time to accept that I am greater in all things, Locephax. Your eternity will be much more sanguine.’

  ‘Followers of the idiot-god will never be greater,’ came the retort. ‘You are creatures of reflex. Simple and thoughtless. Where is the pleasure in such mindless slaughter? To kill with a purpose, to savour the suffering of your victims, though? That is precisely what you are doing, my love.’

  ‘Do not speak to me.’

  ‘Are you afraid I tell you the truth? That your lust for revenge brings you pleasure? Ask yourself which god you truly serve, Valkia. It is not too late for you…’

  ‘I said be silent!’ Valkia unstrapped the shield from her arm and raised it before her so that her burning red gaze met that of the daemon prince. ‘I am my master’s consort. You may court me all you wish, Locephax, but I know my own way. Hold your tongue until I have need of your power.’

  ‘What will you do to me otherwise, Valkia?’ Locephax’s sneering tone angered the warrior queen beyond measure. ‘Kill me? Take my skull? I believe you have already done all you can. All I have left to torment you with is the truth. Grant me that much at least.’

  She secured the shield to her back so that she could no longer see Locephax’s face and beat her wings harder, driving the pace below to something much faster. The disembodied voice continued to taunt and complain behind her, but she lashed it with her fury and it dwindled into bitter silence. She had made her choice a long time ago.

  Why, then, did the daemon continue to try to tempt her? She shook her head, scowling.

  ‘I am Valkia,’ she said, her tone strong and her voice clear. ‘I am Valkia, known as the Bloody. The Gorequeen. I am the Bringer of Glory and I serve Khorne. Your words are meaningless, Locephax. So hold your tongue.’

  As she flew onwards, leading the horde towards the Vale, she could hear the cruel laughter of the daemon prince behind her. Locephax was her gift, her reward, and she could bend the creature to her purpose when she s
o desired. But he was also her eternal curse.

  She hated him.

  So close to her goal, she channelled that hatred into a single bolt of rage that she hurled with supernatural might at her desired target.

  ‘I know you are not real. You do not frighten me.’

  Edan was back once more against the wooden stake, held rigid and immobile by invisible bonds. He could sense rather than see the presence of his tormentor.

  ‘You should be terrified, Edan, son of Merroc. Why are you not afraid?’

  ‘I know this cannot be real. I know that you cannot be real.’

  ‘You seem very sure of yourself.’ The creature of darkness moved around him and he tried with every ounce of strength in his body to turn his head to look at her. Face your fears head on and they will no longer frighten you. His own sister had taught him that when, as a mewling child, he had been afraid of his own dreams. But he could not move.

  ‘Hepsus watched you die, Valkia.’

  There was a laugh and a shifting in the darkness. The creature that shimmered into being in front of him began to take form and substance, ethereal tendrils of mist coalescing into a more tangible shape.

  ‘So you acknowledge who I am, at least.’

  Edan swallowed although it was difficult. The rope that was lashed around his neck was drawn excruciatingly tightly. ‘I think I always knew,’ he said after a period of silence. ‘I think I always knew but did not accept the truth.’

  ‘But you have said yourself, you know none of this is real.’ The shape before him was now more than just air, but somehow distorted. The face was too blank, devoid of not just expression but of defining features. The shape, although clearly female, was also something he was not familiar with. It had been ten long years since Valkia’s death... or at least her alleged death... and although time lessened the memory, Edan was almost entirely certain that his sister had possessed neither horns nor wings the last time he had seen her.

  As if she sensed his thoughts, the female shape emitted a low chuckle. There was no amusement in the sound. ‘Time,’ she said, ‘changes all things.’

  ‘Indeed.’ It was a useless response and Edan knew it was nothing more than a verbal placeholder whilst he struggled to organise his thoughts.

  ‘You are right, of course. None of this real.’ His captor broke the lengthy pause. ‘You are... how shall I put this delicately... a prisoner within your own mind. I have brought you here so that you understand why it is that you have to die.’

  ‘We all die,’ he countered, but his voice held none of the conviction of his words.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said sneeringly, mocking his feeble response of earlier. ‘But most of us die gloriously. Some of us die well before our allotted time. Your death, Edan, will be neither glorious nor noble. You will die on your knees, screaming for mercy. And for you, my dear brother...’

  She leaned forward and he could smell her breath. It was not unpleasant; it put him in mind of autumnal leaf mould. The earthy scents of the decay that permeated the air at the end of a Vale summer.

  ‘For you, there will be none. Enjoy the last hours of your life, Edan, for that is what it has become measured in. Soon, it will end.’

  With an effort he had not thought himself capable of, Edan pulled back his head and spat at the Valkia-thing. He awoke seconds later to the ringing sound of her derisory laughter.

  She was close, of that there was no doubt. Edan had woken from the most recent dream in abject terror. Perhaps he could run. Perhaps he could gather up what mattered to him and flee from the oncoming storm of his sister’s rage.

  But where would he go?

  The sheer inevitability of what was going to happen filled him with a strange kind of calm acceptance. If he could not flee, then he would stand his ground. He would show courage until the moment he died. The irony of the fact that he had spent his entire life seeking the easy way out was not lost on the Godspeaker. When Eris came to his tent, alerted by the sounds emanating from within, she found her uncle barely able to stand, laughing so hard that he was vomiting. Several empty wine bottles littered the floor at his feet and his intoxication was without doubt.

  ‘Uncle, control yourself.’ Eris put steel into her tone and that served only to make Edan laugh harder. The man was quite deranged, broken by the terrifying visions he had been suffering.

  ‘Send out your warriors if you wish, Eris,’ he said between choking gales of laughter. ‘The Schwarzvolf are doomed either way. Stay here and be slaughtered. Head out to face the maelstrom and be destroyed in the effort.’ He reached over and patted Eris on the cheek in a fond way. ‘The ogre’s choice, my dear. Die quickly or die slowly. Our death is assured.’ He nodded solemnly, although the effect was somewhat spoiled by the thin trickle of drool that oozed from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Then if the gods have seen our end,’ said Eris, her back straightening and defiance coming into her expression, ‘then we will make it a glorious one.’ With those words, she turned and strode to the tent’s entrance. ‘It is what my mother would have done.’

  After she had said that, Edan stopped laughing.

  ‘Your mother,’ he whispered and then passed out in a dead faint, inebriated beyond capacity to even stand any longer. With a disdainful sniff, Eris left her uncle face-down in a puddle of his own waste and began the task of preparing the Schwarzvolf for war.

  SEVENTEEN

  From Whence the Blood Flows

  The army of Valkia moved south like a roiling wave of devastation. Behind them they left nothing but ruin and death. They fed well and they did so with startling regularity. Those who needed blood to survive indulged their gluttonous appetites with every kill.

  Increasingly suspicious of her uncle’s erratic and unpredictable behaviour, Eris had decided to remain behind rather than accompany the scouts from the camp. It had proven to be a wise choice as not one of them had returned. That in itself had been warning enough. The warriors of the Schwarzvolf would not sit idle and wait for their enemy to invade the Vale. Eris gathered them together, delivering a rousing speech that put many of the tribe elders in mind of her mother. They would not wait to die at the hands of this unseen foe, she had cried with feeling. They would meet the threat head on.

  Edan had been insensible after she had found him laughing in the tent and she had turned away from him in disgust. Her uncle’s mind was lost and she had no time to give him any kindness or sympathy. She bore such hatred for the man that she would have been hard pushed to spare him a kind word anyway. She had planned to leave him in the charge of the young and the infirm, those who could not take to the field of battle. He would be of no use to them once the fighting started. But he came anyway, spouting some incomprehensible nonsense about facing his destiny as the gods intended.

  In this situation, Eris finally came into her birthright. She had always been her mother’s daughter but now she was able to move out of Valkia’s considerable shadow. It didn’t matter that her grasp of strategy was nowhere near the calibre of her mother’s. It mattered only that she could lead the Schwarzvolf into war and that she could conduct herself with due deadly force at their head.

  So the army of the Schwarzvolf marched north, their remaining scouts sent ahead of them. Better by far to be prepared for what they faced, even if they had barely any concept of the horror that approached.

  The horde of Valkia moved steadily south. They had no need to send runners ahead of their force. Valkia had no need to prepare for what they faced at the end of the march. Moreover, she did not care. The ultimate battle would be but a formality, its details consigned to the vagaries of history. Her victory was assured. Her success was never in question.

  The Schwarzvolf would die.

  ‘It’s too quiet.’

  Night had fallen, bringing a chill that promised the first snowfall by dawn. The army of the Schwarzvolf, not gifted with the same unnatural strength and resilience of a daemon host, had paused in their march. It was a time to gather t
heir strength, a time for reflection and preparation.

  For Eris, it was also a time to look upon the heavily diminished numbers of the warriors. With so many of the former allied tribes breaking their ties to the Schwarzvolf, the host had been decimated. A head count had put their numbers at several hundred still, so it was still a force to be reckoned with. But at Valkia’s zenith, her army had numbered well over a thousand.

  The first party of runners still had not returned and Eris was beginning to wonder if their enemy had some breed of war-dog to sniff them out. Had she known the nature of the hounds stalking the darkness ahead of Valkia’s monstrous legion she would have kept every man as close as possible.

  ‘It’s too quiet.’

  Eris made the observation again, but she was speaking to herself. She had dismissed her battle commanders and had taken a walk away from the ribald laughter and conversation of the resting army. To her mind, such high spirits were inappropriate when their doom was coming towards them with relentless certainty.

  And it was quiet, even given that it was the dead of night. Usually, there would be distant sounds of howling wolves, or the flitter of bat wings. But there was nothing. No night-time insects or any other ambient noise that Eris had always associated with the evening. Even the air was still, as though the world held its breath before the bloodshed to come.

  Nothing but the dark and the cold and the chill of anticipation.

  Eris stroked the whetstone down the length of her blade, comforted by both the motion and the sound. The soft sching of the stone on the steel brought confidence and familiarity. Readying the blade she wielded reminded her who she was; what her purpose was.

  ‘I am Eris of the Schwarzvolf,’ she said, raising her head to the moonlight that shone down on the chill plains of the north. ‘I am the daughter of a warrior queen and I will lead my people to their victory or to their death. Either way...’

  Sching.

  ‘Either way, I will lead them. In the name of the Four, I do this thing.’

  The words left her mouth, but they were mechanical and without any true feeling. They were words that she had learned from an early age and which she had repeated over and over in her life. She had prayed to gods she had once truly believed in, but in whom she had ultimately lost faith. Her uncle had fallen to the lure of the Reveller, that much was clear to her. Where her mother had walked the path of blood, her uncle had stumbled down the path of excess.