Headtaker

by David Guymer

  The gunner grinned excitedly, chittering instructions to the fuel-bearer as he pressed down on the trigger.

  The intensity of the explosion knocked Queek off his feet as the fuel-bearer rocketed skyward on a pillar of warpflame, exploding far above the battlefield in firework fury. Queek gasped for breath as gobbets of warpfire rained down, sinking through dwarfish armour and igniting skaven fur. Panicked skaven bolted in every direction, setting fresh ratkin ablaze as they blundered through the crazed press or simply, mercifully, ended their short lives on the axes of the still advancing dwarfs.

  A quartet of ratling guns arrived behind him, breathless and exhausted as had been the late warpfire team. ‘Fire, fire, fire!’ he squealed as panic threatened to become a rout.

  Victory would be his. Kazador would be his. He was Queek. Fearsome. Undefeatable.

  The gunners cranked the handles of their weapons and the muzzles of their fearsome guns chittered and spun, but spat nothing more deadly than warpstone-smeared oil. One of the skaven shook his weapon angrily. Another, surveying the destruction of the warpfire team, released a stale waft of relieved musk.

  ‘No!’ Queek wailed, stamping his footpaws in fury. Blurred ratkin shapes ran by in full flight. ‘No, no, no, no!’

  He glared at Kazador with undisguised hate.

  Next time, Kazador.

  Next time.

  Chapter Eight

  There was little cheer to be found among the throng of Karak Azul as the ratkin fled the Deep in rout. The skaven were scattered to the depths but, like the verminous weeds of the Underworld they were, every last one needed to be purged by blade and flame down to the very root before there could be any rest. Units of Ironbreakers, escorted by rangers and experienced miners, already pursued the foul creatures to their lair.

  Sensing the blackness of their king’s mood, the throng joined him in giving expression to the sombreness in their hearts. There was little chance now of a war on the Black Crag. The clansdwarfs would return to their trades, the warriors from foreign holds would trickle back to their homes and the moment when restitution came agonisingly within their collective grasp would have passed. Grudgement would be forced to wait – another fifteen years or more.

  The sound of fighting continued to filter from distant quarters. The sharp report of a Thunderer’s handgun sounded strange after the sense-deadening cacophony of the battle just fought, a shrill note suddenly silenced, like the shriek of a fowl snared in the depth of darkness before the dawn chorus. From somewhere lost in smoke came the rumour of steel clashing against steel, likely skaven hold-outs unaware their battle was lost. But there was little glory in such slaughter. Even the sound of it faded to insignificance beneath the rumbling industry of the Eighth Deep, audible once again at the battle’s death, immutable as the grinding drift of continents.

  The area around the fort had become the last focus of activity. In an unexpected reversal of roles, besieged had become besieger, and ranks of Thunderers knelt behind hurriedly fashioned palisades of skaven corpses and scree as they took potshots at the grey-walled basilica. A group of skaven, fleetingly visible through the slitted openings in the rock face, had somehow gained access to silence the artillery station there. The wooden footbridge spanning the chasm before the fort shook to the tread of boots as clansdwarfs quick-marched back the way they had come. A continuous stream of missiles rained down upon them, from poison darts to cannonballs, hauled to the window slits between pairs of slender paws and dropped onto the heads of the dwarfs like rocks.

  Some distance from the continuing actions, not far from the spot where Kazador had crushed the skaven centre, the wounded and the slain lay in grisly array, a battalion of the broken laid out in parade order. Lorekeepers with iron-bound ledgers walked the files, grimly recording the names of the slain. Priestesses and their assistants bustled by them. For many, there was naught to be done but cleanse bloody flesh and comb knotted beards that they might be presentable for their arrival in the Ancestors’ Hall. Those that lived awaited stolidly the ministry of the daughters of Valaya. The hermit priest, Gunngeir, followed more slowly in their wake, offering Grimnir’s quite different balm to the wounds of the dishonoured. There was no weeping, no gnashing of teeth. They bore their suffering like dwarfs.

  Handrik resented his own place in that unlucky number. These dawi were heroes undeserving of his company. They had laid their bodies down in defence of the karak, whereas he hadn’t suffered so much as a splinter from a thaggoraki shield. He lay face down in the ground, the millennia-old stone fractured and bloodstained from the murder mill that had passed over it mere hours before. He had been helped out of his armour and his goat wool undershirt, his densely muscled shoulders straddled by the sturdy thighs of a Valayan priestess. Handrik bore her ministrations, red-faced. That any should see him in such a condition was intolerable.

  Handrik grumbled, wincing as the priestess cut into the flesh of his back. He felt blood spill from a lanced swelling and stream down his sides. He ground his teeth as the woman cut deeper. A shadow fell across his face and he squirmed under the priestess’s hold to look up, a curse pre-formed on his lips.

  ‘That’s right, come take a good gawp at…’ Handrik coughed, embarrassed as the approaching figure turned out to be that of Kazador. ‘I… erm… Forgive me, majesty.’

  The king came on foot, whether out of humility born of misplaced respect, or simple consideration for his bearer’s aching limbs. He held himself back, eyes fixed upon the hanging fog, glassy and unseeing as a sleepwalker’s in their modest aversion.

  ‘How do you fare, old friend?’

  ‘Don’t ask such stupid questions,’ Handrik snapped, before he could rein in his wayward tongue. He forced a laugh, but it was half-hearted, devoid of his usual cheer. ‘There’s a keg of Bugman’s in it for you if you’d have this harpy from my back.’

  ‘Almost done, you big baby. Stop fidgeting.’

  Handrik spluttered in outrage. ‘Baby?’

  ‘Peace, Handrik,’ Kazador intoned. ‘Leave Grimhildur be.’ The king regarded him sorrowfully. ‘Know that no blame is apportioned to you over Logan’s death. It is my own fault. I should never have permitted you to take up arms at my side, but I couldn’t deny you one last battle.’ His expression hardened. ‘The fault is mine. I was warned against it.’

  ‘You were,’ the priestess added.

  ‘No! Logan fell on my account.’

  ‘Silence, Handrik,’ Kazador threatened. ‘The grudge is set. I can only hope one day to find the good fortune to atone. Logan’s memory deserves no less.’

  Handrik softened in surrender. It was already written.

  ‘The loremaster will be interred with full glory tomorrow morning. You were friends. I’d ask you to join me in bearing his body to the Burial Hall.’

  ‘I’ll allow that,’ Grimhildur interrupted, ‘but only that,’ she finished firmly.

  ‘Aye, majesty,’ Handrik whispered.

  ‘It is done,’ said Grimhildur, patting him on the rump. The priestess clambered off Handrik’s back, wiping her bloodied hands on a rag. ‘The swelling is lessened, but you must rest. And I mean really rest this time.’ She regarded him sternly. ‘So if I hear so much as a whisper of you donning that armour again, it’ll be an inch from your beard.’

  Handrik grunted, downcast, not troubling himself to rise at the scuff of fresh boots. He was not some performing beast to make a spectacle of himself for the amusement of every ill-mannered gruntitroggi that passed his way.

  Kazador, for his part, noted the new arrival with the slightest of nods. He might have smiled had his frown not been immortalised in stone. ‘A pleasure to meet you again,’ he said, ‘Quite the hero of the hour if what I hear is to be believed.’ But the king’s countenance and tone of voice remained grim.

  Grimhildur nodded to the newcomer and offered a bow to the king, turning to leave them be before fixing on Handrik one last time. ‘If I don’t find you right here when I get back–’
>
  ‘I know, I know. Away with you, woman.’

  The stranger laughed, and the sound of his voice removed any mystery as to his identity, for Handrik knew no other whose Khazalid was so polluted with Imperial accenting. ‘I’d do as she says, longbeard. She strikes me most fearsome.’

  ‘What do you want, beardling?’ he asked, tersely.

  ‘Speak well to friends or hold your tongue,’ Kazador barked. ‘I summoned the boy. May dawi in my kingdom travel only where Handrik Hallgakrin deems fit?’

  ‘Of course not, majesty. Forgive me.’ He struggled to rise. He could feel his legs better now, frigid needles prickling his extremities, but he was still horrifically sore. His body felt beaten, wrung out. And he had a dire thirst. A gentle hand, gloved and unarmoured on his shoulders, bade him stay still and, to no benefit to his temper, he was too weak to do anything but comply. He glared into the youthful, golden-haired face of Thordun Locksplitter. ‘You look bloody pleased with yourself.’

  ‘As well he might,’ said Kazador. ‘It is scarcely commonplace for the actions of one so young to save a kingdom, old friend. Single-handedly, he plugged the hole left in the line by that traitorous umgaki, Hrathgar, may his beard be shorn and his chin lie forever fallow. He held the thaggoraki long enough for Lothgrim to drive them back with reinforcements from the citadel.’

  Forgetting his ire against Thordun, he snapped back at the king, red-faced and indignant, ‘I told you. I said that Lothgrim was too sparse on the chin. He was tasked with guarding the stair. It wasn’t for him to decide what’s best. What if the skaven had got in behind him, they could have made it anywhere in the hold?’

  ‘But they didn’t.’

  ‘I hear there are skaven even now inside the fort, how do you explain that? Without the barrage to keep them down, the thaggoraki nearly overran our entire left flank. How many dawi fell because the guns went quiet?’

  ‘Lothgrim’s actions were decisive and bold. Without his Ironbreakers we would almost certainly not be having this conversation now. He is to be commended, and that is all I need to explain to you.’

  Handrik grumbled, but said no more, taking a sudden interest in the grain on the stone beneath his cheek.

  ‘Thordun,’ Kazador continued. ‘It is only right that I offer you some reward for your deeds.’

  ‘That is unnecessary, your majesty,’ Thordun said, beaming. ‘It was my honour.’

  ‘It is necessary. In Karak Azul, we honour our debts in full. But if you prefer, consider it further service to me. I need to send an emissary to Karak Eight Peaks. Belegar must be informed of the treachery perpetrated in his name, and of the debt already owed for his failure to honour his alliances. And Hrathgar’s heir must be notified as well. His father’s grudge debt is now his to repay.’

  ‘This seems an unhappy duty.’

  ‘Does it?’ Kazador asked, surprise briefly threatening his grim mask of apathy and pain. ‘Ours is an unhappy world, beardling. You will learn this as the centuries add grey to your beard.’

  ‘I will serve proudly, majesty.’

  ‘Good. Then when that is done, you will bear record of these grudges to the high loremaster of the Karaz Ankor in Karaz-a-Karak. I am told it would be on your way home.’

  Thordun bowed low, nervously clearing his throat. ‘With respect, majesty, you are mistaken. This is my home, if you will have me.’

  Kazador barked with hollow laughter. The gesture was a half-remembered habit, an impulse from another life, and his lifeless visage was unmoved. ‘Then let us clear your home of thaggoraki. You should have a hearth worth returning to after your trek to the Everpeak.’

  ‘I can help,’ said Handrik. He rolled to his feet in brazen defiance of his own body, swaying but refusing to fall. His legs bent and quivered as he came forward. ‘My axe hand still works.’

  ‘Handrik,’ said Kazador, sorrowfully. ‘Do as Grimhildur says.’

  ‘Mother of mercy be damned!’ he roared, fists clenched in frustration. Kazador did not flinch, his stony façade unyielding before the heat of Handrik’s glare.

  Thordun placed a calming arm around his shoulder. He shook it off and shot him a warning scowl. He had anger sufficient for Thordun and Kazador both.

  The young dwarf held up his hands. ‘Please rest. Just for a time. The battle is won and now we just mop up the dregs. I’m sure you’ll be fighting fit in no time.’

  Handrik lowered his head. Un-helmed, his mane of grey hair spilled down over his shoulders. He knew his body better than any priestess, and certainly better than any beardling from the Empire. ‘Aye, lad. Miracles do happen, I suppose.’

  Thordun lowered his hands, choosing to offer one in friendship. ‘Perhaps when I return we can share an ale again? I would love to hear more tales of the glories of Azul.’

  Handrik merely stared at the proffered digits until Thordun withdrew them. Turning his back, he sank to the bloodstained stone, hoping none saw how the stone of his legs had turned molten. He just wanted to be alone.

  ‘Leave me in peace, beardling.’

  ‘Handrik–’

  ‘And take your wretched umgi with you when you leave.’

  Sharpwit paced the choked confines of the dwarfish battery. The cannon themselves lay calm at his side, panting and hot like hounds summoned to heel. His plan had worked as perfectly as he had known it would, but for what?

  The door leading back to the elevator shaft shook to the punishment of a ram, a momentary spear of illumination shafting by its bowing hinges. The floor around the doorway had been piled with cannonballs, corpses, powder kegs, anything not chained down and readily hoisted by skaven paws. A terrified-looking adept braced the failing door with his body; arms, legs and tail spread-eagled against the stone frame as though his life depended on it.

  Gutter runners hovered at the angular muzzle slits overlooking the Ninth Deep and the rear of the dwarfish line, hurling throwing stars down after the distant targets. The waspish steel buzzed through the smoke with Clan Eshin poison dripping from their stings. Iron bolts fired back in fitful exchange struck the imposing granite frontage of the fort.

  Sharpwit looked over the five cannon at the wide corridor that cut deeper into the fortress stair and its batteries, each now as dead as this one. He lost himself to a fit of coughing. The smoke wormed its way into his lungs. It stung his good eye and flushed his nostrils with the scent of gunpowder and terror. He ceased his pacing and ground his crutch angrily into the flagstones. He would not die here.

  He looked up as Fang Dao materialised from the smoke that masked the service tunnel, his lithe physique conditioned unconsciously to stealth. The rictus of panic shadowing his features only marginally ruined the effect. Two gutter runners crept after him, their movements obvious only by comparison

  ‘All dwarf-things are dead-dead,’ reported Dao, half an eye looking behind Sharpwit to the door as it suffered another crunching blow.

  Sharpwit snarled. The assassin’s efficiency made Queek’s wretched efforts all the more infuriating. Victory had been within his paw and, while failure was bad enough, what truly caught in his gullet was the discovery that the mad warlord still lived. The ferocity with which he gripped his crutches left splinters in his paws. He had seen the warlord charge down Kazador’s throat. He had seen him repulsed just as swiftly. Perhaps it would teach the whelp some humility, but he doubted it. Queek lacked the requisite mental acuity for anything as refined as ‘learning’.

  Sharpwit gestured at the cannon that had formed this battery. He would have dearly loved to claim such fine engines for the glory of Skavendom but there was no way to get them out, and some half-wit tinkerer like Fizqwik would only insist on ‘improving’ them to the point of ruination in any case.

  ‘See these are destroyed. These weapons at least will be lost-taken from Azul-Place.’ He tittered sarcastically. ‘Such glorious victories. Azul-place will never recover from such completeness of sabotage. What are the workshops of weaponmasters and the forges of runema
kers compared to five big scary cannon like these?’ Overcome with fury, he kicked out at the closest war machine. The hollow barrel tolled like the Thirteenth Bell and Sharpwit’s ankle exploded in pain. He hopped on one footpaw, his crutches making vengeful stabs at the floor as he waited for the throbbing to cease. He coughed, loudly clearing a bloody gob from his throat, which he spat from the cannon slits and onto the dwarfs below.

  ‘What are you waiting for? Is Clan Eshin in the habit of receiving invitations from those they kill-slay? Do it now!’

  Dao bobbed to obey, calling a pawful of his charges from their positions to assist in sabotaging the ancient machines.

  Another crunch of splintering oak. Wood shards sprayed from the door’s centre. The riveted iron bands running across its top and bottom began to buckle. A gutter runner dashed to aid his comrade in holding together the tortured wood. Another pair tried to drag one of the cannon to add to the ramshackle barricade, so possessed by panic that they hadn’t realised the thing was chained to wooden tracks to check its massive recoil. Frantically, they kept on tugging regardless.

  A gutter runner jerked back from one of the cannon slits with a bloody crater in his chest, his tail jerking like the decapitated body of a worm. The booming report of a musket shot resounded through the choking miasma. A lucky shot.

  Again, the door shuddered in its death throes. The panelling began to come apart. Sharpwit could see fierce brown-furred faces through the ever-widening cracks in the dead oak.

  Fang Dao cast about in a desperate search for an escape route. His eyes lingered on the cannon slits. They were wide enough and tall enough, and a sheer climb down seamless granite was no obstacle to a master of Clan Eshin – if a skaven fancied escaping the dragon’s maw by fleeing into its flaming belly.

  ‘Do not be a fool-fool,’ Sharpwit hissed, limping towards the narrow opening. ‘No way out that way.’ The smoke swirled and coiled, sauntered and writhed; it had currents and tides like a deep ocean of ash. The cry of the Thunderhorn keened through the Deep, mournful and solitary as whale song.