The End Times | The Rise of the Horned Rat

by Guy Haley

  The north wind turned then, skirting the northmen’s horsehoe wall and blasting both their faces with snow. It carried the coppery, obscenely sweet odour of recent death. The horses snorted anxiously. Kasztanka stamped her hooves and whinnied until Biegacz, Stefan’s mount and a stablemate since birth, nuzzled his old companion and blew reassurance into her ear. Men of the southern cities liked to mock the bond between an oblast man and his horse, but few men loved an animal as Kolya loved Kasztanka. It was her, rather than his own blood brother, that was keeping the bold man Stefan had known alive.

  ‘Marszałek!’

  The shout cut through the blizzard with little warning of the horseman who cantered through, then reared to a standstill in a flurry of snow. Boris Makosky was younger than Stefan, had been a trapper making a decent living selling meat and fur to merchants from Praag before the incursion, but defeat had aged him. There was grey in his fringe and something feral never far beneath the surface when he spoke. Even when he did not, it was there in his eyes. If a man was brave enough to look.

  ‘There are tracks that continue north. It is too heavy to be a man, but whatever else it may be it is a beast of two legs.’

  ‘Can you not tell what it is from its tracks?’ said Kolya.

  ‘An ogre mercenary that fled the fall of Volksgrad, perhaps? One of the trolls that the Kurgan say now occupy Praag? We have seen worse migrating south.’

  ‘But these tracks head north,’ said Stefan. ‘They follow the same warband as we do.’

  Makosky shrugged angrily. ‘What I can tell, I have told. If you want more then speak with Bochenek.’

  That stung. The rota’s scout was feeding the foxes of the last stanitsa they had found: the price paid for spotting the Kurgan ambush too late. Stefan said nothing. On the oblast, a man learned to conserve warmth any way he could and that included keeping his mouth shut when words were not welcomed. Instead, he glanced again to the ruined corpses, worrying what such a monster might do to the captives those Kurgan had taken with them. The capture of the wise woman, Marzena – who had clearly exhausted her good fortune when Kolya and Bochenek had heard her screams and rescued her from the beastman herd that had invaded her home in the Shirokij Forest – had hurt them all, but Kolya most of all. His brother had always been one to seek out omens in the shapes of clouds, to beseech the spirits before partaking of a spring, and to heed the wisdom of the Ungol hags.

  Stefan shook his head grimly. Snow dropped from his brow. What kind of beast, though, would render such carnage and not even pick at the bodies it had left behind? Stefan did not like the inevitable option that that left.

  Daemon.

  He shuddered, reaching for the szabla scabbarded by his left stirrup.

  ‘A man may seem brave when fighting sheep,’ said Kolya, quoting another of Marzena’s proverbs, ‘but be a sheep when faced with brave men.’

  Stefan drew himself upright in the saddle to regard his brother fully.

  ‘I speak of the monster, not you,’ said Kolya, the memory of a smile haunting his thin lips. ‘These men were frost-bitten and half-starved. Their war leader left them behind while the bulk of his host continued north.’ He indicated that direction with a nod. ‘We ride on?’

  ‘For our lost brothers,’ said Stefan, spurring his mount around to face north. ‘I would not leave any man in the hands of the Kurgan, and I certainly won’t abandon an old woman.’

  Kolya nodded, but Makosky’s scowl merely darkened. The man seemed to come alive only in the heat of the hunt. The land was wide, with too few beastmen to be found roaming lost and starving on the steppe. Usually they were ridden down with relish.

  Other times, they were made to pay for what they had wrought on Kislev.

  Nothing that Stefan could think of short of a victory, however small, or the remote possibility of reuniting with the Ice Queen’s pulk would rally his men’s hopes.

  ‘We are gaining,’ said Kolya, then raised a hand to sweep over the dead. His manner was grim, barren of hope and glad for it. ‘These men will not miss their furs now. When the horses are rested, we will bring the vengeance of Dushyka onto the Kurgan and their pursuer both.’

  ‘Tell me of your adventures in Praag,’ said the black-robed priest of Grimnir, walking barefoot through the soot and steam of Grimnir’s foundry, deep within the halls of Karak Kadrin. The air was thick and black. It tickled the throat with the honest taste of coal and cushioned the clangour of hammers upon anvils and the hiss of bellows. Shrouded to their bare arms in the murk, visions of Grimnir himself at his fabled forge, a score of dwarfs worked their anvils with a single-mindedness that bordered on brutal. Their straining muscles crawled with tattoos and coursed with sweat. Not one of them spoke. It was just them, the iron, and the sanctity of the forge.

  Snorri Nosebiter said nothing, for it was an old question, and merely watched as the priest padded in a circle behind his back, Snorri twisting in his chair to follow his progress as far as he could. The snap of taut leather arrested him and pulled him back into the chair.

  Oh yes. Snorri kept on forgetting that.

  He was secured into a high-backed wooden chair and, though it took a lot of leather to strap in a chest as massive as Snorri’s, this priest was taking no chances. The stump of his right leg was laid out upon the anvil in front of him. He remembered that his old friend Gotrek Gurnisson had cut it off for him. He grinned in success at having remembered, but then almost immediately frowned.

  Was he happy about that? Clearly he was still missing something.

  ‘Snorri,’ the priest prodded, circling back round to the front. He wore his black hair long and his beard forked, and walked with his hands clasped behind his back as he spoke. He wielded his voice with an authority as unsubtle as Snorri’s hammer. His bare feet slapped the hot floor. ‘I asked you a question.’

  Snorri maintained his frown. He was here to remember, that much he remembered. Deep thought scrunched up his face. It was unique, even as faces went. It had taken so many beatings that bony regrowths knobbled his jawline and brow and his nose was flattened between his cheeks. One ear was a cauliflowered mess while the other had been torn clean away to leave a pinhole in the side of his head. Sometimes, when things got boring, Snorri could hear air whistle through it.

  ‘What kind of name is Skalf Hammertoes anyway?’ said Snorri.

  ‘I was a ranger, and not a very good one. I do not hide from my shame as some might.’ He looked askance towards Snorri. ‘Praag.’

  ‘Snorri does not remember.’

  ‘I think that you do.’

  Snorri watched the priest circle behind him once again. It was making him dizzy. He closed his eyes to think. Praag. He had travelled there with Gotrek and with young Felix on the airship, Spirit of Grungni, to fight Chaos. The fighting had been all right but he hadn’t enjoyed the journey much. There had been too much time with nothing to do but think.

  Snorri did not like thinking. It did not agree with him. It gave him memories.

  As he thought now, back past that point, his mind flinched like a dog from an old master who had once been cruel. There was an old wound that was still buried there despite the years he had spent trying to forget. And now he was supposed to remember. Why?

  Because he had promised, that was why.

  He saw a dwarf woman and her child. He did not remember if the child was his but the regret, the anguish, that knotted in his chest at the memory told him that he had loved these two as if it were. The knot tightened. His heart was a lead weight on his lungs. He had killed them both. Or had he? But their deaths had been his fault. Yes, that was right. He could not remember.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Skalf, checking his stride. Snorri opened his eyes, blinking as if he had just had his head submerged in a barrel. The priest’s lips twisted in amusement. ‘You talk when you think, Snorri Nosebiter. I can only assume it is that thick skull o
f yours that has seen you through so many of our age’s great battles.’ Snorri beamed. ‘I want you to tell me about the second time you visited that city, when you returned there without Gurnisson and the human. It was around then that your memory began to fail.’

  The priest snorted at some private joke and Snorri bristled. This beardling priest was mocking him. By what Grimnir-given right? Something about being asked the question, though, made his mind go there. His skull ached. The three brightly coloured nails that had been hammered into his head in place of the traditional Slayer’s crest throbbed. Pain threatened to flush his mind of hard memories, but he grunted and willed himself past it. He had made a promise. He owed Gotrek that much.

  ‘Gotrek and young Felix disappeared into a magic door. When Max could not find them he and Snorri went back to Praag to fight Chaos some more.’

  ‘This is Maximilian Schreiber? Your wizard friend?’

  ‘Max is the wisest human Snorri knows. One time Snorri fell asleep in a bucket of vodka and when he woke up Max made his sore head go away.’

  ‘Then perhaps he is not so wise,’ Skalf snapped, ‘for a hangover is Grimnir’s way of making the last night’s fools suffer.’ The priest took a deep breath and went on. ‘What did you and Max do in Praag?’

  ‘Er…’

  Snorri vaguely recalled the following summer as a sequence of disappointing skirmishes with beastmen and marauders with just the one halfway memorable battle with a champion’s warband somewhere upriver. But he could not really remember that either. Then there had been that incident with the daemon-possessed violin that, even after he had sobered up, Snorri had thought sounded rather unlikely. Max was not the sort to make that kind of thing up, though. Not at all like that young rascal, Felix. He remembered being sad to have missed it. Then he remembered something that he had not before.

  ‘Ulrika was there too, Snorri thinks.’

  ‘The zanguzaz?’

  ‘Oh, she wasn’t a vampire then,’ said Snorri, then paused to think. ‘At least… er…’

  ‘Doubt,’ said Skalf with a grim half-smile. He unclasped his hands from behind his back, then laid them flat on the anvil by the stump of Snorri’s leg. He leaned forward. His eyes were a hawkish amber. ‘Doubt is progress, and progress is good. I think you have always wanted to forget.’

  ‘Snorri thinks this priest is stupider than Snorri.’

  ‘Gotrek and his rememberer were unique individuals,’ Skalf pressed. ‘They were possessed of a destiny I cannot pretend to understand. Their quests swept you along, Snorri, allowed you to forget your pain. But then one day they were gone, and you were left alone.’ Snorri tried to pull away. There was a leathern moan and the strap buckle bit into his massive forearm. Of course, Snorri thought miserably, Snorri forgot. ‘Pain is like gold. However deep you try to bury it, someone will always dig it up again.’

  ‘Snorri thinks… Snorri thinks he would like a beer now. Or ten.’

  ‘Of course you would,’ said Skalf. He gestured towards someone that Snorri could not see. Snorri smacked his lips. They would probably be bringing beer.

  Another Slayer strode through the smoke. He wore his hair in two crests, sharp red horns at the front but shaved down to the scalp at the back. His bare, muscular torso was a web of red and black tattoos. It looked like the musculature of a flayed body. But not a dwarf’s though, Snorri realised, as the Slayer’s face emerged from the smoke, painted into the snarling visage of a daemon. Snorri grasped instinctively for a weapon, causing his chair to rattle.

  Acknowledging neither Snorri nor Skalf, the Daemonslayer dropped a large leather bag onto the anvil. It hit with an iron clank. The bag was open and Snorri glanced inside. In amongst the common hammers and tongs of the smith’s craft, there rested an oddly proportioned spiked mace. There were no spikes at the very head of the weapon and there was no grip at all. The end of the handle where it should have been was flat and smooth and skirted with triangular iron flaps that were each punched through with eyelets. But nowhere in amongst it did Snorri see his beer.

  ‘Snorri wants to know what you two are up to.’

  The Daemonslayer laid his palm on Snorri’s shoulder. Burning, bleeding ligaments and sinews crawled across the well-muscled arm, but the touch was not unkind. ‘I owe you a debt, Snorri Nosebiter.’

  ‘Snorri will take your word for it.’

  ‘As you should, for my word is iron,’ spoke the Daemonslayer, retrieving his hand so that he could devote both to removing the mace from his bag and laying it reverently upon the anvil. Hammer and nails followed and the Daemonslayer then positioned the smoothed-flat haft of the mace up against the stump of Snorri’s leg. It was surprisingly warm and was a suspiciously good fit.

  Snorri had a very bad feeling about this. He hoped he was going to get his beer sooner rather than later.

  ‘That worm-eaten peg that the humans gave you to replace your leg is hardly fit for a son of Grungni,’ said Skalf, but Snorri was having difficulty focusing on him. His gaze slid to where the Daemonslayer was making a ring of measured little guide nicks around his leg by scoring an iron nail through the meat. ‘Surely the shame of it was the reason you refused your old companion, Makaisson, and remained here while he joined King Ironfist’s throng for the march to Sylvania. Or could there be some other reason?’

  ‘Snorri… cannot remember.’

  Skalf snarled; the wrong answer. ‘The von Carsteins rise again, Snorri. All of the blood-suckers. The king aligned himself with elves, elves, to fight them.’ He looked to the ceiling and presented his open palms in dismay. ‘Many Slayers found their dooms there in that mighty defeat. Even Makaisson did not return.’

  Skalf nodded to the Daemonslayer, who then picked up a nail and threaded it through one of the eyelets at the junction of the mace-leg. It dug into Snorri’s thigh. The Daemonslayer lined up his hammer.

  ‘My name is Durin Drakkvarr,’ he muttered. ‘I owe you my life, and my death. On the lost halls of home I will see that you find yours.’

  ‘This is going to hurt,’ said Skalf.

  ‘Can Snorri not have his beer first?’

  Skalf stuffed a rolled up leather belt into Snorri’s mouth. ‘You have already had too much. That is the problem.’

  From the corner of his eye, Snorri saw Durin swing his hammer. He tightened his eyes, bit down on the belt, and grunted as the Daemonslayer took his time striking nails through the eyelets of the mace-leg and into his thigh. The hammering from the nearby Slayers proceeded unabated. As if they did not hear.

  When it was done, Durin laid a hand briefly on Snorri’s shuddering shoulder, then diligently wiped up the few splatters of blood and put away his tools.

  ‘Tell me of your “Spider Lady” , ’ said Skalf, quietly, pulling the belt from Snorri’s mouth as though nothing had just happened.

  ‘Snorri is going to kill you when he gets out of this chair.’

  ‘There is nothing darker than a kinslayer,’ said Skalf calmly. ‘Even threatening it is enough to earn your name in blood in a clan’s book of grudges.’ The priest shrugged. ‘Lucky for you I have no family. Now answer my question.’

  Snorri tried to think of something else, but couldn’t stop his mind going where it was bidden.

  Woods. Giant spiders in the trees. An old lady screaming.

  ‘Snorri… saved an old lady in the woods. Big spiders… attacking her… Snorri… killed them all.’

  ‘Slow down,’ said Skalf. ‘Take a breath.’

  Snorri did as he was told and found it helped. ‘They stung Snorri a lot and when he woke up, the old lady told him that he would not die yet. She said Snorri would have a great doom. Like Gotrek’s.’

  ‘And this destiny, is it to be found here within the temple of Grimnir?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Snorri, disfigured brow knotting in concentration.

  The old lady in the wo
ods had said more, been more specific than he remembered, but it was gone now. An old lady standing over him. She is sad. You will have the mightiest doom. Even though it made his head hurt he tried to remember. He had made a promise. The harder he tried to remember though, the harder it seemed to be, like swatting a fly with a hammer. Thoughts of his supposed destiny always carried him nearer to memories of his shame, as if they were connected somehow. He wondered what Gotrek would do. They had been friends since before either of them had taken the Slayer oath. Perhaps he and Gotrek would both meet their ends together. That would be nice. It would make up for… for… He winced, his crest of nails throbbing in the roof of his brain.

  ‘Snorri can’t remember.’

  The priest stroked his beard thoughtfully, took a considered breath, then directed a nod to Durin Drakkvarr. Snorri watched as the Daemonslayer produced a massive pair of tongs. Durin studied the straps holding Snorri down.

  ‘These will not hold him for this.’

  With a nod, the priest turned and whistled into the smoke. The two nearest Slayers looked up from their anvils, then downed tools and started towards them. Each took one of Snorri’s arms and, at a hand gesture from Skalf, one of them put a hand over Snorri’s brow to hold steady his head. The iron bite of Durin’s tongs approached from behind, followed by a yawning silence, and then a pressure on his skull as the tongs clamped onto the first of Snorri’s nails.

  ‘Not those,’ Snorri moaned. He strained against the two massive dwarfs, but they had him pinned. All he could move was his eyes. They rolled up to fix the Daemonslayer with a pleading gaze. ‘Please.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ Durin whispered. ‘But I owe you too steep a debt.’

  ‘Grimnir takes sacrifice in the blood of his Slayers,’ whispered Skalf. ‘Malakai has gone. Gotrek has gone. It has been over a year now, Snorri, and still you cannot or will not recall.’