by Robert Earl
Ancient blood
( Warhammer )
Robert Earl
Robert Earl
Ancient blood
This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage. At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. It is a land riven by uncertainty, as three pretenders all vie for control of the Imperial throne. But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering World’s Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.
We walk ragged amongst many peoples of many lands
So that their scorn will make us harder
We thrive on the speed of our wits and the sleight of our hands
And on skill and luck and murder
We face the depths and the darkness of the world alone
So that we may become ever brighter
We live hunted and hated by all but our own
So that the bonds that bind draw ever tighter
We wait for the time of the storm that will call us home
To the birthright of our once and future lands
We pray for our rebirth in that fresh crimson dawn
But until then we trust ourselves to Ushoran’s hands
CHAPTER ONE
“Only a fool calls a wind good or ill. The greatest fortune can be brought by the most terrible storm, and the most lethal thunderbolt can fall from the clearest of skies.”
– Strigany aphorism At the crest of the hill the Elector Count of Stirland reined in his mount. After the gallop, his horse was breathing heavily, its sides bellowing in and out, its breath steaming in the morning air. As it recovered, the elector count, also breathless, smiled the smile of a truly content man.
Apart from a ready supply of women and drink, he didn’t demand much from life, and that which he did demand awaited him below.
The patchwork of pastures and forests that lay beneath his vantage point contained all that a hunting man could desire. Savage boar, fleet deer, wild goats to tempt a man up onto the most windswept of crags-the barely tamed lands of his estate held them all.
Stirland, fit after a lifetime spent in the saddle, was already catching his breath. He turned, with a squeak of leather, and peered down the path behind him. When he saw how far back his companions had fallen, his smile disappeared, replaced with a scowl of impatience.
He didn’t blame the hunt master or his lads for their slow pace. After all, as commoners, their horses wouldn’t have looked out of place in the yoke of a plough. He didn’t blame his dogs, either. Bull hounds were a strong-winded breed, but no match for Stir-land’s galloping steed.
No, the elector count was a fair man. The only person whose slowness tried his temper was the one who should have been able to keep up: the skinny, pallid man who was riding his second-best horse, the man who he was trying to befriend.
“Averland!” Stirland roared, his voice sending a flock of ravens squawking from the trees. “Don’t bother waiting for them, old man. Stick by me.”
The Elector Count of Averland started at the sound of his host’s voice. Then a look of fresh misery crossed his gaunt face, and he spurred his horse unenthusiastically forward. The animal broke into a canter for a dozen hoof beats. Then, content that it had gained the measure of its rider, it slowed back down to a walk.
Stirland’s moustache tips twitched with exasperation. Averland had been his guest for the past week, and although they were not friends they both knew that a friendship was worth cultivating. In these troubled times, an elector needed all the political allies he could get. Things had been bad enough when there had just been one Emperor. Now there were supposedly three.
Yet, as hard as Stirland tried, he was finding Averland damned difficult to like.
“Don’t be afraid to use the spurs,” he bellowed to his guest. “She’s a fine horse, but you have to let her know who’s the master, like all women, hey?”
Averland smiled weakly and twitched his heels. His mare, who certainly knew who the master was, obliged by shuffling into something approaching a trot for a while.
The problem with his fellow nobleman, Stirland decided, was that he thought too much. He spent too much time indoors, whole days, sometimes. He didn’t like getting drunk, or singing, and, as far as Stirland’s spies were aware, Averland was so weak-blooded that he didn’t have even a single mistress.
Yesterday, Averland had even claimed to dislike hunting, at which point Stirland’s patience had almost snapped. The gods had built all of Sigmar’s sons to be hunters, and as far as Stirland was concerned, claiming otherwise was tantamount to heresy.
Hence, he had insisted that Averland accompany him into the glorious carnage of today’s sport. After all, what could be more likely to spark a friendship with the bandy-legged fool than to show him the pleasures of the field?
If they ever got there, of course.
“Come along, men,” Stirland snarled, venting his impatience on the party as a whole. Men and dogs obediently raced to join him at the top of the hill, and even Averland’s horse quickened its pace to keep up with them.
When they arrived, Stirland gave Averland a moment to appreciate the way that the rising sun lit up the hunting grounds beyond. Then he leaned over and slapped him on one shoulder.
“Damned fine view, isn’t it? Look at the way those hills close in onto that forested valley, just like the cross of a virgin’s thighs.” Stirland, lost in the poetry of the image, didn’t see Averland wince. “Just imagine what beasts we’ll find down there,” he continued, his eyes shining. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a hankering for boar. Can’t beat the taste of meat reared on blood and acorns.”
“Boar, yes,” said Averland vaguely, and shivered. His eyes were watering in the early morning sunlight, and he turned to look longingly back down the path to the hall. “How long will the hunt last for?”
“Until we’ve tasted the quarry’s blood, or until they’ve tasted ours,” Stirland said, grinning. His men grinned too. They might be servants, but on the hunt they and their lord adopted the easy familiarity of a pack of wolves.
Averland looked at them, his mouth tightening into a ring of petulant disapproval. Then he frowned.
“Don’t worry,” Stirland said, winking at him. “It’s almost always us that tastes the quarry’s blood first.”
“Unless we do find boar, your lordship,” the hunt master added. “Remember what happened when we found that herd last summer? What happened to your cousin Rudolph? The carpenter had to take his leg clean off, and even then it was a close-run thing.”
Stirland nodded as if at some happy memory.
“That was a good day’s hunting,” he said. “Got an even dozen of the beasts before Rudolph got caught. He’s just lucky that leg was all he lost. The beast almost got his acorns too.”
The party roared with laughter. Even the dogs joined in, yelping with excitement. Averland shuddered, and looked miserably a
t the wilderness below. The trees looked as dark and treacherous as… well, as dark and treacherous as them, the people who haunted every shadowed corner of his troubled mind.
“Perhaps it will rain,” he suggested as the laughter died away, “and we won’t find the scent.”
“Don’t worry about that, your lordship,” the hunt master assured him with a malicious confidence. “If we start now, it shouldn’t take us long to pick up a scent.”
“Well said,” Stirland agreed, stirring himself from his cheerful reverie. “Let’s not waste any more of the day. Take the dogs out front, Heinz. The rest of you, fall in behind me and Averland. And don’t worry,” he told his fellow nobleman as the hounds loped off down towards the nearest patch of trees, “if we do find a boar you can take the first stab at it.”
“Oh,” Averland said, “good.”
He wished, not for the first time, that he’d tried to ally himself with somebody else. By the time they had descended into the forest, Stir-land’s earlier irritation was quite forgotten. He loved it here. The spreading boughs of the trees above turned the sunlight into a thousand shades of green and gold, and the dark labyrinth of the tree trunks always promised a good hunt.
As the party moved silently forwards, the elector count fought back the temptation to whistle an accompaniment to the songbirds hidden in the branches. Instead, grinning at the thought of what lay in store, he slipped his boar spear from its holster and tested its weight.
“Why are you doing that?” Averland asked, his voice shrill enough to draw several disapproving stares.
“Just testing the heft of it,” Stirland replied, his voice a hunter’s soft murmur.
“You haven’t seen anything?” Averland whined, loudly enough to silence the nearest songbirds.
Stirland took a deep breath, and bit his lip. “No, just getting ready,” he whispered.
“What’s that you said?” Averland cried.
“I said, no,” Stirland snapped. “Can you do me a favour, Averland old man, and keep your voice down? The animals don’t like it.”
“Oh,” Averland said, “all right.”
Damned fool, Stirland thought. He was still struggling to contain his disgust when, at a signal from the hunt master, the party drifted to a halt.
Stirland, who realised that he was going to have to treat Averland like the idiot he was, glanced over to tell him to stop, too. When he saw that he had already done so, he felt a moment’s surprise. Then he realised that the only reason Averland had halted was that his mare had the sense that he lacked.
For a moment, he considered telling Averland to stop digging his heels into the animal’s flanks. Then he decided against it. As long as the idiot kept his mouth shut, he didn’t care what he did.
Instead of wasting any more time on his guest, Stir-land nudged his horse slowly forward. Its hoofs fell with a practiced stealth that made the gelding worth its weight in silver. Soon Stirland was beside Heinz, and he leaned over so that the hunt master could whisper into his ear.
“Look at the hounds, my lord,” he said.
Stirland, ignoring the garlic that laced the man’s breath, did so. They were pacing back and forth warily, their hackles raised in bristling manes, and their tails as straight as pokers. Usually, they showed more enthusiasm, more joy. As it was, every stiff-legged movement betrayed the hounds’ anxiety about the prey they had found.
“Look at them,” Stirland gloated, “it must be boar, mustn’t it?”
“Possibly, my lord,” Heinz agreed, “or something else.”
“Yes, it’s boar all right,” Stirland mused. “Tell you what, why don’t Averland and I follow behind the dogs from now on? They’ve obviously got a strong enough scent to follow. You can ride behind us.”
At another time, Heinz might have argued with his master. The hunt master loved his dogs, and he hated the idea of being even momentarily separated from them. On the other hand, the thought of what Aver-land might do when faced with a boar was an intriguing one. The shrill, nervous aristocrat had been the butt of the household’s contempt from almost the moment he had arrived, and the hunt master had a feeling that he was not about to acquit himself well.
“As you say, my lord,” he conceded. “Just be careful that Nellie there doesn’t get to the boar before you. She’s a brave old girl, despite her age.”
“Don’t worry,” Stirland reassured him, “I’ll look after them. I’ll-”
He was cut off by a sudden, terrible howl from Nellie herself. As Stirland and the gamekeeper exchanged a surprised glance, the rest of the pack joined in. As one, they had turned towards a slope that led down towards a tangled ravine, their teeth bared, and their ears lying back flat along their skulls.
“What’s wrong with them?” Stirland asked, appalled by the din the hounds were making.
Then the wind shifted, and even he could smell the scent that had so affected the hounds. At first, he thought that it was a goat, and then a boar. Then, with a rush of exhilaration that sent his heart galloping, he realised that it was neither. No natural animal stank so badly, which meant that the things the hounds had found were…
“Beastmen,” the gamekeeper hissed, his voice as low as the hiss of his drawn hunting sabre.
Stirland’s pulse quickened, as his steed shifted nervously beneath him. For the first time, he heard the movement that was crushing through the undergrowth that covered the ravine. He also heard the sound of snapping twigs from the dark hollows to either side of them, and the silence that had replaced the birdsong.
The elector count snarled, or maybe it was a grin. Either way, in the gloom of the forest, his bared teeth were as sharp and as yellow as his hounds’.
“Men,” he called back, his voice as level as a crossbow bolt, “we are ambushed. Form up on me.”
“What do you mean ‘Ambushed’?” Averland asked, terror in his voice. “How can we be ambushed? This is ridiculous.” His terror quickly turned to outrage. “I’m returning to the castle. There’s obviously no game here. Honestly, Stirland, this is no pastime for a gentleman.”
Luckily, Stirland was no longer paying the slightest bit of notice to him.
“Karl,” Stirland said to the man beside him, “you and your boys look out to our rear. Gьnter, you keep an eye on my Lord Averland.”
“Now look here-” Averland began.
Before he could finish, however, the jaws of the ambush closed around them with a terrible hunger. It wasn’t the first time Stirland had seen this enemy. He had once passed a pile of their horned heads, left to rot, beside the mile post outside Nuln. When he was a boy, he had seen some of the trophies his father’s men had brought back from war, too: snuff boxes made from horns, dice made from bones, and purses made from other parts.
Once, when he’d been a student, he’d even seen one of the things torn to pieces in a pit full of dogs. He had lost a packet on that particular sporting event, but it had been worth it to see such a fight.
However, none of that had prepared him for meeting them head-on, or for the shock of their onslaught.
Although they moved with a weasel’s stealth, and although they burst from the brambles as easily as partridge, many of the misshapen pack were massive beasts. The largest stood taller than any man Stirland had ever seen, and the muscles that rolled beneath the stinking mat of their hides looked as strong as the hawsers that towed the barges down the Reik.
Stirland’s grin faded, and he let his steed jitter backwards.
The nearest of the things tore free of the last of the brambles, and shook off a shower of thorns and blood. Its head was almost ox-like, Stirland thought, apart from the viciously sharpened horns, and the glitter of insane intelligence in the reddened eyes… and the fangs.
His horse whinnied in fear, its voice joining the hounds’ chorus of terror, and for a single, shameful moment, Stirland thought about retreat.
It was Nellie who saved him from the disgraceful thought. One-eared and grey-muzzled though she was
, the hound’s instinctive hatred for these abominations flared and she lengthened her whine into a terrible snarl. The sudden fire that burned within her animal heart stopped her edging back. It stopped her cowering, and, even as her master’s courage was tested, she rushed forward, silent as death as she hurtled towards the nearest of the horrors.
The beastman’s piggy eyes blinked eagerly as it caught sight of its assailant, and even as the hound closed in, it chopped the rusted crescent of its axe blade down onto her.
Another hound would have died, split in two as neatly as a rabbit on a butcher’s block, but not Nellie. Although a great grandmother, she had been dodging blows ever since she had been a pup, and when the axe bit deep, it was into earth. She was already twisting beneath the three-kneed arc of the monster’s legs, her yellowed teeth slicing into the tendons above one of its cloven hooves.
The thing screamed, as she tore out its hamstring. It was a shuddering, soulless sound, and it was enough to slap Stirland from his shock.
“Follow me!” he cried and, the boar spear tucked under his arm like a Bretonnian’s lance, he spurred his horse into a charge. “Follow me! Follow me!”
He ignored the first of the beastmen. It had already been crippled by Nellie, and her pack was closing in to finish the thing off. The elector count dodged to one side, and, roaring with the sudden exhilaration of battle, thrust the point of his spear into the hollow above the following beastman’s collar bone.
The steel tip punched through its throat as neatly as a needle through cloth. It sliced through the arteries and muscles of its neck, and only stopped when it became trapped in the vertebra of the thing’s spine.
Stirland should have released the haft of the weapon, but, in the wild thrill of the moment, his grip remained stubborn. By the time he remembered to loosen his fingers, it was already too late. The counterweight of his enemy’s collapsing body dragged the spear down swiftly enough to hoist him out of his saddle and throw him through the air.
