[Blackhearts 01] - Valnir's Bane

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  “It’s your decision, captain,” said Hals.

  Reiner cursed under his breath. “This is exactly why I don’t want to lead. There is no good decision here.”

  He chewed his lip, thinking, but whichever way he turned it, it was bad.

  “Your best course is to put them out of their misery,” said Gustaf. “They are no longer men.”

  “What does a monster know of men?” spit Hals.

  Reiner wanted to punch Gustaf, not for being wrong, but for being right. The surgeon always took the bleakest view of every situation, had the most cynical view of human nature, and so often turned out to be one Reiner should have listened to. Killing them would be best. The slaves were too weak to keep up, and would stretch their food supply much too thin, but Reiner could feel Franz’s eyes hot upon him, and Pavel’s one-eyed gaze as well, and couldn’t give the order.

  “We… we’ll free them, and… and offer them the choice to follow us or not.” He flushed as he said it, for it was a horrible equivocation, a mere sop to common sense. What other choice did the slaves have? He was dooming the men who depended on him because he hadn’t the heart to kill men who were virtually dead already.

  Franz and Pavel nodded, satisfied, but Gustaf made a disgusted sound and Giano groaned. The rest looked non-committal. Reiner fished the keys from the dead Kurgan’s belt and started down the tunnel to the larger corridor.

  Franz fell in beside him. “That was a rotten trick just then, pushing me into danger.”

  Reiner’s teeth clenched. He was tired of feeling guilty. “I had faith in you.”

  “But I’ve lost a little in you,” the boy countered, then shrugged. “Though you do a brave thing here.”

  “I do a foolish thing here.”

  The slaves edged warily back as Reiner and his men came out of the tunnel. There were sixteen of them, four teams to push the four carts, which were filled with waste rock. Each starveling quartet was shackled together at the ankles.

  Reiner held up the keys. “Don’t be afraid. We’re going to free you.”

  The slaves stared, uncomprehending, and flinched back again as he approached them.

  “Hold still.”

  The slaves did as they were told. Commands seemed the only speech they understood. Reiner squatted and unlocked the four locks in turn. Franz and Pavel followed behind him, pulling the chain that linked them out through the slaves’ shackles until all were free.

  Reiner faced them. “There you are. You are slaves no more. We welcome you to follow us to freedom, or… or to take what path you think best.”

  The slaves blinked at him, eyes blank. Reiner coughed. What was wrong with them? Were they deaf? “Do you understand? You’re free. You can travel with us if you wish.”

  One of the slaves, a woman with no hair, began to weep, a dry, scratchy sound.

  “It’s a trick,” said another. “They mean to trap us again.”

  “Stop torturing us!” cried a third.

  “It isn’t a trick,” said Franz, as the slaves whispered among themselves. “You are truly free.”

  “Don’t listen to them!” said the slave who had first spoken. “They only mean to catch us out. Go back to the work face! Warn the masters!”

  He backed away from Reiner and began running back down the corridor. The others ran with him, like sheep running because other sheep were running.

  “Curse it!” growled Reiner. “Stop!” He grabbed at a fleeing slave, but the skeletal man squirmed out of his fingers. “Stop them!” he called to the others.

  “What are they doing?” asked Franz, confounded, as the others tried to corral the slaves. “Why are they running?”

  “They are lost, as I told you,” said Gustaf, sneering.

  Pavel, Hals, Oskar and Giano grabbed a handful of the slaves and pushed them to the floor, but more were disappearing into darkness.

  “Never mind why,” said Reiner, running down the hall. “We have to shut them up before they bring their overseers down on us. Giano, bring the lantern!”

  Reiner and Franz chased the slaves with Giano, Ulf and Hals running behind them, Giano’s slotted lantern throwing dancing bars of light on the uneven walls. Reiner was surprised at how fast the slaves moved. He thought they would be weak from starvation, but it seemed that their constant labour had given them a wiry strength, and Reiner and the others had difficulty keeping up, let alone catching up, for the slaves seemed to know every inch of the tunnels in the dark.

  “Come back, curse you!” he called after them, but this order they did not follow.

  The slaves reached the main corridor and turned right. As he angled in behind them, Reiner could see the glow of torches up ahead. He put on a burst of speed and caught the last slave around the neck, bringing him down.

  The slave cried out. The others leapt ahead, wailing, and scattered. Some continued down the main corridor. Some swerved into side corridors. All started shouting as loud as their rusty voices would allow.

  “Masters! Masters! Help!”

  “Interlopers, masters! Protect us!”

  “They have killed our overseer!”

  Franz darted into the first side corridor after two slaves, but Reiner collared him and pulled him back.

  “Don’t be a fool! We must stick together.”

  “Too late anyway,” sighed Giano, as hounds began to bay and harsh Kurgan orders echoed through the tunnels. The thud of heavy boots began to converge on them.

  Reiner groaned. “Back to the others, quick.”

  He turned and started running back down the corridor. Franz, Giano, Oskar and Hals following in his wake.

  Franz seemed almost on the point of tears. “Why did they do it? We only wanted to help them.”

  “Been underground so long,” said Hals, “they believe no more in the sun.”

  “I don’t understand,” Franz wailed.

  “I’ll explain it to you if we live,” said Reiner. “Now run.”

  They sprinted back toward where they had left the others. The Kurgan were too big to move quickly, and did not gain on them, but the hounds were faster than horses. Reiner could hear their baying coming closer and closer. At last he rounded a bend in the corridor and saw Pavel, Oskar, and Gustaf by the mine carts, standing guard over the slaves they had caught.

  “Run!” called Reiner.

  “Up, you lot,” growled Pavel to the slaves, prodding them with his spear. “Get moving.”

  But when he and Oskar let them up the slaves ran toward Reiner and his companions. Reiner tried to stop one as she ran by, as did Franz, but the slaves dodged away from them and ran on, toward the hounds.

  “The fools,” sobbed Franz.

  The company squeezed past the mine carts. Screams of agony and animal snarls echoed from behind. Reiner felt a stab of self-loathing as he found himself hoping that the hounds would stop to eat the slaves that he had gone to such pains to free only moments earlier. This did not appear to be the case, for the baying and shouting continued to grow louder.

  They rounded another bend and Giano fell sprawling over some loose rock. The lantern bounced out of his hand and smashed on the rail. The flame went out. Total darkness closed over them. They jumbled to a stop.

  “Myrmidia curse me!” cried Giano.

  “No one move,” said Reiner as the baying and running boots echoed ever closer. “All hold hands. If you are not holding a hand, speak up.”

  He stretched out and took a rough hand. He had no idea who it was.

  “I stand alone,” said Gustaf.

  “You certainly do, mate,” said Hals.

  Reiner reached toward Gustaf’s voice. “Take my hand.”

  Gustaf’s soft fleshy hand batted at his, then caught it.

  “Hurry!” wailed Oskar. “They’re coming!”

  Reiner looked back. Far down the corridor, huge hound shadows bounded and swooped along the walls. Then the hounds themselves came into view, massive black silhouettes running ahead of the Chaos troops’
torches.

  Reiner turned and ran, forgetting to give an order. There was no need. The rest ran with him, blind as bats, whimpering in their throats. They all knew it was useless to run, but it was impossible not to. Fear drove their legs, not thought—the primal instinct for flight in the face of certain death.

  Reiner tripped over the rails, caught himself, and crowded against the wall to avoid the ties. He could hear Gustaf wheezing and stumbling behind him, and not twenty paces behind him, the panting and snarling of the hounds.

  So this was it, Reiner thought. He was going to die, lost to all he loved and all who loved him, in a black tunnel under the Middle Mountains, eaten by monstrous hounds. The things he had yet to do crowded into his head, all the money he hadn’t yet won or spent, all the women he had yet to bed, books unread, the loves unloved. He found himself weeping with regret. It had all been so damned useless, the whole horrible journey—his whole life.

  Franz shrieked from the back of the line. Ulf roared something incoherent and Reiner heard an impact and an animal yelp. He looked back, but there was little to see except leaping shadows and bobbing torches in the distance.

  “Franz?”

  The boy’s answer was lost as, at the head of the line, Giano screamed. His scream was repeated by Pavel and Hals. And there was a sound of rattling pebbles and strange echoes. Reiner tried to halt before he ran into the hidden danger, but Gustaf, Ulf and Franz piled into him from behind, sending him flying forward again.

  “Wait!” he cried. “Something…”

  His left foot came down on empty air. He yelled in surprise and threw his hands out, expecting to hit the tunnel floor face first. His hands touched nothing. There was nothing below him.

  He was falling into a bottomless void.

  THIRTEEN

  All Is Not Entirely Lost

  The fall was just long enough to allow Reiner to wonder how far down the bottom was, and to tense for the inevitable fatal bone-shattering, organ-exploding impact. But when it came at last it was less of a slam than a slide.

  Not that it wasn’t painful.

  Reiner’s first thought was that he was scraping against the cliff he was falling past, but the surface that was abrading his clothes was loose and crumbly and slid with him. It quickly turned into an almost perpendicular slope, made up of gravel, dirt and large rocks. Reiner caught one of these amidships and curled up in blinding pain. He began rolling and bouncing down the slope at breakneck speed, scraping and bashing his elbows and knees and shoulders. His brain bounced around in his head until he had no idea which way was up, if he was alive or dead, broken or whole. Only half conscious, he buried his head in his arms as the angle of the slope began to grow less acute and the speed of his fall to lessen.

  He was just slowing to a stop, sliding down the mound, half buried in an avalanche of gravel, and thinking that he might possibly have survived, when a body dropped on his chest, crushing his ribs, and bounced away again, grunting. Reiner gasped, but couldn’t draw a breath. It felt as if his lungs were locked in a vice.

  A second body, lighter, but bonier, landed on his face. A knee cracked him in the nose and blood flooded his mouth. He slid at last to a stop, sucking air and spitting blood. All around him weak voices moaned and cried in pain. There were lights dancing in the centre of his vision. At first he thought they were after effects of the fall, but then he realised that they were torches, about as far above him as the top of a castle wall. He would have sworn he had fallen much farther than that. The Kurgan were looking down into the void to see what had become of them. He thought he heard them laughing. He doubted they could see anything.

  “N…” He tried to speak and failed. He hadn’t enough breath. After a moment he tried again. “No one… strike… a light. Wait.”

  He heard a hacking chuckle from nearby. “No fear of that, captain,” said Hals. “Dead men got no use for torches.”

  After a moment the torches disappeared and they were left in total darkness.

  “Unfortunately,” said Reiner at last, “we appear to still live. If you’ve your flint handy, Hals?”

  “Aye, captain.”

  Reiner heard him shift around, then hiss in sudden pain. “Ah, Sigmar’s blood! I think I’ve bust my leg.”

  “Any more hurt?” asked Reiner, though he was afraid to ask. “Pavel?”

  There was a muffled reply, then a curse. “I’ve lost a bloody tooth.”

  “Oskar?”

  “I… I know not. I don’t feel much of anything.”

  “Franz? Did that monster get you?”

  “I… I’m fine.”

  “Ulf?”

  There was no reply.

  “Ulf?”

  Silence.

  “Just a moment, sir,” said Hals. “Light’s on its way.”

  Reiner resumed the roll call. “Gustaf?”

  “I’ve lost some skin, that’s all.”

  “That’s a relief. I hope you haven’t lost your kit.”

  “I have it.”

  “Giano?”

  “A rock, she cut me. I bleed a lot, I think.”

  Light flashed as Hals struck sparks off his flint, followed by a steady glow as his tinder started. He touched it to a taper.

  Reiner raised his head. His face felt twice as big as it ought to be, and twice as heavy. He looked around, squinting in the yellow light. The men were strewn like broken dolls at the base of a huge scree of gravel and loose rock that rose up into the darkness above them. This was obviously where the slaves dumped the waste rock they chipped away as they mined the ore. He looked at the men one by one.

  Pavel was sitting up, holding his mouth, his fingers dripping blood. Hals was near him, holding aloft the candle. One of his legs was bent at an angle. Franz lay further down the slope, curled up and clutching his side. Reiner couldn’t see the boy’s face, but he seemed to be trembling. Oskar lay flat on his back staring straight up. He held one of his arms against his chest. Gustaf was hunched over his pack, sorting out his supplies. His canvas jacket was ripped to shreds on his left side, as was the skin under it. He bled from a hundred minor lacerations. Giano sat, naked to the waist, pressing a cut in his thigh with his shirt. His arms, shoulders and chest were mottled with blossoming bruises. Reiner was certain that all of them looked just the same under their clothes. Ulf he found at last, at the edge of the candle light, a motionless mass lying on his side at the base of the mound.

  “Gustaf,” said Reiner, lowering his head again. “Could you see if Master Urquart still lives.”

  “Aye.”

  Gustaf made his way cautiously down the slope, slipping and sinking into the loose gravel. He bent over Ulf, touching his neck and chest, and peeling back his eyelids. “He lives,” he said. “But he has struck his head. I don’t know when he will wake. It is possible he won’t.”

  Reiner groaned. Just what they needed.

  “’Tis a miracle,” said Pavel unclearly, as Gustaf climbed the slope again to Giano, who was bleeding the most. “All of us alive. Sig-mar must be watching over us.”

  “If Sigmar was watching over us,” said Hals dryly as he lit a torch from the taper, “he wouldn’t have let us fall off the cursed cliff in the first place.”

  “If your hammer god care one bit of damn for us,” spat Giano, “he not let us take this fooling mission.”

  “I can’t work here,” said Gustaf. He had tied off Giano’s gash, but his kit was sliding away down the slope, and he was sunk in almost to his knees. “We must find somewhere flat.”

  With a groan Reiner sat up and looked around as Hals’ torch flared to life and the others began slowly and painfully to stand. The hole they had fallen into was a natural crevasse, deep and wide, that wandered off into darkness to their left and right. The hill of gravel they lay on spread out in a semi-circle across an uneven mud floor that made Reiner think water ran through the chasm occasionally. He was wondering if one direction was better than the other when he noticed that there was a circular open
ing in the opposite wall of the crevasse. More decisions. Which way was best?

  Then he remembered that he had Veirt’s compass, taken from his dead body, in his belt pouch. He took it out and frowned at it. South pointed almost directly at the circular opening. “Try in there,” he said, pointing to it.

  Pavel began helping Hals down the slope, arms over each other’s shoulder, both of them hissing and grunting in pain. Reiner felt as bad as they sounded. His ribs ached with every breath, and every joint seemed to have its own separate and particular pain. He and Giano opened a blanket and rolled Ulf’s supine body onto it, then, with Gustaf’s help, they pulled the blanket and Ulf down to the floor.

  Oskar and Franz brought up the rear, Oskar holding his left arm with his right, Franz clutching his ribs and crabbing along, almost bent double. His jacket was torn at the back, and his breeks, below it, were turning black with blood.

  “Lad,” said Reiner. “Are you certain you’re well?”

  “It’s nothing,” the boy grunted between clenched teeth. “Nothing.”

  Dragging Ulf across the dried mud floor took quite an effort and Reiner’s ribs and muscles complained mightily, but it got easier once they entered the tunnel. Though crudely worked, it was almost perfectly circular, and the floor was worn smooth from what must have been centuries of traffic. Adding to the slickness was a hard, oily coating that covered everything like a glaze. It was as if the whole tunnel had been varnished. Reiner was repulsed by the feel of it, yet it made pulling Ulf almost effortless.

  Giano sniffed suspiciously. “Smell of rat-men.”

  Reiner chuckled. “Don’t be a fool, man. Rat-men are a myth.”

  “Is not true. They live.”

  Pavel smirked back over his shoulder. “Giant rats that talk? Come on, Tilean. What do y’take us for?”

  Giano pulled himself up, insulted. “They live, I tell you. My whole village they kill. My mama and papa. Come out of ground and kill everybodies. I have swear vengeance upon them.”

  “Bit difficult, seeing as they don’t exist.”

  Giano sniffed. “Men of Empire think they know everythings.”