by C. L. Werner
‘He will believe what he is told,’ Inhin said, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘If he doesn’t, it is of small concern. Even if he suspected our purpose here, he will never tell Malekith. He is being paid too well to betray me.’
‘There is always the question of loyalty.’ The objection came from the elf who stood beside Pyra, a tall, powerfully built warrior encased in elaborately gilded and engraved armour, his face hidden behind the smooth polished gleam of his horned helmet. ‘There are many among our folk who still feel a sense of obligation to the Witch King.’
‘Are you one of them, Sardiss?’ Inhin quipped, suspicion and challenge mixing with the levity of his tone. The prince shook his head. ‘No, if Malekith can’t even maintain the loyalty of his Black Guard, he won’t have anyone’s much longer. That fool and his bitch mother are on their last legs. Soon it will be their heads spitted on the walls of Naggarond!’
‘Uthorin will need the barbarians,’ Pyra pointed out. ‘He will need this warlord, this Tchar’zanek, to wield as a weapon against the Witch King. To do that, he will need to control the animal, make its dull mind tractable.’
‘That is what you have promised Lord Uthorin,’ Inhin said, stepping in close to the sorceress, reaching out and stroking her arm. He saw the way Sardiss bristled inside his armour at the familiar, possessive way he treated the woman. ‘A way to control the savages and use them against both Malekith and the decadent mongrels of Ulthuan.’
‘Used properly, Tchar’zanek’s Raven Host is a weapon that will cut down all our enemies, be they deranged tyrants or the last pathetic remnants of the foolish asur.’ Pyra slowly brushed Inhin’s fingers from her arm, as though his hand were some crawling vermin. ‘Lord Uthorin will not bleed our strength against these “high” elf traitors, he will use the animals to fight for us. Whichever side prevails, the fleets of Naggaroth will wipe the exhausted victor from the shores of Ulthuan and we shall again reclaim our homeland and our birthright.’
‘This relic,’ Inhin asked. ‘You are certain it will give us power over the barbarians?’
‘We have sailed half way across the world in pursuit of it, tortured hundreds of captives to learn of its powers. Have I not called upon the nameless powers of Old Night in pursuit of it?’ Pyra shook her head. ‘No, my prince, I do not risk my life and soul following a fool’s errand.’
Inhin’s expression became wistful, covetous. ‘The Spear of Myrmidia. That fool Dolchir thinks he can use it to close the portal between worlds, to stop the flow of the Winds of Magic! He would pit himself against both gods and daemons! How like the pathetic, grandiose delusions of the asur, so supreme in their self-righteous prattle! The truly wise do not fight gods and daemons, they bend them to their will, use them to achieve their own purposes!’
‘And what is your purpose, my prince?’ There was just a suggestion of amusement in Pyra’s voice. ‘Do you support Lord Uthorin or do you return to the safer path and grovel at the feet of Malekith?’
The noble’s hand shot out, curling about Pyra’s jaw like a vice, twisting her head so that she was forced to look up at him. ‘Do not bait me, strumpet! If I tire of you, how do you think the Witch King will receive his unfaithful bride?’
‘If I have been unfaithful,’ Pyra hissed through clenched teeth. The words caused Inhin to relent. For the first time he noticed the way Sardiss’ hand had closed about the Black Guard’s monstrous sword, inching it from its scabbard.
Inhin favoured Pyra with a thin, withering smile. ‘You forget your place. Even in jest, such things are in ill taste.’ The noble looked away, glancing back at the village, watching Abhar make sport with one of the captives. ‘I will gather my warriors. It is time we were leaving this place. Abhar and his corsairs can stay behind with the ship. It would be unfortunate if anything were to befall the Bloodshark and her crew.’ His face broke in another sardonic smile. ‘Most unfortunate indeed. Lord Uthorin might never know if we ever reached Norsca.’ The prince let his words linger in the chill air, then stalked off to gather his minions.
Pyra watched her patron walk away, then turned to glare at Sardiss. ‘Idiot!’ she spat. ‘He already suspects you are a spy sent by the Witch King to watch him. The only reason he hasn’t killed you is because I have convinced him that if he did then Malekith would only send someone else, someone better at the job! If he even thinks about what other activities you have been occupying yourself with…’
Sardiss bowed his armoured head. ‘The cur is a traitor. His skin should already be hanging on the walls of Naggarond!’
Pyra patted the Black Guard’s shoulder, as though comforting an upset dog. ‘If you kill him, how will you ever bring the Spear to Malekith? We need him Sardiss.’
‘But if he brings the Spear to Uthorin!’ protested the warrior.
The sorceress laughed. ‘Inhin will never bring the Spear to Uthorin. He wants that power for himself.’ She let her hand slide down the cold surface of the Black Guard’s breastplate. ‘Sometimes I question why Malekith sent you. Then I remember that loyalty and intelligence are not the same thing.’
Sardiss stiffened at the jibe, then pushed Pyra from him. The Black Guard was looking past the sorceress, at the trees beyond her. Pyra turned to follow his gaze, watching as a sinister scarlet shape emerged from the trees. The red-robed, almost skeletal figure of Naagan crept towards the two elves like a jackal sniffing for carrion.
Naagan was an unsettling sight. A belt of tiny skulls, the silvered heads of sacrificed infants, circled his waist and from it swung the ugly knob of a flanged mace of elfin steel. A jewelled pectoral drooped from around his thin neck, a bronze pendant in the shape of a cauldron. Daggers and skulls were embroidered throughout his robe, forming a shifting tapestry of murder and death. His face was gaunt, cadaverous, with a pallor that was sickly even for a druchii. His iron-grey hair was streaked with lines of crimson where he had dyed it with blood.
Naagan was a disciple of the Cult of Khaine, the gruesome god of murder worshipped to the exclusion of all other gods by the dark elves of Naggaroth. The order of Khaine was unusual in its practices, its priesthood almost entirely female, with the bloodthirsty witch elves, the handmaidens of Khaine, as the bulk of their initiates. Some few men were allowed to devote themselves to the rites of Khaine; the babes who were stolen in the dead of night to be raised as the cult’s assassins. Naagan was different, an outsider whose tireless devotion and fanaticism for Khaine had drawn the attention of the cult. Because the Hag Queen considered him useful, he was allowed to become one of Khaine’s disciples, taught the profane rituals of the Lord of Murder.
The priest nodded his head in deference to Pyra. ‘Your plan has proceeded flawlessly, mistress.’ He told her, his voice like the discord of a cracked bell. ‘Beblieth swam ashore and silenced the watchers before ever our ship came in sight of land. I thank you on behalf of Khaine for so many offerings, even if they were only animals.’
‘What of the other thing?’ Pyra asked.
Naagan’s eyes sparkled with malice. He threw back the folds of his robe, exposing the trembling little girl he had concealed beneath the tapering sleeve of his raiment. ‘I found it in the trees, running from one of the watch posts. I apologise, but it was the best I could find.’
Pyra stared down at Freya. The girl tried to look up at the elf, but the awful beauty of the sorceress was too terrible to her frightened mind.
‘Can you find your way to other humans?’ Pyra’s voice was stern as she interrogated the girl, struggling with the crude human words. Freya nodded, too terrified to speak. ‘That is well. You will go to them and tell them what happened here. Tell them the ship is staying here, that we are staying here.’ Pyra waved her hand at the forest. ‘Now go, before we kill you.’
Freya bit down on her lip to keep from crying out. Dodging away from Naagan’s skeleton figure, she darted for the trees, vanishing into the snow with all the fright of a fleeing rabbit.
‘The barbarians will descend on this place en
masse,’ stated Sardiss.
‘When that happens, we will be long gone from here,’ Pyra assured him. ‘A pity Captain Abhar will not be able to say the same.’
A dry croak rattled from Naagan’s throat. ‘I only wish we could stay to see his face when the salt plugs in the hull of his ship melt and he watches his only chance for escape sink beneath the waves.’ The priest shook his head with mock sadness. ‘He really should have watched what I was doing down there. A more pious elf should know it does not take so long to offer the hearts of slaves to Khaine!’
Chapter Three
The smell of burning flesh wafted through the soot-blackened hallway, whipping through it on a sweltering breeze. Cowering behind the heavy oak door, Ilsa could smell the stench oozing up from the tiny crack between portal and floor. The foul stink brought stinging tears to the girl’s eyes and fresh sobs of despair from her trembling body.
If only she had listened to her mother. If only she had listened to Father Bottcher, the grizzled old priest of Sigmar who made the journey down from Richterberg each month to minister to the spiritual needs of the village. She should never have accepted a position at the tower, never have taken on the job of chambermaid for him. The pay was good, more than even the village hetman Steiner might see in a year. That was what had seduced Ilsa and the other servants away from the security and normalcy of the village for the sinister isolation of Char Peak and its macabre inhabitant. Father Bottcher had warned that they were jeopardising their immortal souls by accepting service under a wizard, but the lure of money had made them deaf to his words.
Now, too late, Ilsa understood the menace of sorcery. It was not meant for man to delve into such awful, obscene powers. Even with the noblest and most selfless intentions, only evil could come from trafficking in magic. Magister Kabus was a good man, a decent man, kind in his way and always considerate of his servants. Ilsa had never seen him call upon daemons or curdle the milk of an honest man’s cow, as her mother warned her wizards were wont to do. But she had seen the effects of his spells, felt the unnatural aura that pervaded the man and even the stones of his dwelling. The tower on Char Peak was never cold in winter, no matter how deep the snow and she had seen rain sizzle as it fell upon the wizard’s shoulders when he stood upon the battlements to watch an autumn storm. Such displays had made her frightened, but she had quieted her fears by reminding herself that nothing bad had happened. Nothing really bad. And there was the wizard’s gold…
Ilsa’s breath caught in her throat as she heard movement in the hallway outside the little closet that had become her refuge. Terror in her eyes, she shoved her hand into her mouth and bit down to stifle her sobbing. The salty taste of blood rolled across her tongue. Somewhere, in the distance, she heard a scream followed by coarse, brutal laughter. From nearer, she thought she could hear a rough, slobbery noise, like a sickly dog snuffling at the floor. Wet, squishy steps, the sound a gigantic toad might make, slapped against the flagstones as something scurried down the corridor. Despite the hand clenched between her teeth, a little moan of horror wheezed past her lips.
The evil had come! Drawn out from the darkness by Magister Kabus’s reckless pursuit of forbidden, profane things. It had descended upon Char Peak like a tempest, savage and ghastly, without warning or mercy.
The snuffling noise came again, this time much louder and closer. The oak door shivered as something brushed against it, the light showing beneath it was broken by shadow. Ilsa bit down on a scream, but the effort was wasted. Whatever was outside knew she was there.
The thing pressing against the door pulled away and for a moment the door was still. A moist, barking croak, halfway between a growl and a hiss, rumbled from the hallway. Suddenly the oak door shook violently in its frame as a powerful force smashed against it. Ilsa drew her hand away and screamed, crying out to Sigmar and Shallya to preserve her from the monster outside.
If the gods heard her plea, they did not listen. The portal shuddered again, this time the thick wood splintering. Ilsa fought through her terror, pushing her legs out, setting her slippers against the rough panel, trying to bolster it against its attacker. Her effort was far too little. As the thing in the corridor slammed against the door for a third time, Ilsa felt the impact shiver through her bones. Daring to look at the growing hole in the middle of the door, the maid saw a pair of immense black eyes regarding her hungrily. She shrieked, pulling her legs back, curling herself into a little ball of fear in the corner of the closet.
The black-eyed monster uttered another croak-growl and pulled away again. It threw itself against the oak door once, twice. On the third impact, there was a terrible cracking sound as iron fastenings were bent and the door beneath them ruptured. Jagged splinters of wood stabbed out at weird angles from the gaping hole that had been bashed through the door.
Ilsa could see the monster now, trying to squirm its bloated body through the opening. It was unspeakably hideous, a great ball of scabby flesh with a pair of short fat legs beneath it. Its colour was somewhere between that of a scab and a bruise, its tough hide peppered with ugly nodules of horn. Thick black claws, each the size of Ilsa’s hand, tipped its powerful legs. Saucer-shaped eyes, dull and witless, stared at her ravenously. All this, the maid noted only fleetingly, for her attention was soon fixed upon the main feature of the monster’s anatomy: the gigantic mouth that stretched from one side of its head to the other. The beast seemed to be all mouth, so grotesquely did its gaping maw dominate its physiognomy. Yellowed fangs, each the size of a dagger and serrated like the edge of a saw, jutted from the monster’s mouth, snapping and gnashing as it fought to push its way into the closet. Ilsa had seen a wolf-trap once, but she doubted if even the trap’s steely teeth could match the havoc the creature’s yellow fangs could work upon flesh and bone.
Scrabbling furiously at the door, the monster pushed and wheezed its way inch by inch into the closet. Sometimes it would stretch itself, snapping at Ilsa, testing its reach. She could smell its vile breath, could see the gristle and fat from old meals trapped between its fangs. The maid gave a wail of horror, crying out to her gods again for deliverance from this devouring monstrosity.
From outside, in the hallway, Ilsa heard a shrill, whispery voice call out. She could not make out words, if indeed the grunts and snarls were words, but she saw some element of awareness intrude into the monster’s eyes. The shrill voice snapped out again, then there was the meaty smack of something cracking against the monster’s backside. A sullen, almost comically contrite expression came into the monster’s hideous face; even in her horror, Ilsa could think only of a scolded puppy as she watched the change come over the creature. Awkwardly, with ill grace, the monster squirmed its way back out the hole and into the corridor.
It was on her tongue to give thanks to Shallya for her deliverance, when Ilsa’s eyes were drawn to a new shadow blotting out the light beyond the door. Her body went cold as she saw a figure pushing itself through the hole in the door. It was like a little man, no bigger than a nine-year-old boy and with a stringy, wiry build. It wore crude garments, rough leather tunic and trousers stitched together from spongy, greasy hides. Stiff boots, little spike-like nails jutting from its toes and dagger-like thorns embedded along the inside of its calves, protected the little creature’s feet while stiff gauntlets of the same spongy hide as its tunic encased its hands. Ilsa was horrified to see the dried face of a fang-creature staring at her from the back of one of the gloves, its teeth spread across the fingers of the one who wore it.
The creature’s face was more horrible still, a cruel lean visage with a long slender nose and a knife-gash of a mouth filled with needle-like fangs. Beady red eyes gleamed maliciously from the leathery green skin of the creature’s face. Upon its head, the dried husk of another monster formed a weird hat, the monster’s withered legs dangling like the liliripes of a jester’s cap. Ilsa had never seen such a creature before, but she knew it for what it was just the same and that knowledge set her heart quivering w
ith utter terror.
The thing in the doorway was a goblin. It grinned at her, like a mischievous child, displaying those wickedly horrible teeth. Its tiny fingers pulled an ugly-looking knife from its belt. Ilsa screamed as she saw the dull, rusty blade. The goblin’s grin grew wider.
‘Wot dis?’ the goblin cackled in its shrill whisper, its degenerate command of Reikspiel almost unintelligible. ‘Ya ’fraid soft lil’ humie? ’fraid ol’ Zagbob gonna hurt ya?’
The goblin crept forwards, running a leathery thumb along the back of its knife. Ilsa screamed again.
‘Dat gud!’ Zagbob laughed. ‘Make da pretty noise! Ya an’ ol’ Zagbob gotz plenty o’ time ta play!’
Gorgut Foechewer stomped through the bloodstained halls of the tower, absently chewing on a sheep’s leg, spitting clumps of wool from the side of his mouth. A massive hulk of swollen muscle and scarred flesh, the black orc stood nearly eight feet tall at the shoulder. His leathery skin was a deep shade of green where it was not marred by puckered grey scar tissue or stained white with fungus-pigment tattoos. The orc wore a crude vest of rusty chain, battered plate and polished bone, all held together with a lunatic confusion of rivets, tethers and staples. A simple grinning face, its smile twisted by grotesque fangs, was painted across the largest scrap of armour lashed over the brute’s chest. Above the monster’s broad, ape-like shoulders, a low-browed head jutted forwards, piggish eyes glaring from above a smashed slit of a nose and a wide gash of a mouth. Massive tusks stabbed from the orc’s lower jaw, crushing his cheeks beneath their carved enamel.
