by C. L. Werner
Chapter Thirteen
From the very top of the hall, Gorgut grinned as he watched the metal wall rupture like a swollen belly. The shriek of twisted metal was soon drowned out by the deafening roar of the beast that had caused it. The orc’s beady eyes gleamed with black amusement. Zagbob had outdone himself. Gorgut had told his scout to find the biggest, baddest beast he could and then provoke it enough to follow him back to the dark elves.
Gorgut resented the way the elves had used his lads as bait to draw out their own enemies. Maybe none of his warriors had wit enough to understand what the scrawny elves were about, but Gorgut did. He didn’t like being the rat at the end of someone’s squig-stick. Now the elves were going to know what it felt like.
The monster Zagbob had lured back was beyond anything Gorgut had seen before. It was like a big red mountain, easily able to swallow an ogre whole with one snap of its immense jaws. In shape, it was something like a mammoth hog-wolf-spider thing. It had one leg that was a big paw while the other was more like a bunch of twisted scorpion-claws. Its hind legs both ended in hooves and from its back bristled a forest of black horns that quivered and shook like the legs of a crushed spider. Its thick bull-neck and the top of its head were sheathed in plates of bronze barding. A huge nub of bronze jutted over its snout, like the nose-spike of a rhinox. Thick horns spiralled away from just above either ear. From its snout, a great ring of brass dangled and the underside of its monstrous chin supported a tuft-like beard of horn. The great beast’s eyes burned with pained madness, not the dull rage of an animal, but the lunatic frenzy of a thinking thing. It was a look that gave even Gorgut pause.
‘We going down there to kill it, boss?’ Dregruk asked.
Gorgut chuckled and shook his head. ‘No. We’ll let the skinnies play with it awhile. The same way they let us have all the fun with them knights and the wizard.’ The warlord raised his voice into a louder bellow so that all of his ragged mob could hear him.
‘Let’s go see what kind of loot’s lying around this place,’ the black orc barked, gesturing with his axe at the archway beneath the fangs of the carved daemon. He stared down at the shivering, exhausted huddle of Zagbob. The warlord kicked the panting scout. ‘Lead the way,’ he growled. Zagbob stared murder at Gorgut, but one display of the orc’s tusks had the goblin back on his feet.
Gorgut gave one last look at the battle raging below. The behemoth was attacking everything, dark elf or beastman. His huge frame shook as a regretful sigh rumbled through him. It was a shame to miss out on such a scrap, but he could console himself that there wasn’t anything small enough on the beast to take home as a trophy anyway.
The metal walls of the fortress pressed close around the four northmen. The heated surface sent a weird crimson glow oozing against them, leeching the strength from their limbs with its sweltering aura. Burnt meat dangled from the chains swaying from the ceiling, fat sizzling as the motion of the intruders knocked the chains into the heated walls.
Kormak was once more in the lead. Of them all, he was the most skilled in the arts of tracking and hunting. Perhaps some of Vakaan’s spells might have made the marauder’s talents superfluous, but the magus had displayed a marked reluctance to call upon his dark arts since entering the Bastion Stair. In subdued tones he had warned Tolkku against drawing too heavily upon his own magic. ‘This is the Blood God’s domain,’ he cautioned. ‘All sorcery is repugnant to him. Draw upon your magic only as a last resort. It is not wise to tease the dragon in its own lair.’
Kormak doubted if even the Kurgan zealot needed to be reminded to be wary. The oppressive heat, the grisly surroundings, the pools of fresh, sticky gore they passed with alarming frequency, any of these would have put even the most inexperienced Hung horse-thief on his guard. But there was something more, a constant feeling of being watched, of an unseen force, powerful and malignant, watching their every move. Kormak’s skin crawled whenever he allowed himself to concentrate upon the feeling. Whatever was watching them, he knew it only had to rouse itself to action to obliterate them all. He felt like an ant that lifts its head and recognises the boot descending to crush it.
The marauder ground his teeth and spat against the heated wall. The spittle sizzled against the skull-strewn bronze. He watched it for a moment, then noticed something lying upon the floor, almost lost in the shadow cast by a spiked cornice. Kormak knelt and retrieved the object from the shadows, shifting it from one hand to the other in an effort to lessen the contact of the hot metal with his hands.
‘What have you found?’ Urbaal asked. The Chosen came forward, staring at the silvery mesh of chain Kormak had discovered. The marauder handed the tiny fragment to Urbaal, impressed when his armoured gauntlet closed about it without any notice of its blistering heat. The Chosen studied it a moment, then dropped it to the floor again. ‘Southling steel,’ he pronounced with a low growl.
‘You believe it is the southlings who have the Spear?’ asked Tolkku. Urbaal nodded.
Kormak stared at the long narrow hall, studying each shadow for any sign of other debris left behind by the southlings. He smiled to himself. No, he wasn’t looking for southlings. He was looking for the elves, and in particular the prancing witch who had disgraced him. They were looking for the Spear too. He wondered how near they might be, indeed if they had discovered the same trail the warband itself was on. The question made him touch the faint smudges of the dark elf’s blood on his armour. He looked back at Vakaan hovering above the floor on his daemonic steed.
‘Can you tell how near the elves are?’ he asked.
The membranes flicked closed over Vakaan’s eyes. The magus bent his head in concentration for a moment, then waved his hand towards the left. ‘Somewhere down there,’ he answered. ‘If the trail keeps upon the path it has taken, we will be able to avoid them.’
Kormak nodded his horned head. ‘If we have the lead, then we must make certain to keep it,’ he said. He turned to Urbaal. ‘I will scout ahead, see if any of the Bloodherd are there. If there are, they will follow my scent and I can lead them away.’
‘Jodis Wolfscar warned it is death to face the beastmen,’ Urbaal replied.
‘Then it is death,’ Kormak growled back. ‘If my death allows you to find the Spear and open the Portal of Rage, then Tchar will smile on my spirit and I shall be exalted in the halls of my ancestors.’
‘Your bones will be chew-toys for goat-kin pups,’ Tolkku laughed derisively.
Urbaal stared hard into Kormak’s eyes, then slowly nodded his agreement. ‘Clear the path, Norscan. Find glory or death, as you will, but clear the path.’
Kormak pulled the heavy axe from its fastenings on his back and sprinted off into the shadowy gloom of the bronze labyrinth. It was not thoughts of either glory or death that burned behind his eyes, however. It was thoughts of pale, laughing flesh and poisoned daggers.
When Kormak found an opening in the left-hand wall, he turned down it. He did not know how far he would need to travel to find the dark elf; he only knew what he would do when he did.
So lost in his bloody thoughts of vengeance was he, that Kormak was almost on top of the monster crouching in the darkness of the side-corridor before he saw it.
The beast had been distracted as well, intent upon the splattered mess of limbs it had been gnawing on. In the crimson glow, Kormak could see hands and feet protruding grotesquely from the gore-mound. A wet skull, its scalp still covered by a chainmail coif of southling manufacture stared silently at him from the top of the pile, as though welcoming another lost soul to the monster’s larder.
The beastman towered over even Kormak’s huge frame. It was easily nine-feet tall, its head a ghastly mixture of human and goat, its naked torso scarred with skull-runes and recent sword wounds. It wiped a hand-like paw across its fanged muzzle, blood and bits of meat dripping from its fur. The gor’s lips pulled back in an eager snarl and it dropped the gnawed human leg it held.
Kormak braced himself to meet the monster’s charge,
but the brute displayed a human level of cunning. Instead of rushing the man, it feinted towards him, then spun and dove for the wall behind it. Kormak roared with fury, lunging after the beastman. His axe slashed down in a cleaving arc, aimed at the gor’s shoulder. The beastman spun before the blow could hit it, intercepting Kormak’s axe with the handle of its own double-axe. The impact trembled through Kormak’s arms, throwing him back, nearly ripping the weapon from his hands.
The beastman grunted, its nostrils flaring. Warily, it began to circle the marauder, rolling the huge double-axe clenched in its claws. The black eyes of the gor bored into those of the man. Its fanged mouth pulled back in a savage grin.
‘You die, Norscan,’ the beastman snarled as it pounced.
Kormak had prepared himself for the monster’s attack, but so shocking was it to him to hear words rasp past its fangs that the gor’s axe was almost against his skull before he recovered himself and blocked the descending blow. The marauder’s body shook with the fury of the impact, the brutal strength of the goat-headed beast almost enough to batter aside his desperate defence. The gor brayed angrily, twisting the axe about in its grip to hook the handle of Kormak’s weapon. The marauder was pulled forwards as the beastman tried to tear the axe from his hands. He twisted his head, raking his horn against one of the monster’s paws. The brute recoiled in pain, licking blood from its paw.
‘Grakthar feast on manflesh,’ the monster promised, displaying its fangs. ‘Norscan scream when Grakthar chew his bones!’
Kormak grinned back at Grakthar, his own fangs stretching, pushing clear of his lips as they lengthened. ‘I hear no screams, beastkin,’ the marauder growled back. ‘Only an animal that is tired of living.’
The beastman roared, spittle flying from its fangs. It charged back at the marauder, driving its axe down in a butchering chop. Kormak dodged the blow, bringing his own axe swinging around, cleaving through the tendons of Grakthar’s leg. The monster bellowed in pain, smashing the butt of its double-axe into the Norscan’s chest. Kormak felt ribs grind together beneath the blow, blood boiling into his mouth. It was his turn to recoil in pain.
Grakthar pursued the staggered human, all of its animal hate consuming its primitive mind. More than the ancient loathing of its kind for men, it was the savage instinct of hunter and prey that filled its brain. Wounded, the smell of fresh blood spilling from his mouth, Kormak had made the transition from adversary to meat.
Kormak glared at the monster as it sprang at him once more. He caught the descending double-axe with the head of his own weapon. He cried out in agony as he felt his muscles burning, as he struggled to defy the greater strength and mass of Grakthar’s misshapen body. The beastman brayed and bleated, all trace of speech lost in its hungry snarls. Slowly, inch by inch, the gor forced Kormak’s body down. The marauder howled in fury as his knees buckled and he was pressed to the ground. The edge of the double-axe gleamed down at him as Grakthar pushed it towards his face.
Summoning the last reserves of his strength, Kormak ripped his axe free. It spun away, clattering against the heated wall. Grakthar’s weapon was nearly wrenched from the beastman’s claws and the gor’s body spun with the violence of Kormak’s move. In the end, however, the brute retained hold of its weapon while the human did not.
The advantage was lost even as it was realised. Kormak’s arm shifted, melting into the gruesome shape of an axe-head, a fanged mouth running down its middle. The mutant jaws gaped wide and snapped closed on one of Grakthar’s paws, severing the appendage at the wrist. Grakthar whinnied in shock, stumbling back, staring in disbelief at the spurting stump.
Kormak did not allow the monster time to recover. His mutant limb slashed after the reeling beastman, chewing through its midsection, spilling the half-digested muck in Grakthar’s belly. The beastman shrieked, throwing down its double-axe. The brute seized Kormak in its claws, lifting him off the floor. It pulled him towards its fanged muzzle, determined to rip out his throat before it was overcome by its own wounds.
Kormak leaned into Grakthar’s face, slashing it with his long horns. The stunned beastman dropped him, clapping its paw to its mangled cheek and ruptured eye. Kormak dove at the monster from where he fell, his cleaver-arm gashing its uninjured leg, all but tearing it loose at the knee.
Grakthar crashed to the floor like fallen timber, splattering its gory collection of limbs and heads against the bronze walls. The brute struggled to lift itself again, its remaining paw groping feebly at the blood-slick floor. Kormak clutched his side and carefully made his way over to the fallen beastman.
‘Khorne cares not…’ Grakthar coughed when it saw Kormak standing over it.
The marauder scowled down at the man-eating monster. ‘Neither do I.’ His arm assumed the shape of a bony spear, shooting down into the brute’s horned head, smashing through flesh and bone, punching through the gor’s skull to impale the brain beneath. Grakthar quivered on the end of Kormak’s arm, then its massive body slackened and became still.
Kormak slumped onto the floor beside it, breathing hard, biting his tongue against the pain from his cracked ribs. He glanced at his axe, all but shattered by the superhuman effort that had finally unbalanced the beastman. He crawled to where Grakthar’s weapon lay, pulling the huge double-axe into his lap as he sat with his back against the stinking carcass of the gor. There was nothing to do but wait, wait for either death or Tolkku’s healing magic.
The Norscan smiled as he saw the skull wearing the chainmail coif watching him from where it had been thrown. He looked down the silent corridor beyond the corpse of Grakthar. Somewhere down there he would find the witch elf. If he could convince the others that the southlings were there too, then there was just a chance he might live long enough to settle the score with his enemy.
Beblieth clung to a skull-faced cornice, trying to drag air into her scorched lungs. She cursed the vile goblin yet again, the thought of blaming her own arrogance never entering her mind. She had stalked the goblin scout, as Pyra had told her to. Indeed, she doubted if the stupid runt had ever even suspected she was there. Through the grim halls she had followed him when he broke off from the rest of the greenskin mob.
At last, the goblin found what it had been looking for. In a vast cavern gouged out from the maze-like nest of corridors and galleries, the goblin confronted a truly gigantic beast. Beblieth could not guess what the hunter was about as it fired arrow after arrow into the slumbering brute. It seemed to her that the goblin had lost its fragile grip on intelligence and its brain had collapsed into suicidal madness. It was only when the monster at last stirred and started to pursue the now fleeing goblin that she guessed the mission Gorgut had sent it upon.
The witch elf raced down side-corridors, desperately trying to draw ahead of the goblin and cut it off before he could lead the pursuing behemoth back to the main body of dark elves. She rounded a corner, confronting the scout as he raced towards her. The goblin snarled at her, pointing its clawed finger. One of the gruesome squigs hopped ahead of its master, bounding after Beblieth like a rabid toadstool. The witch elf smiled at the laughable threat. She had killed asur swordmasters and the hulking reptiles of Lustria in her time. The squig with its fangs and claws was no challenge. She smiled as the bright-green monster sprang at her. Her daggers struck it from either side, seeking to bisect its body.
As soon as Beblieth struck the squig, it exploded into a cloud of putrid gas. The witch elf recoiled from the noxious explosion, but was not quick enough to keep some of the murky vapours from searing her eyes and throat. Almost blind from tears, she was powerless to stop the cackling goblin and its surviving squigs from running past her. It was all she could do to throw herself back into the side-passage before she was trampled by the hurtling bulk of the pursuing beast.
Beblieth had considered leaving the other druchii to their fate. Only the cold realisation of her chances of making it alone stayed her flight. Alone, even a witch elf would be tempting prey for all the fiends of the Was
tes. Worse, if any of the druchii survived to escape back to Naggaroth with word of her cowardice, the Temple of Khaine would set its assassins on her trail. Even a witch elf had no illusions about eluding the avenging knives of Khaine’s killers.
Instead, Beblieth cleared her eyes as best she could and followed the rampaging behemoth. She could tell from the sounds of battle ringing through the corridor that she was too late to warn her kinsmen. The beast had already found them, its trumpeting roar booming off the bronze walls. She could hear the clack of crossbows, the piercing shrieks of dark elves being torn to ribbons. A last thought of retreat, then Beblieth drew her poisoned daggers once more.
Ahead, she could see the beast’s hindquarters jutting from the ruptured wreckage of the wall. Beyond the flanks of the brute, she could see armoured ranks of dark elves firing on the monster, stabbing at it with long spears, slashing at its paws with swords. While she watched, she saw Pyra fling her arms wide, drawing upon her arcane powers to combat the behemoth. Nor were the dark elves alone. Dozens of dark-furred beastmen were rushing to the attack. There were still knots of the goat-headed savages fighting isolated druchii, but most of them seemed to have decided that the behemoth was a more pressing menace.
‘Azuk’Thul!’ the brutes brayed and growled, terror filling their mad bleatings.
The behemoth hissed as it heard its name, almost as though it were confirming its title for the horrified ears of its victims. Beastman or dark elf, the monster made no distinction, but brought its huge claws snapping down, spearing mangled bodies with each click of its pincers. A volley of crossbow bolts peppered its snout, a crude axe of steel and bone scarred the bony spur jutting from its chin, black lightning flashed against its face – each attack only adding to Azuk’Thul’s berserk fury.
