Tales of the Old World

by Marc Gascoigne

  Having gained the warlord’s tent, Kurgan and Thorin rummaged through the treasures stolen by the orcs, searching frantically for their ancient weapons and armour. Nothing else would hold back the tide of greenskins now. Beside them lay the still form of Borris, whose deathly pallor did little to cheer Kurgan. Looking up briefly, he saw the orc warlord crush the face of a hunter with a mighty punch, before swinging his axe round in a deadly arc that left three more fighters dismembered. Cursing his befuddled head and aching limbs, the dwarf king redoubled his search.

  Before the tent, Ansgar and Eginolf fought back to back, surrounded by a crowd of orcs whose blows rose and fell with relentless ferocity. Each of them was marked by a dozen light cuts, but the pile of bodies around them testified that each drop of blood had been drawn at a heavy price.

  As Ansgar gutted one orc and stepped back to avoid the swipe of a sword, he felt Eginolf stumble behind him. Hacking wildly at his foes to push them back momentarily, Ansgar glanced over his shoulder. Eginolf, his twin brother, was on his knees. A spear had punched through his stomach; its barbed point now jutted from his back. Eginolf still swung his sword and screamed at the orcs.

  “It’ll take more than a green scum twig like this to end me. I’m going to bathe in your blood, you cowardly wretches!”

  Time slowed for Ansgar as he saw a black orc push forward from the throng, a mighty cleaver in each hand. Even as Eginolf weakly fended off one blow, the other arm swept down with unstoppable force. Helpless to intervene, Ansgar watched with horror as the head of his twin tumbled to the ground.

  Something inside Ansgar snapped. Yelling incoherently with pure rage, he threw himself at the orcs with renewed vigour. He was berserk, giving no thought for his own life, as he hacked and slashed, stabbed and jabbed with his sword. Startled by this unexpected fury, the orcs fell back.

  Ignorant of everything except his raging hatred of his brother’s murderers, Ansgar pressed on wildly, each step taking him further from the sanctuary of his comrades. As he shouldered one foe aside, Ansgar’s blade was knocked from his grasp and was lost beneath the orcs’ stamping feet. Ansgar tossed his knife from his left to his right hand and ducked his head down. In the press, the orcs’ heavy weapons were useless. Ansgar’s hunting knife was far more deadly; opening arteries, severing windpipes, ripping tendons and puncturing vital organs.

  Despite the veteran’s frenzied counter-attack, Kurgan thought the humans looked close to fleeing. The dwarf king was hastily hauling on his rune-encrusted armour, feeling its ancient plates fold over him like an old lover’s embrace. Thorin was busy strapping on his studded gauntlets when he gave a cry of dismay. Turning, Kurgan watched in horror as Vagraz burst through the ranks of humans. The orc’s massive axe glittered with dark magic, black flames playing along its edges. A few foolhardy men tried to interpose themselves between the awesome killing machine and the dwarfs, but in a few swift heartbeats they were dead, their blood seeping into the forest floor to mix with the gore of a hundred other warriors, orc and human.

  Then the humans’ youthful leader was there, leaping over the axes and swords of the orcs to attack their warlord. The young warrior stood with his legs slightly apart, ready to face the oncoming butcher. Still staring at the approaching orc, the human shouted to Kurgan.

  “Where’s your magic, beardling? I think now would be a good time to see it!”

  Bellowing his wrath, Vagraz charged. Rolling beneath a wild swing of the warlord’s baleful axe, the human youth dived to one side, then swung his long sword down at the orc’s neck with his whole weight. The blade shattered on the enchanted armour of the warlord, who turned slowly and grinned at his would-be killer. Without hesitation the hunt lord flung the shattered stump of his sword into the orcs’ face and leapt, his feet thudding into the warlord’s jaw with a sickening crunch. The orc was knocked sprawling by the unexpected blow.

  Allowing the hulking brute no time to recover, young Steel-eye moved behind Vagraz and started raining punches into the back of his thick neck. Roaring in anger, the orc spun around, smashing a plate-sized fist into the lord’s chin, hurling him to the ground. Shaking his head to clear it, Vagraz lifted an immense booted foot to stamp on the young warrior, but he was too slow and the hunter rolled to his feet with fluid grace. The young man delivered a sweeping kick that made the warlord buckle at the knees.

  Kurgan was cursing constantly now, throwing heaps of gold and gems aside in his frantic quest for his ancient weapon.

  “Where the hell are you?” he spat, but even as he spoke his hand fell upon sturdy stitching wound around cold steel. With a yelp, he pulled the rune-forged warhammer from the concealing pile of glittering treasure. Kurgan fervently prayed he wasn’t too late.

  He span around to see the beleaguered human leader slip on the slick of mud and blood that covered the ground. As the orc chieftain lifted his massive axe above his head, its blade shining with unearthly energies, Kurgan flung his hammer to the young man. It arced across the campsite, spinning slowly, its head flashing in the glow of the bonfire. The youth’s long arm snapped up to grab it, his fingers closing round the hilt. As Vagraz’s dark axe swept down, the barbarian leader brought up the rune hammer to meet it. The weapons clashed with a shower of black and blue sparks and the two fighters were locked together.

  The orc had the advantage and pressed down with all his weight, bringing the sorcerous axe blade ever closer to the young man’s throat. The youth’s arms trembled with the strain, sweat poured across his body and his face was purple with effort. His huge muscles twitched and veins stood out like cords across his neck and shoulders. With a scream Steel-eye thrust the orc back with all his remaining strength, swinging the hammer to one side to knock the warlord off balance. Howling, the hunter leapt to his feet and the two adversaries stood facing each other again. The human was grinning wolfishly, his eyes ablaze. The orc’s hand constantly clenched and unclenched on the haft of his massive axe in agitated anticipation. Gauging each other carefully, the two leaders circled slowly.

  “Your axe is very pretty, scum, but this hammer will be your doom. Even unarmed I was besting you and now I have this, you have only a heartbeat left to live! Enjoy your last moments, greenskin offal!”

  “Keep talkin’, pretty boy! Froat Biter hasn’t finished wiv yer yet. Perhaps yer voice won’t be so dainty once I’ve cut yer froat from ear ta ear!”

  “I’ll bathe in your blood and count the heads of your friends before that clumsy lump of pig iron touches my skin!”

  “Let’s see if yer muscles are as big as yer mouf!”

  As one, both combatants swung. Their mighty weapons rang against each other with an explosion of magical energy. Steel-eye ducked Vagraz’s swing and brought the warhammer around in a mighty blow that smashed off one of the warlord’s shoulder pads. Amazed that his magical armour had been penetrated, the warlord was thrown off-guard. Vagraz barely had time to throw a hasty parry as the warhammer swung upwards again, knocking the orc backwards. Without pause, the young human leapt forward to sustain his attack, raining blow after blow against the orc.

  Vagraz was not going to fall easily. A wild swing opened up a gaping cut in the hunter’s side, but left the orc leader’s defences open. With a defiant yell, the young man ignored his injury and swung again, the head of the hammer sweeping Vagraz off his feet with an audible cracking of bones. A second blow snapped the orc’s head backwards and sent his axe tumbling from his grasp. Somehow the orc still clung to life. With a grunt it raised itself to its shattered knees and held up a hand. Confused and suspecting treachery, the hunt lord checked his next blow, staring distrustfully down at the broken creature on the ground before him.

  To Steel-eye’s surprise, the warlord started laughing, a dull chuckling that rose to a guttural thunder. Vagraz snorted contemptuously, spitting several teeth into the mud, and he raised a hand to form one final, vulgar gesture.

  His patience gone, the hunt lord stepped forward. “Was that really the best y
ou could do?” Steel-eye taunted, stepping on the orc’s other hand with a crunching of bones, as it stretched towards the fallen axe. Steel-eye steadied himself and swung one final blow. As the body slumped to the ground, the hunter stepped absent-mindedly to one side to avoid a rivulet of green, viscous fluid that drained towards the trees. He was staring intently at the body, as if suspecting it still presented some danger.

  After a moment’s pause, Steel-eye turned to look around him. Kurgan strode up, laughing heartily. The dwarf king tugged hard on the hunter’s ragged, bloodstained cloak, stopping him as he took a stride towards the fight. The lad turned quickly to glare at the dwarf, his wide, battle-crazed eyes full of questions, the hammer in his hand half-raised to attack.

  “Woah there, it’s only me! You’re a fine fighter, lad, and no mistake. Perhaps you pinkskins aren’t so bad as we thought.”

  Steel-eye looked down at the dwarf and held out the hammer, haft first. When he spoke, his words came in panting gasps, his breath carving misty shadows in the cold air.

  “Thank you for… your weapon… Talk later… orcs to kill… Take it back… I’m sure I can find… something else.”

  The dwarf king shook his noble head. Stroking the tangles out of his long beard, he looked up at the human with a wry smile on his face and a mischievous glint in his eye. Kurgan took the proffered warhammer and patted its rune-encrusted head. With a short chuckle, he handed it back to the surprised youth.

  “I think he likes you better than me. Keep him. His name is Ghal Maraz, or Skull Splitter. You’ve done us a great service today. A small gift hardly compares to the life of a dwarf king, now does it?”

  The youngster nodded his thanks and turned to rejoin the fight. The remaining orcs were falling back into the woods, all thoughts of battle gone now their warlord was dead. Kurgan laid a hand on the hunt lord’s arm and halted him again.

  “This day will be recorded in our annals with joy. What’s your name lad, that we might honour you?”

  Steel-eye hefted the hammer in his hand, his eyes straying towards the fleeing orcs. He looked at the dwarf king again, his eyes smouldering with energy. The rest of his face was in darkness and as the flames flickered in those intense grey eyes, they took on an eerie light. Even the baleful gaze of the orc warlord hadn’t exuded the raw power of the youth’s stare. His reply was short and simple.

  “Sigmar.”

  TALES OF

  ADVENTURE & MYSTERY

  HAUTE CUISINE

  Robert Earl

  During the summer when the ship Destrier limped back into Bordeleaux, the heat was everywhere and always. In the daytime it throbbed down from the blinding sun, grilling the skin of those forced to toil beneath it. At night it lay heavy in the air, radiating from bricks and cobbles so that the city felt like a giant kiln.

  Even in the docks, where Manann’s breath blew chill from the ocean beyond, the heat greased the air. The open sewers that fed into the harbour oozed beneath it, and the waste that finally dripped into the thick waters was as warm as blood. Methane fires occasionally flared above the stew of filth and brine, although they did nothing to dispel the stink.

  But to Florin d’Artaud the foetid air of the harbour was sweeter than any rose. After all, it was the smell of home, and after thousands of miles of ocean and jungle and danger and pain, what could smell sweeter?

  He lent over the railings of the Destrier and gazed longingly at the sweltering city that rose up around them. Lorenzo, who stood behind him, was not to be distracted by such sentiments. The older man stared at the deck instead, his eyes glittering in the oil lamps that had been set around the gunwales of their ship.

  The treasure glittered, too. It had been spread out on the battered timber of the deck, and now, as the survivors of the expedition watched like hawks, it was being divided.

  “Gold,” said the captain, weighing a misshapen yellow statue that looked a little like a frog. “Sixteen pounds and nine ounces.”

  The assembled men, gaunt and ragged and fabulously wealthy, nodded approvingly. They watched the quarter master scratch the weight into the lump of metal, then turned back as the captain lifted the next piece. It was a medallion as big as a breastplate, the perfect oval spoiled only by a bullet hole right in the centre.

  “Gold,” the captain said. “Twelve pounds and six ounces.”

  The men shifted appreciatively. Only Florin looked impatient. He paced around behind them, gazing hungrily at his city. Even at this late hour it would be teeming with life, he knew. There would be fresh women and fresh food, tailors and bathhouses and wine merchants.

  Behind him the captain paused over the next part of the inventory. A murmur of disquiet passed through the men as they watched him turn the bauble this way and that. Then he shrugged and put the thing into the scales.

  “Egg,” the captain said as he weighed it. “Twenty-four pounds.”

  Florin’s brow creased and he turned around.

  “What did he just say?” he asked Lorenzo, who was frowning. It made him look even more like a monkey.

  “Egg,” he said, and there was no mistaking the disgust in his voice. “More gold than we could carry, and what does some idiot decide to save?”

  There was a murmur of angry agreement, and the captain held the egg up. It took two hands to lift it, and although it was obviously worthless it was pretty. Intricate shapes patterned the glazed surface, and he could see why, in all the panic, somebody might have snatched the bauble up.

  The men, however, seemed less understanding.

  “Well, whoever brought this should take it as their share,” the captain announced. “Who was it?”

  The men fell silent. The Bretonnians glared suspiciously at the Kislevites, and the Kislevites sneered at the Tileans. The captain, realising that the fuse of racial tension had been relit, decided to douse it.

  “Nobody? Right then, as nobody wants it we’ll throw it away.”

  Before anybody could reply he lifted the egg high over his head and hurled it over the side of the ship. It plopped into the sewage-choked water, bobbed once, then disappeared from view.

  “Gold,” the captain said, moving hurriedly on to the next piece. “Nine pounds and four ounces.”

  It was almost dawn by the time the spoils had been divided, and as the shipful of rich vagabonds hove into Bordeleaux, not a single one of them gave another thought to the egg that had been added to the rich stew of the city’s harbour.

  One Year Later

  The men who worked in these depths toiled as hard as any miners. They strained and swore and struggled, their brows oiled with sweat as they practised their craft beneath the hiss of brass lanterns.

  The patissier, his skin grey after a lifetime spent in clouds of flour, battered his pastry with a blacksmith’s strength. The saucier wielded a long-handled tasting spoon amongst his apprentices, driving them on like so many galley slaves. Meanwhile the rotissier, his arms scarred by fire and boiling grease, sliced apart a roast piglet with a swordsman’s skill.

  And through this inferno, his face red and his eyes savage, strode the chef. In one hand he held the rolling pin that served as his marshal’s baton. The other was empty, although it flexed nervously. After all, although every dinner party involved the sort of perfect timing that would make a juggler dizzy, tonight was even worse. Tonight his master, Monsieur Lafayette, was entertaining his arch rival, Monsieur Griston.

  Which was to say that perfection was no longer enough.

  The chef idly whacked his rolling pin down on a porter who had been foolish enough to cross his path. The impact of wood onto flesh soothed him. So did the thought that tonight he would indeed give his master more than perfection.

  “How’s the porc au miel provencal?” he asked the rotissier. The man, who was using two knives simultaneously, answered without looking up.

  “Needs to rest for twenty minutes,” he said.

  The chef looked at his timepiece, a burnished brass lump that was as big as h
is palm. “Twenty minutes,” he repeated. “Good, saucier?” The saucier swivelled at the sound of his master’s voice.

  “Chef?”

  “Twenty minutes for the sauce florette de porc.”

  “But it’s ready in five.”

  “Twenty minutes!” the chef screamed, and all around him quailed.

  “Twenty minutes it is,” the saucier said, already shoving his apprentice out of the way to take personal charge of that particular cauldron.

  The chef forgot him as he hurried towards his own bench. It was a marble slab, as big as a coffin, and a porter stood beside it in constant attendance. With a feeling of pride the chef put his rolling pin to one side and opened the box of eggs that waited for him on the slab. He hoisted one out, turning it to admire it in the lamplight.

  He still wasn’t sure what the thing was. The size put him in mind of the giant chickens that were said to live in the Southlands. On the other hand, the colours that striped it were like nothing he’d seen on any mere bird’s egg before. They looked almost ceramic.

  It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was what lay inside the strange shell. The one that he had sampled before purchasing the box had been as smooth as the richest mousse. And the taste… For the first time in his life, the chef believed that he had found something that couldn’t be improved upon by any artifice of his.

  He smiled happily, secure in the knowledge that he would get the credit anyway. And all he had to do was to poach the eggs, slice them, and then cover them with clear sauce translucid for appearance’s sake.

  “Garcon,” he bellowed, despite the fact that the porter was standing right behind him.