Warriors of the Chaos Wastes - C L Werner

by Warhammer

  As the thought came to him, Broendulf winced as a bright light shone down into the pit. The first beam was quickly followed by others. The dwarfs had turned their daemon-eyes upon the slave pit. Fully illuminated by the beams, the huscarl was staggered by the sheer numbers of greenskins packed into the slave pens. So were the dwarfs in the stronghold. Only a moment after the lights shone down into the pit, a metallic shriek wailed throughout Dronangkul as the dwarfs sounded the alarm.

  ‘Come on,’ Broendulf ordered, ducking behind the basalt block to avoid the searching beams of the daemon-eyes. ‘We’ve done what we came to do.

  ‘The rest is up to Wulfrik.’

  The shrieking alarm was what Wulfrik had been waiting for. Waiting outside the walls, the northmen had seen the lights on the towers concentrate down into the pit, and they had heard the savage war cry of the slaves. But it was the alarm the champion had wanted to hear. Now he could see dwarf sentries rushing along the battlements, leaving their posts to reinforce the lower gates along the causeway. If they were still upon the heights overlooking Dronangkul, he was certain they would see ranks of dwarf warriors marching from the ziggurat to put down the revolt. Even if they would have preferred to leave the chore to the hobgoblins, the dwarfs had sent too many of their minions out into the desert looking for Wulfrik and his warriors. The dwarfs would be compelled to do their own fighting this time. And in so doing they would leave their outpost ripe for an assault.

  Wulfrik counted out the minutes, judging how long it would take the dwarfs to mobilise and march down into the pit. He would allow for their short legs and heavy armour, give them extra time to open the causeway gates and close them again behind the warriors. The longer he gave the dwarfs to descend into the pit, the longer he would have to reach the ziggurat before they could react to his attack.

  A sword in each hand, Wulfrik turned to his men. ‘Die well,’ he told them, ‘because the gods are watching.’ He shifted his gaze to Zarnath, his fangs bared. ‘Your magic had better be all you claim it is, Kurgan,’ he growled.

  Wulfrik ignored the shaman’s reassurances. Facing the stronghold once more, the champion threw himself forwards, sprinting towards the walls. Not all of the dwarfs would be gone from the walls, and even if they were, once the gates came down the entire stronghold would know it was under attack. The champion intended to be inside the ziggurat by the time the dwarfs could organise their defences.

  Two hundred yards, then a hundred, then fifty. The black walls of Dronangkul drew closer and closer with every heartbeat. Wulfrik could hear his men panting as they ran beside him. There were no war cries, no shouts of battle and fury. That would come later.

  The dwarfs noticed the men rushing at them from the black of night when the Norscans were only twenty yards from the walls. Wulfrik saw the sentries above the gates reel back in shock as they spotted them. One of the dwarfs lifted a bronze horn to his lips, blowing a solemn note to alert the rest of the stronghold. The others hefted blunderbusses and aimed at the men converging on their position.

  Before the dwarfs could fire, the gate was rocked by a tremendous blast of blue fire the size of an ox-cart. Hurtling down from the night sky, the burning sphere smashed into the metal gates with the force of a rockslide. The entire wall seemed to rise up from its foundations then slam back down against the earth. The dwarfs were knocked off their feet, several screaming as they fell from the battlements to smash their skulls upon the ground below.

  Smoke billowed from the gates, metal bubbling where Zarnath’s spell had smashed into them. The basalt walls were cracked, great chips crumbling from the ravaged stone. Yet the sturdy architecture of the fire dwarfs was as robust as that of their western kin. The barrier held, defying Wulfrik to breach them.

  From the heavens, a second ball of fire coalesced, even bigger than the first. It left a trail of shimmering blue flame as it shrieked out of the darkness. This time when the fire slammed into the walls, they did not simply jump, they buckled. Immense blocks of stone were thrown high into the sky, and screaming dwarfs were tossed through the air like autumn leaves. The great gates of Dronangkul collapsed, slamming against the ground as they were ripped from their foundations, crushing the dwarfs who had rushed to reinforce them with iron beams.

  Now Wulfrik did raise his voice in an exultant war cry, a roar of primal, savage abandon that was taken up by each of his warriors. For the moment, the desperate odds he challenged were forgotten, and even the hope of breaking his curse was absent from the hero’s thoughts. There was only the thrill of battle, the lust for blood and triumph. Wulfrik leapt through the shattered gateway, smashing his boot into the face of a trapped dwarf trying to crawl out from under the fallen gates, thrusting his sword through the chest of a stunned guard who stumbled into his path.

  ‘Khorakk!’ Wulfrik howled, his voice echoing through the cramped alleyways of the dwarf settlement. A bearded guard wielding a great axe charged at him, then sank to the earth as Wulfrik’s sword removed his arm at the shoulder. ‘Khorakk!’ the champion roared again.

  Wulfrik was thrown from his feet as something slammed into him from the side. Air rushed from his lungs as he crashed against the stone steps leading up into the gatehouse, sparks flaring before his eyes as his head cracked against the hard basalt. He could feel the earth quiver as whatever had struck him came charging after him. The champion recovered his wits as a wickedly sharp axe came flashing down towards his face.

  The northman kicked up with his legs, locking his boots about the descending blade, arresting its downward sweep. Powerful even by the standards of the Norscans, Wulfrik felt his entire body shudder at the effort of holding back the axe. He ground his fangs together, bracing his back against the steps as he threw his entire body into the effort.

  ‘I’ll make your skull a chamber pot for Thegn Khorakk!’ a gruff voice snarled in the debased Khazalid of the fire dwarfs.

  Wulfrik felt the axe start to move, forcing his legs to bend. Slowly, inexorably, his foe was proving the stronger. In a matter of seconds, the axe would come slashing down and split his head in two.

  Growling like his namesake, Wulfrik twisted his legs, trying to wrench the axe from his enemy’s hand. His foe laughed at the feeble effort. Certain his enemy was concentrated fully upon driving the axe through his face, Wulfrik released his hold.

  The axe came chopping down, but before it could strike, Wulfrik’s own sword was flashing across one of the hands behind the axe. Fingers flew in the wake of Wulfrik’s blade, dwarf blood fountaining from the mangled hand. Gripped only in one hand now, the axe’s momentum was diverted. Instead of cleaving through the northman’s head, the blade scraped against the step six inches next to him.

  Wulfrik sprang at his stricken foe, lashing out at him with the swords gripped in either hand. The crippled enemy retreated before the fury of the champion’s attack. Wulfrik saw now that his adversary wasn’t a dwarf at all, at least not completely a dwarf. From the waist upwards, he resembled the guards he had butchered on entering Dronangkul, even sharing the same scale armour and thick black beard curled into long coils. From the waist down, however, the creature was more like a bull, standing upon four muscular legs that each ended in an iron-shod hoof. The courtyard beyond the gate was filled with more of the dwarfs, many of them already locked in combat with Wulfrik’s men, but this creature was the only one of his kind the hero could see.

  The champion took a step away from the centaur and laughed. ‘Was it your father or your mother who was a drunk?’ he mocked in the beast’s own debased Khazalid.

  The centaur blinked in surprise to hear his language spoken by a human. Then the nature of what Wulfrik had said contorted the creature’s face into a mask of pure rage. ‘Barbarian pig! I’ll braid my beard with your entrails! I am blessed by the Father of Darkness!’

  ‘Then it was your mother who couldn’t hold her ale.’

  Fury overwhelmed the bull centaur. He forgot the axe in his hand, forgot the warriors he had brought
with him from the ziggurat to protect the gate. The centaur’s nostrils flared, his hooves stamped the ground. Like a blood-mad bull, he threw himself at the jeering man who had dared to insult both his ancestry and his god.

  Wulfrik dived from the path of the charging centaur. The champion’s laugh stabbed into the monster more keenly than any blade. Shaking his head in rage, the centaur turned around and made a second charge.

  The northman was ready for the centaur this time, however. His dive from the onrushing brute became a sideways roll along the centaur’s path. Wulfrik’s swords slashed into the monster’s legs, hewing through muscle and tendon. The centaur crashed onto his side, sliding across the ground, bowling over dwarfs and Norscans before skidding to a stop against the ruined wall.

  Wulfrik rushed after the crippled monster, caving in the face of a dwarf who got in his way, disembowelling another who thought to stop him with a fang-edged axe. The champion reached the centaur as he was struggling to stand, trying to use the wall to support his ruined body. Wulfrik brought the edge of his sword biting through the centaur’s arm, shearing it off at the elbow. The monster shrieked in pain and crumpled to the ground.

  A loud explosion made Wulfrik spring away from the dying centaur. The champion spun about, swords at the ready. He smiled grimly when he saw Sigvatr standing over the corpse of a dwarf, a smoking blunderbuss lying beneath the guard.

  ‘I wanted to keep the fight fair,’ Sigvatr said, nodding towards the bull centaur.

  ‘Then you should have let that backshooter bring a few of his friends to help,’ Wulfrik growled. He glanced across the courtyard. Several of his warriors were down; whether they were dead or wounded he didn’t much care. The dwarfs themselves were in full retreat.

  The reason for their flight revealed itself quickly. From the towers on the causeway, lights were turned upon the courtyard. Immediately, there was a frantic burst of activity on the tower roofs. Dwarfs scrambled around a pair of artillery pieces. At first Wulfrik thought they might be like the cannons used by dwarfs in other lands. However, there was something incredibly sinister about these machines. They seemed to glow with some infernal power of their own, thick iron chains lashing them to great turnstiles sunk into the towers. He recalled Stefnir’s claims that the fire dwarfs had a way to bind daemons into metal.

  The dwarfs on the towers removed heavy tubular devices from racks and stuffed them down the yawning mouths of their artillery. Shielding their eyes by lowering the visors of their helms, the dwarfs touched flame to their weapons. A burst of blazing light, a snarl like the belly-growl of a bear, and the weird cylinders flew from the artillery. They streaked towards the courtyard, sparks streaming from their hollow ends. One of the rockets smashed into the outer wall of the stronghold, punching almost clean through before becoming stuck. It sizzled there for a moment, then exploded in a burst of fire and poisonous gas.

  The second rocket smashed down into the courtyard itself, glancing off the basalt flagstones and spinning crazily about. Northmen fled before the runaway missile, leaping up stairs and clinging to walls to avoid its crazed movement. At last, the sparks leaping from the rocket’s end sputtered out and it became still.

  Wulfrik glared at the weird weapon, then at the towers above the causeway. He could see the dwarfs feeding more of the strange rockets into their artillery. ‘Kurgan!’ Wulfrik shouted. He raged across the courtyard, looking for the shaman. He smiled grimly when he saw Tjorvi leading Zarnath through the shattered gates.

  ‘I need your magic again!’ Wulfrik snarled at the shaman. He pointed his bloody sword at the distant towers. ‘Stop them before they shoot at us again.’

  Zarnath leaned weakly against his jewelled staff. ‘Breaching the gates has sapped my powers. I must rest.’

  ‘Rest when you’re in hell!’ Wulfrik snapped. ‘Stop those vermin or I’ll cut you down right here!’

  Zarnath’s eyes blazed with blue fire, his face twisting with hate. His expression softened when he felt steel against his ribs.

  ‘You heard the captain,’ Sigvatr hissed in his ear. The old warrior put enough pressure on his blade to break the shaman’s skin. Zarnath shuddered as he felt his own blood trickling down his side. Reluctantly, he bowed his head.

  Throwing wide his arms, Zarnath raised his staff. Arcane words even Wulfrik could not decipher rasped across the shaman’s lips. The fire in his eyes slowly faded, gathering instead within the gemstone at the head of his staff.

  Streams of lightning crackled from the head of the staff, sizzling into the rack of rockets upon the roof of the left tower. Several of the dwarfs were caught in the lightning storm, screaming in terror as their bodies were scorched by the electricity. Others, seeing the target of the malevolent magic, flung themselves from the turret, more willing to risk the fall to the causeway far below than remain upon the roof.

  Zarnath’s spell did its work quickly. The entire roof of the turret vanished in a pillar of fire and poisonous gas as the violence of the lightning caused the battery of rockets to explode. The dwarfs in the other tower abandoned their posts, scrambling with indecent haste down the trapdoor leading into the structure’s interior. The northmen laughed at the frantic terror of the dwarfs.

  ‘Sigvatr!’ Wulfrik barked. ‘Take half the men and secure the lower gate! Keep the dwarfs penned up down below as long as you can. If you strike out now while they’re hiding from the Kurgan’s sorcery, you may have a chance!’

  The old warrior shook his head. ‘My place is with you,’ he told Wulfrik.

  ‘Your place is where I damn well tell you it is!’ Wulfrik yelled. ‘Get your arse down there and hold the gate!’

  Sigvatr held his ground, staring into his friend’s eyes. At last he relented, calling out the names of the warriors he would take with him. The last man he called was the shaman. Wulfrik shook his head.

  ‘I want the Kurgan with me,’ he told Sigvatr. ‘I might need him if I have to knock down any more doors.’

  Sigvatr scowled at Zarnath. ‘Just don’t take your eyes off him,’ he advised.

  Wulfrik turned a fanged grin on the shaman. ‘I don’t intend to,’ he warned Zarnath.

  Seeing further argument would get him nowhere, Sigvatr and his warriors dashed down the broad road leading to the lower gate. There was no telling how quickly the dwarfs would rally from the violent destruction of the rocket battery. The northmen knew better than to squander the opportunity their confusion presented.

  ‘To the ziggurat!’ Wulfrik called to his men. He cast a last glance at Sigvatr leading the warriors in the other direction. If things went wrong, at least there was a chance his old friend would be able to get out and make his way back to the Seafang.

  Wulfrik turned away and led the way down the road to the ziggurat. He didn’t see Zarnath gazing at the men rushing to the causeway, or the hate in his eyes as he stared at Sigvatr. He didn’t see the small, toad-like creature that dropped from the sleeve of the shaman’s tunic and grovelled at the Kurgan’s feet.

  Zarnath pointed his finger at Sigvatr’s back. ‘That one,’ he hissed.

  The fanged imp muttered a peal of insane gibberish and loped after the old warrior.

  The shaman wiped the slime from his arm where the imp had lain. Quickly he followed after the northmen. It wouldn’t do for one of them to double back looking for him and discover what he had done.

  Besides, Wulfrik might need Zarnath’s magic when he reached the ziggurat, and the last thing the shaman wanted was the champion to fall for want of a few spells.

  Chuckling at his own jest, Zarnath hastened his steps as the sounds of battle reached his ears.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wulfrik charged down the wide roadway leading to the base of the ziggurat. His skin crawled as he passed the morbid ranks of statues lining the path, stone effigies of dwarf warriors with axes raised. As he glanced at them, Wulfrik noted that the silent sentinels were not wholly the work of chisel and hammer: real bones were plastered into hollowed sectio
ns of the guardians, a skull grinning from beneath the stony helm of each statue. The bones were those of dwarfs, but whether the dawi zharr intended the gruesome display to honour their own dead or defile those of their enemies, he could not say. It was enough for him to be reminded of the black hearts of his foes and the cruelty he could expect from them if he failed.

  The champion half-expected the statues to leap into life as he passed them. Running down the road, he kept glancing back at them, watching them for some sign of motion. He could see his warriors doing the same, clearly victim to the same unsettling premonition of lurking menace. Njarvord succumbed to the sensation, attacking one of the statues with his axe, hacking slivers of rock and bone from one of the sentinels before throwing himself full against it and pitching it to the roadway. The statue cracked as it struck the road, collapsing into a heap of rubble.

  Njarvord’s attack encouraged the other northmen to lash out at the grim statues. Even Wulfrik felt the impulse to fling himself upon the closest of the guardians and smash it into dust. He was raising his sword to chop at stone ankles before he realised what he was doing.

  Angrily, Wulfrik lifted his sword high and shouted at his men. There was some subtle sorcery woven into the statues, some insidious magic that antagonised any who trespassed within their influence. The statues protected the ziggurat by provoking fear in the minds of their enemies. Lesser men would have fled screaming from the stronghold. Norscans were made of sterner stuff. Instead of running, they fought back. But in doing so, they allowed the statues to fulfil their purpose. Attacking unfeeling stone, spending their strength, dulling their blades upon rock and bone, the warriors were weakening themselves. Worse, they were giving the defenders of the ziggurat the time they needed to muster their own troops.

  ‘The Crow God’s pox on all your manhoods!’ Wulfrik cursed his men. ‘Forget the gargoyles! There are foes of flesh to be slain!’