by Warhammer
‘What happen?’ Thognathog growled. The ogre rose to his feet, knocking Zhardrach to the deck. His massive hand reached back to his bloodied head, tenderly testing the knot growing there.
‘You slipped,’ Zhardrach explained. The ogre favoured the dwarf with an unamused look. Without warning he picked up the dwarf’s chains, jerking him into the air and lumbered towards the side of the ship. Soon, Zhardrach found himself dangling over the ice some thirty feet below.
‘When see Dark Father, say you slip,’ the ogre growled. Zhardrach thrashed about in his chains, eyes screwed shut as he howled in protest, waiting for the inevitable plunge down to the ice. When several seconds passed and he was still alive, the dwarf opened his eyes again. He was surprised to find that Thognathog was not looking at him. The ogre was staring down into the furrow, as were Vallac and Urda. Zhardrach followed the direction of their gaze. He could see Birna and Orgrim running toward the ship across the ice. The berserker was bent nearly double carrying Einarr’s armoured frame across his shoulders.
‘Steelfist live!’ Thognathog exclaimed.
‘Not for long,’ Vallac said as a black shadow appeared beneath the ice, rushing after the fugitives. ‘They’ll never reach the ship ahead of that thing.’
Thognathog turned towards the Kurgan, inadvertently dragging Zhardrach back on deck. The ogre’s look was pensive, almost as though he were ashamed of something. ‘We help Steelfist,’ he said. It was not a question.
‘Of course we will!’ Zhardrach was quick to agree. ‘I saw a harpoon thrower in the forecastle of this wreck. Cut me loose and I can have it working like that.’ Zhardrach snapped his thick fingers. Thognathog looked over at the frozen wreckage of the bolt thrower, then back at the dwarf’s fanged grin.
‘Thognathog has better idea,’ the ogre growled.
Birna could make out Vallac and Thognathog prowling the decks of the ice-bound ship. They were near enough that she fancied she could even smell the ogre’s rancid stench, but even that was not close enough. A quick glance over her shoulder showed the shadow of the kraken speeding after them under the ice. She shouted to Orgrim to run faster, as though the berserker hadn’t been putting in his full effort already. There was no chance of outdistancing the kraken. She braced herself for the by now familiar sensation of the ice buckling beneath her feet as the kraken forced its tentacles through the ice.
The ice did shudder, but the sensation was less intense than Birna had expected. It also seemed to be some distance away. When the ice shook again, she saw something large crash against the surface a hundred yards away. It looked like a huge spear of all things, as thick around as a man’s leg and chased in bronze. The harpoon rolled across the ice where it was soon joined by a second. Birna looked back at the ship. This time she saw Thognathog hurl one of the immense projectiles into the ice.
For an instant, Birna did not understand what the ogre was trying to do. Had the brute’s wits deserted him entirely? Then the ice was jolted, not from above but from below. She saw the kraken’s crimson arms bursting up through the ice, scratching across the surface. But the kraken had not exploded beneath their feet, it had instead been drawn to the area Thognathog had been hurling his spears. Birna watched for a moment as the kraken’s tentacles coiled around a spear and pulled it beneath the ice. She turned and sprinted for the ship. She didn’t want to be around when the monster decided it couldn’t digest wood.
Orgrim was already at the side of the ship, getting Zhardrach and Vallac’s help lifting Einarr over the side. Birna raced to join them, lending her strength to the effort while keeping one eye on the kraken. After what seemed an eternity, Einarr’s unconscious body was over the side. Birna lost no time scrambling up after him. The kraken’s tentacles had already withdrawn, no longer interested in the junk Thognathog was throwing onto the ice.
The huntress slumped onto the deck, trying to catch her breath after her exertions. She looked across to where Urda was crouched above Einarr’s prostrate body. The old witch examined his wounds, shaking her head gravely.
‘You might as well have left him on the ice,’ she said, turning to face Birna. ‘He’ll never wake from such a wound. If only he had heeded Tchar’s warning, but such is the way the gods rid themselves of those unfit to bear their mark.’
The remark brought a growl of frustration ripping up from Orgrim’s jaws, the sound more savage than the howl of a wolf. Birna shook her head in disbelief. After all the signs, all the portents, to have them add up to nothing…
‘The beast not like toys now,’ Thognathog observed, letting the harpoon he had been preparing to fling overboard crash down onto the deck. ‘Maybe it tired.’
Zhardrach spat over the side of the ship, watching his spittle splatter on the ice. ‘I can think of a lot of things to call that lurker, but tired isn’t one of them!’
‘The slaver is right,’ Birna sighed. ‘It will be back, and probably very soon.’
Vallac nodded his head in agreement. ‘We’ll just have to make sure Thog has plenty of junk to throw down there for it to play with.’
‘I don’t think the kraken will be so easily deceived next time,’ Urda said. ‘Even now, it is down there mulling over how it was tricked. When it resolves its confusion, it will be back.’
‘Good thing we aren’t on the ice then,’ Zhardrach said. ‘At least the ship is safe from it.’
‘No, it’s not.’
All eyes turned to find Einarr standing on the deck, defying the dire pronouncement of the witch. Urda looked at him with a mixture of horror and awe, backing away as though from a raging fire. It was an apt comparison, for the warrior’s body seemed to blaze with power, the metal on his hand shining with a molten light. Einarr looked into the face of each of his followers, fixing them with his commanding gaze. Birna wondered if the others felt the same thrill of both hope and dread as Einarr’s gaze swept past her.
‘The kraken will return, but this ship is no refuge from its hunger,’ Einarr said. ‘To get us, it will drag this entire vessel down into its black domain. In so doing, it will seal its own doom.’ The warrior stabbed his finger at Zhardrach. ‘I want you to build a ladder from the prow of this ship to the top of the ice wall, have Thognathog help you. Make it sturdy, dwarf. If the ogre falls, you fall with him.’
Einarr did not wait to hear Zhardrach’s protests, but fixed his attention on Urda. ‘I need your magic again, crone. A spell to change water to ice. Tell me Tchar has seen fit to teach you such magic.’
Urda nodded her head. ‘I know such a ritual, but it is no simple thing to command the powers of the gods! There is much to prepare before such magic can be safely cast.’ As proof of her words, she displayed her charred hand to Einarr. The warrior was unimpressed.
‘You will climb the ladder first then,’ he told her. ‘Begin your preparations as soon as you are on the ice. Orgrim will watch over you, to ensure you do not lose your way.’ The witch scowled at him, but nodded her head again.
‘Birna,’ Einarr called to the huntress. She smiled as he said her name, but there was no tenderness in his tone when he spoke, no softness in his eyes as he looked on her. ‘Watch for the kraken and sound the alarm as soon as you see it.’ Birna’s face slipped back into severity and she nodded her understanding of the warrior’s orders.
‘What of me?’ Vallac asked. Einarr’s features darkened as he looked at the Kurgan.
‘Come with me,’ the warrior said, turning and stalking towards the decayed door of the ship’s cabin and withdrawing into the gloom within.
The hold of the ship was a ghastly sight. Bodies were piled together in a great heap at the centre of the hold. Bundled in thick furs, the crew of the ship had at last huddled together, trying to use their combined body heat to stay warm. As they suffered together, so they had died together, frozen into one immense mass of blue flesh and frosty fur. Einarr was surprised to find that many of the men appeared to be Norse, though just as many sported features from lands he could not even begin t
o name. The only constant were the tattoos and scars, the medallions and talismans that marked these men as worshippers of the Dark Gods in the divine unity of ultimate Chaos.
Even Vallac, an old hand at slaughter and carnage, who had seen his first battlefield while still a babe sucking his mother’s teat, even he was struck by the morbid vision. The Kurgan hung back as Einarr circled the heap of frozen men, studying it as a horse trader might study a new foal. Vallac found the sight even more disturbing, recalling the profane bone-callers who sometimes practised their abominable sorcery among the cairns and barrows of his people, instilling unclean life into the husks of fallen warlords.
‘You doubt my dreams,’ Einarr said as he paced around the pile of bodies. ‘You doubt the mark upon my flesh. You doubt the promise that Tchar has made to me.’
‘I doubt nothing,’ Vallac replied. ‘I only questioned if you had interpreted the signs correctly.’
Einarr turned and faced his comrade. ‘Do not question me. Do not doubt me. Just follow where I would lead you, Vallac, and you shall have the glory you desire.’ He began circling the corpses again, seeming to lose interest in his companion. He touched the wooden support beam that rose amid the bodies, closing his eyes as his fingers traced the runes carved into its surface.
‘This ship was mighty once,’ Einarr said, his every word booming with force and command. ‘The terror of the seas. Many were the nights when the citadels of the elf-lands shivered in fear when the black sails appeared on the horizon. But nothing can resist the Winds of Change. Prey becomes predator and hunter becomes hunted. Chased from the seas, weakened by battle, defeated and wretched, the captain thought he could hide himself in the very lap of the gods. But the gods have no use for the weak. They let him come near enough to think himself safe, then they abandoned him to the ice and snow.’
Einarr stared at the bodies, a strange smile on his face. ‘There is a lesson there for mortals, I think. If we are wise enough to heed it.’
Vallac felt the colour rush into his face. ‘Einarr, I thought the kraken had killed you, otherwise I should never have left you behind.’ The Norscan ignored Vallac’s protest, continuing to pace around the bodies. Suddenly he gave a bark of excitement, springing to the pile and attacking it with his sword. Vallac lingered at the edge of the ice-bound hold, wondering what strange mania had seeped into Einarr’s skull from his wound.
Einarr struggled at the frozen carcasses, chopping arms and heads free as he ploughed through the pile. At last he forced a huge armoured body free from the corpses clustered around it. He cut away the frozen cape of fur that covered the body’s arm. Despite his concerns, Vallac drew close, watching as Einarr dragged the elaborately armoured carcass away from the pile. He could see the intricate runes carved into the blue-black plate that girded the corpse’s torso and legs. The powerful arms were bare, however, bound only by thick bands of gold and silver. Einarr had no eyes for these, though, staring intently at the incongruous iron ring that circled the body’s wrist.
‘Here, as I knew it would be,’ Einarr said. He brought his sword cracking down into the corpse’s wrist, sending its frozen hand skipping across the hold. Einarr reached down and pried the band from the stump of the arm, holding it reverently in his palm. Vallac could see the eye-like symbols inscribed all along its surface, one of the sacred symbols of Tzeentch.
‘What is that, and how did you know it was here?’ he asked. Einarr seemed to diminish somehow as Vallac asked the question. When he spoke, the tone was uncertain, almost confused.
‘I had a vision of this place, of the frozen captain and the band fastened about his dead arm,’ he confessed, staring at the iron band as though seeing it for the first time.
‘But what is it?’ Vallac repeated.
‘Mine,’ the Norscan replied, bending the iron band around his own arm. Before Vallac could question him further, both men looked up at the roof of the hold. Birna’s voice drifted down to them.
The kraken had returned.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The ancient ship shuddered as it was struck from below, the old timbers cracking and exploding under the strain. Einarr and Vallac fought their way through the rolling passageways as the ship began to disintegrate around them. Fang-like icicles plummeted around them, shaken loose by the ship’s violent throes. Slivers of ice slashed at the men as the icicles shattered against the frozen floors, spraying them with debris. Neither man gave thought to the bleeding cuts – far worse waited them if they tarried.
As the timber beneath them began to buckle and crack, the warriors reached the deck. Only a few feet away, the frozen face of the cliff loomed over them, Zhardrach’s ramshackle ladder leaning against it, just reaching the top some thirty feet above. The others had already retreated up the ladder, staring down at them from the icy cliff above the furrow. The ship shuddered again, her tortured substance shrieking as the hull began to snap. Almost like a living thing, the deck beneath them heaved and rolled. Einarr pushed Vallac towards the ladder, roaring at him to climb. Nothing more than the toppled mainmast with crude steps pounded into its sides, Vallac struggled to lift himself up the ungainly structure.
‘Climb, you damn Kurgan whoreson!’ Einarr bellowed, lunging for the ladder himself as the violent convulsions of the ship intensified. He could see the kraken’s tentacles, mottled scarlet and black, chewing into the hull of the ship, wrapping about it in a crushing embrace. He turned back towards the faltering Kurgan. ‘Climb!’ he ordered again.
Vallac continued to struggle to maintain his footing. Einarr snarled, scurrying with a spider-like agility to help his comrade. Long years at sea had left their mark in Einarr, crawling about 672the rigging of the longships had lent him an unerring sense of agility and balance. The horse-born Kurgan was without such instinct, clinging to the ladder with a desperate grip. Einarr struck Vallac, again extolling him to climb. Beneath them, the ship shuddered again. There was a terrible cracking sound and Einarr looked down to observe the stern crumbling into debris and sinking beneath the freezing water. The ladder trembled and began to slide.
Suddenly, the ladder became stable again, then, impossibly, began to rise. Einarr stared back down at the deck, watching as the destruction that had started with the stern swiftly overcame the rest of the ship. A gaping hole in the ice sucked the wreckage down even as the kraken’s vibrant tentacles continued to pull the ship apart. Einarr looked back up at the cliff, smiling as he saw Thognathog’s immense hands closed around the top of the ladder, lifting both it and the two men clinging to it to the safety of the ice.
Einarr sprang from the ladder as soon as it cleared the lip of the furrow, turning to stare back at the jagged hole where the ship had been. As he watched, the kraken dragged the prow of the ship down into its watery domain. The tentacles vanished along with its ancient victim, only the jumble of floating debris giving evidence that it had ever been there at all.
‘Next time we go around,’ Vallac cursed, wilting to the ice as he released his death grip on the ladder. Thognathog stepped away from the recuperating Kurgan. Carrying the ladder with him, the ogre approached the edge of the trench. With a savage grunt, he lifted the massive mast over his head and hurled it like a javelin down into the pool of freezing water that marked the kraken’s retreat.
‘We should flee before it comes back,’ Birna advised, pressing her fur cloak against the worst of Einarr’s wounds. Einarr shook his head.
‘Crone!’ he called. Urda was sitting slouched over her rune stones, a crude circle of symbols and sigils carved into the ice around her. She looked up as the warrior called her, her rune-eye white with frost, her breath a mist of ice. ‘Is your spell ready? I want the hole that thing pulled the ship down frozen over again.’
‘I waited only for yourself and the Kurgan to get clear,’ Urda said.
‘Then wait some more,’ Einarr told her. ‘But be ready. I will tell you when it is time.’
They waited for nearly an hour, feeling the chill Norse wind
whip against their bodies, freezing their noses and eyes. Vallac and Birna urged Einarr to move on while they could, but the Norscan would not be moved. The kraken had hunted them for days across the ice, there was no reason to believe it would relent now. No, they would settle with it here.
Orgrim was the first to see the beast’s return. The water that had sucked down the doomed ship began to bubble and froth as an immense body surged upward from the depths. Einarr called out to the others to be ready in case Urda’s magic was less than she promised.
The water exploded upward in a frigid geyser as the kraken’s tentacles flailed against the ice, scratching against the sides of the trench. Einarr stared down into the turbulent pool, watching as the water slowly filled with the kraken’s scaly mass. An eye, hideously human and the size of an ox, stared back at him. The kraken rolled its body over, exposing the other eye, fixing both on Einarr and his comrades. The beast’s drooling, bird-like mouth cleared the water, hissing and slobbering in its tremendous hunger. For a moment, Einarr was struck by the enormity of the kraken, it was larger than the whales of the Sea of Claws and the hideous prometheans that sometimes ransacked the fishing villages of the Baersonlings. His mind rebelled at the thought that such a giant could live and breathe.
The moment passed and Einarr glared back at the monster with new eyes. This thing stood between him and what he had been promised. No matter how enormous, he would not allow that to be.
‘Now, old witch,’ Einarr snarled. At his command, Urda stood, baring arms that were blue from the chill. The hag circled her hands through the air, as though weaving the very wind. Sibilant tones wheezed through her shivering lips and she cast a fine white powder of snow into the air. A greater cold clutched at Einarr as the witch worked her magic, a chill of sorcery rather than winter. Einarr pulled his cloak closer and stared back at the kraken.
The monster seemed to sense that something was wrong, stretching its tentacles still higher in an effort to reach the lip of the fissure. The snapping beaks on the undersides of the tendrils dug at the ice, almost as though the beast were trying to pull itself up after them. The kraken’s body erupted into a display of livid yellow and black stripes as it angrily tried to pull itself from the water. But if such was its intention, then it was too late.
