Hammerhal & Other Stories

by Various

  The tattoos which covered his blue flesh began to squirm in welcome, and his crimson mane of plumage flared and flexed as he slid inside himself. Breath flooded his lungs, and he lurched upright, gasping. For a moment, he saw his surroundings through two sets of eyes, and heard the music through two sets of ears. Then his soul settled within his flesh and he was whole again. His limbs trembled with weakness.

  ‘Kezehk – water,’ he rasped.

  A shape crouched beside him and handed him a clay bowl filled with brackish water. He slurped it eagerly, wetting his beak, and nodded his thanks to the tzaangor. Kezehk was the most loyal of his supporters, though loyalty, like all things, was prone to change at the whim of the gods.

  ‘What did you see, Split-Soul?’ Kezehk croaked. The thread-like filaments that encircled his dull eyes twitched slightly. The aged aviarch was all but blind, but his other senses – both physical and magical – had expanded to compensate. ‘Victory for the warflock?’ Even crouched, he loomed over Tzanghyr, his form swollen with magical strength. His flock of Enlightened waited nearby, and Tzanghyr could smell their eagerness.

  The hulking tzaangors were paragons among the beastkin. They wielded spears wrought of change-metal and saw the echoes of the past-yet-to-be with a clarity that Tzanghyr was envious of. They were warriors without equal, each capable of slaying many lesser foes. They each bore a shard from the herdstone somewhere on them, on their war-plate or embedded in their scarred flesh. To them fell the honour of guarding the flux-cairns, and they had performed this task well under Kezehk’s command.

  ‘Always victory, even in defeat,’ Tzanghyr said, stretching his aching body. ‘All have purpose in the Great Plan, though we see it not.’ Such was the way of things, and he took comfort from it. Even failure had its place, though victory was always preferable.

  ‘Yes, yes, but what did you see?’ Kezehk asked, testily. ‘The Great Plan will be as it will be. What does today bring for us?’ He thumped his chest with a big fist.

  ‘Fire. Flame and spark. The flux-beacon has been lit, and the Grand Vizier calls out to us, from across the twisting path.’

  Kezehk gave a caw of laughter. ‘Grand Vizier, eh? He grows vainglorious, that one.’

  Tzanghyr snorted and rose to his feet. Kezehk stood with him.

  ‘It is the way of them. They know not the beauty of the light, and so cloak themselves in shadow. Names within names. But useful, for all their foolishness. They serve the machinations of the Feathered Lords no less than we.’

  ‘Aye, they serve. And I grow eager to do the same.’ Kezehk thumped the soft loam with the butt of his spear. ‘Battle calls to me, Split-Soul. I would walk the war-road.’

  ‘And you will, sooner than you might think.’ Tzanghyr turned away. ‘The silver-skins will come. They will seek to topple the flux-cairn. We must be ready to meet their fortune with ours, and break their destiny beneath the weight of our own.’

  Kezehk cawed in satisfaction and thumped the ground again. ‘That we can do. Our destiny is heavier than stone, and sharp besides.’ His warriors screeched in agreement.

  ‘As sharp as fate,’ Tzanghyr said. He caught hold of Kezehk’s beak and brought their skulls together with a gentle crack. Their horns scraped and the shaman stepped back. ‘But fate cuts both ways, flock-brother. Be wary.’

  Kezehk nodded. ‘Always, Split-Soul.’ He laughed. ‘But you worry overmuch. My path is set, whatever comes. What will be, will be, and I follow it gladly.’

  He turned to snarl orders to his warriors. They would guard the approaches to the glade, and hold back any who sought to approach unbidden. Tzanghyr knew they would do this even if it meant their death, such was their devotion to the light of change and the Great Schemer’s design.

  Leaning on his staff, the shaman approached the flux-cairn where it cast its strange light across the clearing. He ignored the drummers and the dancers. Being so close to it inflamed his senses. His strength swelled, but his ability to concentrate dwindled. No matter. Tzeentch gave, and Tzeentch took away. All things served the Great Plan. He reached out to brush his claws across the shroud of iridescent lichen covering the closest of the stones that formed the flux-cairn.

  When he looked into the crystal, he did not see his own face reflected back at him. Instead, he saw that of a soft-skin: his coven-brother, the mortal known to some as Rollo Tarn, and to others as the Grand Vizier. The reflection was part of the bargain he had made, so long ago, before the sylvaneth had been driven out and he and his kin had claimed the Hexwood. It was a shard of his coven-brother’s soul, resting within his own.

  Soul-bonded and bound, their fates were a single thread, stretching into the future. Where one went, the other would follow. Such had been the terms of their bargain, and it had served them well in the years since.

  Tzanghyr placed his palm flat against the flux-cairn’s surface.

  ‘Coven-brother,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’

  Rollo Tarn turned as the apparition appeared in the stateroom of his airship, the Hopeful Traveller. He had a goblet of wine in one thick hand, and took a sip before speaking.

  ‘Hello, coven-brother,’ he said warmly, nodding to Tzanghyr’s shimmering form. ‘You look well.’ He held out the goblet. ‘Care for some wine?’

  Tzanghyr cocked his avian skull. ‘I am not here.’

  ‘I know – I am being polite.’ Tarn took a sip. He frowned. ‘It is terrible, at any rate.’

  ‘Then why drink it?’

  ‘Someone has to.’ Tarn took another sip. ‘Is something amiss?’

  ‘Things proceed as they must, here. The crooked path aligns with the skein of fate, and we will soon follow it. Will we find welcome, when we reach its end?’

  ‘You will.’ Tarn hesitated. ‘We are making ready to weigh anchor. Once we are airborne, the ritual will commence. The way will be opened, and the city will be yours.’

  ‘Why have you not begun already?’

  It wasn’t quite an accusation, and Tarn took no offence. Tzanghyr was impatient – understandably so. Nonetheless, he paused before answering. Sometimes, his coven-brother needed his beak tweaked.

  ‘We had visitors. I was hoping to deal with them before we began.’

  He restrained a grimace. In truth, he had intended to stage the ritual in the warehouse, surrounded by the blessed wood he had retained for that very purpose. But the invaders had made that impossible. Instead, his acolytes would have to settle for the ship’s hold. No matter. He could feel the strength of the rite growing, despite the interruption. Soon, every door would be flung wide, and the servants of the Changer of Ways would sweep through the city.

  Tzanghyr cocked his head, one dark eye fixed on Tarn. ‘Visitors?’

  ‘A witch hunter. And a Stormcast Eternal.’

  ‘A silver-skin?’ Tzanghyr demanded.

  ‘Yes. Gaudy brute.’ Tarn swirled his goblet. ‘My followers are dealing with them now. Vetch has them trapped in the warehouse. I have faith that he will see that they pose no further interruption to our schedule.’

  What the curseling lacked in wit, he more than made up for in tenacity. There were few threats Vetch couldn’t deal with, in his own inimitable fashion. He had claimed the souls of more than a few of Tarn’s enemies over the years.

  ‘Why did you not alert me of this sooner?’ Tzanghyr hissed, plumage rattling. ‘They could endanger everything we have worked towards.’

  ‘It is being handled.’ Tarn frowned. He had miscalculated somewhat, true, but he saw no reason to admit that, not even to his coven-brother. ‘Vetch is perfectly capable–’

  ‘The curseling is a brute and fool. It is why he is as he is.’ Tzanghyr tapped the side of his head. ‘His weaknesses condemned him to a lesser fate…’

  Tarn stiffened. ‘Careful, coven-brother,’ he said.

  The old hurt flared anew, buried so deep he some
times forgot it was there. Vetch hadn’t always been Vetch. Tarn remembered a baby’s smile and a child’s laugh, and a father’s pride at his son’s accomplishments. No, Vetch had once been someone else, someone better. But the thread of his fate had been cut, and woven into a new pattern – one more pleasing to the Changer of Ways. But that was slim comfort, even to a man like Rollo Tarn.

  Tzanghyr hesitated. He clacked his beak. ‘Forgive me, coven-brother. I spoke out of turn. Allowed my impatience to colour my words.’ He placed a hand over his heart. ‘But you must hurry, or all our efforts will be undone. The trees are the doorway. We open the path from our end, but unless you open it from yours as well, our forces will be lost to the tangled pathways between worlds.’

  ‘The ritual will proceed, coven-brother,’ Tarn replied. ‘Vetch will not fail. I will not fail you. As you have never failed me. Our thread is one.’

  Tzanghyr nodded. ‘Our thread is one. My kin and yours.’ He looked away, as if at something occurring over his shoulder. ‘I must go, coven-brother. I have my own battles to fight. May the Feathered Lords give you strength.’

  ‘Go with the blessings of the Great Schemer, Tzanghyr.’

  A moment later, the image of the tzaangor shaman wavered and popped like a soap bubble. As it faded, Tarn touched his chest. He could feel a strange yet comforting warmth there, where his heart ought to be. It came from the shard of Tzanghyr’s soul which rested within him, lending him some of his coven-brother’s strength, and vice-versa. But would it be enough? Time would tell.

  ‘I can smell the bitterness of your memories from here, coven-brother.’

  Tarn looked up, smiling slightly. ‘Not bitterness, Aek. Regret.’

  Taller than Tarn, Aek had to stoop to fit beneath the stateroom’s ceiling, and even seated, he loomed. He was so still and silent that Tarn had half-forgotten that he was there. Aek could be quite unobtrusive, when he put his mind to it, which was a handy skill to have for a servant of the Great Schemer.

  Aek had served Tzeentch longer than either Tarn or Tzanghyr. He had served many covens, and participated in many schemes. When he had first arrived in the city, in secret, Tarn had been wary. But in the years since, Aek had proven himself as loyal a coven-brother – and as loyal a friend – as Tzanghyr.

  The fatemaster was clad in heavy baroque armour, and wore silken robes worth more than the airship they currently lounged aboard. His conical crested helm rested by his feet, leaving his pale features and long, colourless hair exposed. He smiled easily at Tarn, his black eyes shining with good humour.

  ‘Regret is the spice of a life well lived,’ he said.

  ‘I prefer plain foods. Predictable.’

  ‘There is no sin in that. What man does not want a predictable life? Though you may have chosen the wrong god to serve, if that is the case.’

  Tarn snorted. ‘Who said I chose him?’

  Indeed, it was more the other way around. It was Tzanghyr who had saved him from the wrath of the monstrous sylvaneth. The tree-kin had almost taken everything from him, for the crime of simply trying to make his fortune. If not for Tzanghyr and the Changer of Ways, his path would have been short indeed.

  Tarn frowned, remembering those early days. He looked around his stateroom, with its sumptuous carpets and expensive carvings, and then at the rings on his fingers and the stitching on his robes. Once, the thought of such luxury had been inconceivable.

  A hard life, then. He’d come from Azyrheim with little more than the clothes on his back and the strength to swing an axe. He had been a forester in the Nordrath Mountains, as his father and his father’s father had been, but the promise of new realms, of new forests to tame, had been too much to resist. So he’d left. There were opportunities in Ghyran, if you were brave and canny enough to take advantage of them. He’d seen a need and filled it. Soon he was paying others to swing axes, rather than doing it himself.

  He flexed his hand. The old scars and calluses earned through a life of hard labour were still there – reminders of the path that had brought him here, to his ultimate opportunity. Even though he’d had men to do it for him, he’d still swung his axe day in and day out, right alongside them. A point of pride, at the time, and one that had almost led to his death.

  Tarn took a deep gulp of wine, and felt it burn its way down his gullet. The day he’d set his sights on the Hexwood had been both the worst and best day of his life. A day of great change and opportunity – the very things he’d come to Ghyran to find. But the cost…

  His hand tightened on his goblet, and the soft metal buckled. The tree-kin had slaughtered his loggers and stalked him for days, playing on his hope of escape in order to draw out his torment. Their rasping laughter had driven him near to madness. Sigmar had not answered his prayers for aid, his pleas to see his wife, his children, just once more.

  But something had. And he served that something now, out of gratitude as much as greed. The Great Schemer was a patron to the ambitious, and the rewards were great indeed, if one could walk the path without slipping. He set aside the crumpled goblet and cast his mind outwards, feeling for the strands of Vetch’s dim consciousness.

  There was pain, there, and the jagged ever-present pressure of the tretchlet, T’vetch’tek. Not all curselings were subservient to their daemonic symbiote, but most were. Vetch was not one of the rare few with the strength of will to maintain a separate consciousness. He was a hollow thing – a receptacle for magic and the will of the Changer of Ways. He could smell lies and seek out hidden magics – it had been Vetch who had learned how to link the two ends of the crooked path, and to make the lumber taken from the Hexwood into a gateway. In the end, that secret had cost him everything.

  ‘It cost us both,’ Tarn murmured. He peered through Vetch’s eyes, watching as he fought in the coven’s name. ‘But is it worth it?’ He returned his gaze to Aek. ‘Sometimes I wonder.’

  ‘Life is an endless dance of change, coven-brother. We must follow the rhythm, or be lost. You followed. And for that, you and Tzanghyr will be rewarded.’ Aek tapped the hilt of the immense two-handed blade standing upright before him. ‘As I was.’

  Tarn glanced at the blade, and felt a twinge of unease. Known as the Windblade, the great weapon was a cruel-looking thing, all barbed convolutions and squirming lines. The hilt resembled the stretched wings of a bird, and the pommel, an avian skull. Strange colours, such as he had only seen in dreams, ran through the metal of the blade. As Aek’s fingers stroked it, the hilt seemed to flap its wings. Tarn suspected that the Windblade had a mind of its own, and that mind was a cunning one.

  Aek chuckled. ‘It does and it is,’ he murmured.

  Tarn wasn’t surprised that the fatemaster knew what he was thinking. Aek’s talents were many. He often finished other’s sentences, as if he knew what they were going to say before they said it.

  ‘It has had nine hundred masters,’ the fatemaster continued. ‘It has been broken and reforged nine thousand times, across ninety-nine thousand years. Sometimes, I feel those other wielders, as if they and I are but facets of a whole. We all grip this blade as one – nine hundred hands, and nine hundred wills.’

  ‘No wonder you can lift the blasted thing so easily,’ Tarn said lightly.

  Aek chuckled, and for a moment, Tarn thought he heard a chorus of laughter and saw other faces, some not human at all, superimposed over Aek’s own. But the moment passed, and it was only Aek there once more. His coven-brother. His friend.

  An alarm bell began to ring above deck. Tarn set his goblet aside. He felt a sudden wrenching sensation, accompanied by a sharp pain in his skull. Images of silver and fire swept across his mind’s eye, and he staggered. Aek rose and steadied him.

  ‘Coven-brother?’

  Tarn pressed his fingers to his head, trying to massage some order into the chaotic flood of sensations surging through him. He could feel Vetch’s dim-witted panic as the
battle turned against him. He sent the impulse to turn and fight arrowing into the curseling’s stunted mind. If Vetch could hold them, just long enough for the airship to cast off, then he would have served his purpose.

  ‘Forgive me, my son,’ Tarn murmured.

  Great opportunity only came with great cost. Thus said the Feathered Lords.

  ‘What is it, Rollo?’ Aek asked again. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘It seems we are discovered. We must cast off now. We cannot risk being caught here. The crooked path must be thrown open. The city must fall.’ Tarn pushed away from the fatemaster. ‘Ready yourself, Aek. For war has well and truly begun.’

  Chapter Five

  FIRE AND AIR

  The gryph-hound snuffled at the floor. The blood trail had stopped suddenly, deep within the maze of log stacks and support beams, as if the curseling had vanished entirely.

  Carus glowered about him. ‘Gone,’ he said, his voice echoing.

  ‘So it seems,’ Gage replied. ‘It led us a merry chase. We should have caught up to it.’

  Somewhere behind them, he could hear Kuva and Bryn giving good account of themselves against their foes. He longed to go back and help them, but he knew that tracking the curseling was more imperative than killing a few acolytes. Capturing the creature might enable them to find its master, if Carus could compel it to talk. At the very least, they might learn why every stack of wood in the warehouse seemed to be suddenly sweating daemonic ichor.

  He glanced at a nearby stack, lip curling in disgust. The smell, like tar and sugar, clung to every scrap of wood in the place.

  ‘Witch-stink,’ he murmured.

  The air had gone muggy and thick. It felt like breathing soup. He had experienced such unnatural heat before, though thankfully only rarely. It built in places of foul magic, like a pot being brought to boil.