by Warhammer
‘What is it?’ Drahl murmured.
‘A debt owed,’ Grudi said. He glared at the skiff. ‘An engineer of my father’s acquaintance offered to design a better distillation device for him. Unfortunately, it distilled liquor into explosives and blew itself, and part of the brewery, up. In recompense, Makaisson–’
‘Malakai Makaisson?’ Snorri said, his eyes widening.
‘Yes,’ Grudi grated. ‘Yes, Malakai Makaisson, the maniac!’ He shook himself. ‘He gave that...that monstrosity to my father in payment of his debt. Said it would help us make deliveries in record time.’
‘And did it?’ Staahl said.
‘Oh yes. Record time, as he promised. Too bad it moved too fast for us to keep the cargo from flying off!’ Grudi gesticulated. ‘And not just cargo. We lost three couriers the last time we used it!’
‘Sounds like just what we need, Snorri thinks,’ Snorri said, climbing aboard. ‘Unless Grudi Halfhand didn’t intend to catch the grobi?’
‘Catch–’ Grudi blinked. Then his face hardened. ‘Of course I intend to catch them! I will fulfil my oath or find my doom in the process!’ He stomped towards the skiff. ‘One side, Nosebiter… I’m the only one here who knows how to pilot this craft!’
‘Wait for us,’ Staahl said, hurrying forwards. The other knights hesitated and the Grandmaster whirled on them, his face flushing. ‘Are you cowards coming or not? We have a Grandmaster to reclaim! Not to mention the beer he’s floating in!’
The knights climbed aboard sheepishly. Staahl glared at them for a moment and then transferred the look to Grudi. ‘Well? What are we waiting for?’
Grudi looked at Snorri. ‘Nosebiter… Start the engine.’
Snorri stumped to the back of the skiff and glared at the strange propeller contraption. Then, with a grunt, he whacked the central plate of the construct. It depressed with a hiss of long-dormant hydraulics and there was a growl worthy of a dragon. The skiff shifted in the water, and then it was moving.
The sudden thrust caused Snorri to fall, and the knights hastily grabbed the rails as Grudi battled the steering mechanism, his lips peeled back from his teeth and pressed tight. Such was their speed that his nascent crest was flattened against his skull and one of the knights lost his helm.
The boat jerked from side to side as Grudi fought the controls. True to his claim, the vessel wasn’t the gentlest of its kind. In fact, it was positively murderous. It moved too fast, and jerked too wildly to be anything other than a last resort. With the Bear’s Milk sloshing in their bellies, the knights began to look as green as the orcs they were hunting. Snorri, however, was enjoying himself. Crouched in the prow, he beat the flat of his axe against the side of the boat and howled out an overly cheerful dirge.
They rounded a bend only minutes after setting out, and suddenly a large shape sprang into view. It was a paddleboat, moving so slowly that the skiff and its passengers shot past it, leaving the irregularly spaced torches lining its sides doused in their wake.
The vessel was large and square-shaped, with a boat-house at its aft-section, and a towering pyramid of kegs at its bow. The kegs had been haphazardly tied down with lengths of leather, chain and cloth. Goblins crawled over the pyramid like red-eyed ants, and orcs with whips and axes supervised their efforts to keep the pyramid shipshape.
Grudi howled a war-song and twisted the wheel, spinning the skiff around for a second pass. Snorri clambered up onto the rail as they shot forwards. As they closed in on the front of the paddleboat, Snorri could see that his suspicions had indeed been correct: the boat was being pulled by teams of river trolls. Two of the brutes strained at the prow, pulling against thick harnesses and hauling the boat bodily through the water.
As the skiff shot back towards the boat, Snorri leapt onto the team of trolls, using the head of one to springboard onto the other. He brought his hammer down between his feet as he landed. The troll immediately sank below the water, nearly taking Snorri with it. Using his axe like a grapple, he scurried up the prow onto the paddleboat.
Heaving himself over the rail, he came face-to-face with a shield-wall of black-clad goblins. Several orcs loomed behind them, and one of the brutes cracked a whip over the goblins’ heads, sending them rushing forwards. Snorri swept his axe out and beheaded the spears that darted for his flesh. Then, with a roar, he bulled into the goblins, his weapons leaving a mangled trail of greenskins in his wake.
Meanwhile, Grudi had spun the skiff again and was charging towards the aft section of the paddleboat, which, thanks to Snorri’s impetuous assault, had slowed to a crawl. ‘Hold on, manlings!’ he roared, not looking back at his passengers. He wrenched the wheel and the skiff bounced up and smashed full-tilt into the boathouse, splintering wood and glass and sending green bodies flying.
After a few moments of stunned silence, Staahl kicked his way free of the wreckage, his sword in one hand and his skin of Bear’s Milk in the other. Pulling the stopper with his teeth, he poured the skin haphazardly into his mouth and roared out a daring approximation of a bear’s snarl as he charged towards the nearest orc. Uttering their own cries, his knights followed suit, hacking and slashing at the bewildered goblinoids.
Grudi was the last to free himself. Spitting blood and splinters, he crawled out of the wreckage and shook himself. Then, freeing his axe, he charged towards the pyramid of barrels.
Snorri reached it at the same time, albeit on the opposite side. At the apex, a massive orc squatted, overseeing the battle and occasionally uttering incomprehensible orders to his underlings. Clad in patchwork gromril armour that had quite obviously been stripped from dead dwarfs and strung together to make something that would fit, the orc was an imposing sight. Knotted beards had been tied to its belt and it gestured with a dwarfish axe.
Berserk, Grudi began to climb the pyramid. Foaming and cursing, he chopped at goblins and barrels alike. Snorri began to climb the other side, and shouted up taunts at the orc, who looked back and forth between them with what appeared to be indecisive eagerness.
‘He’s mine, Nosebiter!’ Grudi howled, lopping off a goblin’s head and booting the body at Snorri. ‘That’s the one who took my hand and the life of my kin! He’s mine! My doom!’
‘Only if Snorri doesn’t get there first, Grudi Halfhand!’ Snorri said, selfish desire propelling him to climb faster.
‘Back off!’ Snarling, Grudi lashed out at the makeshift straps that held the pyramid to its shape. The straps parted with a shriek and the barrels began to shift. Snorri nearly lost his footing and lashed out with his axe, hoping to anchor himself. Instead, the axe sank into an already rolling barrel and the Slayer was yanked off the pyramid as the barrel bounced down towards the deck. Snorri screamed in frustration as the orc boss receded into the distance.
The barrel struck the deck and shattered. Snorri bounced once and slammed into the hideous face of a troll as it began to pull itself up out of the water. Instinctively Snorri struck out, burying his axe in the monster’s shoulder. It reared back, hauling him over the rail.
A strong hand fastened on his ankle as Staahl rushed to his aid. ‘Hold on, stunty!’ the big man said.
‘Let Snorri go, fatty!’ Snorri said, kicking at his would-be rescuer. ‘Snorri is going to his doom!’ The troll, in pain, buried its talons in the Slayer’s shoulders. Staahl lost his grip as dwarf and troll toppled into the water.
‘’Ware!’ someone shouted. Staahl whirled and saw the barrel pyramid beginning to wobble and dissolve into a crashing mess of wood and alcohol. At the tip of the disintegrating pyramid, the orc boss and Grudi Halfhand fought a savage duel atop an ever-rotating cask. Axe crashed against axe for several moments, until, inevitably, their duelling ground dropped out from under them. Orc and dwarf disappeared beneath the avalanche of barrels. The knights scrambled for cover even as the barrels crashed to the deck in a chaotic cacophony. The paddleboat dipped with the force of the collapse, and several knights were almost thrown overboard, including Staahl.
A
s silence returned, the last surviving cask bounced down the pile of shattered barrels and rolled towards the rail. As it struck it, the top popped off, spilling out a familiar shape. Staahl, pulling himself back on board, looked down at it and grinned. ‘Hello, Rodor, you old lush! Have a nice time?’
The ex-Grandmaster didn’t answer, but Staahl took the rictus grin for assent. Stepping over the body, he joined the other knights in staring at the pile. Angmar shook his head.
‘What a waste,’ he said softly. Staahl put an arm around his shoulders.
‘I know. That’s an awful lot of good beer gone.’
‘I meant Grudi!’ Angmar snapped. He crouched and hauled aside a chunk of wood, revealing an arm ending in a hook extending from within the pile. The knights watched silently as Angmar and Staahl pulled the limp body of the Slayer from out of the debris.
‘He died as he lived,’ Angmar said softly.
‘Aye. Covered in blood and liquor,’ Staahl said piously. ‘Sigmar bless the stunted little madman. And Snorri as well, wherever he–’
A troll’s head slid across the deck and bounced over Grudi’s body. The knights turned as Snorri hauled himself over the rail, dripping wet and covered in black blood. He looked at them, then at the body at their feet. And then at the now-empty cask of Wynters.
‘Is that the Wynters?’
‘Unfortunately,’ Staahl said.
‘Is he dead?’ Snorri said, pointing at Grudi.
‘Ah… yes,’ Angmar said.
‘Lucky bastard,’ Snorri said. ‘Got his doom when Snorri doesn’t even have a drink.’ He sighed and sat down on a dead orc. He looked around and sighed again, rubbing his palm over his crest of nails. ‘Snorri begins to understand why his friend Gotrek Gurnisson is so sour.’
PROPHECY
Ben McCallum
I
Thunder was a god’s spoken wrath.
The sound had the shape of a snarled curse. The heavens’ anger was rich with spite. It rumbled into the physical realm as a literal thunderclap, the aftershock of a god’s volcanic contempt, a deity’s ill-temper translated into the world of natural laws and physical constants.
It was a command that left nothing unchanged. The land yielded like clay to the god’s primordial brutality. Mountains fell flat in storms of tectonic agony, throwing up enough dust and ash to obscure the horizon. A filthy ocean of oil and blood boiled away in a blink-fast instant of hissing vapour. A toxic bank of fog formed in its sudden absence, vast enough to choke a nation.
The god-thunder lengthened into a predator-growl, like the roar of some great hunting cat from antiquity. It opened a snaking trail of fissures in the parched earth, reminiscent of the earthquake-ravaged islands of the far south.
Finally, with a snorted boom of disinterest, the riot of change fell silent and the god glanced elsewhere.
It was the nature of the Chaos Wastes to warp and heave in such a way. It was a land slaved to malignant energies, doomed to conform to the whims of the aethyr. This cursed state owed every one of its torments to the ugly rent in reality at the world’s northern pole. It was here that the breath of the gods was at its foulest.
It infected every principle of nature, every foundation of existence. Distance was a quaint notion, here. A league could be travelled in a matter of footsteps, or it could stretch out into endlessness at any given moment. In the ever-changing landscape, mountains could crawl across the horizon, becoming meaningless and confusing points of reference.
Time, too, became a fickle thing. Anyone foolish enough to lie down and sleep upon the Wastes might wake to find that either mere moments had passed or themselves aged by half a century.
Even roving warbands from the Hung and Kurgan territories turned their noses up at this region. It was merely the first step of damnation’s long road. The destruction wrought by the tyrannical god was a diluted echo of something fiercer further north. Ambitious warlords struck deeper into the heart of the Wastes to fight for the gods’ favour, where the suspension of order became stranger still, and far more dangerous.
But of the death of mountains and oceans, two souls paid no heed. They didn’t hear the god-thunder, even as it drowned out their screams.
Twins. Brothers, identical in all but minor ways. Their albino-pale skin showed an unhealthy grey under the weak light of the blighted skies. Their eyes marked them as souls with a god’s favour – in the magic-rich air of the Wastes, they were flickers of crimson fire.
They howled like dogs. It was not a dignified sight. They stumbled over their long robes, barking at phantoms, drooling at nightmares only they could see. Pain was plastered over their gaunt features. And fear. Fear was a tangy spice in the chill air.
Around them, ghosts blinked in and out of existence, either through their own uncontrolled talents, or as quirks of the haunted land. Colourless figures flickered as indistinct insights into whatever madness ran amok inside their skulls.
It was not such a rare sight in the northern reaches of the world. For here, this was how men dreamed.
Most men dream in silent repose.
It was never their way. As children, the twins would howl into the late hours, screaming at the scenes that played behind their eyes. The tribe’s elders would gather in cautious silence, straining to steal any meaning from the youths’ anguished cries. Old men would lean over their cots, thin, gnarled hands outstretched as if to snatch their secrets from the air. The pair were blessed; they all knew that from the moment the children had left the womb. Ordinary infants aren’t born with a carnivore’s needle teeth.
That practice soon ceased as the twins matured, and the howling became violence. Whatever secrets Tchar whispered to them, it turned the silent youths into snarling animals. Night after night, they bled under each other’s ferocity.
Sharpened teeth weren’t the only sign of the Changer’s favour. Kelmain – Goldenrod, as he would soon come to be known – possessed fingernails that were blade-sharp claws on his right hand, the fierce gold of a cold steppe sunrise. Lhoigor – Blackstaff, true to his slightly quieter, more introverted nature – was much the same, save that his were dark silver on the opposite hand.
Emerging unscathed each morning, they kept their secrets to themselves. No one enquired too deeply about what these children, so obviously born with Tchar’s blessing, saw. It was foolish to pry. When the mood took them, they offered whispered warnings of trouble down the road, of rival tribes waiting in ambush.
No one realised that even in their hushed seclusion away from the rest of the tribe, they rarely spoke with their actual voices. It was their first expression of sorcerous talent, an ability to communicate with each other through thought alone. They shared the same dreams, experienced the same hungers and passions, and through the harsh years of their nomadic upbringing, they plotted the route their lives would take, like the charted course of a raiding vessel.
With this power, with these gifts, they set off into the world, dreaming their dreams of what was to be, beholden to no one except the Changer.
Consciousness returned with a strangled gasp.
Kelmain’s vision swam, painting the world in bleary smears. The ragged inhalation awakened his physical senses. He tasted blood’s copper tang on his tongue, and spat it into the foul wind.
Worrying. Something inside him must have ruptured. Visions always took their toll, but this was severe.
He closed his eyes as his pulse began to quicken in the claws of a panic attack. The helplessness of disorientation was rare to a man like him, but the landscape had changed again. When the vision had taken him, there had been mountains on the horizon. Now there was just a distant dust storm, a smudge of black off to the... north. Or perhaps east.
He grappled the momentary weakness. Throttled it before it could taint him further.
He sat up delicately. The ash beneath him held his imprint, his robes leaving a confused outline on the ground. He bit back a groan, his every muscle offering him a thousand different pains. It w
as an effort to still the trembling.
Lhoigor came awake opposite him. Where Kelmain would rouse slowly and carefully, his brother all but fled the visions. The seizures could be staved off, and willpower could force their muscles to obey, but Lhoigor always floundered, always let his fear master him. His screams were a confession of weakness.
Stop it, he scolded. There was nothing of kindness in the voiceless communication.
‘I am sorry, brother,’ came Lhoigor’s breathless reply. His voice was scratchy and hoarse at being so rarely used. ‘It always makes me so disorientated.’
They sat in silence for several long moments, gathering their wits, cataloguing their pains. One brother scowled at the barren earth, grim and silent, where the other turned his crimson eyes skywards, as if entreating heaven to relieve him.
‘Brother.’ Lhoigor’s voice still shook, uncertainty creeping into his tone.
Lhoigor.
‘What did we see?’
You saw. We both saw.
‘Nevertheless,’ Lhoigor pressed. Minor convulsions wracked his spindly frame. ‘I would hear you speak it aloud.’
Kelmain sighed, composed where his brother was honest with his weakness.
‘We saw him,’ he said, using his actual voice for the first time in days. ‘We saw the Slayer.’
II
The dragon opened its eyes.
Lhoigor faltered in his chanting. It was something few mortals had ever witnessed, and it startled him, despite the fact that he had already foreseen this moment. To see such a beast in the flesh, to actually feel its breath gust past him...
Focus. His brother’s rebuttal was hard. Impatient. This moment was crucial.
It was easy for Kelmain to say. To one attuned in such a way, the dragon’s ancient intelligence was a palpable presence. It was not just a powerful creature. Its consciousness was a transcendent thing, an order of magnitude above humanity’s frail perceptions. Even the Slight Ones, who claimed companionship with these draconic gods, were like children in comparison.