‘There are none of my folk that are strangers to fear,’ Alarielle replied. ‘When all is nearly lost, one thinks only to cling to what is left. I am not guiltless in such regard. The ages have turned and a different season is upon us. We cannot seek to simply resist our inevitable decline. A new power is coming, and we must allow ourselves to be borne up on the fresh tide or be washed away forever.’
‘What new power, Everqueen?’ asked Holodrin.
She looked up to the skies. Against any natural wind, clouds were gathering, tinged with azure light. Lightning flickered, not of any mortal origin.
‘We are not alone,’ she said. Sadness marred her divine features for a moment. ‘It was only fear that made me think that we ever were.’
WARDENS OF THE EVERQUEEN
by C L Werner
The War of Life rages on, as Torglug the Despised and the forces of Nurgle seek to destroy the Everqueen. But with their new Stormcast allies, the beleagured sylvaneth at last have a hope of victory...
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The Volturung Road
Guy Haley
I
They always came for the Hardgate.
To one side of the volcano, its flanks sloped more gently, allowing the Slaaneshi to gather in larger numbers than elsewhere. After one hundred years of siege, the ground was a mess of bones and old armour, the remains of men and titanic monsters tangled with the broken remnants of great siege engines. Time after time, the forces of the daemon prince Qualar Vo threw themselves at the gates with ecstatic abandon. They laughed as they died, revelling in the sensation of death. Time after time, the Fyreslayers of the Ulgaen lodges cast them back.
Today was different. When the Slaaneshi assailed the gate, they broke into the hold from below.
‘Stop them!’ roared Ulgathern, twelfth runeson of the lord of Ulgaen-ar. ‘Kill the breaching worms!’
Hideous, pallid things thrashed as Vulkite Berzerkers buried their axes in rubbery flesh. Petal mouths gaped and snapped, but the duardin were too swift. Their ur-gold runes lent them speed and strength, and the worms could not land a blow. Other Fyreslayers battled with the human tribesmen coming up the tunnels that had been chewed through the rock by their monsters. The south passage was a disorienting racket of clashing arms and screams.
Ulgathern sliced through the body of a worm behind its head. The creatures were massively thick, and it took several blows to sever its head completely. The body did not cease thrashing, but yanked back into the tunnel keening shrilly, leaving a slick of clear blood on the floor.
The sounds of battle receded. All around the tunnel were heaped the bodies of Slaaneshi marauders. Their gaudily coloured skins were smeared with blood. The last fell with a defiant yell.
‘Ha! Chaos filth!’ roared Mangulnar, third and oldest surviving runeson of Karadrakk-Grimnir. He slapped Ulgathern hard on the shoulder and flicked the gore from his moustaches with a grin. Both of them were covered in the stinking fluids of the worms. ‘When I’m runefather, little brother, we’ll run out after them and kill the lot, not skulk in these caverns waiting to die.’
Ulgathern looked sidelong at his elder sibling. Sometimes, Mangulnar enjoyed fighting a little too much.
‘That would be the best way to lose the war,’ he said.
‘You sound like father. Where’s your hunger for the fight? There’s pleasure in war, and we should embrace it. Fear brings no ur-gold to our lodge.’
‘Be careful what you wish for. The thirst for pleasure is what drives our enemies at us.’
Mangulnar spat. ‘Their pleasure makes them weak. Battle joy makes us strong, it’s completely different.’
‘These are not their best warriors. I sense a ruse. Their attacks are getting bolder, more inventive. The worms are new. It is nearly one hundred and one years since the siege began. Storms fill the skies, and we should be wary.’
‘Are you talking about that bloody prophecy of Drokki’s again?’ said Mangulnar harshly. ‘You should be careful whose words you heed. As withered in mind as he is in arm, that friend of yours. Listening to the likes of him is why you’ll never be a runefather, but if you’re fortunate, I might let you serve me when I am lord of Ulgaen-ar.’ Mangulnar stalked away, looking for something else to kill.
Ulgathern stared after his brother. Mangulnar and he rarely saw eye to eye.
‘You there!’ shouted Ulgathern to one of his warriors. ‘Report back to my father that the third deeping is clear.’ The warrior nodded and ran off. Ulgathern looked to the holes. The walls of the burrows were slick with the worms’ secretions. ‘And get a building team here, plug these up. I don’t want anything else coming through.’
‘Are you to join your father, my lord?’ asked Grokkenkir, Ulgathern’s favoured karl and leader of his Vulkite Berzerkers.
‘The runefather ordered me to the Hardgate once done. My brothers and father will stop the other breaches soon enough without my help, you can be sure of that.’
Ulgathern took the steps up to the gate parapet three at a time, his muscles hot with Grimnir’s power. Well before the thin daylight penetrated the gloom of the stairwell, he heard the enemy: a frenzied roaring as repetitive as the booming of the sea. On the wallwalk over the gate stood the auric hearthguard, firing their magmapikes into the packed hordes a hundred feet below. Ulgavost, thirteenth runeson of Karadrakk-Grimnir, watched the enemy die from a step behind the battlement. Ulgathern went to join his brother, and looked out over the mountain slope.
The Hornteeth Mountains were in Ghur, but they might well have been in the Realm of Fire: a long chain of sharp-peaked volcanoes stretching sunward and nightward across the continent, dividing the prairies from the Darkdeep Ocean. The mountains were all black ash and young rock, cut through by chasms that often filled with torrents of lava. Precious little grew around the Ulmount. The skies were choked with clouds of dust that glowed orange when the mountains spoke to one another. Blue skies were a rarity; more so recently, for strange storms raged daily.
The Slaaneshi tribesmen had occupied the lands below the Hardgate for so long they had constructed their own town there. Ulgathern looked over the screaming masses to the fortress occupying the settlement’s middle. It was a hideous thing, the blocks hewn from the side of Ulmount itself and carved with repulsive images.
Around the fortress was a sea of tents. Darkness ruled down there, away from the ember-glows of the volcano, and the bright silk banners of the Chaos worshippers appeared muddy in the shadows.
Most of the horde must have marched out from their twisted township, for they were arrayed before the Hardgate in numberless multitude. A pair of gargants with striped blue skin battered at the gates. Endless ranks of warriors and tribesmen surged around them, roaring out praises to their unclean deity.
‘If they think they’re getting in here, they’re going to be disappointed,’ said Ulgavost. ‘Nobody’s coming to open the gates for them today.’
‘You sealed your breach?’
Ulgavost sniffed. His perpetually dour expression lifted a moment in a display of modesty. ‘Nothing to it, there were only a hundred or so of them.’
‘I don’t like the look of this. There are more of them all the time,’ said Ulgathern.
‘Think they’d just give up and leave us be? Chaos won’t be done here until we’re all dead. It’s just a matter of time,’ said Ulgavost.
‘Aye,’ said Ulgathern. ‘I fear that time is coming soon.’
‘Have you been talking to Drokki again?’ said Ulgavost. ‘That rhyme he’s always trotting out has the runefather dead before the hold falls, if I recall, and I don’t see our father laying down his life just yet.’
‘There are the storms, Ulgavost. How do you explain them?’
‘It’s just a rhyme, Ulgathern.’
They stopped talking as hissing streams
of molten rock poured out of the statues lining the wall below the crenellations. The heat of it hit them like a blow, but they were unperturbed; fire ran in their blood.
The gargants were not impervious. The lava hit them both, crushing them with its weight and setting them ablaze. They bellowed in pain and died quickly. The smell of roasting meat wafted up over the battlement and the horde bowed back.
‘See? We’re not going anywhere,’ said Ulgavost. He looked to the sky, where storms had played for over a month. For the moment, they flickered with occasional lightning, but banks of black clouds were building to the sunset horizon. ‘Looks like it’s going to rain again. That usually has them leaving off for a while.’
Ulgathern watched the clouds gather. ‘I still don’t like this.’
Just then the sound of running feet echoed up the stair to the parapet. A puffing runner burst from the darkness. Ulgathern grinned in relief, certain the messenger was about to deliver news of their imminent victory, but the runner’s expression quickly wiped the smile from his face.
‘My lords, you must come swiftly,’ he said. ‘Runefather Karadrakk-Grimnir is dead.’
Upon the Isle of Arrak, deep under the Ulmount, two brother lodges stood. The duardin of Ulgaen-ar stood to the left of the island, while those of Ulgaen-zumar stood on the right, and each lodge was arranged around the end of the bridge leading to its respective delving.
The wrights and the warriors, matrons and maidens faced the Cages of Loss in respectful silence. Youngflames had their heads bowed, their youthful boisterousness doused by sorrow. The twin magma streams that made the rock an island ran dim and ruby. The very mountain mourned the passing of its mightiest son.
Over the Fyreslayers’ heads the Ulmount opened its throat. Five hundred feet high and more, the uneven sides of the central chimney had been crafted into a straight, octagonal shaft by the duardin. Four-foot high ur-gold runes spiralled up the walls, their magic stabilising the volcano and holding back its eruptions. At the top the stern faces of Grimnir looked down. In the centre of their leaning heads the shaft opened at the base of the caldera, and the sky could be seen. The storm had broken and thrashed the heavens, flashing lightning the like of which none had seen before. The thunder was so loud it was as if Grimnir waged war upon Vulcatrix once again. The rain that fell on the Ulmount’s cupped peak was gathered by cunning channels and sent deep into the hold. Smiths and artisans teased out its load of dissolved elements, before sending it on to water crops and the duardin themselves. The rain that fell into the vent could not be caught, and dropped down into the centre of the mountain. The water heated rapidly as it fell, and the duardin under the opening steamed.
Karadrakk-Grimnir lay in one of twenty funerary cages. These were wrought of fyresteel fixed to the brink of the cliff, and mounted upon axles. Two burly hearthguard stood at the wheels, ready to send their lord to his final rest. The runefather was swaddled tightly from head to foot in broad strips of troggoth leather, leaving only his face exposed and hiding the places where his body had been stripped of its ur-gold runes. His magnificent orange beard and crest had been washed free of blood, combed and laid carefully upon his wrappings. The deep gash in the side of his skull was covered over with a plate of gold that could not quite hide the lividity of his flesh. Gold coins stamped with the image of Grimnir-in-sorrow covered his eyes, while between Karadrakk-Grimnir’s broad teeth was clamped an ingot of fyresteel, carefully crafted to fit his mouth perfectly – the gold because he was the master of gold and ur-gold, the steel because he was a warrior.
Karadrakk-Grimnir did not sleep alone. Twelve other cages on the Ulgaen-ar side cradled their own sad burdens, each attended by pairs of auric hearthguard. Ulgaen-zumar’s funeral apparatus was set on the cliff opposite, the cages equal in number, though not so many were occupied. The fallen of Ulgaen-zumar lodge may have been fewer in number, but the blow to the hearts of all the Fyreslayers by the loss of Karadrakk-Grimnir was grievous.
A clank of gold pendants and the soft tread of many duardin feet came from the far side of the bridge arching over the lava to Ulgaen-ar’s deepings. A low, rumbling song struck up, audible between the bangs and booms of the storms above. Runemaster Tulkingafar came over the bridge. His staff was visible first, burning hot with the borrowed fires of Ulgaen-ar’s sacred forge. Then his crest, then his face, grim with the duty he must carry out, and painted white with the bone ashes of mourning. His hair was dark red, his upper lip shaved. Ten runesmiters walked in his train, eyes downcast as they sang, their skin coloured charcoal black.
The Ulgaen-ar lodge parted silently to let the zharrgrim priesthood through, and the procession came slowly to the centre of the Isle of Arrak, where it halted in the rain. From the other side, where the bridge to Ulgaen-zumar was situated, came a similar song, and another procession of the priests of the zharrgrim wended its sorrowful way forward, headed by Runemaster Marag-Or the Golden Eye.
Marag-Or, older, scarred, one eye replaced by a featureless orb of gold, came to a halt before Tulkingafar.
‘Runemaster,’ he said.
‘Runemaster,’ responded Tulkingafar. The hot water streaming down their faces made their mourning colours run.
They turned sharply, leading their processions out from under the volcano’s vent to their respective lodge’s cages. Tulkingafar had the graver duty today and so would begin. Marag-Or took his followers to the side of Runefather Briknir-Grimnir, Karadrakk’s brother.
Marag-Or looked sidelong at Briknir. The runefather’s expression was set hard as a mountain’s, no indication of what he thought or felt, but that he mourned his brother was clear to one as wise as Marag-Or. Briknir-Grimnir’s beard showed fresh strands of grey within its fiery bunches, and his eyes were hollow as cave mouths.
Tulkingafar left his runesmiters and went to the side of his master’s last resting place. He rested his broad hands on the fyresteel a moment, and looked at the dead lord and his funeral goods.
‘Our runefather is slain!’ he said. His voice was loud, and carried well over the constant rumbling of the twin lava rivers and the crackling boom of the storm. ‘For three hundred years he led us. No longer!’ He stared over the heads of his congregation, speaking directly to the heart of the mountain. ‘He and twenty other good duardin were slain as they drove the enemy out of our hold.’ He dropped his gaze to meet the eyes of his fellows. ‘The runefather was not fond of long speeches.’ There was scattered laughter at this. ‘Who needs talk? He was brave! He refused defeat each time it was so generously offered to him by our besiegers. He was noble! He was the most generous of ring-givers.’ He paused. ‘And he was my friend.’
More than a few voices rumbled aye to that. Karadrakk-Grimnir had been well loved.
‘We will not be broken. Burukaz Ulgaen-ar!’ called Tulkingafar.
‘Ulgaen-ar burukaz!’ the others responded.
Tulkingafar nodded at the hearthguard manning the cage machinery. They turned the wheels reverently, the ratchets on the axle clacking one tooth at a time.
‘From fire we were born, to fire we return,’ Tulkingafar intoned. ‘Burn brightly in the furnaces of Grimnir, Karadrakk-Grimnir Ulgaen, and be forged anew. May the heat of your soul never cool, and its flames never dim.’
The cage reached a near-vertical position and the hearthguard ceased their turning. One pulled a lever. A gate opened at the foot of the cage, and Karadrakk-Grimnir slid from its confines and fell into the Ulgaen-ar magma river. A bright flash of fire marked his passage from one world to the next, lighting up the faces of the mourning lodge members, showing many tugging at their beards with sorrow.
The mountain rumbled. The cracking of stone sounded deep in the ground. Short-lived geysers in the rivers sent shadows leaping across the craggy stone, and teased starbursts from the veins of minerals in the rock. The cavern returned to its sombre ruby.
‘The Ulmount mourns the loss o
f a good master,’ said Tulkingafar. ‘Grimnir has taken him to his forge.’
A battlesmith went to the empty cradle. In a droning chant he began to recount the many deeds of Karadrakk’s long life as Marag-Or and Tulkingafar went down the row of occupied cages and immolated their dead.
However, one priest-smith present had his mind on other things. Drokki of the Withered Arm looked up the tall chimney of the Ulmount’s throat. The faces of Grimnir looked down at him reproachfully at this stinting of duty, but he was not interested in their disapproval. He stared at the lightning flashing across the sky, and he worried.
‘In a week’s time, the Ulgahold will have been under siege for one hundred and one years. We come here to discuss the wishes of Karadrakk-Grimnir Ulgaen, and who among you, the seven surviving sons of Karadrakk-Grimnir, will assume the heavy burden of responsibility for leadership of Lodge Ulgaen-ar.’
Tulkingafar gave the seven sons a steely look. They stared back with varying amounts of defiance, hope, sorrow and fear.
Get on with it, you pompous ass, thought Ulgathern. He bridled at Tulkingafar’s superior manner, his ponderous delivery. Ulgathern was eager to be done; he itched to avenge his father, and he needed to talk to Drokki. At first he had dismissed Drokki’s talk of the Great Omen, but since the storms he had come to half-believe him. And now this…
The auric regalia he had to wear was heavy, a wide poncho of gold plates sewn to thick leather, and a huge, ceremonial helm. Fyreslayers as a rule rarely wore much. Their holds were warmed by the blood of the earth, while their own Grimnir-given fires kept them heated in the most inhospitable of environments. To wear too many clothes or, Grimnir forfend, too much armour, was an affront to their shattered god. Ulgathern found the gear uncomfortable. The zharrgrim temple was nigh to the forge, where streams of lava were harvested for their metals and channelled into the fyresteel foundry. The grumbling of hot stone bottled up behind its sluices was as oppressive as the heat. But borne the heat must be, and he stood there sweltering and stiff with all the stoicism expected of a duardin.
Sacrosanct & Other Stories Page 37