by Darius Hinks
Clara cowered as the spirits all turned suddenly in her direction. Then she realised there was a splashing sound coming from the pool behind her.
She turned to look and saw something that finally tore a scream from her. It was the green-skinned, antlered giant – the same hideous brute that had almost throttled her when she arrived at the borders of the forest. She recalled how mercilessly he had butchered the peasants when she first encountered him and she grew rigid with terror.
None of the spirits seemed to notice Clara’s scream and she realised it had emerged as a quiet, rattling croak.
‘You have your king,’ said the giant as he climbed from the water, clutching a spear. His physique was as Clara recalled – humanoid, but built on a massive scale. He was eight or nine foot tall – with broad, angular muscles that seemed carved from wood. His crown of antlers made him seem even taller and his legs were those of a stag, with thick, ridged hooves. There was something she had not noticed before though – his torso was encased in an armour plating of thick, ridged oak, with a green, serpentine rune glowing at its centre.
The spirits hissed, snarled and rushed to confront the giant.
‘He has been born,’ gasped one of the spirits and Clara saw shock written across all of their faces.
‘How dare you return now,’ cried the wolf, shaking off its surprise and replacing it with outrage. ‘Whatever trickery has given you life does not give you the right to enter this grove. You have not been summoned. This is not the season of rebirth.’
‘There are no seasons, you know that as well as I do,’ replied the giant.
‘What do you want, Orion?’ asked the hooded sorcerer. His voice was a thin, hateful hiss. ‘We have already told you we will not hunt.’
Clara hopped aside as Orion strode onto the grass.
‘You will,’ he replied calmly.
The animals looked at him with a mixture of confusion and derision, then they turned and began to fade into the shadows.
Clara panicked, ‘Wait!’ she tried to scream, but she only managed the same pathetic croak.
The spirits had only gone a few steps when they paused. The pool was boiling and bubbling as something else emerged behind Orion. Something far larger.
They gasped and hissed as the colossal shape of a dragon rose from the pool, his eyes blazing as he towered over the clearing.
‘Tanos!’ cried several of the spirits, staggering back into view. Even the venom-tongued sorcerer shook his head. ‘What does this mean?’ he gasped, looking from the dragon to Orion.
As the spirits watched in amazement, Tanos climbed from the pool, lowered his head and allowed Orion to climb along his neck and take a seat between his wings. Then he reared up and let out a deafening roar.
‘What is this?’ asked the white wolf.
‘This is your purpose!’ howled Orion. ‘This is a hunt!’
The spirits reeled before the magnificent sight of Orion and his mount.
Clara saw that they were at a loss to know what to do.
Then the wolf padded up to the dragon and threw back its head, letting out a long, mournful howl.
Other cries followed, one by one, until the grove was filled with the sound of screams, howls and roars. The sound swelled to such a painful volume that Clara pounded at her head with her forelegs, trying to block it out. She buried her face in the mud, but she could not escape it.
Then, as suddenly as it started, the sound ceased.
Clara looked up and saw that the grove was empty. The spirits had vanished, along with the giant and his dragon. There was nothing but the trees and the dusk.
She hopped around, looking desperately for a sign of Zephyr, but he had vanished with the others. She was alone.
Despair overwhelmed her as she realised she must have lost the last shreds of her sanity. There were no hoof prints or tracks of any kind on the grass. She must have hallucinated the whole gathering. Perhaps even Zephyr had only been in her mind. She looked around. There was nothing but the forest… and her mutated flesh.
With growing horror at her fate, she hopped back towards the pool, sensing that there was only one way to escape what she had become. The water could help her, if only by ending her miserable existence. She realised she had misunderstood the bones. Death was her only escape.
She dived into the pool, closed her eyes and began swallowing as hard and as fast as she could.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Orion plunged through the clouds on Tanos’s back, haloed by a burning sky. Sparks flashed along his antlers and danced on the bone-white tip of his spear. He sang as his dragon mount bore him through the fumes, filling the air with majesty and leading his strange kin to war. Countless other beasts tumbled in his wake, each more incredible than the last. The sentinels of the forest lifted their voices in reply to his song and it became a deafening, magisterial round. This was the hunt to end all hunts. Sinew, spirit and bark, tempered into a single, vengeful blade. They hurtled into the valley singing of ancient bowers and lonely, sunken paths. They sang of the roots of the world, its Shadow-glades and ghostways. They roared in praise of the wild. Howled to the untrammelled. Screamed for blood.
The fly queen dragged her face from a corpse and skittered up onto a mound, batting away swords and fists. She wiped gore from her eyes and hissed, shocked by the nature of Orion’s host. It looked like sunlight slicing into a darkened room. The king was ablaze with emerald light and flanked by incredible creatures – forest dragons, briar-winged hawks and silent, ivy-clad owls. Below them, emerging from the trees in one snorting, tidal rush, came bears, followed by boars, followed by wolves, stags and noble, moon-flanked unicorns. The fly queen stared, bewildered, and the longer she stared the more her mind unravelled. The forest wore many masks, not all of them easy to comprehend, but she knew these feral lords; she knew them from her former life and she felt their pull.
The asrai raised bloody weapons, roaring tributes to their king. Pitiful few remained but at the sight of the Wild Hunt they grew in stature and wrath – hurling themselves back into the fray, joining their blades to a storm of claws.
Orion watched through a blood-red haze as Alkhor’s army collapsed before him. The dragons tore daemons from the air. Their armoured flesh was immune to plague or disease and they fed as they flew, gulping down daemon-blood like honey, slashing and clawing through their enemy.
Daemon-flies pounded against Orion, but he barely registered them. The wrath of Kurnous was pouring from him. With the dragons at his side, he was incandescent. Unstoppable. Tanos and the other dragons batted attackers aside as easily as real flies, sending them spiralling into the toiling ranks below. Then Orion raised his horn to his lips and called the forest to battle.
A spearhead of animals and spirits charged beneath him, cutting across the horseshoe plain, bolstering the ranks of asrai and rushing the watchtower. With the dragons leading their charge, they were utterly fearless. Tallymen crumpled under the momentum of the attack. They still outnumbered the king’s army but numbers were meaningless against such fervour.
As he neared the column of fungus, Orion saw tendrils lash out, burning and poisoning his army. He tried to stem his wildness and consider tactics, but it was no use. His mind was awash with bloodlust. He howled and drove the dragon on into the daemon-fly clouds, hacking and tearing as he went.
Drycha paused, wrenched her wooden claws from a twitching daemon and backed away from the fighting. Her branchwraith sisters were making painfully slow progress. Forcing their way through the daemon hordes had proved to be far more difficult than she had hoped. As the dryads fought, cankers sprang up across their bark, stiffening their joints and blunting their teeth. Each time they tore into a daemon, blight enveloped their claws, rotting their talons and withering their limbs with fungus.
Drycha’s army was so vast that it was gradually pushing across the plain from the east but, to her amazement, the tattered banners of the asrai were moving faster. As she climbed up a slope to
get a better view, she saw that they were smashing through the daemons from the north and their vanguard was already within a stone’s-throw of the watchtower.
Liris climbed up beside Drycha, her eyes filled with horror. ‘The hunter king is with them.’
‘No,’ hissed Drycha. ‘He is not. He can’t be.’ But she began to shiver and rattle as she saw the truth. Orion was there. Even from half a mile away, she could see his proud, antlered form. He was fighting with all the power and ferocity of the very first Consort-King: hale, healthy and driving the asrai straight into the daemon’s realm. ‘I saw him,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I saw him spewed from the dying oak. He was useless. A puling wretch, just as the Ancient One described.’
‘Look,’ gasped Liris.
Drycha had been so shocked by the presence of Orion she had failed to notice the monsters flying with him. She clenched her talons into fists, watching dozens of lithe shapes swoop through the clouds. ‘Dragons,’ she spat. ‘Cyanos has failed us. He swore they would never return.’
Liris grimaced at the mention of the asrai noble. ‘Of course he has failed us.’
Drycha did not register her sister’s words. She was still staring at the horizon. It was not just the dragons that had joined Orion and the asrai – the other spirit beasts had followed their lead. ‘Why would they follow Orion? After all that has come of his rule?’ Pain knifed through her crooked frame. ‘Why would they side with him?’ She looked around at her toiling sisters – each one prepared to sacrifice themselves in defence of the forest, after all their centuries of silent, unwavering guardianship. ‘Why are they not here, with us?’
Orion’s horn rang out and Drycha saw his army wash up against the watchtower. The grotesque digit shivered under the weight of the attack and lashed out with barbed, snake-like limbs, killing asrai and scattering beasts. Hundreds more daemons were still pouring from Còlgarran Pass and the two armies reached a juddering, grinding impasse. The Consort-King soared through the clouds, felling more daemons, until a vast shape loomed from the shadows and hurtled towards him. It was hard to see clearly through the filthy, fly-filled haze, but Drycha thought it must be another daemon-fly, only much larger than the others and dressed in the shreds of a lemon-coloured gown.
Orion and his dragon mount joined battle with the monster and an asrai cheer rang out as he drove the monster back.
Drycha stared at Liris. ‘If he wins, the spirits will forgive him everything. They will sanction his rule. They will let him stay.’ She screamed and jabbed one of her talons at the tower, ordering her sisters forwards. ‘This victory must be ours!’
The branchwraiths pushed forwards, clawing desperately at the mass of daemons, but it was no good. The crush of mottled, necrotic flesh was impassable. It was like trying to cut through mud. For every few steps forwards, hundreds of the one-eyed monsters glooped around the dryads, miring them in sticky, gangly limbs and pinning them to the ground with their pitted, iron swords.
Drycha watched in silent fury as her army reached the same deadlock that had stalled the Wild Hunt.
Liris glanced at her and then looked at the crevasse that divided their army from Orion’s. Drycha knew what her sister was thinking and her sap boiled in response.
Drycha clawed at her own face, weeping tiny spirals of bark. ‘Never.’ Her voice was desolate.
She hurled herself from the slope and smashed through her sisters, making for the daemons, but it was impossible. The combatants were so tightly packed that she could not reach the battle lines. She could not even join the fight. She jerked and thrashed, horrified by a growing realisation. After all she had done, the Council of Beasts had sided with the false king rather than their own kind.
Through tear-filled eyes Drycha saw a vision of the bear she had been forced to kill. Then the diseased corpse was transformed into the eternal bear spirit, Bruithír. Deep down she had known the truth since the moment Bruithír spared the nascent king. Why would the forest allow Finavar to escape? Why would it free him from the Wildwood, unless it wanted him to live? Unless it wanted a king?
It took a few more minutes for Drycha to accept defeat. She remained hunched and shivering on the ground until splintering bark and brittle screams forced her to relent. She rose from the throng and lurched wearily back up the slope, knowing what she must do.
She howled the order to retreat.
Alkhor quivered as his children emptied jars into his chest. Spores, bile and twitching mutants sloshed into his gaping ribcage and with each new sample his body grew. The Plague Father was starting to form in his flesh. Alkhor could feel the dizzying sensation of impending godhood. The vast, rotten hulk of his body was surrounded by such a fierce tornado of flies that his garden was barely visible, but he knew it was there, growing along with him; preparing for the great arrival. The muddy pool beneath him was gurgling, spitting and starting to boil over.
‘My lord,’ cried a voice, straining to be heard over the roaring column of flies.
Alkhor recognised the moist lisp and laughed. ‘Almost there, Ganglion!’ he bellowed, causing several smaller daemons to tumble from his ribs and disappear into his knotted, glistening guts. ‘The Plague Father is almost with us!’ He looked around and saw the cyclopean, pot-bellied daemon, hovering a few feet from his face, sitting on the back of a giant daemon-fly. The whirling clouds of insects were buffeting the daemon-mount, forcing Ganglion to hang desperately onto one of its studded antenna.
‘Smile,’ boomed Alkhor, snorting out flies. ‘We will soon have a garden to cover the world!’
Ganglion jabbed his rusty sword at the hole in the sky. There was an unusual note of panic in his voice. ‘Look, my lord,’ he cried. ‘Others have discovered you. They have found the rift. We must stop them. They are not your friends. They will take the world for their own.’
Alkhor’s boulder-sized head split into a gaping grin. He looked back at the patch of nothingness, noting how prettily it was framed by his gaudy tumours of fungus. Ganglion was right. Something new was flooding through the gap. Even through the whirlwind of flies he could see it. Rather than shambling, rotten lines of tallymen, Alkhor saw a new army – a vivid red column of slavering beasts. The brutal, crimson-skinned head-takers of Khorne. They were bestial, howling daemons. Knots of bloody sinew, lashed together by hate, snapping and straining at an unseen leash.
They entered the world with a strict, martial discipline that turned Alkhor’s grin to laughter. Seeing such feral creatures marching in orderly lines reminded him of circus animals, strutting around in ludicrous outfits. Drums and braying horns accompanied their advance, adding to the impression of a bizarre parade. There was no mistaking their cruel intent though. Every one of the daemons clutched a huge, two-handed sword – sculpted, jagged blades, forged of unholy alloys that shimmered and flashed. White-hot sorcery, burning in a prison of tempered steel.
At the head of the daemons trundled a warped, steam-hissing chariot – a jagged, sharpened lump of brass and iron, ridden by another crimson monster. Like the others, this one was all whiplash sinew and low, backwards-swooping horns, but the daemon driving the chariot was clearly a great lord. It was larger than those that followed and the oddly precise movements of the footsoldiers corresponded to its barked commands.
Ganglion shook his head as he saw that Alkhor was laughing. ‘They will seize victory for the Blood God!’ The storm of flies forced his mount away from Alkhor, and his voice became desperate. ‘You must stop them!’
Alkhor laughed harder and slumped back, relishing the sensation of more diseased body parts being emptied into his chest. ‘Victory is mine. It always was. They are the most moronic, dribbling, dog-brained fools, Ganglion, but they are all part of the plan.’ His laughter became a smug grin. ‘I keep my wife on a tighter leash than their master imagines.’
Alkhor frowned. ‘Enough!’ He closed his chest with a slap and held up a warning hand. ‘I’m full. Sated. Replete.’ He smiled again. ‘I am done.’ He closed his ey
es and settled back into the mud with a satisfied belch. The wound healed itself and Alkhor’s body began to ripple and change. As the transformation gathered pace, the storm of flies grew fiercer and the daemon vanished from view.
Ganglion steered his fly back and forth, attempting to enter the spinning cocoon, but it was no use. He fixed his single, yellow eye on the red fiends hurrying through the garden towards him.
‘Proctor,’ he whimpered and steered his mount back towards the battle.
‘We have them!’ cried Caorann, vaulting over a muddy ditch and bounding towards another huddle of plaguebearers. They lifted iron blades with their rotten, mangled fingers and lurched towards him. There was no sky. No horizon. The world was a smear of brown, yellow and pink. But Caorann laughed and sang as he approached his prey.
Before Caorann could bring his swords to bear, arrows whistled past his ear, slamming into the daemons’ faces. The one-eyed horrors stumbled and fell, blinded, as Sibaris reached the lip of the ditch, shooting arrow after arrow.
By the time Caorann reached his foes, they were all staggering like drunks, clutching at spurting irises.
‘Not fair,’ spat Caorann, removing their heads with a balletic whirl of sword strikes. ‘You’re taking all the sport out of this.’
Alhena burst from the clouds of flies, her eyes straining. Every inch of her was trembling with fury. She saw Caorann, whirling at the centre of the confused daemons and bolted to his side, bringing her own swords down in a flashing arc and taking the last few heads.
The wardancers had learned that, while the daemons seemed unwilling to die, they could at least be halted by a good beheading. Sibaris rushed to join the other two, firing more arrows at the half-glimpsed shadows that surrounded them.
Every now and then the fumes would part, revealing crowds of battling figures. It was a brutal sight. The daemons were hacking down asrai spearmen and pouring plague into their still-warm bodies, while feral beasts, more spirit than flesh, tore through the mud, snarling, clawing and devouring everything they encountered. There were no tactics, no battle plans, just slaughter. But every time the combatants faltered, wearied by the directionless death, a hunting horn rang out from the heavens and it all began again.