'You're doing it wrong,' I say after a few minutes of watching her poke at the sloppy mess, drawing bloody sigils and whispering pointless curses.
'What?' She looks up, her eyes flashing.
I take an aetherlabe from my belt and tighten the brass coil at its centre. Slender hoops whiz and click, orbiting its crystal dome until the gemstone inside starts to glow. I hold the device over the steaming intestines. Flies are already starting to gather but the mechanism is unaffected, picking up the aethionic currents with ease whirring and clicking as its cogs fall into place. The aelf's eyes widen. 'You're an ordinator.'
I ignore her, adjusting the device, closing in on the current. Even the Slayer is intrigued. Some of the savagery fades from his face and I see a cunning I had not previously noticed. 'You're an engineer?' he says.
I say nothing.
He looks at me closely, then studies the various measuring instruments attached to my armour. There is a look of recognition in his eye and he mouths a few crude engineering terms.
I use my boot to move some of the intestines as the aetherlabe's teeth click into place.
I nod to a narrow ravine that leads from the hollow. 'The Neverspike is that way. You're only two days away.'
Gotrek laughs and slaps me on the shoulder, causing me to stagger. 'Finally! Someone with at least half a brain. What did I tell you, witch? We're almost there.'
He storms down the gulley, humming cheerfully to himself. His mood has changed in a moment from dour and fractious to eager and happy.
Maleneth is still kneeling in the drake's stomach, covered in blood. She looks at me in disbelief, then shakes her head and hurries after Gotrek, wiping the gore from her face.
* * *
'And this one?' says Gotrek, prodding another of my instruments with a stubby, spade-like finger.
We're hunkered in the lee of a scorched tree skeleton. Gotrek was keen to march through the night, but the aelf insisted we stop. The Slain Peak is even more dangerous in the dark than in daylight and the Slayer grudgingly agreed, still buoyed by the news we were close to the Neverspike.
'It looks like a connecting rod on a turbine,' he says.
He seems oddly knowledgeable about engineering. All his guesses are wrong, because he understands nothing about aetheric transference, but they are still educated guesses, based on a sound understanding of mechanics. I have never seen a savage so well-versed in science.
'It's an adylusscope,' I explain. 'A kind of orrery. It tracks the cycles of the realms and all the other heavenly bodies.' I would not usually be so open with a stranger, but the duardin will be dead in a few hours, so I allow myself a little pride, describing the power of my cosmolabes and other surveying equipment.
'And this?' His eye narrows as he looks at the inverussphere.
'It reverses aetheric polarity,' I explain, knowing he won't have any idea what I'm talking about. I baffle him with descriptions of all my instruments, going through them one by one, amused by the disdain on his face. He tuts and shakes his head, muttering something about shoddy work, even though he could never conceive of the machines' complexity.
The Slayer has a sack filled with skins of ale and we've been drinking for over an hour.
'Not bad for a manling,' he grunts as I empty another skin.
'You've no idea who or what I am,' I say. 'I could drink this for days and still be ready to fight. My flesh was forged in the Anvil of the Apotheosis, not prised from the womb of—'
I hesitate, struggling to imagine what he was prised from.
The rune in his chest glimmers slightly, flashing in his eye, turning it crimson. Then he laughs and throws another skin at me.
'Let's see,' he says, grabbing another skin for himself and poking at part of my armour. 'What does this do?'
The aelf is somewhere back down the gulley, taking her turn to watch for drakes, so I allow myself to relax. Since I started drinking, the voice in my mind has fallen quiet and I'm feeling a little more at ease. Once the duardin is dead, I can dig the rune from his remains and be on my way. My return to Azyr will be far more glorious than I had expected if the aelf is even half right about the power of the rune - and by the way my instruments are behaving, she is. The witch is a fool to have let the Slayer live so long. He openly derides Sigmar, along with every other god he knows the name of. He's an enemy of the God-King. And he's an animal. Just like the drake he left steaming in the hollow. All he cares about is which of us can hold the most ale.
After another hour of drinking, I begin to feel odd. Gotrek's face shifts in the half-light swelling and leering like a gargoyle. 'What is this?' I say, frowning at the skin I was drinking from.
'The first decent ale I've found in this sweaty armpit you call a realm.' He wipes froth from his beard with a forearm that looks like a thigh. Beer glistens on his scarred skin.
I have the disconcerting feeling that I'm drunk.
Gotrek lets out a deep, rattling belch.
'I need to rest,' I mutter, falling back against the tree stump, feeling as though the mountain is swaying beneath me.
Gotrek grins, revealing a jumble of broken teeth, then slumps back against a rock, reaching for another skin, ignorant of everything beyond the satisfaction of out-drinking me.
'So now you're murdering duardin?'
I wince as I walk. My head is already pounding from the ale I drank last night and the voice in my mind feels like fingernails scraping across the inside of my skull.
I'm not murdering anyone. He wants to reach the Neverspike and I'm taking him there.
'You know what will happen to him if he approaches the Amethyst Prince. Nagash put him there as punishment for defying him. He's there as an example. As soon as Gotrek touches him he'll he ripped apart by death magic.'
If he dies, it's because he's a fool. A dangerous fool. And a blasphemer to boot. He talks of killing the gods. Who would blame me for letting someone so stupid destroy themselves?
'The witch.'
I look around. She's clambering up the slope behind us, her eyes locked on me. She has spent all this time in service to an impious lunatic and she has done nothing to take the rune. When the duardin is dead, I'll deal with her. My fingers brush against one of my hammers. I already have a good idea how.
'Manling!' bellows Gotrek from further up the slope. 'You've earned your beer!'
I pick up my pace, clambering quickly over the rocks to reach the Slayer's side. We're perched on a ledge looking out over another drop and the sight that greets me is horribly familiar. Another world has been smashed into this one: Shyish. The Neverspike is an icy, iridescent spear of rock that juts from the mountain, completely alien from the sun-bleached crags that surround it. The rock is shimmering and rimy, edged with patches of ice. It has no place in the Realm of Fire and the air knows it, billowing around the shard in flickering, static-charged spirals. If we had approached from any other direction, the Neverspike would have remained hidden from view. It is clearly the work of a divine intelligence. Even in Shyish, the shard would not have been a natural formation - it is a single curved talon of rock, and at its summit there is a tall alcove that looks like a shrine. There is a fire burning in the alcove, purple and blue, death magic, engulfing the figure within. It's impossible to see the prince clearly from here, so I take out one of my looking glasses and turn the shaft until the prince comes into focus.
I grimace. He's rigid with pain, but still alive after all these long centuries. The flames are burning him, causing his skin to blister and peel, but he cannot die. His eyes are gone, melted into blackened sockets and his flesh looks like living ash, crumbling and flickering in the blaze, but his agony is eternal - a warning to all who would challenge the so-called God of Death.
I hand the looking glass to Gotrek and he mutters something in the duardin tongue, shaking his head as he sees the prince.
The Slayer is minutes away from death. Nagash's magic will not preserve Gotrek as it has done the prince; it will simply immolat
e him. It fascinates me that he can walk so blindly to his death.
'Why do you seek him?' I ask. 'What do you want?'
'Vengeance,' he snarls, taking the looking glass from his eye and handing it back to me. 'The gods lied to me, manling. They promised me a worthy doom, then stole it from me. They brought me to your wretched realms with no explanation. So I'm going to make them bloody pay.'
I am about to explain to Gotrek that the Amethyst Prince is not divine; and never was, when I realise the absurdity of arguing with someone who thinks he can kill gods. The Slayer is insane. I knew it the first moment I laid eyes on him. I look at the rune in his chest. The ur-gold is forged to resemble the face of a deranged, psychotic Slayer. It looks almost identical to Gotrek.
I nod and gesture to a narrow bridge. It leads across a sheer drop to the Neverspike. It's a single, slender arch of stone, soaring across the chasm like a hurled rope, suspended by some unseen artifice.
The aelf joins us as we make the final approach, grimacing as the air seems to attack us, lashing and hissing around our faces as we cross the bridge.
We are only halfway across when shapes assemble on the far side.
'Aye,' laughs the Slayer. 'Show us what you've got.'
As we get nearer, I see that the figures are corpses - the remains of men and women, lurching from the rocks that surround the spike. They are charred beyond recognition but they move with silent purpose, gripping swords and axes as they shuffle onto the bridge. I mutter a curse as I see that the whole spike is spawning similar figures. There are hundreds of them struggling to their feet.
Gotrek roars in delight and thunders across the bridge, his axe flashing as he raises it over his head.
Maleneth hisses a curse and barges past me, drawing her knives as she sprints after him.
I take my time, slowly drawing my hammers as Gotrek crashes into the blackened husks.
He burns brighter than the prince, hacking and roaring through the crush. Blackened bodies fly in every direction, tumbling into the crevasse. Gotrek barely breaks his stride, carving a path through the undead husks with Maleneth keeping pace, lunging and stabbing.
By the time I reach the end of the bridge, dozens of the revenants have been hacked to pieces, but there are plenty left to attack me. I stride out onto the Neverspike, hammering corpses aside, smashing the sorcery from their lifeless flesh.
We fight towards the burning prince, and the battle is bathed in the violet light of his pyre. Gotrek grows even more excited, hacking through the throng with even more ferocity. 'Hurry, manling!' he cries, waving me on.
I oblige, picking up my pace. When Gotrek dies, I need to be close. The aelf is not a worthy guardian of the rune. I must be on hand to pluck it from his ashes.
As we approach the alcove holding the Amethyst Prince, it becomes hard to see. The death magic is dazzling, bleeding from the tormented prince and flashing through rows of shuffling corpses, scattering light like strands of purple lightning.
I have to shield my eyes as I battle the final few feet.
I'm so dazzled that it takes me a moment to realise Gotrek has turned to face me. He's silhouetted by the unholy blaze, but I sense that his mood has changed.
'What—?' I manage to say before he pounds the haft of his axe into my stomach.
I'm so surprised I do not prepare myself for the blow. Breath explodes from my lungs. I double over in pain. It's like being hit by a felled tree.
Before I can straighten up he hits me again, pummelling the side of my helmet and sending me sprawling across the rocks. My hammers slip from my grip and clang down the slope towards the bridge.
When I manage to sit up, my vision is blurry from the blow, but I see that Gotrek is holding my inverussphere. Fury jolts through me. It's an incredibly sacred device, capable of reversing the polarity of aether currents.
'Thought you'd kill me?' There's a grim smile on his face. He hacks down another revenant but keeps his eye locked on me.
I throw an accusing look at the aelf, then remember I didn't share my plans with her.
The Slayer laughs. 'Drunks always talk in their sleep. Especially pompous manling drunks who can't hold their ale.'
'What?' I gasp.
He turns and fights his way up to the blazing prince, ignoring the fury of the flames as he cuts through the rows of undead.
'I'm not interested in princes,' he cries, adjusting the inverussphere with surprising skill.
I curse as I stagger to my feet, fending off revenants with my fists. Gotrek wasn't drunk when I told him how my devices work; he was listening carefully to every word.
He looks at the sky. 'My quarrel is with the gods!'
He turns a cog on the inverussphere and punches it into the prince's twitching body.
The light flares, blinding me, then vanishes, plunging the Neverspike into darkness.
Magic rips through the undead, tearing them from their feet and hurling them towards the alcove, lashing across the rocks with such ferocity that I fall again, tumbling across the stones towards the prince, caught like a leaf in a tempest.
Cords of aetheric lightning smash against the Neverspike, ripping the air with a deafening howl, rushing towards the alcove from the surrounding peaks.
Gotrek manages to stay on his feet, staggering but upright as the alcove becomes a vortex of shadows, smoke and body parts.
The Amethyst Prince howls in delight, finally freed from his torment, then disintegrates, obliterated like the rest of the undead, his ashes snatched by the whirlwind.
'Nagash!' howls Gotrek. 'The Slayer comes for you!'
He steps into the vortex, following the dead prince, bellowing a war cry as he vanishes from sight.
I try to crawl away, but the storm is too violent. I'm dragged, inexorably, towards the peak of the Neverspike.
There's a series of explosions as the Neverspike shatters, spraying amethyst lances into the darkness.
With a final, desperate lunge, I grab hold of the bridge, hanging on to a slender arch as rocks whistle past my head.
Then my fingers slip and I'm thrown forwards, my armour clashing against the rocks.
I hurl towards the vortex, surrounded by a storm of blackened corpses. Then the darkness takes me.
I howl as I feel the morbid chill of Shyish, soaking through my armour and eating into my arms. My memories clear, revealing in horrible clarity all the things I was trying to escape. But there is no escape from death.
As I fall, I hear Gotrek, laughing and singing as he dives into the abyss.
CHAMPION OF OATHS
JOHN FRENCH
'A sword takes the edge it is given.'
- Aphorism of the Gobinal Blade Clans, Terra (age unknown)
'Are you ready?'
Sigismund raised his eyes. Archamus looked back. The Master of Huscarls' gaze was steady.
Sigismund let his breath relax through him; let the rising adrenaline drain from his thoughts; let his fingers hang, empty and still. Above him, the black walls of the Temple of Oaths rose to its vaulted ceiling. The names of the Legion looked down at him, marked in gold, etched in stone. Fires burned in bronze bowls that hung from iron chains. In the shadows, his brothers waited - two hundred warriors, armoured in black and yellow, draped with white-and-black tabards, weapons resting in their hands. The Templars. The guardians of the oaths of the VII Legion. This was the place where every warrior of the Imperial Fists made his oath to brother, primarch and Emperor, and the Templars protected it with their swords and with their lives.
Archamus was still looking at Sigismund, waiting. The Master of Huscarls had assumed his rank only a year before; but there was a weight to his presence even before he became Rogal Dorn's chief bodyguard. Archamus was one of the First, those warriors raised to the Legion after the Emperor found Rogal Dorn. That alone would have been enough to make Archamus deserving of respect. He was there as the proxy of Rogal Dorn to see that all was done correctly. If Sigismund failed, the primarch would not be
there to see his weakness. Sigismund gave a single nod.
'Very well,' said Archamus, and held out the sword he had brought from the Phalanx's armoury. Another sword hung at his back, sheathed in black leather and silver; the oath blade of the Temple, the sword that would be Sigismund's to carry if he passed through the trial to come.
Sigismund gripped the hilt of the proffered blade and felt the weight of the weapon sink into his arm as Archamus let go. The servos in his armour purred as he turned to face the circle of his brothers.
'Begin,' called Archamus, and the first of the two hundred Templars came at Sigismund in a blur of steel.
Night fell over the Ionus Plateau. The drift camps covering the land were new, a consequence of Unification, and the wars that had been fought for it. Those that could flee the wars between old tyrants and new had come here and sheltered in the ruins of forgotten empires. They had made a labyrinth of metal and fabric that spread for two hundred kilometres and bled out into the rad zones to the south. It was tainted land. Not tainted in the way that the toxin-laden wastes of the Gobi were, but tainted by the stories that clung to the place. That was why it had been empty when the refugees came.
The old monarchs and despots who had carved their palaces into the faces of the mountains, and whose tombs dotted the plains beneath, had been enchanters and spirit speakers. They had vanished into the oblivion of Old Night, leaving their kingdoms to decay and half-memories of fear in the lands that bordered them. The refugees had put aside those fears, the need for sanctuary overcoming the ghosts of old stories. Still, though, few would look up at the ruins or touch the tombs.
Except the young. To them the dead past was there to be picked up and worn like a discarded cloak. The packs of youths that gathered and roamed the drift had taken the old stories and made them their own. When they went on rampages, it was in horned masks of jagged metal daubed in white, and crowns of polished scrap. Their gang names spoke to the tales of the land: Blood Spectres, Corpse Kings, the Queens of Hades. They came at night, and killed, or inflicted cruelty on those who could not defend themselves. Most of all, they preyed on the thousands of orphans that lived in the cracks of life in drift camps. Some said the gangs took those they could and made them their own, replenishing their ranks by kidnapping.
Black Library Events Anthology 2018-19 Page 2