Warhammer [Ignorant Armies]

by epubBillie

  And most of all he loved the tales of the old Slann, with their wonderful machines which could spit fire and fly through the air. In his dreams Cotza was a God-Emperor, studying through obsidian his boundless dominions...

  Cotza had reached a bitter manhood when, one overcast day, the sergeants of the army of King Charles rode into the local market square. The colours of their helmets' plumage shone out against drab mud walls.

  The sergeants drew their dandified pistols and gathered the young men, Cotza among them, into a rough platoon. The King, the sergeants said, intended a plundering raid over the border into Estalia. They needed volunteers.

  Two men were shot to encourage the rest. Then the peasants were marched away, hands clasped on their heads.

  So Cotza found himself recruited into the fyrd - the peasant backup to Charles' professional troops. He was given a crude heraldic design to sew onto his brown shirt, was supplied with a stubby sword and an axe. He found life in the army of the King brutal and unrewarding. He watched officers strut around the battlefields intriguing against each other and showing off their dazzling standards.

  Meanwhile the fyrd was thrust into battle in great disorganized mobs. Peasants died en masse. Cotza was a coward. He hid, ran, earned the contempt of his fellows. But he survived.

  There was magic on the battlefield, Cotza learned. While peasants bludgeoned each other in the mud, he watched knights in their enchanted armour ride out and join in battle under magic standards.

  He saw strange things. A man suffered grievous wounds to the head, yet fought on. For a few seconds a knight split mysteriously into two copies, baffling his opponents. Massive warriors would inexplicably turn, drop their weapons, and run howling from the field.

  And at the centre of it all was a strange figure, a frail-looking old man who could nevertheless walk through a crowded field and have the burliest warrior step aside for him. This was Rufus, a powerful Wizard in the pay of the King. His bony face was masked by a florid beard and he wore a cloak that was stiff with sewn-in runes, shards of bones, bits of shattered blades; habitually he carried faded spell-scrolls stuffed under his arms.

  Once he dropped a scroll. It steamed as it lay in the mud. None dared to pick it up for him. Rufus seemed to shimmer as he walked. The aura of power around him was almost tangible. It hurt Cotza to stare too long.

  King Charles' campaign drew to a muddy close. The ragtaggle army headed back over the Breton border. Cotza thought about returning to the village, to a life of poverty and dirt...

  They crossed an old battlefield. The rotting bodies of friend and foe filled the air with a fetid stench. The army made camp; Cotza, exhausted, spread his threadbare blanket across the ground, lay down and closed his eyes. But sleep would not come. He wriggled on the hard ground, suffering the curses of his comrades. There was something wrong. The ground was warm beneath him.

  Warm?

  He waited until the dead of night and then, by starlight, lifted the blanket and scraped aside the mud. Then he sat back and stared, breathing hard. He had found a spell-scroll, dropped and trampled into the dirt, glowing softly like coal burning from within.

  Someone groaned in their sleep. Cotza hastily packed the earth back over the scroll and lay down again, heart pounding. This was his chance.

  The next morning he made his way to the ornate tent of Rufus, and waited at its entrance until the Wizard emerged. Rufus scowled like thunder. The bits of shattered weapons sewn into his cloak glinted at Cotza like hard eyes. Cotza quailed... but he stood his ground. He told Rufus about the scroll. The Wizard asked him to describe it, and as Cotza did so Rufus' eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he asked where the scroll was.

  Blood pounding, Cotza proposed a deal.

  The Wizard mocked his bargaining, eyes burning. But Cotza got his deal. He led Rufus to the scroll. The Wizard lifted it reverently from the ground and returned to his tent, nodding slowly at Cotza as he passed.

  It took the Wizard some days to complete his preparations. Then he sent a messenger to summon Cotza to his tent.

  Now that the moment was here fear nearly overwhelmed Cotza; but he pushed himself to his feet and followed the messenger, ignoring the curious stares of his fellow peasants. He entered the gloomy interior of the Wizard's tent. The Wizard was a vague form in the shadows. On a wooden table lay the stinking corpse of a Slann.

  Cotza whimpered and almost fell; he felt a shaming warmth spread damply down his legs. But, under Rufus' directions, he climbed onto the table beside the corpse.

  It took three days. The pain was more than Cotza could bear... almost. Then, on the fourth day, he opened new eyes. The world was stained pus-yellow. The Wizard held up a mirror.

  A Slann face stared back at Cotza.

  "You see, soldiers - even peasant soldiers - share stories, legends, from all over the world," Cotza told Erik. "I listened to the tales of Elves and Dwarfs, sifted through the rubbish, searched for grains of truth, sought opportunity..."

  "I remembered those boyhood tales. I learned that the Slann are the oldest race on the planet. Their powers, though lost, were once the greatest. Then I heard the legend of the star boat. I decided this was my chance. In return for the scroll the Wizard gave me gold... And I asked him to make me a Slann. I would seek out the star boat, take its treasure and power."

  Erik studied the broken amphibian body without pity. "You were so stupid as to desire... this? To be a Slann?"

  "It was my childhood dream," whispered Cotza. "A chance to reach the machines of the ancient Slann. It was a gamble. For the highest stakes - for the chance of power such as no mortal has wielded for five thousand years. Perhaps the power never to die."

  "But you've lost," Erik snapped. "You fooled me, but you couldn't fool the Slann machinery. Could you?"

  Cotza hung his head, nursing his ruined arm. Erik left him. There was no more to be said.

  The turtle crawled over the ice like an injured slug. Erik had tightened the horses' harnesses, goaded them into turning their armoured belts once more. The horses stamped and complained. They were less willing to work together and progress was slow.

  The belts moved with a grind. At least one of the wooden rollers was cracked, Erik decided. He tried to fix the loose mithril plates in the roof and floor. But they rattled and slid, and Erik grimly sensed invisible limbs probing into the breached machine.

  For the first few days Cotza guided their way with his map and obsidian, but he grew duller and more apathetic. At last he crawled into a pile of furs, dangling his stump of an arm.

  The air grew colder. At last frost began to rime the furs suspended over the metal walls. Erik rested with his back to the mithril. Behind the wall he could hear gloating laughter. His own body was a battleground. In his dreams his hands turned to wolf paws which tore into his human face. He awoke sweating despite the cold, the fur on his cheeks and hands erect and itching.

  The grease lamps leaked dim patches of light. The turtle became a place of shadows, sinister and huge, no longer a sanctuary. He approached the horses, thinking to feed them. They reared at him, shouting like huge cats, a menacing mass of hooves and ragged manes. Erik stumbled back.

  Something stirred under a heap of dirty furs. Erik poked aside the furs with a booted toe. The thing that had been Cotza blinked up at him. He stank of blood and urine. A few blue feathers still clung to his skin.

  The fake Slann held up his smashed arm. Something was growing out of the stump. It had a tiny face with a mouth that opened and closed. Cotza stared at it emptily.

  Erik pushed the furs over the degenerating creature and returned to his resting place. For a long time he clutched his arms around his body, trying to stop his trembling.

  They fell under the sway of Slaanesh once more. And once more the fists of nightmare beat at the shell of the turtle.

  This time the roof buckled. Erik clung to a shuddering wall. The horses roared. The Cotza-thing squirmed in his pile of furs, mewling. The turtle was rocked, picked up
and dropped; rollers cracked and Erik heard the belts grind the broken wood to splinters. There was a smell of sawdust.

  Still the turtle lurched on, its fraying belts spinning. But now Erik heard a sound at first as soft as a heartbeat, a tumble of hooves that grew to a stampede until at last -

  - with a crash like thunder one wall of the turtle imploded. Mithril plates shattered and ripped. The last of the lamps went out and the turtle teetered once, twice, tipped sideways.

  Erik tumbled, arms wrapped about his head. Furs and filth and grease rained down over him. He caught a glimpse of a huge, wool-covered face, of horns like swords.

  The turtle was left on its side, its rollers spinning uselessly. With a massive laugh of victory, the minotaur stomped away across the landscape.

  Erik pushed debris from his body and tried to sit up. The riven armour admitted a gloomy light. Remnants of the snapped belts littered the cabin. The warhorses were a dark crowd that fought and bit at their harnesses. Erik heard toughened leather snap like thread. The animals drummed their hooves against the nearest wall until armour plates tumbled like leaves. Then the horses burst through the wall and galloped away.

  Erik pushed his way to his feet. Cautiously he worked his way through the debris to the breached shell and peered out.

  The turtle lay in a landscape of rocks, of a few stunted trees. The sky was a dim grey. There was a scent, as if a beautiful woman had passed this way-

  Nothing moved. And yet Erik sensed inhuman eyes watching, waiting for him. Unprotected he wouldn't survive more than minutes out there. He needed the mithril.

  He found a breastplate and helmet among the debris of one wall; he tied on the breastplate with a strip of leather and jammed the helmet on his head, ignoring the scratching of its pig-iron rim. He searched for shreds of drive belt. Strips of mithril still clung to the bits of frayed leather; Erik wrapped the shreds around his limbs. He fashioned crude mittens and boots. He swathed his face with belt material, leaving only slits for his eyes.

  Then - encased in mithril, axe and sword to hand, and with the rudder-toy still lodged inside his shirt - he left the turtle.

  A kind of slime coated the machine; it dripped like mucus over Erik. The dragon head had gone. There were teeth marks in the neck stump.

  Something called after him. "Erik... Help me." And another, tiny, voice echoed the first mockingly: "Erik... Erik..."

  Cotza was lost. Erik couldn't help him. He didn't look back.

  The land seemed empty of light. It was neither day nor night. At times the horizon seemed impossibly distant, at times absurdly close, as if the world itself were swelling and subsiding like the chest of a breathing giant.

  Erik shook his head. He was on the border of the Wastes themselves. "The rules don't apply," he growled to himself. He stumbled on.

  Occasionally the lid of clouds would break and Erik could make out the stars. They flickered and wavered, as if seen through tears; but they were there. Erik squinted up at them, searching for the North Star. When he found it he turned his back and limped onwards. South. Always south.

  Occasionally he heard rumbling over the horizon, saw flashes of light. The hordes of Slaanesh...?

  Erik ran until his lungs rattled in his chest, away from the terror. But there was no sanctuary. Even at the quietest hour, even in the most lifeless wasteland, ghostly fingers clutched at him, prying and probing. He would whirl, weapons ready; but there was nothing there.

  They were watching him. Biding their time. Perhaps arguing over the spoils. He shook his head and stamped onwards. He didn't dare sleep. He knew that if he lost consciousness he would not be allowed to regain it.

  The days wore away, and with them his strength. Finally his knees buckled. He slumped to the ground, pressed face down by the weight of his armour. Dust crept over his legs and buried them.

  No - From somewhere he found the strength to push himself upright, to drag his calves from the malevolent dirt. Then, with a howl of defiance, he drove one foot ahead of the other.

  His howl had been a wolf's, he realized. He dug his fingers into palms that seemed thicker, more padded, than before. All his life he had battled to retain his humanity. Only on the battlefield had he used his Were power. But now his human strength was draining and the wolf was emerging. Would he die an animal, his mind full of blood and death?

  Eyes half-closed, body crusted with scraps of mithril, Erik the Were stumbled on through the deadly landscape.

  Dimly he noticed that the land was changing. The trees disappeared and the dust was replaced by a surface that was smooth and yielding. A coarse black grass sprouted from the pitted ground. A tuft of grass wrapped itself around Erik's foot. He clattered to the ground.

  The earth was warm. Body hot. With his ear to the surface Erik could hear a thumping. Like a huge heartbeat. Groggy, disgusted, he tried to rise, push himself away from this ground of flesh. But strands of the black hair-grass wrapped themselves around his ankles and wrists, pinning him.

  A face pushed out of the epidermis beneath him. A human face; the face of a boy. Fur sprouted over high cheekbones. The boy cried and stared into Erik's eyes. "Erik," he said softly. "Erik..."

  Erik struggled against the thongs of hair. The tortured face was his own, as a child.

  Now there was a soft growling. The face was lengthening. Whiskers sprouted from the stretching muzzle and a wide mouth grinned, filled with razor teeth. It was the face of a wolf. A female. She licked her lips, flicked her pink tongue at him.

  Her body thrust out of the epidermis, wriggled against his. The body was a human woman's. Erik barked softly, aroused. His armour was in the way; he began to shrug it aside. The lithe body of the female moved beneath him -

  "No - " His voice was a growl.

  He ripped free one arm and touched his face. There was a suggestion of a muzzle; the bones of his jaw ached unendurably, as if they were being stretched. "No, no, no - "

  The human words seemed to cut through his hot, muddled thoughts. He pulled free his limbs. The hair-grass ripped out by the root. The land bled. He stood erect, breathing hard. It was an effort to keep his balance, not to drop to all fours.

  The wolf-face laughed at him; the body writhed. But now Erik could see that the eyes were green, that the body had a single right breast.

  The stigmata of Slaanesh. Laughing, the daemon sank once more beneath the surface.

  There was a snorting, a clattering of hooves behind him. Erik whirled around.

  The warhorses. They ran towards him in a mist of sweat and saliva. Their hooves left little bloody craters in the living earth. Sudden hope filled him. If he could catch, mount one of them...

  The horses drew closer, still packed together. Now he could see how the heads and limbs of the horses thrust at random out of the herd. Nostrils flared and eyes rolled as the dozen heads snapped and bit at each other; legs clattered at random into the ground, some broken and dangling.

  Erik's hopes evaporated. He clutched his sword, braced his legs. This was no ally of Erik's. The herd was a single creature, a bag of dark skin out of which protruded the remnants of the warhorses. The horse-thing was a chimera, a monster of Darkness.

  The chimera struggled to a halt just before Erik; the nearer horses tried to rear, and twenty hooves waved at the Norseman. Erik faced it, sword and axe held ready-

  There was a bulge in the sack of flesh. A reptilian face thrust out towards him. A wide mouth opened. Two arms pushed out, beseeching. "Erik." The voice was muffled. "For pity's sake. I am still alive, and sane, inside this thing. Help me!"

  "Cotza..."

  The horse-thing reared again and advanced, looming over him. And now a face erupted out of the right arm of the buried Cotza-thing, a tiny caricature of Cotza's. "Erik," it hissed. "Erik." It lunged at his throat, snapping like a snake.

  Erik smashed at it with his axe. Cotza wailed in agony. A hoof caught Erik's chest. Armour spun away, gleaming. More hooves rattled over his head, his back.

&
nbsp; He lost his axe. He went down, arms over his head. Under the flailing hooves the living ground turned to a bloody pulp. There was a smell of urine and sweat.

  He reached deep inside himself, sought all the Were strength in his being. And unleashed it.

  With a howl that was at once wolf and human, he rose to his feet and stabbed at the thing above him, thrusting again and again.

  There was blood and dirt and pain. Erik crawled away, slumped to the ground, looked back. The chimera still raged. But it was being held from him, pushed back by a dark shape that howled and leapt. Shining teeth ripped throats and gouged eyes.

  It was a wolf. For one second it looked at Erik with a kind of understanding. Then it turned, scrambled onto the multiple back of the roaring chimera, and fought on.

  Erik struggled to his feet, pulled his tattered armour around him, and staggered away.

  The land turned to dust again. Then ice crunched beneath his feet. Erik shivered with the renewed cold. But he rejoiced. It was a natural cold, a sign that he was leaving the shadow of the Wastes.

  Day and night resumed their cycle. The stars no longer wavered. Erik dared to sleep, huddled in a blanket of snow.

  He reached an empty coast. The frozen sand crackled. A single longboat remained. Bjorn saw him approach, hailed him, came running from the little camp to greet him -

  - then hesitated a few paces away. "Erik?" he asked doubtfully.

  Erik opened his mouth - then licked his lips, worked his stiff tongue and tried again. "Bjorn. What is it?"

  "So it is you," the Norse overseer said wonderingly. "But you've changed..."

  He took Erik's arm and led him to the edge of the sea, bade him stare at his own reflection in a sheet of ice. Erik saw a smooth face, a thin tangle of beard, cheekbones that were low and free of fur. The mark of the wolf had gone.

  Erik looked back to the northern shadow... to where his despised Were half had remained to save him from the chimera. Perhaps it fought on even now.

  "Come on," Bjorn said, wrapping an arm around Erik. "Let's get you to the camp. We've got stew and mead... and we'll set off for Norsca in the morning. I'll bet you've quite a story to tell."