the cold hand of betrayal

by ich du

  'The Foul Pantheon are jealous masters, warrior. In the end they will always betray those who serve them. Always.'

  He felt a breath catch in his throat as Reya spoke. The treetops above seemed to shrink away into the skies around the scabrous face of the woman, her presence causing a sudden wave of revulsion to set his blood afire. The soothing calm that had dulled his pain started to drain away, dispelled by the mounting rage within his soul.

  He tried to move his punished form but found that he could not, his injuries too severe.

  'Rest now. It's all I can to halt the pain. Be at peace. Shallya shows mercy to all, warrior, even to those who are no longer able to recall how to practise compassion and empathy.'

  Her words were little more than a buzzing in his ears and felt his heart pounding in his chest now, the events of the past peeling away in layers in his shattered mind.

  He felt his emerging soul shuddering with revulsion as he recalled speaking the names of the gods, of Sigmar and Morr, of Ulric and Myrmidia. Gods he had once revered, long ago. Gods he had forsaken, renounced with all his heart and soul. The gods of the enemy.

  Ulgoth, valiant Knight Panther did not exist. He had never existed.

  Uulguth, Champion of the Dark Pantheon, lifted his head and looked down at his battered, dying body. Gone were the exotic furs that had covered his proud armour, replaced instead with the rotting skins of his enemies. His shining silver plate was a dull black, pregnant with trophies and totems dedicated to the four gods of Chaos. Even now, as the enchantment of the Shallyan witch slipped away, he still felt a tingle of revulsion in his soul as he looked upon his own debased form.

  'Damn you, witch...' he whispered, fighting to lift his blackened, blood-slicked hands. Dark blood began to spray from his lips as he spoke, his voice a terrible, rattling rasp. 'I spit on your bitch goddess and her benevolent magicks. You will pay for what you made me do, Shallyan sow. By the Dark Gods, I swear this...'

  Reya sighed and placed her hand upon his chest. There was no hatred or revulsion in her eyes, only pity.

  'Please understand, I could not allow you or your warriors to hurt the children. I beseeched her mercy. She answered my prayer with you. The power and the purity of the herciful goddess can wash away the darkness from any soul, if even for only a short time.'

  'Do you see, lost one? You were purified, cleansed of sin. You were yourself again, if only for one last, glorious time.'

  Uulguth began to shake and convulse, the light around him starting to grow dim. Reya shook her head slowly and hushed him, running a gentle hand across his scarred grey face. Even as he felt his body growing cold and his breath coming in ragged gasps he could not let go of the burning rage within his soul.

  He had betrayed his gods while under this witch's spell. He had slaughtered his own men, filled with a zeal and rage not his own.

  He began to snarl, his ruined gauntlets clattering as he raised them slowly towards the woman's neck.

  'I die a servant of Chaos. I served the Ruinous Powers in life and I do so in death. Even your damned goddess cannot change that.'

  Reya pushed his hands away softly and without effort. 'Faith,' Reya answered, her eyes still filled with forgiveness, 'is the most powerful weapon of all. It was faith, true faith that saved us. Before you die, warrior, ask yourself this. Where are your gods now? They have abandoned you. You will find neither comfort nor forgiveness in death.'

  'Shallya restored your honour and zeal. She washed away the filth and the sin within you. She brought the true warrior to the surface and you shone, lost one. You shone like the sun once again, if only for a moment.'

  'Damn you, whore. I hope your death is a slow, lingering one. I hope you die screaming in agony. I hope the red pox sloughs the skin from your palsied bones and rots the little brats alive. Damn y-'

  SHE MET HIS burning gaze for a moment and held it until the light finally left his eyes and his quaking body fell still.

  'Go with peace,' Reya whispered, shedding a single glistening tear.

  THE DAEMON'S GIFT

  by Robert Baumgartner

  'HERE THEY COME.' Aelfir said. He grinned, showing teeth filed to points. Rain lashed the night, drenching the cold stones that rose above the warband. Great fires burned despite the rain, the water sizzling as it fell on the burning wood. In the light of the fires twisted shapes of beasts could be seen, monstrous blends of man and animal with cruel horns that cast distorted shadows as they dashed among the stones, rushing up the sides of the ancient temple mound toward the waiting Orning warriors.

  'Let us go and greet them,' said Khojin, resplendent in silver armour that gleamed even in the rain. 'Mugin, sound the charge.'

  A bone whistle blew, a piercing blast that caused Aelfir's head to ache. Aelfir charged down the mound, rushing beside Khojin into the teeth of the beasts' advance. The shock of the Northmen's charge overwhelmed the beasts at first, but the men were swiftly surrounded. The darkness grew around them as the fires died and the beasts howled, thirsting for blood.

  As the screams of the dying echoed in his ears, Aelfir called upon his god, 'Tchar. Tchar. Blood and souls for you. Blood and souls for the Old One of the Mound!'

  Khojin roared aloud, 'Tchar! By my oath to you, send me the Fire of Transformation in my hour of need!'

  Golden mouths opened in Khojin's dark skin and in his silver armour. The mouths sang a strange song in no tongue Aelfir knew, and from them a golden fire began to flow, spilling onto the earth around Khojin and rising about the embattled men. The strength of the beasts seemed to fail in the golden fire and the warband took new heart. Ulla the shieldmaiden laughed aloud, and recklessly ran to Khojin to embrace him.

  Aelfir felt the eye of Tchar upon him in that place as men fell about him, and he cut down beast after beast. As the blood of man and beast mingled on the mound, he saw the souls of the beasts and of men shining forth like blue light under their skins. And he saw from the corner of his eye a dark shape moving among the slain, with mad blue eyes, crouching to chew upon the fallen before the souls flew from their flesh. A daemon walks among us, he thought.

  The bone whistle shrilled again, and Aelfir winced in pain. From the summit of the mound Khojin's Tarkhal riders charged, plainsmen of the eastern steppes riding wildly down upon the beasts. Kitsa, Aelfir's beloved, rode at the head of the riders with her black hair flying like a flag, crashing into the beasts and scattering them, riding them down among the stones. As the golden fire faded and darkness fell over the battlefield, the Tarkhals screamed their triumph.

  THREE DAYS LATER the warband gathered at the mouth of a great cave under high cliffs. A ramshackle wall of wood and bone, adorned with tattered banners of gold and blue, blocked the mouth of the cave. Dead men hung from the wall, their blond hair flowing with the banners in the breeze that drove a cold smell of rot against the banners of the warband. Overhead, eagles soared in the clear blue sky. Aelfir sat on his borrowed horse uneasily, tensing as the grey backed away from the wall, lifting its hooves high from the sucking mud of the track. He did not understand what had happened to his home.

  'Aelfir.' Khojin said, 'when we left the south lands and followed the call of the gods to Middenheim, my people and I were lordless and landless. You called us to join you, here in the north, promising wide lands and a safe dwelling where we might gather our strength to go south again. You and I are blood brothers, and I have given you my sister, Kitsa, but I do not think I would have brought my people here had I known what was waiting.'

  The two men turned their horses from the wall towards the waiting warband. The tribesmen sat on horseback, loosely gathered about their banners under the looming Tarkhal wagons. Chained behind the wagons slaves sat huddled in their misery, men and women dressed in rags with bare and bleeding feet.

  Khojin cried aloud, 'Tarkhals! Hear me! Aelfir has brought us to this place, and Tchar has blessed his path! Though the hold here looks grim, we will find shelter from the winter with his father, Orn, and gat
her our strength again!'

  The mass of the Tarkhal riders, young men with the broad faces and narrow eyes of the eastern steppes, screamed repeatedly, throwing back their heads and shrieking their approval of their chieftain. They wore black beards and greased their long black hair with fat, and red cloaks hung over their bare chests. The Ornings, sullen and pale, blond of hair and wrapped in furs, sat silently, unsure of the home they had sought for so long.

  THE WARBAND ENTERED the city, passing through a gap in the wall. They grew grim as they heard strange cries echo among the longhouses. The staves that made up the house walls had been warped into strange shapes and the shingles on the roofs bore half formed faces. As they rode down the empty streets, Khojin peered at the runes scrawled upon the wooden buildings. 'Mighty magic was done here.' he said to Aelfir, 'but for good or ill I cannot tell. These runes should channel the raw power of the gods into the very city itself, but, why?'

  A cry came from the Tarkhal scouts. A rider galloped up to Khojin. 'Lord, there are still men in the city! But they are strange, mad, and they show the touch of the gods upon their bodies.'

  'Where?' asked Khojin.

  'Did they speak?' asked Aelfir. 'Was there a winged man among them?'

  'We saw no winged man.' said the scout. 'They were naked but for rags, even the women among them. They stood upon the roofs of the longhouses and spoke in words we could not understand. We feared them, so we fled.'

  'Batu you dog!' Khojin shouted. 'Lead us to them!'

  Khojin drove Batu before him, beating him with the flat of his sword. When they reached the other scouts they galloped down the dirt lanes of the city. Aelfir, a poor rider, was hard pressed to keep up.

  'Khojin!' he cried realizing where they were. 'Beware! We draw near the river and the fields of the dead!'

  The Tarkhals clattered to a halt before a narrow bridge over a dark, swift flowing river. As Aelfir forced his mount to stop beside them he saw on the far side of the water men and women he recognized as kin walking deeper into fields of bones. Scattered across the fields were corpses tied upright to stakes, adorned in armour and bright robes - the old lords of his tribe. Aelfir's kinsmen moved as if in a trance, wandering among the bones, singing in weird, high voices.

  As the riders sat in silence, a harsh and grating voice spoke from behind them, 'Leave them, the gods have taken their minds.'

  AELFIR LOOKED UP to his father in the high seat, masked and hooded, covered in great robes that hid all, and wondered what had gone so wrong. His father was speaking to Khojin about the runes he had scrawled on the longhouses.

  'By the power of those runes and the storm of the gods I have joined to my city,' Orn said. 'I shall endure as long as it shall stand.'

  'But Orn,' Khojin said, 'what has happened to your people?'

  'The power of the ritual was too great,' Orn said. 'The storm destroyed their minds. I alone remain, but you shall be my new people. The Ornings and the Tarkhals shall join and my city will be full of life again. Khojin, take an Orning maiden and make her your bride. Aelfir, marry a Tarkhal maiden. I hear you have one already picked out.'

  THE NEXT DAY Aelfir sat in a daze as the tribe feasted. He remembered the wedding ceremony that had taken place that morning, sanctified by the sacrifice of the nine gifts of Tchar. The corpses of the men who were the last and most important of Tchar's gifts sat at a table a little way from him, cleaned and arrayed in finery, a hearty spread of mead and food arrayed before them.

  'As you clasp hands together above this fire,' Orn had intoned while Ulla and Khojin and Aelfir and Kitsa stood before him, 'remember your oaths to each other, spoken and sealed before this high seat, and this holy flame of Tchar.'

  A sudden silence broke his reverie. A tall young man in a grey cloak with an unsheathed sword and glaring blue eyes was striding down the length of the hall. 'Orn!' the swordsman cried. 'Orn! I have come for you!'

  None dared approach as the warrior stalked to the high seat. Aelfir, at the last moment, leapt up but was dashed aside. Orn stood in silence as the warrior ripped aside his robes, showing withering, discoloured flesh and deformed stumps where the wings Aelfir remembered had once stretched.

  'Tchar's mercy is gone, and his judgment has come!' said the warrior. He turned to the staring tribesmen, saying, 'I give this gift to the one who can claim it.' and drove the sword into Orn's chest, leaving it there.

  As the warrior strode away, the men rose from their seats to slay him, but they stopped in wonder and terror at the transformation that struck Orn. Orn's flesh grew warped and twisted, his bones and muscle straining at his stretching, tearing skin. Orn fell onto all fours and began to stumble about the room, moaning piteously.

  Khojin said, 'The sword is a gift from Tchar. Back, all of you. I will take the sword from this spawn.'

  But as Khojin approached the spawn suddenly tensed and lashed out with its forelegs, striking Khojin to the ground. The Tarkhals ran to aid their chosen, but none dared to take the sword until Aelfir approached.

  As Aelfir drew near the spawn grew quiet. He stepped forward and laid his hand upon the hilt of the sword. He saw out of the corner of his eye a low, dark shadow that seemed to look on with malevolent approval. The sword seemed to fall out into his hand.

  'How?' Khojin snarled in wonder, 'But, it is said the were know their own.'

  The twisted shape shuddered. Orn's slack face, with its too-wide mouth began to mutter and mumble a continuous stream of noise that rose into a high wailing. The spawn forced its way through the doors of the great hall and fled, wailing, into the darkness of the city.

  'AELFIR, WHAT PRICE would you ask for that sword?' Khojin demanded. 'Whatever it is, I can pay. Do you want gold? Slaves? Horses? Warriors for your warband?'

  'I have what I want,' Aelfir said.

  'As Tchar wills it,' Khojin sneered, limping to the high seat. His wounds were bandaged and a cup was set before him, but his eyes never left Aelfir. Ulla went to Khojin and embraced him, happily whispering into his ear, but his eyes remained cold as he absently stroked her golden hair.

  The warriors of the Tarkhals and the Ornings gathered about Aelfir and Kitsa, admiring the blade and guessing about its origins.

  'Daemon-forged,' a gaunt Tarkhal said.

  'Yah,' said a badly scarred Orning. 'A blade out of the sagas of old.'

  'I will make my own saga wielding it,' Aelfir declared.

  'If I had a blade like that, I would never sell it,' said Mugin, 'but saying no to a chosen is a good way to end up dead.'

  'With this blade,' said Aelfir, 'I can say what I want to anyone I want. Come, Kitsa, the old women have prepared an old hall for me near the river.'

  'Let me say goodbye to Khojin and Ulla first,' Kitsa replied.

  As Kitsa walked up the hall to the high seat, Khojin's eyes seized upon her. When she reached the high seat, Kitsa told Khojin and Ulla that she and Aelfir were leaving. 'So soon?' Ulla laughed. 'You're married now, you can do it all the time. Why hurry?'

  Kitsa blushed, and laughed. Khojin asked Ulla for a moment alone with Kitsa. After Ulla went to find a drink and say goodbye to Aelfir, Khojin turned to Kitsa and whispered urgently, 'Kitsa, you must make him give me that sword!'

  'Khojin,' she said. 'He never will.'

  'Would you be a widow?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I mean there cannot be two masters in a house, two chieftains in a tribe. The blade is a mighty sign of Tchar's favour. If I am to lead these people, I must have it. If he will not give me the blade I must take it and he must die.'

  'Khojin,' she said. 'No. I swore an oath to him.'

  'Yes,' he said, 'you are a Tarkhal, bound to me by blood and clan. I swore an oath, too, but he is an outsider. Already he has defied me. Tonight you must kill him and get me the sword. If you do not, there will be war between us, Aelfir and I, and your hands will not be clean of the blood that is shed.'

  'Khojin, I cannot.'

  'You must.'

 
Kitsa rejoined Aelfir at the door, her face downcast. 'Kitsa, don't look so joyous,' he said. 'The other girls will be jealous.'

  She broke into tears.

  THE OLD WOMEN of the tribe lit their way to Aelfir's hall with raised torches, singing bawdy songs until they ducked beneath the low lintel of his door. But when they were left alone, and the fire sank low in the hearth, Kitsa was inconsolable and Aelfir was unsure. They slept apart. He gave her the bed and slept on a bench next to the fire.

  As the night drew on, Kitsa awoke. She crept from her bed silently and stood above Aelfir as he slept. The dying light of the fire caught upon a gleam of steel in her left hand. She raised the dagger, stopped, and raised it again. She shook, put the dagger away, and paced before her sleeping lover. The fire was only embers when she heard harsh whispers at the door of the hall. She saw that Aelfir stirred and with a look of fear took the sword from where it lay by his side.

  Kitsa turned to the door and put her hand upon the latch. When she opened the door Khojin was there with many Tarkhal tribesmen bearing torches. 'Khojin, what are you doing?' she asked.

  'What you fear to do,' he said.

  'No. Here is the sword. Take it and go.'

  At that moment, Aelfir awoke. He saw his sword being passed through the door and leapt to his feet. 'Kitsa, no!' he shouted, grabbing her by her black hair and throwing her back from the door. Her head struck a corner of the bed and she lay very still.

  Khojin howled when he saw Kitsa pulled back from the door. 'Orning, give me back my sister!'

  'Give me my sword, thief!' Aelfir replied.

  Aelfir heard Khojin speak to his men in the language of the Tarkhals. He could not tell what was said, but moments later a man's shadow darkened the door and a Tarkhal warrior ducked under the low lintel. For a moment the man was vulnerable and Aelfir brought his fist down hard on the back of the man's head, knocking him to the floor. Aelfir quickly took the man's sword and slew him, crying out, 'Khojin, this one dies for Tchar!'

  As he said it the room darkened and he felt a presence. A low, dark shape seemed to stand in the farthest corner from the fire. He caught the gleam of eyes and heard whispering, malevolent, gleeful chattering at the edge of hearing.