Hammer and Bolter 7

by Christian Dunn

  MANBANE

  Andy Hoare

  Stinking cold mud gushed into Duerr’s mouth as he crashed to the root-choked ground, his ankle turning on a twisted stump. He coughed, spewed the bulk of the vile liquid from his mouth and blew through his nose to clear his nostrils. Gasping, Duerr cursed, invoking dread spirits only one of his calling could name. Duerr was a wizard, a student of the amethyst arts, what some might in their ignorance call a necromancer. Right now, stumbling through the night-shrouded depths of the Drakwald Deeps, he felt he was closer than ever to joining those spirits he had so foolishly named but a moment before.

  Up! Gritting his teeth Duerr hauled himself erect, his grasping hands finding purchase on the clammy trunk of a thoroughly rotten tree. He cast around to regain his bearings, then looked directly up into the sickly green orb of Morrslieb. The Dark Moon was high overhead and, as such, little use as a navigational aid. But Duerr was gifted of the arcane sight, perceiving the questing tendrils of raw Chaos that seethed around it like a slithering halo of snakes. Breathing deeply, he turned west, knowing that his one, precarious hope of survival lay in reaching one of the scattered settlements along the Altdorf-Middenheim road before his pursuers overtook him.

  As if to underscore his predicament and drive him onwards, the dark woods suddenly echoed to a coarse, braying war cry. Duerr cursed once more, feeling his guts turn to ice as they threatened to void themselves there and then. The sound was unmistakably that of the savage beastmen, the Children of Old Night, of Chaos itself. Beasts that walked and talked like men, or men that fought and rutted like beasts, the nature of the vile creatures that haunted the deep woods of the Old World mattered not. The only thing Duerr cared for was that his pursuers were closing on him, the scent of man-flesh and mortal fear sending them into an animal frenzy.

  Another cry split the cold night air, and Duerr was spurred to movement. He pushed through the undergrowth in search of the path he had lost what seemed an age ago. The way ahead was even denser than the path he had already travelled, the trees more twisted and gnarled and the bracken ever more thick and treacherous. Thorns caught on his trailing robes, the deep purple fabric he had paid so much for soon tattered and stained with patches of crimson blood. His breath came in ragged gasps as he stumbled ever on, his arms flailing blindly before him to ward away branches that stabbed for his eyes from the darkness.

  Another cry, far closer than the last. Duerr hurtled through the undergrowth, barely keeping his footing as he imagined hot, stinking breath on the back of his neck and razor-sharp, jagged fangs sinking into his flesh. A heavy thud sounded from somewhere behind, as if a body ten times his own mass had shouldered into, and through, the rotten tree he had just skirted. Heavy footfalls thudded hollowly across the moss-carpeted ground, but Duerr knew they were no normal feet. These were cloven hooves, trampling the undergrowth to pulp with their passage.

  A hideous screech sounded from somewhere off to Duerr’s left, and he knew that some smaller, faster variety of beastman was attempting to outflank him or to herd him into a trap. Desperation welled inside him and his vision closed down to a tunnel. His every footfall seemed like it would be his last, for now the woods behind were filling with the cacophony of uncounted braying creatures. His imagination populated his wake with fanged, tentacled horrors slithering and stampeding through the undergrowth, every one of them intent upon dragging him to the ground and plunging their teeth into his belly to haul out his guts and suck them dry before his dying eyes. And worst of all, the small part of him that had not yet surrendered to terror knew such visions were, if anything, but the least part of the horrible truth.

  Now shadows darted amongst the trees to left and right, little more than darker patches against the black woodland backdrop. Upright creatures, agile and sinuous upon reverse-jointed legs dashed from tree to tree. The nearest beast-thing was little more than a loping silhouette, but Duerr could see it was carrying a short, crude bow in a one of its clawed hands and an arrow in the other. The thing halted, setting arrow to cord and aiming directly at Duerr.

  A guttural, incomprehensible, sound escaped Duerr’s throat as he flung himself to the ground at the exact moment the arrow sliced the air where his head had been. He rolled as he struck the ground, his hands sinking into the foetid mud almost up to his elbows. Gritting his teeth, Duerr rolled over onto his back, kicking against the leaf-strewn ground as he backed away from his pursuers.

  In an instant, they appeared. Though little more than shadows, the green light of Morrslieb glinting dully from rusted metal cleavers and ragged mail, the beastmen were mighty brutes, a head taller than most human warriors. Duerr was not a large man, and they towered over him as he desperately backed further away, his mind almost shot.

  The nearest slowed as it approached, its every movement imbued with savage, raw, animal power. It cast its head, shaped not unlike that of an ox, left and right and huffed, its foul breath billowing in the cold air. Other shapes lurked in the undergrowth behind, but backed away, evidently warned off by this mighty creature of muscle and horn.

  Silence hung heavy in the damp air, disturbed only by the ragged gasps of Duerr’s breathing and the slow, steady tread of the beast as it approached. Duerr felt a damp tree trunk at his back, and he knew that he was cornered. He knew that he was about to die.

  The thing turned its silhouetted head to look down at the form before it, and Duerr saw that one of its four curved horns was broken, snapped off at the tip in some challenge or fight for dominance. The beast halted not ten yards from Duerr’s supine form, and the breath caught in the wizard’s throat.

  ‘Morr deliver my soul–’ Duerr began. Something sharp and fast zipped through the air, cutting a stinging furrow across Duerr’s cheek. He caught movement in the undergrowth to his left, and saw there the kneeling form of the creature that had shot at him moments earlier. Already, it was notching another arrow, which this time must surely strike home and bury itself in Duerr’s flesh. In a flash, part of him recognised such a death as vastly preferable to what he could expect at the beast-leader’s hands…

  But the twisted wretch of a creature never loosed its third arrow, for the leader took a deep breath that seemed almost to draw the canopy down towards it, then unleashed such a dirge of a war cry that Duerr was forced back against the rotting tree. As the breath was forced from his lungs he screwed his eyes tight shut against a sudden gale that stank of mould and the earth between dead roots. Mindless with terror and deafened to all but the pounding of his own heart, Duerr scrambled around the trunk he was backed against. He stumbled against a looped root, lost his grip and struck his head against the hollow tree, the sudden impact bringing him somewhat back to his senses, though terror still threatened to overwhelm him. He looked desperately around and saw that a wide, open space lay behind the tree, though he had no time to gaze into the inky darkness.

  The bellowing of the beast-leader had continued all the while, a steady drone of animal fury, but now it cut out with shocking abruptness. The damp air was silent once more, and Duerr could not help but peek cautiously around the tree trunk, holding his breath so as not to be betrayed by his own fear.

  The smaller creature cringed at the leader’s feet with its forehead, studded with two nub-like horns, pressed firmly into the soft ground in abject supplication. The leader reared above its underling, each half of the broken shortbow held in a clenched fist. Duerr’s eyes widened in horror as the leader slowly raised a cloven foot over the smaller creature’s head, the whipcord muscles of its leg tensed in readiness.

  With a start, Duerr realised that he had a chance of escape, and he turned his head from the gristly scene to the open space at his bac
k. At that very instant, he heard the leader’s hoof come down with a wet thud, and he knew that the smaller beastman had received the ultimate punishment for the crime of interjecting in its lord’s kill.

  That very thought spurred Duerr to push himself from the tree trunk and power forwards blindly into the darkness. The instant he was moving he heard the unmistakable sound of the beastmen pursuing. He turned his head as he ran, glimpsing the brute rounding the tree, following after him. His attention elsewhere than on the ground he was crossing, Duerr lost his footing on the wet soil, his momentum propelling him forward several more steps before he slammed painfully down, the breath driven from his lungs by the force of the impact.

  Duerr lay stunned for a moment, his face in the mud, knowing that he would be fortunate indeed to die as the twisted underling who had shot at him had. In what he assumed would be his final moments, Duerr found some peace.

  After what felt like an age, death was yet to come. Duerr opened his eyes, not having realised that they were shut. He blinked and strained his ears, but all he heard was the sound of the forest: the swaying of branches in a light wind and the creaking of ancient bowers. He glanced around but saw no sign of any murderous beast-thing nearby. Blinking more rapidly, he dared look up then rolled onto his side and looked about.

  Duerr was lying in an expanse of rough ground, a glade or clearing of some sort, though he could not tell if it was natural or manmade. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the tree line a scant twenty yards before him was lined with beastmen, dozens of heavily muscled, horned, beast-headed abominations, all stood in silence with dark eyes glowering straight at him. The stillness was quite shocking in the aftermath of the desperate pursuit through the forest, and more disquieting still because at any moment the beasts could simply stride forward and tear Duerr limb from limb. Why, Duerr thought as his mind struggled to take in the scene, did they not simply do so?

  ‘They fear this place,’ a dry, death-rattle voice sounded from somewhere behind Duerr. That voice injected ice water directly into his veins, yet the effect upon the beastmen was greater still. They visibly shrank back from it like cringing animals, cornered and desperate for an escape route.

  ‘And most of all,’ the unseen speaker continued, ‘they fear me.’

  At that, the assembled beastmen backed away from the shadowed tree line, slowly at first, as if retreating from a foe that might lash out at any moment. Then they were gone, melting into the undergrowth silently without disturbing so much as a leaf. Duerr watched for long minutes, unwilling to trust that his would-be murderers were gone. He studied the shadows beneath the canopy and then turned slowly to locate the source of his deliverance.

  The centre of the wide clearing was dominated by a tower: circular and tall, crooked and ramshackle. Its blocks were rough-hewn and irregular, black and glistening damply in the wan light of the Dark Moon. Ivy crept upwards, the leaves shimmering with silvered spider’s webs and wet moss clothed vast swathes of the surface. As Duerr’s glance climbed upwards, he saw dark, slit-like windows, their stone frames engraved with ancient devices rarely seen in the architecture of the Empire. At the summit, he could just make out an open-topped, crenulated turret set apart from the main structure, seeming like it must surely fall away and topple to the ground far below.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ the dry voice crackled from the base of the tower. Duerr looked to a dark portal set in its base and the door – heavy oak, iron-reinforced – swung partly inwards. ‘Before they return.’

  Galvanised to sudden motion by the thought of the beastmen reappearing from the trees, Duerr climbed shakily to his feet and stumbled towards the doorway. Glancing over his shoulder one last time, he passed through, the door swinging on screeching hinges and slamming shut behind him, plunging him into darkness far deeper than the moonlit night outside.

  Only as Duerr had begun the ascent up the winding spiral stairs within the tower had he realised just how bone weary he truly was. The events of the last few hours had blurred into a terrible, confused melange of desperation and panic, which he was unable to string together into a coherent chain of events. How long ago had it been since the sun had set? How long since the beastmen had discovered him wandering lost through the haunted glades of the Drakwald Deeps?

  As he climbed the stairs, one leaden step at a time, he gave up trying to make sense of any of it. He looked around as he climbed the narrow flight, which turned every few steps so that he became increasingly dizzy the higher he climbed. The stairs were so narrow and steep that he could set his hands upon them without bending over, which was fortunate because he was so tired he was almost reduced to climbing up on hands and knees.

  At length, Duerr came upon a landing. It was dark, but the wan, sickly light of Morrslieb spilled in through an ached window, lending a half-light glow to the numerous objects strewn all about. As his eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, Duerr saw that the walls were hung with all manner of artefacts, from blades of truly ancient pattern to shields the likes of which he had only seen in the most esoteric tomes of the Colleges of Magic. Fragments of armour were set in nooks, each coated in a layer of dust that had clearly not been disturbed in decades, perhaps even centuries. One floor to ceiling nook contained row upon row of glass containers, ranging from tiny phials to huge bell jars, the shoulders draped in the grey dust of ages and the contents dark and obscured.

  A coldness settled upon Duerr’s soul as his eyes grew more used to the gloomy interior and he took in the collection of objects arranged about the landing. As a student of Amethyst magic – the realms of the spirit, of dark dreams and of death, Duerr was well used to dabbling in matters most would find more than a little unsettling. But there was something else here, something old, something…

  ‘Welcome…’ the same parchment-dry voice that Duerr had heard earlier intoned. He cast about the dark landing, but saw nothing more alive than the spiders that haunted the dusty webs strewn across every surface. His breath quickening, Duerr prepared to answer, but was interrupted before a word had left his lips. ‘The uppermost chamber, boy,’ the voice said, a note of impatience evident. ‘Don’t keep me waiting.’

  ‘Sit,’ the old man ordered as Duerr came finally to the topmost chamber in the tower, excepting a small turret which he saw was accessible from a low side door. ‘Rest.’

  Duerr stepped over the threshold into a circular chamber that occupied the entire storey, finally coming face to face with the man who had apparently saved him from the beastmen. The chamber was lit by flickering blue and green flames dancing in archaic wall sconces, and it took Duerr’s eyes long moments to locate the speaker.

  To describe the man as old would be a drastic understatement. The crooked, black-robed individual before him was truly ancient. His robes were ragged, but had clearly been made of the very finest material, for they were patterned in intricate runes and sigils in thread of gold and silver. The ancient’s hands were as twisted and gnarled as the trees outside, his wrists and fingers decorated with bands and jewels that whispered to Duerr of dusty tombs and long dead cities.

  Duerr looked into the ancient’s face and his heart froze, just for an instant. For a moment, he had thought he was looking at a dry, wind-blasted skull, the mouth set in a rictus grin, the eyes hollow pits of darkness. Then the effect passed as the green and blue light flickering from the wall sconces changed its rhythm. Life, of a sort, glinted from the depths of the eye-sockets and the raw bone of the skull revealed itself to be covered with a paper-thin layer of dry, liver-spotted skin. Still, Duerr thought as he steadied himself upon the high back of a nearby chair, there was scant muscle and flesh between skin and bone, the sharp edges of the skull threatening to tear through the thin covering.

  ‘Please,’ the ancient insisted, a wizened arm gesturing to the chair Duerr was leaning against. Duerr looked down at the dusty, black velvet padding, before his mind caught up with him. He nodded, gathering his wits
, and seated himself.

  ‘Well then,’ the ancient said. ‘So long has it been since I had a visitor pay me court. Your name, sir?’

  Duerr opened his mouth to speak, then caught himself, his throat so dry he thought he might gag. It was the dust in the air, he realised, and the residue of mud and fear left over from his flight through the Drakwald. He coughed, and tried to speak.

  ‘Where are my manners?’ said the ancient, a dry chuckle sounding from somewhere inside his robes. ‘Where indeed?’ he continued as he shuffled across the faded, yet still ornate, Arabyan carpet. At length, he reached a cabinet seemingly carved of ivory and opened its doors, the creaking of the dry hinges shockingly loud in the confines of the chamber. The ancient muttered and chuckled as he withdrew a pair of crystal goblets and a decanter filled with liquid so dark it appeared black in the flickering illumination cast by the sconces. As the old man shuffled back the way he had come, Duerr risked a furtive glance about the chamber.

  If the landing lower down the tower had been cluttered, this place was overrun with artefacts. Every square foot of the wall was occupied, most of it by curved shelves housing volume after volume of ancient tomes. He squinted as he sought to read the text inset in gold at the spines, then his breath caught in his throat and his eyes widened in disbelief. Mroggdok K’Thing’s Testimony! He could scarcely believe that such a priceless work might be secreted away in the tower of some mad old wizard in the depths of the Drakwald. He scanned the spines of the next few volumes, his disbelief growing all the while. There were several volumes of Drivot’s Diatribes, copies of which he had glimpsed once in the Colleges of Magic, but never been allowed to read. Next was a tattered, rat-chewed copy of Trakall’s Paradox, a tome he knew by its fell reputation, but was unaware that any copy existed within the borders of the Empire.

  ‘Trakall…’ the old man sneered as he leaned over Duerr, a goblet of dark liquor proffered before him. The sudden speech made Duerr start and he felt suddenly guilty for his curiosity, as if he were a student again, caught rifling in the ingredients store.