by Dan Abnett
He and Dalvar had just stepped into the entryway when the darkness around them erupted in howls and bestial roars, and broad, bare feet slapped across the slate tiles. Malus caught a glimpse of a huge, horned, muscular form rearing up in the lantern light, then a heavy club smashed into his left vambrace and threw the lantern from his hands. The highborn retreated, raising his sword as the lantern shattered on the tiles, scattering burning oil across the floor.
Malus’ attacker let out another inhuman roar and rushed at the highborn with his club held high. The weak light of the burning oil gleamed on a broad, heavily muscled chest fringed with black, wiry hair and powerful, furred legs that terminated in large hooves. The monster was close to seven feet tall and looked far stronger than any druchii, and moved with the speed of a plains lion.
As fast as the monster was though, the highborn was faster still. As the man-beast charged, Malus leapt forwards as well, ducking beneath the monster’s thick arms and stabbing his sword deep into its belly. The sword pierced the monster’s thick wall of abdominal muscle and the power of its charge forced the blade through its body, grating against its spine as it punched out through the creature’s back.
The man-beast bellowed in shock and anger, doubling up around the druchii sword, but its left hand reached over and caught Malus by the hair. It flung him backwards against the nearby wall; the highborn’s head struck the stone and sparks exploded across his vision. Then came the creature’s club, smashing against his thick breastplate, and Malus thought he’d been kicked in the chest by a god.
Malus bounced off the stone wall and fell to the ground, gasping for air. The armour plate was the only thing that had saved him, and even then he could tell that the tough, flexible steel was deeply dented just to the left of his heart. The club smashed down again, this time striking the wall and part of his shoulder, and the joint flared with a sharp spike of pain. Malus cried out in pain and anger, fumbling a long dagger from a sheath in his boot. When the man-beast lifted his dub once more, Malus leapt from the ground and grappled the huge creature, stabbing again and again into the monster’s chest and throat.
The monster roared, its mouth right above the highborn’s left ear. Malus could smell the thing’s fetid breath, and was battered by the tips of thick tusks or horns as the creature tossed its head in pain. Hot, bitter blood washed down the monster’s chest, and its bellows turned to a choking rattle.
Once again, the monster’s broad, callused hand grabbed Malus by the hair and neck and tried to pull him free, but the highborn snarled in pain and held on, driving the knife again and again into the man-beast’s body. The heavy club tumbled to the floor, but the highborn’s triumph was short-lived as the beast smashed its right fist into the side of his head, once, twice and then a third time that sent him sprawling across the floor.
Stunned and disoriented, Malus scrambled to regain his feet. There were shouts and screams echoing in the empty room, and the beasts seemed to be everywhere. A fur-covered figure crashed into him, bearing him down, and the highborn sank his teeth into the thing’s torn and bloody throat before he realised that it was in its death throes. A moment later, the man-beast died, and Malus rolled the creature off himself. His sword was still buried to the hilt in its abdomen.
The ambush was as brief as it was brutal. As Malus recovered his senses he saw another monster topple onto the still-burning oil, but the dagger protruding from the creature’s eye spared the beast the agony of burning alive. Two other creatures sped in front of the flickering light, arms and legs flashing as they ran for the open doorway “Stop!” Malus roared as they ran headlong into the courtyard, and the highborn staggered to his feet in pursuit.
A nauglir bellowed a challenge just as Malus reached the doorway. The beastmen — for there was no better term to describe them — stood frozen in place just a few feet from the doors as seven cold ones stalked their way. The cold ones were fanning out in a rough semicircle to surround and pin their prey against the wall of the tower.
“Stand!” Malus commanded, his voice crackling with authority. All seven of the war-beasts paused, their training briefly overcoming instinct.
The beastmen turned at the sound of his voice and fell to their knees, bleating words in a language Malus had never heard before. In the grey light of day, the highborn saw that the creatures were both powerfully built and covered with black fur except across their biceps and chest. Their legs ended in glossy black hooves, and their fingers were tipped in thick, claw-like nails. The beastmen had heads like great rams, with black eyes and heavy, curved horns that sprouted from their foreheads and hung down to their chests. One wore a bracelet of crude, beaten gold around his right wrist, while the other had a necklace of bone and assorted feathers hanging around his thick neck. As far as Malus could tell, the twisted creatures were pleading for their lives.
Vanhir and one of Dalvar’s men came from the gatehouse at a dead run, crossbows in their hands. The side of Malus’ face throbbed, and blood dripped on his neck from deep gouges in his cheek and ear. The rest of the water party stumbled out into the light, many covered in blood themselves.
“How many attackers?” Malus asked.
Dalvar shook his head, pressing a hand to a cut on his cheek. Lhunara wiped her hair from her eyes. “Five, all told. Those two ran as soon as they realised they were the only ones left.”
Malus turned to Vanhir. “What are they?” he said, pointing to the two creatures.
The retainer shrugged. “Beastmen.” As the highborn’s expression paled with rage, Vanhir quickly added, “The Autarii say they live in loose tribes in the farther reaches of the Wastes, where the mystical energies warp their bodies into blasphemous shapes. They sometimes raid our watchtowers along the frontier, but the Shades slay any that trespass in the hills.”
“Can you speak their language?”
“Certainly not, my lord,” Vanhir replied, offended by the very idea. “I don’t think even the Autarii understand them.”
“Then they aren’t of much use to me besides sport,” Malus growled. “Why do you suppose they are here?”
“I’m a knight of the Hag, my lord, not some damned oracle,” Vanhir said archly. “If I had to guess, I would suppose they were fugitives of some kind. These beasts typically travel in bands hundreds strong — for one reason or another, these are far away from their litter mates.”
Malus rubbed his chin thoughtfully, wincing as the motion set his torn ear to aching. “They’re from farther north, you said?”
Vanhir nodded. “Farther north than here, at least.”
The highborn eyed the beastmen speculatively, then strode quickly over to Spite’s side. He fumbled through his saddlebag and produced the wire-wrapped skull. Malus returned to the two creatures and showed the relic to them both. “Kul Hadar?” Malus asked. “Kul Hadar?”
One of the beastmen let out a cry of surprise. “Hadar! Hadar!” it grunted, pointing at the skull, then gobbled out a long string of gibberish.
Malus smiled. “That’s better.” He turned to his men. “It appears we have a guide,” he said, pointing to the babbling creature. “That one lives. The other one will entertain us tonight.”
The druchii smiled, their eyes glittering at the prospect of an evening’s flirtation with darkness. One night’s revelry would be good for morale — tomorrow, Malus felt, they would be at the edge of the forest that skirted the mountain.
And then Kul Hadar, he thought, smiling with anticipation.
“Are you certain?” Malus asked, feeling a fist close about his heart.
The druchii looked from Dalvar to Malus, clearly nervous at earning the highborn’s undivided attention. “Y-yes, my lord. The nomads wore furs, but these riders had on black cloaks and rode proper horses.”
Malus stepped to the closest gatehouse window. The sun had only just cleared the horizon, and already hot gusts of dusty wind blew against his face. From this height he could see a long way past the broken walls and across the desol
ate plain. “How far would you say?”
The retainer shrugged helplessly. “Half a day, my lord? Less than five miles, I think. I only caught a glimpse as the sunlight silhouetted them along one of the ridgelines. The way distances are warped here. Who can say for certain?”
“Urial’s riders must have followed us through the Wighthallows,” Dalvar said, his face paling. “You don’t suppose they fought their way through the wights?”
“Perhaps,” Malus growled. “Or perhaps they’re close enough to being dead themselves that the wights couldn’t tell the difference. It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving. Now.” The highborn headed swiftly for the stairs.
Out in the courtyard the warband was saddling the cold ones for the day’s travel. For the first time in days the warriors were talking easily among themselves, their humour improved by the entertainment of the previous night.
The beastman hung from an improvised rack they’d built with steel bars taken from the old forge. The creature’s prodigious endurance had prolonged the revels well into the early morning hours, until, drunk with torture and running short of time, the warband had adopted much cruder tactics to bring the celebrations to an end. The beastman now resembled nothing so much as a badly butchered slab of meat, its blood staining the sand around the rack. The surviving beastman didn’t seem overly troubled by the death of its companion; it had watched the revels with some curiosity once he’d been persuaded that he wasn’t about to be the next victim.
Now it stood among the druchii as they loaded the animals, running its hands along its arms and chest with a troubled look on its face. It had taken a large amount of the nauglir slime to cover his scent so the cold ones would accept him. Malus hoped they hadn’t accidentally poisoned their guide. Lhunara and Dalvar alike tried to tie the beastman’s hands, but Malus had prevented them despite their heated objections. He wanted the creature to think they were potential allies, not captors.
If the beastman thought it had a chance of being released when they reached Kul Hadar, it would be more inclined to cooperate and get the whole thing over with. Plus, the highborn hoped it sent a signal to the creature: It doesn’t matter to us if you try to run. You can’t escape us, no matter what you try.
They were almost ready. Malus considered the dead beastman. It would be easy enough to pull the corpse down and conceal it in one of the buildings. After a moment’s thought he shrugged in resignation. Let the riders find the body and traces that they’d been here. With luck they would search the rest of the city for them and waste precious time while the druchii escaped. “Sa’an’ishar!” he cried. “Mount up! We leave in five minutes!”
The warband immediately bent themselves to finishing their last-minute tasks. Malus gathered Spite’s saddle and headed for his mount. Lhunara was waiting for him, her expression troubled. “What’s happened, my lord?”
“Urial’s riders,” he said with a grunt as he threw the heavy saddle over Spite’s back. “The sentry thinks he saw them on the plains, about half a day’s ride away. I want to put as much distance between them and us as possible.”
The retainer muttered a curse under her breath. She eyed the beastman warily. “Do you think you can trust it?”
“I think after what it saw last night it knows that it’ll be next unless it gives me exactly what I want.”
“That was a wise decision last night, my lord. The men seem much improved.” Lhunara glanced sidelong at him as Malus tightened the saddle’s girth strap. “Or does this have something to do with the conversation you had with Dalvar underneath the keep?”
Malus grinned. “Clever girl. A bit of both, I think. Dalvar and I have come to an understanding of sorts. He and his men have sworn themselves to me.”
“To you? What of Nagaira?”
“They’ve seen enough to believe that my dear sister has washed her hands of them. Thus, they no longer consider themselves in her employ.”
“Your sister will not be pleased.”
“At this point I am beyond caring what my dear sister thinks.” Malus stood and leaned close to her. “It’s possible that this is all an elaborate scheme to punish both Urial and myself. She’s sent me out here with my brother’s precious relic in the hopes that I’ll be lost forever.”
Lhunara looked grim. “So far I’d say she’s succeeding. So why continue this fool’s errand? Why not head back for the Hag?”
“Because Urial is there, and my former allies, and their contract with the temple,” Malus hissed. “Nagaira has thought this through carefully. If I stay here in the Wastes, I die. If I return empty-handed, I die. The only way out is through the temple. I must succeed, or I’m finished.”
“You’re assuming there even is a temple! All you have to go on is what your sister told you!”
“Not so,” Malus said. He pointed to the beastman. “That thing knows where Kul Hadar is. And that’s where we’re going.”
Lhunara opened her mouth to protest, but she knew the implacable look in Malus’ eye all too well. “As you wish, my lord,” she said with a sigh. “I only hope the rest of us survive to celebrate your triumph.”
The bleak look on Lhunara’s face elicited a sharp laugh from Malus. “Fear not, terrible one,” he said, not unkindly. “If I want you to die I’ll kill you myself. Now mount up and let’s be gone.”
They reached the outskirts of the city within the hour, navigating ponderously over piles of fallen stone and shifting mounds of sand. There was no northern gate, as it happened — the warband was forced to seek out a large enough section of collapsed wall and clamber their way over the rubble. The dark mountain loomed in the distance, shrouded by drifts of wind-borne dust.
Malus turned to the beastman, who rode on Lhunara’s nauglir just behind the retainer’s saddle. The highborn wasn’t certain who appeared more uncomfortable with the arrangement — the cold one, Lhunara, or their erstwhile guide. “Kul Hadar?” Malus inquired.
The guide pointed a clawed finger — off to the northwest, seemingly away from the cleft peak. “Hadar,” the creature grunted, then added more in his guttural speech.
Malus gazed from the mountain to the direction indicated by the beastman. It made no sense. But this is the Wastes, he thought. Besides, what’s the point of having a guide if you don’t follow his directions? “All right,” the highborn said to the creature. “But remember your packmate back in the keep. That’s what happens to those who aren’t any more use to me.”
From the look in the beastman’s eye, the creature may not have understood the words, but the meaning was clear enough. “Hadar!” the beastman replied, more forcefully this time, pointing to the north-west.
Malus tugged on the reins and pointed Spite away from the mountain. “This makes as much sense as anything, I suppose,” he muttered, and spurred the nauglir into a trot.
They reached the forest by nightfall.
For the entire day the mountain rose from their left, never receding but at the same time growing no closer. The warband rode through desolate plains of shifting dust and grit, passing the occasional withered tree or empty lakebed.
As the sun sank low in the west, the terrain began to slope slightly upward and the vegetation became more abundant. The hot, sulphurous wind tapered off, and before they knew it the druchii were riding across rolling hills thick with underbrush and scraggly, black-leafed trees. Unseen animals hissed and chattered in their wake, and once a creature with broad, leathery wings burst from the scrub and soared away to the north, screaming its agitation at the intruders.
Malus was starting to look for possible campsites when Spite crested a tall hill and he found himself staring at the outskirts of the elusive forest. Beyond rose the great mountain, its deep wound standing out as a line of abyssal blackness against the steel-grey of its flanks. For a moment, Malus couldn’t believe his own eyes. When had their course begun curving back towards the peak? Try as he might, he could not remember. No matter, he thought. We’re here.
Lhunara sidl
ed her cold one up alongside Spite. “Do we camp here, my lord?”
The daylight was almost spent, but the northern auroras were already boiling across the sky in the most vivid display Malus had ever seen. Streaks and great loops of blue and red and violet arced across the underside of the clouds, casting unsteady shadows among the tall trees. “We’ll press on a bit longer,” the highborn decided at length. “Urial’s riders have no need for sleep, I suspect. I want to cover as much ground as possible while there’s light to see by.”
Somewhere deep in the woods, a creature gave out a long, gruff howl. The cold ones shifted uneasily, and Malus could feel Spite gathering his wind for a response until he quieted the beast with a jab of the spurs. He looked to the beastman. “Kul Hadar?”
The beastman sat with its shoulders hunched, apparently unnerved by the strange howl. Reluctantly, it pointed straight ahead, into the shadowy wood.
“All right, then,” Malus said, raising his hand to motion the warband forward and then reaching back for his crossbow.
There were a number of well-worn paths through the wood, wide enough for even cold one riders to traverse them in single file with ease. The tall oaks and cedars blocked much of the light from the auroras with their spreading branches, but colonies of green and blue fungus climbed the boles of many of the trees and gave off a faint luminescence that revealed enough of the path to navigate by. The small column moved slowly amid a preternatural stillness. No night animals disturbed the silence with their cries, an observation that set Malus’ nerves on edge.
They had been riding beneath the trees for more than an hour when they heard the howl again. Once again, it was off to the west, but it seemed somewhat closer than before. Whatever made the long, hungry cry had to be huge, the highborn thought, as loud and as lengthy as the sound was. Something as big as a cold one, or possibly bigger, he thought.