Gotrek and Felix - Road of Skulls

by Josh Reynolds

  Regardless of the when, what the dwarf had accomplished was undeniable. Even Khorne shrank from the raw unfettered fury, for too much nourishment is as bad as too little where gods and men are concerned. A hundred thousand daemons died at the dwarf’s hands and their shattered essences marked his road into eternity, even as their blood washed away the Wastes, forcing them to contract.

  The dwarf had not been alone, of course. There had been others… A confluence of coincidences that had sealed the world forever on the edge of midnight. But only the dwarf concerned him. The illusion of stability pleased the gods, hungry though they were. But the insult given by the dwarf could and should be rectified.

  A Skull Road had been carved into the north, into Khorne’s domain. And now, a Road of Skulls would be carved south in Khorne’s name. It was only just, only right. And it fell to him, Blessed of Khorne, to do so. He would carve a trail of fire across these mountains and write his name on the Worlds Edge. And when he had placed the last skull, when he had taken the skull of the Doom-Seeker and placed it on the road, when the debt the dwarfs owed the Blood God had been paid… then would Garmr have what he desired – a world of war, of battle unending. It was a beautiful dream, full of raw red things and music that sounded like steel on steel and unending screams.

  He stepped down off of his throne-altar, a net woven of human hair in his hand. The net was full to splitting with skulls, each having been engraved with one of the eighty-eight thousand names of Khorne. The camp was not quiet. It was never quiet. Champions battled throughout the sea of tents and yurts, testing their might and trying to draw the eyes of the gods. More skulls would be added to the net before the light turned sour with evening. His army died in stages, every eighth man, then eight in ten, singly or in groups, even as it swelled, distant warbands reaching his camp, begging to be allowed to join, begging to serve Khorne’s cause.

  He would never run out of warriors, no matter how many he sacrificed on blood-stained altars or killed with axe and fang. That too was Khorne’s gift to him, his favoured son. Men would come and continue to come until the road was finished. Until Khorne’s path was cleared. The more they killed, the more skulls were collected, the more word of his glory spread and the more who would come seeking to join him.

  Garmr moved among his men, trusting in their fear and awe to protect him. Assassinations were not unheard of, especially in an army as long-denied as this. All skulls were equal in Khorne’s eyes, as well his men knew. Even his own – especially his own, for if he was not fit to lead, he must be struck down. That too was Khorne’s gift, the chance to test his abilities against those of the strongest opponents. Garmr strode towards the war-shrine where Grettir crouched. He dropped the net of skulls in front of the sorcerer. ‘Tell me of the road, cousin.’

  ‘I think you know enough,’ Grettir said, not looking at him.

  Garmr kicked him, hard, in the side. Grettir fell and curled into a ball, covering his face with his hands. ‘Up, cousin, tell me what I wish to hear.’

  Grettir snapped to his feet, far more quickly than Garmr had anticipated. His many eyes glared, but Garmr knew better than to look into them. One hand snapped out, fastening tight around the sorcerer’s throat. He jerked Grettir into the air and shook him. ‘Tell me of the road,’ he snarled. ‘Is the one-eyed Slayer coming? Is the Doom-Seeker marching to meet his fate? Has Canto done as I hoped?’

  ‘Y-yes,’ Grettir gasped, clawing at Garmr’s fingers. ‘He comes! He comes!’

  ‘Good,’ Garmr sighed, flinging his cousin into the dust. ‘And his is the keystone skull?’

  ‘You know this,’ Grettir rasped, rubbing his throat.

  ‘Yes,’ Garmr said. He gestured to the skulls. ‘Tell me where to place these, cousin. Khorne grows impatient with my tardiness, and I must finish the road to open his path.’

  ‘Maybe you should have thought of that before deciding to wait here and let others do your fighting,’ Ekaterina said. Garmr turned slowly. Men stopped what they were doing to watch.

  She stood lazily behind him with the other champions arrayed around her, their eyes fever-bright with eagerness. The horde might soon have a new lord – or lady, as it were. Garmr had no weapon, but they were all armed. He felt no fear, nor even anxiety. If they did not challenge him, they were not worthy of serving.

  He spread his hands. ‘Battle is a gift, and an honour, Ekaterina, not a chore. Or perhaps you are simply angry that you were not chosen?’

  Her eyes narrowed. She was not challenging him, not quite. Not yet. Not until the gods could see her. He took a step forwards. She hesitated, not willing to retreat. One of the others – Bolgatz, the Bone-Hammer – growled and stepped forwards. He was big, with club-like fists and only the barest traces of the Marienburg dock-rough he had been centuries earlier visible in his monstrous face. Tusk-like fangs grated against one another as he said, ‘I am, Gorewolf. The Bone-Hammer is angry. We have squatted in these rocks for weeks, with precious little blood to spill! I care nothing for your road or your bargains! I would have battle!’

  Garmr met his hot gaze unflinchingly. Bolgatz was almost as much of a beast as Hrolf, in his way. Bone-plated knuckles scraped together as he thrust his head forwards petulantly. ‘Is it a challenge, then?’ Garmr said, softly.

  The gathered Exalted Champions traded looks. They were all, in their own ways, blessed of the Blood God, like Vasa with his leonine features or Ekaterina with her murderer’s grin. But to lead a horde such as this, well, it would prove that the eyes of Khorne were upon them especially and that they were marked for victory.

  Bolgatz nodded. ‘The Bone-Hammer challenges you, Gorewolf! The Bone-Hammer will break you! And then he will lead the horde to glory in the Blood God’s name!’ Bolgatz punctuated this cry with a roundhouse blow that would have taken off a normal man’s head. Garmr avoided the blow easily.

  He stepped back, avoiding another and another, drawing Bolgatz towards him, forcing the bigger man to get closer. That had not always been Garmr’s way, but now such ways of doing things came to him as easily as killing. Once, he would have flung himself on his challenger and buried his teeth in Bolgatz’s guts. But now, the red mist did not clog his mind and he could see that the true path to victory was not in mindless violence, but in drawing your opponents into an ever constricting web of their own making, to poke and prod and bleed them until their skulls were ripe for the plucking. There was a weapon for every battle; you simply had to find the right one.

  He batted aside a thunderous blow with inhuman ease and lunged forwards. Iron-shrouded talons dug into Bolgatz’s throat and he brought their heads together with a crack and then pivoted, tossing the dazed champion over his hip.

  Bolgatz scrambled to his feet, blood dribbling from his mouth into his matted beard. He roared and reached out with his bestial paws. He was so incensed that he failed to notice the other champions falling back, stumbling away, eyes wide, their limbs trembling. He failed to notice the vibrations rippling through the ground beneath his feet. He failed to notice the screams and howls of the Chaos marauders, as something monstrous and massive tore through their ranks, heedless of the damage it caused, heedless of anything save Bolgatz. It stank of blood and thunder and its flanks rippled with scars centuries old. It moved with feline swiftness, crushing the men who were too slow to escape its charge.

  Bolgatz failed to notice it all, until the shadow coalesced over him. He staggered to a halt, his charge ending before it had begun. He turned, eyes widening. Bolgatz screamed.

  ‘Take him,’ Garmr breathed.

  And the Slaughter-Hound did.

  Karak Kadrin,

  the Slayer Keep

  It was quiet when Garagrim led them through the outer keep towards one of the secret routes into Karak Kadrin. Dwarfs were not ones for the wild jubilation of men, even after a great victory. Instead, they simply returned to work.

  In the ruins of Baragor’s Watch, masked dwarfs hurled bodies onto immense pyres, burning the Chaos dead e
ven as others separated the dwarf dead from their enemies, to be taken in ceremonial silence into the depths of Karak Kadrin, where they would be interred in honoured silence for eternity.

  Felix followed Gotrek and the others as they moved through the great rent in the outer walls. One of the remaining giants had fallen there, its mammoth carcass draping the inner wall like a fleshy flag. The smell of it was abominable, and Felix covered his nose and mouth with the edge of his cloak. It didn’t help much, his cloak being stained with the leavings of the battlefield as it was.

  The last giant sat slumped against the archway of the portcullis of the sixth wall, head bowed, seeming somehow shrunken in death, its ungainly armoured body twisted awkwardly. Hundreds of crossbow bolts sprouted from its head and torso, obscuring its features, for which Felix was grateful. Dwarfs had attached ropes and chains to its armour and were attempting to pull it down onto a heavy, flat, wheeled sled that was meant for transporting timbers.

  As the enormous corpse slumped and toppled with an earth-shaking crash onto the sled, Garagrim led Gotrek, Felix and Axeson through the open gates, bellowing for dwarfs to step aside. Most did so quickly enough, though Felix noted that some glared at the War-Mourner. Garagrim was a brave warrior and regal, but he was lacking in social graces, to say the least.

  Felix looked at Gotrek, who had been lost in his own head since he had killed the Chaos dwarf. He had considered trying to convince Gotrek to leave then, but the Slayer had been insistent that Axeson fulfil his promise and prove his assertions. Thus, they were now on their way into the depths of Karak Kadrin where the Temple of Grimnir sat. Felix had been surprised by the number of secret pathways that had been revealed in the final sortie. Gotrek’s earlier statement that Baragor’s Watch was nothing more than a trap for the unwary had been proven, and well. The dwarfs had managed to attack their enemy from multiple directions with almost perfect precision, and the Chaos army had simply disintegrated in the fighting that followed.

  A squad of ironbreakers trotted past, weapons hefted and shields held ready, heading towards the lower sections of Baragor’s Watch. There were still small, isolated bands of Chaos marauders holed up here and there, and the dwarfs were flushing them out slowly and methodically. Cannons and grudge throwers had been brought out and their crews were studiously hammering portions of the Watch flat. For the dwarfs, there was no reason to fight vermin; especially when they might as well be entombed, so deeply were they dug in. Thus, for the most part, they simply buried their erstwhile enemies and moved on with mechanical regularity. Those they couldn’t, the ironbreakers and rangers and even a few lone Slayers dealt with.

  Throughout it all, dwarfs had been hunting doggedly for the Chaos dwarf, Khorreg, and the Chaos warrior, who had made their escape in the fire and din of battle. Several rangers insisted that they had escaped into the Underway, while others said that they had seen the Chaos warrior flee the outer keep on horseback, accompanied by a rag-tag band of Chaos knights and marauder horsemen, all galloping north. Personally, Felix thought that both Khorreg and his compatriot were long gone. The latter, in particular, had seemed to display none of the stubborn, mindless propensity for fighting to the last that his followers possessed. A fact for which Felix was enormously, if privately, grateful, despite the fact that it seemed as if the escapee was likely, in fact, the leader of the army in question. Or at least one of them, as the various reports of dwarf observers were collected and compared. The dwarfs had a mania for knowing exactly who was behind such an attack, so that his name could be properly inscribed into the Book of Grudges for future generations to curse.

  They left Baragor’s Watch behind, moving through the secret routes into the mountains to either side of Karak Kadrin. It took long hours, but Felix was glad enough to be heading into safety, rather than battle. He felt tired, drained of all energy, and though dwarf healers had seen to his wounds, they itched and ached unmercifully. He couldn’t help but probe them, wondering how many new scars he’d acquired. Unlike Gotrek, Felix fancied that he’d been handsome, once. Perhaps he still was, albeit in a rougher sort of way, but there was too much scar tissue on him now for him to ever be called classically handsome again.

  Then, that wasn’t much of an issue, was it? Looks mattered little to the sort of folk he now associated with regularly and the circles he now travelled in. Indeed, looking like six leagues of bad road could only be helpful on the frontiers of the Empire, or in the Border Princes.

  Gotrek grew surlier and more withdrawn the closer to Karak Kadrin they drew. He soon refused to speak even to Felix, instead merely gazing at the runes on his axe as if they held some answers to whatever was plaguing him. Felix caught Axeson watching the Slayer, and the expression on the priest’s face put him in mind of a man trying to gauge the intentions of a dangerous animal.

  The hold was quiet when they entered it through a small, undecorated portal that was nonetheless guarded by several stout clansmen, all of whom made gestures of wary respect in Garagrim’s direction as the War-Mourner brushed past them, leading them towards their destination.

  The only dwarf hold Felix had been in prior to this was Karak Eight Peaks, and Karak Kadrin was as different from that dead ruin as a living man was from a corpse. Even now, after enduring a siege, it hummed with activity as clansmen put aside their weapons and returned to their work. But it was not only that. The Eight Peaks had been empty of human or dwarf life, being home only to beasts and monsters; the air had been foul and the waters tainted and the streets and passages befouled.

  But in Karak Kadrin, life and order yet reigned. Vast slanted walls and columns double the size of the great Pillar of Sigmar in the Koenigspark in Altdorf thrust upwards from the flat stones paving the floor, into the upper darkness. Angled shafts lined with polished sheets of metal mounted on movable frames carried daylight from outside the mountain down into its depths and immense squares of migratory light lined their way, moving with the pilgrimage of the sun across the sky. Everywhere was a vast sense of age, weight and space. Far more of the latter in fact than Felix had expected. He felt no more cramped within Karak Kadrin than he did in any city of the Empire. Indeed, a good deal less so than he had in Nuln. Truly, the hold of Karak Kadrin made the cities of men seem like rat warrens, though he kept that opinion to himself.

  The Temple of Grimnir occupied one of the great halls, a towering edifice which dominated all others, crouching amidst smaller temples to other gods like a tiger amongst lambs. It was a thing of sharp angles and heavy domes and before the doors was a mighty pillar which rose high into the upper reaches of the hall. The pillar was as wide as any Felix had seen, but its purpose was not structural. Instead, every inch of its surface was covered in runes.

  ‘Names,’ Gotrek murmured. ‘The names of those who have found their doom.’ He gazed at the pillar wistfully. Felix said nothing, struck by the sight of what must have been the names of hundreds of thousands of Slayers. Centuries of the dishonoured dead, remembered in stone for eternity.

  The king’s hammerers guarded the doors. They stepped aside, allowing the quartet to enter the temple. The Temple of Grimnir was a shrine to a particular sort of dwarf madness, Felix thought. He would never say so out loud, of course, but it was impossible not to think it, standing beneath the great domed roof in the main chamber of the temple.

  The silence was the first thing he’d noticed. In those temples dedicated to the more martial of the human gods, there was always noise, even if it was merely the omnipresent murmur of priests or penitents. But here there was only an implacable emptiness. Dwarfs did not pray as men, he knew. Words were flimsy things; dwarfs measured things in deeds, and it was only for men or elves to mouth words of promise to their gods.

  There was no statue to Grimnir, not as Felix was used to them. Instead, two massive stone axes, both as tall as five men, one atop the shoulders of the other, stood beneath the dome, blades crossed, creating a fierce archway over a heavy dais, the centre of which was occupied by a great
stone bowl. It was only when he drew closer that he noticed the resemblance between the idealized weapons and the brutally existent one once more clutched in Gotrek’s hand.

  King Ironfist turned from gazing up at the great stone axes as they entered and said, ‘It took you long enough. I should have sent my hammerers to collect you as soon as the battle was done.’

  ‘Did you think the priest needed protection?’ Gotrek said, meeting the king’s gaze. ‘Did you think I would kill him in a petulant fit?’

  ‘I long ago gave up on predicting your whims, Gurnisson,’ Ungrim said. ‘You do what you want, without regard to anyone else.’

  ‘Some would say that that is the very essence of a Slayer,’ Felix said quietly.

  ‘Who gave you leave to speak, manling?’ Garagrim snapped, joining his father.

  ‘He is right,’ Axeson said, his deep voice silencing the War-Mourner as effectively as a slap. He looked sternly at Garagrim. ‘He is a dwarf-friend and a Remembrancer, War-Mourner. To deny him is to deny Gurnisson, and no Slayer can be denied in the house of Grimnir.’

  ‘Except that you are denying me,’ Gotrek said, glaring accusingly at Axeson.

  Axeson sighed. ‘Aye, we are.’

  ‘Show him, priest,’ Ungrim said. ‘Toss the stones. I would waste no more time on Gurnisson’s stubbornness.’

  Axeson stepped up onto the dais from which the two stone axes rose and leaned over the great bowl that sat there. He reached into his robes and pulled out a small bag. He emptied the bag into the bowl, freeing a cascade of small, flat stones. ‘We taught men the art of the stones, in times long past. The words of the gods are sealed in the rock and the dark and it is from within them that we wring glimpses of what must be and what has been.’

  The dwarfs gathered around, silent and grim. ‘Grimnir carved a road of skulls north, and the blood he shed hardened the world, making what was fluid and foul hard and unchanging. But now, something moves south, following Grimnir’s road and making what was solid fluid again,’ Axeson said. ‘We have seen the signs, in the deeps and in the high places.’ He glanced at Felix. ‘Your folk sense it too, though they confuse it for one more storm among many. But it is not. It is the same storm that swept the world aeons ago and sent our people into the dark and set us on our path, and with every step it takes, more of the world is lost.’