Gotrek and Felix - Road of Skulls

by Josh Reynolds

  Gotrek ignored him. He lifted his axe and brought down a bone-shattering two-handed blow on the griffon’s neck, severing its head. Its feline legs kicked once and then flopped down, still. Gotrek picked up the avian head and hurled it away. ‘Well, that was fun, eh, manling?’ he said, looking at Felix.

  ‘Not in the least,’ Felix gasped as Gotrek grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. ‘It... Why did it attack us? Why wouldn’t it die?’

  ‘Beasts like this need little reason to attack. We might have entered its territory, or maybe…’ Gotrek extended his axe and used the curve to hook the collar that had been around the beast’s neck. He pulled it up, looking at the skulls that clung to it. Felix’s skin crawled at the sight of them. Something, a weak red light, seemed to issue from the eye-sockets of one of the skulls. Gotrek threw the skulls aside with an oath. They hit a tree and shattered.

  ‘Daemon-work,’ Gotrek spat.

  Felix looked at the griffon in horror. ‘The beast must have been in torment.’

  ‘Aye, and now it’s ended,’ Gotrek said.

  ‘Gotrek, you’re bleeding,’ Felix said, gesturing to the wounds that criss-crossed Gotrek’s arms and chest. The Slayer grunted and dipped a finger in one of the larger cuts. He sucked on the finger and spat.

  ‘So are you, manling,’ he said, pointing at Felix with the wet finger. Felix looked down at himself, at the tears in his shirt and trousers and the bruises and cuts beneath. Suddenly he felt very tired. Nothing would please him more than settling down to sleep for a week. Sleep seemed to be the furthest thing from Gotrek’s mind. ‘And what of it?’ he said. ‘I still live.’

  And I’d like to continue living, thank you, Felix thought, but said, ‘Where are we, do you think?’

  ‘Not where we need to be,’ Gotrek said curtly. He licked a finger and held it up. Then he pointed. ‘That way,’ he growled.

  ‘How can you–’ Felix began. Then he heard them – horns, in the distance, though whether they belonged to dwarfs or men, he couldn’t say. ‘Oh,’ he finished, lamely.

  Gotrek stumped towards the shattered gyrocopter and began to rummage through it. A moment later he tossed a small pack to Felix. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘There‘ll be supplies in there, dwarf bread and dried meat. Always good to have supplies, just in case you crash somewhere inhospitable.’

  Felix shuddered at the mention of dwarf bread. It tasted like rock and had a similar texture. The meat was likely more edible. Gotrek stepped away from the gyrocopter with two water-skins slung over his shoulder. ‘If I were Ungrim, I’d be aiming to catch them in the Peak Pass,’ he said. ‘Best place for a battle, and the rangers know the secret ways that’ll circle around the enemy to cut them off.’

  ‘But they’re not only pursuing an enemy, Gotrek, they’re marching to meet one. One that is ready for them, remember?’ Felix said, hurrying after the Slayer, despite the ache in his legs. ‘What happens if the enemy is already in the pass?’

  Gotrek didn’t slow. ‘Then we’ll avenge Ungrim and the rest as best we can, before I meet my doom,’ he said.

  17

  The Worlds Edge Mountains, above the Peak Pass

  ‘They’re dead,’ Lunn said hoarsely, stepping out of the darkened outpost and sucking in a great breath of cleansing air.

  ‘How long?’ his brother, Steki, asked quietly.

  ‘Weeks,’ Lunn said, hawking and spitting, trying to clean his mouth of the taste of decay. The two Svengeln brothers were almost twins, despite the difference in their heights. The rangers they led were among the best, hardened veterans of high peak skirmishes against orcs and worse. Now they crouched in a rough semi-circle: fifteen stone-faced clansmen, armed with crossbows and short-hafted axes and shields, looking at the crude spikes planted in the ground around the outpost, each one decorated with a halo of weather-ravaged heads bound to the spikes by their beards.

  ‘Something has been at the bodies,’ Lunn continued, wiping his mouth.

  ‘Must have hit them not long after Ranulfsson’s throng was wiped out,’ another ranger said. ‘That’d explain why we got no word, why no signal fires were lit.’

  ‘Have to be thousands of the buggers swarming these hills,’ another said. This was the third outpost they’d found in such condition. Those closer to Karak Kadrin had been abandoned as per the sentries’ standing orders when the enemy drew too close, but only a third of the assigned sentries had returned to Karak Kadrin by the high paths. Of the others, there had been no sign, until now.

  It didn’t bode well. ‘Ungrim could be walking into a trap,’ Steki said, looking at his brother. Lunn clapped him on the arm.

  ‘That’s why we’re here, brother. Let’s see if we can’t spring it before Ungrim gets there, eh?’

  The rangers readied themselves to move out. They moved silently and steadily through the hills and gullies that spread outwards from the Peak Pass. They were all old hands at fighting the wild men who poured down out of the north every so often. The mountains were like a valve for the eastern wastes. If they didn’t pour straight down into the lands of men through Troll Country, they rode down into the mountains, looking to use the crags as a ready-made fortress for campaigns into the Empire and Kislev. When they did that, it fell to the rangers of Karak Kadrin to harry them back north. Steki and Lunn had spent many a spring season doing just that, hunting battle-hungry Kul and Dolgans.

  But this was different. This wasn’t some petty war-chief or god-bothered shaman leading a few hundred warriors. This was something larger and more unpleasant. Even the mountains seemed different with the advent of the horde. Every shadowed crevice seemed to hold wolf-fanged ghosts and every peak shuddered with the drumbeat of unseen marchers.

  Twice the rangers were forced to defend themselves against mutant beasts, driven into the hills by the advancing horde. Big and porcine, with great maws and gouging talons and tusks, the gorebeasts flung themselves at the dwarfs, heedless of the crossbow bolts pricking their malformed skulls.

  As they drew closer to the high hills around the Peak Pass, even the very air seemed tainted with the omnipresent stench of blood and rot. More skulls littered the area, placed in culverts and tree branches like macabre decorations. ‘They must be killing each other on a regular basis to get this many of the blasted things,’ Lunn growled.

  Steki spat. ‘They’re no better than wild dogs, brother, you know that. If they can’t find real enemies, they fall on one another.’

  A slow, warm wind rippled around them, setting the ghastly bouquet of bones clattering amongst the branches of the scrub trees that clung tenaciously to the crags. Every ranger was alert as Lunn signalled for silence. On a large rock was etched the rune indicating that a blind was close by, created by some other group of rangers during some other conflict. It would allow them to survey the pass without revealing themselves.

  ‘What do we do if they’ve already reached the pass, brother?’ Steki said softly as they crept through the rocks.

  ‘We warn Ungrim and hope that he’ll listen,’ Lunn said. ‘They’ll attack, sure enough, but they’ll overwhelm us through sheer numbers unless we can – hsst!’ The ranger stopped. The others froze, crossbows aimed and ready.

  There was a sound, hot and heavy like a great bellows, squeezing air in and out. The stink hit them next, like a bear’s den in the summer, with something else just below it, something sharper and alien. It wasn’t a natural smell.

  Claws scraped on rock. Something growled and the sound of it echoed through the bones of every dwarf, shaking them down to the soles of their boots. And then a shadow was blotting out the sun and a heavy body was landing amidst them. Claws curled out and a ranger went spinning through the air, wrapped in a shroud of blood. It moved so fast that the dwarfs could barely see what it was; scarcely so much as where it was. Crossbows twanged and the thing roared, more in anger than in pain. Lunn’s crossbow was ripped from his hands and destroyed and as he reached for his axe, he brought his shield up. Fangs sank into the met
al and pierced the arm beneath, eliciting a bellow of agony from the ranger. The massive head jerked and Lunn’s feet left the stone as he was whipped up and over, shaken like a rat caught by a terrier. The straps on his shield broke and he went flying.

  Steki roared a challenge and slammed his shield into the monster’s skull. His axe swept down but became tangled with the hilt of a dagger – one of a dozen jammed into the creature’s back. The creature spun, jerking him from his feet. As he flew upwards, its talons punched through his chest and out his back. Steki died, choking on his own blood. Heedless, the beast used his body as a bludgeon, crushing rangers and battering them to the ground.

  Lunn, lying nearby, could only watch as his brother was reduced to a red mess. The force of his fall had broken something inside him, and his legs refused to work. So he lay, shouting curses as the creature finished off the last ranger, its grotesque jaws fastening themselves on the dwarf’s head and removing it in one bite. The creature turned towards them, its eyes meeting Lunn’s.

  ‘Come on then,’ he groaned, trying to lift his axe. ‘Come on,’ he said, more loudly.

  And then it did.

  The Worlds Edge Mountains, the Peak Pass

  Garmr shuddered in his saddle as the sensations of the dwarf’s death ran through him. The horde was approaching the point in the twining corridors of the pass where they’d left the slain corpses of the first dwarf throng, from so many days past. He heard Ulfrgandr’s howl a moment later. The beast’s fury was only increased by its brief taste of combat. It wanted more and Garmr gave a sigh. ‘Soon,’ he murmured.

  The creature ignored him, its roars increasing in fury. He closed his eyes, watching in his mind’s eye as it vented its fury on the bodies, tearing at them. Then it loped into the crags, following their trail. The beast would fall on the dwarf army from the rear, savaging them even as his army did the same.

  Shivering in pleasure, he snapped his fingers at a nearby chieftain of a band of marauder horsemen. ‘Take your men. Follow mighty Ulfrgandr’s trail above. When it strikes, so too will you.’

  The chieftain blanched. No one wanted to get too close to the Slaughter-Hound, especially when it was in a killing frenzy. Garmr’s hand shot out, grabbing the man by the throat. With a jerk of his wrist, he snapped the chieftain’s neck. Dropping the body, he looked at one of the others. ‘He was your chief?’ Garmr said.

  The man nodded jerkily.

  ‘You are chief now,’ Garmr said. ‘Take your men. Follow the trail. Strike when it strikes.’

  The newly made chief obeyed instantly, jerking wildly at his horse’s reins and galloping off, followed by his companions. Garmr watched them go. The centre of the Peak Pass stood before them, a wide canyon, filled with the dead. It was the doorway to the lands beyond the Wastes, fittingly enough. And it was here that he would fulfil Khorne’s wishes.

  ‘Here, and no further,’ he murmured. He could feel destiny pressing close about him, enfolding him in its wings. He made a fist and looked forwards. At his command, warriors marched up, carrying stakes and skulls. The pass would be made ready for Khorne’s coming. It would stand forever blighted and stained with the blood of his sacrifices as a monument to the might of the Skull Throne. He would write his name in the very life-stuff of these mountains, farther south than any champion before him, save those who had marched forth in those first terrible, wonderful years when the gods had run riot across this fallen world. The name of the Gorewolf would echo through these rocks forever, reminding the paltry mortals of this world that he had walked and slain among them.

  He lifted his axe and gazed at the runes carved into its blade. It had served him well, these thousand years. He had taken it from some chieftain or other, wresting it from his slackening grip on a battlefield of black poppies and wailing insects. It was another of Khorne’s gifts to him. It hungered, even as he himself did. It lusted for blood and Khorne’s mark was on it. It had been forged at the foot of the Blood God’s throne, and ruinous magics had been woven into its creation. It was a thing of death, of perfect doom, and the skulls it took were dedicated to the Skull Throne. Once the Road of Skulls was complete, it would take a bounty undreamed of by the chieftain he had wrested it from.

  He looked up. There were clouds in the sky. Great, angry- looking masses of bruise-coloured darkness. The rain would begin soon, as the world wept at the birth of the Road of Skulls. So Grettir had foretold. Garmr sighed. He would miss his cousin, he thought. Not enough to spare him, but he would miss him nonetheless. Like an old pain, suddenly gone. Grettir would be the first to die, when the road had been completed, and his blood would be used to baptise it. It was the least he could do for the man who had once been as close to him as a brother.

  The Doom-Seeker was coming. All was right with the world. When he had first seen the one-eyed Slayer in the visions Khorne had gifted him with, he had wondered at how he might find one single dwarf in the wide world. Then, he had been led to Karak Kadrin. It had been centuries earlier, when he had served another in an earlier war, that he had first seen the Slayers of Karak Kadrin and come to know of their purpose. Where else would the dwarf he had seen in his visions have come from, save the City of Slayers?

  It had all led to this moment. All of his striving, every skull taken, every rival slain, had all led to this moment, when he would match axes with his one-eyed prey. He had baited the trap with bloody meat and pulled the creature from its den, like a patient hunter. Now all that remained was to close the jaws of the trap.

  ‘What are your commands, my lord?’ Ekaterina asked, at his elbow. Garmr turned.

  ‘Ready your marauder horsemen. You will be the point of the spear,’ he said. She smiled, pleased. He had known she would be. Despite her mutinous intentions, she could not resist the call of battle. Like Grettir, he would miss her, when he collected her skull at the last. Perhaps he would carry it with him into the eternity of war to come. She would like that, he thought. ‘Canto, you will see to the dregs. We will strike and you will follow,’ he said, looking at the black-armoured warrior. ‘Guard the hellcannon and its master. I would not lose that engine as you lost the others.’

  Canto he would not miss. Despite the amusement he garnered from the warrior, Canto had ever been a living warning to Garmr. Frozen, like a bug in amber, Canto was a testament to the risks every man took when he sought the gods’ favours. He was not a true devotee of Khorne, resisting the gods’ call, no matter how loud. And like all false followers, he was forever trapped between life and death. But not for long, Garmr mused.

  ‘It will be my honour,’ Canto said smoothly, not even flinching at the mention of his failure. ‘Shall I see to Grettir?’

  ‘Yes. When the battle is done, bring him forth. I will require him,’ Garmr said, not looking at him. He turned, casting his gaze over his horde. A thousand banners stabbed towards the sky, marking a thousand Chaos marauder chieftains, a thousand slaves of darkness. He raised his axe, and a roar swelled from the throats of the horde, shaking the walls of the Peak Pass.

  ‘Remember, the one-eyed dwarf is mine,’ he said to Canto and Ekaterina as he basked in the adulation.

  All was right with the world. Today would be a good day.

  The Worlds Edge Mountains, the Peak Pass

  ‘No sign of them?’ Ungrim said. Thungrimsson shook his head and Ungrim cursed. He tugged on his beard angrily. The rangers had not reported back yet. That in and of itself would not normally be worrying; rangers were independent sorts and not as respectful of the chain of command as many might otherwise wish.

  But here, and now, it was worrisome. It meant something had happened. He looked ahead, where the centre of the Peak Pass waited like the jaws of some vast predator, eager to consume his throng as it had Ranulfsson’s not so long ago. Thungrimsson coughed into his fist, catching Ungrim’s attention. ‘If we go in now, we will be marching in blind,’ he said.

  ‘If we don’t, we could lose any advantage we yet retain,’ Ungrim countered. Behind him
and around him, the Grand Throng was arrayed for battle. The clans marched as they fought, and there would be no need to reorganize once they had reached the place of battle. Thunderers and quarrellers marched on the flanks, their front ranks occupied by clansmen carrying the sturdy camp pavises, which would be set down in irregular lines, allowing for the retreat of the front ranks as they fired. The pavises would be lifted as they retreated, protecting them until they reached the rear of the formation, where they would begin to reload.

  The centre was held by Ungrim’s own clansmen and those of his closest kin. With shield and axe, they would meet any charge and throw it back. At the back of their formations were the few grudge throwers which had been brought. Less than Ungrim would have liked, but he had thought speed more important than firepower. The catapults could fire over the heads of the throng, which was more than organ guns or flame cannons could do.

  Ungrim glanced at Thungrimsson, who was frowning. ‘What is it, old friend?’

  ‘I wish we had more war-engines. A cannon or six,’ Thungrimsson said, scratching his nose.

  ‘We will make do without them,’ Ungrim said. ‘The Slayers will meet the enemy first, as is proper.’ He looked at Biter, who nodded and grinned.

  ‘And we’re all about proper, us,’ he said.

  ‘Go, gather your companions,’ Ungrim said. ‘We will enter the pass and drive the invader back north, with their tails between their legs.’ He raised his axe, and signal-horns sounded, passing his wordless command to each warrior in the throng. Dust rose as the dwarfs began to march.

  Thungrimsson, his hammer over his shoulder, squinted up at the sky. Ungrim followed his gaze. The clouds looked ready to burst. It was the rainy season, and it wasn’t unusual for the lower reaches of the mountains to flood when melting snow and pouring rain caused flash floods that swept down into the lower valleys. More than one dwarf had been lost to a sudden surge of water cascading through the rocky gorges of the Worlds Edge Mountains. The centre of Peak Pass was high enough that it was unlikely such would happen here, however.