Rain wasn’t the only thing that could fall from the sky, however. Ungrim raised his axe again, and another volley of signal-horns sounded as those formations closest to the cliffs and slopes of the pass raised their shields and pavises up over their heads. It wasn’t so much arrows that he feared as rocks. The mountains were a volatile beast, and showed their displeasure with those who dared to march through them in many ways. Ungrim had been trapped in more than one avalanche in his time, and didn’t intend to repeat the experience.
He saw the first of the stakes as they came around a bend in the pass, and fury bloomed in him. Around him, clansmen muttered and growled, as well they should have. Ranulfsson’s throng, many days dead, had not been left to rot. It would have been preferable if they had been. Instead, each and every dwarf of that ill-fated throng had been impaled upon a spike of wood which had then been planted in the hard soil. A forest of the dead spread out before Ungrim, and an ocean of dwarf blood had long since dried on the ground. He spat an oath and gripped his axe so tightly that the haft creaked in protest.
He saw faces he recognized, here and there. Young thanes who had petitioned him for leave to march forth, looking to add lustre to their clan’s record of deeds, now hung stiff and silent, food for birds. Beards had been hacked from jowls and tied in crude melanges that hung like matted curtains, moving in a warm breeze. Skulls clattered softly, moved by the same breeze where they hung from high plinths and posts that had been hammered into the steep slopes.
The sheer dishonour of it struck him dumb for a moment. Everything stank of death, and dwarfs made cautious gestures, ancient superstitions reigniting as the throng moved into the wasteland. Several clans began to break ranks, the sounds of their dirges rising even as they sought to bring down the posts that held the bodies of their relatives. Ungrim growled in frustration and signalled again. Short, terse blasts from the signal-horns refused those clans leave to recover their dead. Voices were raised in protest and he stifled those closest to him with a savage glare. ‘Now is not the time,’ he barked, knowing his voice would carry. ‘We will tend to the dead once our living enemies have been seen to!’ He gestured with his axe. ‘We hold here!’ he roared out.
‘I don’t like having to look at that disgrace,’ Thungrimsson said, jerking his chin towards the stakes and their ghastly burdens.
‘It will hinder them more than us,’ Ungrim said harshly. ‘Let them ride through deadly ground of their own making. We will hold here, and drown them in shot and steel beneath the gazes of our dishonoured dead.’
The Worlds Edge Mountains, above the Peak Pass
‘Hurry, manling,’ Gotrek said impatiently. He clambered up the steep slope, axe in hand, Felix just behind him. ‘I can hear the horns of Karak Kadrin.’
Felix could as well, but there was no reason to waste breath replying when Gotrek wasn’t listening. He staggered, exhausted and aching, but forced himself to go on. They had been moving for what felt like hours without stopping, and Felix knew he was fast approaching the outer limits of his vitality. In his time with the Slayer, he had become used to pushing his body farther and further than he had at first thought possible, but he was still only human.
He didn’t ask Gotrek to stop for a rest, however. The Slayer wasn’t in the mood to wait for Felix and had left him behind more than once since they’d left the crash site. They were on the ridges above the Peak Pass, where outcrops of rock warred with patches of scrub trees for space on the dangerous ledges. He stumbled and fell, his foot catching on something. He went face-down, scraping his palms and chin.
He twisted, looking into the mangled features of a dead dwarf. ‘Gotrek,’ he called out. Felix turned. There were more dwarfs. By the look of them, their deaths had been quick, but not painless.
Felix scrambled to his feet and stepped over another body, drawing Karaghul. There was an animal smell in the air, clinging to the corpses and the rocks.
He saw Gotrek crouched near a body, his axe across his knees. The Slayer glanced at him. ‘Lunn Svengeln,’ Gotrek said. Felix bit back a curse. He remembered the name of one of the rangers who had accompanied them on their sortie before the walls of Karak Kadrin, though how Gotrek could tell it was him given the condition of the body, Felix couldn’t say.
‘What… what did that to him?’ Felix said.
‘I don’t know,’ Gotrek grunted, staring at the body. ‘No beast I know of makes marks like these.’
Felix looked around. Something moved through the rocks, catching his eye. ‘Gotrek,’ he said.
‘I know, manling,’ Gotrek said, rising from his crouch, his eye still on Lunn’s corpse. ‘I heard them earlier.’ He turned and extended his axe. ‘Come out, jackals. My axe thirsts for your blood.’
The Chaos marauders burst from concealment in a rush. A hairy warrior swung a double-bitted axe at Felix, forcing him to suck in his stomach and leap back. Gotrek cut the legs out from under two of the others, dropping them screaming to the ground.
Felix booted his opponent in the belly, bending him double. Karaghul opened his neck to the bone and then Felix was lunging past him, driving his sword into another marauder’s stomach. Ripping the weapon free, he turned, catching a crude sword on his crosspiece and jerking it from its wielder’s hands. He brought the sharp end of his elbow around, catching the weaponless marauder in the face. Bone crunched and Felix swept his sword out, spilling the man’s guts. Panting, he looked for Gotrek and saw him driving a marauder skull-first into a rock even as he swung his axe out in a vicious arc, driving two others back.
Hooves pounded and Felix turned as a number of marauder horsemen burst up onto the crag, whipping their horses savagely. One swung a club at Felix as he galloped past, catching him a glancing blow on the head. Felix fell, his vision spinning. Through bleary eyes he watched as Gotrek shoved his axe at a horse, forcing it to rear up.
And then he saw nothing more.
The Worlds Edge Mountains, the Peak Pass
‘Come on, lads,’ Biter shouted. ‘Do you want to live forever?’
‘Quiet,’ Dorin snapped. ‘Don’t jinx us!’ Several other Slayers shouted agreement.
Biter grinned and started forwards, the other Slayers fanning out around him.
‘How am I supposed to remember your deeds if I die here, is all I’m saying,’ Koertig said. The Nordlander was just behind Biter with his shield held up and his axe held low. His eyes darted around nervously. ‘I can see well enough from back with the catapults.’
‘And what fun would that be?’ Biter said. ‘No, you’ll thank me for this, human, you’ll see.’
‘Not likely,’ Koertig grunted.
The Slayers ranged out far ahead of the dwarf lines, heading out to meet the foe, rather than wait for the enemy to attack. It was their right, and they had been champing at the bit since they’d come in sight of the Peak Pass. And since he was in charge, it was his right to lead them in.
Gurnisson was probably gnawing his own liver in frustration right about now. Biter smiled, thinking of the other Slayer. He admired Gurnisson, he truly did, but the Jinx-Slayer was a chore to be around, especially if you had death on your mind. There was too much destiny weighing down that one’s shadow.
Biter had his own destiny, thank you very much, and he didn’t need someone else’s bigger, louder destiny overshadowing his. Not that he particularly wanted to die, but why test fate? Who wanted to wind up like that poor bastard Snorri Nosebiter? Gurnisson’s luck had rubbed off on him, right enough. Or like that boastful drunkard Drong, who’d taken to the sea out of desperation in the days following his encounter with Gurnisson?
No, better that Gurnisson stayed where he was, safely out of the way. Biter was sympathetic, but not enough to want Gurnisson around for something like this.
The Slayers moved through the forest of stakes, heedless of the dangling bodies. The Slayers were on the hunt, and not even dead kin could shake them from it. A low mist, humid and clammy, rose from the rocks and coiled about the
ir legs as they moved. It crawled across Biter’s skin, trailing damp lines through his tattoos. Above, the clouds continued to swell and grumble.
And then something growled.
Biter looked around. The Chaos hound growled again, as it slunk from behind the post. Rags of flesh hung from its furry body and slobber dripped from its jaws. It leapt. Biter caught it in the head with his axe, caving in its skull even as he was knocked flat by its weight. Howls erupted from deeper within the forest of stakes and the monstrous forms of mutated trolls, accompanied by more Chaos hounds and marauder horsemen, exploded into view.
The woman on the lead horse was clad in half-armour and gory locks. Her sabre snicker-snacked out, taking the top of a Slayer’s head off as she galloped past, before she yanked on her reins and turned her mount. She shrilled out a hawk-like scream and rode down another dwarf. Biter grinned and shoved the dead Chaos hound off. ‘I like her, she’s a fierce one.’
‘I think she heard you,’ Koertig said, driving his axe down between the shoulder-blades of a hound as its claws scratched across his shield. The woman bore down on them, a vulpine grin on her face. Biter threw himself aside as her horse reared up over them.
‘No! She’s mine!’ Dorin screamed, his axe taking the animal’s legs out from under it. It fell with a hideous scream and the woman rolled from the saddle with inhuman smoothness. She looked first at the dying animal and then at the young Slayer. A cruel smile spread across her face. Her too-wide mouth split, revealing a throat full of fangs.
Dorin faced her across the dead horse, his face strained and wild. Biter grabbed Koertig’s arm. ‘Leave him, human. Plenty of other foes for us,’ he said. ‘He’s called dibs.’
The woman glanced at him lazily. Her eyes narrowed as she took in Biter’s axe and his maimed face. ‘You,’ she said. Around them, Slayers, riders and beasts fought and died in a savage prologue to the battle to come. Horns blew and drums thumped, twin waves of sound crashing together in the centre of the pass.
‘Me,’ Biter said.
She turned from Dorin and gestured to Biter with her sabre. ‘Garmr wants you, one-eye,’ she said.
‘Tell him he can’t have me. Who’s Garmr?’ Biter said.
‘A dead man, just like you,’ the woman said, flinging herself towards him. Her sabre cut for his head and Biter caught the blade on his axe and shoved it aside. He punched her in the belly and she stumbled back. The ground was shaking beneath his feet and he glanced aside.
The Chaos horde was on the march, or at the charge, rather. Horsemen, Chaos knights and chariots thundered forwards in a wave of death, smashing aside the stakes like a deluge of foul water. The woman began to laugh and came for him again, her eyes wide and mad and red.
Dorin cursed and hurled himself at her, tackling her to the ground with a wild cry even as the first rank of horsemen smashed into the struggling knots of dwarfs and marauders that occupied the centre of the pass. Biter laughed as hooves cracked against his shoulders and head and he lashed out blindly, wondering if being crushed by horseflesh was considered a worthy death.
The ground shivered beneath Ungrim’s feet as the enemy made their charge. Horsemen and worse things galloped into the forest of the dead, brushing aside stakes and bodies in their mad haste to reach the throng of Karak Kadrin. The Slayer King took a breath and swept back the edges of his dragon-skin cloak.
‘This is it,’ he murmured. ‘This is the day.’
‘Let’s hope not,’ Thungrimsson said, his eyes hard.
Ungrim glanced at his hearth-warden and grinned. ‘You will look after the boy, won’t you? And my queen,’ he said.
‘More like she’ll look after me,’ Thungrimsson said. ‘Besides, it’s quite likely that the both of us will fall here today, my king.’
‘There are quite a few of them, yes,’ Ungrim said mildly. He ran his thumb across the edge of his axe and admired the bead of blood that rolled down.
‘He’ll make a fine king,’ Thungrimsson said.
‘Yes,’ Ungrim said. And then there was no more time for talk. Cries of alarm rippled up and down the line. Ungrim looked and saw what might have merely been a stirring of the mist that clung to the ground. It rose up, disgorging shapes that billowed and steamed like the grotesque faces he’d fancied seeing in the forge fires as a boy. Only these weren’t the childish imaginings of a beardling but nightmares made flesh coalescing before him.
The vanguard of the enemy was, to a man, clad in heavy armour, daubed in blood. They were giants, even among the Chaos marauders, who were larger than the men of the south. These were the hardened veterans of the Chaos Wastes, men who’d fought in a thousand battles across fields that burned with witch-fire and worse. No two sets of armour were the same, and each was a work of darkly intricate artifice. The axes and swords they wielded were gruesome tools, forged only to shed blood in Khorne’s name. The Chaos warriors charged with a blood-curdling roar, packed with all the venom and hatred that such men could muster. Dwarfs muttered into their beards and more than one clansman shifted backwards unconsciously.
‘Hold your positions!’ Ungrim roared out. He turned his glare on the warriors to either side of him. ‘Hold fast, clansmen of Karak Kadrin. Hold hard and lift your axes. Let them see only death here, not fear or cowardice. There is only death for the enemies of Karak Kadrin, not victory, never victory!’
As the dwarfs raised their weapons with a ragged cheer, Ungrim began to sing, letting the deep, dark words of the death-dirge of Karak Kadrin slip from between his lips. The sound met and fought with the noise emanating from the horde. Like the crashing together of rival seas, the sounds met and mingled, shaking the sides of the valley, sending sheets of rock sliding down to patter and bounce off hastily upraised shields.
The first Chaos warrior reached them a moment later, bellowing curses or prayers or both, a flail made from chains and bronzed skulls whirling in his grip. Ungrim caught the flail on his axe and yanked it from its owner’s grasp. One scarred fist shot out, denting the Chaos warrior’s fearsome helm. The hammers of Thungrimsson’s men lashed out, killing the warrior before he could recover from Ungrim’s blow. ‘Death,’ Ungrim roared out, ‘Death to the dealers of death! Death to the forsworn! Death to the daemon-lovers! Sons of Grimnir… give them death!’
The thunderers began to fire, and smoke filled the air. Shields were lifted as the ranks changed positions, and crossbows twanged as the quarrellers covered the thunderers’ reorganization. The dwarfs of Karak Kadrin had long ago learned the art of making themselves into the perfect engine of death. Every clansman was a cog in that machinery, and bullets and bolts swept the Chaos line, shattering the front ranks and breaking the charge.
Or, they would have, had the enemy been normal men. Instead, the savages charged on, through shot and smoke, trampling their dead and dying. Banners rattled and flashed as they were passed from hand to hand and the line of clansmen stepped forwards, setting their shoulders and shields. Horsemen crashed into that stolid line a moment later. Hooves lashed out, glancing from shields and helmets, crushing dwarfs; horses were falling and screaming as axes cut men and beasts down. It was wet, crimson work and the dwarfs excelled at it, but the Chaos warriors and the marauders who followed them would not retreat. They pressed ever forwards, and dwarfs fell, dragged down by numbers and mindless ferocity.
Great stones were lobbed into the sky from the dwarf grudge throwers to crash down, flattening men by the dozens. A massive grudge-stone hit the ground on its side and it bounced and rolled through the ranks of the Chaos marauders, crushing and smashing all in its path. Still they came on, shouting the praises of the Blood God.
Ungrim swept his axe out, bisecting a bare-chested warrior. Even as the man’s legs fell, his front half crawled forwards, choking and snarling. The Slayer King stamped on his skull and drove the haft of his axe into another’s face, denting the bestial helm and crushing the skull beneath. He roared out an oath and caught another Chaos marauder in the back as the latter
darted past him.
Beside him, Thungrimsson fought in grim silence, his hammer punching out and up and down like a piston. Around them, the hammerers lived up to their name, creating a bulwark of carnage around their king and commander.
Ungrim cleft a skull in twain and took a leg off at the thigh, growling out a laugh. He longed to move forwards, to push his way into the enemy lines, to leave his guardians behind. He wanted to find his opposite number, to find the warlord or high chieftain who had dared to lay siege to Karak Kadrin and see him bleeding and gasping in the dirt.
So intent was he on the thought, he almost missed the horns of alarm sounding from the rear ranks of the throng. Snarling, Ungrim tore his mind away from the red ocean of battle madness and turned. ‘What is it?’ he said.
Thungrimsson turned, face pale. ‘They’ve boxed us in,’ he grated. ‘We’re surrounded.’
Ungrim cursed. ‘Take the reserves and fall back,’ he said. Thungrimsson hesitated and Ungrim grabbed him by his beard, causing the hammerer’s eyes to widen in shock. ‘Do it, hearth-warden! We must win this day. My life means nothing, next to that. I will hold them here.’
Thungrimsson nodded jerkily and turned, shouting commands. Before he got ten paces, something massive and foul crashed down upon him, driving him to the ground. Ungrim blinked in shock. It was large, far larger than any beast he’d encountered, save a dragon or two. Was this the doom the priest had foreseen? Was this the thing that had been fated to devour Gurnisson? It was certainly impressive enough, if a bit small. Whatever it was, it had bounded through the ranks of the throng like an eager hound, killing warriors and maiming others.
Roughly anthropoid in shape, it had a thick tail that cracked like a whip, knocking dwarfs from their feet with bone-
breaking force. Vast, frog-like jaws split open, revealing a thicket of crooked fangs, and eyes like the bloated orbs of the blind fish which swam in the deep mountain rivers glared out at the dwarfs around it with more than animal malevolence. Two great simian fists pounded the ground, and then spread, revealing monstrous talons which gouged the rock. It was the colour of blood drying on slate and stank of a century of butchery. The hilts of daggers and swords protruded from its broad, scarred back, clattering with every roll of its shoulders. Scars in the shape of runes and sigils branded its flesh, leaking smoke and pus. Great chains had been threaded through its flesh at several points. One foot on Thungrimsson, it stretched and reared, pounding its chest with its fists and releasing a squealing roar, like some titanic swine.
Gotrek and Felix - Road of Skulls Page 31