Ulfrgandr growled warningly and Garmr chuckled. In another time, he would not have noticed the trap closing about him. He would have simply attacked the Chaos dwarf for defying him and likely died in the attempt, one way or another. ‘Is that Khorne’s will, then?’ he said, spreading his arms. He looked at Khorreg. ‘Go then, Khorreg Hell-Worker, Daemonsmith of Zharr Naggrund, your services have been rendered and our bargain is done.’
Khorreg’s eyes narrowed, and the murmur grew. The Chaos dwarf had not been expecting that. Nonetheless, he nodded and turned, his armour hissing and wheezing as he strode away, his assistant following. Garmr looked around.
‘You should not have let them go,’ Ekaterina said, and her supporters growled with her.
‘We do not need them any longer,’ Garmr said loudly. ‘Khorne’s fist will crack the holds of our enemies! We walk the Road of Skulls, warriors, and our victory is certain!’
‘What hold, Garmr? We see no hold, no enemy! Only bloody stones! If you will not lead, you are not fit to command this horde,’ Ekaterina said.
‘Who else will lead it, if not me?’ Garmr said, turning his back on her. ‘I am the strongest, and so I lead. When you think to change that, challenge me.’
Ekaterina raised her sabre and said, ‘Garmr!’
Garmr stopped.
‘You do not deserve Khorne’s blessings,’ she said. The horde fell silent. ‘You do not deserve to lead. You are a false servant of the Skull Throne,’ she continued, stepping closer.
‘And you are more worthy?’ Garmr said. He still hadn’t turned around.
Incensed, she stepped closer. She said, ‘Than you? Yes. Khorne led me to you to take from you your undeserved title, Gorewolf. Valkia herself watches over me, and I will shed oceans of blood and take mountains of skulls for the Blood God, not for myself. Not for some road, but for the glory of the god!’ She raised her sabre and extended it towards him. ‘Face me, Gorewolf!’
19
The Worlds Edge Mountains, the Peak Pass
Felix followed Gotrek through the forest of stakes as they picked their way towards the small city of shrines and wheeled altars that had been set up in the centre of the pass. ‘There must be hundreds of those things,’ he muttered. It had taken several hours to reach this place, and he wondered what could maintain the attentions of the horde for so long. What had prevented them from simply plunging through the pass and sweeping aside Garagrim’s throng as they had Ungrim’s? He put the question to Gotrek as they crept through the abattoir leavings of the earlier battle.
‘What of it?’ Gotrek said, far more loudly than Felix would have liked. The Slayer’s shoulders bunched as he took a two-handed swing, shattering a jutting stake and causing it to topple with a crash. ‘Let them come!’
Snarls echoed through the night as monstrous shapes scrambled towards them, alerted by the Slayer’s bellow. Gotrek met their snarls with one of his own. Felix drew his blade, but before the scrambling shapes reached them, a heavily armoured form, black and imposing, stepped between them, sword in hand.
‘Hold,’ the Chaos warrior rumbled in rusty, archaically accented Reikspiel.
‘You,’ Gotrek growled. ‘Going to run away again?’ he continued nastily. As they drew closer, Felix recognized the armoured warrior as the one they’d fought upon first coming to Karak Kadrin, in the Engineers’ Entrance and later, during the final battle of the siege. He even still had the marks of Gotrek’s axe on his cuirass.
‘Not quite, no,’ the warrior said, a hint of dark amusement in his words. He leaned closer. ‘You are… expected, dwarf.’
‘Of course I am,’ Gotrek snapped.
‘Who’s expecting us?’ Felix said, keeping a wary eye on the crouching shapes. Men moved among the beasts, their features obscured by the rain.
‘Not who you’re thinking of,’ the warrior said. He snapped an order at one of his followers, and a curling ram’s horn was lifted to alert the horde. ‘Best hurry up, dwarf. The eye of the storm is over us, and destiny is gnashing its yellowed fangs.’
‘Very poetic,’ Felix muttered, trying to find courage in sarcasm. Both Slayer and Chaos warrior ignored him.
The latter led them deeper into the belly of the beast. Several times, the warrior leading them was forced to strike out at over-eager Chaos marauders or worse things. He seemingly had no problem killing his own troops, which turned Felix’s stomach. There were no bonds of loyalty here, or even shared purpose. The enemy was held together by the slenderest of threads – a shared love of slaughter. This, he knew with a sickening sense of realization, was what the gods of Chaos wanted for mankind, regardless of whether they were gods of murder or pleasure. Each man sunk into personal depravity and madness, caring nothing for his fellow man or even something greater than the next kill, the next massacre. The Chaos marauders weren’t even beasts, but puppets, acting out the sickening fantasies of an impersonal and alien intelligence.
Felix shuddered and pulled his cloak tight, wishing he had taken Gotrek’s advice and stayed in the dubious safety of Garagrim’s camp. Even if this scheme worked, even if this army ripped itself apart as Gotrek predicted, there was no reason to doubt he’d be ripped apart along with it. He cast a quick look at the sky. Less than an hour until dawn, he wagered, and plenty of time to die a horrible death.
The light of the torches grew eye-achingly bright as they were led into an open circle within the rings of shrines and altars and stakes. He grabbed Gotrek’s shoulder and said, ‘Gotrek!’ as he saw the prisoners. Ungrim was among them, Felix was glad to see.
‘I see them, manling,’ Gotrek said, but his eye wasn’t on Ungrim and the others, but on the scene playing out before them. Felix saw a woman – no, not a woman, something that might have once been a woman – challenge the armoured giant he took to be the warlord. She cried out a challenge and her voice was like the scratch of razors across his ears.
‘Just in time,’ the black-armoured Chaos warrior murmured.
The giant turned and he rumbled something in reply, his voice echoing oddly from within his helm. The sound of his voice threatened to turn Felix’s legs to jelly. This creature – he wasn’t a man – was caught between one world and the next, Felix thought, as was the creature in robes and battered armour chained to the altar near him. Thunder rumbled in the ugly clouds overhead and the rain began to pound down once more as Gotrek shoved past their escort and stumped forwards, heedless of the army that surrounded them.
‘Aye, why would you do that when you could face me instead?’ he bellowed, apparently understanding their dark tongue well enough to interrupt. ‘Gorewolf, are you? Well, Gorewolf, turn and face Gotrek!’
All eyes found Gotrek in the silence that followed. Every Chaos follower, from marauder to warrior to champion, stared at the Slayer as he stalked forwards. ‘Do you hear me, you butcher’s leavings?’ Gotrek continued. ‘Face me!’ He gestured with his axe, and Felix thought the warlord watched the blade as if it were a snake about to strike.
He knew, with an instinct born of experience, that they had walked into the middle of something. They hadn’t been waiting for Gotrek, no matter how much it might look that way. He looked for their escort, but the Chaos warrior was gone.
‘Face me!’ Gotrek bellowed again, loud enough to bring a groan of sympathy from the slopes above. ‘Give me a doom the gods will boast of! Come and take my skull, if you dare!’
As if Gotrek’s words had snapped him out of whatever reverie he had been lost in, the Gorewolf gestured with his axe. ‘I will face you,’ he rasped in broken Reikspiel as he stepped down from the altar. ‘I will take your skull. And the road will be complete, no matter who stands in my way.’
‘No!’ the woman snapped, lifting her sabre. ‘One challenge at a time, Gorewolf,’ she went on, gesturing with the curved blade. Like the Gorewolf, she spoke in Reikspiel, and Felix wondered if it were for their benefit. ‘I have waited too long for this. Khorne demands your head, and it will be my blade that takes it, aye,
and the dwarf’s as well, come to that.’ She gave a hideous, too-wide grin. ‘The road will be complete, but it will be your skull that completes it, Garmr.’
Warlord and champion glared at one another for a hard moment. There was lightning in the air and Felix felt as if he were back in the Underway, with the spark hissing towards the explosives.
‘Is that the way it is to be then? Fine,’ the Gorewolf snarled, brandishing his axe. ‘Have your challenge, Ekaterina and for you, dwarf, a doom!’ As the Gorewolf’s words echoed, a massive shape, heretofore hidden behind the altar, rose and snarled eagerly as it scrambled to its feet and flung itself through the crowd, killing tribesmen as it thrashed towards the Slayer.
‘Gotrek–’ Felix began as the monster charged towards them.
‘He’s mine, manling!’ Gotrek said, shoving him aside. ‘I’ll take care of this overgrown salamander.’ He raised his axe and let loose a tooth-rattling roar as he charged to meet the monster.
Gotrek was moving quicker than Felix had ever seen him move before, tumbling, running, twisting to avoid the creature’s berserk, ground-shaking initial attack. As he watched, Gotrek leapt over a stabbing tail and spun, swinging a two-handed blow that drew a spray of ichor from the creature’s back. It screamed and launched a backhanded swipe at Gotrek, catching the Slayer a glancing blow on the skull and sending him sprawling.
Blood pouring down his scalp, Gotrek rolled aside as the creature pounced like a cat, landing with all four feet where the Slayer had been lying only moments earlier. Gotrek was on his feet in an instant, his axe chopping into the creature’s shoulder like a woodman’s into a tree. It surged up, jerking Gotrek off his feet, and rolled, as if seeking to crush him beneath its weight. Gotrek released his axe and instead grabbed for one of the dagger hilts that rose from the thing’s back.
As his hands seized the hilt, the creature arched its back and bellowed in agony. Gotrek jerked on the hilt, trying to drag whatever it was attached to free. The creature reared up and reached blindly for Gotrek, trying to pluck him from its back. Gotrek hung on, cursing.
Felix hesitated, caught by indecision. If he aided Gotrek, the Slayer would never forgive him. But if he didn’t, and the Slayer died here, Felix knew he wouldn’t last much longer. Felix cursed as well as he charged towards the combatants. Gotrek might want the beast all to himself, but whatever Felix could do to keep him fighting and on his feet, he would, even if it meant incurring the Slayer’s displeasure. Karaghul was light in his hand as he swept it across the thing’s exposed belly.
The monster screamed and staggered. It reached for Felix with one paw, shredding the edge of his cloak as he whirled aside. Karaghul slid across its arm and it snarled. Felix avoided another blow and saw that Gotrek was using the daggers as handholds. The Slayer was steadily pulling himself towards his axe. But every time he touched a hilt, the beast thrashed as if in agony.
Could it be–? Could those blades be connected to something vital in the creature’s grotesque body? Who knew what sorcery the warlord had worked to gain control of such a monster?
Felix ducked another blow and spun about, seeking a way clear of the monster. His eyes locked with those of the strange robed figure he’d seen standing near the warlord when he and Gotrek arrived. Time seemed to slow around him and the world went vague and soft. A thousand eyes blinked at him from the thousand facets of the crystalline helm it wore, and in them, he saw glimpses of things – dreams of past moments, perhaps, or memories not yet formed. He saw Gotrek battling the undead beneath Wurtbad; he saw the war-engines of the skaven rupture the streets of Nuln and saw a vast, impossible airship duel with a monstrous serpentine shape in the skies above the mountains. All of this he saw and more, hundreds of memories and yet-to-be and never-were moments cascading across his consciousness like water.
And then the images were gone. Felix was left blinking, but not for long. Snapping from his reverie, he only just managed to avoid a flailing claw and he threw himself forwards as the beast whirled about. Rolling to his feet, he shouted, ‘The daggers, Gotrek! Pull out one of the daggers!’
As Ulfrgandr loped towards its prey, Garmr’s axe purred in his hands and he swept it out in a loose, looping blow, driving Ekaterina back. ‘I have already fought this fight in my head, woman. You lost,’ he said.
‘Dreams are treacherous things,’ Ekaterina said, lunging. The tip of her blade scored his armour. His axe twisted in his hands, fully awake now, for the first time in a long time. It sensed that the road was almost complete, that Khorne’s time was almost come, and its hunger grew in proportion. Ekaterina’s skull would make a fine gift to put at the Blood God’s feet. Garmr bulled into her, forcing her back, putting his greater mass to use.
‘So are many things, it seems,’ Garmr said. His axe was light in his hands as he hewed at her. It chewed flinders from her blade, knocking her back. He had always been stronger than her. He was stronger than all of them. He was Khorne’s will made manifest.
Ekaterina leapt aside and bounded to her feet, her blade slashing out across his back, drawing sparks from his cuirass. He whipped around, grabbing her matted hair before she could jerk back, and yanked her from her feet, hurling her to the ground. ‘Did you think it would frighten me, Ekaterina? Did you think I would be paralyzed, frozen by indecision when the Doom-Seeker appeared, alive and whole and demanding my attentions, just when I thought victory had been gained?’
She barely scrambled aside as his foot slammed down, nearly crushing her head. ‘Do you think so little of me?’ he roared, his cry echoing the Slaughter-Hound’s as it battled the Slayer. ‘I have slaughtered nations, woman. I have butchered races undreamed of, and gouged my name into a billion skulls!’ His axe sank into the ground, narrowly missing her leg as she rolled aside, trying to gain her feet. Garmr could tell that his speed shocked her.
‘But I am not angry,’ he said, stepping back, letting her get to her feet. ‘Without challenge, how can I prove worthy?’ He glanced at the others, at Vasa and Canto. ‘When will you challenge me? When will you prove your worth in Khorne’s eyes?’ He gestured. ‘Come to me, Lion. Come, Unsworn. Join us in our dance. Come join us on the road. Let us baptise Khorne’s path with the blood of heroes…’
Vasa twitched and bared his fangs. His eyes were alight with battle-lust and with a snarl he ripped his heavy sword from its sheath and lunged to the attack. He had been waiting for this moment, Garmr knew. All of them had, except for Canto, who stepped back. They had joined him only to challenge him, only to take what was his in glorious combat. And what better moment than this, what better time than now to do it, as the gods themselves watched? Vasa’s blade emitted a growl, like a beast hungry for flesh, as it chopped towards Garmr. He stepped back, easily avoiding the blow. His axe scraped Vasa’s side, drawing blood and staggering the champion. Ekaterina shrieked and used the crouching champion as a springboard, diving towards Garmr. He swatted her from the air easily, and then Vasa was driving him back, his great rending blade hacking wildly.
As he fought them both, Garmr felt the old red joy rising in him, the thunderous longing for the Eternal Battle. It had all come down to this moment. Here, in this place, in this moment, he was victorious. Surrounded by enemies, locked in combat, he was victorious.
‘Prepare, cousin,’ he howled, catching Vasa by the throat and hurling him into Ekaterina and knocking them both sprawling. ‘Ready yourself for War Unending!’
‘I have been ready for a long, long time, cousin,’ Grettir said. Garmr turned as the sorcerer stood and shrugged off his chains.
‘What–?’ Garmr said.
‘War, cousin,’ Grettir said. ‘War and death.’ He extended his golden talons and spat baleful words, and the world directly in front of Garmr was ripped apart by a whirlpool of coruscating destruction.
The monster roared and shuddered as it reared up, clawing for Gotrek. He crouched on the monster’s back, heaving at the hilt of one of the larger daggers. As Felix watched, Gotrek sank to his h
aunches and his muscles swelled like those of a dock-worker preparing to heave a barrel over his shoulder.
The dagger tore loose from the creature’s spine with a wet cracking noise. The monster’s subsequent scream seemed to hold as much triumph as it did torment. It thrashed and Gotrek stood up on its back, still holding the blade, and grabbed his axe. It shrieked and grabbed him, plucking him free and smashing him against the ground. Felix leapt over its lashing tail and hacked at its legs, forcing it to turn and spin away from the Slayer. Its long arms tore into the onlookers, gutting Chaos marauders and flinging an armoured Chaos warrior into the air. Felix ducked beneath another sweeping blow, leading the creature to vent its fury on the crowd, which began to pull back at last, the awesomeness of the spectacle giving way to the very real danger of becoming an unwilling part of the proceedings.
The tree-trunk-like tail snapped out, carving a red arc through a close-packed group of Chaos marauders, pulping their bodies and the altars and war-shrines behind them. Spears and swords bounced off its hide as it bellowed and tore at the sea of enemies that surrounded it. Overhead, the dark clouds were retreating from a glow on the horizon.
Then, as if the capricious gods had decided to add to the confusion, a sorcerous inferno suddenly sprang to life, sweeping over the ranks of Chaos marauders. ‘Down, manling,’ Gotrek growled, grabbing his cloak and jerking him back as the flames, all colours and none, washed across the warriors nearest Felix. The men screamed as their bodies were wracked by sickening and uncontrollable mutations. Felix scrambled back, his gut churning as the flames faded, leaving ruin in their wake. ‘What was that?’
‘Whatever it is, we’ll sort it out later,’ Gotrek rumbled through bloody lips. His face was swollen and bruised, and blood dripped from dozens of wounds on his frame, but his savage vitality was undimmed. Like his monstrous opponent, agony only seemed to spur him on. He lifted his axe and gestured towards the captive dwarfs, who were doing their best to take advantage of the chaos around them. Between the beast’s rampage and the strange, terrible fire, the Chaos army was in upheaval. As Felix watched, Ungrim snagged a Chaos warrior’s throat with his chains and dragged the man down. The King of Karak Kadrin planted his knee in the Chaos warrior’s back and hauled on the chains, snapping his captive’s spine with an audible crack.
Gotrek and Felix - Road of Skulls Page 34