The ripple rose to a cheer and Valkia felt the thrill of power that she got from knowing her words had incited such reaction. She stood once again upon her dais.
‘We head north. We gather the rest of our army and then we will keep following the God Light until we reach the realm of the Blood God. Everything that we kill on the way, we dedicate to him.’ She raised Slaupnir high above her head and screamed at the top of her voice.
‘Blood for the Blood God!’
‘Skulls for his skull throne!’
It took a good ten minutes for the roaring cheers to die down enough for Valkia to be heard again. When she spoke this time, it was softly and yet they all heard.
‘We leave. Now.’
The army marched out, the Gorequeen at their head, their voices raised in song. Most of those voices were gruff and tuneless, but it was heartening.
The initial march was accompanied by high spirits and as the ranks of the Schwarzvolf swelled, so did the mood. The warriors walked companionably, encountering nothing more threatening than a few mountain lions which were swiftly dispatched. Each such encounter was turned into a trial of bravery ,with the showdown between hunter and prey always ending in a lethally close knife fight. Valkia herself fought down one animal, a huge alpha male, and received barely a scratch.
One warrior did not fare so well. His arm was torn from his shoulder by a lioness before she was run through by Hepsus. The man was gravely wounded, but not dead; a hardy testament to the strength of those born to the Schwarzvolf. The blood loss left him weak but as soon as he regained his senses he had taken himself straight to Valkia at the head of the army. He had insisted on still coming with them.
‘I still have my axe arm,’ he had stated pragmatically. ‘I can still fight.’
‘Indeed,’ Valkia responded, narrowing her eyes and assessing the warrior. He was fine and strong and if his injuries did not get infected there was a chance he might yet survive the hardships of the journey. He could and clearly was willing to serve her for as long as he was able and that was acceptable. She had fixed the young warrior with a hard stare. ‘Understand that if you fall behind, we will not wait for you. You will be left as carrion for the predators of the mountains.’
His gratitude had been almost embarrassing, but Valkia had let the feeling slide in favour of the pleasure of the young man’s unswerving loyalty.
‘Nobody will watch your back,’ she told him. ‘If you are strong enough to survive this, the Blood God will look favourably upon you as well.’ She had smiled inwardly at the zealous glow on his face and as he had strode away to the back of the army where he walked with the other youths, she had called after him.
‘What is your name?’
‘Kormak, my lady.’
‘I will remember this bravery, Kormak. Be assured that your reward will come in time.’
The flurries soon became blizzards and in due course, the blizzards became white-outs. The snow blanketed razor-sharp rocks, pitfalls and deep fissures and its uniform surface sparkled with curious green striations. Upon closer inspection, the discoloured snow contained flecks of glowing emerald dust that warmed the flesh and hurt the eye. The difficulties of traversing the mountain passes were made even more treacherous by the sheer depth of some of the drifts. The army trudged ever onwards. They did not complain. They were men and women of war and the thought of the battles to come sustained them through the difficulties.
The mountains in the harsh of mid-winter were every bit as spectacular to look upon as they were deadly, and many of the Schwarzvolf found that the sheer majesty of the range quashed their grumbles. A rough but clear path through the peaks had once been marked out by ancestors of many different tribes, huge, crumbling black monoliths lining the route. Although the snow piled up against their obsidian faces, sometimes in drifts four or five feet high, it was easy enough to spot their jagged tips above the surface. Steep and difficult, it took them a full two weeks to reach the highest point.
They encountered no other human life in these early parts of the journey other than the warriors they collected from the outlying tribes and, keen to conserve her army’s strength, Valkia ensured that the army broke off their march from time to time to get some rest. Food was in plentiful supply; they had wisely kept much of the meat taken from the mountain lions. There were animals in the mountains too, but after they had killed several, a sense of revulsion kept the Schwarzvolf from eating them, at least at first. Misshapen and grotesque creatures that had too many eyes or in some cases, too many legs. In time hunger took over and the creatures were skinned and eaten. Most of them were covered in white fur and they blended in perfectly to their surroundings. It took a sharp eye and excellent sling arm to take one down.
Once they had been caught and killed, the hares were skinned and stewed with handfuls of edible herbs and eaten alongside flat-baked bread that cooked in the embers of the campfires. It was meagre sustenance; the animals were lean themselves, but the meals were more than adequate for the army to march on.
At some point, without any of them really noticing it, they began to eat the flesh raw. It was just the first of many such physical changes that started happening to Valkia’s army as they headed further north and as the leaking tendrils of Chaos began to wrap them in its warping embrace.
On the eighteenth day of the march, they had crested the mountains and were making their way down the other side. The contrast could not have been greater. Greenish snow still dappled the rocks and crags but thick grey dust and crushed bone lined the pass. It spilled down the jagged valleys and carpeted the shattered plains that stretched away as far as the eye could see. Heavy, tumultuous cloud churned overhead, the colour of bruised flesh, and wild lightning creased the air almost constantly. For all its savage, alien nature, the path was wider and easier on the north face of the mountain and a brief respite in the seemingly endless winter snows gave them additional energy.
It also brought with it the army’s first true skirmish of the journey.
A party of five young scouts had moved at the head of the army since they had left the Vale, reporting back regularly. Until now the news had always been the same. The way ahead was clear.
But Valkia could tell long before they reached the army that this time they had something more to tell. They were approaching at a flat run; determination in their youthful faces. And one of them was missing.
‘Hepsus.’ Valkia only had to speak the single word and the Warspeaker was already amongst the troops, readying them for potential battle. The Schwarzvolf had not survived and prevailed for as long as they had by being disorganised. The Gorequeen took her daemon-headed shield from her back, strapping it to her arm in readiness as the four scouts reached them.
‘Make it fast,’ she said, giving them a moment or two to catch their breaths. Their eyes were wide, more with shock than fear and when they spoke, they did so at the same time, their words jumbling together incoherently.
Scowling, Valkia nodded towards one of them. ‘Speak,’ she demanded.
Still desperately out of breath, the young man’s words came out in a gasp. ‘Monsters,’ was the word he used and it drew Valkia’s brows together in confused irritation. She passed Slaupnir to the warrior on her right and caught the scout up by the neck of his fur tunic, dragging him towards her.
‘What kind of monsters,’ she hissed, her eyes searching his face for some clue as to what he had seen that could have induced such levels of cowardice. ‘Answer me!’
The scout swallowed hard and made an admirable effort to compose himself. Eventually, Valkia released her grip on him and he stumbled backwards. Despite the cold of the day, there was a faint patina of sweat across his forehead.
‘Troll-kin,’ he finally managed to get out. ‘But not like I have ever seen before. Many of them. Ten. Twelve. Maybe more. And they...’
He broke off and Valkia caught him again, shaking him slightly.
‘Control yourself,’ she said. ‘Or I swear that I w
ill cut your tongue from your head.’
‘They killed Farand.’
‘You engaged them in battle?’ Valkia was dismissive. If five untried boys had thought themselves a match for the massive trolls, then they were lucky that any of them had survived. The boy was shaking his head though and now he was speaking far more coherently.
‘We smelled them first but didn’t know what to make of it. Then we turned a bend on the mountain path and they were just... there. We kept our distance. They had not noticed us, or at least gave no sign that they had. So we watched them. As we have been taught to do.’
Hepsus had rejoined them by now and nodded at the boy’s words. ‘Keep your calm, Garvin,’ he said. Valkia glanced at her Warspeaker and knew a moment’s irritation that she had not known the scout’s name. ‘Tell us what happened.’
‘It all happened so fast.’ Garvin ran his hands through sweat-soaked hair. Accepting a sip of water from the water skin that Hepsus offered him, he stammered out the story.
The scouts had remained crouched, simply observing this new potential threat. The Schwarzvolf had encountered trolls in the past, although altercations between the two had been thin on the ground. The monstrous, scaly creatures that they had periodically fought with dwelt close to the western banks of the river that ran through the Vale. They were mostly solitary things; rarely had they had to deal with more than two or three at any time.
The creatures they watched were clearly of the same base stock; the same huge size and abnormally disproportionate bodies. The similarities ended there. The stench of rot rising from their distended bodies brutalised the senses and stung the eyes. Their skin was mottled and sickly and hung in tattered strips from their chests and bellies, exposing diseased bone and glistening, wasted organs. A morass of flies surrounded them like a veil and tiny, vestigial horns split the flesh above their milky eyes. The rugged trolls of the Vale were notoriously stupid and whilst none of the scouts had ever personally encountered one, they were aware of the implicit dangers. The story of the warrior who had disembowelled a fallen troll, only to be burned to death by the acid that had bubbled forth from the thing’s guts,was well-told around the Schwarzvolf fires.
The large group of trolls were interested in nothing but each other. They were grunting and evidently squabbling amongst themselves as they shambled around the mountain path. The scouts could not determine if they were actually planning on heading further up into the mountains or if they had a lair nearby.
For several more minutes, they had watched and then picked what they felt was the opportune moment to make their move and return to the army to report. The sudden movement of the five young men had alerted the closest troll. It had grunted its displeasure at the sight of the boys and had begun lumbering towards them, its crude club swinging. Barely more than a thick, rotten tree branch, it would nonetheless do considerable damage when introduced with force to the side of a hapless victim’s head.
Garvin had been at the head of the group as they had run at full pelt up the mountain path, but Farand had stumbled and fallen.
‘Keep going! Warn the queen!’
They had been the last words that Farand would ever speak. A few moments later, the troll was virtually on top of him. Garvin, following Farand’s desperate demand that they keep going had paused briefly and what he had seen would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his days.
‘The beast retched,’ he said to Hepsus, staring up at the Warspeaker. He switched his gaze to Valkia and the boy’s face was filled with horror. ‘It made itself vomit. And it hit Farand square in the face.’
‘Acid?’ Valkia virtually spat the word. From experience, she knew that two trolls were hard enough to kill. To fight them in such greater numbers would be... bloody.
Garvin shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Far worse.’
The acrid-smelling, foul bile that had spattered itself across Farand’s head and neck was disgusting enough and Garvin had watched as his fellow scout had done his utmost to stand and wipe the vomit from his face. But then the screaming had started.
‘There were... white things all over him,’ said Garvin. ‘Worms or something like that. They were writhing and crawling all over his face... and they were eating his flesh. Whilst he was still living.’
The troll had simply stood there, not attacking, but just watching as the carnivorous worms that it spewed forth caused the most excruciating pain to its victim. Farand had only managed to rise as far as his knees and Garvin had watched helplessly as his fellow scout had clutched at his rapidly disintegrating face. The agonised screaming had lasted right up to the moment the worms had rushed into his mouth and begun eating away at him from the inside. When the troll, finally bored with its crude entertainment, had caved in the scout’s head with its club, it had been a mercy in Garvin’s eyes.
‘And we ran,’ finished Garvin. ‘We ran back to you.’
‘Did they follow you?’ Hepsus looked up at the path down which the boys had raced towards them and Garvin shook his head.
‘No,’ he responded. ‘I think they are too big, they would have found the gaps in the rocks impassable.’
‘So they are just beyond the ridge,’ interjected Valkia. ‘Waiting for us.’
Garvin nodded, miserably. The Warspeaker put a hand out and touched the scout’s shoulder lightly. ‘Go and get some food, boy. You will need your strength back.’ The scout heeded Hepsus’s words immediately and walked away. Turning his gaze to his leader, the big Warspeaker raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘Your thoughts, Valkia?’
She pursed her lips as she considered her response. ‘Trolls are never easy to kill,’ she observed. ‘But they are standing between me and my goal.’
‘Indeed,’ he responded with a wry smile. That alone would be enough to fire her into action.
‘My concern is their numbers,’ she continued. ‘They are stubborn beasts to take down when they are alone. So many of them in a narrow valley... and with abilities like Garvin described...’ It was rare that Valkia shuddered, but the thought of carnivorous worms eating at her flesh was a far from pleasant one. She considered for a few moments longer and resolve straightened her spine.
‘I will take a hunting party and we will get them out of our way.’ She snatched her spear back from the warrior who had been holding it for her. ‘There was advice given to the hunting parties when I was a girl. The animal grease we use in battle offers some small protection against the acid of the trolls in the Vale. It may work here. Cover any exposed flesh with it. Also, it may be worthwhile tying cloth around our faces. If these enemy are as pungent as we have been told... it may reduce any need to be sick ourselves.’
Hepsus agreed. They had face coverings that they all used from time to time during the driving blizzards; thin fabric that came from one of the river traders and was virtually transparent. It was not thick, but would prevent immediate skin contact. It was a good plan and Valkia’s swiftness in thinking of it was commendable.
They were big creatures though and if Garvin’s estimate was even halfway accurate, it would be a long, arduous battle. The Warspeaker exchanged a glance with Valkia and without words even passing between them, he knew what she wanted. The strongest, fastest and best warriors that the Schwarzvolf could field. They would put on a show of force that would make these monsters regret their defiance.
In the end, they formed a party of fifty consisting largely of older, more experienced fighters. Valkia also formed a part of the group; whilst this was going to undoubtedly cost lives, both she and all those around her knew she was a superlative warrior. The shield bearing Locephax’s head was strapped to her arm. She had yet to determine how to invoke the daemon’s will; it seemed that for now at least, she had no control over whether the thing was asleep or awake. She was willing to bet that if she could bring it to awareness, it would count heavily in their favour.
She had tried a few things. Shaking it, prodding it, screaming into its face... none of thes
e things had the desired effect. She knew it still lived. Or existed. Or whatever it was the vile thing did and she knew that its reluctance to cooperate was to be expected. But soon, she would unlock the secret of mastering Locephax. And then... she would be invincible.
Slaupnir held aloft, Valkia led the group of warriors along the mountain path until they reached the gap in the rocks that Garvin had described. Even through the crude face cloths the stench of spoiled meat and rancid guts was almost overpowering, and Valkia struggled to accept that anything that reeked so badly could possibly still be alive. They could hear the sounds of the trolls beyond; evidently closer than they must have originally been. They were grunting to one another in their thick, bubbling voices and a careful listen suggested several distinct individuals.
The gap in the rocks was going to prove difficult. Barely wide enough to allow the passage of two people at a time, it would have the effect of funnelling Valkia’s warriors so that they could not easily ambush the trolls.
‘We need to move them further way from the rocks,’ she whispered to Hepsus. ‘Drive them backwards so that we can get more of our party through to face them.’ If they tried to attack in pairs, they would be obliterated almost immediately.
‘Fire?’ Hepsus’s suggestion was simple and not too dissimilar to the thoughts that the warrior queen was having herself. They might be huge, powerful and exceptionally dangerous, but like most beasts the trolls were wary of fire, often more so since their robust flesh never healed as rapidly from its touch. In such a confined and narrow corridor as offered by the mountain path however, there were dangers to them as well.
‘We could use that to drive them further down the path,’ she conceded in the end. ‘If we can push them back to a more open area, the fight will tilt in our favour.’
She squinted through the gap in the rocks. ‘If we could drive them over the edge, that would be even better. Tough as they are, a fall from this height will kill them just as it would you or me.’ She glanced over at Hepsus. ‘It’d rob us of a fine battle, but I am in no mood to linger in these infernal mountains.’
Valkia the Bloody Page 17