The gathering force beneath her was a tool. It would break upon the Schwarzvolf with the name of Khorne raised in adulation. Both sides would die in droves, but that was all she craved; blood and skulls and endless slaughter. Her army, those who followed and served her, would receive their reward when they reached the red plains of the Blood God.
Those who had betrayed her...
Valkia’s fingers, each topped with curved talon-like nails closed tightly around the rock she was gripping. It crumbled beneath her touch and tiny fragments fell to the ground below in a shower of particulate dust.
She unfurled her wings and rose into the night sky. In a matter of days, battle would be joined. There was little time to spend planning the revenge she so sought, but there would be an eternity in which to relish it.
SIXTEEN
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
His dreams were getting worse with each passing day, but Edan could not let anybody see the state in which he woke. Sweat bathed his night garments, soaking into the rough blanket under which he slept. His thinning hair was plastered to his skull and his breath came in shallow gulps when he jolted awake.
At one time, Edan had entertained the company of his pick of the young women of the tribe. Ten years ago, he had been desirable. No issue ever came forth from him, despite his best efforts to produce children. It had been a constant thorn in his side. If he had been able to produce an heir, his stake on the Schwarzvolf throne would be that much stronger.
Now he was not a desirable or coveted man. His decadent lifestyle had padded out his once-slender frame grotesquely. He rarely bathed and he had a reputation for violent rages that meant the women of the tribe largely avoided him. He was still reluctantly afforded the respect due the tribe’s Godspeaker however.
Edan could not pinpoint the exact moment that his life had gone out of his immediate control. Perhaps it had been in the darkest reaches of the north, when the head of Locephax the daemon prince of Slaanesh had whispered promises of great reward...
Pushing himself up from the pallet upon which he slept, Edan crossed to the bowl of ice water and splashed it on his face, trying to shed the clinging vestiges of the nightmare. He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger as though that could somehow chase away the headache that throbbed at the base of his skull.
He picked up a piece of clothing, one of the outsize tunics that were all that fit his rotund frame any more. He drew it on over his head and dragged fingers through his still-damp hair. An appalling stink of alcohol hit him and he realised with alarm that it was him. Not the tunic, although that was reasonably pungent in its own right, but Edan himself. The sweat had chased all the lingering alcohol from the previous night’s excess from his pores.
‘I should bathe,’ he mused, then immediately discounted the idea when his stomach growled in hunger. For Edan, the path to decadence had not come at the price of lust and sexual perversion. For him, it had been an entirely different route. But the touch of Locephax on his weak mind had been irreversible. The damage had been done and he was a slave of the god he knew as the Reveller.
It was, perhaps, a mercy that his corruption was entirely contained. The majority of the tribe had retained such strong warrior urges that his attempts to seduce them to what he called the finer things of life mostly fell on deaf ears. So he kept his gluttony and sloth to himself and enjoyed every moment he spent forcing food and wine down his throat. He was lazy and indifferent to the problems that the Schwarzvolf were suffering.
The nightmares were most likely a byproduct of all the rich food and alcohol that he was consuming. He told himself that on a regular basis in the hope that it might explain the sheer horror of his sleeping hours.
His head was pounding and he sat down on the hard, carved wooden seat at the end of his pallet-bed. Leaning back, he scratched at the wild, unkempt beard on his chin and closed his eyes.
The horror of the dream slammed back into his skull with an intensity that set his fat body quivering. He gripped the arms of the chair as though he were pitching into a fit and fell headlong into the terror that welled up in him.
‘Where am I’?
His voice echoed around the landscape. Everything was tinged with a hint of red as though his pupils bled. He felt a tremendous urge to reach up and rub vigorously at them to clear his vision, but he could not move anything but his head.
No answer came to his question, so he called out once again. He felt the faintest of brushes against his cheek as though something flew past him and tried to move away. Whatever was holding him rigid…
He glanced down. Ropes lashed around his body, holding him firmly against a wooden pole that was driven into the ground. The thick coils bound around him like a serpent, holding him tightly. He could not feel them, but surely they must be biting into his flesh.
‘This is not real,’ he called into the emptiness. ‘I am not really here. I am dreaming.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ came a whispering voice. It was barely a voice at all, more a low purr. Edan was immediately reminded of the mountain lions that had plagued their trip to the Northern Wastes. There had been one foolish boy who had tried fighting one and lost his arm. ‘You may be dreaming this, Edan, son of Merroc, but this is as real as I want it to be.’
He felt that same brush against his face and flinched. There was nobody here with him, unless they stood directly behind the stake, just out of his extreme peripheral vision. The thought made his bowels twist with anxiety.
The touch on his cheek ended abruptly and he heard a new sound. Wings, beating slowly. A faint breeze that lifted his thin hair from his head. His breathing came in low rasps, his chest restricted by his bonds.
‘Who are you? What is this?’ His voice was rising in pitch and urgency and it was all he could do not to scream his terror into the darkness. The reply came to him in multiple voices, from different directions, and still no sign of the speaker.
‘I am the guilt that has hunted you all these years, Edan.’
‘I am the harbinger of your demise.’
‘I am the nightmare in all mortals. I am the thing you fear the most.’
‘I am death.’
Edan began to cry like a babe. Huge tears formed in the corners of his eyes and rolled unchecked down his cheeks. ‘I am dreaming,’ he said.
‘Dreaming? Yes.’ Finally, the voice resolved into something much clearer. It was a female voice. ‘But not for much longer. Soon, this dream will become your reality, Edan.’
He said nothing in response, merely hiccupped his misery as the tears continued to fall. The unseen enemy laughed spitefully.
‘The great and powerful Edan. See him weeping like a child.’
‘What do you want?’ He wept the sentence out through his shameful tears. The silence following the question was aching in its length. Then he felt a clawed hand grab at his hair and pull his head back against the stake.
‘Revenge.’
He could clearly feel the point of the blade as it entered his throat just below the left ear.
Then a sudden, terrible pain.
Then…
‘Godspeaker? Are you well?’
Edan’s hand flew to his throat and he blinked rapidly to clear the haze of blood. He was sitting in the main council tent. The Circle were absent and try as he might, Edan could not recall at all the moment he had left his own tent and made his way there.
‘What?’ He stared around at the owner of the voice. It belonged to a young man who was vaguely familiar. He knew the boy. One of the tribe’s scouts. The name escaped him and he did nothing to recall it. ‘What do you mean? Of course I am well.’ He hesitated. ‘Why would I not be?’
‘You were just sitting, staring off into space. As though you were having some sort of vision. Are the gods trying to send you a vision of what is to come?’ The young scout was eager that this be the case. He had witnessed Edan’s incoherent babblings before and always found it a thrilling thing to be in the pres
ence of the gods themselves. That was how Edan explained it. He was merely a conduit through which the Four could communicate with their loyal followers.
‘The gods? No. I...’ Edan slowly removed his hand from his throat and gave a short laugh. ‘I was, shame upon my soul, daydreaming. My attention drifted. I slept poorly last night and I am not as young as I used to be. Perhaps a cup of wine...’ He let the sentence trail off. The young scout stared at him in fascination for a moment before realising it was an order rather than a suggestion.
‘Of course, Godspeaker.’ Without a further word, the youth disappeared from the tent to fetch Edan’s wine, leaving the man alone. Groaning softly, Edan let his head drop into his hands.
‘I am going mad,’ he muttered to himself. He genuinely had no recall of the time spent between waking and moving to the tent of the Circle. Had there even been a meeting? Had he sat through it like some sort of fool?
Perhaps you are mad, came that female purr in the back of his mind. It was a horrible sensation, as though the inside of his skull was itching. Perhaps you are still asleep. Perhaps this is all still a part of your dream.
‘No,’ he said aloud. ‘No. This is real.’ He lifted his arm. He was not restrained or tied in any way. There was no blood on his body and he could feel the bite of the air outside the thick hide tent. ‘This is who I am. I am Edan, son of Merroc. I am the rightful chieftain of the Schwarzvolf tribe. I am...’
‘You are talking to yourself.’
Eris stood in the entrance of the tent, that infuriating sneer on her face. In her hand, she held the cup that the scout had fetched. She had intercepted him on his way back to the tent and informed him that she would deliver it herself. She had come into the tent to find Edan with his face in his hands, muttering to himself.
The Godspeaker straightened his back. The girl had caught him at a disadvantage, something she had a disturbing habit of doing. But he would not give her any satisfaction.
‘And what of it?’ His response was haughty. ‘It is the only way to be sure of a truly intelligent conversation at the best of times.’
‘Best not let the Circle hear you say that,’ she said in a conversational tone that infuriated him. ‘They already think you are on the path to madness.’ She moved across and set the cup of wine down next to him.
‘They do not,’ he replied. ‘Watch your tone, Eris.’
‘You are so sure? Very well.’ She shrugged one slender shoulder. ‘I will leave you to your ranting. I have things to be doing. She cast a brief, telling glance at the wine. ‘Enjoy that, won’t you?’
With that, she left the tent. Edan scowled after her back and leaned back in the chair. He mopped at his sweating brow and took up the cup of wine. He raised it to his lips.
Revenge comes in many forms, Edan.
The thought came unbidden and he stared at the cup. He would not have put it past Eris to poison him. Perhaps that was where these hallucinations were coming from.
With a bellow of fury, Edan threw the cup across the tent, the blood-red wine spilling as it went.
Their numbers were swollen beyond anything Valkia had anticipated. It was as though their mere passage through the hills and mountains created a vortex that drew more to their bloodthirsty cause. The recruitment of the trolls had been a remarkably easy matter. On seeing Valkia descend from the skies, they had immediately grunted their acknowledgement of her rightful leadership and begun shambling along behind the marching army.
The faintest of memories tickled the back of Valkia’s mind as she remembered the battle against them on their journey north. How the wheel turned.
Daily, they edged closer to the borders of Schwarzvolf lands. Daily, she invaded her brother’s dreams with increasingly terrifying images and thoughts. The closer they were to Edan’s location, the easier it became to torment her betrayer.
The army travelled mostly by night, when the wild and damned things of the darkness would crawl from their holes and slither in among the horde. Sometimes, Valkia would descend from the heavens and prowl among her devoted legion of killers. Her tread stained the earth with fresh blood and a hissing mob of daemons followed in her wake, butchering any that dared stray too close to their unholy queen. A pair of huge, carmine hounds stalked at her flanks, their jaws dripping fiery spittle and their broad necks adorned with tendrils of daemonic flesh that fanned out like blades.
They were her hunters, Khorne’s peerless killers of men, and each night they would range far and wide around the marching army and sniff out barbarian scouts who thought themselves hidden from prying eyes. The tribes would not know of the doom that descended upon them until the axe was at their neck and their blood already stained the thirsty earth.
Her army needed no training, for they themselves were the weapon. They needed no food, for they feasted on the flesh of the fallen, and they needed no rest as Valkia drove them on with her iron will and inflamed their own insatiable lust for battle.
Their passage through the forest was met with no resistance. Everything that dwelt there either had sense enough to go into hiding or was eager to join with the daemon princess. By the time the land was levelling out, the slopes of the mountains falling behind them and the weather becoming bitingly cold, the hunger and thirst for the spilling of blood could no longer be contained and neither did Valkia attempt to contain it.
They were legion, out for war and out for revenge. But there were also bloody appetites that needed to be sated. And once they cleared the reaches of the far north, hunger for war became the ultimate driving force.
By the light of the setting moons, Valkia’s army spilled into the settlement. Their approach had not gone undetected and the resident warriors were ready for an attack. The settlement belonged to a tribe who had once proudly flocked to the banner of the Schwarzvolf, but had long since broken away to resume their prior independence. They had been one of the many.
The Queen of Skulls was not to know that they no longer swore allegiance to her former tribe. As far as she was concerned, they had arrived at the doorstep of her enemy and she unleashed her horde upon them without compunction.
The arrival of Valkia’s army had not been anticipated for several days, but the force that surged across the steppe had become vast and the earth shook beneath their tread, heralding their approach. The tribes of the north were always prepared for battle however. Within minutes of catching sight of the foe bearing down on them, they had ensured that their young and vulnerable were already on their way to the nearby cave system where they took shelter when absolutely necessary.
When the first cries of ‘enemy approaching’ were heard, they stood ready. But for all their experience and ferocity, they were ill-equipped and totally underprepared for the reality that followed.
A preliminary wave of warriors led the charge, their feet thundering as they gained momentum in their eagerness to slaughter. They were met with fierce but entirely inadequate resistance.
Starved of battle during the trek through the mountains, Valkia’s army ripped their way through the helpless barbarians without mercy, killing every living thing that stood in their way. When the last of the people had been slain, they started on the livestock. As the last of the creatures fell beneath a battle-axe they turned upon each other.
Valkia herself did not join in until it reached the closing stages. When her own warriors fell on one another like the animals they were, she merely watched for a while, enjoying the slaughter. There was something maternal about seeing these beasts and warriors turn on one another. Each understood clearly the basic tenet of the Blood God.
‘It matters not from whence the blood flows,’ she intoned as she stalked through the battle. In her wake, the fighting gradually ceased. Those who still lived and were able to drop to their knee, or incline their heads in a respectful bow, did so. ‘So long as it flows.’ At her side rode the ever-silent Kormak, his mighty blade sheathed across his back.
The camp had been rendered into little more than a c
harnel house, an occasionally twitching mound of corpses that had been torn apart. Blood, gore and faecal matter loaned a foul stench to the air that, for Valkia, merely added an olfactory highlight to the sweet taste of murderous revenge.
‘Where are your women and children?’ Valkia reached down and easily hauled up a mortally wounded warrior. The man was a pitiful wreck. One eye had been burst by troll-vomit and ran in a jelly down his bloodied cheek. His tunic was soaked through with red and his life was measured in minutes.
‘Safe,’ came the croaked reply. ‘Where you will never find them.’
‘Never is a long time, mortal,’ Valkia crooned softly. ‘And unlike you, time is something I have plenty of. You may be on the verge of death, but I have ways of keeping you here for as long as I wish. Why suffer the torments of the flesh that will be visited upon you? Tell me what I want to know and you earn yourself a swift end.’
‘I will not betray...’
‘Betrayal?’ Valkia threw the man to the ground and he lay still. He was not quite yet dead, but something told him that he may stand a better chance of survival if he feigned otherwise. ‘You dare speak to me of betrayal? When I was betrayed by those I led to greatness? It is my sworn vow that the tribes of the Schwarzvolf will burn!’ Her voice rose in pitch until she was screaming her fury at the dying warrior.
‘I will tear them down one man at a time if I must. There will be no mercy.’ She had already determined not to give them the choice of death or glory. For the betrayers, there would be only the long darkness of oblivion. She put her cloven-hoofed foot on the neck of the unfortunate barbarian. ‘Now tell me what I want to know. Where are the rest of your people? Or should I have my pets hunt them down in their craven holes?’
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