Valkia the Bloody

by Sarah Cawkwell

  ‘Be silent, creature. This worm is favoured by none, least of all the gods. You are nothing more than a slave to my will and you will do as I command.’ Valkia silenced Locephax with a sharp word, but the daemon continue to chortle softly. She turned her attention back to Edan whose face was oddly beatific.

  ‘I am ready for my death now, Valkia.’ He sounded calm and at peace with the world. He flung out his arms, exposing the vast expanse of his torso so that she could slay him.

  But still she did not.

  ‘I am not yet ready to spill your worthless blood,’ she retorted, though the need crackled through every fibre of her being. ‘First, you will answer me one question.’ She stepped closer to him, much as it disgusted her to do so. ‘Why? Why did you lead the Schwarzvolf astray? The power our people could have had. The strength they could have wielded if they had laid themselves at the feet of Khorne. You were their Godspeaker and yet you turned them from the path with lies and poisoned words and in so doing, you damned them to this end. Why, Edan?’

  He considered her, fascinated by her new form. She was still very clearly the woman he had known in life. The sister he had once clung to as an infant. The sister he had once looked up to. The sister he had watched descend slowly into madness. The sister he had betrayed.

  A thousand flash images shot through his mind. So many memories. So many mixed feelings towards the woman... the thing in front of him. But he could not find the words to answer her question. Instead, he just shook his head.

  ‘Because it should have been me, Valkia. No more to it than that.’

  She had tired of his conversation long ago and he could see that in her eyes. He did not fully understand why she had not simply killed him on sight. A wild thought struck him. Perhaps there was something of his sister still inside the daemon woman clad in bleeding armour. He put out a hand towards her.

  ‘Valkia...’

  ‘I do not wish to hear your mewling any longer, Edan.’ She stepped forward and gave her half-brother a contemptuous sneer. ‘When your blighted soul reaches the feet of the Reveller, be sure to tell the lord of pleasures who has sent you before him. Perhaps, as he slowly tortures your frail spirit, he will consider the folly of bringing his weakling creatures to my attention.’

  Edan could do nothing but wait for her to run him through with her spear, but she didn’t. She planted the weapon in the earth and took hold of his head with both her hands. She pulled him closer to her as if she was going to touch her head to his in benediction.

  Then with the supernatural strength with which she had been blessed, she pulled.

  A series of sharp cracks sounded as the bones in his neck stretched in protest and Edan was dragged upwards onto his toes. He could not even cry out in pain as the thick flesh of his throat constricted under the mounting pressure. The last thing he ever saw was the cruel half-smile on Valkia’s face as she tore his head from his shoulders. A glistening tail of vertebrae followed, meat and gristle still attached but snapping as she pulled her trophy free.

  Edan’s headless corpse stood motionless for a few seconds, hot blood spraying explosively from the ragged stump of its neck, and then it toppled with a meaty thump to the ground. Valkia held up her gruesome prize to the skies.

  ‘Khorne!’ Her voice rose to a scream. Somewhere in the distance she heard the sound of her own army returning the cry and she knew that they advanced on the Vale. Within minutes, what remained of the Schwarzvolf would face the daemon horde. She had her prize. She had taken her revenge on the figure that had orchestrated her demise more than a decade ago.

  She stared into the dead eyes of Edan. In death, his face was locked in a rictus grin that she felt mocked her. She had done what she had come here to do. With a word, she could prevent the obliteration of an entire people.

  She could.

  But she would not.

  Valkia had fulfilled the obligation that had tied her to life, and even as she attached the head and spine of Edan to her armour, she forgot the idea of ever having considered leniency. Taking up her shield and spear, she once again spread her wings and took to the skies.

  Throwing her head back, she gave voice to the cry that would echo across countless battlefields through the ages.

  ‘Blood for the Blood God!’

  The answering roar of the army roared into the night and the Chaos horde swarmed into the Vale.

  They were ruthless and they were swift. The latter was out of necessity rather than compassion. Dawn was fast approaching and, released from Valkia’s will, many of the daemonic creatures who stalked among the army would return to the eternal realm once the first rays of daylight crept through the grey skies.

  Those in camp who had not taken to the battlefield were largely children and the infirm, although there were a few heavily pregnant women. Every last one of them did all they could to defend their home from the horrific invaders. They died in their droves.

  The flesh hounds, weakening with the coming of day, prowled the camp, burying their muzzles in the bodies of the slain, closing powerful jaws around the heads of the fallen and feasting on the slaughter.

  There were a handful of berserker warriors remaining who looted the camp for anything they considered useful; weapons for the most part, but they also indulged themselves with the wine and food they found. Now that the carnage was all but over, Valkia turned a blind eye to their antics. They had served her well. They faced a hard journey back north and there was a good chance that they would not survive the mountain crossing. The daemon princess cared nothing for their fate.

  Striding through the camp, Valkia glanced this way and that, finding nothing that stirred any meaningful memories. Her life here was truly over and it held no sentimentality for her. The sight of the slaughter had only one effect on her and that was satisfaction at the appropriate sacrifice to strengthen her lord and master.

  A few paces behind her, Kormak rode, his massive, gore-soaked axe resting easily across his armoured shoulder. Forever bound to his armour and the service of his mistress, he could not speak to voice his opinion. But the set of his massive shoulders and the straightness in his spine spoke of his own quiet satisfaction.

  ‘Kormak, first among my warriors.’ Valkia turned and beckoned her champion to her. ‘I must depart this place soon. I leave you to spread the bloody word. Carve a path of death and glory and bury the land in skulls.’ The armoured warrior inclined his head in acknowledgement. Valkia stared up at the sky. The pink tinge to the edges of the clouds suggested that dawn was minutes away. It would not cause her any bother, but she could feel her distant lord calling her, ordering her to return to his side and she would not defy him.

  Around her, flesh hounds and bloodletters were dissipating into the morning mists, drawn back to the eternal battle from whence they had come. Whilst they had marched at Valkia’s side, their mistress’s inherent power had bled into them, giving them form and purpose. They had always been weakest by day, but now that their task was complete, they simply returned to their twilight existence.

  Valkia was aware of the way they responded to her, the deference they showed to her, and she soaked up the glory with hungry pleasure. The slow but certain knowledge of the power she wielded had gradually eroded any doubts she may have harboured.

  ‘Before you leave this place,’ she ordered her champion, laying a hand on his shoulder, ‘ensure that everything is burned to the ground. Leave nothing of the Schwarzvolf but a vague and terrible memory.’

  Her champion nodded again and turned to walk from her and begin the task of rounding up the warriors ready for the task ahead. As the sun’s weak winter rays began to poke through the mist, Valkia inhaled deeply. The day would be cold and fresh. The first snows of winter would settle on the ravaged Vale before nightfall.

  Leave nothing of the Schwarzvolf but a vague and terrible memory. That was all she had herself. Memories that she could somehow neither fully reconcile nor care to linger on. What she had been... who she had been... a
ll was the stuff of legend. If any still lived who remembered her, then her name and deeds she performed in life might continue to live on.

  She did not bother to dwell on the thought. Instead, she closed her eyes. Taking another long, slow breath of the ice-tinged morning air, she noted with pleasure that the scent of death and blood had seeped through and permeated the morning.

  There was one final task she needed to perform before she returned to her lord’s side. Valkia stalked the Vale and the battlefield where the majority of the Schwarzvolf had fallen. With care, she selected the most loyal of her own warriors, taking their heads. Kormak and his warriors would deal with taking the skulls of the enemy, but Valkia’s choices were personal. She took maybe three or four; skulls of those who had battled with particular valour.

  With the exception of her personal prize, the head and spine of Edan, there was only one other Schwarzvolf head that she had taken.

  ‘You fought well, my daughter,’ she said to Eris’s corpse as she knelt by the dead woman’s side. ‘And your skull will be added to our lord’s throne by me personally. There is no greater reward.’

  She brought Slaupnir down and severed Eris’s head, cutting through the final lingering tie to her past. Without another thought, the daemon princess vanished just as the first shafts of pale sunlight broke over the distant mountains. Thick, black pillars of smoke were already climbing into the cold air, filling the sky with ash as Valkia abandoned the Vale to its ultimate fate.

  She had been here before.

  Valkia stood once again at the edge of the abyss, the crackling maelstrom that would take her back to her lord and master’s side. The last time she had stood here, she had faced the horrors of the wastes alone, but for the eternally loyal Kormak. Now, she was able to command those horrors to do whatever she desired. The irony entertained her.

  This time, none would stop her. This time, she would ascend the titanic steps and cross through to the realm of the gods unhindered. The daemons that prowled and waited for the unwary variously hissed and spat at the Blood Queen of Khorne as she ascended, but they dared not approach. Those who served the god bowed in respect for their rightful queen.

  As she came to the step where she had fallen all those years before, she knelt and briefly raked her talons across the dark stain where her body had once lain. It was a permanent reminder of her trials, of all that she had undergone to reach the pinnacle she had reached.

  Standing, her head held high with the pride and arrogance worthy of a daemon princess, she strode through the coruscating madness into the unfathomable realm of the gods.

  She never could fully articulate what it was she saw when she stood before her master’s throne. A veritable sea of skulls and bone, stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions, rising upwards to support the throne of brass upon which he sat.

  Blood red images of her recent butchery assailed her mind, the destruction of the tribes, the burning of the Vale and the explosion of gore as she had torn the head from Edan’s shoulders.

  ‘Did you doubt my fidelity, my lord?’ Valkia threw down the skulls that she had gathered and they tumbled down the mountain to rest, forgotten, at the bottom. In time, they would decay and be unrecognisable. But Valkia had already lost interest in them. The head of her traitorous half-brother with its broken spine lay on the plain of bones, the unseeing eyes staring into eternity.

  A tide of murder, destruction and warfare filled her consciousness. Ceaseless carnage and a field of battle that stretched on into eternity. There would be no end to the bloodshed until the stars themselves grew dim and fell from the sky.

  The vision thrilled her. This was what she had been born for. This was what she was. The right arm of slaughter personified.

  ‘Aye, my lord,’ she said, leaning on her spear and staring out across the eternal battle. ‘There will always be blood.’ She turned and took in the enormity of the presence that dominated the throne. ‘Blood for the Blood God.’

  EPILOGUE

  The fire that Kormak and his chosen warriors set razed the sprawling camp of the Schwarzvolf to the ground. The animal enclosures, the training grounds... everything that had taken so long to build up was destroyed in a comparative blink of an eye.

  Fierce and unchecked, the fires raged for several days, dying out only when the snows became heavy enough to smother them. Thick, acrid clouds of black choked the skies for miles around. The snow came down thick with ash, staining the landscape in grim blackness that lingered until the second snows restored unblemished white to the world.

  When the hard winter passed, when the ice receded, the true extent of the destruction wrought on the Vale was finally revealed. The earth was as dead as the carpet of stiff corpses that littered the former settlement, piled high where the battle had taken place. Fire, blight and the touch of daemons had withered the once-verdant valley and turned the soil a noxious black.

  On the orders of his mistress, Kormak had spared one thing only and Valkia’s throne had escaped the purging fires unscathed. It had been returned to its rightful owner in the realm beyond and over the years became lost in the skulls she chose to decorate it with. Her brother’s skull disappeared into the countless others she brought to her consort over time, but she retrieved that of Eris, mounting it on her throne in a silent acknowledgement of her daughter’s final tribute.

  The years passed, melting into one another in a blur of time. Five, ten, twenty years during which the memories of the Schwarzvolf faded gradually. Fifty, one hundred years... and more.

  Nothing would grow in the Vale and the surrounding region. The unyielding earth would give no life to seeds that found their way there and over time, the poisons in the ground seeped into the trees and copses that bordered on the old Schwarzvolf lands. They twisted and contorted into mockeries of their former selves, taking on eerie, horrific shapes that conjured up images of tortured bodies.

  Cursed, they called it. The name of the Vale was lost, swathed in the mists of time until the area where a long-forgotten tribe had once lived became known as Bloody Hollow.

  Legends grew; stories of how the valley had become cursed by the gods. Some touched the edges of truth but for the most part, memories of the Schwarzvolf passed into history forgotten. The people of the tribe were nothing more than echoes of the past.

  All but their leader.

  Legends persisted of a terrible daemon scourge that scoured the lands in the guise of a woman. Legends that told of the history and deeds of the mistress of skulls. The story of the self-proclaimed warrior queen who had conquered and allied the warring tribes of the north under a single banner.

  The tales told of a cold beauty that was much coveted by the living and the damned alike. How she had been cursed by her own people to die in her most triumphant hour and how the dark god of battle had raised her again to fight on in his name.

  Wide-eyed children listened to the stories around campfires, searching the skies warily for a glimpse of the winged harbinger. They learned swiftly that to spy the Blood Queen was a prelude to war. Time continued to pass and then they learned that stories were sometimes cruel reality.

  Wherever there were people, there was inevitably conflict. And even though warriors might claim lofty goals or noble ideals, in their secret hearts they craved the glory that could only be claimed from the taking of life. They were Khorne’s creatures whether they acknowledged it or not.

  But the armies that rolled out of the Chaos Wastes carved a gory path wherever they went and raised their voices in open adulation to their thirsting god. The memory of the Schwarzvolf may have been long gone, but the memory and knowledge of Valkia the Bloody remained. Wherever there was war, she would arrive, leading an army of unnatural creatures into glorious battle.

  And afterwards, when all that remained on the fields of slaughter were the dead, the dying and carrion birds, Valkia would stalk around the bodies of the fallen, marking out those who earned eternal reward and above all else, reaping skulls fo
r her master’s skull throne.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sarah Cawkwell is a north-east England based freelance writer. Married, with a son (who is the grown up in the house) and two intellectually challenged cats, she’s been a determined and prolific writer for many years. Her first novel, The Gildar Rift, was published in 2011. When not slaving away over a hot keyboard, Sarah’s hobbies include reading everything and anything, running around in fields with swords screaming incomprehensibly and having her soul slowly sucked dry by online games.

  An extract from Orion: The Vaults of Winter

  by Darius Hinks

  Silver light poured down through the branches, filled with the power of the infinite. It shone first upon a circle of priests, flashing across their wooden masks and in the bottomless pits of their eyes. Then, as the moons aligned overhead, the light fell on the figure kneeling at their feet: a trembling, scarred ruin with shattered antlers and a broken, bleeding fist. The tree had endured the ritual countless times and, as the soul of a god descended through its branches it shivered, recognising the dreadful hunger of Kurnous, come again to taste blood.

  There were nine disciples, their droning chant led by the High Priest, Atolmis, whose spear was resting on Orion’s shoulder. At the crescendo of their song, he drew a knife and dragged it across his naked chest. The other priests followed suit and, as the blood fell, they caught it and hurled it over Orion’s back. The blood slapped against his skin, the moonlight flickered and Orion shuddered in pain.

  The priests closed their eyes, sensing that Kurnous was amongst them, and knowing it was not their place to look upon divinity.

  As the blood ran down his back, Orion’s bones cracked and elongated. He gasped but did not cry out, remaining kneeling, despite the agony.

  Atolmis began the song again, raising his voice to drown out the sound of Orion’s splintering bones. It was a droning round that was joined after a few moments by another voice.