The monster roared, a sound born of pain and red rage. Torben tugged his weapon free, as the monstrous beastman span round to face him. It was half as tall again as Torben, its long horns curving upwards from its ugly, distended goat-head, adding to his height. His head was slung low, between broad, hunched shoulders and a shaggy mane of hair coveref the muscular neck. Two great yellow tusks jutted from its jaw drooled thick saliva.
It wore a hide loincloth, trophies it had taken, as a champion of the beastmen, hanging from its waist, a macabre testament to its savage prowess in battle. Below the knee the creature’s legs became backward-jointed animal limbs, ending in cloven hooves. No doubt to honour some primitive deity, the beastman had various parts of its body pierced by thick iron. Most impressive of all, however, was the huge ring through its snout. Everything about it spoke of ferocious strength: it looked capable of wrestling a bear and winning. The orbs of its caprine eyes burned with the reflected glow of the roaring bonfire.
The champion hefted its oversized, jagged-edged cleaver and, opening wide its mouth, bellowed. Torben didn’t need to be able to understand the beastmen’s language to know that it was a direct challenge.
The Kislevite needed no second invitation. Yelling his own battle-cry Torben flung himself at the beast.
His opponent was surprisingly fast and agile. Torben parried the beast’s first ringing blow but staggered back under its force, his own muscles protesting as he maintained his position. Out of the corner of his eye Torben saw Arnwolf wrestling with the tribe’s robed shaman, axe and bone-staff locked. Alexi and Vladimir were leading the others against the closest of the startled herd.
Any moment now, Torben told himself. Any moment now the rest of the border patrol would crash through the gates of the stockade like the Sea of Claws breaking against the cold coast of Kislev. But the attack never came - at least not as Torben imagined it would.
He heard the riders galloping past on the other side of the stockade, their horses’ hooves pounding the frozen ground, but it took Torben a few moments to realise what the riders had done. Putting the stockade to the torch, Yasharov’s knights had trapped the beastmen inside and Torben’s rescue party along with them.
Hatred and fury burning in his heart, Torben realised they had been betrayed. Considered expendable by their captain, Yasharov had simply used them as a distraction, so that he could put an end to the beast horde once and for all, condemning the tribe’s prisoners along with their captors.
Sudden, sickening doubt gripped Torben’s stomach, as it became abruptly apparent that the outcome of the battle was no longer as assured as he might have at first hoped. Then steely resolve entered his heart. If it was his destiny to die here and now, then at least he would die fighting!
They traded blow for blow, Torben putting every ounce of his strength and every iota of concentration into the battle while the beastman’s bloodlusting rage, relentless in its ferocity, drove it on against him. This was no scrawny, half-starved specimen but a true monster among monsters. Torben knew there was no way he could win this fight by brawn alone: the brute’s massive body seemed to soak up every wound he managed to inflict against it. He would have to use his brains as well, something that from his experience most beastmen lacked.
The Kislevite and the champion fought on, Torben carefully manoeuvring them away from the heat and smoke of the conflagration towards the trophy-hung menhir. As he jumped backwards, to avoid a swipe of the heavy-headed cleaver, he felt the cold stone at his back and his hand touch the rusted links of a chain. Carried forward by the momentum of his swing, the beastman champion almost lumbered into Torben. This close he could smell its foetid reek, like a cowshed overdue a mucking out.
He thrust his sword forwards at the creature’s unprotected midriff, but this was merely a diversionary tactic. The end of the chain in his hand, he swiftly pushed its hooked end through the iron ring in the beastman’s nose and rattled it through with a strong tug. Snorting, the beastman lowered his horns, preparing to skewer Torben on their sharpened points.
Turning away from the beastman’s goring attack Torben pushed the hook through another link in the chain, which was still securely attached to the herdstone. He backed off hurriedly as the champion swung at him with his brutal weapon again. Missing him, it lunged for Torben.
Torben clearly heard the sickening crunch of cartilage breaking over the roar of the burning wicker beastman, as the chain pulled on the great nose-ring. His opponent bellowed in pain and tried to free itself but the links of the chain remained strong. Torben heard a crash and a screaming roar. Turning to the source of the pain-induced bellow he saw the robed shaman crashing into one blazing leg of the wicker effigy, its body a mess of red wounds dealt it by Arnwolf’s rune-inscribed axe, as it recoiled from another mighty blow from the Norscan. The burning wood of the leg, already weakened by the flames, gave way, the shaman being swallowed by the white-hot conflagration. With one of its supports destroyed, the whole burning structure gave way.
Torben looked up to see the fiery body of cages, packed with roasted peasants, toppling towards him. Despite his wearying battle with the beastman champion, with an almighty leap Torben flung himself out of the way of the collapsing effigy.
GASHRAKK BLACKHOOF, CHAMPION of the Great Beast and chief of the Dark Horns, bellowed his anger to the heavens as the burning effigy of his god crashed down on top of him, a burning spar impaling his instantly combusted body.
ORAN AND MANFRED clung to the antlered skull-head of the pyre as it came crashing down in a blizzard of sparks and fiery smoke. Oran closed his eyes tight when he saw the sharpened tips of the burning palisade coming up to meet him.
Then he was falling, before scant seconds later he hit slushy snow and started rolling down the steep slope of the man-made hill. The head of the towering effigy had cleared the perimeter fence, throwing him and Manfred clear of the flames altogether.
TORBEN, ALEXI, YURI and Arnwolf raced through the blazing stockade, the air around them filled with swirling sparks. There was nothing they could do for their fellows who had died valiantly, battling the beastmen. Oleg, Arkady, Stefan and Vladimir had all succumbed to their animal wrath. Now the four of them who remained, could only hope to save themselves and with a pack of fire-maddened beastmen at their heels, there was no only one hope for them.
Yuri was the first into the tunnel, diving into the hole by the dung heap. The others quickly followed, half-scrambling and half-falling down the shaft cut through the earth and rock. The first of the goatmen plunged headfirst in after them, only to become wedged in the narrow tunnel entrance, being so much broader than its quarry.
At the bottom of the hill again, the four survivors gathered reunited. The Kislevite cavalry who had launched the attack on the stockade were now mere flickering specks within the tree line once again.
The fire consuming the beastman camp lit the hills and forest for a quarter of a mile. As the flames rose high into the night sky, for a fleeting moment Torben fancied he saw a roaring antlered head appear briefly amidst the conflagration before vanishing.
Was it something being banished, he wondered, or summoned?
AS THE STOCKADE continued to burn in the distance, back under the shelter of the trees, the survivors of Torben’s unit found the other Kislevite soldiers gone, assured of the success of their captain’s brutally effective tactics. As far as Captain Yasharov was concerned, the abducted villagers and even his own men could burn if it meant he achieved his goal, without putting himself at risk.
‘I don’t know who I loathe more - the beastmen or Yasharov,’ Torben seethed.
‘It was a massacre,’ Manfred stated coldly.
‘So what are you suggesting we do?’ Alexi asked Torben. ‘Desert?’
‘Yasharov thinks we’re dead already anyway,’ Torben replied, the first hint of a grin creasing his face.
Yuri looked at Torben anxiously: ‘What would we do then?’
‘Do what we’ve always done
. Live by the sword - as mercenaries.’
THE NEXT NIGHT the moon hung full and gibbous in the star-pricked sky over the Kislevite camp. Torben Badenov and his companions had watched and waited as their erstwhile fellow soldiers celebrated defeating the beastmen. But now, with half the night gone, the sounds of carousing had finally ceased as drink and sleep overcame Captain Yasharov’s men.
‘Are you ready?’ Torben whispered to the foully grinning Oran.
‘Oh yes,’ the weaselly man replied, playing with the blackened dagger in his hands, ‘I’m ready’.
‘We won’t be long,’ Torben said, addressing Alexi, Yuri, Manfred and the burly Arnwolf, ‘Then we can be on our way.’ He lifted a heavy, bulging sack over one shoulder. ‘We’ve got a delivery to make.’
With that, he and Oran slipped between the tents like fleeting shadows.
THE MORNING AFTER the attack was cold and frosty. Lev Kolenski stumbled through the tents, clumsily strapping on his sword belt, to take his turn at gate duty. The chill morning breeze was clearing his muzzy head and he began to gently whistle, his breath pluming into white clouds.
Reaching the entrance to the camp the soldier froze, the tune dying on his lips. His eyes widened in shock and he put a hand to his mouth to stem the bitter tasting bile that rose up his throat. He staggered backwards, his still unbuckled sword belt slipping onto the frosty ground, then turned tail and scampered back into the camp towards Captain Yasharov’s pavilion.
BORIS BAGDASHA STEPPED quietly into Yasharov’s tent after repeatedly failing to wake him from outside. He stopped abruptly, mortified by the sight that greeted him. Yasharov’s bedclothes were twisted and rumpled, the pure white fur of the top blanket saturated with glistening red blood. Protruding from underneath the sheets was Yasharov’s hand, his fingers bent into claws as if in a paroxysm of agony. His emerald signet ring winked balefully in the morning light. But the thing that lay on the deeply stained pillows made Kolenski double up and vomit violently onto the tents’ lush carpeting. Staring back at him from burnt out eye sockets was the remains of a monstrous and unmistakably goat-like head, severed at the neck, with long curving horns protruding from its charred skull and a blackened tongue lolling from the side of its scorched mouth.
Bagdasha stooped out of the tent, nausea and shock making his head spin. He regained some of his senses when Kolenski, babbling incoherently, hared round from behind a tent and almost bowled him over.
Outside the camp, just past the gates, a huge black rook settled gently on the bald, fleshy lump that sat atop a post driven firmly into the ground. It ruffled its oily coloured feathers and cawed, sharp eyes darting over the land. Then, with a powerful thrust of its neck, it buried its hooked beak into the juicy eye socket and tore free a lump of jellied fluid. The bird began to feast busily, as above more carrion birds began to circle.
And on the wind-blasted plains of Kislev, Captain Arman Yasharov’s dead eyes wept red tears.
JAHAMA’S LESSON
by Matt Farrer
SOMETHING HAD ARRIVED on the shores of Bretonnia, a chill shadow that slipped into the Bay of Hawks under an empty night sky and through a still, quiet ocean mist. It was a thick, unseasonable fog that lay across the shore like a blanket of some parasitic mould, drowning the shingle beach and tangling itself in the trees beyond. On another night it would have had poachers or late-night fishermen muttering uneasily, but tonight the moon was in and nothing moved in the dimness. Out to sea it narrowed sharply to a spot in the centre of the bay: a spire of black rock, glistening like a rotted tooth, spearing into the air between the headlands. The spire had not been there at sundown.
Khreos Maledict, Lord of Karond Kar, master of the Black Ark Exultation of Blighted Hope, chuckled over the sound of lapping water and tugged at the cloak about his armoured shoulders. The night had been mild as they had sailed into the bay, but the sorcerous fog had brought a chill to the air.
‘I confess I have often thought our sorcerers’ interest in weather weaving and concealment foolish and effete, but I profess myself newly educated. Even lacking the skills of our soft-spined southern cousins, I can see how the techniques Skail and his apprentices were fretting over could be… profitable. I have never seen the Exultation’s walls of mist extended so far from her, or so thick.’
He peered about him, trying to see the hills over the curve of the bay, but they were as smothered by the fog as the shape of the Black Ark behind them. The young helldrake towing the landing-skiff was invisible in the whiteness ahead, although every so often he thought he could hear a crack or chink as the Drakemasters goaded their charge one way or another. Even the lines of his coach, almost close enough to touch, were grey and dreamlike, and the four dark riders behind it made ghost-shapes as their horses pawed at the skiff’s broad deck. Khreos shot a look at the young elf next to him.
‘You, nephew, are clearly still not convinced of this whole exercise. No matter. Truth to tell, Khrait, I do not believe you will be convinced until you stand at the foregate of the Exultation and watch the, feh, what’s the creature purporting to rule this piece of the land?’
‘The Due d’Argent,’ put in a pale shape from the gloom at the front of the skiff.
‘Watch the Due d’Argent being towed aboard by the witch elf hooks in his flesh. What do you think, Miharan? Gilded chains for the baron and his family, in honour of their station?’
Miharan Diamo, the diminutive witch elf elder, the one they called the Scorpion’s Daughter, would not return his smile.
‘Make sure your reach does not exceed your grasp, Lord Khreos. You have not yet made your cut - you are only just drawing the knife.’ She gave a dismissive gesture of her hand. ‘But when the Castille d’Argent has fallen, I will commission your gilded chains happily enough.’
Khreos kept his smile in place and made a polite bow of acknowledgement, as he narrowed his eyes and promised himself yet another time that the little albino bitch would be meeting with an accident as soon as he could find a foolproof way to arrange one. Ahead of them splashing sounds came through the fog as the helldrake gained shallow water and was made to pull the skiff aground. The little vessel juddered as its bow was hinged down into a ramp, and Khreos and Khrait climbed carefully into the coach as Miharan stepped in on the other side. There was the sound of hooves and they were off, jolting up the beach until they reached the road into the hills, the Dark Riders taking up position around them as they emerged from the fog.
‘Perfect,’ declared Khreos, sitting back and smiling again. ‘See, nephew? I told you the coach would cross the beach with no trouble. I selected this bay for its shingle as well as its roadway.’ His nephew did not reply, and Khreos’s gaze switched to the fourth figure in the coach, a silent patch of black against the wine-and-gold colours of the seats.
‘And you, Jahama, you are to be the knife we draw tonight, the core and pivot of my stratagem.’ He leaned forward to the figure - but not too close. He had heard stories about the assassins who emerged from all those years under the witch elves’ tutelage, and of what happened to those who got too trusting toward them. ‘Miharan has sung your praises, sir. I don’t doubt that when we ride upon the Castille d’Argent tomorrow we shall find you greeting us at the gate, knife-blade wet, eh?’
‘I understand my orders, lord.’ The assassin spoke well enough but his voice was oddly soft and flat, as if reciting unfamiliar words by rote. He would not meet Khreos’s eyes.
‘You’d best leave him, Lord Maledict. He has a hard night ahead of him, and he must prepare himself.’ Khreos snorted at the sound of Miharan’s voice, making less effort to hide his displeasure now, and sat back to watch the trees shadowing out the stars over the road. The road was entering woods and the sounds of hoofbeats slowed as the coach-horses moved onto rougher road and the Dark Riders began weaving in and out through the trees, watchful for movement in the dark around them. There was something oppressive about the evening and for a time the only sounds were hooves and the win
d until the coach slowed and they heard the driver’s voice murmuring through the little window: ‘Lord, we are at the place. Beyond here the patrols from the Castille begin.’
With what Khreos considered unseemly haste, Miharan flicked open the coach door and vaulted easily out of the howdah and down to the ground, Jahama a moment behind her. But when Khrait went to lower the little folding steps and follow them Khreos put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Don’t look so puzzled, nephew. Just bide your time. We wait for the Lady Miharan to kiss her throat-cutter goodbye and come back aboard, then we return to the Exultation. In the meantime, try turning your wits to what we’re actually about here.’ His eyes turned to the two shapes outside in the clearing. ‘Let’s see if you can realise what I have planned.’
ON THE GROUND below them, Jahama shrugged his shoulders and adjusted the hang of his cloak. His hands flickered pale in the dimness as he tested the draw on each of his weapons.
‘You need no final advice, Jahama. Remember only what it is you have to achieve. I will greet you again on the Black Ark.’ Miharan gave a small tilt of her head, and Jahama swept back into a deep kneeling bow. The witch elf placed her hand on his head. Then they both straightened and stepped apart.
As Jahama scanned the hills and got his bearings Miharan leapt lightly onto the running board and slipped into the coach. He ignored the sound of its wheeling and moving away, but one of the Dark Riders paused long enough to look down at Jahama with an odd expression. Jahama met the other elf’s gaze for a chilly moment before the Rider wheeled his mount and disappeared after the rest of the party. His face still expressionless, Jahama looked around the clearing again.
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