The hunter emerged onto a ledge that had been obscured from view. Thrashing winds tested his balance as he advanced to find Golg waiting for him in the lee of a cave. He let out a rasping laugh as he staggered into the cavern and slumped to the floor. Pulling his legs in against his chest, the hunter fought to rid the chill from his bones, massaging blood back into his arms. Golg dropped down next to him, bowing his head. Darhur considered striking the beast for its insolence but instead moved closer to the sabretusk, eager to share the heat from its pelt. The three gnoblars shivered in moments later, stood almost shoulder to shoulder in a huddle. Darhur snorted. He’d forgotten about them.
‘Make sure there’s nothin’ back there,’ Darhur snapped, the layer of frost riming his eye lids hindering his ability to see in the gloom of the cave.
Snikkit took a few cautious steps towards the back of the cavern, silently wondering how long it’d be before Darhur or Golg got hungry enough to eat him. Brija was beside him, muttering nonsense between chatters of his gnarled teeth.
‘I’s watch front,’ Najkit took a swig from his flask and sat down opposite Golg. He wanted to keep the sabretusk where he could see it.
Snikkit muttered a curse and turned his attention to the cave. He wasn’t afraid, just desperate to do as he was told and then get some sleep away from Brija. The ceiling was irregular, sloping down and then suddenly reaching up into the mountain. The ground was wet where the freezing cataracts from above had pooled. Snikkit sniffed the air – it was fresher than the choking grit of the blizzard, and there was something else…
‘’Ere, ’ere,’ Brija had wandered ahead and was pointing at what looked to Snikkit like a pile of rocks.
On closer inspection, the rocks turned out to be bones. Snikkit kicked a few of them, the way he’d seen Darhur kick a body to see if it was still breathing. ‘Ain’t nuffin but bones ’ere boss,’ he called to Darhur, ‘Sum animal musta crawled in an’ died.’
The hunter was only half listening, his exhausted body beginning to slip into the great sleep, his mind already dreaming.
In his delirium, Darhur saw Skarg, laughing as Golg lost an eye to the irongut’s upstart gnoblar. He relived the moment that his hammer had crashed through Skarg’s gutplate to pulverise his organs, his ironshod boot trampling the irongut’s head into the ice fields.
The hunter’s frostbitten lips twisted themselves into a grin.
Darhur’s joy was short lived, Tyrant Face Eater’s words of admonishment rising in his mind like a dark cloud. Thoughts of home filled the hunter’s head. He watched himself stand by his tribe’s roasting fires, the smell of fresh human wafting from the butcher’s pot, the cooking flames reflecting off the butcher’s outsized cleaver–
A shadow fell across Darhur’s face. His eyes opened to a hulking figure. It filled the mouth of the cave, a sliver of hardened ice in each clawed hand. Instinctively, Darhur drew his knife, its sickle blade deflecting a downward blow meant to sever his head. Before the attacker could strike again, Golg sprang into its chest, knocking it backwards. The hunter got to his feet, fighting to shake the malaise that had taken hold of him.
‘Yhetee!’
Darhur ignored Snikkit’s yelping. He was wrong anyway. The creature was too large to be a yhetee, its hide too dark. It was a greyback, a larger and far more dangerous foe. The beast was fully a head taller than Darhur, and underneath its layer of insulating hair lay tight bunches of sinew and dextrous muscle. The greyback recovered in an instant, issuing a malevolent roar from a mouth lined with dagger teeth. It caught Golg with a backhanded blow to the head as the sabretusk pressed his attack. Scolding himself for falling asleep in the beast’s lair, Darhur unhooked the hammer from his belt and attacked. The greyback blocked the hunter’s opening swing, its blade snapping against his hammer. Moving in, Darhur slipped inside its reach and shot his forehead into its face. He felt teeth splinter as his stony brow smashed apart its jaw. Moist fur that reeked of stale blood and piss filled his face. Darhur fought down the urge to gag and shouldered the beast against the cave wall.
Snikkit tried to load his sling, but his fingers were too cold. At least he tried, he thought, retreating to the far end of the cave where Brija sat, holding his knees against his chest, head bobbing nervously. Snikkit envied Najkit, who was still lying on the floor, blissfully unaware of the mortal danger he was in. The mixture of the yhetee piss he’d been drinking and the thin air had rendered the snide gnoblar unconscious.
Together, Darhur and Golg pinned the greyback against the wall. They moved for the kill, but the creature avoided them. Leaping to the ceiling, it used its claws for purchase and swung over their heads. Dropping behind Darhur, it raked its talons down his back. The hunter let out a snarl of pain and spun around, lashing out with his hammer. The beast stepped back out of range, as Darhur had expected it to. Continuing his turn, the ogre threw the blade from his other hand. The knife cut through the air and sliced into the greyback’s chest, burying itself up to the hilt. The beast roared, blood bubbling from its mouth, and rushed towards Darhur. Brushing aside the greyback’s desperate thrashing, the hunter clamped his hand around the knife’s handle. Bellowing a curse, he lifted the beast into the air and slammed it down into the ground.
Sweating, Darhur fixed the greyback in place with his foot and pulled his knife free. ‘The Great Maw provides.’
The hunter began carving up his prize. The greyback was no different from the dozens of rhinox and mountain bears Darhur had slain before. Though, unlike the great mammoth whose horn adorned Darhur’s gutplate, the beast would not take a week to pare. With practiced precision he cut away the pelt and sank his teeth into an artery before the blood could run cold. Piercing the larger artery on the beast’s leg, Darhur bathed in the warm blood as it spat onto his face and thawed his features. With his bare hands, he ripped off chunks of muscle and fat, gorging himself on chunks of raw meat. Blood and viscera spilling from his mouth, Darhur ripped off an arm and tossed it to Golg. The sabretusk wasted no time in consuming the flesh and devouring the sweet marrow from within the beast’s bones.
As the sun climbed in the sky and pushed needles of light through the dense cloud, Darhur was reinvigorated. The greyback’s meat had silenced the ache in his belly and lent new strength to his limbs. He’d fashioned an extra cloak from the beast’s hide, the layer of dried blood matting the pelt acting as further insulation against the cold, and used the thick tendons to bind it firmly around his shoulders. Filled with renewed purpose, the hunter continued up the mountain.
‘Maw!’ Darhur roared in frustration and slammed his forehead into the mountain. Blood burst across his brow, freezing instantly as icy winds scraped across his face. He glared at the wall of rock and ice in front of him.
‘I am Darhur Beastkiller of the Wallcrusher Tribe,’ Darhur beat his chest with clenched fists, dislodging the layer of snow that had settled over his clothing. ‘I higher up your peaks than any Wallcrusher ever go.’ He tugged at the heavy pelt around his shoulders, ‘I ate the greyback you sent to kill me.’ He gripped his hammer as tight as his cold-sapped fingers could muster, ‘I will not be beat by a pile of rock!’
Darhur attacked the rock face. Again and again he struck out, his pride rendering him proof against the shards of rock and ice that stabbed out at him as he smashed apart the snowdrift. In response, the mountain shuddered and threw a blanket of snow down upon his head. Darhur winced as the freezing shrapnel cascaded over his shoulders.
‘Master Darhur, boss?’ Snikkit had to shout to be heard over the winds.
‘What?’ Darhur spat, his gaze still locked on the wall of rock blocking his path.
‘Rhinox,’ Snikkit pointed a shaking finger towards a giant beast as it disappeared from view. ‘See boss, they not stuck. We follow?’ Snikkit nodded with such vigour that the snot-icicles that had formed around his nose snapped off.
Darhur stared at him for a moment. ‘Maybe I won’ts let Golg eats you after all.’ The hunter turned to the
sabretusk, ‘Find a path.’
At his master’s command Golg took his paw off Najkit’s chest and bounded after the rhinoxen.
Darhur had been surprised to see a rhinox so high in the mountains, shocked to have encountered entire herds of them. Most were thin and weak from exposure, suffering from a climb they weren’t bred for. There had been others too, packs of skeletal sabretusks and ice cougars, clinging to life as they headed north. The crags were beset with the corpses of creatures that hadn’t the constitution to complete the climb. Darhur patted his gut. Even his burly frame was fading under the strenuous ascent. Without an answer to why the cavalcade of beasts weren’t attacking one another, the hunter had been careful to keep his distance, unwilling to count on it continuing.
The tide of beasts led Darhur up the mountain to the bottom of a sloping plateau. The storm had grown worse as he climbed. The hail was constant, punishing him for every step forward. Fierce crosswinds sped across the open plateau to topple him. Lightning stabbed from a fell sky and lit up the ground in arcing flashes that boiled the snow. On three sides the mountain had all but disappeared. To the front it continued to rise like a titanic monolith with no end, but to the sides it vanished, dropping away into the mist below. If he had believed his eyes and not the dizzying pain in his head, it would have been easy for Darhur to forget that he stood higher than the clouds his tribe followed to war. He watched as the beasts marched to the base of the mountain upon a mountain and stopped. They were not alone - hundreds more creatures had gathered there, heedless of the lightning that periodically reached down and cremated one of their number.
‘Poof,’ Brija clapped his hands together as another creature burst into flames.
The gorger appeared from nowhere barrelling into Darhur, knocking him to the ground. Caught off guard, the hunter lost his footing. He recovered quickly, dropping to one knee for balance and raising his crossbow. But the gorger was quicker, fed by momentum; it was upon Darhur before he could fire. It batted away his weapon and thundered its malformed skull into his jaw. Dazed, the ogre staggered backwards, slipping over on the ice and tumbling downhill towards the edge of the pass. Darhur struggled in vain to arrest his fall, hands trying scrabbling to find purchase. The ground lacked even basic vegetation and the wind had long since filed the rocks smooth. In desperation Darhur drew his knife and stabbed it into the mountainside. He felt the muscles in his shoulder tear as they battled gravity to arrest his fall. Grimacing, he punched the rock face with his free hand. The impact broke his knuckles but rewarded him with a hand hold.
Golg bared his fangs and leapt at the gorger, intent on ripping out its throat. The beast turned, lifting its left arm in defence. The sabretusk’s jaws closed around the limb, its over-sized incisors puncturing the bicep. The gorger let out a snarl of hate, turning with Golg’s momentum to avoid being bowled over. Golg’s grip loosened as the gorger’s fist connected with his ribs, splintering them. Sensing its foe weaken, the gorger threw its arm towards the edge of the ledge with enough force to wrench it from its socket. Gasping for breath, Golg was thrown free from the arm, his teeth raking its length and tearing off strips of flesh as he spun away over the edge.
Pain shot up the gorger’s leg, a rusted bear trap locked around its left foot and ankle.
‘Got ’im, got ’im.’ Brija was still grinning when the gorger’s other foot connected with his face, broke his nose and sent him skidding across the plain.
‘Nuffin big enuff for this. Ain’t nuffin.’ Seized by panic, Snikkit dug around in his makeshift pockets for something to fire at the gorger. ‘Wot Snikkit do? Wot boss do?’ Desperate, the gnoblar raised his arms in the air, spreading them wide to make himself as big as possible, and ran screaming at the gorger.
Bemused, the gorger caught the undersized warrior by the waist and yanked him into the air.
‘Don’t work, don’t work,’ Snikkit cried out as he struggled to free himself from the gorger’s clawed grip.
With the gorger distracted, and with the aid of several more handholds, Darhur pulled himself back onto the plateau. Scrabbling to his feet, he drew his knife. With a shout, the hunter charged the gorger, his heavy strides leaving deep furrows in the snow as his legs powered him towards his prey. The gorger tossed Snikkit aside, opened its mouth and roared. Every muscle on the creature’s swollen torso rippled to attention, veins threatening to burst through its pallid skin. Clawing at its chest with maddened vigour, the gorger ran at the ogre. They slammed into each other, two titans of sinew and hate. The gorger howled as the tusk protruding from Darhur’s gut plate impaled it, the sharpened ivory spearing through the beast’s abdomen and out through its back. The gorger bit down into Darhur’s neck, severing tendons and drinking deep of his blood. Darhur gritted his teeth and fought to stay conscious. He brought his arm up to grab the gorger’s head, but the beast was quicker, catching his arm in an unyielding grip and snapping it at the elbow. Darhur’s mouth dropped open as he cried silently in pain, his strength all but exhausted.
Najkit weighed up his options – run now or join the fight. If Darhur died, the gorger would likely eat him. There was a chance he could convince Brija to have another go at slaying the beast, which might just give him enough time to scamper. He cast his gaze at Brija, who was even now preparing to rush the gorger. No, that idiot would be dead far too soon to be of any use. Running, then, seemed like the best option. He looked around for Snikkit. The gnoblar was unconscious, his prized coat torn and smeared in blood. Najkit kicked a pile of snow in frustration – he didn’t want the coat now, he’d never get rid of Snikkit’s wretched stench. He turned to go and stopped. What if…?
He took a few steps and paused. What if somehow he managed to help the hunter kill the gorger? He might get a coat of his own. There were plenty of rhinoxen around, and Darhur could easily skin one for him. Resolved, Najkit took a swig of yhetee piss for luck and loaded his sling. Squinting through one eye, he tried to take aim through the blizzard. Snow washed into his face and filled his eye faster than he could blink it way. Giving up, he closed both eyes, muttered a prayer to the Great Maw that he didn’t hit Darhur, and fired. The shard of metal shot through the air and struck the gorger in the mouth.
Coughing blood through splintered teeth, the gorger released Darhur’s arm. Seeing his chance, the hunter shouldered the beast away, the horn from his gut plate inflicting more damage as he ripped it out of the gorger’s abdomen.
Najkit punched the air in triumph. Remembering himself, he looked around to make sure no one saw and went back to looking sullen.
The gorger swayed unsteadily on its feet, its warped physiology straining against numerous grievous injuries. Allowing the beast no respite, Darhur swung his hammer into its face and finished what Najkit started, the gorger’s teeth exploding through the air like a hail of bloodied ice slivers. The gorger stumbled, its claws clumsily raking the air as it blindly lashed out. Darhur sidestepped and brought his hammer up into the beast’s midsection, cracking its ribs before driving his forehead into its ruined face. The gorger crashed to the ground, defeated. Tearing the bear trap from the beast’s ankle, Darhur opened the trap’s metal jaws and thrust it over the gorger’s head. With a snap, the trap clamped shut, severing the head at the neck. The hunter watched for a moment as the headless body spasmed through its death throes, before kicking it off the slope.
‘Feast well,’ Darhur offered a prayer to Golg as he watched the gorger’s body fall through the mist to join the sabretusks in the crags below.
Snikkit picked himself up out of the snow, frantically patting himself down in search of injury. There was a long cut on his ribs where the gorger’s claws had gripped him, and numerous nicks and scraps on his exposed arms and face. Relieved to still be in one piece, the gnoblar shuffled over to Darhur. The hunter was in bad shape, one arm dangling lifelessly at his side.
‘What’s now boss?’ Snikkit asked, careful not to stand too close to the edge.
Darhur wasn’t listening
, his attention fixed skyward.
Snikkit looked up. Stumbling backwards in shock, he hunched his back in an unconscious effort to be further from the sky. A fulgurant web hung in the air. Its arcing strands spat and crackled as incandescent fire erupted along their length. Converging, the sparking flames erupted, detonating the web in a thunderclap that hammered Snikkit to his knees. A string of tumultuous booming followed as the clouds wrenched apart.
‘Run!’ Darhur bellowed as bolts wreathed in flame tore down and struck the earth, sparking off the ice to form jets of steam.
There was no cover on the plateau. Darhur cursed his luck and headed for the nearest great mammoth, his tired legs fuelled by the desire to survive. Ducking under the beast’s enormous torso as another hail of fire stung the earth, the hunter caught his breath. The mammoth didn’t move, its four colossal legs set upon the ground. Darhur watched from the creature’s shadow as all around, the other animals stood immobile. Even as another of their number was ignited by the fire-lightning, they remained oblivious to the destruction raining down on them.
‘Boss…’ Snikkit ventured.
Darhur growled. He had no idea what to do next.
The ground growled back, a tremor shivering out from the base of the mountain across the plateau.
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 141