by David Guymer
He saw the Beast ahead.
Huge from a distance, it was frighteningly immense up close, a pair of vicious red eyes burning from the depths of a tightly cinched cowl. Other than that, its features were impossible to discern, swaddled as it was in rags that looked as if they had been worn when it crawled from its grave. The headstones around it had been turfed over and cloaked figures stood knee-deep in pits dug with their own bound hands. Only the stone hammer of Sigmar remained standing, powerless in the shadow of the Beast. Bones and fragments of bones littered the disturbed earth. Dark shapes ran between the diggers to gather every piece and stuff them into black wool sacks.
The Beast emitted a continuous rumble of noise, aiming a crack of its twin-tailed whip, barbed with what looked like bone, over the heads of its toiling charges. Mindless with fear, the villagers let themselves be driven towards it. Most were cut down by flashes of rusted metal amongst the shadows that swarmed about the Beast’s feet, but two were unlucky enough to make it through.
It did not even look as if the giant had noted their existence until an arm like a stone column dashed the first to pulped meat sent careening over the graveyard and into a wall. The body fell, leaving a flowering of blood splatters on the lumpen stone. The second was still coming to terms with his horror when, almost too swift for Felix to follow, that massive arm splayed open to reveal five knifelike claws that lanced through the villager’s scalp. It launched into another harrowing roar, some abominable melding of beast and man. There was a flash of teeth within the creature’s hood and the villager’s screams were abruptly silenced. Blood spattered the Beast’s cowl as the man’s jugular spurted crimson. Still holding its whip, the Beast took the man by the collar and, with a sickening crunch of vertebrae, snapped his neck like a wishbone. The Beast upended the shattered body, head twisted and pinioned between its own shoulder blades, blood sputtering from its neck as though it were some monstrous gourd. Sticky fluids painted the Beast’s hood as the monster guzzled its fill.
Felix felt a sickness in his gut, but gripped his sword two-handed and took courage from Gotrek’s presence.
Gotrek powered into the graveyard, scattering the ghostly creatures before him like grass. Felix roared a war cry of his own and charged in at the Slayer’s back. The ground under their feet was treacherous, and more than once the Slayer stumbled over a shallow grave or lost his footing in loose earth. Fresh bodies lay splayed over the opened graves, their blood draining into the soil.
The Beast turned at Gotrek’s approach, its warm feast still in its grip. It regarded Gotrek for a long time, almost as if to convince itself that the dwarf really did dare to attack it, then flung the villager with a casual underarm sweep. Gotrek barked a curse and tried to duck, the two bodies colliding with a meaty slap. Something else broke within the once-living missile and the pair of them toppled back into an open grave.
‘Gotrek!’ Felix shouted, trying to force his way through the earth and bodies to the dwarf’s aid.
The Beast emitted a chorus of breathy pants, bobbing its head in time. Felix got the impression that it was laughing. It uncoiled its whip and cracked it once, tensing its muscles and snarling something that sounded almost like speech.
‘Huurrrlk!’
Sickly ropes of bloody drool swayed from its hood and it gesticulated up at the roof of the house that abutted one side of the graveyard. It clenched its fist and yanked it down, up and down, as though it were a mallet aimed at Gotrek’s head. Felix swung to look up the steep angle of the roof behind him. There was not a single bare tile. Shadows jostled for purchase, loaded sling cords beginning to whir above their heads like an angry horde of cicadas.
Felix’s throat felt suddenly dry. Gotrek was pulling himself out of the hole, shaking earth from his crest and spitting curses.
‘Gotrek, stay down!’
With a barrage of whines and cracks, a hail of sharpened rocks beat the earth around Gotrek’s shelter, forcing the dwarf deeper into the shallow trench. Felix jumped back and out of the line of fire. Mail struck stone. He pressed himself as tight as he could feasibly get into the uneven stone wall. The creatures could not draw a bead on him under the overhanging eaves. Not that that was any help to Gotrek. Their slings had the dwarf pinned under a relentless hail of fire.
The Beast stalked through the barrage as though it were nothing, growling unintelligible sounds and making sweeping gestures with its claws over the ruined graveyard. The cowardly shadow-creatures that Gotrek’s charge had driven off flowed back, using their monstrous master for cover where they could and snatching up the last few bones that still littered the bloodstained earth. Felix saw one of them struck by a bullet in the chest. Its arms flared and it fell back, hood and sleeves venting green-black smoke, its body dissolving before Felix’s eyes. All that hit the ground was a chemically charred cloak.
‘Manling! What’s going on?’
Gotrek ducked back as the creatures on the roof renewed their efforts to put him down.
The grave robbers were peeling away, their shoulders laden with knobbly sacks, and dashing back into the burning village in the direction of the tavern. The Beast threw Felix one last look of semi-intelligent evil, emitting a wheeze of panting laughter before turning its bulk and chasing after its minions. The creatures on the roof did not follow, maintaining a persistent rate of fire that kept Gotrek, only his crest visible, hunkered down.
‘Do something, manling! I’ll not be found cowering in some dead man’s grave!’
Felix parted himself from the wall long enough to steal a glance over the lip of the roof. Gnarled, tumescent claws curled over the guttering, like hideously mutated birds settling for the night to roost, calling to each other with that deadly leather-strap whir.
‘Make a diversion, manling. Draw their fire.’
‘How?’
Gotrek spluttered as he ducked a fresh volley, driving his face into the muck. ‘You went to university. Think of something!’
Felix clutched his sword to his chest. He had read history and classics, hardly the stuff that heroes were made of. He moved to the edge of the wall and peered around the corner. The tavern was ablaze along with half of the village. The Beast and its minions had already reached it, gathering up more of the shadow-creatures in its wake and bearing right into the hills. Felix set his jaw.
Oh well, here goes.
He leapt as high as he could, roaring himself hoarse as his body corkscrewed and he drove an arm around the guttering. When his hand grazed those misshapen claws, his first burning instinct was to snap it back, but he fought it. Its touch was vile: rotten flesh that gave beneath the pressure of his fingers, brittle stalks of hair that prickled his skin like a dead man’s whiskers, odd protuberances of bone that had no rightful place on a living beast. Suppressing his nausea, he grabbed one of the creature’s ankles. There was a squawk of surprise and then a thump as gravity reasserted its will and Felix began to fall. The creature’s body struck the roof and slid, Felix’s weight dragging it down. Claws shrieked against the tiles and then, just as black robes flared over empty space, bit into the lip of the guttering to arrest its fall.
It kicked out with its free leg, battering Felix about the head and catching him a stinging blow to his eye that had it immediately puffing up with tears. He ignored the battering and tackled its writhing shape in a bear hug, lifting his own feet from the earth. Suddenly holding far more than its own skinny weight, the monster screamed a very man-like scream and the pair of them dropped the short way together. Felix held on as his back hit the ground and drove the wind from his lungs. The creature landed on top, scrabbling furiously with head, feet, elbows, and claws. Unable to hold on, Felix let go. It sprang up, blindingly quick, long knives sprouting organically from its sleeves. It pounced, but Felix was ready for it and threw up his sword.
The creature impaled itself with a piercing wail. To Felix’s horror, that did not stop the creature struggling. It jerked as if hoping to pull itself free, but the action
only slid it further down the blade. Felix recoiled, bracing it on his boot to drive it back. There was a fizzing sound and the thing’s body gave as though its robe were suddenly hollow. Acidic green-black foam dribbled from its hood, fizzing darkly and leaving black burns where it landed on Felix’s armour. After a few seconds, all that was left impaled on Felix’s sword was a steaming strip of black rag.
Felix lay on his back, panting with shock and disgust. A mass of eyes peered down at him over the eaves. They glowed like witchfire, mismatched; reds, greens, blues, weird hues that railed against the ordered strictures of visible spectra. An angry snarl started up somewhere within the pack and spread. Slingshots whirred above the shadow-creature’s heads.
‘Gotrek! They’re distracted, Gotrek!’
‘Keep at it, manling.’
Felix gasped, incredulous. Sometimes he honestly believed that the Slayer would not be satisfied until Felix joined him in whatever doom he found for himself. He rolled his head back to watch, upside down, as Gotrek waded through the soil towards the stone monument of Sigmar’s hammer that leaned from the earth in the middle of the graveyard. Gotrek set his enormous hands to either side of the great hammer’s haft and pressed in. His shoulders bulged as he strained to tear it from the ground. Gotrek was mad! The hammer was as tall as Felix and solid stone. Gotrek was undoubtedly the strongest dwarf Felix had ever encountered, but even he had limits.
One of the creatures shrilled a note of alarm and the others shifted their aim from Felix and back towards the greater threat. They let loose. Missiles pattered off the stone bulk of the hammer but, shielded in its lee, Gotrek suffered only grazes. With a scream of effort Gotrek wrenched the hammer free, its haft streaming soil and fibrous strings of root. Its weight drove Gotrek back before he could set himself against it. Muscles pulled hard as Gotrek held the monolithic weapon steady and then, madly, started to spin. The mighty warhammer swung out to its full length, around and around, faster and faster, thumping through the air like a steam-powered piston until its head began to blur and, with a dwarfish war cry, Gotrek let go.
Gotrek’s aim was true and the night reignited with fresh screams as the giant missile crashed through the wall of the building. There was an implosion of loose stone as the wall failed to offer even token resistance and crumbled. The roof bucked and, suddenly finding nothing beneath it, began to topple, shedding black slate and shrieking figures into the ruined interior before the rest of the roof and three more walls collapsed in on top of them, blasting the graveyard with a wash of pulverised masonry.
Felix stood and dusted himself off. He coughed, regarding Gotrek with a wary respect and a healthy amount of fear. Gotrek stooped to gather his axe, the weapon almost flying from his hands such was the awesome reduction in weight by comparison. The Slayer panted as he pulled his way across the graveyard. Every so often, a muscle twitched, the only outward indication of his exertions.
‘Right then. Let’s have after the big one.’
Hurrlk loped ahead of his minions. They could outrun a horse over short distances, but even they could not match his awesome stride. Burning hovels were reduced to pleasing ruin on either side. His body reported heat, but his mind would accept none. He passed through a ghost town, as it had been once and as he would remake it again.
With a vague awareness, he noted the destruction unfolding at his back. He was curious, a maddened core of him just itching to face that which could inflict such damage. He suppressed it. He was too close to give in to those urgings now, however unlikely it was that a dwarf and a man could ever stop him.
He could not be bested.
Not then, not now, not ever.
That was truly maddening.
He snarled and ran. The tavern roared in the unholy grip of an inferno, shadows cast onto a struggle on its doorstep. Three skulking shadows dragged a corpulent man from the fire. One held him from behind, pinning his arms in its own as another stabbed him over and over in the chest with a serrated knife. Blood blossomed in ink spot patterns on his clothing. Another voice screamed. He ignored it. The mortals died and they were luckier for it. They died because the world was saner for their loss. They tangled the mind, made it torpid and angry; easier to eradicate them all, relieve the world of its burden and let quiet ghosts lie.
They died, but he was not here to kill.
He followed the road to the right and up the valley slope to where it terminated. Plants snapped and fell dead as they sought to scratch at his calves. He crashed through the brittle fauna and again, through a dry-stone wall that had not for one scintilla ever threatened to slow his path.
The Master will rise, has arisen, will arise again.
There was but one treasure yet unclaimed.
The Master would be pleased.
Rudi screamed and stabbed his knife at the shadow-creature’s face. It was so ungodly quick! His wrist was caught in its hands and a clawed foot slammed into his kidney before he even began to see it move. Pain exploded in his side and he collapsed to one knee. He drove an elbow toward the thing’s belly, only to see it blocked by a blur of dark rag.
‘Thomas!’ He choked with pain and inhaled fumes. His brother had bolted out the back way as the tavern front had gone up in flames. Then their father had charged out the front door and left Rudi a decision.
He hoped Thomas had got out safely.
Another creature was circling behind him. Too quick for him to act to stop it, it grasped him by both shoulders and bit down into the meat of his neck. He screamed, flailing his pinned wrist, jerking against the creature at his back. But they had him. Rudi’s screams bled into a whimper, strength floundering, skin peeling from the burning tavern. A third creature rose from his father’s corpse and licked its blade clean, face still concealed beneath a grubby cowl. It froze, tongue sticking out, staring over Rudi’s shoulder.
There was a roar, then the slick note of meat separating before metal and the pressure on Rudi’s wrist eased. An axe flashed before his eyes. A head dropped from the creature’s shoulders and rolled. Rudi caught a glimpse of scabs and weeping sores before both body and head dissolved into a stinking green juice that seeped through its cloak and ran between the cobblestones. The second creature released his neck and yelped like a kicked dog as a rune-scrawled longsword spit through its chest. It flared down into gloop before the man behind it could pull the weapon free. He shook the steaming rags from his sword with a look of disgust.
‘Come on, manling. It’s getting away.’
The dwarf made an abortive effort at chasing after the third and final creature, but gave up after just a few steps as it accelerated out of the village and out of sight.
Rudi accepted the hand that the tall, blond-haired man offered and let himself be hauled to his feet. His saviour’s mail was brilliant in the pyre that had been his home.
‘Thank you, Herr…’
‘Felix. And…’ The man looked down to the eviscerated body that had been Rudi’s father, eyes hooded. Felix seemed genuinely affected. A rare enough quality in a stranger. ‘I’m sorry for your father. And for all of this.’
The returning dwarf grunted, non-committal.
Rudi hung his head. ‘It’s my fault,’ he breathed.
‘You fought, friend,’ said Felix. ‘You could have done nothing more’
‘No!’ Rudi roared, throwing off Felix’s consoling arm. He stared hard at his father’s body. ‘The Beast came for me. It came because I saw. I tried to hide and now my home is ashes.’ He clutched at his head, fingernails burrowing into his scalp and pulling at his hair until white roots showed. The smell of burning hung like a mantle. Somehow, despite the fire, the wind still gusted cold and he shivered.
‘Don’t be such an idiot,’ said the dwarf. His tattoos were frightening, covered with dirt and the occasional gobbet of hissing green slime. ‘Take a look around. This monster doesn’t care a damn about you.’
‘But… but,’
‘It’s true,’ said Felix. ‘It came for your
graveyard, not you.’
Rudi released his taut scalp. Palms flat to his cheeks, he directed his unwilling face toward the path of crushed heathers that marked the trail of the Beast. ‘The… graveyard?’
‘Yes,’ said Felix. ‘Why? What’s buried there that a monster like that could want?’
Rudi did not answer right away. He bent to collect his knife and sword, then rolled his father onto his front with a quiet prayer that the earth accept him.
‘Speak up,’ said the dwarf. ‘Or we’ll leave you behind and have after it ourselves.’
‘I don’t know what it hopes to find.’ Rudi stood, applying pressure to his bruised side. He looked out onto the darkened moors, nodding his head in grim acknowledgement to some unspoken promise. ‘But I know where it’s going.’
Chapter 3
The Morning After
Felix panted from the effort of climbing. Brambles scored pale tracks into his long-suffering boot leather and more than once he had had to snatch his cloak from taloned branches he had not seen in the receding glow of the dying village at their backs. Gotrek forged ahead with an impatient stride while the young swordsman, Rudi, kept close to Felix’s back. Tracking the Beast was not proving difficult. It had left a trail of shattered undergrowth the width of a carriage right up into the hills. They ran with weapons drawn, eyes and ears alert for any sign of the monster or its servants.
‘How could a place so small need more than one graveyard?’ Felix managed between breaths.
Rudi would not meet his eye, kept his gaze to the trail and to the hilltop that it led to. ‘We don’t talk about it.’
‘Could you perhaps give us a clue?’ Felix snapped back. The pain on the younger man’s face made him instantly guilty. Rudi had just lost a father after all.
‘You’re not from here,’ Rudi mumbled, a harrowed look on his face. ‘You couldn’t understand. This is a cursed land. Nothing grows that a man can eat. It’s Sigmar’s punishment.’