by C. L. Werner
Kastern Kabus began to whisper, hot words singeing his lips as he evoked the dire power of Aqshy. He could feel his blood burning beneath his skin as he drew the magic down inside himself, gathering it for one blast of fire that would annihilate the foul invaders of his home. The flames would purge his sanctum of the monsters, leaving only soot and ash. His beard began to curl as the heated whisper grew into a chanted snarl, as the fires of Kastern’s body began to rise.
Stabbing pain in his side snapped the wizard’s concentration. Kastern staggered, hands reflexively closing about a black-feathered shaft protruding from his hip. He could feel the venom of the arrow sizzling into his body. Quickly he ripped it free, slapping his hand against the wound, invoking his magic to cauterise the injury. Flame burst all around his hand, reducing his scarlet gauntlet to burned tatters. Beneath his palm, the pyromancer’s flesh sizzled and blackened.
Kastern raised his staff just as a horrible bounding thing came capering towards him, a fungoid horror of claws and fangs. The wizard sent a blast of force through the staff, rendering it white-hot as it struck the monster. The squig squealed like a gutted pig, horns and flesh wilting beneath the touch of the super-heated staff. It started to retreat, but the wizard opened his mouth, releasing more of the magic he had drawn into himself in a fiery gout of dragon’s breath. The squealing monster crumbled into cinders even as it fled.
An arrow hissed through the air, but this time the wizard was ready for it, unleashing a withering pulse of magic that turned it to ash before it could strike him. Kastern’s eyes narrowed as he saw the archer, a wiry little goblin wearing leathery hides. He pointed a still blazing finger at the goblin, glaring death at the back-shooting villain. Even as he pointed, a tinge of horror raced through Kastern’s mind.
Why was the goblin laughing at him?
The answer roared at him when Kastern spun around. Distracted by the squig and the goblin, he had not concentrated on the cage of fire that penned in the orcs below! He turned, finding the last of the fiery bars flickering out and the largest of the orcs, the black-skinned brute who was their leader, lunging up the stairs towards him.
Hastily, the wizard drew power back into his body, frantically summoning a conjuration with power enough to destroy the charging black orc. Forcing himself to concentrate, trying to blot out everything to work his spell, Kastern was struck dumb when the warlord roared at him in debased Reikspiel.
‘I’z gonna feed ya that stick, spell-chucka!’
Gorgut chuckled as he saw the human shut his mouth in the middle of his spell, stunned by the coarse barbarity of the warlord’s threat. It was only a momentary lapse of concentration, but it was enough to get the black orc ten steps closer. He watched as the wizard did something with his hands, blinking his eyes shut as a glaring light flashed before him. When he opened them again, a flaming sword had erupted from the pyromancer’s hand. The black orc grunted appreciatively. He’d been afraid it was going to be easy.
The warlord brought his axe smashing down at the wizard, but Kastern’s flaming sword blocked the blow, resisting the orc’s bulk and strength with a force that went far beyond the wizard’s frail physique. Gorgut’s nostrils flared as the smell of burning steel reached him. He reared back, roaring in fury as he saw the notch the wizard’s fiery sword had melted in the edge of his axe. Forgetting his own orders, he brought the axe chopping down in a brutal arc aimed at the man’s face.
Again the flaming sword was there to intercept, again Gorgut could smell his favourite weapon being ruined by the human’s cursed magic. The black orc snarled, spitting a blob of phlegm at the wizard’s eyes. The spittle sizzled as it hit the super-heated air that billowed around the magister. Kastern sneered at the orc, pressing the attack. Gorgut felt the fiery sword slash across his armour, felt it singe his skin as it swept past. He felt himself being driven down, forced back by the dazzling flash of the wizard’s sword. He retreated one step, then two. Up above, he could see Zagbob the goblin scout watching the duel, snickering his weasely laugh.
Gorgut’s face contorted into a scowl. He was warboss! Not some crippled thing dancing to amuse goblins! The black orc stared into the human’s fiery eyes, then brought his steel-shod boot crashing up between the wizard’s legs. The fires winked out in the man’s eyes as though cold water had been thrown on them. They were black and wide and filled with pain. The flaming sword fell from the wizard’s hands as he clutched at his groin, the spectral weapon evaporating as it floated to the floor.
Gorgut brought the heft of his axe cracking into the top of the stunned wizard’s skull, spilling him onto the stairs at his feet. He gave the man a good kick in the ribs just to make sure he was out, then set a foot on the wizard’s back. Puffing out his chest, Gorgut looked down at Dregruk and his warriors.
‘That’s how you do a spell-chucker,’ Gorgut told them, the posturing only slightly spoiled when his half-melted breastplate decided at that moment to fall off and clatter down the stairs. Gorgut wrinkled his face in annoyance and gave the wizard another kick.
‘Wake up, ya zoogin’ grot-fondlin’ spook-calla!’
Kastern tried to open his eyes, but the left one was swollen shut. As the swirling mix of colours in the right one assembled themselves into an image, he found himself wishing the right one was swollen too. He was sitting in what had once been his library. The orcs had turned it into a rough bivouac because of the large fireplace that dominated the western wall. Entire shelves of books had been gutted, the priceless tomes they had held now acting as kindling for the upholstered Westerland furniture the greenskins were burning in the hearth. He could see a couple of goblins trying to pry gilded letters off the binding of a volume of Teradasch while a one-eyed orc was flipping through a first-edition Sierck and ripping out the illustrations. Another orc was using a poker for a spit and cooking something with fingers. Kastern closed his good eye then, not wanting to see any more.
‘Da boss talkin’ ta ya!’
Kastern felt a sharp pain in his side. He gasped, trying to lash out at his tormentor. It was that stinking goblin, the one that shot the arrow into him. The little fiend was more than back-shooter and scout to these monsters, he was also their resident sadist and torturer. He had an endless array of daggers and needles crafted from the fangs and claws of squigs and a loathsomely inventive mind for using them. He regretted now that he hadn’t seared the little fiend’s brain when he had the chance.
All chance was gone now. His tower was a shambles, his servants murdered, his treasures sacked and looted by monsters too stupid to recognise their worth. He struggled in the chains that held him and as he did so, Kastern reflected on the worst the orcs had done to him. Fearing his magic, they had made him safe to keep prisoner.
They had cut off his hands.
Even if he survived, even if somehow he escaped, Kastern knew he would never again wield the power of Aqshy. If he lived, he would do so as a mundane, maimed cripple. He would never feel the fires of magic burning through him again, never again feel the might of sorcery. It was better to be dead.
‘We’z gonna play dis game all da day.’ It was the orc speaking, the big black-skinned devil who had captured him on the stairs. The brute had been hovering near throughout Kastern’s ordeal, slapping around the goblins whenever they got too enthusiastic with their torture.
The monster had made repeated demands for ‘da powa’. It had taken three of Kastern’s teeth before he understood the orc was looking for magic. The stupid, dim-witted brute seemed to think he could just collect magic like he could sheep or swine! He thought Kastern had a hoard of artefacts locked away in his tower, like some miser with a pile of gold. It didn’t do any good to explain that the monsters had burned most of his treasures when they violated his library. What few charms and talismans he did have were things the orcs were singularly too thick to appreciate: a necklace to keep rain off your head was hardly going to impress a monster whose idea of hygiene was to wipe his bloodstained hands on another orc�
��s trousers instead of his own!
‘Where’z yer magic!’ the black orc growled. Kastern flinched as Gorgut flicked one of his stubby fingers against the tip of his already broken nose. ‘I knowz ya gotz lotz, spell-chucka! Now, where’z da swag!’
‘Yeah, da swag!’ chimed in Zagbob, twisting one of the needles in Kastern’s arm.
Gorgut backhanded the goblin, sending him flying. ‘I’z doin’ da talkin’ squig-sucka!’
Kastern coughed, blood oozing down his lip. He fought down the urge to laugh. ‘There’s… there’s nothing… here,’ Kastern managed. He winced as Gorgut clenched his fist. The last time the orc had hit him, it had broken his jaw. ‘But… I know… where there’s lots… of… power!’
Gorgut leaned in close to listen, oblivious to the smile twisting the wizard’s battered face.
‘Go… go north… past the lands of ice… past the places of snow,’ Kastern licked his lips, feeling the taste of blood on his tongue. ‘Keep going north… keep north until the land turns purple and the sky becomes green… keep north until the sun is like a ball of blood and the clouds whisper to you.’ Kastern spit a broken tooth from his mouth. ‘That’s where you… you will find… power!’
Gorgut slapped the human’s face in what would have been an almost appreciative gesture if there had been less force behind it. ‘Dat’s more like it, spell-chucka!’ the black orc grunted. He patted his belly and turned about. ‘One you lot go an’ fetch dat lazy gimp Nagdnuf! I’z gotz some meat fer da stew!’ The warboss looked again at Kastern and chuckled darkly. ‘Betta tell ’im ta pick up some o’ Oddgit’s bones too! Might need ’em fer texture!’
Kastern was too resigned to death already to feel any horror at the end the orc planned for him. The only thing he could think of was how much worse it would be for the greenskins when they got where he was sending them. The Chaos Wastes beyond the borders of Kislev were lands of madness and mutation, a place that had swallowed up entire armies without a trace, where daemons and monsters reigned and the very land itself was cursed with insanity. Oh yes, Gorgut would find his magic, and then the filthy beast would choke on it!
‘Oi!’ Gorgut bellowed as he stomped among the lounging bulks of his warriors. ‘Any youse lot know where’z north?’
Chapter Four
The feast hall of Hafn Hundred-eyes was a din of boisterous shouts, drunken boasts and caustic laughter. The reek of spilled mead, human sweat, vomit and the noxious fumes of ox-dung fires rose lazily up into the folded ceiling of the immense mammoth-hide tent far overhead. A brutish chandelier, crafted from nine intertwined skeletons, candles of human fat dripping from their skeletal claws, hung above the misshapen throng crowded about the long timber tables that stretched across the hall. Burly warriors clad in scraps of fur and leather, hulking knights encased in blackened armour of steel and bronze, even the robed figures of sorcerers and seers crowded about the hall, draining ivory flagons and leather jacks, jesting, cursing and carousing.
Hafn Hundred-eyes watched the activity filling his hall with a greedy smile. Many had been drawn to the Inevitable City by the promise of glory and the favour of the Changer. Not Hafn. He had made the journey out of baser concerns. Wherever a body of warriors gathered, wherever an army such as the Raven Host assembled, there would be a place for men like him. The warriors would need places to drink and feast, places to entertain them when they were not campaigning in the name of the Raven God. Hafn provided such a place, and for a little silver, a little gold, any man in the Raven Host was welcome beneath the roof of his tent.
The Baersonling chuckled as he watched one of the lissom serving wenches dart away from the drunken grasp of a Kurgan, then slide back into the man’s embrace when he set a bracelet of gold and emeralds down on the table. Hafn had taught his daughters well. Any warrior so deep in his cups already would make easy pickings in one of the back rooms once they were alone. He rubbed the eye set in his chin, causing it to water and moisten the thin black beard to either side of it. When the girl was done, he hoped she had sense to send the kitchen thralls in to clean up. The patrons would be hungry and there was no sense letting all that meat go to waste.
‘You agree on the price then?’
Hafn didn’t bother to turn around. The dozen eyes staring from the back of his shaven head could see Jun well enough already. ‘Five talents of silver for a pit-slave? The gods may have seen fit to render you mad or stupid, but Hafn still has his wits.’ The Baersonling touched a clawed finger to the temple of his head. ‘Two, and at that I am being generous!’
Jun sulked at the rebuke, thrusting his thumbs beneath his belt and puffing himself out. ‘You know he’s worth ten times that. Every man in this place has heard about how he tried to escape, the mess he made out of my warriors. You’ll make a fortune on the bets alone!’
Hafn shifted the gaze of several clusters of eyes to stare at the Norscan chained between two of Jun’s slavers. The Baersonling had to admit the man was an impressive specimen. He’d bought worse slaves for his hall’s fighting pit. There was a look of such homicidal rage in the prisoner’s eyes that Hafn felt nervous just being around him. If he had that effect on a man like himself, Hafn knew the effect the slave would have on his patrons. Jun was right, there was money to be made from such a spectacle. Still, the slaver was much too anxious to dispose of the Norscan, and that made Hafn suspicious.
‘You think so!’ Hafn said. ‘You tell me to buy this slave and put him in the pit with Noeyes! Who’s going to wager on that?’ The Baersonling laughed cruelly. ‘Noeyes has torn bigger men to ribbons without trying. Pox of Nurgle! I set ten ungors against Noeyes just last night and they didn’t even scratch it! No one is going to bet on this… this Kormak!’
‘They will if they heard about what he did to my men,’ Jun’s voice dripped bitterness.
Hafn’s eyes, those with lids at least, narrowed dangerously. ‘If he’s really that dangerous, then I certainly don’t want him. They come here to see Noeyes rip things apart. What if this idiot manages to hurt Noeyes, or even kill it?’
Jun turned and looked into Kormak’s glowering face. Every ounce of spite in the slaver’s body spread across his visage. ‘I said you should put him in the pit with Noeyes,’ Jun said, rubbing the scar across his face where Kormak’s chain had gouged his flesh. ‘I didn’t say to give him anything to fight it with.’
Hafn chortled at the villainous idea and began counting out the slaver’s silver.
Kormak’s thick fingers carefully kneaded the cramped muscles of his arms after Jun’s slavers removed his shackles. The two Kurgans quickly scrambled for the guide ropes that would haul them out of the pit, as eager to be away from the powerful Norscan as the thing he would soon face. Kormak ignored the fleeing men, instead scrutinizing his new surroundings. The fighting pit in Hafn’s feast hall was a roughly cylindrical gouge in the bare rock of the floor, twenty-five feet deep and nearly twice as wide in diameter. Above him, Kormak could see the long feast tables with their covers of flayed skin and their benches of unworked timber. The face of each of the revelling warriors was turned toward the pit, raucous calls for fresh drink drowned out by eager wagering between the tables.
The pit itself was floored in great flagstones of green-veined limestone. The walls were studded with spears, their points jutting out from the bare earth in a crazed pattern of iron spikes. On several, Kormak could see the decayed remains of men and half-men dangling like rotten fruit. At the far side of the pit was a great iron gate and from it came the foulest stink to ever assault the Norscan’s nose. It was the reek of death itself, magnified and compounded into a terrible aggregate of horror. A low warbling groan sounded from the darkness behind the gate and sometimes a furtive snuffling sound like a sickly dog sniffing for scraps.
‘Friends and celebrants!’ the booming voice of Hafn Hundred-eyes roared over the din of the feast hall. ‘Warriors of the Raven Host! Huscarls of Great Tchar’zanek the Mighty! Tonight I present you an experience unlike any
other! Tonight I offer you the sensation of sensations! From the frozen wastes of Norsca, at great expense and danger, I bring you Kormak the Troll-eater, Scourge of the Sarls and Sorrow of the Aeslings! Killer of men and women and daemons all! Twenty warriors lost their lives bringing this barbarian atavism from the wilds of the Shadowlands to set him here, before your eyes. Some of you may have seen him try to break free in the very streets of the Inevitable City itself.’ Hafn paused and waited while murmurs of conversation crawled through the hall as those who had seen the street fight related it for the benefit of those who had not. After a time, Hafn raised his arms high, motioning for silence.
‘Yes, here he stands,’ Hafn declared. ‘Kormak, whose father was one of the Blood God’s hounds and whose mother was the most debased she-devil ever born of the Tong. What foe, what adversary can we pit against this human monster that would be worthy of his terrible might? What antagonist can we loose against Kormak Giant-smasher that would be worthy of this audience?’
Hafn folded his arms and waited. It did not take long. First a few voices, then the voices spread into a chant, from a chant into a howl. ‘Noeyes! Noeyes! NOEYES!’
The Baersonling raised his hand and nodded his head. ‘You have spoken, friends. You have asked for it, you shall be given it. Tonight, Kormak of the Skull Land shall face Noeyes!’
The announcement brought a roar of approval from the crowded hall. Wagers passed quickly among the tables.
Kormak stared straight up from the pit, into the smirking face of Jun the slaver. The Norscan gestured with his thumb at the gate in the far wall. The sounds behind it had grown into a moaning growl and the iron bars trembled in their settings as something huge and powerful smashed against them.