WH-Warhammer Online-Age of Reckoning 03(R)-Forged by Chaos

by C. L. Werner

  ‘Noeyes?’ Kormak asked. Jun’s smile grew. ‘How do you expect me to fight without a weapon?’

  The Kurgan slaver spit onto the floor at Kormak’s feet. ‘I don’t expect you to fight. I expect you to die. Slowly. In great pain. Noeyes doesn’t like to eat things that aren’t still moving.’

  Kormak made a lunge at the laughing slaver, but his leap was not enough to carry him past the ring of spears set into the wall of the pit. He fell back, his shoulder and side gashed by the iron points. The smell of blood excited the thing behind the gate. The moaning growl became a whine, eager and hungry. Dust and pebbles trickled from the gate’s settings.

  Kormak turned and faced the gate, glaring at the darkness beyond. They wanted a spectacle, he would give them a spectacle. And then he would climb out of this pit and kill every last one of them!

  Hafn gave a signal and a knot of burly thralls bent their backs to an immense wheel. As the wheel turned, chains lifted the iron gate, removing the barrier between pit and shadow.

  Before the gate was more than a few feet off the ground, a great clawed hand was groping beneath it, trying to stretch itself far enough to reach Kormak. It was a monstrous hand, bigger than a man’s chest, each finger longer than Kormak’s forearm and tipped by a black talon as large as his entire hand. The apparition was covered in leprous, mouldy skin that was almost transparent where it clung tightly to the bones underneath. Ugly, fungoid growths and black tumours mottled the pallid hide, adding to its charnel stink.

  After a time, the scrabbling claw relented and was pulled back into the shadows. The hungry whine and snuffling noises rose as the thing in the darkness resigned itself to wait for the gate to finish its ascent. Kormak waited as well, watching as the iron barrier slowly groaned along on its rusty chains.

  The instant that groan ended, a gigantic figure sprang from the black cave. Kormak had judged that it would be immense from the size of its claw, but he had not prepared himself for the awful sight of its full form. It towered over the mouth of its cave, twelve-feet tall despite its curved and hunched back. Its shape was roughly the approximation of a man’s, but monstrously immense and hideous. There was some suggestion of an ogre about the broad, thick bone-structure and heavy features of the face, but there was none of the prodigious power and gluttonous exuberance of an ogre in its withered flesh and scrawny frame. In his youth, Kormak had helped his father destroy a pack of ghouls that had dug their way into the funeral barrows of their ancestors. This was something of the same sort, a ghoulish debasement of ogre.

  The gangrel thing snuffled and snarled at the crowd above, displaying its crooked maw filled with cracked yellow tusks. The monster’s face was twisted with the most abominable depravity, an almost idiot malignance that was all the more horrible for the primitive instinct behind it. Kormak raised his head to stare defiantly in the monster’s eyes but shrank back from it in loathing instead. True to its name, the monster had none for the Norscan to stare into. To either side of its squashed, bulbous nose there was only an empty socket, a crusty residue of decaying tissue clinging stubbornly to the skull. A troglodyte nightmare from the black depths of the earth, the monster had been unable to endure even the dim light filtering down to the fighting pit and, so, it had clawed out its own eyes to stop the pain.

  The gorger spent a moment roaring and mewing at the crowd above, making a few feeble efforts to leap at them until the stabbing pain of the spears drove it back. It patted the ugly wounds its blind efforts had produced, licking its own treacly blood from its claws. Then, as though the taste of blood had aroused some dim memory in its simple brain, the beast spun about, its nose snuffling at the air. It made a drooling cry of unnameable hunger and lunged towards Kormak.

  Kormak did not wait for the gorger’s rending claws to strike. The Norscan drove at the monster even as it rushed him, sinking his fist into its belly. His other hand scythed across the beast’s bicep. Noeyes squealed in pain, its claw slashing across Kormak, hurling the Norscan across the pit, smashing him into the far wall.

  A hush fell upon the shouting spectators. They stared in wonder at the ugly gash across the arm of Noeyes, its thin blood spurting from the grisly wound. The gorger licked at the injury, confused by its wound. It snuffled loudly, its insane half-witted brain incapable of understanding. There was no smell of steel or iron about the prey it had attacked. Therefore it was impossible the human could have hurt it.

  Slowly, painfully, Kormak rose from the bloodied floor of the pit, clutching at bruised ribs with his right hand. The other he lifted high, shaking blood from the bony, serrated cleaver-like appendage that had replaced his left hand. The crowd above roared their approval. The Norscan was a marauder, a mutant warrior of the Wastes, capable of twisting his flesh and bone at will into new shapes. The slaughter arranged by Jun and Hafn was not so one-sided as they had imagined. Kormak bore the mark of Tzeentch upon him!

  Noeyes shook its head, lank strips of filthy black hair streaming about its hideous face. The brute bellowed, snorted, and then charged the little man who had hurt it. Like an avalanche the gorger came, its enormity threatening to break Kormak like a twig. The monster’s very mass and momentum betrayed it. As Noeyes charged, Kormak dove from its path, rolling along the ground. He let the brute smash against the wall of the pit, then rushed upon the dazed gorger, his axe-blade hand hacking through its knee.

  The gorger wailed as its leg folded beneath it. The degenerate ogre struck out blindly with its claws, the sweep of its talons slashing so near its foe that they scraped along Kormak’s left horn. The Norscan was swift to retaliate, his axe-hand chopping down on the descending claw, severing three of its dagger-like fingers.

  Shouts of ‘Kormak!’ rained down upon the pit as man and monster circled one another warily. Frightened, pained by the hurt already done it, the terrible hunger of Noeyes would not let the gorger retreat. Kormak did not even consider the prospect. He knew the only way out of the pit was over the beast’s corpse.

  ‘Kill that mutant bastard!’ Hafn snarled. The hundred-eyed Baersonling seized the shoulder of one of the feast hall’s bouncers, pushing the man into the pit. The man landed with a crash, sprawled upon the floor of the pit. Before his battered head could even start to make sense of the abrupt change in his own fortunes, the guard was set upon by the enraged Noeyes. Drawn by the sound of the man’s fall, the gorger pounced upon him, crushing his ribcage beneath its prodigious mass while it ripped great slivers of meat from his body with its remaining claw.

  Kormak seized upon the gorger’s distraction, leaping upon the monster’s back. His axe-hand bit down, slashing into the brute’s neck. The gorger rose, shrieking, trying to buck off the Norscan straddling its curled spine. The bleeding stump of its hand slapped wetly at Kormak. The marauder ducked beneath the mad swipe of its claw, the black talons ripping into the gorger’s hide as they missed the man.

  The marauder roared with bloodlust. He stabbed his axe-like limb into the gorger’s neck, sending an ugly spray of blood jetting from the wound. Kormak leaned back, the bony blade of his hand changing, shifting before the eyes of the spectators. A serrated mouth spread across the middle of the axe-head, forming a reptilian maw that gaped and snapped at the gorger’s spurting arteries.

  ‘He’s killing Noeyes!’ raged Hafn. The Baersonling seized a spear from one of his guards, hurling it at the man straddling his monster’s back. The shaft sank into Kormak’s shoulder, the pain staggering him long enough that one of the gorger’s clumsy strikes connected and sent him sprawling.

  Angrily, Kormak snapped the spear shaft protruding from his body, casting the splintered end full into the face of the crippled gorger. ‘Here, monster!’ he snapped. ‘Give your cringing master a bit of sport before I kill you!’

  Noeyes charged at the Norscan, narrowly missing him as he sidestepped the lunge.

  A sly smile worked its way onto the marauder’s harsh features. He sprinted across the pit, flinging himself at the ring of spear shafts, gra
bbing hold of the lowest blades. He ignored the biting pain in his hand, fought to control the snapping teeth of the axe-mouth that had replaced the other. Exerting every ounce of strength in his powerful frame, he pulled himself as high on the spears as he could. He was still well short of the lip of the pit, but the opportunity for escape would present itself soon enough.

  ‘Ho, you pig-suckled runt of a whoreson whelp!’ Kormak shouted at the blind, snuffling beast. ‘I’m over here now, you walking midden heap!’

  Noeyes bellowed, thundering across the pit towards the voice of its enemy. Kormak waited until the beast leapt at him, then released his hold on the spears. The Norscan dropped to the floor of the pit while the gorger smacked full force into the spear-studded wall.

  The monster’s heels scrabbled against the earthen wall as its final breath wheezed out of it. Impaled upon a half-dozen spears, the gorger was pinned to the wall like a moth in an alchemist’s collection case.

  A shocked silence spread through the feast hall. Kormak did not allow the shock to pass. Once more he lunged at the wall, this time using the gorger’s body to climb above the ring of spears. Bracing himself upon the leprous shoulders of the monster, he threw himself at the lip of the pit. The marauder’s axe-hand changed, melting and contorting into a great crustacean claw. Kormak stabbed the spiny tip of his new appendage into the stone floor of the hall like a mountaineer’s piton. Secured, the barbarian pulled himself the last few feet. He was greeted by a clutch of Hafn’s guards.

  They did not delay him long.

  Hafn Hundred-eyes was the last to die.

  Kormak lifted the squealing, blubbering Baersonling over his head, then up-ended him into the fighting pit. Hafn’s skull cracked like an egg upon the solid stone floor, eyes bursting from the gory wreck like seeds from a shattered melon.

  Jun the Whip cowered as the hulking Norscan approached him. The other surviving slavers had deserted Jun as soon as they saw Kormak break free. The slave master had been too overcome by awe and terror to move. Now he wilted before the marauder’s advance. Kormak’s mutant limb melted and shifted between an array of loathsome and murderous implements. Jun fumbled at the sword in his belt, but a snake-like tendril shot from Kormak’s mutant fist, sending the blade clattering across the floor.

  ‘I don’t expect you to fight,’ Kormak growled, edging ever closer. ‘I expect you to die. Slowly. In great pain.’

  Jun screwed his eyes shut, waiting for Kormak’s revenge. It took some time for him to realise that he wasn’t dead, that his flesh had not been gouged and butchered by the marauder. When he opened his eyes, he could see the Norscan looming over him, his axe-hand raised for a murderous blow. A weird yellow glow filled Kormak’s eyes and he was as still as a statue.

  ‘Our paths cross again, Jun of the Chains.’

  The slaver turned to see a familiar figure stalking through the feast hall, warriors and mutants scattering before him in frightened deference. There was no mistaking the robes and the pallid, tattooed visage of the zealot who had cowed the marauder once before with his magic. This time the mystic held a different skull in his pale hand, a grotesquely painted thing with amber set into its empty sockets and a sinister yellow glow swirling about it.

  ‘Tolkku Skullkeeper, at your command,’ the zealot said with mock courtesy and a jeering bow. ‘I think I might take the mutant from you. How much?’

  ‘Thr… no… two talents of silver,’ Jun sputtered. For a moment, just an instant, the yellow light flickered in Kormak’s eyes and the axe-hand descended several inches closer to the slaver. Jun squealed in fright.

  Tolkku smiled beneath his stained skin. ‘No, I think you should give me more to take him. Shall we say seven talents of silver? Or would you prefer I freed him from my spell now? Think about it. I am sure you will make the right choice.’

  Urbaal’s retinue of warriors rode through the cluttered streets of the Inevitable City, watching the spiked battlements and the hovering bulk of the monolith that hung suspended above the city fade away behind them. The Chosen could feel the envious eyes of knights and warleaders, champions of every shape and form regarding him with hate. Each resented the honour Tchar’zanek had shown him, each despised the caprice of fortune that had smiled upon Urbaal and not themselves. Each, he knew, would try to stop him if they but dared. Only fear of opposing Tchar’zanek made it safe for Urbaal and his followers to walk the streets. Beyond those streets, beyond the menacing threat of Tchar’zanek’s displeasure…

  ‘When we are past the walls of the city, we must watch for treachery,’ Urbaal said, his voice echoing within the steel of his helm.

  Vakaan the magus nodded in agreement, a gesture that caused his own steed to dip as it levitated over the flagstones. Unlike the rest of his retinue, Urbaal’s sorcerer did not depend upon the strength of a horse to bear him. The magus had bound one of the almost formless predators known to daemonologists as ‘screamers’ to his terrible will. The thing had been given shape and substance by the craft of the Raven Host’s armourers, trapping the daemon within a great ring of bronze, forcing it into the flattened form of a discus. Such daemon platforms were capable of carrying a sorcerer powerful enough to command them, and the same runes that bound their spectral essence also sustained them in the physical plane. Discs of Tzeentch the loathsome constructs were called, and they were a sign of prestige and pride among the thousand cabals of the Changer.

  ‘Treachery is Tzeentch’s way of choosing those who are worthy… and those who are unfit to serve as instruments of Change,’ Vakaan pronounced. The sorcerer’s familiar, a vile thing that looked like the foetal stage of some dwarfish bat-ape, chattered into the magus’s ear. ‘Nastrith says one who watches for betrayal must keep one eye upon himself. As always, the imp clouds his words in half-truths, but there is wisdom for one who would find it.’

  ‘I have no time for crooked words,’ Urbaal said, his eyes narrowing behind the visor of his helm. ‘I ask if your powers have shown a threat to my mission, you answer in vagaries and the mutterings of daemons.’

  Vakaan laughed at the warlord’s petulance. ‘You are mighty, Urbaal and well-favoured among the warriors of the Changer, but you fail to appreciate the nuances of plot and counter-plot, weaving the strands of fate so that they become as much your servant as your sword or your steed.’ Vakaan stamped his boot upon the back of the fleshy horror he stood upon. The disc slavered and gibbered its displeasure, little dribbles of burning light trickling from the jaws set into its underside. ‘You are too much the warrior, not enough the schemer.’

  ‘What need have I for schemes when I have you?’ Urbaal challenged. ‘There are some among your cabal whom you did not destroy and whose power you did not steal.’

  ‘Petty warlocks unworthy of my attention,’ Vakaan waved aside the threat, but the smile had dropped from his face and his familiar had withdrawn into the sanctuary of one of his sleeves. ‘I do not need your protection.’

  Urbaal leaned back in his saddle and stared hard at the magus. ‘Indeed. I wonder Vakaan, who needs whom more. The sword or the sorcerer?’ He patted the weapon sheathed at his side, his gauntlet ringing against the scabbard. ‘If I do not think you useful to me, perhaps we will find out. I have other magicians I can call upon.’

  ‘That skull-collecting fanatic, Tolkku?’ scoffed Vakaan. ‘Ask him to heal your wounds and he might manage. Ask him to slaughter your enemies, to call down the daemons of the aethyr, ask him to crumble the walls of a fortress or turn a forest into a sea of flame and see how far you get!’

  The Chosen turned about in his saddle, watching the ranks of his warriors, looking over their armoured bulks. He could see Tolkku astride the back of an almost skeletal horse sporting crooked antlers and the multi-faceted eyes of a spider. The zealot was holding one of his skulls in his hand, muttering to it like an indulgent mother soothing an uneasy child. Urbaal looked past the shaman-priest, glancing at the hulking brute who followed close behind Tolkku’s horse. Alone of Urbaal’s r
etinue, this man went on foot, his hands bound before him, a great iron collar about his neck and chains securing his bonds to Tolkku’s saddle. Urbaal saw the huge marauder swing his horned head in his direction, their eyes locking for an instant. It was the Chosen who at last broke the gaze, turning back to Vakaan.

  ‘Tolkku has a new toy,’ Urbaal said.

  ‘Some idiot whose peculiar skull has intrigued him,’ Vakaan observed. ‘In a few days Tolkku will take out his flaying knife and that will be the end of him.’

  Urbaal shook his head. ‘He’d better not try it with this one. I hear the Norscan killed Noeyes and Hafn Hundred-eyes all by himself.’ Urbaal raised his armoured gloves. ‘With nothing but his bare hands and the gifts Great Tzeentch has bestowed upon him.’

  ‘All the more reason Tolkku will add his skull to the collection,’ Vakaan said. ‘There is a great deal of power to be gained by killing such people. I should know.’

  The warleader again shook his head. ‘I hope he does not try it. I can’t afford to lose Tolkku. My other magician has proven less reliable of late.’

  Vakaan glowered at Urbaal, then cast an anxious look at the streets around them. ‘Foresight only goes so far before it becomes unreliable, too susceptible to the Changer’s shifting moods.’ The magus lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘And when it is reliable, it is unwise to discuss it where there are too many ears.’

  Urbaal nodded, spurring his horse forwards, waving his arm to hasten the rest of his retinue. The great gates of the city were still some distance away and he would be far from the Inevitable City before they lost what little light the shimmering sky allowed them.

  As they rode, they were watched by a pair of particularly envious eyes. The watcher waited until the last of Urbaal’s men had passed from sight, then turned and strode to the mammoth wall of the city. The skulking man drew a heavy clay jar from beneath his black robes. Raspy words crawled from the throat hidden beneath the folds of his hood and his thorny helm leaned close to the mouth of the jar. A ghastly azure light began to rise from the jar and with it a clacking host of crawling things. The sorcerer stepped back, allowing the legion of daemon insects to creep free of their prison. He stabbed a scrawny finger at the wall of the city. In response, a scarlet rune imposed itself upon the stonework, glowing evilly in the shadows.