Hammer and Bolter 24

by Christian Dunn

  ‘So he can be destroyed?’ said Sigmar.

  ‘Of course, nothing in this world is eternal,’ said Bransùil. ‘Not love, not duty, nor – in the end – honour. You know this. When the storm breaks on the morrow, we must travel high to the edge of a vast crater, the site of an ancient starfall that not even the sons of Grungni know, wherein lie the ruins a lost city. An outpost built in the name of a forgotten conqueror from the Land of the Dead. Built to serve an eternal empire, it was destroyed within a hundred years, and passed from living memory. At the heart of the city lies the tomb of its mightiest general, a warrior whose deathly energies Krell will drain to restore his power, perhaps even enhance it. The wards around the tomb are strong, and not even a being as powerful as Krell can break them easily. But he will break them given time.’

  ‘Then we must stop him before he reaches this city,’ said Sigmar.

  ‘You cannot stop him, he is already there,’ answered Bransùil.

  Despite the threat of the beast whose lair they were currently inhabiting returning, Sigmar’s warriors passed a restful night, and awoke warmed by Bransùil’s fires that surged back to life with the dawn. The storm had passed in the night, and the day was bright, with a thin powder of snow draping the path into the toothed summits. Sigmar stood at the mouth of the cave, staring out over the mountainscape around him. Such titanic peaks dwarfed the achievements of men, and they would outlast any great deed he might hope to perform.

  The city they were to travel to this morning was proof enough of that.

  Bransùil had spoken of an immortal god-emperor known as Settra, a being whose armies and war-fleets had once nearly conquered the world. His reign was to have lasted until the end of time, but, like all mortal men, Settra had died and his empire had faded into forgotten myth. What did it matter how many lands a ruler conquered or how many people offered him fealty if he would eventually die? Lesser men would come after him, and all that he had built would decay until nothing remained.

  Sigmar knew he was being vain and morbid, but the thought that all he had built and shed blood to create would be lost after his death troubled him deeply. He did not desire immortality as Settra was said to have done, but nor did he want his achievements to pass into legend, a tale of pride and hubris told at the fireside by old men and saga-poets.

  Alaric emerged from the cave and gave Sigmar a respectful nod.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you were saying, old friend,’ said Sigmar. ‘About the mountains.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Looking at them from up here makes a man feel small,’ said Sigmar. ‘I realise now that we’re all very small in a very big world.’

  ‘Some men are bigger than others.’

  ‘Some dwarfs are bigger than others.’

  Alaric grunted in amusement. ‘You and I are oath-sworn, Sigmar, and nothing will ever change that, but you would do well to hurl that warlock from the cliffs and be done with him.’

  ‘He’d probably spread that feathered cloak of his and fly off.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Alaric. ‘Nothing good will come of keeping him close, mark my words.’

  ‘I’m not a fool, Alaric,’ replied Sigmar. ‘I know his arts are not to be trusted, but for now his purpose and our purpose are united.’

  ‘You do not know his purpose, it would be unwise to think you do.’

  ‘Very well, then I will say that our purposes appear to be united,’ said Sigmar. ‘And that will have to be enough. Bransùil has power, and to fight something that bears the mark of the Blood God, we will need that power.’

  ‘Aye, like as not,’ agreed Alaric. ‘But I still don’t like it.’

  It took the morning and the better part of the afternoon to climb to the edge of the crater Bransùil had spoken of. Though the landscape all around was shawled in snow, the steep-sided rock of the crater’s rim was bare and black. The pale glitter-threaded rock they had become familiar with over the last week gave way to the glossy stone more commonly found where mountains erupted with fire and smoke. Even the thin scrub with which they had rubbed the horses and bulked out their grain began to thin. The air took on a grainy quality, as though invisible dust hazed the atmosphere, and when Sigmar dismounted to touch the snowless rock he found it was warm.

  The lip of the crater was hundreds of feet above them, almost as tall as the Fauschlag Rock, and Sigmar could see no obvious paths. Alaric led the way, unerringly finding hidden defiles and stepped grabens that afforded access to the upper slopes. The climb was exhausting, and by the time their hunting party had led their mounts to the top, both men and horses were breathing hard and lathered in sweat.

  Sigmar saw Alaric and his dwarfs standing silhouetted at the lip of the crater, looking vaguely frustrated at the laboured progress of the men behind them. His breathing came in shallow gasps, and he found it hard to take a breath, far harder than it should have been.

  ‘Breathe slowly,’ said Alaric. ‘The air is thin up here, and you manlings don’t do well at such heights.’

  ‘I thought dwarfs were all about depths, not heights,’ said Sigmar.

  ‘Dwarfs cope well with any extremes,’ said Alaric, without any hint of irony.

  Sigmar nodded as he climbed the last ridge of the crater and stared down into the ruins of what had once been an outpost of a dead empire. What little was left of his breath was snatched away in wonder.

  A vast hollow had been gouged from the mountain by the ancient starfall, a wide, steep-sided depression thousands of feet in diameter and hundreds deep. A dozen towering waterfalls spilled into the crater on its far side through a naturally formed dam of compressed rock, and glittering rainbows arced over the ruins of a great city of black stone. Tall towers and giant temples with golden domes and great needles of tapered silver vied for space with grand palaces and ornate castles, with each building Sigmar’s eyes fell upon grander than the last. Great lakes formed in what had once been pleasure gardens and rivers flowed along proud avenues before vanishing into abyssal cracks torn through the base of the crater.

  Sigmar saw the city was built to an ingenious design: its streets were arranged in concentric rings, with every thoroughfare cutting through its circular geometry angled towards the building at the city’s heart. A vast temple, stepped and constructed of angular blocks of a pale stone that even Sigmar could tell had not been hewn from these mountains. Ornamented beyond all reason, its pillars were topped with great carven lions, its portals flanked by wide processionals of beasts that merged human and animal anatomies.

  A great road, easily wide enough to accommodate a column of marching men wound down to the city along the inner face of the crater, and Sigmar wondered what had happened to the road on its outer face.

  Bransùil strode to the crater’s lip, his eyes dark and peering into forbidden places where no man’s gaze ought to penetrate.

  ‘You must hurry,’ he said. ‘The last ward is collapsing.’

  Sigmar rode at the head of his warriors, each man galvanised by the thought of finally cornering the monster they had sought for so long. The road into the crater was smooth and led onto one of the main avenues that encircled the palace at its heart. It was a simple matter to navigate the city, for its sacred geometries were necessarily simple.

  The city’s architecture had been impressive from above, but seen up close it was doubly so. The buildings were of a heroic scale unknown among the lands of the Empire, and Sigmar vowed that his realm would soon boast such monumental structures. Though thousands of years or more had passed since their builders had raised them, Sigmar saw each building was still as sound as they day it had been completed. Only those structures that had suffered at the hands of earthquakes or the eroding effects of the water had suffered the ignominy of collapse.

  Leodan rode at his left, Wenyld to his right with Sigmar’s banner held high.

  Cuthwin, Teon and Gorseth rode behind him, with the dwarfs split into two groups that jogged with an unflagging
pace to either side of the riders. Bransùil rode with Gorseth, who, as the youngest warrior in their group, had been appointed the unwelcome task of bearing the warlock on his mount. Sigmar kept the horses at a brisk walk, knowing he might have need of their fleetness later. The mood of Sigmar’s warriors was grim but eager, as much at the thought that they would soon be able to return home as defeating Krell.

  Twice they were forced to take detours as they came upon blocked streets that had not been obvious from above or found swollen rivers of ice-cold water that were too deep to ford. Yet the precision of the street plan allowed them to navigate their way to the centre of the city without difficulty. A fallen stone needle afforded a crossing of one fast-flowing river and the swift application of dwarf hammers broke open a way that was previously blocked.

  Before long, Sigmar found himself riding along the grand, statue-lined processional that led to the great mausoleum temple. The statues were part man, part animal, but not in the monstrously melded way of the beasts that dwelled in the Empire’s forests. These creatures looked constructed, as though they had been bred or shaped with deliberate intent. The idea that anyone would breed such monsters was anathema to Sigmar, and he found himself glad that this Settra’s empire had passed from history.

  ‘This is the place,’ he said. He could feel the strange wash of dark breath that gusted from inside. The part of him that had passed through the Flame of Ulric felt the emanations of dark magic from the temple, and Sigmar recoiled as he sensed a connection between that power and this. To think that Ulric’s power shared even a passing kinship with such evil unsettled him greatly.

  The portal that led within was easily wide enough to allow his warriors access without breaking formation, but Sigmar ordered a halt as they reached the edge of the darkness that lay within. Sigmar twisted in his saddle to look up at the edge of the cliffs encircling the city as he felt a sudden chill on the back of his neck, as though a cold northern wind had brushed past him. He felt as though someone were watching him, but it was not an uncomfortable sensation or a threatening one.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked Leodan.

  ‘No,’ said Sigmar.

  ‘We must hurry,’ said Bransùil. ‘Krell’s strength is growing even as we wait.’

  Torches and lanterns were broken out of packs, and tinderboxes sparked to ignite the oil-soaked brushes and wicks. With light to guide them, Sigmar’s warriors rode into the temple with greater urgency, the stone carvings of its walls glittering with embedded jewels and gold relief. Sigmar saw the dwarfs’ entire demeanour change at the sight of so much ancient gold.

  The passage was wide and high, and Sigmar could imagine the great cortege that had accompanied the dead general as he made his way to his final resting place. To this vanished culture, death was something to be venerated.

  Cuthwin rode alongside Sigmar and said, ‘I’ve heard that the tombs of the old kings were full of traps. Shouldn’t we ride with more care?’

  Sigmar shook his head. ‘Any traps will have been triggered by Krell.’

  He didn’t need to add, I hope.

  The air of the temple was charged with a subtle vibration, and Sigmar could feel the wards sealing the tomb at the heart of this structure were close to breaking. From somewhere far ahead, he could hear the thunderous booming of enormous impacts. A terrible roar of howling anger echoed from the walls, and Sigmar felt the same fear he had known when facing the dread necromancer himself. He had fought great beasts, creatures of nightmare, daemons and devotees of the Dark Gods, but this fear touched the very mortality of every man, and exposed his worst terrors. Sigmar loosened the haft of Ghal-maraz and swung his glittering warhammer in looping arcs at his side.

  The passage opened into a vast, vaulted chamber of dark stone and soaring statuary depicting ancient gods whose names had been lost and great kings whose deeds had been forgotten. Its roof enclosed an immense space of dusty gloom, pierced in numerous places to allow beams of dim, moon-shot twilight to illuminate its grand void.

  At the centre of the space stood a great sarcophagus on a golden bier, surrounded by piles of skeletal warriors in armour of gold, silver and jade. They had been smashed to pieces by the fury of the red-armoured giant that stood before the sarcophagus with its great axe rising and falling like a butcher cleaving a carcass in two. Wisps of dark magic flowed like poisonous fog from the cracks in the imperishable substance of the sarcophagus, and Sigmar knew the last ward was on the verge of being broken. Even without further blows from Krell’s axe, it had suffered too much damage and was beginning to unravel by itself.

  Krell’s bulk was enormous, taller by a yard than the Berserker King of the Thuringians and broader than even the troll Sigmar had fought at Black Fire.

  Plates of armour beaten into shape from a metal known only to a far distant world encased Krell’s body, embossed with skull sigils that writhed in anger and howled in unending rage. Blood dripped from every skull-faced rivet and stained every link of mail that hung in tattered strips from exposed joints. Splayed bone horns jutted from his helm, and Sigmar saw that great portions of the champion of death’s armour had been blasted clear or hung from his frame in broken fragments.

  The sight would have been pitiful were it not for the vast shanks of dried meat and yellowed bone that jutted from the wounds torn through Krell’s armour. The blood that coated his armour and dripped from his gauntlets was not his own, but an unending stream from the skulls taken in the name of his hellish master.

  ‘Krell!’ bellowed Alaric. ‘I name thee Grudged.’

  The giant champion of the dead and slaughter turned at the sound of the name he had borne in life and let loose a fearsome roar. Beneath its shattered visor, the monster’s face was a fleshless nightmare of yellowed bone and grey flesh. A hideous emerald glow burned in one eye socket, and its lambent light promised only death.

  The grinning skull leered at them, as though remembering those who had escaped its axe once, but who would not do so again. Sigmar felt the cold dread of this monster, the terror that leeched from its dead bones and sapped the courage of all who stood before him.

  But these were men of Reikdorf who had faced an army of the dead, men who were commanded by the very warrior who had smashed the great necromancer to dust. They fought beside dwarfs who had stood against Krell and lived, who were led by the greatest runesmith of Karaz-a-Karak.

  But most powerful of all, they were dwarfs who bore a mighty grudge.

  Krell swung his mighty axe around, a weapon stained black as midnight by the blood of a million victims, and the powerful reek of its murders filled the dusty tomb. Krell had no voice, but a throbbing bass rumble, like a dreadful mockery of a heartbeat boomed with every step he took.

  ‘Any thoughts as to how we’re going to do this?’ asked Alaric.

  ‘With horse and speed and strength!’ shouted Sigmar, raking back his spurs and urging Taalhorsa to a gallop. His riders followed him with a wild yell, Leodan with his lance lowered and Wenyld with Sigmar’s banner aloft. It was a wild charge, with none of the grace or elegance of the Taleuten Red Scythes or the wild passion of the Ostagoth Eagle Wings, but it had power and it had Sigmar.

  And it had Ghal-maraz.

  Driven by anger, driven by shame, or driven by guilt, Leodan was the first to reach Krell.

  He thrust his lance into the very heart of the undead champion’s chest as though driven by the hand of Ulric himself. The cold iron tip punched through the red-stained metal as the wooden haft of the lance splintered into fragments with the force of the impact. Krell didn’t so much as stagger, and the Taleuten kicked his boots free of his stirrups as Krell’s axe slashed down with awesome force.

  The enormous blade clove Leodan’s horse in two through the saddle, and an ocean of blood flooded from the shrieking creature’s body as it fell. Leodan rolled to his feet, his sword already in his hand, as the rest of Sigmar’s riders hit home. Heavy broadswords, double-edged slashing blades and short stabbing swords clan
ged against Krell’s armour, some piercing the gristly flesh beneath, others rebounding in showers of red sparks.

  Krell’s axe struck out, faster than any weapon of such size should be able to move, and five riders were hacked from their mounts, decapitated with executioner’s precision. Their headless corpses rode on for a few yards before the weight of their armoured bodies dragged them to the ground.

  Sigmar swayed aside from a return stroke of the axe and slammed Ghal-maraz against Krell’s shoulder. Unnatural plates buckled and broke against the fury of his blow, and Krell at last staggered. The champion spun around, his axe reaching for Sigmar, but finding only empty air. Sigmar wheeled Taalhorsa around and drove his ancient warhammer into Krell’s back, splitting apart the cuirass of his monstrous armour and drawing a howl that echoed in this world and the realm of the dead.

  The cracks in the sundered sarcophagus split wider, and the deathly tang of evil magic grew stronger. Sigmar cried out as he saw another six of his men cut down by Krell’s deadly axe, their souls dragged from their bodies to feed the monstrous appetite of the blood-hungry champion.

  ‘Hurry!’ cried Bransùil. ‘The last ward is almost spent!’

  Alaric and his dwarfs hurled themselves into the fray, hammers beating on Krell’s body like demented smiths in a forge. Each warrior bore a weapon inscribed with runes that worked the magic of the dwarfs into a useable form, and each blow wreaked fearful damage on the strange plates of his armour. Alaric’s frost-bladed axe bore runic magic the equal of that worked onto the killing face of Ghal-maraz, and every blow sheared slices of metal and bone from the beleaguered champion.