by David Guymer
Felix sighed.
‘And this is the place you would have us go.’
Five
The Mightiest Doom
‘Are we nearly in the Chaos Wastes yet?’ said Snorri, staring glumly out the porthole as the steam-wagon clattered and huffed across the vast, featureless expanse of Kislev’s northern oblast.
Gotrek looked over and swore under his breath. His face, beard and arms were black from shovelling coal, everything except his eyes that reflected the heat of the furnace. He slid its iron cover shut, then set his shovel blade-down and crossed his arms over the handle.
‘If you ask me that once more before we reach Ivan Petrovich’s place, then I swear the next time I pick up the shovel it’s going between your ears.’
‘Snorri hears his wife is a looker.’
‘Don’t be disgusting, Snorri. You need to stop listening to what those wattocks say about human women.’
With a sigh, Snorri returned his attention to the porthole. The sky was too wide, like a great blue lens above their heads. And the ground was too flat. Staring at it day in day out, all day, every day, gave Snorri the impression of a pit mine that had been fully exploited and then padded back down to confuse any following prospectors. The view hadn’t changed, but then it hadn’t changed in days so it probably wasn’t about to.
He hoped Ivan Petrovich had beer.
‘Snorri hates Kislev…’
‘The air grows cold,’ murmured Durin Drakkvarr. The Daemonslayer stood at a fork in the tunnel, deep eyes distant, running the tattooed claws of his fingers down the damp, uneven wall. The flickering lantern carried by Krakki Ironhame was the sole source of light. It made the moist ceiling glisten and sent the shadows of a dozen Slayers, a priest of Grimnir’s cult and an apprentice runesmith weaving over the walls. The air smelled dank. Durin’s blackened nose chased a scent over the wall’s rough stone. ‘I smell taint on these stones.’
‘Bully for you,’ Krakki grumbled, voice squeezing low and flat through his cracked nose. The fat dwarf kept to the rear of the company, guarding their beer from the skaven, goblins, and faeries that still mysteriously managed to snaffle their share despite his vigilance.
‘This is Kislev,’ Snorri sighed, thinking about beer, then rubbed his eyes tiredly. The lantern light was making them sting. He had been avoiding sleep – and dreams – for the five days that their journey through the Underway from Karak Kadrin had taken. But even a dwarf as damaged as Snorri always knew where he had been.
And Snorri had been this way before.
‘Well done, Snorri,’ said Skalf Hammertoes, with a smile as proud and probing as a crowbar. The priest stood from where he had been crouching in the tunnel’s westward branch. His bare feet were half-submerged in a puddle, ripples riding out with the movement of his toes. ‘They’ve already started calling it North Ostermark, but aye.’ He twiddled his toes in the puddle and looked up to the wet ceiling. ‘We’ve passed under the Upper Talabec.’
‘What were you doing on the floor?’ Snorri asked.
‘Beastman spoor.’ Skalf pointed to the tufts of hair that floated in the puddle, then to the scrapes in the ceiling that might have been cut by horns. ‘They’ve been this way, but not in numbers. I say we carry on north for now, seal the way only when we can go no further.’
The Slayers nodded agreement and made ready to move on to the northward tunnel. The old bar-steward, Drogun, his stiff muscular frame squeezed into a leather jack, stuck to the runesmith like rust to human metalwork. Krakki – big mouth that he was – had explained how the last expedition had failed when Drogun had gone chasing his doom rather than defend his charge. The new runesmith was called Gorlin and, in Snorri’s opinion, too young by at least a century and a half to be a proper runesmith. His beard was rust-brown and came only to his waist. His armour was a mix of steel plates and leather joints. At his belt were buckled a brace of pistols and he walked with a hammer-headed staff inscribed with a rune that resembled a lightning bolt. He wore a rain-proofed leather backpack on a single strap over the opposite shoulder.
The runesmith eyed Krakki’s torch warily, turning his pack away from the flame and giving the Slayer a wide berth. Krakki teased him into a skipping run with a jab of his torch, then laughed and hauled a leather harness containing four kilderkins of Ekrund Brown over his shoulders.
Snorri wondered how long had it been since he had had a drink.
His temples throbbed. And his skin had shrunk, he was sure of it. One beer surely couldn’t hurt. It was less than he needed, which had to satisfy his oath to Skalf. Just one beer and he could sleep again.
To try and keep his mind off his dry mouth and itching head, he checked his own pack. The leather was worn and had a rune sewn into it. It was the name of a town, but not one he recognised any longer. His mother wouldn’t let him even as far as Everpeak for the ore market… He shook his head before the memory of fire and screams could return. He did not think it was of a place that existed any longer.
‘Few Slayers carry keepsakes,’ said Durin, appearing like a shadow at his side. ‘I do not recall you carrying it in Karag Dum.’
Snorri shook his head slowly. ‘Skalf said Snorri had it with him when he came to swear his oath. But Snorri doesn’t remember.’
‘What is inside?’
With a shrug, Snorri unbuckled the bag and opened it. He gave it a hopeful shake in case some beer might have magically appeared between now and the last time he’d double-checked. For the most part it was just old clothes. They were stained with blood and still reeked of smoke.
‘What is this?’ whispered Durin, reaching in to withdraw a necklace. He spooled the thick gold chain through his fingers, examined the runes engraved into the outside edge of each of the links. ‘It is engineering code. Strange, on a woman’s chain.’
‘What does it say?’ said Snorri.
‘I was a smith, not an engineer.’ Durin dropped the necklace back into the bag as though it had never interested him. ‘And even if I could read it, I would be honour-bound to the secrets of my guild.’
‘Snorri thinks his rememberer could share some little secrets.’
The Daemonslayer turned his face to the ceiling and for an instant looked as if he might be about to experience an emotion. ‘For the final time, Snorri–’
‘Come, Slayers,’ announced Skalf Hammertoes, padding silently towards Durin and Snorri. He acknowledged the Daemonslayer with a nod, but his eyes never parted from Snorri. ‘There will be battle ahead. Tomorrow? Perhaps. The day after? For certain.’ His eyes probed Snorri, as if suspicious of water in their beer. ‘Have you remembered any more of your promised doom?’
Woods. Needles in his back as he lies flat, can’t move.
Snorri crunched his eyes shut.
Giant spiders, everywhere, dead. An old lady stood over him. ‘You should have died today, Snorri, but I will not allow it.
‘You will have the mightiest doom.’
He shuddered and opened his eyes to the guttering light, the intent stare of Skalf and the blank one of Durin. Why was it that the more he remembered of that prophecy, the more it sounded like a curse?
‘Snorri can’t remember.’
For almost an hour, Stefan Taczak and the Dushyka rota followed the monster’s tracks north. Makosky was adamant that a creature of its apparent size, and in this depth of snow, could not have been more than half an hour ahead of them, but no matter.
They had surely found it now.
A small herder’s tirsa lay in the snow like a camouflaged hunter. The dark timber walls of two dozen small structures were banked with snow, sloping roofs hidden under a foot of the stuff except for a few where stub-nosed slate chimneys poked through glittering, refrozen ice. The settlement was too small for a wall, but there was evidence of a ditch, lighter packed snow in a ring around the tirsa and a stockade of wooden stakes and ha
nging skins inside of that.
But this hunter’s hide had been stumbled upon by another. A mass of furs and dusted snow, war cries rumbling through the blizzard, the assaulting force of Kurgan resembled a giant bear, aroused early from its winter slumber and angry for it. The blizzard made it difficult to make an accurate count, but Stefan estimated three hundred men, maybe four, and nearly half as many horses.
Their foot soldiers were running at the ditch from the south, coming in a sweeping crescent that enveloped the tirsa from west to east. They would be probing for a fording point for the cavalry. Stefan saw the Kurgan horsemen holding back with a handful of reserves and a clutch of snow-blinkered war banners. Stefan nodded snow from his brow and returned his attention to the tirsa. The first Kurgan charge had flailed into the deep snow of the ditch. Arrows took off from the stockade, silent black dots in the distance like a flight of starlings.
‘Teeth of the bear,’ Kolya breathed, for once seeing the steppe exactly as Stefan saw it. ‘You were right. Someone does still live.’
He had been right!
Vengeance was good, it was kvass in a man’s belly to warm him through a winter’s night; but even the most boisterous kossar could only drink so much. Hope was better. Unable to hold down a triumphant shout, Stefan gave the order to dress for battle.
The rota did so in the saddle quickly, for there were no hiding places on the oblast. If you could see, then you could be seen. In the span of a few minutes the fur-clad rabble that had looked little better than the marauders they pursued became once again the gleaming pride of Dushyka.
Steel winked dully in the snow, like misted mirrors, beautifully ornate three-quarter armour accoutred with amber and jet. Capes cut from the pelts of predatory beasts were clasped at each man’s collar and worn over the left arm. Kolya had downed most of those beasts himself, and Kasztanka looked justly proud under the pelt of a chimera. Like all traditions of the oblast this one was steeped in pragmatism, for a horse accustomed to the scent of wolf would not panic in the face of goblin raiders. The riders’ magnificent ‘wings’ snapped in the wind, curved wooden poles fixed to the cuirass and feathered with the plumage of eagle, falcon, ostrich, peacock, and swan. Every man unique. Every life precious.
Through the heart-shaped opening between the cheek-guards of his tall, fur-edged helm, Stefan watched his brother tie coloured ribbons through Kasztanka’s bridle. They would ward off the spirits that might spook her in battle. Each was a different colour and intended for its own malicious spirit.
The rota were still ordering themselves when a guttural roar rumbled through the blizzard. Kasztanka shied from it, wrecking the formation, coloured ribbons flailing from her harness as Kolya hushed soothing words into her ear. The call growled out for what felt like minutes, snowflake to snowflake, too long for any human’s lungs.
It came not from the assaulting warriors but from the encampment at their rear.
‘The daemon strikes for the Kurgan’s heart,’ observed Makosky.
Stefan threw a longing glance towards the tirsa’s embattled stockade, then wheeled Biegacz about and spurred him straight into a gallop without waiting for the rota to question what he was doing. There was no need for a speech. Every man could hear what he heard, see what he saw. This tirsa was beyond the help of nine men, but there would be others. Stefan was more certain of that than ever.
They could still rescue the wise woman, Marzena, and the traditions of Kislev that she carried with her.
If the Dushyka rota could spare her from the daemon first.
The roar of the siege became tinny and distant, the snow falling so densely all of a sudden that it was as if the lancers bore it with them. Snow and horses, the last two things on the oblast that were constant and true. So heavily was it coming down, so numbing in its blankness, that Stefan failed to spot the Kurgan horseman charging in the opposite direction until they were almost on top of each other.
And thanks to months of aching cold and hunger, Stefan was the slower to react.
The horseman reined in so hard that his muscular black mount reared, forehooves flailing as the northerner bawled orders to the other riders now emerging from the blizzard in loose formation behind him. Man and beast, they were bigger than their Kislevite counterparts. The steeds were draped in heavy hide caparisons that slapped wetly against their flanks. The men themselves wore thick furs over plates of hide armour that still bristled with hairs and leather helms adorned with antlers and horns.
Stefan had hoped that the cover of Lord Winter would allow them some element of surprise, but the marauders rode ready for battle, either fleeing the daemon in their midst or riding to bring back their warriors to fight it. At their chieftain’s shout, they hefted javelins and spears and drew back on powerful recurved bows.
‘Gospodarinyi!’ Stefan roared.
At the same instant, that point-blank volley was unleashed.
Granted power by two sets of rapidly closing horsemen, arrowheads punched through steel plate and barding like pegs through frozen earth. Men screamed, muscle memory alone keeping them in the saddle. A javelin struck a horse in the chest. The animal shrieked, twisted as it fell and crushed its rider beneath it. Stefan screamed into the storm of shafts. An explosive pain flared in his left shoulder. In the heat of the moment though it was bearable and he channelled the pain into guiding Biegacz as the horse rammed the chieftain’s mount in its flank as it tried to turn. The Kurgan horse was stronger, heavier, but today the momentum lay with Kislev.
The marauder chieftain shouted curses and grabbed in vain for Biegacz’s tack as his own mount went over, those curses turning into screams for the leg broken under the massive horse’s shoulder. The northman’s efforts to escape grew spasmodic as the panicked animal sought to right itself, sawing over the Kurgan’s legs and abdomen and reducing the chieftain to a paste of blood and guts that seeped out of his armour into the snow.
Six more Kurgan riders went down as the Kislevite charge drove through their loose formation. Stefan heard a whir and flinched instinctively as a lariat flew at him. The rope noose hit his wings and bounced off, then raced over the snow after the departing rider.
Stefan twisted in the saddle to ensure that they were not returning for another attack, then gasped in suddenly excruciating pain. It was his shoulder.
The gardbrace plate was smashed and painted with blood. The bloodied shaft and fletching of a Kurgan arrow stuck out. Stefan put his hand to it and shuddered at the agony that contact brought him. It nearly blacked him out, but he bit into the pain to keep his hand where it was. After a few seconds the agony faded enough to become manageable.
Kolya regarded him sombrely. It was bad and they both knew it. The arrow had punched right through the bone. Even with rest and good care and the blessings of Salyak, it was doubtful he would ever have use of the arm again.
Stefan groaned, but not with pain. It was the knowledge that his fight was done. He reasserted his grip on his szabla. It could have been worse.
It could have been the right arm.
‘You can go no further,’ said Kolya. ‘I will leave one man with you and take the rest ahead.’
The clangour of steel on steel drifted through the falling snow with the rumour of battle, a promise from the next world. Stefan’s shoulder was turning cold, icicles of pain etching deeper into the muscle of his arm and back. Marszałek Stefan Taczak had fought his last battle, but he was not dead. The return of Marzena, of her wisdom and lore, would be his last great victory for Kislev
Grunting in pain, Stefan nudged Biegacz around with his knees. He looked from Kolya to Makosky to the other two riders still in the saddle.
Five men. All that remained of the two thousand he had commanded at the Tobol Crossing. It hadn’t been enough then and it still wasn’t.
‘I will ride ahead and find where Marzena is being held, draw them away as best I can. I will c
all out so you can avoid the enemy and rescue the wise woman.’
‘With respect, brother,’ said Kolya with a gristle-thin smile, ‘that is a terrible plan.’
‘I am injured,’ Stefan insisted, turning his shoulder to show them. ‘I am most expendable.’
‘We are all expendable. We were all dead and mourned for the day we rode south from Dushyka. I will go ahead. If you wish the Kurgan distracted long enough to rescue the wise woman then it should be me.’
For a moment, Stefan intended to argue. He was Marszałek, and the decision was supposedly his, but Kolya was right. Stefan slumped back into the saddle. ‘Very well. If you can draw the daemon from Marzena then do it, but in Ursun’s name don’t try and fight it. Leave it to the Kurgan with my blessing.’
‘I will go with you,’ said Makosky suddenly.
‘The plan requires only one,’ said Stefan.
With a feral grin, the rider shook gore from his nadziak and directed his horse into position alongside Kasztanka. ‘As your esaul reminded you, it was a terrible plan.’
In Dushyka, when the morning dew became morning frosts, the animals of the stanitsa too old, too young, or too weak to endure the winter would be butchered in a day-long ritual of kvass, bloodletting and revelry. Those were the sounds that Kolya heard now as he listened to the screams that rang through the falling snow. Not a battle, but a slaughter, a cull of those too old, too young, or too weak. The smell, however, was beyond anything he had experienced before.
Even warriors of Chaos, it seemed, spilled their bowels when death came for them.
The horses placed their hooves between the bits of Kurgan warrior that littered the ground. Their eyes were wide, ears rigid, every scream and bellow causing them to freeze until their riders encouraged them on. Fallen weapons, trophy rings and knotted ropes of entrails lay everywhere. Blood stained the snow, as if some giant bear had taken a bite out of the ground. Kolya felt more pity for the Kurgan horses, butchered right alongside their masters, than for the men themselves. It was they who had unleashed such horrors upon Kislev. He smiled grimly.