by David Guymer
‘Look at me,’ came the voice, and Max looked.
The fervid, jealously intelligent visage of a troll leered between the bars of Max’s cage. Crystalline shards of warpstone grew from his brow, running down his neck and shoulders like a mane of hair and following the contours of his arms to produce a pair of harshly glowing club-like tumours around each wrist. Upon that gnarled, mineral-encrusted head, above eyes that shone with a god-given intellect, sat a crown engraved with the eight-pointed star of Chaos. The silver circlet of Duke Enrik had been forced over one wrist like a Kurgan trophy ring, and sealed into place by the creep of that living mineral. It was not a face ever intended to speak.
His name was Throgg, favourite of Chaos, the Troll King of Praag.
‘What the gods gifted to me can be gifted to another. I will not be the one mind in a race of blunt, witless animals.’ Throgg closed his hard grey fists around the bars until they groaned. For all his intellect and strength, the Troll King was bitterly alone.
‘I believe in you, Max. I hope it will be you that does not fail.’
Ten
Alone
Kislev was flat and it was open. The wind cut down from the big mountain range in the north, getting stronger and bloody colder as it stormed over the plains unchecked and battered Snorri Nosebiter’s face. Snorri closed his eyes and waded into the waist-deep snow. His eyelids rippled as if under attack by tiny blows. His beard thrashed. The force being driven against his broad shoulders was enough to uproot a tree. But Snorri wasn’t a tree. As tough as trees looked they were soft in the middle and Snorri wasn’t soft anywhere, except perhaps in the head, but if he had to be soft anywhere then that was probably where he would have chosen. With a determined growl, Snorri dug himself out another foot and swung his mace-leg into it. Snorri spat snow from his lips, but his beard was full of the stuff. It was a cold and constantly wet weight on his chin, like he had just been pulled from a river. Snorri hated water. It tasted horrible.
And Snorri hated trees. They were where old human ladies with nothing better to do than surround themselves with giant spiders and curse innocent Slayers lived.
Snorri plunged his massive hands into the snow in front of him and shovelled it aside. Foot-by-foot, that was the dwarf way. His stupid destiny could be a mile away or a thousand and over the mountains, but one step at a time would get him there in the end. He just hoped it would be sooner rather than later. Driving his body into the opening he had cut, he turned, sheltered his eyes under his hand and looked back down the trench he had gouged.
Snow flicked his numb fingers, and he watched for a minute as it filled the trench behind him and patted it down as though burying a body. The only evidence that Snorri had passed that way was that Snorri was right here. It would be so easy to just give up, sit down, and let the snow cover him too. He was tempted. An eternity as a dishonoured revenant denied Grimnir’s hall didn’t seem so terrible when compared to Kislev. It would be worth it just for the look on that mean seeress’s face – take your doom and choke on it! – but Snorri knew he couldn’t do that.
Snorri shook the snow from his hand and rubbed his eyes. He had made a promise to Gotrek. The thought of his old friend loosened more than just snow, but he tried not to think about it. It was hard though in this place. The steppe was like Snorri’s mind, big and empty and just waiting to be filled. The steppe had its snow and its wind. Snorri had his thoughts.
Was Gotrek involved in his doom somehow?
Did he have something to do with Snorri’s shame?
Unable to keep himself from thinking, he tried to think about something else instead. About how many days he had been walking like this perhaps? Snorri grinned wearily. That was too easy. He had absolutely no idea.
What else could he think about?
Thinking hard on that occupied his mind long enough for him to turn back to the snowface. Snorri hated snow. He had come to this understanding only over the last several days, but he held it with a vehemence that most reserved for goblins or elves.
He kicked the hated stuff with his mace-leg, and again, imagining it was goblins. He saw their ugly, pointy faces in its layered folds, their glinty eyes in the flakes as they fell. What did goblins have to do with anything? Furious now without knowing why, he kicked harder. The mace crunched through the snowface and wedged there. Snorri shook it ferociously, so intent on pulling it loose that he didn’t even notice his standing leg sliding under him until he was starting to topple. With a frustrated cry, Snorri flailed his arms and crashed back into the snow.
‘Get up, Snorri. Get up.’
Borek Forkbeard hooked his arms under Snorri’s shoulders and dragged him back from the wreckage of the steam wagon. Smoke was billowing from the portholes in its squat, armour-plated chassis and rolling like cooling magma from the open rear hatch. Two dwarfs lay dead on the barren, oily rock beside it. Aside from a coating of ash, there wasn’t an obvious mark on them. The smoke had killed them.
Snorri gave a hacking cough. ‘Not another accident. Snorri thinks that’s plain unlucky.’
Borek answered with a vigorous shake of the head.
The longbeard had soot and blood down one side of his face and the lens of his pince-nez was cracked. He was loading a big, wide-muzzled blunderbuss. Snorri cast about for his own axe and found it on the ground where he had dropped it after staggering from the steam wagon. He picked it up. Warbling cries sounded through the roar of smoke and fire, and all around Snorri could see ape-like, not entirely solid creatures scrambling on all fours over the twisted terrain of the Chaos Wastes.
It was an attack. And they were surrounded.
Swathed in fumes from the wrecked wagon, Gotrek fought off a pack of the cackling, rubber-limbed horrors, wielding a coal shovel two-handed. The engineer swung wildly, almost accidentally catching one of the daemons over the side of the head and cracking open its skull. The daemon gibbered and flailed, the wound in its temple widening as though pulled apart by something within. It continued to cackle though, even as its flesh was rendered down to an elastic pink gloop. Two meaner, gnarlier daemons shook their parent’s remains from their blue hides, bared their fangs and leapt into the attack.
‘Valaya be merciful,’ Borek muttered, swinging up his blunderbuss to cover the scrum around Gotrek and, before Snorri could even think about what was about to happen, pulling the trigger.
There was a detonation, as if a mining charge had just gone off in Snorri’s ear, and then a storm of nails and iron trimmings tore through the pack of horrors. Some were thrown back by the impact. Others jigged on the spot as though tickled by those sharp metal shards. Somehow, protected by the height and the number of them, Gotrek remained unscathed. He clocked one of the few standing pink horrors with his shovel.
‘Kill the blue ones,’ Borek yelled, reloading his blunderbuss. ‘They won’t come back.’
With a grateful snarl, Gotrek thrust the blade of his coal shovel through a blue horror’s throat, then swung backhanded to spill another’s weird, semi-sentient guts. A spitting horror launched itself at the engineer’s back, but dropped short with an axe in its spine. Snorri ripped his axe free, using his bulk to shield Gotrek as Borek shouted a warning and sent another withering blast of shrapnel through the weakened daemons.
When their ears had stopped ringing, Gotrek lowered his shoulders and put his hand on Snorri’s shoulder. He gave it an approving pat.
‘I owe you one, Snorri. Don’t ever let me forget.’
Snorri beamed. He didn’t much care about fighting daemons or rediscovering lost Karag Dum, but his friend’s respect he had always craved.
‘Back to the last wagon,’ said Borek. He shouldered his blunderbuss and hustled the two dwarfs around. ‘It’s crowded, but we can still make it.’
‘If that’s a joke then I’ve heard better,’ said Gotrek. ‘I told you the Wastes were impassable. Turn that box around while
it has wheels that turn.’
‘Never,’ Borek screamed back. ‘We’re so close. Think of the glory. Think of the gold.’
Only half listening over the surrounding din, Snorri lifted his axe to point out the weird, willowy daemon-thing that was drifting through the smoke of the gutted wagon and was heading towards Borek’s. Its body twisted into gnashing faces and long, floating limbs that flickered with flame in place of hands. Snorri felt the heat of it, felt it somewhere deep inside his soul.
‘Snorri thinks–’
There was a whumf of magical energy, flames racing along the daemon’s arms until its whole body was an inferno, and then two jets of blistering heat shot towards the dwarfs’ last wagon. The fire struck the angle of its front armour, driving the wagon’s nose into the ground, before it punched through and hit the engine. For a split second it groaned, like a dwarf with indigestion, then a many-tentacled eruption of coloured fire ripped it apart from the inside out. The roof rocketed high into the air while bits of wood and armour plate were hurled wide.
‘No!’ Borek roared, the absolute destruction of his dreams hellishly reflected in the broken lens of his pince-nez. He made to run to the wagon as if he could save it, but Gotrek held him back, just as a string of secondary explosions wracked its remains.
‘We’re done,’ Gotrek growled. He was changed, even Snorri could see it.
The Wastes had changed him. It had changed them all.
Snorri levelled his axe to the flamers and horrors that came gambolling towards them. His heel hit a hammer amongst the debris of the wagon’s explosion and he took that too, roaring into the gibbering pack.
‘Leave Snorri alone!’
He clutched his head, as if his fingers could bore into the pockmarks left by his old crest of nails and dig these memories from his brain. Borek’s first expedition to the Wastes had been doomed from the outset, dogged by accident and disaster long before that final attack. And it had been Snorri that talked Gotrek into going. It was Snorri’s fault. All of it. There was more. There was…
Digging his chewed nails deep into his scalp, he groaned, pushed his face into the wall of the snow trench and used it to push himself up. Snow swirled in to greet his suddenly exposed head. Snorri rubbed a stream of snot onto his forearm and suppressed a sob. Then he kicked at the snowface and started moving again. He had a doom, a destiny, places to be. He had no time to remember. But he owed it to Gotrek.
To Gotrek.
Snorri punched his fist deep into the snow and howled into the warp storm.
Black clouds rolled over a sky that just moments before had been a string web of colour, the charge of daemonic cavalry, lances of purple lightning jagging frenziedly down, up, and in every direction across the sky. Thunder never stopped rumbling. Pebbles bounced under Snorri’s boots. His beard bushed, repulsing itself with charge.
‘Gotrek!’ he yelled, but the wind smothered his voice and forced it back down his throat. If the wind was the strong arm of the Wastes then its claws were pure warpstone. The air glittered with it and Snorri could feel the corruption scratch down his throat with every breath. He squinted back the way they had come, into the wind-beaten warpscape of twisted rock shapes and its gyrating skyline. Gotrek was gone.
‘Gotrek!’
Snorri turned, intending to go back for him, but the rope tied around his waist that tethered him to Borek pulled taut and held him in his tracks. The thick knot dug into his belly. It had been the old scholar’s idea to keep the three of them together through the Wastes. His hand closed over it, felt one where there should have been two.
‘Oh no.’
‘Where is he?’ said Borek, taking a grip on his own rope as if Snorri’s incompetence might dissolve it even at a distance. ‘And how in the name of Grungni did you lose him in the first place?’
‘It’s not Snorri’s fault. He said he’s no good at knots.’
‘You idiot, Snorri!’
‘It’s not Snorri’s fault,’ Snorri said again, shouting as if to make it truer, to make it heard over the storm. ‘Gotrek checked it. He said Snorri did them good.’
‘Well they weren’t good, were they?’ Borek spat.
Snorri had never seen the longbeard so furious, not even after the daemons had destroyed the wagons. Helplessness and guilt welled up inside him and he spun around to wail into the storm once more.
‘Gotrek!’
His friend could not be gone. Gotrek was invincible.
‘We will return to Karak Kadrin,’ said Borek firmly, seemingly in no doubt that they would return. ‘I expect there is an oath there that you will wish to make.’
Snorri hung his head. Stupid Snorri. Gotrek’s impenetrable over-and-under arrangements held like iron rivets. Who couldn’t tie a knot? Then he nodded. It wasn’t as if he was much good for anything else. Perhaps a half-decent doom as a Slayer was what he had always been destined for.
‘After,’ said Snorri, sadly. ‘After Snorri tells Gotrek’s family what he did.’
Snorri’s mace-leg dragged after him through the snow behind. He wasn’t even bothering to attack the snowface any more, just ploughed into it face first. His eyes were limned with frozen tears. His insides felt cold. He still had no idea how long he’d been walking. But he’d remembered. That was his shame! It had been Snorri’s fault that Gotrek had got lost in the Wastes. Shaking his head he trudged on. He’d been expecting something more, a great weight off his shoulders or something like that. Instead he felt worse than ever, like someone had just punched a bruise. There was only one explanation.
That wasn’t his shame.
It would have been bad enough, but there was more. After all, Gotrek had survived. Snorri hadn’t known that of course when he’d taken the oath, but there would have been no need to bury the memory so deep. Something had happened later, something to do with that dwarf woman and child.
‘No more!’ Snorri yelled it into the wind and snow.
Memories sloshed around in his mind as if the holes in his skull had caused it to leak. Taking a handful of snow, he smothered it over his scalp like a protective cap and roared with grief. This was that priest, Skalf’s, fault. And Durin too. They had taken his nails, taken his beer, had saved his life when he might have died and cheated that old lady’s curse.
Fists flailing as though everyone who had ever done him wrong were right there hiding in the snow, he lost his balance again and slipped, this time whacking his chin on a lump of packed snow. With a groan, he pushed himself up. The flutter of snow on the top of his head cooled his overheated thoughts somewhat and he relaxed. Glumly, he crossed his arms tight over his enormous chest and stared back the way he had come. Into the past.
It wasn’t fair. Snorri didn’t want to remember.
All Snorri wanted was…
‘Beer.’
‘You heard him, Craddi,’ said the ranger crouched over him, peeling open Snorri’s bloodshot eye with thumb and forefinger. He was grey-haired, gruff-bearded, and grizzled from a century of daylight and mountain winds. A second dwarf, Craddi presumably, appeared at his shoulder. He was younger, dressed in a waterproof cloak painted with what looked like greenskin tribal glyphs, and had a bone grobi-whistle still in his mouth. ‘Get this dwarf a beer, he’s dead on his feet.’
‘Snorri would love a beer,’ he drooled. ‘He’s not had one since the Chaos Wastes.’
‘Must be delirious,’ said Craddi. ‘And who do you think this Snorri is?’
‘Snorri is thirsty,’ Snorri answered.
‘Got by the goblins most likely, same as everyone else,’ said the old ranger. ‘Stop yapping and give him his mouthful. We haven’t time to sit here all day.’
‘Aye, Fulgriff.’
The neck of an ale skin appeared at Snorri’s lips and its honey-sweetened ambrosia washed the pain of his journey from his mouth and down his throat. Many were the
legends told of the fortifying power of dwarf beer, of the drunken clanner who fought off a goblin army with a spear in his belly and a tankard in his hand, of the embittered old greybeard who died mere yards from completing his pilgrimage to Bugman’s brewery only to be revived for one final pint by the mere whiff of Josef Bugman’s famous hops. This was a far inferior brew, ranger’s rations, but to Snorri it felt like something the Ancestor Goddess herself would use to clean wounds and salve broken hearts. Snorri felt a comforting buzz, the promise of numbness and a future without pain. For the first time since losing Gotrek, Snorri imagined that he could face the world again. His parchment-dry lids flickered open and he leaned forwards to try and steepen the flow into his mouth. Infuriatingly, Craddi chose that moment to pull it away from him.
‘We are trying to run ahead of a goblin warband,’ said Fulgriff. He was crouched down beside Snorri. His cloak smelled of wax and hung stiff in the breeze. Eyes open now, Snorri studied him and his rangers more closely. Including Fulgriff there were six of them, all of them dressed in thick waterproofs painted with greenskin markings and leather caps that bristled with pebbles, bird droppings, and bits of moss. ‘Was it they who attacked you?’ Fulgriff pressed. ‘Was it near here?’
‘No,’ said Snorri. He shook his head. He had left Borek behind at Karak Kadrin to fulfil his promise to Gotrek, but he didn’t know the way. Miserably, he looked at the rune sewn into his pack. ‘Where is this?’
Thinking that Snorri was answering his question, Fulgriff answered quickly. ‘A week out from Karaz-a-Karak, if you don’t rest.’ Then the ranger pulled aside, and pointed away down a dramatic gorge that was flanked by wintry, but majestic-looking peaks. Snorri was lying in the shade cast by the mountains on the southern side of the valley, being pointed down to a slender ribbon of water that ran in darkness along the bottom. ‘The Skull River. We’re following it all the way to the Badlands, warning every watchpost and town of the danger coming their way. Those chuffing grobi have already sacked two mines on Karag Khatûl.’ The other rangers grumbled curses, but Fulgriff shrugged. ‘Lucky in a way. They got carried away. Gave us time to get ahead of them.’