by Various
He felt some relief in finding that the heartstones still stood where he’d seen them last. They still glowed and pulsed, but not with the stinging brightness. Their vibratory song had grown muted, like the panting of a wounded animal. Soon, you will sing again – but this time, it will be a tune more to Grandfather’s liking, Goral thought, pleased. He felt like howling his triumph to the skies. Instead, he turned, seeking the fallen treelord. He would extract a measure of joy from the creature’s stiff hide. Perhaps he would even lay its head at the feet of his Lady of Cankerwall, as proof of his devotion. Will you offer me a smile then, my lady? His own smile faded as he realised that the treelord was gone.
Goral cursed. A trail of spilled sap led out of the glade. It hadn’t been as wounded as he’d thought. ‘Hunt the wounded one down, Uctor,’ Goral snarled, angry at himself. ‘I want that brute’s branches for my trophy-rack. It must pay for daring to defy Nurgle’s will.’ And for denying me the joy of the kill, he thought savagely.
‘We’ll strip the bark from whatever passes for its bones, my lord,’ the huntsman said, whistling for his dogs. The wormy Chaos hounds yelped and bounded out of the glen, loping after the wounded treelord. They had gotten a taste of its roots and were excited to finish the job they had started. Goral knew how they felt.
He knew he should not leave. The Lady had said he must embed Lifebiter in the heart of this place to accomplish his quest. But there was time enough for that, after he’d indulged himself. Perhaps he would chain the thing, rather than kill it, and drag it back to Cankerwall. Such thoughts were pleasant, if untoward. They reeked of hope, but Goral thought Grandfather would forgive him his vices.
‘Sir Culgus – see to these damnable stones. Topple them and make this place fit for Nurgle’s chosen. I’m for the hunt,’ Goral said as he thudded his heels into Blighthoof’s flanks and urged his steed after Uctor and his hounds. A number of the others followed him, ignoring Culgus’ raspy commands. Goral laughed. He was inclined to leniency. After all, was Grandfather not indulgent of his children?
‘Come brothers, ride hard,’ he shouted, still laughing. ‘Our prey awaits us!’
In her delirium, the Outcast calls out. She casts her voice into the teeth of the world, listening as it echoes through shadows and knotholes. The wind carries her call to the secret places of this weald, this wood, where sane things fear to tread. She is not alone in her status as outcast, though some part of her believes that perhaps she was the first. There are others: broken things with cracked souls and minds riven by hunger and fear.
Inside her flesh, hive-spites stir, and she feels their confusion. They have slumbered too, these tiny spirits. As they awaken, they begin to speak in their high, buzzing voices, murmuring to her as children to their mother. They seek comfort and reassurance, but she has none to give them. There is nothing of the nurturer in her, nothing of the caretaker. The song of the sylvaneth is not for her, or hers. Only the song of the reaping. Only the war-song.
She begins to sing. And as she sings, she strides the root-road through the shadows of the forest, at once insubstantial and implacable. The forest is under attack. The sound of its pain catches and tears at her secret knots, loosening some and pulling others painfully taut. Memories mutter deep in her, the sound of them almost lost among the murmurings of her spites. She twitches, trying to see through the murk of what once was or what might have been, and find the trail of the now. Her feet seek the hard path of the present.
Something happened. That is all the Outcast knows. Some black moment, forever etched in the bark of the world. The Everqueen knows, but will not say. The Outcast shrieks again, in frustration now, rather than command. She can feel the edges of that black moment in the air and soil, like a wound that will not heal. It reverberates through her, searing her mind and filling her with dread purpose. The land is sick and dying, but not dead yet. Not yet, and never again. The Outcast will not allow it. Not again.
The thought snags, uncomfortably close to epiphany. The Outcast remembers lies and forgets truth, or so the Everqueen has said. That is why she is outcast. And the word of the Everqueen is law, thus her words must be true. But then why does the Outcast remember them? Questions hum through her mind like wasps in a hive. Her thoughts race like fire through dry grass, igniting old fears and desires. She has been asleep for so long… so long… Her roots ache with need, and the hive-spites nestled within her hiss eagerly.
It is time to hunt… to hunt… to hunt, she sings. The need is like a creek swelled by the springsfed tide, unnoticed until it is no longer ignorable, and then all-consuming, all at once. It races through her roots and branches, filling her.
The trees are singing as well, but she cannot hear them. She sees them swaying with the wind, their roots stretching deeper and deeper, seeking strength as she strides past, cloaked all in shadow. Leaves twitch back, afraid to touch her or be touched. She is anathema, forgotten, outcast. So Alarielle has said and the word of the Everqueen is law. The forests fear her, and rivers recede at her approach. Animals and spirits fall silent in her wake. Root-claws gouge the earth as she stalks forwards now, growing, unfolding. Sap runs and forms, layer after layer. Scything talons of bark and stone and vine sprout, swell and flatten. They thin to well-used points. They will tear iron and crush bone. The Outcast is still singing as she pulls herself through the shuddering trees, leaving tiny scratches on their trembling bark to remind them of this moment.
Remember me… Remember this moment, she sings, as the forest begins to scream. She can hear the wails of the dryads and the agonised bellow of one of the ancients. The great song falters, interrupted. Its last notes hang suspended, quavering, on the air. Her song matches the echo and drives it to flight. Hers is the only melody now, whatever the Everqueen intended. You have called, and I have come. I am here… I hunt… I slay… Remember.
The Outcast laughs and the forest falls silent, abashed. Then, a sigh of noise fills the emptiness, like a soft black whisper. The broken ones. They have found her trail, and follow her now, snuffling at her heels. They slash past her, broken bat-like shapes and gaunt, loping shades, chittering and shrieking. The reaper-kin, the reavers and outcast-kind. They have heard her song, and found it to their liking. They fly at her command, laughing in mad joy. They will hunt the forest, and harry the foe, and drive them back towards her.
She does not slow as she reaches the glade where the heartstones thud in fear. The pounding of the stones calls out to her, drawing her on as Alarielle knew it would. Fully awake now, the Outcast feels the weight of the world’s pain and she desires nothing more than to punish those who would dare set foot in the holy places of the sylvaneth. The glade glows with warm light as she enters its circle in a skirl of leaves.
She sees the defilers, the rotten ones, the grub-men, through the eyes of every tree and blade of grass, all at once and from a thousand directions. They are small, compared to her, and their souls are weak things, flickering on the edge of awareness. Like her, they are deaf to the song, though they lack even the knowledge of their handicap. But she will show them.
The Outcast tears through the veil of worlds. They are slow to react, slow to understand. She lunges towards the closest of them, and fills the air with sour blood. Trees bend towards her as she attacks, uprooted and added to her mass, despite their protests. She reaches out, crushing the head of another of the would-be defilers as easily as she might snatch a worm from the soil. They are so fragile, the Outcast thinks, these piles of meat and muscle. They are ephemeral things, bundles of scattered moments soon forgotten. But dangerous… so dangerous.
They have wounded the realm. The sky weeps poison and the rivers are stagnant. She feels it all with every breath, and tears of sap run down her cheeks. But it is rage she feels, not sadness. The Outcast is not the Everqueen. I will not run… I will not hide, she thinks. I will hunt… I will slay… I will kill until the trees grow fat on red water.
She kills two more before they see her fully, for she is cloaked in a storm of leaves and splintered branches. The forest seeks to hide her monstrousness, ashamed. It needs her and hates her for that need, though she does not understand why. Animals squeal and stamp as she ravages among them, snapping their greenstick bones and tearing their filthy flesh. They are half-dead already, these things, as are their riders. So much mulch, for the hungry soil. A heavyset warrior, clad in boils and barnacled iron, heaves himself towards her, spewing the high-pitched bird noises which pass for words among his kind.
The Outcast cannot stand the shrill screams of the meat. They do not sing. They squeak and scream, too fast, too high. She desires their silence. A foul blade bites into her hives, eliciting shrieks of outrage from her spites. Flitterfuries pour from the honeycombs in her arms and shoulders and swirl about the warrior in a glittering, stinging cloud. The spites drive him back as the Outcast advances. She tears the blade from his hands and catches his flabby face in her talons. He hammers at her bark with ineffectual fists, still squeaking.
Why do they talk so much, she wonders. Why do they clog the air with words and the sound of meat slapping against meat? Fragile… so fragile, she thinks, as she pulls the sour one’s head apart, stripping flesh and muscle from bone, one red blossom at a time. His squeals fall silent, and she sighs in relief. Bits of his flesh dangle from her claws, but the Outcast loses interest as a ring of iron and fire surrounds her. She hisses and her spites hiss with her. They stream from her hives and launch themselves at the enemy. The ring of iron and fire comes apart as she strides through the glen, stalking and killing.
Some flee, rather than face her. These, the Outcast ignores as she continues her butchery. The forest will take them. The broken ones will drag them into the dark. That is their pleasure. Like her, they are hidden beneath the canopy, forgotten and ignored until the reaping comes and the war-wind blows.
When the last of the defilers dangles ruined from her claws, she stops. The song of the heartstones has caught her attention and for an instant, just an instant, the song of the reaping gives way to the blooming and war is drowned out by peace. The Outcast sways in place, listening, and in that moment, she is outcast no longer. She is Drycha Hamadreth, first daughter of the sylvaneth, auspicious and honoured. She hears the song of her kin for the first time in a long time, and feels the tears of Isha upon her cheeks. See me… hear me… she croons, reaching out with one monstrous talon.
She wishes to touch them, just for a moment. To feel again the warmth of the blooming and the suns. To taste the sweet waters, so long denied her. She wishes…
A sour one moans at her feet. The moment is broken. She lifts a foot and stomps down, turning bones to powder and flesh to jelly. No… do not touch me… fear me, the Outcast hisses, glaring at the trembling heartstones. For an instant, she almost forgot… no. She will never forget and never remember. For her, there is no song. There is only the now. There is only the reaping and the wind.
The Outcast throws back her head and screams.
The treelord was gone.
A trail of golden sap marked its stumbling flight. The trees sought to hide it, but Uctor’s hounds found it and followed it regardless. They led Goral and the others on a yelping chase, away from the glade and the hateful light of the stones. Golden handprints and smears led them deeper into the dark and the quiet of the forest, until the only light was that of their torches and the only sound was the susurrus of the leaves.
But their quarry was nowhere to be found. Even Uctor’s hounds seemed to have lost the trail, and they now circled and yelped in apparent confusion. Goral cursed and smacked a fist on his saddle horn. Some part of him had expected as much. ‘Where is that cursed thing? It can’t have gotten far, not with the wounds I gave it,’ he said. He glared down at Uctor, wanting an answer, though he knew the hound-master would not know.
Before Uctor could reply, a monstrous shriek echoed through the forest. The yelping Chaos hounds fell silent and slunk back towards their master, tails tucked between their legs. The shriek seemed to grow in strength, reverberating in the dark, before finally fading away. Goral gripped Lifebiter more tightly. ‘What is that blasted thing? Why does it not come out, if it wishes to challenge us?’ he said. He straightened in his saddle and peered into the dark. He thought he saw something moving beneath the shroud of roots, but dismissed the idea. A serpent, he thought. Or some weak spirit, seeking to hide from them.
‘My hounds don’t like it, my lord,’ Uctor said, peering at the trees warily. ‘There’s something new in the air, a smell…’
Goral nodded. He could detect it as well. At first, he’d thought it was the stones and whatever magic was seeping from them inundating the surrounding trees, but this wasn’t the smell of either rock or sorcery. Not quite. It was a sickly sweet reek, like too-ripe flowers. Close to the pleasing odour of rot, but not quite. And it was everywhere, and growing stronger. Like the hint of rain, heralding a storm, he thought. But the smell wasn’t the whole of it.
The trees were trembling. But not, he thought, from fear. No, they were trembling with anticipation. As if the forest were a wounded animal, and it was about to turn on its hunters. They seemed to crowd around his warriors, and the roots beneath their feet twisted slowly into new and horrid shapes. It’s waking up, he thought, and he couldn’t say why he’d thought it. They’d hacked and burned a scar across its face, but it was only now stirring.
For the first time in a long time, Goral felt what might have been the embers of an old and forgotten fear stirring. Uctor’s maggot-hounds were whimpering, and his warriors were sounding little better. They had faced the shimmer-scaled devils of the stars, and the silver-armoured warriors who rode the lightning. But now… here… their courage was stretched thin, like a ligament extended past its breaking point. The joy they’d felt only moments ago had dissipated, leaving behind only silence.
‘Perhaps we should turn back,’ Uctor said. ‘Once we shatter those stones, whatever lurks here will wither and be no more threat. We can call on aid from the rest of the Order, or rouse the musters of Festerfane and Cankerwall if need be.’
Goral ground his teeth in frustration. In the dark, something laughed. The Chaos hounds began to bay shrilly, and their horses whinnied and stamped. ‘Light – more light,’ Goral snapped. He reached down and snatched a crackling torch out of a Rotbringer’s hand. He slung it away. It rolled across the carpet of roots, casting weird shadows. His knights and warriors followed suit. The dark retreated in bits and pieces, leaving oily pools of blackness between the trees.
More laughter. Something peered at him from behind a tree. Goral twisted in his saddle, but whatever it was, it was gone. Chuckles echoed down like raindrops. Childish laughter slithered up from the roots. Goral heard wood scrape against wood. He caught glimpses of pale flesh or tangled bark, never in the same place twice.
‘Steady, brothers,’ Goral said as he tried to control his restive steed. ‘We are the hunters here. What we have claimed, they cannot take back.’ As he spoke, the laughter ceased. Silence fell.
Then, the crackling. Not of balefire, but like twigs snapping. One of his warriors gestured with his sword. ‘I saw something,’ he gurgled. ‘In that tree.’ Goral looked. The tree was a stunted thing, sheared in half by some long-ago axe stroke. In the flickering glare of the fallen torches, he could make out something moving. Many somethings.
Then, cackling, shrieking, they spilled out of the cloven tree, crooked bark-talons reaching. Pest-swollen flesh popped and tore as they swarmed over Goral’s warriors, biting and clawing. They moved quickly, like dead leaves caught in a cold wind. A Rotbringer stumbled, clutching at his torn throat. Another was yanked upwards, into the shadowy canopy, legs kicking. More of them descended on his knights, knocking them from their horses. Armour buckled and split as blows rained down. Shields splintered and shivered apart. Axes and swords were yanked from hands, or lef
t embedded in trees. Bellowing warriors were mobbed by dozens of spirits and dragged away. Chaos hounds were pulled howling beneath the roots by unseen claws.
The blessings of Nurgle granted strength and durability, but those gifts were useless here. Cyclones of stabbing bark talons and gnashing fangs tore even the most doughty Rotbringer to bloody strips. ‘Back, fall back,’ Goral roared. He lashed out with his axe, removing a groping claw. ‘Leave me,’ he snarled as the cackling tree spirits crowded around Blighthoof. They had the faces of aged children, stretched taut across bones of root and vine. Teeth like splinters tore at his legs and Blighthoof’s neck. The horse-thing shrilled in agony and reared, lashing out with its hooves even as Goral swept his axe out, hacking at them savagely. The tree spirits retreated, but only for a moment.
Laughing, they scuttled across the trees and over the roots like insects, pursuing his remaining warriors as they retreated. Goral hauled on Blighthoof’s reins, turning his steed about. ‘Fall back to the heartstones,’ he bellowed. He couldn’t say whether any of the others heard him. He bisected a chittering spirit with Lifebiter and then turned Blighthoof away. He raced through the forest, and the tree spirits followed him, swooping and surging out of the dark. He fended them off with wild blows from his axe. Toying with me, he thought, as he bent low over Blighthoof’s neck.
He had heard stories about the malevolent spirits which lurked in the shadows of the forests. Things which were of the tree spirits, but apart from them. Twisted things, more savage and cruel than any daemon, for they were bound by no god’s will. Old things, blighted, embittered and monstrous. If these creatures infested the Writhing Weald, it was no wonder Nurgle desired its taming.
If he could make it back to the stones – shatter them, defile them – they might yet have a chance. The forest would grow weak. Goral looked around, trying to spot the light of the stones. But he saw only darkness, or the brief, bounding motion of a torch swiftly snuffed. He wondered whether Uctor was one of those. He’d lost sight of the hound-master in the attack. Goral hoped the warrior was still alive.