by Warhammer
Masters of a sinister magic, there was no saying what sort of daemon the dwarfs of Zharr Naggrund had bound into the Smile of Sardiss, but it was such a thing as to make even a phantom know fear.
Wulfrik did not care what the thing hiding in the red smoke was. It was enough that it would keep the ghosts busy while his men escaped. Roused from his despair by Broendulf’s words, a new purpose filled the hero’s heart in place of the hope that had so cruelly been crushed. Revenge. He would find Zarnath and he would make of the treacherous shaman an end that would make even the gods tremble.
‘Away, you dogs!’ Wulfrik called to his crew. ‘Stop gawking and take to your heels! The daemon will kill you just as quick as the ghosts!’ As if to prove the hero’s words, the red smoke slammed into another of the Sarls clustered about the menhir, tearing him apart in the same grisly fashion as his comrade.
‘Away!’ Wulfrik barked again. He grinned fiercely as his warriors rushed past him, racing into the forest. The hero lingered a moment, soaking in the spectacle of the butchered elf-wives and his slaughtered men, of the wailing ghosts and the raging daemon. Of the crimson shards of the torc strewn about the clearing.
‘We’ve a ship to sail,’ Wulfrik growled through clenched fangs, ‘and a Kurgan to kill.’
The marauders raced through the forest, eager to put as much distance between themselves and the haunted clearing as possible. More than before, the trees seemed to regard them with some awful awareness of their own, hostile and malignant. Unconsciously, the northmen kept to the path winding through the grove, unwilling to chance pushing their way through the trees. At every turn, they expected to see the ghosts barring their way or encounter the crimson daemon still eager to glut its hunger.
When trouble came, it came from neither phantom nor fiend.
A Sarl suddenly cried out, toppling to the ground, an arrow through his neck. From the shadows, more arrows came whistling down, lodging into the bodies of men with chilling accuracy. Warriors crumpled to the ground before they could even draw their axes, their bodies looking like pin-cushions as arrow after arrow stabbed into their flesh.
Had their attackers been less wrathful, they could have slaughtered Wulfrik’s entire warband. Instead, the ambushers vented their fury, loosing arrows into the same target over and over.
‘In the trees!’ Jokull shouted. The hunter loosed one of his own arrows into the darkness overhead. A thin wail greeted his shot, and a lean body hurtled down from the branches to slam into the ground. It was the body of an elf, that of a warrior wearing breastplate and helm over his green tunic and robes. A yew bow fell from the elf’s dead fingers.
Zarnath’s flare had alerted the elves in the tower. With incredible speed they had dispatched scouts to investigate and defend the elf-wives praying in the grove. Hearing the sounds of men running through the woods, the elves had hidden themselves in the trees. It was easy enough for them to guess they were too late to save their wives: every one of Wulfrik’s warriors was carrying loot ripped from the dead she-elves. Now they would wreak a terrible revenge upon the barbarian invaders.
Jokull had only a second to revel in the accuracy of his archery. A dozen arrows thumped into his body, striking him with such speed that they might have been loosed from a single bow. The hunter’s bloody body slumped against the trunk of a tree, his tentacle writhing against his chest as life drained out of him.
Wulfrik snarled in impotent wrath. The elves were picking his men off one by one and there was nothing the northmen could do to fight back. The trees offered some cover, his marauders forgetting their repugnance in their eagerness to avoid the arrows of their foes. But there was no real shelter to be had in the wood. He could hear the branches overhead creaking as the elves nimbly sprang from one perch to another, circling around the warriors to strike them from behind.
Staying in the copse was death. The prairie would be worse: the grass and wildflowers would offer absolutely no protection from the elven bowmen, but at least it offered a chance to reach the Seafang and escape.
‘Dogs of Norsca!’ Wulfrik shouted to his men. ‘Follow me and live, stay here and die!’
The hero didn’t wait to see how many of his men abandoned their cover to follow him. He was too busy sprinting down the path, weaving from side to side as he ran, trying to thwart the marksmanship of the elves. Arrows whistled past his ear, stabbing into the earth around him. Pain flared through his body as one of the missiles cut across his arm, leaving a bloody gash along his shoulder. Behind him, he could hear northmen crying out in agony as other arrows found their mark.
Bright sunlight welcomed Wulfrik when he emerged from the copse. The men following him cheered as they felt the warmth of day shining down on them, banishing the supernatural chill of the sacred grove from their bones. From the depths of the forest, the screams of the men who had clung to the cover of the trees rang out as the elves continued to whittle away at them.
Wulfrik dismissed the wretches from his mind. They had made their choice, now they would suffer for it. The gods favoured the bold. The best of his crew were still with him. They would be enough to sail the Seafang and voyage back to Norsca and vengeance.
The hero studied the winded, panting warriors behind him. Almost every man had at least one elven arrow stuck in his flesh; only a half-dozen of the score who had managed to escape the forest looked unscathed. Every man cast frightened glances back into the trees.
‘They won’t stay in there long,’ he snarled at his warriors. ‘As soon as they finish off the men we left behind, they’ll be howling at our heels!’ Wulfrik turned and pointed his sword across the plains, towards the distant cliff on the horizon. ‘We won’t be safe until the Seafang is under our feet again and we are gone from this accursed land!’
Tired, wounded, the northmen nevertheless jogged after Wulfrik as he set out over the prairie. At every step, each man expected to feel an arrow slam into his back. With nowhere to hide and only open ground between them and the sea, there was no question of eluding the elves when they emerged from the forest and began their pursuit. The only uncertainty was how long it would take their enemies to catch them.
Resigned to their doom, the northmen loped through the grassy meadows. The landscape that had filled them with admiration only hours ago now seemed to them as bleak and unforgiving as the wastes of the Dark Lands, as pitiless as the Mountains of Mourn. There seemed no end to the rolling plains, the cliffs drawing no nearer no matter how strenuously they strived to reach them. The worst of the crew’s wounded fell as they ran, slumping wearily to the ground. No thought was given to helping them; each man had to save his strength for himself. The abandoned men did not curse their comrades, but instead turned their faces back to the copse and drew their axes. At least they would have steel in their fists when they entered the halls of their ancestors.
Wulfrik ignored the pulsing pain in his arm as he ran, was deaf to the sound of injured men collapsing behind him. Only the cliff and the sea mattered now, reaching the Seafang and showing Zarnath that his trap had failed.
The hero held up his arm, motioning his warriors to halt. Wulfrik glared across the meadows, watching as seven riders galloped towards the northmen, the sun glistening from their tall silvery helms and long lances. Elf knights, waiting to cut off the retreat of the men who had escaped from the grove! Wulfrik cursed. Caught in the open, the armoured cavalry would cut the marauders down as easily as the bowmen.
‘What do we do?’ Tjorvi demanded, panic in his voice.
Wulfrik gave the Graeling a contemptuous glance. ‘We hold our ground, unless you want to go back to the grove.’
Before the northmen, the galloping knights lowered their lances. The ground shuddered as they spurred their powerful warhorses into a charge. The marauders could see the stern, merciless expressions on the faces of the elves. No quarter would be given. The knights would ride them down like animals.
Wulfrik bared his fangs and braced himself for the attack. ‘Any man wh
o fails to slay three knights is a mongrel unfit to lick the arse of a maggot!’ he growled at his men.
‘Kill these bastards and prove to the gods your fathers weren’t southling thralls!’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The elf knights gave voice to a weird exultation, a cry as melodious as a harp and biting as a whip. There was neither doubt nor hesitance in the riders as they bore down upon the northmen. Masters of saddle and blade, hardened by centuries of warfare, the knights had only contempt for the barbarians who stood before them. Many of the elves had been there when Erik Redaxe’s army had been slaughtered by the hosts of Cothique and Chrace. They remembered that battle now as they charged Wulfrik’s men, confident that these wounded, weary marauders would be easy prey.
Several of the Sarl warriors were indeed trampled by the knights, their bodies torn and mangled by their lances. But the elves did not strike with impunity. The horde of Erik Redaxe had looked to their king for leadership and in that moment of need, he had failed them. Wulfrik was made of sterner stuff than the vanquished king.
As the knights rode down his crew, Wulfrik sprang from the ground, his sword lashing out, the blade hacking into the arm of an elven rider. The bright, silvery ithilmar mail withstood the sharp edge of the hero’s sword, but the bone within was not so unyielding. The crushing impact of Wulfrik’s blow snapped the rider’s arm like a twig. The elf cried out in shock, his lance falling from a suddenly nerveless hand. Before the elf could recover from his surprise, Wulfrik’s other sword came flashing out at him. The left-hand blade glanced across the horn of the elf’s saddle, stabbing deep into the neck of the horse he rode.
Wulfrik jumped back as the injured warhorse reared up, its hooves pawing the air, blood spurting from where the northman’s sword was buried in its neck. The knight struggled to recover control of his wounded steed. Almost he succeeded, such was his mastery over the beast, but before he could wheel the warhorse around, Njarvord rushed at him from the other side, smashing into the horse’s flank with his shoulder. The Baersonling’s berserk charge and the fury of his impact against the horse caused the animal to lose its footing.
Whinnying in terror, beast and elf fell. The knight struggled to pull himself from beneath his thrashing steed, but before he could, Njarvord was upon him, driving his axe into the knight’s face. The sharp, patrician features of the knight lost their ethereal beauty as the axe’s spike stabbed over and again into his face.
A second knight, seeing the destruction of his comrade, charged Njarvord. The Baersonling had only just turned away from his victim to face the sound of pounding hooves when the knight’s lance crunched through his ribs, exploding from his back in a welter of gore. Impaled upon the knight’s lance, the northman howled in pain, blood and froth bubbling from his mouth.
The elf’s horse reared back, the man impaled upon the knight’s lance lifted into the air by the motion. The knight kicked out with his armoured boot to push Njarvord’s body from his weapon. The smack of a boot in his belly roused the Norscan, giving his mind something more than pain to consider. Njarvord glared at the elf, spitting blood at the haughty knight as he moved to kick the marauder a second time. Clenching his teeth, Njarvord closed one hand around the shaft of the lance. Screaming his agony, the warrior pulled his body down the lance, feeling his bones crack as he pressed the shaft deeper into his flesh. Angrily, Njarvord shook his head, struggling to defy the pain. Trembling with the effort, he raised his other arm, the cleaving edge of his axe gleaming in the sun.
Horror crawled onto the elf’s face. In a thousand years, the elf knight had never seen such mindless, murderous determination. Panicked, he kicked his boot into Njarvord’s body, raking his thighs with his spurs. The warhorse reared again, its legs flailing at the impaled northman. Njarvord defied every effort to knock him loose. Shrieking a war cry that would have deafened the grim gods of the north, he forced his body another foot down the lance and brought his axe swinging around to cleave the elf asunder.
Belatedly, the knight abandoned his lance, casting it and the man impaled upon it from his grasp. The move caused Njarvord’s axe to miss its target. Within reach of the elf, the marauder’s blow would have torn even an ithilmar breastplate. Instead, the strike crunched into the skull of the warhorse, splitting it down to the jaw. The beast dropped as though smashed flat by the fist of a giant, crashing to the ground, crushing the dying mass of its killer beneath its own bulk.
The elf knight tried to squirm out of the saddle as his steed died beneath him. With an inhuman display of grace and agility, he lifted himself from the back of his warhorse and sprang to the ground. Instantly, his battle-hardened reflexes were in motion, an ithilmar blade flashing from its scabbard to parry the strike of a Norscan sword. However, even the elf’s reflexes were not enough to fend off Wulfrik’s second blade. The hero’s sword smashed into the knight’s back, just above the join between cuirass and mail skirt. The elf flopped to the earth, his spine severed. He tried to slash his blade across the champion’s belly as Wulfrik loomed over the wounded knight. The northman’s boot smashed down upon the elf’s hand, breaking every finger as he ground his heel savagely against the prisoned flesh. The elf’s cry of pain was silenced in a bloody gargle as Wulfrik stabbed the point of his sword into the knight’s neck.
Wulfrik turned away from the dead elf, shaking the knight’s blood from his sword, his eyes hungry for enemies to slay. He found four knights galloping across the plains, heading away towards the grove. Behind them they left three of their number. Arngeirr had cut the legs out from under a warhorse, the kraken-tooth sword shearing clean through flesh and bone. The dismounted knight had been finished off by a blow from Broendulf’s sword.
However, the knights had wreaked havoc with their charge just the same. In addition to Njarvord, seven northmen were lying dead in the grass. Only ten of the marauders were still standing with Wulfrik. He could almost read the thoughts of the elf riders. They had lost almost half their number, but they had destroyed half of the invaders with that charge. The price was high, but with their blood roused by the massacre of their wives, the elves might not care how many of their own fell to prevent the invaders from escaping.
Wulfrik turned his head and snarled at his surviving crew. ‘Gather the bodies,’ he snapped. ‘Build a barricade against their next charge.’ He watched his men only long enough to make sure they were following his orders, then returned his attention to the knights. As he had predicted, they were wheeling about, making ready for another charge. Then, suddenly, they stopped. Wulfrik saw one of the knights turn and look behind him. Faintly he could hear the rider shout something. The hero’s keen eyes could see movement in the grass. It could be one of the wounded men the marauders had left behind trying to crawl his way to the cliff, but somehow he doubted it. When he saw the knights lean back in their saddles, adopting an almost relaxed posture, he was certain of it. There would be no charge now. The knights were afraid of trampling their own people as they crept through the tall grass.
‘Down!’ Wulfrik snarled, diving behind the gory wreck of the horse that had crushed Njarvord. Not all of the other northmen were quick to understand the immediacy of their captain’s howl. Two Sarls struggling to move the corpse of Arngeirr’s horse, and a third Sarl trying to shift the body of an elf knight; these were caught in the open when the reason for Wulfrik’s warning manifested itself.
Several hundred yards from where the northmen made their stand, bowmen suddenly rose from the grass. With lethal precision, the elves loosed a volley of arrows at the warriors, dozens of shafts falling upon the men in a murderous rain. The Sarls caught without cover shrieked as the arrows slammed into them, crumpling to the earth like broken toys.
Wulfrik pressed his shoulder against the horse carcass he hid behind, forcing it up onto its side, using it like a shield against the incoming arrows. The morbid bulwark shuddered as it was struck again and again, but none of the missiles stabbed deep enough to strike the man himself. He r
isked a quick look past the rump of the warhorse, watching as the elves dropped back down into the grass.
‘More to starboard!’ Arngeirr shouted. Frantically, the northmen shifted their grisly shields as a second band of archers rose from the tall grass and sent a volley at them. More screams sounded as one of the Sarls was hit, a shaft lodged in his hip. He flopped out from behind the pile of Norscan dead he had used for shelter, rolling across the ground in agony. A second arrow silenced him, smashing clean through his forehead.
‘Scum! Curseling swine!’
Wulfrik felt steel press into his collar, felt blood gushing down his shoulder. He rolled onto his back, kicking out with his boot. A blade flashed before his eyes. He heard the sound of metal sinking into flesh as the blade hacked into the horse carcass. It had missed his neck by a hairsbreadth, but for the impact of his boot against the body of his assailant, it would have struck true.
Tjorvi ripped his axe from the dead horse, at the same time slashing his knife at Wulfrik, the hero’s blood dripping from its steel. The Graeling’s face was livid with rage, the merciless fury of a man overwhelmed by fear. ‘We trusted you to lead us to glory!’ Tjorvi hissed. ‘Instead you bring us only death!’
The furious warrior lunged at Wulfrik. Wulfrik swatted aside Tjorvi’s axe, prepared to do the same with the man’s knife when his keen ears caught the whistle of arrows in the air. He tried to throw himself flat, but was too late to avoid all of the missiles hurtling down upon the northmen. Pain flashed through his body as an arrow slashed across the side of his head, gouging a deep furrow in his scalp. A second crunched into the meat of his leg, a third punched through his forearm.
Shielded from the arrows by his foe, Tjorvi sprang at the stricken champion. His knife bit across Wulfrik’s hand, forcing him to drop one of his swords. His axe smacked against the hero’s chest, shattering one of the trophy skulls he wore, denting the steel of his breastplate.