by Warhammer
CHAPTER TWO
The sudden silence that filled the kennels snapped Einarr from the restless sleep that had stolen upon him. The incessant barking and yapping of the dogs had been broken, replaced by an imposing stillness. Einarr rolled onto his back, letting his eyes adjust to the icy gloom that filled the kennels. Two sapphire orbs gleamed at him from the shadows beyond his cage, staring at him with sinister curiosity. Einarr glared back at the shadowy figure, even as his body cringed from the supernatural chill emanating from the apparition. The eyes and the cold were things Einarr knew only too well. The time had come then. Bloodfather Alfkaell had come to offer him up to the gods of Skraevold.
‘They tell me it takes much to make you scream, Baerson,’ the shaman rasped, his voice like a cold northern wind. ‘That is good. Very good. The gods are pleased with those who are strong. It is good to offer them such souls.’
From the darkness, Einarr could see the shaman more distinctly now – the withered, emaciated frame, the heavy bearskin cloak festooned with runestones and bone talismans, the tall elven helm that framed the man’s sharp features. The heavy staff Alfkaell carried seemed to glow in the darkness with a strange, smouldering light. Einarr found his eyes straying from the unnatural light to the glistening metal blade that tipped the shaman’s staff. He had seen for himself the lethal edge the blade possessed; the impossible keenness only the witch-metal of the elves could keep. With such a blade, the timber poles of his cage would not confine him long.
‘That must be why the Aeslings raid and maraud against their neighbours,’ Einarr said. ‘Because there is none in this maggot nest that the gods would take.’
‘Do you know how you will die?’ Alfkaell asked, ignoring Einarr’s insults. ‘Skraevold has been blessed by the gods. In my grandfather’s time, the skald was touched by the Skull Lord and changed into a thing of the gods, a living sacrament of their power and might. It is with us still, a temple of flesh to the Skull Lord. We shall offer you to it, that through the beast your soul may be given to mighty Kharnath and feed his mighty hunger. You will scream then, as the great beast strips the flesh from you, as it licks the hot blood from your bones. The beast takes a long time to kill a man – you will think yourself dead a thousand times over before the end finally comes. Suffering pleases great Kharnath, and the beast will see that the Skull Lord is satisfied with our offering.’
Einarr rose to his feet, grinding his teeth against the pulse of agony that throbbed through him as he did so. Bracing himself against the bars of his cage, he forced his way to the front of his cell, glaring into the smirking features of Alfkaell. ‘If this beast of yours grew from an Aesling, it is no thing of the gods. I will crush its skull with my hands and spit on its carcass when I am done. You offer it no child this day, crow-caller, but a warrior, a son of Vinnskor!’
The shaman took a step back from the bars of Einarr’s cage, but the smile remained on his face. ‘It is good that you are defiant, that you shout your idle boasts so proudly. It will make the sacrifice all the more amusing for the Skull Lord. You will shout louder still when the beast’s paws flay your flesh, when its jaws chew upon your soul.’
Einarr glared into Alfkaell’s luminous eyes. ‘When I have strangled the life from your beast, you will be next, carrion-eater. How loudly will you scream when I carve that smirk from your withered face? Tell me what amusement your cries will give the gods as you beg me to let you die.’ Einarr could see some of the amusement fall away from Alfkaell’s expression, watched as the shaman’s features hardened.
‘I will take extreme pleasure offering you to the Skull Lord,’ Alfkaell hissed.
‘Do you not mean offering me up to your beast?’ Einarr retorted. ‘What is wrong, scavenger-rat, do you need a beast to bring the favour of the gods to Skraevold?’ The venomous words were falling from Einarr’s tongue faster than his mind could form them, smashing against the shaman’s pride. Einarr could see the man’s flesh turning crimson, could almost feel Alfkaell’s enraged gaze burning into him. A part of him suddenly realised what he was doing, what sort of man he was insulting. This was a shaman, a man touched by the gods, wielder of strange and terrible powers. It was madness to incite such a man, to tempt the awful vengeance a seer could inflict upon a mere mortal. Yet another part of him swelled up within him, filling Einarr with rage. He was already destined to die, what more hurt could befall him by stoking the ire of the shaman. Again, words poured from Einarr’s lips, stabbing into Alfkaell’s ego. ‘Will the gods not listen to the words of the great and terrible Alfkaell? Will even ravenous Kharnath not accept a sacrifice from your own hand?’
‘Enough, wretch!’ Alfkaell snarled. He gestured with his staff towards the cage, the ithilmar blade fixed to its head gleaming in the meagre light. ‘Be silent or I shall cut that wagging tongue from you!’
‘How will mighty Kharnath hear my screams then?’ Einarr replied, laughing as he saw the shaman become still more incensed. ‘The Aeslings are indeed a stupid people not to understand it takes more than a bit of elven steel to make a seer.’
‘Fall silent, cur!’
Einarr laughed at the shaman’s command. ‘Tell me, Alfkaell, what lies did you tell your people about your talismans? Did you tell them stories about some mighty battle in the elf havens, or some great lie about sacking a terrible elven ship?’
‘When the god-beast has finished with you, I shall feed your manhood to the crows!’ Alfkaell threatened, shaking his staff at Einarr. The shaman’s knuckles were white where he held the weapon. Einarr knew he stared at death when he looked into the seer’s eyes, but the prospect held no great terror for him and the baiting words continued to roll off his tongue. Nothing Alfkaell could do to him would be any worse than what the shaman already intended.
‘Tell me, Alfkaell, did you scavenge your trophies from a wreck or did you earn it as wergild when your woman did not give you a son?’ Einarr could see the fury boiling over in the seer’s face. Even as far away as Vinnskor the story of Alfkaell’s wife had been heard, how she had thrown herself from the cliffs rather than endure the seer’s embrace. ‘Or was it the woman’s fault? Perhaps a thrall such as you is more accustomed to being a consort than taking one!’
Einarr braced himself for the stabbing thrust of Alfkaell’s staff. One swift strike and it would all be over, one lethal cut from the ithilmar blade and he would escape the waking dream of the mortal coil and walk among the gods. Yet even as he gritted his teeth against the coming blow, something inside told him to lunge forward, towards the wooden bars of his cage. Einarr stared at Alfkaell, saw the raw hate burning in his eyes. Yet somehow the emotion was muted, indeed there was a sense of dullness about the shaman’s cold gaze, a brute quality that reminded Einarr of an ox or goat. Instead of using the great reach of his staff to stab at Einarr from beyond the bars, Alfkaell stepped towards the cage, so close that Einarr could smell the mangy bearskin draped about the seer’s shoulders, could smash his fist into the seer’s furious face.
The warrior did not hesitate to question the foolishness that had set upon the seer. Instantly, Einarr’s massive frame crashed against the bars of his cage, his powerful arm shooting between the timbers to close about Alfkaell’s windpipe. The dull quality still filled the shaman’s eyes as the captive squeezed and tightened his hold about the man’s neck. Alfkaell brought the shaft of his staff smacking against Einarr’s arm, but the effort was feeble and painless compared to the days of torture Einarr had endured. His grip tightened and the seer’s eyes began to bulge, the dullness beginning to fade as Alfkaell’s lungs filled with hot, spoiled breath. The familiar, evil cunning reasserted itself and from the corner of his eye, Einarr could see the shaman adjust his hold on his staff, grabbing it just beneath the bladed tip and pointing it towards the warrior’s belly.
With a savage roar, Einarr twisted his arm, snapping the shaman’s neck with a grotesque crunch that echoed through the still silent kennels. He heard Alfkaell’s staff clatter to the floor, watche
d as the smouldering life in the seer’s eyes began to fade. Einarr let the limp form slip from his hand, watching with apprehension as the shaman’s corpse flopped to the floor. It was taboo amongst the tribes of Norsca to strike down one of the god-touched seers, an act certain to bring the vengeance of those same gods upon any who dared such blasphemy. A man might kill a jarl or even a king, but he did not dare raise his hand against one who served the gods.
Einarr shuddered as he considered what he had done. He had thought to goad the seer into attacking him, into giving him a quick and clean death. Instead, it was Alfkaell who had died. The Baersonling stared at the timber roof above him, imagining the angry eyes of the gods glaring down upon him. He held his breath as he waited for their terrible fury to be visited upon him. But long moments passed and slowly his breath grew normal. The fear trickled from his veins, reason subduing the superstition that had paralysed him with terror. Alfkaell was dead, and if the gods had cared so much for the Aesling seer, they had done nothing to stay Einarr’s hand. The warrior looked again at the cold, still shape of the seer, crumpled on the filthy floor of the kennel like a pile of discarded rags. Then Einarr’s eye was caught by the bright shine of metal. He laughed as he saw it, the sound causing the still cowed hounds in the cages around him to cringe still further into the shadows.
Alfkaell’s staff, with its wicked elf-steel blade, had fallen within easy reach of Einarr’s cage. The warrior did not even need to stretch to grasp it and pull it through the bars. He lifted the weapon over his head and cracked it against his knee, Einarr’s immense musculature allowing him to snap the heavy staff like a twig. He tossed the longer section aside, interested only in the shorter length and the deadly ithilmar edge affixed to its top. Einarr laughed again as he tested the feel of his improvised sword. He had seen for himself the incredible keenness of the elven metal. A weapon that had split iron and cleft steel with such ease would make short work of the timber bars of his cage, and speed was what he needed now. He did not know how long it would be before the Aeslings came for him and discovered what he had done.
The elf steel did its work faster than Einarr could have believed, the wooden bars parting like butter beneath its touch. Soon the only thing that stood between him and his freedom was Alfkaell’s crumpled form. Einarr stared down at the seer’s corpse and drew a deep breath into his body. Carefully, the reaver stepped from his cage and over the body.
Einarr, son of Sigdan was prisoner of the Aeslings no longer!
The fugitive maintained an easy, loping trot as he made his way through the snow swept terrain. Einarr knew there was no sense in tiring himself with a more hurried pace. Though his newly won freedom had done much to strengthen his abused body, he knew he had many leagues to go before he would reach Vinnskor. He also knew that his escape would not go unnoticed for long. The Aeslings would find their seer’s body in the kennels or else they would find the body of the warrior Einarr had ambushed and whose clothes he now wore. Once they did, Einarr knew they would come after him, come after him with the very fury of the gods.
Let them come, he thought, throwing his shaggy head back and inhaling the icy night air. They would not find him so easy to capture a second time. Armed with the elf-steel from Alfkaell’s staff, even their god-touched jarl might find Einarr a match for him. Einarr’s face split in a savage grin as he imagined that contest, as his mind’s eye visualised the ithilmar blade slicing through Kolsveinn’s swords and ripping through his armour. If he escaped the wilds, if he managed to return to Vinnskor without the Aeslings catching him, Einarr would speak with his own jarl, Tulkir, and encourage him to prepare an all-out attack on Skraevold. The Aeslings would regret taking him captive, carrying him back to their village like some prize beast. For Einarr had seen their village, had seen where it was strong and where it was weak. It would be the women and children of Skraevold who would wail and lament when next their peoples met on the field of battle.
Einarr snapped from his dreams of glory and carnage, freezing as he saw something long and lean slowly steal from the black shadows cast by the trees. Yellow eyes shone from the black shape that began to pace languidly in his direction, gleaming from the darkness like tiny witch-lights. As it paced, the pungent musk of its fur struck Einarr’s senses. How long it had been tracking him, the warrior could not say, for it had the sense to stay upwind of him, keeping to the darkness of the trees, far from the light of star and moon. Even now, as he watched it stalking towards him, it made no noise, its paws making no sound as they pressed against the snow. Though its face remained hidden in the shadows, Einarr could see the sharp dagger-like fangs jutting from its lower jaw gleaming in the starlight.
It was an ice-tiger, smallest of the sabretusk breed and the only one of the great cats that did not hibernate during the black Norscan winter. At least Einarr hoped the thing stealing towards him was an ice-tiger. The breath of the gods was strong in the north, its power changing both man and beast. If the predator stalking him had been god-touched, what man could say what strength the Dark Gods might have given it? No, better to think it an ice-tiger, a thing a man could understand, a thing a man could kill.
The creature continued to circle Einarr, and now he could hear its low, threatening hiss. He’d heard the sound before, when hunting as a youth with his father and old Svanr. There had been times when the elk and deer felled by their arrows had been stolen from beneath their very noses by a hungry sabretusk. Some of the hunters told brave stories about savage fights with the massive cats when they took it in mind to hunt the hunter. Even as a child, Einarr had known most of the stories to be nothing but lies, bold tales told to cheer men too old or too infirm to claim real glory by raiding. Yet he’d never been more certain of it than he was the cold winter morning that his father had died, his head crushed between the powerful jaws of a sabretusk. Only a boy of twelve, Einarr had watched the great cat carry off his father, using its claws to scramble up a tall tree where the Baersonling hunters could not follow. Hunting down that cat, by himself and with only a spear and a dagger, had been his rite of manhood.
Einarr brandished the dagger he had fashioned from Alfkaell’s staff. He stared into the ice-tiger’s hungry eyes. ‘Hold, old thief!’ the Norscan called. ‘I’ve no spear this day, but you’ll find I’m not a stripling anymore. I am Einarr Sigdansson, and you should let me pass.’
The ice-tiger stopped pacing, its body tensing as Einarr’s voice split the silence of the night. The great cat scowled at him, baring its fangs. Einarr scowled back at it with an expression equally savage. ‘Steal back to your shadows,’ he told the beast. ‘I’ve no time for your games.’ The ice-tiger almost seemed to understand his words, quickly turning its head in the direction of the trees. But the hunting had been poor and the hunger in its belly great and its head turned back with equal swiftness to snarl at Einarr once more.
‘Then one of us meets his ancestors this day, old thief,’ Einarr swore. Sabretusk and man lunged at one another in almost the same instant, crashing together beneath the frosty night. The tiger’s massive paws scraped against Einarr’s body, their sharp claws trying to dig through the heavy furs he wore. The cat’s fanged jaws snapped at Einarr’s throat, but the warrior’s blade was there to meet it. As the keen edge of the dagger slashed against the ice-tiger’s muzzle, one of the massive incisors was cut free from its face. The sabretusk yowled in pain, pushing against Einarr’s body with all four of its legs. The combined strength of all of the cat’s limbs was too great to resist and the cat tore itself free, falling back into the snow.
Before Einarr could react, however, the beast had recovered. Almost as soon as it landed, the ice-tiger was pouncing at him again. Einarr tried to brace himself for the cat’s lunge, but its three hundred pound body smashed into him with the might of a thunderbolt. Einarr locked his arms around the sabretusk’s body as he felt himself knocked off his feet. He dragged the cat to the ground with him, trying to smash its skull against the frozen ground. The ice-tiger stru
ggled too, scratching at him with its long claws; its frantic efforts to rip itself free shredding the flesh on Einarr’s legs. Despite the pain, Einarr held fast to the animal, knowing if he relaxed his grip, it would try for his throat again. He tried to work the edge of the ithilmar blade against the animal’s neck, but could only succeed in stabbing the point into its shoulder.
The pain incensed the tiger, causing its efforts to free itself to become even more frantic. Man and beast rolled across the snow, locked in a struggle that could only end in death. Einarr felt small bushes crumple beneath their weight, felt sharp stones and fallen branches dig into his body as they rolled across them. Then, suddenly, the ground gave way and they began to tumble down a sharp incline. The tiger’s yowling thundered in Einarr’s ears as they rolled down the snowy cliff, the stars and the trees seeming to tumble along with them. Faster and faster they fell, rolling over the frozen hillside. Then came the sudden stop, as the land turned level once more. Dizzy from the fall, Einarr found the tiger springing away from him before he could remember to hold onto it. He could see its lean, pantherine shape staggering in the snow as it too tried to recover its senses.
Einarr tried to clear his head, then realised that both of his hands were empty. The dagger! The seer’s blade, he had lost it in the fall! Einarr looked again in the direction of the tiger. The sabretusk was snarling, working its sandpaper tongue against the damaged corner of its jaw. Would it run, retreat to its lair to lick its wounds? No, Einarr could tell there was a malevolence about the beast, a malicious spite that was almost human. As soon as it remembered who had injured it, the cat would be lunging at him again. Without Alfkaell’s blade, Einarr did not favour his chances. Sigdan would spit upon him if Einarr allowed a sabretusk to take him. No Norscan could respect a son who did not find a more noble death than his father.