by Warhammer
The warrior felt himself hurtling through the empty air. Something smashed against his arm, splintering as he struck it, then his head and shoulder were crashing against unforgiving stone.
Then there was only darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
A sharp, stabbing pain pulled Einarr from the darkness to which his mind had withdrawn. The Norscan likened the sensation to someone jabbing his chest with a dull dagger. He could taste blood in his mouth, feel his bruised ribs and battered shoulder throbbing. His nose was filled with the stink of blood and death, his skin felt oily and unclean. The only sound he could hear was the steady dull thump against his chest and the occasional flutter of feathered wings.
Like a coiled viper, Einarr’s hand lunged upwards, closing around the throat of the monstrous black bird he saw perched there through his clouded eyes. It was large enough to be an eagle, though Einarr had never seen one with so thin and crooked a beak. The ugly raptor squawked in alarm as his hand closed around it, beating its massive wings against his face, digging at him with its sharp talons. Einarr was blinded by the flailing wings, crying out as the bird’s claws tore into his flesh. But the warrior maintained his grip, closing his hand tighter and tighter, digging his fingers into the eagle’s neck. The eagle continued to struggle, and Einarr could feel his blood soaking through his wool tunic. The wings smashed against his head, almost as though trying to smother him with their rancid feathers. Einarr drew his grip still tighter, wincing as he felt the bird’s blood dripping down his arm. It was cold, with an almost syrup-like feel to it as it slowly oozed down his hand. Beneath the eagle’s blood, his flesh went numb, as though drained of its very life.
Still he maintained his death-grip on the eagle, enduring the agony as its claws dug into his body, as its wings continued to batter his face. He tried to move his other arm, succeeding only in sending a blast of red-hot pain flooding into his brain. It would not move, disjointed in his battle with the god-beast. This realisation forced new strength into his other arm and Einarr willed his fingers still tighter about the eagle’s throat. Finally, there came a dull, snap and the bird croaked a final liquid groan. Einarr tossed the filthy scavenger aside, letting its miserable carcass slide onto the floor.
The warrior opened his eyes again, thankful that the eagle had decided to peck at his chest rather than start with his head.
With a grunt that barely voiced the incredible pain that surged through him, Einarr sat up. While his hand felt the tattered mess the eagle’s claws had made of his chest, the warrior’s eyes scanned his surroundings. He was in a hut of some kind, though it seemed too fine for the thralls and too large for any of the unmarried warriors. The roof had caved in and one of the walls had been collapsed outward in exactly the same way that he had seen Emla’s home destroyed. The grisly, half-gnawed skeleton pushed into the remaining timber wall was recognisable as that of Ulfarr only because of the stubby crown of horns that grew from the skull – the same mark of mutation that the seer had borne. The hut then, was the seer’s. Somehow, despite the devastation around him and the hideous abomination he had seen tearing apart the village, he felt all his old superstitions about the seer and his home take hold of him. Einarr reached for a half-collapsed timber and used it to pull himself to his feet. He did not know where he would go, he only knew he was not going to linger in the shaman’s dwelling.
As Einarr tried to stumble his way free from the wreckage, his eyes fell to the earthen floor of the hut. The seer’s runestones were still scattered within a crude circle, lying where Ulfarr had cast them in his divination. Though Einarr could not read the meaning of the runes, there was no mistaking the pattern they had made when they fell. As he stared at the scattered runestones, Einarr saw himself looking at the skull-sign of Khorne, the great Lord of Battles, the ravenous Harvester of Blood.
Einarr loped through the rubble of Vinnskor. Blood was spattered across every stone; the lanes were a sucking morass of crimson sludge. Bodies and bits of bodies were strewn wherever he turned his eyes. Not a man, woman or child, not so much as a dog or a rat, stirred within the silent desolation. Except for himself, there was not even the dimmest flicker of life in the village.
Everywhere the torn remains of once familiar faces, the faces of those he had lived among all his life, stared at him from the muck. Cold dead eyes glared at him with accusation, demanding to know why he had brought such doom upon them. He found Spjall, his body crushed into a little knot of flesh, limbs protruding brokenly in an insane tangle of blood and bone. He found Jarl Tulkir, his skull crushed flat by some enormous weight, the impression of one of the monster’s taloned foot-tendrils marring the ground all around his flattened head. Emla, his neighbour for years, whose children his own Asta had helped nurse and raise, was almost unmarred, only the monstrous bite that had pulled her rib cage from her chest spoiling the effect of a weary mother lying at rest.
With every step, Einarr’s fear grew. Not terror of where the monster was now, but rather where it had been. He, a crimson-handed reaver who had stormed the walls of Erengrad and ransacked its domed temples and fortified palaces, felt his knees shake as he neared the smoking ruin that had been his home. He did not want to know, above anything, he did not want to know. But he had never given into his fear before, never allowed it to shame him, to give his ancestors cause to curse his name. He could not do so now, not even when every fibre of his soul urged him to flee.
Einarr stepped into the shambles that had been his home, trying not to notice the roof that had been pushed down into the structure, nor the walls that had been collapsed outward. He shambled like a thing without mind or purpose, vanishing into the gloom.
How long he sat there, in the grave of his life, Einarr did not know. When he rose, however, there was no longer room for pain or sorrow or loss in him. In the warrior’s eyes there burned a new fire, a flame that only death could quench. He moved towards the splintered timbers that marked where the beast had pushed its way free of his home. He considered the arm lying limp and numb at his side. He positioned it between two jagged logs and pressed his body against the wall. Grinding his teeth together, he pulled his entire body back. With a pop, his arm snapped back into position. Einarr clenched his jaws tight against the shock that stormed through his body as feeling returned to his arm. He would not cry out again. There was no pain greater than what he had already found and it would shame her if he ever gave voice to any lesser hurt.
The warrior scoured the rubble of his home, retrieving what armour he could scavenge. What he could not find in his own home, he took from those of others until he had what he needed. He did not fear the spirits of his kin as he collected the gear. They would understand. He was not looting the dead. He was avenging them.
When Einarr left the sorry, butchered carcass of Vinnskor behind, he embodied the avenging spirit of his people. Tulkir’s great breastplate of steel, torn from the corpse of a southland prince, encased Einarr’s chest. Over his legs he wore the heavy fur leggings that had been the speciality of Hilga the tanner, a layer of small river stones sewn between the layers of leather beneath the fur to thwart fang and blade. Across his back he wore the monstrous bearskin cloak Raskulf had claimed in a raid against the Vargs, its fur even paler than the snow, the horned skull of the bear covering Einarr’s head like a helm. About his hands were the iron gloves of Valbrandr, upon his feet the iron-shod boots of Sorkvir. From his belt hung the axe of Rafn, its haft pitted where the sizzling blood of the beast had struck it. Beside it rested the splintered length of Fangwyrm, the renowned blade of Tulkir. Across his shoulder he carried the ox-hide bag with Spjall’s herbs and potions. Around his neck he wore the silver band he had given Asta, the metal stained almost black by her blood, the image of the torn jumble of meat scattered through his home burned forever in Einarr’s mind.
One last thing did Einarr take with him as he left Vinnskor, the crude dagger he had fashioned from Alfkaell’s staff. There was no reluctance now to touch it; indeed, it se
emed almost to slide into his grasp as he reached for it. The warrior tucked the elven blade into his left boot, the metal feeling hot against his skin. He would return it to the people of Skraevold, those who had marked him for the Blood God and who had set Kharnath’s vengeance upon his village. He would see if the Aeslings had the strength to take it from him and he would build a mound of skulls from those who failed.
Their bloodbeast had made a mistake, thinking him dead, and Einarr was determined that Skraevold would suffer for that mistake.
Blackened timbers reached into the dark Norscan sky like jagged teeth in a rotten skull. The wattle walls of garths and pastures were broken and torn, fields trampled into desolation. Even in the murk of the twilight gloom, Einarr could see that there was little of Skraevold still standing. He was under no illusion what had happened here. The tracks of the monster that had destroyed Vinnskor were easy enough to follow, a deep bloodstained furrow that drove straight as an arrow back to the place from which it had come. The bloodbeast had returned to the Aeslings.
Einarr thought of the old admonition his father had always given him about calling upon Kharnath: ‘Do not call upon the Blood God, for he cares not from whence the blood flows’. The Aesling had paid the price for not heeding that wisdom. Without their seer, they had no way to control the force they had unleashed.
The warrior continued on into the slaughterhouse that was Skraevold, oblivious to the mangled bodies and splintered bones strewn around him. He prowled among the wreckage like a hungry wolf, eyes watching every shadow for the merest sign of motion. The need to kill was like a fiery fist closed upon his heart, burning inside him every bit as keenly as it had in the monster. The anguish of his frustrated vengeance crashed down upon him the deeper his steps took him into Skraevold. They were dead, all of them. He was too late, too late to claim retribution for his kin, for Asta.
Like a great beast himself, Einarr howled his frustration into the black sky. Long minutes passed while the reaver roared at the stars, the moon and the cruel gods of the north. Vengeance, every drop of blood in him called out for it! Einarr swung Rafn’s axe, cleaving the skull of a slaughtered Aesling in half.
‘That is my kinsman you butcher.’ The cracked, broken voice boomed like thunder in the silent oblivion of the village. Einarr swung around. For the first time he saw movement among the shadows. A hulking shape pulled itself into the light. Kolsveinn, jarl of Skraevold, was as ruined as his domain. The elaborate armour that girded him was pitted and holed with the caustic burns caused by the beast’s blood. His face was a mass of scars; the old ritual signs of Kharnath obliterated beneath the claws marks that now split his visage. One eye was a milky mass, cleft in two down the middle. Half his nose was gone, and a deep gash in his brow gleamed white with the bone beneath. ‘You have come too late to find glory here, brigand,’ Kolsveinn hissed. ‘The Blood God has taken it for himself.’
‘I did not come here for glory,’ Einarr growled. He pulled back his bear-skull helm, baring his face to the crippled champion. Kolsveinn’s remaining eye went wide with shock. Einarr pointed his axe at the mangled jarl. ‘I came here for blood and for death.’
‘Spoken like a son of Skraevold,’ Kolsveinn spat. The jarl staggered forward, his fist closed around one of his deadly swords. But as he moved further from the shadows, Einarr saw the most hideous of the injuries Kolsveinn had suffered. The champion’s right arm had been torn from its socket, only a ragged mess of twisted flesh now attached to his shoulder. Einarr did not exult in his enemy’s injury; he did not give thought that without his arm and second sword Kolsveinn would be an easier man to defeat. None of that mattered to him. Victory or defeat, survival or death, these were secondary to vengeance.
And now he had something to visit his wrath upon.
There were no more words between them, these last survivors of their people. Einarr rushed at Kolsveinn, slashing at him with his axe. The jarl swatted his blow aside with a parry of his sword, then tried to follow it with a thrust to Einarr’s belly. Kolsveinn’s attack was slow, awkward; his mind still thinking it should be using the blade held in his missing arm. Einarr grinned savagely at his foe. The fight was already over; the jarl just didn’t know it yet.
Kolsveinn slashed his sword at Einarr’s face, dropping the sword into a guarding position as Einarr retaliated. But again, the once mighty jarl sank back into habit, expecting a second blade that was not there. Einarr struck at the man’s right, just past the guard of his sword. The axe chewed through the rotten, pitted armour, carving a deep gash in Kolsveinn’s side.
The champion roared in pain, but even through his pain, he attacked, driving his sword at Einarr’s chest. The Baersonling brought his axe up, catching the edge of the sword on its heft. With a grunt, he forced the jarl’s weapon aside. He followed up on his block by cracking the end of the axe handle into Kolsveinn’s jaw. Teeth flew from the jarl’s face and he staggered back beneath the blow.
Einarr firmed his grip upon his weapon and came at the reeling Aesling. Kolsveinn desperately tried to ward off the attack, this time over compensating for his missing arm, leaving his left exposed. Einarr brought his axe chopping down into Kolsveinn’s leg. The corroded armour gave way beneath the blow, ripping apart as the axe tore away Kolsveinn’s knee. The wounded jarl struck back, slashing at Einarr before the warrior could recover from his strike. The steel scraped along the reinforced fur leggings, a few stones spilling into the mire as the edge tore the leather.
The axe licked out again, barely missing Kolsveinn’s head. The red-bearded Aesling dragged his body back, creeping into the shadows, trying to use the gloom to defend him. But there would be no respite, and the Aesling knew it. Einarr slashed at him again, catching the edge of the jarl’s sword. Already weakened by the bloodbeast’s caustic ichor, notched from its contact with Einarr’s axe, the blade broke upon impact, shattering like ice.
Kolsveinn looked in disbelief at his broken sword, then stared into Einarr’s face. The Aesling did not ask for quarter for he knew none would be given. Instead, with a howl of rage, he flung himself at the Baersonling, seeking to drive his ruined blade into Einarr’s belly. The axe flashed through the twilight one last time, sending the jarl’s battered head rolling into the darkness.
After finishing the Aesling champion, Einarr pressed deeper into the wreckage of Skraevold, following the stench of old blood and rotting bones. He had done what he had set out to do; he had visited what vengeance a man might take from his foe. Now he was ready to stand before the grotesque god-beast the Aeslings had called down from Kharnath. He knew it was impossible for one man to prevail where two entire villages had found only death and slaughter. But he was not afraid of death. It was better to die with an axe in his hand and a war cry on his tongue than to wither away, some sulking coward hiding in the wilds. He would make the god-beast understand fear before he would let it take him. He would find a doom that would not bring shame on his ancestors.
It was an easy thing, finding the lair of the god-beast. All he had to do was follow his nose. The stink of rancid blood and the spoil of butchery steadily increased as he neared the great pit that the Aeslings had gouged from the earth. Heaps of offal were splashed across the ground, mounds of glistening skulls grinned at him from every side. The gore-soaked mire he walked upon was so drenched in blood that his boots sank into it with his every step. It was as though the god-beast had tried to recreate a part of the Blood God’s realm in the middle of Skraevold.
The walls of the pit were marked with runes and a log palisade, the sharpened ends of the timbers facing inward and pointing down. The one place where the palisade stood open, a massive log had been pushed into the pit, forming a crude bridge into the darkness. Only a small distance from the palisade, the Aeslings had constructed a bier, Alfkaell’s robed body lying atop it, the seer’s elven helm laid upon his chest.
Einarr strode toward the pit, Rafn’s axe at the ready. His eyes tried to pierce the black darkness, but could see not
hing. The warrior stopped. The beast already had enough things in its favour; it did not need one more. He drew the broken shard of Fangwyrm, filling his free hand with its comforting weight. Then with a roar he raised his arms above him, smacking axe and sword together. The metal crash thundered through the silence. Einarr thought he could hear something moving in the pit, imagined that the stench of blood grew. He raised his arms again, cracking his weapons together. The third time he did so, he could make no mistake. Something was crawling up from the hole.
Like a gigantic serpent or a vast worm, the bloodbeast oozed its way up the log, tendrils coiling around it as the monster pulled itself upward. Its hide was brighter than it had been in Vinnskor, glutted on all the blood it had spilled. It rose, eager for still more, drawn by what its slobbering mind interpreted as the sounds of battle.
This time, the bloodbeast held no horror for Einarr. He stood his ground as it surged toward him, a gore-soaked hill of hungry flesh and lashing tentacles. He watched as the thing’s back split open in a burst of crimson, as a long trunk oozed its way into being, as the monstrous hound-like head grew from the stump of the neck. The head swung slowly in his direction, the riot of black eyes staring down at him. The massive maw with its sword-like fangs dropped open and from the beast came an ear-splitting howl that shook Einarr’s bones.
The warrior glared at the thing and roared back at it. The beast surged forward, a great paw growing from its chest and slashing at him. Einarr dodged the clumsy swipe, stabbing into the monster’s corrupt flesh with the ragged edge of Fangwyrm. The monster absorbed the stricken limb back into itself and stumbled forward once more. Einarr backed away as a pair of crab-like claws shot from the thing on root-like stalks. The ghastly limbs clacked shut only a hand-span from Einarr’s leg. He spun and chopped down at the things before the beast could pull them back, the axe slashing through the meat of the stalks. The dismembered claws writhed in the mire even as they began to crumble into a blood-black crust.