by Warhammer
There was no warning, just the crash of an enormous boulder as it was flung at the men. The huge stone smashed into the frozen ground, pulverising the ice and earth as it struck. So close had it come, that Einarr’s cheek bled from the shreds of pebble and hoarfrost cast up by the stone’s impact. The Baersonling was stunned for the moment, awestruck by how near he had escaped being crushed. Had his hand not begun to vex him, had he not paused to soothe it with snow, a far less heroic doom than the one he thought to seize would have been his.
Even Vallac was stunned by the sudden and brutal attack, the Kurgan staring in open fascination at the sheer size of the boulder. It was as big around as a man and the crater it had dug for itself betrayed a weight that was almost inconceivable.
The tremor from the boulder’s impact was still resounding in the bones of the warriors when a vile stench overwhelmed them, a reek of dog vomit and festering carrion. There was a great crash among the trees and then a massive shape exploded from the forest. Before Vallac could even draw his sword, before he could register more than an impression of filthy white fur and powerful long arms, the creature was upon him. Towering over the mounted Kurgan, the monster bowled man and steed over with the impact of its charge. Vallac’s horse whinnied in fright as it was pushed down on its rump. Vallac found his arm and weapon pinned beneath his animal as the monster turned it onto its side. The horse shrieked in terror, trying to rip free of the creature’s powerful grip and regain its feet. The monster growled in annoyance, bringing its fist cracking down on the animal’s skull. Vallac’s horse wilted under the impact, its head shattered by the beast’s blow. As his horse crashed back into the snow, Vallac was pulled down with it, pinned beneath its weight.
Einarr rushed towards his besieged comrade, smacking his axe into the shaggy white back that rose above the Kurgan and his mount. Icy blood streamed down his axe as the monster howled in pain. It spun, glaring at Einarr with ancient, animal hate. It was bigger than a bear, covered not in fur but locks of stringy white hair. The shape was roughly that of a man, twisted by the mass of muscle clinging to its bones. The long arms, longer by far than any man’s, ended not in paws but huge hands, each finger tipped with a wicked claw. The face that glowered down at him from behind its fringe of ratty hair was bestial, the nose pushed in against its face, its mouth a great fanged gash. But there was intelligence in the monster’s yellow eyes, a cruel cunning and wickedness far greater than any mere beast.
‘I’ve never seen one so big as you, dung-chewer,’ Einarr growled at the monster. ‘You must be the grandfather of all the ymir.’
The monster threw back its ape-like head. From its mouth there sounded a hideous shriek-scream that made Vallac’s blood curdle. Even in the depths of the Wastes, where all was at the whim of the Dark Gods, the Kurgan had seldom heard a sound so terrifying. Einarr seemed unfazed by the high-pitched cry, simply swiping his axe through the empty air, spattering the ymir’s mangy hair with its own blood. The brute lowered its head, snapping its jaws at Einarr. The Norscan gestured at it again with his axe, daring it to test his steel. There was more than simple bravado in Einarr’s actions. Any man in the north came to know ymir well from the sagas told during the long winter nights. He knew they were cowardly creatures with little taste for battle. If he could intimidate the ymir with a show of force, it might abandon the fight.
The ymir roared, lunging at Einarr, its hands curled into deadly claws. The warrior reacted to its charge, chopping down at it with his axe. The beast turned with the blow, letting the edge of Einarr’s blade catch it in the shoulder rather than the skull. The ape-beast’s warm blood steamed as it splattered across the snow, but the ymir hurtled onward, its immense weight smashing into Einarr like a living avalanche. The warrior was thrown from his feet, hurtling backward as though kicked by a horse. The ymir loomed above him, snarling. It dabbed fingers into its wound, sniffing the gore that coated its fingers, then shriek-screamed at the man who had injured it.
Einarr heaved himself from the ground with a grunt, hands still clenched tight around the haft of his axe. The Norscan had barely regained his feet when the ymir was lunging at him again. This time he struck low, looking to end the monster’s charge rather than its life. The axe chewed into the beast’s thigh, scraping against the thick bone of its leg. The ymir collapsed beneath the blow, screaming in pain. Einarr hurried toward the crippled monster while it was still down on its knee, hoping to end the battle with one last strike. But the beast was far from finished. As Einarr closed upon it, the ymir swatted him with its massive arm, tossing him back with such force that the Norscan was certain he’d heard ribs crack beneath the blow.
The Baersonling spat blood from his mouth, pressing one hand against his side where the beast had struck him. He could not tell through the armour just how extensive his injuries were, but the sharp pain that shot through him as he pressed his side told him that they were there. Einarr shifted his grip on the axe, standing his ground as the ymir rose from its own wounds. The beast limped forward, favouring its maimed leg. It snarled at Einarr, baring its enormous fangs. Watching it hobble towards him, Einarr considered that the sagas had seriously overstated the cowardice of these creatures.
Einarr did not wait for the ymir to come at him again, but charged the creature. The ymir slashed at him with its clawed hand, receiving a taste of the axe for its efforts, severed fingers scattering across the snow. The warrior followed upon his attack by chopping the blade into the monster’s chest. The ymir howled in pain, rearing back and pulling the axe from Einarr’s hand. Instinctively, Einarr lunged forward to recover the weapon stuck fast amid the ymir’s ribs. It was a costly mistake. The claws of the ymir’s uninjured hand closed around Einarr’s arm. The warrior could feel the awesome strength of the ymir as it tossed him through the air like a rag doll, leaving him to crash hard against the icy ground.
Einarr tried to suck air back into his body, even as he reassured himself that he still had an arm. The way the ymir had grabbed him, he had thought the beast had torn his arm from the socket. Certain he was still whole, he drew the jagged length of Fangwyrm from his belt and prepared to face the monster again. He looked aside to see what had become of Vallac. The Kurgan was frantically digging at the frozen ground with his dagger, trying to slide his leg out from beneath his dead horse. There would be no help from that quarter, the earth might as well be solid granite for all the good Vallac’s efforts were doing him. No, it would be Baersonling strength and Baersonling steel that would need to deal with the ymir.
Watching the beast hobbling toward him, Einarr began to doubt his faith in either strength or steel. Even with the ghastly wounds it had suffered, with blood fairly exploding from the mangled ruin of its hand, with Rafn’s axe still buried in its chest, the ymir still had not lost its murderous hunger.
‘I’ll split your belly before I fill it,’ Einarr cursed as the ymir drew closer. The ape-beast snarled, bloody drool falling from its fangs. If it was intimidated by the battered Norscan with the broken sword, it was certainly not showing any sign.
Suddenly, a grey shape crashed into the monster’s side, knocking it flat. Einarr caught an impression of fur and steel as the strange figure straddled the toppled beast, sending its blood flying as his frenzied assault tore into the ymir’s body. Again and again, Einarr saw the fur-covered man’s axe slash into the ymir, ripping its body into shreds. The beast did little to defend itself – after bowling the crippled giant over, the man’s first blow had severed the arteries in its neck.
When the ymir and its slayer grew still, Einarr cautiously approached. The man was shorter than Einarr, but seemed to be even more massively built beneath the patchwork of ragged wolfpelts and animal hides that covered him. Breathing heavily, the man rose from his gory labour, licking the bloody edge of his axe clean. He turned his hairy visage toward Einarr as he approached. Einarr saw that the man’s face was thin and sharp, his brow almost as hairy as his chin. Although the man’s hair was nearly as grey
as the furs he wore, there was nothing about his features that suggested great age; certainly nothing about his sudden and savage attack did.
‘You took my kill,’ Einarr told the man. The stranger’s eyes narrowed at the challenge.
‘Five days I tracked it,’ the man snarled. ‘The kill is mine. Be thankful you’re no Aesling, or Orgrim would have let the ymir finish you first.’
‘How do you know I am no Aesling?’ Einarr asked. If the weird hunter was truly a foe of the Aeslings, he might be useful to Einarr’s plans for revenge. He would certainly know better than Einarr where their villages were situated. Besides, there was something compelling about the man, a haunting feeling that Einarr knew him, had seen him before.
The hunter laughed. ‘You don’t stink like an Aesling,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose. The hunter turned back toward the dead ymir. He set his axe down, burying its blade in the snow, and reached towards the weapon still embedded in the beast’s chest.
‘The kill may be yours, friend, but the axe is mine.’ Einarr locked eyes with Orgrim. The hunter had strange pale eyes, like chips of frost. It was not an easy thing to match his gaze, but Einarr forced himself to do so. He had braved the belly of Skraevold’s god, he would be damned if he would look away from some scruffy woodsman. Orgrim seemed to appreciate the display of will. The hunter ripped the axe free, offering it to the Baersonling. Einarr reclaimed his weapon, wiping the ymir’s gore from the steel. The hunter watched him clean the axe with a suggestion of amusement in his savage face.
‘You helped with the kill,’ Orgrim said. ‘I will share the beast’s meat.’ For the first time, Einarr noticed the nature of some of the injuries on the ymir’s body. The hunter hadn’t simply been trying to kill it. After delivering the deathblow to the ymir’s neck, he had started butchering it, cutting it into sections even before it was fully dead. The warrior winced at the image of eating any part of the ymir. The hunter shrugged and returned to his labours. ‘Suit yourself, more meat for my fire.’ Orgrim rose and pointed towards the mountains looming in the east. ‘My home is no great distance. If you won’t share my food, perhaps you would share my fire?’
‘I would be lying if I said a warm fire would be unwelcome,’ Einarr smiled and offered the hunter his hand. ‘Einarr Sigdansson of the Baersonlings,’ the warrior said. The hunter nodded as he heard the introduction.
‘My nose never lies,’ Orgrim said. ‘I knew you were no Aesling. I know their stink too well to be fooled. The one with you, he is no son of the Aes either.’
Einarr and Orgrim both turned their heads. Vallac glared back at them, flopped against the side of his horse, no closer to freeing himself than when he had started. Horse and Kurgan alike were coated in blood, having failed to dig into the ground, Vallac had started to free himself by carving through his horse.
‘Show some care, that is our supper you abuse!’ Einarr called back to his companion. They would have fresh meat, and without accepting the abominable fodder Orgrim had proposed.
Orgrim’s home turned out to be a bleak little cave pitting the side of a rocky slope. The hunter had made little effort in the way of comfort, eking out an existence almost as primitive as that of any beast. The only concession to civilization Einarr could find was a clay pot filled with salt.
The hunter had made his fire easily enough with flint and tinder, but Einarr noted that their host barely let the fat start to sizzle before he withdrew the ymir meat from the flame and began ripping into it. Vallac seemed to find the hunter’s penchant for raw, salted meat alternately revolting and amusing. He made a point of blackening the flesh of his own meal before starting in on it. The horse had been much too robust and muscular for its meat to be tender, but Einarr considered that he had eaten far worse and that it was certainly preferable to the meal Orgrim was wolfing down. To eat something so similar to a man was one of the few things that turned even a Norscan’s stomach, though Vallac claimed cannibalism was not particularly taboo among his own people.
As they ate, they talked. Orgrim was keenly interested in what had drawn Einarr so far from the lands of the Baersonlings. When he learned of the warrior’s mission of vengeance, the hunter laughed with approval. It transpired that Orgrim was an Aesling himself, though an outcast from his tribe who bore his people only the most bitter of hate. He knew quite well the locations of every Aesling village within a hundred leagues and would be more than happy to help turn Einarr loose upon them.
‘I knew there was something important about you,’ Orgrim said. He tapped the side of his nose. ‘I caught your smell on the wind, before even the ymir. There was something special about it, almost as though the wind wanted to lead me to you.’
‘The voice of Tchar,’ Vallac nodded, touching the mark of his god branded on his flesh. To the Kurgan, it seemed every stray snowflake was the work of Tzeentch. Einarr was beginning to find the man’s rampant superstition trying.
‘And what does the wind say to do now that you have found me?’ Einarr asked. Orgrim shrugged.
‘Lead you to kill Aeslings,’ he said without conviction. ‘Perhaps we can carve our wergild from them together. My own debt with my people has been unsettled for much too…’ The hunter froze in mid-thought, his body becoming rigid, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed at the air. In a blur of speed, he drew his axe and leapt toward the mouth of the cave. Einarr and Vallac drew their own weapons and hurriedly followed their host. They found themselves glaring down at a thin, spindly figure bundled in a heavy blue cloak, its collar fringed in bright feathers and glass beads. The figure had been climbing the slope, up towards the cave, but it froze as the men emerged.
Orgrim glared down at the cloaked intruder. The hunter sniffed noisily at the air, his expression growing even more incensed. ‘You’ll find no shelter from the cold here, Aesling bitch, only pain and a slow death!’ As the outcast’s anger built, his voice thickened and his features darkened. Einarr found himself backing away from his new ally, an instinctive reaction for anyone who had seen the fury of a berserk. Vallac hesitated, ignorant of the battle-fury that the Norse warriors who walked the path of the berserker could hurl themselves into. Einarr gripped the Kurgan’s arm, motioning for him to distance himself from Orgrim. When the hunter slipped into his frenzy, he would be a menace to friend as well as foe.
The traveller pulled back the heavy hood of her cloak, revealing a head of stringy white hair and a face withered by age and the elements. At the centre of the crone’s forehead, the skin was puckered and scarred, grey with dead flesh. Into this wound had been placed, or perhaps had grown, a large black stone. Into the rock had been carved an eye-like symbol, one of the signs by which the Windlord Tchar was known. Einarr felt the same haunting feeling that had come upon him when he had faced Orgrim, the eerie sensation that this complete stranger was somehow familiar to him. The crone sensed his scrutiny and he almost felt compelled to look away when he saw the stone shift its position to face towards him, as though it were staring back at him.
The crone tapped the staff she carried against the ground, causing the collection of bone charms and bronze trinkets dangling from it to jangle. Her normal eyes studied Orgrim, watching him with the same caution a man might regard a growling dog. ‘When the bloom of youth was mine, you should have eaten out of my hand,’ the crone said, her voice thin and scratchy. ‘Now I shall be content to have you lie at my feet.’
Orgrim was already in motion, pouncing towards the old woman as though he were a sabretusk. Einarr was struck by the awesome speed and strength in the hunter’s lunge and considered that Orgrim’s boast about not needing his help to soften the ymir had not been an idle one.
As fast as the hunter was, the crone was faster still. She did not try to flee from Orgrim’s attack, did not try to dodge aside from his lunge. Instead, the woman simply struck her staff against the icy ground again. This time the charms did not jangle together, instead the strings of gut and wire seemed to rise as though pulled by the wind, each of the s
mall trinkets reaching out towards Orgrim’s hurtling shape. A foot from the woman, Orgrim’s body stopped, crashing against some unseen force. The hunter staggered back, his nose bloody from the impact against the invisible barrier. He howled with rage, coiling his body for another charge. There was an expression almost of pity as the crone watched him. She waved her withered hand and Einarr could feel the power erupt as she made the gesture. Orgrim’s eyes rolled back in his head and with a whimper, the hunter wilted into the snow.
‘I did not come all this way to see my bones gnawed by the wolves,’ the crone hissed. She looked up, watching as Vallac and Einarr prepared to face her. The Kurgan too had felt the power that the old woman had used to fell Orgrim, and like Einarr, he did not relish the prospect of fighting a witch.
‘Be at peace,’ the witch called out to them. ‘I mean you no ill. Even that cur lying in the snow is unharmed. He will sleep, for a time, but that is all.’
‘He said you were an Aesling,’ Einarr replied. He looked aside at Vallac and could see the Kurgan was thinking the same thought as himself. If they both charged the witch at the same moment, perhaps one of them would strike her down before her spells could work their ruin. ‘An Aesling is never at peace with a Baersonling!’
The witch pointed at Einarr’s hand. ‘The mark upon your flesh is more important than the blood in your veins, reaver.’ With a flourish, she shrugged back the cuff of her cloak. Upon the thin, wasted arm Einarr could see a patch of skin that had sprouted a growth of brilliant blue and yellow feathers. Somehow, it did not strike the Norscan strange that the growth should be in the same shape as the symbol on his own hand.