by Warhammer
Einarr shook his head. ‘Such a small thing for Tchar to ask of me, to storm the stronghold of Neiglen himself and steal one of the plague god’s treasures!’
‘Not in a thousand years could you gather an army mighty enough to seize the palace of Skoroth,’ sneered Urda. ‘You must use cunning and deception if you would do this thing. Where an army must fail, a few might succeed.’
‘What I must do is cast aside all this talk of gods and relics,’ Einarr snarled. ‘Let Tchar burn his mark into some other fool! I did not ask for his favour, nor do I want it! All I ask is that I spill the blood of many Aeslings and take vengeance for my slaughtered people.’
Urda’s scrawny hand closed around Einarr’s arm as he started to leave. ‘Wait, Steelfist! I have told you what Tchar asks of you, but you have not heard what he offers in return! Far more than simple vengeance, far more I assure you.’
Einarr glared at the old witch, his temper roused by the desperation in her voice. Was there nothing more behind her talk of gods and palaces than a cheap trick to keep him from cutting his way through the villages of the Aeslings?
‘What is there left to me except my vengeance?’ he demanded.
‘Step within the circle and you shall see for yourself,’ Urda replied. The witch motioned for Einarr to cross into the patch of befouled snow. His boots stomped across the images and he waited while Urda pulled a scroll of vellum from beneath her robe. She held the letters close to her face, her eyes squinting as she studied the symbols.
‘More sorcery, witch?’ Einarr growled. ‘I grow weary of your tricks! What would you have me do this time? Milk a maggot, or perhaps drink the piss of a weasel?’
Urda looked up from her scroll. Her eyes glowed with etheric energies. When she spoke, her voice was a subdued whisper. ‘The gods do not need such ceremony to impose their will upon the world. The power of a god is but a single word.’
Einarr saw Urda’s mouth open again, but such sound as she might have given voice, he did not hear. For when the witch spoke, Einarr’s world vanished in a blinding burst of colour and light. Einarr felt every fibre of his being stripped and torn as existence itself collapsed around him.
Amidst the heavy furs of his bed, Einarr crushed Asta’s warm, lithe body against his. His hand caressed the scaly skin that covered the back of her neck and shoulders, the coppery plates feeling smooth beneath his touch. Suddenly his entire body shook, trembling like a sapling beneath the fury of the winter wind. The swordsman sat bolt upright, nearly spilling his wife onto the earthen floor of their home. He stared wide-eyed at the little room, stunned by every unbroken timber. He looked into Asta’s pretty face. His massive arms circled her, pulling her against him in a desperate embrace.
‘You are supposed to be resting,’ Asta scolded him, but her efforts to free herself from his grip were far from genuine.
Einarr tried to stifle the emotion that flooded through his body, but Asta sensed his anxiety just the same. She looked down into his confused eyes. Einarr’s breath came in rapid, uneven gulps betraying a fatigue of spirit rather than body. Asta smiled at him, brushing the hair from his brow with her hand.
‘I thought you dead,’ Einarr finally managed to find his voice. The image of Asta, torn and ruined, her body littered across the shambles of their home… But, no, she was here, in his arms, her breath washing across his face, her scent in his nose. Where had the horrible images, the phantom memories that filled his mind, where had they come from? Visions? Dreams? Nothing more than the ill-sendings of his fever and his wounds?
‘It was I who thought you dead,’ Asta said, swatting his shoulder with her palm. ‘Or have you forgotten your time at Skraevold so soon?’
Einarr felt a cold chill run up his spine. Skraevold at least had been no dream. What of the rest? A warning? A premonition? The chill running up his spine turned to ice as he looked down and saw his hand. He withdrew it quickly, hiding it beneath the blankets before Asta could see.
‘Oh! Did I hurt your hand, husband?’ Asta reached for Einarr’s hand, but the warrior held her back. He didn’t want her to see it. If she saw it, then he would know it was real. And if it was real…
‘Then let’s be away from this place, wife,’ Einarr said, forcing his voice to be gruff and steady, to keep the panic that he felt from tainting his words. ‘Take what we can and leave. We can go to the lands of the Sarls or even the southlands.’
Asta pulled her hand free from his grasp. ‘You are afraid what the runes will tell Ulfarr, aren’t you? What Tulkir will decide must be your punishment for killing the seer of Skraevold?’
‘No, not Ulfarr, or even Tulkir,’ Einarr told her. He pushed her from the bed. ‘Don’t ask questions. Just move! We have little time! Death is coming to this village!’ Einarr surged from the bed and began stuffing supplies into a leather bag. Much to his annoyance, Asta stood beside the bed, staring at him with a perplexed look.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘What do you mean, death is coming to the village?’
Einarr let the length of salted venison he was holding drop to the floor, shuddering as he noted that he had been holding it with his marked hand. His face was a mix of agony and guilt as he looked into his wife’s eyes. ‘Death is coming to Vinnskor,’ he repeated. ‘I know because I have brought it here! Now hurry! While there is still time!’ The desperation in his voice caused Asta to spring into motion. She raced towards the heavy wooden chests where they kept their furs and clothes, swiftly sorting through them to find the most rugged and durable. Einarr watched her for a moment, then noted the pile on the floor, the cloak and gear he had stolen when making his escape from Skraevold.
The warrior lunged for the pile, startling Asta, causing her to drop the clothes she was stuffing into an old ox-hide sack. Einarr tore through the pile of mangy furs, groping among them for the slender length of silvery metal he now knew could save Asta and his entire village.
Asta watched her husband’s strange actions, wondering what sinister spirit had come upon him when both of them suddenly spun around and stared at the door. Outside, in the village, they could hear a great tumult, voices screaming and crying out in alarm.
Einarr bit down on a curse as his fingers closed about the elven dagger, the sharp edge of the metal slicing his hand. Blood spilled down his arm, but he ignored the pain, raising the weapon in triumph above his head. Now he had a chance! Now they all had a chance! He looked into Asta’s eyes, feeling his chest swell with hope and determination. The god-beast of Skraevold would not touch her this time!
The cold, stinking snow pressed upon Einarr’s face. He recoiled from the muck, straightening himself. He stared all around him, the same shock throbbing through his body. Surrounding him, the ghastly trees seemed to laugh at him, their eyes narrowed as they savoured his despair. A cruel trick! A filthy trap! But the witch had failed in whatever mischief she had thought to work upon him. He knew now what had been illusion and what was reality. Urda would pay for her Aesling treachery with her life!
Einarr could hear the witch croaking with laughter. No, not laughter, she was choking, her breath rattling against her collapsed throat. The Norscan looked in the direction of the noise and found Vallac standing over the witch, his powerful fingers wrapped around her neck.
‘Where is he?’ the Kurgan was shouting. ‘By all the black horrors of Ruin, what have you done with the Hand of Tchar?’ Urda beat weakly against Vallac’s wrists in a feeble attempt to free herself. Einarr grinned. Good, Vallac was making certain the witch didn’t die too quickly. There would be time for Einarr to take his own retribution out of the deceitful bitch’s hide. He reached for the shattered length of Fangwyrm.
The warrior stared in amazement at his hand as he moved it. It was cut, the fresh blood on his fingers and in his palm only now beginning to freeze under the harsh Norscan night. He lifted it toward his face, disbelieving his own eyes. As he did so, a familiar smell filled his nose, a smell he never thought to smell again. Asta’s scent
still clung to his hand. Then it had been more than a dream!
Horror filled Einarr’s mind as he looked back towards Vallac and Urda. The old witch’s movements had grown even more feeble, her pale features turning purple as Vallac continued to strangle her. The Norscan shouted, racing toward the combatants. He pushed a startled Vallac away from Urda, almost knocking the Kurgan flat in the snow. Einarr caught Urda in his arms as the witch collapsed. He massaged the crone’s neck, trying to will air back into her body.
‘Steelfist!’ Vallac shouted. ‘Where were you? I thought this hag had worked some black sorcery upon you and made you into one of these vile trees!’
‘I told you to leave me alone with the witch and see to Orgrim,’ Einarr snarled back, desperately trying to minister to Urda. Her breathing continued to be shallow and ragged.
‘He is fine,’ Vallac said. ‘Still sleeping from the hag’s spell. It is you I feared for. I should find little glory if you were to find so ignoble an end.’
‘A man finds his own glory,’ Einarr growled back. ‘He does not wait for others to give it to him!’ He felt a little easier as Urda suddenly gasped and gulped a great breath into her body.
‘Tzeentch guided me here,’ Vallac reminded him, a scowl on his tattooed face. ‘You play an important part in my own doom, Einarr Steelfist. Until I have seen otherwise, I will go where you go, do what you do.’ Vallac’s gaze strayed from Einarr as he spoke, looking instead at what remained of the picture-signs Urda had drawn in the snow.
‘Then next time you will also do what I say,’ Einarr warned him. ‘It would sit ill with me if you had travelled so far only to find your doom on the end of my axe.’ The Norscan subdued some of the anger he felt. He had no cause to be angry with Vallac, the Kurgan had tried to help, tried to avenge a friend he thought slain by foul treachery. He forced a smile onto his visage. ‘If I were forced to kill you, Vallac, who would lead me to all these hot-blooded Kurgan slatterns I’ve been hearing about ever since we left Skraevold?’
Vallac nodded, accepting the sentiment of both jest and threat. He understood well the strange ways of magic, the many forms and shapes it could take. He also understood that the reason for Einarr’s anger was not wholly directed at him, but mainly directed at whatever spell Vallac’s attack had broken. The Kurgan turned his head and slowly walked away, his mind wondering what manner of spell Urda had cast over the Norscan and where it had sent him. Einarr seemed unwilling to talk about it, but wherever he had been, it had been no place near the grove and the clearing. Perhaps he would get the truth out of the witch when Einarr wasn’t around.
Einarr watched his comrade walk away, heading back towards Orgrim’s cave. When he was lost to sight, he looked down into Urda’s face. The old woman’s eyes were open now, she seemed at least mostly recovered from Vallac’s attack. A wry smile puckered the crone’s features.
‘Now you see,’ she said. ‘Now you understand. For a moment, Mighty Tzeentch allowed the deceit of time to be cast aside.’ Her hissing cackle caused her withered body to shake in Einarr’s arms. ‘What he has done once, he can do again, any time he wills it. Now you see the reward that Tzeentch offers you, Steelfist!’
CHAPTER SEVEN
The snow drifting down through the Norscan night shimmered as it fell upon the ground, glowing with the colours of the rainbow, casting an eerie flickering light across the pines. The tainted snow felt hot as it fell against Einarr’s skin, causing him to brush it from his exposed arms in irritation every few yards. For days they had marched through the hinterlands of Norsca, their steps slowly but relentlessly drawing them from the lands known to men.
‘The winds blow down from the north,’ Urda observed. The old witch hobbled alongside Einarr, only too aware that she needed the Norscan’s protection. Vallac’s distrustful gaze was like a dagger poised at her back, the Kurgan’s eyes always fixed upon her every time she looked in his direction. Ahead of them, the renegade Orgrim trudged through the shimmering snow. When he looked back at Urda, there was no mistaking the savage, bloody fire that smouldered behind his gaze. Even more than Vallac, Einarr had been hard pressed to keep Orgrim from killing the witch. Several times, he had thought their disagreement would be settled in blood, but Einarr was too cunning to settle for so short-sighted a solution. He needed a guide to pass through the lands of the Aeslings, to reach the Frozen Sea and the Wastes beyond.
‘The breath of the gods is in that wind,’ Vallac said. ‘You can see their fire burning in the snow.’ The Kurgan was silent for a moment, as though contemplating his own words. ‘It is a good omen’, he finally pronounced.
‘Not to the herdsmen who tend their cattle, or the shepherds with their flocks,’ Einarr said. ‘Animals sicken when the power of the gods falls upon them. Many will die when this snow falls into their pastures.’ The warrior stopped, lifting his head and staring at the cloudy sky and the shimmering snowfall. ‘The herds of the Aeslings will be culled by this snowfall. Perhaps this winter they will starve.’ He lowered his head, turning to stare at Vallac. ‘It is a good omen,’ he agreed, a grim smile set on his face.
Urda felt her blood chill as she heard the hate in the Baersonling’s voice. She knew that Einarr would have killed her as soon as any other Aesling if he were not terrified that to do so would also kill his only hope of claiming the prize Tchar had promised him. She hoped that the warrior would not take it into his head to force her to try and repeat the ritual. The power had come from Tchar, not her own abilities. It was not something she dare invoke again. When the time was right, the Lord of Change himself would reward Einarr, and when he did, he wouldn’t need a tired old Aesling witch to work his magic. She had explained as much to Einarr, but how much he had believed, Urda did not know. The fact that he had forced her to come with him certainly boded poorly for the faith he put in her words.
Ahead of them, the renegade Orgrim suddenly stopped, his head turning from side to side, looking into the trees around them. He dropped to all fours, pressing his face against the snow. Urda could hear him snuffling like a beast as he thrashed upon the ground. Einarr hurried forward to discover what had happened, his axe at the ready. Vallac came up behind the crone, his sword pressing against her side.
‘If this is more of your witchery, hag, I’ll skewer your heart,’ he hissed into her ear, all the menace and malice of his people lurking within the Kurgan’s threat.
Einarr stood above Orgrim while he grovelled on the ground. He could hear the man sniffing, his nose pressed into the snow, breathing deeply. The warrior reached down to shake Orgrim from whatever fit had crossed him. The berserker recoiled from his touch like a frightened dog, curling into a knot of tensed muscle and bared teeth. After a moment, reason restored itself to Orgrim’s eyes and he relaxed, straightening himself and rising to his feet.
‘A woman passed this way,’ Orgrim told Einarr. ‘Not long ago. Her scent is strange, not the stink of an Aesling.’
Einarr digested the berserker’s words. He had already come to trust Orgrim’s uncanny sense of smell. But what would a woman, a foreign woman at that, be doing wandering in the wilderness alone and in the middle of black winter? Einarr felt a shudder course through him as he remembered tales of ghosts and spectres that had echoed in his father’s longhouse on cold winter nights.
Orgrim pointed his hairy hand to the south. ‘She came from there,’ he said. His nose twitched as he sniffed at the air. ‘But she did not remain alone. They came from the west and took her back with them.’
‘Who took her?’
Orgrim’s expression was dark as he answered, his face betraying the revulsion he felt as he made his answer. ‘The forest folk, the beast-kin.’
‘Then your mysterious woman is lost.’ Einarr turned to find that Vallac and Urda had joined them. He raised an eyebrow as he saw the Kurgan’s sword pressing into Urda’s side. Reluctantly, Vallac withdrew his blade and slammed it into its horse-hide sheath.
‘Which way did they take her?’ Einarr demande
d. Orgrim pointed once more towards the west. Einarr nodded his head and began marching toward the trees. Vallac’s hand closed around his arm, pulling him back.
‘The gors have her, let the matter rest,’ Vallac told him. ‘While they feast, we may slip through their wood unseen.’ Einarr shook his head and pulled away.
‘Perhaps a Kurgan might leave his women to warm the bellies of beast-kin, but a Norscan does not,’ Einarr said. He could see shame darken Vallac’s features as he spoke. ‘Even if this slattern were an Aesling slut, I would not leave her to the paws of the beastmen.’
Vallac nodded his head slowly. It was clear that the Kurgan still did not agree with Einarr’s decision, but at least now he understood it. Among his own people, there was no dishonour in accepting the harsh whims of the gods, but the Norse were still fool enough to believe they could challenge the strands of fate.
Sharp and acrid, the smell of the cook-fires reached them even before the mangy reek that characterised the beast-kin encampment. Orgrim led the way, gliding noiselessly through the frozen forest, not so much as a branch stirring in his wake. Einarr felt himself as ungainly as a drunken giant trying to match the woodsman’s stealth, every twig that snapped beneath his boot seeming to thunder across the silence of the forest, every bush he disturbed seeming to sway with the violence of a war flag on the prow of a longship. Sometimes Orgrim would pause to give him a reproachful glance, but more often the scout ignored his clumsiness, understanding that it could not be helped.
Soon, the sounds of the beastmen broke the silence of the forest, deep-throated roars and high-pitched brays, a mongrel din that grated across Einarr’s ears like a knife across bone. The monsters had established their camp in a small clearing nuzzled between two great piles of rock. Einarr could see the filthy bone and gut totems of the gors jutting up from the rocks, boldly proclaiming the presence of the beastmen to anything that had somehow failed to take notice of their stench and sound. One ragged totem, its standard formed by the flayed hide of a man, bore the arrow symbol of the realm of the gods upon it, the scarlet sign still moist with its morbid ink. In the trees above, crows had gathered, draw by the stench of blood and decay, the carrion birds croaking and squawking to one another as they waited for the leavings of the beastmen.