by Warhammer
‘Einarr of the Baersonlings,’ the warrior hissed, taking the knight’s hand.
Von Kammler nodded as he heard Einarr’s name. ‘I warn you, Einarr of the Baersonlings, the tales they tell of the Soul-eater are lies. There is no great reward awaiting the one who would destroy it. Whether you were promised treasure or knowledge, the Soul-eater has none to give. Linger here at your peril.’ The knight pointed to the ground. Einarr was shocked to see the shattered pieces of crystal slowly crawling back to the centre of the clearing.
‘I lingered too long trying to find its treasure,’ von Kammler continued. ‘When the Soul-eater was reborn, it bound me to its will. It is a cruel thing, to be commanded to slay the only ones who might set you free.’
Einarr nodded, appreciating the horror of such an existence and wanting no part of it. ‘I may have no choice,’ he said. ‘I doubt I have the strength to crawl, much less walk, back to my camp and I do not think any of my comrades would brave the forest to look for me.’
Von Kammler fastened his mace to his belt once more, moving towards Einarr and helping to support the flagging Norscan. ‘Your comrades are both wise and craven,’ he said. ‘But I will see that you are safely free from this place. I have not so completely put the lands of my birth behind me that I would abandon one who has done me good.’
Too weary to protest even if he wanted to, Einarr let von Kammler guide him out of the forest, grateful to be leaving it as the crawling dread of the Soul-eater began to slowly reconstruct itself within his mind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Einarr lay on his belly near the roaring fire that Thognathog had built, his armour strewn around him, his sword close at hand. He grunted sharply as Urda’s thin fingers probed his wounds, working a foul-smelling poultice into his injuries. The witch’s touch was far from delicate, her finger worming beneath his skin as she clawed damaged tissue and foreign matter free. He endured the torment the witch inflicted on him, he knew Urda was wise in the ways of healing. He smiled as he glanced past Urda, finding the worried gaze of Birna watching him from behind the trickle of falling snow. The huntress stood behind the witch, her scowl darkening every time he winced in pain, her knuckles white where she gripped the hilt of her own sword. If Urda did plan any mischief, at least Einarr could be certain he would not be the only one meeting their ancestors.
The rest of his small warband was also clustered around the fire, gorging themselves on a pair of burrow-hawks Thognathog had plucked from their holes and an oversized rabbit with six legs that Orgrim had discovered on one of his lonesome ramblings. A plate of meat rested beside Einarr’s prone frame, slowly freezing in the cold winter night as snow drifted down onto it, but the Norscan had more vital concerns on his mind than the base placation of his animal needs. He turned his eyes away from the fire, staring at von Kammler’s immense steel form.
‘Now you have heard where it is we go and what it is we face,’ Einarr told him. The knight stared into the flames, his glowing eyes seeming to absorb the light. When he spoke, his voice was a deep rumble.
‘You have no imagining of where you go or what awaits you there,’ von Kammler said, his voice filled with scorn. ‘Children and dogs playing at the games of men! Blind, idiot things pretending they can think and see!’
The knight’s derision brought a bestial snarl rolling from Orgrim’s hairy throat. Birna paced towards him, her hand still gripped on her blade. Vallac stood, glowering at the sinister armoured apparition, his bloated neck pulsing in time with his anger. Thognathog stared at von Kammler, snapping a log in half with his powerful hands. Zhardrach simply chuckled and shovelled another fistful of burrow-hawk into his mouth.
‘And you know better?’ Einarr asked, his voice low, filled with menace. He would not allow the knight to stop him now, not after they had come so far. Not after he had been promised so much. If that meant finishing their battle, then Einarr would answer that challenge.
Von Kammler nodded his armoured head. ‘I do, Norscan,’ he said. ‘These eyes have seen the place you seek. These feet have stood within its corrupt halls. This mace has tasted the maggot-ridden blood of the tower’s master. Yes, I do know better, Einarr Steelfist.’
The statement brought jeering laughter from Vallac. The Kurgan sneered at the knight’s words, shaking his head. ‘The southlander lies!’ he boldly proclaimed. ‘I have seen the maps the shamans keep, I have seen the Palace of Plagues marked upon them. It lies thousands of leagues from here, deep in the lands of the Hung! Are we to believe now that a weak southlander could make such a journey, much less return to boast…’
The Kurgan’s words died as rings of blazing light suddenly flared into existence around him, swirling and pulsating as they circled him. Vallac fell to his knees, his body throbbing with agony. Einarr could see his flesh peeling away as bony growths erupted from his skin, watched in amazement as his left eye socket began to slide down his face. Across the fire, von Kammler stood with his hand outstretched, his gauntlet pulsing with light. Orgrim pounced at the knight, but a sweep of von Kammler’s mace sent the woodsman rolling across the snow. Birna lunged at him before he could recover from the attack. Her blade cracked against the knight’s gauntlet, causing the metal to shriek and spraying her with molten ichor. She recoiled from the stinging liquid. The glow faded from von Kammler’s gauntlet and the knight turned to face his new antagonist.
‘Enough!’ Einarr roared, springing to his feet, Alfwyrm in his hand. ‘Is this the gratitude you show one who has done you a service? Is this von Kammler’s concept of honour?’ The knight glared at Einarr, then at Birna. Slowly, he backed away from the woman, fastening his mace to his belt. Warily, the huntress circled around him, moving to help the still reeling Orgrim.
‘Your Kurgan doubted my strength,’ the knight said. Einarr looked across the camp to where Vallac writhed on the ground. His arms were a mass of bony knobs, his face distorted by the mutating power of von Kammler’s spell. Urda stood some distance from the stricken marauder, watching him intently. Einarr knew what she was watching for, to see if the changes would continue even without the spell, to see if Vallac’s entire body would collapse into a mindless, reeking thing of madness and carnage. Beside such a doom, even death was a blessing.
‘Vallac knows better now,’ Einarr said. ‘I do not think any here will challenge you so lightly again.’
‘What do you barbarians know of the powers you call gods?’ von Kammler growled. ‘You understand nothing and imagine much! I sometimes wonder who is more pathetic, the men of the north with their superstitions and legends or the men of the south with their miserable Sigmar!’
‘Now you claim to know the gods themselves!’ Urda spat, her tone incredulous.
‘I know much, wrinkled sister,’ von Kammler retorted. He turned towards Einarr again. ‘If you would prevail, Norscan, leave behind superstition, it will avail you nothing. Seek wisdom, that alone shall earn you the blessing of Tzeentch. You will need the blessing of the god if you would vanquish Skoroth.’ The knight reached to his left hand, pulling away the armoured gauntlet. The hand he exposed was pale and colourless, the veins standing stark beneath the skin. Yet it was the pattern those veins formed that arrested Einarr’s attention. There was no denying the shape they formed, the same shape that was seared into his own hand. Von Kammler too bore the mark of Tchar. ‘Trust me when I tell you I know of what I speak.’
Emotion swelled within Einarr’s bruised frame. Fascination, excitement and something that Einarr almost refused to let himself feel: hope. The Norscan lowered himself back to the ground, eyes fixed to von Kammler’s hideous mask and glowing eyes.
‘If you have been inside Skoroth’s palace,’ he asked, ‘where is it? How far away? How many days must we travel?’
The knight shook his head. ‘Leagues? Days? Such words are without meaning in the lands closest to the gods. Time and distance are deceits the gods place no value upon. If I told you the palace was a thousand, thousand leagues away, it might be a
falsehood. If I told you that you should see it before the moons’ next rising, it might be truth. There are no “maps” of the Wastes, whatever the Kurgan’s shamans might think. Nothing remains where it once was, it finds each traveller in its own measure and its own way.’
Einarr felt the flicker of hope crumbling beneath the knight’s words.
‘Then how does one find the place?’ he demanded, frustrated fury in his voice. ‘Can you guide us there?’
‘You must guide yourself,’ von Kammler replied. ‘Distance, direction, navigation, the lands of the gods care nothing for these.’ Kammler pointed to his breast, thumping his hand against the gothic platemail. ‘It is what is here that the Wastes respect. It is the will and determination that the land measures. If you want something badly enough, if the lust to find it burns brightly enough, it will find you.’
Einarr listened to the knight’s words, not understanding them but believing them. The forest of the Soul-eater and the mythic sagas of the Baersonlings had shown him that in the land of the gods anything was possible. He understood that it was the only answer von Kammler would give him, perhaps the only answer the knight could give him. Yet still he had questions.
‘What will we find there, within the palace?’ he demanded.
‘Death,’ the knight’s heavy voice intoned. Von Kammler’s burning eyes grew dim, as though his very spirit retreated before the memories his mind conjured. ‘How is it that Kaanzar the Defiled described it in his tome of abomination? “The lands around the tower are rife with disease and corruption. It is a place where the very ground drips with pestilence and where the rocks spew filth across the earth and the trees weep decay. The very air is abomination, a reeking burning thing that chokes you with its loathsomeness. The plague clans of the Hung make their encampments around the tower and the land is vile with them. They stalk the Wastes like human jackals, eager to infect any clean thing they see with their poxes. The creatures of the Plague God haunt the land in all their bilious shapes, lusting for healthy flesh to rend and defile. About the palace itself festers a great swamp, a place of muck and ruin where the ground is nothing more than oozing corruption that tries to suck you into its embrace. At its centre there lies a great lake of putrescence and rising from the lake, like a sliver of steel in a rotting wound, the Tower of Skoroth stabs up into the leprous sky.”’
‘Death lurks within that lake,’ von Kammler continued, pulling himself from the slithering narrative of the long dead warlock Kaanzar. ‘Bubos, the men of the Khaigs called her, a dragon ancient and vile, her body oozing with the power of Skoroth and his god.’
Einarr’s companions muttered fearfully among themselves as they heard von Kammler speak of the tower’s dread guardian. Einarr refused to let the same fear overcome him.
‘What awaits us once we are past the dragon?’ he boldly demanded. Von Kammler laughed, the sound like that of scraping steel.
‘There is no “after”, barbarian,’ the knight scoffed. ‘Bubos will kill you all. I, with nine thousand Khaig warriors, was unable to prevail against the dragon. We marched on the palace, to cast down Nurgle’s loathsome temple, to seize its treasures for mighty Tzeentch. Nine thousand, we marched, neither man nor daemon daring to stand against us. Then we saw that stagnant lake, saw the abomination that dwelt within rise from its putrid depths. I was forced to abandon my army, leave them to the dragon and slink into the fortress like a sneaking thief. Nor did such sacrifice avail me much, for Skoroth was awaiting me. Only a champion of my might could have survived the spells of ruin and corruption the sorcerer cast upon me. Only by the will of Tzeentch did I escape that place at all.’
‘We will prevail where you failed, southlander,’ Einarr declared. ‘We will use cunning and subtlety, the tools of Tchar, not the brute force of an army. We will get past your dragon because she will never know we were there. We will get past the swamp and the Hung and all the other horrors. We will overcome it all. I will not fail as you did, von Kammler.’
‘What makes you so certain you will prevail where I was defeated? I, a warlord of the Kurgan, a magister of the Purple Claw! What makes you better than me, barbarian?’
Einarr clenched his fist and as he did so, the mark of Tchar burned with a hellish light. Snow steamed as it struck the blazing fist. ‘Because I am the chosen of Tchar!’ he roared. ‘I will not fail because I will not allow it! What has been promised me will be mine and nothing, not even the Plague God himself, will stand in my way!’ Einarr glowered at the knight, staring into the glowing embers beneath his helmet. ‘Who broke the spell of the Soul-eater, southlander? Who penetrated the forest only to find the one man who has escaped the place his quest must take him? There is no chance, southlander, only the will of the gods!’
Von Kammler leaned back, seeming to consider Einarr’s words. At length, the knight nodded his agreement. ‘What you say may indeed be true, Steelfist,’ he said. ‘You are right to say that nothing is ever merely chance. Perhaps it was the will of Tzeentch that you find me, that I accompany you to the palace. Perhaps in helping your quest, I will reclaim the glory that was stripped from me. Yes, Einarr Steelfist, I will go back there with you.’ The knight turned his head, scanning the camp. ‘But we are too few,’ he lifted his hand to forestall Einarr’s objection. ‘I do not speak of armies, I speak of numbers. Nine is the sacred number of Tzeentch, the number through which he works his mightiest magic, the number by which his covens and his champions gather. We are seven, eight if your Kurgan lives.’
‘Do not worry about numbers, Kammler,’ Einarr said. ‘If we are too few, then I shall simply have to do twice my share of the work.’
The remark caused von Kammler to shake his head. ‘You understand nothing about the ways of the gods. The symbol is the power. It is through symbols that the gods manifest their power, exercise their strength. This prize you seek, why do you think it is of such value to Tzeentch? It is a symbol, a physical incarnation of his power. The Dark Claw, the talon of Be’lakor, the Shadowlord. First among mortals, he was during his life, gathering together all the followers of the true gods to march against the heathen elves and the scaly vermin of the jungles. For his might and valour, the gods raised Be’lakor above all other mortals, sharing some of their own power with him. He became the first mortal to escape the curse of death, became the first man to replace his carcass of flesh for the eternal essence of the daemon. But the gifts the gods bestowed upon him made Be’lakor proud and arrogant in his ways. No longer did he imagine himself as a servant, but as an equal. For his audacity, mighty Tzeentch struck Be’lakor down, stripping him of his power, flaying his mind with such torment that the daemon was driven mad. A shape without form, a wraith without substance, Be’lakor was cast into the winds, to wander the world forever cursed and reviled, an abomination to both man and god.’
Von Kammler turned his head, looking at each of Einarr’s followers in turn. ‘What you seek is the only remnant of Be’lakor’s physical form, the only part of him that Tzeentch allowed to linger in the mortal world. It is the chain that binds Be’lakor’s spirit to his curse. Who holds the Dark Claw holds power over the spirit, can use it to command Be’lakor’s tortured soul.
‘Think of it,’ von Kammler hissed. ‘The power to command a being even daemons fear and dread!’
Einarr’s eyes narrowed as he heard the excitement in the knight’s metallic voice. ‘Is that why you attacked the palace before?’
The knight turned to face Einarr. ‘And what noble purpose drives you to seek the Claw?’ he sneered. ‘What selfless dreams bring Einarr Steelfist and his rabble so far from their homes? I can see your desires written on your faces. The savage woodsman hopes to find a cure for the curse that flows through his veins, to appease the wrath of Tchar. The old witch sees one last chance to prove her worth to Tzeentch, one last chance to earn her god’s favour. The Kurgan seeks prestige and glory, to return to his tribe as a mighty champion of the gods in his own right. The huntress looks for something better than
her miserable life among the Sarls and marriage to men she thinks unworthy of her. The ogre, he is much simpler in his needs, looking only to repay the man who cast off his chains. The dwarf is simpler still, he’d see every throat in this camp slit.
‘But you, Einarr Steelfist, what do you want?’ von Kammler asked. ‘What purpose drives you into the lands of the gods? I see guilt and loss, desperate hope that you can earn a god’s promise…’
‘What of you, southlander?’ Einarr snapped, colour rushing to his face as he heard the knight mock him.
‘I have already said, Norscan,’ he replied. ‘I seek power.’
In the dead of night, Einarr awoke with a start. He felt something warm press against his side, rubbing against him beneath the heavy bear cloak he had wrapped himself in. The Norscan scrambled out from beneath his blanket, hand flying to where his sword lay. As the crust of sleep crumbled from his vision, he saw Birna smiling at him. The huntress held the thick fur close to her, wrapped around her lithe frame. Enough of her ivory shoulders and bare arms was left exposed, however, that he found himself wondering how much she was wearing beneath his cloak.
‘You’ll catch a cold strutting around like that,’ Birna chided him. Einarr scowled at her, but relaxed his grip on Alfwyrm.
‘I could say the same thing,’ he grumbled, stalking back towards the pile of furs he had been sleeping on. He sat down on the hides, looking up at Birna. ‘My cloak,’ he said, reaching toward her. Birna pouted and snuggled deeper into the folds of fur.
‘I don’t want to catch cold either,’ she said. ‘That’s why I came over here, to get warm.’ Her suggestive smile set Einarr’s blood pounding through his veins. The warrior grinned back at her. Eyes still locked to hers, he made a quick lunge, hand closing around a fistful of his cloak. With one swift tug he ripped it away. As he had guessed, the huntress was as bare as a skinned seal beneath his cloak. He chuckled as she gasped in surprise. Einarr let his eyes linger on her a moment, then wrapped the cloak around his body and buried himself in the furs.