by Warhammer
Birna stared at him in disbelief for a second, shivering as the night clawed at her skin. Einarr looked up from his feigned sleep and smiled.
‘You’d better decide what you’re doing before you freeze,’ Einarr warned her. ‘I’m already one man short according to the southlander.’
Birna seized the invitation, darting under the cloak and squirming close to Einarr’s warm bulk. She crooked her head to stare again into his eyes. After a moment, she wrinkled her nose in distaste.
‘These furs stink like ogre,’ she complained. Einarr pulled her closer his breath hot against her neck.
‘Thognathog was the only one I could talk into lugging them across the Frozen Sea,’ he said. His calloused hand stroked her smooth shoulder. ‘Besides, you have more important things to think about.’
Impossibly, a blood red sun glared down at them from the black sky, tingeing the land crimson with its gory rays. Einarr decided that it was the most horrible sight his eyes had seen in the weeks since they had emerged from the Frozen Sea. They had seen rivers of brown soup that slobbered their way across the land only to vanish into nothingness. They had seen trees that crawled across the ground like mighty serpents and which called to one another in the mewing voices of tiny kittens. There had been mountains that seemed to tremble at their approach, slinking fearfully towards the horizon so that every step forward put them two steps further away. They had watched snow lift itself from the ground and fly back into the clouds. There had been colours and sounds and smells without end, coming from nowhere and nothing and vanishing as swiftly as they manifested.
The touch of the gods was on and in everything they saw. The game Orgrim brought back for their fire became stranger every day. Boars without legs, birds with fur instead of feathers, huge mice with fangs the size of daggers and a frill of flesh around their necks. Once, the woodsman returned with something that might have been a flower save for its size and the scrabbling claws that had replaced its roots.
The change had come upon them as well. Orgrim’s ribs had sprouted new extensions, puncturing his sides with spiny fingers of bone. Vallac’s misplaced eye had swollen and faded into that of some cave fish. Thognathog’s centre arm had withered into a twisted stump while great horns sprouted from his left head. Urda’s face had become pinched into something that almost looked like a bird’s beak. Zhardrach’s skin had darkened into the colour of pitch.
Most unsettling to Einarr had been the changes that had manifested in Birna’s body. Every night, the huntress came to him to warm away the chill and worm her way deeper into his affections. At first he did not notice it, trying to dismiss the sensation as some caprice of memory, but after a time there was no denying it. Birna’s body was changing, becoming more and more like that of Asta beneath his hands. Even the patch of scaly skin was there, that piece of Asta the gods had touched. Einarr knew it could not be mere chance, that it had to be some mocking gesture of the gods. However much her body changed, Birna would never be Asta.
Did he even want her to be? Birna was a strong, fierce woman, gripped with a determination and force of will that Asta had never possessed. She was a woman that would not be content to linger behind in the safety of some village while her man roamed abroad searching for gold and glory. She was a fighter, a warrior in her own right, one who desired to stand beside him in battle as keenly as lie beside him in the night. Einarr had felt his passion for her overwhelm him, filling his heart almost before he was aware it was even there. The memory of Asta faded from his mind more and more each day, her face only a dim flicker, her voice a distant echo.
Einarr wondered if this too, was naught more than the mockery of the gods. The closer he drew to the Palace of the Plague Lord, the less he cared about the reward he had been promised. He continued because he had sworn an oath and because he knew the others would see the breaking of that oath as a sign of weakness. Birna clung to him because he was strong, because she wanted to share in the glory that could be his. He could not take the risk that she would still care as much for mere Einarr Sigdansson as she did Einarr Steelfist.
They crossed the barren tundra of snow and rock, the bloody sun beating down on them fiercely, the snow rejecting its efforts and stubbornly refusing to melt beneath its attentions. Sometimes they saw the bones and weapons of those who had tried to cross these lands before them. Rarely were such remains identifiably human, yet Einarr could not say that perhaps they had not been men before entering the Wastes. Dark shapes sometimes appeared on the horizon, black riders galloping into the distance yet vanishing well before they reached the horizon. Once they saw something that towered above them as it lumbered across the land, its twisted face curled into a feral snarl, its gigantic hands closed around a stone club that looked to have been torn from the side of a mountain. Yet the giant did not see them, walking right through them, its body as insubstantial as mist, its flesh nothing more than thin air. Einarr did not think the thing to be some ghost or spirit, for the vibrancy of life was within it. Von Kammler claimed that it was just as real as any of them, but that it had become out of sequence with the deceit of time and so prowled within its own empty, lonely world.
The incident stayed with Einarr and he considered again the reward he had so proudly demanded from Tchar.
That night, as they made their camp, Einarr held council with von Kammler. He had done so many times since the knight had joined his warband, but now the Norscan was less willing to accept the cryptic and evasive answers the southlander had given him before. The sight of the ghostly giant had impressed upon Einarr that there were things much worse than death that the gods could visit upon those who displeased them. He was willing to risk much to claim the reward Tchar had promised him, but now he wondered if he had risked more than he had known.
When the fires burned low and even Orgrim settled into a fitful sleep, Einarr joined the knight on the edge of the encampment. Von Kammler stared out at the empty tundra, his fiery eyes scanning the limitless horizon. As they had seen many times since entering the Wastes, the land was never as empty as it appeared.
‘What troubles you this night, Steelfist?’ the knight asked, not bothering to turn as he heard Einarr approaching. Einarr ignored the challenge in the knight’s voice, the tinge of superiority in his words. Such tricks might cow the weak men of the south, but a Norscan respected deeds, not haughty airs and arrogance. He had seen for himself that von Kammler was far from the infallible champion of the gods he thought himself to be. If not for him, von Kammler would still be a slave in the Soul-eater’s forest.
Einarr marched up to the knight, seating himself on the frozen ground, following von Kammler’s ever-vigilant gaze.
‘The Dark Claw,’ Einarr said. ‘You really think we can steal it from Skoroth?’
Von Kammler chuckled darkly. ‘If I did not think so, I would hardly return there with you.’ Einarr nodded as he digested the sound reasoning behind the knight’s words.
‘There is something you are keeping from me,’ Einarr said. ‘Something that has been bothering me for some time. You spoke of the lake and the dragon. You also spoke of getting past both. I want to know how.’ He raised his hand, motioning for the knight to keep silent. ‘None of your riddles and half-wisdoms, I want an answer even Thognathog could understand.’
Von Kammler turned his eyes from the horizon, staring down at Einarr. ‘You will not like what I tell you. I have seen how you lead this rabble. I do not think you have the stomach for what it will cost you to get into the tower.’
‘Tell me anyway,’ Einarr growled. Von Kammler turned away, eyes scanning the horizon once more.
‘You will need to make sacrifices to get across the lake,’ the knight told him. ‘There are powers I can call upon that will get us past the lake, but they will demand a price. They will demand blood.’
Einarr digested von Kammler’s words, feeling himself grow sick as he considered them. There were few things he would not do to save Asta and his people, but betrayal was one
of them. Birna, Orgrim, Vallac and the others, they were trusting him, trusting him to lead them to glory and triumph. Not to feed them to whatever unspeakable power von Kammler decided to invoke. The knight saw the distaste in Einarr’s expression.
‘It is a talent I have always had,’ he said. ‘The ability to read a man’s soul. The skill to know his limits. It will have to be done.’ The knight chuckled again, the sound as malevolent as the growl of a troll. ‘If it sits so ill with your conscience, we can always use the dwarf.’
Einarr shook his head. The thought still made him sick. The realisation that using Zhardrach made the prospect almost agreeable made him sicker still. It was not any affection he had for the dwarf, rather the tribal repugnance he felt for anything that smacked of treason.
‘There has to be another way,’ Einarr said.
‘I wish you fortune in finding it,’ von Kammler retorted. ‘And know this, every moment you tarry beside the lake you risk drawing the notice of the dragon. If that happens, you will have even worse considerations to choke down.’
‘What do you mean?’ Einarr demanded.
‘After my army drew Bubos up from the depths, there was only one way for me to get past her. While she slaughtered my men, I and my closest followers broke away. There was a cave, a tunnel, deep in the swamp. It ran beneath much of Skoroth’s domain, eventually opening on the other side of the lake. We dared the dark of the cave, travelling under the swamp to elude the dragon. But the cost was high. A terrible beast, a foul daemon of Nurgle, dwelled within the cave. To get past it cost me many men, their bones stripped clean of meat as the daemon devoured them.’ The knight looked at Einarr again. ‘Wake the dragon and we must brave the cave.’
Einarr looked away, staring at the ground. The knight had been right, he didn’t like what he had been told. He wondered if he should tell the others, give them the chance to turn back. Then he realised he didn’t dare. He needed them, all of them, if he was to stand any chance of stealing the Dark Claw and saving his village.
‘We will find another way,’ Einarr said. Von Kammler did not reply, simply returning to his scrutiny of the horizon.
Einarr judged their travel across the tundra to be measured in weeks, perhaps as many as three or four, when the Miasma struck. They saw it first as a swirling, pulsating vibrancy against the horizon. Von Kammler shouted a warning to them all, but could offer no advice to defend against what was coming. Like frightened children, they clustered together on the empty plain, clutching to one another as they braced themselves for the terrible power the knight told them was coming.
Einarr watched as the thing skipped across the land. He thought it not unlike a waterspout or cyclone when he first observed it, but no storm he had seen displayed such unnatural character. The thing grew and shrank every instant, sometimes collapsing into almost nothing then swelling so that it stretched across the entire horizon. The light within the storm glowed with putrescence, swirling and dancing in mesmerizing patterns that seemed to decay the soul of those who looked upon it. He could see snow rising from the earth, dancing in the storm’s swirling eddies. As the snow spiralled up into the clouds it began to change, transforming into a dripping slime that infected the very sky with its corruption.
The storm danced across the tundra in a maddening display of directionless uncertainty. Sometimes it would be leagues away, then suddenly skip forward thousands of yards in the blink of an eye. Once, it hopped so far that it was behind them. Before anyone could breathe a sigh of relief, the miasma skipped again, roaring and raging only a few hundred yards from where they cowered before its power. Now Einarr could hear voices in the wind, voices that called and whispered and cursed. If he concentrated, he could hear the words of a particular voice, but every time he did, another voice would shout over the one he attended, trying to drown out the other voices with its own desperate cries.
Then the storm was all around them, its winds tearing and ripping at them, its power pulsating through their bodies. Einarr felt as though his flesh were on fire, as though every scrap of his essence was being stripped away, rotting from his very bones. His mind filled with a hissing cacophony of voices, all clamouring for room within him. He screamed against the maddening din, against the agony pulsing through his body.
All at once, the world was silent again. Einarr’s flesh was his own once more, his mind was clear of any voice save his own. For an instant, he had imagined the babble assailing his mind to coalesce into a single shriek, then swiftly explode back into the ether like so many rats smoked from a ship’s hold. As he opened his eyes, he saw the fading glow of the symbol branded into his hand, the eye-like rune almost seeming to wink at him as it became dull once more.
He looked around him as his comrades likewise rose from the ground, shaking their heads to try and drive the last echoes of the miasma from their skulls. The snow they brushed from their bodies had turned a stagnant green, dripping from their fingers like oozing scum. Einarr turned his eyes to the landscape around them. It had been transformed from a bleak barren desolation of ice and wind to rolling hills and black canyons. Pools of putrid water steamed up from the ground, spurting their corrupt essence into the air. Even the sky had changed, no longer the black veil of night but a leprous yellow, like a great tapestry of pus and urine. Amid the filth, even the blood-red sun seemed to fade, its rays struggling to pierce the sickness that threatened to consume it.
Flocks of vultures circled in the heavens and Einarr’s ears filled with the buzzing of flies. The stench of rot wafted over him. The warrior was overwhelmed by the assault on his senses and he fought to keep his belly from disgorging its contents into the green snow-scum that blanketed the earth. He had just succeeded in his struggle when he felt von Kammler’s armoured hand close on his shoulder. He spun on the knight, his hand on his sword, but there was no malice in von Kammler’s gesture.
‘You must indeed be great in the favour of Tzeentch,’ von Kammler told him. ‘We have survived the Miasma of Pestilence without our flesh being twisted by the daemons of the withering wind, without our souls being consumed by the poxes of the storm.’
‘Where are we?’ was all Einarr could find the words to say. Von Kammler laughed, the sound corrupted into a metallic rumble by his helmet.
‘Where you wanted to be,’ the knight said. ‘The Miasma has brought us where you wanted us to be, or perhaps the storm brought it to us.’ The knight stretched his arms, gesturing to the filth all around them. ‘Behold the domain of Skoroth, the festering realm of Nurgle the Obscene!’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The putrescence of the land sucked at their feet as they tried to march across it. For days now they had trudged through a diseased maze of low, mound-like hills. Great fat flies buzzed about their faces, crawling across their lips and scratching at their eyes. The stench intensified, growing from the reek of spoiled fruit to the stink of a sewer. Einarr’s eyes teared at the smell, the greedy flies sucking at his suffering as the fluid ran down his face. Orgrim, with his keen senses, was reduced to a whimpering, slinking thing, one hand constantly crushing his nose close.
Disease constantly clawed at their bodies. They could feel it seeping into their flesh. For a time, Urda struggled to combat the plagues, casting her own spells to combat the malevolent power all around them. Her efforts seemed to anger something, rather than keeping the diseases at bay, her magic drew them closer, intensifying their unseen assault. The constant attack wore down the witch’s strength, subverting her efforts to keep them healthy.
Urda was the first to develop the cough, the illness settling into her lungs and filling her breath with phlegm and misery. The filth she spat into the snow-scum was green with sickness and red with blood. The corruption spread to Vallac and then Birna and Orgrim before finally claiming Thognathog as its final victim. Strangely, Einarr and von Kammler were almost immune to the pestilence, a fact that did little to comfort their allies. Their march through the mire slowed to a diseased crawl of coughing an
d spitting as fever ravaged the warband.
Tiny things plopped and slobbered across the ground, cackling and giggling as they savoured the sickness of Einarr’s followers. Like living excrement, the grinning daemons slopped along the earth, their bubbling cries tormenting them as much as their fever. Several times, Orgrim broke away to savage the capering daemons with his axe, but for every creature he splashed across the ground a dozen more were drawn by the sound of battle. Eventually even the berserker tired of wasting his energy on the vile things, resigning himself to their ceaseless mockery.
Still they pressed on. Eventually the dung-like hills were behind them, most of the creeping daemons reluctant to leave the mounds and enter the stagnant plain that now stretched before Einarr. It was littered with ruined piles of stone and timber, the outlines of walls and roofs nearly obliterated by the mould and slime that clung to them. Great twisted weeds, taller than trees, peppered the land and everywhere Einarr could see tendrils of smoke rising into the mouldering sky and the glow from cook-fires amid the rubble.
‘The camps of the plague clans,’ von Kammler told him. ‘Like lice, they infest these lands. We will need to tread carefully if we would escape their notice.’
‘How far is the tower?’ Einarr asked. Von Kammler fixed him with his fiery eyes.
‘As near as death,’ the knight said grimly, ‘and as distant as hope.’
Crawling through the ruins, Einarr was impressed by the scope of the desolation. From the edge of the plain, he had thought it vast enough but he had not appreciated the scale of the architecture buried beneath the moss and mould. No men had reared such structures, men were ants beside whatever had built the primordial ruins. Cyclopean blocks of stone bigger than longships rose from the muck, piled one atop the other in massive walls that sagged sickly from their own ponderous weight. Great pillars wide enough that all of Vinnskor might have fitted comfortably upon their tops stabbed up from the slime, their marble surfaces pitted with decay and corrosion. Ceramic plates, the debris from collapsed roofs of the city were strewn throughout the scum-snow on the ground, every tile larger than a man.