Warriors of the Chaos Wastes - C L Werner

by Warhammer

  Einarr kicked the werewolf crouched beside him. He pointed over to Birna. ‘Grab her and follow von Kammler,’ he told Orgrim. The werewolf turned and loped over to Birna. The huntress tried to shake him off, but he easily caught her and threw her across his furred shoulder. Birna’s accusing stare followed Einarr as Orgrim ran towards the swamp. Einarr felt a weight lift from him. He was under no delusion as to the woman’s safety, but at least he would not have to watch her die. Somehow, that had become more important to him than palaces and promises. The realisation made the blood sour in his veins. Why was he here then, if not to save Asta and his village?

  Einarr turned to face the dragon. The last flickers of flame dancing across Bubos’s festering immensity sputtered and died as they were smothered by oozing pus. She snapped angrily at the empty air, then swung her head downward, glaring at Einarr with reptilian malice. The Norscan fingered his sword, the names of his ancestors a whisper on his tongue. He would see them all soon. The dragon lurched forward, the ground trembling as she moved. Her diseased breath washed across Einarr, causing his eyes to burn and his lungs to crawl. She was near enough that he could see the wiry little worms crawling between her teeth, could smell the reek of charred flesh beneath the dragon’s overwhelming stench.

  The chill calm of one who knows he is already dead settled over Einarr. The battle was hopeless, but before he died, he would do everything possible to give Birna and the others their chance to escape. Like a watch dog, perhaps the guardian of the lake would not pursue the others if they retreated far enough into the fens.

  Bubos almost seemed to laugh at the Norscan’s bravery, the air hissing down into her mammoth bulk as she sucked it into her obscene frame. There was no mistaking the malicious intelligence that shimmered in the dragon’s pupils. The ground shuddered again as the dragon slithered back across the mud. He had underestimated the dragon’s cunning. She wasn’t so foolish as to risk Einarr springing an unpleasant surprise on her the way Vallac had.

  Einarr’s resolve faltered as fragile hope crumbled in his heart. The dragon wouldn’t waste more than a heartbeat on him, then she would plunge into the swamps and catch the others. There was no mistaking the satisfaction in Bubos’s reptilian smile as Einarr’s shoulders sagged and despair flooded through him.

  Suddenly, the mud beneath Bubos exploded upward, a bellowing roar booming along the shore. Bloodied, bruised, his armour in tatters, his chest almost crushed flat, Thognathog stubbornly clung to his savage life. The ogre launched himself at the dragon, stabbing the hand still encased in the skull of the minotaur through the reptile’s lower jaw, using the plague bull’s horned head like some grotesque fist spike. Bubos reared back, bellowing in pain. The ogre roared again, throwing his other arm over the dragon’s snout and pulling the monster’s jaw closed. Bubos thrashed her head about, struggling to dislodge the ogre clamped around her face. Massive claws flailed feebly as they tried to reach around the bloated, putrid enormity of her flesh, trying to pull the ogre free.

  Einarr moved to help Thognathog, but the ogre’s heads turned back towards him, fixing him with a sombre stare. ‘Thognathog die,’ his twin voices rumbled. ‘Steelfist live! Find much glory! Remember Thognathog!’

  The Norscan hesitated, the idea of abandoning a comrade locked in battle repugnant to everything he believed. As though to decide him, foul green vapour hissed from the dragon’s clenched jaws, spilling around Thognathog’s powerful frame. As the foul vapours touched him, his skin withered and rotted, the ogre’s immense muscles decaying before Einarr’s very eyes. Something the size of a man’s head dropped away from the shrivelling ogre and it was with disgust that Einarr recognised the blackened husk of the ogre’s hand.

  Reason demanded that he run, flee while the ogre was still able to distract Bubos. But an overwhelming urge caused Einarr to run towards the hand that had fallen into the mud. He crouched above the desiccated paw, ripping one of the fingers free from the rotting mess. He looked back up at Thognathog, the ogre’s left head wasted to little more than a skull by the dragon’s fumes. He saluted his friend’s sacrifice and reaching to his neck, fixed the ogre’s finger to the necklace Spjall the vitki had given him in what now seemed a lifetime ago.

  Then he was gone, running into the swamp, the bestial roars of Thognathog and his doom thundering behind him.

  Urda paused against the jagged clump of rock, her body shuddering as wracking coughs again ravaged her withered frame. She spat blood and phlegm into the mire, idly wondering how much she had left to spare. In the distance, she could hear the dragon still bellowing in rage. She nodded her head sagely. Perhaps he really would do it, overcome Bubos. Maybe she had been a bit too hasty in her judgement. The ways of Tchar were many, and even the wisest witch could not hope to see every path that the Changer of Fate laid down before her.

  She coughed again, bile spilling down her chin. It had been a bold thing, to carry the carcass of the nurgling hidden beneath her robes, so close to her body. Its diseased essence had oozed into her body, polluting it with a vileness even her magic could not overcome. She knew this, had known it the moment she had killed the thing, but she also knew that the gods did not reward those who wavered in their devotion to them. Flesh was but a prison, it was what reward her devotion would bring to her soul that drove her on.

  Urda knew the nurgling’s carcass would draw the dragon from the lake. It had been a part of her vision, the same vision that had coloured her dreams since they had emerged from the Frozen Sea and the disgraced champion von Kammler had started to exert his corrosive influence over Einarr. The knight cared nothing for any of them. He cared only about reclaiming the honour and glory that he had failed to claim the last time he had tried to assault Skoroth’s lair. He would cheat Einarr of his glory, cheat them all, so that he might reclaim his own lost power. Einarr would never listen to her, he was too deeply under von Kammler’s spell, too obsessed with his own promised reward. The others would never listen. There was just enough bitterness in the old witch to rail against the injustice of the deceit Tchar had played on her. To spend her last days travelling across half the world, to bring her chosen champion to the very gates of triumph only to have it all taken from them by a disgraced southlander maggot!

  The witch smiled, a raspy cackle wheezing from her body. Well, if her champion could not claim the prize, then no one would. The dragon would make sure of that. There was a grim satisfaction in knowing that if she could not be a part in victory, she could at least be the instrument of defeat.

  A sound among the weeds forced Urda to control the spiteful laughter shuddering through her frame. She glanced at the swamp around her, trying to penetrate the veil of diseased filth. Whatever had made the sound, it refused to reveal itself. Even so, the witch decided that she had lingered long enough out in the open. She turned towards a muddy cave just beyond the rocks. It would provide decent enough refuge from whatever was prowling among the weeds and would protect her from the dragon’s terrible eye should the great beast take wing in search of stragglers from Einarr’s doomed company.

  With such speed as she could muster, Urda hobbled towards the cave. The stinking darkness loomed before her and the witch froze, her every sense afire with alarm. She reached into her bag, pulling a pinch of silver dust from a pouch within it. An incantation slithered past her lips as she cast the dust into her eyes. At once they began to glow, piercing the blackness as easily as if she’d called the sun down from the sky to illuminate it for her. A long tunnel stretched through the dripping scum of mud and ooze, human bones beyond number protruding from the slime. The crone shifted her gaze to the slobbering, drooling thing that squatted just inside the cave. Caked in the same muck that made its home, the thing looked like some insane cross between slug and frog. Eyestalks oozed up from the shapeless trunk that formed the thing’s head. Flabby webbed paws scrabbling lazily at the mud as the thing shifted its monstrous bulk.

  Urda backed away from the plague beast, not eager to join its coll
ection of bones. The daemon seemed to lose interest in her when it became apparent she would not be courteous enough to walk right into its mouth, the eyestalks sinking back into its slimy head.

  The Aesling hag turned away from the cave. She would have to find another refuge to hide from the dragon, and quickly if the fading sounds of battle were any judge. The crone had not gone more than a few steps before she found her path blocked by a familiar, if grotesque, face. Covered in his own blood, his scalp torn, his arm slashed, Vallac nevertheless grinned as he stared at the witch.

  ‘You didn’t stay to see the dragon, hag,’ the Kurgan said. ‘One might almost think you saw it coming.’ Urda stepped back. The warrior was wounded, that much was obvious. How seriously, that was something it would take her time to decide. There were a fair number of spells she could call upon to rid herself of the Kurgan annoyance, but to cast them she would need to reach into her bag.

  ‘I have the second sight,’ Urda reminded him. She lifted a bony finger to indicate her rune eye. Her other hand slowly crawled towards her bag. Vallac took a step towards her and she froze.

  ‘Strange you did not see fit to warn the rest of us,’ he observed. ‘A suspicious man might even think you planned the whole thing.’

  The remark forced Urda into action. She snapped her fingers, the slight residue of silver powder on them igniting into a brilliant flash of powder. Vallac cried out in surprise, throwing his arms to his face as he was momentarily blinded. Urda threw her other hand into the bag, reaching for the powder that would still Vallac’s stubborn life. Yet, even as her bony fingers closed around the pouch, her arm was seized from behind. A powerful strength pulled her arm back, snapping it like an old twig. Urda shrieked in pain, but her attacker held fast to her broken limb. Another powerful arm closed around her neck. Urda could feel the clammy touch of muddy steel as the cold armour brushed her papery skin.

  Vallac rubbed at his eyes, then stalked towards the witch, a sneer on his twisted face. ‘You remember Berus?’ he asked. The berserker tightened his hold until Urda yelped once more in pain. ‘I found him in the swamp after he crawled out of the hole the dragon put him in. I told him we should find you. If there is one thing Berus despises more than the plague worshippers, it’s a traitor!’

  Urda spat into Vallac’s gloating face. ‘This will avail you nothing! The southlander will take all the glory for himself! There will be nothing for Steelfist!’

  Vallac’s calloused hand closed around the crone’s chin, forcing her head upward. He looked over her shoulder at Berus’s skeletal visage. When Vallac spoke again, it was not in the tongue of the Kurgans or even the trade patois common between the Norse. It was the brutal, braying notes of the Dark Tongue itself, the language of monsters and sorcerers. ‘Your sight does not fail you there, witch!’ Berus fixed his eyes on Vallac, trying to discern the meaning of the unfamiliar words by studying the other Kurgan’s face. ‘There will be nothing for Einarr, but the southlander will not claim the prize either! The glory will be Vallac’s and Vallac’s alone!’ He pushed the hag’s chin back still further until her neck snapped with a dull pop. Urda’s eyes rolled back in her skull as her head drooped lifelessly against her spine.

  ‘Too bad, hag,’ Vallac scoffed at the corpse. ‘When you played your games of treachery you didn’t realise I was playing too.’

  Berus let the broken body fall from his grip.’ The witch is dead,’ he growled, suspicion in his voice, menace rumbling through the skeletal jaws of his helm. ‘Now you will show me the way into the palace, as you promised.’

  ‘In time,’ Vallac said. ‘We have to wait for von Kammler. He is the one who can get us inside, remember?’

  The berserker nodded his horned head. ‘You are certain about what you heard the southlander and Steelfist say?’

  Vallac nodded his head. The stupid southlander had never imagined that the sorcery he had unleashed upon him had changed more than just his flesh. His hearing had grown to such levels that he heard noises even Orgrim had failed to detect. That had served him well, listening in the dead hours of the night while Einarr and von Kammler made their plans. Now that knowledge would serve them well.

  He looked down at Urda’s broken body. Had the witch learned something of their plans as well, or was it merely fate that caused her to be here? Either way, her presence was fortuitous and something Vallac was not going to waste.

  ‘Pick up the hag,’ he told Berus. ‘The crone can keep the thing in the cave occupied while we pass.’

  ‘Down!’

  For the fifth time, they threw themselves into the muck, sinking into the filthy water as the black shadow crawled across the swamp. Every time, Einarr waited for the earth to shake, for water to explode all around him as the dragon dove down from the sky and descended upon them. Every time, the gods granted them a reprieve, the dragon’s hovering bulk sweeping across the pustulent sky to scour some other corner of the desolation for her enemies.

  The Norscan rose from the dripping mess as the dragon flew off once more, her tattered wings fanning the noxious air. Convinced that things were as safe as they could be, he lifted Birna from the morass, the huntress leaning on him for support. Growling, Orgrim threw himself to the shore, shaking the filth from his fur.

  ‘One good thing to say for the dragon, she’s keeping all the vermin in their burrows,’ Zhardrach observed, wringing swamp water from his beard.

  Einarr glanced at the dwarf, then at von Kammler. The armoured knight turned his head, scanning the terrain.

  ‘The cave will be near now,’ the knight said.

  ‘You are sure it is the best way?’ Einarr asked, again looking at the dwarf. Zhardrach smiled back at him.

  ‘Think I’ll knife you in the dark?’ the dwarf groused. ‘Not with that dragon flittering about! Need as much meat to throw between her and me as possible!’

  Von Kammler turned back. ‘It is the only way.’

  Einarr shook his head. ‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘We have to think about later.’

  ‘If we don’t get past Bubos, there will be no later,’ von Kammler reminded him. Grimly, Einarr nodded his head. Von Kammler turned again and forced his way through the rushes.

  Zhardrach watched them go, Birna supported by Einarr as he pushed into the weeds. The dwarf sucked at his needle-sharp teeth. There was something he was missing here, something he was certain he didn’t like. His hand slipped down to the Hung knife he had hidden within the matted coils of his beard. Maybe the Norscan would be getting that stab in the dark after all.

  A low growl snapped Zhardrach from his murderous thoughts. Hackles raised, Orgrim snarled at him, the werewolf’s sharp fangs gleaming wetly.

  ‘Allright,’ the dwarf sighed. ‘I’m moving. See, this is me moving. No need to bite.’

  Einarr set Birna down beside a lumpy green stone and joined von Kammler near the opening of the cave. The knight stared grimly into the darkness.

  ‘You are certain this will work?’ Einarr asked him in a lowered voice, still uncomfortable with the price they would have to pay to travel this road. Even less comfortable with what it would mean later.

  Von Kammler bowed his armoured head. ‘There is little mind left in the guardian. Give it prey and it may be too occupied to pay any notice of us.’

  Einarr glared at the darkness, his mouth vile with the taste of betrayal. He fingered the edge of Alfwyrm. ‘We could fight our way past.’ The hollow hiss of von Kammler’s laughter echoed from behind his helm.

  ‘Forty of my champions thought the same,’ he said. ‘A wise man understands when he gains from losing.’

  ‘What about the lake?’ Einarr demanded.

  ‘We will burn that village when we come to it,’ the knight said. It seemed to Einarr that von Kammler’s head turned ever so slightly, as though the knight had started to glance toward Birna before he corrected himself. Disgust pulsed through Einarr’s veins, but he bit down on his rage. After they were across the lake would be the time to dissuade the s
outhlander of his unsavoury notions.

  Spitting swamp water, his body coated in muck and slime, the curses dripping from Zhardrach’s mouth were especially obscene as the dwarf crawled onto the slightly more solid ground around the cave. His eyes narrowed as he spied the dank gloom of the cave, a sinister twinkle in the smile that briefly flashed across his face. To the men, the darkness was forbidding and menacing, but to him it was friendly and inviting. He’d have the advantage now, the humans would be all but blind in that murk while he, with his sharp dwarf eyes, would barely notice the difference. A bit of knife work and it would all be over. The werewolf was the only thing that really bothered him. He wasn’t sure how well the beast’s other senses would compensate his impaired vision. He’d have to strike the werewolf first then. The southlander next, then the barbarian slut. He’d save Einarr for last. He didn’t want to rush when it came to disposing of him. He had many weeks of trial and ordeal to pay the Baersonling back for.

  Zhardrach emerged from his dark ruminations, blinking in confusion as he found everyone looking at him. Even von Kammler’s steel mask seemed to have an expectant quality about it.

  ‘What? What did I do now?’ Zhardrach demanded. Einarr simply gestured towards the cave. Tiny alarms began to clang in the back of the dwarf’s mind. He took a step back, nearly sliding back into the mire.

  ‘You expect me to go first?’ Zhardrach said, shaking his head.

  ‘You are the dwarf,’ Einarr told him. ‘Your people riddle the mountains with this kind of burrow. Navigating places like this comes as easily to you as sailing the Sea of Claws comes to me. Lead the way.’

  Zhardrach took another step back, this time slipping onto one knee as the muddy bank gave beneath his boot. The unexpected motion drew a deep snarl from Orgrim, but the dwarf kept his eyes focused on Einarr, the alarms banging away as he studied the man’s stern visage.

  ‘Not my people,’ Zhardrach protested. ‘Maybe you are thinking of goblins.’ Orgrim’s growl deepened and the dwarf could see the werewolf starting to circle him. Einarr took a few steps towards him, one hand closed about the hilt of his sword.