by Warhammer
With a roar of such fury that even the dragon’s eye blinked shut, Berus ripped his axe from the dragon’s snout. The blood that steamed against his body, that dissolved his flesh and ate his bones only served to fuel his frenzy. Lifting the axe high over his head, he charged the dragon’s eye.
Bubos’s head pulled back, instinctively reacting to the madman driving towards her eye. No longer anchored by his axe, Berus lost his footing, tumbling from the dragon’s snout. Bubos’s head shot forward again, her triple jaws snapping shut on the falling berserker. Legs vanished down the dragon’s gullet as Berus was bitten in half. His torso slammed against the pitted floor, guts spilling from the horrendous wound. For a moment, he struggled to lift himself, then even the rage of Khorne deserted him and Berus fell back into the widening pool of his own blood.
Einarr looked away from the berserker’s destruction, glaring back at the monster. The dragon continued to paw at her bleeding snout, trying to ease the pain that pulsed through her. For the moment she seemed oblivious to her other foes. Einarr started to approach her again, pausing as his boot struck something lying on the ground. The same unspeakable compulsion he had felt before gripped him, forcing him to lean down and retrieve it, a sliver of metal from von Kammler’s gauntlet, the living steel feeling warm against his skin. Einarr hastily stuffed the scrap of armour in his meal bag.
As he rose to face the dragon once more, his world exploded into a sheet of crimson. Sharp, stinging pain flared through the back of his skull. Einarr turned, spinning with the speed a lifetime spent hunting and raiding had given him. He saw the crooked sword slash at him again, twisting so that the blade caught only the edge of his cloak. Vallac’s twisted face glared at him, the Kurgan’s eyes narrowed with spite and treachery. No, there was something more lurking there, behind Vallac’s eyes. Something that had been there from the start, but which Einarr had failed to recognise until now. Envy, jealousy that it had been the Norscan and not himself who had been marked by Tchar, who had been chosen to recover the Dark Claw for the Windlord. Now, with Einarr so near to his goal, Vallac had given in to his wounded pride, striking out at the man who had been given the honours Vallac felt were rightfully his.
The ground trembled as the dragon’s foot stamped against the floor. Instinctively, Einarr started to turn back towards the monster. Vallac smiled as he saw the mistake, slashing his sword at the Norscan’s belly. Again, the arrogance of the Kurgan caused him to underestimate Einarr’s reflexes and agility. From the corner of his eye, he saw Vallac’s arm start to move, driving the crooked sword at him once more. He spun with the blow, thrusting Alfwyrm into the arm of his attacker. Vallac backed away, clutching at his injury. Einarr stared at the traitor, death in his gaze. A cruel smile twisted Vallac’s mutated features. The swollen sack beneath his chin swelled and Einarr knew the dragon’s fire wasn’t the only flame he had to fear.
An arrow stabbed into the floor beside Vallac, drawing a wail of pain from the living flesh. The Kurgan spun, scowling as a second arrow narrowly missed him. Einarr lunged at the distracted marauder, driving Alfwyrm towards his enemy’s skull. But the Kurgan had not survived so long upon the cold, brutal steppes without his own balance of fortune and fate. Ignoring the archery, Vallac caught Alfwyrm with his crooked blade, blocking the Norscan’s blow. A savage kick to Einarr’s knee brought the northman low. Vallac started to move in for the kill, but the assassin’s face grew pale with horror. Instantly he was on his heels, fleeing down the hall.
Einarr did not have to look to know what had frightened the Kurgan. The warrior dove across the floor, rolling as the dragon’s claw came smashing down once more. Like an angry child trying to crush an ant, Bubos’s talon pursued him, gouging deep craters in the ground, sending bone and skin spraying through the hall. Some of the gruesome debris struck Einarr, cutting him where cloak and armour failed to protect him.
Bubos’s festering eye focused on the Norscan and she lifted her paw once more, determined this time to smash the annoyance into pulp. Einarr heard the reptile’s hiss of satisfaction as her claw came hurtling towards him.
Suddenly, the hall shuddered with an ear-splitting cacophony, a keening scream that vibrated through the very bones of everything it struck. Einarr crushed his hands to his head, trying to block out the noise. The dragon reared back, her claw crashing down a few feet from Einarr’s body. Bubos raged from side to side, her tail lashing the walls mercilessly, scattering scraps of screaming, festering humanity in every direction. Her talons dug into the floor, digging great pits to swallow her suffering. Her wings snapped open, smashing against the ceiling, causing chunks of flesh and coils of tendon to rain down into the hall. From the dragon’s jaws, noxious fumes scorched everything she turned upon.
There was no system or strategy to the dragon’s fury, only wretched madness and anguish, the unthinking rage of the maimed and ruined. As her head turned to blast one of the walls, Einarr saw the black arrow sticking from Bubos’s eye, the dripping paste that drizzled from the ruptured organ. Blind, the dragon had gone berserk, lashing out at everything around her. Einarr rose to his feet, retreating before she recovered enough of her wits to remember the little man she had been trying to smash.
He found Birna leaning against one of the walls, her bow still in her hands. The huntress smiled weakly as he ran to her. ‘I felt I should do my part,’ she said. ‘I only wish I hadn’t missed that Kurgan scum.’ She pointed a shaking hand to one of the corridors that opened into the hall. ‘He ran into there. I had to choose between stopping him and helping you.’
Einarr pulled her to him, supporting her weakening frame. ‘At least you put out the orm’s eye.’
‘It was too big to miss,’ Birna quipped, trying to hide the pain in her voice. Einarr pushed her towards another of the passageways that opened into the hall. He could not say how, but he knew it was the way they needed to take. It was the same impulse that had made him plunge into the forest to find Birna so long ago, that had made him set out across the Frozen Sea. Somehow, he felt he could trust it. Somehow he knew he couldn’t disobey the urge even if he tried.
Orgrim’s broken body limped over to join them, the werewolf’s muzzle singed by the dragon’s blood. Einarr looked past Orgrim, into the hall where Bubos still raged. He could see figures running down the far end of the macabre hall, drawn no doubt by the dragon’s fury. Let the denizens of the palace try to contain the wyrm’s rage, Einarr decided, they had done their best. As he turned to urge his remaining comrades deeper into the passage, his eyes glanced across Zhardrach’s torn and mangled form. Another urge swelled up inside him, and like the instinct that drove him on, Einarr knew it was too powerful to resist.
‘Stay here,’ he growled and before huntress or ulfwerenar could protest, he ran back into the great hall. The dragon’s immense claws slashed the floor, digging deep gouges in the lattice, exposing the stagnant depths beneath the hall. Einarr lunged over the crevices, feeling the floor sag beneath him as he crashed against the other side. He pressed himself flat as Bubos’s paw swiped the air above him before raking across the shrieking walls, spilling loops of entrail into the air. He was on his feet again in a heartbeat, racing toward the dwarf’s carcass. The foremost of the guards rushing into the hall saw him, shouting excitedly in their bubbling voices. Razor-edged javelins slammed into the floor around him as the Hung warriors hurled their weapons at the intruder. The Norscan pressed on through the hail of spears, not slacking his steps even when a bamboo shaft slammed into his arm, shuddering as it glanced from his armour. He kept his eyes fixed on the dwarf, drawn by the urge that burned inside him.
The werewolf had done his gruesome work well, Zhardrach’s organs lay strewn around his ripped and mutilated body. Something wet and swollen squelched beneath his boot as Einarr quickly leaned over the dwarf, his hand reaching to Zhardrach’s beard. As his fingers closed around one of the coiled beard locks, Zhardrach’s eyes snapped open. Einarr hastily drew back as the dwarf’s fist came sweepi
ng up, his knife still clutched in his hand. The beard lock tore free as Einarr recoiled from the slaver’s last effort, but whatever pain Zhardrach was still able to feel did not diminish the spiteful smile he wore.
An instant later, the dwarf’s hate was obliterated as a scaly leg smashed down into the floor. Einarr was thrown back by the impact, watching in awe as the power of the dragon caused Zhardrach’s head to pop from his neck and go spinning across the hall like a cork shooting from a bottle. The Norscan froze as the dragon’s immense head leaned down, her ruined eye spilling down her snout. The reptile’s tongue flickered from her mouth, trying to pick Einarr’s scent from the filth of the palace. He held his breath, trying to will the heart hammering away within his chest to grow quiet. For a tense moment, the blind dragon loomed before him, her flickering tongue only inches from his face.
Then the howls of the Hung crashed around them. Bubos reared back, spitting fiery death into the charging warriors. Men shrivelled into ash and cinder beneath the dragon’s diseased fire, their bodies immolated by her corruption. Shocked, horrified that the monster had turned on them, most of the survivors fell back, screaming in dismay, or abasing themselves before her in some mad attempt to appease her wrath.
Einarr used the distraction presented by the Hung to make his escape. With the dragon raging above him, he made a reckless charge back across the hall, to the passageway where he had left Birna and Orgrim.
By force of will, Einarr leapt to his feet and ran for the passageway. The Norscan ignored the pain that pulsed through his body, the image of Zhardrach and the Hung warriors giving him more than enough incentive to keep moving. Only the thought of Berus’s mutilated torso gave him pause. He turned, looking across the hall to where the berserker’s remains lay crumpled against the wall.
He lingered for an instant, watching as the Kurgan’s body bled out, waiting for the same mad impulse that had forced him to Zhardrach’s side to drive him toward the berserker. When it did not come, he understood why. Von Kammler had made a mistake, they weren’t intended to be nine, and that mistake had caused Einarr to make another. Berus had never been intended to be one of them, the proof was in Einarr’s own mind, that lack of a fiery urge to rush to the dead berserker and claim from him some manner of talisman, as he had with his other fallen comrades. Einarr cursed his error as he ran back towards the corridor. How very different things might have turned out without the berserker in their midst.
Birna’s arms flew around him as he gained the relative safety of the tunnel, her lips crushing against his. Then her fist cracked into the side of his jaw.
‘Have the gods made you mad?’ she demanded. From where he crouched against the floor, Orgrim gave voice to a low growl, seemingly in agreement with the huntress. ‘Why by Tchar’s shadow would you go back in there?’
Einarr reached to his neck, fastening the scrap of von Kammler’s gauntlet and the beard-lock from Zhardrach to his necklace. ‘Collecting keepsakes,’ he replied, pushing Birna deeper into the passage. ‘But there is nothing more to keep us here. For now what guards this place can muster will be busy with the dragon. It would be unwise to depend on her to keep them so.’
With his grim warning hovering over them, Einarr led his remaining comrades deeper into the palace and whatever nightmares called it home.
Bubos continued to rage through the great hall, her talons and tail ripping into walls and floor, her boiling breath searing the roof and causing it to shred in wet, dripping tatters. The Hung warriors kept their distance, watching the dragon’s blind tantrum in silent, mortal terror. There was no thought of trying to contain her fury, they knew only too well what the beast was capable of.
The black terror that filled them was routed by an even greater fear. A crawling, scuttling horror that stole upon them, a foulness that repulsed not merely flesh, but soul as well. The Hung prostrated themselves upon the floor, shivering in dread. The floor shuddered with them and from the wretches entombed in the walls came sobbing wails even more agonised than the ones Bubos had caused.
Into the great hall came a shambling enormity, a stumbling, slithering loathsomeness. Where its shadow fell, blisters sprouted; where its legion of rotting feet stepped, mould sprang into vile life; where its heaving exhalations touched, disease flourished. Those Hung who dared lift their eyes to gaze upon it felt them water, tears of pus running down their faces. Instantly, warriors encased in rusted armour fell upon the heretics, cutting them down where they grovelled upon the floor. The butchered remains they threw before the shuffling feet that marched through the great hall.
It had a body. Thousands of them, naked and writhing, fused into one abhorrent mass by the foulest of sorceries. Every slave’s mouth moved in silent agony, displaying the jagged stump where a tongue had been torn from mouth. There was a time to indulge in the sounds of misery, and there was a time to appreciate the silent contemplation of agony. He who was borne into the great hall upon the living palanquin prided himself on understanding that delicate balance.
‘Bubos, be still!’ the festering voice dripped through the hall from beneath the living canopy of the palanquin. The dragon recoiled at the sound of that voice, even in the grip of her maddened rage, fear had its place. Even in the terror of her blindness, in the madness of her corruption, there were things that still made her know dread. Like a scolded dog, the dragon cringed back, her reptilian head sliding to the floor, seeking refuge behind one of her immense claws.
Skoroth, Plague Lord of Nurgle, Scourge of the Wo and Aghols, emerged from the noxious fume of shadow that filled his palanquin. His bloated body stomped across the backs of the naked carriage, tearing flesh with every step. Atop his obese body, a shrunken, skeletal head surveyed the carnage that had raged through the hall. Cold fury smouldered in the pits of Skoroth’s blighted eyes. The rolls of fat engulfing his neck undulated and heaved. From the corners of his mouth, furry black flies crawled free. The insects took flight, swarming about his head. Skoroth stared at them, the rage building inside him.
‘The infidels who escaped, the ones who continue to profane this sacred place,’ his decayed voice croaked. ‘They will be found and made to know despair. Glory to the one who brings me their heads, those who fail will rebuild my great hall.’ The Plague Lord surged back into the shadows of his palanquin. The swarming flies sped away, scattering through his fortress, carrying his words in their buzzing drone.
The intruders would be found and when they were, they would curse the mothers who bore them, the fathers who sired them, and the gods who gave them breath.
For a start…
The three invaders plunged into the festering depths of the palace. Rotten arms groped at them from the walls, phlegm-filled voices begging for succour and mercy. Even the hardened Norscans found the wretched pleas infecting them, draining their strength and resolve. Unlike the feeble arms that clutched at them, the voices were not so easily brushed aside.
Einarr found their progress further impeded by the infirmity of his companions. Orgrim dragged his broken leg behind him, his agility and animal speed crushed with the limb. Birna’s own pace was little better, only the noxious influence of the bloodroot preventing her from collapsing in a puddle of her own sickness. Einarr knew he should abandon them, press on to the shrine by himself and leave them to their fate. But such a thing smacked too much of treason and cowardice to sit well in his gut. He would leave the running to Kurgan swine like Vallac.
Orgrim suddenly stopped, the werewolf’s muzzle curling back in a low snarl. Einarr tightened the grip on his sword and slowly made his way forward. The corridor ahead was filled with a mass of heaving, crawling flesh. With revulsion, Einarr recognised the horror as a gigantic grub, its verminous body coated in glistening slime. Beyond the ox-sized insect he saw two others. One sported gigantic, crab-like claws, which it was using to nip and tear at the living wall. While he watched, the grub cut one of the bodies free from the wall, shuffling aside so that the shrivelled husk could crumple to the
floor. Unlike the bodies that still wailed and moaned from their fastenings on the wall, the body on the floor was quite dead.
Morbid fascination gripped Einarr and he watched as the second grub shuffled forward to take the place of its clawed companion. This one was a fat swollen creature. It lifted its massive tail over its slimy back. The tail began to undulate, as though pushing something through its bloated length. From a dripping orifice at the tip of the tail, a scrawny little man appeared, expelled from the grub’s body. Before the little wretch could even begin to wipe away the mucous that coated him, the first grub Einarr had seen was scurrying forward. Dozens of arms latched onto the man, pulling him off the second worm’s back and pressing him into the hole in the wall. Even as the man screamed, the grub began to cement him into the wall of writhing bodies, coating his arms and legs with a paste-like drool that slobbered from its mouth.
Einarr turned away from the gruesome scene. This, then, was how Skoroth maintained his palace. The hideous grubs were repairing damage in the halls, cutting dead flesh from the walls and replacing it with living bodies. The horror of it made Einarr want to charge the filthy brutes, end their vile existence with clean steel. He also knew that such behemoths would be a long time dying, time he didn’t think they had.
But there was another way they might get past the mammoth insects. Einarr looked back the way they had come. There was a side passage connecting into the main corridor. He looked back at the grubs, watching as they continued to attach the screaming man to the wall. His idea was risky, there was a chance he would draw more grubs instead of distracting the three ahead. Einarr pulled Birna from the floor and motioned for Orgrim to follow him. They retreated back down the hall, past the side passage.
‘Stay here,’ he warned them, then dashed back down the corridor and into the side passage. He looked at the wailing, wretched husks of humanity fused into the walls. Even a Norscan could not help but pity such miserable beings. It was just as well. It made what he had to do easier. It made it mercy instead of murder. Einarr stabbed Alfwyrm into the chest of one man, then plunged the sword into the breast of a woman. Again and again he thrust his steel into the wall, bringing blessed death to the tortured husks. The wailing around him changed into desperate cries, plaintive shrieks for the mercy of the blade. Einarr tried to bring release to as many of them as he could, but he knew he could not linger long. He kept his ears peeled, trying to catch the sound of the grubs shambling towards the passage to repair the carnage he had visited upon the walls. It was difficult to hear with all the moaning voices surrounding him. Instead he felt the insects’ advance, their massive bodies causing the floor to shake. Einarr turned away from his grisly work, running down the passageway and back into the corridor.