Warriors of the Chaos Wastes - C L Werner

by Warhammer

  ‘Which way?’ Birna asked him.

  ‘The left hand path is ours,’ Einarr told her without hesitation. The huntress looked at him, her face filled with confusion and doubt. ‘Do not ask how I know, woman! Somehow this vile place is more vivid in my mind than the streets of my village! Something guides me, some instinct I can feel in my bones.’

  ‘More of Skoroth’s trickery,’ Birna spat.

  ‘It does not feel like the Plague Lord’s filth,’ Einarr said. ‘I have felt it for a long time now, since I left the ruin of Skraevold and entered the lands of the Aeslings.’

  ‘Then it has led you far to betray you now,’ Birna observed. She limped through the loamy floor, towards the gaping pit. It descended at an angle, a fleshy, tongue-like slope slithering from its lip into the gloom below.

  The sound of shouting voices and baying beasts sounded from the passageway, their pursuers rapidly closing the gap. Einarr glanced down the corridor, seeing the shadowy shapes of the plague-thralls rushing toward them. He looked back at Birna.

  ‘Go,’ he said. ‘We’ll make our stand at the bottom.’ Birna nodded and lowered herself into the pit. Einarr turned, watching the passage as the huntress dropped from view. The howling pack increased its speed as they saw the hulking Norscan waiting them. A scrawny jackal-like hound rushed for Einarr’s throat, its jaws filled with stinger-like growths. Einarr brought the edge of his sword smashing through its skull, spilling the diseased animal across the floor. Behind it came another, and still another, each more hideous than the last. Einarr broke each in turn, his prodigious strength overwhelming their savage fury. After the first three hounds were littered about his feet, the rest of the pack cringed away in fear, unwilling to confront something that had overcome their leaders. But beyond the cowering curs there were others who did not share such timidity, horned pestigors and sallow-skinned Hung warriors, their mouths shrieking war cries and wrath.

  Einarr knew it would be his turn to be overwhelmed if he stayed to wait for the plague worshippers. Numbers alone would drag him down. He might kill a dozen, a score, even a hundred, and his valour would mean nothing. No one would carry his name into the sagas, not even the gods would note his passing. He would simply be another sacrifice before the plague god’s festering altar, another speck of sand upon the shores of his corruption.

  Tightening his hold on Alfwyrm, Einarr turned his back to the oncoming horde and ran to the pit, diving headlong into its hot, cloying depths. Stagnant air washed over him as the slimy, leathery slope bore him downward. He felt a twinge of panic as he noted the ribbed symmetry of the red, raw walls, unable to rid himself of the image of a gigantic throat sucking him down into its gullet.

  The Norscan’s slide through the dank blackness ended in a wet, dripping collision with a reeking sheet of velvety flesh. Einarr’s body slammed into the loathsome substance, its flexibility cushioning his impact. He scrambled for purchase on the hairy meat, but his fingers slipped from the decaying muck. His flailing hands scraped against the rotting sheet as he hurtled downward. Einarr yelled in protest as he fell to the floor twenty feet below, splashing into a pool of sewage and offal.

  Einarr spat filth from his mouth and rose from the obscene water, rancid sludge dripping from his frame. He glared up at the opening through which he had fallen, waiting for any sign of pursuit. For long, tense moments he waited for sallow-faced Hung marauders to drop down after him. It was only when the seconds passed into minutes and still he saw no sign of his foes that Einarr turned away from the opening. Through fortune or fate, it seemed their enemies had lost their trail for the time being.

  Einarr stalked off through the slush of scum and detritus that swirled about his feet, eyes struggling to penetrate the gloom. He did not worry that there was no escape from the reeking hole, as he had told Birna, whatever strange instinct had possessed him had led him far only to abandon him in the Plague Lord’s oubliette. It was the huntress who was foremost in his thoughts. He worried about her welfare, concerned how well she had weathered the violent descent. He worried too about what else might be sharing the rancid pool with them and despite his concerns for her, he did not call out to his companion lest other ears hear him and be made aware of his presence.

  The warrior sloshed through the filth, able to see only a few feet before him in the shadowy stink that dominated the hole. The grainy bed beneath the sludge seemed to crawl under his boots, threatening to spill him face first into the muck with every step. Einarr forced the urgency that filled him to give way to caution and make certain of his footing.

  No sooner had he slowed his pace than something black exploded from the waters inches before Einarr’s face. Instantly his sword was flashing through the darkness, hacking through the shadowy apparition. Alfwyrm struck the side of the thing with a chopping report, fragments of his adversary spraying across the water. Einarr pulled his sword from the shape, straining to free it from the gash he had drove into the thing’s side. No sooner was the sword free than the shape shot back down into the water.

  Cautiously, Einarr pressed his foot forward again. Once more, the black shape stabbed up from the water, coils of offal draped down its length. Now Einarr could see what manner of menace he had so narrowly avoided. It was a great black thorn, thicker than a spear and cruelly sharp. Barbs projected from its sides, dripping slime and excrement, and Einarr could see luminous venom dripping from the tip of each spur. He shuddered at how nearly he had given himself to such a hideous and ignoble death.

  While he watched, the thorn shot back down beneath the surface, hidden once more beneath the sewage and filth. A gnawing dread quickly grew within Einarr’s mind as he watched the water become still once more. No longer concerned with what lurking ears might hear him, he began to call out to Birna. He circled around the sunken thorn, pressing on through the pool, haste once more moving his steps. A second thorn stabbed up, missing him by a hair’s breadth. As the slimy spike sank again, Einarr’s shouts became a frantic roar, urging Birna to keep still, warning her of the gruesome menace that lurked in the water.

  He strained his ears for the faintest hint of a whisper, but only the dripping slime answered him. Einarr pressed on, turning back towards the opening through which he had dropped. Again, a ghastly spike burst from the water, diseased sludge crusted about its deadly frame. Einarr chopped at it with his sword and the thorn retreated once more. Panic churned in his stomach and the Norscan roared Birna’s name, until his throat was raw. The warrior slogged through the filth, hacking at the thorns as they erupted around him.

  A black spine shot up beside him as he raged through the mire. Einarr swung Alfwyrm at the lethal spike, but his arm froze in mid stroke. Strength drained from Einarr’s body and he slumped down before the thorn, scarcely able to retain his grip on his sword. The world faded into a bleary smudge as tears spilled from the Norscan’s eyes.

  The outline of the thorn was all but lost, only the gory spike at its tip visible. The rest of it was embedded in a lean, lithe body, driven through thigh and belly and breast before ending its murderous passage by punching through the side of the neck. The ruin of the woman’s head sagged against the edge of the thorn, eyes frozen in a moment of shock and agony. There was an abominable irony in that face as Einarr gazed into it. The last vestiges of Birna had been driven from it. Looking upon her he saw again the maimed debris of Asta lying strewn about their home. The loss of one lover was magnified with the loss of the other. Einarr felt himself being crushed beneath the pitiless sorrow that ground him beneath its heel.

  How long he sat beside the lethal trap, Einarr did not know. What words dropped from his tongue, he could not say. Whether he mourned Birna or Asta, even this refused to burn through the icy numbness that closed around him. He was aware, dimly, of regaining his feet, of trying to pull Birna from the thorn. Every effort only succeeded in maiming her further as the spurs tore deeper. At length, he relented, drawing back, resigned that he would have to leave his companion behind amid the
squalor and filth of the pit.

  There was a cold distance between mind and action as Einarr reached to Birna’s mangled head. He cupped her face in one hand and raised the edge of Alfwyrm toward her mouth. For an instant, he tried to resist the impulse, but he could no more fight against it than he could when he had taken talismans from the other comrades he had lost. Instead, his mind retreated into some black corner of his being, watching with cold detachment as his fingers pried the woman’s mouth open and the sharp edge of Alfwyrm did its gruesome work.

  He felt his hand fumbling at his neck, opening Spjall’s band and added the new charm to the others. He could feel Birna’s sharp, bird-like tongue dripping against his neck, but refused to admit the horror the sensation evoked. He crushed his revulsion into a knot of hate, husbanding the emotion with all the care of a wet nurse. He would use it, use it against Skoroth, against the fell Plague Lord. The sorcerer would feel that hate, when Einarr clove open his skull and ground his brains beneath his boot.

  The Norscan turned away, vengeance glowing in his eyes as, alone, he stalked off into the shadows. Behind him, the impaled remains of his last comrade faded back into the stagnant pool as the thorn withdrew once more.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Einarr stalked through the festering halls of the palace, a thing of pain and regret. Birna’s death pulsed through his mind, a crimson phantom of anguish, her lifeless eyes staring at him, her dead lips set in silent accusation. She had trusted him to lead her to glory, had followed him here from Norsca only to find death, to have her soul devoured by the gluttonous plague god. He felt guilt rip through him like the edge of a sword, bile churning in his belly. Within his mind, other faces appeared, glowering at him with accusing stares. Thognathog, his double heads rotted to the bone by Bubos’s pestilence. Orgrim, his flesh melted and torn. Even old Urda, her skull crushed and broken. All glared at him, demanding recompense for their deaths. Black despair flooded through Einarr and he crumpled to his knees, the fleshy floor quivering as he sank against it.

  What was the purpose? What was the use? He had dared everything in this mad adventure, this vain attempt to seize an impossible promise. Those who had followed him were dead now, those who had trusted him to lead them to glory and triumph. Asta, Spjall, his entire people would remain as they were – butchered offerings to ravenous Kharnath. There would be no redeeming them from the Skull Lord’s realm, no righting the terrible doom Einarr himself had brought down upon his village. All was carrion and the laughter of the cruel gods.

  In his hand, Einarr could feel the cold grip of Alfwyrm pressing against his flesh. It would be so easy to end this hopeless farce, to cheat the gods of their sadistic entertainment. What was death, after all, but an escape from suffering, release from the horrors of a wicked world?

  Einarr turned the sword he held, pointing its blade at his own belly. One quick thrust, and his misery could be over. He closed his eyes, seeing the approval in the mangled visages that filled his mind. This was what Birna and the others wanted. This was what would satisfy them.

  The mark of Tchar forged into his flesh blazed with fiery brilliance and Einarr’s hand felt as though he had thrust it into the mouth of a furnace. Alfwyrm dropped from his smouldering grip, flopping against the floor. The faces swirling within his mind shrieked as a blinding light exploded through his consciousness, the visages collapsing into one another until only a single face remained – the rotting skull of the Plague Lord. It scowled at him in cold hate as the light burned even his true face from Einarr’s brain.

  The Norscan doubled over in sickness, spitting his stomach against the throbbing wall. As the Plague Lord’s fell influence was purged from his mind, Einarr’s flesh crawled with revulsion at the sorcerer’s obscene violation of his soul. The black despair that Skoroth had evoked within him withered, overwhelmed by his rage at the sorcerer’s deception.

  Strangely, the Plague Lord’s mental attack emboldened Einarr, firming his resolve to bring about Skoroth’s ruin. If the sorcerer was trying to use such tricks, trying to force him to kill himself, then Skoroth did so because he was afraid. He did not trust the palace’s gruesome defences to stop Einarr. The Norscan smiled at the thought. Nothing would stop him now. He would carve his wergild from Skoroth’s withered carcass and hear him wail for mercy before he allowed the sorcerer to die.

  The glistening, meat-like wall shuddered and Einarr watched with disgust as a drooling mouth formed within it. It slopped open and, from its putrid depths, shambling, wailing things that could only mockingly be called human emerged. They turned desiccated, disease ravaged faces towards him, their corroded axes and swords as pitted with decay as the skeletal hands that clutched them. The moaning, wretched horde advanced on him, the slime of their own excretions dripping from their feet.

  Einarr glared back at the zombie-like horrors. He stooped and retrieved Alfwyrm from the quivering floor. His other hand closed about the necklace he wore, feeling the talismans against his skin. One man against such a horde, even a horde of such miserable things, could never hope to prevail. But Einarr was more than one man. He could feel the strength of his dead comrades filling him, surging through his body. They were with him still, they could still share his triumph and his glory. That was how he would satisfy their spirits, by giving to them their victory.

  With a roar of feral savagery that might have torn itself from the canine jaws of Orgrim, Einarr charged the plague-thralls. The first he decapitated, the second he disembowelled. The third he cut in half with Alfwyrm’s shining blade and crushed its mangled bones beneath his boots as he began the slaughter in earnest.

  From the slaughter of the plague-thralls, Einarr pressed onward. The rotting halls of the palace oozed and throbbed all around him. Walls of raw meat alive with maggots, floors of oozing mucous that clung to his body and tried to suck him down into their filth. He saw pillars of fused bone, alive with gnawing vermin. He heard the shrieks and howls of the damned as he passed. His nose was assailed at every turn by the mephitic vapours he could feel blackening his lungs as he drew them in. Through his very bones he could feel the throbbing vibrations that pulsed through the palace, the abominable life that infested every corner of the hideous structure.

  Einarr endured it all, the thirst for revenge, the lust for triumph, steeling him against the worst the palace could inflict upon him. He could feel Skoroth’s pestilential sorcery trying again to thrust diseased fingers into his mind. But he was aware of the Plague Lord’s trickery, steeling himself against his magics. He mocked Skoroth’s efforts, daring the decayed sorcerer to face him with steel instead of tricks. The fury of the Plague Lord thundered across Einarr, boils and oozing sores erupting from his flesh when the sorcerer found he could no longer infect his mind. The armband Einarr had taken from the Frozen Sea grew still more decayed as it drew the worst of the pestilential sorcery into it.

  As Einarr jeered at Skoroth’s efforts to bewitch him, the ceiling overhead began to pulse and throb. The glistening meat that formed the roof peeled back with a wet, sucking sound, exposing thick ropes of coiled intestine so large Einarr doubted if even a mammoth’s gut could contain such enormity. The leprous organs quivered and swelled, expanding until they flopped from the ceiling, dangling disgustingly into the corridor. Einarr felt dread gnaw at his mind as the organs continued to swell. He looked back the way he had travelled but found that it too had been overtaken by the bloated loops of intestine.

  ‘Is this all you have?’ Einarr growled to the unseen sorcerer. At that instant, the nearest of the organs reached the point at which it could expand no more, its swollen skin splitting as the intestine burst. Green, stinking juice sprayed across the hall, steaming as it struck the fleshy walls and the shivering floor. Einarr howled in pain as the acid sizzled against his skin, his cloak and armour smoking where the intestinal filth struck them.

  Einarr bit down on the pain and set his eyes on the corridor ahead. Already more of the intestines were reaching the bursting poin
t, the acid from the first seeming to speed the process. He started to turn his head around, then stopped himself. Whatever happened, he would not take one step back. The heart of the palace lay ahead of him, the prize Tchar demanded from him would be there, triumph would be there. Behind him was nothing but shame and death. Before him was vindication.

  Howling like a thing spit from the blackest hells, Einarr lunged down the corridor, charging past the drooping sacks of acid. Some burst before he reached them, showering him with a burning spray, others exploded behind him, singing his cloak and gnawing into his armour. His body railed against the pain, against the abuse, but Einarr would not heed it.

  Blood seeped from his ravaged flesh, his armour hung in tatters, his bearskin cloak was reduced to smoking rags, and still the Norscan refused to falter in his purpose. For what seemed an eternity he rushed down the corridor, roaring as the acid rained down upon him. He felt his strength ebb, his limbs grow cold and heavy, yet still he forced his body onward. When endurance failed him, Einarr’s indomitable will sustained him. When even this reached its limit, spite alone kept him moving.

  At last, Einarr won his way clear of the deadly hall, crashing to his knees as he emerged into a chamber of fused bone and reeking moss. The warrior sucked deep breaths into his starved lungs, even the stinging stench of the palace a welcome respite after the burning mist that had assailed him. The Norscan reached his hands to his head, removing the bear skull helm. It was pitted from the acid, even its unnatural strength overcome by the burning filth. Einarr hurled it from him, then began peeling away the shreds of cloak plastered to his back by his own blood. The tattered ruin of his armour was next, dregs of acid still eating through the toughened leather and steel.

  Fatigue tugged at Einarr’s body, trying to crush him to the floor. He raged against it, lurching to his feet. With the weight of his ruined armour gone, he felt light, almost wisp-like. He shrugged aside the sensation of vulnerability that came with it. After the punishment dealt it by the acid, his armour would not have protected him from the claws of a weasel, much less anything that lurked within these diseased halls. It would only have slowed him down, taxed his already waning strength with its bulk. Einarr cast aside the rest of his gear, the meagre remains of his rations, the last dregs of his waterskin, the empty hollow of Spjall’s medicine bag. Only the necklace of talismans, the corroded armband and the deadly edge of Alfwyrm did he retain.