Reflections in Steel - C L Werner

by Warhammer

  The next instant, and Vanya was gone. Up and over the edge of the precipice a huge red claw rose. It crashed down over her as it sought purchase on the road. Kenji dived aside as a second claw embedded itself in the rock. Heaving itself up from the wall of the volcanic pit was a great scaly body, a lizard-like head snapping hungrily at the air.

  Javelins and arrows flew at the reptilian monster as the Reavers responded to its threat. Kenji saw arrows glance off the thick plates that covered the monster’s back and parts of its legs. Javelins stabbed into the scaly hide, quivering as they drove home. Hot blood steamed out from the wounds, setting the wooden shafts alight.

  The giant lizard lowered its head, its black eyes fixating on the humans. Its scaly jaws opened wide and from its fanged mouth a blast of flame and smoke spilled forth. Dozens of warriors were enveloped in the blast. Flesh was charred down to the bone, bronze plate dripped away in molten splashes, and screams transformed to vapour as bodies were immolated.

  ‘Let the gods bear witness!’ Kenji shouted. The lizard was pulling itself further onto the road. It brought its back legs onto the edge as it advanced. For a moment its body was lifted high. Kenji flung himself beneath its bulk and slashed at it with his sword. The softer hide of the reptile’s belly split as he struck. Kenji screamed as the steaming blood sprayed onto him. He sprang away as the lizard flopped back down onto its belly and tried to crush him.

  The lizard’s angry hisses were echoed by an enraged duardin who was strapped to a saddle on the thing’s back. He thrust at Kenji with a long poleaxe and dealt a blow that split his helm. The human dropped flat, but as he did, the reptile slashed at him with one of its claws. The immense foot narrowly missed him and he was able to take off one of its toes by way of reprisal.

  ‘Fight me, you crawling cur!’ The challenge was shouted by Gharm. The Champion charged towards the lizard and its rider as they turned towards Kenji. The reptile whipped its head around, startled by the ferocious yell. It lowered its horned snout and tried to impale Gharm, but the Champion dived away and his gleaming sword sheared through the knife-like protrusion. A length nearly a foot long went spinning across the ground.

  Kenji knew a blast of the lizard’s fiery breath would finish Gharm. He still felt a debt to the Champion, both for sparing his life and for providing him a new one. So it was that he ignored the continued efforts of the lizard’s rider to chop him down and rushed the beast itself once more. His target was the most vulnerable spot he could reach – the stump of the toe he’d cut off. With cruel abandon, he chopped at the wound with his sword, the edge biting into the still-bleeding flesh and the exposed nerves.

  The lizard threw back its head and roared in pain. It reared up in defiance of the duardin rider’s frantic efforts to control it. As it lurched onto its hind legs, its belly was exposed once more. Kenji saw the wound he’d inflicted before reflected in Gharm’s sword as the wolf-helmed raider charged in and attacked. Like Kenji, he dived away as the brute came slamming back down.

  The rider chopped at Kenji again. This time he whipped the chain around the haft of the poleaxe. The duardin was strong, too strong to pull the weapon from his grasp but not so strong that he could rip his axe free either. While he was effectually disarmed, Kenji used his blade to hack again at the lizard’s toe.

  Kenji was lifted into the air as the lizard reacted to the pain. His dangling weight was enough to wrench the poleaxe from the rider’s grip and he crashed back to the ground perilously close to the edge of the pit. Frantically he rolled aside as the beast flopped down once more and missed being crushed by the narrowest margin.

  The lizard was wild now, its armoured tail lashing from side to side, battering Reavers and duardin alike. It spat gouts of fire from its maw, not in concentrated and focused blasts as it had before, but in little spurts that struck the walls more often than flesh. The rider tried to get his steed back under control, desperately pulling at chains fixed to stakes embedded in its flesh.

  Gharm pressed his attack. The Champion’s armour steamed from the lizard’s fiery blood, but his blade was unharmed. Indeed, it seemed to have drawn into it some of the heat of the reptile’s gore. Where Kenji’s sword was pitted and scored from his attacks upon the beast, Gharm’s blade struck with even greater force. It slashed through the thick plates on the lizard’s side and gashed the scaly skin beneath. A stream of burning blood vented from the wound.

  The already maddened lizard whipped itself around to confront Gharm. At the same time the rider was trying to turn it the other way. The reptile responded only in part, and in doing so its tortured bulk lost its balance. The rider howled in horror as he and his gigantic steed pitched over the edge and fell towards the lava far below.

  Kenji threw aside his ruined sword and glanced around for another. Because of the lizard’s rampage, the battle had drawn away from this part of the road, leaving only the dead. He spotted Vanya’s pulverised body, her hand still clinging to her axe. He tugged it free from her dead fingers. Now she knew which of them was right. Glory before gold.

  ‘You have a new weapon,’ Gharm stated as he turned away from looking over the edge of the pit. ‘Good. We’ll see that beast again when we reach the bottom of the stronghold. It didn’t seem to mind swimming in lava.’

  Kenji’s fingers tightened around the axe. ‘The head of a monster that has to be killed twice will be a worthy trophy,’ he said, eagerness in his voice.

  Gharm nodded and headed back into the fray. For a moment, Kenji could see the Champion’s gleaming sword shining out from amongst the combatants. Then all sight of his leader was lost in the scrum of battle.

  ‘This day will bring much glory,’ Kenji laughed. He stepped away from Vanya’s body and rushed back into the fight.

  The wails of the dying and the doomed filled Kenji’s ears. He took no pleasure from the sound, just as he’d taken no pleasure from the raid. The little settlement had been unworthy of his attention, its people less than the ticks that plagued the warband’s horses. There hadn’t been a decent fighter among them. Kenji was glad he hadn’t invoked the Dark Gods, because it would have been an insult to draw their attention to so pathetic a struggle.

  Kenji vented his frustration on the inhabitants he came upon in the burning streets. The sickle-shaped sword he’d won in battle with an undead king was caked in the blood of his victims. Any who crossed his path were cut down. He made no distinction and offered no mercy. But for the existence of their miserable town Gharm’s warband might have found a worthy enemy instead of being ordered by Kravoth to ransack the settlement for supplies.

  Kyoshima had been a place like this. That realisation only inflamed Kenji’s rage. All those years wasted, clinging to the delusions he’d been taught as a child, oblivious to the reality of existence. A warrior was one who had the courage to claim what he wanted from the world, to stand proudly before the gods and invite them to behold his accomplishments.

  As a Reaver, Kenji had fought against the wooden tree-fiends of the Grymnwolde and cut the head from the vampire lord of Urahdesh. He’d eaten the still-beating heart of a chimera and drunk the fermented blood of an orruk warboss before the greenskin’s dying gaze. He’d marched through the Realmgates and set his boots upon lands unguessed and unseen by any of his kind. He’d held in his hands treasures more ancient and wonderful than the most fabulous legends.

  Now he was here! In some nameless, worthless slum that offered nothing but a day of full bellies for the horde. Kenji swung around in his fury and hacked apart a wooden pole that stood in front of a mud-brick house. The awning the pole supported sagged as it was cut in half, spilling slates of brittle stone into the street. They shattered with a loud series of cracks. As they did, a figure sprang up from behind a water trough and charged at Kenji.

  ‘Little rat,’ Kenji snarled as he plucked the knife from the youth’s hand. He swatted him with the chain he still carried and the bloodied pea
sant fell at his feet. Before he could rise, Kenji smashed him down with his boot and pinned him in place.

  ‘Are you the best this slum can offer?’ Kenji spat. ‘Is this the greatest challenge you people have to offer me?’ He ground his heel against the boy’s back. He scowled when he failed to draw a cry of pain from his prisoner.

  ‘Let him go.’

  Kenji looked up when he heard the command. Gharm was walking towards him down the narrow street. The eyes behind the wolf-mask weren’t looking at him, but instead were regarding the prisoner under his foot.

  Anger flared up inside Kenji. ‘Am I a dog to be ordered around? I’ve fought beside you in a hundred battles! Battles! Not pathetic slaughters like this. There’s nothing here worthy of us! It is an insult to you that Kravoth would…’

  Gharm’s gaze shifted to Kenji. ‘Let him go,’ he repeated, his voice as imperious as before.

  Memories of the past antagonised Kenji’s emotions. ‘This wretch isn’t like me,’ Kenji snapped. ‘He isn’t a warrior. He isn’t destined for glory.’

  Gharm didn’t argue. The gleaming sword in his fist came swinging at Kenji. He raised his own blade to block the blow, but the Champion shifted his angle of attack. The polished edge bit down and hewed through his wrist.

  His injury only further inflamed Kenji. He whipped the chain at Gharm’s helm, the links cracking across the wolf-mask as he tried to strike the eyes. The effort failed to distract the Champion. The shining sword ripped into Kenji’s body, piercing his chest. A bubble of blood spilled up from his mouth and he crashed onto the ground.

  As life ebbed from him, Kenji watched Gharm direct one of the warband’s slavers to take charge of the boy. The Champion turned and started to walk away, the shining sword clenched in his hand, all trace of Kenji’s blood already vanished from its enchanted blade.

  In the sword, Kenji could see his reflection as he died. It was his last sight before the darkness claimed him.

  About the Author

  C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Age of Sigmar novels Overlords of the Iron Dragon, Profit’s Ruin, The Tainted Heart and Beastgrave, the novella ‘Scion of the Storm’ in Hammers of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Horror novel Castle of Blood. For Warhammer he has written the novels Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Warhammer Chronicles: The Black Plague series. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer worlds.

  An extract from The Red Feast.

  As he stepped from the shadows of the caravan-court’s drapery, Athol let out the breath that had gathered tight in his chest. His anticipation was not matched by the others who lined the rope-bounded oval that denoted the taer-huma, the bladespace. Where before he had seen eyes wide with excitement, lips quivering with bated breath, now his quick glance observed disinterest from the ­courtiers of Prophet-Queen Humekhta III, fourteenth Aridian Empress. A few yawned in the late afternoon heat that pushed through the canopy above, others fiddled with sceptres and jewellery. In seasons past his muscular body and pale skin had brought remarks and admiring glances, but the novelty of his outlandish appearance had faded, particularly following his marriage to Marolin and even more with the arrival of his child seven summers earlier.

  A couple of the youngest courtiers, Humekhta’s nieces Aless and Joira – twelve summers and eight respectively – smiled as their war-trainer made his appearance. A desultory ripple of applause moved around him, barely louder than the flap of porch canvas in the strengthening wind.

  Athol raised the spear he held loosely in his right hand, always careful never to point the tip at the Prophet-Queen. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, following the line of his helm’s chinstrap.

  ‘I am the Spear-carrier, champion of Humekhta the Third,’ he declared, his other hand curling into a fist that touched lightly upon the gilded bronze of his breastplate, the knuckles barely touching the sculpted pectorals. ‘Trial has been called and I offer my spear in defence of the Prophet-Queen’s honour.’

  Humekhta sat cross-legged upon a cushioned throne-step. She seemed to float upon a cloud of dawn-light, her legs lost in a billow of silken layers, each a subtly different shade of purple, orange and yellow. Her scarlet regal attire was bound tight to stomach and chest, covering her to the neck but leaving her arms bare. Serpentine tattoos covered her upper arms and ruby-crusted gilded bangles circled her forearms, matched by the rings on her fingers and the half a dozen hoops that hung from each ear. A veil of delicate black cloth obscured her face, hanging from an opal-studded headband, her scalp above it a fuzz of close-cropped hair dyed a stark violet.

  At her side a great double-handed sword stood against a wooden frame, its pommel higher than her head, fixed with a fist-sized shard of amber that contained a preserved scorpion. Its scabbard was made from greenish drakona hide, bound with thread of thick bronze and gilded rivets. Though it looked unwieldy, the Jagged Blade of Aridian was wrought from a feather-light metal; not just the heirloom and symbol of the Prophet-Monarchs for fourteen generations, but a weapon of war that Humekhta herself had carried into battle just as her predecessors had done.

  But this was a matter of law, and that meant a trial by combat, a deed beneath the sacred blade and its owner. Thus, Athol had been called from his encampment downwind of the royal city.

  From behind her stepped Orhatka, the lawsmith. He had a round, soft face which masked the quick, ruthless mind that had seen him rise to the position of lawsmith before his fortieth summer. He moved with the casual grace of a swordsman, a firm believer in keeping the body fit so that the mind also remained sharp. He had never raised a weapon in trial against Athol, but several opponents, beaten in logic and law-knowledge, had resorted to desperate injunctions and fallen beneath his blade. Athol was glad not to have tested himself against Orhatka, not because of any fear or failure, but because such a dispute would mean division between Humekhta’s two closest allies.

  ‘Accused is Williarch of Bataar, for theft from the Holy ­Prophetess, namely six hundred head of whitehorn kept in the Delnoas Plain. Accused also for the illicit profiteering in his encampments by means of crooked gambling and withholding wage. Sundry lesser charges also apply.’ Orhatka gestured towards the fur-clad trader, who scowled at the lawsmith from beneath a domed felt hat, the spearpoints of Humekhta’s court guards at his back. ‘You have chosen to defend yourself by trial of arms, as is your right.’

  ‘I have,’ growled the merchant, the two words thick with his western accent.

  ‘Do you wish a weapon brought forth?’

  ‘I wish word sent to the train, for champion to come.’ His grimace eased into smugness. ‘Me champion will fight.’

  ‘You did not make a nomination of your champion when first accused,’ grumbled Orhatka.

  ‘I not know Aridian law so well,’ Williarch replied with a smirk.

  ‘Prophetess, what is your guidance?’ asked Orhatka, turning to his monarch. ‘By rights he should fight his own trial…’

  Humekhta turned her steady gaze upon the accused man, whose self-satisfaction wilted under her stare. Athol watched his tongue flick along thick lips, his fingers fidgeting with the furred hem of his coat. Williarch’s face was a mask of sweat.

  ‘What do you say, champion of mine?’ Humekhta asked, not turning her gaze towards Athol. ‘Do you wish to face this man or his champion?’

  ‘I would not have any man or woman denied justice on a technicality, Mother of the Plains. Let him have his champion.’

  Williarch’s lips twisted into a sly smile almost immediately.

  ‘But I would like Orhatka to remind the accused of his punishment should his case be proved false,’ Athol continued, eyes fixing the strange
r as though spitting him on the point of his spear.

  ‘The crimes of which he is accused carry the penalty of abandonment,’ the lawsmith announced with some relish. Williarch’s confidence faded as Orhatka continued. ‘If proven guilty, he shall be taken forth from the camp for five days into the heart of the Long Dust and there left without food or water. He shall be cut upon the arms and legs, ’til the blood runs freely. If Sigmar looks kindly upon him he shall survive long enough to find a spring or companions. If not, he shall die of thirst or by the claws and fangs of the great hunter-beasts that prowl the Long Dust.’

  ‘Send for his champion,’ declared Humekhta, rising. ‘We shall convene this court again in two days’ time.’

  She swept from the tent-room followed by a coterie of retainers, her nieces included, though Orhatka remained behind. With a flick of the hand he commanded the guards to escort Williarch back to his cage.

  ‘He is desperate,’ said Athol as the lawsmith approached.

  ‘He made no attempt to bargain for leniency – he declared for trial by arms the moment he was brought to me.’

  ‘Is he guilty?’

  Orhatka shrugged. ‘Surely that is the point of the trial?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, he is as guilty as the plains are hot. Five hundred of the queen’s whitehorns were still in his camp when Makhred’s scouts found them. The others he had already sent on to Bataar. He was brazen about it. He had three dozen of the Oldfire tribe working the herd and they complained he had been robbing them.’

  ‘Strange. The Oldfire are not meek. Why would they not simply take back what was theirs?’

  ‘I don’t know, and that concerns me. Williarch is from Bataar, a cunning serpent like all that breed, and he is altogether too confident. I think he intends to make a mockery of us. To take our livestock and whistle in our faces as he does so.’