Fyreslayers Read online

  Carving arcs of fire through the air, he hacked the first marauder in half from shoulder to groin. He tore his axe back, turning and arching under the haft, and smashed the butt across a warrior’s jaw. The two Bloodbound fell almost at the same time. His axe spun, taking off the hands of a bloodreaver that tried to jump him with two knives upraised.

  With a roar, he dropped his head and cannoned deeper into the melee.

  A bloodreaver with a crest of spikes broke through the after-glow of Dunnegar’s axe work and thrust a dagger into his side. The notched blade bent. The bloodreaver dropped the knife from broken fingers and Dunnegar took his head with a single sweep. Blood rained. Through the crimson fountain, he saw the blood shaman.

  The man – once a man – was more than twice Dunnegar’s height and almost as heavily built. Spinning his glaive one-handed until his body was blurred by it, the shaman clawed at the heavens and called for the attention of his god.

  With a hum of fine-edged steel, a throwing axe splintered the blood priest’s ribcage. The giant looked at the blade for a moment, coughed blood over the handle, and then, losing muscle control in stages, folded indelicately to the ground.

  ‘No respect for the dead,’ muttered the stranger, relaxing his throwing arm as Dunnegar finished off the last of the rabble. The rest broke and fled for their precious mountains. Dunnegar turned to glare at his unwanted saviour.

  ‘You could have made him yours if you had truly wanted him,’ the duardin stranger said.

  He was referring to the ur-gold runes hammered into Dunnegar’s slowly cooling flesh, added to many times since the day of his trial and shining dully now. Dunnegar grunted acknowledgement. Indeed he could have, but the power of ur-gold was precious and finite and not lightly tapped.

  To his slim credit, the other duardin nodded and extended a hand.

  ‘I am Aethnir, of the Sepuzkul lodge. Thank you for the help.’

  A strange name. And strange words.

  ‘Talkative for one of the Grim Brotherhood,’ Aethnir murmured sarcastically, a smile parting his beard.

  Ignoring the stranger, Dunnegar looked across the blasted foothills that Killim’s ancient lore had brought them to.

  A mist of gelid gore hung thinly in the air. It clung to the rocks and to the handful of forsaken trees that persisted here, and glazed the standards of the diverse war bands to a common, glistening crimson. While a few of those bands were still battling willingly against the Fyreslayers pushing into the highlands from the plains, the majority were ever-reddening shades disappearing back into the mountains.

  Dunnegar squinted into the scarlet dampness.

  The fog made it impossible to make out the peaks themselves, but something about their too-smooth contours imparted a frisson of unease. Looked upon directly, as now, the mountains were a jagged haze in the far distance, but caught side-on by an accidental glance, those ill-defined shapes became something other. Statues. Hard warriors whose horned helms broke the sky and whose broad shoulders were cloaked in snow.

  The blast of a horn called his attention back, dragging his gaze over a satisfyingly long and deep trail of Bloodbound dead.

  Marching at the head of a fyrd of hearthguard elite, Killim held the battle standard of the Angfyrd lodge aloft. The old battlesmith had forged the standard expressly for the great odyssey, and the fyresteel icon depicted Grimnir in his aspect as the Wanderer. The differences to Grimnir the Vengeful, or the previous standard of Grimnir the Destroyer, were subtle, and Killim had captured the ancestor god’s form masterfully.

  ‘What have I told you about… charging ahead?’ Killim wheezed.

  The hearthguard – never the most forgiving of companions – tactfully ignored the battlesmith’s exhaustion. The incline was shallow, but over many leagues taxing, and while they had merely marched it the old smith had spent the last three days and nights through hostile country reciting the five thousand year-long Angfyrd Chronicle to the rhythm of their boots.

  The battlesmith struck his standard into the rocks.

  Dunnegar offered a conciliatory mumble, Killim huffed something that suggested he was appeased, and on such a foundation their friendship would make it to the seven hundred and twentieth day of the odyssey.

  The hearthguard closed ranks around their standard, regarding Dunnegar and Aethnir with equal suspicion.

  ‘What did you mean about disrespecting the dead?’ Dunnegar asked of the stranger, ignoring the hearthguard as they would rather ignore him.

  The dark Fyreslayer pointed up into the hill country. There, under a pall where blood and smoke mingled, a great pyre burned. Dunnegar had assumed the fire to be some phenomenon related to the presence of the Goresworn.

  It turned out that he was wrong.

  ‘Come with me,’ said Aethnir solemnly. ‘I will take you to the runefather.’

  With bone weariness, Killim dragged up his standard once again and the duardin fell in behind their cousin.

  As far as anyone knew, all Fyreslayers cremated their dead. It recalled the origins of their cult in Grimnir’s demise, the infernal twinning of destruction and rebirth. It reminded the living that power could never be annihilated, only dispersed.

  The Sepuzkul’s funeral pyre burned high and hot on a mound of their fallen, tapering in the copper-tasting wind that came in off the highlands. A gathering of grimly attired duardin stood to one side, approaching the flames one by one to cast gold scavenged from the battlefield into the fire. Watching through half-lidded eyes was a magmadroth so worn and ancient that its life could only have been drawn out through some uncanny means. So far beyond its physical prime was it that the heat in its belly wasn’t even enough to clear the rime from its gums. It appeared to be in mourning for its master.

  ‘We stopped to send on our fallen,’ Aethnir explained. ‘We had not expected the dogs of Khorne to regroup so quickly.’

  ‘They ambushed you,’ said Rokkar, karl of the hearthguard, casting a weighted look over the rugged, open landscape.

  ‘They recovered quickly. The Lord of Khorne here calls himself the Griever. I do not know why, but perhaps you will soon have cause to rue the name as we do.’

  ‘Griever,’ Dunnegar muttered, turning to Killim. ‘A lieutenant of Taurak Skullcleaver, perhaps?

  Aethnir looked taken aback. ‘You know that name?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Killim, forgetting for a moment that his voice had gone three days without respite. With palpable excitement, he reached out and grasped the foreign duardin’s wrist. ‘What brings your lodge to this place?’

  ‘I suppose the same as you. We have received the call home.’

  ‘But if both our ancestors came from Fyrepeak,’ said Dunnegar, looking the macabre duardin over with a sick feeling in his belly. ‘That would make us…’

  ‘Related?’ Aethnir finished, parroting Dunnegar’s actions exactly, but with an added tincture of black humour. ‘You think you are a disappointment.’

  ‘How far have you travelled?’ Killim interrupted. Dumping Grimnir the Wanderer into Dunnegar’s unsuspecting hands, he unslung his pack and rummaged about in it until he found what he wanted. He withdrew a thick book. The pages were a dull silver, the ancient binding clad in orruk tusk ivory.

  Muttering excitedly, he cracked open the tome.

  The first page was – like all of the books Dunnegar had once lost himself in as a flameling – given to a highly detailed map drawn by the lodge’s founders. A large circle in the centre depicted the region known to the Fyreslayers of the Angfyrd lodge. Smaller circles depicting other places overlapped the first, joined by realmgates that were indicated by a runic marking. Civilizations had fallen and risen and fallen again since that map was drawn. Many of the cities it marked were rubble, but mountains, oceans: they could but hope that time and Chaos had not altered those.

  Killim stabbed his finger onto the map. �
�We took the first gate here, to the Ferroussian Sea, then followed the Orran upriver to these mountains.’

  ‘Titan’s Edge,’ Aethnir confirmed.

  ‘Then we are on the ancestors’ path.’ Killim looked upward with a relieved sigh, closed his eyes and muttered his thanks to Grimnir. ‘And you head for the same realmgate as we do.’ Dragging his finger towards the centre of the page, Killim tapped a spot within the mountain range where the silvery-coloured region they occupied overlapped another wreathed in fire.

  ‘According to our Founding Saga, the journey from Fyrepeak took four thousand days to complete.’

  Aethnir nodded. ‘Ours has taken longer.’

  The stranger turned his gaze towards the mountains, and the pyre.

  Dunnegar’s fingers flexed and tensed around the standard’s steel pole. No one knew what made the grimwraths special amongst their kin, but even though he could endure the amount of ur-gold in his body, the erratic flow of power made him restive, impatient at best, violently ill-tempered at worst. It was one thing to be aware of that. To act before he snapped and somebody lost blood was another.

  He took a deep breath, and tried not to think of the battle waiting in those mountains.

  ‘Have you been told why we’ve been called home?’

  ‘The message flame spoke of war. What other reason is there?’ With a shrug, Aethnir nodded towards the pyre. ‘Beyond that, you would have to ask the runefather.’

  A duardin in ossified ceremonial robes bearing the runic iron of a runemaster called out in an ancient tongue, and a gang of pall-bearers set to withdrawing a scorched iron pallet from the fire. From the quantity of smouldering ur-gold on the pallet and the wealth of the helm, gauntlets and belt, the crisped bones rattling inside their wargear could only have belonged to the runefather of the Sepuzkul lodge. The priest inspected the remains as they passed him, spoke some manner of blessing over them, and sent them for burial by a company of hearthguard. With their red, rune-studded torsos and powdered faces, they looked strange and unearthly.

  ‘You are burying his runes?’ said Dunnegar in surprise.

  After it was spent, ur-gold reverted to an inert state, but so far from his home and forge it would be a rare Fyreslayer who would risk using his final rune. Surely some of Grimnir’s power still lingered in those fragments.

  ‘They are his, and his soul faces more battles if he is to pass through the Underworlds,’ said Aethnir as though this should be obvious to anyone. ‘Do you not?’

  ‘We definitely do not.’

  The duardin all turned as Runemaster Rolk strode towards them with Horgan-Grimnir, his hearthguard, and a trio of grimly armoured warriors of the Sepuzkul lodge behind him.

  Walking with the aid of his runic iron, which he stabbed into the ground ahead of him, the priest glowered at all he passed. Bits of glimmering metal banged against his armour on chains, trinkets of presumably of priceless ur-gold that he had picked out from amongst the jewellery of the enemy dead.

  From the steady stream of muttered asides and the way they appeared to compete with each other for the right to be first in the line, the three Sepuzkul were likely the sons of the late runefather. Their wargear was black, ribbed, and hatched with runes that looked like tally marks. One wore a magmadroth skull as a helm and simply by the short shrift with which he put down his brothers he clearly held himself as the favourite to succeed.

  Horgan came last, trailing his long cloak of gold-etched steel. As was his way, he allowed his molten stare and weapon arm to do his talking. His immense latchkey grandaxe rested across his shoulder and dripped a trail of blood behind him. None met that gaze, even Dunnegar, though a part of him had longed to try it ever since the day of his trial.

  ‘A waste of a bloody blessing is what it is,’ Rolk scowled.

  ‘Your assistance was timely and appreciated,’ said the skull-helmed prince, leaning into his barbed spear and huffing out his bleached cheeks into a grimace. ‘But we’ll send off our own as we always have. I suggest you head on your way and do whatever it is you do with yours.’

  ‘We’d be better off together,’ said Dunnegar, earning a sharp stare from everyone for his lack of propriety. ‘A lot more Bloodbound where these came from.’

  ‘Always,’ Aethnir echoed with a thin smile.

  ‘We have a way around them,’ said the helmed Sepuzkul runeson. From the pride with which he said it, it was plain that if there was a way it was because he had found it. ‘It took us years to explore the trails up in those mountains, but we have found one that leads almost all the way to the gate.’

  Killim grinned, closing his book with a tink of metal. ‘You’ll show us?’

  ‘And why should I? Has your lodge bled itself for the Griever to find this trail? No. Find your own way and to the Lord of Undeath with you all.’

  With a rumble of exasperation, Rolk rounded on the Sepuzkul runeson.

  ‘And if I swear an oath to avenge that lost blood with the life of the Griever, would you let us join you on your trail?’

  The four Sepuzkul Fyreslayers looked aghast at the suggestion.

  Aethnir explained. ‘Such oaths we swear only for gold.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Rolk muttered. ‘The rate you throw it away.’

  ‘You would… do this?’ said one of the other runesons.

  The runemaster merely crossed his arms, offended at having his conviction questioned and sincerity doubted.

  ‘I won’t allow it,’ rumbled Horgan-Grimnir. Slowly. Finally. ‘Your skills are needed.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Dunnegar, voice rising. ‘If it’s to be done at all then it should be me.’

  ‘Bah! I was wringing the necks of the blood-crazed before your grandfathers grew out of wooden axes.’

  His gaze was fire, and even Horgan-Grimnir met it uneasily.

  But Runemaster Rolk was harder than the magmadroth scale he wore and just as hot on the inside. It was a miracle he had restrained himself this long. Horgan-Grimnir shook his head, but did not argue the point again. None present doubted that the ancient Fyreslayer would and could do exactly as he vowed.

  ‘On the one thousand and forty-second day, the realmgate came within our grasp at last. A mighty battle it was to be, a red day, a grim day…’

  The Angfyrd Odyssey

  The Lord of Khorne who called himself the Griever thrust his lance into the tumbling snow and bellowed his challenge. His voice cracked with the sound of impacting skulls and echoed hollowly from behind the fused teeth of the metallic skull that encased his head as a helm. The skins of Rolk and those duardin that had gone after him fluttered from poles mounted in the harness of the brazen juggernaut the Chaos warrior rode as a mount, while the hell-steel of his armour was fused with the gaping skulls of duardin and countless others.

  His horde took up his cry. They coated the mountain like a blood slick. Fifty thousand warriors armoured in crimson and draped in the dead skins of men and beasts stamped their feet, rattled weapons above their heads, and gave vent to a single wordless howl that would surely have brought the mountains down upon them all had the Titan’s Edge not been firmly under the heel of the Lord of Skulls.

  Looking across the gully from halfway up the facing mountain, Horgan-Grimnir wordlessly sat back on the violet-scaled shoulders of his magmadroth and raised his grandaxe high. The challenge was accepted.

  The Fyreslayers of both lodges, diminished as they were, swore new oaths.

  The preceding year had taught them why this dark champion was known as the Griever. The Sepuzkul Fyreslayers set up a great lament to see their dead so mistreated, but none brooded on the insult more than Horgan-Grimnir.

  He stared across the chasm with a look that could have soldered fyresteel. Affected by its master’s anger, the magmadroth scratched its claws into the rock and bellowed. The runefather had always preferred to lead his warriors
on foot as one of them, but since the snowy night that his son’s mount, Caldernorn, had returned alone he had sworn that they would not be parted until both had vengeance.

  Aethnir knelt in front of his fyrd of vulkite berzerkers, who silently joined him on one knee to pray. Their words were strange but still directed towards Grimnir. Beside them, Killim hoisted the icon of Grimnir the Wanderer and in a hoarse voice recounted tales of ancient triumphs over the chosen of Khorne. The auric hearthguard cheered the saga, stamping their feet faster, harder, as if to drown out the thunder from across the gorge.

  Dunnegar looked across the gully. The mountain was a totem to the Dark Gods on an infernal scale. From its snow-swirled lower reaches to its majestic heights, it had been hewn into the idolatrous likeness of the Griever.

  Its peak was a terrifying replica of the Chaos champion’s skull helm, a mile high, and through sweeps of snow, Dunnegar saw the realmgate they had sacrificed hearth and kin to find. It was inset into one of the eye sockets, ripples of fire shimmering apparently at random below its smooth, metal arch. The Griever and his chosen few stood by their banners on the top of the cheekbone, his horde spilling as far out and down as far as Dunnegar could see.

  The Fyreslayers were on a higher, secondary peak, the two lodges occupying a long rump of stone a thousand feet wide.

  It was a thumb.

  Behind them were more rocky bumps, and an incredible stone lance rising precipitously into the dark sky.

  The snow was starting to come down more heavily, and Dunnegar shook it from his beard.

  A sour-faced runesmiter of the Sepuzkul lodge stood at the ledge. The duardin spread bare muscular arms wide as if to draw the gulf to him, a latch-axe in one hand and a forge key of pure ur-gold in the other. The Sepuzkul Fyreslayers ended their prayers with a dirge-like hum. Dunnegar and the Angfyrd lodge joined them until the mountainside resonated with deep duardin voices.

  Chanting around, under, and against the dirge, the runesmiter smote the ferrule of his weapon on the rock and thrust his forge key out over the gully.