Hammer and Bolter: Issue 20 Read online

  ‘Your lands are empty, Norscan – all of the other settlements have been abandoned. Tell me where your legendary Ironpelt warriors are. Now.’

  The old man struggled to breathe, summoning every ounce of strength he could muster before responding.

  ‘If it is warriors you seek then there is… nothing for you here,’ he choked. ‘All of our men have… taken to the long-ships to raid the… southern kingdoms.’

  ‘So it appears,’ Vhorgath replied. ‘What I want to know is… why?’

  ‘Why?’ the man wheezed.

  ‘I’m no fool. This is not the raiding season. Tribes across Norsca are already preparing for the winter. The long-ships are back in port, the menfolk fill their beds beside their wives. But not in your lands.’

  The man nodded, as best he could with Ruaddon’s fist clenched around his throat.

  ‘The… plague…’ he managed, just as the light faded from his eyes.

  Vhorgath nodded to Ruaddon, who let go of the unconscious old man. His limp body fell into the dirt, and a woman scrambled to tend to him, kneeling beside his head.

  She looked up to the towering figures of Vhorgath and his lieutenant, her face twisted with anger.

  ‘He spoke the truth,’ she said. ‘It came with the last spring thaw. A fever that spread through our entire tribe in one cycle of the whitemoon. All of our lands suffered. Offerings to Neiglen did nothing to stop it.’

  Vhorgath narrowed his eyes. ‘But something must have, unless I converse here with a village of ghosts,’ he growled.

  ‘As the summer faded a great sacrifice was made, a terrible rite that gave the Plague-Lord the best of our tribe, maidens and warriors alike. Only then did the fever leave us. Now we are few. Our herds are nearly gone, our people are weak. Our men did no raiding all summer, and it was only in these last few days, when they should have been returning to us, that those who remain sailed away. Our survival depends on what they can bring back to us.’

  ‘So the great tribe of Ironpelt dies with the whimper of pox and not the clamour of battle,’ said Ruaddon, some of the nearby warriors laughing mockingly. ‘A pity.’

  ‘We have nothing for you,’ she wailed, still cradling the old man in her lap. ‘Fight your war without us.’

  Vhorgath stared down at her, saying nothing.

  ‘Do you fail to understand me, or do you still disbelieve what your own cursed eyes see?’ she demanded.

  The Chaos lord looked away as if in frustration, or merely boredom. ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘I believe every word.’

  ‘Then begone. Take your foul beasts and go back the way you came. Leave these lands forever,’ she said.

  Vhorgath turned back, his eyes flashing like a hawk.

  ‘That sounds like a command,’ he said. ‘Perhaps my senses do fail me, so long have we been in this forsaken land.’

  He turned to his second. ‘Ruaddon, did it not sound to you as though this wench commanded me?’

  The armoured giant looked to his master. He’d seen that gaze before. It always heralded violence, and pain. ‘That it did, my lord,’ he said.

  ‘How amusing.’

  Vhorgath turned away from the rebellious woman, addressing all the gathered folk of Volfskul. ‘Since you do not possess the resource we seek, you are worthless to me. And so we will indeed leave you.’

  The villagers looked to one another, uncertainly. Vhorgath looked once more to Ruaddon.

  ‘Knights, scour the village,’ he said, loud enough for all to hear. ‘Take whatever you wish, whatever you can find. Tear down every wall if you must but take anything of value left in this pathetic place. We will leave them whatever remains.’

  Vhorgath sneered at the woman, turning away as he left Ruaddon to carry out his orders. He looked out towards the open seas for a moment, before spurring his mount.

  A cry of defiance halted him.

  It came from behind, the angry yelp of a woman. Another followed, and another. As Vhorgath turned, Ruaddon saw an arrow whistle past his head, so close that the feather fletching cut across his master’s bare cheek.

  In an instant the once-passive Norscans had sprung into action. Leaping from every direction, they pounced like a wolf pack. Armed with whatever they could grab – wood-axes, pitchforks and scythes – screeching women and grim-faced old men leapt upon the black riders from all sides. Even maidens and young boys came at them, hurling rocks and striking at the horses’ legs.

  ‘So, the spirit of Ironpelt is not quite dead after all,’ Ruaddon shouted. ‘Though it soon will be!’

  Scores of villagers came at the Chaos warriors, jumping from behind shuttered doors, and leaping out from bales of damp straw. The townsfolk outnumbered them, but Vhorgath rose up in his saddle at the scent of blood on the wind.

  ‘Feast upon these barbarians, brothers! Bring your swords to bear! Let them quench their thirst with weak Norscan blood!’

  The men did not need to be told. The black warriors responded with vigour, setting about them with blade and burning torch.

  Ruaddon managed to fall in next to his master as the Norscans raged in a frenzy of blades and screams. Safe for the moment behind the iron wall of his warriors’ defensive circle, he reared on his mount to survey the scene.

  The Norscans surged, women and children tearing and slashing at the Chaos warriors with the kind of feral ardor known only among the half-savage tribes of the North. The peasants tore at horses and shields, clawing with their bare hands as the village around them erupted in flames.

  Ruaddon howled as he rode out into the heart of the swarm, slashing with his great two-handed sword. Blood and entrails and broken limbs rained down as villagers fell at his every stroke. He bounded through the thick of the fray, killing anew with each step.

  Still the crowd swarmed about them, defiant.

  Old men, drooling and frothing like rabid dogs, seized his saddle and stirrups, their grip as tenacious as the cold stare in their eyes. He saw one of his comrades pulled from his horse, dragged beneath the press of bodies, sucked into a living riptide. To Ruaddon’s horror, the Norscans tore the screaming warrior apart.

  Ruaddon rallied his men. Calling them into formation around him, he led the black riders forth in a merciless counter-attack. Fanning out across the entire expanse of Volfskul, they stomped in lumbering, monstrous strides atop their armoured beasts, hoping to split the mob and drive them across the blood-soaked tundra like rats before a flood. Even so, the Norscans held their ground for as long as they were able to stand, fighting back with boundless, wild aggression.

  But the rampaging Chaos warriors cut them down. Severed heads fell among mangled corpses. Bones shattered. Sharpened steel carved flesh in vicious strokes, one after another. Wails of agony eclipsed the whirl of axes. Those few souls not fortunate enough to die by the blade were thrown down into the muck, the life crushed from their bodies by iron-shod hooves as the behemoth warhorses trampled over fields of ruin.

  Volfskul was a village no more. It was a field of butchery. More than an hour after the last war-cry had been silenced, the armoured warriors moved between smouldering ruins and crumbling huts slowly, mindful of any survivors lurking in the debris with murder on their minds.

  Ruaddon still sat atop his steed, though others were dismounted and tending to the grisly task Vhorgath had set them. He always ordered, at the close of battle, the sign for which he was known – and loathed – all across the frozen northern realms.

  As they had done a hundred times before, the warriors used their blades to sharpen the ends of charred timbers, this time the remains of the village long-house. Having readied the pikes, they rammed them through decapitated corpses, throat first. Then they lifted the gruesome poles, jammed the severed heads atop them and drove the opposite ends into the ground, elevating a horrific parody of the human form: beaten, broken cadavers suspended upside-down, their displaced heads crowning their final disgrace.

  They would remain there, to rot and feed the scavenger bird
s until their bones fell away. Until then, any who came upon the savagery would see the dreadful signature of Vhorgath, etched into the landscape in blood and ravaged flesh.

  Stalking the far side of the ruins for yet more bodies for his men to defile, Ruaddon caught a glimmer of movement beneath a pile of rubble. The jumble of crumbled stone and burnt wood was heaped beside a half-standing wall, deep enough to hide a person…

  As he approached, a hand pushed through the wreckage. A figure followed – cloaked and slight of build, it crawled from the ruins as though hatching from an egg.

  ‘Hold, Norscan rat!’ Ruaddon called out.

  The command went unheeded. Instead the small figure jumped from the rubble and darted across a smoke-filtered alley.

  Giving chase, Ruaddon cornered the refugee at the edge of what had once been the main square. The place lay in ruin just as the remainder of the village, the long-house collapsed into a smoking mess of beams and rubble, flanked by a blood-stained scree slope piled up with the bodies that had not yet been impaled.

  Bearing down, Ruaddon called out again. ‘Hold!’

  The other riders filed in behind him. With his prey trapped in the corner between a sheer face of stone and a pair of broken pillars, Ruaddon reined his mount back. He moved closer, his sword pointed at the lone survivor.

  The figure was cornered, but not subdued. Trying to escape through the space between the two columns, its hood fell away, and to Ruaddon’s surprise, he found himself facing a young woman. Though she was backed against the crumbling wall, her eyes seethed with a familiar, defiant fury.

  The Chaos warrior approached her, now flanked by two riders with their axes still dripping red. An eerie quiet had descended.

  ‘Archers, draw.’

  ‘Ruaddon! Halt your bowmen!’ Vhorgath shouted from across the desolation.

  The lieutenant turned to see his master approaching. ‘My lord, she is the last of them. Should we not finish what we have begun?’ he replied.

  Vhorgath steered his stallion over and dismounted. He stepped between the hulking warrior and the cowering village girl. Ruaddon supposed he’d seen something that interested him.

  ‘Not yet,’ Vhorgath said, pointing to the girl. ‘Look at her. She shows no marks of battle. No blood, no sign of wounds endured or inflicted. This one alone among all of her fellow villagers did not join in the fight against us.’

  ‘Then she is either the smartest of her tribe, or the most cowardly,’ Ruaddon sneered.

  Vhorgath lifted his sword, using the point of it to probe at the girl, drawing the flat of his massive steel blade along the length of her arm and then pointing it only inches away from her face. She did not flinch.

  ‘It appears she is no coward,’ he whispered.

  She was ragged and shivering. Her lank blonde hair fell all around the soft features of her face. She was no more than a teenager, but despite Vhorgath’s malevolent appearance, the waif did not quail at the sight of him.

  ‘Who are you, girl?’ Vhorgath asked.

  ‘Freya is my name, daughter of the Ironpelt skald Ragnar,’ she said.

  ‘The child of a poet? Why don’t you fear me, little one?’

  She stared back at the sinister knight with a gaze as cold as his own.

  ‘I fear no man, for my eyes have looked upon the greatest warrior of the Ironpelt tribe. The most fearsome killer ever to sail the seas of the north,’ she said.

  ‘Have they now?’ he said. ‘We have ridden across all of the Ironpelt lands, and found not a single man worthy of bearing a sword. Who is this warrior you speak of?’

  Freya stared back with a kind of daring pride.

  ‘The Talon of Khorne himself: Scyla Anfingrimm.’

  The words brought a pause to Vhorgath and his warriors; a hush of awe among men who had seen the fires of hell itself. For a long moment, no one made a sound. Ruaddon looked to his master, then back at Freya.

  ‘Scyla Anfingrimm?’ he finally said, breaking the brief silence. ‘The ruthless murderer of Black Gulch? The renowned dwarf-slayer?’

  ‘The very same. We know that his name is a curse across the southling lands,’ Freya replied.

  ‘Tell us, little girl, where have you seen this most savage of all Norscans?’ Vhorgath asked.

  ‘He dwells up in the mountains, on the far side of Broken-Axe Peak, not more than a single day’s journey from here. This village was once his own.’

  Ruaddon scoffed, despite the uneasy silence that had fallen over his comrades, but Vhorgath shot him an angry glare.

  ‘You mock the name of Scyla?’ he said. ‘If any man has laid more skulls at the foot of the Blood God’s throne, I have not heard the tale.’

  Ruaddon’s incredulity melted, drifting towards annoyance. ‘Scyla Anfingrimm has not been seen since the slaughter of the gorgers at Undermountain, many years ago,’ he answered. ‘No one knows for certain what became of him.’

  ‘That was some time ago, this much is true,’ Vhorgath muttered.

  ‘He could be a broken old man by now, if he still draws breath at all,’ Ruaddon said. ‘And what reason do we have to believe her? Poets are nothing more than liars with silver tongues.’

  Vhorgath looked back at Freya.

  ‘My lieutenant is right, little one. Why should we believe you? Why shouldn’t I just kill you and mount you on a pike for the ravens like the rest of your people?’

  ‘You don’t have to believe my words alone. I can take you to him,’ she replied. ‘I promise you, the favour of the Blood God has made him more fearsome now than he has ever been.’

  ‘Intriguing,’ Vhorgath said. ‘Finally, a prize worthy of our time spent in this barren land.’

  Ruaddon prickled at his side. ‘You’re taking this girl at her word?’ he protested.

  ‘She speaks the truth in at least one regard,’ said Vhorgath. ‘Scyla Anfingrimm is said to have been a raider without equal among the Norscans, as merciless and cruel as he was powerful. Though I do not know why he no longer raises his axe with the rest of his tribe, I can think of no better addition to our horde.’

  ‘And if she’s lying?’

  Vhorgath considered this, and placed a hand upon Ruaddon’s skull-faced pauldron. He directed his answer to Freya.

  ‘If you’re lying, little girl, I’ll give you to Ruaddon. Can you guess what he likes to do to little girls who lie?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You won’t like it.’ Ruaddon grinned. ‘Only after you’ve begged for death, pleading for hours, will I consider cutting your throat.’

  Freya stared back at Ruaddon with an insolent glare. Then she turned her icy-blue eyes to Vhorgath, and pointed to the rocky mountain path.

  ‘The trail begins there,’ she said.

  Vhorgath, Ruaddon and three of their chosen riders formed the delegation which would ride out to meet with Scyla, and in short order Freya led them away from the coastal plains, up to the higher ground beyond the ruins of Volfskul. The rest of the Chaos warriors remained behind to finish the grisly monument to their master’s brutality.

  The cold sun climbed in the sky as she ushered them into the skeletal remains of the pine forests. The trees were mostly bare, scattered clumps of brown needles clinging to desiccated branches and winter-ravaged trunks. As promised, the winding trail stretched through the dead woods, bristling on every side with sharp, dry brambles.

  After more than an hour the trees began to thin out as the trail took them to an even higher elevation. Rocky, open ground soon prevailed, dotted with patches of yellow grass and thorny brush. Above them they could see the serried peaks of Broken Axe flirting with the clouds, tiers of frozen crags and wind-scourged hills that seemed to vanish in the mist.

  Ruaddon held Freya in front of him in his iron saddle, while Vhorgath rode in silence behind them. After some time, as the cold winds eased, the Chaos lord rode up beside them.

  ‘We have followed your directions for hours now,’ he said. ‘How much further is it to Scy
la’s haven?’

  ‘Still a while,’ she replied.

  Ruaddon groaned. He knew that his master grew impatient, but had not yet been brought to ire.

  ‘There are many tales of Scyla’s deeds, sagas my father told to me as soon as I was old enough to understand them,’ she offered. ‘As our journey is long, might you care to hear one?’

  Ruaddon clamped a hand on her shoulder, sending a shudder through her slender frame.

  ‘Hold your tongue, girl,’ he said. Then he lowered his voice and spoke directly into her ear. ‘Lest I tear it from your mouth.’

  Vhorgath laughed. ‘Ruaddon likes people to fear him. It’s one of his better qualities, in fact. And while I admit I enjoy the smell of fear as much as he does, I think in this moment anything you can tell us of Scyla Anfingrimm is worth more than the thrill of watching you beg Ruaddon for mercy.’

  Freya looked back at him with an uncertain face. Vhorgath answered her with a call to his men.

  ‘Pin back your ears, you motherless wretches,’ he said, ‘and hear of the triumphs of Scyla.’

  Freya gathered her grimy robes about her, breathing deep as she readied herself to spin the tale. As ordered, the dark riders listened.

  ‘Back many years, in the waning days of the seventh summer since the Graeling Jarl Grundval Fang-Scar slew his uncle, the usurper Bjarn Baerrok,’ she began, ‘a curse fell upon the folk of the Bay of Blades, and they soon knew a suffering greater than the bane of war or pestil–’

  ‘Oh, do get to the point, girl,’ Ruaddon bawled, his patience wearing thin. ‘I already strain to hear you over the whistling of this damnable wind.’

  Freya continued, ignoring him. ‘For a month, no long-ships put into port. The Graeling raiders, ever the scourge of Bretonnia, did not return with the frost-winds of winter, as they had for as many generations as the tribe had dwelt beneath Stoneclaw Mountain. No ships laden with gold sailed in from the cool mists; no dragon-boats carrying slaves in fetters, barrels of mead and bushels of barley to sustain them through the coming storms.