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Harbinger - S P Cawkwell

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Harbinger

S P Cawkwell

‘Let him call for me. I won’t go.’

Everyone in our village has an opinion of the elder. Me, I know him best as a stubborn old fool who places too much value on his pride and appearance. He’s proud of what we’ve become. From the simple hunter-gatherers we were when he was but a boy, the years have seen us become farmers. Our existence isn’t easy, far from it. The ground does not invite healthy crop growth, and our meat comes mostly from what we find in the woods and the fish that come from the river flowing close by. Not easy, but the way we live is better than some of the more primitive tribes further north.

I have heard tell that a little way to the south is the edge of a great civilisation. Perhaps my children, or theirs, will find that place. It isn’t something likely to happen in my lifetime.

Whatever it is that keeps the elder stubborn, he is fully exerting it right now. He shakes his head when I repeat our visitor’s request to speak with him.

‘No! I won’t be dragged to a stranger’s deathbed. I owe him nothing.’

‘But…’

He places a finger to his lips suggesting that I stop my gentle rebuke. ‘I know. You’re going to tell me he’s dying. Well, that’s his problem. He is a barbarian. Why should I care? Where his kind go, trouble follows in their wake. I will see him when his body is ready for the fire. Not before.’

The elder leans back in the fur-backed chair and folds his arms across his chest. I am angry with him. It is irrational and I do not quite know why. His opinion is right, of course. The crude savages of the mountain tribes have no business bringing their blood thirst amongst my people. But this man is dying and he has asked for the elder again and again. To explain himself. His request is most sincere, of that I have no doubt.

The fire throws flickering shadows onto the wall of the elder’s hut, shadows that twist and writhe without form or shape. I consider him for a while longer. The firelight itself is a symbol of his status and power. None of us have hearth fires in our huts, bar him. I am allowed a cook fire for the brewing of my potions and unguents, but otherwise all food is cooked at the communal pit outside.

The man is older than I am by some fifteen years – no great age difference, but enough that he has outlived his enemies and is considered wiser than any other in the village. Moreover, he is a warrior of our people. I am an aging healer, the one they call Old Mother. Hardly flattering, but accurate enough.

The elder has been our tribe’s leader for ten summers, during which time he has led us to many victories against the endless attacks from the northern tribes. He has led us in opportunistic strikes against them, too. These attacks of retribution have rarely brought us anything but the loss of life. He is getting old now. War no longer sings to him as it once did. His arthritic legs and aching knees no longer carry him to the front of the battle line. His time is short. But it is his time to spend how he will.

Stubborn fool. I press on, driven by an old guilt that gnaws away at me. The guilt that came following the death of a stranger I turned away, many years ago. That lack of compassion brought about one of the most terrible battles between several tribes – including ours – I can ever recall. All because I was young and foolish and said ‘no’ to a man in need. For the rest of my life I have attempted to atone for this sin.

‘Please,’ I say for the fourth time. ‘I beg you. Grant a dying man a final favour.’ Then it hits me. The right way to get his compliance. ‘If we deny him this, how are we any better than he is? Yes, he is a barbarian, but death is the same for all. We should honour his death with as much respect as if he were one of our own. Would you let one of the village pass into the arms of the ancestors without telling their last tale?’

My words strike true. I see a look of guilt flicker in the elder’s eyes. A surge of triumph wells up within my breast as he chews on his lower lip. Even the elder knows better than to question the age-old traditions of our people. He fixes me with a long, thoughtful look and finally says the words I have been waiting to hear.

‘Very well. I will speak with this man. But when he is dead, he is taken to the edge of the village and burned outside our borders. Is that clear, healer?’

‘Crystal clear.’

I keep my expression solemn but the burden in my soul is lightened immeasurably by his agreement to see the barbarian. For two nights and three days the man has lain in my hut, clinging to life with the tenacity of the first flowers of spring. The gash in his chest weeps constantly and yet he has not died. I cannot close the wound. Nothing I do will stop the blood from flowing. I have tried medicinal remedies. I have even tried drawing the wound closed with catgut, but it bursts anew every time.

His skin is clammy: white and pale as a ghost. Until I encountered him, I had no idea that a man could suffer so much and yet not die. Such a tenacity in clinging to a shattered existence is a thing that lies far beyond my ken. His desperation to speak to the elder, before he is taken by whatever savage gods he worships, is curiously admirable.

I lead the elder to the hut where I work my craft. I have almost as high a standing amongst the villagers as he does and I am never ungrateful for the status it brings me. I was born with a gift – a natural understanding of the medicinal properties of herbs and plants. It has brought health and a god-blessed longevity to our people, a strong, hardy folk. We reach the hut and my hand hesitates on the door.

‘Prepare yourself,’ I warn the elder. ‘What you are about to see isn’t pleasant.’ He steels himself, though a lifetime of struggle and war has already shown him many ways a man might perish. He nods, a curt, anxious gesture. I open the door and the stench of death instantly reaches out with its acrid, coppery fingers to draw us in.

The air is tainted with the stink of putrefying flesh. I have treated the wound over and over, but infection is still taking hold. Combined with the man’s natural reek, that of a born warrior to whom bathing has always been anathema, the air within this room is a miasmic haze of vileness. The elder gags and makes no effort to hide it. I have gotten used to the smell over the past day or so. Without a word, I hand him a pungent bag, filled with a variety of herbs, strung onto a piece of cord. He places it over his head and brings the linen pouch to his nose, inhaling the clean scent deeply. It dispels the worst of the aroma.

Our ‘guest’ lies on the floor, a sheet loosely covering his body. My well-trained eyes note that the blood has seeped through the fabric again causing it to stick to his skin. He is a savage in every sense of the word. When he arrived, he was naked from the waist up so I have left him that way. The muscles of his torso are tightly knotted and the swarthy flesh that is exposed by the sheet bears primitive tattoos – symbology of some kind. His hair, blond and long, is tangled and matted, and the face, broad and brutish – at least what I can make out of it beneath the matted beard – is contorted with the terrible pain of his injury.

‘I am here,’ says the elder between sniffs of the scented pouch. ‘Speak to me.’

The warrior turns his head with agonised slowness towards the sound of the elder’s voice. A slow smile changes the aspect of his face in a remarkable way. I pick up the bowl of water that stands atop a table and move towards him. With gentle care, I peel back the sheet from the terrible rent in his torso, a blow that should have killed him outright.

‘This is our village elder,’ I say in my best soothing tone as I begin for the thousandth time to cleanse the stinking wound. ‘I promised you I would bring him to you. And here he is.’

The man says something to me in his guttural native tongue and I shake my head. ‘I cannot understand you. Speak as you did before. In the common tongue.’ The elder looks at me sharply and I know what he is thinking. Although some of the northern tribes have migrated south and become entirely more civilised, we have a shared ancestry that can never be denied. As such, there is a core of language in which every tribal dialect is firmly rooted. For people like the village elder, an old man who remembers harder times, the cant is a painful reminder of what we once were.

When he finally speaks, he does so with great difficulty. The shapes of the unfamiliar sounds do not come easily to him and what little strength remains within him is focused on keeping him breathing. But slowly, agonisingly so, the tale begins to shape. The light is seeping out of the day, what is left of the sun sinking below the trees. He captivates us with his words and I am reminded of the Skalds, preserving the history of the tribes in stories passed down from one generation to the next. He paints such a vivid picture that it is as clear to us as if we stood at his side, watching the series of catastrophic events unfold. In the grand theatre of our mind’s eye, we relive the warrior’s tale.

The warriors were weary as they trod the long road home. The campaign had been hard-fought, but they returned triumphant. They did not return without loss, either, for they bore the bodies of the victorious dead on makeshift litters that they carried through the ever-thickening forests that would lead them ultimately to their families. When they got there, there would be long and complicated rituals for the dead and the fallen. There would be shorter, but no less complex, rituals for the victorious living. There would be much feasting and celebration, and there would be stories.

Little wonder it was, then, that the war band moved with increasing spring in its step.

The trophies of battle were carried with reverence by some of the younger warriors. Those for whom this had been the first foray into the life that was the clan’s lot. The need to protect and defend what was theirs from those who tried to take it. For those trespassers, there was no quarter given.

A beast of a man walked at the head of the returning army. Powerful shoulders and a thickly muscled torso strained at the remains of a tunic that had once covered him. His face was a dark mass of whorls: tattoos that held important symbolism to his people and some that held important symbolism to him personally. Dedications to the tribe’s gods, to their elders, to their history… all of them created a mass of dark colour that left him with a threatening aspect. He was followed by those who lauded his extraordinary demonstrations of heroic bravery. Songs would do no justice to his acts of courage and bravery, but already verses were forming in the heads of those who were musically inclined.

Yes, the fight had been long and arduous, but it was over now. A great cry went up from the front of the trudging party as the first home fires were spotted curling about the tree line. The welcoming scents beckoned them forward and a certain urgency hastened their steps.

Home.

It was not much to look at. A few rickety wooden huts, accompanied by a larger number of tents and lean-to structures. A small corral off to one side housed what little livestock the villagers managed – a few goats for milk and several chickens who squawked and scattered all across the settlement. There were not many people there to greet them. Most had been present for the battle. Only the very youngest and most elderly as well as women who had been deemed too important to lose to the enemy had remained.

As they came closer, the group allowed their leader to step across the threshold of the clan’s village. He was greeted by four men whose faces were hidden behind elaborately decorated wooden masks. Each bore a unique design, and somewhere on the face of the warrior at the head of the army, the twin could be found amongst his many tattoos. One, wearing a mask that was painted to represent a stylised skull, stepped forward.

‘Step no further. Speak now to us. Speak to the Godtouched. Is the day won?’

‘The day is won,’ replied the army’s leader, the people’s champion. He dropped first to one knee and then the other before prostrating himself fully at the feet of the four, lowering his face until his nose touched the ground. When he spoke again, it was muffled by the earth at the feet of the Godtouched. ‘The day is won. Victory belongs to our people. All hail the return of Edred.’

‘You led them to this victory,’ said the man in a bird-like mask. ‘Rise up now, Edred. Rise up and receive the honours due.’ He put out a gnarled hand to the prone warrior, noting the fresh scars that his body carried, clearly visible through the hacked and mangled remnants of his leather tunic. Edred slowly raised his head and then accepted the hand of the elder, rising to his feet and being borne aloft on the soaring call of his name as the tribe demanded tales of the battle and enemies vanquished. ‘The honour of the War Leader is yours. It is well-earned.’

The warriors poured into the village with enthusiasm after the ritual of return had been observed – greeted with joy by those they had left behind and sorrow by those to who they brought the news of ultimate demise. But such sorrow could not last in the wake of tales of a great enemy vanquished by the people. Edred sought his mate in the crowd, but struggled to spot her amidst the throng. His three children, all boys, had been too young to bear blades this time. But next time…

His name was called over and over, a wave of adulation that was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. His pride swelled almost to bursting and for a fleeting moment, he allowed himself the luxury of ego.

Edred! Edred! Edred!

Two syllables repeated over and over, the sounds overlapping until his name was completely indistinguishable. He was forcibly raised onto the shoulders of the warriors, who had deposited the bodies of the fallen into the care of the women, and carried to the central ritual circle. Jostled uncomfortably, he did not object. All eyes were on him.

They worship me. The knowledge was stirring a passion within his breast: a lust for life and battle superheated his blood until he felt he could not contain the sheer exuberance any longer. Edred threw back his head, letting loose a bestial and feral roar of celebration. Let them worship him. He was divine. Thoughts of his family fled from his mind as he bathed in the adulation of his people.

They were still chanting his name over and over, and he soaked it up with the thirst of a dying man drinking a last cup of mead. He relished this moment with the same hunger that had driven him to the position of War Leader over the past years. From boy to man, Edred’s history was paved with the corpses of his many victims. Fearless on the battlefield, bold and cunning with his strategies, he had led his people to victory after victory. He glanced briefly across the head of the throng that surrounded him. Beyond their packed bodies, he saw three of the older women of the village engaged in the practice of anointing the fallen with sweet-smelling oil, painting three circles onto the faces of the dead so that they would be welcomed by the lords beyond into eternity. When the task was complete, the Godtouched who spoke for the Lord of Death would oversee the burying of their bodies at the totem in the east of the village.

Caterwauling shouts came from the press of bodies – a call for a re-telling of the story. But there were things that had yet to be attended to. The presentation of the trophy. The head of the leader of the enemy army. Edred laid a hand on the cloth sack slung over his shoulder. The bottom was soaked with dark blood, crusted from the return journey, but he opened it and reached in. He held up his other hand, trying to bring the people to silence. Gradually, the howling and cheering began to ebb, like the tide washing back from the shore until an eerie silence descended.

‘My people,’ said Edred, and he had no need to raise his voice. They hung on his every word. He welcomed it. He hungered for it. This was what it was, he thought, to be great. I am strong. I am invincible. His eyes raked across everything: the buildings, the ritual wailings of the Godtouched at the Lord’s totem, the people who gazed at him with total adoration. ‘My people. Our enemy is defeated! The foes who strove to rob us of our land are meat for the crows and we emerge as the victors! The years of suffering at their hands are ended. The future is ours!’

The silence was shattered by a fresh round of screaming delight. Edred held up his hand again and once more a shroud of peace settled gradually over their shoulders. They held onto every word he uttered, spellbound by each syllable, and he basked in their adulation. Why not drag it out just that little longer? His fingers closed around the blood-matted hair of the disembodied head within the sack.

‘With each hour, the battle grew fiercer,’ he said keeping his voice low enough that the people had to strain to hear him speak. ‘For all the hatred we bear for our enemies, they fight as well as the Headsman’s own. We lost many fine warriors to the kiss of their axes and the cowardly shots from their bows. But we would not be denied. We fought our way through their front line and when their shield wall broke, we went among them as wolves among sheep.’ A slow smile spread across his bloodstained and dirty face.

Edred was considered a handsome man amongst his people. To those outside the tribe, he was one step removed from a feral beast. The tattoos and facial hair coupled with his vast size made him seem more animal than man. His face had, over the course of the last few days of battle, picked up fresh scars, and matted gore had dried in his sandy, blond beard and long, plaited hair. His face and body became animated as he told the tale, his hands expressive, his voice low and filled with the drama of recollection.

‘The mountains have been their lands forever, but we broke them upon their slopes. We pulled them from their holes and towers and set fires in their caves. They hid like cowards behind their walls, but we would not be denied. We broke their shields. We broke their gates.’ His hands curled into fists and he beat them against his chest. Elsewhere in the crowd, the steady rhythm was picked up and accompanied the remainder of his tale.

‘We fought to get into their long-hall for hours and still the stubborn bastards refused to die. Say what you will of our enemy, they knew how to cling to life. But it did not last. We slaughtered the warriors at their door and crossed the threshold. We found their leader hiding behind more of his warriors, too fearful to join them on the front line. His death was a truly glorious thing. Much blood was spilled as he watched, impotent and useless. He was old. Past his time. We killed his men. We gathered up his treasures. When I took my sword to him…’ He patted the hilt of the vast weapon that he wore strapped to his back. ‘With a single stroke, we took his head as well!’

With those words, he dragged out the head of the enemy general, holding it aloft. The steel-grey hair was as blood-matted as his own, forked and plaited beards drooped from the square jaw. ‘As I slew him, I dedicated the kill to the lord of battle. Blood for the blood god!’ He screamed the last aloud to the heavens. ‘Blood for the blood god!’

The cry was picked up and repeated around the village, a great chorus of voices that united in purpose as they called out to their bloodthirsty deity to somehow accept the sacrifices that they had laid at the feet of his skull throne. To accept the sacrifices and grant them a measure of reward.

The reward came, but not until the feast had started.

‘Bank the fire,’ the elder says to me. A chill has settled across the hut despite the comparative warmth of the evening. Without question, I do as he says. The dying man coughs weakly and blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth. The telling of his story is taking every ounce of fading strength that he possesses. Death is close and suddenly I resent him for departing the mortal coil. Suddenly, I do not want him to expire.

I want to hear the end of his tale. I want to know what it is that reduced him to the state in which he came to us. What became of his people? I take the cooling cloth from his fevered brow and wring it out in the bowl of water. It turns salmon-pink with his blood, but I refresh it and replace it, bringing him some small amount of comfort. He gives me a look. Is that gratitude I see in his eyes? Gratitude… or pity?

‘Here.’ I raise the mug of brackish, slightly warm water to his lips. His throat must be parched. Most of the light has gone from the day and he has been talking for longer than any of us realised. He sips at the liquid and lies back for a moment or two, damply exhausted. His eyes flutter closed and a creeping certainty that he is dead comes over me. I raise my eyes to look at the elder, my frustration mirrored in his face.

The moment of silence stretches out. The rasp of his sudden intake of breath, rattling in abused lungs startles me enough to make me spill some of the water. His eyes flutter open again. In a voice edged with fading vitality, he resumes the tale.

‘The reward came,’ he said, ‘but not until the feast had started…’

They drank a potent, heady brew distilled from the juice of berries found close to the village. Eaten straight from the bush, the fruit induced hallucinations as well as good health in bizarrely equal proportions. Brewed into an alcoholic beverage, it brought about a remarkable sense of well-being and a feeling of invincibility. The villagers drank and sang. They danced and they engaged in fantasia, battling one another in an arena that was hurriedly marked out to provide a stage for the re-enactment of Edred’s victory. Six drunken warriors staggered belligerently around the arena, whilst another who took the role of the dwarfish general shuffled on his knees in a mockery of the enemy’s smaller stature. He waved a wooden sword fiercely and fell beneath the onslaught of ‘Edred’ and his warband.

From the raised dais, the hero of the battle watched the ridiculous performance with amusement in his eyes and on his lips. His mate was by his side and Edred’s arm was draped loosely across her shoulders. With her, he had fathered sons of his own, strong boys who would stand to gain from his reputation and carry on his bloodline into the next generation.

He rarely gave thought to the one daughter who had been given to him – some punishment perhaps for a slight on one of the gods. Unsure which god had been angry with him, he had taken the Godtouched’s advice. In order to appease all four, the infant had been left swaddled on the hillside for their judgment. It was the lot of farmers to bear female children, not a warrior.

He had slain a long time enemy of his people and now they all but fell at his feet. He felt strong. He felt invincible. Driven on by intoxication and arrogance, he knew without question that he was the most powerful warrior who had ever lived. The gods would reward him, he knew it.

Night time fell upon the small village, wrapping it in an ebon cloak of balmy night. Stars began to prick through the veil, engaging in their eternal vigil and watched over Edred and his people. He drew a deep breath, exalting in all that he was and all that he had.

It would be the last time he would do that.

Even as he breathed, he looked upwards. Clouds were passing over the pale moon, drenching the land in the green light of its darker twin. Edred stared for a moment and let out the breath he had been holding. The night breezes had brought something with them. Something he had thought not to scent again so soon after several days at war with the dwarves. Blood tinged the air; metallic and pungent. Sobriety forced through his alcohol-soaked thoughts and his hand reached for the hilt of the great sword. The re-enactment of the battle had all but ended although some of the more inebriated of the tribe were still gamely fighting one another. Edred willed his senses, muted and softened by the application of alcohol, to return to their former battle-sharpness.

‘Something comes,’ he said. His eyes went to the men standing on guard at the edges of the settlement. A cloud passed over the face of the moon and the world took a breath.

Seconds later, they burst forth. Dark bodies and flickering blades that seemed only half real. At first, nobody could properly see them but their presence was felt like a wave of dread breaking over the unsuspecting celebrants. Timeless evil: a power of untold aeons channelled through the daemonic forms that were taking shape. The shadow of a tree stretched upwards, becoming a long, thin creature with razor-sharp claws. Several much smaller, but stockier beings lurked at its heels.

From the edge of the village, beyond the celebratory centre, the first screams sounded and the jovial, carefree nature that had belonged to Edred and his people was shattered into forgotten fragments in an instant.

‘Allies of the mountain folk! They are here to seek their revenge!’ Edred leaped to his feet, wobbling only a little through the drunkenness that kept its grip on his reactions. He had no reason to believe his own words, but in the haze of his own sense of invincibility it was the only possible explanation. ‘To arms, my people, to arms!’

His mate hissed and dropped into a defensive stance, a habit borne of the years she had spent bearing Edred’s shield. Without a shield to hand, she instead drew the long curved knife she wore at her waist. As she did so, the first of the daemons lunged from the shadows into the firelight. A bestial form, hunched and covered in wiry, corded muscles clearly visible through a crimson skin that slithered and moved across bone and organ alike. It rushed with a lumbering gait towards the raised dais on which Edred and his woman were seated; from where they had enjoyed the spectacle of re-enactment just moments ago. As it came closer, three of Edred’s warriors stepped in to halt its progress. It took the first up in huge, spade-like hands, breaking the man’s back as easily as if snapping a twig. It raked black, dagger-like claws across the stomach of the second, spilling his guts and leaving him mewling feebly in a spreading pool of gore. The third scrabbled to get away.

He did not succeed. The pack of twisted hounds that snapped at the daemon’s heels descended on the fleeing man in a storm of talons and jaws, tearing him apart in a furious orgy of carnage.

The daemon went unhindered after that as it made its approach towards Edred. Its eyes were blood-red slits with tiny black pupils that dilated in the firelight. Its horned, protracted head tipped to one side, and it gusted air from its nostrils that reeked of cinders and old meat. It grunted once or twice and then growled the language of Edred’s people as though it were simply another visitor.

‘I herald your reward, Edred. My mistress heard your prayers and her champion comes for you.’

Edred could not reply for several long moments. Rage warred with wonder as he grappled with the urge to attack the God-touched creature. He knew from the tales of old, that legends had been born this way. He must stay focused. Around him, the celebrations of earlier had long since ceased, giving way to a silence that reeked with the deaths of his people. Some had fallen to their knees, unable to give voice to the sense of dread that oozed from the daemon. Edred’s voice found strength as his fingers closed around the hilt of his sword, its familiar touch slamming his status as a champion of his people back into his awareness.

‘Your mistress?’

‘The consort of our glorious master. Valkia hears your call for reward, Edred Dwarfslayer. She sends it for you to collect.’ Other daemons began to slide from the shadows, joining the first. They hissed and growled – creatures of darkness given corporeal form by a power far beyond Edred’s comprehension.

At the periphery of hearing, the warrior could make out the sound of the trampling of undergrowth. Something huge being ridden through the woods. No horse could make that sound. No creature that Edred was familiar with could make it sound as though it were simply uprooting trees that were in its way and carving its own passage through the forest. It was a rhythmic thunder. A heartbeat of nature and chaos that pounded in a perfect beat.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

One beat. Two beats. Three beats. The daemon threw back its head and screamed into the night sky, ‘Her harbinger comes!’ At those words, violence exploded out of the surrounding woodlands, crashing into the settlement and bringing dread chaos in its bow wave.

Something massive and brazen thundered from the darkness: a juggernaut with its head bowed, heavily armoured and simply trampling anything – or anybody – that was in its path. It stampeded with single-minded purpose towards the dais on which Edred and his family were seated and flipped the structure over. Edred lost sight of his woman and children as he tumbled through the air, and for a moment fear gripped him as the platform disintegrated into kindling, shards flying in all directions. Then, something more primal was stirred deep in his gut and he roared out his defiance. He struggled to his feet, only to see the creature and now, clearly, its rider coming for him.

The weapon that he favoured performed best when wielded with two hands, but Edred was big, strong and had defeated every enemy that had stood before him. He transferred the weapon to his right hand and, whilst it took him a moment or two to adjust to the balance, he knew from long experience that he could fight almost as well one-handed. He looked around, taking in the scene with alacrity and stooped, picking up the closest shield from one of his fallen brethren.

Shield was a loose term for what was, to a man of Edred’s size, little more than a buckler. He knew, even as he took it up that it would offer him very little protection. Nonetheless, he took a defensive stance as the monster ploughed into him. The buckler absorbed barely any of the impact and splintered. The War Leader flew backwards several feet, crashing into a tree. Other men would have been dazed, unable to move following the shock of an impact that he could feel had broken several ribs. But Edred had ever been above other men. He was back on his feet in seconds, prepared and ready.

Providence favoured him as he saw the curve of a vicious axe whistling towards his head. Had he been unable to withstand the shock of the monster’s initial charge, the weapon would undoubtedly have cleaved him in two, rendering him as broken and useless as the platform on which he had only recently enjoyed his elevation. He ducked the blow which split the trunk of the tree. There was a hideous creak and the tree toppled over with a groan.

Edred took a quick stock of his condition. His chest ached abominably where his ribs had been broken and his numb right shoulder hung lower than the left, suggesting he had dislocated it. Bracing himself against the pain he knew it would cause him, he moved to another tree and slammed his shoulder hard against the trunk. The pain was excruciating, but he bore it with the stoic growl of a man who had done this before. His timing was perfect, for the rider on the monster’s back had dismounted and was walking towards him.

There was no urgency in the stride of the rider. It walked at a leisurely pace, unhurried and determined, the huge axe held easily in one hand. The target of its attention was more than evident and Edred stared, mesmerised.

Edred was a huge man, six and a half feet, and this warrior towered over him. For a fleeting moment, Edred knew what it was to be the lesser man in battle and he did not like the feeling. Regardless, it kindled his desire to fight. His latest opponent’s arms were as thick as tree trunks and covered with plated armour of a metal Edred had never seen before, the plates seeming to shift and change before his eyes the closer he came. It was only when the colossus stopped a man’s length away that Edred could make out the screaming faces trapped beneath the ruddy armour, squirming and screaming, locked in an eternity of agony like freakish things caught in blood-amber.

The helmet that covered its face had two curved horns rising from the temples, vicious things that could impale a man if the wearer charged with his head lowered. But it was the weapon that held Edred’s attention the most. The axe’s edge was not a honed, sharp implement of cutting doom, but a jagged line of snapping jaws that twisted and bit at the very air. This weapon would do more than just cut. It would bite and tear.

As the crimson-clad behemoth strode to within arm’s length, Edred could hear the shrieks and wails of his people dying, but everything faded into complete obscurity. Scarlet eyes alight with hell-fire gazed at him and the huge warrior levelled a burning brass hand at Edred. The forefinger extended and he pointed directly at the wounded man’s chest. Edred blinked, understanding the implication even without words.

The noise that came from the warrior’s chest, muffled by the helmet, was little more than a grunt – a strange, strangled kind of noise that told Edred instantly that the man, or whatever it was, behind the mask was a mute. The stabbing forefinger curled to join its fellows in a fist of challenge. It did not matter that his enemy couldn’t speak. The gesture was plain, the intention clear.

We fight.

‘We fight.’ Edred confirmed. He transferred the weight of the two-handed broadsword back so that both hands were balanced on its hilt. He took a careful breath, assessing how badly the broken ribs and recently reset shoulder would hinder him and made the decision that he could still fight. And all the time he could fight, there was a chance that he could win. Only hours earlier, he had beaten a lifelong enemy of his people. He was – he reminded himself – invincible.

‘We fight,’ he said again, his voice ringing out with arrogance and confidence oozing from every syllable. ‘We fight and then even the Gods themselves will see my power.’

Across the village, the countless creatures that had been indulging in the massacre gradually began to glide, slither or variously stalk towards the two warriors, drawn by the lure of a champion’s battle. Slowly but surely, a loose circle formed around Edred and his opponent. Rather than find this unnerving, their presence simply filled Edred with even more determination.

Another noise rumbled in the huge warrior’s chest, but Edred could not understand him. One of the creatures in the spectator’s circle obligingly translated. ‘Kormak the Destroyer brings greetings from the Queen of Skulls,’ it said in a sibilant voice. ‘ You are honoured indeed, mortal, for he is her eternal champion. Only the mightiest souls are given the chance to challenge his position.’

The creature sidled forward remaining always on the very edge of Edred’s peripheral vision. He did not turn to look; keeping his gaze locked on the being he now knew to be Kormak the Destroyer. The daemon at his shoulder whispered softly, but at a pitch designed to set his battle senses throbbing.

‘Challenge him.’

‘Challenge him. Challenge him!’ Other voices picked up the refrain and screamed their eagerness. Edred howled, his body stirred by a cocktail of rage, drink and confidence in his own ability. His vision filled with the red mist of the berserker and he held his sword aloft. But a small part of him knew that he had to keep his wits about him. He had to control himself. He forced the fury out of his system with the practiced expertise of a man who had seen too many warriors lost to insensibility. Slowly, the blood drained from his vision and he realised that Kormak had not moved. He still stood there. Just… waiting for the challenge. If it did not come, Edred had no doubt that he would fail in the eyes of the Blood God.

If he did challenge Kormak… if he were able to subdue, or even defeat the thing, then maybe he would become the chosen of the gods. Visions of such a reward crowded his pain-fogged mind and pushed out ideas of survival. The world narrowed: a tunnel vision that encompassed just him and the monstrosity.

Challenge him!

‘Kormak the Destroyer,’ said Edred and his voice rang out above the tortured shrieks and sounds of dying that rose from the village. He held his head proud. As well as the much-coveted title of War Leader, the Godtouched had bestowed another name upon him during the celebrations. He used it now. ‘I am Edred Dwarfslayer and I challenge you.’

Silence fell, sudden and terrible. It settled across the village like the first snowfall of the winter, inducing an unnatural sort of calm. Kormak remained motionless, like a statue cast in the deepest scarlet and then he loosened his fist from his side and stretched it out once more. This time, he beckoned his challenger forward.

Edred wasted no time. He knew instinctively that he may have sealed his doom in making the choice. All that remained for him now was to make his end one fitting of a warrior of his tribe; to please his gods. To receive his ultimate reward. He charged headlong towards Kormak, his sword, the slayer of countless enemies, swinging in a perfect arc. It connected with the overlapping leaves of the Chaos Champion’s armour with a sound like the tolling of a funeral bell. For all the reaction it induced, he may as well have struck a wall. The reverberation shuddered up through the hilt of his sword and both of Edred’s arms shuddered violently. For the first time he could recall, he let go of his weapon in the midst of a fight.

The enormity of the moment was not lost on him. He had not attained his position as War Leader in the tribe by losing his grip – literally or figuratively – in the heat of battle. He clung on as hard as he could, but the shock of the impact was so great that the weapon clattered to the dirt at his feet. With a stoop that barely broke the stride of his enemy’s advance, Kormak leaned down and swept the weapon to one side.

Edred’s earlier confidence, the certainty of his victory, took a rather solid blow from the knife-edge of cold reality at that point and he looked around for something, anything else that he could use as a weapon. His eyes fell upon a mace that had fallen with one of his men, and he dropped to the ground beneath a lethal swing from Kormak’s axe. Rolling to the weapon, he took it up and was back on his feet in a heartbeat.

‘No!’ His defiant scream tore through the night. ‘I have come too far to lose now! You will not take me!’ He launched himself at Kormak, the mace a blur as he swung it with terrible force towards his opponent. The first blow glanced off the shoulder with no less a shuddering impact than before. The second blow, again to the shoulder sent Kormak staggering – a reaction that fuelled Edred’s arrogance once again. A third strike, well-aimed and well-positioned struck Kormak in the side of the neck. The champion’s head twisted sideways with an audible crack.

Turning with lumbering slowness, Kormak’s eyes glowed faintly crimson beneath the helmet. Edred met the champion’s gaze, defiant and certain. He stood firm, armed with the mace of one of his fallen warriors and held his ground. ‘You will not take me,’ he repeated quietly.

By way of response, Kormak lashed out with his huge, brass fist. It smashed into Edred’s face with a wet sound of breaking skin, bone and tissue. His fingers let go of the mace which rolled away from him. Blood sprayed from the warrior’s crushed nose and he staggered backwards, spitting out teeth that had been loosened. The other fist met Edred’s jaw in a right uppercut that took him off his feet and he flew backwards yet again to land crumpled and beaten on the cold ground. The watching circle of daemons cackled and laughed and gurgled with hunger and pleasure at the scene.

No, he would not allow this to come to pass! He was not beaten. Not yet. He lived still. He could still fight. His eyes, swimming with tears mixed of pain and blood sought another weapon and he saw a knife held tightly in the hand of a severed arm. He reached for it and recognised it. He recognised the bonding brand on the arm because it matched perfectly the one on his own arm.

His mate’s arm. Her knife.

Cold clarity struck and Edred’s arrogance drained from him leaving in its wake a fallen warrior. But he was nothing if not true to his nature. Even as the smile of Kormak’s axe raced down to strike, he snatched the knife from the dead woman’s limb. In a bizarre attempt to deflect the blow, he tried – unsurprisingly without success – to stop Kormak’s blow; a strike that bit into his flesh, tearing him open from shoulder to hip. It was a fatal wound and yet Edred did not die instantly.

Easy defeat was simply not in his nature.

I am staring at the man as he concludes his story. He is laying back on the bed, his eyes closed and his face a dreadful shade of ash-grey. The effort of telling us his tale has taken the very last of his strength. The logs on the fire have burned to embers and there is the faintest of orange glows flickering against the wooden walls.

I glance at the elder, who is looking horrified at the telling of the story, then back at the warrior. ‘You are he, aren’t you?’ The question feels redundant and even as it leaves my lips, even as he weakly nods his head, I know that it is the truth. Edred’s injuries correlate precisely with the wound he claimed a champion of the gods inflicted upon him. There is no sense that he has lied to us. There is no reason at all to believe that he has told us anything but the truth.

But for one single thing.

‘You said you received your reward,’ I say to him and my voice sounds unnaturally loud, even to me. ‘Yet you are at death’s door. Is death the reward that your people crave?’

He laughs, a weak sound that trails off pathetically into a horrible gurgle as the blood in his chest slowly fills his lungs. There is no more I can do for him and yet I still will him to cling to life. To complete his tale. He clenches his hands into fists, then claws desperately at the air, seeking one last chance to say what he so clearly yearns to say.

‘My reward,’ he says in a voice that is barely more than a whisper in a storm, ‘is to bring word of the arrival of Kormak, Champion of Valkia the Bloody. I am his herald. What greater honour than to bring word of the arrival of the blood god’s servants?’

My blood turns cold as ice and I clutch at the dying warrior’s arm, exchanging a look with the elder. He sits rigid, his gaze faraway, almost as if he has not heard Edred’s words. But he has heard them. It is written in the terror in his eyes, the abject fear on his face.

‘But we are peaceful. We have… done nothing to incur the wrath of the gods!’ My pleas sound childish and pitiful and Edred shrugs, a movement that brings more blood streaming from his chest.

‘It matters not from whence the blood flows,’ he says. ‘Only that it does.’

Amongst the last sounds Kormak’s herald makes are another laugh, threatening and horrific. He coughs up a great torrent of gore, reddens his bearded face and fills the air with the acrid scent of bile and death. Reaching up to clutch my arm in the vice-grip of the dying, Edred says his final words, barely audible over the sounding of the warning horn.

‘Her harbinger comes.’ A bubble of blood bursts on his crusted lips and the hand around my arm goes rigid. That is when I hear the sound outside the hut. A sound that I had not registered whilst I had been caught up in Edred’s tale. A rhythmic thunder. A monstrous heartbeat.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

‘This can’t be happening,’ I whisper to Edred’s cooling corpse. ‘This isn’t real. What vile sorcery is this?’ The words go unanswered and all my yearning wishes that I am simply suffering some kind of delusion explode into kindling along with the hut in which we sit. The elder lets out a brief shriek as he is thrown from his feet before breaking against the far wall. His body flops lifelessly to the floor in a tangle of limbs and broken bones pierced through with ragged splinters.

I look at him and all I can think is that it is a mercy that the elder is dead. Cherry red embers from the dying fire scatter over his corpse and onto the blankets covering Edred. In a matter of moments, the two of them are being consumed by flames. Their clothes are reduced to ashes in seconds, their flesh burning more slowly. Even though my entire being is screaming that I should run, I still try to extinguish the flames, to try to put out the fire before it can spread further, but it is a gesture of utmost futility. I am old. An old woman whose time is all but done. My efforts are useless.

It is too late, I realise. It is much too late for any of us. The dry straw and rough-hewn wooden walls of the hut are burning swiftly and as the inferno rises up around me my senses begin to fade. My eyes catch movement amongst the hungry flames and I look up to stare at the silhouette lumbering towards me.

Her harbinger comes. Just the way Edred described him, only more real and more horrific than anything I could have imagined. It is a horror made into flesh. Details that were missed from Edred’s account swim into painfully sharp focus as my eyes rest on Kormak the Destroyer.

The figure is vast, easily the size of three warriors of my people, and sits astride a huge creature the likes of which have only ever been imagined in the worst nightmares or spoken of in whispers around winter cook fires. The infernal glow of the fire glints off blood-red armour that covers both the creature and its rider. I am transfixed with fear and I cannot help but take in every single detail, even when every part of my body is screaming to run. Every tiny feature is exaggerated in the grip of my terror.

Its bulk fills my vision like a towering, living monument to slaughter but as the monster stomps closer, the full horror of its visage is revealed. The horned helm that covers the warrior’s face. The skull symbol that adorns the chest of its armour. The arm of knotted brass and liquid fire and the axe it carries in its blazing fist. Two mortal men could not have borne such a blade yet the giant holds it without obvious effort. It pushes deeper into the crumbling hut, shouldering aside burning beams with contemptuous ease and I see the serrated edges of that cruel weapon. I snap, for the briefest of moments, across the line into insanity. My mind recoils from the horror of the faces trapped within the axe. This cannot be real. It makes no sound and yet the threat is palpable.

Its mount is an iron-clad beast, the like of which I have never seen and which I cannot give name to. Its burnished flesh is highlighted in the flames, emphasising every ripple of the huge muscles that play beneath its surface. At an unspoken command, it lowers its broad head, pawing at the ground as the rider dismounts. I have never seen him. I have never even dreamed that such a thing existed. But Edred’s story is fresh in my memory and I know who he is.

‘Kormak.’

Fragments of reality force their way back into my consciousness and I hear screaming. Terrible, anguished screaming coming from beyond. Outside the ruined walls of the hut, I see that the village is ablaze. Figures run in all directions, some with far more than the usually accepted number of limbs. Animals, people, monsters. Everywhere I look there are scenes of terror as daemons tear my people limb from limb and feast on the gore. Some are trying to fight back but the futility of it all is palpable. The desperation bleeds from my people just as their life spills from them in red tides. The blood is flowing.

Kormak strides towards me, his armoured tread mirroring the painful thump of my labouring heart, and I cannot move. Naked terror freezes my limbs to immobility, unable to flee. He – for now I know his identity, I cannot think of him any longer as an ‘it’ – pauses and stares down at the half-charred body of Edred.

The axe comes down in a single, perfect stroke and separates the head from the torso. Kormak lifts the ghoulish trophy to the skies and for a moment, I see in my mind’s eye the moment that Edred must have revealed the head of the dwarf general.

Crimson eyes like forge coals smoulder with hatred deep within that full-faced helm and they turn on me. The shock of that gaze frees me from my paralysis. Despite my advanced years, my legs remember how they should work and I urge them to do just that. I fight past the pain of the years and I start to run. Tears blind me and combined with the light of the flames spreading throughout my home, disorientation threatens to consume me. I have no place to go. There is no sanctuary to be found. No escape from whatever cruel fate awaits me.

The daemon horde responsible for the destruction of Edred’s own village has spilled down from the north to consume us. It followed the scent of the barbarian’s blood to our hearth and now it is our turn to be consumed. We have done nothing to deserve this, other than simply to live. To exist. Our attempts to fight our barbaric instincts and adopt the softer living of the southern tribes has doomed us.

I pause, rubbing smoke and tears from my eyes. I have not run far. My old legs will not carry me at any great speed and I come to a halt as the vast crimson slab of horror, that is Kormak the Destroyer, strolls casually into my direct path. I spin and begin to move in a different direction. My heart pounds painfully in my chest and I ignore the pains that creep up my left arm. For months I have known this pain and it has not taken me. Defiance flares. The same defiance that refused to help an injured man so many years ago.

I will not go quietly, I vow.

I stumble to a halt as a huge canine animal – some kind of hound – pounces atop a fleeing villager, taking his head in its massive jaws and shaking it loose of the body in a welter of gore. Everywhere there are severed limbs, mangled corpses, shredded flesh and smears of blood. The screaming reaches a crescendo of terrible, raw fear and then becomes sobbing. Begging. Pleas for a mercy that is not going to come.

My eyes fix on a shaggy marauder clad in gore-spattered armour, swinging a vicious-looking blade and ending the lives of other villagers as if he is reaping a field of wheat. Even in the midst of my all-consuming terror, I remember legends I heard as a girl, of the Skull Queen, reaping the harvest of skulls for the Blood God. They were stories, designed to frighten children. Stories! They were not meant to be true!

Everywhere is on fire. The whole world, it seems, is burning before my eyes. I see, in the back of my mind, that man who I refused to help so many years before. A raw wail tears from my throat to join the chorus of sobs and screams that drown it out. I brought this on my people. I should have taken the elder’s advice and ended Edred’s suffering. By keeping him alive long enough, the harbinger of Chaos has brought this upon us. Upon my people.

The now-familiar clanking of Kormak’s armour can be heard behind me and I know that once again he has moved ready to prevent my escape. Defeat is close but like Edred, pride stiffens my spine. I could not save my people. But there is a chance remaining that I could perhaps save myself.

It is a feeling that does not last. A staccato battle cry from one of the daemons pierces my thoughts, rocking my already unstable sanity to within a point of toppling. I cling onto what tiny bit of clarity remains to me amidst this living nightmare. To reassure myself that I am still in control my hands close into fists, my long nails biting into the tender flesh of my palm and leave fresh red welts that ooze with blood. I close my eyes. I breathe. But none of it helps.

Brick by brick, my defences are torn down, madness and anguish replacing each clear thought and desperate last hope. Finally, Kormak the Destroyer, Harbinger of the Queen of Skulls stops whatever game he has been playing with me and steps to stand directly before me, the biting jaws of his daemonic axe chewing at the air, hungry for the taste of flesh and fear.

I look up. And up. And up some more into the glowing eyes of this monolithic bringer of destruction. What happens then feels as though I am watching from beyond my own body. It is as though I am simply observing the demise of another victim. It is a peculiar experience that is at one and the same time horribly real but strangely detached. My own madness holds me steady and refuses to allow me a final attempt at flight as Kormak’s axe comes down towards my shoulder.

I feel the razor-sharp daemonic teeth biting through flesh, bone, muscle and sinew. Even when my arm detaches from my body and falls to the ground, a twitching thing of meat and bone, it is not really my arm. I don’t even notice the pain. It is a mortal wound, but it is calculated and well struck. Despite my age and despite the severity of the injury, the wound will not kill me immediately. I do nothing to stem the blood that pulses from the gaping smile in my torso and look up at my slayer. I wait for the killing blow. But it does not come. Instead, Kormak slides the axe across his shoulder. Tiny, monstrous hands reach out and clasp the weapon tightly to his back. He looks down at me. He points to the south.

I know precisely what it is that he demands of me. He may be mute, this monstrous creature of another world, but his message is perfectly clear to me. Kormak reaches down with one huge, gauntleted hand and drags me to my feet. The agony in my shoulder screams at this treatment and I am violently sick from the pain. My world swims in and out of focus and my vision fills with blood and fire. There will be no easy release for me. For Kormak has chosen his new herald.

He points again, then puts his gauntleted hand into the small of my back, propelling me forward. Caught up in something I can never hope to understand, I nod, a sound somewhere between a sob and a giggle escaping my lips. I take three steps backward, my eyes fixing for the last time upon the collapsing village and then I turn and run south. The next tribe is little more than half a day’s run through the woods. My awful wound pulses weakly, the fell powers bound to Kormak’s weapon choosing to take my life only in slivers rather than mercifully ending me. A bloody trail marks my passage.

I slam through the forests, the branches reaching out to tear at my hair and clothes like grasping fingers and I can give voice to only three words.

‘Her harbinger comes!’

About The Author

S P Cawkwell is a north-east England based freelance writer. Her work for Black Library includes The Gildar Rift, Valkia the Bloody and a plethora of short stories. Sarah’s hobbies include reading everything and anything, running around in fields with swords screaming incomprehensibly and having her soul slowly sucked dry by online games.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Adrian Smith.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-596-8

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