03 - God King (5 page)

“That we were, High Scholar of the Empire,” replied Alfgeir, returning the
favour. “We caught them at Astofen and trapped them against the river.”

“Astofen?” said Eoforth as Alfgeir walked his horse towards a water trough.
“Strange how the greenskins always find their way back to Astofen. I wonder what
draws them there?”

“Does it matter? They come and we kill them.”

“And the following year they will need killing again.”

Alfgeir nodded and looked over towards the flag flying over the longhouse to
the north of the city. “Any news of the Emperor?” he asked.

It had been nearly nine months since Sigmar had set off to the north. With
ships requisitioned from Count Marius’ fleet at Jutonsryk, he’d taken the
swords of the Empire across the frozen seas to the lands many were already
calling Norsca. The Norsii were going to learn that there were consequences to
attacking Sigmar’s realm.

“There is indeed,” said Eoforth. “Redwane sends word from the Fauschlag that
Sigmar’s ships have put ashore in Udose lands at a place called Haugrvik.”

“Do you think they found him?”

“Gerreon? I doubt it,” said Eoforth. “We would have heard.”

Alfgeir nodded, having already suspected that would be the answer.

“So when is Sigmar coming back to Reikdorf?”

“Soon, I expect. If they’re done with the war across the sea, then they’re
probably on their way now.”

“Good,” said Alfgeir. “It’s time he was back. We’re not an Empire without an
Emperor.”

Alfgeir had a point. In the year following the great victory against the
Norsii, the Empire had weathered the storm of war in consolidation. Each of the
counts had returned to their lands to regroup and refortify, but instead of
returning to Reikdorf, Sigmar had gathered a force of warriors and crossed the
sea to make war on the Norsii. No more would the banished tribes of the north
dwell with impunity in their frozen homelands, believing themselves safe from
attack. Yet without the Emperor, the people of the Unberogen grew restive,
withdrawing behind their palisade walls and spears. Many traders now carried on
up the coast to Marburg and Jutonsryk or headed east to Three Hills or south to
Siggurdheim.

The Unberogen needed their Emperor back.

The horse lowered its head and Alfgeir patted its flanks as squires arrived
from the stables to care for the knights’ mounts. These were beasts bred from
Wolfgart’s stock, wide-chested, powerful and trained to fight. Bred for strength
and musculature, not speed and height, the knights’ horses were squat and
pugnacious beasts. Iron plates riveted to a boiled leather harness protected the
horse’s flank, while segmented bands of iron and mail sheathed its neck and
head.

“Maybe the greenskins keep attacking Astofen due to its historical
significance?” suggested Eoforth, returning to their earlier discussion.

“I still don’t see why it matters,” said Alfgeir.

“Perhaps if we knew why they came, we could do something about it,” said
Eoforth as Alfgeir’s squire led the horse away to be stripped of its armour,
rubbed down, fed and watered. The care of a good warhorse was a thorough and
expensive business.

Alfgeir sat on a stone bench at the side of the street, and Eoforth saw how
tired he was. It was a long ride from Astofen and as much as the Empire was far
safer than it had been in Bjorn’s time, it still did not do to be away from the
scattered pockets of civilisation for too long. Orcs were not the only dangers
that lurked in the depths of the Empire’s forests.

“Very well, I will indulge you, scholar, but what is there to do?” said
Alfgeir, tilting his head back to allow the breeze to cool his skin. “Orcs are
savages, they are driven by their lust for blood. There is no force in this
world that can change that.”

“You may be right,” said Eoforth, sitting next to him. “It is a depressing
thought.”

“That I am right or that the orcs will never change?”

Eoforth smiled. “I was referring to the orcs, my friend. Tell me, does the
dwarf bridge still stand to the south of Astofen?”

“It does,” said Alfgeir. “And someone has erected a shrine on the north
bank.”

“Oh? Dedicated to which god?”

“To no god. It is dedicated to Sigmar.”

“To Sigmar?” chuckled Eoforth. “An understandable gesture, but let us hope it
is too small for the gods to notice and take offence.”

“Indeed,” said Alfgeir, removing his helmet and pulling back the coif. He set
the helmet next to him and ran a hand through his sweat-streaked hair. Eoforth
noticed it was thinning at the crown, and there was more than a hint of grey to
its hue.

Alfgeir saw the look and said, “None of us are getting any younger, scholar.”

He smiled as he said it, but Eoforth saw the horror of aging in the warrior’s
eyes.

He forced a smile. “There’s truth in that, my friend. Even I am starting to
feel old.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while, watching the youngsters
fussing around the knights, offering to carry their lances, lead their horses or
polish their armour. The knights shooed them away with smiles or pantomime
growls, and Eoforth watched the boys following behind them, wielding sticks like
swords and miming the slaying of their enemies.

“How goes the teaching?” asked Alfgeir, nodding towards the books in
Eoforth’s lap.

“Slowly,” admitted Eoforth. “As you see, the boys are more interested in
learning to kill than to read poetry or count.”

“We will always need warriors to defend us,” pointed out Alfgeir.

“And we will also need poets to inspire them, artists to commemorate them and
tallymen to organise their armies.”

“Young men don’t care for that,” said Alfgeir. “They hunger for glory, not
numbers and letters. Unberogen boys weren’t made for study. I mean no offence by
that, the pursuit of wisdom is an honourable one.”

“No offence taken,” said Eoforth, “but it saddens me that we still need
warriors at all. Wasn’t the foundation of the Empire supposed to be an end to
wars?”

“Even a rose needs thorns to defend it,” said Alfgeir.

Eoforth gave Alfgeir a sidelong look. “Poetry?”

Alfgeir looked embarrassed. “I read that book you loaned me. The writings of
the Brigundian saga poet, what was his name…?”

“Sigenert,” said Eoforth. “I wasn’t sure you’d read it.”

“I read it,” replied Alfgeir. “It just took me a while.”

“What did you think of it?”

Alfgeir shrugged. “A lot of it went over my head, but I liked his words.”

Eoforth laughed and pushed himself to his feet. “That’s about
all a poet can hope for, I suppose.”

Cuthwin loosed between breaths, his goose-feathered shaft thudding home at
the base of the goblin’s skull. It toppled from the back of the wolf with a
surprised squeal. He drew another arrow from the quiver at his shoulder and sent
it through the throat of a wolf-riding goblin. One of the riderless beasts leapt
onto the wagons, bloody saliva dripping from its jaws.

It pounced onto one of the dwarf’s armed with a thunder bow and bore him to
the ground. Yellowed fangs fastened on the dwarf’s neck and blood fountained as
the beast bit through his throat. Cuthwin’s next arrow punched though its eye
socket, and the beast dropped next to its victim with a howl of agony.

The goblins either didn’t realise they were under attack from a different
direction or didn’t care. A flurry of ragged arrows flew from the goblin bows.
Most thudded harmlessly into the timber sides of the wagons, but a dwarf fell
with two shafts buried in his chest. The wolf-riding goblins were quick to take
advantage of the situation, two of their number goading their mounts to leap
onto the wagons.

Swinging his bow around, Cuthwin’s arrow slashed into the flank of the first
wolf, his next into the hindquarters of the other. The dwarfs fell upon the
downed goblins and slew them with quick, economical blows from their axes. A
shot rang out from the dwarf with the thunder bow and another goblin was punched
from the saddle.

Cuthwin exhausted his quiver, emptying another four saddles and killing three
wolves. He set his bow upright against the tree next to him and drew his hunting
knife, a foot of cold steel that had shed more than its fair share of greenskin
blood. Two more dwarfs were down, one with an arrow protruding from his neck,
another with a goblin blade buried in his guts. The thunder bow spoke again and
a goblin died with half its head blown off.

Cuthwin ran down to the road and leapt on the back of a wolf, plunging his
blade into the goblin rider’s side. The creature shrieked in agony and he hurled
its corpse to the ground. He rammed his bloody blade into the wolf’s back. It
howled and rolled, trying to dislodge him. He landed lightly beside it and
stabbed its throat as it scrambled to get upright.

Another wolf landed on him, the claws of its front paws scoring his thigh and
barrelling him to the ground. Cuthwin rolled as its fangs snapped for his
throat. He threw up his knife arm and hammered its jaw with the pommel. Yellow
teeth snapped beneath the Empire-forged iron and the stinking beast threw back
its head and roared. One of the dwarfs dropped to the road and ran towards him,
but a goblin with better aim or luck than most loosed a shaft that sliced home
into his rescuer’s neck.

The dwarf sank to his knees, blood pumping in a flood down his mail shirt. He
pitched forward as the goblin turned its bow on Cuthwin. A thunderous boom
echoed across the clearing and the last goblin fell from the back of its wolf
with what passed for its brains mushrooming from its skull.

Cuthwin rolled to his feet as the wolves, free of their cruel masters’ spurs
and goads, fled into the forest, leaving the clearing silent save for the
laboured wheezes of wounded beasts. Cuthwin’s leg ached, but the cuts were not
deep. He scrambled over to the wagons, checking each of the dwarfs in turn. Only
one still lived, the dwarf who’d fired the shot that had saved his life. An
arrow was lodged in his chest, its shaft warped and crudely fletched with what
looked like raven feathers.

The dwarf’s beard was twisted into three heavy braids, each bound with an
iron band at the end, and his cheeks were black with powder burns. The dwarf was
bald, his heavy brow pulled down in pain. Blood flecked his spittle and his eyes
were glassy and unfocussed.

“You’re hurt,” said Cuthwin. “Pretty badly, but if I can get you to Reikdorf
you might live.”

The dwarf looked at him in pained confusion and murmured something in a
strange, angular language of harshly edged words. Cuthwin didn’t understand and
shook his head.

“I don’t know what you’re saying. Do you understand me?”

The dwarf nodded slowly, grim faced and belligerent.

“My fellows?” he said.

“They’re all dead.”

The dwarf nodded and Cuthwin saw a depth of pain and anger that frightened
him with its intensity. He had felt sorrow at the death of friends, but this was
a different order of feeling entirely.

“Were they your kin?” he asked, helping the dwarf to sit upright.

“All dwarfs are kin,” hissed the dwarf, as though he was being wilfully
dense.

“Sorry I asked,” replied Cuthwin. “Now hold still. I need to get that arrow
out, and it’s going to hurt.”

The dwarf looked down at the jutting shaft and said, “Don’t tell me it will
hurt, manling, just do it before I die of old age.”

“Suit yourself,” said Cuthwin. “I’m going to count to three, and then—”

He jerked the arrow out in one swift motion. The dwarf roared in agony and
swung his fist at Cuthwin’s head. He’d been expecting that and swayed back from
the blow. Blood pumped from the wound and the dwarf’s eyes rolled back as the
pain threatened to overwhelm him.

“Stay with me, mountain man!” said Cuthwin, holding the dwarf upright. “Come
on, look at me! Listen to me, you have to stay awake or you’re as good as dead.
There’s likely more of those goblins out there, and it won’t take them long to
get here on those wolves. So you need to come with me if you want to get back
beneath the mountains.”

The dwarf gripped the edge of the wagon and it seemed as though his anger
alone was sustaining him. Cuthwin turned to cut strips of cloth from one of the
dead dwarfs’ cloaks to bind the wounds. The dwarf watched him and said, “What is
your name, manling?”

“I’m Cuthwin of the Unberogen,” he said.

“The Heldenhammer’s tribe…” said the dwarf, the hard edges of his voice
softening with blood loss and fatigue.

“The very same,” said Cuthwin, binding the dwarf’s wound as best he could. He
would have preferred to lace the wound with healing poultices, but they were in
his pack.

“And you? What’s your name, mountain man?”

“Deeplock,” said the dwarf, his voice already sounding distant and faint.
“Grindan Deeplock of Zhufbar, Engineer to the Guildmasters of Varn Drazh, Keeper
of the—”

The dwarf’s voice faded and the ragged howling of wolves from further south
told Cuthwin it was time to move on. Slinging the dwarf’s arm over his shoulder,
he set off towards where he’d set his bow and hoped he could put enough distance
between him and the goblins before they were able to pick up his tracks.

“Wait…” said Deeplock. “Must bring…”

“No time, mountain man,” said Cuthwin, half carrying, half dragging the
wounded dwarf into the shadows of the forest. Were it only the larger greenskins
behind them, Cuthwin wouldn’t have been worried, they were strong but not too
clever.

But goblins were cunning and would find their tracks swiftly. On his own he
could evade them without trouble, but with a wounded dwarf in tow…

That was going to be a challenge.

“Hand me the tongs, son,” said Govannon, squinting in the smouldering orange
light of the forge. His hand grasped air until Bysen placed the warm metal in
his hands. The furnace was a blaze of light before him, the roar of its heat and
the hiss of water droplets from the powered wheel that worked the bellows acting
as a sounding guide for him as he thrust the tongs into the hot coals.