03 - God King (8 page)

Sigmar felt the touch of Ravenna’s memory, but instead of pain, it now
brought him comfort, a reassurance that she was alive within his heart.

“You’re right, I
do
know the pain of losing loved ones. I lost the
love of my life many years ago and my best friend was killed by a man I once
called a brother. Every death in Middenheim was a grievous loss, but I know that
a life lived without hope or joy is a wasted one. I know the reality of life in
the Empire, my friend. I know it is dangerous, often short and violent. That is
precisely why we must take what joy we can from what the gods give us.”

“That may be the Unberogen way, but it is not my way,” said Carsten. “Live in
hope if you must, I will live in the knowledge that all things must die.”

Sigmar said, “Look at Reikdorf, look at all we have achieved here and how the
Empire’s cities grow larger and stronger. One day we will have borders that no
enemy, no matter how strong they are, can breach. We will have peace and our
people will know contentment.”

Conn Carsten took a mouthful of beer and smiled. “It would not do for me to
call you foolish, my Emperor, but I think that is a naive belief. We will always
have to fight to hold on to what you have built. Already you have defeated two
major invasions. Many more will come. It only takes one to succeed and the
Empire will be forgotten in a generation.”

“I have heard that before, Conn,” said Sigmar with a grim smile. “The
necromancer Morath tried to break me with a similar argument. If we live fearing
that all we have will be lost, then we would never build anything, never
achieve
anything. I cannot live that way; I will build and defend what I
have built with my life. You are part of that, Conn, a vital part. I cannot do
this without your support. You alone can keep the clans united and be my sword
in the north.”

Carsten smiled and his face was transformed in an instant. Sigmar’s words
were flattery, but the northern clansman saw the sincerity in them and his dour
expression lifted. He raised his mug of beer and Sigmar toasted with him.

“I’ll drink to that,” said Carsten. “But I know what I am, a cantankerous old
man the clan chieftains tolerate as their count because they know that every
other clan hates me too. I have no sons left to follow me, so the other
chieftains look at me and know they will be rid of me in a few years. They can
wait.”

Sigmar extended his hand and Conn Carsten took it.

“Make the bastards wait a long time,” said Sigmar.

Conn Carsten laughed and somewhere beyond the longhouse walls a bell
tolled.

The revelries continued for another three hours, though Conn Carsten excused
himself not long after their conversation. As the last of the tribesmen
staggered or were carried from the longhouse, Sigmar stood from his throne and
paced the length of the dwarf-built structure. Its walls were fashioned from
black stone quarried from deep beneath the Worlds Edge Mountains, carried on
wagons from the east and raised by surly craftsmen of the mountain folk under
direction of Alaric.

Sigmar knew the dwarfs called him Alaric the Mad, a name that rankled, for a
more level-headed, pragmatic individual would be hard to find. Alaric now
laboured deep beneath the mountains to forge twelve mighty swords for the counts
of the Empire. Before Black Fire, Pendrag had crafted wondrous shields for each
of the tribal kings, and King Kurgan had decreed that he would present Sigmar
with swords to match.

Alaric himself had delivered the first of those swords to Sigmar at the
battle for the Fauschlag Rock, a blade without equal among the realm of man. It
had been given to Sigmar, but he had presented it to Pendrag as the Count of
Middenheim, and upon his death it had been taken up by Myrsa—once the Warrior
Eternal, now the new count.

Sigmar sat on a bench, idly tracing the outline of a wolf in a spilled pool
of beer. He missed his friends. Time and distance had seen them pulled to the
corners of the Empire, and though each was in his rightful place, he still
wished they could be near. He even found himself missing the reckless wildness
of Redwane. The young warrior and his White Wolves were now quartered atop the
Fauschlag Rock as honour guard to Myrsa, a position Sigmar saw no need to
rescind.

The hall smelled of cold meat, sweat and stale beer. It was the smell of
maleness, of warriors and companionship. Sigmar looked up as the moon emerged
from behind a long cloud and its light flooded the hall. He remembered catching
Cuthwin and Wenyld trying to sneak a glance at the warriors within on his Blood
Night, smiling at the memory of those long ago days. Two and a half decades had
passed since then, and Sigmar shook his head at the idea of such a span of time.
Where had it all gone?

“Thinking of the past?” said Alfgeir, sitting opposite him and depositing a
pair of wooden mugs of beer on the trestle table. “Isn’t that the job of old
men?”

“We
are
old men, Alfgeir,” said Sigmar with a grin.

“Nonsense,” said the Grand Knight of the Empire. He was drunk, but pleasantly
so. “I’m as strong as I was when I first took up a sword.”

“I don’t doubt it, but we’re not the young bucks of the herd anymore.”

“Who needs to be? We have experience those with milk from their mother’s teat
on their thistledown beards can only dream about.”

“Those that are old enough to have beards.”

“Exactly,” agreed Alfgeir, taking a long swig of his beer.

Sigmar knew that Alfgeir would pay for this indulgence tomorrow. It wasn’t as
easy to shake the effects of Unberogen beer as it had been in their youth.
Sigmar had ridden to Astofen after a heavy night of drinking and had felt no
worse than any other morning, but he now had to nurse his beer or else he’d feel
like the gods themselves were swinging hammers on the inside of his skull. His
friend was still a powerful warrior, yet Sigmar knew he was slowing down. A
young man when he served King Bjorn, Alfgeir was now approaching his sixtieth
year.

“Do you remember when we climbed to the top of the Fauschlag Rock?”

“Remember it? I still have nightmares about it,” said Alfgeir. “I still can’t
believe I went with you. I must have been mad.”

“I think we were both a bit mad back then,” agreed Sigmar. “I think youth
needs a bit of madness, or else what’s the point?”

“The point of what, youth or madness?”

“Youth.”

Alfgeir shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong man, my friend. You want clever
answers, you should ask Eoforth.”

“I would, but he went to his bed many hours ago.”

“Always was the clever one, eh?”

“The wisest among us,” said Sigmar, taking a long mouthful of beer.

They drank in silence for a while, listening to the good-natured arguments of
drunken warriors outside as they wended their way to their bedrolls. Sigmar
could well imagine the substance of their strident roughhousing, the same things
he and his sword brothers had squabbled over when they were young; women, war
and glory.

“I sometimes miss it though,” said Sigmar. “When all you had to do was strap
on your armour, carry a sharp sword and ride out with the blood thundering in
your ears. You fought, you killed the enemy and you rode back with your cheeks
blooded. Things were simpler back then. I miss that.”

“Everything seems simple to the young.”

“I know, but it would be pleasant to live like that again, just for a while.
Not to have to worry about the fate of thousands, to try and protect all you’ve
built and fear for what will happen to it when you’re gone.”

Alfgeir gave him a sidelong look down the length of his nose. His eyes were
unfocussed, but there was a clarity to his look that Sigmar knew all too well.

“The Empire will endure,” he said, taking his time not to slur. “The
youngsters behind us may be foolish just now, but they’re good men and they’ll
grow wiser. You’ve built a grand thing in the Empire, Sigmar, grand enough that
it’ll endure without sons of your blood to keep it strong.”

Sigmar nodded and looked into the thinning froth on his beer. Alfgeir had hit
a raw nerve, and he took a moment to consider his answer.

“Ravenna and I talked of a family,” he said.

“She would have borne you strong sons,” said Alfgeir. “She was a bonny lass,
but she had strength too. Every day I wish Gerreon a thousand painful deaths for
what he took from you.”

“What he took from us all,” said Sigmar. “But I don’t want to talk about
Ravenna. The world will have to make do without my sons.”

“And mine,” said Alfgeir. “Never wanted to make a woman wait for me every
time I rode to war. Didn’t seem fair, but I wish I’d sired a son. Someone to
carry on my name after I die. I wanted there to be someone who’d remember me
after I was gone.”

“The saga poets will remember you, my friend,” said Sigmar. “Your deeds will
be immortalised in epic verse.”

“Aye, maybe so, but who’ll read them?”

“They’ll be sung from the longhouses of the Udose to the castles of the
Merogens. I’m the Emperor, I can make it law if you like.”

Alfgeir laughed and the maudlin mood was banished. That was the Unberogen
way, to laugh in the face of despair with a drink in one hand and a sword in the
other. Alfgeir threw his empty mug over his shoulder into the gently glowing
firepit and nodded.

“Aye, I’d like that,” he said. “Make it happen.”

“First thing tomorrow,” promised Sigmar, draining the last of his beer and
lobbing his mug over Alfgeir’s shoulder. It broke apart on the coals, the last
dregs of the beer hissing as the alcohol burned with sudden brightness.

“So how was Carsten?” asked Alfgeir, apropos of nothing. “Looked like you
cracked the granite of his face at the end.”

Sigmar took a moment to consider the question. He and Carsten had established
a connection tonight, one he hadn’t expected to make, but Sigmar still felt like
he hardly knew the man.

“We’re never going to be friends, but I think I understand him a bit better.”

“What’s to understand? He’s a dour-faced misery, though he’s a devil of a
fighter.”

“I knew that already, but I know why he’s the way he is. He’s known great
pain and suffering and I think it got the better of him.”

“We’ve all known suffering and loss,” said Alfgeir, raising his mug. “To the
dead.”

“To the dead,” said Sigmar.

Beneath the light of Mannslieb a hundred warriors of the Menogoths marched
from the hill fort of Hyrstdunn. They followed an oft-used road that led through
the fields and villages clustered around the sprawling settlement like children
afraid to venture too far from a parent’s protection. Many warriors carried tall
spears tied with green and yellow cords, flanked by groups of hard-eyed men in
lacquered leather breastplates with unsheathed broadswords. Torchbearers
accompanied the marching warriors; each robed in black and with their hoods
pulled up over their heads. At the head of the column rode Count Markus of the
Menogoths, draped in the black cloak of mourning and with his own swords
sheathed across his back.

The fortress city at their back had stood for hundreds of years, a forest of
wooden logs with sharpened tips and strong towers. The land hereabouts was
rugged and undulant, rising in gentle sways towards the haunches of the Grey
Mountains that bordered Menogoth lands to the south. The earth here was fertile
and rich in resources, yet the price for that bounty was a life lived in the
shadow of the monsters that made their lairs within the mountains: greenskins,
cave beasts twisted by dark magic or strange monsters with no name and ever more
fearsome reputations.

King Markus had carved a life for his tribe in this wild land, but not
without great cost. His people were hardy, yet their souls were forever caught
in the shadow of the mountains. Often gloomy and fatalistic, the Menogoths were
viewed as a miserable tribe by their more northerly cousins, but had they spent
a year in their lands, not one Unberogen, Cherusen or Thuringian would fail to
see why.

Count Markus rode beneath a streaming banner of yellow and green silk carried
by his sword champion, Wenian. The banner had been a gift from Marius of the
Jutones in the wake of the great victory at the Fauschlag Rock, and its fabric
was said to have come from lands far to the east beyond the Worlds Edge
Mountains. Markus had cherished the gift ever since.

His wife and daughter rode in an ornate coach pulled by four black horses
that had been harnessed in bronze and plumed with black feathers. The coach was
of lacquered black wood, hung with ebony roses, spread-winged ravens and, at its
front, the image of a great portal. The women had their heads bowed, and heavy
veils hung with black pearls obscured their faces.

This was a grim night for the Menogoths, for the only son of Count Markus was
dead.

Borne on a palanquin of spears, Vartan Gothii went to his rest among the
tombs of his ancestors. An honour guard of the Bloodspears carried the body of
Markus’ son, granted this honour for their courage in standing firm at Black
Fire while their brother warriors had run.

Markus led the procession through his lands towards the flat-topped hill
where the Menogoth heroes of old were buried. Called the Morrdunn, its height
should have made it the natural place to build one of the forts that gave the
Menogoths their name of hill people, but the first tribesmen to settle here had
instinctively known that this was not a place for the living. A number of
torches flickered at its summit as the grim procession wound its way up the
hard-packed earth of its burial paths.

They passed the tomb of Devyn of the Axe, the heroic warrior who had saved
the first king of the tribe from an ogre’s cook pot. Further up, Markus nodded
respectfully to the mausoleum carved into the hill where Bannan, the greatest
Swordmaster of the Menogoths, lay at his final rest. Odel the Mad lay within a
simple sepulchre of polished grey granite built into the upper slopes of the
hill, and Markus touched the talisman of Ranald at his chest to ward off the
malign influence of the berserk huscarl.