Gotrek and Felix - Road of Skulls Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Warhammer

  Map

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

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  7

  8

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  About The Author

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  This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

  At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it isa land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forestsand vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reignsthe Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of thefounder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

  But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands ofthe Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

  PROLOGUE

  Worlds Edge Mountains,

  The Peak Pass

  The sun was an ugly knot in the sky, its harsh light catching at armour and movement in the distance as the enemy approached the throng of Karak Kadrin’s position through the winding, crooked crags of the Peak Pass. Borri Ranulfsson, thane and commander of the throng, blinked and squinted, a thin wisp of smoke rising from the bowl of his pipe. ‘There are more of them than we thought,’ he said gruffly, tugging at one of his beard’s plaits. He stood on a heavy, embossed shield that had been braced across two upright stones, worn smooth by time and tide.

  ‘How many d’you think?’ a quiet voice asked.

  Ranulfsson glanced over at his nephew. The two dwarfs were mirror images of one another, for all that Borri’s ginger hair and beard were streaked with white and Kimril’s were still dark with youth. Both had the wide, keg-shaped build of their people, and their armour was without the frippery or fancy that adorned the war-panoply of some of the clans of Karak Kadrin. There were better places for wealth to sit than on a shield or an axe’s haft or cuirass.

  ‘A thousand, at least,’ Borri said, sucking meditatively on his pipe. The contours of the pass made it hard to judge distance properly. It widened and thinned at odd points and the avalanches that were not uncommon in the Worlds Edge Mountains had a tendency to wreak drastic changes on the topography. Too, battle was as common as the avalanches in this region and as in the lowlands, and it had a tendency to re-shape the ground even as it was fought over. More than one throng had been buried in a sudden avalanche or the collapse of a cliff-face, entombed alongside their enemies forever. ‘Hard to tell at this distance, but I expect we’ll be getting a better look soon enough.’ He pretended not to see the jerk of his nephew’s throat, or hear his soft intake of nervous breath.

  Kimril was nervous, and there was no shame in it. Borri had been nervous as well, the first time he’d been called to the killing fields. His armour had had the weight of a mountain that day, and he’d dropped his axe more than once. Nerves were natural.

  Then, he’d only been fighting grobi. This… this was a whole other cart of ore.

  The cool wind of the heights carried the stink of old blood and men and something else, something infinitely more unpleasant than either of the former, through the Peak Pass and Borri grimaced. Only one thing he knew of smelled that way.

  He looked back at the approaching horde, and the feeling of worry gave way to disgust. It wasn’t the first time something foul had swept down out of the north. The Chaos filth tried to march through the pass at least once a season, sometimes in fewer numbers, sometimes in greater. Granted, this lot were quicker than usual, and it was a bigger group than he’d been prepared for, thanks mostly to the failure of his scouts to report back.

  It had been six days since he’d sent Fimbur and his rangers to inspect the enemy. Borri had a grudging respect for the ranger, though he didn’t think spending that much time in the open was entirely healthy for a dwarf, and he hoped they hadn’t been caught. There were worse things than being captured by enemies such as these, but none he could bring to mind at the moment.

  The horde had swarmed out of the eastern mountains in such numbers that the traders who’d brought word of their coming to Karak Kadrin had said that the dust of their passage had darkened the sky above the Skull Road for miles. They’d thought it exaggeration at first, which was why his throng numbered only five hundred stout clansmen. But now, seeing it, and with the failure of Fimbur to report back, he was starting to think that the traders hadn’t been exaggerating at all; they’d been underplaying, if anything.

  Borri gave his nephew’s shoulder a quick pat. ‘We’ll be fine, boy. They’ll catch one look at this throng waiting on them, and they’ll run back north, tails between their legs,’ he said quietly. He turned, looking at the throng arrayed behind him. A sense of fierce pride swelled in him, a pride he saw reflected in the eyes of those warriors closest to him.

  They were the throng of Karak Kadrin, and they had never failed to hold the Peak Pass when it counted. Borri expelled twin trails of smoke from his nostrils and pulled his pipe from his lips, tapping it on the rim of his shield. He refilled it without looking at it, the habit second-nature to him.

  The throng stood arrayed for battle across the point where this part of the Peak Pass grew narrow and began to rise towards the upper reaches which Karak Kadrin occupied. The high ground was always the best place to be in a slugging match such as this was shaping up to be. Representatives from four clans were present, and their standards, as well as those of the sub-clans, rose above the bristling block formations. The light caught on the golden discs carved in the shape of the faces of the ancestor-gods, and Borri turned away, knowing that Grimnir and Grungni looked down on the throng and were proud.

  His reverie was interrupted when another dwarf ambled towards them, his beard tied into two plaits with copper wire and iron hair-clasps, pulled tight over his broad shoulders and tied off to hang down the back of his armour. His armour was heavier than that of either of the others, and he carried a long-hafted hammer slung casually across his shoulders. An ornate full-face helm rested in the crook of his other arm. He whistled softly, not looking at them.

  ‘Feel up to a wager, Ranulfsson?’ he said, squinting at the approaching enemy.

  ‘With you, Durgrim, no,’ Borri said, lighting a taper on the inside of his shield and holding the tiny flame beneath the bowl of his pipe. Durgrim snorted, his eyes flicking towards Kimril.

  ‘What about you, young Kimril? It’s your first taste of battle today… How about a wager to spice things up?’ he said.

  Kimril glanced at his uncle, who shook his head. Durgrim caught the gesture and rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t be such a wanaz, Borri,’ he said.

  Borri frowned and glared at the other dwarf
, irritated by his lack of respect. ‘Where are your ironbreakers, Durgrim? Lounging in the back somewhere, gambling away their weapons?’

  Durgrim gave no sign that the jibe bothered him. He extended his hammer. ‘We’re in the centre of the line, as is our right, Borri,’ he said. He smirked. ‘Where are your warriors?’

  ‘Right where they should be, Durgrim,’ a harsh voice interrupted, before Borri could reply. ‘As you should be,’ the speaker went on, joining them. Bare-chested and scar-faced, the dwarf was a terrifying sight. A thick ridge of greased and crimson-dyed hair flared up from his otherwise shorn skull, and thick steel bands covered his massive forearms. He leaned on the haft of an axe, and a necklace of orc tusks hung from his neck.

  ‘Ogun,’ Borri said respectfully. Durgrim looked away.

  ‘Thane Borri,’ the Slayer rasped. ‘It will be a good day, I think.’

  ‘One can hope,’ Durgrim muttered.

  The Slayer looked at him, face as hard as stone. The ironbeard pretended not to notice. Durgrim was an effective warrior, but he had any number of bad habits, bred in his time in the deep dark, and he was unhappy being in a subordinate position. But then, Ogun was simply a discomfiting presence.

  Even more discomfiting, Ogun had brought a number of his mad brethren with him, though Borri had neither requested nor wanted them. For all that Karak Kadrin was ruled by a Slayer King, Borri had the proper amount of wariness regarding the dishonoured and the doomed. They would not hold the line, nor would they obey his commands. Even Ogun could barely control them, and then only because he had knocked heads in a grand runk the night before.

  Borri examined the Slayer surreptitiously. Ogun was old for a Slayer, and pragmatic. If he was mad, it was in a quiet sort of way, and he felt a brief flicker of sympathy for the warrior. To be without honour was to be set adrift in a world without sense. He could not imagine what it would be like to lack the solidity of hearth and home and his clan ties. To be so mired in shame that only death could erase the stain. Hopefully, he would never find out.

  Kimril’s armour clattered as he shifted his shield to a more comfortable position. Borri watched his nephew for a moment, and then noticed Ogun doing the same. The Slayer grunted. ‘If we fall here, warning will need to be delivered to King Ungrim,’ he said.

  Borri met Ogun’s eyes. ‘We won’t fall.’ They couldn’t afford to. If they gave ground, the horde would have a clear path to Karak Kadrin, though it would take them many days to reach the hold. The Peak Pass was a major trade route and had been since the Golden Age of the dwarf empire. Here and there, hidden now by time and fallen rocks, were the ancient stones of a long-vanished road, which had been ripped and shattered by some forgotten cataclysm. It was claimed that the Peak Pass only existed thanks to Grungni’s ingenuity, that the ancient ancestor-god had carved the pass with some long-lost mechanism of masterful artifice.

  Ogun grunted and turned away. Borri knew what the Slayer’s look had meant and he looked back at Kimril, who nervously shifted his grip on his axe. He had been considering much the same himself, but the lad had to be blooded sooner or later. To deny Kimril the right to stand or fall with his clan was not something that Borri was prepared to do.

  From above, a brass-bellied ram’s horn gave an eerie moan. The enemy were drawing close. Borri raised his axe, and war-horns sounded from within the body of the throng. The block formations dissolved into heavy overlapping lines. The pass was wide enough to accommodate a half-sized throng such as this one, but their foes would be squeezed tight, with nowhere to go but forwards and upwards, into quarrel and shot. And those that survived would meet the axes of the clan-warriors, Durgrim’s ironbreakers and Ogun’s motley lot.

  Borri puffed on his pipe in contentment. Ogun was right. It was looking to be a good day.

  ‘This will be a good day,’ Hrolf growled, hunching low over his horse as it trotted forwards, scaly hide rippling with colour. ‘The wind stinks of slaughter.’ Hrolf was built large, and as he shifted in his saddle, muscles swelled beneath his scarred flesh. As if to emphasize his point, he took a deep sniff of the air. His lips peeled back, revealing yellowing fangs that jutted from his gums and jockeyed for space with more normal, human teeth.

  ‘You say that every day,’ his companion said, his voice echoing oddly from within the black helm he wore. Unlike Hrolf, every inch of the man was shrouded in black iron. The armour was bulky and imposing, but shorn of ornamentation save for the yellowing skulls with strange marks carved into them that had been hung from his pauldrons and cuirass by small, wickedly curved hooks. The armour creaked as he leaned back in his saddle. ‘Sometimes I think your nose is clogged with the effluvium of the butcher’s block.’

  ‘Efflu-what?’ Hrolf growled, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘He’s mocking you, Hrolf,’ a soft, rasping voice said. ‘Aren’t you, Canto?’

  ‘That is what I’m here for, Ekaterina, as you never fail to remind me,’ Canto Unsworn said hollowly, craning his head to look at the woman who rode on the other side of Hrolf. She was a lithe creature, clad in the ragged ruin of a Kislevite boyar’s brass-buttoned coat, with the scalps of dead men dangling from her shoulders like hideous epaulettes. Heavy gauntlets hid her hands, one of those resting on the pommel of the sword sheathed on one hip. A sleeve of chainmail covered one arm, stretching to the gauntlet from a light pauldron that had been decorated with a leering face.

  She had been beautiful once, Canto mused. She was beautiful still, in the same way that a tiger was beautiful. The icy poise of a well-bred woman of Kislev was still there, despite the hair bound in wormy dreadlocks and slathered with blood and fat, and the slit corners of her mouth that gaped to reveal deep-set fangs when she smiled her terrible, too-wide smile. Her eyes were carmine slits that bored into his own dark ones, challenging him, daring him to draw his own sword.

  He looked away.

  Ekaterina laughed, and the sound scratched his eardrums like razors. ‘You are still so cautious, Unsworn, and so afraid. You should be more like Hrolf.’

  Canto glanced over at Hrolf, whose chest swelled as he preened, flashing his ragged teeth at the woman. Canto shook his head. ‘I prefer to be what I am, woman. I remain true to myself.’

  ‘A coward, beloved by no gods,’ she said.

  He ignored her and turned in his saddle. Behind them, the army of Garmr Hrodvitnir, called the Gorewolf by some, spilled through the pass in a cloud of dust and noise. Horns torn from the hairy skulls of beasts wailed and drums made from human skin were beaten, pressing an erratic and discordant rhythm into the very stuff of the air.

  Armoured Chaos knights mingled with half-naked Chaos marauders on the shaggy horses of the eastern steppes, and worse things came behind them. A sea of altars and shrines, their brass and iron wheels chewing the rocky ground as monstrous beasts strained against heavy chains, pulling the shrines in their wake. Far behind, men – Norscans and marauders and dark-armoured Chaos warriors – marched, loped or ran in whatever formations made sense to them, and ahead of them all, the Exalted Champions – lords and lady alike – whose combined will worked to hold the natural instincts of their followers in check.

  Canto grimaced and looked at the creatures he’d fallen in with. Hrolf was a brute and a lunatic; every dawn shrank the gap between him and the blood-mad beast things that served as his vanguard. The Chaos marauders riding just behind their twitching, muttering leader were nervous of the Chaos hounds that lurched and loped around Hrolf’s horse. Even their horses were nervous of them, snorting and bucking every so often, trying to ward off the monstrous canines.

  Past Hrolf’s warriors were those who followed Ekaterina. Like their mistress, they had been Kislevite, once. There was a rumour, a whisper of a ghost of a story, that those men were all that remained of those who had ridden in pursuit of the remnants of Asavar Kul’s once-mighty horde as it retreated north, a captive boyar’s daughter in their clutches. Some had been suitors, they said, brothers, cousins, lovers, and now… what
?

  Ekaterina caught him looking and opened her mouth, the slit edges of her smile gaping to reveal the inwards-curved maw of threshing fangs that hid behind her human lips and teeth. Canto turned away. His own followers, a bevy of horsemen riding powerful, foul-tempered steeds, trotted in his wake, at a respectful distance. Like him, they wore heavy armour, though theirs lacked the protections woven into his during its forging. He noted that several of his men were already showing signs of bending beneath the weight of the gods. Blood-daubed sigils and massive studded collars marked out those whom he might have to cull sooner rather than later.

  There were other lieutenants of course, other chosen or Exalted warriors; dozens if not hundreds, whose individual retinues and ranks made up the army, though only eight were of any importance. And of those eight, only four were of importance to him, and of those four, only one was truly important.

  He sought out the Gorewolf. He was easy enough to find. Garmr liked to be at the front, where Khorne could see him clearly. Canto fought to restrain a smirk. No one would be able to see it, not with the helm he wore, but lowering your guard, even in private – especially in private – was a sure-fire way to wind up with your skull added to one of the shrines. Or worse… Canto shifted uncomfortably in his saddle.

  Garmr rode some way ahead of his lieutenants, his night-black horse a handbreadth larger than any other in the army. His armour was the colour of clotted blood and the stink of him was enough to choke even a follower of Grandfather Nurgle on a hot day; or so Canto thought, though only in private. Indeed, Hrolf and Ekaterina seemed to quite like the Gorewolf’s stench. Then, he’d once seen Hrolf burrow into the carcass of a daemon-beast and fall asleep; there was little sense in what the worshippers of the Blood God found pleasurable.

  Garmr, like his mount, was large, bigger than any man, with arms and legs like bunches of thick rope crammed into baroque armour. He rode almost dejectedly, his great head bowed and his gauntlets limp on the pommel of his saddle. Hundreds of hooks dangled from the edges of the plates that made up his armour, swinging from braids made of hair, flesh and metal. His helm was a snarling brass daemon’s head, surmounted by a mane of matted animal hair. A number of chin-scalps – blood-matted beards taken from the mauled bodies of the dwarf scouts they’d run across a few days prior – hung from his saddle.