03 - God King (3 page)

Sigmar slammed a gauntleted fist into the rock of the cave.

“He was here,” snapped Sigmar. “He was here and we missed him. We were so
close.”

“Aye, we got close, but he’s gone now,” said Wolfgart.

“Gather the men,” ordered Sigmar. “That passageway likely opens out somewhere
north of the village. If we hurry we can mount a pursuit.”

Sigmar made to pass him, but Wolfgart laid a hand on the centre of the
Emperor’s breastplate. Though the air in the cave was cold, the ancient metal
was warm to the touch, the magic bound to it sending a threatening vibration
through Wolfgart’s fingertips.

“He’s gone,” said Wolfgart. “You know it too. Who knows where these tunnels
lead, and do you really want to go haring off into the darkness after someone
like Gerreon? It’s time to go home, Sigmar.”

“Really? I seem to remember you were the one who called me a fool for not
going after him the last time.”

“Aye, that was me, but I was young and foolish then. I’m older now. Can’t say
as I’m much wiser, but I know when a quest is hopeless. The Empire needs you, my
friend. It’s been the hardest year for our people, and they need their Emperor
to guide them. The suffering doesn’t end just because the fighting stops.”

Sigmar looked set to argue, but the light of anger went out of his eyes.
Wolfgart hated to be the one to tell him these truths, but there was no one
else. Not anymore.

“Pendrag was better at this sort of thing than me,” said Wolfgart, feeling
the ache of loss once again. “But he’s not here, and I’m all you’ve got. Like I
told you in the Brackenwalsch, you’re stuck with me.”

“Aye, Pendrag was the wisest of us,” agreed Sigmar, looking over his shoulder
at the darkened passageway.

Wolfgart saw him accept the truth of his words and his shoulders slumped just
a little.

“The Empire needs us,” said Wolfgart. “But more to the point, it needs you.”

“You are wiser than you know,” said Sigmar. “It’s starting to worry me.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let it go to my head,” said Wolfgart. “I live in a
house of women who keep telling me how much cleverer than me they are.”

“Then let’s get you back to them,” said Sigmar. “They must be missing that.”

“Aye,” said Wolfgart with a broad smile. “Let’s do that.”

They watched from a concealed ledge further along the cliffs. A rutted track
twisted through the rocks and defiles behind them, leading down towards the
bleak landscape of the north. Beyond the cliffs, the achingly wide vista became
ever more irregular, a harsh mix of tundra, ice shelf and blasted wilderness.
The horizon shimmered, and the boundary between earth and sky blurred as though
the difference between them was maddeningly inconstant.

Beyond the horizon, Azazel knew the world grew stranger still, the land no
longer bound by the laws of nature and man. It was a shifting realm of
nightmares and Chaos, its character broken and bitter, like a land shaped by
spiteful gods.

Azazel smiled, knowing that was exactly true. He could feel the breath of
northern powers sweeping down from the realm of the gods, laden with ruin and
aeons-old malice. He and Kar Odacen had ventured far into that forsaken
wilderness, travelling paths known only to madmen or those whose lungs drew
breath of the air touched by the great gods of the north.

It had changed them both, though Azazel remembered little of the journey save
the monumental tomb of an ancient warrior and a duel with its guardian. The
quest into the north had reshaped him in ways beyond his comprehension. His body
was faster and stronger than was humanly possible, and his senses were honed to
preternatural levels.

Those senses now told him he would venture into that wilderness again.

They were silent as to whether he would ever return.

He and the boy had threaded their way through the tunnels of the cliffs,
finally emerging in a sheltered defile high on the flanks of the mountain. They
lay in a concealed ravine high above the soaring white cliffs that marked the
boundary of this icy realm, watching as black smoke from the burning settlement
pressed down on the bay like a mourning shroud. A hundred and thirty-four people
had lived there, mostly women and children, with fifty men to bear swords. All
were now dead, slain by a man he had once called friend.

Azazel hadn’t known any of the villagers and felt nothing at their deaths.
Everyone had been slain, but this one boy had survived. That had to mean
something, didn’t it?

Azazel looked down at the young boy He was clean limbed and looked strong for
his age, with a shock of hair so blond it was almost white. His high cheekbones
were characteristic of the Norsii tribes, and Azazel saw he would grow into a
strikingly handsome man.

Tears cut through the grime on his young face, his body wracked with sobs now
that the adrenaline of fear had worn off. Azazel sensed a confluence of fates in
their meeting, the twisted schemes of higher powers at work. Kar Odacen would
have said it was the will of the gods that had brought them together, but the
shaman had been raving and delusional when Azazel had seen him last.

Perhaps it
was
the will of the gods, but who could tell? Anything
could be interpreted as a sign from the gods, and it was no use trying to guess
their intent. All he could do was follow his instincts, and his instincts were
telling him that this boy was special in ways he couldn’t even begin to imagine.

He returned his attention to the south, watching as the crimson sails of the
raiders from the Empire pushed out to sea, past where Lord Aetulff’s wolfship
had sunk beneath the waves. The ships cleared the headland, but instead of
turning along the coastline to seek fresh slaughter they kept going, aiming
their tapered prows to the south.

“Are they going home?” asked the boy.

Azazel nodded. “It looks like it, yes.”

“Good,” sobbed the boy.

Azazel slapped him hard, knocking him back onto his haunches. Instantly, the
boy was on his feet, his grief swamped by anger. He reached for a sword that
wasn’t there, and hurled himself at Azazel.

“I’ll kill you!” he screamed.

Azazel sidestepped his rush and pushed the boy to the ground. Before the boy
could rise, he planted a booted foot in his chest.

“Anger is not your friend, boy,” said Azazel. “Learn to control it or I will
throw you from these cliffs. Listen to me, and listen well. You are the last of
your tribe. No other will take you in except as a slave, and the land will kill
you if you do not start using your head. We are going to travel into the north
and you will do exactly as I say or it will be the death of us both. I will
teach you what you need to survive, but if you ever disobey me, even once, I
will kill you. Do you understand me?”

The boy nodded. His grief and anger were gone, replaced by smouldering
resentment.

That was good. It was a beginning.

He held his hand out to the boy, hauling him to his feet. An angry red weal
burned on his cheek where Azazel had struck him.

“That is the first lesson I will teach you,” said Azazel. “It won’t be the
last, but it will be the least painful.”

The boy regarded him coldly, rubbing his cheek and holding himself
straighter.

“Look out there,” said Azazel, pointing out to the ocean. “What do you see?”

“The raiders’ ships,” said the boy.

“Yes, and they are going home to a land that hates you.”

“Will they be back?”

“I doubt it. Southerners don’t do well with this cold. Even the Udose don’t
get winters like we do up here.”

The boy looked at him with a sneer curling his lip. “You say ‘we’ like you
are one of us.”

“I am more part of this land than you will ever be,” Azazel promised him. He
turned from the diminishing ships, setting a brisk pace along the path over the
cliffs. This was the first day of their journey, and who knew how long it would
last.

The boy trotted after him, throwing careful glances towards the smoke rising
from the ruin of his home.

“Will we ever come back here?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” promised Azazel. “One day we will. I promise. It will be many years
from now, but we will return and we will avenge all that has befallen us.”

“Good,” said the boy, his jaw clenched and his blue eyes cold and dead.

Azazel paused in his march as a thought occurred to him.

“What is your name, boy?” he asked. “What do they call you?”

The boy drew his shoulders back, and said, “I am called Morkar.”

Eoforth tried to keep his frustration in check, but it was hard in the face
of such thick-headedness. Teon wouldn’t listen; he had no interest in listening,
and stared defiantly at Eoforth, daring him to press on. Eoforth perched on the
edge of his desk, a finely made piece of furniture crafted by Holtwine himself,
and folded his arms across his chest.

“I ask you again, Teon,” he said, pointing to the tally marks chalked on the
slate. “If you multiply the first number by the second, what do you end up
with?”

Teon looked over at Gorseth, his best friend and companion in troublemaking.
He winked and said, “A sore head. It’s all nonsense anyway. Who needs numbers
when you can swing a sword as well as I can?”

He flexed his arm and Gorseth laughed on cue. The rest of the class nervously
followed.

“Enough!” said Eoforth, lifting the birch cane from beside his desk.

“Go ahead,” said Teon, “I dare you. My father will kill you, old man or not.”

For all his bluster, Teon was popular with the other boys. Powerfully built
for his age and blessed with handsome features and an easy manner beyond the
classroom. Close to his fifteenth birthday, he would soon ride out on his first
war hunt. His father was Orvin, one of Alfgeir’s captains of battle, and the boy
saw little need to spend his days cooped up in a classroom when there were
fights to be gotten into and maidens to pursue.

Eoforth stood and limped towards Teon’s desk, the cane swishing the air
before him like a threshing scythe.

“Every day you cheek me, Master Teon,” said Eoforth. “Every day you test my
patience, but I counselled King Bjorn in the time of woes when all around us
threatened to destroy the Unberogen. I stood at his side when the Cherusens and
Taleutens raided our lands. I brokered the peace that first united those tribes
as allies, and I have spoken with the kings and queens of all the great tribes.
I have done all this, and you think you can intimidate me? You are a foolish
young boy with a head as thick as a greenskin skull and the manners of a forest
beast.”

Teon frowned, unused to being spoken to like this. He was off balance and
Eoforth smiled as he stopped by the boy’s desk.

Eoforth tapped the cane on the arithmetical problem chalked on the slate
surface of the desk. “Now I am asking you again. What is the answer to the
problem?”

Teon looked up at him defiantly before spitting on the slate and smearing the
chalk illegible with his sleeve. “A pox on you, old man. I spit on your sums and
letters!”

“Wrong answer,” said Eoforth, slashing his birch cane down on Teon’s fingers.

The youngster snatched his hand back with a howl of pain. Tears brimmed on
the curve of his eyes and Eoforth wasn’t proud that he hoped they would spill
out. Some shame and humility would do the boy a world of good. Teon’s face
flushed with anger and he rose to his full height, clutching his hand to his
chest.

“My father will hear of this,” he spat, heading for the classroom door.

“Indeed he shall,” said Eoforth. “For I will tell him, and he will give you a
sound beating for disrespecting your elders. Your father knows the value of
discipline, and he would thrash you within an inch of your life were he to see
you behave like this.”

Eoforth wished that were true. Orvin was as brash and quick to anger as his
son, yet he was a fierce warrior and had ridden with Alfgeir’s knights for ten
years. Though Eoforth did not like the man, he knew of his respect for the
proper order of things. He just hoped his son saw that.

Teon paused and Eoforth saw the battle raging within him. To lose face by
complying with Eoforth’s demand or to risk a beating from his father. The lad
returned to his seat, though he continued to glare fiercely at Eoforth.

“Thank you,” said Eoforth, moving between the lines of desks. A dozen boys
and girls filled his classroom, a dusty room within a timber-built schoolhouse
on the southern bank of the River Reik. A hundred children of Reikdorf learned
their numbers and letters here, taught by women he himself had instructed. No
men taught at the school, for the youngsters tended to rebel more against male
teachers, and seemed more reluctant to pick fights with the matronly women
Eoforth had chosen.

“I know what you are thinking,” he said. “You are thinking that this is a
waste of time, that you would much rather be practising on the Field of Swords,
learning how to fight. The skills of a warrior are important, and every
Unberogen needs to know them. But consider this, without your numbers how will
you know how much beef to carry in your wagons when you go to war? How much
grain and fodder for the horses, and how much extra for the beasts of burden who
pull those wagons? How many swords will you need? How many arrows and what size
of war chest should you bring to pay your soldiers?”

Eoforth paced the length of his classroom, his limp forgotten as he warmed to
his theme.

“And what of your orders? How will you read the map to deploy your warriors,
or read the names of the towns your captain has sent you to? Will you be able to
work out how far you must travel or where your evening campsites must be? How
will you send word to your fellow warriors without knowledge of your letters?”