His hands closed around the hilt like a long lost friend, and he sighed as though welcoming a midnight lover.
“Zhek Askah was right,” said the boy. “You are a great warrior, Wyrtgeorn.”
“I am the greatest warrior,” said the man, stripping the sword belt from the first man he had killed. He slid his own blade home. It was a loose fit, the scabbard designed for an Unberogen stabbing sword. “And do not call me Wyrtgeorn. It is not my name.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. My name is Azazel,” he said, letting the name settle in his mouth, as though he hadn’t really earned it until now. The boy looked up at him with a mixture of awe and wariness.
Azazel smiled and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, leading him towards the hidden passageway through the rocks. The warriors pursuing them would find the entrance, but they would never find them in the warren of tunnels that lay beyond.
The boy looked back at the slice of light at the cave mouth and hesitated.
“There is no going back,” said Azazel. “There never is.”
The bodies were taken from the cave and carried down the narrow cliff path to the waiting ships. None of their number would be left behind on this cold land, they would be taken back to their homelands for the proper funerary rites to be observed. Their souls demanded no less. Wolfgart studied the ground and splashes of blood on the walls with eyes of cold anger, tracing the course of the fight, though it could hardly be called a fight such was the speed with which his comrades had been killed.
He ran a gloved hand through his long red hair, pushing the woven braids from his face as he shook his head. Wolfgart was no youngster, but his body had lost only a little of its youthful power since he had first swung a sword in battle.
His body was a warrior’s, yet his face was that of a rogue.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” said a voice behind him.
“Aye,” agreed Wolfgart. “But then you knew that, didn’t you?”
“As soon as I saw him on the ledge,” said the warrior with the gold-crowned helm.
Wolfgart gestured to the tracks and scrapes on the cave floor. “It happened so damn quick, the poor buggers didn’t have a chance. He killed Caeadda first and took his weapon. Then he cut Radulf’s throat with it. You saw what he did to Paega and Earic.”
The warrior removed his helm and handed it to another behind him. His golden hair was bound in a short scalp-lock and his face was handsome with a rugged edge that made him a leader to follow in war and an Emperor to obey in peace.
Sigmar, ruler of the lands of men and Emperor of the twelve tribes.
“Only Gerreon could have killed them so quickly,” said Sigmar, his differently coloured eyes tracing the course of the fight and reaching the same conclusion as Wolfgart. “I should have known he would be here.”
Wolfgart turned to look up at his friend and Emperor. “Why? How could you know he would be here?”
“The burning ship,” said Sigmar. “It is how the Norsii send their dead to the gods. To fight in the shadow of unquiet souls is an omen of ill-fortune.”
“Aye, well we’ve had enough of them over the last year,” grumbled Wolfgart.
Sigmar nodded and moved to the back of the cave, peering into the darkness of a rough passageway. Wolfgart’s eyes were drawn to the mighty warhammer hung on Sigmar’s wide leather belt. The hammer’s rune-encrusted haft glittered with pale winter’s light and its heavy head was unblemished by so much as a single drop of blood. This was Ghal-Maraz, ancient weapon of dwarfcraft that had been gifted to Sigmar by King Kurgan of the mountain folk.
Sigmar turned and Wolfgart was struck by the change that had come upon him in this last year. Though he had just entered his fortieth summer, Sigmar carried himself with the poise and strength of a man half his age, yet it was his eyes where he bore the weight of years. The rise of his Empire had been hard won, built upon foundations of blood and sacrifice. Friends and loved ones had been lost along the way, and enemies old and new tore at the newly-birthed Empire with avaricious claws.
A full year had passed since the defeat of the Norsii invasion at the foot of the Fauschlag Rock; a year that had seen Sigmar’s raiding fleets scouring the icy coastlines of the north. Village after village was burned to the ground and its people put to the sword. Wolfgart had been as vocal in his support as any when Sigmar had announced his plan to take the fight to the lands of the Norsii, believing that such vengeance would safeguard the Empire for decades to come.
Now he wasn’t so sure, for these raids were building hatred for the lands of the south that would only fester and grow stronger with every passing year. With every bloody slaughter, Wolfgart understood that Sigmar’s reason for these attacks was more personal. In every ruined village, he sought signs of the swordsman Gerreon, the traitor who had killed the woman he loved and plunged a broken sword into the heart of his dearest friend.
Wolfgart rose to his feet, his height a match for Sigmar’s. The wan light entering the cave only served to highlight the frustration he saw in his friend’s face.
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 night
mares 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.”
——
Young Minds and Old Men
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 be
fore 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.