With the howls of the hunters echoing behind them, Malus and Spite raced down the broad passage. Darkness engulfed them, and the sounds of battle faded.
He gave Spite his head, trusting the cave born nauglir’s senses as they raced down the passageway. Arleth Vann had shown him where the tunnel ran, and he knew that after a hundred yards it ended in a large, empty chamber that once housed the dwarfs while they worked on their tomb. A spiral ramp at the west end of the chamber led up to the road of black stones that would take Malus to the Vermillion Gate.
When the echo of Spite’s footfalls suddenly stopped, Malus knew he’d entered the housing chamber. He slowed the warbeast’s pace and guided him to the left, allowing the nauglir to pick his way through the debris-strewn room. When he felt a breath of moving air against his cheek, he nudged the cold one’s flanks. “Climb the ramp,” Malus said, trusting it was there even though he couldn’t see it. “Up!”
With a grunt, the cold one padded forwards and sure enough, Malus felt them begin to climb. The ramp was just broad enough for the cold one to work its way up, and the highborn lay flat against the nauglir’s back and tried to stay out of the way.
After several long minutes, Malus found he could see vague outlines of the ramp around him. They were almost at the top, where the road’s glowing fungus shed a modicum of light. Two turns later Spite edged out into the main passageway, and the highborn breathed a sigh of relief.
He turned Spite’s nose to the left, heading deeper into the hill, and let the warbeast lope down the tunnel. They rode on in silence for some minutes, until Malus began to feel the tingle of eldritch power against his skin. They were drawing close to the ancient gateway.
Moments later Malus found himself riding through a long, underground plaza, its ceiling lost in darkness high overhead. Worn stone statues flanked the long chamber, their features worn smooth over uncounted millennia. A heavy silence hung in the enormous chamber, and even Spite seemed to feel its weight.
The plaza led them to a large, semicircular gallery at the edge of a wide, natural pit. Here, statues of beautiful, fearsome blood-witches bore lamps of witchlight and robed executioners carried elegant swords of white marble. A slender bridge of stone ran from the gallery to a circular spire of rock that rose from the centre of the pit. The top of the spire was flat and capped with paving stones of glossy, black marble, and upon those stones rose an arch of seamless, reddish stone.
Taking a deep breath, Malus led Spite onto the bridge. He had no idea if the span would support the cold one’s weight, and it was just barely wide enough to accommodate it. A cold void yawned beneath the bridge, leading perhaps to the heart of the world itself.
“Easy, Spite, easy,” he said. The nauglir seemed to understand, taking one slow step at a time as it edged its way across the abyss.
Nearly five minutes later they were just over halfway across the span, and Malus was starting to breathe easier. Then he heard the sounds of pounding feet behind him and turned just in time to see the Chaos beast leap at Spite with a chilling howl.
Chapter Twenty-One
RED SKIES
The Chaos beast landed square on Spite’s back, its talons sinking deep into the nauglir’s hindquarters. The cold one roared in surprise and pain and instinctively turned to bite its attacker. The nauglir’s right hind leg slipped from the bridge, and to Malus the world seemed to lurch vertiginously to the right. He threw himself to the left, away from the bottomless chasm, just as the hunter lashed at him with a pair of tentacles.
One of the barbed whips wrapped around his left arm and another wound around his waist. Screaming in fear and rage, Malus hacked at the tentacles with his sword, but the rubbery skin was barely marked. With no apparent effort the beast dragged him out of the saddle.
Malus looked down and saw nothing but emptiness and shadow. Then Spite’s jaws snapped at the hunter and caught the tentacles in his fearsome maw.
The cold one’s teeth parted the whips like thread, splashing Malus with sticky ichor. Still screaming, he fell like a stone, hitting the edge of the span and tumbling over it face-first.
By an equal mix of pure luck and desperation, Malus caught the raised edge of the span with his left hand and seized it like a drowning man. His legs swung past and he rocked like a pendulum over the pit as the two beasts raged above him. He heard the sounds of talons on stone as he fought for purchase, clawing at the other side of the bridge with his hind leg in an effort to force himself back onto the span. A stream of broken stone trickled into the blackness, and Malus heard an ominous crack.
His ichor covered hand and arm slid across the stone. With a thrill of terror, he realised he was slipping. The highborn threw his other hand over the edge of the bridge, hoping to stop his fall without losing his sword, but he hadn’t reckoned on the slickness of the foul ooze coating his arms, and the sudden motion caused his left hand to slip.
Malus’ stomach lurched as he dropped. Then he felt a heavy weight cover his arm and jerk him to a stop. He hung over the pit for an instant, his legs swinging uselessly. Then the mind numbing panic subsided and the highborn had the presence of mind to let go of his sword and try to find some kind of purchase with his right hand.
The weight on his left arm shifted slightly, and Malus distinctly felt the armoured shell of his vambrace bend beneath the pressure. Pain began to build at his forearm and wrist as they took the mounting strain. Gritting his teeth, Malus pulled himself upwards with his sword hand until he was able to get the crook of his arm over the bridge’s rounded edge.
A clawed hand the size of his torso slashed past him, missing his head by inches. Spite had managed to regain his footing and was reaching back to claw and bite at his attacker. In doing so the one-ton warbeast had stepped on Malus’ arm.
The Chaos beast still clung to Spite’s hindquarters, tearing at one hip with its cruel beak and lashing at the warbeast’s face with its remaining tentacles. The nauglir’s clashing jaws had bitten off several more, and the stumps sprayed the cold one with gouts of clear, briny ichor. Spite roared and lashed his tail, hoping to dislodge the hunter from his back, but the Chaos beast only dug its claws in deeper and held on. The nauglir’s foot ground down as it swung its tail, and the pain in Malus’ arm intensified. He threw a leg over the edge of the bridge and pulled most of his body over. Then he grabbed up his sword and slapped at Spite’s leg with the flat of the blade. “Get off, you great lump of scales!”
Whether by accident or design, Spite lifted his leg and Malus yanked his arm free. The vambrace was crumpled, and a thin stream of blood leaked past the edges of the steel halves from where the armoured parts had bitten into his skin, but the highborn was not in any position to complain.
Spite shifted again, and Malus heard his jaws snap shut on empty air just above his head. A surge of terror shot through the highborn as he saw a shadow spread like a stain on the bridge around him, and out of pure instinct he rolled as far to the left as he could, just as a smothering weight of stinking flesh smashed against him.
He couldn’t breathe for a moment, much less see, but then the Chaos beast drew back from its lunge and Malus saw how horrifyingly close he’d come to being impaled by the thing’s beak. The shroud of flesh surrounding its mouth slid away from Malus, and without its weight to pin him he fell back over the edge of the span. Screaming, he flailed his hands and grabbed the first thing he could: a bleeding stump of wriggling tentacle. The highborn felt the clenching barbs of the thing’s suckers scraping against his armoured glove as the creature screeched in his ear and tossed its head, flinging Malus high into the air.
The highborn held on for dear life as he was whipped about by the hunter’s thrashings. More tentacles lashed around Malus, wrapping his legs and trying to pull him closer to the creature’s rending maw. He groped at his belt, desperately trying to find some weapon he could use against the thing. The beast’s strength was enormous, drawing him inexorably towards the great beak, and he had no illusions that
his armoured breastplate would give the beast a second’s pause before it tore him to pieces.
The monster’s lunge had left it overextended, however, and Spite saw his chance. He darted forwards, closing his jaws around the hunter’s neck. The Chaos beast shuddered and screamed, spraying Malus with spittle and gobs of sticky ichor.
He heard the creature’s thin bones crunch as Spite bit deeper, and he knew what was soon to happen: the nauglir would break its neck with a savage shake and hurl the beast aside, just as it had down in the crypt. Frantically, he started to kick and thrash in the monster’s grip, praying to the Dark Mother that it would start to weaken as its wounds began to tell.
With a fierce kick, Malus managed to pull his left leg free. He felt the beast begin to shift as Spite found his footing and started to lift. Acting on impulse, the highborn drew back his armoured leg and kicked the monster on the side of its beak. To his surprise, the monster howled and let go of his other leg.
Spite rumbled deep in his chest, lifted the hunter into the air, and started to shake Malus heard bones crunch and felt the beast go limp. As the nauglir was wrenching the hunter back over the bridge the highborn took a deep breath and let go.
For a horrifying moment, Malus was certain he’d miscalculated. Rather than being thrown back onto the bridge, it seemed as if he was being hurled along its length, his arms flailing wildly as he began to plummet downward. At the last moment his left hand struck the edge of the bridge and he grabbed hold, his shoulder flaring in pain as it took the brunt of the impact. Without hesitating, Malus kicked up his feet and swung roughly over the edge of the span, just in time to see Spite hurl the broken body of the Chaos beast into the abyss.
Panting and giddy with terror, Malus rolled carefully onto his back and savoured the sensation of lying on something that wasn’t writhing or clawing at him.
Further back on the bridge, Spite lifted his snout and roared in triumph, and the highborn felt the curved bridge start to shift.
“Damn me,” Malus breathed, rolling onto his knees. He could see wide cracks spreading along the length of the bridge, racing towards him from the weakened section where the nauglir still stood. “Spite!” Malus cried, waving his arms. “Go! Move!”
The cold one looked curiously at his master. It blew a gobbet of ichor from its nostrils and shifted its weight, edging its way towards him.
“No! Not this way, you thick lizard! Back! Go back that way!” he yelled. He scrambled down the bridge, waving his hands wildly at the heavy cold one. Grumbling, the nauglir finally got the message and turned around, walking ponderously towards the Vermillion Gate.
The bridge groaned and crackled with each hair-raising step, but Malus managed to recover his sword and creep onto the spire without further incident. He fell to his knees beside the cold one, trembling with exertion.
“Well, I think it’s safe to say we won’t be going back that way,” he gasped.
The nauglir rumbled and turned to sniff at the red stone arch. After a moment, Malus managed to catch his breath and staggering back to his feet, he went to check on his cold one’s injuries. He counted more than a dozen deep gouges torn by the hunter’s beak, and applied a healing salve from his saddlebags to each before climbing back into the saddle.
No sooner had he taken up the reins than he heard a commotion at the gallery behind him. Malus turned in the saddle to see about a dozen zealots standing at the foot of the bridge, glaring angrily at him. Apparently they’d seen the damage to the middle of the span, and had no interest in testing its strength.
The highborn gave the zealots a mocking salute with his sword, and then nudged Spite towards the arch. Taking a deep breath, he addressed the daemon. “I don’t suppose you know anything about this gate?”
“I know a bit,” Tz’arkan admitted.
Malus bit back an angry curse. “Well, why don’t you tell me how it works?”
The daemon shifted within his chest. “There’s little to tell. Cross beneath the arch and fix your destination firmly in your mind.”
“I don’t have a destination, as you damned well know,” Malus snapped.
“Don’t be churlish, little druchii,” Tz’arkan sneered. “I will guide us to where we need to go.”
They rode towards the archway. Malus studied it closely as they approached. There was not a single rune or sigil anywhere along its length. Whatever magic worked upon it was invisible to his uneducated eye. He could feel its power though, washing over him in pulsing waves that made his ears ring and set his teeth on edge.
As they passed beneath the arch, the highborn expected to see a portal of smoke or light, but nothing appeared. “Are you sure you know how this works?” he said.
Then the world turned the colour of blood, and Malus felt himself twisted inside out.
Tz’arkan had neglected to mention the pain.
Malus was blind, plummeting through howling darkness, and it felt as if ravens were feeding on his organs. The highborn felt their sharp beaks tear at his heart and lungs, worrying out little pieces and pecking thoughtfully at his quivering flesh as if savouring a fine meal. He could not move, could not scream. All he could do was suffer the ravages of the carrion birds for what felt like an eternity.
Then there was a clap of thunder, a hot wind smote Malus in his face, and Spite was stumbling down a shallow hillside of loose stone and parched dirt.
The nauglir bellowed in confusion and pain. Malus reeled in the saddle, feeling sticky moisture on his face. His stomach heaved, and for a terrifying moment it felt like something was trying to force its way out.
Spite skidded to a stop at the base of the hill and Malus all but fell from the saddle. He landed hard on his knees and vomited a fountain of dark blood and glossy, black feathers onto the lifeless ground.
“Mother of Night,” he groaned, wiping his mouth with the back of his gauntlet. The armoured glove came away slick with blood. Gasping for breath, he straightened and tried to see where he was.
The hillside behind him emptied onto a dry and desolate plain under a swirling sky the colour of blood. Towering black mountains reared above the northern horizon, their iron flanks painted with chiaroscuros of jagged yellow lightning. The hot wind seemed to blow from every direction, shifting crazily around the compass at the whim of some lunatic god. It moaned and whispered in his ears with a susurrus of strange voices, hinting at things that he only dimly grasped, but the pieces he understood turned his guts to greasy ice.
A city of black iron and blasted stone sat on the plain like a vast, black spider. Tall, blade-like towers reared hungrily into the crimson sky behind ruined walls and craggy battlements. Pillars of inky smoke rose here and there across the cityscape, wreathing the ancient buildings in a pall of suffocating fumes and ash. Off to the east, huge, hulking shapes the size of citadels writhed and lumbered along the horizon, reaching skyward as if to grasp the fickle lightning, and bellowing in madness and rage.
The gate had sent him into the far north, into the Chaos Wastes. Nowhere else in the world could such a vision of torment exist.
Why had the zealots brought the warpsword here, he wondered? What had possessed them? Was it fear of discovery by the temple, or had the blade itself chosen its resting place?
“Where is the sword, daemon?” Malus croaked, his throat ravaged by his ordeal. “Enough with your damned games. Just tell me where to find it so we can quit this accursed place!”
“It is yonder, I think,” Tz’arkan said. Malus knew the daemon meant the foul city on the plain.
“You think?”
“What am I, a hound that sniffs out swords?” Tz’arkan spat. “The gate is not so precise as I imagined, or else my control was not quite as perfect as it might have been. We are in the proper area, and I feel a source of great power to the north. What else could it be?”
“Here? In the Wastes? It could be a great many things.” Before Malus could expound further, however, Spite looked back the way they’d come and sniffed t
he hot air warily.
The highborn looked back over his shoulder. Up the long, rocky hillside, perhaps two hundred yards away, a knot of horsemen regarded him from the hillcrest.
Malus glared sidelong at the nauglir. “You and your damned bellowing” he muttered, climbing to his feet. As he did so, the horsemen kneed their mounts forwards, walking them carefully down the treacherous slope.
“Time to be going,” the highborn said, reaching for his saddle. He swung himself onto Spite’s back and kicked the nauglir into a trot. His mind racing he led the warbeast out onto the plain.
The cold one’s feet kicked up puffs of grey dust as the nauglir trotted across the wasteland towards the ruined city. The horsemen easily kept pace with the cold one, fanning out expertly into a semicircular formation once they came down off the hillside. Malus studied them intently as they rode, but he could make out few details except for the spears that rose above the riders’ heads and the skill with which they rode. As near as the highborn could reckon there were at least a score of them. That either meant a large patrol or a small raiding force. Malus wasn’t certain which possibility he preferred.
Spite made good time at first, but as the minutes wore on the highborn noticed that the great beast began to tire. His gait became uneven, and Malus let out a curse. The nauglir was going lame from the deep wounds in his hind legs. It was much harder to lame a nauglir than a horse, but with only two legs to drive it along, when it happened the effects were often much worse. The highborn snarled. He didn’t dare stop to let the beast rest, but if he didn’t slow down the cold one would eventually collapse. Having little choice, he reined in and slowed Spite to a walk.
The riders gained ground steadily, although they did not seem especially eager to get within spear distance of the lone druchii. The closer they got, however, the more they hemmed Malus in to left and right. Soon their intentions were clear: they were herding him closer to the city on the plain.