Warhammer [Ignorant Armies] (26 page)

"You've left me here, unarmed, to die, dwarf."

Kleinzack didn't say anything, just drooled. His bowels had let go, and he was dripping.

"You took away my sword. Up here, that's as much murder as taking away my life."

There were creatures around them in the darkness, human and otherwise.

"You owe me a sword, Kleinzack. I'll take yours."

He threw Kleinzack upwards. The dwarf seemed to hang in the air for a moment, eyes wide with disbelief. Johann reached out and grasped the hilt of the sword in the mayor. The dwarfs weight dragged it down. Kleinzack screamed as the sharp blade shifted in his chest. The point of the sword dug a few inches into the ground. He put a boot on Kleinzack's belly, and pushed the dwarfs body down the length of the sword. The straps and belts came free, and Kleinzack flailed, the long-ago killing stroke finally accomplishing its purpose.

Johann drew his new sword from its scabbard of flesh, and kicked the dead dwarf away.

The fighting had begun, and the dark was pierced by bright flashes. Fires were started, and creatures hurled themselves against each other. An altered head rolled past Johann's feet as he cut Vukotich loose from his net. A cannonade exploded close by, and Vukotich took a peppering of shot in one leg. Johann felt blood pouring down his face, from a chip lodged in his forehead, and tried to smear it away.

Nobody was paying particular attention to them, although Johann killed anything that came within a few yards of them, just to make sure. Vukotich took a two-bladed, dagger-topped waraxe from a fallen troll, and split the face of a bear-faced Norse warrior who was hefting a sword at him. As the bearman fell, Johann saw the scarface design on his belt-buckle. He had been one of Cicatrice's.

No, one of Wolf's.

Johann and Vukotich fell back against the hall, leaning on the roof. It was a defensible position. Before them, the warriors hacked and slashed at each other, not caring who they wounded. Ribbons of blood flew through the air. The killing continued.

They didn't have to wait long.

Among the frighteningly random conflict there walked one group who seemed cooler, murderous but purposefully so. They fought their way through the throng towards the hall, towards Johann and Vukotich. There were less than they might have expected - Wolf must have taken bad losses during the last week of fighting by night - but they were death-hardened. Each wore, somewhere about him, the scar.

And one luxuriously-maned, red-eyed, fang-snouted giant wore it as a blood-coloured tattoo across his face.

Wolf.

Wolf growled, low and feral in the back of his throat. Then the growl rose to a snarl, and spittle flew from his lupine snout. Then the snarl ended with a gulped intake of air, and Wolf's chest swelled. He howled like the animal he had become, baying at the skies. He clutched and unclutched his great, furred fists.

He carried no weapons but the three-inch, razor-edged claws that ended his fingers and toes, and the rows of teeth in his face. Johann guessed that with those natural assets he wouldn't need to.

Again, Vukotich had been right. There was nothing, that he could see, left of his little brother.

Then the wolf smiled at him, and passed a claw through the air, bidding him come forward.

Wolf's bandits held back, keeping the rest of the battle away from the area now marked out for the fight to the death.

"Forgive me," Johann said, as he lashed out with Kleinzack's sword. Wolf threw up an arm, tendons shifting beneath his pelt, and the swordblow was deflected. The altered Wolf must have iron in his muscle and bone. Johann's strike had left a graze, which trickled blood, but no more. It should have sheared through, severing the arm.

Wolf moved fast, and Johann had to stumble backwards, losing his footing, to avoid the snipping of the claws. Wolf kicked out with a barbed, bootless foot, and a claw-toe raked across Johann's stomach, cutting through his layered-leather armour. He pushed upwards as he stood, grabbing Wolf's ankle with both hands and turning it, off-balancing the creature that had been his brother. Almost immediately, he lost his grip and Wolf was righting himself. He stood like a man, ready to wrestle with the arts they had been taught as boys, but he fought like a beast, who had to use tooth and claw or go hungry tonight.

Vukotich was still leaning against the sloping roof of the hall, breathing heavily. He was watching his pupils, but also wary of Wolf's comrades, ready to pitch in with an axe if the strangely altered rules of fair combat were breached. Otherwise, he was leaving Johann and Wolf to their struggle.

Johann saw that Wolf had indeed grown with his alterations, finding a shape to fit his name, yet retaining every spark of his intelligence. His eyes were cruel but gleamed with sharpness of mind. The claw-stroke across his face marked him as a leader. He would never have been Baron, but he had proved that he could rise to power by his own designs.

Had Johann not missed his deer, what would Wolf have made of himself? How would his strength, now perverted into monstrosity, have been made manifest? Truly, the division between Hero and Hellspawn is fine, no thicker than a slender arrow...

The cut at his belly had gone deeper than he thought, and he felt his own blood soaking the inside of his clothes. Knots of pain were forming, too, and he tried not to think of the depth of his wounds. He had seen men vainly trying to coil their insides back in, and knew how permanent damage to the vitals was. Wolf showed no sign of hurt, although he had struck him again and again with the edge of Kleinzack's sword. His brother's hide was thicker than any armour.

They circled each other, like wrestlers looking for a good hold. He remembered that he had always bested his brother when they were boys. The three years between them gave him the advantage, and Wolf had been shamed only when Johann, hoping to give his brother a taste of victory, had held back and allowed himself to be beaten. Had that experience festered in the captive boy's mind while the powers of the warpstone were exerted on him? Was that the secret anger that had fuelled his alteration?

Johann bled from the shoulder now, almost the exact spot where he had wounded Wolf so many years ago, and wondered whether that claw-thrust had been a deliberate reminder.

Wolf wore a metal shoulder-piece with the mark of Cicatrice picked out in jewels, covering the site of his long-healed wound. It was one of several for-show scraps of armour adorning his body.

Wolf jabbed again, with a blade-tipped forefinger, and again gored his shoulder. Now, he was sure it was deliberate. Wolf was drawing the fight out, reminding him of the long-ago error that had brought them to this...

He heard a clash and a scream, and glimpsed a tableau behind Wolf. One of the bandits had gone for Vukotich, and was on its knees in front of the Iron Man, axe embedded between its eyes. The axe came free, and Vukotich whirled to take on another attacker. Things were coming to an end, and Wolf's men were clearing up the side issues.

Wolf dropped to all fours and charged like an animal, his long, still-golden hair streaming behind him. His back arched, and Johann saw the points of his vertebrae thrust against his skin. With a two-handed grip, he sliced into Wolf's humped back, aiming for the spinal column. Hide peeled, and the sword jarred in his hands. Wolf roared, apparently feeling pain for the first time in the fight. He twisted away, rolling in a ball, and then stood like a man again, and closed with his brother.

Johann's swordpoint touched his breast, and he froze. Wolf looked at Johann, the sword held between them. Johann had a good grip, and Wolf leaned forward into it. His hairy skin dimpled around the sharp end of the blade, and Johann felt the hilt pushed against his stomach. He could let go of the sword and it would stay between them, held by their bodies. For an instant, the brothers locked eyes, and he knew he was lost. Wolf snarled, strings of saliva hanging from his snout, and coals glowed deep in his blood-filled eyes.

Wolf held his shoulders, and pulled his brother towards him in a killing embrace. The sword should have burst through the skin, and pierced his heart neatly...

Instead, the sword bent. First, it simply strained, and Johann felt the pommel driving painfully into his wounded gut. Then, with an agonizing creak, a natural weakness in the iron was worked on, and the weapon bent as easily as a green branch. Wolf's snarl continued, and the sword was pulled out of Johann's hand. It fell away, useless.

Vukotich was still fighting. Three of Wolf's men were out, but the last two had him pinned to the roof, and were cutting him. The Iron Man was bleeding badly, and his blood had an unhealthy, greenish tinge.

Wolf and Johann grappled with each other, wrestling again. He felt the claws going into his wounded shoulder, digging deep in the flesh. He brought his knee up, and slammed into Wolf's rock-hard belly. The blow had no effect. He took a handful of Wolf's hair, and tugged it sharply. A patch came away bloody, but Wolf didn't flinch. Wolf made a fist, and aimed for Johann's face. He took the blow on his chin, and reeled back, his head ringing, his vision shaking.

His shoulder was a fiery mass of pain now. And his left knee wasn't working properly. And he had no weapons save for his hands. And his mind.

Wolf howled, with a note of triumph, and came after him. He was tempted to turn and run. But he wouldn't get ten feet in the battle anyway. He might as well die by Wolf's hand as by that of an unknown minion of the night.

He made a hard-edge of his hand, as the monks of Nippon were known to do, and chopped at Wolf's neck. Wolf moved before the blow could land, and he skinned the leading edge of his hand on the jewelled armour plate.

Wolf screamed, and lashed out clumsily, claws closing in the air a foot to the left of Johann's face.

That was the reminder he needed. That was the message what was left of his brother had been giving him. He felt the pain in his own shoulder, but ignored it, and took hold of the scarface-marked armour piece.

He wrenched it off, and looked at the patch of untreated, rotted wound beneath. Worms writhed in it, a flash of bone could be seen in the mangled meat. The fur around was grey.

Wolf looked at Johann with the eyes of the boy he had been, and silently begged for it to be over.

Johann found a sword on the ground, bloodied but unbroken. Wolf was down on one knee, as if waiting to be knighted. Johann calculated that he could drive the blade through the old wound, past the shoulderbones, and into his brother's heart.

The flow of blood from his temple had halted, but there were tears on his face, salt stinging a cut on his cheek.

Johann hefted the sword aloft, and held it point-down above Wolf, ready to thrust deep, ready to finish his quest...

But things changed, and Vukotich was under him, between the brothers, mortally wounded but still moving. Johann had already begun to bring the blade down. It slipped into the Iron Man just below the v of his throat, and slid through flesh and bone.

Incredibly, he stood up. Johann backed off. Wolf was curled up behind Vukotich, cheated of his death. Vukotich turned, and pulled the sword from his neck. He held the weapon against him, point lodged beneath his chin, and then drew it across his body.

He opened himself, and his blood fell upon Wolf. Innocent blood.

There was a coppery smell, and Vukotich glowed with a violet light. He was mumbling at the last, reciting some charm or spell of his homeland, bleeding all over the thing he had once nurtured, taught and loved as a son.

Then he fell sideways, dead.

Johann went to Wolf, reaching for the sword in Vukotich's already-stiffening hands, and found the source of the violet light. Wolf was glowing, surrounded by a man-shaped cloud of insubstantial mist. The glow pulsated, and the mist grew thicker. Johann couldn't see his brother through it.

Innocent blood. Never underestimate the power of innocent blood, Vukotich had said.

He tried to touch his brother, but his gloved hand couldn't penetrate the mist. It was yielding, but refused to break.

An enormous male altered with four-foot antlers charged them, and Johann brought his sword up, scraping the velvet from a tine. The stagman howled, and his face was engorged purple with rushing blood. Johann cut him down expertly, and took on the two twin goblins who followed, tricking them into spearing each other. Then came an octopoid monstrosity with the eyes of a beautiful woman, and a tiny-headed giant with four mace-handed arms. And others, and others.

As if possessed, Johann fought them all. He stood over his cocooned brother, and held off the hordes until morning.

At first light, the battle stopped. It was like a combat sport. An unheard referee had ended the match, and everyone could go home. Johann had been trading blows with an androgynous popinjay who wielded a thin, deadly rapier. When the sun first tainted the sky, the creature sheathed its sword and bowed elaborately to Johann, swishing a ruffled sleeve through the air. All around them, combatants had left off trying to kill each other and were breathing hard. The sudden quiet was unnerving.

Johann looked at his enemy of the moment. There was a disturbing touch of invitation, of frightful promise, in its womanish smile. Its beauty was almost elven, although its neutered but well-muscled form was human.

"Until tonight?" It said, gesturing in the air.

Johann was too exhausted to reply. He simply shook his head, conscious of the blood and sweat falling from his face.

"A pity," it said. It kissed two fingers, and pressed them to Johann's lips, then turned and walked away, a gorgeously embroidered cloak swinging from side to side, the buds of horns poking through its girlish hair. Johann wiped the scented blood taste from his mouth. It joined the others, and they trudged wearily away, leaving behind the losers of the night's conflict. They were tonight's losers, or the next night's, or a hundred nights from now and far from this place's. When you fight for Chaos, you fight with Chaos. And you can't fight with Chaos and win.

Johann fell to his knees beside Wolf. Vukotich's corpse was stiff as a statue now, and had suffered much abuse during the course of the night. But his normally hard face had softened. Johann realized just how little he really knew about the man he had lived with, fought alongside, travelled with and eaten with for ten years. At the end, though, Sigmar was with him. And magic had been in his blood. He traced a hammer in the earth.