02 - Wulfrik Read online

  Wulfrik settled for the southling’s life, stabbing him in the neck as he frantically tried to free his short sword from the boat’s side. The hero tossed his own sword into the bottom of the boat and planted both hands upon the gunwale. It took a superhuman effort for the northman to lift his armoured body from the river, the wood beneath his hands starting to splinter as his massive weight pressed upon them. Only a man whose flesh had been warped by the Dark Gods and whose spirit burned with bloodlust could have managed such a feat. Wulfrik the Worldwalker was such a man.

  The hero dropped into the bottom of the boat, the planks creaking beneath his boots. He caught up his sword just as the sergeant of the riverwardens came rushing towards him, thrusting at him with a barbed pike. Accustomed to fending off smugglers and pirates whose only drive was escape, the riverwarden underestimated the nature of his foe. As the pike grated across Wulfrik’s breastplate, the northman struck back at the sergeant, his sword flashing so near the man’s face he could feel air sweep against his nose.

  The sergeant recoiled in horror, eyes going wide as he noticed the skull dangling from the hilt of Wulfrik’s sword, the other skulls fastened to his belt and armour. Realisation that he fought something more than a river pirate struck the soldier as solidly as one of Broendulf’s kicks. His flesh turned clammy and his stomach went sour as the idea formed in the riverwarden’s mind that his foe was something far darker. This stretch of the River Reik was far from the great seas, but not so far that stories of Norscan raiders and their savage brutality had not reached the ears of even the lowest peasant.

  Calling upon Sigmar, patron god of all men of the Empire, the sergeant thrust his pike at Wulfrik. The barbed point stabbed into the northman’s leg, almost in the exact spot where the elf arrow had struck him. Wulfrik howled in pain, his sword smashing down, crunching through the wooden shaft of the pike. The sergeant staggered back, trying to recover his balance.

  Maddened with pain, Wulfrik pounced on the retreating riverwarden. He crushed the sergeant beneath his armoured bulk, smashing him across the bottom of the boat. The soldier screamed and flailed under the furious northman, battering at him with the broken length of the pike. Wulfrik ripped the crude club from the sergeant’s hand as though he were a child, then broke the man’s wrist when he grabbed for the knife in his belt.

  Snarling the name of Khorne, lord of blood and slaughter, Wulfrik pressed the edge of his sword against the riverwarden’s face, slowly sawing through the screaming man’s flesh. It was some time before the screaming stopped.

  Wulfrik rose from the dead riverwarden, brushing blood and teeth from his armour. He cast his gaze across the patrol boat. Only one other man still stood amidst the gory charnel house. One of Broendulf’s hands clutched a wound in his side. The other clenched a southling sword in its fist.

  “Put that away before I forget our agreement,” Wulfrik warned the injured huscarl. He smiled at Broendulf. “You didn’t stab me in the back when I was killing the master of this scow. I don’t think you’ll do so now.”

  Broendulf nodded, lowering the captured sword. “These are southlings,” he said. “Why did the magic bring us into southling waters instead of Ormskaro?”

  Wulfrik thrust his own sword back into its sheath. Coldly he reached down and grabbed the bloodied tunic of the sergeant, lifting the mutilated man from the belly of the boat. “We are here because I wanted to be here,” he told Broendulf. Callously, he tossed the body of the sergeant into the river.

  “What?” Broendulf demanded, anger rising in his voice. “Why not Ormskaro? Why here? Where is this place?”

  “I don’t know,” Wulfrik shrugged, reaching down to grab the body of another riverwarden. “That is, I don’t know the name of this place.”

  “Then where are we?” Broendulf persisted.

  Fangs gleamed from Wulfrik’s savage smile. “This is where Zarnath has fled to,” he answered, his voice never more like the hungry growl of a wolf.

  Broendulf shook his head in disbelief. “That doesn’t make sense,” he protested. “How can the magic bring us somewhere without a name?”

  Wulfrik tossed the body of the riverwarden into the Reik. “I didn’t want to find a place. I wanted to find a man.” He pressed a finger to his head. “In here I wanted to find Zarnath more than return to Ormskaro like a whipped dog. The Seafang took me where I wanted to be most. To the place where Zarnath has hidden himself. I can smell his stink in the wind,” the hero added, closing his eyes.

  “This is madness!” Broendulf said. “Why would a Kurgan hide among southlings?”

  “Because he isn’t a Kurgan!” Wulfrik snapped, his eyes burning with hate. “Everything he told us was just another of his lies! An illusion to cover his tracks! A trick to save himself.”

  “Who is he then?” Broendulf asked.

  Wulfrik clenched his fist, glowering at the distant lights of the settlement stretching across the bank of the river. “A southling wizard who thinks he can cheat the gods by playing with my dreams,” he hissed. “Now he will share my nightmares!” He turned his gaze on Broendulf. “Help me lift the dragon into this scow,” he ordered the huscarl.

  Broendulf limped to Wulfrik’s side, straining with the hero to raise the wooden figurehead from the river. Gasping, panting for breath, he sank down on one of the boat’s benches when the labour was finished. “Now what will you do?” the Sarl wondered, gesturing at the Seafang’s figurehead.

  Seemingly oblivious to injury or fatigue, Wulfrik prowled across the little boat, hoisting the bodies of the other riverwardens over the side, wiping the blood from the vessel with strips torn from its sail. “I will return to Ormskaro,” he said. “I will make that scoundrel Viglundr raise up such a fleet as Norsca has never seen. Then I will come back here and burn this city to cinders and offer every living thing within its walls to the gods!”

  Broendulf could hear the fanatical determination in the hero’s voice. Despite everything, he found himself believing Wulfrik could do just what he promised. He would force the treacherous king of the Sarls to raise the men and ships he needed. He would sail across the Sea of Claws and batter his way through the fortresses of Marienburg. He would sweep past the fleets of the Empire and bring his army here, to this place, this refuge where Zarnath had fled.

  The huscarl stirred from his thoughts as he noticed Wulfrik turn towards him. The hero had finished his morbid cleansing of the patrol boat, removing the bodies and most of the blood, eliminating the fodder that would draw daemons from the border-realm even more swiftly than the presence of living men. Blood dripped from Wulfrik’s palm where he had reopened the cut across his hand.

  “Out,” the hero snarled at Broendulf. The huscarl started to reach for the stolen southling sword in his belt, but Wulfrik’s bloody hand closed about his wrist, pinning it in place. “You’re staying here.” Wulfrik exerted pressure, forcing Broendulf to stop struggling and listen to him. “You’ve seen Zarnath. You know what he looks like. Whatever disguise he wore as a Kurgan, he won’t be able to hide those eyes of his. Find him! Watch him! Don’t let him run! The gods shrivel your bones if you do!”

  Wulfrik gripped Broendulf’s shoulder, lifting him and pitching him into the river with a single fluid motion. The huscarl struggled up from the cold embrace of the Reik, his head breaking the surface just in time to see Wulfrik press his bloody hand against the wooden dragon and watch as spectral mists gathered to engulf the little boat.

  Broendulf waited until the mists had cleared and Wulfrik was gone. Turning from the vanished boat, the huscarl began swimming towards shore. He would do as Wulfrik had ordered. He would find the shaman and see that he did not escape. But when the hero returned, there would be a reckoning between them.

  By all his ancestors and the gods, Broendulf would settle with Wulfrik.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Death came to the huscarl without warning or preamble. One moment he stood upon the weathered battlements of Ormfell, staring out across the spr
awl of Ormskaro, watching the light of the moons shimmering across the cold waters of the fjord. In the next breath, he was lying upon his back, gasping out his life while blood gushed from a gash that split him from belly to groin. Fiercely, the dying warrior tried to pull the axe from his belt, his last impulse even in death a savage urge to strike back at his killer.

  Wulfrik waited until the huscarl was still, then returned his gory knife to its sheath and climbed over the worn battlement to drop onto the roof of Ormfell. It had taken the wounded hero two hours to make the climb up the side of the tower, a climb even the boldest Norscans would have baulked at. The ancient walls of the tower were almost sheer, the stone crumbling and treacherous. Not for a chest of gold would even a brave man consider such a reckless climb. Wulfrik, however, was after something more precious to him than gold. And he would not be denied.

  None had seen the little boat emerge from the fog, nor watched as Wulfrik rowed the tiny craft onto the beach of Ormskaro. A fisherman had seen him as he hid the Seafang’s figurehead beneath a pile of worn wool sails, but Wulfrik had ensured the old man would never tell anyone what he had seen. A drunken warrior fumbling about in the pathway behind a mead hall had been the only other man to stumble onto Wulfrik. Like the old man, the warrior would not spread word that the hero had returned.

  The hero took the axe from the dead huscarl’s fingers, lifted the iron helm from the Sarl’s head and made his way across the roof. He paused at the trapdoor, his nose flaring as he drank in the smells rising from the tower below. Fangs gleamed in the moonlight as the marauder smiled. Sinking the toe of his boot under the trap, he kicked the door open with a savage thrust. Before the opened door could smash down upon the roof, Wulfrik was already leaping down the hole.

  One hand hooked about the side of the wooden ladder, the wild chieftain hurtled the fifteen feet between the roof and the corridor below. He landed with a bone-jarring crash at the bottom of the ladder, his injured leg threatening to buckle beneath him. Wulfrik gasped in pain as he landed, putting a note of fear into his voice.

  There were two men in the corridor. They spun about, axes at the ready when they heard Wulfrik make his violent descent. By the gloom of torchlight, however, all they took notice of were the familiar axe in the hero’s hands and the iron helmet which enclosed his head. Like the rest of Ormskaro, they thought it impossible to climb the walls of Ormfell. Suspecting nothing, the two warriors laughed and approached the northman huddled at the base of the ladder.

  “Seeing ghosts, Orfi?” joked one of the Sarl warriors. “I told you you couldn’t hold your mead!”

  The banter fell silent when the warrior came close enough to see the eyes burning from the iron mask of the helm and the full red beard beneath. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but his voice collapsed in a liquid gurgle as Wulfrik brought the stolen axe hewing into the man’s side. Mail links snapped and ribs splintered beneath the hero’s mighty blow. The Sarl crashed to the floor, thrashing as blood filled his lungs.

  Wulfrik snarled and turned away from his first victim. The other guard was overcome by fear, perhaps aware of who it was he faced. The Sarl turned, running down the hall. Before he could shout an alarm, Wulfrik threw the heavy battleaxe at the fleeing man. The weapon smashed into the warrior’s back, crunching through armour and flesh. The man stumbled, groping futilely at the axe, trying to pull it free. He took a few staggering steps, then sagged weakly against the wall.

  Wulfrik stalked past the two men he had killed. A new scent was in his nose now, a smell imprinted upon the deepest recesses of his heart. Long, lonely nights he had spent with only that scent to offer him solace. There was a lock of golden hair even now in a bag around his neck that bore that scent. For a moment, violence and vengeance were forgotten. Dead hope flamed into terrible life within his heart. The most desperate dreams are those which die hardest.

  Another smell struck Wulfrik’s senses and his lips curled back in a feral growl. The hero knew that smell too. Sveinbjorn. The Aesling prince was still in the tower.

  The hero quickened his pace, sprinting down the silent halls of Ormfell like a wolf on the prowl. He hesitated when he heard voices coming from behind closed doors, and lingered to listen to some of the muffled conversations. What he heard sent slivers of fire racing through his veins. Wulfrik’s death had again become accepted fact in Ormskaro, announced by the sole survivor of the hero’s last expedition: the Kurgan shaman Zarnath. He had related the death of Wulfrik and his crew before announcing his own departure from Norsca. The shaman had taken pains to make it clear he was returning to his own people far to the north in the Wastes.

  A last ploy in case Wulfrik should make it back from Alfheim. The hero clenched his fists in silent fury. Zarnath hoped he would go racing off looking for him among the Kurgans. Without the Seafang, it would be a quest that would consume a man’s lifetime. But the supposed shaman had made a mistake when he reckoned upon the destruction of Wulfrik’s ship and its magic. He also hadn’t considered that Wulfrik’s hate would lead him to the traitor’s true homeland, the Empire.

  Vengeance! It was a truer dream to cling to than the hope Zarnath had betrayed. When Wulfrik caught the filthy sorcerer, he would cut out the liar’s heart and make a present of it to Hjordis. As much as himself, Zarnath’s crooked promises had betrayed her. She deserved to taste the bitter fruit of revenge. It was all they had left now.

  Wulfrik suddenly froze in his steps. Quickly he pressed himself against the stone wall, peering around the corner to watch the hallway. Almost he had walked straight into a guard, so distracted was he by his thoughts of revenge. Now he studied the man lurking in the corridor, and with each observation, the hero felt his anger swell. The guard was no Sarl huscarl, but an Aesling hersir. His axe was leaning against the wall beside him. The guard was turned away from Wulfrik, with his ear pressed against the panel of a door.

  For a moment, Wulfrik watched the spying hersir. So content was the guard upon his snooping that he didn’t hear the marauder step away from the wall and creep down the corridor towards him. The first the spy was aware of Wulfrik was when the hero’s powerful arms coiled about his neck and crushed his windpipe. Wulfrik waited until the choking hersir was dead before tossing the guard aside like a sack of meal.

  Curiosity made Wulfrik press his ear to the door. He listened and a cold light grew in his eyes. The sounds coming from beyond the door were not unfamiliar to him. At least one of the voices wasn’t.

  If a blood-crazed troll had struck the door it might not have been propelled with such violence. The heavy oak panel crashed inwards, torn from its hinges, the twisted debris of its lock clattering across the floor. Gasps of shock and alarm rose from the huge bed sitting in the middle of the room. A brawny figure leapt from the nest of blankets and furs, lunging for a sword lying upon a chest against the wall.

  He never reached the weapon. Before he had taken more than a few steps, Wulfrik was upon him. The hero’s fist smashed into the naked man’s face, knocking teeth from his jaw. The man shrieked in outrage, lashing out with his own fist. Wulfrik caught Sveinbjorn’s hand in his own. Exerting all of his ferocious strength, the hero broke Sveinbjorn’s fingers, driving the wailing prince to his knees.

  “Wulfrik!” a shrill voice cried. The hero looked away from the whimpering prince, his eyes locking on the comely shape that rose from the bed. For a moment, he almost forgot Sveinbjorn and Zarnath, almost forgot the cruel curse laid upon him by the gods. He drank in the bare, curvaceous body descending to the floor like an Arabyan lost in the desert setting upon the cool embrace of an oasis. The scent he knew so well, the golden hair he kept about his neck, the smooth ivory skin…

  Savagely, Wulfrik brought his knee smashing into Sveinbjorn’s face. The prince’s nose cracked under the impact and he flopped to the floor. Wulfrik kicked him in the ribs, glaring at the faint red marks left by his hands upon Hjordis’ pale flesh.

  Hjordis stood a little away from the furious hero, shock and
wonder written across her face. She fumbled at the bed behind her, dragging a bearskin away to wrap about her nude frame. “Wulfrik?” she said again, a note of doubt in her voice.

  “Wulfrik,” the hero told her. “Not a ghost,” he added, delivering another savage kick to Sveinbjorn’s ribs.

  The stunned princess rushed to him, oblivious as she dropped the bearskin and trampled it beneath her feet. “The Kurgan said you were dead!” she cried, tears streaming down her face. She caught at Wulfrik, trying to press herself against him. “Oh, he said you were dead!”

  Wulfrik’s face twisted with revulsion. Sternly he gripped the woman’s arm, pulling her from him. “You stink of Aesling,” he growled, kicking Sveinbjorn once more.

  Hjordis retreated from the glowering hero, her face going almost white with horror. “They said you were dead…”

  “You didn’t take long to replace me,” Wulfrik snarled. “And with scum like this,” he snapped, burying his boot in Sveinbjorn’s gut. The prince rolled over onto his back, gagging as vomit spilled from his bloody mouth.

  Hjordis’ lips trembled as she stared at Wulfrik. “It wasn’t like that,” she said, shaking her head. “My father… when he heard you were dead…”

  “All this time,” Wulfrik said, his voice quaking with emotion, “through all the battles and suffering, one thing kept me going. That was knowing you were waiting for me here! Knowing that however far I fell, however many friends I led to their deaths, I could count upon your love!” He pounded his fist against his chest. “That long, I had something! That long I was still a man, whatever hell the gods cursed me to!”