Gunnar Brand is in action with the rest of his Oathbound this week, in a final clash before Dawnbringers Book VI : Hounds of Chaos goes on pre-order tomorrow. He thinks he’s doing Archaon’s work… but is he really?
Blood sprayed as Gunnar Brand buried his axe in the Sigmarite's face. Bone shattered, a red river gushing forth. The corpse remained upright, snagged on the metal, until the chieftain booted it in the chest.
Flicking blood from his axes, Gunnar took in the moment. The mountainside grove was awash with carnage and screams. Most of the latter, it gratified him to know, came from the wretches his warriors were tearing apart. The Brand tribe knew Attramor – high in the Snow Peaks of Aqshy – better than any. Slipping between stocky trees and around boulders carved with old marks, Gunnar's warband had surrounded the trespassers. Now came the red work. They brought axe and spear against those who had come to these unforgiving heights – from where their ancestors had fled, and yet the Brands had made their own.Snow crunched under Gunnar's boots. Through clouds of condensing breath, he could see where the Sigmarites massed around their campfire, shields presented as a ring of defiance. The bark of a fusil’s muzzle split the night. To his left, Vatok span as if punch drunk, his throat turned to red mist by a whistling musketball. Any measure of respect withered within the chieftain. Gunnar raised his blade, its pitted face glinting flame-bright, and released an ursine war-shout. The darkness shuddered as his kin howled and charged.
It wasn't much of a battle. Gunnar drove an axe into the gut of a thickset man, hurling him to the ground. He raised his foot to stomp. A sound, like a raptor's egg cracking between fingers, saw him glance right. Dendrel, his monolith of a huscarl, was headbutting his already dead opponent. Brain-matter dribbled from his helm. Nearby, Tirrik Kel was defiling a Sigmarite banner, as she had sworn upon her oathstone to do. Her exultant howls verged on inhuman.
Rage cooling, Gunnar lowered his foot. He knelt, drawing steel across his enemy's throat in a quick, passionless motion. Animal panic was overtaking the dead man's kith as they fled through a cleft in the mountains. Gunnar made no effort to stop them. He watched and waited for the inevitable cacophony to ring out: the thundering hooves of the horsemen he had left lying in wait, and the screams of the soldiers mixing with the crack of trampled bones.
As his kin began looting rations or sawing off trophy heads, Gunnar approached the fire. Heat's caress, gentle enough to seem a trespasser itself in these harsh climes, soothed the ache in his fingers. Frigid breath spilling over his lips, he watched the smoke rise, obscuring the distant twinkle of the heavens.
The sound of hooves crunching on snow coaxed his attention onto the approaching riders. Steam billowed from the blood-splatted, war-painted flanks of their steeds as they trotted into the grove. Their leader grinned, bow hung over her shoulder as she tossed a severed head at Gunnar's feet.
'The look on their mewling faces, father.'
'Enough.' Gunnar speared his daughter's gloating, as he continued to warm by the flames. 'They're already dead, Singri. Mocking them won't change anything.'
As her riders dismounted to join the pillaging, Singri patted her snorting steed's neck and made no secret of her disdain. 'We won. Our enemies died. There's nothing wrong with celebrating that.'
'Celebrate survival,' Gunnar said, frowning. 'Celebrate protecting what's yours and seeing kin again. That's what matters.’ Fire's eager crackle cut through the quiet. Eventually, Gunnar sighed. 'You did well, daughter.'
The chieftain's hand strayed to an oathstone around his neck. His brother Jorvak had carved it days before he had gone mad and begun offering the tribe to the cursed fiends of the forest. Jorvak had claimed it earned him power and favour from the gods. All it had done was unmake him.
Singri dismounted. She flicked blood from her face into the fire, letting it sizzle, before nudging an errant log.
'This is the spot, then?'
'Folk build campfires at sites of old magic,' Gunnar said with a nod. 'Even if we don't realise it, the souls of the realms call to us.' For a moment he allowed himself to breathe; to take solace in the quiet, and in Singri joining him by the fire.
Then he felt the darksome presence slither into the glade.
'Yes-yes, here is where we must strike.'
Each syllable scratched Gunnar's mind like claws – and not only his. His warband were scrambling to their feet, blades hissing from sheathes, as Singri nocked an arrow into her bow. Gunnar's raised axe stopped them. He didn't sheathe the weapon, though, as he turned to the figure crouched behind him.
The messenger was clearly some sort of skaven, though not like any Gunnar had seen or slain before. Low and stooped, little of its flesh could be seen: only a boil-riddled tail that slinked out from beneath grimy fabric. The stench of the unnatural smothered it. It gestured towards the campfire with fingers formed of spasming rat tails.
'Here-here, the work must be done.' In the shadow of the rat-creature's hood was the faint impression of motion, like a hundred jaws chittering in disharmony. 'The crystal, where-where?'
Grunts of effort and a keening scrape echoed through the forest of black cedars. Strange tribesmen entered the glade, dragging a spur of green crystal behind them. Brand warriors drew back, muttering abjurations and clutching charms. Gunnar himself suppressed a shiver of unease as he watched the spindle-limbed figure of Nadja scuttle nearby. The shaman's beaked mask snapped towards her chieftain.
'It pulses with the breath of the gods.'
Gunnar and Singri backed away as the object was hauled over the snuffed firepit. With a heave, the tribesmen began to nail chains to the earth and drive the crystal's pointed tip downwards. It pierced rock with a disturbing ease. The ground ululated painfully, heated air rattling from fresh ruptures. The wounds pulsed green.
'You bring filth into Attramor, ratman.' Gunnar growled, forcing himself to watch the corruption spread. 'And still won't speak plainly of your design.'
'Our design?' the messenger cackled. The creature's finger-tails grasped its robe, shifting it slightly. A foetid stench wafted across the glade. Within the folds of fabric glinted a tarnished icon: an eightfold star, underset by two jagged arrows. Tribesmen mumbled and made devotional gestures.
'The Everchosen's design, yes-yes,' the messenger gnashed. 'His three eyes seek where to spear the lands with our stone. To turn the earth against the storm-thing and his minions. He calls you to aid, and we facilitate. Because you are… loyal.' It spat the word as a curse, before wheezing a low chuckle. 'And the Takblood Queen serves, where you hesitate.'
Mention of Gunnar's chief rival was an unsubtle threat. The rat-thing knew that; its tail drummed an amused tattoo upon the protesting earth. Gunnar's eyes panned across his warriors, settling upon Singri's look of consternation. Then he gazed out over the plains of Capilaria.
On the far horizon he thought he could see the orange glow of Sigmar's seething metropolis. It hunkered there, drawing its walls close. Weakness. Hard to believe its inhabitants and the tribes of the darkoath had been one people, in ages past.
'Aye, creature. We serve.' Gunnar nodded, as he turned back to the messenger. 'We will set this trap, if it harms the cowards. But we do it at the Everchosen's bidding.' He pointed his axe at the creature. Blood dripped from its curve. 'Not yours.'
The creature spasmed. The shifting of its foot revealed where its touch had blackened the earth. As it looked back at Gunnar, its laugh was a thing of knives.
'Yes-yes, mortal. As you say.'
You can pre-order Gunnar and his family tomorrow, alongside loads of their Darkoath allies, Abraxia the Spear of Archaon, and Dawnbringers Book VI.
