Archaon: Everchosen Read online

  As the storm smashed them on, lightning seethed through the sky. The world was fit to break. The furious flashes revealed a shale beach. On the shore sat a collection of beached fishing boats, rocking in the storm. Beyond lay a fishing village. Innocent. Provocative. Vulnerable. The barbarians stood in their dripping furs and spiked armour. They could already feel the spray of hot blood across their faces. The screams and the begging that aroused them so, soothing the mind and ear. The ache of omnipotence flooded their being. Hands stain-speckled with death reached for the tools of their trade – wicked blades, slender axes and spear shafts of saturated gore. They were the storm. The sudden and sickening eruption of forces unknown upon the helpless and afeared. The stinking and smoking ruin that their progress left in its path – the northmen’s advertisement to the world. They were there. They robbed. They ravaged. They murdered. And they lived.

  The hovel’s roof flashed white in the storm. Rain lashed the windows clean and the shrieking north wind battered the door with the insistence that it be admitted. As the oldest homestead in Hargendorf and one of the closest to the beach, the hovel bore the full fury of the coming storm. Within, a fish broth bubbled above the fire, both being attended by Viktoria Rothschild. It was cold for the time of year but storms didn’t bother Viktoria. She was a fisherman’s daughter and a fisherman’s wife. The north winds warranted nothing more than a shawl. She had nets to mend and three young boys to tend to.

  Otto pretended to be asleep in his bunk. He had never liked the Nordland storms and his father feared for the kind of fisherman he would make. His brother Dietfried, on the other hand, pushed his face to the window, feeling the drum of droplets through the glass and his nose. As thunder shook the hovel and lightning bleached the young boy’s face, his mother called him away. Dietfried retreated. A little. Only Lutz seemed oblivious to the tempest, sitting with his mother by the fire. He had no intention of helping her. With a stomach like a grotto or sea cave, the boy merely waited for his broth and the salt bread that would go with it.

  Viktoria sighed. Lutz’s stomach was usually a good indicator of when her husband Roald was due to return. In weather like this she expected him even earlier but reasoned that the boats would need dragging further up the beach and securing in the storm. Between the claps of thunder she heard the sound of boots on shale. Roald was home. She handed bowls and wooden spoons to Lutz from the shelf.

  ‘Set the table for your father,’ Viktoria told the boy. ‘Dietfried, help your brother.’

  When Dietfried didn’t reply, the fishwife turned on him with a face like the squall. ‘Dietfried,’ she carped, heading to unbar the door, her hands busy with salt bread. The boy was staring out of the window. He looked back at her, his face cast in shadows of concern by the flashing outside.

  ‘Mother…’ he began, turning back to the window.

  There was shouting. Course and guttural. With bread in hand, Viktoria approached the window. Shadows passed before it in quick succession. The shadows of men in the village, but instead of nets and boat hooks and buckets, their hands glinted with the metal of blades, spear tips and axes.

  Viktoria dropped the bread.

  She grabbed Dietfried and went to pull him away from the window. The horror held them there, however. There was screaming now. Hedda Molinger was dead. Viktoria heard it. She had probably gone out to greet her husband, Edsel. The Rodeckers’ dog was barking and then promptly stopped. Old Mother Irmgard was suddenly out in the street, the centre of a mob of kicking and stamping. Bertilda’s boys Gelbert and Jorgan were straight out into the unfolding havoc but within moments were on their knees and pleading for their lives. Their entreaties went unheeded and seconds later their blood splashed up against the Rothschilds’ window, streaming down the glass with the rain.

  Viktoria couldn’t quite catch her breath. She hauled Dietfried back and found both Lutz and Otto – awake and out of bed – clutching at her skirts. She looked about the hovel. They were fisherfolk and had little coin to spend on weapons like swords. She wouldn’t know what to do with it even if she had one. The best they had was a wood axe but it was wedged in a log amongst the firewood piled outside the door.

  She felt her heart hammer in her chest. As the shadows continued to flash by the window and she could hear the crunch of boots up the beach and into the village, she felt the hammering accelerate to a lightheaded flutter. She went to say something to her children but the words wouldn’t come. A silhouette eclipsed the storm at the window. It was a man. Big in his furs and spiked armour. He wasn’t running into the havoc unfolding in the centre of Hargendorf like the others. He had stayed to finish Old Mother Irmgard, while his barbarian battle-kin had surged on to pillage and slaughter children and womenfolk.

  He stood still like a predator, the wind and rain whipping about him. The shape of a woman tore by shrieking the name ‘Brigette’. Through the glass, Viktoria saw it was Carla Vohssen. The marauder sprung like a trap, snatching the screaming woman by the hair and pulling her into the hovel wall. His shadow held hers there. She fought but the barbarian stood like a statue above her. Viktoria heard the slow sound of a blade escaping its scabbard. Carla Vohssen’s voice was a strangled whisper. She alternated between begging and praying but the marauder silenced her with a single ‘Sssshhhhhhh’ from behind his helmet. As the tip of his broad blade dimpled her flesh, Viktoria heard Carla fall once again to screaming and struggling. Her elbow crashed through the hovel window, allowing the storm to scream inside. Viktoria clutched her children to her and retreated further into the hovel as she heard Carla’s shriek turn to moan, moan to whimper and whimper to silence.

  Viktoria felt her children cling to her. In the distance the shrine bells were ringing. The temple. It somehow calmed Viktoria. She knew she had to act. Pushing Dietfried, Otto and Lutz to the corner of the hovel, she lifted the mound of fishing nets waiting for her attention there. There was no time for words, even ones of maternal comfort. They were all too scared. The boys instinctively understood what their mother wanted and crawled beneath, Dietfried’s hand lingering on Viktoria’s as she positioned the netting over them. An impact on the hovel door sent the child’s hand shooting back beneath the material. Viktoria stood bolt upright.

  The shadow was missing from the window. Poor Carla’s corpse had slipped down the wall and her elbow from the shattered glass. The marauder’s armoured boot slammed into the door but it was barred against the storm and held. Viktoria slipped the knife she had been using to gut the fish off the table. She backed towards the fire, the stinking blade behind her. She watched. She waited.

  The third impact splintered the bar in two and the smashed door was battered aside, allowing the maelstrom in. Framed in the doorway, in the flaring storm, in her nightmares, was the marauder. Rain cascaded from his furs and the urchin-like outline of his armour. Where leather, mail and plate failed to contain the northman’s brawn, his flesh was tattooed and scarred. Centred about his heart and crossing one great pectoral muscle, the warrior had a rough tattoo in the shape of an eight-pointed star. Viktoria felt both drawn to and despairing of the symbol but decided that it would be the best place to bury her knife when she had the chance. The warrior’s helm was horned and covered his face. Light was admitted by a number of rough puncture holes in the faceplate that, for all Viktoria knew, afflicted the marauder’s hidden face also. The tempest whipped Carla’s lifeblood and gore from the huge blade of the sword in the marauder’s mailed fist.

  He entered. Slowly. Like his knife had the girl outside. His sea-drenched boots carried him calmly across the hovel. There was no frenzied attack. Nothing like the butchery behind him as marauders moved through the village like a pack of wolves, slashing, tearing and sharing. Viktoria picked up a plate and threw it, and another, but they bounced uselessly off the marauder’s chest. He kept coming. Slow. Deliberate. His blade held in casual readiness. He reached out for her but she retreated, grabbing the
pot of fish broth by one burning handle and flinging it awkwardly at the warrior. As the heavy pot clattered to the floor, the boiling broth steamed off the marauder’s scalded flesh and armour. If he felt pain, the warrior didn’t show it.

  Viktoria backed away. She felt a sob erupt from her. Futility and frustration. She was about to die and she knew it. At the sound the boys beneath the fishing net stifled their own terror, as the marauder’s helm drew around to the corner of the hovel. The action turned Viktoria’s stomach to stone. She reached into the fire for a partially burning log. She would torch the northerner. His mailed fist snapped around her wrist like vice. She strained but the warrior held her there. She felt his balance change. The tip of his sword was up and resting on her stomach. He intended to skewer her like he had Carla.

  And the marauder would have done, but Viktoria brought the knife from behind her back with her other hand and thrust the blade at the tattoo of the star across the monster’s heart. The tip of the knife punctured the skin and slipped partly into the warrior’s flesh. The marauder was no fish, however. Muscle, bone and whatever protection the unholy symbol offered barred the way to his heart. As Viktoria stood there, frozen with horror, an instant of dark connection was made between their two souls, their two bodies. Shocked and sickened, she released her grip on the weapon, and tried to pull away.

  He looked down at the knife protruding from his flesh, then back at Viktoria. She thought she saw his eyes, the light of the fire penetrating the helmet and revealing the jaundiced, bloodshot peace of his gaze. He released her wrist but backhanded her away from the fire. The mailed palm took several of the fishwife’s teeth and she hit the wall with an ugly, head-gashing crack. The children squealed from beneath the netting.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Viktoria called to them. ‘Mummy’s all right.’

  The knife clanged to the floor as the marauder swept his own weapon around, smashing the handle down and the blade tip from his flesh. He turned towards the mound of nets but Viktoria called, ‘No’. She spat blood. She sobbed. ‘Here. Here.’

  She backed into the hovel’s only other room. The bedroom. She was crying. The marauder stopped. He considered. Finally he slid his sword slowly back its scabbard. The marauder advanced. Viktoria retreated. She cried out as the back of her legs hit the bed. She fell back into the blankets. The marauder entered. In his armour and helm he seemed to fill the tiny room. Thunder crashed. The wind moaned. The skies wept.

  Viktoria lifted her back from the covers.

  ‘No,’ she wept.

  The marauder brought his mail fist up to the helm and extended a finger. ‘Sssshhhhhhh,’ he told her.

  Someone was behind him. The warrior went for his sword and turned. The boat hook smashed through the side of both his helm and skull. Roald Rothschild held him there for a moment, the fisherman’s weapon keeping the marauder in place as he began to tremble and shake. Rothschild had no warrior skill. He had been fortunate in both his approach and the hook’s destination. Fear had driven him on. A husband’s wrath had carried him through doubt. The ungainly wickedness of his improvised weapon had done the rest. Lowering the warrior to his armoured knees, Roald shook the hook loose from the twisted metal of the helm and allowed his victim to fall. The marauder crashed onto the floor and fell into a brief fit, the insides of his head leaking out of the side of the helmet, before finally falling silent and still.

  All Viktoria could see was her husband. His beard hid the grimness on his lips. Dietfried, Otto and Lutz were suddenly about his legs, crying. He put his finger to his lips and bid them be quiet before extending a hand to his wife. Viktoria took it and the family fled the hovel, heading into the storm – Roald’s fishing boat waiting for them, a little way up the rain-lashed beach.

  Legends are not made in this way…

  The Dark Master will not be thwarted thus. What is a prophecy if not a truth promised to be? The skill is knowing where to exert force. It is true that with so many competing forces in the world, so many invested entities and powers, with so many destinies at odds, it is nigh but impossible to change the great happenings of the age – any age – directly. There is balance, except when there is not. With a lever long enough, however, I could balance it across the great mountains of the Worlds Edge and prise mighty Morrslieb from the night sky.

  This world was once mine. A glorious ruin of ash and flame. It will be again. And so like the pages of a book, flicked back to read again that which was missed the first time, I bring forth my instrument of destruction. He, who is destined for Armageddon’s crown. He, whose anointed flesh is destined to be my own. Archaon… will be.

  Small changes can make a big difference – sometimes, all the difference.

  Which is why this time the shrine bells of Hargendorf never rang.

  CHAPTER I

  ‘Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.’

  – Senectra the Younger, Dialogues

  The village of Hargendorf

  Nordland Coast – The Empire

  Mitterfruhl, IC 2391

  The water was cold, as was her purpose. Viktoria Rothschild stood in the shallows. She had been crouching there for some time and her legs were numb. The waters splashed up against her knees and swollen belly and on up along the shale beach. She looked out across the bay. Beyond extended the Sea of Claws and beyond that, only the gods knew what. The sea had been good to her family. To her father. To her father’s father. To herself, Roald and the boys. It was a giver of life. Dietfried, Otto and Lutz had grown strong and healthy on whatever the sea had provided for them. Roald had his boat. She sold the fish he caught. The sea had been good to them.

  Manann’s realm could be fickle, however. As well as giver it was also the taker of life. Isolde Altoff’s boy Hanke had drowned off Stukker Nook. Viktoria’s cousin Gretel had been taken by a wyrm on the beaches of Lugren when Viktoria had been just a teenager. Three generations of the Lassowitz family had been lost in one night during a squall on the Hunderbank. The sea would take another that morning.

  The slosh of the waves and the offshore breeze stole her grunts and exertions. She was a mother of three fine boys. She had done this before. About her the water was a murky crimson. She cried for the last few minutes. Above, dark clouds were gathering and the wind turned.

  ‘Viktoria!’

  It was Roald. He had been running up the beach calling her name. His boots took him into the shallows. ‘Gods woman, no,’ he said, swirling about the bloody waters with his big hands. ‘Viktoria, no.’

  She turned to him and staggered. He caught her and held her for a moment. He looked out to sea while she peered back up the shale beach to the hovel. It was one of the last standing after the terrible night of slaughter nine months before. The hovel that had admitted the marauder and borne witness to the dark gift he had bestowed on Viktoria Rothschild. The gift of a child unwanted. Viktoria blinked the salt from her eyes. If only there had been a warning. If only the shrine bells had rung. If only Roald and the fishermen had returned earlier. But they hadn’t and Viktoria had bought herself and her children time with her miseries.

  ‘We shall be punished for this,’ Roald told her. ‘The gods will punish us.’

  Viktoria held him a little longer.

  ‘We’ve been punished enough,’ Viktoria said bleakly, before wading out of the shallows and back up the shale. Otto and Lutz were playing outside, while Dietfried watched them from up the beach, from where he had been helping his father with the catch.

  Roald Rothschild remained, the waves rising and falling about him. He looked but saw nothing. The sea had taken the child. It was one with the depths. He cast his gaze up at the haemorrhaging sky. There would be another storm. It was the season. The fisherman’s lips moved silently. Roald Rothschild prayed. He prayed to Manann. He prayed to Sigmar. He prayed to any and all that were listening. Little could he kn
ow that a force dark and powerful had indeed heard his fearful prayers.

  You would consign fate, crafted in flesh and blood, to the depths? The gifts of Chaos are not to be refused. They are not demanded or earned, they are visited upon mortals at the pleasure of Dark Gods and the princes of ruin.

  This story cannot be untold. The will of daemons cannot be undone. It is decided. Doom lives on. Damnation endures. From the darkness of the depths to the darkness of the womb, the gift shall be returned.

  And so I petition the moons and turn back the tide. The black depths reject that which has been rejected. Once more the fruit is swollen with the seed of doom. This child shall live and in doing so bring about the death of all the world. Consider this already done. Done in the name of god-thwarted Be’lakor.

  CHAPTER I

  Now it is the time of night,

  when fears surmount their mighty sum,

  and the grave gapes forth its welcome.

  – Nelkenthal, The Raven’s Call

  The village of Hargendorf

  Nordland

  Nacht der Kranken, IC 2391

  Viktoria sent Dietfried for the midwife from Shlaghugel. Gunda Schnass had brought all three of her sons successfully into the world and Viktoria would have no one else for the fourth. Although a lapsed follower of Shallya, Gunda made her offerings to the God-King at Dempster’s Rock. The temple was nearer and according to Dietfried – who she had also delivered – there was little time. Gunda didn’t even know Viktoria was expecting. It seemed strange after the tragedy that had befallen Hargendorf. There was so much work to do in rebuilding and managing the catch alone that another child – so soon – struck Gunda as an extra burden. Asking for Sigmar’s blessing on her work and strong sons for his Empire, the midwife made her way to Hargendorf with Dietfried Rothschild walking miserably behind. She tried to prise some conversation from the boy on their journey but he would not be drawn. He had turned into a serious child, hard of face and burdened by his thoughts. The midwife expected little else from the youngling: he had been taken by the heel and dipped in tragedy head first. He had seen things no one was meant to see.