Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

‘Another day, another argument,’ said Aethnir, striding up from the water’s edge with a band of loosely armoured Sepuzkul hearthguard sweating behind him. His bleak smile, like the Fyreslayers themselves, was diminished, but clung on with a stubbornness that was at odds inspiring or infuriating, depending on the swing of Dunnegar’s moods. ‘You must indeed be strong friends, else one of you would be dead by now.’

Killim and Dunnegar eyed each other. They both knew which one.

Remembering himself, Killim bowed stiffly. His attitude to their reversal in status was ironic given that it had been by his own scholarly concession, ‘not unheard of’, that had finally overcome the resistance to the decimated Angfyrd lodge being absorbed into their cousins’ ranks. It was Aethnir now that commanded the auric hearthguard, with Killim relegated merely to carrying the standard.

‘Perhaps in a few hundred years,’ Nosda-Grimnir had said by way of consolation, time enough for the old smith to memorise the chronicle of the new lodge he was now a reluctant part of.

‘Shouldn’t you be foraging ahead?’ Killim grumbled.

With a self-deprecating shrug, Aethnir indicated the slimy marmot-like creatures strung up from his fyrd’s magmapikes. The animals burrowed into the soil all over this country where the lake was shallow. They tasted even more like dung than dung, but they needed neither cooking nor skinning, and when left to hang could release three or four times their dry weight in lukewarm water.

‘I’d rather eat the magmapike,’ Killim grumbled.

‘You could always try going hungry,’ Aethnir returned. ‘It would be better for the pike.’

‘I should’ve gone with Huffnar and Rokkar. Founded a new lodge and forgotten this damned quest. I’ll wager they’re not eating this hot drez right now.’

‘I’d wager you’re right,’ said Aethnir levelly.

Dunnegar snorted, earning himself a sharply quizzical look from his old mentor. ‘You really think they managed to start a new lodge anywhere here?’

‘Better off,’ Killim grumbled after a moment.

Dunnegar turned to the young karl. ‘Do you know how far we are from Fyrepeak?’

Aethnir simply shrugged.

‘Of course he doesn’t know,’ Killim snapped, swiping up his own chronicle and waving it like an admonition to an entire damnable world. ‘It’s been thirty-three hundred days. We should’ve seen the Plain of Dust, but we haven’t. We should have had at least a hint of Taurak Skullcleaver or the last of his lieutenants, but we haven’t. We should be entering the Red Mountains, but we bloody well aren’t.’ He looked around, drunk with sarcasm. ‘We’re not, are we?’

Aethnir squinted at the red haze on the horizon. ‘They look a bit l—’

‘They’re not the Red drenging Mountains,’ Killim screamed, slamming his book shut, then taking it two-handed and launching it into the air.

It sploshed into the lake, ignited an instant later, and sank under with a hiss.

Panting, Killim turned slowly pale. ‘Oh, drez.’

‘It’s alright,’ said Aethnir. ‘I don’t think it was helping anyway.’

‘This is your fault.’

‘My fault?’

‘Aye. You. Burying ur-gold I could have used. Feeding me these… things.’

Ignoring them, determinedly so for the circularity of their arguments made him dizzy, Dunnegar rose to his feet and leaned forward. He was peering to the horizon, and that latent red shimmer. For a moment it had seemed to crackle as if with storms. He listened, counting under his breath, and on the count of nine came the rumour of thunder.

He couldn’t say why, but the storm made him think of war.

‘The Red Mountains are there,’ he said, sure of it. ‘And we go on.’

‘The four thousand and first day saw the end of one quest and the beginning of another. The journey had proven long and costly and perhaps we should have abandoned it before we did, though there can be few who were there that day who took issue with the outcome. An oath is an oath, but gold is gold…’

The Sepuzkul Chronicle (formally the Angfyrd Odyssey)

‘I am wrath!’ Dunnegar roared, throwing his elbow through a warrior’s pointed jaw. Blood exploded from the reaver’s mouth. There was no time to attend him further. The enemy were packed in so close that there was no air to breathe that had not already been breathed out or bled into. The froth from their mouths was in his beard, their blood was in his eyes, and he killed more men with his fingernails and his teeth than he could with his axe.