Lord of the Mountain Roads

Chapter I: Dark Rider

Sunset spread out crosswise over the peaks of the valley of dreams.
You tied grass into a knot and wove a lock of my hair into it.
You sent, in strange dreams, that crazy vision of a land
Where days are bright with starlight

I will call you 'Lord of Mountain Roads.'
Who said that snow is cold?
I will go through the pass and the rock ledge crossroads
The junction of rivers of stone

I am leaving in the tracks of those unaware what the word 'fear' means.
Oh, isn't everyone with you who got lost, who died in the mountains
Who found peace there, where the winds dance under your hand
On the verge of a clear morning?

I will call you 'Lord of Mountain Roads.'
Clouds swirl in clusters before the storm.
Our blood is escaping into the sand
Forget it and it will sprout a willow wand

I wanted to stay with you
I have already managed to dare
Unclouded pain smells like snow -
Is it the distance, the height or death?

May frost cover my trail of footprints
So that no one will have been able to find them.
Who reads your name under the ice now
Lord of Mountain Roads?

(Translation of the song by Melnitsa, „Lord of Mountain Roads")

...

These were dark times, times that no Druchii with a heart true to Khaine and to the ancient pride of the noble heritage of Nagarythe could look upon without feeling utter despair in their soul. Times darker and more treacherous than before.

Foul creatures, damned humans favored by the debased god of lust and hunger, marched through the cities and along the roads of Naggaroth. Dark Elves sacrificed their honor to crawl under the whip of daemons. The Cult of Pleasure, responsible for the war that had driven the Druchii into exile from their righteous home, emerged from under the surface, and the Seeress-Queen Morathi once again controlled her people as if they were mere puppets in her selfish schemes. Decadence and perversion ruled the once proud and deadly people, and the Temple of Khaine struggled to maintain order, but even the murderous and magnificent Brides of Khaine fell prey to the dark temptation, surrendering to the evil caress of Slaanesh one by one.

And though the ones still righteous and nonyielding called out to their leader, the mighty Wicthking, he was not there to support them or lead them into the battle against the enemy within with his firm hand and wise mind; for he was gone to wage war on Ulthuan, and his all-seeing eye was averted from his own people.

These were dark times, and dark was the night through which Setharai rode. The steed, fiery and black as the night sky, was not able to gain full speed on the rocky terrain, and her rider was reluctant to injure the loyal mount. Up and down the road coiled and unfolded, in serpentine curves, and Setharai's view was at all times obscured by the mountains on both sides of the narrow pass. She had been going for five full days now, stopping only to let Umdar, her horse, graze upon the scarce vegetation hidden under snow, and to sleep in uneasy, nightmare-filled fits. She was glad that the highest part of the pass was behind them, where she had only been able to lead Umdar by the reigns, the air so thin and the rocky ground so steep that even she had trouble to keep her pace on foot.

She was a Dark Rider, and she had a task; though she began to wonder by now if it was not a suicide mission, a mere gesture of the one who hired her to show his allies that he tried his best.

Umdar snorted, probably smelling some animal close by, something small and irrelevant, since Setharai's sharp elven senses didn't register anything. Umdar was hungry, of course, since for the last two days they had crossed such barren terrain that she had found nothing under the frozen snow. The air was still thin, but Setharai was persistent and well-trained, and so was Umdar; they traveled on. They were lucky that the walls of rock on both sides of the pass at least guarded them from the icy wind that had tortured them on their way up the slope, biting through Setharai's light leather armor and thick woolen cloak and freezing the sweat on Umdar's flanks before it could evaporate.

Setharai had shared her own rations of dried meat with her horse, but Umdar was not sated. It was probably the warm scent of some rodent, or maybe a fox, that made her nervous now. The black steeds of the Dark Riders were nothing like their counterparts that the weakling usurpers of Ulthuan held – they were raised and trained to bite and kick out at the enemies, and to devour the flesh of their corpses. Like her sisters and brothers, Umdar was a ferocious beast.

Sethatrai patted the steeds neck. "Shhh, my deadly, we will be there soon. When we find Lord Arhigram, you will get some rest and some meat. Be patient, my beautiful, be patient."

The steed suddenly pinned her ears back and reared, almost throwing Setharai from her back. Setharai gripped the saddle with her thighs, shouting out in surprise. Her left hand still held the reigns, but her right dropped to the handle of her sword, drawing it quickly.

And just in time. Umdar had sensed them long before her elven companion did – humans, monstrous, ugly shapes with thick bones and square shoulders, thundering clumsily along the mountain road with their axes and crude swords raised over their heads. The Chaos Moon, appearing from behind torn clouds, shone its greenish light on them, and Setharai saw them more clearly than she would wish to. Dressed in garishly colored furs and leather, their skin painted with patterns more intricate than she would expect from such barbarians, they were running towards her, in the clear intention to kill.

How could they have approached without her noticing? How did they know at all of her presence? Sorcery must be at work here, she thought feverishly.

She pressed her heels into the steed's flanks, and the horse jumped forwards, speeding ahead and straight into the running horde. "Go, my deadly, go!" Setharai let her voice end in an eerie scream that echoed in the mountains. "Bless me, Anath Raema!"

They crashed into the wave of the barbarians like a skiff's bow, cutting a line through the middle, Setharai's sword lashing out to the left and the right with quickness increased by her fear, Umdar's sharpened teeth biting chunks of flesh out of the humans' shoulders and faces. The narrow road was a disadvantage for the humans as well – slow and bearish, they had difficulties to strike out properly, and hindered each other; Umdar's impact threw them towards the rocky walls and against each other, smashing limbs and breaking skulls.

A man grabbed the reigns, his gross features adorned with heavy golden rings in nose and lips distorted in a lustful grin, and she struck down, her blade cutting through his bald head; but he had slowed them down, and now she had to parry and dodge the blows instead of plowing through the horde at full speed.

An axe missed the Druchii's thigh just by a width of a finger and buried its blade in the leather of the saddle. Setharai felt Umdar twitch, and the steed cried out, indicating that she was hurt. With a cry of anger, the rider lashed out with her sword in half a circle, cutting the top half of the enemy's skull off, and he fell backwards, drawing the axe out in his movement.

And then they were through, the barbarians reacting too late to follow them, and Umdar, bleeding from her side but undefeated, galloped away from the pass, the terrain finally sloping down again.

Now she felt she had a ghost of a chance to finally reach Lord Arhigram and deliver her message. Breathlessly, she prayed to Anath Raema to have granted her this success, to have chosen her as the hunter, not the prey, to have allowed her to slay so many of the damn brutes and still survive.

And then she saw lights in the darkness; fires, hundreds of them. Frantically, she grasped Umdar's reigns, pulling, tearing, trying to make the steed stop running, stand; and she wished to have been slain at that narrow pass.

An army was stationed in the valley before her.

Bellows from crude throats echoed from the ancient stone of the Blackspines, distasteful songs were sung at the blazing fireplaces. Humans and bestial creatures, turned into undefined monsters by the touch of chaos. And among them, fallen yet proud, the worst of all living beings, were ten or twelve, or maybe fifteen – she didn't dare to call them Druchii, it hurt her mind to even think about them as her kind – beautiful, seductive, treacherous – she wanted to make it stop, make them disappear – elven women, Druchii, Sorceresses and fallen Witches, talking to these beasts, laughing with them... Oh Anath Raema, grant me a fast death, she prayed, that my eyes must see such debasement... Some of them were even laying with the beasts.

Setharai retched, leaning over the side of her horse to spit on the snowy ground. When she regained her breath, she looked more closely, forcing herself to study the situation with a cold heart and a clear mind.

This was probably one of the hosts that the loyal followers of the decadent Queen have summoned. Chaos barbarians following the call of the rotten deity that they called the Dark Prince, and even more gruesome mutated beings. She discovered a graceful daemon among them, neither female nor male in appearance, with crab-like claws, stalking among the people sitting at the fires and randomly slicing through them with the blades growing from its arms. The chaos worshipers didn't resist the daemon's touch, as if they didn't care about death – or even welcomed it.

This was bad. Very bad. Her employer had explained to her that it would be here that Lord Arhigram's men would set up camp on their hunt for run-away slaves. A dangerous territory, said to be in the hand of the Autarii, the Shades, who didn't always ally with the city-dwellers – especially not with those from Clar Karond. But it seemed that not the Shades had laid an end to Arhigram's hunt. Instead, they were probably all dead by the hands of chaos-worshiping scum now, and with these being Slaaneshi forces, they probably had experienced a very long-lasting, very torturous way to die. What a terrible and shameful end!

She had to ride back. She urged Umdar to turn and then stopped, listening to the steeds ragged breath. Quickly, she slid from the saddle and lead the horse into the shadow of a ledge. She struggled with the saddle straps, unbuckling them with trembling fingers, and suppressed a scream. Under the saddle, a deep wound was gaping in the horse's side, red trickling rivulets running down and dripping onto the rocks. And from the way Umdar gasped and shivered, Setharai knew that the steed's lung was damaged. There was nothing she could do for Umdar; she was not a healer. She could only wait – but waiting here, with the army on one side and the barbarians on the road pass on the other, most of which were probably still alive, would be death for them both.

At last, she had decided to lead Umdar by the reigns. She couldn't leave the horse there, even though other Druchii would have called her softhearted – but who was here to witness it at all? Umdar had been with her for many years, they had fought hundreds of battles together, delivered thousands of messages. She had never been as close to any Druchii as she was to her loyal mount.

Tears flowed down her face, freezing half-way to her chin, and she made step after step in the darkness, hoping to make it to another pass or some not yet known entrance to the tunnels beneath before dawn. Hoping, helplessly, that they had a chance. She didn't dare to pray to Anath Raema for help anymore. The Goddess of the Hunt was a deity of predators; she wouldn't listen to someone who now was merely a fleeing prey animal.

...

Author's notes: For those who read/have read my other story (Hadrilkar - the Collar of Servitude), expect to see a side character from it emerging in this story soon! And, for a change, there will be no Slaaneshi-typical debaucheries in this project, since we approach the other side now - that of Druchii who are not at all impressed by the surfacing Cult of Pleasure (I combine the "Storm of Chaos" and the current canon storyline version - meaning Malekith invades Ulthuan, the Cult of Pleasure grows stronger, Morathi invades Lustria, and at the end, Malekith comes back in defeat and, using a possibility to find a scapegoat, starts a great purge to free Naggaroth from the Cult, forbiding even the memory of it having surfaced again - and the order is restored as if nothing had happened). This story is actually a romantic one (or as far as romance can go according to the Druchii view on life). Yes, I want to try my hand at writing romance, and since it is close to impossible with Makareth, the main character of Hadrilkar, I chose another one for that.