King Hound II:
The Fall
By Roomsky
Edited by Non-Euclidian Planes
Rickard
2335
"Mother?"
Rickard paced clumsily down the unlit hallway, the soft carpet pleasant under his small feet. Save for periodic shafts of moonlight, he was blind in the unlit halls. Even so, he walked with the naïve conviction of any four-year-old, more than once pacing headlong into the legs of his family's many well-carved tables. Tears stained his puffy cheeks, but he was determined to remain silent. He was the prince of Hannesberg, and his mother told him that wailing did not befit one of his position, even while only a child.
He had made this journey before. Sigmund, the resident priest and healer said he had more nightmares than expected for his age, and they plagued him several times a week. They were vivid, monstrous dreams that left in him a distress that only his royal mother could abate. She had a soft, maternal quality about her that no maid or servant could replicate, and so after numerous failed alternatives it was simply accepted that he would wake the queen in the event of his nightly terrors.
He rounded the last familiar corner, and was surprised to find a shaft of light stark against the carpeted floor. He thought it odd; she was never awake at this hour.
"Mother?" he repeated, moving his arm up to shield against the glare. He tried to squint through the light, but the image failed to resolve. It was not until he was all but through the door that the scene beyond became visible.
"Mother?"
She looked up at him with large, verdant eyes, surprise written clear across her tender features. The platinum-blonde hair she spent so long preparing every morning was strewn haphazard across her chest, resting voluminous on her thin neck and coiled fingers. It was there, wrapped about her hands, that the golden strands turned crimson. The blood stained her fingers, and the hilt of the dagger pressed into her gut. From there, a cloud of red crawled through her white silk nightgown, death's talons slowly encircling her corpse.
Above her body was his father, standing in a half-crouch while his hands worked tremulously. They were soaked in her blood. Everything seemed terribly out of focus but those hands, and the blood spattering slowly onto polished marble.
…
It was the morning light that woke him.
Beams of gold stabbed through thin curtains over the mansion window, casting the bedroom in a harsh orange. He sat up lazily, regarding his own pitch silhouette stretching to the far wall. His shadow fell across the sleeping form of his companion, picturesque in her undress. He took a moment to drink in her naked form, from her slender legs to the curling black hair cascading across her shapely breasts.
On another day he may have considered some playfully erotic way to wake her, but such thoughts had abandoned him. To his infinite dismay, they instead lingered on the fat menial who had delivered his fathers' summons the day prior.
"King Volkord wishes your presence in his study tomorrow at noon, my prince." The portly man had said, wearing the same tired smile he paraded daily.
Rickard made no effort to hide his surprise.
"The Sons of Hror burn new townships by the fortnight, and you see fit to make jests at my expense?" Rickard had inherited his father's height, and stared down at the chamberlain with a mix of confusion and irritation.
"I am most sincere, my prince," the man responded, now showing the same confusion as his master. "Though I have not a guess as to why. He simply ordered I deliver his summons, a word was barely spoken otherwise."
He had dismissed the man shortly after, but the confusion had lingered long into the night and several glasses of wine.
He ran his hands through his coarse, mud-blonde hair and untangled his legs from the linen sheets. His sire had never failed to observe empty courtesies. In Rickard's youth, he had the finest toys. As a man, he wore the finest armor. His want of battle had been met with nothing but support from his father, and rarely was he denied even the most foolhardy requests. But beyond concessions, gifts, and pleasantries, they shared no love. They rarely spoke, and it was with increasing regularity that weeks would pass without so much as a glimpse of the man.
"A few hours until noon yet, my prince," Ellyn cooed lazily from the bed. "I can see the tension in you. I may have a method of calming your nerves before you depart."
Rickard turned to watch the young noblewoman lean back and kick what little sheets remained to conceal her fluttering onto the purple carpet.
Rickard gave an internal curse at his father. Must so common an image call to mind that night?
Ellyn seemed to notice the change in his face, and she wasted little time rolling forwards and wrapping her slender arms around his muscular frame. "Or… we could simply enjoy breakfast?"
He struggled to hide his sudden discomfort. "I… will have to take you up on that tomorrow, my lady. With these raids on my future subjects unceasing, I have much on my mind."
She released him and slowly reclined back onto the stuffed mattress. "Strange," she began, her voice dripping with sudden amusement. "It didn't seem to stop you last night."
That's because I wasn't dreaming of my mother's corpse immediately before fucking you last night seemed a discourteous response. "I'm sorry; I'm just in no hurry to see my father today. Yesterday it seemed distant but now…"
"Breakfast it is then," she responded casually, already making for her lavender shift. "Some fresh cut pig will set you straight. You've never been very attractive when you're moping, Rickard Volkord."
Hjolmar
2318
He was falling. The clouds roiled black and violent over an immense stream of slaughter. Uncounted billions swarmed past a forest of monstrous black towers, screaming their prayers of blood and skulls even as they killed and died. Rough iron chains wrapped clumsily about his naked body, every clang of shifting metal on metal heralded the searing of a newer, darker mark than the last. He tried to cry out from the pain, but no sounds escaped his shriveled throat as he plummeted through the superheated winds, his ears filled with the mocking laughter of sentinel daemons. He wanted it to end, for his pitiful form to splatter upon the rapidly approaching ground and cease the unbearable pain.
But the ground never came.
…
Hjolmar jolted upright, wheezing and sputtering gobbets of spittle onto blood-caked sheets. Golden hair had tangled and clumped together with dried blood and vomit, and pulled painfully at his freshly bleeding scalp. Red streams trickled slowly from the bolts in his skull, the flesh surrounding the nails perpetually red and swollen.
He hadn't remembered climbing into bed. The nightmares had arrived in concert with the wrought-iron crown now permanently affixed to his brow, and so he avoided sleep for as long as he was able. He kicked the soiled sheets away and inspected his arms and legs, always expecting the black bite of searing chains to have followed him into the waking world. It was with a sigh of relief that he beheld only noisome filth.
He struggled to stand. He felt weak, but couldn't bring himself to eat more than the barest minimum. Everything he ate tasted of blood, and every scent was the smoke of burning corpses. His feet bled anew as he stepped across the shattered glass that littered the floor, the remains of a reflective hanging that seemed crafted for the sole purpose of fanning the vanity of previous residents. He did not mind the pain, however. The wounds in his dreams did not bleed, and the warm blood that seeped between his toes was comforting in its reality.
He looked into the reflective shards, those not smeared with blood, and beheld a corpse. Gaunt and skeletal, its pale skin was marred by thick trails of blood. It shared Hjolmar's iron crown, and his emerald stare.
He ignored the wight, dismissing it as hallucination, and continued to the desk opposite his bed. He squatted on its undersized stool and haphazardly swept aside stacks of notes that seemed essential at their inception but now sickened him to even consider. These were joined on the cold floor by myriad lumps of wax that had once been candles. Soon all that lay before him was the book. One of Kel's sacred tomes, its dried leather binding was pleasing under the flesh of his palm.
The lone sigil that adorned its cover, a ring with the Reikspiel "v" at its crest, seemed to stare back at him as he regarded its beautiful simplicity. He imagined many would say their lack of understanding of the rune made it meaningless, but he knew better. He knew that simple words could not describe the depth of its significance.
He fanned through the book, finding a random ingress. He kept a mental note of how many pages he had read, and with each passing day that number became more implausibly high. Yet every day also brought new content, some new well of knowledge he had not yet absorbed.
He had learned of the realms beyond the veil, and the numerous steps needed to access them. He had learned the great subtleties of allegiance to the divine, and how the tiniest permutation might reap bountiful favor or infinite spite. He had learned rituals to imitate the andi that spawned from the realm of the gods, to pass ones' spirit into a suitable host and to travel incongruently through all being as they did.
All things but the answer he sought were held within, it seemed. All but the cure for this Iron Crown and its dreams of Hel.
The constant throbbing in his skull made the passage of time feel like an eternity. To Hjolmar, the time since his seclusion began could have been minutes or centuries. He wondered if his people had abandoned him. He wondered if Joric still waited for his return.
Pain lanced through his skull at the thought. His fingers instinctively found the rim of the crown, pulling and clawing until the skin had gone ragged in his vain attempt to stop the agony. He shuddered and thrashed and vomited, his failing body attempting every conceivable solution to the unbearable throbbing. When it finally subsided, his thoughts were again empty. There was only the book; the book would have an answer. It must have an answer.
He found his place and began to read anew, the subject once more altered into the unfamiliar.
Ragarin
2318
Ragarin and Mulkan fought back-to-back. Together, they were a small island, a black fang jutting from a sea of green. The tide roared in fury, a cacophony of guttural nonsense interspersed with smaller, equally angry voices. The brothers of the Kol fought in tandem with a synchrony that required no verbal communication. They could feel each other's movements; read the waves of each other's killing. His warhammer pulped the skull of the ork before him, smashing its bloated form back into those of its fellows. Goblins, small but numerous, flooded around their clumsy masters and made ready to hack at him with woefully ineffective blades. He took them all with one sweep of his weapon, their tiny bones crunching satisfyingly as their mangled forms were swept aside.
His brothers fought similar battles all throughout the field of greenskins, crushing and rending the small warband into ever growing ridges of foul-smelling corpses. The Kol's usual formation had been broken quickly. The ork vanguard had charged in suicidal fervor, their only goal to force the dwarves apart.
All's the better, thought Ragarin. He looked up to see a great gnarled thing, near twice the size of its fellows, violently part the slavering ranks before him. Ragarin tightened the grip on his weapon and grinned beneath his helm. More for me.
When the battle was over, their once pristine armor ran verdant with blood. Ragarin stared at the stony ceiling, ragged breaths escaping dry lips as his body finally processed the strain it had endured. His brothers were the same, their armored forms showing rare fatigue as they absorbed the extent of their killing.
Stevik spoke first, as he always did. Ragarin laughed in time with his brothers at the punch line, though he barely heard it. Something about a fight to the death relaxed him, the overwhelming violence of it all somehow feeding his amiability.
"Good to see the new status quo hasn't given us any lack of enemies to kill, eh Rag?" Zal patted him on the shoulder, the black plates clanking noisily together. "I think you got the biggest one this time."
"Well, it was no Winged Lord, brother. The elves may be feeble, but there is skill in their killing. The greenskins are giant children with blunted axes."
"I'll be sure to say that at your burial when one of those 'giant children' smashes you flat with a club."
"Well, clubs are another story," Ragarin said dryly. "Still, a real test of our mettle would be welcome. Something to make the parades King Rik throws on every return to Mountainhearth feel earned."
"I think you're over-eager to join your ancestors, Rag."
Ragarin felt irritation creeping into his post-battle high. He took a moment to push it from his voice; he didn't want his brothers to think him any sourer than they did already.
"I think our blades grow dull on these animals, Zal."
…
The sound of breathing was the only sign he had woken. There was tranquility in the dreams, an odd stillness that seemed unremarkable at the time. Now though, the wheeze emanating from tortured lungs seemed the only sensation that could be truly real.
Beyond the breathing, there was nothing. His memory was feint, little more than the sound of breaking bones as the Norsca woman kicked him into the tunnel wall. Perhaps that had been imagined as well, the breathing seemed absent from his recollection.
It didn't much matter; he knew that this lack of feeling, this numbness, was his dying. A living man, after all, would be in agony. It was like he was already dead, silent and still, peaceful in the armor that would become his tomb. He could barely see out of his eyeslit, only some great shape made meaningless by the dark managed to resolve. One of his brother's corpses, perhaps. Even with such thoughts, he could not muster the anger he knew he should be feeling.
Had the savages left him to die? Did they assume he'd perished instantly upon that unforgiving stone? Perhaps they were ignorant to the slow, feeble death crawling into his limbs. Again, he was almost startled at his own indifference.
He let his eyes shut once again. Resignation washed over him like a burial shroud, and a strange comfort filled his previously numb extremities.
They were waiting beneath his eyelids. First was the Norsca, Hjolmar, screeching petulantly in his artless, northern tongue. Dangling from his hand were the heads of his brothers and master, fastened grotesquely to a chain of blackened iron. They stared at him accusingly from their trophy of mocking spectacle. The Norsca turned to Ragarin, adopting Khazalid that was no longer clumsy or broken. Thin lips parted, and Ragarin's own baritone spilled into the quiet air.
"You I have defeated most thoroughly. You I made abandon your duty."
No, he thought, eyes snapping wide with sudden energy. No, fate was no longer in his hands. His contentment began to burn away, flimsy and unearned, evaporating as if it had never been. But his body, his prison, remained inert. Righteous fury churned inside him, a sudden madness that was choler and sorrow entwined into something far more potent. For all the bile welling in his veins, the broken corpse that enshrined him would not move. When he screwed his eyes shut in impotent frustration, Grobi Rik was waiting.
Ragarin looked upon his king, in all his soft finery and softer flesh. His king, who in the absence of the Kol would lead his people deeper into the yolk of Imperial rule; his king, who would see his people become as weak and corpulent as he himself had become; his king, who had sent his most loyal subject to die so he may excise any threat to his rule.
Grobi Rik did not speak. He did not mock, nor jeer, nor challenge Ragarin's honor. He did not even look at him. He simply wore a look of easy satisfaction.
And that was enough.
Joric
2318
"Mother-"
The plea was interrupted by another kick to his stomach. He felt like he was going to vomit, but there was nothing to expel. He covered his abdomen with both hands as he lay there, retching. The next kick sprained his fingers.
Joric didn't want this. He never wanted this of course, but today had been going so well; perhaps that was why he pleaded when usually he remained silent. He pleaded even while knowing that it would not help him.
His mother was rambling something about his missing sword work with the other boys. She was slurring, and with blood pounding loud in his ears couldn't really hear her. Tears stained his swollen face, cut and bloody from when the beating began. She always started with his face, and he had been left uglier for it. Sometimes over dinner, his mother would threaten him with a future of such ugliness, as if that meant anything to his seven-year-old mind.
When his dry heaving was allowed to coalesce into wheezing gasps, he knew it was over. There were no pauses during the beatings, only when Erva's fury abated would it end. Even so, he laid there for a time, fantasies of a loving mother and matricide surging through his thoughts in equal measure. When he finally crawled to his feet the sky outside had gone black, and his mother had returned to the bottle.
The cold air felt good on his bruises as he walked down emptying footpaths and away from the meager hut. Cook fires burned orange through longhouse windows, and those who remained outside were so only out of tardiness. It was a startlingly clear night, the black abyss overhead speckled with the souls of the dead. The white gaze of the moon, waxing full, stared in judgment.
Few regarded Joric as he navigated the weaving footpaths, none commented on his condition. Joric scarcely noticed them, either. His thoughts danced again around his mother, and her occasional excuses for his mistreatment.
"I am wounded every time I strike you Joric," she would say, as if the victim. "It is not a mother's place to toughen their child. But without your father here, may he ride at Khorne's side, I must take the discipliner's mantle."
He sneered as the words echoed through his skull, a malignant tattoo that soon consumed his full attention.
And then he was there, his bare feet landing on the hard and cold of a rocky beach. Hjolmar was waiting as always, torchlight burning from within their driftwood fortress. Their play here had been a ritual for nearly 8 moons, though Joric was still unsure whether it was genuine merriment or simply the company he enjoyed.
"Who goes there?" Hjolmar shouted in his shrill voice, his attempts to deepen it into something menacing sputtering feebly.
"It's Joric."
"Tis Joric," he corrected, shoving the butt of his torch into a crack in the damp wood. He hopped off a small ledge and ran out to Joric, doubtlessly full of a new days' catalogue of nominally interesting events.
Instead of the routine outpouring, the Bonesplitter's future jarl looked him up and down before asking "What happened to your face?"
"What?" Joric asked, confused. He felt Hjolmar pat him on a tender cheek before displaying bloody fingers in the dim firelight.
"You're bleeding," he said redundantly.
Something like anger bubbled up in Joric's chest. He wanted to scream at Hjolmar's ignorance. But Hjolmar didn't know, he had never asked. That made him angrier, made him want to throw up his hands and shout the horror spawned by his own parent on a weekly basis, for no reason beyond the absence of a father.
But that was not Joric. He was quiet, and timid, and felt as though every time he tried to force the words they turned to mud in his throat. Whether it was by fear of further punishment or the uncertainty of how his sole friend would react, Joric could not produce the truth. He could not wear his heart on his sleeve.
"I got hit by an ork," was all he could produce. He knew the lie was stupid before he'd even finished saying it.
Hjolmar's eyes widened, and he looked at Joric as though he had suddenly sprouted six extra legs. Then, suddenly, the blonde boy burst out laughing.
"A joke? I didn't know you told jokes Joric!"
Hjolmar's oblivious grin somehow spread to Joric's own face, and soon they were both laughing at his ridiculous explanation.
Joking feels good, he thought simply, as he and Hjolmar ran back to their ramshackle fortress for a game of "smash the dwarf". Next time though, next time he asks I'll tell him the truth. I'll have the courage by then.
…
"Joric?"
"What?" His voice sounded groggy, even to his own ears.
"You fell asleep."
"No, just resting my eyes," he replied, making no effort to rise from the oddly comfortable stone seat he found himself in.
"So the five minute pause in explaining why you don't need more sleep was to be dramatic?"
Joric couldn't help but grin at that, despite the sour mood recollection had summoned. He blinked his eyes open and slowly righted himself, suddenly finding the Dwarven furniture monstrously uncomfortable. Vidar sat across from him, a lithe but handsome warrior Valka had taken a liking to three days prior. Joric had no dislike for the man, though he found Vidar's assumption that his being bedded by Valka somehow earned Joric's friendship to be mildly annoying. Still, that he had reached the following dawn's light without any broken bones was somewhat impressive.
"You need to rest, Joric," he said for what must have been the hundredth time. Joric had begun to find the swaying braids of his platinum mustache more captivating. "The Ghosts won't tear themselves apart in one night."
Of that, Joric was skeptical. He had ruled in Hjolmar's stead for two weeks, in which time his fellows had run out of corpses to appease their boredom and alcohol to keep them placated. It was only three nights past that two had killed each other over a bottle of piss they were both convinced was the last of the dwarves' tasteless liquor. The only available food being barrels of salted fish did little to ease tensions, and a new dilemma seemed to manifest with each new day. The small warband was growing restless, eager for a fresh conquest that Joric could not produce.
Atop the ever-expanding mountain of concerns was that of Sven. Every morning light brought with it some fresh case for his leadership being preferable to that of Hjolmar's, and by extension, Joric's. Joric held no disagreement with the latter point, and had quickly found command a tedious and disturbing exercise. He wondered if Hjolmar was forced to reduce his kinsmen to predicted actions as he did.
Dealing with Hjolmar was no easier. His seclusion had rankled the Ghosts, and as the clan's impatience built so too did the desire of an in-person explanation of their idleness. Joric shuddered to imagine what they would do to him in his present state.
"Sven comes," Vidar warned, nodding towards the hut's rectangular doorway.
Joric stifled his daydreaming, the idea of rest suddenly appearing more than reasonable.
The afternoon sun shone intensely through the mouth of the cave city, stark shadows growing off the precise buildings in black pools. The approaching men were made near-silhouettes by the glare, though there was no mistaking their identity. Few carried themselves with an arrogance to rival Hjolmar's, and Sven's seemed to grow with every passing day. In tow were Tomas and Holgir, a rather pungent duo of kinslayers whom Joric had tried to avoid until his de facto leadership forced their acquaintance. Both held carried freshly severed limbs, too dainty to belong to anything but a lowlander.
"Go get Valka," Joric instructed Vidar, leaning close so that only he could hear. "Tell her to bring the axes."
Vidar nodded once before slipping through the door. As Sven entered, he made a show of watching Vidar disappear into the blocky crush of Dwarven architecture.
"Well, I was hoping for private conversation anyway. I'll have these two step out." His tone was thick with courtesy, the falseness of which irritated Joric more than Hjolmar's blatant condescension ever did.
"I command in Hjolmar's stead, Sven. It is my place to say whether they stay or go." He gave the two dullards a look that made it more than clear what he expected of them. While both seemed pensive at his glare, it was Sven's nod of permission that bade them exit.
Joric was unsettled by the action. What had Sven fed these people to command such loyalty? Had honeyed words eclipsed the killing of a daemon with ones' bare hands?
Perhaps they disliked Joric's killing the vitki with his bare hands.
"My shame for their disrespect, Joric. They get ahead of themselves. Though it brings us nicely to point-"
"Well thank the gods for that," Joric interrupted. "I've never figured out how to make you speak plain. And tell those dung-eaters to stop tormenting the slaves."
Sven laughed at that. "It is good to hear command has not pounded the mirth from you. But that, too, is the point. Your leadership is passive, Joric. You barely hold us together. The effort does you honor, but it cannot last forever. As for the slaves, well, they need something to keep them busy."
"'Forever?'" Joric let out something between a laugh and a growl. "It's been two weeks. Hjol's looking better every day, and you have my word on that. I doubt three days will pass before he's back among the living."
Sven's expression indicated he knew exactly how long it would take for Hjolmar to recover, if ever.
"Well, this is just a contingency, then," Sven began.
"A what?"
"A backup plan, in case our mighty leader has a relapse. Give me the command, Joric. Just until Hjolmar recovers, you have it on my honor. But you more than anyone have seen the growing tension in our little warband. We need to raid. We need plunder. Khorne only knows who they'll start killing if something doesn't change."
Joric tensed at the threat. He locked eyes with Sven, jaw set. His mind raced, searching for a retort. He tried to convince himself that splitting the bastard's head open here and now wouldn't be the end of them.
Joric looked up at approaching footfalls. "Let's ask Valka what she thinks, eh?"
Sven's face became the slightest shade paler as the Ghost's only female warrior knelt through the low doorway, her skin glistening from whatever weapons practice they had interrupted. She all but knelt to keep her fiery hair from brushing the ceiling, a gesture which made the already squat Sven look comically tiny by comparison.
"Joric, I thought this was between us?" Sven said, apparently calm but now lacking the pompous mirth he displayed on arrival.
"Yes, I'm sure you did think that. You need to keep abreast of things if you want to lead, Sven. Now stop trying to take something not yours. Khorne only knows who might bash your face in for it."
A look from Valka kept the man from saying any more, and his usually polite departure was replaced by a look of pure bile. He walked to the door, all but sprinting away once past the threshold.
When he was out of earshot, Valka spoke. "We should kill him, he's stirring things up."
"Much as I'd like to, he has too much genuine support. Trust me; I saw it before you got here. We're a small enough force as it is, if we have to start killing each other our next raid will be our last."
Valka snorted. "So we let him pit everyone against us, is that it?"
"No," Joric said, sighing. "Though until Hjol fixes himself, there's not much we can do."
Valka's glare was something Joric would rather have lived his life not seeing. "Then we need to stop burning time and help him! We've both seen how sick he is, yet here we sit, doing nothing."
"What can we do?" Joric responded, hands raised placatingly. "Hjol is smarter than the lot of us put together, Valka. We'd just get in his way. If Hjol needs us, he'll tell us."
"Like on the boat?"
"What?"
"On the boat, Joric, where he tried fighting like an idiot. We knew it was a bad idea but said nothing, and he almost died for it. No, I don't trust him to get out of this alone, especially all mangled like he is."
"What do you suggest then, oh wise and mighty Valka?" Joric snapped. He immediately regretted the acid in his tone. She was right, of course, in that blunt way of hers. Hjolmar wasn't likely to come out of this without help, though he wasn't sure if theirs was the help he needed.
He was more certain that freedom from command may keep him from making such an ass of himself, however.
Valka only growled at his rebuke, though Joric could tell the next would earn him several broken bones. "`Don't know. We'll figure it out when we get there."