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The Wayward Tale – Extract

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THE WAYWARD TALE

Jeremy Lambert

It was cold at the top of the hill.

Rare that Volgrym felt it at all, the cold. Once, maybe twice in the Battlesmith’s long life and both times a flameling… yet here it was, creeping in from all around like night overtaking day.

He tried to move. It felt more like he was encased in stone and not sprawled on the flat of his back, staring up at the ever-ashen sky of Shyish. Snow was falling. The ur-gold helm on his head framed his view and he couldn’t see much else. The thing felt heavier than an anvil, but he managed to raise his head from the snow and look down at the crimson mess that was now his ribcage. A splintered cask of the most precious ale. He chuckled. Coughed.

Just a scratch, then.

His head dropped back to the ground. The red and grey mess of his beard was blowing about his face. The wind was biting. His ears rang unceasing bells of warning. All he could hear. Whoever or whatever knocked him to the snow had done so swiftly and with all the kindness of a hammer at the forge.

Something glowed down there by the blood and snow. He knew that glow. It flickered briefly and grew brighter.

His broken body was in revolt and his chest was a horror, but warmth returned like a fire kindled next to him. First on one side and then all around. He felt around the snow with thawing hands, until one found the hilt of his axe. He managed to sit up, sinking the blade of it down into frozen ground, using the handle for support.

His other hand came up empty. The icon of Grimnir he forged all those years ago, his companion of a thousand battles, was as much a story of the lodge as any that Volgrym could tell… and it was gone. Nowhere to be seen. He remembered teeth and blood and–

An explosion of pain twisted in his side. The missing icon was not his only problem.

The wound was bad. His beard was matted with blood around the side of his ribcage. He couldn’t see all of it, but he didn’t need to. It was a wonder nothing else had spilled out of him. It was a wonder he was alive at all.

But when he lifted his gaze to the scene around him, he wished he wasn’t.

Volgrym knew every duardin to ever raise fyresteel in the name of Hargrim, Runefather of the Narrgrund lodge, and they were here before him, all of them that remained, strewn about the snowy hillside as though they had fallen from the sky to break upon the ground, a mess of blood and flesh and fyresteel half-buried in the cold. Jutting up among them like a mountain among the hills was the once-mighty magmadroth Karagnyr. Now, she was as motionless as the rest, with serried holes gored deep into her flank. His eyes searched all around her for her rider, but there was no sign of Runefather Hargrim.

Volgrym stood for a better vantage point, his chest screaming in pain, bone grinding bone, threatening to buckle in on itself. He used his axe as support, leaning on it with all his weight. He clutched the wound with his other hand, but his chest buckled forward, unsupported.

Agony. Volgrym wheezed. Coughed. He spat a concerning amount of blood in the snow, swaying unsteadily on his feet. He closed his eyes, drew cold air into his lungs. His words were as much a weapon on the battlefield as any axe or hammer. They were needed if there was to be any hope. He only heard the ringing. Could only hope the battle raged still. Somewhere.

‘Children of Narrgrund!’ Volgrym shouted, wheezing between words. ‘Rise! Rise, my kin! Your duty is not yet done!’

He opened his eyes. The scene around him had not changed. No Fyreslayer stirred.

‘Tonight we feast in the hall of Kargrund the greatfather!’ He stumbled with the effort, replanted his axe in the ground. ‘But not… yet!’

That glow again. Warmth coursed through him, his battle-scarred hands and feet a mess of painful pins and needles that barely registered amid the other pain. The glowing light at his side grew brighter, illuminating the crimson snow around him in a warmer hue.

It was the ur-gold runes, hammered into his flesh over the course of his many years, each of them earned with the blood and toil and honour of his lodge, shining brighter than ever before. All around him. Surrounding him. Then they dimmed once more, and the pain returned. Volgrym’s knees weakened and he fell back into the snow.

Grimnir, he thought, closing his eyes in prayer to the duardin god. You wished me to witness the end. If this is it… who would hear my story?

‘And what in the name of the great one’s hairy arse are you doin’ lyin’ down there?’

Volgrym opened his eyes with a start, searching the sky. A shape above him. There. A glimmering, golden thing. But his helm, the damnable helm was in the way.

‘Last of the lodge, only flame left to the Narrgrund name… and you’re lazin’ about like a mountain mouse that plundered the feast hall.’

The golden shape above him grew closer. Coalesced into a face. Ragnyr, one of Hargrim’s Runesons. A storied warrior and more storied drinker when the day was won. But his face… it had been scarred all over in life, but was absent of them now. Even the scar he’d received as a flameling for testing Karagnyr. The eye that Karagnyr’s claw had taken was back where it belonged. Everything seemed smoothed over. Like the apparitions that walked this realm. But different.

‘Either I’m already dead or my eyes are in about as good a shape… as my ribcage…’ He clambered to his feet once more, biting back a howl of pain. A hand under his arm lifted him up.

‘Easy, Battlesmith,’ said another, much older voice. The Runefather, Hargrim.

Next to him were his son Ragnyr, and daughter Brygid.

‘I… I am in fever, Runefather. Shyish… The great jester of life knows only death. I’m alone on this hill. My path to the Doomgron grows clear. A… priest. A flamekeeper. I need–’

‘Well, they’re all dead, storyspinner.’ Ragnyr’s gruff voice cut him off. ‘And yer bleedin’ like a speared troggoth, so what’s yer next bit o’ brilliance?’

Volgrym swayed on his feet.

‘Careful, lad,’ the glimmering form of Hargrim said. ‘You’re all that’s left.’

Volgrym scanned the hilltop and the ruin that adorned it.

‘I… I can’t be…’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2024 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Nuala Kinrade.

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ISBN: 978-1-83609-072-4

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