Darkoath by Chris Thursten

Author:Chris Thursten
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FMT
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2024-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE WARQUEEN

‘FACE ME!’

Tanari emerged at a run, leaping and driving an armoured knee into the first of her Oathsworn to cross her path, knocking them off their feet. She spun and whipped out with the haft of her spear, striking a warrior across the head with such force that it shattered the crest of bone that curved upward from their helm. Had they not been helmed at all, the blow would likely have killed them.

Yet these were not intended to be killing blows, Gunnar observed. The Warqueen subdued her wayward Oathsworn one by one, but if she felt the same lethal imperative that he did – that they all did – then she did not give way to it. She locked blades with the next warrior she met, then drove their long-handled axe towards the ground with imperious ease and disarmed them. They were broken then, their fear of her overcoming the force that emanated from within the pyramid.

Gunnar did not believe that Tanari truly possessed the blood of daemons. He did not believe that she had been sired by them, nor did he believe that she had dived into the surging Takblood river and stolen power from the beasts that coiled in its depths. He believed these things to be stories – useful in their way, but stories, nonetheless.

Yet there had been moments, in the course of both their rivalry and their later partnership, that lent credence to the legends. This was another of those moments. Tanari Takblood bestrode the godstouched land as if it were no different to any other battlefield. With each step she dispelled its mythos and imposed her own. Despite the miasma in the air he saw her clearly: her strife-honed musculature, her scowling, angular features, her dark eyes glowering beneath the curving horns of her war-raiment. A treacherous sense of awe gripped him, if only for a moment.

Tanari’s Oathsworn tensed uneasily, buffeted by contrary forces far greater than themselves. But their weapons fell to their sides, at last.

‘FOLLOW!’ Tanari bellowed. She gestured back the way she had come, drawing her people away from the pyramid. Those that could still stand heeded her words and the throng parted, clearing the ground that separated the Brand chieftain and the Takblood Warqueen.

She saw him then. Her eyes met his, then fell to the relic in his hands.

‘Gunnar Brand,’ she began. It was not a question. If his appearance surprised her, she did not make this readily apparent. But her tone changed, her voice dropping to a lower register. ‘You have done this?’

Here, instead, was the question, and within it, both a repudiation and a challenge. The Warqueen’s posture shifted, too. She adjusted her footing into a duelling stance and started to advance, spear-tip levelled towards him.

‘No,’ Gunnar said simply. ‘I have claimed the power that resides here. Your people’s madness is their own.’

Each word that Gunnar uttered burned in his lungs as he spoke it, as if he were straining to be heard over the war being fought between his body and the relic in his hands.

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