Strong Bones - Michael R Fletcher Read online

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  Cover

  Strong Bones – Michael R. Fletcher

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘The Rise of Nagash’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Strong Bones

  By Michael R. Fletcher

  Stugkor sat at Old Tooth’s feet, listening to the fat ogor ramble on about how great everything used to be for the Fangtorn, back before the Everwinter separated them from the main bulk of their clan.

  Leaning back so he could see past Old Tooth’s belly, he studied the wizened face, skin like dried mud left to freeze. Was he called Old Tooth due to his age, the fact he only had one tooth – a prominent fang jutting from his lower jaw that always looked like it might get caught in a drooping nostril – or because that lone tooth, cracked and brown, looked ancient like… like…

  ‘What’s the oldest thing you can think of?’ Stugkor asked, interrupting.

  The big ogor blinked down at him, eyes narrowing. ‘The sun,’ he said finally, hooking a thumb in the direction of the cold yellow light barely peeking over the horizon. Noon, this was as high as it would get at this time of year.

  That tooth sure as blood didn’t look like the sun. ‘A real thing,’ said Stugkor. ‘An object.’

  Old Tooth sucked in the fat thickness of his lower lip, chewing on it like he meant to devour his own face. A mass of scars and ill-healed wounds, it looked almost as old as the tooth. ‘Saw an Icefall yhetee trapped in a glacier. Looked alive, eyes open, teeth bared. Like it might step out and start killin’.’

  An old thing that wasn’t really dead and looked alive anyway? No help at all. ‘What’s the oldest–’ Stugkor stopped when he realised he couldn’t remember why he was asking.

  ‘What was I talking about before you interrupted?’ demanded Old Tooth.

  ‘How the Fangtorn used to be a great tribe,’ answered Stugkor. ‘How the ’umans used to scatter before us like frost mice, and how we’d mash them with clubs and then eat them while they screamed.’

  ‘Right. The good days.’

  ‘If they was screamin’,’ said Stugkor, ‘don’t that mean you did a bad job of the mashin’?’

  ‘Naw. You mash the legs so they can’t run, but can still scream and kick when yer eatin’ ’em.’

  Made sense, Stugkor decided, as he glanced about the camp. A score of ogors bustled about, either busy at something like sharpening weapons, or eating something from the last raid. Kthang, the tribe’s frostlord, had returned from raiding just two days ago and already supplies were dwindling. Off to the east the Everwinter, a twisting swirl of ice and snow, moved ever closer. They’d move soon, before it devoured them, before it buried them in the long-not-quite-death. Like that Icefall yhetee: not quite dead, but not alive either.

  ‘Think Kthang will let me come on the next raid?’ Stugkor asked.

  ‘Nope,’ said Old Tooth.

  Not even a moment’s hesitation, not even the briefest pause for thought. Not that Old Tooth was famous for thinking.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If you ’ave to ask…’

  What the blood did that even mean?

  ‘I’m tired of leftovers. I want fresh meat. Warm marrow from a just-snapped bone. Blood, hot and salty.’

  ‘Y’ ate the bear.’

  ‘Not the same, eatin’ something dumb.’

  Old Tooth nodded, almost looking wise. ‘Troof. Best meat knows it’s being eaten. Best meat had other plans for the day.’

  Humans always had plans. It was an ongoing mystery to Stugkor. Why plan for tomorrow when you were probably going to get eaten? Strange creatures. If they hid in the trees, they’d be so much harder to find! But there they were, building walls and making buildings. If an ogor saw a wall and a building then the one thing it knew for sure was that there was a meal inside.

  ‘What was I talkin’ about before you interrupted?’ Old Tooth demanded, again.

  Rolling his eyes, Stugkor pushed to his feet with a grunt. ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘But it was important?’

  ‘Very. Life lessons ’n all.’

  Nodding, the ancient ogor turned and shambled away, limping on his bad leg. Someday he’d slow enough the Everwinter would get him. Unless the rest of the tribe was hungry enough to eat the leathery old beast first.

  Stugkor’s belly, hanging far over the heavy leather belt he wore for decoration, rumbled. Fetishes, bear scalps, frost sabre teeth and assorted trinkets taken from things the young ogor had mashed and eaten and forgotten, hung from the belt, swaying as he lumbered off in search of his mates, Chidder and Algok.

  He found them toying with a hare, fur white like the snows, eyes wide and black like the night. They’d cornered the little creature in an ice dell and were stomping the ground, blocking its every attempt at escape. The thing quivered in terror, chest heaving. They’d keep this up until either it fell over, too exhausted to move, or one of them misjudged and accidentally mashed it flat. Such a dumb little life, hardly worth eating. No plans. And if Chidder, who’d always been clumsy, mashed it flat, it wouldn’t even wriggle when you swallowed it.

  Sometimes, decided Stugkor, the game was better than the meal.

  ‘Stug,’ grunted Algok, spotting his approach.

  ‘Old Tooth says Kthang ain’t gonna let us go on the raid,’ he told his friends. He hadn’t specifically asked about them, but seeing as he was the oldest, it seemed a safe assumption.

  They grumbled but seemed unconcerned.

  The hare, sensing their distraction, made a dash for freedom and was mashed flat by Chid, who’d rather see it squished than let it escape.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Algok, dead hare already forgotten.

  In Stugkor’s opinion she spent way too much time doing that. He never said anything though because she had a temper and liked to sit on people until they lost consciousness.

  ‘Yeah?’ he asked. ‘And?’

  ‘Aelves,’ she said, crossing her arms.

  ‘Why the blood you been thinking about aelves?’ demanded Chidder. ‘Ain’t none here.’ He looked around, beady eyes squinting. ‘Are there?’

  ‘No,’ said Algok. ‘None. But you know how Kthang and the other raiders always say that the best meat is smart meat, meat with plans for tomorrow?’

  Stugkor and Chidder nodded.

  ‘Well, aelves,’ she said, waiting expectantly.

  Chid scowled at his friend. ‘What in the blood?’

  Stug understood. ‘They live a really long time. They’re supposed to be even smarter than ’umans.’

  ‘Imagine how many plans a thing that lives ’undreds of years has,’ said Algok.

  Chid frowned, looking at his huge blunt fingers like they might provide an answer. ‘So…’

  ‘So,’ said Stug, ‘they’re prolly the tastiest thing in all the world.’

  ‘’Cept for gods,’ said Algok. ‘Immortals have plans for the big.’

  She was right, as always. Gods probably tasted great.

  ‘Old Tooth say why we couldn’t raid?’ asked Algok. Quicker than most, she bounced from subject to subject with alarming speed.

  ‘If you ’ave to ask,’ said Stugkor, repeating Old Tooth’s words. He blinked. He’d thought Old Tooth meant that if he had to ask, he wouldn’t understand the answer. But what if the ancient ogor meant that if you had to ask, you couldn’t come? What if he meant that the way to go raiding was to not ask?

  ‘I,’ said Stugkor, feeling rather pleased wi
th himself, ‘have a plan.’

  It was, he decided, a rather brilliant plan. The ingenuity! The cunning! The clever details! By the blood, maybe Algok wasn’t the smartest ogor after all!

  ‘So?’ Algok demanded.

  ‘We go raiding. Just us.’

  ‘Blood,’ swore Chid, clearly impressed.

  Even Algok nodded in appreciation.

  Stugkor had another thought. ‘If we get eaten by some other ogors,’ he mused, ‘I bet we’ll taste better than we would have before.’

  Algok understood, eyes widening. ‘Cuz we got plans!’

  Shard, Stugkor’s young, grey-white mournfang, moved effortlessly over the endless wastes. Even through the heavy bone-and-hide saddle, he felt the beast’s coiled strength. Ever alert, Shard prowled, massive head low and swinging back and forth as she sought the scent of life. She might not see much past the length of her monstrous tusks, but her sense of smell was second to none. At least when it came to meat and blood.

  Algok, riding to Stugkor’s right, picked at a scar on her black mournfang’s shoulder. The creature’s eyes, bloody sparks of hate, never left Shard. There was a harsh hierarchy to the pack, and Stug’s mournfang ruled tooth and claw.

  Chidder, not paying attention, allowed his red-tinted mount to edge past Shard. The lead mournfang swung her tusks in his direction with a guttural growl, and Stug eyed the other ogor. Was Chid ready for a fight? Had he already grown bored with the raid? While Stug desperately wanted to mash some humans, shove great quivering gobs of fresh meat into his mouth and drool blood down his belly, a mad brawl in the snow would be fun too.

  ‘Go on, Chid,’ he said, grinning. ‘Go for it. We can always raid another day. After yer mournfang has healed.’

  Chidder grunted, and slowed his mount so Shard was once again in the lead.

  Snow. Ice. The howl of wind whipping across land broken only by jagged peaks of glacier. The bone-crunch of frozen snow beneath your feet, and the endless expanse of blue, deeper than a glacial lake, overhead.

  The sun peeked over the horizon, did little to warm the world, and slunk back down, defeated.

  Stomachs growled, and tempers rose.

  Another day without food, without mashing anything.

  Boring. So boring.

  Another day.

  So hungry.

  Snow gave way to occasional patches of frozen mud sprouting tufts of hardy grass that still mostly looked dead. Sometimes they found copses of stunted trees, gnarled and bent.

  How long had they been out here? Was it two days or four? Stug had lost count. He was about to ask Algok, when Shard raised her head, keen nose testing the air. Studying the horizon, Stugkor grinned at what he saw.

  ‘I’ve forgotten the plan,’ admitted Chidder, eyes slitted against the harsh wind.

  ‘Find ’umans,’ Stugkor explained patiently. ‘Mash ’umans.’

  ‘Blood,’ swore Chid in awe. His face crumpled in thought. ‘How we find ’umans?’

  Stugkor pointed south with a thick finger. ‘Smoke. And where there’s smoke there’s…’

  ‘Stuff burnin’?’ asked Chid.

  ‘No, idiot,’ said Algok. ‘’Umans.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Burnin’ ’umans.’

  Cresting a ridge of stone and dirt, Stug spotted the human settlement. It sat in the bottom of a shallow valley. He slowed to examine the distant wall. Made from bundled twigs and branches bound together by wound grass and packed with mud, it was an embarrassing effort at best. Really, all it had going for it was height, and stood maybe his own height and half again. Since it didn’t look sturdy enough to climb, they’d have to bash their way through.

  Rickety wood watchtowers stood at each corner, but they were empty.

  Such a strange human thing, he thought. Like knowing you were about to be mashed and eaten somehow made things better. Wouldn’t it be better to be surprised? You know, dead and half-digested before you really knew what was going on. Seeing as there was no one in the towers, maybe the humans had figured that out for themselves.

  Reining in their mounts, they stopped to study the town.

  ‘Never seen a ’uman village before,’ Stug said.

  Much like the wall, their homes were built of pathetic twigs and patched with grey clay. Cobblestones lined the main street, the rest being little more than mud paths.

  ‘Something doesn’t look right,’ said Algok.

  Stugkor blinked at the sight, struggling to comprehend. While not mashed, the ’umans were already dead. Some lay scattered and leaking blood into the snow. Others had been torn apart, their limbs gathered in one pile, their torsos in another.

  The really strange thing, however, was how many of the dead were still marching around doing stuff. Stripped of flesh and blood, corpses in strange armour or long decorative robes worked at incomprehensible tasks.

  There were so many of them, hundreds and hundreds of dead hard at work. Some gathered together corpses, sorting them for reasons beyond Stug’s understanding. Others collected what little metal the ’umans had, tossing it into piles.

  ‘This ain’t right,’ said Algok. ‘Town is full of deaders.’ She leaned forward in the saddle, eyes narrowed. ‘They’ve already butchered all the ’umans. Nothing to mash. Maybe…’ She glanced at Stug. ‘Maybe we should go?’

  Chid looked ready to argue but less ready to dare Algok’s temper.

  Stugkor’s stomach grumbled complaint. It had been looking forward to digesting living planning things, and let him know just how unhappy it was with the thought of more leftovers.

  A gaunt corpse, garbed in the shredded remnants of long green robes and finely crafted armour of a type he’d never before seen, stalked the savaged town. It wore a great fanned crown of curved bone and bore a colossal jade scythe wafting foul smoke from the blade. The other dead stepped from its path. Somehow the scene reminded Stug of the ants that came out during brief thaws. They moved as if perfectly united in purpose, driven by a single will.

  ‘Deader sorcerer,’ said Algok. ‘Prolly invaders from another realm.’

  Never having left the northern wastes of Ghur, the Realm of Beasts, the young ogor had little experience in such things.

  That was bad. Sorcerers were supposed to be easy to mash if you surprised them, but dangerous if they knew you were coming. This one, with its strangely shaped bones and smoking scythe, definitely looked like the kind you wanted to drop a large rock on. Preferably from a great height.

  An odd feeling shivered through Stug, and for a moment he wished he was somewhere else.

  Ain’t nothin’, he told himself.

  That thing was no taller than a man, barely came past Stug’s belt.

  Just my gut saying it wants to go ’ome and eat somethin’.

  By the Lord of Predators he wished he was back with his people.

  A massive creature constructed of bone and metal lumbered into view. It bore massive ribbed baskets upon its back, and had a spine of barbed bone. Grasping finger-like appendages protruded long past its terrible body. Twisting coils of greenish smoke leaked from its death’s-head maw. Sometimes it walked on the four largest legs, but sometimes it reared back, head raised as if testing the air, the great jagged rune-cut sickles of its forelegs flashing in the pale sunlight.

  ‘It’s got too many limbs,’ whispered Algok.

  She was right. Spindly arms, at least in comparison to its powerful legs, twitched and spasmed, bone hands reaching out to feel the earth beneath it. The whole thing reminded Stugkor of those many-legged carrion wyrms that burrowed into rotting corpses. Except much bigger. Much, much bigger.

  The beast stopped over one of the neat piles of body parts, its thin limbs blindly feeling about, grasping severed arms and legs.

  ‘No way that thing is gonna leave any for us,’ moaned Chidder. ‘Look how big it is!’


  The ogors watched in appalled horror as the meat and muscle and blood was stripped off and tossed aside to land in a steaming pile. The arms then passed the bones along until they could be tossed into the massive baskets.

  Stugkor struggled to understand. ‘Didn’t even eat it!’

  Of what possible use could stripped bones be?

  He stared at the dead creatures. Some were made of bones he recognised. The spine of a bear. Legs of a frost sabre. He tried to comprehend. These things were made?

  The lumbering beetle-like beast tossed aside more parts than it stripped, littering the snow with perfectly good food.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Chidder. ‘I say we kill the deaders and eat all the meat. They’re just gonna throw it away!’ His stomach growled. ‘Maybe eat the bone-things too.’

  ‘How do we kill dead things?’ asked Algok, ever a source of smart stuff.

  ‘Mash,’ said Chidder. ‘Mash and mash and mash.’

  Perhaps he wasn’t so dumb after all.

  ‘That’s an army in there,’ Stug said. ‘If the clan was ’ere, we’d mash ’em in a heartbeat. But just us three?’ He studied his friends. ‘Might be difficult.’

  Difficult.

  No way these corpses could defeat the Fangtorn. And yet the thought of that fight didn’t sit well in Stug’s gut.

  Just hungry, he told himself.

  He found himself staring again at the sorcerer, the smoke curling off its jade scythe. It moved wrong, like it had a will. Like it was a living thing, a twisting wisp of souls.

  The deader sorcerer lifted a bone hand, fingers splayed wide. All movement ceased in an instant. Stug watched, helpless, dreading, as it turned its skeletal face to focus on him. No hesitation. No searching. It knew exactly where he was.

  Not good. Not good. Not good.

  Hand raised, it studied him. Even from here Stug saw the stuttering sparks of green fire lighting the empty caverns of its eye sockets.

  We have to… We have to go.

  He opened his mouth, said nothing.

  Chid said something, but he couldn’t hear it.

  Those eyes that weren’t eyes saw him, saw through him. They held Stug, crushed his heart in a bone fist. He couldn’t breathe.