03 - God King by Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead) Read Free Book Online Page A

feeling woefully inadequate to face such a towering mass of muscle and fury.
Warriors rallied to their side, for they were men much respected amongst the
Unberogen, and together they charged the hideous creature. Its leering grin
split apart in a mass of broken teeth and half-chewed flesh, but it was not in
anticipation of feeding. A burbling heave spasmed through its stomach, and a
caustic flood of acidic bile spewed from its wide mouth.
    Govannon was one of the lucky ones. Leading the charge, he was spared the
agony of being eaten alive by the deadly acid. His helmet took the brunt of the
splash, but after three hours of fighting in the punishing heat, he’d pushed the
visor up. Droplets of the viscous stomach bile dripped into his eyes, and the
fiery agony as it burned into them was the worst pain in the world.
    He remembered Bysen leaping to face the hideous beast. Its heavy club had
smashed him to the ground and left him lying with his skull caved in like a
broken egg. That had been the end of their battle, and the next Govannon had
known was days later when he awoke in the surgeons’ tents at the mouth of the
pass. Bright light hurt his eyes and only the dimmest outline of shapes and
contrasts were visible to him.
    Though his sword brother, Orvad, had splashed water into his face moments
after his wounding, the damage was done. His sight was virtually gone. Orvad
died later in the battle, but with the help of one of the surgeons’ runners,
Govannon had sought news of his son. It took two days to find him among the
thousands of wounded, and though he still lived, the lad left the better portion
of his brain in the dusty sand of the pass.
    Govannon could not weep, his eyes ruined by the beast’s venom, but he sat
with his son until they were set upon wagons for the journey back to Reikdorf.
    Black Fire had taken away his sight and his son’s mind, but there wasn’t a
day went by he wasn’t glad he had stood in the line and faced the greenskin
horde.
    “Da?” said Bysen. “What the matter, da?”
    Govannon snapped out of his melancholy, squinting through the gloom at the
blurred outline of his son. He held the sword metal in the tongs, and Govannon
shook his head at his foolishness. The metal had cooled too far to work, and
would need to be reheated. That was careless, for the quality of the blade would
suffer after too many reheats.
    “Nothing, son,” said Govannon. “Let’s get this metal heated up or this sword
will be no better than a greenskin club.”
    “Aye, da,” grinned Bysen. “Heat it up, aye, heat it good.”
    The metal was thrust into the fire and the process began again.
    Govannon watched the seething glow, wishing for the thousandth time that he’d
kept his visor lowered.
    “Damn you for a fool,” he whispered, the words lost in the roaring of the
furnace.
     
    They were getting close now, too close. Cuthwin moved as fast as he could
with the injured dwarf stumbling alongside him. He bore the bulk of Deeplock’s
weight, which was slowing him down and making it much harder to keep their
passing secret. The forest had closed in, thick and ideal for getting lost in,
but Cuthwin had travelled this way many times.
    The forest was a harsh companion, a friend to those who understood its
rhythms, a deadly enemy to those who didn’t give it the proper respect. Cuthwin
knew how to make his way in the wilderness, but the goblins were equally at home
in its shadowed depths. Their pursuers were, at best, a mile behind. The wind
carried the yapping barks of the wolves and though Cuthwin tried to angle his
course so that it wouldn’t carry his scent to them, it was proving to be
impossible. He’d kept to the hard packed earth and stony ground where he could,
wading through shallow streams and leaving false trails to throw their pursuers.
That had bought him time, but hadn’t shaken the goblins.
    He’d stopped every now and then to give the wounded dwarf a rest, and