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God of Earthquakes – Phil Kelly

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Stormvault’

A Black Library Publication

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God of Earthquakes

Phil Kelly

VEXOTH CAVES
THE GHURISH HEARTLANDS

Nensi screamed as a vast, grasping hand pushed through the hide-covered entrance of his family’s cave. Filth-encrusted fingernails the size of grave markers scrabbled rock from walls as tree-trunk fingers sought to catch him up. On the knuckles, rusted steel breastplates clanked and screeched.

A stray, probing digit crushed Nensi’s brother Naatan against the wall, his ribcage giving way with an awful popping crack. Blood bubbled from the dying tribesman’s lips as he was dragged to the mouth of the cave and plucked upwards to hang upside down in the air.

Nensi stood transfixed as Naatan was lifted high towards a cliff-like slab of a face with a great stinking maw. Behind that hideous apparition loomed another gargant, bald and sneering, the prow of the boat it wore as a pauldron limned silver by the light of the half-moon Gnorl. Two of the creatures, then, and another close at hand by the sound of it. The Gallet Stomp. Their hunger was the death of tribes.

Screaming all the while as he was lifted by the leg, Naatan was consumed in two quick, killing bites.

A bloodshot eye floated into view across the cave mouth as the first Gallet-brute peered in to find its next meal. Nensi saw a face with a twisted rope of scar tissue across its lips – the legacy of his stonewife Darna’s spear during the last attack. She had fought to the last, just as Nensi had known she would. He felt a sense of burning shame at the recollection, for he had not fought at all.

Then the fingers came again, and a voice that felt like the end of the world filled the cave.

‘Come ’ere, little weaklings! Come and get eaten!’

The sheer volume was intense. Nensi fought the urge to curl up in a ball and cry, instead casting around to see if anyone else was left alive.

One, and only one. Wiry-thin and standing fierce. His sister, Faranga.

‘Quick, Fara,’ shouted Nensi. ‘Run!’

He did not wait to see if she had listened, but weaved amongst the stalagmites, crab-stepping and scraping his legs as he squeezed into the sacred fissures. There was no other choice. Shaman Lohari was no longer there to forbid them, caught up and bitten in half during the last Ravening. All her talismans and amulets, all her bone flutes and woad daubings had come to nothing.

Such was the power of the gargants. They broke through magical protections with a horrible, earthy power of their own.

‘No!’

Nensi heard a scream of defiance. He looked back. Faranga was hacking at the fingertips with her old, rusted blade. She jabbed the foremost digit as savagely as she could, a spurt of dark blood staining her legs.

The giant hand recoiled, then came in twice as hard, smashing her against the wall with contemptuous ease. She gave a low moan, collapsing to the ground with her head lolling at a hideous angle and her thigh bone pushed right out the top of her leg. Her hip was a pink-grey paste.

‘No,’ said Nensi weakly. ‘No, Faranga, not you as well…’

He fought back a sob. But grief would not help him survive. His cries would only make it more likely the gargants would claw open the mountainside to find him, like anteaters gouging at a termite’s nest.

He was the only one left, then.

A sick feeling of betrayal surged up into his throat as he turned away from his sister and slid into the darkness beyond, shaking his clay jar of amberwasps as he went. A furious buzz emanated from within, as did a low, orange glow that seeped from its awl-drilled holes. He picked his way through more stalagmites, pushing further into the tunnels until he had to stoop to fit along them. Within a few minutes, even the echoes of the screams had faded.

They rang loud in his mind nonetheless.

The odd fissure in the ceiling led up to the mountainside, light streaming down in a drizzle of rain. Slick, molten-looking deposits of lime streaked the walls, making the passageway seem like the gullet of some impossibly vast beast petrified by the passing of the aeons.

On he went, further into the dank, intestinal warmth. He gave his clay urn another shake, bullying some more light out of the wasps inside, but even they seemed subdued by the clammy, moist darkness. One pricked his thumb through one of the holes, making him stumble on a rock and turn his ankle.

‘Blood of a dead god.’ Gritting his teeth, he bunched a fist and slammed it into his thigh to disperse the pain. His good foot scattered bones, small and fine. He froze at the noise, half expecting the low growl of a pouncer-cat to filter through the tunnels.

After a fraught minute he went on. It took an age, the pain in his ankle worsening as he went further in, but finally he got to the deep caves intact. He could feel the air change. The plip-ploop, plip-ploop of water dropping into cave pools spoke of a wide, echoing cavern.

The Painted Chambers.

Nensi felt his way along the wall with one hand, watching where he trod in case a cave scorpion stabbed the top of his sandal-clad feet. A flicker of light from the wasp-urn, and he found what he sought.

Ancient and abstract, the paintings were from another era. Their style was artful yet simplistic to the point of ambiguity, daubed there in the elder times by his distant ancestors. Lohari had spoken of them on occasion, but she had always forbidden the rest of the tribe from seeking them out.

Another shake of the clay jar, and more of the painted figures sprang into focus on the wall – stickmen daubed in charcoal, blood and chalk. Most were running, leaping or clutching their heads. Some were riding thickset mountain horses, the curving strokes of their necks and flanks carrying some part of their indomitable spirit. They made Nensi miss his own steed, Sontrani, likely still grazing in her favourite spot on the upper slopes high above him. Her smell, her earthy presence. Her sheer mass.

Above the figures was a sky of swirling lines. Depicted there were sinuous, serpentine things with broad wings and stylised flames that curled from triangular heads. Nensi traced his fingers across some of the more symbolic designs. Crusted blood-paint flaked away under his fingertips. He recoiled as if bitten by the blasphemy of it, but Lohari would not be admonishing him this side of Shyish’s veil.

Beyond the fleeing figures and serpent-like drakes were zigzag lines that Nensi at first mistook for lightning. Some of the painted men were being claimed by them, half consumed as the jagged lines overtook them. He traced them back, watching them converge on the image further into the darkness with a sick feeling in his gut.

And there it was, painted across a slab of rock twice the span of his arms. The deity of the ancient Vexoth people, its myth as faded as the paint that depicted it.

The Earthquake God.

A giant, centauroid monstrosity reared up across the amber-hued rock, a heavy-headed weapon in one hand and an ornate disc-shield in the other. The Dread Mace, that weapon was called – Nensi dimly remembered stories of it told by his grandfather. The shield was named Tuskbreaker, and had a story of its own. Weapons of an ancient time. Gifts from the land, the sky and the elemental spirit of Ghur itself.

Even in the form of an ancient cave-shape, the godly image had a raw, muscular power to it. It had the torso of a man, the mane of a lion, the lower half of a stallion and two massive horns curving back on themselves. From its great hooves came branching fissures, accentuated by the cave’s cracks and creases.

Nensi squinted, moving closer until he was only a few inches from the cave wall. He shuddered, all of a sudden feeling the lack of sun. Being Vexoth, he knew something of rock and its habits. Enough to tell that the cracks had formed around the painting, not the other way around.

Nensi took a deep breath and knelt before the wall, baring his throat at the image’s spirit. He dared not speak the name out loud, but it was there, burning in his mind.

Kragnos, son of Gorgos. Bringer of Ruin. End of Empires.

And there, at the creature’s back, was the detail he sought. A sketch at best, but one that would change Nensi’s life. Maybe even lead him to his revenge, if the realm was kind.

A mountain, crowned with two curving peaks.

TWINHORN PEAK
GHURISH HEARTLANDS

Nensi hobbled up the shoulders of the great mountaintop, Sontrani clip-clopping at his back. The horse never let him ride on the way up. Perhaps she was still annoyed at him for making her leave her beloved slopes back in the Vexoth people’s ancestral territory. Still, the journey had to be made, despite the relentless, baking heat. For the sake of his family. For the sake of his revenge, if he was honest with himself.

He had adapted well enough, leaning on his blade-tipped staff whenever his ankle sent a bolt of pain up his calf. Taking in the view for a moment, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm and flicked it away to keep it from attracting too many biting insects. There was still a long way to go if he was to reach the part of the mountain that split into two soaring, horn-like protrusions, and he needed to pace himself. His leg had never healed right since the bleak and unforgettable night of terrors that had brought the entire Vexoth people down to just one lonely, forlorn soul.

He should have rested the ankle, perhaps, after finding the paintings he sought in the deep caves. But in Ghur, resting somewhere new was a swift way to get killed. He had needed to keep moving. Tales abounded across the Heartlands of travellers who went to sleep in a cave, only to have it close on them in the night, entrapping them, suffocating them or crushing them to a paste with its conical rocky teeth before the lengthy process of digestion began.

There were always predators sniffing around; even the land itself hungered. Above him, he noticed evil-looking vultures had begun to circle high, no doubt hoping to lure a hunter towards him so they could feast on the carcass left behind.

‘Not while I yet live,’ muttered Nensi. He bent his staff hard enough to string its notches with its gut-twine binding, took out an old, broken-tipped arrow from his oilcloth quiver and launched it in the general direction of the vultures to disperse them. A laughably poor shot, but they flapped away nonetheless, cawing in disapproval.

There was a sort of throbbing pulse in the back of his head whenever he made his way to these upper slopes – a rhythm that he could not quite explain away with the exertion of the climb. The heartbeat of the mountain, perhaps, though he knew in his soul it was too fast a beat for such a titanic being.

For nearly a year, they’d been making the pilgrimage up from the safe-cave, with Nensi having to use every ounce of his fieldcraft to avoid the longteeth and other prowlers on the slopes. Every day he’d prayed for the mountain to reveal its secrets. And for what? Retribution against an entire clan of gargants? It was a fool’s delusion, but he had nothing else left.

Keep the faith, Nensi, he told himself. Matters of gods and giants are not settled overnight. And vengeance, as they say, is spiced all the more by time.

Unrolling his prayer mat, Nensi laid it flat on the gentlest part of the slope. He walked over to his horse and put his forehead against hers, holding the pose in silent communion. Sontrani whinnied softly as he stroked her flank, lashing her tail to disperse the salt-flies. She knew full well what was expected of her. Whilst he was at prayer, she would be his eyes, his ears and, perhaps most importantly, his sense of smell. Those flaring nostrils could even scent a creeper-vine winding towards his ankle. A warning snort from Sontrani had saved his life more than once.

The ritual complete, Nensi arranged himself on the prayer mat. Tiny rocks dug into his knees, so he raised the corner and brushed them out, settled himself, and began to chant.

‘O great living tremor, share with your humble servant a measure of your power. Send your fissures east, to show the might of the land. Set free the earth-maw, the grinding mouth that consumes even the ravenous beast. Let those who remember your splendour see thy wrath as living truth, and bring the–’

Some feeling on the back of his neck made him pause. He looked back downhill, a change in the air nagging at senses he couldn’t describe. The leafless, carnivorous forests on the lower slopes were shivering, as if agitated by a gale.

Then it reached him – not a wind, as such, but something more like a bow wave of pressure. It smelled… fresh. Pure. Not reminiscent of the hungering, eternal hunt of Ghur, but something more pastoral.

His mind swelled full of memories that were not his, experiences he’d never had. The smell of new seedlings sprouting amid damp grass. The scent of fields of wheat. Of orchards in blossom, insects lazily pollinating in the sun. Of a baby’s scalp. Of freshly turned soil. Of renewal, and springtime at full bloom.

The air swelled once more, a wind he suspected was heavy with what Lohari had once described as motes of raw magic. Even Sontrani could feel the power of it, given the way she stamped the slope and rolled her eyes towards him.

Mind aflame with wonder, Nensi stood up, rolled his prayer mat into a tube and took a few tentative steps.

His ankle felt… fine. He leant on it, gently at first. Still fine. Strong, even.

He tentatively tapped his heel on the ground. No pain.

That was when he saw the first signs. Sprouting tendrils of clinger-moss, only a sling-throw’s distance away, reaching up as if yearning for the skies. The forests on the lower slopes groaned, swaying and even thrashing as their gnarloaks fought for dominance.

Nensi watched in rapt fascination, listening to the creak and hiss of flora sprouting, crawling and questing higher. More and more of the strange invigoration washed across the mountainside. Cracks and fissures opened in the substrate as the roots of a thousand trees swelled thick and fat. A season’s growth in a handful of minutes, sap rising and new life blooming as if he were witnessing the wild fever dream of some sylvan druid. He felt a strange rejuvenation singing in his blood, his muscles, his soul. Maybe he could restart his bloodline after all, take a new wife and breathe new life into the Vexoth before their flame guttered out altogether.

Sontrani was affected by the strange aura too, her coat becoming lustrous and fine. It seemed she had grown a full two hands in height, and put on a few new slabs of muscle to go with it. He could not wait to ride at full gallop, to feel the rush of breakneck speed as she cut loose her new power.

‘Thank the goddess,’ whispered Nensi, his limbs shivering with raw energy. ‘This is a gift, blown from the Everqueen’s bower to the lands of the tribe.’ He felt stronger and more vital than any time since his cuttingday.

The mountain was shuddering too. The pounding in his head grew louder now, a dull throb that was beginning to push little spikes of pain into his temples. It was a different kind of magic, of that he was sure. A contra-rhythm to the waves of life energy washing over the lands. The magic of the beast.

Thump, thump, thump.

It was insistent, relentless.

Like something trapped, and raging to get out.

That horrible, throbbing boom would not stop. It had pulsed through Nensi’s mind since that sweltering afternoon on the mountainside, and each day it grew a little louder. It was insistent, bullying even, and it never ceased. It was shot through every part of his mind, now. He was sick with it.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.

It was hard to think of anything else.

He was forcing himself up the slope of Mount Twinhorn nonetheless. Sontrani was unsettled too, twitching and snorting in fear with the lather of sweat thick on her flanks.

‘Just a harmless echo, brave heart,’ he said to his steed, laying a hand on her shivering neck. ‘A noise from the deep vaults. It’s the heartbeat of the realm, that’s all it is. The land beneath us was startled by that strange swell of life, but I name it harmless.’

A little voice in the back of his mind, gleeful in stark contrast to the creeping sense of unease that was flowing through him, told him that was not the case at all. That this is what he wanted. The sound was the war drum of something ancient and terrible. Something he had summoned with his daily plea for revenge, a last response to that immutable, cardinal law of Ghur.

The strong eat the weak.

It was a self-evident truth. Every tribe that had made it through the dark time knew it to be true. There were ways to adapt to it, of course. Learn to run and to hide. Sharpen the senses. Keep moving.

And when something mighty preys upon you, find something even mightier to prey upon it in turn.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.

The mountain gave a shudder, long and seismic, nearly causing Nensi to lose his footing. His eyes lit up, a fire spreading through him. That feeling of imminence, of danger from the earth itself, felt through the soles of the feet. That mingling of terror and exhilaration that came before the land was remade, sending even the most ferocious predator running for its life with its tail between its legs, and in doing so leaving the race of men to claim the bounties of the torn earth.

Another shake, the scree tumbling in little streams down the steepest parts of the slope. It was followed by a crack, deep and loud, in the distance. Then another, and another, until they seemed to come from all around him. There was a sound like the ice floes of Andtor splitting in the springtime warmth, and Nensi saw a great slew of the mountainside fall away in a tumble of boulders, like an iceberg calving from the cliff face of a glacier.

He swallowed his fear, and looked up.

There was an ear-splitting bang, and the mountainside exploded.

Something massive burst from the dying mountain like a war mammoth charging through a wall of ice. Huge slabs of rock flew in all directions, one thumping down to Nensi’s right so hard it crushed a pair of elder gnarloaks to flinders. It felt like he was suddenly trapped in a meteor shower, a hailstorm of hurled rocks, a hurricane of splinters, all at one time. A roaring, killing confusion of noise and sudden, impossible violence.

What have I done?

A wall of dust and debris rushed towards Nensi. He had time enough to raise his arm over his eyes before it hurled him from his feet and slammed him on his back. No more thumping now. Just a storm of confusion and terror that felt like it would consume him whole.

Nensi struggled to his feet, teeth bared and arm still held across his face. Sontrani was jumping, whinnying, her eyes wide with panic and her tail held high in fright, but to her credit she did not bolt. Even now, shaking head to hoof, she would not leave him. The storm of noise and violence was dying away, thank the twin moons.

He had begun to think he might live after all. Then came a roaring, booming voice that buried invisible claws deep in his soul. The words were a form of the tongue used by Nensi’s people, long fashioned after that of their ancestors and their elder gods in turn. He felt the force of their sentiment like a punch to the gut.

‘I claim freedom!’

The volume was mind-numbing in its intensity. It shivered pebbles from the slope above Nensi, a cascade of rocks joining those already spilling from the great wound in the mountainside. The pain in his head was so intense it blurred his vision, and he staggered, driven to his knees.

He risked another look at the mountain’s upper slopes. Pulling itself free from the avalanche of debris was the sight Nensi had dreamed of seeing ever since that dreadful night in the caves.

A monstrously muscled torso loomed through the dispersing rock dust, capped by a shaggy-maned head. Two huge arcs of horn curled from the creature’s forehead, great curves of stone-hard matter splintered and dusty as if from constant headbutting against unyielding rock. Below them, a face that embodied triumph and rage in equal measure, its thick lips framing a maw of broad, flat teeth.

Nensi found he could not look away. Around the titan’s neck and limbs were bronze plates strung as primitive adornment, their metal discoloured by age to sit pastel green against russet flesh. Torrents of sweat carved runnels through the rock dust that speckled it from head to toe, making it seem like some aeons-old stone elemental but for the ruddy vitality of the flesh exposed beneath. Hugely thewed arms lifted a shield heavy with the weight of ages, its verdigrised surface glinting dully in the mid-morning light. In a fist the size of a boulder it held a mace that shimmered with an aura of power – the very same weapon as the one depicted in the Vexoth’s home caves.

Kragnos, son of Gorgos. The Living Earthquake.

Fighting the urge to break and scramble away with every iota of his being, Nensi stood his ground. The awful, terrible monstrosity raised his weapon to the sky, ropy cords of vein standing out from his thick brown throat as he shouted in savage joy at the blue-white vault above. Two massive equine legs hauled themselves out of the rubble, bracing against the crumbling mountainside to push slews of rock away even as the titan hauled his huge, centauroid bulk out of the mountain’s grip.

Nensi recalled legends of the Great Drake binding Kragnos deep within a mountain long ago. Now, clearly, that magic was broken. Whether by the strange wave of vitality that had swept the mountain, his own insistent prayers or a confluence of the two, it mattered little.

The End of Empires had been reborn.

The primal god-thing had wrestled and crushed his way free of Twinhorn Peak, and was now snorting hot, moist air from his arching nostrils as he stood amongst rivulets of tumbling stone. The deity stared eastward, scanning the horizon. To Nensi’s great relief, Kragnos did not notice him. Likely he seemed an insect by comparison.

Nensi followed the monstrosity’s gaze as the dust of the avalanche thinned. He was staring out all the way across the span of Thondia, over the low peaks of the Krondspine Range and to the city of men that glinted like a star at the extremes of vision. Excelsis, the traders called it. A cursed place, by all accounts.

The god-thing squinted, holding his shield up against the bright Hyshian sun to cast half a mile of mountainside in shade behind it. Nensi watched the creature’s proud expression sour, then turn into a grimace. He watched the mighty head track around towards the distant chasm of Carcass Donse, and found himself crouching low with fear.

The elders said that Donse had once been a proud nation. Now it was nothing more than dust. The home of the drogrukh, giant centaurs so powerful they had carved their homes from the rock with nothing more than fist, horn and hoof. There were stories about it, stories handed down amongst the Vexoth for time immemorial – how Donse had risen high, but through the violence of a pact broken upon the wheel of time, had been shattered and burnt by the draconith children of the Great Drake. He’d never ventured there, but the stories all ended the same way. The once proud spires of Donse had been reduced by the passage of aeons to a distant memory, the bones of its people buried deep in the sand.

The creature that men called Kragnos clashed his mace on his shield with a sudden, mind-shattering clang, bellowing so loud it felt to Nensi like a gale force wind was pushing him back down the slope. Louder it grew, and louder still, until the rocks of the mountain fled all over again in trickling landslides and invisible hands pushed raw pain into his ears. The Earthquake God stomped eastward, the thump of his hooves shaking the mountainside once more.

En route to Donse, Nensi would find something else upon which the god could vent his fury. And if he had to be the bait, so be it.

He bolted, leapt onto Sontrani’s back and rode for his life.

Sontrani whickered and shrieked, primal fear taking her to the edge of white-eyed panic as she thundered down the mountain pass, dust flying from her hooves. She had been on the verge of bolting ever since the gargantuan drogrukh loomed out from his shattered prison, and now he was mounted, Nensi had no objection.

Already his thigh muscles were sore from the effort of staying in the saddle as Sontrani’s pounding, breakneck sprint brought them ever closer to the lesser mountains of Thondia. Sontrani was panting hard, her mighty chest heaving. Fear had pushed her to the edge of exhaustion, but never beyond it. That strange surge of life that had seen her grow before Nensi’s eyes had clearly given her stamina as well as raw strength.

The tribesman risked a look back. Perhaps an arrow’s flight behind him, the drogrukh god pounded after them, eyes blazing as he stared down imperiously. In them was pure fury – fury that a creature as small and weak as Nensi had the temerity to exist, let alone to meet his gaze. He could feel the drogrukh god’s need to crush him radiating off his colossal form in waves.

Cracks in the earth split wide with every hoofstep, a gap becoming a fissure becoming a chasm in the deity’s wake. He was a figure charging headlong out of myth, primal notions of power and ferocity made real.

Together they were heading east, with Nensi subtly guiding Sontrani alongside a trail of titanic footprints he had seen denting the packed earth. It was a dangerous game they played, but they had stayed ahead of him for what seemed like the better part of a day, only those occasions when Kragnos took his fury out on some tumbled, weather-worn temple or statue buying Nensi a moment of respite. Whenever he felt his exhausted body could take no more, whenever his eyes drooped and his body went slack, he looked back to set eyes upon the monstrous centauroid and found himself alight with fear all over again.

Keep riding, he told himself. Keep following the footprints. You are the lure in a trap long in closing, but it will be worth it to see the jaws clamp shut.

Or maybe his steed would finally be blown, or turn a hoof, and the Dread Mace would slam into them both, killing them in a single, bone-powdering instant.

Rounded shapes resolved in the shimmering haze to the north-east – the foothills of Vexothskol, not so far from the territory of the Gallet Stomp. Already the tremors shivering out from the Earthquake God’s hooves would be reaching the giant clans, calling forth the monsters that had brought Nensi’s tribe to the brink of extinction. No gargant could resist responding to such thunder from the earth, for they respected only that which was even more physically powerful than themselves.

Less than an hour later, just as Sontrani’s gallop was slowing to a canter, Nensi felt a mirthless smile creep onto his lips. Great lumbering shapes were forming on the horizon, humanoid but massively outsized. They strode in a loose group to intercept his course – his, and that of the god that came behind him.

In the distance beyond the gargants was the wreckage of an armoured caravan, some crusade of Dawnbringers or other foolhardy optimists, no doubt. Most of the wagons had been stamped into wreckage, but some few were still intact. Excelsians, most likely, overly fond of civilisation but willing to trade with the Vexoth whenever it was safe enough to venture from the caves.

Nensi’s heart leapt, making him feel sick and elated all at once. The first of the gargants was horribly familiar. He recognised it from its sloping shoulders and cruel swagger, even before he saw the bloodshot eye and twisted lip that had been Darna’s parting gift to the creature. The great oaf had its hand to its ear, cupped as if listening to something. In its other hand it carried a giant oak tree, banded with metal and with the odd root and branch jutting from the age-blackened trunk.

At the leader’s side came the bald one, the one who wore a coastman’s boat as a shoulder-guard. Behind that elder brute came a bearded mountain of muscle as hairy as its older kinsman was bald. The fourth was clad in the bones of monsters, rattling and clacking like shaman’s tools as it swept its longspear from side to side, whilst the fifth had a flail made from wrecker’s chain. Last to come was a horned monstrosity with one half of its face smeared over the other.

They were enormous – bigger even than the drogrukh monster gouging the lands as it thundered behind Nensi. No matter, he told himself. No mortal creature can stand before a god of ruin.

Scar Lip pointed his vast tree-club at Kragnos, turning to bellow something to his fellows before drawing a deep-gouged line in the ochre earth with its tip. Here, the gesture said, but no further. Nensi found himself laughing, wild and unrestrained, at the idea of drawing a line in the path of an earthquake.

He steered Sontrani in an arcing path towards them, insisting she stay true even as she tried to peel away. Everything in his soul told him to run, to flee, that he had done enough just by bringing Kragnos here. But his darker side, his vengeful side, would not turn away, not for all the realmstone in the eight worlds. The son of Gorgos had risen, and he would show the Gallet Stomp what he thought of their line in the sand.

Sontrani whinnied loudly. Nensi steered her away from the gargants as they fanned out, knowing she was right. To be caught between their lumpen wall of muscle and the unstoppable force pounding towards them would be to die.

‘Be ready, girl!’

Kragnos showed no sign of stopping in his charge, the ground torn to wreckage under his hooves. Scar Lip shouted something unintelligible, then counter-charged with his club swinging up high. He brought it round in a devastating sweep, turning his shoulders and hips to deliver a blow of such force it would have shattered a castle wall.

Kragnos did not turn aside, but simply raised his shield. The giant’s oak-tree weapon shattered upon it in a storm of flinders, like a long-rotten battering ram meeting a wall of steel.

Off balance, Scar Lip reeled. A split second later, Kragnos’ shoulder slammed into his chest. He stumbled, but did not fall – not until the rounded head of the Dread Mace caught him in the spine as it whipped backwards. The relic weapon doubled the giant warrior over the wrong way with a sharp snapping noise, and the gargant’s broken body fell, spasming, slamming down to the earth in a spreading cloud of dust.

‘Now!’ shouted Nensi, spurring his heels into Sontrani’s barrel-like torso. She took a few steps forwards, but would not charge.

Cries of outrage sounded as the rest of the gargants stampeded in. The bone-clad savage was foremost, laughing as he came on, a weird glint in his eye. Crouching, he got a good thrust in with his longspear, a low angle that slid under the shield. It would have gutted a lesser foe. Kragnos reared back like a bucking stallion to let the blow glance from his knee, then lashed out a foreleg quick as a snake, caving in the stooping gargant’s head with a flailing hoof. Blood sprayed, greyish-pink brain matter spilling into the dust.

Another roar of defiance sounded from the gargants as they moved to encircle him. When the drogrukh god slammed his hooves back down the ground split apart, deep cracks yawning left and right. Two of the gargants lost their footing. The hideous one with half a face stumbled back in shock, and his ugly great foot, still slicked red with the smeared remnants of the caravan people, buckled as it slid into a fissure that had not been there moments before. His ankle turned and he went down hard.

The Dread Mace lashed out once more, pulverising the gargant’s misshapen head against the unforgiving stone of Gallet’s crust.

‘Go around, girl!’ shouted Nensi, kicking his steed with his heels. Reluctantly, she cantered in a wide arc at the verge of the fight. A second, sharper kick finally elicited a burst of speed. She would make him pay for that later if they lived long enough, but he was running out of choices.

Ahead of them was Scar Lip, writhing in the dust with his back broken. A great arm went up high as he noticed Nensi’s charge, blotting out the sun for a moment before swiping back down. Sontrani veered on instinct, a blackened thumb like a fallen log slamming down a few feet from their path. The horse leapt over the gargant’s hand a moment before it raised it again, grabbing clumsily. Had Nensi not leaned all the way over to squat on Sontrani’s flank he would have been plucked up and devoured just like his brother, and his wife before that.

‘Too slow!’ he shouted, a fierce joy overwhelming his urge to flee. He spurred Sontrani once more, driving hard towards Scar Lip’s boulder-sized head.

The gargant craned its neck, that foul maw gaping open as if to swallow him whole. Nensi put his staff’s spear-like tip right through its bloodshot eye. The force of his charge drove it deep into the gargant’s outsized brain.

He let the spear-haft go as Sontrani galloped past, his hand flying to the hilt of his knife as the blood pounded in his veins. Realising what he was doing, Nensi took the reins with both hands instead. The great brute that had killed his family was collapsing back to the earth, now, blood pouring in great streams from its eye socket as it spasmed its last. A dagger’s thrust was neither here nor there.

To his right, battle still raged. Whilst the drogrukh god was engaged with the bald elder, the last of the younger gargants were circling around him. One had got around Kragnos’ flank, raking his side with its great rusted chain. Hot blood – the blood of a god – spattered down like rain. Nensi felt some on his lips, a sacrament of violence and madness.

He heard a roar like the striking of a thunderstorm, tooth-rattling in its intensity. Everything went black for a moment, but then, as his vision cleared, Nensi saw the gargants in front of Kragnos, their blunt-featured faces screwed up in pain. He had no time to question what had happened before the God of Earthquakes reared and stamped down hard with his hooves either side of a fissure. The ground collapsed before him, a sinkhole opening under the hair-covered gargant with horrible speed. Churning fast, it swallowed the brute whole.

The gargant with the wrecker’s chain roared, swinging his weapon in a massive arc. The Dread Mace lashed out first. Not a swing this time, but a thrust. The relic weapon’s spiked head smashed into the flail-wielder’s face, caving his features in to leave a red crater behind.

As the giant staggered, the drogrukh god lowered his horns and reared high, catching the stricken gargant under the ribs and lifting him clear off his feet before the colossal weight of his body saw that gouging, horned headbutt pull his chest apart. An explosion of gore coated Kragnos from scalp to hoof in hot, red blood. The risen god bellowed once more in fierce, primal elation.

Stunned and reeling from the auditory assault, Nensi could only hang on to Sontrani’s neck as he fought to stay conscious. The last of the gargants, the bald elder, dropped to his knees with an earth-shaking thump. He held out his mast-club, raising it in both hands to offer it to the drogrukh god. A moment passed before Kragnos replied, a rumbling string of words that Nensi roughly grasped as an affirmative.

The bald gargant saw him then, rheumy eyes locking on to his own. Nensi’s guts writhed with fear, and he turned Sontrani away. A moment later, the giant’s wrist flicked out, and a jagged boulder came right at him. It smashed into Sontrani’s neck with horrible force, bowling her over onto the ground.

Nensi did not get free in time. The pain from his leg as it was crushed into the rocky earth was indescribable. He writhed, head ringing and leg screaming in agony, to look up at the Earthquake God.

‘Please!’ he shouted. ‘Kill the last one! Finish what you started!’

In his peripheral vision he saw the gargant point right at him, and – holding Kragnos’ gaze all the while – raise his finger to his lips. The gargant made a chomping motion with his wrinkly, hateful maw. A hateful sucking sound came from his throat, then a gulp, as if swallowing an oyster.

The Earthquake God rolled his shoulders in something approaching a shrug, a surprisingly human gesture for a creature of aeons past. The bald gargant grinned up at him, exposing awful, rotten teeth. He reached out, those terribly strong digits closing around Nensi’s chest with impossible force.

He was dragged out from under his fallen steed, but he could not scream, for his breath had been crushed out of him. There was nothing left inside apart from blind, animal fear.

The elder brute’s horrible, brine-stinking mouth opened wide, a chasm of black and pink yawning open especially for him.

And then, with a wet crunch and a smack of lips, the people of the Vexoth were no more.

The one they called the God of Earthquakes watched in distaste as the gargant chewed on his prize. The horseman had asked for death by getting in his way, so what did it matter in the end how it came about? There were millions more of the things, after all, infesting Ghur from end to end. Humans, orruks, gargants, it was much the same to him. They could worship him if they wished, provided they stayed out of his way.

Only his kin, the drogrukh, really mattered.

Kragnos fixed his eyes on the horizon, and smiled. Soon he would be home. Soon he would be amongst his people in the spires of Donse, the true and rightful rulers of the Ghurish Heartlands, celebrating his return.

And there, after a lifetime lost to a war of pride and vengeance, he would finally find peace.

About the Author

Phil Kelly is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Farsight: Crisis of Faith, the Space Marine Conquests novel War of Secrets, the Space Marine Battles novel Blades of Damocles and the novellas Farsight and Blood Oath. For Warhammer he has written the titles Sigmar’s Blood and Dreadfleet. He has also written a number of short stories. He works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham.

An extract from Stormvault.

WHUMP – WHUMP, WHU-WHUMP!

The beat of the Big Drum rolled through the still air of the evening like the colossal heartbeat of a godbeast.

WHUMP – WHUMP, WHU-WHUMP!

Brognakk the Skinner felt its basso boom vibrate in his barrel chest. The sound sent a surge of exhilaration through the old megaboss. A spike of aggression tightened his fist instinctively around his massive double-bladed choppa, Krump, until its gnarled leather bindings creaked.

WHUMP – WHUMP, WHU-WHUMP!

The sound bounced off the mountains that towered like Gorkamorka’s tusks to the north. It boomed like thunder over the ruined cityscape that sprawled before Brognakk, its sunken streets and canyons black with shadow, the hard planes of its ruined buildings daubed bloody down one flank by the setting light of Hysh.

WHUMP – WHUMP, WHU-WHUMP!

The Big Drum itself had been hauled to the top of the ruined watchtower that overlooked the road north of the city. Crude block and tackle winches and a great deal of gargant muscle had got the drum into position, and now a pair of hulking ogors pounded away at it with double-handed beaters made from obsidian and monster-bones.

Beneath him, Brognakk’s maw-krusha steed shifted restlessly. It hunched on a crag overlooking the watchtower and the drum. He had named the enormous beast Smash; this was in part because of what Brognakk had seen it do to Boss Graznak’s ’ardboyz the day he killed Graznak and took the monstrous steed for his own, and partly because he didn’t have time for all that imaginative mucking about. Let the weaker races mess around with fancy names for their weapons and mounts and what have you. While they were wasting time with such nonsense, the orruks would be kicking down their castle doors and smashing their teeth in.

‘Steady, lad,’ growled Brognakk as Smash stirred again. The maw-krusha pounded one huge, scaly fist against the lip of the crag, dislodging a spill of scree. Brognakk gave his steed an affectionate whack on the back of the skull with his own clenched fist, asserting dominance as naturally as he breathed air. ‘It’s da drum, innit? You feel it too,’ he said. His maw-krusha gave a deep, rumbling snarl that sounded like wet rocks grinding together deep beneath the earth. Brognakk chose to take that as assent. It was the Big Drum, he thought, the war beat of Gorkamorka pounding out until it filled the valley. How could Smash not respond to that? How could any of them not?

At the thought of Gorkamorka, Brognakk spat superstitiously, first right then left. One for each head of the Great Green God.

‘Come on, lad. They’ll be gavvered by now,’ said the leathery old megaboss, and gave his steed another whack to get it moving. Smash let out a deafening roar then launched itself from the lip of the crag and spread its wings wide. Maw-krushas couldn’t really fly, per se, not like the fancy winged beasts of Sigmar’s storm ladz or the twisted-up terrors that the biggest Chaos boyz rode to battle. They were too big, too tough, solid lumps of muscle and bone that even the widest wingspan wouldn’t keep aloft indefinitely. Instead they leapt and glided, as Smash did now, launching itself high into the air with a tremendous shove of its heavily muscled forelimbs then catching the air and soaring upon it with the wide flaps of skin that stretched bat-like between its wrists and hind legs.

Brognakk grabbed onto the pommel of his saddle and enjoyed the sensation of acceleration. Smash shot over the watchtower where the Big Drum still pounded, greenskin shamans and warchanters gibbering, dancing and adding their own drumbeats about its base. The maw-krusha sailed down over the lower slopes and as it went its shadow swept over a sea of shanty-encampments. Fire smoke billowed around Brognakk, parting in a whirl as Smash plunged through it. Crude idols to Gorkamorka jutted up everywhere, ramshackle agglomerations of rubble, hewn wood, war trophies and dung daubed with vibrant colours and jangling with cheap bells and trinkets. Smash clipped a few of the tallest and Brognakk leered at the cries of shock from below as rubble crashed down on surprised orruks and ogors. Thousands upon thousands of warriors marched beneath Brognakk’s flayed-skin banner, and they teemed underneath him as he rushed like an angry wind towards the valley floor.

The slopes raced past below, thick with grass, undergrowth and giant emerald-green ferns that broke like green waves against the rocky outcroppings jutting amidst them. Ahead, the ruins of the city swelled larger with alarming rapidity as the horde’s forward positions approached.

‘Dat way,’ barked Brognakk, wrenching Smash’s head around as they whipped past a hillock crawling with chanting Bonesplitterz and the Morkagork hove into sight. The enormous war fort had been wheeled all the way to the fringe of the city’s crumbling northern districts and now loomed, huge and menacing, as its two wood-and-iron visages watched the city sink into twilit shadow. Brognakk’s black old heart swelled with pride at the sight of the Morkagork, as it always did when he saw the colossal war engine. He had enslaved an entire nation of Spiderfang grots to build it, working most of them to death as they hacked down the web-festooned trees of their dank valleys and mined their shadowy caverns for the materials to make Brognakk’s rolling tribute to the Great Green God. It was a veritable castle on iron wheels, moved by gargants chained into its lowest level, bedecked to resemble Gorkamorka and loaded up with deck upon deck of spear chukkas. For now, its presence was a brazen challenge to any enemy entering the valley. It said, ‘Orruks is ’ere, get gone or get ready fer a fight.’

It would rain spears down upon the enemy in support of his horde when the big fight came, as it always did.

And there was a big fight coming, thought Brognakk.

Of that he was sure.

His warchiefs had gathered in the shadow of the Morkagork as instructed. He could see his sail-like Waaagh! banner rising from amidst the tumbled ruins of an ancient structure that squatted on the very fringe of the ruined city. Mobs of orruks and ogors lolled about the courtyard before it. The hand-picked ladz of Brognakk’s best warchiefs eyed each other belligerently across the cracked and sprouting expanse of stone. It wouldn’t take much to spark a fight between them, he knew. Greenskins and ogors alike forgot quickly who was in charge, started getting ideas in their heads about being biggest and best.

And nothing proved supremacy amongst Gorkamorka’s teeming offspring like a good bit of violence.

‘Time t’remind ’em who’s in charge,’ snarled Brognakk and leant forward over Smash’s scaled neck, his tusked leer widening. The rushing wind squeezed tears from the corners of his right eye, though it had no power to trouble the glowing green gem that had long ago replaced his left. It sang through the metal plates hammered into Brognakk’s flesh and rattled the assortment of tribal charms that hung about his thick, green neck.

Smash came down with meteoric force amidst the warchiefs’ bodyguards. The maw-krusha hit so hard that stone shards splintered and burst up around its great knuckles, rattling from its thick hide. The beast let out a stupendous bellow of rage, so deafening that luckless orruks fell back with blood squirting from their ears and noses.

WHUMP – WHUMP, WHU-WHUMP came the endless drumbeat from the slopes above as Smash ploughed a path through the warchiefs’ retinues. Its huge clawed fists left deep craters in the stone, more than one painted with the remains of Ironjawz orruks too slow to get out of the way. The beast’s club-like tail swung behind it, swatting an ogor from his feet and breaking the arm of another armoured orruk. One greenskin, a real monster with spiked shoulder guards and a double-handed choppa, stood his ground and bellowed a challenge as Smash ploughed towards him.

Brave, Brognakk thought, but really, really stupid. Smash’s head shot forward on its saurian neck. Its gaping jaws stretched wide then slammed shut like a mantrap. Fangs thicker than Brognakk’s arms punched through iron, flesh and bone. Blood jetted as the orruk’s legs flopped to the ground, relieved of the rest of his body in a single monstrous bite. They were mashed to pulp an instant later as Smash ploughed on, head thrown back and gullet working as it crunched the challenger down – armour, blade and all.

There was a gaping rent in the far side of the building that his warchiefs had gathered in, but a megaboss of Brognakk’s station didn’t go around. He went through.

Smash reared up on its stubby hind legs like a massive simian and pounded its huge green claw-fists into the side of the ruin. Ancient stonework cracked and gave, and the maw-krusha ploughed through amidst a rain of tumbling rock and billowing dust. Cries of shock and alarm met Brognakk as his steed shouldered its way through the hole. Indistinct shapes tumbled away amidst dust and shadow.

Brognakk pulled in a huge breath, rose high in his saddle with Krump brandished high above his head, and bellowed at the top of his lungs.

‘WAAAGH!’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Catherine O’Connor.

God of Earthquakes © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. God of Earthquakes, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-80026-732-9

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