LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

Mark Latham

They had travelled half the night, father and son, over hill and dale and thick forest. The cold of the Middenland winter bit at them through their furs. The boy was too young for such hardships, though he was uncomplaining.

They had left the village of Breuna in the dead of night. Leaving the sanctuary of the palisade wall after dark was forbidden, but the father, Jens, was a hunter, known as the stealthiest man in the village, and the pair had evaded the night-watchmen with ease. They had walked for hours, skirting the foetid borders of the Midden Marches before thrusting north towards the shadow-haunted Drakwald. Jens never once lost his way, even without a light. The men of the north had hunted these lands for generations and the wilderness paths were ingrained on his memory.

‘Always be careful here, boy,’ Jens warned his son. ‘Goblins roam here of a night, and will make sport of a stripling like you. Even so, it’s safer than the highways. When night falls, bandits and brigands rule the roads, and even the wardens daren’t ride out. Goblins are wicked – it’s their nature – but men can be crueller still. Keep to the old trails, like I taught you.’ The boy had never seen a goblin in his five years, but he had seen bandits and even wardens. They both frightened him equally.

The boy listened intently, as he always did. He knew Jens was a great hunter. Even alone out here, with wolf-calls in the distance and barely a moon to guide them, the boy was not afraid. Not while he had his father.

It seemed an age before they reached the forest. Jens had brought them on a circuitous route over frost-hardened moors and part-frozen bogs. ‘Better to come this way, boy,’ he said. ‘Keep to the wilds. Stray towards the villages at night and you’ll have to answer to the watch, or parley with vagabonds. Always trust in your own strength; best not to rely on men.’ It seemed a harsh warning, but the boy nodded and trudged onwards beside his father.

As the trees grew thicker and the forest ahead of them grew as black as pitch, they looked back once more over the Midden Marches. A silver mist hung over the gentle valleys, masking the endless stretches of marshland that were home to the innumerable bones of long-dead warriors and the screeching spirits that guarded their damp tombs.

‘If you stand still and quiet of a night, boy,’ Jens said, ‘you’ll see them. You’ll think it’s the fog at first, drifting over the hills. But then you’ll see it move against the breeze and take the shapes of men, cursed to fight their final battle for the Marches over and over.’

The boy stared at the mist now, full of wonder, but he saw nothing but a few flickering green marsh-lights in the far distance.

Drakwald oaks and ironwoods towered above them, blocking out the stars and moons. The trails became harder to follow now; tanglethorns and fire-nettles snagged their clothes at every pace. Jens did not flinch even when the wicked barbs bit through his breeches and stung his flesh. Instead he picked up his boy and lifted him past the worst thickets, or slashed new paths with his hunting knife.

When the giant wolves came, the boy hid behind his father. Large red eyes shone in the darkness and the noise of their slavering in that still forest seemed deafening. Jens nocked an arrow and let fly almost as soon as the boy noticed the danger. A pair of eyes faded, like dying embers doused in water. The pack leader came next, large as a bear, plunging out of the darkness, the pale hair along its flanks forming a faint outline in the gloom. That was all the target Jens required. The old hunter loosed another arrow at close range and the wolf yelped as the shaft found its underbelly. A flash of steel and the job was finished. With mournful howls, the pack withdrew to find less aggressive prey.

‘Remember, boy, go for the belly or the throat. Kill them quick, for a wounded wolf is even more dangerous than a healthy one.’ He gave the boy his heavy blade and made him show what he had learned, slicing into the throat of the dead beast. Jens daubed the blood of the wolf onto his face, and onto his boy’s face. ‘To hide our scent, lest the wolves return,’ he said.

Hours passed as they struck into the Drakwald. Spiders the size of cats watched them hungrily from the canopies, whilst other, more noisome things shrank away from their approach.

Ahead, there came a light; a soft amber glow at first, but as they picked their way towards it they saw that it was a fire, set in a clearing ahead. They heard whooping and braying, sounds of unmistakeable merriment, all accompanied by the thrumming of drums. The cries grew louder, until father and son found themselves at the edge of the clearing, peering through the bushes.

Dozens of creatures cavorted around a bonfire, their bodies twisted, their heads bestial. These were half-men; beastmen. Some had magnificent antlers sprouting from their gnarled heads, others rams’ horns. Some looked more like horses or dogs, and others still like no animal Jens had even seen. They danced and writhed and fought, with the bodies of men and women but hooves and claws. From every bough around the clearing hung flayed animal carcasses – and worse – dripping blood onto the forest floor. The scene was maddening.

A shaman, clad in rags, with a mask of bone upon his massive head, cried out to the heavens, his arms stretched skywards in entreaty to some dark god. Then, slowly, the shaman turned his massive head to look upon their hiding place. Jens only cupped his son’s face, and said to him earnestly: ‘We are here, boy. Remember all that I have taught you, for it will serve you well. This is your family now. You must never return to Breuna. I can’t hide you any longer. The soldiers will kill you and I shall be arrested. Stay here and be free.’

The shaman stepped towards them, though none of the others paid them any heed. The boy tried in vain to form words. Tears shone in his large yellow eyes. The shaman drew nearer and Jens stood and turned away; he was resolute. It seemed the shaman would let him live, satisfied, perhaps, by the offering of a new warrior for his beast-herd.

The boy’s bestial moan was all but indistinct and he yanked at his father’s arm with a small, misshapen claw. Jens strode away, never looking back. He heard the grunt of the hideous, goat-headed shaman and the anguished cries of his accursed son. And with those cries ringing in his ears he marched back into the ebon forest, with the first tear he’d shed in five years freezing on his weathered cheek.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author of the short stories 'Kovos Falls' and 'Like Father, Like Son', Mark Latham is an English literature post-graduate who has worked as a writer and editor for Games Workshop for nearly thirteen years. After cutting his teeth on Battle Games in Middle-earth, he went on to edit White Dwarf magazine for more than thirty issues, and is now the lead editor for the studio's Warhammer 40,000 books. Mark is obsessive about classic ghost stories of a bygone age, and his writing tends to contain a dash of the macabre.

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Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

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