Ambassador…
The master despised that title. It was so beneath him as to be closer to an insult. The master had killed people for insults. He had turned villages into craters for disrespects only he seemed to notice. To call him ambassador, implying subservience to foreign powers, was a good way to make him snort like a boar. His kin knew this and called him by his true title.
But for the ruling council in Zharr Naggrund, he was the ambassador; send to the roof of the world on a mission. The barbarians wanted weapons only dwarfs could provide and dwarfs needed slaves, so the ambassador was there to sign contracts and fleece the tribesmen who would kill their firstborn for a dwarf made meat cleaver.
Few manling knew his name. More importantly, fewer still knew what he was.
Razek knew, and much more. Maybe too much for a greenskin.
But stranger things could happen in the Roof of the World.
Six decades in the Wastes, surrounded by manlings drooling over bones and howling oaths to the void. Six decades of that and even a daemonsmith could change, could grow… informal, talkative with his warriors and servants. Who else could he talk to in a land where madness is the norm, where even greenskins are more predictable than the locals?
In the Roof of the World, an hobgoblin could even grow old. Razek, green of skin and grey of chin, wondered sometimes if any other of his kin had ever lived as long as he had. He hoped not. He liked to see his talent as the exception. His master had relied on his daggers for decades but more than that, he relied on HIM. Razek was an oddity. He could think ahead, he could handle a true conversation and keep his volatile greenskin impulses under control.
And now he was old, with beard on his chin and the patronage of a daemonsmith.
A daemonsmith who might order his death before the end of the day.
The assassin filled a tankard of blood ale and gave it to his lord.
-Well master?
The master gave him a smile, fierce behind his tusks, yet unsettlingly friendly.
-It could have gone better.
Calm, avuncular even, despite the underlying growl no dawi could ever subsume. Razek called it the mask.
A spider. A giant spider daring me to cross the line. A kraken with a hundred tentacles. But old Razek is no fool.
-Or far worse to be honest, the master continued. You failed me Razek. Had I fully trusted your information, the fate of the convoy would hang in the balance. But not as much as yours…
Mechanically, the assassin got down on his knees and performed the ritual of submission. –I implore your forgiveness for this unworthy servant great lord, he said without any inflection.
-Implore away slave and as you do, listen.
The ambassador pulled his head back and slowly emptied the tankard. A connoisseur, he could taste every race that had donated blood for this batch.
-The norscan camp was where you said, they were as many as you said, their patrols followed the pattern you described… You just failed to notice the crown changed hands in the last year. Urlf is dead. In his stead I found some degenerate by the name of Ingolf. He refused to deliver the slaves Urlf had promised and yet demanded I delivered the weapons to him. He threatened many punishments if I refused, including turning my beard into a whip to make Hashut plow the Pleasure God’s fields. An inventive soul…
Razek raised an eyebrow slightly to show his indignation.
-What was your answer?
-I gave him the weapons of course, along with three hundred armors as a personal present to celebrate our association. It is the least we owe such paragons of excess. My best work I must say, they fit his warriors like a second skin. I doubt they can ever remove them but why would they want to? They shall wear them to a glorious destiny no doubt…
The daemonsmith pulled an obsidian dagger, went to the brazier burning at the center of the tent and cut his left palm. Heaping praise on the marauders who just broke faith with him, he let the blood pool on his palm then let it drop on the bronze tablet he was now holding with his right.
The tablet where he and Urlf had sworn their oath.
-Manlings are scum Razek, – his tone changed to a sinister whisper - vermin with minds barely above yours, and you might even stand above a few of them. Let them rut and glut and call it faith. They do not make the rules, I do. And I say an oath is sacred. Urlf swore, now Ingolf pays. He craves odd experiences I reckon… then this will be a good day for him.
-I hope for his sake you warned him of the consequences.
–And why would I? I was not sent here to civilize them. That is a feat beyond Hashut himself, no wonder he never tried. If Ingolf thinks his whore god will protect him after double crossing the Father of Darkness, I feel no need to disabuse him. He belonged to me the moment his tribe signed the pact. He belonged to me even as I let him steal my work and soil it with his musk!
The daemonsmith raised the bloodstained tablet.
-But that is the price of my duty. I kiss your feet today, I eat your liver tomorrow!
He whispered words Razek couldn’t understand, nor cared to. By respect and prudence he averted his gaze and stared as hard as he could at the ground, lest his curiosity get the better of him and make him see what he wasn’t supposed to.
Old Razek is no fool.
But sometimes that wasn’t enough to beat back fear.
The master was speaking.
And something was answering.
He did not saw what came next, but he felt it. Shadows gathered around the brazier, shadows with eyes and fangs and voices, threatening the daemonsmith for having the audacity to demand, then complying with ill grace. He did not saw the tablet melt in his master’s hands and drop into the brazier, making the coal hiss.
But he felt it, felt it on his skin and in the back of his throat. Razek had come to the conclusion that magic was, for lack of a better analogy, like drowning in oil.
It sticks to you.
So he waited until silence returned. And it did, but the light did not.
-Contract terminated…
That made the assassin look again. Somehow the brazier now spread darkness. His master was one with the shadows.
–Do you hear something in the wind, slave? – He said as malice bled from every pore - Maybe your wolves are blessed to hear what we cannot. Even as we speak my armors are being reforged. Hammered and melted and crushed… until my work resembles something else entirely.
Razek remained impassive, but behind his back he felt his hands shaking, the only emotion he couldn’t suppress as the daemonsmith revealed the depths of his retribution. The greenskin allowed himself a cruel smile, picturing what his master had conjured somewhere beyond the bivouac, beyond the hills.
One valley away, something horrifying was happening. For a moment he imagined he could truly hear the cracking, the bursting and the manlings feeling every moment.
And yet, Razek couldn’t shake the feeling something of all this was at odds with what he knew of his master. After sixty years, his mind could discern patterns in his lord’s behaviour. He was proud of it.
And pride comes before the fall.
-A fitting end… and merciful.
A part of him felt like biting his tongue even as he spoke but another part, the part that simply refused to think ahead, kept going. The master raised an eyebrow crooked like a dagger and the hobgoblin thought he had finally crossed the line.
-Explain.
The word carried no inflection, but many implications. The ambassador was less than impressed. Razek had been betrayed by his mouth before but so far he had found he knew his master well enough.
-Blasphemer… Oathbreaker… It seems to me this punishment doesn’t begin to account for his debt.
For an uncomfortable moment the dawi zharr stared at him, betraying nothing. Then he blinked and once again the mask was on, the indulgent smile.
-How you know me, assassin! Of course Ingolf is alive… and no doubt tormented by many questions. Fortunately I bring answers, more than he can handle. I wish to have a long conversation with him about our gods and their respective value, about the importance of oaths. I will send him to Uzkulak, I think. A lifetime protecting Hashut’s crops as a living scarecrow and even a pleasure fiend can learn his true place. And knowing one’s place Razek - he said emphasizing every word - is the foundation of order.
Razek knew that tone. Those last words were for his sake. It meant there was still one small matter to resolve.
-Will you kill me now great lord?
His lord looked at him with a crooked smile, cynical, as if the notion truly had never crossed his mind.
-Should I kill you? After you’ve had my favor for so long? After I marked you with a dawi name? Razek was the name of one of my oldest ancestors, assassin. Razek the oathbreaker, founder of a cursed branch of my clan, one who fled back west, one who denied the Dark Father when he came to us. Did I name you after him because he was as low as a greenskin? Or because you now stand as high as a betrayer? – the daemonsmith looked at him as if trying to solve a riddle - Why do I tolerate you Razek? Maybe because you have endured for so long. Maybe I’m waiting to see which of your kin finally kills you. Maybe I find entretaining the way you outsmart them at every turn. Maybe your usefulness is reason enough.
-I dare not guess master, honored as I am for my dawi name.
-Leave honor out of this, assassin. You failed me today. Time to pick another of your wolf riders and roast him for the ogres. Make it quick, we march immediately to gather Ingolf, his slaves and anyone who didn’t got an armor.
Razek changed his expression, just enough to prove to his master that he was suitably chastised and the punishment had been well chosen.
But as he left the tent, against his better judgment the assassin turned around and asked a question that had nagged him for some time.
-With respect great lord, you know of course their deaths mean nothing to me. You have already spared me the burden of killing several rivals myself.
-Ah, but there are only so many underlings I can roast! One day you will ran out and that day it will be you on the spit. Unless they gut you first, for I doubt they enjoy paying for your mistakes. Pray Hashut to keep your wits in the future, lest I kill you, lest they kill you, lest I find one who surpasses you in cunning…
-Lest I kill you…
Fool…
Fool…
Fool…
Fool…
Fool…
He was still speaking when the dwarf looked him in the eyes and he realized he had finally done it. A simple look and whatever had made Razek survive all this time dissolved. All that remained was the greenskin, his mind unraveling, facing the fact there was no way out of this one.
The ambassador was gone. All the trappings of diplomacy, all the indulgence of conversation melted, leaving only the core nature of Hashut’s chosen. Blood red eyes and incandescent skin like dying embers, once again what he truly was, a world away from the mask he so liked to wear. Razek saw something boiling, quite literally, in the dawi’s eyes, the facade replaced with torrents of violence always ready to explode, and for a single terrifying moment, the greenskin felt the Black Bull’s presence, watching him through His prophet.
Then the daemonsmith laughed.
-You insult me, slave. Any other insult and I would make you envy Ingolf’s fate. All, except that one. That insult is not yours, Razek. That insult is the Dark Father speaking through an unworthy vessel. Leave and don’t push your luck.
Razek bowed and left, thanking Gork and Mork for the cold wind in his face. As he fought to recover the calm that had kept him alive for so long, the last thing he heard was his master, laughing in the darkness.
If you outlive me Razek, I wasn’t worthy.
Thirteen years later, crawling out of the charnel pit where they threw him, the ambassador would remember that conversation. His convoy destroyed, his army dead, his scalp tied to the belt of some shaman, his skull ravaged with a new kind of pain, the daemonsmith reignited the lost forge of Karak Oram and forged the instrument of his vengeance.
The mask gone forever, he thought about the corpse he had looked for and never found.
You cannot outlive me, Razek.
And so, alone in the Wastes, Agag the Stoneskull forged, and hated, and endured.
Somewhere in the roof of the world stands a pillar of polished bronze. Forged from the metal of three hundred armors, it is a mechanical marvel as only dwarfs can devise. All over its surface the runic cartouches change place constantly thanks to ingenious shifting gears and minuscule moving parts, proclaiming the supremacy of the Dark Father in a hundred different ways. The pillar itself rotates on its axis, Hashut’s relief always facing the winds of magic as a silent challenge to the Four. Blood oozes from its core and drips from the top of the capital, oiling the delicate mechanisms forever.
It will never stop, not until its creator releases the daemons keeping it standing.
He never will.