Vanholf kept his eyes downcast but shook his head emphatically. ‘But the Shrouded King may expect a trap,’ he said. ‘Always Pater Mathias has acted as… as a mediator between the town and the wraith.’ He looked up at Arnhault. ‘Pater Mathias is gone! No one can find him. He has left us!’
‘In a time of crisis, men display their true quality,’ Penthius scowled.
‘We will carry out the plan with or without Mathias,’ Arnhault declared. ‘The wraith may be so certain of its power over you that even without Mathias’ welcome, the monster will not be suspicious.’
Vanholf was still uneasy. ‘If… if the Shrouded King does suspect…’ Suddenly the burghermeister looked up, excitement on his face. ‘If we took one of Mathias’ cassocks…’ The excitement faded as he looked up at the huge warriors. ‘No, the Shrouded King would never mistake one of you for Pater Mathias.’
‘Then we will need one of your people to play the part,’ Penthius stated. Again his uncompromising eyes moved across the elders. ‘Who among you will do it? Or are there no heroes left in Wyrmditt?’
A long moment of shameful silence dominated the temple. It was broken at last by a quiet voice from beside Arnhault.
‘I will do it,’ Mueller declared. ‘I feel it is my duty, for I was the one who begged Sigmar to send you to us.’
The Stormcasts looked at the blind priest in astonishment. Even Penthius was impressed by the man’s determination.
‘Are you not afraid?’ Arnhault asked.
‘Of course, my lord,’ Mueller said. ‘But I can control my fear.’ He raised his hand to his sightless eyes. ‘Now I understand that this affliction is a blessing. Because I cannot see him, my fear will grow no worse when the Shrouded King comes. I can stand outside the shrine and wait for him, just as Pater Mathias did.’
Arnhault was pensive. The risk to the blind priest would be great. Mueller would be standing in the very path of the storm. Yet there was something in what he said about his blindness being an asset now rather than a hindrance. Anything that increased the chance of luring the Shrouded King into their trap had to be considered. Moreover, he thought about the terrible humiliation Mueller would feel if his offer were rejected outright.
‘It will be dangerous,’ Arnhault advised Mueller. ‘Search your heart and if you are certain this is the path Sigmar has called you to follow, then we, the Gilded Sphere of the Sacrosanct Chamber, will accept your help.’ He gazed over the elders and saw that, somehow, their dejection was even more pronounced than before. Truly these men had been humbled. Arnhault marvelled at the wisdom of Sigmar.
To be humbled in the presence of the Sacrosanct Stormcasts was something a man could rationalise to himself. To be humbled by the courage of a blind man… That was a lesson none of the elders would ever forget.
The Shrine of Nagash was an imposing pagoda near the centre of Wyrmditt. The morbid tower was not pressed upon too closely by its neighbours. Instead a great expanse of open ground surrounded it, ground that was uncharacteristically barren by the standards of Ghur. A few withered trees and the husks of yellowed bushes were the only evidence life had ever intruded upon this place. The dirt around the dead plants was parched and grey, as though some vampiric scourge had drawn all the vibrancy from it.
The pagoda itself was equally barren, but in a different way to the neglect that afflicted the Temple of Sigmar. Here the walls were in good repair, the wooden beams and doors fastidiously maintained. It was not the rot of abandonment that hung over the Shrine of Nagash, but rather an aura of total decay, a repulsion of life itself. The place made no pretensions about its macabre nature. Every doorway was framed by the fleshless grins of leering skulls. Skeletal gargoyles gripped the edges of the roof, condensation drooling from between their fangs. Around the walls were grim funerary niches where placards bearing prayers to the dead were exhibited for all to see.
Everything about the place was steeped in the darkest of magic, the heavy aether in which the realm of Shyish itself was immersed. Arnhault could feel its essence the moment he approached the pagoda and walked across the desolate earth. It was like a clammy film pressing against his skin.
‘Is something wrong, Knight-Incantor?’ Orthan asked Arnhault. The very best of Penthius’ Sequitors, he had been tasked with being Arnhault’s guardian when the trap was sprung. A powerful warrior, he was less attuned to the threads of magic they walked through than the aether-mage.
‘This is a vile place,’ Arnhault declared. ‘It has been abominably used.’ He let a ripple of magic course through his staff and back through his body. The aetheric wind dissipated the clammy sensation, but more than that it lent a certain quality to the inimical energy. A quality that was at once unspeakably vile yet strangely familiar to him. ‘Long before the first bricks were laid down, this site was blighted.’
‘They built the shrine to Nagash here because Pater Mathias said it was sacred to the Lord of Death,’ Mueller told Arnhault. The blind priest looked strange in the heavy black robes that now shrouded him. Vanholf and the elders were too afraid of the Shrouded King to fight, but they did lead Nerio’s Castigators to the shrine and bring back one of the cassocks to complete Mueller’s disguise.
Arnhault gripped the priest’s shoulder. ‘In that much he told your people the truth. This place is saturated in dark magic.’ The Knight-Incantor hesitated, strangely troubled by his own words. He stared at the pagoda, at the town outside the patch of barren earth. In his mind he tried to imagine the place as it might have looked before Wyrmditt had been built.
‘Something happened here,’ Arnhault continued. ‘Something that drew the attention of Nagash to this place.’
Mueller nodded his head. ‘Death,’ he said. ‘Only that would interest Nagash. Many small deaths or one death of greater consequence. Perhaps Pater Mathias knew which, but if he did he never said.’
Arnhault let the spell he’d evoked fade. Gradually the clammy sensation returned and with it came a sense of frustration. He felt he knew the answer to this riddle. Yes, he felt it, but he did not know.
‘A last chance to turn back,’ Arnhault reminded Mueller. He stared up at the darkening sky. The day was fast fading. Soon the new moon would rise and with its ascension, the Shrouded King would come to claim his tribute.
‘I know,’ the priest said. ‘It grows cold now, despite the dew from the geysers. That means the sun is gone, or nearly so.’ Mueller shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can be of use to you here. Let me stay. Let me show you the measure of my faith in Sigmar.’
Arnhault grabbed the hood of the cassock and drew it over the top of Mueller’s head. ‘This will lend itself to your disguise. From a distance, even the wraith might mistake you for Mathias. When he draws near… then he will sense the light of your soul and know he has been tricked.’ His grip tightened about the haft of his staff. ‘Orthan and I will be within the shrine, ready to strike before that can happen. I have three Castigators on the upper floor of the pagoda. Nerio and the rest are in the buildings around the tower along with Penthius’ Sequitors.’
‘Sigmar willing, the enemy will not escape,’ Mueller said.
A grim laugh rose from Arnhault. ‘It is the duty of all Stormcast Eternals to be the instruments of Sigmar’s will.’
Arnhault peered through the slats to either side of the shrine’s doorway. From his vantage point, he could see the disguised Mueller standing out in the middle of the barren ground. His head was bowed as though he were reciting prayers to Nagash as Mathias would have had he been waiting for the Shrouded King.
Past the priest and the blighted expanse, Arnhault watched the streets of Wyrmditt. Though its own light was dim, the new moon appeared magnified by the mist. A silvery glow spilled down onto the land, illuminating the town and the hill above it. The streets were a patchwork of shadows and emptiness. The buildings were dark, brooding bulks, their doors locked and their shutters fastened. Fr
om memory Arnhault could have declared which of the structures harboured a hidden Sequitor or Castigator, where Nerio and Penthius stood by, waiting for his signal.
The crucial moment, giving the signal. Arnhault had taken that task onto himself. A flash of arcane lightning from his staff and the Stormcasts would spring into action, closing a circle of righteousness around the infernal Shrouded King. Only when he was certain the fiend was in their trap, that escape was impossible, would he give that signal. Their mission in Ghur depended upon it.
So too did the lives, perhaps the very souls, of everyone in Wyrmditt. If the Shrouded King got away there was no telling the sort of vengeance he might wreak. Even as civilisation began to spread across the war-ravaged Mortal Realms once more, so too did the malefic dominion of Nagash. The ghastly necroquake that sent its shock waves from Shyish had loosed legions of the unquiet dead upon the living. The Shrouded King was part of that terrible scourge and even Arnhault could not say how much of its power might be at the wraith’s beck and call. Cheated of its tribute, the spectre might dispense with its pretension of kingly rule and simply annihilate the entire town, each death swelling the numbers of Nagash’s slaves.
Such would not be! By Sigmar, Arnhault would not permit it! He had spoken truth to the elders of Wyrmditt. He had fought against the enemies of mankind many times and in all their horrific forms. The Shrouded King was simply the latest of those enemies to cross him, another foe upon which to bring justice and judgement.
Why then, he wondered, did he feel so strange? The longer he spent in Wyrmditt, in the old lands of Kharza, the more Arnhault felt a growing unease. His studies of the chronicles and history of the vanquished kingdom lent themselves to an eerie familiarity, or was it something more? What was this hinterland between feeling and knowing?
A shadow fell across Arnhault’s awareness, drawing his gaze to the hill above Wyrmditt. There, upon the summit, a lone rider had appeared. Manifested might have been the more fitting word, for the Knight-Incantor swore the horseman had not been there an instant before and there had not been time for his steed to reach the summit unobserved. Illuminated by the lunar glow that suffused the mist, the rider remained a thing of shadows. A dark caparison clothed his mount, rendering it a black smudge upon the hill. The figure astride its back was similarly arrayed, a nebulous blot that exhibited only the vaguest hints of shape within his voluminous robes. Only the head seemed to have substance, a bare skull that rose above the shrouded body.
‘The enemy is here,’ Orthan stated, peering through the slats and following Arnhault’s gaze. ‘Look at the crown it wears.’
Arnhault had already seen it. Indeed, his eyes could not leave the sight of that jewelled circlet. An unaccountable fury suddenly welled up within him, an emotion as fierce as it was unexplainable. This wasn’t the righteous indignation of Sigmar’s warriors towards the infernal foes of mankind. It was something deeper than that. More base and primal. More selfish.
‘By my own hands will this atrocity be destroyed,’ Arnhault swore.
Orthan gazed at Arnhault, shocked by the passion in the Knight-Incantor’s voice. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Just as you command. The honour of vanquishing the wraith belongs to you.’
Arnhault stifled a bitter laugh at Orthan’s choice of words. Honour? There would be no honour here! There was no honour in crushing vermin under heel. To find honour in battle the enemy had to possess at least some semblance of worthiness. To be more than a thing of contempt.
The Knight-Incantor shook his head, stunned by the emotion that gripped him. It was unseemly, this arrogant loathing for which he could not account. By an effort of will, he fought to suppress the feeling. ‘We do not fight for ourselves and our own glory,’ Arnhault said. ‘We fight to fulfil the duty Sigmar has entrusted to us.’ His words were more a chastisement of himself than Orthan, an injunction against the wrath that had so suddenly filled him.
The rider began to descend the hill. The ghostly horse trotted towards Wyrmditt at a confident and unhurried pace. There was a sneering disdain about its progress, bespeaking the mocking contempt with which the Shrouded King regarded the living men he had claimed as his subjects. The display evoked disgust in Arnhault.
Orthan expressed his own revulsion. ‘Arrogant villain, isn’t he?’ the Sequitor remarked.
‘His arrogance serves us,’ Arnhault said. ‘It will lead the wraith into our trap and see him destroyed before he is even aware of his peril.’
Even as he spoke, Arnhault’s attention remained riveted upon the crown the creature wore about its fleshless head. He recognised it from his studies as that which had been worn by the priest-kings of Kharza before the hordes of Chaos devastated their land. Together with the Dragonseat throne, it was a part of the regalia that signified their dominion. To see that noble legacy debased by this grave-filth was too much to bear. As Sigmar willed it, Arnhault would end this profanation!
‘My lord,’ Orthan pointed up at the deserted streets through which the Shrouded King rode. He drew Arnhault’s attention away from the wraith’s crown and to the lone figure who came creeping out from hiding. It was Pater Mathias, the priest of Nagash.
‘I should have seized him as Penthius advised,’ Arnhault grumbled as Mathias hurried through the streets. ‘I left him free because I thought his capture would upset the people of Wyrmditt and cause them to resent us. I should have anticipated the possibility of this betrayal and taken pains to prevent it regardless of the consequences.’
There could be no question of Mathias’ purpose. The black-robed priest was outside the cordon of hidden Stormcasts, beyond their reach unless they stirred from their concealment and exposed their presence. He was set upon a course that would intercept the slow, imperious ride of the Shrouded King.
‘What is done is done,’ Arnhault hissed. He shook his head. ‘Sigmar grant that my mercy has not undone our plans.’
The Shrouded King drew back upon the reins of his phantom steed as Mathias emerged from an alleyway and stood before him in the street. The priest genuflected towards the wraith in an exhibition of obscene deference.
‘Sire,’ Mathias spoke, his thin voice loud in the brooding silence that hung over Wyrmditt. ‘I am your loyal subject, a brother in the service of Nagash.’ He stared up at the Shrouded King. ‘Attend my words, master, for I am your friend.’ He waved his arm towards the pagoda. ‘They are waiting for you. Sigmar’s knights would deny you your tribute and have laid a trap for you! Like slinking jackals, they wait to pounce on you, sire. But I remain true to you. I bring you warning. Ride from Wyrmditt and escape their trap!’
The Shrouded King looked down upon Mathias, ghostly lights glowing in the pits of his skull. Seconds stretched into an eternity for Arnhault as he watched to see what the wraith would do. Would he believe Mathias or think the warning itself to be a ruse to trap him? The Knight-Incantor prayed it would be the latter.
Arnhault’s prayers seemed to be answered. Answered in savage and brutal fashion. A hiss of contempt boiled off the Shrouded King. The wraith’s bony arm lashed out and in its skeletal claw a smouldering sword appeared. Mathias had time to shriek once before the blade swept across him. As the sword passed through his flesh, a weird double-image of the priest became visible. The solid, physical form of Mathias fell to the street whole and unmarked. At the same time, a translucent reflection staggered where he had been standing, a welter of blood spurting from the half-severed neck. The ghostly shade stumbled as it clutched at its gashed throat, then evaporated in a burst of phantasmal sparks.
The Shrouded King urged his aethereal steed onwards, its spectral hooves trampling the physical carcass of the fallen priest. The wraith glared at the pagoda and Arnhault could feel its malignant gaze sweep through him. An electrical shock shivered through his body, a reaction unlike anything he had ever experienced before. With half the town between them, with the walls of the shrine concealing him, Arnha
ult felt as though the spectre had just reached inside his armour and closed its skeletal fingers around the very core of his soul.
‘He knows I am here,’ Arnhault told Orthan, and there was a quiver in his voice when he said it. Because there was something more to it than that. Something he could not express to the Sequitor. Something he tried to deny even to himself. He knows me, Arnhault’s mind raced.
The steed reared back, its hooves pawing the air. From the Shrouded King there issued a ghastly howl. A single word, a word that cracked across Wyrmditt like the snarl of a lash.
‘Arise!’
In response to the command, shadows surged up around the Shrouded King. In a matter of heartbeats there was a broiling mass of darkness flowing through the street around the wraith, a black cloud that billowed towards the Shrine of Nagash. As the cloud spilled further and further away from the Shrouded King, it began to break apart. Distinct shapes could be discerned, blobs of shadow that became wispy forms draped in dark robes and tattered shrouds. Fleshless faces grinned from beneath decayed hoods. Bony claws clutched rusty chains and gleaming scythes. Embers of grisly grave-light flickered in the sockets of leering skulls.
A matter of heartbeats, but in that time Arnhault realised that the trap had been turned against the Stormcasts. The Shrouded King had summoned his phantom vassals, conjuring a tide of wraiths to come crashing down upon the foes who dared to defy his dominion.
There was just one chance, a desperate hope that Arnhault seized upon. Just as his own attention had been riveted upon the Shrouded King, if the fiend’s own focus was concentrated upon a single point, perhaps the situation could be salvaged. Perhaps he could give Penthius and Nerio a chance to salvage this disaster. He looked at the disguised Mueller standing on the barren earth, shaking from the fury of the wraith’s cry but unaware of the infernal host rushing straight towards the pagoda. At the very least, Arnhault would not abandon the brave mortal to the undead legion.
Sacrosanct & Other Stories Page 5