Fear was the hidden enemy, capable of infiltrating even the stoutest heart. Stark cold fear brought on by the sure and certain knowledge of what they faced across the field, by the inhuman nature of the enemy.
Fear could make even a strong man weak.
There would be desertions as fear got the better of some men. The lull before the storm broke was always the worst time, when fear was at its most deadly. Things would happen in the glow of the night’s fire that would be regretted, should the participants live long enough to have the luxury of regret. Mistakes would be made. All they could do was pray that they would not prove fatal.
Kallad made his excuses and withdrew, choosing to walk alone for a while. He sought the calm centre of his being, the pacific core where he was the rock around which the storm broke. There was no peace. He could hear his own heart, the steady rhythm of it, so absolute was the calm here, removed from the killing ground. There was a mindless quality to it, an eternal reminder of mortality.
There, alone on the mountainside, surrounded by his kin, it began to haunt him.
The battlefield was littered with wasted life.
The dwarfs had turned the tide of the skirmish, the Hammerers and Ironbreakers charging down from the low lying hills and crashing into the bones and lichen-smeared carcasses being puppeted across the field of death by von Carstein’s necromancers. Kallad planted the standard in the dirt and threw himself into the thick of the fighting, his double-headed axe hewing through rotten flesh and brittle bone with ruthless efficiency. He was a tightly controlled whirlwind of death on the battlefield, Ruinthorn hacking and slashing, cleaving limbs, stoving in dead skulls and gutting his ghoulish foes. He fought with the manic intensity of a true slayer. The dead lay in pools at his feet. He cut down fifty, sixty, more, losing count to the endless press of the enemy surging forwards, wave after wave of the dead and the damned.
He took a battering, was dragged down twice by clutching hands, and twice managed to fight his way back to his feet and drive the dead off.
The dead relinquished the field only when Razzak ordered the full might of the engineer’s war machines to be wheeled into the fight. The war machines were huge chariots, equipped with bolt throwers and fire breathers that belched a cocktail of liquid fire, and of rolling artillery flankers and organ grinders that fired silver shot instead of arrows, burning the dead where it sizzled into their flesh. Ballistae launched fragile demijohns of blessed water into the front ranks of the dead and huge stones that skittled through the skeletons.
The legions of the dead restrained themselves. The winds rose, biting and blowing hard across the field. Thick storm clouds drew in, heavy with the threat of rain.
The next few hours saw several small, relatively ineffectual raiding parties driven off by the living. It exposed them for the shambles they were. Twice the Otillia and Lutwig clashed, their own men turning on each other in frustration. The Blood Count was testing their mettle, gauging the effectiveness of their response. Already, after only a few days of trying to coexist, the living were in disarray. They undermined each other at every turn.
Chirurgeons tended to the wounded, but the living were too late to reclaim their dead. The necromancers wove their dark magics, breathing black life back into the fallen and drawing them into the ranks of the dead, swelling von Carstein’s unnatural horde with dwarfs and humans. Kallad took a savage blow to the side, crushing the plates of his mail shirt. His breathing was laboured, drawing a fresh breath was an effort. The dour faced chirurgeon poked and prodded the wound.
“You’ve bruised your lungs and it feels like you’ve cracked a couple of ribs. Y’ll live.” He pressed a poultice up against the wound. “Keep this in place for an hour, it’ll ease the swelling from the ribs and take the pressure off your lungs’
“Aye, if you know who gives us a minute’s respite,” Kallad said. He left the chirurgeons’ tent and headed towards the dwarf encampment, away from the bickering manlings. He saw Lutwig, the Altdorfers’ pretender to the Imperial throne, deep in conversation with two unsavoury looking sorts. He was whisper thin, with lank, greasy hair that spilled over the right side of his face, and gaunt cheeks. The stresses of the war were taking it out of the man. The last time he had heard speak of Ludwig’s successor he had been deemed striking, handsome and commanding, but none of these adjectives suited the tired man that stood across the field from him. Kallad’s sharp eyes spotted a pouch changing hands. It was surreptitiously pocketed.
“Tonight,” one of the others said, his voice just loud enough to carry to where Kallad stood, rooted to the spot. To make sure there was no misunderstanding, the soldier drew a finger across his throat, signing the execution order with the promise that it would be done.
Who would Lutwig want dead so badly that he would pay soldiers to be assassins?
That of course was only half of the question, the full question was slightly different: who here would Lutwig want dead so badly that he would pay to have him killed?
There was only one answer: the Otillia.
The Otillia directly opposed Lutwig’s every move and was making a mockery of his leadership. That kind of slight would burn a man of singular ambition.
Was this so-called hero of the Empire such a coward that he would resort to assassination?
“There’s a storm coming,” Grufbad Steelfist said, coming up behind Kallad.
Kallad looked at the thick rolling thunderheads in the sky, and then back at Lutwig and the assassins.
“You’re not wrong, my friend. You’re not wrong.”
The cries rang out before dawn:
“The Otillia is slain!”
“Murder!”
Her throat had been cut while she slept. Her chamberlain had found her in a bed of blood-soaked sheets. The old man had been roused by the sounds of struggle from within her pavilion.
The fiends had not escaped justice, one lay dead, slumped over her magnificence as if in worship, and the other had stumbled into a dawn patrol, her blood still on his hands. The assassin had denied nothing, he had merely smiled and looked at the rising sun. “It is not over,” was all he would say for an hour. Then, with the sun high in the sky, he changed his statement, “It is over now. The day is lost, the day is found, and bodies there are, all around.” They executed the assassin at noon, during the highest point of the sun, but not before he had confessed his sins and named his paymaster. Few could believe it, even when Kallad Stormwarden came forward and confirmed that indeed, the assassin was one of the pair he had seen trading gold for promises with the Pretender, Lutwig.
Gossip was rife. Lutwig of Altdorf, Pretender to the Imperial Throne, had sanctioned the assassination of one of his greatest political rivals, the Otillia of Talabecland. Fears rose for Helmut of Marienburg, the third pretender. Could Lutwig be so bold as to shatter their fragile peace now of all times, and push his claim for sovereignty?
Talabheimers declared the murder a vile act of cowardice, yet still there were whispers from certain quarters to the contrary, that it was a stroke of genius and would have taken great courage from Lutwig, as, finally, the forces of the four armies could be united under one commander, and two deaths would assure thousands of lives saved. Talk of the greater good was a dangerous thing.
Shockwaves ran through the camps. Driven by fears of resurrection, those loyal to the Otillia hacked her corpse to pieces and burned it. It was far from a fitting burial for an empress. Even as her pieces burned down to embers, tempers rose and fights broke out. At close quarters it was turning ugly. Vigilantes seeking their own justice turned on stragglers from other camps who had wandered too far from their own people, bludgeoning them to death with sticks and stones. It wasn’t enough for them. The Talabheimers demanded restitution. It was like a sickness within the mob. From one raised voice came the cry, “Death to Lutwig!” and the hatred of the others was inflamed. They marched on the Altdorfers’ camp, intent on ramming the pretender’s head onto a pike, turning the man who would
be Emperor into food for the ravens.
Torches blazing, they raised arms, turning on their allies as they forced their way through the tent city to Lutwig’s pavilion.
They were greeted by an angry mob, armed with hatchet, axe and sword, and equally hungry to taste the blood of their master and commander’s murderers. There were two murders that night, but Helmut of Marienburg was not the unfortunate second victim, Lutwig of Altdorf was.
Physicians emerged from Lutwig’s pavilion, faces grave. The pretender had succumbed to the poison on the assassin’s blade. There was nothing even their considerable skills could do, Lutwig was dead.
“The pretender is dead!”
“Murderers!”
The Altdorfers surged towards the Talabheimers, demanding their own bloody justice.
In a bizarre twist, King Razzak’s dwarfs and Marienburg’s men found themselves between a rock and hard place, trying to keep the peace and root out the truth among so much wild speculation and flared tempers. Two of the three pretenders to the Imperial Throne were dead, that much was undeniable. The uneasy peace was shattered. The four armies were disintegrating, and now, of course, was the perfect time for the dead to rise up and destroy what little remained of their resistance.
They came quietly, fiends rising from between the trampling feet to claw down the mob, dragging them down into death. They came loudly, on nightmare steeds, brandishing unholy blades, banshees shrieking in their wake as they charged.
Even the threat of extinction couldn’t reunite the armies of the living.
It was cold-blooded slaughter.
Without the dwarfs it would have been so much worse.
As it was, thousands fell in the hour that turned the field into a Morr’s paradise on earth.
Razzak ordered the organ grinders to spray bullets of silver across the field, indiscriminately. The engineers used up every last flake of metal in their arsenals to drive off the dead and earn a few minutes of respite.
The screams of the dying were hideous. The screams of the living were worse.
The necromancers pulled every last corpse from the mud and threw it at the living.
Kallad stood in the middle of it, swamped by the press of humanity as it strove to tear the throats out of its traitorous allies, while it all but succumbed to the crush of the dead.
In resisting the dead, the dwarfs bought the living precious time to unravel the treacheries of the night before. Too exhausted to fight, and drained by having to dismember friends and sword brothers to save them from a fate far worse than death, the men rallied around the banner of Helmut of Marienburg so that the third pretender could impose some kind of order.
The truth, when it emerged was as bitter as it was ironic: Lutwig had ordered the Otillia’s murder, hoping to rise himself up as rightful leader of the armies of the living, and likewise, the Otillia had paid good coin to assassins to dispose of Lutwig, who she saw as nothing more than a thorn in her side.
In one way the whisperers had been right, however, with only one figurehead to rally behind, the living were more than fit to match the dead on the field of combat.
They buried their dead and their hatreds with them, and clung to Helmut of Marienburg, as they would have to Sigmar himself had the Man-God descended from the clouds to fight beside them.
The battle raged on day and night for a week. There was no give on either side: no weakness.
The dead fought for dominion. The living fought for salvation.
The dead had called a parlay and come out under the flag of truce. It was unexpected, and not welcomed by the survivors.
The soil steamed, the rocks and dirt hissing with heat where the liquid fire had burned itself out.
Kallad stood in the middle of the scorched earth, the banner of Karak Sadra gripped firmly in his hand. He forced it deep down into the sizzling soil, ramming the point home, and shouldered Ruinthorn, keeping the faithful axe close to hand should he need it.
The carnage was laid bare across the killing ground, skulls set on sword pommels, carrion birds haunting the skulls. Ravens circled overhead, swooping low to pick worms of flesh from the newly dead. They were a numbing reminder of war’s cost and its futility. Kallad knew that in a few hours those bones would begin to stir again, twitching back into unnatural life as the necromancers reanimated them.
Only Morr himself could take any satisfaction in this day’s work, and only then if the necromancers didn’t succeed in robbing him of the souls that were rightfully his.
The contempt this enemy had for life was staggering.
Four vampires walked across the steaming earth. They squared up to the living. He recognised Skellan as one of them. One of the creatures was female, but that was not the only difference that marked her as special in this group of the dead. Indeed, despite her chalk-white complexion and red red lips, there was something distinctly alive about her.
Helmut of Marienburg, his son Helmar, Kallad, and the dwarf king, Razzak, met the dead halfway across the burned earth. They were all that remained of the leaders of the four armies.
The woman spoke: “Our master wants to speak with you.”
A distant howling caught Kallad’s attention: wolves.
“He would now, would he?” Helmut said, his voice thick with utter contempt.
“It is not a request, human,” the second vampire interceded smoothly. “Konrad commands an audience with the leaders of the living. There will be no discussion.”
“Your master’s arrogance is outstanding.”
“As is your stupidity.”
Kallad studied Skellan’s face during the exchange. A flicker of a smile touched the vampire’s lips as insults were traded. He was enjoying himself. He obviously hoped to provoke the pretender into saying or doing something rash.
“Konrad would speak with von Holzkrug as he believes the Untermensch witch and the pretty pretender are no more,” the fourth vampire said, stepping forwards. He swept his cloak aside, resting his delicate fingers on the wyrm-hilted blade at his side. “Konrad gets what Konrad wants, always.”
“Konrad does,” Skellan said, speaking up for the first time. “Gentlemen,” He inclined his head slightly to Razzak, “and dwarfs, may I present von Carstein’s rightful heir, the Blood Count himself, Konrad, Vashanesh reborn.”
It burned Kallad to be so close to the beast that had murdered his father. He tugged unconsciously at the standard, lifting it six inches out of the dirt.
“Konrad gets what Konrad wants,” the Blood Count repeated, the wyrm-hilted sword singing as it slid clear of its sheath, “and Konrad wants…” He turned in a circle, pointing the tip of the blade at each of the living in turn. It passed over Kallad and stopped on Helmut of Marienburg. Konrad’s grin was sly. “You! Or are you craven?”
“What are you talking about, man?” Marienburg blustered. “You want me for what?”
Kallad could feel the rain on his face as the skies broke: a drop at first, then harder, more insistent.
“Konrad would make a king of you. Yes he would, a true king, not some petty pretender. Konrad would raise you up and honour you, as you deserve. Konrad would have men worship you. Konrad would turn you into a legend among the dead. A dead king. Yes, that is what Konrad wants with you, Helmut of Marienburg. Konrad wants to make you immortal, human. Konrad wants to bless you.”
The ground beneath their feet sizzled as the first raindrops evaporated.
“Konrad is mad,” Helmut barked, drawing his sword and slapping away the Blood Count’s blade with it. For a moment, the two swords locked. The steel serration along the edges of Marienburg’s monstrous Runefang caught Konrad’s bone blade. The last of the pretenders rolled his wrist and drew his blade back with a smooth tug. It was a simple manoeuvre that would have disarmed a weaker foe with ease, but von Carstein’s grip never wavered. His blade slipped free of Runefang’s teeth.
Kallad launched himself into the fight, only for Skellan to intercede. “This is not our fight, little
man,” Skellan hissed, catching hold of Ruinthorn with both hands and forcing the dwarf back.
“Konrad is glad you have decided to accept his offer, your majesty. Konrad is delighted.”
“Father!” Helmar cried as Konrad launched a blistering attack that finished with his sword slicing Helmut’s chest. His ringmail saved him from having to scoop up his entrails. Marienburg staggered back under the frenzied attack, barely getting his sword up to deflect three more staggering blows aimed at removing his head from his shoulders.
Steel clashed loudly with steel-hard bone.
Still, Skellan would not release his hold on Ruinthorn. “Stop the boy from getting himself killed,” the vampire said, pushing back and sending the dwarf sprawling.
Helmut stumbled over a smouldering chunk of rock protruding from the steaming mud.
It was all Konrad needed.
The vampire threw himself into a forward roll, coming up on his left shoulder, sword snaking out like some pit viper’s tongue. The wyrm-hilted blade slipped easily through the muscle of his calf and up into his hamstring. Konrad came out of his roll, towering over the fallen pretender.
Negligently, he cut the ties binding Helmut of Marienburg’s soul to his flesh.
“Now Konrad is as good as his word. Yes he is. So to make you a king! Immoliah!”
Kallad was back on his feet quickly enough to restrain Helmar.
“Now’s not the time, man. Fight when you can kill them. Don’t make the mistake of giving up your life cheaply,” he rasped, clamping a hand on the newly orphaned boy. Helmar shook it off and stumbled forwards, his legs buckling as his body betrayed him. He didn’t scream or cry as he fell to his knees. He collapsed in on himself. His grief was absolute. He opened his mouth to moan and sickness swept over him. Helmar threw up as the woman moved easily to her master’s side.
The rain streamed down her face, matting her luxuriant raven black hair flat to her face. She looked up as if to savour it, raising her hands above her head. The wind swarmed around them. At the far sides of the battlefield the dead stirred, pulled closer to the necromancer by her silent call. She breathed the wind in, Shyish merging with nature’s own cold, wet wind, in her lungs, and she breathed out magic.
[Von Carstein 02] - Dominion Page 28