“And what are you proposing I give you in return?”
“Help.”
“Go on.”
“You know the story of the first war?”
“I was there, yes.”
“Then you know that it was won by guile, not force. Von Carstein had a talisman of incredible power that enabled his dead form to regenerate. The talisman was stolen during the Siege of Altdorf, allowing the Sigmarite priest to slay him once and forever.”
“I know the story,” the dwarf said. “The Vampire Count’s ring. The thief stole it and gave it to the priests.”
Yes, the von Carstein ring—only I don’t for one minute believe that the thief gave it to the priests. Put it this way, it wasn’t in either grave and I can’t see them leaving it in a jewellery box on a nightstand, can you?
“I need to find the thief who took it. I need to make sure that the damned thing is destroyed. That is what I need your help for.”
“And who told you I know anything about any ring?”
“You did, just now. I said talisman, you said ring.”
“I could have heard that in a taproom just about anywhere in the Empire.”
“Yes, you could have, but you didn’t, did you?”
“No, I met the thief. I saw with me own eyes the price he paid for his heroics. He ain’t got that ring though, you can take my word for that. One of your kind took it. Cut his hands off in the process and left him for dead, only he didn’t die.”
Jerek didn’t say a word for the longest time. When he finally spoke, it was as if he hadn’t heard the dwarfs words. “I saw the banner you bore into battle. I recognised the device: Karak Sadra. I know what happened to that stronghold, dwarf. I know who was responsible for destroying it. That means I know what you are, or who you are, rather. You are the last of your clan.
“Knowing that gives me the key to you, how you work. I know what drives you. I understand the anger festering inside you, the need for vengeance, better than any other you will meet. You bear a grudge against the monster that slew your people.
“I bear one as well, against the monsters that made me into what I am. I will not lie down and let them swallow my world whole. I will not stand by and watch it plunge into eternal night. I will not watch it become a place of blood and sorrow. No, dwarf, that cannot be allowed to happen, but it falls to people like us to prevent it. That is what will happen if what you say is true. That ring cannot be allowed to adorn the finger of a vampire. It cannot. The world cannot withstand another dread lord of my sire’s ilk.”
That confession went against every instinct the wolf possessed, still it felt important to have no lies between them, not if he was going to sway the dwarf to his side.
“You’re saying you and him… you and the mad one… you’re brothers?”
“Of a sort, dwarf, but not in any meaningful way, there is no kinship between us, no bond. He is vermin and should be treated as such.”
“You’re brothers though, in blood. Brothers with the monster that killed my father.”
There was no way he could deny the truth so he didn’t.
“You see a beast gone rabid what do you do?” Jerek asked.
“Put it out of its misery.”
“That’s my brother, dwarf. A beast that needs to be put out of its misery, that is all he is.
“Now, guile won the last war, not strength of arms, not the supreme sacrifice of one man. That stinks like the effulgence it is. The thief won the war by taking away the one thing that von Carstein had—his invulnerability. Once he was stripped of it and made mortal, the war was as good as over. Any blade could have struck him down. It didn’t have to be Sigmar sent or Ulric blessed. This war could be won the same way. The Blood Count has no talent, and so long as the von Carstein ring hasn’t found its way into his possession, he isn’t blessed with that infuriating knack of coming back and coming back and coming back. All he is is a madman who demands that his few pet magicians raise his armies for him. He is a shadow of his sire and he knows it, self-loathing and doubt consume him. He strives to reinvent himself as more than he is. He is trying to build a legend, but those men he relies upon, well, they have no such immortality—in other words, they aren’t particularly difficult to kill. Hit them and the war is essentially over.”
“I’ve got no liking for this and I don’t mind saying,” the dwarf grunted, cracking the bones in his neck as he twisted, “but there’s no denying what you’re getting at. Well, it makes a fair deal of sense.”
“You don’t need to like it, dwarf, just accept that it is so. I am less than human, more than vampire, something else entirely and nothing completely. I have no loyalty to the dead. I would do what I have always done, all my life. I would protect the living. I’m not claiming the life debt you owe me for saving you from Skellan back there, although I could. I know your culture. I know what it means to save a dwarf from certain death. I know that you are beholden to me, but I don’t care. I want your help given willingly or not at all. I cannot risk you suffering a change of heart. No, what I am asking for is nothing more than your help in preventing a dark and hungry god from arising in our time, in our children’s time. I am asking you to do the right thing. You have already proven that you know more about this thief and the ring than I have unearthed in long months of searching. Together, we can do things that alone we can’t. So, dwarf, do we have a pact?”
He studied the dwarf, saw him struggling to get past his natural hatred of the beast he had become, the betrayal he felt knowing he faced a blood relative of the beast that had slaughtered his people, trying to grasp that something of the man he was still remained, and that he could in fact be trusted.
Finally, the dwarf nodded.
“Aye, you hold up your end, get close to the necromancers and kill them if you can, but the mad vampire is mine,” Kallad Stormwarden said, spitting on his palm and holding his hand out. “When that’s done we’ll turn our attention to that damned ring of yours.”
They shook, sealing the bargain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
To Kill the Mocking Birds
GRIM MOOR
The Season of Decay
Death comes to all living things, there is no escaping it: death, the great destroyer; death, conqueror, liberator, denier, despoiler.
Death. It was his gift to the living.
Konrad von Carstein’s mind was in turmoil. Thoughts he didn’t recognise as his own pulled him every which way. He was torn. He heard voices: they weren’t externalised, they were inside him. They taunted him and jeered at his failings. He knew the loudest of them. It belonged to a head from his rotten gallery. Although the head of Johannes Schafer was far, far removed, the man’s voice was an incessant yammering in his head, going on and on and on.
He screamed. He hammered at his temples, trying to drive the voices out, but they wouldn’t leave him, and they wouldn’t leave him alone.
Schafer was dead. Konrad couldn’t remember how he had killed the man, only that he had and that the rogue had been a screamer. That he remembered. Now, as penance, he carried the ghost around inside his head.
“Leave Konrad be, leave him!” Konrad yelled, spinning around violently. He tore the map from the table and shredded it. His sword lay on the tabletop beside a goblet of dark liquid. In anger, he lashed out and sent the weapon clattering to floor. His necromancers, Immoliah Fey and Nevin Kantor, backed off a step from his madness. “Not you! You!” They had no idea whether they were supposed to stay or go. “You will obey Konrad! You will serve him with your heart or he will feast on it, Understand?”
Neither said a word.
In truth, they had no idea whether the Blood Count was talking to them or raving at some invisible speaker whose words filled his head.
There was an uneasy balance in the room: they could not trust him and he could not trust them. He knew they were scheming behind his back. Skellan kept him informed. Skellan, his last loyal soldier. Skellan, poor, pitiful Skellan. The wa
r had all but destroyed him, but he refused to die.
It was only pity that stayed Konrad’s hand, pity for himself, not for Skellan, pity that the wretched beast was the closest he had to a friend, family, or a lover; pity that all around him sought to topple him from his lofty perch. Pity that it had come down to this: kill or be killed.
He had never been afraid of bringing death into the world. Death was his one true talent, his gift.
Konrad heard a cough and turned.
“Whistle up the daemon,” he said as Skellan moved awkwardly into the room. The Hamaya dragged his left leg, and his right arm hung uselessly at his side. The muscles showed signs of atrophy. It had set in with surprising speed, as if Skellan had lost the will to heal himself, and had given in to the natural entropy of all things flesh. The bones twisted around on the shoulder joint, hunching his back uncomfortably.
For all that, it was his face that betrayed the full extent of the toll that the war had taken. It was barely recognisable: a ruin of scars closed up his right eye, the flesh itself merging into a flat plane from nose to brow with only the narrowest slit where his eye had once been.
He refused to say who had done this to him, although Konrad harboured suspicions. There were few great heroes allied to the forces of the living, certainly no more than a handful of men capable of standing up to a vampire of Skellan’s lethal cunning.
“You wanted me?” There was no deference in Skellan’s voice. His battering had knocked the respect out of him. Konrad would deal with it, in time, but not today. Today, he needed Skellan’s devious nature to undo the forces of the living that had rallied behind Helmar of Marienburg’s banner. He knew Skellan was devious, that Skellan plotted his own schemes, that his Hamaya desired nothing more than to usurp him, but Konrad was no mere beast, Konrad was Vashanesh reborn. Konrad was supreme. Konrad was immortal!
“Yes, yes, yes. Konrad wants you. Konrad wants to pick your brains. These two pretend loyalty, but they refuse Konrad.”
“Then make them. It is as simple as that. Take something of theirs and threaten to destroy it. What do they love more than anything?”
“They love nothing,” Konrad said, exasperated.
“Wrong, your madness, they love their books. They love the trinkets and treasures you gave them. They love their power. Take it away from them. Take it all away from them unless they do as you demand.”
“You can’t!” Fey cried.
Kantor slapped her across the face, hard. She wheeled around on him, her snarl feral.
Skellan laughed harshly. “See, Konrad. Threaten to take their toys away and they turn on each other fast enough. You didn’t need me for this.”
“Konrad would hear the truth, and you are his truth speaker, Jon Skellan, so speak to him. When you look at the field what do you see?”
“What do you want me to say? Bloodshed, devastation, suffering? I see a world of hurt.”
“But is it enough? Does it satisfy you? Will it open the way for the Kingdom of the Dead? Will it?”
“You want the truth?” Skellan asked, shuffling awkwardly to one side so that he could draw the tent flap back. The cold air, heavy with the taint of blood and urine, blew into the pavilion. The sounds of battle rushed in behind it. The sounds of death and dying, the low moaning keen of the zombies, the creaks and groans of the skeletons, the shrieks of the ghouls and the howls of the dire wolves a haunting counterpoint to the agonies of the living, the clash of steel on bone and the wet tearing of flesh.
“Yes, Konrad would hear your truth.”
Skellan stared at him, his one good eye blazing hate. “I think you are finished, Konrad. I think your pets are turning against you and you can’t do a damned thing to stop it. I don’t think you even see it, you are that blind. Kantor here, and Fey, have dreams of dominion. They see the world you are carving out and think to themselves: but this is all our doing, not his. And they are right, because without them you are nothing, and out there, on that blasted moor, I think you are being destroyed bit by bloody bit.” His words came out slurred because he couldn’t curl his lips around them properly when he grew angry. They will not write glorious histories of your life, and they will not fall for the drivel you had Constantin scribble in your honour. They will remember you for what you are, a poor deranged fool. That is my truth.”
“You seek to anger Konrad? You seek to drive him to violence, yes? Konrad understands your pain, understands that you are less than a man, so you lash out at his greatness to appease your own pain. Konrad understands, but Konrad does not forgive. Oh, no, Konrad does not forgive such slights.”
Skellan smiled, as best his ruined mouth would allow.
“It isn’t for Konrad to forgive. Konrad matters nothing to me.” He shook his head, as if irritated that the Blood Count’s affliction of referring to himself in the third person had transferred itself to him. “Who controls your Hamaya, your madness? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. I do. We both know it. Every one of the second generation was hand-picked by me. Where does their loyalty lie? You can answer this one, go on, have a guess.”
“You,” Konrad rasped, the beast roaring out from beneath his skin. His brow split, his nose thickened and elongated, stretching his mouth up to bare cruel fangs.
“Me,” Skellan agreed.
He didn’t unleash the beast.
“Who is loyal to Konrad? WHO?” the Blood Count raged, spinning around the confines of the tent. He grabbed Immoliah Fey by the throat and drew her close. He saw fear in her eyes and revelled in it, rasping into her face, “Are you loyal to Konrad, bitch?”
For all her magic, she had no answer for him. She feared him.
That in itself was condemnation. Who had need to fear but a traitor?
He threw her aside and wheeled around on Kantor. The weasel threw up his hands and spat an oath that hit Konrad in the gut, twisting his insides. He didn’t understand what he was feeling at first, didn’t grasp the seriousness of it as the necromancer continued his malicious incantation. He felt a fire in his blackened heart, felt it spreading out through his left arm and down his left side. He didn’t wait to see what was happening to him, he lashed out, sending the necromancer sprawling back over the table and into the pavilion’s canvas wall. He stood over Nevin Kantor, poised to deliver judgement.
“You will swear loyalty to Konrad, spirit of Vashanesh reborn. You will swear it or you will die here.”
“I will bring your army to its knees first,” Kantor rasped. You ignorant fool, harm me, and your hold over the dead dies. Can you be so far gone that you don’t realise it? Your army exists through me, not you. You are not the lord here, Konrad. I am, and she,” he inclined his head towards Immoliah Fey, “is my dark queen.”
“Build an empire on dust, Konrad, and you have to expect it to sink eventually. It is the way of all things.”
“No,” Konrad said, refusing to believe the truth of his own ears. “No, no, no, no.”
Kantor struggled to his feet, a contemptuous sneer pasted across his face. “Do you hear that, Konrad?”
“Konrad hears nothing.”
“Exactly, that silence is ominous isn’t it, considering this is a battlefield. Where are the screams of the dying? Where is the clash of sword on sword?”
“What have you done?”
“Only what I promised—I have taken my dead back. They do not fight for you. They await my will, and sense that my anger is directed inwards, focused on you, Konrad. Can you hear them coming? Can you hear the grind of bones, the shuffling feet? They are coming for you.”
Konrad pushed past Skellan and staggered out of the pavilion and into the harsh light of day. The sun burned his skin. He looked up at the sky, at the golden orb hanging above his head, and screamed, “Where is the darkness? Konrad commands it be night!”
The necromancers emerged from the tent, faces impassive. Skellan came up behind them, something gleaming in his right hand.
“You truly are a fool, aren’t you, von
Carstein?” Kantor spat. “You bluster at the heavens and don’t even look at the earth. Look, damn you, see your doom as it nears.”
“Betrayal,” Konrad whispered, seeing the dead fighting amongst themselves, the vampires struggling against the endless press of Kantor and Fey’s automatons. The dead were coming for him: the dead, his dead. “Fight!” Konrad roared. “Butcher the living!” But it was useless.
“Your time of blight is over, Blood Count,” Kantor said smugly.
It was the last thing he ever said. Skellan rammed a thin-bladed dagger into his back, between the third and fourth bones of his ribcage, and buried it deep into the necromancer’s heart. His lips moved, but he didn’t make a sound. A white mist leaked from Kan-tor’s mouth, coalescing into a wraith-like shadow, gathering form. It was a vile beast. Konrad knew what he saw, just as he knew that he couldn’t be seeing it. Kantor’s essence, Kantor’s soul, and then, even as the winds around the battlefield howled and a massive thunderclap split the clear blue sky, the mist dissipated and an unerring calm settled over Grim Moor.
Then his body collapsed.
The dead under Kantor’s thrall echoed his collapse as one, the black thread of Shyish that bound them back to this life cut.
Ravens circled the battlefield, settled on the roofs and guide ropes of the pavilions, on the corpses of the dead and on the stones, and cawed, their mocking cry taking on an uncomfortably human aspect: he is coming… he is coming…
[Von Carstein 02] - Dominion Page 30