“Whatever is on your mind, deal with it later,” said Leovulf. “They’ll be looking for us soon. And we need you with us.”
“You’re right,” he said, holding himself tall in the saddle. He unhooked his warhammer and slipped the leather thong at its base around his wrist. The White Wolves saw him and repeated the gesture, and every man’s shoulders squared. Leovulf had spotted what he should have seen. The defenders on the wall were at the limit of their endurance, the dead finding more breaches and pulling men to their doom in ever greater numbers. Myrsa raised the runefang high and his banner bearer swept the flag from side to side. Now the wind caught it, and the billowing standard flew with glorious brightness against the sepulchral sky.
“That’s it,” said Leovulf, turning to Holstef.
Holstef raised the war horn to his lips and blew a three note blast.
Redwane raked back his spurs and shouted, “White Wolves, ride in the name of Ulric!”
His horse leapt forward, and two hundred heavy horsemen followed him, galloping across the cobbled esplanade towards the city gate in a column ten riders wide, twenty deep. Ustern raised their banner high, and each man loosed a feral wolf howl to banish the fear they all felt as they charged towards the gate. A team of stout men hauled the gates open, but before the dead could take advantage of this new opening Redwane’s White Wolves thundered through and struck the enemy host like a hammerblow.
Marius let out a groan of pleasure as Marika rolled off him and lay back on the bed with a contented sigh. Her eyes were closed, and she purred like a satisfied cat, blonde hair tousled with errant strands across her face. He stared at her for a moment, relishing this rare moment of escape from the world of plans, defences and warriors. Marburg was a city readying for invasion, and it felt good to take a moment for himself amid the frenetic battle preparations.
“You’re staring again,” she said.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“I’m a princess,” she said, as though that answered his question. “If we can sense a pea in our beds, we can surely sense when a self-satisfied man is staring at us.”
“Self-satisfied?” he said with mock hurt. “You have a viper’s tongue, Marika.”
“You weren’t complaining about my tongue last night,” she said, finally opening her eyes and pushing herself up onto her elbows. Marius smiled and traced his fingertips down her slender neck, over her small breasts and down her flat stomach.
“Indeed I wasn’t,” he agreed. “Though I can’t help but feel your brother wouldn’t approve of the use you put it to or your choice of lover.”
She laughed and rose from the bed, fetching a silver ewer filled with water. Marius stared at her naked body, the sway of her hips and the beads of sweat running down her spine sending a tingling warmth through his entire body. She half-turned and nodded.
“Aldred never does,” she said. “He’d have me live out my life as a virgin spinster.”
She laughed. “Ranald’s balls, if he knew half the men I’d bedded, he’d have me locked in the Raven Tower, never to see the light of day again.”
“And that would be a crime against the pleasures of the flesh.”
She padded back to bed with the ewer and a pair of goblets, pouring one for each of them. Marius took the proffered drink and drained it in one gulping swallow. The march along the coast through the swamps had given him a terrible thirst that never seemed to be quenched.
He dropped the goblet to the floor and leaned up to kiss Marika.
“Why me?” he asked suddenly.
“Why you, what?”
“You know fine well what I mean,” he said. “Why take me as your lover, a man your brother would cheerfully gut? Is it because I am an energetic and thoughtful bed-mate with the body of an athletic god or is it simply because I am a count of the Empire?”
“A little of both,” she admitted. “You are an enjoyable bed partner, but I need more than that. I need a man who can achieve things. A man who can match my dreams with an ability to shape this world to the way it ought to be.”
In any other woman, such candour would have surprised him, but Princess Marika had proven to be a far more interesting woman than any he had met before. She had an open honesty to her ambition that he liked, a mind free of the subterfuges and coquettish games played by most women of his acquaintance. Amid such grim times, the company of a beautiful woman free from the normal petty games of her sex was refreshing.
And these times were indeed grim.
In the week since the Jutones had arrived at the gates of Marburg, Marius and Aldred had clashed many times in deciding how to defend the city. He had come to believe the Endal count wanted his city to fall, such was his obstinate rejection of any stratagem or defensive measure Marius suggested.
These interludes with Marika had provided a welcome diversion from talk of war and the dead. Marius liked to think of it as affirming the joys of life. After all, weren’t sex and death but two sides of the same coin? Wasn’t the moment of climax known by some poetic souls as the Little Morr?
Marika rolled onto her side, interrupting his train of thought. Her face was inches from his, and he felt the directness of her gaze.
“I know what you did with Jutonsryk,” she said. “You turned a small fishing village into the most prosperous city in the Empire. Ships came from all across the world to your city.”
“That they did,” said Marius, knowing her flattery was intended to stroke his ego, but enjoying it nonetheless. “If there’s one thing I understand it’s how to take what the gods have given me and use that to turn a coin.”
“I want you to do the same with Marburg,” she said. “Aldred is a good man in his own, limited way, but all he wants is to maintain what our father built. Marburg is ideally placed to become as great as Jutonsryk ever was, if not greater, but only if rulers of vision are prepared to make it so. Aldred has no vision to make Marburg great, but you do.”
“You might be right, but Aldred is count of the Endals, not me.”
“That can change,” said Marika.
“How?”
“If you and I were to be married,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him.
Now it was Marius’ turn to laugh. He rolled onto his back, pillowing his head on his hands. “That’s your plan? Your brother would never allow it. Manann’s thunder, he’d have my manhood on a spike if he thought I’d even kissed you let alone bedded you.”
“Aldred won’t be count forever,” she said. “After all, if what you’ve been saying in the war councils is true, then this city is likely to be attacked soon by these undead corsairs. Aldred’s a decent enough warrior, but anything can happen in a battle, can’t it?”
Marius turned to look at Marika, his eyes narrowing as he saw the extent of her ambition.
It matched his own and he felt the stirrings of opportunity.
“What are you suggesting?” he asked.
“Suggesting?” she said, pulling the sheet down and rolling on top of him. She sat up, allowing his eyes to feast on the seductive curves of her body. “I’m not suggesting anything, I’m just saying that if something were to happen to Aldred, then there would be nothing to stop you marrying me and becoming lord of all the lands from here to Manann’s Teeth.”
Marius slid his hands up her sides and cupped her breasts with a smile.
“You are a cunning fox, aren’t you?” said Marius.
“Takes one to know one,” she said.
Redwane crushed skeletal warriors in crumbling iron armour beneath his horse, swinging his hammer in a mighty underhand arc that smashed collarbones, broke shoulders apart and sent skulls flying. His horse trampled the dead beneath its hooves. To either side of him, Leovulf, Ustern and Holstef fought with brute ferocity as they battered a path down the viaduct, winning Myrsa and Renweard time to move up fresh warriors and relieve those who had fought to exhaustion.
“Holstef, spearhead!” bellowed Redwane, and the clarion blew a long risi
ng blast.
The White Wolves smoothly formed a wedge on Redwane, pushing hard into the choking massed ranks of the dead. Redwane lost himself in the simple purity of this fight, bludgeoning the dead with his hammer and letting his horse kick and crush its enemies with wild abandon. He heard screams around him as grasping, skeletal hands dragged warriors from their saddles or screeching things with elongated jaws and red eyes tore the throats from horses to spill their riders to the ground.
Their charge was slowing, the press of dead warriors too great for even the mighty White Wolves to smash through. And as they slowed, more of Redwane’s warriors were falling to the blades of the dead. A fiery-eyed wolf leapt towards him and Redwane swayed in the saddle, intercepting the beast’s opened jaws with his hammer. Its head split apart and its corpse slammed into him. Its dissolving body unravelled, looping, rotted guts spilling into his lap and stagnant fluids hissing as they burned his armour.
“Time to go!” shouted Leovulf.
Redwane nodded and turned to shout at Holstef to sound the retreat, but the saddle next to him was empty. He circled his horse, finally seeing Holstef pinned to the ground by a scabrous ghoul with foam-flecked jaws and needle-sharp talons. Holstef screamed as it tore his guts out, its arms bloody to the elbows as it disembowelled the White Wolf. Redwane hauled back on his reins and his horse reared up onto its hind legs. Its hooves flailed as it came down, crushing the creature beneath its weight, though it was too late to save Holstef.
The White Wolves fought on, the dead pressing in from all around as the sheer number of skeletal warriors finally arrested their charge. The viaduct was choked with the debris of the fighting, a welter of bones, rusted armour and leering skulls.
Though it was probably suicide, Redwane leapt from the saddle and dropped to the ground beside Holstef. The man was already dead, his ruptured stomach steaming in the cold air. Redwane reached for the war horn. Unless he blew the retreat, the White Wolves were as good as dead.
An armoured foot slammed down on the horn, shattering it into fragments, and Redwane leapt aside as a black sword slashed towards him. He rolled to his feet, swinging his hammer up to block a descending blow. The force of the blow rang up his arms and emerald sparks flew from the impact. He backed away, taking in the measure of his opponent as he fought the rising tide of fearful bile in his throat.
Redwane’s heart chilled as he saw he faced a dead knight in black armour who was shawled in a cloak woven from nightmares and woe. Its sword and armour were archaic, coated in grave dirt and rust, though the lambent glow that surrounded the ancient warlord told Redwane that this was a champion of the dead, a supreme killer of the living. It wore an open helm, and the green fire in its eyes promised a death as quick as it would be meaningless.
Its sword swung for his neck and Redwane threw himself back as it attacked with a speed and skill no living swordsman could match. Without a shield, Redwane could only block and parry with his hammer, but no matter how skilful, a fight between sword and hammer could only end badly for him.
The champion’s blade slipped past his guard and Redwane screamed as its icy tip punched through his armour and slid between his ribs. Numbing waves of cold spread from the wound, and Redwane’s heart stilled as the blade twisted in the wound. He staggered away from the champion, and no sooner had its sword scraped free of his armour than his heart thumped painfully in his chest.
The dread champion came at him again, but before it could strike him down, a black horse slammed into it, sending it crashing back against the viaduct’s parapet. Leovulf reached down and extended his hand towards Redwane as the champion climbed to its feet, broken bones knitting together once more and its grinning skull welcoming fresh meat to slay.
“We can’t fight it…” gasped Redwane.
“I know!” shouted Leovulf. “Get on!”
Redwane grasped Leovulf’s hand, hauling himself painfully onto the horse’s rump. The dead were closing in, and Redwane feared that Leovulf’s horse would never make it with two heavily armed warriors on its back.
The dead champion strode towards them, but it had taken only a handful of steps before it halted, as though sensing a greater threat than the two warriors before it. Redwane’s entire body was cold, his flesh icy and grey from the wound dealt to him, but a deeper cold swept over him as the sound of winter gales howled from the forests. Swirling snowflakes and fragments of ice slashed from the sky, and the dead paused in their relentless attack, as a surging wind roared up the viaduct, echoing with the howls of wolves.
The chorus of lupine fury was utterly without mercy, and Redwane watched in amazement as a blizzard of winter wind blew over the dead warlord who had so nearly slain him. Ice formed on its ancient armour and decaying flesh as the chill wind froze the champion in place. A bitter squall of hail tore at it like a storm of razored glass, and a deafening howl of winter’s fury broke its bones apart in an explosion of long dead remains.
The dead parted as something pushed its way up from the ground, a hulking figure in thick wolf pelts and cloaked in a blizzard of freezing ice. He carried a long staff that shimmered with hoar frost and was topped with a glittering blade of ice. A wolf-skull mask obscured his face, and his heavily muscled limbs were bare to the elements, though he seemed to feel no ill-effects from the deathly cold. Two wolves loped through the motionless dead as he stalked towards them, one pale as moonlight, the other black as jet. The fighting on the viaduct ceased, and the White Wolves drew together as the wolf-clad warrior stopped before them.
“The fire of Ulric calls me,” he said, his voice echoing as though coming from the furthest reaches of the frozen north. Redwane had seen this warrior once before, at the coronation of Sigmar in Reikdorf, and a wave of frozen pain washed through him.
“Ar-Ulric!” cried Leovulf. “Ar-Ulric has come!”
—
The Next to Die
Maedbh ran towards the centre of Three Hills, hearing the shouts of the sentries and their cries of alarm. Fear clamped her heart and she looked back over her shoulder to make sure Ulrike and the boys were with Garr’s Eagles. Asoborns armed with bows and spears were pouring from their homes, dwellings cunningly secluded within hidden arbours and sunken hollows. Any enemy would have a difficult time in locating their homes, but it sounded like someone had done just that.
Her own bow was slung over her shoulder, but she carried a long, leaf-bladed spear that normally sat in the queen’s chariot. A priest of Taal had blessed its blade, and its keen edge never failed to find its prey. A thousand possibilities flew through her mind, the living dead had found a way to locate Three Hills, the greenskins were invading from the mountains, the forest beasts had followed a scent trail to the Asoborn homeland…
None of those made sense. Queen Freya’s army was between Three Hills and the living dead, and though the greenskins had been more active of late, the mountain scouts had reported no signs of a gathering horde. That just left beasts…
Freya had entrusted the care and safety of her sons to Maedbh. Bad enough that she couldn’t have marched with the queen, but to allow enemies within Three Hills would be unforgivable. Maedbh rounded a grassy hillock, overgrown with trees and nettles, finding a line of Asoborn women with bows lined up with their backs to her. Their bowstrings were taut, yet their arrows remained unloosed. Children scampered around their mothers’ legs, but there was no sense of fear, no sense that something dangerous had come amongst them.
“What in Taal’s name is going on?” said Garr, coming alongside her with the children in tow. Ulrike held his hand, while Sigulf and Fridleifr had their hunting knives bared. Clad in baked leather armour and a bronze-reinforced kilt, Garr was handsome and strong, with a cropped scalp of fine black hair. One of the youngest Queen’s Eagles, Maedbh had heard enough stories of Garr’s stamina and prowess to know that he was a true Asoborn in all areas the queen required. He had taken to the children well, and they to him, which made their confinement to Three Hills ma
rginally less troublesome.
“I don’t know,” replied Maedbh, resting the spear over her shoulder and walking towards the line of Asoborns. She heard gruff voices and the clank of metal beyond, and her trepidation turned to curiosity with every step. The Asoborns parted before her and she found herself looking at a hundred armoured dwarfs, clad from head to foot in armour of silver, gold and bronze. Stained with the dust of many days travel, the dwarfs seemed unconcerned by the bent bows aimed at them or the assembling chariots rumbling around their flanks.
Leading the dwarfs was a broad figure in a suit of glittering gold and silver. The visor of his helmet was shaped in the form of a stern, bearded god and he rested his mailed fists on the haft of an axe almost as tall as he was. The warrior flipped his visor up to reveal a craggy face like the flanks of a cliff and eyes that twinkled like shards of obsidian. The dwarf’s beard was plaited with iron cords and he spat a mouthful of dust.
“Which of you manlings is in charge here?” said the dwarf.
Maedbh stepped forward, planting her spear before her in the earth.
“I am,” she said. “Maedbh of Three Hills. Who are you and how did you get past our sentries? No one enters Queen Freya’s lands without permission.”
“I am Master Alaric, Runesmith to King Kurgan Ironbeard of Karaz-a-Karak, and your queen is likely dead,” said the dwarf, and a horrified ripple of disbelief swept through the assembled Asoborns. Maedbh felt a cold hand take hold of her heart. She struggled to maintain her composure in the face of such terrible news.
“As to how we got here,” continued the dwarf, oblivious to the effect his words were having, “Do you think the paths over the land are the only ones? The roots of your manling town reach so rudely into the earth that even a skrati couldn’t miss them. There are routes to the surface all over this place. I’m surprised you haven’t found them and taken steps to secure them, but then you are only manlings…”
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