03 - God King

by Graham McNeill

  The fire-eyed rider reared back and a gust of parched wind, like a sirocco blown of the southern deserts, swept down to engulf the ramparts. Endal warriors screamed and fell to their knees as their bodies were wracked by dark magic. Their flesh withered and rotted, their bones becoming brittle and dusty. Marius felt the seething energies around him, but he remained untouched. Likewise Aldred seemed impervious to the malefic sorcery, so clearly there was an advantage to bearing a sword enchanted by the fey or foreign kings.

  Laredus staggered under the effects of the powerful magic, his skin pallid and the veins on his neck straining like hawser ropes. The dragon’s neck came down and its jaws opened, still drooling a wash of blood and entrails from its last kill. The Raven Helm hammered his sword into the dragon’s mouth and broke several fangs. Arrows bounced from its bony skull, and a huge javelin hurled by a war machine plunged between its ribs. Aldred ran to join his champion, but Laredus pushed him away.

  “Stay back!” he yelled.

  His distraction cost him dear, as the dragon’s jaws snapped shut on his shoulders and head. Laredus came apart like a wineskin filled with blood, his upper body carved open with a gory V shape in his torso. Aldred screamed his champion’s name as Marius leapt forward to bring his sword down on the dragon’s head.

  His fiery blade clove through the bone of its skull, hacking a fist-sized chunk of bone from its body. The beast roared and snapped at him, but Marius was already moving. He dived beneath the dragon’s jaw, rolling to his feet on its left-hand side. His sword plunged into its eye and a blaze of green fire spurted from the wound.

  Aldred hurled himself at the beast, Ulfshard slashing a burning tracery across the dragon’s snout. It reared back and its claws slammed down. A cracked talon slashed Aldred’s chest open and the Endal count fell back. Blood streamed from the deep wound and Aldred toppled to the ground.

  Marius ran to the injured Aldred, but the hooded rider hurled a forking blast of black lightning from his iron-sheathed fingers towards him. He staggered under the force of the dread sorcerer’s power as ice poured through his veins, his sword’s magic unable to prevent the darkness from overcoming him.

  “Damn you!” he yelled, more angry than afraid. “Not like this!”

  His sword flared brightly, and the enchantments beaten into its folded metal by the wizards of the Celestial Tower of the Divine Dragon a thousand years ago unravelled before such dread energy. Its blade shone like the sun, cracks of light spurting all along its length as the magic dissolved. The sword exploded in radiant beams of light that spiralled heavenward with the sound of bells and shattering glass in a far away tower.

  The full force of the black sorcerer’s magic surged in Marius’ body, but moments later it was gone. Marius blinked away dark spots from his eyes and saw Aldred on his feet before the rearing dragon, the sorcerer’s arcing forks of black lightning being drawn into the pellucid blue form of Ulfshard.

  It seemed impossible that any blade, enchanted or not, could survive such an assault, but Ulfshard was an ancient weapon of the immortal fey folk from across the oceans. Their smiths had mastery of magic and all its secrets since before mankind had crawled from muddy caves in the mountains. Those who had bound their arcane knowledge into its starmetal had done so with complete understanding of the winds of magic and how to defeat those who sought to pervert that power to evil purposes.

  As powerful as this sorcerer’s magic was, it was nothing compared to the power bound to Ulfshard’s elder design. Marius watched in amazement as Aldred, blood pouring from the mortal wound in his chest, swept his blade down, casting the corrupt energies of undeath into the earth. The ground at his feet blackened and withered, its life drained in an instant as the dark magic was dissipated through the enduring rock of the citadel.

  A white-fletched arrow flew through the air and buried itself in the chest of the sorcerer, who it let out an almighty howl of rage. Its magic was cut off abruptly as another arrow sliced through its black robe and flared brightly with a wash of pure light. As his strength began to return, Marius twisted to see Marika calmly walking towards the dragon and its rider, loosing arrow after arrow at the dread creature. Her bow shimmered with light, silver blue threads worked into the bowstave gleaming with the same pale light as suffused Ulfshard.

  More arrows slashed into the dark sorcerer and Marius felt the creature’s desperation as the magic of the fey folk severed the connection to its dread master. Marius surged to his feet as Aldred collapsed to his knees and slumped onto his side. Ulfshard dropped from his hands as Marika sent another arrow through the hood of the sorcerer.

  It screeched with agony and scales fell from the dragon’s body, its limbs spilling powdered bone from between its joints. The green fire in its remaining eye dimmed and Marius saw he had a chance to end this. He swept up Aldred’s fallen sword and charged the reeling dragon. Ulfshard blazed with all the power the ancient smith and his archmage brother had bound to its edge.

  Marius brought Ulfshard down on the dragon’s neck, the blade shattering mighty bones as thick as a man’s waist as easily as if they were fashioned from brittle clay. The sword cut through the dragon’s neck and its head fell to the ramparts with a bellowing roar, like a whirlwind through a bone-filled desert. The sorcerous will animating the long-dead beast could not hold its form together in the face of Ulfshard’s magic, and it began falling apart, bones and withered flesh falling like ashen flakes from its mighty form.

  Its wings folded and rotted away, blown like cinders from a cold firepit. Its hollow bones disintegrated, and the black sorcerer upon the dragon’s back fell to the ramparts. Its robes billowed around it like hellish wings and its hood fell back to reveal a loathsome face with gaunt cheeks, pallid skin and a narrow tapered jaw filled with needle-like fangs. Its eyes were sunken and violet, but Marius saw they were all too human. This evil that had bound itself to Nagash was no unholy creature of darkness, but had once been a man.

  A man steeped in evil and filled with unnatural power, but a man nonetheless.

  Glowing arrows protruded from his body, shafts of white and gold that trembled as though working deeper into his magically sustained existence. The creature hissed and bared its fangs, but Marius saw it was wounded nigh unto death and stripped of its powers by Marika’s arrows.

  Marius stepped in and hammered Ulfshard across the creature’s neck, the blade slicing as cleanly through the monster’s flesh as it had the unholy dragon’s. It died with a curse on its lips, but as its head flew through the air the body ignited with an internal fire that consumed it within the time it took Marius to bring Ulfshard around.

  A cold wind blew over the ramparts and a foetid exhalation gusted along the length of the walls as skeletal warriors hacking their way over the walls collapsed into piles of decaying bone. Undead corsairs slumped on the docks and bloodied corpses that had, moments before, been clawing at the desperate defenders of Marburg now fell to the ground as the dark will empowering them was undone.

  Thousands more remained beyond the walls, but this attack was over.

  And that was good enough for Marius.

  He sheathed Ulfshard, not surprised in the least to find it fitted within his scabbard, despite being almost a handspan longer than his previous blade.

  Marika ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck. She held him tightly, and he responded in kind, though the gesture was automatic rather than heartfelt.

  “We did it!” she cried. “They’re dead!” Marius looked at the decaying remains of the sorcerer and his dragon, lying next to the corpses of Aldred and Laredus.

  He wondered which deaths she meant, but realised it didn’t matter.

  “That we did, my dear,” he said with a satisfied grin. “That we did.”

  ——

  The Price of Knowledge

  Eoforth hurried through the darkened streets of Reikdorf, fear lending his exhausted limbs strength. The streets of the city, once so familiar and reassuring,
were now threatening and unknown. Every turn was laden with uncertainty, each step echoing strangely as though this was a city that existed beyond the realms of men, a place forsaken by the natural laws of the world.

  A gibbous moon hung low in the sky, casting stark shadows through the empty street. Eoforth knew that thousands of people, refugees from all across the Empire, packed Reikdorf, so the idea that the city could be so empty was surely ridiculous. Thousands of people filled every nook and cranny: refugees from Marburg and Jutonsryk, southern tribesmen and villagers coming up from the Grey Mountains and villagers fleeing the closing net of the dead from the east and north.

  Nor were refugees the only people to come to Reikdorf. The city had the feel of an armed camp, with warriors billeted throughout its many buildings. The majority were Unberogen, for they made up the bulk of the population around these parts, but many more were Asoborns and Brigundians fleeing the destruction of their lands.

  Eoforth had heard snippets only of the news from across the Empire, for his researches into Nagash’s history had driven him to the point of obsession. His head ached constantly and the aches and pains that plagued him on a daily basis seemed stronger and more insidious than ever before—as though the dread necromancer’s reach was clawing him down into the ancient pages and scrolls gathered on the library’s shelves. His breathing rasped in his lungs and every step sent a spike of pain shooting through his chest. Eoforth knew the eyes of the necromancer were upon him, mocking his attempts to uncover some secret that might give Sigmar and his warriors a means of defeating him. No such secret existed, and it amused Nagash to allow Eoforth to fritter away his time on such fruitless research.

  Yet Eoforth had found something…

  Not a hidden nemesis by which the necromancer could be defeated, but a character trait that might yet be exploited. He had to take what he had found to Sigmar’s longhouse, yet the street before him seemed to stretch away into infinity. Scrolls fell from the bundle haphazardly stacked in his arms and he blinked stars from his eyes as his heart lurched painfully.

  Sigmar had returned to Reikdorf two days ago, and the mood of despair that had settled upon the city had lifted as he rode through the Ostgate with Wolfgart and the Asoborns. News of what had befallen Freya’s army had not dampened the spirits of Reikdorf’s people, but Sigmar had not wasted any time and instructed every smith in the city to sharpen blades, repair armour and bolster the defences of the Unberogen capital.

  Every man, woman and child within the city bent their efforts to ensuring the survival of the Empire, carrying armloads of arrows to the walls, establishing makeshift infirmaries for the wounded and doing all they could to help. Not one person or family stinted on their duties, and the sense of brotherhood that stretched from one side of Reikdorf to the other was palpable.

  All that would be for nothing if Eoforth could not reach Sigmar’s longhouse.

  His moment of epiphany had come as the last glimmers of light faded from the library’s high, lancet windows. Only when the dozen candles with which he surrounded his desk had blown out in the one instant had he realised he was alone.

  Eoforth felt the gloom and the unseen whisperers in the darkness close in on him. Glimmers of light drifted from the farthest halls of the library, a host of sibilant voices sighing like distant choirs as they spiralled towards him, laughing in derision at his puny efforts to undo the schemes of their master.

  He’d cursed himself for allowing himself to become so engrossed in his work that he’d forgotten the passage of time. He’d allowed the dead to get in and now he was going to pay for it. His heart beat an irregular rhythm on his thin chest, and a painful numbness flowed down his left arm. He flexed the fingers, trying to force the blood to flow. His heart was weak and to put it under such strain was too much for him to bear.

  Eoforth rested against a stone building, trying to gather his strength. He heard whispers behind him and spun, clutching the scrolls he’d gathered in the dark before fleeing for the streets. Moonlight bathed the world in cold, heartless light and he saw shadows where no shadows should be. They slid across the cobbles and over the walls of nearby dwellings, stretching and swelling to resemble elongated figures with black, featureless faces, thin, wasted arms and curling claws.

  They chattered with the rattle of unseen teeth, clicking their insubstantial claws on the stonework as they closed in on him. Eoforth pushed himself from the wall as they drew near, limping down the road with desperate heaves of tortured lungs rattling in his chest. Though it was cold and his breath misted the air before him, his skin was slick with sweat.

  Despite the reek of boiling hops that turned his stomach, Eoforth set off down Brewer Street, weaving like the drunks who clustered around the beer makers’ back doors, hoping for the slops.

  The shadows on the walls followed him and he heard screeching laughter from the streets running alongside him, half-glimpsed phantoms flickering at the corners of his eyes. It seemed impossible that no one else could be aware of these spectres, or that he hadn’t yet encountered another person.

  Perhaps he walked in the world of the dead now, a living soul that moved unseen by those untouched by mortality. The enemy stalked him, perhaps fearing what he knew and might pass to Sigmar. The dead believed he had found something that could hurt them and that made him pick up his pace, forcing his wretched body onwards.

  Eoforth clutched the silver dove pendant around his neck, mouthing a prayer to Shallya that he hadn’t said aloud since he was a youngster.

  “Merciful Shallya, meek and mild, watch me now, your helpless child,” he said, feeling the chill of the grave lessen with every word. He fought to remember his other prayers, especially ones to Morr and Taal. Morr for his hatred of the undead, Taal for his joy in life.

  “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to Morr my soul to keep—”

  His words were cut off by a feral snarl and Eoforth looked up to see a pack of wolves blocking the road ahead. Filthy, rotted creatures with bone and muscle exposed beneath mangy, dirt-encrusted fur, these were abominable creatures of darkness. They did not howl, but their broken teeth were bared and they stalked forward, limping and ungainly on broken bones and twisted spines. As malformed and broken in death though they were, Eoforth had no illusions as to his ability to outrun them or survive their attack.

  He couldn’t make it past them, and looking over his shoulder he saw the chattering shadows easing down the street with their stretched arms reaching out to him. There was no way he could reach the longhouse, and the Gardens of Morr were on the other side of the city walls, so he set off down the Street of Temples, to the only place that might yet grant him sanctuary.

  They came after him, but slowly, as though they were afraid to follow him into this place of gods. These divine beings watched over mankind, and the minions of necromancers were their most hated foes, for the dead worshipped nothing.

  Still clutching his dove pendant, Eoforth hurried down the street with the wolves padding behind him and the shadow hunters laughing at his feeble attempt to escape. He saw the building he sought, just as a sharp pain stabbed into his chest. Eoforth gasped with the shock of it. He stumbled, losing more of his scrolls, and ground his teeth against the pain spreading down his left side. Eoforth was no physician, but he knew his heart was giving out under the strain.

  He cried out as he slammed into the temple door, the pain of the impact spreading through his body as he slid down the stonework.

  “Help… me…” he gasped, though he knew no one could possibly hear so weak a cry.

  The shadows closed in and the wolves bared their fangs.

  “In the name of Shallya, have mercy!” he cried with the last of his strength.

  And then, a miracle. A sliver of light filled the street and the shadow hunters fled its touch, retreating to the forsaken corners of the darkness. The wolves backed away from the light, wary of its touch. They waited, uncertain and afraid, the torchlight reflecting in the empty sockets of their eye
s.

  Eoforth reached out to the light, as greyness smothered his vision.

  His chest burned with pain and he fell into the arms of the woman who appeared in the doorway like the beauteous goddess of mercy and healing herself. His heartbeat became an arrhythmic crescendo as the light haloed her head and softened her angular features.

  Eoforth had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life.

  “My lady…” he said. “You came for me…”

  High Priestess Alessa of the temple of Shallya knelt beside Eoforth and cradled his head. Her eyes swept the street beyond her temple, and the wolves fled from her stern, unflinching gaze. No creature of darkness could face so holy and pure a vision without fear.

  He felt himself sliding down into darkness, and tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “Be at peace, Eoforth,” said Alessa, seeing immediately that he was dying. “Whatever they were are gone now.”

  “I must… speak,” he said, as a single tear slid down his cheek. “Sigmar needs to know…”

  Alessa brushed it away and said, “Speak to me. Whatever you have to say, I will tell him. I promise. What would you have as your last words in this world?”

  Eoforth gripped her shoulder and pulled his lips to her ear. With his final breath he whispered one last thing to the high priestess. As his eyes closed, he saw her face turn cold, and went into Morr’s embrace terrified that she hadn’t understood.

  He heard wolves in the distance.

  And then nothing.

  Sigmar knelt beside the body of his counsellor and kept his eyes closed. He gripped Eoforth’s hand and wished he could have been there for his friend’s final moments. This war against the enclosing forces of Nagash had already cost the Empire dear, but that cost had never been harder to bear than now. Friends and allies had fallen to the advance of the undead, but no one who had been as dear to him as Eoforth.