by C. L. Werner
The vampiress turned the slide into a roll, nimbly coming to her feet after the violent rebuff. Some of the red rage had left her now and she began to watch the mummy rise with trepidation. She knew what this being had been capable of in life, and now she had felt its infernal might in death.
Nehb-ka-menthu regarded the vampiress for a moment, then strode toward the coach once more. Not for her a destruction brought about by some spell plundered from the books of Nagash. No, the priest-king would end her unnatural life with his own hands.
De Villarias backed away from the mummy, and rounded the carriage. She needed to keep its mass between herself and her enemy while she worked out some way of fighting the undead horror. Nehb-ka-menthu kept up with her, trying to catch the vampiress as she went round the coach. De Villarias had looked with loathing on those of her kind who shed their beautiful shapes for the cruder forms of bats and wolves, but now how she wished that she had learned such arcane secrets.
At last, the horses could tolerate the presence of the mummy no longer. With a scream of fright, the stallions broke loose from the carriage, snapping their traces and galloping away into the darkened, deserted night. The already unbalanced coach groaned and shuddered before turning onto its side, catching Nehb-ka-menthu beneath it. The mummy was lost to sight as the heavy framework of iron and ponderous panels and seats of wood crashed down upon it.
For a moment, de Villarias thought that the weight of the coach had accomplished what her slaves had been unable to do. She dared to hope that the carriage had crushed the old bones of the priest-king; that it had pulverised to dust the withered corpse of her ancient adversary. But her hopes were short-lived.
The mummy rose again, lifting the carriage as it freed itself. It let the heavy coach crash back onto the street after it had cleared the wreck. Nehb-ka-menthu glared at the contessa with eves of green witch-fire, then grasped the upper railing of the coach, ripping a great length of it loose. The mummy hefted its improvised spear of wood and turned towards the vampiress.
Suddenly, the mummy’s upper body jerked as it was struck repeatedly from behind. Four steel darts exploded from the monster’s chest and tore through its rotten husk. Nehb-ka-menthu paused as the force of the missiles upset its balance. The unliving tomb king was quick to recover, however, and resumed its steady march.
Brunner cursed as he witnessed the ineffectiveness of his attack. The priest-king’s powerful assault had left him dazed, but the wiry bounty hunter had recovered quickly, pulling free two of his knives. He was determined to combat this supernatural foe with his every breath. But he was surprised that the monster was no longer interested in him. He had watched the mummy’s rampage after it had burst through the laboratory wall. He had considered his options as he reloaded his weapons. Watching Relotto and Torici’s impossibly swift movements, the bounty hunter had come to realise that there was something unnatural about his patroness, but even he had been shocked when the woman had grown claws and fangs and leapt upon the mummy with the fury of a feral wolf. Legends and rumours filtered their way up into the bounty killer’s consciousness: tales of unholy things that stalked the night, and feasted on the blood of the living to prolong a profane existence. Contessa Carlotta de Villarias was such a fiend, a vampire, a creature of the dark.
Brunner’s first instinct had been to walk away, to leave the undead creatures to destroy one another, to let these abominations from beyond the grave fare as they would. But a colder, more cunning part of his mind caused him to linger. The bounty hunter emerged from the building just as the mummy freed itself from the coach. He had taken aim with the reloaded skaven crossbow, placing all four bolts into the monster’s desiccated flesh. The deadly missiles had been as effective as pebbles thrown at a giant, their passing not even meriting the notice of the monster.
Nehb-ka-menthu closed upon the vampiress. He raised the splintered shaft of wood like an over-sized javelin. De Villarias coiled her body, preparing to lunge. Escape was not an option, the priest-king would track her down. He would find her in whatever nameless hole she might slink to. But perhaps she could cause some damage to the blighted thing before it could bring about her second, permanent death. Over the mummy’s shoulder, de Villarias could see the bounty hunter racing forward. It puzzled her somewhat that the man had lingered, that he had chosen to involve himself in this struggle of beings that had been ancient before the lands of his birth were founded. The sight of the mortal charging toward his death made the vampiress pause. She had to admit that his was a powerful and fearless will. It would almost be a tragedy to see his life spent so uselessly.
Brunner swung Drakesmalice in a great sweeping arc. The sword dug deeply into the mummy’s side, crunching through ribs and withered organs. This time, the mummy did pay attention to the warrior’s assault; he turned on the man as he withdrew his sword. The green witch-fires in the sockets of the monster’s skull-like face seemed to burn even more brightly. Powerful clutching claws swept the air in front of the bounty hunter, narrowly missing the man. Brunner stepped back, drawing the recharged pistol from its belly holster. He had smelled the kerosene dripping from the dried-out mummy’s rags, and a new plan had occurred to him. As Nehb-ka-menthu took another step towards him, Brunner pulled the trigger of the blackpowder weapon. There was a flash of flame and thunder as the pistol discharged. The bullet tore harmlessly through the monster’s chest. The fiery muzzle flash was another matter.
Fire licked about the grey-green figure of the walking mummy, transforming it into a pillar of flame. Brunner allowed himself a smile of triumph as he holstered the pistol. But his smile faded as the mummy reached out to him, its fire-engulfed claw scraping across the front of his breastplate.
The bounty hunter fell back before the undead horror as the tomb king shambled forward, fire swirling about its figure. The dark shape of the monster’s body could be dimly seen within the flames. Upon the undamaged funeral wrappings, eldritch writing began glowing with an amber light. The faded picture-writing of Nehekhara’s liche priests was blazing into life, revealing figures of primordial gods, wards of ancient and terrible potency. Though fire clung to its form, the mummy of Nehb-ka-menthu did not burn. The protective spells its priests had carefully inked upon every layer of cloth that encased their lord still defended the tomb king. The pillar of fire reached out once more, seeking to draw the bounty hunter into a crushing, fiery embrace.
Suddenly, the mummy was struck from behind, as a great shaft of wood ruptured its belly. De Villarias snarled and drove the spear still deeper, the angle of the weapon causing its tip to sink deep into the gap between the broken stones of the street. The vampiress had been quick to exploit the bounty hunter’s distraction of Nehb-ka-menthu. She had taken up the makeshift stake the mummy had dropped. Now she drove the weapon her enemy had thought to destroy her with through its shrivelled flesh.
De Villarias and Brunner both stood back as the fiery mummy struggled to free itself from the impaling length of wood, like a boar stuck upon a hunting spear. For a moment it seemed as if the monster might not be able to pull itself from the long shaft of wood. Then it lifted its blazing paw and struck the portion of shaft that had emerged from its belly. The wood shattered under the blow as through it were glass. The tomb king straightened, to face the vampiress once more. There was no mistaking the ghastly, inhuman malevolence behind its masks of cloth and fire.
The monster took a few steps, then stopped. Its withered skull craned downward, to stare at its fire-shrouded body. The shaft of wood that had pierced its body was now on fire, burning like a bright finger of flame. Part of that fiery finger was inside the mummy’s dry, withered flesh, underneath the guard of the warding glyphs that covered its outer wrappings. Black smoke began to billow from the mummy’s form as its innards were quickly devoured by the consuming flame that spilled from every cut and wound that had been dealt to its body.
Nehb-ka-menthu did not feel any pain as the fire devoured him from within. He was too close to the
truly dead to feel such a sensation. The mummy knew it was being destroyed, that the flames would feed off the nitrates used to preserve and embalm its desiccated flesh. The mummy strode forward once again. If it were to pass into the realm of Ualatp, the vulture-headed god of the dead, then it would not do so alone.
Faster than even de Villarias could have imagined, the mummy was on her. A desperation gripped the monster, a shadow of urgency. It knew that its ancient essence would soon be banished, that it had only moments now to perpetrate one last act of destruction. Nehb-ka-menthu’s claw gripped the front of the vampire’s dress, causing the cloth to smoulder beneath its fiery touch. Foul smoke was now pouring from the tomb king’s body, shrouding it almost as completely as the flames. Little fingers of fire licked outward from the rents and cuts in the mummy’s wrappings. Yet through it all, de Villarias could see the grinning face of Nehb-ka-menthu, wresting a small victory even in his moment of defeat. The mummy’s grasp tightened and it began to pull the vampire towards its burning body and the wooden stake that still protruded from beneath its ribs.
Before Nehb-ka-menthu could impale the vampiress, gleaming steel struck downwards in a cleaving arc. The burning paw of the mummy was severed from the its arm. The monster glared at Brunner as he readied Drakesmalice for another blow. But it would not be needed. The mummy’s belly and chest crumbled, reduced at last to an ash-like state that even Nehb-ka-menthu’s tremendous will could not force to retain its shape. The mummy collapsed in upon itself, its shoulders falling to rise impossibly from its hips.
With the decay begun, the rest of the mummy’s body quickly followed, crumbling into ash. Now, where the almost unstoppable tomb king had stood, there now sprawled a mass of blazing bandages, the ancient hieroglyphs written on the grey-green cloth still glowing with sorcerous energy.
Brunner regarded his patroness coldly as he stepped back from the remains of the mummy. She swatted at the smoking cloth of her dress. The vampire fixed her red-rimmed eyes on the flaming pile of rags, then turned toward the bounty hunter. Her face slipped from an expression of relief into the stern, arrogant superiority she had shown in the black room of her palazzo.
‘Well done,’ the vampiress said. She noted with a faint alarm that the bounty hunter still held his sword at the ready. In his other hand, his gloved fingers clutched a rounded wooden stake. De Villarias could sense the stake’s purpose.
‘Don’t you think you have strained the limits of your luck enough tonight?’ she asked. ‘You won’t find me as easy to vanquish as some story-book monster.’
‘I won’t have to,’ the bounty hunter’s icy voice retorted. ‘Not if I’m paid.’
De Villarias’s eyes burned with smouldering anger. The audacity of this filthy hired sword! The sheer gall of him to speak to her, to suggest that he would destroy her if his vile blood money were not given to him! The vampiress had killed men for lesser affronts, and she had taken great pleasure in each one of their deaths. De Villarias’s fangs elongated, protruding over her lower lip. But the caution born of her centuries of unlife made her hesitate. Perhaps this man truly was a menace and a threat. Had he not held his own against Nehb-ka-menthu? Had he not helped to destroy that ancient and potent tomb lord?
The eyes of the contessa grew soft once more. From behind the visor of his helm, the bounty hunter did not flinch from her gaze.
Her voice was soft and silky when she spoke. ‘Why settle for crude gold when you can have so much more?’ The vampiress let her unnatural guile filter through her words. She stabbed into the bounty hunter’s soul with her gaze. ‘You are a powerful man, a strong man. Impressive even to me. Lay down your weapons and come to me. Let me embrace you. You will be my lover and we shall share the long nights together, force the world to give us all that we might desire.’
For a moment, Brunner’s hold on his sword faltered, and he took a step toward the expectant vampiress. But just as quickly, he regained control of himself, and clenched his weapons more firmly.
‘All I want from you is my gold, bloodworm,’ he said. De Villarias drew herself back, scowling at the defiant hireling.
‘Mortals with such willpower as yours are dangerous!’ she hissed, fangs bared.
‘Not when they are paid,’ Brunner replied.
De Villarias considered the armed killer for a moment, weighing up her chances against the man. She should be able to destroy him quite easily—she had ripped such men apart with her bare hands many times before. But there was something different about this one. The bounty hunter had killed a tomb king of Nehekhara; he might be able to do the same to a vampiress as well. And there was that simple-looking wooden stake he held so firmly in his left hand. De Villarias could sense the energy that swirled about that fang of wood, the power that had been imbued into it, the baneful force that was more than capable of eradicating one of her kind.
The vampiress turned away, pointing a pale finger at the corpse of her former thrall Torici. Already the years had reclaimed him, reducing him to a crumbling skeleton in elegant clothes.
‘You will find your money there,’ de Villarias said coldly. ‘And more besides.’ The vampire watched as Brunner walked over to the skeleton, keeping his eyes on the woman. ‘You can have it all, bounty hunter,’ she said as Brunner set his sword down on the ground and removed a heavy money belt from around the skeleton’s hips.
‘Thanks,’ Brunner said, weighing the belt in his hand, to determine how much wealth such a weight might represent. ‘I’ll take the extra as compensation for some of the things you neglected to tell me about this job.’ There was a tone of threat in his voice. De Villarias chose to ignore it.
‘I will be returning to Estalia,’ the vampiress said as she slipped into the dark. ‘I would suggest that you stay far from that land. It would be unfortunate if you were to cross my path again.’
Brunner threw the money belt over his shoulder and retrieved his sword. He stared into the shadows where the vampiress had vanished.
‘Perhaps for both of us,’ he told the dark, as he tucked the engraved stake under his belt. Without a second glance at the carnage all around him, the bounty hunter made his own way into the shadows.
The morning light revealed the aftermath of the battle. Rats scuttled back into their holes, fat from their night of gruesome feasting. Crows and vultures descended to take their place, their hatchet-like beaks slicing flesh from the stiffening bodies scattered about the lane.
But there was one area that vermin and carrion birds alike avoided: a pile of still-smoking grey-green rags. The ancient evil of the remains kept even such fell creatures at bay. And yet one creature dared to crawl across the broken stones, undeterred by the aura of menace. A five-limbed rat-sized thing crawled onto the pile of rags. Like a bird returning to its roost, the severed hand of Nehb-ka-menthu settled down amongst the funeral wrappings, and burrowed its way beneath them to escape the growing light of the sun.
WHERE WALKS THE MARDAGG
I
The room was dark, lit only by pairs of pot-like oil jars set at either end of the chamber. What the flickering, dancing light cast by the flames did reveal was expensively furnished. The table that dominated the room was massive, stained cherry-wood imported from across the sea, its claw-footed legs tipped in silver, a great slab of polished black marble set into its surface. Stern-visaged portraits glowered down from the dimly illuminated walls, secure in their gilded frames. The polished wood-floor was barely visible, much of its surface strewn with expensive fur rugs, the gleaming black hide of the Arabyan jackal, the dun hues of the Ebonian lion and the pristine white of the Norscan ice bear.
Seated behind the table in this room of wealth was a nondescript man of advancing age. He held his hands folded before him, the silver-threaded cuffs of his robes drooping from his wrists. An immense gold medallion hung from a heavy chain about the man’s neck. His name was Masario, chamberlain to the powerful Merchant Prince of Pavona, Bensario. He regarded the armoured figure standing before h
im in silence for some time, studying the man with an experienced eye. In his role as chamberlain, Masario had often been called upon to engage the mercenaries who would fight Pavona’s wars, years of such duties making him a keen judge of character. The chamberlain could, at a glance, see the limits of a man’s courage, the depths of his greed, the shallowness of his loyalty.
Masario nodded in satisfaction. He could see the determination and ruthlessness in the man before him. Such qualities were, in the chamberlain’s mind, much more dependable than lofty ideals and foolish notions of honour and chivalry.
‘I am pleased that you answered my summons,’ the chamberlain spoke, his voice resonating with the authority of his position. He made a pretence of looking at some of the sheets of parchment strewn about the table. ‘You are highly spoken of,’ he added. ‘Apparently yours is a most fearsome reputation.’
The bounty hunter shifted his stance. ‘What’s the job?’ he asked, in a cold tone of voice.
The chamberlain leaned back in his chair. ‘I had heard that you were a no-nonsense sort.’ Masario leaned forward once more, the subtly amused quality dropping instantly from him. Like the bounty hunter, he too was now all business.
‘I wish to hire you to find a murderer, Brunner,’ the chamberlain stated. ‘I am certain that you have done this sort of thing often before. I wish to employ you, on behalf of his highness, the Prince of Pavona, to find this despicable creature and kill him.’
‘Who and how much?’ Brunner asked the question without a hint of emotion in his voice.
‘Ten thousand gold ducats,’ Masario pronounced. The bounty hunter inclined his head slightly, a gesture that indicated the money was good, though he wondered what made the job worth such a price. The chamberlain easily read the gesture. ‘You will find the “who” a bit more difficult. You see, we do not know the identity of the murderer.’