Blighted Empire

by C. L. Werner

  Skrittar chittered maniacally as he watched the skaven swarm. He would teach the mice to fight! His lips curled and his tail lashed angrily against the stone arch. There were still too many dragons, and his enemy was keeping them away from the ground and the gnashing fangs of the skaven. To burn them all out of the sky would be impossible, but Skrittar realised that it wouldn’t be necessary. The only enemy he had to kill was the mage-man who had conjured up the dead-things to begin with.

  Glaring at the tower, ignoring the scattered packs of fleeing skaven who had escaped the death frenzy he had inflicted upon their fellows, Skrittar snarled down at the bell-ringer. ‘Need-want more bell!’

  The slave cried out in terror, protesting his master’s latest command. Skrittar stretched out his paw, crushing the ratman’s mind between his claws, reducing him to a fleshy puppet. With clumsy, spastic motion, the slave brought the striker cracking against the bell one final time.

  Skrittar’s fangs bit down upon another chunk of warpstone, adding still more arcane energy to the reverberations of the spell. The seerlord focused his thoughts, directing the magic into a snaking chasm that would reach out and undermine the tower, send it crashing down. The magical fulcrum and the mage-man who had conjured it would be broken in one stroke of divine fury!

  Such was his intention, but as Skrittar tried to focus his spell, he heard something crack inside him. Looking down, he saw his arm bend back upon itself in a fashion he was certain should be physically impossible. An instant later, all the fur on his left side turned into pulpy, twitching feelers, like the legs of a million fat spiders.

  Skrittar tried to scream, but by that time it was too late to stop the runaway magic ravaging his body.

  From the top of Vanhaldenschlosse, the metamorphosis of Seerlord Skrittar was like a blazing eruption of volcanic fury. The tower shook from the aethyric vibration and the unleashed Chaotic energies. The whirling current of vibrations faltered for an instant, their harmonies disturbed by the discordant inflection.

  Vanhal stirred from his conjuration, his breath coming to him in shallow gasps. Returning his concentration to the three dimensions of mortal space was an ordeal to one who had sent his mentality soaring through vistas beyond the barriers of time and dimension. His consciousness had ridden astral tides, striding at once across powers and principalities to effect his mighty evocation. He had done more than simply form a spell from his will – he had effectually become the spell, channelling his essence into the enchantment.

  The zombie dragons drawn from forgotten caves across half the world, the resurrected skaven, the walking dead of Sylvania, these had become more than simply puppets animated by his magic. They had become extensions of himself, extra fingers of his outstretched hand, physical manifestations of his soul. Vanhal had been more than an identity; he had become a multiplicity, an existence that transcended all concepts of mortality and divinity.

  What he had discovered was so much more than mundane appreciations of life and death. He had tasted eternity, an eternity of tranquillity devoid of pain and sorrow. He had experienced a world without oppression and fear – a world where all the discord was forced into harmony, all the frayed edges had been mended.

  His focus lost, Vanhal could feel the magical vibrations coursing through the tower ebbing. The stars overhead assumed their natural positions as time reasserted its tyranny. Blocks of stone, held in place solely by the aethyric vibrations, fell away, crashing from the walls. The levitating altar dropped to the roof, smashing into bits of bone. Vanhal himself dropped away, landing with a jarring impact on the splintered wreckage.

  Beyond the walls of Vanhaldenschlosse, he could hear the frightened squeaks of the fleeing skaven. Briefly, the necromancer sent a little tendril of power into the remaining dragons, enough to sustain their decayed frames while they harried the ratmen back to their burrows. When he had time, he would perform a more complete ritual to reduce the transience of their animation. Alongside the droves of dead the skaven left behind, the dragons would make short work of completing his tower.

  A surge of discordant emanations drew Vanhal’s attention to the base of his tower. Far below he could see a colossal shape scrabbling up the stones, dragging itself with gravity-defying malignance on a confusion of what seemed at once both legs and tentacles. The thing’s shape was that of some insane insect, yet there was also that about it that suggested both crabs and spiders. A motley, piebald fur stretched across most of its grisly body while across its broad back, elongated into an absolute of madness and horror, was the visage of a huge horned rat.

  The ghastly residue of Seerlord Skrittar, the foul spawn born of his arcane apotheosis, squirmed up the tower with such swiftness that Vanhal was unable to direct even the most minor of incantations against it before the thing had reached the roof. Whips of aethyric energy crackled about the thing as it clambered up to meet him, the distorted skaven face grinning idiotically as the residue of the grey seer’s mentality tried to remember why it was here. One paw, the only portion of the monster that was unchanged, pointed its claw at the necromancer.

  ‘Die-die!’ the giant, rat-like head bellowed.

  The whips of energy lashed out at Vanhal in a withering discharge of amok magic. The stones beneath the necromancer’s feet turned to jelly, the shattered bones of the altar took flight as rainbow-winged insects. Where the energy glanced across his robe, the garment sprouted gritty, coral-like encrustations.

  ‘I have too much to do before that happens,’ Vanhal told the insane Skrittar-spawn. The necromancer’s eyes blazed with power as he drew the waning energies of the fulcrum into his mind…

  Lothar von Diehl stepped around the mess of putrid, steaming fur. No need, then, to ask his master what had become of the monster he had seen climbing the tower. Having sensed the power of the creature, he had worried that Vanhal might not be able to defeat it on his own. Now he felt foolish for having hurried back to render aid.

  Turning away from the loathsome puddle, Lothar bowed before his seated master. No sense in wondering how Vanhal had brought his palanquin up from the halls below. Perhaps he’d been inspired by the monster’s ascent and simply had the thing climb up the side of Vanhaldenschlosse.

  ‘The enemy is in full retreat, master,’ Lothar reported. ‘Between the dragons and the destruction of their leader, I think they won’t be back.’

  Vanhal was silent for a time, eyes closed behind the skeletal contours of his mask. ‘Never underestimate the foolishness of mortality,’ he said, his voice like an icy whisper. ‘The living can only be trusted to do the unpredictable, be they men or rats.’

  ‘What then is the answer?’ Lothar asked.

  Vanhal opened his eyes, but there was a faraway quality in their gaze. Whatever the necromancer stared at, it was nothing his apprentice could see.

  ‘The answer is to bring them peace,’ Vanhal declared.

  ‘The only peace any of them will ever need.’

  Chapter XIX

  Middenheim

  Ulriczeit, 1118

  Vrrmik bared his teeth at the vengeful dwarfs as they struggled to reach him. The stormvermin of Clan Mors were among the strongest and most vicious warriors in the Under-Empire. A fortune in food and armour, weapons and warpstone had been spent to make them an elite force without equal. Entire burrows had been enslaved to cultivate the warpweed that supplemented their carnivorous diet and caused their muscles to swell. They were the terror of a hundred warrens, a thousand burrows. Entire clans of slaves quivered at their very scent.

  It was, therefore, quite a shock to the warlord when his super-skaven broke before the vicious assault the dwarfs mounted. The white ratman’s eyes went wide with fright when he appreciated that the only thing standing between himself and a throng of enraged dwarfs were a handful of opportunistic clanrats who had thought to loot the corpses left by the stormvermin. As the stormvermin scattered, the clanrats found t
hemselves staring straight into the snarling masks of the dwarfs’ helms.

  For an instant, the fury of the dwarfs was turned against the looters. They had the misfortune to be discovered in the act of cutting rings from the fingers of the dwarf champion Vrrmik had slain. What the dwarfs did to the scavengers was horrible enough that the warlord forgot himself and expelled his glands. Nervously, his claws tightened about the haft of Drakdrazh.

  Scurrying away from the dwarfs, Vrrmik tripped over the corpse of a ratman who had treacherously died in such a fashion as to make himself an obstacle for his warlord. Angrily, Vrrmik swung the stolen hammer at the carcass. He was shocked when the head exploded into a mist of blood and gristle. A mad titter of awe hissed from his clenched fangs. In his panic, he’d almost forgotten the reason he’d taken such risks and involved himself directly in the attack.

  Jumping to his feet, Vrrmik met the charging dwarfs. There were five of them. He swung the warhammer full into the side of the first dwarf, crumpling his steel shield as though it were a mouldy leaf, hurling the dwarf across the cavern with such force that his armoured body left an impact crater inches deep in the rock wall. The other dwarfs tried to put up a better fight, but the dire combination of Drakdrazh and Vrrmik’s vicious, warpweed-enhanced strength was too great for them to overcome. One by one, they died.

  Vrrmik exulted in the carnage, savouring the smell of blood as he reduced his enemies to pulp. What need to hide behind his stormvermin (though those treacherous flea-licking mice would suffer for abandoning him) when he was a veritable demigod of battle! An avatar of the Horned One raining death and destruction upon all those mad enough to oppose him!

  The last dwarf turned and ran, even the stubborn courage of his kind incapable of enduring Vrrmik’s murderous havoc. The warlord watched him flee, debating whether he should allow the wretch to tell others of what he had seen or whether to smash him into paste as he had the dwarf’s comrades. Vrrmik wondered if he could swing Drakdrazh lightly enough to merely maim the dwarf. That would give him the best of both choices.

  The scent of human in the air caused Vrrmik to hesitate and allow the dwarf to flee back behind the ranks of his kind. The warlord’s whiskers twitched as his cunning restrained his bestial bloodlust. There were far more important things to consider than the slaughter of a few dwarfs. Oh yes, much more important things!

  Vrrmik hefted the great weight of Drakdrazh onto his shoulder and scampered back towards one of the mine shafts, watching as more of his monstrous warriors swarmed up into the Fourth Deep. Most of them were mere slaves, axe-fodder to wear down the foe. Vrrmik didn’t think twice about spending their lives, yet at the moment there was no purpose to further fighting. This sally against the dwarfs had achieved what Grey Lord Vecteek expected. Now it was time to give the verminous tyrant what he deserved.

  Raising a curled horn that had once adorned the head of a grey seer, Vrrmik blew a doleful note, a manic cachinnation that rippled across the cavern. At the sound, the skaven withdrew from their enemies, fleeing down the shafts and passages in a panicked rout of such suddenness that it left the dwarfs and their human allies too stunned to react.

  Vrrmik lashed out with Drakdrazh, slaughtering a dozen of his minions as he cleared a place for himself in one of the tunnels. The gory example wasn’t one he needed to repeat. The ratmen gave their warlord all the room he needed.

  Vrrmik savoured the smell of their fear. Soon all the Under-Empire would fear him the same way. There would be changes in Skavenblight when Vecteek failed to return. Changes that Vrrmik – with the support of Clan Pestilens – would exploit to the full.

  Poor Vecteek, Vrrmik thought. With the human army down in the deeps, he would think himself safe to launch his attack on Middenheim. What would the despot do when that army suddenly came rushing up at him, trapping him between the enemies on the surface and the ones in the dwarfhold?

  It was an amusing image, one Vrrmik was almost sorry he wouldn’t see for himself.

  Fires raged through parts of Middenheim, thick plumes of smoke rising into a darkened sky, columns of flame reaching up to paint the twilight a hellish crimson. Entire neighbourhoods were burning, put to the torch by attackers and defenders alike, both sides using fire to constrain and contain the other. The hovels of the Westgate district were an inferno, the tortured screams of those trapped within the maze-like warren echoing across the city.

  Graf Gunthar watched the conflagration with fatalistic resignation. The ratmen had plotted and planned well. They were inside the city’s defences before anyone was even aware of the peril. Their hordes seemed to be everywhere, making a feeble mockery of Middenheim’s thick walls and numerous defence strategies. What assembly for the militia when the skaven already controlled the streets, when the vermin swarmed through the squares? They pillaged across the fields and gardens, stealing the crops Middenheim had taken such pains to cultivate in the cold mountain air. They ransacked homes and shops, plundered inns and temples. Wherever a man’s eye turned, he found the skaven already there.

  Now it was Warrenburg’s turn; Graf Gunthar’s thoughts turned bitter. Middenheim had watched from the safety of the mountain while the shanty town at the foot of the Ulricsberg burned, thankful that they had been spared such catastrophe. Now, it was Warrenburg’s turn to be thankful, to look up and shudder at the fiery glow high on the mountain.

  ‘Your excellency, what are your commands?’

  The graf looked aside, his eyes not seeming to see Grand Master Vitholf seated upon a hulking black destrier. Master horsemen, the Knights of the White Wolf had remained in the city when Mandred led his army into the bowels of Karak Grazhyakh. Now they formed the core of the motley defenders who had rallied around the Middenpalaz. Watchmen, templars, hunters, foresters, rangers and mercenaries, they were a ragged collection from across Middenheim. Every man who could hold a sword or string a bow had, it seemed, converged upon the palace, looking to Graf Gunthar for guidance, trusting in their noble lord to lead them to victory.

  Victory? There was a truly bitter thought. What victory could there be for Middenheim against such a horde? What victory for Graf Gunthar when he knew his only son lay dead somewhere in the dark beneath his feet?

  A wolf dies on its feet, a dog on its belly. The words of the Ulrican proverb rang through the graf’s mind, reverberating through his very soul. Choking back his own despair, he answered Vitholf in a grim voice.

  ‘We ride to our doom,’ he told the knight. ‘We ride into the flames of vengeance, into the cauldron of slaughter. We ride to reap and slay, to kill and die. We ride to seek an end that will not shame us in the eyes of Ulric.’

  Sombrely, the ragged host followed their graf as he led them from the bloodied courtyards of the Middenpalaz and past the burning manors of Teutogen nobility. Across the blasted fields of what had been the Konigsgarten they marched, cavalry at the fore, footmen behind. Sometimes tattered groups of men would stagger out from the rubble to join the grim procession. More often they would find only clumps of pillaging skaven. Seldom did the creatures linger to fight so large a company, but instead turned tail and fled.

  All of that changed when the graf and his followers reached the streets of the Eastgate district. Here, among the despoiled homes and savaged shops, the skaven gathered in a great mass, chittering and hissing at the humans in triumphant mockery. Snipers hidden in garrets and clinging to spires picked off victims with impunity, the great range rendering them immune to the archery of Middenheim’s defenders. To fight the ratmen, the humans would be forced to take the battle to them.

  Graf Gunthar looked back at his army, feeling his heart tighten as he saw the expectant, hopeful light in the eyes of his men. Surely they knew the fight was hopeless, that there would be no victory here? Yet none of them, from the highest noble to the lowest beggar, glared at him in accusation, held him to account for the doom that had come upon them all. Even in this hour, they l
ooked to him as their leader.

  It was a realisation that made Graf Gunthar feel unworthy. What was this quality within him that deserved such loyalty? What was this divine ember that invested him with such right? And as he gazed into the faces of his people, he understood that the answer to those questions didn’t lie within himself. It was in those he ruled, it was their faith and their trust that ennobled him.

  In this last hour, Gunthar vowed he would not betray that trust. Sitting straight in his saddle, throwing back the wolfskin cloak draped about his shoulders, he drew his sword from its sheath. Like a finger of daylight, the graf’s sword burned in the night. Legbiter, one of the famed runefangs forged by the dwarfs for the twelve kings who united under Sigmar, the blade had ever been the symbol of Middenland’s count and Middenheim’s graf. As its ancient magic rippled across its surface, even Gunthar felt a sense of awe. It was as though Ulric – or perhaps Sigmar – were reaching down, letting the warriors of Middenheim know that they had not been forsaken.

  Swinging his sword overhead, Gunthar shouted his defiance of the scuttling vermin infesting the streets of the Eastgate. ‘Death!’ he howled. ‘Death and ruin! Death and havoc! Death! Death! Death!’ Spurring his horse, the enraged graf charged the skaven. The earth shuddered as the knights and horsemen he led urged their own mounts to the attack. The snipers in the rooftops desperately tried to blunt the charge, but their efforts were like casting pebbles into the sea. Nothing would stop the surge of Middenheim’s vengeance.

  Into the streets Graf Gunthar led his men, hewing ratmen asunder with Legbiter at every turn. The mockery of the skaven collapsed into frightened squeaks as the humans rode them down. Knights drove their horses through shops and homes in pursuit of the ratkin, spearmen ranged through alleyways to skewer hiding skaven, archers loosed arrows into the backs of vermin seeking to escape down side streets.