Swords of the Emperor

by Chris Wraight

  The army he’d brought to the mountains with such labour was installed a few miles away in one of the scattered way-forts that lined the road to Black Fire Pass. Even though the way-forts were capacious, many of the lower ranks had been forced to camp in the shadow of its walls. He had over two thousand men under his command, the kind of force that only Black Fire Keep could accommodate with ease.

  The place where he stood was far from the road and the way-forts. It was a desolate spot, a patch of wind-blasted stone in the heart of the peaks. A wide flat area, perhaps four hundred yards across, was bounded on three sides by sheer cliffs, cracked with age and flecked with mottled lichens. The piercing sun made little impression on it, and there was a dark aspect to the rocks.

  Bloch didn’t speak for a long time. This was the third such site he’d been shown. It never got any better.

  He turned to his companion, the mountain guard commander Helmut Drassler. The man was tall and rangy, and like all his kind wore a beard and was dressed in furs. Drassler looked over the site with a kind of blank distaste. After seeing so many of them, perhaps there was little other reaction.

  Aside from Bloch and Drassler, only Kraus, Schwarzhelm’s honour guard captain, was present. His expression was as hard, cold and unreadable as his master’s.

  “This one’s the worst,” muttered Bloch. Drassler nodded, saying nothing.

  The site was a natural killing place. The cliffs on all sides turned it into a cauldron of death. For any forces out in the middle of it, there was only one escape—back through the narrow gap where the three of them stood. If that route were blocked, then there could be no hope for any trapped within.

  So it had proved for the men lying on the stone in front of them. They had been dead for a long time. Their skin had been dried and bleached by the wind and hung in tatters from exposed bone. Their eyes had long gone, taken by the scavengers of the high places. Even now, carrion crows circled in the icy airs, waiting to feast again. The banner of Averland, crested with the golden sun of Solland, hung limply against the far cliff. The standard was surrounded by heaps of bodies, as if that was where they’d made their last stand.

  It hadn’t done them much good. Obscene images had been daubed across the precious fabric, obscuring the proud record of past conflicts. The figure of the sun had been transformed into the leering face of a corrupted moon.

  Bloch couldn’t tell how many bodies lay there. Hundreds, certainly. Probably far more. The way they lay atop one another, rammed together in death as they had been in their final hours, made it hard to tell.

  “They took plenty with them,” said Kraus.

  That they had. For every man who lay on the stone, there was an orc too. The greenskins’ flesh had weathered better. The two armies were intertwined with one another, locked in an embrace that had lasted far longer than the fighting.

  Despite the numbers of dead greenskins, it was clear who had won. The human bodies had been despoiled and their armour plundered. There were signs that goblins had crawled down the cliffs like swarming insects, no doubt raining barbs down on top of the defenders. One goblin corpse still hung forty feet up, its hand trapped in a crack, its lifeless body twisting in the wind.

  It would have been a massacre. The soldiers must have known they were going to die. They would have fought for pride, but nothing else.

  Bloch felt sickened. Just like the other sites Drassler had shown them. They’d come up here to be killed.

  “Why?” he said, bitterly, not expecting any better answers than last time. “Why leave the forts? These places are murder-traps.”

  “I told you,” said Drassler. “We had orders. You’ll see it all at the Keep.”

  Bloch shook his head despairingly. He hadn’t been a commander long, but he’d fought in the Emperor’s armies all his adult life and knew how they worked. There were some orders you didn’t follow.

  He crouched down and took a closer look at the bodies near his feet. The corpses of the Black Fire Keep garrison stretched away across the site, their clothes torn and flesh rent. Empty eye-sockets gazed up at the sky, laced with dry, crusted blood.

  He wasn’t interested in them. He was interested in the orcs. Before him lay one of the smaller breeds. Perhaps a large goblin—it had the hook nose and long yellow fangs of the kind. It had been skewered on the tip of a sword and the blade still stood, lodged in its scrawny chest. Dead claws clutched at the air, locked in the final throes of agony.

  Bloch studied its armour. Like all the greenskins it was wearing close-fitting mail. It had been carrying a short sword of its own rather than a gouge or a flail. The workmanship was good. Just as with the orcs he’d encountered in Averland while serving under Grunwald, the greenskins had excellent wargear. Imperial wargear.

  He shuffled forwards and took a closer look at the creature’s face. Even in death it had a horrifying aspect. A long black tongue lolled from its cruel mouth, and its thin face was set into a scream of rage. The expression was so vivid, so locked in malice, it was hard to believe that some flicker of life didn’t still exist within it.

  The sun flashed from something shiny. Dangling from the goblin’s earlobe was a coin. Bloch pulled it from the flesh and it popped free. An Imperial schilling, embossed with the image of Karl Franz and stamped with the date and place of manufacture. It was new, minted in Altdorf that year. Coins like that were rare—they took time to come into circulation. All the ones he’d seen in the death-sites were the same. Somehow, this horde of orcs had come across Imperial armour and a batch of newly-minted coins.

  He stood up again, keeping the schilling in his hand.

  “Same as before?” asked Kraus.

  “Same as before.”

  Bloch turned to Drassler. “I’ve seen enough of this. We’ll head to the Keep.”

  “They’re still camped in there,” warned Drassler. “I don’t know how many.”

  “I don’t care how many,” growled Bloch, clenching his fist around the coin and squeezing it tight. “We’ll kill ’em all.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Iron Tower was not the only building being raised in Averheim, but it was by far the largest. A whole district of the poor quarter had been scoured to allow its creation. Some of the demolished houses and streets had dated back to the time of the first Emperors, before the city had grown large enough to reach over the river and absorb the villages along the western bank. They were gone now, mere whispers in the long march of Imperial history.

  The building work had taken place quickly. So quickly that men marvelled at it as far afield as Streissen and Nuln. Though the Leitdorf’s and the Alptraums between them had erected plenty of follies in their long years of rule, each had taken years to complete. In a matter of weeks, the Iron Tower’s foundations had been laid and the skeleton metal frame had shot up into the sky.

  Despite the wonders of engineering, the Tower was not popular. Soon after work had started, ordinary folk of the poor quarter had learned to give it a wide berth. Few willingly walked under the shadow of the great iron spurs that marked out its future outline. Any who had to pass close by scratched the sign of the comet on their chests. It had an evil rumour, and in private many started to call it Grosslich’s Folly.

  No one knew for certain why the Tower was so hated. After all, the new elector was wildly popular. Order had been restored to the city, and the gold was flowing again through the merchants’ coffers. It was even hissed in quiet corners that joyroot could be found again, though its trade had been heavily curtailed.

  Still, the stories kept coming. A baby had been born in sight of the Tower with three arms and no eyes. Milk curdled across the city when the foundation stone had been laid. No birds would fly within a mile of it, they said, turning Averheim silent at dawn and dusk. All fanciful tales, no doubt. All unreliable, plucked from the gossipy lips of old wives with nothing better to do.

  But the world was a strange place, and old wives weren’t always wrong. What no one could deny was th
at, from time to time, attractive youths were still going missing. Not many—just one or two, here and there - but enough to attract attention. That had been going on even before the days of the Tower, and folk had put it down to the evil times with no elector. Grosslich had even issued an edict on the matter, promising death for any found engaged in the grisly removal of Averland’s next generation.

  It didn’t stop the disappearances. Like the slow drip of a tap, they carried on. It was worse around the Tower, some said. Many believed the rumours, even though there was no proof. It was all hearsay, conjecture and idle talk.

  Heinz-Mark Grosslich, still dressed in the robes he’d worn to receive the Imperial messenger, found himself enjoying the irony of it all as he headed towards the Tower. The foolish, the ignorant and the savage were quite capable of seeing what was going on under their noses. Only the wise were blind to the horror that lurked around them. Blind, that is, until it was far too late.

  Night had fallen. The Tower building site was heavily guarded by men of the elector’s inner circle, loyal soldiers who’d seen the fight against Leitdorf through from the beginning. As he approached the perimeter of the works, Grosslich saw half a dozen of them leap to attention. They looked surprised to see him walking on his own. They shouldn’t have been. He’d been back and forth between the Tower and the Averburg several times a day for the past couple of weeks. When the work was completed it would become the new seat of power in Averland. The Averburg would have to go. The city needed a fresh start, a new way of doing things.

  He nodded to the guards as he passed their cordon and entered the site. None of them would ever go further inside—their job was to patrol the fences. That didn’t mean the interior was unguarded, just that the guards there were of a more specialised type.

  Once past the fences, the building came into view properly. It had the appearance of an upturned claw. Huge iron shafts had been sunk into the earth, on top of which the structure was now being raised. When finished, the Tower would resemble a giant dark needle, soaring up into the high airs and dominating the land around it. There would be a turret at the very pinnacle sending six spikes out over the cityscape, each twenty feet long. At the centre of those spikes would be his sanctum, far above the rolling plains. That would be the heart of it all, the fulcrum about which the realm would be moulded to his will.

  There was still so much to do. The lower levels of the Tower were little more than a tangle of naked metal. Piles of beams, trusses, stone blocks, nails, rods and other paraphernalia littered the churned-up earth. The disarray offended Grosslich’s refined senses, and he made a mental note to order the workers to take more care.

  As he neared the centre of the works, a door loomed up out of the darkness. It was imposing—over twelve feet tall and nearly as wide—and decorated with friezes of pure, dark iron. Here and there, a face of tortured agony could be made out in the night air, lost in a morass of limbs and torsos. The iron doors themselves were covered in a filigree of sigils and unholy icons, all traced with formidable skill and delicacy. Grosslich had no idea what they all signified, but he knew he would soon. His abilities increased with every passing day.

  The wall behind the door was barely started and rose no more than a few feet above the iron frame. Beyond it, the bone-like scaffolding was obvious. It was a door that seemingly led nowhere. And yet, for all that, it was guarded by two heavily-armoured soldiers. They wore strange armour, quite unlike the standard gear his men in the citadel were given. Each was clad in a suit of segmented plates, glossy and polished. The soldiers carried double-bladed halberds, though the steel had been replaced with what looked like polished crystal. Both were short and stocky and stood strangely, as if their legs bent the wrong way and their shoulders had been dragged out of place. Most disconcertingly, their closed-face helmets had long snouts, carved in the shape of snarling dog’s muzzles. No unaltered human could have fitted into those helms. These were Natassja’s creatures, the product of her endless experimentation.

  As he gazed on her progeny, Grosslich felt a surge of love for Natassja bloom up within him. She was everything to him, the one who had taken him from a minor landowner in the border country with Stirland and turned him into the most powerful man in the province. Her imagination and beauty were beyond those of anyone he had ever met. Particularly her imagination.

  “Open the doors,” he said. The soldiers complied without speaking, though there was a strained wheezing from their helmets. So many of them died after having the alterations made. That was a shame, but a small price to pay for art.

  The iron doors swung inwards, revealing a staircase that plunged down into the foundations of the Tower. The smell of jasmine, Natassja’s smell, rose up from the opening. There were other delights too, such as the pleasing chorus of screams, just on the edge of hearing. Things were so much better now that she had the time and freedom to truly give rein to her inclinations. This was just a foretaste of what was to come. Soon, the screams would be ringing out across all Averland.

  Grosslich smiled and descended into the depths of the Tower. Behind him, the doors clanged closed.

  Ludwig Schwarzhelm finished writing and placed the quill next to the parchment. He sat back in his chair, rolled his massive shoulders to relieve the ache, and looked up from his desk.

  The walls of his study in Altdorf looked alien in the candlelight. He’d hardly visited it in the past decade of constant campaigning. Now they were an indictment of him. He’d been ordered to stay in them, to keep out of Imperial affairs for as long as it took the Emperor to forgive him for what had happened. However long that might be.

  The rooms were minimally furnished. Most men of his rank would have lived in opulent state chambers, attended to by scores of servants and surrounded by priceless treasures from across the known world. That had never been his way. His dwellings were close to the Palace, but they were simple. He had a single manservant to keep an eye on the place when he was on campaign and employed the services of an aged charwoman, the mother of one of the many men who’d died serving under his command. They were both devoted to him, but since coming back from Averland he’d found he could hardly look them in the eye. He was diminished, and felt the shame of it keenly.

  Night air gusted through the shutters. The fire had burned low in the grate. The rain continued to plague the city, and he could hear the constant drum of it outside. He’d been working for hours, and was not an eloquent scribe. Composing the letter to the Emperor had taken him the best part of the day and all of the evening. Even now he wasn’t sure everything was ordered correctly. He found himself wishing Verstohlen was around. He’d have been able to advise. He’d always been able to advise.

  Schwarzhelm brushed sand over the parchment and folded it up. He slipped it into an envelope, reached for the candle of sealing wax and tipped a gobbet of it on the join. As the wax hardened he pulled his personal seal from the drawer at his side. That too was hard to look at. The Sword of Justice entwined with the Imperial seal atop the initials L.S. Once it had been a source of pride to him. Now, like everything else, it had been sullied.

  He pressed the seal onto the wax, watching as the red fluid solidified, then placed the letter on the desk in front of him. Beside it was the key he’d taken from Heinrich Lassus’ house. It had taken a while for him to discover which lock it opened, but he still had friends in the city. The old traitor had been careful, but not careful enough. He’d trusted in his reputation, and that alone had been sufficient to fool everyone. Even now, only Schwarzhelm himself knew of the man’s treachery. The fire had concealed evidence of his transformation, and men assumed that the old general had suffered from a terrible accident. For the time being, that was how Schwarzhelm wanted it. The truth would emerge in good time.

  He took up the key and ran it over his fingers. Iron glinted in the candlelight. Even after much time had passed, he still had no idea why Lassus had done it. As far as he knew, the old swordmaster had no connections in Averland and no
interest in the succession. He’d never had any concern with matters of rank or promotion. That was precisely why he’d been so admired. I’ve been granted the grace to retire from the field and see out the rest of my days in peace. That’s what he’d told Schwarzhelm, back before he’d ridden to Averheim. Such an effortless, professional lie, so smoothly delivered.

  With an effort of will, Schwarzhelm turned his mind back to the present. The longer he lingered on his many failures, the less useful he could be. Deep down, the tidings of Verstohlen nagged away at him. The spy had seen the mark of Chaos in the city, and his reports had been vindicated by the horrific manner of Lassus’ death. Schwarzhelm had to assume that Natassja was still alive. Perhaps Rufus Leitdorf was too. In any event, for as long as Verstohlen remained in Averheim, the counsellor was in terrible danger. Schwarzhelm had sent coded messages by secret courier, but had little hope of them getting through. The only course left to him was to return there himself. Amends had to be made, debts settled, secrets uncovered.

  He’d tried to seek an audience with the Emperor to explain his worries, but that had proved impossible. Never before had any request of his to meet Karl Franz been turned down. That hurt him more than anything else that had happened. Perhaps the Emperor was still angry. Perhaps he was trying to protect Schwarzhelm from any further involvement, thinking it best that he recovered from his trials. Or perhaps there was corruption even in the heart of the Palace, blocking his missives from reaching their target.