Swords of the Emperor

by Chris Wraight

  So be it. He’d never asked for anything other than a life of testing. Being Grand Marshal of the Empire brought with it certain privileges—the loyalty of powerful men and the favours of beautiful women—but these were not the things that drove him onwards. It had always been about faith, an ideal, something to aspire to. He’d come closer than ever to death in Averheim, and no man remained unchanged in the face of his own mortality. Maybe he’d been too flamboyant in the past, too ready to orchestrate the defence of the Empire around his own ambition. Maybe Schwarzhelm had been right to resent his success. Maybe some of this had been his fault, despite the long, painful hours he’d spent blaming his great rival for all that had befallen.

  Things would have to change. Whatever the result of the war, he could not go back to Altdorf as if nothing had happened.

  He began to re-sheathe the sword when a faint rattling sound caught his attention. He paused, listening carefully. It was coming from outside the window. Helborg’s room was on the first storey of the mansion, more than twenty feet up from ground level. Leitdorf’s chambers were down the corridor, and the other rooms were empty.

  The rattling sounded again. Helborg placed the scabbard on the bed and took the naked sword up in his right hand. For some reason his heart began to beat faster. His armour had been hung in the room below, and he wore nothing more protective than a threadbare nightshirt. There should have been Reiksguard patrolling the grounds. The noise outside was like nothing he’d heard in his life, at once artificial and full of a strange, scuttling kind of life.

  He stood up from the bed and edged towards the window. He listened carefully. Nothing, save the faint creak of the floorboards beneath him and the rush of the wind from outside. Helborg stayed perfectly still, blade poised for the strike, watching.

  Still nothing. Heartbeats passed, gradually slowing. Perhaps he’d imagined it.

  The window shattered with a smash that resounded across the chamber. A bone claw thrust through the jagged panes, scrabbling at the stone sill, hauling something up behind it.

  Helborg sprang forwards, bringing the sword down on the talons with a massive, two-handed hammerblow. The stone fractured, sending shards spinning into the air, but the blade rebounded from the claw, jarring his arms and sending him staggering back. There was a thin scream and something crashed back down to earth. Helborg regained his feet. The talons had gone. Whatever had tried to get in had been sent plummeting back to the courtyard.

  It had not been alone. With a spider-like pounce, another creature leapt through the shattered glass, crouched on the floor and coiled for another spring.

  “Helborg!” it hissed, and there was something like ecstasy in its warped voice.

  Helborg stared at it in horror. The stink of Chaos rose from it, pungent and sweet. The body of a young woman, naked and covered in scars, squatted on the floor, draped in the remnants of rags. The flesh was as pale as the Deathmoon and caked with mud and filth from the moors. Old blood had dried on its needle teeth and ribbons of dry skin clung to the talons. Its eyes glinted with the dull sheen of tarnished iron, then blazed into a pale lilac fire.

  It pounced. Helborg swung the sword to parry, using all his strength to ward the scything claws. The horror’s strength and speed were incredible. It lashed out, striking at his eyes and fingers, following him across the chamber as he withdrew, step by step.

  Helborg’s sword moved in a blur, countering the strikes and thrusting back. He was the foremost swordsman of the Empire, but this blade was no runefang. The curved talons of the handmaiden scored the edge of it, scraping down its length in a shower of sparks and shivering the metal.

  More clambered in, two of them, their eyes lit up with the same lilac blaze. They rushed into the attack, limbs flailing, trying to break through Helborg’s guard.

  He pulled back to the door, whirling his blade in tighter and faster arcs. The edge seemed to have no effect on them. Every time his sword connected with flesh, a hidden layer of bone or iron bounced the shaft back. The creatures were like the automata of a crazed surgeon’s imagination, pitiless and unstoppable.

  One dropped down low and went for his legs. He kicked the creature hard in the face, knocking it on its back, before leaping away to dodge the attack from the others. As he withdrew again he felt hot blood running down his shin. Morr’s teeth, the thing had bitten him.

  The first creature pressed the attack, trying to impale him against the wooden doorframe, jabbing its talons in hard and straight. Its face came close, locked in a contortion of pain. Helborg veered his head out of the way and blocked a sideswipe from the second with the flat of his sword. The third got back on its feet and coiled to leap again. They were all over him.

  Feeling the door at his back, Helborg kicked it open and retreated out to the landing beyond. It was darker there, and the pursuing horrors’ eyes glowed with malice in the gloom. Step by step they pushed him back, slicing at his exposed flesh, pushing for the opening. It was only a matter of time. He couldn’t hurt them, and they never tired. Even as he knocked away a lunge, Helborg felt a sharp stab of pain as one of the talons got past his guard.

  He broke away, fresh blood dripping from the wound, twisting and blocking to evade the merciless attack. They were going to break through. They’d blooded him, and the taste of it in the air drove them into a fresh mania.

  “Helborg!” they cried together, gathering themselves for the strike like coiling snakes. Helborg held the sword steady, waiting for them in the dark. His teeth clenched, breath coming in ragged gasps. He tensed, ready for the impact.

  “Sigmar!”

  He heard the cry, but the voice wasn’t his. A dark shape plunged past him, wielding a blade and swinging it with clumsy abandon.

  The new sword swung down, connecting with the lead creature as it made to leap. A flash of blinding light broke out across the landing, briefly showing up the scene in stark, dazzling relief.

  Leitdorf was there. Leitdorf. The fat, slovenly man laid into the horrors with his broadsword, as naked as the day he’d been born, roaring with a kind of blind, panicked fury. Helborg lurched after him, desperate to stop the man being cut to pieces. The elector was no swordsman—he was a fool, a buffoon, a spoiled brat.

  The horrors fell back. Incredibly, they shrank away from the heavy swipes of the Wolfsklinge, eyes dull with horror, talons curled up into impotent fists. Leitdorf ploughed into them, jabbing left and right with slow, inexpert strokes. Every step he took, they scrabbled back, screaming at him with an unmistakable expression of terror.

  They were afraid of him.

  There was no time to be astounded. In a heartbeat, Helborg was at his side, matching the elector’s clumsy blows with precision strikes. Under the twin assault, the creatures seemed to shrivel into a tortured impotence, holding their tortured hands up in front of their ravaged faces, scuttling to escape, desperate not to face the heavy bite of the Wolfsklinge.

  “Follow my lead!” roared Helborg, dazzling one of the creatures with a glittering backhand swipe before bringing the edge back sharply. The horror, so eerily efficient before, clattered backwards. Its guard destroyed, Leitdorf landed the killer blow, his sword cleaving the creature from neck to stomach in a single movement. Old flesh, iron bindings, clockwork bearings and rune-stamped plates scattered across the landing floor, skittering and bouncing as the creature was ripped apart. A cloud of jasmine perfume billowed out, sighing across the darkness of the landing before rippling into nothingness.

  The two remaining handmaidens turned to flee, wailing like lost children in the night. With every blow from Leitdorf’s blade a fresh blaze of light seemed to cow them further. Leitdorf and Helborg pushed them back into the bedchamber, steel ringing against bone and exploding in flashes of light and sparks.

  One of them coiled for a counter-attack, jaws wide in a scream of fear and hatred, talons extended for a desperate, gouging assault. Helborg was on it in an instant, his blade hurtling round to sever the horror’s wrists. As
ever, his weapon bounced from the creature without biting, but the impact was enough to knock it off balance.

  “Now!” he roared, and Leitdorf was quick enough to obey. The elector jabbed down, his grip two-handed, and the creature was smashed apart by the power of the Wolfsklinge.

  One remained. It scrabbled backwards, face contorted in terror. It stared at Leitdorf with anguish, all thoughts of its mission forgotten.

  Helborg shot Leitdorf a quick look. The man’s face was white with terror and his temples were drenched in sweat. He was panting heavily, mouth open and jaw loose. He looked like he’d stumbled into a nightmare.

  “Finish it,” Helborg growled, edging forwards. He had to provide the opening. He let the tip of his sword sway back and forth, distracting the creature as it crouched miserably.

  Then he struck, darting forwards, slipping the blade under the horror’s outstretched talons, going for the midriff.

  It slapped the sword away contemptuously, ignoring his attack, eyes still on Leitdorf. But the distraction had been enough. The elector was on it, hammering down with the Wolfsklinge, shattering iron bonds and ripping dry skin.

  The handmaiden, Natassja’s killing machine, the perfect assassin, shattered under the flurry of blows, its tortured hide carved open, its spell-locked innards dented and smashed. Helborg staggered out of the way, ducking under a wild swipe from Leitdorf. The man hacked and hammered in a frenzy of rage and fear, obliterating the cowering horror with blow after crushing blow. Even when it was nothing more than a heap of dented iron and twitching sinews he kept going, pounding away until the floorboards beneath were hacked up and in danger of collapsing.

  “Leitdorf!” cried Helborg.

  The man kept going, eyes wild, hair swinging around his head like flails.

  “Leitdorf!” roared Helborg, grabbing him by the shoulder and swinging him round. For a moment, he thought Leitdorf was going to attack him. The elector stared at him wide-eyed, his face lost in a mask of terror.

  “It’s me, Rufus,” said Helborg, eyes locked with his, hand clamped on his shoulder.

  Leitdorf froze, sword ready to strike. His limbs were shivering. His fat belly was streaked with sweat. Slowly, haltingly, he let the Wolfsklinge fall from his fingers. It clanged amongst the shattered carcasses of the handmaidens, now lost in the darkness of the chamber.

  “What… I…” he mumbled, frenzy giving way to shock. The blood had drained from his face. He looked ready to pass out.

  “Get some clothes on,” said Helborg, keeping the grip on his shoulder tight. Already there were sounds of commotion from below. “I’ll get some guards up here. Then we need to talk.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Leitdorf sat in his father’s study. His hands still shook each time he raised the glass of wine to his lips. From the landing outside he could hear the guards clearing away the last of the wreckage of the assassin creatures.

  Dawn had broken, and a meagre light had slowly crept over the moorland outside. The clouds that had been building up for days continued to mount, blocking the light of the sun and turning the sky as dark and sullen as a musket-barrel.

  Leitdorf placed his goblet back on the desk. In front of him, as always, was his father’s diary. He’d read it all, some parts several times over. Even the most obscure passages had begun to make some sense. Over the final few weeks’ entries, though, Marius’ handwriting was near-illegible, and there were still long sections where Rufus could make nothing out. In the centre of the page he was looking it, the old elector seemed to have drifted off into random scrawlings.

  …bedarruzibarr’zagarratumnan’akz’akz’berau…

  There was more of the same. One page was entirely covered in such nonsense. As he reflected on a proud mind laid low, his spirits sank further. He’d not been close to his father in life, but no son wanted to witness such degeneration. If he’d known at the time, maybe he’d have done something. Or maybe he’d have stayed mired in the excess and privilege he’d always known.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come.”

  Helborg pushed the door open. It had been courteous of him to knock. Over the past few days, the Marshal had got into the habit of bursting in uninvited. Helborg walked over to the desk and leaned against the wall beside Leitdorf. He looked untroubled by the events of a few hours ago. No doubt he’d seen worse.

  “Feeling better?” asked the Marshal.

  “Yes, thank you.” The wine had helped calm his nerves. Leitdorf noticed Helborg had had his wound freshly bound again. He looked a lot more formidable out of his nightshirt and back in his standard military uniform. Not many men would have seen the Master of the Reiksguard fighting in his nightwear. Then again, at least the man had been wearing some clothes.

  “Interesting reading?”

  Leitdorf glanced back down at the page. “Like looking inside the mind of a dead man.”

  He pushed his chair back from the desk and turned to face the Marshal.

  “You know what’s been bothering me?” Leitdorf said. “For over a year we lived as a couple in Altdorf. She had access to all of my resources, all of my men. Why didn’t she ever try to corrupt me? Why did she use Grosslich?”

  Helborg shrugged. “You’re sure she never tried? The ways of the enemy are—”

  “Subtle, yes, I know,” muttered Leitdorf. “And yes, I’m sure. She tried to subvert my father—and failed. How could that be possible? She had the power to walk in men’s dreams. Just look what she did to Schwarzhelm. Somehow, Marius resisted her for all those years where the Emperor’s Champion couldn’t. He was untouchable.”

  As he spoke, Leitdorf felt a fugitive pride in that.

  “Not all men give in to temptation,” said Helborg.

  “Of course. But something else is at work here. You saw what happened with those… creatures. It’s only confirmed a suspicion I’ve had for some time, ever since I first read this book.”

  Helborg looked doubtful, but said nothing.

  “You know as well as I that the bloodlines of the electors are ancient. There have been many ruling families in Averland over the centuries, but the Leitdorf’s have always been among them. Ever since the time of Siggurd my people have taken up swords in the defence of this realm. We’re bound to Averheim like none of the others. This has always been the root of our hold over the runefang, even during the dark times when it was wielded by others. We were the first ones.”

  As he spoke, Leitdorf thought of all the fine words he’d rehearsed for this speech. It sounded ludicrous, contemptible even, in his head. Still, he had to say it.

  “My father believed there was a hidden presence in the city. Under the city. His dreams were full of it—a source of power, or evil, or knowledge. That’s why he hated Averheim, even as he fought to retain it. Men have long joked that the place was cursed, destined forever to be ruled by the insane. My father thought he knew why. There were always clandestine forces at work there, nagging away in the shadows, whispering in the silences.”

  Helborg narrowed his eyes, still listening intently.

  “And then there was this woman, this Natassja, making all those fears explicit, coming to him in his sleep. Despite everything, she failed to turn him to the enemy. Why? He was too strong, too indomitable. In the end, tiring of her seduction, she let him ride out to face Ironjaw and turned her ambitions away from the Leitdorf’s. She had to.”

  As he spoke, Rufus held Helborg’s gaze, his brown eyes steadier than they’d ever been.

  “It’s in our blood, Marshal,” he said. “We can’t be turned. I’d always been told it by nursemaids and tutors, but I never really knew what they meant until now. We have our failings, to be sure, but one kind of corruption we are free of. The whispers of the great enemy are useless against us. It’s not just a matter of will. It’s in the blood.”

  Helborg looked sceptical. “You think that explains what happened here?”

  Leitdorf smiled. “You know my reputation as a fi
ghter, my lord. And yet, against her creations, I had the mastery. I will always have the mastery. She must have known that. So she needed to find another champion.”

  Helborg remained incredulous. Leitdorf couldn’t blame him. The idea sounded preposterous to him too in the cold light of day. And yet only he—fat, stupid Rufus—had been able to defeat the creatures. The hero of the Empire, the Hammer of Chaos, would have been carved apart by them. There was some link between the Leitdorf’s and Natassja, something that made him powerful.

  “I’ve heard of such things,” said the Marshal at last, evidently unconvinced. “There are weapons, the Wolfsklinge maybe, which have power over individuals and their works. Maybe some long-forgotten father of your line performed a distant feat of faith which explains your victory. Beyond that, I would not safely go.”

  Leitdorf smiled again, this time with resignation. He couldn’t expect anyone else to understand. This was between him, his father and Natassja.

  “No doubt you’re right, my lord,” he said. “Only consider this. There is a force for corruption in the city that my family has resisted for generations, even to the extent of being driven into madness. Is it not possible that we have developed some counterpart power of our own? And if this were so, would it not be a matter of great hope for the Empire? For mankind, even?”

  Helborg thought for a moment, then gave a noncommittal gesture. “There are many strange things in the world. Be careful where your pride takes you, elector. Many have thought themselves immune to the call of corruption. They have always been the first to fall.”

  Leitdorf bowed his head. “Of course. These are just speculations.”