Swords of the Emperor

by Chris Wraight

  “Save your energy for the daemons,” rasped Volkmar, watching as the first of them plunged downwards. “You’ll need it.”

  The daemon hurtled towards Helborg, only turning out of the path of the Klingerach at the last moment. The Marshal ignored it. Unless they made a mistake, they were too fast to engage with. The curtains of fire in the air buoyed them. This was their element. More screams from behind him told him they’d found another victim.

  He turned a final corner and ran down a long, straight street. At the end of it, the rows of shattered houses finally gave out, revealing a pair of enormous iron-rimmed gates. Two pillars flanked them, crowned with fire. Beyond the gates, a wide and featureless courtyard opened up. The Tower stood in the centre. Up close, its scale was even more daunting.

  “Volkmar!” he shouted, keeping up the pace. “The gates!”

  The Theogonist responded instantly, summoning bolts of golden flame from his staff and hurling them at the iron. The gates shuddered from the first impact, broke on the second. The metal slammed back hard, bouncing from the stone pillars as the hinges strained. Then they were through, the ever-diminishing company tearing across the open courtyard, harried and pursued at every step.

  “I can sense her,” said Leitdorf.

  The man was suffering. His red face still carried too much fat, and the sweat was running in rivulets down his cheeks. Just as he’d predicted, though, the daemons ignored him. The Wolfsklinge had a heritage they feared. Or maybe it was something more.

  “Then you’ll be the guide,” said Helborg, gazing up at the column of ruin looming over him.

  The Tower was massive, a soaring dark skeleton of iron over a throbbing core of magma-red. Above the pinnacle, the ring of clouds had broken, exposing Morrslieb again. The power that had drawn the storm in over Averheim was beginning to dissipate.

  Volkmar felt it too.

  “Weakness?” he asked.

  Leitdorf shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Its work is done.”

  Helborg didn’t ask how Leitdorf knew that. He risked a look over his shoulder. A few dozen men were left, all haggard and panting from the sprint across the ruined city. No regular troops had made it. The remainder were warrior priests and a scattering of Reiksguard, the only ones with the stomach to endure the horrors of the air. The Tower would be no kinder to them.

  “Once we’re in, which way?” he asked Leitdorf, watching as the massive Tower gates loomed up out of the fire-flecked dark.

  “Down,” replied the elector tersely. “She’s beneath the earth.”

  Volkmar shook his head. “There’s nothing human in there.”

  Helborg said nothing, but forced the pace once more. The gates drew close. Pillars of adamant framed the huge curved doors, glinting in the firelight. Sigils of Slaanesh adorned the iron, sunk deep into the metal in a sweeping pattern of silver. The vast bole of the Tower rose up into the night, soaring three hundred feet to the summit. The base of it was mighty, bound by pillars of obsidian and engraved bands of iron. The rumble of machines working in the deeps crept across the stone, and bloodfire rushed up the flanks of the enormous structure, washing over the colonnades and parapets as it raced to the apex.

  The daemons came for them again, swooping down the sheer sides of the Tower, arms outstretched and ready for more feeding. There were dozens of them now. They’d been waiting for this, their last chance to pick them off in the open.

  “Get those doors open,” snapped Helborg, but Volkmar was already working.

  The Theogonist swung his staff round and hurled a stream of leaping fire at the barred doors. They shivered, but remained closed.

  Then the daemons landed, crashing to earth and sinking their talons deep into the unprotected mortals below.

  “Sigmar!” roared Helborg, tearing into them with the Sword of Vengeance. They darted away from the blade, cowed by the rune-wound power of the steel.

  “Averland!” cried Leitdorf, though his meagre voice was carried away by the roar of the furnaces. He swiped wildly at the spinning creatures, and they evaded his blows easily.

  Volkmar unleashed another volley, and the gap between the doors fractured.

  The daemons kept coming, sweeping more troops up in their terrible embrace and tearing them apart in mid-air. One of them came for the big warrior priest with the standard. He stood his ground and brought his heavy warhammer round with incredible speed. The faith-strengthened head of it slammed into the oncoming daemon. Bright light blazed from the impact, knocking the creature back yards. It hovered for a moment, dazed.

  The priest roared his defiance, keeping the standard aloft, whirling the warhammer over his head in triumph.

  “Smite the mutant!” he bellowed. “Purge the—”

  A claw punched through his back and out through his chest. He coughed up blood in gouts as he was lifted from the ground. More daemons flocked to him, snapping at his flailing limbs and biting deep into his flesh. Too quick for Helborg to reach him, they dragged the heavy figure into the air.

  “Fight the darkness!” Maljdir roared through his blood-clogged throat, still crying aloud as half a dozen daemons struggled to bear him aloft. He dropped the standard but kept swinging his warhammer, slamming more of them aside even as he was taken beyond the reach of help. “Dawn will come again! Trust to faith!”

  Then he was gone, hauled up the flanks of the Tower, his increasingly weak cries of denunciation and defiance echoing down from above before they were silenced forever.

  Volkmar summoned fire a third time and the gates blew inwards, crashing back on their enormous hinges. A sickly jasmine stench rolled out to greet them. Beyond the portal, a corridor stretched away, dark and forbidding.

  “Inside!” roared Helborg, pushing his men across the threshold, doing what he could to protect the swooping daemons from their backs. They hurried in, those that were left. Leitdorf was at the rear, followed last of all by Volkmar. As the Theogonist passed under the dark lintel, he turned and smashed his staff on the ground. A ball of force raced outwards, a shimmer in the air like the backwash from a massive explosion. The daemons were hurled away, wheeling into the high airs and screaming with frustration.

  “Close the gates!” Helborg shouted, seizing a door and pushing against it.

  There were fewer than twenty of them left. The priests and Volkmar took one door, the Reiksguard and Leitdorf joined Helborg. Slowly, agonisingly slowly, the gates began to grind shut. Outside, quickly recovered from Volkmar’s casting, the daemons rushed back, screaming for more blood. Helborg saw the foremost tearing towards him, her eyes alive with bloodlust.

  “Harder!” he roared, straining every muscle. The gap closed too slowly. The daemons hurtled towards it, reaching for the diminishing space. If they got in, then they were all dead men.

  At last, groaning and creaking, the mighty iron doors slammed into place. There were heavy thuds from the outside as the daemons crunched into them, followed by howls of petulant anguish. The iron doors buckled but did not break.

  “There are wards here,” panted Volkmar, leaning on his knees.

  “That won’t hold them,” said Leitdorf, drawing huge, shuddering breaths.

  All around, the surviving troops slumped to the polished marble. Helborg felt impatience prick at him. They needed to keep moving.

  “How long have we got?”

  Leitdorf shrugged, his shoulders shivering with fatigue.

  “They know this place better than we do,” he said without conviction. “Not long.”

  Helborg looked over his shoulder. The corridor yawned away into the dark, lit only by faint blushes of lilac. The walls were dark and smooth, polished to a high sheen. The muted thunder of the bloodfire still thrummed throughout the walls. The interior of the Tower was filled with strange, echoing sounds. The immense superstructure of iron creaked. From far below, unearthly noises rose up, warped and distorted by their passage through the catacombs. The stain of corruption was everywhere, thi
ck and cloying.

  At the far end of the corridor there was a huge spiral stairway leading both up and down. Flickering light, bright and unnaturally blue, came from below.

  “Time to move again,” Helborg said. His voice was harsh, his expression unforgiving. “And I hate to keep a lady waiting.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Schwarzhelm kept his weight perfectly balanced, watching for the counter-thrust. The raw power of his anger flowed freely, but it did not master him. The duel was too evenly poised for recklessness, and Grosslich was too strong. His natural skill as a soldier had been magnified by his corruption, and he matched Schwarzhelm’s blistering assault stroke for stroke.

  All around them, the battle was similarly poised. Schwarzhelm’s men, a mix of the many companies Volkmar had brought into battle, were locked in combat with the dog-soldiers. Neither side had the mastery, and the line of grappling men stayed static, locked over the same patch of blood-soaked land.

  As for the remainder of the army, Schwarzhelm could only hope they were holding together. He’d worked hard to restore some kind of shape to the Imperial lines, but the numbers were still against them. Killing Grosslich might bring some respite, but it wouldn’t win the day. Whatever happened between the two of them, there were long hours of fighting ahead.

  Grosslich pressed the attack, his sword crackling with lilac energy. As he did so, the clouds fractured over the summit of the Tower. Starlight shone through the gap, exposing the deep of the night above. Then, slipping into vision as the clouds sheared away, Morrslieb spilled its putrid light across the battlefield. Firelight mingled with the yellowish stain of corruption, making even the Empire troops look as ravaged as corpses.

  Grosslich risked a glance upwards before meeting Schwarzhelm’s challenge again. The swords crunched together, splattering the viscous slurry from Grosslich’s sword in a wide circle.

  “The Deathmoon,” he said, dodging a vicious swipe at his flanks and twisting Schwarzhelm’s blade back at him. “Sign of your defeat.”

  “My defeat?” growled Schwarzhelm, letting his sword come back and seizing the grip with both hands. “I remember you as you were. There’s no victory for you here.”

  He flung Grosslich’s blade up out of position and stabbed at the traitor’s midriff.

  “Your death will be victory enough,” hissed Grosslich, sidestepping the strike and getting his sword back down into guard. His voice was ragged with effort.

  “Tell yourself that, if you need to.”

  Grosslich snarled and surged forwards. His sword spun round, spraying black fluid over Schwarzhelm’s armour.

  “You know nothing of my choices!” he spat, thrusting at Schwarzhelm’s guard with renewed vigour. “Dominion was denied me, though I was twice the man Leitdorf was.”

  Schwarzhelm let the flurry of blows come to him, stepping into them, bringing his enormous strength to bear on the parries, engaging the peerless swordsmanship that had made his reputation on the battlefields of the Empire.

  “Maybe once. Now you have diminished, and he has grown.”

  “He lives?” Grosslich became agitated, and the disquiet fed itself into his sword-strokes.

  “Even now he nears the Tower. Husband and wife are due a reunion.”

  Grosslich’s eyes filled with a mocking light. His face glowed sickeningly as his misshapen mouth cracked into a warped smile.

  “She needs no husband,” he laughed, meeting a powerful thrust from Schwarzhelm and pushing it back. “He can’t destroy her. You can’t. Only I have the power. Kill me, and you doom yourself.”

  Schwarzhelm feinted to the left before bringing his edge back sharply, probing for the join in Grosslich’s armour below the breastplate.

  “You overestimate your power,” he said, his voice steely calm. “Do you not recognise the Sword of Justice? It is a holy blade. It thirsts for your death, and you have nothing to answer it with.”

  Grosslich laughed again. Quick as a snake, he pressed the attack, whirling his sword into Schwarzhelm’s face. The strike was blocked, but the power behind it was sudden and massive. The locked blades fell back before Schwarzhelm’s mighty arms halted the thrust. For a moment, the edge of the metal was close. Close enough for him to see the runes on Grosslich’s sword-edge, half-obscured beneath the ever-flowing corruption across its surface.

  “You don’t recognise my blade either?” Grosslich crowed. “You gave it to me. The runefang of Averland. The Sword of Ruin. All of this, you gave to me. I have bent it to my will, just as I have this province. It can hurt you, Schwarzhelm. Oh, this can hurt you.”

  The two men broke apart again. For a moment, Schwarzhelm’s eyes still rested on his enemy’s sword. A flicker of doubt passed across his face. Above them, the Deathmoon spread its sickening sheen across the mass of struggling men. In every direction, thousands struggled, all lit by the fires of Averheim. All around him, his troops were pitted against a foe they couldn’t hope to best. They would die, one by one, even if he halted Grosslich.

  Schwarzhelm brought the Rechtstahl into guard, feeling the solid weight of it in his hands. The light of Morrslieb glinted from the steel, transmuted into pure silver by the holy metal. Grosslich waited for him, gathering his strength.

  Doubt drained away. All that remained was combat, the purity of the test. It was one he had never failed, not even against Helborg. He wouldn’t do now.

  “Pain is fleeting, Grosslich,” he said, poised for the strike. “Damnation is eternal. Let me show you the difference.”

  “I’ll go first,” said Helborg. His voice resounded from the marble walls of the Tower. “Leitdorf behind, Volkmar last.”

  The men silently fell into their positions. None of them, even the warrior priests, looked sure of themselves. There was something sickening about the Tower. The long nights of agony had left their imprint in the structure, staining it as surely as a birthmark. A man didn’t need Volkmar’s skills to detect the perversion humming in the air.

  “Remember yourselves,” the Marshal warned, peering ahead to the stairwell. Despite himself, his heart beat faster in his chest. After the terrible sprint to the Tower, the sudden eerie quiet was hard to deal with. Something awful lurked here, something ancient and suffused with malignance. “Death in His service is glorious. Only the traitor fears destruction.”

  He crept forwards, and the spurs on his boots clicked against the marble. The paltry band of men, now just eighteen strong, stayed close, eyes wide, knuckles white on the grips of their weapons. At the rear, Volkmar kindled a warm glow from the tip of his staff. It was scant consolation, and did little more than pick out the horrific images engraved on the walls.

  They went down the stairs swiftly, hurrying round the broad sweep of the spiral and avoiding the twisted shapes embedded into the iron banister rail. As they descended, it got hotter. Breathing became more difficult and the growl of the hidden engines echoed more loudly. From far in the deeps, there came the sound of clanging, as if vast chains swung together. A muted howling resonated from far above.

  “Daemons,” muttered Leitdorf, clutching at the book at his belt.

  “Volkmar can handle them,” said Helborg. Terror seemed to invest the air itself, and he was not immune from it. “Keep your mind clear. We’ll be busy with your Natassja.”

  “She was never mine.”

  “Enough. We’re closing.”

  They reached the base of the stairs. A long vaulted passageway led directly ahead. The walls were richly decorated with sculptures, all carved with assorted scenes of creative agony. Limbs and faces were contorted across stone friezes, locked in impossible positions of excruciation. Helborg let his gaze alight on the face of a young woman. The carving was artful, despite the debauchery. Bathed in the light of Volkmar’s staff, the subject still retained a warped kind of beauty.

  Her eyes flickered open.

  “Help me!” she gasped, muffled by the iron clamping her lips together.

  Helborg recoiled in shock
, bringing his blade up in a flash. The woman struggled against her sorcerous bonds, weeping with terror and misery. All along the corridor, other eyes opened. There were still people alive in there, locked in agony.

  “You can’t help them!” cried Volkmar, calling to a priest who had swung his hammer back, ready to smash them free. “They are one with the Tower. Leave them.”

  The band pressed on, walking a little faster, avoiding the piteous wails from the walls, hastening to avoid the fingers that somehow managed to clutch at them as they passed.

  It kept getting hotter. The roar of the bloodfire became more complete. A doorway loomed up at them from the shadows, high and ornately carved. The corruption came from within it.

  As they approached, a cloaked figure burst through the doors, screaming with fury. It might have been a man once, but it had been terribly transformed. Its spine curved over, forcing it to scuttle like an insect. Its flesh was ivory-white, though the eyes were ringed with black. One hand was chronically distorted, now little more than a collection of flesh-ribbons. The other was curled tight into a fist.

  “Blasphemy!” it screamed, hurling itself at Helborg.

  The Marshal caught it in mid-air with the edge of the Klingerach, hurling it back against the wall. The creature hit the iron with a crack, and slid down to the floor. For a moment it looked like it might get up again.

  “Blasphemy…” it croaked. Its mouth filled with purple blood and its eyes glazed over. “She will punish…”

  Then it locked into a spasm, choking and gagging. Helborg advanced to finish it off, but it expired. It slumped, twisted and broken against the iron wall.

  Leitdorf gazed at it with horrified recognition.

  “Achendorfer,” he breathed, unable to look away from the man’s distorted features.