Swords of the Emperor

by Chris Wraight

  Volkmar had got back to his feet by then, and sent a fresh stream of spitting golden fire straight at the daemon. His staff was the only weapon that seemed able to harm her daemonic flesh. Irritated by the interruption in her killing, she turned her attention back to the raging cleric.

  Helborg tensed, ready to plunge back into the attack, but then caught sight of Leitdorf. The man had frozen. The Wolfsklinge was in his hands, but only just.

  “Your blade, Leitdorf!” bellowed Helborg, rushing to the elector’s side. As he did so, he saw Volkmar being beaten back, just as before. “Remember Drakenmoor!”

  Leitdorf shot him a panic-stricken look.

  “I can’t…” he began, but then Helborg was dragging him to face Natassja.

  “We attack together!” he cried, pushing him forwards. “Just as before!”

  The Marshal hurled himself at the daemon. Somehow Leitdorf summoned the courage to join him, and the two men charged the monstrous figure.

  Then, and for the first time, Helborg almost wounded her. Distracted by Volkmar’s attack and faced with the onslaught of two ancient blades, Natassja faltered for just an instant. She pulled back from Helborg’s blow, but failed to withdraw from Leitdorf’s attack. The Wolfsklinge passed through her flesh without biting and came clean out the other side.

  Off-balance, Leitdorf stumbled to his knees. As quick as a whip, Natassja kicked out with a hoof and sent him flying across the chamber floor. He hit the far wall hard. His sword spun from his grasp, coming to rest by the eviscerated body of a fallen Reiksguard knight.

  Isolated and unable to land a blow, Helborg fell back.

  Two of the surviving warrior priests charged at the daemon then, their warhammers swinging heavily. Natassja turned to face them and bared her fangs again. One priest simply exploded, his breastplate spinning across the floor and spraying blood. The other seized up, his face marked with agony. He shuddered, and his bones burst out through his flesh, lengthening with frightening speed, tearing the muscles as they came. The priest collapsed to the ground and dissolved into a mess of ripped flesh and still-extending skeleton.

  By then there were only six priests left, all cowed by the daemon’s contemptuous response to their attacks. Helborg looked over at Volkmar. The Theogonist was preparing for a third attack, but Natassja had badly hurt him. Leitdorf lived too, but he looked dazed and shaky on his feet.

  “We can’t do this,” breathed Helborg, aghast at the sudden awareness of his weakness. He took up the Klingerach again and prepared for another charge. Duty demanded no less, but he held no hope for it. “We have come too late. The bitch will kill us all.”

  Leitdorf gasped for breath. The merest touch of Natassja’s flesh had been enough to send a searing chill through his body. He’d felt the vast power coiled up within her then, and it dwarfed anything he’d ever felt before.

  He gazed up at her, watching as she pulled the limbs from another warrior priest. Natassja looked almost bored, as if this were a mild distraction before the real entertainment began. Next to her, Helborg and Volkmar, two of the mightiest warriors in the Empire, looked more ineffectual than children playing at combat.

  Determined as ever, Helborg charged back into contact, spinning the Sword of Vengeance around him, trying to land a blow on Natassja’s shifting, ephemeral body.

  As he did so, Volkmar sent a third barrage of faith-fire at her. The Theogonist aimed at her face and the swirling column of lightning impacted directly. She was knocked back against the Stone. The impact didn’t do any real damage, but the interruption seemed to infuriate her.

  She extended her palm and Helborg was flung back through the air, his limbs flailing as the unseen thrust slammed him aside. Then she clenched her fist and Volkmar doubled over. The light streaming from his staff dimmed, and he fell to his knees in pain.

  Ignoring his own wounds, Leitdorf limped to Volkmar’s side. He clutched at the Theogonist’s shoulders as the man toppled to one side. The remaining warrior priests charged heroically at the daemon, drawing her attention away from Volkmar. Their six lives bought nothing but a few moments of respite.

  “My lord!” Leitdorf cried, helping the man to the floor.

  The Theogonist’s eyes were filmy. It looked like he wasn’t seeing very much.

  “Too… powerful…” he gasped, and his fingers clutched at his staff feebly.

  Leitdorf felt his despair turn to a desperate, frustrated anger. He looked up. The roof of the chamber was open, and a vast shaft of fire soared away into the distance. This had been Natassja’s birth-chamber. The entire structure above was nothing more than an amplifier for the energies needed to bring her into being. That was why she’d needed Averheim. It was nothing to do with temporal power or riches. For her, the city had been a machine.

  He looked at Natassja. She killed two more men then, flaying them alive with a twist of her fingers. The remaining quartet still came on, still trying to find a way to harm her. Helborg too had staggered back into range. Their bravery was phenomenal, but it would do little to save them.

  “Can you ignite the staff again?” asked Leitdorf, a note of desperation in his voice.

  Volkmar shook his head.

  “Look around you,” he panted. “This has been centuries in the making. We cannot hurt her.”

  Leitdorf slammed his fist against the marble floor. He was no longer afraid, just furious. After all the pain, all the bloodshed, it had come to this at last. His inheritance, turned to ashes before his eyes, destroyed in order to bring a new horror into the world.

  “There must be something.”

  Volkmar shook his head. “Her daemonhood is complete. Without knowledge of her true name, she is invulnerable to us.”

  The last of the warrior priests was riven where he stood, his body torn into ribbons. Only Helborg, Volkmar and Leitdorf remained. The last ones to die, locked beneath the earth under a tower of iron.

  From above, the distant howling grew louder. The lesser daemons were still looking for a way in. The bloodfire bloomed anew, roaring and thundering against the iron. The Stone could sense victory, and gloried in it.

  “Her name?” asked Leitdorf, suddenly feeling a sliver of hope. “What power would that give you?”

  Volkmar looked up at him. There was a grim smile on his face, the resigned look of a man who knows death is upon him.

  “I could hurt her then,” he growled. “By Sigmar, I would hurt her.”

  Leitdorf began to fumble at his belt.

  “Find the power,” he ordered, his voice suddenly resonant again. “Find it from somewhere. This isn’t over yet.”

  Helborg pulled the body of the warrior priest back, but too late. The man’s skin hung in strips from his frame. For a last few agonised moments, the priest still lived. He fixed Helborg with piteous eyes, blood and tears mingling across his destroyed face. Then he collapsed, just another corpse on the floor of the chamber.

  Helborg withdrew a pace, keeping his blue eyes locked on the figure looming over him. Natassja smiled at him and flexed her talons.

  “Shall I preserve you?” she mused, looking at the Marshal as if he were a morsel of food at the end of a banquet. “These ones have died in an instant. Your death will last for an eternity.”

  Helborg smiled wolfishly, keeping the runefang between him and the daemon.

  “I am sustained by faith,” he said.

  Natassja raised an amused eyebrow.

  “You believe that still? Do you not think these priests had faith?”

  “Their deaths were glorious. Their souls are with Sigmar.”

  Natassja shook her head with disbelief.

  “You mystify me, human,” she said. “You all mystify me. You are shown the illusion, and still you refuse to see through it.”

  Helborg circled round the daemon carefully, looking for any sign of weakness.

  “I see enough.”

  “Evidently not.”

  She moved, quicker than thought, reaching out with a t
aloned hand to grab him by the throat. At the same time, Volkmar roared into life for a final time. A beam of gold lanced out from his staff and slammed Natassja backwards, dousing her in a cascade of golden shards.

  She spun to face the Theogonist. The cool irritation had vanished from her features to be replaced by exasperation.

  “Still not dead?” she spat. “You’re beginning to annoy me, disciple.”

  She coiled to strike, curling her talons into a fist. Volkmar shrank back, his bloodied figure standing defiant against the coming onslaught.

  “Bedarruzibarr!” came a voice from the edge of the chamber.

  Natassja whirled round, amazement and horror suddenly rippling across her features.

  Leitdorf stood before her. He held the book in his trembling hands. He kept reading. Just as it had done for her birth, the bloodfire in the chamber flared up at the sound. “Bedanuzibarr’zagarratumnan’akz’akz’berau!”

  “Cease speaking, worm!” screamed Natassja, and her hands burst into blue flame.

  “Bedarruzibarr!” thundered Volkmar, echoing Leitdorf’s cry.

  The Theogonist raised his staff and sent a flurry of crackling bolts into Natassja’s torso. They impacted heavily. This time they seemed to damage her, and she staggered back towards the Stone.

  “Cease!” she cried, still wreathed in bands of shimmering golden flame. “This is forbidden knowledge!”

  “Abbadonnodo’neherata’gradarruminam!” shouted Leitdorf, his voice growing in confidence, tracing the words from the pages of his father’s diary. With every syllable, Natassja seemed to recoil further.

  Volkmar sent fresh volleys of faith-fire at her, his face alight with furious relish.

  “Hear your name, spawn of Slaanesh!” he roared in triumph. “Feel the powers at your command unravel!”

  Buffeted by a wall of spitting fire, Natassja rocked back. The calm assurance of her superiority was gone. The syllables of her true name echoed around the chamber, fuelling Volkmar’s torrent of righteous fire. She reeled under the onslaught, screaming as the fire tore at her.

  Then Helborg was on her too, no longer seeming so diminutive. He hauled his blade round in a mighty arc, scything at Natassja’s legs. The runefang connected, and a blaze of pure white light leapt up. Blood sprayed through the air, as black as the Stone behind it, sparkling like beads of onyx.

  Natassja screamed again, her voice now filled with pain and frustration. She lashed out with her left fist, catching Helborg on his breastplate and sending him lurching backwards. She opened her other hand and let loose the full power within her.

  The chamber shuddered, rocked to its foundations by the blast. The bloodfire blazed purple, roaring into a frenzy. Volkmar was knocked from his feet, and the Staff spun from his grasp. Cracks ran up the walls and the iron bands around them broke open. Wards were shattered, and the howling of the lesser daemons boomed down the shaft.

  Leitdorf jumped aside just as the floor disintegrated under him. The marble rippled like a wave and cracked open. From below, the thunderous roar of the deep engines rolled upwards.

  Natassja staggered towards Leitdorf, the last of Volkmar’s golden fire streaming from her shoulders. She was badly wounded, and great gashes had opened on her flanks. They wept black essence, as dark and pure as jet.

  “Worm!” she rasped, and her voice was fractured with hatred. The choir within her had begun to come apart. “Utter not words beyond your comprehension.”

  Leitdorf scrambled away from her, stumbling around the edge of chamber.

  “Malamanuar’nerarnumo’klza’jhehennum!” he shouted, keeping up the recital even as he fled from Natassja’s wrath. The very sound of it seemed to wound her.

  He couldn’t escape forever. The chamber held no hiding places, and Natassja still had the power to move quickly. She stood over the elector, towering above his paltry frame, poised to silence the words that cut through her power so completely.

  Leitdorf kept shouting the words out, right until the end. Natassja pulled her hand back, wailing in agony as each syllable resounded around the chamber. A curved dagger unrolled into existence, extending from her flesh like smoke and firming into a wicked, twin-bladed instrument.

  Helborg clambered to his feet and charged towards her. Volkmar hauled the Staff back into position. It was far too late. The dagger plunged down, seeming to cleave the very air around it. It lodged deep in Leitdorf’s chest, pinning him to the stone beneath.

  The elector screamed, and his body arched in agony. The book fell from his hands. As it hit the ground, Natassja glared at it and the parchment burst into green-tinged flame, shrivelling and curling into nothing.

  But then Helborg was close enough. With the last echoes of the daemon’s name still lingering in the shaft above them, he raised the Sword of Vengeance high above his head. The runes blazed in the bloodfire, reflecting the fury of the Stone, bending the rays of contamination back at it.

  Natassja whirled to face the new threat, but her aura of invincibility had gone. She bared her fangs again, fixing Helborg with a look of such malice and terror that a lesser man would have crumbled under it.

  Helborg’s shoulder wound burst open, drenching his chest with blood. For a moment, Natassja’s face rippled into Schwarzhelm’s, and a bizarre mix of daemon and man screamed its hatred at him.

  He didn’t flinch. The blade came down in a mighty, crushing sweep. The edge bit true, carving through aethyr-wound sinews as readily as real flesh. A ball of brilliant light radiated from the impact, rushing across the chamber and swirling into the heights of the shaft. The bloodfire guttered in its wake. Fresh cracks radiated from the Stone, rippling across the floor and releasing gouts of smog from the furnaces below.

  Natassja cried out with agony, and her many voices rebounded from the iron walls around her. Her face returned to its normal shape, transfixed in pain and fury. She twisted away from the runefang, exposing the huge, jagged wound in her torso. It gushed a torrent of bile, foaming and fizzing as it poured out into the world.

  Helborg ducked under a vicious swipe from her dagger hand and swung the Klingerach back at her. The blade sunk deep, cleaving Natassja’s stomach open and jarring on the bones beyond.

  The daemon fell to her knees, weeping blood. The bloodfire shuddered and veered away from her, suddenly averse to the failing presence in its midst. She dropped down further, bracing herself with a blood-streaked arm.

  Natassja looked at Helborg, her face now level with his. Her expression was a mix of scorn, fury and astonishment.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done, mortal,” she rasped, her voices jarring as they overlapped. “You have no idea…”

  Helborg didn’t listen. The Sword of Vengeance rose high, glimmering in the firelight.

  “I see enough,” he snarled, and brought the blade down.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Natassja’s severed head rolled from her body, coming to rest close to the stricken form of Leitdorf. The bloodfire continued to roar, the engines continued to grind, the wind continued to howl.

  Then the daemons came, tearing down the shaft, screaming like vengeful harpies. Helborg stood up to them, and the runefang blazed with a holy fire. All weariness had fallen from his shoulders. Just as before, he looked like one of the heroes of old, clad in sacred armour and wearing the hawk-wing helm of the Reiksmarshal. He waited for them to come to him, his cloak rippling in the bloodfire, still bearing the Sword of Vengeance in both hands.

  The first of them hurtled down from the pinnacle, teeth bared, arms outstretched. A second later, she lay on the floor next to her mistress, her body broken by Helborg. Another fell to the same blade, carved in two by the holy metal. The rest of them halted in their onslaught, suddenly looking with horrified eyes at the ruined body of their mistress. They hovered in the air above the Stone, frozen in terrible doubt.

  As they surveyed the scene, Volkmar recovered his footing.

  “The tide has turned, whores of Slaanesh,” he cri
ed, reaching for his staff and fixing them with a vengeful glare. “Leave while you can, or the Sword of Vengeance will tear every one of you apart.”

  They looked at him, then at Helborg. The Reiksmarshal stared back, grim-faced and resolute. The blade in his hands glowed with residual energy, and the runes resonated. The sword was back with its master, and its thirst for killing was not yet sated.

  Then they fled, screeching as they went, buoyed aloft by the surging bloodfire. The shaft echoed from their screeches, dying into nothing as they spiralled towards the distant pinnacle.

  The Tower creaked ominously. Pieces of iron and stone detached from the walls and trails of dust ran down from the high places.

  Helborg watched the daemons go, then stumbled across to Leitdorf. Volkmar joined him, limping heavily. As they went, the floor cracked further. Great booms rang out from far below, muffled by the layers of rock beneath them.

  Leitdorf’s face was pale. Natassja’s dagger had dissolved into nothingness with the demise of its mistress, but the wound was ugly and hadn’t closed. There was no blood, just a dark-edged hole. Leitdorf struggled to breathe. As Helborg approached, he tried to push himself up on to his elbows.

  “Remain still,” said Helborg, coming to his side and looking anxiously at his wound. “Can you do anything, Theogonist?”

  Volkmar crouched down next to the Marshal. He placed his calloused hands on the incision, and Leitdorf recoiled in pain. The Theogonist closed his eyes, probing for aethyric residue. When he opened them again, his expression was grave.

  “No lies between us, Rufus Leitdorf,” he said. “This wound is mortal.”

  Leitdorf smiled thinly.

  “How stupid do you think I am?” Then he broke into coughing. There was blood in his throat, flecked on his armour.

  “You have triumphed, elector,” said Helborg, his severe face drawn with pain. “Do you remember your words in Drakenmoor? You have proved the bane of her.”

  Leitdorf cast his weakening gaze over to the broken body of the daemon prince. It lay just a few feet away, huge, ravaged, and yet for all that still perversely alluring.