Warhammer - Curse of the Necrarch

by Steven Savile

  He didn’t have time to dwell on it.

  The cry went up. The dead had come!

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Last Testament of the Lost Prophets

  On The Outskirts of Grimminhagen, in the Shadow of the Drakwald Forest, Middenland

  The Autumn of the Living Dead, 2532

  Amsel sat with all the pages in front of him, marvelling at the simplicity of the puzzle when all the pieces were in place. The vampire had come to the highest point overlooking the settlement of Grimminhagen, leaving the bulk of his army below, poised to crash down like a merciless tidal wave on the streets of the town. He felt a little surge of satisfaction at having followed the game to the end and brought it all together. It took a special kind of mind to see outside the framework of the conundrum and root out the solution, but then, the master knew him better than any other. He knew his mind and the way he thought and had constructed the clues for him to follow. Korbhen had laboured long and hard to lay out the seeds of his long game, anticipating the covetous nature of his get and the grim determination of his thrall, and planting seeds to please and frustrate in equal measure. Now, on this darkling plain, Amsel knew that just rewards waited over the next horizon.

  He took the bones of the dead bird in his hands, gently stroking life into the brittle skeleton. The wing twitched involuntarily. He whispered a sweet word, drawing another barely perceptible tremor out of the dead bird’s carcass. He had written the note, cryptic enough to have Radu pacing and cursing his name before he took the time to decipher the message properly, and secured it around the dead bird’s leg.

  Amsel breathed unlife into the fragile creature, throwing it up into the air. The bird’s wings flapped and fluttered as it lurched in the sky, flying erratically. Amsel watched it, willing the creature to rise. When it was high in the sky he whispered the final command, bidding it fly home to Kastell Metz. “Carry the message to the new master. Bid him come.”

  The bird rose higher and higher, angling towards the dark clouds. It would find Radu and in the meantime they would wait.

  The prize is not a book but a box long hidden where the bodies are buried in Grimminhagen. It awaits your hand.

  The knowledge that it was no mere book they sought excited him. He ran his fingers over the indentations beneath the ink on the page, tracing out the symbol of the great Nagash and recognising the secret strength seeded into the vellum. It was no accident that Korbhen had woven the necromancer’s sigil into the warp and weft of the paper. He could read the images as clearly as he could the words, and knew precisely what they meant, but doubts nagged him, still. Could Korbhen really have left such a treasure waiting at the rainbow’s end, or was it more lies meant to build up Radu and then crush him when they came to nothing?

  “Could it possibly be?” he whispered, daring to hope.

  Hope was such a tenacious thing. Once it had its teeth in the mind it did not let go.

  He knew what the scrolls promised, and he had told Radu enough to work it out if he dared. A box where the bodies are buried is more commonly known as a coffin or casket, long hidden, or hidden throughout the ages. Could such a treasure truly contain the necromancer’s hand? Or was it a metaphor for the power the hand offered? He had some of the answers, but far from all of them. The rest were there to be read by those with eyes to see.

  Radu watched the dead bird settle on the battlements among the rest of its kind. Flesh and feather hung from its tiny bones. Its jaundiced eyes roved, finally settling on the necrarch. It hopped forward. He saw the note fastened to its leg and chuckled at the utterly prosaic nature of his thrall’s communication. That Amsel would raise a raven from the dirt to carry the message and not imbibe it with the remnants of his own voice but rather scratch out a few hasty words said so much about the thrall.

  The cruel wind howled, whipping in from the north. Given time it would bring snow. He grew weary of waiting. Amsel had been long gone with no word, and worse, no reward for his sojourn. Still, here was the bird with its archaic little message. He knew he ought to be grateful that the fool had managed this much, but there was no room for gratitude while every black heart he had surrounded himself with would so willingly feast on his remains.

  Below, he saw the filth of life diluted into the desperate act of survival, the few damned and deformed grubbing around in the dirt. He licked his fleshless lips.

  “Come to me, little wing,” the necrarch rasped, his voice clotted with disuse. The words frosted in the air like tiny crystals. The bird cocked its tiny head and then hopped forward three steps onto Radu’s rotten palm. The wind ruffled what was left of its feathers. He unfastened the tie and unrolled the small strip of parchment. The message was not what he had hoped. He crumpled the paper and tossed it from the parapet. “Can the fool not be trusted to do anything alone?” he railed, wheeling on his heel to see Casimir skulking in the shadows. The thrall irritated him irrationally, creeping around everywhere.

  “My brother has let you down, master?” Casimir wheedled, rubbing his pale hands together in gleeful anticipation.

  Radu knew him well enough to know that nothing pleased Casimir more than hearing of Amsel’s shortcomings. The bitterness between them would be the death of one of them soon, but even that did not worry the necrarch. Why should it? A second death was weakness. He had no need of the weak to serve him. If one died, how could he ever have been worthy of Radu’s wisdom?

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Radu the Forsaken muttered, his frustration getting the better of him. Without realising it he had crushed the frail skeleton of the resurrected bird in his gnarled fist. It cawed once, weakly, but didn’t die even as its chest cavity caved in and its wings bent and snapped like dry twigs. Radu looked down at the mess in his hand, grunted, and tossed it off the battlements. It fell, but it was not released of the curse that had brought it back. He watched as the fluttering of the wings became impossible to differentiate from the blur of its descent. It would live on until the enchantment failed, a pitiful wreck of a thing.

  “What does he say?”

  Radu looked up. What should he say? What lie should he spin? What truth should he obfuscate? What, in the end, did it matter what he told the eager Casimir? Let the thrall stew in his own juices and convince himself that Amsel had discovered some rare and exquisite treasure.

  “That the promised prize is not what was promised at all but something far, far more powerful. He would have me there for its recovery.”

  He watched the covetous gleam flicker across his thrall’s slack-jawed face.

  “I will watch over your work, master. You need not fear your efforts being undone by time.”

  “You are a fine servant, Casimir, faithful.”

  The thrall nodded.

  Radu could not miss the greed behind his dark eyes. His cravings were every bit as transparent as his brother-in-death’s, more so, even. That predictability made him malleable.

  “What will you do, master?”

  Radu thought about it, drawing the rags of his cloak close about him as though to ward off the wind’s chill. The moon danced silver across his lips. “What I always do, Casimir. I shall take hold of the situation myself. If you want a job doing well, you must, it seems, do it yourself.”

  “The master is wise indeed,” the thrall agreed, obsequiously.

  “Leave me now,” Radu said turning his back on the lickspittle.

  An ugly kestrel banked high in the night sky. Caught in the light of the twin moons its deformities drew the eye. Amsel watched it with a sense of trepidation, knowing the bird for what it was, a harbinger.

  A grey empty mist lay on the fields, wisps of fog curling up from the down-trodden grasses. The bones of the skeletons had been allowed to fall to rest, scattered across the fields. The acolytes would rouse them when the need arose. He had better things to do than waste his energies rising piles of bones. This was his moment of glory. The zombies stood still, swaying slightly as they awaited the imperative to attack. For now, the pe
ace was a blessing. The deformed clung to the dubious safety of the trees. Amsel turned his attention from the bird to the mist, listening for the telltale sounds of Radu’s approach. For the longest time there was nothing but the loneliness of the mists, but slowly a dark shape began to resolve and the crook-backed necrarch limped out of the swirling fog, strands of ethereal white still clinging to him as he stomped angrily through the remnants of the dead. His grumbles preceded him like the snapping of a black hound. Clutching his lantern, Amsel hastened towards him.

  “I do not answer your beck and call like a dog,” the Forsaken rumbled threateningly as he divested himself of his travelling cloak and thrust it at Amsel. Radu’s face twisted angrily.

  “No, master. I merely thought—”

  “You were not sent out to think. You were sent to recover a treasure, and now you tell me you were wrong all along and this treasure is no treasure at all? I should flay every inch of skin from your spine for your temerity and use it to record your failures so that all who come in your stead know not to disappoint me.”

  “Master,” Amsel said, bowing his head. The chill of the night wormed its way down his spine one bone at a time, lingering.

  “Then… then perhaps I would satisfy the anger that churns away within me, the anger of a man who feels he has been cheated and lied to. Should I cede to that anger, then I would draw the bones out of your wet flesh and broil the marrow out of them for broth to feed that damned coterie you have filled my home with. Is that the fate you want for yourself, Amsel?”

  “No, master,” Amsel said, not daring to move, even to shake his head in denial, lest the necrarch’s temper flare and he make good on his threats. Radu was nothing if not a volatile man, and capable of great pettiness should the whim strike. It did no good to snivel or plead. The necrarch had no respect for weakness, despite the underlying irony of that loathing. Begging would only worsen the punishment. Amsel merely waited for reason to reassert itself in the necrarch’s mind. Such was the new master’s capricious personality that in an hour or two the man would be lost in thoughts of the great gift his thrall had uncovered, but for now his imagination was no doubt ablaze with tortures galore, each one burning to be unleashed on Amsel’s body.

  He needed to divert Radu’s attention to the discovery. It was more than any mere book, more than a trinket or a gewgaw. It was a relic fundamental to their heritage. It was, in truth, their birthright.

  More than that, it would change the world.

  That would appease the Forsaken.

  Radu turned up his nose as though catching a scent on the wind, turned his head and walked beyond Amsel. “Show me what you have found, and pray that it is enough to defer my disappointment.”

  Amsel scurried after him, hurrying to catch up.

  It was a narrow track forged by animals who had made the side of the hill beyond Grimminhagen their home. It wound up the shallow slope in a series of slow curves, taking the line of least resistance up to the summit. Moonlight and lantern combined to turn the ground to his left gold and silver while darkness claimed the thick grasses to the right. Beneath, behind and between Radu’s curses, Amsel heard the night sounds of the forest: the low croak of tree frogs, the susurrant whisper of the leaves in the trees, the rustle of snakes, badgers, and rats in the long grass, and all the small creatures that made the shelter of the hillside trees their home. They followed the trail up towards the rocky plateau that overlooked the town. Mountain goats chewed at the side of the track, bolting at the first whiff of decay.

  Radu moved with an awkward, clumsy, gait, struggling up the incline.

  The higher they went, the lower the tree branches dragged down.

  The wind tore at Amsel’s rags as he struggled to match the necrarch’s determined stride.

  Finally they stood together at the summit, on the rocky outcrop that overhung the tallest of the trees. They were not alone. Volk stood to the side, clutching the three bone tubes that they had rescued from the ruins. The lights of Grimminhagen lit up the valley below them. The candles and oil lamps looked like a thousand fireflies hugging the lowlands. Slightly removed from the town, but still within the walls, lay a manor house, and outside the wall, the silhouette of garrisons and the shadow of Sternhauer’s keep. Even in the low light of the night it was apparent that parts of the town had been built and rebuilt, the dark stained silhouettes of the buildings that had not been reconstructed marking out darker lines in the grass that had overgrown them.

  “This is what you brought me to see? A sacked town? It is not as though any of this devastation is newly wrought, so what am I supposed to be looking for?”

  “The answer is in the marks in the grass, master. I did not see them at first, for the light is not good, but if you wait, the moon will again catch the angles you need.”

  “Explain.”

  “Come, come, here, look,” Amsel said, waving Gehan Volk over. Without a word the acolyte uncapped the scroll cases and unfurled the three vellums, laying them out to correspond with the town down below. He saw Radu studying the man, and in turn saw Volk’s ruined face with its ragged wound instead of a nose curl in contempt. “Do you see?” he asked, causing both men to look at him instead of each other. It had been an accident but once Amsel had glimpsed the similarities between what appeared to be random brushstrokes and the black shadows in the dirt of fallen ruins, he had understood. The vellums were literal and figurative maps to the treasure.

  He brought his lantern closer.

  Looking at the map and the darker patches of grass he could rebuild the town of Grimminhagen as it had been before invasion had levelled it, before Korbhen had stashed the casket away. Layer upon layer of plans became apparent.

  “What am I looking for?” Radu asked impatiently.

  “The town today is not the town that it was. It’s clever, beyond clever. Look at the penmanship.”

  “Sloppy at best,” Radu said, dismissively.

  “Not at all, every stroke is immaculately rendered. Together they form the final jigsaw piece. Look again and then look down at the patch of ground on the far side of the town, slightly removed from the streets and new houses, but still within the wall. The dark patches in the grass?”

  “I see them.”

  “Now compare them with those sloppy brushstrokes.”

  “Amazing,” Radu crooned, seeing it at once. Amsel could not help but smile. “A temple?”

  “I believe so, master.”

  “Hidden away all this time, but how could the man who penned this document have known that the outline of the temple would still show through the earth today? Was that not a great risk to take with such a treasure?”

  Volk cleared his throat. “If I may make so bold, there are many possibilities. None of them demand that the scribe knew the fate of the temple, after all the image might simply be a key and does not have to be a literal outline for outline match. What we have here is the building schematic of a Sigmarite temple. It could be any temple. It is the written clues that direct us to this corner of the Empire. If the temple still stood it would be equally obvious to the beholder where the treasure might be found. That said, perhaps the document was inked after the temple’s destruction, or then again perhaps the writer witnessed its fall or brought it about. This place has a history of war and pain. He may even have been the one who hid the treasure within, or merely heard a rumour and this is all some wild goose chase. Whatever, this is undoubtedly the place.”

  “Absolutely,” Radu said, his face lit up with greed. There was an ugliness in Radu that went beyond the flesh. All the words he said were lies and half truths, all he touched, as tainted as defiled dirt. He was weak, sickeningly so, with the madness of greed, a canker that grew where his mortal soul had once been.

  He was nothing now but a maker of illusions, the great deceiver.

  A cheat, a coward, a liar, a fraud, he was all of these things.

  Amsel looked at the avaricious glee in the vampire’s eyes as he rubbed his ha
nds together contemplating the great treasure his cunning was about to earn, and revelled in the repugnance of it all. Layers within layers, he told himself patiently. Korbhen had recognised all of these failings in his thrall, Radu knew. The true master had seen through all of the deceptions. Hence the game of power now, riddles within riddles, leading towards a single goal. He felt instinctively that he knew what it was, what it had to be and his dead heart raced imagining Korbhen’s return. How could it be anything else? The true master was returning to vanquish the vainglorious upstart that had usurped his power with sour deceits.

  All of Radu’s supposed great magics were founded upon the genius of those around him, stolen through guile and cunning.

  That greed would be his undoing.

  Eager to hasten the end, Amsel bustled the vampire towards the edge. “It is down there, waiting for you.”

  “But what is it?” The necrarch asked, his voice grating.

  Amsel moved in close beside him, so close that his decayed lips grazed the air beside the necrarch’s ear. “I believe,” he said, his tongue wrapping itself salaciously around the words, “a casket lies within the bone yard of the old temple, and within the casket a relic of the Great Necromancer.”

  “Nagash,” Radu crooned, stepping forward instinctively, closer still to the edge. The rock crumbled beneath his feet, sending a thin shale falling out into the nothing above the treetops. Down below, the wind whipped up, tearing the last of the low mists to shreds. The night shone bright on the town of Grimminhagen, the moon’s radiance lingering on the sacred ground where once a temple had stood.

  A step behind him, Amsel nodded.

  “Then it is best we recover this treasure before sunrise, before the living awake to find their world awash with walking bones.”

  “Master,” Amsel agreed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dawn’s Dead

  On The Outskirts of Grimminhagen, in the Shadow of the Drakwald Forest, Middenland