Scharnhorst swung his broadsword in a wide arc, and the defenders fell back again. On either side of him the heavily armoured knights rampaged, slicing their way through any resistance. Their armour was scratched and dented, their breastplates streaked with blood, their plumes ripped and tattered. They looked like death incarnate, tearing their way through the corridors and stairways of the upper citadel. None could stand against them.
They had fought hard up the many stairways and hidden chambers. Every bridge, every archway, every postern had been held against them. Each redoubt had been stormed, cleansed of the traitors who still clung to them. Anna-Louisa’s men knew better than to expert mercy. The Imperial electors were not merciful men. Scharnhorst had his orders, and they all knew it. So they fought like ferrets in a trap, desperately clinging on to every slight defensive position, only ejected after all had been slain. It was dirty, tiring work. But it felt good. Scharnhorst was a patriotic Hochlander. The rebels were vermin. They had forgotten their allegiance, and in a world of war, that was all that mattered. Removing them from the realm of the living would make the remainder purer. Even in their deaths, they were doing Sigmar’s work, after a fashion.
Scharnhorst looked over his shoulder. The vanguard was still at his heels. The knights clattered up the stone passageways to join him. Behind them, the state troopers clustered, baying for blood. He could dimly make out the vast shape of that engineer, Ironblood’s deputy. The man looked good in a fight.
The general turned back to the task ahead. They had fought their way to the base of the central tower. The bulk of the citadel now lay beneath them. The valley floor was several hundred feet distant, and wreathed in the shadows of the gathering dusk. Fires had been started in the lower levels behind the walls, and their flickering light bled up the steep slopes of the inner walls. The first level of the fortress had been taken, and the last of the guards were being remorselessly hunted in the shadows. The second level was now contested. Knowing the value of striking at the heart of the contagion, Scharnhorst had not tarried, but had carried on upwards, fighting all the way, clearing the stairwells of Anna-Louisa’s traitorous minions, pressing on to the central tower.
Now it loomed before them, stark and tall against the gloaming. There was a great courtyard set at its base, wide and paved with stone. At the edge of it there was an ornate parapet. The rest of the citadel was below that edge, and the stench of its burning rose above it.
In the centre of the courtyard, a wide stair rose. It ascended for many dozens of steps, and could have accommodated a whole company of knights. At the summit of the stairs, the huge tower soared into the air. Though only a single tower, it was larger than many small fortresses. The base was over forty feet wide, and the vast bole rose sheer and smooth from it. Studded into the courtyard-facing aspect were narrow windows, glowing with a lurid light.
Right at the top, leaning out over them, far above, was the final chamber. After everything, despite the ruins of the rest of the fortress, the windows of that bulbous pinnacle still shone with a bizarre green illumination. Far out into the gathering night they shone, staining the smooth stone with a sickly sheen.
Scharnhorst watched with satisfaction as his men cleared the courtyard of the final few defenders. His victory was almost complete. Only the tower remained. Its massive doors were barred, but that was of little consequence.
“Knights, to me!” he ordered.
Kruger and his company were immediately by his side.
“This is the final element,” said Scharnhorst coldly, gazing up at the tower. “I will make the final kill. You will come with me.”
Kruger pulled his helmet off, leaned on his longsword for a moment, and wiped his brow. His face was flushed and ran with sweat, but his eyes were as piercing as ever. He looked at the doors doubtfully.
“We’ll need a ram for those,” he said. “Men won’t bring them down quickly.”
Scharnhorst smiled grimly.
“I disagree,” he said, and turned around, back towards the press of men at his back. “Where is the engineer?” he bellowed, his voice rising above the tumult. “The man who was in Ironblood’s company? I saw him.”
There was a brief commotion as the state troopers tried to find the man the general wished to see. After a few moments, Hildebrandt was located, and pushed to the front of the crowd. He emerged looking more weary than surprised, and bowed clumsily.
“What’s your name, man?” asked Scharnhorst.
“Hildebrandt, sir,” replied the engineer, giving no hint of resentment at not being recognised. Both he and Scharnhorst knew that they had met and spoken many times on the long journey into the mountains, but it was not a general’s responsibility to remember such things.
“Where’s Ironblood?” asked Scharnhorst.
“Fighting in the lower levels,” replied Hildebrandt without hesitating.
Scharnhorst smiled. The man was loyal at least.
“Then you’ll have to do,” he said. “I know of the blackpowder bombs. The ones you used to destroy the guns. There’s one last task for them. Can you break down those doors?”
Hildebrandt looked over them, and nodded curtly.
“I can.”
He reached to his belt, and pulled two of the round charges from it. There were leather straps around them. In Hildebrandt’s hands they looked little more than hens’ eggs.
“Then do it,” ordered Scharnhorst. “Blow them down on the first attempt, and I’ll forget any harsh words I’ve said concerning engineers. And you shall have the honour of being in the vanguard for the final assault.”
Hildebrandt didn’t need to wait for further instructions. He strode forward. Behind him, the ranks of men in the courtyard shuffled back. There was soon a wide gap between the doors and the first ranks of Scharnhorst’s army. Hildebrandt ascended the stairs, looking up as he went at the strange, silent bulk of the tower. There was no movement from above. As the evening waned towards night, it remained implacable.
Hildebrandt reached the top. He placed both of the charges where the massive ironbound doors met. The man retreated down the stairs far more quickly than he’d ascended them, and came running back to the protective ranks of soldiers. As he reached the safety of the general’s retinue, the charges went off. Two sharp cracks resounded across the courtyard, and twin orbs of fire rushed outwards. The doors rocked. One was blasted clean from its massive hinges. The flames and smoke cleared, and the damaged door swung open on one iron bracket. A dark green light leaked out from the interior.
For a moment, the men in the courtyard hung back. There was something unwholesome about the green glow coming from the shattered doorway. Scharnhorst himself felt an unusual pang of foreboding. What had been unleashed? Would a brace of daemons spill from the gap? Though the sounds of combat and looting still rose into the air from down below, the high courtyard was seized with a sudden hush. There was no movement from the tower. It stood darkly, looming over them like a noiseless portent of death.
Scharnhorst took up his sword, and was comforted by the weight of the steel in his hands. His doubts began to ebb away.
“Come,” he said, quietly but firmly. Around him, the knights raised their weapons as one. “The bitch von Kleister is there. The one who has brought this bloodshed on our land. Follow me. The time has come to end this.”
As the last natural light bled from the west, the vanguard strode up the stairs, towards the ruined gates and into the last tower.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I have learned, over long years of study, not to judge the exterior of any object without knowing the full details of its interior. The grandest building may conceal a rotten core, and the meanest-looking pistol may hide the finest rifling workmanship within it. That seems to me a good maxim for any engineer. We have often discovered that the way a device looks is no guarantee of its quality. In fact, though I hesitate to make the comparison directly, the same may too be said of men. Some of us who seem most fearful by reputat
ion may turn out, on closer examination, to be nothing but weaklings and cowards. Conversely, even those who have sunk low, almost to the point of becoming nothing, may carry within them the smouldering spark of greatness, ready at any moment to leap once more into flame…
—The Notebooks of Leonardo da Miragliano
The machines toiled. Even after being abandoned by their makers, the valves and pistons still turned in the darkness. The channels of fire still burned, and the vaults still echoed. It was as if the place had a vital spirit all of its own, an animal awareness that filled its iron sinews and copper muscles.
Magnus steeled himself. The sound of Rathmor’s footsteps had died away, and the cathedral-like forge was free once more of human sounds. Clutching his pistol carefully, poised to fire at the slightest movement, he crept free of the lee of the vast machine that sheltered him. Far ahead, the light of the fires seemed to ebb. Magnus went towards the end of the hall warily, keeping close to the cover of the mighty devices and hugging the shadows of the columns. Every so often he would jump as a sudden spurt of steam or belch of liquid fire caught him off guard. Then he would spin around, or flatten himself against the hot stone, his heart beating. But Rathmor had gone, fled into the lower levels, further into the dark heart of his kingdom. For the moment, Magnus was alone.
He took a deep breath. He could still taste the ash on his lips. He went on. The columns passed by in stately succession. As he padded silently, each fresh machine emerged from the fiery murk, and passed back into it behind him. He lost count of how many there were. Each one was more elaborate and heavily ornamented than the last.
Eventually, Magnus reached the end of the long rows of foundries. The final mechanical device in the hall had a great wolf’s head carved from metal on its summit. Just like the gates. Thick brown smoke rose in a steady, boiling pillar from its central chimney. It smelled foul, and a brackish ooze lapped at its base. Magnus stepped around it carefully, knowing enough of Rathmor’s ways not to get any of the strange liquid on his clothes. The pool looked poisonous in the gloom.
The light of the fires was losing its vibrancy. Most of the great channels of magma were now far behind him. Magnus began to descend again. He screwed his eyes against the perpetual murk. There were more chambers ahead, soaked in shadow, lit by measly, smoky torches. Their filth clogged the already acrid air. He had to stop himself coughing. Grimly, he pressed a rag to his mouth, and carried on.
It got darker, and lower. Magnus passed huge storerooms. Some of the contents of them could only be guessed at. They looked like they’d been bored directly into the rock. It was hard to gauge their size. In the gloom inside them, row upon row of weapons waited. Spears were piled in huge bales next to sheaves of swords. And there were guns, placed in racks and hanging side by side. They were long guns, the kind that had been used against the army in the passes. Even in the thick murk, Magnus could see the distinctive serpentines adorning their barrels. So they had been forged here, wrought using Rathmor’s diabolical machinery. There were none quite like them in all the Old World. Dwarfish, and yet not dwarfish. There were still riddles to unravel.
The atmosphere started to cool. The fires were left behind. Magnus pulled his leather coat closer round his shoulders. The fine cloud of dust and soot lifted, and the air became sharper. It smelled dank. As the last of the fire-pits diminished into the distance, the light once more became dim. The few torches bracketed against the walls were scant compensation, and threw a thin orange light across the uneven floor. The elaborate paving of the hall was forgotten. The roof of the chamber had sunk to little more than a few dozen feet high. The magnificence of the forges was replaced by a cold, forgotten procession of dreary tunnels and store-chambers.
In one of them, great dark shapes loomed in the shadows. They were covered in some kind of fabric. There were no torches flickering above them, but their outline was unmistakeable. Infernal machines. Rathmor’s devices. A dozen more. It was hard to tell if they were finished, waiting for deployment at a moment’s notice, or still in construction. All had the basic outline of the Blutschreiben. They were copies. Shams. But still deadly, for all that. Magnus shook his head in disgust. They were abominations. If Rathmor was allowed to complete his plan, it would spell destruction on a terrible scale for the Empire. Magnus felt the smooth weight of his pistol in his palm, and it reassured him. There was still time to halt it all.
He walked on further in the gathering gloom. He had begun to lose track of distance. The storerooms came to an end, and the darkness grew. Magnus stopped, and listened carefully. It was hard to make out much ahead. He felt as if he’d descended to the very root of the mountain. The shadows were as cold and ancient as any in the world. Going any further would be hard without a torch. But carrying a flame would make him an easy target. He decided to do without. It made his progress even slower. At any moment, Magnus expected to hear the report of a pistol. Even as he walked, his every muscle seemed to tense.
But there was nothing. Rathmor seemed to have shrunk back into the very rock itself. The more that Magnus crept onward, the more silent and ominous his surroundings became. The ceiling carried on descending. Soon he was walking down corridors not much taller than he was. The rock had been carved roughly around him, and there were faint track marks in the jagged floor. Every so often, he would pass some abandoned cart, knocked onto its side and left to decay in the eternal shadow. There were still torches, even so far down. They flickered and guttered. Some had gone out for lack of fuel. The others would follow them soon enough. Then the night would close over him, and he would be totally blind.
That thought was strangely terror-inducing, and Magnus pushed it out of his mind. He kept going, his feet treading silently on the unseen floor, his fingers running along the walls, tracing the serrated pattern of the stone under them. The churn of the machines was a distant whisper now. There were no other noises. It was as if he was lost at the centre of earth. The memory of light and wind felt distant.
There was a noise. Magnus pushed himself hard against the near wall, his pistol raised. His breathing quickened, and he strained to see ahead. There was no repeat of the sound. He couldn’t even tell what it had been. But where there was noise, there was movement. And where there was movement…
Magnus waited for his breathing to calm, and set off again. It felt like he’d been walking for hours. Gauging time was near impossible. And then, he got the impression of space once more. The gloom around him was almost complete, but there was something in the air that told him the tunnel had opened out into a hall once more. Magnus slipped over to the near wall again, wary of the wide space. He paused, listening hard for any sound. There was nothing, except for maybe the slightest of moans as the air from above shifted down the miles of tunnel and chamber. No water dripped, no torch sparked. Something within Magnus told him that he’d reached the end. There were no chambers below this one, no more machines. Whatever had been done here, it was still a secret.
He looked down at the pistol in his hands. He could just make out its outline in the gloom. The last torch, some yards back, still lent a dim glimmer to things.
Then it went out. Caught by some freak gust of chill air, or doused by a malevolent hand, the light died. Magnus was plunged into complete darkness. He might have been swimming in the void before the creation of the world. Panic rose in his throat. He had been a fool. There was nothing he could do in such a place. He was blind, and alone. He had to get back, find a way towards the light.
Magnus whirled around, back in the direction he thought the tunnel lay. For a moment, he felt the urge to cry out loud, to scream, to do something to break the endless, terrible silent darkness. Then he felt the cool metal press against his temple.
The invaders climbed the steps swiftly. Kruger and his knights were in the lead, powering up the twisting stairs even in their heavy plate armour. Hildebrandt struggled to keep up with them. Night had fallen, and he felt his fatigue latch on to him like a heavy cloak. The long,
cold days in the mountains had taken their toll. His arms ached from wielding his weapon for so long, his legs ached from the endless climbing. It felt like they’d ascended halfway up the side of the peak itself. Only now were they nearing the uttermost pinnacle, the final chamber of the citadel.
Moonlight shone weakly through the windows of the tower, but there was little other light. The shadows clung to the walls like ink. Men’s faces distorted in the murk, and Hildebrandt felt his mood become more febrile. The green tinge on the edges of the stone was growing. As they clattered up the narrow, twisted ways, it became steadily more intense. The nearer the summit they went, the more it looked as though the walls had been doused in some unholy alchemical substance.
There was no resistance on the stairs. The promised army of defenders looked to have melted away. Hildebrandt wondered if the strength of Anna-Louisa’s forces had been overestimated. Certainly, since their initial setbacks in the passes, the battle had swung decisively their way.
The stairs went on, winding tighter and tighter as the tower drew towards its peak. Hildebrandt could feel his lungs labour. His breathing began to come in shuddering heaves. He was too old and too fat for this. His hands shook from tiredness. With a dogged growl, he pressed on, determined not to be outdone by the armoured men around him. Even after hours of fighting and pursuit, they still fought and climbed as keenly as ever.
Just as Hildebrandt began to think that they’d be plodding up the stairway forever, it came to a sudden end. There was a narrow antechamber ahead. Three iron lanterns hung from the ceiling. The glass in the panes was lime-green. They threw a sickly light across the stone. The walls were almost bare. Here and there, a few gold trinkets had been hung. It was an incongruous sight. In the eerie light, they looked strangely sinister.
Scharnhorst was waiting in the antechamber, as was Kruger and many of the other knights. There was space for several dozen men, no more. At the far end of the chamber, a large pair of doors was bolted against them. There was still no sign of any guards. The room was quiet. From down the stairs, the noise of men clattering to a halt on the stone echoed upwards. Hildebrandt came to a standstill amid the knights, his chest heaving. It didn’t look like Scharnhorst was in any hurry to break the doors down.
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