by C. L. Werner
Huld approached Makvar as he started to dismount. ‘Shall I remain behind as well?’ he asked. ‘It may be prudent to have my celestial beacon to support Lord-Castellant Vogun’s warding lantern.’
‘No doubt it would,’ Makvar agreed, ‘but I fear I need you with me. My pride can suffer the reality when I confess that my eloquence is that of a child beside your own. In a duel of blades one chooses to have his best swordsman at hand. It is no different in a contest of words.’
The Knight-Azyros bowed his head. ‘Sigmar grant that I am worthy of the trust you place in me.’
‘The God-King knows the strength within every soul,’ Kreimnar stated. ‘He knows the hour when that strength must be called upon, when each man must show his mettle.’
Yes, Makvar thought, but how often is the test of a man’s mettle to parley with the Death God?
Though it was a shameful thing to feel, Makvar was grateful that it was upon Huld’s shoulders and not his own that such an enormous feat had fallen.
The great hall of Schloss Wolfhof was a squalid, rotting ruin. The tapestries that hung from its walls were faded, moth-eaten and caked in mould – incapable of stifling the cold drafts that whipped through the multitudinous cracks that rippled through the stonework. The rugs that lay strewn across the floors were stained and threadbare, doing nothing to lend a semblance of refinement, or to dull the chill of the flagstones underfoot. The timber tables were splintered, their surfaces gouged and dented, the wood discoloured by the substances that had seeped into the grain. The chairs were worn, the carvings upon armrests and backs rubbed down to shapeless bumps by centuries of misuse and neglect. The cushions upon the seats stank of mildew, their feathers squeezed and compressed until they had a stony firmness. The candelabras that were arrayed about the tables were caked in verdigris, and wobbled on feet that had long ceased to be even. Overhead, a dusty mess of cobwebs and rust struggled to present itself as a chandelier.
More unsettling than the decayed splendour of the great hall were the efforts expended by its inhabitants to cling to the grandeur of the past. The lord of the castle, a decayed and monstrous vampire calling himself Count Zernmeister, draped his twisted body in scraps of rotten velvet and wore a crown of tarnished metal too small to fit about his misshapen head. The abhorrant made a great show of playing host to his guests, exhibiting a courtly solicitude that took no notice of the dilapidated surroundings.
Zernmeister’s court were no less hideous than their lord. Snarling, atavistic ghouls sat around the tables wearing ruffled rags and perfumed wigs, golden rings jammed down about their scabby claws. A naked, bat-winged monster stinking of crypts and coffins played the part of major-domo, announcing each guest by stamping its clawed foot against the floor and croaking out a stream of inarticulate garble from its fang-ridden mouth. A huge monstrosity with splinters of bone piercing its leprous flesh sat behind the ramshackle harpsichord that leaned against one wall, prodding the keys with clawed fingers and pumping its pedals with taloned toes. A bestial creature the size of an ogor sat in the chair beside Zernmeister, an embroidered collar pinned about its neck, and a gilded pectoral hanging against its furry breast. When the vampire introduced the thing as the Prince of Wolfhof and his heir, the monster stood up and spread its leathery wings wide.
The madness of the ghoulish entourage was heightened by the abominable repast they presented their guests. Platters of raw flesh were set before each table, sometimes exhibiting the curve of a rib or the tapering point of a finger. Soup was a broth of blood and worms. The wine was nothing but sludge drawn up from the tarn below. Yet to Zernmeister, the fare was extravagance itself and the vampire took pride as he described the wondrous boar hunt by which the main course had been brought to the table, utterly oblivious that what stared back at him from the tarnished trencher were the butchered remains of some luckless marauder.
Makvar shook his head as the horrible fodder was set before him. Turning to where Zernmeister sat, he apologised to their crazed host. ‘Forgive me, your grace, but I and my brothers have taken strict vows. We may neither sup nor drink until our sacred duty has been accomplished.’
The vampire crooked his deformed head to one side, as though suffering some internal turmoil at this disruption of his fantasy. After a moment, Zernmeister decided to fit the rejection into his delusion. ‘It is a pity, Lord-Celestant, for you will find no better fare in the kingdom. You do respect to your order by exhibiting such fidelity to your vows. There are few templars, I fear, who would adhere to such strictures.’ The abhorrant turned his attentions away from Makvar to nibble at the rotten meat on his own plate, sucking such blood as remained in the collapsed veins.
The Lord-Celestant looked away, turning his attention towards the head of the table. There, reclining in a seat fashioned of bleached bones, Nagash rested his cadaverous body. The inhabitants of Schloss Wolfhof had accepted the Great Necromancer as their liege lord, making a great show of presenting to him a coffer filled with finger bones – the tax they had collected from their serfs. The vampire had further sought to placate his visiting sovereign with a series of gifts, the least disgusting being a mouldy funeral shroud. Nagash had indulged the insane dementia of the ghoul-court, treating them as faithful vassals and accepting their deranged tribute. Watching Makvar follow his example appeared to amuse the Lord of Death.
‘You pay them a grand kindness, leaving them with their illusions,’ Nagash declared. ‘When a wretched reality persists beyond its time, there are many who would find succour in madness.’
The sepulchral hiss of Nagash’s voice reverberated through Makvar’s very spirit. He suspected that the Great Necromancer’s words only reached those whom he wanted them to reach. Many times when he spoke, the court of Wolfhof failed to respond. At others, his slightest murmur had the debased ghouls fawning over him to attend his needs.
Makvar had to be more cautious with his words. From everything he had seen, from all that Nagash had intimated, the only thing that kept the ghouls from falling upon the Stormcasts was the delusion that the knights were their guests. Anything that broke that fragile fantasy would turn the great hall into an abattoir. Even if the Anvils prevailed, Makvar sensed that they would have failed a test, a trail that the Death God had set before them.
‘Your realm has suffered greatly,’ Makvar said. ‘The taint of Chaos has taken much from your subjects.’ He frowned as he stumbled over the words, glancing down the table to where Huld sat beside Zernmeister’s monstrous ‘heir’. The Knight-Azyros was the one who should be here fencing words with Nagash and trying to keep from saying anything that would unsettle the ghouls. By design or perverse whim, the Great Necromancer had singled out Makvar for his attentions, sitting the Lord-Celestant on his right at the head of the table, well away from his fellow Stormcasts. The only ally near at hand was Neferata, seated to Nagash’s left, who gave a warning flutter of her lashes whenever he felt himself sliding into some verbal trap the Death God had laid for him.
Nagash took up the chalice Zernmeister had set before him, raising it to his fleshless mouth. The ghoul court was oblivious to the fact that none of the slop ever left the cup. ‘Chaos is a ravenous beast,’ Nagash declared. ‘The more it consumes, the more it demands. Nothing can sate its hunger. Even were Chaos to devour the whole of the Eight Realms, it wouldn’t be satisfied.’ He lowered the chalice and leaned towards Makvar. ‘There are some appetites that can never be appeased.’
‘The enemy is formidable, but not unstoppable,’ Makvar said. ‘Sigmar has held them back, kept them from breaching the gates of Azyr. The God-King’s armies range across the realms, taking the battle into the very strongholds of Chaos. Many realmgates have been wrested from the enemy, many lands and peoples have been liberated.’
‘If the God-King’s victories are so numerous, why does Sigmar send you to treat with me?’ Nagash asked. He gestured at the decayed hall around them with a bony talon. ‘Is his rea
lity as much an illusion as that of these wretches?’
The Death God’s blasphemous mockery stirred a sense of pious outrage within Makvar’s heart. He held back the retort that would have so easily rolled from his tongue. It didn’t need a warning look from Neferata to tell him Nagash was trying to bait him into some injudicious remark. Still, he refused to let the slight against Sigmar go unanswered. ‘Chaos is a foe to test even the mightiest of gods,’ he stated.
‘True,’ Nagash conceded. ‘The War of Bones has taken its toll even upon me.’ He pointed a bony finger at Makvar. ‘Still, it must be remembered that I fought on while Sigmar simply locked himself away behind the gates of Azyr. Now that he has decided to stir from his seclusion and try to turn back the tide of Chaos, in his arrogance he sends his disciples to rebuild the old alliances and renew the ancient pacts?’
‘The God-King seeks to reassemble the divine pantheon,’ Makvar said. ‘The strength of Azyr and Shyish united once more against Chaos, committed to driving its creatures from the Mortal Realms.’
Once more, Makvar found the skeletal face of Nagash turned towards him, empty sockets studying him with the fiercest scrutiny. ‘Sigmar has been busy in his absence,’ the Great Necromancer conceded. ‘Never have I seen such armour and weaponry as those you carry. I have never encountered warriors such as your Stormcasts, men who bear the light of Azyr burning within them.’
‘We are but one Warrior Chamber,’ Makvar said. ‘There are multitudes of us among the armies of Azyr. This is the strength Sigmar is unleashing against the legions of Chaos. This is the power which–’
Nagash interrupted Makvar’s speech. ‘But why does such strength seek alliances? Why is it needful for Sigmar to send his underlings scurrying about the realms to draw others into his camp?’
Makvar had braced himself for such a question. The Great Necromancer was a being of darkness, existing in a world of suspicion and oppression. It would only feed his doubts if Makvar didn’t disclose the necessity that had seen the Anvils descend into the Realm of Death. ‘Archaon holds the Allpoints, seeking to corrupt it for his masters. If Chaos could be denied possession–’
‘And Sigmar doesn’t have sufficient faith in his Stormhosts to carry the day for him,’ Nagash chuckled. ‘He seeks to add my deathless legions to his forces.’ The Great Necromancer nodded. ‘It is a wise course to pursue. The only method by which Chaos may be beaten is to overwhelm them utterly.’ He raised his hand in warning to Makvar. ‘Before I can render assistance to Sigmar, I must regather my own resources. Most of the Realm of Death has fallen to Chaos since Archaon’s invasion.’
‘What do you require?’ Makvar asked. ‘If it is within the means of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer to secure, we will see it done.’
‘If it is not, then you will shake my faith in this army Sigmar has made for himself,’ Nagash cautioned him. ‘First we must find my other Mortarchs.’ He extended a skeletal claw towards Neferata. ‘My lovely Mortarch of Blood once more stands at my side, dutiful and loyal as ever. To help me in my magic, I will need her companions. Arkhan, the Mortarch of Sacrament, and Mannfred, the Mortarch of Night.’ The Great Necromancer rested his claws on the table before him, listening for a moment to the off-key dirge rising from the harpsichord. ‘It will be a perilous ordeal, unearthing my Mortarchs and returning them to me. Neither of them are so gracious as my dear Neferata, and they are prodigious sorcerers in their own right. Should they prove reluctant, it may be no simple task to bring them to heel.’
The taunting dismissal of the Stormcasts woven within Nagash’s warning offended Makvar’s sense of honour and pride, but this alone wasn’t what moved him to agree to help the Great Necromancer track down his errant acolytes. It was the knowledge that his mission depended upon securing an alliance with Nagash, and that it was the Death God’s province to dictate the conditions to secure his aid.
Part of the pageantry demanded to support the delusions of Zernmeister’s court was that his guests should retire to chambers within Schloss Wolfhof’s crumbling towers for the night. Nagash, as the count’s visiting liege lord, was given accommodation in the abhorrant’s own chambers, with Zernmeister displacing his son and initiating a ripple effect that would see the winged major-domo sleeping beneath one of the tables in the great hall alongside the ghoulish kitchen staff.
For Makvar and his comrades, as well as the vampiric entourage of Neferata, the ‘guest rooms’ within the towers were rendered for their use. Zernmeister had been most effusive in his assurances that the rooms had been exactingly prepared for them by his servants. In reality, this simply equated to the ghouls ensuring that there was still a room waiting behind the water-warped doors. The chamber Kreimnar had been given lacked an outer wall, its floor dropping away to offer an unobstructed view of the stagnant tarn. The room shared by Huld and Brannok had been a little better, though the lack of a roof overhead was worrisome considering the size of the bats flying about the castle.
Makvar almost felt spoiled when he discovered his room had both a ceiling and four walls, though the condition overall made him hesitant to touch anything. Mould and tradition seemed to be the only things keeping the place from falling apart. Even under better conditions, he wouldn’t have rested comfortably in a castle infested with insane vampires and ghouls. Instead, he kept his sword close at hand when he sat down upon the floor, his eyes fixed on the swollen door, his ears trained upon the corridor outside.
It was some hours into his vigil when Makvar heard a furtive sound in the hallway. Closing his hand around the grip of his sword, he waited as the sound slowly crept nearer. When the deformed horror that served as Zernmeister’s steward withdrew from his room, it had taken the creature much effort to close the warped door behind it. Now the portal slowly inched inwards, no sound betraying the creaking of its hinges or the scrape of its bottom against the floor.
The starlight shining through the narrow window of Makvar’s chamber illuminated the figure that quickly shifted around the open door. The Lord-Celestant recognised the enticing presence, the sensuous curves of slender limbs and the alluring swell of a generous bosom. Framed by her raven tresses, the pale face of Neferata was a vision of beauty to melt even the stoniest heart. The soft smile that flickered across her red lips was at once both innocent and suggestive. With a kick of her bare foot, she closed the door behind her.
Even a heart of stone would have been roused by the voluptuous vampire as she entered the room, but Makvar’s spirit had been forged from unyielding sigmarite, not simple stone. Yes, he could recognise the charms of his visitor, appreciate the enticing lure, but they presented no temptation to him. Neferata realised that fact when she saw the sword still clenched in his hand.
‘I mean you no ill, Lord-Celestant,’ Neferata said. ‘I come to you as one who would consider you a friend.’
Makvar nodded at the thin gown that was doing a feeble attempt at covering the vampire. ‘I dare say you’ve won many friends with visits like this.’
‘How else to convince you I mean no harm?’ Neferata asked. She turned around, holding her arms at her sides. ‘You can see I bear no weapon.’
‘There’s no weapon half so fearsome as what you choose not to hide,’ Makvar observed. ‘But understand – I am not one of your thralls like Harkdron.’
Neferata smiled again, this time without any imposture of innocence or seduction. ‘I was wrong to underestimate you, but do understand that my intentions are sincere. There is much to be gained through this alliance you seek.’
‘Surely that is Nagash’s decision to reach,’ Makvar said. ‘He is your master, is he not?’
A haunted look filled Neferata’s eyes. ‘You must be careful of him,’ she warned. ‘Do not trust him too far. Already he has dealt treacherously with your knights.’
Makvar sprang to his feet and seized the vampire’s arm. ‘What do you mean? What has he done?’
Neferata
drew away from him, staring at the imprint of his hand on her milky skin. ‘The Obelisk of Black,’ she said. ‘He asked your storm-knights to bear it away from my city. He was testing your men, seeing how mighty they truly were. He knew that nothing mortal can long endure contact with the Obelisk.’
‘You knew this as well,’ Makvar accused, ‘yet you said nothing!’
‘It isn’t an easy thing to defy Nagash,’ Neferata said. ‘The only reason I have the liberty to do so now is because he has turned his attentions elsewhere.’ A look of fear twisted her face. ‘Don’t trust anything he tells you. Always be on your guard.’ She hesitated, as though drawing up some hidden reserve of courage. ‘If I ask it, swear to me you will protect me from him.’
Makvar shook his head. ‘Such a promise is one I cannot give. There are things greater than either of us at stake. They cannot be jeopardised. I cannot set aside my duty.’
‘Your duty may doom us all,’ Neferata told him. As quickly as she had slipped into his room, the vampire queen withdrew, retreating back into the hallway. Makvar watched as the door slowly closed behind her, cutting off his view of the corridor.
Alone again inside his room, the Lord-Celestant didn’t see the shadow that emerged from the end of the hall. He didn’t hear its silent approach or sense its lingering presence outside his door. Nor was he aware of it when it withdrew, following the same path Neferata chose when making her retreat.
Chapter Seven
Foul, reeking of decay and dissolution, the vast swamps seemed without end, a great sea of mud and morass that stretched away into eternity. Great stands of marrow-weed stabbed up from dank ponds and sinkholes like the bones of drowned men, their morbid flowers oozing poisonous nectar. Expanses of corpse-willows cast their shadows across boggy creeks and scummy streams, their trunks contorted into the semblance of rotten bodies, their finger-shaped leaves waving with sinister artifice in the marshland breeze. The croaking of toads bubbled up from every puddle, a groaning chorus redolent of sorrow and mourning. Crocodiles slithered down slimy embankments, their dark hides melting into the brackish gloom of sluggish channels. Crimson grave asps crawled through the shadowy branches of festering fenpines, their scales marked with death’s heads.