Lord of Undeath

by C. L. Werner

  Roaring bloodstokers lashed their scourges across the scarred backs of barbarous bloodreavers, whipping the tribesmen into homicidal frenzies that found them plunging fearlessly into the choking smoke of plaguesmog congregations. Bands of blood warriors, their plate armour caked in dried gore, ripped their way through packs of rabid plague monks with axe and sword. Berserk wrathmongers, their faces locked inside horned helms, ploughed into the ratkin with crushing sweeps of the chained hammers they bore, trampling the bodies of their victims underfoot.

  Where the row of plagueclaw catapults had stood, there was now only a litter of smouldering debris and mangled bodies. Amidst the wreckage, armoured barbarians mounted upon hulking daemon steeds of brass and bronze hunted the few skaven artillerists that had escaped the carnage of their charge. Makvar saw the molten metal that dripped from the jaws of the daemonic juggernauts as they worried at the ratmen, the savage glee that distorted the mutated visages of their riders as they shattered skulls and severed arms with mattock and axe.

  The walls around Makvar shook once more as they were battered by a tremendous impact. He turned from the sight of the broken catapults to gaze upon the creatures that had taken their place. Three enormous gargants, their man-like bodies branded and tattooed with the Blood God’s symbols, were wrenching stalagmites from the ground. Hefting their huge burdens, the towering gargants whipped them around in a swinging motion and flung them at the castle.

  ‘The vermin are from Clan Septik,’ Neferata declared, gesturing at the swarming ratmen. ‘They were among the first of their breed to gnaw their way into the roots of the Bonegrooves and spread their pestilence across the Realm of Death.’ She pointed her staff to where a great mass of the robed skaven were pushing an immense carriage topped by a great arch of pitted stone. From this arch a vast pendulum swung, its counterbalance drawn back by a crew of chittering ratkin, the gigantic metal cage fitted to its opposite end spewing a foul green vapour.

  ‘Kingdoms have been exterminated by their poxes,’ Neferata explained, ‘the dead so defiled with disease that only a supreme effort can rouse them from their plague pits.’

  ‘Sorcery wicked enough to overcome the black art of necromancy,’ Vogun mused. The Lord-Castellant had tied Torn’s carcass to his back, unwilling to leave his faithful gryph-hound where his remains might become the plaything of deathmages and corpsemasters.

  ‘It seems their plagues aren’t potent enough to avail them here,’ Knight-Azyros Huld said. He pointed to where a monstrous hulk of muscle and claws ravaged a congregation of ratmen, decimating them by the droves as it splashed their black blood across its crimson flesh.

  ‘Yet while the skaven keep the attention of the Khornate horde, we will find our own opportunity,’ Makvar declared. He cast his gaze across the Chaos horde, trying to find the overlord who led them. ‘If we can reach the Bloodking before they can overwhelm us…’

  Neferata drew close to the Lord-Celestant, pointing across the sea of carnage. ‘Thagmok will be where the scent of blood is strongest,’ she said. ‘The madness of Khorne burns inside him and calls out to the blood shed in murder and battle. There! We will find him there.’

  The spot Neferata directed Makvar’s gaze towards was a solid block of armoured blood warriors and burly skullreapers. A massive barbarian marching before them brandished an enormous icon of bronze fitted to a steel pole. Behind the mass of warriors, a red light pulsated, throbbing from a dull glow to a blazing intensity with eerily organic palpitations. Makvar couldn’t gain even the slightest glimpse of what exuded this gory luminance, but he felt it had to issue from the Chaos warlord himself.

  Makvar took a moment to study the battlefield, evaluating the shifting tide of carnage. There were yet enough of the plague monks to contain the Bloodbound on the right flank. Using some of the stalagmites for cover, they might be able to win their way through the conflict unnoticed for a few hundred yards. After that, it was certain to be a brutal fight to reach the overlord.

  ‘We will make our descent as near to this position as we can,’ Makvar decided. He commanded his fellow Anvils to regard the line of stalagmites he intended to use for cover. He offered no illusions about their prospects, but if most of them fell, it would be worth the sacrifice if even one of them came to grips with the Bloodking. When he had explained his intentions, he turned to Neferata. ‘You should stay here, my lady. Nagash may need your abilities when he musters his legions to aid Sigmar.’

  The Mortarch of Blood laughed at Makvar’s concern. Reaching out her hand, she ripped a fragment from the crenulations in front of them. ‘I am more than capable of acquitting myself in the fighting, and you will never reach the Bloodking without my aid.’

  ‘I am thinking beyond this battle,’ Makvar told her. ‘You are more important to the battle that is coming, the fight to reclaim Gothizzar and take the Allpoints.’

  Neferata turned, pointing her staff at the ground. A ghostly mist began to form, a dark shadow swelling within it. Soon, it was apparent that she was summoning her abyssal steed Nagadron to her side. ‘The choice is mine to make,’ she said. ‘You have worked hard to broker an alliance between us. Allies do not desert one another before battle.’

  Makvar could see the determination in Neferata’s eyes. She wouldn’t be denied. His fears that her loss here would hurt the war had to be balanced against killing such goodwill as she felt towards the Anvils and their cause. One of Nagash’s Mortarchs was already their foe, could they risk making a second their enemy?

  ‘As you wish,’ Makvar conceded, ‘but keep close to us.’ He pointed at the skeletal Nagadron as its shape grew into a semblance of solidity. ‘Don’t hesitate to retreat on your steed if the fight turns from a hopeless endeavour to an impossible one. Spare no thought for us. If a Stormcast falls, his spirit returns to Sigmaron. Reforged, we will fight again.’

  Mannfred von Carstein could feel the power being siphoned away from Nachtsreik. The refuge he had spent so much time and energy to construct was crumbling around him. The blood that held the stones together was being leached away by the Khornate horde outside its walls. Now the spirits themselves were being drawn out of the fortress. He didn’t need to exert himself to know this was the doing of Nagash. Only the Great Necromancer had the ability to pierce the wards that imprisoned the ghostly masses.

  Hate boiled inside Mannfred as he reflected upon the prodigious abilities of his master. For truly, Nagash was the vampire’s master. At the least moment, he could exert his will and reduce the Mortarch to naught but a puppet, a mere extension of the Death God.

  Mannfred had had a reminder of Nagash’s authority during the fighting in the crypt. The strange compulsion that had stolen upon him to attack Lord-Celestant Makvar – he knew that could only have been issued by the Great Necromancer. He suspected that Neferata’s intervention, the poltergeist that foiled Gheistvor’s thrust and spared the Stormcast’s life, was likewise provoked by Nagash.

  Left to his own devices, Mannfred would have been far more cunning about turning on the storm-knights. It stung his pride to be used in so blatant and crude a manner, moreso when his fellow Mortarch spoiled the ambush. Yet, all of it was part of a greater design, a strategy the vampire had yet to piece together. Nagash was neither impulsive or capricious. Everything the Lord of Death did was towards some ultimate purpose. He wouldn’t push Mannfred into attacking Makvar just to repent the decision and move Neferata to intervene.

  The scene had been staged, and Mannfred was certain that the reason for such theatre was pursuing him through the halls of Nachtsreik. His conviction was justified by the hesitance that seized hold of him when he would choose one passage over another or drop down a particular trap door, make use of some hidden portal or pass through the ghostly face of a gallowglass. He could have lost his pursuer a dozen times over, but always he had been compelled to hold himself back.

  Rounding a corner, Mannfred found himself in the c
olossal confines of his library. Treatises and texts from across the Mortal Realms filled cavernous stacks that spiralled up to the ceiling hundreds of feet above. Winding stairways fashioned from polished bone and yellowed ivory climbed each of the columnar stacks, lit by the ghostly orbs bound within the skulls that hung from their banisters. He could see the niches cut into the base of each stack where the guardians of his library reposed. It would be a simple thing to call out to them, to draw to him a regiment of grave guard that would occupy his pursuer while he slipped away.

  The idea quickly faded, and Mannfred left the skeletons to rest in their shadowy posts. Even more than the fortress itself, he had invested too much effort creating this library. He had razed whole towns simply to secure single volumes. He wasn’t going to throw it all away because a storm-knight was chasing him. Instead, he drew upon the necromantic energies residing within the guards, extracting them to fuel a greater conjuration.

  Fortunately, it seemed the influence Nagash exerted upon him made no objection when Mannfred summoned Ashigaroth from the shadows once more. There was no protest when he dimmed the orbs around him and used his magic to cloak himself and his steed in a shroud of darkness. With Gheistvor in his hand, he stared across the floor of the library, waiting for the hunter to show himself.

  The storm-knight soon appeared, his dark armour reflecting the uncanny glow of the orbs. Mannfred recognised the battle-horn that hung at the warrior’s side. This was the one his companions had called Brannok. The Mortarch always found it amusing to know the names of his victims. It added a certain savour to the taste of their deaths. Before he could spur Ashigaroth to attack the storm-knight, the vampire found his attention drawn to a figure moving through the darkness at the base of the book-filled columns. It moved with too much speed and agility to be a skeleton accidentally roused from its rest. Nor did it move with the bluster and arrogance he had come to associate with the storm-knights.

  Mannfred smiled when he sensed the nature of the stalker and deduced his purpose. He was one of Neferata’s thralls from the unmistakable vibration that coloured his aura. It appeared that the Mortarch of Night wasn’t the only one with unkind feelings towards the storm-knights. Watching with keen interest, Mannfred waited while Brannok and the vampire drew closer.

  Brannok was searching every shadow for sight of his quarry. As careful as he was to conceal himself, Neferata’s thrall couldn’t hide from the storm-knight’s vigilance. Sword at the ready, the warrior rushed at the stalker. ‘Traitor,’ he hissed as he lunged at what he thought was Mannfred.

  The storm-knight’s sword clashed against the thrall’s blade as he moved to parry the descending blow. Lightning flashed from Brannok’s weapon, briefly revealing the face of his adversary. Surprise at finding a different enemy than he expected caused his attack to falter for an instant. It was all the time the thrall needed to twist his body around and slam an armoured elbow into the storm-knight’s mask.

  ‘Queen Neferata is mine!’ the thrall roared as he strove to press his assault. Though the vampire possessed a strength many times that of a mortal man, his attack had barely phased Brannok. The storm-knight retaliated by driving the flat of his sword up into the thrall’s chin, cracking teeth and all but breaking his jaw.

  ‘I have no time to waste on you, Harkdron,’ Brannok snarled at the thrall. ‘Relent.’

  Harkdron staggered back from the blow he had been dealt, spitting chips of tooth onto the floor. ‘Lord Harkdron,’ he hissed. The vampire charged Brannok in a burst of bestial frenzy. Though the storm-knight intercepted the flurry of slashes and thrusts Harkdron directed at him, he was steadily pushed back by the intensity of the attack.

  ‘You Stormcasts have humiliated me before my queen,’ Harkdron accused. ‘You think to steal her favour from me!’

  Brannok continued to fall back, letting Harkdron work himself into a still greater fury. From his vantage, Mannfred could appreciate what the storm-knight was doing. He was letting the thrall slip deeper and deeper into his rage. Not with the aim of tiring Harkdron, for the undead knew no weariness, but to goad him into the unthinking savagery that would cause him to expose himself. Brannok was hoping to bring the contest to a swift conclusion.

  The storm-knight would get his wish, but hardly in the fashion he had intended. By falling back, forcing Harkdron to chase him, Brannok was drawing close to the very column where Mannfred waited in the shadows. The Mortarch knew it wasn’t coincidence. The will of Nagash had sent him into the library, and that same will now made use of Harkdron to move Brannok into position.

  Without warning, Mannfred spurred Ashigaroth forwards and charged Brannok. The Knight-Heraldor was smashed to the floor by the impact of the dread abyssal, the sword flying from his hand. While he was stunned, Mannfred commanded his steed to rip the battle-horn from his belt with one of its black claws.

  Harkdron lunged at the fallen storm-knight, sword raised for a killing blow. Mannfred glared at the thrall, a deathly blast of necrotic wind hurling him back. ‘He isn’t yours,’ the Mortarch snarled.

  From where he had been thrown by Mannfred’s magic, Harkdron glared at him. ‘I will have vengeance,’ he declared.

  Ashigaroth pressed its claw against Brannok’s chest, keeping the storm-knight pinned to the floor. Mannfred dismounted and stood over the prostrate Knight-Heraldor. He held Gheistvor over the warrior’s throat. His other hand closed about the shard of glassy black stone from his sanctum. ‘Then let us have true vengeance,’ he told Harkdron. Viciously he drove the tip of his sword into Brannok’s neck.

  Immediately there was a searing crackle of energy. Mannfred felt his arm go numb as power pulsed through Gheistvor. He thought of the Chaos sorcerer he had seen Nagash kill and the way her spirit had flown through the Mortis Blade and into the black stone he carried, defying the Mark of Tzeentch the witch had borne. Now, the same thing was happening, only this time it was the spirit of Brannok that was in contest and the claim of Sigmar being defied.

  Pain burned through Mannfred’s body as the spiritual discharge rippled through Gheistvor. He could feel Brannok’s spirit trying to escape, to fly back to the God-King in Sigmaron. If the Mortarch relented for an instant, he knew the soul would escape his grasp. A will greater than his own steeled him, commanding him to endure despite the agony that ravaged him. Nagash demanded more than obedience. He demanded success.

  Smoke rose from his seared skin by the time the ordeal was over and Mannfred rose from where Brannok had lain. He gazed down at his hand and the black stone he held. Faintly, he could feel the echo of the storm-knight’s soul. Brannok had been killed, but the Mortarch had been unable to confound the mighty enchantments that bound the storm-knight to Sigmar. After the briefest instant, there had been a blinding flash of light and the Knight-Heraldor was gone, hurtling back to Azyr.

  ‘What have you done?’ Harkdron asked. He had seen the Stormcasts in battle enough to know that what he saw now wasn’t normal.

  Mannfred held up the black stone. ‘Discovered something interesting,’ he said. ‘Something of great value.’ He turned his head and studied Harkdron for a moment. ‘Neferata has been friendly with these storm-knights. She won’t thank you for turning against them.’ He laughed, a sound as cruel as the edge of a knife. ‘Fear not, she won’t learn of this from me. Not while you are useful.’

  Harkdron stiffened, glancing at where his sword had fallen. ‘I will not betray my queen.’

  ‘You already have by attacking the storm-knight,’ Mannfred said. ‘At least it will seem so to her. I know the truth, but even if I told it to her I doubt she would believe.’ He shook his head. ‘No, she won’t have it, I think.’ A sly gleam shone in his gaze as he looked again at the black stone. ‘Perhaps things will be different later. Find someplace to keep yourself until then. I will send for you when the time is right.’

  Mannfred exerted some of his own dominance, compelling Harkdron to return
to the shadows. Neferata’s consort might prove useful to him in his intrigues, allowing he could regain her good graces. It would be useful to have an agent so close to the Mortarch of Blood, one he had a hold upon that went beyond mere magic.

  Plans for Harkdron were for the future, however. Looking at the stone, Mannfred appreciated that he had more pressing matters to attend to. He knew what his master had expected of him, and that he had failed to achieve that purpose. But in failure he had made a tremendous discovery, one that he knew Nagash would be most eager to learn.

  For when Brannok’s soul crackled through Gheistvor, Mannfred had noticed something that he felt certain had escaped even the Great Necromancer’s attention.

  The screams and howls of the dying rang out across the havoc-strewn cavern. Mobs of diseased ratmen strove to pull down tribes of bloodreavers, the contagion drifting from censers scorched the lungs of blood warriors and left them choking on bits of their own burnt organs. Skullcrushers stampeded across broken swarms of skaven, the brazen hooves of the juggernauts pulverising the furry carcasses into paste. An amok slaughterpriest wallowed in the gore of butchered plague monks as he clove them with his massive axe.

  Around this carnage the small group of Stormcasts made their way. Spells of concealment conjured by Neferata hid them from all but the nearest of their enemies. The Mortarch’s illusions couldn’t deceive those who drew too close, however. Fortunately, there were none who paid especial notice to the sounds of combat as the Anvils vanquished slinking ratmen and packs of scavenging Chaos hounds.

  It was a far different matter when they drew the notice of two enormous beasts, abominable monsters that seemed the very embodiment of Khorne’s primal savagery. They were bigger than ogors, immense slabs of muscle bulging from their vaguely humanoid frames. Masses of bone protruded from their crimson flesh, curving outward into enormous claws and talons. A crest of horns sprouted from each monster’s back, arching over the shoulders to frame the ghastly stump of its head, almost as though in mockery of the halos worn by the Stormcasts’ commanders. The heads themselves were blackened skulls leering above gigantic lower jaws rife with vicious tusks and fangs. Other skulls, wet and dripping, were embedded in the flesh of the monsters, slowly absorbed into their bodies. Branded across their chests was the murderous skull-rune itself, pulsing with a grisly hunger.