The Empire Omnibus

by Chris Wraight, Nick Kyme, Darius Hinks

  Mikael turned to see Mordan, another dagger in his hand, about to throw it when he was split in two, a grotesquely muscled freak with a tiny hooded head, cutting him down with an axe.

  Mikael lost the creature amidst the chaos, his attention arrested by Halbranc’s muffled cries as he was still pinned by the obese woman.

  Reiner had shaken off another mutant and was moving in, when Heinrich appeared beside them, hefting a torch from the wall and ramming the fiery brand into the obese freak’s wound. Its jaw distended horribly to reveal the half-digested corpse of a Krugedorf knight, slain in the first battle, as it recoiled from the fire, shuffling away into the shadows.

  Gasping for breath, Halbranc slumped to his knees, his zweihander clattering to the ground.

  Around them, the smoke was clearing, the freaks defeated, but Mordan was dead and Valen badly wounded.

  Mikael regarded the carnage, the corpses of slain villagers, afflicted by the plague, were everywhere, but of the macabre circus freaks, there was no sign.

  ‘I brought down at least one,’ growled Goiter, apparently reading Mikael’s mind as he wiped the gore from his mace.

  ‘I too felled one of them that could not have lived,’ offered Vaust.

  ‘Daemons,’ Reiner spat, under his breath.

  ‘Whatever those things were, we cannot remain here,’ said Heinrich, gesturing to the charred ruin of the door. ‘When they return, and return they will, we will be defenceless.’

  ‘Is there another way out?’ Reiner asked, looking out impassively into the darkness.

  ‘A secret passage leads to the surface from the relic room,’ said Heinrich.

  Reiner turned, an inquisitive look flashing briefly over his face.

  ‘If your priest is successful and banishes the spirits…’ Heinrich let the thought hang in the air for them to finish.

  Then we live, Mikael thought.

  ‘The passageway before the relic room is narrow,’ Reiner said. ‘It will be easier to defend. We fight in pairs, rotating as each pair gets tired. We’ll make our stand there.’

  Without further preamble, Reiner stalked over to the trapdoor, the others following him.

  They had waited for over an hour in the creeping dark of the catacombs, Sigson’s muffled prayers emanating through the door of the relic room.

  Mikael was listening to it when he noticed Veiter looking at him. The Krugedorf knight evoked an uneasy feeling in the young templar, and he quickly averted his gaze, shifting it to the other knights.

  Vaust was ever watchful over his brother who grimaced in pain next to him. Halbranc and Reiner stood quietly, the former lost in thought, the latter an emotionless statue. Köller sat opposite Mikael and looked sullen, the dark mask upon his face as always.

  Of the Krugedorf knights, Goiter and Kurn stood sentinel at the entrance to the passageway. They seemed oddly restless. Even Heinrich, alongside Veiter, appeared on edge.

  ‘What troubles you?’ Mikael asked.

  Heinrich opened his mouth to answer when the trapdoor caved in and stone fell like rain.

  The torches in the passageway guttered and died, engulfing the knights in blackness. Amidst a deluge of broken stone slabs and ruined wood, something large and terrible filled the end of the passageway. The charnel house stink of its breath infected the air.

  Goiter turned to shout to Heinrich as something thick and wet lashed out of the dark, and suddenly Goiter was no more, the sickening crunch of bone a macabre echo of his existence.

  Overcoming the mind-numbing terror threatening to unman him, Mikael drew his sword.

  ‘We cannot prevail here,’ Heinrich breathed, fear in his voice.

  Reiner, backing away from the beast, looked over his shoulder at the solid stone door behind him.

  ‘Into the relic room!’ he bellowed.

  Acting quickly, Halbranc got to the door first. ‘Watch my back,’ the giant snarled, and heaved on the iron door manacle.

  It wouldn’t yield.

  The massive Krugedorfer, Kurn, appeared alongside him. Together, with the stone grinding in their ears, the knights opened the door.

  Inside, Sigson was kneeling on the floor. He’d stepped beyond the cordon of light and was encircled by grave dust, facing off against the witch. In front of him was a black candle, its flame casting a bright aura. The warrior priest was bathed in sweat, his features creased with exertion. Around him, the spirits wailed silently, trying to tear at him with unearthly claws, only repelled by the priest’s wards.

  The knights paused at the portal when they saw the spirits. The thing in the corridor was a worse terror though and the knights piled inside. Sigson was unaware of their presence, entranced as he invoked the banishment ritual. Kurn heaved the door shut behind them.

  Heart racing, Mikael leant heavily against the wall. Something fell from his arm greave, dislodged in the panic. He stooped and picked up a section of cloth. It was the same piece he’d used to staunch his bleeding face outside the temple. He hadn’t paid much attention to it. Now that it lay open in his hands, Mikael saw it bore the crest of the Krugedorf knights: a red shield, two bearded stags at opposite diagonals. He suddenly recalled his dream of the stags coming together in a blaze of flame, and wondered what it meant. He half heard Sigson chant the banishment rites and felt the same sadness as he had before. Only it wasn’t sadness, it was something else. It felt like… pleading.

  Two stags coming together.

  Mikael looked again at the cloth. He held a corner in each hand and folded them in on each other, then turned them up, forcing the image of the two stags together.

  His heart quickened as the realisation of what was before him struck like a hammer blow. In his hand, the cloth folded over to reveal an entirely different image: a burning hand.

  ‘Sigson, no!’ he cried.

  He was too late. Sigson had finished the ritual.

  The candle flared impossibly bright, and white light flooded the chamber. The witch screamed, flung back with the force of her broken summoning, the spirits crying out in unison as they were expelled in a blinding coruscation.

  The knights were thrown down with the sheer power of the invocation, ears ringing with the screams of the damned.

  Blinking back the stark after-image, virtually seared upon his retinas, Mikael saw that Heinrich was on his feet and running towards the arch at the back of the room.

  ‘Slay them!’ he cried.

  Kurn’s zweihander was drawn, and he smashed Vaust aside with the flat of the blade. The knight struck the wall hard and fell into a crumpled heap, next to his semi-conscious brother.

  Veiter, eyes aglow with balefire, leapt at Reiner, but the captain of Morr was ready and parried his double-handed assault. The Chaos knight snarled, revealing fangs.

  ‘Knights, to arms, the servants of Chaos are among us!’ Reiner bellowed.

  Sigson staggered to his feet, drawing his blade with shaking hands.

  Kurn’s armoured boot put him down as he advanced on Halbranc.

  The two giants clashed, zweihander on zweihander, the scrape of churning metal and flashing sparks filling the air around them.

  ‘By the hand of Morr,’ Halbranc breathed. Face-to-face with the beast, he saw that Kurn’s helmet was fused to his neck, the eyeholes empty voids of hate.

  The stone door thundered as whatever was outside tried to get in. Mikael gave it little heed, as he ran past the battling knights. He was intent on Heinrich, who was through the archway at the back of the room and into the antechamber.

  ‘Heinrich!’ he cried, flinging his short sword at the traitor captain.

  The Krugedorfer turned and parried the blade out of the air with unnatural quickness.

  ‘Unwise to relinquish your only weapon,’ he said, licking his lips with a serpentine tongue, and stepping backwards into the centre of the an
techamber.

  ‘You want the relics for yourself,’ Mikael said accusingly.

  ‘Fool,’ Heinrich spat. ‘Whatever feeble trinkets reside in this place are of no interest to me. It is the temple that I covet,’ he said.

  ‘Ignis!’ he then cried and a tongue of flame spread furiously around him, describing a rune-etched symbol on the ground, an unholy icon of Chaos.

  Exultant, Heinrich threw his head back and the flames rose to the ceiling.

  Mikael backed away from the conflagration. Through the blaze, a hazy silhouette was visible.

  ‘Dormamu, I supplicate myself before you. Make me your host,’ Heinrich uttered with a voice like prophecy.

  His treachery was clear. He meant to summon a daemon.

  The inferno intensified as Heinrich’s shadow form was lifted off the ground, the deep and unholy resonance of another voice coming from the fire as Heinrich reasserted his pledge.

  ‘He seeks to re-consecrate the circle,’ the witch cried desperately from behind Mikael, vying against the raging din of the fire.

  Shading his eyes, heat searing his face, Mikael turned to her.

  She staggered to her feet.

  ‘Help me,’ she begged.

  Suddenly, Kurn loomed behind her, zweihander raised, Halbranc lying prone and defeated, his breastplate smashed.

  ‘No!’ Mikael cried as the blade fell. She would be cut in twain.

  The blade failed to strike; an aura of blue light surrounding her repulsed it.

  Witness to a miracle, Mikael had a sudden epiphany as if the light had opened his eyes for the first time. She was no witch. She was a priestess, the guardian of this place, and he must protect her at all costs.

  Mikael took up his thrown short sword and rushed at Kurn, knowing he was no match for the Krugedorfer.

  The giant turned his attention to the young knight, exuding menace.

  Mikael raised his weapon, awaiting the deathblow that would shatter it and his body. It never came.

  Kurn recoiled wordlessly, like an automaton, as Köller’s blade smashed down onto his pauldron.

  Seeing his opportunity, Mikael came at the Chaos warrior from the front, plunging his sword into Kurn’s breastplate. He withdrew it savagely, then watched horrified as black sand spilled from the wound. The knight reached out to crush him with a mailed fist.

  Köller cleaved it off with a two-handed blow. Still Kurn lived, and whirling around, smashed Köller into the wall.

  Mikael gripped his blade, incredulous that the thing before him still endured.

  This was his last chance. ‘Morr, guide my hand,’ he breathed and thrust his sword deep into the eye slit of Kurn’s helmet. The giant staggered, trying to clutch at the weapon embedded in his skull with a hand that no longer existed. At last, he fell, like a hewn oak, thunderously to the ground and was still. But it wasn’t over yet. The door to the relic room shuddered, cracks appearing in the stone. Mikael turned to the priestess.

  She closed her eyes as she muttered words of power. The knight’s defence in her honour had granted her the time she needed to perform some ritual.

  The cracks in the stone door widened and finally it split and crumbled. The terrible shadow filling it retreated and a horde of bloodshot, plague-infected eyes regarded them.

  Mikael was about to run to intercept the creatures, when he felt the light touch of the priestess on his arm. He looked back.

  Her eyes opened, burning with a deep blue lustre. The heat from the conflagration surrounding Heinrich visibly ebbed. Even the mutants paused at the doorway, as if sensing something.

  ‘Stop her!’ Heinrich cried from within the inferno, his voice deep and ageless.

  Only Veiter remained.

  Reiner advanced on the last Krugedorfer, the mutant horde faltering at the doorway.

  Flinging his blade at Reiner to distract him, Veiter ran. He fled through the arch at the back of the chamber, lost suddenly behind the inferno.

  Reiner was about to give chase. A plague creature grabbed his arm, its rusting cleaver about to strike, when the priestess spoke.

  ‘No.’

  The cleaver was blasted aside by some unseen force as her voice echoed through the chamber. It was followed by a terrible wail as the dread spirits returned.

  Ghostly faces and ethereal bodies became as one as they coalesced into a swirling, spectral maelstrom.

  ‘Purge this place,’ she said.

  The spirit host swept through the temple like a cleansing wave, accompanied by a wrathful wind, searing plague-ridden flesh and shredding bone. Holy light blazed furiously as the dust and grime clogging the window was destroyed. A lance of power came through it and engulfed the Chaos circle, extinguishing the flames surrounding Heinrich.

  Mikael shielded his eyes against its glory.

  Then the light was gone, as quickly as it had manifested, and the vengeful spirits with it.

  His vision returning, Mikael saw Sigson crouching down next to the priestess.

  Mikael went over to him.

  He held her in his arms. She was beautiful, the dirt and grime on her face washed away, her hair golden and pure, her robes no longer torn. A radiant blue aura surrounded her.

  ‘My time here is ended,’ she told them. ‘The sanctity of this place has been preserved.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mikael asked, his mind reeling from what he had witnessed.

  She pressed something into the young knight’s hands.

  It looked like a book, old and unadorned, but with a small silver clasp in the centre. Mikael unhooked it and opened it out, revealing that it was no book, but a triptych. Three wooden plates within described a battle. In the middle a temple, two doves flying above in a stormy sky; below them, a force of knights surrounded by holy light, a priestess at their heart; to the left, an army of black-armoured warriors and daemons, led by a mighty dark knight on a fell steed; to the right, a plague ridden horde, their skeletal master holding a scythe aloft…

  It was the battle from Mikael’s dream.

  ‘This place of power has existed for centuries,’ said the priestess. ‘The prosperity of the village, the relic in your hands,’ she said, looking at Mikael, ‘ensures its purity. Every one hundred years it is contested. Every one hundred years a guardian is selected to watch over it, to remain here for another century until it is contested again and the next guardian called.’

  ‘A hundred years,’ breathed Sigson, ‘but that would mean…’

  ‘Yes, I will die,’ she said, smiling faintly. ‘When the plague came I was weakened. I could not prevail without help. Now the malady that ravaged this place has been lifted and the new guardian is here to take my place.’

  Mikael took a deep breath and exhaled his resignation. The dream had been a sign, he could see that now. It was his calling.

  ‘I am the guardian,’ he said solemnly.

  The priestess turned, a trace of amusement upon her face, ‘No, it is not you of whom I speak,’ she said, looking beyond the two knights.

  Mikael and Sigson turned as one, following her gaze.

  Köller staggered to his feet, the light from the window bathing him was a startling affirmation. He looked shocked at first; then, as if suddenly enlightened, he knelt down, bowing his head and laying his sword before him.

  Sigson gasped, as the priestess shimmered and faded, the blue aura surrounding her flaring bright in Köller’s eyes as he looked up, bathing the room in azure. Then it was gone, and Köller returned to normal.

  The remaining knights of Morr stood around him, their wounds miraculously healed.

  ‘What happened here?’ Reiner asked darkly.

  Mikael looked back to the corridor. Of the creature and the plague horde, there was no sign; even those mutants who had entered the chamber were gone.

  ‘A miracle,’ the y
oung knight breathed.

  Reiner walked to the back of the room, apparently unmoved.

  He regarded Heinrich’s charred remains in a circle of ash. He scattered them into nothing with his boot.

  ‘Our work here is done,’ he said, his voice like ice. He turned on his heel, and with a glance at Köller, stalked out of the room.

  ‘What will you do?’ Mikael asked Köller.

  He looked different, lifted.

  ‘I will remain here,’ he said, ‘and protect this place in the name of Morr.’

  Silence persisted, the gravity of the moment and Köller’s undertaking sinking in.

  ‘It is a noble deed, Köller,’ said Sigson. ‘A great evil has been averted this night.’ He bowed solemnly and left the chamber after Reiner.

  Valen and Vaust followed, a nod at Köller before they went.

  ‘Fare thee well, lad,’ Halbranc said, joining the others.

  Mikael handed Köller the triptych. ‘This belongs here, I think.’

  Köller accepted it gratefully. ‘Yours is a great destiny, Mikael. Do not fear it.’

  Mikael opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t find any words. Instead, he turned and walked away into the darkness.

  Outside the temple, the knights made ready.

  ‘Your orders, Captain Reiner?’ Halbranc asked, securing his zweihander.

  ‘We head back to the Road Warden’s Rest, get the horses and make for the nearest temple of Morr,’ he said. ‘There is much to report.’

  He stalked off, back the way they had come when first happening upon Hochenheim.

  Mikael thought of Köller and found his heart heavy as he walked through the ramshackle village gates and back into the Drakwald. As he did, he looked back at Hochenheim one last time. There, in the village square, he noticed the great tree and upon its branches the smallest of blossoms.