[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution

by Steven Savile - (ebook by Undead)

  A WARHAMMER NOVEL

  RETRIBUTION

  Von Carstein - 03

  Steven Savile

  This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons

  and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the

  world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury

  it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds

  and great courage.

  At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the

  largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for

  its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is

  a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests

  and vast cities. It is a land riven by uncertainty, as three

  pretenders all vie for control of the Imperial throne.

  But these are far from civilised times. Across the length

  and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces

  of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come

  rumblings of war. In the towering World’s Edge Mountains,

  the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and

  renegades harry the wild southern lands of

  the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the

  skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the

  land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the

  ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen

  corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods.

  As the time of battle draws ever near.

  the Empire needs heroes

  like never before.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Stranger in a Strange Land

  The Lands of the Dead

  Before

  The man cast a terrified glance over his shoulder as he ran.

  He couldn’t see anything, but that didn’t matter.

  He could feel it getting closer.

  He fled across the desert, staggering up banked dunes and lurching down them again, his legs buckling as the wind buffeted him. Sand burned the soles of his feet. He ran. He fell. He forced himself back to his feet. He ran again. He stumbled. Fell.

  It followed.

  It was there—no matter how far he ran, how fast—it was always there.

  It was relentless.

  He clutched the bundle of rags tightly to his chest. The thing wrapped within the rags was repulsive. It reeked of corruption; stank of the dead wind. Paradoxically, it was alive in his arms. He felt it, a pulse beating through the layers of cloth. It craved, hungered. He felt its presence inside his head, the insidious whisper of its need. One word: release. It ached to be free, to be loosed upon the world now that it had stirred.

  “Not yet,” he managed, through cracked lips. His voice was raw, thick with grit and sand. The desert heat burned in his lungs. His skin crawled, as though the heat of the sun ate away at his flesh. Blisters chaffed against the course weave of his robes. It was an exquisite form of torture. He clung to the pain. He couldn’t remember a time without pain. It was the one constant of his world. As long as there was pain, he was alive.

  Long thin tendrils of shadow swelled up around him, like some giant hand snatching him from the desert sands. He spun around, stumbling backwards with the momentum of fear. There was nothing behind him—nothing that could have cast that shadow. He turned away quickly. He fixed his gaze on the heat-shimmer of the horizon.

  The sun blazed in the sky, flensing him of all sense of self.

  His robes, a dirty-white robe worn threadbare in places, whipped around his legs. He was covered from head to toe. Only his eyes were exposed to the elements. Still the sand bit at them, stung them into tears. The world blurred.

  The sand shifted beneath his feet as he staggered on, desperate to be free of this dead place. Dust devils churned around him, surging up from the ground like mystical djinn only to be blown away on the wind, no more threatening than the grains of sand they were.

  The tendrils of shadow thickened. The man ran for his life. He didn’t dare look back. He didn’t need to.

  He knew what the shadow was. He had always known.

  The claws of the dark lord, reaching out, reaching…

  No, that was impossible.

  That was the voice of his fear speaking to him, a malaise that had haunted him ever since he had entered this forsaken land. It was paranoia worthy of Konrad.

  Konrad.

  The name bubbled up inside his head.

  He tried to focus on it, to recall the face behind the name, but there was nothing.

  Shadows coiled around his blistered feet.

  Reaching out from his slumber, woken by your own stupidity, fool.

  Your power.

  At the back of his mind, the mocking whisper:

  Your arrogance.

  He clutched the bundle tight to his chest. It weighed heavy in his arms.

  Dark shapes began to solidify on the horizon. His mind painted them as daemons come to claim his soul and drag him down to Morr’s Underworld. A moment later they coalesced into trees. Oasis or mirage, it mattered little to him. He staggered on, his feet dragging one after the other. He tried to imagine the cool trickle of water down his throat, quenching the fire inside him: the need.

  Laughter rang in his ears: hysterical, spiralling, mocking.

  The ring on his left hand, a plain unassuming adornment, caught the glare of the scouring sun, dispelling the dark shadows for a moment. His determination to survive grew with each unsteady step. The ring was important to him, but he had no idea why.

  His thoughts swam in and out of focus. He tried to focus on the oasis. He walked on. It never appeared to get any closer.

  “You’re not real,” he croaked, knowing even as he said it that his mind was playing tricks on him.

  He walked on.

  The world tilted, blurred.

  He heard the caw of birds, but saw nothing in the sky, straining to make sense of it as blood came sliding down from the sun, burning the desert red before it faded into the black of night.

  Darkness hid the shadows—it didn’t banish them. The twin moons of Morrslieb and Mannslieb appeared low in the sky, rising. The desert air grew cold. He stumbled on, staring at the ground as it fell away beneath his feet until he splashed over the water’s edge. He fell to his knees, setting aside the bundle, and reached down to scoop up mouthful after mouthful of sun-warmed water.

  It did nothing to slake his thirst.

  It was an unquenchable fire inside him.

  He was burning up from the inside out. It was consuming him and there was nothing he could do to quell it.

  A black bird had settled on one of the branches around the oasis. The beady-eyed scavenger had obviously come to feed on his corpse. He looked up at the creature, defying it, defying the fire, the hunger, the all-consuming need inside him. “I will not die here,” he told the bird, and he meant it.

  His defiance didn’t impress the bird. Its harsh caw caw caw mocked him.

  He threw back his head, tore away the wrapping of his headscarf, and screamed, startling the bird into flight. It swooped down out of the tree, clawed feet looking to pluck out his eyes as its wings beat and battered at his face.

  The man’s hand snaked out with eldritch grace, taking the bird out of the air. He held it for a moment, cradling the creature in his hands. The bird’s wings flapped desperately as the force of his grip intensified, crushing its delicate ribcage as though crumpling vellum. He tore the bird’s head from its body with a savage twist and raised the still flapping carcass to his lips, sucking greedily at the blood and flesh, f
eeding.

  It tasted good.

  This was what his body had hungered for.

  This was the need driving the maddening cravings he felt tearing at him: Blood.

  He savoured the flavours, the thickness of the liquid as it ran down his throat.

  The taste stirred a dark memory.

  He had tasted blood before.

  He tore at the bird with his teeth, spitting out blood-clotted feathers. It wasn’t enough. Now that the need had been awoken it demanded sating. He tried to stand, but he lacked the strength.

  The world swam out of focus and he lapsed into unconsciousness.

  There was blood on his hands when he came to.

  The blood was rust-coloured and caked hard, but it was undeniably blood. He had killed the bird. It hadn’t been some weird fever dream. He had torn the head off the animal and sucked greedily at the gaping hole, draining the pitiful creature of every precious ounce of blood.

  And he had enjoyed it.

  But rather than quell the pain, the blood only served to intensify it, reminding his body of what it craved.

  He looked up.

  Where the land and sky met, a swarm of black specks had begun to gather. He watched them solidify, a murder of black-winged birds taking shape out of the dark sky, hundreds of them. They seemed out of place in this wilderness of sand. They took on individual forms as they neared.

  He didn’t move.

  He couldn’t.

  He lacked the strength even to hold his head up.

  The first birds roosted in the branches around the oasis, but soon others settled on his legs and in his lap, crowding around him, their black bodies a bloated swarm. He could feel them—not just their nearness. He could feel their pulses: faint, ephemeral beats tripping out the erratic skips of fearful life. He reached down and took one of the birds from his lap, cradling it in his hands.

  “It doesn’t end here,” he promised the bird. The raven cawed raucously as though it understood. He smiled as he pressed down with his thumbs, splitting the bird’s breastbone and pulling the creature open. He raised it to his lips and drank greedily. Draining it, he cast it aside and scooped up another.

  He feasted on the ravens and crows, and countless other carrion creatures that had flocked to him.

  It wasn’t human blood—but it was blood.

  It was revitalising.

  It gave him strength.

  And with the blood came memories of self—a name.

  He tore into another and then another, sucking at the wounds. Ribbons of blood trickled down his chin. He tossed his head back and roared his defiance. It was a primal sound, animalistic. The birds cawed and crowed as panic spread through them. A few scattered, taking flight only to be brought down by others in a flurry of wings and violence. They flocked to him, drawn to the bittersweet tang of blood. It was in their nature. They were scavengers, carrion eaters.

  He tore into the frail bodies, milking them. It was wanton gluttony. He ripped at the soft meat, splitting open the underbellies and gorging himself on the birds until hundreds became a few. He stopped himself from destroying them all. He took one in his hands, lifted it to his lips and opened his mouth—but instead of feeding, he whispered into the bird’s ear. The creature answered with a shrill caw.

  Around him the remaining birds echoed the raven in his hands, their caws spiralling into a hysterical chorus—a threat, a promise, the truth.

  “Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming!”

  Their words reverberated through him.

  “Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming!”

  They shrieked through every raven and carrion crow across the Old World.

  Mannfred: that was his name.

  But it was more than merely his name that had been returned to him. The birds’ sacrifice had bought his salvation. He would not perish in the sand and the dirt. He would not be buried beneath the dunes in the Land of the Dead. He would escape. He gathered the bundle into his arms, cradling it close to his chest. The half-life the rag wrapped treasure possessed no longer felt threatening. He welcomed it.

  The last of the dread vampire counts of Sylvania surged to his feet and scattered the few remaining birds to the four winds. Their caws rose hysterically as they burst into flight.

  “Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming! Mannfred is coming!”

  The birds would carry word to his most loyal followers. They would prepare for his return.

  A lone rook circled above him, its cry a deep-throated rumble.

  “Mannfred is coming!”

  Mannfred smiled coldly, renewed by the blood of the birds flowing in his veins, and took the first step on the long walk home.

  THE BLACK SHIP

  I

  Navigating the Reik

  The black ship ghosted downriver, cutting silently through the heart of the Empire.

  Those that knew ships marvelled at the lines of the three-masted barque. She was a spectre on the brackish water. She drew frightened eyes. How could she not? The barque was unlike any ship seen on the Reik in that she appeared to have no crew. The superstitious called the black ship a ghost and whispered that she was crewed by the revenant shades of sailors whose mortal remains had sunk to a watery grave. The ship herself, they breathed, refused to fail them. She would bring the dead home.

  Those superstitious fools were almost right.

  The Vampire Count stood alone on the deck, enjoying the twin moonlight of Morrslieb and Mannslieb. Ravens circled overhead. He was growing accustomed to the birds. He took a peculiar sort of comfort from their nearness. The black ship sailed on, deeper into the heart of civilisation. The signs of habitation grew more frequent: washed clothing hung out to dry, goats left to graze near the water’s edge. At first the homesteads were little more than wooden shacks, but as the black ship sailed deeper into the heart of the old world the buildings grew more sophisticated, built of both wood and stone.

  Coils of fog clung to the riverbank. Oil lanterns burned, barely penetrating the fug. Greasy black smears of smoke curled up lazily into the night.

  The first chill of winter was in the air.

  He savoured it. This was his time. He was the winter of mankind.

  The riverbanks reeked of mortality, petty lives and petty squalors crushed together to offer the illusion of safety. Humanity echoed the rats of the bilge tanks, swarming all over each other, revelling in filth and decay, spreading disease.

  He turned his back on it, content to let their unseeing eyes look on while the ghost ship sailed past their wretched strip of life as it clung to the riverbank.

  He lifted the hatch set into the deck and descended into the belly of the black ship. The crew—for the ship wasn’t manned by ghosts or anything quite so fanciful—avoided their peculiar passenger. He knew what they called him: Allogenes. In their tongue it meant, literally, “the stranger”. He enjoyed the epithet. It was fitting. That was, after all, who and what he had always been.

  He paused mid-step.

  He heard something: grave dirt grinding under the boot of a crewman.

  The dirt of unnamed graves had been scattered all across the lower decks. It went some small way to negating the vile pull of the sea on his body. He listened, seeking out the enticing dub-dub of the man’s heartbeat and the blood flowing in his veins. It was a delicious tattoo. His nostrils flared. He could smell the fool. Living in these cramped confines left no room for hygiene. Every one of them stank, the stench made so much worse, more pungent, by their fear, and those smells were unique in their odour.

  He waited for the man to show himself.

  The crewman tried to back away into the shadows at his approach, but there was no hiding from Mannfred.

  “Come to me, sa
ilor,” he said, gesturing the frightened man forwards. The man’s face, trapped in shadow, twisted, betraying the agony he felt trying to control his own limbs. The crewman stumbled forwards against his will and debased himself at the vampire’s feet. “Better. You would do well to remember your place, human.”

  The storm lamp hanging from the wall by a rusty nail guttered and died.

  “I am hungry.”

  The sailor looked up, the veins in his neck protruding as he fought against the vampire’s will. Mannfred sneered. Even token resistance was futile. He curled his index finger, beckoning the man to his feet, and tilted his head, lips parting slightly in anticipation of blood. Fear blanched the sailor’s face. His entire body shivered violently. Mannfred enjoyed the delicious tang of terror that seeped into the man’s stink. He drew him closer and opened his mouth wider, poised to sink his teeth into the soft white flesh of the sailor’s throat, only to push him away with a careless wave of the hand.

  He sniffed the air, breathing in all the rancid scents of the ship. The hold was alive with the rich heady tang of blood. He closed his eyes, enjoying the lure of the flesh.

  “Bring me a body. Make it young, ripe. I don’t care for old meat.”

  The sailor nodded sickly and scrambled back, feet scuffing at the planking. He shook his head, “Please don’t make me choose.”

  “Go before I change my mind and feed on you, man.”

  The sailor looked up, eyes wide, black holes of shadow in his fear-blanched face, and scuttled off towards the deeper darkness of the hold.

  The barque’s timbers groaned as the black ship rode the tide, the hulk shifting and settling around them. Mannfred smiled. It was a cold, pleasureless expression. He waited until there was only the lulling, hypnotic rhythm of the river lapping up against the barque’s sides before he retreated into the sanctity of his chamber to wait for his meal. He enjoyed pretending there was some kind of grandeur about the black ship. There wasn’t. His chamber was nothing more than a belly hall, stripped bare of ornamentation. It would have been used in the past to store grain and other comestibles on long voyages. Now it housed a makeshift coffin. The bottom of the coffin had been lined with a fine sprinkling of grave dirt gathered from one of the many ports of call along the way. No doubt they regretted fishing him from the sea. Mannfred’s nostrils flared as he breathed deeply. Traces of his homeland still clung to the dark loam, though they were barely perceptible beneath the rank odour of the hold.