by C. L. Werner
Mandred slammed into the ground, the impact driving the wind from his body. More than the physical impact, however, it was the sound of his horse galloping off through the brush that elicited a pained groan from him. It would be a long walk back to Carroburg.
A low growl reminded him of the cause of his predicament. Again his hand snatched at Legbiter. He had regarded the white wolf as some kind of omen, a divine benefactor, but it seemed the creature was only a hungry animal after all.
Drawing his sword even as he scrambled to his feet, he looked about for the beast. He found it seated once more on its haunches beside the berry bush. Somehow, it seemed to exude a sense of amusement as it watched him.
Mandred lowered his sword. The wolf confused, annoyed and puzzled him, but strangely he felt no fear of it. He was certain that it had deliberately scared his horse, yet it made no move to menace him.
‘What do you want?’ he demanded, feeling more than a little foolish shouting at a wolf.
The animal rose to its feet and turned its back to him. Before loping off into the brush, it looked back at him over its shoulder, seeming to beckon him.
Mandred returned his runefang to its scabbard. As he had a year before, he accepted the strange animal’s unspoken invitation.
Alone, he followed the white wolf into the dark of the forest.
Sylvania, 1120
Under the merciless lashes of the Nachtsheer, the grim battlements of Castle Drakenhof began to take shape once more. Hundreds of peasant slaves toiled to drag the heavy blocks of stone up earthen ramps to the towering castle walls. Indentured artisans, masons and architects culled from every settlement within reach of the Nachtsheer, both within and without the county of Sylvania, laboured with hammer and chisel to give form to those blocks. Day and night they chipped away until the blocks were reduced to jagged, fang-like crescents. Only then were they hoisted onto the parapets and made fast with staples of steel.
From the windows of the Red Spire, Malbork von Drak watched his fortress being reborn, restored after the devastation wrought by the terrifying Starfall seven years ago. The largest of the noxious black stones was still embedded deep beneath the castle dungeons, lodged too securely for even a thousand slaves to remove. Even if the Sylvanian voivode had been prepared to accept the loss of workers due to the sickening miasma the so-called Jewel of Morrslieb exuded, his best architects had assured him removing the stone would compromise the foundations of the castle. Malbork trusted the judgement of his engineers, especially when, after executing three of them for possessing a defeatist bearing, the fourth engineer told him the exact same thing. He’d rewarded the man’s honesty with a purse of gold.
The Voivode of Sylvania prided himself on his impeccable sense of justice.
‘Your excellency must understand that the transition in Wurtbad does not change the duties incumbent upon the county whose governance you have been entrusted with.’ The words were those of Baron von Waldberg-Raabs, envoy from the Grand Count of Stirland. Sylvania had enjoyed five years without interference from their liege lord. Already decimated by plague, Stirland had further suffered in the aftermath of the former grand count’s death. Along with most of the electors of the Empire, Grand Count von Boeselager had perished in Carroburg when plague struck the fortified refuge of the late Emperor Boris. No direct heir had been left behind by von Boeselager, and for four years the streets of Wurtbad and the countryside of Stirland had witnessed vicious battles between half a dozen claimants. Only in the last spring had Karl von Oberreuth prevailed over his rivals and established himself as the new Grand Count.
Malbork stroked the thick moustache that drooped from his upper lip. It was so terribly tempting simply to push the irritating Stirlander out of the tower window. Rising far above the rooftop of Drakenhof’s central keep, the Red Spire offered more than simply a stunning view of the construction below. Immediately to the west of the tower yawned a great pit, a natural fissure that tradition held had once been the home of a dragon. Tradition also held that the pit was without a bottom. Certainly it was deep enough that no body had ever been recovered from it. For generations, the von Draks had used the Wyrm’s Gizzard to dispose of people they didn’t want to see again.
The voivode smiled when he saw the look of horror on the face of Clucer Scarlat when the courtier saw his lord gazing at the tall window overlooking the pit. For the moment, the heavy shutters with their engraved dragons were closed, but it would only take a word from von Drak and his soldiers would fling them open… and fling the envoy to his doom. The ramifications of such an incident made the foppish Scarlat sick with horror. Some men had no stomach for war.
Malbork turned away from the window and scrutinised his noble visitor. Von Waldberg-Raabs was a middle-aged man, the prime of health slowly draining from what had once been a robust physique. There was a strength of character about the man’s features that Malbork always found suspicious in his minions and frustrating in his peers. It denoted a propensity for defiance in the former and a decided lack of corruptibility in the latter. Any thoughts of offering the envoy a bribe would be as inadvisable as putting the Wyrm’s Gizzard to use.
‘It pains me, but these lands have been harder hit than most,’ Malbork told the baron. ‘Sylvania was among the first to suffer the misery of plague…’
Von Waldberg-Raabs offered the voivode a thin and utterly insincere smile. ‘As the first to suffer the plague, you must also be the first to emerge from its shadow.’ The envoy pointed to the battlements far below and the construction gangs labouring to restore the castle. ‘Forgive me for observing, but there seems no shortage of peasants in your fiefdom.’
Malbork glared murder at the Stirlander for his insulting turn of phrase. ‘Get out,’ he hissed in a low, vicious tone.
Baron von Waldberg-Raabs blinked in confusion, unable to process the voivode’s abandonment of protocol. ‘Excuse me, your excellency?’
The voivode turned about, stroking his moustache as he looked to the shuttered window. ‘Get out or you will be shown out.’
Clucer Scarlat, all colour drained from his face, hooked an arm around that of the envoy and began a hasty retreat from the Red Spire. ‘His excellency needs time to consider the logistics of your request,’ the courtier explained. Soon, the two men were out in the corridor descending the spiral stairs leading down into the keep. Malbork von Drak was alone in the ancient execution chamber.
Or so the voivode’s reason told him. His senses told him otherwise. As soon as the sound of Scarlat’s conversation grew distant enough that the clucer’s voice was nothing but an indistinct murmur, there came a new sound just at the edge of Malbork’s hearing. It was a strange, eerie noise that defied all efforts to determine its source. He could liken it only to the prolonged tearing of some old and rotten cloth, thin and porous with age. From everywhere and nowhere the noise came, until it seemed the Red Spire was saturated with the clamour.
It was then, when the noise had grown to its most antagonistic, that Malbork saw the shadow. Rising from the corner of the room closest to the shuttered window and the Wyrm’s Gizzard, the shade was indistinct at first, merely a blot on the join between floor and wall. But with each passing breath, the shadow grew, becoming both denser and more distinct. It began to take on man-like shape, a manikin of darkness, robed in a veil of black.
An awful fascination imprisoned Malbork. He could neither move nor speak, only watch as the spectre assumed form. The tyrant of Sylvania, the despot who lorded over thousands of lives, was as helpless as a sparrow caught in the serpent’s gaze.
Ice crackled on the tower’s stone floor as the shadow stepped out from the wall and became three-dimensional: a lean, withered body draped in a cloak ribbed like the wing of some monstrous bat. Against the folds of a high, crimson-hued collar, a vulturine face regarded the voivode with malignant intensity. Malbork felt his skin crawl under the scrutiny of those blood-shot eye
s.
‘Vanhal,’ the count gasped. Malbork was reckoned a fierce, formidable warrior by those who had met him on the battlefield, yet the spectral visitation had sapped even his courage. Tales of the necromancer’s terrifying sorceries were never far from the thoughts of any Sylvanian, far less the man who nominally reigned over them all. That the dreadful warlock should be able to violate the defences of Castle Drakenhof so easily was a horror he had never dared imagine.
The cadaverous face pulled back in a thin, sneering smile. ‘If I were him, you would be dead right now,’ the morbid intruder declared in a scratchy, withered voice. ‘I am the Baron Lothar von Diehl of Mordheim. I tell you this in order that you might understand it is an equal and not some unwashed peasant who treats with you.’
Malbork stepped back, one hand closing about the dagger hanging from his belt. ‘I have heard of you,’ he said. ‘You are Vanhal’s creature, his minion. You too have despoiled my lands and stolen my people from their graves!’
‘Graves you so obligingly filled,’ Lothar said, bowing his shrivelled head in acknowledgement. ‘But I did not come so far to dwell upon the past, excellency. I came here to discuss the future.’
‘What demands does Vanhal make of me?’ Malbork asked, managing to keep the fear he felt from his voice. With the skaven sniffing at the borders of his lands, with Stirland growing increasingly onerous in their demands for past duties and tithes, now was the worst time for the necromancer’s deathless legions to stir from Vanhaldenschlosse.
Lothar blinked, surprised by the voivode’s question. ‘Vanhal makes no demands,’ he laughed. ‘Were he able, he would simply take what he wanted.’ He raised an almost skeletal finger to indicate the significance of the point he was making. ‘Were he able,’ Lothar repeated. ‘But I fear my mentor still recovers from his exertions. Decimating the skaven, annihilating their sorcerer-priest, violating the governance of time-space, these have extracted their toll from my master.’
Malbork’s hand eased away from the dagger, his brows knotted in keen interest. ‘What is it that Lothar von Diehl wants? And why?’
The Mordheimer gave Malbork another of his ghoulish smiles. ‘I have come to offer you my services. In return, you will agree to show me certain considerations.’
‘What considerations?’
A theatrical flourish of his emaciated hand brought a streamer of shadow expanding from Lothar’s hand. In a few breaths, the darkness became a tiny yet precise miniature of Vanhaldenschlosse’s crooked battlements. ‘I want Vanhaldenschlosse,’ he said. ‘The tower and a promise of non-interference as I pursue my studies.’ A grisly chuckle wracked the scrawny necromancer. ‘I can afford to procure any materials I might require on my own.’
The voivode eyed his visitant with hostile suspicion. He could guess what kind of materials the necromancer referred to and the sort of obscenities that would be conducted within Vanhaldenschlosse. ‘What services do I buy for such considerations?’
Lothar snapped his fingers, dispelling the shadowy miniature. ‘As I have said, Vanhal has been recuperating from his exertions. His power is diminished. After the battle, he could maintain but a scant thousand of his legion, only a handful of his zombie dragons. Have you not wondered why he doesn’t stir from his castle? Why his undead do not threaten your towns and villages?’
‘So you are telling me now is the time to strike?’ Malbork curled his lip in contempt. ‘If it is so easy, why do you not dispose of him yourself?’
‘You misunderstand me. I said that Vanhal was recuperating. He has already regained a formidable degree of his power.’
Anger coloured Malbork’s face, overwhelming the fear Lothar’s eerie entrance had provoked. ‘Then you are saying it is already too late to strike!’ He shook his fist in frustration.
Lothar merely smiled. ‘Too late now. But I have studied my master’s recovery most carefully. I have a better understanding of his abilities now. Of what he can do and what may again drain him to the point of vulnerability. The proper crisis, a conflict to draw him from his lair…’
‘I will not risk my army on some fool’s venture,’ Malbork growled.
‘Then we will not use your army, excellency,’ Lothar said, a cunning gleam in his eye. ‘Surely, between us, we could turn Vanhal’s ire towards another antagonist. Say, for instance, your liege lord, Grand Count von Oberreuth?’
Malbork marvelled at the perfidy of the necromancer. Pit one enemy against the other? Whichever emerged victor, the true winner would be Sylvania. ‘You seem certain of your influence over your master.’
Lothar shrugged. ‘As he recovers, he depends upon me for the little, mundane matters. Attending to invaders for instance. I can tell him such foes are from Stirland as easily as Sylvania.’
The light of suspicion crept back into the count’s gaze. ‘And all you want is the tower?’
‘The tower, freedom to conduct my researches and the protection of your soldiers against those who might take a dim view of my researches.’ Lothar paused, looking at the ceiling for an instant. When he continued it was as though remembering a minor detail that had almost slipped his memory. ‘I will also require a slight bauble, a bit of bric-a-brac recovered from the Inquisitorium of Verena in Mordheim. Certain… shall we say inimical concentrations of ideology make it difficult for me to get it myself.’
‘A sorcerer can’t trespass on holy ground,’ Malbork scoffed.
‘Something of the sort,’ Lothar admitted nonchalantly. ‘But I think it would be wise to act upon my request. Just in case Vanhal should prevail over your other enemies. Neither of us wants him coming back. This trinket will ensure he doesn’t.’
Malbork nodded as he carefully considered the necromancer’s claims. ‘Discuss your plans in more detail, sorcerer. It may be that we can form a compact.’
In sober tones the two noblemen made their plans of treachery and slaughter, secure in the isolation of the Red Spire. Unaware of the verminous ears lurking behind the walls, sharp to catch every nuance of their intrigues. Lips peeled away from inhuman fangs as the ratkin listened and plotted their own revenge.
Chapter III
Drakwald, 1119
For what felt like hours, Mandred followed the white wolf through the forest. Whenever he felt foolish, whenever doubt crept into his mind, the beast ahead of him would pause and look back at him. There was such an aura of expectancy in those piercing blue eyes that the nobleman would feel a surge of determination swell up inside him. Wherever the wolf was leading him, he was resolved to see the end of the trail.
The sun was sinking from the sky, the pale sliver of Mannslieb just beginning to cast its silvery rays into the shadowy forest. A cool, crisp wind moaned through the trees, sending dead leaves rustling across the ground. The white wolf trotted on, its pale pelt stark as a beacon in the gloom. A sudden increase in its pace left Mandred well behind. A flicker of alarm coursed through the noble. He sensed he was near wherever it was the animal was leading him. If he lost it now, he feared he would never learn the wolf’s secret.
One hand closed about his sword’s scabbard to keep the weapon from jouncing against his leg, Mandred rushed after the wolf. The animal broke into a steady run, weaving between the trees with an incredible grace. It wasn’t long before Mandred lost sight of the beast entirely. For an instant, he ran onwards, thinking he might pick up the animal’s trail again. Then reason asserted itself and he stopped running. He was alone in the twilit wood, chasing after a beast that was clearly anything but natural. An idiot could see the foolishness of pressing on.
Frustrated, angry at himself for allowing the wolf to lead him so far from the trails he knew, Mandred took stock of his surroundings. The trees and bushes around him looked much like any other in the Drakwald, but he recalled an old bit of woodcraft that claimed moss would grow only on the northern side of a tree. Or perhaps it was the southern side. Either way, unless some
divine perversity caused the sun to set in the east, he’d be able to get his bearings by examining which way the moss grew.
He was just kneeling down to inspect one of the trees when he noticed the cave. A craggy lump of rock jutting out from the forest floor, its surface almost completely obscured by dead leaves and weeds; its would have been easy to miss but for the grim blackness of the cave mouth. As he continued to stare, he became aware of a dull, flickering glow deep within the darkness, the light of someone’s fire.
Mandred drew Legbiter from its sheath. The presence of fire indicated the presence of a thinking creature, one entirely different from the wolf he had followed so far and for so long. The most pleasant prospect his imagination could conjure was a band of brigands; at least they would be human. More likely the cave was infested with goblins, perhaps even a pack of skaven stragglers. The irony of that last possibility almost made him laugh.
Warily, he approached the cave. He strained to hear any sound, the scratchy whisper of goblin voices, the nasty hiss of skaven squeaks. The only noise that rewarded his alertness was the crackle of the fire. Tightening his grip on his sword, muttering a prayer to Ulric and another to Taal, Mandred made his way into the darkness.
The fire was a small one, burning in a little pit that had been gouged in the floor at the back of the cave. By its fitful light, Mandred saw that some manner of thinking creature had made the cave its home. Strings of dried herbs hung from the rock roof; animal skins covered the floor. One wall was given over to an assortment of gourds, woven baskets and old bones, their arrangement suggesting a deliberation beyond the witless whims of goblins and the bestial impulses of gors.
Mandred walked over to the assemblage of baskets and gourds. Removing the plug that sealed one of the gourds, he found the hollowed inside had been filled with a collection of wolf teeth. Carved into each fang was a sign, a rune that he recognised from the oldest Teutogen relics.