by C. L. Werner
Ever growing.
Ever hungry.
Vanhal stepped to the edge of the roof, balancing himself upon the precipice. He stretched forth his pallid hand. Years of aethyric energies had leeched his flesh of all colour, leaving the skin translucent. Veins and arteries were visible beneath his ghostly skin, yellow bones pressing close against the surface. Yet there was no sense of weakness in the necromancer’s emaciation, only an awful and irresistible sense of destiny. Fate made manifest.
The master necromancer hissed the hoary words of dim antiquity, shaping the Khemran tongue into patterns never imagined by the liche-priests of lost Nehekhara. A mosaic of obscenity wove itself around Vanhal as he evoked his magic. The chill of sorcery caused frost to gather about the black masonry of Vanhaldenschlosse and sent an aurora of witchfire crackling across the sky.
A ghostly gale plucked at Vanhal’s robes, snapping the tattered vestments about him like the wings of some mammoth bat. The necromancer ignored the menacing pull of the wind, ignored the precipitous fall only a hairsbreadth from his feet. The physical world had faded from his consciousness. All that remained was his great conjuration.
Upon the deathly desolation below, a terrible activity now became manifest. An undulation swept across the bonefield, the unburied dead shifting like the waves of some ghastly tide. Skeletal arms reached to the heavens, fleshless jaws snapped and clamped. One by one, then hundred by hundred, the slaughtered and the slaughterers raised themselves upon bony legs and turned inwards to face the tower. A silent horde of abomination, profane legions from beyond the grave. By their hundreds, by their thousands, the undead awaited the command of their master.
Vanhal stiffened. For the first time Lothar had an inkling of weakness in that awful personage. A bead of sweat dripped from the fallen priest’s palm, a quiver snuck into his invocations. Small things, but they spoke to Lothar of a strain he had never seen before. Below, he watched as four of the great necrotic mounds that had once been dragons shifted and stirred. The headless bulk of Graug was the first to rise. Two of the other dragons, the most recently dead of the beasts Vanhal had summoned from the fabled Plain of Bones beyond cursed Nagashizzar, also reared into a macabre semblance of life. The fourth dragon, however, collapsed back to the earth, its bones flaking and crumbling into ash as the dark energies that had attempted to revive it dissipated and fled back into the aethyr.
During the battle with the skaven, Vanhal had conjured dozens of the mighty wyrms to do his bidding. Now it was beyond him to maintain even four of the beasts. Lothar tried to hide the thrill of excitement, the lustful anticipation that swelled inside him.
Vanhal turned from the edge of the roof, his eyes boring into Lothar’s. The master held his hand towards the apprentice. Lothar tried to resist, but there was no defying the imperious demand in that gaze. Step by reluctant step, he crossed the roof and joined Vanhal. The moment he reached the fallen priest, Vanhal’s icy clutch closed about his own hand.
Instantly, Lothar felt himself reeling. He could feel something draining out of him, flowing from his spirit into that of his master. The ghoulish embers of Vanhal’s eyes blazed with revivified fire. The master necromancer turned back to the bonefield and the thousands of slaves awaiting his command.
New words rasped from Vanhal’s lips. Like some human parrot, Lothar found himself repeating those intonations without any conscious volition. Dimly, faintly at first, phantom strains of melody impacted the nobleman’s hearing, a cacophony of eerie melody that seemed to crawl into the blackest corridors of his soul.
Lothar knew this music, the cadence from the beyond. It was a conjuration of Vanhal’s own devising, a ghastliness he called the Danse Macabre. Lothar had witnessed its effect before, watched it impart upon the risen dead a horrifying vivacity.
‘Oh thou profaner of souls. Oh thou defiler of the tomb. Thou Mighty One of Uatep.’ The invocation boomed like thunder from the parapets of Vanhaldenschlosse, the voices of master and apprentice merging into a single tone. ‘Let not these limbs be without movement. Let them not pass away. Let them not suffer from corruption. Make supple these limbs. Make strong these sinews. Refill these hearts with persistence. Restore these souls with perseverance that they may walk again the kingdom of Khem in all thy majesty and terror and wear once more the mantle of life.’
A tremor passed through the deathless legions below. With awful vitality, they turned away from the tower, forming themselves into companies of fleshless warriors, snatching up splintered shields and rusty blades from the bloodied battlefield around them. Decayed roars wheezed from the leathery carcasses of the dragons as they lifted themselves into the night on ragged pinions.
‘Now they will know the terror that waits in the darkness. Now they shall see the doom that waits for them in the shadows. Blind, ignorant, they shall all die for presuming to defy the might of a god.’
The words were Vanhal’s. The tongue that gave them voice was Lothar’s.
In that tiny corner of his mind that hadn’t been subsumed by the essence of his master, Baron Lothar von Diehl screamed.
Chapter IX
Dietershafen, 1119
Much of the ground floor of the Seafarer’s Guild had been gutted, doors torn down, walls knocked out, pillars toppled. Sections of the floors above had come crashing downwards during the demolition, precipitating a crazed network of support beams and rigging to keep the rest from collapsing. One exterior wall had been blown out entirely, the room extended into a rickety expansion cobbled together from discarded lumber and deck planks scavenged from Dietershafen’s shipyard.
The purpose behind such deranged architectural adjustments reposed in the middle of the cavernous sprawl of the Guild’s ground floor. It was a hulk of copper pipes and tubes, bronze flywheels and iron gears, crystal lenses and ratskin belts. Enormous tread-wheels bulged in haphazard disarray among the confusion of machinery, scrawny ratmen locked inside the cages as they frantically used their legs to propel the revolving platforms beneath their feet. A great curl of wire, spiralling upwards into a set of horns, loomed above the contraption, crackling with electricity as the slaves spun the tread-wheels.
As it danced between the horns, the electricity took on the shrill, squeaky intonations of a distorted skaven voice.
‘Man-dread not come,’ the disembodied squeak whined. ‘Can’t sniff-see man-army. Sword-rats get hungry-bored. Want-like sack Salzen-nest soon-soon. Want-like much-much.’
Sythar Doom, Warplord of Clan Skryre and Grand High Techno-tyrant, bruxed his fangs in annoyance as he heard the report. The nugget of warpstone that powered his mechanical heart burned a bit hotter as the ratman’s rage surged through his veins. After his humiliating defeat in Altdorf, he wasn’t about to let the humans trick him again. Before, he had made the mistake of considering the urgings of his minions, listening to their treacherous counsel. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. They would bide their time, they would adhere to his plan and if any of the mouse-fondling maggots dared spring the trap early…
Energy crackled about Sythar’s metal fangs as he turned towards the nearest of the slave-wheels that powered the Warpsqueaker. His own invention after he had appropriated the research of an almost-clever underling, the machine allowed transmission of vocalisations uttered by those who’d undergone the proper surgeries. One day, devices such as the Warpsqueaker would be found throughout skavendom, wherever the shining brilliance of Clan Skryre had established a presence, allowing instant communication between the far-flung hench-rats of the Grey Lords. It was to be regretted that warpstone poisoning took such a toll on the slaves needed to power the device. A human would last roughly an hour, a dwarf three or four times as long and an orc longer still, if one could keep the dumb brute motivated. No, the most efficient were skaven slaves, and even these would suffer fatal exposure after two days. Watching the occupants of the nearest cage, Sythar considered it was probably getting close
to the stage where their fur would fall out and the sores on their skin start to ooze. He’d have to remind the warlock-engineer responsible to have them switched out as soon as this annoying report from his minions under Salzenmund was complete.
Sythar Doom’s natural eyes had rotted away long ago, replaced with lenses of polished warpstone and arcane technology. They burned with a grisly crimson light as he focused them upon the Warpsqueaker. The machinery was a dull, scarlet shadow in the ratman’s synthetic sight, the arcs of electricity appearing as grisly green flashes.
‘Listen-obey!’ Sythar snapped, his fangs crackling with energy as they gnashed together. ‘Wait-watch! The army of Man-dread will come. The man-things have no tunnels. They must use roads, must crawl across the surface. My spies will see-sniff them. They will tell when the humans near Salzen-place! Man-things need rest and food and think to find both in Salzen-place. Instead, they will find death!’
Sythar chittered happily as he envisioned the carnage when the human army walked into his trap. The might of Clan Skryre and half a dozen vassal clans would rise from their burrows to exterminate the feared Man-dread. Killing the feared slayer of Vecteek the Despotic would be an accomplishment to shake the halls of the Shattered Tower. The Grey Lords would bare their throats to the skaven who killed the despised Man-dread. Though Sythar was far too sensible to risk himself in a direct engagement with the terrifying warrior, it would be his plan, his genius, that brought about the human’s doom.
A great tumult rose from the streets outside, a clamour of confusion that drowned out the response crackling from the Warpsqueaker’s transmitter. Sythar Doom spun away from the immense invention, murder in his posture. Someone would pay for this interruption! If they were human, he’d have their bones ground into bread! If they were skaven, he’d wear their pelt as a scarf… and have their bones ground into bread!
Glaring at the attendant warlock-engineers, the fierce warplord began to stalk to the great doors of the guildhall. He had only gone a few paces, however, when his ears began to twitch and his tail began to squirm. The sounds of disorder were growing louder and more persistent. He could hear the boom of explosions, the whoosh of warp-fire being expelled from flame-spitters, the crack of jezzails being fired.
Sythar Doom spun back around, baring his fangs at the Warpsqueaker. Those treacherous flea-maggots! They’d been whining about impatience and boredom, complaining that they wanted to attack the humans. All of it was lies! They’d allowed Man-dread and his army to march right past them without raising a paw to stop him!
The humans weren’t in Salzenmund, they were attacking Dietershafen!
‘Destroy that… that foolishness!’ Sythar roared at the warlock-engineers. The technorats stared at him in confusion for a moment. When their cruel overlord drew an oversized pistol from his belt and sent a sizzling lance of warp-lightning burning through one of them, they quickly regained their sense of priority. With hammer and spanner, the skaven threw themselves at the offending Warpsqueaker, savaging it with the viciousness of starving rats.
Sythar Doom wished he hadn’t been so hasty killing the inventor of the treacherous device, because he dearly wanted to kill him now. A brilliant device, one that would reshape all skavendom! An instrument for treasonous underlings to work their betrayals from afar, to squeak their lies without hiding the duplicity in their scent and the deceit in their posture!
This betrayal wouldn’t succeed. Sythar was too cagey to place all of his trust in anything or anyone. Plans within plans within plans had been the philosophy that had allowed Clan Skryre to prosper. Let the humans enter the city; let them carve their way deeper into Doom’s domain. Every step would bring them only closer to their own destruction.
When Sythar had claimed Dietershafen for Clan Skryre, it had been with a definite purpose in mind. The shipyards had been quickly converted for the use of his allies, the ship-rats of Clan Skurvy. Even now, a flotilla of Skurvy ships equipped with the murderous inventions only Clan Skryre could provide was sitting at anchor in the bay. They watched for enemy ships, fleets from across the Sea of Claws, but it would be a simple thing to turn them around and bring their weapons to bear against Dietershafen.
That thought brought another chitter of malignant laughter from the warplord. Not only the weapons of Skurvy’s ships could be turned away from the sea. Seizing upon that idea, leaving his underlings to complete the demolition of the Warpsqueaker, Sythar scurried from the guildhall, intent upon reaching the defences he had prepared for the protection of Dietershafen.
Defences he would now use to smash the city flat!
Legbiter flashed in a butchering sweep, cleaving down to crush the collarbone of the skaven halberdier who leapt out from the fog. Black blood exploded from the ratman’s torn flesh, the creature wilting to the roadway to be crushed beneath the stamping hooves of Graf Mandred’s destrier.
‘No quarter! No mercy!’ Mandred shouted, bringing his sword stabbing into the breast of a second ratman. A kick of his boot flung the flailing creature from his blade, knocking down a cluster of skaven charging behind it. Mandred spurred his warhorse into the tumbled creatures, splintering bones and smashing skulls before the monsters could recover. All around him, frightened squeaks and bestial screams rang out, wailing from the thick grey mantle of fog that blanketed the city.
There was no blessing the gods could have bestowed upon Mandred’s army that could have been more welcome than the fog. The Nordlanders held that they had never seen the Breath of Stromfels range so far inland, and seldom had they seen it so thick. Visibility was measured in feet, all beyond that range reduced to vague shapes behind the mist. The wet dankness of the fog confounded the keen noses of the skaven. For the first time in their war against the vermin, the Middenheimers found themselves on a level field with their monstrous foe.
Or nearly so. The beasts were still inhumanly quick and agile, capable of frenzied bursts too swift for the human eye to follow. At the same time, they were cowardly, cringing creatures devoid of any loyalty to anything greater than their own skins. The ratmen wouldn’t press an attack once they saw their enemy wasn’t to be overwhelmed easily.
From the start, the skaven had been taken by surprise. Under cover of the fog, Kurgaz Smallhammer and his dwarfs had stolen right up to the walls of Dietershafen, crept right to the great gates of the city and planted the explosive charges that sent those gates hurtling into the sky. The thunderous blast had been the clarion call for Mandred’s army. Into the fog had charged his cavalry, a thousand horses and more spilling down the streets of Dietershafen in an avalanche of steel and flesh. After the cavalry came the host of footmen and peasant conscripts, some clambering onto the walls to clear them of stunned skaven sentries, others smashing into the houses and shops to clear them of any verminous occupants.
The fog, the great and glorious fog, made the human advance swift and irresistible. The skaven, their keen senses stifled by the mist, were disorganised and confused. As they swarmed out to meet the attack they did so as individual packs and mobs. The weight of numbers wasn’t there, the cruel discipline of their despotic leaders wasn’t behind them to drive them into the terrified desperation that alone could make them press home their attacks. When they came boiling out of the fog, they did so without any concept of how numerous their foes might be. Vision and smell dulled, all they could do was to listen to the cries of battle. And when those cries were the fierce roars of enraged men and the dying whimpers of butchered skaven, the monsters would break and run, scampering back the way they had come, blocking those still with the heart to bring battle to the humans.
Great was the slaughter as Mandred led charge after charge into the packed masses of ratmen. The white caparison of his warhorse was black with the blood of vermin, the surcoat of his standard bearer became foul with the fluids of dying skaven, and his own beard became matted with clots of gore. Still the slaughter continued. The crunch of warhamme
rs splitting skulls and smashing ribs, the crack of bones pulverised beneath the iron-shod hooves of warhorses, these became like a perpetual roar in his ears. Resistless as the pounding tide, the Knights of the White Wolf followed their sovereign down the streets of Dietershafen.
Narrowly did Mandred escape disaster. Pressing one routed pack of skaven too closely, he discovered the fratricidal brutality of these monsters. A great sheet of green flame came rolling out from the fog, sweeping over the ratmen, incinerating them in a wash of molten fire. So great was the heat that for an instant the fog itself was burnt away. Before it could come sweeping back in, Mandred saw what looked like a beer-monger’s wagon at the end of the street, a clutch of skaven swarming about it, pushing it up the lane. Stalking before the wagon, its body draped in an all-enclosing smock of oiled leather, was a muscular ratman with a strange metal nozzle gripped in its paws. Hoses led away from the nozzle back to the immense wooden barrel in the bed of the wagon.
The operators of the fire-thrower hadn’t been able to see the humans through the fog, instead they had targeted the panicked squeaks of their own comrades. Unleashing the caustic flames of their weapon at the sound, they had trusted they could destroy the enemy along with their own fleeing troops. By a slender margin, their ghastly tactic had nearly succeeded.
Mandred forced himself to wait while the fog closed in again, watching as the skaven worked frantically to push their grisly weapon forwards. As soon as the curtain of fog came back, he turned his horse and bolted down a side street. ‘To me! To me!’ he cried, his shout taken up by Beck and his standard bearer. The Knights of the White Wolf followed after him, the Dienstleute behind them galloping after. Mandred took the first turn, wheeling his horse about to the north. His steed trampled the skaven jezzails they found lurking in the lane, smashing them before the beasts could bring their guns to bear. The graf cursed even so slight a delay as he turned his horse again, charging down a street parallel to the first diversion. From the scorched road he had retreated from, screams of men and horses sounded, accompanied by the fiery whoosh of the insidious skaven weapon. Mandred tried not to think about the men who’d been caught in that grisly green fire. Instead he focused on the path ahead, the path that would see those men avenged.