by C. L. Werner
All told, the Great Host was equal to its name. Never had Malbork seen such a vast army. At least not of living men…
The foe that now marched indefatigably towards the forest was more numerous than Malbork had believed possible. Rank after rank of bleached bone and rusted armour, troop after troop of fleshless horses carrying skeletal riders. Vanhal’s legion was as numberless as the stars in the sky. Tattered banners and rotten flags waved above the undead horde, crows and vultures circled above them, drawn by the omnipresent stench of death. Spear and sword, bow and axe, lance and flail, the skeletons came, giving voice to no shouts, no song, no chant. Only the dry rustle of leathery flesh against decayed bone, the clatter of crumbling armour jouncing against morbid frame.
At the core of the legion, like the hub of some obscene wheel, was the necromancer himself. Malbork could see the fiend’s black cloak and the skull-like mask. Even from a distance, his skin crawled at the impression of malefic power emanating from the sorcerer. Vanhal was borne aloft upon a writhing, wailing nimbus of spectral energies, a great pillar of enslaved spirits, their essences fused to form an abominable chariot beneath the necromancer’s throne.
Vanhal raised his arms high and as he did so, three vast and ghastly forms swept down from the sky, the wasted, putrid carcasses of dragons, preserved and animated by the necromancer’s foul arts. Shouts of alarm greeted the descent of the dragons, cries of horror that were silenced by the blare of trumpets. At the signal, the Great Host retreated into the shelter of the trees while bowmen advanced between the ranks and loosed a volley into the hurtling monstrosities.
Arrows by the hundreds whistled up into the reptiles, stabbing into their withered scales and corrupt flesh. The beasts responded with gouts of stinking putrescence, a brew of diabolic corruption that seared its victims to the very marrow. Scores of men fell shrieking beneath the toxic breath. Unable to drop the beasts with their arrows, they were left helpless before the rampaging dragons.
The sacrifice of the archers provided an opportunity for a particular element within Graf Mandred’s force. Rushing onto the field and taking up a position to the flank of the swooping dragons, a regiment of burly dwarfs hastily brought their curious weapons to bear. The dwarfs aimed their weapons – long tubes of steel fixed to stocks of wutroth – skyward. Each warrior set the end of a smouldering cord of hemp against a small opening just behind the steel tube. A moment later, a deafening roar boomed from dozens of firearms as each gunner sent a ball of lead exploding into the decayed dragons. Where the undead brutes had shrugged off the impact of arrows, the dwarfish bullets pulverised bone and shredded flesh. One of the wyrms plummeted to the earth, gouging a great pit as its mass pounded into the field. The sound of the reptile’s bones breaking brought a resounding cheer from the Stirlanders and their allies. The remaining dragons wheeled away, retreating back across the line of Vanhal’s advancing legion.
Malbork looked back at the necromancer, hoping to see some reaction from the fearsome Vanhal to the routing of his foul dragons. The skull-masked sorcerer remained implacable, as emotionless as the skeletons he commanded. A gesture and the dragons began circling over the undead host. Not routed, simply withdrawn. It occurred to Malbork that their foe had more tactical acumen than he would have credited him. The dragons had been a probing attack, simply a test of the Stirlander line. Mandred’s deployment of the dwarfs had exposed one of the teeth hidden inside von Oberreuth’s army.
At another gesture from the necromancer, the entire deathless legion came to a halt with preternatural precision. One breath they were moving, the next they were as still as a mountain, a solid mass of carrion arrayed before the forest. Vanhal leaned forwards upon his spectral throne. For an instant, it seemed to Malbork that the fiend stared directly into his eyes. He shuddered at the contact, feeling the devilish mockery in the necromancer’s glare.
Then there came a flurry of motion from the centre of the undead host. Marching out from between the ranks of silent skeletons were scores of armoured monsters. Flesh blackened and withered by millennia clung to the ancient bones, the bronze armour caked in verdigris, crumbling a little more with each step the horrors took. There was something troubling about that armour, something naggingly familiar. Malbork’s vexation resolved itself when he heard Dregator Iorgu draw a frightened gasp.
‘Impossible!’ Iorgu exclaimed. ‘It wasn’t real! It wasn’t real!’
The wights continued to march, and from the Stirlanders a despairing moan rose. ‘The old kings,’ they wailed. ‘The old kings march to reclaim their land!’
Malbork stared again at Vanhal, understanding now that terrible mockery. He had thought to provoke war between his enemies by convincing Stirland that Vanhal had set the ancient Styrigen dead upon them.
Now, Vanhal was making Malbork’s lie a reality. He had called the dead from their barrows. The Styrigen wights had risen to take their revenge against the Asoborn conquerors.
Chapter XIII
Averland, 1123
Arch-Lector Hartwich led the outlaw knight down a winding path between the pavilions of the great and the mighty. Clustered at the very core of the encampment, the tents of the nobles and dignitaries were a spectacle, their gaudily painted banners snapping in the winds, bright pennons fluttering from support poles. Soldiers wearing the liveries of a hundred noble houses stood guard outside the tents, leaning against spears and halberds as they watched each passer-by with a suspicious glare. The enticing aromas from a dozen private kitchens wafted through the air, almost blotting out the omnipresent stink of horse dung and human sweat.
‘Where are we going?’ Erich asked the priest for what seemed the hundredth time since they’d quit Hartwich’s own pavilion. This time, however, instead of brushing him off with an injunction to be patient, Hartwich stopped and turned towards the knight. There was a worried look in his eyes.
‘I am taking you to where I think you can work a great good,’ Hartwich said after a moment of inner reflection. ‘Yes, I think Sigmar must indeed have guided you here, in His mercy. But now that we stand upon the precipice, I find myself wondering if I have the right to ask this of you.’
Erich smiled and slapped his gauntlets against his armoured thigh. ‘You’ve asked nothing of me so far. Aside from hiding in a cave for years on end, my only human contact a Taalite priest.’
‘Haerther is a wise man. I knew he would keep you safe,’ Hartwich said.
‘He stayed with me for a time after I took shelter with the Knights of the Black Rose, but mysteriously left us one day, vanished as completely as if he’d never been,’ Erich said.
Hartwich nodded knowingly. ‘Haerther is more comfortable among the trees and meadows, the wild places where he can be closer to Taal. He’s little good around people for very long.’ The priest frowned as his mind turned back to the subject at hand.
‘Erich, I am going to ask your help to heal a great hurt,’ Hartwich said. ‘I’ve tried my best, but it needs a strength more profound than what I can bestow.’
The knight slapped his gauntlets against his thigh again, this time with a bit of irritation behind the gesture. ‘You’re speaking in riddles again,’ he accused.
‘Princess Erna Thornig is in this camp,’ Hartwich stated, his words blunt and to the point. ‘She was rescued from the skaven in Carroburg. Graf Mandred himself found her.’ The priest felt a pang of guilt when he saw the way Erich’s face lit up at the mention of the princess. He remembered watching them together, all those years ago when they’d all been involved in Prince Sigdan’s conspiracy against the Emperor. He’d been praying the light he’d noticed then hadn’t been dimmed by the cruelties of time.
Now that he saw it yet burned, at least in Erich’s heart, Hartwich felt his guilt increase a hundredfold. He reached out and set his hand on Erich’s shoulder. ‘Prepare yourself,’ he cautioned. ‘The princess isn’t the same woman you left in Altdorf.’
Erich shook his head and said sombrely, ‘The woman I left in Altdorf I thought to be dead, murdered by that maggot her father arranged for her to marry.’ He knew it was vile to hold a grudge against the dead, but he still resented Baron Thornig’s callousness in using his own daughter as a means of removing Adolf Kreyssig.
‘There are some things worse than death,’ Hartwich warned. ‘Things that make even a priest lose hope.’ He stared hard at the knight. ‘If there is any feeling for you left in her, it may awaken when she sees you, and in awakening stir the rest of her mind. She may need your strength to support her for a very long time.’
‘She will have it for as long as she wants it,’ Erich vowed. Hartwich nodded and led him on towards a tent that stood by itself. Even the fact that she was being supported by Graf Mandred wasn’t enough to make anyone pitch camp next to a madwoman. Two dwarf guards stood before the tent, the only warriors in the camp with the stomach for such duty.
Hartwich led Erich past the sentries and into the sparingly appointed space beyond. The knight gasped in disbelief when he saw the white-haired, pallid woman. It was like looking at the echo of the Erna he had known in Altdorf. She was lying upon a pile of furs, idly rocking back and forth while pulling clumps of goose-down from a pillow.
‘She has suffered much,’ Hartwich explained. ‘First at the hands of Kreyssig, then as a witness to the cruelties of Boris. Finally there came the long years as slave to the skaven.’
Erich felt the flicker of hope die inside him. ‘What can be done?’ he asked.
‘Pray,’ Hartwich said, but the priest was looking past the knight, watching the woman rocking back and forth. At the sound of Erich’s voice she had perked up. Now she was looking in their direction.
‘Captain? Is it my captain?’ Erna asked. When she saw Erich turn back around, a piteously jubilant smile stretched across her face. Dropping the pillow, she lurched onto her feet and stumbled on her stiff legs towards him.
‘Go to her,’ Hartwich encouraged the perplexed knight. Erich nodded and did as the priest said, meeting Erna halfway across the tent, catching her in his arms.
‘It is you,’ the princess cried, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Adolf said he killed you.’
Erich smiled at that. It would be just like the swine to claim he was dead just to inflict that little extra measure of torment on his wife. ‘I don’t die so easily,’ he told her.
Erna drew away from the embrace, staring intently into Erich’s eyes. ‘I killed him,’ she said.
The knight smiled awkwardly. It was common knowledge that Kreyssig was alive and well in Altdorf, still acting as Protector of the Empire. Indeed, he was something of a hero to the people there after fending off a skaven attack.
Erna understood the incredulous expression. Her brow knitted angrily. ‘I killed him,’ she insisted. ‘Doktor Moschner was there. He saw me do it.’ She glanced around warily. ‘I wouldn’t tell anybody because it is a secret but I want you to know. I killed him.’
‘That is all she worries about, this man she says she killed,’ Hartwich explained. ‘She always says it is a secret only the doktor knows. Sometimes she also explains that the doktor was taken away by the skaven.’
Erich sighed. ‘The things Kreyssig must have done to you for you to murder him in your mind,’ he said, his voice almost reduced to a sob as he reached out to stroke Erna’s colourless hair.
Again, the princess pulled back. Ironically, there was an uncomprehending look on her face. ‘Not Adolf,’ she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. Her next words, soft as they were spoken, still had an impact like thunder as they left her lips.
‘I killed Emperor Boris.’
Graf Mandred paced about the confines of his tent, listening again to the report that had just reached him from his scouts. It was about the worst news he could have expected. For this reason, he’d summoned only his closest confederates, the men who had been with him the longest. Even his most ardent supporters like Baroness Carin were excluded from this select group.
‘You’ve heard the reports,’ Mandred challenged his councillors once the scouts finished repeating the information. ‘What is your advice?’
‘An army marching behind us on our flank,’ Ar-Ulric said. ‘It threatens the entire campaign against Averheim. Instead of catching the skaven between us and the Averburg, this force would trap us against the walls of Averheim.’
‘Do we know who they are,’ Duke Schneidereit asked. ‘Perhaps it is another volunteer force from Stirland or Sylvania?’
‘More likely a skaven column,’ Grand Master Vitholf suggested. His face grew grave as he voiced another possibility. ‘It could also be a fresh army from Vanhaldenschlosse.’ After their battle with Vanhal, not a man in Mandred’s army liked the prospect of fighting the undead a second time.
Kurgaz growled into his beard as he suggested yet another dire prospect. ‘Most of the greenskins have been battering away at the dwarfholds in the mountains,’ he said, ‘but it’s always possible some horde of goblins decided to call it quits and look for easier prey.’
Mandred’s fingers clenched about Legbiter’s grip. ‘Whoever they are, we can’t have them on our flank.’ He grimaced as he thought of the other problem at hand. ‘We can’t delay the attack on Averheim. Any delay and I think the contingents from Ostland and Talabecland will go home. We have to strike, and strike soon.’
Grand Master Vitholf stepped over to his graf. ‘There’s only one thing to do then. You’ll need to send a company of cavalry to engage these troops on our flank. Attack swiftly, retreat quickly and lead them off away from the army.’
‘It will be a dangerous duty,’ Mandred cautioned.
Vitholf laughed. ‘That, your highness, is why I am volunteering the Knights of the White Wolf for the job.’
The shrieks of a score of skaven scratched at the air as a jagged chunk of masonry came hurtling out from behind the towering walls of the Averburg. Packed in tight formations around the besieged fortress, every rock lobbed by the defenders wrought a hideous toll from the attackers.
Great Warlord Vrrmik, He who is Twelfth, bruxed his fangs in satisfaction when he caught the scent of the dead and dying ratmen. The humans had directed their artillery against Clan Skab’s positions again, proving Vrrmik’s wisdom in rotating them there. It would make for a formidable object lesson if Skab’s warriors were decimated here. The scum should have stood their ground in Woerden and fought to the last fang instead of turning tail and scampering away after their warlord was killed.
Vrrmik leaned back in his palanquin, a massive throne that had been stitched together from a number of tapestries plundered from the homes of the nobles and then lashed to a jumbled frame that included the altar from a shrine to the goddess Rhya. The altar stone was a bit onerous for Vrrmik’s bearers to shoulder, but the warlord found the smell of the stone as delightful as the texture of the tapestries, so the slaves really had no choice in the matter.
Well, they had one choice, Vrrmik reflected, running his white paw down the haft of the enormous mattock he’d stolen from the dwarfs inside the Ulricsberg. He’d named the thing Skavenbite in recognition of his new position as Vecteek’s successor. With the diminished power of the grey seers, more than ever the occupant of the Twelfth Throne was ruler of the Grey Lords and master of the Council of Thirteen.
There were challengers of course, chief among them the other great warlord clans, Skab and Rictus. Several thousand warriors from each of those clans had been brought to Averheim, determined to win for their warlords some measure of the victory when the Averburg finally fell. It was important to them that Vrrmik and Mors be denied the credit for subduing the city.
Such scheming, however, played right into Vrrmik’s paws. Between Averheim and Woerden all the towns were defended by skaven from Clan Mors, skaven who wouldn’t engage Man-dread’s army as it moved southward
but would instead retreat. Vrrmik would open the way for Man-dread to reach Averheim. There, the man-things would obligingly slaughter the treacherous clanrats of Skab and Rictus. Once the decimation of his rivals reached a point where they could safely be considered no longer a threat, Vrrmik would attack with the full might of Mors and the diseased weapons of his ally, Poxmaster Puskab Foulfur.
The humans would think themselves winning a great victory in Averheim, but in fact they would merely be stepping into a carefully laid trap. Prey just waiting for Vrrmik to pounce.
Altdorf, 1124
Adolf Kreyssig and an honour guard drawn from the ranks of the Kaiserknecht sat their horses beneath the ponderous stone arches of the Reikstor, the great gate on the western bank of the River Reik that afforded entrance to Altdorf from the province of Reikland. Rain pounded against the battlements overhead, streaming down from the maws of stone gargoyles and lead-lined culverts. The downpour had sent all but the most determined travellers retreating indoors. What little traffic remained, largely traders desperate to reach the city before market day and refugees from the eastern provinces seeking the security of the capital, was being diverted away from the Reikstor by companies of armed militia. Kreyssig wanted the gate kept clear for a very special visitor from the east.
The years since the Night of the Holy Knives had been eventful. The dominance of Gazulgrund and the Temple of Sigmar had grown despite Kreyssig’s clandestine efforts to undermine it. Even when he’d cut off the supplies of grain being diverted to the Temple, the Grand Theogonist’s power had continued to grow. His cynical belief that a policy of ‘bread for prayer’ was behind the dramatic rise of the Sigmarite congregations had proven woefully wrong. There was much more at work than the disbursement of food to hungry peasants, a force that was so alien to the opportunistic Kreyssig that while he could recognise it and even exploit it he was unable to understand it. That force was simply faith, the stubborn perhaps even desperate willingness of the commoners to believe in something greater than their noble lords and their servile existence.