And yet tears streamed down his cheeks.
The tears surprised him. He wasn’t afraid. He had always known this day would come.
Tonight he would stand beside Baumann and Bernholz and the others and he would be proud to do just that. War made heroes out of normal people. Here, on the fields of Essen Ford, heroes would be born.
And heroes would die.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Swords of Scorn
ESSEN FORD, SYLVANIA
Winter, 2010
The sounds of the battlefield were all wrong.
There were screams as soldiers fell and fierce battle-cries answered by the stampede as swords clattered off shields, the cacophony intended to instil fear in an enemy that knew no fear. Despite the screaming, the drumming and the stamping feet there was no ringing clash of steel on steel.
The fight was no ordinary fight.
Swords slashed through the torrential rain, cutting at the dead arms as they clawed and scratched and pulled at the soldiers. The dead stumbled forward and the living lurched backwards desperate to evade their outstretched arms and suffocating embrace. The ground beneath their feet was treacherous. It was virtually impossible to fight. They were reduced to trying to stay alive. They staggered and lurched as they struggled to fend off the dead, their movements mimicking von Carstein’s monstrous regiment as they struggled to keep their balance.
No matter how desperately the Ottilia’s soldiers fought, the dead kept on coming, surging relentlessly forward without fear or concern for their own safety.
Fischer fought for his life beside Baumann, the flaxen-haired archer proving himself as deadly with a sword as he had shown he was with a bow. There was no smile on his face now though, only grim determination to stay alive as the dead threw themselves at them. Twice already during the fighting Baumann’s blade had deflected a blow aimed at sweeping Fischer’s head clean off his shoulders.
Fischer ducked under a wild blow, jamming his sword up into the gut of a woman. Half of her face had been eaten away by maggots. He wrenched the sword left and right violently slicing deep into her spinal cord. Her torso buckled, folding over itself. Fischer dragged his sword free. Unable to support itself her body collapsed at their feet but still she clawed at them, tugging at their feet. Her clawed hands hooked around Baumann’s ankle and almost succeeded in toppling him before Fischer’s sword cleaved through her wrist. He kicked her severed hand away as another zombie trampled over her writhing corpse. There was no time for thanks.
The pair fought on, lungs and arms burning with exhaustion. The sheer weight of numbers was overwhelming. The dead climbed over each other to get at them.
All across Essen Ford it was the same.
The dead were a tidal wave, an undeniable force beyond the limits of nature sweeping everything away in their path. Von Carstein’s army was relentless and lethal. They had no need of weapons. They threw themselves bodily at the terrified soldiers, dragging them down into the sinking mud and once they had them down the dead swarmed over them, clawing, biting and rending at their flesh until they had stripped the fallen soldier of his humanity.
It was barbaric.
It wasn’t a battle, it was butchery.
Ghouls, once men like Fischer and Baumann before they sank so far as to become cannibalistic eaters of the dead, picked over the corpses as the combatants trampled them into the mud. The vile creatures stripped away fillets of fresh meat and gorged themselves on it. Friends, foes, the ghouls were indiscriminate in their feeding.
Fischer parried a raking claw aimed at putting his eyes out and rammed the point of his sword into a woman’s throat. Her blood-matted hair fell across her face. Where she should have had eyes were empty sockets stitched up with mortician’s thread. She threw herself forward onto the sword, trying to snare him in her deadly embrace. Fischer couldn’t drag his sword free. Her bloody locks fell in his face as she threw all of her weight at him. Fischer felt himself buckling under her.
Screaming, Fischer heaved himself upright and sent her spinning away across the muddy field, his sword still stuck in her throat. She bucked and thrashed trying to wrench Fischer’s sword out. He cursed and hurled himself forward, landing on top of the blind woman. He punched at her face, slamming his fist into it again and again until it felt like he was pounding a slab of raw meat. Still she clawed at the sword. Fischer pushed himself to his feet as another two undead grabbed at him. He slammed an elbow into the face of the first hard enough to rupture its nose and spray blood into its eyes. He grabbed the hilt of his sword before the second dead man could stop him.
Baumann cut the dead man down before Fischer could turn to meet the challenge.
More came to fill the gap left by the fallen dead.
There was no end to it.
Around them good men died only to rise again and turn on them.
It had been like that for six hours. Even before the first blow had been struck whispers spread through the ranks, the Vampire Count had offered the outriders clemency should they abandon the Ottilia and serve him. None did. Schliffen had arrived on the field of battle an hour before von Carstein unleashed the full might of his horde. It didn’t matter. More than half of the outriders had fallen and been absorbed into the ranks of the undead before Schliffen and the body of the Ottilia’s army arrived. Their horses were useless in the muck and mire. They couldn’t run and the mud only served to bog them down and topple them giving the ghouls more meat to gorge themselves on. There was no questioning their bravery though, even when von Carstein himself entered the fray, his nightmare steed snorting licks of fire from its flaring nostrils as the Vampire Count’s wailing blade cleaved through terrified ranks of human defenders. The shrieking of the sword as it cut through the air was mortifying. The soldiers who weren’t cut down fled and dragged more down in their panicked wake as they tried to escape the hungry blade. Von Carstein himself mocked them, laughing manically as he cut and hewed through the living and almost negligently raised them in his wake, bringing them into his legion of the damned.
Fischer stared in awe at the nightmare.
It was an awesome beast, blacker even than true black and easily five hands higher than the biggest horse Fischer had ever seen. Everything about the mount and its rider radiated pure unmitigated evil. The creature reeked of it. Von Carstein’s mane of black hair was matted with the rain. He twisted in the saddle, standing on black iron stirrups and learning forward. His sword wailed its hideous threnody as it sheared through the neck of a terrified Imperial soldier. The man’s head fell beneath the nightmare’s hooves and was sucked into the mud.
More vampires came behind the count, led by a giant of a man who had no need of a nightmarish steed to inspire terror, his twin curved blades were more than enough. The vampire’s face was splashed with blood, none of it his own. He licked his lips and savoured the taste of his defeated foes. The treacherous battlefield didn’t appear to hinder him as he ghosted through the living and the dead, his twin blades blurring into a single steel blue arc. His vampires and wolves trailed in his deadly wake.
Some of the risen dead recovered weapons from the fallen, skeletons with swords and pikes and spears came at them.
In a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye Fischer saw Bernholz was in trouble. A revenant shade had risen up behind him, ethereal claws coming down to rake through body and soul. The shock of the cold would be enough to throw Bernholz’s focus, giving the three putrefied corpses crowding around him the chance they needed to bring him down. He couldn’t shout. The warning would go unheard over the sounds of carnage and feeding. He had to do something.
Without thinking about what he was doing Fischer grabbed a handful of mud-clogged hair on a decapitated head and heaved it up into the air so it arced through the air and came down hard on the shoulder of one of the zombies crowding in on Bernholz and landed at its feet in a splash of snow and sludge. Bernholz backed up a step. It saved his life. The revenant shade’s claws sheared thr
ough his back and out of his chest causing the soldier to scream in shock and pain but his backwards step had given him space enough to regain his composure as the zombies lurched forward. The outrider gutted one and decapitated another. Even then there was no letup for him as dire wolves snapped at his legs and dregs clawed their way through the mud seeking to bring him down.
Something slammed into Fischer’s back and sent him sprawling forward and his sword spinning out of his hand. He tasted the mud and the blood of the fight as his face ploughed into the sodden ground. His sword had fallen tantalizingly out of reach of his fingers. He scrabbled toward it but before his hand could snatch it a heavy foot came down on his back, pinning him in the mud.
“Well, well, well, look who we have here.”
Despite its mocking tone he knew the voice.
Fischer squirmed beneath the crushing weight of the foot. He craned his neck to see the twisted features of his best friend sneering down at him: Jon Skellan. Only it wasn’t Skellan. It was the soulless, heartless, dead thing wearing Skellan’s bloodless corpse. It might have his memories and share his skin but it wasn’t his friend. It was an animal.
Skellan kicked Fischer. “Up, my friend. Time to die like a man.” Blood clung to Skellan’s teeth where he had fed. His eyes were searing pits of anger.
“You’re not my friend, not anymore.”
“Have it your own way. Up. I’ve got no patience for cowards and you stink of fear, Fischer. You absolutely reek of it. Now get up.”
Skellan kicked him forward as he struggled to rise so he kissed the blood-soaked dirt. Fischer put his hands under him again and started to stand only for Skellan to kick him off-balance again. He lay there in the mud, utterly drained. He lacked the will to move. Around him the sounds of the battle muted and lost their clarity as his senses narrowed their focus to the space between him and Skellan, shutting out all of the screaming and the dying, the driving rain, the keening of the undead and von Carstein’s hideous wailing sword.
“So this is how it ends then?” Fischer said looking up at Skellan.
The vampire sheathed his sword and offered his hand.
“It doesn’t have to. Take my hand. Join us. We can always use a good man. The Blood Kiss will set you free, believe me. I am a different man. Before it was all petty vengeance. My life was consumed with it. Posner freed me of the shackles of mortality. Now the strength of death flows through my veins in place of blood. The weakness is gone. There is no pity, no compassion, and no stinking mercy. I am vampire. I am immortal, what need have I to fear anything? It is a gift. The greatest gift.”
“No. You don’t believe that. It is a curse and you know it. It is an abomination, even nature refuses you a reflection now so repugnant are you to the world. And you forget in your new arrogance, Skellan, you can die. You can die very well. Like Aigner. Remember him? Remember the man who murdered Lizbet? Remember the monster he was? That is what you are. How does it feel? You didn’t slay the beast, you became the beast.”
“He was weak.”
“He was strong enough to destroy everything you loved.”
“And what is love if not weakness?” Skellan sneered, baring razor-sharp fangs. His features contorted, burning with bestial anger. “I am not the man I was. I am more than that. I am immortal. I will be here when you are dust. I will see the rise and fall of empires. I am immortal.”
Suddenly, oddly, Fischer realised that the rain running down his face could well be the last thing he ever felt. He tilted his face up to meet it, savouring it for a moment before answering Skellan.
“So you keep saying, but you forget there are countless ways you can die a final death, and when you do you will be condemned to eternal torture in the realm of the dead, so cling to your unlife, Jon Skellan, live in fear of that final terrible judgement.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out the silver pendant Leyna had given him on their wedding night: the hammer of Sigmar.
Skellan recoiled, a look of utter revulsion on his bestial features. “You and your miserable Man-God!” he spat. “Stay as meat, you ignorant fool! You are nothing more or less than cattle to us.” He swept his arm out in a grand gesture, encompassing the whole field. You are part of our herd, Fischer. You are bred for one specific purpose: so that we might feed on you.”
Fischer’s fist closed around the silver trinket.
“Then feed, friend. You wouldn’t be the first to. Hell, you wouldn’t even be the prettiest. Drink! Here’s my throat, I am offering it to you. Drink damn you! Drink!”
“What are you waiting for?” Herman Posner asked curiously. He had come up behind the pair without either of them noticing. The man moved like a ghost across the battlefield. The fighting had all but died out in several parts of the field. A gibbous moon hung in the air behind Posner’s head. Without turning, Posner rammed one of his twin blades into Bernholz’s chest as the outrider came up behind him, sword raised ready to deliver a huge killing blow. It was coldly done. Posner didn’t even acknowledge the dying man as Bernholz’s eyes flared wide and blood bubbled out of his mouth as it sagged open in shock. The sword slipped from his fingers and fell into a puddle of mud and blood. The man was dead before he hit the din.
“Well? He’s meat. Feed, lad. Don’t let good food go to waste. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”
Before Skellan could respond the cries went up across Essen Ford: the Ottilia’s forces were routed, the battle was won and there were still hours to go before the sun rose redly on the killing ground and the dead sank back into whatever hell held them once more. It was over.
Posner’s crew moved amongst the living and the dead, spreading the word: the Vampire Count wanted the survivors.
All of them.
Skellan hauled Fischer to his feet and pushed him forward, driving him hard toward the pavilions the dead were erecting for their master away from the worst of the carnage. He staggered and stumbled through the mud. He wasn’t alone. The survivors—of whom there were precious few—were being herded like cattle toward von Carstein’s pavilion. He saw Schliffen, beaten and battered, his head down as he shuffled toward the tents, and Baumann, cut and bleeding but head raised defiantly as two of Posner’s vampires jabbed him forward with the bloody tips of their swords. The vampires were beaten bloody; one’s face was badly disfigured where Baumann had put his eye out and shattered its nose, and the other had lost half of its jaw where Baumann had almost cleaved its head in two.
Fischer saw countless bodies hunched over the fallen. He knew what they were: ghouls picking over the corpses, feeding. Normally he would have expected the survivors to gather the dead for burial, but not this time. The dead of Essen Ford would swell the ranks of the Vampire Count’s monstrous army.
They had lost more than just their lives.
They had lost their deaths.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Spilling Tainted Blood
ESSEN FORD, SYLVANIA
Winter, 2010
Von Carstein walked down the line of prisoners.
He moved slowly, taking the time to examine each of the men facing him. Ganz walked two paces behind him. Buoyed up with the bloodlust of victory he felt like one of them. He felt immortal. Eternal. He felt the thrill of victory course through his veins. He felt the vitality of life pulsing through his body. He was alive. For the first time in years he felt it. He experienced it all as one huge sensory overload: the rain on his face, the tang of blood and dirt as he breathed, the sudden richness and clarity of the colours that made up the world around him, the infinite shades of greens and browns, even the coppery taste of his own blood in his mouth, all of it came together in one exaltation of life. And that was when he realised that he had more in common with the cattle von Carstein had lined up for inspection than he did with the Vampire Count and his hellish minions. He was human. Humanity was weakness.
Ganz looked at the row of faces, the resistance beaten out of them, the resignation to their fate written harshly in their dulled eyes.
They were meat.
Meat for the beast.
“You,” von Carstein said. “These are your men, yes?”
The man nodded.
“I will give you a choice, a simple one. Think carefully before you decide. I am not in the habit of letting people change their minds. You spurned my offer of clemency so your life is forfeit. That is not in doubt. Your choice is this, serve me in life, or serve me in death. It matters not to me. Either way, I own you.”
Hans Schliffen stiffened physically. “You cannot be serious.”
One of Posner’s vampires moved up behind the general, hissing in his ear as he gripped his arms and pinned them behind his back. “The count is always serious.”
“Indeed. Ganz, pick a soldier, any soldier, and cut his throat. Show the good general here just how serious I am.”
Ganz walked the line, relishing the looks of pure terror in the soldiers’ eyes as he paused in front of them, each one silently begging him not to choose them, to move on and take one of their friends instead. He stopped in front of Baumann because unlike the others there was no fear in his gaze, only defiance as he stared Ganz down. A slow smiled spread across Ganz’s face. He stepped forward and, with one swift twist of the wrist, grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and yanked his head back. He brought his other hand up and rammed the dagger he had concealed in it deep into the archer’s throat. Baumann gagged, blood burbling through his fingers as he clutched at the wound. It was a surprisingly slow death. No one dared move, least of all Ganz. He stared with sick fascination as the man he had just stabbed died.
Von Carstein held out his hand, palm up and made a slow lifting gesture. Baumann’s body twitched and jerked in response as the newly-dead muscles answered to his will. Less than a minute later Baumann was standing back in his place in the line, his head lolling back slackly on his slashed throat, the life burned out from his eyes.
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