by Nathan Long
Manfred prodded Reiner from behind. ‘Go out!’ he shouted. ‘Get the stone! The spears will hold the stair.’
Reiner groaned. He didn’t want to die because of Manfred’s political rivalries, but the count’s displeasure meant certain death, while wading into a crowd of crazed fanatics was only nearly certain.
‘Blackhearts forward!’ he called, and pushed into the mob with Jergen on his left and Pavel and Hals on his right. Gert and Augustus faced out on the flanks. Franka, Dieter and Rumpolt walked backwards, forming the back wall of their small square with the scholar Darius in the centre, eyes wide with fright.
‘This is madness,’ stuttered the scholar.
‘Get used to it,’ said Gert as cultists fell all around them. He shot a dirty look back at Manfred, who was calling encouragement from behind his Nordbergbruchers. ‘Puttin’ his pride before his duty, I’m thinkin’.’
‘Seems we might die in a prison after all,’ grumbled Hals.
Jergen decapitated two cultists with a single blow and they were through the throng. Some followed them, but most continued to press for the stairs. Von Pfaltzen’s men were pushing onto the balcony from the stairwell and trying to get to the fight. Rodick and his house guards had somehow got in front of them and were fighting down the right-hand stair beside Danziger’s swordsmen. Teclis stood at the bars, one fist clenched before him, while his elves shot shaft after shaft into the pit. As Teclis raised his arm the Tzeentch sorcerer jerked into the air above the fire, clawing at his throat as if the high elf’s hand was throttling it. Then he dropped and bounced off the waystone into the flames. The way to the waystone was clear.
‘Hals, Pavel, Augustus!’ called Reiner, as the Blackhearts hurried forwards. ‘Get your spearheads under the stone and lever it out of the blaze.’
While Reiner, Jergen and the others protected them, Hals, Pavel and Augustus thrust their spears into the fire and jammed them under the waystone, then pushed down, using the burning logs as fulcrums.
‘All together, lads!’ cried Hals.
It was hot work. The waystone was in the centre of the fire, and the spears were only just long enough to reach. The pikemen were instantly drenched in sweat, and Augustus’s wild eyebrows were smoking at the ends. It was hot work defending them as well, for the cultists were leaving the stairs to stop them. Reiner, Jergen, Rumpolt and Dieter stood in a half-circle around Hals, Pavel and Augustus, protecting their backs from the seething mob, while Franka and Gert shot around them and Darius crouched behind, hiding his head and whimpering.
The cultists’ numbers thinned quickly, however, for their retreat from the stairs had allowed the companies to enter the pit, and a sea of colourful uniforms and steel breastplates spilled across the floor to plough into their flanks.
Manfred was just pushing through the press to Reiner and crying, ‘Well done, boys’ when, with a final unison grunt, Hals, Pavel and Augustus at last levered the waystone off the burning lumber. The blackened menhir rolled to the floor on the opposite side of the fire, and rocked to a stop directly in front of the exquisite gold-trimmed boots of Lord Rodick Untern.
The young lord immediately put a foot upon it as if it was a dragon he had just slain and turned to Teclis, who was crossing to them. ‘Fair one,’ he said, bowing. ‘We have the waystone. Please allow the house of Untern, family of our great countess, protector of Talabheim, the honour of carrying it to your quarters.’
Reiner cursed. The boy was quick.
Manfred, Danziger and von Pfaltzen all raised their voices in protest, but Teclis held up a hand. ‘To forestall argument,’ he said, ‘Yes. Carry the stone. Now, let us be gone.’
‘Thank you, fair one,’ said Rodick as one of his men unstrapped a bundle he carried on his back. It contained four long, sturdy poles and several coils of rope. Rodick had come prepared.
‘Bungling fool,’ Manfred whispered in Reiner’s ear. ‘Look what you’ve done.’ ‘Yes, m’lord,’ said Reiner. ‘Very sorry, m’lord.’
Manfred turned away in disgust. ‘What sort of Blackheart are you?’
Not a patch on you, you villain, thought Reiner.
Rodick’s men were trying to roll the waystone onto the four poles using spears and lengths of lumber.
‘You may use your hands,’ said Teclis. ‘It will be cool to the touch.’
The soldiers didn’t appear to believe him. One reached out warily and brushed the stone with his fingers.
‘He’s right,’ he gasped. ‘It ain’t hot at all.’
The soldiers were not reassured by this unnatural phenomenon, but none-the-less manhandled the stone onto the four poles and lashed it in place with the ropes. Each then took a pole-end and, grunting, lifted it up like a sedan chair.
‘So we’re done, then?’ asked Augustus, as the companies began marching up the stairs and out of the room. ‘Weren’t as hard as the count made out it would be.’
‘Aye,’ said Pavel. ‘Not really worth getting us out, was it?’
‘Beats sitting about in Altdorf on our arses,’ said Hals.
The companies wound through the abandoned prison with Rodick’s men in the centre, and Danziger, seeming petulant and out of sorts, bringing up the rear.
They had passed out of the prison through the melted portal and were halfway across the vast vat room when Teclis stopped, looking into the shadows. His elves went instantly on guard.
‘There are men here,’ he said, loud but calm. ‘Hidden by magic. We are ambushed.’
Before the words were out of his mouth, a hundred dark forms were swarming from behind the huge vats, waving swords and shrieking, ‘The stone! Get the stone!’
Teclis uttered a short phrase and, with a bang, a ball of sun-bright light popped into being above his head, throwing every object in the room into sharp relief. The soldiers of the companies were shocked by this sudden illumination, but their ambushers must have seen something more than light in the ball’s radiance, for they cringed away from it, and some turned and fled.
‘Blackhearts! Nordbergbruchers!’ called Manfred. ‘Protect Teclis! Protect the stone!’
Reiner and the others formed a rough square around Teclis and Rodick just as the first wave of attackers hit. Von Pfaltzen and his men encircled them too, but Lord Danziger, caught just coming through the melted hole, fell back to it.
Reiner’s mind raced as he fought. Whoever they were, these madmen hadn’t been here when the companies first came through the room. Teclis would have sensed them. That meant they had known the companies were coming here to take the stone from the Tzeentchists. And they couldn’t have followed them from the granary. Even without Teclis, the companies would have noticed so great a force behind them. Which meant that they had known where the stone was being held. Which meant that someone had eyes in more than one camp.
These attackers were as frenzied as the Tzeentchists, but, unlike them, these men looked not enraged, but enraptured. Their eyes were rolled back in their heads and beatific smiles split their faces as they hacked at the companies. When Reiner slashed one across the arm, he moaned in ecstasy. Nor were these ill-equipped acolytes, caught unawares. These men were well armed and clad in leather and steel.
‘Who are these?’ cried Rodick, slashing wildly at two slavering men.
‘Cultists of the Lord of Pleasure,’ said Teclis, then began mouthing another incantation. His elves sent a torrent of white shafts into the attackers. Every one found a mark.
Rumpolt reeled back, clutching his forehead. Reiner’s knuckles were shredded from punching a fellow in the teeth. He saw a Nordbergbrucher go down with a hatchet buried in his back, and further down the line, one of the countess’s guards toppled, lifeless. But now that their initial confusion at the sudden attack had passed, the discipline of the companies began to show, and more cultists began to fall.
‘Forwards, you layabouts!’ Manfred cried.
Reiner looked back to see the count pushing Rodick and his men toward the front line.‘You wanted th
e honour of carrying the stone, then you should welcome the honour of defending it!’
Reiner shook his head in wonder as he parried a sword stroke. Even in the midst of an ambush that they might not survive, Manfred jockeyed for the stone.
Teclis’s voice grew louder, and the air around him vibrated with contained energies. He raised his arms and glared out at the ravening horde. Glowing tendrils began to boil from his hands. But just as he began to declaim the last thunderous words of his incantation, a black arrow sped from the darkness and impaled his chest.
SIX
Touch Not The Stone
TECLIS COLLAPSED BACKWARD, falling across the waystone. His guards turned, shocked, but recovered instantly, and flew into action. As five of the elves fired white shafts in the direction from which the black shaft had come, their captain snapped the black arrow nearly flush with Teclis’s chest, then picked up the fallen mage in his arms as if he weighed nothing. The others clustered tightly around them, facing out, two with arrows nocked, the others holding swords. Without a word to their human companions they hurried for the exit, cutting down the cultists who got in their way.
‘Does he live?’ called Manfred after them. ‘Does Teclis live?’
The elves did not answer.
As they reached the vat room’s broken doors, a flood of deformed mutants poured through them, waving clubs and rusted swords. The elves laid about them furiously, but the mutants seemed uninterested in them, and instead ran directly at the men defending the stone.
‘Cowards!’ shouted Rodick, shaking his fist as the elves disappeared out the door. ‘They’ve left us to die!’
The horde of mutants broke upon the companies and the Slaaneshi cultists alike, clawing and flailing with misshapen limbs, their eyes glazed. ‘The stone,’ they moaned. ‘Get the stone.’
‘We’re done for,’ whimpered Rumpolt as the Blackhearts fought a swirling chaos of cultists and mutants. ‘This is death.’
‘Shut yer hole, infant,’ growled Hals.
The Slaaneshi attacked the mutants as fiercely as they fought the men, screaming ‘Back, foul vermin!’ and ‘The stone is ours!’ The soldiers struck at anything that didn’t wear a uniform.
Manfred edged to Reiner, stabbing a cultist in the throat. ‘Take up the stone,’ he said. ‘While our enemies fight each other.’
Reiner nodded, happy to leave the front line. ‘Fall back, Blackhearts!’
The Blackhearts disengaged carefully, allowing the other companies to close ranks around them.
‘Take up the stone!’ Reiner shouted. He stooped to grab a pole-end as the others found their places and did the same.
‘What’s this?’ cried Rodick, turning and ducking a sword as the Blackhearts lifted the waystone by the poles. ‘We were told to carry the stone!’
‘And you shall again,’ said Manfred. ‘But my men already have it up. To the corridor! We are too exposed here.’
‘This is underhanded, sir,’ said Rodick, as the Blackhearts started forward. ‘I protest!’
‘Protest if we live,’ said Manfred.
The waystone was lighter than Reiner expected, and the Blackhearts made good time to the door, walking it in the centre of a moving island of soldiers, who were in turn surrounded by a boiling surf of screeching mutants and cultists. The floor underfoot was slick with blood. Seeing that his colleagues were leaving him behind, Lord Danziger and his men left the safety of the melted portal and fought across the room after them. The mutants in particular seemed to offend Danziger’s sense of propriety. ‘Disgusting perversions!’ he bellowed. ‘Unclean vermin! Touch not the stone!’
Reiner, freed from the fight, at last had time to wonder at the black arrow that had felled Teclis. Who had shot it, and why? And what dread power must he have to pierce Teclis’s wards and armour as if they were nothing? Close on those questions came another. Why had the mutants, who had before cowered away from the companies, suddenly attacked so savagely, and with such singleness of purpose? And how did they also know of the stone?
The island of men reached the door, and the Blackhearts squeezed through, surrounded by Manfred’s spearmen and Rodick’s house guard. Danziger’s men pushed in behind them as von Pfaltzen’s troops stayed in the door, penning in the majority of the mutants and cultists.
‘Go,’ cried von Pfaltzen, waving a hand. ‘We will hold them. Get the stone to the countess!’
Manfred saluted him. ‘Courage, captain,’ he called, then motioned the Blackhearts down the hall with the Nordbergbruchers and Rodick’s and Danziger’s men guarding them.
Reiner looked back at von Pfaltzen. It was possible, he thought, that the captain was the only man in this whole enterprise who cared more for the security of Talabheim than his personal advancement.
Danziger’s men took the rear as the companies ran through the maze of cellars and catacombs, while Rodick’s men scouted the way ahead. The Blackhearts sloshed across flooded chambers and ducked through stifling crawlways. The waystone soon felt twice as heavy as when they had picked it up, and they sweated through their shirts.
As they trotted through a series of looted crypts and mausoleums, Rodick dropped back to Manfred.
‘You have held the waystone long enough,’ he said. ‘We will take it again.’
Manfred sneered. ‘Your ambition is showing, Untern. No matter who carries it, it goes to Teclis in the end.’
‘And what of your ambition?’ asked Rodick.
‘I have no ambition but to serve the Empire and my Emperor,’ huffed Manfred.
Their argument was interrupted by a shrieking swarm of mutants that poured from another corridor. They crashed into Danziger’s men, tearing at them with bare hands and bashing them with bricks and stones. The swordsmen hacked and kicked at them, shouting with anger and surprise. Mutants died by the score, but more came behind them.
Reiner looked back, baffled. ‘Where do they all come from? How do they find us?’
Manfred smirked. ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’ He waved the Blackhearts on. ‘Hurry. While they’re engaged.’
‘But Lord Danziger will be left behind,’ said Augustus.
‘Precisely,’ said Manfred. ‘Hold them, Danziger!’ he called. ‘And fear not. We will get the waystone to Teclis!’
‘Curse you, Valdenheim!’ shouted Danziger. ‘Come back!’
Manfred sighed as the Blackhearts followed Rodick’s men and the Nordberbruchers around a corner. ‘What has become of the spirit of noble sacrifice that made this Empire great?’
Rodick giggled. Reiner held his tongue.
More mutants followed them, pacing the party like wolves. They kept their distance, but Reiner could hear them murmuring, ‘Get the stone. Get the stone,’ in monotonous unison.
The Blackhearts gasped and stumbled under the weight of the thing. Gert’s round face was as red as a steak. Franka’s eyes were glassy. Reiner’s legs ached and his arms shook. The carrying pole was slipping in his sweaty grip. He cursed Manfred for denying Rodick’s men their turn to carry it. He would have been happy to give it up.
At last they reached the abandoned cold cellar that led up to the sewers. The Blackhearts staggered wearily to the tilted shelves that served as a ladder to the hole, Rodick’s men and Manfred’s Nordbergbruchers trotting around them.
‘Down! Put it down!’ choked Reiner.
The Blackhearts gratefully eased the stone to the ground as the party looked back. Lurching and shambling across the floor came the mutants. There were scores of them, some already bloody and limping from the earlier melees. Reiner didn’t understand what drove them. Many cried out in pain at every step, yet they came on, still mumbling their endless refrain, ‘Get the stone. Get the stone.’
Reiner took stock of Manfred and Rodick’s forces. Baerich and five spears were all that survived of the Nordbergbruchers. Rodick had lost only one man—proof they had indeed hung back in the fighting. The Blackhearts had all their number, though they were neither whole
nor hearty. Reiner could barely lift his arms.
‘Up, men,’ said Rodick, and clambered up the tilted shelves and over the rubble that littered the lip of the hole with his men behind him. ‘Hurry,’ he called from the top. ‘Before they reach us. Pass up the stone!’
‘Come down, curse you,’ barked Manfred. ‘Take the defence. Your men are untouched.’
‘But my men are already up, and there is no time to change,’ said Rodick, mimicking Manfred.
‘Do you mock me, sir?’ Manfred looked back. The mutants were nearly upon them. He grunted with frustration. ‘Death of Sigmar! Spearmen, hold them off! Blackhearts, pass up the stone.’
‘Aye, m’lord,’ said Reiner. ‘Lift away, lads. Frank… Franz, guide us up.’
As Baerich and the remaining Nordbergbruchers spread out in a meagre half circle, Reiner and the Blackhearts took up their poles and lifted the stone. Behind him, Reiner heard the mutants hit the thin line of spears. He cringed. He could feel daggers and swords striking for his back. He could feel foetid breath on his neck.
The shelves creaked ominously as Hals and Pavel stepped up onto them with the stone carried between them. Two of Rodick’s men stepped through the hole and put feet on the top shelf to brace it. One of the men had his back foot on a heavy chunk of granite. It rocked and he nearly fell.
‘Careful,’ called Rodick.
Reiner heard a scream of agony behind him, and Manfred cursing.
‘Hurry, you sluggards!’ bellowed the count. ‘They overwhelm us!’
The Blackhearts took another step. The shelves flexed beneath them. The howling of the mutants and the cursing of the spearmen filled Reiner’s ears.
‘Step!’ he called.
The shelves groaned as they took more weight. The sides bowed. The stone slid back alarmingly, and the ropes that tied it to the poles creaked. Rodick’s men reached down toward them. Rodick had joined them, stretching out his hands.