The Bone Cage - Phil Kelly

by Warhammer

  Screeching down from above, the faceless vargheist lunged a taloned arm towards Blaze. Its claw grabbed air as the Tilean dived headlong through the gap in the bone cage. The knight landed well enough, tucking into an awkward sideways roll before coming up fast to impale a leaping ghoul on the point of his stolen sword. Sweeping his arm wide, he flung the cadaverous creature from his blade right into the path of the swooping vargheist. The impact knocked the winged monster from the skies in a flurry of leathery flesh.

  ‘Sindt! Help me!’ shouted Mordecaul, waving his manacles at the trickster-priest. Grasping hands pushed through the bone spars to grab at the Morrite priest’s robe, yanking him closer to the bars. The young priest tasted the bile of true fear as he imagined filthy teeth sinking into the backs of his legs. Volkmar was too far away to intervene, stamping and shouting on the other side of the cage like a man possessed.

  Suddenly Elspeth was there, wrapping the chain of her own manacles around the cannibal-thing’s throat and drawing it tight. Half-lying, half-kneeling, the matronly priestess braced her foot against its head. She put her hips into it, and broke the creature’s spine with a sharp crack.

  Sindt scrabbled over to Mordecaul, a thin whine of pain escaping his lips as his ruined arm bumped and scraped. The trickster-priest’s eyes ran with tears as he fumbled the feathertip into the death priest’s manacles with his off-hand. Keeping his arms as still as possible, Mordecaul kicked away the questing claws of the ghouls that threatened to disrupt Sindt’s work.

  Nearby, Volkmar struggled to fend off the faceless vargheist, using his broken cuirass as a shield. Badly dazed, the old man was too slow. The bat-devil swatted him across the cage so hard that he crashed into the bars near Olf.

  Even in his dazed state, the old warrior priest still had sense enough to roll left, bodily toppling out of the gap in the prison’s ribs to crumple into the blackened grass. The winged monster pushed its sharp-mawed head through the cage’s bars, snapping at Elspeth’s midsection as she fought to scrabble away.

  Sindt gave a yelp of relief as Mordecaul’s manacles clicked open. The young priest grabbed the heavy chain loops as they fell away and whipped them out sideways, smashing into the nearby vargheist’s ruined face. The beast screeched and flapped backwards, a bat-winged silhouette against the red light of the descending reliquary.

  Mordecaul caught a glimpse of the deadly palanquin hovering at the height of the treetops. In front of him Sindt moaned and cowered as his eyes. Incredibly, the blood pulsing from his shoulder stump began to flow up towards the ironbone construction, a dozen other streams of gore following suit. Thin rivulets of crimson from around the clearing reached up towards the obscene device as it was borne down on its escort of ghosts.

  His attention riveted on the Mortis Engine, Mordecaul was powerless to resist as a muscular ghoul grabbed onto Sindt’s good arm and dragged him through the corpse-bed to the bars. Three more of the leering scavengers reached in to pull the trickster close. The lanky priest screamed in agony as the pale, wrinkled ghouls bit down into his back and gnawed their way to his spine in a welter of spurting blood.

  Horrified into action, Mordecaul picked up Sindt’s fallen feather-pick and pushed it frantically into the keyhole of the manacles binding his feet. He had to get free, to save the princess from the same fate as Sindt. He felt the feather’s nib slip and bend, but it was pliable enough not to break.

  Outside the cage, Blaze was fighting hard against the second vargheist. The Tilean darted under its gangling reach to take its throat with the point of his blade, but the creature fought on regardless, slamming the knight’s longsword out with a wide backhand blow. It bit down hard onto the Tilean’s shoulder, breaking its teeth on his ornate plate armour.

  Mordecaul forced himself to concentrate on his manacles as his feet slopped and slid in the corpse-mulch underfoot. Nearby, Elspeth was doing her best to keep the scrabbling ghouls away from the elven princess. She hammered at hands and heads with a skull she had seized from the corpse bed, but there just were too many of them.

  One of the ghouls grabbed the elf’s robe and pulled hard, only to be blasted apart by a flash of pure and blinding light that took Mordecaul’s vision for a second. Some kind of elven enchantment, perhaps, not that really it mattered. A chance was a chance.

  Bought a momentary reprieve, the young priest felt the lock on his manacles click open. He cried out in triumph, but his voice was lost under the screeching of fleeing ghouls.

  The Morrite priest stumbled blindly across the cage, bumping into Olf and knocking them both out of the cage onto the grass below. He could smell the Ulrican’s stale sweat and bad breath. Above him, Russett screamed in frustration as the bone cage’s bars snapped back into place, and the nature priest was forced to tumble away in a windmill of bloody limbs to avoid its bite.

  As Mordecaul disentangled himself from Olf and scrabbled to his feet, his vision began to clear. The ghouls had fled, scared away by the blinding light. Nearby, Volkmar was staggering over to the vargheist that battled Blaze. He raised his manacles in both hands and used them like a chain whip, beating the winged monstrosity’s back over and over with a roar of angry despair.

  The beast lashed out hard, its razored claw slashing into Volkmar’s guts and straight up into his chest. The old man was hurled backwards, slit from navel to breastbone. Gasping, Mordecaul rushed to help him, ripping off a sleeve of his robes and binding the wound as best he could. From inside the cage the Bretonnian noblewoman called out a phrase, quick and strange, and the Theogonist’s wound clotted closed in a shimmer of crimson light.

  ‘Thanks!’ blurted Mordecaul.

  The caged aristocrat sketched a curtsey, her smile strangely mocking.

  Nearby, Olf had flung himself bodily at the wing-devil that Blaze was hacking into with his longsword. The Ulrican grabbed the thrashing creature around the neck in a wrestler’s grip.

  Mordecaul saw his chance. Picking up a jagged splinter of bone that lay nearby, he lunged forward and buried it deep in the monster’s heart. It gave a thin screech of pain and denial, flapping its wings and jerking away. Olf was flung to the ground. The creature staggered, cried out with an almost human sound of despair, and collapsed.

  His features set in a grimace, Russet picked up a fallen branch and ran at the faceless vargheist staggering blindly around the side of the carriage. As the nature-priest was about to thrust the point of his improvised stake into the creature’s back, a pale hand shot out from the bone cage and caught it with a dry slap.

  Hollow laughter echoed across the clearing, a sound that told Mordecaul they had already lost.

  ‘Morgiana, my dear,’ said Mannfred, riding up close on the back of his undead steed. He held a giant, flesh-bound grimoire, still covered in a thick layer of dust. ‘Why not join the celebrations? You certainly deserve it, having kept my latest investment alive, if not well. The old man still has enough life left for my purposes. And my compliments on having put up with these godly fools for so long in your… how shall I put this…’ the vampire savoured his own wit for a moment like a fine wine, ‘unladylike condition.’

  Von Carstein made a flicking motion with his hand. The bone cage’s spars opened wide with a grinding creak, and the Bretonnian woman’s manacles fell open into the corpse-mulch. She deftly dropped down out of its rear and in one smooth movement stepped up to Russet, biting down hard into the nature-priest’s neck. Russet screamed and thrashed, but Morgiana held on tight, her eyes wide with dark delight. The nature-priest struggled on for a moment, twitched, and fell still.

  The Bretonnian woman took a silk kerchief from her ruined finery and dabbed at the blood trickling from her mouth, smiling at Mordecaul like a predatory cat. The young priest spotted elongated fangs amongst her perfect white teeth. She held a finger to her lips, crimson sparks dancing in her eyes. With a jolt, Mordecaul remembered the stories of a telepathic bond between a vampire and its kin, and realised she had likely been passing their plans to her von
Carstein master all along.

  There was a clatter of hooves as Mannfred rode in close, his cursed palanquin drifting down towards him. Mordecaul could feel his skin writhe in disgust at the thing’s nearness.

  A terrible tiredness flowed through him. Nearby, Olf stumbled and fell to the ground, lying with his unfocused eyes staring at the red glare of the unholy reliquary.

  ‘A noble effort, my deluded friends,’ said the vampire. ‘But not nearly enough.’

  The last thing Mordecaul saw before the ruddy light swallowed his consciousness was Mannfred stroking the dusty tome, cradling it in his arms like an infant and chuckling softly to himself.

  ‘Nagash… will rise.’

  About The Author

  Phil Kelly is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 Damocles novella Blood Oath and the Warhammer titles Sigmar’s Blood and Dreadfleet, as well as a number of short stories. He works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham.

  As the forces of the Dark Gods threaten the world, Mannfred von Carstein strives to resurrect the one being who can weather the storm of Chaos: Nagash.

  The first Warhammer: The End Times novel.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

  © Games Workshop Limited 2014. All rights reserved.

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  ISBN: 978-1-78251-256-1

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