[Sigmar 02] - Empire

by Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead)

  A crookbacked priest of Morr stood beside an open grave marked only with a simple fencepost. A man in the tribal garb of a Middenlander and a gaggle of weeping children knelt beside the grave. Sigmar ordered the army banners dipped. Lying next to the grave was the body of a woman wrapped in a white burial shawl that left her head exposed to the elements. The man gently stroked her head, her blonde hair stark against the black ground of the hills.

  The priest nodded towards what Sigmar had assumed was the haft of a shovel stuck in the earth, but which he now saw was a wide-bladed felling axe. The man took up the axe as the priest spoke again and the children rolled their mother onto her front. The axe swept up and then down, and the woman’s head rolled clear. Weeping, the man dropped the axe, before helping the priest lower her face down body into the grave.

  The tribesman lifted his wife’s head and placed it in a canvas bag as the priest intoned the blessing of Morr, and the children began scooping earth with their bare hands. Sigmar raised his hand to the priest, who bowed and helped the grieving family to fill the grave.

  The army continued on its way, marching higher into the soaring peaks, winding a treacherous course through icy valleys and mist-shrouded gorges as they climbed high above the snowline. Sigmar chose their course without truly understanding what guided him, for this region of the north was little mapped, and few had travelled this way and lived to tell of it.

  It felt as though the coldest wind in the world blew from the heart of the mountains, and Sigmar was merely following it, like an explorer tracing the course of a river back to its source. At each fork in the landscape, Sigmar would strike out without hesitation, leading his army deeper and deeper into the unknown. Scouts reported signs of greenskins and other dangerous monsters dogging their course, but none dared attack so numerous a body of warriors.

  As the army camped in a rocky gully and darkness fell upon the camp like an unwelcome guest, Redwane said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  “That bodes ill,” said Pendrag with a forced smile. Sigmar chuckled and threw a handful of twigs on the fire. Myrsa held his hands out to the flames as the dead wood caught light.

  “Thinking about what?” asked Sigmar.

  “That burial we saw yesterday. I mean, what was that all about with the axe? Did that man hate his wife?”

  “Far from it,” said Myrsa. “He must have loved her dearly.”

  “So that’s what passes for love in the north, chopping your dead wife’s head off. Nice.”

  “He was making sure she wouldn’t return from the dead,” replied Pendrag. “Her husband will take the head away and burn it out of sight of the grave so that if an evil spirit possesses the body it will spend eternity searching for something it can never find.”

  “Don’t they have gardens of Morr in these parts? We’re miles from the nearest village. It must have taken them hours to get here.”

  “I think they buried her here because it is far from their home,” said Sigmar. “Putting her face down in the ground at a crossroads means she will not know which way to go to wreak havoc among the living. And if some evil spirit lingers in her flesh and wakes, it will dig its way downwards, never to return to the world above.”

  Redwane shook his head and pulled his cloak tighter around his body. “Damn, but whatever happened to dying and just going on to Ulric’s hall? It’s not right having to do all this stuff to a body to make sure you get to the next world.”

  “Better that than coming back as one of the walking dead,” pointed out Sigmar. “Better that than having to destroy a dead thing that wears the face of a loved one. If this necromancer is as powerful as Hauke claimed, then there are men in this army who may well have to face their sword-brothers in battle. The warriors Myrsa sent into these mountains may well be waiting for us.”

  “There’s a happy thought,” grumbled Redwane. “A man ought to die with a sword in his hand and be carried by the battle maidens to Ulric’s hall. I don’t want to die in these mountains and come back as one of the walking dead. You hear me? I want you to promise me you’ll make sure of that.”

  Pendrag reached out and shook Redwane by the shoulder.

  “If it comes to it, I’ll cut your head off myself and burn your body to ash,” he said.

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “Just say the word,” promised Pendrag. “What manner of sword-brother would do less?”

  Sigmar hid a smile and idly drew shapes in the dust around the fire. It felt good to sit around the fire with his friends, yet he could not shake the feeling that the words spoken in jest carried fears that ran deeper than any of them cared to admit.

  “But to do that to your woman? Or to have her do that to me?” said Redwane. “I don’t know if I could do that to a woman I loved.”

  Pendrag snorted. 'Have you ever loved a woman? I thought you bedded one and then moved on to the next conquest.”

  “Guilty as charged,” agreed Redwane. “But that was in my younger, wilder days.”

  “So are you saying you’re in your older, more settled days now?” asked Myrsa.

  “Not exactly, but you know what I mean. If I was ever to find a woman I wanted to fasten hands with over the Oathstone, then I don’t know if I could ever do that to her.”

  “If you ever wanted to fasten hands with a woman, we’d know the End Times were upon us,” said Pendrag.

  “I’m serious,” snapped Redwane, and Sigmar saw that the undercurrent of fear that gnawed at the nerves of every man was preying especially hard on the young White Wolf. It was easy to forget that, for all his skill in battle, Redwane was still only twenty-five; old enough to be considered a veteran, yet still young enough to feel the immortality of youth.

  Close to home in the warm lands of the south, it was easy to put thoughts of mortality from the mind, but here in the mountains, with each breath of cold wind promising death, such thoughts were harder to ignore.

  Like Sigmar, Redwane had risked his life many times, but the fear that wormed its way into the mind was not of falling in battle but the slow, lingering death that came at the end of years of pain and suffering, indignity and madness.

  To a warrior, death was something to be faced and defeated in battle, not something that came with talons of age and infirmity. With the cold dread of mortality hanging on every icy breath, the stark fact that they would one day die seemed achingly, horribly close.

  Redwane shook his head and stared deep into the fire.

  “I’ve loved a lot of women,” he said, “but I never found one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Or, if I’m honest, one I thought would want to spend her life with me.” He looked deeper into the mountains and pulled his cloak tighter. “But here? Here I’m getting to think that carousing is not what I want anymore. It might be time to find a good woman and sire strong sons. Don’t you feel that?”

  Sigmar studied the faces of his friends and knew that Redwane’s words had cut through the armour protecting their souls. None of them had ever expected Redwane to speak such words, and they had been caught unawares and unguarded.

  “I’ve felt that,” said Pendrag bitterly, “but I do not believe in love. It is for fools and poets.”

  Sigmar felt the pain behind his sword-brother’s words, and wanted tell him that a life lived without knowing love was a bland and tasteless thing, but the memory of Ravenna appeared in his mind, and the black mood of the mountains crushed the words in his heart.

  Myrsa nodded in understanding, looking at each man in turn. “The role of Warrior Eternal denies me the chance of a wife and sons, but I have made my peace with a life lived alone.”

  Redwane looked over at Sigmar, but before Pendrag could silence the question that he saw was coming, the White Wolf said, “What about you, Sigmar? Have you never thought of finding a wife? An Emperor needs heirs after all.”

  A heavy silence greeted Redwane’s words, but Sigmar nodded.

  “Yes, Redwane, I have,” he said. “Once, I loved a woman. S
he was called Ravenna.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Ulric’s bones, Redwane!” stormed Pendrag. “You are a prize fool and no mistake. Can you not leave well alone?”

  Sigmar raised a calming hand. “Don’t blame the lad, Pendrag. He would only have been a boy when it happened, and no one dares speak of it now.”

  Sigmar looked across the fire and said, “Ravenna was a beauty of the Unberogen, and I loved her from the first moment I saw her. She loved me for all my faults and knew me better than I knew myself.”

  “Did you marry her?”

  “I was going to,” said Sigmar. “I promised her that when I was king I would marry her, but she died before I could. Her brother Gerreon had a twin named Trinovantes, and when he died at Astofen Bridge, Gerreon blamed me. I thought he had accepted what happened to his twin, had accepted the truth of it, but he nursed his hatred in a secret place in his heart and almost killed me as I swam with his sister. He failed to slay me, but he murdered Ravenna.”

  “No!” cried Redwane. “Gods, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

  “From that moment, I vowed I would love this land and no other,” said Sigmar. “I have devoted my life to the empire and it will be my bride, my one abiding love. I swore this on Unberogen soil before the tomb of my father, and I shall live and die by that oath. I know that there is talk of my taking a wife, for people think I must sire an heir for the empire. They lament a future without me, but they do not know the strength that lies within this land and its people. They do not see that what I am building is greater than any one man. After all, I did not found the empire for it to become the possession of a single dynasty.”

  Sigmar stood and looked at each of his friends in turn, and none doubted the sincerity of his words. “The empire is an idea that lives in the hearts of all men and women who dwell within it, and when I am dead and gone, the empire will live on in them. For they are all Sigmar’s heirs.”

  * * *

  The welcome light of morning crept over the hills, only reluctantly pushing back the darkness and spreading down the icy valleys and jagged gorges of the mountains. Fires that had burned through the night were doused, and the army swiftly broke camp after a meal of warm oats. Sigmar’s banner was raised, and his warriors followed him as he marched purposefully into a snow-shawled valley that loomed like a vast, columned gateway.

  Six days had passed since the army had left Middenheim, and the friendly rivalry that passed back and forth between the warriors was forgotten as each man fought against unbidden thoughts of crows pecking at his eyes and worms gnawing at his decaying flesh.

  The valley was deathly silent, the walls glistening with spears of ice and swallowing the sound of marching feet and the clatter of armour. The sun did not reach to the base of the valley and the army climbed in shadow, what little relief had been provided by daybreak crushed by the deadening gloom. Clouds of dark-pinioned birds circled overhead, ravens and other scavengers of the battlefield. Their raucous cries echoed in the narrow valley and scraped like blades down each man’s nerves.

  Pendrag came alongside Sigmar. His sword-brother had lost weight since the march had begun, and Sigmar nodded as Pendrag slapped a hand on his pauldron.

  “That’s fine armour,” Pendrag said. “You could work a whole lifetime and never have enough coin to buy such a gift.”

  “Alaric is a master of his craft,” said Sigmar.

  “That he is,” agreed Pendrag. “Do you know the runes worked into the metal?”

  “Kurgan told me they were runes of protection crafted centuries ago by a Runesmith called Blackhammer. He said they would do me more good on their own than the finest suit of armour crafted by man.”

  Pendrag patted his mail shirt. “The dwarfs do not have a high opinion of our metalworking skills, do they? You remember that breastplate I crafted for Wolfgart’s hand fastening ceremony, the one with the gold embossing and fluted rims?”

  “Of course, it is a masterful piece.”

  “Alaric told me it was ‘serviceable’, perhaps the equal of an apprentice’s work in his forge.”

  “High praise indeed,” noted Sigmar.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Pendrag wistfully. “It has been too long since he has visited Reikdorf.”

  “I think he has his hands full making the swords King Kurgan promised. And you know Alaric—he will not rush their creation.”

  “He won’t, no. Perhaps we might arrange to visit Karaz-a-Karak?” ventured Pendrag.

  Sigmar shrugged. “I do not think the mountain folk encourage visitors, my friend. Except maybe other dwarfs, and even then there are all manner of formalities before they are granted permission to journey to a hold. Why are you so keen to see Master Alaric?”

  “No reason,” said Pendrag. “He is my friend and I miss him, that’s all.”

  They lapsed into silence for a while, the trudging monotony of the climb and the constant twilight wearing at their spirits like a millstone. Sigmar found his hatred towards this necromancer growing with every mile that passed.

  “Why would anyone desire this?” asked Sigmar, looking around at the bleak, inescapable hostility of the landscape.

  “Desire what?”

  “This,” replied Sigmar, sweeping his arms out to encompass the sepulchral valley. “I understand the lust for power, but surely if a man can cast spells and use magic, he would live somewhere less dismal. I mean, why would any man choose a life that sees him banished to a place like this?”

  “The path of the necromancer necessitates a solitary existence,” said Pendrag. “To violate the dead breaks one of our most sacred taboos. You do not do such things where people can find out about it, so you live where no one else wants to.”

  “I suppose,” agreed Sigmar, “but that leads to another question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Why be a necromancer at all?”

  “To live forever?” suggested Pendrag. “To cheat death?”

  “If living like this is cheating death, I would sooner not bother. Even if you were to cheat death, is what you would have really life? Living like this, shunned by your fellow man and surrounded by corpses? No, if that is what living forever entails, then I want no part of it.”

  “They say that some men are drawn to necromancy in the hope of bringing back a loved one,” said Pendrag, “that they do not begin as evil men.”

  “Maybe that is true, but to delve into such darkness can only drive a man to madness. I loved Ravenna and I lost her, but I would not dream of using the dark arts to bring her back.”

  “Not all men are like you, Sigmar,” said Pendrag, casting an uneasy glance towards the tombstone sky. “To fear death is not unusual.”

  “Trust me, Pendrag, I am in no rush to find death, but I do not fear it. Death is natural, it is part of what makes us human. That is why we must strive to make every moment special, because it might be our last. Some men live in fear their whole lives. They fear to fail, so they do nothing. You can hide from danger all your life, but you will still die. What matters is how we make use of the gift of life, bettering ourselves and helping our fellow man wherever we can. That is why this Morath is so dangerous: he lives only for himself and contributes nothing of value to the world. In the realm of the necromancer, nothing grows, nothing lives and nothing dies. And stagnation is death.”

  “So is starvation,” said Pendrag, looking over his shoulder at the six hundred men who marched through the valley behind them. “Between what the pack ponies and the men are carrying, we only have food enough for another two days march into the mountains. If we’re going to find this Brass Keep, we’d better do it soon.”

  “We will,” said Sigmar, feeling the deathly chill of the cold wind blowing from the centre of the mountains grow stronger, reaching into his chest and caressing his heart with icy talons. “We are close, I know we are.”

  “I hope you are right,” said Pendrag. “I don’t know how much more of this I can t
ake.”

  The shadows moved across the valley sides, the only visible indication that time was moving on at all. After a mid-afternoon stop for food and water, Sigmar’s warriors continued on through the valley as the ground became even more broken and uneven.

  Jagged rocks tore at tunics and flesh as the day lengthened and the slopes of the mountain grew steeper. The unnatural silence of the mountains loomed over everyone, broken only by the pebbles that skittered from ledges high above. Pallid shapes darted between narrow clefts carved in the mountainside by scouring winds, and arrows loosed at the shapes clattered harmlessly on the rocks before Myrsa ordered his men to stop wasting their shafts.

  The valley began to widen ahead of a sharp northward turn around a black spur of knife-sharp rock, perhaps a mile distant. A gust of cold air, like the last laugh of a suicide, swept the landscape, and Sigmar knew that he had reached its source.

  “Raise the banners,” said Sigmar. “Assume battle march formation.”

  “Battle formation?” queried Redwane, looking up to the sky. “But it’s nearly dark.”

  “Do it,” said Sigmar. “We are here.”

  The White Wolf nodded, and the word was passed along the line. No sooner was the order given than the warriors moved smoothly into formation. Swords were bared, and a fresh sense of purpose infused every warrior. Sigmar loosed Ghal Maraz from his belt and a squadron of White Wolves formed up around him.

  With Pendrag at their head, the Count’s Guard took up position on the right, while Myrsa led the warriors of Middenheim on Sigmar’s left. Moving at a swift yet economical pace, the army marched towards the black spur, shields locked and swords held at the ready.

  As Myrsa’s warriors reached the turn, he slowed their pace as the Count’s Guard wheeled around it, the entire shallow wedge of the army swinging around like a closing gate with the spur as the hinge.

  Beyond the spur, the landscape fell away in rippling slopes of icy rock towards a wide crater gouged in the heart of the mountains, thousands of yards in diameter. The ground shone like a mirror, a vast and stagnant lake that had frozen in an instant during some forgotten age. Broken spires and strange collections of jumbled stone jutted from the frozen lake, like stalagmites in a cave. Towering over this grim and frozen tableau was a mighty edifice that could only be Morath’s lair.