Blighted Empire

by C. L. Werner

  Mandred felt the sting of the dwarf’s gruff words. No gratitude, no praise. No appreciation. Just a casual dismissal of the entire fight as inconsequential. It grated on his pride as a human, was an offence to his honour as a noble and a slight upon his ability as a leader. He was tempted to turn around and lead his men back into the city, leave the dwarfs to hold the Crack on their own.

  Instead, he threw back his shoulders and turned to shout commands to his followers. ‘Dispatch the wounded topside! Officers, reform your companies.’ He thought about the ferocity of the attack and the suddenness of the skaven ambush. ‘Spears to the fore and flanks. Archers behind.’ He watched for a moment as the soldiers adjusted to the new formation, then called out in a voice loud enough to carry back to the surface. ‘Let’s show these beardies how men can really fight!’

  When he turned back around to lead his army into the subterranean gloom, Mandred saw Kurgaz looking at him. He wasn’t sure if it were his imagination, but he thought he saw Kurgaz smiling before the dwarf turned away.

  Dwarfs! He doubted if any human could ever really understand them. Too proud to ask for help, too stubborn to praise it when it was given. Yet help them Middenheim would.

  Because in helping the dwarfs, they would be keeping the skaven away from their city.

  Warmonger Vecteek preened his whiskers and squeaked contentedly as the dust-covered messenger made his report. The little force had broken into the dwarf tunnel when the sniffer-moles became agitated. The moles had become accustomed to the smell of dwarfs, so their handlers knew it was something different that upset their keen senses. Breaking into the tunnel, they’d discovered a few dwarfs leading a great company of humans down into the stronghold!

  Vecteek didn’t care about the details of the ensuing fight. With an angry snarl and a flick of his tail, he set a pair of Verminguard pouncing on the messenger. There was an amusing look of entreaty on the hapless ratkin’s face when his head was chopped from his shoulders.

  The humans were reacting just as he’d planned. They were rushing down into the tunnels to help the dwarfs. And while they were busy slaughtering Vrrmik’s treacherous scum, they’d be leaving their city wide open. Helpless prey for Clan Rictus and the genius of Vecteek!

  The Grey Lord’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he leaned over the side of his palanquin. He bared his fangs as he saw Plaguelord Puskab watching him from the shadows. The diseased priest had been arguing for delays, trying to play for more time. He claimed the Black Plague needed a few more weeks to truly spread. Vecteek wasn’t fooled by such puerile attempts at deception. Vrrmik and the weaklings of Clan Mors would never hold out that long. The dwarfs would overwhelm them and the humans would return to their city. Vecteek’s careful plan to divide and conquer would be undermined!

  Or, perhaps Puskab was being truthful. Vecteek licked his fangs as he mulled over that possibility. In that case, the plague would ravage Middenheim, destroy the city without the loss of a single skaven life.

  Vecteek’s tail lashed out in a fit of fury, slapping one of his Verminguard. The second possibility was even more abhorrent. No great battle! No chance to display the genius of the Warmonger against a formidable enemy! It was insufferable. If it cost a thousand, ten thousand of his clanrats, he’d have his battle. There was no glory in a bloodless victory. The plague was there to weaken and debilitate, but it couldn’t be allowed to claim credit for the final triumph!

  ‘Diggers! Sap-rats!’ Vecteek snarled, his voice cracking down the length of the earthen tunnel. Criers scattered through the maze of passages and burrows winding behind the walls of Karak Grazhyakh took up his shout, ensuring it reached the ears of every skaven bearing the brand of Rictus on his pelt. ‘Man-things go below to help the dwarf-meat. Now Rictus-rats will strike! Now Rictus will conquer! Now Rictus will reign!’

  He leaned around, glaring once more at Puskab, fairly daring the plaguelord to protest his orders. Vecteek considered that the degenerates of Clan Pestilens must have at least a pawful of brains when Puskab wisely kept silent.

  ‘Dig-smash! Break-crush!’ Vecteek howled. ‘Up! Up into man-thing nest! Up to their streets and their cellars! Up to their granaries and their stockyards! Up to their homes and their temples! All-all belongs to Rictus! All-all belongs to Vecteek!’

  Vecteek savoured the clamour of claws on bare rock as his underlings hurried to obey his diktat. The approaches were already prepared; before the next feeding cycle his sappers would be through. The tunnels would break up into the sewers beneath Middenheim. From the sewers, the skaven would filter into every cellar, dungeon and crypt.

  The walls of Middenheim were tall and strong, built to keep out any foe. Any foe except the one who chose to ignore them. Now those same walls would imprison the people of Middenheim.

  Would ensure that none of Vecteek’s prey escaped.

  Chapter XVI

  Altdorf

  Kaldezeit, 1114

  ‘Open in the name of the Emperor!’ The command was shouted in a thick voice, punctuated by the hammer-like blows of a mailed fist against old timber. The speaker was a stocky, heavy-set being, shorter than a man but with a stoutness of build that lent him a decidedly powerful appearance. Heavy plates of steel were strapped above the mail he wore, and over his bearded head he wore a close-fitting helm adorned with swirling runes of silver and gold. Rings of gold were threaded through the plaits of his thick beard.

  Beset by plague and disease, the collection of revenue had become a logistical nightmare for the Ministry of Finance. Taxmen died by the droves as they succumbed to the illness of their victims, their ranks decimated even more savagely than those of physician and priest. An attempt had been made during the spring of 1112 to employ men already struck by the Black Plague as excise collectors, but the effort had failed miserably. The plague-stricken collectors had spread the disease to every quarter of the city. Worse, with the spectre of Morr already hovering over them, they had proven less than stalwart about turning over the revenue they collected to Imperial coffers, skimming most of the money to squander on such pleasures as they might enjoy before the plague took them.

  It was Emperor Boris himself who came up with a solution. Aware that the plague had ignored the halfling population, he had seized upon the theory that the Death was only affecting humankind. Soft-hearted and inoffensive, halflings didn’t have the stuff to act as tax collectors. Fortunately, there was another non-human community dwelling in Altdorf that did.

  Their own business failing as the plague devastated their customers, many of Altdorf’s dwarfish community had responded to the Emperor’s summons. Soon an entire cadre of dwarf taxmen were stalking the streets of Altdorf, exacting the Imperial tribute from great and small with the stubborn, harsh tenacity of their dour breed. True, the services of the dwarfs were more expensive than those of human taxmen – for one thing the dwarfs refused to accept Imperial coin after the gold content was reduced, forcing their wage to be drawn in raw nuggets and dust – but their role was essential to maintaining the financial stability of Imperial government.

  The dwarfs adopted the grandiose title of ‘The Imperial Guild of Excise, Custom, Honour and Fidelity’, but to the people of Altdorf they were simply ‘Goldgather’s Goldgrubbers’. Though they were hated and despised universally, it was still a rare thing for anyone to raise their hand against one of the dwarfs. More than merely the act of defying Imperial law, it was the vindictive nature of the dwarfs themselves that held the abused populace silent. Injure a dwarf and the whole race would persecute the offender’s family unto the tenth generation. Dwarfs recorded their grudges in great tomes so that even the slightest insult would never be forgotten.

  The few peasants abroad in the streets didn’t even turn their heads at the commotion on the doorstep of a once prosperous moneylender. They had become accustomed to shunning the house ever since the warning cross had been chalked across the door. Few even knew if
the man or any of his household still lived, nor were any willing to risk the plague to find out. Once a week a corpse-cart would pass down the street and knock at each door. They would find out if anyone were still in there – it was what they were paid to do. The corpse-collectors earned a copper from the Temple of Morr for each nose they brought to the cremation pits outside the city wall.

  Grumbling into his beard, the dwarf glanced down at the moneylender’s name on the list he carried, noting the balance beside it. It was an appreciable sum, derived from the earnings the man’s business had enjoyed before the plague. A small thing like a pandemic would hardly justify a reduction in taxes. Besides, if the man felt the sum was unreasonable, he could protest to his noble lord. Allowing that his liege had survived the plague and hadn’t already fled the city.

  Either way, the dwarf’s job was to collect. He repeated his summons, banging his fist so forcefully against the door that he bruised the wood. He drew back, waiting for any trace of activity. Frowning under his beard, the dwarf tilted his helmet up and pressed an exposed ear against the door. Years of mining in the Grey Mountains had honed the dwarf’s hearing to a superhuman degree, enabling him to detect the presence of ore simply by the sound his pick made when striking the wall, warning him of a cave-in by the softest groan from a support beam hundreds of yards up the shaft. By comparison, listening at a keyhole was simplicity itself.

  Immediately, the dwarf’s ear caught the sounds of furtive shuffling inside the house. He leaned back, adjusting his helmet in place. Pejorative crept into his grumbling. So the cheats thought to hide in there and pretend they weren’t home, did they? Well, if they thought a dwarf could be dissuaded from his duty by such a facile deception, they were sorely mistaken.

  Stepping away from the door, the dwarf thrust his shoulder towards it and lunged at it. The portal shook in its frame as his armoured weight slammed into the wood. Unfazed by the impact, the dwarf stepped back into the street, allowing himself a better start before charging into the door again.

  This time the door collapsed under his impact, flying back on its hinges. The dwarf was propelled into the dingy parlour beyond.

  Eyes adapted to the murk of mines and tunnels stared in disbelief at the scene within that parlour. If plague hadn’t claimed the moneylender and his household, they would have been better off if it had. The monsters that filled the decrepit building now certainly wouldn’t have been merciful to any occupants they found.

  The parlour and what he could see of the rooms beyond were swarming with hundreds of skaven.

  The dwarf drew his axe, set his feet and roared a prayer to Grungni. Then the vermin rushed at him in a chittering tide of fangs and blades. He cut down ten of them before he was crushed to the floor. After that, despite his heavy armour and his powerful build, it was only a few moments before the dwarf was reduced to an unrecognisable heap of dripping meat.

  Dejected and dispirited, the peasants walking the streets had paid only the sketchiest notice to the dwarf’s invasion of the house. They paid far more attention to the horde that flooded out through the broken door. A few of them even had time to scream before the ratmen fell upon them.

  It was a scene that was repeated all across Altdorf. From sewers and cellars, from abandoned homes and boarded warehouses, even from the holds of derelict ships, the ratmen came. With sword and fang the seemingly numberless horde rampaged through the streets. Wherever the skaven appeared, death and destruction reigned. The monsters were merciless in their depredations, devoid of any semblance of pity or restraint. Temples filled with the sick and dying became abattoirs in the wake of the chittering horde. Refugee camps erupted in flames as the ratmen surrounded them and put them to the torch, the agonies of those trapped within the ring of fire echoing hideously across the icy waters of the Reik.

  Through the Kaiseraugen, the men assembled in the council chamber could see the pillars of smoke rising from the burning city. Screams, roars, the bedlam of a city being torn apart wasn’t quite muffled by the thick panes of glass. Several Kaiserjaeger stood watch, shouting to the leaders gathered about the table whenever they spotted the enemy in the streets below.

  Adolf Kreyssig considered the grim-faced men gathered around him. They were solemn, hardly daring to speak as the magnitude of the attack was borne home to them with each fresh report that made its way to the palace. One of them, the bewigged fop Emperor Boris had installed as burgomeister of Altdorf, sat slumped in his seat, sobbing loudly into a laced handkerchief. Fortunately for the city, the rest of its leaders were made of sterner stuff. Kreyssig had made certain of that when he’d purged the council and made his plans for war.

  Duke Vidor shook his head and cast aside the slip of parchment he had been reading, a report from a captain in the Schuetzenverein. ‘The area east of the river is cut off,’ he declared. ‘The ratmen have demolished the bridges. Two-thirds of the army had their billets there.’

  Grand Master Leiber pulled at his long moustache, eyes closed as he pondered the dire news. ‘At least the heavy horse is stationed on this side of the river,’ he stated. ‘That leaves us roughly three hundred knights. More if we call upon the templar orders.’

  ‘The Black Guard have been surrounded by the cremation pits outside the walls,’ a wizened old count reported. A haunted look crept into his eyes as he considered the full message he had received. ‘Thirty knights against hundreds of those things. They won’t leave enough for Morr’s ravens to find!’

  Prelate Arminus nodded in sympathy at the sacrifice of the Black Guard, closing his hand about the whalebone icon he wore around his neck. The priest’s voice was apologetic when he addressed the other leaders. ‘I fear that the Knights of the Storm are largely absent from the city. With the plague ravaging the river trade, many of them have been serving as marines on those vessels still braving the Reik. Merciful Manann watch over them all.’

  Inquisitor Fulk of the Verenan temple drew back the heavy hood he wore, letting his sharp eyes rove across the faces of the men around him. ‘My temple stands ready to assist the city, but our strength is sadly diminished. The Black Plague has been most attentive.’ The grim priest tapped his fingers on the breast of his robe. ‘At best we might rally seventy swords if we left the temple unprotected.’ It was clear from his tone that he considered such a move to be sacrilegious.

  Kreyssig decided to reject the inquisitor’s offer. The Verenans weren’t a martial order, their forte was hunting heretics. Torturers and executioners were quite capable of killing in cold blood, but he doubted if many of them were equally capable of hot-blooded killing, of fighting against an armed adversary. No, it was better to leave them in their gloomy temple and let them fare as their god saw best.

  ‘We have almost three thousand foot soldiers this side of the river,’ Kreyssig declared. ‘At the moment, they are scattered throughout, clumped in their training camps and isolated in their billets.’ He raised his eyes, staring out through the window. One of those training camps was built over the wreckage of Breadburg. From here, he could see a great column of smoke billowing up from that vicinity.

  Vidor stood up from his chair, addressing the various nobles seated at the table. ‘By themselves, the knights will be of little use. The strength of heavy horse lies in the charge and there will be little opportunity for such tactics in the close confines of city streets.’ He turned, locking eyes with Kreyssig. ‘If we are to have any hope of driving the ratmen from the city, we have to mobilise our scattered foot troops, concentrate them into a single battle group. The ratkin may outnumber us, but those same close quarters will counter that advantage. Man for monster, even the lowest dienstmann is more than a match for the vermin. If we can concentrate our troops into bodies large enough to resist the numbers of the ratmen…’

  Kreyssig nodded. From what he had seen of the skaven, they were a craven breed. They relied upon subterfuge and ambush to fight their battles. They had little st
omach for a real fight. So far, the monsters had enjoyed success because they hadn’t encountered anyone in a position to seriously oppose them. Upset that tide of success even a little and it might hurl the entire horde into disarray.

  ‘What is your plan, Reiksmarshal?’ Kreyssig asked.

  ‘First we will use the Kaiserknecht and as many footmen as are available to penetrate down to the river,’ Vidor said. ‘Any peasants they find will be drafted as labourers. Once they reach the Reik, they will take every ship, scow and barge and lash them together. The ratmen destroyed the old bridges, so we’ll build a new one.’

  ‘It will take time to construct a pontoon bridge,’ one of the other generals objected. ‘I can appreciate the need to bring the rest of the army across the river, but until they are across the ratmen will have an even freer hand on this side of the Reik.’

  The Reiksmarshal shook his head. ‘Not so,’ he stated. ‘Because while they are building the bridge, we will be using the rest of our knights to get messages to the brigades on this side of the river. If we can get all of them to converge upon a single position, concentrate our strength, we can resist the vermin until reinforcements can be brought across the Reik.’

  ‘You said the knights would be useless in city fighting,’ Grand Master Leiber pointed out.

  ‘I don’t need them to fight,’ Vidor returned. ‘I need their mobility, their stamina to win clear of the ratmen and reach our scattered troops. A humble task, I grant, but there will be time for valour and glory after we have the strength to mount a credible offensive.’