[Von Carstein 01] - Inheritance

by Steven Savile - (ebook by Undead)

  Up and down the line the battle-hardened Knights of the White Wolf responded to Kruger’s impassioned speech vigorously, hammering their breastplates with gauntleted fists over and over until the beating became deafening, and then, when the hammering was at its loudest, howling like the very beasts they took their name from.

  Kruger slammed his gauntleted fist once against his breastplate and lifted it in salute to his men.

  “We fight!” Mehlinger cried. “Mount up! Night falls!”

  “The White Wolves ride!” the chant went up. “The White Wolves ride!”

  Roused, they were an awesome sight.

  Nothing could stand against them, Kruger promised himself. Nothing.

  He turned away from his men. Mehlinger was right, where he had assumed they had a final hour, they had barely minutes as the sun dipped behind the treelined hills. Already shapes were emerging from the white pavilions: von Carstein’s vampires.

  On the ground the dead stirred.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Riders on the Storm

  SCHWARTHAFEN, SYLVANIA

  Dead of winter, 2049

  At full glorious charge the Knights of the White Wolf were an awesome sight.

  The thundering hooves of the warhorses sent shivers coursing through the earth itself. The cacophonous tattoo of their charge rent the night.

  Rank upon rank of majestic chargers came at the rows of undead with flaming brands and warhammers swinging.

  “For all of humankind!” Mehlinger bellowed, his words snatched away by the wind.

  Kruger drove his spurs hard into his horse’s flanks, urging her to open up into full gallop. The waiting was over: the helplessness of it, the doubt gnawing away at a man’s courage, the uncertainty. Fighting was better. The old Wolf lived for the thrill of it. There was nothing in the world even remotely like the vitality of it: man and beast as one. The charred earth crunched under his horse’s hooves. Grimly, Kruger wiped the sweat from his eyes with the fur cuff of his gauntlet.

  Mehlinger blew his warhorn, trumpeting the command to full gallop.

  The discipline of the line was precise; when the grand master gave his horse her head the rest of the line followed, matching their momentum beat for beat.

  Kruger’s smile was grim.

  There was no evil in the world that could not be thwarted by men brave enough to stand up against it.

  There was no fear here today. This was what they lived for.

  His warhammer sang in the air as he whipped it round above his head.

  The cry of carrion birds overhead matched it hungrily; the birds had some sixth sense, flocking to the killing ground long before the first blood was spilled.

  The air reeked of sulphur, sharp and repugnant.

  No waning of the light marked the arrival of night. Moments before the charge a bloom of blue light above the white pavilions chased up into the heavens, like lightning in reverse as it gathered into a luminous sphere. The ball of lightning shifted colour almost continuously as it climbed until it met the clouds with a clash of steel and a belly-deep rumble of thunder that rent the sky. Immediately the rain came down, hard. The fat drops bounced five and six inches off the battlefield, turning it quickly to sludge beneath the horses’ hooves.

  Kruger had heard stories of the Vampire Count resorting to sorcery to turn the tide of his battles. Von Carstein could conjure hordes of ravaging daemons for all he cared. They would die just the same. Kruger was nothing if not a practical man. He knew what the blossoming blue radiance was but, unnatural or not, rain was rain and his men were more than capable of riding through a storm. The redolent sulphur, the ball lightning, the sudden fury of the storm itself, all of it might be unnerving, Kruger thought maliciously, but they were incomparable to the sight of the White Wolves bearing down on you.

  The white-hot fire of battle filled his senses, coruscating through his entire body.

  This was what being alive was, at its very grandest.

  Here, now.

  And then the battle was joined in a horrifying destruction of flesh, blood and bone as the Knights of the White Wolf hit the ranks of the dead head-on, warhammers crashing into thick skulls and mashing through dead arms as they clawed out. Firebrands flew high into the air, arcing, some burning out in the torrential rain, others descending on the mass of undead with lethal fire, igniting on the desiccated skin of the zombies.

  The dead met the charge kicking and screaming as they were trampled beneath the horses’ hooves.

  Already the ghouls had a feast of corpses to gorge themselves on. Bodies sprawled in pools of congealing blood. Some had lost arms, legs were crushed, heads stoved in. The ghouls treated them all the same: as meat.

  Kruger’s warhammer smashed into skulls and shoulders, cutting a swathe through the dead. This was his day. This is what he had been born to do. He was the immortal on the field, not von Carstein. The blood fury sang through his veins. He bellowed a fearsome battle-cry and threw himself into the fray. He booted a shambling zombie in the face so hard that the creature’s jaw caved in, and lifted another, a child with dead eyes, off its feet with the staggering force of his hammer blow. The boy slumped with his arm hanging loosely at his side, forced himself to his feet only for Kruger’s hammer to stove in his skull. The air around Jerek Kruger ripped and crackled with violence. He savoured it, channelling it inside, feeling it course through his veins and turning it into his own strength. That was his magic. He was a fighter.

  He sought out von Carstein across the field of slaughter and found him.

  “Face me!” the grand master roared, challenging the Vampire Count. His taunt carried across the fighting and was met by a sneer from the pale lips of von Carstein. Kruger stood in the saddle and roared his challenge again: “Face me!”

  Mehlinger’s warhorn sounded three times in short succession, drawing the second rank of knights in a sweeping arc across the battlefield and sending the third rank in their wake to pick off the pieces while the front rank broke the back of the undead’s force. The dead scattered aimlessly, lost for direction as the Vampire Count rose to meet Jerek Kruger’s challenge, his sword wailing and shrieking like a daemon possessed as he wheeled his mount around and spurred the nightmare beast into a rash charge.

  Kruger’s heart slowed, his pulse, the noise of the battle, everything around him slowed as though trapped in molasses. He saw von Carstein riding at him, saw the carrion birds circling overhead hungrily, saw the dead falling beneath his horse’s hooves, but it all happened so slowly. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. His battle-cry stretched out into one long deafening howl.

  And then the world snapped violently back into place.

  Kruger’s warhammer sang as it whistled through the air. The white pavilions were battered by the wind and rain but still that damnable banner snapped and flapped tauntingly against the black sky.

  The Vampire Count’s horde was in disarray. The Knights of the White Wolf hammered them down, crushing them ruthlessly.

  Kruger only had eyes for one foe: the Vampire Count.

  Von Carstein’s tainted blade cried out for blood as the Vampire Count flung himself forward. Ripples of moonlight shimmered on the cursed blade as it scythed through the air, aimed high at Kruger’s neck.

  The grand master took the blow on the shaft of his huge warhammer, the jarring impact shuddering through him. He slammed a fist into von Carstein’s face. There was nothing pretty about the move. It was pure brutality. It was a bone-crunching blow that had the vampire reeling in his saddle.

  Kruger pressed his slim advantage, bringing the butt of the warhammer’s shaft to bear. He jabbed the end of it into von Carstein’s face as he struggled to shift his balance. The vampire was quicker. He rolled under the blow, taking it on his shoulder, his sword snaking out and slicing uselessly off Kruger’s breastplate. The speed of the counter was dizzying. No sooner had the wailing blade clattered off Kruger’s mail than von Carstein brought it to bear again and again in two li
ghtning fast nicks, either side of the grand master’s face, drawing blood on both cheeks. The wounds dripped into Kruger’s unkempt beard. They were marks of humiliation, nothing more, nothing less.

  Kruger roared, his entire musculature driven by controlled fury. He brought his warhammer down in a crushing arc. The blow was clumsy. It missed von Carstein and cracked sickeningly into the head of the Vampire Count’s nightmarish steed. The animal shied, bucking and twisting, as its hind legs buckled and spilled von Carstein from the saddle. The undead count leapt clear, landing lightly, a look of intense displeasure on his face. He brought the wailing blade to the centre, taking it in a two-handed grip, then waited, implacable, deadly.

  Kruger wheeled his mount around and charged for von Carstein, his mind filled with the image of the count’s head bursting like an overripe watermelon beneath his hammer blow.

  Again von Carstein was too quick. He dived and rolled beneath Kruger’s lethal hammer and between his mount’s deadly hooves, coming out on the other side in a tight crouch, horse blood dripping from his sword where he had gutted the animal on the way through. The horse managed five more steps before it realised it was dead and collapsed. Kruger barely managed to roll free before the dead weight of the beast pinned him in the mud.

  Von Carstein was on him in an instant, followed by a pack of howling ghouls who threw themselves on the dead horse, biting and tearing with their teeth and bare hands. Gouts of blood pumped from the animal’s gaping stomach, soaking the vile creatures as they fed.

  “You’re a parasite. Your time here is done, vampire,” Kruger said, his grimace hard as he weighed the warhammer in his huge hands.

  “And you’re wasting your precious breath trying to goad me, savage. Time to die.” The vampire unleashed a lethal reverse cut, feinting first high to Kruger’s left then pulling the blow a fraction before the White Wolfs block and dropping his right shoulder, rolling the cut so it actually came from underneath, shearing up for his throat. Kruger barely got out of the way in time to save his life as the wailing blade sliced away the lobe and more than half of his ear in a bloody mess. The pain was blinding.

  He staggered back a step and countered with a punishing right cross, his meaty fist snapping the vampire’s head back. One fang snapped under the impact, spraying blood. Kruger sprang forward raining blows on either side of von Carstein’s head, slamming his club-like fist into the vampire’s ear and his nose but the Vampire Count was strong, impossibly strong. After the initial shock of the blow von Carstein unleashed the beast within, sacrificing all pretence at humanity, and roared on the offensive, his bloody blade slashing and arcing between them.

  They circled each other warily, each judging the other for signs of weakness, looking for the kill. Death was very close and Kruger did not care. He had never been more alive.

  Von Carstein feinted left and lunged, the tip of the wailing blade slicing at Kruger’s stomach. The knight slammed the cut away and launched himself two-footed at the vampire, his booted feet crashing into the Count’s face. Von Carstein staggered back. Kruger rolled to his feet as the vampire reared up, sword slashing wildly in the air between them. The knight threw himself forward, blocking blow after blow with the shaft of his warhammer and answering each with a devastating counter aimed at the Count’s head until the rune of Ulric slammed into the side of von Carstein’s face, hurling him from his feet. He lay there in the pool of horse’s blood, ghouls all around him feasting, as Jerek Kruger, chest heaving, stood over him.

  “Today I conquer death, destroyer of worlds. Go back to the hell that spawned you, fiend.”

  With that Kruger beat the life out of the Vampire Count, pounding his bones to a bloody pulp with his mighty warhammer. The carrion birds cackled and cawed, circling vindictively overhead.

  Mehlinger’s horn trumpeted. The Vampire Count had fallen and the remnants of his army were routed.

  The tide of the battle had turned. Kruger sank to his knees, utterly spent. Dawn was still hours away. It didn’t matter. They were victorious. The night was won.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A Wolf to the Slaughter

  MIDDENHEIM

  Spring, 2050

  But one night does not a war win when the enemy refuses to die. The sad truth is that victory on one field can easily turn to defeat on another.

  Where the open fields of Schwarthafen suited the glorious chargers of the Knights of the White Wolf the cramped serpentine streets of Middenheim imprisoned them. It was impossible to ride their horses and unseated they lost not only their mobility but their cohesion as well.

  Without their powerful mounts the knights were nothing more than glorified infantry with unwieldy weapons unused to fighting at close quarters.

  They were vulnerable to von Carstein’s undead.

  The city’s isolation on the huge plateau, the Fauschlag, only served to hinder them all the more because their enemy was neither mortal nor flesh and bone. In his heart Kruger knew there was no way to fend off von Carstein this time. What use was iron and steel against the ghosts conjured by the Vampire Count?

  Von Carstein held back his zombies and skeletons, crowding them on the viaducts into the city itself and in a vast ring around the base of the plateau.

  Instead he unleashed the revenant shades, the wraiths and the wights and the ghasts and the ghouls, ethereal undead that ghosted through wood and stone as though it didn’t exist. Middenheim was every inch the great fortress city that Ulric foresaw but in a matter of hours von Carstein turned it into a necropolis.

  Middenheim, City of the Dead.

  Lukien Karr was the first casualty. Brave, foolish Lukien. Bellowing the battle-cry of the White Wolves, the knight stepped into the path of a ghastly shade and met it steel for insubstantial talons. The wraith entered Karr, sank into his skin and chilled his heart and turned his blood to ice, then ripped itself free of the dead man, ectoplasmic ribbons of ichor fanning out behind the wraith as it screeched off up the narrow street toward the plague monument. It was over in a heartbeat. Karr fell to the cobbles, a look of abject terror frosted onto his face.

  More died the same way, the spirits shrieking and laughing as they tore through the flesh of the knights, making a mockery of their life as the helpless warriors hurled their hammers and struggled vainly to fight off an enemy as insubstantial as thin air.

  The cry went up for priests, the desperate hope that faith and holy water would stand firm where iron and steel had proved useless.

  Jerek Kruger stood in the centre of it all, watching his men die and helpless to do anything about it. He burned with impotent rage.

  The ghosts of von Carstein tore through the streets, they drifted, they flew, they emerged from solid stone walls, they came from everywhere and there was nothing Kruger could do but swing his warhammer and wonder why the revenant shades claimed the lives of those around him but left him alive. They swarmed through the Pit with its warren of decrepit shacks and tumbledown buildings. They swept through the makeshift hovels as easily as they did Middenpalaz, the grafs palatial home. They poured through the squares, moonlight shining through their transparent forms, and down the streets, an endless sea of incorporeal souls spilling out of the shadows and the spaces between. In the Grafs Repose succulents and hardy perennials choked and withered as the cold flush of death lapped over them in foetid waves. Von Carstein’s dead army threatened all life.

  The priests came shuffling into the streets, cowed by the terrifying might of the wraiths and the ghasts as they snuffed the life out of the knights trying vainly to protect them as they stumbled over lines of exorcism and banishment rituals. They joined together from all denominations: Ulric, Sigmar, Shallya, Myrmidia, Verena and Morr, bringing their bells and holy books into the streets, spraying blessed water at the shades and shadows, though fear had them cowering and tripping over the lines of the rituals, allowing the mellifluous wraiths to slide into their flesh and chill their blood to ice, culling the one defence the city of Middenheim actu
ally had from the Vampire Count’s wrath.

  The high priest of Sigmar suffered the worst. As the old man raised his eyes to the Middenheim Spire he saw the implacable figure of Vlad von Carstein squatting amid the buttresses and the gargoyles. It was impossible for him to make out the sardonic mockery in the pale count’s expression but still the old priest was overwhelmed by the sudden repulsive touch of the vampire’s base evil. The priest knew that von Carstein only resembled a human, that his nature was in fact something far older, and far more malignant in origin. His tainted blood was ancient and far crueller than any living being’s.

  He revelled in savagery, in death, in sadistic slaughter and sacrifice. He excelled at it. He was the Lord of Death and he hungered for mortal flesh, mortal blood. The priest felt the taint of his hunger, felt himself succumbing to it, being overwhelmed by the bloodlust of the beast perched up amongst the gargoyles, mocking their heroics.

  The cobblestones around the Sigmarite’s feet frosted with rime, touched by the unholy cold of the hungry dead, ribbons of frost crystallising and crusting over the stone walls of his temple, solidifying into ice. The priest’s breath fogged in the air in front of his face as he struggled to give voice to the words of banishment, merging with the spectral forms, his own breath giving shape and definition to the dead. And then they were inside him, not one wraith, but a whole ungodly host, devouring his eternal soul even as they congested his lungs and blocked his throat with ice so that he could not breath or talk, choking him slowly and painfully to death even as the Vampire Count’s mocking laughter rang through the streets. As the cold wormed its way into the silver hammer around his neck, the holy relic cracked and split in two. The shards fell to the cobbles and shattered like glass. The priest clutched at his throat, clawing at his own tongue, trying to pull it out so that he might swallow one last desperate mouthful of air before he died.