“For Wissenland!” the count roared, bringing his sword chopping down. Hooves thundered down the hillside as the riders charged towards the doom of their land.
Blood bringer crashed down, smashing through the festering skull of something that might once have been a fisherman. Its broken husk crumpled, splintering beneath the flying hooves of Count Eberfeld’s steed. Cries of rage and horror rose around him, ripping past the lips of his Sablebacks. The screams of horses tore at the night as the clutching claws and rusting spears of zombies dragged them down. The count could not say how many of his riders were still with him. He could not even tell if any of the other regiments were still keeping pace. All that mattered was the endless sea of rotting faces, the ghastly corpse legion with its empty eyes and decayed hands. There seemed to be no end to them, yet he knew there must be, there had to be. Somewhere beyond these horrors was the ultimate horror of Zahaak.
How many had already died? How many were even now dying to bring an end to that monster? Count Eberfeld thought of Baron von Rabwald and his men, lost and forgotten in the wilds where they had fallen. He thought of the man who had ridden so far to turn his phantom hope into a thing of substance. Max Kessler claimed to have killed five horses riding to reach Wissenberg, a journey that had brought him across the entire length of the province. The man had neglected his own hurts, ghastly wounds that would have crippled any lesser man. Kessler’s determination exceeded even that of the count. Eberfeld was ready to die to try and save his land. Kessler had refused to die, forcing his body on when every fibre of his being must have called out to him to give in, to abandon the struggle and relent. Many of the wounds he had suffered were torn open by his fierce ride, others were alive with infection, oozing with pus and corruption. Even with such hurts, Kessler had violently warded away the attentions of surgeons and their leeches until after he had spoken with his sovereign, until he had given Count Eberfeld the key to destroying Zahaak.
It swung from the hilt of his runefang, the little crescent of rock with its spiral of gold. Count Eberfeld could feel its power, augmenting the ancient magics already bound within his blade. The undead hosts around him could feel it too, recoiling from him like slugs before a flame. He knew it was no effort of mortal valour that sped their passage through the lines of the legion, but the magical might of Blood Bringer and the talisman, the Sun-Tooth.
The Sablebacks plunged into a line of hoary skeleton warriors, their decayed husks encased in bronze scales, plumed helms rising from the grisly skulls. No mere zombies, no mindless skeletons, these things fought with a cruel semblance of life, a ghastly echo of mortal hatred. The blue blood of nobles gathered around the ancient warriors in puddles, as the fearless horrors hacked and stabbed at the charging horsemen. They did not quail before the power of the runefang as the lesser warriors of the legion had, but fought with a tenacity that Count Eberfeld would have called fanaticism in anything alive. His great courser was cut down beneath him, sinking to the earth with a bronze kopesh lodged in its belly. The count managed to free himself from the saddle as his horse dropped, slashing the skull from its killer before the fiend could recover its weapon.
Screams of horror sounded all around. Already tested to their utmost, the courage of his army began to crack. They had seen their champion, their leader, brought down, unaware that he had survived the slaughter of his steed. Count Eberfeld had been a living vessel of the hope of Wissenland, the only person in whom his people could place their trust and allegiance. With him gone, their discipline crumbled. Their ranks lost cohesion, and holes began to open in their lines. Fresh cries of terror sounded as the most ghastly of the legion’s creatures galloped into those holes to butcher the enemies of their infernal master. The swirl of the melee did not close fast enough to spare Count Eberfeld the sight of his army being ridden down by the grisly knights of Nagash, the skeletal horrors that Zahaak had crafted from the once mighty Order of the Southern Sword.
The count’s flesh turned to ice as the cold clutch of evil clawed at his heart. He turned away from the slaughter of his army to face the source of such pitiless malice. The bronze-armoured skeletons parted like wheat before a scythe. A tall spectre, girded in shadow and steel, strode between their silent, faceless ranks. A crimson cloak billowed around its shoulders, a hood drawn over its naked skull. Beneath the primordial evil that exuded from the being, Eberfeld could feel it gloating over him. This was the true enemy, the puppeteer behind the legion: Zahaak the Usurper, Zahaak the Worm.
Eberfeld tightened his grip on the hilt of Blood Bringer. He could sense Zahaak sneering at him. The wight stalked towards him, lifting its scythe-like staff. The man could feel the fell sorceries bound within the weapon grasping at him, stabbing at his soul with fingers of decay. He fought against the urge to throw himself down before the blade, to lift his neck and let the scythe take his head. It took all his strength to resist the suicidal compulsion, and the effort of his resistance pounded through his veins.
Such was the psychic duel that Eberfeld scarcely remembered the physical peril. While his spirit fought against the black sorcery, Zahaak stalked ever closer. The wight raised its staff. What would not be given could still be taken.
Less than a breath separated Count Eberfeld from death and damnation when, almost of its own accord, the runefang crashed against the descending staff. An electric pulse seared through Eberfeld’s body, but he was rewarded to see the malevolent blade of the scythe shatter against Blood Bringer’s burning edge. Zahaak staggered back under the violent exchange, its domineering self-assurance vanishing with its repulse. The sockets of the wight’s skull smouldered with witchfire. At first, it stared at the count, and then its attention shifted to the blade he held.
Zahaak stepped away from the count, its unholy gaze locked not on the runefang but on the fang-like stone that swung from its hilt. The wight lord felt something it had thought never to know again, something that it had not felt since Black Nagash had taken from him that thing called ka, his very life essence.
It knew fear.
The wight had never expected to see the Sun-Tooth, the relic that had brought death to Zahaak, again. He had cast spells of terrible potency to ensure that it would not. However, Zahaak had not known how many centuries the Sun-Tooth had lain fixed to the hilt of Solland’s stolen Grudge Settler. He had not understood the curious way its aura had mixed with that of the enchanted sword. Like the men who had hunted for it, Zahaak had confused Sun-Tooth and runefang, but where men had mistaken talisman for sword, Zahaak’s sorcery had mistaken sword for talisman. The wight thought the Sun-Tooth was safely lost within Gordreg’s tomb, yet here, impossibly, he faced it once more.
The wight continued to back away, exerting its will to motivate its numberless legion. The skeleton warriors did not move, frozen by the alien fear that tainted Zahaak’s commands. Rage flared up within the monster, rage fuelled by royal pride. Claws splayed like knives, the wight flung itself at Eberfeld, determined to destroy the man who had forced it to know fear again.
Eberfeld swung the runefang at the lunging monster, the glowing blade smashing into the fiend’s side. One steel talon slashed across Eberfeld’s cheek, and then the ghastly wight lord was staggering, clutching at the wound in its side. Black serpents of midnight drooled from its ruptured side, striking the ground like oily worms, seeping into the earth. Zahaak struggled to rise again, but Eberfeld smashed the runefang down into the reeling monster. Through crimson hood and leprous skull, the magic steel cut its path, the stony crescent of the Sun-Tooth blazing with might. The sword cleaved through Zahaak’s head, piercing socket and jaw. The witchfires withered and faded. A dry rattle hissed through the broken face. With a final shudder, the body collapsed to the ground, black scales crumbling into rust, the crimson cloak fraying into tatters, ancient bones turning to dust.
Count Eberfeld felt the monster’s power vanish. All around him, the silent ranks of skeletons stood still, locked in the moment of their master’s destruction. The
n, like the body of Zahaak, they began to collapse, crumbling into a field of rust and bone. The eerie fog faded into nothingness, revealing the black tapestry of the starlit sky.
Where before only screams had risen, now cheers rose into the air, the joyous shouts of men redeemed from the brink of eternal horror. Eberfeld could see the survivors of his army picking their way among the dead, searching for their hero.
It would be some time yet before they found him. Count Eberfeld dropped to his knees, holding the runefang before him. Quietly, his voice solemn and subdued, he thanked the gods for his victory, and thanked the men who had given everything to save his land. They, not he, were the true heroes, the true saviours of Wissenland.
Through the long battle, Kessler fought to keep breath in his burning lungs. The efforts of the leeches and surgeons were useless. They could not even prolong his suffering, much less preserve his life. It did not bother him much. There was precious little to bind him to this world any longer. He was ready to die, but first he had to know. He had to know if it was victory or ruin.
Every second was agony, the poison of infection sizzling through his ravaged body, his failing strength draining from him with every drop of blood that oozed from his wounds. Kessler ground his teeth in a madman’s grin, savouring the pain, letting it fill him. So long as there was pain, there was life. He would die, but not yet. Not yet.
One of the surgeons, understanding the magnitude of Kessler’s pain, raised a knife above the swordsman’s head. Kessler saw the look in the surgeon’s eye. Before the healer could strike, Kessler’s hand was around his wrist, grinding the bones together. The healer cried out, the blade falling from nerveless fingers.
“Not yet,” Kessler growled, making certain that all around him knew his meaning. He almost smiled as he saw their awed fear, like an echo of the spectators who had watched him despatch the baron’s enemies. They backed away, and Kessler knew that no other bold hand would rise against him.
A great cleansing wind rushed through the camp. The cloying reek of death was banished, and the nebulous clutch of ancient evil dissipated into the ether. Even the shadows of night seemed to become brighter, less filled with threat and malice. Kessler felt a surge of calm and peace wash over him, and he knew that the taint of Zahaak was being purged from the land. The Worm had been cast back into oblivion, and with him all the evil he had wrought. Only the scars would be left behind, the empty cities and the empty graves, and they would heal.
Kessler closed his eyes against the bright light that swelled within the hospital tent, but still the brilliance blinded him. For a moment, he struggled, and then, for the first time since goblins had cut his face from his body, Kessler no longer felt pain. He was dimly aware of something, something torn and mangled and putrid lying stretched below him. He could not remember what it was. As the light grew, he realised he didn’t even care.
In the light, a smiling figure held her hands out to him, three tiny shapes clinging to her pale, slender legs.
He knew that he was gazing upon the Gates of Morr, where Carlinda had lingered to wait for him.
Her wait was over.
EPILOGUE
“I think I smell fresh air, Kopff!”
“You said that twenty smells ago, Schmitt,” growled the weasel-faced brigand’s companion. Even in the pitch dark of the tunnels, Schmitt could see the disgusted sneer on Kopff’s face.
“If we’d gone the way I said, we’d be out of here by now!” accused Schmitt. After deserting Rambrecht, the two men had tried to navigate their way back through the old goblin caves that they’d discovered in the rear of Gordreg’s tomb. What they had hoped would be a quick, safe route to the surface had proven to be an apparently endless warren of twisting tunnels and blind corridors. The two bandits had been prowling the dark for weeks, living off cave-rats and other unmentionable squirming things, trying desperately to find some way back to sunlight.
“Stop your yapping!” Kopff ordered. “If I hadn’t led the way, we’d never have found our way back to the crypt and picked up this trinket.”
A greedy grin split the outlaw’s face as he patted the jewelled sword thrust through the loop of his belt. In their blind rambling through the tunnels, the two bandits had rediscovered Godreg’s tomb. The terrible necromancy that had raged through the chamber was spent by the time they came slinking back. Even thoughts of hunger had deserted the rogues as they pounced on the freshly slain dead littered around the crypt, looting the corpses of man and orc with equal abandon. It was during this frenzy of greed that Kopff had spotted the shine of the runefang’s hilt, hidden behind a pile of rubble. The brigand lost no time in seizing the weapon and claiming it. He knew little enough about its pedigree, but he recognised that the richness of its decoration and manufacture would command a high price whatever market he found to dispose of it.
Kopff pulled himself from his avarice, eyes narrowing as they were drawn into the gloom of the tunnel. “I think I see something!”
Kopff crept down the winding corridor, Schmitt close behind him. They’d seen no hint of goblins or orcs, but neither man wanted to press their luck too far. There was safety in numbers, or at least a chance that any monsters would strike after the other bandit.
Gradually, Kopff’s claim of seeing light bore out, a faint glimmer shining from some crack in the mountain above the tunnel. The bandits grinned at the sight, rushing forward to wallow in the almost forgotten sunlight. In their haste, they paid little notice to the thick, cloying reptilian musk that washed over their other senses. It was only the sound of something crunching beneath their boots that caused Kopff to pause. The bandit lifted his heels, trying to see what had broken beneath them. A sharp cry from Schmitt snapped him away from his inquiry.
Schmitt was scrambling away from something large and smelly lying in the centre of the corridor, right beneath the little ribbon of daylight shining down from the roof. Kopff thought his heart would stop as he recognised the scaly bulk of the hydra, as he discerned claws and heads among the sprawled mass. He drew the dusty steel of Grudge Settler from his belt, the runefang shivering in his trembling grip. He started to back away, thankful that Schmitt was between him and the beast.
“We’ve got to get out,” Schmitt gasped, trying to edge past Kopff, apparently having reached the same conclusion about keeping someone between him and the hydra. Kopff shoved him away, making a show of carefully studying the sprawled reptile.
“I think it’s dead,” Kopff pronounced. Schmitt looked dubious.
“Maybe it’s sleeping,” he objected.
“No, we’d hear it breathing,” Kopff decided. “It’s dead.” Schmitt’s indecision began to show. Kopff gave him a shove towards the sprawling beast. Schmitt’s boots crunched across the floor.
“Go make sure,” he told the weasel-faced brigand, bracing himself for a speedy retreat down the tunnel.
Boots crunching against the ground, Schmitt nervously approached the hydra. He reached a shaking hand out to the beast’s flank, pressing his palm against the scaly hide. Clenching his eyes shut, he pushed against the monster. The reptile rolled beneath his touch, but the feared heads did not spring into life. Schmitt opened his eyes and pushed again. The monster still refused to react. The bandit laughed as he looked at the hideous wounds gouged all over the brute’s body. “It’s dead!”
“I told you it was dead,” Kopff scolded him, walking into the chamber. Again his boots crunched across the floor.
“What in the name of Khaine are we walking on?” he swore. He reached down and lifted a dull, greyish piece of what looked like broken pottery into the light. It took a minute for him to decide what the curved, roundish bit of debris was. When he did, Kopff’s face was frozen in an expression of abject horror.
Schmitt looked away from his inspection of the dead hydra to find the other bandit still staring in terror at the weird object he held.
“What’ve you got there, Kopff?” he asked.
Kopff swallowed a knot of
fear, looking slowly from the thing in his hand to Schmitt. “Part… part of… an… eggshell.”
The stench of reptilian musk seemed to swell. The two men looked away from the dead body of the mother hydra, and away from the little circle of daylight. All around them was the unbroken darkness of the mountain. Within that darkness, dozens of cold, hungry eyes watched them, waiting for the light to vanish so that they might crawl out of the shadows to feed.
Scanning, formatting and
proofing by Flandrel,
additional formatting and
proofing by Undead.
[Warhammer] - Runefang Page 34
