03 - God King

by Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead)

  Sigmar gathered his knights in the longhouse, twenty men of hardy Unberogen stock and proven courage. The fires burned brightly, filling the hall with warmth, for the night beyond its walls was chill, and oppressive clouds hid the moon. Eoforth studied an unrolled map with Cuthwin, listening attentively to the scout’s tale of his rescue of Grindan Deeplock.

  He sat on the edge of a long trestle table, judging how long it would take them to reach where the dwarf wagons had been ambushed.

  “I reckon four days to get there and back,” said Alfgeir.

  “Assuming no trouble,” replied Sigmar. “That part of the forest’s not travelled much. The beasts and greenskins have grown bold in the south.”

  “They’d have to be bolder than I’ve known them to attack twenty knights, plus you and me.”

  “They attacked a convoy of dwarfs,” pointed out Sigmar.

  “I suppose,” said Alfgeir with a shrug. “These are my best, and can handle any trouble that comes our way.”

  Sigmar nodded, shivering despite the heat of the nearby fire. He pulled his bearskin cloak tighter about him. Eoforth stood straight, rubbing the small of his back with one hand and pinching the bridge of his nose with the other.

  “Well, High Scholar?” asked Sigmar. “What do you have for us?”

  Eoforth scowled at Alfgeir and said, “I think I have a good idea of where young Cuthwin came upon the goblin raiders, on the old mountain road about two miles north of the Thaalheim mines.”

  A murmur passed through the armoured knights, and it was Orvin who spoke up. Sigmar had fought alongside Orvin many times, and knew him as a warrior of great personal courage, quick temper and unpredictable moods.

  “Dangerous country,” remarked the knight. “The greenskins we routed were from around there. I’ll wager they came from under the mountains via the mineworks.”

  “More than likely, Orvin,” said Eoforth, and Sigmar caught the tension between the two men. He knew Orvin’s son to be a source of frustration to Eoforth, and wondered how much of the father had passed to the son.

  His thoughts were interrupted as he heard a sudden commotion from the main doors to the longhouse. His hand flashed to Ghal-Maraz at his belt in anticipation of danger. His crown grew warm at his brow, a runic warning of fell sorcery and unnatural powers at work.

  “To arms!” he shouted as the doors to the longhouse burst open and a swirling gale of icy wind blew inside. The fire was snuffed out in an instant, its fitful embers glowing dully with all the heat that remained to them. Frozen gusts of dead air flew around the longhouse like poisonous zephyrs, carrying with them the scent of death and far off lands that baked beneath an oppressive sun.

  A lone figure stood silhouetted in the doorway, a tall warrior in silver and gold mounted upon a hellish black steed with rippling flanks and eyes of smouldering red. Stinking steam like marsh gasses gusted from the beast’s flared nostrils. The rider walked his nightmarish mount into the longhouse, its iron-shod hooves sparking from the flagstones like heavy hammer blows.

  He dismounted with easy grace and folded his arms across a gleaming breastplate. His manner was confident to the point of arrogance and a white cloak flowed like snow from his shoulders. The knights drew their swords and roared in anger, moving to surround the elegant warrior, his long dark hair swept back over his ears and his swarthy complexion cut from a cruel mould. His eyes were black and without pupil, his mouth twisted in a malicious grin of spiteful mischief.

  Alfgeir took a step towards the intruder, but Sigmar held him back.

  “No,” said Sigmar. “This man is death.”

  “Your Emperor is a wise man,” said the warrior, his voice liquid and seductive. “I have heard that about him. You should listen to him, for I would kill you before you could even swing that lump of pig iron in your hand.”

  “You talk big for a man surrounded by twenty warriors,” said Alfgeir.

  “Then that should tell you something about how good I am.”

  Sigmar stepped towards the warrior, his hand tight on the grip of Ghal-Maraz. Everything about this warrior sent pulses of anger and hate from the ancestral hammer of the dwarfs into his hand. The weapon longed to be unleashed, but Sigmar kept his urge to fight in check. He knew this man was no ordinary foe.

  “I am Sigmar Heldenhammer, Emperor of these lands,” he said. “By what right do you come before me into my longhouse?”

  The warrior bowed elaborately. “I am Khaled al-Muntasir, and I bring a message to you, Sigmar Heldenhammer.”

  “A message from whom?”

  “My master, the lord Nagash,” said Khaled al-Muntasir.

  “You lie!” hissed Alfgeir, making the sign of the horns over his heart. “There’s no such being; he’s just a story to frighten children. You can’t scare us with old ghosts.”

  “Can’t I?” laughed Khaled al-Muntasir. “I beg to differ.”

  Sigmar had heard the tales of Nagash, there were few in the Empire who had not. No two stories were the same, lurid tales of walking corpses, fallen warriors stirring from their tombs and legions of the living dead marching to the howls of carrion wolves as darkness covered the land and the living cowered in terror.

  But all the tales agreed on one thing. Nagash was the supreme lord of the undead, an evil king from an ancient land far to the south where a world-spanning empire had once risen from the desert sands. That empire had been destroyed in an age long forgotten, and only dusty tales and half-remembered legends survived from those times.

  Sigmar knew from bitter experience that the dead could indeed rise from their graves. He and his warriors had destroyed a sorcerer of the undead many years ago, but if even half the tales of Nagash were true, then his power dwarfed that of the necromancer of Brass Keep.

  “You are not welcome here, Khaled al-Muntasir,” said Sigmar. “So deliver your message and begone.”

  “No threats?” said Khaled al-Muntasir. “No promises of a swift and brutal death?”

  “I sense you are not a man cowed by threats.”

  “True, but that doesn’t stop the foolish from making them,” said Khaled al-Muntasir. He gave Sigmar an elaborate bow and threw his cloak back over his shoulder. The knights tensed, but made no move against the warrior, as a blade that shimmered with dark power was revealed at his side.

  “You have something that does not belong to you,” said Khaled al-Muntasir. “A crown forged by my master over a thousand years ago. You know this crown belongs to another, yet you keep it from its true lord. It will be returned to him.”

  “I know this crown can never be allowed to fall into the hands of evil men.”

  “I was not offering you a choice.”

  “The crown remains where it is,” said Sigmar. “If your master wishes to try and take it back, he will find all the armies of the Empire ranged against him.”

  Khaled al-Muntasir smiled, a winning smile of pristine white teeth. Sigmar was not surprised to see two sharpened fangs at the corners of his mouth. His heart beat a little faster as he knew he faced a vampire, a creature of the night that fed on blood and murder.

  Sigmar saw the monster’s eyes widen a fraction and knew it could sense the increased flow of blood around his body. The hunger was upon this creature—he could no longer think of Khaled al-Muntasir as a man—and the danger of every one of them dying within the next few moments was very real indeed.

  “You cannot stand against my master,” said Khaled al-Muntasir.

  “Others have said similar things, yet the Empire endures.”

  “Not against the legions of the dead it won’t,” promised Khaled al-Muntasir. “Your friend Markus, king of the Menogoths, is already dead. He and his family and his tribe have swollen the ranks of my master’s army and more will follow.”

  Sigmar sensed the furious shock of Khaled al-Muntasir’s revelation sweep through his knights. They badly wanted this warrior dead.

  “Hold!” cried Alfgeir, also seeing the angry urge to attack in the face
s of his knights.

  Sigmar’s voice was colder than the Norscan ice as he met the blood drinker’s gaze.

  “Get out,” he said. “And if you return you will be killed. This is the word of Sigmar.”

  Khaled al-Muntasir turned and vaulted onto the back of his terrible steed. Its eyes flared brightly and it reared up onto its hind legs. He rode from the longhouse and Sigmar’s knights ran after him with Alfgeir at their head.

  No sooner was the vampire beyond the walls of the longhouse than a pair of wide black wings of impenetrable darkness unfolded from the steed’s sides. The beast leapt into the air and its wings boomed with the sound of a mainsail catching a stormwind. It rose swiftly into the night sky, a bat-like slice of darkness against the black vault of the heavens.

  Alfgeir watched it vanish over the hills and treetops, his face pale and fearful.

  “Do you think he was lying?” he asked. “About Markus, I mean.”

  Sigmar shook his head. “I fear not, my friend.”

  “Damn,” whispered Alfgeir. “The Menogoths gone…”

  Sigmar turned and re-entered the longhouse, barking orders as he went.

  “Bring every scribe and runner in Reikdorf here,” he said. “I want word of this on its way to every one of the Empire’s counts before sunrise. Eoforth, search every scroll in the library for tales of Nagash. Sift what facts you can from the legends. We’re going to need to know what we’re up against. Draft orders for sword musters to be gathered in every town and village from the Grey Mountains to the Sea of Claws. I want to be ready for these monsters when they come at us.”

  Alfgeir nodded. “I’ll make it happen,” he said. “I take it we’ll not be heading south now?”

  “I cannot, but you must lead these knights and Cuthwin to find what the dwarfs buried. Find it and bring it back here. I swore an oath and I mean to see it kept, even if I cannot do so myself.”

  “I’ll see it done, my Emperor,” promised Alfgeir.

  “And Alfgeir?” said Sigmar. “Be swift.”

  “The crown is really that important to Nagash?” asked Alfgeir.

  “You have no idea,” said Sigmar.

  ——

  Dead Flesh

  The madmen chanted and danced with wild abandon, like Cherusen Wildmen in the grip of a bane leaf frenzy. Redwane shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, trying to gauge the right moment to ride in and end this. He glanced at the rider next to him, a wide-chested warrior in red plate and thick mail with a sodden wolf pelt cloak draped over his shoulders.

  Like every White Wolf, Leovulf didn’t wear a helm, and his wild mane of black hair was plastered to his skull by the rain. Apparently to go bareheaded into battle was considered an act of bravery, openly displaying a warrior’s contempt for the foe. Redwane wasn’t so sure that going without a helm was a good idea, but since the White Wolves he’d recruited from Middenheim followed Leovulf’s lead in all things, he couldn’t very well go against it.

  The man had carved himself a legend in the fighting that had raged through the streets of the northern city, and though he was lowborn, Count Myrsa had decreed that station was no barrier to entry into the ranks of the White Wolves. Courage was all that mattered.

  “Madness,” said Leovulf, watching the madmen with bemused distaste. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  “I have no idea,” said Redwane, wincing as he watched a screaming man jam a long iron nail through the palm of his own hand. “But Myrsa wants it stopped.”

  “Count Myrsa,” said Leovulf.

  “Of course,” replied Redwane. He’d known Myrsa for a long time, and still couldn’t get used to the idea of calling him count, though he’d more than earned that title during the siege of Middenheim. “Force of habit.”

  He returned his gaze to the centre of the village, shaking his head at the sight before him.

  Two hundred men dressed in rags filled the centre of Kruken, a gloomy, stockaded miners’ settlement a day’s ride to the west of Middenheim. Built upon ancient dwarf ruins, Kruken nestled in an undulant range of hills in the midst of the Drakwald Forest. It had found prosperity with the discovery of tin beneath the high ground, but that prosperity had quickly faded as it became clear the seams were nowhere near as deep and rich as had been thought.

  Wailing and moaning, the madmen whipped their bare backs bloody with lengths of knotted rope bound with thorns and fishhooks. Some cut into their chests with gutting knives, while others jammed splinters of sharpened wood beneath their fingernails.

  Each man chanted meaningless doggerel interspersed with monotone dirges in an unknown tongue that sounded part gibberish, part incantation. A wooden log had been hammered into the ground near the centre of the square and a pile of kindling set at its base, though Redwane wasn’t sure what they were planning to burn.

  A drizzle of rain drained the life from the day, and only made the utilitarian nature of the soot-stained buildings, mine-workings and dormitories of Kruken all the more depressing. Perhaps a hundred people were gathered in the town square, watching the carnival of madness at its centre with varying degrees of dour amusement. Children threw stones at the chanting men, while yapping dogs snapped and bit at their bloody ankles.

  In the days since the defeat of the Norsii horde, the people of the north had suffered great hardship; the forest beasts that had fled the destruction of Cormac Bloodaxe’s horde had returned to hunting men as their prey, banditry had increased, harvests had gone uncollected and famine was widespread. In the aftermath of the fighting, outbreaks of pestilence in the settlements around the western foothills of the Middle Mountains stretched the resources of the land still further.

  Life in the north was always hard, but this last year had been especially hard, so any diversion, no matter how absurd or bloody, was welcome.

  No one had noticed these wandering bands of madmen at first, for the Empire was a land of strangeness, of the bizarre and dangerous. They had been tolerated as an aberration that would soon burn itself out, but as the year grew darker and life harder, it became obvious that, far from dying out, these roving bands of lunatics were growing in strength.

  The largest of these bands was said to be led by a man named Torbrecan, a man who—depending on which fanciful tale you listened to—was either a warrior driven mad by a life of bloodshed or a priest of Ulric who’d spent too long alone in the winter woods. Torbrecan’s host marched in bloody procession from the isolated towns and villages north of the mountains, curving in a southerly bow towards Middenheim. Pestilence marched alongside them, and thus Middenheim’s warriors blocked the roads to the city. Something had to be done, and so Myrsa had despatched Redwane and the White Wolves to break up this band and take Torbrecan prisoner.

  Redwane shook his head as he watched a man drag his dirt-encrusted fingernails down his face then drop to his knees and plunge his scarred features into the mud. Was he Torbrecan? Who could tell? Each man looked just as ferociously insane as the next.

  Leovulf shook his head. “We’ll need to move if we want to stop this getting out of hand.”

  “Aye,” said Redwane. “But I want to make sure we don’t start trouble going in too early.”

  “Trouble’s started already. We’re just limiting it.”

  Leovulf’s gloomy assessment of the situation wasn’t far off the mark. Like most northern tribesman, Leovulf had a grim worldview, one born out of years of harsh winters and the constant struggle for survival in the inhospitable wilds of the northern marches. The people of the north were tough and hard as oak, but weren’t noted for their lightness of spirit.

  A tall figure in a mud-spattered robe that might once have been white, but which was now a grimy brown danced towards the centre of the square. His shoulders were stained red, and he carried a metal-studded switch that dripped blood. Matted and unkempt hair hung lank and limp to his shoulders and his beard was tied in a number of braids like tangled tree-roots. Each burned with a small coal that sent acrid fumes into
his nostrils.

  “You think that’s Torbrecan?” asked Leovulf.

  “Must be,” agreed Redwane. “He looks mad enough.”

  The man walked a ragged circle around the square, his eyes wild and staring, his mouth open in a silent scream. He beat himself over the shoulders with his switch and laughed hysterically with each blow. His followers gouged and tore at themselves with each crack of his switch.

  “People of Kruken!” howled Torbrecan. “Listen well to me, for I speak of your doom! It is the doom of us all, for the gods have turned their faces from this world! Who among you has not seen the signs of the End Times? Who among you has not seen heralds that portend our extinction from this world? Plague destroys your towns, beasts hunt your children and ungodly men seek to take what is not theirs with blade and bow! We are doomed, and it is no one’s fault but our own. We turned from our proper devotions and led the gods to abandon us. The terror that stalks the land is one of our own making, for we are a godless people, condemned to die unless we can wash away our sins in blood and pain.”

  The crowd jeered him, but not as many as Redwane expected. Some looked like they were seriously entertaining this insanity, and some were even nodding their heads like he was making some kind of sense.

  “The gods are far from us,” went on Torbrecan, jabbing a scabbed fist at the sky, “and they grow farther with every passing day. Only through the ecstasy of pain shall we draw their attention to us. Only by the exquisite wails of our suffering shall we turn their gaze back upon us.”

  Redwane shook his head, unable to believe that folk weren’t simply laughing this man out of their village. Surely life was hard enough without people like this wanting to make it worse?

  “This has gone far enough,” said Redwane, jabbing his spurs into his mount’s flanks.

  “Aye,” agreed Leovulf. “Bloody lunatic needs to be shut up for good.”

  Redwane shook his head. “No killing. Myrsa, Count Myrsa, was very specific about that.”

  Leovulf nodded and passed the word through the ranks. The White Wolves shucked their pelt cloaks from their right shoulders to clear their hammer arms. Ustern unfurled the banner, a glorious piece of red linen with a wolf picked out in silver thread, and Holstef blew two rising notes on his clarion.