Warhammer - Curse of the Necrarch

by Steven Savile

  “Why?” Casimir demanded. “Why did he kill you?”

  “Blood… Ritual… Betrayal… of… dead. Let… me… go!” Seven of the eight words were dragged out of the ghost’s mouth, so swallowed in grunts that they were barely intelligible as words at all. The eighth was a feral roar.

  “We know the maker, then,” Casimir said, turning his back arrogantly on the shade, “and we know his reason.” He waved his hand, a curiously imperious gesture, and banished the diseased memory of the corpse eater.

  “How does that help us?”

  “A ritual must be recorded, yes?”

  “Not necessarily,” the necrarch said, ruminating on the summoned shade’s words. Blood ritual, betrayal of the dead, they did not have to fit together as neat sentences. The creature could barely form a coherent thought, could it be relied upon?

  “The cipher unlocks a book, written by Korbhen, or at least pages from the same source, from the backs of mortals gone feral.”

  “Where do we find such a thing, if it even exists?”

  “The secret has to be hidden within the cipher,” Casimir said. “Let me see the page again.”

  Radu had been over the writing a thousand times and more, and there was nothing in it that resembled directions to some mythical book composed by his sire.

  “Here!” Casimir barked triumphantly, stabbing a finger at the centre of the page. Radu hunched over, looking to see what he had found. Casimir snatched up a quill and began inking a series of quick strokes that matched not the blood ink but the spaces it left behind. “It is not what you see, it is what you don’t! Like so much the truth is hidden in plain sight! The master is wise, indeed. Look, the mark of the Man-God,” he rasped, his grin fierce. “That is what you meant me to find, is it not?”

  “An astute find, Casimir. In a world of shadow and death it is not where one looks that danger lurks, but where one is blind to it. Perception is the key. Open your mind to the possibilities. Look where you already looked, but with different eyes. Everything you need to know is in the cipher if you know how to see it.”

  “The master is pleased?”

  “Very,” Radu said. “Now solve the riddle, and I shall not cut your tongue out and feed it to Amsel. Fail me, and your usefulness is at an end.”

  “Yes, master,” Casimir said, already hunched back over the page, duplicating several of the spaces between the lines to release the truth for Korbhen’s elaborate ruse.

  Radu waited on the roof of the tower, notions fermenting in his mind.

  There was a game being played here, for his sake almost certainly. That Korbhen created the cipher did not surprise him, indeed he had almost expected it of his sire. There were no kindred loyalties between them; Korbhen had walked out on Kastell Metz decades before, in search of a story, nothing more. He had come across an account from the time before the Winter War that claimed a living book had been brought out of the Lands of the Dead. The discovery had become the necrarch’s obsession, the intimation of what might lurk within, what power caused it life, too much for Korbhen to resist. So he had turned his back on everything, walking out on all that they had built in this remote corner, hidden away from the world, and risked discovery and the ruin of everything.

  Was the purpose of this page to draw him into Korbhen’s hunt? To manipulate him into dancing once more to the shackles of his sire?

  “I will not,” he said in stubborn denial, but just as von Carstein’s book had wormed its way into every thought of his sire, this page of secrets and codes to be deciphered had planted its hooks in him. He would learn all of its secrets, and he knew that Korbhen understood that similarity in their nature, that thirst that would keep him digging until he had excavated every last secret from the page.

  Casimir joined him just before dawn, triumphant.

  “Ashenford!” he said, even before he was halfway through the door. “That is the answer to your riddle, master. The testament of one of the lost prophets lies under lock and key in the Sigmarite temple in Ashenford.”

  “So the cipher is the key to the ravings of a mad man?”

  “Yes, master. It is a brilliant deception cutting to the very heart of faith and heresy. Hidden within a dream supposedly received from the Man-God himself, lies the wisdom of the lords of death.”

  “And what is that wisdom?” Radu asked, sensing that Casimir wanted to say more, to prove his intelligence.

  “The cipher is a mix of languages. If I have interpreted it correctly, this secret will shake the Empire to its foundations, master.”

  Radu raised a hairless eyebrow.

  “The hidden incantation is tied to a ritual of blood, as the ravaged beast claimed, an incantation that invigorates the dead.”

  “Invigorates? A curious choice of words.”

  Casimir nodded and said, “The text is explicit, the enchantment alters the nature of the risen dead. It stimulates the diseased brain, creating a learning animal, capable of swiftness and more lethally, the most basic of thoughts. Imagine the shambling dead thus changed! Adapting, learning, growing more and more deadly as they understand the mind of their enemy! Imagine the fear that would place in the hearts of the living!”

  “You have done well, Casimir. I will not kill you today.”

  “Thank you, master. I exist to please. Let me recover this testament. Let me lead a force of bone warriors into the heart of the humans and steal this great truth from beneath their noses.”

  Radu looked into his thrall’s face and saw the hunger there, the unashamed greed and ambition, and denied him. “No, you are needed here, with me. I will send Amsel, it is only right as he brought this testament to my attention.”

  “You would send the lame one?” Casimir asked, disgusted.

  “I would, and I will brook no argument. Do not defy me in this, Casimir. You have done well, do not make me regret my decision to keep you alive. As you said, you serve my will. It is not the other way around.”

  “Yes, master. But—”

  “Enough. Now leave me to think. There is much to plan if we are to mount a crusade for this lost testament.”

  Radu was pleased to see the flare of undisguised hatred in Casimir’s eyes as he turned to leave; the servant’s naked ambition was a concern that would bear closer scrutiny. After all, he had risen to power through treachery and betrayal and he could expect no less of those he favoured.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Drowning in the River Death

  Grimminhagen, in the Shadow of the Drakwald Forest, Middenland

  The Autumn of Sacrifice, 2532

  Reinhardt Metzger held his right arm outstretched for the silver-grey goshawk. The wind was fierce but that didn’t slow the bird’s swooping descent. It came in fast, wings furled and then opened them at the last moment, arresting its dive. The bird never settled on the leather gauntlet, preferring to sink its talons into the meat of his shoulder rather than be tethered. Their bite was always a sharp jolt but far from agony. When the bird was younger he had worn a leather harness on his shoulder but the goshawk would invariably come down on the other, unprotected shoulder. The skin had long since been toughened by the raking claws. Never once did the old man flinch. He merely waited for the bird to calm down even as the thin rivulets of blood trickled down his chest, and crooned softly to it.

  They had been together for eleven years, hunting hares and marmots and smaller denizens of the forest floor, scavengers like squirrels, rats, and field mice.

  The sky was thick with thunderheads, heavy as they amassed over the distant outposts, a veil of black threatening to drown the world in their sorrows.

  Metzger was in a strange mood, and it seemed as though the sky shared his misgivings. They hadn’t had a runner in from the outpost at Brach for two weeks. Orlof, the commander there, was a fastidious soul, and it was quite unlike him to be derelict in any duty. Things happened, of course, the runner might have been taken sick on the way or fallen foul of bandits, or one of a hundred other possibilities. Metz
ger knew that, but he could not shrug off the nagging feeling that worse was afoot. There was a strict protocol for reporting throughout the protectorates and Metzger had spent years drilling the routines and disciplines into every man that fell beneath his command. As with any fighting force, Metzger’s army was only as strong as its weakest man but he had made damned sure that even that man was disciplined and drilled and worthy of holding the lives of his fellow soldiers in his hands.

  The goshawk had not been alone in the sky. Darker specks of black smeared the swirls of cloud, banking and sweeping low across the land in their hunt for carrion: ravens. Metzger had a dislike of the birds. They were ill omens. His father had whispered that they were harbingers, psychopomps that carried the souls of the dead to Morr, and had told tales of how in his great-great grandfather’s day a bird had been caught with a forked tongue, capable of phrasing the most basic Reikspiel: a talking bird of death. Metzger had shuddered then, and he shuddered now. He had seen those damned birds feed on too many friends to disbelieve anything he heard about them. He was a soldier, facing his fiftieth year. He did not shy away from death, but he was in no hurry to embrace it, either, and carrion eaters were as much a part of his life as was his sword.

  He gentled the goshawk. It was a male hunting bird, raised from the nest by his falconer. Metzger had been there in the high woods of the Drakwald when Scharner had found the nest abandoned, and had crouched low over it, whispering, so that his voice and his face were the first things the newborn heard and saw, imprinting on it as would a mother bird. He had cradled its tiny form in his huge hands, soothing its name over and over: Morgenrot after the dawn’s red sky.

  Metzger often brought the goshawk out when he wanted to unwind the kinks of the day, letting him hunt, but today’s black mood would not be shifted, even by the primal role of the hunter.

  “Feed, my beauty,” he said, dislodging Morgenrot from his shoulder. The goshawk rose in a flurry of feathers, gaining altitude quickly. He flew in ever-decreasing circles above the fields of the estate until he found his prey. Then he struck, falling from the sky with lethal speed, sweeping low, talons raking the grass, and rising back into the sky with the kill, a dormouse. The rodent was alive, squirming as the hawk released it, a thousand feet above the earth, and then plunged after, snagging it with its barbed talons to open the dormouse, and began feeding even as it tossed the corpse into the air again, enjoying the thrill of the kill.

  Metzger never fed Morgenrot from his hand, no cut meat and no pampering. He earned his kills, tasting the meat fresh with blood spilled by his own beak and rending claws, or he did not eat at all. Domesticating the bird would have been wrong in so many ways. They had ridden to war more times than he wanted to remember, and more than once Morgenrot had in some way been responsible for saving his flesh from the damned ravens. That was the bond they shared.

  Reinhardt Metzger called the goshawk back with three sharp whistles. He came reluctantly, leaving the small carcass of the dormouse half-stripped.

  “We’re done for today. See to Morgenrot,” he told Scharner as the falconer appeared, as though summoned by the same three sharp whistles as his bird.

  The younger man took the leather gauntlet and hooded the goshawk, making peculiar chirrups and caws as he did, as though speaking to the bird in its own tongue. Scharner had a gift with all birds, just as his father had. He had trained falcons and hawks for the Graf himself before joining Metzger’s household.

  He sat on the side of the stone fountain that hadn’t cascaded water for the better part of a decade. Rainwater stagnated in the bowl. He dragged his fingers in the water, looking back at the house he had done his damnedest never to set foot in, the familial home. Like Metzger, the place had seen better days. Vines clawed up the facade of the fortified manor, choking the brickwork. The facing had chipped away to reveal the dung and hay hardcore centre and the linseed treated timbers were riddled with dry rot and insect infestation that slowly worked away at bringing the once noble manse down.

  Alone again, Metzger could no longer hide from the duties of the day.

  He had been born into the commission of Knight Protector of Grimminhagen, the duty inherited from his father and his father before him. His family had served as the right-hand of the Graf Sternhauer, making him in effect the second most powerful man in the entire protectorate, for a little while longer at least. In a few weeks he would hang up his shield and unbuckle his sword belt for the last time, and with no son to inherit the role of Knight Protector it would pass to another of Sternhauer’s choosing.

  He did not know how he felt about that; much of his life had been dictated by honour and servitude and suddenly he would be no one, a retired old man living in his manor on the outskirts of the town. He wanted to believe that he was about to embark on one last adventure but after the better part of fifty years caring for so many people it would be difficult to simply stop. Decades of service were a habit not easily forgotten. Would the new man look upon him as some interfering old fool always prattling on about how he used to do it in the good old days? Would he seek him out for advice at all or ignore him and be his own man?

  Metzger knew the answer to that.

  Still, for a little while longer he had a duty to Sternhauer.

  He swallowed the bitterness he felt rising and retreated to the quiet of his rooms for the best part of an hour, reading the latest missives from the protectorates, before moving on to the quartermaster’s monthly rationing reports on supplies stockpiled for the winter, tributes still owed, projected sowing and harvesting returns, building and shipping manifests for imported victuals traded with thieving merchants, even forecasts for the weather, which seemed such a ludicrous waste of time. Better to try and predict the outcome of a cock fight than foretell the foibles of the wild skies, but it was all part and parcel of the business of running the small community of Grimminhagen in the Graf’s absence.

  The last piece of business was one that always left a sour taste in his mouth: the dispensing of justice.

  Kaspar Bohme waited downstairs with the accused, barely a child and with child herself. The charges were serious, the sentence one of public humiliation should he choose to exercise it. It rankled that hunger had become such a crime in his homeland, but having read the quartermaster’s predictions, it was easy to see the privation all around without ever having to leave the relative sanctuary of these rooms.

  He pushed back his chair and went downstairs to face the accused and mete out his judgement.

  Metzger was a good man, which made even such a petty theft difficult to let go unchastised. To turn a blind eye would send out the message that survival within his protectorates had become a matter of cunning and crime, but to shame the woman for needing to eat sent out a message he found even less palatable.

  He loitered at the head of the grand stair, beneath so many portraits of long dead Metzgers that there was no space left on the wall. Generation after generation of faces so similar to his own in the artists renditions gazed down on him. He could not help but wonder if there was approval in their oily eyes, or if they deemed him a disappointment for shying away from the harder choices of leadership. Had Felix Metzger harboured the same doubts centuries before, or Ewan, or Kormac or even Montague, the family’s one true scholar? Or were they all better men than him?

  “Some are born to greatness, some have it thrust upon them, and others live their lives shying away from it,” he said, taking that first step down.

  Kaspar Bohme waited at the foot of the stairs. He smiled in greeting. Where Reinhardt was a bull of a man, Kaspar was a wolf, lean, hard of eye and heart, ruthless to the core, and fiercely loyal to the pack. He had been with Metzger twice as long as the goshawk, serving through fifteen campaigns with Reinhardt Metzger’s Silberklinge.

  The old knight did not match his friend’s smile.

  “Where is she?” he asked, heavily.

  “In your study.”

  He side-stepped his friend and then tu
rned and said, “Have Rosamund bring mulled wine in fifteen minutes,” as though an afterthought, when in truth it was anything but.

  “Of course. Do you want me to sit in?”

  Metzger shook his head. “There is no need, Kaspar. My mind is made up.”

  “And you will not be swayed?”

  “Have you ever known me to be?” Kaspar Bohme laughed at that, a short bark of a laugh.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Metzger repeated and then left him.

  The wooden floors were carpeted, the rugs worn thread-bare by the endless passage of bustling feet over the years since he had inherited the old family manse, though he had barely added to the wear so often was he gone.

  Briony Neumann might have been comely, once, but no more. She stood in the corner of the study, wringing her hands. To her credit she hadn’t tried to flee; there were three large leaded windows in the study, though none of them opened. She looked up from her hands as he closed the door behind him.

  He said nothing.

  An oak pedestal desk dominated the centre of the room, behind it a leather-backed chair. He sat behind the desk, steepling his fingers as he contemplated the woman before him.

  “You have put me in a difficult position, Briony,” he said, eventually. She met his eyes, pleading mercy without saying anything. “Artur was a good man,” he said tapping his temple, “and his memory is still strong in here. For his sake I would not see you humiliated, nor harmed, but how would that look?”

  “If you are going to take my hands, be quick, I beg you, do not drag it out like some hideous torture. If you loved my man, do that for him at least.” There was a fire in the woman, even now. He admired that and he could see why his Silberklinge had fallen for her. A man of war needed a good woman, perhaps more so than a simple farmer, but goodness was not measured in pretty packages; it was measured in heart and spirit, not the curve of a breast or the swell of a hip.