Warhammer - Curse of the Necrarch

by Steven Savile

  “I made my peace with death a long time ago, my friend. When you understand that it comes no matter what we do, then it loses much of its power to frighten. It doesn’t matter if we run all our lives or if we stand and fight, you can only run so far before you fall down, your heart worn out.” He rubbed subconsciously at the side where he had first felt the pain of his heart so close to bursting. “A sword in the back to hurry it along or a withered corpse tucked up in bed, which would you rather?”

  “Neither,” Bohme said with a wry smile.

  “Exactly, but it isn’t as though we have much of a choice, so knowing we are on borrowed time it is best to truly live. So, I make damned sure that every man that serves with me knows I am prepared to put my life on the line for him, and that I would ask nothing of them that I am not prepared to do myself.”

  “But how can that be enough?”

  “Who said it is? You asked how I coped.”

  “You’re a complicated man, my friend, truly bloody complicated,” said Bohme. Metzger smiled at that. “It’s not a compliment.”

  “No, I am leader. What would you say if I told you I know where we are going? That this is not some blind crusade against an unknown enemy but rather a quest to lay to rest a lost hero?”

  Bohme looked askance.

  “Do you remember the story I told you? My ancestor’s last stand?” Bohme nodded.

  “There is more to it than death,” Metzger said. “Death would have been mercy from what I understand of it. We all have things in our life we are not proud of, but sometimes we are presented with the opportunity to right what once went wrong.”

  “You aren’t making sense, my friend.”

  “There was a survivor from that day, a single soldier who fled the field of battle in fear. He carried a story back to the family. The vampire did not kill Felix Metzger, it turned him into one of them. That is the secret shame of my family, the protector turned predator. Every story needs an end. That is why we march to war, because unless we do it will never be over.”

  Bohme had stopped listening as he saw the three bodies lying in the middle of the rough track. All he could think was that they weren’t coming home ever again. There was no sign of what had killed them, but the way they lay left him in no doubt that they were dead. Even without seeing their faces Bohme knew who they were. They had sent three scouts ahead to read the road. Three men lay dead one hundred yards ahead of him, and even though the horses were nowhere to be seen it did not take any great wisdom to put two and two together.

  The road cut between twin peaks, both covered with rough scrub and gorse thick enough to hide any number of archers. At that moment nature was reduced to useless beauty and hidden threats. Bohme scanned the ridge looking for telltale reflections, for any glint to give away the hiding places where their ambushers lurked. He saw none.

  Metzger raised his fist above his head and drew it down sharply, the signal to the men behind that something was wrong and that they must proceed with care.

  “See anything?” Bohme asked, shielding his eyes against the morning glare.

  “Nothing,” Metzger said, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t know exactly where the whoresons are. To the right, up high, see the line of bushes.”

  “I see it.”

  “Watch for movement. Something will give them away, even if it is something as basic as the need to fart. They’re up there,” he said, resisting the urge to make any sort of gesture in their direction. They were up there, Metzger was sure of it. He knew death well enough. “You, you and you,” he called, picking out three of the men from the ranks, “go and bring the bodies home. Keep your wits about you, lads, this place reeks of ambush.”

  They nodded and moved cautiously towards the three corpses that lay in the road.

  “Form up,” Metzger called, urging the front ranks of the infantry to move into defensive formation. Word moved quickly down the line with the men shifting ranks. Because there was no enemy in sight the Silberklinge broke away from the mass of the men, forming a circle at the head of the line while the infantry merged into an apparently solid block, shields up and swords and pikes out to form a wall of steel. The narrow confines of the path made it impossible for the block to properly form, and where the pass choked the road the Two-Tailed Comet were isolated from the main body of the army. Metzger could not see them, but had faith that Ableron would react as the formation shift moved down the ranks.

  Bohme took in the lie of the land. It didn’t take any great strategic genius to know that they were in a bad place. The path took them right between the twin peaks, both towering several hundred feet above them with plenty of outcroppings and overhangs to offer shadow and shelter. There was no obvious way around the peaks, making it the perfect spot for an ambush. Had they not been talking they would have seen it easily, but it was a long road, they were tired and hungry and the thirst for vengeance would only sate the mind so far. Beyond that, mistakes became inevitable. What it meant was that for more than a quarter of a mile they were easy pickings for any half-decent bowman.

  But it was not bowmen they needed to fear.

  In the long silence the fear of the men facing their first real test as a fighting force was palpable.

  Bohme looked to the sky but there was no help to be had there.

  They needed to draw them out; the horses were useless against an elevated foe. His mind raced, rejecting implausible thought after implausible thought as he hatched and dismissed a dozen stupid plans for getting the dead out in open ground so that the Silberklinge could tear into them.

  Then the first bone spear arced through the air, slamming into the ground beneath his horse’s hooves. Bohme wheeled the mighty roan around, spurring it into a gallop as the animal surged towards the ranks of armoured knights. The second shaft sailed harmlessly overhead. There wasn’t a third.

  It was only then, facing the wrong way on the track, that Bohme saw the true nature of the trap: the iron jaws of the damned and deformed springing tightly shut behind them cutting the fighting men off from their supply wagons and leaving the knights of the Twin-Tailed Comet stranded from the body of the main force. It was a simple manoeuvre, and one they would not have fallen into had they known the terrain better, or been more alert, but such thinking was best left for the regrets of the dead.

  He spurred his horse on, feeling the immense power of the animal beneath him as a dozen bone spears streaked across the sky and hammered into the grain barrels. They made hellish sounds as they flew, the bone whittled in such a way as to turn the long shafts into instruments as well as weapons. Their’s was the music of slaughter. A dozen more shafts of bone hit other victuals, and a single well-placed spear split the wooden brandy keg. The reek of alcohol was fierce as it seeped into the wood of the cart and into the sacks of grain.

  The sudden stench of burning flesh was overpowering. Bohme saw the burning man stagger out of the undergrowth moving jerkily but with obvious purpose. He lurched forward, flame eating into his flesh, with his arms held out in front of him, grasping for the cart.

  “Stop that thing!” Metzger bellowed beside him.

  Two of the knights reacted instantly, bringing their mounts around and charging at the burning man. Their swords cleaved into the wretched creature, hacking off one of its arms and half of its head but still the zombie lurched on, collapsing against the side of the cart. As it reached into the flatbed, the flames burned down its hand and ignited the alcohol. The cacophony of the explosion was deafening, the splintered shrapnel lethal as it roared out of the flames as they engulfed the supply wagons on either side.

  The detonation acted as a signal for the dead to come streaming out of the undergrowth, screaming and howling as they swarmed down both sides of the valley. They lurched at the ranks of the horses grasping and clawing at the frightened animals. There was no cohesion or strategy to their assault, the mass of rotten flesh surging out of hiding, pieces of undergrowth still clinging to them where they had lain in the foliage
.

  More corpses came shambling out of the mouth of the pass ahead of them, effectively cutting off any hope of escape. The valley was thick with the dead.

  This attack was far from mindless. Bohme saw a hunchbacked figure on a nightmarish black steed snorting steam and wisps of smoke as it thundered forward. The wretched rider gesticulated wildly. The dead danced to his frantic waving. Bohme remembered vividly the effect the vampire’s death had had on its minions at Grimminhagen: as Fehr cut the creature down all of its constructs had collapsed, but the fiend rode within the mass of zombies, unreachable.

  From the first shriek to the first clash of steel three hundred more swarmed over the supply wagons, gutting the cooks and the servants and all the vital machinery of war, and those that fell upon the knights went for the horses, not the warriors as they cut and cut and cut. The horses cried out, fell or shied, the men struggling to keep them under control with the stench of blood fresh in their nostrils. In such close-packed quarters it was almost impossible for the mounted warriors to do anything.

  With nowhere to run, it turned into a bloodbath in moments.

  Bohme drew his sword and threw himself into the thick of the fighting.

  There was no place for skill or swordsmanship. Bohme swung his blade brutally, in vicious wide stabbing arcs. There was no finesse to it. Each swing was aimed at delivering maximum pain for minimum thought. He hacked away at the first man that stumbled into his path, thrust a vicious blow into the throat of the second, opening a second ferocious grin beneath the first, and disembowelled the third in a matter of moments. It carried on like that, his sword moving of its own accord in a danse macabre. It was a world of blood, Bohme, Cort and Bonifaz at the centre of it, each beloved of Morr as they sent more and more souls into the Underworld with ruthless efficiency.

  “To me, Silberklinge!” Metzger bellowed, drawing the knights towards the front. A dozen still on horseback rode to his side, the rest cutting a path to join him. They read his intent immediately. They had to open up a path for the infantry to retreat.

  Metzger dug his heels into his mount and spurred the animal forward at a charge. The mounted knights formed an arrowhead, sitting low in the saddle, swords held out like lances as they drove into the ranks of the dead.

  The knights hit the line of skeletal warriors, splintering the bones upon their swords and shields as they crashed down upon them mercilessly. The unhorsed knights charged in their wake, their blades cutting and cleaving into the decimated ranks of the undead.

  Metzger was a beacon in the centre of the carnage, his sword plunging and rising and plunging again to fountains of blood as it cleaved deep into vile flesh and opened blackened veins, fighting relentlessly towards the mounted cadaver that played general to the undead horde. The knights fought their way to his side, punching a hole straight through the unbeating heart of the dead’s disorderly line.

  The foot soldiers swarmed in behind them, turning the tide of the battle by sheer weight of numbers and the momentum of fear.

  Bohme found himself turned and turned about, hacking and slashing away at the macabre faces pressing in all around him. He took a blow to the side of the head that rattled his brains inside his skull. Dazed, he stepped back. Through the blood mist Bohme saw young Fehr fighting desperately against a dozen foes, barely keeping them at bay. It was a battle the lad was destined to lose. Loosing a savage roar, Kaspar Bohme threw himself forward, using all of his anger to force a path through to the young man. The din of battle subsided momentarily, the world in his ears reduced to the snap and cackle of flame and the groans of the dying. He saw Fehr turn, presenting his back to a huge warrior clad in black leather with twin ebon blades, and run. Rather than cut him down, the giant mocked him. His laughter rang out, chasing the coward off the field of battle. The words stretched out in a deep, almost lupine howl, “Ruuuuun man child! Ruuuuun!”

  “Face me,” Bohme challenged, his blade thick with the ichor of corpses. His voice carried to the leather-clad giant. The man-thing turned, cocking his head quizzically, and then laughed, raising twin blades above his head as though mocking the sky. He lumbered forward, gathering momentum like some huge colossus as he charged through the ranks of the knights. The undead giant wore a leather mask over the right side of his face. The left remained uncovered, featureless, the skin like melted wax where the hideous burns had caused it to slip over the mildewed bone. His milky white eye fixed on Bohme, half of his mouth splitting into a grin as he brought his swords up to cross them over his chest.

  Bohme had no time for such niceties of ritual.

  He flicked out a deliberately weak feint. The move was telegraphed, ostensibly little more than a test to gauge the skill of his opponent, and meant to feed off the man’s arrogance. Even as more laughter rumbled in the beast’s maw, Bohme rolled his shoulder and swivelled on his heel, changing the angle of the strike to slice high, towards the few inches of bare flesh left unprotected at the giant’s neck. The laughter died in the big man’s throat. The blow cut deep enough to open up the thick muscles all the way back to the jagged bones of the neck. There was no blood. Surprise filled the beast’s milky eye. For a long moment he tried to fight on, delivering a wild clubbing swing with both blades scissoring in at the same time, looking to remove Bohme’s head from his shoulders. His head lolled sickly on his neck as maggots bubbled out of the undead warrior’s throat.

  Bohme gagged at the sight of the corruption. The huge warrior delivered a crushing blow that took Bohme high on the left shoulder, twisting him around. Bohme rolled with the momentum of the blow, turning with it. He reversed his blade and thrust hard into the boiled leather of the warrior’s breastplate, driving the monstrosity back a step. Its head hung slackly on its neck, the black-clad warrior lacking the muscle to control his gaze, stared with his one eye at the dirt beside Bohme. Bohme stepped in, cleaving the masked head from the giant’s shuddering shoulders, and planted the sole of his foot against the dead man’s chest to topple him.

  He turned away from the corpse a fraction of a second before a rusted blade could deliver him a matching fate. The sword registered instinctively in his mind, his body reacting without thought, and still he barely brought his blade up in time. He took the full vehemence of the blow across his knuckles. His gauntlet saved his hand. It was a stupid lapse of concentration but he had no time to berate himself. He rounded on his would-be killer and dispatched him to whatever fate awaited such soulless abominations.

  He was alone, deep in the ranks of the dead, surrounded on all sides by leering eyes and slack jaws, cut off from the rest of the men. Out of the mist of blood he saw Metzger and Bonifaz fighting through the zombies to reach the hunchback on his nightmarish mount.

  A blade thrust in towards his exposed back. He blocked it on the flat of his blade, barely turning, and hammered his elbow into the face of the enemy fighter, rupturing his nose and spraying blood into his eyes. He drove his blade into the man’s belly and left him to die.

  Metzger and Bonifaz fought side by side, barking out orders to the others. The word passed down the line. Discipline replaced shock and within a minute the Silberklinge were fighting with controlled fury, pushing back the swords and spears of the enemy. Those that succumbed to their fear fell victim to the savagery of the corpse warriors. Such was the ebb and flow of any fight.

  Bohme cut through the enemy to reach their side.

  With the heat of the fires on their faces, they bought a few yards of breathing space. Bohme delivered a vicious riposte, rolling his wrist around a blow aimed at his heart, and stepped in to open his surprised enemy’s belly from stem to sternum. The zombie fell, clutching at its guts as its black heart slithered out of its corpse, rendering the beast dead again.

  He could not see the knights of the Twin-Tailed Comet beyond the ragged lines of the foot soldiers. No doubt their rearguard action mirrored the breakout manoeuvre trying to punch a way through the press of the dead to open the pass behind them. There was no way of k
nowing how they fared, and no sense in worrying about it.

  A horn sounded four sharp blasts behind them: Ableron’s herald announcing that the pass was clear.

  The sound meant more than that, though. It signified the turning of the battle. Bohme smiled coldly. After the initial shock of the ambush Metzger’s men had stood their ground, the fire of battle tempering them as a fighting unit.

  A dozen keening corpses lurched and staggered between him and Metzger. Another dozen stood between him and the ranks of the infantry.

  The old knight fixed his gaze on the mounted hunchback. It was obvious that the fiend orchestrated the ambush, his razor-sharp fangs bared as his wild gesticulations puppeted the zombies across the field, throwing them against the raw recruits of Metzger’s crusading army. The creature was unlike anything the old man had faced in his years of combat, dressed like some shamanic priest of the old ways. Fetishes and gewgaws hung from his belts, including shrunken skulls, the withered tongues of fallen foes, and so much else besides. It turned its baleful eye on the old warrior fighting his way towards it, and recognised the threat immediately, casting some grim enchantment from its cadaverous finger.

  The ground around Metzger’s feet buckled and cracked. Dead roots dripping bugs and worms clawed up towards his feet trying to snare him. Metzger kicked through the grabbing fingers of the roots, his sword ruthlessly cleaving a path through the keening zombies towards their master.

  The vampire levelled a finger at Metzger’s chest and uttered a single arcane curse.

  Pain erupted within the warrior’s chest as an unseen force invaded his body. Ethereal fingers clawed through his veins, the death in his blood answering to the creature’s black arts. He felt the blood choking inside him, his heart seizing, but gritted his teeth and forced himself forward through the sheer black agony.

  The wizened cadaver cackled, hissing more words of power to bring Metzger down to his knees. The old man’s legs buckled but he did not fall. Determination kept him on his feet as a fresh wave of pain tore through his body. He lurched one step forward, and then another and another, pushing on through the pain. The sight of fear writ on the acolyte’s twisted face was enough to drive him on. Metzger blocked out all sounds of the battle and all thought of anything beyond reaching the beast’s side. Waves of dread and fear hit him over and over, bearing down upon him as they assailed his mind. He could not shake them. His muscles stiffened, threatening to betray him. His heart hammered wildly in his chest. He felt his sword arm tremble, gripped by fear. Metzger loosed a bloodcurdling scream-come-challenge and lurched forward another step, forcing himself to move through the dread just as much as he forced himself to move through the grasping roots, and felt the lethargy and pain lessen. The beast had ceased its chanting, he saw with grim satisfaction. Metzger raised his sword and began to run.