Warhammer - Curse of the Necrarch

by Steven Savile

  Bohme could not comfort him, but he could keep him safe as the dead came on again and again.

  Fehr hit Metzger so hard that the old man staggered back and fell, sprawling in the mud. He lost his grip on his sword, and then lost sight of it as Fehr came down on top of him.

  Nothing of the man remained in the deserter’s face. Even the bone structure beneath it had shifted, elongating and becoming almost lupine beneath the blazing yellow eyes. Unshaven facial hair grew in across his cheeks and up to those jaundiced eyes, while his hairline had crept down low across his brow, and even as the lost boy looked down at the old man, his wild hair became more of a mane than a ragged mop. His mouth opened on sharp canines while his jaw distended like a snout. The transformation was as horrific as it was incredible.

  There were tears in his yellow eyes as he reached out with thickly muscled arms and wrapped the rusted chains that dangled from his wrists around Metzger’s throat.

  “Help me,” he pleaded, slowly choking the life out of the old man. Then he shook his head brutally, and whatever last vestiges of Wolfgang Fehr clung to the beast’s sense of self were gone. “I can smell death within you, old man. It’s in your blood. Killing you will be a mercy.”

  “You talk… too… much,” Metzger said, the chain biting deep into his throat as it choked off his breath. He reached up, clawing weakly at the length of chain with his left hand in a desperate subterfuge. He reached down with his right hand, fumbling blindly for the hilt of the dagger sheathed in his boot. His fingers snagged it, drawing it an inch out of the leather, and then another inch until they could wrap around the leather binding.

  The chains bit so deep into his windpipe that he couldn’t swallow down even a mouthful of air.

  He flapped weakly at his throat with his left hand and closed his eyes, counting silently to five in his mind. Then he brought his right hand up with terrible swiftness, ramming the short blade into the side of the beast’s neck. It went in up to the hilt, the metal cutting easily through the soft flesh of Fehr’s throat, opening the thick vein and parting the windpipe in a single cut. Metzger wrenched the dagger’s hilt sideways, opening the wound wide. The wet sound of the beast sucking air through the ragged hole was accompanied by a weak, gurgling rasp as Fehr’s eyes rolled up inside his skull and he slumped forward.

  Metzger rolled out from beneath him, untangling the chains from around his throat. Gasping hard, trying to swallow down gulp after gulp of air, he rolled Fehr over. The taint of Chaos that had so brutally transformed the boy into a monster remained. He had died a beast, not a man, but there was some small mercy in his dead eyes. The yellow stain had left them. There was hope at least that his soul had gone on to Morr released and that in death he had somehow found his humanity again. Metzger could not dwell upon it. Down by the water the fighting had reached a tumult. He pushed himself to his feet, and as he did, another fierce stab of pain lanced clean across his chest, tearing away at the muscles. He staggered forward a step, his knees buckling as the world swam around him, threatening to go black. He closed his eyes and shook his head, “Not now. Not yet. Just give me an hour, that’s all I ask.” Metzger grunted, willing his vision to come back into focus.

  For a moment the world retained some of its clarity, though the sharp edges remained blurry. He looked around for his sword and found it lying beside the corpse of a broken soldier. He bent down carefully to retrieve it.

  With one final look at the empty battlements, Reinhardt Metzger walked resolutely down to the water’s edge to join his men for one last time.

  The shadow of death had come down from the dark tower to join them outside the gates of the castle. Ravens circled, the braver birds settling on the fresh corpses already, picking over the best of the meat.

  Slowly, the huge iron doors groaned open.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Traitor’s Game

  Behind the Walls of Kastell Metz, Deep in the Heart of the Howling Hills, Middenland

  The Winter of Black Hearts and Tainted Blood, 2533

  As the enemy approached the gates, Amsel stared at their flag, a glimmer of recognition stirring in the back of his mind as he watched the ragged cloth pennon snap in the wind. He knew the crest. There were still doors within the old castle that bore the matching mark. They were not the frightening force they had been. From his vantage they appeared battered and broken, yet still they came on. It was the strength of their humanity that made them most dangerous now.

  There was one that the master had forbidden him from opening until the end, though how could he know it was the end? The world went in circles not lines. Events lapped and overlapped; they did not run side by side. Yet this, here and now, was the end, he knew.

  He saw Radu and the scar-faced dead man striding along the walls towards him.

  He could not stay. There was much to do. “A door to open,” he mumbled, turning his back on the new master and scurrying away.

  “Wait!” the necrarch barked as Amsel reached the narrow flight of cracked and broken steps. He did not. He descended quickly and fled across the courtyard, chased by the sounds of fighting and dying. Radu and his new plaything did not follow.

  “Soon,” he crooned, a spring of anticipation creeping into his step as he approached the main building. He slipped through the open doorway and in no time was stalking through the tunnels far below.

  His footsteps echoed hollowly in the musty passage. Dank rivulets of water seeped down through the ceiling from the lake above, tracing wet lines down the walls, The vampire paused at the corner, smelling the corruption that lingered in the dank air.

  “Soon,” he breathed again, a promise to the dark corners beyond the alchemical lights.

  He dragged a hand across the slick stones, feeling the earth shiver with revulsion. A deep tremble ran all the way through it as somewhere up above Radu the Forsaken unchained the bones of the dragon.

  There were things that had to be done despite the press of time. Things that the master, the true master, had entrusted to him.

  “So little time,” he grumbled, scurrying like a rat through the warren of twists and turns. He knew each one intimately having walked the rough stones of the tunnels smooth with his shuffling feet. Then he reached the hidden door, though it looked nothing like a door. It was marked with a single stone, the crest of the old family chiselled into it. He had seen the crest somewhere else, somewhere outside of this place. The vampire rested his hand upon the stone and pushed until he heard the faint click of a rusty mechanism falling into place and the tumblers being released. It was as though the sound crystallised the half-forgotten memory for him. He knew then where he had seen the sigil: on one of the gravestones in Grimminhagen, close to the hole where the girl had descended into the earth to retrieve the master’s treasure.

  He pushed the false wall open to reveal a small cavity, more akin to a tomb than a room. The vampire’s palms itched as he reached up to adjust the alchemical globe so that he might better see into the recess.

  What he saw confused him.

  There was an empty funeral bier, or rather a bier without a body. Instead, a wonderfully wrought sword had been interred there, deep in the hidden places of the castle. He eyed the blade covetously, not sure precisely what he had expected to find in this hole in the wall, but this relic of the keep’s old masters was certainly not it.

  Had Korbhen hidden it or Radu himself?

  It mattered little.

  Amsel crouched and reached into the cavity, his cadaverous hand closing around the hilt of the blade and thrilling to its touch.

  “How long since someone held you?” Amsel crooned. He might well have been talking to a widow, so intense was the longing in his voice as he stroked the flat of the blade. It was a wondrous piece, the metal folded and folded and folded time and again in the tempering process. The flame-scalloped edge was serrated like the teeth of some great beast, and still maintained a deep onyx lustre. The hilt added to the illusion, the grip covered
in black leather, the pommel, guard and centre an antique brass with what looked like bone accents set into the cross-brace.

  Why open the door now, only at the last with the wolf at the door?

  Why, unless there was more to the sword than folded metal?

  He ran his crooked fingers along the blade again, feeling for any residual taint of the arcane within the metal but there was nothing magical about the blade. There were no daemons bound to it, no runes etched into its metal, no Chaos hunger that would leech the soul of the living into it, no entrapped wizardry. It was merely a sword, a beautiful sword, no doubt with a story to tell, but a sword just the same.

  Then he understood the master’s plan. It was so simple in its genius.

  This was the last secret of Radu the Forsaken, a sword from another life with a story to tell to the right listener. It was not some trinket or superstitious gewgaw; it was the truest of relics binding the necrarch to his past life. There were no coincidences. Korbhen had laid out a pattern of cause and effect that spanned miles and years to culminate in this place, at this time. The subtleties of it were intricate and far-reaching but undeniable. It was no accident that the casket had lain hidden so long in Grimminhagen, the matching crests of the family Metzger proved that. No, this was akin to the blossoming of a perfect rose, each petal a layer of intricacy to the schemes of the necrarch lord, another aspect to the subtlety of the lies that Korbhen had laid out across the land to inflict one final torture upon the warrior he had sired so many long years ago. It was vicious and vindictive and an utterly exquisite vengeance.

  He would see the new master humbled and shed the yoke that ground him down. There was only one mind in this place worthy of apprenticeship to the true master.

  Amsel hefted the blade. Despite the fact that he possessed no skill of arms he could feel how well it was weighted and appreciate the perfect balance between hilt and blade turning the wielder’s wrist into a fulcrum around which death pivoted.

  It was a hero’s blade.

  A hero should wield it. He grinned fiercely as the thought crossed his mind. “Yes, yes, yes,” he crooned delightedly. It was so obvious. All the signs pointed to this final deception.

  With no way to conceal it, Amsel clutched the great sword as he hurried back towards the surface in search of the hero to wield it against the necrarch.

  Casimir climbed the stairs to their summit.

  The tainted warrior, Fear, had brought the enemy to their door just as he had planned. All that remained was to open it and let the living in.

  He stepped out onto the roof of the great tower, treachery in his dead heart.

  Out on the killing fields below the fighting raged, but it looked so artificial, comical even. He watched with curious detachment as the dead rose up out of the lake and shambled towards the shore, only to be met with the old man’s steel. His mane of white hair streamed wildly in the wind, untamed. He was an oddity, this ancient in the midst of such vibrant and desperate youth, leading them on this hopeless crusade.

  And it was hopeless, or it would be without a few traitorous manipulations. Forget the coterie of the damned and deformed, men and women blighted by disease and the touch of plagues and other evils. Forget the scar-faced warrior with his heart in a box down in the subterranean laboratories, risen dead but no longer some sluggish, mindless zombie, but a deadly foe. Forget even the necrarch’s parasitic touch. Down and down, deeper than the bones of the old gravestones lay the skeletal remains of the huge dragon, chafing at the chains that bound it. Cut the beast loose and none of them would survive, such was its threat.

  He watched the living playing at their game of soldiers.

  The world, he thought, as sword clashed with bloated flesh, could be divided into two: predators and prey. For all their fight, the old man and his little men with their swords were prey.

  He could not unbind the dragon, neither could he slay the scar-faced one, but he was not alone. He could call on Mammut of the Nine Souls, and what such a beast was capable of even its creator did not know. His smile was slow and cunning.

  “Soon,” he told the wind, savouring the taste of betrayal on the wind.

  Radu could not have discovered Mammut. Since his return the necrarch had been caught up with the dragon and the dead knight, too cocksure in his power. Hubris would be his undoing, the same as it ever was.

  “Who would be master then?” Casimir asked the moon, for there was only one in the sky. Morrslieb eclipsed Mannslieb. It was an omen. The death god was coming to claim his dues this night. Casimir welcomed the deity, and though he had no soul for the lord of the underworld to harvest, he still thought of death as his only friend.

  The tower’s ravens gathered around him, a hundred or more birds fighting one another to get close to the vampire. Those that were closest pecked at his ankles and feet, their beaks digging into his emaciated flesh and chipping away at the brittle bones beneath. He lashed out, kicking at the birds, first with his left foot, then with his right, and then with his left again. He threw his arms up, cawing loudly in imitation of the carrion eaters, and then jumped and twisted, flapping his arms in a mad caper to scare the ravens into flight.

  They took wing in an explosion of oily black feathers and vicious caws.

  Down on the battlements beneath the tower he saw Radu looking up at him. Casimir sneered, knowing there was no way the necrarch could read his expression from so far away. It was a petty rebellion, but gratifying just the same. Radu could surround himself with all the powers of the natural world, but they would not save him. Casimir’s time had come.

  He left the tower. First he would slip the bar on the great gates to let the living in behind the walls. Then he would free the beast that was with nine souls.

  There would be blood tonight.

  Radu watched the slaughter from the high wall. Anger seethed within his tortured body as the battle ebbed and flowed. It was an organic thing, killing. The living cut into his dead, even as he raised them again and again, and the dead cut into the living, giving him more corpses with which to defend his bastion. The way Amsel had fled the wall did nothing to appease the paranoia fermenting within his turbulent thoughts. The wretch made no secret of his split loyalties, mumbling about his old master all the time. Could he not see how much greater Radu was than Korbhen had ever been? He would show him, yes he would. Well, Radu would drive a stake of bone through the ghost of his sire once and for all. Amsel could plot and scheme and play with his demented followers to his calcified heart’s content. It mattered little now. His petty ambitions were about to be crushed. Radu had always known that the thrall must die.

  He looked up at the tower. Bathed in the sickly moonlight Casimir watched the violence unfold.

  Radu turned his attention back to the slaughter.

  “You dare come at me?” he whispered, barely forming the words. The necrarch shook his head, his skeletal fingers digging deep into the crumbling masonry of the low battlements. The stone wept dust, so fierce was his grip.

  The warrior cleaved into the bloated corpse that shambled into his way, cutting clean through the wet flesh of its neck and bringing his blade around to gut a second. It was not graceful but it was brutal and effective. The white-haired warrior led the line. Others fought beside him, forming an arrow-head of steel that cut towards the barricaded gates of the castle.

  “Then come, dead man,” Radu said. It mattered little that the warrior could not hear him. “Come and let us be done with this dance.”

  The old man floundered in the shallow water with his sword raised above his head.

  Radu laughed cruelly but the sight brought with it flickers of distant memories that stole any mirth from the situation. He saw the ghost of himself out there, looking up at the walls, his heart swollen with fear. He had been another man, his intellect harnessed by the wretched sword in his hand. Steel proved nothing. It was not power. The result of true power stood at his side, scars marring his beautiful face. True power allowed him
to reach beyond the veil and drag a hero back to the mortal plane to do his bidding. True power granted him immunity from weaknesses of the flesh. True power conferred its immortality upon his shrunken bones. True power was unlocked by the rigours of the mind, not the strength of the sword arm.

  The white-haired warrior was a dead man walking. Radu could smell the corruption eating through his blood from where he stood. It was rank.

  He recognised the banner they marched under. It had not changed in all the time since he had carried it.

  He almost pitied the fool for his bravery, only it wasn’t bravery at all; it was suicide. It was a motivation he was well familiar with. After all, it was the same one that had brought him back to these very doors.

  “Death will come to you soon enough,” he promised the old man, enjoying the exquisite irony of it all. Circles within circles; it was a complex pattern of life and failures. The man was like a flea picking away at his corpse, but there came a time when all the flea-carrier could do was scratch.

  Perhaps he would sire the warrior, just as he had been sired at the gate? Close the circle once and for all?

  With Amsel disposed of he would have need of willing hands to do his bidding while he immersed himself in his work.

  There was a curious appeal to the thought.

  Radu looked up at the eclipsed moon.

  It was time for the living to learn how truly pitiful they were. Let them tremble and fall upon their swords. Let them beg for mercy that he did not possess. Let them die.

  He relinquished his hold over the drowned men, breaking the incantation, and threw up his arms, shouting, “Arise! Arise!” The world shivered beneath the force of his will, the very ground quaking at his might. At first it was no more than that, a ripple through the dirt, a convulsion that ran from the walls of the castle through the courtyard and the outer bailey and back, across from the disused chapel to the graveyard. By the time the tremors reached the graveyard the earth around the tombstones began to sift down through the cracks and the stones yawed like broken teeth in a cemetery smile.