Warhammer - Curse of the Necrarch

by Steven Savile

  He took a single step. Pain flared through his side as the movement tore the wound wider. He told himself there was no way he could run. The ground buckled beneath his feet, every fixed point his balance depended upon betraying the sudden fluidity of the earth. He stumbled, gritting his teeth against the fresh wave of black agony as it threatened to overwhelm him. For a moment the sound of the rain drumming down on the lake, the shrill screeches of the bats clogging up the black sky and the seismic groans of the earth failed to silence the screams of good men dying beyond the castle wall, and then they came together to drown out everything with the agonies of the world.

  Kane steeled himself, his breath still coming quick and shallow. His hands were trembling and the blood ran freely down his side from the cut delivered by the vampire’s sword, but he marshalled the will to turn back towards the lake and face the castle beyond it.

  The bats smothered the moonlight but the vague shadows of the corpses were unmistakable.

  One amongst them was his brother.

  He knew what he had to do. It wasn’t about resolve or revenge. It was about dying. He wanted to die. But it wasn’t as crude as suicide. If it had been he could have simply fallen on his broken sword and let the damned steel claim both brothers. It was about standing beside the others. He was a soldier. Soldiers died. Kane turned back to the vampire’s decapitated corpse. His vision rolled unsteadily. This time it was not the earth that betrayed his balance, it was the loss of blood. Tentatively, he explored the wound, pressing his fingers into his flesh. It was deep and wide, and without being treated would almost certainly see him unconscious in a ditch. His hand came back thick with blood. The sight of it made his pain all the more real.

  “Tonight’s as good a time to die as any other,” he muttered, casting about for a weapon because dying was all well and good but he wasn’t about to do it without a sword in his hand. His broken sword was neither use nor ornament. There were blades aplenty, the lakeside was littered with them. The swords of hundreds of men lay in the mud beside the fallen, but there was nothing close at hand. He had run too far from the battle in his panic.

  That wasn’t true. There was one weapon, but Kane had no intention of wielding the vampire’s flame-scalloped blade.

  The lightning transformed the world around him, lighting the skeletal limbs of the trees and the bloated bodies of the bats as they swarmed above him. For a moment he might have been standing on the bottom of the lake, looking up at the surface thick with the flotsam and jetsam of death floating above him. Then the residual glow faded and the world returned to the night side.

  He had enough ghosts; he did not need to go looking for more.

  Pushed beyond desperation, he took up the beast’s blade and, clutching his bloody side, ran towards the fighting within the castle proper.

  The world lurched beneath his feet again, venting a terrible scream of dirt and stone.

  The bleached white skull of a great dragon breached the line of the wall walk, bursting into the sky, huge rotten wings helping it climb.

  He saw the necrarch on the wall, obviously commanding the creature with the strands of its vile sorcery.

  Suddenly the sword in his hand felt tiny and inconsequential: a pig-sticker that would barely graze the monster’s bones, either of them.

  More and more of the creature rose up behind the castle walls, its bones brittle ivory in the diseased moonlight, until it took its place amongst the bats. The thing was immense, its wings fashioned from hundreds and hundreds of bones fused together by some vile magic. The skeletal beast merged with the bats, the leathery wings of the smaller mammals fleshing out the dragon. It hung there in the sky above him, blacking out the moon, a huge spectre of death hanging over the castle. The bone dragon loosed a hideous cry, and swooped low, its immense jaws closing around the kicking and screaming body of a soldier. The beast climbed high into the sky, flapping its wings languidly as it rose higher and higher, until the screams became one with the rain. At the height of the scream, it opened its mouth and let the man fall out of the sky.

  He was dead long before he hit the ground.

  Reinhardt Metzger gritted his teeth as another savage cramp tore into his chest.

  He barely brought his shield up high enough to catch the wild swing aimed at taking his head off his shoulders. The impact jarred through him, shaking him all the way down to his boots. The warrior stepped in, leaning heavily on his right foot and drove his sword up into the belly of the wretched freak that stood in his way.

  For a moment he was out of the rain, sheltered by the arch of the huge castle gates. Two hundred of the men he had brought with him hadn’t made it that far. Rainwater overflowed from the wall walk above the arch’s keystone and drilled into the straw roof of the stables, soaking through to the sandy soil beneath. Metzger looked to all points of the castle, left to right from the stables, across the lower bailey to the well, the shadowy keep and the great conical tower to the wall curtaining off the main bailey, and behind the wall, the main buildings and what once must have been the chapel, getting his bearings. He counted six staircases cut into the curtain wall, leading up to the wall walks and the battlements.

  Metzger stepped back out into the storm.

  There were no rousing speeches, no calls to arms. Every man beside him knew why he was fighting. Any words would cheapen their sacrifice. Metzger barrelled into the front line of the damned, seeing the faces of everyone who had ever done him wrong, everyone who had hurt those he cared for. He brought his blade around, hacking into the face of a woman, not waiting for the rusted short sword to slip from her fingers before he pushed her corpse out of his way and thundered a crippling punch into the face of the man beside her. Metzger fought like a daemon possessed, his matted white mane a beacon for the living and the damned.

  Bohme fought at his side.

  Each was so familiar with the other’s movements they could anticipate and move into the spaces left behind by the other. The lower bailey quickly became a scene of carnage. Men and women fell, slopping and sliding in the mud as they struggled to fight. The discipline of the lines collapsed, the freaks swarming over Metzger’s men. From above cocktails of fire oil were launched, chased by flaming arrows.

  A bottle sailed through the air. Metzger barely managed to get his head out of the away and avoid any back-splash as it shattered against the head of the man three steps behind him. It was followed a moment later by a scream and a soft crump as a burning arrow slammed into the man’s shoulder. Metzger followed the burning arc of the arrow’s flight, helplessly captivated by it as the flame’s heat singed his cheek. He saw the arrow bury itself deep in the warrior’s shoulder, saw the look of shock, horror and sudden understanding as he frantically grabbed at it.

  Before the warrior could wrench it free the flame caught the oil in his hair and transformed him into a living fireball. There was a bleak moment of doom when the man knew he was dead even before his flesh was consumed. He did not try to cling on to his sword, he simply cast it aside and stumbled forward, almost colliding with Metzger as he reached out with groping hands. Make your death count was every warrior’s motto. This man did. It did not matter that his screams were horrific as he ran blindly, ablaze, into the centre of the ranks of the freaks. What mattered was that he brought death into the heart of their ranks, clutching at anyone trapped in his way and smothering them in his fiery embrace.

  Metzger threw himself into the man’s burning wake, cutting to the heart of the enemy’s ranks. He did not look to see if Bohme followed. A fury burned within him as bright and fierce as the fire that consumed the man stumbling before him.

  The burning man fell.

  Metzger did not.

  He blocked an overhead cut and answered it with a stunning riposte, slashing across the face of the ugly man before him. Ugly became uglier as pain twisted his features. Metzger stepped in and plunged his sword into the man’s chest, ending his pain. He wrenched his blade free as a burning figure stumbled
towards him. He gave the wretch a merciful death, opening his throat.

  The second death bought him a few feet of breathing space. He scanned the wall walks and the bat-filled sky. The shrieking of the shrivelled creatures had become indistinguishable from one another in the battle. He felt a curious contentment with his sword in his hand, Bohme at his back. That contentment burned out in the shadow of another burning man, when he looked up at the sky and saw the stark silhouette of the great winged wyrm climbing for the eclipsed moons. It was a vision ripped from a hellish oblivion and made real. Then he saw the man falling, flailing and screaming soundlessly before he disappeared behind the wall. Bohme felt his resolve buckling, his limbs slack with fear. Despite all that he had seen nothing had prepared him for the sight of this new twisted parody of death.

  The great bone drake bellowed at them, a sound like nothing else in the world, and streaked down towards the swell of bodies. Metzger could only watch in horror as the great grinding jaws snapped up three fighters. The creature’s slaughter was indiscriminate. It took two of his men and one of the castle’s wretched denizens and dashed their brains out against the red tiles of the conical roof of the dark tower before it swooped down again, huge jaws wide, straight for the white-haired warrior.

  Sheets of flame roared out of the skeletal dragon’s maw, roasting across the heads of the combatants, raging out of control, and Metzger stood in the path of the flame.

  It seared towards him, great gouts of fire, but he could not feel its heat. His armour ought to have melted against his skin, his hair shrivelled away, his skin burned and blistered, but as the dragon’s fire consumed him it did no such thing.

  Reinhardt Metzger stood in the heart of the fire, untouched.

  The dragon chased the ghost fire. Unlike the flames, the mildewed bones were still every bit as powerful as they had been in life.

  Metzger threw himself to the side. The old man lost his grip on his sword as he sprawled in the mud at the feet of a dozen rag-clothed misfits. Each of them clutched either fistfuls of stone or snapped poles with ragged ends, still tied with strips of cloth. Metzger barely avoided the dragon’s eight-inch long incisors.

  He tried to push himself back to his feet but the sodden ground sucked at his hands and knees as he struggled to rise. Then the first stone hit the centre of his back. Another cracked off the back of his skull. Then they used the poles to beat him back down into the mud. Metzger tried to protect his head from the beating.

  He looked up to see the deformed faces staring down at him, hungry to cause the old man hurt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Ancient Blood

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

  The Final Spring Night of an Old Man’s War, 2533

  Kane stood at the water’s edge, driving the tip of the flame-tongued sword into the muddy bank. He ignored the shrill squall of the bats and the raucous cawing of the frightened ravens, and knelt beside his brother’s corpse.

  He had no words so he simply bowed his head.

  He did not stand again until he had said his goodbyes, “I will see you on the other side, brother.”

  Kane followed the light of the dragon’s flame through the huge gates of the castle. He stood there for a moment, stunned by the sheer horror of the slaughter, and then he saw the white-haired Metzger go down, and threw himself into the thick of the fighting. There was no easy path to the old man’s aid. Metzger had driven himself deep into the press of the deformed enemy with their hellishly contorted faces and hideously twisted limbs, but the path he had cleaved had closed up behind him, leaving the old man trapped.

  Kane ducked away from a thrown stone, only to be hit square on the chest by a second. An astringent reek blossomed beneath his nose, stinging his eyes. It took him a moment to realise it hadn’t been a stone but rather a clay vial that had shattered upon impact, splashing a viscous fluid across his chest and up across part of his cheek. He reached up with his free hand, touching the liquid. It stank but it did not sting, but as he stepped back out into the rain he realised that the water did not wash it away. That struck a chord of fear in his heart. He clenched his fist around the hilt of his borrowed blade and launched himself at the wall of men.

  A corpse with rank boils all down the side of its rotten flesh reared up before him. Kane swung. The sword hissed as it sliced though the air. It sliced bloodily into the man’s groin. As the man buckled, Kane swung again, cleaving the dead man’s neck and severing his spine. It was only then that he realised the man had no weapon. He couldn’t allow himself the luxury of pity. It was not killing, he told himself; he was simply banishing them from the life that was not theirs. He was bringing them final peace. He forced himself into the melee. He banished the second corpse as ruthlessly as the first, with two cuts, one high on the thigh, the other across the thick vein of the man’s neck. There was no arterial spray.

  The third, with his rusty sword, took longer, but not much. He lunged forward on the front foot, going for a swift kill through the heart. The move cost him. The wound in his side opened up, the pain from it blinding him for a moment. The deformed man parried the thrust with surprising skill and delivered a return cut that grazed Kane’s cheek, opening up a thin trickle of blood. It could have been so much worse but his vision cleared in time to fend off a second cut. They traded blows, cutting and slashing, Kane driving the man backwards step by step, until his back was pressed up against the men behind him. The wretched zombie blocked, moving back still further. A path seemed to open up for him and Kane realised that he was being led into the mass of the enemy. He went in willingly. He felt himself beginning to tire, the loss of blood taking its toll. He feinted a second desperate lunge at the last moment shifting his balance and cutting the creature’s legs out from beneath it. Two more went down in the space of a single moment as Kane slashed out in a huge sweeping arc, the flame-scalloped blade cutting through their bellies and unravelling the rope of their guts.

  Then he saw the old man lying on his back in the sucking mud. The rain streamed down across his eyes, cold on his face. Metzger was in trouble. A dozen of the deformed freaks swarmed all over him. He had his arms up trying to protect his face but he had no sword.

  Three more men stood between them. He did not know if they were living or dead. He did not care.

  The first came at him hard, and he staggered as the man’s improvised staff thundered off the side of his skull, barely blocking the follow-up as the jagged teeth of the broken end of the pole lanced towards his ribs. The exertion tore open his side-wound even further. The fire inside was agonising, but Kane dug deep, finding strength he did not know he possessed, and surged forward. He opened the man’s throat, stepping over him as he slumped forward, choking on his own blood. The second died with a blow to the face that opened a gaping hole in the centre of his head. He would have made it all the way to Metzger’s side but for the sudden stabbing pain in his back.

  At first he thought he had been punched in the base of the spine, but he felt his knees begin to give out even as he tried to force another step out of his legs. He blinked, rain in his eyes causing his vision to fade in and out. The pain of the punch didn’t fade. His blade met that of the last man, who blocked three successive blows, each one coming at greater and greater effort to Kane until he was moving purely on instinct, no conscious thought behind his attack. The man came back at him, a huge rusted broadsword sweeping into his gut. The blade rattled off the plate of his mail. The shock of it was brutal. Kane fell towards the man, crashing his left fist into his face and exploding the gristle of his nose. He followed the punch with a vicious thrust, disembowelling the last man that stood between him and Metzger.

  The old man was only five paces away when Kane’s legs buckled and he slumped to his knees.

  Blind with the pain, he reached around, his fingers finding the wooden shaft of an arrow embedded deep in his back. It had punched through the metal of his backplate. He tried to rise but
couldn’t.

  A second arrow came down out of the sky, trailing out of its arc with a tail of flame. It struck the young warrior in the shoulder. A moment later his chest went up in flames. The agony of the naphtha eating into his skin was brutal as it tore into his face, melting away the skin through to the bone.

  He reached out with the sword, still trying to reach the fallen warrior, and then through the flame he thought he saw his brother striding towards him. He lost his grip on the sword, falling forward onto his face, and as the light finally dimmed, the castle and the carnage lost to the endless night of death, Kane reached up to take his brother’s hand.

  Metzger watched the lad burn in horror, unable to understand the beatific expression that settled on his face even as the flames melted it away.

  The dead man’s sword had come down inches from his fingers, closer by far than his own. It taunted him with a chance of life, if he could just close his fingers around it. Metzger stretched out his arm, desperately trying to snag it.

  The sharp ends of broken poles pounded on his chest. He felt his heart skipping arrhythmically, each missed beat sending a spasm of pain through his muscles. His fingers grazed the sword and then he had it in his palm. He brought it around blindly, sheering into the legs of the men standing over him.

  The sky above filled with the angry red of the bone dragon’s ghost fire and it was as though the gates to the Underworld had been dragged open. The dragon came down to settle on the great wall. They stood side by side surveying the slaughter. The necrarch climbed the ladder of the giant wyrm’s vertebrae and rode it into the rain-filled sky.