02 - Empire

by Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead)

  “That is why we are here,” said Pendrag, indicating a simple structure of polished granite at the end of the street. The building had a heavy wooden door guarded by two Ulrican templars and its few windows were shuttered. A White Wolf with painted red eyes set in a sunken reliquary above the door provided the only colour on a building that was grim even in a city of dourly constructed buildings.

  “A temple of Ulric?” asked Sigmar.

  “The building belongs to the Ulricans,” said Pendrag, sharing an uneasy glance with Myrsa, “but it is not a temple. It is a prison.”

  “A prison for whom?”

  “Something evil,” said Pendrag. “Something dead.”

  The building’s interior was smothered in gloom, the only illumination provided by a series of tallow candles set into niches shaped like the gaping maws of snarling wolves. Sigmar felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand erect, and his breath feathered the air before him. The walls were dressed ashlar, unmarked by a single devotional image or carving. A sullen sense of despair clung to the stonework, as though it carried the weight of the city’s sorrows.

  Four priests in dark wolfskin cloaks awaited them, each carrying a candle that gave off a cloying, sickly aroma. Pendrag closed the door behind Sigmar, shutting out the last of the evening light, and he felt a crushing sense of soul-deep unease settle in his bones.

  Something was very wrong here, something that violated the very essence of human existence. This place reeked of abandonment and decay, as though the ravages of centuries had taken their toll in an instant. More than that, a palpable sense of fear lingered in every passing moment.

  “What happened here?” whispered Sigmar, feeling the full toll of all his thirty-six years. He felt the pain of long-healed scars, the ache of tired muscles and the unending, ever-increasing weight of his rule upon his shoulders.

  “I’ll show you,” said Pendrag, following the priests as they turned and made their way down the shadowy corridor. Moisture pooled on the floor, and Sigmar noticed that droplets hanging from the ceiling were forming icicles.

  Myrsa matched step with Sigmar as the priests led them deeper into the cold and echoing building.

  “While you made war against the Jutones, the Norsii have been raiding all along the coast, destroying dozens of settlements,” he said. “Entire villages have been massacred: men, women and children impaled on sharpened stakes. Even the livestock is butchered and left to rot.”

  “You have seen this yourself?” asked Sigmar, knowing how such tales could grow in the telling until they bore little resemblance to the truth.

  “Aye,” nodded Myrsa, “I have,” and Sigmar did not doubt him.

  “Many of the people in Middenheim are from those few settlements that have not yet been attacked,” continued Pendrag. “The northern marches have been virtually abandoned.”

  “Abandoned?” asked Sigmar. “The Norsii have always raided the coastline. What more is there that drives people from their homes? There is something you are not telling me.”

  “That is why I sent word to you, my friend,” said Pendrag. “As you drew closer to Middenheim you must have felt the nameless fear emanating from the mountains?”

  “We felt it,” confirmed Sigmar, stepping into an echoing chamber filled with lecterns of dark wood, “a black dread that tears at the heart with talons of despair.”

  No scribes sat at the lecterns, though open books and pots of coloured ink awaited their careful hands. The chamber smelled of copper, vinegar and oak apples, though Sigmar had the sense that no one had sat here in many years.

  “What causes it?” asked Redwane. “An enemy we can fight?”

  “Perhaps,” said Myrsa, leading the way from the lettering chamber along a bare stone corridor towards a thick timber door secured with heavy iron bolts top and bottom. “There is one beyond who may know something of what afflicts us.”

  Another two priests flanked this door, each carrying a spiked man-catcher, a long polearm with a vicious collar on the end and sharpened spikes on its inner surfaces that would rip a prisoner’s throat out if he struggled.

  “The dead thing you spoke of?” said Sigmar, and Redwane made the sign of the horn.

  “The same,” replied Pendrag, drawing the bolts and opening the door. Sigmar saw a set of curving steps that spiralled deep into the rock. Pendrag set off down the stairs and Sigmar followed him. The temperature dropped with every downward step. Hoarfrost formed on the walls, and each intake of breath was like a spike of cold ice to the lungs.

  “The priests of Morr came to me two months ago,” said Pendrag, as the stairs wound deeper and deeper into the rock. “They spoke of dreams coming to their gifted ones, dreams of a long dead evil stirring in the Middle Mountains. The high priest claimed that Morr himself appeared in a dream to warn them that a terror from the ancient days had awoken from its slumber and sought dominion over the lands of men.”

  “Did the high priest say what this terror was?”

  Pendrag shook his head, and said, “No, only that it would spread like a plague, bringing misery and death to the race of man. Less than a week later, we heard the first tales from the villages in the foothills of the mountains.”

  “Tales? What manner of tales?” asked Redwane.

  “Of the dead walking,” said Pendrag. “Entire villages destroyed in the night, every living person vanished and every grave emptied. Soon this began spreading ever further from the mountains, and more and more people fled to Middenheim as the shadow crept ever onwards.”

  “You suspect a necromancer?” asked Sigmar as the cramped stairwell grew steadily brighter.

  “Or worse,” said Myrsa. “I sent warriors into the mountains—Knights of Morr and Ulrican Templars—but none ever returned.”

  “Until now,” added Pendrag, as the stairs opened up into a wide chamber hacked from the rock with picks and bare hands. A swaying lantern hanging from the ceiling on a long chain and a host of torches set in iron sconces illuminated the chamber. A rough-hewn tunnel in the far wall led into darkness.

  The candle-bearing priests took up positions on either side of it, chanting soft prayers to their god as those armed with the spiked collar weapons stood before it with their weapons held at the ready.

  As Sigmar stared into the darkness of the tunnel, he felt as though the last breath was sucked from his body and icy hands had taken his heart in a cold, clammy grip. Though he had faced death many times, he felt unreasoning terror seize his limbs at the sight of the darkened passageway.

  He gripped Ghal Maraz tightly, the warm, reassuring presence of the ancient warhammer steadying his nerves and easing his terror. The runes worked into its haft and head shone with a warm light, and, gradually, the paralysing fear holding him immobile began to diminish.

  “What lies at the end of that tunnel?” asked Sigmar, fighting to hold his voice steady.

  “It’s better if I show you,” said Pendrag, taking a torch from the wall.

  With the priests of Ulric leading the way, Pendrag, Myrsa, Sigmar and Redwane entered the darkened passageway. The darkness seemed to swallow the light from the torches, pressing in on them like a smothering blanket. Only the light of Ghal Maraz shone steadily, and never was Sigmar more thankful for King Kurgan’s gift.

  As a warrior, he had known fear, for he had faced many terrible foes, but this was not the fear of defeat, this was something else. This evil wormed its way into his soul with the fear of rotting flesh, of decomposing organs, his soul enslaved to an eternity of damnation.

  The tunnel began to widen, though the light of the torches barely illuminated the walls. Sigmar saw they were scrawled with feverish lettering, as though someone had copied vast tracts of text onto the bare rock of the walls. He eased closer and saw that the words were charms of protection and warding, and entreaties to the god of the dead. The very walls of the prison were enchanted to keep whatever lay ahead bound to this place.

  The journey along the passageway seeme
d endless, though it could only have been a hundred yards or so. Sigmar looked over his shoulder to see the dim rectangle of light from the antechamber shrinking away from him, as though an impossible distance away. Swallowing hard, he kept his attention fixed on Myrsa’s glittering white armour.

  At last the passageway opened out onto a wide ledge in an echoing cavern. A deep chasm plunged into the infinite darkness, and a raised drawbridge swayed gently in the cold gusts from below. Fresh torches burned with the same sickly aroma as the priests’ candles, and Sigmar finally recognised it as wightbane, a plant cultivated by the priests of Morr to ward against the walking dead.

  Across the chasm was a solitary individual, chained to the rocks with fetters of silver and cold iron. Clad in bloodstained white vestments and rusted armour, the man raged against his bindings, hissing and spitting with animal fury. His flesh was grey, and thin strands of white hair hung from his mottled skull.

  Sigmar gasped as he saw the wolf symbol of Ulric on the man’s chest, but when the prisoner’s head came up, he saw the true horror of his condition. The knight was a man no longer, but a thing of corruption and decay. What little flesh remained on his body writhed with maggots and carrion beasts of the earth, and his breath was ripe with the stink of the grave. Glistening innards hung from his ruptured belly, and snapped ribs jutted from his chest where an axe blow had split him open. A fell radiance waxed and waned in the skull’s empty eye sockets, and Sigmar saw the promise of extinction in that light.

  “Ulric preserve us!” hissed Sigmar, taking an instinctive step back from this monstrous thing. “What is it?”

  “It is—or was—Lukas Hauke, a warrior priest of Ulric,” said Myrsa. “He led the expedition into the mountains to defeat this evil. He left Middenheim in the spring and returned alone two months ago, barely alive. I knew Hauke well, my lord, and he was a full five years younger than I, but when he rode into the eastern gate-fortress he appeared older than any man I have ever seen. The priestesses of Shallya treated Lukas with their most potent remedies, but he was ageing a year for every day that passed.”

  The horror of such a dreadful ailment struck at the core of Sigmar’s humanity, and he felt his mouth go dry and his stomach knot in fear.

  “Eventually, he appeared to die,” continued Pendrag, “but when the priests of Morr came to remove his body, Hauke rose from his deathbed and attacked them with his bare hands. He killed three men and eleven priestesses before they were able to bind him with blessed chains and bring him here.”

  Sigmar lifted Ghal Maraz from his belt and Lukas Hauke, or what he had become, turned his creaking skull towards him.

  The evil light in Hauke’s eyes glittered with unholy power, and he spat a wad of black phlegm.

  “That toy of the stunted ones will not save you, man-thing,” he said. “Its power is a flickering ember before the might of the crown! If you knew the power of my master, you would end the pitiful, meaningless parade you call life and offer yourselves to Morath!”

  Sigmar’s skin crawled at Hauke’s loathsome voice, a monstrously rasping, gurgling sound that conjured images of diseased lungs frothing with corruption.

  He held Ghal Maraz out before him, and despite the dead thing’s earlier words, it recoiled from the pure light that shone from the warhammer’s head.

  “Who is this Morath?” asked Sigmar. “Speak now or be destroyed!”

  Hauke spat and shook his chains as the light of Ghal Maraz touched him, but the evil in his eyes remained undimmed as he said, “He is your new master and the living are his playthings.”

  “I call no man master,” roared Sigmar, advancing to the edge of the chasm, feeling his courage growing with every step he took towards the unnatural monster. “You will tell me of Morath, his plans and his strength. Do this and I will free your soul to travel to Ulric’s hall.”

  Hauke writhed in pain as the hammer’s light grew brighter. The silver of its chains burned hot as its essence unravelled in the face of such ancient power. The creature’s jaw gnashed in fury, but the dread force animating the brave knight’s corpse could not resist the power that compelled it to answer. Its back arched and an awful crack of splitting bone echoed as it fought to keep its secrets. Bones ground and wasted muscles tore.

  At last, Hauke’s body sagged against the chains as the monster revealed itself.

  “Morath is the Lord of the Brass Keep that holds dominion over Glacier Lake, and he is the doom of you all!” said the dead thing, the words dragged from its unwilling throat by the power of Sigmar’s hammer. Each word was hissed through rotted stumps of teeth and spoken as a curse. “He alone survived the doom of Mourkain and bore the crown of his master to this land in an age forgotten by the living.”

  Much of what the creature said made no sense to Sigmar. He had no knowledge of Mourkain, whether it was a place or a person, but the mention of a crown piqued his interest. In its defiance, the creature had claimed its power was greater even than that of Ghal Maraz.

  Lukas Hauke flailed and tore at the bindings, the silver chains glowing with the heat of their forging. Dust fell from where the iron bolts were driven into the rock, and the creature’s limbs writhed with unnatural strength.

  “You shall die!” screamed Hauke. “The flesh will slide from your bones yet you will serve my master until endless night covers the land in darkness!”

  With a final surge, the dead creature tore its chains from the wall and leapt across the chasm, its claws outstretched to tear Sigmar’s throat. Its eyes burned with killing light, but Sigmar was ready for it.

  He swung Ghal Maraz in a swift upward stroke, smashing the monster’s skull from its shoulders. The deathly animation within the fallen knight’s body was snuffed out by the power of the dwarf hammer, and a howling shriek of oblivion echoed from the walls of the cavern as the body tumbled into the chasm, disintegrating with every yard it fell. Within moments, all that remained was a drifting cloud of grave dust, and even that was soon lost to sight. Sigmar heard a gentle sigh of release, and knew that the soul of Lukas Hauke was freed.

  “Gods of Earth and Sky!” said Redwane. “Is it… dead?”

  “It is,” said Sigmar, stepping back from the edge of the chasm. “But this was just a messenger. This Morath wanted us to hear what it had to say.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he seeks to draw us into his lair.”

  Redwane wiped his brow and risked a glance into the chasm, and said, “And we’re going?”

  “We are,” said Pendrag, seeing the iron determination in Sigmar’s eyes. “That creature was a challenge to us, and we must answer it.”

  Sigmar turned to Myrsa and said, “Gather your bravest warriors and raise the Dragon Banner from the highest tower.”

  “It will be done, my lord.”

  “We shall find this Brass Keep and bring it down stone by stone,” promised Sigmar.

  ——

  The Mountains of Fear

  The army of the north set off as the sun passed its zenith the following day, six hundred warriors of courage and iron. Only the bravest had rallied to the Dragon Banner, for to march out under that blood-red standard was a declaration that no quarter was to be given to the enemy and none expected in return. It was a banner of death from the ancient days of the Unberogen and had not been raised since before the time of Redmane Dregor.

  Cold winds blew off the snow-capped peaks, and Sigmar could feel the black amusement of the hidden necromancer in every warmth-sapping gust. He marched at the head of the column of warriors as they made their way from the eastern gate fortress and followed the road that skirted the rippling haunches of the towering mountains. The army moved on foot, for no horse would be able to negotiate the treacherous paths of the towering mountains.

  Redwane marched with the White Wolves, his body swathed in a thick bearskin cloak, and he clutched Sigmar’s banner close to his body. The youngster’s face was pale and he was quieter than Sigmar could ever remember. Myrsa and Pend
rag accompanied the warriors of the Count’s Guard, giant men encased in glittering suits of plate armour who carried enormous greatswords across their shoulders. These proud northern warriors towered over the White Wolves, and already Sigmar could see proud rivalry developing between the stalwart fighting men. It was a rivalry born from confidence won in battle and the knowledge of mortality, and Sigmar knew that it would help the men conquer the fear he heard in the forced banter hurled between the different orders.

  Pendrag carried the Dragon Banner, and his silver hand reflected wan, lifeless sunlight that did nothing to lift the army’s spirits. Cheers followed them as they marched through the camps at the base of the Fauschlag Rock, but they were flat and without the infectious enthusiasm that had sent the Emperor’s army to Jutonsryk.

  These people did not expert them to return alive.

  The army marched into the mountains beneath a sky the colour of bone. The ground rose, the weather deteriorated with every mile, and the gently sloping hills and wide valleys around Middenheim quickly gave way to craggy gullies and a broken landscape like crumpled leather.

  Rain fell in unending sheets and purple lightning smote the heavens from black clouds at the centre of the mountains. The sky was screaming at some unnatural violation and it was towards this that Sigmar led his army. The whispered mutterings of his warriors grew more fearful with every passing day, and Sigmar could not shake the feeling that he was leading his men to their doom.

  Wolves howled in the night, but these were no welcome heralds of Ulric. They were black wolves of the mountains, beasts that had turned from the god of winter in ancient days and now roamed wild and masterless. Their howls plucked at the nerves of every fighting man, and wolf-tail talismans and protective amulets were held tightly as each night closed in like a fist.

  On the morning of the third day’s march, Sigmar saw a burial party at a crossroads upon the last valley of the foothills, and was reminded of the sad sight of the corpse-carts leaving Marburg.