02 - Empire

by Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead)

  As the days passed and the city endured, hope that a grand victory might be won seeped into every man’s heart.

  All that came to an end on the thirteenth day.

  Cormac felt the blood run down his face, relishing the taste of it even as the stink of dead flesh turned his stomach. He was naked but for a loincloth, and the tanned colour of his skin was entirely obscured by the crusted blood that covered every inch of his flesh. His arm ached from sawing through meat and bone, yet he could not deny the exhilaration that filled him as he stood in the centre of the pit.

  The pit was precisely eighty yards wide and eight deep, filled with severed heads to the height of a man’s waist. Every corpse that had fallen from the mountainous spire of Middenheim since battle had been joined was dragged here and decapitated. Day after day, Cormac had hacked the skulls from the fallen and hurled them into the pit. Kar Odacen had spoken of a great prince of Kharnath and such a mighty avatar of the Blood God demanded great honour.

  The ground underfoot was thick with coagulated blood, and rotting flesh peeled from the skulls of men and beasts alike. Warriors and champions from every tribe surrounded the pit, each with a dagger poised at the throat of his fiercest warrior. Only the most vicious killers would serve as sacrifices, for a sacrifice was not a sacrifice if it was not valued.

  Cormac had woken this day with his veins throbbing and his vision streaked with red, as though an endless gourd of blood was being slowly poured over his head. The taste of it was in his throat and a rabid fury filled his heart. He had felt a similar sensation in the tomb of Varag Skulltaker, and he had felt it when Kar Odacen bound the dark spirit to his axe.

  Cormac now saw that those moments had been hollow and meaningless, pale echoes of the bloodlust that now coursed through his body. Mighty powers had turned their eyes upon this mortal world with ruinous ambition, and Cormac’s heart soared at the thought of being their mortal champion. His axe growled and hissed, the fell spirit bound within the blade also sensing that this day was special.

  Today promised bloodletting like no other.

  Today, he would fight alongside one of the mighty daemon lords of Kharnath.

  Kar Odacen had sought him out at first light, and the moment he caught sight of Cormac his eyes widened with a mixture of fear and awed reverence.

  “It is time,” said the shaman.

  Word had spread through the camp, and the assault on Middenheim was forgotten as warriors, beasts and monsters were drawn to the pit to witness this great and terrible sorcery.

  Alone among Cormac’s warriors, Azazel and the Hung had not come to share this glorious moment, for their master was Shornaal, the ancient god most hated by Kharnath. To be a devotee of the Dark Prince at the birth of one of the Blood God’s avatars would be suicide.

  Cormac had ritually taken the skulls of eight times eight captives, holding their severed heads above his own and letting the blood drain onto his iron-hard flesh. Each baptism had sent his heart racing, and when he dropped into the pit of heads, he felt the thinness of the air, as though he could tear down the wall between this world and the void with his bare hands.

  The day was silent, no sounds of life or the passage of moments, for the powers pushing into this world were the bane of all living things. Cormac could feel the pressure within his skull, like the coming of a storm. He welcomed it, for this was a storm of blood, a storm of blades and a storm of skull-taking.

  He looked up at Kar Odacen, the shaman’s wizened features energised by the power being drawn to the pit. Cormac blinked as his vision blurred. The world around him began to turn red, as though his eyeballs were filling with blood. The sensation was not unwelcome. For the first time, Cormac could see the breath of the gods roaring over the earth, clouds of red howling soundlessly around him like smoke in a storm. It touched everything with rage and hatred, pride and glory. Nothing was left without its boon.

  The breath of Kharnath was everywhere, in every act of violence, every act of martial pride and every act of spite. Every mortal heart was touched by it, and he laughed as he saw the top of Middenheim was just as wreathed in the breath of the Blood God as his own army.

  “I feel it!” he roared, a red fury of power surging in his veins.

  Kar Odacen raised his arms, and the red mists gathered around the shaman, drawn to him as he gave voice to a host of guttural, primal syllables that sundered the air with their horror and rage. Instinctively, Cormac knew that these were the first words of death, the sounds of the first murder and the echoes of Kharnath’s birth at the dawn of all things.

  The shaman nodded, and the champions of the north sliced their blades across the throats of their willing victims. Blood jetted from a hundred opened throats, and the air was rent by howls, roars and cries in honour of the great god of battle and blood. But death alone was not enough, and the blades hacked through sinew and bone to sever each head.

  Cormac gasped as the heads were hurled into the pit with him. Ruby droplets spattered him as they bounced and tumbled over the decaying carpet of skulls. The howling red clouds were drawn up into a towering spiral of crimson, like a bloody vortex that reached from this poor, tasteless realm to the abode of the gods.

  How Cormac ached to climb to that domain of murder and hew skulls in the name of the Blood God, but this moment was not for him to transcend, but for something far older and far more terrible to tread the soil of this mortal earth.

  Cormac felt it pass from its own existence to his, and threw back his head as he welcomed the avatar of Kharnath with a bellowing roar of bloody devotion. The pit began to fill with gore, as though an endless lake of blood was flooding through an invisible tear in reality. Forking traceries of light flashed in the sky and crimson bolts of lightning slammed into the pit. The blood boiled and the earth screamed as something ancient and abominable poured its essence into the world.

  The pressure in Cormac’s skull intensified a thousandfold, and he screamed in agony, collapsing into the mass of severed heads that floated in the lake of blood. The jostling skulls and blood swallowed him as his flesh burned with invention.

  Too late, he realised his mistake.

  His role in this was not to fight alongside a lord of Kharnath.

  His role was to become one.

  Sigmar knelt before the Flame of Ulric, and knew that this was the last day.

  He felt it in the icy fire that chilled his bones, and he saw that same knowledge on the face of the hundred warriors who stood with him in the midst of the half-built temple. Even Wolfgart and Redwane were on edge, sensing that this day was somehow special. Sigmar felt a dreadful pressure on the air, like the last breath before the executioner’s axe falls.

  Coruscating sheets of lightning danced in a sky the colour of mourning, and streaks of red left blinding afterimages on the backs of his eyes. Sigmar’s nose was bleeding, and he saw that he wasn’t the only one. Cuts and wounds he had received during the fighting bled freely as though freshly sliced in his flesh, and he felt an aching sickness in his soul. He tasted blood and smelled a rank, foetid stench, like an overflowing cesspit in summer. It was the smell of corruption, the smell of things about to die.

  “Shallya preserve us, what is that?” gasped Redwane. “Smells worse than a dead troll!”

  “I thought it was you, lad,” said Wolfgart. “You White Wolves look as ragged as Cherusen Wildmen. Proper Northmen you are now.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Redwane, cupping a hand over his mouth and nose.

  Sigmar knew that smell, for it had saturated the air in the Grey Vaults. It was the reek of the daemonic. Earlier that morning he had watched a mass of Norsii and beasts gathered around a wound carved in the earth, like a wide pool of blood, and felt the dread power of the Dark Gods being drawn forth.

  A column of armoured Norsii warriors was already climbing the viaduct to the half-built towers at its top, but Sigmar was confident that Pendrag and Myrsa could handle whatever the tribesmen could throw at t
hem. The runefang had completed his sword-brother, as though it were a piece of his soul that he had not even known was missing.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about today,” said Redwane, idly dabbing at a reopened cut on his neck. The White Wolf looked up at the bruised sky and shook his head. “You remember when we talked about finding a wife? When we marched to Brass Keep?”

  “I remember,” said Sigmar, understanding the source of his friend’s woe. “What of it?”

  “I wish I’d done something about it,” said Redwane, and Sigmar was surprised to see that the warrior was crying. “I didn’t though. I thought there would be time for that kind of thing later, but there is no later for the likes of us, is there? There’s only the here and now.”

  “We make of life what we can, Redwane,” said Wolfgart. “We make the best choices we can, and we have to live with them, good or bad. I’ll wager that when this is over, you’ll find yourself a good lass.”

  “You still think we can win?” Redwane asked Sigmar.

  “I know we can,” promised Sigmar.

  Redwane sighed, looking over the slate-grey rooftops of the buildings around them to the mighty mountain peaks in the distance that reared to the heavens.

  “It doesn’t really matter in the end, does it?” asked Redwane. “I mean, look at the land we call the empire, it’s so… eternal, and we’re so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Will it matter if we all die here? Does the land care which king sits upon a throne and declares himself its master?”

  “Perhaps not, but it does not change our duty to fight,” said Sigmar. “We are fighting for the land and everyone who lives under our protection. If we fail, thousands more will die, for the warriors of the Dark Gods will not stop until the whole world burns. Our enemies bring disorder and chaos with them, darkness from the blackest realm of nightmare that will consume all that is good in this world. But you are right, in the end, it does not even matter if we live or die.”

  “How can it not matter?” asked Redwane.

  “All that matters is that we are here, right now,” said Wolfgart, “standing against that evil.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” replied Redwane, “and since when did you become a philosopher?”

  Wolfgart shrugged. “I’m not, but I know in my heart that we have to try and stop Cormac or everything we love will be destroyed: Maedbh and Ulrike. If I don’t fight, they die. I need no more reason than that to kill these bastards.”

  Redwane nodded slowly.

  “Then that’s good enough for me,” he said.

  Though his wounds ached with the promise of pain, Sigmar smiled at Wolfgart’s words. Better than any notions of honour or glory, the love of family and the need to protect them was all any warrior needed in order to fight.

  Sigmar took a breath of mountain air and tasted bitter, burning metal in the back of his throat. He looked over at the walls of the temple, seeing red smoke hissing from the runic patterns hammered into the stone. Alaric had told him these runes were proof against the sorceries of the northern shamans, but even as Sigmar watched, the stone was disintegrating as though it were no more solid than sand. Only the most dread powers could unmake the runes of the dwarfs, and Sigmar felt an icy hand grip his heart as a shadow passed over the sun and the world was plunged into gloom.

  A deafening roar shook the Fauschlag Rock, the scream of a creature older than time and more terrible than any nightmare. Men fell to their knees, screaming and vomiting blood as their every sense was violated by something utterly inimical to mortality.

  Sigmar tasted blood and burned meat, wet fur and hot iron.

  He looked up and saw the worst thing in the world. And it was coming for him.

  ——

  The Last Day

  Pendrag’s sword was a shimmering blur of silver as it clove through a screaming Norseman’s chest. No armour was proof against its edge, and no warrior brought low by its power would live. In the heart of the battle, the Count of Middenheim fought alongside his people; their leader, their hero and their friend.

  Count Otwin hacked men down by the dozen with his mighty axe, his muscled form bleeding from a score of wounds, and his face a mask of crimson where his crown of blood pierced his temple. The King’s Blades screamed as they slew, paint running from their bodies in streams of sweat and blood.

  Resplendent in their orange tunics, the Jutones battled with lance and sword, fighting with a precision lacking in their Thuringian brothers. Marius, though still in great pain from Bastiaan’s traitorous attack, stood with his fellow counts, cutting through flesh and armour with elegant sweeps of his eastern cavalry sabre.

  Conn Carsten and his clan-kin fought at the viaduct also, all three leaders of men having been drawn to fight together on this last day. Pendrag had welcomed them, understanding on some unknown level that this was where they needed to be. Alaric and the dwarfs were assembled on the wide esplanade, the Grimloks, the Skrundoks, the Gnollengroms and the Grimargul veterans. Front and centre were the Hammerers from King Kurgan’s personal guard, and Alaric stood among them, a great runic axe held at his shoulder.

  The Norsii attacked with greater ferocity than ever, their war cries more brutal, more hideously animalistic than the howls of the wildest rabid beast. The viaduct was all that mattered now, and the enemy had abandoned their attempts to carry the walls elsewhere. From the edges of the forest, the beasts howled as the men of the north alone fought to break into Middenheim.

  A warrior in armour of burnished blue plate leapt for Pendrag’s unprotected back, but Myrsa’s hammer intercepted him in mid-air. The Warrior Eternal smashed the tribesman aside, sending him tumbling to his death. The two masters of Middenheim fought side by side like brothers, slaying their foes and protecting one another with deadly grace.

  White Wolves howled as they killed, the fury of Ulric upon them as they fought to protect the city that shared their name. With their wild hair and brilliant red armour dazzling in the sunlight, they were as fearsome a sight as the Norsii, feral and magnificent.

  Pendrag blocked the sweeping blow of an enormous axe and stepped in to hammer his fist at the snarling tribesman. Blood and teeth burst from the warrior’s face, though this only seemed to amuse him. The axe came at Pendrag again, and he ducked, bringing his sword up in a whistling arc that sliced his foe from groin to shoulder. The runefang was a weapon beyond compare, its edge sharper than the dawn and lighter than a dream. With its awesome power at his command, Pendrag’s wounds and aches were forgotten as he fought with the strength and speed of a man half his age.

  How long they had fought for, Pendrag did not know, but they were holding their foes at bay. The Norsii were pushing hard, throwing their all into the fight, but the resolve of the defenders was like iron. Jutones, Udose, Thuringians, Middenlanders, Unberogen and dwarfs fought as one, an unbreakable line of courage that no wild charges of the Norsii could break.

  Dreams of triumph filled Pendrag’s head, but, like all dreams, they could not last.

  As the attackers fell back once more, a monstrous darkness filled the sky, and Pendrag dropped to his knees as blinding pain flared throughout his body. The skin at his neck blackened where the dead king’s blade had struck, and blood poured over his silver hand, as though the fingers had been cut from him but moments ago. The runefang tumbled from his grip and he screamed as his body curled into itself in terror. Through tear-blurred vision, Pendrag saw men who only moments before had been fighting like heroes of legend, fleeing from a monstrous shadow that filled the sky with its terrible bulk.

  It moved too fast to see, its blood-matted hide reeking of death and ancient rage: enormous wings of darkness, brass and iron, the smell of charred flesh and wet fur.

  Blood burst from Pendrag’s mouth and nose. He vomited over the cobbles.

  The shadow flew over the viaduct, the doom of his race made real, and Pendrag wept as its deathly power washed over him. He scrabbled for his fallen weapon, and no sooner had
his fingers closed on the runefang’s hilt than the suffocating fear fled his mind. His blade crackled with power, and he felt its ancestral hatred of the enveloping shadow.

  The Norsii screamed a name, a vile, filthy sound that clawed at the air like fingernails on slate, but it had no power over Pendrag, for he bore a weapon of ancient times. No matter that it had been newly forged, this was a weapon that had always existed. Sometimes as a sword, sometimes a flint spear or bronze-bladed axe, but through all the ages of the world, this weapon and its as yet unmade brothers had always been here to fight the corrupting power of the Dark Gods.

  Pendrag stood tall amid the helpless defenders of the viaduct, and the runefang blazed with the purest light, a brightness to conquer the blackest night and banish the deepest of shadows. He thrust the sword to the sky and smote the darkness with its blade. Sunlight broke through as the terrible shadow flew towards the centre of the city, and the warriors of the empire clambered to their feet as the power of the runefang gave them strength.

  The Norsii charged, and Pendrag’s eyes were drawn to the warrior leading them.

  He wore form-fitting silver armour that shone wondrously in the light, and flowing black hair spilled gloriously around his shoulders. The warrior bore twin swords of dazzling brightness and, as he skilfully rolled each blade in his grip, Pendrag was struck by the familiarity of the move. Sigmar had claimed Ravenna’s murderer was among the Norsii, but until now, Pendrag had thought that impossible. Clean shaven and pristine, he was monstrously out of place amongst the Norsii, and Pendrag’s heart skipped a beat as he saw the image of his old friend Trinovantes in the warrior’s face.

  “Gerreon,” he whispered.

  Though fifty yards or more separated them, Gerreon seemed to hear him, and a smile of breathtaking beauty slid across his face as he angled his course to meet Pendrag.