by Phil Kelly
Kaslain touched the head of the heavy Reikhammer on the flagstones behind him for a brief moment before bringing it over his head in a glimmering arc. It smashed into the creature’s clammy pate with such force that its head burst clean apart. Foulness sprayed over everyone nearby as the decapitated body toppled backwards, arms splayed wide.
‘Grow that back, you bastard,’ said Kaslain, spitting on its twitching corpse. ‘Anyone hurt?’
The fine plate of the Reiksguard knights had been dented and stained, and two of their number lay dead and broken against the pillars around the edge of the cache. The rest of the escort was more or less intact. They mumbled and picked themselves up as Kaslain and Aglim searched around the chamber and looked up in the ribbed vaults, weapons raised.
Of the second of the two monstrosities, there was no sign.
‘Shit,’ said Kaslain, grimly. ‘That’s not good.’
‘Excuse me, sir?’ said Zintler. ‘We drove the damned things off, didn’t we?’
‘That second one,’ replied Kaslain, peering down into the darkness of the narrowing hole in the middle of the vault. ‘It had the crown.’
‘But the Emperor has the crown. We just saw him at state.’
‘Not the Imperial tiara, you bloody moustache on legs!’ said Kaslain, his voice trembling. ‘The bloody Crown of Sorcery! The Crown of Nagash.’
As the forbidden name echoed around the silence of the crypts, the torches of the Reiksguard flickered green for a second and went out.
Zintler’s detachment had returned in shocked silence to report to the Emperor, but now the Grand Atrium was getting another chance to show off its acoustics. Volkmar’s rage was always impressive, no matter how many times Kaslain saw it. Today, it was incandescent.
The elector counts had the good sense not to interrupt whilst Volkmar filled the air with thunderclouds of invective. He paced up and down in front of the returned delegation, systematically stripping Reikscaptain Zintler of every ounce of his dignity. Even Kaslain, the closest thing Volkmar had to a friend, had already been pinned beneath Volkmar’s towering wrath for close to five minutes. It had not been a happy feeling.
The Grand Theogonist had every reason to be furious. Technically speaking, the artefacts in the Cache Malefact were under the sole protection of the Sigmarite cult. The blame for the disappearance of the Crown of Sorcery would be laid squarely at Volkmar’s door, and everyone knew it. Since his return from the wars in the north, the old man had more than enough detractors ready to tear him down. The loss of such a potent relic would be the last nail in his political coffin. If it was not recovered within a matter of days, it could see him banished from office forever.
The stolen artefact had been found ten years ago after the breaking of Waaagh! Azhag, a greenskin invasion of such scale and ambition it had collapsed a swathe of the northern Empire. Altdorfer spies had claimed that whenever Azhag the Slaughterer had worn the crown he had talked to himself almost constantly, often replying to himself in sepulchral tones. The hulking orc had begun to show displays of uncanny military genius as well as the ability to wield the energies of death itself. At the Battle of Osterwald, however, he had fallen to the charge of the knightly orders nonetheless.
Since that day the relic had rested in the depths of the great temple, theoretically as safe as sacred Ghal Maraz itself. In practice, the vault’s wards and guardians had been unable to banish the fleshy horrors that had burrowed into it like worms in the darkness. The chances of the Sigmarite cult recapturing the crown from one as cunning as Mannfred were vanishingly small.
‘It’s obvious what happened, you fool!’ roared Volkmar, his red-veined face a finger’s breadth from Zintler’s nose. ‘The vampire wanted his master’s crown, so he ensured he had our attention long enough to snatch it. Stahlberg here,’ he said, motioning towards the fallen body as it was carried away by liveried servants, ‘was a decoy. The true attack was taking place beneath our feet! And we fell for it! You fell for it!’
Zintler apologised for the twentieth time, eyes down, but Volkmar was in full flow. Only the interruption of the Emperor spared the Reikscaptain from death by spittle.
‘Volkmar!’ shouted Karl Franz, exasperated to the point of intervention. ‘We need more than strong words to fix this.’
The Grand Theogonist turned to face the Emperor, shoulders slumping in despair. Behind him, Zintler surreptitiously dabbed his face with a handkerchief.
‘I cannot allow rebellion in my Empire to go unpunished,’ said the Emperor. ‘Let alone an uprising led by a vampiric dynasty we presumed long gone.’
‘No, my lord,’ replied Volkmar.
‘We have been hearing for weeks that the situation in Sylvania is dire,’ continued Karl Franz. ‘And today, it has been made painfully clear that these claims of a magical darkness haunting the province are based in fact. This bizarre act of secession needs putting down, immediately and finally.’
‘Yes, your eminence,’ replied Volkmar with a bow. ‘You speak wisely.’
‘Dissent amongst allies is not the solution. And neither is mustering the Altdorf army, before you suggest it,’ said Karl Franz, casting a warning glance towards the assembled elector counts. ‘We have our hands full in the north. Besides, we want to ensure the extinction of that slippery bastard’s line once and for all. We cannot afford to announce our intentions until we have him trapped. A grand show of force will merely drive him back into hiding.’
Karl Franz turned his attention to the gathered electors, meeting their gazes one by one.
‘Our foe in Sylvania is functionally immortal. He has all the time in the world to play hide and seek. We, however, do not. So, I put the question to you all. What do you intend to do about it?’
‘I will attend to this crisis personally, my Emperor,’ said Volkmar. ‘I… I will lead my own army of the faithful into Sylvania.’
The old man seemed to straighten as he spoke the words, his rounded shoulders setting firm.
‘I will lead a crusade of light against the darkness,’ he continued. ‘A crusade of the righteous and the vengeful, united in faith. I swear to you now, with the great and the good to bear witness. I will hunt down and destroy the fiend Mannfred von Carstein and reclaim the Crown of Sorcery from his ashes, or I will die in the attempt.’
Meaningful glances passed between several of the elector counts, but no one spoke a word.
‘Fine words, old friend,’ said Karl Franz softly. ‘Though, I am not sure that they are wise ones.’
‘I must go, my lord,’ replied Volkmar. ‘I have no choice. I am Sigmar’s appointed representative in the Old World, and therefore I must act in his name, regardless of the danger.’
‘Very well,’ said the Emperor, his tone resigned. ‘You have a better chance than most. Faith is a powerful weapon against the powers of darkness. Though, you will need help. Help that my armies cannot give.’ Karl Franz paused for a second and scribbled something down on a nearby parchment before passing it to a uniformed aide.
‘Go, then, and prepare the muster of the faithful,’ said the Emperor, laying down his quill. ‘Take Kaslain with you. Arch Lector Aglim can tend the flock in your absence.’
‘Thank you, your eminence,’ said Volkmar softly, meeting Karl Franz’s level gaze for the briefest moment. The look that passed between the two dignitaries was as close to a fond goodbye as circumstances would permit.
‘Don’t be so quick to thank me. I only hope you make it back alive. The darkness gathers thick these days.’
Volkmar bowed his head for a moment before starting towards the door.
‘May I ask how you intend to find your quarry?’ said Karl Franz.
‘Ah,’ said Volkmar. ‘Well… there is… There is one of my witch hunters still active in Sylvania, my Emperor. A man who knows that benighted realm like his own reflection. You will not like it, but he truly is our best chance at finding the vampire.’
The Emperor sighed. ‘Let me guess. Alberich von Kord
en?’
‘Indeed, my lord,’ said Volkmar, taking a deep breath. ‘Alberich von Korden.’
THE CROW AND HAMMER
Konigstein, 2522
The witch hunter reloaded his silver-chased pistols at the top of the stairs of Konig’s Coaching Inn, pouring in gunpowder before priming the flints. He calmly slotted his powder horn back into his bandolier, taking his longboot from the neck of the troglodytic ghoul that had sought him out. The inhuman beast had stopped twitching a while back, but it was always better to be cautious when it came to the living dead and their kin.
One down, three to go.
Cutting through the ghoul’s neck with a sharp blow from his sabre, the hunter kicked its body down the stairs and hung its disembodied head on a butcher’s hook at his waist. He laughed softly to himself, fingering the still-smoking hole in the beast’s forehead. A brace of ghouls’ heads was always useful for keeping the roadwardens quiet.
He had the upper floor of the inn to himself, by the look of it. The sound of flintlock shots and the blood splashed up the walls would keep the inn’s patrons cowering in their beds, at least until the rest of the pack showed up.
Sure enough, another ghoul skittered around the corner of the upper corridor. The foul thing cried out in a strange gurgling yelp that the hunter recognised as a pack-call. He glanced backwards and shot the creature silently creeping up behind him without so much as a blink of surprise. His consecrated bullet passed into the thing’s open mouth and blasted out of its back in an explosion of brown blood.
The witch hunter turned back to confront the ghoul loping down the corridor just as it sprang for his throat. He shot it in the chest mid-leap. Deftly stepping to one side, he let its flailing body smash into the ghoul bleeding out behind him. A sweeping heel kick sent them both tumbling down to join their headless friend at the bottom of the stairs.
Three down, one left.
The last ghoul was always the largest of the pack, a mark of cowardice in a species too devolved to care. He could hear it scrabbling around on the layered straw of the roof above him. He ducked to avoid a taloned arm that shot through the thatch and swiped at his face. ‘Stupid cannibal bastards,’ the hunter said. ‘Never get your timing right.’
Dropping the spent pistols, the hunter grabbed the flailing arm and pulled hard. A muscular ghoul tumbled down into the corridor, dust and straw filling the air. It leapt to its feet with surprising agility for a creature that looked like it belonged at the bottom of a swamp. No time to regain the pistols and reload. No time to use the white ring, either, come to that.
The foul thing leapt forward, talons swiping out. It was fast, hellishly so. One of its dirt-encrusted claws went for the witch hunter’s eyes, knocking off his feathered hat and opening his lip instead. The hunter growled as he tasted his own blood.
Pink spit-flecks formed at the corners of the hunter’s mouth as he jabbed a witch-pin into the side of the beast’s neck. A kick to the chest shoved it backwards, buying a second of precious time. The ghoul recovered quickly, pouncing forward once more, but the hunter had recovered too. The beast leapt straight into a brawler’s forearm jab. The hardwood stake strapped to the hunter’s wrist punctured its breastbone with a sharp crack. The witch hunter pushed the beast backwards all the way to the end of the corridor, impaling it against the crude wooden panels of the inn’s rearmost wall. The ghoul writhed there like an insect pinned to a cork board.
The hunter nailed the squealing creature’s arms to the wooden planks with a carpenter’s precision, driving his witch-pins home with a small replica of Sigmar’s own warhammer. He drew his butcher’s knife and sliced the beast’s hamstrings before unhurriedly reloading his pistols in case any more of the foul things turned up. Once the flintlocks were primed and checked, the hunter put his jutting chin within biting distance of his captive’s needle-toothed maw. It was in too much pain to notice, its beady red eyes swimming with tears.
‘Yes, you feel that, don’t you?’ said the hunter, grinning. ‘Vampire, ghoul or common man, a length of wood stuck into the heart always hurts like hell. I left it nice and splintery, just for you and yours.’
The witch hunter stowed his butcher’s knife and drew out a pair of sharp filleting blades, running the edges along each other with a slight musical chime. His cold smile widened, blood staining his teeth.
‘Boss?’ came a timid voice from behind him.
‘What?’ shouted the hunter as he wheeled around. His face would have scared a daemon.
‘Message for you, boss,’ said the hunter’s lieutenant, Unholdt. The mercenary was cowering like a beaten dog, despite the fact he practically filled the corridor. ‘From the lads up at the watch. They says it’s from the Old Man himself.’
Turning back to the wall for a second, the witch hunter sucked in his breath before putting one of his pistols under the beast’s chin and pulling the trigger, blowing the top of its head off in a spray of gore. He shoved his way past Unholdt, snatching his hat from the floor as bits of the ghoul’s brain pattered down from the ceiling.
‘This,’ hissed Alberich von Korden, ‘had better be big.’
KONIGSTEIN WATCH
The Vale of Darkness, 2522
The witch hunter strode through Konigstein’s rural outskirts, Unholdt trailing in his wake. Together they made their way through the gloom towards the ramshackle watchtower they had taken as a base. Jutting from the foothills at the base of the town’s peak, the tower was a forbidding sight. Jawless skulls kept a vigil from each of its eight walls, and the giant metal skeleton that crested its battlements stared down impassively at their approach.
Brass sentinels, the effigies were called. Cleverly designed by the Colleges of Magic as a way to impart information over large distances, each construct’s arms could be positioned like the hands of a clock with the turning of a few cranks. When used correctly, specific signals and even individual words could be passed from hilltop to hilltop. Even a message from as far afield as the Imperial Palace could be relayed across the Empire in less than a day.
Von Korden’s fellow hunter Stahlberg had told him that the alloys used in each brass sentinel’s construction were brewed by the alchemist-mages of the Gold College. Those observers with the second sight could perceive signals sent days or even weeks before – the traces made by the skeletal hands lingered in the air for those with the wit to read them. Sounds like witch’s work, von Korden had said at the time. Give me quill and parchment any day. Stahlberg had laughed and cocked his head knowingly in response, an odd habit of his that always made von Korden’s trigger finger itch.
‘Why do they have to look like skellingtons?’ moaned Unholdt, picking up on von Korden’s thoughts about the brass sentinel. The big man could be unusually perceptive, sometimes suspiciously so. He cast a baleful glance around the scattered tombs and ivy-covered walls that dotted the lands around the watchtower. ‘Don’t make sense to make the place look even more nasty, if you ask me,’ Unholdt continued. ‘Enough skulls and bones in the vale already, eh boss?’
‘I didn’t ask you, you fat oaf,’ said von Korden irritably. The brass effigy’s form made perfect sense to the witch hunter, but then he was something of an expert in inspiring fear.
‘Huh. That’s sturdy and handsome oaf, to you,’ Unholdt muttered under his breath.
As the two hunters approached the watch, a figure looked over the battlements for a second. Its helmeted silhouette was barely visible against the darkness of the Sylvanian sky. Despite their walk from the inn taking them just past noon, the afternoon sky already looked more like dusk.
Since the great darkness had fallen three weeks ago the colour had slowly been leached out of the province. Even the tough, wiry bloodweed that usually thrived in the vale was slowly dying through lack of sunlight, and most of the peasants had sought refuge in neighbouring provinces. Von Korden scowled. Give it a week and his men would most likely be the only living things left.
‘Open it now!’ commanded
von Korden as he approached the heavy wooden door of the watchtower. A series of clunks and thuds came from the other side in response. The door opened half a foot, exposing the scarred snout of a large and ugly pig. It sniffed the air for a moment before its porcine owner licked its lips and grunted the all clear. It looked up expectantly at its witch hunter master with its beady black eyes.
‘Hello Gremlynne, you fat old sow,’ said von Korden, pushing open the door and tousling the pig’s tattered ears. He held out a pair of ghoul’s ears on his upraised palm, and they were snaffled up greedily, leaving the witch hunter with a handful of stringy spit. Only a pig could dine on ghoulflesh and get away with it, and the old beast had developed quite a taste for it in her years as a witch-sniffer. Von Korden wiped the pig slobber on Unholdt’s greatcoat and absently made the sign of the comet as he crossed the threshold.
‘Any attacks, Steig?’ said the hunter, looking sidelong at the tall guard waiting beside the door.
‘Nah,’ said the lanky Stirlander, fiddling with his ruined teeth. ‘They might try for a kill when your back’s turned, but not even a corpse-eater’s stupid enough to attack us here.’
‘Don’t bet on it, or that line of thought will get you killed,’ said von Korden. He cleaned the soles of his boots with the pitted bronze sword the garrison used as a boot-scraper, flicking the mud into a grave-pit outside the door. ‘This is Mannfred’s lot we’re talking about, after all. I found Heinroth Carnavein chewed up in his bed this morning. That makes me the only one of the order left in the province.’
‘Bloody bells,’ said Steig, shaking his head sadly. ‘That’s a damn shame, that is.’
Unholdt looked over at his comrade, a puzzled frown on his broad face.
‘Bastard owed me for cards,’ said Steig by way of explanation.
Unholdt rolled his eyes and moved over to the fire, poking it with the head of his long-handled mace. ‘Just tell ’im the bloody news, Sticks,’ he said, staring into the flames. Behind him, Gremlynne lay back down on her dirty rug and began to snore gently.
