by Phil Kelly
Von Korden stormed back up the ridge, his face twisted into a wild-eyed snarl and his hand palming a filleting knife. Discipline would be restored, one way or another.
The hunter stopped suddenly, sniffing the air. Something foul lingered under the peaty smell of wet earth. A moment later the dull moaning that von Korden had heard minutes earlier drifted through the mist, coming from the tumbled walls just beyond the tower. The witch hunter listened carefully.
This time, he distinctly heard the low toll of an ancient bell.
Waving his arm behind him in signal, von Korden darted back to the front line and crouched down behind a shattered tombstone. Sure enough, there were ghostlights in the gloom. Strange figures began to coalesce in the misting rain, skeletal shapes that moved in jerky synchronicity. One by one, a clutch of dead things scraped and staggered their way towards the trespassers. They stalked with painstaking slowness around the yawning graves and jutting hillocks, forming up in front of a tumbledown wall. Their ranks were a mockery of a proper military unit. Slack jaws dangled from fleshless skulls and rusted armour clanked gently on ice-cold bone.
‘Sigmar’s sack, just look at ’em all,’ exhaled Swift.
‘Shut your damn mouth, Swift, you’ve embarrassed yourself enough already,’ growled Curser Bredt, taking a bead on the skeletal warriors with his rifle. ‘Concentrate. As soon as I give the order, make every one of those bullets count.’
Hastening back to the vanguard, von Korden gestured forward and right. In response Sigmar’s Sons double-timed as best they could towards the abandoned watch. It did not bode well that Unholdt and the rest of his men had not yet emerged onto the roof. Still, they needed to secure the tower, whatever horrors lurked inside.
The mist ahead thinned for a second. It revealed hunchbacked shadows that moved like long-limbed toads across the grass, leap-stop-leaping towards the swordsmen. Von Korden almost called out a warning, but bit his tongue. Ghorst would be close by, and the necromancer would flee if he knew his old persecutor was on the field. The hunter was relieved when Bredt spoke out a second later.
‘Change target, new marks below!’ shouted the gunner-sergeant. ‘Mind the Sons!’
The Silver Bullets swivelled as one, taking a bead on the ghouls in the mist below them as the Sons broke into a hunched run. The handgunners fired a sharp fusillade, hurling one creature backwards and taking another in the throat so hard it left its head dangling on its back. The ghoul kept going for a second before collapsing into a grave-pit. Von Korden met Sootson’s eye up on the ridge, and a few seconds later two more ghoul-things were blasted apart by the Hammer of the Witches. Two of the pallid creatures were ahead of the rest, leaping on the rearmost swordsman and tearing great strips of flesh from his back. The rest of the unit formed up, turning as one at a barked order from Eben Swaft.
The swordsmen fought hard to lock their shields, stabbing at sore-pocked faces and necks as the ghouls groped and slashed with their long, dirt-encrusted fingers. Arterial blood spurted in the mist, the hot red of the state troops splashing uniforms alongside the brackish brown of ghoul gore. Von Korden wished he was in the thick of it with them, but he had other matters to attend to.
Horses snorted and tack jangled to the witch hunter’s left as the Knights of the Blazing Sun galloped down into the fight. He waved them on, gesturing with a pistol in the direction of the skeletal warriors that were stalking towards the Silver Bullets. With the skeletons engaged against the knights on the left and the ghouls fighting tooth and nail against Sigmar’s Sons on the right, von Korden was free to pursue his own agenda.
Heldenhammer be praised. There he was.
Lurching through the mist ahead came Helman Ghorst, stooped atop his charnel cart. Four grotesque corpse-things pulled it forward in fits and spurts. The putrid stench of the cart’s rat-infested cargo was like a living thing in its own right. The witch hunter broke cover for a second and ran in a crouch from gravestone to tomb, a feral grin stretching his features. He gestured back to Sootson’s cannon, an open hand that meant ‘hold fire’. He needed Ghorst alive if they were to find Mannfred before the realm of Sylvania was lost altogether.
Ahead, Ghorst was scanning around, mumbling something that von Korden strained to hear. Suddenly the arcane words grew deafeningly loud. The necromancer stood up to his full height, eyes blazing with purple-black energy. Twin bolts of raw death shot out from his sunken sockets, narrowly missing Lupio Blaze and burning into the charging knights behind him. Two finely-armoured Estalians convulsed and writhed, falling from their saddles in explosions of ash. A pair of empty suits of armour clattered into the muddy grass.
The charge of the Myrmidian knights hit home nonetheless, slamming into the ranks of the skeletal warriors with tremendous force. Their lowered lances took skulls from necks and punctured rusted breastplates with ease, and the sheer weight of the armoured stallions and their plate-clad riders proved a powerful weapon in itself. Over a dozen of Ghorst’s skeletal warriors were smashed apart by the momentum of the charge. Blaze’s cries to Myrmidia rang out as fleshless limbs and scraps of armour were hurled in all directions. The back ranks of the undead regiment snapped into action as if waking from a dream, setting their shields and bracing just in time to stop their unit’s utter destruction.
Von Korden was within a stone’s throw of his quarry when he saw the slinking, malevolent shadows of giant wolves dart out of the scattered trees on the left flank. An unearthly howl keened through the mist, and the hunter caught a glimpse of rotten sinews and yellowed bone that gleamed under ragged patches of half-sewn skin. The undead pack would be falling upon the rear of the knights in no time at all, and they were too far away for von Korden’s pistols to count.
The witch hunter swore under his breath, taking off his gauntlet and pulling out the ivory ring he kept on a thin chain around his wrist. The artefact had been given to him by the white wizards of Templehof as a reward for slaying the vargheist that was preying on their town, and he had always intended to use its powers against Ghorst. Yet he could not afford to lose the knights, not yet.
‘Be banished!’ shouted von Korden, standing up from his tombstone cover and pressing the ring flat against his bare palm. A serpent of pure light streaked out from its centre into the midst of the undead wolves just as they were about to pounce upon Blaze’s knights. The luminous apparition wrapped around three of the canine creatures and squeezed them into nothingness. A moment later Curser Bredt’s voice rang out, and a volley of shot blasted the rest of the pack into chunks of maggoty meat.
Von Korden barely had time to smile before a tangle of pale limbs grabbed at him. Unclean fingers snatched his collar and dug painfully into his cheek. A moment later Ghorst’s foul carriage was upon him, bell clanging wildly. Rotten teeth bit hard into his shoulder a heartbeat before the cart’s wooden yoke knocked him into the dirt. The hunter tried to rise, but a clammy and twisted foot pressed the side of his face into the mud. Out of his other eye he could see a jagged wheel coming right for his neck.
There was a sharp Estalian war cry and Ghorst’s carriage veered suddenly to the right. Its wheel came on, ripping out a great hank of the witch hunter’s hair and nearly scalping him in the process. Through a haze of confusion and pain he could just make out the glinting armour of Blaze’s knights wheeling around through the damp grass. The mist thickened for a moment, and the toll of Ghorst’s bell faded away to be replaced by the thunder of hooves.
As the horses passed by von Korden stumbled back to his feet. Badly winded, bleeding profusely and spitting out a mouthful of grave-dirt, he still grasped a mud-covered pistol tightly in his good hand. Nearby, the Knights of the Blazing Sun had broken formation. Their warhorses were stamping down hard on the disembodied skeletal arms that had burst from the ground to claw ineffectually at their legs. Over by the watchtower, Sigmar’s Sons were chasing down the last of the ghoul-things, hacking at unarmoured backs and cutting heads from necks.
Ghorst’s macabre car
riage was nowhere to be seen.
Von Korden swore a blue streak as he marched up towards the watchtower, smearing the worst of the grave-mud from his face and checking that his holstered pistol was still sound. His head rang with pain and one of his eyes was swelling shut, but the rage boiling inside him kept his mind sharp. Once his message was sent from the watch he could allow himself to tend his wounds, but not before.
‘Get the hell out of my way,’ he spat at the Sigmarite swordsmen still hacking the heads from the ghoul corpses outside the watchtower. They moved aside immediately, sensing that they were in more danger from von Korden than from any of the walking dead. ‘Swaft, Weissman, you’re with me.’
The two Sons exchanged a meaningful glance as the witch hunter strode between them. ‘Well, Volkmar did say,’ murmured Weissman, handing the regiment’s banner to a nearby comrade before following von Korden to the heavy wooden door of the watchtower. Swaft came reluctantly after him, wiping gobbets of thick brown blood from his blade.
The hunter pushed the door with an open palm, and it swung open on its hinges. There was no sound, no motion inside. The entire lower floor of the building was in total disarray. The writing desk was upturned, its inks spilled like black blood across the flagstones to pool around the shattered skull of the Templehof vargheist.
Suddenly Unholdt’s corpse lurched out from behind the door, bowling into von Korden with such force it knocked them both flailing onto the floor. Weissman pushed inside the doorway just as the thing that had once been Steig clambered out of the disused well, blood-covered tongue flapping. The Sigmarite soldier edged around the well, blade ready for a killing thrust, only to find another undead guard barrelling out from behind the tower’s grandfather clock to grab him in a biting, tearing bear hug. Swaft moved in, blade readied as he looked for his moment to strike.
Wrestling Unholdt to one side, von Korden discharged his pistol into his old comrade’s dead bulk. The corpse jerked upward for a second before falling back down again, teeth gnashing a few millimetres from the witch hunter’s eye. The grotesque thing’s rotten breath invaded von Korden’s nostrils, and strings of blood-laced drool draped across his cheek.
Setting his teeth and bracing his knee on the wall, the witch hunter jerked sideways. He rolled the corpse of his former lieutenant off him and pushed against it with one hand as he fumbled to draw his cutting sabre with the other. The scabbard was empty. The corpse pushed back, its weight tremendous. Von Korden’s muscles began to shake, then to give. Unholdt’s chomping, stinking mouth came closer, inch by tortuous inch.
A high-pitched squeal rang out, ear-piercing in the confines of the watchtower. A moment later a hairy mass of hogflesh burst out from behind the stairwell curtain and barged into Unholdt, knocking him bodily from von Korden. The corpse rolled with the impact, some vestige of its brawler past coming to the surface as it scrabbled to its knees. Its hands flew down to Gremlynne’s neck, sinking into the pig’s dense throat as von Korden regained his feet. With a roar, the witch hunter grabbed a splintered chair leg from the floor and slammed the sharp end right through his dead lieutenant’s back. The corpse shuddered for a moment and lay still.
Von Korden spun round to the Sons, but they had already despatched the animated cadavers that had once been Steig and Freidricksen. The whole altercation had taken less than half a minute.
‘You two, check upstairs,’ said von Korden, clutching his bruised arm. The Sons nodded in assent, moving past him and as they climbed up into the stairwell. Once they were gone, the witch hunter moved over to Unholdt and, with a great effort, rolled his body to one side. Gremlynne looked up at him with one watery eye, her front legs broken and her breath hissing in ragged gasps through the bloody ruin of her throat.
‘Oh no,’ said von Korden, anguish flooding his soul. ‘No, Gremlynne!’ He cradled the dying pig in his arms, stroking her ears as she wheezed bubbles of blood from her snout. ‘Not you as well,’ he said, trying to stem the red rivulets that poured from her neck. ‘Hang on, old girl, I’ll… I’ll get some bandages or something,’ he said, the words catching in his throat. He laid her down gently, frantically scanning for something to use as a tourniquet. A low rattle came from behind him, and with an effort of will he turned back.
He was too late. The pig had breathed her last.
‘You bastards!’ cried von Korden, kicking the stonework of the well so hard a part of it crumbled down into the darkness. He threw the shattered table leg across the room, and it clattered in the corner. ‘You’ll pay for what you did to us!’ he shouted, tears stinging in his eyes. He slumped into what remained of his armchair, hand questing for the cameo portrait that hung next to his heart. With his wife’s pig gone, the necklace was all that was left of the old days. It was the last remnant of the farm they had loved so much. Even Alberich von Korden – the man he had been – had died a long time ago.
‘Lynn, my dear,’ he gasped as he pried open the jewelled image, ‘Oh, Lynn, I’m sorry… I’m sorry I was too late to save the girls.’ Alberich shut his eyes hard, fighting to stay in control as a decade of suppressed emotion roiled inside. ‘I’m so sorry I never told you that I needed you, my love.’
His shoulders shook, but no sound would come.
‘I’ll make them pay, Lynn,’ said Alberich to the female portrait lying in his bloodstained hand. ‘I promise you.’
There came a cascade of footfalls from the stairway, and Weissman pushed his way in through the curtain.
‘Trouble?’ he asked.
Von Korden was standing in the middle of the room, facing away from the stairwell as he fussed with his pistols. He did not turn around.
‘No,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘Just… I just thought I saw one of them twitch, that’s all.’
‘Right,’ said Weissman, ‘Well, glad we got the bastards before they got us. Nothing much on either floor, up there. Bit o’ grub in the cupboards. You want to send the message whilst the going’s good?’
‘Yes. Get some lamp oil on the signal cogs, goose fat, whatever you can find. I’ll be up in a minute.’
‘Right you are,’ said Weissman, heading back upstairs.
Von Korden took a long and ragged breath, as deep as he could. He held it for a long time before heading upstairs to the battlements.
THE COLLEGIUM OF LIGHT
Templehof, east of the Vale of Darkness, 2522
There it was again. A glimmer of witch-light, tiny but distinct, emanating from the peaks on the other side of the vale.
Jovi Sunscryer of the Light Order squinted into the gloom, his heart quickening at the prospect that someone might be using Konigstein’s brass sentinel to communicate. He ran a hand across the brown leather of his pate and down over his eyes, gently humming the Seventh Rumination of Shem to help him focus. There was a message there, he was certain of it.
He leaned over the banister of the spiral staircase that led down into the Collegium’s library and tinkled the small bell that hung from the brass serpent at their top.
‘Fetch the scrying lenses, please, Khalep,’ he called.
There was no response.
He tried again, leaning over a little further. ‘Khalep, be a good fellow and fetch the scrying lenses.’
One… Two… Three… Still nothing.
‘Khalep!’ the old man bellowed, the wattle of skin on his scrawny neck wobbling. There was a scuffle, a creak and a thump from the floor below. A few moments later a blinking young man blinked up from the bottom of the stairs, hastily rearranging his ceremonial robes.
‘Yes, m-m-magister?’ stuttered the youth.
Jovi glowered up at the overcast skies. They glowered right back.
‘Khalep, I was wondering if you would be so kind as to fetch me the scrying lenses before I turn you into a legless toad.’
‘Certainly, m-m-magister, right away.’
The acolyte scurried off. There was some serious work ahead for that boy.
The elderly scholar turned his attentio
n back to the glimmering lights on the horizon. They had changed, but the sigils of the previous communiqué hung behind them in time, a message that only one trained in the magical arts could read.
Less than a minute later the young apprentice staggered up the spiral staircase laden with a contraption made of brass rods and calibrators. Held suspended in their metallic web was a set of softly glowing lenses shielded by cups of beaten copper. Neftep, the second of Jovi’s two acolytes and arguably the least incompetent, was close behind, a blazing lantern in his hand.
‘Neftep,’ said Jovi, patiently. ‘This gloom,’ he gestured vaguely above his head, ‘hangs heavy in my soul, just as it does in yours, I am sure. I would dearly love to lift it from the skies. But when we are trying to perceive a distant light, a light close at hand is worse than useless.’
Neftep nodded once. ‘Yes, magister,’ he replied sagely.
‘So be a good fellow and toddle off back downstairs, before you ruin my night vision entirely and I am forced to hurl you from the balcony with a great shout of angst.’
‘Of course, oh master,’ replied Neftep, making his way back down the stairs.
Jovi Sunscryer blew out his cheeks, gathering his focus once more. Khalep, to his credit, had already assembled the scrying lenses and was busy focusing them on the light in the distance.
‘Ah, good show,’ said Sunscryer. ‘Might I perhaps be permitted to fine-tune the device, Khalep? Or would you prefer me to sit here and quietly die of old age?’
‘N-n-no, ma-magister,’ said Khalep. He stepped backwards, allowing his tutor to lean down to the eyepiece of the scrying device.
The flickering light was indeed a message, and a long one, too, by the looks of it. The magister recognised the personal sigil of von Korden at the message’s end, a circle of fire that symbolised the judicial pyres of the witch hunter. Jovi licked the end of his vulture-feather quill and inked it, writing down the message as he deciphered it.
