by Phil Kelly
The Vale of Darkness, 2522
The wind rustled through the dying oaks of Deihstein Ridge, casting another handful of leaves onto the canopy of the canvas-covered wagon below.
‘Well? What do you wait for?’ asked Exei von Deihst, his thick Strigany urgent and low as he pointed at the witch hunter in the distance. ‘That him, Voytek. I tell you. Take shot.’
The sharpshooter scratched the underside of his stubbly jaw before bellying forward for a better angle. Below their hidden caravan at the side of the road, brightly-uniformed Talabheimers were fighting hard against the von Vassel clan. Eager as ever to prove themselves, the von Vassels had sprung the ambush too early. Still, the outlanders were too preoccupied fending off the ambush to pursue the corpse-laden cart escaping into the distance, let alone pay attention to the von Deihsts.
‘Hush, Exei. I like part where life and death hang in balance,’ grinned Voytek, his hunting rifle’s barrel poking out of the painted canvas of the wagon. ‘Savour it. Second best part of having long gun.’
‘Take shot, Voytek,’ said Alexei, a warning tone in his voice. ‘Pale count will not be happy if Ghorst caught. Feed you to wing-devil.’
‘Be still, little grandmother,’ mocked Voytek. ‘You shake so much you spoil aim.’
‘Voytek. Take shot.’
‘Just…give…second…’ said Voytek as a distinctive witch hunter hat bobbed in his sights. ‘There. Got him.’
The Strigany sharpshooter pulled the trigger.
There was a tremendous crash as the war altar thundered over the crest of the Deihstein Ridge and ploughed into the Strigany caravans hidden by the side of the road. Its colossal weight bundled over two of the hooded wagons just as the crack of a hunting rifle rang out. Two gangly men spilled out of the rear of the larger of the two wagons, screaming in shock as the iron wheels of the war altar ground through one’s midsection and crushed the other’s legs.
Volkmar sounded the Horn of Sigismund as his surprise attack hit home, the brazen roar of the war horn ringing out across the fields. It struck fear into the faithless – like the scum scattering below – and let the Talabheimers know help was on its way.
Heartened by the sound and the sight of the war altar, the Talabheimer state troops attacked with renewed purpose, slashing and stabbing at the dusky horsemen in their midst. Several of the nomads’ horses had bolted at the sound of Volkmar’s war horn, but many more of the Strigany had danced out of reach and taken a position by the side of the wooded ridge, puffs of smoke coming from their rifles.
A great maniacal shriek came from the wooded rise above the road and the Tattersouls spilled into view, hurling themselves from the lip of the ridge like cultists united in a mass suicide pact. Several of the crusaders smacked bodily into the horse nomads, bearing them to the ground before strangling them with their flails, ropes, even dirt-encrusted hands. Many more of the zealots missed their targets and thumped down hard into the muck, writhing as they cried out in an ecstasy of pain.
The remaining Strigany broke and galloped off, leaving their wounded and dying behind them in the dirt. On the road ahead, von Korden’s Talabheimers recovered themselves and saw to their own fallen, binding wounds and giving Morr’s grace to those who had died.
As he surveyed the situation from atop his pulpit, Volkmar saw a wounded nomad in the shattered remains of a covered wagon behind the altar. The Strigany pulled a knife from the stock of his long rifle and cried out in his strange language before taking the blade in both hands, turning it round, and plunging it deep into his own throat.
Placing his hand firmly on the chassis of the war altar, the Grand Theogonist leapt over the balustrade at the front of the pulpit. He landed deftly in the mud below, ceremonial robes billowing around him. Hastening over to the dying man, he kicked the thug’s knife into a ditch and knelt down, placing his hand over the pulsing wound. A golden light spilled from between his fingers. When he took his hand away, the gash had healed over, though it was still slick with arterial blood.
‘Not so easy, I’m afraid, young man,’ said Volkmar to the Strigany gasping for air beneath him. ‘I know someone who wants a few words with you.’
THE VARGRAVIAN MOUNTAINS
The Vale of Darkness, 2522
‘Oh for Shem’s sake, Khalep,’ said Sunscryer, testily. ‘I swear, you’ve got the bladder of a pregnant shrew.’
Robes hitched, Khalep was relieving himself against a boulder at the side of the winding road that led up to the borders of Vargravia. Behind him the Luminark creaked in the winds that whipped around the high peak road, wyrdglass lenses tinkling. At its rear, a few dozen of the Goat’s finest were taking advantage of the break to tap the barrels of wine they had hoisted into the rear cabin of the war engine. Sunscryer had not approved one bit, but a heavier load was well worth the thirty or so brawlers that they had convinced to fight at their side over the course of the night. Stirland’s Revenge, they called themselves, the last dregs of a province that had all but given up the fight. It was a rather grand name for such a scruffy collection of drunkards. The elderly wizard only hoped they could live up to it.
Even Jovi felt like perhaps a little Marienburg courage might not be such a bad idea, but he quickly quashed the thought. When involved in the business of spellcasting, a single mistake could lead to a painful death – or worse, a daemon-breach. As his acolyte Vorac had learned many years ago, a tipsy wizard could be more dangerous than an entire army of normal men. The Collegium’s rear wall was still missing to this day.
Ahead of them, Sunscryer could just about perceive the ironbone fencework that had been erected by some nameless mason to keep the peasants out – or more likely to keep the dead in. Behind the rotten borders were timeworn peaks, each dotted with tombs so ancient they had been eroded smooth and covered in clinging moss. The occasional statue rose bravely out of the slinking mists that haunted the sprawling necropolis, and in the distance, the silhouette of an astromancer’s dome was just visible against the glowering skies.
A ghastly howl wound out of the mists, getting louder and louder before stopping abruptly. Some of the peasants from the Goat made the signs of Sigmar and Morr. Others, including Khalep and Neftep, looked longingly at the barrels of wine at the Luminark’s rear.
‘Ready then?’ called out Jovi from the lens deck as his men milled about below. ‘Make your peace if you have to. Oh, and remember, no names. Names have power, and I’d rather not risk our souls as well as our lives.’
Mumbling sullenly, the ragtag expedition made their way through the tombs and sepulchres that dotted the outlying peaks of Vargravia. Ghostlights gathered in the holes and recesses that honeycombed the eroded limestone, glowing a sickly green wherever one of the trespassers got close. Sunscryer thought he saw the flicker of a haggard female face in a few of the holes, but he said nothing.
‘Ho!’ called Bernhardt, pointing at the gravel-strewn muck that formed a crossroads with the path they were following. Neftep halted the Luminark, the men milling around it. ‘Them’s recent tracks,’ continued Bernhardt, pointing to the faint shapes of horseshoes in the scree. The path led deeper into the maze of tombs, its edges delineated by the parallel grooves of a heavier carriage, a cart or similar construction that had passed that way not too long ago. A muddle of bare footprints cropped up in between the dusty ruts, some of which were clearly missing toes.
‘Reckon them’s dead men’s feet,’ said Bernhardt.
No one contradicted him.
‘Well then,’ said Sunscryer. ‘That’s where we’re headed.’
The expedition changed direction, hauling the Luminark around and following the tracks that Bernhardt had spotted as they wound further into Vargravia’s grave-dotted wastes. A scattered rearguard loitered at the back, absently testing the swords and cudgels they had acquired over the last few weeks. Tombstones and mausoleums broke the rolling mounds at irregular intervals, some of which yawned open to the sky as if waiting to be filled.
‘Look at that one, Ferd,’ said Long Cobb, pointing at a gravestone. ‘That’s one with your name on it there.’
‘Sigmar’s guts, you’re right enough – Ferdinand Lessner. That’s today’s date an’ all.’
Nearby, a starveling raven perched on the statue of a sightless angel, cawing softly. Its beady eyes gleamed green in the twilight as it followed the trespassers’ progress. Worms writhed in the rot at their passage.
‘Come to think of it, Breck, that’s yer actual proper name on that one, isn’t it? Johann Breckner?’
Breckner made the sign of Morr over his heart. ‘Not funny, Ferdy.’
Big Delf took a swig from his wineskin and stared back at the men behind him, his eyes narrowed. ‘Oi, Cobb. You heard what the old man said back there. Shut your bleeding traps.’
‘You shut yours, Delf Cook, or I’ll shut it for you.’
‘Hey!’ shouted Bernhardt, leaning around a scattering of twisted trees to look back at the rearguard making their way through the graves. ‘You lot at the back. Don’t think I can’t hear you natterin’ away.’
‘Yeah yeah,’ called out Delf, giving Bernhardt a two-fingered salute. ‘Here,’ he whispered, pointing a chubby finger at a statue-crested mausoleum to the east. ‘Look at that one, the big one there with the torch. ‘Here lies Jovi Sunscryer.’ Ain’t that the name of his holiness himself?’
‘Damned if I know,’ said Lessner.
‘Bloody hammer,’ swore the fat man. ‘I’m having second thoughts about all this. I keep expecting to see a stone with ‘Delf’ on it and my first wife lurkin’ at the bottom, all rotted up.’
‘Shut yer gabbin’, Cook. Bernhardt’s already pissed off at us,’ said Long Cobb. ‘And for Sigmar’s sake, stop sayin’ out names.’
Bernhardt led the expedition forwards as it made its way further into the peaks, climbing higher and higher by the hour. A thick mist had begun to coalesce around the tombstones and shattered statuary, white as a shroud and cold to the touch. Through a combination of leading by example and occasional accusations of cowardice Bernhardt was just about keeping discipline amongst his men, though it was just as much through their fear of turning back alone as it was through drunken bravado.
Up ahead, the wizard Sunscryer was fiddling with the lenses of his wagon’s glass contraption, turning screws and tweaking iron rods. His assistants were chanting quietly, eyes rolled back in their heads. Must be the way wizards prepare for trouble, Bernhardt mused. He could practically taste the tension in the air.
‘Weapons up, I think, lads,’ said the big man, coming to a halt. He took a swig from his wineskin and rolled his shoulders. The soft but insistent tang of Estalian brandy filled his mouth, making him glad he had brought something stronger than wine. The militiaman tested the edges of his swords against one after another before adjusting the tension on his crossbow and sighting down its length on a fanged skull half-buried in the dirt.
When Bernhardt looked back up the mist ahead was winding upwards, twisting and writhing as if alive. As he watched, it coalesced into a series of man-sized shapes, beggar-thin and clad in wisps of smoke.
‘All right lads, blades up!’ he shouted, dropping his wineskin and drawing his swords. ‘Look lively and hit ‘em hard!’
There was a thin shriek and a dozen gheists came forward, ectoplasm trailing like the clothes of drowning men. Bernhardt raised his crossbow and shot one in the face. It passed straight through the apparition’s misty skull as if there was nothing there at all.
A gurgling scream came from Bernhardt’s left as a robed spectre rose up from an open trench and plunged its blackened claws into Bruger Steick’s chest. Blood bubbled from Steick’s mouth as he toppled sidelong into the yawning grave that bore his name on its tombstone. Derrick Vance thrust a spear through the creature’s torso as it passed. The crow’s foot strapped to its shaft tore away a scrap of ectoplasm, but the blow achieved little else.
Bernhardt took a step forward and thrust his lucky blade through the neck of the creature drifting after Richter Swartz. It tore away the gheist’s head, but the body kept on going, wrapping its long arms around Swartz’s neck like a cloak and bearing him into a half-open tomb with a chilling screech.
All around the militiamen swords slashed into misted limbs and skull-thin faces. The weapons wielded by the Stirlanders passed right through, their wildly swinging blades unbalancing their wielders as they flailed ineffectually at the spectres attacking them.
Bernhardt risked a glance behind him, on the verge of making a break for it. More of the scrawny things were emerging from the graves to their rear, cutting off any chance of escape. The closest one floated towards the big man’s chest, rictus jaws agape.
‘Drop!’ came a cry from atop the Luminark.
To their credit every one of the surviving Stirlanders remembered to fall the ground, eyes covered. There was a sudden flare of light that curved around in a blistering circle, the heat of its passage burning away the mist and the gheists with it. Bernhardt could feel it crackle overhead, a wash of heat and light that reverberated inside him. He risked a glance upward. Every time the burning flare touched a gheist the damned thing would crackle and disappear with a whiff of brimstone.
A shocked silence descended as the Luminark completed its circuit.
One by one the surviving militiamen rose to their feet, eyes blinking and mouths open. There was no sign of any gheists, no living mists, nothing apart from the Luminark still humming and plinking gently on the path ahead. Sunscryer’s young assistants were applauding politely, the bald old buzzard himself taking a bow at the rear of the Luminark’s lens array.
‘Well swap me for a three-eyed fish,’ muttered Bernhardt. ‘That works pretty good, then.’
‘She is indeed most efficacious,’ replied Jovi Sunscryer with a grin. ‘But then I did design her specifically for adaptive banishment in battlefield conditions.’
‘You what?’ said Long Cobb, marching up from the rear with his sword hilt clenched tight. ‘Why d’ya wait for four of us to die before you used the bloody thing?’
‘Ah yes, my apologies. Had to harness as much of Hysh’s energies as possible.’
‘That wizard talk don’t mean nothin’ to me,’ said Cobb, pointing an accusatory finger. ‘Just that you let my mates die. How are we supposed to fight these bloody things?’
‘Aye,’ shouted Janosch Velman, stepping up behind Cobb. ‘How?’
‘With faith,’ said Neftep, pointing at the twin-tailed comet symbol emblazoned on Velman’s stained surcoat.
‘Oh, bloody wonderful,’ said Cobb, throwing his sword point-first into the rocky ground.
The unlikely procession wound onwards into the peaks, Bernhardt cursing himself for volunteering to take the lead. Still, it had been the only way to keep the peace after the battle with the gheists. Cobb and his lot were still sullen at the death of their drinking cronies, and Sunscryer seemed intent on making matters worse. Bloody wizards. So fond of their fancy ways.
Something on the path ahead was bothering Bernhardt, nagging at him even more than the atmosphere of chill sinking into his bones. That was it; there was something wrong with the shadows that pooled around each crypt and stone. They were… well, wriggling. That was the best way he could put it. Moving around. The ground underfoot was becoming stranger, too. Up this high in the peaks there should not really be any mud, nor earth to speak of. Yet the ground was soft and yielding, a bit like… well, a bit like meat. Rotten brown meat.
Bernhardt was jolted from his unsettling thoughts by a call of warning from atop the Luminark. He raised his blades, squinting into the mist. A swarm of glowing orbs were up ahead, like the ghostlights they had seen earlier, but moving in pairs, like eyes. They moved with a strange, flowing motion, up and down, back and forth.
The big man stifled a yawn. He decided to sit down on a nearby gravestone so he could better take stock of the lights dancing up ahead. He puffed out his cheeks as he sat, loosening his belt a bit so
it did not bite into his stomach quite so much. These endless paths, they just stretched upwards forever and ever. The lads obviously felt the same, and had taken a break as well. Some of them were already lying down.
Even the old boy and his apprentices were slumped over on their wagon. Everyone needs a rest now and then, thought Bernhardt. Even a big lad like me. In fact, he deserved to have a little bit of a nap. Just to rest his eyes for a moment. No one would blame him making himself a bit more comfortable. The gravestone had his name on it, after all.
DEIHSTEIN RIDGE
The Vale of Darkness, 2522
The cries of injured men and the dying Strigany horse nomads punctured the silence as the crusaders gathered for the advance once more. Volkmar stood at the head of the gathered Tattersouls, glowering down the hill as von Korden made his way up the path to the top of Deihstein Ridge. The death toll had been low, comparatively, but tending to the wounded had cost them valuable time.
‘And so Ghorst escapes again,’ spat von Korden as he approached, his face twisted in barely suppressed anger.
‘Even a necromancer has allies,’ replied Volkmar, emerging from the lee of the war altar. ‘We cannot afford any more delays. We need to stay on track, find the von Carstein. Your friend Ghorst’s carriage-ruts will likely lead us straight to him.’
‘Unlikely,’ scoffed the witch hunter. ‘The necromancer may be slow but he’s not a fool. Plus a few dozen peasants have taken their wagons along this road since he passed. Tracking Ghorst’s cart won’t be so easy.’
‘In that case, there’s someone you should meet. Come.’
Volkmar turned and walked back to the leeward side of the war altar, von Korden behind him. In the shadow of the towering carriage, Gerhardt the Worm was keeping guard over a slumped form covered head to toe in mud.
The Strigany sharpshooter was bound hand and foot, a hessian rag stuffed in his mouth. His matted hair stuck out in all directions, and his leg was bloody where a spar of bone poked through. He glared fiercely at Volkmar as the old man approached, shouting muffled curses into the cloth.
