by Phil Kelly
‘Sigmar protects!’ bellowed Volkmar, slamming his warhammer’s head against the metallic frame of the pulpit. The rain turned golden around the Tattersouls for a second, and the curse was lifted, though many survivors were already bent double under the sudden weight of years.
The undead battle line was less than fifty feet away now. The moans of the undead that stalked through the dissipating mist could be heard even above the thunder. Now was the time, thought Volkmar. They could wait no longer.
Volkmar sounded the Horn of Sigismund once more. Behind him, a brace of rockets huffed into the air, fuses crackling. With a tremendous triple bang the artillery volley detonated high above the battlefield, the burning light of its explosions strobing against the slick black brickwork of Castle Sternieste. Their illumination remained as bright as the first detonation as the phosphoric rockets drifted downwards on wide canopies of silk. The luminescence was so bright that it lit the battlefield as clear as a summer day.
‘Sigmar!’ shouted Volkmar, cracking the war altar’s reins as hard as he could and sending the carriage surging forward. Answering his war cry, the entire line of crusaders charged headlong into the wall of undeath coming towards them. The war altar crashed bodily through a mass of skeletal swordsmen, crushing half a dozen to splinters in a second. Volkmar lashed out at skulls and bony wrists below him as the unliving warriors jabbed upward at him ineffectually. To his left the Tattersouls flung themselves into the fray, shattering yet more skeletons with their swinging flails. With the battlefield bright and the fires of righteous ire in their veins, the Sigmarites were cutting down corpses with every strike.
On the right flank, the cavalry thundered around the edge of a cluster of large hillocks to come out at full gallop. They slammed hard into the mass of bodies that boiled out of the lee of the castle, corpse-puppets sent to keep the horsemen from his main battle line. A dozen lances struck home into mouldering torsos, warhorses stamping their hard iron hooves into any that evaded them. Demigryphs screeched as they clawed and slashed and bit, flinging dead meat in all directions. Atop the eagle-headed beasts, Weissmund’s Altdorf Gryphites swung their cavalry halberds in great arcs, bisecting cadavers in twos and threes.
Too soon, thought Volkmar hopelessly. The fools had been stalled too soon.
Captain Weissmund’s body was ripped into two flailing halves as Mannfred burst out of the shadows and rode past, shearing his sword and his hooked blade through the Gryphite’s abdomen in a spray of blood. The Reiksguard knight riding next to him drew his sword and turned with a shout, but the vampire’s deathless warhorse swung its heavy skull sidelong into the rider with a clang, unseating him. Mannfred’s blade took another Gryphite’s head from his neck, the strike so powerful it sheared through without slowing and plunged deep into the throat of its steed. The vampire screeched in ecstasy as hot blood pumped out in great sprays, his ridged black armour stained as crimson as his maw. Lupio Blaze charged at full gallop towards him, lance lowered and a prayer to Myrmidia on his lips. His weapon’s tip hit only shadow as Mannfred dissolved into nothingness with a dark and mocking laugh.
Thunder boomed and a streak of green lightning shot out of the clouds, grounding on the highest of Castle Sternieste’s open towers. The crackling green bolt did not vanish away, but instead spread into eight smaller fingers; a distorted claw of energy with one fingertip dancing on each of the tower’s circle of pillars.
Out from the clouds above came the most terrifying thing Volkmar had ever seen.
Borne upon a palanquin of spectres was an artefact of such eldritch evil it assaulted the mind. Its open lead casket presented the terror of the relic inside to the world. The souls of ancient queens whirled around it, their screams forming a jarring discord that sawed on every nerve at once. The choking stink of mass graves assaulted the nostrils of the Empire line, forcing even Volkmar to gag painfully in disgust. But it was the vision blazing within the reliquary’s ironbone cage that offended the senses most of all.
At the heart of the reliquary was a giant taloned hand of purest black, the evil sight clutching at the eyeballs of every living creature that witnessed it. Something about the hand beckoned to Volkmar, making his soul feel filthy and used. A prayer spilled reflexively from the Sigmarite’s lips, and the feeling ebbed away.
The militiamen below the reliquary were not so fortunate. As the spectres that bore the palanquin brought their charge lower and lower, the claw’s fell energies stripped away the skin, then the muscles, then the tendons of the men underneath it until nothing was left but blood-slicked bone. The gory skeletons shivered and danced before plunging their bony claws into those of their panicked comrades that milled around them or curled into foetal balls.
Up on the hillock, the wizards of the Light Order were screaming their chanted magicks against the storm. Steam smoked from the Luminark’s lenses as lances of energy stabbed out again and again at the fleshless horrors stalking towards it. As the reliquary hovered low above the battlefield, the ironwork frame of the Luminark’s lens cannon juddered slowly round to point at it instead, the old man at the helm barking ancient syllables and pointing at the casket within.
A flash of white caught Volkmar’s eye through the storm as a hideous female gheist appeared next to the Luminark’s chanting acolytes. It cupped its hands to the youngest wizard’s ears for a second. The apprentice blanched and toppled forwards, dead as a rock. With his demise the wizards’ tripartite chant faltered and tumbled to a halt.
Sunscryer cried out in agony as the failed ritual backfired. A moment later he burst into a pillar of white flame so tall it nearly reached the clouds above. Every glass lens in the Luminark shattered at once, its jagged shards raining down onto the screaming acolyte clutching the dead body of his friend on the riding plate below. The human torch that had been Jovi Sunscryer fell burning from the lens deck into the mud with a searing hiss.
Above him, the ghostly palanquin hovered in close, its tortured gheists shrieking in dark joy as they pointed at the reeling figure sizzling in the muck. A cannonball ploughed through their midst, tearing away a few scraps of ectoplasm but slowing them not in the least. The surviving acolyte huddled on the riding plate of the Luminark cried out wordlessly in fear, his skin aging rapidly as the hellish engine grew closer.
Suddenly a bright flare of light burst out from Sunscryer’s blackened robes, coalescing to form the upper body of a glowing guardian angel. The giant figure flew upwards towards the reliquary, seizing its ironbone gates and wrestling it backwards whilst the palanquin’s ghostly forms shrieked and clawed at its insubstantial flesh.
Volkmar tore his gaze away and shoved a crawling skeleton away from his lectern with the end of his warhammer. Though half a dozen of the ghastly warriors were clambering up the war altar’s carriage towards him now, his attention was irresistibly drawn back to the spectacle unfolding atop the hillock. Whilst the luminescent figure was being torn apart by the palanquin’s gheists, a trio of ragged zealots had clambered up the chassis of the shattered Luminark. Picking out daggers of wyrdglass with bloodied hands and clasping them between their teeth, the Tattersouls leapt up to grab onto the reliquary’s plinth as it hovered above its prey.
Two of the flagellants missed and went flailing down into the skeletons advancing towards them, but Gerhardt the Worm managed to catch an ironbone strut and swing himself up onto the stonework. Gheists plunged through him again and again, wreathing him with unnatural green flame, but the zealot was too deep in his mania to care. He laughed as his flesh crackled and burned, stabbing his wyrdglass shard into the gaunt guardian that hunched protectively over the evil book. The smell of burned meat filled the air as Gerhardt flung his arms around the cowering corpsemaster, the zealot’s triumphant scream echoing over the rumble of the storm as emerald fires turned them both to ash.
Though Volkmar and his men were slaughtering the clumsy corpse-puppets wherever they appeared, the unclean things always staggered back to their feet and continued the
fight a few moments later. Exertion burned in the Grand Theogonist’s arms as he swung his hammer again and again into the clacking skeletons below him. His men were crying out with effort instead of anger now, hacking their heavy blades again and again into dead flesh until their shoulders slumped and their voices gave out. Yet somehow the battle line held.
A cry came from the rear ranks of the Sigmar’s Sons, and Volkmar chanced a glance behind their lines. His eyes widened as he beheld dozens of ancient, armoured figures stalk out of the cairn hillocks with rusted bronze blades held high. Behind them mouldering horsemen were emerging through the mist, galloping eastwards at some unspoken command. The ancient tribe formed up on the skeletal king at their centre with uncanny speed and charged, ploughing into the rear of the Talabheimers and their Stirland allies with blades raised.
Eben Swaft bullied his way through the Talabheimer ranks to the rear of his shouting troops, elbowing and stabbing his way past the front rank of armoured skeletons to plunge his blade right into the ancient king’s ribcage. Once, twice, three times he jabbed with a fencer’s grace. The wight merely stared dolefully at him with its empty eyes before bringing its pitted blade down in a glowing arc. Thunder boomed above them as it cut straight through Swaft’s deft parry and sheared off the duellist’s head and right arm in a single blow.
The snap of wings sounded, and Volkmar whipped his head around once more to see three bat-like figures drop from their roost underneath a shattered tower. The Devils of Swartzhafen, screeching as they glided low towards him. A skeletal claw clutched at his ankle from the skeletons milling below, and he stamped down hard. By the time he looked back up, the winged vargheists were upon him, kicking him to the floor with their taloned feet. They were huge, filling his vision with their drooling, pointed faces and membranous wings. One of them reached out towards his sacred warhammer and wrenched it out of his grip before dropping it as if it were on fire.
Kaslain fell upon the wing-devils from above, leaping down from his perch atop the Golden Griffon to bring the Reikhammer down in a two-handed strike. The ancient warhammer hit one of the hulking, bat-like creatures right in the nape of the neck, shattering every bone in its torso and pulping it against the altar’s iron balustrade. Volkmar kicked its remains away into the skeletons below. At the same time its pack-mate lunged, biting into Kaslain’s face with a sickening crunch. Bellowing the Prayer Exalt, Volkmar summoned all of his rage into a white-hot ball and blasted the beast backwards, burning the beast’s flesh with the flames of his faith. It screeched and released the arch lector, Kaslain toppling backwards like a felled oak as the wing-devil lurched away on smouldering wings.
Suddenly Volkmar felt something sink into the back of his head, and everything went dark.
In the shadow of an empty cairn, Ghorst stood up to his full height atop his grisly carriage. Two points of burning black energy appeared in his eyes.
‘One last time, then, Alberich von Korden,’ croaked the necromancer.
Von Korden grabbed a Stirlander militiaman’s corpse and hefted it in front of him as twin bolts of darkness crackled out from the necromancer’s eyes, blasting the impromptu shield into black wisps of smoke. With his pistols already spent and with no time to reload, the witch hunter picked up a disembodied arm from the ground and sent it spiralling towards the necromancer’s head. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, von Korden darted to the right as the cadaverous cart lurched towards him, swinging himself up into the morass of decomposing bodies held in the upturned ribcage of its chassis. Dead hands clutched at his legs, drawing blood with their bony grip, but nothing could shake the hunter’s focus.
Ghorst spat black sparks as he began another spell, but von Korden was on top of him before he could finish it. He grabbed the necromancer’s lank hair with both hands and pulled his head down sharply to meet his knee on the way up, crunching teeth and shattering his jaw in a spray of brown blood.
‘No more spells for you, Helman,’ gloated von Korden. Behind him, several of the cart’s passengers clambered up and sank their rotting teeth into his thighs, but the hunter blocked out the pain with an effort of will, pulling out his ivory ring and placing it against his palm. He thrust both hands downward and clamped them over the necromancer’s mouth. ‘My turn, bastard. Be banished!’
Searing light burst out from Ghorst’s eyes, mouth, ears and nose as the energies of the white ring burned him from the inside out. The necromancer spasmed violently, but von Korden held on with grim strength until white cracks appeared across Ghorst’s skin and the magical light burned him away completely.
Underneath von Korden’s feet the cart sloughed away into a compost heap of rotting flesh and bone. Extricating himself, the witch hunter kissed the cameo hanging around his neck, ignoring the grave-filth that covered his gauntlets.
‘That’s for you, Lynn,’ he murmured.
All around von Korden the battle raged on in the lashing rain. On the hillock behind, the Silver Bullets were firing frantically at a hooded gheist that was drifting towards them with its scythe raised. The handgunners’ pinpoint volleys blasted straight through it without effect. Curser Bredt barked a command and the men ripped off the silvered talismans they wore around their necks, reloading and shooting at point-blank range just as the wraith’s hooked blade cut down the first of their number. The gheist wailed and came apart as the blessed bullets burst through it. A heartbeat later a pack of incorporeal horsemen rode through the handgunners’ ranks from behind, their scythes flickering as they claimed soul after soul.
Ahead, the rest of the state troops were struggling hard against the dead rising up from the ground below them as Mannfred incanted his spells. Not only were half-rotten cadavers and corpses standing back up to clutch at the survivors of the grinding melee, but also the bloody-uniformed Talabheimer dead they had called comrades moments before. A sense of desperation seethed in the air, an imminence that drove men to acts of heroism and cowardice in equal measure.
The big man that had led the wizards’ rabble took up a fallen banner-sign from a mound of twitching dead and swung it hard at the vampire count from behind, breaking the goat-emblazoned sign across the back of his bald head. Blood puffed out, but the vampire merely snarled, catching the brawny Stirlander by the scruff of his neck and flinging him onto the lance of the Reiksguard knight that was charging him from the right.
In the lee of the corpse-heap left in Ghorst’s wake, von Korden reloaded his pistol with the last of his silvered shot. The vampire had them outnumbered now – at least three to one, by the look of it. Legs were buckling and sword arms flagging as darkness drew in once more, the Sunmaker’s flare-rockets dampened and then extinguished by the driving rain. With the cavalry committed, the battle of attrition was sliding dramatically in favour of the dead. Green lightning flashed overhead as the screams of pain and the cries of dying men punctuated the rolling thunder. Worse still, Mannfred was at the height of his power.
The witch hunter was readying himself for one last charge when a lambent flood of light rolled out across the battlefield from the west. It spread like running quicksilver, draining into the earth in seemingly random locations. A moment later the earth shook like the fur of a wounded beast.
Suddenly, miraculously, the earth burst open in a hundred different places. This time it was not the dead that emerged, but the buried symbols of the faithful. Stolen sigil-hammers, steel wolf totems of Ulric, Morrite pennies, even brass suns of Myrmidia burst out of their earthy graves to hang at head height across the field, each glowing with raw magical power.
Von Korden gave a shout of triumph. Mannfred’s agents had buried the stolen symbols deep, but not deep enough. His message had been intended for Karl Franz, in truth, but Sunscryer’s plan to convey it to the Colleges of Magic had borne fruit at the critical hour. Clearly, Balthasar Gelt, Supreme Patriarch and master of metalshifting, had heard of their plight and offered his own contribution just in time.
A roar of fierce elation wa
s torn out of the surviving crusaders at the sight of their sacred symbols lifted high. All across the battlefield Mannfred’s incorporeal gheists were blasted into nothingness by the wave of raw faith that poured out across the field. Even the reliquary drew back into the storm clouds, its guardians crying out in unearthly pain.
A surge of vitality bloomed through the crusaders’ ranks at the sign of so much hope made manifest. Swords and axes were raised high once more, tired limbs were reinvigorated and battle-cries found new voice. United in rebellion against the pall of undeath that had threatened to bury them, the crusaders cut down the rotting host one after another until nothing was left but strewn chunks of meat and the stench of death.
Von Korden scanned the battlefield as the surviving crusaders gave thanks to their gods amidst the torn remains of their foes. Slowly his spirits sank, despair filling his heart once more. In the chaos, the vampire Mannfred had made his retreat. Worse yet, the war altar lay on its side, abandoned.
Volkmar was nowhere to be seen.
EPILOGUE
As the battle ground to a sudden halt outside Castle Sternieste, the light in the great open chamber atop its southern tower flickered fitfully. Inside, tree-trunk candles made from human fat spluttered and spat as if disgusted by the robed priest that had been flung into their midst.
A pair of bloodied vargheists paced hungrily around their prize, chattering to each other in their clicking tongue. Even in their dim animalistic minds, they had enough sense not to tread upon the gilded grooves that formed a rough outline of Sylvania upon the chamber’s floor.
As his dazed senses returned to him, Volkmar could feel magical power thrumming through the flagstones he was lying on. He raised his head and struggled blearily to focus. Blood pulsed out of the hole in his bald pate where one of the vargheists had bitten down hard. He dared not touch it, fearing he might feel something soft and spongy beneath his fingertips.
