[Sigmar 02] - Empire

by Graham McNeill

  Yet the blades of the dead were no less lethal and the dead warriors struck with a power that belied their rotten frames. Darkly-glowing swords cut into the northlanders, and each man that fell died with his head hacked from his shoulders. The swords of the dead warriors flashed with a speed that would have been impossible for a mortal man, each blow precisely weighted and aimed to kill with a single stroke.

  A towering warrior in corroded bronze armour coated in verdigris fought at their centre, the flesh withered to his bones and a light from beyond the grave flickering in the pools of his eye sockets. Armoured in the fashion of hundreds of years ago, Pendrag knew that he faced one of the ancient warrior kings of old, a great leader interred within a hidden barrow beneath the earth, only to be torn from his eternal rest by the magic of the necromancer. The undead king’s sword glimmered with frost, and Pendrag could feel it hunger for his neck.

  Pendrag slammed the Dragon Banner into the ice and hefted his axe in both hands.

  “'You are mine!” Pendrag bellowed, holding the double-bladed axe towards the dead king.

  The mighty king heard the challenge and could no more ignore it than could a living warrior. He dragged his shimmering blade from the chest of his latest victim, and charged Pendrag with a cold fire burning in the sockets of his skull. The sword swept up, a blur of rusted bronze, and Pendrag barely had time to block it, twisting his axe to sweep the blade aside. Pendrag spun around the king and swung his axe at his back, but the blade was blocked as the warrior impossibly brought his sword around to parry the blow.

  The leathery flesh of the ancient king creaked as he smiled in triumph. The jaw gaped and rancid breath, like gases expelled from the depths of a bog, enveloped Pendrag. He stumbled, retching, blinded by the rankness of the grave king’s exhalation. He threw himself back and brought up his axe, knowing that an attack was coming. The king’s sword slammed into his breastplate and smashed him from his feet. Pendrag lost his grip on his axe and skidded across the ice.

  His silver fingers gouged the frozen lake as he hit something jammed in the ice that halted his slide. The ancient king of the dead walked towards him with measured paces, his sword raised to finish him off. Something red flapped above Pendrag’s head, and he looked up to see the Dragon Banner, its bloody fabric shimmering in the light of the dread moon.

  The dead king brought his sword up to take his head, as Pendrag wrenched the banner from the ice, rolling to his knees as the sword swept towards his neck. Pendrag launched himself forward with the bladed finial of the banner pole aimed at the heart of his deathly foe.

  Both weapons struck at the same instant, the silver point of the banner pole plunging through the rusted mail of the ancient king’s chest, and the dread blade slamming into Pendrag’s neck. Bright light exploded before Pendrag’s eyes as the dead king’s sword struck the torque ring that Master Alaric of the dwarfs had given him many years ago. He screamed as the torque seared his skin, fighting to resist the dreadful power of the dead king’s blade.

  The silver point of the banner pole tore from the dead king’s back, swiftly followed by the bloody banner as his weight dragged him deeper onto it. The balefire in his eyes guttered and died, the blood of heroes driving the fell animation from his long dead frame. With no trace of that power remaining, the king’s body fell to pieces, the skeleton and armour clattering to the ice in a rain of bone and rusted bronze.

  Pendrag let out an agonised breath, still holding the banner aloft, and reaching up to drag the deformed torque from his neck. Forged from the star-iron of the dwarfs and shaped with runic hammers, the metal was blisteringly hot. He dropped it to the ice, and it sank into the frozen surface of the lake in a cloud of boiling steam.

  No sooner had the ancient king’s body disintegrated than his skeletal guards began to fall apart. Bound to the service of their liege lord in death as in life, their souls fled the decaying shells in which they were trapped. Pendrag breathed a relieved sigh as the deadly warriors collapsed into piles of bone and iron. His warriors stood amid a billowing dust cloud, surrounded by the headless bodies of their comrades. Every blow the dead had struck had killed one of his warriors.

  Pendrag planted the Dragon Banner, and used the pole to haul himself to his feet.

  On the far left of the battlefield, Myrsa’s warriors pushed onwards, hacking a gruesome path through a host of snapping wolves of rotten flesh and mangy fur. The warriors Myrsa led were rough and ready, yet their courage had seen them willingly follow their Emperor into the jaws of battle.

  In the centre of the battlefield, the White Wolves battered their way onwards, yet Pendrag could still not see Sigmar in their midst.

  The Count’s Guard formed up around the banner he clutched tightly in his silver hand. He saw their expectant faces and, lifting the crimson banner high, he aimed it towards the gleaming walls of the necromancer’s keep. “Onwards!” he cried. “For Sigmar and the empire!”

  Fighting side-by-side, Sigmar and Myrsa bludgeoned a path through the walking dead. The warriors of Middenheim followed their Emperor, wheeling around and pushing hard towards the gateway of the brass fortress. Before the great iron portal, dead warriors clad in the livery of Ulric and Morr awaited them.

  Myrsa smashed another of the dead from its feet and took a moment to recover his breath. These monsters were without skill, but the horror of their very existence drained a man’s spirit and will to fight. It took every ounce of his courage to stand firm in the face of these abominations.

  Beside him, Sigmar fought with a fury and strength that put Myrsa in mind of the greatest heroes of ancient times: legendary warriors such as Ostag the Fell, Udose Ironskull or Crom Firefist. Ghal Maraz swung around the Emperor’s body in a blur, and wherever it struck, a dead thing was destroyed. Its bones would fly apart, shattered into fragments, and the horrid animation in its eyes would be snuffed out.

  Myrsa’s skill with a warhammer was great indeed, but as hard as he fought, he could not match Sigmar’s strength. The speed and precision with which Sigmar wielded Ghal Maraz was truly breathtaking, as though the weapon was a part of him, or had always been a part of him. Myrsa had heard the story of how the Emperor came to bear the hammer of the mountain king, but no dwarf had borne this hammer to such deadly effect. Myrsa knew with utter certainty that whoever had forged Ghal Maraz had done so in the knowledge that Sigmar would be the warrior to bear it.

  Myrsa drove the head of his own hammer through the face of a rotten death mask of a creature wielding a butcher’s cleaver as another came at him with a grain-cutter’s sickle. These were not warriors, these were ordinary men and women enslaved to the will of the necromancer. Each blow he struck fanned the flames of Myrsa’s rage, for these were his people, Middenlanders all, and they deserved a better end than this.

  Myrsa swung his hammer up in readiness to face the next foe, but all that remained standing between them and the keep’s black gateway was a shield wall of warriors in all too familiar tunics. Myrsa let out a low moan as he saw dozens of familiar faces before him, men he had despatched to seek out the source of the evil in the mountains.

  Sigmar stood before the Ulrican templars and Knights of Morr, the dead-faced warriors as unbending and firm in the face of the enemy as they had always been. Myrsa’s soul rebelled to see these fine, honourable warriors so debased.

  He looked over at Sigmar, seeing the same revulsion that men who had fought against such evil were now forced to serve it. His fury overcame the dread he felt at seeing the dead walking, and Myrsa charged the shield-wall with his hammer swinging in wide, crushing sweeps.

  The warriors of Middenland followed him, and he heard their wild yells as they pounded across the ice. He felt Sigmar charging alongside him, and the sheer presence of the Emperor steadied Myrsa’s nerves. The shield wall loomed before them, the dead warriors bracing their shields and lifting their swords over the tops.

  Living and dead clashed in a surging mass of armour and flesh. Myrsa blocked a sword thru
st with the haft of his hammer and swung the head into the shield before him. Sigmar punched a huge hole in their ranks of the dead, and hurled himself into the gap, battering his way into the shield wall with a blend of skill and brute strength.

  “With me!” he shouted. “Break it open!”

  Warriors poured after him, cutting their way into the formation. A normal shield wall would fly apart now, but the dead warriors remained where they were, cutting and stabbing and blocking as though nothing had happened.

  A sword clanged on Myrsa’s armour, slashing up to his helmet and tearing off his cheek guard. Blood sprayed from his chin as the blade caught him, and he spat a tooth.

  He lost sight of Sigmar as the dead warriors closed ranks, pushing back with their shields and stabbing down with their blades. Though they were dead, their armour was still bright and their swords were still sharp. The ice was sticky with blood and entrails, fresh and rotten, and screams of pain echoed from the sides of the crater as men were killed by warriors who had once sworn to stand beside them.

  Myrsa blocked a clumsy sword thrust and swung his hammer in an upward arc, tearing the shield—and the arm that bore it—from the dead warrior who carried it. He lifted his hammer high to finish the job, but his jaw dropped open and the blow never landed as he saw the face before him.

  “Kristof?” he said, seeing the face of his sword-brother from before he had sworn the oath of the Warrior Eternal. Together they had fought greenskins in the Middle Mountains and Norsii raiders on the coast, and they had cleared whole swathes of the forest of hideous beast creatures. Kristof had saved his life on dozens of occasions, and Myrsa had repaid that debt many times. He had known there was a chance he would have to face his sword-brother on this march, but he had held out hope that Kristof would not have been among the risen dead.

  He lowered his hammer.

  “My sword-brother… What have they done to you?” he said.

  Kristof’s sword lanced out in answer, a blade that Myrsa himself had presented to him. He tried to dodge aside, but memories of his lost friend cost him dearly. The blade hammered home just below the breastplate, and mail links snapped as the north-forged iron plunged into his stomach. Myrsa cried out, feeling cold fire spread out from the wound, such that he felt as though he had been stabbed with a shard of winter.

  He dropped to his knees, and cried out as the sword was torn from the wound. He looked up at the man with whom he had sworn eternal brotherhood, seeing that the sunken orbs of Kristof’s eyes held no memory of him.

  The pain of his wound faded, and Myrsa watched as the blade swept up and then down, moving as though in a dream. Metal flashed, and he heard a thunderous ring of metal on metal as a hammer of magnificent workmanship intercepted Kristof’s blade. The hammer twisted the sword aside, and its wielder smashed the end of the haft into his former sword-brother’s face. Decaying skull matter broke apart, and the hammer’s reverse stroke shattered Kristof’s ribcage to cleave his body in two.

  Myrsa felt strong hands dragging him back, and saw Sigmar looking down at him with fearful eyes. The pain of his wound returned with a savage vengeance, and he cried out as he saw that his lap was soaked in warm blood.

  “Take him!” ordered Sigmar, lying him down on the ice and shouting at some people that Myrsa could not see. Warriors of Middenheim knelt beside him, pulling open his armour and pressing their hands against his wound. The pain was indescribable, but was fading with each passing moment.

  The clouds were dark and purple, split by crackling lightning, and Myrsa thought that it would be a shame to die with such an ugly sky looking down. Sigmar loomed above him, his face creased with lines of terrible fear.

  The Emperor tore something from around his neck and pressed it into his hands. Myrsa craned his neck and saw that it was a bronze pendant, carved in the image of a gateway.

  “Hold to this, Myrsa,” said Sigmar.

  “Morr’s gateway,” he whispered. “Then it’s my time? I’m dying?”

  “No,” promised Sigmar, though he flinched at Myrsa’s words. “You will live. My father gave it to me when death hovered near and it kept me safe. It will do the same for you.”

  Sigmar nodded to the men behind him. “Do not let him die, no matter what occurs!”

  Myrsa lifted the bronze pendant to his heart as Sigmar turned back to the battle.

  Sigmar ran for the gateway of Brass Keep. Ragged bands of warriors followed him, all semblance of order gone in the desperate fighting to break the shield-wall. The necromancer’s citadel was breached, but not without cost. Hundreds of Sigmar’s men were wounded, and even if he could defeat Morath, many would not survive to reach Middenheim.

  This thought spurred Sigmar to greater speed, and he emerged from the darkened gateway into a cobbled plaza in the midst of the ancient keep. Within the walls, he saw that Brass Keep was no more real than the manufactured city beneath the ice. Like that drowned city, the keep was little more than a shimmering artifice created by Morath, a fiction to recall past glories and ancient triumphs.

  The walls were simply walls, bereft of ramparts or stairs, and the towers were simply columns of stone without any means of accessing them. What buildings there were in the courtyard were simply ruined shells, little more than rubble and decay. Perhaps there had once been a mountain fortress here, but it had long since been forgotten by the race of men.

  The only structure of any reality within the fortress was the tower fashioned from glistening, pearlescent stone. The pinnacle of the tower was haloed with dark lightning, the withering light from the necromancer’s staff bathing the underside of the clouds with a demented, sickly aura. A spectral mist oozed from a skull-wreathed archway at the base of the tower, and hideous shapes writhed in its depths, howling souls bound to Morath’s evil.

  Sigmar ran towards the tower, and the warriors of the Fauschlag Rock came with him, their swords bright and their hearts hungry for vengeance on the hated necromancer. The mist twitched and danced as the spirits felt the lash of their master’s will, and they streaked across the ice towards Sigmar’s warriors like glittering comets.

  Streamers of light surrounded them, and Sigmar saw they were the spirits of ghostly women, flying through the air as though moving underwater. They were beautiful, and he lowered his hammer, loath to strike out at a woman, even a ghostly one.

  Then their jaws opened wide and they screamed.

  Their dreadful wailing tore into Sigmar’s soul with talons of fire. He dropped to his knees and Ghal Maraz fell as his hands flew to his ears to block the agonising sound. One of the she-creatures hovered in the air before him, robed in grave shrouds that swirled around its emaciated body with a life of their own. Its beauty sloughed from its remarkable face to reveal a fleshless skull with eyes that blazed with bitter hatred. A long mane of spinelike hair billowed behind it, and Sigmar instantly knew that these were not victims of Morath at all, but creatures of evil.

  They shrieked around the men of the empire, wailing in torment, seeking to wreak a measure of their eternal suffering upon the living. Ghostly claws ripped open armour, and shrieking laments cut deeper than any blade. Some men went mad with fear and fled back through the gateway, while others dropped down dead, their faces twisted into rictus masks of terror by nightmares only they could see.

  Sigmar’s mind filled with visions of lying beneath the earth with worms feeding on the diseased meat of his body. He cried out as he saw Ravenna, her once beautiful features ravaged by the creatures of the earth, her flesh bloated and rotten, blue and waxy as the world reclaimed her.

  Tears streamed down his face and his heart thudded against his chest in terror. The pain in his head was beyond measure and he could feel his soul being prised from his mortal flesh with every shrieking wail.

  Then he heard something else, a sound that spoke to his spirit and cut through the unnatural fear of these monstrous women. It was a sound of the wild, a sound that represented the core of who he was and everything for which he s
tood. It was the sound of the empire and its patron.

  It was the sound of wolves.

  Sigmar twisted his head towards the sound to see a host of warriors pouring through the gateway: a mass of Pendrag’s Count’s Guard and Redwane’s White Wolves. Armoured in silver and red, their wolfskin pelts and the Dragon Banner billowed as though they marched through a winter storm. Their wild hair was unbound, and each man howled with all the ferocity he could muster. Their wolf howls were like the pack of Ulric, and Sigmar saw his friends leading these brave men with a hammer and sword, hewing the dead with every stroke.

  Freed from the awful, soul-shredding agony of the witches’ shrieks, Sigmar bellowed in rage. The women howled again, but they had no power over the men of the empire, for faith in Ulric had armoured their souls.

  Pendrag ran towards him.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “No,” said Sigmar, pushing himself upright and forcing the visions of death from his mind.

  “Here,” said Redwane, holding out Ghal Maraz. “You dropped this.”

  Sigmar took the warhammer, feeling a strange, jealous stab of power surge up his arm as he turned his gaze upon Morath’s tower. The spirit-haunted mist was dispersing, as though blown by a strong wind, and the skull-wreathed archway yawned like the deepest cave in the rock of the earth. Only death awaited in such a place, and Sigmar felt his innards clench at the thought of venturing within.

  Monstrous laughter boomed from above, and Sigmar’s resolve hardened like dwarf-forged iron. He turned to his warriors and saw that same resolve in every face.

  “Men of the empire, today a necromancer dies,” he snarled.

  ——

  A Warning Unheeded