How could such a devout Sigmarite commit such filth to vellum and in so doing cast such untruth in stone? How could such a great man fall so far? The irony was not lost on the priest, given that Wilhelm had plunged from the battlements of Altdorf locked in the Vampire Count’s deadly embrace. Death was not averse to irony.
Kurt refused to believe the story unfolding within the diary.
He hurled the book across the floor, the pages spreading like wings as they hit the black iron dogs of the open fire. One of the pages blackened and burned. For a moment he thought about leaving the book there and letting Wilhelm’s confession be consumed by the hungry flames, but only for a moment. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be responsible for the death of history. The words, that spidery scrawl, were all that remained of Wilhelm’s fatal encounter with the first Vampire Count. Somewhere in there, surely, was the key that would set them free. Vlad had fallen, so too would his vile progeny.
“No, no, no, no.”
He slapped out the first wisps of black smoke as they smouldered through the ancient leather.
He couldn’t let the book burn.
And yet he couldn’t move beyond the confession, the lie, that Sig-mar’s hand had been nowhere near the dank crypts while a sick old man prayed for a miracle.
“You want me to believe that it wasn’t Sigmar who came down?” He made the sign of the hammer across his chest reflexively. “You want to believe it wasn’t Sigmar who granted you the strength to battle, despite the sickness eating away at your flesh? You want me to believe that it was a vampire that delivered to us salvation? God help me!” Spittle frothed at his quivering lips as he threw his arms up in anger and despair. He spun around, lashing out at the oil lamp on the table, sending it crashing across the floor. Blue flame spread virulently across the flagstones. He watched the flames dance, allowing them to burn themselves out.
He tore out a single sheaf of vellum from the binding of the unholy book, crumpled it and threw it into the fireplace. For a moment it looked as though the page would resist the teeth of the fire, immune to its heat, but then it blackened and shrivelled, and finally burst into all-consuming flame, taking its lies with it. He tore another handful of pages from the book and raised his arm as though to hurl them into the fire, but he let them slip through his fingers and fall at his feet.
Exhausted, he sank back into his chair, staring at the ancient diary.
“What am I supposed to do? What do you want from me? What am I to do when the progeny of unfettered evil bears down upon us and there’s no thief to steal us a victory? Am I to fall upon my knees and beg for mercy from a creature that knows no such thing? Am I to fall upon my knees and pray to a god who abandoned us before? Am I to hurl myself from the spire and fall upon the pikes of their advance? I don’t know what I am supposed to do.” That was the truth. He leaned forwards, drawing closer to the book. “What is the point in prayer when I am praying to a lie?”
Fat tears of frustration broke and rolled down his cheeks, falling onto the scattered pages of the old priest’s confession.
A knock at the door dragged him from his melancholy.
“Come,” he said, looking up.
The heavy door swung open and a young messenger entered, wearing the colours of Stirland. The grime of the road was beaten deep into his features.
“What is it, boy?”
The messenger reached into his satchel and withdrew a missive bearing the red wax seal of von Kristallbach. He handed it to the old man, eager to show that he had not broken the seal. Kurt took a knife from the table, still wet from where it had been slicing the flesh of an apricot. He slipped the blade beneath the seal and cut it loose. He teased the single sheet of parchment out of the envelope and brought it over to the light.
He read the single line with weary eyes and felt the hand of Sigmar rest upon his shoulder.
“What is it, sir?” the messenger asked, even though it wasn’t his place.
A glimmer of a smile touched the Grand Theogonist’s thin lips. “It is salvation, my boy, salvation.”
He read the single line of text again: What can be bound can be unbound.
The Grand Theogonist swept purposefully through the dark halls of the cathedral and across the courtyard, acolytes swarming around him, one handing him his cloak, another trying to impress upon him that perhaps there were other options.
“Perhaps the priests of Taal have another copy of the book, your grace?”
Kurt held out his arms for the acolyte to dress him even as he argued.
“There are no other copies of the nine books of Nagash.”
“Are you sure, your grace?”
“Positive. The only known copies were destroyed here, on this very soil two centuries ago. Where are my horses?”
“They’re in the courtyard, your grace.”
Kurt spun on his heel and marched out into the snow-filled air, saying, “I ride for the libraries of Arenburg. There, perhaps, we might find something. The scribes are far more knowledgeable than I.”
“You do yourself a disservice, your grace. Your knowledge and our resources here are unrivalled.”
He reached the horse.
“Were not books taken to the scholars at Middenheim or the scholars of Nuln? Not that it matters. You’d never make it through. Listen to them, your grace. They’re here.”
Ignoring the acolyte’s warning Kurt said, “No, no, no, young Kristoff. The books were burned in pyres. The priests gathered them, drenched them in oil and sacrificed them to the fires.”
He swung himself up onto the horse.
In the distance they heard the screams of retreat as people fled from the undead scourge. Thousands of rusty swords clanged and hammered, and beat against shields conjuring thunder that boomed and rolled across the great city. The dead were encircling the city walls like a noose around her delicate neck.
“Here… under our very feet, are the ashes of those books.” Kurt glanced up in the direction of his room, the dance of flame on the burning confession still playing out across his mind’s eye. Something lurked in the shadows, tantalisingly close. The pyres were here,” he repeated emphatically, “here.” The letters on the illuminated page had been in different inks. When one had touched the flame, he recalled the way that they had flared on ignition. For one brief moment he had been presented with the answer. Only now did he see it. What’s beneath our feet, Kristoff?”
“The ashes?” the young acolyte asked, a little bewildered.
“No, Kristoff, the catacombs’ That was it. That was what he had seen in the burning paper, only he hadn’t recognised it for what it was; he’d been too busy feeling angry with his god. There were no answers at Arenburg. They were here, buried deep. Like all true secrets, the words of the Liber Mortis had been lost for so long that they had become legend, and legends were stories, and stories were make believe… only, they weren’t, of course. For every lie there was a grain of truth.
He didn’t wait for the acolytes to follow. He dismounted and swept across the courtyard oblivious to the snow, through the majestic double doors into the cathedral, and down into the catacombs. His footsteps rang out hollowly, echoing up and down the dark passages. He snatched up a flaming torch and plunged deeper into the secret places of the house of worship. Light danced off the carvings lining the rows of ornate priestly sarcophagi. He walked slowly down the line, shadows dancing all around him. The musty smell of cold damp stone filled his nostrils. He heard scuttling—rats hugging the walls.
He cast about left and right, looking for something to call to him. He wasn’t certain what he was looking for, but he had renewed faith—it would present itself to him. Here was the history of the priesthood laid bare, his forebears in stately repose, guardian swordsmen hefting their blades aloft in exultation to Sigmar.
All, that was, except one, in a dark recess further down the hall.
The stone swordsman’s blade stabbed down into the lid of the sarcophagus of a child’s tomb at its f
eet, as though guarding against some infernal evil.
The other sarcophagi bore the names of those interred, but this one bore two simple couplets, engraved into the facade of the tomb. He held the torch closer so that he could better read them. Child of Death, Free of Death.
He knew the inscription well. He had always thought it such a sad one, but now, reading those words again, he began to unravel the secret hidden in plain sight. Child of Death, Free of Death.
In the old scholar’s tongue the couplets meant the same thing: Liber Mortis.
The same word for child and free had a third meaning.
Liber also meant book.
Liber Mortis: the book of the dead.
A chill shivered down the ladder of his spine.
How many times had he, and others, passed the tomb without a second thought? They had chosen to hide one of the most repellent artefacts of the undead nation beneath the holiest of holies. All that it needed was someone with the eyes to see beyond the simplicity of the message. He made the sign of the hammer again, uttering a soft prayer to his lord.
He was not alone.
Anxious footsteps echoed down the stairs towards him.
“Your grace? Are you all right?”
Kurt gripped the lid of the sarcophagus and leaned his back into it, heaving with all of his might. “Come!” He called. “Come help me!”
The acolytes rushed to his aid, throwing their combined strength into the task, gradually prising the stone plinth from its resting place and smashing it to the ground. Holding their torches aloft, they gathered around the open tomb as the grand theogonist rummaged around inside.
There was no body.
He lifted out the unholy manuscript and held it at arms length, already feeling its insidious evil worming its way into his heart.
“Come! Sometimes it takes evil to fight evil. Let the wretched carry out burdens and squabble amongst themselves. Sigmar is with us!”
“Sigmar is with us!” they repeated.
Mannfred stood beneath the imposing walls of Altdorf and surveyed all that he had wrought. He was the wrack and ruin of mankind.
He had not expected the seeds of the fear he had sown to be so fruitful.
The living had fled.
Chill winds swept along the empty battlements, rattling the unlit braziers at each abandoned sentry post. Where normally the flames would be lit to mark the beginning of man’s domain the braziers remained unlit, testament that death had encroached beyond the humanity’s defences. The once flaming braziers that stood watch over the city illuminating its night had fallen into darkness. Their fires had burned out with no one there to tend them, the embers long since dead and their rattling bronze wailed in the night, beaten by the winds without mercy.
Mannfred roared with laughter, turning around to his troops, raising his fist. “Now they cower! Finally they heed the lessons taught by our kith and kin! Altdorf is ours!”
Adolphus Krieger stepped up beside him, a finger to his lips as he hushed the whole army, even his leader. A slow, cold smile spread across his lips as the lone cry of a baby echoed from the narrow streets behind the high walls and out across the horde. Delicious victims waited for him.
From out of the darkness a lone black bird descended. It swept low, settling on Mannfred’s broad shoulder. The Vampire Count swatted it away, but the bird would not be cowed. It bit a chunk out of the side of his face, drawing blood, and in that moment, a name rose in Mannfred’s mind, as though he had been touched by another remote force, one other than the slumbering malevolence he had unearthed deep in the Lands of the Dead.
“Finreir,” he said, tasting the name. A face flowered within his mind’s eye.
“What are you talking about?”
Mannfred reacted quicker this time, snatching the crow from his shoulder. He snapped its neck and threw it to the ground.
“Nothing,” he replied.
“What are we waiting for?” Krieger muttered.
“We are not waiting, we are savouring the moment,” said Mannfred. “Where my sire failed, I have risen to best them all. It is I, Mannfred, who stands before the terrified city. It is I, Mannfred, who will drink on the blood of Altdorf s finest. It is I, Mannfred, who will claim this greatest of prizes. This is my destiny!” His words carried out over the dead, his voice spiralling in its intensity whipping the hordes into a frenzy of bloodlust. It was no natural lust. The sheer power of Mannfred’s words imbued the ranks of the dead with his own hunger. The ghouls panted and salivated, goaded on beyond reason by the mere promise of meat. “Now, we break open this rotten carcass. It is time for us to feed!” He launched his sword at the city gates to manic cheers from the animate cadavers.
They surged forwards throwing themselves at the gate, trampling one another underfoot in their lust to be the first to breech the wall.
Mannfred stood in the centre of it.
This was his moment of triumph, the breaking of humanity.
Then, high on the walls, he saw a lone figure wrapped in holy vestments, battling against the elements. It was almost comic. One man, no matter how holy, couldn’t hope to stand against the might of the vampire nation. Mannfred smiled, waiting for the fool to be torn limb from limb by his wretched horde.
Unperturbed the figure strode to the very centre of the battlements, showing no fear.
He reached into his vestments and produced, not a shield nor a sword but a book.
“What’s this fool doing?” Adolphus Krieger asked. Then his face split into a manic grin. “He’s going to sing for us!” The notion delighted the vampire.
The voice that came down from the battlements was not miraculous or musical. The intonation was flat, emotionless, but somehow the words carried.
Mannfred recoiled in horror, recognising the arcane tongue immediately.
“It cannot be,” he said in disbelief.
Suddenly the ground quaked beneath his feet. The high walls trembled and the rumble of the storm took substance. The rhythmic beating of the undead’s shields faltered before the might of holy wrath. Without warning, lightning cleaved the sky, forks spearing down before the battlements. The blistering maelstrom swarmed around the priest. One by one, the braziers at the guard’s posts exploded into flame, the detonations shooting pillars of fire up into the heavens.
In desperation, Mannfred screamed at his armies, “Bring me his head!”
Krieger leapt to the attack, running for the priest. On his sixth step his body shimmered into vapour and from the smoke a huge black bat took flight, its wings skimming over the upturned heads of the skeletal army, and ploughed through the blizzard remorselessly.
Another line tore from the priest’s mouth as the Great Spell of Unbinding took shape, its echo so powerful that Krieger’s ears began to bleed. The bat slammed into the wall and tumbled to the ground, its wings ripped by bone and rusted armour as the mindless dead fell upon it.
This was not the moment of glory Mannfred had believed was his by right.
Krieger’s body took shape at the foot of the mighty walls, battered and bruised, and bloodied beyond all recognition. The vampire roared his anger and frustration, but undeterred continued to scale the backs of the skeletal army as they ramped up against the stone walls.
The Grand Theogonist turned the page to read the final line of the incantation. His trembling lips tripped over the final words, sheer exhaustion consuming his fragile body. He had done all that he could do, more. His knees buckled and the book tumbled from his fingers and fell, pages torn apart by the gale. The skeletal army arrived atop the battlements and reached out to grasp him.
Kurt closed his eyes and offered himself up to the mercy of Sigmar. It was out of his hands now.
As Krieger climbed higher, scrambling against the bones of his makeshift ladder, his foot suddenly gave way, ploughing into the disintegrating chest cavity of a dead foot soldier. He struggled to pull his foot free and regain some kind of balance, but wherever he lashed out he found nothing
but crumbling bone. The dissolution set in. One by one the soldiers of the undead army fragmented, collapsing in on themselves as whatever magic bound them to this hellish form degenerated.
All around Mannfred skulls rolled off shoulders and swords and sword arms clattered to the ground in tainted heaps. The chiming of desiccated muscles and stringy sinew snapping rang out across the battlefield as mass atrophy took hold.
Mannfred stood, despairing at the absolute collapse of his forces.
Piles of bones gathered at his feet, rapidly disappearing beneath flurries of fresh snow. The glowing torches of Altdorf looked down upon him in mocking disdain. The living had found themselves an unlikely hero, not a man of the sword, but a man of the cloth. Because of one man’s faith, the dead were forced to flee.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Small Matter of Revenge
Drakenhof Castle, Sylvania
Kallad Stormwarden broke his vow.
He hoped Grimnir would forgive him.
He led his dwarf brethren through the dark crags and into the belly of the Worlds Edge. The reality of being back in the tunnels was considerably less troubling than the fear he had allowed to fester. Cahgur suggested that they held off from lighting the torches until they were deep beneath the mountain so as not to risk smoke or light signalling their arrival to the unsuspecting world above. Kallad agreed, although the ground seemed slick and treacherous underfoot. The ragged sounds of his own breath filled his ears, but something seemed different.
The return of the echo was muted.
They pushed on, deeper into the darkness.
They became increasingly aware that some quality within the tunnels had changed. The air thickened with moisture. It wasn’t damp. It was hot.
Belamir huddled in close with Kallad and Valarik.
“I can’t stand this dark,” Belamir cursed. “I’m gonna end up on my arse!”
“Strike a flint, fer Grimnir’s sake and let’s get some light in here.”
The rasp of the flint being sparked was followed by the sudden bluish flare and the drawing of flame. Valarik ignited the tinder and in turn a torch. The dwarfs squinted against the brightness, waiting for their eyes to adjust. Only then were they able to fully comprehend the horror unfolding before them.
[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution Page 25
