Bloodsworn

by Nathan Long

  ‘Grand master,’ intoned Kodrescu, pointing the red-gleaming sword at him. ‘Let this combat be proof that the lords of night are greater than your so-called god of the dead. You think he will give you strength. He will not. You think he will protect you from resurrection. He will not. Wolf’s Fang will drink your soul, and your shell will ride with me, rejected by Morr, and–’

  The grand master charged him, slashing strong and sharp and silent. Kodrescu parried barely in time, and took a step back as the knight followed up a with chop at his legs. Ulrika’s skin prickled with sudden hope. Could he really do it? Eternal vengeance or no, she would spare the grand master’s life if he made the loudmouth general eat crow for once.

  It was not to be. Kodrescu recovered and twisted aside with unhurried ease as the grand master made a thrust to his exposed neck, then hacked down and sheared the templar’s silvered blade in two with his crimson one. The grand master dodged back, raising the shattered sword and reaching for the mace that hung at his belt, but Kodrescu was blindingly fast, and chopped down through his clavicle and chest to his heart before he could bring either weapon into position. The dread blade keened like a whimpering dog and glowed bright red in the wound, as if heated on a forge. The grand master sank to his knees, his mouth open in a silent scream of agony. Ulrika blinked as she saw that he had no tongue. It had been cut out long ago.

  ‘Now you see that power is greater than faith,’ said Kodrescu as the dying templar’s eyes bulged in horror and his face drained white. ‘Now you see that the dead are mine, not Morr’s. Welcome to my army, grand master. Your lance will soon be crimson with the blood of your brothers.’

  He twisted the sword in the wound, causing the grand master to jerk with one last spasm of pain, then tore the blade out and laughed as he toppled backwards to the ground. The templar’s wounds bled not a drop. He was as dry as a raisin.

  Kodrescu turned from the corpse and looked around, and Ulrika did too. The battle was nearly over. Out-numbered two to one and pressed from all sides, the templars and the initiates were dying to a man. Only a last knot of Black Guard still fought on, ringed by von Graal and his favourites and dying quickly.

  Kodrescu plunged for them, shoving aside von Graal and the others to reach the front rank. Wolf’s Fang flew everywhere, slicing through armour, bone and flesh as if they were air, and wreathing him in a whirlwind of blood. Von Graal snarled at the intrusion, but regained control of his expression by the time Kodrescu had slain the last templar and raised his sword to his troops.

  Ulrika smiled. Even without her goading, the players already seemed to be playing their parts.

  ‘Well fought, brothers!’ cried the general, heedless of the glares he was reaping. ‘Now, finish the town. We march on the monastery within the hour.’

  Ulrika waited, the black enamelled breastplate of a templar of Morr in her hands, as Stahleker knelt by Rachman, folding his arms over a leafy oak twig. Rachman lay with the rest of the Ostermark dead, his chest caved in by a Black Guard’s axe and his face shattered by the hooves of the horses that had trod on him after he had fallen.

  ‘I’m sorry, captain,’ said Stahleker. ‘I’ll just be a minute. Just have to…’ He broke off, then tried again. ‘Just have to say the words.’

  ‘Take your time, sergeant.’

  Ulrika looked away as Stahleker made the sign of Taal’s horns and began to murmur under his breath. The lancers had gathered at one side of Bruchben’s square and were seeing to their dead and donning the armour of the templars of Morr, while on the far side of the square, Kodrescu, von Graal and the other Blood Knights were feasting on their victims – those templars and town-dwellers who had survived the initial onslaught – and preparing for their assault on the monastery.

  ‘Ride free, brother,’ said Stahleker when he had finished his prayer. ‘I’ll find you on Taal’s veldt.’

  With a sigh, he stood from Rachman’s body and took the front half of the black breastplate from Ulrika, then held it to his chest as she set the back in place and began to pull the straps through the buckles. The back-and-breast was much too big. The templars were huge men, chosen for their size and strength. Men of the Ostermark had Ungol blood in their veins and were consequently smaller and more wiry than their southern cousins.

  ‘Like fighting inside a coffin,’ growled Stahleker as he tried to move his arms in the bulky armour. He glared across the square towards where Kodrescu stood with Lady Celia as Ulrika started to buckle a pauldron to his left shoulder. ‘First into the lion’s den again, for the second time in a night. You wouldn’t want to make your move before he kills me like he killed Rachman?’

  ‘I wish I could, but we’ve no home to return to if we don’t do as von Messinghof bade us. We have to finish the monastery, and we need Kodrescu to do it.’ She started on his right pauldron. ‘But as soon as it is done, look for my signal. I want to strike while he is still celebrating.’

  Stahleker nodded, grim. ‘Aye, captain. We’ll be ready.’

  Across the square, Kodrescu was stepping from Lady Celia and motioning everyone else back. She had entered Bruchben once he had declared it safe, and was now crossing to the centre of the square. Ulrika saw the V-branded girl staring at her from her cage as she stopped near the tree and faced Morrslieb, which hung near the western horizon and had the night sky to itself.

  Stahleker shivered and turned his back as Celia took what looked like a mummified forearm and fist from the folds of her robe and began to croon over it like it was a child. Ulrika, however, could not look away.

  As Celia continued to sing, the fingers of the fist slowly unclenched and then began to flex and curl as if waking up, while scabs of ancient skin flaked away and fluttered to the ground. Celia stroked the limb and the song became a chant, still soft, but insistent, as if she was urging it to some task. The fingers curled again – all but one, which remained pointing like that of an accusing judge.

  Still chanting, Celia raised the limb to the sky and pointed it at the Chaos moon, then all around at the town, and finally down at the ground at her feet, where she began to sweep it around herself in careful strokes. Wherever the finger pointed the grass withered and blackened, and Ulrika saw that some sort of pattern was being drawn on the ground.

  With the completion of each line, a pressure like a coming storm grew heavier, and the night blacker, as if a dark lens was being placed over the sky. Celia’s strokes grew slower too, and her arms began to shake like she was pushing the pointing finger through mud rather than air. Stahleker’s men edged back, eyes wide, and Ulrika felt nausea climbing her throat like a fat worm.

  She had never liked the sensation of magic being done, and this was the greatest spell she had ever witnessed up close – and the vilest. Celia was drawing deep from the dark winds and opening doors into places beyond reality with the drawing of each new stroke. Human screams echoed from nowhere and half-seen beings flickered at her shoulders as she struggled on.

  Still unable to look away, Ulrika saw that the lines of blackened grass were forming an arcane symbol enclosed within the iris of a stylised Nehekharan eye, and Celia was trapping herself in the centre of it. Finally, shaking like a palsy victim, she drew the loop of the iris, and as the seared circle around her was made complete, a silent crack, like thunder felt but not heard, echoed through the town, staggering Ulrika as if the ground had moved under her feet. Stahleker and his men staggered too. Some vomited or buckled at the knees.

  Stahleker pressed his hand to his breastplate and sucked in constricted breaths, but Ulrika, after the initial shock, felt invigorated. Whatever the dark energy Celia was gathering, it was feeding her, giving her strength. It was not a healthy vitality, however, more like a jittery rage. She wanted to howl and kill and had to force herself to keep her claws and fangs sheathed. The scent of Stahleker’s bloody wounds was choking her with thirst.

  In the centre of the eye, Celia
lifted the withered arm over her head and began a new chant, more martial and rhythmic than before, which raised translucent walls of black energy from the blackened lines of the symbol until they formed an irregularly shaped column of darkness around her. When the column was taller than the spreading oak, she pushed out with her palms and the walls began to expand outwards, passing through the tree and other solid objects as if they weren’t there.

  Their caress jolted Ulrika with another surge of the poisonous vitality, and her skin crawled. She growled in her throat. It affected Stahleker and his men in exactly the opposite way, making them shiver and moan with pain, but these were only side effects. The walls’ true purpose was revealed as they began to ripple over the bodies of the dead that Ulrika and the lancers and the rest of Kodrescu’s force had left strewn around the town square.

  At the touch of the dark energy, the corpses began to twitch and jerk, faintly at first, like dreamers caught up in a nightmare, but then the spasms became more pronounced. Their heads snapped about and their limbs flailed as if they were having seizures. A stonecutter’s wife with her guts spilling from her belly flopped onto her back and began clubbing herself in the face with her arms and fists. An old man gnawed the dirt and crawled in circles.

  Stahleker grunted. ‘Taal and Rhya, no!’

  Ulrika looked down and saw that Rachman and the other dead lancers were twitching and writhing along with the rest. The living lancers recoiled in horror.

  Stahleker balled his fists and started towards Celia. ‘Y’eerie bitch! Leave my men–!’

  Ulrika hauled him back, pinning his arms. ‘Don’t,’ she hissed. ‘You’ll spoil our ploy.’

  Stahleker struggled in her grip. ‘No! The counts bought our lives, not our deaths! They won’t have ’em!’

  ‘They won’t!’ agreed Ulrika. ‘Finish them before they rise. Quick.’

  Stahleker’s face contorted and he began to shake. ‘But – but that’s–’

  ‘Would you rather the alternative?’

  With a curse Stahleker tore away from her and drew his sabre, then knelt by Rachman and chopped his head off as tears ran down his cheeks. Taking their cue from him, his men did the same with the other dead, sorrowfully decapitating them, then laying them down again and straightening their limbs.

  Stahleker rose and stood beside Ulrika as they watched the rest of the dead start to lurch to their feet and stagger around, gnashing their teeth and colliding with each other. His face was cold and hard as he wiped the tears from his cheeks.

  ‘We’ll be ready, captain,’ he said as he stared at Kodrescu and Celia. ‘We’ll be ready.’

  The dead templars and initiates, now stripped of their armour, rose up on maimed and broken legs and clawed at the air with arms cut to the bone. The aged priest of Sigmar stumbled out of the temple and crashed into the women and children he’d tried to protect. They careened blindly away from the impact, trailing guts and blood-sodden bed clothes. And as the walls of necromantic power spread to encompass the whole town, more and more dead citizens shambled into the square, drawn by Celia’s siren call. Butchers with their knives, stonemasons with their mattocks and chisels, guards with their halberds and swords, wives and children with kitchen knives and clubs and whatever futile weapon they had been defending themselves with when Stahleker’s men had killed them.

  ‘And all our sins shall come back to haunt us,’ whimpered a lancer as he saw the horde approaching.

  ‘Steady, lad,’ said Stahleker. ‘We saved our own, at least.’

  Finally, after Celia’s chant had gone on for what seemed hours, the torrent of walking dead slowed to a trickle and the necromancer lowered her arms and hung her head, exhausted. The stultifying tension of the spell dissipated and the night grew brighter again. Stahleker and his men drew relieved breaths. Ulrika shook herself, casting off the simmering urge to violence that had filled her since it had begun.

  A slave rushed up to Celia and offered her his arm and his neck. She took both gladly, leaning her weight on him as she drank greedily from his throat, but while she was distracted, her new charges began to drift, and turn towards the living with dead, staring eyes.

  Stahleker cursed and stepped back as some of the undead throng shuffled towards him and his men. ‘First she raises our dead, then she tries to kill our living. Call off your dogs, y’corpse witch!’

  Celia was too lost to hear.

  ‘Take up your armour and retire,’ said Ulrika. ‘I will speak to her.’

  ‘And slit her throat while yer at it,’ said Stahleker.

  ‘Would that I could.’

  Ulrika started towards Celia, then saw some of the zombies pawing at the cage that held the V-branded girl. A tall corpse had caught the bars and was pulling on them while she trembled inside, staring with terrified eyes at the sea of undead around her.

  Ulrika paused, suddenly sickened. There was no hope for this girl. The only innocent in the whole affair, and she had suffered worse than all of the rest. Nor would her suffering end when the zombies brought down the cage and tore her from it. At best, they would eat her alive. At worst, they would obey Kodrescu’s rules and only kill her, allowing Lady Celia to raise her and make her one of them. Even if she escaped, there was little hope for her. With a vampire’s ‘V’ branded on her forehead and what she had seen tonight seared into her mind forever, she would likely be burned at the stake or locked up in a madhouse by the upright citizens of the Empire. That was no life, no life at all.

  Ulrika turned abruptly, and started kicking through the zombies.

  ‘Get away!’ she barked, and slapped at the corpses with the flat of her stolen templar sword. They groaned and stumbled aside, but only to the edges of the burnt grass plot, where they stood slack-jawed, watching the swinging cage like it was a hypnotist’s medallion.

  Ulrika stopped the cage with a hand, then looked at the girl. She cringed back against the bars, as fearful of Ulrika as she was of everything else.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ Ulrika said. ‘I will save you from them. Now, stay back.’

  The girl shrank away even more as Ulrika raised her blade and swung down hard at the rusty lock. It fell away in pieces and Ulrika pulled the door open, then held out her hand.

  The girl remained at the back of the cage, but when Ulrika made no more threatening moves, she edged forwards and let her lift her out and lower her to the ground. She was almost too weak to stand, but at last rose and looked up at Ulrika.

  Ulrika couldn’t meet her gaze. She waved a hand. ‘Go before me, to the west gate. I will protect you.’

  The girl turned and glanced fearfully around at the looming zombies, then looked again over her shoulder.

  Ulrika nodded. ‘Go on.’

  The girl turned back and started for the gate. Ulrika raised her sword and decapitated her before she had taken two steps.

  ‘I’m sorry, little one,’ she said. ‘That is the only protection I can give you. Find peace in Morr’s realm.’

  She stepped over the little headless corpse and started again towards Celia.

  chapter twenty-three

  BLOOD AND BLACK ROSES

  Under the shadow of the trees at the edge of the surrounding forest, Ulrika watched with Kodrescu, von Graal and Lady Celia as Stahleker and his lancers, dressed in the armour of the Black Guard, trotted in double file towards the black stone monastery, which sat on the side of a hill about a half-mile across a cultivated valley through which wound the Werkenau river. The monastery was high-walled and rose up the slope in sections, with the roof of a temple rising above the walls of the bottom section and dormitories and other buildings poking out further up.

  She watched the disguised lancers approach it with some trepidation. What if they were challenged? What if their ill-fitting armour was noticed? She turned to Kodrescu. ‘And if the monks close the gates to them? Do we lay siege after all?
’

  Kodrescu smiled. ‘The servants of Morr never close his gates. It is a stricture of their cult. All must be allowed to enter his temple.’ He motioned to the monastery. ‘Even here, the doors have a gap between them wide enough for a single rider to pass through. If the monks recognise the lancers as impostors, all they can do is defend the gap, and there will be few enough left for that. But they will not see the ruse. They are too arrogant to believe that their brothers could ever lose.’

  Ulrika hid a smirk at that. Kodrescu was certainly an expert on arrogance, but maybe he was right. She hoped so. The lancers had still not recovered from Celia’s enervating spell when they had ridden off. In that condition, they would need every advantage they could get.

  A short while later, she saw their black line start up the twisting road to the monastery gate. A horn blew from the walls and Ulrika tensed, afraid it was some signal that had to be answered, but the lancers rode on without responding, and she saw no sign that the monastery was in a state of alarm. Indeed, as the lancers reached the level area before the gate, the heavy doors swung open.

  Ulrika let out a sigh of relief and gathered up her reins.

  ‘You see,’ said Kodrescu, smug. ‘They are in.’ He waved a hand. ‘Ahead at a canter.’

  He and his command spurred their horses forwards and the rest of the column started after them. The little valley looked so peaceful as they rode through it. The fields were lush with growing crops and the monastery seemed to slumber on the hill, but from inside its walls Ulrika heard the distant pops of pistols and the faint cries of men.

  ‘Should we not go faster?’ she asked.

  ‘We cannot enter until the wards falter,’ said the general. ‘Lady Celia will know when it is safe.’

  Ulrika ground her teeth. If Lady Celia was overly cautious the lancers could again be left high and dry. She wanted to race ahead, not only because she thought of Stahleker’s men as her own now, but also because their deaths would endanger her own plans. If the lancers died, her coup would die too.