Dead Winter

by C. L. Werner

  There was only one way a challenger could prevail and that was how Puskab had done it. Through the sponsorship of a seated lord, and the use of his network of spies and informants, the challenger might learn the secret of each test before he ever set a paw within the black depths of the Shattered Tower. Blight Tenscratch had revealed to Puskab the trick to each trap, the answer to each riddle, the solution to each contest. Through the Wormlord’s connivance, Puskab had survived to make his challenge and demand a place among the council.

  The figures upon the dais glowered down at Puskab for several minutes, their malignant scrutiny causing the plague priest to shiver and his glands to tighten. When they did deign to speak to him, it was the fierce tones of Warmonger Vecteek that boomed down from the shadowy thrones.

  ‘Poxmaster Puskab,’ Vecteek snarled. ‘We are pleased with your gift-offering. The man-things wither under the Black Plague. Their cities rot from within. They cower inside their burrows and hide from their own neighbours. They shall be easy-meat for our armies!’

  Puskab bowed before the dais, crooking his head so he exposed his throat in the proper gesture of submission. ‘Happy-proud to serve-help great lords,’ Puskab said. ‘Black Plague kill-kill much-much. Many man-things sick-die! Bring-make glory to Horned One!’

  ‘Too many die!’ snapped High Vivisectionist Rattnak Vile. ‘Leave none to catch-take! No slave-meat to grow food and dig tunnels!’

  ‘And the plague strikes our own!’ growled Warpmaster Sythar Doom. ‘We have been forced to burn the burrows of Clan Verms because they caught your plague!’

  Puskab quivered as the Grey Lords made their accusations. Any one of these tyrants could have him killed on the spot and none would be the wiser. He turned his eyes across the shadowy rim of the dais, trying to pierce the haze and appeal to his patron.

  ‘The infection of the Hive wasn’t the fault of Puskab Foulfur,’ Blight declared, his voice a threatening growl. ‘The Poxmaster has come here, braved the Twelve Tests to challenge the traitor who sits in our midst! He has come to topple this greedy maggot who has endangered all Skavenblight by his murderous schemes! The Horned Rat has allowed him into the Chamber of the Thirteen, that he may purge this council of the corruption within its ranks!’

  The arguing Grey Lords fell silent as Blight’s words echoed through the great hall. ‘Is this true?’ the hacking tones of Arch-Plaguelord Nurglitch rasped. ‘Have you come here to challenge a traitor for his seat upon the council?’

  Puskab raised his horned head, pulling the tattered hood back from his decayed face. ‘Survive-win Twelve Tests,’ he growled. ‘Now-now want-take Thirteenth Challenge! Take-win name-rank of Lord of Decay!’

  Hisses and snarls filled the shadows as the lords of skavendom reacted to the reckless effrontery of the plague priest’s demands. Tradition and the convoluted politics of the Under-Empire dictated that Puskab had earned the right to make his challenge, but the villainous despots didn’t appreciate the callous way he addressed them.

  ‘Puskab is right,’ Blight shouted down the other lords. ‘The destruction of my warren demands justice! Challenge the traitor-meat! Remove his stink from the Shattered Tower!’

  Puskab’s lips pulled back in a feral grin, exposing blackened fangs and bleeding gums. ‘Claim-fight traitor-meat who sick-kill Clan Verms! Claim-fight heretic-spleen who think-want poison-slay all skaven!’ The plague priest raised his fat claw and pointed to one of the black thrones.

  ‘Claim-fight Blight Tenscratch!’

  Bylorhof

  Ulriczeit, 1111

  Frederick sat in a wicker chair, his back to the wall of the mortuary, his priest’s robes pulled tight against the preternatural cold which surrounded him. He stared out across the morbid chamber. It was silent now; the gnawing and scratching of rats as they fed upon the dead had been absent these past few days. Even the vermin had been driven off by the fell energies converging upon the place. There was only one living thing in the entire graveyard now.

  The priest stared at the stone knife resting on the floor beside his chair. Many times he had taken up that blade and set it against his wrist. Against the horror he had unleashed, death would be a welcome release. That is, if death was still an option for him. It lacked the same finality with which he had regarded it a week ago.

  He raised his eyes from the knife and gazed upon the silent, unmoving shapes facing him. Frederick had ordered them here and they had come. He could order them to leave, and they would go. If he closed his eyes and pictured their arms raised in salute, the decayed arms would rise. His merest whim was unbreakable law to these zombies. Creatures with no will of their own, they were utterly enslaved to the necromancer’s desires. Frederick found the concept alternately fascinating and abominable. His mind whirled with thoughts of power and emotions of blackest despair.

  Necromancer. Another word from the tomes of Arisztid Olt, the title of the most reviled heretic of them all – the magician who pierced the veil between life and death, who drew his sorcery from the very emanations of the grave. One of the insane monsters who followed the forbidden arts of Nagash the Accursed.

  Frederick tried to tell himself he wasn’t such a creature, that a vast gulf separated him from an apostate like Olt. He knew the argument was a lie, a final desperate effort to cling to decency and morality, to keep faith with the gods he had betrayed.

  There was a reason why, for all his cleverness, Olt had been discovered. The temple had been built upon a nexus point, a convergence of magical forces that magnified any act of sorcery. When Olt had practised his spells, he had opened a gateway he could not shut. The dark energies had swelled and grown until they could not be ignored. That had proven Olt’s downfall. It had also proven the source of Frederick’s curse.

  When he had conjured the ghost of Aysha, the priest had opened the floodgates. The baleful emanations, once tapped, had refused to recede. They had spread, directionless and unfocused, acting upon the subconscious desires of the necromancer who had drawn upon them. Locked within his mind were all of Olt’s spells and secrets, the knowledge of generations of sorcerers and witches stretching back to the sands of Nehekhara. In his slumber, his dreaming mind had evoked those spells and the directionless energies had brought them into being. Frederick’s guilt and shame at being unable to save the people of Bylorhof from the plague had resulted in the unconsecrated dead rising again as zombies – a sardonic and aimless refutation of the Black Plague.

  It was a feat to impress any warlock – conjuration without apparatus or gesture, magecraft by sheer force of will alone. Frederick had never imagined such ability to lie untapped within his mind. If he had, he should have killed himself long ago.

  The necromancer scowled at the rotting zombies standing before him. He was tempted to tell them to jump in a lake, except that was exactly what they would do. There was no limit to their servitude. As an experiment he had ordered one of them to chew off its own arm. Neglecting to specify which arm, he had looked on in amazement as the zombie gnawed its way through each arm in turn.

  Emperors and kings did not command such loyalty! Frederick shuddered at the hideous power he possessed. Yet might such horror not be turned towards benevolence? Must only evil arise from evil? He was still a decent man, moral and just. He could control this terrible power. He would not allow it to control him.

  Frederick rose from his chair, stalking past his zombies. He faced one of the niches, the niches filled with the corpses of Bylorhof’s dead. These bodies had failed to reanimate under the influence of the necromancer’s subconscious. Shriven, protected by rituals sacred to Morr, these dead were already consecrated. The protection against evil had been enough to fend away his undirected magic. But what would happen, he wondered, if he were to wilfully concentrate his power upon one of these bodies?

  The necromancer turned away. A snap of his fingers sent a pair of zombies shambling over to the niche. Without uttering a sound, the undead reached into the corpse pile and dragged out the bod
y of a young woman. Still acting upon their master’s unspoken command, the zombies carried their morbid burden to the stone table, laying it prostrate upon the cold surface.

  As he stared down at the dead husk, Frederick pictured Aysha’s body lying there. For a moment, he felt a surge of regret. He almost desisted in the horrible experiment, but a tremendous desire to know, to understand the limits of his magic, pushed him on. Aysha was safe within the mausoleum, beside Johan and the templars of old. She had no part in this. There was only Frederick van Hal and some nameless bit of peasant carrion.

  He closed his eyes, visualising the dark power, drawing strands of black energy and weaving them around the prostrate corpse. His lips moved in a whispered invocation, calling upon one of the Nine Names of Nagash. The foreign note of that name seemed to make the room tremble. Frederick could feel it crawling off his tongue, slithering like something alive across the mortuary to settle upon the dead woman’s pale brow.

  For a moment the necromancer could feel the corpse struggling to oppose his will. It was a fleeting defiance, brushed away as casually as a cobweb. Frederick opened his eyes and extended his hand towards the corpse. Clumsily, the dead woman began to rise from the slab. A thin smile of triumph flashed across Frederick’s face. Even the protection of the gods wasn’t enough to defy his power!

  The necromancer returned to his chair, staring across his undead slaves. This was power, but he would not abuse it. He would use this magic in the cause of justice, a counterpoint to the cruel abuses of corrupt lords like Baron von Rittendahl and Count Malbork von Drak.

  Frederick’s eyes became cold and hard, his hands clenching around the arms of his chair.

  There was too much injustice, too much suffering in Sylvania, but he knew just where he would start. The plague doktor, Bruno Havemann, murderer and charlatan. He would be made to confess his crimes.

  And then he would answer for them.

  Chapter XVI

  Altdorf

  Vorhexen, 1111

  The abandoned tunnel wasn’t as abandoned as Erich von Kranzbeuhler had expected. After battering their way through the stone blocks concealing the entrance, the rebels had been surprised by a squeaking horde of black-furred vermin. After their experiences in the sewer, it was a shock that had them shrieking in disgust and horror. For a moment, the rats rushed at the startled men, but it was flight not fight that motivated the animals. Soon their scaly tails were seen darting into bushes and behind outbuildings.

  The conspirators breathed a collective sigh of relief, but as they stared down into the blackness of the tunnel, they wondered if perhaps they shouldn’t have stayed behind with the men holding the gates or the force staging a diversionary attack on the Palace doors.

  ‘If it has been sealed up all these years, how did the rats get in?’ Palatine Kretzulescu wondered. No one could give the Sylvanian an answer.

  Erich took it upon himself to lead the way. Lighting a whale-oil lamp provided by Count van Sauckelhof, the knight reluctantly entered the forbidding darkness. At once the dank reek of the tunnel engulfed him, a choking foulness that brought a cough rumbling from his chest. He felt his pulse quicken as theories about miasma as source of the plague rose unbidden in his mind.

  The walls of the tunnel were ancient, displaying the rough masonry and brickwork of Sigismund the Conquerer’s time. Bones and rat pellets littered the floor while cobwebs dangled from the vaulted ceiling. Here and there the bulk of a fallen slab of stone loomed in the darkness, a vivid warning that something more substantial than a cobweb might drop down into the passage.

  As Erich crept through the tunnel, he found his thoughts straying to the daughter of Baron Thornig. The Middenlander had pressed upon Princess Erna first the role of spy and then that of murderess and assassin. It offended the knight’s sensibilities to exploit a beautiful woman in such a fashion, however noble the cause. For her sake, he hoped that Erna would ignore her father’s command.

  A familiar stench brought an end to Erich’s ruminations. Ahead, the knight saw a yawning pit, bricks scattered about it. The smell was that of the sewers, evoking once more visions of horror. Rats scampered about the hole, dropping down into it as they recoiled from the light of Erich’s lamp.

  Here at least was the answer to how the rats had gotten into a sealed tunnel. Part of the floor had collapsed into the sewers, which must run beneath the Imperial Palace. So much for the durability of dwarf architecture – though as he looked at the pit and the stones piled about it, he couldn’t escape the idea that something was very wrong. The hole looked like it had been caused by something burrowing up from below rather than stones collapsing into a passageway beneath.

  ‘We have to hurry,’ Prince Sigdan cautioned. He cast a dubious glance at the pit, then laid his hand on Erich’s shoulder and urged him onwards. ‘Every minute we delay is another minute of Boris’s tyranny.’

  ‘And more time for the Kaiserjaeger to show up,’ warned Baron von Klauswitz.

  Baron Thornig’s harsh laughter echoed through the tunnel. ‘I’ve arranged to pull their teeth,’ he boasted. ‘Right now Commander Kreyssig is dining with Khaine in hell!’

  Erich felt his blood boil at the baron’s bravado. So lost was he in what he considered a clever bit of scheming that Baron Thornig seemed oblivious to the danger he had placed his daughter in. The knight half-turned to berate the Middenlander, but Prince Sigdan’s silent urging kept him moving.

  There would be time to settle all accounts once Boris Goldgather was deposed.

  Middenheim

  Vorhexen, 1111

  The warbling clamour of crude horns rose from the darkened forest, a feral din that seemed to scratch at the stars and to drag down the moon. The discordant notes had scarcely started to fade before a confusion of animalistic howls, bleats and screams pierced the night. From the battlements of Middenheim, archers loosed flaming arrows into the treeline. By the flickering light of the arrows, a bestial horde could be seen rushing from the woods.

  An alarm bell sounded, echoed a moment later by the clarion call of trumpets all along the wall. It seemed a useless gesture. The inhabitants of Warrenburg had to be aware of the attack already. They didn’t need the soldiers on the walls to warn them.

  For hours the beastmen had been working themselves into a frenzy, the dull rhythm of their manskin drums pulsing from the forest, the growling chants of their savage shamans rising from the trees. There had been ample time for Grand Master Arno to gather his chosen men. Fifty knights in full armour, each of their steeds a gigantic warhorse clad in steel barding, mustered behind the portcullis of the East Gate.

  At the clarion call of the trumpet, Arno raised his hand. Slowly the soldiers within the gatehouse began to raise the barrier. Arno watched the massive gate retreat into the roof of the archway with a fatalistic resignation. Once he went through that portal, he understood there was no coming back.

  ‘I didn’t expect you to lead the charge.’

  The Grand Master turned in surprise at hearing the voice of Prince Mandred, though in hindsight he shouldn’t have been. It was, after all, the boy’s idea.

  ‘I couldn’t ask any of my men to risk themselves if I was too timid to go myself,’ Arno explained. A troubled frown came across his face. ‘You should stay behind, your grace. This is too perilous for the Prince of Middenheim.’

  Mandred smiled at the knight’s protest. ‘If it is so dangerous, then we can’t risk the Grand Master of the White Wolves.’

  Arno laughed. ‘Commander Vitholf can more than make up for my loss. The White Wolves might even be better off with him leading the pack.’ The troubled look returned to the knight’s face. ‘There is only one Prince of Middenheim,’ he said.

  Mandred saw the Grand Master directing what he thought was a subtle signal to his knights. The prince watched as two of the warriors edged their horses closer to his own. Glancing at the rising portcullis, Mandred dug his spurs into the flanks of his warhorse.

  ‘Let it n
ever be said the Prince of Middenheim asked his subjects to do something he was afraid to do himself!’ he shouted as his horse bolted forwards. Crouching his body low against the animal’s neck, he was just able to clear the spikes jutting from the underside of the rising gate.

  Grand Master Arno gawped after him in astonishment, then roared at his knights. ‘You heard his grace!’ Arno bellowed. ‘Follow him to hell or victory!’ Spurring his own horse onwards, the Grand Master copied Mandred’s example, clearing the gate as it was still being raised. Behind him he could hear the thunder of hooves as the rest of the knights started after him.

  The broadness of the eastern causeway gave the knights room to form ranks as they charged out from the gate. Above them, from the walls, the clarions sounded once more, singing out into the night, announcing the wrath of man to his inhuman enemies.

  The beastmen had reached the hovels of Warrenburg, rampaging through the confused huddle of shacks with feral bloodlust. If they heard the trumpets sound, the brutes were too lost in their animalistic rage to care. The primordial hatred of beastkin for man burned in their savage hearts, feeding the fires of their fury. Not content to simply kill their victims, the raging beastmen mauled their victims, ripping them to shreds with tooth and claw. In their fury, they glutted themselves in an orgy of destruction.

  Into this vision of atrocity, the warriors of Middenheim charged. The tents and hovels of Warrenburg crumpled beneath the pounding hooves of their steeds, parting before them like wheat before a scythe. Refugees scattered before the knights, but the blood-mad beastkin stood transfixed, their savage brains flung into confusion by the sudden appearance of the warriors.

  Warhammers came smashing down into horned heads, great axes clove through furred flesh, iron-shod hooves crushed bestial bodies. The name of Ulric rose in a fierce war cry as the White Wolves brought the vengeance of man to the marauding forest beasts.

  Mandred was in the thick of the battle, spurring his huge destrier into the heart of the shantytown. His sword slashed across the face of a fawn-faced beastling as it gorged upon the body of a slaughtered woman. The creature clapped furry claws to its mangled eyes, bleating in agony. Another sweep of the prince’s sword opened the monster’s throat and sent it crashing into the snow.