Dead Winter

by C. L. Werner

  ‘And then, so will all of you.’

  Bylorhof

  Ulriczeit, 1111

  A great bonfire blazed in Bylorhof’s town square. Doors had been torn from the homes of plague victims and broken to splinters with sledges, used as kindling for the roaring fires. Long tables surrounded the blaze, their surfaces littered with trenchers of mutton and platters of steamed lamprey and boiled heron. Bowls of almond milk and suet, mugs of spiced cider and hot ale, great plates of blancmange – these were all arrayed in a great feast. A riotous confusion of chairs and divans, couches and benches was at the disposal of the banqueters.

  The Plague had done its work too well in Bylorhof. The townsfolk had capitulated to the inevitable. Hoarded stores had emerged from their places of hiding, valuable stock had been butchered and cooked. All thought of tomorrow was forbidden, for the plague made it impossible to consider the future. The moment was all the Sylvanians could depend upon, and they seized it in a mad embrace.

  Peasants danced about the flames while shepherds strummed a discordant melody upon battered mandolins. Men toasted one another with great swallows of ale, tearing at slabs of mutton with their knives and spitting the gristle into the bonfire. Tipsy revellers, assuming the duties of cupar and sluger, traipsed about the tables, filling cups and exchanging empty trenchers for full ones. Often they would pause beside a prone diner, kicking his chair to see if he was merely intoxicated or if the Black Plague had removed his presence from the feast.

  There were many such chairs with pale, lifeless figures slumped against the table, the stink of their sores seeming to goad the other diners to further excess and gluttony.

  At the head of the table, his chair raised slightly, sat the founder of the feast. Despairing of escaping Bylorhof and joining his master behind the stone walls of the castle, Cneaz Litovoi had orchestrated the wild abandon. Better a quick end amidst song and dance than a slow, wasting demise alone in the dark. Such had been his conviction and the glassy stare in his unseeing eyes as he slouched in his chair indicated that he had achieved his desire.

  The Cneaz had surrounded himself with the most prominent of the town’s denizens, the merchants and guildmasters. Among these was the sinister figure of Dr Bruno Havemann. The celebrants had insisted the plague doktor wear his costume to the feast, by turns toasting him for his endless efforts to stop the Black Plague or jeering him for the same. The physician endured the mercurial affections of his hosts, his beaked face nodding in solemn recognition of their regard. Madness ruled Bylorhof now, and he was not one to question the whims of the mad.

  His boot lashed out, kicking one of the enormous rats scurrying under the table, scavenging the scraps dropped by dead hands. The vermin squeaked in protest, scampering away, its scaly tail dragging behind it. Havemann watched the rodent flee with grim satisfaction. Perhaps he couldn’t stop the plague, but at least he didn’t have to suffer the presence of rats at his table.

  The face behind the bird-like mask contorted in a grimace as his gaze drifted past the dancers and the bonfire. At the other end of the square, a mob of people had appeared. From the distance, Havemann couldn’t quite make them out, but there was no mistaking the black habit of a Morrite priest.

  Frederick van Hal stalked across the square, his followers marching behind him with clumsy, uneven steps. As he advanced, the revellers fell silent. They cringed away from the dark priest and gazed with horror at the throng following behind him. Screams rippled about the square. Banqueters rose from the table and fled into the streets.

  Havemann kept his seat. Even when the rotten, monstrous appearance of the priest’s congregation became apparent to him, the plague doktor was unmoved.

  ‘Have you come to collect me for your garden?’ Havemann asked the priest. The beaked face turned, regarding the dead guildmasters seated to either side of him. ‘I should think there is carrion enough to sate your god.’

  Frederick van Hal glared across the table at the grotesque plague doktor. ‘There is always room for one more,’ he said, his voice a whispered snarl. ‘But first I will have justice for my nephew, who died from your fakery. Justice for my brother’s wife, who was driven to suicide by your deceit. Justice for my brother, who was murdered by your hand.’

  The plague doktor took each of Frederick’s accusations with perfect nonchalance. ‘You are too late for justice,’ Havemann sneered. He reached a hand to the side of his mask, loosening the strap which bound it in place. The bird-like beak fell away, exposing a chubby, almost childlike visage. All across Havemann’s face were ugly black sores, the mark of the plague.

  Frederick lifted a hand to his breast, ripping at the embroidered raven stitched to his robe. The symbol of his god frayed beneath his clawing fingers. A terrible resolve burned in the necromancer’s eyes.

  ‘The gods may have cheated me of justice,’ Frederick hissed. ‘But there is always time for vengeance.’

  At his gesture, the zombies surged forwards, knocking over the table and converging upon the diseased doktor.

  Bruno Havemann was a long time dying. The necromancer’s magic saw to that.

  Dregator Miklos stormed from his tent, crushing his lynx-fur hat tight about his head as he emerged into the biting cold. The lord of the Nachtsheer glared at his soldiers, offended by their disturbance of his ablutions. The dregator considered adding a few of the soldiers to the gallows, but reflected that such draconian measures might be counterproductive. It wouldn’t do to let the peasants think there was disunity among Count von Drak’s troops. Such a supposition might give them hope and hope might encourage foolish ideas about breaking the quarantine.

  The nobleman’s gloves creaked as he drew his baton of office from his belt, its jewels gleaming in the moonlight. He scowled as he marched past the Nachtsheer. These men were supposed to be the finest soldiers in Sylvania. If they couldn’t handle a sickly peasant rabble…

  The sentries at the fence turned and saluted as Dregator Miklos came stalking towards them, leaning their crossbows against the piled logs and timber. Other soldiers in the red and black livery of the Nachtsheer maintained a grim vigil. Even as the nobleman curtly returned the salute, he saw them loose bolts across the field separating them from the infected town.

  ‘My lord,’ one of the sentries said. ‘The peasants are making an effort to withdraw from the town. We have warned them to turn back, but they keep coming.’

  The scowl was still on the dregator’s face. ‘Try shooting into them instead of over their heads,’ he snapped. ‘The entire province is threatened by the plague. Now is no time for timidity!’

  The scolded soldier bowed his head sheepishly. ‘My lord, we have targeted them,’ he objected. ‘We have loosed three volleys into them and they still keep coming!’

  Dregator Miklos hissed in disbelief. He stared out across the barrier, watching the peasant mob stumbling its way through the snow. He’d watched the crossbowmen shoot, but he’d heard no outcry from the peasants. Either the fools weren’t aiming at them or they were all as blind as bats! His irritation mounting, the nobleman seized one of the crossbows leaning against the fence. Choosing one of the approaching peasants, he aimed and loosed, smiling cruelly as the bolt crunched into the peasant’s chest.

  His smile faded and the dregator dropped the weapon. It was impossible that he could have missed! He had seen the peasant’s body jerk as the bolt slammed into it! Miklos reached to his neck, fingering the talismanic charms dangling at his throat. A feeling of superstitious dread ran down his spine.

  ‘Kill them!’ he snarled at the soldiers. ‘Kill them all!’ He glared at the soldiers around him, trying to hide his fear. His gloved hand slapped against the heraldic dragon on the sentry’s livery. ‘You are Nachtsheer,’ he spat. ‘Are you going to be frightened by a bunch of peasant scum!’ He reached down and drew the soldier’s sword from its scabbard, pushing the weapon into the warrior’s hand. ‘Get out there and cut them down!’

  The Nachtsheer displayed no eagern
ess to carry out Dregator Miklos’s command, but they were too disciplined to question his authority. In short order a dozen armoured warriors were climbing over the fence, swords in their hands and murder in their faces. Growling the name of Count Malbork von Drak as their battle cry, the Nachtsheer marched upon the peasant rabble.

  The moons decided at that moment to emerge from behind the black clouds dotting the sky. Silvery light bathed the town and its surroundings, illuminating for the first time the dark, shambling figures of the peasants.

  Shouts of horror rose from the ranks of the Nachtsheer as they beheld the nature of their would-be victims. They were peasants, dressed in the crude homespun wool of Sylvanian serfs. But their flesh was decayed, rotten with worms and frostbite, their faces were leering skulls and their eyes were pits devoid of thought and emotion. Clawed hands gripped crude spears, bill forks and a score other rough weapons scavenged from farm implements.

  Fear overwhelmed the discipline of the mercenaries. First one, then another, broke ranks and fled back towards the barrier. Prepared to slaughter peasants, the warriors were unprepared to face unliving monsters.

  As the soldiers fled, a dreadful vitality swept through the shambling ranks of the zombies. Dry moans escaped ragged mouths, loathsome hunger smouldered in lifeless eyes. Strengthened by the darkest magic, the zombies pursued their routed foe, racing forwards with speed and hideous purpose. The fleeing soldiers were dragged down by the undead, mangled and butchered by the hatchets and knives clenched in desiccated hands.

  Dregator Miklos could only watch in terror as his men were slaughtered. His mind whirled with strategy and tactics, urging him to spring into action, to call back his cavalry scouts, to summon the troops at the other watchposts, to do something to oppose the monstrous horror. Terror held him in an icy grip, all the arrogant self-assurance of the tyrannical dregator unable to break its frightful hold.

  A dark shape strode through the ravening mass of zombies, a figure cloaked in the black habit of a Morrite priest, his pale hands clenched about an ebony staff. Beneath the hood of the priest’s habit, a mask fashioned from the face of a skull concealed the necromancer’s visage. Scraps of flesh and beads of blood still dripped from the macabre ornament, staining the exposed cheeks and chin of the fiend.

  The necromancer stopped a few yards from the fence, his imperious gaze staring out from behind the sockets of his mask. He gestured at the logs, his lips moving in a whispered incantation. With a wave of his hand, a malevolent surge of energy crashed down upon the fence. Before the dregator’s horrified gaze, the timbers began to splinter and rot, crumbling into dust in the space of a few heartbeats.

  Waving his hand again, the necromancer scattered the dust, leaving only the white snow between himself and the Nachtsheer encampment. The barrier removed, he strode towards Dregator Miklos. The lips beneath the skull mask spread in a malignant smile.

  ‘I am Vanhal, the fallen,’ the necromancer hissed. He pointed a bony finger at the nobleman’s chest. Miklos gasped as he felt his heart quiver, as the palpitations began to slow. Whatever entreaty was on his lips went unspoken as his body crashed into the snow.

  ‘I am Vanhal,’ Frederick snarled at the crumpled corpse. ‘And I bring hell to Sylvania.’

  Skavenblight

  Vorhexen, 1111

  Puskab Foulfur pulled his bloated body onto the narrow ledge, his heart pounding as some of the ancient masonry crumbled beneath his weight. He wrapped his arm about the neck of a stone gargoyle, its face worn into a featureless lump by the centuries. The effort to keep from turning his head was too great and the plague priest risked a downwards glance. The side of the Shattered Tower descended hundreds of feet before vanishing into the fog. He could pick out the jagged fissures in the wall, could see the black lines of rain gutters spiralling about the structure. Balconies, so tiny at this height that they were almost unrecognisable, jutted from the lower tiers, worm-oil lanterns glowing from their balustrades.

  His arduous ascent had taken him far. It was from one such balcony that he had started his climb, scrambling up the uneven face of the tower, trying to balance safety and caution against strategy and speed. A single misstep, a moment of carelessness and Puskab would lose his grip upon the aged masonry. He would plummet to the streets of Skavenblight hidden somewhere below the fog, hurtle like a falling star into the ruined desolation of the city.

  The plague priest gnashed his fangs as he contemplated all the unfair advantages that had been given to his adversary. The window from which Blight had started his climb was a good hundred feet higher than Puskab’s balcony. The Wormlord had been equipped with steel climbing claws and a stout cord woven from skaven-tails. Before starting his climb, Blight had imbibed a full pot of skaven-brew, that potent mixture of blood and powdered warpstone which would excite the metabolism of any ratman and increase the swiftness of his reactions. Puskab knew his enemy had partaken of this mixture because he had smelled the discarded pot as it sailed past him on its way to the streets below, narrowly missing the plague priest’s head.

  Still, Puskab contented himself with the one advantage the scheming Wormlord didn’t possess. That was a real and sincere faith in the Horned One. Plots and tricks were all Blight had to protect himself. Puskab had the divine power of his god to sustain him, to bring him victorious from any ordeal.

  The corpulent ratman laughed as he recalled the sickly smell of Blight when the fool realised he had been manipulated. He had honestly expected a plague priest to turn against his own kind in favour of a heretic and unbeliever? The plague monks had their rivalries and hates, but these were never allowed to threaten the might of Clan Pestilens or impede the spread of the Horned One’s faith. Blight had arranged everything so that Puskab could challenge Nurglitch and claim his position as one of the Lords of Decay, little imagining that it was he himself who would suffer the challenge. Puskab wondered if the fool realised now that it had indeed been the Poxmaster who had loosed the Black Plague upon Clan Verms.

  The flea-breeding Verms had been marked for destruction from the start. Puskab had developed parasites to carry the plague to other ratmen almost before Clan Pestilens had started experimenting on humans. He had carried his own fleas into the Hive, fleas bloated with plague germs, fleas that had spread among his guards and assistants. He had used his magic to preserve the lives of those skaven working in close proximity to himself in order to allay suspicion, but there had been no magic to guard the hundreds of ratkin the lab-rats came into contact with. The diseased fleas had spread and brought Clan Verms to its knees.

  There had been a delicious irony when Blight sent Puskab to lead the assassins against Nurglitch. It was Puskab himself who had passed warning to the Arch-Plaguelord through the buzzing voices of his fever-flies. Informed of the primitive drives which motivated the diggerfangs, the plague monks had simply built great fires within the Inner Temple, heating the thick stone walls. The spiders, faced with an even greater heat than that of the worm-oil goads, had retreated, charging straight back into the faces of their handlers! So much for the murderous machinations of the Wormlord!

  Blight would suffer for his impudence, trying to turn Clan Pestilens against itself, as though the disciples of the Horned One could be used and manipulated like some common warlord clan!

  The plague priest’s bitter growl ended in a frightened yelp. A brick came sailing down out of the darkness, crashing against the side of the gargoyle and knocking chips from its folded wings. Puskab flinched, pressing a stinging paw to his mouth. He squeezed his bulk against the wall as another brick shot towards him. It glanced off the ledge, vanishing into the mists far below.

  Blight had reached the top of the tower, using all of his advantages to beat the plague priest. The rules of the challenge dictated that the combatants could in no way strike out against one another until both stood within the belfry atop the Shattered Tower and heard the Broken Bell toll the midnight dirge. Neither by magic or force was either ratman allowed to atta
ck his enemy before the bell struck the thirteenth stroke. But how could a skaven be held accountable if some unfortunate accident claimed his opponent before he could reach the belfry?

  Puskab redoubled his efforts, a prayer to the Horned One wheezing through his lips as his claws dug at the broken wall. He scrambled upwards, exploiting the grip afforded by one of the jagged fissures running down the side of the Shattered Tower. His fingers and toes wedged into the crack, he scurried up towards the belfry.

  A great slab of stone crashed against the side of the tower, sending a cascade of debris raining down into the fog. Puskab’s paws were knocked from the fissure, his body flailing backwards as his feet struggled to maintain their purchase. A second slab hurtled past, smashing his tail as it bounced against the wall. The plague priest howled in pain, a spasm of agony rushing through his veins. By a supreme effort, he pulled himself back to the wall, ignoring the broken, bloodied mangle of his tail.

  Eyes narrowed with vengeful determination, Puskab drew upon his sorcerous powers. Green flame blazed up from his eyes, ribbons of mephitic vapour rose from his nostrils. Evoking the great name of the Horned One, the plague priest’s jaws opened wide, spewing forth a reeking miasma that swept upwards. He might not be able to use his magic directly against Blight, but he could use it to hinder any ‘accidents’. The Wormlord would have a hard time dropping a brick onto the head of someone he couldn’t see.

  Like a living thing, the magical miasma crawled up the face of the Shattered Tower, engulfing the crooked belfry. Puskab was near enough to hear Blight’s snarls and curses as the mist surrounded him and blinded him to what was going on below. Hastily, Puskab abandoned the fissure he had been using, scrabbling along a rain gutter until he reached the tower’s sharp corner. He chittered softly as he watched another slab of stone shoot past, clearly directed against someone using the crack to make his ascent.