Dead Winter

by C. L. Werner

  The commander of the Kaiserjaeger chuckled malevolently. ‘Is that really my dear father-in-law? I would never have believed him a party to any conspiracy to depose our great and gracious Boris Goldgather.’ His voice lowered into a vicious hiss. ‘At least right up until the moment my wife tried to slit my throat. Tell me, father, after I execute you, how long do I have to keep her alive before I can claim the title?’

  With every word, the horror in Baron Thornig’s eyes faded a little more, burned away by a swelling hatred. Kreyssig saw the change, dropping down from his perch and taking a few steps back. ‘Kill them and bring me the hammer,’ he said, waving his thugs forwards.

  Erich drew his sword, prepared to sell his life as dearly as he could. He singled out the murderous bulk of Drechsler. If he could only take one enemy with him, he vowed it would be the Scharfrichter. He glanced aside at the baron, hoping the man’s senses would rally before he was butchered out of hand by the advancing Kaiserjaeger.

  The Kaiserjaeger wore confident expressions as they stalked forwards, but before they reached Erich, those expressions changed. Colour drained from their complexions and they staggered back in gasping horror. Erich didn’t need to turn around to know what they had seen. Lunging for a nearby sarcophagus, the knight rolled into cover and watched as a swarm of chittering monstrosities came spilling from the narrow crack in the wall.

  ‘Forget the mutants!’ Kreyssig was shouting. ‘Get the rebels!’ But for once fear of their commander wasn’t enough to make the Kaiserjaeger obey. Ancient night-terrors, fables learned in the cradle, horror stories told about winter hearths, all of these came rushing through the minds of the soldiers. The instinctive loathing and fear of vermin of every breed and stripe gripped their brains. Crying out with the same disgust Erich had voiced, the Kaiserjaeger met the ratmen.

  Erich watched as Reikland steel clashed against the rusted blades of the verminous monsters, as brawny men matched their strength against the wiry suppleness of ratkin. The speed of the monsters was unbelievable, only the spastic crudity of their swordsmanship allowing the Kaiserjaeger any chance at all.

  Then Erich found his gaze wandering away from the general fray to focus upon one combatant. Gotthard Drechsler was fending off three of the ratmen at once. The executioner’s legs were slashed, his torso betraying a jagged cut, but already two ratmen lay broken at his feet. While the knight watched, the Scharfrichter caught one of his enemies with his huge sword. The ratkin’s body was flung across the crypt by the impact, bones cracking as it smashed against the crumbling wall. Even as the creature crumpled to the floor, Drechsler brought the flat of his blade smashing down upon the snout of another foe, shattering its muzzle and leaving the ratman twitching at his feet.

  Where Erich might have sympathised with another combatant, rallied to their shared humanity against a subhuman abomination, he could feel only hate. In his mind flashed the memory of Grand Master von Schomberg’s humiliating and cruel execution, and the Scharfrichter’s role in that atrocity. Revenge decided his actions. Clutching his sword, Erich sprang from cover.

  Drechsler was still engaged with the last of his adversaries when Erich came at him. The knight felt no dishonour in attacking such a butcher from ambush. Any right Drechsler had to chivalry had been forfeited in the Widows’ Plaza.

  The knight’s sword stabbed deep in the executioner’s back, piercing him through the belly. Drechsler screamed in agony, spinning around and swatting Erich with the back of his hand. The knight reeled, feeling as though he’d been kicked by a horse. Through his spinning gaze he could see Drechsler lurching towards him, the tip of the sword still protruding from his body. By an incredible feat of stamina, the executioner ignored his wound and raised his massive zweihander for a murderous sweep. Erich saw death glistening in the Scharfrichter’s eyes.

  Then a verminous shape pounced upon the executioner’s broad back, rodent fangs burying themselves in his neck. Drechsler howled in agony as blood spurted from torn veins, as his monstrous enemy worried at his flesh. The zweihander fell from his weakened fingers. He clutched feebly at the ratman on his back, but the creature squirmed away from his hands, dropping to the floor and watching with savage glee as the dying man slumped to his knees. A titter of malignant laughter rushed past the ratman’s fangs as Drechsler crashed face-first to the floor.

  Erich staggered back, fumbling for the dagger in his belt, sickened as he watched Drechsler’s blood dripping from the ratman’s muzzle. Myth or monster, he would not die in such a way!

  Above the sounds of battle and the squeaks of the monsters, the voice of Adolf Kreyssig continued to ring out, desperately trying to stop the chaos. His Kaiserjaeger, however, remained deaf to Kreyssig’s cries. There was only one man who noted the commander’s voice. Ignored by both ratkin and Kaiserjaeger, Baron Thornig rose to his feet. Glaring at Kreyssig, the Middenlander tightened his grip on his warhammer. With a fierce bellow of ‘Erna!’ the baron charged his enemy.

  The war cry did not go unheard. Kreyssig noted the maddened Middenlander’s rush, darting aside as Baron Thornig swung his massive hammer at him. The weapon swept past the commander, smashing against the wall of the crypt instead. Masonry rained down from the crumbling wall as a jagged crack slithered its way up to the stone ceiling.

  ‘Relent, you fool!’ Kreyssig snarled, slashing his blade across the baron’s arm. Thornig ignored the cut, striking once more at the peasant. Again, the blow failed to connect with his enemy, crashing instead against the wall.

  This time, the entire crypt shook. The ratkin raised their muzzles towards the ceiling, frightened squeaks rippling from their throats. In a single, chittering mob, they broke and scattered, clawing at each other in their haste to squeeze back into the fissure.

  An instant later great blocks of stone came thundering down from the roof. Erich saw one of them smash into Baron Thornig, battering the enraged Middenlander to the floor. Another mass of rubble pulverised a wounded Kaiserjaeger, reducing him to a red smear on the ground.

  The other Kaiserjaeger ran for the south exit. Erich could see Kreyssig start after them, then turn back towards Baron Thornig’s body. Stones smashed down around the commander as he darted through the collapsing crypt. There was an exultant look of triumph on his face as he ripped the warhammer from Thornig’s lifeless fingers. That expression quickly faded when he saw his prize wasn’t Ghal Maraz, just a heavy chunk of Middenheim steel. He just had time to appreciate his mistake before a mass of stone came crashing down. Kreyssig screamed, raising his arms in a futile effort to shield himself.

  It was the last thing Erich saw before a stone slammed into the back of his head and his world collapsed into darkness.

  Erich von Kranzbeuhler awoke to pain. His body felt like one enormous sore, hurting in places he didn’t even know existed. The smell and the darkness told him he was still in the sewers.

  He was surprised to be alive.

  A furtive rustling sound snapped him from bleary contemplation of his wounds to terrified awareness. There was a lantern resting beside him. Frantically, he reached for it, never questioning its presence. Feeding more oil to the flame, he found that he wasn’t in the crypt, but in an entirely different part of the sewers. Such understanding had barely registered, however, before he was pressing himself against the wall, stark terror racing through his veins.

  Crouched only a few feet from him was one of the ghastly ratmen, studying him with its beady red eyes. The creature bared its fangs as the lamplight washed over it. Erich’s horror only increased when the thing spoke to him in a shrill, squeaky whisper.

  ‘Man-thing leave-go,’ the ratman said, pointing a clawed finger down the tunnel. ‘Scurry-hurry, quick-quick!’ it added, a long scaly tail slapping against the floor behind it, either in a display of annoyance or as an emphatic gesture. The creature lowered its finger, pointing at something lying on the ledge beside Erich. ‘Take-hide king-hammer,’ it squeaked, its body trembling in fear.

  Erich forced
himself to follow the ratkin’s pointing claw. When he did, he was shocked to see Ghal Maraz resting on the ledge. Somehow, for whatever reason, the ghastly ratmen had recovered Sigmar’s hammer and returned it to him.

  Despite his horror and disgust, Erich tried to force words of gratitude. The monster, perhaps the same that had fought Drechsler, had no patience for such propriety. Again, it lashed its tail and pointed imperiously down the tunnel. ‘Take-go, quick-quick!’

  Painfully, Erich rose to his feet and gathered up the warhammer. He noticed the flow in the channel was moving in the direction the ratman pointed. If he followed the passage, he would reach the river.

  Wearily, Erich turned and made his way down the tunnel. When he looked back, the ratman was gone, the lantern failing to reveal even the shine of its eyes. Why the ratmen had brought him here, why they had saved him and helped him were mysteries he couldn’t fathom. Perhaps they weren’t so different from men and dwarfs and halflings, despite their monstrous appearance. Perhaps they too couldn’t abide tyranny and a world governed by fear.

  Whatever their purpose, Erich was thankful. He would take Ghal Maraz far from Altdorf, far beyond Boris Goldgather’s reach. It would be the first blow in a new struggle to end the tyrant’s reign.

  In the darkness, the skaven watched their pawn creep towards the river, malicious mirth hissing past their fangs. Adolf Kreyssig had been a useful pawn, but Erich von Kranzbeuhler would be an even better one. He would take the king-hammer away to another of the man-thing warlords. Then that warlord would declare himself emperor-thing and the man-warrens would make war against each other.

  Whatever the Black Plague didn’t kill, the man-things would slaughter in their war, further draining their strength.

  Whichever man-thing won didn’t matter. The skaven would be there to vanquish the exhausted survivor.

  From the ruins, the skaven would inherit all.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  C. L. Werner was a diseased servant of the Horned Rat long before his first story in Inferno! magazine. His Black Library credits include the Chaos Wastes books, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy and the Thanquol and Boneripper series. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer World.

  Visit the author’s website at www.vermintime.com

  An extract from The Great Betrayal by Nick Kyme

  On sale August 2012

  Cacophonous thunder rolled across the slopes of Karag Vlak. Earth trembled for miles. Fire wreathed the darkling sky. It warred with the furnace at the mountain peak, glowing hot and angry through swathes of pyroclastic cloud. Shadows lurked within it, drifting against the wind on thin, membranous wings…

  Thurgin Ironhand eyed the enemy racing at his throng across the hellish plain and scowled.

  ‘They are swift,’ he said, feeling the tremor of their hoof beats through his iron-wrought armour. Runes of warding fashioned into its breastplate began to ignite in a chain of forge-bright flares that painted the metal like parchment.

  Never before had the dwarfs waged war against such a foe. All of the urk and grobi festering beneath the Worlds Edge could not come close in number to the glistening horde riding down upon them now.

  Two hundred feet away from bloodying his axe and Thurgin gave an order, growled through the mouthpiece of his war helm and carried to every warrior of his throng through its runecraft.

  ‘Lock shields!’

  Across the slopes of Karak Vlag, ten thousand dwarfs obeyed.

  That was but the first rank.

  Deep into the valley, standing upon the Fist of Agrin, Thurgin knew the High King fought alone. It was said of him that he could break the stars. To witness that rune blade he bore, gripped two handed and splitting heads as effortlessly as barrels, Thurgin could believe it.

  The enemy closed, coming fast and hard on hooves of silver flame.

  Thurgin, thane-king, felt the solidity of his clan brothers at either shoulder and smiled.

  This would be a good day for the dwarfs.

  Vengeance would be won.

  He bellowed, his voice louder than a hundred war horns, ‘Khazuk!’

  The throng answered, its many ranks adding to the fury of their reply, ‘KHAZUK!’

  Axes and hammers began to beat shields, rising in tempo as the riders closed.

  ‘Khazuk!’

  Thurgin slid the ornate faceplate over his eyes and nose until it clanked and the world became a slit of honed anger.

  His brothers’ chorus resonated through his helm, chiming with the clash of arms.

  ‘KHAZUK!’

  It meant death.

  Death to the enemies of the dwarfs.

  Glarondril the Silven spurred his riders to greater effort. The enemy was close, a thick wedge of mailed warriors clutching blades and shields.

  Twenty thousand noble lords at his command, armour glittering with the falling sun, lowered their lances.

  They had ridden hard and far to reach this hellish plain. Glarondril would not be found wanting on the slopes of the mountain. He would see it through to the end, even if that meant his death. Whispering words of command to his mount, he drew the riders into a spear tip of glittering silver.

  ‘In the name of the Phoenix King,’ he roared, unable to keep his battle lust sheathed any longer. A sword of blue flame slid soundlessly from his scabbard. ‘For the glory of Ulthuan!’

  So close… Glarondril saw their hooded eyes, shimmering like moist gemstones, and smelled the reek of their foul breath, all metal and earth.

  ‘None shall live!’

  The blue-fire sword was held aloft as a thicket of lance heads drew down upon the enemy.

  Thurgin felt his body tense just before the moment of impact.

  ‘Hold them, break them!’ he raged. ‘No mercy. Kill them all!’

  Here before them was a foe worthy of dwarfish enmity.

  The shield wall dug in, backs and shoulders braced.

  Over fifty thousand in this single throng; his muster from Karak Izril was large but far from the largest of the hold.

  Behind them he heard the slow tread of the gronti-duraz, felt the resonance of their advance as the low, sober chanting of their masters compelled them. Thurgin was glad to have the stone-clad giants at his back.

  Lightning cracked the sky as magical anvils were made ready.

  On the far mountain flank, obscured by rolling fog, the bolt tips of ballista twinkled in the dying light like an endless celestial array.

  Dwarfs did not need the stars, or the sun. They were dwellers of the earth, solid and determined. They would need those traits today as they would need all the craft of the runesmiths and the engines of the guilds.

  Never before had the dwarfs faced a foe such as this. They meant to drive them from the Old World forever.

  The enemy reached them.

  Thurgin knew there would be no quarter given.

  Glarondril and his knights swept into the armoured horde piercing flesh and shattering bone. Incandescent fire reaved from the jaws of their mounts in a tide that burned the foe to ash. No defence was proof against the Dragon Princes of Caledor. No foe, however determined, could resist their charge.

  Hundreds died in the first seconds, their corpses left to ruin in the fell sun. What began as a contest swiftly became a slaughter.

  ‘For the king!’ shouted Glarondril above the eager roar of his mount, as he took the enemy leader’s head.

  ‘For the king!’ urged Thurgin, chopping into the riders blunted on the dwarfs’ wall of shields. They buckled as they hit it, mounts and riders sent sprawling only to be crushed by those that followed or butchered by dwarfish axes.

  ‘Forward!’

  The throng of Karak Izril moved slow but inexorably, like a landslide and with the same momentum. Already broken against the dwarfs’ resilience, the riders were scattered. Hounded without mercy, the enemy cavalry had lost two third
s of its warriors before the charge was ended.

  Seeing no gain in pursuit, Thurgin called the throng to a halt.

  He looked to the sky at a vast shadow approaching him out of the sun.

  ‘We have the east flank in our fist,’ he called to it.

  Glarondril landed with a grace the dwarf had not thought possible for the winged monsters he rode, and bowed in the saddle to the thane-king. So too did his beast.

  ‘Well met, Thurgin son of Gron.’ He wiped the ichor-blood from his sword before sheathing it.

  ‘High prince,’ the dwarf answered with a nod of deference, standing amidst a host of sundered daemon corpses.

  ‘We had best make the most of our good fortune then,’ remarked the elf.

  ‘Indeed…’ Thurgin turned his eye northwards.

  Four behemoths, avatars of Ruin all, towered in the distance. Before them the innumerable hordes of Chaos made flesh.

  And on a stool of rock, miles across, still farther away stood High King Snorri Whitebeard and the elf lord Malekith, alone and besieged by hell.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

  Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan.

  Map by Nuala Kinrade.

  © Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.

  Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2012, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-85787-507-5

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.