03 - God King (10 page)

“No, not yet,” whispered Khaled al-Muntasir. “Not when there are such sights
left to see.”

Darkness boiled from the towering black warrior’s form, filling the sky with
unnatural gloom, blotting out the moon and filling the sky with evil clouds and
the screeching of bats. Wolves howled in the darkness, blood-hungry beasts of
the deep forest, not the noble creatures of the northern woods that carried the
chill winds of Ulric in their veins. The darkness closed on Hyrstdunn, obscuring
it from view, but Markus heard the screams and knew his city was doomed.

“I want you to say his name,” said Khaled al-Muntasir.

“I don’t know it,” said Markus, wishing that were true.

“Come now,” chided Khaled al-Muntasir, digging a manicured nail into his
throat. “It lives in mortal minds as a nightmare of distant lands and forgotten
days. It is a name of death that travels with fearful taletellers and poisons
the lips of scared men huddled around fires in the foolish belief that they are
safe from his reach. Say it, mortal. Say it now.”

“No,” wept Markus. “I cannot.”

“Of course you can, it’s just wind noises passing through your throat.”

“He is… he is…”

“That’s it, go on,” urged the blood drinker.

“He is
Nagash,”
said Markus, spitting the name like a curse.

As though giving voice to the name of the dread necromancer from the ancient
horror tales gave it power, the mighty form slammed its vile metal hand into the
earth of the Morrdunn. A booming peal of thunder split the heavens and the green
light in Nagash’s eyes blazed with incredible power, flowing through his
withered, monstrous body to pour into the earth of the Empire like a corruption.

Flickering green light danced over Markus’ son’s body, like wisps of corpse
light in the swamps. Though he was cold and dead, Vartan sat up with stiff
movements, as some dread force other than his own wasted muscles empowered him.
Markus wept at this violation of his son’s flesh, hating these beings of
darkness more than he had hated anything in his life.

Vartan turned his dead gaze upon Markus, the cold empty green light
flickering in his sunken, shrivelled eyes. Cold horror crept over Markus as his
son stood on limbs he himself had washed and oiled the night before, the metal
links of Vartan’s armour clinking together as he took his place at the blood
drinker’s side.

The ground of the hill trembled and a deep groaning from its heart rumbled
far beneath Markus’ feet. The grass rippled, as though an army of snakes
writhed beneath its surface, and a hand punched up through the earth. Dried
flesh clung to the bones and fragments of rusted armour emerged as the dead
warrior clawed its way from beneath the hill.

More and more followed it, hundreds of Menogoth dead torn from their eternal
rest by the dark sorcery of the ancient necromancer. The hill shook as the
honoured slain broke open their mausolea, tombs and barrows and marched to the
summit of the Morrdunn.

Markus felt his anger crowd out his fear, but Khaled al-Muntasir’s grip was
unbreakable.

“Know that your Emperor’s realm is doomed,” said the blood drinker. “Know
that all you love will die and rise again to serve this army of darkness. Know
this and despair!”

Khaled al-Muntasir’s fangs sank into his neck and Markus felt
his life being sucked from his flesh. Yet as he slipped down into the black
abyss of death, his thoughts were that once again the Menogoths had failed their
Emperor.

Another arrow thudded home in the straw man hung from the pole, spinning him
around with a foot of Asoborn wood protruding from his chest. Wolfgart watched
as the black and gold chariot rumbled a weaving course through a long line of
stakes hammered in the dry ground. Maedbh guided the two horses pulling the
chariot with an expert hand, while his daughter loosed carefully aimed arrows
from the fighting platform behind her.

“Only a youngster and already she can handle a bow better than I,” he
said.

The chariot turned at the end of the strip of land and came back towards him.
Maedbh gave her daughter a hug and Ulrike waved her bow for him to see. He waved
back, but inwardly he hated the sight of his little girl with a weapon. Too
small to practise with spears, Maedbh had not wasted the year he had been in the
north with Sigmar, and Ulrike had transformed from a small girl into a budding
young woman.

Maedbh hauled back on the reins and the chariot came to a halt next to the
piled logs on which he sat. Situated on the outskirts of Three Hills, this wide
strip of land had been used by Asoborn youths to hone their skills with bow and
spear and chariot for decades. A huge square of hard-packed earth and stone, the
wheels of countless chariots and the hooves of unnumbered cavalry mounts had
long since beaten any fertility from the soil.

At the field’s northern end, a group of Asoborns marched back and forth,
getting used to the notion of fighting and manoeuvring in ranked-up blocks of
sword bands. It wasn’t the usual way Asoborns fought, but after Black Fire had
proved its worth, Sigmar had pressed every tribe to master such organised
warfare.

Men and women marched together, and Wolfgart smiled. Some of the tribes of
the Empire thought the Asoborn armies comprised of only women, but such an idea
was ridiculous. Any tribe that sent only its women to war would soon be extinct
without mothers to birth the next generation of warriors and farmers.

“Did you see, father?” cried Ulrike as Maedbh brought the chariot to a halt
beside him. “I didn’t miss a single one! Even Daegal can’t manage that!”

“Aye, dear heart, I saw,” he said, wondering who Daegal was. “No greenskins
will get by you with that bow of yours.”

“I know,” she said, miming the act of pulling the bowstring back. “I’ll kill
them all. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh!”

“Our daughter’s a natural,” said Maedbh, stepping lightly from the chariot
and lifting Ulrike down. The little girl ran over to Wolfgart and leapt into his
arms, curling her own wiry limbs around his neck. She kissed his cheeks and he
hugged her back, the most precious thing in the world to him.

“Easy there, Ulrike,” he said. “You’ll squeeze the life out of me like that.”

“Sorry,” she giggled. “I don’t think I could do that. You’re too strong.”

“Aye, maybe you’re right,” he said, squeezing her until she squealed at him
to stop.

She rested her head on his shoulder, and Wolfgart hated that he had been away
for so long. He had missed so much of her childhood with war calling him from
one corner of the Empire to the other. Too often, Wolfgart felt like he was
being pulled in different directions. Maedbh had eventually tired of living in
Reikdorf and after months of sullen silences and furious rows, she had declared
that she and Ulrike were moving back to the Asoborn settlement of Three Hills.

Wolfgart had remained in Reikdorf as one of Sigmar’s Shieldbearers, but had
travelled often between Unberogen and Asoborn lands. The times between each
visit grew longer as he and Maedbh would often end up arguing, and if not for
Ulrike, Wolfgart wondered whether he would come at all.

“When are you going back?” asked Ulrike, and Wolfgart hated that this was
always one of the first questions she asked when she saw him.

“Ach, don’t let’s talk about that just yet, lass,” he said, prising her from
his shoulder and setting her onto the ground. “Gather your shafts and show me
again how good you’ve gotten with that bow.”

Ulrike nodded enthusiastically and ran off towards the gently swaying straw
men to pluck the arrows from their abused forms. Wolfgart straightened and
sighed as he saw the fiery look in his wife’s eyes.

“Well?” said Maedbh.

“Well what?” he said, though he knew fine well what she was asking.

“You didn’t answer your daughter,” said Maedbh. “When are you going back to
Reikdorf?”

“Can’t wait to get rid of me, is that it?”

Maedbh stared at him coldly, and even in such an ill-temper, she was still
beautiful. Her fiery red hair was bound in two long scalp locks that fell to her
waist and her figure was gloriously curved and full. Desire swelled in him, but
one look at her icy eyes quelled it.

“You always have to start a fight, don’t you?”

“That’s rich coming from an Asoborn,” he said, though he knew it would only
inflame the situation. “As I recall, you’re the ones who prefer to hit first.”

Maedbh sighed, and Wolfgart wanted to reach for her, to hold her close to him
and tell her that he loved her, that he knew she still loved him and that this
fighting was stupid. But his pride wouldn’t let him. She was a hellion in war
and in the bedchamber, but her viper’s tongue drove him to words he knew were
foolish.

“I do not want to fight, Wolfgart, but I need to know you will be here for
Ulrike. She misses her father. She
needs
her father.
I
need him.”

“I’ll stay as long as I can,” he said. “There’s trouble in the south, and
we’re hearing rumours that the forest brigands have banded together in the
northern marches. They’ll need rooting out before they become too strong. Not to
mention the greenskins coming down from the mountains and the beast raids along
the Taalbec.”

Maedbh moved away from him and rubbed the horses’ necks, loosening the bits
at their mouths now that they were at rest. He saw the disappointment in her
posture and rose from his seat on the logs.

“Look, what do you want me to say? I’m oath-sworn to Sigmar, I can’t just
leave him.”

“He is an Emperor,” snapped Maedbh. “You think you are his only warrior, that
the Empire will fall if you are not at his side?”

“It almost did once before,” he said. “There was that business with the crown
I told you about.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you are his oldest and dearest friend, but you
also swore an oath to me, remember?”

“I remember,” he said, taking her hand. “It was one of the happiest days of
my life.”

She pulled away, watching as Ulrike plucked the last of her arrows from the
straw men.

“She will make a fine warrior,” said Maedbh. “A proud Asoborn warrior woman.”

Anger touched Wolfgart and he said, “Does she have to be?”

“What do you mean?”

“A warrior. She’s my little girl; she shouldn’t be using any weapons at all.
It wasn’t so long ago she chided me for wanting to go to war. She said it was
stupid, and she wasn’t wrong, but here you are pushing her into the battle
lines.”

“As every Asoborn child is,” pointed out Maedbh. “Or is there some reason you
think she shouldn’t learn to defend herself?”

“She’s a girl,” protested Wolfgart. No sooner were the words out of his mouth
than he knew he’d made a terrible mistake.

“She’s a girl,” repeated Maedbh. “Like me, you mean? Unberogen women may not
fight, but you are in Asoborn lands now, Wolfgart. And if you don’t like it go
back to Reikdorf and stay in your draughty house without us.”

“Aye, well for all the warmth you bring to it, I might just do that.”

Maedbh’s face turned to granite and she looked away as Ulrike returned with
her quiver restocked. Wolfgart wanted to take his harsh, thoughtless words back,
but it was too late.

“Come on,” said Maedbh, lifting Ulrike back onto the chariot. “Let’s try
again, and this time I’ll make it more difficult for you.”

As the chariot pulled away, Ulrike waved to him and shouted, “Watch me! Watch
me hit them all again!”

Wolfgart waved back, though a leaden weight settled in his belly.

Elswyth knelt by the dwarf’s pallet bed, cleaning the wound at his shoulder,
tutting at Cuthwin’s crude application of herbal poultices. Inflamed joints had
forced Cradoc to hang up his healer’s satchel, but his apprentice had proved to
be no less capable, though her manner was just as abrasive as the old man’s.

“Did he tell you his name?” Sigmar asked Cuthwin, looking at the dwarf’s
pallid features.

Sigmar had seen his share of battlefield injuries and though he’d seen many a
man and dwarf recover from such a wound, few of them had travelled for six days
through the wilderness before being properly treated.

“Yes, my lord,” answered Cuthwin. “Grindan Deeplock. Said he was from
Zhufbar.”

“And an engineer by the looks of it,” added Elswyth, lifting the dwarf’s
hand. Scarred and callused, the tips were dark with powder burns and the nails
were caked with the residue of oils and coal dust.

“He said he was an engineer, aye,” nodded Cuthwin. “Said he worked for the
Guildmasters of Varn Drazh. Didn’t say what that was though.”

“It’s a vast lake, high in the mountains,” said Sigmar. “Alaric told me of it
long ago. Supposedly a comet fell from the sky and blasted a huge crater in the
mountains. Alaric said there’s lots of dwarf settlements nearby, because the
rock around the lake is rich with iron and precious metals.”

“Really, Cuthwin, were you
trying
to help this dwarf to die?” cut in
Elswyth. “This wound is so dirty and infected that I don’t know if anything I
can do will halt it. You might as well have packed the dressing with
nightshade.”

Cuthwin shrank from the healer’s sharp words, and Sigmar hid a smile. Though
many considered Elswyth a fine looking woman, few dared attempt to court her,
for her tongue was well known amongst Unberogen men, though for all the wrong
reasons.

“We were on the run from greenskins,” protested Cuthwin.

“They were only goblins,” pointed out Elswyth.

Cuthwin’s face darkened. “I didn’t have time to redress his wound. It looked
fine.”

“Did you check? Or did you just drag him here through all the muddy, stagnant
pools of water you could find?”

Cuthwin looked set to lose his temper. Sigmar smiled and put himself between
the scout and the healer before violence ensued.