03 - God King (36 page)

A white-fletched arrow flew through the air and buried itself in the chest of
the sorcerer, who it let out an almighty howl of rage. Its magic was cut off
abruptly as another arrow sliced through its black robe and flared brightly with
a wash of pure light. As his strength began to return, Marius twisted to see
Marika calmly walking towards the dragon and its rider, loosing arrow after
arrow at the dread creature. Her bow shimmered with light, silver blue threads
worked into the bowstave gleaming with the same pale light as suffused Ulfshard.

More arrows slashed into the dark sorcerer and Marius felt the creature’s
desperation as the magic of the fey folk severed the connection to its dread
master. Marius surged to his feet as Aldred collapsed to his knees and slumped
onto his side. Ulfshard dropped from his hands as Marika sent another arrow
through the hood of the sorcerer.

It screeched with agony and scales fell from the dragon’s body, its limbs
spilling powdered bone from between its joints. The green fire in its remaining
eye dimmed and Marius saw he had a chance to end this. He swept up Aldred’s
fallen sword and charged the reeling dragon. Ulfshard blazed with all the power
the ancient smith and his archmage brother had bound to its edge.

Marius brought Ulfshard down on the dragon’s neck, the blade shattering
mighty bones as thick as a man’s waist as easily as if they were fashioned from
brittle clay. The sword cut through the dragon’s neck and its head fell to the
ramparts with a bellowing roar, like a whirlwind through a bone-filled desert.
The sorcerous will animating the long-dead beast could not hold its form
together in the face of Ulfshard’s magic, and it began falling apart, bones and
withered flesh falling like ashen flakes from its mighty form.

Its wings folded and rotted away, blown like cinders from a cold firepit. Its
hollow bones disintegrated, and the black sorcerer upon the dragon’s back fell
to the ramparts. Its robes billowed around it like hellish wings and its hood
fell back to reveal a loathsome face with gaunt cheeks, pallid skin and a narrow
tapered jaw filled with needle-like fangs. Its eyes were sunken and violet, but
Marius saw they were all too human. This evil that had bound itself to Nagash
was no unholy creature of darkness, but had once been a man.

A man steeped in evil and filled with unnatural power, but a man nonetheless.

Glowing arrows protruded from his body, shafts of white and gold that
trembled as though working deeper into his magically sustained existence. The
creature hissed and bared its fangs, but Marius saw it was wounded nigh unto
death and stripped of its powers by Marika’s arrows.

Marius stepped in and hammered Ulfshard across the creature’s neck, the blade
slicing as cleanly through the monster’s flesh as it had the unholy dragon’s. It
died with a curse on its lips, but as its head flew through the air the body
ignited with an internal fire that consumed it within the time it took Marius to
bring Ulfshard around.

A cold wind blew over the ramparts and a foetid exhalation gusted along the
length of the walls as skeletal warriors hacking their way over the walls
collapsed into piles of decaying bone. Undead corsairs slumped on the docks and
bloodied corpses that had, moments before, been clawing at the desperate
defenders of Marburg now fell to the ground as the dark will empowering them was
undone.

Thousands more remained beyond the walls, but this attack was over.

And that was good enough for Marius.

He sheathed Ulfshard, not surprised in the least to find it fitted within his
scabbard, despite being almost a handspan longer than his previous blade.

Marika ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck. She held him
tightly, and he responded in kind, though the gesture was automatic rather than
heartfelt.

“We did it!” she cried. “They’re dead!” Marius looked at the decaying remains
of the sorcerer and his dragon, lying next to the corpses of Aldred and Laredus.

He wondered which deaths she meant, but realised it didn’t matter.

“That we did, my dear,” he said with a satisfied grin. “That
we did.”

Eoforth hurried through the darkened streets of Reikdorf, fear lending his
exhausted limbs strength. The streets of the city, once so familiar and
reassuring, were now threatening and unknown. Every turn was laden with
uncertainty, each step echoing strangely as though this was a city that existed
beyond the realms of men, a place forsaken by the natural laws of the world.

A gibbous moon hung low in the sky, casting stark shadows through the empty
street. Eoforth knew that thousands of people, refugees from all across the
Empire, packed Reikdorf, so the idea that the city could be so empty was surely
ridiculous. Thousands of people filled every nook and cranny: refugees from
Marburg and Jutonsryk, southern tribesmen and villagers coming up from the Grey
Mountains and villagers fleeing the closing net of the dead from the east and
north.

Nor were refugees the only people to come to Reikdorf. The city had the feel
of an armed camp, with warriors billeted throughout its many buildings. The
majority were Unberogen, for they made up the bulk of the population around
these parts, but many more were Asoborns and Brigundians fleeing the destruction
of their lands.

Eoforth had heard snippets only of the news from across the Empire, for his
researches into Nagash’s history had driven him to the point of obsession. His
head ached constantly and the aches and pains that plagued him on a daily basis
seemed stronger and more insidious than ever before—as though the dread
necromancer’s reach was clawing him down into the ancient pages and scrolls
gathered on the library’s shelves. His breathing rasped in his lungs and every
step sent a spike of pain shooting through his chest. Eoforth knew the eyes of
the necromancer were upon him, mocking his attempts to uncover some secret that
might give Sigmar and his warriors a means of defeating him. No such secret
existed, and it amused Nagash to allow Eoforth to fritter away his time on such
fruitless research.

Yet Eoforth
had
found something…

Not a hidden nemesis by which the necromancer could be defeated, but a
character trait that might yet be exploited. He had to take what he had found to
Sigmar’s longhouse, yet the street before him seemed to stretch away into
infinity. Scrolls fell from the bundle haphazardly stacked in his arms and he
blinked stars from his eyes as his heart lurched painfully.

Sigmar had returned to Reikdorf two days ago, and the mood of despair that
had settled upon the city had lifted as he rode through the Ostgate with
Wolfgart and the Asoborns. News of what had befallen Freya’s army had not
dampened the spirits of Reikdorf’s people, but Sigmar had not wasted any time
and instructed every smith in the city to sharpen blades, repair armour and
bolster the defences of the Unberogen capital.

Every man, woman and child within the city bent their efforts to ensuring the
survival of the Empire, carrying armloads of arrows to the walls, establishing
makeshift infirmaries for the wounded and doing all they could to help. Not one
person or family stinted on their duties, and the sense of brotherhood that
stretched from one side of Reikdorf to the other was palpable.

All that would be for nothing if Eoforth could not reach Sigmar’s longhouse.

His moment of epiphany had come as the last glimmers of light faded from the
library’s high, lancet windows. Only when the dozen candles with which he
surrounded his desk had blown out in the one instant had he realised he was
alone.

Eoforth felt the gloom and the unseen whisperers in the darkness close in on
him. Glimmers of light drifted from the farthest halls of the library, a host of
sibilant voices sighing like distant choirs as they spiralled towards him,
laughing in derision at his puny efforts to undo the schemes of their master.

He’d cursed himself for allowing himself to become so engrossed in his work
that he’d forgotten the passage of time. He’d allowed the dead to get in and now
he was going to pay for it. His heart beat an irregular rhythm on his thin
chest, and a painful numbness flowed down his left arm. He flexed the fingers,
trying to force the blood to flow. His heart was weak and to put it under such
strain was too much for him to bear.

Eoforth rested against a stone building, trying to gather his strength. He
heard whispers behind him and spun, clutching the scrolls he’d gathered in the
dark before fleeing for the streets. Moonlight bathed the world in cold,
heartless light and he saw shadows where no shadows should be. They slid across
the cobbles and over the walls of nearby dwellings, stretching and swelling to
resemble elongated figures with black, featureless faces, thin, wasted arms and
curling claws.

They chattered with the rattle of unseen teeth, clicking their insubstantial
claws on the stonework as they closed in on him. Eoforth pushed himself from the
wall as they drew near, limping down the road with desperate heaves of tortured
lungs rattling in his chest. Though it was cold and his breath misted the air
before him, his skin was slick with sweat.

Despite the reek of boiling hops that turned his stomach, Eoforth set off
down Brewer Street, weaving like the drunks who clustered around the beer
makers’ back doors, hoping for the slops.

The shadows on the walls followed him and he heard screeching laughter from
the streets running alongside him, half-glimpsed phantoms flickering at the
corners of his eyes. It seemed impossible that no one else could be aware of
these spectres, or that he hadn’t yet encountered another person.

Perhaps he walked in the world of the dead now, a living soul that moved
unseen by those untouched by mortality. The enemy stalked him, perhaps fearing
what he knew and might pass to Sigmar. The dead believed he had found something
that could hurt them and that made him pick up his pace, forcing his wretched
body onwards.

Eoforth clutched the silver dove pendant around his neck, mouthing a prayer
to Shallya that he hadn’t said aloud since he was a youngster.

“Merciful Shallya, meek and mild, watch me now, your helpless child,” he
said, feeling the chill of the grave lessen with every word. He fought to
remember his other prayers, especially ones to Morr and Taal. Morr for his
hatred of the undead, Taal for his joy in life.

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to Morr my soul to keep—”

His words were cut off by a feral snarl and Eoforth looked up to see a pack
of wolves blocking the road ahead. Filthy, rotted creatures with bone and muscle
exposed beneath mangy, dirt-encrusted fur, these were abominable creatures of
darkness. They did not howl, but their broken teeth were bared and they stalked
forward, limping and ungainly on broken bones and twisted spines. As malformed
and broken in death though they were, Eoforth had no illusions as to his ability
to outrun them or survive their attack.

He couldn’t make it past them, and looking over his shoulder he saw the
chattering shadows easing down the street with their stretched arms reaching out
to him. There was no way he could reach the longhouse, and the Gardens of Morr
were on the other side of the city walls, so he set off down the Street of
Temples, to the only place that might yet grant him sanctuary.

They came after him, but slowly, as though they were afraid to follow him
into this place of gods. These divine beings watched over mankind, and the
minions of necromancers were their most hated foes, for the dead worshipped
nothing.

Still clutching his dove pendant, Eoforth hurried down the street with the
wolves padding behind him and the shadow hunters laughing at his feeble attempt
to escape. He saw the building he sought, just as a sharp pain stabbed into his
chest. Eoforth gasped with the shock of it. He stumbled, losing more of his
scrolls, and ground his teeth against the pain spreading down his left side.
Eoforth was no physician, but he knew his heart was giving out under the strain.

He cried out as he slammed into the temple door, the pain of the impact
spreading through his body as he slid down the stonework.

“Help… me…” he gasped, though he knew no one could possibly hear so weak a
cry.

The shadows closed in and the wolves bared their fangs.

“In the name of Shallya, have mercy!” he cried with the last of his strength.

And then, a miracle. A sliver of light filled the street and the shadow
hunters fled its touch, retreating to the forsaken corners of the darkness. The
wolves backed away from the light, wary of its touch. They waited, uncertain and
afraid, the torchlight reflecting in the empty sockets of their eyes.

Eoforth reached out to the light, as greyness smothered his vision.

His chest burned with pain and he fell into the arms of the woman who
appeared in the doorway like the beauteous goddess of mercy and healing herself.
His heartbeat became an arrhythmic crescendo as the light haloed her head and
softened her angular features.

Eoforth had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life.

“My lady…” he said. “You came for me…”

High Priestess Alessa of the temple of Shallya knelt beside Eoforth and
cradled his head. Her eyes swept the street beyond her temple, and the wolves
fled from her stern, unflinching gaze. No creature of darkness could face so
holy and pure a vision without fear.

He felt himself sliding down into darkness, and tried to speak, but the words
wouldn’t come.

“Be at peace, Eoforth,” said Alessa, seeing immediately that he was dying.
“Whatever they were are gone now.”

“I must… speak,” he said, as a single tear slid down his cheek. “Sigmar needs
to know…”

Alessa brushed it away and said, “Speak to me. Whatever you have to say, I
will tell him. I promise. What would you have as your last words in this world?”