03 - Sword of Vengeance (19 page)

As his fingers ran over the surface of the desk, they caught
on a small, leather-bound book, buried under the heaps of paperwork. Knowing
full well he should retire and keep his strength for the following day, Leitdorf
flicked it open. There were handwritten entries on nearly every page, also in
Marius’ script. Some were written as confidently as the signature on his
orders; others looked shakier, as if scribbled down in haste.

He began to read. Some of it was illegible, and other
passages didn’t make sense at all. Perhaps written when his father’s mind was
beginning to drift.

And then, as if it had been burned on to the page for that
very purpose, there came a sentence that chilled his heart. He dropped the book,
hearing it thud on to the desk. It fell open where he’d been reading.

Leitdorf stayed still for a moment, lost in shock. He no
longer needed to read the phrase to see it. He couldn’t have been mistaken.
There it was, scrawled in black ink, as plain as a hawk against the open sky.

Her name is Natassja. And she will kill me.

Verstohlen felt his strength begin to give out as he ran. His
coat streamed behind him, more a hindrance than a help. The houses passed by in
a haze of half-seeing. The moonlight covered everything with a faint outline of
silver, but the pools of shadows were ink-black and deep as souls.

The streets were deserted. He had no idea where he was.
Perhaps the terror was driving him somewhere in particular. Perhaps not. There
was no time to think. He felt his legs protest, his muscles burn. This would be
over soon.

He tore round a corner leading into a small square. Tall
buildings on all four sides cut off the light, and it felt like running into a
well of shadows. Behind him, the rattling grew even louder. The creature was
almost close enough to reach out and touch him.

Verstohlen veered sharply to the left, darting to one side
and trying to wrong-foot his pursuer. Something snagged at his coat, tearing the
leather. Footfalls echoed around the enclosed space, making it sound like there
was more than one of him trying to run. The illusion was cruel, only reinforcing
his desperate isolation.

Bone-hard fingers clutched at his coat again, slicing through
the expensive leather as if it were the flimsiest of gauze. One more lunge, and
the creature would have him.

Verstohlen spun round, bringing the dagger up hard. He had a
glimpse of the monster’s face. It nearly caused him to miss his aim. A ravaged
visage, stripped of skin and eyes, studded with brass spikes and needle-tipped
incisors. The blank eyes glowed lilac, shining in the night like corrupted
stars. An inhuman shriek echoed round the square as Verstohlen’s blade scraped
across what remained of the flesh.

Then he was moving again, running as before, heart labouring,
sweat streaming from his brow. The creature barely paused. It scuttled after
him, wheezing as it came. There was no blood on the dagger, just scraps of dry
skin and sinew.

Verstohlen had seen enough. The horror had once been a man he
knew. Tochfel’s features, or what was left of them, still existed, distorted by
pain and artificial hatred.

The talons groped for him. He felt one of them scrape down
his back, cutting through his clothes and drawing blood. Verstohlen roared with
pain, twisting away from the agonising touch, feeling himself stumble.

Verstohlen rolled as he fell, getting his dagger up just in
time to parry a fresh plunge of the talons. The Tochfel-creature’s robes fell
away and Verstohlen saw the full extent of the man’s transformation. He was
naked underneath the flimsy draping, though not much of his old human form
remained. He was as much bone and iron as flesh, animated by some dread power
and kept alive by forbidden sorcery. Spikes studded his ruined flesh, curved and
barbed. A chasm had been cut in his chest and the ribs were still visible across
the wound. Within that exposed shell beat a heart, though it was no natural
organ. It pulsed with a lurid light, strapped in place with iron bands and
surrounded by the eight-pointed star. Tochfel’s residual flesh curled away from
it, as if burned by the terrible energy within. The stink of jasmine was pungent
and close, as sweet as death.

The talons raked down, aiming at Verstohlen’s eyes.
Frantically, driven by nothing more than pure fear, he fended off the blows, his
dagger scraping along the scythes.

The end would come quickly now. Tochfel’s strength had been
augmented three-fold and his sorcery-laced limbs quickly pinned Verstohlen to
the ground. Talons scrabbled at his face again and he only just got the dagger
up in time to ward them. The blade was knocked away by the force of the strike,
sent spinning across the ground. Then he was defenceless.

Verstohlen looked up into the eyes of his killer. There was
no humanity left there, just a sickening grin where Natassja had inserted rows
of needle teeth. The Tochfel-creature’s smile widened, and its cheeks stretched
impossibly taut.

“Verstohlen,”
it whispered a final time, as if the
name somehow gave it the power to kill. It opened its jaws wide and prepared to
lunge.

Light exploded, blinding him. There was a heavy blow from
somewhere close by, and Verstohlen felt the creature knocked into the air. He
scrabbled free, rubbing his eyes. Something huge and heavy strode across his
field of vision. Moonlight flashed down the length of a mighty sword, carved
with runes and with the sign of the comet etched on its surface.

“You’re a hard man to find,” growled Schwarzhelm, before
plunging after the wounded Tochfel-creature, His sword flashed again in the
night, and battle was joined.

Deep under the Iron Tower, the screams now never ceased.
Insulated from the surface by many feet of solid stone, they resounded from the
polished walls of the lower dungeon, rising through the snaking vaults and
shafts before spilling out across the throne chamber, mixed together in a
symphony of suffering. As the catacombs had expanded, hewn from the rock by
Natassja’s growing army of Stone-slaves, the scope for experiments had only
grown. So many of the fine young men who’d volunteered for Grosslich’s forces
had ended up serving a rather different mistress. No doubt those coins didn’t
look like such a good deal now.

Natassja knew that Grosslich didn’t like her taking a tithe
of his warriors for her own purposes, but that really was too bad. She
understood, as he could not, what purpose they served. The inflicting of pain
was not merely done for her enjoyment—though, to be sure, she did enjoy it.
There was method behind it, a necessary accumulation of souls in anguish. The
time was coming when the object of her labour would become apparent. Not yet,
but soon.

Natassja walked down towards the Chamber of the Stone. She
was already far below ground level and the floor was still sloping down. The
rock walls of the corridor had been carved recently and she hadn’t had time to
decorate them yet. Maintaining an appropriate aesthetic was important, and she
would have to set her architects to work on the lower levels without much
further delay. Grosslich thought such work was a waste of effort, which only
went to show how meagre his understanding of the great plan was.

Natassja reached the archway that led to the chamber. From
within, she could hear Achendorfer chanting away. He’d been busy, the little
lizard. Such diligence really deserved some kind of reward. Perhaps one of the
slave girls from the upper pens could be given to him before too much work was
done to her.

Natassja entered the domed chamber, feeling the waves of
suppressed energy surge towards her, bathing her body in the raw essence of the
aethyr. The Stone recognised her.

The chamber was perhaps forty feet in diameter and perfectly
circular, though it rose far higher than that and the roof was lost in shadow.
At floor level the rock had been ground smooth and reflected the light like a
mirror. Torches had been placed high up on the walls, covering the scene in a
lurid purple glow. Achendorfer stood to one side, reciting passages from the
book he’d taken from the Averburg library. As he read, the flames seemed to wave
and flicker in appreciation. Something in the chamber was listening to him.

Natassja looked up at the Stone, the centrepiece and
foundation of everything she’d done. Only the merest tip of it had been exposed
and even that was massive, thrusting up from the floor like a miniature
mountain. It was pure black, shiny and diamond-hard. She didn’t know exactly how
long it had lain under Averheim, locked deep within the earth, cold and
forgotten by men. What she did know was that it was gigantic, a vast fragment of
tainted substance, hidden away since the forgotten wars of the great powers at
the dawn of the world.

The Stone. Ancient and malignant, locked out of sight for
millennia, exposed to human contact again just two days ago. Even now its
energies were bleeding upwards, suffusing the structure of the Tower and taking
it over. With every cry of agony, the slumbering giant groped more surely to
awakening.

Natassja breathed in deeply, feeling the throbbing air fill
her lungs, glorying in the latent, thrumming energy around her.

“How long have you been working, Uriens?” she asked, gazing
fondly at the little insect.

“Six hours,” he replied, looking exhausted.

“Get some rest,” she said, stroking his bald head absently.
“I’ll have something nice sent to your chamber.”

Achendorfer closed the book and bowed, his limbs trembling
from fatigue. Dried blood had collected around his cracked lips. He shuffled
back into the tunnel, leaving Natassja alone with the Stone.

She walked up to it and ran her fingers down its many-faceted
surface. It was warm to the touch. The spirit had been roused. Her pupils
dilated, and a smile of satisfaction spread across her elegant face.

“Not long now, then,” she breathed. “Not long now.”

Schwarzhelm strode forwards, whirling his sword back into
position, watching as the horror before him gathered itself to strike. It was
like some massive, terrible insect. Its limbs cradled around itself, stretched
and distended.

It looked up and screamed at him. The sound was unearthly,
like a man’s and a woman’s voices mixed together and stretched almost beyond
recognition. The lilac eyes flashed, the teeth snapped in the dark.

Then it sprang. The talons extended, slashing at his eyes.

Schwarzhelm brought the sword up sharp, cutting the blade
into the oncoming torso and bending back out of range of the swiping talons. The
creature crumpled around the sword and a flash of light shot out, just as
before. The horror was sent flying back, its scrawny legs cracking as it hit the
stone. Quick as hate, it was back on its claws, scuttling into the attack.

It leapt at Schwarzhelm. The Champion parried the claws away,
stepped back out of the range of the snapping jaws, working his blade with
phenomenal speed.

The Tochfel-creature dropped low, coiling to pounce at
Schwarzhelm’s legs. Its movements were fast but clumsy, like a spider trying to
manage too many limbs. It sprang, both hands outstretched.

Schwarzhelm darted back again, the Rechtstahl flickering in a
defensive pattern. Next to the ruined amalgam of man, machine and sorcery, he
looked even more solid and immovable than usual, a bulwark of coiled force and
endurance. No emotion crossed his craggy features as he worked, no fear shone in
his eyes. In combat Schwarzhelm was irresistible, as elemental as the storms of
nature, as unyielding as the bones of the hills.

Verstohlen staggered to his feet, dagger poised. He had no
chance of intervening—this fight had been taken from him. The Tochfel-creature
struck again, screaming with frustration as it tried to find a way past
Schwarzhelm’s wall of steel. Every time it lashed out, a flash of light broke
across the square. The Rechtstahl had been forged for monsters such as this. No
ordinary blade would have withstood the clattering talons or gnashing incisors,
but the Sword of Justice had been wound with spells of warding and drenched in
litanies of destruction.

Schwarzhelm waited patiently, watching the horror flail at
him, keeping it engaged until the opening emerged. It leapt up again, trying to
rake at his eyes with its sweeping claws. He slammed the sword round, connecting
solidly with the Tochfel-creature’s iron-bound chest and sending it spinning
through the air. It hit the stone hard, and there was the sound of something
snapping. The lilac light in its eyes flickered for an instant.

Schwarzhelm went after it quickly, rotating the sword in both
hands and holding it point down. The horror was almost too quick. As soon as its
spine hit the ground it began to gather for another strike. Only for the
briefest moment was its ruined torso exposed. Schwarzhelm plunged the Rechtstahl
down cleanly, through the flesh and bone. The tip went down into it all, rending
as it went, impaling the abomination like a fly on a pin.

The Tochfel-creature screamed, flailing wildly, raking its
talons and trying to claw at Schwarzhelm’s eyes. The Emperor’s Champion held
firm, keeping the blade lodged in place, letting the holy steel purge and
cleanse.

Slowly, punctuated by shrieks, whines and hisses, the light
in the monster’s eyes dimmed. Its iron heart lost its lustre and the ravaged
limbs fell still. Schwarzhelm kept the sword in place, not daring to withdraw it
until the last energy had been bled from the creature of Chaos. It took a long
time for the final twitches to subside. Eventually, the fire extinguished, and
the talons clanged to the ground, bereft of a guiding will, as inert as an
unwielded dagger.

Schwarzhelm pulled the Rechtstahl free, keeping it poised for
a second strike. It wasn’t needed. The terror had been extinguished.