03 - Sword of Vengeance (3 page)

So it had proved for the men lying on the stone in front of
them. They had been dead for a long time. Their skin had been dried and bleached
by the wind and hung in tatters from exposed bone. Their eyes had long gone,
taken by the scavengers of the high places. Even now, carrion crows circled in
the icy airs, waiting to feast again. The banner of Averland, crested with the
golden sun of Solland, hung limply against the far cliff. The standard was
surrounded by heaps of bodies, as if that was where they’d made their last
stand.

It hadn’t done them much good. Obscene images had been daubed
across the precious fabric, obscuring the proud record of past conflicts. The
figure of the sun had been transformed into the leering face of a corrupted
moon.

Bloch couldn’t tell how many bodies lay there. Hundreds,
certainly. Probably far more. The way they lay atop one another, rammed together
in death as they had been in their final hours, made it hard to tell.

“They took plenty with them,” said Kraus.

That they had. For every man who lay on the stone, there was
an orc too. The greenskins’ flesh had weathered better. The two armies were
intertwined with one another, locked in an embrace that had lasted far longer
than the fighting.

Despite the numbers of dead greenskins, it was clear who had
won. The human bodies had been despoiled and their armour plundered. There were
signs that goblins had crawled down the cliffs like swarming insects, no doubt
raining barbs down on top of the defenders. One goblin corpse still hung forty
feet up, its hand trapped in a crack, its lifeless body twisting in the wind.

It would have been a massacre. The soldiers must have known
they were going to die. They would have fought for pride, but nothing else.

Bloch felt sickened. Just like the other sites Drassler had
shown them. They’d come up here to be killed.

“Why?”
he said, bitterly, not expecting any better
answers than last time. “Why leave the forts? These places are murder-traps.”

“I told you,” said Drassler. “We had orders. You’ll see it
all at the Keep.”

Bloch shook his head despairingly. He hadn’t been a commander
long, but he’d fought in the Emperor’s armies all his adult life and knew how
they worked. There were some orders you didn’t follow.

He crouched down and took a closer look at the bodies near
his feet. The corpses of the Black Fire Keep garrison stretched away across the
site, their clothes torn and flesh rent. Empty eye-sockets gazed up at the sky,
laced with dry, crusted blood.

He wasn’t interested in them. He was interested in the orcs.
Before him lay one of the smaller breeds. Perhaps a large goblin—it had the
hook nose and long yellow fangs of the kind. It had been skewered on the tip of
a sword and the blade still stood, lodged in its scrawny chest. Dead claws
clutched at the air, locked in the final throes of agony.

Bloch studied its armour. Like all the greenskins it was
wearing close-fitting mail. It had been carrying a short sword of its own rather
than a gouge or a flail. The workmanship was good. Just as with the orcs he’d
encountered in Averland while serving under Grunwald, the greenskins had
excellent wargear. Imperial wargear.

He shuffled forwards and took a closer look at the creature’s
face. Even in death it had a horrifying aspect. A long black tongue lolled from
its cruel mouth, and its thin face was set into a scream of rage. The expression
was so vivid, so locked in malice, it was hard to believe that some flicker of
life didn’t still exist within it.

The sun flashed from something shiny. Dangling from the
goblin’s earlobe was a coin. Bloch pulled it from the flesh and it popped free.
An Imperial schilling, embossed with the image of Karl Franz and stamped with
the date and place of manufacture. It was new, minted in Altdorf that year.
Coins like that were rare—they took time to come into circulation. All the
ones he’d seen in the death-sites were the same. Somehow, this horde of orcs had
come across Imperial armour and a batch of newly-minted coins.

He stood up again, keeping the schilling in his hand.

“Same as before?” asked Kraus.

“Same as before.”

Bloch turned to Drassler. “I’ve seen enough of this. We’ll
head to the Keep.”

“They’re still camped in there,” warned Drassler. “I don’t
know how many.”

“I don’t care how many,” growled Bloch, clenching his fist
around the coin and squeezing it tight. “We’ll kill ’em all.”

The Iron Tower was not the only building being raised in
Averheim, but it was by far the largest. A whole district of the poor quarter
had been scoured to allow its creation. Some of the demolished houses and
streets had dated back to the time of the first Emperors, before the city had
grown large enough to reach over the river and absorb the villages along the
western bank. They were gone now, mere whispers in the long march of Imperial
history.

The building work had taken place quickly. So quickly that
men marvelled at it as far afield as Streissen and Nuln. Though the Leitdorf’s
and the Alptraums between them had erected plenty of follies in their long years
of rule, each had taken years to complete. In a matter of weeks, the Iron
Tower’s foundations had been laid and the skeleton metal frame had shot up into
the sky.

Despite the wonders of engineering, the Tower was not
popular. Soon after work had started, ordinary folk of the poor quarter had
learned to give it a wide berth. Few willingly walked under the shadow of the
great iron spurs that marked out its future outline. Any who had to pass close
by scratched the sign of the comet on their chests. It had an evil rumour, and
in private many started to call it Grosslich’s Folly.

No one knew for certain
why
the Tower was so hated.
After all, the new elector was wildly popular. Order had been restored to the
city, and the gold was flowing again through the merchants’ coffers. It was even
hissed in quiet corners that joyroot could be found again, though its trade had
been heavily curtailed.

Still, the stories kept coming. A baby had been born in sight
of the Tower with three arms and no eyes. Milk curdled across the city when the
foundation stone had been laid. No birds would fly within a mile of it, they
said, turning Averheim silent at dawn and dusk. All fanciful tales, no doubt.
All unreliable, plucked from the gossipy lips of old wives with nothing better
to do.

But the world was a strange place, and old wives weren’t
always wrong. What no one could deny was that, from time to time, attractive
youths were still going missing. Not many—just one or two, here and there -
but enough to attract attention. That had been going on even before the days of
the Tower, and folk had put it down to the evil times with no elector. Grosslich
had even issued an edict on the matter, promising death for any found engaged in
the grisly removal of Averland’s next generation.

It didn’t stop the disappearances. Like the slow drip of a
tap, they carried on. It was worse around the Tower, some said. Many believed
the rumours, even though there was no proof. It was all hearsay, conjecture and
idle talk.

Heinz-Mark Grosslich, still dressed in the robes he’d worn to
receive the Imperial messenger, found himself enjoying the irony of it all as he
headed towards the Tower. The foolish, the ignorant and the savage were quite
capable of seeing what was going on under their noses. Only the wise were blind
to the horror that lurked around them. Blind, that is, until it was far too
late.

Night had fallen. The Tower building site was heavily guarded
by men of the elector’s inner circle, loyal soldiers who’d seen the fight
against Leitdorf through from the beginning. As he approached the perimeter of
the works, Grosslich saw half a dozen of them leap to attention. They looked
surprised to see him walking on his own. They shouldn’t have been. He’d been
back and forth between the Tower and the Averburg several times a day for the
past couple of weeks. When the work was completed it would become the new seat
of power in Averland. The Averburg would have to go. The city needed a fresh
start, a new way of doing things.

He nodded to the guards as he passed their cordon and entered
the site. None of them would ever go further inside—their job was to patrol
the fences. That didn’t mean the interior was unguarded, just that the guards
there were of a more specialised type.

Once past the fences, the building came into view properly.
It had the appearance of an upturned claw. Huge iron shafts had been sunk into
the earth, on top of which the structure was now being raised. When finished,
the Tower would resemble a giant dark needle, soaring up into the high airs and
dominating the land around it. There would be a turret at the very pinnacle
sending six spikes out over the cityscape, each twenty feet long. At the centre
of those spikes would be his sanctum, far above the rolling plains. That would
be the heart of it all, the fulcrum about which the realm would be moulded to
his will.

There was still so much to do. The lower levels of the Tower
were little more than a tangle of naked metal. Piles of beams, trusses, stone
blocks, nails, rods and other paraphernalia littered the churned-up earth. The
disarray offended Grosslich’s refined senses, and he made a mental note to order
the workers to take more care.

As he neared the centre of the works, a door loomed up out of
the darkness. It was imposing—over twelve feet tall and nearly as wide—and
decorated with friezes of pure, dark iron. Here and there, a face of tortured
agony could be made out in the night air, lost in a morass of limbs and torsos.
The iron doors themselves were covered in a filigree of sigils and unholy icons,
all traced with formidable skill and delicacy. Grosslich had no idea what they
all signified, but he knew he would soon. His abilities increased with every
passing day.

The wall behind the door was barely started and rose no more
than a few feet above the iron frame. Beyond it, the bone-like scaffolding was
obvious. It was a door that seemingly led nowhere. And yet, for all that, it was
guarded by two heavily-armoured soldiers. They wore strange armour, quite unlike
the standard gear his men in the citadel were given. Each was clad in a suit of
segmented plates, glossy and polished. The soldiers carried double-bladed
halberds, though the steel had been replaced with what looked like polished
crystal. Both were short and stocky and stood strangely, as if their legs bent
the wrong way and their shoulders had been dragged out of place. Most
disconcertingly, their closed-face helmets had long snouts, carved in the shape
of snarling dog’s muzzles. No unaltered human could have fitted into those
helms. These were Natassja’s creatures, the product of her endless
experimentation.

As he gazed on her progeny, Grosslich felt a surge of love
for Natassja bloom up within him. She was everything to him, the one who had
taken him from a minor landowner in the border country with Stirland and turned
him into the most powerful man in the province. Her imagination and beauty were
beyond those of anyone he had ever met. Particularly her imagination.

“Open the doors,” he said. The soldiers complied without
speaking, though there was a strained wheezing from their helmets. So many of
them died after having the alterations made. That was a shame, but a small price
to pay for art.

The iron doors swung inwards, revealing a staircase that
plunged down into the foundations of the Tower. The smell of jasmine, Natassja’s
smell, rose up from the opening. There were other delights too, such as the
pleasing chorus of screams, just on the edge of hearing. Things were so much
better now that she had the time and freedom to truly give rein to her
inclinations. This was just a foretaste of what was to come. Soon, the screams
would be ringing out across all Averland.

Grosslich smiled and descended into the depths of the Tower.
Behind him, the doors clanged closed.

Ludwig Schwarzhelm finished writing and placed the quill next
to the parchment. He sat back in his chair, rolled his massive shoulders to
relieve the ache, and looked up from his desk.

The walls of his study in Altdorf looked alien in the
candlelight. He’d hardly visited it in the past decade of constant campaigning.
Now they were an indictment of him. He’d been ordered to stay in them, to keep
out of Imperial affairs for as long as it took the Emperor to forgive him for
what had happened. However long that might be.

The rooms were minimally furnished. Most men of his rank
would have lived in opulent state chambers, attended to by scores of servants
and surrounded by priceless treasures from across the known world. That had
never been his way. His dwellings were close to the Palace, but they were
simple. He had a single manservant to keep an eye on the place when he was on
campaign and employed the services of an aged charwoman, the mother of one of
the many men who’d died serving under his command. They were both devoted to
him, but since coming back from Averland he’d found he could hardly look them in
the eye. He was diminished, and felt the shame of it keenly.