03 - Sword of Vengeance (30 page)

Natassja was revealed in all her dark majesty. The wind,
whipped up by the latent forces surging beneath Averheim, screamed past her,
rippling her black robes and tousling her long raven hair. Her body now glowed a
deep, luminous blue, and tattoos as black as night writhed across her exposed
skin. Her white-less eyes glittered in the night air and her lips were parted.
She gazed on the maelstrom, and the maelstrom gazed back.

“It begins,” she murmured.

Grosslich wore a new suit of armour, blood-red and forged
from some unnatural alloy created in Natassja’s forges. It shone like an
insect’s shell, jointed with astonishing precision, encasing his entire body
below the neck. In place of a sword he carried a slender wand of bone, carved
from skulls and fused into a single channel for his forbidden magicks. He was a
sorcerer in his own right now, gifted by the Dark Prince for the damage he’d
wrought to the Empire he’d once called his homeland. His expression was eager,
though there was a note of uncertainty.

“The lesser towers are lighting,” he said.

One by one, the six smaller spikes of iron protruding from
the old city walls burst into sudden flame. Each was a different colour, vivid
and searing. As the torches kindled, the fluorescent hues mingled in the air
above the rooftops, turning the deep of the night into a bizarre and perverted
copy of the day. Shadows swayed wildly across the city as the illumination
switched from one shade to another. All of Averheim was ablaze, drenched in a
riot of sorcerous, sickening colour. Only the central Tower, massive and
nightshade-black, remained untouched by the luminous blooms. It was waiting,
biding its time, holding for the moment.

More mutant soldiers, some bearing bronze studs in their
flesh as the handmaidens did, began to file from the gates at the base of the
Tower, marching behind the dog-soldiers to take up their places within the city.
The ranks of troops emerging from the surgeries and dungeons seemed endless,
hundreds upon hundreds of twisted creatures who’d once been men. The mortal
inhabitants of Averheim cheered them on, their own senses distorted and
insensible to anything but a vague impression of excitement. The madness was now
universal, soaked into the walls and stained deep at the roots.

Below it all, the Stone waited. Its spirit was alive,
sentient and searching. In its hidden chamber, Achendorfer read the rites
endlessly, the blood flowing over his chin and dripping to the polished floor.
It remained as black as a corrupted soul. As the chanting continued, it became
more
black, sinking into an utter absence of light impossible to create in
the world of untainted matter. As Achendorfer stumbled over his spells, the
glossy sheen disappeared, replaced by a purity of darkness he’d never seen
before. It deepened, falling away to a shade he could only describe as
oblivion.

Out on the pinnacle, Natassja sensed it. She sighed, flexing
her long, taloned fingers. The aethyric energies surging up the Tower resonated
with her body, fuelling the transformations within. She felt subtle harmonics,
so long cultivated, shift into alignment.

“Here it comes…” she whispered.

Far above, the clouds broke. High in the sky, the Deathmoon
rode, as yellow as a goblin’s tooth, full-faced and leering. Morrslieb, bleeding
corruption, was abroad. As the final shreds moved away from it, baleful light
flooded across blighted Averheim, blending with the fires on the walls and
drenching the Aver valley in more layers of diseased virulence.

“Ah…”
Natassja breathed, feeling the tainted essence
of the moon sink over her. The tattoos on her flesh whirled into new shapes,
spinning and extending like a nest of snakes.

Below, in the fevered city, the chanting broke out with fresh
ardour. The fires on the towers sent plumes high into the sky, tearing up
towards the glowing disc, wreathing it in fingers of outstretched
witch-lightning.

“Will you say the word?” asked Grosslich, fingering the wand.
He looked half-enraptured, half-terrified.

Natassja hardly heard him. She was lost on a higher plane of
sensation. Below her, the Stone sang. Above her, the vast ball of warpstone
sailed through the heavens. Between them was the Tower, the fulcrum on which
everything rested. She could feel massive waves of power run up the
spell-infused iron, resonating like the peals of great bronze bells. The earth
cried out, though only she could hear its tortured wails. The barriers
separating her from the raw essence of Chaos were finger-thin.

Then the moment came, the conjunction of all she’d worked
for. After so much suffering, so many years of toil, her vision was realised.
The failure with Marius now meant nothing. Lassus’ failure meant nothing. She
had the tools she needed to complete the great work. The servants now answering
her call would be of a different order to any who had come before.

She raised her arms high, and coruscating energy blazed from
her palms. The Tower beneath her shuddered, trembling as a vast, uncontainable
force suddenly surged along its frame.

“Now,”
she hissed.

And Averheim exploded.

* * *

Verstohlen awoke, covered in sweat. It was still the deep of
the night. He rolled over, tangled in his cloak. The wind was rippling across
the moors, racing through the tussocks of grass. A storm was brewing.

That wasn’t what had woken him.

Schwarzhelm was already standing, arms folded, gazing into
the north-west. Overhead, the clouds were racing. Morrslieb had risen, just as
it had over the Vormeisterplatz. The heavens were in motion.

“I dreamt of…” Verstohlen started, but his words trailed
away. The nightmares had come back. Visions of daemons leaping from roof to
roof. An endless cycle of screams, flesh pulled from the bones of living men,
soldiers with the faces of dogs. Above it all, a tall, slender tower of dark
metal, looming across the carnage, covering the world in a shadow of insanity.

“You weren’t dreaming.”

Verstohlen clambered to his feet, shivering against the cold.
Far in the west, a tongue of flame burned bright on the horizon. It was like a
column of blood, impossibly distant, impossibly tall. It stood sentinel over the
land, neither flickering nor weakening, a pillar of fire.

“Holy Verena,” Verstohlen breathed, making the sign of the
scales on his chest. “What
is
that?”

“It is Averheim, Pieter,” said Schwarzhelm, voice grim. “It
is what we’ve done.”

“That’s impossible. Averheim must be over a hundred…”

Verstohlen broke off again. As he watched, he knew the truth
of it. The city was burning.

The two men remained silent, watching, unable to move or look
away. The column remained still, staining the boiling clouds above it crimson.
If there had been any doubt in his mind, it was banished now.

The city was damned. With a terrible insight, Verstohlen knew
that no force within the province could hope to counter such terrible sorcery.
Whether Helborg received the Sword of Vengeance or not made no difference now.

This was a power no mortal could hope to contest, and it had
entered the world of the living.

The wizard screamed. Drool flew from his lips, splattering
against the dirt of the camp floor. His fine sky-blue robes ripped as he rolled
across the ground in his agony, eyes staring, nostrils flared. Blood ran down
from his ears in thin trails and his fingers clutched at the air impotently.

“What is this?” roared Volkmar, lurching to his feet. He’d
sensed something too, but Magister Alonysius von Hettram, Celestial Wizard and
the Master of the Seers, evidently felt it more keenly.

“She is coming!”
he shrieked, scrabbling at his eyes
feverishly.
“She is coming!”

Efraim Roll strode forwards, lifting the man from the ground
and shaking him like a doll. The other members of Volkmar’s command retinue,
clustered in his tent overlooking the encampment, hung back in horror. Hettram
was now vomiting, his limbs shaking uncontrollably.

“She… is… coming!”
he blurted between heaves.

“Enough of this,” snapped Volkmar, moving to the tent
entrance. He pushed the canvas to one side and strode out into the night.

Below him, the lights of the camp glowed in the darkness. Men
slept in their rank order, curled in cloaks and watched over by teams of
sentries. Far to the south, a storm had been brewing for days. Now it had
broken.

“Sigmar’s blood,” murmured Roll, coming to stand beside him.

Many miles away, a column of fire, slim as a plumbline,
disfigured the southern horizon. The swirling clouds above it were as red and
angry as an open wound.

“How far is—?”

“Averheim,” said Volkmar. He felt a cold fist clench around
his heart. It was the Troll Country all over again. Chaos ascendant.

“Are you sure?”

“What else could it be?”

Above the vision of flame, the malignant orb of Morrslieb
peered through the tattered streams of cloud. The line of fire rushed to meet
it, streaming into the high airs and tainting the very arch of the sky. The
pillar was far away, very far away, but even so the stench of Dark magic clogged
his nostrils. Something of awesome magnitude had been discharged, and the
natural world recoiled from it in horror.

Back in the tent, the Celestial wizard was busy raving. All
across the camp, men were woken from their slumber, knowing even in their mean,
base way that some terrible event had taken place. When they saw the distant
column, voices were raised in alarm.

Volkmar felt his resolve waver. Anything capable of rending
the heavens in such a way would be untroubled by blackpowder or halberds. What
had Schwarzhelm unleashed here? How deep did the corruption run?

“Theogonist?” asked Roll, his voice as flat and savage as
ever. “What are your orders?”

Volkmar said nothing. He could think of nothing to say. The
commotion across the camp grew. More of his commanders stumbled from the tent,
gaping at the distant glow. Maljdir was among them, for once speechless. Gruppen
too. They all looked to him.

He clasped his staff. It gave him no comfort. Placed beside
the abomination ahead, all the weapons they had seemed like so many trinkets and
charms. He felt despair creep up, just as it had when Archaon had come for him
in the north. The great enemy were too strong. They were
too strong.

“Theogonist?” asked Roll again.

Volkmar looked away from it. That helped. Just gazing on the
searing line of flame seemed to bleed the hope from him. He looked down. His
palm was raw from clutching the ash shaft of the Staff of Command. He remembered
Karl Franz’s final words to him in Altdorf.
Can I trust you, Volkmar? Can you
succeed where both my generals have failed?

“Yes, my liege,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “You
can.”

Roll looked confused. “My lord?”

Volkmar whirled on him.

“Light fires of our own. Banish the dark, and the men will no
longer be plagued by it. Get an apothecary for the wizard, and minister to him
yourself too. He cannot be allowed to die—we’ll need him.”

Then he turned on the rest of his men, his face lit with a
dark certainty.

“What did you
expect
?” he snarled, feeling both faith
and fury return to him. “That they’d welcome us with open arms? Know your
danger, but do not fear it. That is our destination. That is the crucible upon
which your devotion will be tested.”

He turned back to the face the pillar of flame. This time his
resolve was solid.

“Search your souls, men. Purge all weakness. The storm is
coming. If we fail here, then all the world will know the horror that Averheim
knows now.”

Balls of blood-red fire soared high into the sky, racing
upwards, coiling round the Tower in a vortex of dizzying speed. Screams from
below fractured the very air, ripping it open and exposing the shimmering
lattice of emotion beneath, the naked stuff of Chaos.

All along the length of the Tower, iron panels withdrew. The
citadel’s innards glowed an angry crimson, like hot coals. From the
newly-revealed recesses,
things
emerged.

To Natassja, they were objects of transcendent beauty,
diaphanous intelligences, winged and noble, possessed of an ineffable wisdom
derived from the realm of the infinite. They soared into the fire-flecked air
like angels, swimming in the void, drinking in the unleashed power crackling
through the air.

To mortal eyes, they were women, lilac-skinned, claw-handed,
clad in scraps of leather and iron, lissom and fleshy, screaming from mouths
lined with fangs, trailing cloven hooves as they swooped. They were visions of
lust and death, fusions of sudden pain and lingering pleasure, the incarnation
of the debauchery of their Dark Prince and the fragments of his divine will.

They flew down like harpies, crashing into the roofs of the
houses and shattering the tiles, drinking in the sheets of flame lurching up
around them, growing larger and more substantial as the aethyr bled into the
world of matter, sustaining them and firming up insubstantial sinews.

In Averheim, the sky no longer existed. The air was as red as
blood, thundering upwards in a vast column of roaring aethyric essence. In the
midst of it all was the Tower, focussing the torrent, keeping it together,
directing the inexhaustible will of the Stone.

Natassja laughed out loud, glorying in the rush of the fire
as it surged past her, rippling her skirts and tearing at her hair.

“Behold the Stone!” she cried, and from hundreds of feet
below a rolling boom echoed across the city.

Grosslich staggered away from her, his face drained. Torrents
of aethyr latched on to him, clutching at his armour and then ripping away in
shreds. The daemons came soon after, tugging at his hair and laughing.