03 - Sword of Vengeance (31 page)

“Unhand me!” he commanded, brandishing the wand. They laughed
all the harder, but none dared harm him. Instead they limited themselves to
lascivious gestures, wheeling around the pinnacle like birds flocking to a
storm-tossed ship. As they screeched, their voices echoed across registers, at
once as flighty as a girl’s and as deep as the pits of the abyss.

“What is this, Natassja?” he demanded, turning on her, eyes
blazing with fear and anger.

The queen of Averheim gave him a scornful look.

“The allies we seek,” she said. “What mortal army would dare
to venture here now? The Stone sustains a portal, one which can last for
centuries if I will it. This is the stuff of Chaos, Heinz-Mark, the raw material
of dreams. Daemons will come. While the column of fire lasts they will endure,
terrible and deadly. We have created what we wished for, my love! A foothold of
the Infinite Realm in the heart of Sigmar’s kingdom!”

Grosslich looked as angry as before. His armour made him
nearly invulnerable and he’d developed powers of his own—he would be a
formidable enemy if she chose to pick a fight with him. Formidable, but not
insuperable.

“This is not what I wanted!” he roared over the torrent. “I
wanted dominion over men, not a realm of magic! What good is this to me?”

Natassja’s eyes narrowed dangerously. She was flush with
power, suffused with all the roaring energy of the Stone. Grosslich had served a
useful purpose and at one time she’d been fond of him, but he was playing a
perilous game.

“This mortal realm is yours for the taking, my love,” she
said, keeping her voice low. “Only the daemons cannot venture from the column of
fire. All my other creations will serve you in the realm of the five senses.”

“But you have destroyed them!”

“Look around you, fool!” she snapped, tested almost beyond
endurance by his stupidity. “Do you see the buildings burning? Do you see your
troops withering? This is no earth-bound fire. These flames burn souls, not
flesh.”

Grosslich hesitated, then stalked to the edge of the
platform. Bracing against a huge buttress of iron and stone, he leaned far out
over the void. Natassja came to his side, fearing nothing of the precipitous
drop. She was fast becoming impervious to physical harm.

“Watch them, my love,” she purred. She couldn’t stay angry
for long, not when so much had been accomplished. “See how they relish what we
have done for them.”

Far down on the streets of Averheim, the dog-soldiers still
marched, filing from the gates and assuming defensive positions outside the
walls. The citizens of the city had been transformed in their turn, moulded by
the power of the Stone and warped into something greater. Where their eyes had
been there were now smouldering points of light, blazing in the smog of the
furnaces like stars. All their previous cares and infirmities had been shaken
off, and they stood tall, glorying in the rush of aethyr around them.
Grosslich’s army, already huge, had been bolstered by thousands more, their
wills bound to the Stone, their bodies hale and ready to bear arms.

“Don’t you see it?” murmured Natassja, caressing Grosslich’s
cheek and speaking softly into his ear. “The daemons are for me, here in the
Tower. Your realm will stretch for many leagues to the north, to the south, to
wherever you wish it. Only here will the raw essence of the world of nightmares
be permitted to endure.”

Grosslich looked sullen but impressed. Far below, the hordes
of Stone-bound slaves had begun to form into crowds and head towards the
courtyard below them. Even as they did so, dog-soldiers prepared to hand them
weapons. The Everchosen himself could hardly have wished for a more devastating
host to command. The joyroot had prepared them, and the Stone had completed the
great work.

“I believed we would rule Averland together, you and I,” he
muttered, torn between rival lusts. “I thought that’s what you wanted too.”

“I do, my love,” said Natassja, pulling his head round from
the scenes below. The furnaces, the screams, the capering daemons, the palls of
smoke, all of these were forgotten for a moment.

“This is what we have done, you and I,” she said, pulling him
close to her. “Why can’t you be happy with it?”

“I am, my queen,” Grosslich replied, his anger dissipating as
her eyes bored deep into his. Resisting her was never easy, even after he’d been
taught so much. “It’s just that… my vision was different.”

“Then revel in
this.
See what glories will be achieved
here. Our names will pass into the annals of legend, not in this fading world,
but in the libraries of the gods, etched on tablets of marble and placed in
halls of perpetual wonder. You have taken a step towards a new world,
Heinz-Mark. Do not falter now, for there is no way back.”

He nodded weakly, all resistance crumbling. His will was
always so easy to break. Not like Schwarzhelm, and not like Marius—they had
been made of more enduring material. As she spoke, she sensed the doubt in his
mind. Had it always been there? Perhaps she should have paid more attention.

“Remember my words,” she warned, making sure he’d taken her
meaning. “This is the future for us, the future for mankind. I will say it
again, in case you failed to hear me: there is
no
way back.”

Kurt Helborg turned uneasily in his sleep. In the past, his
slumber had been that of a warrior, complete and unbroken. Ever since the fires
of the Vormeisterplatz, though, the pattern had been broken. He saw visions
before waking, faces leering at him in the dark. There was Rufus Leitdorf, fat
and pallid, gloating over his failure to secure the city. Skarr was there too,
mocking him for the loss of the runefang. And there was Schwarzhelm, his face
unlocked by madness, brandishing the Sword of Justice and inviting the duel once
again. It was all mockery and scorn, the things he’d never encountered in the
world of waking.

At the vision of the Emperor’s Champion, Helborg awoke
suddenly. The sheets around him were clammy and blood had leaked from his wound
again. The pain was ever-present, a dull ache in his side. He could ignore it in
battle, just as he’d ignored a thousand lesser wounds before, but the architect
of it would not leave him in peace.

Helborg lay still, letting his breathing return to normal.
The room around him was dark and cold. Dawn was some hours away and the shutters
had been bolted closed. At the foot of his massive four-poster bed hung the
sword he’d been lent by Leitdorf. It was a good blade, well-balanced and forged
by master smiths of Nuln. It was nothing compared to the Klingerach.

Helborg swung his legs from the bed and walked over to the
window. He unlocked the shutters, letting the moonlight flood into his chamber.
Mannslieb was low in the eastern sky, almost invisible. It was Morrslieb, the
Cursed Moon, that rode high. Helborg made the sign of the comet across his
chest, more out of reflex than anything else. He feared the Chaos moon as little
as he feared anything else. Far out in the north-west, he noticed a faint smudge
of red against the horizon. Perhaps a fire, lost out on the bleak moorland.

He limped back to the bed and sat heavily on it. Being
isolated, cut off from the Imperial chain of command, was an experience he’d not
had for over twenty years. Even in the fiercest fighting he’d always had access
to some indication of how things stood in Altdorf. Now things were different.
For all he knew, Schwarzhelm still hunted him. If so, then the man’s soul was
surely damned.

Leitdorf had told him of the corruption recorded in Marius’
diaries, the sickness at the heart of Averheim. He’d seen it for himself at the
Vormeisterplatz. Whatever force had the power to turn Schwarzhelm’s mighty hands
to the cause of darkness was potent indeed. The old curmudgeon had always been
infuriating, stubborn, grim, taciturn, inflexible, proud and prickly, but he’d
never shown the slightest lack of faith in the Empire and its masters. Not until
now.

Prompted by some random inclination, Helborg took up his
borrowed sword and withdrew the blade from the scabbard. He turned it slowly,
watching the metal reflect the tainted moonlight. A weak instrument, but it
would have to do. Nothing about his current situation was ideal. Leitdorf was a
simpering, self-pitying fool, the men at his command were half-trained and
liable to bolt at the first sign of trouble, and Helborg had almost no idea what
Grosslich’s intentions or tactics were.

So be it. He’d never asked for anything other than a life of
testing. Being Grand Marshal of the Empire brought with it certain privileges—the loyalty of powerful men and the favours of beautiful women—but these were
not the things that drove him onwards. It had always been about faith, an ideal,
something to aspire to. He’d come closer than ever to death in Averheim, and no
man remained unchanged in the face of his own mortality. Maybe he’d been too
flamboyant in the past, too ready to orchestrate the defence of the Empire
around his own ambition. Maybe Schwarzhelm had been right to resent his success.
Maybe some of this had been his fault, despite the long, painful hours he’d
spent blaming his great rival for all that had befallen.

Things would have to change. Whatever the result of the war,
he could not go back to Altdorf as if nothing had happened.

He began to re-sheathe the sword when a faint rattling sound
caught his attention. He paused, listening carefully. It was coming from outside
the window. Helborg’s room was on the first storey of the mansion, more than
twenty feet up from ground level. Leitdorf’s chambers were down the corridor,
and the other rooms were empty.

The rattling sounded again. Helborg placed the scabbard on
the bed and took the naked sword up in his right hand. For some reason his heart
began to beat faster. His armour had been hung in the room below, and he wore
nothing more protective than a threadbare nightshirt. There should have been
Reiksguard patrolling the grounds. The noise outside was like nothing he’d heard
in his life, at once artificial and full of a strange, scuttling kind of life.

He stood up from the bed and edged towards the window. He
listened carefully. Nothing, save the faint creak of the floorboards beneath him
and the rush of the wind from outside. Helborg stayed perfectly still, blade
poised for the strike, watching.

Still nothing. Heartbeats passed, gradually slowing. Perhaps
he’d imagined it.

The window shattered with a smash that resounded across the
chamber. A bone claw thrust through the jagged panes, scrabbling at the stone
sill, hauling something up behind it.

Helborg sprang forwards, bringing the sword down on the
talons with a massive, two-handed hammerblow. The stone fractured, sending
shards spinning into the air, but the blade rebounded from the claw, jarring his
arms and sending him staggering back. There was a thin scream and something
crashed back down to earth. Helborg regained his feet. The talons had gone.
Whatever had tried to get in had been sent plummeting back to the courtyard.

It had not been alone. With a spider-like pounce, another
creature leapt through the shattered glass, crouched on the floor and coiled for
another spring.

“Helborg!”
it hissed, and there was something like
ecstasy in its warped voice.

Helborg stared at it in horror. The stink of Chaos rose from
it, pungent and sweet. The body of a young woman, naked and covered in scars,
squatted on the floor, draped in the remnants of rags. The flesh was as pale as
the Deathmoon and caked with mud and filth from the moors. Old blood had dried
on its needle teeth and ribbons of dry skin clung to the talons. Its eyes
glinted with the dull sheen of tarnished iron, then blazed into a pale lilac
fire.

It pounced. Helborg swung the sword to parry, using all his
strength to ward the scything claws. The horror’s strength and speed were
incredible. It lashed out, striking at his eyes and fingers, following him
across the chamber as he withdrew, step by step.

Helborg’s sword moved in a blur, countering the strikes and
thrusting back. He was the foremost swordsman of the Empire, but this blade was
no runefang. The curved talons of the handmaiden scored the edge of it, scraping
down its length in a shower of sparks and shivering the metal.

More clambered in, two of them, their eyes lit up with the
same lilac blaze. They rushed into the attack, limbs flailing, trying to break
through Helborg’s guard.

He pulled back to the door, whirling his blade in tighter and
faster arcs. The edge seemed to have no effect on them. Every time his sword
connected with flesh, a hidden layer of bone or iron bounced the shaft back. The
creatures were like the automata of a crazed surgeon’s imagination, pitiless and
unstoppable.

One dropped down low and went for his legs. He kicked the
creature hard in the face, knocking it on its back, before leaping away to dodge
the attack from the others. As he withdrew again he felt hot blood running down
his shin. Morr’s teeth, the thing had
bitten
him.

The first creature pressed the attack, trying to impale him
against the wooden doorframe, jabbing its talons in hard and straight. Its face
came close, locked in a contortion of pain. Helborg veered his head out of the
way and blocked a sideswipe from the second with the flat of his sword. The
third got back on its feet and coiled to leap again. They were all over him.

Feeling the door at his back, Helborg kicked it open and
retreated out to the landing beyond. It was darker there, and the pursuing
horrors’ eyes glowed with malice in the gloom. Step by step they pushed him
back, slicing at his exposed flesh, pushing for the opening. It was only a
matter of time. He couldn’t hurt them, and they never tired. Even as he knocked
away a lunge, Helborg felt a sharp stab of pain as one of the talons got past
his guard.