03 - Sword of Vengeance (51 page)

The priest roared his defiance, keeping the standard aloft,
whirling the warhammer over his head in triumph.

“Smite the mutant!” he bellowed. “Purge the—”

A claw punched through his back and out through his chest. He
coughed up blood in gouts as he was lifted from the ground. More daemons flocked
to him, snapping at his flailing limbs and biting deep into his flesh. Too quick
for Helborg to reach him, they dragged the heavy figure into the air.

“Fight the darkness!” Maljdir roared through his
blood-clogged throat, still crying aloud as half a dozen daemons struggled to
bear him aloft. He dropped the standard but kept swinging his warhammer,
slamming more of them aside even as he was taken beyond the reach of help. “Dawn
will come again! Trust to faith!”

Then he was gone, hauled up the flanks of the Tower, his
increasingly weak cries of denunciation and defiance echoing down from above
before they were silenced forever.

Volkmar summoned fire a third time and the gates blew
inwards, crashing back on their enormous hinges. A sickly jasmine stench rolled
out to greet them. Beyond the portal, a corridor stretched away, dark and
forbidding.

“Inside!” roared Helborg, pushing his men across the
threshold, doing what he could to protect the swooping daemons from their backs.
They hurried in, those that were left. Leitdorf was at the rear, followed last
of all by Volkmar. As the Theogonist passed under the dark lintel, he turned and
smashed his staff on the ground. A ball of force raced outwards, a shimmer in
the air like the backwash from a massive explosion. The daemons were hurled
away, wheeling into the high airs and screaming with frustration.

“Close the gates!” Helborg shouted, seizing a door and
pushing against it.

There were fewer than twenty of them left. The priests and
Volkmar took one door, the Reiksguard and Leitdorf joined Helborg. Slowly,
agonisingly slowly, the gates began to grind shut. Outside, quickly recovered
from Volkmar’s casting, the daemons rushed back, screaming for more blood.
Helborg saw the foremost tearing towards him, her eyes alive with bloodlust.

“Harder!” he roared, straining every muscle. The gap closed
too slowly. The daemons hurtled towards it, reaching for the diminishing space.
If they got in, then they were all dead men.

At last, groaning and creaking, the mighty iron doors slammed
into place. There were heavy thuds from the outside as the daemons crunched into
them, followed by howls of petulant anguish. The iron doors buckled but did not
break.

“There are wards here,” panted Volkmar, leaning on his knees.

“That won’t hold them,” said Leitdorf, drawing huge,
shuddering breaths.

All around, the surviving troops slumped to the polished
marble. Helborg felt impatience prick at him. They needed to keep moving.

“How long have we got?”

Leitdorf shrugged, his shoulders shivering with fatigue.

“They know this place better than we do,” he said without
conviction. “Not long.”

Helborg looked over his shoulder. The corridor yawned away
into the dark, lit only by faint blushes of lilac. The walls were dark and
smooth, polished to a high sheen. The muted thunder of the bloodfire still
thrummed throughout the walls. The interior of the Tower was filled with
strange, echoing sounds. The immense superstructure of iron creaked. From far
below, unearthly noises rose up, warped and distorted by their passage through
the catacombs. The stain of corruption was everywhere, thick and cloying.

At the far end of the corridor there was a huge spiral
stairway leading both up and down. Flickering light, bright and unnaturally
blue, came from below.

“Time to move again,” Helborg said. His voice was harsh, his
expression unforgiving. “And I hate to keep a lady waiting.”

Schwarzhelm kept his weight perfectly balanced, watching for
the counter-thrust. The raw power of his anger flowed freely, but it did not
master him. The duel was too evenly poised for recklessness, and Grosslich was
too strong. His natural skill as a soldier had been magnified by his corruption,
and he matched Schwarzhelm’s blistering assault stroke for stroke.

All around them, the battle was similarly poised.
Schwarzhelm’s men, a mix of the many companies Volkmar had brought into battle,
were locked in combat with the dog-soldiers. Neither side had the mastery, and
the line of grappling men stayed static, locked over the same patch of
blood-soaked land.

As for the remainder of the army, Schwarzhelm could only hope
they were holding together. He’d worked hard to restore some kind of shape to
the Imperial lines, but the numbers were still against them. Killing Grosslich
might bring some respite, but it wouldn’t win the day. Whatever happened between
the two of them, there were long hours of fighting ahead.

Grosslich pressed the attack, his sword crackling with lilac
energy. As he did so, the clouds fractured over the summit of the Tower.
Starlight shone through the gap, exposing the deep of the night above. Then,
slipping into vision as the clouds sheared away, Morrslieb spilled its putrid
light across the battlefield. Firelight mingled with the yellowish stain of
corruption, making even the Empire troops look as ravaged as corpses.

Grosslich risked a glance upwards before meeting
Schwarzhelm’s challenge again. The swords crunched together, splattering the
viscous slurry from Grosslich’s sword in a wide circle.

“The Deathmoon,” he said, dodging a vicious swipe at his
flanks and twisting Schwarzhelm’s blade back at him. “Sign of your defeat.”

“
My
defeat?” growled Schwarzhelm, letting his sword
come back and seizing the grip with both hands. “I remember you as you were.
There’s no victory for you here.”

He flung Grosslich’s blade up out of position and stabbed at
the traitor’s midriff.

“Your death will be victory enough,” hissed Grosslich,
sidestepping the strike and getting his sword back down into guard. His voice
was ragged with effort.

“Tell yourself that, if you need to.”

Grosslich snarled and surged forwards. His sword spun round,
spraying black fluid over Schwarzhelm’s armour.

“You know nothing of my choices!” he spat, thrusting at
Schwarzhelm’s guard with renewed vigour. “Dominion was denied me, though I was
twice the man Leitdorf was.”

Schwarzhelm let the flurry of blows come to him, stepping
into them, bringing his enormous strength to bear on the parries, engaging the
peerless swordsmanship that had made his reputation on the battlefields of the
Empire.

“Maybe once. Now you have diminished, and he has grown.”

“He lives?” Grosslich became agitated, and the disquiet fed
itself into his sword-strokes.

“Even now he nears the Tower. Husband and wife are due a
reunion.”

Grosslich’s eyes filled with a mocking light. His face glowed
sickeningly as his misshapen mouth cracked into a warped smile.

“She needs no husband,” he laughed, meeting a powerful thrust
from Schwarzhelm and pushing it back. “He can’t destroy her. You can’t. Only I
have the power. Kill me, and you doom yourself.”

Schwarzhelm feinted to the left before bringing his edge back
sharply, probing for the join in Grosslich’s armour below the breastplate.

“You overestimate your power,” he said, his voice steely
calm. “Do you not recognise the Sword of Justice? It is a holy blade. It thirsts
for your death, and you have nothing to answer it with.”

Grosslich laughed again. Quick as a snake, he pressed the
attack, whirling his sword into Schwarzhelm’s face. The strike was blocked, but
the power behind it was sudden and massive. The locked blades fell back before
Schwarzhelm’s mighty arms halted the thrust. For a moment, the edge of the metal
was close. Close enough for him to see the runes on Grosslich’s sword-edge,
half-obscured beneath the ever-flowing corruption across its surface.

“You don’t recognise my blade either?” Grosslich crowed. “You
gave it to me. The runefang of Averland. The Sword of Ruin. All of this, you
gave to me. I have bent it to my will, just as I have this province. It can hurt
you, Schwarzhelm. Oh, this can
hurt
you.”

The two men broke apart again. For a moment, Schwarzhelm’s
eyes still rested on his enemy’s sword. A flicker of doubt passed across his
face. Above them, the Deathmoon spread its sickening sheen across the mass of
struggling men. In every direction, thousands struggled, all lit by the fires of
Averheim. All around him, his troops were pitted against a foe they couldn’t
hope to best. They would die, one by one, even if he halted Grosslich.

Schwarzhelm brought the Rechtstahl into guard, feeling the
solid weight of it in his hands. The light of Morrslieb glinted from the steel,
transmuted into pure silver by the holy metal. Grosslich waited for him,
gathering his strength.

Doubt drained away. All that remained was combat, the purity
of the test. It was one he had never failed, not even against Helborg. He
wouldn’t do now.

“Pain is fleeting, Grosslich,” he said, poised for the
strike. “Damnation is eternal. Let me show you the difference.”

“I’ll go first,” said Helborg. His voice resounded from the
marble walls of the Tower. “Leitdorf behind, Volkmar last.”

The men silently fell into their positions. None of them,
even the warrior priests, looked sure of themselves. There was something
sickening about the Tower. The long nights of agony had left their imprint in
the structure, staining it as surely as a birthmark. A man didn’t need Volkmar’s
skills to detect the perversion humming in the air.

“Remember yourselves,” the Marshal warned, peering ahead to
the stairwell. Despite himself, his heart beat faster in his chest. After the
terrible sprint to the Tower, the sudden eerie quiet was hard to deal with.
Something awful lurked here, something ancient and suffused with malignance.
“Death in His service is glorious. Only the traitor fears destruction.”

He crept forwards, and the spurs on his boots clicked against
the marble. The paltry band of men, now just eighteen strong, stayed close, eyes
wide, knuckles white on the grips of their weapons. At the rear, Volkmar kindled
a warm glow from the tip of his staff. It was scant consolation, and did little
more than pick out the horrific images engraved on the walls.

They went down the stairs swiftly, hurrying round the broad
sweep of the spiral and avoiding the twisted shapes embedded into the iron
banister rail. As they descended, it got hotter. Breathing became more difficult
and the growl of the hidden engines echoed more loudly. From far in the deeps,
there came the sound of clanging, as if vast chains swung together. A muted
howling resonated from far above.

“Daemons,” muttered Leitdorf, clutching at the book at his
belt.

“Volkmar can handle them,” said Helborg. Terror seemed to
invest the air itself, and he was not immune from it. “Keep your mind clear.
We’ll be busy with your Natassja.”

“She was never mine.”

“Enough. We’re closing.”

They reached the base of the stairs. A long vaulted
passageway led directly ahead. The walls were richly decorated with sculptures,
all carved with assorted scenes of creative agony. Limbs and faces were
contorted across stone friezes, locked in impossible positions of excruciation.
Helborg let his gaze alight on the face of a young woman. The carving was
artful, despite the debauchery. Bathed in the light of Volkmar’s staff, the
subject still retained a warped kind of beauty.

Her eyes flickered open.

“Help me!” she gasped, muffled by the iron clamping her lips
together.

Helborg recoiled in shock, bringing his blade up in a flash.
The woman struggled against her sorcerous bonds, weeping with terror and misery.
All along the corridor, other eyes opened. There were still people alive in
there, locked in agony.

“You can’t help them!” cried Volkmar, calling to a priest who
had swung his hammer back, ready to smash them free. “They are one with the
Tower. Leave them.”

The band pressed on, walking a little faster, avoiding the
piteous wails from the walls, hastening to avoid the fingers that somehow
managed to clutch at them as they passed.

It kept getting hotter. The roar of the bloodfire became more
complete. A doorway loomed up at them from the shadows, high and ornately
carved. The corruption came from within it.

As they approached, a cloaked figure burst through the doors,
screaming with fury. It might have been a man once, but it had been terribly
transformed. Its spine curved over, forcing it to scuttle like an insect. Its
flesh was ivory-white, though the eyes were ringed with black. One hand was
chronically distorted, now little more than a collection of flesh-ribbons. The
other was curled tight into a fist.