03 - Sword of Vengeance (54 page)

“Shall I preserve you?” she mused, looking at the Marshal as
if he were a morsel of food at the end of a banquet. “These ones have died in an
instant. Your death will last for an eternity.”

Helborg smiled wolfishly, keeping the runefang between him
and the daemon.

“I am sustained by faith,” he said.

Natassja raised an amused eyebrow.

“You believe that
still
? Do you not think these
priests had faith?”

“Their deaths were glorious. Their souls are with Sigmar.”

Natassja shook her head with disbelief.

“You mystify me, human,” she said. “You all mystify me. You
are shown the illusion, and still you refuse to see through it.”

Helborg circled round the daemon carefully, looking for any
sign of weakness.

“I see enough.”

“Evidently not.”

She moved, quicker than thought, reaching out with a taloned
hand to grab him by the throat. At the same time, Volkmar roared into life for a
final time. A beam of gold lanced out from his staff and slammed Natassja
backwards, dousing her in a cascade of golden shards.

She spun to face the Theogonist. The cool irritation had
vanished from her features to be replaced by exasperation.

“Still not dead?” she spat. “You’re beginning to annoy me,
disciple.”

She coiled to strike, curling her talons into a fist. Volkmar
shrank back, his bloodied figure standing defiant against the coming onslaught.

“Bedarruzibarr!”
came a voice from the edge of the
chamber.

Natassja whirled round, amazement and horror suddenly
rippling across her features.

Leitdorf stood before her. He held the book in his trembling
hands. He kept reading. Just as it had done for her birth, the bloodfire in the
chamber flared up at the sound.
“Bedanuzibarr’zagarratumnan’akz’akz’berau!”

“Cease speaking, worm!” screamed Natassja, and her hands
burst into blue flame.

“Bedarruzibarr!”
thundered Volkmar, echoing Leitdorf’s
cry.

The Theogonist raised his staff and sent a flurry of
crackling bolts into Natassja’s torso. They impacted heavily. This time they
seemed to damage her, and she staggered back towards the Stone.

“Cease!” she cried, still wreathed in bands of shimmering
golden flame. “This is forbidden knowledge!”

“Abbadonnodo’neherata’gradarruminam!”
shouted
Leitdorf, his voice growing in confidence, tracing the words from the pages of
his father’s diary. With every syllable, Natassja seemed to recoil further.

Volkmar sent fresh volleys of faith-fire at her, his face
alight with furious relish.

“Hear your name, spawn of Slaanesh!” he roared in triumph.
“Feel the powers at your command unravel!”

Buffeted by a wall of spitting fire, Natassja rocked back.
The calm assurance of her superiority was gone. The syllables of her true name
echoed around the chamber, fuelling Volkmar’s torrent of righteous fire. She
reeled under the onslaught, screaming as the fire tore at her.

Then Helborg was on her too, no longer seeming so diminutive.
He hauled his blade round in a mighty arc, scything at Natassja’s legs. The
runefang connected, and a blaze of pure white light leapt up. Blood sprayed
through the air, as black as the Stone behind it, sparkling like beads of onyx.

Natassja screamed again, her voice now filled with pain and
frustration. She lashed out with her left fist, catching Helborg on his
breastplate and sending him lurching backwards. She opened her other hand and
let loose the full power within her.

The chamber shuddered, rocked to its foundations by the
blast. The bloodfire blazed purple, roaring into a frenzy. Volkmar was knocked
from his feet, and the Staff spun from his grasp. Cracks ran up the walls and
the iron bands around them broke open. Wards were shattered, and the howling of
the lesser daemons boomed down the shaft.

Leitdorf jumped aside just as the floor disintegrated under
him. The marble rippled like a wave and cracked open. From below, the thunderous
roar of the deep engines rolled upwards.

Natassja staggered towards Leitdorf, the last of Volkmar’s
golden fire streaming from her shoulders. She was badly wounded, and great
gashes had opened on her flanks. They wept black essence, as dark and pure as
jet.

“Worm!” she rasped, and her voice was fractured with hatred.
The choir within her had begun to come apart. “Utter not words beyond your
comprehension.”

Leitdorf scrambled away from her, stumbling around the edge
of chamber.

“Malamanuar’nerarnumo’klza’jhehennum!”
he shouted,
keeping up the recital even as he fled from Natassja’s wrath. The very sound of
it seemed to wound her.

He couldn’t escape forever. The chamber held no hiding
places, and Natassja still had the power to move quickly. She stood over the
elector, towering above his paltry frame, poised to silence the words that cut
through her power so completely.

Leitdorf kept shouting the words out, right until the end.
Natassja pulled her hand back, wailing in agony as each syllable resounded
around the chamber. A curved dagger unrolled into existence, extending from her
flesh like smoke and firming into a wicked, twin-bladed instrument.

Helborg clambered to his feet and charged towards her.
Volkmar hauled the Staff back into position. It was far too late. The dagger
plunged down, seeming to cleave the very air around it. It lodged deep in
Leitdorf’s chest, pinning him to the stone beneath.

The elector screamed, and his body arched in agony. The book
fell from his hands. As it hit the ground, Natassja glared at it and the
parchment burst into green-tinged flame, shrivelling and curling into nothing.

But then Helborg was close enough. With the last echoes of
the daemon’s name still lingering in the shaft above them, he raised the Sword
of Vengeance high above his head. The runes blazed in the bloodfire, reflecting
the fury of the Stone, bending the rays of contamination back at it.

Natassja whirled to face the new threat, but her aura of
invincibility had gone. She bared her fangs again, fixing Helborg with a look of
such malice and terror that a lesser man would have crumbled under it.

Helborg’s shoulder wound burst open, drenching his chest with
blood. For a moment, Natassja’s face rippled into Schwarzhelm’s, and a bizarre
mix of daemon and man screamed its hatred at him.

He didn’t flinch. The blade came down in a mighty, crushing
sweep. The edge bit true, carving through aethyr-wound sinews as readily as real
flesh. A ball of brilliant light radiated from the impact, rushing across the
chamber and swirling into the heights of the shaft. The bloodfire guttered in
its wake. Fresh cracks radiated from the Stone, rippling across the floor and
releasing gouts of smog from the furnaces below.

Natassja cried out with agony, and her many voices rebounded
from the iron walls around her. Her face returned to its normal shape,
transfixed in pain and fury. She twisted away from the runefang, exposing the
huge, jagged wound in her torso. It gushed a torrent of bile, foaming and
fizzing as it poured out into the world.

Helborg ducked under a vicious swipe from her dagger hand and
swung the Klingerach back at her. The blade sunk deep, cleaving Natassja’s
stomach open and jarring on the bones beyond.

The daemon fell to her knees, weeping blood. The bloodfire
shuddered and veered away from her, suddenly averse to the failing presence in
its midst. She dropped down further, bracing herself with a blood-streaked arm.

Natassja looked at Helborg, her face now level with his. Her
expression was a mix of scorn, fury and astonishment.

“You have no idea what you’ve done, mortal,” she rasped, her
voices jarring as they overlapped. “You have
no idea…”

Helborg didn’t listen. The Sword of Vengeance rose high,
glimmering in the firelight.

“I see enough,” he snarled, and brought the blade down.

For a moment, nothing happened. Natassja’s severed head
rolled from her body, coming to rest close to the stricken form of Leitdorf. The
bloodfire continued to roar, the engines continued to grind, the wind continued
to howl.

Then the daemons came, tearing down the shaft, screaming like
vengeful harpies. Helborg stood up to them, and the runefang blazed with a holy
fire. All weariness had fallen from his shoulders. Just as before, he looked
like one of the heroes of old, clad in sacred armour and wearing the hawk-wing
helm of the Reiksmarshal. He waited for them to come to him, his cloak rippling
in the bloodfire, still bearing the Sword of Vengeance in both hands.

The first of them hurtled down from the pinnacle, teeth
bared, arms outstretched. A second later, she lay on the floor next to her
mistress, her body broken by Helborg. Another fell to the same blade, carved in
two by the holy metal. The rest of them halted in their onslaught, suddenly
looking with horrified eyes at the ruined body of their mistress. They hovered
in the air above the Stone, frozen in terrible doubt.

As they surveyed the scene, Volkmar recovered his footing.

“The tide has turned, whores of Slaanesh,” he cried, reaching
for his staff and fixing them with a vengeful glare. “Leave while you can, or
the Sword of Vengeance will tear every one of you apart.”

They looked at him, then at Helborg. The Reiksmarshal stared
back, grim-faced and resolute. The blade in his hands glowed with residual
energy, and the runes resonated. The sword was back with its master, and its
thirst for killing was not yet sated.

Then they fled, screeching as they went, buoyed aloft by the
surging bloodfire. The shaft echoed from their screeches, dying into nothing as
they spiralled towards the distant pinnacle.

The Tower creaked ominously. Pieces of iron and stone
detached from the walls and trails of dust ran down from the high places.

Helborg watched the daemons go, then stumbled across to
Leitdorf. Volkmar joined him, limping heavily. As they went, the floor cracked
further. Great booms rang out from far below, muffled by the layers of rock
beneath them.

Leitdorf’s face was pale. Natassja’s dagger had dissolved
into nothingness with the demise of its mistress, but the wound was ugly and
hadn’t closed. There was no blood, just a dark-edged hole. Leitdorf struggled to
breathe. As Helborg approached, he tried to push himself up on to his elbows.

“Remain still,” said Helborg, coming to his side and looking
anxiously at his wound. “Can you do anything, Theogonist?”

Volkmar crouched down next to the Marshal. He placed his
calloused hands on the incision, and Leitdorf recoiled in pain. The Theogonist
closed his eyes, probing for aethyric residue. When he opened them again, his
expression was grave.

“No lies between us, Rufus Leitdorf,” he said. “This wound is
mortal.”

Leitdorf smiled thinly.

“How stupid do you think I am?” Then he broke into coughing.
There was blood in his throat, flecked on his armour.

“You have triumphed, elector,” said Helborg, his severe face
drawn with pain. “Do you remember your words in Drakenmoor? You have proved the
bane of her.”

Leitdorf cast his weakening gaze over to the broken body of
the daemon prince. It lay just a few feet away, huge, ravaged, and yet for all
that still perversely alluring.

“I truly believed that I loved her,” he croaked. His face
went from grey to white, and a slick of sweat broke out over his forehead. “Can
you believe that?”

Helborg and Volkmar said nothing. The sound of stone and iron
grinding against each other grew from below. More debris showered down from the
shaft and the roar of the bloodfire became intermittent. The Tower, bereft of
its guiding will, was cracking.

“I thought she would deliver more than Averland to me,” said
Leitdorf, his breath ragged, still gazing at Natassja. “I thought she would give
me what I wanted. A
son,
Lord Helborg. Blame that desire, if you still
need blame. My line dies with me here. I am the last.”

Helborg grasped the dying man’s hand.

“You have saved the city,” he said. “Your deeds will be
remembered.”

“No,” Leitdorf replied, and blood ran from his cracked lips.
His voice shrank to barely a whisper. “Tell them what my father did. He
discovered her name. Tell them—”

Leitdorf broke into coughing again, and black fluid bubbled
up his throat. His hand clenched Helborg’s tightly as he recovered himself. In
his last moments alive, his face was a mask of pure determination.

“Tell them he wasn’t mad,” he said.

Then Leitdorf’s eyes went blank. He stiffened, and the
fingers of his free hand clutched at the air wildly. He took one last shuddering
breath, and then fell still. His pudgy face, speckled with blood and ash,
relaxed. In the shifting firelight, the resemblance to Marius was striking.

More debris began to fall from above. A great iron spar
tumbled down the shaft, clanging from the walls as it spiralled before crashing
to the earth on the far side of the chamber. Flames, real flames, began to lick
up from the cracks in the floor.

“We need to go,” said Volkmar.

“I will take the body,” said Helborg, reaching for Leitdorf’s
prone corpse.

“Leave it.” Volkmar stood up. “It will slow you. This is his
victory, and his realm. No tomb in Altdorf would be finer.”

Helborg hesitated, then ran a hand up to his bleeding
shoulder. More cracks ran up the walls, lifting the plates of iron and exposing
raw, pulsing aethyric matter beneath. The Tower was suffused with it, a conduit
of baleful energies.

He rose, stooping only to retrieve Leitdorf’s sword from
where it had fallen.

“A pup no longer,” he said, looking bitterly at Leitdorf’s
body. “You should have lived to wield this.”

Then Helborg and Volkmar left the chamber, hurrying under the
doorway as the Tower began to fall apart. Behind them, the room was marked only
by the corpses on the floor and the sinister presence of the Stone in their
midst. It glowed in the darkness for a while, as if revelling in one last
lingering expression of power.