03 - Sword of Vengeance (8 page)

Above the altar, laid on a chaplet of black silk, was the
sword. It was naked, and a notch had been taken from the blade halfway along its
length. So Karl Franz had ordered it to lie until Helborg either returned to
claim it, or was killed, or was proved to be a traitor beyond the doubt of the
Theogonist.

Schwarzhelm took it up in his left hand. For a moment he held
the two blades together, the Swords of Justice and Vengeance, just as he had in
the Vormeisterplatz in Averheim, when madness had stirred in the air and his
mind had been locked into a fury that wasn’t his own.

The metal of the Klingerach was sullen, its runes barely
visible in the gloom. Something about it spoke of betrayal, of anger, of death.
He sheathed the Rechtstahl and took Helborg’s weapon himself. Reaching inside
his jerkin, he withdrew the letter he’d worked so hard to compose and left it on
the altar in its place.

“It is done,” he breathed.

Then Schwarzhelm turned, unable to look up at the stern
visage of Magnus, unwilling to gaze back on the bodies of the men he’d killed
even as he dragged them into the gloom of the chapel recesses and hid the
evidence of the brief, sordid combat.

Moving quickly and quietly, he left. He’d done what he’d come
for. His business in the Palace was over, and Averheim beckoned once again.

Night made the air of the Worlds Edge Mountains even more
bitter. Though not as bone-jarringly cold as it was in winter, the passes were
still harsh at the end of the summer, and the rock underfoot was shrouded in a
cloak of frost.

Bloch, Kraus, Drassler and the senior officers sat around a
rough oak table high up in the tower of the last way-fort before Black Fire
Keep. Most of the army were sleeping below them, either rammed up against one
another in the hard stone halls of the fort or shivering in tents clustered
close to the gates. The huge fires they’d built to ward off the cold burned
still, denting the worst of the chill. Bloch had ordered that they be kept
stoked, even though it would give away their presence in the mountains for miles
around. They hadn’t come to creep around like thieves.

At dawn they would march again. They knew where the enemy
was, and thanks to Drassler’s scouts knew the rough strength of the forces that
remained to them. The back of the orc army had been broken by Schwarzhelm on the
plains of Averland, but enough greenskins had survived to make the Keep a
difficult target. Bloch had two thousand men at his command, including the
remnants of the mountain guard that had survived the first days of the
incursion. Drassler reckoned a similar number of orcs had made it back to the
Keep, but they had the advantage of stone to hide behind.

“We’ll need to draw them into the open,” Bloch said, looking
over the plans of attack his men had been discussing. “If they stay behind those
walls, we’ll never prise them out.”

“Why’d they come out?” asked Drassler. “They’ve got supplies,
and they’ve got protection.”

Kraus grinned.

“They’ll come out,” he said. “Give an orc a reason to fight
and it’ll take it.”

Drassler shook his head. “Not these ones. They had a plan,
and they stuck to it.”

“Just like the ones on the plains,” mused Bloch, remembering
the artful way Grunwald had been drawn further and further east.

“It’s like I said,” insisted Drassler. “They’ve been armed by
men, and given their orders by men.”

Bloch had heard this said many times since leaving
Grenzstadt. He didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence was there. The orcs
wore close-fitting amour and carried straight swords. They’d not attempted a
wild rampage through the east of the province, but had acted as if explicitly
commanded to draw Schwarzhelm from the city. And there were the coins. An orc
had little use for gold, but there was plenty of it on their corpses. They’d
made the schillings into earrings and pendants, or stuffed them into the throats
of their victims for fun. Someone in the Empire had planned it all.

“Tell me again,” he said to Drassler, his chin leaning
heavily on his crossed fingers. “How did you let them get at you?”

Drassler looked irritated. No one liked to recount the story
of their failure.

“What more do you want?” he asked. “We got our orders, just
as we always did. Captain Neumann did as he was told. We were told there were
four bands of greenskins coming over the passes, none of them more than a
hundred strong. The orders from the Averburg were to destroy them before they
defiled the memorial sites.”

Bloch knew all of this. He knew that the roving bands of orcs
had turned out to be made up of thousands, that they’d worked in concert, and
that once the defenders had emerged from the walls they’d been slaughtered. The
memory of those killing grounds was still vivid in his mind.

“And who gave you those orders?” he asked, still searching
for some clue. Schwarzhelm had told him that one of the contenders for the
electorship, Rufus Leitdorf, had been a traitor. If he’d orchestrated all of
this, then he deserved everything that the big man had no doubt dished up to him
in Averheim.

“They came as they always did. A courier from Averheim,
dressed in the livery of the citadel, carrying the scrolls in a locked casket.
He had a guard of warriors, two dozen, all wearing the colours of the Averburg
garrison. Everything was in the standard cipher, signed off by the Steward. I
saw them myself. Nothing was different.”

“And you didn’t think
anything
was strange?” asked Bloch, trying to
keep the incredulity from his voice. “Four incursions, all at once, all moving
in different directions? What of the defence of the Keep?”

Drassler stiffened. “Fighting is a way of life up here,
commander. We’re not like the rest of our kinsmen. When the order comes, we
follow it.”

Kraus shook his head. “You were played for fools,” he
muttered.

Drassler slammed his fist on the table. “How
dare
you?” he hissed. He looked tired. They all looked tired. “We were doing our
duty.”

“Your duty was to defend the Keep,” said Kraus, and his face
showed his disdain.

“Enough,” said Bloch, unwilling to see the tension spill over
into pointless bickering. He privately shared Kraus’ assessment, but nothing
would be gained by raking over past failures. “This isn’t helping.”

He held his head in his hands, trying to think. There was so
much he didn’t know. The idea of Averlanders deliberately sabotaging their own
defences was disgusting enough, but perhaps the rot went deeper. The money,
after all, had come from Altdorf. Maybe they were still being played for fools.
Maybe all of this had been anticipated.

That didn’t alter the bare facts. He’d been ordered to retake
the Keep. He had a mixed army of Averlanders and Reiklanders, most of them
seasoned by weeks of near-constant fighting, no siege engines and little
artillery. There had been no news from Averheim since Schwarzhelm’s departure
for the city, and his supply lines were extended and precarious. A cautious
commander might have withdrawn, pulled back to Grenzstadt until the situation in
the province had become clear and reinforcements were received. Grunwald’s
failure weighed heavily on Bloch’s mind. There was no sense in fighting a battle
that couldn’t be won.

“We have a few hours until dawn,” he said. He looked at the
officers one by one, gauging from their response how ready they were for the
fight. They all met his gaze. “We’ll stay awake until we’ve hammered out a plan
to get the Keep back and the pass secure.”

His eyes rested on Drassler, who stared back at him
defiantly. Despite everything, the mountain guard were keen to avenge their
defeat.

“I want ideas,” he growled, feeling impatient for action
again. “We need to get them out of the Keep. One way or another, when the sun
goes down tomorrow we’ll have paid those bastards back twice what they handed
out to us. I don’t care how we do it, but the passes
will
be back in our
hands, and the last of those scum choking on their traitor’s gold.”

The Grand Theogonist Volkmar was an imposing sight even when
bereft of his immense battle-armour. His skin was thick and leathery, tanned
tight by a lifetime on the battlefield. Dark, direct eyes peered out from under
feathered eyebrows. Like Schwarzhelm, he was not known for his humour. His mouth
rarely smiled beneath its drooping Kislevite moustache, and his burly arms
remained crossed across his chest when not kept busy swinging a warhammer. His
shaven head and forearm tattoos completed the savage picture. He looked properly
terrifying, as if he struggled himself to contain raging forces of anarchy
within him. Even when at rest, he inspired trepidation. When unleashed on to the
battlefield, that trepidation turned to awe.

Those who knew him well had even more reason to be fearful.
This was a man who had come back from the dead, who’d passed beyond the barrier
between the mortal world and that of Chaos. The pain of it still marked his
every word, scored his every movement. No one knew the terror of the great enemy
quite as intimately as Volkmar, and the experience had marked him out even more
than he had been before. With each gesture, each glance, he gave it away. Under
the skein of savage piety, a cold furnace of frenzy forever lurked, waiting for
the kindling. Once he had been a warrior. Now he was a weapon.

The head of the Cult of Sigmar bowed to few men, but he did
towards the figure before him. His ochre robes fell across his broad shoulders
as he stooped, his right hand nearly touching the floor.

“Enough of that,” came a familiar voice. “Sit. We need to
talk.”

The Emperor Karl Franz sat in the same chair he’d used when
commissioning Schwarzhelm for the Averland mission. Then, he’d looked at ease
with the world, confident and self-assured. Now his skin had taken on a pale
sheen and his eyes were ringed with grey. His hair, normally glossy, looked
dull. The most powerful mortal man in the Old World was troubled, and he hadn’t
laboured to hide the fact.

Volkmar rose to his full height, grunting as he did so. The
wounds that had ravaged his body during his escape from the daemon Be’lakor had
been slow to close.

He sat beside the Emperor, saying nothing. The two men were
alone. The fine furniture around them looked heavy and lumpen. Outside, a fine
rain still spat against the glass windows, and the morning light was grey and
filthy. In the corner of the room, the old engineer’s clock ticked methodically.

Karl Franz looked down at some sheets of parchment in his
lap. They looked like they’d been read many times.

“Why didn’t he come here himself?” the Emperor mused.

“My liege?” asked Volkmar.

“Schwarzhelm. He could have spoken to me. I was angry, but
not beyond reason. Now I’ve lost both of them.”

Helborg. If the Reiksmarshal were found, then Volkmar would
be the one priest senior enough to interrogate him. Though hardened by the fires
of war and the poisons of Chaos, that was a task he wouldn’t relish.

“Perhaps he tried,” said Volkmar.

“What are you saying?”

“That not all your servants are as loyal as he.”

Karl Franz frowned, displeased by the implication. He looked
down at the parchment again. “What do you know of this matter?” he asked.

“A little. Averland is now governed by Heinz-Mark Grosslich.
Leitdorf’s son is a traitor, and Helborg with him.”

“And do you believe it? What they say of Helborg?”

Volkmar gave a snort of disgust that said all there was to be
said.

“Schwarzhelm has erred,” agreed the Emperor, “and he knows
it. Whatever forces were ranged against him have achieved what they set out to
do.”

He looked up, and a little of the familiar resolve shone in
his eyes.

“We’ve been granted a second chance,” he said. “They made a
single slip. You know of Heinrich Lassus? He was the man behind them. He
betrayed himself. Schwarzhelm has killed him, taken back Helborg’s sword, and no
doubt seeks to return it to him. Perhaps he is already on the road.”

“So how stands Averland?”

“We don’t know. All is clouded. The only thing we can be
certain of is that the great enemy is active. They’ve used this succession to
gain a foothold. Nothing has been purged. The stain remains, and it is growing.”

Volkmar let the implications of that sink in. Averland had
always been the most placid of provinces, the one furthest from the strife that
ravaged the rest of the Empire.

He should have seen this coming. Only in war was there
purity; where there was peace there was disease.

“Can Grosslich handle it?”

The Emperor shrugged. “Who knows? He doesn’t answer my
summons. That may be pride, or it may be worse. In any event, our response must
be the same.”

Here it came. The Emperor’s orders. Volkmar didn’t need his
fine-grained knowledge of statecraft to know what they would be.