—<TEN>—

Curse of the Dead

 

 

Middenheim, City of the White Wolf. The sheer pinnacle of rock looming from the forest canopy never failed to amaze Sigmar. More than a thousand feet high, the mighty Fauschlag Rock dominated the landscape for miles around, inescapable and impossible.

Stark against the evening sky, Middenheim towered over the land of mortals like the home of the gods, an impregnable bastion whose summit glittered with light. Sigmar followed the road towards the granite-hewn gate fortress at the base of the rock, feeling a strange unease settle upon him as he glanced towards the towering Middle Mountains beyond the city.

Spreading into the north-east, they were a bleak and inhospitable range of jagged peaks and soaring cliffs, perpetually wreathed in snow and flensed by icy winds from the far north. Inhuman monsters made their lairs deep within the mountains, and many expeditions to purge them from its haunted valleys and shadowed gorges had ended in disaster.

Cresting the last rise before the city, Sigmar saw the forests around the city had been cleared for almost a mile in every direction, and a vast expanse of canvas tents surrounded the base of the rock like a besieging army. Looking closer, he saw that the tent city was instead home to carpenters, builders, stonemasons and labourers.

If Sigmar had thought that the work on the road linking Middenheim with Reikdorf was impressive, it was nothing compared to the scale of industry that surrounded the Fauschlag Rock. Thousands of craftsmen toiled in makeshift quarries and carpentry shops to service the construction of the giant structure rearing from a wide clearing in the forest floor.

Like an ever-ascending bridge of stone aimed at the summit of the Fauschlag Rock, a giant viaduct rose from the ground at the southern compass point of the city. The viaduct climbed to around a hundred feet before coming to an abrupt end, a forest of scaffolding clinging to its sides like vines on some ancient ruin. Workmen swarmed around its upper reaches on rope pulleys and harnesses, and the sound of hammers, chisels and saws reminded Sigmar of the clash of iron in a battle.

“Great Ulric’s beard,” hissed Redwane as the full scope of the work was laid out before them. “How in the world did they ever…”

“Pendrag is a clever man, and he had some help from the dwarfs,” said Sigmar, pointing to a number of short, stocky figures in iron shirts and pot helmets at the top of the viaduct. “This is only the first of four of such structures Pendrag plans to build.”

“Four!”

“If Middenheim is going to be one of the great cities of the empire, it is going to have to be easier to get to than it is now,” said Sigmar. “Until the viaduct is complete, we have to travel to the summit on one of the chain lifts.”

Redwane shielded his eyes from the setting sun as he followed the swaying progress of one of the chain lifts as it made its juddering way from the ground to the timber structure that leaned out from the top of the rock. Sigmar smiled as he saw the young warrior’s face pale.

“Of course, if you really want to prove your courage, you could climb the rock like I did.”

“You climbed that?” asked Redwane. “From the ground up?”

“I did,” said Sigmar, still amazed that he had dared attempt so dangerous a climb. “So did Alfgeir. But then we were young and foolish. Or at least I was.”

“And you killed Artur once you got to the top?”

Sigmar nodded, remembering the desperate fight with the Teutogen king, and the soul-chilling fall he had taken through the Flame of Ulric that burned eternally at the heart of the peak’s summit. In that glacial moment, he had felt the briefest touch of a power greater than any mortal mind could hope to perceive. As he had felt its touch, it too had sensed his presence. The cold, pitiless echo of that moment had never left him.

“I regretted killing Artur,” said Sigmar. “He was once a good man, but he had grown arrogant atop his fortress, and thought himself above all men.”

“But not you, eh?”

“No,” said Sigmar sadly. “Not me.”

Their Thuringian guide had left them yesterday, when the towering spire of Middenheim had come into sight. The taciturn huntsman had merely taken his coin and vanished into the forest without any word of goodbye. Sigmar had been sorry to see Tomas go, for he had liked the man’s self-reliance and independence.

They rode towards the gate fortress along temporary roads of rough-laid stone, passing workshops of carvers and stonemasons, assembly shops of carpenters and scaffold makers, hospitals, cook tents and the hundred other trades required for so colossal an undertaking. Numerous guild flags were planted throughout the campsite, and Sigmar recognised many of them as having worked on the buildings of Reikdorf.

In the years that Sigmar had spent campaigning in the west, Reikdorf had grown and prospered, with the great library taking shape in its heart and many new temples erected within its walls. Though it broke his heart to leave so soon after the successful conclusion to the war against the Jutones, a request for aid from his oldest friend could not be ignored.

As he led his warriors through the enormous camp, Sigmar felt a strange unease settle upon him, like a cold wind blowing with the breath of despair. He looked to the eastern mountains, and felt ancient eyes of incalculable evil watching him. For the briefest second, a profound sense of hopelessness swept over him, as though his very existence were meaningless in the face of death’s inevitability.

Sigmar shook off the feeling, but as he watched the sullen faces of the camp’s inhabitants, he saw he was not alone in this feeling. An unspoken fear hung over the camp, men and women moving with leaden steps and expressions of hopelessness. On the journey northwards, the people he had seen had welcomed them and smiled with each new dawn, but around Middenheim it was as if the sun were setting on the last day, and no one believed it would ever rise again.

“What in the name of all that is good is wrong here?” asked Redwane, riding alongside Sigmar. “It’s like everyone’s mother suddenly dropped down dead.”

“I do not know,” said Sigmar as the wide drawbridge of the gate fortress lowered. “Pendrag will tell us more when we reach the summit.”

Redwane looked up as a series of chain lifts rattled and clattered their way down the sheer cliff face of the Fauschlag Rock, and he swallowed nervously at the thought of ascending the rock in such a contraption.

“Couldn’t we wait until the viaduct’s finished?” asked the White Wolf.

 

Pendrag and Myrsa were waiting when Sigmar stepped from the chain lift and onto the roofed platform built out from the rock on a series of mighty cantilevers. His sword-brother had changed in the five years since he had last seen him, but Sigmar hid his surprise. Pendrag’s waist had thickened and the cares of the world, which he had always carried in his eyes, seemed magnified by the dread that seeped from the mountains. His flame-red hair was no less wild, and his joy at seeing Sigmar was like the first rays of sunlight after a winter of darkness.

Pendrag swept Sigmar into a crushing embrace, and the two men laughed at the sight of one another. Sigmar held his brother’s shoulders as they relished this long overdue meeting.

“Damn me, Sigmar, but it’s good to see you,” said Pendrag when he finally released him.

“You are a sight for sore eyes, Pendrag,” replied Sigmar. “Wolfgart sends you his best.”

“The rogue isn’t with you?” asked Pendrag, his disappointment clear.

“He wanted to come, but I told him that he needed to spend time with his family,” said Sigmar. “Ulrike is nearly four now. Even if I hadn’t forbidden him to come north, Maedbh would have cut off his manhood had he tried to ride out with me.”

“Aye, she’s a fierce one, right enough,” said Pendrag, as Sigmar turned to Myrsa and took his wrist in the warriors’ grip.

Where Pendrag had changed, Myrsa was as solid and untouched by the passing of the years as his mountain home. His white armour was polished and pristine, his grip as firm as ever and his eyes like chips of ice.

“My lord,” said the Warrior Eternal. “Welcome to Middenheim.”

Myrsa was pleased to see him, but where Pendrag greeted Sigmar like the old friend he was, the Warrior Eternal welcomed him as an Emperor. As he released Myrsa’s wrist, Sigmar was reminded of the Hag Woman’s warning not to let the Warrior Eternal die before his time. It had seemed like a ridiculous request then, and seemed doubly so now. How could any man promise such a thing?

“It is good to be here,” said Sigmar as his White Wolves formed up behind him. Ten warriors had accompanied Sigmar in the chain lift, and they looked anxiously at the creaking wooden floor, conscious that there was nothing beneath it but fresh air and the ground hundreds of feet below. “I have left it too long to come north, but there has been much to do in the west.”

“So I hear,” smiled Pendrag. “Two years… Jutonsryk must have been a tough nut to crack.”

“It was,” admitted Sigmar. “I could have used some of your dwarfs to help break it open.”

Pendrag led Sigmar and his bodyguards from the platform and onto the streets of Middenheim, as the lifts descended to bring more White Wolves to the summit.

Despite his outward calm, Sigmar was grateful to feel solid rock beneath his feet, and he was once again struck by the distinctive architecture of this northern city. It was as if the close-packed buildings had been carved out of the rock, dour and low-roofed, with little in the way of ornamentation. They were crowded together, as Sigmar would expect of a city with a finite amount of land on which to build. Few were higher than two storeys, for unforgiving winds whipped across the Fauschlag Rock and quickly toppled any structure that dared to test its power. Many of the buildings bore the hallmarks of dwarf craftsmanship, but even these solid structures clung close to the surface of the rock.

The people of the north were hardy and pragmatic, and their dwellings were a reflection of that grim temperament. Most of the city’s inhabitants were dark-haired and broad-shouldered, as firm and unbending as their city. Though Sigmar sensed the same unnatural gloom that possessed the camp below, he saw an impressive determination to resist it.

The busy streets were narrow and filled with people, far more than Sigmar remembered from his last visit to Middenheim, and Myrsa’s plate-armoured warriors were forced to clear a path with shouted oaths and blows from their scabbarded greatswords.

“So many people,” commented Redwane.

“Aye,” said Pendrag guardedly. “The city is almost full.”

Sigmar sensed a deeper meaning in Pendrag’s words, but saved his questions for later as they forged a path through the crowds.

“I doubt I could have spared you any of the mountain folk,” said Pendrag answering Sigmar’s earlier comment. “Without them we wouldn’t have managed to get the viaduct so high in so short a rime. In any case, you took Jutonsryk in the end, though I’m still amazed that Marius swore his Sword Oath with you. I thought he would die first.”

Sigmar shook his head.

“Marius is no fool,” he said, “and if a Sword Oath was the price of his life and his city’s fortune, then he was more than willing to give it.”

“The man is an opportunist,” spat Pendrag, turning down a wider avenue that led to the stone circle where Sigmar had fought Artur. A tall building of white stone was in the process of being built around the menhirs encircling the Flame of Ulric, and Sigmar felt a tremor of bone-deep chill as he caught a glimpse of its flickering light, like a speartip of dancing ice.

He shook off the memory of the flame’s chill and said, “True, but great wealth is pouring into the empire from the west. Without that, there would not be the gold to pay for Middenheim’s viaducts. That is after a twentieth of Jutonsryk’s yearly income is tithed for distribution amongst the warriors who fought so hard to take it.”

“I’ll bet Marius hated that,” laughed Pendrag, passing the construction site and leading the way down a deserted street that was even narrower than the others they had traversed.

“That he did, but even with the tithe, his city’s coffers are swollen with gold from all the trade that has opened up for him,” said Sigmar. “If Marius had realised how lucrative swearing a Sword Oath would be, I think he would have done it long ago.”

“And you trust him to live up to his oath? He failed to stand by us once before.”

Sigmar smiled and put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. “I left a thousand warriors in Jutonsryk to make sure of it.”

“Unberogen?”

“A mixed force of warriors from all the tribes,” said Sigmar. “Each of the counts sent fresh troops from their homelands.”

“Hoping to pick Jutonsryk clean, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” agreed Sigmar, “but I did not want warriors who had lost friends garrisoning a city they had shed blood to take. The time had come to send the army home.”

Pendrag nodded and said, “Two years is a long time for a man to be away from his family.”

“It is,” agreed Sigmar, hearing the wistful longing for home in Pendrag’s voice, “but enough reminiscing, my friend, are you going to tell me why you have brought me here?”

“That is why we are here,” said Pendrag, indicating a simple structure of polished granite at the end of the street. The building had a heavy wooden door guarded by two Ulrican templars and its few windows were shuttered. A White Wolf with painted red eyes set in a sunken reliquary above the door provided the only colour on a building that was grim even in a city of dourly constructed buildings.

“A temple of Ulric?” asked Sigmar.

“The building belongs to the Ulricans,” said Pendrag, sharing an uneasy glance with Myrsa, “but it is not a temple. It is a prison.”

“A prison for whom?”

“Something evil,” said Pendrag. “Something dead.”

 

The building’s interior was smothered in gloom, the only illumination provided by a series of tallow candles set into niches shaped like the gaping maws of snarling wolves. Sigmar felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand erect, and his breath feathered the air before him. The walls were dressed ashlar, unmarked by a single devotional image or carving. A sullen sense of despair clung to the stonework, as though it carried the weight of the city’s sorrows.

Four priests in dark wolfskin cloaks awaited them, each carrying a candle that gave off a cloying, sickly aroma. Pendrag closed the door behind Sigmar, shutting out the last of the evening light, and he felt a crushing sense of soul-deep unease settle in his bones.

Something was very wrong here, something that violated the very essence of human existence. This place reeked of abandonment and decay, as though the ravages of centuries had taken their toll in an instant. More than that, a palpable sense of fear lingered in every passing moment.

“What happened here?” whispered Sigmar, feeling the full toll of all his thirty-six years. He felt the pain of long-healed scars, the ache of tired muscles and the unending, ever-increasing weight of his rule upon his shoulders.

“I’ll show you,” said Pendrag, following the priests as they turned and made their way down the shadowy corridor. Moisture pooled on the floor, and Sigmar noticed that droplets hanging from the ceiling were forming icicles.

Myrsa matched step with Sigmar as the priests led them deeper into the cold and echoing building.

“While you made war against the Jutones, the Norsii have been raiding all along the coast, destroying dozens of settlements,” he said. “Entire villages have been massacred: men, women and children impaled on sharpened stakes. Even the livestock is butchered and left to rot.”

“You have seen this yourself?” asked Sigmar, knowing how such tales could grow in the telling until they bore little resemblance to the truth.

“Aye,” nodded Myrsa, “I have,” and Sigmar did not doubt him.

“Many of the people in Middenheim are from those few settlements that have not yet been attacked,” continued Pendrag. “The northern marches have been virtually abandoned.”

“Abandoned?” asked Sigmar. “The Norsii have always raided the coastline. What more is there that drives people from their homes? There is something you are not telling me.”

“That is why I sent word to you, my friend,” said Pendrag. “As you drew closer to Middenheim you must have felt the nameless fear emanating from the mountains?”

“We felt it,” confirmed Sigmar, stepping into an echoing chamber filled with lecterns of dark wood, “a black dread that tears at the heart with talons of despair.”

No scribes sat at the lecterns, though open books and pots of coloured ink awaited their careful hands. The chamber smelled of copper, vinegar and oak apples, though Sigmar had the sense that no one had sat here in many years.

“What causes it?” asked Redwane. “An enemy we can fight?”

“Perhaps,” said Myrsa, leading the way from the lettering chamber along a bare stone corridor towards a thick timber door secured with heavy iron bolts top and bottom. “There is one beyond who may know something of what afflicts us.”

Another two priests flanked this door, each carrying a spiked man-catcher, a long polearm with a vicious collar on the end and sharpened spikes on its inner surfaces that would rip a prisoner’s throat out if he struggled.

“The dead thing you spoke of?” said Sigmar, and Redwane made the sign of the horn.

“The same,” replied Pendrag, drawing the bolts and opening the door. Sigmar saw a set of curving steps that spiralled deep into the rock. Pendrag set off down the stairs and Sigmar followed him. The temperature dropped with every downward step. Hoarfrost formed on the walls, and each intake of breath was like a spike of cold ice to the lungs.

“The priests of Morr came to me two months ago,” said Pendrag, as the stairs wound deeper and deeper into the rock. “They spoke of dreams coming to their gifted ones, dreams of a long dead evil stirring in the Middle Mountains. The high priest claimed that Morr himself appeared in a dream to warn them that a terror from the ancient days had awoken from its slumber and sought dominion over the lands of men.”

“Did the high priest say what this terror was?”

Pendrag shook his head, and said, “No, only that it would spread like a plague, bringing misery and death to the race of man. Less than a week later, we heard the first tales from the villages in the foothills of the mountains.”

“Tales? What manner of tales?” asked Redwane.

“Of the dead walking,” said Pendrag. “Entire villages destroyed in the night, every living person vanished and every grave emptied. Soon this began spreading ever further from the mountains, and more and more people fled to Middenheim as the shadow crept ever onwards.”

“You suspect a necromancer?” asked Sigmar as the cramped stairwell grew steadily brighter.

“Or worse,” said Myrsa. “I sent warriors into the mountains—Knights of Morr and Ulrican Templars—but none ever returned.”

“Until now,” added Pendrag, as the stairs opened up into a wide chamber hacked from the rock with picks and bare hands. A swaying lantern hanging from the ceiling on a long chain and a host of torches set in iron sconces illuminated the chamber. A rough-hewn tunnel in the far wall led into darkness.

The candle-bearing priests took up positions on either side of it, chanting soft prayers to their god as those armed with the spiked collar weapons stood before it with their weapons held at the ready.

As Sigmar stared into the darkness of the tunnel, he felt as though the last breath was sucked from his body and icy hands had taken his heart in a cold, clammy grip. Though he had faced death many times, he felt unreasoning terror seize his limbs at the sight of the darkened passageway.

He gripped Ghal Maraz tightly, the warm, reassuring presence of the ancient warhammer steadying his nerves and easing his terror. The runes worked into its haft and head shone with a warm light, and, gradually, the paralysing fear holding him immobile began to diminish.

“What lies at the end of that tunnel?” asked Sigmar, fighting to hold his voice steady.

“It’s better if I show you,” said Pendrag, taking a torch from the wall.

With the priests of Ulric leading the way, Pendrag, Myrsa, Sigmar and Redwane entered the darkened passageway. The darkness seemed to swallow the light from the torches, pressing in on them like a smothering blanket. Only the light of Ghal Maraz shone steadily, and never was Sigmar more thankful for King Kurgan’s gift.

As a warrior, he had known fear, for he had faced many terrible foes, but this was not the fear of defeat, this was something else. This evil wormed its way into his soul with the fear of rotting flesh, of decomposing organs, his soul enslaved to an eternity of damnation.

The tunnel began to widen, though the light of the torches barely illuminated the walls. Sigmar saw they were scrawled with feverish lettering, as though someone had copied vast tracts of text onto the bare rock of the walls. He eased closer and saw that the words were charms of protection and warding, and entreaties to the god of the dead. The very walls of the prison were enchanted to keep whatever lay ahead bound to this place.

The journey along the passageway seemed endless, though it could only have been a hundred yards or so. Sigmar looked over his shoulder to see the dim rectangle of light from the antechamber shrinking away from him, as though an impossible distance away. Swallowing hard, he kept his attention fixed on Myrsa’s glittering white armour.

At last the passageway opened out onto a wide ledge in an echoing cavern. A deep chasm plunged into the infinite darkness, and a raised drawbridge swayed gently in the cold gusts from below. Fresh torches burned with the same sickly aroma as the priests’ candles, and Sigmar finally recognised it as wightbane, a plant cultivated by the priests of Morr to ward against the walking dead.

Across the chasm was a solitary individual, chained to the rocks with fetters of silver and cold iron. Clad in bloodstained white vestments and rusted armour, the man raged against his bindings, hissing and spitting with animal fury. His flesh was grey, and thin strands of white hair hung from his mottled skull.

Sigmar gasped as he saw the wolf symbol of Ulric on the man’s chest, but when the prisoner’s head came up, he saw the true horror of his condition. The knight was a man no longer, but a thing of corruption and decay. What little flesh remained on his body writhed with maggots and carrion beasts of the earth, and his breath was ripe with the stink of the grave. Glistening innards hung from his ruptured belly, and snapped ribs jutted from his chest where an axe blow had split him open. A fell radiance waxed and waned in the skull’s empty eye sockets, and Sigmar saw the promise of extinction in that light.

“Ulric preserve us!” hissed Sigmar, taking an instinctive step back from this monstrous thing. “What is it?”

“It is—or was—Lukas Hauke, a warrior priest of Ulric,” said Myrsa. “He led the expedition into the mountains to defeat this evil. He left Middenheim in the spring and returned alone two months ago, barely alive. I knew Hauke well, my lord, and he was a full five years younger than I, but when he rode into the eastern gate-fortress he appeared older than any man I have ever seen. The priestesses of Shallya treated Lukas with their most potent remedies, but he was ageing a year for every day that passed.”

The horror of such a dreadful ailment struck at the core of Sigmar’s humanity, and he felt his mouth go dry and his stomach knot in fear.

“Eventually, he appeared to die,” continued Pendrag, “but when the priests of Morr came to remove his body, Hauke rose from his deathbed and attacked them with his bare hands. He killed three men and eleven priestesses before they were able to bind him with blessed chains and bring him here.”

Sigmar lifted Ghal Maraz from his belt and Lukas Hauke, or what he had become, turned his creaking skull towards him.

The evil light in Hauke’s eyes glittered with unholy power, and he spat a wad of black phlegm.

“That toy of the stunted ones will not save you, man-thing,” he said. “Its power is a flickering ember before the might of the crown! If you knew the power of my master, you would end the pitiful, meaningless parade you call life and offer yourselves to Morath!”

Sigmar’s skin crawled at Hauke’s loathsome voice, a monstrously rasping, gurgling sound that conjured images of diseased lungs frothing with corruption.

He held Ghal Maraz out before him, and despite the dead thing’s earlier words, it recoiled from the pure light that shone from the warhammer’s head.

“Who is this Morath?” asked Sigmar. “Speak now or be destroyed!”

Hauke spat and shook his chains as the light of Ghal Maraz touched him, but the evil in his eyes remained undimmed as he said, “He is your new master and the living are his playthings.”

“I call no man master,” roared Sigmar, advancing to the edge of the chasm, feeling his courage growing with every step he took towards the unnatural monster. “You will tell me of Morath, his plans and his strength. Do this and I will free your soul to travel to Ulric’s hall.”

Hauke writhed in pain as the hammer’s light grew brighter. The silver of its chains burned hot as its essence unravelled in the face of such ancient power. The creature’s jaw gnashed in fury, but the dread force animating the brave knight’s corpse could not resist the power that compelled it to answer. Its back arched and an awful crack of splitting bone echoed as it fought to keep its secrets. Bones ground and wasted muscles tore.

At last, Hauke’s body sagged against the chains as the monster revealed itself.

“Morath is the Lord of the Brass Keep that holds dominion over Glacier Lake, and he is the doom of you all!” said the dead thing, the words dragged from its unwilling throat by the power of Sigmar’s hammer. Each word was hissed through rotted stumps of teeth and spoken as a curse. “He alone survived the doom of Mourkain and bore the crown of his master to this land in an age forgotten by the living.”

Much of what the creature said made no sense to Sigmar. He had no knowledge of Mourkain, whether it was a place or a person, but the mention of a crown piqued his interest. In its defiance, the creature had claimed its power was greater even than that of Ghal Maraz.

Lukas Hauke flailed and tore at the bindings, the silver chains glowing with the heat of their forging. Dust fell from where the iron bolts were driven into the rock, and the creature’s limbs writhed with unnatural strength.

“You shall die!” screamed Hauke. “The flesh will slide from your bones yet you will serve my master until endless night covers the land in darkness!”

With a final surge, the dead creature tore its chains from the wall and leapt across the chasm, its claws outstretched to tear Sigmar’s throat. Its eyes burned with killing light, but Sigmar was ready for it.

He swung Ghal Maraz in a swift upward stroke, smashing the monster’s skull from its shoulders. The deathly animation within the fallen knight’s body was snuffed out by the power of the dwarf hammer, and a howling shriek of oblivion echoed from the walls of the cavern as the body tumbled into the chasm, disintegrating with every yard it fell. Within moments, all that remained was a drifting cloud of grave dust, and even that was soon lost to sight. Sigmar heard a gentle sigh of release, and knew that the soul of Lukas Hauke was freed.

“Gods of Earth and Sky!” said Redwane. “Is it… dead?”

“It is,” said Sigmar, stepping back from the edge of the chasm. “But this was just a messenger. This Morath wanted us to hear what it had to say.”

“Why?”

“Because he seeks to draw us into his lair.”

Redwane wiped his brow and risked a glance into the chasm, and said, “And we’re going?”

“We are,” said Pendrag, seeing the iron determination in Sigmar’s eyes. “That creature was a challenge to us, and we must answer it.”

Sigmar turned to Myrsa and said, “Gather your bravest warriors and raise the Dragon Banner from the highest tower.”

“It will be done, my lord.”

“We shall find this Brass Keep and bring it down stone by stone,” promised Sigmar.