—<TEN>—

Creeping Death

 

 

A dozen riders fled north, whipping their mounts in a frenzy of terror and desperation. Khaled al-Muntasir watched them go with a wry grin of amusement on his lips. A city of nearly eight thousand people, and twelve men were all that now lived. He watched from a high balcony of the Count’s Palace, a grand tower decorated with finery from all across the Empire and a number of artefacts he recognised as belonging to civilisations from the other side of the world.

“You were a man of culture,” said Khaled al-Muntasir, lifting a delicately-wrought vase of pale white ceramic decorated with exquisite images picked out in blue ink. The artist had skilfully rendered a man and women drinking tea at a low table in a bamboo-framed home. The brushwork was flawless and the detailing incredible. In any land this piece would fetch a small fortune.

Khaled al-Muntasir tossed the vase from the balcony, watching as it tumbled down the cliff to smash to fragments on the way down. The vase’s owner didn’t bat an eyelid at his prized possession’s destruction.

“Yes,” said Khaled al-Muntasir, moving back into the Great Hall, its walls painted with colourful frescoes depicting scenes of hunting and battle. “You have some wonderful pieces here. This rug, for example, bears the handiwork of the dreamweavers of Ind, while this wall hanging is from the silk-worms of the Dragon Emperor is it not?”

The vampire stopped beneath a podium of oak, upon which was mounted a pair of giant ivory tusks. He stroked the monstrous fangs, marvelling at their size and contemplating the scale of the beast from which they had been torn. The vampire looked towards the warrior standing motionless in the centre of the audience chamber, a tall man in golden armour and a crown of the same metal upon his brow. His hair was white and flowed across his shoulders like a frozen waterfall.

“Ordinarily, I would say these belonged to a dragon, but I know of no such beasts in these lands anymore. So tell me, Siggurd, what manner of creature once owned these?”

The warrior turned to face Khaled al-Muntasir, his face drained of life and his throat a ruined mess of torn sinews and muscle. Blood coated his chest and his eyes were now sunken, filled with a hideous red light. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came out, just a hiss of dead air from his opened throat.

“Ah, yes, of course…” said Khaled al-Muntasir. The vampire muttered a petty incantation of dark magic and the torn meat of Siggurd’s throat began to close up, the necrotic flesh weaving the ghastly wound closed. “Now, you were saying…?”

The count of the Brigundian tribe’s mouth opened and a rasping death rattle emerged, a sound dragged from the abyss that carried such pleasing anguish that Khaled al-Muntasir couldn’t resist a wide grin.

“Skaranorak…” hissed Siggurd. “A dragon ogre…”

Khaled al-Muntasir’s eyes widened, and he stroked the heavy tusks with his carefully clipped nails, a new-found respect in his deathly eyes.

“You killed this beast yourself?” he asked.

“No,” said Siggurd, his voice returning. “Sigmar killed it.”

“Ah, yes, Sigmar,” said the vampire. “I should have guessed.”

Siggurd walked out onto the balcony, a perch from where he had once surveyed the lands belonging to his tribe, lands that had once brought trade and wealth to his city, but were now overtaken by darkness and fear. Swollen by the Menogoth dead, the army of Nagash had taken Siggurdheim in a matter of days, its rugged peak climbed by hundreds of ghoulish infiltrators as thousands of dead warriors marched along its steep winding roads to batter their way in through the heavy gateway. The city had fallen in a night that still held sway, the Great Hall’s many windows admitting no light, only the darkness of eternal night.

“Are you not going to stop them?” asked Siggurd, his flesh finally losing its vigour and warmth as the Blood Kiss destroyed the last of his humanity and completed his journey to become an immortal killer of the living.

“Why would I care to do that?” said a voice laden with thousands of years of blood and slaughter. Like tombstones crumbling, it was the sound of toppled civilisations, cultures destroyed and entire realms drained of life.

Siggurd and Khaled al-Muntasir bowed as Nagash entered the Great Hall. The darkness beyond the windows was eclipsed by the bleak presence of the arch necromancer, a thick miasma of dark energy that filled his servants with macabre vigour. The coiled snake staff crackled with simmering power, and his metallic fingers dripped beads of dark magic to the stone floor of the hall.

The hulking violence that was Krell marched at Nagash’s right hand, his black axe strapped across his armoured back. The fallen warrior of the Dark Gods had run rampant through the city, killing with a frenzy that would no doubt have pleased his former master. To Nagash’s left was the wolfish figure of Count Markus, his lean frame now invigorated with slaughter. His blade and chin were covered in blood; his eyes alight with the thrill of feeding on so many fearful hearts.

“They will carry word of what has happened here,” said Siggurd, staring hungrily at the blood on Markus’ blade. “It will give them time to prepare for your attack.”

“It matters not,” said Nagash. “Already my vassal forces spread fear to the furthest reaches of this land. Man is a beast and it is good that fear fills him.”

“And that fear will drain men’s hearts of courage,” said Khaled al-Muntasir, returning to the balcony. “But more than that, it tastes so sweet…”

Khaled al-Muntasir watched as the riders fleeing Siggurdheim’s destruction disappeared over the horizon, their life lights as bright as stars. “Where will they go?” he asked.

“North to Asoborn lands,” answered Siggurd, licking his lips and pacing the hall like a restless stallion. “They will flee to Queen Freya in Three Hills. She lives for war and will muster her warriors as soon as she learns what has happened here.”

“Then that is where you will go, Khaled al-Muntasir,” said Nagash. “Hunt down this queen and destroy her.”

Khaled al-Muntasir bowed and dropped into the throne that had once belonged to the Brigundian count.

“I will leave her lands as desolate as Bel Aliad itself.”

“What of the Merogens?” asked Siggurd, his hands clawed into fists. “Is Henroth dead?”

“Henroth’s people huddle around flickering candles within their castles of stone, surrounded by the dead. They will be no threat,” said Nagash as Markus walked over to Siggurd and took hold of his chin.

The former count of the Menogoths turned to Khaled al-Muntasir. “The birth-hunger is upon him,” he said.

“It is,” agreed the vampire.

“He will need to feed soon or else go mad.”

“There are living yet within this city’s walls,” said Khaled al-Muntasir, languidly twirling a finger through the air, as though stirring its flavours. “Young Siggurd must learn to hunt on his own, just as you did.”

Siggurd took Markus’ hand from his chin, his eyes hostile, and they circled like two virile males in a wolf pack. Khaled al-Muntasir smirked at such posturing in newly-ascended blood drinkers.

“Give a mortal a taste of true power and it all but overwhelms them,” said Nagash.

“If either survive to learn how to use that power they will be formidable killers,” said Khaled al-Muntasir.

“The fate of blood drinkers interests me not at all,” hissed Nagash ducking below the balcony’s archway and casting his immortal gaze over the landscape. The darkness of his armour and tattered cloak swirled around him like sable light, the faint glow from within his bones like the last sunset of the world. “Only the crown matters.”

“Then why am I to ride north?” asked Khaled al-Muntasir. “Surely we should march straight to Reikdorf.”

Krell took a thunderous step towards him, his axe unsheathed in a heartbeat and the light in his skull shining with the threat of furious violence.

“You question my purpose?” said Nagash.

“No, my master,” said Khaled al-Muntasir, smoothly swinging his legs from the arms of the throne and giving an elaborate bow. “I am your humble servant in all things.”

Nagash’s eyes bored into him, and Khaled al-Muntasir instantly regretted his flippant tone. He felt himself touched by a fraction of the necromancer’s power, a dreadful extinction that held everything that lived or once drew air into its lungs with contempt. Even the living dead were not immune to the necromancer’s touch. His enormous reservoirs of power could snuff out unlife as easily as a mortal blew out a candle.

Khaled al-Muntasir had passed the point where he feared much of anything, but the one fate that still struck horror through his undying flesh was oblivion. To live forever, to hunt the living and to indulge his every sense and vice was the sum total of his desire, and the thought of that ended filled him with dread.

Nagash saw his acquiescence and the lambent glow in his eye sockets shimmered at his vassal’s fear. The Lord of Undeath turned to the darkened landscape beyond Siggurdheim.

“Spread the terror of death before you and drive those you do not kill toward my crown,” hissed Nagash. “Lay waste these petty kingdoms and scour the seed of mortals from this land.”

“It shall be my pleasure,” Khaled al-Muntasir assured Nagash.

 

A low bell tolled, echoing across the Old Town harbour, and Sergeant Alwin of the Jutonsryk Lancers paused to watch the beacon fire atop the Tower of Tides light up, signalling the end of another day.

“Regular as always,” he said to himself. “Good to know that some things never change.”

He moved on, walking with an unhurried gait, his sword sheathed at his side and his blue cloak flitting behind him in the choppy evening wind blowing off the seafront. It was a quiet night, which made a nice change, the drunks keeping a low profile instead of roistering in the streets or brawling in the taprooms.

The docks were quiet, just the slap of water against the quay, the creak of ships’ timbers and the sigh of wind through the rigging and flags. His lancers followed behind him, four men of proven character, all of whom he could rely on in a tight spot. Not that he expected any tight spots tonight; the day had been without incident, as though the thousands of sailors, tradesmen and inhabitants of the city had been reluctant to remain outdoors for any length of time. He’d thought it odd, but anything that helped keep the peace in Jutonsryk was a boon as far as Alwin was concerned.

He paused by the westernmost spur of the docks, putting his foot up on one of the iron mooring rungs set in the quay. The Ormen Lange, an Udose vessel familiar to the docks of Jutonsryk, was moored here, and he waved up to the bearded clansman at ship’s watch in the forecastle.

“All’s bonny,” called the man. “None reddin the fire the night, eh?”

“Indeed,” agreed Alwin, though he had no idea what the clansman had just said.

He moved on, looking up at the Namathir to Count Marius’ castle, its many windows glowing with colour and light. The lord of Jutonsryk was a hard man to like, but Marius knew how to ran a busy port, understanding that commerce and trade would only flow into a city if its streets could be made safe. Merchants would not come to a city where they feared for their life and cargo.

Which wasn’t to say the city was a Utopian society where crime didn’t happen, far from it, but those who flouted the law were punished by Marius’ only penalty—death. Justice in Jutonsryk was harsh, uncompromising and final. Which made for a city where all but the most foolish drunks or desperate footpads observed the law.

Alwin followed the line of the docks as he and his lancers made his way towards Taal’s Fire, the most southerly beacon brazier of the docks. It burned with blue fire, a shimmering lodestone for incoming ships. Further north, around the curve of the bay, Ulric’s Fire wavered with a green light. Differing herbs altered the colour of the flames, and it was thanks to these beacons, together with the one atop the Tower of Tides, that not a single vessel had been lost while navigating the treacherous channels around the Reik estuary.

As Alwin looked north, the light from Ulric’s Fire was momentarily obscured, as though a shimmering curtain had been drawn in front of it. He frowned and squinted through the darkness as it flickered and disappeared.

“Did you see that?” he said, turning towards his warriors.

They nodded and Alwin looked south towards Taal’s Fire. It too was gone.

“Damn me,” hissed Alwin. “I don’t like that, no I do not.”

He looked back at the Tower of Tides, reassured to see that its beacon light was still lit. Low clouds clung to the distant tower, tendrils of mist that seemed not to move with the wind. Alwin looked out to sea, and his mouth fell open at the sight of a rolling grey fog coming in from the darkness. Living by the ocean, with a coastline of marshland to the south, a man got used to mists, but this was something more. It hugged the water, undulating over its black surface like a scum of sea filth as it crept towards the city.

The fog was thick and reeked worse than a bloated corpse dragged from the water. It drifted over the hundreds of berthed ships, slinking and creeping over their timbers with an unclean touch. It slithered up the quayside, oozing onto the docks with dreadful purpose, and Alwin knew he’d never seen anything quite so unpleasant.

“It’s only mist, damn it,” he chided himself, irritated that something so banal had him spooked. Even as he told himself it was only weather, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it portended something far worse. No sooner had he formed the thought than he heard the dolorous peal of a brass ship’s bell, a talisman to guide a vessel through just such a fog, yet this familiar sound gave him no comfort.

The sound was dead, without the natural echo or earthly touch of an instrument forged by man. Another bell answered it, then another. Soon the quayside was echoing to the ringing of dead bells, hundreds of flat peals that slid through the darkened streets like midnight assassins. Sailors and traders were emerging from the taverns, drawn by the deathly echoes and an instinctual understanding that these sounds were just wrong in every way it was possible to be.

Alwin wanted to tell these people to run, to flee whatever doom was soon to overtake the city, but he couldn’t think of what to tell them that wouldn’t sound ridiculous. He looked back out to sea, searching for the source of the hollow bells, now hearing the sluggish passage of water over rotten timbers. Lights began to appear in the fog, drifting corpse lights that rose and fell with the tide, a hundred or more of them.

They shone like a host of candles for the departed, poisonously evil flares that bridged the gap between the living and the dead. Or guided the dead to the living…

“Reinen, get back to the barrack house,” ordered Alwin.

“Gather everyone you can find and have them arm themselves before getting down to the quayside.”

“Sir? What’s going on?”

“Don’t argue with me, just do it!”

Reinen nodded and sped off, grateful to be freed from remaining at the water’s edge. Moments later, Alwin heard a clatter of armour behind him as his lancers fled the quay, leaving him alone on the dockside. Though he knew hundreds of people were nearby, he could see none of them as the fog thickened around him.

Isolated in his mist-wreathed world, he saw nothing but the approaching lights and heard nothing beyond the sullen bells, his thudding heartbeat, the slurp of water and the rattle of dusty bones, chains and rusted iron.

A shape emerged from the fog; a black-hulled vessel wreathed in a spectral light and which could surely never have remained above the waves such was the rotten, holed nature of its hull. Its timbers were swollen and decayed, and whole swathes of its side were missing. Stagnant water poured from it as though recently raised from the deeps. The fog lifted momentarily, and Alwin saw hundreds of these ships of the damned surging into Jutonsryk harbour, each with tattered crimson sails that hung lank and limp, stirred by no wind and made fast without ropes or crew.

Captain Raul claimed he had seen two hundred vessels of the dead, and Alwin now knew the southern captain’s estimate of numbers had been conservative. The black ships moved against the wind, relentless and inexorable as they drifted over the sea to the quay. Black things moved through the sky, horrors thankfully concealed in the thick fog, swooping over the city with murder in mind. Chittering flocks of bats billowed in their wake and a distant screech of something monstrous echoed through the fog-bound city.

Muffled by the fog, Alwin heard cries of alarm from the moored ships. Alarm bells began ringing, on the ships and throughout the city, but Alwin knew it was too late for any warning to save Jutonsryk. He heard a sickening crash of timbers and looked back over his shoulder to see the Ormen Lange cloven in two by an eastern war galley built in the style of a hundred years ago. The galley slammed into the quayside with a thunderous crash of splitting timbers, and Alwin had his first look at the damned crew aboard this abominable vessel.

All along the gunwale, dreadful figures with piercing green lights for eyes stared at him with hungry fervour. Pale corpses, rotted skeletons in corroded armour and hunched figures with water streaming from their wounds clutched spears, axes and short blades in their dead hands.

They streamed onto the land, a host of dead sailors come for revenge on the world of the living. Alwin heard the first screams from further along the quay. The sound broke through the paralysing terror that held his limbs fast, and he drew his sword, determined to fight these seaborne invaders with whatever courage he could muster.

He ran back to the Ormen Lange, seeing the clansman he had spoken to earlier crawling from the wreckage of his ship. Bloated, grey-skinned dead men hacked at him with sharp cutlasses. As soon as they saw Alwin, they abandoned their victim and lurched towards him with a dreadful hunger in their sunken, dead eyes.

Alwin wanted to ran, to live, but he was a Jutone warrior, and he brought his sword up.

“Come on then, you dead bastards!” he shouted, hurling himself at the damned.

His first blow clove a rotten corpse in two. Its flesh was soft and yielding, and his blade easily cut through its sodden meat. Alwin slashed the neck of another drowned man, and a froth of stagnant water bubbled from the wound. A grinning skeleton came at him and he slammed his blade through its skull, dropping it in a clatter of bone. The dead pressed in, dying by the dozen, but they poured in unending numbers from the hundreds of ships.

He buried his sword in the guts of another waterlogged corpse, twisting the handle to relieve the suction of wet flesh on the blade. A corpse fastened its teeth on his arm and bit through the meat there. Alwin cried out and punched the dead thing in the face. Its jellied eye squirted ooze, momentarily blinding him, but momentarily was all the opening the undead needed.

Clawed hands fastened on his throat and tearing limbs pinned his arms to his side, as they bore him to the ground. Sharpened teeth gnawed at his flesh and Alwin’s sword was torn from his grip. He struggled furiously, but there were too many and the pain was too great. He screamed as they devoured him, biting chunks from his legs and stomach like warriors with hunks of roast boar at a victory feast. Blood burst from his mouth, and the stink of it drove his killers to fresh heights of hunger.

Alwin’s last sight was the beacon fire atop the Tower of Tides as it died, plunging the world into a darkness which it could never survive.

 

The muster fields of Three Hills were thick with horses and the clamour of warriors. Maedbh wound a careful path through the thousands of people gathered here, nodding to those she knew and picking out the differing tattoos of various tribal sword bands. Even within the Asoborns there were fiercely clannish groupings, and though they were united by Queen Freya’s call to arms, each swaggered with something to prove.

At the centre of the maelstrom, Freya directed her warriors with fiery sweeps of her spear and shouted pronouncements. Her twin boys were at her side, their faces downcast and sullen. Maedbh could guess the reason why, now understanding a measure of Wolfgart’s reluctance to see Ulrike trained in the arts of war.

Five hundred chariots were lined up along the edge of the field or rolled in to take up position by the rutted track that led towards the river. Two acres of forest had been felled to corral the horses and a neverending train of wagons was assembling on the far side of the hills to carry their fodder. Sword bands in their hundreds milled around the field, warriors from all across Asoborn lands greeting one another like long lost friends. Many of these warriors would not have seen each other for years, and Maedbh lamented that it took times of such darkness to bring them together.

Ulrike walked beside her, holding tightly to her hand. Every night since the attack of the wolves, she had woken in the darkness, screaming and weeping uncontrollably. Maedbh had held her tight, hating that her little girl was suffering like this. She remembered her own first blood, a desperate chariot ride before a mob of greenskins raiding the eastern lands of the Asoborns. Freya’s mother, Queen Sigrid, had broken the enemy horde, but Maedbh never forgot the exhilarating terror of riding close enough to the enemy that she could smell their rank, rotten-meat breath and feel the bite of their axes on her chariot.

“Is the queen going to fight the wolves?” asked Ulrike.

“Yes, my dear,” said Maedbh. “That’s exactly what she’s going to do. All these men and women are going to ride south and hunt them down. They’re going to kill every one of them so they never hurt anyone ever again. Do you understand me? The queen doesn’t tolerate bad wolves in her lands.”

“Good,” said Ulrike. “I hope they kill them all. I hate wolves.”

“Those weren’t real wolves,” said Maedbh, stopping and coming down to Ulrike’s level. She looked her daughter in the eye and said, “Real wolves are servants of Ulric, the god you were named for, so don’t hate them. Those things that attacked us were once noble wolves, but an evil man made them into monsters with his dark magic.”

Ulrike nodded, though Maedbh saw she was yet to be convinced. Maedbh led her through the sword muster, passing mail-clad fighters of the east, bare-chested horse archers of the hill folk, colourfully tattooed women of the Myrmidian sects and burly horsemen from the northern woodlands with their long iron-tipped lances. Everywhere she heard proud boasts of the monsters the warriors would kill, tall tales of martial prowess and bravado, but it rang hollow to Maedbh’s ears.

Mixed in with the Asoborns were perhaps two hundred Brigundians and a hundred Menogoth warriors; all that had survived the invasion of the dead. Hundreds of refugees from both tribes were sheltered in Three Hills, but these men, with their grief-etched faces and hollow eyes, sought only vengeance. Maedbh didn’t blame them; their lands had been ravaged, their homes destroyed and their families murdered. With nothing left to lose, they were only too glad to join the Asoborn war muster.

Maedbh knew how she would feel if Three Hills suffered as their lands had suffered, and that thought gave her stride fresh purpose as she marched through the uprooted warriors towards the Asoborn queen.

Freya stood beside her chariot, a gold and bronze creation of deadly power. Its sides were reinforced with iron cords and layered wood against the grain. Golden fire was inlaid in finely crafted carvings of flaming wheels and blazing cornets. A dozen of the Queen’s Eagles surrounded her, mounted on tall, wide-chested geldings, their golden-winged helms shining like sunlight on silver. Sigulf and Fridleifr harnessed two beasts Maedbh recognised as having once belonged to Wolfgart’s herds to the chariot, though it was clear the boys were less than happy with their mother.

Freya herself was clad in her finest armour of bronze and iron, and, as always, the queen was attired to impress as much as protect. Bronze mail hung in a weave from her shoulders, and the plates protecting her chest and belly were moulded to the form of the muscles beneath. Iron greaves and vambrace were strapped to her shins and forearms, leaving the curved sway of her hips and thighs bare. A scarlet cloak was pinned to her shoulders with silver brooches in the form of snarling wolves.

“Maedbh!” cried the queen as she saw her approach. “A fine gathering is it not?”

“Yes, my queen, very fine,” said Maedbh, looking around the muster field. “How many answered the call to arms?”

“All of them it seems,” laughed Freya. “Near five hundred chariots, two thousand warriors on foot and a half century of horsemen. A host to chase the dead back to their tombs, eh?”

“A mighty army indeed,” answered Maedbh. “Our lands must be empty of warriors.”

The queen nodded, her face darkening at Maedbh’s insinuation. “I know you think me rash to ride off like this, and, yes, this muster will leave us vulnerable for a while. But brother Siggurd’s lands are aflame and what manner of queen would I be if I left his murder unavenged? You heard what Sigmar’s herald said, the dead are rising everywhere and the Menogoths are already gone. Now Siggurd’s city is taken and our southernmost scouts say there’s an army moving on Three Hills. No one invades my lands, Maedbh, no one.”

“I understand, my queen,” said Maedbh. “But I have faced this enemy, and it is not cowed by threats, boasts or reputations. It is a foe that lives to kill and create more of its kind.”

“You can still come, Maedbh. I need you with me,” said Freya, indicating her chariot. “I can find another rider when battle is joined, but no one has your skill with a chariot. No one has your fire and daring.”

Maedbh glanced down at Ulrike, pulled by the desire to ride with her queen and the need to protect her daughter. She had crewed Freya’s chariot ever since the queen had taken the throne, and the idea that she would go into battle without Maedbh rankled. Yet one look at her daughter’s need told her she could not ride with this army. In that moment she understood the demands on Wolfgart, but to Maedbh, the choice was clear. She could not leave Ulrike.

“Thank you, my queen,” said Maedbh, “but I cannot. I have Ulrike to think of.”

The queen shrugged and said, “Your child is blooded now, she should ride with us too.”

Anger touched Maedbh. “As Sigulf and Fridleifr do?”

The queen’s face darkened and she climbed aboard her chariot.

“You know why they do not march with me,” hissed Freya, mercurial as ever. “If you will not ride with me, then I charge you to protect them. Keep my boys safe, Maedbh, promise me this and I might forget your insolence.”

“I will watch over them as though they were my own,” promised Maedbh.

Freya smiled, her earlier anger forgotten.

“I know you will,” said the queen. “I will leave a sword band of my Eagles too, but it is a great honour I do you, Maedbh.”

“I understand, my queen,” said Maedbh, bowing as Freya took her sons in a crushing embrace. The queen hugged them to her breast, whispering something to each of them in turn and pushing them towards Maedbh. They stood with Ulrike, hurt that they were not riding to war with their mother and resentful that they were under the protection of another.

Freya took up a spear from her chariot and raised its bronze blade high. At her signal, the Asoborns let loose a whooping war shout, which was taken up by every warrior gathered in the muster field. The queen of the Asoborns cracked the reins and her chariot rumbled away, leading her army towards the route south.

Maedbh watched her go, her heart heavy at the sight of so many warriors going into battle without her, yet secretly relieved she wouldn’t have to leave her daughter. She looked at the three children she was now beholden to protect, and the maternal urge flowed through her entire body.

She would die before she allowed any harm to come to these youngsters.

“Are you our guardian now?” asked Sigulf.

“Yes,” said Maedbh. “I am.”