—<THIRTEEN>—

The Next to Die

 

 

Maedbh ran towards the centre of Three Hills, hearing the shouts of the sentries and their cries of alarm. Fear clamped her heart and she looked back over her shoulder to make sure Ulrike and the boys were with Garr’s Eagles. Asoborns armed with bows and spears were pouring from their homes, dwellings cunningly secluded within hidden arbours and sunken hollows. Any enemy would have a difficult time in locating their homes, but it sounded like someone had done just that.

Her own bow was slung over her shoulder, but she carried a long, leaf-bladed spear that normally sat in the queen’s chariot. A priest of Taal had blessed its blade, and its keen edge never failed to find its prey. A thousand possibilities flew through her mind, the living dead had found a way to locate Three Hills, the greenskins were invading from the mountains, the forest beasts had followed a scent trail to the Asoborn homeland…

None of those made sense. Queen Freya’s army was between Three Hills and the living dead, and though the greenskins had been more active of late, the mountain scouts had reported no signs of a gathering horde. That just left beasts…

Freya had entrusted the care and safety of her sons to Maedbh. Bad enough that she couldn’t have marched with the queen, but to allow enemies within Three Hills would be unforgivable. Maedbh rounded a grassy hillock, overgrown with trees and nettles, finding a line of Asoborn women with bows lined up with their backs to her. Their bowstrings were taut, yet their arrows remained unloosed. Children scampered around their mothers’ legs, but there was no sense of fear, no sense that something dangerous had come amongst them.

“What in Taal’s name is going on?” said Garr, coming alongside her with the children in tow. Ulrike held his hand, while Sigulf and Fridleifr had their hunting knives bared. Clad in baked leather armour and a bronze-reinforced kilt, Garr was handsome and strong, with a cropped scalp of fine black hair. One of the youngest Queen’s Eagles, Maedbh had heard enough stories of Garr’s stamina and prowess to know that he was a true Asoborn in all areas the queen required. He had taken to the children well, and they to him, which made their confinement to Three Hills marginally less troublesome.

“I don’t know,” replied Maedbh, resting the spear over her shoulder and walking towards the line of Asoborns. She heard gruff voices and the clank of metal beyond, and her trepidation turned to curiosity with every step. The Asoborns parted before her and she found herself looking at a hundred armoured dwarfs, clad from head to foot in armour of silver, gold and bronze. Stained with the dust of many days travel, the dwarfs seemed unconcerned by the bent bows aimed at them or the assembling chariots rumbling around their flanks.

Leading the dwarfs was a broad figure in a suit of glittering gold and silver. The visor of his helmet was shaped in the form of a stern, bearded god and he rested his mailed fists on the haft of an axe almost as tall as he was. The warrior flipped his visor up to reveal a craggy face like the flanks of a cliff and eyes that twinkled like shards of obsidian. The dwarf’s beard was plaited with iron cords and he spat a mouthful of dust.

“Which of you manlings is in charge here?” said the dwarf.

Maedbh stepped forward, planting her spear before her in the earth.

“I am,” she said. “Maedbh of Three Hills. Who are you and how did you get past our sentries? No one enters Queen Freya’s lands without permission.”

“I am Master Alaric, Runesmith to King Kurgan Ironbeard of Karaz-a-Karak, and your queen is likely dead,” said the dwarf, and a horrified ripple of disbelief swept through the assembled Asoborns. Maedbh felt a cold hand take hold of her heart. She struggled to maintain her composure in the face of such terrible news.

“As to how we got here,” continued the dwarf, oblivious to the effect his words were having, “Do you think the paths over the land are the only ones? The roots of your manling town reach so rudely into the earth that even a skrati couldn’t miss them. There are routes to the surface all over this place. I’m surprised you haven’t found them and taken steps to secure them, but then you are only manlings…”

Maedbh struggled to hold her annoyance at the dwarf’s insult, instead focusing on the news he had brought.

“What are you talking about?” she said at last. “Queen Freya’s army set out from here only a week ago.”

“Freya?” said the dwarf. “Tall woman with red hair, doesn’t wear enough armour to cover a small child? Rides a chariot of black and gold?”

“Yes,” said Maedbh.

“Aye, that’s her,” said Alaric. “It’s hard to tell you manlings apart sometimes. Anyway, the dead destroyed her army at the river crossing. It was messy, not many escaped. A blood drinker swordsman commands the dead, and those he slew now march north with him.”

Maedbh swallowed, grief twisting her gut into a painful knot. She knew little of the dwarfs and their ways, but knew the Emperor counted them as his sworn allies and that they did not lie or embellish.

To the mountain folk, truth was like the hardest stone, unyielding and enduring.

“How many?” she said. “And how long do we have?”

“His army is near four thousand now,” said Alaric. “I reckon they’ll be here within the day and don’t even think about hiding. They’ll sniff this place out as sure as gold glitters.”

“Then we need to leave here,” said Maedbh. “We need to head west to Reikdorf.”

“Aye,” agreed Alaric. “That you do, manling. And right quick too.”

 

The attack on Marburg came in the dead of night. Spectral fog gathered over the marshland around the mouth of the Reik where it spilled over the treacherous sandbars and narrow channels of the harbour. Marburg wasn’t as naturally blessed as Jutonsryk in its geography, but it had the advantage of being on the Reik, which meant it could control the traffic of ships to Reikdorf.

That thought alone made Marius’ mouth water.

“A city of gold,” he whispered. “That’s what this place could be.”

His lancers looked over at his words, but none spoke. Unlike some counts, he didn’t encourage fraternisation between commoners and their betters.

Marius and a hundred of his warriors stood on the southern shore of the main channel that led to the curving ring of the docks where Aldred and the Raven Helms awaited. The quayside was deserted, all those ships that could flee the city having sailed around the coast to safer ports in the south. It made for a strange sight to see a port bereft of ships.

Despite her brother’s urgings to remain in the city, Marika commanded a host of archers on the rooftops and forecastle-shaped towers set in the curve of the citadel’s lower walls. From there her archers could rain down arrows upon the dead without fear of retaliation.

Rearing up behind her archers was the Raven Hall, the monstrous tower dominating the skyline with its beaked upper chambers and swept-back wings. Impressive enough in its own way, Marius found it rather vulgar, like something the ancient tribal kings might have raised to some long forgotten animal god. Hundreds of crows and ravens alighted on its ledges and carvings, such that it shivered with feathers as though coming alive.

Endal warriors occupied positions all along the docks and shoreline, their spears and shields wavering like tiny specks of starlight in the darkness. Aldred had been a hard man to convince of his own danger, but with Marika’s help, Marius had been able to persuade him to evacuate many of the oldest and youngest along the river towards Reikdorf. Marburg was a city of warriors now, but as night after night passed without an attack, fear gnawed at the courage of every man.

Truth be told, it was almost a relief when the dead finally came.

Huntsmen watched the coastal approaches to Marburg, and Marius had persuaded Aldred to send out sentry ships to watch for the undead corsairs. One of those ships now bobbed in the dark swells of the harbour, its sails torn and holed, listing to the side where planks had been torn from its ribs by bony fingers. Its crew still stood on its decks; the helmsman at the tiller and its captain behind the wheel, but it was clear to all who saw them that these men were dead.

The ship had drifted into Marburg an hour before the watch fires were lit, and as darkness closed in, the city’s defenders rushed to their posts. Yellowed fog rolled in from the sea, and Marius heard the flat, toneless sound of ships’ bells, the same bells that had rung the death knell of his city. He smiled weakly as he realised he was afraid. That was a new sensation. Even when Bastiaan had stabbed him in Middenheim he had been more angry than afraid.

The monotonous sound conjured images of skeletal ferrymen and a black river crossing from which no living soul could return. Bobbing corpse lights followed the echoes of the bells, and Marius saw a host of ships drift into the harbour, over two hundred of them, each with torn sails, splintered oars and swollen, barnacle-encrusted hulls. They came on without need for wind or sail, dread ships of the forsaken and the damned.

“Now,” hissed Marius, willing the defenders ranked up along the line of docks to hear his whispered imprecation. “Come on, Aldred, don’t be a fool all your life.”

The ships came on until a single fiery arrow arced up into the night sky.

Flames rippled around the curve of the docks as oil-soaked braziers were sparked to life and the city’s entire complement of war machines were unmasked from behind wicker mantlets. Marius heard the creak of windlasses as heavy ballistae cranked, followed by a whoosh of the barbed tips of great javelins being set alight. Ten of these machines had been dismantled from their positions on the city’s eastern walls and carried down to the docks, where they had been rebuilt in makeshift earthworks of good Reikland mud.

The heavy iron bolts leapt towards the enemy ships and six were struck, the flaming missiles punching through their rotten timbers and setting them ablaze. Holed beyond the ability of their masters’ dark magic to sustain, they slid beneath the water and distant cheering drifted up to the Jutones’ position.

“Don’t get carried away,” said Marius. “The dead don’t fear a bit of water.”

More missiles leapt from the war machines, smashing masts and breaking open hulls with every bolt as the war machines’ crews found their range. The ships of the dead scattered, moving with greater urgency towards the shoreline. A flurry of arrows rained down from the high town, thudding home on the decks of the hulks or piercing the dead meat of their crew.

Marius saw Marika among the archers, loosing white-fletched shafts from a bow he was sure was of fey origin. He had sent a similar bow to Sigmar before Black Fire, which he’d heard the Emperor had broken over his knee. Such a shame, the bow had been worth more gold than Sigmar would have seen in his life.

Nothing more had been said of his and Marika’s conversation the other night, but Marius was savvy enough to know that it still hung in the air between them. He could do nothing to act on her unsaid plan just yet, but perhaps his doing nothing was just what she wanted.

“My lord,” said Vergoossen, appearing from the darkness and shivering in a thick woollen cloak. “Should we not be on the move? Much as I am loath to approach anything resembling a battle, was our plan not to move to occupy the southern tip of the docks upon the appearance of the dead?”

“Indeed, it was,” said Marius, watching the battle unfold as the ships of the dead reached the docks. The first of the drowned sailors leapt from their ships and no sooner had they done so than Marika loosed a flaming arrow that lit the oil spread around the quayside in wide troughs hacked into the stone. A wall of searing flame leapt up and ran around the docks like a fiery snake, setting hundreds of corpses alight and spreading swiftly to their ships.

“Is that not our plan now?” asked Vergoossen. “I do not recall any tactical amendments from Count Aldred.”

“No, you wouldn’t have, Vergoossen,” said Marius. “This one came from Princess Marika. She and her brother clearly share an… interesting relationship.”

“I see, my lord.”

“No you don’t,” said Marius. “But it doesn’t matter. Watch and learn, Vergoossen. Watch and learn. This is how things change in this world, not with diplomacy and words, but with swords and gold and ambition.”

The wind carried the stink of rotten, burning meat, and Marius covered his mouth with a pomander scented with exotic fruits and rose petals. The fire on the docks was dying now, and yet more of the dead were pouring from their ships or climbing from the muddy waters of the shores. The Raven Helms charged, smashing into the dead with heavy broadswords, cutting them down with brutal strokes. They pushed the dead back, driving them into the water as Endal tribesmen fought to keep the flanks of the elite warriors safe.

“Ah, now things get interesting,” said Marius, as hundreds of the living dead waded ashore below them. Water spilled from opened bellies and vacant ribcages. Green fire guttered in rotted eye sockets. The dead lurched in the direction of the Raven Helms, ignoring the Jutones on the higher ground.

“Won’t the Raven Helms be flanked if we do not move?” asked Vergoossen.

“Of course,” said Marius, drawing his sword. “And the bloodshed will be terrible, but at the last moment, the heroic Marius will save the day. Saga poets will sing songs of my bravery for years to come.”

“I hope you are right, my lord,” replied Vergoossen.

“Of course I am,” said Marius.

 

Marika loosed another arrow into the flaming horde below, straggling to contain her horror at these decaying revenants as they shambled ashore from their doomed boats. Dozens were ablaze in the harbour, banishing the crepuscular gloom with the fury of their demise. To see so many of the dead clawing at the living brought back all the memories she’d buried of her time in the marshes. The lingering doubts she’d had regarding her unspoken pact with Marius were forgotten as the suffocating terror of that night returned to her.

“Another quiver!” she shouted, and Eloise passed her a fresh batch of arrows. Her maidservant had refused to leave with the rest of those who fled for Reikdorf, but Marika saw she was now regretting that decision.

She nocked another arrow and sighted on a skeletal warrior with a rusty cutlass and a hole in its breast where a heart once beat. She let out a breath and loosed before drawing another. Her arrow flew straight and true, slashing into the dead warrior’s chest and dropping him to the ground in a pile of disconnected bones. It was a fine shot, but ultimately a waste of a shaft. Marius had told them to look for the host’s sorcerers, evil beings who gave life to the army of the dead.

Without these fell magickers, the dead could not sustain their existence and would return to the grave. She didn’t know how Marius had learned of such things, but supposed that with enough gold, you could learn anything in the world.

Marika scanned the docks, finally spying a hunched figure lurking by the gunwale of a wrecked ship listing against the quayside. She pulled another arrow and took her time with her aim, allowing for the gentle sway of her target’s ship and the slight wind. The figure turned towards her, and she saw its face was that of a man, though one ravaged by some hideous wasting sickness or starvation.

Her arrow punched through his right eye, the barbed tip bursting from the back of his skull and pinning him to the gunwale. The dead things clambering from his ship lurched drunkenly as their dissolution overcame them. Armoured warriors of bone and rotted meat collapsed where they stood and the bloated corpses of drowning victims sagged and fell back into the sea. Perhaps fifty of the dead cracked and crumbled to ash with the death of the black sorcerer, and Marika’s heart surged with sudden hope.

To face the dead was to know fear like never before, but to fight them… that was the sweetest elixir. She whooped with newfound fearlessness. She shouted to the rest of the archers, reminding them of what to look for, feeling her heart race with surging life.

“My lady?” whimpered Eloise. “What’s that?”

The light of the moon was obscured as the carrion birds took off from the eaves and garrets of the Raven Hall. Marika had seen birds behaving like that before. The birds were flocking not to feed, but to flee. She looked to where Eloise was pointing, seeing hundreds of screeching bats swarming in from the sea. Their leathery wings sounded like a fleet of ships at sail, but behind them came something far larger, far worse and far more terrible than she could have dreamed in her worst nightmares.

 

* * *

 

Aldred watched the sky darken as hundreds of bats swarmed the night with their hideous furred bodies. Ever creatures of ill-omen, bats were vermin with a thirst for blood, and claws that carried all manner of foulness. Arrows flashed toward them from the citadel walls, and though he hated to admit it, Marius was right to deploy the archers further back.

The fighting around the docks raged in the leaping shadows of dying fires, a frantic fight for survival against a foe that cared nothing for pain. His warriors had beaten back one attack and he had driven Ulfshard into the chest of one of the robed sorcerers Marius had told them to look for. That death had unmade two ships’ worth of the dead and Aldred felt unbridled joy as their spirits were released from bondage.

Endal tribesmen fought to prevent the dead from getting a foothold on the docks, but their enemy’s numbers were telling in every backwards step they were forced to take. The wail and skirl of pipe music echoed over the water and filled the hearts of every warrior with courage. While the ancient tunes of glory played, no man could fail to fight without feeling the judgemental eyes of his ancestors upon him.

A dreadful shriek echoed over the water, and Aldred flinched as something monstrous flew overhead. He heard screams, and saw a winged shadow swoop down on the city, a terrible monster of darkness with a black armoured figure astride its bony, elongated neck.

His terror nearly overwhelmed him as a stray shaft of moonlight reflected from its exposed bone and dead scale hide. Ragged wings of death-stiffened hide flapped with ponderous slowness and its rotted jaws opened wide exposing broken, jutting fangs of yellow.

“It’s a dragon… a dead one…” he said, unable to believe his eyes, feeling his fragile courage melting away at the sight of so terrifying a monster in the flesh. Its body shimmered as though not truly corporeal, and Aldred’s soul wept to see a creature from the elder days of the world violated in such a hideous manner.

Necrotic flesh withered on its millennia old bones, and flaps of skin trailed from ancient lance wounds in its flank. Its elongated head was horned and hooked, barbs of bone and tooth making its jaw a serrated blade as long as a warship’s keel. Sat astride its bony neck was a hooded figure robed in black, its body wreathed in baleful energies of undeath. Pale wisps of bleak twilight billowed around the rider and wherever its gaze turned, men fell dead in terror, the flesh withering to ash on their bones.

The mighty dragon swooped down over the citadel walls, and a billowing cloud of noxious breath streamed from its jaws to engulf the ramparts. The stench was overpowering even from so far away, and Marius coughed at the grave reek. He could hear men dying, choking and coughing as their internal organs liquefied and the flesh melted from their bones.

Wails of terror spread along the docks as warriors threw down their weapons and fled in terror from the corpse dragon. Alone among the Endals, the Raven Helms held firm, but one look at their faces told Aldred they were close to breaking. He held Ulfshard aloft, and the pale blue glow of the fey enchantments woven into its arcane metal poured iron into their veins.

The living quailed before the sight of the dragon, but the dead cared nothing for its dreadful magnificence, and threw themselves upon the Raven Helms once more. Notched blades clove armour, claws and teeth ripped flesh. Aldred blocked a slashing cleaver and beheaded its wielder as he saw that he and the Raven Helms fought on alone. Endals were dying all around him, borne to the ground by the dead or skewered on rusted spears.

The defence of the docks had become a rout, hundreds of warriors fleeing towards the lower walls of the citadel. The gates were open and men fought to reach the safety of the walls. Laredus fought through a press of the dead warriors towards Aldred, the top portion of his sword snapped off and his black armour torn by bloodied claws.

“We need to go, my lord!” he shouted. “We can hold them at the walls.”

Aldred nodded, too weary to even reply. His sword arm felt like his veins had been filled with lead and the exhaustion of the fighting settled upon him like a cloak of iron. He knew he was no longer as fit as he needed to be. This one fight had almost drained him.

“Sound the retreat,” he gasped.

“There’s no need,” said Laredus. “We’re all that’s left. Raven Helms! With the count!”

Aldred and Laredus turned and ran towards the gates of the citadel, but they had covered barely half the distance when the ground trembled. Glittering particles swirled in hundreds of miniature whirlwinds, dust devils that spun and twisted like living things of spectral light. They gathered form and solidity until hundreds of translucent figures stood between them and the citadel, a lambent host of ancient men and women with eyes of pale white and mouths stretched open in soundless screams.

The blood froze in Aldred’s veins.

An army of the dead behind them and a host of hungry ghosts ahead of them.

They were trapped.

 

Marika saw the host of shimmering spirits arise from the dust and her humanity rebelled at the sight of these wretched souls denied their final rest. She could feel their pain and the horror of their blasted existence, and tears welled at the thought of such a fate. What manner of man could tear these souls from Morr’s realm and force them into slavery, denying them their rightful place in the next world?

These dreadful wraiths flickered in the air like wavering candle flames, drifting against the wind towards Aldred and the Raven Helms. A ring of dead warriors and glowing spirits surrounded them, and there was nothing anyone could do. No warrior dared leave the citadel while the looming dragon and fear of the restless spirits held their courage in check.

Screams and groans of pain surrounded her. The dragon’s breath had swept the ramparts and its pestilential exhalation choked the life and vitality from all those who breathed its foulness. Young men in the full fire of youth had fallen to the ground, transformed into ancients with withered skin, brittle bones and sunken flesh. Some coughed up bloody froth as their lungs dissolved, while others had the flesh scoured from their bones by the noxious corruption.

A handful of arrows slashed up at the beast, but every single one bounced from its dead hide. The war machine crews attempted to bring down the beast, but some hideous force protected it from their missiles. Unable to harm the dragon, the survivors of its attack turned their bows upon the dead spirits, loosing volley after volley at the glowing figures. Their arrows passed through the spirits’ forms, clattering on the cobbled streets and shattering as though they had been frozen in flight.

They might as well have been loosing arrows at clouds for all the effect they were having.

Undeterred, Marika pulled back her bowstring and loosed a shaft from the bow her father had given her on her fifteenth birthday. The bowstave was fashioned from a wood no Endal craftsman could name or work, its length inlaid with silver threads woven through the grain of the wood in swirling patterns that changed with the seasons.

Her arrow leapt from the bow, arcing up and slashing down through the spirits, and where its point struck, one of the forlorn revenants vanished in a flare of light.

“They can be slain,” she said, looking in amazement at her bow. The metallic threads shimmered with life and the wood grew warm to the touch. Her father had told her the bow had been crafted by the fey folk from across the ocean, but she hadn’t really believed him until now. She bent her bow and released over and over, freeing more of the damned spirits from their hellish servitude in shimmering twists of light.

But as many as she banished, there was no way she was going to destroy enough to save Aldred and the Raven Helms.

 

Aldred and Laredus stood back to back as the dead drew near. Ulfshard shimmered with a blue light, the blade brighter than Aldred had ever known it. The moans of the dead cut through the din of battle and the dry roar of the dragon and its screeching bats. The Raven Helms fought the dead coming in from the sea with desperate strokes, blocking ship’s axes and cutting down dead men who came at them with nothing but their clawed hands reaching to pluck the eyes from their heads.

The spirits of the dead enveloped them, swirling in a cloying mist of screams and tormented wailing. They tore at the Endals with insubstantial claws that passed through the thickest armour yet drew no blood. The merest touch of these damned spirits sucked the vitality from a warrior like a leech drawing blood from a wound. None came near Aldred, flinching from him as soon as he brought Ulfshard to bear. He swept his sword through the misty substance of the spirits, feeling their joy as the connection to the evil sorcery binding them to the world of the living was severed.

Yet it was not enough. The spirits shrieked and wailed as they were dissipated by Aldred’s blade, but there were too many of the fleshy undead to defeat. The ring of Raven Helms shrank as the ranks of the dead swelled still further. More ships were crashing into the shoreline to disgorge yet more of the doomed warriors of the dead.

Aldred heard a furious clamour from the citadel and saw a banner of bright colours borne through the melee, a flag no Endal would dream of bearing. It was a Jutone flag, ostentatiously colourful and garish, and beneath it rode a host of armoured lancers in pale blue cloaks fighting with curved sabres. Marius fought at their centre, cutting a dashing path through the dead with the elegant sweeps of a duellist. His blade was a golden streak of sunlight, and like Ulfshard, the dead feared it.

The Jutone cavalry smashed through the encircling dead, and Marius backhanded a reverse cut into the skull of a dead warrior, neatly removing the top of his head. Marius fought with fluid grace, as much a showman as a killer. His skill was undeniable, though Aldred saw he favoured his right side.

The charge of the Jutone horsemen was devastating, smashing the dead apart with ferocity Aldred had hitherto not suspected. The Endals had long believed the Jutones had gone soft in their city of merchants, preferring the luxuries gold could buy instead of living as warriors. Clearly he had underestimated Marius, and the thought disturbed rather than reassured him.

While the Raven Helms and Jutone lancers held the dead at bay, Marius reined in his horse beside Aldred, his face flushed with excitement and the thrill of battle.

“I think you should be getting out of here, yes?” said Marius.

“Where in Manann’s name did you come from?” demanded Aldred. “Weren’t you supposed to be holding the southern shore?”

“We were, but rather more monsters than we could handle came ashore and I had to fall back to the citadel to save my men,” said Marius. “We mounted up as soon as we saw your danger, and here we are.”

“You allowed us to be flanked!”

“Yes, my deepest apologies about that, but I did send a runner informing you of our withdrawal,” said Marius smoothly. “I suppose he must have been killed en route. That is a pity.”

“A pity!” stormed Aldred. “We were almost overrun.”

“And you still will be if you insist on having this ridiculous discussion now,” pointed out Marius. “Get up behind me if you want to live through this night.”

Marius held out his hand to Aldred, who bit back an angry retort as he hauled himself onto the back of the Jutone count’s horse. Though it went against everything he knew to be right, he held his sword out to Marius.

“The spirit creatures fear the magic of Ulfshard,” he said. “Use it to cut us a path.”

“No need, they fear mine also,” said Marius with a manic grin. “Now let’s be off.”

Marius kicked back his spurs with a wild yell, and his horse took off towards the citadel. The Jutone lancers fought alongside the Raven Helms as Marius forced the howling wraiths back with his enchanted blade. They rode back towards the citadel gates through the path the lancers had cut. Aldred heard cheers from the ramparts as they came within sight of the gates and laughed with joy. He saw his sister loosing arrows into the dead, and his relief fled as he saw the expression on her face. It was disappointment.