Lord of Undeath Page 12

  ‘Please, cover the light,’ she asked, keeping her eyes averted from the Stormcasts. ‘My mistress sends me with tidings for the Lord-Celestant.’

  Makvar nodded to Vogun, motioning for him to swing the lantern around so that it was behind him. At the same time, he gestured to the Judicator retinues to keep a closer watch on the embankments. It was discomforting to know that they had allowed Kismet to reach them without discovery.

  ‘The light has been withdrawn,’ Makvar told Kismet, walking towards the embankment. When the vampire lowered her hands from her face he could see the furtive, almost hunted look in her eyes. ‘You are safe with us,’ he said, trying to ease her fear. His assurance brought no change to her attitude.

  ‘Queen Neferata bids me pass warning to you,’ Kismet said, each word becoming lower and softer until her voice was reduced to a mere whisper. ‘At great risk to herself, she has used her magic to spy upon Nagash, to delve into his plans. She wishes you to know that we do not march to find Arkhan, but rather that Nagash has known where his disciple has been from the very start. Through his spells, Nagash has been in communion with the Mortarch of Sacrament. She desires that you should know of this subterfuge… and be ready for it.’

  Makvar listened to Kismet’s warning, turning over each word, trying to decide what to believe and what to discard. That Neferata had her own ambitions was apparent, though he doubted she would entertain any ‘great risk to herself’ to achieve them. Even so, she was cunning enough to exploit the intrigue of others to perpetuate her own scheming. With a being as steeped in magic as the Great Necromancer, there was little that could safely be put outside of possibility.

  ‘Thank your mistress for her concern,’ Makvar said. ‘You may tell her that I will bear her message in mind and that the Anvils of the Heldenhammer will act accordingly.’ Kismet bowed to him before vanishing back into the undergrowth. When he saw how stealthily the vampire withdrew, Makvar repented some of his displeasure at the vigilance of the Judicators.

  ‘Someone is anxious to make friends,’ Vogun said when Kismet had gone.

  Makvar frowned behind the mask of his helm. ‘Too anxious,’ he said. When he had described the strange reception at Schloss Wolfhof to Vogun, he had left out the details of Neferata’s nocturnal visit to his room. ‘The question we must ask ourselves is if we can afford her kind of friendship.’

  ‘You believe she is inventing this plot between Nagash and Arkhan?’ Vogun asked.

  ‘No,’ Makvar conceded. ‘I think she is too clever to lie to me.’ He turned and stared through the stands of corpse-willows, gazing in the direction from which Nagash’s deathly aura emanated. ‘What troubles me is how much of the truth she has decided I should hear.’

  Harkdron watched as Kismet slipped away from the Stormcasts, dropping behind a clump of bat-thorn as she turned in his direction. At this late stage, it would be absurd for her to discover him now. Not after all the care he had taken in following her through the swamp.

  The vampire glared in the direction of the storm-knights. He hadn’t drawn near enough to hear what Kismet told them, but he could guess. She had brought them some offer from Neferata. The queen’s pretence of fawning obedience to Nagash didn’t fool Harkdron. He knew she had aspirations of power, that she would rebuild her kingdom, if not in Nulahmia, then in some other land.

  Neferata had some idea that the storm-knights could win that kingdom for her. Harkdron could just imagine her offering to share her throne with that interloper Makvar. She would make that usurper her king, bestow upon him all the honours she had withheld from Harkdron!

  Directing a last glare towards the storm-knights, Harkdron hastened after Kismet. He had small worry that the handmaiden would notice him following her. If anything, she would be more concerned about drawing the attention of Nagash’s morghast guards. When Neferata sent her off on her clandestine liaison, it had been the Great Necromancer and his creatures they had been careful to avoid. Neither of them had given a thought to hiding their intentions from Harkdron.

  The vampire gnashed his fangs as he considered that his queen had given him very little thought since the fall of Nulahmia. Neferata had turned a cold shoulder to her former lover and consort, treating him no better than any of her blood knights. He knew she blamed him for the ruin of her city, the breaching of the Jackal Gate and the defiling of the Throne Mount. He had done his best to redeem himself, but before he could annihilate the hordes of Chaos, Makvar and his damned storm-knights had appeared!

  It was enough that Makvar had stolen from him his chance to prove himself to his queen. Harkdron wasn’t about to allow him to take his place in the queen’s favour.

  There was no way to strike directly against Makvar. Harkdron knew this. Even if he discounted the displeasure of his queen, there was the danger of angering Nagash. The Lord of Death was interested in the storm-knights, at least for the moment. Perhaps he was even entertaining Makvar’s overtures of an alliance with Sigmar.

  No, Harkdon decided, the only route open to him was to drive a wedge between Neferata and Makvar. He had to turn her against the storm-knights and make it seem her own decision when she did so. Then she would understand that Harkdron was the only consort worthy of her.

  With a powerful lunge, Harkdron threw himself across a stagnant brook. As soon as his feet struck the ground, he was dashing through a stand of gallow-oaks. Kismet would take a more cautious course as she made her way back to her queen. Haste, not caution, was Harkdron’s goal. Darting around the boughs of the squat oak trees, the vampire felt the thrill of the hunt pulsing through him. He had let himself grow soft amidst the luxuries of Nulahmia. He had forgotten the excitement of being a predator about to fall upon his prey.

  Kismet’s pale shape came gliding out from the undergrowth, hesitating as she peered in the direction of the undead column. Her fixation with the column and any threat rising from it made her oblivious to the menace stealing towards her from the gallow-oaks. Harkdron was nearly upon her before she sensed him and noted her peril.

  Like a cornered tigress, Kismet spun about to meet her attacker. Raking fingers slashed at Harkdron’s face, missing the vampire only by a hair’s breadth. The foot she brought slamming into his midriff brought better results, connecting with such violence that he was knocked off his feet.

  Harkdron was back on the attack almost at once. Snarling, he pounced at his fleeing quarry. One of his clutching hands seized a clump of Kismet’s hair, wrenching it out by the roots and spilling the handmaiden into the mud. The vampire loomed over her, staring down with blazing eyes.

  Kismet saw death in those eyes. ‘Spare me, Lord Harkdron,’ she begged. ‘I will tell you whatever you want to know.’

  The vampire sprang at her, driving his fist into her chest with superhuman, bone-splintering force. ‘Keep your secrets,’ he hissed into her ear. ‘You are more use to me this way.’ With a vicious pull, Harkdron’s hand came tearing out of Kismet’s mangled chest. Clenched between his bloodied fingers was the handmaiden’s dripping heart. He glared at it a moment, then tossed it into the weeds. Crouching over Kismet’s body he removed the silver talisman he kept hidden in his boot. He averted his eyes from the tiny hammer, an ancient relic from the ages when Sigmar had walked the kingdoms of Shyish. The God-King was long gone from the Realm of Death, but his power lingered on in the few symbols left behind. Symbols that were potent against the undead.

  Harkdron stuffed the talisman into the gaping wound. There were times when he had disposed of vampiric rivals for Neferata’s attentions, using the little hammer to ensure they stayed dead when he destroyed them. While the hammer rested in the place where Kismet’s heart should be, she would remain with the truly dead. If some friend found her resting place, they might dispose of the talisman and allow her to revive, but Harkdron would ensure that didn’t happen. He picked her up and stalked off into the swamp. He had seen an especially deep bog when he
had followed her away from the column. Just the place for someone to disappear.

  Harkdron wondered what Neferata would think when Kismet failed to return from her meeting with Makvar. With some care on his part, he was certain he could help her come to the right conclusions.

  Blackened hills and barren fields rushed past Lascilion’s foggy vision. Dimly, he perceived the dried beds of dead lakes and the gnarled boughs of charred forests, the broken walls of ruined castles and the shattered foundations of fallen temples. The rubble of despoiled tomb cities lay strewn across meadows of bleached bone. The husks of vanquished armies withered upon groves of stakes, fleshless skulls grinning up at the sky.

  Everywhere, the taint of Chaos was in bloom. The megalithic flagstones of ancient roads were split and broken by the fibrous stalks of colossal flowers with petals of ice and fiery nectar. Streams of corrosive ooze eroded primordial barrow mounds, sending pillars of greasy vapour screaming into the air. Vast, amorphous things rippling with unclean vitality washed across the ghostly streets of desolate villages, caking all they touched in crystalline growths.

  Awareness came roaring back into Lascilion’s brain, threatening to devour his senses in a paroxysm of pain. Reluctantly, the Lord of Slaanesh fought back the agonies that threatened to consume his reason and render him a dumb, mad thing. With his resistance came memories, the crushing torment as his daemon steed rolled across him and crushed the strength from his bones, the searing light of the storm-angel’s lamp as it pierced his eyes and stabbed his spirit. Most of all, he remembered the sight of Neferata, the delicious vampire queen, so close to him that his tongue swelled with the scent of her cruelty.

  He had fallen then, hurtling down the side of the Throne Mount, the burning city rushing towards him as though eager to draw him into its dying embrace. Then, everything was lost in the darkness. The warlord knew no more.

  Lascilion tried to move, to discover for himself the extent of his injuries. The effort sent a new spasm of pain rushing through him and a trickle of blood down his back. He could feel the sharp claws that were dug into his flesh, the bite of his splintered armour as it cut his skin. Managing to tilt his head, he could see the hideous face of Amala staring down at him. He knew then that he was held fast in the mutant’s claws as she soared across the sky. There was no hint of intention to be found in her inhuman eyes and no clue of her purpose to be had from the inarticulate slobbering that dripped from her jaws. Amala had been a dutiful enough servant when he had been the Lord of Slaanesh with an army of men and daemons under his command. Now, broken and disgraced, he wondered if any sense of loyalty lingered in her.

  Amala’s purpose soon became clear to Lascilion, and when it was, he considered that it might have been better for him if she had simply carried him off to some craggy mountainside to devour his flesh. A vast encampment lay sprawled across the terrain below, a veritable city of hide tents and wooden shelters that stretched away into the mist-shrouded horizon. Lascilion could see huge stone idols with their blood-drenched altars. He could see massive slave pens with their spiked fences. There were great fighting arenas gouged where the followers of Khorne offered up the skulls of their victims, and the diseased cesspits where the disciples of the Plague God sought Nurgle’s putrid blessings. Eldritch towers bound in chains of copper and adorned with arcane sigils of gold flickered with weird energies and eerie lights as the students of Tzeentch practised their sorceries. Lascilion looked for the perfumed pavilions of Slaanesh’s initiates, but soon despaired of the search. Most of those who honoured the Prince of Pleasure in this realm had flocked to his banner and followed him to their doom in Nulahmia. Those who remained would view him with loathing, an affront to their absent god.

  The winged mutant tightened her grip upon Lascilion’s shoulders. Wheeling through the air, Amala headed towards the gigantic tent at the centre of the encampment. Stitched from the hides of mammoths and dragons, it was supported by enormous pillars of skulls, each head branded with the grisly rune of the Blood God. Pennants of flayed flesh fluttered above each pillar, flags cut from the still-living bodies of kings and hierophants and stained with the murderous symbols of Khorne. Encircling the tent, their skinned bodies nailed to posts, were the eighty-eight warriors chosen as offerings to the Lord of Skulls. As each tortured warrior expired, he was replaced by another, an endless cycle of blood to ensure the Blood God’s favour.

  This, then, was the stronghold of Bloodking Thagmok, mightiest of the generals left by Archaon to secure the Realm of Death in the name of the Dark Gods. Lascilion had been filled with pride when he had last stood in Thagmok’s presence, arrogantly boasting that he would succeed where so many others had failed. He had promised to find Nulahmia and capture its queen. The Bloodking wasn’t known for his mercy, nor his indulgence of broken promises. As Amala descended towards the tent, Lascilion found his gaze roving across the exposed muscles and organs of the warriors on the posts. He trembled as he imagined joining the gory offerings.

  If Thagmok even considered him worthy of such a fate.

  Chapter Eight

  Huld soared across the blighted wasteland of the Mirefells, keeping close to the oozing earth, vigilant for any path that might provide his comrades a speedier journey than the creek they followed. Except for a few rocky islands and the occasional stand of twisted forest that seemed rooted in something with more solidity than a bog, his efforts had come to naught, as had those of the Prosecutors who shared in his labour. The nearest any of them had come was the discovery of a stone causeway sprawled across some fens, its supports dragged down into the muck so that the road was tilted on its side. The dilapidated construction looked as treacherous as the boggy ground that was slowly consuming it. Even had it been in a more amiable state, it was useless to the needs of the Stormcasts, winding its broken course away from the backwaters into which the Lord of Death was guiding them, as though the land itself were telling them to turn back.

  Yet the Anvils couldn’t turn back. Too much depended upon their mission. Makvar cajoled every effort from the Stormcasts to keep from falling too far behind the undead. The winged scouts did their best to guide their comrades to paths less onerous than that taken by Nagash and his creatures, but never could they seem to find a route which would allow them to gain upon the undead. Makvar was compelled to keep pushing the Anvils and prevent them from losing all contact with the undead column.

  The Knight-Azyros didn’t envy Lord-Celestant Makvar his burden. Every decision he made had to be weighed against the success of their mission. Whatever lengths it took to convince Nagash to lend his support to Sigmar and unite his deathless legions with those of the Realm Celestial, Makvar had no choice but to pursue them. Even when it meant putting his comrades at risk and marching them into a trackless mire. Huld’s comrades sometimes said he had been reforged with a silver tongue, but he wondered if his gift of eloquence would have counted for much when it came to negotiating with the Great Necromancer. He felt that it was deeds, not words, that were needed to sway Nagash.

  Huld’s wings snapped tight against his armoured body as he sent himself into a dive, skimming just above the moss-ridden treetops with deceptive grace. His aerobatics were more than simple exuberance. He was keeping close to the trees to avoid being spotted from afar. Only the most debased and forsaken of the enemy’s minions would linger in a place like the Mirefells, but if there was one thing Huld had learned about the hordes of Chaos, it was to never underestimate the depths to which they could lower themselves. Some of the things he had seen perpetrated by the bloodreavers of Khorne would have made a ghoul’s gorge rise.

  There were also the noxious creatures of the swamp itself to avoid. Several times, immense bats had taken wing at the approach of the Stormcasts, whether from hunger or to defend their territory. Most of the flying vermin had been routed easily, a single stormcall javelin enough to scatter their flocks and send them hastening back to the shadows. A few of the larger bea
sts had been more persistent, their eyes aglow with an appetite that uncomfortably recalled to Huld the hideous feast at Count Zernmeister’s castle. Only by sending their steaming carcasses plummeting down into the bog were the Stormcasts able to fend off the attentions of these unliving horrors.

  The faint sounds of battle drifted back to him on the rank wind and made Huld forget about giant bats. The distinct clash of metal against metal rang through the air, but with the sound came even more savage noises. Ferocious howls and fearsome screams, bestial and exultant, the cries of wanton carnage and brutal conquest. Somewhere ahead of him, a vicious battle was being fought.

  Signalling the Prosecutors, Huld sped onwards, towards the roar of combat. The stands of trees below became more sparse, their trunks wizened and even more twisted than the others he had seen in the Mirefells. Ugly patches of mist and vapour billowed up from the marshy ground, pulsating with a phosphorescent glow. Here and there, he could see clumps of broken masonry poking out of the mud and the severed stumps of stone columns half-engulfed by weeds and moss.

  Evidence of ancient habitation increased the closer Huld drew to the clamour of battle. The few trees that thrust their trunks from the muck became still more sickly and dwarfish, their branches reaching out like decayed claws. The heaps of rock and stone protruding from the mire were now recognisable as structures, empty windows gaping from their abandoned walls, morbid carvings nearly obscured by sediment and slime. Certainly, Huld thought, what lay below him had once been a great city, perhaps a seat of empire in some long-lost epoch.

  The sound of battle drew him still farther. He began to wonder if what he was hearing was some ghostly echo of this city’s death, some grim haunt conjured to lead him astray. The Knight-Azyros shook his head. The only way to be certain what was real and what was phantom was to press on and discover for himself where the phenomenon would lead him. Only then could he tell Makvar what lay ahead of the Anvils.