Lord of Undeath Page 16

  Vogun darted away from the terrorgheist’s bite and retaliated with a slash of his halberd that sent fangs rolling across the clearing. Growling at the undead monster, ignoring the colossal difference in their sizes, Torn sprang at the beast that had tried to eat its master. The gryph-hound’s beak ripped into the terrorgheist’s rotting face, slashing such meat as yet clung to its skull.

  A snarling sheet of lightning crashed down into the terrorgheist as Kreimnar brought the fury of the God-King descending upon the undead horror. Flesh steamed in the elemental blast, bones blackened and fractured. One of the monster’s wings withered into a charred stump. The shriek that hissed from the monster’s jaws now was one of agony as the dark magic which fuelled its abominable animation was burned away.

  Makvar brought his sword chopping down into the stumpy neck that supported the terrorgheist’s bat-like head. The blade sheared through the rancid flesh, gouging the thick vertebrae beneath. The decaying beast swung around, trying to snap at him with its blackened jaws. A crack of Gojin’s tail broke the momentum of its assault and sent more of its fangs tumbling onto the ground.

  Gripping his sword in both hands, Makvar brought the blade slashing down in a vicious stroke. The sharp edge sheared through the already weakened bone. The terrorgheist’s head crashed to the ground, dislodging Torn from his worrying grip on the beast’s ear. The massive body twitched and writhed, tail whipping out in blind malignance, the remaining wing closing and opening in mindless spasms. A ragged shout of victory rose from the Stormcasts around the vanquished monster, their triumph tainted by the loss of their comrades to the beast’s rampage.

  ‘Now we must return to the real fight,’ Makvar declared, rousing his knights and recalling to them the greater battle raging above the drowned streets of Mephitt. Even as he did so, Vogun drew the Lord-Celestant’s attention to the turn that battle had taken.

  The corrupt Chaos horde had come the worse for their struggle against the undead. Between Neferata’s vampires and Arkhan’s bone warriors, the slaughter had been monumental. Dire spells leapt from the eldritch staves the two Mortarchs carried as they rode about the periphery of the conflict, decimating entire warbands with each of their conjurations.

  The bloated, toad-like daemon which led the forces of Nurgle, the hulking Great Unclean One that had seemed so formidable to Makvar when he led his knights to Arkhan’s rescue, was now beset by a power even more destructive. Nagash had sallied forth from the darkness to confront the daemon. The skeletal Lord of Death sent masses of clawing wraiths screaming across the huge daemon’s cancerous body, tearing great rents in his hide. He hurled shrivelling magics into the thing’s exposed organs, reducing them to empty husks. Chilling energies streamed from Nagash’s staff, cracking and splitting the Great Unclean One’s oozing skin, freezing its horns and nose, making them so brittle that they shattered when his foe tried to strike at him with a giant diseased sword.

  Nagash’s other hand gripped a sword of his own, a blade of such immense darkness and malice that it seemed to drain the vitality from the very air around it. When the Lord of Death brought his blade against that of the daemon, the bilious sword was shorn in half, split asunder as though it were naught but a twig. The deathly weapon continued its murderous sweep, slashing into the daemon’s body, hewing through its vast maw and cyclopean eye. Relentless to the last, Nagash gave the blade a twisting flourish before tearing it from the daemon’s body.

  Almost before Makvar understood what he was watching, the immense daemon of Nurgle lay corroding at Nagash’s fleshless feet in four gory segments.

  The Stormcasts had exhibited their might for the undead. Now Nagash had shown the warriors of Sigmar why the God-King was so keen to restore the Lord of Death to his pantheon.

  Chapter Ten

  The translucent morass that had consumed Mephitt surrounded the Anvils of the Heldenhammer as they descended into the depths of the ruined city. Wispy orbs and weird lights flittered through the sunken streets, darting down empty avenues and through abandoned archways. Colossal statues sitting atop huge pedestals of marble and malachite flashed into view as the ghost-brands rushed past them. Pyramidal obelisks and ovoid menhirs were revealed as glowing motes swirled around their bases.

  More macabre than the drowned echoes of the forgotten city were the gruesome objects that hung suspended within the ectoplasmic lake. Bones of every description, human and inhuman, hovered within the opaque mire, slowly drawn down into the depths of Mephitt. The corpses of beasts and men killed in the recent fighting, the splintered remains of Arkhan’s vanquished warriors, could be seen oozing their way down from the surface, sinking with almost glacial lethargy into the shadowy underworld. The broken husk of the terrorgheist was there, gargantuan and hideous, its monstrous bulk drawn down towards the long-hidden flagstones of Mephitt’s great plaza.

  ‘I can feel the chill of this place chewing into my bones.’ The words were spoken by Knight-Heraldor Brannok, but they could have come from any of the Stormcasts. The clammy, dank atmosphere was inescapable, too persistent for even Lord-Castellant Vogun’s lantern to hold at bay. It was a cold not of temperature but of spirit, the frigid clutch of an open grave, the slumbering malice of the dead towards the living.

  ‘This necropolis is offended that we are here,’ Lord-Relictor Kreimnar stated. Boldly, he reached out his hand, feeling the translucent wall beside him recede ever so slightly at his touch. ‘It has been a long time since anything that drew breath walked these streets.’

  It didn’t take Kreimnar’s arcane sensitivity to feel the sullen hostility that oozed up from the ruins. Lord-Celestant Makvar felt it all around him, a creeping sensation that crawled through his skin. It was like having a thousand eyes watching him, glaring at him with pitiless hate. Every instinct in his body and all the fighting reflexes he had honed and developed were shouting to him, crying out to him to beware. It wasn’t fear – that emotion was all but unknown to the Stormcast Eternals. It was something more subtle, welling up from some primal aspect of his being. It was the same anxiety he could feel pulsing through Gojin’s reptilian bulk, could see hovering about the feathered head of Vogun’s gryph-hound. As Kreimnar said, life wasn’t welcome in Mephitt, and even the basest creature could feel itself trespassing upon a world in which it had no place.

  Yet for all the malice, the atmosphere of bitter threat Makvar felt pressing in around them, he knew that the Stormcasts were in no danger. The spirits that haunted the desolation, the spectral malignity of Mephitt’s ruins, the deathly essence of the translucent mire, all of these were manifestations of the Realm of Death. Nothing of this sinister land would do them harm. Not while they were in the company of the god who claimed dominion over Shyish.

  Makvar gazed at the eerie tunnel through which the Stormcasts marched, boring its way through the submerged streets, lit by a ghostly glow that followed the knights as they pressed deeper into the city. Ahead of him he could see the fleshless ranks of Arkhan’s skeletons, the crimson armour of Neferata’s vampires. Beyond them, towering over the undead legion, was the morbid throne upon which Nagash reposed, carried upon a phantom tide of writhing spirits, surrounded by the black essence of the Great Necromancer’s power.

  When he had descended from Azyr, Makvar had imagined Nagash to be a dwindling force, a fading deity whose powers were waning. They had come to broker alliance with Neferata because they had believed the Mortarch to be a more active opponent of Chaos, a leader of such defiance as yet lingered within Shyish. Nagash, he had thought, was in retreat, sealed off within his underworlds, unable or unwilling to oppose the hordes of Archaon. Seeing his swift dispatch of the Great Unclean One proved to Makvar that whatever else, Nagash’s powers were still far from extinguished. Watching him stretch forth one of his bony hands and bore a passage through the ghostly sludge which buried Mephitt impressed upon him that this was still the realm of the Death God.

  No, there wasn’t an
y question that Nagash was still a formidable power. He could stand against the tide of Chaos. What Makvar wondered was if the Great Necromancer was willing to do so. Perhaps he had been too long in his hidden vaults and underworld catacombs to believe victory was still possible.

  ‘Lord-Celestant, a rider comes,’ Huld called to Makvar. The Knight-Azyros waved one of his wings as something emerged from the undead ranks and crossed the gap that separated the Stormcasts from their allies. Makvar almost expected to see Neferata’s handmaiden drawing towards them, to relay tidings from her mistress or to pass along some veiled warning. Instead, what he saw was a withered husk perched atop a skeletal steed. The mounted corpse bore a bony standard in one of its fleshless claws, a golden icon mounted to the top of the morbid pole. The thing regarded the Anvils with its empty sockets, then dipped its head in a creaking extension of honour.

  ‘Mighty Nagash wishes you to attend him,’ the rider said, its jaws moving too slowly to match the words that rattled from them. ‘If Lord-Celestant Makvar would follow, he will be shown where he will be received.’

  Brannok drew close to Makvar’s side. ‘Don’t go alone, commander,’ he cautioned.

  Makvar cast his gaze up at the mass of ectoplasm above them, pondering how far below the surface they were now. ‘If Nagash willed, it he could bring this tunnel crashing down upon our heads,’ he said. ‘No, he has no need for subterfuge. Not while we are so completely in his power.’ It was hardly a comforting sentiment, but then they hadn’t been sent to the Realm of Death to play things safe. They had been sent to accomplish their mission and accept whatever risks were demanded to execute that purpose.

  ‘You should take someone with you,’ Kreimnar said, studying the undead horseman. ‘Someone to offer advice and council should it be needed.’

  Like Brannok, Kreimnar was more worried about Makvar’s safety than any strategic concerns, but unlike the Knight-Heraldor, he was more cunning about expressing himself. The suggestion even had merit in its own right. Makvar was wise enough to appreciate that his focus on the success of their mission might blind him to other matters. Nuances of possibility that might have an oblique effect upon the alliance he strove to build.

  ‘I will take Brannok, Huld and Vogun,’ Makvar told Kreimnar. ‘I trust that will allay some of your worry, old friend?’ Of all of his officers, Brannok and Vogun were the ones most critical of the powers they had been sent to court. As a result, they would be the ones paying the most attention when he conferred with the Lord of Death. Huld, with his keen tongue, was someone he was certain would prove essential in any event.

  ‘Bring such servants as you deem needful,’ the skeleton declared. ‘Great Nagash will be waiting.’ Its message delivered, the undead herald collapsed in upon itself, its bones losing their cohesion. The horse disintegrated in similar fashion, crashing to the ground in a mess of decay.

  By its disintegration, the undead rider impressed another message upon Makvar. It was that whatever served Nagash existed only because it had a purpose useful to him. Once it became superfluous, its existence could be snuffed out in a matter of a few heartbeats.

  The weight of ages lay wrapped about the royal palace of Mephitt. The tomb-mire that had smothered the city made it impossible for dust to gather or spiders to spin their webs between the columns. No vermin scurried in the shadows, no decay pitted the gruesome frescos painted on the walls. Yet time had left its stain just the same, the years seeping down into the marble floors and limestone walls, tainting the bronze sconces and brazen braziers. A miasma of antiquity clung to it all in defiance of the arcane preservation of the spectral lake that had drowned the once-mighty city.

  It needed only a wave of his hand for Nagash to send the tomb-mire rolling back, to drive the opaque sludge from the great hall where the necro-kings of Mephitt had once lorded over their people. As he marched to the barren throne where the ashes of the last necro-king lay heaped, he let the ancient vibrations of the dim past inundate him, welcoming him with ghostly harmonies and the silent howls of the grave.

  The Great Necromancer seated himself on the jewelled throne. Dimly, he could feel the lingering essence of the last necro-king, its final agonies and entreaties bound into the place of its dissolution. Nagash banished the irritation with a thought, hurling the royal spirit into the formless shadows of the realm it had once ruled. The Mortarchs who followed him into the hall sensed his casual obliteration of the spirit. He felt the tremor of fear that pulsed through Neferata and the shiver of adoration that coursed through Arkhan’s ancient bones.

  So vastly different in character, these two scions of death, yet each had an important part in Nagash’s vision. Makvar and his Stormcasts had their own role to play, even if they were as yet unaware of it. Their performance in the plaza had revealed much to him, allowing him to better place them within his design. Their potential was enormous. As hard as it came to him to accept Sigmar’s withdraw from the Realm of Death, he had to concede that the God-King had accomplished much behind the gates of Azyr.

  Nagash looked up as he felt the presence of the Stormcasts enter the hall. The celestial energy that burned within them, the mark of Sigmar’s Reforging – he knew the alarm it evoked from Neferata’s vampires. The Mortarch of Blood’s reaction was more layered, less clearly defined. It was like her to view anything new in the context of both threat and advantage. If she felt the reward was grand enough, there was little she wouldn’t risk to further her pursuit of power. Sometimes she was overbold in her recklessness. Sometimes her lack of restraint left her exposed to hazards even she couldn’t see.

  Arkhan’s contemplation of the Anvils was more like that of his master. The Mortarch of Sacrament pondered the methodology behind their creation, the limitations invested within them. He would be thinking of their armaments both as menace and as asset. Not with an eye towards his own advantage, but with the cold detachment of expanding his knowledge so that he might be of even greater use to the Great Necromancer. If Neferata’s failing was her selfish ambition, then Arkhan’s was his lack of the same. He suffered from a deficiency of imagination, an inability to ferret out the possibilities, to follow hope and fear to their furthest limitations.

  Of course, when it came to dreams of avarice and schemes to power, there was one who made even Neferata’s intrigues appear childishly simple. Nagash intended to call upon that twisted mind quite soon. With the help of Makvar and his knights.

  ‘Lord Nagash,’ Makvar greeted him. The Great Necromancer noted that the black-armoured knight made no obeisance before him. It was more than pride – the Mortarchs had that in abundance yet they didn’t hesitate to prostrate themselves in his presence. No, it was that rarest of all things – an absence of fear. For why should a warrior feel fear if death would simply speed his soul back to the halls of Sigmar to be cast anew in the forges of the God-King?

  ‘I have summoned you, knight of Sigmar, to make my intentions known,’ Nagash told Makvar. He looked across the warriors who accompanied the Lord-Celestant. The flare of purity shining behind the shutters of the lantern fixed to the belt of one companion evoked a twinge of amusement. Such a weapon would discomfit Neferata or Arkhan, possibly even destroy some of the vampire queen’s entourage, but it was nothing to a being who had once walked beside Sigmar and withstood the aura of the God-King himself.

  Makvar stepped forwards and pointed towards Arkhan. ‘We have helped to restore your disciple to you,’ he said. ‘It is my hope that we have displayed to your satisfaction the quality to be found in Sigmar’s servants and the advantage of fighting beside us against the common foe.’

  ‘Your command sustained casualties in the fight,’ Nagash stated.

  Makvar’s voice had just the faintest edge to it when he answered. ‘Most of our losses were suffered putting down the monster Arkhan summoned with his magic.’

  Nagash nodded, shifting around so that his deathly countenance glowered down at th
e liche-king. ‘Explain yourself,’ he hissed at Arkhan.

  The Mortarch of Sacrament fell to one knee, bowing his head before his master’s ire. ‘The fault is mine, my liege. The invaders had forced their way past my guardians. In my rush to work my spells and conjure a servant mighty enough to defy them, I made an error in my incantation. My haste is to blame for rendering the terrorgheist beyond my control–’

  A wave of Nagash’s skeletal claw silenced Arkhan’s apologies. ‘Your carelessness has brought harm to those that would befriend us,’ he said. ‘Be grateful that they were able to put down that which you so recklessly summoned.’ He turned back towards Makvar. ‘It is my hope that your casualties were not too severe.’

  ‘We still have strength enough to accomplish our mission,’ the winged Stormcast Huld answered. It was the sort of ambiguous response a skilled diplomat would give, acknowledging the situation while assuring it made no impact upon the relative positions of all involved.

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ Nagash cautioned. ‘Confidence is but the prelude to achievement.’ He waved one hand towards the undead who stood beside his throne. ‘I must rebuild the might of my legions if I would help Sigmar wage his battles. To do so, it is needful that my Mortarchs assist me in my labours. Two of them now stand at my side, but there is a third whose help is essential to me.’

  ‘You ask that the Anvils of the Heldenhammer find this missing vassal for you?’ Huld looked aside to Makvar before continuing. ‘Are you making that a condition…’

  ‘There can be no alliance based upon disparity,’ Nagash declared. ‘I will not treat with Sigmar unless it is as his equal.’ The Great Necromancer extended one of his fleshless hands. From his bony claws, a ripple of dark magic poured away, striking the cold floor of the forgotten palace. In response, streamers of spectral essence billowed upwards, growing like phantasmal vines. As the deathly energies wound about each other, they merged, fusing into a single pillar of writhing green light. When the pillar stood higher than any of the assembled Stormcasts, its summit began to fold in upon itself, transforming into a nebulous sphere-like shape. With each gyrating shudder that passed through it, the form grew more defined and distinct until finally the Anvils found themselves staring up at a grisly visage. It was almost bestial in its degree of cruelty, menace dripping from the vicious set of the jaws and the sharp beak-like nose. The eyes were sunk deep within shadowed sockets, the bald pate distorted by nodules of bone.