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  Though the shamed dwarf longed for death in battle, he submitted to capture when he saw Erich helpless before their enemies. More important than Kurgaz’s vow to redeem his honour with a glorious death was the duty that had been entrusted to him by Graf Mandred. He was Erich’s protector and as such couldn’t allow harm to come to the knight.

  ‘Manling! Do you hear me!’ Kurgaz growled.

  Erich had to spit blood from his mouth before he attempted to answer. ‘My apologies, friend,’ he said. ‘I overestimated Kreyssig’s sense of honour.’ His statement ended in a grunt of pain as one of the soldiers carrying him brought a fist cracking against the knight’s head.

  ‘Silence, traitor!’ the guard snarled. ‘It is by Protector Kreyssig’s mercy that you are still alive.’

  A grim grin crossed Erich’s features. ‘Then he must have a good reason for needing us alive,’ he sneered at his captors. ‘I already know Kreyssig doesn’t know the meaning of mercy.’

  The guard struck at Erich again, this time smacking his fist into the knight’s face. The assault brought fresh thrashings and curses from Kurgaz. The soldier brutalising Erich turned and glared at the slayer. A cruel glint came into his eyes.

  ‘Protector Kreyssig said to keep the traitor,’ the guard mused. ‘He didn’t say anything about needing the dwarf.’

  The Palace Guard stopped their march through the halls. A wicked laugh spread through their ranks. There were seven of them. The two holding Erich maintained their grip on the knight, turning him around so he could watch the murder of his companion. The guard with the sword at Kurgaz’s throat drew his arm back while the four men holding the chains tightened their grip.

  The soldiers stopped at the sound of armoured troops marching down the hall. They turned and looked in confusion as half a dozen dwarfs slowly walked towards them down the gloomy corridor.

  ‘What do you gold grubbers want?’ one of the guards demanded. He looked over at the two captives and added in a sardonic laugh. ‘These two already paid their taxes.’ The jest brought laughs from the other soldiers. Kreyssig had maintained Emperor Boris’s policy of using the plague-resistant dwarfs to collect taxes in Altdorf. It was the only thing the men in the Palace Guard felt the creatures were good for.

  The dwarfs continued their slow, silent march towards the soldiers. They didn’t share in their laughter. Indeed, the expression on their bearded faces was anything but jovial.

  ‘Khazukan Kazakit-Ha!’ As the fierce cry echoed through the hall a heavy hammer came sailing through the air, smashing into the arm of the swordsman. The guard shouted in pain, his weapon clattering to the floor.

  The dwarfs suddenly charged down the corridor, dragging weapons from their belts. ‘Gold grubbers!’ one of the guards cursed, ripping his sword from its sheath and lunging forwards to receive the first of the attackers. His slashing sword glanced off an armoured pauldron while the dwarf’s return with a vicious axe stroke left the man lying disembowelled on the floor.

  The reluctance of the Palace Guard to abandon their prisoners and meet the dwarf attack in force made the fight woefully one-sided. First two, then three of the soldiers were felled by the axes and hammers of the dwarfs. The last man trying to hold the chained Kurgaz was dropped by his own captive when the slayer suddenly lunged at him and brought his thick skull crashing into the soldier’s forehead. The stunned guard wilted to the floor, dragging the chained Kurgaz down with him.

  The last guard holding Erich drew his dagger and pressed it to the knight’s throat. Defiantly, he glared at the dwarfs. ‘Back!’ he snarled. ‘Back or I’ll kill him!’

  There was a chilling indifference in the expressions of the dwarfs. Their leader, a broken-nosed fighter with a long black beard simply shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Kill away,’ he said. He jabbed a thumb at Kurgaz lying on the floor. ‘I owe a debt to Smallhammer here, not the manling.’

  From the floor, the slayer cried out to the dwarf leader. ‘Dharin, I have given my word to protect the human!’

  Dharin nodded and fixed his stony gaze on the guard. ‘That makes it different,’ he declared. ‘Cut the manling, and my clan will swear vengeance on your bloodline. We’ll not rest until your children’s children’s children have cause to curse your name.’ He shrugged again. ‘Or you can drop the knife and run away.’

  The guard licked his lips nervously. His eyes flashed from one dwarf to another, finding the same brooding malignance on each face. He watched helplessly as two of the dwarfs began to free Kurgaz from his chains. Imagining what the slayer would do to him if he made good his threat was what decided him at last. Shoving Erich towards the dwarfs, the soldier turned and fled up the corridor.

  ‘Looks like we’re out of a job,’ Dharin said, reaching to his left arm and ripping off the armband that marked him as an Imperial revenue collector. The other gold grubbers chuckled at the remark and removed their own armbands.

  One of the dwarfs had recovered the keys to Kurgaz’s chains from a dead guard. The moment he was free of the bindings, the slayer stomped over to Erich and used the keys to remove the knight’s own manacles.

  ‘It was lucky for us that your friends happened along,’ Erich said, bowing to Dharin in gratitude.

  Kurgaz quickly corrected the knight. ‘Dharin Rockhome is no friend. He’s the most bitter enemy my family owns.’

  ‘And the Smallhammers are recorded in our Book of Grudges for their insults,’ Dharin declared. ‘Your blood will not be enough to wash away that debt, but at least it will be a start.’

  Erich blinked in disbelief. ‘You… you saved us just so you could kill Kurgaz?’

  Kurgaz shook his head. ‘It’s not that simple, manling. I’ve taken the Slayer Oath. If Dharin kills me, he must take up my vow. He’s too fond of gold to do that. All the Rockhomes are.’

  ‘I can still give my ancestors the satisfaction of watching you die,’ Dharin snarled back. ‘Just knowing there’s one less Smallhammer in the world will ease their burden.’ He shook his head. ‘We must be quit of this place. The guard who ran away will be sounding the alarm.’

  ‘They’ll already have closed the gates then,’ Erich observed. ‘And I doubt if Kreyssig has left the old route to the sewers open after my last escape from this place.’

  ‘Those tunnels were built by dwarfs,’ Dharin said. ‘Do you think any shoddy human construction can keep us out of them?’

  Chapter XVII

  Averland, 1123

  At Arch-Lector Hartwich’s urging, Graf Mandred agreed to receive the representatives from Altdorf in the tiny Sigmarite chapel within the old fortress of Averburg. Only days after his fight with the skaven warlord, Mandred’s body felt like one big bruise. The rush of battle, the rage of war had carried him through the fray after the beast’s magic hammer decapitated his noble steed. With the battle won, those revitalising energies had deserted him, making him keenly aware of the hurts he had suffered.

  Mandred stared at the Sigmarite iconography on the walls. For an Ulrican like himself, he still found it strange to be surrounded by the trappings of a god he had always considered something of a foreigner. It was only through his travels across the Empire that he had begun to appreciate the importance of what Sigmar represented, the greater meaning the god held for mankind as a whole. The old gods, deities like Ulric and Taal and Rhya, were in many ways localised gods. Middenland was the home of Ulric; he was their patron. Nordland and Westerland claimed Mannan; Stirland favoured Rhya; Talabecland and Drakwald venerated Taal; here in Averland it was Verena. Each land, each people, claimed a different god as their own. Sigmar alone was a god for the whole of the Empire, a god meant to bring unity rather than divisions. He was the god a broken land needed now more than ever.

  Mandred smiled as he considered what Ar-Ulric would have said about such an idea. Most likely, he would have regarded it as some manner of heresy, a slight against the White Wolf’s p
ower and authority. After all, he would have reminded Mandred that in life Sigmar himself had venerated Ulric.

  Even so, Mandred had to admire Hartwich’s cunning. From the first, the priest had manoeuvred him into a closer relationship with Sigmar, proclaiming him as ‘the Wolf of Sigmar’ when he emerged from the miracle of the Eternal Flame. Peoples and lands who might have felt threatened by a manifestation of Ulric, lands with long histories of strife with the Teutogens, had more readily accepted a miracle that could be attributed to Sigmar instead. Hartwich the priest wasn’t half so clever as Hartwich the politician.

  Now the delegates from Altdorf and the Imperial court had arrived. Mandred had heard much from Princess Erna about her husband, Adolf Kreyssig, the man Emperor Boris had proclaimed Protector of the Empire in his absence. Since the arrival of Erich von Kranzbeuhler in the camp, Erna had recovered much of her mind and her memory. What she’d revealed to him about Kreyssig, what parts of her story both Hartwich and Erich could substantiate, made him cool in his reception of the delegates.

  Even without Erna’s story, Mandred couldn’t forget that Kreyssig’s emissaries had waited until after the Battle of Averheim was decided before riding out from their camp to meet with him. Hulda said that from the look of their encampment, they had been there for more than a week. They could have met with Mandred well before the battle had they been so inclined. Most likely, they had been told to wait, to see which way the battle went, to see how weak Mandred’s position was before they came to him.

  Mandred smiled as the Reiklanders came marching into the chapel. He’d taken care to fill the place with representatives from all the lands he had liberated, with the men and women he could count as his friends and allies. He ensured that they would see the Count of Averland, his head bandaged from the injuries he had received in the last hours of the battle to free his capital. He made certain that the exiled Reikmarshal von Boeckenfoerde had a prominent place on the dais where Mandred waited to receive his visitors. It had been von Boeckenfoerde’s mercenary army riding out from Mordheim to join forces with Mandred that had so alarmed him days before and caused him to dispatch Grand Master Vitholf and the Knights of the White Wolf to intercept them in the belief they were a skaven column or a fresh legion of undead from the necromancer Vanhal. The sudden appearance of von Boeckenfoerde’s forces outside Averheim had helped to break the ratmen and send them into full retreat. Von Boeckenfoerde hadn’t sat back to see how the battle would end, he had ridden into the fray to help turn the tide.

  The Altdorf delegation bowed as they approached the dais. One of the noblemen displayed the signet ring on his hand, a ring that bore the Emperor’s seal. Only two men were permitted to entrust that seal to an emissary, the Emperor and his appointed Protector. ‘We bring greetings from Protector Kreyssig of the Imperial Throne to Graf Mandred of Middenheim,’ the Altdorfer said.

  Arch-Lector Hartwich stepped out from the front pew and walked across the chapel until he stood between Mandred and the delegates. ‘By what authority do you wear that ring?’ he demanded.

  The nobleman bristled at the scorn in Hartwich’s tone. ‘By the authority of Protector Kreyssig!’ he snapped.

  ‘And by what authority is he Protector?’ the priest demanded.

  ‘By decree of the late Emperor Boris!’ the Altdorfer snarled back.

  ‘Then your authority comes from pretenders and dead tyrants,’ Hartwich declared. He pointed at Mandred. ‘There stands a ruler whose authority has been bestowed by the gods.’

  The Altdorfer smiled. ‘Even in the Imperial Palace we have heard stories of fables… I mean miracles.’

  ‘The incredulous will not believe a miracle unless they have seen it with their own eyes,’ Hartwich said. ‘That is why Lord Sigmar has granted Graf Mandred a sign of His favour no man can contest!’

  Even Mandred was stunned by the vehemence in Hartwich’s voice, surprised by the belligerence of his tone. Certainly he understood the priest’s loathing of Kreyssig and the murderous Grand Theogonist the Protector had installed as the highest cleric of Sigmar in the land, but this went beyond what he could accept. Diplomacy demanded that care was taken in how Kreyssig’s men were received. In his proper wits, Hartwich would have been the first to acknowledge that fact.

  Mandred was about to admonish Hartwich before the assembled nobles and dignitaries when he suddenly stopped. The priest had turned away from the Altdorfers and was walking towards Erich who had risen from his seat. The knight held a bulky object wrapped in a purple cloth. Reverently, Hartwich took the object from him and marched back towards the dais.

  ‘Tell me, what is the living relic by which an Emperor’s rule is sanctified? What is the link that binds him to Sigmar?’ Hartwich could see the confusion on the faces of most of the emissaries, but the man wearing the signet ring had grown pale. He at least knew the answer to the priest’s question. Hartwich turned away from Kreyssig’s men. Lifting his voice, he instead addressed the nobles gathered in the chapel.

  ‘Ghal Maraz!’ he declared, whipping away the purple cloth, exposing the ancient warhammer forged over a thousand years before for Sigmar himself. Richly etched and engraved, the head of the hammer supported by carved griffons, the pommel at the end of its spiralling grip fashioned into a conclave of skulls, the relic blazed with an inner light, a golden glow that suffused the air around it with a divine aura. ‘Skull-splitter!’ Hartwich’s voice rose into a roar. ‘The Hammer of Sigmar!’

  An awed silence held the assembly, a silence that wasn’t broken until Hartwich turned and dropped to his knees before Graf Mandred. ‘Ghal Maraz, come to us by the will of Sigmar into the hands of the man who will lead His Empire out of darkness and back into the light!’

  Almost timidly, Mandred approached the kneeling priest. Hesitantly, he reached down to take up Sigmar’s Hammer, wondering to the last if he dared such a thing, if he was truly worthy of such honour.

  Then, as his hand closed about the spiral grip, as Mandred felt the magic within the hammer flow into him, he knew he would never doubt again. It was the same sensation he had felt in the Eternal Flame, the holy power of the gods.

  Raising Ghal Maraz in one hand, Mandred basked in the jubilant cries of those who had followed him, those whose lands he had liberated and whose people he had saved.

  Only the men from Altdorf were silent, their faces pale with fear. Even if they didn’t feel it, they recognised the power of the symbol Mandred held.

  The power to unite the whole Empire.

  Kurgaz knelt amid the ashes outside Averheim’s west gate, the place where the city’s rulers had cremated the carcasses of the skaven dead. He could think of no better place to do what he had to do.

  Grimly, the dwarf drew the knife from his boot. Tears of shame streamed down his face as he stared at the earth. A ritual such as this was supposed to be observed within a proper shrine, preferably the Great Shrine in Karak Kadrin. It was a magnification of his guilt that such a pilgrimage was impossible for him. Any day might see Mandred’s army resume its campaign against the ratkin. When the humans marched, Kurgaz would march with them. He had little enough honour left to him; he wouldn’t allow that to slip away as well.

  The dwarf closed his eyes, seeing again the ghoulish white skaven, the defiled Drakdrazh in its paws. The creature that had killed his brother, that had stolen the sacred relic of his clan, a weapon that had been handed down from father to son since the War of Vengeance ages ago. He had vowed to find that monster, to kill it or die in the attempt. He had succeeded in neither. He was alive, and so too was his bestial nemesis.

  There was only one answer for such shame.

  Kurgaz brought the knife against the side of his head, pressing it against his scalp until he could feel a trickle of blood running down his neck. His voice lowered to a respectful whisper, he prayed to Grimnir, begging the ancestor god to accept the offering of his hair, his honour and his life
. From memory, Kurgaz recited the Slayer Oath as he used his knife to scrape the hair from the sides of his head.

  Life had no value to him now. The only redemption Kurgaz could still claim was to die a noble death, to set before Grimnir the carcass of some mighty foe. Only then could he hope to enter the halls of his ancestors. Only then could he blot away the shame he had allowed to stain the name of his clan.

  Cautiously, Beck picked his way among the tents and pavilions erected by Mandred’s triumphant army. Amid the vast host it was impossible to go anywhere unobserved, but he wanted to avoid anyone who might recognise him if possible. There might be awkward questions later if somebody remembered seeing him where he was going.

  The knight turned his face and inspected a stack of spears when a pair of White Wolves went marching past. The warriors seemed caught up in their lively debate over the combat abilities of Aldinger and his Knights of the Black Rose, but there was always a chance that they might be more aware of their surroundings than they seemed. Beck preferred not to tempt fate even with the most remote opportunity to work mischief. Too much depended on his success.

  Beck scratched at his scarred face, trying not to think too closely about what it was that his eye patch now concealed. He knew there were those who would call it the Dark Stigmata and condemn him as a disciple of Old Night should they learn of the strange changes that had come over his wound.

  The knight had his own ideas about the cause of his affliction. He’d seen the way Ar-Ulric regarded the ‘oracle’ Hulda. There were many in the camp who held her to be more witch than priestess and several who laid still more sinister accusations against her. For his own part, however, Beck wasn’t certain. It was undeniable that Hulda’s strange powers had been beneficial to Graf Mandred. The possibility that those same powers were protecting the graf from the same sort of affliction as the one his bodyguard was suffering had so far restrained Beck from taking any action. It was enough to keep a sprig of wolfsbane in his pocket next to his stone talisman.