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  Proceeding through the camp, Beck hurried towards a different sort of affliction, one that he could and would protect Mandred from. He’d been there after Hartwich’s dramatic presentation of Ghal Maraz to the graf, been privy to the far more private audience he’d held with the emissaries from Altdorf. He listened as the emissaries offered an alliance between Kreyssig and Mandred. The Protector would support any claim Mandred made upon the Imperial throne in exchange for certain concessions. Baroness Carin had encouraged the alliance, pointing out that with the certain support of the electors whose provinces Mandred had helped liberate and the endorsement of the Protector, there was no force in the Empire that would prevent him being installed as the next Emperor.

  The argument might have swayed Mandred but for the venomous counsel of Princess Erna. Why the half-crazed adulteress should hold any influence over the graf was a mystery Beck couldn’t explain. All he did know was that without her, Mandred would be more open to an alliance with Kreyssig. The wedge that had come between himself and Baroness Carin would be removed.

  Beck’s hand tightened about the grip of his sword as he approached Erna’s tent. He paused outside for a moment, listening to the sound of voices inside. She had her lover in there, that outlaw knight Erich. So much the better. He’d need someone to blame for her murder, and the knight would make a perfect patsy.

  Carefully, Beck slipped into the tent. He could see the princess seated on a divan, her feet propped in the air. Erich was waiting on her, bringing her wine and cold mutton from a table set against the side of the enclosure. His back was to the entrance; her eyes were on him. Quickly, Beck drew his sword and rushed at the knight. He could afford for Erna to make some noise – everyone knew she was mad and they wouldn’t think too much of a few screams – but he couldn’t have Erich giving an alarm. Not until the deed was done, anyway.

  Erna’s startled gasp as she saw Beck rushing towards Erich gave her lover just enough time to turn. Instead of crashing against the back of his skull, the iron pommel of Beck’s sword slammed into the side of his face. The result was the same, dropping the man to the ground, though instead of being insensible, the blow only stunned him.

  Beck kicked Erich as he started to rise and then rushed towards Erna with his sword. He found his charge turn into a sprawl when Erich’s hands clutched at his foot and tripped him.

  ‘Damn you, Reiklander!’ Beck cursed. ‘I need you alive!’ He punctuated the statement with a brutal kick to his foe’s head.

  ‘Why, murderer?’ a voice snarled from behind Beck. The knight looked up to see Hulda standing between him and the princess. ‘Did you decide there weren’t any skaven you could blame this atrocity on?’

  Beck rose to his feet, a vicious smile on his face. He reached into his pocket. ‘I don’t know how you got here, witch,’ he said, ‘but I came prepared for you just the same.’ He held the sprig of wolfsbane towards her and laughed as she drew back. ‘Ar-Ulric was right, wasn’t he?’ the knight laughed.

  ‘Now you will kill us all?’ Hulda accused, keeping Erna behind her, preventing the princess from rushing to her injured lover.

  Beck nodded. ‘Him because now he’s heard too much. Her because she stands between Graf Mandred and the greatness that should be his.’

  Hulda eyes gleamed hatefully at Beck. ‘You have killed for that reason before,’ she said. ‘Your scent was on Lady Mirella’s body, and there was no smell of skaven around her. I had no proof I could bring to Mandred, but from that moment I have watched you.’

  ‘For all the good it has done you,’ Beck said. ‘If you meant to avenge Mirella, you’ve failed, monster.’ He nodded his head, reaching a decision. ‘You are as much a threat to Graf Mandred as any of them. If the people found out what you are, Hartwich could bestow a hundred relics on the graf and they’d never make him Emperor!’

  Hulda looked away from Beck, staring past the knight at something over his shoulder. ‘You heard?’ she asked.

  ‘I heard,’ Mandred’s voice was little more than a hiss. Beck spun around at the sound of his master’s voice. ‘You killed Mirella?’ he snarled at his bodyguard, then disgust curled his lip as he remembered another woman who had been close to him. ‘Did you kill Sofia too?’

  ‘You were beside yourself with grief,’ Beck explained. ‘She had the plague. You’d have caught it yourself if I…’

  ‘Enough!’ Mandred roared. ‘I have heard enough, murderer!’

  Beck cringed at the fury in his master’s voice. ‘Please, highness, all that I have done I did for you!’ The knight recoiled when he saw no pity in Mandred’s enraged gaze. When the flap of the tent was pulled back and half a dozen Teutogen Guard swarmed into the tent, Beck turned and threw himself at the far wall of the enclosure. His sword slashed out, cutting a great gash in the wall. Before any of the guards could seize him, Beck was through the gap and running off into the rubble of Averheim.

  Mandred glared at the rent in the wall. ‘I want him found,’ he snarled, tears in his eyes.

  ‘I want him to answer for his crimes.’

  Stirland, 1122

  Bonelord Nekrot, Corpsemaster of Clan Mordkin, gnashed his fangs together with such fury that it rattled the teeth in the jaws of his skeletal helmet. Worthless, treacherous grave-rats, incapable of restraining their pestiferous hunger for a few hours more! He should have the entire pack skinned alive and their bones made into toys for newborn pups! They’d allowed the scent of rotten meat and decayed bone to overwhelm their brains, rushing up from their concealed burrows to glut their hunger on the dead-things. In so doing, they’d run straight into a lurking force of humans.

  Nekrot glared at the embattled ratmen. He was sorely tempted to leave the treasonous vermin to their fate. Only the realisation that to do so would mean cancelling his plans to visit gruesome revenge on Vanhal dissuaded him from such a course. The ambush was spoiled; the only option now was to attack in force, quickly, savagely and with all the merciless terror of starving rats.

  A snap of his claws and the gang of slaves cowering at the warlord’s feet lifted to him the dragon horn. Plundered from the carnage outside Vanhaldenschlosse, the armourers of Clan Mordkin had pounded slivers of Seerlord Skrittar’s sacred bell into its sides. A hollowed nugget of warpstone served as a mouthpiece and when Nekrot wrapped his lips about it he could feel the raw magic sizzle against his flesh. It was no light thing to call upon the divine power of the Horned Rat.

  When Nekrot blew into the mammoth horn, a dolorous note shuddered through the hollow. Each passing breath intensified the sound, causing trees to crack and the earth to tremble. Skaven were thrown from their feet as the cacophony washed over them, but their enemies fared even worse. Horses toppled, smashing their riders against the ground. The baggage train beyond the Sylvanians was scattered like so much rubbish, thrown to the four corners of the forest by the violent susurrus.

  Nekrot ripped the horn from his lips, shreds of burned skin clinging to the poisonous mouthpiece. The warlord clenched his paw against his smouldering lips, trying to ease the pain. Absently, he kicked one of the slaves, feeling a little better when he heard something snap. With the paw not massaging his muzzle, he waved the warriors of Mordkin forwards. If they struck fast, they could slaughter the humans before they recovered from the Whispering Horn. As he watched the horde scurry past, Nekrot wondered how many of the over-eager vanguard lying strewn across the ground would be trampled underfoot.

  The Bonelord hoped the casualties were high.

  His belly felt empty.

  Raw horror gripped Count Malbork von Drak as he struggled to free himself from the thrashing weight of his toppled horse. All around him the screams of panicked men and animals impacted against the discordant ringing in his ears. Instinctively, he tried to look past the prone bodies of his guards, trying to see what Vanhal was doing, what the necromancer had done to wreak such magical havoc. Only when the chittering
horde of skaven was descending upon the reeling Nachtsheer did the voivode appreciate that the dreadful magic had been unleashed by the ratmen themselves.

  Isolated bands of soldiers fought to hold the verminous mob back. Theirs was a hopeless struggle, but Malbork hoped they might delay the skaven long enough to afford him some chance to escape. To die in battle was something he was prepared to accept, but to be butchered beneath the paws of such filth! That was a peasant’s death!

  The stricken horse continued to thrash above him, grinding his right leg against the ground, refusing Malbork’s every effort to bring the beast back to its feet. In despair, he drew his dagger and slashed it across the animal’s throat. The horse screamed and crumpled against its master. Malbork cried out in agony as the dead weight pressed against him, but without the horse’s struggles he at least had some hope that he might pull himself free.

  A glance over his shoulder robbed him of that hope. A snarling ratman, its muzzle flecked in blood, the spiked mace in its paws caked in clumps of gore, came skittering past the beleaguered soldiers. The creature chittered malignantly at Malbork, then dove in for the kill.

  The voivode shifted away from the descending bludgeon and stabbed upwards with his dagger, catching the beast in the groin. The skaven uttered a yelp of shock and collapsed in a writhing heap, black blood spurting from its punctured body. Malbork forced himself to look away from the hideous brute, to concentrate on wrenching his leg from beneath his fallen steed.

  As he began to despair, the weight against him seemed to dissipate. Malbork blinked in wonder as his horse began to twitch, as the animal kicked its legs and started to rise. His wonder turned to horror when he saw the dead glassy eyes and the rictus-like grin. Now he could see the snake-like ribbons of unholy power seeping into the animal’s body, endowing it with a profane semblance of animation.

  Before the zombie steed could lift itself fully from the ground, Malbork dragged his leg from the stirrup. Panting in terror, he watched as the animal stumbled onto its hooves and pawed at the earth. More snakes of sorcerous power were slithering along the ground, sinking into whatever dead flesh they encountered. Frozen with horror, Malbork watched as the skaven he had killed staggered into grotesque life and retrieved its mace from the ground.

  A firm grip seized the voivode from behind. Malbork whipped around with his dagger, but Iorgu caught his hand before he could deliver the blow. ‘Excellency, you must call the retreat!’ the dregator yelled, his words barely penetrating the ringing in the voivode’s ears. ‘Vanhal has turned his legion away from von Oberreuth. If we do not run now, we shall be caught between the skaven and the undead!’

  Malbork’s lip curled in an ugly snarl. ‘Let the Nachtsheer die! That is what they are paid to do! Their deaths will allow us the opportunity to escape.’

  Iorgu’s grip tightened about Malbork’s hand. Cold fury blazed in the former peasant’s eyes. ‘You can’t abandon your men!’ he roared.

  With a twist of his wrist, Malbork broke Iorgu’s hold and sent the dagger plunging into the dregator’s breast. ‘Stay with them then,’ he hissed at the dying man. Even as the words left his tongue, the voivode saw the tendril of darkness seeping into the murdered man’s flesh. Crying out in terror, Malbork reeled away from the revivified dregator.

  Dragging his injured leg, Malbork fled across the field towards the trees, praying he might reach their shelter before the deathly legions of Vanhal came crashing down upon the Sylvanian camp. Behind him, even through the clamour of the skaven horn, he could hear the stumbling steps of Dregator Iorgu as the zombie pursued its killer into the forest.

  The skeletal horde marched away from the Stirlanders and their allies, ignoring the mortal foes as though they weren’t even there. The surrounded cavalry broke free, riding back into the shelter of the trees. A ragged cheer went up from the allied camp as Graf Mandred returned to them. For the Stirlanders there was only a limping steed with an empty saddle to mark the fate of their grand count.

  Vengeful archery punished the undead as they turned northwards and away from Fellwald. Dwarf gunners emerged from the trees, firing their weapons at the dragons overhead, peppering the beasts with bullets until they flew beyond the range of their weapons. Behind them, like the track of some vast and decayed snail, the undead left a litter of broken bones and mutilated bodies.

  Upon his spectral carriage, upon his throne of wailing ghosts, from behind his mask of bone, Vanhal watched as his legion marched towards the real battle. The deceptions of Malbork von Drak and Lothar von Diehl, the challenge of Graf Mandred and Grand Count von Oberreuth, these had been useful to the necromancer. They had provided the bait that would draw his greatest enemy from hiding. Once before, he had dismissed the verminous ratmen as being of no consequence. That had been a mistake, one that had cost him dearly. One thousand years of shapeless oblivion.

  Vanhal shook his head, trying to clear the weird image from his mind. An illusion of memory, a nightmare struggling to make itself real. Yet where had it come from? Some ancestral spark, some mad delusion conjured by the brain of Lothar von Diehl?

  The necromancer dismissed the distraction. The provenance of the illusion was of no consequence. What did matter was the annihilation of the skaven. Once they were extirpated there would be no more assassins slinking into the halls of Vanhaldenschlosse, no more thieves stealing into his fortress to plunder the warpstone from its walls. There would be only peace and silence, the quietude of the grave.

  The ratmen were engaged with the remnants of the Nachtsheer and the newly risen dead Vanhal’s magic had animated. Even so, their numbers were vast, mighty enough to form a battle-line to oppose the tide of undead he was bringing to bear upon them. The necromancer made a pass of his hand through the air, bidding the abhorrent dragons in the sky above to swoop down and shatter the skaven formation.

  As the dragons descended, the destructive cacophony of the horn sounded once more. The blast of magic caught both dragons, sending their wormy bulks crashing to earth, bowling them across the ground like a landslide of reptilian flesh and saurian bone. Hundreds of skeletons were pulverised as the dragons rolled over them. What had been a vast legion of the undead was shattered.

  Vanhal stretched forth his hand as one of the dragons came tumbling towards him. The vast bulk exploded into a shower of decay, passing to either side of the necromancer like ocean waves crashing about the base of a rock.

  The necromancer glared across the carnage. He paid no notice to the squeaking, jeering swarm of skaven who now skittered across the battlefield and dragged down those pockets of undead yet standing. His eyes were focused on the morbid warlord who had conjured such magic. There, he knew, lay the real threat.

  Mustering his energies, Vanhal sent his phantom palanquin shrieking across the terrain, boiling over shattered undead and marauding skaven alike. Whatever the wailing spirits touched was scorched and withered, left rotting upon the barren ground. The jubilant squeaks of the ratmen turned to howls of horror and they broke before the advance of the ghostly throne.

  Bonelord Nekrot was just putting his scorched lips to the horn to evoke its magic for a third time when Vanhal’s enslaved spirits brought the necromancer raging through the skaven lines. Before the skaven warlord could react, a blast of arcane power caused the Whispering Horn to crumble in his paws. The vengeful ratman squealed in terror as spectral hands lifted him from the ground and dragged him to the ethereal mound of enslaved ghosts. He was dumped at the very feet of the man he had struggled so hard and for so many years to kill.

  Vanhal smiled behind his mask. Now all the old betrayals would be avenged. Stretching out his hand, he began to draw the life from Nekrot’s body, leaching his vitality like a sponge. He held the warlord in his power, killing him inch by inch, letting the once mighty skaven hear the shrieks of terror rise from his minions, letting him watch as they scampered back to their holes.

  Before h
e had drawn the last dregs of life from Nekrot’s body, Vanhal broke the spell. The Bonelord was doomed, he had only moments to live, but they were moments the necromancer intended to savour.

  Nekrot knew he was dying, and that knowledge fired his ratty heart like no other power could. With all the viciousness of a cornered rat he lunged at the necromancer.

  In the moment before Nekrot’s fangs closed about the necromancer’s throat, Vanhal withdrew his consciousness from the body of his apprentice Lothar, the shape he had worn like an old cloak while his own body rested within the walls of his fortress.

  He wanted Lothar to experience with his own mind the last murderous seconds of Nekrot’s vitality. It was really the least Vanhal could do to repay his apprentice’s clumsy effort at betrayal.

  The last sound Vanhal’s spirit heard before it went hurtling back to Vanhaldenschlosse was Lothar’s anguished shriek as he understood what his master had done to him and felt Nekrot’s fangs sink into his flesh.

  Chapter XVIII

  Averland, 1123

  The great hall of Averburg’s keep bore the scars of the skaven siege. Once a grand arcade of marble pillars and tiled floors, now only the soiled echoes of its past opulence remained. Graf Mandred recognised the putrid corrosion left behind by the impact of a warpcaster’s glowing pellet. Whatever infernal magic the skaven poured into those spheres when they slammed into a target they had the power to melt stone and vaporise iron. The less thought given to their effect upon flesh the better.

  Still, despite the savageries of the skaven, Mandred could feel the lingering majesty of the place, the sense of legacy that seemed to exude from the very walls. He understood why the von Orns had wanted the graf to meet with his council here. It was their way of demonstrating to Mandred and his allies that Averland had been a great and prosperous land. It would be again, now that the skaven were in retreat.