Blighted Empire Page 6

  Many times, Lothar had despaired, wondered if he shouldn’t employ cudgel or dagger to effect his father’s speedy demise. Such impatient temptations were fought back only by the fiercest exertion of will. The spells were doing their work. Slowly but surely his father’s vitality had been ebbing, leeched away by phantom parasites neither priest nor physician could discover. When the old baron died, there were none who thought of murder. To even the most suspicious, there was never a notion that the baron was anything but another victim of the Black Plague.

  Lothar set a covetous hand against the stack of deeds that represented ownership of three-quarters of Mordheim’s riverfront. He smiled as he saw a promissory note from Count Steinhardt himself peeking out from beneath the pile. Great and small, many were those who must credit the Baron von Diehl for their prosperity.

  Rising from behind the table, Lothar paced across the cheerless confines of his study. Prosperity had become a bitter word to the people of Mordheim, a mocking echo of better times. With over half the city carried off by the plague, the fields beyond the walls invaded by starving refugees, the violence in Talabecland choking off what river trade still flowed into Ostermark, Mordheim was in the throes of her own slow death.

  It was the natural order of things, Lothar mused. People and places were fated to grow, thrive and prosper for a season, but then must come that time when they would wither, decay and die. Not the gods themselves could defy the laws of fate.

  A cold smile formed across Lothar’s face. The only way a man could ensure his accomplishments was to set himself outside the tyrannical dictates of fate. His grandfather had awakened to that revelation, but had lacked the fortitude to pursue his studies fully. His father, with pious horror, had rejected the researches of the elder von Diehl, burning his books and papers when the barony came into his possession. Hjalmar had been thorough in his fiery purge, but not perfect. A few tomes slipped his notice, and eventually those volumes of forbidden lore had found their way into Lothar’s hands. The seeds of the grandfather’s work found fertile soil in the grandson’s mind.

  Staring up at a portrait of his father, Lothar sighed as he recalled all the years he had been compelled to secrecy, labouring away in the disused cellars and crypts beneath the castle, embezzling money from the von Diehl estates to fund his experiments, to procure the obscure books necessary to his research. With the support and understanding of his father, Lothar should have progressed in his studies with cosmic momentum. Lacking such assistance, he’d been forced to trudge away, content himself with the most restrained and insignificant advances. In those long hours, shivering in the clammy gloom of the castle vaults, he realised that if he were to succeed, he must become baron. When rumours drifted into Mordheim of a mighty sorcerer who had arisen in Sylvania and brought the von Draks to heel, a terrible envy took hold of Lothar’s heart. No longer would he wait for the power that must one day belong to him!

  Turning away from the portrait, Lothar shook his head and tried to blot out the faint wail of professional mourners that wafted through the castle halls. What had been done was done. The bridge had been crossed, the decision made. It would, he vowed to himself, be worth it.

  All at once, Lothar’s attention was drawn to a tall shelf sunk into the wall at the far corner of the room. The bronze figure of a wolf stood upon one of the shelves, a hammer and bell clenched in its rampant paws. While he watched, the statue revolved from side to side, causing hammer to strike bell and send a tinkling note through the chamber. Lothar watched the gyrations of the figure as he stalked over to a bell-pull beside the hearth. One sharp tug would set an alarm that would see a dozen men-at-arms swarm into the room.

  Lothar bided his time, hand poised about the bell-pull, eyes fixed on the bronze wolf and the shelf it rested upon. While he watched, the shelf began to move, rotating away from the wall and exposing a dark passageway with stairs descending into the black depths beneath the Schloss von Diehl.

  Lothar relaxed and walked back to his table when he recognised the figure who emerged from the darkness. He was a stocky, fat-faced man with ruddy complexion and bulbous nose. His raiment was simple, lacking the costly dyes and embroidery of the noble classes, yet of immaculate condition and quality. The overall impression was that of a man of means if not social position.

  ‘Marko,’ Lothar greeted the man in a cold, somewhat irritated fashion. When he’d heard the bell sound, he’d half expected his father’s ghost to come tromping up those steps, such was the morbid turn of his mind.

  ‘Baron von Diehl now, I believe,’ Marko addressed Lothar. He glanced about for a moment and, without awaiting an invitation, sank into a heavy chair opposite the table. His host scowled at the man’s temerity but kept his tongue. In their long association, he had been forced to a grudging acceptance of Marko’s discourteous habits.

  ‘Your sense of propriety leaves much to be desired,’ Lothar upbraided the man. ‘My father lies cold in his chambers and you choose tonight to visit.’ He made a pretence of examining the documents on the table, directing a dismissive wave at Marko. ‘Get out. Leave me to my mourning. Come again in a fortnight.’

  Marko leaned forwards in his chair, an oily smile across his face. ‘Is that any way to speak to an old friend who has come to offer his sympathy?’

  A caustic laugh was Lothar’s answer. Marko’s smile collapsed into a sullen frown.

  ‘Perhaps the word “friend” offends you?’ Marko asked. ‘There is another word I might use, but “accomplice” is such an ugly word that noble ears should be spared its utterance.’

  Lothar set down the deed he had been feigning interest in and glared at his visitor. ‘You dare threaten me? Are you forgetting that I am now Baron von Diehl?’

  The smile was back on Marko’s face. ‘Indeed I am not,’ he said. ‘It is because you are the baron that I have brought you something.’ Reaching into his coat, digging into the deep poacher pockets sewn into its lining, he withdrew a thick bundle wrapped in sheepskin.

  Whatever annoyance Lothar felt was instantly supplanted by curiosity. Marko had been wrong to refer to himself as an accomplice. He was a facilitator, a provider of the magical treatises and implements needed for Lothar’s researches. The peasant had proven himself most capable in his illicit trade, braving the vengeance of both secular and religious law to secure the forbidden tomes Lothar required.

  Tonight, however, Lothar could sense that the trader had brought him something special. Cynically, he wondered how long it had been in Marko’s possession, if the peasant hadn’t been biding his time, waiting until the title and wealth of Baron von Diehl passed into Lothar’s hands.

  The new baron set dignity aside as he hurriedly unwrapped the package. Within he discovered a large book bound in some strange scaly hide. A golden skull was embossed upon the cover, and it was with a thrill of excitement that he recognised the hieroglyphics beneath it as belonging to the vanished civilisation of Mourkain.

  ‘You will appreciate it,’ Marko declared, ‘when I tell you that what you hold in your hands is the only known copy of De Arcanis Kadon.’

  Lothar’s knees went weak, dropping him ungracefully back into his chair. There was a tremor on his lips, a shiver in his hands. Shocked by the artefact in his fingers, the baron’s heart pounded to the beat of both horror and exuberance.

  ‘You know the story, of course,’ Marko said, savouring the emotions warring for control of his patron’s mind. ‘Kadon was a shaman of the primitive tribes along the Blind River. Sometime before the birth of Sigmar, he built a great city in the Badlands, a place he named Mourkain.’ The peasant chuckled grimly. ‘In the Strigany tongue, it means “the Dead City”. Employing the black arts, he raised an army of the dead to make war in his name. With Mourkain at its centre, Kadon built the kingdom of Strygos. Those who submitted to his power became his slaves. Those who defied him were slaughtered… and became his slaves just the same.’

/>   Marko paused, examining an old sword hanging on the wall, running one of his hands along the blade. ‘It is said that Kadon was the greatest sorcerer of his day, and that he used his magic to empower many strange and terrible relics. None, however, could equal the malignity of De Arcanis Kadon. Written upon skin flayed from the bodies of his children, scribed in the heart’s blood of his own wives, Kadon consigned onto these pages all of his arcane knowledge.’

  Marko stared up at the portrait of Hjalmar von Diehl, watching as the flickering glow from the hearth cast strange shadows across the dead baron’s face. ‘There were nine copies of De Arcanis Kadon, patterned after the ancient Books of Nagash. Each copy was couched in its own cipher and entrusted to one of Kadon’s disciples. The disciples scattered when Strygos was overrun by a mighty orc invasion. Kadon himself perished when the city of Mourkain fell to the greenskins, but through his disciples and De Arcanis Kadon, his knowledge endured.’

  Lothar ran his thumb along the book’s spine, feeling an icy sensation flow down his arm. ‘I understood that De Arcanis Kadon was lost when the Great Cathedral of Sigmar burned in Nuln,’ he said, his voice nothing more than an awed whisper.

  ‘One copy was reputed to be held by the Sigmarites in their vaults,’ Marko agreed, returning to the table and lowering himself into his chair. ‘Another was burned in Remas by the fanatics of Solkan. A warlock in the town of Mirkhof was reputed to be in possession of a copy when that community vanished from the face of the earth.’ Marko laughed. ‘The work of elves, some claim.

  ‘There was another copy somewhere in Bretonnia, but much like Mirkhof, the community harbouring it vanished in a night. Undoubtedly the work of the Great Enchanter. If so, then it will never leave the Grey Mountains.’

  ‘Where did this copy come from?’ Lothar asked.

  ‘It wasn’t easy to get,’ Marko assured him. ‘It is supposed to have been in the possession of a man titling himself “King of the Strigany” and was, perhaps, handed down from father to son since the destruction of Strygos. It is doubtful the man understood what he possessed, otherwise his caravan wouldn’t have been massacred when they tried to camp near an Ostland village. It seems there was talk that the Strigany were spreading the plague, so the men of the village rose up and massacred the entire caravan. Their fear of the plague didn’t keep them from looting the dead, however. Among the plunder, the villagers found De Arcanis Kadon. The miraculous thing is that they didn’t destroy it to steal its gold adornments.’ Marko laughed again, but it was an uneasy sort of laugh. ‘Maybe it was the book exerting its magic on their simple minds, protecting itself from their ignorance and fear.

  ‘Eventually the book found its way to Wolfenburg and into the hands of one of my… associates.’ Marko stood up, setting his hands on the table and leaning towards Lothar. His voice dropped into a warning hiss. ‘You will never be closer to such power, herr baron! The few who have truly understood that book have learned secrets that have been forbidden to men for a thousand years. They accomplished great things, feats of magic that have been immortalised in myth and legend.’

  Lothar looked up from the ancient tome. His voice quaked as he questioned Marko. ‘What of those who couldn’t understand, who couldn’t unlock Kadon’s secrets?’

  ‘They were driven mad,’ Marko admitted with a shrug. He smiled and stood away from the table. ‘That is why, when I ask you for two thousand gold crowns, you will oblige me by paying before you begin your researches.’

  Lothar’s expression became indignant. At the same time, he wrapped his arms protectively about De Arcanis Kadon. ‘Two thousand gold crowns! That is robbery. I will not pay it!’

  ‘You will pay it,’ Marko assured him. ‘I have never sold you false merchandise, never lied to you. Two thousand crowns is cheap for the knowledge that book can bestow on you.’ He looked down at the table, littered with deeds and promissory notes. He waved his hand over the heap of documents. ‘What is wealth except a means to power?’ he asked. ‘And what power is greater than knowledge?’

  Lothar raised his head, listening to the faint wail of the mourners. It was true, what the peasant said. In trying to secure temporal wealth, he had stumbled upon true power – the power of magic and the arcane. What did lands and titles matter beside the ability to invoke death with a touch, the power to raise the dead from their tombs?

  ‘You will have your money,’ Baron von Diehl promised. ‘But let us wait a little.

  ‘I have a father I must bury first.’

  Sylvania

  Vorhexen, 1112

  The smell of burning thatch and timber boiled across the air, the tang of man-thing blood laced with man-thing fear was borne upon the breeze, the stink of rat-fur and skaven musk rolled down the muddy lanes. They were exciting, invigorating smells that filled Seerlord Skrittar’s nose and teased his olfactory organs, but none of them were so enthralling as the burning scent of warpstone.

  The seerlord’s grey paw closed tighter about the black nugget it held, a little wisp of smoke rising from his clenched fist as the warpstone singed his fur. He was oblivious to the caustic emanations of his prize, too absorbed in the enormity of what it represented. That nugget was the first, the first of a treasure so vast it would reshape the whole of skavendom!

  A blood-chilling scream scratched across Skrittar’s hearing, causing him to turn and watch as a lone man-thing tried to fend off a pack of clanrats. The sword-rats of Clan Fester weren’t the mighty killers of Clan Rictus or Clan Mors, but they were more than equal to the hapless peasant they menaced. Warily, the skaven circled around the man, making little mock attacks that drove him steadily backwards. Each step he took allowed the ratmen to spread out, the skaven at either extremity fanning out to nip at the peasant’s flanks.

  There was nowhere the man-thing could retreat to. The wattle-and-daub wall behind him was smoking away, cinders dribbling from its burning face. The building beyond it was fully engulfed, its roof a fiery pyre that blazed into the night sky. There were a few man-things inside the building – their screams made that clear – but bullets from Fester’s slingers were keeping the Sylvanians penned up inside the burning structure. No hope for the doomed peasant there.

  Moved by some caprice, Skrittar stretched forth his horned staff, channelling magical energies into the warpstone talisman set between the curled horns. He chittered an invocation, drawing down the malignity of the Horned Rat. Despite the fires blazing away in the village, a chill crept into the air as he worked his sorcery. A green glow leapt from the talisman, flashing down the lane. One of the sword-rats squeaked in agony as the light slashed through him, boring a smouldering crater in his shoulder. Undiminished by its incidental victim, Skrittar’s spell struck onwards, slamming into the embattled peasant’s head and popping it like an engorged tick.

  Skrittar chittered maliciously as the surviving clanrats scattered, terrified by the grey seer’s display of magic, leaving their stricken comrade to writhe and bleed in the mud. The seerlord savoured their fear. It was good to remind the vermin of Clan Fester who was in charge, who held the real reins of power in their little alliance.

  The seerlord whipped his tail through the mud in annoyance. Left to his own devices, he would have preferred to avoid the inconvenience of an alliance altogether. But that ten-flea tyrant Vecteek had made decrees limiting the number of grey seers the Order could maintain and had further placed prohibitions on the Order possessing any warriors of its own. He had seen to it that the Order would never be self-sufficient, claiming that the grey seers must serve the needs of all skaven rather than their own selfish interests. Of course, the despot hadn’t made similar conditions to control the upstart heretics of Clan Pestilens! The plague monks were more powerful now than ever, with two seats on the Council and the entire Under-Empire squeaking their praises because of the Black Plague!

  They would soon squeak a different tune. With the rat-power of Clan Fester’s t
eeming masses to provide him with the brute force he needed, Skrittar would fill the halls of the Shattered Tower with warpstone. He would curb the dictatorship of Vecteek and Clan Rictus, usher in a new age of balance and cooperation among the clans where no one voice was supreme among the skaven. All would hearken to the Voice of the Horned One through His chosen instrument, Seerlord Skrittar. The clans would be led by the wisdom of their god, and any that wouldn’t hearken to Skrittar’s words would be exterminated.

  Casting his gaze across the burning village, Skrittar watched as Clan Fester’s slaves scurried about the fields and meadows, pawing at the dirt as they retrieved nuggets of raw warpstone from the ground. His spell had performed even more magnificently than he had dared dream. The land was littered with warpstone ripped from the moon, so much that he could see a green glow on the horizon when he squinted his eyes. It might take years to gather it all!

  Not that Skrittar intended to be so patient. He’d contact Warlord Manglrr Baneburrow and demand he send more labourers. He didn’t care exactly where Manglrr got them. There were plenty of weaker clans Fester could conquer and enslave to deliver the workers he needed.

  Manglrr would obey, too. There was no question of that. Sylvania was ripe for the picking, helpless at Skrittar’s feet. Half the province was dead because of the plague, and the other half had been poisoned by the warpstone.

  Who was there left with the strength to oppose the skaven?

  Chapter IV

  Middenheim

  Sigmarzeit, 1118

  There were many stories about the Kineater, but the most popular held that the thing had been born to the family of a prosperous raugraf. The rural lord was desperate for an heir, and after giving birth to daughters for twelve years, his weary wife had prayed to the Ruinous Powers for a son. In their malice, the Dark Gods had answered her, but the son she bore was far less than human. For many years, the raugraf had kept the mutant child locked inside a hidden room in his castle, but with the coming of the Black Plague, his lands had become too desolate to feed the horrible monster. One night, wracked by hunger, the mutant had escaped, butchering its own family to sate its appetite. Since that time, the Kineater had prowled the Drakwald, preying upon any human it could catch.