03 - God King (26 page)

Ustern grunted. “They can’t miss. Even I could loose an arrow that would slay
something.”

“Probably one of us,” added Leovulf, undoing the leather thong that held his
black hair.

“You cut me deep,” said Ustern, tapping smouldering ash from the end of his
pipe.

Redwane let them talk, it was their way of easing the tension before a
charge. Though the White Wolves feared no living foe, the horde arrayed before
them today was something much worse. Redwane had fought the living dead before,
but the same fear was still there, still poisoning his gut with a sour-bile
taste. The thoughts that had haunted him on the march towards Brass Keep
returned to him anew; the dread of dying alone, the fear that his best years
were already behind him and that he was on a grim descent into dotage and
infirmity.

Redwane took a deep breath, looking to the sky in a bid to cast off such
gloomy thoughts, but he found no refuge there. The sky above the Fauschlag Rock
was as black as his mood.

It had been that way ever since the dead had isolated Middenheim from the
Empire.

The noose had closed slowly, with villages blotted out one by one and the
steady stream of traders, mercenary companies and pilgrims diminishing until it
was impossible not to see that something terrible was developing in the haunted
forests surrounding the city.

Despite his dislike of the man, Bordan’s foresters had quickly discovered the
roads cut by lurking bands of the dead and packs of fiery-eyed wolves. The
villages and camps around the city were hastily evacuated, their people brought
within Middenheim’s walls. Even Torbrecan’s band of lunatics had come into the
city, which had surprised Redwane until he remembered that they had foreseen
their deaths before the walls of Reikdorf. Despite his insistence that no one be
left beyond the city, Redwane suspected that Myrsa was already regretting his
decision to allow the self-mutilating madmen into Middenheim. They marched
through the streets, preaching their prophecies of destruction and pain, while
whipping themselves into maniacal frenzies. No warriors could be spared from the
fighting to stop them, and the mood in the city soured as more and more of
Middenheim’s citizens joined in their cavalcade of blood.

“If they’re so eager for death, I say we help them on their way. Give them a
sword and stick them on the walls,” Redwane had muttered at one of Myrsa’s war
councils, and few disagreed with him. Yet for all their apparent lust to die,
the madmen refused to take arms to defend Middenheim. Clearly they weren’t
insane enough to want to die just
yet.

Within a day of the gates closing, the living dead host swallowed the lands
around Middenheim, throwing themselves at the fortresses clustered around the
city and the chain lifts. Those bastions still held, but the horde had soon
discovered another way up. Led by shadowy, dark-cloaked figures on black steeds,
skeletal warriors armed with spears, axes and swords climbed the great viaduct
towards the city. Frothing blood-hungry corpses scrambled up the rocky sides of
the Fauschlag Rock, and Orsa’s city defenders had their hands full hacking them
down as they reached the summit.

Trapped beyond the walls, Wulf’s mountain pathfinders had tried to cut
through the dead towards the viaduct, but they had been overrun before making it
halfway. Redwane had watched as the Mountain Lord was dragged down and eaten by
wiry, hairless things with tearing claws and distended jaws. Orsa led a party of
axemen to retrieve the bodies of their fallen comrades, but had been beaten back
without success.

Now Wulf marched with the dead, his ravaged flesh hanging from his bones in
rotten strips. His warriors fought beside him, as loyal in death as they had
been in life. It had been a blow losing Wulf, for he had been well-liked and the
tale of his ending had circulated to become a macabre scare story, growing in
horror with every retelling.

“They’ll be calling for us soon,” said Leovulf.

“Expect you’re right,” said Ustern.

Redwane looked towards the fighting raging at the head of the viaduct. Since
the war against the Norsii, a more permanent defensive barrier had been built
across the head of the viaduct, a curved wall flanked by two drum towers and
with a heavy gate of Drakwald oak and good northern iron at its centre. Atop the
walls, Count Myrsa led the defenders in battle, the runefang cleaving glowing
arcs through the ranks of the dead. None of them could resist it, the
dwarf-forged blade slicing through mouldering bones, rotted armour and decayed
flesh with its runic edge. To see so magnificent a weapon borne by such a hero
lifted the hearts of all who fought beside him. Myrsa’s banner bearer battled
alongside him, the blue and ivory standard soaked and limp. No wind stirred the
fabric and instead of lifting the spirits of those who saw its colours, it only
served to remind the warriors of Middenheim of how grim their situation truly
was.

The dead swarmed the defensive wall, scaling its rugged surfaces with bony
claws digging into the stonework in a way no living warrior could manage. They
fought with a speed and ferocity Redwane remembered all too well, dragging men
from the battlements and pushing through any gaps in the line.

Myrsa and Renweard commanded the defenders on the viaduct, while Bordan and
his men occupied the high ground behind the walls. Perched on rooftops, clock
towers and watch posts, the foresters thinned the dead host as best they could.
Orsa’s men patrolled the city, hunting down any dead warriors that found their
way through the caves that honeycombed the rock or successfully scaled its
sides.

Redwane had defended this city once before from an attacking army, but this
felt very different. Then he had been one of Sigmar’s warrior companions, but
now he was part of Middenheim’s defence, a city that was not his by birth. As
much as Sigmar might declare that all men of the Empire were as one, he couldn’t
shake the feeling that he ought to be in the south, fighting to protect
Unberogen lands. This city wasn’t his, no matter what oaths he had sworn to
Myrsa and the White Wolves.

“Redwane,” hissed Leovulf, leaning in close.

“What?” he muttered absently.

“You’re our leader, so damn well lead,” said Leovulf.

Redwane snapped out of his gloomy reverie, and nodded, ashamed he had allowed
his mind to wander when he needed to focus now more than ever.

“Aye, sorry,” he said, looking towards the walls for Myrsa’s signal.

“Whatever is on your mind, deal with it later,” said Leovulf. “They’ll be
looking for us soon. And we need you with us.”

“You’re right,” he said, holding himself tall in the saddle. He unhooked his
warhammer and slipped the leather thong at its base around his wrist. The White
Wolves saw him and repeated the gesture, and every man’s shoulders squared.
Leovulf had spotted what he should have seen. The defenders on the wall were at
the limit of their endurance, the dead finding more breaches and pulling men to
their doom in ever greater numbers. Myrsa raised the runefang high and his
banner bearer swept the flag from side to side. Now the wind caught it, and the
billowing standard flew with glorious brightness against the sepulchral sky.

“That’s it,” said Leovulf, turning to Holstef.

Holstef raised the war horn to his lips and blew a three note blast.

Redwane raked back his spurs and shouted, “White Wolves, ride in the name of
Ulric!”

His horse leapt forward, and two hundred heavy horsemen followed him,
galloping across the cobbled esplanade towards the city gate in a column ten
riders wide, twenty deep. Ustern raised their banner high, and each man loosed a
feral wolf howl to banish the fear they all felt as they charged towards the
gate. A team of stout men hauled the gates open, but before the dead could take
advantage of this new opening Redwane’s White Wolves thundered through and
struck the enemy host like a hammerblow.

Marius let out a groan of pleasure as Marika rolled off him and lay back on
the bed with a contented sigh. Her eyes were closed, and she purred like a
satisfied cat, blonde hair tousled with errant strands across her face. He
stared at her for a moment, relishing this rare moment of escape from the world
of plans, defences and warriors. Marburg was a city readying for invasion, and
it felt good to take a moment for himself amid the frenetic battle preparations.

“You’re staring again,” she said.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“I’m a princess,” she said, as though that answered his question. “If we can
sense a pea in our beds, we can surely sense when a self-satisfied man is
staring at us.”

“Self-satisfied?” he said with mock hurt. “You have a viper’s tongue,
Marika.”

“You weren’t complaining about my tongue last night,” she said, finally
opening her eyes and pushing herself up onto her elbows. Marius smiled and
traced his fingertips down her slender neck, over her small breasts and down her
flat stomach.

“Indeed I wasn’t,” he agreed. “Though I can’t help but feel your brother
wouldn’t approve of the use you put it to or your choice of lover.”

She laughed and rose from the bed, fetching a silver ewer filled with water.
Marius stared at her naked body, the sway of her hips and the beads of sweat
running down her spine sending a tingling warmth through his entire body. She
half-turned and nodded.

“Aldred never does,” she said. “He’d have me live out my life as a virgin
spinster.”

She laughed. “Ranald’s balls, if he knew half the men I’d bedded, he’d have
me locked in the Raven Tower, never to see the light of day again.”

“And that would be a crime against the pleasures of the flesh.”

She padded back to bed with the ewer and a pair of goblets, pouring one for
each of them. Marius took the proffered drink and drained it in one gulping
swallow. The march along the coast through the swamps had given him a terrible
thirst that never seemed to be quenched.

He dropped the goblet to the floor and leaned up to kiss Marika.

“Why me?” he asked suddenly.

“Why you, what?”

“You know fine well what I mean,” he said. “Why take me as your lover, a man
your brother would cheerfully gut? Is it because I am an energetic and
thoughtful bed-mate with the body of an athletic god or is it simply because I
am a count of the Empire?”

“A little of both,” she admitted. “You are an enjoyable bed partner, but I
need more than that. I need a man who can achieve things. A man who can match my
dreams with an ability to shape this world to the way it ought to be.”

In any other woman, such candour would have surprised him, but Princess
Marika had proven to be a far more interesting woman than any he had met before.
She had an open honesty to her ambition that he liked, a mind free of the
subterfuges and coquettish games played by most women of his acquaintance. Amid
such grim times, the company of a beautiful woman free from the normal petty
games of her sex was refreshing.

And these times were indeed grim.

In the week since the Jutones had arrived at the gates of Marburg, Marius and
Aldred had clashed many times in deciding how to defend the city. He had come to
believe the Endal count
wanted
his city to fall, such was his obstinate
rejection of any stratagem or defensive measure Marius suggested.

These interludes with Marika had provided a welcome diversion from talk of
war and the dead. Marius liked to think of it as affirming the joys of life.
After all, weren’t sex and death but two sides of the same coin? Wasn’t the
moment of climax known by some poetic souls as the Little Morr?

Marika rolled onto her side, interrupting his train of thought. Her face was
inches from his, and he felt the directness of her gaze.

“I know what you did with Jutonsryk,” she said. “You turned a small fishing
village into the most prosperous city in the Empire. Ships came from all across
the world to your city.”

“That they did,” said Marius, knowing her flattery was intended to stroke his
ego, but enjoying it nonetheless. “If there’s one thing I understand it’s how to
take what the gods have given me and use that to turn a coin.”

“I want you to do the same with Marburg,” she said. “Aldred is a good man in
his own, limited way, but all he wants is to maintain what our father built.
Marburg is ideally placed to become as great as Jutonsryk ever was, if not
greater, but only if rulers of vision are prepared to make it so. Aldred has no
vision to make Marburg great, but you do.”

“You might be right, but Aldred is count of the Endals, not me.”

“That can change,” said Marika.

“How?”

“If you and I were to be married,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him.

Now it was Marius’ turn to laugh. He rolled onto his back, pillowing his
head on his hands. “That’s your plan? Your brother would never allow it.
Manann’s thunder, he’d have my manhood on a spike if he thought I’d even kissed
you let alone bedded you.”

“Aldred won’t be count forever,” she said. “After all, if what you’ve been
saying in the war councils is true, then this city is likely to be attacked soon
by these undead corsairs. Aldred’s a decent enough warrior, but anything can
happen in a battle, can’t it?”

Marius turned to look at Marika, his eyes narrowing as he saw the extent of
her ambition.

It matched his own and he felt the stirrings of opportunity.

“What are you suggesting?” he asked.

“Suggesting?” she said, pulling the sheet down and rolling on top of him. She
sat up, allowing his eyes to feast on the seductive curves of her body. “I’m not
suggesting anything, I’m just saying that if something were to happen to Aldred,
then there would be nothing to stop you marrying me and becoming lord of all the
lands from here to Manann’s Teeth.”

Marius slid his hands up her sides and cupped her breasts with a smile.