03 - God King (28 page)

Endal warriors occupied positions all along the docks and shoreline, their
spears and shields wavering like tiny specks of starlight in the darkness.
Aldred had been a hard man to convince of his own danger, but with Marika’s
help, Marius had been able to persuade him to evacuate many of the oldest and
youngest along the river towards Reikdorf. Marburg was a city of warriors now,
but as night after night passed without an attack, fear gnawed at the courage of
every man.

Truth be told, it was almost a relief when the dead finally came.

Huntsmen watched the coastal approaches to Marburg, and Marius had persuaded
Aldred to send out sentry ships to watch for the undead corsairs. One of those
ships now bobbed in the dark swells of the harbour, its sails torn and holed,
listing to the side where planks had been torn from its ribs by bony fingers.
Its crew still stood on its decks; the helmsman at the tiller and its captain
behind the wheel, but it was clear to all who saw them that these men were dead.

The ship had drifted into Marburg an hour before the watch fires were lit,
and as darkness closed in, the city’s defenders rushed to their posts. Yellowed
fog rolled in from the sea, and Marius heard the flat, toneless sound of ships’
bells, the same bells that had rung the death knell of his city. He smiled
weakly as he realised he was afraid. That was a new sensation. Even when
Bastiaan had stabbed him in Middenheim he had been more angry than afraid.

The monotonous sound conjured images of skeletal ferrymen and a black river
crossing from which no living soul could return. Bobbing corpse lights followed
the echoes of the bells, and Marius saw a host of ships drift into the harbour,
over two hundred of them, each with torn sails, splintered oars and swollen,
barnacle-encrusted hulls. They came on without need for wind or sail, dread
ships of the forsaken and the damned.

“Now,” hissed Marius, willing the defenders ranked up along the line of docks
to hear his whispered imprecation. “Come on, Aldred, don’t be a fool all your
life.”

The ships came on until a single fiery arrow arced up into the night sky.

Flames rippled around the curve of the docks as oil-soaked braziers were
sparked to life and the city’s entire complement of war machines were unmasked
from behind wicker mantlets. Marius heard the creak of windlasses as heavy
ballistae cranked, followed by a
whoosh
of the barbed tips of great
javelins being set alight. Ten of these machines had been dismantled from their
positions on the city’s eastern walls and carried down to the docks, where they
had been rebuilt in makeshift earthworks of good Reikland mud.

The heavy iron bolts leapt towards the enemy ships and six were struck, the
flaming missiles punching through their rotten timbers and setting them ablaze.
Holed beyond the ability of their masters’ dark magic to sustain, they slid
beneath the water and distant cheering drifted up to the Jutones’ position.

“Don’t get carried away,” said Marius. “The dead don’t fear a bit of water.”

More missiles leapt from the war machines, smashing masts and breaking open
hulls with every bolt as the war machines’ crews found their range. The ships of
the dead scattered, moving with greater urgency towards the shoreline. A flurry
of arrows rained down from the high town, thudding home on the decks of the
hulks or piercing the dead meat of their crew.

Marius saw Marika among the archers, loosing white-fletched shafts from a bow
he was sure was of fey origin. He had sent a similar bow to Sigmar before Black
Fire, which he’d heard the Emperor had broken over his knee. Such a shame, the
bow had been worth more gold than Sigmar would have seen in his life.

Nothing more had been said of his and Marika’s conversation the other night,
but Marius was savvy enough to know that it still hung in the air between them.
He could do nothing to act on her unsaid plan just yet, but perhaps his doing
nothing was just what she wanted.

“My lord,” said Vergoossen, appearing from the darkness and shivering in a
thick woollen cloak. “Should we not be on the move? Much as I am loath to
approach anything resembling a battle, was our plan not to move to occupy the
southern tip of the docks upon the appearance of the dead?”

“Indeed, it was,” said Marius, watching the battle unfold as the ships of the
dead reached the docks. The first of the drowned sailors leapt from their ships
and no sooner had they done so than Marika loosed a flaming arrow that lit the
oil spread around the quayside in wide troughs hacked into the stone. A wall of
searing flame leapt up and ran around the docks like a fiery snake, setting
hundreds of corpses alight and spreading swiftly to their ships.

“Is that not our plan now?” asked Vergoossen. “I do not recall any tactical
amendments from Count Aldred.”

“No, you wouldn’t have, Vergoossen,” said Marius. “This one came from
Princess Marika. She and her brother clearly share an… interesting
relationship.”

“I see, my lord.”

“No you don’t,” said Marius. “But it doesn’t matter. Watch and learn,
Vergoossen. Watch and learn. This is how things change in this world, not with
diplomacy and words, but with swords and gold and ambition.”

The wind carried the stink of rotten, burning meat, and Marius covered his
mouth with a pomander scented with exotic fruits and rose petals. The fire on
the docks was dying now, and yet more of the dead were pouring from their ships
or climbing from the muddy waters of the shores. The Raven Helms charged,
smashing into the dead with heavy broadswords, cutting them down with brutal
strokes. They pushed the dead back, driving them into the water as Endal
tribesmen fought to keep the flanks of the elite warriors safe.

“Ah, now things get interesting,” said Marius, as hundreds of the living dead
waded ashore below them. Water spilled from opened bellies and vacant ribcages.
Green fire guttered in rotted eye sockets. The dead lurched in the direction of
the Raven Helms, ignoring the Jutones on the higher ground.

“Won’t the Raven Helms be flanked if we do not move?” asked Vergoossen.

“Of course,” said Marius, drawing his sword. “And the bloodshed will be
terrible, but at the last moment, the heroic Marius will save the day. Saga
poets will sing songs of my bravery for years to come.”

“I hope you are right, my lord,” replied Vergoossen.

“Of course I am,” said Marius.

Marika loosed another arrow into the flaming horde below, straggling to
contain her horror at these decaying revenants as they shambled ashore from
their doomed boats. Dozens were ablaze in the harbour, banishing the crepuscular
gloom with the fury of their demise. To see so many of the dead clawing at the
living brought back all the memories she’d buried of her time in the marshes.
The lingering doubts she’d had regarding her unspoken pact with Marius were
forgotten as the suffocating terror of that night returned to her.

“Another quiver!” she shouted, and Eloise passed her a fresh batch of arrows.
Her maidservant had refused to leave with the rest of those who fled for
Reikdorf, but Marika saw she was now regretting that decision.

She nocked another arrow and sighted on a skeletal warrior with a rusty
cutlass and a hole in its breast where a heart once beat. She let out a breath
and loosed before drawing another. Her arrow flew straight and true, slashing
into the dead warrior’s chest and dropping him to the ground in a pile of
disconnected bones. It was a fine shot, but ultimately a waste of a shaft.
Marius had told them to look for the host’s sorcerers, evil beings who gave life
to the army of the dead.

Without these fell magickers, the dead could not sustain their existence and
would return to the grave. She didn’t know how Marius had learned of such
things, but supposed that with enough gold, you could learn anything in the
world.

Marika scanned the docks, finally spying a hunched figure lurking by the
gunwale of a wrecked ship listing against the quayside. She pulled another arrow
and took her time with her aim, allowing for the gentle sway of her target’s
ship and the slight wind. The figure turned towards her, and she saw its face
was that of a man, though one ravaged by some hideous wasting sickness or
starvation.

Her arrow punched through his right eye, the barbed tip bursting from the
back of his skull and pinning him to the gunwale. The dead things clambering
from his ship lurched drunkenly as their dissolution overcame them. Armoured
warriors of bone and rotted meat collapsed where they stood and the bloated
corpses of drowning victims sagged and fell back into the sea. Perhaps fifty of
the dead cracked and crumbled to ash with the death of the black sorcerer, and
Marika’s heart surged with sudden hope.

To face the dead was to know fear like never before, but to fight them… that
was the sweetest elixir. She whooped with newfound fearlessness. She shouted to
the rest of the archers, reminding them of what to look for, feeling her heart
race with surging life.

“My lady?” whimpered Eloise. “What’s that?”

The light of the moon was obscured as the carrion birds took off from the
eaves and garrets of the Raven Hall. Marika had seen birds behaving like that
before. The birds were flocking not to feed, but to flee. She looked to where
Eloise was pointing, seeing hundreds of screeching bats swarming in from the
sea. Their leathery wings sounded like a fleet of ships at sail, but behind them
came something far larger, far worse and far more terrible than she could have
dreamed in her worst nightmares.

* * *

Aldred watched the sky darken as hundreds of bats swarmed the night with
their hideous furred bodies. Ever creatures of ill-omen, bats were vermin with a
thirst for blood, and claws that carried all manner of foulness. Arrows flashed
toward them from the citadel walls, and though he hated to admit it, Marius was
right to deploy the archers further back.

The fighting around the docks raged in the leaping shadows of dying fires, a
frantic fight for survival against a foe that cared nothing for pain. His
warriors had beaten back one attack and he had driven Ulfshard into the chest of
one of the robed sorcerers Marius had told them to look for. That death had
unmade two ships’ worth of the dead and Aldred felt unbridled joy as their
spirits were released from bondage.

Endal tribesmen fought to prevent the dead from getting a foothold on the
docks, but their enemy’s numbers were telling in every backwards step they were
forced to take. The wail and skirl of pipe music echoed over the water and
filled the hearts of every warrior with courage. While the ancient tunes of
glory played, no man could fail to fight without feeling the judgemental eyes of
his ancestors upon him.

A dreadful shriek echoed over the water, and Aldred flinched as something
monstrous flew overhead. He heard screams, and saw a winged shadow swoop down on
the city, a terrible monster of darkness with a black armoured figure astride
its bony, elongated neck.

His terror nearly overwhelmed him as a stray shaft of moonlight reflected
from its exposed bone and dead scale hide. Ragged wings of death-stiffened hide
flapped with ponderous slowness and its rotted jaws opened wide exposing broken,
jutting fangs of yellow.

“It’s a dragon… a dead one…” he said, unable to believe his eyes, feeling his
fragile courage melting away at the sight of so terrifying a monster in the
flesh. Its body shimmered as though not truly corporeal, and Aldred’s soul wept
to see a creature from the elder days of the world violated in such a hideous
manner.

Necrotic flesh withered on its millennia old bones, and flaps of skin trailed
from ancient lance wounds in its flank. Its elongated head was horned and
hooked, barbs of bone and tooth making its jaw a serrated blade as long as a
warship’s keel. Sat astride its bony neck was a hooded figure robed in black,
its body wreathed in baleful energies of undeath. Pale wisps of bleak twilight
billowed around the rider and wherever its gaze turned, men fell dead in terror,
the flesh withering to ash on their bones.

The mighty dragon swooped down over the citadel walls, and a billowing cloud
of noxious breath streamed from its jaws to engulf the ramparts. The stench was
overpowering even from so far away, and Marius coughed at the grave reek. He
could hear men dying, choking and coughing as their internal organs liquefied
and the flesh melted from their bones.

Wails of terror spread along the docks as warriors threw down their weapons
and fled in terror from the corpse dragon. Alone among the Endals, the Raven
Helms held firm, but one look at their faces told Aldred they were close to
breaking. He held Ulfshard aloft, and the pale blue glow of the fey enchantments
woven into its arcane metal poured iron into their veins.

The living quailed before the sight of the dragon, but the dead cared nothing
for its dreadful magnificence, and threw themselves upon the Raven Helms once
more. Notched blades clove armour, claws and teeth ripped flesh. Aldred blocked
a slashing cleaver and beheaded its wielder as he saw that he and the Raven
Helms fought on alone. Endals were dying all around him, borne to the ground by
the dead or skewered on rusted spears.

The defence of the docks had become a rout, hundreds of warriors fleeing
towards the lower walls of the citadel. The gates were open and men fought to
reach the safety of the walls. Laredus fought through a press of the dead
warriors towards Aldred, the top portion of his sword snapped off and his black
armour torn by bloodied claws.

“We need to go, my lord!” he shouted. “We can hold them at the walls.”

Aldred nodded, too weary to even reply. His sword arm felt like his veins had
been filled with lead and the exhaustion of the fighting settled upon him like a
cloak of iron. He knew he was no longer as fit as he needed to be. This one
fight had almost drained him.