03 - God King (34 page)

A skeleton came at him with a notched sword, and he stabbed it through the
jaw, wrenching its head from its shoulders. The animation went out of the long
dead warrior and it collapsed over the stone parapet. Another clambered over its
remains and a rusted axe swung down at him. Marius brought his sword up, but the
force of the blow turned it aside and the dead warrior’s axe slammed into his
shoulder.

He grunted in pain and sent a reverse stroke into the creature’s neck. The
blade parted the bone easily and the warrior dropped to the ground. Marius
stepped away from the wall and shouted, “Take my place!”

Another warrior filled the gap Marius had left and he stabbed his sword into
the earth at his feet, rotating his shoulder and prodding the flesh to feel how
badly he’d been hurt. The skin was bruised and swollen, but he couldn’t feel any
blood pouring inside his armour, and he took a moment to survey the fighting.

The entire length of the walls pulsed with desperate combats, Endal and
Jutone warriors struggling to keep the dead from getting in. A mobile reserve of
Raven Helms stood behind the fighting at the ramparts, ready to bolster the
defences whenever the dead punched a hole, but Marius saw they were stretched
thinly. All it would take would be one too many breaches and there would be no
one to stop the dead from overrunning them.

Marika’s archers had taken up positions further back, loosing volleys of
arrows over the heads of the warriors at the ramparts. The bat swarms flew
overhead, circling the ruins of the Raven Hall or roosting in its tumbled
structure. The mist that wreathed the lower town and docks seeped up into the
citadel, a choking fog that settled in the lungs and gave every man a hacking
cough.

Just thinking about it made Marius cough, though thankfully he’d managed to
avoid the worst of it by virtue of having well heated quarters that were free
from damp. There was more than one benefit from a close, physical relationship
with Princess Marika, he thought with a smile.

A group of lancers formed up around him, and Marius nodded in weary
appreciation of their efforts. He didn’t waste words on them, for these men were
just doing their job, and if a man needed thanks or encouragement just to do his
job, then he wasn’t worth employing.

Marius heard a shout of terror and the dreadful form of the dragon reared up
over the walls, its patchwork wings spread wide as it hovered over the twin
towers of the barbican protecting the citadel’s gate. Arrows slashed out towards
it, but only Marika’s white-fletched ones seemed to cause it harm. Two of the
war machines hurled iron barbs towards the vast creature, but both splintered
against its necrotic hide.

A heaving breath of toxic vapours gusted from the dragon’s mouth and
enveloped the barbican. Men staggered from the ramparts, choking and vomiting as
the hellish miasma did its evil work. The road to the lower town sloped down to
the gates, and from his position behind the walls, Marius saw them wither as the
timbers shoring up the already weakened structure rotted away to brittle
deadwood. The mass of dead warriors on the other side buckled the decayed
woodwork and the gates split apart in a flurry of rotten timbers.

A mob of groaning warriors poured through the gateway, but any thought that
the dead fought without stratagems was banished the moment Marius saw what
manner of undead forced their way inside. The chaff of the dead assaulted the
walls, shambling corpses with no more will than to devour the flesh of the
living. These new attackers were the champions of this host, warriors with black
hearts whose dreadful malice transcended their own deaths to sustain them with
pure hate.

Armoured in ancient hauberks of corroded bronze and bearing long-bladed
halberds and great axes, they surged into the citadel and split left and right
to sweep the walls clear of defenders. Marius looked around for the Raven Helms,
but Laredus had already led them to plug a breach further along the western
walls.

“Damn you, Aldred, you’re practically giving me your city,” said Marius,
dragging his sword from the earth. He led his lancers towards the dead champions
pouring through the gate as a flurry of arrows sliced into them. A dozen fell,
but most simply picked themselves up again, unfazed by the two-foot shafts
jutting from their bodies.

The lancers slammed into the dead, cutting the head from the eastern push
onto the ramparts. The warriors on the walls saw their danger and captains of
battle sent men to stem the tide of flanking enemy. Marius ducked a ponderously
swung axe, plunging his sword through a gap in a dead warrior’s armour. His
sword passed into his foe’s body without resistance, its enchanted edge glowing
as though heated in a forge. The champion convulsed and the magic sustaining it
was broken. Marius spun away from the creature, wincing as the old wound in his
side pulled painfully.

He pushed into the mass of dead warriors, fighting with his usual finesse and
elan as he beheaded enemy champions with an ease that was as much to do with his
blade as his own skill. His lancers fought in a wedge with him at its point,
forcing the dead back and stemming the rush of their breach through the gateway.

A heavy halberd blade slammed into his stomach, but its edge was dulled and
all it did was drive the wind from him. He doubled up, but before the halberd
could be reversed, Marius thrust his sword into the groin of its wielder. The
dead champion clattered to the ground as it was destroyed, and Marius surged to
his feet, invigorated at yet another brush with death.

“It’ll take more than that to kill me!” he yelled, plunging headlong into the
mass of dead warriors. The fear was gone, and he felt utterly disconnected from
even the idea of it. He heard the booming wing beats of the dragon beyond the
walls, but even that held no fear for him. For one wild moment, Marius thought
of charging through the gateway to face the dragon like the heroes of legend who
were said to fight such monsters on a daily basis. Common sense reasserted
itself as he saw Aldred and a detachment of Raven Helms fighting the dead
forcing their way down the western stretch of the walls.

The Endals fared rather less well than the Jutones, and Aldred’s warriors
were falling to the black blades of the dead like cabin boys before a bosun’s
whip.

“Ten of you with me, the rest of you secure this gate!” he shouted. “Nothing
gets in or out!”

Without waiting to see if his order was obeyed, Marius ran towards the
Endals. Pipe music drifted across the ramparts and Marius wanted to laugh with
derision. Who in their right mind played music when there was a battle to be
fought? His sword shimmered with light as he sliced it across the small of a
dead warrior’s back, almost cutting him in two. His lancers swung their swords
and maces to break a path through towards the Endals.

Marius blocked a slashing blow to the head and hacked the legs from another
dead man, spinning around to parry two quick thrusts and destroy another pair of
dead champions. These warriors might be the best of the dead, but Marius was a
count of the Empire and bore a blade that hated the undead with a vengeance. Its
power flowed through his veins like an elixir, and though Marius was a fine
swordsman, even he wasn’t arrogant enough to believe he was
this
good.

Another blade of power flickered near him and he saw Aldred fighting against
a towering monster of bone and iron. Like a vast statue of basalt, iron and
discarded butcher meat, the monster slashed ponderously with an axe formed from
some enormous creature’s jagged-toothed jawbone.

Aldred darted in to slash his sword at the creature, and it turned its great
axe upon him. The Endal count jumped back, giving Marius the chance to attack
the creature, plunging his blade into its back. His blade flashed with angry
light, as though encountering some force inimical to the enchantments worked
into its metal.

Marius flinched as the blade stung him like a treacherous serpent, feeling
his sudden euphoria and confidence evaporate in the face of this new beast. It
turned to face him, its monstrous, bovine skull jammed with the fangs of a dozen
different deadly creatures. It snapped at him, a jagged tooth catching the links
of his mail shirt and tugging him off balance. The jawbone axe swung for him,
but the blue fire of Aldred’s blade caught the dreadful weapon in its downswing
and deflected it into the earth.

As the beast straggled to free its blade, Endal warriors and Jutone lancers
surrounded it, stabbing with spears and halberds. Marius righted himself and
ducked beneath its slashing axe, slicing his own weapon towards the creature’s
belly. The sword scraped along the monstrously elongated thighbone, trailing
sparks of orange fire until it bounced clear on the vast pelvis. Aldred attacked
from the beast’s other side, hammering Ulfshard against the beast’s flank.

As mighty as the beast was, it could not resist the pressure of so many
blades and portions of its form began to come apart under the relentless
assault. Shards of bone and armour peeled loose from its body as Aldred and
Marius clove their blades through its unnatural bulk. Fighting side by side, the
counts of the Empire hacked the slow-moving creature down piece by piece.

Aldred was the one to deliver the deathblow, though Marius had seen the
opening. Even in the midst of this desperate fight, he knew to leave the glory
to the man whose city this was. As the creature tumbled back in a collapsing
pile of rotted armour and mismatched bone, Marius heard a sudden clamour from
the gateway as the defenders finally resealed the shattered portal. Wagons,
debris, broken crates and rocks were rolled down the slope to block the
entrance. It wasn’t pretty and likely wouldn’t hold out against another attack,
but it would do for now.

Marius rotated his neck to work loose the stiff muscles and walked towards
Aldred.

“Quite some fight,” he said with a laconic smile. “Damn thing almost had me
there.”

Aldred nodded, too weary to answer, and Marius swept his sword out in an
elaborate bow before the Endal count. He heard shouts of alarm, but before he
could pinpoint the reason for them, he was barrelled to the ground as someone in
heavy armour slammed into him.

Marius rolled, but a mailed fist cracked against his jaw and he saw stars.
Shouts of alarm became shouts of anger, but Marius was too dazed to understand
what was going on. He felt himself being dragged away from where he’d fallen and
struggled to get his feet underneath him. He heard Jutone and Endal voices
shouting at one another, but couldn’t make sense out of what they were saying.

Eventually his vision cleared enough to see that he was being dragged away by
one of the Raven Helms, Aldred’s chief lieutenant if he remembered correctly,
though the man’s name was a mystery. He rolled and swung his sword up. The man
jumped back and Marius scrambled to his feet as Aldred ran over towards the
confrontation.

“Laredus, what in Manann’s name are you doing?” shouted Aldred.

“Getting this conniving, murderous bastard away from you!” shouted the Raven
Helm.

“Are you mad?” demanded Marius. “I was fighting alongside your precious
count, you damned fool! I’ll have you flogged for this, a hundred lashes from my
strongest lancer!”

“Enough, both of you!” cried Aldred. “Put up your weapons, there will be no
flogging here. Laredus, I mean it, put up your sword.”

The Raven Helm stared at Marius with unbridled hatred, and Marius knew he saw
through his deceptive facade of bonhomie and brotherhood. This man knew he
intended to win the hearts and minds of the Endal warriors before engineering
Aldred’s death. Laredus was a dangerous man, and Marius knew he would have to
find a way to be rid of him before continuing with his and Marika’s plan to make
Marburg their own.

Before any more could be said, a freezing shadow enveloped the ramparts as
the mighty dragon and its sorcerous rider dropped from the sky to land upon the
barbican towers with a thunderous boom of wings. Its hideous bulk shook the very
foundations of the citadel as it reared over them with its jaws spread wide.

Despite his terror of this monster, Marius smiled as he realised the perfect
means to be rid of Laredus had just presented itself to him in all its
monstrous, draconic glory.

Assuming it didn’t kill him too…

* * *

“Can you hit it from here?” asked Govannon, squinting towards the blurred
outline of the empty barrel resting against the walls of Reikdorf. He’d placed
the canvas bag on the barrelhead, but couldn’t see it from here. Nor could he
tell how far away it was, but Cuthwin assured him they were at least a hundred
paces away. Bysen held onto his shoulder, eager to see if this composition would
produce a more stable reaction.

Though Govannon’s sight was virtually gone, he still felt Cuthwin’s withering
gaze.

“You could put it another fifty paces back and I’d still hit it,” the scout
assured him.

“Sorry,” said Govannon.

“Is this one going to work, da?” said Bysen. “Is it going to be big bang?”

“Hopefully, son, but not too big.”

Govannon had spent weeks working on the dwarf war machine, melting down
almost every spare piece of armour and weaponry to forge a strong enough tube to
replace the broken barrel. In every case the required centre of mass was off,
the metal perforated with air bubbles or the weight not a precise match. These
had proven to be costly mistakes, for each imperfection caused Master Holtwine’s
wooden carriage to fall out of balance. Dwarf engineering was unforgiving of
errors.

But now they had it, a perfect twin of the other barrels; one that was
completely in balance with the others and which was free from air bubbles and
matched the precise density of the dwarf work. Though he never said so out loud,
Govannon wished he could travel to the mountain holds of the dwarfs to hear
their cries of astonishment at his accomplishment.