03 - God King (38 page)

“High Priestess,” said Sigmar. “I hadn’t thought to see you at a gathering of
warriors.”

Alessa turned to Sigmar and he was struck by the hostility he saw in her
face.

“Nor would you under normal circumstances, but these are not normal times.”

“Then join us,” he said, gesturing towards an empty space on a long trestle
bench.

“I’ll stand,” she said. “I do not relish being here, so I will say what I
have come to say and then I will go.”

Sigmar nodded. “You said that the dead won’t simply trap us within the city
and allow us to starve to death. Why do you think that?”

“It is the crown,” said Alessa. “Nagash is desperate to retrieve it, and he
will not wait for you to die from lack of food and water. He will want to break
the walls of this place down as soon as he can and kill everyone inside. Eoforth
knew as much, they were his last words to me before he died.”

“He spoke to you?” demanded Sigmar. “Why did you not tell of this before
now?”

Alessa’s hostile confidence diminished and Sigmar saw the agony of indecision
within her. Whatever she had to say to him, it had taken a great deal of soul
searching for her to come forward.

“He spoke about the crown I foolishly allowed to be buried beneath my
temple.”

“What about it?” said Sigmar, seeing a number of confused expressions around
the longhouse. The secret of what he had buried beneath the temple of Shallya
was not widely known, and Sigmar would prefer it to stay that way. One look into
Alessa’s eyes told Sigmar that wasn’t going to happen.

“Nagash is obsessed with it. It’s the only thing he desires.”

“We already know that,” said Alfgeir. “The blood drinker told us that.”

“But he would not have communicated how the great necromancer is consumed
utterly by his desire, how his entire existence is bound to it in ways no mortal
can understand. It is part of him, and without it he is less than nothing. To be
close to the crown will drive all thoughts of restraint and reason from Nagash.
It is his greatest strength and his most terrible weakness.”

“Eoforth told you all that?” said Wolfgart. “He always did use ten words when
one would do. Not bad for a dying man.”

“Of course he didn’t,” said Alessa. “He simply said, ‘The crown, tell Sigmar
it’s his Ravenna.”

“And you got all this talk of obsession and desire from that?” said Alfgeir.

“That and an understanding of what it means to be near the wretched thing,”
whispered Alessa. “You understand what I mean, don’t you, Emperor?”

Sigmar nodded, only now seeing how pale Alessa was, how thin and
undernourished. Her hollow cheeks and haunted eyes were a true testament to the
insidious nature of Nagash’s crown, a pervasive evil that sapped the vitality of
the living by degrees.

“I do,” said Sigmar. “And if we survive this coming battle, I swear I will
hide this crown far from the lands of men, somewhere its evil will no longer
wreak harm.”

Wolfgart turned to him. “Do you know what Eoforth meant? Does it help us?”

“He does,” said Alessa, bowing her head and clasping her hands as tears
flowed down her cheeks. “Shallya forgive me, but I should never have told you.”

“What is she talking about, Sigmar?” said Alfgeir, rising to his feet.

Fear touched Sigmar as he understood the source of Alessa’s reluctance to
speak of what Eoforth had told her. They had shut the crown away from the world
for good reason. Mortals were not meant to wield such magic, for their hearts
were too malleable and too easily seduced to be allowed near such temptations as
eternal life and ultimate power.

Sigmar had broken free from the malign effect of Nagash’s crown once before,
but could he do it again?

“There is only one way we can fight Nagash,” said Sigmar. “Only one way I can
face him with any hope of victory.”

He stood at the end of the firepit and took a deep breath, loath to even say
the words, let alone contemplate the reality of what it would mean for the
Empire if he failed.

“I have to wear Nagash’s crown again,” said Sigmar.

The host of Nagash arrived before the walls of Reikdorf on the leading edge
of dark storm clouds. Winter cut the air and the cold winds that blew from the
vast horde of the undead carried the stench of mankind’s corpse. Chain lightning
flashed in the clouds and rumbles of thunder that seemed to roll out from
distant lands echoed strangely from the walls of the city’s temples, taverns and
dwellings.

No sun rose on this day, the unnatural darkness covering the land in a bleak
shadow from which it could nevermore be lifted, a gloom that entered every
mortal heart and filled it with the sure and certain knowledge of the fate of
all living things. Skeletons marched at the fore of the army, ancient warriors
in serried ranks that stretched from one line of the horizon to the other.
Cursed to serve Nagash for all eternity, they wore armour of long lost kingdoms,
clutched weapons of strange design, and the grave dirt of far off lands clung to
their bones. Heavily armoured champions in heavy hauberks of scale and corslets
of iron marched at their head, exalted warriors of the dead whose skill with the
executioners’ blades they carried was more terrifying than when they had been
mortal.

Where the warriors of bone resembled the army they had been in life, the
thousands of bloody corpses dragged from shallow peasant graves or raised back
from the dead in the wake of battle were a shambling mockery of life. Limping on
twisted limbs and groaning with the torment of their existence, they were a
stark reminder that even death in battle against this foe would be no escape
from the horror. Hunched things in black robes moved through the shuffling horde
of corpses, their fell sorcery directing its mindless hunger.

The sky above Reikdorf blackened with the fluttering wings of bats and every
rooftop was lined with black-winged carrion birds. Ravens cawed in anticipation
of a feast of flesh, hopping agitatedly from clawed foot to clawed foot,
impatient for the slaughter to begin.

Hundreds of dark riders on skeletal steeds caparisoned in black and red and
riding beneath banners of skulls and fanged maws took position at the centre and
flanks of the army, the stillness of their mounts hideous and unnatural. These
dread riders carried long black lances, their tips glittering with a loathsome
green shimmer.

Scraps of lambent light billowed like pyre smoke around the horde, wailing
with the torments of the damned. Spectres and howling revenants dragged from
death, but whose remains were no more, spun and twisted in ghostly wisps, their
eyes bright with aching need for the warmth of mortal flesh. Their howling
struck terror into all who heard them, and scores of terrified people took
blades to their own necks rather than face such an enemy.

Loping ahead of the host, a ragged line of corpse eaters moved on all fours,
wretched and debased, with only their monstrous appetites to sustain them. These
degenerate monstrosities had once been men, but they had fallen far from the
nobility of their former race. Some clutched sharpened bone, others fragments of
swords, but most only needed their long, gnarled claws to tear out an enemy’s
throat. They gurgled and croaked as they skulked in the shadows, eager for the
bloodletting to begin, but fearful to be the first into the fray.

No trace of the land could be seen as the black host spread out before the
city, a tide of rotten meat, bleached bone and unquiet spirits. This was an army
to end the reign of mortals, to plunge the world into eternal night.

Yet it was the figures at the head of this mighty army that drew the eye, a
vanguard of three riders, one in silver plate, and the others in armour of
black. Khaled al-Muntasir was easy to identify, but the two warriors alongside
him were unknown to the defenders. Each clutched a flag so soaked in blood it
was impossible to tell what heraldic devices it had once displayed.

Yet even among such dreadful abominations, the master of this army was clear,
a towering column of fuliginous chill that seemed to draw in what little light
remained to the world only to snuff it out within his immortal form.

This was Nagash, the Great Necromancer, the bane of life and undying corpse
lord who had toppled empires and unleashed the curse of undeath upon the world.
His dread form floated above the earth, and where he passed, the ground split
apart, withered and destroyed as sable light was drawn upwards and coiled about
his armoured and ragged-cloaked form. The creatures of the earth crept from the
soil, crawling, buzzing and slithering away from the necromancer as his
monstrous power sucked the vitality from everything around him.

Through the roiling miasma of deathly energies that surrounded him, black
segments of iron and bronze could be glimpsed, shimmering coils of green light
suffusing each plate, rivet and fluted line of beaten metal. A grinning skull of
ancient bone loomed from the darkness, massive and long since bereft of flesh,
muscle and life.

At Nagash’s side, a towering warrior of brazen iron and ferocity. Broader and
taller than even the mightiest tribesmen, Krell bellowed a martial challenge
that not even death could contain. The bloody champion of undeath and slaughter
brandished his axe, raising it to point at the city before him, as though
claiming it as his own.

A wind from the depths of the earth sprang up around these fell lords of
sorcery and battle, a chill breath of lifelessness and the withering passage of
time. It roiled towards the city, billowing like a desert sandstorm. Where it
struck the walls, the stonework cracked and spalled, aged a thousand years in a
heartbeat. Wooden gates rotted and crumbled as though split apart by centuries
of hoar frost. The cold wind blew through the city with a ghastly whisper heard
by every man, woman and child.

It was the Necromancer’s promise and threat all in one.

Man is cattle…

Yet Nagash was not the first to reach Reikdorf this day. As the fleeting
light of dawn crested the eastern mountains before being smothered by the black
canopy of the undead twilight, a ragged band of a hundred warriors limped
towards the city’s southern gateway. Led by her sword maidens, Queen Freya
returned to the lands of Men, having fought her way through the infested wilds
of the southern Empire.

These wounded, exhausted men and women were all that remained of the proud
host she had led from Three Hills, warriors whose honour sought redemption by
bringing the queen they had failed to safety. Death would be a release for them,
should the enemy facing them grant such mercy. Maedbh was overjoyed to see
Freya, as were the people of Reikdorf, for her survival was a lone beacon of
hope in these grim times. That Freya could survive meant others could too. No
sooner had she ridden through the gates than the Queen’s Eagles surrounded her,
bringing her sons to her side for a tearful reunion.

The joy that greeted Freya’s arrival was soon tempered by word that the dead
were no more than an hour behind them. The gates were sealed and barred, and the
warriors preparing to defend the city with their lives manned the walls,
clutching swords and axes in hands slick with fear. Though still gravely
wounded, Freya took her place with the Queen’s Eagles, and no words of
admonition could shift Sigulf and Fridleifr from her side.

There could be no bystanders in this battle for survival.

All would fight, or all would die.

The bell on the temple of Ulric chimed, and the dead came to Reikdorf.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” said Alfgeir, holding tightly to the
reins of his horse as it tossed its head and snorted in fear. “This is madness
and you know it.”

“Maybe so,” said Sigmar, “but it needs to be done.”

“I am never one to back down from a foe, but I agree with your Reik Marshal,”
said Freya, riding alongside Garr and three of his Queen’s Eagles. As the only
one of Sigmar’s counts present in Reikdorf, she had the right to ride out with
him, but he found it hard to look at her without picturing the boys that carried
his blood.

They rode through the rotted remains of the Ostgate towards the enemy army.
Since arriving at the walls of Reikdorf, the undead host had stood in silence,
content to let fear worm its way into the hearts of those mortals who would soon
be joining their ranks. The only movement had been when the three armoured
warriors in the army’s vanguard had ridden forward beneath a lowered banner, the
universal symbol of parley.

“Why should we respect this parley?” said Garr, one hand on his sword hilt.
“We outnumber them and should cut them down while we have the chance.”

Sigmar looked over at the man, irritated at his foolishness.

“You could try, but these are blood drinkers, and they would kill you before
you even drew that blade,” said Sigmar.

Garr swallowed hard and released his hold on his sword.

“Damn, but what I wouldn’t give to be riding out to these bastards with
Redwane and a century of his White Wolves about now,” said Wolfgart.

Sigmar smiled. “Aye, that would be most welcome, but Middenheim will have its
own problems if I’m any judge.”

Further conversation was halted as the air grew dense and cold. The blood
drinkers were ahead of them, blocking the road and silhouetted on the crest of
the slope ahead of them. Sigmar felt his skin crawl at their nearness, the very
core of what made him a man rebelling at being so close to creatures that so
obviously violated the natural order of the world. An aura of freezing air
surrounded them, as though warmth was repelled by their very presence.

Khaled al-Muntasir gave an elaborate bow from the back of his dark steed,
smiling in welcome as though they were old friends and not mortal enemies.
Sigmar’s horse balked at the proximity of the undead, its ears pressed flat
against its skull and eyes wide with fear. He heard a jingle of trace and
harness as the horses of his companions whinnied and sought to gallop back the
way they had come.