Dead Winter

Chapter XIII

Altdorf

Vorhexen, 1111

His heart was pounding as Erich von Kranzbeuhler led the way into the cellar. It was not fear for himself that sent terror racing through his veins, but the knowledge that if they were caught then their cause would die with them. No one else in Altdorf would dare to stand against Emperor Boris after them. It was that thought which made his fist clench tighter about the hilt of his sword and made him pause at the door, listening for the slightest sound from below.

Erich looked back, instinctively seeking out Prince Sigdan, the leader of the conspiracy. He waited until the nobleman nodded his head, then he wrenched open the door and leaped down the short flight of stairs. He braced his feet on the cold stone floor, his body tensed for battle, his eyes scouring the darkness for the faintest hint of motion. The only sound was the rustle of rats creeping among the boxes and nibbling the straw scattered about the cellar.

A rushlight threw rays of illumination across the cellar, driving the rats back into their holes but revealing no lurkers in black livery. Erich glanced back at the steps behind him, reaching back to take the burning rushlight from Baron Thornig.

‘It doesn’t look like they’re here yet,’ Erich said. ‘We can thank Sigmar for that, at least!’ The captain turned about, staring at the jagged opening to the tunnel. He frowned as he thought of asking aristocrats like Prince Sigdan and Duke Konrad to creep through the muck and mire of the sewers, and the idea of Princess Erna and Lady Mirella slinking through such filth turned his stomach. If there were a way to spare them such indignity… but, no, they would suffer far worse if they fell into Kreyssig’s hands.

That is, those of them who hadn’t already decided on such a fate. He felt his jaw clench as he imagined the lovely princess married to a reptilian peasant like Kreyssig. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if it wasn’t better to make a stand of it and go down in a clean fight.

‘What is it?’ Mihail Kretzulescu asked. ‘Why have you stopped?’

The darkness hid the twinge of embarrassment on Erich’s face as he answered the Sylvanian. ‘Thought I heard something,’ he answered lamely. ‘It must have been a rat.’ Without explaining further, the knight pressed on, rushing along the cramped passage, following the mephitic reek of the sewer. Gradually the air became warmer, the moist unclean heat of the steaming channel of waste flowing beneath the city.

Erich hesitated upon the ledge, watching and listening. In the distance, he could just make out the sound of voices. They were faint and indistinct and in the echoing sewer it was impossible to tell which direction they came from. All he could tell was that there were a lot of them and there was a rattle of armour any time the speakers were silent. Only one group of armed men would have any business in the sewers. It was the Kaiserjaeger, come to close Kreyssig’s trap.

‘Which way, my lord?’ asked Meisel, a notched blade gripped in the dienstmann’s hand.

Erich agonised over the answer, turning his head left and right, desperately trying to decide which direction the voices were coming from. If they waited long enough to see the lights the Kaiserjaeger carried, then their own rushlight would be seen. They had to move before then, before Kreyssig had a chance to spot them. But if he made the wrong choice, they would run right into the villain’s arms.

As he gazed into the murk of the sewers, Erich felt his skin crawl. Thousands of beady red eyes gleamed at him from the shadows, each burning with obscene hunger. Looking at them, he could picture his body lying in the effluent with a Kaiserjaeger sword through his gut and a horde of greedy rodents gnawing the flesh from his bones.

The knight froze as he noticed another pair of eyes watching him from the darkness. They were bigger than the rats’ eyes, higher off the ground and with a disturbing impression of a lanky shape behind them. Yet they reflected the glow of the rushlight with the same crimson gleam as the rats around them, an unholy ember of malice and hunger. Erich felt fingers of ice race along his spine as he locked eyes with the sinister apparition.

Then there was no more time to think about the dreadful spectre. Imagination or nightmare, Erich tore his gaze from the dark figure, twisting around in answer to the cries of shock and horror rising from behind him. His first thought was that the Kaiserjaeger had stolen upon them from behind somehow. An instant later, he was wishing what had ambushed them was Kreyssig’s thugs.

The walls of the sewer were alive with vermin, great bloated rats that scurried along the ledges and swam through the filthy channel. An army of squeaking, chittering rodents came swarming towards the fugitives. Meisel was shouting in disgust, using the flat of his sword to fend off the vermin scrabbling at his legs. Lady Mirella screamed as a black beast with enormous fangs gnawed at her shoe. Palatine Mihail Kretzulescu stamped frantically with his boots as a pack of squealing brutes rushed at him.

Erich lunged at the chittering horde, thrusting the rushlight full into the faces of the rats as they swarmed about the feet of Princess Erna. The horrified woman collapsed in his arms, her breath reduced to a terrified panting. The knight shifted her weight to his sword arm, pressing her against his shoulder as he waved the flaming brand across the snouts of the onrushing pack.

An anguished wail echoed through the sewer. Erich looked up to see the manservant Gustav clutching at his bleeding leg, a piebald rat gnawing at his knee. His mangled leg collapsed beneath him, spilling him face-first into the swarming tide of rodents. At once they were over him, a living carpet of gnashing fangs and flashing claws.

‘We can’t fight them!’ Erich shouted, waving his sword and rushlight. ‘Not with these! We have to run!’

‘Run where?’ demanded Prince Sigdan, trying to slash the vermin spilling around his feet with a jewelled dagger and a gromril sword. ‘What about the Kaiserjaeger!’

‘Khaine take the Kaiserjaeger!’ exclaimed Duke Konrad, his arm covered in gore from where a rat had leaped upon him. ‘Anything’s better than being eaten alive!’

Erich spun around, noticing for the first time that the way was clear to their left. For some reason there were no rats in this direction. Perhaps they had been scared off by the approaching Kaiserjaeger, but whatever the reason, he wasn’t going to squander the chance to escape those verminous fangs! Yelling to his comrades, hugging Princess Erna tight against him, Erich led the frantic retreat.

The rats swarmed after them, chittering and squealing, raising such a deafening, monstrous commotion that the echoing voices of the Kaiserjaeger were smothered by the noise. Erich couldn’t tell if they were moving closer to or away from their enemies. Nor did he care. All that mattered was to escape the horde of ravenous vermin.

For what seemed an eternity but couldn’t have been more than a dozen minutes, the fugitives fled through the sewers. It was a shameful, terrified retreat. Warriors who had faced ogres and orc warlords across the field of battle fleeing for their lives before such tiny, miserable animals! Yet there was no fighting such a swarm. For every rat Erich might crush underfoot, ten would rush in to take its place. There were only two choices to make: run or be devoured.

Finally, when he felt his heart must burst from the exertion, when his breath was a burning agony in his lungs, when sweat streamed from his brow and blinded his eyes, the sewers suddenly fell silent. Erich paused in his headlong flight, daring to look back. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and blinked, unable to believe what he saw.

The rats were gone! One instant the sewers had been filled with a swarming horde of vermin hungry for blood, the next there was only the ancient masonry and brickwork. Against all belief, the entire horde had suddenly decided to abandon the chase!

‘Where did they go?’ Erna gasped in wonder, almost unwilling to believe the evidence of her eyes.

‘Let’s not stick around to find out,’ Erich decided. His hand lingered against the silky smoothness of the princess’s fingers, then, with deliberate gentleness, he led her to her father. The knight nodded grimly as he saw the gratitude in Baron Thornig’s face. He didn’t feel he’d done the princess any favours. What waited for her was every bit as repulsive as an army of hungry vermin.

‘At least we seem to have avoided the Kaiserjaeger,’ observed Count van Sauckelhof, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the bites marking his legs. ‘But where are we?’

Meisel sheathed his sword slowly and looked about him. Gradually the dienstmann began to nod. ‘I think we must be somewhere near the waterfront.’ He jabbed a thumb at the mucky channel, indicating the fish bones sticking from the effluent, then he pointed down the tunnel. ‘This should let out to the Reik soon. The flow is getting quicker and the air is just a little colder.’

‘Who cares where it leads, so long as it gets us out of these damn sewers!’ Duke Konrad grumbled.

‘That, your grace,’ Erich said, ‘is the best damn idea I’ve heard all day!’

With unseemly haste, the small group of nobles and idealists hurried down the tunnel, eager for the clean air and the open sky. None of them looked back. None of them saw the gleaming pair of red eyes watching them from the darkness or heard the shrill, inhuman titter of laughter that rose from the lanky shape behind the eyes.

‘Find them,’ Kreyssig snarled, glaring at the Kaiserjaeger sergeant. The soldier executed a stiff salute and hastened back through the tunnel leading up into Lady Mirella’s cellar. Kreyssig scowled as he heard the shouts of the other men searching the sewer tunnels. Except for one dead man, they had found no trace of the conspirators. Even the corpse was useless, gnawed beyond all recognition.

‘Commander,’ a sharp voice hissed from the darkness. Kreyssig swung around, a dagger in his fist. He could just make out the shape crouched beside the rubble of a broken pillar. There was no mistaking that twisted, subhuman slouch. It was one of his mutant friends, the secret eyes and ears of the Kaiserjaeger.

Kreyssig kept his dagger ready, anger blazing in his eyes. ‘They’ve escaped,’ he snarled. ‘For all your talk about knowing the sewers, the traitors escaped! If you’d led us here quicker, if you’d found a more direct route, I could have had them all!’

The mutant cringed before Kreyssig’s wrath, pressing its ratty nose to the filthy ledge in a token of abasement. ‘Forgive-mercy, great-terrible commander!’ the mutant squeaked. ‘Try-help, yes-yes, try-help much-much!’

Kreyssig resisted the urge to kick the cowering abomination’s fangs down its throat. ‘They’ve escaped,’ he repeated.

The mutant reared up slightly, its eyes gleaming red in the light of Kreyssig’s oil-lamp. ‘Not all-all,’ the creature hissed, its body straightening with pride. ‘Catch-take one,’ it reported. ‘Kill-wound,’ it added, its tone becoming apologetic. ‘Crawl off to die-die. But find-take this before traitor-meat get away!’ The mutant reached into its filthy cloak, removing a scrap of parchment from some hidden pocket. It reached out with its furry paw to give it to Kreyssig. The commander’s face contorted in disgust. Angrily he pointed to the rubble, indicating the mutant should leave its prize there.

Kreyssig was annoyed by the failure of his subhuman confederates. He was just beginning to think the mutants had outlived their usefulness when he reached down and retrieved the scrap of letter. As his eyes read the fragmented sentences, he chuckled cruelly.

‘This is good,’ he said. ‘Your people have done well.’ The mutant bobbed its head as Kreyssig complimented it. He, however, had already dismissed the creature from his thoughts. He was too busy thinking about the letter and how he was going to tell Emperor Boris that his most favoured general was colluding with a conspiracy to depose him.

First his marriage to Princess Erna, then his destruction of Reiksmarshal Boeckenfoerde’s career. Great things were ahead for Adolf Kreyssig.

There was no limit to where a man with his kind of ambition could go.

Skavenblight

Vorhexen, 1111

Panic rippled through the streets and rat-runs of Skavenblight. Every eye glistened with fear, musk dripped from every gland. The stormvermin of Clan Rictus and their thrall clans poured through the sprawling confusion of dilapidated buildings and subterranean tunnels, viciously trying to maintain order. No less than a dozen slave uprisings had broken out in different warrens. Several lesser clans had exploited the anarchy to pursue vendettas against rivals, ransacking each other’s burrows and slaughtering enemy breeders and their pups.

The source of the unrest lay within the infested tunnels of Clan Verms. More ratmen had become victims of the plague, and this time Wormlord Blight hadn’t been able to keep news of the disease from leaving the Hive. The exuberance with which the Black Plague had been regarded as it decimated the man-things by the thousands now turned to absolute terror as the skaven came to understand the same plague might be loosed among themselves.

Blight Tenscratch had been present at the hasty meeting of the council. A vote had been taken to decide what measures must be instituted to control the plague. It came closer to any vote in the history of the council to being unanimous. Blight was the only one who was against the immediate seclusion of the Hive and the extermination of every living thing inside it. Only extensive bribes had allowed Blight to escape the fate of his warren. Except for himself and a cadre of cronies, the skaven dwelling in the Hive were to be sacrificed for the common good of skavendom.

By design, Puskab Foulfur was one of the few Blight selected to be spared. Each ratman allowed to escape the Hive had cost the coffers of Clan Verms dearly, but of them all it was the plague priest who Blight felt offered the most potential for reclaiming his lost fortune.

The Black Plague had struck almost immediately after the failed assassination of Arch-Plaguelord Nurglitch. Blight didn’t think that was a coincidence. Puskab’s theory that Nurglitch was using traitors to spread the disease among Clan Verms had been proven. But Clan Pestilens had been more subtle than Blight had given them credit for. Rather than move against Verms openly, rather than depend on the plague to wipe them out, Pestilens had instead turned the whole of skavendom against them!

Puskab scurried through the winding passages of the Hive, keeping pace with the mob of chieftains. He was careful to keep a particularly sharp eye on Nakkal Blackfinger, the Treasure Hoarder of Clan Verms. Charged with cataloguing and protecting the income from worm-oil, Nakkal was among the most important of Blight’s functionaries. Even more so since there was no question that the treasurer had skimmed a fair portion of the clan’s profits for himself and squirreled his loot someplace far from the Hive. Blight would want to get his paws on that plunder, but to do that he would need Nakkal alive. At least for a little while. If any of the Wormlord’s minions had been given accurate instructions for how to escape the destruction of the Hive, it would be Nakkal.

There were several groups of chieftains and warlords racing through the tunnels, abandoning their underlings to the cruel fate that awaited them. The others, however, had been given false trails to follow. Their escape routes ended in tunnels bristling with black-furred stormvermin and withering fusillades of jezzail fire. The shrieks of those who had been betrayed by Blight’s deception echoed through the doomed burrows.

Puskab was thankful for the Wormlord’s foresight, even as his glands clenched at the notion that his group might likewise be hurrying to its own massacre. The lesser skaven of Clan Verms were hardly content to sit back and wait for death to claim them. Those that had not thrown themselves into a mindless rampage of looting within the main warren had gathered in large packs, stalking after the refugee chieftains, hoping to join them in escape.

Few skaven followed Puskab’s group. The plague priest had been viewed with fear and suspicion from the first, but now he was shunned as the source of all their woes. Their panic hadn’t risen to the point where they would forget their fear and try to attack the horned sorcerer; there hadn’t been enough time for hate to put some mettle into their spines. Before it could, Puskab intended to be far away.

Down the cramped tunnels, the walls crawling with bugs of every size and shape, the skaven hastened. Sometimes their little group would dart into a side passage as a larger pack of refugees came rushing past. Once they waited while a gigantic scorpion, loosed from its cage, came scuttling down the tunnel, a half-eaten ratman clenched in its claws. Twice they were forced to retreat before the waddling bulk of a skaven brood-mother, an entourage of eunuchs and slaves trying to guide the brainless females to some place of imagined safety. The husky scent exuded by the frightened brood-mothers was enough to compel even a few of the chieftains to forget about safety and rush after the females, instinct driving them to protect the breeders despite their certain doom.

The crack of jezzails ahead announced that the refugees were nearing one of the dozens of egresses from the Hive. The sharp tang of skaven blood, the acrid smell of warp-powder and shot, the musky reek of fear-smell, all of these joined to form a stench peculiarly redolent of merciless despair.

The narrow tunnel widened as it climbed towards an archway of stone. Dozens of skaven bodies, some of them still twitching, lay strewn about the gateway. Beyond, a phalanx of Clan Rictus ratmen, hulking in their patchwork armour of plate and chain, stood with spears at the ready. Between the spear-rats, their red eyes shining maliciously in the flickering light of worm-oil lanterns, weedy Clan Skryre sharpshooters huddled. Each of them clutched a massive tube of steel in his paws, the front spitted upon a triangular firing rest which had been driven into the ground. The jezzails were taller than the ratmen who carried them and it took two skaven to pour powder and shot down their cavernous barrels.

Puskab’s eyes narrowed as he saw the formidable cordon that had been thrown about the Hive. His magic would be useless against such numbers. He might slay twenty or thirty with a ball of burning putrescence, but after that his body would be shattered by the jezzails. His only hope now lay in his usefulness to Blight and whether the Wormlord had spoken truly about a way out.

‘Tenscratch eat-slay traitor-meat!’ Nakkal barked out, his voice shrill and terrified. It was the password that had been arranged between Blight and the fangleaders he had bribed. If the treachery had been discovered, or if the guards had reconsidered the agreement…

A scar-faced stormvermin, a battered human helmet crushed down about his skull, a nugget of glowing warpstone dangling from the lobe of his ear, stepped slightly forwards, pushing aside the spears of his henchmen. ‘Late-late, fool-meat!’ the fangleader snarled. He cast an anxious look over his shoulder, then waved his arm in imperious fashion. ‘Hurry-scurry or stay-burn!’

The warning didn’t need to be given twice. Puskab scrambled along with the Verms chieftains, shoving Nakkal out of his way as he reached the gap that had opened between the stormvermin. His haste was quickly justified. A sharp squeal sounded from somewhere up the tunnel — the cry of some unseen sentinel. In response, the fangleader’s warriors closed ranks once more, blocking the escape of the slower chieftains. Callously, the fangleader growled a command. The stormvermin lashed out with their spears, skewering the refugees still before them. Those few who eluded the spears and tried to flee back into the Hive were shot in the back by the chittering sharpshooters.

Puskab could see the reason for the fangleader’s sudden sense of duty. From the broad tunnel beyond the archway a great mob of skaven was scurrying into view. Foremost among them were a number of huge cask-shaped carts pushed along by packs of emaciated slaves. Riding atop the carts were groups of leather-clad ratmen, their paws and forearms covered in thick oilskins, their heads encased in weird fur masks that had been soaked in something that was at least partly vinegar to judge by the smell. The scent of Clan Skryre lingered about the masked skaven and each of them fussed about a confusion of brass wheels and ratgut hoses.

‘Make way!’ the fangleader snarled, casting a warning look in Puskab’s direction. The plague priest did as he was told, scurrying aside as the weird carriages came trundling past him. A second pack of stormvermin followed, these bearing the red fur and scorched armour of Clan Volkyn. They fanned out as the bulky Clan Skryre carts passed through the archway and down the entrance into the Hive. Excited squeaks rose from the warriors as a ragged mob of skaven appeared at the far end of the tunnel. Anxiously they clashed swords against shields until the entire corridor boomed with the clamour.

The mob of Clan Verms skaven hesitated for only a moment, then gave voice to a savage howl. Like a crazed thing, the horde of desperate ratmen came charging down the passage. As they rushed towards the carts, the warlock-engineers mounted atop them began to work the machinery of their arcane contraptions. Some of them fiddled with pressure valves while others worked networks of pumps and windlasses. At the fore of each cart, a strongly-built ratman raised a heavy hose with a broad metal nozzle.

In response to the efforts of the warlock-engineers, smoke began to rise from the mouth of each hose. Then a tiny flicker of green flame sputtered into view. It danced about the metal nozzle for only an instant before it was drowned by a great rush of shimmering emerald fire.

The charging horde shrieked as the green flames washed over them. Ratmen leapt into the air, their fur blazing, their flesh melting from their bones. Dozens of them were reduced to piles of steaming meat in the blink of an eye. Scores more wailed in agony, trying to drag their mutilated bodies back into the darkness of the Hive.

The warlock-engineers laughed at the havoc wrought by their hideous weapon, the warriors of Clan Volkyn cheered at the spectacle of burning bodies strewn before them. Encouraged by the ease of the slaughter, the warlock-engineers shouted down at the slaves chained to the sides of the carts, ordering the wagons pushed deeper into the boundaries of Clan Verms.

‘They will burn out every inch of the Hive.’

Puskab turned about, surprised to see Blight Tenscratch standing beside him. He had been so fascinated by the display of Clan Skryre’s admittedly heretical techno-sorcery that he had failed to notice the scent of the Wormlord and his remaining guards.

‘Warpfire they call it,’ Blight hissed. ‘I am told it uses a mixture of worm-oil and warpstone.’ His head suddenly darted to one side, then the other, eyes searching among the ranks of the Rictus stormvermin.

‘Nakkal lost-gone,’ Puskab said, guessing who Blight was looking for. The plague priest felt a twinge of amusement as he stated that the chieftain had suffered an accident.

Blight’s lips pulled away from his fangs. ‘This is all that flea-sucking pimple-arsed Nurglitch’s fault!’ The Wormlord shook his fist at the roof of the cavern, muttering curses under his breath.

‘We will-must try-try again,’ Puskab said.

Blight fixed the plague priest with a crooked smile. ‘We?’ he snickered. ‘No-no, not we! You!’ The Wormlord’s claw trembled as he pointed it at Puskab. ‘You will kill-slay Nurglitch! Challenge him for his seat on the council! Take his place-pelt as Arch-Plaguelord!’

Bylorhof

Ulriczeit, 1111

When Frederick roused from his stupor, the monster was gone. Retrieving a spike-headed mace from the cells once inhabited by the templars, the priest made his way outside to inspect the temple grounds. The cold wind blew snow across the rows of graves, headstones vanishing beneath a mantle of white. In the distance, the mournful cry of a dog rose, invading the eerie quiet of the night. Mannslieb was nearly full now, the greater moon’s silvery light eclipsing the sickly glow of Morrslieb.

By moonlight and rushlight, Frederick circled the temple, the heavy mace always at the ready. Snow crunched under his feet as he scoured the ground for any trace of the undead creature he had seen. If the thing had left any tracks, they had been obliterated by the new-fallen snow.

The priest uttered a nervous laugh. If the thing had been there at all. If it hadn’t existed solely in his own mind. If he wasn’t going mad.

Then Frederick’s steps brought him to the side of the temple and the ornate window looking into the sanctuary. His skin crawled as he stared at the ground below the window. Sheltered by the eaves of the roof, the ground here had been spared the attentions of the latest snowfall. Pressed clearly into the snow were the marks of unshod feet, feet like none he had ever seen. Visible in the snow were the prints of toes, toes that were like scraggly claws. Toes from which all the flesh had been peeled away. As a final sign that the creature had been real, Frederick found a strip of decayed skin caught upon the window frame, left there when the undead horror had pressed itself against the glass and peered into the sanctuary.

Clenching the mace tighter, Frederick turned away from the window. His eyes scanned the silent rows of graves, wondering where the monster had gone. He felt an obligation to track down the abomination. Despite the heretical spell he had evoked, he still regarded himself as a priest of Morr and it was a priest’s duty to bring peace to the restless dead.

The open door of the old vault swayed in the wind, banging against the carved granite walls. Frederick felt a chill run down his spine. There was no one who would have opened that door. Even the most desperate looters shunned the gardens of Morr, if not from fear of the plague then from the dreadful memory of Arisztid Olt and his frightful abuses of the cemetery.

Forcing himself towards the mausoleum took more courage than Frederick believed he had. At every step he felt the urge to flee, to retreat into the temple and cower behind the altar. His flesh crawled, his breath came in icy gasps, his hair stood on end. Every part of his being could sense the unnatural aberration which had preceded him and left the door swinging in the wind.

Somehow he managed to reach the mausoleum. The priest hesitated upon the threshold, gazing in silence upon the confusion of prints which had disturbed the centuries of dust inside the vault. Clumps of marsh grass and mud littered the steps as they descended into the musty darkness. Furtive sounds rose to scratch at the edge of his hearing and Frederick did not need to be told it was not the noise of rats.

Frederick started to pray to his god, then hesitated. After what he had done, the blasphemy with which he had profaned Morr’s temple, he had no right to presume upon the god’s benevolence. He had failed his god. Perhaps this was a test, a trial to redeem himself. If so, he was determined he would meet the challenge on his own.

The darkness wrapped itself around Frederick as he descended into the ancient vault. The illumination of the rushlight lessened with each step, as though the tomb resented the intrusion of its flame. As the light began to fail, raw panic threatened to overcome the priest.

Again the furtive shuffling sounds slithered across Frederick’s ears. They were closer now, close enough to startle the priest. He had imagined his quarry to be deep within the catacombs by now, not lingering so near the entrance. Casting a worried glance at the doubtful flame of his rushlight, he strode towards the noise.

Before he had gone more than a few steps, a sweet, rotten stench struck his senses. From the gloom, a shape emerged into the faltering light. Frederick recoiled in shock as he found himself gazing into the decayed face of a Bylorhof peasant, the man’s visage reduced almost to a skull by the ravenous attentions of marsh vermin. Worms writhed in the peeling flesh, the scaly carcass of a scavenger fish protruded from the creature’s cheek, ugly water beetles crawled through hair matted with slime.

Frederick swung the heavy mace into the monster’s hideous face. The rotten skull shattered beneath the terrified blow, spattering the wall of the crypt with stagnant muck and slivers of bone. The creature swayed for a moment, as though unaware its brain had been pulverised. Then the thing collapsed on the dusty floor.

Zombie! The grotesque word came unbidden to Frederick’s mind. Walking revenants without purpose or motive, slinking horrors that were the antithesis of life and of death. They were the lowest form of undead abomination, mindless corpses devoid of either will or soul.

Yet, as Frederick’s mind turned back to the dark lore of Arisztid Olt, a troubling thought came to him. A zombie was a thing that existed because of dark magic, it could thrive only at the direction of some outside force, some greater will to sustain its empty husk. Suddenly he understood why these things had appeared. Some terrible fiend had descended upon the graveyard, might even now be lurking among the tombs. Witch or daemon, it was summoning the unhallowed dead, drawing them from their watery graves.

The priest’s heart pounded in his breast. Somewhere, in the black catacombs, a malevolent power was gathering its strength. It had to be stopped, stopped before it could threaten the town.

Frederick followed the sunken passages, the spiked mace held in a white-knuckle grip. His eyes struggled to pierce the gloom, strove to compensate for the increasingly poor illumination of the rushlight. The shuffling steps echoed ahead of him. He could tell they came from more than one source, but whether there might be a dozen or a hundred, he could not say. If fate favoured him, he might never need to know. There was only one enemy he had to face — the occult power that had summoned the zombies from the marsh.

On through the blackness the priest crept. Sometimes the decayed hulk of a zombie would loom out at him from the shadows. A blow from the mace quickly drove the things back, shattering decayed limbs and crushing rotten bones with each frantic strike. Frederick’s skin crawled as he noted the unnatural way the zombies reacted to his assaults. Making no move either to defend or attack, the things simply wilted beneath his blows, staggering aside as he forced his way past them.

Perhaps their sorcerous master was as yet unaware of the priest’s presence. Perhaps the fiend had exhausted its power resurrecting the dead and was now resting, trying to replenish its energies. Frederick hoped such was the case, that he could steal upon this malignance and destroy it before it was strong enough to oppose him.

Movement ahead arrested the priest in his tracks. Whatever was ahead of him moved with an energy and vitality absent from the shambling zombies he had encountered. Images of ghouls and vampires flashed through Frederick’s brain. Again, he felt the urge to flee. Again, he forced himself to be brave. Whatever was ahead of him might still be unaware of him. He might still be able to take it by surprise.

Wailing an inarticulate cry, the priest charged into the blackness, the mace flying forwards in a brutally violent sweep. Frederick cried out in pain as the mace crashed against some unyielding force, sending tremors throbbing down his arm. Reeling from the injury, he thrust the faltering rushlight at his antagonist.

An incredulous smile crept onto Frederick’s face as he looked ahead. There was no fiend in the darkness, only the smooth blackness of an obsidian pillar, a monument to some long-dead templar knight. The pillar was marked by a scratch, the best his mace could do when it had smashed into the immovable stone. The pillar had retained its polish down through the years, reflecting the glow of Frederick’s rushlight and the man who held it.

Trying to attack the fiend who haunted the catacombs, Frederick had attacked his own reflection. The absurdity of the thing brought bitter laughter to the priest’s lips.

His laughter died as the sounds of shuffling steps filled the passage behind him. Frederick’s attack on the pillar might have been absurd, but it had borne terrible fruit. The zombies were aware of him now, guided to him by the malignant power of their master. He could see them groping their way into the light, faces purple with rot, swollen tongues protruding from mouths clenched in the final rictus of death.

Frederick shifted the mace to his uninjured arm and braced himself to confront the undead horde. ‘Keep back,’ he warned the creatures.

To his shock, the zombies stopped advancing. Like ghastly statues, the things froze in place, their lifeless eyes staring emptily at the priest.

Raising the mace, trying to encourage the rushlight to greater effort, Frederick took a step towards the waiting zombies. The undead monsters moved not so much as a muscle. A dreadful cold settled around the priest’s heart, a suspicion so monstrous he refused to accept it.

‘Let…’ Frederick’s voice failed him. Licking his trembling lips, he tried again. ‘Let me pass.’

His mouth opened in horror as the ranks of zombies shifted, pressing their decayed bodies against the walls of the catacomb, clearing a path for the priest. The display of mute, unquestioning obedience sent a thrill of terror rushing through Frederick’s soul.

Without a sidewise glance, Frederick ran past the zombies, fleeing with all haste from the vault and the awful discovery he had made.

He could run from the zombies, but Frederick could not run from the truth. The undead had been called by a terrible power, a force great enough to bind them to his will. He was the fiend who haunted the cemetery. He was the malignance that called the dead from their graves.

Frederick van Hal had surpassed the legacy of Arisztid Olt.

He was now the necromancer of Bylorhof.