The End Times: The Return of Nagash

ONE

The world was dying.

It had been dying for a very long time, according to some. But Erikan Crowfiend, in his long trek from the battlefield of Couronne, had come to the conclusion that it was finally on its last legs. There was smoke from a million funeral pyres on the wind, not just in Bretonnia but in the Empire as well, and the stink of poison and rot was laid over everything. In the villages and wayplaces, men and women whispered stories of two-headed calves that mewled like infants, of birds that sang strange dirges as they circled in the air, and of things creeping through the dark streets that had once kept to the forests and hills.

Beasts and greenskins ran riot, carving red trails through the outskirts of civilisation as nightmare shapes swam down from the idiot stars to raven and roar through the heart of man’s world. Great cities reeled from these sudden, unpredictable assaults, and the great gates of Altdorf, Middenheim and Nuln were barred and bolstered, almost as if it were intended that they never be opened again.

Erikan had seen it all, albeit at a remove. He had been forced to fight more than once since crossing the Grey Mountains, and not just with beasts or orcs. Men as well, and worse than men. Then, Erikan wasn’t exactly a man himself. He hadn’t been for some time.

Erikan Crowfiend’s heart had stopped beating almost a century ago to the day, and he had not once missed its rhythm. He moved only by night, for the sun blistered him worse than any fire. His breath reeked of the butcher’s block and he could hear a woman’s pulse from leagues away. He could shatter stone and bone as easily as a child might tear apart a dried leaf. He never grew tired, suffered from illness or felt fear. And under different circumstances, he would have been happy to indulge his baser instincts as the land drowned in madness. He was a monster after all, and it was a season for monsters, from what little he’d seen.

But he was no longer the captain of his own destiny, and hadn’t been since the night a pale woman had taken him in her arms and made him something both greater and lesser than the necromancer’s apprentice he had been. So he moved ever eastwards, following a darkling pull that urged him on, across beast-held mountains and over burning fields, and through forests where the trees whimpered like beaten dogs and clawed at him with twisted branches.

Above him, a swarm of bats crossed the surface of the moon, heading the gods alone knew where. Erikan suspected that they were going the same place he was. The thought provided no comfort. The call had come, and he, like the bats, had no choice but to obey.

‘Erikan?’ a wheezing, slurred voice asked, interrupting his reverie.

‘Yes, Obald,’ Erikan said, with a sigh.

‘It could just be the alcohol talking, or it could be the constant seepage from these inexpertly, if affectionately, placed poultices of yours making me light-headed, but I do believe that I’m dying,’ said Obald Bone, the Bone-Father of Brionne. He took another swig from the mostly empty bottle of wine he held in one bandaged claw. The necromancer was a wizened thing, all leather and bone, wrapped in mouldering furs and travel leathers that, to Erikan’s knowledge, had never been washed. Obald lay in a travois made from the stretched hide and bones of dead men, constructed by equal parts sorcery and brute strength. He blinked and forced himself up onto one elbow. ‘Where are we?’

‘Just about to cross the border into Sylvania, Obald,’ Erikan said. He was hauling the travois behind him on foot, its straps of dried flesh and stiffened gut lashed about his battered and grime-encrusted cuirass. Their horse had come down with a bad case of being digested by something large and hungry that even Erikan had been hard-pressed to see off. He didn’t know what it was, but he hadn’t felt like sticking around to find out. Monsters once confined to the edges of the map were now wandering freely, and setting upon any who came within reach, edible or not. ‘And you’re not dying.’

‘I hate to be contrary, but I am a master of the necromantic arts, and I think I know a little something about death, imminent, personal or otherwise,’ Obald slurred. His travois was cushioned with empty bottles, and he reeked of gangrene and alcohol. He’d been getting steadily worse since Erikan had extracted the arrow that had taken him in the belly in the last moments of the battle for Couronne, just before the Green Knight had struck off Mallobaude’s head.

For the first few weeks, Obald had seemed fine, if in pain, but the wound wasn’t healing, and they weren’t the sort whom the priestesses of Shallya normally welcomed. Obald had survived worse in his time, but it was as if he, like the world, were winding down.

Obald sank back down onto the travois, dislodging several bottles. ‘Did I ever tell you that I’m from Brionne, Erikan? Good pig country that.’

‘Yes,’ Erikan said.

‘I was a pig farmer, like my father and his father before him. Pigs, Erikan – you can’t go wrong with a pig farm.’ Obald reached out and swatted weakly at the sword sheathed on Erikan’s hip. ‘Blasted Templar blade. Why do you still carry that thing?’

‘I’m a Templar. Templars carry Templar blades, Obald,’ Erikan said.

‘You’re not a Templar, you’re my apprentice. It’s not even a proper sword. Hasn’t even got a curse on it,’ Obald grumbled.

‘But it’s sharp and long, and good at cutting things,’ Erikan replied. He hadn’t been Obald’s apprentice since he’d been given the blood-kiss and inducted into the aristocracy of the night. He smiled at the thought. In truth, there was very little aristocratic about hiding in unmarked graves and devouring unlucky peasants.

‘Where’s my barrow-blade? I want you to have my barrow-blade,’ Obald said muzzily.

‘Your barrow-blade is still in the body of that fellow whose horse we stole,’ Erikan said. The flight from Couronne had been as bloody as the battle itself. When the Serpent had fallen, his forces, both the living and the dead, had collapsed in an utter rout. Obald had had an arrow in the belly by then, and Erikan had been forced to hack them a path to freedom as the dead crumbled around them.

‘Ha! Yes,’ Obald cackled wetly. ‘The look on his poxy, inbred face was priceless – thought that armour would save him, didn’t he? Oh no, my lad. A dead man’s sword will cut anything, even fancy armour.’ He rocked back and forth in the travois, until his laughter became strangled coughing.

‘So you taught me,’ Erikan said.

‘I did, didn’t I?’ Obald hiccupped. ‘You were my best student, Erikan. It’s a shame that you had to go and get mauled by that von Carstein witch.’

‘She’s not a witch, Obald.’

‘Trollop then,’ Obald snapped. ‘She’s a tart, Erikan.’ He belched. ‘I could do with a tart about now. One of those fancy ones from Nuln.’

‘Are we still talking about women?’ Erikan asked.

‘They put jam – real jam – right in the pastry. Not sawdust and beef dripping, like the ones in Altdorf,’ Obald said, gesticulating for emphasis.

‘Right, yes,’ Erikan said. He shook his head. ‘I’m sure we can find you a tart in Sylvania, Obald.’

‘No no, just leave me here to die, Erikan. I’ll be fine,’ Obald said. ‘For a man who wears as many bones as I do, I am oddly comfortable with notions of mortality.’ He upended the bottle he held, splashing much of its contents on his face and ratty beard. ‘Bones, bone, Bone-Father. I can’t believe you let me call myself that. Bone-Father… What does that even mean? The other necromancers were probably laughing at me.’

He was silent for a moment, and Erikan half hoped he’d fallen asleep. Then, Obald grunted and said, ‘We showed them what for though, didn’t we, Erikan? Those blasted nobles and their treacherous Lady.’ Obald and a handful of other necromancers had flocked to Mallobaude’s serpent banner after the dukes of Carcassonne, Lyonesse and Artois had declared for King Louen’s bastard offspring, and they’d raised legions of the dead to march beside the Serpent’s army of disgraced knights. But Obald and his fellows had been a sideshow compared to the real power behind Mallobaude’s illegitimate throne – the ancient liche known as Arkhan the Black.

Why Arkhan had chosen to aid Mallobaude, Erikan couldn’t say. He had his reasons, just as Obald and Erikan did, the latter supposed. And with the liche on their side, Bretonnia was brought to its knees. At the Battle of Quenelles, Erikan had had the pleasure of seeing the Serpent cast his father’s broken body into the mud. The southern provinces had fallen one by one after King Louen’s death, until the Serpent had cast his gaze north, to Couronne.

It had all gone wrong then. Mallobaude had lost his head, Arkhan had vanished, and…

‘We lost,’ Erikan said.

Obald gave a raspy chuckle. ‘We always lose, Erikan. That’s the way of it. There are no winners, save for death and the Dark Gods. I taught you that too.’

Erikan hissed in annoyance. ‘You taught me a lot, old man. And you’ll live to teach me more, if you stop straining yourself.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Obald coughed. ‘You can smell it on me. I know you can, boy. I’m done for. A longbow is a great equaliser on the battlefield. I’ve only survived this long out of nastiness. But I’m tired now, and I’m all out of spite.’ He coughed again, and Erikan caught the whiff of fresh blood. Obald doubled over in the travois, hacking and choking. Erikan stopped and tore himself loose from the travois. He sank down beside his old mentor and laid a hand on his quivering back.

Obald had always looked old, but now he looked weak and decrepit. Erikan knew that the old man was right. The arrow that had felled him had done too much damage to his insides. That he had survived the journey over the Grey Mountains and into the provinces of the Empire was due more to stubbornness than anything else. By the time they’d reached Stirland, he’d been unable to ride, and barely able to sit upright. He was dying, and there was nothing Erikan could do.

No, that wasn’t true. There was one thing. He lifted his wrist to his lips. He opened his mouth, exposing long, curved fangs and readied himself to plunge them into his wrist.

He paused when he saw that Obald was watching him. Blood and spittle clung like pearlescent webs to the old man’s beard. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of rotting teeth. Obald patted him on the cheek. ‘No need to bloody yourself, Erikan. My old carcass wouldn’t survive it, anyway.’

Erikan lowered his arm. Obald lay back on the travois. ‘You were a good friend, Erikan. For a ravenous, untrustworthy nocturnal fiend, I mean,’ the necromancer wheezed. ‘But as the rain enters the soil, and the river enters the sea, so do all things come to their final end.’

‘Strigany proverbs,’ Erikan muttered. ‘Now I know that you’re dying.’ He sat back on his heels and watched the last link to his mortal life struggle for breath. ‘You don’t have to, you know. You’re just being stubborn and spiteful.’

‘I’ve been stubborn and spiteful my whole sorry life, boy,’ Obald croaked. ‘I’ve fought and raged and run for more years than you. I saw Kemmler’s rise and fall, I saw Mousillon in all of its pox-ridden glory and I visited the secret ruins of Morgheim, where the Strigoi dance and howl.’ The old man’s eyes went vacant. ‘I fought and fought and fought, and now I think maybe I am done fighting.’ His trembling, wrinkled fingers found Erikan’s wrist. ‘That’s the smart choice, I think, given what’s coming.’ His glazed eyes sought out Erikan’s face. ‘Always get out before the rush, that’s my advice.’ His voice was barely a whisper. Erikan leaned close.

‘I miss my pigs,’ Obald said. Then, with a soft grunt, his face went slack, and whatever dark force had inhabited him fled into the crawling sky above. Erikan stared down at him. He’d been hoping that the old man would make it to Sylvania. After leaving Couronne, they’d learned that the other survivors were going there, drawn by some bleak impetus to travel across the mountains. There were stories of walls of bone and an independent state of the dead, ruled by the aristocracy of the night. They’d even heard a rumour that Arkhan’s forces were heading that way.

It was the beginning of something, Erikan thought. Obald had mocked the idea, in between coughing fits, but Erikan could feel it in the black, sour hollow of his bones. There was smoke on the air and blood in the water, and the wind carried the promise of death. It was everything he’d dreamed of, since his parents had gone screaming to the flames, the taste of corpses still on their tongues. He’d seen a spark of it when Obald had rescued him then, flaying his captors with dark magics. In those black flames, which had stripped meat from bone as easily as a butcher’s knife, Erikan had seen the ruination of all things. The end of all pain and hunger and strife.

And now, that dream was coming true: the world was dying, and Erikan Crowfiend intended to be in at the end. But, he’d been hoping that Obald would be by his side. Didn’t the old man deserve that much, at least? Instead, he was just another corpse.

At least he was free, while Erikan was still a captive of the world.

Erikan carelessly pried the old man’s fingers off his wrist and stood. He dropped his hand to the pommel of his blade and said, casually, ‘He’s dead.’

‘I know,’ a woman’s voice replied. ‘He should have died years ago. He would have, if you hadn’t been wasting your time keeping his wrinkled old cadaver from getting the chop.’

‘He raised me. He took me in, when anyone else would have burned me with the rest of my kin, for the crime of survival,’ Erikan said. His hand tightened on the hilt of his blade and he drew it smoothly as he whirled to face the newcomer. ‘He helped me become the man I am today.’

In the sickly light of the moon, her pale flesh seemed to glow with an eerie radiance. She wore baroque black armour edged in gold over red silk. The hue of the silk matched her fiery tresses, which had been piled atop her head in a style three centuries out of fashion. Eyes like agates met his own as she reached out and gently pushed aside his sword. ‘I rather thought that I had some part in that as well, Erikan.’

He lowered his sword. ‘Why are you here, Elize?’

‘For the same reason as you, I imagine.’

Erikan stabbed his blade down into the loamy earth and set his palms on the crosspiece. ‘Sylvania,’ he said, simply.

Elize von Carstein inclined her head. A crimson tress slipped free of the mass atop her head and dangled in her face, until she blew it aside. He felt a rush of desire but forced it down. Those days were done and buried. ‘I felt the summons.’ She looked up at the moon. ‘The black bell of Sternieste is tolling and the Templars of the Order of Drakenhof are called to war.’

Erikan looked down at the pommel of his blade, and the red bat, rampant, that was carved there. It was the symbol of the von Carsteins, and of the Drakenhof Templars. He covered it with his hand. ‘And who are we going to war with?’

Elize smiled sadly and said, ‘Everyone. Come, I have an extra horse.’

‘Did you bring it for me?’

Elize didn’t answer. Erikan followed her. He left Obald’s body where it lay, to whatever fate awaited it. The old man’s cankerous spirit was gone. His body was just so much cooling meat now, and Erikan had long since lost his taste for such rancid leavings.

‘Are we all gathering, then?’ Erikan asked, as he followed her through the trees, towards a quiet copse where two black horses waited, red-eyed and impatiently pawing at the earth. Deathless, breathless and remorseless, the horses from the stables of Castle Drakenhof were unmatched by any steed in the known world, save possibly for the stallions of far Ulthuan. He took the bridle of the one she indicated and stroked it, murmuring wordlessly. He’d always had a way with beasts, even after he’d been reborn. He’d kept company with the great shaggy wolves that Obald had pulled from their forest graves, leading them on moonlit hunts. The day Obald had taught him how to call up the beasts himself was the closest he had ever come to true happiness, he thought.

‘All who still persist, and keep to their oath,’ Elize said. ‘I arrived with several of the others. We decided to journey together.’

‘Why?’ Erikan asked.

‘Why wouldn’t we?’ Elize asked, after a moment, as she climbed into her saddle. ‘Is it not meet that the inner circle do so? I saw your trail, and decided to see if you were interested in joining us. You are one of us, after all.’

‘I don’t recall you asking me whether I wished to be,’ he said, softly. Elize kicked her horse into motion and galloped away. Erikan hesitated, and then climbed up into his own saddle and set off after her. As he rode, he couldn’t help but muse that it had always been thus. Elize called and he came. He watched her ride, her slim form bent low over her mount’s neck, her armour glinting dully in the moonlight. She was beautiful and terrible and inexorable, like death given a woman’s shape. There were worse ways to spend eternity, he supposed.

She led him into the high barrows and scrub trees that populated the hills and valleys west of the border with Stirland. Ruins of all sorts dotted the area, the legacy of centuries of warfare. Shattered windmills and slumping manses towered over the gutted remains of border forts and isolated farmsteads. Some were more recent than others, but all had suffered the same fate. This was the no-man’s-land between the provinces of the living and the dead, and nothing of the former survived here for long.

As they left the trees and the fog that had clung to them, he hauled back on the reins of his horse, startled by the sight of the distant edifice of bone, which rose high up into the sky, towering over the area. It was far larger than the rumours he’d heard had intimated. It was less fortress rampart than newborn mountain range. Only the largest of giants would have had a chance of clambering over it. ‘Nagash’s teeth,’ he hissed. ‘I’d heard he’d done it, but I never expected it to be true.’ The sense of finality he’d had before, of endings and final days, came back stronger than ever. Sylvania had always seemed unchanging. A gangrenous wound that never healed, but never grew any worse. But now, now it was finally ready to kill. He wanted to laugh and howl at the same time, but he restrained himself.

‘Yes,’ Elize said, over her shoulder. ‘Mannfred has seceded from the Empire. Our time for hiding in the shadows is done.’ The way she said it made him wonder if she were entirely happy about it. Most of their kind were conservative by nature. Immortality brought with it a fear of change, and a need to force the world to remain in place. Erikan had never felt that way. When you were born in squalor and raised amid corpses, a bit of change was not unwelcome.

Erikan urged his horse on. ‘No wonder the bells have been sounded. If he’s done all of this, he’s going to need as many of us as he can get.’ The thought wasn’t a comforting one. Vampires could, by and large, get along, if there was a reason. But the inevitable infighting and challenges for status that would result were going to be tedious, if not downright lethal.

Elize didn’t reply. They rode on through the night, galloping hard, the endurance of their steeds never faltering. More than once, Erikan saw distant campfires and smelt the blood of men. The armies of the Empire were on the move, but he could not tell in which direction they were going. Were they laying siege to Sylvania? Or were the rumours of another invasion from the north true? Was that why Mannfred had chosen now of all times to make such a bold statement of intent?

All of these thoughts rattled in his head as Elize led him towards one of the ruins close to the bone bastion. It was far from any of the campfires that dotted the darkness and had been a watch tower once, he thought. Now it was just crumbled stone, blackened by fire and covered in weeds and moss. He saw that three men waited inside, as he climbed down from his horse and led it to join the others where they were tied to a gibbet. Elize led Erikan into the ruin, and he nodded politely to the others as he ducked through the shattered archway. There was no light, save that of the moon, for they needed none.

‘What is he doing here?’ one of the men growled, one hand on the hilt of the heavy sword belted to his waist. Erikan kept his own hands well away from his blade.

‘The same as you, Anark,’ Erikan said, as Elize went to the other vampire’s side, and put her hand over his, as if to keep him from drawing his blade. Anark von Carstein was a big man, bigger than Erikan, built for war and clad in dark armour composed of serrated plates and swooping, sharp curves. The armour had seen its share of battle, to judge by the dents and scratches that marked it. Anark had been fighting in the Border Princes, the last Erikan had heard, leading an army of the dead on behalf of one petty warlord or another.

Elize leaned into Anark and whispered into his ear. He calmed visibly. She had always had a way with the other vampire, Erikan recalled. Then, much like Erikan himself, Anark was a protégé of the Doyenne of the Red Abbey, and had even been allowed to take the name of von Carstein, something Erikan would likely never achieve. Nor, in truth, did he wish to. He had his own name, and he was content with it. That, he thought, was why she had cooled to him, in the end. She had offered him her name, and he had refused. And so she had found another blood-son, lover and champion. And Erikan had left.

He looked away from them, and met the red gaze of the other von Carstein present. ‘Markos,’ Erikan said, nodding. Markos was hawk-faced and his hair had been greased back, making him resemble nothing so much as a stoat. Where Anark was a simple enough brute, Markos was more cunning. He had a gift for sorcery that few could match, and a tongue like an adder’s bite.

‘Crowfiend, I never thought to see you again,’ Markos said. ‘You know Count Nyktolos, I trust?’ He gestured to the other vampire, who, like Anark and Markos, was clad in a heavy suit of armour. Nyktolos wore a monocle, after the fashion of the Altdorf aristocracy, and his grin stretched from ear to ear, in an unpleasant fashion. Unlike Anark and Markos, his flesh was the colour of a bruised plum, flush with a recent feeding, or perhaps simply mottled by grave-rot. It happened to some of them, if the blood-kiss wasn’t delivered properly.

‘Count,’ Erikan said, bowing shallowly. He’d heard of the other vampire. He’d been a count of Vargravia once, before Konrad had stormed through, in the bad old days. Nyktolos smiled, revealing a mouthful of needle fangs, more than any self-respecting vampire needed, in Erikan’s opinion. If he was Konrad’s get, that and his odd hue were probably the least of his problems.

‘He’s polite. I like him already,’ Nyktolos croaked.

‘Don’t get too attached,’ Anark said. ‘He won’t be staying long. Erikan doesn’t have the stomach for war. A real war, I mean. Not one of those little skirmishes they have west of the Grey Mountains.’

Erikan met Anark’s flat, red gaze calmly. The other vampire was trying to bait him, as he always did. Just why Anark hated him so much, Erikan couldn’t really fathom. He was no threat to Anark. He tried to meet Elize’s eyes, but her attentions remained on her paramour. No, he thought, no matter how much he might wish otherwise, he posed no danger to Anark, in any regard. ‘I hope you weren’t waiting for me,’ he said to Markos, ignoring Anark.

‘No, we were waiting for– Ah! Speak of the devil, and he shall appear,’ Markos said, looking up. The air was filled with the rush of great wings, and a noisome odour flooded the ruin as something heavy struck its top. Rocks tumbled down, dislodged by the new arrival as he crawled down to join them, clinging to the ancient stones like a lizard. ‘You’re late, Alberacht,’ Markos called out.

The hairy body of the newcomer remained splayed across the stones above them for a moment, and then dropped down. Erikan stepped back as Alberacht Nictus rose to his full height. The creature, known in some quarters as the Reaper of Drakenhof, extended a hooked claw and caught Erikan gently by the back of his head. He didn’t resist as the monstrous vampire pulled him close. ‘Hello, boy,’ Alberacht rumbled. His face was human enough, if horribly stretched over a bumpy, malformed skull, but his bloated body was a hideous amalgamation of bat, ape and wolf. He wore little armour, and carried no weapon. Having seen him at work, Erikan knew he needed none. His long claws and powerful muscles made him as dangerous as any charging knight.

‘Master Nictus,’ Erikan said, not meeting the vampire’s bestial gaze. Alberacht was unpredictable, even for a vampire. He looked less human every time Erikan saw him. Sometimes he wondered if that was the fate that awaited him, down the long corridor of centuries. Some vampires remained as they were, frozen forever in their last moment. But others became drunk on slaughter and lost their hold on what little humanity remained to them.

‘Master, he says,’ Alberacht growled. His face twisted into a parody of a smile. ‘Such respect for this old warrior. You see how he respects me?’ The smile faded. ‘Why do the rest of you fail to follow suit?’ He turned his baleful gaze on the others. Bloody spittle oozed from his jowls as he champed his long fangs. ‘Am I not Grand Master of our order? Must I break you on discipline’s altar?’ The others backed off as Alberacht released Erikan and turned towards them. He half spread his leathery wings and his eyes glowed with a manic light. He stank of violence and madness, and Erikan drew well away. Alberacht was fully capable of killing any of them in his rage.

‘Not for centuries, old one,’ Elize said smoothly. ‘You remember, don’t you? You gave up your post and your burdens to Tomas.’ She reached out and stroked Alberacht’s hairy hide, the way one might seek to calm an agitated stallion. Erikan tensed. If Alberacht made to harm her, he would have to be quick. He saw Anark gripping his own blade, and the other vampire nodded tersely when he caught Erikan’s eye. Neither of them wanted to see Elize come to harm, however much they disliked one another.

‘Tomas?’ Alberacht grunted. He folded his wings. ‘Yes, Tomas. A good boy, for a von Carstein.’ He shook himself, like a sleeper awakening from a nightmare, and stroked Elize’s head, as a weary grandfather might stroke his grandchild. ‘I heard the bells.’

‘We all did, old beast,’ Markos said. ‘We are being called to Sternieste.’

‘Then why do we stand here?’ Alberacht asked. ‘The border is just there, mere steps from where we stand.’

‘Well, the giant bloody wall of bone for one,’ Count Nyktolos said, shifting his weight. ‘We’ll have to leave the horses.’

‘No, we won’t,’ Elize said. She looked at Markos and asked, ‘Cousin?’

‘Oh, it’s up to me, is it? Since when did you take charge?’ Markos asked. The flat gazes of Anark and Alberacht met his and he threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Right, yes, fine. I’ll get us in the old-fashioned way. Subtlety, thy name is Elize. Form an orderly queue, gentles all, and Erikan as well, of course. Let’s go home.’

TWO

Dawn was cresting the tops of the hills by the time they reached the foot of the bastion. As the red, watery light washed across the ridges of pale bone, Erikan sought some sign of an entrance, but he saw none as they galloped along its base. ‘How are we getting in there? There’s no gate,’ he shouted to Markos. The other vampire glanced at him over his shoulder and grinned.

‘Who needs a gate?’ Markos laughed. He jerked his reins, causing his horse to rear, and flung out a hand. Dark fire coruscated about his spread fingers for a moment as he roared out a few harsh syllables. A bolt of energy erupted from his palm and slammed into the bone bastion, cracking and splintering it. ‘Master Nictus, if you please!’

There was a shriek from above as Alberacht hurtled down, swooping towards the point of impact. The gigantic vampire slammed into the wall and tore through it with a thunderous crash. Markos kicked his horse into motion before the dust had cleared, and Erikan and the others rode hard after him. The wall began to repair itself with a horrible rustling sound as they rode through the gap. And there was something else – a weirdling light that spread about them as they rode, and Erikan felt as if something had opened a burning hole in his belly. He heard Elize gasp and Count Nyktolos curse out loud, and saw that they were all lit by witch-fire, but only for a moment. Then they were clear of the wall, and the feeling faded.

The first thing he noticed was that the sky was dark. The second thing he noticed was the dull, rhythmic pealing of distant bells. ‘The bells of Sternieste,’ Alberacht crooned, swiping shards of bone from his shoulders. ‘I thought never to hear their lovely song again.’

‘Nor I,’ Markos muttered. Erikan saw that he was looking at the wall.

‘What is it?’ he asked. Thunder rumbled somewhere amongst the thick charcoal-coloured clouds that choked the dark sky. There was lightning over the distant hills. Erikan felt invigorated and captivated, all at the same time.

‘Did you feel something? As we passed over the border?’ Markos asked.

‘I did. You?’

‘Aye,’ Markos grunted. His eyes narrowed to slits for a moment. Then, with a growl, he shook himself. ‘We should go. If the bells are sounding, then Mannfred will be at Sternieste. And so will Tomas and the others.’

They rode on, more slowly now. Sylvania was much as Erikan remembered it, from his last, brief visit. He had been at Elize’s side then, learning the ways of their kind, and she had brought him to Sternieste for a gathering of the Drakenhof Order. Elize had spoken for him, and Alberacht had welcomed him into the order with terrifying heartiness. The old monster had been a good Grand Master, as far as it went. Erikan glanced up at Nictus as he swooped overhead, and felt a pang of what might have been sadness.

They made their way to the castle by the old paths, known to their kind. They passed isolated villages and outposts that sought to throw back the omnipresent darkness with torches mounted on posts and lanterns chained to the walls. There was still life of sorts in Sylvania, though how long that would be the case Erikan didn’t care to guess. Most vampires needed little in the way of nourishment, but then, most had the self-control of a fox in a chicken coop. Many of those little villages would not last out the week, he knew.

They rode through the camps of Strigany nomads and sent ghoul-packs scrambling from their path as their deathless steeds sped along the dark track. Loping wolves and shrieking bats kept pace with them from time to time, as did other, worse things. Erikan had heard that when Mannfred had returned to the damned province and first set about the taming of Sylvania, he had thrown open the vaults of Castle Drakenhof and let loose every foul thing that Vlad had ever interred. All were heading east, towards Castle Sternieste. It was as if every dark soul were being drawn to that distant manse, like metal splinters to a lodestone.

It looked like a grasping talon, its trio of crooked towers jutting ferociously towards the moon above. Even from a distance, the crumbling citadel was magnificent. It was a feat of engineering that had, in its day, claimed a third of the lives employed in its construction, and their tattered souls still clung to the rain-slick stones. It crouched in the open, seemingly in defiance of those who might march against it, and Erikan could guess why Mannfred had chosen it – Sternieste was impressive, as citadels went, but it was also situated perfectly along the main artery of Sylvania. Any invaders who took the traditional routes would have to take Sternieste, before they could do anything else. Sternieste, more so than Fort Oberstyre or Castle Drakenhof, was the keystone of the province.

There was also the fact that Castle Sternieste rose high over a field of rolling hillocks. Each of the latter was a cairn of stupendous size and depth, from a bygone age. It might contain a hundred corpses or merely one, but whatever the number of its inhabitants, each dome of soil and withered, yellow grass pulsed with dark energy. And each and every one of them had been broken into. As they rode through the sea of graves, Erikan could feel the ancient dead stirring, disturbed by the passing presence of the vampires.

They passed the burgeoning earthworks being erected by an army of the recently dead. Zombie knights in shattered armour laboured beside equally dead handgunners and militiamen in the mud and dirt, raising bulwarks and setting heavy stakes. Sternieste’s master was readying his lands for siege.

Anark had taken the lead, and he led them towards the gaping main gate of the castle. The portcullis had been raised and the gates unbarred and flung open. There were no visible guards, but then, did a citadel of the dead really need them?

As they clattered into the wide, open courtyard, a flock of crows hurtled skywards, disturbed from feasting on the bodies inside the gibbet cages that decorated the inner walls. Heaps of rotting bodies lay everywhere in the courtyard, strewn about like discarded weapons and covered in shrouds of more squabbling carrion birds.

‘Lovely,’ Markos said, as he slipped out of his saddle. ‘It’s like paradise, except not.’

‘Quiet,’ Elize murmured. She tapped the side of her head. ‘Can’t you feel it, cousin? Can’t you feel him? He’s watching us.’

‘Who?’ Erikan asked, though he knew the answer as well as any of them. He could feel the presence of another mind scrabbling in the shadow of his own, prying at his thoughts and probing his feelings.

‘Who else? Welcome to Sylvania, my brethren,’ a voice called out as the doors of the outer keep opened with a squeal of long-rusted hinges. The heavy, bloated bodies of two gigantic ghouls, each the size of three of its lesser brethren, burdened with chains and rusty cow bells, moved into view as they shoved the doors open. Each of the creatures was shackled to a door, and they squalled and bellowed as a group of armoured figures stepped between them and moved to meet the newcomers.

‘Well, look what the dire wolf dragged in, finally. Elize, Markos and… some others. Wonderful, and you’re all late, by the way. I expected you days ago,’ Tomas von Carstein said as he drew close. The current Grand Master of the Drakenhof Templars looked much the same as he had when Erikan had last seen him. He’d been handsome enough as a living man, but centuries of undeath had crafted him over into a thing of cold, perfect beauty. The warriors who accompanied him were cut from much the same stripe – blood knights, Templars of the Drakenhof Order, who’d fought on thousands of battlefields. Each of them was a capable warrior, more than a match for any living man or beast. Erikan knew one or two of them, and these he nodded to politely. They returned the gesture warily – as Elize’s get, he’d been inducted into the inner circle of the order almost immediately, and Tomas was among those who’d been somewhat incensed by what he saw as her profligate ways.

‘Welcome to Castle Sternieste, where the seeds of our damnation have been sown,’ Tomas continued, extending his arms in a mocking gesture of welcome.

‘Very poetic, cousin. But I, for one, have been damned for a very long time,’ Markos said. Tomas laughed harshly.

‘This is a different sort of damnation, I’m afraid.’ He frowned. ‘We’re trapped.’

‘What do you mean? Explain yourself,’ Anark demanded. Tomas made a face.

‘Must I? You felt it, didn’t you? That grotesque frisson as you crossed the border?’ He looked at Anark. ‘We are trapped here, in Sylvania. We cannot cross the borders, thanks to the sorceries of our enemies – rather, say, Mannfred’s enemies.’

‘Lord Mannfred, you mean,’ Elize corrected.

‘Yes, yes,’ Tomas said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘Lord Mannfred, in his infinite wisdom, decided to openly secede our fair homeland from the Empire. They responded in kind.’ He laughed. ‘They locked the door behind us after we left, it seems.’ His laughter grew, becoming a harsh cackle. He shook his head and looked at them. ‘Still, I am glad to see you. At least I’ll be in good company for the next millennia.’

‘Are we the only ones to arrive?’ Alberacht rumbled. ‘Where are the others? Where is the rest of the inner circle? Where is my old friend Vyktros von Krieger? Where are the Brothers Howl and the Warden of Corpse Run?’

‘Maybe some of us were smart enough to run the other way,’ Markos muttered.

Tomas laughed harshly. ‘Vyktros is dead, killed trying to breach the damnable sorceries that have us trapped. As for the others, I don’t know. What I do know is that Mannfred wished to see us – you – as soon as you arrived. And he’s been getting impatient.’ He smiled. ‘It is to be as it was in the old days, it seems, with us at his right hand. Exactly what it is that we’ll be doing, seeing as we are confined to this charming garden of earthly pleasures, is entirely up for debate. Come,’ Tomas said. He turned and stalked across the bridge. Erikan and the others shared a look, and then followed their Grand Master through the dark gates of Castle Sternieste.

The castle was a hornet’s nest of activity. Skeletons clad in the armour and colours of the Drakenhof Guard marched to and fro, in a mockery of the drills they’d performed in life. Bats of various sizes clung to the ceilings and walls, filling the air with their soft chittering. Ghouls loped across the desiccated grounds, the leaders of the various packs fighting to assert dominance. The dead of ten centuries had been wakened and readied for war, and they stood, waiting silently for the order to march.

There were vampires in evidence as well, more of them than Erikan had ever seen in one place. Von Carsteins as well as others – Lahmians, in courtly finery, and red-armoured Blood Dragons, as well as gargoyle-like Strigoi. For the first time in centuries, Castle Sternieste rang with the sound of voices and skulduggery. They clustered in the knaves and open chambers, sipping blood from delicate goblets, or fed on the unlucky men and women rounded up at Mannfred’s orders from what few nearby villages had not been abandoned and dragged to Sternieste to serve as a larder for the growing mob of predators. They spoke quietly in small groups or pointedly ignored one another. They duelled in the gardens and plotted in the antechambers.

None of them attempted to hinder Tomas and his companions. Everyone knew who the Drakenhof Templars were, and gave them room – even the scions of Blood Keep, who eyed them the way a wolf might eye a rival from another pack. No one was tempted to try their luck at gainsaying him just yet. It wouldn’t be long, though. Erikan could smell resentment on the air. Vampires, by their very nature, seethed with the urge to dominate and they chafed at being under another’s dominion.

Tomas led them through the castle, up curling stone stairwells and through damp corridors where cold air, and things worse than air, slipped in through broken walls. Ghostly knights galloped silently through the corridors, and wailing hags swept upwards, all drawn in the same direction as the vampiric Templars. It was there, in the bell tower of Sternieste, that the great black bells tolled, calling the dead to their master’s side. The sound of the bells was as the creak of a coffin lid and the thud of a mausoleum door; it was the crunch of bone and the wet slap of torn flesh; it was the sound all dead things knew, deep in the marrow of their bones.

Tomas’s warriors peeled off as they approached the narrow stairwell that led up to the bell tower. The meeting was obviously only for the inner circle. Erikan felt a twinge of doubt as they ascended, and the others seemed to share his concern, save for Anark and Elize, who chatted gaily to Tomas as they went. Markos caught Erikan’s eye and made a face. Something was going on. Erikan wondered if Mannfred had truly summoned them, or this was some ploy on Tomas’s part. Or Elize’s, a small, treacherous voice murmured in the depths of his mind. Those who took the von Carstein name tended towards ambition. To assume the name was a symbol of your devotion to the ideals of Vlad von Carstein, of a vampire-state, of an empire of the dead, ruled by the masters of the night. Only the ambitious or the insane announced their intentions so openly.

When they climbed out into the bell tower, the air throbbed with the graveyard churn of the bells, and the soft cacophony of the gathered spectral hosts that surrounded the top of the tower. Hundreds, if not thousands of spirits floated above the tower, pulled to and chained by the dull clangour. The bell-ringers were ghouls, and they gave vent to bone-rattling howls and shrieks as they hauled on the ropes.

And beyond them, his back to the newcomers, his eyes fixed on the innumerable spirits dancing on the night wind, stood Mannfred von Carstein. He had one foot set on the parapet, and he leaned on his raised knee as he gazed upwards. He did not turn as they arrived, and only glanced at them when Tomas drew his sword partially from its sheath and slammed it down.

‘Count Mannfred, you have called and we, your most loyal servants, have come. The inner circle of the Drakenhof Order is ready to ride forth at your command and at your discretion,’ Tomas said.

‘I’m sure you are,’ Mannfred said. His eyes flickered over each of them in turn, and Erikan couldn’t help but feel nervous. He’d only ever served the creature before him at a remove. To see him in the flesh was something else again. Mannfred was tall, taller even than Anark, taller than any normal man, if not gigantic. He seemed swollen with power, and his gilt-edged, black armour was of the finest quality, despite its archaic appearance. A heavy cloak made from the hairy pelt of a gigantic wolf hung down from his shoulders, and a long-bladed sword with an ornate basket hilt was sheathed on his hip. His scalp had been shorn clean of hair, and his face was aquiline and aristocratic, with a fine-boned grace to his features. ‘While I am glad that you have come, I expected more of you, cousins and gentles all.’

‘These are the greatest warriors of the order, my lord,’ Tomas said. ‘The blood of the von Carsteins runs thick in the veins of the inner circle. Will you do us the honour of explaining your purpose in summoning us?’

‘I should think it would be obvious, cousin,’ Mannfred said. He reached out a hand as the ghost of a wailing child drifted close, as if to comfort the spectre. Instead, he crooked his fingers and swept them through its features, causing the ghost to momentarily stretch and distort. ‘I am readying myself for the war to come. To wage war, I require warriors. Hence, your presence. Or must I explain further?’

‘No, no, most wise and fierce lord,’ Tomas said, looking at the others meaningfully. ‘But one must wonder why we have been summoned into a land that we cannot then leave.’

Mannfred gave no sign that Tomas’s words had struck a nerve, but somehow Erikan knew that they had. The lord of Sylvania examined Tomas for a moment. Erikan saw his eyes slide towards those of Elize, who inclined her head slightly. His hand found the hilt of his blade. Something was definitely going on. He was sure of it now. There was an undercurrent here he didn’t like. ‘What are you implying, cousin?’ Mannfred asked.

Tomas cocked his head. ‘Surely you can feel it, my lord. It is the talk of your court, and of the guests who shelter beneath the bowers of your generosity. The borders are protected against our kind. We can enter, but not leave. And as mighty as your walls are, and as great as your army might be, we find ourselves wondering why you gave us no warning?’ He looked around him, at Erikan and the others, seeking support. Anark began to nod dully, but Elize’s hand on his arm stopped him. Erikan traded glances with Markos. The latter smiled thinly and gave a slight shake of his head.

‘If I had, dear cousin, would you have come?’ Mannfred asked, turning away.

Tomas tapped the pommel of his blade with a finger, and gave Mannfred a speculative look. ‘So what you’re saying is that you’ve knowingly trapped us here, in this reeking sty you call a fiefdom. Wonderful, truly. Vlad’s cunning was as nothing compared to your own ineffable wisdom.’ He turned to look at the others again. ‘Yes, your brilliance is as bright as the light of the Witch Moon in full glow, my Lord Mannfred. I, and the rest of the inner circle of the Drakenhof Templars, stand in awe of your puissance and forethought in calling us all back and trapping us here, in this overlarge tomb of yours.’ Tomas clapped politely. ‘Well done, sirrah. What will be your next trick, pray tell? Perhaps you’d like to juggle a few blessed relics, or maybe go for a stroll in the noonday sun?’

‘Are you finished?’ Mannfred asked.

‘No,’ Tomas said, all trace of jocularity gone from his voice. ‘Not even a little bit. I – we – came in good faith, and at your request, Lord Mannfred. And you have betrayed even that shred of consideration and for what – so that we might share your captivity?’

‘So that you might help me break the chains that bind Sylvania, dear cousin,’ Mannfred purred. ‘And you did not do me a favour, Tomas. You owe me your allegiance. I am the true and lawful lord of Sylvania, and your order is pledged to my service, wherever and whenever I so require.’

‘Not quite.’ Tomas smiled thinly. ‘We do serve the Count of Sylvania, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you, cousin.’

Erikan blinked. Even for a vampire, Tomas was fast. The gap between thought and deed for him was but the barest of moments. His blade was in his hand and arcing towards Mannfred’s shaved pate as he finished speaking, and the other had started to turn.

Mannfred was not so quick. But then, he didn’t have to be. Tomas’s blade smashed down into Mannfred’s waiting palm, halted mere inches from the crown of his head. Mannfred examined the blade for a moment, and then tore it from Tomas’s grip with a casual twitch of his wrist. Still holding the sword by the blade, he looked at Tomas. ‘In a way, Tomas, you are correct. However, in another, altogether more important way, you are decidedly incorrect.’ Without a flicker of warning, Mannfred caught Tomas a ringing blow across the side of his head with the hilt of his sword.

Tomas was sent flying by the force of the blow. Mannfred tossed the now-broken sword over the parapet and strode towards the fallen Grand Master. Erikan and the others drew back. Tomas had made his play without consulting them, and the consequences would be on his head alone. He’d likely hoped they’d join him, when they learned of the trap. Then, he had never been very smart, Erikan reflected as Mannfred reached down and grabbed a handful of Tomas’s hair. Mannfred hauled the other vampire to his feet effortlessly. ‘This, Tomas, is why I called you back. This weakness, this bravado, this mistaken impression that you, that any of you, are my equal.’ He pulled Tomas close. ‘I have no equal, cousin. I am Mannfred von Carstein, first, last and only. And I cannot abide weakness.’ He flung Tomas against the wall hard enough to rattle the latter’s armour. ‘I have begun something. And I would have my servants at my disposal, rather than traipsing off, pursuing their own petty goals when they should be pursuing mine.’

Tomas clawed at the wall and dragged himself upright. He glared at Mannfred. ‘The only weak one here is you. I remember you, Mannfred, cousin, scrabbling at Vlad’s heels, hiding from Konrad – you were a rat then, and you’re a rat now, cowering in your nest.’

Mannfred was silent for a moment. His face betrayed no expression. Then, he made a single, sharp gesture. The air and shadows around Tomas seemed to congeal, becoming sharp and solid. For a moment, Erikan was reminded of the jaws of a wolf closing about a field mouse. The darkness obscured Tomas, and there came a strange squeal as though metal were scraping against metal, and then a horrid grinding sound that made Erikan’s fangs ache in his gums.

Tomas began to scream. Blood spattered the stones, and torn and bent bits of armour clattered to the ground. To Erikan, it sounded as if the Grand Master were being flayed alive. Whatever was happening, Mannfred watched it with glittering eyes and with a slight, savage smile creasing his aquiline features.

When it was done, there was little left of Tomas – just something red and raw that lay in the detritus of its former glory, mewling shrilly. Mannfred looked down at the squirming ruin and said, ‘Anark, see to your predecessor. I have other, more important matters to attend.’

Anark started. His nostrils flared, but he gave no other sign that his sudden rise to prominence had surprised him. His lips peeled back from his fangs as he drew his sword and advanced on the remains of his former comrade.

Mannfred stepped back and turned to Elize. He stroked her cheek in such a way that Erikan thought it lucky for one of them that Anark was occupied with his butchery. Mannfred leaned towards her and murmured, ‘And so I have kept my promise, cousin.’ Erikan glanced at the others surreptitiously, but he seemed to have been the only one to hear the exchange. Mannfred drew his cloak about him and left them on the parapet. Erikan waited for the sound of his boots to fade and then said, ‘Well, that was unexpected.’

‘But not unwelcome,’ Elize said. She drifted towards Anark, and rubbed a spot of blood from his cheek. ‘Tomas was a fool, and we all know it. His end has been a century in coming, and I, for one, am glad that we do not have to put up with him longer than was absolutely necessary. If we are trapped here, then Mannfred is our best chance of escape. And besides, Tomas had no concept of honour or loyalty. Anark will make a better Grand Master, I think.’

Anark grinned and ran his hand along his blade, stripping Tomas’s blood from it. ‘Unless someone objects?’ He looked at Erikan as he spoke. ‘Well, Crowfiend?’

Erikan didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I wasn’t under the assumption that we had been given a vote.’ He inclined his head. ‘Long live the new Grand Master.’ The others followed suit, murmuring their congratulations.

Alberacht even looked as if he meant it.

THREE

Mannfred strode through the damp, cool corridors of Sternieste, trying to rein in the anger that had threatened to overwhelm him for days now. The hunched shapes of his servants scurried out of his path as he walked, but he gave them little notice.

Gelt’s barrier of faith still resisted every attempt to shatter it. He had wrung his library dry of magics, and had made not the slightest bit of difference. Soon enough, once the northern invasion had been thrown back, as they always, inevitably were, Karl Franz would turn his attentions back to the festering boil on the backside of his pitiful empire and lance it once and for all. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to go. It might take centuries, or millions of lives, but Mannfred had studied the Emperor for a decade, and he knew that there was no more ruthless a man in the world, save himself. Karl Franz would happily sacrifice Ostland and Stirland, if it meant scouring Sylvania from the map.

Mannfred wanted to scream, to rant and rave, to succumb to the red thirst and rampage through some village somewhere. Everything he had worked for, everything he had conquered death for, was coming apart in his hands before he’d even begun, leaving him still in Vlad’s shadow. Tomas had scored a palpable hit with that painful truth, before Mannfred had dealt with him. That the blow was not physical made it no less painful, nor any less lingering. Most of his followers knew better than to question him, either out of fear or because they lacked the wit to see the trap for what it was. In a way, the preponderance of the latter was his own fault. He had eliminated most, if not all, of his rivals amongst the aristocracy of the night. Vlad had bestowed the gift of immortality as a reward, without much thought as to the consequences, and Konrad had been even more profligate, turning dockside doxies, common mercenaries and, in one unfortunate incident that was best forgotten, a resident of the Moot.

Mannfred had dealt with all of them, hunting them down one by one over the centuries since his resurrection from the swamps of Hel Fenn. Any vampire of the von Carstein bloodline who would not serve him, or was of no use to him, he destroyed, even as he had destroyed Tomas. Most of Vlad’s get had been swept off the board at the outset. Tomas and the other members of the inner circle of the Drakenhof Templars were among the last of them, and with Tomas’s death, Mannfred thought that they were sufficiently cowed. Elize was more pragmatic than the others, and could be counted on to keep them under control. At least in so far as monsters like Nictus, or weasels like Markos, could be controlled.

He reached up and ran both hands over his shorn scalp. He wondered if, when all was said and done, he would finally be free of Vlad’s ghost. When he had finally broken the world’s spine and supped on its life’s blood, would that nagging, mocking shade depart.

No. No, I think not, Vlad’s voice whispered. Mannfred neither paused, nor responded. The voice was only in his head. It was only a trick of long, wasted centuries, some self-defeating urge that he could ignore. Am I though? Or am I really here with you still, my best beloved son? the voice murmured. Mannfred ground his teeth.

‘No, you are not,’ he hissed.

The voice faded, leaving only the echo of a ghostly chuckle to mark its passing. Mannfred hated that chuckle. It had always been Vlad’s signal that he was missing something that the latter thought obvious. And perhaps he was. But he had weighty matters on his mind at the moment. Most notably that his demesnes were already subject to invasion, albeit not a large one, and not one initiated by the Empire. But it was still enough to give Mannfred pause. His nascent realm had already suffered attack once, by a horde of daemons. Those had been easy enough to see off, but this new threat was proving to be more persistent. He’d sent out wolves and bats to shadow the intruder’s approach, but every time the beasts came closer to the newcomer, Mannfred’s control over them had slipped away. That could only mean that the invader was another master of the Corpse Geometries, and one unlike the other wretched creatures that had thus far made it across the border.

Whoever it was had made no attempt to either openly challenge or offer fealty to the lord of Sylvania. Mannfred had at first suspected that it was the self-styled Lichemaster, Heinrich Kemmler, who’d been his ally for an all-too-brief moment, before he’d chafed beneath the goad and taken his leave of Mannfred’s court, his hulking undead bodyguard Krell following behind him. Mannfred had kept tabs on the necromancer, and the last he’d heard the lunatic sorcerer had raised an army of the dead to lay siege to Castle Reikguard, for reasons fathomable only to him.

But the intruder’s aura, the taste of his power, was different from Kemmler’s. It was older, for one thing, with its roots sunk deep in disciplines that had existed for millennia. And it was greater, possibly even a match for Mannfred’s own. There were few creatures who could wield such power so negligently – that wretched creature Zacharias the Ever-Living for one, or that perfumed dolt Dietrich von Dohl, the so-called Crimson Lord of Sylvania. And this newcomer was neither.

Which left only one possibility.

Mannfred forced down the anger as it threatened to surge again. If the intruder was who he suspected, he would need all of his faculties to deal with him in the manner he deserved. But before he marshalled his energies for such a conflict, he would need to be certain. Time was at a premium, and he could not afford to waste his carefully husbanded strength battling shadows. That said, the thought of such a conflict did not displease Mannfred. Indeed, after the weeks of frustration he had endured, such a confrontation was an almost welcome diversion. To be free at last to strive and destroy would be a great relief to him.

The loud, raucous communal croak of a number of carrion birds let him know he’d reached his destination, and he quickly assumed a mask of genteel calm. It wouldn’t do to show any weakness, emotional or otherwise, to a creature like the Crowfiend. He’d asked Elize’s creature to meet him in the castle’s high garden. There were things Mannfred needed to ask him, to lend weight to or dismiss those theories now burgeoning in his mind.

A brace of skeletons, clad in bronze cuirasses and holding bronze-headed, long-hafted axes, guarded the entrance to the open-air, walled garden. He stepped past them, and as he entered the garden, a flock of black-feathered birds leapt skywards, screaming in indignation. He watched them swoop and wheel for a moment. Vlad had always felt a ghastly affection for the beasts. Mannfred had never understood how a creature as powerful as Vlad could waste his attentions feeding sweetmeats to such vermin, when there were more important matters to be attended to.

The Crowfiend sat on one of the cracked, discoloured marble benches that encircled the garden’s single, crooked tree. The fat-trunked monstrosity was long dead, but somehow it still grew, drawing gods alone knew what sort of nourishment from the castle into whose mortar it had sunk its roots. Erikan stood as Mannfred approached. Mannfred gestured for him to sit. He gazed at the other vampire for a moment.

The Crowfiend had a face that radiated feral placidity. There was no obvious guile in him. Cunning, yes, and cleverness, but no guile. He was not a subtle creature, but neither was he stupid. There was something familiar there as well – a raw need that Mannfred recognised in himself. A hunger that was greater than any bloodthirst or flesh-greed. Mannfred drew close to the other vampire and caught his chin in an iron grip. He pulled Erikan’s face up. ‘I can see the ghoul-taint in your face, boy. Elize tells me that your kin were corpse-eaters, though not so debased as those that prowl these halls.’

‘They were, my lord,’ Erikan said.

‘They were burned, I am given to understand.’

‘Yes,’ Erikan said, and he displayed no more emotion than if he’d been speaking of a rat he’d killed. Mannfred wondered if such lack of feeling was a mask. Vampires, contrary to folk belief and superstition, did not lose the ability to feel emotion. Indeed, undeath often enhanced such things. Sometimes every emotion was redoubled and magnified, stretched almost into caricature. Love became lust, passion became obsession, and hatred… Ah, hatred became something so venomous as to make even daemons flinch. And sometimes, they became as dust, only a fading memory of emotion, a brief, dull flicker of fires burned low.

‘If I were to say to you that the world is soon to die, what would you say?’

‘I’d say that I’d like to see that, my lord,’ Erikan said.

Mannfred blinked. He meant it, too. He let him go. ‘Is existence so burdensome to you?’

Erikan shrugged. ‘No. I merely meant that if the world is to burn, I might as well help stoke the fires,’ he said.

‘You believe it is time for a change, then?’

Erikan looked away. ‘Change doesn’t frighten me, my lord.’

‘No, perhaps it doesn’t, at that. Perhaps that is why Elize chose you – she has always had a streak of perversity in her, my lovely cousin. She was a sister of Shallya once, you know. She was at Isabella’s side, when she passed over from the wasting illness, and Vlad wrenched her back from Morr’s clutches. Poor, gentle Elize was Isabella’s first meal upon awakening. And she served as the countess’s handmaiden until her untimely end.’

Erikan said nothing. Mannfred smiled thinly. ‘Very loyal is Elize. Loyal, trustworthy, her ambition kept on the tightest of leashes. Why did she toss you aside, I wonder?’ The other vampire cocked his head, but did not reply. For a moment, Mannfred was reminded of a carrion bird. He gestured airily. ‘I don’t suppose it matters. She brought you over, and that is more a gift than most get in this fallen world.’ He turned away and strode to the tree. ‘You came from Couronne, I’m given to understand,’ Mannfred said. He gazed up at the tree. Idly he jabbed a talon into the spongy surface of the trunk. Black ichors oozed out of the cut. He glanced back at Erikan and sucked the sour sap off his finger.

Erikan nodded slowly. ‘I did.’

‘The Serpent fell, then,’ Mannfred said.

Erikan nodded again. ‘We were defeated.’

‘And what of Arkhan the Black?’

Erikan jolted, as if struck. ‘What about him, my lord?’

‘What happened to him in the aftermath?’

‘I don’t know, my lord,’ Erikan said. ‘I and– I was with Mallobaude’s bodyguard.’ His face twisted slightly. He shook himself. ‘Some say Arkhan was never there at Couronne to begin with. That he had used Mallobaude as a diversion for some other scheme. Others say that the Green Knight struck off his head as he had Mallobaude’s.’

Mannfred grunted. ‘No such luck,’ he muttered. He looked back at Erikan. ‘But he was there – in Bretonnia – of this you’re certain?’

‘I saw him, though only at a distance, my lord. It was him. He rode in a chariot of bone, which bore banners of crackling witch-fire and was pulled by skeletal steeds surmounted by the skulls of men, which screamed out in agony as they galloped.’

Mannfred nodded. ‘That sounds just ostentatious enough to be truthful,’ he murmured. The liche had long since lost any subtlety he had possessed in life. Arkhan had none of a vampire’s inbuilt sense of discretion. He was almost… theatrical.

What had the liche been after, he wondered? He was about to inquire further as to Arkhan’s activities when movement drew his eye, and he glanced up. A pale face stared down at him from among the crooked, arthritic branches of the tree, its features twisted in a mocking smile as flickering shadows gathered at the corner of his vision. Was it Vlad’s face? Or someone else’s… The features were at once Vlad’s and those of a youth from some other land, handsome and terrible and noble and bestial all at once. The thin-lipped mouth moved, but no sound came out. Nonetheless, Mannfred heard it as clear as if it had whispered in his ear. ‘La Maisontaal Abbey,’ he muttered. He blinked and shook himself. The face was gone, as were the shadows, leaving behind only a dark echo of a man’s sonorous chuckle. He felt like a child being guided towards a treat. Irritated, he gouged the trunk of the tree again, leaving five suppurating wounds in its soft bark.

Of course it was La Maisontaal. Of course! Why else would the liche have bothered with a backwater like Bretonnia? Mannfred stared at the sap seeping from the tree. But why come here, now? Unless… He grunted. Arkhan’s goals were as unsubtle as the liche himself. He had ever been Nagash’s tool. He had no more free will than the dead who served him.

He was coming for those items that Mannfred now possessed, and had spent no little effort in acquiring. His lips peeled back from his fangs as he contemplated the audacity of the creature – to come here, to Sylvania, to take what was Mannfred’s by right of blood and conquest? No, no, that would not do.

‘Once a thief, always a thief,’ he snarled. He turned, his cloak flaring about him like the stretched wing of a gigantic bat. Erikan started, and tried to stand as Mannfred swooped upon him. He grabbed the other vampire gently by the throat with both hands, forcing him to remain still. ‘Thank you, boy, for your candour. It is much appreciated,’ Mannfred purred. ‘Tell your mistress and her oaf of a progeny Anark to ready the defences of this citadel. I expect the Drakenhof Templars to defend what is mine with their lives, if it comes to it.’

He released Erikan and strode towards the doorway, cloak swirling. Erikan rose to his feet and asked, ‘And what of you, Lord Mannfred? What should I say you are doing?’

‘I, dear boy, am going to confront the invader in person. I would take measure of my enemy before crushing his skull to powder beneath my boot-heel.’

If he had been capable of it, Arkhan the Black would have been in a foul mood. As it was, he merely felt a low throb of dissatisfaction as he led his rotting, stumbling forces through the blighted foothills of Vargravia. It had been a matter of mere moments to use his magics to rip a hole in the immense bone wall that carved off Sylvania from the rest of the world, but the blackened and shattered bone had repaired itself with an impressive speed. More than half of his army had been left on the other side of the gap, but there was nothing for it. He could always raise more to replace them. If there was one thing that Sylvania didn’t lack, it was corpses.

And it would be easier now, as well. There was something in the air, here; or, rather, there was something missing. He looked up, scanning the dark sky overhead. It had been daylight when he’d crossed the border, only moments before. But the skies of Sylvania were as black as pitch, and charnel winds caused the trees to rustle in a way that, had he still possessed hackles, would have caused them to bristle. He could taste death on the wind the way another might smell the smoke of not-so-distant fire.

But despite all of that, they were going too slowly. It had taken him longer than he’d hoped to reach Sylvania. The power of Chaos was growing, and Arkhan could feel the world quiver, like a man afflicted with ague. The winds of magic blew erratically, and things from outside the walls of reality were clambering over the threshold in ever-increasing numbers. More than once, he’d been forced to defend himself from cackling nightmares from the outer void, drawn to the scent of sorcery that permeated him. Beasts gathered in the hills and forests, making them traps for the unwary, and the land heaved with conflict in a way it never had before. It was as if the world were tearing itself apart in a frenzy.

Perhaps that was why his master had begun to speak to him once more. Ever since he had been resurrected from his first death by Nagash’s magics, an echo of the latter’s voice had occupied his head. A comforting murmur that had never truly faded or weakened, even when Nagash himself had ceased to be. For years he had refused to acknowledge it for what it was, and had lied to himself, boasting of autonomy to the soulless husks that did his bidding. An easy thing to do when the voice grew dim, retreating to a barely heard buzz of mental static. But, over the course of recent decades, it had begun to grow in volume again. It had whispered to him in his black tower, compelling him to rise and strive once more, though there seemed to be no reason to do so.

His first inkling that it was not merely a stirring in the dregs of his imagination was when the armies of Mannfred von Carstein had marched on the ruins of Lahmia. Such arrogance was well within the remit of every vampire he’d ever met, but the sheer scale of the undertaking was a thing unmatched in his experience. Von Carstein had wanted something from the ruins of Lahmia. Whether he’d found it or not, Arkhan did not know. Von Carstein had fled before the might of Lybaras and its High Queen. But something had compelled the vampire to strike at Lahmia, and then later, Nagashizzar.

When Queen Khalida had made to return the favour a few centuries later, Arkhan had travelled with her to Sylvania, in pursuit of one of Mannfred’s get. Mannfred himself was long dead by that point, sunk into the mire of Hel Fenn, but the dark spirit that had compelled him to attack the Lands of the Dead was obviously present in those creatures of his creation. They came again and again, looking for something. In this case, it had been one of Nagash’s lesser staves of power – not Alakanash, the Great Staff, but a weaker version of it.

And like all tools forged by the Great Necromancer, it had had a whisper of his consciousness in it. Nagash had ever imparted something of himself, something of his vast and terrible soul, in everything of his making. Arkhan had taken the staff for his own, and though he’d held it aloft, the voice he’d long thought banished from his mind returned. It had howled in his mind, the chains of an ancient subjugation had rattled and he had begun his quest.

Upon Nagash’s destruction by the brute hillman now venerated by the people of the Empire, those artefacts of his design had been scattered to the four winds by plot and chance. The will that pressed upon Arkhan’s own had whispered to him his new task – to find these missing treasures. He was to seek out and gather the nine Books of Nagash, the mighty Crown of Sorcery, the Black Armour of Morikhane and the Great Staff, Alakanash, all of which had vanished into the weft and way of history. And there was the Fellblade of foul memory, and certain other things that must be brought together. Lastly, he required the withered Claw of Nagash, struck from the Great Necromancer’s arm by the edge of the Fellblade, and lost for millennia.

Once all of these had been gathered, Arkhan could begin the last great working. Then, and only then, could the Great Necromancer return to the world, which was his by right of birth and fate. And it was Arkhan’s task to help Nagash do so, even if it meant his obliteration in the doing of it. Such thoughts had rebounded against the walls of his skull for centuries, growing stronger and stronger, until it had reached a crescendo of such power that Arkhan was hard pressed to tell his thoughts from those of his master.

Two of the Books of Nagash were in his possession even now, strapped to the backs of his servants. And he knew where Alakanash and the Black Armour were. But someone had beaten him to the other items, or so the voice in his skull whispered again and again. And that someone, he had been assured, was Mannfred von Carstein, resurrected from the grave even as Arkhan himself had been.

That the information had come from the sore-encrusted lips of one as untrustworthy as Heinrich Kemmler, the self-proclaimed Lichemaster, did not make Arkhan doubt its veracity overmuch. Kemmler had returned to the Grey Mountains after some time in the Empire, retreating to lick his wounds after nearly losing his head to the bite of a dwarf axe at Castle Reikguard. Mallobaude had sought him out, despite Arkhan’s objections. The Lichemaster could not be trusted in such matters. His mind was disordered and he chafed at subordination.

Nonetheless, he had been intrigued to learn of Kemmler’s brief alliance with von Carstein, as well as the vampire’s acquisition of an elven princess of some standing. Kemmler had seen several of the items in question during this affair, and he, being no fool whatever his other proclivities, knew that there was some black plan brewing in the vampire’s crooked brain.

What that plan was, Kemmler hadn’t been able to say, and Arkhan felt disinclined to guess. The Books of Nagash were tomes of great power, and the Crown was a relic beyond all others. Any one of them would have served Mannfred adequately in whatever petty dreams fed his ambition. But to gather them all? That was a mystery indeed.

From somewhere far behind him, there was a great crackle of blossoming bone. He turned to watch as the yellowing shell of the wall repaired itself at last. A number of his slower followers were caught and pulverised, their rotting carcasses disintegrating as spears and branches of bone tore through them. Arkhan leaned on his staff, one fleshless palm resting on the pommel of the great tomb-blade that sat in its once-ornate and now much-reduced sheath on his hip.

‘Well, that’s interesting,’ Arkhan rasped. It had required great magic to create that wall, and maintain it. Mannfred had been busy. He reached up and scratched the maggoty chin of the zombie cat laying across his shoulders. He’d found the animal in Quenelles and, on some dark, unexplainable whim, resurrected it. In life, it had been a scar-faced tomcat, big and lanky and foul-tempered. Now, it was still as big and even worse-tempered, albeit sloughing off its hair and skin at an alarming rate, even for a zombie. Arkhan suspected that the animal was doing it to be contrary. The cat gurgled in a parody of pleasure and Arkhan clicked his teeth at it. ‘Isn’t that interesting?’

Mannfred had sealed off Sylvania efficiently enough, but Arkhan did not think he was responsible for the sour ring of faith that now enclosed the province as effectively as a dungeon door locked and barred by a gaoler. No, that particular working stank of Chamon, the yellow wind of magic – dense and metallic. That meant the involvement of men, for only they employed such basic sorceries for such complex tasks. Arkhan had little familiarity with the barbaric lands of the Empire, though he’d warred on them more than once. That they had sorcerers capable of such a wreaking was moderately surprising. That Mannfred had aggravated them into doing so, was not.

‘I still can’t believe that you brought that cat with you.’ Arkhan turned at the harsh croak, and examined the angular, patchwork face of the man who stomped towards him. Ogiers was – or had been – a nobleman of Bretonnia. Now he was a horseless vagabond, whose once-minor interest in necromancy had suddenly become his only means of protection, in the wake of Mallobaude’s failed rebellion. He was also a giant of a man, who towered over the bodies of his former men-at-arms.

‘And I can’t believe that something so inconsequential weighs so heavily on your mind,’ Arkhan said. ‘And you do have a mind, Ogiers. That’s why I pulled you from under the hooves of your kinsmen’s horses. What of the others? Did we leave anyone on the other side?’

‘Some. No one consequential. That jackanapes Malfleur and that giggling maniac from Ostland. Fidduci made it through, as did Kruk,’ Ogiers said with a shrug. Arkhan stroked his cat and considered the man before him. Ogiers’s beard, once so finely groomed, had become a rat’s nest, and his face was splotched with barely healed cuts and bruises. Big as he was, he slumped with exhaustion. He’d discarded most of his armour during the retreat over the Grey Mountains, but he’d kept what he could – more, Arkhan suspected, for sentimental reasons than anything else. The other necromancers likely looked just as tired. He’d pressed them hard since they’d reached the borderlands, keeping them moving without stopping. He forgot sometimes, how heavy flesh could be. It was like an anchor around you, bone and spirit.

He considered leaving them, while he forged ahead, but knew that would only be inviting trouble. They were frightened of him, but fear only went so far. He needed to keep them where he could see them.

Mallobaude’s rebellion had stirred a hornet’s nest of necromantic potential. In the months before his first, tentative missives had reached Arkhan in his desert exile, Mallobaude had sought to gather a colloquium of sorcerers and hedge-wizards to counter the witches of the lake and wood who bolstered the tottering throne of his homeland. Dozens of necromancers and dark sorcerers had responded, trickling over the Grey Mountains in ones and twos, seeking the Serpent’s favour. When Arkhan had arrived at last, he’d been forced to initiate a cull of the gathered magic-users. Most were merely fraudsters or crooked creatures with only a bit of lore and a cantrip or two – hardly useful in a war. These he butchered and added to the swelling ranks of dead, where they’d be more useful.

Others he’d sent off to the fringes of the uprising, to distract and demoralise the enemy. The rest he’d gathered about him as his aides. He’d rescued the best of these in the final hours of the rebellion, gathering them to him and whisking them away from harm. Many hands made quick work, and he had much to do. The angles of the Corpse Geometries were bunching and skewing as the world shuddered beneath the weight of some newborn doom. The world had teetered on the edge of oblivion for centuries and it appeared that something had, at last, decided to simply tip it over.

The thought was neither particularly pleasant nor especially unpleasant to Arkhan, who had long ago shed such mortal worries. Death was rest, and life a burden. He had experienced both often enough to prefer the former, but the latter could never entirely be shed, thanks to the grip Nagash held on his soul. ‘We will keep moving. Let the dead fall. This land is full of corpses, and we no longer have need of these. They merely serve to slow us down.’ He swept out a hand, and the shambling legions at their back twitched and collapsed as one with a collective sigh, all save the two enormous corpses that bore the heavy, iron-bound Books of Nagash in their arms. The two zombies had, in life, been ogre mercenaries from across the Mountains of Mourn. They and a mob of their kin had been drawn to Bretonnia by the war, and slain in the final battle at Couronne. Arkhan had seen no sense in wasting such brawny potential, and had resurrected them to serve as his pack-bearers.

‘This is the first time we’ve stopped in days. We are not all liches, lord,’ Ogiers said, looking about him at his fallen warriors. Arkhan had dispatched them with the rest. If Ogiers disapproved, he was wise enough to say nothing. ‘Some of us still require food, sleep… A moment of rest.’

Arkhan said nothing. Behind Ogiers, Fidduci and Kruk made their way towards them over the field of fallen corpses. Franco Fidduci was a black-toothed Tilean scholar with a penchant for the grotesque, and Kruk was a twisted midget who rode upon the broad back of the risen husk of his cousin, clinging to the wight like a jongleur’s pet ape.

‘What happened? All my sweet ones fell over,’ Kruk piped.

‘Our master has seen fit to dispense with their services,’ Ogiers said.

‘But my pretty ones,’ Kruk whined.

‘If you’re referring to those Strigany dancing girls of yours, they were getting a bit mouldy,’ Fidduci said. ‘Best to find some new ones, eh?’ He looked at Arkhan. ‘Which we will, yes? This is not a land for four innocent travellers, oh most godly and grisly of lords,’ he said cautiously.

‘Frightened, are you?’ Arkhan rasped.

‘Not all of us have escaped death’s clutches as often as you,’ Ogiers said. He looked around. ‘Maybe we should take our leave of you. We will only slow you down, lord, and you disposed of our army, thus rendering our contribution as your generals moot.’

The cat examined the gathered necromancers with milky eyes. Its tail twitched and its yellowed and cracked fangs were visible through its mangled jowls. Arkhan stroked it idly, and said, ‘No, you will not leave my side. Without me, you would be dead. Actually dead, as opposed to the more pleasing and familiar variety. We all serve someone, Ogiers. It is your good fortune to serve me.’

‘And who do you serve, oh most puissant and intimidating Arkhan?’ Fidduci asked, fiddling with his spectacles.

‘Pray to whatever gods will have you that you never meet him, Franco,’ Arkhan rasped. ‘Now come, we are a day from… What was it called, Kruk?’

‘Valsborg Bridge, my lovely master,’ Kruk said. The diminutive necromancer hunched forward in his harness and pounded on his mount’s shoulders. ‘Come, come!’ The wight turned and began to lope in a northerly direction.

Arkhan gestured with his staff. ‘You heard him. Come, come,’ he intoned. Fidduci and Ogiers shared a look and then began to trudge after Kruk. Arkhan followed them sedately. As he walked, he considered his reasons for coming to Sylvania.

Bretonnia had been, if examined honestly, an unmitigated disaster. He had intended to use the civil war as a distraction in order to crack open the abbey at La Maisontaal and secure the ancient artefact ensconced within its stone walls, but Mallobaude had failed him. He’d been forced to retreat, gathering what resources he could. He intended to return, but he required more power to tip the balance in his favour. And time was growing short. The Long Night fast approached, and the world was crumbling at the edges.

There was no easy way to tell how long it took them to reach the bridge, even if Arkhan had cared about marking the passage of time. More than once, he and the others were required to fend off roving bands of ghouls or slobbering undead monstrosities. Bats swooped from the sky and wolves lunged from the hardscrabble trees, and Arkhan was forced to usurp their master’s control to protect his followers. Ghosts haunted every crossroads and barrow-hill, and banshees wailed amidst the bent trees and extinct villages that they passed on the road to Valsborg Bridge. It was Mannfred’s hand and will behind these obstacles, Arkhan knew. The vampire was trying to slow him down, to occupy his attentions while he mustered his meagre defences.

The bridge was nothing special. A simple span of stone across a narrow cleft, constructed in the days of Otto von Drak, before the Vampire Wars. A thin sludge of water gurgled below it. Arkhan suspected that it had been a raging river in its day, but the arteries of running water that crossed Sylvania were fast drying up thanks to Mannfred’s sorcery. Storm clouds choked the skies above, and thunder rumbled in the distance.

His companions had collapsed by the roadside, exhausted by the gruelling pace. Even Kruk hung limp in his harness, stunted limbs dangling. Arkhan looked up at the churning sky, and then back at the bridge. Then he turned to his pack-bearers and motioned for them to drop to their haunches. They sank down, jaws sagging, blind, opaque eyes rolling in their sockets. They would not move, unless he commanded it, and they would not let anyone take the books they carried without a fight. He hefted his staff and stroked the cat, which made a sound that might have been a growl.

Someone – something – was coming. He could feel it, like a black wave rolling towards the shoreline, gathering strength as it came. Arkhan glanced down at his followers. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘Do not interfere.’

‘Interfere with what?’ Ogiers demanded as he clambered to his feet. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To parley with the master of this sad realm,’ Arkhan said as he strode towards the bridge. ‘If you value your insignificant lives, I’d draw as little attention to yourself as possible.’ He walked across the bridge, ignoring Ogiers’s shouts, and stopped at the halfway point. Then he set his staff, and waited. He did not have to wait long. The sound of hooves gouging the ground reached him several minutes later, and then a steed of bone and black magic, bearing a rider clad in flamboyant armour, burst into view, trailing smoke and cold flame. At the sight of it, the cat curled about his shoulders went stiff, and it hissed.

The rider hauled on his reins, causing the skeleton horse to rear. Its hooves slammed down on the stone of the bridge, and it went as still as death. Its rider rose high in his saddle and said, ‘It has been some time since I last saw you, liche.’

‘I have counted the years, vampire.’ Arkhan scratched his cat’s chin. ‘Have you come to surrender?’

Mannfred von Carstein threw his head back and unleashed a snarl of laughter. Overhead, the sky trembled in sympathy. ‘Surrender? To a fleshless vagabond? It is you who should prostrate yourself before me.’

‘I have not come to bend knee, but to reclaim that which is mine by right.’

Mannfred’s sneer faded into a scowl. ‘And what might that be?’

Arkhan held up his hand, fingers extended. As he spoke, he bent his fingers one by one. ‘A crown, a severed hand, and seven books of blood-inked flesh.’ He cocked his head. ‘You know of what I speak.’

Mannfred grimaced. ‘And why should I yield these artefacts to you?’

‘Nagash must rise,’ Arkhan said, simply.

‘And so he shall. The matter is in good hands, I assure you,’ Mannfred said. ‘Go back to the desert, liche. I will call for you, if I should require your help.’

‘I am here now,’ Arkhan intoned, spreading his arms. ‘And you seem to be in need of help. Or have you discovered a way of freeing your land from the chains that bind it and trap you?’

‘That is no business of yours,’ Mannfred snarled.

‘That is up for discussion, I think,’ Arkhan said. He held out a hand. ‘Nagash must rise, leech. Nagash will rise, even if I must destroy this blighted land to accomplish it. That is my curse and my pleasure. But he has always held some affection for your kind. If you serve him, perhaps he will let you keep your little castle.’ Arkhan cocked his head. ‘It is a very pretty castle, I am given to understand.’

Mannfred was silent, but Arkhan could feel the winds of death stirring as the vampire gathered his will. The air seemed to congeal and then fracture as Mannfred flung out his hand. A bolt of writhing shadow erupted from his palm and speared towards Arkhan. The liche made no attempt to move aside. Instead, he waited. A freezing, tearing darkness erupted around him in a squirming cloud as the bolt struck home. If he had still possessed flesh, it would have been flayed from his bones. As it was, it merely tore his cloak and cowl. The cat on his shoulder yowled, and Arkhan gestured negligently, dispersing the cold tendrils of shadow.

Arkhan laughed hollowly. ‘Is that it?’

‘Not even remotely,’ Mannfred snarled.

More spells followed the first, and Arkhan deflected them all and returned them with interest. Incantations he had not uttered in centuries passed through his fleshless jaws as he pitted his sorceries against those of the lord of Sylvania… and found them wanting. Arkhan felt a flicker of surprise. Mannfred was more powerful than he’d thought. In his skull, his master’s chuckle echoed. Was this a test then, to separate the wheat from the chaff?

Dark sorceries and eldritch flames met above the bridge between them for long hours, crashing together like the duelling waves of a storm-tossed sea. Cold fire bit at writhing shadows, and black lightning struck bastions of hardened air, as the muddy turf of the riverbanks began to heave and rupture, releasing the tormented dead. Bodies long buried staggered and slumped into the guttering river, splashing towards one another. More skeletons, clad in roots and mud, crawled onto the bridge and groped for Arkhan as he batted aside Mannfred’s spells. The cat warbled and leapt from his shoulder to crash into a skeleton, knocking it backwards.

He ignored the others as they clawed at him. There were few forces that could move him once he had set himself. The biting, clawing dead were no more a threat to him than leaves cast in his face by a strong breeze. Nonetheless, they were a distraction; likely that was Mannfred’s intent. It was certainly Arkhan’s, as he directed his corpse-puppets to attack Mannfred.

The vampire smashed the dead aside with careless blows and hurled spells faster than Arkhan could follow, hammering him with sorcerous blows that would have obliterated a lesser opponent. The stone beneath his feet bubbled and cracked. It had survived a weathering of centuries, and now it was crumbling beneath the onslaught. Arkhan was beginning to wonder if he was going to suffer the same fate. He could feel his defences beginning to buckle beneath the unyielding onslaught. Mannfred’s power seemed inexhaustible; vampires were reservoirs of dark magic, but even they had their limits – limits that Mannfred seemed to have shed. Where was he drawing his power from? Some artefact or… Arkhan laughed, suddenly. Of course.

Mannfred had sealed off Sylvania, blocking the sun and the rivers and the borders. Such a working would require some source of mystical power. Mannfred was drawing on those same magics now, and it gave him a distinct advantage. But, such a resource, while advantageous, was not infinite.

Certain now that he had his foeman’s measure, Arkhan redoubled his efforts. If he could force Mannfred’s hand, he might be able to simply outlast him. Sorcerous talons and bone-stripping winds lashed at him, but he held firm, his hands clasped around his staff. Overhead, the clouds swirled and contracted. Fire washed over him, and a thousand, thudding fists, which struck at him from every side. Wailing ghosts and serpentine shadows sought to drag him down, but Arkhan refused to fall. He sent no more spells hurtling towards his foe, instead bolstering the dead who fought at his behest.

Mannfred was howling with laughter, and Arkhan could feel the weight of the mighty magics that thrummed around the vampire, waiting to be unleashed. As Mannfred gathered them to him, the words to a powerful incantation dropping from his writhing lips, Arkhan readied himself.

Nevertheless, the first shaft of sunlight was as much a surprise to him as it was to Mannfred. It burst from the clouds high above and struck the bridge between them. The latter’s skeleton mount reared and hurled him from his saddle. Arkhan staggered as the pressure of his enemy’s magic faded. The expression on Mannfred’s face as he clambered to his feet was almost comical. The vampire looked up, eyes wide and hastily released the murderous energies he had been preparing to hurl at Arkhan back into the aether. The clouds roiled and the sunlight was once more choked off by the darkness.

‘Well, that was an amusing diversion,’ Arkhan rasped. He started across the bridge. ‘Are you prepared to listen to reason now?’

Mannfred shrieked like a beast of prey, and drew his blade. Without pause, the vampire leapt at him. Arkhan drew his tomb-blade and blocked Mannfred’s diving blow in a single movement. The two blades, each infused with the darkest of magics, gave out a communal cry of steel on steel as they connected, and cold fire blazed at the juncture of their meeting. Mannfred dropped to the bridge in a crouch before springing instantly to his feet. He sprinted towards Arkhan, his sword looping out. This too Arkhan parried, and they weaved back and forth over the bridge, the screams of their swords echoing for miles in either direction. Overhead, the sky growled in agitation, and the noisome wind swept down with a howl.

Below them, in the mud and stagnant water, the dead fought on, straining against one another in a parody of the duel their masters fought above them. Arkhan could feel Mannfred’s will pressing against his own. He’d foregone magic, save that little bit required to control the dead. Their battle was as much for mastery of the warring corpses below as it was against each other. The vampire came at him again, teeth bared in a silent, feral snarl. His form flickered and wavered as he moved, like a scrap of gossamer caught in a wind storm. A living man would have found it impossible to follow the vampire’s movements, but Arkhan had long since traded in his mortal eyes for something greater.

He matched Mannfred blow for blow. It felt… good, to engage in swordplay once more. It had been centuries since his blade had been drawn for anything other than emphasis or as an implement of ritual. The ancient tomb-blade shivered in his hand as it connected again with Mannfred’s. The embers of old skills flared to life in the depths of Arkhan’s mind, and he recalled those first few desperate battles, where a gambler’s skill in back-alley brawls was put to the test by warriors whose names still lingered in legend. It was good to be reminded of that time, of when he had still been a man, rather than a tool forged by the will of another.

Arkhan wondered if Mannfred knew what that was like. He thought so. The vampire’s magics had that taste, and his voice was like the echo of another’s, though he knew it not. Arkhan could almost see a familiar shape superimposed over his opponent, a vast, black, brooding shadow that seemed to roil with amusement as they fought.

I see you, Arkhan thought. This was a test and a pleasure for the thing that held the chains of their souls. Arkhan’s master had ever been a sadist and prone to cruel whimsy. This battle had been a farce, a shadow-play from the beginning. There was a power in that knowledge. A power in knowing exactly how little of it you yourself possessed. It allowed you to focus, to look past the ephemeral, and to marshal within yourself what little will your master allowed.

Arkhan the Black was a slave, but a slave who knew every link of the chain that bound him by heart. Mannfred had yet to realise that he had even been beaten. Their blades clashed again and again until, at last, Arkhan beat the vampire’s sword aside and swiftly stepped back, his now-sodden and torn robes slapping wetly against his bare bones.

‘We are finished here, vampire.’

Mannfred’s eyes burned with rage, and for a moment, Arkhan thought he might continue the fight. Then, with a hiss, Mannfred inclined his head and sheathed his sword with a grandiose flourish. ‘We are, liche. A truce?’

Arkhan would have smiled, had he still had lips. ‘Of course. A truce.’

FOUR

‘The problem isn’t getting in. It’s just a wall, and walls can be breached, scaled and blown down,’ Hans Leitdorf, Grand Master of the Knights of Sigmar’s Blood said, glaring at the distant edifice, which towered along the border of Sylvania. That it was visible from such a distance was as much due to its sheer enormity as to the height of the parapet he and his guests stood atop. ‘It’s what’s waiting on the other side. They’ve had months to erect defences, set traps and build an army out of every scrap of bone and sinew in Sylvania. And that’s not even taking into account the things slipping over the border every night to bolster the cursed von Carstein’s ranks. Strigany nomads, strange horsemen, beasts and renegades of every dark stripe.’ He knocked back a slug from the goblet he held in one hand. Leitdorf was old but, like some old men, had only grown harder and tougher with age. He was broad and sturdily built, with a barrel chest and a face that had seen the wrong end of a club more than once. He wore a heavy fur coat of the sort Ungol horsemen were fond of, and had his sword belt cinched around his narrow waist. ‘We’ve tried to stop them, but we’re too few. I don’t have enough men to do more than put up a token effort. And when I ask for more men from the elector and Karl Franz, I get, well, you.’ He looked at his guest.

Captain Wendel Volker gave no sign that Leitdorf’s insult had struck home. The fourth son of a largely undistinguished Talabecland family tree, he hadn’t expected a man like Leitdorf to be happy with his arrival. His uniform was still coated in trail-grime, and he shivered beneath his thin officer’s cloak. It was cold up on the parapet, and it had been a wet trip. Volker was young, with a duellist’s build and a boy’s enthusiasm. The latter was swiftly being sapped by the circumstances of his current posting, but, as his father had said on multiple occasions, one mustn’t complain.

‘Oh he’s not so bad, is our young Wendel. He guarded me ably enough on the road from Talabheim,’ the third man on the parapet rumbled, as he stroked his spade-shaped red beard with thick, beringed fingers. He was a big man, like Leitdorf, though his size had more to do with ample food supply than anything else, Volker thought. There was muscle there, too, but it was well padded. Despite that, he was the most dangerous of the three men on the parapet. Or, possibly, in the entire keep. ‘Able, aristocratic, attentive, slightly alcoholic… All virtues as far as I’m concerned,’ the third man went on, winking cheerfully at Volker.

‘You hardly needed an escort,’ Leitdorf said. ‘The Patriarch of the Bright College is an army unto himself. There are few who would challenge Thyrus Gormann.’

‘I know of one,’ Gormann grunted, tugging on his beard. He waved a hand and, for a moment, a trail of flickering flame marked the motion of his fingers. ‘Still, neither here nor there, all in the past, all friends now, hey?’ He scratched his nose and peered at the distant wall of bone that separated Sylvania from Imperial justice. ‘That is one fine, big wall the little flea has erected for himself, I must admit.’

‘The little flea’, Volker knew, was Mannfred von Carstein. Even thinking the name caused him to shudder. Still, on the whole, it was better than going north with the rest of the lads. He’d take the dead over daemons any day. Nonetheless, he couldn’t repress a second shudder when he looked at the distant wall. He caught Leitdorf looking at him and stiffened his spine. As terrifying as Mannfred von Carstein was, he was over there, and Leitdorf, unfortunately, was right here. Leitdorf snorted and turned back to Gormann.

‘Volkmar isn’t coming back,’ he said.

‘Did you think he would?’ Gormann asked. ‘No, he’d have torn those walls down if he’d been able. It was a fool’s errand, and he knew it.’

‘He had to try,’ Leitdorf said softly.

‘No, he bloody didn’t.’ Gormann shook his shaggy head. ‘He let his anger blind him, and now we have to muddle through without him. Stubborn old fool.’

‘Friend pot, have you met cousin kettle?’ Leitdorf asked.

Gormann looked at the knight and frowned, but only for a moment. He guffawed and shook his head. ‘I always forget that you have a sense of humour buried under that scowl, Hans.’

Volker watched as the two men – two of the most powerful, if not influential, in the Empire – continued to discuss the unpleasantness just across the border and decided, for the fifth time in as many minutes, to keep his opinions to himself, just as his mother had counselled. ‘Keep quiet, head down, ears perked, nose to the trail,’ she’d said. A hunting metaphor, of course. Big one for hunting was mumsy, big one for the blood sports and the trophies and such.

Blood had always made Volker queasy. He licked his lips and looked longingly at the jug of mulled wine that Leitdorf clutched loosely in one hand. Occasionally, the Grand Master would refill his goblet, or Gormann’s. Volker had not been offered so much as a taste. Another snub, of course. A sign of his new commander’s displeasure. Mustn’t complain, he thought.

As the wizard and the warrior conversed, Volker kept himself occupied by examining his new post from the view the parapet afforded. He’d heard stories of Heldenhame as a boy, but to see it in the flesh, as it were, was something else again.

At its inception, Heldenhame had been little more than a modest bastion, composed of a stone tower and a wooden palisade. Now, however, a century later, Heldenhame Keep was the grandest fortress in Talabecland. The old stone tower had been torn down and replaced by a castle that was many times larger, and the wooden palisade had been discarded in favour of heavy stone walls. Within the walls and spreading outwards from the castle was a bustling city, filled with noise and commerce. It was a grand sight, for all that it still bore the marks of the greenskin tide that had sought to overwhelm it the year previous.

The western wall was still under repair from that incident. Volker watched the distant dots of workmen reinforcing and repairing the still-crippled span. It was the only weak point in the fortress’s defences, but such repairs couldn’t be rushed. Volker knew that much from his studies. As he examined the wall, he saw what looked to be a tavern near it. His thirst returned and he licked his lips. ‘Worried about the western span, captain?’ Leitdorf asked, suddenly. Volker, shaken from his reverie, looked around guiltily.

‘Ah, no, sir, Grand Master,’ he said hastily, trying to recall what sort of salute one gave the commander of a knightly order. Leitdorf gazed at him disdainfully.

‘You should be,’ he grunted. ‘You’ll be stationed there. You’re dismissed, Volker. I trust you can find your quarters and introduce yourself to the garrison without me holding your hand?’

‘Ah, yes, I believe so, sir. Grand Master,’ Volker said. Leitdorf turned, and Volker, relieved and dying for a drink, scurried away.

Ungrim Ironfist, king of Karak Kadrin, ran his thick, scarred fingers across the map of beaten bronze and gilded edges that lay before him on the stone table. The map was a thing of painstaking artifice and careful craftsmanship, and it was as lovely in its way as any silken tapestry or a portrait done by a master’s hand.

Ironfist, in contrast, was a thing of slabs and edges and could, in no way, shape or form be called lovely. Even for a dwarf, the Slayer King was built on the heavy side, his thick bones weighed down by layers of hard-earned muscle, and his face like a granite shelf carved sharply and suddenly by an avalanche. His beard and hair were dyed a startling red and, as ever, he wore a heavy cloak of dragon-scale over his broad shoulders.

His craggy features settled into a taciturn expression as he stared at the map. It wasn’t alone on the table. There were others stacked in a neat pile near to hand, and opposite them a number of metal tubes, containing statements and reports culled from every watch-post and lookout tower for a hundred miles in every direction. Ironfist had read them all and more than once. So often, in fact, that he knew what each one said by heart.

More reports were added by the day, as rangers and merchants brought word to the Slayer Keep from the furthest edges of the dwarf empire. These too Ironfist committed to memory. None of what he learned was comforting.

There was a strange murk upon the dust-winds that rolled west from the Dark Lands over the eastern mountains, and the sky over that foul land was rent by sickly trails of green, as if the moon were weeping poisonous tears upon the blighted sores that covered the skin of the world. Plagues such as the world had not seen in a thousand years were loose in the lands of men, and worse things than plagues, too. Devils and beasts ran riot in the Empire, and traders returning from Tilea, Estalia and Araby brought word that it was just as bad in those lands. The vile rat-things had burst from their tunnels in unprecedented numbers, and subsumed whole city-states and provinces in the same way they had the holds of his people so long ago.

The Badlands were full to bursting of greenskins; the clangour of the battles fought between the orc tribes carried for miles in all directions, and as soon as one ended, another began. Soon, as was inevitable, they would flood into the mountains and the lands beyond, hunting for new enemies. But this time they would do so in unprecedented numbers: in their millions, rather than their thousands.

However, that was as nothing compared to word from the north, where strange lights writhed across the horizon and arcane storms raged across the lands. Daemon packs hunted the high places and barbarians gathered in the valleys as long-dormant volcanoes belched smoke and the earth shook as if beneath the tread of phantom armies.

Ironfist had, in all his centuries, never witnessed such a multitude of troubles, all occurring at once. Bad times came and went, like storms. They washed across the mountains and faded away with the seasons. But this was like several storms, rising and boiling together all at once, as if to wipe away the world. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts of the miasma of foreboding that clung to them.

Ironfist tapped a point on the map. ‘What word from the Sylvanian border? Are the rumours true?’ he asked the dwarf sitting across from him. Snorri Thungrimsson had served at his king’s right hand for more years than could be easily counted. He was old now, and the fat braids of beard that were tucked into the wide leather belt about his midsection were as white as the morning frost on the high mountain peaks. But he still served as his king’s hearthwarden and senior advisor. It was Thungrimsson who collected and organised the diverse streams of information that came into the hold from messengers, scouts and spies, and readied it for Ironfist’s study.

‘You mean about the, ah, bones?’ Thungrimsson asked, gesturing. He grimaced in distaste as he asked it.

‘No, I mean about this year’s turnip festival in Talabheim. Yes, the bones,’ Ironfist said.

‘They’re true enough. The whole land is surrounded by battlements of bone. It’s sealed off tighter than King Thorgrim’s vaults.’ Thungrimsson traced the border of Sylvania on the map. ‘The rangers can’t find a way through, not that they tried very hard.’

Ironfist sat back in his chair with a sigh. He tugged on his beard and let his gaze drift across the high alcoves of the library, where the watery light of hooded lanterns illuminated stone shelves and pigeonholes, each one stuffed with books, tomes, scrolls and papyri. The library was one of his great pleasures, when all was said and done. It had been built carefully and over centuries, much like the rest of Karak Kadrin. ‘Well, what are you thinking, hearthwarden?’ he asked finally, looking back at Thungrimsson.

‘It is a shame about the turnip festival,’ Thungrimsson said. Ironfist growled wordlessly and the other dwarf raised his hands in a placating gesture. ‘I’m thinking that Sylvania has been a boil on our hindquarters for more centuries than I care to contemplate. Whatever is going on in there bears keeping an eye on, if nothing else. And we should send word to the other holds, especially Zhufbar. The blood-drinkers have attacked them before.’

Ironfist gnawed on a thumbnail. Every instinct he possessed screamed at him to muster a throng and smash his way into that blighted land, axe in hand. There was something on the air, something that pricked at him, like a warning only half heard. There were other threats to be weighed and measured, but Sylvania was right on his hearthstone. He had been patient for centuries, waiting for the humans to see to their own mess. But the time for patience had long since passed. If the zanguzaz – the blood-drinkers – were up to some mischief, Ironfist was inclined to put a stop to it soonest.

His eye caught a golden seal on one of the more recently arrived message tubes. He recognised the royal rune of Karaz-a-Karak, the Pinnacle of the Mountains, the Most Enduring. He flicked the tube open and extracted the scroll within. He frowned as he read it. When he was done, he tossed it to Thungrimsson. ‘We’ll have to settle for keeping watch. At least for now. The Grudgebearer has called together the Council of Kings.’

Thungrimsson’s eyes widened in surprise as he read the scroll. ‘Such a council hasn’t been convened in centuries,’ he said slowly. His eyes flickered to the scrolls and maps. He met Ironfist’s grim gaze. ‘It’s worse than we thought, isn’t it?’

Ironfist pushed himself slowly to his feet. He tapped the map again. ‘It seems I’ll be able to alert my brother-kings as to the goings-on in Sylvania in person,’ he said softly.

Tyrion’s palms struck the doors of the meeting chamber of the Phoenix Council like battering rams, sending them swinging inwards with a thunderous crash. Eltharion of Yvresse winced and made to hurry after his prince.

The latter’s haste was understandable, if not strictly advisable. Then, the Warden of Tor Yvresse had never been fond of haste. Haste led to the mistakes and mistakes to defeat. A slim hand fastened on his arm. ‘Give him a moment. He’s making an entrance.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of, Eldyra,’ Eltharion grated, brushing the hand from his arm. He turned to glare at the woman who followed him. Eldyra of Tiranoc had once been Tyrion’s squire; now she was a warrior in her own right, albeit an impetuous one. She was a vision of loveliness wrapped in lethality. She had learned the art of death from the foremost warrior of their race, and her skill with blade, bow and spear was equal to, or greater than, Eltharion’s own, though they had never put that to the test.

‘No, you’re afraid he’s going to kill someone.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘Better to ask whether I care,’ she said pointedly. ‘The idea of our prince taking off the head of that pompous nitwit Imrik fills me with a warm and cheerful glow.’

Eltharion shook his head and followed Tyrion into the council chamber. Tyrion had interrupted the aforementioned Imrik, Dragon Prince of Caledor, in mid-speech. The Phoenix Council had been discussing the same thing they’d been discussing for months – namely Imrik’s assertion that Finubar had ceded his right to the Phoenix Crown.

The Phoenix Council had been paralysed for months by disagreement among its members and disillusionment with the current wearer of the crown. Finubar had sealed himself in the Heavenlight Tower in order to divine the cause of the recent disasters that had beset Ulthuan, at a time when his people most needed his guidance. Eltharion could not help but wonder what was going through his king’s mind; the longer Finubar sat isolated in his tower, the more that discontent spread through the halls and meeting chambers of the elven nobility. As Chrace and Cothique were overrun by daemon-spawn, and their peoples scattered or exterminated, Finubar had yet to reappear, and had, so far, allowed only one to impinge upon his solitude – Tyrion’s brother Teclis. Teclis had come out of that meeting certain that Tyrion must take command of Ulthuan’s armies.

Tyrion, however, had taken some convincing. Not that Eltharion blamed him for being preoccupied. He and his companions had only just returned from the citadel of abomination known as Nagashizzar, where they’d failed to rescue Aliathra, firstborn daughter of the Everqueen, from her captor, Mannfred von Carstein. Aliathra had been captured earlier in the year by the vampire while she had been on a diplomatic mission to the High King of the dwarfs at Karaz-a-Karak. Dwarfs and elves both had been slaughtered by Mannfred in pursuit of Aliathra, and when word reached Ulthuan of her fate, Tyrion had been driven into as wild a rage as Eltharion had ever seen.

The reason for the sheer force of that rage was known to only two others, besides Eltharion himself. Eldyra was one and Teclis the other. The three of them shared the weight of Tyrion’s shameful secret, and when he’d made it known that he intended to rescue Aliathra, Eltharion, Eldyra and Teclis had accompanied him. But the expedition to Nagashizzar had been a failure. Mannfred had escaped again, and taken the Everchild with him.

Teclis’s spies, both living and elemental, had confirmed that the vampire had taken Aliathra into the lands of men, and Belannaer, Loremaster of Hoeth, had sworn that he could hear the Everchild’s voice upon the wind, calling from somewhere within the foul demesne known as Sylvania. Failure ate at Tyrion like an acid, making it impossible for him to focus on anything else. He had been planning for a second expedition when Teclis had forced him to see sense. Now his rage at Aliathra’s fate had been refocused, and for the better, Eltharion hoped.

‘Our lands are in turmoil, and you sit here arguing over who has the right to lead, rather than doing anything productive. No wonder the Phoenix King hides himself away – I would as well, had my advisors and servants shamed me as you now shame him,’ Tyrion said as he stalked into the chamber, the stones echoing with the crash of the doors. Clad in full armour, armed and flanked by the armoured forms of Eltharion and Eldyra, the heir of Aenarion was an intimidating sight. At least if you had any sense.

‘Ulthuan needs leadership. Finubar is not fit to be king. Not now, not when we are on the precipice of the long night,’ Imrik growled. He glared at Tyrion as fiercely as one of the dragons his homeland was famous for. ‘Speaking of which, where were you? First Finubar locks himself away in his tower, and then the Everqueen vanishes to gods alone know where. The Ten Kingdoms heave with the plague of ages and you, our greatest champion, were half a world away!’

‘I am here now,’ Tyrion said. He drew his sword, Sunfang, from its sheath and swept it through the air. The ancient sword, forged to draw the blood of the daemons of Chaos, burned with the captured fires of the sun. Runes glowed white-hot along its length and the closest members of the council turned away or shaded their eyes against the sword’s stinging promise. Only Imrik continued to glare, undaunted.

Tyrion looked at the council, his eyes blazing with a heat equal to that which marked the runes on his sword. ‘You will cease your nattering. You will take up blade and bow as befitting lords of Ulthuan, and marshal your forces to defend the Ten Kingdoms. Any who wish to quarrel further can take up their argument with the edge of my sword and see what it profits you.’

Imrik shot to his feet and slammed his fist down on the table. ‘How dare you?’ the Dragon Prince roared. ‘What gives you the right to speak to this august council in such a disrespectful manner? We are your betters, whelp! Who are you to demand anything of us?’

Tyrion smiled humourlessly. ‘Who am I? I am the Herald of Asuryan, and of the Phoenix King, in whose names I would dare anything. That is all the right I require.’ He pointed Sunfang at Imrik and asked, ‘Unless you disagree?’

Imrik’s pale features tightened and his lean body quivered with barely restrained rage. ‘I do,’ he hissed. He circled the table and strode past Tyrion. ‘Strike me down if you dare, boy, but I’ll not stay here and be barked at by you.’

Tyrion did not turn as Imrik stalked past him. ‘If you leave, prince of Caledor, then do not expect to be included in our councils of war. Caledor will stand alone,’ he said harshly.

Imrik stopped. Eltharion saw his eyes close, as if he were in pain. Then, his voice ragged, he said, ‘Then Caledor stands alone.’ Imrik left the chamber without another word. No one tried to stop him. The remaining council-members whispered quietly amongst themselves. Eltharion looked at them and frowned. Already, they were plotting. Imrik’s star had been in the ascendancy, and now it had plummeted to earth. Those who had supported him were revising their positions as those who had been arrayed against him moved to shore up their influence. None of them seemed to grasp the full extent of the situation. He saw Tyrion looking at him. The latter crooked a finger and Eltharion and Eldyra moved to join him.

‘Thank you for watching my back,’ Tyrion said quietly. ‘But now that the council has been tamed, I need you two to do as you promised. Make ready, gather what you need for the expedition, and set sail as soon as possible.’ His composure evaporated as he spoke, and his words became ragged. Eltharion could see just how much it was costing his friend to stay in Ulthuan. There was pain in his eyes and in his voice such as Eltharion had never seen.

‘You have my oath as Warden of Tor Yvresse,’ Eltharion said softly. He hesitated, and then placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He looked at Eldyra, who nodded fiercely. ‘We shall rescue Aliathra, or we will die trying.’

The three men descended down the dank, circular stone steps, following the woman. She held a crackling torch in one hand, and its light cast weird shadows on the stone walls of the catacombs. ‘The abbey was built to contain that which I am about to show you,’ the woman said, her voice carrying easily, despite the softness with which she spoke. ‘Rites and rituals went into the placement of every stone and every slather of mortar to make this place a fitting cage for what is imprisoned here. And so it has remained, for hundreds of years.’

‘But now?’ one of the men asked. They reached the bottom of the stairs and came to a vaulted chamber, which was empty save for a wide, squat stone sarcophagus the likes of which none of the men had ever seen. It had been marked with mystical signs, and great iron chains crossed it, as if to keep whatever was within it trapped. The woman lifted her torch and let its light play across the sarcophagus.

‘Now, I fear, we are coming to the end of its captivity. Something is loose in the world, a red wind that carries with it the promise of a slaughter undreamt of by even the most monstrous of creatures that infest our poor, tired land. Or those of its greatest heroes, Tancred of Quenelles.’

‘This is what he was after,’ Tancred, Duke of Quenelles, said staring at the stone sarcophagus. His breath plumed in the damp, chill air. Part of him yearned to touch the sarcophagus, while a greater part surged in revulsion at the thought. The thing that lay inside seemed to draw everything towards it, as though it weighed more than the world around it. Tancred felt the weight of his years settle more heavily than ever before on his broad shoulders. ‘This is what Arkhan the Black was after, then, my Lady Elynesse?’

‘Perhaps,’ Lady Elynesse, Dowager of Charnorte, said. Her voice was soft, but not hesitant. She was older than even Tancred, whose hair and beard had long since lost the lustre of youth, though her face was unlined and unmarred by time. ‘Such a creature weaves schemes within schemes, and concocts plots with every day it yet remains unburied.’ She held her torch higher and circled the sarcophagus. ‘This could be but one goal amongst many.’

‘What is it?’ one of the others asked. His hands were clamped tightly around the hilt of his blade. Tancred wondered whether the other knight felt the same pull towards the sarcophagus as he did. Though Fastric Ghoulslayer was a native of Bordeleaux, he had shed blood beside Tancred and the third knight, Anthelme of Austray, in defence of Quenelles in the civil war. The Ghoulslayer was a warrior of renown and commanded a skylance of Pegasus knights, and there were few whom Tancred trusted more.

‘Whatever it is, I’d just as soon it stays in there,’ Anthelme said nervously.

‘And so it shall, if we have anything to say about it,’ Tancred said, looking at his cousin. Anthelme, like Fastric, was a trusted companion, even beyond the bounds of blood. There were none better with a lance or blade in Tancred’s opinion. ‘Our kingdom lies broken and bleeding, and the one who struck that blow will return to capitalise on our weakness. The Dowager has seen as much. Arkhan the Black wanted this sarcophagus and its contents, even as the Lichemaster did in decades past. But we shall see to it that La Maisontaal’s burden remains here, in these tombs, even if we must die to do so.’

‘But surely whatever is in here is no danger to us? The true king has returned. Gilles le Breton sits once more upon the throne of Bretonnia, and the civil war is over. We have passed through the darkest of times and come out the other side,’ Anthelme said. Those sentiments were shared by many, Tancred knew. When Louen Leoncouer had been felled at the Battle of Quenelles by his treacherous bastard son, many, including Tancred, had thought that the kingdom’s time was done.

Then had come Couronne, and Mallobaude’s last challenge. The Serpent had challenged the greatest knights in the land on Quenelles, Gisoreux, Adelaix and a hundred more battlefields, and had emerged victorious every time. But at Couronne, it was no mortal who answered his challenge; instead, the legendary Green Knight had ridden out of the ranks, appearing as if from nowhere, and had met Mallobaude on the field between the armies of the living and the dead. In the aftermath, when the surviving dukes and lords inevitably began to turn their thoughts to the vacant throne, the Green Knight had torn his emerald helm from his head and revealed himself to be none other than Gilles le Breton, the founder of the realm, come back to lead his people in their darkest hour. The problem was, as far as Tancred could tell, the darkest hour hadn’t yet passed. In fact, it appeared that Mallobaude’s rebellion had only been the beginning of Bretonnia’s ruination, the return of the once and future king or not.

‘And so? Daemons still stalk our lands, and monsters burn the vineyards and villages. Mallobaude might have lost his head, but he wasn’t the only traitor. Quenelles is in ruins, as are half of the other provinces, and home to two-legged beasts. Bordeleaux is gone, replaced by a daemonic keep of brass and bone that even now blights the surrounding lands. No, we are in the eye of the storm, cousin. The false calm, before its fury strikes again, redoubled and renewed. I fear that things will get much, much worse before it passes,’ Tancred said firmly. He looked around. ‘Come, I would leave this place.’

He led them back up the stairs and out of the abbey, ignoring the huddled masses of peasants, who genuflected and murmured respectful greetings. More and more of them came every day, seeking the dubious sanctuary of the abbey’s walls as the forests seethed with beasts and the restless dead, and the sky blazed with blue fire or was split by the fiery passage of warpstone meteors.

As they got outside, Tancred gulped the fresh, cold air. It was a relief, after the damp unpleasantness of the catacombs, and the close air of the abbey, redolent with the odour of the lower classes. He looked about him. His father, the first to bear the name of Tancred, had funded the fortifying of the abbey in the wake of the Lichemaster’s infamous assault some thirty years earlier. The Eleventh Battle of La Maisontaal Abbey had been a pivotal moment in both the history of his family and Bretonnia as a whole.

The fortifications weren’t as grand as Tancred’s father had dreamed, but they were serviceable enough. There were garrison quarters, housing hundreds of archers and men-at-arms, as well as scores of knights, drawn from every corner of Bretonnia. The abbey sat in the centre of an army.

Somehow, he doubted that would be enough.

He turned as he heard a loud voice bellow a greeting. The broad, burly form of Duke Theoderic of Brionne ambled towards him, his battle-axe resting on his shoulder. ‘Ho, Tancred! They told me you were slinking about. Come to inspect the troops, eh?’ Theoderic had a voice that could stun one of the great bats that haunted the Vaults at twenty paces. He was also the commander of the muster of La Maisontaal. He’d come to the abbey seeking penance for a life of lechery, drunkenness and other assorted unchivalric behaviours, and had, according to most, more than made up for his past as a sozzle-wit.

They clasped forearms, and Tancred winced as Theoderic drew him into a bear hug. ‘I see that the Lady Elynesse is here as well,’ he murmured as he released Tancred. He jerked his chin towards the Dowager, who swept past them towards her waiting carriage. She had come to show them what was hidden. Now, having done so, she was leaving as quickly as possible. Tancred couldn’t blame her. Lacking even the tiniest inclination to sorcery, he could still feel the spiritual grime of the thing that lurked in the depths of the abbey. He could only imagine what it must be like for a true servant of the Lady. ‘Has she foreseen trouble for us?’

‘Arkhan the Black,’ Tancred said.

‘I thought we sent him packing, didn’t we?’ Theoderic grunted.

‘Do such creatures ever stay gone for as long as we might wish?’

‘Ha! You have me there. Never fear, though – if he comes, we’ll be ready for him,’ Theoderic said, cradling his axe in the crook of his arm. ‘Some of the greatest heroes of our fair kingdom are here. Gioffre of Anglaron, the slayer of the dragon Scaramor, Taurin the Wanderer, dozens of others. Knights of the realm, one and all. A truer gathering of heroes has never been seen in these lands, save at the court of the king himself!’

Tancred looked at Theoderic’s beaming features and gave a half-hearted nod. ‘Let’s pray to the Lady that will be enough,’ he said.

The voices of the Dark Gods thundered in his ears and Malagor brayed in pleasure as his muscles swelled with strength. He snapped the gor chieftain’s neck with a single, vicious jerk, and snorted as he sent the body thudding to the loamy earth. He spread his arms and his great, black pinioned wings snapped out to their full length. Then, he looked about him at the gathered chieftains. ‘Split-Hoof challenged. Split-Hoof died. Who else challenges the Crowfather?’ he bellowed. ‘Who else challenges the word of the gods?’

None of the remaining chieftains stepped forward. In truth, Split-Hoof hadn’t so much challenged him as he had voiced a concern, but Malagor saw little difference between dissension and discomfort. Neither was acceptable. The gods had commanded, and their children would obey, whether they were inclined to do so or not. He snarled and pawed the ground with a hoof, glaring about him to ram the point home. Only when the chieftains looked sufficiently cowed did he allow them to look away from him. They wouldn’t stay cowed for long, he knew. The children of Chaos did not have it in them to be docile, even when it served the gods’ purpose. In their veins was the blood of the gods and it was ever angry and ambitious. Soon, another chieftain would voice dissent, and he would have to fight again.

His goatish lips peeled back from yellowed fangs. Malagor looked forward to such challenges. Without them, there was no joy in life. Taking the life of an enemy with the sorceries that hummed in his bones was satisfying, in its way, but there was no substitute for feeling bone crack and splinter in his grip, or tasting the flesh and blood of an opponent.

Malagor folded his wings and looked about him as he idly stroked the symbols of blasphemy that hung from his matted mane and leather harness. Icons plucked from the bodies of human priests dangled beside twists of paper torn from their holy books, all of them stained and soiled and consecrated to the gods, who even now whispered endearments to him as he pondered his next move.

The forest clearing around him echoed with the raucous rumble of savage anarchy. Beastmen yelped and howled as they danced to the sound of drums and fought about the great witch-fires, which burned throughout the clearing. All of this beneath the glistening gaze of the titanic monolith that had sprouted from the churned earth months earlier. The strange black stone was shot through by jagged veins of sickly, softly glimmering green, and it pulsed in time to the thudding of the drums.

Ever since the dark moon had waxed full in the sky, and the great herdstones had risen from their slumber beneath the ground, so too had the voices of the gods hummed in his mind, stronger than ever before. And they had had much to say to their favoured child. They had demanded that he join the beast-tribes south of the Grey Mountains, and lead them into war with a man of bone and black sorcery. But his fractious kin had been preoccupied with battling their hated enemies, the wood elves.

It had taken Malagor months to browbeat, bully and brutalise a number of tribes and herds into following him into the war-ravaged provinces of Bretonnia, only to find that his prey had already slipped over the mountains and into the north. But all was not lost. The gods had murmured that Arkhan would return. And that he would fall in Bretonnia. That was their command and their promise. The skeins of fate were pulled taut about the dead man, and there would be no escape for him again.

‘The Bone-Man must die,’ Malagor bellowed. ‘The gods command it! Death to the dead! Gnaw their bones and suck the marrow!’

‘Gnaw his bones,’ a chieftain roared, shaking his crude blade over his horned head. Others took up the chant, one by one, and soon every beast in the clearing had added its voice to the cacophony.

Malagor’s muscles bunched and he thrust himself into the air. His black wings flapped, catching the wind, causing the witch-fires to flicker, and bowling over the smaller beastmen. He screamed at the sky as he rose, adding his howls to those of his kin.

The liche would die, even if Malagor had to sacrifice every beastman on this side of the Grey Mountains to accomplish it. The Dark Gods demanded it, and Malagor was their word made flesh. He was the black edge of their blade, the tip of their tongue and their will made into harsh reality. He flapped his wings and rose high over the trees. Overhead the sky wept green tears and crawled with hideous shapes, and Malagor felt the blessings of his gods fill him with divine purpose. He roared again, this time in triumph.

Arkhan the Black would die.

The gor squealed and staggered back, grasping at its sliced belly with blood-slick paws. Araloth, Lord of Talsyn, darted forward to deliver the deathblow before the beast recovered. The ravaged glade rang with the sound of blade on blade, and the death-cries of elves and beasts. Blood, both pure and foul, turned the churned soil beneath his feet to mud.

A shadow fell over him, while his sword sent the beastman’s brutish head spinning from its thick neck. Araloth glanced up and saw a minotaur raising its axe over him, its bestial jaws dripping with bloody froth as it gnashed its fangs. Its eyes bulged from their sockets, and it whined and lowed in mindless greed. The minotaur stumped forward, reaching for him with its free hand. He tensed, ready to leap aside, a prayer to Lileath on his lips.

Then a second, equally massive shape slammed into the bull-headed giant from the side, bearing it to the ground. The two enormous figures ploughed through the fray that swirled about them, scattering elves and beasts alike as they smashed through the trees of the blood-soaked glade. Araloth could only watch in awe as Orion, the King in the Woods, rose over the fallen minotaur, a hand gripping one of its horns.

Orion dragged the dazed beast to its feet and locked his arm about its throat. He grabbed its horns and threw his weight to the side. The glade echoed with the crack of crude, Chaos-twisted bone, and then Orion threw down his opponent and let out a roar of victory that caused the trees to shiver where they stood.

The beastmen began to retreat, streaming back the way they had come, first in ones and twos, and then in a mad panic, bellowing and braying in fear. Orion put his horn to his lips and sounded a long, wailing note. Glade Riders galloped off in pursuit of their fleeing enemies. Orion met Araloth’s gaze for only a moment, before turning away and loping after his huntsmen. Araloth shivered and sheathed his blade.

There had been nothing but rage in his king’s eyes. Even sorrow had been burned away, and reason with it. Only the battle-madness remained.

Despite his fear, Araloth could find no fault in that. Ariel was dying, and the forest with her, and there was nothing Orion or anyone could do. He understood the king’s rage better than most, for was he not the queen’s champion? ‘Much good I did her,’ he murmured, looking about him. Every muscle in his body ached, and his hands trembled with fatigue. He had been fighting for days on end, trying to drive back this latest assault on the deep glades of the forest.

The source of the sickness that afflicted the Mage Queen was not readily apparent, but in its wake came a rot on the boughs of the Oak of Ages, and then a sickness that spread through the forest, twisting and tainting everything. Glades that had gone unaffected by the shifting seasons since the first turning of the world now withered, the trees cracking and splitting, their roots blistering and turning black as the forest floor heaved with decay. Madness swept through the ranks of the dryads and treemen, making dangerous, unpredictable enemies of ancient allies as the children of Chaos poured into these now-desolate glades in their thousands.

These were not the usual herds who perennially spent their blood beneath the forest canopy, but bray-spawn and mutant filth from hundreds of leagues away, migrating from every direction, as if drawn to the weakened forest by some unvoiced signal.

Araloth looked about him, at the piles of twisted bodies that littered the ground, and the pale, slim shapes that lay amongst them. No matter how many they killed, no matter how many times they repulsed them, the creatures continued to pour into the forest. He leaned forward on his blade, suddenly feeling more tired than he had in centuries. He wanted to sleep for a season, but there was no time for rest, let alone slumber.

He opened his eyes and began to clean his sword. There would be another attack. The king and his Wild Hunt might have driven off this one, but there were more herds in the vicinity, and all of them were moving towards the King’s Glade. Eventually, they would get through. And when that happened…

He turned as he heard the thud of hooves, dismissing the dark thoughts. A rider burst into the glade, and headed for Araloth. The wood elf swung down out of her saddle and thrust the reins into Araloth’s hands. He blinked in surprise. ‘What–’ he began.

‘The council requires your presence, champion,’ the rider gasped, breathing heavily, though whether in excitement or fear he couldn’t say. ‘The Eldest of the Ancients has awoken, and he speaks words of portent. You must go!’

Without further hesitation, Araloth swung up into the horse’s saddle and dug his heels into its lathered flanks. The horse reared and pawed the air with its hooves before turning and galloping back the way it had come, carrying Araloth into the depths of the forest.

As he rode, he wondered why Durthu had chosen now to awaken, and whether it had anything to do with their visitor. Several months after Ariel had fallen ill, an intruder had somehow navigated the worldroots and penetrated the King’s Glade. The newcomer had allowed the startled sentries, including Araloth himself, to take her into custody and asked only that they grant her an audience with the Council of Athel Loren. Araloth, bemused, had agreed, if only because it wasn’t every day that Alarielle, Everqueen of Ulthuan, visited Athel Loren.

His bemusement had faded when he had learned of her reasons for braving the dangers of the worldroots. The forest was dying, and it seemed that the world was dying with it. The balance of the Weave was shifting, and all that his folk had fought so long to prevent was at last coming to pass. The doom of all things was upon them, and no one could figure out a way to stop it. Araloth bent low over the horse’s neck and urged it to greater speed.

But if Durthu had at last risen from his slumber, if the Eldest of the Ancients had decided to address the council, as he had done so infrequently in recent decades, then perhaps that doom could still be averted.

And perhaps the Mage Queen could still be saved.

‘Die-die filthy man-thing!’ Snikrat, hero of Clan Mordkin, shrieked as he fell out of the tree onto the panting messenger. The man – a youth, really – died as soon as the skaven struck him, the weight of the rat-thing landing on his neck and the bite of the cruel, saw-toothed blade the latter clutched, serving to tumble him into Morr’s welcoming arms before he knew what was happening. Snikrat bounded to his feet, tail lashing, and whirled about excitedly, hunting for more foes.

Relief warred with disappointment when he saw nothing save the hurrying shapes of his Bonehides scrambling over the thick roots and between the close-set trees of Hvargir Forest. The clawband of black-furred stormvermin swarmed towards him, chittering in obsequious congratulations. Snikrat tore his blade free of the messenger’s body and gesticulated at his warriors. ‘What good are you if you cannot catch-quick one man-thing?’ he snapped. ‘It is a lucky thing that I was here, in this place where you see me, to dispose of the creature whose body I now stand on with this blade I hold in my paw.’

Beady black eyes slid away from his own bulging, red-veined ones, and the stink of nervous musk filled the immediate air as his warriors bunched together and the front ranks shuffled back. Snikrat knew that he cut an imposing figure. He was bigger than any two of his Bonehides put together, and clad in the finest armour warpstone could purchase. His blade had belonged to a dwarf thane, once upon a time, and though it had changed hands and owners several times since, it was still a deadly looking weapon, covered in dolorous runes and smeared with several foul-smelling unguents, which, to Snikrat’s knowledge, did nothing – but better safe than sorry.

He spat and looked down at the messenger. ‘Search the man-thing there on the ground and the clothes that he wears for anything of value, by which I mean things of gold and or conspicuous shininess, and then give them to me, your leader, Snikrat the Magnificent, yes-yes.’ He kicked the body towards his followers, the closest of whom immediately fell upon it in a frenzy of looting. A squealing squabble broke out. Snikrat turned away as the first punch was thrown.

He scrambled back up the tree he’d been hunched in before the messenger had disturbed his well-deserved meditation. From its uppermost branches, he could take in most of the forest, as well as the distant stone towers and wooden palisades that dotted the region. The lands the man-things called the Border Princes was cramped with duchies and fiefdoms, most no bigger than a common clanrat’s burrow. The messenger had likely been heading for one of them, sent out to bring aid to the keep the rest of Clan Mordkin was, at the moment, busily sacking.

Snikrat hissed softly as he thought of the slaughter he was missing. Warlord Feskit had led the assault personally, from the rear, and he had wanted Snikrat around while he did it. Snikrat grunted in grudging admiration – no one had ever accused Feskit of being stupid. Indeed, the leader of Clan Mordkin was anything but, and under his beneficent rule, the clan had recovered much of the wealth and prestige it had lost over the centuries since its ousting from Cripple Peak. Though he was growing older and less impressive with every year, he had managed to avoid every serious challenge and assassination attempt made on him.

Perched on a branch, anchored by his hairless tail, Snikrat hauled a flap of tanned and inked flesh out from within his cuirass and carefully unfolded it. The map wasn’t much, but it served its purpose. Carefully, his pink tongue pinched between his fangs, he used a stub of charcoal to draw an ‘x’ over the keep they’d just come from. There were still six more between them and Mad Dog Pass, which meant plenty of chances for him to add to his own meagre pile of campaign spoils. Idly, he reached up and plucked an egg from the bird’s nest that sat in the branches above. He’d eaten the mother earlier, and it seemed a shame to let the eggs go to waste. As he crunched on the delicate shell, and eyed the map, he considered his fortunes, such as they were.

It was a time of great happenings and glories, from the perspective of an ambitious chieftain, such as he, himself, Snikrat the Magnificent. The sky wept green meteors and the ground vomited up volcanoes as unnatural storms swept the land. It was as if the great Horned Rat himself had opened the door to the world and whispered to his children, ‘Go forth and take it, with my compliments.’

Granted, that was easier said than done. True, the man-thing kingdoms of Tilea and Estalia, as factitious in their own way as the skaven themselves, had fallen quickly enough to the numberless hordes that had surged upwards from the network of subterranean tunnels. Every city between Magritta and Sartosa was now a blasted ruin, over which the ragged banner of one clan or another flew. But there were other victories that proved more elusive.

Snikrat scratched at the barely healed mark on his throat. A gift from Feskit, and a sign of his mercy. Snikrat hunched forward and ate another egg. It had been his own fault, and he, Snikrat, was pragmatic enough to admit that, in private, in his own head. He had thought that the omens were a sign that he, Snikrat, should attempt to tear out Feskit’s wattle throat. Instead, it was he who felt his rival’s teeth on his neck.

Still, there was plenty of time. The world was the skaven’s for the taking, even as Clan Mordkin was for his, Snikrat’s. And then, the greatest treasures of the clan would be his… Including the Weapon – that oh-so-beautiful sword of glistening black warpstone that Feskit kept hidden behind lock and chain. Even he, Snikrat, had heard of the Fellblade, the slayer of kings and worse than kings, on whose edge the fortunes of Clan Mordkin had been honed. With a weapon like that in hand, there would be no stopping him, and he, Snikrat, would be a power to be reckoned with in the Under-Empire.

Snikrat chattered happily to himself and ate another egg.

FIVE

The woman who knelt before Mannfred von Carstein was pale and beautiful, and deceit oozed out of her every pampered pore. She claimed to speak for the Queen of the Silver Pinnacle, but so too did half a dozen other similar women, all of whom were mingling with his guests in a manner he found somewhat amusing. He accepted the scroll and waved a hand. She rose gracefully and retreated, leaving the garden behind. As she left, the guards crossed their blades, blocking any further entry.

Mannfred tapped the scroll against his lips. His eyes slid to his cousin, Markos, as the latter refilled his goblet from a jug of magically warmed blood. ‘Where is the liche? He practically demanded that I include him in these meetings. I find myself slightly disappointed that he chose not to show up.’

Markos hesitated. His eyes went unfocused for a moment, and then snapped back to their usual keenness. He finished filling his goblet. ‘He’s in the old library in the west wing, poring over those books and scrolls you lent him.’

Mannfred frowned. It had been weeks since the battle at Valsborg Bridge and its inconclusive climax. He had played the part of the dutiful aristocratic host, inviting his new… ally back to Castle Sternieste. Arkhan had accepted the offer with grating sincerity, and had been as good as his word. He had made no attempt at treachery, asking only that he be allowed to see those relics he had come for, and that he be included in any councils of war, as befitted an ally. Mannfred had yet to grant the former request, both out of suspicion and a perverse urge to see how far he could push the liche’s magnanimity.

The line between ally and enemy was often only the thickness of ambition’s edge, and could be crossed as a consequence of the smallest act of disrespect or discourtesy. Thus far, Arkhan had given no obvious notice to the passing of time, or Mannfred’s attempts to evade his request. He wondered if the liche’s absence was a subtle thrust of his own. ‘And his creatures?’ he said, studying the scroll of papyrus the Lahmian had given him. Arkhan’s coterie of necromancers were as untrustworthy as their master, but they had enough raw power between them to be useful. ‘What of them?’

‘They’ve settled in nicely. Several of their fellows reached us weeks ago.’ Markos tapped his chin. ‘We have quite the little colloquium of necromancers now. Enough to raise a host or six, I should think.’

‘You shouldn’t, cousin,’ Mannfred said. He hefted the scroll and it curled and blackened in his hand, reduced to ashes.

‘Shouldn’t what?’ Markos asked.

‘Think,’ Mannfred said. He ignored Markos’s glare and looked at Elize. He gestured to the ash that swirled through the air. ‘What of the handmaidens of the mistress of the Silver Pinnacle? Can they be trusted, or will they seek to sabotage my efforts for lack of anything else to do, if they haven’t already?’

Elize blew an errant crimson lock out of her face and said, ‘They’re cunning, but cautious. Overly so, in my opinion. Without word from their queen, they seem content to watch and nothing more.’ She frowned. ‘If the barrier of faith falters, even for a moment, they’ll make for the mountains as quickly as possible. We may want to inhume them somewhere out of the way, if for no other reason than to deny the Queen of Mysteries what they know.’

Mannfred paused, considering. It was a pleasant thought. But that was for the future. He shook his head. ‘No. As amusing as that thought is, the Queen of Mysteries is too dangerous an opponent to antagonise needlessly.’

‘Besides which, for every one of her creatures you see, there are at least two you don’t,’ Erikan said. He sat in the tree, whittling on a length of femur with a knife. Mannfred glanced up at him.

‘You are correct,’ Mannfred said. ‘And they’re not the only maggots hidden in the meat.’ He looked at Nyktolos. ‘What of Gashnag’s representatives? Will the Black Prince of Morgheim throw in with us, or will I be forced to bring him to heel like the brute he truly is? And can we trust those creatures of his, who currently enjoy my hospitality?’

‘Those who hold true to the banners of mouldy Strigos are, for the moment, with us.’ Nyktolos hesitated, and then amended, ‘That is to say, with you, Lord Mannfred.’ Nyktolos took off his monocle and rubbed it on his sleeve. ‘And the beasts you brought from Mousillon are as content as such creatures can be. Nonetheless, it is my informed opinion that we cannot trust them, being as they are snake-brained, weasel-spined, marrow-lickers, fit only to be staked out for the sun.’

‘Well said,’ Alberacht grunted from where he perched on the high wall, wings drooping over the stones like two leathery curtains. His lamp-like eyes sought out Mannfred. ‘We cannot trust the spawn of Ushoran, Count von Carstein. They are animals, and unpredictable ones at that,’ he growled, with no hint of irony.

Markos nearly choked on a swallow of blood. Mannfred glanced at his cousin disapprovingly. While mockery was a game he enjoyed, Nictus was deserving of more respect. He was a monster, and addle-brained, but loyal. And, in his own way, the Reaper of Drakenhof was as much a power in Sylvania as any von Carstein. Nictus had been of the old order, a cousin to Isabella and a nephew of Otto von Drak. Von Drak had ordered Nictus chained in an oubliette for some unspecified transgression, and only Isabella’s pleas had moved Vlad to bother digging him out. Nictus had served Vlad faithfully in life and then in undeath, with a dogged, unswerving loyalty that Mannfred had, at the time, found amusing. Now, centuries after his own betrayal of Vlad, he found Nictus’s continued, unquestioning, loyalty almost comforting.

He heard a sibilant chuckle inside his head and felt a flash of anger. He pressed his fingers to his head and waited for it to pass. Pushing his thoughts of Vlad and loyalty aside, he asked, ‘What of the others? The so-called Shadowlord of Marienburg? Cicatrix of Wolf Crag? Have they sent representatives or missives?’

‘No, my lord. Then, Mundvard was never one to be accused of knowing his place. When Vlad died, he went his own way, as so many of us did,’ Alberacht said. He shook his head. ‘Marienburg is his place now, and he’ll not leave it or invite us in, if he can help it.’

‘And Wolf Crag, even ensconced as it is within our borders, has not responded. If Cicatrix still lives, she may well have decided to throw in her lot with von Dohl, given their past history. She was ever fond of that perfumed lout,’ Anark said.

Mannfred sighed. Not all vampires in the world congregated in Sylvania, but Mannfred saw no reason that they shouldn’t be made aware of what he had wrought. And if they chose to come and venerate him as the natural lord of their kind for it, why, who was he to turn them away? Granted, he tempered such musings with a certain cynicism. He had travelled among his farther flung kin, journeying through the stinking jungles of the Southlands and the high hills of Cathay, and knew that, whatever their land of origin, vampires were all the same. Uniformly deceitful, treacherous and arrogant.

They could be allies – but subordinates? He smiled to himself at the thought. There was little humour in the expression. Soon, however, he thought, they would have no choice. He felt the weight of destiny on his shoulders such as he never had before, even during those heady months when he had first taken control of Sylvania. The time was fast coming when all of the descendants of the bloody courtiers of long-vanished Lahmia, whether they lurked in jade temples, insect-filled jungles or mouldering manses, would have to bend knee to the new master of death.

And are you so sure that master is you, my boy? Vlad’s voice murmured. Mannfred closed his eyes, banishing the voice. For all of the old ghost’s attempts to undermine his surety, Mannfred felt all the more certain of his path. The world would be broken to the designs laid out by the Corpse Geometries, and made a thing of unflinching, unfailing order, ruled over by one will – his.

‘Did you hear me, my lord?’ Anark asked, startling him. The big vampire had grown into his role as the Grand Master of the Drakenhof Order, bullying and, in one case, beheading, any who might challenge him. In the weeks since Tomas’s charred head had been relegated to a stake on the battlement for the amusement of the crows, Anark had weeded out the favour-curriers and courtiers, leaving only a hardened cadre of blood knights equal to any produced by the drill field of Blood Keep. Mannfred looked forward to employing them on the battlefield.

‘What?’ Mannfred blinked. He shuddered slightly. He felt as if he’d been lost in a dream, and was slightly ill from the sweetness of it. He felt the eyes of the inner circle on him, and he cursed himself for showing even the briefest of weaknesses. It wouldn’t take much to incite a cur like Markos, or even lovely Elize, to start sharpening their fangs, and he could ill afford to have them start scheming against him now.

‘I said that we have reports that the Crimson Lord has returned to Sylvania, and is claiming dominion over the citadel of Waldenhof,’ Anark said.

Mannfred waved a hand. ‘And so? What is that to me? Let that dolt von Dohl pontificate and prance about in that draughty pile if he wishes. He knows better than to challenge me openly, and if he chooses to do so… Well, we could use a bit of fun, no?’ He clapped his hands together. ‘See to our strategies for the coming year. Everything must go perfectly, or our fragile weave is undone. I must speak with our guest.’

He left them there in the garden, staring after him, and was gone out the door before they could so much as protest. He knew what they would say, even if they hadn’t been saying it every day for weeks. The incessant scheming, strategising and drilling was wearing on them, even Anark, who lived for the tourney field. Vampires were not, by nature, creatures of hard graft. They were predators, and each had a predator’s laziness. They exerted themselves only when the goal was in reach, and had not the foresight to see why that path led only to a hawthorn stake or a slow expiration under the sun’s merciless gaze.

All save me and thee and one or two others, eh, boy? Vlad murmured encouragingly. I taught you to see the edges of the canvas, where one portrait ends and another begins, didn’t I?

‘You taught me nothing save how to die,’ Mannfred hissed. He quickly looked around, but only the dead were within earshot. The truly dead these, rather than the thirsty dead, wrenched from silent tombs and set to guarding the corridors of his castle. He paused for a moment, eyes closed, ignoring the shadows that closed in on him. It was no use; he could feel them, winnowing into his thoughts, clouding his perceptions.

Vlad had indeed taught him much, his words aside. The creature who had given him his name had been as good a teacher as any Mannfred had had up until that point in his sorry life. He had learned from Vlad that the only true path was the one you forged for yourself.

In their centuries together, Vlad had taught him to change his face, and the scent of his magics, so as to hide his origins from prying forces who would seek to use the secrets of his turning against him. Vlad had taught him to trust only his instincts, and to be true to his ambitions, wherever they led, to use his desires like a blade and buckler. And, in the end, Vlad had taught him the greatest lesson of all – that power alone did not shield you from weakness. It crept in, like a thief in the night, where you least suspected it, and it slit your throat as surely as any enemy blade – Nagash, Neferata, Ushoran and, in the end, Vlad himself had all been humbled by their weaknesses. And so too had Mannfred.

But unlike them, he had risen from the ashes, remade and all the stronger for his failure. And he would not fall prey to his weaknesses again. ‘I learned my lessons well, old man,’ he murmured as he opened his eyes. ‘I will be beholden to no man or ghost, and ambition is my tool, not my master.’

Something that might have been laughter floated on the dank air like particles of dust. Mannfred ignored it and continued on through the halls, his mind turning from the past to the future and what part his newfound ally would play in assuring that it came about.

He found the liche in the library, as Markos had said. Arkhan sat at one of the great tables, his fleshless fingers tracing across the page of one of the large grimoires that Mannfred had collected over the course of his life. His pet sat curled over his shoulder, its milky orbs slitted and its ragged tail twitching. He peered over Arkhan’s shoulder, and saw the complicated pictographic script of lost Nehekhara. ‘Dehbat’s Book of Tongues,’ he said. The cat hissed at him and he replied in kind.

Arkhan didn’t turn as he reached up to scratch the cat under the chin. ‘I knew Dehbat. He was one of W’soran’s pets, in better days,’ he said, as he carefully turned the page. The book was old, older even than Mannfred, and was a copy of a copy of a copy.

‘He was wise, in his way, if unimaginative,’ Mannfred said, circling the table and heading for the great windows that marked the opposite wall. It was dark outside, as ever, but the sky was alive with a hazy aurora of witch-light. The light was not of his doing, and he knew that it was bleeding through his protective magics from the world outside. Time was running short. Eventually, Sylvania would be shorn of its protection, but still trapped by the wall of faith.

‘W’soran did not choose his apprentices for their creativity,’ Arkhan said. He closed the book. ‘I cannot say why he chose them at all, frankly. They were all disreputable, undisciplined overly ambitious vermin, without fail.’

‘So speaks Arkhan the Black, gambler, murderer, thief, sorcerer, and secret animal-lover,’ Mannfred said. ‘I know of your history, liche. You are hardly one to speak of disrepute and discipline.’ He looked at Arkhan, and the latter’s jaws sagged open in a wheezing laugh that caused Mannfred’s teeth to itch in his gums. ‘Did I say something funny? Why are you laughing?’

‘I am laughing, von Carstein, because your misapprehension amuses me,’ Arkhan said. He hefted the book and tossed it to Mannfred, as if it were nothing more than a penny dreadful from a street vendor’s stall.

‘Enlighten me,’ Mannfred said. He caught the book easily and set it back gently on the table. His fingers curled in the fraying hairs that hung lank and loose on the cover. The scalp had belonged to some night-souled shaman from one of the tribes in the Vaults, who had copied the book into its current form, and then been gutted and scalped at his own command by the savages whom he’d ruled. It was a lesson in the fine line between dedication and obsession.

‘You assume that I am Arkhan the Black,’ Arkhan said.

Mannfred froze. Then, slowly, he turned. He said nothing, merely waited for Arkhan to continue. Arkhan watched him, as if gauging his reaction. The liche’s skeletal grin never wavered.

‘Arkhan the Black died, vampire,’ Arkhan rasped. He touched one of the other tomes. His skeletal fingers clicked as they touched the ancient bronze clasp that held it shut.

‘And was reborn, as I was,’ Mannfred said, trying to read something, anything, in the flicker of the liche’s eye sockets.

‘Was I? Sometimes, I wonder. Am I the same man I was then, the man who drank of Nagash’s potions, who chewed a drug-root until his teeth turned black, who loved a queen – and lost her? Am I him, or am I simply Nagash’s memory of him?’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Are my thoughts my own, or his? Am I a servant – or a mask?’

Mannfred said nothing. There was nothing he could say, even if he had wanted to. He had never had such thoughts himself. They smacked of philosophical equivocation, something he had no patience for. He saw a flash of something out of the corner of his eye, heard Vlad’s dry chuckle, and bit down on a snarl. ‘Does it matter?’ he snapped.

Arkhan cocked his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But you asked what I found so amusing. And I have told you. You are missing several key pieces, are you not?’ He rubbed the cat’s spine, stroking the bare bone and causing the foul beast to arch its back in a parody of feline pleasure.

‘I am aware of the gaps in my collection, yes, thank you,’ Mannfred said acidly. He threw up his hands. ‘And were I not trapped here, I would have those items in my hand even now.’

‘The staff, the blade, the armour,’ Arkhan said.

‘And two of the Nine Books,’ Mannfred said slyly. ‘Or are you offering those to me, as a gesture of our newfound friendship?’

‘You said that with a straight face. Your control is admirable,’ Arkhan said. Mannfred grunted, but said nothing. Arkhan inclined his head. ‘And I am, yes.’

Mannfred’s head came up sharply, and his eyes narrowed. ‘What?’

‘The books are yours, should you wish,’ Arkhan said. He stood and drifted towards the window, hands clasped behind his back. ‘This place is as safe as any, for the time being, and we both desire the same end, do we not?’

Mannfred stepped back and looked at the liche. ‘Nagash,’ he said. Shadows tickled the edges of his vision, and he heard what might have been the rustle of loose pages as a draught curled through the library.

‘Nagash must rise. As you promised the sorcerer-wraiths of Nagashizzar, the black cults of Araby, and the ghoul-cabals of Cathay, when you sought their aid in gathering your collection, as you call it.’ Arkhan pressed a bony digit to the window, and frost spread around the point it touched the glass in a crystalline halo. He looked at Mannfred. ‘For you, he is a means to an end. For me, he is the end unto itself. Yet we move along the same path, vampire. We tread the same trail, and follow the same light. Why not do it together?’

‘We are,’ Mannfred said. ‘Have I not opened my castle to you? Have I not given shelter to your creatures?’ Though he meant the necromancers, he gestured to the cat, which glared at him with dull ferocity.

‘Yes, but you have still denied my request to gaze upon those items that are necessary to our shared goal. You have denied me my request to see those prisoners whose blood is the base of the sorceries that protect Sylvania – and trap you here.’

Mannfred tensed, as he always did when the wall of faith that caged the laughable cess-pit he called a realm was mentioned. Arkhan scraped his finger along the window, cracking the glass. He had allowed Mannfred to play the genial host for long enough. It was past time for action. The world was cracking beneath the weight of warring destinies.

Arkhan had felt it, as he crossed the mountains and journeyed to Sylvania, though it had taken him the quiet weeks since to process those ephemeral stirrings into something approaching a conclusion. They were approaching a pivotal moment, and they were not doing so unobserved. Eyes were upon them, even here, in this place. Arkhan could feel the spirits of Chaos whispering in the spider-webbed corridors and rumbling far below the earth, and he had cast the bones and understood the signs. There were powers gathering in the dark places, old powers, no longer content to simply watch.

Time was their enemy now. And he could not allow Mannfred to cede any more ground, not if their shared goal was to be accomplished. ‘They are part of it, you see. The magics used to bind you here, like a cur in a kennel, are your own, twisted back upon you.’ He decided to sweeten his bitter draft with a bit of flattery. ‘Why else did you think it was so powerful, vampire? The living have no capacity for such magics, not on their own. You have made your own trap and you can break it, if you so desire.’

Mannfred twitched. His eyes narrowed and he asked, simply, ‘How?’

‘There is a ritual,’ Arkhan said.

‘What sort of ritual?’

‘I doubt that you would agree to it.’

‘Let me be the judge of that,’ Mannfred hissed. ‘Tell me!’

Arkhan said nothing. He scratched the cat’s chin. Mannfred’s upper lip curled back from his teeth and he glared at Arkhan furiously. Arkhan met the glare patiently. He could not force Mannfred into what needed doing, not without fear of provoking the vampire. No, the easiest way of getting a vampire to do something was to tell them not to do it. Mannfred snarled and struck the stone sill of the window with his fist, cracking it. ‘What sort of ritual, damn you? We do not have the time to play these puerile games of yours, liche.’

‘A sacrifice,’ Arkhan said. He removed the cat from his shoulder and deposited it on the table. ‘You possess nine prisoners, do you not? That is the number required for the blood ritual you enacted to seal Sylvania against threats divine and worldly, if my memory serves.’

Mannfred started visibly. ‘You know it?’ he asked.

‘I know more than you can conceive, von Carstein. All such sorceries derive from a single source, like the rivers of the Great Land. And I am most intimately acquainted with that source, if you’ll recall.’ Arkhan gave a negligent wave of his hand. ‘Sacrifice one of the ones whose blood you’ve used to anchor your rite, any one of them, and it will create a momentary breach in the wall of faith that encircles your land.’

‘Sacrifice?’ Mannfred asked. He shook his head. ‘Madness. No. No, I’ll not cripple the very protections I worked so hard to create.’

‘Then, we’d best get used to one another’s company,’ Arkhan said. ‘Because we’re going to be here for a very long time. Out of curiosity, how long can one of your kind last without blood? A few decades, I expect. After that, you’ll be too withered and shrunken to do much more than gnash your fangs fetchingly.’ He cocked his head. ‘By my calculations, your servants will have drunk this province dry within a month, at least. They glut themselves without consideration for the future, and you let them, to keep them distracted and under control.’

‘How I control my servants is my business,’ Mannfred growled.

‘Correct,’ Arkhan said, ‘I cannot force salvation upon you, von Carstein. I merely offer my aid. It is up to you to accept it, or to gnaw your liver in continued frustration. But you are correct. Time grows short. What happens in a month, or a week, when your prisoners are the only living things left in this place? How long will your control last then? How long before you face revolt from your servants, and from your own unseemly thirst? Is it not better to sacrifice one now, so that you might be free to utilise the others as you wish, unimpeded?’

Mannfred turned away. ‘Which one?’ he asked.

‘I will need to see them to answer that. I have ways of determining which of them is the least necessary for your pattern.’

‘And now we come to it,’ Mannfred snapped. ‘All your offers of aid and books are nothing more than your attempt to burrow your way into my vaults, are they not? You could not defeat me in open battle, and now you seek to trick me. You came to Sylvania to claim those items I won by my guile and strength, and to demand that I swear fealty to the broken, black soul whose cloak hem you still cling to. Well, you’ll get neither!’ Mannfred whirled and caught up the table, wrenching it up over his head in a display of monstrous strength, spilling books and the yowling corpse-cat to the floor. His lean frame swelled with inhuman muscle as his face contorted, becoming as gargoyle-hideous as that of any of his more bestial servants. ‘Nagash is not my god, liche. He does not command me!’

Arkhan looked up at the table, and then at the face of he who held it. He could see, though just barely, an enormous, ghostly shape superimposed over Mannfred’s own, and heard a rustle of sound in the depths of his own tattered spirit that might have been laughter. Mannfred’s face twisted, and Arkhan knew that the vampire heard it as well. The tableau held for a moment, two, three… And then Mannfred set the table down with more gentleness than Arkhan had expected. He seemed to deflate. The library was as cold as a crypt, and frost clung thick on the windows, as if something had sucked all of the heat from the room all at once.

‘Which are you, I wonder – servant or mask?’ Arkhan asked.

‘I am my own man,’ Mannfred grated, from between clenched fangs. He closed his eyes. ‘Nagash holds no power over me. I am merely in a foul humour and my temper is short. Forgive me.’ The excuse sounded weak to Arkhan. The defiance of a mouse, caught in the claws of a well-fed cat. Mannfred was bowing beneath the weight of another’s will, no matter how much he denied it, and he knew it too. The thing that held his soul in its talons had done so for far longer than Mannfred likely suspected, Arkhan thought. It battened upon him, like a leech, and only now had it grown strong enough to be felt.

Memories of his own life, in service to Nagash, before things went wrong, spattered across the surface of his mind, brief bursts of colour and sound that pulsed brightly and faded quickly. It had taken him years to understand the plague that was Nagash. How he infected his tools, both living and inanimate, with himself, with his mind and thoughts. He hollowed you out and took your place in your own skull, pulling the red rags of your psyche over himself like a cloak, emerging only when necessary. Mannfred had never had a chance… Vampires were the blood of Nagash. It was his essence that had transformed Neferata into the creature she now was, and from her had sprung fecund legions, whose veins ran with the black blood of the Great Necromancer. While creatures like Mannfred persisted, Nagash would never truly be gone.

Arkhan felt a pang of something that might have been sympathy for the creature before him. For all of them – puppets on the end of his master’s strings, though they knew it not. Some were more wilful than others, with longer strings, but they were still puppets, still slaves to the song of blood and the Corpse Geometries that hemmed them in.

Mannfred’s head came up sharply, and his nostrils flared. ‘Ha!’ he barked. He looked at Arkhan. ‘You wanted to see the prisoners, liche? Well let us go visit them.’

‘What changed your mind?’ Arkhan asked.

Mannfred chuckled and swept for the door. ‘They’re trying to escape.’

‘You don’t sound concerned,’ Arkhan said, as he hurried after Mannfred, his robes rustling. The liche’s hand fell to the pommel of his blade, as he examined Mannfred’s broad back. It would be no effort at all to simply slide the blade in. Well, perhaps some effort. Mannfred was no guileless peasant, after all. Destroying him now might spare grief later. Vampires were unpredictable at the best of times, and this was most assuredly not the best of times. Right now, Mannfred thought he was in control. Eventually, however, he would try to openly resist Nagash’s return, especially once he realised what fate awaited him, should they be successful.

Nonetheless, he still required the vampire’s aid. Many hands made for quick work. Arkhan let his hand slide away from the blade. No, the time to dispose of Mannfred had not yet come.

‘I’m not. I want them to try,’ Mannfred said. I want them to try again and again, and grow more desperate with every failure. Their spirits must be broken. There can be no resistance, come the day. Nothing must stymie us.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Arkhan said.

SIX

Volkmar stood knee-deep in ash and dust. Harsh smoke caressed his aching lungs and stung his weary eyes. Every limb felt heavy, and his heart struggled to keep its rhythm. He was bitterly cold and terribly hot, all at once. His hammer hung almost forgotten in his hand, its ornate head broken, and its haft soaked in blood and sweat. His breath fogged and swirled before his eyes, and he could see faces in it. Men and women, some he knew, others whom he found familiar though he could not say why or how.

There was blood on his face and hands, and his gilded armour was stained with tarry excretions and reeking ichors. The smoke that entombed him stank of funeral pyres, and he could hear the roar of distant battle. Weapons crashed against shields and bit into cringing meat. The air swelled and cracked with a riot of voices, echoing from unseen places. Screams of agony mingled with pleading voices and howling cries of pure animal terror. The air was choked by the smoke that curled about him; he could see strange witch-lights pulsing within its depths, and horrible, ill-defined shapes moving around him, either too slowly or too quickly. He could not say where they were going, or why. Something crackled beneath his foot.

The smoke swirled clear for a moment, and he saw that he stood on a carpet of bones, picked clean by the ages. Old bones and new bones, brown and white and yellow, clad in the shapeless remnants of clothing and armour from a span of centuries that boggled Volkmar’s already addled mind. He saw weapons and tools the likes of which he had only seen in the most ancient of barrows, and those that seemed far more advanced than the ones he was familiar with. It was as if someone had emptied out all of the graveyards of history.

Volkmar did not know where he was, or how he had come there. He only knew that he was frightened, and tired, but not yet ready. Ready for what, he did not know, but the thought of it caused him to shudder in horror. He raised his hammer wearily, preparing himself for what he somehow knew came next.

All about him, the plain of bones began to tremble and clatter. Sparks of weird light grew in the empty sockets of every skull and a eye-searing green fire crackled along the length of every bone. The bones surged up with a cacophonous rattle, and something began to take shape – something immense and powerful, Volkmar knew, though he had never seen it before. A single voice suddenly drowned out all others, silencing them. It spoke in a language that Volkmar had only ever seen written down, and the words were carved into the chill air like sword strokes.

As the thing – the daemon, his mind screamed – grew and formed and spoke, the smoke above him cleared. He looked up at the cold, black stars that pulsed in the dead void above. A thought quavered in his head, like the tinny tone of a child’s bell. Everything was dead, here. Nothing lived, save him. Nothing moved, or breathed, or laughed or loved, without the whim of the monstrous intelligence that guided the climbing, shifting pillar of bones rising up before him. It had conquered and covered and was the world about him. His world, for he could see the ruin of the great temple of Sigmar, there, rising from the sea of death, and the Imperial palace and a hundred other landmarks, barely visible through the smoke.

His heart sank. He saw the blackened skeletons of the Vagr Breughel Memorial Playhouse and the Geheimnihsstrasse Theatre, the broken ruin of Temple Street, and shattered remnant of the Konigsplatz. Altdorf, he was in Altdorf, and it, like everything else in this world, was dead and buried. The gods were gone, and only this cold, malignity remained.

The thought incited him, freeing him from his terrified paralysis. A hoarse roar slipped from his blistered lips, and he swung the hammer up, catching it in both hands as he forced himself forwards through the clawing tide of dead matter that swirled about him. A light, weak at first, and then growing stronger, suffused him. A corona of heat swirled into being about the shattered head of the hammer as he swung it.

The hammer smacked into a giant’s palm. The sliding, slithering bones that made up the titan’s claw gave slightly at the force of the blow. Then the massive claws curled down, enclosing the hammer completely, and, like a parent taking a toy from a child, snatched the weapon from Volkmar’s grip. The arm was impossibly long, and attached to an equally out-of-proportion shoulder. The constant motion of the bones made it hard to discern the truth of the shape before him, but he saw enough to want to look away – to run, a voice screamed.

Volkmar turned and ran. It was not the first time he had done so, and he knew that it wasn’t the first time he had faced this enemy either. He had fled from it before, and fought ineffectually against it and been buried by it again and again. He ran, and his hammer was somehow in his hand again, still broken, its weight slowing him down. The thing followed him, ploughing through the smoke and charnel leavings like a shark through shallow waters, absorbing and expelling the bones it rolled over. Sometimes it was beside him, and other times it loomed over him, its shadow enveloping him in a cloak of numbing cold. It outpaced him at times or fell far behind. He had the sense that it was in no hurry. That it was enjoying itself. But he did not stop, he could not stop. To face it, he knew, was to fall. Only in flight was there life, and Volkmar dearly wanted to live.

The courage that had sustained him throughout his long life, that had kept him on his feet through fire and ruin, that had seen him match his hammer against all manner of foes, had failed him. All of his training, all of his rhetoric, all of his faith, had fled him, leaving only the raw atavistic impulse to survive at all costs. So he ran.

He ran in pursuit of the wind. He heard a woman’s voice, in the hissing sibilance of the breeze that stirred the smoke. He always heard it, as he ran. Sometimes he thought it was his mother, or an old lover, or the daughter he’d never had, but other times, he knew it was none of those. It was not a human voice. It was a voice that spoke to the wind, and to eagles, and it lent him strength, and propelled him on, easing the weight of his hurts and sweeping aside the dead shapes that lunged for him out of the smoke.

Run, she murmured.

Run, she whispered.

Run, she screamed.

Volkmar ran, and the dead world pursued him. And as his limbs failed, and his blood pounded in his ears, and the rattle of bones grew thunderous in his ears, he grasped at her words, her voice, grabbing for any shred of salvation, of hope, and, as all of the dead of Altdorf heaved beneath him, the Grand Theogonist woke up.

Volkmar’s eyes sprang open, and he sucked in a lungful of stale, damp air. He shuddered and twitched, unable to control his limbs. His heels drummed on the stone floor, and his palms flapped uselessly against his battered cuirass. He moaned and tried to roll over, but the manacles about his wrists prevented it. He was forced to squirm about and haul himself up into a sitting position. His body ached, much as it had in his dream. He coughed, trying to clear his throat, and looked around blearily.

‘Still alive, my friend?’ someone asked. Volkmar peered through the gloom, and caught sight of golden armour gleaming still beneath a layer of filth. He struggled to recall the Tilean’s name, through the mugginess of his aborted sleep.

‘If you can call it living,’ Volkmar coughed. His throat was parched and drier than the deserts of Araby. He squinted at the knight. ‘You’ve looked better, Blaze.’

Lupio Blaze, Templar of the Order of the Blazing Sun, laughed shallowly. ‘As have we all,’ he said, rattling his chains. His once-handsome features had been bludgeoned into a shapeless mass of dried blood and bruises, but his eyes were still bright, and his torn lips still quirked in a smile. ‘Still, it could be worse. It could be raining.’

Overhead, thunder rumbled. The soft plop of water was replaced by the steady downbeat of falling rain. Blaze laughed again, and craned himself backwards, so that his head and torso was caught in the downpour. ‘You see, Olf? I say that the gods still watch over us, eh?’ Blaze called out, gulping at the rainwater. He made a cup of his hands, and caught a handful of the rain. Then he kicked the legs of the figure chained next to him. ‘Up, Olf, have a drink, on me,’ he said, pouring the handful of water into the cupped hands of the burly Ulrican priest who was chained to the lectern next to his.

Olf Doggert eagerly slurped the water, and then grudgingly passed the next handful of water to the next prisoner in line, the pinch-faced young priest of Morr, Mordecaul Cadavion. Cadavion drank his share and passed along the next handful, emptying his cupped hands into those of the wan-faced matron named Elspeth Farrier, a priestess of Shallya. Volkmar turned his attention to the figure of the man chained beside her. Wild haired and raggedly dressed even before their captivity, Russett, blessed of Taal looked like a living corpse now. He hadn’t eaten in days, and he’d barely drunk anything. His flesh was mottled with bruises where he’d thrown himself at the walls, and bloody marks chafed his wrists where he continually yanked on his chains. One of his ankles had been gnawed to the bone, not by any of Mannfred’s beasts, but by the man himself in an attempt to get free of an earlier set of chains.

The nature priest had suffered more physically in captivity than any of them, save Volkmar and Sindst, the sour-faced priest of Ranald, who’d lost a hand and several chunks of his flesh on their journey across Vargravia in Mannfred’s bone cage. Russett crouched, wrapped in chains and silently rocking back and forth. Like an animal that had been caged too long, he had gone quietly mad. Now he stared at the cockroaches and rats that shared their prison, as if trying to communicate with them. But whatever esoteric abilities Taal had granted him were not in evidence, not in Sylvania. The voices of the gods, ever faint, might as well have been the only fevered imaginings of a flagellant, for all that they reached their servants here, Volkmar reflected.

He watched Elspeth help Sindst drink. He slurped greedily at the water in her hands, and nodded weary thanks when he’d finished. Volkmar looked around. After Mannfred’s last visit, they had been moved from the walls to the lecterns, and had their chains shortened. The reason hadn’t been shared, but Volkmar suspected that it was another of Mannfred’s demented games. He knew that the vampire enjoyed their futile escape attempts, just as he knew that they couldn’t stop trying. Wounded, exhausted and filthy as they were, none of them were yet ready to give up, save perhaps for poor Russett and the Bretonnian, Morgiana, whose mind and soul had been taken by Mannfred long before they had met her. She belonged to von Carstein now. She murmured to herself in the far corner of the room, unchained, but unmoving. She lay on her side on the cold stone, and stroked the floor as if it were a beloved pet, whispering constantly to it. He caught a flash of a delicate fang as she muttered, and looked away, sickened by what she had become.

Volkmar caught Elspeth’s eye, and the Shallyan priestess shook her head slightly. Volkmar sighed and winced, as the wound on his head split and began to leak blood and pus. He reached for it, but Elspeth hissed, ‘Don’t touch it. It’s having enough trouble healing without you picking at it.’

‘I don’t think it’s ever going to heal, sister,’ Volkmar said. ‘Mannfred won’t give us that time.’ He looked around. ‘You can all feel it, can’t you? That heaviness in the air? We’re in the eye of a storm, and one that Mannfred wants to unleash on the rest of the world. He needs us for that.’

‘Otherwise why keep us alive, right?’ Sindst muttered, hugging his wrist-stump to his chest. ‘We know all of this, old man. That’s why we keep trying to escape. Badly, I might add,’ he spat, glaring at Blaze and Olf.

‘Keep talking, sneak-thief,’ Olf growled. ‘Seems to me, if Mannfred needs you alive, I’d be doing us all a favour by wringing your scrawny neck.’

‘Do as you will, brute,’ Sindst said, tonelessly. ‘We’re not getting out of here upright, none of us. We’re all dead, even the pointy-eared witch over there.’ He motioned with his stump to the elf maiden.

Volkmar looked at the elf. He pushed himself to his feet and moved as close as he could to the lectern where she was chained. Her eyes were closed, as they had been for the entirety of their brief, inhospitable association. Volkmar gathered water from Elspeth, and got as close to the elf woman as he could. ‘Drink, my lady,’ he croaked. ‘You must drink.’

Her eyes flickered open. Volkmar realised that she was blind, and felt his heart twist in his chest. ‘Aliathra,’ she murmured. Volkmar blinked. He recognised her voice instantly as the same one he’d heard in his dream, urging him to run. A weak smile flickered across her face and was gone. She leaned forward, and he held his hands out. She reached up and took his hands in hers and bent her face. She drank deeply, and sat back, frowning. ‘Tainted water from tainted skies,’ she said. ‘It tastes of his sorcery.’

‘Funny, I thought it tasted of smoke, maybe with a hint of a Sartosan red?’ Sindst said.

‘Quiet,’ Elspeth said sharply. ‘That’s quite enough out of you, servant of Ranald. If you can’t be of use–’

Sindst’s manacle clattered to the floor. He stretched his good arm and Volkmar saw a twist of metal sticking from the raw stump of his other wrist, poking through the filthy bandages. He grinned in a sickly fashion and said, ‘It took a while. I had to hide it where the flesh-eaters wouldn’t sniff it out. And wait for the flying fang-brothers to go wherever such creatures go when they’re not watching us,’ he added, referring to the two vargheists that Mannfred had left to guard them.

He heaved himself up and began to free the others. ‘This is useless, you know,’ he said, as he worked on Volkmar’s manacles. ‘We’re all dying by inches – no food, no water, no weapons, sick, hurt and bled dry thanks to Mannfred and his cursed spell. We won’t get far.’

‘Then why bother?’ Volkmar asked, looking up at him.

Sindst chuckled. ‘Ranald is the god of luck, among other things. And you don’t get lucky if you don’t roll the knucklebones, Sigmarite.’

‘I hope we have a better plan than last time,’ Mordecaul said, as he was freed.

‘Run faster,’ Elspeth said.

‘That’s not a plan,’ Mordecaul said.

‘Die well,’ Olf said, heaving himself to his feet.

‘What part of the word “plan” don’t you understand?’ Mordecaul demanded.

Sindst chuckled. ‘For the servant of the god of death, you’re not very eager to make his acquaintance, are you, boy?’

Mordecaul hugged himself. ‘I wouldn’t be in his bower for very long, would I? Death is not the end here.’ He looked up, his pale face pinched with grief. ‘I can’t feel him. Morr, I mean. I can’t feel him here.’

‘None of us can feel our gods,’ Blaze said, kicking aside his chains as Sindst freed him. ‘That does not mean they are not there, hey?’ He went to the younger man and clapped him on the shoulders. ‘I knew a man, he was from Talabheim. His name was Goetz, and he was a brother-knight to me. He grew deaf to the words of Myrmidia, but he fought on, deaf and blind to her light. He still served. And when the time came, when he was at the end, suddenly – there she was!’ Blaze made a flamboyant gesture. ‘She had been there all the time, and he had been like a blind man standing in the sun, hey? That is what we are, newly blind. We must find the sun.’ Blaze patted Mordecaul on the cheek. ‘Find the sun,’ he said again.

Volkmar watched the exchange silently. Blaze’s overt display of faith made him feel ashamed, in some small way. His own faith had not so much been shaken as it had been uprooted. One did not become the Grand Theogonist on the strength of faith alone. Such a position was built on a bedrock of compromise. He had felt the power of Sigmar in his veins, but he had never spoken with his god, or gazed upon his face. He had never felt the need to do so. Sigmar provided him with purpose and the strength to carry out that purpose, and that was enough.

Or it had been. Now he wasn’t so sure. He felt eyes on him, and looked around to see Aliathra gazing at him, her face like something carved from marble. In her eyes was something he could not define – sadness, perhaps. Or pity. Volkmar felt a flush of anger and shook off the cloud of doubt that had settled on him. Mannfred had called him ‘Sigmar’s blood’. Well, he’d show the vampire the truth of those words, when he pulled out the leech’s unbeating heart and crushed it before his eyes.

Sindst had gone to the chamber door. ‘I can’t get it open,’ he said.

‘Then step back,’ Olf growled. He flexed his long arms. ‘Still a bit of strength left in this old wolf, I think. What about you, Blaze? What’s that you Myrmidians always say?’

‘We go where we are needed,’ Blaze intoned. ‘We do what must be done.’ He grinned. ‘See, I teach you something yet, yes?’

‘Shut up and put your shoulder into it, you poncy pasta-eater,’ Olf growled. Blaze chuckled and both men struck the door with their shoulders. Volkmar longed to help them, or to see to Morgiana with a sharp length of wood, but it was all he could do to stand. Instead, he kept an eye on the corner where Morgiana still lay, unheeding of their actions, as well as on the open roof above, just in case the vargheists decided to return. There was no way they could fight the creatures in their current state. It would be a miracle if they made the castle gates. But better a quick death in battle than whatever Mannfred had planned. He rubbed his blistered wrists and glanced down at the blood that flowed through the runnels that cut across the floor.

Then, his eyes were drawn to the gleaming iron crown, where it sat on its cushion of human skin. It seemed to glitter with a strange internal light, at once ugly and beauteous, attractive and repulsive in the same instant. He thought he could hear a soft voice calling to him, pleading with him, and he longed to pick it up.

I should, he thought. It was his duty, was it not? The Crown of Sorcery belonged in the vaults of the temple of Sigmar, in the Cache Malefact with the other dangerous objects. It should never have been brought into the light. How Mannfred had breached the vaults was still a mystery, but Volkmar’s fingers itched to snatch up the crown and – place it on my head – carry it away from this fell place.

He froze, startled at the thought that had intruded on his own. It had not been his, and he knew it. His eyes narrowed and he mustered the moisture to spit on the crown, which seemed to flicker angrily in response.

‘You can hear it, can’t you?’ the elf maiden murmured, from behind him.

Volkmar licked his lips. ‘I can,’ he hissed hoarsely. He looked away. ‘But it says nothing worth listening to. It is nothing more than a trap for the unwary.’

‘I saw Mannfred wearing it,’ Mordecaul said. He looked at the crown and shuddered. ‘It fit him perfectly.’

‘It fits any head that dares wear it,’ Volkmar grated. ‘And it hollows out the soul and strips the spirit to make room for that which inhabits it.’ He grinned mirthlessly. ‘Let the von Carstein wear it, and bad cess to him. Let it drain him dry, one parasite on another. A better fate for him, I cannot imagine.’

‘That is not his fate,’ Aliathra said. Her blind eyes sought Volkmar’s. ‘He will burn in the end. As will we all.’

‘I see the stories of the good cheer of the folk of Ulthuan were just that,’ Sindst said. He hefted a broken length of bone in his good hand. ‘If we’re going, let’s go.’

‘The door is giving,’ Olf said. The door shuddered on its hinges as the Ulrican and the knight struck it again. Even half starved and beaten bloody, both men were still strong, as befitted the servants of war gods.

Volkmar was about to reply, when a cloud of char and splinters cascaded down from above. He looked up and then turned, caught up Aliathra and Mordecaul and hurled them aside as the vargheist landed with a shriek and a crash. It reared up over Volkmar, wings filling the confined space of the chamber. It screamed again, jaws distending as it lunged for him. Then it jerked back as something soft struck Volkmar’s shoulder and hurled itself into the creature’s face. A second rat leapt from Volkmar’s other shoulder, and then a third leapt from the floor, and a fourth, a fifth – ten, twenty, until it seemed as if every rat and cockroach that had shared the chamber with the prisoners was crawling over the vargheist, biting and clawing. The monster staggered back, crashing into the lecterns with a wail as the tide of vermin knocked it sprawling.

Volkmar turned and saw Russett watching him blankly. The nature priest was surrounded by rats, and his lips moved silently as he sent his furry army into hopeless battle with the vargheist.

‘Come on,’ Olf roared as he grabbed Volkmar and propelled him into the corridor. ‘Leave him and let’s go!’

Erikan swept the femur out, and the holes he’d cut into it caught the breeze, making an eerie sound. He leaned back on his branch and placed the femur to his lips. The tune he piped out was an old one; he didn’t know what it was called, only the melody.

‘Very lovely,’ Markos said. ‘But weren’t you supposed to be helping us see to these strategies, Crowfiend?’

‘I am,’ Erikan said, not looking down. ‘I’ll take my hounds of night and silence the watch-posts along the Stir, as soon as we are able to leave. If we strike quickly enough, no one will have any idea that we are out and about.’ He whirled the femur again, enjoying the sound it made.

‘And by “hounds of night”, you mean those mouldering wolves and chattering ghouls that you seem content to spend your time with? What sort of warrior are you?’ Anark sneered, glaring up at him, his fists on his hips.

‘An effective one, Anark, and a reliable one – Elize, keep your trained ape muzzled, please,’ Markos said, poring over the map unrolled across the bench.

‘Ape, am I? I am your Grand Master, Markos, and you had best not forget it!’ Anark said, reaching for his sword. Elize caught his wrist and prevented him from drawing it. Which was wise, in Erikan’s estimation. Markos was just looking for an excuse to humble Anark. Then, so was everyone else. Anark was fine in small doses, but they’d been cooped up with him for weeks, and he was champing at the bit to bully someone into a fight. Mostly he seemed to want to fight Erikan, but anyone would do, by this point. Erikan looked down at Anark and smirked, then he brought the femur up and recommenced playing his tune.

‘Oh believe me, I have not,’ Markos purred, without turning around. ‘You deserve your new position as surely as poor, late Tomas did.’

Alberacht cackled where he crouched, gargoyle-like, on the wall. Anark glared at him, but the monstrous vampire didn’t even deign to return it. Instead, he dropped from the wall and ambled towards Markos. He tapped the map with one of his claws. ‘Heldenhame, that’s where our trouble will come from, you mark me, children.’

‘The Knights of Sigmar’s Blood,’ Nyktolos said. He was running a whetstone along the length of his sword as he leaned against the garden wall. ‘Master Nictus is correct. I have encountered them before. They are dreadful creatures, pious and murderous in equal measure.’ He looked up and frowned. ‘And Heldenhame is a tough nut indeed. High, thick walls and an armed populace do not for an easy siege make, should we get that far.’

‘But it has its weak points. Everything has a weak point,’ Elize said. Hands behind her back, she paced back and forth. ‘We simply need to find it.’

‘And hit it,’ Anark added. Elize smiled and stroked his cheek. Erikan, still in his branch, rolled his eyes. He played an annoying little tune, causing her to look up at him. Her expression was unreadable.

‘Are you ever sorry that you taught him how to speak, cousin?’ Markos asked. Anark’s face flushed purple and he made a half-hearted lunge for the other vampire, only to be stopped by Elize and Alberacht.

Erikan made to play accompaniment to the farce below, but lowered his femur as the sound of bells shook the air. He tossed aside the bone and dropped from his perch. ‘The bells,’ he said.

‘Yes, thank you, Erikan. Any other blindingly obvious statement you’d care to make?’ Markos snarled as he swept aside his maps and shot to his feet. ‘It’s why the bloody bells are ringing that I’m interested in.’

A pack of yowling, slavering ghouls surged past the garden entrance, accompanied by slower-moving skeleton guards, clad in rusty armour and brown rags. ‘The prisoners are making another escape attempt,’ Elize said. She spun and pointed at Alberacht and Nyktolos. ‘Get to the courtyard. That’s the quickest way out of the castle.’ She turned to Markos. ‘Rally the rest of the order. We’ll need to search the castle, if it’s anything like last time.’

‘And who put you in charge, cousin?’ Markos purred.

‘I did,’ Anark growled, drawing his blade. ‘You will obey her as you would me, cousin.’

‘She’s right, Markos,’ Erikan said, striding past the three of them. ‘And we have no time for arguments regardless. The prisoners are too valuable to risk either their escape or their deaths at the hands of Lord Mannfred’s other guests.’ Markos made a face, but fell silent. In the last few weeks, more than one attempt had been made on Mannfred’s inner sanctums by various vampires and necromancers enjoying his hospitality. If it wasn’t the Lahmians, it was the Charnel Circle, or one of the lesser von Carsteins, seeking, as ever, to supplant their betters.

And while no one liked to mention it, food had been getting scarce. While Strigany caravans were still trundling along the old Vargravian road, bringing wagons full of kidnapped men and women to Castle Sternieste, pickings in Sylvania itself were growing distinctly thin. Only the Strigany or other human servants could pass through the barrier of faith, and fewer of them returned every day. Some likely fell to the Imperial patrols that guarded the hinterlands of the neighbouring provinces, but others had, perhaps, simply decided not to come back.

Erikan was out of the garden a moment later, the others trailing in his wake or splitting off to do as Elize had commanded. Soon it was just himself and Elize and Anark, hurrying in pursuit of the ghoul pack they had seen earlier. The dead that stood sentry in every corridor and stairwell were all moving in the same direction, directed by their master’s will.

Volkmar and the others had tried to escape before, with predictable results. Once, they had even made it as far as the stables. But as more and more vampires had flocked to Sternieste, so too had the likelihood grown that another such attempt would lead to more than a beating for Mannfred’s amusement. Hungry vampires had all the self-control of stoats in a hen house. Regardless, there were only so many ways that the prisoners could go. Erikan thought that it was likely that they would simply try to bull their way out this time. Subtlety had got them nowhere, after all.

His conclusion was borne out by the trail of shattered bones and the twisted bodies of fallen ghouls that littered the stairs leading down to the lower levels of the keep. Erikan felt a grim admiration for the prisoners. That admiration only grew stronger when they found one of their own, a Drakenhof Templar, with his skull caved in and a jagged length of wood torn from a postern shoved through a gap in the side of his cuirass and into his heart. Anark cursed. Elize shook her head. ‘They know us of old, these mortals.’

‘Well, you know what they say… Familiarity breeds contempt,’ Erikan murmured. He didn’t recognise the vampire. Then, there were many in the order he didn’t know. Elize had kept him by her side at all times. That was one of the many reasons he’d left, and sought out Obald again.

They heard the clash of arms and followed the screams of dying ghouls. Volkmar and the others had made it through Sternieste to the inner courtyard that separated the main keep from the outer. It wasn’t hard to figure out how they’d made it that far – though the castle’s population had increased, it was night, and almost all of its inhabitants were out hunting. Those who were left were likely trying to either avoid getting involved, or were waiting to see how far the escapees got. You had to make your own entertainment, in times like these. But it wouldn’t be long before certain vampires got it in their heads to try to get in on the fun.

Erikan sprang out into the rain-swept courtyard and took in the fight roiling about him. Only seven of the prisoners had made it this far, but they were giving a good account of themselves. Most of that was down to Mannfred’s command that they not be harmed. A matronly woman swung a brazier about her with determined ferocity, sending ghouls tumbling and scrambling to get out of her way. A one-handed man guarded her back, a polearm held awkwardly in his good hand.

Volkmar himself led the way, watching over the elf maiden, who sagged against the shoulder of the young priest of Morr. And the Ulrican and the Myrmidian kept the group’s flanks protected. The Myrmidian had found a sword from somewhere, and laid about him with enthusiasm and skill, crying out to his goddess all the while. The Ulrican had a spear, and as Erikan watched, he impaled a skeleton guard, hoisted it, and sent it flying towards the courtyard wall. Volkmar was leading the group towards the portcullis that separated the inner and outer keeps, where Count Nyktolos waited, leaning on his blade, his monocle glinting in the torchlight.

Above them all, shapes, lean and a-thirst, ran along the walls, keeping pace but not interfering, not yet. Erikan recognised a number of Mannfred’s more recent hangers-on in that group, their eyes glazed with hunger and ambition as they looked down on the Grand Theogonist. Erikan understood that look, though he didn’t feel it himself. Volkmar was the living embodiment of the church that had made the scouring of Sylvania and the destruction of its bloodthirsty aristocracy a central tenet of its dogma. To see him like this, running frightened, dying on his feet, must be like a gift from the gods that Mannfred had barred from his kingdom.

They wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to see the old man scream, command from Mannfred or no. He glanced at Elize, and he saw by her expression that she was thinking the same thing. She nodded sharply and sprang for the wall. Anark made to follow her, but Erikan stopped him. ‘No, we need to recapture them,’ he said. Anark snarled, but didn’t disagree.

They split up, each approaching the prisoners from a side. Erikan hurtled the rolling body of a disembowelled ghoul and drew his sword. He arrowed towards the knight, reckoning him more dangerous than the Ulrican, so long as he had a sword in his hand. Even as their blades connected, Erikan saw Nyktolos lunge forward, his sword chopping into the haft of the spear the Ulrican wielded.

The Myrmidian whirled his blade and stamped forward, moving lightly despite his wounds. He still wore the tattered remnants of his armour, and Erikan could smell the pus dripping from the sores beneath the metal, and the blood that had crusted on its edges. Their blades slammed together again. The man was smart – he didn’t intend to pit his strength against Erikan’s. He was simply trying to drive him back. Erikan allowed him to do so, trying to draw him away from his comrades. If he could get him alone, the ghouls could swarm him under through sheer numbers.

A wild cry caused him to glance up. Mannfred’s pet vargheists circled the courtyard, screeching fit to wake whatever dead things had managed to ignore their master’s summons. Alberacht swooped between them, looking almost as bestial. He had obviously gone to rouse the beasts into helping with the hunt.

Volkmar cried out as one of the vargheists plummeted down and plucked the elf from the ground. She screamed and struck out at the beast that held her, but it merely screeched again and carried her upwards. Volkmar cursed loudly and turned. Erikan saw Anark rush towards him with his sword raised. He cursed the other vampire for an idiot, albeit silently. The old man ducked aside and looped the length of chain he carried around the vampire’s throat. Anark snarled as Volkmar hauled forwards with all of his weight, pulling him off his feet. He fell with a clatter, and his sword flew from his grip. ‘Get the blade!’ Volkmar roared.

The Ulrican snatched the sword up and spun on his heel, gutting a leaping ghoul. Erikan lunged to meet him, as Nyktolos blocked a blow from the Myrmidian meant to split Erikan’s spine. He forced the Ulrican back with a slash. The burly warrior priest swept his stolen blade out in a wild, looping blow. Erikan weaved back with serpentine grace, not even bothering to block the attack. He heard Nyktolos laugh and saw the other vampire back away from his opponent as a mob of ghouls surged forward.

The knight, freed of Nyktolos, came at him from the side, hoping to flank him, even as the ghouls chased after him. Erikan pivoted, and avoided the knight’s lunge. He flipped backwards, evading the Ulrican’s blade a second time. The ghoul that had been pressing forward behind him wasn’t so lucky. It fell, choking on its own blood. More of the cannibals rushed into the fray, trampling their dying comrade in their haste to reach the enemy.

Erikan sprang to the wall and dropped back behind the ghoul pack. Nyktolos had the right idea. There was no sense in risking himself. The two men fought hard, with desperate abandon. Bodies and blood slopped the floor. He saw that Volkmar had managed to get atop Anark and was hauling back on the chains, trying to snap his enemy’s neck. The vampire’s mouth was wide, and a serpentine tongue jutted from between his fangs as he writhed beneath the Grand Theogonist. Erikan hesitated. It was the perfect moment to be rid of Anark. He might not get another one. He heard Elize cry out and, almost against his will, began to move.

Then, the second vargheist had Volkmar in its claws, and it hauled him upwards to join its fellow. Erikan lowered his sword. ‘He who hesitates is lost,’ he murmured as he rushed to help Anark to his feet in an obsequious show of concern.

Above, Volkmar cursed and tore at the vargheist holding him, to no avail. The beast had him, and there was no escape. Erikan watched as his struggles became weaker and weaker, until at last he ceased entirely, and hung in its grasp like a corpse. The vargheist dropped him onto a parapet, and sank down on him, like a cat crouching atop its kill.

The sound of applause swept across the courtyard, cutting through the sound of the rain and the whimpers of dying ghouls. Mannfred von Carstein stood on the parapet above the portcullis, Arkhan behind him. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Look how far you got. I am quite impressed, as I’m sure my comrade is.’ He gestured to Arkhan. ‘Aren’t you impressed?’ he asked, over his shoulder.

Mannfred didn’t give Arkhan a chance to reply. Instead, he leapt down from the parapet and dropped lightly into the courtyard, drawing his blade as he rose. The torches that flickered, hissed and spat in the rain seemed to dim slightly, as if Mannfred’s presence were draining the heat and light from them. ‘I’m impressed,’ he said again, looking up at the gathered vampires who crouched or slunk about above the courtyard. ‘And yet, something puzzles me. Where did you think you were going to go? This castle is mine. This land is mine. I rule everything from horizon to horizon, every mountain, every bower, every ruin and river. All mine,’ Mannfred went on. He waved aside the ghouls, who retreated from him with undignified speed. ‘Where were you going to go?’

‘Back into the eyes of our gods,’ the knight said. His voice sounded thin and weak to Erikan’s ears. ‘Back to the light.’

‘There is no light, unless I will it,’ Mannfred said, extending his blade. He looked at the Ulrican and the Myrmidian. They were the only two left, save for the priest of Morr, who crouched nearby. The woman and the one-handed man had been knocked sprawling and pinned to the wet ground by Alberacht in the confusion. ‘There are no gods, save me.’ Mannfred smiled, and Erikan felt a cold wind sweep through the hollows of his soul. Mannfred turned his blade slightly, so that the light caught the edge. ‘If you bow, I will not hurt you too much. If you crawl to me, I will not take your legs. If you beg me to spare you, I will not take your hands.’

The stone, when it came, was a surprise, even to Mannfred, Erikan thought. The young priest had torn it from the ground and hurled it with such force that it drew blood when it caromed off Mannfred’s skull. He whirled with a cry that put his vargheists to shame and his blade nearly took the young priest’s head off. The young man fell back, face twisted in fear and defiance. Mannfred stormed towards him, but before he could reach him, a swirling storm of spirits erupted from the ground and walls of the courtyard and surrounded the man. Mannfred spun, and glared up at Arkhan, who lowered his staff silently, but did not call off the ghosts he had summoned.

Mannfred turned back in time to block the Ulrican’s attack. The big man came at him in a rush, silent and determined. His sword drew fat sparks as it screeched off Mannfred’s cuirass. Mannfred stepped back and his fist hammered into the man’s chest. Erikan heard bones crack, and the Ulrican slumped, coughing redness. Mannfred caught the back of his head and hurled him to the ground hard enough to add to the tally of broken bones.

The Myrmidian hacked at him, and Mannfred caught the blow on the length of his blade and surged forward, driving the knight back against the hall. He pinned him in place. ‘We need to sacrifice one, eh?’ Mannfred asked, glancing at Arkhan. The liche nodded slowly. Mannfred looked back at the knight, as the latter strained against his strength, trying to free himself. ‘This one, then. He’s been more trouble than he’s worth.’ He tore his blade away from the wall, and the Templar staggered forward, off balance. He recovered quickly, and lunged. The blade skidded off Mannfred’s side, staggering him. But before the knight could capitalise, Mannfred batted his guard aside and sent him flying backwards to bounce off the wall and topple to the ground, unconscious.

Mannfred looked down and then up, letting the rain wash the blood from his face. And for a moment, just a moment, between the shadows and the rain, Erikan thought he saw something terrible looming over Mannfred, shaking in silent glee.

SEVEN

The empty bottle shattered as it struck the wall. Wendel Volker scrambled to his feet and darted out of the commandant’s grimy office. Otto Kross stormed after him, as quickly as a man on the wrong end of a three-day drunk could manage. Kross was bald, with a thick beard and sideburns, which hid his heavy jowls, and a neck that was more an unsightly outgrowth of shoulder than anything else.

‘I told you that I’d have you, popinjay, if you countermanded me again. Those men deserved a lashing! Their hides were mine,’ Kross bellowed as he lunged, red-faced, after Volker, fists windmilling.

‘I didn’t countermand anything,’ Volker yelped, scooting across the courtyard on his backside, trying to get enough room between himself and his commandant so that he could get to his feet without receiving a faceful of Kross’s scarred knuckles. ‘I simply placed them on punishment detail. How was I to know you meant they needed a flogging?’

That was a lie, of course. He had known, and hadn’t approved. Punishment was all well and good when the men in question had committed an actual infraction or crime. But flogging was a step too far, especially when their only real crime had been to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d placed them on night soil duty, reckoning that would keep them out of Kross’s sight until he’d sobered up and forgotten why he wanted them punished in the first place. Unfortunately, someone had spilled the beans. The next thing Volker knew, he was dodging bottles and Kross’s fists.

‘I’ll stop your squawking, popinjay,’ Kross snarled. He lurched drunkenly for Volker, tripped over his own foot, and fell face-first to the ground. Volker took the opportunity to get to his feet and made to flee, until he noted the gathering crowd of men. It looked as if every trooper assigned to the Heldenhame garrison was piling into the wide, long courtyard that linked the Rostmeyer and Sigmundas bastions.

It wasn’t surprising. The past few weeks had seen a steady increase in tensions among the men. There was something growing in Sylvania, behind those blasted walls; they could all feel it. Not to mention the reports coming from the north. For every ten men who’d marched for the Kislev border, only seven reached their destination, thanks to beastmen, greenskins and plague. The fighting along the border had spilled into Ostermark and Talabecland, and the armies of those provinces were hard-pressed to hold the tide back.

Many men wanted to travel north, to fight the enemy. Others wanted to stay put, out of the way, safe behind Heldenhame’s walls. Luckily for the latter, Leitdorf was obsessed with keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Sylvania. Or, as some lackwits whispered, he just wanted to stay good and close to the centre of the Empire, in order to take advantage of what many were coming to see as the inevitable conclusion of recent events.

Sometimes, Volker thought that was why Thyrus Gormann had come. It would be difficult for Leitdorf to get up to any mischief with the Patriarch of the Bright College looking over his shoulder.

Volker heard a voice growl, ‘Two bits on the commandant.’ He looked over and saw the scowling features of Captain Deinroth. Kross’s second-in-command had never warmed to Volker. He shared his commandant’s opinion, and indeed that of most of the other captains, that Volker was a man who had bought his rank with gold, rather than blood, and was thus no sort of man at all. Which was a bit unfair, Volker thought; it had been his father’s gold after all, not his.

Deinroth, he thought, was the likely instigator of the current situation. In his years as Kross’s second-in-command, Deinroth had learned well the art of winding his belligerent superior up and setting him loose like a demigryph in a glassblower’s shop. He’d been poking and prodding at Kross to lay in to Volker for weeks now, and it looked as if he’d finally got his wish.

‘Three on the popinjay,’ a second voice cut through the rising tumult like the peal of a hammer on an anvil. Men fell silent as a robed figure strode to the front of the growing crowd. Stern-featured and grizzled by decades of service on the Sylvanian frontier, Father Janos Odkrier was a welcome enough face. Odkrier wasn’t quite a friend, but he was as close as Volker had in Heldenhame.

Odkrier winked at Volker. Around him, money changed hands and men shouted out bets. Kross staggered to his feet, face flushed, teeth bared. He swayed slightly, but didn’t fall. He raised his fists. ‘I’ll wipe that smirk off your chinless face, Volker,’ he spat.

‘There’s no need for this, commandant,’ Volker said hurriedly. A brawl wasn’t quite as bad as a duel, but the knights frowned on it regardless. Especially in times like these, with northmen howling south in ever-increasing numbers, green comets raining down out of the sky, and a great bloody wall of bone towering over Sylvania’s borders. The whole world was coming undone around them. ‘If Leitdorf finds out, we’ll both get our necks stretched,’ he said. He cut a glance towards Deinroth, who was smirking in his usual unpleasant fashion, and wondered if that was what Kross’s right hand man wanted. ‘You know how he feels about his officers brawling in front of the rank and file.’

Kross smiled maliciously. ‘Leitdorf isn’t here, popinjay.’ He shuffled forward and threw a blow that would have broken Volker’s jaw, had it connected. Volker slid aside, the way his swordmaster had taught him, and drove his fist into Kross’s side. The big man spun, quicker than Volker had expected, and caught him a stinging blow on the cheek. Volker fell back onto his rear, and only just managed to bob aside as Kross’s iron-shod boot slammed down where he’d been sitting.

Volker’s hand flew to his sword. As much as the thought turned his stomach, he knew that he could draw it and have it through Kross’s fat gut in a wink and a nod. He was a better swordsman than any of those present. Indeed, he fancied he could even match one of Leitdorf’s armoured thugs in a fair bout. But killing a superior officer was even worse than getting into a round of fisticuffs with one. Leitdorf already despised him; Volker had spent the months since his arrival avoiding the Grand Master of the Knights of Sigmar’s Blood at every opportunity. Sigmar alone knew what Leitdorf would do to him if he pinked Kross even slightly. He pulled his hand away as Kross gave a bull bellow and charged towards him.

He caught Volker and swept him up in a bear hug. Volker groaned as he felt his ribs flex. Fat as he was, Kross was still strong enough to knock a dray horse off its hooves with a punch. The commandant’s alcoholic breath washed over his face, and Volker was suddenly reminded that he had been headed to the tavern, before Kross had called him in. The crowd was cheering and catcalling in equal measure, their faces a blur as Kross spun him about. Volker slithered an arm free and poked Kross in the eye with his thumb. Kross roared and released him. The commandant stumbled back, clawing at his face. He belched curses and snatched his dagger from his belt. Volker backed away, hands raised. Kross staggered after him, blade raised.

Then came the sharp, savage sound of a cane striking something metal and all the cheering ceased. Both Volker and Kross turned as a lean, broad-shouldered figure stumped through the crowd. The newcomer leaned on a cane, and was dressed in the heavy furs and coarse jerkin that all of the members of the Knights of Sigmar’s Blood wore when not in armour. His face bore the sort of scars that came from getting pulled off a horse and into a knot of orcs and summarily trodden on. His name was Rudolph Weskar, and he was the closest thing to the word of Sigmar made flesh this side of Leitdorf in Heldenhame.

All of the fire went out of Kross, and he hastily put away his blade. Volker swallowed as the limping man approached them. Deinroth and the other captains were already melting away with the crowd. ‘Brawling without prior permission is a pillory offence, gentlemen,’ Weskar said, leaning on his cane. His hard, dull eyes pinned Kross. ‘Commandant Kross, I can smell the reek of alcohol on you from here. Do not make me regret recommending you to the Grand Master for promotion, Otto. Go sober up, and keep that potato peeler you call a knife in its sheath from now on.’

Kross hesitated. He glared at Volker one last time, then nodded tersely and slunk away. Volker didn’t watch him go. He kept his eyes on Weskar. He licked his lips, suddenly dying for a drink. Weskar stumped towards him. ‘Wendel, Wendel, Wendel. You disappoint me, Wendel. When I heard what was going on, I was hoping you might finally spit that hog, and thus deliver yourself to the hangman, freeing me to promote a more congenial pair to your positions. Instead, here we are.’ He came close to Volker, and the latter tensed. A discreet cough caused Weskar to glance around. Father Odkrier alone had remained where he was, when Weskar’s arrival had caused everyone else to scatter. The old Sigmarite wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything.

Weskar turned back to Volker. ‘Why?’ he asked simply.

Volker swallowed. He knew what Weskar was asking. ‘Kross was drunk, and bullying an innkeeper. When the man refused him further service, he tried to gut him. The lads intervened. Kross was still drunk when he ordered that they be flogged for laying hands on a superior officer. I thought if I could keep them out of sight until he sobered up…’ He trailed off. Weskar grunted.

‘That he might regret it, and not punish them further,’ he said. ‘You know a little something about the regrets overindulgence brings, I think, eh, Wendel?’ He leaned forwards again, like a hound on the scent. ‘You’re dying for a drink now, I’d wager.’ Volker didn’t answer. Weskar twitched a hand. ‘Go,’ he said.

Volker hurried past him, his hands trembling. Odkrier caught him around the shoulders and shoved a flask into his hands as they left Weskar standing there, staring after them. ‘Drink up, my boy. I’d say you’ve earned it.’

Ungrim Ironfist sat on his stone bench and listened to the basso rumble of dwarf disagreement as the Kingsmeet entered its fifth hour. King Kazador of Karak Azul pounded upon the stone table with a heavy fist, and King Alrik of Karak Hirn crossed his brawny arms and scowled at his fellow monarch. Belegar of Karak Eight Peaks sat hunched and silent in his seat, looking at no one, his face sagging with the weight of constant worry. And glaring at them all, from the far end of the table, sat the High King, Thorgrim Grudgebearer.

As Kingsmeets went, this one wasn’t as bad as Ungrim had begun to fear, on his journey to Karaz-a-Karak. He’d learned that the occurrences in Sylvania were already well known, at least by Thorgrim, and that the von Carstein was one of the problems under discussion. One of many problems, in fact. The reports he’d received had only been the tip of the proverbial anvil, and the world seemed to be intent on coming apart at the seams, all at once.

Ungrim didn’t find that as distressing as the others. Indeed, it filled him with a bitter enthusiasm. He had long been torn between two fates – that of king, and that of a Slayer. To prioritise the one over the other was impossible, and as the centuries progressed, he had begun to feel as if he, like his father before him, would die still cloaked in dishonour, and that his son, Garagrim, would be forced to tread the same line. Ungrim closed his eyes for a moment, as the old pain resurfaced. Every time he thought it buried and gone, it clawed its way back to the forefront of his mind. Garagrim was dead now, and free of the shame that still held Ungrim. He had died as a warrior, and as a Slayer, though he’d had no dishonour of his own to expunge. He’d thought his blood could buy his father’s freedom, but such things were not proper.

Garagrim had meant well, but he had been a foolish boy, with a beardling’s bravado and his mother’s stubbornness. At the thought of the latter, he felt a pang. He missed his wife’s quiet counsel. His queen had a mind second to none, and a clarity of thought that cut through even the most rancorous preconceptions. It was she who should be sitting here. He had no mind for politics, and no patience for querulous oldbeards like Kazador.

Ungrim contented himself with examining the table. It had been carved long before the Time of Woes, and a map of the ancient dwarf empire at its height sprawled across its surface. Holds that had not existed for untold centuries were still marked there, as if to deny their destruction, as if to shout, ‘What has been still is and will always be’ into the void. Then, that was the way of his people. Like mountains in the stream of time, they sat immoveable and intractable, but worn down bit by bit, over the span of aeons.

He sighed and looked about the chamber, scanning the gathered faces that watched from the ascending rows of benches that surrounded the table and its occupants. Courtiers, thanes, advisors, second cousins twice removed of the aforementioned thanes, and anyone who could get past the chamber wardens was watching. Politics was a spectator sport among the dawi. Like as not, someone was collecting bets on when the first punch would be thrown, or the first head-butt delivered.

‘The Underway swarms with ratkin and grobi,’ Kazador said, drawing Ungrim’s attention as he cut the air with his hand. ‘But they do not attack. Something is afoot. Something is growing in the deep darkness, something foul, that threatens to drown us all when it finally surges to the surface.’

‘Or maybe they’re simply warring with one another as they are wont to do,’ Alrik said. He looked at Thorgrim. ‘Their numbers swell and their filthy warrens abut one another in most places. They seek the same holes, and like the vermin they are, they fight over them. If they have gone quiet, it is because they are busy doing our work for us!’

‘Then explain the new access tunnels my miners have found,’ Kazador snarled, slapping the table. ‘Explain the skaven-sign splashed on the walls of the lower levels. Explain the sounds echoing up from the far depths – not of battle, but of industry.’

Alrik settled back in his seat, silent and frowning. For several moments, no one said anything. Then, Thorgrim spoke. ‘I too have heard these reports, and more besides. I have seen the glowering skies and heard the growl of the stones. Beasts stir in mountain caves, and our northern kin, in their strongholds in the mountains of Norsca, send word of daemons scouring the lands, and of the mobilisation of the barbarians who worship the Dark Gods.’ He looked around. ‘But these are not new tidings. These are merely old tidings on a new day. Our people are still strong. Our enemies still break themselves on our walls and are swept away by our throngs. Did not the Ironfist shatter such a horde in years past? Did he not take the head and pelt of the Gorewolf?’

Ungrim grimaced. In truth, he hadn’t taken the Chaos warlord’s head. The Gorewolf had been killed by the renegade Gotrek Gurnisson. In doing so, Gurnisson had saved Ungrim’s life, which only added to the Slayer King’s already weighty grudge against the other Slayer. Years later, when Gurnisson had returned to Karak Kadrin on the trail of a dragon, Ungrim had considered clapping him and his pet poet in irons and dumping them somewhere unpleasant, to repay the indignity. He had restrained himself then, as before. Gurnisson wore chains of destiny that not even a king could shatter, more was the pity.

‘Horde after horde has poured into these mountains and we have shattered them all, be they northmen, orcs or ogres,’ Thorgrim went on. ‘To seal our gates is to admit defeat before we have even seen the enemy.’ He sat back on his seat and looked around. ‘I see by your faces that some of you agree, and others do not. Belegar, speak…’ He motioned to the king of the Eight Peaks, who looked up, startled. Ungrim realised that he’d been lost in his own gloomy thoughts. He cleared his throat.

‘I have little to add, High King,’ he said. ‘Siege is not new for those of us who make our home in the Eight Peaks. We war with grobi and ratkin both, and they war with one another when we retreat to lick our wounds and entomb our dead. In truth, these tidings mean little to me. I know my enemies, and I fight them daily. I fight them in the tunnels and on the peaks, and what does it matter if the sky above is blue, red or green, when a skaven is looking to gut you with a rusty blade? What does it matter if the earth shakes, when your halls are swarmed by goblins? What do the affairs of the far northern holds matter, when your own is swamped by enemies?’

He held up his hands. ‘I have only two hands, brother-kings. I have only a third of a hold – aye, a great hold, and greater still when I have wiped it clean of the remaining filth that infests it, but still… only a third.’ He looked squarely at Thorgrim. ‘For my part, I am here because I owe you a debt, High King. You helped to defend my meagre holdings against the orcs, when the beast known as Gorfang came knocking at my gates. For your part, I suspect that I am here out of courtesy only, though you would shave your beard before you admitted it, I wager. I am here, because you are worried – all of you.’ He turned, taking in the whole of the table. ‘We are small for a grand council. Where are the others? Where are the kings of Zhufbar and Karak Izor? Where is the king of Kraka Drak or the lord of Barak Varr?’ He sat back and shook his head. ‘They did not – or could not come. They are worried. More worried than ever before. The sky weeps and the world heaves, and our enemies have gone silent. They are right to be worried.’

‘Well said, brother,’ Kazador grunted. He looked at Thorgrim. ‘Alrik might be blind, but you are not, Grudgebearer. And if you will not heed me, you might heed another.’ He gestured. From out of the throng of watching advisors and hangers-on stepped a thick-set figure who all immediately recognised. A rush of whispers and mutters swept about the chamber as Thorek Ironbrow, Runelord of Karak Azul, stepped forward, one hand resting on the anvil-shaped head of his rune hammer, Klad Brakak, which was thrust through his belt.

‘Karag Haraz, Karag Dron and Karag Orrud all belch smoke into the sky, High King,’ Ironbrow said portentously. He gestured in a southerly direction with one gnarled hand. The runelord’s hide looked like leather, and was puckered by burns and pale scars.

Even by Ungrim’s standards, Thorek Ironbrow was a conservative. He was a dwarf who held fast to the oldest of ways, and his words were heavy with the weight of uncounted centuries. He had ruled over the weapon shops of Karak Azul for as long as Ungrim had been alive, and even the sons of kings dared not enter his domains without his prior approval – almost all of the kings in the council chamber had felt the lash of Ironbrow’s tongue or the hard, calloused palm of his hand on the backs of their heads as beardlings. That was why he could get away with lecturing them now. The runelord looked about him as he went on, his hard gaze resting on each king in turn, as if they were a group of particularly dull-witted apprentices. ‘Mountains that have not erupted in millennia now vomit forth fire and smoke and death. The world shudders beneath a horrible tread, my kings, and unless we are prepared, we will be ground underfoot.’

Ungrim had heard that argument before. Every time a horde swept south, out of the Wastes, or west out of the Dark Lands, Ironbrow made some variation of it. He knocked on the table with his knuckles, interrupting the runelord’s rehearsed speech. He grinned as Ironbrow glared at him for his temerity, and asked, ‘And by prepared, you mean close the gates?’

Ironbrow hesitated. Then, solemnly, he nodded. ‘We must put our faith in strong walls and shields, rather than squandering our strength upon wayward allies.’ Another murmur arose at that. Everyone with half a brain knew what the runelord was referring to by that comment.

Thorgrim had earlier spoken of the kidnapping of the Ulthuani Everchild out from under the noses of the warriors of Karaz-a-Karak, and the subsequent battle at Nagashizzar: a battle that had failed to free her from Mannfred von Carstein’s clutches, despite the aid the High King had rendered to the elgi. Ungrim glanced at Thorgrim, to see if he’d noticed the dig. It was hard to tell, given the High King’s ever present sour expression.

Ironbrow was still talking. He gestured to King Kazador. ‘My king has already heeded my council and sealed the main gates of Karak Azul. Will you not do the same, Slayer King?’

Ungrim sucked on his teeth, stung by Ironbrow’s tone. ‘No,’ he said bluntly. He cut his eyes towards Thorgrim. ‘Not unless so commanded by the High King, I won’t.’ He swivelled his gaze back towards Ironbrow. ‘Karak Kadrin has ever been the edge of the axe, as Karaz-a-Karak is the shield. Let the world shake, and rats gnaw at our roots. We shall reap and slay and strike out as many grudges as Grimnir allows in what time we have.’

‘You would doom your people, your hold, and for what? Has your inherited dishonour driven you that mad?’ Kazador asked, heaving himself to his feet. ‘Our people stand on the precipice of destruction, and all you see is an opportunity for war.’

‘And so?’ Ungrim asked hotly. He rose to his feet and slammed his knuckles down on the table, causing it to shiver. ‘My people know war. And that is what is coming. Not some indecipherable doom, or irresistible event. No, it is war. And every warrior will be needed, every axe sharpened, every shield raised, for our enemies are coming, and our walls alone have never stopped them, as my brother-king knows to his cost.’

There was a communal intake of breath from the crowd above them as the words left Ungrim’s lips. Kazador’s eyes bulged from their sockets, and his teeth showed through his beard. Ungrim thought for a moment that the old king would launch himself across the table and seek to throttle him.

‘Enough,’ Thorgrim rumbled. ‘That grudge has been settled, and by my hand. Every king here must do as he considers best for his hold and people. But there are other grudges to be settled and the Dammaz Kron sits open and impatient. I have vowed to strike out every entry in the Great Book of Grudges, and it seems that time to do so is running thin. If the throng of Karaz-a-Karak is mustered, I must know who will muster with me. Who stands with the Pinnacle of the Mountains?’ He looked at Ungrim first.

Ungrim grinned. ‘Do you even need to ask, High King?’

Thorgrim inclined his head slightly, and looked at the others in turn. Alrik stood and nodded belligerently. Belegar too stood and said, ‘Aye, the Eight Peaks will march, to our enemies’ ruin or our own.’

Thorgrim sat back. The High King seemed tired. Ungrim did not envy him the weight of responsibility he bore. Heavy sat the crown of the High King, and it was very likely that he was now watching the sun at last set on the empire of the dwarfs. Ungrim smiled humourlessly. Even so, if they were to die, then it was best done properly.

That was the only way dwarfs did anything, after all.

The great beak snapped shut inches from Eltharion’s nose, and a rumbling hiss filled the hold. The horses in the nearby stalls shifted nervously as the griffon hunched forward, its claws sinking into the wood of the deck. Eltharion reached up as the beast’s chin dropped heavily onto his shoulder and stroked the ruffled feathers that cascaded down its neck. ‘Shhh, easy, Stormwing,’ he murmured. He felt one of his mount’s heavy forepaws pat clumsily at his back, and heard its inarticulate grunt of contentment.

Around them, the ship made the usual noises of travel. Not even the graceful vessels of Lothern were free of those, though elvish craftsmanship was the finest in the world, and their ships second to none. If he listened, he could hear the waters of the Great Ocean caressing the hull, and beneath that, the melodic hum of the whales that occupied the sea. Their song was one of beauty and peace, but tinged with fear. Even the most isolated of animals could sense that the world was sick.

As he stroked the griffon’s neck and head, he looked about him. The horses who shared Stormwing’s hold belonged to the Knights of Dusk, a noble family of Tor Ethel. More accurately, the only family, noble or otherwise, of Tor Ethel, which was all but abandoned these days. It sat on the western coast of Tiranoc, and each year coastal erosion took more of that once shining city into the sea, claiming gardens, sanctuaries and palaces alike. The Knights of Dusk hailed from the ever-shrinking group of the city’s remaining inhabitants. They were valiant warriors, as were the others who had accompanied him and Eldyra on this journey.

Besides the Silver Helms of Tor Ethel, there were the Sentinels of Astaril, mistwalkers of Yvresse, in whose company he had honed his archery skills as a youth, and the Faithbearers of Athel Tamarha, a company of spearmen who had fought at his side in every campaign but one. A small enough host, but tested, and experienced. They would need to be, to survive what was coming. They were entering unknown territory. The last time he’d set foot in the lands of men, they still hadn’t quite grasped the concept that hygiene wasn’t a mortal offence. He doubted much had changed in the intervening centuries.

He didn’t hate them. He simply didn’t see a reason for their existence. They caused more problems than they solved, for all that they were barely more than chattering apes. It had been men, after all, who had allowed the goblin, Grom, to pass through their lands in order to reach Ulthuan. Teclis doted on them, in his acerbic way, something that had always puzzled Eltharion. Men were the cause of the problems facing them now. Men fed Chaos a constant stream of souls, whether they knew it or not. And if they weren’t doing that, they were turning themselves into abominations like Mannfred von Carstein. Men couldn’t leave well enough alone. Some small part of Eltharion hoped that whatever was going on would swallow mankind whole before it ended, and that the Dark Gods would choke on their grubby little souls.

As if sensing the direction his thoughts were taking, the griffon grumbled into his ear, its hot, foul breath washing over him. He pushed the thoughts aside and concentrated on calming the animal. Once, when Stormwing was no more than a squalling cub, he’d have taken the beast in his arms like an infant, and carried it about until it was soothed to sleep by the rhythm of his heartbeat. Now the griffon was bigger than the largest of the horses who occupied the remainder of the hold, and a good deal more skittish about the confined space it found itself in.

‘I see Stormwing is no more fond of the sea than his master,’ a voice said. Eltharion didn’t turn. He dug his fingers into the strange spot where feathers met fur on Stormwing’s body and gave it a good scratch. One of the griffon’s rear paws thumped the deck, and its spotted tail lashed in pleasure.

‘Come to check on your own mount, then, Eldyra?’ he asked. ‘He misses you. I can tell.’

‘I doubt that. He’s asleep, the lazy brute,’ Eldyra said, crossing to the stall where her stallion, Maladhros, stood dozing. The big, silver dappled animal was the only one who showed no concern at Stormwing’s presence, though whether that was because they had been stabled together before, or because Maladhros had fewer wits than a thick brick, Eltharion couldn’t say. The stallion was strong and fierce, and Eldyra swore that it was a canny beast as well, but Eltharion thought she vastly overestimated its problem-solving capabilities. When he’d come down into the hold, it had been eating an empty bucket.

She clucked and rubbed the stallion’s nose, stirring it to wakefulness. Eltharion watched as she fed it an apple, and it crunched contentedly. ‘He’s taking the trip well,’ he said.

‘He knows it’s important,’ she said. She stroked the horse’s mane.

‘Does he now?’ Eltharion smiled.

Eldyra looked at him. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, he does. How is Stormwing?’ she asked. She stepped across the hold towards him, light on her feet despite the pitch of the deck. She was the perfect blend of grace and lethality, much as Tyrion was, Eltharion reflected. He wondered if the latter was aware of just how much he’d shaped the princess of Tiranoc in his image, and whether he’d find that worrisome. Probably not; in Eltharion’s opinion, Tyrion didn’t worry as much as he should, at least not about the right things.

‘Nervous. He doesn’t like confined spaces. He prefers to fly,’ he said. The griffon grumbled and eyed Eldyra balefully. Stormwing didn’t care for anyone other than Eltharion getting too close. He had a tendency to snap.

‘Why not let him?’

‘There’s no guarantee he’d remember to come back, rather than fly home,’ Eltharion said, rubbing his palm over the curve of Stormwing’s beak. The creature butted his chest and made a sound halfway between a purr and a chirp. ‘He’s not very bright.’ He hesitated. ‘Then, perhaps he’s smarter than both of us.’

‘Do you truly hold so little hope?’ she asked, quietly.

He smiled thinly. ‘I am not known as “the Grim” for nothing,’ he said.

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘No, it is not.’ He looked at her. ‘There is no hope. She is as good as dead, or worse. We are not heroes… We are avengers.’

‘Tyrion doesn’t think so,’ she said.

‘Tyrion lies to himself,’ he said softly. ‘Just as he lied to himself that there would be no consequences for his indiscretion. Those lies are the source of optimism, and his downfall.’

‘You think that, and yet here you are,’ Eldyra said. She said it as if it were an accusation. And perhaps it was, he thought. He nodded agreeably.

‘I am, yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Why are you here?’ he asked.

‘My lord Tyrion ordered it,’ she said stiffly.

‘I was under the impression that he was your friend,’ he said. ‘Just as he is my friend.’ He tasted the word as he said it. It wasn’t one he used often, or, indeed, at all. But it seemed fitting, in reference to Tyrion. Tyrion was his friend, and that meant that there was nothing Eltharion wouldn’t do to help him. ‘And I, like you, am smart enough to know that if we were not here, he would be, and Ulthuan would suffer for it.’

‘Or at least worse than it already has,’ Eldyra said. ‘Do you think…?’

‘I do not think. I do not worry. I trust. We have our mission. Tyrion and Teclis will drive the daemonic hosts from our shores, as they did before. And we will find Aliathra, for good or ill, whether she is alive or…’ He trailed off.

‘She is alive. Of that much, I am certain, Warden of Yvresse,’ a new voice cut in. A blue-robed shape descended the steps down into the hold. Pale eyes looked about from beneath a diadem of emeralds, and a thin mouth quirked in disgust. ‘Why you two insist on spending so much time in this makeshift stable, I’ll never understand. It smells awful.’

‘It’d smell worse if someone didn’t see to the animals occasionally,’ Eltharion said, turning to face the newcomer. He cocked his elbow up on Stormwing’s flat skull. ‘And you could have waited until we came back up on deck.’

‘Probably, yes, but then I wouldn’t have been able to interject my opinions so smoothly, now would I?’ Belannaer groused. He tapped the side of his head. ‘It’s all about the seizing the moment.’

‘What is?’ Eldyra asked, smiling crookedly. She enjoyed teasing the Loremaster of Hoeth, and Eltharion couldn’t find it in his heart to blame her. Belannaer had once been the High Loremaster of Ulthuan, before ceding the title and its responsibilities to Teclis. Many, including Eltharion, thought Belannaer had been only too happy to do so, making him a rarity among the Ulthuani. In the years since, he’d found contentment amongst the tomes of yesteryear, forgoing the crudity of politics and war, for a life devoted to study and contemplation. But he’d set such prosaic workings aside when he’d learned of the Everchild’s capture. Belannaer knew, better perhaps than anyone else save Teclis, what such an event meant to the fate of Ulthuan. But though he’d shed his reclusive ways and taken up his sword once more, he was still a scholar, with a scholar’s stuffiness and a pedant’s obliviousness.

‘Everything,’ Belannaer said. He gestured airily. ‘History is made of moments and the people who seized them.’ He looked at Eltharion. ‘Aliathra has seized hers. I can hear her voice on the wind, stronger now than before, for all that she’s growing weaker. Time is running short.’

‘We can only sail as fast as the wind takes us, loremaster,’ Eltharion said. He knew what Belannaer was feeling, for he’d felt it himself. The growing impatience, the anxiety of uncertainty. There were still hundreds of miles of overland travel between them and Sylvania. They would make up time by keeping to the river, but even then, there was no telling what might arise to stymie them.

‘I know, which is why I stoked the winds with my sorcery, so that we might move faster,’ Belannaer said. Eldyra looked at Eltharion.

‘I wondered why the ship was creaking so,’ she murmured. Eltharion shushed her with a quick look and said, ‘Something is different, isn’t it?’

‘Aliathra has shown me… flashes of what awaits us,’ Belannaer said. ‘There are dark forces on the move, and this is but the smallest shred of their plan. We will need allies.’ He said the last hesitantly.

Eltharion tensed. ‘Allies,’ he repeated. ‘You mean men.’

‘And the dwarfs, if they can be convinced,’ Belannaer said.

‘No,’ Eltharion said. ‘No, the dwarfs are the reason that Aliathra was captured in the first place. I’ll not surrender her fate to their hands again.’ He felt a surge of anger at the thought of it. ‘Neither will I entrust it to men.’ He shook his head. ‘They are worse even than dwarfs. They cannot be counted on.’

‘And yet we must, if we are to have any hope of rescuing the Everchild,’ Belannaer said. ‘I’ve ordered the fleet to sail due east, for the Empire of Sigmar. They know Teclis of old, and will be open to our entreaties. We gave them aid, once upon a time, and they owe Ulthuan a debt.’

‘You ordered?’ Eltharion shook his head, astounded at Belannaer’s arrogance. ‘I lead this expedition, loremaster, not you,’ he said softly.

‘You do,’ Belannaer said. ‘And I am sure you will come to the right decision eventually.’

Eltharion glanced at Eldyra. ‘Did you know about this?’

‘No, but he’s right,’ she said.

Eltharion’s eyes narrowed. Eldyra spoke quickly, ‘Think about it, cousin… Our army is small and we will have to cross lands held by men sooner or later. Better to do it with permission, and perhaps even with allies, than to fight our way through.’ She held up a hand as he made to protest. ‘We could do it. Our army, small as it is, is better than anything they can muster. But elves will die in the doing of it. And for what – pride? Better to sacrifice pride than warriors, especially where we’re going.’

Eltharion listened silently. Some of Teclis had rubbed off on her as well, he thought. Then, given how closely the twins’ fates had been linked these last few centuries, that wasn’t surprising. Eldyra had learned the art of battle as Tyrion’s squire. But she had learned something else entirely by watching Teclis’s crooked mind at work.

Regardless, she wasn’t wrong, save about his pride. It wasn’t pride that motivated him, but caution. What profit could be gleaned from faithless allies or worse, useless ones? They would hamper the clean, quick strike, and slow them down. He was certain their host could cross quickly into Sylvania, before the men could mobilise to question them. But could they then get out again, once victory had been achieved? It would be unfortunate if they succeeded in rescuing Aliathra from one savage, only to fall prey to another.

Finally, Eltharion nodded. ‘You are right, cousin, loremaster,’ he said. ‘Better we ally ourselves with willing primitives than stand alone in defeat.’

‘Then the fleet will continue east?’ Belannaer asked.

Eltharion nodded. ‘East – it is time to see if the Empire of Sigmar remembers its debts.’

Durthu, Eldest of Ancients, spoke in a voice like the rustling of branches and the cracking of bark. It filled the King’s Glade, travelling through the branches of every tree and slipped from every leaf, until the air throbbed with the sound of his voice. ‘The cycle of the world begins anew, and just as the forest once aided the folk of Ulthuan in days now slid from mortal memory, it shall do so again.’ Durthu shifted his immense weight as he spoke, and the air was rent by the squeal of twisting branches and the dull, wet crunch of popping roots. The treeman was the oldest of his kind, and his mind was like the forest itself: vast, wild and unpredictable.

Araloth watched as a ripple of murmurs spread through the assembled ranks of the Council of Athel Loren where they sat. It was rare that Durthu spoke, and rarer still that he spoke so lucidly. More and more often these days, his mind was awash in the forest’s rage, and he spoke words of war and madness. But here was the calm Durthu of old, the wise spirit who had so often guided his folk in ages past. Araloth felt a twinge of sadness as he watched the ancient tree-spirit speak. The forest was dying, glade by glade, rotting from within and falling to the madness that had poured forth from the Vaults of Winter. Soon enough, if it was not halted, Durthu would join many of his kin in either decay or madness. And that would be a terrible moment indeed.

Araloth pushed the thought aside and concentrated on Durthu’s words. ‘But as in those days, there will be a price for the forest’s aid, Everqueen of Ulthuan,’ Durthu said, his ageless eyes fixed on the proud figure of Alarielle. She stood before the council, bound in chains of leaves and vines, as was customary.

The Everqueen lifted her chin and said, ‘I know nothing of these events, revered ancient, but whatever your price, know that I will pay it willingly and in full.’ Her voice possessed a liquid musicality to it that, in other circumstances would have seemed the epitome of beauty to Araloth. But now, he could hear the sadness that tainted its harmonies, and the desperation that had driven its owner to this point.

At her words, the trees of the glade seemed to sigh, though whether in sadness or triumph, Araloth couldn’t say. Nor did he wish to guess. The forest had a mind of its own, one that no elf could attempt to fathom, not if they wished to remain sane.

Durthu receded back into his place. Having said his piece, the Eldest of Ancients had fallen silent. The bargain had been struck, and there was nothing more to be said. The Council was quick to act. One of them stood and met Araloth’s gaze. ‘You heard?’ he asked.

‘I did,’ Araloth said. He knew what was coming next, for it was the only reason that he would have been summoned to witness what had just occurred.

‘You, Lord of Talsyn, and champion of the Mage Queen, will assemble a host to pierce black Sylvania, and lend our cousins aid in their rescue attempt.’

‘I will,’ Araloth said, simply. Nothing more needed to be said. His mind was already hard at work on the logistics of such an undertaking. Axe Bite Pass would be the quickest route. They would head north, through Parravon. There would be dangers aplenty, but he had little doubt that it could be done. He would request volunteers. He would not order any to follow him into such a place.

The chains of vines and leaves fell from the Everqueen as the audience ended. Two of the Mage Queen’s handmaidens, Naestra and Arahan, waited to take Alarielle to the place of reckoning, where her part of the bargain, whatever it was, would be fulfilled. Araloth did not envy her the task to come. She glanced at the handmaidens, and then strode towards him. ‘My daughter,’ she said.

‘I will do all that it is in my power to do for her,’ he said quietly.

‘As will I,’ she said, looking into his eyes. She took his hand and squeezed it. He felt a shock as something passed between them. When she released his hand, he saw that she had pressed a locket into his palm. He looked at her questioningly.

‘It will lead you to my daughter,’ she said. ‘Let us hope, for the sakes of those we love, that you reach her in time.’

EIGHT

Mannfred felt a hum of satisfaction ripple through him as he watched Arkhan take in the room, and its treasures. There, the lecterns that held the damned tomes of Nagash. Nine, now, rather than the seven they had been, thanks to Arkhan.

And amidst them sat the Crown of Sorcery, pulsing softly with its weird light. Arkhan stood before the crown, and reached out a hand. Mannfred was possessed by a sudden urge to rip him away from it, but he wrestled the feeling down. It would not do to start a fight. Not now.

From above, the vargheists growled warningly. They hissed and snarled as the liche ran his fingers over the crown, but fell silent at Mannfred’s gesture. Arkhan traced the wicked iron points that topped Nagash’s crown, and then let his hand drop. He did not look at Mannfred when he said, ‘You have the Claw as well.’ It wasn’t a question.

Mannfred crossed his arms and smirked. ‘Indeed.’

‘Where?’

‘Not here,’ Mannfred said.

Arkhan turned. ‘Even now, you do not trust me.’ The liche cocked his head. ‘You are wise, in your generation.’ He turned towards the prisoners. ‘I thought you enjoyed their escape attempts. Why torture them?’

The prisoners hung in their chains, broken and beaten. They stank of death now, as much as anything else in the castle. Their flesh had been gouged and burned and flayed, and all remaining armour had been stripped from those who wore it. They had been crippled and hobbled, and hovered on the brink of death. Only Mannfred’s sorcerous artifice kept them from tipping over entirely into the void. Mannfred strode past Arkhan and wrenched up Volkmar’s head. Of the nine, only the old man and Aliathra were still conscious. The vampire looked at the elf woman. Her eyes were closed, but her lips moved silently. He wondered whether she, like the nature priest, had slipped at last into madness. Or worse, into damnation like Morgiana.

Volkmar glared defiantly up at him with exhausted, pain-clouded eyes. Mannfred leaned close, drinking in his captive’s pain and helplessness. ‘Because the time for games is done. If you can do as you claimed, then it is time to put away childish things and get to work,’ he said, staring at Volkmar. He leaned close to the old man. ‘Don’t you agree, Volkmar? Aren’t you tired of this never-ending game of ours? Don’t you want to see it end, finally, once and for all?’

Volkmar hawked a gobbet of bloody spittle into Mannfred’s face. Mannfred released the old man’s head and stepped back. He wiped the spittle from his face and smiled. He felt no anger at the gesture. It was nothing more than the defiance of a peasant on the block. He looked at Arkhan and gestured. ‘Well – I allowed you in here for a reason, liche. Tell me… Which one?’

Arkhan picked his way carefully across the blood-stained floor, and he gazed at each of the nine in turn. His hell-spark eyes lingered on the elf woman for a moment, and Mannfred felt himself tense, though he could not say why. Arkhan motioned to the unconscious form of the Myrmidian knight, Blaze. ‘You were correct, earlier. This one. His blood is powerful, but not as much as that of the others. It is diluted, and thus perfect for our purposes.’

Mannfred nodded slightly. ‘As I suspected.’

‘You have already assembled much of what is required. But we still lack three things.’ Arkhan turned. ‘Three items tied to the Great Necromancer’s death. All lie within reach of Sylvania, and all require but the proper application of force to acquire. Neither guile nor cunning will be necessary. Luckily for you,’ Arkhan said.

Mannfred twitched. He closed his eyes and fought to control his temper. Arkhan was baiting him, but he would not give the liche the satisfaction. ‘I know all of this, you black-toothed hank of gristle. What I do not know is how you intend to help me acquire them.’

‘I told you – the secret is in the blood,’ Arkhan said, motioning to the floor. ‘The true question is, how are we to divide the work to come?’

Mannfred ran his hands over his bare head. ‘Ah, well, there I think is my contribution. Before your – ah – timely arrival, I was already concocting stratagems for that very purpose. Heldenhame is too obvious a target, and too close. If we strike there first, our enemies will surely know that we have escaped the cage they made for me. For us,’ Mannfred said. ‘I suggest we divide our forces. You came close to acquiring Nagash’s staff, Alakanash, from La Maisontaal Abbey once… Best you succeed this time.’

Arkhan didn’t react to his dig. ‘And the Fellblade?’

‘Not far from here, as you said. My spies have brought word that it is in the possession of the skaven somewhere in Mad Dog Pass, as you yourself are likely already aware.’

Arkhan inclined his head. ‘And you will acquire it?’

‘I will.’ Mannfred gestured down at the map. ‘We will depart via the western border, I think. It will give you the quickest path into Bretonnia, and me the quickest into the Border Princes. Speed is of the essence, but it will still take us most of the year. I suggest that we save Heldenhame for our coming out party, as it were.’

Arkhan looked down at the map. He looked up. ‘Agreed. It will take me some time to prepare. A few days, no more than that.’

‘Excellent. It will take me that long to see to raising a proper host, to carry us in style to our respective destinations.’ Mannfred spread his hands. And to ensure that you return on your shield, rather than behind it, ally-mine, he thought. ‘If you were capable of drinking, I’d raise a toast to you, oh mighty Arkhan.’

‘And if I had any interest in drinking with you, Mannfred, I would accept. Go, you may leave me here. I must attune myself to your sorceries and find the right strands to pull and those to cut.’ Mannfred hesitated, and Arkhan gave a rasping laugh. ‘Fear not, vampire. Leave your dogs to guard me, if you wish. Summon ghouls or assign your pantomime Templars to stand sentinel over me, to ensure that I do not steal your treasures. I care not.’

Mannfred bowed shallowly. ‘You cannot fault me for being overcautious, Lord Arkhan. Allies, in my experience, are as the shifting sands – untrustworthy as a matter of course. But you shame me with your generosity of spirit, and courtly manner. I leave you, sir, to do as you must. And I go to do as I must.’ Mannfred swept his cloak up about him and turned and left.

As he stalked through the corridors of Castle Sternieste, Mannfred forced aside the worries that gnawed at him. He didn’t trust Arkhan, but he had little choice at this juncture. As old and as learned as he was in the arts of sorcery, Arkhan was older still. The liche had likely forgotten more about magic than Mannfred would ever be able to learn. He had been present at the birth of necromancy, and he was as good as Nagash’s will given form.

But that wouldn’t save him, once he’d outlived his usefulness.

Something yowled, and he paused. He looked up and saw Arkhan’s detestable cat slinking through the ancient support timbers above. It glared down at him with milky-eyed malevolence, fleshless tail twitching. Mannfred’s eyes narrowed. Was it watching him – spying for its master? He raised his hand, ready to blast it from existence, when something stopped him. He caught a glimpse of a massive, gaunt shape, twitching and flickering with witch-fire, out of the corner of his eye, like a giant squatting to fill the corridor behind him, and he whirled with a snarl. But there was nothing there. No giant and no shadow, save his own.

When he looked back up, the cat had vanished.

Mannfred looked around once more, and then continued on his way. He soon arrived at the high garden that he had made his war chamber for the coming campaign. He could not say why he had done so; he had rarely visited the high garden in all the months he had made Sternieste his home.

And do you remember why you avoided coming to Sternieste? Vlad purred softly. This was my garden, wasn’t it? Where I held my councils of war, in that golden age between conquest and damnation, while Sylvania was still to be won. I am honoured that you have chosen to honour my memory in such a way, my most attentive student.

Mannfred stopped. He ran his hands over the crown of his head. He had had hair once, a luxuriant mane of hair, the hue of a raven’s wing. He had been beautiful, and proud of that beauty. But after rising from the sump of Hel Fenn, he had shaved his head. His return was a rebirth. In death, he had been purged of old failings and faults, and vanity was discarded with the rest. Or so he’d thought.

Really, though, it had been to mark himself as different to Vlad. Vlad, with his icy mane and aristocratic mien; Vlad who held to the noble traditions of a long-gone empire – including the superstition that councils of war should be held in the open air, beneath the eyes of the gods so as to gain their favour.

Mannfred felt a chill course through him. Was that why he had been drawn to Sternieste, to the garden? Was he unconsciously imitating Vlad?

How many of Nagash’s detestable tomes did I gather again? One or two, surely. Your initiative in that regard is impressive, I must say. Then, you never did know how to quit while you were ahead, did you? Vlad laughed.

No, no, he had chosen Sternieste for the strategic advantage it provided. And the garden… Well, few others even knew it existed, which made it the ideal spot to confer with his subordinates without danger of eavesdroppers.

Am I so poor an example, then? Vlad whispered.

‘You’re dead. You tell me,’ Mannfred muttered. Vlad’s laughter accompanied him into the garden, where the inner circle of the Drakenhof Templars sat or stood, arguing loudly amongst themselves. Well, Anark and Markos were arguing, which had become an annoyingly regular occurrence. The two vampires snarled and cursed at one another, and Mannfred thought they might come to blows. He paused, waiting, amused now, his previous uncertainties forgotten.

‘Oh very good,’ he said, after the spectre of violence had passed on, thwarted. ‘I do so enjoy a spirited debate. I hope it was about something important.’

‘He refuses to acquiesce to my authority,’ Anark growled. Elize had one hand on his shoulder and her other pressed flat to Markos’s chest.

‘When you show me a reason to respect the puerile demands that flutter from your flapping lips, perhaps I will,’ Markos snapped.

Mannfred sighed and strode between them. Elize retreated as Mannfred’s hands snapped out and his fingers fastened on the throat of either vampire. Unliving muscle swelled as Mannfred hauled them both up and off their feet and into the air. ‘This debate, while amusing, is most assuredly moot, my friends. The only authority here to which you must acquiesce is mine own.’ Point made, he dropped them both. Anark, with a beast’s wisdom, scrambled away. Markos sat and glared, rubbing his throat. Mannfred ignored him.

‘The liche thinks that he can shatter the mystic cage that holds us,’ he said, pushing aside the flicker of anger that accompanied those words. ‘Out, all of you. Rouse the barrow-legions and draw the souls of the cursed dead from the stones where they sleep. The muster of Sternieste marches to war, and I would have every muck-encrusted bone and ragged shroud ready. Go, fly, rouse my army,’ Mannfred said, sweeping out a hand.

Markos and the others filed out of the garden. But before Elize could follow them, Mannfred stopped her. As he did so, he noticed that her pets hesitated. Brute and shadow, Anark and the Crowfiend. Anark hesitated more obviously, waiting like a loyal hound. The Crowfiend lurked outside the entrance to the garden, as if he were only stopping to admire the mouldy tapestries that dangled from the walls there. Mannfred looked at Elize and she motioned delicately to Anark. He turned and left, visibly reluctant. The Crowfiend drifted away a moment later, silent and seemingly unconcerned.

‘The loyalty you inspire in your get awes me, Elize,’ Mannfred said. He clasped his hands behind his back and strode towards the tree. ‘Do I inspire the same devotion in any creature?’

‘I am your loyal servant, my lord,’ Elize said softly.

‘So you have shown again and again, sweet cousin.’ Mannfred glanced at her. ‘You are one of the rocks upon which my foundations stand.’ He looked away. ‘We are sallying forth from this besieged province, cousin, and I would have the Drakenhof Templars in the vanguard.’

‘We have ever stood at the narrowest point, my lord,’ Elize said.

‘That point, I’m afraid, is going to become narrower still.’ He lifted a hand, and spoke a single, shuddering syllable. The air thickened and the light dimmed, as if a fog had settled over the garden. ‘There,’ Mannfred said. ‘Now we can speak freely with one another, without curious ears eavesdropping. Anark will accompany Arkhan into Bretonnia.’

‘Bretonnia,’ Elize repeated. She hesitated, and then nodded. Mannfred had not told his inner circle just what he was after, but he had no doubt that the brighter sparks among them had already guessed. ‘Are you certain now is the time, my lord?’

‘Was that a question, or a suggestion?’ Mannfred asked. ‘Arkhan’s usefulness is finite. Can your pet be trusted to do this thing for me, sweet cousin?’ Mannfred asked, looking up at the tree. It seemed to be flourishing anew, its limbs growing gnarled and strong, as if it were feeding on the mortal energies of the dead things gathered at Sternieste. He traced the jagged contours of its crumbling bark with a finger.

‘He can, my lord,’ Elize said.

‘You sound confident.’

‘In Anark’s strength and willingness? Yes, cousin, I am. I chose him for those qualities.’

Mannfred smiled. ‘Ah, cousin, my cousin, you were ever the darling of dear, sweet, mad Isabella’s eye, in those glorious times now gone to dust and memory. She relied much on you, in those final days, while Vlad was occupied with the war.’

Elize said nothing, but silence was as good an answer as anything she might have chosen to say, to Mannfred’s way of thinking. He glanced over his shoulder at Elize, studying her. ‘You were alone among her handmaidens in your practicality and – dare I say it? – your sanity. A mind second only to my own, I have often said.’

‘Have you, my lord? I have never heard you say such about anyone,’ Elize said mildly. Mannfred raised his brow in surprise. Elize was normally quite circumspect. He expected such comments from Markos, but Elize…

‘You are worried, then,’ he said, turning to face her. ‘Should I send another of your creatures? The Crowfiend, perhaps? Erikan of Mousillon,’ he continued, and his smile turned feral as a brief look of consternation crossed her perfectly composed features. ‘Oh yes, I smelt the stink of that particular demesne on him, the poor boy. He is the last surviving pup of the Cannibal Knight of Mousillon, of infamous memory, isn’t he? The Bretonnians burned that lot in their sewer palaces. The Cannibal Knight, his princess of Bel-Aliad, and their squalling retainers. Royalty, that one, at least insofar as the Bretonni judge these things. He has no idea, of course, and I shall not tell him.’ He crossed the space between them and caught her chin. ‘That shall be my gift to you, hmm? From one loving cousin to another.’ He lifted her chin, so that her eyes met his. ‘Shall I send him instead of Anark, perhaps? Or both together?’

‘As you wish, my lord,’ Elize said.

Mannfred released her and stepped back. He chuckled. ‘What game are you playing, sweet cousin, that you will not share your moves with me?’

‘It is but a small one, to amuse myself,’ she said.

‘I’ve often wondered… How did you woo him? Or did he woo you, the necromancer’s apprentice trailing after the beautiful lady without mercy?’ Mannfred turned away. ‘He angered you, though, your cannibal prince. I know that much. He left to follow his own path, without a word of thanks for all your efforts to groom him into something greater. What was your plan then? Was he to be a stepping stone to influence elsewhere?’

‘As I said, my lord, it was but a small amusement,’ Elize said.

She was lying. Mannfred nodded nonetheless, as if he believed her. ‘Then you will not mind if I send both. If one of your creatures fails, then the other will not.’

Elize’s face might as well have been a marble mask. ‘As you will, my lord. Who, dear cousin, will accompany you? And who will be castellan here?’

‘The latter is easy enough – you,’ he said.

She blinked. Then, she inclined her head. ‘You honour me, cousin.’

‘I know. See that you do not disappoint me. I’d hate to accomplish my goals, only to return to a burned-out ruin, and a scattered army.’ He ran his palms over his head and said, ‘As for who shall accompany me… Markos and our good Vargravian count, Nyktolos. Both have warred in the Border Princes before, and their experience is required. Master Nictus will stay with you, to act as your good right hand.’

Elize hesitated. Then, ‘Are you certain you wish to take Markos?’

Mannfred looked at her. ‘Concerned for my wellbeing, sweet cousin?’

‘If I were not, would I have warned you of Tomas’s intentions, all those months ago, before this affair even began? Would I have warned you that he’d made an agreement with von Dohl, that he was promised command of the armies of Waldenhof, if he took your head?’

‘As I recall, you warned me so that I might allow you to choose the next Grand Master of the Drakenhof Order. A straight bargain, Elize.’ Mannfred laughed. ‘And even if I hadn’t known, Tomas would have failed. He was a maggot, nothing more, just like von Dohl, and the cursed Shadowlord and all the others who defy my blood-right.’

‘Like Markos?’

Mannfred paused. ‘Markos has never been… comfortable in a subordinate role. Vlad spoiled him. He had a peculiar fondness for acerbity in his servants.’

And you would know, wouldn’t you, boy? Vlad’s voice murmured. Mannfred ignored it and continued, ‘It is a fondness that I do not, on the whole, share.’ Of course not. You never could stand to be questioned could you, young prince? Vlad needled him. Mannfred felt his cheek twitch as he sought to restrain a snarl of frustration. ‘I am giving Markos a chance. He will serve, or he will make his move,’ he said. ‘Either way, I am too close to victory to allow him to remain undecided. We are coming to the sharp end of all things, sweet cousin. The time when sides must be chosen, and banners unfurled for the last time. All games save mine must be put aside, for the good of all who bear the von Carstein name.’ He looked at her. ‘Including yours, my sweet Elize.’

‘Do you dream, old man?’ Arkhan asked. He examined Volkmar from a distance, head cocked. He had stood in the same place since Mannfred had left, soaking up the miasma of the place, drinking in the concentrated essence of his master’s earthly remains. All that had been Nagash, save for certain pieces, was here, and he could feel the Great Necromancer’s presence beating down upon his brain like a terrible black sun. ‘I think you do. You can hear his footsteps in the hollows of your heart, and his voice in the sour places of your memory, even as I can.’

Volkmar said nothing. He glared at Arkhan as silently as he had Mannfred. Arkhan leaned against his staff. He was not weary, but sometimes he felt what might be the ghost of such a feeling, deep in his bones. ‘I see the skull beneath your skin, old man. It’s no use denying it. He has chosen you.’

‘He is chosen, and by Lord Mannfred,’ Morgiana hissed. She rose from where she’d been crouching in the corner and sauntered towards Arkhan, as far as her chains would allow. Unlike the others, she hadn’t been beaten to within an inch of her life. She no longer had a life to lose. She glowed with the cold fire of undeath to Arkhan’s eyes, and he did not wonder why she was still chained. She had been threat enough in life. In death she was even more dangerous. Or she would be, once she learned the new limits of her power.

Arkhan examined her curiously. She was kept with the others both because she made for a cruelly amusing gaoler, and because even Mannfred wasn’t so foolish as to let a creature like Morgiana Le Fay wander loose. Her blood still pulsed with the raw stuff of life, as did her magics. It was only her presence that kept the other captives from slipping over the precipice into death’s domain. Mannfred had truly wrought something abominable when he’d turned her. Still, there was yet a sliver of the woman she had been within the beast he’d made of her.

‘How did he acquire you, I wonder?’ he murmured, drawing close to her. She hissed and retreated, her eyes narrowing with pain. Arkhan stopped. Some vampires, those with an unusual sensitivity to the winds of death, felt pain in his presence. He was little more than the power of necromancy given form, and for some vampires, that was the difference between being warmed by flames and burned by them.

Morgiana’s beautiful features twisted into an expression of bestial malice. ‘Drycha,’ she spat. Arkhan nodded. The branchwraith of Athel Loren had ever been a changeable and unpredictable factor. It did not surprise him that she had brought Morgiana to Mannfred. That sort of malevolent caprice was what Drycha was best at.

‘Free me, liche, and I shall aid you in whatever way you wish,’ Morgiana said, the mask of humanity slipping back over her face. She rattled her chains for emphasis. ‘I shall abet you and comfort you. My magics – all that I am – will be at your disposal.’

Arkhan let a raspy laugh slip between his fleshless jaws. ‘I doubt that, woman. Mannfred keeps you chained for good reason. You are more dangerous now than you were in your enchanted Bretonnian bower.’

Morgiana snarled and sprang for him. Arkhan didn’t move. He had stopped just out of the reach of her chains, and she tumbled heavily to the floor, where she rolled about, writhing and shrieking like a she-wolf in a trap. She spat bloody froth at him, and where it struck the floor, green patches of moss flourished, before swiftly withering and dying.

He turned away from her display, focusing his attentions on the Everchild, where she hung in her chains, eyes closed, lips moving in a silent song. And it was a song, for Arkhan could hear it, even if Mannfred could not. It was a hymn, a sorcerous prayer, subtle yet powerful enough to pierce the bindings Mannfred had placed about Sylvania. It was a thing of intricate beauty to his eyes and sorcerous sense, a crystalline web that stretched upwards from Aliathra, growing in strength and size, as she powered the spell with her own life essence.

‘I wonder if they have heard you yet, child?’ he asked as he approached her. ‘I think they have. I can feel the burden of gathering destinies. Your song calls your kin to your side. Perhaps you have wondered why I have not stopped you?’

The elf did not reply. Her eyes remained shut, and her lips continued to move. Arkhan brushed a strand of her hair from her face, and he felt her clammy skin quiver at his touch. ‘It serves the ends of the one whom I serve, you see. I tell you this so that you understand that we are both pawns, and that there is no malice in my actions.’

Her eyes flashed open. Arkhan lowered his hand. There was fire there, and rage. It crashed against the coldness of him, and he almost flinched back. As much power as inundated his cracked and ancient bones, the fury that lurked in the elf maiden’s blood was greater by far. It was power enough to shatter continents and crack the world’s core.

For a moment, Arkhan felt fire and pain. Then it passed, and he was himself again. He found that his cat had returned, its maggoty body pressed tight to his shoulders. Its weight had come upon him unnoticed, and it hissed at the elf maiden with feline disdain. He reached up and stroked the animal’s decaying throat. Aliathra’s eyes were closed. Arkhan turned away, disturbed.

That disturbance did not lessen in the coming days, as he prepared for the ritual that would allow for escape from the caged province. He saw Ogiers and the others but little over the following days. The trio of necromancers he’d scavenged from the ruins of Mallobaude’s army had scattered the moment they arrived, slipping his reins to find newer, more pliable partners or masters. It would have been a matter of moments to summon them back to his side, but for the moment he left them free to pursue their whims. Morgiana, despite her madness and untrustworthy nature, still had an able mind, and she proved an able replacement, in between pleas for release and demands for blood. It was fitting that she was such, for she was, herself, one of the cornerstones of the very ritual that formed the root of their current predicament.

He had faced Morgiana only briefly on the field of Couronne during Mallobaude’s revolt, but that confrontation had shown him the nature of the power that lurked beneath Bretonnia’s barbaric facade. That Morgiana was still somehow connected to it, despite her current state only confirmed his suspicions. Necromancy, at its base, had been born in elven minds, or so Nagash swore. He had altered it, and forced it into a shape more to his liking, but its seed had been planted in the wisdom of Aliathra’s dark kin, even as Morgiana’s own had its roots in the secret glades of Athel Loren.

The collegial magics that had been used to create the wall of faith were similar, albeit watered down, and altered still further to account for the frailty of the human frame. Luckily, that was something Arkhan no longer had to worry about.

As the weeks progressed, he eventually ordered Morgiana unchained, to better aid him in preparing his form for the rite to come. His bones had to be carved with the proper sigils and runes, and the ritual knife he would use had to be soaked in the blood of each of the nine captives for a certain amount of time. The proper bindings had to be prepared, as well as the unguents and powders that would be used to mark the circle and feed the braziers. Many hands made for light work, and Morgiana had proved to be pliable enough, once freed.

Time passed strangely for the dead. It moved in fits and starts, as slow as tar and as fast as quicksilver. Arkhan could only keep track of the days by the puddles of melted candle fat, so engrossed was he in studying the Books of Nagash, as well as the other grimoires he ordered brought to him by the whining ghoul pack Mannfred had given him to act as his dogsbodies. He read and studied and read still more, and as they always did in such times, the unoccupied portions of his mind drifted into the depths of memory, and were reluctant to return. He had once spent a decade brooding on his throne in his black tower in the desert, lost in the grip of his memories. They were all that he had of himself that was not of Nagash’s crafting. Or so part of him hoped.

On the last day, when the last mark was added to his scrimshawed bones and the last powder mixed and all preparations made, Arkhan stood in the centre of the chamber, admiring his handiwork. Over the centuries, he had carved and shaped his own bones more than once. Unlike his long-abandoned flesh, his bones always healed, and his work faded eventually. They would not have long before the marks he and Morgiana had so painstakingly made would vanish, necessitating that they start the whole purification rite over again. He sent the ghouls scrambling to alert Mannfred and turned to Morgiana. ‘It is time, enchantress. I thank you for your service.’ He paused, and then asked, ‘Would you see your land again, one last time? As payment, for services rendered.’ Even as he spoke he wondered when such a thing had occurred to him.

Morgiana looked at him and then away. ‘I do not think so. I know what you intend, and I know that I cannot stop you, but I would not see it.’

‘Very well.’ Arkhan looked at her.

‘You are going to kill me, aren’t you?’ Morgiana asked, suddenly.

Arkhan hesitated. ‘You are already dead,’ he said.

‘No, I am not. If I were, this would not work,’ she said, gesturing to the runnels of blood that cut across the floor. ‘If I were, I would not feel the way I do.’ She ran her hands through the ratty tangles of her once luxurious hair. ‘How can anything dead be so hungry?’ Her eyes, fever-bright with barely restrained madness, turned towards her fellow captives. All but Aliathra were unconscious, even Volkmar. Morgiana had been feeding on all of them, save those two, to keep them docile while Arkhan completed his preparations. It was the first taste of blood she’d had in a long while, and it was that which had shocked her back to something approaching lucidity. ‘It’s always with me,’ she said. ‘I can hear the Lady’s voice, but only faintly, as if I am on the opposite shore of a vast, red lake. Sometimes her words are entirely drowned out by the crash of the crimson waves on the white rocks.’ She looked at him. ‘Can you even understand, dead thing that you are?’

‘I… can,’ he said. He crossed to her as faint echoes of memory were stirred from the sludge of ages and rose unencumbered to the surface of his mind. Of another woman, of another time, of another ritual, marred by poison and betrayal. Unthinkingly, he brushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘My spirit will never know peace. I must play my part until the end of time.’

‘I thought I would as well, but the world had other plans,’ she whispered, not looking at him. ‘My path changed. And I cannot bear to see where it is taking me.’

‘I… knew a woman like you, once,’ he croaked, wondering as he spoke why he was bothering to do so. What matter to him the travails of a madwoman? Then, perhaps his unlife had simply given him perspective. Even as a man, he had never been given to torture. ‘She too was afraid, and had lost the voice of her goddess.’ He fell silent.

She looked at him, and for a moment he saw the face of another superimposed over hers. A pale face, framed by hair the colour of night, with eyes like molten pools and lips that could change from kind to cruel with the merest twitch. Even now, when his mind was not otherwise occupied, he could see her face. Her hands reached up to stroke his jawbone. ‘What happened to her?’ she murmured.

‘She persevered,’ he said. ‘She was a queen, and queens do not know fear for long.’

Morgiana closed her eyes. ‘I do not think I will have that opportunity. You will kill me, won’t you?’ she asked again.

‘I will,’ Arkhan said. ‘In the end, nine are required for the final ritual, though eight will suffice. But no less than that.’ He stroked her cheek. Some part of him snarled in warning, but he ignored it. The chamber had been replaced by another in his mind’s eye, of cool marble and sandstone. He could smell the ocean, and hear the rustle of silk curtains. ‘There will be no pain… That I swear.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘That is what I needed to know.’ Her hand dropped. A moment later, his knife was jerked from its sheath and Morgiana had its tip pressed to the flesh over her heart. The flesh of her hand sizzled as the malign enchantments wrought into the blade resisted her touch. Marble and silk again became mouldy stone and the stink of abused flesh.

Arkhan lunged forward, hand outstretched. ‘Neferata,’ he rasped, momentarily uncertain what was memory and what was reality. She shoved him back, her vampiric strength taking him by surprise. He staggered. ‘No, please…’ he said, still caught in the tangled strands of memory. He saw Neferata writhing on her bed, caught in the throes of an agonising death. He felt Abhorash’s blade, as it cut him down. The full weight of the last, worst moment of a life badly spent crashed down on him for the first time in centuries, and he could not bear it. ‘Please don’t!’ The words were ripped from him before he even realised that he’d said them.

Morgiana smiled in triumph. ‘My path was changed. But I can change it back.’ She wrapped both hands around the hilt, and thrust it into her own heart. Black smoke boiled from the wound, and blood gushed as she toppled forward into Arkhan’s arms.

The liche screamed. The sound was one of frustration, rage and despair. As her blood coated his arms and chest, he knew what she had done. It had taken her weeks, but she had ensnared him in her glamour, making him see… and feel. Rage burned through him, and then guttered out. He cradled her close as the last wisps of the glamour faded and he was himself again. No longer Arkhan the gambler, Arkhan the dread lord, now only Arkhan the Black.

He tore the knife from her chest and hurled it aside. He hesitated. Her face was peaceful, in death. But some part of her yet remained. Vampires could not truly die. He could bring her back with but a touch, to stir the black sorceries that flowed through her tainted blood. But still, he hesitated.

From behind him came a yowl. He turned and saw his cat crouched atop Nagash’s crown. Its starved, crumbling frame was draped over the iron points, tail lashing. Its empty eyes met his own and he nodded slowly. He looked back down at Morgiana and said, ‘No, my lady. Escape is not so easy as all that, I fear.’

He placed a hand against the wound, and dark lightning crackled briefly from his fingers to course through Morgiana. Her body twitched and her eyes opened wide. Her lips spread and a scream escaped them. It was a sound empty of all hope. She clawed uselessly at him, and he jerked her to her feet. In moments, she was chained once more. She crouched against the wall, sobbing. Arkhan watched her for a moment, before turning away.

He felt eyes on him, and looked around to meet Aliathra’s gaze. ‘Were you amused, Everchild? I have heard that your folk drink deep of the cup of mortal suffering, finding it to be exquisite.’

‘No,’ she spoke, her voice soft. ‘I was simply surprised that it worked. I thought dead things could not be ensnared thus. Then, you are not truly dead, are you?’ Arkhan said nothing. The elf smiled sadly. ‘For that to have worked, there must be some kernel yet of the man you once were, trapped in the husk of you, Arkhan the Black. Some small touch of mercy.’

The cat shrieked, and Arkhan turned away. ‘No. There is not,’ he said, finally. He picked up his staff and slammed it down. The chamber echoed with the sound, and he heard the howl of the vargheists who lurked in the shadows above drift down in reply. The cat leapt onto his shoulder. The vargheists dropped down heavily, snarling and snapping at one another. Arkhan pointed his staff at the unconscious form of Lupio Blaze. ‘Unchain him, and bring him. I grow weary of Sylvania. It is time to leave.’

‘We are still agreed, then?’ Mannfred asked, hands crossed on his saddle’s pommel as he leaned over his mount’s neck. The horse-thing was all bone and eldritch fire, and it stank of charnel pits and mouldering ashes. ‘West for you and east for me.’

‘As we agreed,’ Arkhan said. He stood at the centre of his carefully prepared ritual circle. At his feet, pinned to the ground by crudely forged bronze spikes, was the pain-contorted shape of Lupio Blaze. Black candles, with tallow rendered from human flesh, surrounded the circle, as did a number of smoking iron braziers.

And in the distance, the only obstacle between them and the return of the Undying King. Gelt’s wall of faith rode dips and curves of the border; the symbols of Morr, Sigmar, Ulric and a dozen other gods, some real, some not, hung suspended in the air, glowing with a terrible, painful light. The western border was one of the few places where the cursed barrier was visible to the naked eye, and thus the perfect spot to ensure that the spell had actually worked.

Behind Mannfred, the army of Sylvania waited. Arkhan would take only a small bodyguard of Drakenhof Templars and his dissolute cadre of necromancers into Bretonnia, while Mannfred would lead the vast bulk of the waiting army into the Border Princes. Above the silent army, the Drakenhof banner fluttered like a dying snake.

‘Excellent,’ Mannfred said. He leaned back in his saddle and slapped his thigh. ‘Well… on with it, liche. I have a world to conquer and no time to dally.’ He jerked on his mount’s reins and galloped off to rejoin his waiting blood knights.

Arkhan watched him go and then looked down at the knight. ‘Any last words, warrior?’ Arkhan asked softly. Blaze glared up at him defiantly, and spat something virulent in Tilean. Arkhan nodded respectfully. ‘As it should be. A brave man’s final words ought to be unrepeatable,’ he said.

Arkhan began to chant, slowly at first, and then faster, the words bursting from him like a cascade of rocks down a cliff-face. He spoke in the tongue of Nehekhara, and it came as easily to him as the memory of his first death. He spat the words into the teeth of the growing wind, and the vast faces, bloated and loathsome that leered down at him through the tattered veils of reality. The words were as much promise as invocation, and the world squirmed about him as his voice tore great wounds in the air. Thunder rumbled overhead. Black lightning, blacker than the dark sky, split the air, creating jagged cracks in the firmament full of squamous, daemonic shapes, which writhed and fought.

Ghostly shapes, half formed and inhuman, spiralled madly about Arkhan and his captive, and wolves, both dead and alive, began to howl. The bitter air grew thick and poisonous, as the weight of the forces Arkhan was invoking settled on the world. He drew the bone dagger from the jewelled sheath on his belt with his free hand and dropped down to crouch over the knight. The same dagger that had almost taken Morgiana’s life would now spill the blood of her fellow captive. ‘Rest assured that your sacrifice will help to save the world, warrior. Take that thought with you into the embrace of your goddess, for however long it lasts.’

Then, with two swift movements, he slit the knight’s wrist and thigh, releasing twin sprays of red blood to splash onto the thirsty ground. Blaze’s struggles grew weaker, and his curses quieter, as his life emptied itself into the soil of Sylvania. Arkhan stood, and raised his hand. His fingers snapped closed and the candles tumbled over, setting the pooling blood alight. The fire raced about the circle, spiralling upwards with a loud roar, consuming everything within, save for Arkhan, who stood untouched by the greedy flames. His robes whipped about him as he raised his hand, and the flames tore at the heavens in reply. The fire whirled about him in a flickering typhoon of destruction, and in the coruscating surface of the flames he could see the faces of his enemies, gnashing their teeth and cursing him silently. Arkhan let the flames spill upwards into the sky.

And then he snuffed them with a snap of his bony fingers. The fire went out, leaving him in a circle of char and ash. He stood for a time, as the magics he had raised coursed through him. He had taken the power that had hidden in the knight’s blood into himself, and he could feel it roil in his nonexistent veins. Its fury had momentarily silenced the voice of his master within him, and he felt as if an indescribable weight had been lifted from his old bones. He looked at his hand, considering the power he now held. It would be so easy to use it for himself, to do as he wished, for once. He could dispatch his rivals here, take Mannfred’s acquisitions for himself and remake this blighted land into something that would ride out the coming storm better than the eternal abattoir the vampire imagined. A land of order and perfect, beautiful silence, where no daemon or dark power, save himself, held sway.

He looked up and met Mannfred’s cool, calculating glare. A giant shadow hung over the vampire, looming above him, its black gaze on Arkhan. He knew that he was the only one who could see it, who could feel the impatient malevolence that boiled off it like steam. Who was it looking out of the vampire’s eyes right now? What black brain drove Mannfred in his efforts?

Arkhan knew the answer well enough. He had seen it before, on the Valsborg Bridge, and in Castle Sternieste. The world buckled beneath the weight of a dark fate, and one that he knew better than to try and avoid. ‘Nagash must rise,’ Arkhan murmured. He motioned slowly, and the ashes at his feet stirred, rising as if caught in a hot wind. They played about his fingers as he gestured with his knife and called out, ‘Bring your standard forward, vampire.’

Mannfred gestured. A blood knight rode towards Arkhan, carrying the Drakenhof banner. Arkhan anointed the ancestral banner of the Sylvanian aristocracy with a handful of ashes. ‘Carry the banner to the wall.’

The standard-bearer glanced at Mannfred, who motioned towards the partition. The blood knight grimaced visibly, and then kicked his coal-black steed into motion towards the wall of faith. As the armoured vampire extended the standard towards the hovering holy symbols, there was a flash, and one by one, the sigils and symbols tumbled from the air to land heavily on the ground. Mannfred stood up in his saddle and waved his hand. ‘Forward!’ he shouted. ‘For Sylvania, and for the world to come!’