Blighted Empire

Chapter XVII

Middenheim

Ulriczeit, 1118

Lady Mirella stood on the veranda overlooking the marshalling yard within the walls of the Middenpalaz. It was here that Prince Mandred had assembled his expedition into the heart of the Ulricsberg before marching off to the temple of Grungni on the other side of the city.

She had watched them go, every man filled with a grim determination to do his duty, to lay down his life in the name of justice and goodness, to defend civilisation against the monstrous creatures of Old Night. Mirella knew she should have found it an inspiring sight, should have felt pride when she had gazed down into Mandred’s face and seen that noble resolve etched across each line and curve. He had saluted her, before turning to lead the soldiers away, a gesture as heavy with meaning as that of a Bretonnian knight seeking a damsel’s favour.

Mirella hadn’t been able to acknowledge Mandred’s show of affection. Quickly she had turned away, unwilling to let him see the dread in her eyes. For she had seen other men, moved by similar motives of justice and goodness. Right had been on their side, their enemy no less monstrous than these fiends from beneath the world. Despite the nobility of their cause, the selfless virtue in their ambitions, they had failed. Death, not victory, had been the price Prince Sigdan and his allies had paid for defying Emperor Boris.

Watching another prince, another man she loved marching off to battle had been more than she could bear. Mirella cursed her weakness, berated herself for the fear that clawed at her heart. Yet try as she might, her courage had deserted her. She thought of that horrible moment, in the sewer beneath Altdorf when they had fled Kreyssig’s Kaiserjaeger, that terrifying moment when the rats had swarmed all around them in the dank filth. If she closed her eyes she could still feel their loathsome touch, hear their scurrying, chittering tide rushing through her ears. It was an awful, nightmarish memory, but how pleasant compared to the horror of what Mandred now sought to confront. Hordes of vermin, not mere rats but creatures of malignant intelligence and abominable spirit, things of Chaos spat up by the black pits of the earth!

No, Mirella had been unable to watch as the army moved off. By the same token, she was unable to leave now that they were gone. She lingered upon the veranda, staring out into the empty square, picturing that last sight of Mandred as he waved to her. She had feared he would resent her, would feel she was somehow responsible for Sofia’s illness and death. Whatever feelings had developed between her and the prince, she worried that he would deny them in his mourning, reject them afterwards from a sense of guilt. Even so slight a gesture of regard gave her some hope that Mandred’s heart was yet tender towards her.

Such a foolish, selfish thing to ponder when the fate of Middenheim itself was in question. Perhaps the whole of the Empire, for where but in the City of the White Wolf could the strength be found to rebuild the shambles left by Boris Goldgather? The fate of mankind lingered at the edge of darkness, yet she was worried about…

Perspective asserted itself upon Mirella’s reflections in the most dramatic and hideous manner she could have imagined. Down in the yard, among the paving stones, a heavy iron grate shuddered in its fastenings, the cover of a drain. The motion drew her attention, but as her eyes focused on the grate, she recoiled in fright. There were fingers clutching at the grate from beneath — furry, clawed talons. Something was down in the drain seeking to escape!

Before she could cry out, Mirella saw the cover flung upwards. Even as the grate clattered against the stones, a lean figure lunged up from the drain. She had seen that revolting carcass Kurgaz had thrown before the graf’s councillors. She recognized this thing for another of that breed.

Mirella cringed away from the sight, stumbling back against the palace wall as more and more of the beasts boiled up into the yard. Faintly, she could hear shouts and screams echoing from the city beyond the walls of the Middenpalaz. The thought that this scene must be repeating itself all across Middenheim spurred her to action. It wasn’t courage that drove her, but terror of the most dire cast.

The woman’s scream turned rodent heads upwards, caused beady eyes to narrow. The skaven froze for an instant, like so many rats startled by a sudden candle. The instant passed, the monsters scattered, leaping at the walls where human guards had been alerted by the shriek. Several of the guards were shot down before they could even raise their weapons, picked off by ratkin snipers armed with long jezzails.

A few of the vermin rushed at the palace itself, launching themselves from the yard in an effort to reach the veranda. Most of the creatures fell short, crashing back to earth with snarls and squeaks. One of the monsters, however, caught the balustrade with its paws. Briefly its legs scrabbled at the edge of the veranda, then it was pulling itself upwards, fangs bared in a vicious snarl.

Mirella found herself unable to move, unable to do anything but gaze in horror at that verminous face. The skaven chittered at her. She could see the muscles under its piebald fur tense as it prepared to spring at her.

Death caught the ratman before it could attack. A ball of spiked steel slammed into its face, splitting its skull and sending a spray of fangs and blood across the veranda. Brother Richter swung the footman’s mace he held a second time and sent the corpse tumbling down into the yard. In the next instant, the priest grabbed Mirella and pulled her inside the palace.

Dazed, confused by her astounding escape, Mirella was slow to appreciate the bloodstains on the cleric’s robe or the sounds of conflict echoing through the interior of the Middenpalaz. Then it struck her. What she had seen in the yard must be happening everywhere, anywhere there was a grate or drain leading into the sewers. The skaven were bypassing every fortification in the city by attacking from below!

‘Graf Gunthar is rallying his warriors,’ Richter was telling her as he helped a cluster of servants barricade the door opening onto the veranda. ‘They’ve fought their way down to the cellars and are closing up the entrances!’

Mirella listened to the priest, but his words made little impact on her. Her thoughts were somewhere else. If the skaven were able to reach the city, if they had already prevailed below…

‘What about Mandred?’ she gasped.

Brother Richter shook his head. ‘The graf believes it was a trap to draw the army below. The skaven must have been waiting.

‘Prince Mandred must be dead.’

‘Khazuk!’ Kurgaz bellowed, staving in the face of a ratman with the head of his hammer. The dwarf laughed boisterously as the carcass went flying backwards, toppling several of the skaven behind it.

Mandred slashed the throat of the monster he fought, nearly decapitating it. ‘A fine cast, friend Smallhammer.’

Kurgaz cracked the skull of one of the skaven that had tripped over the corpse of his previous victim. A fierce shout sent several others scurrying away in fright. ‘That’s naught,’ he grumbled. ‘You should see me with the real thing!’

It didn’t take any explanation for Mandred to know what the dwarf was talking about. It was impossible not to note the fearsome power of Drakdrazh. The temptation to sit back and watch Kurgaz’s brother ply the enchanted hammer back and forth among the vermin was almost overwhelming. It was like seeing one of the dwarf ancestor gods in action. Mandred couldn’t help but think of Ghal Maraz, the Hammer of Sigmar, and its legendary might. He wondered where the outlaw knight had taken it after it was stolen from Emperor Boris. He wondered if he would ever see it wielded in battle as he now saw Drakdrazh being wielded.

The dwarfs were already locked in pitched battle when the Middenheimers reached the caverns and mines of what the denizens of Karak Grazhyakh called the Fourth Deep. Skaven had swarmed up from the smaller shafts and tunnels radiating out from the Fourth Deep. Fighter for fighter, the ratmen were vastly inferior to the rugged dwarfs, their crude armour and scavenged weapons woefully primitive beside the steel plate and keen axes of their foes. The dwarfs, however, were unable to match the speed of the ratkin, an advantage that enabled the skaven to bring their prodigious numbers to bear upon the foe. The dwarfs presented a solid rock, steady and impenetrable, but the skaven were like a raging sea, sweeping in from every quarter to pound at their defences.

How easy it would have been to lose heart when they reached the battle, when they saw the seemingly endless horde flooding through the great hall, scurrying across overturned mine carts and scampering down skeletal gantries. It was one thing to hear how numerous their foe was, but to see it before one’s eyes was a thing terrible to contemplate. Mandred felt his own heart buckle when he saw that verminous sea crashing around the small knots of embattled dwarfs scattered through the cavern. Yet seeing those doughty warriors, unperturbed despite being outnumbered and surrounded, combating their enemy with a stubborn defiance, made an even greater impression. Watching a grizzled old dwarf smoking calmly on his pipe as he mashed ratmen with his axe, or listening to a young beardling singing a Khazalid tune as he plied his hammer sent a fire coursing through their veins. Such courage in such conditions was a magnificence of valour that belonged in legend. No man could abandon such courage to be overwhelmed and destroyed. Whatever time he bought by such abject cowardice wouldn’t be life, but merely a hollow existence of shame.

To a man, the Middenheimers had charged into the Fourth Deep, the fatigue of their long march forgotten as the roar of battle thundered through them. Shouting ‘wolf and graf!’ they had fallen upon the flank of the skaven horde. The ratmen, already locked in combat, were taken by surprise, forced to give ground before the humans.

If they prevailed, they would be hailed as heroes when they returned to the surface, paraded through Middenheim as champions of order and light. If they could turn the skaven back here, they would break the siege of their homes before it could even start.

The tide of battle was turning against the skaven. Steadily the humans were driving them back, fighting their way across the cavern to relieve the embattled dwarfs one group at a time. Ratmen still swarmed from the shafts and passageways, but now they did so fighting a trickle of skaven seeking to flee the conflict. The sight reassured Mandred. If his army could maintain the momentum, they would make that trickle into a raging torrent that would sweep the verminous horde away.

‘We’ll soon join your brother!’ Mandred called out to Kurgaz, nodding to him.

The dwarf turned away from the mushed remains of an armoured ratman, frowning as he tried to peer over the shoulders of the knights and soldiers around him. ‘I’ll take your word for it, princeling,’ he growled, then hurled himself at another foe.

Beside the prince, Beck was fending off the frenzied assault of a snaggletoothed ratkin draped in a tattered cloak and wielding knives in both its paws. The filthy creature reminded Mandred of the gutter runners that had rampaged through Neist’s hospice. He felt no qualms as he drove his sword into the thing’s back. Many more would die before Sofia was avenged.

‘Thank you, your grace,’ Beck huffed, winded by the hard fight. He had barely drawn a breath before he was lunging forwards again, striking down an opportunistic ratkin that was leaping at Mandred’s back. The rodent fell in a pool of spilled entrails.

The ebb of battle flowed away from the prince’s position. For a moment, he was able to gaze across the cavern, to appreciate the havoc that had been wrought against the skaven. Even as Mandred was feeling the glow of their accomplishment, he saw something that turned him sick inside.

Kurgaz’s brother, that great champion with his fabulous warhammer, was beset by a mob of armoured ratmen. Black-furred brutes, they bore great halberds in their paws. While Drakdrazh struck one down, another slashed at Mirko, catching him in the back of the knee. The dwarf’s mail blunted the impact, but he staggered just the same. The blazing runes on the haft of his hammer flickered for a moment.

In that moment, a huge white skaven wearing black armour lunged at Mirko, a sword clutched in either paw. The massive ratman brought both blades stabbing down, driving them with such force that they penetrated the mail between neck and shoulder. The monster put his full weight behind the stabbing blades, pushing them down until only the pommels projected from Mirko’s shoulders.

The dwarf champion collapsed and Drakdrazh tumbled from his fingers. One of the black-furred skaven grabbed at the hammer, but before he could reach it his white-furred warlord lunged at him, tearing out his throat with gleaming fangs. Mandred’s view of the skaven warlord was obscured as the armoured skaven surged forwards to oppose the dwarfs seeking to avenge Mirko.

Another surge of skaven swept towards Mandred’s forces, pushing them back and away from Mirko’s company. Kurgaz cursed and raged, throwing himself with reckless ferocity against the monsters. He’d heard the great wail set up by Mirko’s comrades. He knew his brother was dead.

Mandred redoubled his own efforts, striving for every inch of ground. As the skaven began to give way, as they fell before the swords and spears of the Middenheimers, the prince kept an eye out for the white rat, dreading to see Drakdrazh blazing in the creature’s paws.

‘Your grace! Your grace!’ The cry came from a sweat-drenched man clad only in a linen tunic and woollen breeks. He pushed his way through the reserves behind the prince. Mandred shook his head at the man’s curious raiment. He didn’t look like one of his soldiers, which left the question of where he had come from.

‘Your grace!’ the man shouted again, his cry ringing over the fray. There were more words, but they were garbled in the clamour of battle. Something of their import must have impressed Beck, however. The knight pressed close to Mandred, fending off the prince’s foes so that he could disengage.

Mandred fell back, listening with horror as the man’s words became clear. He was right, the man wasn’t a part of the army. He was a messenger from the surface. From Middenheim.

‘We are undone,’ the messenger cried. ‘Skaven are attacking the surface!’

The report was like a cold knife sinking into the prince’s heart. Skaven on the surface! Skaven in Middenheim!

‘Your grace, what do we do?’ The question came from one of the commanders, a nobleman who had been fighting at the prince’s side.

Grimly, Mandred turned back to the battle. ‘We fight on,’ he said. ‘We gave our word to help the dwarfs, we will not forsake them.’ He choked back the dread that made his voice falter. ‘If we can’t turn the enemy back here, we won’t be able to save our homes anyway.’

Carroburg

Mitterfruhl, 1115

Plague ravaged Carroburg. Daily, from the towers and parapets, the denizens of Schloss Hohenbach could see the decimation of the city. Corpse-carts prowled the streets, bodies lay stacked in the gutters. White crosses were marked up on the doors of the afflicted, and even from the heights of the Otwinsstein the nobles could pick out the figures of plague doktors, their faces hidden behind their birdlike masks, making the rounds. The trickle of trade still braving the river to reach Carroburg vanished entirely, plunging the stricken populace even deeper into the grip of need and want.

Within the castle, however, a much different world existed. Here the Black Plague held no dominion. Here there was no spectre of starvation, no threat of death and disease. Here there was only indulgence and luxury, the excesses of extravagance. All the vices the plunder of the Empire could buy were brought forth by its Emperor to impress upon his guests once and again the magnificence of his might and his wealth. To make them forget the horror that had become their salvation.

It was a venture doomed to failure. What melody, what dance, what farce, what harmony, what delicacy, what eroticism could make a mind forget what had been done? Never could those who had partaken of the obscene inoculation drive that knowledge from their minds. Not the strongest spirit, not the most potent herb, not the most ardent lover could bring a moment’s respite. Yes, Emperor Boris had saved their lives, but their salvation was a tawdry thing, ever haunted by the thing Fleischauer had made.

Emperor Boris brooded upon the problem, watching as the very thing he had hoped to stop was instead accelerated by the warlock’s magic. The great men of the Empire were growing to hate their Emperor, not because he couldn’t protect them but because he had.

This inverted logic finally placed an idea in Boris’s cunning mind. The schemer who had played nobles and provinces against one another, who had ensured that no man was without some potent enemy only the Emperor could protect him from, now set his insidious intellect to this crisis. The answer that came to him was almost an epiphany. If he could not make his guests forget the cause of their good fortune, then he would compel them to embrace it!

The great hall was lavishly adorned, draped with festive garlands and colourful banners. Priceless artworks by the old masters were placed upon the walls, and a band of the most skilled musicians Boris had commanded to the castle assembled at the far end of the chamber. Broad tables displaying poached quail eggs, broiled cormorant and dozens of other items of costly fare lined the other end of the hall. It was the last of the fresh food. After this night, they would have to endure the pickled and preserved stores. This night, however, indulgence was to be the rule.

As the strains of a jaunty waltz rolled through the castle, the noble guests sauntered into the chamber, festooned in an opulence of frill and lace, each face hidden behind a feathered domino mask. Cloaked in the anonymity of their costumes, they entered the hall with a measure of bravado they might otherwise not have shown. Each feared to find accusation and recognition in the face of their peers — even more in the eyes of the thing itself. Wrapped in their disguises, however, they felt no such trepidation.

Boris himself made small attempt to conceal his identity, striding into the hall dressed in a costume that affected the ostentatious regalia of the proscribed godling Vylmar, lord of debauchery and decadence. The small silk mask that covered his eyes did nothing to conceal the impish smile. Even the dullest mind couldn’t fail to recognise the griffon-headed walking stick with which he swaggered about the hall, for all had seen that item many times in Boris’s possession.

The timid, quiet woman who accompanied Boris made a better effort at concealing her identity, but she was betrayed by the company she kept. It had been several weeks since the Emperor had devoted his attentions to anyone except Princess Erna.

The Emperor made a single circuit of the hall, a gesture that had all the judgemental posturing of an inspection tour; then he turned his back upon his guests and stared directly at the thing that none of them dared acknowledge, the thing they could look at only with shy, quickly averted glances. Boldly, Boris defied the taboo his guests had agreed upon.

The thing’s eyes were open, but there was no awareness in its gaze. A line of drool trickled from the corner of its toothless mouth, dripping down its breast to bathe one of the leeches fastened to its pallid flesh. The trunk of the thing was inanimate, only the rise and fall of its chest indicating that it was alive at all.

Brazenly, Boris walked up to the pedestal. From beneath the breast of his brocaded tunic, he brought forth a fold of gaudily coloured cloth adorned with tiny bells. While his shocked guests watched, Boris rose onto his toes, stretching to the utmost to set the fool’s cap onto the thing’s shaven head.

Music fell silent, conversation died. The atmosphere in the great hall became charged with tension, a dreadful expectancy. All eyes were turned to the Emperor and the grotesque thing resting upon the pedestal.

The shaven head tilted to one side, setting the little bells sewn to the cap jangling. In the silence, the tinkling note sounded like a peal of thunder.

As the thing’s head rested against its shoulder and the bells were quiet once more, a boisterous laugh boomed. Emperor Boris pranced about the fearful apparition, genuflecting before it in mocking deference. With his antics, he demonstrated to his guests that the thing they feared was no ill omen, no token of damnation and guilt. It was simply an idiot thing to be made sport of, a mindless buffoon that could accuse no one and nothing of any sin.

The Emperor’s laugh spread through the hall, at first half-heartedly echoed by his most spineless sycophants, but soon growing into genuine bursts of amusement. Into that laughter the nobles poured their relief, their last pangs of fleeing guilt. When the musicians again took up their instruments and sent the strains of a waltz flowing through the hall, the celebrants paired off, dancing through the hall, their opulent gowns and coats bustling and swirling around the pedestal and the drooling wreckage perched atop it. With each pass, the dancers jeered at the thing, pointing and laughing, letting their fear become contempt.

Emperor Boris cast his gaze about the revellers, searching for Erna, intent upon joining the celebration. His guests thought they were applauding restored freedom, liberation from the mortal terror that had dominated them since Fleischauer’s ritual. In truth, they were enslaved by fetters far more insidious. The Emperor had led them from the shackles of their own conscience, had roused them to embrace the perversity that preserved them from the plague. He had led, and they had followed. So it would always be.

His eyes hardened behind his silk mask as he found Erna near the door leading to the Sigmarite chapel. The princess had distanced herself from the throng, was keeping away from the revelry. Her mask couldn’t hide her almost pious disdain for the scene. Here, Boris knew, was one who hadn’t followed him, who refused to follow him.

Seated beside Erna was the besotted ruin of Doktor Moschner, dressed in the deerskin of a Thuringian druid, his mask cast aside so that he might partake more liberally from the jar of wine resting beside him. The physician looked up when he saw his Emperor approaching. He tried to rise, to bow before his master, but liquor had already weakened his legs and he instead slumped back in his seat.

‘You are a disgrace,’ Boris snarled at Moschner. ‘We should have you removed from the castle.’

Moschner blinked up at Boris, a flicker of awful hope passing through his eyes. ‘Would you? Can I leave, Your Majesty?’ He waved his hand at the dancers, trying to point a finger at the thing on the pedestal. ‘You don’t need me. You don’t need a doktor. You don’t need medicine!’ He slumped over, as though his bones had suddenly turned to jelly. ‘You have magic to preserve you…’ The last words were drawn from him in a low sob.

Boris glared down at the physician. He’d come to confront Erna, but where he might be prepared to indulge her defiance, he would brook none from Moschner. ‘You’ll be cast out,’ he vowed. ‘Dumped over the wall and left to fend with the rest of the peasant rabble.’

‘Please, he is drunk. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’ Erna caught at the Emperor’s arm. All that pious disdain was gone now, unseated by raw panic.

‘A drunk man speaks the truth in his heart,’ Boris told her in a cold voice, reciting a bit of wisdom disseminated by the god whose raiment he wore. ‘He speaks treason against Us and will be punished.’

Erna’s grip on Boris’s arm tightened. She turned him around so that he again faced the crowd, could see them dancing and jeering. ‘You don’t need to. Can’t you see that you’ve already won?’

The Emperor stared into her eyes and when he spoke, his words were sombre. ‘Have We? We came over here to ask why you do not dance, why you do not share the cheer We have demanded from Our subjects.’

The princess withdrew her arm, recoiling from the tone in Boris’s voice. ‘I cannot…’

‘You defy Us openly,’ Boris accused. ‘You set a poor example for the others. Why We permit this, We do not know, but it ends now. It ends here.’

The colour drained from Erna as she appreciated what it was that the Emperor commanded. ‘You won’t punish the doktor?’ she asked.

Boris reached out, took her hand in his and led her towards the revellers. ‘We will spare him. He is a peasant. Nobody cares about peasants,’ he added with a cruel chuckle.

The celebrants parted as the Emperor and Erna danced about the hall, watching as their sovereign led his companion in a graceful pirouette. Again and again, they circled the pedestal, drawing near to the idiot thing. At each pass, Erna felt her skin crawl, her soul sicken. Boris saw her revulsion, smiled at the power it implied. He had at last broken her to his will. Even this bulwark had crumbled before his siege.

In the course of one of their passes, with a deft flourish of his hand, Boris plucked a bloated leech from the tattooed thigh and presented the parasite to Erna. ‘A pill to preserve the doktor’s health,’ he whispered to her.

Erna could feel everyone watching her as she took the foulness from Boris’s hand. Quickly, before she could think about what she was doing, she put the leech in her mouth.

Laughter rippled through the hall. Emperor Boris had displayed to his guests that no one could resist his authority. Within the castle, he was absolute. Neither men nor women nor the gods themselves could defy him.

Long into the night, the music of the waltz echoed through the castle. Strains of melody drifted down from the Otwinsstein, rolling down from the hill into the desolate streets of Carroburg.

There were few in the plague-blighted ruins to hear the revelry.

Even fewer who listened did so with human ears.