Blighted Empire

Chapter XIX

Middenheim

Ulriczeit, 1118

Vrrmik bared his teeth at the vengeful dwarfs as they struggled to reach him. The stormvermin of Clan Mors were among the strongest and most vicious warriors in the Under-Empire. A fortune in food and armour, weapons and warpstone had been spent to make them an elite force without equal. Entire burrows had been enslaved to cultivate the warpweed that supplemented their carnivorous diet and caused their muscles to swell. They were the terror of a hundred warrens, a thousand burrows. Entire clans of slaves quivered at their very scent.

It was, therefore, quite a shock to the warlord when his super-skaven broke before the vicious assault the dwarfs mounted. The white ratman’s eyes went wide with fright when he appreciated that the only thing standing between himself and a throng of enraged dwarfs were a handful of opportunistic clanrats who had thought to loot the corpses left by the stormvermin. As the stormvermin scattered, the clanrats found themselves staring straight into the snarling masks of the dwarfs’ helms.

For an instant, the fury of the dwarfs was turned against the looters. They had the misfortune to be discovered in the act of cutting rings from the fingers of the dwarf champion Vrrmik had slain. What the dwarfs did to the scavengers was horrible enough that the warlord forgot himself and expelled his glands. Nervously, his claws tightened about the haft of Drakdrazh.

Scurrying away from the dwarfs, Vrrmik tripped over the corpse of a ratman who had treacherously died in such a fashion as to make himself an obstacle for his warlord. Angrily, Vrrmik swung the stolen hammer at the carcass. He was shocked when the head exploded into a mist of blood and gristle. A mad titter of awe hissed from his clenched fangs. In his panic, he’d almost forgotten the reason he’d taken such risks and involved himself directly in the attack.

Jumping to his feet, Vrrmik met the charging dwarfs. There were five of them. He swung the warhammer full into the side of the first dwarf, crumpling his steel shield as though it were a mouldy leaf, hurling the dwarf across the cavern with such force that his armoured body left an impact crater inches deep in the rock wall. The other dwarfs tried to put up a better fight, but the dire combination of Drakdrazh and Vrrmik’s vicious, warpweed-enhanced strength was too great for them to overcome. One by one, they died.

Vrrmik exulted in the carnage, savouring the smell of blood as he reduced his enemies to pulp. What need to hide behind his stormvermin (though those treacherous flea-licking mice would suffer for abandoning him) when he was a veritable demigod of battle! An avatar of the Horned One raining death and destruction upon all those mad enough to oppose him!

The last dwarf turned and ran, even the stubborn courage of his kind incapable of enduring Vrrmik’s murderous havoc. The warlord watched him flee, debating whether he should allow the wretch to tell others of what he had seen or whether to smash him into paste as he had the dwarf’s comrades. Vrrmik wondered if he could swing Drakdrazh lightly enough to merely maim the dwarf. That would give him the best of both choices.

The scent of human in the air caused Vrrmik to hesitate and allow the dwarf to flee back behind the ranks of his kind. The warlord’s whiskers twitched as his cunning restrained his bestial bloodlust. There were far more important things to consider than the slaughter of a few dwarfs. Oh yes, much more important things!

Vrrmik hefted the great weight of Drakdrazh onto his shoulder and scampered back towards one of the mine shafts, watching as more of his monstrous warriors swarmed up into the Fourth Deep. Most of them were mere slaves, axe-fodder to wear down the foe. Vrrmik didn’t think twice about spending their lives, yet at the moment there was no purpose to further fighting. This sally against the dwarfs had achieved what Grey Lord Vecteek expected. Now it was time to give the verminous tyrant what he deserved.

Raising a curled horn that had once adorned the head of a grey seer, Vrrmik blew a doleful note, a manic cachinnation that rippled across the cavern. At the sound, the skaven withdrew from their enemies, fleeing down the shafts and passages in a panicked rout of such suddenness that it left the dwarfs and their human allies too stunned to react.

Vrrmik lashed out with Drakdrazh, slaughtering a dozen of his minions as he cleared a place for himself in one of the tunnels. The gory example wasn’t one he needed to repeat. The ratmen gave their warlord all the room he needed.

Vrrmik savoured the smell of their fear. Soon all the Under-Empire would fear him the same way. There would be changes in Skavenblight when Vecteek failed to return. Changes that Vrrmik — with the support of Clan Pestilens — would exploit to the full.

Poor Vecteek, Vrrmik thought. With the human army down in the deeps, he would think himself safe to launch his attack on Middenheim. What would the despot do when that army suddenly came rushing up at him, trapping him between the enemies on the surface and the ones in the dwarfhold?

It was an amusing image, one Vrrmik was almost sorry he wouldn’t see for himself.

Fires raged through parts of Middenheim, thick plumes of smoke rising into a darkened sky, columns of flame reaching up to paint the twilight a hellish crimson. Entire neighbourhoods were burning, put to the torch by attackers and defenders alike, both sides using fire to constrain and contain the other. The hovels of the Westgate district were an inferno, the tortured screams of those trapped within the maze-like warren echoing across the city.

Graf Gunthar watched the conflagration with fatalistic resignation. The ratmen had plotted and planned well. They were inside the city’s defences before anyone was even aware of the peril. Their hordes seemed to be everywhere, making a feeble mockery of Middenheim’s thick walls and numerous defence strategies. What assembly for the militia when the skaven already controlled the streets, when the vermin swarmed through the squares? They pillaged across the fields and gardens, stealing the crops Middenheim had taken such pains to cultivate in the cold mountain air. They ransacked homes and shops, plundered inns and temples. Wherever a man’s eye turned, he found the skaven already there.

Now it was Warrenburg’s turn; Graf Gunthar’s thoughts turned bitter. Middenheim had watched from the safety of the mountain while the shanty town at the foot of the Ulricsberg burned, thankful that they had been spared such catastrophe. Now, it was Warrenburg’s turn to be thankful, to look up and shudder at the fiery glow high on the mountain.

‘Your excellency, what are your commands?’

The graf looked aside, his eyes not seeming to see Grand Master Vitholf seated upon a hulking black destrier. Master horsemen, the Knights of the White Wolf had remained in the city when Mandred led his army into the bowels of Karak Grazhyakh. Now they formed the core of the motley defenders who had rallied around the Middenpalaz. Watchmen, templars, hunters, foresters, rangers and mercenaries, they were a ragged collection from across Middenheim. Every man who could hold a sword or string a bow had, it seemed, converged upon the palace, looking to Graf Gunthar for guidance, trusting in their noble lord to lead them to victory.

Victory? There was a truly bitter thought. What victory could there be for Middenheim against such a horde? What victory for Graf Gunthar when he knew his only son lay dead somewhere in the dark beneath his feet?

A wolf dies on its feet, a dog on its belly. The words of the Ulrican proverb rang through the graf’s mind, reverberating through his very soul. Choking back his own despair, he answered Vitholf in a grim voice.

‘We ride to our doom,’ he told the knight. ‘We ride into the flames of vengeance, into the cauldron of slaughter. We ride to reap and slay, to kill and die. We ride to seek an end that will not shame us in the eyes of Ulric.’

Sombrely, the ragged host followed their graf as he led them from the bloodied courtyards of the Middenpalaz and past the burning manors of Teutogen nobility. Across the blasted fields of what had been the Konigsgarten they marched, cavalry at the fore, footmen behind. Sometimes tattered groups of men would stagger out from the rubble to join the grim procession. More often they would find only clumps of pillaging skaven. Seldom did the creatures linger to fight so large a company, but instead turned tail and fled.

All of that changed when the graf and his followers reached the streets of the Eastgate district. Here, among the despoiled homes and savaged shops, the skaven gathered in a great mass, chittering and hissing at the humans in triumphant mockery. Snipers hidden in garrets and clinging to spires picked off victims with impunity, the great range rendering them immune to the archery of Middenheim’s defenders. To fight the ratmen, the humans would be forced to take the battle to them.

Graf Gunthar looked back at his army, feeling his heart tighten as he saw the expectant, hopeful light in the eyes of his men. Surely they knew the fight was hopeless, that there would be no victory here? Yet none of them, from the highest noble to the lowest beggar, glared at him in accusation, held him to account for the doom that had come upon them all. Even in this hour, they looked to him as their leader.

It was a realisation that made Graf Gunthar feel unworthy. What was this quality within him that deserved such loyalty? What was this divine ember that invested him with such right? And as he gazed into the faces of his people, he understood that the answer to those questions didn’t lie within himself. It was in those he ruled, it was their faith and their trust that ennobled him.

In this last hour, Gunthar vowed he would not betray that trust. Sitting straight in his saddle, throwing back the wolfskin cloak draped about his shoulders, he drew his sword from its sheath. Like a finger of daylight, the graf’s sword burned in the night. Legbiter, one of the famed runefangs forged by the dwarfs for the twelve kings who united under Sigmar, the blade had ever been the symbol of Middenland’s count and Middenheim’s graf. As its ancient magic rippled across its surface, even Gunthar felt a sense of awe. It was as though Ulric — or perhaps Sigmar — were reaching down, letting the warriors of Middenheim know that they had not been forsaken.

Swinging his sword overhead, Gunthar shouted his defiance of the scuttling vermin infesting the streets of the Eastgate. ‘Death!’ he howled. ‘Death and ruin! Death and havoc! Death! Death! Death!’ Spurring his horse, the enraged graf charged the skaven. The earth shuddered as the knights and horsemen he led urged their own mounts to the attack. The snipers in the rooftops desperately tried to blunt the charge, but their efforts were like casting pebbles into the sea. Nothing would stop the surge of Middenheim’s vengeance.

Into the streets Graf Gunthar led his men, hewing ratmen asunder with Legbiter at every turn. The mockery of the skaven collapsed into frightened squeaks as the humans rode them down. Knights drove their horses through shops and homes in pursuit of the ratkin, spearmen ranged through alleyways to skewer hiding skaven, archers loosed arrows into the backs of vermin seeking to escape down side streets.

What started as a desperate fight became a bloody slaughter, slaughter gave way to massacre. The warm thrill of victory roared in Graf Gunthar’s breast. Despite the numberless hordes of the enemy, they had no stomach for battle. Middenheim might yet be saved.

Then, as quickly as the prospect of victory danced before his eyes, Graf Gunthar saw it snatched away. His men had pursued the fleeing skaven deep into the Eastgate district, towards the great theatre of marble and alabaster that marked the cultural heart of the city. The once glistening walls were foul with soot and blood, the statues toppled, the glass dome shattered and smashed.

The wanton, savage destruction was cruel enough, but crueller by far was the deception that had brought the avengers here. As the cavalry charged into the wide plaza before the theatre, hordes of skaven erupted from every quarter. No alleyway or side street failed to disgorge a chittering swarm. From cellars and sewers, the beasts emerged, from wrecked homes and ruined towers they scurried. Out of the defiled halls of the theatre, a great horde of hulking armoured ratmen marched, cruel halberds and great axes clutched in their filthy paws.

At the centre of these armoured vermin, the ratkin carried a great palanquin fashioned from the smashed wreckage of a royal carriage. Gunthar recognised the heraldry as that of his chamberlain, von Vogelthal, and wondered what manner of death had claimed his old friend.

Lounging amid the cushions of the shattered carriage was a horrific skaven clad in armour that might have been fashioned from a thorn bush. He was a huge brute of a creature, his fur midnight-black. Heaped about the monster on his carriage were the spoils he had claimed as his own, a mad confusion of rubbish and treasure. Panes of glass rested beside bolts of cloth, sacks of grain were sprawled across a pile of swords. The carcass of a fresh-slain sheep lay at the warlord’s side, its hide peeled back that the ratman might nibble at its innards like a gourmand with a plate of sweetmeats.

Even from a distance, Gunthar could see the evil glitter in the warlord’s eyes as the creature stared at him.

For an instant, as the trap swung closed behind them, silence gripped the plaza. Gunthar saw the skaven turning uneasily towards their hideous overlord, their bestial bloodlust cowering before their terrible king. Even the snipers fell silent as they waited for the attack to begin.

The rat-king lifted his nose, sniffing the air, drinking in the scent of fear wafting up from Gunthar and his soldiers. Then, his lips peeling back to expose clenched fangs, the warlord brought his claws crashing together.

In response to the signal, the skaven hordes set up a deafening chorus of squeaks and shrieks.

An avalanche of fur and fangs closed upon the surrounded men of Middenheim.

Carroburg

Pflugzeit, 1115

For those within the Schloss Hohenbach, the spectre of the plague remained an omnipresent threat. Despite the horrible curative their Emperor had procured for them, despite the isolation of their palatial hermitage, despite everything, they were ruled by fear. Daily, rising from the city below, they would hear the dirge being rung by the temple bells. From the parapets they could see the processions of corpse-carts in the streets, the proliferation of white crosses upon the doors.

It was an affront to the might of Emperor Boris, a slight against his supreme authority. He had delivered these people from the plague, yet the plague refused to abandon its prey. Like a wolf just beyond the firelight, it circled and snarled and snapped.

Emperor Boris, with cruel deliberation, decided to remove the wolf from the castle gates. One afternoon, when the bells below had been particularly active, he gave orders. As a fortress designed to command the River Reik, the walls and towers of Schloss Hohenbach were littered with catapults. The war machines had been poised to lob death and destruction upon any ship so brazen as to flout the sovereignty of Drakwald. Now, at the Emperor’s command, the siege engines were removed, redeployed so that they might visit destruction upon a much different victim.

Encouraging a festive air among his guests, Emperor Boris led the great men of his Empire onto the battlements. Von Metzgernstein’s Dienstleute, supplemented by those Kaiserknecht and palace guards who formed Boris’s own retinue, manned each of the catapults. A great brazier of smouldering coals stood ready beside each machine and nearby were bales of straw drawn from the castle stores.

Swaggering along the parapets, the Emperor addressed his subjects. ‘We brought you here as a retreat from the tawdry concerns of commonality. Here you have feasted and revelled, savoured all the delights of the world. As your Emperor, We have treated you in manner as befits the friends of the Imperial throne. In the harmony of this refuge of royalty, We have allowed no discordant note, no blemish upon the rich tapestry of Our accomplishments.’

The Emperor turned abruptly, pointing at the clustered streets of Carroburg. ‘This is an offence to the cultured tastes of you, Our most noble friends. It is a blight, a scourge upon Our delicate sensibilities.’ The impish smile worked its way onto Boris’s features as he turned back towards his audience. ‘We will remove this outrage, and in the doing offer to Our loyal subjects a spectacle such as none of you have ever seen.’

At a gesture from the Emperor, the soldiers manning the catapults loaded bales of straw and hay into the bowl of each engine. Other soldiers brought kegs of pitch and, employing long-handled brushes, painted each bale with the incendiary. After the men with the pitch withdrew, a lone knight advanced with a blazing torch. Gingerly, the warrior leaned towards the catapult and ignited the material loaded into the bowl.

Boris raised his hand up high. For a moment, his eyes glanced over at Erna. He could see the unspoken appeal written on her face. He grinned at the woman’s temerity. Since her capitulation during the masque, he’d found her far less interesting. Whatever charm she’d exerted over him had been rendered impotent. He knew she had broken at last to his will. There was nothing else to interest him now.

Savagely, the Emperor brought his hand slicing down. In time with the gesture, the arms of the catapults snapped upwards and hurled their flaming missiles into the air. Boris’s guests rushed to the edge of the walls, watching in rapt fascination as dozens of burning missiles descended upon Carroburg. Like fiery rain, the incendiaries came crashing down, exploding into little fingers of flame as they struck streets and rooftops. Wooded shingles and thatch ignited under the provocation, the fire quickly spreading among the semi-deserted neighbourhoods.

Again and again the incendiaries came raining down. The bells in the temples rang not with the slow notes of a dirge but with the rapid clamour of an alarm. From boarded homes and dilapidated hovels, the people of Carroburg rushed into the streets. Frantic mobs swarmed towards the river, gathering buckets, jars, pots, anything that might fetch water to oppose the flames.

Emperor Boris laughed at the peasants and their futile efforts, his jaded courtiers quickly warming to the cruel mockery. Wagers were soon placed on where each salvo would fall, the nobles watching with bated breath to see if their guesses would prove accurate. Jests were made over the pathetic fire brigades, the soldiers manning the catapults encouraged to lob their missiles wherever it seemed the peasants might turn back the flames. When a ring of flames began to close upon a stables that had been given over as a hospice for the sick, the nobles were treated to a parade of crippled humanity scrambling from the building, trying to hobble and crawl to safety before the fire could reach them.

Rare amusement this! Boris congratulated himself on this novel entertainment. Who but an Emperor could command such a performance? Who but an Emperor could afford to lay waste to an entire city? If nothing else had impressed his guests with the extent of his power, this would emblazon it upon their very souls! Once the spectacle was past, once the wonder and emotion had cooled into the reflections of cold reason, they would understand and appreciate what they had been witness to. He was thankful that the Black Plague had finally reached Carroburg. Without it, he might never have considered such a display of unrestrained power.

The conflagration quickly spread, entire districts blazing, the afternoon sky blotted by thick pillars of smoke. Before the gawking, jeering spectators assembled on the castle walls, Carroburg died.

Emperor Boris, tiring of the fiery display, turned from the battlements, seeking to find Erna. The woman’s helpless disapproval would, he decided, still add a much needed spice to the banquet of Carroburg’s destruction. He scowled when his roving eyes failed to find her. She’d retreated back into the castle, hiding herself away as she had when the nobles would feed the beggars. Boris chuckled at the absurdity. As though by not seeing a thing she could make it any less real.

He was debating whether to send someone to fetch Erna from wherever she had hidden herself when a note of alarm rose from the nobles on the parapet. Thinking perhaps he had missed some rare incident of unique tragedy, Boris rushed back to the battlements. He was surprised, even disappointed to find that his guests weren’t watching the fire but had instead turned their attention to something close to the base of the castle wall.

It was then that the Emperor became aware of the sounds, sounds that perhaps had been present for some time but had been deadened by the applause of his guests and the din rising from burning Carroburg. The sounds were strange, a confusion of dozens of small bells that seemed to have been selected for their disharmony. Beneath and around the chaotic notes were the tones of many chanting voices.

But such voices! Boris felt his pulse quicken at the loathsome noise. They were shrill, scratchy voices — the squeaks of vermin trying to contort themselves into the patterns of speech. He thought of the reports from the southern provinces, the appeals for monetary and military aid against hordes of horrific ratmen.

The Emperor’s guests pointed with trembling hands at a ragged line of sinister figures in tattered green robes. They were somehow monk-like despite the uncanny wrongness of their every step, the surging scurry in their gait that belonged to nothing human. It was from these figures that the eerie chant arose, and clenched in the furry talons of many of them were bells of every stripe and size.

Around and around the Otwinsstein the inhuman monks marched, filling the winding road with their pestiferous numbers. Every fifth monk bore aloft a metal censer fitted to a long pole, swinging it with crazed fervour overhead. The ball-like censers expelled clouds of grimy smoke, filth that was borne towards the castle by the winds sweeping across blazing Carroburg.

Emperor Boris heard the frightened mutters of his guests, the superstitious fears of men who now repented their mockery of the gods.

‘We stand protected,’ Boris called out to his guests. ‘The enchantment will shield us.’ Even as he spoke, he waved soldiers away from the catapults, sent servants hurrying to ready bows and arrows.

‘The magic will protect us,’ Boris scolded the terrified men around him as he watched a noxious green fog slither its way up the castle walls. ‘The gods are powerless to harm those who reject their power.’

Inwardly, however, the Emperor doubted his own words.