Dead Winter

Chapter XVII

Altdorf

Vorhexen, 1111

Erich wiped the blood from his blade, feeling a twinge of regret as the young soldier lay bleeding at his feet. The man had fought bravely and fiercely, and despite his years he had given the knight many close moments. Experience had prevailed, however, and in the end all it had taken was one ill-timed slash to allow Erich to slip past his adversary’s guard and run him through.

There were many such brave fighters lying strewn throughout the arcade overlooking the grand ballroom. Many of them wore the gold of the Palace Guard, but mixed among them were members of Baron Thornig’s retinue, several of Duke Konrad’s men and even a few of Erich’s fellow Reiksknecht. But for the timely intervention of Erich and his force, Prince Sigdan might have been repulsed and overwhelmed by Boris’s faithful defenders.

Now those defenders had been pushed back into the Harmony Salon, overlooking the ballroom. Bracing the doors with tables and chairs, the Palace Guard were making a staunch defence until Aldo Broadfellow made a suggestion. The halfling had no appetite for battle, and it took a mind such as his to conceive a better way to force entry into the salon. Instead of smashing their way into the room, the rebels piled tapestries, furnishings, paintings and anything else that looked like it might burn.

At Prince Sigdan’s order, the pile of battered finery and art was doused in lamp oil and set alight. Coils of thick black smoke boiled through the arcade, spilling out into the halls and almost choking the invaders until Duke Konrad ordered the doors to the connecting chambers thrown open and the windows smashed to vent the fumes. Count van Sauckelhof took vindictive delight in ordering the obliteration of the Emperor’s prized Kaiseraugen, hurling an iron sconce into the crystal panes as the first blow against the decadent opulence that had characterised Boris’s reign.

Before the next bell tolled from the spires of the Great Cathedral, the barricaded doorway had been reduced to smouldering rubble. The rebels shouldered their way past the flaming wreckage, pressing on into the mirror-walled room beyond. Every furnishing had been pushed up against the door, leaving only the massive hydraulis still standing. Too heavy to move, the immense water organ formed the Emperor’s last refuge. Sheltering behind its bulk, Boris Goldgather glared at his enemies as they stormed into the room.

‘Boris Hohenbach!’ Prince Sigdan shouted as he marched through the crumbling doorway, with boots scraping against the charred planks of the wood-covered floor. ‘For crimes against the Empire and its people, you are called upon to abdicate your throne and relinquish the powers you have abused and of which you are unworthy!’

The Emperor’s eyes narrowed with hate as he heard Prince Sigdan’s demand. He cast his gaze across the rebels filing into the salon, then looked over at his own depleted forces. Coughing, half-smothered by the smoke, his Palace Guard still formed ranks around him, raising their shields and drawing their swords. The black-armoured figure of Baron Peter von Kirchof stepped out from the ranks of the defenders. The Emperor smirked as he saw the faces of his enemies go pale. In all the Empire, no man was better with a sword than von Kirchof, the Emperor’s Champion.

‘I do not recognise your authority,’ Boris growled. ‘But if you think I am guilty of some injustice, then I give you leave to prove my guilt in personal combat with my representative.’

Von Kirchof acknowledge his sovereign’s words with a curt military bow. Then the champion’s sword was drawn from its sheath. A gasp of outrage rose from Duke Konrad’s lips.

‘Beast Slayer!’ the furious duke raged. ‘The Runefang of Drakwald! That blade belongs to the Count of Drakwald! You have no right to bestow it upon this… this hired killer!’

Emperor Boris leaned out from behind the water organ, his eyes glittering malignantly. ‘There is no Count of Drakwald,’ he sneered. ‘The trappings of that realm are forfeit to the Imperial Court.’

Duke Konrad started forwards, in his blind anger ready to confront even the incredible swordsmanship of Baron von Kirchof. Erich grabbed the Drakwalder by the shoulder, restraining his reckless advance.

‘We have collected trinkets too,’ Erich called out. He laughed as he saw Boris’s look of smug victory collapse as Baron Thornig held aloft Ghal Maraz. ‘What kind of emperor are you without the Hammer of Sigmar?’ the knight scoffed.

Boris reeled against the side of the organ, his face growing purple with indignation. A portly man in black robes and a physician’s cap dashed out from the little knot of courtiers who had taken shelter with their Emperor, fumbling about in his bags as he tried to administer a restorative to his sovereign. The stunned Emperor waved away the efforts of his personal physician.

‘You dare such sacrilege?’ Boris demanded, throwing his head back and fixing the conspirators with his withering gaze. ‘That is the holy hammer of our lord and saviour, Sigmar Heldenhammer, first emperor of the glorious Empire of mankind!’ A hint of a smile curled his lips as he saw doubt flash across the faces of some of the rebels. It seemed they hadn’t thought of their little revolt in terms of blasphemy and heresy. Ready to turn against Boris Hohenbach, they weren’t ready to defy Sigmar Heldenhammer. Inwardly, the Emperor sneered at their religious qualms, though outwardly he wore the mantle of pious outrage.

‘You are a fine one to speak of sacrilege,’ Erich challenged. ‘By whose order was Arch-Lector Hartwich killed?’

At once, any doubts of purpose the rebels felt were extirpated. Prince Sigdan, drawing the Runefang of Reikland from its scabbard, stalked across the charred floor. He stopped well away from von Kirchof, looking past the champion to the tyrant hiding behind the hydraulis. ‘Archers!’ the Prince of Altdorf cried and at his command ten Drakwald bowmen nocked arrows and took aim.

‘I will not play your games, Goldgather,’ the prince declared. ‘You will abdicate now, relinquish all claim upon the crown, or we will burn this room and every-one in it. Anyone who makes a move to stop us will be shot down.’ He turned his head at a flash of purple cloth amongst the courtiers. ‘If your pet warlock makes another move, if he even breathes wrong, he can be the first to die.’ Karl-Maria Fleischauer did a perfect impression of a statue as the threat reached the warlock’s ears.

Prince Sigdan smiled coldly as he saw the resignation on Boris’s face, as the Emperor’s shoulders slumped in defeat. ‘Fetch quill and parchment!’ he ordered Baron von Klauswitz. ‘His Imperial Majesty has one last diktat to write down.’

While the rebels were storming their way into the Harmony Salon, a different assault was unfolding at the gates of the Imperial Palace. The siege of the Courts of Justice having been broken, the Kaiserknecht, supported by troops from both the Schuetzenverein and the Kaiserjaeger, began a vicious attack. Bowmen loosed arrows at the rebels holding the gate while the knights brought the stout gibbet-post from the Widows’ Plaza to employ as a ram against the portals themselves.

Despite the viciousness and energy of the attack, the rebels soon discovered it was nothing more than a diversion. Having guessed the strategy of the conspirators, Commander Kreyssig decided to use their own tricks against them. While the rebels were looking outwards, Kreyssig led a force through the escape tunnels — those of modern vintage and with an entrance underneath a nondescript wine shop — to effect a clandestine entry to the Palace.

Once inside, Kreyssig sent the bulk of his troops to attack the defenders at the gates from behind. When the gates were thrown open, the rebels would have no hope of holding the Palace. Indeed, there was only one thing that could still carry the day for them. Detaching twenty men from his main force, including the hulking Scharfrichter Gottwald Drechsler, Kreyssig hastened to locate Emperor Boris.

He was under no delusion that his fate was not dependent upon the safety of His Imperial Majesty. Without the protection and patronage of Boris Goldgather, Kreyssig would be a man alone, cast out to suffer the retribution of the nobility. If he would save his own skin, he had to save the Emperor’s crown.

A frantic halfling messenger from the gate rushed into the salon, bearing word that they were under attack by the Emperor’s soldiers. The news sobered the jubilant conspirators. The inmates of the salon had been disarmed and herded against the wall. Emperor Boris had been coerced into signing his own abdication and affixing the Imperial Seal to it. A feeling of triumph had gripped them all, a sense that everything would soon be set right.

‘Give up now, and I promise you will only suffer exile,’ Boris said as he heard the report. He extended his ring-laden hand to reclaim the diktat held by Prince Sigdan.

Prince Sigdan laughed at the scheming tyrant. ‘I would expect the same mercy you showed Grand Master von Schomberg,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t be too excited. We anticipated this. You above all people should know how well stocked the cellars of the Palace are. I imagine we could endure a whole year under siege. And by then, your enemies — and I assure you they are many — will flock to Altdorf to ensure you abide by this proclamation.’

A snarl on his face, Boris leaned back against the water organ, sending a sickly note from the instrument as his elbow pressed down on the keys. Aldo Broadfellow grinned at the defeated tyrant, making a great display of his bare, hairy feet. The halfling elder turned to Prince Sigdan.

‘I have a request,’ Aldo said. ‘Now that he’s not emperor any more, I’d like to see him take off his shoes.’ The halfling wiggled his bare toes. ‘It’ll be recompense for all the times he made me wear boots.’

The request brought a much needed laugh to the rebels, but their laughter faded when a second messenger came racing into the salon.

‘The gates have fallen!’ the halfling squealed. ‘Somehow Kaiserjaeger got inside the Palace and attacked our men from behind!’

The conspirators went pale, the last flush of victory draining out of them like blood from a corpse.

Boris Goldgather rose from beside the water organ and held out his hand. ‘Give me that parchment,’ he told Prince Sigdan. ‘If you surrender before my men get here, I promise I will still be lenient. But I suggest you hurry. My offer will expire very shortly.

‘And then, so will all of you.’

Bylorhof

Ulriczeit, 1111

A great bonfire blazed in Bylorhof’s town square. Doors had been torn from the homes of plague victims and broken to splinters with sledges, used as kindling for the roaring fires. Long tables surrounded the blaze, their surfaces littered with trenchers of mutton and platters of steamed lamprey and boiled heron. Bowls of almond milk and suet, mugs of spiced cider and hot ale, great plates of blancmange — these were all arrayed in a great feast. A riotous confusion of chairs and divans, couches and benches was at the disposal of the banqueters.

The Plague had done its work too well in Bylorhof. The townsfolk had capitulated to the inevitable. Hoarded stores had emerged from their places of hiding, valuable stock had been butchered and cooked. All thought of tomorrow was forbidden, for the plague made it impossible to consider the future. The moment was all the Sylvanians could depend upon, and they seized it in a mad embrace.

Peasants danced about the flames while shepherds strummed a discordant melody upon battered mandolins. Men toasted one another with great swallows of ale, tearing at slabs of mutton with their knives and spitting the gristle into the bonfire. Tipsy revellers, assuming the duties of cupar and sluger, traipsed about the tables, filling cups and exchanging empty trenchers for full ones. Often they would pause beside a prone diner, kicking his chair to see if he was merely intoxicated or if the Black Plague had removed his presence from the feast.

There were many such chairs with pale, lifeless figures slumped against the table, the stink of their sores seeming to goad the other diners to further excess and gluttony.

At the head of the table, his chair raised slightly, sat the founder of the feast. Despairing of escaping Bylorhof and joining his master behind the stone walls of the castle, Cneaz Litovoi had orchestrated the wild abandon. Better a quick end amidst song and dance than a slow, wasting demise alone in the dark. Such had been his conviction and the glassy stare in his unseeing eyes as he slouched in his chair indicated that he had achieved his desire.

The Cneaz had surrounded himself with the most prominent of the town’s denizens, the merchants and guildmasters. Among these was the sinister figure of Dr Bruno Havemann. The celebrants had insisted the plague doktor wear his costume to the feast, by turns toasting him for his endless efforts to stop the Black Plague or jeering him for the same. The physician endured the mercurial affections of his hosts, his beaked face nodding in solemn recognition of their regard. Madness ruled Bylorhof now, and he was not one to question the whims of the mad.

His boot lashed out, kicking one of the enormous rats scurrying under the table, scavenging the scraps dropped by dead hands. The vermin squeaked in protest, scampering away, its scaly tail dragging behind it. Havemann watched the rodent flee with grim satisfaction. Perhaps he couldn’t stop the plague, but at least he didn’t have to suffer the presence of rats at his table.

The face behind the bird-like mask contorted in a grimace as his gaze drifted past the dancers and the bonfire. At the other end of the square, a mob of people had appeared. From the distance, Havemann couldn’t quite make them out, but there was no mistaking the black habit of a Morrite priest.

Frederick van Hal stalked across the square, his followers marching behind him with clumsy, uneven steps. As he advanced, the revellers fell silent. They cringed away from the dark priest and gazed with horror at the throng following behind him. Screams rippled about the square. Banqueters rose from the table and fled into the streets.

Havemann kept his seat. Even when the rotten, monstrous appearance of the priest’s congregation became apparent to him, the plague doktor was unmoved.

‘Have you come to collect me for your garden?’ Havemann asked the priest. The beaked face turned, regarding the dead guildmasters seated to either side of him. ‘I should think there is carrion enough to sate your god.’

Frederick van Hal glared across the table at the grotesque plague doktor. ‘There is always room for one more,’ he said, his voice a whispered snarl. ‘But first I will have justice for my nephew, who died from your fakery. Justice for my brother’s wife, who was driven to suicide by your deceit. Justice for my brother, who was murdered by your hand.’

The plague doktor took each of Frederick’s accusations with perfect nonchalance. ‘You are too late for justice,’ Havemann sneered. He reached a hand to the side of his mask, loosening the strap which bound it in place. The bird-like beak fell away, exposing a chubby, almost childlike visage. All across Havemann’s face were ugly black sores, the mark of the plague.

Frederick lifted a hand to his breast, ripping at the embroidered raven stitched to his robe. The symbol of his god frayed beneath his clawing fingers. A terrible resolve burned in the necromancer’s eyes.

‘The gods may have cheated me of justice,’ Frederick hissed. ‘But there is always time for vengeance.’

At his gesture, the zombies surged forwards, knocking over the table and converging upon the diseased doktor.

Bruno Havemann was a long time dying. The necromancer’s magic saw to that.

Dregator Miklos stormed from his tent, crushing his lynx-fur hat tight about his head as he emerged into the biting cold. The lord of the Nachtsheer glared at his soldiers, offended by their disturbance of his ablutions. The dregator considered adding a few of the soldiers to the gallows, but reflected that such draconian measures might be counterproductive. It wouldn’t do to let the peasants think there was disunity among Count von Drak’s troops. Such a supposition might give them hope and hope might encourage foolish ideas about breaking the quarantine.

The nobleman’s gloves creaked as he drew his baton of office from his belt, its jewels gleaming in the moonlight. He scowled as he marched past the Nachtsheer. These men were supposed to be the finest soldiers in Sylvania. If they couldn’t handle a sickly peasant rabble…

The sentries at the fence turned and saluted as Dregator Miklos came stalking towards them, leaning their crossbows against the piled logs and timber. Other soldiers in the red and black livery of the Nachtsheer maintained a grim vigil. Even as the nobleman curtly returned the salute, he saw them loose bolts across the field separating them from the infected town.

‘My lord,’ one of the sentries said. ‘The peasants are making an effort to withdraw from the town. We have warned them to turn back, but they keep coming.’

The scowl was still on the dregator’s face. ‘Try shooting into them instead of over their heads,’ he snapped. ‘The entire province is threatened by the plague. Now is no time for timidity!’

The scolded soldier bowed his head sheepishly. ‘My lord, we have targeted them,’ he objected. ‘We have loosed three volleys into them and they still keep coming!’

Dregator Miklos hissed in disbelief. He stared out across the barrier, watching the peasant mob stumbling its way through the snow. He’d watched the crossbowmen shoot, but he’d heard no outcry from the peasants. Either the fools weren’t aiming at them or they were all as blind as bats! His irritation mounting, the nobleman seized one of the crossbows leaning against the fence. Choosing one of the approaching peasants, he aimed and loosed, smiling cruelly as the bolt crunched into the peasant’s chest.

His smile faded and the dregator dropped the weapon. It was impossible that he could have missed! He had seen the peasant’s body jerk as the bolt slammed into it! Miklos reached to his neck, fingering the talismanic charms dangling at his throat. A feeling of superstitious dread ran down his spine.

‘Kill them!’ he snarled at the soldiers. ‘Kill them all!’ He glared at the soldiers around him, trying to hide his fear. His gloved hand slapped against the heraldic dragon on the sentry’s livery. ‘You are Nachtsheer,’ he spat. ‘Are you going to be frightened by a bunch of peasant scum!’ He reached down and drew the soldier’s sword from its scabbard, pushing the weapon into the warrior’s hand. ‘Get out there and cut them down!’

The Nachtsheer displayed no eagerness to carry out Dregator Miklos’s command, but they were too disciplined to question his authority. In short order a dozen armoured warriors were climbing over the fence, swords in their hands and murder in their faces. Growling the name of Count Malbork von Drak as their battle cry, the Nachtsheer marched upon the peasant rabble.

The moons decided at that moment to emerge from behind the black clouds dotting the sky. Silvery light bathed the town and its surroundings, illuminating for the first time the dark, shambling figures of the peasants.

Shouts of horror rose from the ranks of the Nachtsheer as they beheld the nature of their would-be victims. They were peasants, dressed in the crude homespun wool of Sylvanian serfs. But their flesh was decayed, rotten with worms and frostbite, their faces were leering skulls and their eyes were pits devoid of thought and emotion. Clawed hands gripped crude spears, bill forks and a score other rough weapons scavenged from farm implements.

Fear overwhelmed the discipline of the mercenaries. First one, then another, broke ranks and fled back towards the barrier. Prepared to slaughter peasants, the warriors were unprepared to face unliving monsters.

As the soldiers fled, a dreadful vitality swept through the shambling ranks of the zombies. Dry moans escaped ragged mouths, loathsome hunger smouldered in lifeless eyes. Strengthened by the darkest magic, the zombies pursued their routed foe, racing forwards with speed and hideous purpose. The fleeing soldiers were dragged down by the undead, mangled and butchered by the hatchets and knives clenched in desiccated hands.

Dregator Miklos could only watch in terror as his men were slaughtered. His mind whirled with strategy and tactics, urging him to spring into action, to call back his cavalry scouts, to summon the troops at the other watchposts, to do something to oppose the monstrous horror. Terror held him in an icy grip, all the arrogant self-assurance of the tyrannical dregator unable to break its frightful hold.

A dark shape strode through the ravening mass of zombies, a figure cloaked in the black habit of a Morrite priest, his pale hands clenched about an ebony staff. Beneath the hood of the priest’s habit, a mask fashioned from the face of a skull concealed the necromancer’s visage. Scraps of flesh and beads of blood still dripped from the macabre ornament, staining the exposed cheeks and chin of the fiend.

The necromancer stopped a few yards from the fence, his imperious gaze staring out from behind the sockets of his mask. He gestured at the logs, his lips moving in a whispered incantation. With a wave of his hand, a malevolent surge of energy crashed down upon the fence. Before the dregator’s horrified gaze, the timbers began to splinter and rot, crumbling into dust in the space of a few heartbeats.

Waving his hand again, the necromancer scattered the dust, leaving only the white snow between himself and the Nachtsheer encampment. The barrier removed, he strode towards Dregator Miklos. The lips beneath the skull mask spread in a malignant smile.

‘I am Vanhal, the fallen,’ the necromancer hissed. He pointed a bony finger at the nobleman’s chest. Miklos gasped as he felt his heart quiver, as the palpitations began to slow. Whatever entreaty was on his lips went unspoken as his body crashed into the snow.

‘I am Vanhal,’ Frederick snarled at the crumpled corpse. ‘And I bring hell to Sylvania.’

Skavenblight

Vorhexen, 1111

Puskab Foulfur pulled his bloated body onto the narrow ledge, his heart pounding as some of the ancient masonry crumbled beneath his weight. He wrapped his arm about the neck of a stone gargoyle, its face worn into a featureless lump by the centuries. The effort to keep from turning his head was too great and the plague priest risked a downwards glance. The side of the Shattered Tower descended hundreds of feet before vanishing into the fog. He could pick out the jagged fissures in the wall, could see the black lines of rain gutters spiralling about the structure. Balconies, so tiny at this height that they were almost unrecognisable, jutted from the lower tiers, worm-oil lanterns glowing from their balustrades.

His arduous ascent had taken him far. It was from one such balcony that he had started his climb, scrambling up the uneven face of the tower, trying to balance safety and caution against strategy and speed. A single misstep, a moment of carelessness and Puskab would lose his grip upon the aged masonry. He would plummet to the streets of Skavenblight hidden somewhere below the fog, hurtle like a falling star into the ruined desolation of the city.

The plague priest gnashed his fangs as he contemplated all the unfair advantages that had been given to his adversary. The window from which Blight had started his climb was a good hundred feet higher than Puskab’s balcony. The Wormlord had been equipped with steel climbing claws and a stout cord woven from skaven-tails. Before starting his climb, Blight had imbibed a full pot of skaven-brew, that potent mixture of blood and powdered warpstone which would excite the metabolism of any ratman and increase the swiftness of his reactions. Puskab knew his enemy had partaken of this mixture because he had smelled the discarded pot as it sailed past him on its way to the streets below, narrowly missing the plague priest’s head.

Still, Puskab contented himself with the one advantage the scheming Wormlord didn’t possess. That was a real and sincere faith in the Horned One. Plots and tricks were all Blight had to protect himself. Puskab had the divine power of his god to sustain him, to bring him victorious from any ordeal.

The corpulent ratman laughed as he recalled the sickly smell of Blight when the fool realised he had been manipulated. He had honestly expected a plague priest to turn against his own kind in favour of a heretic and unbeliever? The plague monks had their rivalries and hates, but these were never allowed to threaten the might of Clan Pestilens or impede the spread of the Horned One’s faith. Blight had arranged everything so that Puskab could challenge Nurglitch and claim his position as one of the Lords of Decay, little imagining that it was he himself who would suffer the challenge. Puskab wondered if the fool realised now that it had indeed been the Poxmaster who had loosed the Black Plague upon Clan Verms.

The flea-breeding Verms had been marked for destruction from the start. Puskab had developed parasites to carry the plague to other ratmen almost before Clan Pestilens had started experimenting on humans. He had carried his own fleas into the Hive, fleas bloated with plague germs, fleas that had spread among his guards and assistants. He had used his magic to preserve the lives of those skaven working in close proximity to himself in order to allay suspicion, but there had been no magic to guard the hundreds of ratkin the lab-rats came into contact with. The diseased fleas had spread and brought Clan Verms to its knees.

There had been a delicious irony when Blight sent Puskab to lead the assassins against Nurglitch. It was Puskab himself who had passed warning to the Arch-Plaguelord through the buzzing voices of his fever-flies. Informed of the primitive drives which motivated the diggerfangs, the plague monks had simply built great fires within the Inner Temple, heating the thick stone walls. The spiders, faced with an even greater heat than that of the worm-oil goads, had retreated, charging straight back into the faces of their handlers! So much for the murderous machinations of the Wormlord!

Blight would suffer for his impudence, trying to turn Clan Pestilens against itself, as though the disciples of the Horned One could be used and manipulated like some common warlord clan!

The plague priest’s bitter growl ended in a frightened yelp. A brick came sailing down out of the darkness, crashing against the side of the gargoyle and knocking chips from its folded wings. Puskab flinched, pressing a stinging paw to his mouth. He squeezed his bulk against the wall as another brick shot towards him. It glanced off the ledge, vanishing into the mists far below.

Blight had reached the top of the tower, using all of his advantages to beat the plague priest. The rules of the challenge dictated that the combatants could in no way strike out against one another until both stood within the belfry atop the Shattered Tower and heard the Broken Bell toll the midnight dirge. Neither by magic or force was either ratman allowed to attack his enemy before the bell struck the thirteenth stroke. But how could a skaven be held accountable if some unfortunate accident claimed his opponent before he could reach the belfry?

Puskab redoubled his efforts, a prayer to the Horned One wheezing through his lips as his claws dug at the broken wall. He scrambled upwards, exploiting the grip afforded by one of the jagged fissures running down the side of the Shattered Tower. His fingers and toes wedged into the crack, he scurried up towards the belfry.

A great slab of stone crashed against the side of the tower, sending a cascade of debris raining down into the fog. Puskab’s paws were knocked from the fissure, his body flailing backwards as his feet struggled to maintain their purchase. A second slab hurtled past, smashing his tail as it bounced against the wall. The plague priest howled in pain, a spasm of agony rushing through his veins. By a supreme effort, he pulled himself back to the wall, ignoring the broken, bloodied mangle of his tail.

Eyes narrowed with vengeful determination, Puskab drew upon his sorcerous powers. Green flame blazed up from his eyes, ribbons of mephitic vapour rose from his nostrils. Evoking the great name of the Horned One, the plague priest’s jaws opened wide, spewing forth a reeking miasma that swept upwards. He might not be able to use his magic directly against Blight, but he could use it to hinder any ‘accidents’. The Wormlord would have a hard time dropping a brick onto the head of someone he couldn’t see.

Like a living thing, the magical miasma crawled up the face of the Shattered Tower, engulfing the crooked belfry. Puskab was near enough to hear Blight’s snarls and curses as the mist surrounded him and blinded him to what was going on below. Hastily, Puskab abandoned the fissure he had been using, scrabbling along a rain gutter until he reached the tower’s sharp corner. He chittered softly as he watched another slab of stone shoot past, clearly directed against someone using the crack to make his ascent.

The belfry was just visible through the haze of sorcery, tilting at a steep angle away from the Shattered Tower, its crooked roof a shambles of cracked tiles and splintered beams. Octagonal pillars supported the steeply gabled roof at every side, forming narrow archways. Faceless gargoyles leered from the slender ledge which ran about the bases of the pillars, their toothless mouths open in silent roars.

As Puskab hurried to climb the last few yards between himself and the belfry, the entire tower began to shake. A thunderous note boomed through the heavens, its dolorous tone causing the ratman’s bones to vibrate. The quivering masonry beneath his clutching paws flaked and crumbled, forcing him to dig his claws even deeper into the stone.

A pause, a moment of silence, and then the deafening bellow was repeated, sounding across the night like the angry howl of a daemon king. The tower shook and shivered, the lone skaven clinging to its side struggled to maintain his hold against the violent clamour. Ears ringing, body trembling, Puskab clenched his fangs and waited for the din to be repeated. He understood what the thunderous scream was — the ringing of the Broken Bell. It would toll thirteen times. If he failed to reach the platform of the belfry by that time, then his life would be forfeit. Blight would be free to use any means at his disposal to kill the tardy challenger.

Hissing psalms of putrescence and decay, Puskab scurried towards the belfry, moving only in those moments of shocking silence between the tolls of the bell. Five. Six. Seven. Again and again the Broken Bell screamed out the notes of Puskab’s doom. The plague priest’s heart hammered in his chest, his glands expelled themselves in a burst of despair. His fat fingers fumbled at the stones, his broken tail lashed against the crumbling masonry.

Eight. Nine. Ten. The belfry seemed as far away as ever to Puskab. With each toll, the fury of the Broken Bell increased, the reverberations quivering ever more violently through the tower. A horned gargoyle snapped from its mooring, streaking past Puskab on its way to the street hundreds of feet below. A shower of cracked tiles came sliding away from the gabled roof, pelting the plague priest with stinging fragments.

Puskab clenched his fangs, averting his face against the deluge, and struggled upwards.

Blight Tenscratch was standing between two of the pillars when the bell tolled the thirteenth note, his eyes darting from side to side, trying to pierce the veil of miasma. A heavy chunk of stone, chiselled away from one of the pillars, was clenched in the Wormlord’s paws. He hissed triumphantly when he heard the final note sound.

‘Fool-meat!’ Blight growled. ‘Think-dare to challenge me!’ The Wormlord’s voice dropped in a peal of vicious laughter.

‘I am here,’ Puskab snarled, heaving his bloated bulk over the ledge and onto the platform. His eyes lingered for an instant upon the monstrous bell suspended beneath the roof, a great black mass of corroded metal, a jagged split down its side, strange symbols engraved into its rim. There was something unholy and unnatural about the Broken Bell, about the way it seemed to drain light from its surroundings, soaking the illumination into itself like a sponge. The effect was chilling and terrifying, setting Puskab’s fur on end.

Alone with the horrible bell for almost an hour, Blight had become accustomed to its malefic emanations to a degree. Enough so that he recognised Puskab’s distraction and pounced upon it. The Wormlord hefted the heavy chunk of stone, hurling it at the distracted plague priest. The block cracked against Puskab’s side, its momentum nearly pitching him over the side of the platform. He yelped in pain, twisting about to face the foe whose presence he had almost forgotten.

Blight chittered triumphantly as he saw the way Puskab’s arm hung limp and ragged at his side. He drew a fat-bladed dagger from his belt, twisting his paw so that light played across the edge. ‘I will wear-take your pelt,’ he growled. ‘Teach-learn all traitor-meat not to trifle with Clan Verms!’

Puskab fixed the Wormlord with a merciless sneer. ‘You will suffer-rot, liar-fool,’ he promised. Awkwardly, he pulled his gnarled wooden staff from where it had been bound across his back, removing it with his left paw. His right continued to dangle at his side, limp and bloody.

Blight didn’t hesitate. While the Broken Bell’s clapper was still swaying from the violence of its final toll, the Wormlord sprang at Puskab, lunging at the plague priest’s left side. His crooked sword slashed out, ripping through his enemy’s robe, blocked at the last instant by the intercepting sweep of the wooden staff. Blight used his momentum to rake the claws of his foot across his foe’s knee.

The plague priest lashed out with his staff, but the heavy wood whistled through emptiness. Blight sprang away, coiling about one of the pillars with his twisted body, using it as a fulcrum to propel himself at his enemy. The notched sword flashed at Puskab’s head, crunching through one of his antlers. The Wormlord’s other paw shot out, latching about the priest’s throat. The cloth of Blight’s robe rippled as a long, creeping thing slithered out from under his sleeve. Brightly marked in splotches of red and yellow, a huge centipede reared its fanged head, poised to strike at the priest’s throat.

Even as Blight’s malignant laughter hissed between his fangs, the centipede faltered. Its long antennae drooped, its legs became slack. Like a strip of gaudy ribbon, the bug flopped lifelessly from the Wormlord’s sleeve, its tiny organs unable to withstand the pestilential aura of the plague priest.

Before the treacherous Blight could pull away, he felt claws digging into his back, prisoning him against the plague priest’s fat frame. Puskab’s supposedly useless and broken arm held him in a merciless grip. The Grey Lord struggled to bring his sword to bear, but was unable to shift past the warding length of the priest’s staff.

‘Now see-learn power-might of Horned One,’ Puskab hissed, leaning towards Blight, savouring the stark terror filling his eyes. Drawing upon the sickly magic of his god, the plague priest opened his decayed jaws, letting a froth of bile and blood surge from his diseased guts.

Blight’s fur smoked, his flesh sizzled as the stream of corruption washed over his face. The notched sword clattered to the floor, the clawed fingers dropped away from Puskab’s throat. Howling in agony, the stricken Wormlord reeled away from the plague priest. Puskab lunged at his staggering enemy, leaping into the air and bringing his gnarled staff cracking down upon the crown of Blight’s skull in a double-pawed effort that had every ounce of his massive weight behind it.

The Wormlord’s head shattered like an egg, blood and brains splattering across the platform. Blight’s body swayed drunkenly on its feet for a moment, then toppled against one of the columns. Puskab hobbled over to it, prying the lifeless claws from the aged stone. Vindictively, he pushed it over the side with the butt of his staff.

When the council saw Blight’s broken body lying at the foot of the Shattered Tower, they would know that Puskab Foulfur was triumphant. They would know that the Wormlord was no more, his place as Lord of Decay forfeit to the Poxmaster of Clan Pestilens.

Puskab leaned against his staff, gazing out across the sprawl of Skavenblight. By the gleam of the moons and stars, he could see the taller buildings rising above the fog. He could see the vast morass of the swamps and marshes beyond the city, the paddies of black corn and the rickety barges collecting their sickly harvest. He could see the distant lights of the man-warren called Miragliano and the far-off peaks of the Irrana Mountains.

The sight brought an avaricious gasp from Puskab’s lips. Soon all of it would belong to Clan Pestilens, the marshes, the mountains, the man-warrens, all of it! They would bring the diseased glory of the Horned One to every corner of the earth! Nothing would oppose them this time, not the man-things, not the dwarf-things, not their own perfidious kind! The world would be crushed beneath the Black Plague, razed as it writhed in the decayed majesty of the Horned One!

The man-things of the Empire were only the beginning. Two seats upon the council now belonged to Clan Pestilens. The balance of power had shifted. The plague monks could now counterbalance the double-vote of Seerlord Skrittar all on their own. They would use that strength to draw other clans away from the heresies of the grey seers. And those who would not see the wisdom of embracing truth would suffer.

A new world was coming.

The world of the Black Plague.