The baron nearly lost his concentration, that fragile link that kept his flesh from fading into a ghostly vapour. The enormity of such a feat was beyond anything he had believed possible. Yet there must be some motive behind Vanhal’s act, some dire need that had pushed him to such a supreme and dangerous evocation.
Hexentag! That was the answer. The aethyric current flowing through the tower would be even more potent in the haunted hours of that ominous day. Yet the answer itself begged another question: why did Vanhal need all this arcane energy?
Casting his gaze away from the stars and the necromancer’s altar, Lothar looked down to the plain far below. At once he saw the massed formations of Vanhal’s undead legions, arrayed across the landscape like chessmen on a board. The size of that army would have impressed him had it not been for the still greater host scurrying towards the silent ranks of walking dead. Skaven! The verminous Underfolk of myth turned into hideous reality. This was the enemy Vanhal had tried to prepare for, but the monsters had come too soon. Their multitudes were innumerable. They were a chittering colossus descending upon the puny army arrayed against them.
Lothar could hear the first bestial shrieks as the ratmen struck the front ranks of zombies, hacking and clawing their way through decayed flesh and bleached bone with murderous fury. The undead tried to repel the vermin, but their numbers were too small to hold the foe back.
‘The gnawing rat will not befoul the dream,’ Vanhal’s words slashed across Lothar’s ears like a knife. ‘Not this time,’ the necromancer vowed, his eyes blazing more brightly.
‘Nothing can stand against that,’ Lothar protested, waving his hand at the swarming vermin below. ‘You must use your magic to make the tower disappear!’
‘I have used my magic,’ Vanhal hissed. ‘But it is the skaven who will disappear.’ The necromancer raised his hand, ribbons of spectral light rippling along his fingers, making the bones glow beneath his wizened flesh.
Lothar followed the pointing finger of his master. What colour was left in his pale countenance drained away as a gargantuan shape soared down from the heavens, blotting out those incongruous stars. As it descended towards the tower, the luminescent tendrils of power revealed its monstrous form, a scaly leviathan of muscle and sinew, of decayed flesh and exposed bone. Tattered pinions held it aloft, fanning a necrotic stench across the tower. A great tail undulated behind it, the forked tip flashing through the streamers of aethyric vibration. No face, no matter how horrific, could have matched the grisly stump of neck that projected from the gigantic shoulders. The head had been cut clean away long ago, leaving only a gaping wound dark with clotted blood and wriggling worms.
It was a dragon. Vanhal had used his magic to raise the bones of a dragon as one of his undead slaves! This was the weapon the necromancer’s sorcery had drawn to destroy the skaven horde.
‘The most recently killed of dragonkind,’ Vanhal pronounced. ‘He will be your warhorse. Strike down the skaven. Leave none alive.’
As he stared up at the zombie dragon, Lothar almost felt sorry for those slinking creatures down below.
Chapter XV
Altdorf
Brauzeit, 1114
Kreyssig turned away from the empty throne and slowly descended the steps leading up to the dais. He ignored the pair of armoured Kaiserknecht who flanked the throne Boris had left behind when he retreated from the plague-stricken city. For their part, the knights did their best to ignore him too. Their grand master had made no secret of his displeasure over taking orders from a commoner.
Still, whatever his feelings, Grand Master Leiber had too many ideas about honour and duty to refuse Kreyssig’s commands. So long as Kreyssig wore the regalia of the Emperor’s chosen Protector, he could depend upon the unwavering loyalty of the Kaiserknecht — whatever he asked them to do.
Half a dozen of the armoured warriors came trooping into the Winter Audience Hall, their steel clattering as they filed through the frescoed entry and passed beneath the magnificent lattice of silver and ivory that hovered between the ornamental pillars lining the entry. Between them, looking dishevelled and unruly, the left side of his face purple with a fresh bruise, Duke Vidor loped into the hall, his arms laden down with iron manacles and a great collar locked about his neck.
A thin smile formed on Kreyssig’s face as he observed Vidor’s humiliation. There was something supremely satisfying about seeing a noble brought low, humbled and humiliated as they humbled and humiliated the thousands of peasants they exploited. Given the chance, he would see all of the blue-bloods in chains, dragged through the streets like cattle before being strung up by their perfumed necks.
Only for a moment did Kreyssig relish that vision of an Empire free from the parasitic nobility, free from the tyranny of breeding and pedigree. An Empire where even a mere peasant might become ruler if he were cautious enough. Ruthless enough.
For the moment, Kreyssig had to balance the two, caution and ruthlessness. The nobles were too entrenched to depose. Nor was it desirous to discard them out of hand. Not when they might still prove useful.
‘Leave us,’ Kreyssig told the duke’s escort. The knights saluted stiffly, then filed from the room. Kreyssig turned his head, repeated the order to the Kaiserknecht beside the throne. Without a word, the armoured warriors withdrew.
Kreyssig waited until the knights were gone before approaching the shackled duke. ‘Now we can speak more freely,’ he said.
Vidor’s face contorted into an expression of withering contempt. ‘If you expect me to beg, you may as well just kill me now. I’ll not grovel before a peasant.’
‘If I wanted to hear you beg, I would never have brought you to the palace,’ Kreyssig said. ‘You would have gone to the Courts of Justice with all the other profiteering traitors.’
‘What happened?’ Vidor scoffed. ‘Couldn’t your Kaiserjaeger fabricate enough evidence for you? Or did somebody warn you that you have already gone too far? The nobility won’t sit idle while you cart them off on trumped up allegations of treason!’
‘I have only purged the Imperial court of a few villains who were seeking to aggrandize themselves while their liege lords are away,’ Kreyssig said, though he made little effort to put any conviction in his voice. ‘I don’t think Altdorf will miss a dozen or so grasping counts and barons, do you?’
Before Duke Vidor could answer, Kreyssig was walking back towards the Emperor’s throne. Vidor gasped in shock as the Protector sat in the Imperial seat. Kreyssig smiled at the noble’s offended dignity. Deftly working his fingers under the throne’s armrest, he pulled at a concealed knob.
Vidor’s shock was redoubled when the entire throne began to pivot, swinging out from the dais and exposing a flight of stairs concealed beneath the throne. ‘The entire palace is a maze of hidden corridors and secret passages. Prince Sigdan was fortunate to catch Emperor Boris in one of the few chambers without a hidden exit.’ Kreyssig laughed. ‘Actually, the Harmony Salon did have a hollow wall, but the Emperor had it filled in because he felt it was detrimental to the acoustics.’
The commander rose and stepped away from the throne, posting himself at the head of the hidden stair. Vidor watched him with growing nervousness, tempted to bolt and run while Kreyssig was seemingly distracted. The indignity of such a retreat stifled such intentions. He might cower before an Emperor, but he would be damned if he were going to flee from a peasant.
Kreyssig bent over, reaching down into the hidden stairway. A slim hand, gloved in purple, reached up from the passage beneath the throne, accepting the commander’s waiting grip. Soon he was escorting the Baroness von den Linden, svelte in a close-fitting gown the colour of ambergris, down the steps of the dais. Behind them, the Imperial throne rotated back to its former position.