As he nudged the dials to bring the focus into line, Karl Franz felt a hollow sensation in his guts. There could be no mistake. He saw a long, arrow-straight mane of pure white hair, hanging from a still-noble head. Eyes of purest obsidian were set in a flesh-spare visage, drawn tight across sharp bones. He saw armour the colour of a flaming sunset, blackened with old fires and old blood; a long, ebony cloak lined with finest ermine; fangs jutting from a proud, cruel mouth; a longsword, sheathed in an ancient scabbard.
And, most of all, the ring. Even at such a distance, its garnet-stone glowed like an ember, leaking smoke from its setting.
Karl Franz put the telescope down. ‘Then it is true,’ he murmured, leaning against the balcony railing heavily. ‘Vlad von Carstein.’
Schwarzhelm’s face was black with fury. He looked torn between rival hatreds – of the Chaos hordes that hammered at them from the north, and the undead blasphemers that had crept into view in the east. ‘There were rumours at Alderfen,’ he rasped. ‘They say the dead fought with us.’
Karl Franz felt like laughing at that, though not from mirth. ‘What surety can we place on that?’ He gazed up at the heavens, as if some inspiration might come from there. In days long past, it was said that the comet would appear to men at the times of greatest darkness, such as it had done for Sigmar and for Magnus. Now, all he could see was the scudding of pestilential clouds.
He reached again for his war-helm, and this time Schwarzhelm made no move to stop him. The undead continued to gather along the ridge. With every passing moment, their numbers grew. Soon there would be thousands. Between them, the armies of Chaos and undeath outnumbered the mustered Imperial forces.
‘What do you command, my liege?’ asked Schwarzhelm.
‘Talb’s flank is close to collapse,’ said Karl Franz, placing the helm on his head and fastening the leather straps around his neck. ‘Take any reserves you can find, join Huss and pull him out of there. Salvage what you can, stage a fighting retreat.’
Schwarzhelm nodded. ‘And you?’
Karl Franz smiled dryly, and his hand rested on the hilt of his runefang. As if in recognition of what was about to happen, Deathclaw let fly with a harsh caw from its enclosure.
‘We are between abominations,’ he said, his voice firm. ‘This is my realm. Once again, we must teach them to fear it.’
Then he started moving, ignoring the supplications from his field-staff around him. As he went, his mind fixed on the trial ahead. The whole army would see him take to the air. All eyes would be on him, from the moment Deathclaw cast loose his chains and ascended into the heavens.
‘Hold the line for as long as you can,’ he ordered, descending from the viewing platform with long, purposeful strides. ‘Above all, the daemon is mine.’
THREE
Helborg charged straight at the daemon, spurring his steed hard. The vast creature towered over him, a swollen slag-pile of heaving, suppurating muscle. It was now fully instantiated, and its olive-green hide glistened with dribbling excreta.
The stench was incredible – an overwhelming fug of foul, over-sweet putrescence that caught in the throat and made the eyes stream. Every movement the thing made was accompanied by a swirl of flies, sweeping around it like a cloak of smog. Under its hunched withers the earth itself boiled and shifted, poisoned by the sulphurous reek and ground down into a plague-infused soup. The daemon wallowed in its own filth, revelling in the slough it had created around it.
Helborg’s horse nearly stumbled as it galloped into range, betrayed by the shifting terrain, but its head held true. The daemon saw him approach and drew its cleaver back for a back-breaking swipe. Helborg drove his mount hard towards the target. The cleaver whistled across, spraying bile as it came. Helborg ducked as he veered out of its path, and felt the heavy blade sweep over his arched back; then he was up again, raised up in the saddle and with his sword poised.
Others of the Reiksguard had followed him on the charge, some still bearing their long lances. Two of them plunged the weapons deep into the daemon’s flanks, producing fountains of steaming mucus. The daemon let slip a gurgling roar, and swung its bulk around, tearing the knights from their saddles and flinging their bodies headlong across the battlefield.
Helborg’s warhorse shied as it tore past the wall of trembling hide, and Helborg plunged his sword into the daemon’s flesh while still on the gallop. It was like carving rotten pork – the skin and muscle parted easily, exposing milk-white fat and capillaries of black, boiling blood beneath.
The daemon’s cleaver lashed back towards him, propelled by obese and sagging arms, but Helborg was moving too fast. He guided his steed hard-by under the shadow of the other daemonic arm, slashing out with the runefang as he went. More gobbets of flesh slopped free, slapping to the earth in smoking gouts.
The Reiksguard were everywhere by then, riding their steeds under the very shadow of the daemon’s claws and hacking with their longswords. The creature throttled out another echoing roar of pain, and flailed around more violently. Its cleaver caught two Reiksguard in a single swipe, dragging them from the saddle. Its balled fist punched out, crushing the helm of another as he angled his lance for the cut.
The clouds of flies buzzed angrily, swarming around the beleaguered daemon and rearing up like snakes’ heads. They flew into visors and gorgets, clotting and clogging, forcing knights to pull away from the attack. Maggots as long as a man’s forearm wriggled out of the liquidised earth, and clamped needle-teeth to the horses’ fetlocks. Swarms of tiny daemon-kin with jaws as big as their pulpy bodies spun out from the greater creature’s armpits as it thrashed around, clamping their incisors onto anything they landed on and gnawing deep.
The Reiksguard fought on through the hail of horrors, casting aside the lesser creatures in order to strike at the greater abomination beyond, but the creature before them was no mere tallyman or plaguebearer – it was the greatest of its dread breed, and the swords of mortal men held little terror for it. Its vast cleaver whirled around metronomically, slicing through plate armour like age-rotten parchment. Helborg saw three more of his men carved apart in a single swipe, their priceless battle-plate smashed apart in seconds.
He kicked his steed back into contact, riding hard for the daemon’s whirling cleaver-arm. As he went, he pulled his runefang back for the strike, and the sacred blade shimmered in the preternatural gloaming.
The daemon saw him closing in, but too late. It tried to backhand him from his mount with the cleaver’s hilt, and Helborg swerved hard, leaning over in the saddle. As the eldritch blade whistled past again, Helborg thrust out with his own sword, ramming the point up and across. The runefang plunged in up to the grip, sliding into the putrid blubber as if into water.
The daemon roared out a gurgled cry of outrage, affronted by the audacity of the attack. Helborg grabbed the hilt of his sword two-handed, fighting to control the movements of his mount, and heaved. The rune-engraved steel sliced through sinews, severing the daemon’s arm at the elbow. A thick jet of inky blood slobbered across his helm visor, burning like acid, and he pulled harder.
With a sickening plop, the daemon’s entire forearm came loose, trailing long strings of muscle and skin behind it. Weighed down by the cleaver, the chopped limb thudded to the earth, sinking into the slurry of saliva and pus underfoot. The daemon bellowed, this time in real agony, stretching its wide mouth in a gargantuan howl that made the clouds shake.