By then Leoncoeur was already searching for more prey. Riding through the foul mucus-rain was hard work, and it was difficult to see more than a few dozen yards in any direction. Beaquis’s wings began to labour as the beast struggled to gain height.
‘Stay strong,’ urged Leoncoeur. He need a better vantage. Slaying mutant beasts was satisfying, but it would not halt the momentum of the assault – there were too many of them, and they were not in command.
The hippogryph beat harder, climbing high above the swirl and crash of combat. Leoncoeur twisted in the saddle, peering out over the beleaguered city, trying to make some sense of the pattern of battle.
He had expected to find the enemy hammering at the gates, expending its rage against the walls that had stood for over two thousand years, but it was clear that fighting was already rampant across the entire city. Whole sections were burning, collapsing in piles of stinking rotten timbers. He saw daemons swarming over the ruins, chasing down the last of the mortal defenders or fighting furiously with dwindling bands of battle wizards and priests. They were everywhere, as profligate as the rain-showers that splashed around them and covered the streets knee-deep in slime.
We come too late, he realised.
He drove Beaquis even higher, desperately searching for something to use to his advantage. The earthbound knights were committed now, locked in combat with a far greater foe, but he could still choose his prey.
The vast bulk of the Imperial Palace reared up out of the gloom. It was still immense – a mighty gothic pile of imposing stone and iron, ringed with huge statues to the Imperial gods – but already thick with corrosion and unnatural growth. Just as the forest had been, the Palace was raddled with foetid plant-matter, and the austere walls and domes were heaving with clinging grave-moss. The causeways leading to the Palace precincts were rammed tight with advancing warriors, led by a truly enormous troll-like creature bearing two lesser warriors on its back. The surviving defenders were doing what they could to halt it, firing the last of their blackpowder weapons from the high walls, but it would not be enough.
Leoncoeur considered swooping down on that horror. He might be able to pluck the riders from their mounts and break their backs. Then his gaze swept east, over the tight-packed rooftops and towards the wan light of the rising sun.
The concentration of daemons was greatest there. They were streaming towards a lesser temple dome, one surrounded by the slumped hovels of the poor. A truly titanic greater daemon was lumbering directly for the temple, its echoing bellows of rage rising above the tumult.
As soon as he saw it, he knew that was the prize. Time seemed to slow down around him, isolating the creature of darkness as the true quarry of his long hunt.
He could not save the city – that was beyond any mortal now – but battles could still be won.
He wheeled back to where the pegasi still plunged and dived into the hordes below. Their attacks were lethal, but isolated, and they were doing little to blunt the momentum of the colossal army below.
‘Brothers!’ Leoncoeur bellowed, straining to make himself heard even as he raced back into their midst. ‘The prize lies within the city! Follow me!’
He banked hard, dragging Beaquis back towards the burning walls. The pegasus riders immediately fell in behind him, and the sky-host shot over Altdorf’s flaming walls.
Leoncoeur looked over his shoulder as he flew over the shattered gates, over to where Jhared’s knights fought on. They were still causing devastation, but the net was closing on them. It was only a matter of time before their unity was broken. A pang of guilt struck him, and he almost turned back.
They will die as they lived, came a familiar voice in his mind then. As warriors. They slow the attack on the Palace, and thus their sacrifice will serve.
Leoncoeur flew on, and Altdorf blurred below as Beaquis picked up speed. The pegasus riders caught up, and the phalanx burned towards its target.
And me? he asked, almost without meaning to. Just to hear Her voice in his mind again gave him comfort.
But She did not speak again. Beaquis started to plunge earthwards, and the grotesque daemon lurched up to meet them, still unaware of the danger from the skies. Lesser daemons rampaged around it, tearing at the walls of the temple and beating on the locked gates. The dome itself seemed to have some power to resist them, and alone of all the structures in that quarter of the city remained free of the creeping vines and grave-moss.
Leoncoeur fixed his eyes on the daemon, trying not to fixate on its sheer size and aura of terror. This was what he had come to slay – just one contribution amid a host of other duels that would seal the fate of humanity. Next to that, the loss of kingship felt like a trivial thing indeed.
‘Follow me down!’ he shouted to his fellow knights.
Then he shook the blood from his lance, crouched for the strike, and spurred his steed down towards the horror waiting below.
On a blasted hill to the north of the burning city, Kurt Helborg and Vlad von Carstein stood alone. Helborg’s bodyguard, fewer than a dozen mounted knights, waited further down the slope on the Altdorf-facing side. The vast army of the undead waited to the north, arrayed for the advance but still making no move. In the distance, Altdorf’s spires stood starkly against the plague-rain, now lit grey by the slowly strengthening light of the sun. Spidering strands of dark-green could be made out across the stone, strangling and crushing the ancient structures. Cannon-fire still boomed, and the crackle of magic could be made out sporadically, but the main sounds were the cries of the dying and the guttural chants of the victors.
‘You never replied to my letter,’ said Vlad.
Helborg felt light-headed and nauseous. Days of no sleep and constant toil had finally caught up with him, and simply to be in the presence of a vampire lord would have crushed the spirits of a lesser man. As he gazed up at von Carstein’s spectral face, he saw something like eternity reflected back at him. The dark orbs of the creature’s eyes barely flickered. In an instant, Helborg recognised the gulf in years between them – it was like staring down a god, one who had trodden the paths between the worlds and who had returned to usher in the destruction of them all.
At least the pain had faded. In the vampire’s presence, the legacy of the daemon’s claws seemed to lose its potency.
‘What was there to reply to?’ asked Helborg, trying to muster at least a show of belligerence.
‘That you recognised the wisdom of my offer,’ said Vlad, as smoothly as if he cared little one way or the other. ‘I have gone to some trouble to assemble the army you see before you. It will march on my command.’
Helborg smiled cynically. ‘And your price?’
‘You know it. I wish to be Elector of Sylvania. I wish to preside over my people in peace. I wish to look you in the eye as...’ He returned a colder smile. ‘...an equal.’
Helborg could still hear the sounds of battle. They were impossible to blot out, like constant reminders of everything he had done wrong.
‘That power lies with the Emperor,’ he said.
‘He is here?’
‘You know he is not.’
Vlad raised an eyebrow. ‘You credit me with too much foresight. Harkon has been disciplined for what he did – I had no part of it. As to Karl Franz’s survival or otherwise, a veil remains over it. Even my Master does not know his fate.’
Helborg wished he had something to lean on, to prop up his failing strength, but dared not show the slightest shred of weakness. Everything began to blur, like some nightmare that he had been plunged into. Contempt filled him, both for himself and for the creature he spoke to. That he had been reduced to negotiating with such a horror was humiliation enough, and he sensed there was more to come.