The warlock-engineers laughed at the havoc wrought by their hideous weapon, the warriors of Clan Volkyn cheered at the spectacle of burning bodies strewn before them. Encouraged by the ease of the slaughter, the warlock-engineers shouted down at the slaves chained to the sides of the carts, ordering the wagons pushed deeper into the boundaries of Clan Verms.
‘They will burn out every inch of the Hive.’
Puskab turned about, surprised to see Blight Tenscratch standing beside him. He had been so fascinated by the display of Clan Skryre’s admittedly heretical techno-sorcery that he had failed to notice the scent of the Wormlord and his remaining guards.
‘Warpfire they call it,’ Blight hissed. ‘I am told it uses a mixture of worm-oil and warpstone.’ His head suddenly darted to one side, then the other, eyes searching among the ranks of the Rictus stormvermin.
‘Nakkal lost-gone,’ Puskab said, guessing who Blight was looking for. The plague priest felt a twinge of amusement as he stated that the chieftain had suffered an accident.
Blight’s lips pulled away from his fangs. ‘This is all that flea-sucking pimple-arsed Nurglitch’s fault!’ The Wormlord shook his fist at the roof of the cavern, muttering curses under his breath.
‘We will-must try-try again,’ Puskab said.
Blight fixed the plague priest with a crooked smile. ‘We?’ he snickered. ‘No-no, not we! You!’ The Wormlord’s claw trembled as he pointed it at Puskab. ‘You will kill-slay Nurglitch! Challenge him for his seat on the council! Take his place-pelt as Arch-Plaguelord!’
Bylorhof
Ulriczeit, 1111
When Frederick roused from his stupor, the monster was gone. Retrieving a spike-headed mace from the cells once inhabited by the templars, the priest made his way outside to inspect the temple grounds. The cold wind blew snow across the rows of graves, headstones vanishing beneath a mantle of white. In the distance, the mournful cry of a dog rose, invading the eerie quiet of the night. Mannslieb was nearly full now, the greater moon’s silvery light eclipsing the sickly glow of Morrslieb.
By moonlight and rushlight, Frederick circled the temple, the heavy mace always at the ready. Snow crunched under his feet as he scoured the ground for any trace of the undead creature he had seen. If the thing had left any tracks, they had been obliterated by the new-fallen snow.
The priest uttered a nervous laugh. If the thing had been there at all. If it hadn’t existed solely in his own mind. If he wasn’t going mad.
Then Frederick’s steps brought him to the side of the temple and the ornate window looking into the sanctuary. His skin crawled as he stared at the ground below the window. Sheltered by the eaves of the roof, the ground here had been spared the attentions of the latest snowfall. Pressed clearly into the snow were the marks of unshod feet, feet like none he had ever seen. Visible in the snow were the prints of toes, toes that were like scraggly claws. Toes from which all the flesh had been peeled away. As a final sign that the creature had been real, Frederick found a strip of decayed skin caught upon the window frame, left there when the undead horror had pressed itself against the glass and peered into the sanctuary.
Clenching the mace tighter, Frederick turned away from the window. His eyes scanned the silent rows of graves, wondering where the monster had gone. He felt an obligation to track down the abomination. Despite the heretical spell he had evoked, he still regarded himself as a priest of Morr and it was a priest’s duty to bring peace to the restless dead.
The open door of the old vault swayed in the wind, banging against the carved granite walls. Frederick felt a chill run down his spine. There was no one who would have opened that door. Even the most desperate looters shunned the gardens of Morr, if not from fear of the plague then from the dreadful memory of Arisztid Olt and his frightful abuses of the cemetery.
Forcing himself towards the mausoleum took more courage than Frederick believed he had. At every step he felt the urge to flee, to retreat into the temple and cower behind the altar. His flesh crawled, his breath came in icy gasps, his hair stood on end. Every part of his being could sense the unnatural aberration which had preceded him and left the door swinging in the wind.
Somehow he managed to reach the mausoleum. The priest hesitated upon the threshold, gazing in silence upon the confusion of prints which had disturbed the centuries of dust inside the vault. Clumps of marsh grass and mud littered the steps as they descended into the musty darkness. Furtive sounds rose to scratch at the edge of his hearing and Frederick did not need to be told it was not the noise of rats.
Frederick started to pray to his god, then hesitated. After what he had done, the blasphemy with which he had profaned Morr’s temple, he had no right to presume upon the god’s benevolence. He had failed his god. Perhaps this was a test, a trial to redeem himself. If so, he was determined he would meet the challenge on his own.
The darkness wrapped itself around Frederick as he descended into the ancient vault. The illumination of the rushlight lessened with each step, as though the tomb resented the intrusion of its flame. As the light began to fail, raw panic threatened to overcome the priest.
Again the furtive shuffling sounds slithered across Frederick’s ears. They were closer now, close enough to startle the priest. He had imagined his quarry to be deep within the catacombs by now, not lingering so near the entrance. Casting a worried glance at the doubtful flame of his rushlight, he strode towards the noise.
Before he had gone more than a few steps, a sweet, rotten stench struck his senses. From the gloom, a shape emerged into the faltering light. Frederick recoiled in shock as he found himself gazing into the decayed face of a Bylorhof peasant, the man’s visage reduced almost to a skull by the ravenous attentions of marsh vermin. Worms writhed in the peeling flesh, the scaly carcass of a scavenger fish protruded from the creature’s cheek, ugly water beetles crawled through hair matted with slime.
Frederick swung the heavy mace into the monster’s hideous face. The rotten skull shattered beneath the terrified blow, spattering the wall of the crypt with stagnant muck and slivers of bone. The creature swayed for a moment, as though unaware its brain had been pulverised. Then the thing collapsed on the dusty floor.
Zombie! The grotesque word came unbidden to Frederick’s mind. Walking revenants without purpose or motive, slinking horrors that were the antithesis of life and of death. They were the lowest form of undead abomination, mindless corpses devoid of either will or soul.
Yet, as Frederick’s mind turned back to the dark lore of Arisztid Olt, a troubling thought came to him. A zombie was a thing that existed because of dark magic, it could thrive only at the direction of some outside force, some greater will to sustain its empty husk. Suddenly he understood why these things had appeared. Some terrible fiend had descended upon the graveyard, might even now be lurking among the tombs. Witch or daemon, it was summoning the unhallowed dead, drawing them from their watery graves.
The priest’s heart pounded in his breast. Somewhere, in the black catacombs, a malevolent power was gathering its strength. It had to be stopped, stopped before it could threaten the town.
Frederick followed the sunken passages, the spiked mace held in a white-knuckle grip. His eyes struggled to pierce the gloom, strove to compensate for the increasingly poor illumination of the rushlight. The shuffling steps echoed ahead of him. He could tell they came from more than one source, but whether there might be a dozen or a hundred, he could not say. If fate favoured him, he might never need to know. There was only one enemy he had to face — the occult power that had summoned the zombies from the marsh.