As he stared down at the dead husk, Frederick pictured Aysha’s body lying there. For a moment, he felt a surge of regret. He almost desisted in the horrible experiment, but a tremendous desire to know, to understand the limits of his magic, pushed him on. Aysha was safe within the mausoleum, beside Johan and the templars of old. She had no part in this. There was only Frederick van Hal and some nameless bit of peasant carrion.
He closed his eyes, visualising the dark power, drawing strands of black energy and weaving them around the prostrate corpse. His lips moved in a whispered invocation, calling upon one of the Nine Names of Nagash. The foreign note of that name seemed to make the room tremble. Frederick could feel it crawling off his tongue, slithering like something alive across the mortuary to settle upon the dead woman’s pale brow.
For a moment the necromancer could feel the corpse struggling to oppose his will. It was a fleeting defiance, brushed away as casually as a cobweb. Frederick opened his eyes and extended his hand towards the corpse. Clumsily, the dead woman began to rise from the slab. A thin smile of triumph flashed across Frederick’s face. Even the protection of the gods wasn’t enough to defy his power!
The necromancer returned to his chair, staring across his undead slaves. This was power, but he would not abuse it. He would use this magic in the cause of justice, a counterpoint to the cruel abuses of corrupt lords like Baron von Rittendahl and Count Malbork von Drak.
Frederick’s eyes became cold and hard, his hands clenching around the arms of his chair.
There was too much injustice, too much suffering in Sylvania, but he knew just where he would start. The plague doktor, Bruno Havemann, murderer and charlatan. He would be made to confess his crimes.
And then he would answer for them.
Chapter XVI
Altdorf
Vorhexen, 1111
The abandoned tunnel wasn’t as abandoned as Erich von Kranzbeuhler had expected. After battering their way through the stone blocks concealing the entrance, the rebels had been surprised by a squeaking horde of black-furred vermin. After their experiences in the sewer, it was a shock that had them shrieking in disgust and horror. For a moment, the rats rushed at the startled men, but it was flight not fight that motivated the animals. Soon their scaly tails were seen darting into bushes and behind outbuildings.
The conspirators breathed a collective sigh of relief, but as they stared down into the blackness of the tunnel, they wondered if perhaps they shouldn’t have stayed behind with the men holding the gates or the force staging a diversionary attack on the Palace doors.
‘If it has been sealed up all these years, how did the rats get in?’ Palatine Kretzulescu wondered. No one could give the Sylvanian an answer.
Erich took it upon himself to lead the way. Lighting a whale-oil lamp provided by Count van Sauckelhof, the knight reluctantly entered the forbidding darkness. At once the dank reek of the tunnel engulfed him, a choking foulness that brought a cough rumbling from his chest. He felt his pulse quicken as theories about miasma as source of the plague rose unbidden in his mind.
The walls of the tunnel were ancient, displaying the rough masonry and brickwork of Sigismund the Conquerer’s time. Bones and rat pellets littered the floor while cobwebs dangled from the vaulted ceiling. Here and there the bulk of a fallen slab of stone loomed in the darkness, a vivid warning that something more substantial than a cobweb might drop down into the passage.
As Erich crept through the tunnel, he found his thoughts straying to the daughter of Baron Thornig. The Middenlander had pressed upon Princess Erna first the role of spy and then that of murderess and assassin. It offended the knight’s sensibilities to exploit a beautiful woman in such a fashion, however noble the cause. For her sake, he hoped that Erna would ignore her father’s command.
A familiar stench brought an end to Erich’s ruminations. Ahead, the knight saw a yawning pit, bricks scattered about it. The smell was that of the sewers, evoking once more visions of horror. Rats scampered about the hole, dropping down into it as they recoiled from the light of Erich’s lamp.
Here at least was the answer to how the rats had gotten into a sealed tunnel. Part of the floor had collapsed into the sewers, which must run beneath the Imperial Palace. So much for the durability of dwarf architecture — though as he looked at the pit and the stones piled about it, he couldn’t escape the idea that something was very wrong. The hole looked like it had been caused by something burrowing up from below rather than stones collapsing into a passageway beneath.
‘We have to hurry,’ Prince Sigdan cautioned. He cast a dubious glance at the pit, then laid his hand on Erich’s shoulder and urged him onwards. ‘Every minute we delay is another minute of Boris’s tyranny.’
‘And more time for the Kaiserjaeger to show up,’ warned Baron von Klauswitz.
Baron Thornig’s harsh laughter echoed through the tunnel. ‘I’ve arranged to pull their teeth,’ he boasted. ‘Right now Commander Kreyssig is dining with Khaine in hell!’
Erich felt his blood boil at the baron’s bravado. So lost was he in what he considered a clever bit of scheming that Baron Thornig seemed oblivious to the danger he had placed his daughter in. The knight half-turned to berate the Middenlander, but Prince Sigdan’s silent urging kept him moving.
There would be time to settle all accounts once Boris Goldgather was deposed.
Middenheim
Vorhexen, 1111
The warbling clamour of crude horns rose from the darkened forest, a feral din that seemed to scratch at the stars and to drag down the moon. The discordant notes had scarcely started to fade before a confusion of animalistic howls, bleats and screams pierced the night. From the battlements of Middenheim, archers loosed flaming arrows into the treeline. By the flickering light of the arrows, a bestial horde could be seen rushing from the woods.
An alarm bell sounded, echoed a moment later by the clarion call of trumpets all along the wall. It seemed a useless gesture. The inhabitants of Warrenburg had to be aware of the attack already. They didn’t need the soldiers on the walls to warn them.
For hours the beastmen had been working themselves into a frenzy, the dull rhythm of their manskin drums pulsing from the forest, the growling chants of their savage shamans rising from the trees. There had been ample time for Grand Master Arno to gather his chosen men. Fifty knights in full armour, each of their steeds a gigantic warhorse clad in steel barding, mustered behind the portcullis of the East Gate.
At the clarion call of the trumpet, Arno raised his hand. Slowly the soldiers within the gatehouse began to raise the barrier. Arno watched the massive gate retreat into the roof of the archway with a fatalistic resignation. Once he went through that portal, he understood there was no coming back.
‘I didn’t expect you to lead the charge.’
The Grand Master turned in surprise at hearing the voice of Prince Mandred, though in hindsight he shouldn’t have been. It was, after all, the boy’s idea.
‘I couldn’t ask any of my men to risk themselves if I was too timid to go myself,’ Arno explained. A troubled frown came across his face. ‘You should stay behind, your grace. This is too perilous for the Prince of Middenheim.’
Mandred smiled at the knight’s protest. ‘If it is so dangerous, then we can’t risk the Grand Master of the White Wolves.’
Arno laughed. ‘Commander Vitholf can more than make up for my loss. The White Wolves might even be better off with him leading the pack.’ The troubled look returned to the knight’s face. ‘There is only one Prince of Middenheim,’ he said.