Huss cracked a thin smile then. ‘We will smash some more skulls before they drag us down.’
Schwarzhelm nodded grimly. Already the hordes around them were pushing back again, slaughtering as they came.
‘That we will,’ he growled, striding back into the fight.
Deathclaw surged towards the dragon. The undead creature saw it coming, and reared up in the air, its scythe-like claws extended. Skeletal jaws gaped wide, and a noxious gout of corpse-gas burst from its gaping innards.
Karl Franz brandished his sword. The blade was still inert, bereft of the fire that usually kindled along its runic length, and even amid the rush on oncoming combat, that troubled him. Perhaps the daemon’s blood had quashed its ancient soul.
The dragon rider hailed him then, his voice ringing out through the rain like a raptor’s shriek.
‘You are overmatched, warmblood!’ he cried. ‘Flee now, while your bird still has feathers!’
Deathclaw screamed in fury, and hurtled straight into close range. Its wings a blur, the griffon swept under the hanging streamers of yellowish gas and plunged straight at the dragon’s exposed torso.
The two creatures slammed together, both sets of claws raking furiously. The griffon’s fury was the greater, and whole sheets of age-withered flesh were ripped from the dragon’s flank. The abomination lashed back, tearing a bloody line down Deathclaw’s back, nearly dragging Karl Franz clear from the saddle. As the bone-claws scraped past him, Karl Franz cut down sharply with his blade, taking two talons off at the knuckle.
Then the two creatures, powered by momentum, broke apart again, each angling back for a return pass.
‘Do you see what is happening here, warmblood?’ came the dragon rider’s mocking voice. ‘Your world is ending. It is ending before your eyes, and still you fail to grasp it.’
Karl Franz had caught a glimpse of his enemy as their steeds had grappled, and what he had seen had been unsettling. The rider wore heavy plate armour of rich blood-red, gilded with fine detailing and bearing the ancient seal of the lost Blood Keep. His jawline was swollen with fangs, and his voice bore the archaic, prideful accent of Empire nobility. Everything about him, from his cursed mount to his imperious bearing, indicated that he was an undead lord, a powerful vampire of the knightly bloodline.
Yet Karl Franz had never faced a vampire like this one. He had never seen tattoos carved into a face like that, nor heavy bronze collars adorning such armour. The rider wore a crude eight-pointed star on his breast, as black as ichor, and his sword-edge flamed as if alive with violent energies.
Can the dead fall to corruption? he wondered as Deathclaw banked hard and sped towards the dragon again. Can even they succumb?
The two beasts crashed into one another, writhing and lashing out in a twisting frenzy of mutual loathing. Deathclaw clamped its hooked beak into the dragon’s neck and tore through weak-shackled vertebrae. The dragon pushed back with a blast of poison-gas before plunging down at the griffon’s powerful shoulders, whipping a barbed tail to try to flay it from the skies.
Deathclaw shook off the dragon’s foul breath and thrust back up, all four claws extended. The two riders were propelled close to one another, and for the first time Karl Franz was near enough to strike at his adversary with Drachenzahn.
The vampire was fast, as blisteringly fast as all his damned kin, and the two blades clanged together in a glitter of sparks. Despite his heavy armour, the undead lord switched his blade round in a smear of fire and steel, thrusting it point-forward at Karl Franz. The Emperor evaded the strike, but only barely, and the killing edge scraped across his left pauldron.
Deathclaw and the dragon were still locked in a snarling duel of their own, keeping their riders close enough to maintain a flurry of sword-blows. The blades collided again, then again, ringing and shivering from the impacts.
The vampire lord was a consummate swordsman, capable of the refined viciousness of his breed and animated by the unnatural strength that was the inheritance of that fallen bloodline. In addition to that, the marks of ruin emblazoned on his armour made the air shake – they were bleeding corruption, as if leaking dark magic from the Other Realm itself.
‘For Sigmar!’ Karl Franz roared, standing in the saddle and bracing against Deathclaw’s bucking flight. He rammed his blade down two-handed, aiming to crack the vampire from his mount.
The undead lord parried, but the strength of the strike nearly dislodged him. Karl Franz followed up, hacking furiously with a welter of vicious down-strikes. The vampire struggled to fend them all off, and his armour was cut from shoulder to breastplate. The contemptuous smile flickered on his tattooed face, and for a moment he lost his composure.
But his steed was nearly twice the heft of Deathclaw, and even in its deathly state was a far more dangerous foe. The dragon’s claws cut deep into the griffon’s flesh, tearing muscle and ripping plumage from its copper-coloured back. Karl Franz could feel the fire ebbing in his steed, and knew the end drew near. If he could not kill the rider, the dragon would finish both of them.
‘Why?’ Karl Franz hissed as the swords flew. ‘Why do you fight for these gods?’
The vampire pressed his attack more savagely, as if the question struck deep at whatever conscience he still possessed. ‘Why not, mortal?’ he laughed, though the sound was strained. ‘Why not take gifts when offered?’ His fanged mouth split wide in a grin, and Karl Franz saw the iron studs hammered into his flesh. ‘They give generously. How else could I do this?’
The vampire’s armour suddenly blazed with a gold aura, and the flames on his sword roared in an inferno. Karl Franz recoiled, and the dragon rider pounced after him. Their blades rebounded from one another, ringing out as the steel clashed. A lesser sword than the runefang would have shattered; even so, it was all Karl Franz could do to remain in position. Fragments of his priceless armour cracked free, and he saw gold shards tumbling down to the battlefield far below.
He pressed the attack again, resisting the overwhelming barrage of blows with blade-strikes of his own, when the dragon finally broke Deathclaw’s guard and plunged a man-sized talon of bone into the griffon’s chest.
Deathclaw screamed, and bucked wildly in the air. Karl Franz was thrown to one side, nearly hurled free of the saddle, and for a fraction of a second his sword-arm was flung out wide, exposing his chest.
The vampire needed no more than that – with a flicker of steel, he thrust his blade into the gap, unerringly hitting the weak point between breastplate-rim and pauldron.
The pain was horrific. Flames coursed down the length of the fell blade, crashing against Karl Franz’s broken armour like a breaking wave. His entire world disappeared into a bloody haze of agony, and he felt his back spasm.
He heard roaring, as if from a far distance, and felt the world tumbling around him. Too late, he realised that Deathclaw had been deeply stricken, and was plummeting fast.
Karl Franz looked up, fighting through the pain and fire, to see the rapidly diminishing outline of the vampire gazing down at him.
‘You could have had such gifts!’ the dragon rider shouted after him, his voice twisted and shrill. ‘You chose the path of cowardice, not I!’
Karl Franz barely heard the words. Deathclaw was trying to gain lift, but the griffon’s wings were a ravaged mess of blood-soaked feathers, and the creature’s great chest rattled as it strained for breath.