Ghurk bounded ahead, and Ethrac matched pace, his staff already shimmering with gathering witch-light. The undead wights rushed down the wide passageway to meet them, racing into battle with their unearthly silence. Soon the corridor was filled with the echoing clang of blades clashing. Zombies and skeletons went up against marauders and tribesmen in a mirror of the desperate combat still scored across the entire cityscape.
There was only one opponent worthy of Otto’s attention, though – a crimson-armoured vampire lord bearing a longsword and wearing a long sable cloak. That one towered over even the mightiest of his servants, and swept arrogantly into battle with the poise of a true warrior-artisan.
Otto swung his scythe, clattering it into the vampire’s oncoming blade even as Ghurk and Ethrac blundered onwards, reaping a swathe through the undead ranks beyond.
‘You are the master, then,’ Otto remarked, parrying a counter-blow before trying to skewer the vampire with his blade’s point. ‘Do you have a name?’
‘My name is known from Kislev to Tilea,’ replied the vampire distastefully. ‘Vlad von Carstein, Elector Count of Sylvania. You, though, are unknown to me.’
Otto laughed, whirling the scythe faster. ‘We are the Glottkin. We come to bury the Empire in its own filth. Why not let us?’
Vlad sneered, trying to find a way through Otto’s whirling defence. The vampire carried himself with an almost unconscious arrogance – the bearing of a creature born to rule, and one who knew how to use a sword. ‘You would cover the whole world in your stink. That will not be allowed to happen.’
‘It cannot be stopped now. You surely know that.’
Vlad hammered his blade into the attack. ‘Nothing is certain. Not even death – I should know.’
Otto laughed out loud, enjoying the artistry of the combat. Ghurk would never have understood it, nor Ethrac, but their gifts had always been different. ‘You are rather good, vampire,’ he observed.
‘And you... fight with a scythe,’ replied Vlad, contemptuously.
As if to demonstrate the weapon’s uselessness, the vampire suddenly changed the angle of his sword-swipe, catching the hook of the blade and pulling it out of Otto’s hands. Otto lunged to reclaim it, but it fell, clanking, to the floor. The vampire trod on the blade, advancing on his prey with a dark satisfaction in his unblinking eyes.
Otto let fly with a punch, hoping to rock the vampire, but Vlad was far too quick – he caught Otto’s clenched fist in his own gauntlet, and twisted the wrist back on itself. Caught prone, Otto was forced round, his spine twisted.
Before he could do anything else, the vampire’s blade punched up through his ribcage, sliding through his encrusted skin with a slick hiss. Vlad lifted him bodily from the floor, held rigid by the length of steel protruding from his torso. The pain was excruciating.
‘And so it ends, creature of the Outer Dark,’ said Vlad, bringing his sword-tip up to his lips. As was his wont with the defeated, he licked along the sword’s edge, drinking deep of the blood that ran freely along the cutting edge.
As soon as he had gulped it down, though, he released his grip. His hands flew to his throat, and his eyes bulged.
Otto laughed, freeing himself of the blade and sauntering over to his scythe to retrieve it. The pain was already passing, thanks to the gifts of the Urfather. ‘Drink my blood, eh?’ he asked. ‘Now, I wonder, have you the stomach for it?’
By now Vlad was retching. He staggered against the wall of the corridor, his cheeks red, bile trickling down his chin. A look of horror flashed across his tortured face as he realised what he had imbibed. ‘You... are...’ he gasped.
‘Very unpalatable,’ said Otto, reaching for his blade. ‘My lord, I fear your appetites have undone you.’
Vlad gazed back at him, all the arrogance bled from his face. He vomited, hurling up a torrent of stinking black ichor. In his eyes was the full realisation of what he had done. He was poisoned to the core. He had taken in not blood but raw pollution, the very essence of plague, and now it was eating him from the inside. Once that finished him, all the souls raised by his arts would collapse back into their state of true death – every wight, zombie, skeleton and ghoul would shiver away, their reanimated corpses disintegrating back into the essence of dust.
Otto raised the scythe, appreciating the imagery of the reaper ending the necromancer. ‘That was enjoyable, vampire,’ he said, taking aim. ‘Almost a shame it has to end.’
With a snarl, the shivering Vlad crossed his shaking arms over his chest, still retching uncontrollably. There was a flash of dark matter, and his body disintegrated into a cloud of fluttering bats.
Otto swiped, but his scythe passed harmlessly through the flock, scraping against the floor in a shower of sparks. He laughed again, admiring the vampire’s art. He really had been a worthy opponent. The bats lurched and flapped down the corridor, heading for the outside and too flighty to catch.
With Vlad gone, the rest of his forces melted away. Otto turned to see the skeletons collapsing and the wights slumping to the floor. Ghurk paused in his rampage, his fists stuffed with bones, his mighty head swaying back and forth in confusion as his enemies clattered into tiny heaps around him.
The last to remain on his feet was an oddly mortal-looking warrior in a long coat and with a pair of pistols strapped to his waist. He stared at the spot where Vlad had been, his face a mix of loathing and regret. For a moment, he appeared to fight the inevitable, as if, having been reacquainted with unlife he was now loath to leave it.
But the end had to come. The man’s jaw fell open with a sigh, his eyes rolled up into their sockets, and he collapsed to the floor. Once he was down, his body withered quickly, reverting to its true state in seconds.
Otto looked up at Ethrac, and grinned. The vampire’s wound had already closed over, sealed with a line of glistening bile. There were advantages to being constituted of such glorious poisons.
‘Then we are almost done, o my brother,’ Otto remarked, brandishing his scythe.
Ethrac nodded. ‘One by one, we devour them all. Now for the final meal.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Karl Franz and Martak entered the Chamber of Ghal Maraz. It had been abandoned long ago as the battle for the Palace was lost, and now stood as silent and as corroded as every other hall in the colossal complex.
The walls were weeping now, dripping with thick white layers of pus that fell in clots from the domed ceiling. The supporting pillars were covered in a hide of matted plant-matter, all of it shedding virulent pods that glowed and pulsed in the semi-dark. The great cupola over the circular space was half-ruined, with ivy tresses suspended like nooses from the broken stonework. Rain still spattered down through the gap, adding to the slick of mucus that swam across the chamber floor.
The two men both hurried to the high altar, the only structure to have remained relatively unscathed. The two empty chain-lengths still swayed from their bearings, hanging over the heavy iron table below.
Martak had no idea why they were there. The Imperial Palace had hundreds of chambers, many of them grander and more ornate that this one. If they had to select a place to die, why opt for the ancient resting place of the warhammer, a weapon that was now lost in the north and borne, if at all, by the boy-champion?
Karl Franz drew his runefang and backed up towards the altar’s edge. Deathclaw remained protectively by his side, growling all the while from its huge barrel chest. Martak took up position at the other end of the iron structure, his own griffon remaining close by and snarling with customary spite.