C. Werner: Dead Winter

The moons decided at that moment to emerge from behind the black clouds dotting the sky. Silvery light bathed the town and its surroundings, illuminating for the first time the dark, shambling figures of the peasants.

Shouts of horror rose from the ranks of the Nachtsheer as they beheld the nature of their would-be victims. They were peasants, dressed in the crude homespun wool of Sylvanian serfs. But their flesh was decayed, rotten with worms and frostbite, their faces were leering skulls and their eyes were pits devoid of thought and emotion. Clawed hands gripped crude spears, bill forks and a score other rough weapons scavenged from farm implements.

Fear overwhelmed the discipline of the mercenaries. First one, then another, broke ranks and fled back towards the barrier. Prepared to slaughter peasants, the warriors were unprepared to face unliving monsters.

As the soldiers fled, a dreadful vitality swept through the shambling ranks of the zombies. Dry moans escaped ragged mouths, loathsome hunger smouldered in lifeless eyes. Strengthened by the darkest magic, the zombies pursued their routed foe, racing forwards with speed and hideous purpose. The fleeing soldiers were dragged down by the undead, mangled and butchered by the hatchets and knives clenched in desiccated hands.

Dregator Miklos could only watch in terror as his men were slaughtered. His mind whirled with strategy and tactics, urging him to spring into action, to call back his cavalry scouts, to summon the troops at the other watchposts, to do something to oppose the monstrous horror. Terror held him in an icy grip, all the arrogant self-assurance of the tyrannical dregator unable to break its frightful hold.

A dark shape strode through the ravening mass of zombies, a figure cloaked in the black habit of a Morrite priest, his pale hands clenched about an ebony staff. Beneath the hood of the priest’s habit, a mask fashioned from the face of a skull concealed the necromancer’s visage. Scraps of flesh and beads of blood still dripped from the macabre ornament, staining the exposed cheeks and chin of the fiend.

The necromancer stopped a few yards from the fence, his imperious gaze staring out from behind the sockets of his mask. He gestured at the logs, his lips moving in a whispered incantation. With a wave of his hand, a malevolent surge of energy crashed down upon the fence. Before the dregator’s horrified gaze, the timbers began to splinter and rot, crumbling into dust in the space of a few heartbeats.

Waving his hand again, the necromancer scattered the dust, leaving only the white snow between himself and the Nachtsheer encampment. The barrier removed, he strode towards Dregator Miklos. The lips beneath the skull mask spread in a malignant smile.

‘I am Vanhal, the fallen,’ the necromancer hissed. He pointed a bony finger at the nobleman’s chest. Miklos gasped as he felt his heart quiver, as the palpitations began to slow. Whatever entreaty was on his lips went unspoken as his body crashed into the snow.

‘I am Vanhal,’ Frederick snarled at the crumpled corpse. ‘And I bring hell to Sylvania.’

Skavenblight

Vorhexen, 1111

Puskab Foulfur pulled his bloated body onto the narrow ledge, his heart pounding as some of the ancient masonry crumbled beneath his weight. He wrapped his arm about the neck of a stone gargoyle, its face worn into a featureless lump by the centuries. The effort to keep from turning his head was too great and the plague priest risked a downwards glance. The side of the Shattered Tower descended hundreds of feet before vanishing into the fog. He could pick out the jagged fissures in the wall, could see the black lines of rain gutters spiralling about the structure. Balconies, so tiny at this height that they were almost unrecognisable, jutted from the lower tiers, worm-oil lanterns glowing from their balustrades.

His arduous ascent had taken him far. It was from one such balcony that he had started his climb, scrambling up the uneven face of the tower, trying to balance safety and caution against strategy and speed. A single misstep, a moment of carelessness and Puskab would lose his grip upon the aged masonry. He would plummet to the streets of Skavenblight hidden somewhere below the fog, hurtle like a falling star into the ruined desolation of the city.

The plague priest gnashed his fangs as he contemplated all the unfair advantages that had been given to his adversary. The window from which Blight had started his climb was a good hundred feet higher than Puskab’s balcony. The Wormlord had been equipped with steel climbing claws and a stout cord woven from skaven-tails. Before starting his climb, Blight had imbibed a full pot of skaven-brew, that potent mixture of blood and powdered warpstone which would excite the metabolism of any ratman and increase the swiftness of his reactions. Puskab knew his enemy had partaken of this mixture because he had smelled the discarded pot as it sailed past him on its way to the streets below, narrowly missing the plague priest’s head.

Still, Puskab contented himself with the one advantage the scheming Wormlord didn’t possess. That was a real and sincere faith in the Horned One. Plots and tricks were all Blight had to protect himself. Puskab had the divine power of his god to sustain him, to bring him victorious from any ordeal.

The corpulent ratman laughed as he recalled the sickly smell of Blight when the fool realised he had been manipulated. He had honestly expected a plague priest to turn against his own kind in favour of a heretic and unbeliever? The plague monks had their rivalries and hates, but these were never allowed to threaten the might of Clan Pestilens or impede the spread of the Horned One’s faith. Blight had arranged everything so that Puskab could challenge Nurglitch and claim his position as one of the Lords of Decay, little imagining that it was he himself who would suffer the challenge. Puskab wondered if the fool realised now that it had indeed been the Poxmaster who had loosed the Black Plague upon Clan Verms.

The flea-breeding Verms had been marked for destruction from the start. Puskab had developed parasites to carry the plague to other ratmen almost before Clan Pestilens had started experimenting on humans. He had carried his own fleas into the Hive, fleas bloated with plague germs, fleas that had spread among his guards and assistants. He had used his magic to preserve the lives of those skaven working in close proximity to himself in order to allay suspicion, but there had been no magic to guard the hundreds of ratkin the lab-rats came into contact with. The diseased fleas had spread and brought Clan Verms to its knees.

There had been a delicious irony when Blight sent Puskab to lead the assassins against Nurglitch. It was Puskab himself who had passed warning to the Arch-Plaguelord through the buzzing voices of his fever-flies. Informed of the primitive drives which motivated the diggerfangs, the plague monks had simply built great fires within the Inner Temple, heating the thick stone walls. The spiders, faced with an even greater heat than that of the worm-oil goads, had retreated, charging straight back into the faces of their handlers! So much for the murderous machinations of the Wormlord!

Blight would suffer for his impudence, trying to turn Clan Pestilens against itself, as though the disciples of the Horned One could be used and manipulated like some common warlord clan!

The plague priest’s bitter growl ended in a frightened yelp . A brick came sailing down out of the darkness, crashing against the side of the gargoyle and knocking chips from its folded wings. Puskab flinched, pressing a stinging paw to his mouth. He squeezed his bulk against the wall as another brick shot towards him. It glanced off the ledge, vanishing into the mists far below.