Briardark, page 26
‘Stay in the circle,’ Aaric enjoined him. ‘The celestial salts will repel the undead.’ The scholar emphasised the last word.
Samuel refused to accept what Aaric was telling him. He jumped across the shimmering line and took Cicely in his arms. ‘I’ve got you,’ he assured her. He turned back to the circle. He’d carry her into its protection if that was what it took.
Cicely struggled in his arms, trying to pull away. She felt impossibly cold. Impossibly light. It was as if Samuel was carrying a wisp of icy fog. When he looked down at her, he could see the bones beneath her pale skin. Her hair was like a tangle of shadow spilling from a fleshless skull. Her eyes were hollow specks glimmering at the bottom of deep pits. ‘It’s no good,’ she protested, her breath rank with death. ‘It’s too late. Save yourself.’
The hunter shook his head. ‘Without you, there’s nothing worth saving,’ he told his daughter. Around them, the other nighthaunts were closing in. There was just a narrow gap between the apparitions and the circle. Tightening his hold on Cicely, Samuel tried to dash between the spectres. A hideous revenant, a rusted mask under its cowl and a massive sword in its hands, barred his path. It thrust at him with its blade, and he felt the icy tip of the sword pierce his breast. Crippling pain brought him to his knees. He dropped Cicely, leaving her to roll across the ground. She screamed as she tumbled towards the circle and was thrown back by the celestial salts.
‘Get away from her!’ Samuel snarled as the revenant turned to Cicely and lifted its sword. He lunged at the spectre, passing through its ethereal body. His axe, however, crashed against the massive sword and pulled it away from its intended victim. Still partly inside the phantom, Samuel could feel its frustrated rage. A surge of ghoulish energy sizzled through him, and he was expelled from the wraith to land beside Cicely on the ground.
The revenant loomed above them, its blade poised to strike. ‘Get away!’ Cicely shouted at her father. In a wild spring, she threw herself towards the spectre and raked her hands against its mask. Her savagery was such that she ripped the rusted metal away. The revenant lost cohesion, drifting apart and spilling backwards. Then the mask Cicely held billowed away in a stream of black smoke, snaking through the air to rejoin the greater part of the disrupted malignant.
‘Hurry!’ Aaric called to Samuel.
‘Yes, go!’ Cicely implored her father. More of the nighthaunts closed in upon her, brandishing the mouldering weapons they bore in their bony hands.
Samuel only shook his head and raised his axe. He wouldn’t abandon his daughter. If that meant he would die, then he would die. Looking at the phantoms surrounding them, he accepted that there was no escape.
Suddenly, an anguished shriek rose from the spectral throng. Samuel could see one of the chainrasps writhing in its fetters, a black energy spreading outward from where a sword had pierced its chest from behind. The apparition rapidly dissipated, and this time its tatters didn’t come streaming back to reform its shape. When the chainrasp vanished, he could see its killer standing where it had been. One of Nagash’s templars wielding a nadirite sword. The fleshless warrior swept its merciless gaze across the graveyard, then slowly marched forwards. The other templar limped after it, guarding its flank with its spiked mace.
Exhibiting an uncanny unity of purpose, the nighthaunts shifted to confront the skeletal templars. A scythe-wielding wraith descended upon the swordsman, slashing its armoured arm so that it hung brokenly at the warrior’s side. A sweep of the nadirite blade cleft the phantom from crown to collar and its shadowy form rapidly evaporated. The maceman met the rush of a shrieking chainrasp, crushing it to the ground with a brutal blow of its weapon. The templar was in turn attacked by the harridan, one bony sickle shearing through the side of its skull and exposing the hollow cavity within.
Given a respite, Samuel tried to get Cicely into the circle. ‘Quickly,’ he urged her. She shook her head and resisted. Before she could speak, Samuel felt a stabbing pain in his side. He looked down to see the edge of a glaive biting into his flesh. The bestial skull of Marden’s vengeful spirit snapped its teeth at him and dug the blade deeper. Not all of the malignants, it seemed, had forgotten their original prey.
‘It’s me you want! Not father!’ Cicely screamed at the glaivewraith. She seized the weapon’s haft and struggled to pull it free. The apparition twisted about and gnashed its teeth at her.
‘Marden,’ Samuel groaned. There was still that echo of his son’s presence about the ghoulish entity. Enough to turn his insides cold as he swung the axe at the spectre but not enough to stay the attack. His axe crunched through the bestial skull, smashing through its jaw to pulverise the eye sockets.
Samuel didn’t know if the cleaving stroke dealt the glaivewraith any permanent harm, but as it recoiled from the assault, Cicely succeeded in wresting the weapon away from the stunned phantom. She reversed her grip and impaled the spirit on the bladed head. The apparition writhed for a moment, a mournful baying echoing from its jaws, then it lost cohesion, rags of its dark shape drifting off into the night.
The glaivewraith’s dying shriek brought several of the malignants spinning away from their fray with the templars. The masked revenant, reformed after Cicely’s attack, led a wailing pack of nighthaunts rushing towards Samuel and his daughter. Against the spectral mob, an axe and a phantasmal glaive wouldn’t accomplish much.
‘Bring them this way!’ Aaric shouted. The scholar’s voice descended into a litany of words in a language unknown to Samuel, but there was something about the sound that provoked hope. Without questioning Aaric’s intentions, the hunter shoved his daughter towards the circle.
Aaric had the pouch of celestial salts in his hand. As the fugitives ran towards him, he opened the bag’s mouth wide and made a sweeping throw. The shimmering powder struck the spectres in a billowing cloud. What happened next amazed Samuel.
The revenant at the fore of the pack began to dissolve, its ectoplasm spilling away from it in molten streams. The spectral substance sizzled as it splashed to the ground. The rusted mask, the dark shroud, even the massive sword, all dripped away like wax from a burning candle. In a matter of a few heartbeats, the apparition was utterly consumed. The wraiths and chainrasps behind it were likewise destroyed, the speed of their banishment dependent on the amount of celestial salt that had lighted upon them. None, however, could defy the powder’s potency.
Aaric sagged down within the middle of the circle, his face drawn and his breathing laboured. Whatever rite he’d performed to evoke the enchantment had clearly exhausted him. ‘A practice intended to be performed by one of Sigmar’s Stormcast Sacrosanct isn’t so easy for a mere mortal,’ he muttered, all but collapsing to the ground. ‘It is only by divine grace that I wasn’t annihilated along with the malignants.’
Samuel started towards the scholar to render him such feeble aid as he might, but then he heard Cicely’s horrified gasp. ‘Mother,’ she shuddered. Once again, he followed the direction of her gaze. The scythe-handed phantom was speeding towards them, the skull of the templar it had been fighting impaled upon one of its blades. The other bony blade was clear, however, and the spectre was eager to stain it with mortal blood instead of undead bone.
The hunter dove between the harridan and Cicely. ‘Forgive me,’ he pleaded as he swung his axe at the macabre remnant of his wife. Samuel’s distraught mind made for a sloppy attack. He struck too wide and missed the skull-like face. The harridan had no such sentimental baggage, all its kinder feelings purged by the transformation into a nighthaunt. The arm encumbered by the templar’s head lashed out and smashed into Samuel. He felt the detached skull shatter against his ribs, then the cruel bite of the scythe as it raked across his flesh.
‘Emelda,’ Samuel groaned as he struggled to remain standing. He tried to raise his axe to block the sweep of the harridan’s other blade, but he knew he wouldn’t be quick enough to save himself.
‘Mother!’ Cicely shrieked as she sprang at the spectre. The glaive punched through the middle of the harridan’s cowled shape. By main effort, Cicely swung the impaled phantom around, then slammed it into the earth. The entity screamed as it collided with the edge of Aaric’s protective circle. The ring of celestial salts blazed with blue light as it flared across the grim manifestation. Like cinders crackling in a strong draft, the harridan’s shape fragmented and was scattered into the wind.
‘Mother.’ Cicely cast aside the glaive, hurling it as though it were a venomous serpent. She stared down at her hands, hands that had twice committed matricide. Samuel could see the misery that twisted her visage, but no tears would flow.
His daughter was beyond tears. Samuel realised just how mightily the draining affliction had consumed her. She was so pale that he could see the veins under her skin, so drawn that she seemed a mere skeleton herself.
It was the thought of skeletons that alerted Samuel to a change that had come upon the cemetery. The crash of blades and the wailing of malignants had fallen away. He knew the harridan had settled one of Nagash’s templars, but what of the other?
Turning, the hunter found his answer. The skeletal swordsman stood amid the fading essence of the nighthaunts it had vanquished. The armoured bones of its unnatural construction were splintered and chipped, but there was enough left of its body to retain hold of the black sword it held. Enough animation left in its legs to set it marching towards Cicely.
Samuel could feel the blood trickling from his wounds. When he moved, a broken rib tore at his flesh. His battered and abused body urged him to desist, but his heart commanded otherwise. Perversely, only his metal arm remained strong. Firming his hold on his axe, he stumbled forwards to meet the undead templar. ‘You’ll not have her,’ he vowed, glaring defiantly at the remorseless skull.
A voice so deep it seemed to stir from below the cemetery rattled through the templar’s frame. ‘All that is mortal comes to Nagash. Today he demands the corrupt.’ The embers in the warrior’s eye sockets blazed angrily. ‘Do not be eager to speed your own dissolution.’
‘You’ll have to take her from me,’ Samuel spat. His eyes roved across the templar’s battered frame. The skeleton was damaged, but so was he. Any advantage its injuries might have afforded him were lost by his own weakness.
‘Relent and desist,’ Aaric commanded the templar. The skeleton turned its head to regard the scholar as he stepped out from the protective circle. ‘The evil you were sent here to stop has been stopped. Return to your tomb-temple.’
‘You have no command over me. The corrupt flesh must be rendered to Nagash,’ the sepulchral voice intoned. The templar pointed its sword at Aaric. ‘Those who would interfere are also forfeit.’
The skeleton warrior took a step towards Aaric. As it raised its blade, the scholar brandished his silvered sword. ‘I warn you again to relent.’
The words were wasted on the templar. Its nadirite sword clashed against Aaric’s silver. Mortal and undead strained against one another’s strength. Both had been weakened during the battle, but neither seemed able to overwhelm the other.
Suddenly, Aaric broke free. He dove to one side and let the templar stumble forwards. The skeleton shifted about with eerie agility and stabbed its blade at the scholar. The nadirite weapon narrowly missed Aaric’s shoulder, sinking into the ground instead. Before the templar could recover from its thrust, the silver sword flashed upwards. There was a flash of light as the blade slashed across the skeleton’s neck and sent its skull spinning away among the graves. The headless body remained standing for a moment, then shattered when it collapsed to the ground.
‘I’d hoped to avoid that,’ Aaric stated as he inspected the edge of his sword. ‘It’s not to be taken lightly, destroying a templar of Nagash. There may be repercussions, even for a man who was once one of Nagash’s generals.’ There was dread in the scholar’s eyes as he thought of the consequences that might be visited on him.
Samuel nodded. ‘You have our gratitude,’ he said, glancing back at Cicely.
Aaric fixed him with a stern look. ‘I meant what I told the templar. This evil ends here. Tonight.’
Samuel growled at the imperious tone. He hefted his axe once more, but his arm was dragged back down to his side by a cold, firm grip. He looked aside to see Cicely beside him, her face more wan than ever.
‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘I know you want to help me, but it’s too late. You have to let me go.’
Samuel shook his head, panic overwhelming his mind. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he insisted. ‘Use your magic to save yourself.’ He snapped the cord of the talisman he wore and threw it away. ‘Take me. Use my energy to sustain yourself!’
Cicely gave him a sad smile. ‘Even if I could, I’d never do that. I’ve done so many terrible things, some unwittingly, some deliberately. But I couldn’t do that.’ She held up her arm and showed him where her flesh had been pitted and scorched. Samuel could see shimmering flecks of celestial salt still burning their way through her body.
‘I’m already dead,’ Cicely said. ‘One of the undead.’ Samuel winced as his daughter’s appearance continued to decay before his eyes, becoming steadily more spectral. ‘For longer than I knew. It wasn’t only Marden the wolf killed. I died too that night.’
‘What happened?’ Aaric asked her. Though he was keen to hear her answer, Samuel saw his hand tighten about his silvered sword.
‘A man,’ Cicely said. ‘Verderghast, he called himself. I thought him an outcast physician, but he was in truth a necromancer. He couldn’t restore life, only usurp death.’ A shiver swept through her, and she stared down at her fading hands. ‘For a time, at least.’
‘Then we have to find him!’ Samuel snapped. ‘Force him to use more of his magic.’
Cicely frowned and stepped away from her father. ‘He’s gone. He got what he wanted from me, an enchanted needle black with my sins. He’s gone to spread more evil elsewhere. To conjure Mhurghast.’
Samuel felt a repugnance in the word, hearing it as he did now. Its effect on Aaric was even more pronounced. He paled and began to tremble. ‘Mhurghast? What did this man tell you about Mhurghast?’
‘Only that it is an evil even the gods cannot oppose,’ Cicely said, her breath fading into a hollow rasp. Her eyes darted to the talisman Samuel had thrown away. ‘I know what awaits me. To prolong it is more than I can endure.’
Too late, Samuel realised her intention. Cicely seized the talisman before he could move to stop her. Clutching it in both hands, she clasped it to her breast above her heart. The awful, gradual decline he’d noted, the withered pallor, now intensified. He saw the bones beneath her flesh as her skin became completely transparent. Then the bones themselves took on an ethereal quality. Cicely’s eyes lingered on Samuel before they too evaporated like mist before the sun.
‘Forgive me.’ His daughter’s voice rang in his ears. A last appeal for her father’s love. Then she was gone, vanished as though she’d never been. Aaric walked over and prodded the abandoned talisman with his toe. It crumbled into ash at his touch.
Samuel fell to his knees, the axe tumbling out of his nerveless fingers. The pain of his slashed and battered body was as nothing compared to the torment that filled his heart. ‘I should have let her do whatever she needed to. Helped her whatever way I could to keep her alive.’
Aaric set a consoling hand on the hunter’s shoulder. ‘She was already lost to you. You could have done nothing. She knew that at the end.’
‘Go back to Gothghul Hollow,’ Samuel snarled at the scholar. ‘If I’d never brought you to Felstein, my daughter would still be here.’
‘No, she wouldn’t,’ Aaric said. ‘She was marked, cursed to be consumed by Mhurghast.’
Samuel brushed his hand away. It didn’t matter how much truth there was in Aaric’s words; he didn’t want to hear them now. ‘Leave,’ he ordered. ‘You’ve done what you came here to do.’
‘Your wounds need tending,’ Aaric said, trying to pull Samuel to his feet. ‘And we must try to find this Verderghast.’
Samuel glowered at the scholar. ‘Whether I live or die, I want no more help from you.’ His voice dropped to a shallow cough. ‘As for Verderghast, if I did find him, there’s only one thing I’d want of him. I’d ask to go where my daughter’s gone.’
The hunter’s eyes brimmed with tears as he looked across the desolate graveyard. ‘I’d ask him to show me the way to Mhurghast.’
There was no terror for Samuel in that dread name now, only a desperate sense of longing. To join his daughter, to go where he wasn’t allowed to follow.
To embrace the torments of Mhurghast.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Age of Sigmar novels Overlords of the Iron Dragon, Profit’s Ruin, The Tainted Heart and Beastgrave, the novella Scion of the Storm in Hammers of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Horror novel Castle of Blood. For Warhammer he has written the novels Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Warhammer Chronicles: The Black Plague series. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer worlds.
An extract from Castle of Blood.
Magda brought the slim, rakish blade whipping around. The sword slashed across its target, ripping deep into the bloated paunch. Innards spilled out and streamed across the copper-sheeted floor. A smirk of satisfaction teased at the young woman’s lips. She quickly tried to correct herself and adopt a more sombre pose, but she already knew it was too late. She had exposed herself and would now suffer the price.
‘A lack of focus will get you killed.’ The scolding words rang across the room.
Samuel refused to accept what Aaric was telling him. He jumped across the shimmering line and took Cicely in his arms. ‘I’ve got you,’ he assured her. He turned back to the circle. He’d carry her into its protection if that was what it took.
Cicely struggled in his arms, trying to pull away. She felt impossibly cold. Impossibly light. It was as if Samuel was carrying a wisp of icy fog. When he looked down at her, he could see the bones beneath her pale skin. Her hair was like a tangle of shadow spilling from a fleshless skull. Her eyes were hollow specks glimmering at the bottom of deep pits. ‘It’s no good,’ she protested, her breath rank with death. ‘It’s too late. Save yourself.’
The hunter shook his head. ‘Without you, there’s nothing worth saving,’ he told his daughter. Around them, the other nighthaunts were closing in. There was just a narrow gap between the apparitions and the circle. Tightening his hold on Cicely, Samuel tried to dash between the spectres. A hideous revenant, a rusted mask under its cowl and a massive sword in its hands, barred his path. It thrust at him with its blade, and he felt the icy tip of the sword pierce his breast. Crippling pain brought him to his knees. He dropped Cicely, leaving her to roll across the ground. She screamed as she tumbled towards the circle and was thrown back by the celestial salts.
‘Get away from her!’ Samuel snarled as the revenant turned to Cicely and lifted its sword. He lunged at the spectre, passing through its ethereal body. His axe, however, crashed against the massive sword and pulled it away from its intended victim. Still partly inside the phantom, Samuel could feel its frustrated rage. A surge of ghoulish energy sizzled through him, and he was expelled from the wraith to land beside Cicely on the ground.
The revenant loomed above them, its blade poised to strike. ‘Get away!’ Cicely shouted at her father. In a wild spring, she threw herself towards the spectre and raked her hands against its mask. Her savagery was such that she ripped the rusted metal away. The revenant lost cohesion, drifting apart and spilling backwards. Then the mask Cicely held billowed away in a stream of black smoke, snaking through the air to rejoin the greater part of the disrupted malignant.
‘Hurry!’ Aaric called to Samuel.
‘Yes, go!’ Cicely implored her father. More of the nighthaunts closed in upon her, brandishing the mouldering weapons they bore in their bony hands.
Samuel only shook his head and raised his axe. He wouldn’t abandon his daughter. If that meant he would die, then he would die. Looking at the phantoms surrounding them, he accepted that there was no escape.
Suddenly, an anguished shriek rose from the spectral throng. Samuel could see one of the chainrasps writhing in its fetters, a black energy spreading outward from where a sword had pierced its chest from behind. The apparition rapidly dissipated, and this time its tatters didn’t come streaming back to reform its shape. When the chainrasp vanished, he could see its killer standing where it had been. One of Nagash’s templars wielding a nadirite sword. The fleshless warrior swept its merciless gaze across the graveyard, then slowly marched forwards. The other templar limped after it, guarding its flank with its spiked mace.
Exhibiting an uncanny unity of purpose, the nighthaunts shifted to confront the skeletal templars. A scythe-wielding wraith descended upon the swordsman, slashing its armoured arm so that it hung brokenly at the warrior’s side. A sweep of the nadirite blade cleft the phantom from crown to collar and its shadowy form rapidly evaporated. The maceman met the rush of a shrieking chainrasp, crushing it to the ground with a brutal blow of its weapon. The templar was in turn attacked by the harridan, one bony sickle shearing through the side of its skull and exposing the hollow cavity within.
Given a respite, Samuel tried to get Cicely into the circle. ‘Quickly,’ he urged her. She shook her head and resisted. Before she could speak, Samuel felt a stabbing pain in his side. He looked down to see the edge of a glaive biting into his flesh. The bestial skull of Marden’s vengeful spirit snapped its teeth at him and dug the blade deeper. Not all of the malignants, it seemed, had forgotten their original prey.
‘It’s me you want! Not father!’ Cicely screamed at the glaivewraith. She seized the weapon’s haft and struggled to pull it free. The apparition twisted about and gnashed its teeth at her.
‘Marden,’ Samuel groaned. There was still that echo of his son’s presence about the ghoulish entity. Enough to turn his insides cold as he swung the axe at the spectre but not enough to stay the attack. His axe crunched through the bestial skull, smashing through its jaw to pulverise the eye sockets.
Samuel didn’t know if the cleaving stroke dealt the glaivewraith any permanent harm, but as it recoiled from the assault, Cicely succeeded in wresting the weapon away from the stunned phantom. She reversed her grip and impaled the spirit on the bladed head. The apparition writhed for a moment, a mournful baying echoing from its jaws, then it lost cohesion, rags of its dark shape drifting off into the night.
The glaivewraith’s dying shriek brought several of the malignants spinning away from their fray with the templars. The masked revenant, reformed after Cicely’s attack, led a wailing pack of nighthaunts rushing towards Samuel and his daughter. Against the spectral mob, an axe and a phantasmal glaive wouldn’t accomplish much.
‘Bring them this way!’ Aaric shouted. The scholar’s voice descended into a litany of words in a language unknown to Samuel, but there was something about the sound that provoked hope. Without questioning Aaric’s intentions, the hunter shoved his daughter towards the circle.
Aaric had the pouch of celestial salts in his hand. As the fugitives ran towards him, he opened the bag’s mouth wide and made a sweeping throw. The shimmering powder struck the spectres in a billowing cloud. What happened next amazed Samuel.
The revenant at the fore of the pack began to dissolve, its ectoplasm spilling away from it in molten streams. The spectral substance sizzled as it splashed to the ground. The rusted mask, the dark shroud, even the massive sword, all dripped away like wax from a burning candle. In a matter of a few heartbeats, the apparition was utterly consumed. The wraiths and chainrasps behind it were likewise destroyed, the speed of their banishment dependent on the amount of celestial salt that had lighted upon them. None, however, could defy the powder’s potency.
Aaric sagged down within the middle of the circle, his face drawn and his breathing laboured. Whatever rite he’d performed to evoke the enchantment had clearly exhausted him. ‘A practice intended to be performed by one of Sigmar’s Stormcast Sacrosanct isn’t so easy for a mere mortal,’ he muttered, all but collapsing to the ground. ‘It is only by divine grace that I wasn’t annihilated along with the malignants.’
Samuel started towards the scholar to render him such feeble aid as he might, but then he heard Cicely’s horrified gasp. ‘Mother,’ she shuddered. Once again, he followed the direction of her gaze. The scythe-handed phantom was speeding towards them, the skull of the templar it had been fighting impaled upon one of its blades. The other bony blade was clear, however, and the spectre was eager to stain it with mortal blood instead of undead bone.
The hunter dove between the harridan and Cicely. ‘Forgive me,’ he pleaded as he swung his axe at the macabre remnant of his wife. Samuel’s distraught mind made for a sloppy attack. He struck too wide and missed the skull-like face. The harridan had no such sentimental baggage, all its kinder feelings purged by the transformation into a nighthaunt. The arm encumbered by the templar’s head lashed out and smashed into Samuel. He felt the detached skull shatter against his ribs, then the cruel bite of the scythe as it raked across his flesh.
‘Emelda,’ Samuel groaned as he struggled to remain standing. He tried to raise his axe to block the sweep of the harridan’s other blade, but he knew he wouldn’t be quick enough to save himself.
‘Mother!’ Cicely shrieked as she sprang at the spectre. The glaive punched through the middle of the harridan’s cowled shape. By main effort, Cicely swung the impaled phantom around, then slammed it into the earth. The entity screamed as it collided with the edge of Aaric’s protective circle. The ring of celestial salts blazed with blue light as it flared across the grim manifestation. Like cinders crackling in a strong draft, the harridan’s shape fragmented and was scattered into the wind.
‘Mother.’ Cicely cast aside the glaive, hurling it as though it were a venomous serpent. She stared down at her hands, hands that had twice committed matricide. Samuel could see the misery that twisted her visage, but no tears would flow.
His daughter was beyond tears. Samuel realised just how mightily the draining affliction had consumed her. She was so pale that he could see the veins under her skin, so drawn that she seemed a mere skeleton herself.
It was the thought of skeletons that alerted Samuel to a change that had come upon the cemetery. The crash of blades and the wailing of malignants had fallen away. He knew the harridan had settled one of Nagash’s templars, but what of the other?
Turning, the hunter found his answer. The skeletal swordsman stood amid the fading essence of the nighthaunts it had vanquished. The armoured bones of its unnatural construction were splintered and chipped, but there was enough left of its body to retain hold of the black sword it held. Enough animation left in its legs to set it marching towards Cicely.
Samuel could feel the blood trickling from his wounds. When he moved, a broken rib tore at his flesh. His battered and abused body urged him to desist, but his heart commanded otherwise. Perversely, only his metal arm remained strong. Firming his hold on his axe, he stumbled forwards to meet the undead templar. ‘You’ll not have her,’ he vowed, glaring defiantly at the remorseless skull.
A voice so deep it seemed to stir from below the cemetery rattled through the templar’s frame. ‘All that is mortal comes to Nagash. Today he demands the corrupt.’ The embers in the warrior’s eye sockets blazed angrily. ‘Do not be eager to speed your own dissolution.’
‘You’ll have to take her from me,’ Samuel spat. His eyes roved across the templar’s battered frame. The skeleton was damaged, but so was he. Any advantage its injuries might have afforded him were lost by his own weakness.
‘Relent and desist,’ Aaric commanded the templar. The skeleton turned its head to regard the scholar as he stepped out from the protective circle. ‘The evil you were sent here to stop has been stopped. Return to your tomb-temple.’
‘You have no command over me. The corrupt flesh must be rendered to Nagash,’ the sepulchral voice intoned. The templar pointed its sword at Aaric. ‘Those who would interfere are also forfeit.’
The skeleton warrior took a step towards Aaric. As it raised its blade, the scholar brandished his silvered sword. ‘I warn you again to relent.’
The words were wasted on the templar. Its nadirite sword clashed against Aaric’s silver. Mortal and undead strained against one another’s strength. Both had been weakened during the battle, but neither seemed able to overwhelm the other.
Suddenly, Aaric broke free. He dove to one side and let the templar stumble forwards. The skeleton shifted about with eerie agility and stabbed its blade at the scholar. The nadirite weapon narrowly missed Aaric’s shoulder, sinking into the ground instead. Before the templar could recover from its thrust, the silver sword flashed upwards. There was a flash of light as the blade slashed across the skeleton’s neck and sent its skull spinning away among the graves. The headless body remained standing for a moment, then shattered when it collapsed to the ground.
‘I’d hoped to avoid that,’ Aaric stated as he inspected the edge of his sword. ‘It’s not to be taken lightly, destroying a templar of Nagash. There may be repercussions, even for a man who was once one of Nagash’s generals.’ There was dread in the scholar’s eyes as he thought of the consequences that might be visited on him.
Samuel nodded. ‘You have our gratitude,’ he said, glancing back at Cicely.
Aaric fixed him with a stern look. ‘I meant what I told the templar. This evil ends here. Tonight.’
Samuel growled at the imperious tone. He hefted his axe once more, but his arm was dragged back down to his side by a cold, firm grip. He looked aside to see Cicely beside him, her face more wan than ever.
‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘I know you want to help me, but it’s too late. You have to let me go.’
Samuel shook his head, panic overwhelming his mind. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he insisted. ‘Use your magic to save yourself.’ He snapped the cord of the talisman he wore and threw it away. ‘Take me. Use my energy to sustain yourself!’
Cicely gave him a sad smile. ‘Even if I could, I’d never do that. I’ve done so many terrible things, some unwittingly, some deliberately. But I couldn’t do that.’ She held up her arm and showed him where her flesh had been pitted and scorched. Samuel could see shimmering flecks of celestial salt still burning their way through her body.
‘I’m already dead,’ Cicely said. ‘One of the undead.’ Samuel winced as his daughter’s appearance continued to decay before his eyes, becoming steadily more spectral. ‘For longer than I knew. It wasn’t only Marden the wolf killed. I died too that night.’
‘What happened?’ Aaric asked her. Though he was keen to hear her answer, Samuel saw his hand tighten about his silvered sword.
‘A man,’ Cicely said. ‘Verderghast, he called himself. I thought him an outcast physician, but he was in truth a necromancer. He couldn’t restore life, only usurp death.’ A shiver swept through her, and she stared down at her fading hands. ‘For a time, at least.’
‘Then we have to find him!’ Samuel snapped. ‘Force him to use more of his magic.’
Cicely frowned and stepped away from her father. ‘He’s gone. He got what he wanted from me, an enchanted needle black with my sins. He’s gone to spread more evil elsewhere. To conjure Mhurghast.’
Samuel felt a repugnance in the word, hearing it as he did now. Its effect on Aaric was even more pronounced. He paled and began to tremble. ‘Mhurghast? What did this man tell you about Mhurghast?’
‘Only that it is an evil even the gods cannot oppose,’ Cicely said, her breath fading into a hollow rasp. Her eyes darted to the talisman Samuel had thrown away. ‘I know what awaits me. To prolong it is more than I can endure.’
Too late, Samuel realised her intention. Cicely seized the talisman before he could move to stop her. Clutching it in both hands, she clasped it to her breast above her heart. The awful, gradual decline he’d noted, the withered pallor, now intensified. He saw the bones beneath her flesh as her skin became completely transparent. Then the bones themselves took on an ethereal quality. Cicely’s eyes lingered on Samuel before they too evaporated like mist before the sun.
‘Forgive me.’ His daughter’s voice rang in his ears. A last appeal for her father’s love. Then she was gone, vanished as though she’d never been. Aaric walked over and prodded the abandoned talisman with his toe. It crumbled into ash at his touch.
Samuel fell to his knees, the axe tumbling out of his nerveless fingers. The pain of his slashed and battered body was as nothing compared to the torment that filled his heart. ‘I should have let her do whatever she needed to. Helped her whatever way I could to keep her alive.’
Aaric set a consoling hand on the hunter’s shoulder. ‘She was already lost to you. You could have done nothing. She knew that at the end.’
‘Go back to Gothghul Hollow,’ Samuel snarled at the scholar. ‘If I’d never brought you to Felstein, my daughter would still be here.’
‘No, she wouldn’t,’ Aaric said. ‘She was marked, cursed to be consumed by Mhurghast.’
Samuel brushed his hand away. It didn’t matter how much truth there was in Aaric’s words; he didn’t want to hear them now. ‘Leave,’ he ordered. ‘You’ve done what you came here to do.’
‘Your wounds need tending,’ Aaric said, trying to pull Samuel to his feet. ‘And we must try to find this Verderghast.’
Samuel glowered at the scholar. ‘Whether I live or die, I want no more help from you.’ His voice dropped to a shallow cough. ‘As for Verderghast, if I did find him, there’s only one thing I’d want of him. I’d ask to go where my daughter’s gone.’
The hunter’s eyes brimmed with tears as he looked across the desolate graveyard. ‘I’d ask him to show me the way to Mhurghast.’
There was no terror for Samuel in that dread name now, only a desperate sense of longing. To join his daughter, to go where he wasn’t allowed to follow.
To embrace the torments of Mhurghast.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Age of Sigmar novels Overlords of the Iron Dragon, Profit’s Ruin, The Tainted Heart and Beastgrave, the novella Scion of the Storm in Hammers of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Horror novel Castle of Blood. For Warhammer he has written the novels Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Warhammer Chronicles: The Black Plague series. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer worlds.
An extract from Castle of Blood.
Magda brought the slim, rakish blade whipping around. The sword slashed across its target, ripping deep into the bloated paunch. Innards spilled out and streamed across the copper-sheeted floor. A smirk of satisfaction teased at the young woman’s lips. She quickly tried to correct herself and adopt a more sombre pose, but she already knew it was too late. She had exposed herself and would now suffer the price.
‘A lack of focus will get you killed.’ The scolding words rang across the room.
