[Darkblade 03] - Reaper of Souls

  The wight’s strength was terrible, flinging Malus backward as though he were a child. He crashed through the lectern, knocking the great tome across the polished floor and landed with a crash between two of the knights’ caskets. To Malus’ horror, he saw that they, too, were rising from their silk beds, their eyes ablaze and jaws gaping with wordless cries of rage.

  Malus got his feet underneath him and drew both of his swords as the undead knights leapt from their resting places with fearsome speed and attacked from both sides. Their long blades flashed like wands, faster than any living hand could wield them and the force of their blows almost drove Malus to his knees. Instead of giving ground, however, he counterattacked, feinting at the knight to his left and then spinning on one heel with a back-handed slash to the knight on his right. The highborn’s sword caught the undead knight just above the hip; parchment skin and brittle bones snapped, tearing the tomb guardian in half.

  Fierce and strong, but fragile, Malus noted with a savage grin as he turned his full attention to the remaining knight. He did so just in time to parry a crushing blow aimed at his chest. The highborn was pushed backwards by the force of the blow—and felt a cold hand close about his ankle. From where he lay on the floor the fallen knight smashed his sword into Malus’ back, the blade biting into the highborn’s armour and stunning him. Another blow from the second knight crashed into Malus’ left arm, sending a jolt of burning pain running from wrist to shoulder and knocking the blade from his left hand.

  With a feral snarl Malus stomped on the wrist clutching his ankle, shattering it beneath his heel, then brought back his foot and kicked the fallen knight’s head from his shoulders. As the splintered body collapsed, the highborn threw himself against the second knight, unbalancing it and driving it back against its casket. Dust burst from the seams of its armour as Malus grabbed the knight’s sword arm at the elbow and ripped it from its socket, then drove the hilt of his blade into the leering skull and sent it bouncing across the floor.

  Two down, six to go, Malus thought, pushing himself off the crumbling body when a bony hand as hard as steel closed around the back of his neck. The highborn had just enough time to cry out in rage before Eleuril’s wailing cry filled his ears and the Dagger of Torxus plunged into his side.

  Chapter Nine

  THE DAGGER’S PRICE

  The Dagger of Torxus bit deep and Malus Darkblade felt himself begin to die. There was a horrible, wrenching pain that wracked him from head to toe and it felt as though a part of him had been torn loose, leaving him unmoored in his own skin. The highborn felt his heart stop and the blood begin to pool in his flesh. All strength left him—distantly he heard the ringing clatter of his sword falling to the stones—and then as darkness flowed like oil into his eyes it seemed like his body was shrivelling from within, the flesh turning black and hard like cured meat and his bones hardening to stone. It was as though the dagger was a shard of the Outer Darkness itself, drawing in every shred of heat and life he had left and leaving behind a misbegotten husk that was neither fully daemon nor fully man. The last sound he heard was his own scream of pure, wordless horror.

  He awoke with a gasp, breathing in the dust of the grave.

  Dry air rattled in his ravaged throat, provoking a spasm of coughing that sent dull pain throbbing from his side through his entire body. His eyes felt as hard as polished stones, brushed by leathery eyelids. Malus could not say if he was warm or cold; those sensations seemed foreign somehow, as though he were formed of wood or stone instead of pale flesh.

  He lay on his back at the bottom of a high-walled casket, his head resting against satin cushions that crackled with age and stank faintly of corruption. His left leg was draped over the lip of the casket and felt heavy and numb. Malus wondered at the sensation, uncertain if the dead ever suffered the indignity of having a limb go to sleep. It seemed unlikely to his battered mind, so he was forced to accept the fact that he was somehow still alive. The damned prince had stabbed him with the dagger and then tossed him aside like a slaughtered rabbit.

  It was silent and dark inside the tomb. The musty air was thick with the smell of spilt blood and entrails. Slowly, painfully, Malus raised his left hand. His muscles creaked like old leather as he closed his fingers on the lip of the casket’s side and tried to pull himself upright. Even the faint caress of air against his face felt strange as his body struggled into a sitting position. With a start, it occurred to him that he couldn’t feel the beating of his heart. Had the dagger transformed him into one of the unquiet dead, like the prince and his undead knights?

  “But for me it would have, Malus,” the daemon said, the words rasping like saw teeth over Malus’ bones. “I saved you from an eternal prison even worse than my own.”

  The highborn leaned against the wall of the casket and used both hands to pull his numb leg over and stretch it out beside the other. For a moment, the limb remained heavy and lifeless, but then little by little he felt a rash of pinpricks spread from knee to toes. Malus gritted his teeth at the pain, but was grateful that he could at least feel something. This is your fault, daemon,” the highborn grated. “Were it not for you and your damnable quest I wouldn’t even be here.”

  “Were it not for you and your greed, you mean. No one made you put that ring on your finger, as I recall.”

  Malus noticed that a greenish glow was slowly suffusing the chamber, as though the witchlights in the tomb were designed to wake in the presence of the living and he only grudgingly met their criteria. In the waxing light the highborn realised he lay in the middle of a battlefield: dozens of armoured corpses lay in twisted heaps around the marble caskets and the dais of the prince. Sightless eyes stared accusingly at Malus from pale, blood-flecked faces, their expressions contorted in grimaces of terror and pain.

  It took several long moments for Malus to take it all in. As many as fifty men lay dead in the prince’s tomb, hacked and torn by the swords of the undead knights, but in the end, victory lay on the side of the living. Not one of the prince’s guardians could be seen and the prince himself was nothing more than a heap of tattered rags and splintered bones that some druchii had placed in an untidy pile at the foot of his upright casket.

  “The dagger is gone,” Malus groaned. “The survivors made off with it.” He didn’t need to paw through the bodies to be sure. The men who’d pitched their tents in the square hadn’t come to seek Eleuril’s blessing, but to rob him. If they were gone it meant that the dagger had gone with them.

  The highborn rubbed a hand over his face. His skin felt like boot leather. “How long have I lain here?”

  “A full day,” the daemon said. “The dagger took every bit of life from you that wasn’t already mine.”

  “What does that mean?” Malus said.

  “It means that you’re the first mortal to survive the bite of the Reaper of Souls,” the daemon said. “But only because you had no soul for it to take.”

  “And for that I should be grateful to you?”

  “The alternative was to become a tortured spirit, bound for all time to the spot where you were slain,” the daemon said. “Compared to the cruel power of the dagger I am the most benign of tyrants.”

  A hundred peevish comments bubbled to the surface of Malus’ mind, but at that moment he felt too wretched to debate the issue. “So Eleuril was indeed slain by the vengeful spirit of his wife?”

  “Him and his knights as well?” Tz’arkan sneered. “No, at the end of his life he allowed himself—and commanded his retainers—to be slain by the dagger in order to protect the druchii people from destruction. And he kept his vigil for millennia… until you came along, that is.”

  “Vigil? What are you talking about?”

  The daemon sighed. “Eleuril took the dagger from a Slaaneshi warlock named Varcan, who had himself gone into the Wastes and claimed it from a Chaos warlord there. Varcan was seeking the blade because he’d uncovered a prophecy that warned of a soulless man, who would one day take up the dagge
r and consume the druchii in blood and fire. When Varcan was arrested by Eleuril’s men, he swore to accept whatever punishments the prince deemed appropriate—so long as Eleuril would see to it that the dagger was kept safe. And the prince kept his word, even unto death. He was rather strange, as druchii went. Many thought him to be quite mad.”

  “You knew this?” Malus cried. “All along you knew I was walking into an ambush and you said nothing?”

  “Why bother?” the daemon replied. “It was just some old story about a prophecy. I thought you didn’t believe in such things.”

  The daemon’s laughter was lost beneath a torrent of vicious curses as Malus climbed over the side of the casket and dropped onto the carpet of bodies littering the floor. The highborn was still invoking the wrath of every spirit he could name when he landed on his wounded side and passed out from the sudden explosion of fiery pain.

  Some time later Malus’ eyes fluttered open again. The first sensation he registered was the cold feeling of spilt blood staining his aching side. Slowly, gingerly he pulled himself upright. The laboured pulse in his temples was more of a thin tapping than the pounding of a drum. The highborn tried to inspect his wound, but could discern little with his armour on beyond the triangle-shaped hole the weapon had made in his breastplate. “A vicious wound,” he hissed. “Daemon, much as I hate it, you will have to heal this. It will not close on its own.”

  “In time, Malus, in time,” Tz’arkan said. “I have already been too generous with my gifts of late. I will replenish some of your strength, but you will have to wait for the rest.”

  Malus felt the cold touch of the daemon spread through him and the pain lessened. His limbs regained some of their vigour and his heart ached as it laboured to greater life. The highborn took his mind off his wretched state by heaping still more curses on the daemon. Meanwhile, he began searching among the corpses for his swords.

  It was only after turning over the eighth or ninth body that Malus realised something. He studied the face of the man he’d just moved, a chill racing down his spine. “I know this wretch,” he said fearfully. “His father is a member of the vaulkhar’s personal retinue. These aren’t Urial’s men at all.”

  The highborn knelt among the bodies, considering the implications. Who else could have raised so large a force and knew of Malus’ interest in the dagger? After a moment, the answer was obvious. “Isilvar,” he hissed, his voice full of dread.

  “You suspect your other brother?” the daemon enquired.

  “Of course,” Malus said. “He has the money and the influence to raise such a warband and ample reason to oppose me.” The highborn nodded thoughtfully. He was also certain beyond any doubt that the hierophant of the Slaaneshi cult in Hag Graef was none other than Isilvar. Though he’d escaped the destruction of the cult, Malus had given Isilvar a terrible wound in his throat that would be a long time healing, if it ever did. “He knew that I’d been to the temple in the north and that I was your… servant,” Malus admitted. “It’s possible he would also know about the relics and their power to free you.”

  “Your logic is inescapable,” Tz’arkan said. Was there a hint of mockery in his voice? Malus couldn’t be certain. The question is: what will you do about it?”

  The highborn saw a familiar sword hilt glinting on the marble floor. He pulled the blade clear of the men lying upon it and used a fallen warrior’s hair to wipe the sword clean. “Clearly it would be a mistake to challenge Isilvar and his men on my own,” Malus said, sheathing his blade. “I’ll have to follow him back to the Hag and pay whatever price he asks in order to get the dagger from him.”

  “A costly but prudent plan,” the daemon said approvingly. “You are joking, of course.”

  “Of course,” Malus said darkly. “I’m going to run him down like a fox and hang his ears from my belt and if he gives me the dagger without too much trouble I might let him die with his manhood intact.”

  “I expected no less,” Tz’arkan replied. “If nothing else, Malus Dark-blade, you can be counted on to react to adversity with as much violence as physically possible.”

  It was nearly dawn by the time Malus emerged from Eleuril’s tomb. Every step to the base of the tower had been torture, pushing his ravaged body to the limit of endurance and beyond. By the time he staggered out into the empty square he was a haggard, shambling figure, his limbs working by virtue of sheer, burning hate and little else.

  The tomb raiders had wasted no time breaking camp and had at least a day’s ride head start. Malus assumed they would return to the Slavers’ Road and head west, past the blood-soaked walls of Har Ganeth and onward to the safety of Hag Graef. He had no intention of letting Isilvar and his men make it that far.

  More time was lost, however, before Malus could get Spite ready to travel. He found the cold one where he had left him, curled up within one of the empty buildings and noisily devouring a pair of horses. Judging by the saddles and tack that were still on the beasts, Malus deduced that the nauglir had succumbed to hunger and attacked the druchii column as it was leaving the necropolis. The cold one’s hide was studded with more crossbow bolts, but the highborn knew better than to approach the warbeast until it had eaten its fill. When the nauglir had finally gorged itself, Malus was able to get to his pack and eat some of the dry rations he had left, washing the dried meat and bread down with two cups of bitter horse’s blood. He still felt perilously weak and he reckoned there were days of hard riding ahead.

  By mid-day Spite’s wounds had been tended to and they started on the raiders’ trail. The rain had finally slackened to a cold, clinging mist that distorted sounds and concealed distant objects behind a veil of thick fog. Malus drove the nauglir on in a steady, tireless lope; it was well into the night when the highborn was forced to call a halt. Though Spite could have kept going for many hours yet, Malus had felt his strength leaching away little by little as the day progressed, until he was no longer convinced he could stay in the saddle. He led the nauglir into the empty shell of a smithy and propped himself against Spite’s scaly flank with both swords laid across his lap. Moments later he was asleep.

  He awoke at dawn, only slightly more refreshed. His lap and the stone floor were stained with red. Somehow he’d opened the knife wound in his sleep and when he saw the congealing pool of blood Malus wondered how close he’d come to simply not waking up at all. It was all he could do to choke down another meal of dry rations before climbing back into the saddle and setting out again.

  Malus spent the day delirious from blood loss and fatigue. Rain showers came and went, alternating with patches of weak grey sunlight that provided little warmth. The nauglir’s rolling gait was hypnotic. All too often he would jerk himself from some blank reverie with a start and realise many miles had passed without him being any the wiser.

  By the end of the day he had reached the far end of the valley. The entrance to the necropolis was a tall, free-standing gate, the pillars formed in the shape of two regal and forbidding dragons. The gate was carved in long, curving lines of those sinuous runes Malus remembered seeing in Eleuril’s tomb; he wondered if there was a druchii alive anywhere in Naggaroth that could still read and write the dead language of Nagarythe.

  Beyond the gate was a procession of statues, all worked in glossy black marble. They were carved in the image of tall, voluptuous druchii women, their naked bodies evoked in exquisite grace and detail. Long, curved talons grew from their fingertips and their sensuous mouths boasted terrible, leonine fangs. Malus supposed they represented guardian spirits from the forgotten myths of his people. They were forbidding figures and the highborn could not help but feel a sense of unease as he rode beneath their fearsome gaze.

  The barrow road was made of the same black stone as the necropolis and was wide enough for two riders to travel abreast. Of the raiders there was no sign.

  Malus pressed on after nightfall, determined to make up lost time, but as darkness gathered beneath the trees he found himself struggling to stay a
wake. He thought to try and swallow a little more dried meat, but after fumbling helplessly at the pack for several minutes he gave up. Before long he was leaning against the cantle, his head bobbing on his chest. The next thing Malus knew, he was lying on the grass beside the road. He hadn’t felt it when he’d hit the ground. The highborn looked around for Spite, but the nauglir was gone. Part of his brain warned that he needed to get up and find the cold one, but instead he curled up in a ball and fell asleep.

  He awoke hours later to the sound of crunching bones. Sunlight was streaming through the trees and Spite was resting on his haunches nearby, feasting on a boar he’d caught in the forest. When the warbeast was done with the carcass Malus crawled over and buried his face in the warm flesh, eating every scrap of meat he could reach. When he finally staggered to his feet his pointed chin was stained red and his chalk-white cheeks were streaked with black gore.

  As the day wore on Malus felt more of his strength return, until by the evening he was alert enough to notice the abandoned lodge at the base of the mountain. It lay just to the side of the barrow road, with a view of both it and the Slavers’ Road, less than fifty yards further south.

  The highborn slid wearily from the saddle and inspected the ancient structure. There were signs it had been used only the day before: there was an intact fireplace sheltered by a large square of solid roof and even a pile of dry wood laid nearby.

  The prospect of a warm fire and a roof to keep the rain away practically made Malus giddy with desire, but at the same time he knew that somewhere, farther down the road, the tomb raiders were settling into camp as well. If he didn’t keep moving while they rested, he would never catch them. Shaking his head wearily, the highborn returned to Spite and headed west.