All along the gunwale, dreadful figures with piercing green lights for eyes stared at him with hungry fervour. Pale corpses, rotted skeletons in corroded armour and hunched figures with water streaming from their wounds clutched spears, axes and short blades in their dead hands.
They streamed onto the land, a host of dead sailors come for revenge on the world of the living. Alwin heard the first screams from further along the quay. The sound broke through the paralysing terror that held his limbs fast, and he drew his sword, determined to fight these seaborne invaders with whatever courage he could muster.
He ran back to the Ormen Lange, seeing the clansman he had spoken to earlier crawling from the wreckage of his ship. Bloated, grey-skinned dead men hacked at him with sharp cutlasses. As soon as they saw Alwin, they abandoned their victim and lurched towards him with a dreadful hunger in their sunken, dead eyes.
Alwin wanted to ran, to live, but he was a Jutone warrior, and he brought his sword up.
“Come on then, you dead bastards!” he shouted, hurling himself at the damned.
His first blow clove a rotten corpse in two. Its flesh was soft and yielding, and his blade easily cut through its sodden meat. Alwin slashed the neck of another drowned man, and a froth of stagnant water bubbled from the wound. A grinning skeleton came at him and he slammed his blade through its skull, dropping it in a clatter of bone. The dead pressed in, dying by the dozen, but they poured in unending numbers from the hundreds of ships.
He buried his sword in the guts of another waterlogged corpse, twisting the handle to relieve the suction of wet flesh on the blade. A corpse fastened its teeth on his arm and bit through the meat there. Alwin cried out and punched the dead thing in the face. Its jellied eye squirted ooze, momentarily blinding him, but momentarily was all the opening the undead needed.
Clawed hands fastened on his throat and tearing limbs pinned his arms to his side, as they bore him to the ground. Sharpened teeth gnawed at his flesh and Alwin’s sword was torn from his grip. He struggled furiously, but there were too many and the pain was too great. He screamed as they devoured him, biting chunks from his legs and stomach like warriors with hunks of roast boar at a victory feast. Blood burst from his mouth, and the stink of it drove his killers to fresh heights of hunger.
Alwin’s last sight was the beacon fire atop the Tower of Tides as it died, plunging the world into a darkness which it could never survive.
The muster fields of Three Hills were thick with horses and the clamour of warriors. Maedbh wound a careful path through the thousands of people gathered here, nodding to those she knew and picking out the differing tattoos of various tribal sword bands. Even within the Asoborns there were fiercely clannish groupings, and though they were united by Queen Freya’s call to arms, each swaggered with something to prove.
At the centre of the maelstrom, Freya directed her warriors with fiery sweeps of her spear and shouted pronouncements. Her twin boys were at her side, their faces downcast and sullen. Maedbh could guess the reason why, now understanding a measure of Wolfgart’s reluctance to see Ulrike trained in the arts of war.
Five hundred chariots were lined up along the edge of the field or rolled in to take up position by the rutted track that led towards the river. Two acres of forest had been felled to corral the horses and a neverending train of wagons was assembling on the far side of the hills to carry their fodder. Sword bands in their hundreds milled around the field, warriors from all across Asoborn lands greeting one another like long lost friends. Many of these warriors would not have seen each other for years, and Maedbh lamented that it took times of such darkness to bring them together.
Ulrike walked beside her, holding tightly to her hand. Every night since the attack of the wolves, she had woken in the darkness, screaming and weeping uncontrollably. Maedbh had held her tight, hating that her little girl was suffering like this. She remembered her own first blood, a desperate chariot ride before a mob of greenskins raiding the eastern lands of the Asoborns. Freya’s mother, Queen Sigrid, had broken the enemy horde, but Maedbh never forgot the exhilarating terror of riding close enough to the enemy that she could smell their rank, rotten-meat breath and feel the bite of their axes on her chariot.
“Is the queen going to fight the wolves?” asked Ulrike.
“Yes, my dear,” said Maedbh. “That’s exactly what she’s going to do. All these men and women are going to ride south and hunt them down. They’re going to kill every one of them so they never hurt anyone ever again. Do you understand me? The queen doesn’t tolerate bad wolves in her lands.”
“Good,” said Ulrike. “I hope they kill them all. I hate wolves.”
“Those weren’t real wolves,” said Maedbh, stopping and coming down to Ulrike’s level. She looked her daughter in the eye and said, “Real wolves are servants of Ulric, the god you were named for, so don’t hate them. Those things that attacked us were once noble wolves, but an evil man made them into monsters with his dark magic.”
Ulrike nodded, though Maedbh saw she was yet to be convinced. Maedbh led her through the sword muster, passing mail-clad fighters of the east, bare-chested horse archers of the hill folk, colourfully tattooed women of the Myrmidian sects and burly horsemen from the northern woodlands with their long iron-tipped lances. Everywhere she heard proud boasts of the monsters the warriors would kill, tall tales of martial prowess and bravado, but it rang hollow to Maedbh’s ears.
Mixed in with the Asoborns were perhaps two hundred Brigundians and a hundred Menogoth warriors; all that had survived the invasion of the dead. Hundreds of refugees from both tribes were sheltered in Three Hills, but these men, with their grief-etched faces and hollow eyes, sought only vengeance. Maedbh didn’t blame them; their lands had been ravaged, their homes destroyed and their families murdered. With nothing left to lose, they were only too glad to join the Asoborn war muster.
Maedbh knew how she would feel if Three Hills suffered as their lands had suffered, and that thought gave her stride fresh purpose as she marched through the uprooted warriors towards the Asoborn queen.
Freya stood beside her chariot, a gold and bronze creation of deadly power. Its sides were reinforced with iron cords and layered wood against the grain. Golden fire was inlaid in finely crafted carvings of flaming wheels and blazing cornets. A dozen of the Queen’s Eagles surrounded her, mounted on tall, wide-chested geldings, their golden-winged helms shining like sunlight on silver. Sigulf and Fridleifr harnessed two beasts Maedbh recognised as having once belonged to Wolfgart’s herds to the chariot, though it was clear the boys were less than happy with their mother.
Freya herself was clad in her finest armour of bronze and iron, and, as always, the queen was attired to impress as much as protect. Bronze mail hung in a weave from her shoulders, and the plates protecting her chest and belly were moulded to the form of the muscles beneath. Iron greaves and vambrace were strapped to her shins and forearms, leaving the curved sway of her hips and thighs bare. A scarlet cloak was pinned to her shoulders with silver brooches in the form of snarling wolves.
“Maedbh!” cried the queen as she saw her approach. “A fine gathering is it not?”
“Yes, my queen, very fine,” said Maedbh, looking around the muster field. “How many answered the call to arms?”
“All of them it seems,” laughed Freya. “Near five hundred chariots, two thousand warriors on foot and a half century of horsemen. A host to chase the dead back to their tombs, eh?”
“A mighty army indeed,” answered Maedbh. “Our lands must be empty of warriors.”
The queen nodded, her face darkening at Maedbh’s insinuation. “I know you think me rash to ride off like this, and, yes, this muster will leave us vulnerable for a while. But brother Siggurd’s lands are aflame and what manner of queen would I be if I left his murder unavenged? You heard what Sigmar’s herald said, the dead are rising everywhere and the Menogoths are already gone. Now Siggurd’s city is taken and our southernmost scouts say there’s an army
moving on Three Hills. No one invades my lands, Maedbh, no one.”
“I understand, my queen,” said Maedbh. “But I have faced this enemy, and it is not cowed by threats, boasts or reputations. It is a foe that lives to kill and create more of its kind.”
“You can still come, Maedbh. I need you with me,” said Freya, indicating her chariot. “I can find another rider when battle is joined, but no one has your skill with a chariot. No one has your fire and daring.”
Maedbh glanced down at Ulrike, pulled by the desire to ride with her queen and the need to protect her daughter. She had crewed Freya’s chariot ever since the queen had taken the throne, and the idea that she would go into battle without Maedbh rankled. Yet one look at her daughter’s need told her she could not ride with this army. In that moment she understood the demands on Wolfgart, but to Maedbh, the choice was clear. She could not leave Ulrike.
“Thank you, my queen,” said Maedbh, “but I cannot. I have Ulrike to think of.”
The queen shrugged and said, “Your child is blooded now, she should ride with us too.”
Anger touched Maedbh. “As Sigulf and Fridleifr do?”
The queen’s face darkened and she climbed aboard her chariot.
“You know why they do not march with me,” hissed Freya, mercurial as ever. “If you will not ride with me, then I charge you to protect them. Keep my boys safe, Maedbh, promise me this and I might forget your insolence.”
“I will watch over them as though they were my own,” promised Maedbh.
Freya smiled, her earlier anger forgotten.
“I know you will,” said the queen. “I will leave a sword band of my Eagles too, but it is a great honour I do you, Maedbh.”
“I understand, my queen,” said Maedbh, bowing as Freya took her sons in a crushing embrace. The queen hugged them to her breast, whispering something to each of them in turn and pushing them towards Maedbh. They stood with Ulrike, hurt that they were not riding to war with their mother and resentful that they were under the protection of another.
Freya took up a spear from her chariot and raised its bronze blade high. At her signal, the Asoborns let loose a whooping war shout, which was taken up by every warrior gathered in the muster field. The queen of the Asoborns cracked the reins and her chariot rumbled away, leading her army towards the route south.
Maedbh watched her go, her heart heavy at the sight of so many warriors going into battle without her, yet secretly relieved she wouldn’t have to leave her daughter. She looked at the three children she was now beholden to protect, and the maternal urge flowed through her entire body.
She would die before she allowed any harm to come to these youngsters.
“Are you our guardian now?” asked Sigulf.
“Yes,” said Maedbh. “I am.”
——
Unwelcome Guests
The view from the top of the Raven Hall was spectacular, and Princess Marika never tired of looking out over Endal lands. A relentless grey twilight gripped the day, as it had done for the last few weeks, but on a clear day it was possible to see all the way to the Great Road and the marshes beyond. She suppressed an involuntary shiver at the thought of the marshes, recalling an unhappier time when Aldred had almost sacrificed her to the mist daemons to save their ailing kingdom.
Marika and her brother had publicly made their peace, though she could never quite forget the nearness of her death. As count of Marburg, Aldred had done what he thought best to lift the curse from his people, his good intentions twisted by Idris Gwylt, a manipulative priest of an ancient faith now outlawed in the Empire. That didn’t make it any easier for her to forgive.
Gwylt was dead now, executed in the manner of the Thrice Death, but Marika still woke with the stink of the daemon queen in her nostrils more nights than not.
The reek of the swamp took her back to that dark time, but she was a princess of the Endals and destined for great things. As a child, a soothsayer had told her that she would one day bear the first king of a great city of union, a place of wealth and prosperity that would one day stand taller than all others. It was a child’s fantasy, yet one that made her smile on a day like this, when even a child’s dream was a welcome relief from grim reality.
“So many of them,” said Eloise, her lady in waiting, her hands clasped before her heart in an unconscious supplication to Shallya. “Those poor people.”
Marika shook her head, thinking there were no more than two thousand people trudging along the coast road towards Marburg.
“So many? No, it should be a lot more,” she said. “Jutonsryk was a mighty city. This is less than a third of its population.”
“Where are the rest of them?” asked Eloise, and Marika rolled her eyes. Servants could be wilfully dense sometimes.
“They’re dead,” said Marika, turning and making her way towards her brother’s chambers.
She found Aldred with Laredus in the throne room of the Raven Hall, donning his armour in preparation for meeting his fellow count. Laredus helped buckle Aldred’s bronze breastplate, its front moulded to replicate abdominal muscles Marika knew were nowhere near as sculpted as the armour would suggest. Aldred pulled his sword belt around his waist, shifting Ulfshard’s hilt to be within easy reach.
Twin shafts of weak sunlight shone through the eyes of the carved raven’s head that surmounted the top of the tower, and a warm fire burned in the hearth, filling the glossy-walled chamber with glistening reflections. It was a cold room, one that had seen its share of bad decisions in its time. She had long since vowed to see that no more were made here.
Her brother wore a long dark cloak of feathers, and as she watched Laredus buckle on the last portions of Aldred’s armour, Marika saw an all too familiar melancholy settle upon Aldred. Laredus lifted a tall, black-winged helm from the armour stand behind the count’s ebony throne, where the majestic Raven Banner was seated in a socket cut into the backrest.
Marika took her brother’s hands and looked into his sad features. The years had been difficult for him. The death of their father at Black Fire cast a long shadow, and when their brother Egil died of the mist daemons’ plague, a black outlook had settled upon Aldred like an indelible stain on his soul.
“You should hurry,” said Marika, adjusting his cloak. “He’ll be at the gates soon.”
“They’re here?” asked Aldred without looking up at her. “They’ve moved fast.”
“So would you with the dead nipping at your heels,” she said.
“I suppose,” he answered as Laredus handed him his helmet. Aldred tucked it in the crook of his arm and said, “How do I look?”
“Grand,” replied Laredus. The captain of the Raven Helms was a warrior born, a man who had fought all manner of enemies in his service to the royal bloodline of the Endals. “You do your fellow count honour to meet him warrior to warrior.”
“He’s damned lucky I’m meeting him at all,” said Aldred. “The man’s insufferable. First he refuses to stand with us at Black Fire, and then we have to lay siege to his city to earn his Sword Oath. Now he’s a hero of the Empire? I’ve a damn good mind to shut the gates on him and his bloody people.”
“Don’t be foolish,” said Marika, moving in close and adjusting his sword belt. “What kind of message does that send? You will be gracious and welcoming.”
“His people drove us from our homes,” said Aldred.
“Thirty years ago, after the Teutogens drove them from theirs,” pointed out Marika.
“Semantics.”
“History.”
“History,” he grunted, “Is written by those who now live in lands they took by force.”
“No, it’s written by scribes cleverer than you and I,” she said. “Now come on, you don’t want to keep Marius waiting.”
Aldred eyed her suspiciously. “If I didn’t know better I’d swear you were in a hurry to meet this mercenary.”
Marika smiled. “Marius may be a mercenary, but he is a count of the Empire.
You should remember that.”
“Like you’ll let me forget,” he muttered.
The gates of Marburg swung open and a group of blue-cloaked horsemen rode through on tired mounts. Most were warriors, their armour torn and mud-stained, though one was a young man who was clearly no horseman. A scribe perhaps? Their mounts were lathered and winded, and Marika saw they were near the end of their endurance. Only a fool would ride their mount to such extremes, but what other choice was there when death was the only other fate?
The cobbled courtyard was lined with spearmen in the blacks and browns of the Endals, and a lone piper filled the air with a skirling lament. The lancers looked uneasy, as well they might, for the Endals and Jutones had long been enemies. The coming of the Empire had made them allies, but no amount of Sword Oaths could erase the memory of centuries of bitter fighting.
Count Marius rode at the head of his lancers, incongruous amongst their raggedness by looking as though he had just stepped from his dressing room in search of a grand feast. His long blond hair was kept from his classically handsome features by a silver band, and his blue eyes regarded the warriors lining the courtyard with amused disdain. Where his warriors were dirty and weary, his clothes were immaculate and tailored to make the most of his lean physique. Marika had met Marius briefly atop the Fauschlag Rock the previous year, and had been dazzled by his quick wit, easy smile and roguish charm. Though she bore as much ancestral antipathy towards the Jutones as any Endal, she had found herself warming to him and the cosmopolitan description of his coastal city.
That city was now gone, scoured of all life by an invading fleet of the dead, and all that remained was a decaying charnel house. Or so the fastest refugees had told it. Looking at the bedraggled column of frightened people travelling in the wake of Marius, she was inclined to believe that description.
Marius rode toward Aldred and dismounted. The Raven Helms tensed, though there was surely no threat here. In a gesture of uncharacteristic humility, the dispossessed count of the Jutones dropped to one knee and bowed his head.