Workmen waved as they passed, and Sigmar held Ghal Maraz out for his subjects to see, holding the weapon aloft until they rode out of sight of the work-gangs and into the wild reaches of the forest. The regular sound of axes biting into timber was soon swallowed by the thick woodland, and Sigmar shivered as the trees seemed to crowd in that little bit closer.
He looked into the forest on either side of him, unable to see further than ten or fifteen feet.
Anything could be lurking in the darkness, and Sigmar’s hand slipped back onto the haft of Ghal Maraz. A palpable tension descended on Sigmar’s warriors as they appreciated how isolated they were. The sensation was not entirely unwelcome and as their guide, a huntsman named Tomas, led them deeper into the shadowy reaches of the forest, Sigmar had a potent sense of venturing into the unknown.
As though picking up on his thoughts, Redwane leaned over and said, “Are you sure this man knows where he’s going? It doesn’t look like anyone’s come this way in years.”
Sigmar had to agree with the young White Wolf. Their route was overgrown, and tangled with plants and gently waving ferns. He could barely see the faint trail of hard-packed earth that wound its way between the trees.
Without looking back, Tomas said, “You’re welcome to try and find your own way, boy.”
Their guide was a tall and rangy Thuringian, clad in leather and buckskin that blended with the neutral tones of the forest. A long-hafted axe was sheathed on his back and, unusually for one of Count Otwin’s subjects, he carried a compact recurved bow, Taleuten by the craft of it.
“Redwane meant no disrespect, friend Tomas,” said Sigmar. “Though the trail does look abandoned.”
“It’s not,” said Tomas. “Few use this path now, only foresters and hunters. And good ones don’t leave signs of their passing.”
“What about the bad ones?” quipped Redwane.
“They end up dead. The forest doesn’t forgive mistakes.”
“You travel this way regularly?” asked Sigmar as Redwane made a face of mock terror at the huntsman’s back. Tomas nodded.
“Aye,” he said. “End of each hunting season I’ll take my furs north to the Fauschlag Rock. Wolf, deer and fox mainly, but sometimes I get a bear. Trade them for supplies to last out the winter.”
“A hard life,” said Sigmar.
The huntsman shrugged, as though he hadn’t given the matter any thought. “No harder than most, I suppose. I don’t like towns. I like the peace of the forest.”
“How long till we reach Middenheim?” asked Redwane.
Tomas looked up. “A week. Maybe less if the weather holds.”
The huntsman pushed deeper into the forest ahead and, careful to keep his voice low, Redwane said, “A dazzling conversationalist, eh? Makes Alfgeir look like a blabbermouth.”
“He is a man who spends a lot of time on his own,” said Sigmar, “and someone who can bring a bear down on his own is clearly not a man to antagonise.”
Redwane nodded, glancing over at Tomas and the well-used axe on his back.
“I take your point,” he said.
“Still,” continued Sigmar, “I like the idea that we are treading paths few others have followed. It feels as though we are discovering somewhere new, for the empire is becoming a smaller place.”
Seeing Redwane’s confusion, Sigmar said, “The roads I am building are bringing lands once thought unreachable within our grasp. As traders from Jutonsryk and beyond the southern mountains forge new trade routes throughout the land, it sometimes feels as though the unknown places of the world are becoming fewer and farther between.”
“That’s a good thing, surely?”
“Yes,” agreed Sigmar. “While my intellect rejoices at the idea of unlocking the land for my people, allowing trade and travel to flourish, my heart mourns the passing of its mysteries. Soon there will be no secret places left in the world, and the light of civilisation will usher in a new age.”
“Sounds grand,” said Redwane, though Sigmar knew the young warrior did not grasp the implications of a land made small by the expansion of man. As much as the world needed illumination, it needed the promise of realms unexplored to drive the imagination.
Sigmar remembered journeying south to Siggurdheim and the sense of boundless space he had felt while alone in a landscape free from the stamp of civilisation. Travelling through the northern forests had awakened that wanderlust in Sigmar, and he felt the excitement of an explorer daring to brave new horizons.
He wondered how much longer this would last, for loggers were clearing forests all across the empire. New towns and farms and grazing land were emerging every day, and his people were carving out their homes in areas that had once been beast-haunted wilderness. It seemed as though the forest and lands of the empire were limitless, but Sigmar knew they were not.
What would happen when the land grew too small for his people?
——
Curse of the Dead
Middenheim, City of the White Wolf. The sheer pinnacle of rock looming from the forest canopy never failed to amaze Sigmar. More than a thousand feet high, the mighty Fauschlag Rock dominated the landscape for miles around, inescapable and impossible.
Stark against the evening sky, Middenheim towered over the land of mortals like the home of the gods, an impregnable bastion whose summit glittered with light. Sigmar followed the road towards the granite-hewn gate fortress at the base of the rock, feeling a strange unease settle upon him as he glanced towards the towering Middle Mountains beyond the city.
Spreading into the north-east, they were a bleak and inhospitable range of jagged peaks and soaring cliffs, perpetually wreathed in snow and flensed by icy winds from the far north. Inhuman monsters made their lairs deep within the mountains, and many expeditions to purge them from its haunted valleys and shadowed gorges had ended in disaster.
Cresting the last rise before the city, Sigmar saw the forests around the city had been cleared for almost a mile in every direction, and a vast expanse of canvas tents surrounded the base of the rock like a besieging army. Looking closer, he saw that the tent city was instead home to carpenters, builders, stonemasons and labourers.
If Sigmar had thought that the work on the road linking Middenheim with Reikdorf was impressive, it was nothing compared to the scale of industry that surrounded the Fauschlag Rock. Thousands of craftsmen toiled in makeshift quarries and carpentry shops to service the construction of the giant structure rearing from a wide clearing in the forest floor.
Like an ever-ascending bridge of stone aimed at the summit of the Fauschlag Rock, a giant viaduct rose from the ground at the southern compass point of the city. The viaduct climbed to around a hundred feet before coming to an abrupt end, a forest of scaffolding clinging to its sides like vines on some ancient ruin. Workmen swarmed around its upper reaches on rope pulleys and harnesses, and the sound of hammers, chisels and saws reminded Sigmar of the clash of iron in a battle.
“Great Ulric’s beard,” hissed Redwane as the full scope of the work was laid out before them. “How in the world did they ever…”
“Pendrag is a clever man, and he had some help from the dwarfs,” said Sigmar, pointing to a number of short, stocky figures in iron shirts and pot helmets at the top of the viaduct. “This is only the first of four of such structures Pendrag plans to build.”
“Four!”
“If Middenheim is going to be one of the great cities of the empire, it is going to have to be easier to get to than it is now,” said Sigmar. “Until the viaduct is complete, we have to travel to the summit on one of the chain lifts.”
Redwane shielded his eyes from the setting sun as he followed the swaying progress of one of the chain lifts as it made its juddering way from the ground to the timber structure that leaned out from the top of the rock. Sigmar smiled as he saw the young warrior’s face pale.
“Of course, if you really want to prove your courage, you could climb the rock like I did.”
“
You climbed that?” asked Redwane. “From the ground up?”
“I did,” said Sigmar, still amazed that he had dared attempt so dangerous a climb. “So did Alfgeir. But then we were young and foolish. Or at least I was.”
“And you killed Artur once you got to the top?”
Sigmar nodded, remembering the desperate fight with the Teutogen king, and the soul-chilling fall he had taken through the Flame of Ulric that burned eternally at the heart of the peak’s summit. In that glacial moment, he had felt the briefest touch of a power greater than any mortal mind could hope to perceive. As he had felt its touch, it too had sensed his presence. The cold, pitiless echo of that moment had never left him.
“I regretted killing Artur,” said Sigmar. “He was once a good man, but he had grown arrogant atop his fortress, and thought himself above all men.”
“But not you, eh?”
“No,” said Sigmar sadly. “Not me.”
Their Thuringian guide had left them yesterday, when the towering spire of Middenheim had come into sight. The taciturn huntsman had merely taken his coin and vanished into the forest without any word of goodbye. Sigmar had been sorry to see Tomas go, for he had liked the man’s self-reliance and independence.
They rode towards the gate fortress along temporary roads of rough-laid stone, passing workshops of carvers and stonemasons, assembly shops of carpenters and scaffold makers, hospitals, cook tents and the hundred other trades required for so colossal an undertaking. Numerous guild flags were planted throughout the campsite, and Sigmar recognised many of them as having worked on the buildings of Reikdorf.
In the years that Sigmar had spent campaigning in the west, Reikdorf had grown and prospered, with the great library taking shape in its heart and many new temples erected within its walls. Though it broke his heart to leave so soon after the successful conclusion to the war against the Jutones, a request for aid from his oldest friend could not be ignored.
As he led his warriors through the enormous camp, Sigmar felt a strange unease settle upon him, like a cold wind blowing with the breath of despair. He looked to the eastern mountains, and felt ancient eyes of incalculable evil watching him. For the briefest second, a profound sense of hopelessness swept over him, as though his very existence were meaningless in the face of death’s inevitability.
Sigmar shook off the feeling, but as he watched the sullen faces of the camp’s inhabitants, he saw he was not alone in this feeling. An unspoken fear hung over the camp, men and women moving with leaden steps and expressions of hopelessness. On the journey northwards, the people he had seen had welcomed them and smiled with each new dawn, but around Middenheim it was as if the sun were setting on the last day, and no one believed it would ever rise again.
“What in the name of all that is good is wrong here?” asked Redwane, riding alongside Sigmar. “It’s like everyone’s mother suddenly dropped down dead.”
“I do not know,” said Sigmar as the wide drawbridge of the gate fortress lowered. “Pendrag will tell us more when we reach the summit.”
Redwane looked up as a series of chain lifts rattled and clattered their way down the sheer cliff face of the Fauschlag Rock, and he swallowed nervously at the thought of ascending the rock in such a contraption.
“Couldn’t we wait until the viaduct’s finished?” asked the White Wolf.
Pendrag and Myrsa were waiting when Sigmar stepped from the chain lift and onto the roofed platform built out from the rock on a series of mighty cantilevers. His sword-brother had changed in the five years since he had last seen him, but Sigmar hid his surprise. Pendrag’s waist had thickened and the cares of the world, which he had always carried in his eyes, seemed magnified by the dread that seeped from the mountains. His flame-red hair was no less wild, and his joy at seeing Sigmar was like the first rays of sunlight after a winter of darkness.
Pendrag swept Sigmar into a crushing embrace, and the two men laughed at the sight of one another. Sigmar held his brother’s shoulders as they relished this long overdue meeting.
“Damn me, Sigmar, but it’s good to see you,” said Pendrag when he finally released him.
“You are a sight for sore eyes, Pendrag,” replied Sigmar. “Wolfgart sends you his best.”
“The rogue isn’t with you?” asked Pendrag, his disappointment clear.
“He wanted to come, but I told him that he needed to spend time with his family,” said Sigmar. “Ulrike is nearly four now. Even if I hadn’t forbidden him to come north, Maedbh would have cut off his manhood had he tried to ride out with me.”
“Aye, she’s a fierce one, right enough,” said Pendrag, as Sigmar turned to Myrsa and took his wrist in the warriors’ grip.
Where Pendrag had changed, Myrsa was as solid and untouched by the passing of the years as his mountain home. His white armour was polished and pristine, his grip as firm as ever and his eyes like chips of ice.
“My lord,” said the Warrior Eternal. “Welcome to Middenheim.”
Myrsa was pleased to see him, but where Pendrag greeted Sigmar like the old friend he was, the Warrior Eternal welcomed him as an Emperor. As he released Myrsa’s wrist, Sigmar was reminded of the Hag Woman’s warning not to let the Warrior Eternal die before his time. It had seemed like a ridiculous request then, and seemed doubly so now. How could any man promise such a thing?
“It is good to be here,” said Sigmar as his White Wolves formed up behind him. Ten warriors had accompanied Sigmar in the chain lift, and they looked anxiously at the creaking wooden floor, conscious that there was nothing beneath it but fresh air and the ground hundreds of feet below. “I have left it too long to come north, but there has been much to do in the west.”
“So I hear,” smiled Pendrag. “Two years… Jutonsryk must have been a tough nut to crack.”
“It was,” admitted Sigmar. “I could have used some of your dwarfs to help break it open.”
Pendrag led Sigmar and his bodyguards from the platform and onto the streets of Middenheim, as the lifts descended to bring more White Wolves to the summit.
Despite his outward calm, Sigmar was grateful to feel solid rock beneath his feet, and he was once again struck by the distinctive architecture of this northern city. It was as if the close-packed buildings had been carved out of the rock, dour and low-roofed, with little in the way of ornamentation. They were crowded together, as Sigmar would expect of a city with a finite amount of land on which to build. Few were higher than two storeys, for unforgiving winds whipped across the Fauschlag Rock and quickly toppled any structure that dared to test its power. Many of the buildings bore the hallmarks of dwarf craftsmanship, but even these solid structures clung close to the surface of the rock.
The people of the north were hardy and pragmatic, and their dwellings were a reflection of that grim temperament. Most of the city’s inhabitants were dark-haired and broad-shouldered, as firm and unbending as their city. Though Sigmar sensed the same unnatural gloom that possessed the camp below, he saw an impressive determination to resist it.
The busy streets were narrow and filled with people, far more than Sigmar remembered from his last visit to Middenheim, and Myrsa’s plate-armoured warriors were forced to clear a path with shouted oaths and blows from their scabbarded greatswords.
“So many people,” commented Redwane.
“Aye,” said Pendrag guardedly. “The city is almost full.”
Sigmar sensed a deeper meaning in Pendrag’s words, but saved his questions for later as they forged a path through the crowds.
“I doubt I could have spared you any of the mountain folk,” said Pendrag answering Sigmar’s earlier comment. “Without them we wouldn’t have managed to get the viaduct so high in so short a rime. In any case, you took Jutonsryk in the end, though I’m still amazed that Marius swore his Sword Oath with you. I thought he would die first.”
Sigmar shook his head.
“Marius is no fool,” he said, “and if a Sword Oath was the price of his life and his city’s fort
une, then he was more than willing to give it.”
“The man is an opportunist,” spat Pendrag, turning down a wider avenue that led to the stone circle where Sigmar had fought Artur. A tall building of white stone was in the process of being built around the menhirs encircling the Flame of Ulric, and Sigmar felt a tremor of bone-deep chill as he caught a glimpse of its flickering light, like a speartip of dancing ice.
He shook off the memory of the flame’s chill and said, “True, but great wealth is pouring into the empire from the west. Without that, there would not be the gold to pay for Middenheim’s viaducts. That is after a twentieth of Jutonsryk’s yearly income is tithed for distribution amongst the warriors who fought so hard to take it.”
“I’ll bet Marius hated that,” laughed Pendrag, passing the construction site and leading the way down a deserted street that was even narrower than the others they had traversed.
“That he did, but even with the tithe, his city’s coffers are swollen with gold from all the trade that has opened up for him,” said Sigmar. “If Marius had realised how lucrative swearing a Sword Oath would be, I think he would have done it long ago.”
“And you trust him to live up to his oath? He failed to stand by us once before.”
Sigmar smiled and put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. “I left a thousand warriors in Jutonsryk to make sure of it.”
“Unberogen?”
“A mixed force of warriors from all the tribes,” said Sigmar. “Each of the counts sent fresh troops from their homelands.”
“Hoping to pick Jutonsryk clean, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” agreed Sigmar, “but I did not want warriors who had lost friends garrisoning a city they had shed blood to take. The time had come to send the army home.”
Pendrag nodded and said, “Two years is a long time for a man to be away from his family.”
“It is,” agreed Sigmar, hearing the wistful longing for home in Pendrag’s voice, “but enough reminiscing, my friend, are you going to tell me why you have brought me here?”