WAKING THE DRAGON Josh Reynolds Josh Reynolds is well known for his numerous tales in the World-That-Was, which he drew to a close in The End Times series. Written for The End Times, this is a previously unreleased tale of dark sorcery, revenge and alliances built on bloodshed. Lichemaster Heinrich Kemmler is a hunted man with no army worthy of his purpose. Bound to him is the powerful wight, Krell, an ancient Chaos champion in possession of an unslakeable bloodlust. Following a rumour, Kemmler heads for the abandoned Blood Keep – a grim, black fastness surrounded by enough dead to sweep his enemies away. But the keep is no longer uninhabited, and Kemmler and Krell must deal with the new occupants, who may be far more powerful than the necromancer ever imagined. The great axe flashed and steel parted. The knight was swept from his saddle and sent tumbling through the air, tailing a trail of crimson in his wake as he crashed to the street of the burnt-out mountain village that had once been known as Blenois. Now it was simply another notch on the axe of the being that had killed every inhabitant, from the oldest to the youngest – the creature known as Krell. As the now riderless steed plunged past, snorting and bucking, Krell turned to face his next opponent. The second knight galloped towards the massive armoured wight, shoulders hunched and lance extended, a war-whoop escaping his lips. Krell watched him come and spun his axe between his hands in preparation. The lance struck Krell’s baroquely grotesque cuirass straight on and was peeled to flinders at the point of impact. Krell was forced back a half-step, but he lashed out nonetheless, bringing down both horse and rider in a welter of gore. Two of Bretonnia’s finest – dead in as many minutes. The black eye sockets of Krell’s scarred and pitted skull filled with a weird light as he surveyed the blood spreading through the ruinous sigils engraved on the Black Axe. Its bite was jagged and chipped, and the symbols wrought into the blade seemed to tense and flex with fierce urgency. Krell lowered the weapon almost reluctantly, tearing his gaze from the blood to survey his remaining enemies. They crept through the gloom towards him, war panoply and harnesses clattering. The two knights had been young, eager to make their names by killing the Butcher of Blenois. The men now approaching were not as confident. Some had faced Krell before. Others were simply more cautious than the rash knights errant had been. They moved slowly through the mist that rose from the damp streets of the burnt-out village, men-at-arms to the fore, shields raised high and behind them, peasants with bows clutched in fear-palsied hands. And still further back, the armoured figures of knights – Duke Tancred’s chosen men, among them warriors who had supped from the fabled Grail and been made strong. But even chosen men blanched at approaching a creature like Krell, especially in the grounds he’d made his own. Bodies lay strewn amongst the shattered huts, or hung from the crossbars of the many crude gallows that had been erected in the muddy streets. A flock of carrion crows cawed as they dug at the scraps and flew over the approaching men. A hanging garden of corpses had been created to greet Tancred and his followers, and at its centre, Krell waited, axe in hand. Krell raised his axe in a silent gesture of mocking triumph. In reply, a hoarse voice bellowed an order and arrows were loosed. A dozen cut through the rising evening mist and punched home in Krell’s monstrous form. The wight ignored them and took a step forward, mighty frame tense with anticipation. ‘No, Krell,’ Heinrich Kemmler, sometimes called the Lichemaster, hissed, his words coiling through the mist. ‘Let Tancred come to us, yes?’ Krell paused, and the great axe was lowered. But the wight’s reluctance was noted and Kemmler grimaced in frustration. He stood some distance behind and above Krell, on the pitched and sagging roof of one of Blenois’ pitiful shacks, his lean, wiry shape hidden by the concealing mists that seemed to emanate from the ragged cloak that swirled and writhed about him, as if caught in a hell-born breeze. Kemmler leaned on his ornately carved staff, his fingers stroking the dangling skulls that hung from it on copper chains that had long ago gone green with verdigris. ‘Damnable liche,’ he muttered, his eyes narrowed beneath the floppy brim of his hat. Sometimes Krell was more trouble than he was worth. The ancient warrior-corpse stank of the foul winds of Nehekhara, and there was a power rippling through his dead frame that intimidated even a man like Kemmler. He had bound Krell with the strongest spells he knew; even so, the wight was barely biddable, especially when there was blood to be spilled. Sometimes, when the necromancer looked at his servant, he thought he saw something else – some looming presence, lurking just over the wight’s shoulder and directing his actions. Kemmler pushed the thought aside and licked his dry, cracked lips. He longed to unleash Krell, to set the ancient Chaos champion loose on Duke Tancred and his men. The Duke of Quenelles had harried the Lichemaster from one end of the Grey Mountains to the other since the latter’s failed assault on La Maisontaal Abbey – a failure due in no small part to Tancred’s intervention. Kemmler gnashed his yellowed teeth. Yes, he longed to let Krell slip his chains. As if sensing his master’s thoughts, Krell glanced back up at him. As the creature’s burning hell-spark gaze passed over him, Kemmler said, ‘Tancred is not so much a fool as that, though.’ The duke wanted a confrontation with Krell, which meant that Kemmler would be a fool to allow it. As mad as that desire seemed, Tancred was no lunatic or glory-hungry fool. He was cunning, though. ‘But not quite as cunning as he thinks, oh no,’ Kemmler said, grinning. If he had been, Tancred would have waited to hear from the scouts he’d sent into the village – the ones who now crouched silently below Kemmler, waiting for his signal, their mutilated corpses twitching with a new, necro­mantic life – and failing that, he’d have fallen back to await daybreak. Instead, the valiant Duke of Quenelles had launched his assault and even now set his armoured boot into Kemmler’s trap. ‘Come on, Tancred. Just a bit closer,’ Kemmler murmured. He raised his staff in both hands in anticipation. ‘Come to me.’ And Tancred did. A horn gave a winding note and arrows flew, striking Krell, rocking him back. The men-at-arms formed a half-moon shape, shields raised and spears extended like hunters advancing on one of the great bears that inhabited the Grey Mountains. They stopped and the formation split, unleashing the pride of Bretonnia. Warhorses charged forward with thunderous speed and weapons were drawn. Tancred rode among them, his great antler-topped helm surrounded by a halo of ribbons of Cathayan silk. He swung a brutal-looking morning star as he galloped past Krell, striking the wight in the head. Krell tottered and lashed out, ripping the shield from the duke’s arm and sending his steed to its knees. Another knight lunged to fill the gap, his sword ringing as it hammered down on one of Krell’s pauldrons. An axe chopped into the wight’s side and then Kemmler lost sight of his servant as the wight was subsumed in a wave of horse-flesh and armoured warriors. Weapons rang loudly in the ensuing moments of combat. Every living eye was on Krell’s stand. It was time. Kemmler struck the roof with his staff and gave a great, croaking cry. A deplorable word slipped between his lips, and the air shuddered as it cut through it. The mist thickened and assumed a greasy patina. Corpses twitched and shuddered in the throes of dark resurrection and a weird light blossomed in the ravaged sockets of eyes. Shattered limbs propelled dead weight to its feet and limp fingers clawed blindly for handholds in the ruins of homes. Carrion birds flew upwards, startled by the sudden movement of heretofore stiff feasts. Ruined jaws sagged, releasing agonised exhalations as the bodies of the dead of Blenois shuddered and began to move towards Tancred’s men. As the echo of his cry rippled through the village, Kemmler flung out a hand and snarled, ‘Take them!’ The dead men, who had been squatting below him, their shapes hidden in the mist, rose and began to stumble forward, weapons raised, a bloody vanguard for his nightmarish force. Krell smashed a knight from his horse, crumpling the ornate helm the man wore as if it were paper. His axe took another, beheading him. Tancred abandoned his horse, dropping from the saddle and drawing his sword even as he swung the morning star at Krell. Krell whirled, batting aside the spiked ball and chopping at Tancred. Tancred’s sword glowed with a painful light as it connected edge to bite with Krell’s black axe. The skulls on Kemmler’s staff began to chatter and gibber as they sensed the magics clinging to the sword in the duke’s hand, and the Lichemaster suddenly wondered whether Tancred had fallen into his trap, or he and Krell had fallen into the duke’s. The sword was a potent artefact, glowing with baleful magics, sufficient to harm even a creature like Krell. That was likely the reason that the duke seemed so eager to meet the wight in combat. A moment later, the first of the zombies struck. Dead men barrelled into the living. The bodies dangling from the gallows began to thrash and clutch at the men-at-arms below them, and corpses stirred from the ashes of the burnt shacks, lunging up to grapple with terrified peasants. Tancred stumbled as a dead man grabbed for his sword arm. He managed to wrench his arm free even as Krell struck. Tancred staggered back, his surcoat ripped from the glancing axe blow. Kemmler gestured towards the duke, and black bolts of energy exploded from his eyes. Before they struck the duke, however, Tancred lunged for Krell. Kemmler’s mystic bolts struck one of the other knights, burning through his armour and crisping the flesh beneath, flinging the man back in a smoking heap. Krell and Tancred struck at each other and the latter was driven to his knees, only saved from death by a hastily interposed sword blade. The mist swirled about them, and for a moment, Kemmler lost sight of them. Cursing, he clambered down from his perch, using the ladder he’d placed earlier. He had hoped to watch the battle from a safe vantage point, but the need to see Tancred dead outweighed his desire to stay free of the fight. The dead and the living staggered about in a danse macabre, and Kemmler drew his sword as a screaming peasant ran towards him through the mist, mind broken by the onslaught of the dead. The tomb-blade purred in Kemmler’s hand as he swung it out in a lazy arc, opening up the peasant’s throat. Before the man could fall, Kemmler caught him in the chest with his staff, holding him upright. Dark energies surged through the fossilised wood and into the jerking corpse. An ugly light blazed in its eyes and the dead man wheeled about and lunged for one of his former fellows, hands outstretched and fingers hooked like claws. Men uttered hoarse cries as they flailed about them at the tide of the dead. Kemmler breathed a coiling black tangle of smoke, drawing the newly slain to their feet. They surfaced from the mist and moved to the attack. He leaned heavily on his staff, watching as his puppets clutched and struck at his enemies. Tancred had been separated from Krell by the stumbling dead. He struck about him, and spat curses. Kemmler hoped the dead would drag him down, but Tancred stubbornly held to his feet. So did those knights whom Krell hadn’t dispatched. Indeed, Tancred began to shout orders to his remaining men. The surviving men-at-arms formed a thorny phalanx around Tancred, their shields pressing the dead back and their spears knocking the zombies sprawling. Kemmler cursed and sheathed his sword. It was time to go. There was nothing to be gained by staying. ‘Krell,’ he said, his voice carrying easily, ‘Come.’ Krell ignored him and his black axe smashed down, bisecting an upraised shield and the man huddled beneath it. ‘Krell,’ Kemmler said again, raising his voice. Arrows plucked at his swirling cloak and tugged at his wide-brimmed hat. More men sought sanctuary behind the hastily erected shield-wall. The dead were outnumbered, and with surprise releasing its fragile grip on the Bretonnians’ minds, they were putting paid to the zombies. Tancred would not die this day, Kemmler realised with grim frustration, but he and Krell just might, unless they could escape while their pursuers were occupied. ‘Krell,’ Kemmler shouted, desperate now. Krell lunged, chopping into the shield-wall, trying to batter his way towards Tancred. ‘Damnation! You’re going to get us killed, you stubborn hunk of gristle!’ Kemmler struck the ground with his staff and raised it up in both hands, pulling at the winds of death that swirled invisibly about the village. The wind rose, shattering the mist and it swept towards Tancred’s men, howling and shrieking as it went. Shapeless spirits, wrenched from the earth by Kemmler’s magics, struck the shield-wall and men pitched backwards as their souls were dragged from their bodies by ethereal claws. For a moment, confusion reigned. Krell stepped back and Kemmler stretched a hand towards him. Withered fingers clenched, and Krell shuddered as the necromancer plucked the threads of the geas that bound the wight to him. ‘Come,’ Kemmler spat. Krell shivered, but ignored the pull. His axe thundered down, beheading a sprawled man-at-arms. The wight stepped on the body, pulverising the ribcage, as he moved towards Tancred. Kemmler’s veins bulged as he wrestled with the winds of magic that bound Krell. It was like trying to restrain a savage hound, just as the beast had scented blood. Krell fed on death, and he was ever-hungry. ‘I said come with me,’ Kemmler growled, knuckles cracking as he gestured sharply. Krell swung around and for a moment, the Lichemaster thought that Krell might strike him. But the moment passed and the wight strode towards him, leaving the Bretonnians locked in battle with the hungry dead. They left the battle behind, moving quickly to the outskirts of the village. Kemmler pulled himself into the saddle of a gnaw-bone corpse nag, its bones gleaming whitely through a ragged, crow-picked hide. Its handler was its former owner, a sagging, whey-faced zombie that had once been a merchant who’d had the bad luck to visit the village on the same day that Kemmler and Krell had arrived. Kemmler gestured back at the village and the zombie lurched towards the fray. The dead wouldn’t stay on their feet long, with Kemmler’s departure: his control, while greater than that of most who styled themselves necromancers, was still finite in its reach. Without him, the putrid mockery of life would flee the gelid limbs and the dead would lie down once more. But by that time, he would be gone. The undead horse moved quickly as Kemmler snapped the reins and its lifeless limbs moved smoothly thanks to his magics. Krell kept pace easily, running full tilt at his master’s side. Kemmler had learned that it paid to always have an escape route, even when victory seemed certain. It wasn’t the first time that they had been forced to retreat, but familiarity did not lessen the sting. Kemmler spat a steady stream of curses. It was proving impossible to rebuild his forces with Tancred harrying them across the mountains. The forces of the Duke of Quenelles, however, grew steadily. If there was one thing that could get the normally fractious Bretonnian lords to unite, it was a chance to gain glory in battling an enemy like the Lichemaster. Men and knights from the regions of Parravon and Montfort flocked to Tancred’s banner and no matter how many Kemmler dispatched and resurrected, the living still outnumbered the dead. The Bretonnians had experience in battling the awakened dead, as Kemmler had discovered to his chagrin. Tancred’s hunt had prevented him from staying in one place long enough to build a significant force. Behind them, Tancred’s horn sounded – a dull, rumbling growl of sound. The Duke of Quenelles was on the hunt once more, or would be soon. Kemmler hunched low in his saddle and cursed again, urging his steed up the slopes and into the high hills. The night would aid them in their escape, but what good was escape when there was nowhere to run to? If they stopped, Tancred would catch up with them and the whole process would be started again. Krell could butcher the inhabitants of a hundred villages and Kemmler could raise them, but nothing was gained in doling them out piecemeal against Tancred’s hunters. They needed an army, but there was no place to get one, not that could be reached easily. Mousillon or the ruins of Castle Drachenfels would be ideal, but Tancred had cut him off from those routes. The only direction open to them was east, and what was in the east but the cursed forests of Athel Loren? Kemmler shuddered, thinking of those terrible, close-set trees and the immortal, ethereal shapes that lurked within their embrace. ‘Answer me that, you daemon-infested hulk,’ Kemmler snapped, glaring at the wight that ran at his side. ‘Eh? Where can we go? Tell me that! We need an army, but where is there an army to be had in these cursed mountains…’ Kemmler trailed off as a faint flutter of memory crossed the surface of his mind. ‘Cursed,’ he repeated. Then a feral smile spread across his leathery features. ‘Ha! Yes. Oh my yes,’ he murmured. He wrenched on the reins, turning his corpse-mount about, aiming east. ‘Come, Krell!’ Kemmler galloped up into the crags as black legends flapped through his crooked brain. Blood-soaked stories of fanged horrors descending from their grim keep high in the eastern peaks of the Grey Mountains and of a three-year siege by the men of the Empire, ending in a horrific battle and scattered nightmares. Or perhaps not so scattered – in his wanderings, Kemmler had heard gossipmongers in the mountain villages saying that the black keep with its high stone walls was once again inhabited, that dead men roamed the slopes below it, and that things moved within the barrows that sprouted in its shadow. ‘Blood Keep,’ Kemmler hissed. He glanced at his servant. If Krell recognised the name, he gave no sign. ‘Rumours or no, there’ll be the makings of an army there. An army capable of crushing whatever paltry forces Tancred dares pit against us.’ His head filled with visions of that army – a proper one, not stumbling, rotting peasants but gleaming bone clad in rusty armour and fire-eyed wights. With an army like that, he could sweep down from the Grey Mountains, driving his enemies before him. No more running and skulking like the beggar he had once pretended to be. Tancred would fall, and all of Kemmler’s enemies with him. But not for long, oh no… No, they would rise again, to serve him. Kemmler gave a croak of laughter. But his good humour evaporated a moment later. How could he have forgotten? A man like him lived and died by rumours. It had been rumours and folk stories that had led him to Krell. He cursed. He should have thought of it sooner. So why hadn’t he? He had passed through the eastern mountains more than once… Why hadn’t he gone to Blood Keep sooner? Not for the first time, Kemmler wondered if he was fully in control of his own fate. He thought again of the shape that seemed to lurk in Krell’s shadow – a phantom presence of malevolent weight and titanic malice. He thought that the same shape padded through his fitful dreams on those rare occasions when sleep came. A vast, bloated charnel thing that whispered to him, indeed had been whispering to him all of his life, even as a young man, since he’d first stumbled upon those badly translated copies of the Books of Nagash in his father’s haphazard ancestral library. Those books had started him on his journey, the first steps that had seen him defy death in all of its forms, benign or sinister. He had fought rivals and enemies alike, striving to stand alone. The Council of Nine and the Charnel Congress – rival consortiums of necromancers – had faded before his might, their petty grave-magics swept aside by his fierce and singular will. He had pillaged the library of Lady Khemalla of Lahmia in Miragliano and driven the vampiress from her den and the city, and in the crypts beneath Castle Vermisace he had bound the liches of the Black Circle to his service, earning him the sobriquet ‘Lichemaster’. He had counselled counts, princes and petty kings and gathered a library of necromantic lore second only to the fabled libraries of forsaken Nagashizzar. He had waged a cruel, secret war on men, dwarfs and elves, prying their secret knowledge from them, and with every death rattle and dying sigh, the voice in his head, the pressing thing that had encouraged him and driven him had purred with delight. Until one day, it had gone silent. Hunched in his saddle, staff caught in the crook of his neck and shoulder, he looked down at his scarred, blistered hands. Most of those scars had been earned in the years after the Battle of Ten Thousand Skulls, as his enemies had taken to calling it. For decades, he had scurried through these hills and those of the Worlds Edge Mountains, half-mad and broken in body and soul. He had come so far, learned so much, only to have it all snatched away at the last moment by an alliance of those he’d thought beaten. So much knowledge… lost. So many memories of that time had vanished in the fog of his years in the wilderness. It hadn’t just been his own skill as a scholar that had led him to Krell, no matter how much he liked to tell himself otherwise. Something else – that nagging presence had guided his feet in those years following the Battle of Ten Thousand Skulls, its voice returning, in snatches at first and then growing louder, a demanding drumbeat in his fevered brain. It was quiescent now, but for how long? What was left of his soul squirmed at the thought and he pushed it aside. In control or not, it didn’t matter. If whatever dark entity was guiding him was choosing now to lead him to Blood Keep, he was willing to let it do so. Pawn, puppet or prince, he was still the Lichemaster and he would have his victory, whatever the cost. Kemmler pushed his mount to the limits of its durability in the hours following their escape from Blenois. Even with his magics, the dead animal could only run so fast, and night bled into day all too swiftly in the Grey Mountains. From behind them, every so often, came the low wail of Tancred’s horn, but it grew fainter with every hour. In the rocky peaks, their trail would be almost impossible to follow, or so he hoped. Tancred had developed an uncanny ability to turn up just where he was least wanted or expected. Kemmler had hoped to be rid of the persistent and pestiferous duke in Blenois, but yet again Tancred had survived. It was almost as if some dark force were protecting his enemy and setting him on Kemmler’s trail. Their pace slowed as the sun rose. Kemmler sat huddled in his cloak and his mount stumbled and staggered. Beneath the eye of the sun, the winds of death blew softly, if at all. It took more of Kemmler’s concentration to keep his mount upright and moving. Nonetheless, he did not even think of slowing. Time was of the essence, and no one knew better than a necromancer just how finite a mortal span was. As the day began to give way to evening, they followed the spine of the mountains ever eastwards. It was a familiar enough route for Kemmler, who had wandered these mountains for years following his defeat so long ago. Thoughts of that day occupied him through the heat of the afternoon and into the cool of evening. He’d learned the benefits of allies that day. Before, he’d been content to be an island alone in a sea of the servile dead. But the alliance that had met him had changed his thinking – squabbling enemies had turned boon companions and the battle had gone against him, though not swiftly and not without cost to his enemies. He had escaped – no, he had survived. As he always survived. The Lichemaster had persisted, had clung to the shoals of existence by his fingernails and teeth. He had refused to die, refused to fall despite the forces ranged against him. Heinrich Kemmler would not lose his soul to death and damnation easily. He would not lose it at all. Fired by these thoughts, he drew strength as he always did from the incessant bubble of anger that nestled in the pit of his heart. His knuckles popped as he tightened his grip on his staff. The thought of his enemies falling before him, like wheat before a scythe, filled him with pleasure. But that pleasure was tinged with bitterness. Triumph was far from certain, and he was one man, alone against a kingdom. He glanced at Krell. No, not alone. He had summoned many wights in his time. Sometimes they were little more than ambulatory extensions of his will, with no more personality than a skeleton or zombie. At other times, some fragment of their old self remained, albeit twisted and corrupted. But Krell was unique. His whole being vibrated with a rage that even Kemmler found disturbing. Locked inside that dead shell was a soul in a very specific sort of torment. Krell hungered for blood and slaughter, but could only indulge at his master’s whim. He could feel Krell’s yearnings, his need to kill. It made him hard to control, and there were times that Kemmler feared the creature would turn on him, should his spells grow weak. As if he knew what the necromancer was thinking, Krell looked at him, eye sockets alight with an ugly glow. The jaw sagged in a skeletal grin, and a butcher-block stink rolled out from between the yellowed teeth. ‘Laugh all you want, you mummified brute,’ Kemmler spat. ‘But do not forget who it was that woke you from your prison, eh?’ Krell turned away, as if in dismissal. Kemmler bit back a snarl. No, Krell wasn’t easily controlled, but he was effective. And his effectiveness would be increased by the addition of an army. Something scraped on stone, snapping Kemmler out of his reverie. Distant shapes scrambled out of sight, dislodging rocks. Krell lifted his axe, eye sockets burning, and a whisper of a growl escaped his fleshless jaws. Kemmler frowned. They were being watched, but for how long? Then, the distant wail of a horn reached him. He jerked his mount to a halt. The sound of the horn had not come from behind them. Kemmler’s reptilian eyes narrowed in consternation. Had Tancred somehow managed to get ahead of them? Was the duke aware of their destination? Had those shapes been his men? Kemmler’s lips peeled back from his teeth. He looked at Krell. The wight had stiffened, like a dog catching a scent. The haft of the great axe creaked in the dead warrior’s grip. Kemmler frowned and turned in his saddle, glaring back across the crags that they had just traversed. Everything was bathed in starlight and something large and terrible passed across the silvery face of the moon. Its shriek echoed down and caused Kemmler to shudder. He looked up, following its path, trying to make it out, but before he could, his eyes fell upon a welcome sight. The crags opened up like the petals of a flower, pulling away from a vicious fang of bifurcated stone that curved towards the sky. The jagged tooth-like peak rose from a barren bowl of rock where a thin scrum of scraggly trees eked out a pallid existence, rising from the evening mist like the crooked fingers of a corpse. It was not simply that the mountains were inhospitable; it was as if something were leeching the very life out of them. Dozens of great stone cairns sat among those trees, resting silently in the shadow of the cracked peak that loomed over them. Like the antediluvian tribes of what was now the Empire, the primitive Bretonni tribes had built barrows to house their noble dead and those barrows dotted the mountains, near the ruins of long-vanished settlements. The thought filled Kemmler with a sense of dark triumph. If Blood Keep was built atop the remains of an old town or pre-human fortress, as he suspected, then there could be legions of the dead awaiting his call, more even than he had previously imagined. He would have not just an army, but armies. His gaze was drawn upwards. On the taller of the two sections of the peak, Blood Keep waited, dark and silent. Kemmler reached into his coat, fumbling through spell components and other, less savoury things to find the shape of the old Arabyan spyglass he had carried since a long-ago trek to the Lands of the Dead. He snapped the leather cap off and held it up, peering towards the distant structure. The keep fell into focus: it was perched like a bird of prey on the edge of the sheared peak, its serpentine battlements thrust out over the void like burrs on a blade. A massive bridge, crafted from stone and wood, linked the lower section of the crag to Blood Keep’s grisly portcullis – great stakes, stained black by long-dried blood, thrust out at tangled angles from the arch of the gate, and from some of them, desiccated, almost mummified bodies still dangled, providing perches for crows and other scavengers. There were plenty of the former circling above the broken parapets and ­shattered turrets in the moonlight. That implied a food source of some kind. Necromancers were, to a man, keen birdwatchers. Carrion birds could lead a man to all sorts of treasures. Kemmler wondered how long those bodies had hung there – not for centuries, he knew. Months perhaps, which begged the question, who had decorated the portcullis in such a fashion? The mountain breeze carried a foul effluvium down to him, and he spat. There were bodies somewhere, fresh ones, or nearly so. Perhaps the gossipmongers had been correct, and the Blood Keep was no longer abandoned. He frowned. There were greenskins aplenty in these mountains, not to mention human bandits. But he didn’t smell orcs, or cooking fires or anything that spoke of living inhabitants. Kemmler twisted in his saddle and looked at Krell, who stood nearby, as still as a statue. As ever, the wight’s mood, if he even had one, was impossible to gauge. ‘Come,’ Kemmler snapped, snapping his mount’s reins. Greenskins or not, Tancred’s men or not, they were too close to turn back now. Carefully, they picked their way down into the gorge below. Mist reached up to greet them. But once they were among the barrows and trees, something caught his eye, dragging his gaze back to the battlements. He raised the spyglass again. In the moonlight, metal glinted. Men in armour, Kemmler realised, as fury bubbled within him. No, not just men: knights. The horn wailed again, louder this time, coming not from behind them but echoing down from Blood Keep, and through the spyglass, Kemmler saw one of the knights lower a curling ram’s horn as the sound flew out over the crags and slithered through the rocks. The mist swirled, as if disturbed. Sounds rose up from within the trees and barrows. Kemmler cursed. Somehow, somewhen, Tancred had got men ahead of them, however impossible it seemed. Perhaps they had been waiting, just in case. Regardless, it didn’t matter. It was another ambush, but this time, he and Krell were the ones in the trap. Incensed, Kemmler raised himself in his saddle and shook his staff at the distant figures. ‘You will not stop me! The banner of Blood Keep will be raised and at my command. Quenelles will burn, its people made chattel for my use!’ he roared, his harsh, croaking voice echoing out across the crags. He glared about him, sighting the barrows. ‘There,’ he grated. With an army culled from the barrows, he would see to Tancred’s men once and for all. He could smell the rich aroma of old death rising from the hummocks of stone and hard soil, and he could see the pinpricks of ragged spirits clinging to long-buried remains. Before he could lose himself, however, feet scraped on the stones and harsh panting rose from the darkness as the ambushers closed in on Kemmler and Krell. Krell readied himself, and just in time, as the first of their attackers reached them a moment later. They were not Bretonnians. Filthy rags clung damply to pallid flesh and gangly limbs bent and knuckled the stone as the ghouls burst out of the growing mist with a communal howl. Krell met the first with a sharp blow that bisected the creature as it leapt. Kemmler was forced to draw his tomb-blade as the tide of corpse-eaters poured over Krell and some loped towards the necromancer, fangs bared. His sword stabbed out, catching a ghoul in the gut. Claws tugged at his cloak and he wrenched himself free, hacking wildly. Krell’s armoured fingers slammed down on the head of a ghoul about to leap on Kemmler, and the wight jerked the creature back and hurled it with bone-snapping force into one of its fellows. The horn shrilled again and the surviving ghouls reacted with alacrity, retreating, leaving Kemmler and Krell where they stood. Puffing from his brief exertion, Kemmler licked his lips nervously. He had been taken utterly by surprise by the creatures, with no chance to use either spell or what limited influence his magics sometimes granted him over such foul creatures. The necromancer had seen – and faced – ghouls before, but to see them here was something of a shock. Whole tribes of the verminous creatures lived within the great necropolises of Mousillon, sweeping down into the damned city every time the Chaos moon rode through the night sky, but he had not expected them this far north. The ghouls set up a keening caterwaul a moment later. Three pairs of torch-like eyes peered out of the dark beneath the trees, and three massive shapes ambled through the mist with simian grace in response to the ghouls’ wailing. They were large beasts, bigger than a man and covered in ropy muscle. Animalistic faces grinned, displaying mouths full of needle fangs. Their greyish flesh was marked by several centuries’ worth of scars and one, the largest of the three, wore a primitive torque about its bull-neck, and several strings of yellowed fangs hung from the loop of filthy gold. They shoved aside the ghouls with snaps and snarls, and the corpse-eaters gave way with mewling and whimpering. Kemmler grunted as the stink of old blood and black magic washed over him. The creatures, despite their bestial appearance, were not ghouls. They were Strigoi – broken and bestial vampires, degraded in form and mind, that were to other vampires as ghouls were to men, and were kings amongst that foul breed. The largest of the monsters – likely the pack leader, Kemmler judged – pointed a crooked talon at Kemmler and spoke in a guttural language. He blinked, understanding one word in ten. The language was archaic, and Kemmler recognised it from his brief, long-ago study of Al-Muntasir’s translations of the Books of Morath – it was the language of long-buried Strigos. He didn’t bother to reply to the creature’s querulous grunt. Instead, he stepped back from Krell, sheathed his sword, and thumped the ground with the bottom of his staff. ‘Kill them,’ he said. Whatever reason these creatures had for being here, they could not be allowed to stand in his way. The vampires snarled like wolves and dived forward, claws outstretched. Krell stepped into their path at Kemmler’s gesture. The ancient wight met the Strigoi charge unflinchingly. A blow sent one of the Strigoi sailing backwards and a looping slash with the axe took the hand from the second, causing the creature to reel backwards with a gibbering shriek. The pack leader landed on Krell’s shoulders, its talons digging into the wight’s pauldrons. The Strigoi grabbed either side of Krell’s helm and attempted to wrench the wight’s head off. As Krell staggered, ghouls rushed towards him, seeking to aid their king. Pale limbs clutched at Krell’s arms and legs, trying to bring him down through sheer weight of numbers. Krell stamped down on a ghoul’s skull, bursting it like a melon and killing the beast instantly. His axe extracted a red toll from the corpse-eaters, even as he grabbed for the Strigoi with his free hand. Kemmler watched the battle with only one eye, the other firmly fixed on one of the crumbled barrows before him. He could practically smell the ancient corpses within, hidden for long centuries by tightly packed rock and soil. With the Strigoi occupied, he could summon the first recruits for his army. He stretched his hands towards the barrow and something surged past him, startling him. The skulls on his staff began to clatter and hiss, and Kemmler’s eyes widened as he felt the winds of death roil and wash over him, but not as he wished, not under his control. Bony talons punched through the surface of the barrow and clutched at him, grabbing his cloak and arm. Kemmler gave a squawk of surprise and jerked back. Leering skulls pressed through the crumbling wall of rock and dirt, jaws wide in silent screams. Ancient bronze blades stabbed at him and only Kemmler’s quick reflexes saved him from a ruptured belly. The skeletons followed him as he stumbled back. They forced their way out and struck at him with inhuman precision. Kemmler caught a blow on his staff and clawed for his tomb-blade. He drew it and chopped through a brown, root-wrapped spinal column in one desperate motion. More barrows were torn open from the inside all around him, the dead struggling into the moonlight with deadly intent burning in their guttering eye sockets. He snarled in frustration, sensing another’s will giving motion to the ancient, withered corpses. The strands of dark magic tensed and writhed through the barrows, stirring the dead to life, but not quite in the way he’d hoped. He set his staff and focused every feral, savage iota of his will, grasping at the taunting necromantic winds with his mind. It was like trying to pry a sword from the hand of a determined opponent. But he was the Lichemaster, and he had broken more than one rival on the altar of death-magic. Unseen or not, this foe would prove no different. The dead closed in around him, raising battered weapons. Kemmler ignored them, letting his blade hang down, its tip planted in the hard ground. The skulls on his staff chattered shrilly and flopped about wildly. A foul breeze rose, stirring the dank mist that clung to everything. The dead hesitated. Sweat streaked Kemmler’s seamed face as he fought for control. He felt his opponent’s will bend and flex against his, like a serpent attempting to strike the man who held it. It was almost playful, as if the unseen necromancer were content to dangle the dead before Kemmler, taunting him with their control. Kemmler redoubled his efforts as the dead closed in on him. He was no man to be taunted. Eyes closed, he traced the skeins of dark magic that linked his rival to the newly awakened dead, even as he gathered strength from the sour earth. In any other place, he might have been able to track his opponent through those twisting strings of power, but here, there was simply too much dark magic, and it was the equivalent of tracking smoke through fog. Legions had fought and died here, on these rocks. The essences of their death made this place a sump of necromantic power and Kemmler inhaled it with the desperate, greedy gulping of a man dying of thirst. Power flooded him, burning his veins and setting a cold ache deep in his bones. It was a dangerous thing to draw strength from death, and one misstep could reduce him to something little better than Krell, going from master of death to its servant with one stumble. He felt his opponent’s will hesitate and retreat, as if surprised by Kemmler’s audacity. Sensing triumph, Kemmler lifted his staff and slammed it down. One by one, the skeletal shapes surrounding him turned their inhuman gazes on the ghouls. Teeth gritted, eyes bulging with strain, Kemmler gestured with his sword and the dead advanced on the corpse-eaters with jerky, awkward speed. Kemmler leaned heavily on his staff, the tomb-blade dragging his arm down as his new minions attacked the ghouls. The creatures howled in shock and agony as bronze blades chopped into their maggoty flesh. As the first ghoul fell, the resistance to Kemmler’s control faded. He savoured his victory for only a moment, before turning his attentions to Krell. The wight had battled his vampiric opponents to a standstill. All three creatures were bleeding and stumbling as they lunged again and again at Krell, scoring his armour with their claws. Krell had slowed not a step, and his axe whipped through the air with almost lazy disdain, driving the creatures back again and again. Kemmler grunted in satisfaction and thrust out his staff. Armoured skeletons, their skulls and rust-riddled cuirasses perforated by ragged roots, stalked forward, hacking at the Strigoi, who whirled to face these new opponents with cries of alarm. Kemmler laughed nastily as Krell raised his axe, ready to strike down one of the distracted vampires. Before the blow could fall, the sound of the horn came again, followed by the thunder of galloping hooves. The necromancer spun, sword extended and the words to a spell springing to his lips, as a wedge of knights burst from between two of the larger barrows, scattering ghouls and riding down the dead. Devilish steeds, red-eyed and black-hoofed, clad in bloodstained barding daubed with disturbing icons of necromantic power, snorted and whinnied as the wedge split and thundered around Kemmler and Krell in a circle. The riders, clad in crimson, grotesquely decorated armour, lashed out at ghouls and skeletons alike with lances and swords, while calling out to one another in apparent amusement. The Strigoi retreated into the forests, the ghouls at their heels as the crimson knights dispatched any too slow or too shocked to get out of the way. Soon, the Lichemaster and his hulking servant were alone, save for the newcomers. The red-eyed horses snorted and pawed the hard ground as the knights brought them to a halt. Kemmler was almost light-headed with the dark pressure emanating from the warriors. They were not men, any more than the Strigoi were. They were creatures steeped in blood and the effluvium of the battlefield. Savage eyes peered out from within cruelly curved helms and the stink of offal and death bled off their armour, which was encrusted with ornately wrought images of slaughter. Kemmler bared his teeth. ‘I see the rumours were correct,’ he said. ‘The masters of Blood Keep have returned. Good.’ One of the knights, clad in armour the colour of midnight, rather than the red of his fellows, urged his stallion forward. His face was hidden within his helm, and his voice echoed oddly as he spoke. ‘And what is good about your current situation, interloper? You trespass on our lands and poach our game.’ ‘Game,’ Kemmler repeated. Understanding crept in a moment later. ‘The ghouls,’ he murmured. ‘Aye and their beastly kings – stupid things, all fang and muscle,’ the knight said. ‘But they make adequate sport for a night’s entertainment. You will not be so entertaining, I think. We will break your legs and set you on a short stake.’ The knight’s voice was a barbarous purr, and it sent chills up and down Kemmler’s spine. He spat and Krell stepped forward protectively, a raspy growl echoing from behind his fleshless grin. The knight looked at the wight for a long moment and then back at Kemmler. ‘I think you will do no such thing, kastellan,’ Kemmler said, digging into his memory for the honorific. ‘Instead, I think you will hear me out.’ ‘And why would I do that, Heinrich Kemmler?’ ‘You know me?’ Kemmler said, surprised. He peered at the Blood Knight through narrowed eyes. ‘I know many men. Your foul little crusade is spoken of from Mousillon to Magritta, Lichemaster,’ the knight said, putting a mocking emphasis on Kemmler’s title. Stung, Kemmler’s grip tightened on his staff, but he held his temper. ‘You called it a crusade, and thus it is… A dark crusade to crush the petty kings of men and render their cities into tombs, a crusade that I call upon the Order of the Blood Dragon to join! I come to wake the Order of the Dragon from its sleep of ages and set it loose upon the world once more!’ As one, the circle of armoured vampires laughed. Kemmler flinched as the sound of it slithered around him like the constricting coils of a vast serpent. The kastellan raised a hand. ‘And why would we do that? Why would we raise our banner at the behest of a god-twisted beggar and his creaking abomination?’ ‘I could compel you,’ Kemmler said softly. The laughter faded. The kastellan leaned forward, eyes burning behind his visor. ‘Could you now?’ he said. ‘You had difficulty controlling the dried leavings of these ancient barrows, Kemmler. What hope, then, have you of commanding such as us?’ Kemmler gnawed on his lip in frustration. He knew from the creature’s gloating tone that it was his necromantic opponent from earlier. But he had beaten it then, and he could surely beat it again. His staff twitched, but before he could raise it, one of the other knights raised his lance and pricked the side of Kemmler’s neck with the tip. ‘No hope is the answer you were looking for, Lichemaster,’ the kastellan said. The knight sat back in his saddle and looked up at the silvery moon. ‘The night passes quickly. You have deprived us of our intended sport, Kemmler. Thus, you will serve in its stead. Run, little man. Run and pray that we do not catch you.’ ‘No,’ Kemmler hissed. ‘What?’ the kastellan said. ‘No!’ Kemmler’s blade came up, chopping aside the lance as he thrust out his staff. Black fire speared from the tip, washing over the kastellan. The knight’s mount reared with a shriek, and the kastellan fought to control it even as he swept out a hand. Kemmler’s flames were snuffed as easily as if they were nothing more than the sparks of a candle. Kemmler was already shouting more incantations as the knights closed in as one. Krell raised his axe and roared. The sound of the ancient wight’s voice, so rarely used to its full effect, billowed upwards like the noise of a rockslide, stopping the horses in their tracks and causing the knights to jerk their reins in shock. Krell pointed his axe at the closest of the vampires and words rasped from between his fleshless jaws. The words were indecipherable and unintelligible but their meaning was plain. The kastellan raised his arm and shouted, ‘Hold!’ ‘He has challenged us,’ one of the Blood Knights snarled eagerly. ‘The rotting beast challenges us.’ The others murmured in agreement and Kemmler noted with satisfaction that the kastellan’s posture made his displeasure obvious. The creature had wanted a quick kill. Kemmler’s mind raced as he lowered his staff and tomb-blade. He would have to be quick to take advantage of the situation. ‘And so?’ the kastellan barked. ‘Are we children, to take every challenge as a given? That thing is nothing more than a tool, a puppet of this sack of stringy meat and crooked bones,’ he continued, gesturing to Kemmler, who grinned. ‘Oh, Krell is anything but that, kastellan,’ Kemmler crowed. ‘I awoke him, but I do not control him,’ he continued, noting silently that there was some bitter truth in his bluff. ‘And there is no greater warrior in these mountains or beyond than Krell Thrice-Dead, Krell of the Great Axe. Let your warriors fight him, kastellan. Let them learn what true power is… Let them meet Krell’s challenge, unless you are frightened to do so.’ The Blood Dragons growled at this, glaring fiercely at Kemmler, but their attentions were mostly on Krell. The kastellan grunted. Kemmler chuckled. ‘And if he wins, you will throw your banner at my feet,’ he said. The kastellan whipped around, glaring at him. Kemmler’s smile didn’t falter. ‘Or do you fear that your warriors will not prove up to the challenge?’ ‘And if they win?’ the kastellan said, finally. ‘Then my power will be at your disposal,’ Kemmler said, inclining his head. The kastellan gave a bark of laughter. ‘Oh, I will dispose of you, never fear.’ He gestured to one of his knights. ‘Go,’ he growled. The Blood Knight gave a deep howl and spurred his mount forward. His lance dipped, but Krell made no move to step aside. Instead, as he had in Blenois, the wight allowed the lance to strike him and shatter. Krell drove his shoulder into the horse’s chest, toppling the animal and throwing its rider. The vampire sprang to his feet with barely a whisper of sound; his pale features were twisted in a feral snarl as he drew his sword and whipped it out across Krell’s skull. Krell stepped back and the vampire lunged, pressing the attack. The sword flickered like lightning as it scraped filth and sparks from Krell’s armour. The wight’s hand snapped out and caught the blade. The vampire blinked in shock, but reacted with preternatural swiftness, releasing the weapon and reaching for the dagger at his belt. The great axe sank down, splitting the gargoyle helm and the writhing features beneath before the dagger could be drawn. Krell flung out his arm and flicked the body off his axe as if it were no heavier than a drop of gore. The vampire’s body spun and smashed into the ground. Krell extended his other hand and crooked a finger. A second Blood Knight slid from his horse and advanced, his shield and cruelly hooked war-axe raised warily. The others had grown quiet with the dispatch of the first, their jeers dwindling as it became obvious that even if Krell heard them, he didn’t appear to care. The second knight paused, and then, with a war-whoop, barrelled forward, smashing into Krell with his shield, his axe flickering out to strike the wight’s arm. Krell twisted aside and caught the vampire in the back with an elbow, nearly flattening him. The creature jerked around with the grace of a striking snake, his axe chopping a wedge in Krell’s pauldron and rocking the wight on his feet. Krell rolled his shoulder, using his greater strength to yank the axe from his opponent’s grip. But before Krell could employ his own weapon, the vampire chopped down on his wrist with the edge of his shield, causing Krell to drop his axe. Krell reacted without hesitation. The wight’s hands slammed together on either side of the vampire’s bat-winged helm and with a brutal crack, Krell spun the vampire’s head around. The red-armoured warrior fell, twitching. Krell lifted a foot and stomped down on the flopping creature’s cuirass, denting the metal and smashing the torso beneath. Krell ripped the vampire’s axe from his shoulder and tossed it aside disdainfully. The wight bent and snatched up his own axe and turned back to the gathered vampires, gazing at each in turn. Krell spread his arms and his jawbone sagged in what could only be a mocking expression as no further challengers stepped forward. Kemmler laughed and leaned on his staff. ‘Come, come, who will be next? Step right up, my fine lords. Step up and be put down,’ he cackled. With a communal growl, two knights set their horses into motion. Twin lances dipped for Krell and the wight slashed out, splitting them with a wide swing of his axe. Kemmler didn’t bother to watch. Krell could dispatch his weight in armoured buffoons, blood-drinkers or no. Kemmler was content to leave him to it; the wight was playing his role perfectly, providing a distraction to the enemy so that Kemmler could deliver the killing blow. Instead, the necromancer concentrated on the weak skeins of dark magic that seeped up from the ground and barrows. The arrival of the Blood Knights had interrupted his control of the barrow-dead and he knew that the kastellan had no more intention of honouring the challenge than Kemmler himself did. Unlike his followers, that one was more cunning than courageous. Kemmler felt the dead stir sluggishly as he wove threads of control through the soil and rocks, prodding them into motion. He would raise reinforcements from the barrows and vaults of this place. Even vampires would eventually be dragged under by a tide of dead bone. As long as Krell could keep them occupied… ‘As plans go, it has cunning to it,’ the kastellan said. Kemmler looked up, eyes widening slightly. The black-armoured vampire looked down at him from his horse, seemingly unconcerned with the violence Krell was dealing out to his warriors. ‘It was obvious, of course, from the outset that you would attempt it.’ Kemmler grimaced. ‘Then stop me, wound-licker.’ ‘And insult added upon insult,’ the kastellan said, leaning forward in his saddle. ‘I could stop you with but a thought, necromancer.’ ‘If you could, you would have,’ Kemmler said. Behind the kastellan, a crimson-armoured form hurtled through the air to smash into a barrow, sans head. More of the Blood Knights had joined the fray, both a-horse and on foot. Krell met them all with a creak of battered metal and a rasping roar. Kemmler could almost feel the wight’s bestial satisfaction. ‘I beat you earlier. I can beat you now.’ ‘I let you take control. I saw no reason to let you be devoured by ghouls,’ the kastellan said. ‘Besides, I wanted to see what you were capable of for myself. Stories are all well and good, but a wise man trusts only his own eyes.’ Kemmler tensed. He peered up at the vampire speculatively. ‘Why?’ ‘Curiosity,’ the vampire said. Krell plucked a knight from his horse and swung him by his arm against a tree, shattering it. Not releasing the still-struggling vampire, Krell whirled around, whipping the creature into his companions hard enough to wrench the vampire’s arm from its socket. Arm in one hand and his axe in the other, Krell struck out at his opponents. Kemmler and the kastellan watched the melee for a moment. ‘He is most impressive,’ the vampire said. ‘He is more trouble than he’s worth at times,’ Kemmler said sourly. ‘Like any beast, he requires regular feedings.’ ‘You seem to have little problem with that,’ the kastellan said. ‘La Maisontaal Abbey, Vercoix, Maturin, and… Blenois, was it?’ Kemmler froze. The vampire chuckled. ‘Tancred survived, by the way.’ Kemmler forced himself to speak. ‘I thought as much.’ ‘He’s a determined man, the Duke of Quenelles. Your atrocities inflame him, especially your butchery of the inhabitants of Covreign, in the Forest of Chalons.’ ‘I do not recall that particular atrocity,’ Kemmler said slowly. ‘I do, and quite well, in fact. My knights fed well.’ The kastellan turned back to the battle, saying, ‘Just as they fed well near Brionne and Bastonne and then, when you – or rather I – summoned the ghoul swarms and their Strigoi pack-kings into the streets of Mousillon. That is where they came from, those beasts you fought earlier. I kept a few as pets, finding them useful.’ The kastellan looked at the necromancer. ‘Did you ever wonder why so many knights joined Tancred, Kemmler? Your army was crushed at La Maisontaal Abbey. There’s little glory in hunting a fugitive, but Tancred’s numbers swell and swell, no matter how many you dispatch.’ ‘You,’ Kemmler said. Krell decapitated another Blood Knight. A horse reared and slammed the wight to one knee with its flailing hooves. Swords flashed and Krell surged to his feet, flinging vampires and horses back. ‘A word in the ear, a whispered hint of horrors unimagined, and men are inflamed with righteous passion. Kemmler the renegade, Kemmler the beaten, broken necromancer becomes a monster undreamt of since the last ride of the Red Duke. Do you feel proud?’ ‘Why?’ Kemmler said again. The dead stirred in their barrows and his eyes flashed as anger surged through him. The kastellan didn’t seem to notice. ‘As I said, curiosity,’ the kastellan said. ‘I wanted to test the mettle of the great Lichemaster, to see if the man who came back was as mighty as he had once been. I knew that you would eventually make your way here, for I saw to it that you had no other option. It seemed fitting, and my knights were eager to see their old home. Native soil holds such peculiar power over some of us,’ the vampire went on. ‘Their home,’ Kemmler said. ‘Not yours. Your accent…’ The kastellan said nothing. Kemmler gnawed his lip. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. When the kastellan still didn’t reply, Kemmler gave a cry and flung up his staff. The skeletons and slaughtered ghouls that the Blood Knights had dispatched rose to their feet as one, reaching up blindly to paw at the vampires and their kastellan both. The latter leapt smoothly from his horse as the beast bucked and shrieked; the vampire drew his blade even as his feet touched the ground and his sword shot out. Kemmler barely managed to interpose his own blade, and his shoulder throbbed with the force of the blow as he stumbled back. Desperate, he again drew power from the death-soaked ground and struck back at the vampire. Their swords clashed and for a moment, they strained against one another. Then the vampire shoved him back and Kemmler staggered. The dead came to his aid, their bronze weapons crashing down on the vampire’s black cuirass. Skeletons were shattered as the vampire swatted them aside and lunged for Kemmler again. The Lichemaster scrambled aside and the vampire’s sword hacked a divot out of a barrow. Armoured skeletons, fresh from the grave, were broken and smashed as they tried to interpose themselves between Kemmler and his opponent. Kemmler was knocked onto his back by the force of the vampire’s assault and he only just managed to get his staff and sword up, crossing them to catch the vampire’s descending blade. His elbows creaked painfully as the vampire forced his sword downwards. ‘Who am I? Was that your question, Lichemaster?’ the vampire snarled. He reached up to rip his helm off and fling it aside. Kemmler stared up at the contorted, corpse-like face with its gaunt, aristocratic features and the bare, shorn scalp that writhed with sorcerous energy. Eyes like fiery pits burned into his and thin lips peeled back from a mouthful of fangs. A name swam to the surface of Kemmler’s mind, a name he’d seen etched on a plaque beneath a rotting portrait in the ruins of Drakenhof Castle, so long ago, long before his fall and return. ‘Mannfred Von Carstein,’ Kemmler hissed and the name struck the air like a butcher’s cleaver striking meat. The mist seemed to thicken and draw inwards around them, as if responding to the utterance. Mannfred Von Carstein. Mannfred, last of the Von Carsteins, best beloved of Vlad’s get, brother to Konrad. Mannfred, who had died at Hel Fenn, but had obviously, inevitably, returned. ‘Yesss,’ Mannfred said as he saw recognition bloom on Kemmler’s face. He hunched forward, pressing his sword down, forcing it towards Kemmler’s sweating face. ‘Do you still think you could compel me, Lichemaster? I, who have led legions of your kind in battle. I, who have bargained with the fell things of Nagashizzar and survived? I am the last true Elector of Sylvania, the High Disciple of Nagash, heir to the empires of both the living and the dead, little man, and you should have run when you had the chance.’ Kemmler looked about desperately. Krell had noticed his distress, but there were too many Blood Knights between the wight and his master. Krell tore through the undead, but he would not reach Kemmler in time. Mannfred’s eyes flickered to the approaching shape of Krell, and then back to Kemmler. ‘Even now, you fight,’ the vampire murmured. ‘You squirm and whine and snap, like a rat in a trap, refusing to surrender to inevitability.’ Kemmler bared his teeth in a defiant rictus. ‘I have fought too hard to surrender to a leech with pretensions of aristocracy,’ the necromancer wheezed. ‘Inevitability is for weaker men. Mortality is for cattle.’ Krell roared and trampled a vampire, even as he swatted another aside with a brutal backhand. Mannfred ignored him, staring down into Kemmler’s eyes. ‘And alliances?’ the vampire said. Kemmler blinked sweat out of his eyes. ‘What?’ ‘Dwarfs and elves, Kemmler, Bretonnians and men of the Empire – we have the same enemies, enemies who sunk me into the fenn and reduced you to a gibbering wreck. We stood alone and were hammered down for our temerity. Would you stand alone again?’ Mannfred suddenly stepped back and lowered his sword. Krell reared up over him, axe cocked for a final, lethal blow. Kemmler saw it all, in that moment. All of it had been a test. He had been harried and chivvied from place to place, tempered in fires of constant frustration by the creature standing before him. He had been beaten into a shape fitting the designs of this ancient and calculating intelligence, and fury warred with dark admiration in him. Fury at being so manipulated, but admiration for the ease with which it had been done. Admiration won out. He had learned the benefit of allies. Indeed, he had come to Blood Keep seeking them, something whispered to him. It uncoiled in him, as if stirred by what he had just undergone and the quiet whisper pulsed through him. ‘Stop,’ he bellowed, flinging out his staff in a gesture that brought Krell to a shivering halt, the bite of his axe a mere hair’s breadth from Mannfred’s skull. The wight slowly lowered his axe and Mannfred smiled cruelly as Kemmler picked himself up. ‘Why all of this?’ Kemmler asked. ‘If you wanted an alliance you simply had to ask.’ ‘And be rebuffed?’ Mannfred said, sheathing his sword. ‘No, I think not. And besides, I had other reasons.’ Bestial shapes crouched on the barrows, looking down at the surviving vampires and Krell and Kemmler. ‘You’re gathering an army,’ Kemmler said, glancing at the ghouls and the hulking Strigoi where they crouched, and then at the Blood Knights. Kemmler looked at Mannfred and saw the thick tendrils of dark death-magic, invisible to all but a necromancer, coiling around him. And something else… The same looming shadow that clung to Krell also guided Mannfred’s footsteps. Perhaps Mannfred was not as smart as he thought he was. Or perhaps they both served the designs of something far more ancient and far more calculating than themselves. Krell’s gaze met his and for just a moment, Kemmler wondered whether the wight was his servant or his overseer. ‘Not just an army. The last army,’ Mannfred said, eyes glinting in the moonlight. ‘The banner of Blood Keep flies with the standard of the Von Carsteins, Heinrich Kemmler. Will yours join theirs?’ He held out a clawed gauntlet. ‘Are you content to be one man alone? Or will you march with me, to the ruin of our enemies?’ I think I have never been alone, Kemmler thought. And I do not think you were the only one testing me this day. But he did not say that. Instead, he gave a tombstone grin and clasped Mannfred’s hand, sealing their pact as the mist curled around the barrows and the idiot moon shone down. ‘The dragon is awake,’ the Lichemaster said. ‘Let the world know fear.’