[Konrad 03] - Warblade Read online

  A WARHAMMER NOVEL

  WARBLADE

  Konrad - 03

  David Ferring

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

  At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl-Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

  But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering World’s Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Konrad!” hissed the skaven. “We’ve been waiting for you…”

  Gaxar had adopted his human guise, and he stood in the cave into which the narrow tunnel opened. The cavern was illuminated by phosphorescence from the subterranean rocks, a ghostly light which cast no shadows.

  Konrad and the Altdorf officer gazed at the terrible scene which confronted them.

  Litzenreich and Ustnar were nailed by their hands and feet to the ground, their limbs outspread. Blood dripped from these raw wounds, and also from the other injuries inflicted to their naked bodies. They writhed in agony, but were unable to voice their pain because they had been gagged.

  Human and dwarf lay eight feet apart. Between them was room for another crucifixion, and four iron nails marked where the third victim’s palms and ankles would be hammered to the rock—and Konrad was the intended sacrifice, his flesh to be ripped and his bones splintered by the cruel metal spikes.

  Gaxar had known that he would come in search of his comrades.

  There was another skaven in the chamber, but this giant rodent had not taken on human form. It was Silver Eye. Konrad had given the creature that name when he had been a prisoner in the ratbeasts’ lair deep below Middenheim, and named him because of the shimmering piece of warpstone that had replaced his missing left eye. Silver Eye had been one of Gaxar’s bodyguards and had escaped with his master when their domain had been assaulted and overwhelmed by the military forces from the City of the White Wolf. Now, here beneath Altdorf, the warrior skaven still carried the black shield with its mysterious golden emblem of mailed fist and crossed arrows.

  Recognizing Konrad, the rodent almost grinned, and its tongue curled from its mouth, lapping at its jowls. Konrad remembered the loathsome feel of the creature’s rasping tongue when it had licked blood from his face. The next time there was blood between them, he vowed, it would be Silver Eye’s…

  Konrad had always hated skaven, but clustered around the two supine prisoners were dozens of creatures even more repulsive than the rat-things. They seemed half human, almost like infants. As pale as maggots, their naked flesh displayed their lack of true humanity. They were more like ghouls, drained of all life; their only colour was the red of their eyes.

  With their huge and deformed heads, scaly bodies and stunted tails, twisted limbs and three-clawed paws, the troglodyte mutants wailed and cried as they fought each other in their obscene blood lust. It was they who had caused most of the wounds to the supine sacrificial offerings.

  These were the victims and torturers; but they were not the only creatures within the underground chamber. There was also an audience to the barbaric scene of torment and mutilation. They stood in the darkness beyond the river, high upon a ledge on the far side of the cavern, a handful of shadowy shapes hidden behind the stalactites that hung from the damp roof of the cavern.

  Konrad absorbed all these details in the instant it took him to step from the twisting tunnel. At the same time, he switched his sword from his right hand to his left, then reached behind his back. Beneath his cloak lay the holster which held the weapon to which he had devoted so much practice time over the preceding days. He drew it; he aimed; he fired.

  As the trigger released the taut wire, the six inch bolt hurtled from the device. The weapon was a precision mechanism of brass wheels and steel cogs: a one-handed crossbow.

  Gaxar was a grey seer, powerful in the dark arts, but he could not defend himself from such swift retribution. The arrow flew straight and true, sinking into his right eye and deep into his skull, its impact knocking him backwards. He attempted to grasp the steel bolt with his right hand, in a vain attempt to pull it free—but he had no right hand. As a skaven, his paw was missing; as a human, his hand was gone. Litzenreich claimed that it was he who had deprived Gaxar of that part of his anatomy.

  The skaven dropped, slowly and silently, and lay unmoving on the ground.

  The inhuman infants had been wailing and screaming out their hunger for flesh, but now came a shriek which drowned out all their feral sounds, a chilling cry that momentarily froze Konrad. It was Silver Eye, mourning the death of his master. He raised his sword and hurtled towards Konrad in his quest for vengeance. But the Altdorf officer leapt forwards, blocking the skaven’s route. Their swords rang as they clashed together.

  Konrad sprang to the aid of the captives, flinging his crossbow aside. The pale hordes scurried towards him, and his sword swept at the first of the vermin. Its ugly head flew from its stunted body—but kept on hideously screeching as it arced across the cavern. More of the deformed swarm scuttled towards Konrad, and more of them died.

  They tried to drag him down by sheer weight of numbers, clutching at him with their talons, leaping up and tearing at his flesh. Their claws and teeth were their only weapons, and blood soon flowed from his wounds; but far more blood poured from his assailants. Immune to his own pain, Konrad stabbed and hacked at his enemies, punching and kicking, trampling them beneath the metal studs of his boots. Their flesh was carved and squashed, their bones snapped and crushed.

  No longer did the mutants gibber with primitive delight as they lapped at human blood; now they gasped as their own lifeblood ebbed away. The sound of their dying was more repulsive than that of their feasting.

  A score dead, the same number hideously mutilated and breathing their last, and still they came at Konrad as he hacked his way through them to Litzenreich. He leaned down, ripping away the gag from the wizard’s mouth.

  More of the verminous things sprang at him, and he nearly fell. His sword swung, despatching yet more of the predators. But there was still far too many of them. If he slipped on the gore which oozed treacherously over the rocks, he would never rise. Down on their level, the pygmy army would overwhelm him in seconds.

  “Magic!” Konrad yelled. “A spell!”

  “Free my hand,” Litzenreich managed to say.

  Konrad spun around, hurling away the cold bodies which clung to him. His sword flashed, and heads flew, blood spurting. He tried to pull the nail free from Litzenreich’s right hand, but it was too firmly embedded in the rock.

  “Pull the hand, pull the hand!” ordered the wizard—and Konrad obeyed.

  Litzenreich’s arm came up, and most of his hand with it, but shards of broken bone and chunks of red fl
esh stayed fixed to the iron nail. The wizard screamed in agony, clenching what was left of his fist. But then he stretched out his arm, pointed with his hand, and his scream became transformed into a spell. A thunderbolt shot from his ruined fingers, a jagged streak of lightning which impaled one of his erstwhile tormentors, searing through its warped torso, instantly turning it from deathly white to charred black.

  The creature screeched as it was roasted alive. It was still burning, still howling, when the next one burst into flames. Then another erupted in a blaze of red and yellow. The cavern grew brighter, the sounds of death became louder, and the stink of death was almost overpowering.

  Litzenreich burned them up; Konrad cleaved them apart. Either way: they died.

  Konrad reached Ustnar, sliding his sword below the head of one of the nails which restrained the dwarf’s hands, using the blade as a lever to draw the nail upwards. Ustnar’s right hand came free, and he immediately grabbed the throat of one of the brutes which was trying to bite through his shoulder. He raised it high, squeezed until its neck broke, then cast it aside. By then, Konrad had released his other hand.

  There were very few of the stunted monsters left, and yet they attacked with unabated frenzy. Ustnar grabbed one with each hand, and smashed their skulls together, again and again until their heads were reduced to a gory mess. Meanwhile, Konrad released the dwarf’s feet. As the final nail came free, his sword snapped in two. He drove the broken blade into the belly of another mutant, right up to the hilt. The screeching thing lurched away, taking the weapon with it.

  Litzenreich must have used a spell to free himself, because by now he was on his feet, surrounded by burning carcasses. The troglodytes were all dead or dying.

  The Altdorf officer was also dead, but there was no trace of Silver Eye. He had gone, and he had taken Gaxar’s body with him. Nor was there any sign of the figures Konrad had noticed earlier, the ones who had seemed to be spectators on the ledge beyond the stream.

  Litzenreich and Ustnar and Konrad looked at one another. The first two were almost totally red with blood, most of it their own. Although he had been protected by his clothing, Konrad had been clawed and bitten in many places.

  Then they heard a sound from one of the passages that led from the cavern, and they all turned. The ominous sound was growing louder, coming closer, the sound of more enemies rushing towards them. And like the creatures they had just slaughtered, these enemies were not human. There must have been scores of them, their bestial warcries echoing through the tunnels—and this Chaos horde would not be midgets, would not be unarmed, would not be defeated with such relative ease.

  “The river!” yelled Konrad. “It’s our only chance of getting out!”

  This was how he had originally planned to escape from Altdorf, but he had thought they would only be fleeing from the jail where Litzenreich and Ustnar had been incarcerated—not from a whole legion of the damned.

  They made their way quickly to the water’s edge, the magician and the dwarf both limping. The river flowed through a channel worn away in the ancient rock, then disappeared into a tunnel at the edge of the cavern.

  “I hate water!” said Ustnar, staring down into the swirling foam. Then he jumped in and disappeared. By the time he broke surface, he was halfway to the arch where the river flowed beneath the rock.

  Litzenreich did not move, however, not until Konrad shouldered him. The wizard cried out as he fell, and became silent as he went under. His head appeared for a few seconds before he was carried away into the culvert.

  By then, Konrad had begun to strip off his heavy outfit. His helmet, his cloak, his cuirass and one boot were gone by the time he saw the first glint of feral eyes in the darkness of the passageway from which the menacing sounds echoed louder and louder every moment.

  He leapt down into the icy waters of the subterranean stream. After a few seconds he came up, taking a deep gulp of air, not knowing when he would next be able to breathe. As he gazed upwards, he saw that the ledge on the far side of the cavern had not been totally deserted. Two dark shapes still stood there, and because he was closer Konrad could see them quite well.

  One of them was Skullface!

  There was no mistaking the preternaturally thin body, the bald head which seemed to have no flesh on the bone.

  And Konrad also recognized the figure by Skullface’s side.

  It was Elyssa.

  Then Konrad was swept into the darkness of the tunnel, lost within the rushing waters of the torrent, and all he could do was remember…

  He remembered.

  For over five years he had believed that Elyssa was dead, that she had been murdered when their village had been attacked and totally destroyed by a ravaging army of beastmen. Until now, Konrad had thought that he was the only survivor.

  The assault had occurred on the first day of summer, on Sigmar’s holy day. The previous day Konrad had attempted to leave the village, but he had been unable to pass through the ranks of marauders who encircled the valley. Disguising himself in the hide of a beastman he had slain, he had been forced back by a trio of skaven, made to witness the total annihilation of the only home he had ever known.

  Making his way through the mayhem and destruction, he had reached the manor, hoping that he might save Elyssa. But the Kastring family house was ablaze; no one could have survived within. No one human.

  But an inhuman figure had emerged unscathed from the fierce flames, the skeletal shape that Konrad had come to think of as Skullface. Konrad had taken aim with his bow and sent one of his black arrows deep into Skullface’s heart. Had he been human, the gaunt figure would have died. Instead, he had pulled the arrow free from his bare chest—but there had been no blood, not even a sign of a wound.

  Konrad had turned and fled, and he had managed to escape from the holocaust.

  No one else could possibly have survived, so he had always believed.

  Elyssa…

  Elyssa who was Konrad’s first love, and still his only true love.

  Elyssa who had named him.

  Elyssa who had changed his life.

  Elyssa who had given him the quiver, the bow, the arrows, all of which had been marked with the enigmatic heraldic device—the device emblazoned upon the shield now carried by Silver Eye.

  Skullface must have captured the girl, keeping her alive so long for some unknown diabolic purposes of his own.

  Having failed five years ago, it seemed Konrad had been given another chance to save her.

  He had ventured into the labyrinths beneath Altdorf in order to rescue Litzenreich and Ustnar from the cells in which they had been imprisoned by the city authorities; he owed the latter a debt, if not the former. The dwarf was the only survivor of those who had freed him from Gaxar’s clutches, a period of incarceration which had been caused by the wizard’s devious machinations in his quest for skaven warpstone. But by the time Konrad had reached Litzenreich and Ustnar, it was too late; it was their turn to fall into the grey seer’s power.

  Konrad was certain that Gaxar was no more; but Silver Eye had escaped, taking with him the shield which had made Konrad pursue the two skaven from Middenheim to the Imperial capital.

  Yet that was of no importance, not now, and neither were Litzenreich and Ustnar. All that mattered was Elyssa.

  Konrad wanted to return, to swim back to the chamber where he had seen the girl, but the force of the water was too powerful and carried him inexorably through the narrow culvert. It was Elyssa who had taught him to swim, he remembered.

  She had given him so much of his life that it was difficult to remember anything before the day they had met. It was as if he had not been truly born until then. She was the daughter of the lord of the manor, he the peasant boy who worked in the inn. He had saved her life, slaying the beastman which had attacked her at the edge of the forest. In return, she had given him an identity —but he still did not know who he really was or where he came from.

  The raging stream did not totally fill t
he tunnel, and as he broke surface, Konrad was careful to keep his mouth shut and breathe only through his nose. Some of the sewers and drains from the capital emptied into the underground river, but these were by no means the most foul waters Konrad had ever found himself in.

  He could see nothing in the darkness and spent most of his time beneath the surface, buffeted against the rocks on either side, judging that injuries to his limbs were preferable to having his head cracked open if the roof of the passage should suddenly become lower.

  When he came up for air the third time, he noticed that the darkness ahead was not so total. It was night, and this could be where the river emerged from beneath the city. If it was, then the exit would be blocked by a portcullis, some kind of device designed to allow the water to flow freely but stop intruders using the drainage system as a way of entering the city. There might also be regular sentries on duty at the sluice gate.

  When Konrad and the officer had discovered that the two cells beneath the army garrison were empty, the latter had sent orders that Litzenreich and Ustnar should be prevented from escaping via the underground river. By now, there would almost certainly be guards waiting for whoever reached the end of the tunnel.

  For the first time, instead of letting himself be carried by the force of the stream, Konrad tried to delay his progress. The waters were far too strong for him to swim against, but that did not prevent him trying. His pace barely slowed. He reached out blindly, hoping to grab an outcropping rock and halt himself. If not, he would soon come to an immediate stop, smashed against the railings or whatever obstructed the end of the culvert.

  The blackness ahead had become grey, and he thought he could make out the shape of the opening. Where were Litzenreich and Ustnar? Had the force of the water crushed them against the heavy mesh, knocked them unconscious? Had they sunk below the surface and drowned?

  Closer and closer came the paler darkness, faster and faster did Konrad seem to be propelled. Then he saw a distant light. The end of the tunnel was either illuminated on the outside, or else it was the torches of the waiting troops. He turned his back, bracing himself for the inevitable impact against the maze of metal bars which must form part of the capital’s defences.