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Into the Valley of Death - Frank Cavallo

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Into the Valley of Death

Frank Cavallo

1.

Felix Jaeger ran for his life.

His feet slashed across the muddy ground with every hurried step. His muscles ached, screaming for rest. His lungs burned and his chest heaved. But he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t slow down, not even for a moment. Not even to catch his failing breath.

The beast was near. He could hear it, snarling and howling as it ripped through the thick forest behind him, shrinking the distance between them with each passing instant. The chase had already stretched on for almost an hour, tearing a scar across the dark woodlands of eastern Talabecland. It was a desperate race, a break-neck pursuit through treacherous woods and dense, overgrown brush-tangles. And it was now drawing to its inevitable, brutal end.

Each second brought the claws and the fangs closer. Every time he risked a glance backward, Felix could see those same merciless red eyes, glowing against the cold shadows of the Great Forest. No matter how far he ran, their gaze remained locked on him. In moments the monster’s furious gait would finally close the gap. Soon the beast would outlast him, and Felix’s exhausted sinews would become nothing more than food for the ravenous predator.

A thistle branch tore away his sleeve as he rushed through a thicket of brambles, cutting across his arm and spilling more blood in his wake. Garbed in what had once been the silken finery of a student at a prestigious university – everything he wore was now shredded and frayed. Months of wandering along the fringes of civilization had left him in rags and second-hand scraps. Stains of sweat, mud and blood discoloured the expensive dyes of his ruined clothing.

When he spied a rocky clearing in the forest ahead, only a few steps away, he staggered toward it. The monster’s roaring gait was growing ever-louder behind him. Every step made it swell. A rushing river bounded Felix to his right, churning with white rapids, making the frothing water impossible to negotiate. Ahead, at the edge of the stone outcropping, he caught sight of the fat trunk of a great old oak, towering above the uneven ground and reaching up into the dark canopy. He clenched his fists and summoned his last ounce of strength. He charged into the open.

The beast broke through the wall of brambles behind him only an instant later, splitting the nest of thorn bushes. It was a massive, wild canine, its powerful muscles warped and swollen into a drooling grotesquery of fur and flesh. A mane of razor-sharp bristles crowned the mutant hound’s fearsome head, exaggerating the heft of its enormous shoulders. Its thick body surged with hideous growth. Twisted tusks sprouted from every corner of its flea-swarmed, gore-speckled hide. Ridges of bony spines ran down the length of its arched back. Its haunches flexed over top of scaly, claw-like paws and its scorpion tail whipped wildly through the air behind it.

Bounding in bloodthirsty fury over the last few paces toward Felix, it was on his heels in seconds. Snapping its rabid, frothing jaws, it howled at the warm scent of man-flesh that filled its slimy nose.

Felix leaped for the tree, less than a single step ahead of the hound. He stretched his arms out, as long and as hard as he could muster, straining to reach the lowest-hanging branch and ignoring the pain that rippled through every inch of his body. For a moment he was airborne, flying through the woods in a final, frantic effort to escape. His hands clamped down on an arm of grey bark, but his palms were dripping with sweat. One hand slipped from the grip a moment after, leaving him swinging in the wind, hanging on by only a single, precarious grasp.

The hound gave no quarter. It too sprang on its back legs, careening up toward the vulnerable man, suspended by his tenuous hold.

Its dagger claws swiped at his leg, tearing through his boot leather right down to the skin. The hound’s snout chomped at him, gnashing its fangs within inches of Felix’s midsection. He could taste the beast’s hot breath, stinking with the foul odours of carrion as it bayed in a maddened, mindless wrath. But the nimble young wanderer held fast. He kicked at the hound’s snout, smashing its nose. Then he swung his entire body back in the other direction, somehow managing to again avoid the beast’s snarling jaws.

As the mutated hound fell back to earth, Felix quickly re-established his second grip, using his momentum to haul himself up from below. The snarling beast leaped a second time, but Felix draped his legs over another branch, further elevating himself until he could pull his entire body out of harm’s way.

The ferocious hound remained undeterred, leaping and growling at the base of the old tree, but for the moment, Felix had found his haven. For the moment, he was safe.

2.

With the beast still circling beneath, the chase averted for at least a while, Felix reached into his pack. The tattered green travel-bag was now his only worldly possession, and as he expected, it was nearly empty. Just a handful of nuts and some dry berries remained among stale crumbs. The stolen bread he’d packed away days before was long-gone.

Breathing easy for the first time in a long while, his cheeks were flushed from the hunt. His chest still pounded with the rush of adrenaline as he tried to relax. Perspiration soaked his clothing, dripping from his sleeves and from the long blond locks that had fallen down over his face. He pulled back the mop of hair with a grimy hand, raising his sights to the heavens.

The wet, shoulder-length strands fell down over his collar and the top of his dirty tunic. He was a lean, lithe young man, with a hard-edged jaw-line and narrow eyes that always seemed to squint just a little. Despite having been on the run for many weeks, his youthful face showed only the earliest hints of a beard, no more than scattered patches of fine whiskers on his chin and a thin bit of a moustache forming above his lip.

No longer a boy, but not quite old enough to grow the beard of a man, as his father used to say.

Felix watched the hound below, licking its fangs with a serpentine red tongue. If it was hunger that motivated the vicious abomination, then he shared at least that much in common with the beast. The gurgling pain deep in his own gut, as empty as his burlap rucksack, hurt worse than any knife-wound. A constant, excruciating reminder of how far he’d fallen and how much he’d lost.

It had been days now since he’d been on the run, since he’d awoken with a splitting headache to find himself alone in some of most dangerous wild places in the Empire. Though he whispered curses to any number of gods, he also could hear his father’s disapproving voice for another reason, scolding him within his head. He well knew what the old man would have said: that he could blame no one but himself for his current string of misfortunes – save perhaps the brigands who had recently knocked him unconscious and relieved him of nearly everything he owned.

He’d known, even at the time, that taking up with a band of strangers in Wurtbad was a strategy not likely to bring him good fortune. But his options had been limited.

The association had begun with the best of intentions. Seeking out a place to drown his sorrows with the last of his coins, he’d stumbled into a dingy tavern on the edge of the city, and just as quickly found himself sharing tankards of ale with a motley band of other, apparently like-minded young ruffians.

It was only after they’d become entangled in a brawl and found themselves chased out of the city, that he’d begun to question the wisdom of his choice of company. The exact details, though recent, were rather sketchy in his recollection. It had all happened so fast, and after so much ale.

Someone in his drinking circle of new acquaintances had taken offence at the song being sung by another patron, praising the virtues of Reikland at the expense of all other provinces, if he remembered correctly. That of course, had led to an argument, which had led to a fight, which had turned into an all-out melee in a matter of seconds.

It was only as they fled the scene, overwhelmed by the other patrons and chased even by the city guard, that Felix discovered the identity of his new friends. But by then it was too late to excuse himself from the company of the followers of the infamous local bandit, Therkold Red-Scar.

There was no way he could have foreseen that, having made their escape to a secluded cabin along an old road north-west of the city, Therkold and his men would soon turn on their new-found friend, robbing him of all that he carried and leaving him to die in the wild forest.

Though as he re-traced the steps in his mind, Felix realized that it all looked quite obvious in hindsight.

Returning to his present predicament, he looked down once more. The hound was still there, but was no longer pacing beneath him. Instead it had begun to look elsewhere, its interest snared by something else, out in the forest shadows beyond the clearing. Its sinister tail elevated, curling up over its body as its ears pointed in an alert posture. Whether scent or sound, Felix did not know, but as he watched, the hound began to creep away, skulking out toward some other victim.

With nothing to eat, and nothing near enough to threaten him – for the moment – Felix Jaeger laid his head back against the moss-covered bark, and closed his eyes.

He didn’t rest for long.

A commotion roused him only moments later. Groggy and still aching in every part of his body, Felix was a moment in responding. But as the noises grew, and his senses returned, he scrambled to make up for the lapse.

Shouting dominated the cacophony, angry calls that echoed through the darkness of the forest. They were yet too far away to make out any words, but for the occasional curse or obscenity, hollered above the rest of the calls. A band of brigands perhaps – but men at least, from the sound of distant voices. Trouble to be sure; one never could be certain what kind of rogues were likely to emerge from the shadows of the deep woodlands.

The shouting swelled as the ground shivered and trembled, sending ripples through the trees and the bushes, dislodging rocks from the river-side sediment. Then came the howls. Fierce. Feral. Familiar.

And getting louder – closer, with every second. The hound was returning, and this time, it was not alone.

His body pressed against the trunk of the great oak, Felix felt the vibrations. They were rhythmic, not the widespread rumble of a quake, but a repetitive, powerful pounding. When he looked out from his makeshift shelter, his senses were confirmed. The raging hound charged out once more, again emerging from the deep of the woods. Every footfall of the massive beast was like a hammer-strike upon the earth. The wild monster stomped its way right up to the edge of the river, stopping and letting loose a ferocious squeal as it dug its paws into the silt.

But this time, it was not concerned with Felix at all.

It was wounded now. Blood ran in streaks and splotches across its thorny brown haunches. A dozen arrows and just as many spears pierced its midsection from every angle, lodged beside the spiny growths that jutted out from its hide. Blade-wounds had cleaved chunks of flesh from its shoulders and underbelly, exposing raw muscle and furry flaps of torn skin.

Whatever the beast had gone forth to find, it had met with more than mere prey. It was now the hunted. Felix smiled at the apparent reversal of fortune.

Only a few moments later, after the shouting had risen to a frenzied crescendo, a party of men came up in its tracks. They appeared to be mounted hunters, just as Felix had already guessed. But they were no common trackers or woodsmen. To a man, they were garbed in matching burgundy surcoats, stitched with a gold chevron and double-eagle herald, denoting some noble livery.

Most were armed to the teeth, wielding cumbersome blunderbusses, crossbows, spears and other ranged weapons. But Felix saw that all of them were dishevelled and spattered with mud, their horses panting from their own long pursuit.

As he remained in his secluded spot, careful not to reveal his presence, the hunters dismounted and re-grouped. They fanned out in a semi-circle fashion, closing off any avenue of escape for the wounded beast, its back against the forbidding rapids of the river. Although the men were clearly no strangers to violence, hulking, burly figures all, Felix noticed that they took their orders from the smallest of their number.

His horse, the finest of the group, took up a position behind the centre, and furthest from the hound. It was a regal black stallion, well-fed, meticulously groomed and saddled with an expensive gold-trimmed bridle. Its gear hauled several large packs. The other steeds in the party however, were equipped differently. Obviously sturdy riding horses all, their accoutrements were just as well-crafted, but lacking such elaborate flourishes, and most showed signs of wear. The leather was broken-in and the shine was worn away from the iron buckles. The animals themselves were powerful geldings, and most bore the scars of old wounds etched into their hides.

The young man’s head was the only part of him exposed, and to Felix, his features marked him as a youth probably not much older than himself: pale skinned, with close-cropped sable hair and a clean-shaven face. His features were sharp, with an angular chin and nose that lent him an almost royal bearing.

Slight of build and careful to remain at a distance, he wore none of the accoutrements of a noble house or of a fighting man. Instead, he was garbed in ill-fitting, voluminous dark robes that seemed to swim around him as he moved, and he carried only a scythe atop a long, crooked staff.

Despite that, he was undoubtedly in command of the armed men who stood before him. He directed the hunters with a combination of shouted orders and deliberate gestures. The last of them was a general order to finish the hunt. With perfect obedience, the men began to move forward, closing their ranks like a vice.

First came a new round of ranged attacks, a bank of arrows fired in a single rush. Then a hail of spears hurled at the beast, as the men moved ever nearer to close quarters. The gunners took aim next, setting their wide-barrelled firearms against their shoulders and firing off their blunderbusses in an ear-splitting spasm of smoke and flame. The beast staggered with every hit. Each new wound blasted out dark, fetid blood and chunks of mutant flesh from its hide. But despite its many injuries, the battered hound stood its ground, spitting acid-mucus from its snout in utter defiance.

The man in the black and violet robes called for a change of tactics. He ordered the force arrayed before him to shift into units. Breaking off into these smaller groups, two or three at a time, the hunters followed up their distance-strikes, racing in with slashing swords held high. They alternated angles at his behest, hitting the beast from the left, then from the right, keeping it moving and bewildered as he directed their movements with shouts from afar.

But still the hound rebuffed every new attack, squealing in misery and ever-swelling wrath as it swatted down a different hunter with each attempt to subdue it. Those not cut in half by its whirling, serrated tail or gored by its up-turned fangs were knocked to the side, crushed by the stomping of its claw-like paws. Others were thrown into the air, landing unconscious all over the stony ground of the river-side outcropping.

Felix watched in horror as the entire hunting party was cut down and cast aside until only two remained standing. The first was a grizzled old veteran, barrel-chested with arms like tree trunks. Streaks of black ran like tiger stripes through his bushy grey beard. Behind him, the man who directed the contingent cowered in the shrinking shadow of his lone surviving soldier. They now faced a beast with darkness surging through its blood, raging in a vicious ardour of hunger and pain.

With a fierce canine snarl, the hound charged. The lone remaining warrior heaved a half-broken spear, but the wild-eyed monster brushed it aside like a twig. The tired fighter backed up as the beast closed in on him, and his own feet betrayed him. Tripping blindly on a broken stone, he fell backwards, leaving the hound a clear path to the defenceless young man in the strange robes.

For a long, tense moment, the horrific beast paused, as though unsure of which vulnerable prey to strike first. While the veteran struggled to come to his feet, disarmed and dangerously near to the hound, he appeared careful to make no sudden movements that might provoke it into a final assault.

As he did, the man in the robes behind was not so still. Instead, he lifted his scythe, waving it as he recited some incantation that drew the beast’s crimson stare. For an instant, the young man seemed emboldened as a spell wove itself around his staff in a swirl of purple fog. He then swung his scythe, casting off a blade of sparkling mist. It sliced down upon the beast, breaking like sea-waves upon its hide.

For a brief moment, Felix thought the battle won, but he soon realized his faith was misplaced. The hound was paralyzed for but an instant, before it shook off the mist-attack, snarling and coughing at the fading fog, though otherwise unharmed. The young spell-caster’s eyes widened at the failure. His face suddenly panicked. Again he tried to launch an attack, rushing through the complex incantation once more. But his second salvo proved even weaker than the first. This one fizzled in mid-air before the mist-wave even reached the hound.

The beast growled and then roared, its attention now focused solely on the young man. Though the pale youth raised his scythe in some feeble attempt at defence, the summoned mist seemed to dissipate from around him as the hound closed in for the kill.

Though exhausted, starving and weary, Felix could not sit idle any longer. He leaped from his seclusion, shouting with his hoarse throat to draw the beast away from the unarmed man.

It proved effective enough. The young man managed to duck aside and the hound over-ran him, leaving his rear flanks exposed for an instant. It was a chance Felix did not waste. Snatching a sword from the hand of a fallen hunter, he leaped toward the beast that had sought to make a meal of him, intent on having a measure of revenge for himself.

Although well-schooled in the formal art of the duel, but not a hunter by training, Felix slashed across the hound from behind, slowing its recovery enough to allow him to kick a second discarded blade to the fallen soldier. The grizzled veteran clambered to his feet as his youthful master once again ducked behind. Their partnership unspoken, but sealed nonetheless in that moment, the two men pressed the attack.

Felix moved with the speed and grace of a practiced hand, slipping away from the beast’s mindless charges and slicing through its already broken hide with every turn. The other man proved his mettle as well, stabbing and hacking at every vulnerable part of the hound; a trained hunter who showed no fear in the face of a ferocious enemy.

In moments, the pair had the monster broken, exploiting its existing wounds and inflicting enough fresh ones to drain what remained of its strength. Yet the hound still did not relent. Huffing and wheezing, it lumbered toward Felix in a desperate final attack. Feinting and parrying in the manner of all expert duellists, Felix opened a gash across its soft throat, spilling black blood onto the mossy rocks and sending it down, its front legs crumpling beneath it.

Before he could shift his footing, the other man leaped. He jumped atop the hound, raised his blade to the sky then plunged it through the creature’s skull, cracking it open and rendering the death-blow. The lifeless carcass quickly collapsed into a heap underneath him.

His bearded face and jerkin spattered with dark blood, the man looked up in triumph. He smiled with a mouth full of crooked teeth as the foul vapours from the beast’s innards bathed him in death-steam.

‘Ernst Erhard,’ he said, by way of introduction. ‘Sergeant-at-arms for Count Otto von Halkern.’

‘But you may direct your queries to me,’ the other man added, stepping up from behind now that the danger was past. ‘I am Draeder von Halkern. Son of the aforementioned count.’

Felix responded with the polite half-bow of a gentleman, introducing himself.

‘Felix Jaeger, and I am…’

The thought occurred to him in mid-sentence that he had not had cause to speak his own name in a formal introduction since his recent disgrace and expulsion, and he stopped short of using either his father’s name or that of his former university.

‘At your service, my lord,’ he finally concluded.

3.

They only rested for a moment, catching their breath beside the steaming, rancid carcass. There was no celebration. No cheers or songs of triumph. Only a hard-earned repose.

The pause allowed Felix the chance to take a longer look at the uncommon attire of his new-found companion. It was clear to him now that Draeder was not only the son of a nobleman, but was indeed a wizard of some sort.

In contrast to his apparent youth however, the silk and velvet robes he wore looked quite old, with frayed edges and dyes faded from the passing of years. Totems and talismans of a macabre character adorned his mantle and his sashes; white skull insignia decorated his pointed sleeves and his boot-length waist-coast. The gold trim on his breechcloth and vest were stitched with human bones woven into the worn fabric. Arcane runes ran in columns down the length of his cloak, but his cowl was absent of decoration, a hood of purest black that made the man’s pallid complexion seem all the more stark.

What appeared to be an hourglass hung from his belt, the timepiece dangling as another man might wear a sword. The only thing he carried that looked like a weapon was the reaper’s scythe, a wicked, curved blade affixed atop a crooked wooden staff.

Their respite lasted only a few short minutes, just long enough for Erhard to recoup his strength before Draeder ordered that he return to his duties. Despite his obvious exhaustion, the grizzled sergeant obeyed with little more than a nod.

The first order of business was to see after the remainder of the von Halkern men. In this effort, Felix joined Erhard, if for no other reason than Draeder appeared oddly uninterested in doing so himself. Instead, the young man in the fine, old robes remained beside the beast whose demise he had done so little to assist, while Felix and Erhard went about tending to the fallen.

The sergeant was a stout man, not particularly tall but very heavily built; his massive arms and broad chest evident beneath his hauberk and mail. The hair was thinning atop his pate and his tanned face had the round fullness common to men at middle age. His nose was wide and crooked. It looked to have been broken more than once. The most recent injury had healed a permanent kink across the bridge. The dappled beard he wore covered most of the lower half of his face, even his mouth was hidden beneath his thick moustache.

His gear was well-worn and his hands were callused, the signs of a life spent hard at work. A half-dozen blades and two longswords were affixed to his belt, and even with his horse nearby he carried a pack at all times that would strain the spines of most other men. Though all appearances suggested him to be far more experienced and capable than Draeder, he nonetheless went about his work following the younger man’s orders with never a complaint, even as his master appeared to sit idly by.

Some of the men they were able to rouse without much effort, merely knocked unconscious by the force of the hound’s blows but otherwise unharmed. Of the dozen who had entered the fray, they found four in reasonably good condition.

Three more of the men were still alive, but wounded and requiring aid. The best that could be offered was river water to wash out their lacerations and bandages from Erhard’s pack to bind them. Felix could already tell that one of the men was hurt too badly to survive without more expert care. In its absence, he’d be dead within a day.

Of the rest, the other five men lay dead, their bloody, savaged bodies bearing witness to the brutality with which their lives had been taken: throats torn out, flesh ripped from their bones, disembowelled or bled nearly dry from too many wounds to count.

At Erhard’s direction, the able-bodied four and Felix joined him in the task of corralling the horses and then interring their lost comrades in shallow, muddy graves along the edge of the tree-line. As they finished that grim work, Felix accompanied the bearded old sergeant back to the river’s edge, where Draeder remained beside his peculiar prize.

Erhard made a round of introductions, once the group was re-gathered.

‘Young Felix, these are some of the most trusted servants of House von Halkern,’ Erhard said, presenting them as they stood, in a kind of informal muster. ‘These first two dangerous looking men are Reinhard and Volker.’

The two acknowledged him with polite head nods. The hunters were obviously veterans, not as experienced as Erhard, but men who bore the scars of battle across their skin and their similarly well-worn gear. The first was thick-armed and compact, the second taller but no less hearty.

Erhard next came to the most fearsome looking of them all, a dark figure with a craggy face and a patch over one eye. He stared out from under a brooding mass of long, black hair and a forked beard. His brigandine and surcoat were stained with both blood and soot, and his gauntlets and pauldrons were studded with dozens of iron spikes.

The man beside him however, standing almost in the other’s shadow, looked to be even younger than Felix. His hair was dark, but clipped much shorter than the others, and like Felix his beard had not yet grown in fully. His eyes were brighter and wider than the man next to him, although the two had very similar, narrow faces and resembled one another in a certain respect.

‘These two are my twin attack dogs,’ Erhard joked. ‘The brothers, Strang and Torsten. Thick as thieves and utterly inseparable, try as we might. Strang is one of my most experienced men, and Torsten is the youngest of the company, but we expect great things from him given that he’s learning from a sibling with such distinguished service.’

The smallest of the hunters, Torsten’s frame was thinner than the rest and his armour bore none of the dents and stains that soiled that of his fellows. While his elder brother said nothing, his greeting was the most enthusiastic of them all.

‘Good to have another hand at the ready,’ he said, although the others grumbled a little at his eagerness.

A newly-built fire centered their makeshift camp, some distance from the festering hound carcass, in the relative safety of a larger stone outcropping along the riverside. The beast seemed like something akin to a trophy to the young wizard, and he at first appeared reluctant to leave its side. Indeed, he seemed enrapt by the fallen monster, admiring every warped corner of its flesh as a cultured patron might study a painting or sculpture.

Finally, having concluded his examination, Draeder von Halkern left the dead creature and joined his men around the fire, seating himself atop the highest rock in sight, as if assuming the mantle of a conquering hero. The sun had crept lower on the horizon by then, bringing a dour dusk to the party of men that was now halved in strength. As the brothers assumed sentry duty, Erhard retrieved a flagon from the pack he kept on his horse, and he proposed a solemn toast to those of their number who now lay beneath the ground.

When it was done, Draeder announced what they all suspected. They would make their camp there for the night, in the relative safety of the clearing among the rocky outcropping along the river.

‘You’re quite good with a blade,’ Draeder said, as Felix sat down. ‘Had you not joined our cause, we all might have fallen victim to this vile creature.’

Erhard passed the flagon to Felix, who took a long drink of the wine inside it, despite its spoiled, vinegary taste.

‘I should be thanking you,’ Felix answered. ‘That beast nearly made a meal of me, before you came upon it.’

Draeder smiled.

‘Indeed, that abomination has been rampaging throughout these lands for some time now, often straying into my father’s estates nearby. Many folk living on my father’s grounds found themselves facing the same difficulty as you. The rest were not so fortunate in the end, however,’ he said.

‘We’ve been chasing this hound for days, tracking it deep into the haunted woods,’ Erhard added.

The old sergeant lit an ivory pipe and began puffing a sweet-smelling smoke.

‘So it seems this was indeed something of a common cause for us both,’ Felix replied.

‘Well then, on behalf of House von Halkern, we are happy to have been of assistance to you,’ Draeder said. ‘That does beg the question however, of how you came to be all the way out here at all. These dark woods are haunted by many dangers. Monstrous beasts are not even the worst of them. It’s no place for wandering alone, even for one so skilled with a sword as you appear to be.’

Felix grimaced, and he took a second, longer draught from the flagon.

‘Let’s simply say I have no one but myself to blame, and leave it at that,’ he replied.

Draeder laughed.

‘Forgive me, good sir,’ Felix continued. ‘But I must tell you, though I am not native to these lands, I recognize the name of your noble house. Yet something troubles me.’

‘And what is that?’

Felix paused for a moment, unsure if his next words would bring offence. Given the circumstances, he finally decided the chances were unlikely.

‘The fierce reputation of Count von Halkern is known even in my home in the north of the Empire,’ he said. ‘Yet I must ask, I know of only two sons born to the man. One is said to have been killed in battle, and of the other they say his combat prowess is the equal of his sire.’

Draeder smiled, flashing his teeth in a knowing, almost clever grin. He did not seem offended at all by Felix’s insinuation.

‘Forgiveness is not required, but you’ve not actually asked a question,’ he said.

Felix nodded, grimaced a little as he took another drink, then put his manners aside entirely.

‘You do not appear to be either a ghost… or a warrior,’ he said.

Draeder laughed.

‘Still not quite a question, but diplomatic nonetheless,’ he said. ‘You clearly come from a refined background.’

‘My father is a merchant, fairly well off indeed,’ Felix replied. ‘Though we are somewhat… estranged at the moment.’

‘Ah, then perhaps we have even more in common than either of us has yet realized,’ Draeder replied. ‘But you have been patient with me, and I have not yet answered your query. I am indeed the son of Count Otto von Halkern, and you are correct as to the identity of his first two sons.’

‘His first two?’

‘I am the much less well known third son of House von Halkern,’ Draeder said. ‘The one my father has never been proud to speak of, and so the one you – and most people – have never heard of.’

‘And why is that?’

Draeder laughed.

‘You’ve seen me facing a beast, would you ever mistake me for the son of a renowned warrior?’

‘He disowned you because you couldn’t fight?’ Felix asked, making no attempt to disguise his amazement.

‘Oh, I never said I have been disowned. At least not formally,’ Draeder answered, with a sly smirk.

Felix noticed Erhard grumbling a little at the suggestion. Felix downed more of the lousy wine.

‘No, the situation that brings me to this place is quite a bit more complicated than that,’ Draeder continued. ‘But it is true, my father and I are not on the best of terms, and our falling out did indeed begin with my failure to take to the ways of swords and armour.

‘I was always more given to the study of books than to blades, you see. That alone made me the least of my brothers, in my father’s eyes, as you can well imagine. Eventually I left his estates, looking for a way to regain my lost favour through other avenues. That led me to Altdorf, and to the Colleges of Magic.’

‘So you are a wizard, then?’ Felix asked. ‘I had thought as much, given your attire. But I must admit, I have rarely been acquainted with users of magic. And your spell against the hound was somewhat…’

Erhard muttered something under his breath, which Felix couldn’t quite make out. Draeder did seem to hear it though, and his face tensed. Felix thought he sensed a slightly defensive turn in his voice as he glanced over at his sergeant with a disapproving eye.

‘There is quite a reasonable explanation for my apparent lapse against that beast,’ he finally replied. ‘Controlling the winds of magic is a complex and difficult endeavour, and one not easily understood by common folk. The hound was clearly more powerful than I expected. Had I known the extent of the dark-influence upon it, of course I would have chosen a different approach.’

Draeder seemed to be very nearly boasting, despite what had seemed to Felix an obvious failure. Again, Felix noticed Erhard bristle in the dim, though the sergeant said nothing more.

‘Should I face such a beast again,’ Draeder continued. ‘I promise you the correct spell would dispatch it with little effort. My studies with the Amethyst Order have taught me many ways of dealing with such abominations.’

Felix’s face went blank. Without thinking, he recoiled, edging away from his new companions. He looked again at Draeder’s attire, as if for the first time. The skulls. The bones woven through aged fabric. The sinister black runes.

‘The Amethyst Order?’ he said. ‘You’re a student of… death magic?’

Draeder nodded. He took a reassuring tone, clearly seeking to put Felix’s trepidation to rest.

‘Do not be frightened by that, my friend,’ he said. ‘Whatever you may have heard, the Amethyst Order is not a cabal of necromancers. The study of death is the study of change. Of endings and beginnings. Consider for a moment, how can one truly understand life, if one does not also comprehend the mysteries of death?’

The explanation seemed to satisfy Felix. He reflected on the notion with a furrowed brow – and yet more wine.

‘I had never viewed it such a fashion, but there does seem to be some sense in that, I grant you,’ he finally said. ‘Did your father not see the wisdom in that philosophy?’

Draeder laughed.

‘He might, if I ever actually converse with him over it. But as yet I have not done so. You see, I have only just recently returned from the Order after several years spent cloistered away, deep in study. Shortly after my return to my father’s castle we heard tell of this hound terrorizing the local villages.’

‘The count dispatched us to see after the threat,’ Erhard said. ‘He ordered Draeder to lead the expedition. Though I had not laid eyes on him in several years, I knew him at first sight.’

‘A challenge, no doubt. For that is the kind of man my father has always been. And so I joined my old comrades on the hunt, to perhaps prove to him that my training has been worth something after all,’ Draeder said. ‘In my father’s estimation it is no source of pride to have a son studying something as cowardly as magic. But, now I can return to him having led the expedition that has slain a threat to his people. My sincere hope is that such a feat might erase some of the disappointment he feels at my course in life.’

Felix’s face changed. His eyes brightened, and he lifted his head.

‘Disappointment? You feel like you’re an embarrassment to him?’ he said. ‘I know exactly how that feels, as it happens.’

Draeder von Halkern put down his flagon.

‘Do you now?’ he said, a curious and rather serious glint in his eye, despite the effects of the drink.

‘As well as any man in the Empire, I’d bet,’ Felix answered, rising to his feet. The wine was affecting him now, and he began to speak as though giving a half-drunken speech in a tavern. ‘I know how it feels to do precisely what he says, just what he tells you that you have to do to satisfy honour and tradition. I know how it feels to try to do everything you can to live up to his exalted name – and to be kicked in the face for the effort.’

Draeder extended Felix a hand.

‘You must tell me of this,’ he said.

That was all the incentive Felix required.

‘Three years ago he sent me off to study at university. I remember how his face beamed when I left, so proud of having a son enrolled at such an esteemed institution. We had our disagreements since then, of course. My passion for poetry was not to his liking, for example. But we remained on good terms, until the events of this spring.’

‘What was that?’

‘Another student and I became embroiled in a dispute. The details are rather unimportant now; that it involved a woman and too much wine is all you need to know. This fellow crossed a line, widening the dispute to offer insult to my family and my heritage. It was an affront I could not tolerate. My entire life I had been striving to earn the respect of my family, and this spoiled aristocrat spit upon my very name! I could not stand for it.’

His voice fell still for a moment. His eyes looked out to the shadows of the darkening woods, as if seeing the events unfold against that black tableau. His hand drifted to the hilt of his sword.

Draeder guessed what came next.

‘You duelled,’ he said. ‘And given the skills I have witnessed you employ this day, I’d imagine this other man stood very little chance.’

‘I’ve never been one to run from a fight. I gave him just what he deserved. I ran him through like pig, in the main square, in sight of all,’ Felix answered.

‘And for that, they expelled you,’ Draeder replied.

Felix nodded.

‘Word made it to my father before my belongings were even collected. He cared nothing for the circumstances, nothing for our honour. He cared only that I was expelled. I had besmirched our good name, he wrote to me. And I am thus forbidden to return home.’

‘Then we are kindred souls indeed,’ Draeder said.

‘You appear to have fared better in your exile than I,’ Felix answered. ‘Since my dismissal I have done nothing but wander. I have taken up with brigands and outlaws and many a wench, but most nights my aimless journeys have left me with without so much as a roof over my head. At this moment, I cannot even say with authority where in the Empire I am.’

‘Then you are in luck, on both accounts,’ Draeder replied.

‘What do you mean?’

‘For one, I can not only tell you exactly where you are, I can show you.’

He began to reach behind him, putting a hand into one of his travel bags. Erhard reached across to clutch at the young wizard’s arm however, lowering his voice to a whisper that Felix could not quite hear. But Draeder waved off his sergeant’s hushed concerns with a dismissive gesture.

‘This man saved your life, as well as mine,’ he said. ‘What else could he do to earn your trust?’

Erhard nodded, and returned to smoking his pipe.

From within a leather saddlebag that he had placed behind him, Draeder pulled out a thick scroll of parchment, brittle from age. He untied the scarlet bands holding the scroll closed, and then unfurled it very slowly, holding it with care as one might handle a most treasured heirloom. The edges were uneven, ragged and frayed and charred in spots from some long-ago fire.

The inside surface of the vellum was stained with splotches and discolorations of every sort: blemishes from wine, soot and possibly even blood, all of which bespoke the document’s great antiquity. The centre of it was covered in faded lines, sketching out a design in old black ink that Felix recognized as some kind of ancient cartography. Unlike the modern maps with which he was familiar though, this scroll was etched in a highly stylized script, with artfully drawn mountains and rivers alongside images of serpents and horrific daemons.

The map quite literally reeked of age. When Draeder rolled it open, a musty odour spilled out along with hints of dust and mould.

The young wizard held it out for Felix to see. He pointed at a section near the bottom, just north of where two great rivers separated, near where a smaller third tributary split off from the eastern stream.

‘The river that runs beside us is the Stir,’ he said, then touching his finger to a single spot. ‘We are roughly here, in southern Talabecland, on the edge of some of the deepest woods in the Great Forest.’

Felix studied the map. The geography looked vaguely familiar, but the notations and script were of a sort he had never seen before.

‘That settles one question then, what of the other?’ he asked.

‘As it happens, my journey back to Castle von Halkern was not quite a direct route. Instead, the mission upon which I was engaged when I returned to my father’s house was only half-finished when this beast intruded upon our lands.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Felix said.

‘Quite simple, really,’ Draeder answered. ‘I was recently dispatched from the Amethyst Order on an official, albeit rather secret errand, to seek an item of great value that my superiors believe is to be found to the north-west of here. That is the purpose of this map, in fact, for it is our guide through these most perilous of lands. I had at first intended to purchase the services of some hired swords to assist me in the effort, but having secured this contingent of my father’s men that soon became unnecessary.’

Draeder rolled the map scroll back up, returning it to his pack before clasping his hands, bringing them together under the wide sleeves of his wizard’s robes. His eyes narrowed.

‘However, you do seem to be just the sort I was looking for,’ he continued. ‘In fact I’d say you more than passed the audition.’

Felix lifted his eyes at the suggestion.

‘Are you offering me a job?’ he asked. ‘Doing what, exactly? My most recent attempts at employment have not gone as well as I would have hoped.’

Draeder smiled.

‘We have just this evening buried five of my men, and three more nurse deep wounds. This quite obviously leaves my party rather short on manpower. I could use someone with your kind of skills. I have been promised by my superiors in Altdorf a chest of gold to be split among the mercenaries who accompany me. Quite a decent haul for a young man such as yourself,’ he said.

‘And just what is this mission that you’re on?’ Felix asked.

Draeder looked to his comrades, then leaned in closer, bringing his face so near to the campfire that his pale skin was cast in a deep, blood-red shade. His voice fell to a deliberate stage-whisper.

‘I’m searching for something that even my fellow wizards of the Amethyst Order have never seen, though they have sought it for centuries, a book that holds the key to unlocking the deepest mysteries of life and death,’ he said.

‘I must confess, I do not know much of magic at all, whether contained in books or otherwise,’ Felix answered.

Again, Draeder took a measured tone in response.

‘I assure you, Felix, my intentions are only the purest. What I told you of the College of Amethyst guides everything we do. The book I seek is a very old and very important text. It was compiled ages ago and it contains many of the oldest spells known, as well as some of the most powerful methods to harness even the most obscure currents of magic.’

‘Unschooled as I am in such things, I will admit that it sounds like quite an important volume,’ Felix said.

Draeder laughed.

‘An uncommon gift for understatement! That could only come from a poet,’ he joked. ‘Indeed, my new friend, anyone who possesses a book such as the one we seek, if they also command a sufficient knowledge of the lore of death, would be the greatest of assets to the Empire.’

‘How is that?’

‘While many wizards do fight alongside the armies of the Empire, I am quite obviously unsuited for a combat. But, what if I were to stand with them in command of forces that could shield the armies from death itself? Imagine if all those who did take up arms in the Emperor’s name were protected from the cold touch of mortality. Our warriors would never fall to the swords of the enemy. Our homeland, would be made stronger than ever. Invincible, perhaps.’

Felix, whether because of the drink or the persuasive tone of Draeder von Halkern, could find no fault with the man’s reasoning. The sound of adventure seemed to brighten his eyes and lift his already brimming spirits.

‘Well then, consider me among your party,’ he said. ‘Never let it be said that I shy away from action.’

Erhard laughed, taking the flagon from him.

‘Awfully quick to rush into things, aren’t you?’ the old sergeant said, his voice raspy and rough from a lifetime of pipe smoke.

Felix almost took offence at the suggestion, but elected to find humour in it.

‘I suppose that’s one of the reasons I’m here, come to think of it,’ he replied.

‘Well, you’d best be careful. One of these days, you might rush into something you can’t get out of so easily,’ Erhard said.

The eager young wizard however, shrugged off his sergeant’s worries.

‘Don’t listen to him, Felix. He’s an old timer, his best days are behind him. The future belongs to men like us. Men willing to venture into the unknown, to take risks. And even if the gold were not enough to persuade you, consider this… it could mean even more to you than money,’ Draeder said.

‘How do you reckon?’ Felix asked.

‘Think of how you would be viewed by your family if you were to assist me,’ he continued. ‘If you were to return not as a disgraced student, but as the hero who help bring such power to the armies of the Empire? How could your family refuse a son celebrated by the Emperor himself?’

Felix pondered again, his mind now awash with suggestions; a flicker of lost hope and the thrill of both money and adventure quickening his pulse. He looked over to Erhard, then back to Draeder, before answering with the kind of certainty only known to the young – or the foolish.

‘Like I said before, count me in,’ he said.

4.

The gloaming of dusk had faded, followed by the roaring scarlet of the campfire. So too had the conversation. Eventually the flagons had run dry, and the old familiar numbness had crept into every corner of his exhausted limbs. Then Felix Jaeger put aside the horrors and the mundane triumphs of his day. He found a spot to rest his tingling head, grabbed a ratty old cloak to wrap himself in, closed his eyes and finally slept.

What awakened him this time, many hours later in the darkest still of the night, was neither violence nor carnage. It was something far stranger, at once more wondrous and troubling than anything he could have imagined.

It was a voice. A hissing sort of call that seemed to cry out from the distance, as though half-buried in the whistling of the cold night wind. At first its silky, spectral whispers soothed him, rousing Felix but gently from sleep. Just enough to announce their presence, without disturbing the peace of the evening.

He didn’t even lift his head, merely listening to the strange echoes as they rose and fell in a soft and slinking symphony; the peculiar music of the haunted shadows.

But the echoes in the dim did not remain tranquil. What had been one voice soon doubled, and then doubled again, until the single tone had swelled into a ghostly chorus, bringing a multitude of eerie, rasping voices. Somehow, they all seemed to shout and whisper at once.

The change roused Felix ever more slightly. The numbing effect of the wine combined with the utter exhaustion in his bones had sent him into the deepest of slumbers, and he came around to no more than a muddled, groggy haze. The gauze of a deep repose veiled his eyes like a curtain of mist.

When he looked out, he saw only gloom. Black skies over dark woods. The fire was all-but dead. Gone were the crimson and golden glimmers of the camp hearth. Only the milky shine of moon-glows now lit the river banks.

The rest of the men huddled in their cloaks, nestled in every crevice and nook of the rocky outcropping. Most snored in a similar deep slumber. Even Ernst Erhard lay still, wrapped in his woollen shroud beneath the great oak tree.

Draeder von Halkern alone among them all however, was not at rest.

Dressed in his capacious wizard robes, black and violet and emblazoned with the grisly designs of the Amethyst Order, Draeder was outside of the camp. He’d hiked down-river, just barely in sight. He looked to be standing over the carcass of the hound, ministering like a priest over a coffin. The old leather-bound volume was open in front of him again, set upon the flank of the hound like a lectern. He seemed to be reading from the pages, as though speaking to an invisible congregation at an altar that stank of death. He chanted and made blessings, and each of them found its echo in those ghostly whispers that somehow carried on the wind itself.

Neither Draeder’s words, nor the answers spoken from the deep recesses of the night were in a language Felix understood. It wasn’t even one he had ever heard spoken. The words were utterly foreign, almost serpentine in their rhythm, in the elegant way each syllable wove its way into the next. To the ear of a poet, attuned to the subtleties of tempo and meter, Draeder’s recitations wove an intricate tapestry of voice, made all the more exotic by its inherently incomprehensible character.

For a long while, Felix watched. And he listened. Unsure even if what he was witnessing in the hazy pre-dawn hours was real or merely a dream. He dared not disturb the strange rite, fearful of making so much as a whimper lest he draw the attention of the spirits spilling forth from the darkness. So he continued to watch, quiet and still – until, inexplicably, everything stopped.

After a long and twisted incantation, Draeder paused. He looked down over the length of the beast, as though studying it yet again. Its wounds already festered with pus and the first stages of decay, a process of putrefaction only accelerated by the dark forces that had corrupted its form.

Once his eye settled on a section of the beast-corpse, near the mane of thorny bristles that framed the hound’s great head, he reached a hand into the folds of his mantle. From within the dark robes he drew a single-edged sword, more like a woodsman’s machete than a fighting weapon. Draeder then knelt down above the hound carcass, and proceeded to hack the largest of the beast’s tusks from its hide.

The carving was not easy. Rooted deep in the hound’s thick skin, Draeder chopped and sawed at it with more effort than Felix had witnessed him employ at any other task. When he finally managed to cut it free, he returned to his feet, clutching the severed tusk like a precious gem. Dark, congealed blood clung to his hands like clumps of black jelly and oil. It dripped down on to his sleeves and splattered across his pale face.

The student of the Amethyst College then picked up his scythe, which he had rested next to him as he worked. Caring little for the stains on his hands, he wrapped a leather thong around the base of the tusk, then lashed it to the very crest of his reaper.

‘And now the blood,’ he announced, speaking to the winds again but now in common Reikspiel. Once more he consulted the pages of the aged book in front of him. ‘I summon the purple winds of Shyish. May the blood of the living and the blood of the dead now come together within its cold embrace.’

Draeder turned his blade. Slicing open the palm of his own hand, he let blood leak out from the slit in his pale flesh. It fell on the tusk, staining the ivory dark red and slathering the wild beast’s horn atop his staff.

Another incantation followed. Once again, the winds answered. But this time, they did more than echo his inscrutable verses. Descending from the clouds, a column of mist centred around the blood-bathed tusk. Every word from Draeder’s lips spurred the winds, turning them around the scythe.

As the air churned, the blood-speckled wind seemed to ignite, first spinning the red-purple tusk at the centre of its vortex, then sparking flames that soon overwhelmed the entire crest of the scythe-staff. Soon the glows merged into a single column of flickering purple flame, a ghostly violent fire that burned atop the tusk-crowned reaper.

The violet fire gave off no smoke. It made no sound. Its light was unreal, cold and unforgiving and unlike true fire.

Draeder lifted the flaming scythe into the sky, piercing the swirl of ghostly, whispering winds. The fire climbed, as though fuelled by the ghostly congress of purple wind. It grew and grew until the violet flame rose up into the clouds, roiling with dark lightning.

It all built to a crescendo, until the flame could ascend no more. Then the churning winds collapsed back down on the violet flame, sending a wave of phantom light surging across the outcropping. The whispering voices screamed in that moment, their ghostly calls fading away just as the flash of flame.

When it was done, all that remained was Draeder von Halkern, standing beside the hound corpse, holding his scythe in the air as he bathed beneath the purple flame. His eyes glowed with the same foul fire.

Felix clenched his muscles, too frightened to move. He squeezed his eyes shut, but despite his exhaustion, he barely slept at all the rest of the night.

5.

When the men began to stir just after dawn, Felix remained in his place. He waited until all the others had arisen before getting himself up. When he saw Draeder, standing upon the edge of the river with his scythe in hand, he couldn’t help but stare. He puzzled over the events of the past night, questioning his own perceptions.

If it had been a dream, then it was the most vivid of his life. If it had been real, then Draeder von Halkern was indeed something more than the ineffectual young wizard he’d saved from the jaws of a rabid hound.

In the light of day, there was no hint of the purple flame, and the winds were calm. But when Felix looked closer, he noticed that atop Draeder’s reaper-blade there was indeed a single bloody tusk affixed to the staff. When the wizard turned in his direction, and for an instant caught him staring, Felix quickly looked away.

A chill ran through him.

For close to an hour the men gathered up their things in near silence, struck camp and prepared to move out. None of them even seemed to know of it, unless all of them held their tongues out of some measure of fear, as Felix himself did. He was not inclined to broach the subject, either way.

Two of the wounded had died over the night, and the matter of their final rites brought the first real discussion of the day. Draeder appeared anxious to move on, and initially ordered them left where they lay. When that met with some protest from Erhard, he further suggested dumping their bodies in the river. Again, Erhard argued with his master, until he finally relented.

As the others assisted the last surviving wounded man, Walder, to make ready for travel, Felix helped to bury the dead once again. He and Erhard carried one of the bodies out to the edge of the woods, digging a shallow grave in the wet ground just as they’d done the day before. But this time, when Felix put down his spade and lifted the body to lower it into the dirt, Erhard stopped him. Instead, the old sergeant knelt down before his fallen comrade.

Felix at first assumed it was a moment of solemnity, a final farewell to a lost friend. He bowed his head in a show of sympathy, but Erhard soon disabused him of such sentimental notions.

The veteran began pulling off the dead soldier’s regalia, first his hooded cloak, surcoat and belt, before unstrapping his iron gauntlets and studded leather jerkin. He looked up at Felix with a wry grin.

‘Perhaps you’d be willing to lend a hand,’ he said, ‘Given that this is for your benefit.’

Felix knelt down too, and Erhard passed him the gauntlets and sword belt from the dead man.

‘Put on as much as you can, whatever fits is now yours.’

‘I’m not sure I feel right, taking your dead friend’s gear,’ Felix said.

‘Where we’re going, you’ll need every bit of it. Trust me, it does him no good to hold on to anything now.’

Erhard made sure to take every bit of useful material, including a fine pair of woodsman’s boots, several knives, some armour and a chainmail shirt. Felix found that most of it did fit him, and the rest required only a few adjustments.

‘I admire what you did back there,’ he said, as he donned the dead man’s attire.

Erhard seemed confused by the comment.

‘What’s that, exactly?’

‘You challenged Draeder, in front of the men, no less,’ Felix said. ‘He is your lord, is he not?’

Erhard nodded, but with a shifting smile that hinted at sarcasm, if not outright resentment.

‘He is the son of my lord,’ he said. ‘I indulge him as part of my service to his father, and because I have always done as much for him.’

‘So you’ve known the man a long while?’

‘Since he was a boy,’ Erhard replied. ‘I’ve served in his father’s livery for more than twenty years now.’

‘You watched him grow up then?’

Erhard scoffed a bit. He looked up from the dour task of grave-digging to cast an eye at Draeder, standing at a distance, with his head held high along the riverside.

‘I watched him get older, let me say that,’ he answered. ‘None of us were certain if he would ever grow up.’

‘He seems to have done quite well for himself though,’ Felix answered. ‘Sent forth on this official mission by one of the Colleges of Magic.’

Erhard came to his feet, stuck his shovel into the mud and rested his hands atop the shaft.

‘Just between you and I,’ he continued, in a lower voice. ‘We were all more than a little surprised when he returned to these lands recently, fully attired in the mantle of the Amethyst wizards.’

Felix was intrigued, if not a bit indignant.

‘Just like his father, you expected him to fail as well?’

Erhard shook his head.

‘I’ve probably said too much already.’

Felix put a hand on his shoulder.

‘If I’m to travel with your party into these haunted woods, and to take up arms with you again, do I not deserve to know at least a little of what you do?’

Erhard agreed.

‘There’s nothing to tell, really,’ he said. ‘I’ll only say that… Draeder was simply never the type to follow through with anything. If there was an easy road, you could always count on him to take it.’

‘He cheated?’

‘He did whatever he needed to do, whatever the situation required to accomplish what he wanted – usually with the least amount of effort. So you can understand that it came as a bit of a shock to me when, after vanishing with no word for several years, he returned not as an acolyte or an apprentice, but having claimed the hard-earned title of a wizard.’

‘He does indeed appear to command the winds of magic, does he not?’ Felix said.

Erhard grimaced.

‘Just barely, at times,’ he said, though he seemed to think better of his insult only a moment later. ‘But who am I to judge, I’ve never been fond of mages.’

‘Nor I,’ Felix said. ‘At least thus far.’

They didn’t set off on the trail until mid-morning. But their path soon took them from the banks of the river to the perfectly-fitted masonry of an ancient road. Felix recognized it, for it was the very same road his companions from Wurtbad had taken on their exit from the city. The weathered paving stones seemed to have endured for ages, scarred with the ruts and grooves worn down by centuries of wagon traffic. While choked with weeds and overgrowth, it remained as a silent echo of days past, fading yet defiant of the wilderness into which it led.

‘This road goes all the way to Talabheim,’ Draeder said, reading from the map, though he seemed to have memorized the details. ‘We’ll follow it as far as the third marker, that’s as near to the Barren Hills as most ever go. After that, we’ve only this map to guide our way.’

Felix looked out over the massive expanse that lay ahead of them from the high ground where the old road crested atop a hill. The forest stretched out as far as he could see, a vast expanse of dense, old trees clustered so thick that the vista blended into an ocean of leaves and shadows. He breathed a little deeper as he surveyed the massive, perilous wilds. He felt his heart begin to pound.

The Great Forest was notorious. Felix couldn’t help but wonder what horrors lurked beneath that dark canopy. It was said to harbour all manner of beasts and rogues, unspeakable and unimaginable.

Draeder charted their course, following landmarks etched in faded markings on the parchment map, and using the ancient road as a reference. His companions acted as something of a guard, two riding on each side of him and with Ernst Erhard bringing up the rear on his old spotted gelding.

Just before midday, Draeder fell back from the lead, to ride beside Felix, who had also taken the horse of one of the fallen men. He was now rid of his ruined university attire, garbed more like a woodland tracker or huntsman. He wore a heavy woollen cloak, the hood lowered for travel and clasped at the neck with a brass amulet. A new sword hung at his side, a bandolier of daggers was slung over his iron-studded leather jerkin, and he wore a knife on the side of each boot. Everything stank of sweat and grime, but after a short while, he found the foul odours no longer bothered him, for he was as filthy and unwashed as the dead man whose clothes he now wore anyway.

He had not taken the fallen soldier’s livery-emblazoned coat however, setting him apart from the other men in the party. It was this decision that he expected Draeder to mention when the wizard came up beside him, looking him over in his new attire. Instead, he asked something completely unexpected.

‘So you’re a poet?’ Draeder asked, very much out-of-the-blue.

‘I’m a student of verse, yes,’ Felix answered.

‘You recite it, but you don’t create it?’

‘Oh I do, believe me. It’s just that my own efforts at composition have yet to find the audience they deserve,’ Felix answered. ‘But that is why we study the works of those who have gone before, is it not? To build upon their art and to take it somewhere it has not yet been?’

‘Indeed it is,’ Draeder answered. ‘I happen to know precisely how it feels to be unappreciated in one’s true calling. And I am something of a student of the written word myself, in a manner of speaking.’

‘How so?’

‘The incantations and rites of my schooling are very much like your poems, I imagine,’ Draeder said. ‘In fact, many of them possess a quality not unlike the rhythm of good verse. That is how one commits so many of them to memory, after all.’

Felix looked over at him, and found Draeder staring back at him with a knowing, almost suspect glare. He suddenly realized that the young wizard might be referring to the ritual he had witnessed the night before, though he was still quite unsure if that was something he was not supposed to have seen. He elected to remain stoic.

‘I had never thought to make such a comparison,’ Felix said. ‘Though I must confess, I am rather unfamiliar with any rites of magic or spell-craft, having never seen them employed for myself.’

He looked back at Draeder with those words, and the wizard’s face changed the moment he said them. His glare softened. He nodded once to Felix; an acknowledgement perhaps of some greater level of trust just now established, or else suspicion erased. It put Felix at ease, at least for a while.

They came to a peculiar landmark on their third day trekking across the ancient road, a huge rocky spire that rose up from the undergrowth with three points of smooth granite. It looked vaguely like a dragon, stretching its wings as it took flight.

Draeder brought their party to a halt. He flashed the map so that Felix could see it, pointing to an inscription. Though Felix could not read the runes, he recognized the drawing that accompanied them – a dragon taking flight.

The men gathered round in a circle of horses at his behest.

‘Men of House von Halkern,’ he began. ‘Here we leave the road behind, and we begin our true journey. Beyond this point no woodsmen dare venture. No trails set down by men penetrate this most thickly-grown wilderness. And so it is time to tell you what lies ahead.

‘My colleagues of the Amethyst Order have long laboured in the study of reams of ancient manuscripts. They’ve spent years of searching for clues to a quest that has lasted generations. Recent discoveries have led my superiors to one inescapable conclusion: the lost volume called the Book of Ashur rests in a tower secluded deep in the hidden mists of this very forest, north-west of our present location, in a lost valley of the Barren Hills,’ Draeder said.

‘The Barren Hills?’ Felix asked. ‘Is that land not cursed?’

‘According to some, but the rumours and stories of it are mostly wild tales and outright myth,’ Draeder said, appearing more confident than his comrades.

‘That depends on who you ask,’ Erhard added, echoing the palpable unease that had come over the rest of the men. ‘There are those who live amongst these woods who would tell you that the Chaos moon spat upon these lands many years ago, and its noxious spittle turned the once-Green Hills foul. Most everything alive was killed in a single night, and what little did survive was changed.’

‘Changed how?’ Felix asked, though he suspected the answer.

‘It was said that everything touched by that poison moon’s light grew warped and twisted, plants and animals alike, bent and perverted in ways too horrible to relate,’ Erhard said.

‘But I had always heard that the elector count’s men swept through the ruined hill country, seeking to eradicate the vile mutants. Did they not?’ Torsten asked.

‘Indeed they tried, but no force of men could ever hope to clear an area this large of so many horrors. No doubt many escaped their blades, and others lurk in the caves and shadowed thickets of the deep woods to this very day,’ Erhard replied.

‘That’s comforting,’ Felix added.

‘How, may I ask, did this book of yours come to be in such a cursed place to begin with?’ Erhard asked, turning back to Draeder.

The young wizard seemed perturbed by the question. He answered with a sour expression that hinted he was losing his patience.

‘The valley we seek, deep in the Barren Hills, was once the home of a reclusive necromancer,’ he said.

The men stammered, muttering to each other in hushed tones. The suggestion alone appeared to make them all plainly uncomfortable, agitated in a way uncommon among such imperturbable fighting men.

Even Erhard, as stalwart a soldier as Felix had ever met, seemed suddenly apprehensive. He furrowed his brow and shook his head, stepping back a pace in unconscious solidarity with his nervous men.

‘A necromancer?’ Felix asked, his voice lowered as though the word itself was a curse to even utter. ‘You told us this was about the nobility of death magic, not the work of some evil sorcerer.’

The men echoed his complaint, their muffled protests breaking out into open grumbling. Draeder lifted his arms in response, waving at his soldiers in a gesture of re-assurance. The hard-edged lines of his face softened, as if to stress his own, more decent motives. But Felix sensed something else in that instant, a look in the young nobleman’s eyes that, while indeed more gentle, still betrayed a kind of arrogance. He looked for a moment as if he were about to speak to children, pitying them for their naïve folly and proud of his own superior wisdom.

‘My friends,’ he began. ‘You are wise to be concerned, of course. These are dangerous lands into which we venture, and I would never proceed if I did not have the greatest of faith in the determination and the strength of the men accompanying me.’

‘Admirable, young master,’ Erhard replied. ‘But such qualities will take us only so far in the face of a rogue of the kind you describe.’

‘You must permit me to finish, for while the mission upon which we act is fraught with peril, I can bring you the greatest of assurances from the Amethyst Order itself that the corrupt conjurer has long since perished. My colleagues in Altdorf are convinced he wasted away years ago, withered into nothing at the end of a vain and failed quest to achieve eternal life.’

‘That may be, but it does not change the fact that you have set us on a course in pursuit of an item that was once employed by an evil magician, to the foulest of purposes I can only imagine,’ Felix said.

Draeder again looked at him with a condescending gaze.

‘My friend, do not fall into the trap of judging the object by the character of the man who wields it,’ he said. Then he pointed at the sword resting by Felix’s side. ‘Should your blade fall into the hands of an evil man, it would no doubt be put to evil ends. That would not render your sword an instrument to be loathed in, and of, itself.’

Felix nodded, forced to admit that he agreed.

‘The book we seek is no different,’ Draeder continued. ‘It is true, it was stolen ages ago and set to foul purposes by a cruel and wicked man, but it need not be so. The wisdom it contains is just as capable of serving the Empire as harming it.’

‘I see the wisdom in that,’ Felix conceded.

Erhard stepped up again, clearing his throat as if to draw all attention to himself.

‘That may all be the case,’ he said, signalling at least a vestige of incredulity. ‘But should my men be asked to ride out into the lands of a sinister villain, even one long dead, we must know precisely what it is we are about to face.’

‘Your men?’ Draeder replied. ‘These are servants of House von Halkern all, including yourself, as if I needed to remind you.’

Erhard growled.

‘We entered this forest as servants of your father, it’s true. And we continued on at your behest for that reason, but the moment you purchased our further services with the promise of gold, you took us beyond the limits of our fealty,’ the old sergeant said. ‘Make no mistake, these boys may serve your house, but they serve with me. Servants to your noble name they are, but these men are like my own family. I will not see them ride off unaware of exactly what they face.’

Draeder lowered his hands. He sighed as if exasperated, but seemed persuaded nonetheless. The tone of his voice changed from that of a noble rallying his troops to a man merely telling a story.

‘The man’s name was Skethris, and he was a master of dark magic so powerful his like has rarely been seen beyond the tombs of distant Khemri,’ he said. ‘No one living today knows from whence he came or for how long he walked the earth, all we can say it that the rumours were many and varied.’

‘What do you know?’ Felix asked.

‘The best of the tales are sketchy and of questionable provenance, but I believe this much about him: he began as we are, a simple man, who set about searching for the secrets of this world. Only his path led him astray.

‘Some say he was a rogue magic user even then, a hedge wizard in the days before the founding of the Colleges of Magic. He pursued the study of the mystical winds in secret, travelling from city to city, following whispers and legends of secluded masters. He learned from them all, taking whatever elements they could offer and adding them to a growing repertoire of spells and incantations.

‘But always he sought more. More knowledge, more skill and more power. Eventually, he grew obsessed with seeking the one thing that no amount of fortune or facility can bring – more time. Thus did he embark on a quest to prolong his life, to continue learning and accumulating knowledge. It is possible he began with the best of intentions, we will never know now. But in the end, it corrupted him.’

‘How so?’ Felix asked.

‘Some say he ventured to the distant, sun-scorched Land of the Dead, to steal the secrets of the Tomb Kings, others that he murdered wizards in an attempt to take by force the secrets they refused to teach him. It was even reported that he sought out the tutelage of the living dead, a Vampire Lord himself, to reveal to him the mysteries of controlling death – and ultimately defying it.

‘Perhaps all of those legends are true, perhaps none. What we do know however, is that he extended his reach deep into the realms of shadow, and the foul things he drew forth prolonged his life for centuries, in the least.’

‘They say such men are driven mad by the darkness,’ Erhard said, a haunted look falling over even his eyes.

‘And so it must have been for Skethris,’ Draeder answered. ‘He would have peered longer and deeper into the haunted places than almost any other man I’ve heard of. No one can do so without suffering ill effects. Whatever power he obtained would have been enormous, but the cost even greater.’

Draeder stepped away from them, staring off into the sky with an almost dream-like gaze.

‘I can see it now… currents of dark magic filled his body, flowing through his blood like the most terrible, wonderful poison,’ he said, raising his arms for effect.

Felix looked to Erhard then, for they both saw a change in Draeder as he continued. The more hypnotic his words became, the more his voice grew less frightened, until the young wizard almost sounded admiring – even envious. It began to seem as though he was doing more than simply relating a history, more than merely telling a story. He seemed to be enjoying it. His voice lowered, and his pace quickened, as if he were seeing the macabre events he could not possibly have witnessed.

‘The dark magic corroded his body, forcing him to delve deeper and into ever more foul reaches to preserve his flesh, to stave off the decay that only grew worse with every passing year,’ he continued, stretching out his own arms either to give effect to his words, or else imagining himself performing the acts he described with such careful, intimate detail.

‘Just as his body failed him then, so too did his mind. The things he witnessed beyond the veil haunted him, driving him past the brink of madness until he fell into a permanent nightmare from which he could never awake.’

Felix and Erhard looked to each other, and then back to Draeder, momentarily lost in his own rambling story-telling. He did not seem inclined to continue.

‘And then what?’ Felix prodded.

Draeder was a moment in responding, staring off into the distance a while longer. When he did finally turn back, his cadence had returned to normal.

‘Eventually, I imagine he could not sustain himself any longer, and that was finally how he passed out of existence, fading into the shadows he had so long struggled to master,’ he said. ‘No one really knows, truth be told.’

‘How do you know the book is still there, if the necromancer himself has indeed passed away?’ Torsten asked.

‘There can be no doubt that Skethris had the book. No one has seen or heard from him in decades. He is surely long dead by now,’ he answered. ‘It is rumoured that other expeditions have ventured into these wilds before, seeking the same thing we do. But the book has never been seen anywhere else in all that time, even though possessing it would bestow enormous power upon whoever owned it. The only conclusion is that none of them returned.

‘Thus, the reasonable place to look is where the trail ends. The book is there, of that I have no doubt,’ Draeder said.

‘If no one has returned alive, then that means others have ventured into this cursed land and failed in the same endeavour you have now set us upon,’ Felix said. ‘How exactly do you propose to spare us the same fate?’

Draeder smiled. He lifted his glowing, flaming scythe overhead. Its peculiar purple light fell on them like a cold rain.

‘I have here fused the dark energy that pervaded the flesh of that mutant hound with the winds of Shyish, the source of all Amethyst magic. In so doing I have woven this veil of violet light, whose source is the wild energy of the forest itself. It will help protect us from the savage horrors that lurk in the deep of the cursed land.’

All of them stepped closer together, drenched in the light of the purple, magical flame. Draeder rolled up the map and handed it to Erhard. Then he held up his magical scythe and announced what they all knew.

‘Now we are prepared to approach the Valley of Death.’

Excerpt, Journal of Felix Jaeger – Unpublished, undated

Our journey has been long, these past several months. Beset by dangers and hazards each and every day, I fear I have not had the occasion to make entry in this journal as often as I might otherwise have done. Having now come upon the best shelter we’ve found in weeks, I finally have the opportunity to once again open these pages that I might chronicle at least some of the perils we have survived of late.

Since we left behind the ancient road, the path charted upon Draeder von Halkern’s map has led us on a winding route, ever deeper into the dim reaches of the Great Forest, a dark and thickly grown wilderness where a foul mist lays upon the land at every hour and currents of polluted air move with every shifting of the wind.

Unspeakable vermin have been our constant companions, creeping out from infested groves of twisted, unnatural trees and swooping down to sting at us from above. The pestilent undergrowth swarms with carnivorous plants that slither thorny vines through the mud, reaching out to strike at every turn.

On occasion the light of the purple flame has indeed protected us from a cruel and grisly fate, just as Draeder promised. The eerie fire hid us from both a horde of immense spiders and two marauding packs of rabid tuskgors. But more often than not, the conjured flame was no guarantee of safe passage. On more than one occasion over these trying, difficult months, we have been forced to fight for our very survival amidst this fierce and terrible wilderness.

A vicious tribe of forest goblins nearly overwhelmed us a while back, after we charted what now appears to have been an unwise shortcut around a smouldering crater. Erhard and I both took the heads of more than a dozen each, while the brothers Strang and Torsten proved their worth as well, battling bravely alongside one another in a long and desperate fight, a struggle that claimed the lives of two of our number: both Reinhard and Volker.

Less than a week later we were forced into a similarly narrow escape upon trespassing over the sacred burial lands of a troll clan. That misstep had imprisoned us all for days in a deep pit of the trolls’ camp, and had brought one more of our men to the premature end of his journey, Walder having been roasted upon a spit and eaten by the barbaric creatures. We could hear his horrific screams for hours as the contemptible creatures burned him alive, and I must truly confess that it was perhaps both the longest and the worst single night of my entire life.

I managed to trick the dullest of the trolls into releasing me from the vile pit the following morning. That was a mistake that Strang and Torsten made the troll pay for with his life, as the rest of us regained our horses and rode away.

I fear the dreams of gold are fading in the minds of my companions as our trek begins to keep us in this horrid realm far longer than any of us expected. The brothers have already started to grumble. Strang, as laconic a soldier as there is, yet confines his complaints to his superior, Erhard. Torsten, however, less experienced and disciplined than his elder sibling, has begun to talk openly of abandoning the adventure altogether.

As dusk fell yesterday evening, we could detect a change in the terrain. The ground has grown hilly and rocky. Draeder now seems moved by some new urgency.

I await the sunrise yet again. Of what horrors may yet lurk ahead I cannot even begin to guess.

6.

For several days they trekked up-hill, their horses slowed by the increasingly difficult ground they were forced to negotiate as the Great Forest became even more rolling and strewn with rocks. A deeper chill seemed to fill the air as they moved higher in elevation, condensing into a thick mist as they continued under the ever-present shadows of tall, ancient trees and vermin-haunted thickets.

The tree-line seemed to falter however, when they came to the sight of a long ridge above them. The dense growth that had long surrounded them faded into scattered copses of oaks and lonely pines across the length of the long slope that led up to the bare, stony rise.

Beyond it, the forest came to an abrupt end. What lay ahead was an altogether different landscape, unlike anything they’d witnessed on their journey. A bleak expanse of scrub brush and exposed rock.

‘Finally… the Barren Hills,’ Draeder announced, as they all came over the ridge to survey the lands before them.

Slate grey and the pale yellow of withered grass dominated the vista in every direction. The terrain was fractured and uneven, dented by deep swales and scattered with jagged, stony outcroppings that reached up into a fog of low-hanging clouds. A cruel stink hung over the empty wasteland, the odour of stagnant marsh water and hints of sulphur fumes.

Draeder alone among them seemed encouraged by the frightful vista, and it spurred him forward with a renewed purpose, his eyes alternating between the map and the seemingly forsaken lands. He rode out ahead of the party, taking his horse down a precarious slope and then up along the edge of a barrel-shaped rock mound. For a moment, he looked out in each direction, searching for a landmark or some other point of reference on his map.

When the rest of the riders caught up to him, he turned and pointed toward another hillock half-shrouded in the mist. They once again followed, only to repeat the same routine yet again, and then a third and fourth time until their passage through the foggy barrens seemed to stretch on for hours.

Overhead, massive carrion birds appeared out of the haze. The unnaturally large crows squealed and circled, five or ten at a time. For a long while, the foul scavengers stalked the party from the air, keeping pace with them as they went. Always present, but never close enough to reach.

Paying the birds little attention, Draeder once again rode out ahead of them, his eyes snared by some formation in the hazy distance. At Erhard’s direction, Strang and Torsten took to the gallop behind him, leaving Felix with him, behind at the rear-guard.

‘Would it be impertinent to suggest that we may be lost?’ Felix asked, as they watched the trio charge into the fog beyond.

Erhard grunted.

‘It would be,’ he said. Then his gruff, craggy face widened in a broad smile as he continued. ‘But that wouldn’t make you wrong.’

Felix laughed. As rough a man as he was, Erhard had become something of a mentor to him over the long months of their journey. The old sergeant may not have been of high birth, but it was clear that he had earned his position as a leader of men.

‘You don’t trust him, do you?’ Felix said. ‘I wouldn’t mention it in general company, but given our present circumstances, I may not have another opportunity.’

Erhard looked out, first to Draeder galloping out once again in the distance, then back to Felix. Again, he answered in the simple, direct manner to which Felix had become accustomed.

‘I do not,’ he said.

Although it confirmed his suspicions, hearing the old sergeant speak them so plainly struck Felix.

‘I’m not certain I ever have, truth be told,’ Erhard continued. ‘But even less so now.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Perhaps it would be better that I speak no more of this,’ Erhard said. ‘I know that you look up to him, that you see something of yourself in Draeder, in your shared background.’

Felix agreed, but pressed the conversation regardless.

‘I do respect what he’s done, given his circumstances,’ Felix said. ‘I understand what it’s like to be cast aside by a prominent family. But I’ve also seen how you carry yourself these past months. You care about your men and you’re as fine a solider as I’ve ever known.’

Erhard nodded.

‘Thank you, young sir,’ he said.

‘So then you must tell me, as we’re moving ever deeper into this strange wilderness at Draeder’s behest – you have known the man far longer than I – what troubles you?’

‘You’ve seen what I’ve seen, have you not?’ Erhard replied. ‘I trust a man I can count on. A man who can handle a sword, as you can. Some of Draeder’s spell-casting works, some of it does not. Would you call that reliable?’

‘His magic does seem rather… erratic,’ Felix said, relieved that he was able to express his own concerns openly for the first time.

‘That’s charitable,’ Erhard replied. ‘At times his conjuring has been quite useless indeed. I don’t trust wizards as a rule, but one who cannot be counted on in battle is one I will never put my faith in.’

‘It is strange, as you say. He wears the weathered robes of an old, wise wizard,’ Felix replied. ‘I know very little of the Colleges of Magic, but I had always heard that mages of that sort engaged in long study, for decades sometimes, before they attained the mantle of a full-fledged wizard.’

‘So had I,’ Erhard answered. ‘But Draeder was gone from his father’s estate for no more than three years before he returned, clothed in the way you see him now, in the age-worn regalia of an old adept.’

‘And dispatched on a mission of some importance by his superiors, no less,’ Felix said. ‘Do you suspect he’s lying?’

The question seemed to make Erhard uncomfortable. He winced as he answered, clearly reluctant to continue the exchange.

‘I can’t say I suspect anything in particular,’ Erhard said. ‘Though in my experience, I’ve found it better to suspect everything. That’s the reason I’ve lived this long.’

Felix smiled. He was about to reply, when a scream interrupted.

Both men arched up in their saddles. The rest of their party had just vanished in the mist ahead of them, obscured by a bank of dense fog that had settled over a low swale. Another followed. The first was a cry of pain. The second was a call of battle.

Felix noticed the crows were gone from overhead. Neither man said a word. They simply charged.

Galloping headlong into the low terrain, they soon found themselves swallowed up by the cold, heavy mist. The hooves of their horses splashed through a boggy flat of stagnant, muddy water. The fog was so thick at the bottom of the marshy vale that Felix and Erhard could barely see an arm’s length in front of them.

That was when they heard the terrible squeals close in from above.

The black birds strafed them, diving down out of the thick clouds and then retreating back into the grey. Talons clutched at them, tearing at their horses and ripping across their shoulders. Wings flapped and soared in every direction, as the screeching swelled into a rage.

Felix swung his sword wildly overhead, trying to fight through the haze to see what he was striking as he struggled to beat back the attackers from above. Blood splattered into his eyes. Black feathers wet with slime and stinking of carrion fell in every direction.

Their forward gallop brought Felix and Erhard together with the others, all of them swarmed by the vicious birds.

‘Ride hard men!’ Erhard shouted through the mist. ‘Climb the slopes out of this blasted marsh or we’ll never see the sun again!’

Felix kicked his boots into the side of his mount, joining the others in a hard, blind gallop forward. The raven swarm did not relent. Even as they urged their horses on, the birds continued their onslaught.

But with the forced ride, the horses quickly found a slope on the far end of the swale, bringing them all up to a crest where the fog cleared. Out of the mist and finally able to see again, the men swatted down the ravens who remained, slashing and chopping any who swept low enough to reach.

When it was over, the remains of the bird swarm lay scattered in every direction; leaving them at the centre of a field of blood and butchered ravens.

‘I thought those were supposed to be scavengers, just carrion birds,’ Felix said, panting as he fought to catch his breath.

Draeder however, regarded the carnage with an almost solemn eye, looking over messy, scattered remains of the slain animals with a kind of reverence.

‘In the Barren Hills, you’ll find that very little is what you would expect,’ he said.

7.

Draeder once again studied the vista before them. He scanned the map, looked at the fields of seemingly featureless stone and scrub weeds and pointed them toward a rounded barrow hill just a short ride off. Once they arrived at the tumulus, a low and unremarkable mound, he quite unexpectedly issued an order that none of them wanted to hear.

‘We’ll set up camp here for the evening,’ he declared.

The men bristled, and Erhard spoke up for them.

‘We have several hours of daylight left, and given what we’ve just gone through, we’re all restless to get on with this journey. Let us press on at least ’til nightfall,’ the old sergeant said.

Draeder shook his head, flashing his hand with the same dismissive wave he had so often used to silence his long-serving aide-de-camp. This time however, he found the gesture met with some resistance.

‘We should keep moving ahead,’ Erhard said, edging his horse near enough to grab Draeder by the arm. ‘Unless you have lost your way.’

The affront to his authority drew a cold stare from the young wizard.

‘We have not gone astray and I have never taken orders from you, old man,’ he said. ‘I certainly have no intention of starting now.’

Erhard would not relent.

‘We’ve all sacrificed for this mission of yours,’ he said. ‘Most of my men have been lost already, every one of them claimed by a death I would not wish upon my enemies. Yet we have seen nothing to make us believe we are any closer to our goal.’

‘Is this some rebellion you’ve concocted?’ Draeder replied. ‘Are you now to mutiny against me like traitorous sailors upon a lost ship – and after my magic has protected you for this entire way?’

Felix could feel the tension. It had been simmering between them all for weeks. While Draeder’s claim of magical prowess was rather an exaggeration and Erhard was now verging on outright breach of his oath of fealty, Felix nonetheless tried to manoeuvre his horse between the two in an effort to diffuse the situation.

‘An explanation might go further than you think,’ he said to Draeder, attempting to mediate. ‘Perhaps Ernst is out of line, but even still he is right. We’ve all suffered on this trek and in so doing we have all demonstrated our loyalty as well. I’m sure I speak for every one of us in saying that if we are indeed finally close to the end, then you must tell us why we do not proceed.’

Draeder edged his mount back. He straightened his robes and lifted his chin.

‘I do not need to answer to anyone,’ he said. ‘But if it will placate you, then I will indeed choose to tell you what I know that you do not.’

Felix nodded, though he could see that Erhard remained unconvinced. Draeder however, was a moment in answering, as though he actually had no explanation at the ready, despite his boasting. Finally, after a long and uncomfortable pause, he replied with a rambling narration.

‘We are in fact very close to our goal. Next we must seek out a single hill, one unlike any other across these barren fields, for it is crowned by a distinctive marker, an ancient gateway of three great standing stones. There will we find the passage into the Valley of Skethris. The map outlines the trail we have thus far followed, and I believe we will find the location soon. But we must be fully prepared when we arrive.’

‘Prepared for what?’ Felix asked.

‘The dolmen stones are watched over by an un-living guardian.’

‘A ghost?’ Felix asked.

‘More than that,’ Draeder replied. ‘But the texts do not make clear the nature of the sentinel. They say only that this guardian is bound to the portal itself, and that it never sleeps. He is forever on watch. By the time we see the hill-tower, that-which-dwells-within will already have seen us.’

‘Then how do we hope to pass through it?’ Erhard asked.

‘The secret to entering and safely crossing through such portals is a matter of magic, and thus it is my concern, you need not consider it except to know that if we are to succeed, I must be quite ready before we arrive.’

He held out the vellum, but only so that Felix could see it, pointing to a series of runes stencilled beside the representation of a dolmen. Felix studied it for a moment, puzzling at what he saw.

‘There appear to be two markers there, are there not?’ he asked, pointing at the dolmen and something beside it. ‘Which one is the right one?’ he asked.

Draeder sneered. He yanked the map away.

‘That is my concern. I was not asking for help,’ he said.

‘Why wait then?’ Erhard questioned. ‘If you know the path, and you have the rite at hand, then lead us there. What more must you prepare?’

Draeder scoffed at him, as though he were but an ignorant child.

‘Here indeed is written the oath that must be recited upon these hills, the incantation that can open the gateway. But it is more than a mere matter of recitation,’ he said. ‘The tower must only be approached by moonlight. To attempt to cross the path any other time would be disastrous. Even a perfectly done incantation would fail if not performed at the right time.’

Erhard groaned, and he bade his horse to edge backward. He fell in with Strang and Torsten, whose haggard eyes bespoke their shared frustration.

‘We’ve come this far,’ Felix said.

‘Listen to Felix, let me do what only I can do, and soon I will… we will have the Book of Ashur within our grasp,’ Draeder said, half by request but spoken more as a command.

Felix looked over to the men, and then back to Draeder. Erhard finally nodded, and the others agreed.

‘Do what you must,’ Felix said. ‘We will camp here while you prepare. Summon us when you’ve made ready and this journey can finally come to an end.’

Draeder nodded.

‘Indeed. Make your camp, and I will consult my volumes. Once I have the incantation prepared, we can proceed.’

As the men turned away, satisfied for the moment to merely circle their horses in preparation for setting up camp, Draeder put his hand on Felix’s shoulder. He drew the young man aside, sidling their horses close and lowering his voice so none of the others could hear.

‘Keep your eye on them, Felix,’ he warned. ‘They’re not like us. They’re not men of education. Only you and I can truly understand our purpose here. You and I, Felix. We must watch out for one another as this mission goes forward. I know I can count on you.’

Felix nodded, but as Draeder dismounted and collected his volumes, he cursed under his breath, realizing that the two men he most depended upon did not trust one another, and that both might soon ask him to turn upon the other.

Several hours passed in near silence. Draeder sat with his back turned, perched atop the barrow itself. He was frozen in a pose of perfect concentration, all sign of him lost beneath his huge shroud. The entire time, neither Felix nor Erhard detected so much as a hint of movement from the mage.

The men huddled together in a small circle at the base of the hill. Having no wood with which to build a fire, they wrapped themselves in their cloaks to guard against the damp cold that prevailed over the misty barrens. For a long while they clustered there, some trying to steal a few moments of sleep while the others patrolled the area, keeping a watchful eye for whatever might come out of the wastelands as the sun set upon the Barren Hills, lowering a veil of darkness over them once again.

They were not looking for a threat from within. But only moments after the fall of night, a terrible, blood-curdling scream alerted them to their error.

It came from behind them, from the barrow itself. The shrieking was vile, and it reverberated with many voices – high-pitched and deep-throated in unison. It roused them all at once, scrambling to their feet but covering their ears in some small effort to blunt the awful noise.

Yet that was hardly the worst of it. Still down on his knees and straining as the horrible wailing pounded in his head, Felix managed to look up. He saw a column of mist and shadow emerging from the heart of the barrow. At first merely a shapeless mass, the currents of darkness and fog began to coalesce, and as he watched, they took up a human-like form.

The figure assembled itself into a kind of translucent female form, but dreadful and horrific as an animated corpse. Her stare was ghastly, a face frozen in an anguished stare, with sunken cheeks and eyes that glowed pure white. Black currents of twisted, moving shadow crowned her with a mane of ghostly hair. The gown of mist that trailed behind her was a shredded mantle that rippled with every scream from her pale lips.

Her voice shrieked with abominable fragments of sound. As she moved toward them she raised her thin bone-like hands, pointing long white fingers at them as she wailed.

Felix leaped from the ground, slashing his long sword at the ghostly maiden. The blade passed through her with no effect. When he pulled back his sword the steel was cold, and covered in frost.

Erhard did the same, but again to no avail. The banshee ignored the attack altogether. Unperturbed by any strike or flail, she merely pointed her long, ethereal fingers. And she continued her screeching cry.

Draeder came running down the hill, drawn by the sight and the sound of the ghost maiden. As Felix moved for yet another attack, the wizard shouted at him to hold his position.

‘Our weapons have no effect!’ Felix shouted. ‘Is there nothing you can do?’

Draeder came to the base of the hill, falling in beside Felix and his men. He pointed his scythe at the banshee, but that too seemed to accomplish nothing.

For a long, terrible moment the translucent figure merely hovered over them, screaming.

Then, just as suddenly as she had appeared, the ghostly woman backed away. In the same fashion as she had come, the wraith drew herself off, floating backward toward the haunted barrow. The shadows of the hill seemed to reach out to reclaim her, as her spectral form began to fade, disappearing like little more than candle-smoke.

As she vanished, the last thing that remained of her was her skull-like face. It turned from a ferocious visage into a devious, evil smile before it too faded away.

‘We drove it off!’ Torsten said.

‘We did no such thing,’ Erhard replied. ‘That cursed spirit left of its own accord.’

‘Why?’ Felix asked. ‘But for a fright, it did us no harm at all.’

‘It wasn’t trying to harm us,’ Draeder said. ‘It was issuing a warning.’

‘What was it warning us about?’ Felix asked.

‘Not us,’ the wizard replied, looking out toward the misty, dark horizon. ‘It was warning the guardian. Night has fallen, and now it knows that we’re coming.’

8.

Moonlight touched the Barren Hills with an eerie, ghostly glow. The pale shining of Mannslieb reflected off every surface, glinting from steep slopes and at odd, oblique angles. A haze of cold shimmers and ever-shifting shadows filled the air. Deep and sombre quiet reigned across the barrens by night, a stillness that sent a shiver through Felix. No howling or shrieking he’d heard in all his travels bothered him quite so much as the spooky, flawless still of that deathly silence.

They’d made haste after the banshee’s arrival, having no time to lose with their presence now known across the barrens. After a short while trekking through yet another stretch of badlands, a larger formation grew up out of the foggy distance. A single rocky hill rose high over the bleak sea of stone, its rise dominating the terrain for miles around. The path of a winding trail had been cut into its face, snaking up along the front slope. Upon its crest there stood a lonely, half-crumbled stone triptych. The ancient, free-standing granite blocks sparkled in the weird moonlight, like a beacon across the misty barrens.

Again, Draeder halted the party. He studied his map, compared it to what he saw and puzzled for a moment.

‘That is the hill,’ he said. ‘There we will find the entrance to the Valley of Skethris. We must be on guard now.’

As if in answer to his announcement, the ground rumbled underfoot. An eerie call sounded in the distance, a guttural roar that echoed through the cold mist.

‘There can be no doubt. It knows we’re here,’ the wizard said.

They rode ahead with swords drawn, Draeder still at the lead but now with Strang and Torsten never more than a pace behind him.

As they proceeded, the dead silence began to give way. At first the still was broken only in isolated bursts, a screech in the distance or a muffled howl somewhere in the shadows. But it soon became more, and Felix began to wish for the uncomfortable quiet he’d so dreaded only hours earlier.

When they reached the crest of the hill and dismounted, they found the great dolmen standing alone. It appeared to be large doorway of rock, leading down into the earth. Composed of three great standing stones, two were anchored into the ground while a thinner, flat capstone lay atop them, tilted at a slight angle.

‘I’ve never seen such a thing,’ Felix whispered.

‘The ancient tribes who once ruled these lands laid their kings and chieftains to rest beneath monuments such as this. They were believed to mark portals to the land of the dead,’ Draeder replied.

Although he realized he should have been inured to such a notion already, the suggestion sent a fright through Felix.

‘What must we do?’ Erhard asked.

‘Just as it was for the ancients, the dolmen is the entrance for us as well. Beneath that stone triptych is the portal into the necromancer’s realm,’ Draeder said.

‘We can just enter it?’ Felix asked.

Draeder shook his head.

‘I’m afraid it is not nearly that simple. I must perform the proper rite in order to open the way. And you must distract the guardian long enough for me to do so.’

Felix stammered, looking around across the barren, lonely hill.

‘But I see no guardian,’ he said.

Draeder stepped back, leaving Felix and the men nearest to the dolmen.

‘Look again,’ he advised, even as he receded.

Just as the wizard spoke, the moon-shadows beneath the capstone began to stir. Once more the eerie howls echoed, and as the wind began to blow they were joined by a sort of sinister laughter.

Clanking and shuffling and the hard grinding of stone against stone accompanied the movement beneath the dolmen. A figure crept up from beneath, as if spawned from the fetid earth. It reached out with pale hands until it emerged fully from the grave, standing before them in a display of evil majesty.

The wight was massive. He wore finely-crafted armour of an archaic sort, the antiquated gear of an ancient barbarian warlord. His breastplate was age-tarnished bronze, the edges and the faded inlay infested with green verdigris. His black-iron pauldrons and gauntlets had been dulled by centuries of dust. A mail undercoat fell to his knees, the links rusted out in places leaving gaping holes.

His great, old helmet was crowned with a single spike and a pair of ragged eagle’s wings. Beneath the visor his haunted eyes gleamed bright crimson, stark against his cadaverous, decayed face. He wielded a massive broadsword, the flat of the blade inscribed with black runes that pulsed with dark magic.

‘That is no mere watcher,’ Felix whispered.

Draeder was already a pace behind him.

‘No doubt the warrior-king interred beneath this grave,’ he said. ‘Raised from death and bound to this place long ago by the black hand of Skethris himself.’

The undead warrior king still retained a shadow of his human form. What remained of his skin was desiccated and discoloured. Swathes of his bare, dry flesh were the greenish-grey shade of a corpse, which other places bulged with black and purple splotches where congealed blood had settled and hardened long ago.

‘Welcome travellers,’ the wight said, its deep thundering voice making the ground tremble again. ‘It has been so long since anyone has come. So long indeed that I’ve nearly forgotten the pleasures of company.’

Felix looked to Erhard. He raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

‘We come with no ill will,’ Felix said. ‘We wish only to pass.’

The wight laughed.

‘Why, that is the very pleasure I have so missed,’ the wight replied. ‘Killing those who wish to pass this way.’

Felix lowered his hands. They all lifted their swords. Draeder, standing further from the menacing figure, looked up and centred his eye on the full moon, rising behind the hill itself.

‘The rite must be employed now, while the light shines down. The glows of the Chaos moon will show us the way. I’ll require time to recite the entire incantation.’

‘It does not appear we have much!’ Erhard shouted.

‘You do not need to defeat the wight, merely hold him while I perform the rite that will open the portal,’ Draeder said.

‘That’ll be harder than it looks,’ Felix said. ‘And it doesn’t look easy.’

Felix charged at the undead warrior-king, slashing at him with an expert cut from his blade. The wight merely brushed it aside with little effort, and Felix was forced to quickly duck down from the return blow of the wight’s great rune-blade. Even then, he was nearly cut in two by the undead warrior’s next swipe, two blows rendered faster than any living man could have placed one. The enchanted sword sliced across his jerkin but luckily did not go any deeper. He whirled, and cut through the arm of the un-living guardian, but the strike seemed to have no effect against the hulking, unfeeling attacker.

As the warrior-king swung around, his ardour undiminished, Felix dodged yet another slash of the massive broadsword. This time he leaped up the moment the blade was past him, and he plunged his own sword directly into the wight’s throat. The blade penetrated and came right back out, pulling with it nothing more than foul-smelling dust.

The wight simply cackled, returning the favour with another blow that Felix only barely managed to block. The sheer force of it sent him tumbling.

Erhard raced into the fray just as Felix fell however. He struck back at the wight, cutting across his rusted mail and severing his rotted leather belt. Yet none of his attacks weakened the guardian either. In moments he too was thrown aside, landing in a heap beside the dolmen itself.

‘This is madness!’ Torsten exclaimed, his eyes wide with a kind of panicked terror that bordered on insanity. ‘We can’t defeat such an enemy!’

Strang grabbed his brother by the collar, yanking him back to a measure of sense.

‘Then we die here, brother,’ the one-eyed man growled.

The encouragement held them all together as they backed up, keeping close as they fought off every new attack from the undead warrior-king. Felix looked back to Draeder, ministering with his Amethyst scythe.

The wizard stood before the dolmen, reciting a long and complex chant, lifting and gesturing with his staff as if trying to focus for the magic he was attempting to channel. But for all his incantations and summoning, nothing appeared to happen.

Only a moment later, Strang met with disaster.

The veteran warrior stabbed at the wight and struck it dead on in the chest, but found his blade lodged in the old armour and dry flesh of his attacker. He struggled to pry it loose, but a defenceless moment was all that the undead warrior required. The shambling monstrosity reached over Strang’s trapped sword, slashed his great blade through his throat and tore his head from his neck in a fountain of blood.

Torsten shrieked as he watched his brother die, felled by as horrible an end as could be imagined. He shivered and wailed, swinging his blade wildly as a mad frenzy finally overcame him, erasing all reason and sense.

The wight laughed with a deep, maddened chortle, somehow enlivened by the pain and the suffering he inflicted. Torsten leaped at him, raising his sword high, but the wight merely caught with his bare hand, wresting the blade from his grasp. His own massive rune sword whirled in a terrible arc, slicing down upon Torsten. It cleaved clear through his cloak and mail, splitting his neck from his shoulder in a bloody, vicious gash that opened up half his chest.

Felix and Erhard hurried backward, the powerful wight still bearing down as he cast the young soldier’s mangled body aside. They fell in beside Draeder, standing before the dolmen in confusion, puzzling over the failure of his rite to accomplish anything.

‘I performed it exactly as it is written,’ he muttered. ‘Each rune, each verse. Every turn of the staff exactly correct.’

‘Try it again!’ Felix shouted, seeing the wight close in.

‘What good will that do?’ he replied. ‘I’ve done it all exactly right, it was supposed to work. It should have worked. The moonlight should show the…’

A moment later, Draeder saw something that stopped him. Behind the dolmen, on the far side of the hill, he caught sight of something. A pile of stones rested over an indentation in the earth, where one flat rock lay atop the rest. It was glowing. The stone was illuminated, gleaming in the moonlight. Runes sparkled milky white and bright red across its surface.

‘Of course!’ he shouted. ‘The second stone marker! The dolmen is not the gateway! That is!’

Felix readied for another attack. He looked over to Draeder, pointing frantically in the direction of the glowing rune-stone.

‘But you said the dolmen was–’ Felix began.

‘I was mistaken,’ Draeder replied. ‘You were more correct than you realized, Felix, the rune stones there are the second marker on the map! That is the meaning of the inscription. The portal rests behind the dolmen, not within it! We must get past the wight!’

‘It’s impossible!’ Erhard shouted back. ‘Have you seen nothing here? It can’t be slowed, or even wounded. It is relentless. There’s no way to get by.’

Draeder snarled and he reached for Erhard, grabbing his subordinate by his cloak like a master would assail an unruly child.

‘I cannot abandon this venture now!’ he shouted in the older man’s face. ‘I refuse to accept that. There must be a way! You must find a way!’

Erhard finally lost his temper. Seething in a rage of suppressed anger, he reached up with his thick arms and seized Draeder. He stared into the younger man’s face.

‘I am done taking orders from you, boy!’ he shouted.

Then he lifted Draeder off of his feet and heaved him backwards, throwing the young wizard against the dolmen. He landed so hard his back edged the upper stone of the triptych, grinding it against the stones beneath.

He groaned and wheezed as he fell, but Felix noticed something else in that instant – the guardian staggered as well.

As Draeder tried to come to his feet, the mix of pain and wrath across his face making clear that he intended on a second run at his sergeant, Felix jumped between the two. Erhard turned his back on the wizard, returning his attention to the wight.

‘You’ll pay for that!’ Draeder shouted.

‘I doubt any of us will live long enough,’ the sergeant answered.

He lifted his sword once more, and again he charged upon the wight, its armour dripping with Strang and Torsten’s blood.

Draeder grabbed his scythe and started to follow, but Felix stopped him.

‘This creature is bound to this spot, you told us,’ he said.

The wizard seemed uninterested in answering. Felix grabbed him and shook him.

‘Tell me!’ he demanded. ‘How is this undead thing held here?’

‘As I said,’ Draeder replied, angrily. ‘The dark magic of Skethris binds him to his eternal resting place.’

‘This dolmen,’ Felix replied.

‘Indeed, he is bound to this place for…’

Felix ignored the rest of his answer, turning to the dolmen itself. He dropped his sword, bared both hands and pushed against the capstone. For all his strength, he managed to shift it only a tiny bit.

The moment it moved however, even just a small distance, he heard a peel of agony from across the hilltop. Turning his head, he saw the wight stagger again, though Erhard had not landed a blow.

‘Help me!’ Felix shouted, grabbing Draeder and turning him toward the dolmen. ‘Push with everything you’ve got!’

The two men joined forces, heaving their full weight into the capstone until they felt it edge away, grinding pebbles and dust under it as it scraped across the standing stones beneath it. The effort took all of their might.

The wight howled, stumbling for a moment. Erhard stood against it still, his twin swords meeting the undead warrior’s next blow.

‘Again!’ Felix shouted.

Once more the two men pushed, and a second time they managed to shove the dolmen’s top stone until it was teetering. The wight staggered again, weakened but not defeated. It raged, striking a blow that sent Erhard careening across the hill. The old sergeant fell with a painful thud.

Felix knelt down next to him, helping him back to his feet.

‘Give a hand to Draeder,’ he said. ‘When I call back to you, follow his lead.’

The sergeant nodded, fighting to regain his balance as he fell in beside the young wizard, both men poised beside the dolmen with the precarious capstone.

Once again lumbering toward them, Felix intercepted the cackling wight. Drawing his sword, he bounded and leaped toward the grisly guardian.

‘Now!’ he shouted back to the others.

Draeder and Erhard threw their combined weight at the dolmen. They pushed hard against it with everything their arms could muster, until the capstone slid off of its perch between the two supports, collapsing down in a heap of broke stone.

Felix’s blade crashed against the barbarian king’s rune sword the instant the dolmen crumbled. The two razor edges slid down against one another until the pommels met, wedging the cross-guards together with a clang and a spark.

The wight squealed in agony as the ancient monument broke apart. He shrieked and shook, but Felix held fast. He wrestled with the weakened guardian, forcing the undead sentinel backward. They moved to and fro, the wight’s strength failing with Felix’s every move. Then, as the dead king staggered, Felix shouted back to Draeder and Erhard a second time.

The two answered the call, joining Felix in jumping upon the wight with sword and scythe. As Felix held the undead watcher, Erhard stabbed at the creature and Draeder slashed. This time, their blades wreaked havoc, cutting and chopping the pale flesh of the watcher until his body mirrored the ruin of his grave marker. His severed arms dropped down at his sides, followed by his legs as they collapsed under him.

Finally, Felix swung his sword in an arc, slicing through the wight’s throat. His head tumbled down from his neck, dropping its winged helmet as its body crumpled into a heap of dust and ancient armour.

Draeder fell back against the fractured dolmen, relieved and out of breath for the moment. When he did recover, he ignored Erhard and looked to Felix only.

‘Good thinking all around, Felix,’ he said. ‘Truly, I could not have asked for a more able assistant on this endeavour.’

Erhard looked over to Felix then, his face dour and his brow furrowed. Felix sighed and turned his head, for he found that he could not muster anything to say.

9.

It was not much of a memorial, but Felix and Erhard took the savaged bodies of the fallen brothers and carried them both to the dolmen. There, in the centre of the ancient burial site, collapsed though it was, they laid the two brave warriors to rest.

Though they gave some thought to keeping Strang and Torsten’s horses, they chose instead to leave them behind, freeing the animals to run wild. By the time the moon was fully overhead, they were re-packed and ready to move on.

No sooner had they observed a silent moment than Draeder demanded they resume. He had already studied the portal entrance, the stones above it still gleaming with inscrutable runes. Where there had once been little more than a marker of several stones embedded over a hole in the earth, his incantation had magically opened it into a wide stone gate. Behind lay a tunnel, deep enough to ride a horse down into it with room to spare.

Draeder led the way again, the first to enter the portal. Felix and Erhard formed up in his wake, leaving behind the moonlight and following only the eerie glow of Draeder’s violet scythe flame.

‘I seem to think I might have once considered something like this rather unwise,’ Felix said, as his horse carried him down into the tunnel. ‘But now I suppose I can’t complain.’

The descent through the tunnel seemed to carry them deep into the earth. No hint of the outside world remained as they moved down a long and dark path. On the far side they found that it opened upon a slope at the edge of a long and deep valley – but of the dolmen or the Barren Hills, there was no sign at all.

The grade was steep and the ground was rocky. They could not see the floor of the valley, blanketed by thick carpet of fog. Strangely, the mist did not rise to the higher elevations, obscuring only the distance but leaving the near terrain untouched.

Jagged boulders lay strewn about, massive broken hunks of stone that looked more like the rubble of giants than natural formations. The fractured rock jutted out from the dirt, forcing them to follow a narrow path that snaked for miles in every direction before it finally brought them down to the edge of the mist.

A vile reek filled their nostrils before they reached the fog, and it only grew deeper as they penetrated it. There was no wind down there. The air was cold and stagnant, and filled with a dense curtain of grey mist that hung all about in a dim murk. It stank of corpses, the musty reek of old tombs and decay.

While Felix and Erhard recoiled at the stench, Draeder took the opposite approach. He inhaled the rotten scent with a peculiar relish.

The sun had just gone down, their winding descent having consumed the entire day. Though they found themselves now on the floor of the valley, the fog robbed them of all but the faintest hints of moonlight to guide their way, leaving the forest ahead cloaked in a deep shadow.

‘Should we not pause here, and attempt to continue once the safety of daylight has returned?’ Felix asked.

Draeder shook his head.

‘Daylight may guide our eyes, but we now follow the path of the scythe. The violet flame is strongest at night. Death magic is weakest at midday, and nowhere is the odour of death stronger than here. We must proceed now.’

‘It might be wise to leave the horses,’ Erhard said. ‘If we’re to approach this place with some stealth.’

‘Indeed,’ Draeder replied, as if it had been his own idea. ‘I believe we should proceed on foot from here.’

They dismounted, tethering the horses to a tree and following behind him on foot as they entered into the lower valley. The realm of the necromancer quickly revealed a more ghastly character than the monster-addled lands they’d left behind. The forest had been cleared in every direction, leaving only scattered groves of winter-bare trees. What stood in its place was an immense landscape of blight and ruin.

Hints of faded grandeur stood all around, age-worn and battered, yet clinging to a shadow of opulence, a vast plantation of death.

Crumbled walls lined the edges of what might have once been gardens. The stone work was incredible, chiselled with such care that the granite seemed as thin as a veil of lace, petrified for all the ages. Everything was mouldered and decrepit, a ghost of its former splendour.

Rows of broken columns flanked the grim estates. The pillars were solid marble, but cut with such exquisite artistry as to resemble flowers in spring bloom, vine-covered and delicate as rose petals. The once-fine white stone was now stained with swarms of black lichen. The perfect masonry was pockmarked and charred from some long-ago violence.

Felix ran his hand over the faces of some, almost in disbelief at both the richness and the decay alike. He found that the stone had been eaten away in places – as if gnawed upon. The thought sent a shiver through him.

Water remained in artificial ponds, brown and fetid with oily slicks that lingered across the weed-clogged surface. The detritus of some long-forgotten battle left its mark, in the broken spears and rusted helmets that lay abandoned throughout, grisly monuments to the fall of an entire realm.

The complex and beautiful designs of ancient courtyards survived as mere outlines etched into the scrub-brush and the dirt. Dry canals choked with debris traced the lines of once-flowing streams and captive waterfalls, the rushing rivers reduced to mere trickles of sludge.

The viscous gray mist floated beside them everywhere they went, seething up from the rotten earth, stinking of decomposition. After more than an hour pressing onward, strange noises began to echo in the dim. Footsteps sounded in the misty shadows. Creaking and clanking followed, joined by muffled screams in the distance.

The men penetrated ever deeper into the ruins, and with every moment the noises grew louder. Still they moved forward, further into the gloom, until figures began to emerge from the haze and the darkness ahead.

At first, only their outlines could be discerned, and they were unlike any sentinels the three men had ever seen. Thin and nearly stick-like in silhouette, their movements were likewise inhuman. Awkward, herky-jerky steps brought them closer until the front ranks paraded into the moonlight, revealing their horrid nature.

They appeared from the mist as though marching forth from a nightmare. None were truly men, nothing more than bones animated beyond the grave. All of them stared ahead with cold, soulless eyes, every face exactly the same – a bare skull.

‘The watchers of the valley,’ Draeder said. ‘Long-dead warriors forever bound to this place by the will of the necromancer.’

Erhard pointed just behind them to their left, where a wall of ancient stone ran along the edge of a decrepit garden.

‘I don’t think they’ve seen us yet,’ he whispered. ‘If we circle back, taking cover behind the wall, we might be able to side-step them and find another way forward.’

Felix looked at Draeder. Both nodded.

‘No argument,’ Felix said.

Stepping away with utmost care and proceeding on as stealthily as they could, the party ducked behind the wall and re-traced their steps back, looking to chart a path around the advancing skeletal host.

But their efforts soon proved futile.

Coming up from behind the length of the wall, they found their path once again blocked, by yet more of the foul walkers. These emerged not only from the mist, but from the fetid ground as well, creeping up from the rotten earth in fits and starts to stand among their undead brethren.

Of the dozen or so who now mustered before them, some still clung to fading vestiges of life. Scraps of dried flesh or stringy hair hung off of a few. The tattered, yellowed remains of tunics and cloaks dangled from others. Their evil, hollow black eyes scanned in every direction, holding their mouldered shields and waving their antique swords before them.

‘What a vile sight,’ Felix gasped. ‘Of all that we’ve encountered so far, what could be more horrific than bare skeletons that still walk as living men? Please tell me the magic of your scythe holds sway over these things.’

Draeder didn’t answer. Instead, he slowed, taken aback by the lumbering undead that now approached.

Felix sensed his trepidation.

‘You may wish to draw your sword now,’ Draeder whispered.

Erhard grumbled, unsheathing his twin blades. He sneered at the wizard.

‘I hope your courage is stronger than your magic.’

Draeder scoffed at the insult, but beads of sweat had started to form on his forehead, despite the chill.

‘It is no failing of mine,’ he said. ‘My scythe flame draws its power from the wilds of the forest and the winds of Shyish. Though it follows the currents of the purple wind, it has no power to control those who walk beyond death.’

Felix snarled, as he drew his own long-sword and prepared to meet the dreadful sentinels. Erhard fell in beside him, though Draeder attempted to edge his way back, shuffling in the opposite direction. The old sergeant extended his arm, blocking his path.

‘Not this time,’ he said. ‘If you’re planning to conjure some spell you’d best get to it, because you’re about to stand and fight right alongside us.’

Felix girded himself for the fight, nodding at Erhard as the two men prepared to enter the battle beside one another yet again. The undead came at them in a surge of un-living warriors staring at them with dead eyes.

Erhard crossed swords with two skull-faced sentinels at once. Withered though they were, they wielded their blades with relentless furor. It took all of Erhard’s might to force two of them back. Even then, they parried his return strokes, dodging and blocking several times without a hint of fatigue.

Though the veteran sergeant managed to dispatch them both, smashing the skull of one with a pommel strike from above and chopping the other to pieces, he took a slash across his shoulder. Blood began to stain the edges of his jerkin, soaking through his undercoat.

Felix struggled in similar fashion beside him, matching every feint and counter-strike before he was able to cleave his undead attacker’s mandible from its jaw. Though it betrayed no hint of pain, Felix nonetheless pressed his advantage and cut down the ghastly guardian with two more cuts that shattered its vertebrae. Once its skull came away, the bones collapsed at once into a heap.

‘The heads,’ Felix shouted. ‘Cut off their heads.’

Erhard saw it, and despite his injury he immediately began striking at the bony necks of the sentinels. Even Draeder took the advice to heart, whirling his scythe in wild fashion, decapitating skeletal warriors one after another.

Drawing on some of his old fencing tutor’s more obscure lessons, Felix dropped down to his knees and sliced the legs out from under three of the skeletal warriors with one single swipe. As they crumpled to the dust, he seized a spear from one, and using his full weight, he drove it through the shield of a warrior nearby, pinning it to four others behind and knocking down an entire row of the undead guardians.

Once the undead warriors were knocked to the ground, Erhard and Felix swooped in. They stomped on the fallen skeletons, chopping the skulls from each one until the entire patrol had been reduced to nothing but a pile of bones.

When it was done, once all hint of movement and every last twitch among the animated bones had quelled, Felix dropped down to one knee. He held out his sword to prop himself up. Erhard too permitted himself a rare moment’s rest, taking a seat on an empty helmet as he felt under his shirt, gauging the depth of his wound.

‘I don’t know how much more of that I could have taken,’ Felix said, out of breath as the sweat dripped from his hair.

‘Nor I,’ Erhard wheezed. ‘I’m not a young man anymore. If we don’t find our destination soon, I’m likely to end up just like one of these old boys here soon enough.’

Felix laughed.

‘Nonsense, old man,’ he said. ‘You’re not done yet.’

Draeder, breathing heavily himself, though he had taken down the fewest of the assailants, was the first to return to his feet.

‘We must keep moving,’ he said.

‘Not yet, at least permit Erhard a moment,’ Felix said.

‘We know there are more of these creatures lurking beyond. The longer we remain in one place, the greater the chance that more of these things will find us,’ Draeder replied.

Felix was about to argue, but Erhard stopped him as he began to get up, having already tied a torn piece of cloak around his upper arm as a makeshift bandage.

‘He’s right, Felix,’ the sergeant said, as he took up beside Draeder to continue on ahead. ‘Don’t worry about me, young man. I’ll be just fine.’

10.

They passed through the remainder of the outer precincts quickly after that, but always on guard for more undead sentries. Feeling the effects of their long struggle, each one of them haggard and pushed nearly to the limit, they now preferred discretion to valour. Careful in their every movement, they skirted the edges of ruined gardens and kept off anything that looked like a pathway. In so doing they managed to avoid two more such patrols as they charted a winding course deeper into the heart of the valley.

Finally, they came to the ruins of a large stone wall, which seemed to mark a border of sorts, to what had once been some kind of inner realm. Beyond it stood more elements of ancient architecture, but they quickly saw that these sections were somehow better preserved than the faded, crumbling ruins scattered through the remainder of the valley. While the columns and courtyards that lay ahead had also fallen into disrepair, overgrown with weeds and black lichen, their condition suggested that they had been abandoned much more recently, hundreds of years past perhaps, rather than thousands.

The style of the carvings and stone work differed in another respect as well, and it was one Felix took note of straightaway. Where the age-worn, dilapidated ruins of the outer valley hinted at a kind of lost elegance, a sort of finery rarely seen in the Empire, what they gazed upon now were grim, dour monuments.

Skulls replaced floral motifs atop the columns. Sigils depicting fangs and crossed swords glared in faded tones across the flagstones and the archways. From atop the broken stone embankment, Felix caught a hint of what lay even further out, behind the gruesome landscape, still half-shrouded in the mist.

He could barely discern the outline of a tall tower, cast in silhouette by the fog and the moonlight, looming in the distance directly ahead of them. He pointed it out to the others.

‘The tower of Skethris,’ Draeder said. ‘We’re nearly there.’

They pushed on, risking a final approach without benefit of cover. But the moment they moved out into open ground, they realized that they weren’t alone.

Directly before them stood a portal that opened with three archways. Beneath each one stood what at first appeared to be great statues of magnificently armoured warriors holding large, curved swords before them. When the massive warriors began to move however, marching out in unison toward them, it was clear that they faced yet another, even greater set of guardians.

Though only three, matching them man-for-man, it was obvious that these warriors were of a different, more dangerous sort. While the guardians were skull-faced, just as their brethren in the outer valley, these tall warriors were well-armoured from head to toe. Mail hoods and full length hauberks covered their bones, overlaid with bronze plate. They carried massive round shields and huge broadswords.

Their hollow eyes glowed with a foul green light.

‘Skeletons they may be, but it’ll be much tougher to take their heads from their necks,’ Felix said. ‘And I don’t honestly know how much strength I have left.’

Erhard grimaced, his wound clearly bothering him more than he wished to let on.

‘We cannot fight through such a force again,’ he complained.

‘Agreed,’ Felix said, turning to Draeder. ‘Have you truly no spells to combat such a scourge? I can’t believe the winds of death are no help against warriors who are themselves undead!’

Erhard sneered.

‘I wouldn’t look there for assistance,’ he said, lifting his blades once more for what now seemed the most desperate of fights.

This time the insult appeared to motivate Draeder, and he stepped nearer to Felix, leaving Erhard apart and closest to the ghastly sentinels.

‘Dead or not, if I cannot stop them, I may be able to draw up a spell that will hold them – for a while, at least,’ he said. ‘But I’ll require time to summon the winds of Shyish.’

Felix acknowledged him with a hard pat on the shoulder. Then he closed ranks with Erhard, coming shoulder-to-shoulder with the sergeant.

‘Let him fall back to work his magic,’ Felix said. ‘It’s the only chance we have.’

Erhard refused.

‘He’ll do nothing of the sort!’ he said. ‘He’s not capable of it!’

Felix looked back to the wizard.

‘Can you do it?’ he asked.

Draeder looked to the attackers, marching forward and nearly upon them. Then he gazed back to Felix.

‘Of course, I can,’ Draeder replied, as if it were not even a question. ‘But you must hold them at bay long enough for me to perform the rite, or I will not be able to loose it upon them.’

Felix took Erhard by the arm.

‘What other choice do we have?’ he asked.

The sergeant grudgingly acknowledged. Felix looked back to Draeder.

‘Stay behind us,’ he said. ‘We’ll hold them here for as long as we can, but waste no time. The moment you are able, cast your spell!’

Draeder assented with a nod. Felix and Erhard rallied. They shouted curses and battle cries and they met the charge of the guardians head-on. Hacking and chopping for every inch of ground, the exhausted swordsmen parried every blow of the undead warriors, listening to the archaic verses that Draeder chanted behind them. Bones and blades and broken shields scattered in every direction. Dust choked the staid, foul air.

Struggling for every foothold, Felix slashed his way forward. For a brief moment he managed to push back against the onrushing skeleton sentinels, cutting ancient armour and brittle bones with every stroke. But the offensive lasted only an instant. Beside him, Erhard howled as he took another blow. Blood spilled out from a fresh wound in his leg, hobbling him.

‘We can’t hold them Draeder! Let loose your spell, by Sigmar!’ Felix shouted.

The wizard stepped forward, raising his scythe and calling out the final words to summon the magic he sought. Felix and Erhard continued to battle in close-quarters, in brutal hand to hand combat, holding off the skeletal guardians in an increasingly failing effort.

When Draeder’s incantation seemed to accomplish nothing however, leaving him standing behind them with no magic summoned to his call, Erhard only renewed his jeering.

‘Damn you!’ he cursed. ‘I knew this was folly. We’re now doomed because of you!’

Felix however, remained resolute. He turned to Draeder again, who now looked sheepish and terrified at the onrushing attack he seemed powerless to stop.

‘Try again!’ Felix shouted.

Draeder wiped the sweat from his brow, his hands trembling. He lifted his staff and once more began the spell. But Erhard’s strength had already run out. He screamed, swinging his arms in a wild fury as one of the guardians drove its blade deep into his gut.

Felix held his ground still, but as soon as he heard the old sergeant’s terrible scream he knew what had happened. Even as he fought on, he peered out of the corner of his eye watching as Erhard beat back the skeletal warrior who had impaled him, until his blade managed to cut through the undead walker’s spine, reducing it to a crumpled heap of bones.

Now there were only two guardians remaining, but Erhard didn’t stand much longer. With blood drooling from his lips, the grizzled old sergeant dropped to his knees. Felix abandoned all caution then, fighting his way over to the old soldier, knocking the remaining two guardians back a pace with his sudden, bold counter-attack.

When Felix turned, he saw something he did not expect. Draeder had stepped up in his place, standing alone against the two remaining skeletal warriors. With a swing of his scythe, a pale ring of purple mist did finally spread out across them. It seized the pair, holding them fast and quelling their attack.

Safe for at least a moment, Felix help Erhard to the ground. Blood was spilling out from the wound in his stomach, gurgling in his throat. The old sergeant clutched at Felix’s cloak as he came to rest in the dirt.

‘Easy, old timer,’ Felix said, trying to comfort his companion though he knew very well the wound was mortal.

Erhard pulled him close, near enough to whisper with his last bit of breath.

‘Trust your instincts…’ he wheezed. ‘He’s not what you think… not what he says…’

Felix puzzled, again trying to comfort the dying warrior.

‘You must listen,’ Erhard managed. ‘You’re a good man. You’re not like him.’

Felix tried to encourage the grizzled veteran, but the man had nothing left. His eyes froze just then as his chest stopped moving. Then Ernst Erhard, sergeant at arms for House von Halkern, died in Felix Jaeger’s arms.

Felix’s cradled the body of his fallen friend, holding him tight for a long, quiet moment. Tears choked his eyes, running down through the grime on his cheeks.

When he finally wiped them away, to look out at the stilled scene of battle, he saw Draeder, standing over the frozen sentinels. The young wizard wore a gleaming, triumphant look upon his face, all-but ignoring the death of his loyal, long-time servant.

Felix looked back at the dead man resting in his embrace. Despite Draeder’s obvious success, or perhaps because of it, Erhard’s last words repeated in his mind. He felt a chill run through his blood, making him shiver down to his bones.

11.

Draeder and Felix pushed ahead. They had no choice now. It was not long before the fog cleared out, and a space opened before them that evoked both awe and terror in equal measure.

The tower they had glimpsed in the distance was even more fearsome up close. Skull-topped flag poles crowned with bronze wings flanked a long avenue leading to its gates. They lined the narrow path from the outer grounds into the very centre of the cursed estate. The standards themselves were worn. The fabric was faded and the ends tattered and frayed. But the sigils remained evident, skulls, blades and the bony wings of bats.

Twin statues stood at the terminus of the death-walk. The figures each guarded an obelisk of pure obsidian glass that reflected their shapes in the weak moonlight. Both were carved from a single slab of alabaster five times the height of a man. Garbed in archaic armour, with scythes and oval shields, their faces were skulls.

‘Fantastic,’ Draeder whispered. ‘He made this a monument to the worship of death itself.’

Still reeling from the death of Erhard, Felix could say nothing, merely taking in the evil vista. The tower of Skethris loomed beyond. It was not at all what Felix had expected it to be. It was much worse.

No common citadel lorded over the centre of the wicked grounds. Stout defensive turrets crowned with bastions and crenulated walls formed the core of it. The base and the sides of the structure were solid, old stone; great, hewn mega-blocks of basalt and black marble locked together in perfect order. But there was something gruesome about it as well. The steep outer walls were interlaced with something else, and that was neither stone nor mortar.

Felix stared at the massive, eerie tower, and he shuddered when the dreadful realization came to him, peering ever closer. The remainder of the structure was the dirty yellow shade of old bones, as though the entire keep had been somehow fortified with the remains of the un-living.

The skeletal conglomeration seemed welded to the stone keep in a twisted, parasitic fashion, as though not built or fused to the original structure by ordinary means, but rather something that had grown into place; like the gnarled, fractured trunk of a long-dead tree or some great, thorny weed that threatened to swallow the host upon which it climbed. Outcroppings extended from the whole ghastly length of it, bony arms reaching out to the darkness. Some were interwoven amongst themselves, creating a frightful skeletal lattice-work all around the structure.

Dark stains befouled the whole of it, dry rivulets of deep red that hinted at something unimaginable, a downpour of blood or the proceeds of some immense slaughter draining away from the misty heights, the site of such atrocities now hidden behind the clouds.

Felix couldn’t help but pause, standing in grim awe of such dark and evil splendour. But Draeder was unmoved. Holding his scythe high, he yanked Felix by the shoulder and pulled him into the musty shadows of the necromancer’s tower.

‘We’re close now,’ he said. ‘Very close indeed.’

They forced open the tall, rusted-out iron gate, raising a gritty, high-pitched creak from the old hinges. It required the strength of both men to edge it apart wide enough for them to pass, the joints nearly frozen in place after ages of disuse. Behind it was a small ante-chamber under a vaulted arch. A gauze of cobwebs hung down, blocking the way. Felix cut them apart, spilling a cloud of dust into the staid air. He coughed as they moved forward, Draeder doing the same as he followed.

Behind the entranceway, the inner tower opened into a round chamber. It too was suffering the effects of age and neglect. A thick carpet of dust and old webs coated everything. It smelled rotten, musty and decrepit like an old tomb opened after centuries under seal.

‘The Book of Ashur should be with the altar,’ Draeder said. ‘That would be at the highest point of the tower.’

Felix pointed to the spiral staircase that wound its way up along the far side of the chamber, leading up to the entrance of a second level. It was rusted and swathed in gray, but it made for the only path they could follow.

Though Felix took the first steps on the old stairs, testing if the iron was any sturdier than it appeared, Draeder quickly pushed past him, taking the lead as they proceeded into the upper reaches of the tower.

Above they found nothing more than a second chamber of the same sort. The entire place seemed to have been unused for quite some time. Finding nothing of note, Draeder wasted no time, following the stairs ever higher.

They fought through several rounds of spider webs and rotten stenches stirred up by their arrival, climbing nine such levels without any hint of an end. Already exhausted from the constant fighting and now nearly out of breath, Felix finally paused at the base of the next level before continuing their seemingly endless ascent.

‘From the outside this tower looked no taller than five, maybe six storeys, at most. Yet we’ve already scaled nearly twice that, and seem no nearer to the top,’ he said, gasping a bit. ‘How can this be?’

‘The winds of magic can be turned to many purposes,’ Draeder replied enigmatically.

The strangeness did not appear to disturb him, and his answer seemed to Felix like nothing more than an after-thought. Instead, he merely continued to chart the path forward, looking up to yet another level.

Coming up through the tenth level however, they met with an obstacle – a wall of broken stone. The rubble of some ancient collapse, blocks of shattered stone from the level above had fallen in, piled to the ceiling, clogging the stairwell that was their only path further up.

Felix looked around. There were only a few small windows and no corridors leading off the main chamber. For a few minutes, he and Draeder tried to peel away the fallen roof, but the effort left them no closer. Behind each stone lay more rubble, and the largest of the blocks were too big for twenty men to budge.

‘It’s no use,’ Felix finally said, wheezing and out of breath. ‘We have no idea how high up this goes. All we know is that we are no closer to a way through it, and half of these stones will not move no matter what we do.’

‘So close,’ Draeder whispered. ‘Again, so close. And again, we face a barrier we could not have foreseen.’

‘On that, finally, we agree,’ Felix said.

He picked up one of the smaller stones. Grunting with frustration, he heaved it across the hall. It smashed against the old wood of the nearest shuttered-up window. The stone broke through the aged timber, opening a portal to the sky beyond. Mist from outside drifted in through it, breaking the staid air of the tower.

Draeder jeered at the seemingly pointless act, turning to once again study the stone blockade. Felix, however, fixed his eye on the window. Something had caught his attention.

He went over to it, tested the heft of the remaining shutters and then stepped back. With a snarl that drew Draeder’s eye back to him, he drew his sword, reared back and broke out the rotted wood of the shutters, opening the entire window to the outside.

Beyond was not a flat wall, but a ledge. He scanned the side of the tower, looking over the walls. The entire structure was composed of irregular blocks overlaid by the grisly bone-lattice that encircled the whole of the tower.

‘I have an idea,’ Felix said.

‘We cannot go back down,’ Draeder replied, guessing at his comrade’s notion without even bothering to inquire further.

‘I’m not suggesting that we do,’ Felix said. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. Come here. Look out upon the walls.’

Draeder rather reluctantly came to Felix’s side, and peered out from the broken window frame.

‘That ledge is more than wide enough for a foothold,’ Felix said. ‘And the bones above it offer plenty of places to grip.’

Draeder stepped back.

‘What are you saying?’ he asked. ‘That we should climb up?’

Felix answered by sheathing his sword, jumping up on the ledge and straddling the window.

‘Exactly,’ he replied.

‘That’s madness,’ Draeder said.

Felix stepped out fully onto the outer ledge, leaving only his head and his arms inside the tower.

‘It’s not madness. Given our predicament, it is, I believe, the only sensible course.’

The two men climbed for a long while, realizing as they proceeded that the tower was somehow even taller than they had already imagined. Fog obscured the ground beneath them, and above them the parapets remained hidden behind a thick bank of clouds.

Using the lattice-work of bones to scale the wall, they managed to ascend for a few moments without incident. No skeletal warriors troubled them out in the mist, but even high up on that most remote of places, they soon found that they were not alone.

Ghostly voices hissed at them with nearly every foothold, taunting them or cursing the pair in some attempt to distract them. Several times, the phantoms nearly succeeded. Draeder and Felix each slipped on more than one occasion, both grabbing the other whenever a false step made a fast hand necessary.

Spectral faces appeared from the fog, glaring at them with sinister eyes and haranguing them with high-pitched, wraithlike screams.

Finally, with their arms aching and the skin on their hands rubbed bloody and raw, they recognized a change in the wall. Just above them, the bone lattice tapered off. Beyond that there arose a final ring of giant blocks that crowned the tower. The stones were obsidian black, three times the height of a man and utterly smooth.

‘There’s no place to grab,’ Felix said. ‘Nothing to hold.’

Draeder scanned the heights. Though Felix expected a rebuke for setting them on a futile course, none came. Instead, Draeder began to kick at the bones nearest him, breaking several free from the superstructure.

‘What are you doing, robbing us of what little we have to stand on?’ Felix asked.

Draeder did not reply. Instead, he took several of the bones in hand, recited a chant-like invocation and then tossed the bones up into the air. Instead of falling, the bones aligned themselves in a magical row, forming a sort of makeshift ladder suspended in the fog. It stretched all along the un-scalable section of the wall.

Draeder turned back to Felix with a smirk.

‘What was that you were saying?’

‘Lead the way,’ Felix replied.

As they climbed higher, the ghostly minions only grew more numerous. Every step closer to the tower summit seemed to bring more of them streaming down from the clouds, their faces ghastly and skull-like despite their phantom forms.

They swooped all around the two men, weaving and diving on currents of frost-choked wind. They shouted and taunted from afar, then crept closer, whispering obscene curses in their ears.

After a while, one chorus rose up above the rest. The spectres all seemed to join in uttering the same phrase, one after another as they passed by.

‘Draeder…’ the ghostly voices whispered. ‘Draeder von Halkern…’

They repeated the same thing over and over, as if the wizard’s very name were an accusation. Felix heard it, and though he struggled to keep climbing through the pain and the fatigue in his bones, he managed to call out to his companion above.

‘These phantoms… they seem to know you,’ he said. ‘How can that be?’

Draeder tried to ignore it. He pressed onward, shouting down to Felix to do the same. But the voices only grew louder, and more numerous.

Among the myriad phantoms dancing about in the mist, one figure finally veered closer. Its spectral form grew more substantial, drawing in fog and shadow until its features were well-defined. No mere phantom, Felix could see that the hovering ghost had taken the form of an old man.

It swooped down, apart from the cadre of spectral familiars, to pass right by Felix and then past Draeder above him.

‘Betrayer!’ it said, in a raspy, eerie voice

The phantom turned, moving through the sky for another pass. Its eyes were black and its translucent hands tried to clutch in vain at Draeder as it flew along.

‘I gave you shelter. I took you in,’ it continued. ‘You repaid me with treachery… deceit… and murder.’

‘What does that mean, Draeder?’ Felix shouted. ‘What is it saying?’

‘Pay them no mind, Felix,’ Draeder shouted back. ‘The dead who dwell here are jealous of the living, and wish to deprive us of our lives. They will do or say anything to make us like them. Deceivers and liars, all.’

‘But how could they…?’

Draeder pre-empted him, looking up at the bastions rising atop the tower, finally in view, almost near enough to reach.

‘Keep moving, Felix,’ he yelled down. ‘Do not allow them to lead you astray. We’re nearly there. Just keep climbing!’

Felix looked out at the swirling spectral familiars, hovering and cavorting in the haunted mist. He caught sight of one. The ghostly old man stared him in the eye as he paused on the bone ladder. Something about its gaze gave him pause. Though frightful and ghastly, a far greater horror occurred to him as he looked into the phantom’s eyes.

He somehow knew that every word it said was true.

12.

Felix and Draeder both collapsed upon reaching the top of the tower.

Exhausted from the climb, their eyes were red-sore and haunted by the ghostly terrors that had assailed them. They were at first relieved to find the rooftop quite empty, though Felix blanched at the stench. A foul stink pervaded the place with odours of rotting carrion and mouldered, decaying flesh.

For a moment, they merely listened as they huddled, doing their best to catch their breath and recover whatever strength they had left. The tower crest was eerily silent. No banshee screams or ghostly howls could be heard atop it. Everything was still, and deathly cold. Not even a gust of wind disturbed the peculiar, sinister serenity that reigned atop the necromancer’s black tower.

Pillars crafted of bleached human skulls framed the perimeter of the rooftop. Tattered banners hung limp beneath them. The crest was bare in every direction, crowned only by a single altar, elevated at the centre of a crimson star etched into the roof stones. The red pentacle sparkled against the granite, gleaming in the cloud-diffused moonlight.

It was a massive piece of ceremonial statuary, set upon a huge pile of discarded human bones. The ritual dais was itself a single mighty slab, gilded and bejewelled in a ghastly fashion. The face of it was cut to the likeness of a horned skull. On each side there stood familiar skeletal guardians, their bony limbs garbed in gold armour and their gauntlets resting upon massive swords.

Skeletal vultures cast in pure gold flanked the flat-top central platform, their bony wings rising up like serrated daggers on each side of it. Dark, oily smears of blood and muck stained the whole of it with old spatter and thick streaks. Beneath it lay dry pools of maroon and purple that reeked of death.

Draeder was the first to get up. He staggered across the summit, approaching the altar with a kind of reverence Felix had never seen him employ before. Despite that, he quickly began searching all around the platform. He cast aside bones and refuse, digging and reaching all around the altar.

‘It’s not here,’ he muttered. ‘It should be here.’

Felix came up behind him, straining just to walk.

‘You have to explain,’ he said.

Draeder looked around.

‘It should be here,’ he said. ‘Everything I read, everything I learned tells me it should be near the altar.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Felix replied. ‘And you know it.’

Draeder didn’t seem to hear him, or to care.

‘Those phantoms knew you. They knew about you,’ Felix continued. ‘What did they mean… murder?’

‘I told you, ignore them, it was nothing,’ Draeder said.

He came around the far side of the altar, posing as if he were the necromancer himself, lifting his hands in a mock ritual, guiding himself through a silent rite.

‘What are you up to?’ Felix asked.

Draeder didn’t reply. He keep looking, scanning the back of the altar until his eyes widened. He reached down, grabbed hold of something and pulled it. The slow groan of rusted hinges once again rose up, just as tired and creaky as the tower gate far below. With the sounds, the altar itself began to move, sliding forward to reveal a chamber directly beneath.

Felix came around to see what Draeder had discovered.

‘Of course,’ the wizard said. ‘The necromancer’s lair was beneath the summit. It must be there. It must be.’

Descending yet another winding, cobwebbed staircase, the two men entered a chamber of the macabre. The room beneath the rooftop was a shrine to the study of darkness. It was at once a vast library of foul knowledge and a repository of tools devoted to the most sinister of conjuring.

A round room not unlike the many lower levels of the black tower, this one was crammed full of every grim accoutrement imaginable. Shelves lined the entire room, floor to ceiling. Every bit of space was crammed with texts. Rows upon rows of bound volumes circled the chamber, mismatched and arranged in chaotic fashion. Their spines bore all manner of varied inscriptions, hieroglyphs, runes and twisted elven characters among them. Dozens of racks beside them were packed full of weathered, crumbling scrolls.

Baubles and gemstones affixed atop white skulls rested upon gruesome pedestals draped in chains. Candelabra cobbled together from human bones stood at intervals throughout, holding the remains of old black candles, the cold wax frozen in ancient drippings.

At the centre of it all though, resting upon a bone-carved stand all its own, was the prize they had so long sought. A single book.

Draeder approached it slowly, creeping toward the tome with the lightest of footsteps. When he came close enough, he reached out and scooped up the dusty volume in his arms as a father might cradle a newborn child. Tears welled in his eyes.

‘It is true. It is here,’ he whispered. ‘The Book of Ashur.’

It was a volume unlike any other Felix had ever set eyes upon, or any other in the grim library itself. A grisly monument to unspeakable horrors, the very spine of the tome appeared to be made of human vertebrae, the white bones stitched together with strands of woven gold. The leather cover was blackened from age and centuries of exposure to the foul winds its pages conjured from the depths.

Draeder held the book with the awed reverence of a true believer. When he opened it, leafing through the pages, he inhaled the rotten scent of old papyrus, every inch of its surface scrawled with bright crimson runes.

‘Written in the very blood of the ancient mages themselves,’ he whispered. ‘This will make me the most powerful wizard alive.’

Felix turned at the statement.

‘So it is true,’ he said.

‘What is that?’

‘You have no intention of helping the armies of the Empire. You never did. This was about you, all along.’

Draeder looked up from his precious volume. His eyes were narrowed, and sinister. The grin on his lips was merciless. A terrible feeling crept over Felix in that moment. The last words of Erhard echoed in his head.

‘And what of all the good men we lost on this journey, the sacrifices and the hardships we suffered?’ Felix continued.

Draeder peered back at him with a familiar, condescending gaze.

‘Those men served their purpose. Do not fret over them. As I told you before, they were beneath us, Felix,’ he answered.

‘You were out for yourself all along.’

‘We’re all out for ourselves, Felix,’ Draeder replied. ‘A lesson I’m surprised it took you this long to learn.’

Felix stammered.

‘In any case,’ Draeder continued. ‘That is all in the past now. You should be pleased, my friend. Soon I will take my rightful place as the most powerful wizard of this age, and for your assistance on this journey you will continue to enjoy my favour – as my loyal assistant.’

But Felix refused to let the matter go.

‘All your talk of the nobility of death magic, was that a lie as well?’

‘No, that was quite accurate,’ Draeder replied. ‘The Amethyst Order believes precisely what I told you.’

‘But you do not,’ Felix realized.

‘The true power in death magic is the ability to control it, to move through it. To live beyond its cold touch,’ he continued. ‘I admit, I seek that power for myself, in these lost secrets of Skethris that I have now obtained.’

‘And that was why they threw you out of their order,’ Felix said.

Before Draeder could reply, a third voice answered instead. It was weirdly familiar as its tones reverberated through the chamber.

‘This man was never in the Amethyst Order,’ the strange, ghostly voice declared.

As the words echoed, a figure took shape out of the mist. When the fog came together, Felix recognized the face. It was a tired, old man.

‘The ghost beside the tower,’ he said.

The figure took on a more complete form then, spectral but garbed in the full regalia of an Amethyst adept.

‘You know him, this ghostly wizard,’ Felix said. ‘Tell me how.’

Draeder sneered. He clasped the book and turned toward the stairwell. The voice called out to him nonetheless.

‘You were turned away by the Amethyst Order, adjudged unfit for the study of magic,’ the ghostly figure said, pointing an accusing finger at Draeder.

Felix looked over to Draeder.

‘The erratic casting. The failed spells,’ he said. ‘You were never a true wizard. Erhard saw through it, but not until it was too late. That was what he was trying to warn me about.’

‘They refused to listen to me!’ Draeder protested. ‘My talents were obvious. My natural facility with the winds of magic was greater than any of them. I would have been the greatest of their Order! My gifts frightened them.’

‘But you were not one to fade into the shadows,’ the ghost wizard taunted.

‘I spent years honing my skills, learning from anyone who would teach me,’ Draeder said, now arguing with the ghost.

‘You’re nothing but a hedge wizard,’ Felix replied. ‘That’s why your spells were so inconsistent.’

‘Strong enough to save your life on more than one occasion,’ Draeder rebuked.

‘But weak enough to fail us on many more,’ Felix replied. ‘We all watched out for one another on the trail. Every one of us saved the other’s neck more times than I can count. But that changes nothing. Everything you said, everything you did was a lie. And many good men died because of it.’

‘As I said, they were of little consequence. Those men died so that I might take what I deserve to have,’ Draeder answered.

‘What you deserve?’ the ghostly wizard continued, his voice rising as his spectral face twisted with wrath. ‘You’ve earned nothing. You came to me as a weary traveller, pretending to beg assistance. I took pity upon you, and the moment my guard was down you murdered me. You stole everything I had, my book, my scythe and even those robes you wear – my very identity!’

Felix stood stunned. Now, when he gazed upon the man who had been his travel companion, the only other survivor of their long ordeal, he had only contempt. He looked at everything again. The age-worn robes. The great scythe. The spell-book.

Draeder remained indignant. He continued on his way, ascending the stairwell back to the tower summit. But Felix followed close behind, clambering to the top of the steps and clutching at Draeder from behind. The imposter wizard turned, anger simmering in his eyes.

‘Ignore that ghostly wretch Felix,’ Draeder said. ‘It matters little now.’

‘But it is all true,’ Felix replied. ‘You lied, you cheated and you murdered your way to this place.’

Draeder clutched the book but looked back to Felix with an expression not of shame, but filled with a strange pride.

‘Indeed,’ he finally said. ‘I did all of those terrible things, and many more, if you wish to know.’

Felix stepped back, his hand reaching for his sword.

‘And do you know what it all means?’ Draeder said. ‘Nothing. It means nothing now. For I have the Book of Ashur, the power long denied to me is finally mine to wield. There is no one who can stand against me now.’

Felix drew his sword, pointing it at the wizard.

‘I can’t let you leave here with that,’ he said.

Draeder sighed, shaking his head.

‘You’re making a mistake, Felix,’ he warned. ‘You and I are very much alike. I saw it in you the moment we met. We’re men of culture and wisdom, we deserve to take what is rightfully ours. We are the men who should rule this land, and this book gives me the power to do so. Now put aside this nonsense and take your place beside me.’

Felix kept his blade raised.

‘I want no part of this.’

‘Step aside, Felix,’ Draeder said. ‘Lower your sword and permit me to pass. I could have struck you down already, if I wished to.’

Felix clenched his teeth and gripped his blade.

‘You’re going to have to,’ he said.

Draeder smirked back at him, lifting his scythe and pointing it at Felix. He began to chant, and his great staff started to glow with violet flame, ready to strike. Felix shifted into a fighting stance, prepared to launch his own attack.

Neither one got the chance. A booming crash of thunder split the skies overhead, quaking the very floor of the tower. With it came a flash of crimson lighting. It blinded them both, casting their armaments aside and sending them reeling.

A terrible, ghostly voice followed. It seemed to call out from the dying echoes of thunder across the summit.

‘Blood will be shed here only by my hand,’ the voice proclaimed.

It was possessed of an ethereal quality, deep-throated and raspy, yet mellifluous as a winter wind. The words were enunciated with an antiquated, formalistic diction, in the manner of a man to whom the common tongue was quite foreign. His accent was unrecognizable, blending words together with an eerie, slithering lilt.

‘Who goes there?’ Felix demanded, turning his sword from Draeder and raising it against the shadows. ‘Reveal yourself!’

A swirling smog of red mist and black flames answered him, a sudden cyclone that swirled out of dark clouds above. Ghastly faces, claws and vile phantasms roiled within the foul tempest. The wrenching cries of weeping maidens, suffering and wailing in some unknown sorrow, sang a foul serenade to the coming of the storm. Blood-curdling, sinister laughter echoed from the dim, sending ripples through the rancid mist.

Draeder seemed to recognize the signs. His confidence melted into a look of utter terror.

‘By the gods,’ he muttered. ‘It cannot be.’

The un-living fog was a mere harbinger. From its heart, a centre of raging darkness and howling winds, a figure began to grow. At first no more than the outline of a being, a silhouette against a tableau of shadow and flame, its full aspect soon came into view. Draeder turned to look upon it, and his face went pale.

Even as he said the name, he couldn’t believe his own eyes.

‘Skethris.’

13.

His was a visage of utter terror – something that only barely resembled a living man. He was so gaunt as to be skeletal, though not shorn of flesh like the undead guardians beyond the tower. Desiccated, gray skin covered his ghoulish face. It was deathly pallid and emaciated, hints and outlines of skull showing through the leathery skin that was drawn thin across it. The barest hint of beard whiskers, wispy and long, clung to his pointed chin. A twisted rune was branded into his forehead.

His deep-set eyes peered out from under a set of bony brows, glowering like two crimson flames.

The robes he wore were ancient and ragged, deep sable and the maroon shade of old blood. The folds of his mantle were almost ethereal, as though woven of nothing more than mist and shadow. Ghostly faces shimmered in and out of view within the many creases of the voluminous sheath; the tortured faces of the undead screaming out for a rest they could never know.

Skulls and cryptic death-runes ran along the edges of his midnight-black cloak, glistening red. A spiny cowl rose up like a series of evil horns behind his baleful head. Stringy, matted locks of long, white hair hung all about his crown, framing his face and further suggesting his great age.

Felix’s eyes burned and his lungs revolted. He choked on the icy frost and the sulphur fumes that flooded the tower summit. He looked upon Skethris in frightened disbelief. For a moment the ghastly figure merely menaced them in silence. Then he spoke again.

‘How foolish of you, to attempt to steal what has long been mine,’ he said. ‘Your punishment for that will be unimaginable, an everlasting agony the likes of which you cannot yet even conceive.’

Felix edged back from the roiling, haunted mist. He came nearer to Draeder, though even that seemed unwise.

‘You said he was long dead,’ Felix said, trying to keep his voice low, as if to hide his words from the necromancer.

‘Everyone I consulted told me that he was,’ Draeder replied, though his gaze could not turn away from the dreadful sight of the necromancer. ‘They lied to me!’

Skethris snickered, a deep and disturbing laughter that echoed like his booming, ghastly voice.

‘Just as I gather you have lied to all those you have met, ever since,’ the necromancer replied. ‘Rather fitting, is it not?’

Felix and Draeder came together, united again for the moment in the face of a much more terrible enemy. But the necromancer permitted them no quarter. Not even a moment’s respite.

‘Now you will pay for your crimes,’ Skethris declared.

The necromancer raised his bony arms, bringing the horrid swirl around him to a boil. Incomprehensible incantations followed, sparking blood-red lightning across his pointed fingertips. The wailing souls that flanked him raged as he cast down his cold vengeance, raking the crest of his tower with jagged bolts of black flame.

The summit erupted in a paroxysm of dark fire. One twisted tangle crashed into the floor only inches in front of Draeder. He tried to dodge, to make a leap for some kind of safety, but a second whirl of death magic sent him into a tumble across the rooftop. Felix rushed to his side. But he never made it. Yet another blast of cold flame sent them hurtling apart.

As he staggered to his feet, Draeder was hit by a final explosion of lightning. He lost his grip on both the book and his scythe-staff as he fell backward, sending them sliding across the floor of the tower. In no more than a moment, he and Felix lay exposed. Skethris cackled at the sight of the two interlopers, howling in delight as though merely playing with them before exacting his true vengeance.

Felix regained his footing first, seeing Draeder coming to his feet slower, weakened by the attacks he’d already endured. The force of the blow had opened a gulf between them, separated by a stretch that seemed so very far under the watch of the necromancer and his minions. The Book of Ashur now lay across the tower summit.

Felix didn’t waste a moment. Risking another attack, he dodged a column of ghostly fire and leaped toward Draeder, sliding through the fetid dust until he reached the hedge wizard.

‘We have to stay together,’ he said. ‘It’s our only chance.’

Draeder shook his head.

‘We can’t fight him, he’s too powerful,’ he replied.

‘We may not need to,’ Felix said. ‘If we charge for the edge of the tower, right through the centre of the ghostly horde, we might be able to get over the side fast enough to make it down.’

‘And if we can’t?’

Felix lifted his sword, turning toward the horror they were about to launch themselves upon.

‘Then we’ll die, just as we surely will if we stay where we are,’ he said.

Draeder hesitated. He looked back at the menacing, horrid form of Skethris, the master of the undead looming in the heart of the storm. Then he turned to the book. It lay just out of reach. He couldn’t draw his sight from it, despite the danger.

‘All that power, so very near,’ Draeder whispered. ‘If I could only reach it…’

The ghostly figures closed in around them.

‘We must go, ‘Felix shouted. ‘Now!’

Felix struggled to his feet. He lifted his sword one more time, whispered a final prayer to Sigmar and pressed the attack. Though he could not see who or what his blade struck, he plunged headlong into the mist, his own sight robbed from him as he dove into the putrid miasma of ghosts and fumes. He whirled and slashed, shouting and raging in his last stand against the darkness. But he soon realized that his blade cut only mist. His steel met nothing but smoke and shadow.

It was a moment before he realized that Draeder was not beside him. The young wizard had made his own charge – but not with Felix.

He turned, and tried to see through the mist and the black haze. When he finally saw the nobleman, he was across the rooftop. Though Draeder had managed to once again take hold of the Book of Ashur, he was surrounded by the ghastly minions of Skethris.

‘Draeder!’ Felix shouted. ‘You must leave it behind!’

It was already too late.

As Felix watched in horror, Skethris turned his full fury upon Draeder, not attacking directly but rather swarming him with his spectral followers. Claws and cold hands grasped at him from every direction. Vaporous tentacles coiled like serpents around his legs, rooting him into the floor of the tower. Phantom chains sprang up from the stone. They encircled him, plunging barbed hooks and spears into every corner of his flesh.

‘Though your feeble magic was enough to bring you here,’ Skethris taunted. ‘You are nothing compared to me. My hands command the winds of death itself. Even with the Book of Ashur, you stand no chance against my power.’

The foul necromancer hovered before Draeder. He towered above the frightened young hedge wizard in a column of mist and dark fire. When he lifted his bony, gnarled hand Draeder’s entire body rose up. Skethris reached out with his other hand, his long fingers stretched like talon claws aimed at Draeder’s face.

‘But you are… interesting,’ the necromancer said.

His eyes grew brighter, burning with scarlet flame as he studied the man he held in thrall before him.

‘The stench of death surrounds you,’ Skethris continued. ‘The tortured spirits of your many victims trail behind you, in an ever-present wake of suffering and ruin.’

‘Please, I only wished to learn,’ Draeder pleaded. ‘To see what you see. To know what you know.’

Skethris smiled as he clenched his fingers into a fist. Draeder cried out in pain the moment he did so, howling with a scream of such agony that it turned Felix’s blood cold.

Felix readied himself to face the same fate, holding his sword high in a last measure of defiance, though he knew it was no use. The necromancer seemed unconcerned with him however, all of his attention focused on Draeder.

‘You wish to learn the deepest mysteries of the dark?’ Skethris said.

Draeder trembled, squinting and squealing in absolute misery as the necromancer delighted in tormenting him.

He could manage little more than a feeble response.

‘Yes…’

Again Skethris turned his fingers, sending jolts of pain rippling through every inch of Draeder’s flesh, laughing at the spectacle of suffering.

Felix edged backward, finding that the phantoms still did not impede him. All eyes upon the summit were now drawn to Draeder von Halkern, suspended above the tower, tortured and pilloried for his hubris, the dire consequence of his abject failure.

‘You wish to know death itself?’ the necromancer asked.

Draeder could barely acknowledge.

‘I am death,’ Skethris said. ‘And you belong to me now.’

A dark energy pulsed through Draeder. It surged in his bones, filling his eyes with a blood-red glow.

‘I am yours… master,’ he said.

Skethris smiled, laughing along with his chorus of lost souls.

‘Then as your first act of servitude, renounce the world of the living and rid this place of the defiler who remains,’ the necromancer announced.

Draeder’s head turned, moving slowly until his glowering crimson eyes came to stare upon Felix.

Across the summit, Felix gripped his sword. He now realized what had not occurred to him before – Draeder had not failed. He had found exactly what he sought.

The rogue wizard leaped from the embrace of the necromancer, trailing mist and flame as he charged upon Felix. His scythe swung high over his head, the long, wicked blade slashing down as he came.

‘You should have joined me when you had the chance, Felix,’ he hissed. ‘Now your choice has doomed you.’

Felix met the attack, and though his muscles ached with exhaustion, his sword clanged against the wizard’s staff in a clash of steel and splinters. Draeder’s face was crazed, his eyes seething with Dark Magic. He wheeled, and struck again, but this time Felix was faster. He parried, knocking Draeder’s scythe aside.

Then he whirled around, slicing back at Draeder. His sword tore a bloody gash across his chest. A second cut ripped open the flesh of his leg in a blur of red. The wizard howled and clutched at his wounds, staggering through the flames and the blood.

‘You’re wrong,’ Felix whispered. ‘This was always your choice. Your path. It was never mine. I’m not like you.’

Draeder swung his scythe again in a last-ditch effort, flailing it toward Felix. But Felix dodged, cutting the staff to pieces with a slash that ripped through Draeder’s arm, sending him crumpling down in a heap.

Then Felix turned and ran, and though Draeder wailed in agony behind him, calling out his name as he crossed over to the edge of the wall, Felix never looked back. He jumped over the parapet, sliding down until he reached a ledge, where he climbed the rest of the way to the floor of the valley.

For a moment, as he passed the tower gates toward the avenue of death, Felix could still hear the awful, chilling screams. He could make out the last dying echoes of Draeder von Halkern; cries of desperate anguish, fading somewhere in the distance, cursing him through unspeakable tortures.

Then it was gone. The mist and the shadows and any hint of the undead menace that he now knew lurked behind him in the shadows. With nothing but his sword at his side, thankful for the very life in his bones, Felix turned his back on the darkness and began the long journey away from the Valley of Death.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frank Cavallo has written a number of short stories for Black Library, including ‘Leechlord’ and ‘The Talon of Khorne’. He was born and raised in New Jersey, went to school in Boston and now lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he works by day as a criminal defence attorney.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Winona Nelson

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