by Charles Davidson
Helmut Kerzer realized that he was going to die when he saw the ship. He'd seen the sail long before the ship itself was visible, but somehow it had lacked immediacy; it was an abstract warning, not the reality itself. Here be reavers. But now the ship itself was visible, a dark hull slicing through the waves less than a mile offshore. The day's catch was still in the nets of the fishing boats, and the village was five scant minutes inland, and Helmut felt his guts turn to water as he saw what was about to happen.
The worst element of the situation was the most obvious. Helmut couldn't cover the short distance to the village to warn them, couldn't sound the alarm, and buy time to disperse the young and the ancient into the forest. Because - he gritted his teeth - if he did warn them they would only ask what he had been doing up on Wreckers' Point. And when they found out they would kill him.
Necromancy was almost as unpopular as piracy in these parts.
Not that Helmut was anything like a full-blown corpse raiser - oh no. He grinned humourlessly at the thought, as he watched the black sail of the pirates draw closer. Dead mice and bats! It was the unhealthy hobby of a youth who would have better spent his time mending nets, not the studied malevolence of a follower of dark knowledge. He looked down and saw, between his feet, the little contraption of skin and ivory that paraded there. The creature had died days ago; it seemed so unfair that it might cost Helmut his home or his life. His cheek twitched in annoyance and the vole fell over, slack and lifeless as any other corpse.
Death. Here on the edge of the Sea of Claws they knew about death. It stared his father in the face every time he put out to sea to snare a living by the whim of Manann; it had taken his grandfather and uncles in a single gulp, to cough them up again, bloated and putrid on the beach three days later. He'd been a child at the time, too young for the nets and ropes; he'd hidden behind his mother's skirts as she, and his father, stood stony-faced in the graveyard when they laid three-quarters of the family's menfolk in the ground. It had been then that he'd wondered, for the first time: what if death was like sleep? What if it was possible to return from it, as if awakening to another grey, sea-spumed dawn? But he already knew that they had a word for such thoughts, and he stayed silent.
Wreckers' Point was thickly wooded; shrouded by a dense tangle of trees and dark undergrowth that stretched south towards the great forest. It was a place of ill omen. In times gone by the wreckers had worked here, lighting beacons to guide rich traders onto the rocks of the headland. They were long departed, hounded by the Baron and his men of yesteryear, but the spirit remained; a tight-minded malaise that seemed to turn the day into a washout of greyness, waiting for the night and the lighting of deadly fires. Rumour had it nowadays that the hill was haunted - and the worse for any child who might wander up there.
Helmut gritted his teeth in frustration as he thought about it. His dilemma. That Father Wolfgang might wonder what he'd be doing, and summon the witchfinder. That some lad might follow him, to see what he did alone and unseen in the undergrowth. That if such a thing happened he might never learn... Fingernails dug into his palms. The anger of denial.
The ship was plainly visible now, rounding the headland and turning towards the beach where the boats lay. Any advantage had been squandered by the beating of his heart. Suddenly he realized that he was terrified; a cold sweat glued his shirt to his back as he thought about red-stained swords glinting in the light of the burning buildings. Reavers! If one of them should look up... could he see me? Feeling exposed, Helmut turned and pushed his way back into the treeline. Where was it...? Ah yes. The path. A run, really, perhaps the work of a wild boar some time since - there was no spoor, or else Helmut's surreptitious use had scared the animals away.
The path led downhill, at an angle that would miss the village clearing and the highway by more than a bowshot. Helmut trotted, trying to duck and brush beneath the branches in silence. Afraid of betrayal. If anyone sees me... he reminded himself. Warning ritual, a prayer to whatever nameless god watched over him. Going to live forever. Which meant not getting caught. Another fear gripped him; sick anticipation. That he should not warn the village, that the raiders might catch all unawares and kill them. He would see his mother and father and young sisters gutted, wall-eyed, flies crawling over black-sticky blood. His family he might spare, but some of the others...
A memory rose to haunt him: Heinrich. Heinrich was a year older than he, and had marched off to join the Baron's guard two summers past. Heinrich and two nameless youths tormenting him. Bright light of spring in a meadow back of the Inn. Face pointed to the midden as they held his hands behind him. Childish chanting: "Helmut, Helmut, weakling no-man, eating flies and telling lies, sell his soul to Nurgle's hole." Did they mean it? No more than children ever did. But they'd made his life a misery.
The other two meant nothing; but Heinrich had persisted, had appointed himself the dark messenger from the gods, sent to torment Helmut for sins unremembered.
Then he arrived at the far end of the path, and slowed, panting slightly, to look carefully around for intruders. No-one else would normally visit this place... but it did no harm to check. He looked around.
No, the graveyard was deserted.
To call it a graveyard was to call the village shrine a cathedral; overstating the facts a little. Tilted, crudely-hacked slabs of slate bore mute witness to the cost of life on the edge of the sea. Moss-grown, age-cracked stones abutted new chunks hacked from the cliff face. Wee remember Ras Bormann and hys crew, lost these ten days at see. Canted away from its neighbour by subsidence and the gulf of decades. There was a small, decrepit shrine at one end, and a low wall around it; but nobody came here except for a funeral. Nobody wanted to be reminded. Other than Helmut.
He glanced round swiftly, furtively, then made a dash for the shrine. It was little more than a hovel, with an altar and a rough table on which to lay the coffin; such vestments as the village possessed were kept by Father Wolfgang. But beneath the altar - which now, wheezing slightly, he struggled to move - Helmut had made covert alterations. He'd been twelve when he discovered the ancient priest's hole and found it to his liking. Since then...
Ragnar One-Eye glared more effectively than many a whole-sighted man, even with his patch in place. When he chose to remove it, the contrast - livid wound and burning eye - rooted strong warriors in their boots like grass before a scythe. He was not known as Ten-Slayer for nothing among his followers. He leaned on his axe-haft and waited, knowing where the Rage would take him; red and fast and furious, a tunnel running from his ship to the village of the fisherfolk by way of severed necks and gutted peasants and blood everywhere.
Where Ragnar trod, his bondsmen shivered, the whites of their eyes showing beneath the shadows of their helmets. Wolf-fur cloak and an axe that had shed rivers of gore, and a tread that had made many a foemans' blood turn to water. He stood in the bows as the fast, clinker-built raider ran for the shore, and turned to face his men.
He raised his axe. "Listen!"
The rays of the twilight sun caught the edge of his blade, flashing feverish highlights in their eyes. "We go to war, as ever. We will fight, we will loot, we will take honour and booty home when we leave, and the wailing of their women will be nothing in our ears. But. This time is not the same."
He paused. Before him, the priest was readying his infusion, oblivious to the tension in the warriors around him. The cauldron bubbled as he stirred a handful of ground cinnamon into the ritual wine. Ragnar felt a great hollowness in his chest, a lightness in his head as he inhaled the fumes.
"Listen!" he shouted hoarsely. "The fisher-rats have gone too far. Their desecration offends the gods. Their dark magic has brought famine to our coasts; the fish rot in our nets and the enemies of Ulric walk in the lands of man. This time is different! Let our swords be red and our arms strong as we punish them for their evil!"
A roar answered him. If any of the soldiers had reservations they kept them well concealed. And soon, as soon as the priest was finished, they would have none.
Ragnar looked down with his one eye, and the priest looked up. Black eyes glittered in the man's thin, pinched face; he opened his mouth and spoke impassively. "The host is ready, lord and master. Will you officiate?"
Ragnar grunted impatiently. "Yes, by Ulric's blood. Now!"
The priest wordlessly held up the bowl, and a long, small spoon. Ragnar took both, and holding them, intoned: "Blessed are they who drink the wine of Ulric, for they shall reign supreme in the field of battle, and dying shall experience the delights of heaven. Banish fear and doubt from our hearts and inner reins; make strong our hands to smite the enemy. Let us commence. Wulf!"
Wulf, a hulking lieutenant, stepped forwards. Ragnar raised the spoon to his face; wordlessly Wulf sipped from it, and turned away. A queue formed, in rigid order of rank. Presently, all had drunk from the bowl; and the ship was running through the breakers. Ragnar raised the pot to his face and, glaring out towards the beach, drained the mouthful remaining in it.
The slaughter was about to begin.
Maria Kerzer was not a happy woman. She was not old, but time had attacked her savagely. Married young, she had given her husband only one son before the sea stripped his family from him; and that one had grown up sickly and introverted. And her husband's lot had sunk, for when the ship bearing his father and brothers was lost, so was much of their fortune. So he drank, and brooded, and Maria raised chickens and geese and vegetables and prayed that she might yet bear him another son; and meanwhile the years stole up on her with the harsh, scouring winds of the coast.
That evening he returned from the beach early, stern-faced and angry. "Where's that layabout son of yours?" he demanded, seating himself heavily on the stool by the fireplace where Maria did her spinning.
She shrugged. "He does as he will, that lad. What's he done now?"
Klaus cast a black look at the door. "He was to have mended the trawls, but I've seen hide nor hair of him since noon. Doubtless the dolt's in hiding somewhere. If the net's not sewn he'll not eat, I promise you."
Maria cast a critical eye at the hearth and poked it with an iron. "Needs more wood," she observed.
"Then fetch it yourself. I'll not be trifled with by the whelp!" His indignation vast, he settled down on the stool until it creaked. Maria wordlessly opened the door and went outside. A few moments later she returned, bearing an armload of branches from the store.
"I smell smoke," she said. "Can you believe some man be burning wood outdoors at this time of year?" Her shoulders hunched in disapproval, she bent to place a length of kindling on the fire.
Klaus sighed. "Woman," he said, in an altogether softer tone of voice than he had used previously, "how long have we been married?"
She answered without turning round, "'twill be a score years next summer." Still bent, she stirred the kettle of fish soup that hung on chains above the range.
"'Tis long enough that I forget the oath that bound me to thee. The boy casts a long shadow." Maria turned, to see a distraught look cross her husband's face. It gave her pause to wonder. Gloom she saw there often - but sorrow?
He stood up and reached out to take her hands. "Forgive me," he said roughly, "I should not blame you. But the boy."
"The boy," she said, "worries me as well. Not the scribin' stuff he had from Father Wolfgang, but the other." She shivered. "Wanderings at night and never there when you call. That fever the other year. And then," she paused in recollection; "when we laid the stone for your father. His face itself might have been rock." She looked up to meet her husband's gaze. "Good sir, I might rather he'd been some other's than mine."
Klaus hugged her gently. "Be that as it may, there might be others yet. And - what's that?"
They stood apart. Carried plainly on the wind was the noise of one bell tolling. There was only one bell in the village; and it only tolled for one reason. Danger.
Helmut fumbled the flint but caught it before it hit the damp floor. A scrape, a spark, and there was a brief flare of light from the tinder that settled down into the thin, yellow glow of a candle. It smoked in the damp air of the crypt. The halo of light caught Helmut's face, casting stark shadows on the walls. He reached up and pulled the altar back into place with a tug; now there was no sign to betray his presence. Gingerly he ducked forwards, then inched down the time-worn steps that led into the bowels of the earth.
Once there had been terror and evil in this crypt, but now there was only the oppressive weight of time, the press of centuries. Helmut knew about the Liche. Long ago, decades before some mendicant priest had consecrated this altar to Morr, it had seen sacrifice to another, darker deity. Perhaps time had withered the Liche away to dry bones and whispering dust, but in those long-gone days it had struck terror into the hearts of all who passed this isolated headland. Strange fruit rotted among the branches of the oak trees, and when the flesh of living things had perished the naked bones walked the moonlit earth once more. The sacrifices were not of blood, but of something altogether less innocent. And this was the burial crypt of that source of ancient evil.
Impelled by some sense of urgency he only half-comprehended, Helmut headed for the nether reaches of the dark tunnel. It led downwards, dropping a step every yard or so; narrow enough that men might walk in single file only, low enough that their heads must be bowed. Ten yards inside the musty entrance, Helmut passed a pair of niches in either wall. Within them, pathetic and crumbled by time, lay two skeletons wrapped in cerements that had long ago assumed the texture of mummified skin.
The tunnel was now far from the graveyard. Passing the guardian niches, he held the candle before him. The stones had resisted the grinding of roots and the infiltration of damp; the air was dry and musty, the floor thick with dust. As if in a trance he paced out the steps of the mausoleum, descending towards a doorway which suddenly loomed in front of him, oppressive and dark. Pillars to either side were carved into the semblance of twisted mummies, their mouths open in an eternal shriek. With a strange thrill Helmut realized that they might well be real, petrified in their dying terror by the ancient monster within.
This is it, he thought. He'd been here once before, but no further. The closed door with the human jawbone, yellowing with age, that served as a handle. Inviting him in. Is it worth it? He felt a hot flush. Yes! He reached out and grasped the bone, seeing in his mind's eye the battle that rolled chaotically up the beach, already shedding limbs and lives like the skin of some strange and bloody serpent. It was not for him; nothing of the kind. He had a destiny, and it was greater by far than that.
The oak door opened with a screech of dry hinges, and Helmut pushed through. The sight that greeted him held him paralyzed like a rat before a snake, or a priest feeing a god. The Liche held his eyes with a burning vision, grinning from empty eye sockets above a throne as shapeless as black fire. Welcome, it seemed to say in his head; I've been waiting a long time for you. Helplessly, he felt himself drawn forward by the deathless bony gaze. And the door closed behind him.
Klaus Kerzer's first reaction was to protect hearth and home. As Maria stood immobile, hearing the brassy clangour of the bell, he was already reaching for the heirloom which hung in oilcloth above the lintel. He swept it down from its pegs, swiftly unrolling the swaddling of greasy rags that protected the blade from damp. He looked at his wife grimly.
"Smoke you smelt," he said; "at high tide, and the bell tolling." He breathed deeply and pulled the door open. "Quick woman, rouse out your neighbours! Good wife Schlagen, the Bissels. Everyone. Get them to the temple and take sanctuary there, or else wherever the rest go. But hide - I fear the reavers are coming."
Her freeze broke. She embraced him swiftly, tears forming in her eyes. "Come back to me," she whispered.
"Go," he grunted, turning his head away. The sword lay naked on the rough table, edge gleaming and sharp. His throat was dry. Despite his bulk and his brooding temper, Klaus Kerzer was no warrior. The sword merely emphasized how his family's fortunes had sunk over the years. He grunted again, in the back of his throat, then inexpertly took the weapon in both hands. It was long and heavy, and he hoped that he remembered what his father had taught him of its use. Behind him, Maria slipped into the darkness of the night. The bell still clanged mournfully, but now there was no mistaking the noises that carried from the beach on the chill night breeze.
He stepped outside just as the first of Ragnar One-Eye's soldiers reached the village.
Oblivion's sweet and sickly sea floated Helmut away. It was dark in the crypt, and he knew he slept - no one could, waking, face the Liche and not flee screaming - for he sat on a stool that crackled beneath his weight and payed attention to the ancient monster.
Long ago, it seemed to say, things were not as they are now. The people of this land were not poor fisherfolk and peasants, oppressed by the Imperial nobility and the ravages of war and piracy. Things were better - far better. They had me. Whether it was truly dead or only half so remained a mystery. But there was no sign of malevolence, nor arrogant disdain; it talked to him quietly, like a friendly uncle or a visiting scholar. As if it sensed an affinity in him, and wished to enlarge upon it.
As he gazed upon the candle-lit skull of the robed and bejewelled corpse that sat, enthroned, against the wall opposite him, Helmut seemed to see visions of that far-gone time. It had been a bright age, golden in colour. The Nameless One had ruled mercifully for centuries from his fastness on the headland, exacting a tax of corpses and little else from his domain. Those who lived there closed their minds and their souls, leaving their mortal remnants to the high one; only foreigners chose to dispute his supremacy.
There had been endless days and endless nights of splendour in his fastness. The elixir of life, served from a golden bowl beneath a chandelier of fingerbones; the butler a black-robed skeleton. The dark studies of the eternal overlord who sought to extend his knowledge into every niche, temporal and spiritual, from pole to pole. The searing light of dawn, seen by eyes grown too sensitive for daylight but which yet anticipated a billion tomorrows. His Nameless splendour had ruled for five hundred years while all around him were little more than barbarians.
There came a time, the mummy seemed to say, when the burden became tiresome. When night alone was sufficient for me, and I chose to sleep, and meditate, for I had much to think upon. I had lived a hundred lifespans, and it happened so that I barely noticed the decline of my powers. It grinned at him from the shadows. Helmut grinned back, lips curled in a rictus of fear and longing. Shapes speared out of the darkness to either side of the Liche's throne; edges of boxes, a lectern, great leather-bound books clasped shut with bony locks. I have been waiting a long time for my heir, the skeleton stated in a silent voice which seemed as dry as the desert sands of Araby.
"Yes." Helmut was surprised to hear his own voice, itself as dull as the rocks around him. "Yes," he repeated. How did you know? he asked. How did you know what I wanted? What I was afraid of? It seemed so right, to him, that he should be chosen. Heir to, to -
The dominion. Dominion of Helmut Kerzer, necromancer. Yes, that was it.
"I accept," he said, and although the corpse stayed seated in frozen splendour, a wind seemed to blow through the chamber. His candle guttered and died, but he didn't need it any more; Helmut saw with a clarity he had never known before. Behind the throne lay a flight of steps leading down, down to the rooms and abode and workshops of the Nameless One. Down to his new home. It had been waiting patiently for him, or for someone like him, for many centuries.
A feverish exaltation coursed through Helmut's blood; there was much for him to do, much that would need preparing afresh. Knowledge to be gained, books to be read, unspecified tasks to be carried out. As he pushed eagerly past the throne, its skeletal ruler slumped with a brittle crackle of time: dust rose in final release. It would be years before Helmut came to understand the nature of the spell he had succumbed to, and by then it would be far too late to escape. For now he was blinded by the promise of dark things.
First they came ashore; then they burned the fisherfolk's boats as they found them. Horst the Hairless was still there, bundling his nets for the morrow, and he remained there afterwards, albeit with half his brains in his lap and the flies buzzing huge and hungry around him. Ragnar One-Eye voiced a wordless, ululating battle-cry; hefting his axe, he led a stream of soldiers up the trail towards the village.
"Forward and kill them!" he roared. "Take what you want and torch the rest. Leave none behind!" Succinct; and, more to the point, exactly what the men wanted to hear. The holy rage of the host was upon them, and they were in no mood for restraint. They charged towards the village in a stream of iron.
Ahead of them, Klaus Kerzer heard Horst's death-cry and Ragnar's deep voice. Shocked into a slow run, he made for the village hall. "Foe! Fire! Murder!" he shouted raucously at the top of his lungs.
As Klaus staggered up the track, one of the foemen hit him with a thrown dagger. Shock and pain seared through him, and he fell heavily. As he lay groaning in the dirt, the raider paused to finish him off; but, unexpectedly, Klaus caught the reaver in the hamstrings with a desperate sweep of the heirloom sword, and the man fell cursing to the ground. With a gasp, Klaus raised the aged sword again, but this time the younger and more experienced fighter was far too quick for him: the reaver stabbed the older man in the throat, and Klaus' life began to bubble away. The sword fell at his side.
Klaus' yells, added to the mournful tolling of the bell, had brought the angry, frightened fisherfolk swarming out of their hovels. Some of them bore scythes and other farm implements of dubious vintage; one or two of the richer ones possessed genuine weapons, but none were armoured or trained, and collectively they were a pathetic match for the raiders.
The villagers milled around in front of the hall, incapable of forming any sort of battle order. The local priest had turned out, but there was no sign of real authority; no lord or knight to muster a defence around himself. The berserkers laid in with a will, hacking negligently at the terrified peasants. Ragnar snarled wordlessly, his axe-blade dripping; he was truly in his element. The ruddy glare of fire added a surreal element to the scene as one of the thatch-roofed cottages caught alight. Whether the blaze had been started deliberately or by accident was irrelevant - it spread rapidly, leaping from roof to roof like a ravenous beast on the prowl. The crackling roar thrummed through Ragnar's blood, heating his battle-fury to the boil.
Fleeing women and children fell victim to the raiders. A party led by one Snorri Red-Hair came upon a group of them from behind. Blood flew and screaming rent the air, as terrible as in any slaughterhouse.
Klaus Kerzer had been one of the first villagers to go down, his precious old sword in his hand. Thanks to that weapon, one at least of the berserkers limped whey-faced from the fray, blood pumping from severed veins. But Klaus never heard the screams of his wife, never saw the swinging axe-stroke that half-beheaded her. He died where he had fallen, wondering at the last why this had happened to him now - and where young Helmut had been when he should have been mending the nets.
Presently the fighting ceased for want of a living target for the berserkers' frenzied blows. Ragnar One-Eye looked down on the field of battle from a giant's perspective, his soul floating huge above his body. Corpses lay scattered like trees after a storm, and the steady crackle and snap of burning homesteads was the only constant sound. That and the quiet moaning of the few of his soldiers who had been lax enough to fall victim to fishermen and peasants.
At his feet, a body twitched and opened its eyes. Ragnar looked down incuriously, and saw that it was a priest. In the darkness his cassock was blacker than night, sticky with blood oozing from a deep gash in his belly. The putrid smell told him that the sacerdote would not live long.
The man was trying to speak. Ragnar payed little attention. He was trying to warn him...
"The curse... " Father Wolfgang gasped. His guts were cold now, and he knew what that meant. "The evil of the headland. You'll release it, you fools!" The hulking barbarian showed no sign of interest, no indication that he understood. Wolfgang stopped trying. It was very cold, and in any case he wasn't sure that he should warn the raiders. A fate worse than death, perhaps, befitted them. Meanwhile, he could just relax a little. Shut his eyes. It would be all right; everything would...
Ragnar looked down. The priest was undoubtedly dying, if not dead already. A frown furrowed the Norseman's brows slightly. Had he tried to lay a curse on him with his dying breath? Angered by the thought, he stomped away towards the blazing village hall. Heretics! Spawn of daemons! Worshippers of evil! These weak Imperials. Clean them out!
It was necessary, of course. Since the winter when the fish had been pulled rotting from the sea, netloads of grisly putrescence blighted by dark magic. The divinations of the shamen, oneiromancy and chiromancy, had shown the source of the pollution to be this coastline. His town had starved out the winter, eating rats and drinking the blood of their horses to survive. Practitioners of evil lived hereabouts and must be wiped out. It was as simple as that.
Ragnar vacantly relieved himself against the charred remnants of what had once been the house of the Bissels, as inoffensive a family as could be conceived of. Then, feeling more himself, he looked round. Yes, it would do. Back at the beach they could camp for the night, bind such wounds as they had and prepare for the voyage home. He nodded gloomily.
Home...
Home. Helmut Kerzer in his new home. A study and a laboratory, and the library of a necromancer who had been vast in his power and great in his terrible majesty. A bedchamber - or a crypt - fit for a dead prince. A robing-room where the heavy robes of the mage hung in dusty rows. A dark exultation took hold of Helmut. It was as if he was returning to himself, after a childhood of darkness and ignorance. Somehow he knew where everything was; knew what the rooms were; as if he had lived here before in some past incarnation.
Nobody had ever told him of the dread life-in-death of the great necromantic wizards; much less of the whispered, rumoured ability some had to take possession from beyond the grave. In accepting the domain of a Liche, Helmut had accepted far more than the old monster's possessions. Already he felt a power in himself that was new; a confidence and a knowledge dark in its intensity and external in its origins.
First Helmut lit the lanterns that, scattered through the mausoleum, shed a gloomy light upon the ancient dwelling-place. In the robing-room he paused for thought. Surely...? He shook his head. He had never possessed a garment that was not much-patched, handed down from some previous owner. Rags! A black cassock hung waiting. It crackled with age as he pulled it over his head, but it fitted well. The hood came over his head and he laughed grimly, satisfied. The very image of a wizard.
Next he proceeded to the library. Shelves that bowed under the weight of mighty codices stretched to the ceiling on two sides. There was no reading desk, but there was a lectern in the shape of a hunchbacked, screaming skeleton. A tome was already positionioned on it, open to one leathery page. Helmut walked round it, admiring the binding which was of a curiously light, fine leather that could only have come from one source. Then he looked at the first page.
It was in a script and a language with neither of which he was familiar. But he could read it, or something in him could; it made perfect sense. He laughed again. Voles and mice and dead squeaky bone-things in the forest! Such toys seemed ludicrous now. Then he frowned, remembering the reaver ship. It had been heading for the beach, a landing at high-tide twilight, full of warriors dreaming of the mystery of the axe. Impersonally he realized that there would be plenty of material on hand for his new-found-trade; plenty of familiar faces in strange, twisted contexts...
He turned the page and heard the electrifying crackle of trapped power. Runes glowed on the parchment, gold-encrusted shapes that sizzled with potential. Illustrations of death and the unstill life beyond it, hermetic monsters and people of the twilight. On the raising of corpses and the ghastly perfection of skeletons. On the touch that brings pain and death, and the touch that restores a semblance of life. On the nature and treatment of vampires, ghouls, and the like. The elixir of life, and of death-in-life. His fingertips glided from page to page, subtly memorizing the more useful items.
Then a thought struck him. A thought or a vision. His spine chilled as sweat stood forth on his brow - cold sweat. In his mind's eye he saw a picture of burning houses and villagers butchered, the priest's body gibbeted by the wayside. Barbarous raiders retreating to the beach to feast and celebrate their victory. His parents lying unnoticed among the dead, until the worms and beetles and small furry things came out to feed on human flesh.
The book shut with a crack, dust flying from the spine at either end. Helmut stood with head bowed, a terrible tension in his shoulders. They would test me, would they? he thought with massive, terrible indignation. I, the heir! He still lacked the actuality of power, but nightmarish vistas were opening up to his dark imagination. With what he had here he could rule the headland for miles around. Poison the fish in swarms so that those who failed to fear him would starve, learning their lesson as their bellies bloated and ate the flesh from their bones. Did you do this, master? he asked silently. Did you prepare them for my arrival? Did you?
There was no reply, but somehow he was sure he heard a chuckle from beyond the grave.
Shaking his head, Helmut took the tome and placed it on one of the shelves; by instinct he slotted it into the correct location. Pausing to consider, he selected another. The lectern creaked with a noise like a man racked by torture, as the codex settled onto it. The candles that lit this room smoked eerily with a smell like bacon; the fat of which they were made was wholly appropriate and readily available to any necromancer. He barely noticed the passage of time as he studied, feverishly trying to cram comprehension into his inexperienced skull. Spells and incantations normally beyond one of his experience seemed to be just barely accessible, falling into place with a curious, demented logic of their own. As if he already knew them, as if he had used them before.
Hours passed. Oblivious to time, Helmut slaked his thirst for forbidden knowledge at a well polluted by a subtle foulness.
The power grew in him until he felt that his head should burst if he committed to memory another incantation. It was a monstrous feeling. Presently he shut the cover of the book, this time with delicacy and an almost lascivious feel for the well-tooled human leather of the covers. He looked about, then blinked and rubbed his eyes. Yes, it was time.
There was another exit from the hidden suite of the Nameless master, and Helmut found it without difficulty. He himself had entered by the back door, so to speak; since when had a necromancer not desired easy access to the nearest graveyard? Deep within the forest he found himself climbing a short flight of steps to a trapdoor. It had been buried beneath soil for years, but the bearings were so well-balanced that, despite a small flurry of dirt, it opened effortlessly in the darkness.
Finding himself in darkness, Helmut clapped his hands softly, and muttered a cantrip he had known even before his accession to power. A soft, lambent light began to glow from an amulet that he swung on a chain before him. Let there be light, he thought ironically. Enough to see by, at any rate. Tangled roots wove like ghastly tentacles across the ground, and the trees rose into the gloom of the forest like the legs of giants waiting to step on and crush mortals.
Helmut instinctively made his way towards the graveyard path that led to the village beyond. He never questioned how he knew where the path was - nor even why it had remained in the same place from century to century, down through the ages - but he found it all the same. He made his way towards the settlement quietly, pausing to sniff the air from time to time. The scent of woodsmoke and charred meat told its own story to his sensitive nostrils, a story of despair and suffering and pointless cruelty. The raiders didn't know - could not have known - that their target was not at large in the village when they struck. That their target had nothing to do with the village. That their ashes would be dust on the wind before the night was out. A cold anger grew in Helmut's breast as he drew near to the scene of the massacre. And a ghastly anticipation.
The first victim he saw was a child. Julia Schmidt, baker's daughter. Blood on her dress, dark in the moonlight. Her mother lay nearby. He walked on. There were more corpses now; the reavers had fallen upon a fleeing band of women and children, slaughtering them like sheep. In the gloom they might have been sleeping, in cruel, uncomfortable postures forced upon them by the positioning of strange breaks in their limbs.
Helmut kept rein on his anger. These were his people; firstly the people he had lived among - and latterly the people destined to be his subjects. Then he came to the village.
It was a scene of utter carnage. There were bodies everywhere; twisted and hunched peasants with their weapons still in their hands, oddly pathetic heaps of cloth containing mortal remnants. The wreckage of the houses still smouldered under the moonlight, ashes glowing red around paper-grey cores of charred wood. There was blood in the street.
He slowly turned around, until his eyes had taken in the entirety of the ghastly scene, No-one was left alive; any survivors had fled. He felt no guilt, though. Guilt towards such as these was beneath him. But it wasn't always so, something nagged deep inside. He stilled the dissenting inner voice, and steeled himself for the final act.
No good. Tension and anger curled into knots around his spine. Straightening, he surveyed the corpses. Not one of the reavers had died here! The sight stiffened his resolve. Slowly he stretched out an arm, heavy beneath the sleeve of his black robe, and began to chant a soulless, evil rhyme.
Among the trees a strange rustling could be heard. A shuffling of ragged clothing, a sound like the sighing of the breeze that swung the felon on the gallows. Stick-figures were beginning to twitch and stir. Helmut continued remorselessly. Perhaps a minute passed, and then one of the bodies which was stretched lengthwise along the ground sat up. Moving slowly and arthritically, Hans-Martin Schmidt - the baker - crawled to his feet. He stared vacantly about with a face out of nightmare: mashed-in nose, a jaw that hung below his face by a tatter of drying meat. Seeing a scythe at his feet he bent and laboriously picked it up.
Helmut continued his spiritless, mournful chant. Julius Fleischer rolled over twice in the dust before he too sat up, clutching at the stump of a leg. The leg twitched towards him slowly, forced towards unnatural reunification with its master. The energy pouring into Helmut from the will of the dead Nameless One engorged him with a dark sense of evil; he was one with the night and the magic, as his servants crawled to their feet and, vacant-eyed, shambled towards him.
Finally the incantation was complete; the spell of summoning in place. Zombies were still staggering in, but already a hard core surrounded him. He looked about. The eyes that met his gaze were lifeless: some were merely gouged sockets, while others were hazed and dulled by the flies' feeding. For the most part these were the menfolk of the village, armed in death as in life. His eyes continued their search, until he saw his father. It might have been his father; its neck and head were too badly damaged for him to be sure in the darkness.
"Follow me," he commanded in an ancient tongue, the learning of which was not possible in a night - not without enchantment. "The enemy lies sleeping. In death ye shall reap your revenge for the afflictions of life; whereafter ye shall seek peace through my ministrations. Forward!"
He pointed down the path towards the beach and, slowly at first but gradually gathering speed, the horde of zombies plodded towards the reavers.
Ragnar One-Eye and his men were no amateurs. They had not forgotten to place a watch, nor to light fires on the beach. But a single guard was no match for the horror that swarmed out of the darkness in total silence save for the slithering of rank, battle-scarred flesh and the clanking of metallic death.
The guard stood transfixed for two fatal seconds, mouth agape; then he screamed "attackers!" He was too late. The horde of death was already scrabbling and clawing its way over the sleepers, knives flickering in deadly arcs.
Helmut stood watching, controlling the attack by force of will alone. Something within him was crying out: if you hadn't dabbled, hadn't experimented with corruption, hadn't wakened the thing under the graveyard... No matter. He pushed the thought aside. Some of the reavers retreated to the boats, making to cast off and push them into the sea and escape. A couple of his zombies followed, but he recalled them with a peremptory tug of willpower. Let the survivors bear warning to whoever had sent them! A cold smile that was most certainly not Helmut's own played about his lips as the last of the sleepers died beneath a struggling mound of noisome flesh. The first light of dawn was already beginning to show along the horizon: he turned and, ignoring the destruction around him, walked back towards the Liche-crypt.
It was as he had left it. The fighting hadn't reached the graveyard; a few poppies bobbed fitfully in the morning breeze as he pushed aside the altar stone and again descended into the musty darkness. But this time when he reached the inner chamber he paused before the throne and genuflected. "Thank you, Father. I am most grateful for your assistance," he murmured as he contemplated the heap of bones piled there. The skull grinned at him.
It might almost have been his imagination that as he reentered the apartment a bone-dry whisp of a voice behind him said: Think nothing of it, my son.
But then again, it might not.