Sacrosanct by C L Werner

Author:C L Werner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-13T13:44:22+00:00

Chapter five

A fury such as Arnhault had never known roared through his heart. Standing upon the small plot of grassy earth had opened him to something. He could not say if the images that seared through his mind were drawn into him from outside or borne to his awareness by some deep, forgotten fragment of his psyche. Whatever their source the effect was like being struck by a thunderbolt. He no longer merely felt the name Volkhard belonged to him; he knew he was Volkhard.

Arnhault could see the barren plain around him as it had been long ago, on that day when he’d led his army at the head of his household guard against the hordes of Chaos. He saw again the horde of marauders and monsters as they came charging up onto the plateau. He braced his forces. It was here and here alone they had any chance of stopping the invaders and protecting the heartland of Kharza. Here the awesome numbers of the Chaos horde could not be brought to bear. Here it would be the quality of the warriors and the righteousness of their cause that would prevail.

So it might have been. But Arnhault knew the strategy was doomed from the first, doomed by treachery. Before battle was joined, a dark shadow appeared atop the stony rise and cast his foul spells upon the field. Magics steeped in the deathly energies of Shyish. A moment of terror and pain, the strangled cries of thousands of warriors… And then nothing. The battle lost, for none were left to fight it.

The dark shadow had a name, one that spurred the fire in Arnhault’s soul. Sabrodt the Usurper. The undead filth that dared now proclaim itself the Shrouded King.

Arnhault pursued as Sabrodt retreated into his mouldering tomb. Before it had been duty and necessity that drove him to confront the wraith, his obligations to the people of Wyrmditt and his devotion to Sigmar. Now he pursued Sabrodt for far different reasons. He knew what this creature had done and what his fell deed had cost the people of Kharza. These were crimes that Arnhault would see avenged!

The scythe-wielding spectres came flying towards Arnhault, seeking to intercept him before he could overtake Sabrodt. The Knight-Incantor pointed his staff at the one of the skull-faced haunts, a pulse of lightning snaking away from its glowing head to rip through the shadowy creature and reduce it to a foul-smelling smoke. Another of the fiends rushed for him, slashing its scythe for his helm. Arnhault whispered one of the arcane songs he had been taught and sent a punishing gale of wind tearing across the ghost, scattering its essence across the battlefield.

The Knight-Incantor dealt with the other ghostly reapers in similar fashion, destroying or rebuffing them with his magic. Such was the anger driving him onwards that he gave no thought to conserving his energies, or what the toll taken by so hurried and rapid a string of conjurations might be. Once, he thought

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