Sigmar's Blood by Phil Kelly Read Free Book Online Page B

a bit lonely,’ the musician joked, shaking his leg to dislodge a shattered ribcage that clung to his foot. ‘Very hospitable, this lass.’
    ‘Didn’t know you liked ’em that skinny, Lute!’ said Ulf Weissman, propping the standard of the Sigmar’s Sons in the crook of his neck in order to make an obscene gesture in Swift’s direction.
    Von Korden stormed back up the ridge, his face twisted into a wild-eyed snarl and his hand palming a filleting knife. Discipline would be restored, one way or another.
    The hunter stopped suddenly, sniffing the air. Something foul lingered under the peaty smell of wet earth. A moment later the dull moaning that von Korden had heard minutes earlier drifted through the mist, coming from the tumbled walls just beyond the tower. The witch hunter listened carefully.
    This time, he distinctly heard the low toll of an ancient bell.
    Waving his arm behind him in signal, von Korden darted back to the front line and crouched down behind a shattered tombstone. Sure enough, there were ghostlights in the gloom. Strange figures began to coalesce in the misting rain, skeletal shapes that moved in jerky synchronicity. One by one, a clutch of dead things scraped and staggered their way towards the trespassers. They stalked with painstaking slowness around the yawning graves and jutting hillocks, forming up in front of a tumbledown wall. Their ranks were a mockery of a proper military unit. Slack jaws dangled from fleshless skulls and rusted armour clanked gently on ice-cold bone.
    ‘Sigmar’s sack, just look at ’em all,’ exhaled Swift.
    ‘Shut your damn mouth, Swift, you’ve embarrassed yourself enough already,’ growled Curser Bredt, taking a bead on the skeletal warriors with his rifle. ‘Concentrate. As soon as I give the order, make every one of those bullets count.’
    Hastening back to the vanguard, von Korden gestured forward and right. In response Sigmar’s Sons double-timed as best they could towards the abandoned watch. It did not bode well that Unholdt and the rest of his men had not yet emerged onto the roof. Still, they needed to secure the tower, whatever horrors lurked inside.
    The mist ahead thinned for a second. It revealed hunchbacked shadows that moved like long-limbed toads across the grass, leap-stop-leaping towards the swordsmen. Von Korden almost called out a warning, but bit his tongue. Ghorst would be close by, and the necromancer would flee if he knew his old persecutor was on the field. The hunter was relieved when Bredt spoke out a second later.
    ‘Change target, new marks below!’ shouted the gunner-sergeant. ‘Mind the Sons!’
    The Silver Bullets swivelled as one, taking a bead on the ghouls in the mist below them as the Sons broke into a hunched run. The handgunners fired a sharp fusillade, hurling one creature backwards and taking another in the throat so hard it left its head dangling on its back. The ghoul kept going for a second before collapsing into a grave-pit. Von Korden met Sootson’s eye up on the ridge, and a few seconds later two more ghoul-things were blasted apart by the Hammer of the Witches. Two of the pallid creatures were ahead of the rest, leaping on the rearmost swordsman and tearing great strips of flesh from his back. The rest of the unit formed up, turning as one at a barked order from Eben Swaft.
    The swordsmen fought hard to lock their shields, stabbing at sore-pocked faces and necks as the ghouls groped and slashed with their long, dirt-encrusted fingers. Arterial blood spurted in the mist, the hot red of the state troops splashing uniforms alongside the brackish brown of ghoul gore. Von Korden wished he was in the thick of it with them, but he had other matters to attend to.
    Horses snorted and tack jangled to the witch hunter’s left as the Knights of the Blazing Sun galloped down into the fight. He waved them on, gesturing with a pistol in the direction of the skeletal warriors that were stalking towards the Silver Bullets.