Sigmar's Blood Read Free

stained, and two of their number lay dead and broken against the pillars around the edge of the cache. The rest of the escort was more or less intact. They mumbled and picked themselves up as Kaslain and Aglim searched around the chamber and looked up in the ribbed vaults, weapons raised.
    Of the second of the two monstrosities, there was no sign.
    ‘Shit,’ said Kaslain, grimly. ‘That’s not good.’
    ‘Excuse me, sir?’ said Zintler. ‘We drove the damned things off, didn’t we?’
    ‘That second one,’ replied Kaslain, peering down into the darkness of the narrowing hole in the middle of the vault. ‘It had the crown.’
    ‘But the Emperor has the crown. We just saw him at state.’
    ‘Not the Imperial tiara, you bloody moustache on legs!’ said Kaslain, his voice trembling. ‘The bloody Crown of Sorcery! The Crown of Nagash.’
    As the forbidden name echoed around the silence of the crypts, the torches of the Reiksguard flickered green for a second and went out.
    Zintler’s detachment had returned in shocked silence to report to the Emperor, but now the Grand Atrium was getting another chance to show off its acoustics. Volkmar’s rage was always impressive, no matter how many times Kaslain saw it. Today, it was incandescent.
    The elector counts had the good sense not to interrupt whilst Volkmar filled the air with thunderclouds of invective. He paced up and down in front of the returned delegation, systematically stripping Reikscaptain Zintler of every ounce of his dignity. Even Kaslain, the closest thing Volkmar had to a friend, had already been pinned beneath Volkmar’s towering wrath for close to five minutes. It had not been a happy feeling.
    The Grand Theogonist had every reason to be furious. Technically speaking, the artefacts in the Cache Malefact were under the sole protection of the Sigmarite cult. The blame for the disappearance of the Crown of Sorcery would be laid squarely at Volkmar’s door, and everyone knew it. Since his return from the wars in the north, the old man had more than enough detractors ready to tear him down. The loss of such a potent relic would be the last nail in his political coffin. If it was not recovered within a matter of days, it could see him banished from office forever.
    The stolen artefact had been found ten years ago after the breaking of Waaagh! Azhag, a greenskin invasion of such scale and ambition it had collapsed a swathe of the northern Empire. Altdorfer spies had claimed that whenever Azhag the Slaughterer had worn the crown he had talked to himself almost constantly, often replying to himself in sepulchral tones. The hulking orc had begun to show displays of uncanny military genius as well as the ability to wield the energies of death itself. At the Battle of Osterwald, however, he had fallen to the charge of the knightly orders nonetheless.
    Since that day the relic had rested in the depths of the great temple, theoretically as safe as sacred Ghal Maraz itself. In practice, the vault’s wards and guardians had been unable to banish the fleshy horrors that had burrowed into it like worms in the darkness. The chances of the Sigmarite cult recapturing the crown from one as cunning as Mannfred were vanishingly small.
    ‘It’s obvious what happened, you fool!’ roared Volkmar, his red-veined face a finger’s breadth from Zintler’s nose. ‘The vampire wanted his master’s crown, so he ensured he had our attention long enough to snatch it. Stahlberg here,’ he said, motioning towards the fallen body as it was carried away by liveried servants, ‘was a decoy. The true attack was taking place beneath our feet! And we fell for it! You fell for it!’
    Zintler apologised for the twentieth time, eyes down, but Volkmar was in full flow. Only the interruption of the Emperor spared the Reikscaptain from death by spittle.
    ‘Volkmar!’ shouted Karl Franz, exasperated to the point of intervention. ‘We need more than strong words to fix this.’
    The Grand