[center][h3]In the Shadow of the Kronburg[/h3]
A post by Cyclone, Lauder, Oraculum[/center]

[i]It’s the Bloodhammer.[/i]

The realization made Faustus stiffen, but of course he never displayed such emotion. [i]‘Masks beneath the masks,’[/i] his mind reminded him. That was the only way of things. Still, even a strong will and a disciplined mind could struggle to overcome some terrors. For a few moments it felt as though the revenant’s heart was pounding, though of course it was not, and had not, for a long long time. That was just a sort of phantom sensation, probably akin to how maimed men had sometimes claimed to feel aches in their lost limbs.

As the pounding of hooves grew louder with the horsemens’ rapid approach, his own posse watched and answered with deafening silence. Faustus banished the idle and useless thoughts of cripples and lost limbs and other things, his mind now racing to recall all that he knew of this crazed revenant major. He ruled some bleak foothills and highlands from some fortress that he’d ruled in life, one of the last to have fallen. And his was a quiet and solitary nature, the revenant hardly ever leaving his keep save to go where Eagoth’s wars called. His realm produced little if anything, and yet somehow he’d retained his title, his lands, his head, and his sizable army (though it grew ever more ragged with the passage of time and his lack of income or attention to its upkeep, to hear the tales). All of those musings were of course overshadowed by the Whisperer’s recollection of all the countless ghouls, revenants minor, and even one or two revenants [i]major[/i] that had gone missing in the country about his lands, or on visits to his keep. And even despite the open secret that this was a cruel, wasteful, and indulgent lord who cared little for the Pax Mortis and even less for his fellows in servitude of the Great Necromancer, again he retained his title, his lands, his head, and his army. 

Perhaps it was the army and that formidable keep of his that enabled him to get away with such; smoking him out of his castle would certainly not be easy. But Faustus suspected that the Bloodhammer’s transgressions were suffered only because of the terror that he and his tale gave to the undead and the living alike. Every king or emperor needed his beasts of war, and this Bloodhammer had to be among the greatest of beasts.

And suddenly the pounding of hooves came to a stop, and the Bloodhammer and his outriders came to a halt just a few yards from Faustus, Razzak, and the entourage of caravan guards and porters. There was a pregnant pause as the giant lord revenant remained seated atop his mount, dead eyes peering through the slits of a greathelm to rest upon Faustus. The Merchant’s swollen body still looked small and childlike before the bulk of that giant, but he met the lord revenant’s gaze with no sign of fear. 

[i]“Lord Bjan,”[/i] he finally called out in greeting, [i]“I had not expected to chance upon you on the road.”[/i]


In one motion, the Bloodhammer raised an arm, and for a moment it seemed as though he was about to strike. But then his hand grasped the crown of his helm and tore it away. The face underneath revealed why Bjan was so feared: even through his deathly grey countenance, a barely restrained fury shone through, a mad gleam that appeared to threaten to be always on the point of erupting into a storm of savage, gratuitous violence.

“No, you would not think of meeting me on [i]my[/i] road, across [i]my[/i] fields, in [i]my[/i] domain, would you?” The towering brute attempted a mocking sneer, but his ragged lips, splintered yellow teeth and heavy jaw, still draped with the tattered, mouldy remains of what had once been a great beard, turned it into a beastly snarl. He lowered a hand from the reins of the creature he rode - a great, ghastly amalgamation of human and horse from the flesh-pits of Comiriom, for no ordinary steed, not even undead, could bear his swollen cadaverous bulk - and lifted a massive warhammer from a holster by his leg. The weapon looked old and weathered, scarred by a thousand blows, and rumour had it that it was ever the same one that had earned Bjan his name many decades ago. It certainly seemed venerable enough for that to be true, though no less menacing for its age.

“I know what you truly expected - to crawl by without giving me my due.” The horsemen behind him drew closer. They were ghouls clad in grimy, yet still robust armour that had clearly once come from a good forge, wielding spears and spiked maces. Their worm-eaten, unfeeling eyes dully stared at the hammer’s head, as if expecting a signal. “But you are not as wily as you think yourself. Speak, then, you flea - how do the living do battle these days? What do they wield in their puny blooded hands?”

[i]A robber baron indeed,[/i] the Broker found himself musing to himself, and not very happily.

Faustus had always possessed a quick mind and plenty of wit, but before he could even speak his answer and try some clever way to defuse the confrontation, that strange unbound ghoul that he’d encountered just before the Bloodhammer’s arrival decided to step forth.

“I do not believe he owes you any dues,” came the hallowed voice of Razzak, having stood silent as the two greeted each other with displeasure. The ghoul stared down the Bloodhammer with mild contempt as it seemed that empty threats came about to intimidate Faustus for coming to the lands. No emotion could be conveyed as the skeleton watched the Bloodhammer and his entourage of brutes, noting their weapons and armor to not be as old as his own. Yet, Razzak stood his ground, unmoving from his spot on the road and very clearly lacking fear, as he spoke again, “I believe it is unbecoming of someone of your stature to coerce a merchant in this way. You are owed nothing upon this road.”

“Indeed!” Bjan’s semblance of a grin widened, baring most of his teeth in an outright wolfish grimace. His voice had dropped to a menacing growl. He gave a curt wave with his weapon, and the dead riders drew back again, with not a single superfluous motion. Faustus’ own guards remained eerily statuesque the entire time, the Broker observing with tacit interest. In a vault, the giant was off the back of his steed, landing on his feet with a heavy thud that stirred a small cloud of pale desiccated dirt from the ruined road.

“If I cared about the thoughts of every worm like you I would have rotted away in a ditch long ago,” he advanced towards the convoy, raising his hammer again - this time, it seemed, in earnest. “Pedlar, make way! I have missed the feeling of smashing skulls!”

Faustus had of course already stepped back and out of the way of the quarreling two; though not ingracious to Razzak’s protest, he certainly was not the type to stick his own neck out, and he had every expectation that this strange ghoul was about to meet a quick and grisly end. But he was wrong.

The skeleton began advancing towards the hulking mass of rotted flesh and armor, planning to give the Bjan the respect of meeting halfway. Razzak, however, kept silent as he approached and kept his blade ready for attack, raising his shield. Bits of bluish-green fell away from the decrepit bronze armor as the skeleton continued his stride, soon breaking into a jog and quickly a sprint, as Razzak surged towards Bjan. The old blade steadied itself against the raised shield, the sounds of Razzak’s boots against the ground and the shifting of armor as he moved filled the air. It was in the moment that the old, decayed corpse remembered how much he had longed to hear the sound again.

Facing him, the Bloodhammer hastened his own pace. In a single stride, he had gained speed, propelling himself ahead with no sound but the trample of his feet and the faint rattling of his armour. As he began to draw near to his opponent, he abruptly veered to the side, the length of his step bringing him beyond the paved road in a moment. In the same motion, he swung his immense hammer sideways, swiftly bringing it towards Razzak’s flank.
 
Razzak pivoted in the moment, quickly shifting out of range of the Bloodhammer’s attack, although just barely enough to avoid some of his bones crushed by the assault. Yet, the skeleton would not allow the potential blow to go without consequence as Razzak surged forward and thrust his sword forwards, aimed for a joint in the Bloodhammer’s armor, the point connecting the Revenant’s hammering arm to his body.

A flash of surprise passed across Bjan’s features as his adversary’s unexpectedly swift blade darted between his limbs and scraped upon the edge of his armour’s plates, biting into the dead flesh beneath. The wound would have been a debilitatingly painful one for a living body, but even in life the Breaker had never quailed under the sting of swords; in death, it was only the display of skill from what had seemed to be a nameless ghoul among thousands that gave him an instant’s pause. The already rigid muscle in his shoulder stiffened further, and the giant reached to grasp Razzak’s lunging arm with his free hand.

There was nowhere Razzak could retreat to without abandoning his sword within the arm of Bjan, however, that would leave the skeleton without a weapon and he was hardly as fast as he was in life. Still, the decrepit duelist pulled his sword back, attempting to make sure that the Bloodhammer could not grab his arm. Razzak, however, could not get free in time and Bjan’s cold grip went around the arm of the ghoul, although not without resistance as Razzak began to hammer away at Bjan’s forearm with the edge of his shield. To little avail, it seemed, for the brute’s armoured grip was implacable - until a fortuitous blow struck straight into the concavity of his elbow. Dead flesh twitched under laws it had not quite wholly left behind, and the grasp briefly loosened. 

Bjan’s hammer-arm was now free of its rigour, however, and the great maul came swinging down towards Razzak’s skull as the huge warrior pressed ahead.

The sound of a metal [i]clang[/i] ran through the air as Bjan’s hammer-arm collided with Razzak’s shield, and with the loosened grip the skeleton wretched his sword-arm free and backed up as quickly as he could. His shield had partially caved at the site of where the Bloodhammer had met the shield, surely meaning that Razzak would have met his end had he not blocked the blow. Yet, such thoughts were not present in the undead’s mind as he readied himself once more, taking up a defensive posture.

Bjan, however, did not push further. Lowering his hammer, he bared his teeth in another sneer, which seemed this time to be fraught with satisfaction rather than ire.

“It has been more years than I care to count since anyone gave me as much as a spit of a fight,” he rumbled, with a shade of joviality brushing past the frost of his voice, “Wherever this leech -” he motioned to Faustus “- dug you up from, he got a good bargain of it. A scar has always been a worthy tax under the Kronburg.”

He turned back, and in a few strides he had rejoined his steed, which he leapt astride with little regard for all his bulk must have weighted.

“Pass as you will,” he pointed his hammer further ahead down the road, “But I would yet hear of the arms of the living. Each of us should be ready to crush them when we march the next time.”

If Faustus had been taken aback by the turn of events, his posture betrayed nothing. Calm as a pond’s still waters, he flicked a finger toward one of his own servants to call it forth, then bid it, [i]”Bring forth one of the new weapons for the good lord revenant to witness.”[/i]

Though he’d never turned from Bloodhammer, only then did he deign to answer back to Bjan directly. [i]”A development has been made in the Most Serene Republic of Phasto: the workshop of some ingenious inventor designed a rapid-firing crossbow. I would know little of its implications, of course, but my suspicion is that it may promise to revolutionize sieges and mayhaps war altogether; it is easy to see knights in heavy armor becoming a thing of the past when they could be slain in scores by just a few unwashed peasants bearing such weapons. But my work was merely to obtain specimens to present to our most talented engineers in Necron that they can in turn replicate the technology for ourselves. Ah, here is an example of the device.”[/i]

One of the porters presented a crossbow that managed to look bulky and queer despite its ornate decorations and exquisitely fresh woodwork. True to the Whisperer’s word, it seemed to hold many a quarrel inside, and reloading was as fast and easy as flicking some lever between each pull of the trigger.

[i]”I would daresay that the tactics and spirit of the mainlanders might be of more interest to your ears. The noose they’ve wrapped about Leria’s neck is loosening; with each passing year, some realms grow more dubious of the need for this blockade, or they wonder if they might spare some of their own coin by reducing their commitments and trusting in their supposed allies to pick up the slack. Indeed, old rivalries are starting to remerge with the lack of pressure that we have been putting forth, and the alliance of the living begins to slowly fracture. There’s already some infighting. If the Great Necromancer willed it, I’m sure that I could heap lard unto the fire and ensure that even more comes about.”[/i]

“If they start biting each other’s throats, we might finally have our chance to ride south, and the sooner that happens the better!” The Bloodhammer clenched a fist, as though the impatience to wade into combat with the southrons had been devouring him then and there - which might as well have been the case. “I tire of rotting in my halls like a maggot. If you can stoke those flames and sway the Necromancer to hasten our war, you will be well rewarded the moment I taste warm blood again.”

The skeleton stepped forwards, looking at the contraption with an unshifting look that would give the same look every skeletal face would bear, indifference. Yet, as Razzak stared at it, it was clear that he was interested in the device in some sort of capacity, whether it was greatly or a mild thought was something that could not be outwardly told. Then, the duelist looked between Faustus and Bjan in a gesture that was far clearer to tell, even without the necessary facial tissue.

“What is a crossbow?” Razzak inquired in a hallowed voice of genuine confusion.

It was easy to forget that some of these ghouls had been roused from graves dug hundreds or even thousands of years ago, or else forgotten much of what they had known in life. Razzak’s tarnished bronze arms of course said that it was the former, which made Faustus more inclined to answer. Trying to reteach a ghoul with a rotted mind all that it had once known was oft like trying to fill a cracked jug full of water again. [i]”You know what a simple bow is, I would presume? The crossbow has much the same purpose. It is a more complicated weapon to be sure, but with the added complexity comes some advantages.”[/i]

The revenant minor snatched the thing from the hands of the wretched porter that had brought it forward, then showed Razzak the trigger. [i]”It can fire with greater power than most bows, enabling it to pierce superior armor, and from a greater range at that. You can see that once the bolt is loaded, it can be indefinitely kept at the ready as well, whereas a bowman can hardly keep a strong longbow drawn for more than a few seconds. Having the weapon remain primed proves useful for keeping a steady aim. And this rapid-fire iteration can reload quickly from the bolts kept inside. A trained archer can of course maintain a similar rate of fire and perhaps even comparable accuracy, though this weapon nonetheless has all the advantages of crossbows without the normal drawback of a slow and cumbersome reloading process.”[/i]

Faustus demonstrated by shooting a quick three bolts off at some nearby hillside.

Razzak watched the bolts trail into the distance before turning back to Faustus, almost seeming to be in shock at the display, going so far as to take a step back. The ghoul looked at the contraption, drawing his sword once more as if the machine threatened his very fabric of existence. However, as the skeleton had just finished defending Faustus, he did not lash out immediately instead exclaiming, “That is an affront to all honor! Destroy it! Throw it the fires!”

“It’s a weapon for weaklings and cowards,” Bjan grunted dismissively from the top of his steed, baring his teeth in visible disgust, “But if the living would turn to this, let them! True men are only tempered by battle. The more they lean on these toys, the more watery will their blood become, and when we will come for them only a filthy rabble will be left to face us. The warriors among us remain as strong as the day we fell on the field. No effete trinket will save them from us.”

The poshly garbed caravaneer had little more than an ambivalent shrug in reaction to their disdain, but he did object to destroying his prized trinket. Obtaining the thing hadn’t been easy. [i]”A mere curiosity for the engineers to look over. Perhaps [b]they[/b] or their masters will dismiss it as nothing and cast it into some fire, but it is not for you or I to do such a thing.”[/i]

“Have the living really gone so low as to resort to these… things?” Razzak asked, mostly to himself as he continued to look at the crossbow.