The camp appeared deserted. Wooden sheds and shacks lined the outer walls. Peering through the gloom, I could make out what looked like a stone sarcophagus in the center of the camp. Waves of dark power pulsed from it.
“You see that?” I whispered, pointing at the sarcophagus. “That’s it. That’s where all the power is coming from. We need to get down there.”
“I don’t see any sign of anyone.”
“It might be a trap,” I said.
She looked at me, considering. “It probably is a trap. What do you want to do?”
I took my axe from my back and met her eyes, seeing my own fierce excitement mirrored in her face. “If it’s a trap, I want to spring it.”
I led the way, and Cara followed. She had her bow in hand, a long arrow nocked to the string. The wall of the valley was steep, but not sheer. We slid down fast, in a rattle of stones, landing on our feet at the base of the rough cliff.
Still no sign of any trouble.
Here, so close to the source, I found my iron resistance to the influence of the Festering being tested hard. I caught my breath and glanced at Cara to find her face determined and set. Her potion must be working.
My axe in my left hand, I gestured to her to follow me forward. She fell in, two steps behind me and to my right, her eyes scanning the dark space from side to side.
“Now!” I hissed, and we sprinted through the deserted camp, straight toward the sarcophagus.
It was a huge block of black stone, oblong and as tall as my shoulder. Running around the edge, about the level of my chest, a thin line of shadow, darker than the rest, showed where the lid fitted. I raised the head of my axe and jammed the top of the blade into the crack.
Cara stood ready, her arrow fitted and the bow half drawn. She had taken up her place to my left, turning a slow half circle and scanning the darkness, tension in every line of her supple body. I heaved, levering the stone lid up with the blade of my axe. The lid moved with a deep grinding noise. I bent my knees, huffed in a massive breath, and levered the lid up with every ounce of strength I could muster. As it rose, revealing an even blacker darkness inside, I let the axe slide down and caught the edge of the huge lid with my gauntleted fists.
With a roar of effort, I heaved the gigantic piece of stone up and away. It teetered on the edge of the sarcophagus for a moment, then toppled over. In the thick silence of the fog-bound camp, the sound of the lid shattering was like a bolt of lightning.
The tall skeleton of a mighty warrior lay in the base of the sarcophagus. In life, he must have been a huge man. He had been interred wearing his full armor, and though this was now ancient and rusted, a glance told me that it must have been very fine. His arms were crossed on his chest, and his bony hands still gripped the shafts of his twin axes. I smiled at that; an axeman, like me, but one who favoured a pair of one-handed axes, rather than a big two-hander.
“Is that it?” Cara’s voice broke in on my examination of the skeleton.
“It’s got to be.” The skull of the warrior stared up at me from inside a tall iron helmet. It had a long nose guard and broad cheek guards which could hinge over to cover the mouth. The top was rounded, and fixed in place with crossed bands of gold which glimmered in the darkness. My sense of the Festering was almost overwhelming as I focused on the helmet. This had to be it; the cursed helmet of Theodoric Ironside.
I reached out to touch it, and that was when the trap was sprung.
They came silent as the night itself, a great horde rising up out of the blackness at the edges of the camp. One moment all was empty, the next everywhere was filled with a wriggling mass of shambling figures. Countless pairs of red and yellow eyes glowed at us from the shadows of ragged hoods. Scimitars gleamed in their claws. The Festering’s dark magic must have obscured the foul creatures, working like a powerful cloaking spell that kept them hidden until this moment.
One, taller than the rest, ran forward to stand ten yards from us. He stood up to his full height, only a little shorter than Cara, and threw back his hood.
It was a Ratman. Coarse gray fur covered his long, hideous face. His eyes glowed brightly. He had two huge, pointed teeth at the end of his mouth, and a jagged double row of razor spikes running back into his mouth. A double-handed scimitar as big as my axe was in his hands. His smaller minions flowed up and clustered behind him. He threw back his head and screamed a battlecry, and all of the filthy creatures around him took up the high, ululating call.
Cara let fly her arrow, and in that same moment, as I turned away from the skeleton in the sarcophagus to grab my axe and face the enemy, the tips of my fingers brushed the Helm of Ironside.
Everything stopped.
Cara’s arrow floated in midair, and the huge Ratman’s spittle hung around his mouth. My perception of the scene spun, as if my view was spiralling out from my own body. I could see myself frozen in place, one hand reaching into the coffin, my other raising my axe. I could see my body half-turned toward Cara and
