A Question of Faith

C L Werner

It wasn’t the most romantic location to hold a tryst, but the narrow gap between Rolf Wehner’s storehouse and Xaver Maucher’s chicken coop had exhibited the necessary isolation for a clandestine rendezvous. The cackling of Maucher’s chickens wasn’t nearly so annoying as the sharp tongue of Emil Stuckart’s mother and far less painful than the wrath of Renate Altstoetter’s father.

Emil closed his eyes, trying to will away the worry nagging at his mind. He tried to lose himself in the moment, to savour the touch of Renate’s fingers as they combed through his hair, to revel in the happy little laugh that shuddered across her pursed lips. They had to be careful about noise. If they were too loud, they would upset the chickens and then there’d be a mad scramble to escape before Wehner or Maucher came to investigate the commotion. Strangely, the very danger of discovery made the excitement of being with Renate even more thrilling.

‘Do you love me?’ Renate asked, her voice a soft whisper. It was a timid tone, a question that was almost afraid of an answer. Emil saw the dread lurking at the depths of his woman’s lustrous blue eyes. She was a few years younger than him, yet had developed the confidence that Emil possessed, the strength to have an identity beyond the expectations of her parents. A frown flashed across his visage and he held her close against him.

How many times had she asked him that? Always with that same timidity, always with that same uncertainty. What assurance could he make to her that what they shared was real? Why could he not make her understand that it was no whim, no cruel trick, that he really was devoted to her? What would it take to overcome the poison Juergen had poured into his daughter’s mind?

He was just letting an answer creep onto the tip of his tongue when the sound of raised voices swept into their little refuge. For a hideous moment, both of the young lovers thought they had been discovered. When that initial terror died away, when the threatened doom failed to close in, a different sort of fear pressed upon them. The commotion was coming from the centre of the village near the temple and Baumann’s tavern. At such a distance, few words were intelligible, but one stood out as though it had been branded into the air with a hot iron.

Plague!

Emil felt Renate shivering against him. Exhibiting far more confidence than he felt, he smiled at her and stroked her shoulders. ‘Old Hans trying to scare people again,’ he scoffed. ‘Father Anton will have him quieted down soon enough. I’ll slip down there and see if he needs any help.’

There was a dubious cast in Renate’s eyes as she listened to Emil. She didn’t believe a word of what she’d been told but was shrewd enough to know that nothing good would come from proclaiming the fact. After Emil’s father had died, the village priest had taken great pains to help the Stuckart family recover, assisting them even when no one else would. There was no argument Renate could make that would speak louder than the debt Emil felt he owed to the priest. Instead she gave her lover a fierce kiss farewell. ‘Be careful,’ she said, her heart quivering with an intimation of dread.

Emil didn’t trust himself to look back as he worked his way down the narrow gap and out onto the dirt road. The little wattle-and-daub huts of Helmstedt flanked the lane to either side, defining it far more than the edging of riverstones some long-ago village reeve had ordered erected and which every reeve since had maintained. Collecting the stones from the River Sol had become something of a festival for the villagers, so few complained about keeping up the tradition.

Ahead he could see the village square with the hoary old oak planted at its centre, the baron’s granary – the only stone building in the village – stretching along the far side. Baumann’s tavern had been deserted by its usual crop of idlers and the doors to the temple were standing wide open, a circumstance that was unheard of except on religious observations. However, it didn’t take more than a glance to discover the reason for these disturbances.

A disparate crowd had gathered in the square, converging upon a lone rider leading a heavily laden mule. Strangers in Helmstedt were unusual enough, but this man presented an especially grim aspect. From crown to toe he was draped in black, his body indistinct beneath the oily sheen of a leather coat, his head lost beneath the brim of a physician’s cap. It was the grotesque mask that hid the rider’s face that completed the sinister aura that surrounded him. It was a long beak of leather, like the bill of a rook, with bulbs of garlic and sprigs of holly dangling from its sides.

Emil’s pace quickened as his mind registered what the stranger was – a plague doktor, one of the macabre healers who pitted their medicine against the ravenous appetite of the Black Death. Like the vultures they resembled, the plague doktors were harbingers of destruction and woe. No omen could have boded greater ill for Helmstedt than the appearance of a plague doktor.

That sentiment seemed to be the point of contention among the villagers. As Emil drew nearer he could better make out the words his neighbours were grumbling and growling. It was bad enough that the plague doktor had ridden into the village, but no one was eager to compound their misfortune by allowing the man to dismount.

‘There’s been no plague here,’ Oskar Heitz was snarling, the wart on his forehead turning a livid purple as his temper rose. ‘We don’t need any truck with your kind!’

‘Jackals! Assassins!’ Klaudia Mueller was shrieking at the man. ‘We’ve heard stories about your treatments. We’ve heard about how you scavenge those too sick to beat you off!’

Though his face was hidden behind the birdlike mask, Emil could almost see the plague doktor’s sneer when he growled back at the mob. ‘Peasants! As though any here have the coin to tempt a rat catcher, much less a learned physician.’

‘Do not mock those blessed with humble means, for they are nearer to the grace of Sigmar than any who covets gold.’ The reprimand came in a low whisper that struck with the keenness of a knife. The plague doktor turned in his saddle, cringing somewhat when he saw that this new challenge had been voiced by a man wearing the black robes of a Sigmarite priest. Father Anton was of an unimposing build, a far cry from the robust warrior priests even in his younger years. Yet there was a force of personality etched upon his stern countenance that commanded respect from even the most jaded parishioner. The plague doktor tried to hold Father Anton’s reproachful gaze, but it was an effort beyond his mercenary convictions.

‘There are important people in Pfeildorf who need my services,’ the plague doktor explained. ‘It is vital that I reach the city as quickly as possible.’ He waved his gloved hands in an imploring gesture. ‘If these folk will give me the supplies I seek, I will be on my way.’

Father Anton’s gaze remained unsympathetic. ‘You ride in here stinking of death, fresh from picking over the carcass of some other town or village. You come here with your face hidden against pestiferous vapours, expecting that here too you will find death. Yet is it in your heart to tarry, to render such aid as you might bestow? Holy Sigmar taught that men must be united if we are to overcome the enemies that threaten us. He taught us that we must value one another more than material riches and prideful power.’

The plague doktor shifted uncomfortably. ‘Father, there are many in the city I will be able to help…’

‘Do not spit your lies at me!’ the priest snapped back. ‘You go to Pfeildorf not to heal but to loot! Begone, foul buzzard! You will find no succour here! The pious have no truck with scavengers!’

Before the plague doktor could deny Father Anton’s accusation, a rock went sailing past the brim of his hat. More stones quickly followed, virtually every peasant in the square throwing rocks at the intruder and his animals. Cursing into the bill of his mask, wincing as rocks struck against his oil-slick coat, the plague doktor wheeled his horse about. A moment later he was galloping out of the square, his mule racing after him.

The people of Helmstedt hurled jeers at the fleeing stranger long after he was beyond the range of their rocks. Father Anton took the opportunity to preach to the gathered villagers, leading them in a prayer of gratitude to Mighty Sigmar that their god had preserved the village and kept the plague from their community.

Emil bowed his head, but he couldn’t keep his mind on the prayer. He couldn’t shake the image of the plague doktor, or stop wondering if there might come a time when Helmstedt would be thankful to see such a stranger ride into the village.

‘Burn it!’

The fierce words came boiling across Janos Unger’s flabby lips in a seething hiss. The reeve of Helmstedt’s hand was clenched tightly about the bronze pectoral he wore, the emblem of his position as the baron’s steward. His other hand was a knotted fist that slapped violently against his thigh. In better times, Unger relished the authority he wielded, exhibiting the brand of petty tyranny that made him such an effective administrator for the baron. Now, however, the reeve was sickened by his own commands.

Two days after the plague doktor was expulsed from the village, the first of the peasants fell ill – Gunthar Starkweiter and his children. They were followed the next day by Kaspar Valten and Ottilia Schenk. From the first, the villagers had feared it was the plague. By the second day, those fears were given voice. Terror swept through Helmstedt, crawling into every hut and hovel.

As reeve, the peasants had demanded Unger act to protect them from the plague. A simple man, unschooled and unlettered, he was ill-prepared for such action. He was a farmer, not a scholar or physician. He didn’t have the learning to fight a plague. All he could do was resort to the resources of his agrarian experience. When a herd of cattle showed signs of sickness, the diseased animals had to be culled so that the healthy might be preserved.

Gunthar and his brood, Kaspar and Ottilia, and all those who lived under the same roofs as those stricken, had been dragged from their homes and herded into an old barn at the edge of the village. ‘Quarantine’, Unger had called it, hoping the scholarly word would impress his neighbours. Whatever the efficacy of his high-handed posturing, the reeve’s orders had been carried out by a mob too frightened to disobey.

It was a different matter now. The peasants glanced guiltily at one another as they heard Unger’s draconian pronouncement and the desperate wailing from the condemned within the barn. Isolating the sick, forcing them from their homes, that had been easy enough to justify. But to burn them, to commit deliberate murder? Such dignity as their fear had left inside them quailed at such a crime.

Unger swept his eyes across the crowd. He could easily read the reluctance in their expressions. He wasn’t an inhuman monster, he had the same qualms. If there was another way he would take it. But as far as he knew, there wasn’t. The sick had to be destroyed so that the healthy would survive. It was as simple and brutal as that. He unclenched his fist and pointed a finger at Rolf Wehner. ‘Put the barn to the torch,’ he said. Unger frowned when Rolf hesitated. ‘The baron will exempt you from the tithe next season,’ he promised, appealing to the farmer’s greed. He knew Rolf’s crop had been poor the previous year and that the peasant was still scrambling to pay back the debts he had incurred over the intervening months. Forgiveness of his next tithe would be a considerable boon for him.

Displaying no great enthusiasm, Rolf approached the locked barn, a torch blazing in his hand. Before he could reach the building, he was intercepted by Emil Stuckart. The young peasant pushed him aside with a violent shove, almost knocking Rolf to the ground. Emil glared at the farmer then swept his stern gaze across the rest of the crowd.

‘Have you gone mad?’ he growled. ‘You can’t do this thing! These are friends and family, not animals!’

Unger reached for the sword he wore, another mark of the office he held. ‘It is you who have gone mad, Emil!’ he accused. ‘The plague must be kept from spreading! Would you see the whole village infected?’

The spectre of doom enflamed a mob that had only a moment before been cowed with shame. Snarling like wolves, the villagers converged upon Emil. He tried to fight back as they closed upon him, fending off the first to reach him. When he found himself staring into the enraged face of Renate’s father, Juergen, however, he hesitated. Juergen scowled at Emil, the old hate in his eyes blazing like the flames of a torch. Emil’s father had been the village beadle and Juergen’s back still bore the scars from Otto Stuckart’s whip. The peasant’s hate for the father had simply transferred itself to the son when the beadle died.

Juergen planted his fist in Emil’s belly, doubling him over in pain. The defenceless Emil was quickly set upon by the other peasants. Beneath a barrage of kicks and punches, he was driven to the ground. Before he was beaten senseless, an imperious voice thundered above the turmoil, commanding the people of Helmstedt with an authority that enjoyed far more respect than that afforded to the baron’s reeve.

‘Stop!’ Father Anton cried as he stormed down the street, his black robes billowing about him like the wings of some fearsome raptor. Such was the severity of his expression that none who met his gaze could hold it. One by one, the peasants lowered their eyes and slunk away from the priest’s approach. As the mob fell quiet, the cries of those locked inside the barn filled the silence. Father Anton shook his fist at the crowd.

‘You call yourselves men,’ Father Anton scoffed in contemptuous tone. ‘I see only frightened rabbits, too mindless and too terrified to remember what it means to be a man. Where is the dignity that separates man from the beasts of the field and the greenskins of the waste? Where is the valour that endows man with the strength to withstand the evils of Old Night? Where are mercy and charity, the rock of civilisation itself, the foundation upon which Holy Sigmar forged our Empire?’

Rolf gestured with his torch at the barn. ‘The plague… they are… we will all…’

Father Anton turned on the farmer, his eyes blazing like embers. ‘You fear the plague more than you fear the judgement of Mighty Sigmar. Is your faith so hollow that it crumbles at the first challenge?’ The priest turned away and wagged his finger at the rest of the mob. ‘To save your flesh you would defile your souls?’ He shook his head. ‘That is the way of the barbarian, the path of those who would be slaves of darkness! Sigmar loosed us from such shackles. Would you so readily put them back on?’

The priest helped Emil up from the ground while the people of Helmstedt stood around in shamed silence.

‘The plague will not be warded off by sermons,’ the reeve declared in faltering tones. ‘We must do whatever must be done to protect ourselves and our families!’

Father Anton glared at Unger. ‘Faith will defend Helmstedt. Faith in Lord Sigmar is the only protection we need!’

Instead of wilting before the priest’s conviction, Unger’s defiance was emboldened. ‘Faith in Sigmar did not protect them in Pfeildorf and Nuln, or Wissenburg and Averheim,’ he said. ‘They had lectors and arch-lectors to call upon Sigmar, yet the god didn’t save them. What makes Helmstedt more important than those great cities?’

Unger’s thoughts disturbed the learned priest. The crowd saw the flicker of uncertainty on the priest’s face and at once the spell he had held over them was broken. Angrily, the peasants began to converge on the barn once more. Father Anton raised his arms, crying out for his parishioners to listen.

‘Even the wisest cannot know the minds of gods,’ the priest declared. ‘All we can do is abide by our covenant with them. Perhaps we are not worthy of Sigmar’s intervention – only a charlatan promises miracles. But I can promise that if you murder your neighbours, then this village will be accursed in the eyes of Sigmar.’

‘What do we do with the infected?’ Juergen’s voice rose from the mutters of the mob.

Father Anton smiled benignly at the farmer. ‘Bring them to the house of Sigmar,’ he said. He looked aside when he felt Emil’s hand on his shoulder, giving the youth a reassuring nod when he saw the worry in his face. ‘Let the temple become a refuge for the sick.’

‘If you are afraid to have them among you, then I am not afraid to be among them,’ said the priest.

An atmosphere of desolation clung to the temple more tenaciously than the creeper vines growing along its walls. From the centre of the community, the massive building had become a shunned place. It had become a physical manifestation of the terrible doom that hung over the village: the threat of the Black Plague embodied in mortar and stone. Ominous silence clung to the stone walls, disrupted only by the ringing of the prayer bell. The wails of the sick, the cries of the doomed, the shrieks of the dying, these were mercifully muffled by the thick stone walls. Not a day passed that some family didn’t bring a stricken relation to Father Anton, entrusting their sick to the priest’s care.

Entrusting? That word brought a scowl to Emil’s face. It was far too fine a concept with which to endow the people of Helmstedt. It invested the village with qualities of faith and hope that had long since been lost. The souls of Helmstedt were barren soil for such beliefs. The people who brought their sick to Father Anton didn’t do so from any faith in Sigmar’s mercy or divine clemency. They weren’t entrusting their sick to the priest, they were abandoning them – divesting themselves of a burden they were too afraid to take on. It was better to let the stricken languish and die in the temple, locked inside those stone walls, away from the good folk of Helmstedt.

It was enough to turn Emil’s stomach. To save themselves, children abandoned parents, brothers turned against sisters, husbands condemned wives. Terror of the plague had stripped away everything decent until even the last shred of compassion was gone. If this was what it meant to be human, then Emil didn’t wonder that Sigmar and the gods were indifferent to mankind’s suffering.

Emil frowned at the bitterness of his thoughts. Father Anton wasn’t like that. He wasn’t afraid to help the sick, even if he had become a pariah in his own village. By the same token, Emil could credit himself with the courage to stand by the priest, sneaking food and water to the temple in the dead of night. If he was caught, he knew he could expect a beating from Unger and his men at the very least.

He hesitated in the shadow of Baumann’s tavern, glancing up and down the road to see if the reeve or the harvest-hands he’d impressed as militiamen were around. When there was no sign of Unger or his enforcers, Emil hurried across the road, grunting beneath the weight of the heavy sack of millet he bore across his back. He cursed as he stumbled over a rock and water sloshed from the bucket he carried.

The little door at the side of the temple creaked open as he approached. Father Anton had become accustomed to Emil’s visits at this time of the night. By arrangement, the priest was always close to the door to receive his midnight guest.

Even before he was climbing the few steps up into the sanctuary, Emil could tell something was wrong. On his previous visits, Father Anton had come outside to help him with his burden. This night, the priest remained close beside the door. As he entered the sanctuary, Emil could see the weary sag of the cleric’s shoulders. There was a haggard, exhausted quality to his face. Konstantin Vogel was the oldest man in the village, nearing his seventy-fifth winter. This night, Father Anton could have passed for Vogel’s elder.

‘Just lay it inside,’ the priest told Emil in a tired whisper.

Emil laid down his burden, but made no move to leave. ‘I’ll help you make the porridge,’ he said.

‘I’ll do it,’ Father Anton said, shaking his head. The priest had adapted his own cell to serve as a kitchen for his charges, its window acting as a chimney for the smoke from the fire. Where he slept – if he slept – Emil didn’t know.

‘You take too much onto yourself,’ Emil reprimanded him. He waved his hand at the darkened interior of the sanctuary where the benches had been removed to admit pallets for the sick. ‘You need more help here.’

The priest smiled sadly at the implied offer. ‘If you stayed here, they’d never let you leave. They’d be too afraid. Then where would our food come from?’ Emil noticed the gleam of tears in Father Anton’s eyes as he turned from the doorway, the rush lights shining upon his face. ‘Three more today,’ he sighed, turning his eyes towards the altar and the stone hammer suspended above it. ‘When will it end?’

Father Anton swung around, facing Emil once more. ‘Sigmar has forsaken this village,’ he stated, anguish in his voice. ‘You must leave this place. Take that girl you love and never look back. Go far away. Find someplace clean. Someplace the gods haven’t forgotten.’

Emil shuddered at the despair he heard. At the same time, he felt the pangs of guilt. Leaving Helmstedt had been something he’d discussed with Renate many times. Even now the only thing that kept him from running away was her hesitance to leave her family. It was a shameful thing for him to admit that he’d forsake Father Anton and the sick villagers if it meant taking the woman he loved someplace she’d be safe.

For now, however, she refused to leave, and Emil was committed to doing what he could for Father Anton. ‘Let me help while I can,’ he told the priest. He looked again at the rows of pallets, at the moaning forms laid out upon them. ‘You can’t take on so much by yourself. It is a miracle you haven’t taken sick yourself.’

The priest’s reply was a grave whisper. ‘There are no miracles here,’ he said. ‘Sigmar has forsaken this place.’ He reached a trembling hand to the linen robe he wore, pulling it back to expose his neck. Emil recoiled at what he saw. From throat to shoulder, Father Anton’s flesh was blistered and blackened, disfigured by the stinking buboes of the Black Death.

‘I was a poor shepherd for this flock,’ Father Anton declared. ‘It is only right that I should be punished with the rest.’

Keeping to the shadows, Emil crept down the pathways of Helmstedt, the carcass of a goose tucked under his arm. It was a thin, scraggly creature but the only reward from a day spent scrounging through the village for food. This meagre prize had been kept locked in a shed by Xaver Maucher; if not for a few specks of feed scattered around the little structure, Emil should have missed it entirely. He smiled as he considered his good fortune. Perhaps it was a mark of Sigmar’s favour, a sign that the man-god hadn’t entirely deserted the village. Maybe he would ask Father Anton about it when he delivered the loot at the temple. Certainly there was none in Helmstedt better able to explain the handiwork of the gods.

Whatever favour Sigmar had shown Emil vanished when he left the shadow of Baumann’s tavern. Unger’s men were waiting. Emil’s string of thefts had roused the reeve’s anger as the peasants of Helmstedt badgered him to find the culprit. Most of the villagers preferred to ignore the very existence of the temple and its diseased inmates, but Unger hadn’t forgotten them. The reeve wondered about their survival and so he had set his men to wait and watch.

The reeve’s men had expected the thief to emerge from the temple and at first they refused the idea of the thief sneaking into the sick house. As they stirred from their hiding places, they stared in bewilderment at Emil. Their confusion didn’t last long. The goose tucked under the youth’s arm was damning evidence.

‘Get him,’ Unger hissed as he stepped from the darkness. Before Emil could flee, three men were converging on him. One snatched the goose from him while the others subdued him with the clubs they carried. Unger marched across the road, fixing Emil in a cold glare, watching as the militiamen beat him. ‘Teach the swine a lesson,’ he snarled.

Emil’s world exploded as the militiamen redoubled their savage attentions. The bludgeons hammered away at him, smashing against his ribs and cracking against his legs. His antagonists kept a firm grip on his arms, holding him upright when he would have collapsed to the ground. Despite his resolve, cries of pain shuddered from his lips, bringing callous laughter from his tormentors and a sneer of satisfaction to Unger’s face.

Unger’s sneer disintegrated in a crimson smear as the heft of a hammer came cracking across his face. The reeve toppled, spitting teeth as he tried to shriek with a broken jaw. Standing over the screaming man, a heavy warhammer clenched in his withered hands, a black cassock draped over his emaciated body, was Father Anton. Even more than the blood dripping from his hammer, the priest’s face was a thing of horror. All the vibrancy and colour seemed to have been leeched from the cleric’s skin, bleached to a leprous pallor by the plague. Hideous sores and lesions spotted his flesh, and eyebrows and eyelashes had fallen out to leave his face as bereft of hair as his denuded scalp. His mouth was distended, stretched out of normalcy by the agonies of disease.

It was his eyes, however, that Emil found most terrifying of all. The stern yet sympathetic light that had always coloured the priest’s gaze had been burned away, replaced by a gleam of awful determination. Father Anton had always claimed that a man’s eyes were a window to his soul. If the belief held true, then Emil shuddered at what ghastliness had consumed that of the Sigmarite.

Father Anton cast his pitiless eyes across the militiamen and their victim. ‘Dogs!’ he spat. ‘Faithless curs! Is this the legacy of Mighty Sigmar? In the Hour of Judgement are we so proud that we would turn against our own to ease our own doubt and fear?’ He raised an almost skeletal finger, gesturing at the steeple above his temple. ‘None so blind as they who will not see!’ he shouted. ‘The plague you fear… it is not the doom of men! It is our salvation!’

More awful than the judgemental scorn of the priest’s words was the distorted smile that stretched his face as he spoke. The militiamen surrounding Emil trembled in fright. Since childhood they had been taught to revere the priests of Sigmar and afford them their respect and obedience even the same as they did their own noble lord. Now, all they had been taught was collapsing, corroded by the poison of fear.

First one, then another of the militiamen backed away. It took only a few paces before their slow retreat descended into a full route. Emil turned imploring eyes on them as they fled, terrified at the prospect of being abandoned, left alone with the horrible spectre of Father Anton. As he watched, however, he saw shadows reach out from the darkness and drag down the fleeing men. He closed his eyes and covered his ears as he heard their screams, the violence of a brief and futile struggle.

When he dared to open his eyes again, Father Anton was staring down at him. Some of the fire had dimmed in the priest’s gaze, the faintest echo of his old kindness fought to express itself. ‘Go,’ he said, pointing his hammer down the road. ‘You have already shown Sigmar your worth.’ He glanced aside, watching as Unger started to move. The reeve thrashed feebly in the grip of two black-cloaked figures that were dragging him towards the temple.

‘Go,’ Father Anton repeated, his voice louder now, echoing across the square. ‘Fear no darkness, for there is no harm within it for those who keep faith with Lord Sigmar.’

Shivering, Emil was only too happy to obey the priest’s command, to flee from those ghastly figures. There had been something twisted and obscene about those abductors and there had been no mistaking the stink of plague that clung to their black cloaks.

‘We have to leave the village,’ Emil told Renate. The lovers had concealed themselves in the gloom of Rolf Wehner’s hayloft. It was a place guaranteed to offer privacy – Rolf had died from the plague two weeks ago, his hut and outbuildings were all daubed with the white cross to denote the infection. There were none in Helmstedt who trespassed upon the domain of Morr.

Or at least, that was the way things had been. Emil repressed a shudder as he thought of that horrible night when Father Anton emerged from his temple to take Unger and the militiamen. None of the vanished peasants had been seen again. The reeve, however, had just been the beginning. Other people had been disappearing, entire households vanished in the dead of night. Whether the homes bore the cross of plague or were yet unmarked, nowhere seemed safe from the menace that now prowled through the village.

‘I won’t leave my family.’ Renate gave voice to the old objection. There was love and regret behind the tears that filled her eyes as she kissed Emil’s hand. ‘I can’t leave them, not with things the way they are.’

Emil pulled away from her embrace. He’d tried to be understanding, tried to be reasonable, but he just couldn’t make her understand. His frustration turned him cold. ‘You don’t see it, do you?’ he growled. ‘If we stay here, we’re going to die! That is the way things are!’ He rose and threw open the shutter overlooking the road. Almost at once the caustic voice of Father Anton reached them from the distance.

‘You hear that!’ Emil snapped. ‘That’s what the plague has done to the finest man in Helmstedt! It’s made him a crazed monster! Where once he spoke of hope and the mercy of the gods, now he preaches about judgement and Sigmar’s cleansing flame!’

Renate shook her head, her voice cracking with a sob. ‘Please, Emil. I can’t abandon them!’

Emil frowned at the anguish in her words. For a moment, his resolve faltered, but the very love that made him hesitate gave him the strength to persist. ‘Those people who are missing, Maucher and his family, Unger, even old Katrina? They aren’t missing! Right now I could find them,’ he said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. ‘They’re in the temple, locked away so that Father Anton can purify them for Sigmar!’

As he spoke, Emil glanced out across the village. In the growing twilight, cloaked figures could be seen slithering through the streets; Father Anton’s ‘faithful’ gone to collect another household of sinners for the priest to redeem. The sight sent a chill coursing through his heart and bile rose to his throat.

‘I can’t go,’ Renate persisted with a wail.

‘Listen to the boy,’ a stern voice barked. The two lovers spun around, shocked to see Juergen Altstoetter standing beside the ladder leading up into the hayloft. Before either of them could speak, the farmer was walking towards them.

‘Herr Altstoetter…’ Emil began to speak. Juergen flashed him a murderous glare.

‘I don’t know how long you have been dallying with my daughter,’ Juergen snarled. ‘Dirtying her with your filthy Stuckart hands…’ He paused, closing his eyes as he fought for composure. ‘I don’t care about any of that. Not if you are serious about taking her away from here.’

‘Papa!’ Renate cried, rushing towards her father. ‘I won’t leave you and Mama!’

Juergen brushed her aside, not even looking at her, keeping his hostile glare fixed on Emil. ‘Get her out of Helmstedt,’ he said. ‘Do that and you have my blessing, no matter who your father was.’

Emil stood in stunned silence, his mind reeling from the shocking turn of events. There was no mistaking the barely repressed fury in Juergen’s manner. It was despair that made him turn to the son of a man he considered his worst enemy, nothing less could overcome Juergen’s bitter hate.

‘I won’t go!’ Renate protested as she understood the compact that was being arranged between her father and her lover. Seeing the unyielding set of Juergen’s jaw, knowing her father’s intractable moods, she hurried to Emil, to appeal to him instead. As she threw herself at Emil, wrapping her arms about him, Renate’s body became tense. Looking past his shoulder, she could see the cloaked shapes slinking through the streets. What is more, she could see where those skulking marauders were going, the home they were converging upon.

‘Mama!’ Renate wailed. She flung herself away from Emil and raced to the ladder before her father could intervene. Juergen was after her in an instant, but Emil tarried just long enough to glance at the village and see what had precipitated Renate’s flight. He saw Father Anton’s followers, watching as they converged upon the hut belonging to the Altstoetter family.

Cursing, dread pounding inside his heart, Emil rushed to the ladder to join Juergen in pursuit of Renate. If they couldn’t catch her before she got home… if she reached the hut when Father Anton’s men were there!

Emil tried to vanquish the image from his mind. A prayer started to form on his lips, but died unspoken. Somehow, he didn’t think Sigmar would help a mere peasant against one of his own priests.

Frantic, Emil ran towards the Altstoetter home. He shouted for assistance as he ran, imploring the villagers, pleading with them to help him stop the abduction of their neighbours. His only answer was barred doors and closed shutters. The peasants knew what was happening in Helmstedt, but they had made the choice weeks ago to hide from that truth rather than confront it.

Sounds of violence told Emil he was too late even before he rounded the corner and saw the cloaked man standing above Juergen’s body. The fanatic held a stout cudgel in an impossibly hairy, deformed hand. Before Emil’s horrified gaze, the zealot raised his cruel weapon and brought it smashing down a second time onto Juergen’s bloodied head.

The sight of such wanton brutality, even against a man he hated, incensed Emil. Alone, the rage that was kindled inside him might have been enough to hurl him upon the cloaked attacker. There was more, however, to spur him on. He could see more of Father Anton’s henchmen behind the one who had murdered Juergen, and Renate’s sister and mother struggling in their merciless grip. He could see Renate herself being dragged away by a pair of the sinister fanatics.

The cloaked murderer flinched in surprise as Emil came charging at him. Before the killer could even think to defend himself, Emil’s vengeful hands were at his throat, squeezing with furious force. The flailing fanatic dropped his cudgel and clawed at the choking grip, trying to remove the avenger’s hands. It was then Emil’s turn to receive a shock.

Though he was only inches away, Emil couldn’t see the fanatic’s visage beneath the shadow cast by the hood of his cloak. What he could see were the hands that scratched and clawed at his own – and they were horrible enough. To call them hands was almost a mockery, for they were more akin to monstrous paws, each digit thinner and longer than a proper finger, tipped in a sharp claw that was more talon than nail. The whole was covered in fur rather than hair, a reeking growth of brown fur that completed the bestial semblance.

Horrified, Emil loosened his grip, revolted by the nature of the thing he held. Displaying despicable agility, the cloaked creature squirmed free, springing away with an animalistic hop. He could feel its eyes glaring at him from the darkness beneath its hood.

Before Emil could nerve himself to confront the creature a second time, an explosion of pain slammed through his skull. As he crumpled to his knees, he saw an additional cloaked figure wielding a heavy cudgel. The thing had struck him from behind and while he watched it the creature brought the club slamming down a second time.

There was a brief flash of agony, the impact of his face crashing into the road, and then Emil’s world vanished in merciful oblivion.

The mercy of unconsciousness slipped away from Emil as awareness crept back into his skull. His first impression as he stirred was that of sound, the clamour of people moaning and crying. Next came the abominable smell, the stink of disease and human foulness, the obscene reek of the Black Death. Last of all, the haze cleared from his vision and he could see the manner of hell into which he had been thrust.

Emil knew he was in the temple, though the sanctuary bore only the most remote resemblance to the quiet place of contemplation and worship he had known all his life. The benches had been broken up, cobbled together into tiered racks onto which filthy pallets of straw and thatch had been lashed. Each crude bed bore its miserable inhabitant. Some of the wretches moved, moaning in their agony, struggling feebly against the disease that wracked their blotched, bubo-ridden bodies. Others were still, staring at the ceiling with sightless eyes, left to rot on their death beds.

The cloaked creatures scurried amidst the ghastly tableau, hoods drawn back to expose their verminous heads. Emil felt his stomach churn when he saw the elongated muzzles of the ratmen sniffing at the sick peasants. His mind reeled as he heard the things chittering to one another in a mocking semblance of speech. One of the monsters carried a sheet of skin upon which it made notations with an ink-stained claw. It was like watching his father examine the baron’s livestock, noting each fault and infirmity. The resemblance set raw terror pounding through his veins.

Trying to gain his feet, to flee the foul monsters, Emil appreciated for the first time that he was bound hand and foot. All he could do was writhe helplessly on the cold stone floor. His frantic efforts to free himself only succeeded in drawing the attention of the ratmen. One of their number, a pestiferous creature with diseased antlers sprouting from its head, grinned down at him with its fangs. It snarled something at its fellow monstrosities, then trotted off towards the altar.

A few moments later, the horned ratman was back. Emil could only stare in anguish at the man who accompanied the monster, all sympathy and friendship gone from the priest’s gaze.

‘Why?’ Emil demanded. Even now his mind struggled to understand the cleric’s horrifying transformation from saint to daemon.

Father Anton sighed and shook his head. ‘Even you, Emil? Even your faith is so poor that you do not see? Do you share the delusion with these others?’

‘The only delusion I see here is your madness!’ the youth spat. ‘Can you not see the horror around you?’

Anger flickered on the priest’s face, but when he spoke it was in the patient, indulgent manner of an adult trying to reason with a particularly stupid child. ‘Listen to me, Emil. Try to understand. What you think, what you believe, it is all wrong. It is the wantonness and sin inside you tainting your mind. It blinds your soul to what is real.’

Father Anton opened his arms, gesturing to include the whole of the temple. ‘Could a wise and benevolent god be oblivious to such suffering?’ The question left his lips with withering contempt. ‘No, it is impossible! Absurd to even contemplate! Yet small, faithless souls wail that the gods have abandoned mankind! Yes, Emil, even you doubt, but you will understand how wrong you are.

‘This plague is no natural sickness. It is from the divine, but it is not the curse of the gods.’ Father Anton shook his raised hand to emphasise the point. ‘This tribulation is their blessing, man’s redemption from his own damnation! What men have cursed as the plague is truly Sigmar’s cleansing flame, visited upon the land to purify it.’

‘You are mad,’ Emil shuddered.

The priest continued as though he hadn’t heard the outburst. ‘In their wickedness, men hide from this great test of their virtue. In their heart of hearts, they know the foulness with which they have stained their souls. They understand that they must perish in the cleansing fire, but rather than repent their evils they cling to them. As if evil might lend them the strength to oppose Mighty Sigmar!’

The statement brought a shrill, chittering laugh from the horned ratman standing beside Father Anton. The priest pointed at the monster. ‘Behold the visage of Sigmar’s servants! Cast in monstrous form, rendered in revolting majesty. Sent to teach men humility, to scour away their pride. Look upon their verminous visage and see the reflection of mankind’s soul! Such is how low we have fallen. Such is how despicable the state of our souls.’

Father Anton looked away from Emil, nodding his head to two of the ratmen. The creatures fell upon the peasant, raising him from the floor. Emil struggled in the clutch of their paws, his skin crawling beneath their loathsome clutch.

‘Do not resist,’ Father Anton said, his diseased countenance contorted in a grisly smile. ‘Those who are worthy – whose faith is unsullied by the corruption of this world – they will endure the test of Sigmar’s fire. They will emerge from the ordeal, cleansed of all doubt and fear. They will be reborn as a true vessel of Sigmar, even as I!’

Emil sobbed in horror as he appreciated what the priest intended. Not content to merely collect Helmstedt’s sick, Father Anton had taken it upon himself to help spread the disease, to visit his ghastly ‘cleansing’ upon the whole community, one household at a time. A new terror, greater than anything that had come before, now ravaged his mind. He made one last appeal to whatever humanity lingered in Father Anton.

‘Whatever you want,’ he declared. ‘Just release Renate.’ Emil groaned when the priest’s expression remained unchanged. ‘Renate Altstoetter!’ he shouted. ‘Your vermin abducted her tonight!’

The priest nodded sadly. ‘I thought you were different, Emil. I was so wrong. Even now you covet the delusions of flesh and sin.’ He beckoned to the ratmen holding the peasant. ‘Come, we will take him to the girl.’

‘For pity’s sake!’ Emil wailed as the ratmen carried him down the aisle. ‘Let her go!’

Father Anton stopped beside one of the pallets. He turned and faced Emil. ‘Only the virtuous warrant pity.’

‘Who are you to determine virtue?’ Emil raged at the madman.

‘I do not judge,’ the priest said. ‘I leave judgement to Great Sigmar.’ As he spoke, Father Anton looked down at the body sprawled across the pallet. Emil sobbed when he followed the cleric’s gaze and found himself looking upon Renate. The girl was lying on her back, arms and legs lashed to the wooden pallet. Her skin had a milky pallor to it where it wasn’t blotched with black buboes. Her face was contorted in pain, teeth clenched tight in a rictus of agony. In the blue depths of her eyes, however, there was only a chilling emptiness.

Renate was dead.

‘Her sins must have been many for Sigmar’s fire to consume her so swiftly,’ Father Anton declared, noting in only the most distant fashion the distraught weeping of his captive. Again he nodded to Emil’s monstrous guards. Grunting with effort, the ratmen lifted their burden and dumped him onto the pallet. Verminous fingers tied the peasant to the corpse, defying the peasant’s frantic efforts to spare himself this ultimate horror.

‘The fire will leave her dead flesh,’ Father Anton declared. ‘It will pass into you. If you are worthy, Sigmar will spare you.’

‘Please!’ Emil wailed. ‘Try to be sane!’

The priest shook his head sadly. ‘I will pray for you, Emil,’ he said before turning his back and withdrawing back down the aisle.

Emil wept as he tried to free himself from his bonds, clenching his eyes tight against the sight of Renate’s cold figure lying beside him.

Soon Emil could hear Father Anton’s voice booming out in a vitriolic sermon, declaiming the might of Sigmar and the divine purification of the world.

The priest was oblivious to the mocking titters that rose from the monsters his madness had adopted as messengers of the divine.

About The Author

C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He claims that he was a diseased servant of the Horned Rat long before his first story was ever published.

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Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-278-3

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