More great stories from the Age of Sigmar

SACROSANCT AND OTHER STORIES
Various authors

SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1
Various authors
Contains the novels The Gates of Azyr, War Storm, Ghal Maraz, Hammers of Sigmar, Wardens of the Everqueen and Black Rift

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 2
Various authors
Contains the novels Call of Archaon, Warbeast, Fury of Gork, Bladestorm, Mortarch of Night and Lord of Undeath

GODS AND MORTALS
Various authors

SCOURGE OF FATE
Robbie MacNiven

• HALLOWED KNIGHTS •
Josh Reynolds
Book 1: PLAGUE GARDEN
Book 2: BLACK PYRAMID

HAMILCAR: CHAMPION OF THE GODS
David Guymer

BLACKTALON: FIRST MARK
Andy Clark

THE RED FEAST
Gav Thorpe

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds

CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth

THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner

NEFERATA: MORTARCH OF BLOOD
David Annandale

OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
An Age of Sigmar novel

NAGASH: THE UNDYING KING
Josh Reynolds

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This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury, it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

RED SNOW

by
Nathan Long

Trollslayer Gotrek Gurnisson stared out into the snow-whipped twilight with his single eye as he marched alongside a shaggy camel up the rocky pass. ‘So,’ he growled. ‘When do the ogres come?’

Usman, the gaunt-cheeked Araby axe-man, choked and muttered a curse. Sudijar, one of the camel drivers, darted uneasy looks over his shoulder. Felix Jaeger did the same. He could see nothing but whirling snow. Of course the fall of flakes was so heavy that an ogre could have been standing three paces away from him and he would still have seen nothing, so that was little comfort.

Yashef, the captain of the caravan’s guards, a thick-set, stubble-chinned tribesman from the Howling Wastes, lifted an amulet to his lips, kissed it, then tucked it back into the depths of his heavy woollen coat. ‘If the mountain spirits have mercy upon us, they won’t,’ he said. ‘With luck we will reach Skabrand, sell our goods, and return to Pigbarter without incident.’

‘We better not,’ grunted Gotrek.

Little Noor, hunched on the back of his mountain pony with a long-gun in his lap, glared at him from under his enormous furred hat. ‘Why would you curse us like this, dwarf?’

‘I was promised a fight,’ said the Slayer. ‘The caravan master said there is always a fight.’

Usman snorted. ‘If all you wanted was a fight, you should have stayed at the Sentinels and spit in a hill raider’s eye. You’d have fighting aplenty then.’

‘I’ll fight you,’ said Harjit, a towering Ind swordsman with a beard to rival Gotrek’s and muscles to rival an orc’s. ‘I’ve never fought a dwarf before.’

Gotrek snorted dismissively. ‘I want a real fight. A final fight.’

‘I’ll give you a final fight!’ said Harjit, slapping his broad chest. ‘I killed an ogre once.’

‘Aye,’ muttered Usman. ‘With your breath.’

Harjit turned on him. ‘Take that back, eater of dung!’

‘I’m afraid you have picked the wrong path, dwarf,’ said Yashef, as Harjit and Usman traded insults. ‘We do not seek misfortune. We seek fortune.’

Aye, thought Felix Jaeger, the wrong path. But he bit his tongue. He knew if he spoke, he might say something he would regret, so he just pulled his old red Sudenland wool cloak tighter around his shoulders and hugged his arms. Though one wouldn’t know it by looking at Gotrek, who travelled bare-chested even as ice crusted the crimson crest that grew from his shaved, tattooed head, the foothills of the Mountains of Mourn were as cold as a Kislevite’s grave.

As far as Felix was concerned, Gotrek had been on the wrong path for half the world around. First it was chasing a monster known as the Whisperer of Hayesh, then that foolish madness in Khemri, and after that the trek into the dark lands in the service of Karak Azul, but always east, east and east again – always further and further from home. It seemed that after so many disappointments, Gotrek had become convinced that nothing in the Old World could kill him, and that his only chance of dying in battle, as a true slayer should, was to press on into the unknown. To this end, he had decided to travel to far Cathay and see what dangers lay in store for him there.

This fancy had led them to Pigbarter, a filthy little port city on the estuary of the River Ruin, where the people chewed a kind of nut that made their teeth black, and where, as its name implied, the primary currency was swine. There they had joined a hog merchant who was taking mating pairs of pigs up into the Howling Wastes to sell to the tribesmen there.

That journey had ended – and not a moment too soon as far as Felix was concerned – at the Sentinels, a pair of towering, wind-blasted rock formations that jutted up from the wastes like black castles. Between the bases of these basalt behemoths huddled a nameless trading post, a stopping point for the caravans that plied the ivory road from Barak Varr to Cathay and back again. Men from every point of the compass walked its dusty streets: squat moon-faced plainsmen, dark-skinned traders from Ind, fur-wrapped Kislevites, swaggering Cathayan bravos with heavy curved swords, and occasionally, looming over them all, massive ogres, guarding heavy laden rhinox or walking behind some prosperous merchant.

Tents and shacks and caves carved into the sides of the Sentinels housed merchants, money lenders, smugglers and blacksmiths, as well as hiring agencies for caravan guards, guides, scribes and interpreters. There were also inns and water sellers, and – Sigmar be praised – a bathhouse. Felix had spent nearly all the paltry pay he had received from the hog merchant there, trying to scrub away the smell of pig, and even after five baths he wasn’t sure he had entirely succeeded.

It was in that place of incessant wind that they took employment with Zayed al Mahrak, an old caravan master from Araby who told them he had travelled the ivory road thirty times. He was guiding a train of six merchants up into the Mountains of Mourn to Skabrand and needed guards willing to make the trip. Gotrek’s single eye had lit up when Zayed had warned them of the dangers they might face along the way, and had agreed to the old man’s price without hesitation, though it would hardly be enough for another bath at the end of the journey.

And so, here they were, trudging up a freezing pass into the snow-peaked mountains, with the wind howling like a daemon around them, nothing to look forward to but cold and danger for months to come, and still going east – still on the wrong path.

Felix sighed.

Usman heard him and raised an arched black eyebrow. ‘The dwarf is crazy,’ he said in Arabyan. ‘Crazier than Harjit. But you seem a sane man. Why do you follow him like this?’

Felix replied in the same language. He and Gotrek had picked it up – a little of it anyway – during their travels along the coast of the Gulf of Araby while hunting for the Whisperer. It was the common trading language of the east. ‘I made a vow. Gotrek seeks a great death in battle. I vowed to follow him until he found it, then record it in a poem.’

‘And when did you make this vow?’ asked Usman.

Felix frowned, trying to calculate. ‘Seven years ago? Eight? I’m not sure.’

Usman nodded and turned away again. ‘Perhaps you are not as sane as you look.’

Felix chuckled. ‘Perhaps not.’

A few paces ahead of them, Yashef lifted his head. ‘Did you hear that?’

Felix paused and strained his ears. All he could hear was the screaming wind. ‘Hear what?’

‘A cry,’ said Yashef. ‘A wail.’

‘I heard it,’ said Gotrek.

‘Just the wind, boss,’ said Noor.

Yashef shook his head. ‘I’ve done this trip many times. I know what the mountain winds sound like. This–’

A rumble from above made them all look up.

‘What–?’ Usman began, but he was interrupted by the thud of hooves coming from the front of the caravan.

They all turned. Old Zayed was galloping out of the night on his sturdy little pony, waving his hands at the merchants hunched on their wagons. ‘Run!’ he called. ‘Leave the carts! Avalanche! Run!’ The rumble from above nearly drowned out his words.

Yashef started pushing the other guards back down the path. ‘Move! Go!’

Felix needed no second warning. He turned and ran with the others as the camels and oxen backed and bellowed all around him, catching panic from the men.

‘Come on, Gotrek!’ he called over his shoulder.

The Slayer was looking up into the night, his big rune axe in his hand, as if wondering if he could fight an avalanche, but then he turned and trotted after the rest.

Swarming past him were the merchants and drivers and guards who had been on point. Felix could see them screaming, but the thunder of falling snow was so loud he couldn’t hear them. The ground shook with it, and Felix staggered like a drunk as he ran.

Then, with a final knee-buckling impact and a sound more felt than heard, it was over. The rumble stopped and a great cloud of fine snow billowed down the pass, enveloping them in a nearly opaque whiteness.

The guards and drivers and merchants picked themselves up from where they had fallen and looked towards the front of the caravan. There was nothing to see.

Old Zayed climbed stiffly down off his pony. ‘All here? Anyone missing?’

The merchants and guards all looked around and did a quick head count.

‘I don’t see Humayan the oil merchant,’ said one.

‘Nor his driver,’ said another.

Zayed grunted, then started forward, leading his pony. ‘We better see.’

Yashef and Gotrek followed him, but most of the others hesitated.

‘Is it safe?’ asked Sudijar.

‘Should be,’ said Zayed. ‘Just keep quiet.’

They slogged back up the path, edging around the frightened animals to the front of the column. A hill of snow rose before them, twice as tall as Felix. The back end of the first wagon stuck out of it. Felix could hear the muffled bawling of a buried ox within it. Of the missing merchant and driver there was no sign.

Old Zayed climbed up onto the back of the wagon and crawled up the wall of snow, looking further ahead. He sighed, then climbed back down.

‘Not as bad as it might have been,’ he said. ‘A day or two of digging, I hope.’ He nodded at the buried wagon. ‘Now, come. They may still be alive.’

The drivers and guards fetched the shovels that they had packed for just such an emergency, and quickly began digging the snow out from around the wagon. Gotrek fell in with a will, the instincts of his people taking over, and cleared twice what any of the men managed.

A little more than an hour later the wagon was uncovered, and the ox staggered to its feet, shaking off the last few feet of snow from its back. The merchant and his driver, however, were not so lucky. The diggers found them lying together, both clutching the ox’s reins in frozen death grips.

Old Zayed shook his head. ‘The fools. I told them to leave the wagon.’ He shrugged and turned away. ‘Make camp. We’ll bury them and start digging out in the–’

A call from the night made everyone turn and squint into the snow. Figures with torches were coming up behind the caravan, a crowd of short silhouettes following a tall, broad-shouldered shadow. The caravan guards drew their weapons. Gotrek and Felix did the same.

‘Halloo!’ came the call again. ‘Does anyone live? Is all well?’

Felix stared as the silhouettes and shadows resolved themselves into men. The smaller ones were natives of the hills – short, wiry, black-haired people, thickly bundled in sheepskin and furs and clutching tarred torches. The tall one was the last sort of person Felix expected to see out here at the end of the world – a ruddy-faced, white-haired priest of Sigmar, well past his prime.

Zayed and the others remained on guard despite the friendly words.

‘Who are you?’ growled Yashef. ‘And what do you want?’

The priest stopped, resting his gaunt frame on a long-hafted warhammer like it was a cane, as the tribesmen gathered behind him and stared uneasily at the caravaners. Felix noticed that, except for a few old men, the natives were all young – hardly more than boys.

‘I am Father Meinhart Gessler,’ wheezed the priest in horribly accented Arabyan. ‘Our village heard the rumble of the avalanche, and we came to see if anyone was hurt.’

Old Zayed squinted suspiciously at him. ‘How did you know anyone was in the pass?’

The priest smiled and put a hand on the shoulder of a young boy beside him. ‘Girkra here saw you earlier while he was hunting. And you should be glad he–’ He noticed the bodies of the merchant and the driver for the first time and his face fell. ‘Sigmar have mercy, are they…?’

Zayed nodded. ‘Dead. Buried by the snow.’

Father Gessler lowered his head. ‘I’m sorry. May Sigmar welcome them. I had hoped no one was caught.’ He looked up again. ‘If anyone else is hurt, the village would be honoured to aid them. In fact, they welcome you all to spend the night.’

Zayed and Yashef exchanged uncertain glances.

‘We have no money, holy man,’ Zayed said. ‘And you won’t get our goods without a fight.’

Father Gessler smiled. ‘I understand your suspicions, friends, but these people are not bandits, just simple mountain folk. They would not see you suffer while they were able to help. It is cold here in the pass, and dangerous. There are avalanches, and… and worse things. Now, come. We have hot food and sturdy walls. Please, accept our hospitality.’

Zayed hesitated again, but then a great gust of wind staggered him, and he shivered. ‘Aye. Better than staying here,’ he said. ‘Lead on, holy man.’

‘Sigmar be praised,’ said Father Gessler. ‘Then turn your wagons about and we’ll begin.’

As the caravan followed the tribesmen through a maze of rocky hills, Gotrek and Felix fell in step with Father Gessler, who appeared lost in thought as he limped along, using his warhammer as a walking stick.

‘What are these “worse things,” priest?’ the Slayer asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Gessler, looking up. He blinked, surprised as he took in Gotrek’s naked torso and red crest, then looked past him to Felix. ‘Sigmar! A dwarf! And an Old Worlder! What are you two doing out here?’

‘We might ask the same of you, father,’ said Felix. ‘There aren’t many worshippers of Sigmar on this side of the Worlds Edge Mountains.’

Father Gessler beamed. ‘That’s exactly why I’ve come – to bring the light of Sigmar into the dark lands. To burn away the shadows of ignorance and free these poor lost souls from the misery of their heathen existence.’

Felix struggled not to roll his eyes. From what he had observed, the ‘poor lost souls’ he had encountered in his journeys in the east were no more – and no less – miserable than those he remembered in the Empire.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ growled Gotrek. ‘What is the danger in the pass? Why does the village need sturdy walls?’

The priest cast a glance over his shoulder into the night, then turned back to them. ‘I did not wish to alarm your comrades, but there is a terrible monster that haunts these hills, and it is not safe to be outside the walls of the village while it is abroad.’

‘A monster?’ said Gotrek.

Felix groaned. The Slayer’s single eye was gleaming with an excitement he knew all too well. He had the sinking suspicion their short tenure as caravan guards was about to come to an end.

Usman had overheard. He laughed. ‘It seems you may get your fight after all, monster-hunter!’

‘I hope so,’ said Gotrek.

‘Not if I fight it first!’ said Harjit.

Father Gessler turned and gave Gotrek and Harjit a strange wide-eyed look, then collected himself and marched on. Felix smiled. Yes, priest, he thought. They’re mad. And you’ve welcomed them into your home. Good luck to you.

The hillmen’s village was built on sloping ground at the high end of a narrow valley between two hills. A palisade of raw pine trunks, sharpened to points at the tops, surrounded it, and heavy gates blocked the entrance. The huts within were just as sturdily built – circular split-log huts with clay plastered into every crack and cranny. Only one structure was different, a tiny, lopsided log shrine with a crudely made wooden hammer hanging over its door.

Father Gessler’s work, no doubt, thought Felix, and as he looked around he could see that some of the natives who had come out to stare at them wore little carved stone hammer amulets around their necks. Just as many, however, wore pendants of bone that had been carved to look like fangs.

The hillmen were shy but friendly. They showed the drivers where to leave their wagons and tie up their oxen, and a steaming pot of some drink that was both sweet and bitter was brought out so the caravaners could fill their cups. The only person who didn’t seem to welcome their presence was a toothless old hag, whose lack of teeth was compensated for by the necklace crowded with carved fangs she wore around her skinny neck. She squatted in the door of her hut and glared at the priest with milky eyes as he passed.

‘Do you bring more misfortune to our village, hammer fraud?’ she quavered. ‘They will steal our food and defile our daughters! And we cannot defend ourselves as you have killed all our warriors.’

‘Your warriors died fighting bravely as men should, witch,’ snapped the priest. ‘Not cowering in their huts as you would have them do.’

Felix looked around and saw the old woman was right. There were women of all ages, but as he had noticed of those who had accompanied the priest to the pass, the rest were old men and young boys, but very few men of fighting age.

‘No warriors died when we followed the old ways,’ the old woman sniffed.

‘No,’ sneered Father Gessler. ‘Only the weak and helpless and innocent died.’ He turned from her angrily and shook his head at Zayed and his men. ‘Forgive me, friends. It is to stamp out such craven superstitions that I am here. Now, I’m afraid I must appease Nyima at least in this. I cannot allow you to share the villagers’ huts, but you may set your tents here within the walls, and we will feed you well and tend to your injuries if you so require.’

Yashef frowned. ‘You welcome us in, but not out of the cold? That is poor hospitality.’

Gessler shrugged. ‘The women are frightened of outsiders, and have few men to protect them. Can you blame them if they wish to lock themselves in?’

Yashef was going to say something more, but Zayed waved him down. ‘We accept your offer, holy man. High walls and shelter from the wind are hospitality enough. Thank you.’

Gessler inclined his head. ‘You are most welcome. Sigmar bless you.’

Felix put his hand over his heart at the invocation, but he was the only one.

The rest of the night passed without incident, as did the next day, unless one counted shovelling snow from sun-up to sundown. Everyone worked, even the old men and boys of the village, while the women brought food and drink at regular intervals.

Felix was saddened to see how many of them wore widow’s black, even girls who looked too young to be brides. They were a shy, sombre bunch. Most of them only ducked their heads and flinched away when the merchants and guards made their inevitable advances, but there was one, a sharp-chinned beauty with flashing eyes, who brandished her knife and bared her teeth when big Harjit made a grab for her.

The other women pulled her away, hissing reprimands, and Old Zayed chastised Harjit, and that was the end of it, but Felix found himself watching the young widow for the rest of the day. It was always the bright sparks he liked, and this one was a flame. He noticed that she wore neither Sigmar’s hammer nor the stone fang over her black robes. A woman with a mind of her own, then. He liked that too.

Finally, as the sun vanished behind the hills, they all marched back to the village. Felix could not remember his back or arms ever aching more, but they had cleared the pass, and they would be able to get on their way again in the morning.

Only Gotrek was less than happy about that, and muttered about inconsiderate monsters all through the dinner of grilled mutton and onions that the village women laid out for them.

Late that night, Felix woke as Gotrek got to his feet on the other side of their tent.

‘Whuzzit?’ he mumbled, still dozy from sleep. ‘Summin’ goin’ on?’

‘Quiet, manling,’ said the slayer, and stepped closer to the tent flap, his rune axe in his hand.

Felix listened, but all he could hear was the wind – weaker here than in the pass, but still shrieking. Then he did hear something – a scream of terror, not far away, and directly after it, a deep, guttural roar.

‘Ha!’ barked Gotrek, and raced out of the tent.

Felix scrambled out of his bedroll, but he was barefoot and dressed only in leggings and shirt. He cursed, then stomped his feet down into his boots, snatched up his sword and ducked out into the night.

Heavy snow beat against his face as he peered around in the darkness. He couldn’t see Gotrek, or anything really, but he could hear raised voices to his left, and ran towards them.

He found Gotrek looking into one of the other tents while someone inside shouted at him.

‘Go back to sleep, curse you! We’re all safe here!’

Felix joined the slayer as he stepped to another tent.

‘Who screamed?’ asked Gotrek, sticking his head in.

Harjit’s voice came out of the dark of the tent. ‘No one screamed, dwarf. Did you scream, Ghazal?’ There was a pause. ‘Ghazal? Are you there? By the thousand gods, he’s gone!’

Gotrek cursed and looked around, then stumped quickly toward the privies, which were down the hill from the rest of the village. Felix jogged after him, shivering in the wind.

The door to the privies was open, and no one was within. Gotrek looked at the white ground in front of them. Dark blotches marred it, as did footprints – enormous footprints.

‘Blood,’ said Gotrek.

He and Felix followed the blotches and footprints around the back of the privies to the log palisade. There were great fresh gouges in the wood and beads of blood running down from above.

Felix swallowed. ‘So much for the safety of the village walls,’ he said.

Yashef, Harjit and Usman and a few of the others hurried up and joined them. Yashef cursed and kissed his amulet when he saw the blood and the tracks. ‘The monster.’

‘You did curse us, dwarf,’ said little Noor. ‘I knew it was bad luck to talk of looking for a fight.’

Gotrek strode back to the tents. ‘Get your gear. We’re going after it.’

‘You think we can save Ghazal?’ asked Yashef.

‘No,’ said Gotrek. ‘But we can kill what killed him.’

‘Who wants to wager that I find it first?’ boomed Harjit.

‘We can only hope,’ muttered Usman.

Felix hid a wry smile and hurried after Gotrek.

In the end, they couldn’t find it at all. By the time everyone had put their coats and cloaks on, the tracks outside the village wall were nearly obscured by the falling snow, and they were covered entirely once the search party got up into the hills, where the wind piled the snow in deep drifts.

They did, however, find something else.

On a bluff just above the village, they came upon an old standing stone, carved with crude runes. Attached to it was a set of rusting chains and manacles, placed so that whoever was locked into them would hang spread-eagled from the stone.

Gotrek turned to one of the village boys who had come with them as guides. ‘What are those for?’ he asked.

‘That…’ stammered the boy, then clutched the hammer pendant around his neck. ‘That is the old way.’

Gotrek growled in his throat as the men from the caravan cursed and made signs of warding.

Gotrek insisted on wandering around for another hour up in the heights, determined to find something, but in the end even he grew tired of pushing through snowdrifts and returned to the village.

They found Father Gessler and old Zayed waiting for them at the gate, their eyes bright with hope.

‘Did you save Ghazal?’ asked Zayed.

‘Did you kill the beast?’ asked Father Gessler.

‘No, Zayed,’ said Yashef. ‘I’m sorry. We couldn’t find him.’ He turned on the priest, his brow lowering. ‘You said we would be safe here, holy man! You said the walls would protect us!’

Gessler stepped back, putting his hands up. ‘Forgive me. They keep out everything else. And it rarely comes into the village. I prayed that it–’

‘It never came before,’ said a scratchy voice from behind them.

Felix and the others turned to see old Nyima limping out of the night, supported by a tall wooden staff, and glaring rheumily at Gessler.

‘Not until you angered it, priest,’ she said. ‘In the old days we would chain the weakest and most worthless to the sacred stone and the beast god would be satisfied with that. Our warriors lived to protect us from other dangers.’ She spit into the snow. ‘Now you have sent the warriors against it and it has killed them all. Worse, these foolish attacks have angered it, and it feeds solely upon us, taking whoever it wishes, and we have no one to protect us!’ She raised her staff and shook it. ‘We must go back to the old ways! Only a sacrifice will appease it!’

‘One does not appease evil!’ cried Gessler. ‘One destroys it! That is Sigmar’s way.’

‘Mother Nyima, Father Hammer,’ said a new voice. ‘Must we follow either way?’

Felix turned with the others and saw a village woman in widow’s black coming forward. It was the beautiful widow who had threatened Harjit with her knife.

‘My old mother used to tell me of a time before Nyima’s grandmother,’ she said. ‘When we would kill the beasts who preyed on us. Can we not return to that way?’

‘Yes!’ said Gessler, triumphant. ‘That is the way of Sigmar! That is what I have said!’

‘No!’ said the girl, loud enough to make the priest blink. ‘You sent our men against the beast to fight it face to face, as if it were an enemy, not kill it like a beast. None returned. We must trap it in a pit, as we kill wild rhinox and bears. Only then will we succeed!’

Gessler glared. ‘A coward’s way! A woman’s way! I sent your warriors against it clad in their faith in Sigmar! Had they truly believed, they would have triumphed, just as Sigmar triumphed against Blacktusk the Boar and Skaranorak the Dragon Ogre!’

‘Blasphemy!’ cried Nyima. She shook her finger at the girl. ‘Hold your tongue, Chela! It was when the hunter’s way failed that my grandmother first sacrificed to the beast-god, and it had not troubled us since, until this foreign fool showed up, with his hammer and his lies. The god will not trouble us again when the fraud leaves and we return to the way that works.’

At that, all three started shouting at once. The caravaners all looked at each other, uncomfortable. Felix felt it too. It is always awkward when one’s hosts fight.

Gotrek snorted and turned away. ‘I’m going to bed. I hope I can sleep through the noise.’

Felix and the others quickly followed behind him, leaving the priest, the witch and the young widow arguing in the snow.

‘Tomorrow can’t come soon enough,’ said Yashef.

The others grunted in agreement.

Felix woke once more that night, a strange sound waking him from an evil dream, and saw Gotrek sitting up in his bedroll too.

‘What was that?’ Felix asked.

‘The cry,’ said Gotrek. ‘The same we heard before the avalanche.’

It came again and Felix’s skin prickled. It was a high mournful sound, like the howl of a grieving wolf.

‘The beast god?’

Gotrek shook his head.

‘Then what?’

Gotrek shrugged and lay back down. ‘I don’t know. But it’s far from here. Go to sleep.’

The pass was buried in snow again when the caravan attempted to resume its trip the next morning. Another avalanche had come down, a little further up the trail this time, but just as deep.

Zayed and Yashef and the others cursed their various gods, then sighed and got to work digging out once again. There was nothing else to do. The only alternative was turning back, and there was no money in that, so they dug.

The day passed as the previous day had – endless hours of backbreaking work with the men toiling so hard that, though it remained bitterly cold, many of them stripped to the waist and steamed with sweat.

As they worked, Gotrek occasionally squinted up at the snowfields above the pass and muttered under his breath. Felix wondered what the Slayer was thinking, but after years of travelling with him, he knew better than to ask. Gotrek would speak his mind when he wanted to, not before.

Finally, just as night began to fall, the men cleared away the last of the snow, then headed back to the village as they had the day before, as travelling at night in the mountains was too dangerous. This time, however, Zayed demanded more from his hosts.

‘We stay in the huts tonight,’ he said to Father Gessler as they ate the meal that the village women had made for them.

The priest blanched. ‘But… but you mustn’t. The women won’t like it.’

‘I care not,’ said Zayed. ‘I’ll not have another man die to protect some savage’s modesty. Either they let us in, or we force our way in.’

‘You are the savages!’ snarled Nyima from her place by the fire. ‘You take advantage of us when we are weak.’

‘The men will keep their hands to themselves,’ said Yashef, looking around in a meaningful way. ‘Or they will answer to me, am I clear?’

There was considerably more argument after this, but in the end there was little Father Gessler or Nyima or the villagers could do. The men of the caravan were stronger and better armed. They would get in one way or another. The peaceful way was preferable. But not everybody wanted a cosy bed.

‘I will stay in a tent,’ said Gotrek.

Felix groaned as all the rest turned towards the Slayer. That meant he was staying in a tent too.

‘Let the beast god come,’ Gotrek said. ‘I’ll be ready.’

Father Gessler’s eyes widened at this, and Nyima laughed dismissively. Most of the guards rolled their eyes, but Harjit stood and slapped his powerful chest.

‘Then I will take a tent as well,’ he said. ‘I will not let the dwarf think he is the only one with courage.’

Zayed was about to complain, but Yashef stayed him with a hand. ‘You are brave indeed, Harjit,’ he said. ‘And we thank you.’

‘And the women of the village thank you,’ murmured Usman as he lit a long-stemmed pipe.

Felix shot the Arabyan a glance and they shared a smile. Nobody else seemed to have heard.

Late that night, Felix woke again to Gotrek getting to his feet.

‘The beast?’ he asked.

‘Something,’ said Gotrek, and pushed out of the tent.

Felix had slept in his clothes and boots this time, and only had to throw on his old red cloak before hurrying out after Gotrek. He blinked snowflakes out of his eyes. It was coming down even more thickly than the night before.

The Slayer padded quickly but quietly up the sloping hill through the village, pausing now and then to listen. As they neared the back wall, he motioned Felix to stop, and they both crouched down and looked ahead. Through the snow, something was climbing over the palisade, but it didn’t look or sound like any beast Felix had ever encountered.

It wheezed heavily, and paused at the top to catch its breath before throwing a leg over, then reached down and began to pull up a crude ladder.

Gotrek stood and strode forward. ‘What are you doing, priest?’

Father Gessler, for it was indeed he, gasped and dropped the ladder, then lost his balance and began to topple. Gotrek stepped under him and caught him as he fell, then set him roughly on the ground.

The priest looked up at Gotrek, frightened, as Felix joined them. ‘Herr Dwarf, Herr Jaeger, I can explain.’ He pushed himself awkwardly to his feet. ‘I…’

A curved horn dropped from his robes and thudded into the deep snow. It looked like the sort of thing cowherds in the Empire used to call their cows. Gotrek and Felix stared at it as Gessler gasped, then tried to grab it and hide it.

Felix might not have registered the significance of the horn had not Gessler reacted like a guilty child at its exposure, but suddenly he understood, and raised angry eyes to the priest. ‘I think I can guess the note this horn makes.’

‘A note to shake the mountains,’ growled the Slayer.

The priest let out a sudden sob and fell to his knees in the snow. ‘Forgive me, friends! Forgive me! I did it for the village. You must understand!’

‘I understand,’ said Gotrek. ‘I understand that you will die for this.’

‘What’s the noise?’ called Zayed’s voice behind them. ‘Have you slain the beast?’

‘No,’ said Felix, turning. ‘But we’ve caught a monster.’

Zayed and Yashef and some of the villagers were creeping warily up the hill from the huts, weapons in their hands. Old Nyima and Chela were among them.

Felix picked up the priest’s horn and held it out. ‘This is the cause of the avalanches. Father Gessler has been going out at night and blowing this where the snow is perched to fall. He’s the one who blocked the pass.’

‘What?’ barked Yashef. ‘The swine!’

‘Is this true?’ asked Chela.

‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, glaring at the priest. ‘The question is, why?’

Gessler buried his face in his hands. ‘Because I have failed! Because I had left the village defenceless against the beast!’ He looked up again, pleading with his eyes. ‘Don’t you see? I sent the men against the beast and they died! Now it preys on the women and children. I had to find a way to stop it!’

Nyima cackled like a hen.

Zayed stepped forward, trembling with rage. ‘So you thought you would feed it my men instead?’

‘No!’ cried Gessler. ‘No! I hoped you would kill it!’ He turned towards Gotrek and stretched out his hands. ‘And when I heard that you were a hunter of monsters, I thought perhaps Sigmar had guided my hand after all. You are an answer to a prayer!’

Gotrek sneered and spat in the snow in front of the priest. ‘You deserve no answered prayer, coward. You–’

A terrified scream and a guttural roar cut him off. Everyone looked up. The roar came again, from the direction of Harjit’s tent.

‘The god!’ cried Nyima.

‘The beast,’ gasped Gessler.

‘Come on,’ said Gotrek, and pounded down the hill through the falling snow, drawing his axe as he went.

Felix and Yashef followed, but they were the only ones, slipping on ice as they ran down through the village and the roaring got louder. They caught up with the Slayer as he stumped out into the open ground beyond the huts, trying to peer through the heavy scrim of flakes.

A scream cut short made Felix cringe, but the snow deadened the sound and made it hard to pinpoint.

‘Where is it?’ asked Yashef.

Gotrek nodded ahead as he continued forward. The skin walls of Harjit’s tent were billowing and shaking. Then an angry roar came from within and it ripped asunder, and something big burst out into the night. Felix and Yashef gasped and skidded to a halt. It was difficult to make out through the snowfall, but Felix could see that it was huge and strong and covered in white fur. He could also see that it carried an enormous, ice-crusted tree branch in one hand and dragged something dark and stiff and human behind it with the other: Harjit.

‘Sigmar!’ Felix choked. ‘What is it?’

‘The yhetee,’ breathed Yashef. ‘I didn’t think it truly existed.’

‘It won’t for long,’ said Gotrek, and sprinted forward, bellowing a savage war cry.

The great white beast turned at the noise and howled a response.

‘He’s mad,’ said Yashef, backing away. ‘The dwarf is mad.’

‘Aye,’ said Felix. ‘And so am I, it seems.’ And with that he charged after Gotrek towards the beast.

The thing dropped Harjit and sprang at them with astonishing speed, raising its club. A billowing fog of ice crystals spewed from its mouth as it roared, and Gotrek and Felix were caught in the blast. It was bitterly, impossibly cold – so cold Felix’s joints stiffened instantly and his fingers went numb. A rime of frost furred Gotrek’s red crest, and a glaze of ice glossed his naked shoulders.

The tree-branch ice-club came down. Felix was too stiff to move. He toppled rather than threw himself aside. Gotrek swung his rune axe to block the blow, the skin of ice that covered him splintering into a thousand glittering needles. The axe connected, shattering the ice-club and leaving the beast with nothing but a withered branch. Still it knocked Gotrek back a dozen feet and he crashed on his back in the snow.

The yhetee howled and bounded towards him again, tossing the branch aside and slashing with its huge claws. Gotrek rolled aside and swung behind him, nicking the yhetee’s forearm. It recoiled, barking with surprise, and Gotrek staggered to his feet.

‘What’s wrong!’ the Slayer growled at it. ‘Never had to fight for your dinner before?’

The yhetee lunged forward, bellowing another cloud of ice and swiping left and right. Gotrek ducked inside its reach as the frigid fog enveloped him, and chopped for its gut. It was too agile. It lurched aside and the axe took it in the leg instead, a long red gash that bled into its snowy fur.

Gotrek staggered stiffly away, his naked torso coated in an armour of ice. The enraged beast howled in pain and swept a backhand at him that exploded the Slayer’s frozen shell and sent him crashing into the remains of Harjit’s tent.

Felix forced his shivering limbs to move and pushed himself to his knees as the yhetee knuckled towards the tent. He had to distract it before it reached the Slayer.

But then, from the village came the sharp crack of a long-gun, and the yelling of men. The yhetee flinched as red blossomed on its shoulder, and looked towards the shouting.

Out of the driving snow came the caravan guards, Yashef and Usman waving scimitars in the lead, as little Noor knelt to one side, ramming another charge down the barrel of his gun.

All this was apparently too much for the yhetee. It backed away, growling, then snatched up Harjit, draped him over its shoulder, and bounded for the wall, clearing it in a single leap.

Felix breathed a sigh of relief as the caravaners ran up to him and helped him to his feet, but Gotrek was less pleased. He climbed out of the wreckage of the tent and glared around at them all with his single angry eye.

‘Fools,’ he rasped. ‘I would have killed it if you’d stayed away.’

‘Or it would have killed you,’ said Usman.

‘Grimnir willing,’ said Gotrek.

Yashef, seemingly over his earlier fright, knelt and pointed to dark patches in the snow. ‘You wounded it, but the snow is coming down too fast. Its trail will be covered in no time. We’ll end up walking in circles again like last night.’

‘No we won’t,’ said Gotrek, and started back up through the village. ‘I have an idea.’

Felix stared after him, uneasy. When the Slayer had an idea, things usually ended up with Felix fighting for his life.

As Gotrek and Felix and the others reached the top of the hill, the villagers and the merchants from the caravan were arguing over who would get to kill Father Gessler.

‘He trapped us here,’ Zayed was saying. ‘Deliberately, so that we would be eaten by this monster! I want to drag him behind my oxen all the way to Skabrand!’

‘No!’ cried Nyima, shaking a finger. ‘He has killed more of us than he has of you! He should be given to the wives of the slain warriors. They will make sacred fangs with his finger bones!’

Gessler knelt among them, head lowered, as the argument went back and forth above him, seemingly resigned to his fate, a broken man. Then Gotrek pushed through the crowd and grabbed him by the front of his robe.

‘Come on, priest,’ he growled, then dragged Gessler down the hill towards the gate.

Cries of dismay erupted at this, and the villagers and merchants jogged after the Slayer, shouting complaints.

‘What are you doing?’ called Zayed. ‘He is mine to kill! He owes me men and time!’

‘The vengeance should be ours!’ wailed Nyima. ‘Where are you taking him?’

Gotrek turned on them, glaring. ‘The priest meant to use us as bait. I will use him as bait. I will shackle him to the sacrifice rock and wait for the beast to come.’

Yashef laughed, delighted. ‘Yes! This is true justice. We kill the priest and the yhetee that slew our comrades! Good!’

The other guards cheered.

‘No!’ shrieked Nyima. ‘You must not kill the god! You will doom the village! You will destroy us all!’

‘Silence, crone!’ said Yashef. ‘We do you a favour. Come, dwarf. Let us go. Let the sport begin.’

But Gotrek shook his head. ‘This is my doom. I won’t let you mess it up. I go alone.’

Yashef and the other guards looked about to protest, but Zayed pushed through them. ‘Wait! Remember who pays you. I will not risk men on a fight not my own. We will be gone in the morning, with this mad village and its monster behind us. Forget the beast.’

Yashef and the others grumbled, but looked ready to obey. Gotrek, on the other hand, turned his cold hard eye on the caravan boss.

‘You think you can stop me?’ he rumbled.

Zayed shook his head. ‘I know better than to try and change a dwarf’s mind. You may go, and your pale friend too, and if you come back before we leave, you are welcome to continue with us. But we leave at dawn, with you or without you.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Gotrek, then turned and continued dragging Father Gessler down the hill. Felix sighed, then followed after him. The Slayer’s ‘pale friend’ would have much rather stayed behind and gone back to sleep, actually, but a vow was a vow.

The snowfall began to taper off as Felix and Gotrek led the silent Father Gessler up the winding trail that rose from the village to the sacrifice rock in the hills high above. It was still slow going trudging through the drifts, and Gessler fell several times. Felix hauled him to his feet each time, then shoved him ahead with more force than necessary. He wondered if all his years travelling with the Slayer had begun to make him hard-hearted. Gessler was a priest of Sigmar, and a fellow citizen of the Empire, and yet Felix found it difficult to muster any sympathy for him. He should have been pleading for Gotrek to show mercy, but he remained silent. He wondered why.

Gessler seemed a true believer in Sigmar, and Felix was certain that he didn’t have a spiteful bone in his body, yet despite that, he had sent all the young men of a village to their deaths, and had been prepared to sacrifice the lives of a score of strangers to repair the mistake. No, there was no spite in him, but he was a villain nonetheless – a blind zealot in the first case, who tried to make his converts follow the laws of his god without considering the realities they faced, and a duplicitous coward in the second case, who tried to trick innocent men into solving a deadly problem that he himself had caused.

The irony of it was that if Gessler had come to Gotrek openly, the Slayer would have accepted the challenge of the yhetee immediately, and the priest would have saved himself from committing his second crime – taking by guile what would have been freely given.

His true sin, Felix thought, was that he had caused the deaths of Humayan and his driver, and later Ghazal and Harjit, not to trick the other caravaners into fighting the beast, but to save himself from shame. He had been too embarrassed to ask for help, and so had instead stolen it, and killed four men in the process. That was why Felix remained silent.

Gessler too remained silent, plodding through the deep snow with his head down, his face a mask of dull misery, and not once looking around or making any move to escape. It was only when they had reached the rock and Gotrek was unfastening the bolts on the manacles that he finally spoke.

‘Slayer,’ he said. ‘Don’t let me die like this.’

Gotrek didn’t turn. ‘You don’t deserve mercy.’

‘And I don’t ask it,’ said Gessler. ‘I am ready to die for what I have done, but I wish to do it with my hammer in my hands, fighting the beast, as I should have before.’

‘You don’t deserve that either,’ said Gotrek.

‘I know it.’ Gessler hung his head. ‘I deserve nothing. I have turned from Sigmar, and I will not be welcome in his halls. Still…’ He shrugged and sighed and fell silent.

Gotrek paused, holding the open manacles in his hands. Felix wondered what he would do. Personally, he would have granted the old priest’s request without a second thought. As angry as he was at Gessler for what he had done, he would not begrudge a man the chance to die with dignity. The Slayer, however, was a stickler when it came to honour, and was not known for his mercy. Felix was tempted to speak up for the priest, but he knew better. Gotrek would only dig his heels in, so he kept his mouth shut and waited.

The Slayer remained silent for another moment, then grunted angrily and returned to the manacles. Gessler moaned, and Felix sighed, disappointed. But then, as Gotrek began turning another bolt, something near the sacrifice stone caught his eye. Felix followed the Slayer’s gaze. It was a deep print in the snow, and it seemed rimmed with something dark.

Gotrek crossed to it, then bent and touched the dark stain. He raised his eye. More deep prints continued up into the mountains, following a steep trail out of sight around a bend. The Slayer paused again, glaring into the white distance, then cursed and turned to Father Gessler.

‘Get up, priest,’ he said. ‘You are lucky I am impatient to meet my doom, or we would be waiting until the beast came for its dinner again.’

Gessler sobbed with relief. ‘Bless you, Slayer. I don’t know how to thank you.’

‘Then don’t,’ said Gotrek, and turned for the snowy track.

They followed the trail of wide-spaced prints for another hour up into the mountains while the wind tore at their backs and heavy clouds laboured across the sky above them like ponderous snow mammoths. They needed no torch to see them, for though the moons were lost behind the clouds, the night was white with their hidden glow and the bright snow that covered the rocky slopes.

Towards the end of the hour, the snow picked up again, but not yet enough to hide the trail. A little while after that, they come to a place where the tracks entered a narrow, high-walled ravine with a little ice-fringed stream trickling out of it.

It was darker in the ravine, and the floor of it was a slithering scatter of shale that crunched and slid with every step. Felix tensed at every rattle, afraid they would be heard, and that the yhetee would drop down on them from above. Father Gessler murmured prayers and wheezed like a bellows. Gotrek just stumped on, seemingly unconcerned.

Soon they came to a place where the ravine closed to a bottleneck. The high, shadowed walls framed a wider, brighter area beyond, where snowdrifts mounded on either side of the black stream, and the falling snow whirled in a glowing curtain of white.

Here Gotrek paused, then crept forward more quietly. Felix and Gessler followed behind him, peering uncertainly ahead.

‘Do you see it?’ Felix asked.

‘Aye,’ said Gotrek.

‘Where?’

‘Right in front of you.’

Felix stared again, then almost gasped when something within the swirling whiteness shifted and he realised he was looking at a massive shoulder, covered in shaggy white fur. The yhetee was in the centre of the open space, hunched and facing away from them, and yet so camouflaged in the surrounding whiteness that even as he looked at it, Felix lost its outline and found it hard to see it again.

As they got closer, he could hear a horrible crunching and tearing sound coming from the yhetee, and then a claw flashed up and something red and thin spun over the beast’s shoulder and thudded on the ground. Felix winced. Gessler gagged. It was a human leg, now just red bones and tendon strings.

‘Harjit,’ Felix murmured.

‘Its last meal,’ said Gotrek. He hefted his axe, then looked to Gessler. ‘Are you ready, priest?’

Gessler was staring at Harjit’s leg, his face pale. ‘I… I must pray,’ he said, and fell to his knees.

Gotrek grunted, disgusted, and continued toward the bottleneck. Felix followed after him, but the Slayer shook his head.

‘No, manling,’ he said. ‘There is no one to save here. There is nothing but a fight. Stay back and let those who wish to die go forward.’

Felix paused, then nodded. ‘Very well, Gotrek.’

He stopped and watched Gotrek go ahead, oddly conflicted. So often extenuating circumstances had forced Felix to fight at the Slayer’s side, usually because he’d die too if he didn’t. Now that he could let Gotrek go into a fight alone without any risk to himself or any danger to anyone else, it felt strangely wrong. It might also be the last time he saw the Slayer alive. That felt odd too, but he had taken his vow in anticipation of this day. He knew it would come eventually. All he had to do now was hold up his end of the bargain and watch the fight so that he could write it down faithfully later. After so many years of following him, he would not fail the Slayer in that.

As Gotrek edged through the bottleneck, the yhetee lifted its head and sniffed the wind, then growled and reached for a heavy tree branch as it looked around. It raised the tree branch to its mouth and bellowed a blast of icy breath at it. Thick frost crystals formed on the branch, enveloping it and turning it into a huge ice club in seconds.

Gotrek stepped out into the open area. ‘Over here, beast.’

The yhetee spun to face him, then raised its huge, ape-like arms over its head and shook the club, roaring a challenge. Gotrek stumped forward, unimpressed, and lowered his head between his powerful shoulders, preparing to charge.

But then, just as the Slayer was about to sprint forward, something flashed past Felix and burst out of the ravine into the open area. It was Father Gessler, his hammer raised high and his robes flapping.

‘Sigmar grant me strength!’ he cried as he splashed through the shallow stream and charged the beast.

The yhetee snarled and swiped at him with its icy club. Gessler blocked with his hammer but it was no good. The club was twice his weight. It struck him in the head and chest with the force of a battering ram, and sent him flying back to land, shattered and twisted, in a midden of snow-covered skulls and ribcages.

Felix crept forward to the mouth of the ravine to see if Gessler still lived. The priest’s skull was caved in. If he was alive, he was beyond Felix’s ability to save.

Gotrek barked a harsh laugh, then charged the yhetee, leaping the stream the priest had waded through. Felix made a face at the Slayer’s laugh. Gotrek was hard, even unkind at times, but he rarely made fun of those who died bravely. It seemed uncharacteristic for him to mock the priest’s death – pathetic as it was.

Dwarf and beast slammed together among the snowdrifts. Gotrek’s axe chipped a chunk of ice off the yhetee’s club as they connected, but the force of the impact drove the Slayer back. The beast roared, gusting a column of crystallising air at him. Gotrek dove aside, avoiding the blast, and rolled up by the yhetee’s leg. He slashed at it, but the beast was too quick. It pivoted and swung again with its club. Gotrek blocked with his rune axe but, like Father Gessler, hadn’t the weight to stand his ground. He flew back, lifted entirely off the ground, and slammed down hard on a boulder near the ice-rimmed stream.

Felix winced as the Slayer’s skull smacked against the rock and his axe flew from his fingers to splash into the stream. The yhetee leapt at him and smashed down with its club. Gotrek groggily rolled aside, and the icy club shattered and split against the boulder.

Gotrek crawled behind the beast, shaking his bloody head and groping for his axe, the haft of which was sticking up out of the shallow stream. The yhetee turned and blasted down at him again with its frigid breath as it tossed the broken branch aside. A glassy glaze formed on the Slayer’s skin, but worse, the stream froze solid. When Gotrek grabbed the haft of his rune axe, it wouldn’t budge. It was trapped in the ice.

He got a firmer grip on it, but the beast was on him again, and he had to dive away. It bounded after him, roaring and swiping at his back. Gotrek stopped short and it overshot him, tripping.

Gotrek veered and sprinted for Father Gessler’s body. The yhetee recovered and charged after him. The Slayer reached the priest and snatched the warhammer from the priest’s limp hands, then turned and swung it with all his might behind him.

The beast took the full force of the blow on its snout and reared up in pain. Gotrek followed through with a smash to its knee. The beast howled, its leg buckling. Gotrek dodged around it and ran for the stream.

As the beast lurched to its feet, Gotrek skidded to a stop at the stream and smashed at the ice with Gessler’s hammer, trying to free his axe. The beast dove at the Slayer’s back, its claws outstretched. Felix was afraid that would be it, but at the last second, Gotrek spun again, swinging the hammer.

The results weren’t quite so fortunate this time. The Slayer managed to knock the yhetee’s slashing claws aside, but its full weight hit him in the chest, knocking him flat, and they both crashed through the ice into the water. The beast pressed up, dripping, and pushed Gotrek down under the water.

Felix’s heart lurched as he realised what came next. The beast would blast Gotrek with its arctic breath and freeze him into the river, encasing him like a fly in amber. After that it would be able to kill him at its leisure.

It was an end too horrible to contemplate, and Felix found himself stepping forward and drawing his sword, all the while knowing he would be too late.

The beast inhaled as Felix hurried forward but, just as it was about to roar, Gotrek’s massive, muscled arm shot out of the stream and jammed the head of Gessler’s warhammer down its throat.

The beast rose up, gargling angrily, and tried to grab the haft of the hammer with its clumsy clawed hands. Gotrek erupted from the water beneath it, blowing like a walrus, then ducked between its legs and dove for his rune axe.

This time it ripped free as the beast spun and tore the hammer from its maw. Gotrek charged forward, splashing through the ice-choked stream, then leapt up onto the boulder and vaulted through the air, straight at the yhetee.

It blasted him with its ice breath full force, turning his front half frost-white in mid-air. But the Slayer was not to be slowed. He crashed into the beast’s chest like a frozen cannon ball and chopped down with his rune axe, the ice exploding from him in a glittering cloud.

The axe’s blade vanished into the fur of the yhetee’s chest and it toppled backward to splash down in the stream, thrashing and clawing weakly. Gotrek tore the axe free in a splatter of blood and hacked off its claws as it tore at him, then with a final mighty strike, lopped off its head.

The long, ape-like arms sank slowly into the water as life drained from its body and the icy stream ran red with its blood. Gotrek dropped to his knees on its massive chest and lowered his head as if in prayer.

Felix stepped out of hiding, concerned, and crossed to the Slayer. ‘Are you all right, Gotrek. Are you hurt?’

Gotrek shook his head. ‘East,’ he said morosely. ‘Further east.’

Felix nodded. The defeat of a great beast was always as much of a failure as it was a victory for the Slayer. He would have to continue to seek his doom further on.

As Gotrek cleaned his axe in the stream, Felix picked up Father Gessler’s hammer and crossed to the dead priest. For a moment he thought of bringing the body down the mountain and giving it a proper burial, but it seemed somehow more fitting for him to remain here among the skeletons of the men who he had sent up the mountain to meet their death. Instead he just laid the priest’s hammer on his shattered chest and folded his broken arms over it, then murmured a prayer to Sigmar to forgive him his folly and welcome him into his halls.

‘It’s almost dawn, manling,’ said Gotrek, behind him. ‘The caravan won’t wait.’

‘Aye, Gotrek,’ said Felix. He turned away to see the Slayer waiting for him, the yhetee’s huge head dangling by its hair from his massive left fist.

As they walked toward the mouth of the ravine, Felix turned to the Slayer, frowning. ‘Why did you laugh when Gessler died?’

‘He called to Sigmar to give him strength,’ said Gotrek. ‘Grungni and Grimnir give a dwarf all the strength he needs at birth. They would be insulted if he asked for more.’ He snorted. ‘That’s the trouble with humans, they want their gods to do everything for them.’

Old Nyima was squatting at the gate when Gotrek and Felix returned, and she ran wailing into the village as they approached.

‘Doomed! Doomed!’ she cried. ‘The curse of the god!’

The villagers and the caravaners crowded around in the pre-dawn light as Felix and the Slayer stopped in the centre of the cluster of huts. Some of them shrank back when they saw that Gotrek carried the yhetee’s head, but others murmured prayers of thanks. Gessler’s followers clutched the little hammers they wore around their necks.

‘Where is the hammer father?’ one asked.

‘He’s dead,’ said Felix.

‘And so is the beast,’ said Gotrek.

He tossed the heavy head and it rolled to a stop amongst them. The caravaners cheered, and Yashef gave Gotrek and Felix a big grin, but the villagers shied away from it – all but the young widow, Chela. She stepped forward and spat on the massive thing, then crossed to Gotrek and Felix and bowed before them.

‘Thank you for slaying it,’ she said. ‘Thank you for avenging my husband. Perhaps we will live in peace for a–’

Her words were interrupted by a crackle of flame and the smell of smoke. Everyone looked around. Father Gessler’s shoddy little Sigmarite shrine was on fire, and sparks from it were floating towards the huts. The thatch of one was already starting to smoulder.

The villagers shouted and began to run for water and ladders, but then Old Nyima appeared, pointing a clawed hand at the burning temple.

‘The curse of the god is upon us!’ she shrieked. ‘I told you we would be doomed!’ She turned her glare upon Gotrek and Felix, then drew a bone dagger and tottered towards them. ‘Kill the killers! Appease the god!’

Some of the villagers hesitated, frightened of her, but also of Gotrek’s axe. The fire continued to spread.

‘Stop, crone!’ snapped Chela, blocking Nyima’s way and grabbing her wrists. ‘The god is dead. We will feed it no more–’ She cut off abruptly, wrinkling her nose. ‘You reek of lamp oil! You set the fires!’

‘No! The god curses us!’ cried Nyima, struggling to free herself from the younger woman’s grip.

‘There is no curse!’ cried Chela. ‘Only an old woman trying to win back the power she has lost!’ She turned Nyima towards the huts. ‘Look what you have done! You burn us out of our homes for your pride!’

Nyima twisted her hand and cut Chela’s arm with her knife. The young widow let go, yelping, then knocked the wise woman down with a slap and kicked the knife from her hand.

‘Move the wagons away from the huts!’ called old Zayed. ‘Protect our cargo!’

The caravaners turned slowly away from the fight, seemingly reluctant to miss the spectacle, but then hurried away under Zayed’s curses and kicks. The villagers too seemed paralysed by the struggle, and stood watching with buckets unfilled.

Chela shouted at them. ‘Forget her! To the well! Put out the fires!’

Nyima scrambled up and grabbed a flaming branch from the thatch of one of the burning huts. She shook it at Chela, advancing on her. ‘And what if I set them, girl? I only do my duty as mouthpiece of the god. I obey his–’ She broke off with a scream as the flames suddenly spread to her oil-soaked hands and arms. ‘No! No! Put it out!’

She dropped the branch and backed away, waving her arms, but that only spread the flames, and they began to consume her clothes and hair.

Chela ran forward. ‘Nyima! Stop! Fall to the snow!’

But the old woman was beyond listening. She turned and ran, screaming in pain, and crashed through the burning door of one of the huts.

Chela turned to the villagers. ‘Someone help me! Help me get her out!’

Felix and Gotrek stepped forward, along with some of the others, but it was too late. The flaming roof of the hut caved in and Nyima’s shrieks died off in a piteous wail. Chela stopped and lowered her head, sighing, but then turned to the others. ‘We will mourn her later. Now we must put out the fire. Come. Quickly.’

After that there was a frenzy of snow shovelling and water carrying as the villagers, caravaners and Gotrek and Felix fought to keep the flames from spreading. In the end, all but the first two huts were saved, and Nyima’s charred remains were brought out and laid in state in the centre of the village.

Words were said over her by the elders, but afterwards Chela stood and faced the crowd. ‘Neither Nyima or the hammer father wished us ill, but they brought ill upon us by their blindness, and we allowed this by our blindness. Now, because of them, our men are dead, and there is no one to defend the village. If raiders come, if beasts come, we are finished.’ She sighed. ‘I have heard some say we must find another god to pray to, or seek shelter with another tribe.’ She shrugged. ‘I will stay here. The way will be hard, but it will be our own. We have followed for too long.’

The villagers murmured amongst themselves, some grumbling and glaring at her, some nodding in agreement. Some clutched their stone hammers and their bone teeth to their chests, others took them off and laid them on Nyima’s bier, then crossed to stand with Chela.

Felix grunted as he and Gotrek turned away to help the other caravaners ready the wagons to leave. Chela was a bright spark indeed, and he admired her courage, but he feared it wouldn’t be enough. Raiders, beasts, starvation, the bitter cold of the mountain winter, any one of them would snuff out the little undefended village like a candle falling into snow. The odds were a thousand to one that she and her followers would survive long enough for their boys to become men, and assume the duties of their dead fathers. Still, the girl had a certain something in her eyes that made him think it would be unwise to bet against her.

As the caravan set out up the pass once more, Yashef grinned at Gotrek. ‘So, you got your fight, dwarf. I hope now we can continue to Skabrand in peace.’

‘Aye,’ said Usman. ‘Surely that fight was real enough for you?’

‘Real enough, but not final enough,’ said Gotrek, staring ahead dully with his single eye. ‘East,’ he muttered as before. ‘Further east.’

Felix sighed and trudged on beside him – still on the wrong path.

THE ASSASSIN’S DILEMMA

by
David Earle

The first sentry died when a three-pointed shard of metal pierced his neck, delivering a lethal mix of filth and poisons into his bloodstream. The second sentry had a jagged-edged sword driven through his back and into his lungs. Blood burbled from his lips when the sword was withdrawn, and his legs gave way and carried him to the ground. When he came to the third sentry, Sneeq Foulblade simply sliced the manthing’s head off in a single stroke. The head flew up as the body collapsed, and the skaven assassin caught it on the point of his blade, regarding the confused expression on its face with a malicious mixture of amusement and disgust.

Sneeq’s gutter runners remained a respectful distance away from him. It was unusual for the assassin to sully his talents with pathetic targets such as these, and they recognised from the twitch of his tail and the red gleam in his eye that he was in a most foul mood. Eventually Qit Rin, the most senior of Sneeq’s underlings, stepped forward and coughed meaningfully.

‘Our way is clear,’ Sneeq snapped, answering the unspoken question. ‘We move to the ridge and scout the manthings’ camp. Hurry-scurry!’

His gutter runners obeyed with commendable haste, swarming up the hill towards the ridgeline. Sneeq glared at the sentry’s head one last time. With a snarl he ripped an eye from its socket and popped it into his mouth, then shook the head from his sword and made his ascent.

The Eshin killers were already crouched at the edge of the ridge. Sneeq shoved Skulk Fellpaw, his most expendable underling, out of his way and crept to the edge, taking in the camp below and picking out likely avenues of approach with a practiced eye.

The main body of the camp was situated at the entrance to a narrow valley. The manthing dwellings were laid out with monotonous uniformity, although nestled within the valley itself was a set of mismatched tents arranged in a more disorderly fashion. A pall of blue and grey smoke hung over this section of the camp, smelling of the black powder the manthings used in their war machines.

‘Foolish manthings,’ Qit Rin sneered, scratching irritably at the brass patch that covered his left eye. ‘Too stupid to watch their own backs, yes-yes.’

Sneeq agreed. The sentries they’d killed might have been enough to spot an army of any size, but against the stealth and cunning of Clan Eshin they had been useless. Better still, the humans had left the land between the ridge and the camp laughably unguarded. Had he wanted to, Sneeq knew that he could infiltrate the camp and complete his mission long before the manthings knew something was amiss.

Surely, Sneeq could steal into the camp without being detected. Of a certainty, he could slit his target’s throat before he felt the kiss of Sneeq’s blades. And without question, Sneeq would suffer a far kinder death if he cut his own throat immediately after. For if he did not, it was all but assured that he would be roasted alive for his success.

Not that Sneeq had known this when he had first arrived at the warren of Clan Famin. The clan’s Warlord, Glut, had hired the services of Clan Eshin to pave the way for an assault on the human encampment. Clan Famin had come to control a number of human agents in Nuln some time ago, following Grey Seer Thanquol’s disastrous assault on the city, and years later these spies had finally provided their masters with useful information.

‘The manthings have made a hidden lair in the mountains, to test their most deadly weapons. Terrible they are!’ Glut had said. The warlord had spoken around a hunk of meat torn from the shoulder of a still-living slave. Its pitiful squeaking had made it difficult to hear anything else, and Glut had snapped its neck in annoyance before he continued. ‘These new weapons must be ours. Yes! Yes! To Clan Skryre we will bring them, so that they may unlock their secrets for the good of the Skaven race!’

And so that they may pay you a great many warptokens, Sneeq had thought. ‘A brilliant plan indeed, massive one.’

‘To another did the Council first give this task,’ Glut had said. ‘Failed wretchedly, he has! The manthings are few in number, but entrenched behind their weapons they may yet defy us. Already, I fear they have sent for reinforcements. We must kill them all quick-quick or our chance will be lost!’

Sneeq had bowed his head, seeing at last why Glut had contacted Clan Eshin. ‘Who would you have me kill, most corpulent one?’

The warlord had reached behind his throne and tossed Sneeq a badly stained parchment. On it, Sneeq found a crude drawing of a white-furred manthing wearing strange goggles on its head.

‘That is the engineer who defies us,’ Glut said. ‘With him dead, the manthing weapons will fail and they will die-die swiftly beneath our blades.’

‘You will have his head before this night is ended, Warlord,’ Sneeq had assured him.

‘Excellent.’ Glut had licked his lips, and gestured for his stormvermin to bring him a fresh slave as Sneeq took his leave. He had not gotten far before another skaven stepped out of a side tunnel to block his way. Sneeq’s blades were halfway out of their scabbards before he fully took in the skaven’s appearance and stopped dead.

The skaven wore blue robes with a hood that masked his face in shadow, but left exposed the two great horns jutting from his skull. From within the robes, a green warpmist rose from the place where the skaven’s right eye should be, matching that which drifted around the stone top of the staff carried in the figure’s gnarled paws.

‘Most excellent Grey Seer Qik,’ Sneeq had said, bowing low to the ground. It never hurt to flatter someone who could kill you with a word. His clan’s spies had mentioned that the seer was here, although they’d been strangely reticent to explain why he was present. ‘I am honoured to stand before so powerful a prophet of the Horned Rat.’

‘Do not seek to flatter me, Foulblade,’ Qik had snarled. ‘Warlord Glut has sent you to kill the human engineer, has he not?’

Sneeq hesitated, but decided that revealing his assignment was less risky than displeasing the grey seer. ‘He has, great one.’

‘Just as I thought. Look at me, assassin.’

Sneeq had looked up, and even he had flinched at the sight before him. Qik had pulled back his hood, revealing hideous burns that covered the right half of his face. Flesh and muscle had been melted away, leaving the blackened bone beneath exposed. A rounded shard of warpstone had been situated within the empty socket, and it glowed with a terrible green fire that promised torment, suffering and death.

‘Not a pretty-pretty sight, is it?’ Qik had said. ‘A reminder from the Horned Rat to never underestimate the ingenuity of the manthings… or the treachery of so-called allies.’

The green eye glowed brighter then, and Sneeq had tensed, fearing that the seer might somehow be referring to him. ‘Allies, your magnificence?’

‘It was I who learned of the manthing camp, and I who requested troops from Glut to take it for the glory of the Horned Rat,’ Qik had said. ‘But he provided me with nothing but slaves and fodder! These so-called troops failed me utterly, and thanks to their cowardice I am deformed. Now Glut seeks to usurp my authority and take the manthing weapons for himself,’ Qik snarled. ‘But he shall not have them.’

The grey seer’s voice had grown deeper and more menacing as he spoke, and a nimbus of green fire began to play around his body as he stepped towards Sneeq. The assassin had leapt away, and found himself backed into a corner as the mad sorcerer approached.

‘Glut seeks to slay my enemy and complete my failure. He thinks he can take the credit for my inevitable victory,’ Qik had said. ‘He is wrong! You will spare the wretched engineer’s life, assassin, until I can flay-scrape the flesh from his bones myself. If you fail me in this, I will personally visit torments unending on your miserable flesh. And neither Glut, nor your clan, nor the Council itself will save you from my wrath!’

The flames had burned incandescent around Qik, and with a clap of thunder and a noxious burning odour, the grey seer was gone.

Sneeq shuddered as he recalled that encounter. He had spent several minutes crouched against the wall, emptying his musk glands and feverishly plotting how best he could preserve his life.

He had first thought to simply withdraw, and let Glut and Qik settle their differences without him. Unfortunately, it was all too likely that the petty warlord would seek revenge on Sneeq if the assassin abandoned his contract. Not that he feared the warlord, of course, but Glut still commanded hundreds of clanrats, and Sneeq’s allies in Skavenblight were very far away. It was simple prudence to at least appear to carry out his mission.

From his vantage point atop the valley’s eastern ridge, Sneeq looked down and bared his teeth at the fires blazing in the night. Stupid manthings, to come so far from their pathetic cities. Sneeq bit his tail in frustration. It was their fault he found himself in this mess.

‘What are your orders, Master Foulblade?’ Skulk Fellpaw asked nervously. The assassin started, then glared at his henchthing. The wretch scratched nervously at a hairless patch behind his ear, and kept casting sour glances over his shoulder at Qit Rin. Sneeq’s lieutenant faced the other direction, studiously paying no attention at all to their conversation.

‘Question me, do you? Perhaps you think I must be prodded to act, like some witless rat-ogre?’ Sneeq ran a claw down the blade of his sword, and bared his teeth at his lackey.

‘No, no, master!’ Skulk squeaked, holding up both paws and shaking his head. ‘Eager I am, is all, to shed the manthings’ blood!’

Sneeq almost laughed aloud at the weakling’s words. ‘Then you will have your chance. Minions!’ he cried. The other gutter runners stopped chuckling at Skulk’s misfortune and fell silent. ‘We were sent to seize the manthing weapons. Qit Rin, choose half of the team and lead them to the other side of the valley. Ensure Skulk Fellpaw goes with you,’ he said. ‘Stay far-far from their burrows! Signal when you are in place, and we will run-race to their weapons and take them for the warlord. Go! Go!’

The one-eyed skaven bowed with all proper obeisance. Qit Rin chittered at the rest of the gutter runners, and led half of them away down the slope. Skulk Fellpaw gave Sneeq a curious look as he passed, almost defiant. The assassin made a mental note to punish his lackey even more harshly at the next opportunity.

The gutter runners moved stealthily through the night, with only the most essential squeaks, and soon they were a black stain flowing into the broader shadows within the valley. Sneeq watched them go, certain of his plan’s success. By seizing the weapons himself, he could deliver them to Qik directly, bypassing the warlord. The seer could claim credit for the victory, and his protection would prevent Glut from making any reprisals before the assassin was safely back in his clan’s territory.

It was only a matter of time now. Of all of his underlings, Qit Rin was by far the most competent and deadly. Together they had slain the fearsome ogre brothers of Rotgut Peak, and beheaded the five clawleaders of the treacherous Clan Skitr. Their current task would be like taking a femur from a pup. Sneeq leaned out over the ridge, and eagerly awaited the signal of his inevitable triumph.

Werner Grunhelm took another pull from the flask of Kislevite vodka he kept in a fireproof canister on his belt, and ordered the volley gun crew to give the crank another three turns. The crew complied with aggrieved moans, still bitter at being roused from their tents for a live firing exercise in the middle of the night. On the last turn one of the crew lost his grip, causing the pawl to slip and launching the gun decks into a series of wild gyrations that nearly tore the weapon apart.

‘You incompetent scum!’ Grunhelm bellowed. The engineer pulled his repeater rifle from the holster on his back, and fired a volley into the air. ‘Get the damned mainspring wound properly, or I’ll lash you to the barrels as an example to the next damned crew!’

Seeing the way the reflected torchlight burned in the engineer’s eyes, the crew threw themselves back into turning the crank. Grunhelm shook his head, muttering curses under his breath. He’d never had such trouble with the crews back in Nuln, that much he was sure of.

The very thought of his home city was enough to make the engineer take another drink of vodka. Even now, his peers were drowning the progress of Imperial science in a tide of mediocrity and ignorance, while he had been relegated to this backwater campsite, trying to improve designs that had been obsolete a century ago while he kept the so-called crew from banging on the damned guns with large rocks.

At least they seemed competent enough to fire the guns in battle. The camp had been attacked by beastmen twice recently, and both times the guns had managed to see their attackers off before they could reach the camp proper. Despite this, most of the camp was in a state of near panic. Although they had more than enough supplies and ammunition to hold out until reinforcements arrived, the sheer number of the monsters had everyone worried.

There had been whispers in the camp that the attackers were not beastmen at all. Some dared to claim that they were skaven, vile ratmen that dwelled underneath the Empire in a twisted mockery of mankind. Most dismissed these claims as lunatic heresy, but the rat-like appearance of their foes had leant the idea a great deal of strength.

Grunhelm did his best to ignore the rumours and keep drinking. He’d been at the Battle of Nuln, twenty years ago, defending the College of Engineers from the monsters that had swarmed over the city. When he dreamed, he could still recall the red gleam in their eyes, and the sharp, yellowed incisors that had torn out old Luftig’s throat…

Grunhelm dismissed the memories with a long swig from his flask. ‘Right, lower the elevation, five degrees,’ he said. ‘Look sharp, damn you, we haven’t got all night.’

The crew adjusted the device quickly, and moved a respectful distance away from the weapon as Grunhelm inspected their work. Satisfied, the engineer nodded. ‘Good enough,’ he acknowledged. ‘You, light the taper. The rest of you, five steps back. Quickly now!’

One of the crewmen nervously put a torch to the fuse as Grunhelm and the others jogged a short distance away. In moments, the torch carrier joined them at a somewhat quicker pace. Behind him, the mainspring engaged and turned the barrels of the Helblaster in a lazy arc as the fuse burned down towards the gun.

A loud roar echoed through the valley as the Helblaster fired, sending up a bright plume of flame and smoke. Grunhelm grinned in spite of himself as he saw the barrels continue to turn, without any hint of slowing, warping or jamming.

‘Take a good look, you lot,’ he told the crew, as the second rack of barrels turned into place. ‘That’s what proper engineering looks like.’

Another roar of the volley gun, and another turn of the barrels. This time, as the barrels turned, Grunhelm thought he heard a high-pitched noise coming from the targeting range. It sounded like someone screaming in agony, but in too high a pitch: like a child, or a rat…

The barrels locked into place a final time, and the Helblaster discharged its final salvo. When the echoes died down, Grunhelm strained his ears, but could detect nothing.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ a crewman asked. Grunhelm silenced him with a swift motion of his fingers. After another ten heartbeats spent listening, Grunhelm drew his rifle and motioned for the crew to follow him. He’d only heard the cries for a few moments, he told himself. They couldn’t possibly be what he feared they were. Still, he had to be sure.

The engineer and his crew crept down the valley, keeping low to the ground. The deeper they went, the more sinister the shadows around them became. They walked over the shredded remains of target dummies, straw guts and wooden bones strewn across the landscape by the Helblaster’s fury.

Finally, after they’d almost reached the outer limits of the gun’s range, Grunhelm called a halt, feeling thoroughly relieved that they had found nothing. He took another drink from his flask, and was about to have the men return to the volley gun when one of the crewmen cried out.

‘Yeugh,’ he said, lifting his boot off the ground with a disgusted expression on his face. He had stepped in a puddle of black tar, of a consistency and odour both foul and unfamiliar to the engineer.

Grunhelm bent to make a closer inspection of the substance. As he did so, he caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, and spun sharply towards the eastern slope of the valley.

He saw nothing there, save shadows. A light breeze drifted through the valley, and Grunhelm watched the scrub along the valley’s slopes sway in response. Surely that was all the movement there was.

The engineer felt an uncomfortable heaviness in his stomach that had nothing to do with the vodka. ‘Back to the camp, all of you,’ he said.

‘Sir, what–’

‘Just move,’ Grunhelm snapped, casting one last wary glance along the valley walls as they turned to go. ‘And watch the shadows as you go, if you value your lives.’

Sneeq sat on a rock at the edge of the valley, gnawing his tail impatiently. Qit Rin’s signal was long overdue. The foolish vermin had likely run off at the first scent of danger. Admittedly, Sneeq had nearly done so himself when the manthings had fired their weapons. Only the knowledge of a certain, painful death should he do so had kept him in place.

The assassin spotted movement below, and was about to take the figure in the neck with a throwing star before he recognised Skulk Fellpaw. The diminutive skaven made his way quickly up the side of the valley, carrying a lumpy parcel under one arm. As he approached, Sneeq noticed that the gutter runner smelled strongly of black powder and the musk of fear.

‘Report now!’ Sneeq said. ‘Where is Qit Rin’s signal? Why does he delay my triumph? Speak!’

‘Forgive me, most murderous master, but Qit Rin cannot signal anyone. The humans somehow discovered our approach, and…’ Skulk opened his bag and let its contents spill out onto the ground. Sneeq recognised Qit Rin’s brass eyepatch within the puddle of black slime, as well as a round lead ball that he suspected was the cause of his minion’s demise.

Sneeq let out a loud squeak of frustration, snatched up Qit Rin’s eyepatch and hurled it back down the valley. He had never trusted the stupid vermin, and now his incompetence had cost him many warptokens worth of minions. No, worse than that! With only half a team of gutter runners left, he could not hope to carry the manthing weapons back to the warren before they were missed.

‘What should we do now, Master Foulblade?’ Skulk asked. Sneeq fixed him with a baleful glare, and considered killing the impudent skaven on the spot. But no, he might need all of his remaining gutter runners if he was to have any hope of success.

‘The cannons, where are the manthings that fired them?’ he asked. Skulk pointed back into the valley, between the weapons and the manthing tents.

Sneeq reached into his cloak and pulled out a warpstone-lensed telescope. He’d acquired the device along with the head of a Clan Skryre warlock who had tried to cheat him on a fulfilled contract. Looking through the tube, Sneeq saw the valley floor through the green haze of the warp lenses. Each living thing was picked out in a vibrant white outline, making them as obvious as if he could scent them himself.

He could see a strangely-dressed human walking out of the valley and towards a large tent, followed at a discreet distance by what he assumed were crew slaves. They were moving without haste; presumably they believed that all of their attackers were dead. The human in the lead wore heavy goggles, and carried a variety of small mechanical devices that reminded Sneeq of the trinkets that the warlock had carried around with him. With an adjustment of the lenses, Sneeq could pick out the manthing’s white facial fur, and recognised his target from the crude drawing Glut had presented him with.

The assassin’s eyes began to sting and water, as they always did when he looked through the telescope too long. He saw the human’s features blur through his tears, and felt his tail stiffen at the sight.

The assassin stuffed the telescope back into his cloak and turned to Skulk. ‘If you wish me to spare your miserable life, Fellpaw, find a white-furred sentrything and bring me its head.’

Skulk nodded quickly, obscenely pleased to be forgiven so easily. ‘And what will you do, most merciful of masters?’

Sneeq bared his fangs in a wicked grin. ‘I will take the rest of the gutter runners into the manthing camp,’ he said. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a pup. Now begone!’

Skulk scuttled away with gratifying haste. Sneeq gathered the remaining gutter runners, and soon they were in the camp, running swiftly from tent to tent. The humans had retired for the night, although Sneeq still kept his minions at a prudent distance from the large tent that the engineer and his crew slaves had entered. He had no desire to bring his gutter runners anywhere near the engineer, lest they slay him before he could order otherwise.

As he passed each tent, Sneeq would creep up to the entrance, listening and sniffing for the telltale signs of an occupied burrow. Those he discovered to be empty he searched, looking for the specific devices that would identify his goal.

The first three tents he looked into lacked anything of interest. The fourth was a provisions tent, containing bread and meat and the rotted, yellow milk that the manthings seemed to enjoy so much. Sneeq stuffed a handful of the meat into his mouth and moved on.

Sneeq found what he’d been looking for in the fifth tent. This one was set apart from the others, and contained a variety of odd trinkets wrought in metal and wood, many of which moved seemingly of their own volition. A voluminous shelf contained heaps of papers covered in harsh scribblings. As Sneeq watched, what looked like a bird made of sheet metal craned its head back and let out a thin, high-pitched wisp of steam through a slit in its neck.

The assassin doused the torch burning just outside the tent’s entrance. ‘Stay on guard!’ Sneeq ordered his gutter runners, and he entered the tent, closing the flap behind him before he began rummaging through the engineer’s possessions, searching for anything a manthing engineer might conceivably wear. Glut had given Sneeq a description of the engineer, but he had likely never seen the human in person, relying instead on second-hand descriptions from spies in Qik’s surviving forces. It was unlikely that the warlord would recognise a fake.

Sneeq gnashed his teeth, and restrained himself from simply smashing the manthing’s possessions. He hated the deception, mainly because it was unlikely to fool Glut for long. Still, he only had to deceive the warlord long enough to be far away when the truth was discovered. And it wouldn’t really be his fault if Glut accepted the wrong head. Clearly the warlord should have provided a better description.

Sneeq opened a large drawer and began tossing its contents onto the floor. He suspected he would have little time to find what he needed.

Grunhelm sat in one corner of the common tent, nursing his flask carefully and poring over his notebook of the day’s tests. The crewmen had opted to sit on the opposite side of the tent. Grunhelm suspected they thought he’d gone somewhat mad after the attacks, which suited him fine. Generally the engineer preferred to avoid company, having found no one in the camp who could speak intelligently on any subject of interest to him. Granted, it had mostly been the same in Nuln, but there at least he could take some satisfaction from stumping his so-called learned colleagues.

The tent was crowded with off-shift sentries, nursing mugs of ale and a sense of companionship before they had to go and relieve the men currently watching the perimeter. Even with artillery-deadened ears, Grunhelm could hear the drift the conversations were taking:

I saw one of the beasts go running into a great rathole… One that tried to stab me had whiskers and a tail, on my oath… Heard they almost sacked Nuln years back, but the Countess’s men hushed it up…

That last came up more often than Grunhelm cared to hear. If he’d wished, he could have told the men a great deal more about that battle than they would want to hear. But then, that was the last thing he would ever wish to talk about.

Skaven, he thought. Why did it have to be skaven?

He’d never understood before why the ratmen’s invasion of Nuln had been forgotten, chalked up to a mutant uprising supported by beastmen. He had even, for a time, spoken out about the matter publicly, until a senior professor had taken him aside and told him in no uncertain terms that any further talk of skaven would land him in one of the Countess’s dungeons.

‘The people of the Empire have enough to fear,’ the old lecturer had told him. ‘Elven reavers, orcish incursions, marauding beastmen, not to mention the Northern barbarians. Talk of rats gnawing away at the Empire’s foundations can only lead to panic and civil unrest.’

‘But we all saw the damned things!’ Grunhelm had protested.

The professor had smiled rather sadly at that. ‘We saw what the Countess says we saw. Or else,’ he added.

Grunhelm had understood the words well enough, but never the reasoning behind them. And so he had lost himself in his work, and when that hadn’t been enough he had lost himself in drink as well, until he’d finally caused enough trouble that the senior faculty had sent him out here, where he could rot without bringing undue shame upon the college. Only fitting, he supposed, that the skaven had followed him here.

The engineer stood up on unsteady legs and left the tent. He’d had enough of bad memories for one evening. Best to return to his tent and wait for morning to come.

Skulk Fellpaw crept into the camp at last. In one paw he carried his notched and rusty blade; in the other, a dirty sack containing the head of one of the manthing sentries. None of the sentries they’d killed had possessed the correct colour fur, and he’d finally been forced to kill another one to carry out Sneeq’s orders.

At the thought of the assassin, Skulk’s fur bristled. His master had neglected his obvious talents for years, passing him over for reward and advancement time and time again. Granted, he had suffered more than most skaven from the jealousy of his rivals. He had repeatedly been given tasks that would be certain death to any lesser being. But he had survived! Wasn’t that a truer measure of his prowess than success?

Warlord Glut, at least, had seen his potential. The warlord had called him into his thronechamber shortly before the mission. On first seeing the obese skaven, Skulk had feared that he would simply be devoured alive. Instead, Glut had shared with him a most surprising revelation.

‘Your master is a traitor!’ Glut had snarled, spraying chunks of slave through his teeth. ‘He seeks to abandon his assigned task to save his own worthless hide. He is a coward and a dishonour to his clan!’

Skulk had barely believed his ears. Despite his hatred of the assassin, Skulk had to grudgingly admit that he had never failed to complete a contract.

‘My spies have told me of you, Fellpaw,’ Glut had continued. ‘Foulblade has treated you as poorly as he seeks to treat me. Watch him close-close! Ensure the manthing dies, and I will see that you gain the prestige you so wrongfully lack.’

How could Skulk refuse such an offer?

Of course, he’d seen no reason to move against the assassin if he didn’t have to. It had been a stroke of luck that he’d led Qit Rin’s team into the range of the manthings’ weapons, spoiling Sneeq’s attempt to avoid the engineer. Unfortunately the damnable assassin had thought of another way to wriggle out of the contract with Glut.

Skulk idly hefted the sentry’s head, wondering what he should do next. As he did so, he looked to his left and nearly squeaked out loud in alarm. It was the manthing engineer!

The gutter runner froze in alarm, but he needn’t have worried. The engineer was heading away from him. Skulk traced the human’s path with his eyes, and saw at the end of it a darkened tent. His keen eyes picked out the shrouded forms of gutter runners pacing around the tent, keeping watch.

Skulk’s face twisted in a feral grin. He tossed the head to the ground. This was perfect. Most likely one of the other gutter runners would kill the manthing, and Skulk could take the credit. Or if the manthing escaped somehow, Skulk could kill it after the other gutter runners left. Either way, Sneeq would know nothing until it was too late. The gutter runner drew his second blade. He was going to enjoy this.

Grunhelm swayed through the camp, and the flames from the torches around him swayed as well, casting menacing shadows on the canvas. In Grunhelm’s mind, the shadows took the shape of sneaking figures creeping through the camp. He imagined shining red eyes staring at his back, and high-pitched, chittering laughter coming from either side.

Grunhelm fumbled at his belt for his flask, which slipped through his fingers and tumbled into the grass at his feet. The engineer knelt to retrieve it, and as he grasped it he looked up towards his tent, frowning as he saw that the torch at the entrance to it had gone out. His eyes narrowed. The torch had had hours left to burn.

As he peered at his tent, he thought he saw the shadows around it writhing, swirls of true black rippling through the darkness. A soft breeze drifted towards him, bringing a faint yet familiar musk to the engineer’s nostrils. The scent reminded him of burning buildings and cracked, yellowed incisors.

Grunhelm felt a cold shiver run up both arms. The vodka seemed to evaporate with each short breath he took, leaving his mind clear. The skaven were here. There was no question of it. He considered his options. He could try to fight them, and be killed. He could call for help, and be killed before any arrived. He could sneak away and gather the soldiers, and be ignored. After all, how could ignorant beastmen breach the camp’s perimeter so completely?

The engineer looked at the barrels of gunpowder sitting next to his tent. Slowly, he unslung his repeater rifle from his back, took careful aim, and exercised his fourth option.

Inside the tent, Sneeq was lifted off his feet and thrown to the ground. The assassin blinked, shook his head in a futile attempt to stop his ears from ringing, and scrambled to his feet.

The contents of the tent were ruined. Half of it was smouldering, and most of the devices inside had been shattered or damaged. Through the ringing, Sneeq could hear manthings shouting outside, and steel clashing on steel. The assassin had to gnaw on his tail for a moment to get his rage under control. His wretched henchthings had failed him again!

Once he’d somewhat calmed himself, Sneeq moved to the edge of the tent, cut a small hole in the fabric, and peered outside. His gutter runners, or most likely what was left of them, had gathered together in a small group, blades drawn. Manthing soldiers were charging forward, shouting and summoning reinforcements from all corners of the camp.

Sneeq quickly calculated the odds against them and decided to leave his incompetent servants to their fate. They deserved nothing less. Sneeq moved to the other side of the tent, cut his way out, and quickly distanced himself from the melee.

The assassin darted through the tents of the camp, his eyes constantly scanning for soldiers. As he passed one tent, a group of three soldiers ran around it, swords drawn. The assassin hissed a curse, reaching into his cloak and pulling out a throwing star that he flung into the chest of the lead human. The manthing clutched at the star and collapsed, green froth bubbling from his lips.

The assassin drew his blades and raised them in a guard just as the second manthing brought his sword down in an overhead arc. Sneeq absorbed the force of the blow on both blades, then twisted to the left, using the sword in his right paw to pin the manthing’s blade to the ground. He ran his second blade through the human’s stomach, and when its sword went slack he drove the first blade up under its jaw and into its brain.

The third soldier approached more cautiously, testing Sneeq’s defences with a series of feints. Ordinarily Sneeq would enjoy taking his time cutting the manthing to pieces, but he needed to move quickly. The assassin drove at his opponent with one, two, three quick strikes, then curled his tail around the human’s ankle and tugged. The human’s mouth dropped in surprise as he fell onto his back. Sneeq ran forward, thrust a blade into the manthing’s chest, and continued his flight.

Sneeq had reached the edge of the camp and was just about to escape into the night when a loud shot rang out, and the ground in front of him erupted in a spray of dust. Sneeq instantly fell into a low crouch, a poisoned throwing star in his hand, and looked around wildly until he spotted the engineer. The human was levelling a strange gun at Sneeq. It reminded him of a jezzail, but was much shorter and had six smoking barrels arranged in a ring. Sneeq felt his stomach sink when he noticed that only five of the barrels were smoking.

‘Stay right where you are, abomination,’ the engineer said. ‘Move one muscle, even twitch your tail, and I’ll kill you where you stand.’

Sneeq snarled. His command of the human tongue was imperfect at best. ‘Go away, stupid manthing,’ he said. ‘I have no wish to kill-slay you.’

The engineer cocked his head. ‘You can talk? Then you can understand that I’m not letting you go.’ The human’s lips spread in a wide grin. ‘They’re going to listen to me this time.’

The human didn’t move. Sneeq could think of fifteen different ways to kill the manthing, but could think of no attack that would disarm him without significant risk to himself.

Sneeq was still running through his options when the engineer froze in place, his eyes bulging from their sockets. A moment later, the end of a notched blade burst out of the manthing’s chest, and the engineer collapsed onto the ground. Behind it stood Skulk Fellpaw, holding his bloodied blade and grinning smugly at Sneeq’s shocked expression.

‘Should have obeyed the warlord’s orders, “master”,’ Skulk sniggered. ‘Now you die-die!’

Sneeq dropped his throwing star, threw his head back and screamed, his voice a shrill expression of his frustration. He could feel the killing rage descend, and let it fuel his wiry muscles as he charged at the treacherous gutter runner.

Skulk leapt for the engineer’s dropped rifle, picked it up, and took aim at the assassin. Sneeq didn’t deviate from his path in the slightest. He was too angry to care. Skulk pulled the trigger, and the click as the gun fired on an empty chamber was deafening in the night. Skulk had time for one surprised squeak before Sneeq was on him, twin blades lashing out and carving the gutter runner’s body into chunks of wet meat.

Eventually the red faded from his vision, and Sneeq stood panting over Skulk’s remains, gasping for air. In his exhaustion, he remembered what the engineer’s death meant for him and felt his musk glands contract painfully as they emptied themselves. He wanted to simply curl up into a ball and tremble for a while, but he could hear shouts coming from the human camp, and knew that he didn’t have much time. Even worse, the humans would most likely scour the surrounding area searching for him, and he would have to return to the Famin warren if he wanted to avoid detection.

Sneeq used one of his blades to quickly sever the engineer’s head from its body, and used the goggles to strap it to his belt. The head’s mouth gaped open, and as he looked at it, a scheme suddenly blazed in Sneeq’s brain. It was risky, and would leave him horribly exposed if things went wrong. Still, he was an assassin of Clan Eshin, and death held no fear for him. He told himself that many times as he scurried back to the warren.

Sneeq strode back into Warlord Glut’s thronechamber, confident that he looked every inch the deadly assassin that all Eshin adepts aspired to be. Most of Clan Famin’s clanrats had assembled in the chamber, and Sneeq would not show cowardice in front of a lesser clan. He hoped that no one in the chamber noticed his twitching tail, or his efforts to keep himself from squirting the musk of fear.

Warlord Glut sat on his throne, picking his teeth with a rib and feigning disinterest in the approaching assassin. Grey Seer Qik stood next to the warlord’s throne, watching Sneeq with considerably more interest. Sneeq could see the green glint of the seer’s warpstone eye tracking him from within the folds of his hood.

‘Welcome back, Sneeq Foulblade,’ Glut said, flicking a piece of meat from his incisors. ‘I trust you have returned to report complete success, yes-yes?’

‘I have, most massive one,’ Sneeq said. Getting down on one knee, he produced the engineer’s head, and held it out in the palms of both paws. ‘Proof of the manthing’s death, I have.’

‘Let me see it!’ Glut cried, all pretence of nonchalance gone. He rose from his throne and waddled down to Sneeq, snatching the head from his paws and holding it up where Qik could see it. ‘Confirm, most potent seer,’ Glut said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, ‘that this is the manthing who gave you so much trouble?’

Qik paused for a long moment before answering. His hands twisted his staff in frustration. ‘That is the one, your corpulence,’ the seer said.

‘Excellent!’ Glut said, clambering back up to his throne. Without turning, he said, ‘You have done your duty well, assassin, and will be rewarded as such.’

Sneeq nodded, ignoring the slight. He had to maintain his composure. If Glut was a particularly paranoid skaven, his plan might yet fall apart. Every hair on the assassin’s body seemed to stand on end as he awaited the warlord’s next move.

Glut raised the head where all of the assembled skaven could see it. He licked his lips, swallowed the engineer’s head in one massive gulp, and belched contentedly. Sneeq allowed his muscles to relax, but kept himself perfectly still. He must not be seen to move in the next few moments.

‘My worthy minions!’ Glut bellowed. ‘Now that my enemy is dead, I, the mighty Glut, shall lead you all to inevitable victory!’ The assembled clanrats let loose with a high-pitched cheer for their leader. The green warpfire within Qik’s hood grew brighter, which Sneeq did his best to ignore.

‘We will strike immediately, drive the manthings from their camp, and take their weapons for ourselves! Much riches will be brought to our clan, and the manthings will know to fear the invincible–’

Glut belched, interrupting his own speech. Somewhere in the crowd a skaven tittered in the sudden silence. Glut belched again, and grasped his ample stomach with his paws. The warlord let out a long, low moan that rose to a piercing cry of agony as green foam began pouring from his mouth. Slowly, painfully, the warlord collapsed to the floor of his thronechamber. He twitched a few times, and then lay still.

Through all of this, Sneeq had not even flicked his tail. Now he looked at the grey seer, and once Qik’s stunned gaze fell on him, he subtly twitched his whiskers towards Glut’s corpse.

‘Treachery!’ Qik shrieked, catching on at once. ‘Even in death, the manthing has slain your warlord! But we will not permit this insult to the skaven race to go unchallenged! Rally your troops, and I will lead you as we swift-slay the cowardly humans!’

The clanrats scattered quickly, their leaders rushing to gather their strength and prove themselves worthy of taking Glut’s place. In the confusion, none of the skaven noticed the grey seer approach Sneeq. ‘Impressive work, assassin,’ Qik muttered.

Sneeq nodded, keeping his expression humble. ‘A poisoned star is secreted in the manthing’s jaw,’ he said. ‘You will need to remove it quickly, before the poison eats through his flesh.’

‘My slaves will see to it,’ Qik said. ‘And I will see that your clan receives a… suitable share of Clan Skryre’s payment for the manthing weapons.’

Sneeq bowed deeply, and watched the seer as he departed to take command of the mustering army. He then rose to his feet and began making his way quickly to the underway’s entrance. Sneeq fingered the bundle of scrolls he’d taken from the engineer’s tent and grinned wickedly to himself. He was certain he would get a most substantial portion of Clan Skryre’s payment indeed.

REST ETERNAL

by
Anthony Reynolds

The knight’s heavy plate armour, once flawless, was now dented and worn. Once it had shone like a mirror; now it was dull with grime and wear, and awash with fresh blood.

Some of that blood was his, but most of it belonged to the beast.

‘Lady, give me strength,’ said Calard. His breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, and his heart was hammering in his chest.

As if in response to his prayer, the beast roared, the sound reverberating off the dank walls of the cavern. Calard’s bearded face was splattered with the vile beast’s stinking spittle. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his weapon, a bastard sword with a blade four and a half feet long. Blood dripped from the tip.

The icy mountain winds outside howled. The claws of winter tugged at Calard’s tattered woollen cloak and ruffled his unwashed hair, but he kept his eyes fixed on the beast. He had pledged his oath – his questing vow – to see this monster dead, and he would not falter. Either it would die, here and now, or he would.

The cold winter light outside was quickly swallowed by the darkness of the cavern. The shape of the beast could only be dimly discerned, but its breathing was loud. The close walls further amplified the rumbling sound, giving the impression that it was the cavern itself that was breathing.

Nevertheless the darkness could not hide the sheer size of the beast. Its reptilian, horned head was massive. Its eyes – or rather the one eye that Calard had not yet put out – glinted reflectively, filled with murderous hunger as it focused on him.

The beast’s tail was poised behind it, curved over its body like a scorpion’s, ready to snap forward and impale him. Its barbed tip dripped with noxious venom.

The wyvern – for it could be nothing else – was the grey-green colour of mountain rock, and the heavy blows that Calard had already landed upon its toughened hide oozed crimson. The foetid odour of the beast was strong.

Lowering its head, the wyvern bared its array of tusk-like teeth, each as long as Calard’s forearm. A bruised purple tongue, split at the ends, darted forth to taste the air. Calard saw the beast’s muscles tense as it prepared to launch itself at him. The knight lowered his centre of gravity, ready to spring.

The wyvern’s growl rose to a bloodcurdling roar, and its jaws yawned open as it lunged.

Calard threw himself to the left, moving towards the wyvern’s blind side as it bore down on him. Its jaws slammed shut behind him with force enough to snap a tree trunk. Calard uttered a wordless battle cry as he came to one knee and brought his sword around in an arc that connected solidly with the beast’s skull, snapping one of its tusks and digging deep into its reptilian flesh. It was like striking the mountain itself. The blow jarred up his arms painfully, and while blood gushed from the wound and he had undoubtedly chipped bone, Calard knew he had done little real damage.

Bellowing in pain, the beast swung its heavy head around, hooking one of its immense curving horns underneath Calard and hurling him into the cave wall ten feet away.

The air was blasted from his lungs as he hit first the wall then the ground, and he struggled for breath as he scrambled unsteadily to his feet. The wyvern’s barbed tail speared towards Calard’s face, and he swayed to the side at the last moment to avoid being impaled. The poisoned tip slammed into the wall, and cracks spread across the rock face.

Grunting with the effort, Calard brought his sword down on the wyvern’s tail. Even with all his strength, he was unable to hack through it, dense muscle and vertebrae stopping him from completely severing it. Hissing in pain, the beast pulled its tail back sharply, and Calard saw with grim satisfaction that the sting was hanging limp at its end, held on by gristle and skin.

The wyvern snapped at him again and Calard, his back to the wall, had little room to move. He threw himself desperately to the side, and though he avoided the deadly bite, it caught his trailing cape in its maw. With a wrench of its head it tore him from his feet, slinging him up towards the cave roof.

He hit the rock face first, breaking his nose with an agonising crack before dropping back to the floor. He crashed down onto his back and lay there unmoving for a moment, dazed, his sword slipping from numb fingers. Blood was smeared across his face, and he blinked, struggling to focus.

One of the wyvern’s winged forelimbs slammed down onto his breastplate with enough force to break bones, and he gasped as his armour strained beneath the weight. The beast lowered its head towards him, growling, and a thick rope of drool dripped from its maw. The stink of the beast’s breath was overpowering, like rancid meat and offal. It was all Calard could do not to gag.

Turning his head he saw his sword lying nearby, and he reached for it desperately. His fingers touched the pommel but it was just out of reach. All he succeeded in achieving was pushing it farther away.

The beast’s serpentine lips rippled, and its tongue darted forth to brush Calard’s face. He grimaced at its cold, repellent touch, sickly mucus smearing his cheek.

The wyvern stared down at him hungrily, its one good eye blazing with rage. That eye was the colour of an unfanned ember, glowing with dark intensity, and its pupil was nothing more than a sliver of blackness bisecting it. Calard could see himself reflected in the monster’s gaze.

‘Finish it,’ snarled Calard.

A sudden gust of wind brought a flurry of snow into the cave, and the wyvern’s attention was momentarily distracted, perhaps as fresh scents were carried to its nostrils on the wind. As it turned its head, Calard’s hand slipped to his belt, and he dragged his knife from its scabbard. The wyvern felt the movement and pressed down upon Calard harder, the metal of his breastplate groaning under the pressure, and swung its head back towards him. Calard rammed his knife into the claw pinning him to the ground, embedding the six inches of metal into the wyvern’s flesh, slicing through sinew and lodging it between bones.

Calard had been gifted the blade over a year earlier after saving a rich merchant and his daughter from the bloodthirsty intentions of an ogre in their employ. The blade was not of human origin, that Calard knew for certain; it was like no metal he had seen before. He suspected it had been crafted by the fey folk of Athel Loren.

The beast roared in agony, its flesh smoking from the wound as if the glittering blade was aflame, and it pulled away sharply. The pressure was released from Calard’s chest and he rolled towards his sword, fingers closing around its hilt.

The wyvern snarled as the flesh around the knife blistered, giving off a horrible stench of burning meat. It was shaking its foreleg, trying to dislodge the gleaming blade from between its metacarpals, having seemingly forgotten Calard.

The knight rose to his feet, hefting his bastard sword in front of him, and flicked his wet hair out of his eyes. Ignoring him, the wyvern gripped the knife between its teeth and pulled it free, tossing it away.

Calard darted forward, hefting his heavy blade over his shoulder, mouthing a prayer to the Lady. With a grunt of effort, he slammed it into the wyvern’s neck, striking with all the force he could muster. The blade hacked deep with a sickening wet sound, and the beast screeched as hot blood gushed from the wound, spraying across Calard and painting the cavern in a red torrent. The beast reared up on its hind legs, head thrashing from side to side, almost wrenching the sword from his hands.

As the beast staggered, its head collided with the cave wall, bringing down a tumble of rocks and dust, and Calard only barely managed to avoid being knocked from his feet by its wildly thrashing tail. Stepping in precariously close to its heaving bulk, he slashed a deep cut into its pallid underbelly, unleashing a flood of grotesque intestines. The unmistakeable shape of half-digested human bodies could be seen within the beast’s semi-transparent tract. Calard swallowed back his revulsion, stabbing into the wyvern’s stomach again and again.

The wyvern scrambled backwards, hind claws ripping up the cave floor, and snapped at Calard, who lurched out of the way and slashed with his sword. He severed the beast’s tongue, and it gave out a piteous yelp. Blood was still gushing from its neck in rhythmic spurts. There was so much blood on the floor and walls now that the cave resembled a slaughterhouse.

‘For the love of the Lady, just die!’ shouted Calard, lashing out at an open claw that reached for him, hacking deep into flesh and bone.

The beast was backtracking frantically now, dragging its thick intestinal ropes across the floor. It sounded like a wounded bear, a growling whine rumbling within its chest as it staggered farther back into the cave, but Calard had no intention of letting it escape. He followed it mercilessly, cutting and hacking with his blade.

The last of its lifeblood pumping from its neck, the wyvern launched itself at him one last time. Its mouth opened wide, and Calard knew he had not the speed or strength remaining to avoid it. Instead, he stepped forward, directly into the path of the gaping jaws and stabbed upwards.

The blade pierced the roof of the beast’s mouth as it closed upon him. Calard cried out as tusk-like teeth punched through his armour as if it were paper, but he maintained his hold on his blade, pushing it up into the monster’s brain.

With a final bellow, blood bubbling up its throat, the full weight of the wyvern’s head bore Calard to the ground. That head alone would have weighed as much as two Bretonnian warhorses and, for a panicked moment, Calard thought that was how he was to meet his fate, ignobly crushed to death by the monster he had just slain.

At last he dragged himself free and rose shakily to his feet. Breathing hard, he reversed the grip on his sword and dropped to one knee, closing his eyes as he placed his forehead against the crossbar of the hilt.

‘Lady of mercy, I dedicate this kill to your honour,’ he breathed, ‘and pray that in your wisdom you shall show me your favour.’

He remained there for many minutes, exhausted. After some time, he heard a sound behind him and he surged back to his feet and swung around, his sword at the ready.

There was a startled screech and his manservant, Chlod, jumped back in fear. The hunchbacked peasant slipped on the blood-slick rock floor and fell heavily.

‘It is just me, master!’ Chlod cried.

‘Stupid peasant,’ Calard said, shaking his head. ‘That’s a sure way of getting yourself killed.’

‘Sorry, master,’ said the filthy lowborn, dipping his head.

Calard sheathed his sword across his back and after a brief search he retrieved his knife. The blade was gleaming with a soft, inner light.

He staggered and almost fell as the pain of his injuries crashed in on him. His wounds needed tending; who knew what vile poisons would have been carried in the wyvern’s claws and bite.

Wearily, Calard moved towards the cave entrance.

‘Fetch your axe,’ he said to Chlod over his shoulder. ‘I want its head.’

There were cheers and clapping as Calard approached the snow-topped palisades encircling the mountain village, but he did not deign to raise his hand in response. He had cleaned his armour and skin as best he could in a mountain stream. The icy water had washed away the worst of the wyvern’s blood, but he was still covered in grime and dirt, the result of nearly five years on the road. He was unshaven, his cloak hung in tatters and his armour was in need of urgent repairs, but for all that he rode with his head held high, his nobility plain for all to see.

Though he was no cleaner than the stinking rabble that welcomed him as their avenger and saviour, he looked down his nose at them. They were classless outcasts, exiles and rascals living beyond the law, while he was a noble of Bretonnia, a Questing Knight of the Lady.

If the village had a name, Calard had not heard it, and nor did he care to. Located high in the peaks of the Grey Mountains, the soaring range that divided Bretonnia and the Empire, it overlooked the pass known colloquially as the Crooked Corridor. Calard was not sure if it fell officially on the Bretonnian or Empire side, but it hardly mattered; neither realm cared enough to claim it.

The people of this village were a bastard mix of intermingled backgrounds. They spoke a pidgin hybrid of Bretonnian and Reikspiel, and Calard was certain that the majority of them were nothing short of brigands. Doubtless they ambushed the caravans seeking to avoid paying the taxes of Axe Bite Pass and risking the Crooked Corridor. Calard did not know which was worse – the smugglers that used the pass, or the cutthroats that preyed upon them.

Nevertheless, the Lady had led him here and he had sworn to the self-appointed village burgomeister that he would see the beast dead. He felt the envious eyes upon him as he rode through the village gates, and while the wretched curs were undoubtedly pleased that he had vanquished the beast that had been plaguing their lands, he was still wary of the potential for robbery.

The villagers cleared a path for him, broad smiles splitting their faces as they whooped and applauded. His lip curling in distaste, Calard guided his proud Bretonnian warhorse through the press of unwashed bodies. The highly-trained animal snorted as the villagers pressed in around it.

‘I know,’ said Calard, patting its neck.

Behind Calard came Chlod, riding upon a dejected-looking mule. The malformed peasant waved cheerily and grinned his stupid lopsided grin. Dragged through the mud and snow-slush behind him was the wyvern’s head, drawing gasps and whispers from the villagers.

Calard guided his steed up towards the high point of the village, winding his way past dozens of shanty houses, all covered in a thick layer of snow. The burgomeister was standing out on the porch of his home, a structure that stood out as rich and ostentatious amongst the other hovels. Still, the house was little more than a shack, and Calard looked upon it with disdain. A hangman’s gallows protruded from the front stoop of the building, a grim reminder that this place was outside of Bretonnian and Empire law.

The burgomeister was a heavy set, jowly man, and he stood on his porch with a broad grin on his face as he waited for Calard to draw near. He was surrounded by a handful of richly-dressed individuals, and his fat wife stood at his side.

‘The hero returns!’ declared the burgomeister, raising his arms high. ‘The beast is dead!’

The rest of the village had followed Calard and Chlod and stood now in a semi-circle around them at the foot of the burgomeister’s stoop. The crowd erupted into further cheering and clapping.

‘We shall have a feast this night in honour of this great deed!’ promised the burgomeister, eliciting another burst of applause.

The man spoke with a strong Parravonian accent, a noble’s accent, and Calard wondered briefly what the man had done to be living out here. Murdered a rival and been cast out? Run up debts from which he had fled? Been dishonoured in some sordid court intrigue? Whatever the answer, the man was an outcast, worthy only of Calard’s contempt.

The head of the wyvern was manhandled to the foot of the burgomeister’s stoop by five men, and a great cheer rose as ropes hauled it up upon the gallows. The ropes creaked under the immense weight, and it spun there in place, its one remaining eye bulging from its socket.

‘A bed shall be made up in my own house for our brave hero!’ declared the burgomeister. ‘We shall eat and drink well this night!’

More cheers sounded, but Calard raised a hand. The villagers fell silent.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘I cannot tarry. I must continue on my journey. All I require is a fresh supply of food and some dry tinder.’

There were mutters amongst the crowd at this, and Calard saw the burgomeister’s grin falter.

‘Night draws in, sir knight,’ said the man. He was still smiling but his smile no longer reached his eyes. ‘Let us show our gratitude. Be our guest of honour this evening. Please.’

‘No,’ said Calard, shaking his head. ‘I must decline. I need only some food and dry tinder, and I shall be on my way.’

‘Is my home not good enough for you, noble sir?’ snapped the burgomeister’s wife. ‘Are you worried it might not be seemly to consort with the likes of us?’

The burgomeister shushed his wife, and Calard curled his lip, not even attempting to hide his scorn.

‘Regretfully, my vows do not permit me to sleep in the same place two nights running,’ said Calard, his voice filled with anything but regret, ‘lest the Lady judge me idle in my quest. If it were not for my vows, I should gladly take up your kind offer, madam. Alas, it is not to be. I bid you goodbye.’

He turned his horse around, intending to leave the village and its honourless inhabitants behind him.

‘Come, peasant,’ he said to Chlod, clicking his fingers. Calard glanced back over his shoulder as he nudged his steed towards the village gates.

‘Food and dry tinder, thank you,’ he said. ‘I shall wait outside the palisades.’

With that, Calard rode from the village, uncaring of the venomous glares he was receiving.

The fire crackled and spat and the damp wood smoked heavily, filling the enclosed shelter with the scent of burning pine needles. It had been some two hours after the sun had set when Calard had called a halt, deeming it too dangerous to continue their descent in the darkness.

They had taken shelter in the lee of a rockfall just off the main path leading down towards the Crooked Corridor, and Chlod had quickly rigged up some additional protection in the event of the weather worsening. Under Calard’s watchful eye and with his thick tongue poking from the side of his mouth in concentration, the peasant had woven branches together to form a rough framework roof, over which he had laid a blanket of smaller twigs and pine needles. An oiled canvas sheet was strung up to form an entrance, and weighted down with rocks it formed an adequate barrier from the wind. There was enough room within the shelter to house both Calard’s horse and Chlod’s mule as well as the two men, and while the Bretonnian nobleman was not overly pleased at having to be in such close proximity to his manservant, he had a belly full of food and the fire was warm.

As exhausted as he was, sleep eluded Calard. Wrapped in a woollen blanket, cloak balled up into a pillow, he stared into the glowing fire, listening to its reassuring crackle and the howl of the wind. His horse whinnied softly and shifted its weight at the back of the shelter.

If the storm that had been threatening to break all week did not come, they should pass into the lowlands of Bretonnia within a day or so. It had been almost five years since Calard had taken up his Questing Vow, and just over four since he had last set foot in the land of his birth. He longed to hear Bretonnian voices, eat familiar food and drink a goblet of a fine Bordeleaux vintage. Too long had he been travelling through uncultured foreign lands.

In his relentless quest for the Grail, Calard’s travels had taken him far from his beloved homeland. He had gone as far north as the frozen lands of Kislev, inhabited by its warlike savages, and as far to the south as Tilea, an amoral cesspit of intrigue and backstabbing where a warrior’s honour and sword sold to the highest bidder. In the east, he had travelled through the dwarf-patrolled passes of the Worlds Edge Mountains and looked out across the desolate Dark Lands beyond.

He had spent the better part of two years within the borders of the Empire, and had come to loathe the place and its citizens. There was no divide between the classes in the Empire, and even the lowest born cur could rise to the heights of power. How such a society could operate was beyond him.

Everywhere Calard went he saw dishonour and death, and through it all he steeled his soul, praying fervently to the Lady to lead him onwards, desperate to prove himself worthy. Visions and dreams of the Grail haunted him, the holy chalice always appearing so close but just out of reach. In the Lady’s name Calard had done great and noble deeds across the length and breadth of the Old World, hoping against hope that with one such action his deity would favour him by manifesting before him.

It was said that only those Questing Knights of pure and noble intention would ever be blessed with a visitation from the Lady of the Lake, and of those, few were judged worthy. Fewer still survived imbibing the elixir held within the Grail itself, for only the truest exemplars of Bretonnian knightly virtue, paladins with souls unsullied and free of taint, were able to drink it and live.

It felt like an age had passed since Calard had relinquished his rulership of Garamont, since he had symbolically set aside his lance and forsaken all else but his holy quest. Calard had named his nephew Orlando his heir, presenting the boy the Sword of Garamont, the ancient heirloom of his family’s rulership. Until his successful return, the boy was the ruling Castellan of Garamont. Orlando had been seven years of age when Calard had left; he wondered if he would even recognise him now.

Calard knew that he had left Garamont in good hands. He had requested that the Baron Montcadas act as regent for his lands until such a time as he returned – or Orlando came of age – and he trusted the man implicitly. Montcadas was a bear of a man, full of warmth, paternal wisdom and strength. He was also the terror of his enemies, fearless and unforgiving, roaring his challenge as he thundered into battle swinging his heavy morning star – or at least he had been before he had lost his sight. One of his eyes had been put out fighting the bloodthirsty beastmen of the wildwoods; he had lost the other in a tragic tourney accident. He yearned to hear Montcadas’s booming laughter and wise counsel again.

A part of Calard longed to walk the halls of Castle Garamont again, to ride the perimeter of his lands and see his own heraldry, a silver dragon rampant on a field of red and blue, flying from the parapets; but he reminded himself that it would not be the same as it had once been. It would not feel like home anymore.

His father, that stern and cold figure that had ruled over Garamont for nigh on forty years, was dead, having never accepted Calard into his heart. His stepmother, Calisse, hated him more than ever. And Bertelis was gone.

More than anything else, Calard missed his half-brother.

He felt a stab of guilt as he thought of Bertelis, and he wondered if he would ever see him again; and if he did, if his brother could possibly find it in his heart to forgive him.

The last time he had seen Bertelis had been within the shattered walls of Lyonesse, after the departure of the Norscan hordes that had besieged the island fastness. It had not been a happy time, and they had not parted on good terms. Calard burned with shame thinking back to that fateful day.

He had relived it so many times in the last five years. Even now he could hear that horrible sound as Elisabet’s head connected with the marble stairs. He saw again Bertelis’s face, aghast. Rationally, Calard had known that it was an accident, a tragic, awful accident, but he had allowed himself to be blinded by rage and grief.

His brother had begged his forgiveness, but Calard had turned his back on him.

‘I have no brother,’ he had said, his voice cold and empty. In the days afterwards, as he grieved, he regretted speaking those words but there had been no opportunity to make amends. He had not seen Bertelis since, nor even heard of his whereabouts, though not for want of trying.

Calard’s grim thoughts were interrupted as Chlod rolled over and began to snore loudly. Calard regarded the peasant with an expression of distaste, and swore under his breath. The ignorant wretch was curled into a ball, an idiotic smile on his face. Chlod clutched a regal blue scrap of cloth in his hands, one side lined with mink. Once, that scrap had been a part of the cloak worn by the holy Grail Knight Reolus. Even five years on, Calard could not believe the knight was dead.

Chlod muttered in his sleep, then giggled, and Calard swore again. He hated how sleep always came so easily to the peasant, while it took him hours to drift off. Even then, Calard’s sleep was restless and fraught with nightmares. Who knew what sort of dreams the ignorant peasant was having. Frankly, Calard did not wish to know, certain that they would be unwholesome and base. The little hunchback was an unpleasant fellow, seemingly bereft of conscience, but he had a certain animalistic cunning that had served Calard well on occasion over his years of servitude. His eagerness to please and sycophantic toadying was disgusting to behold, but Calard tolerated it.

The howling gale outside was picking up. The sound was mournful, almost like the roaring of great beasts was concealed within it. Calard shivered, and pulled his woollen blanket tightly around him.

Chlod passed wind loudly and grunted in his sleep before starting to snore once more. Calard tried to blot the noise out, but it was no use. In frustration and exasperation he sat up. Grabbing one of his heavy boots, he hurled it across the makeshift shelter, hitting Chlod square in the face.

The peasant awoke with a shout, jerking sharply. He blinked, looking around him fearfully.

‘You were snoring,’ said Calard.

‘Sorry, master,’ said Chlod.

‘Give me back my boot.’

The peasant scrambled from beneath his blanket and crawled across the shelter, holding Calard’s boot like a holy artefact. He spat on it and gave it a quick rub down with his shirtfront, making Calard grimace. Grinning like a simpleton, Chlod set the boot down carefully alongside its partner.

‘Can I get you anything, master? Water?’

‘No,’ said Calard, rolling away from Chlod. ‘I just want to sleep.’

He heard his manservant crawling back to his blanket, and bit down his frustration at the noise the peasant made, despite his trying to be quiet. The wind continued to howl outside, and again there came another sound, something like a howl.

‘What was that, master?’ said Chlod, his voice fearful.

‘Nothing. The wind. Go to sleep.’

‘I heard that there are beasts what live up here in the mountains,’ said Chlod. ‘Big shaggy cats with teeth like swords. Maybe they are out there now, hunting us.’

‘And I will throw you to them if you do not shut up,’ said Calard. ‘Now, I don’t want to hear another word from you until morning. Don’t let the fire die down overnight.’

‘Yes, master,’ said Chlod. Calard could still hear the fear in the peasant’s voice.

It took him another half an hour to fall asleep, dreaming of home, and of cats with teeth the size of swords, and then nothing.

Calard awoke instantly, knife in hand. Chlod was leaning over him, and the cold light of morning was penetrating the thatch of branches overhead.

Chlod’s eyes were fearful. He was fully dressed and had clearly been up for some time. It was remarkable that Calard had not woken earlier, for he was a light sleeper and would normally have been roused as soon as Chlod had stirred.

‘What is it?’ said Calard in irritation, wiping the last of the sleep from his eyes.

‘There’s people, master,’ said Chlod. ‘They’re armed, and they look like they are in a murderin’ mood.’

Calard threw off his blanket and sheathed his knife. He pulled on his boots, and picked up his bastard sword. He could hear voices, a dozen or more, the sound an angry murmur. He slid the scabbard from his blade and tossed it onto his blanket before kneeling briefly before his small triptych shrine to the Lady, closing his eyes and invoking her blessing. He then rose to his feet and stepped out into the morning glare, the fresh snow crunching beneath his boots.

There was a shout, and the first of the men appeared, pushing through the low branches of the pines outside Calard’s encampment. There were at least a score of them, he saw, and Chlod was right: they looked as though they were out for blood.

He recognised several of them as villagers from the day before. There were too many of them for him to defeat, he knew that, but he would be damned if he didn’t take several of them with him to the halls of Morr if they came at him.

They were scowling and muttering angrily, and they spread out as they closed in on him, cudgels, hatchets and daggers clenched tightly in their hands. Several of them had hunting bows in hand, arrows nocked to strings, and Calard’s disdain deepened – amongst the Bretonnian nobility, the bow was a coward’s weapon, fit only for hunting, or for peasants who had no comprehension of honour.

Calard walked out to meet the villagers, rolling his shoulders. He gripped his blade in both hands and set himself in a ready stance, ensuring that he could see each of the would-be brigands.

‘Is this how you thank those who do you a service?’ he said, his voice filled with scorn. ‘You wait until they leave your village and follow them to their camp, intent on murder and robbery?’

‘Honourless dog,’ said one of them, a brutish man with a thick beard.

‘I bet he ain’t even a knight,’ said another, his face twisted in anger. ‘Probably stole that armour off some poor dead bastard. Killed him, maybe.’

‘I’m gonna cut your heart out,’ said a third man, fingers tightly gripping a butcher’s knife. He had clearly been crying and his eyes burnt with rage and grief. ‘My Adela’s dead because of you!’

The first man, clutching a woodcutter’s axe in his hands, nodded. ‘He’ll pay for it, all right,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Calard, his voice low and menacing. ‘But come one step closer and you’re a dead man.’

‘So long as I take you with me, I don’t care,’ said the grieving man. He held his knife out in trembling hands. The man was no warrior – Calard saw that instantly.

‘Don’t, Pieter,’ said one of the others. ‘Let’s just kill him. Ain’t none of us have to get hurt.’

There were angry snarls of agreement, and Calard tensed as the strings of four bows were drawn back.

‘She was with child!’ shouted the grieving man, Pieter, quivering with rage. ‘And now she’s gone, and it’s all your fault!’

‘I have hurt no woman,’ said Calard, ‘and I will strike down any man who claims otherwise. I have done nothing but that which was asked of me.’

‘Nothing but lied to get a free feed, more like,’ sneered another of the men.

‘I am a knight of Bastonne. I do not lie,’ said Calard, eyes flashing.

‘Blood’s been shed, you bastard,’ snarled another man. ‘You’ll pay for what happened to Pieter’s woman.’

‘Enough,’ said Calard. ‘If it is your intention to rob and kill me, get on with it. You bore me.’

The archers tensed.

‘Hold!’ came a shout. ‘Hold!’

Calard saw the village burgomeister stomping through the snow from the main path, pushing his way through the angry mob. His face was flushed.

‘I knew you were nothing more than a brigand, you cur,’ said Calard. ‘I should have left you to your fate, to be devoured by the beast.’

The grieving man gave out a garbled scream and lurched forward with his knife. Expecting the attack, Calard slammed the flat of its blade against the man’s wrist, knocking the blade away. The man cried out and fell to his knees in the snow, gasping in pain. Startled by the sudden move, one of the bowmen loosed his arrow.

Calard was already moving, and the hastily taken shot glanced off his shoulder and struck a tree. Calard stepped forward, swinging his blade over his shoulder.

‘Hold, damn you!’ boomed the burgomeister, his voice filled with authority, giving the other bowmen pause.

‘What is going on?’ hissed Calard, not lowering his weapon.

‘I might well ask you the same thing,’ retorted the burgomeister.

‘Speak plainly,’ said Calard, ‘or your man here dies.’

‘We know that you did not kill the wyvern,’ said the burgomeister slowly.

‘Are you bereft of your senses?’ said Calard. ‘You hauled its head up on your damned gallows! You all saw it.’

‘I don’t know how you did it,’ said the burgomeister. ‘Sorcery, perhaps. What I don’t understand is why. You wanted no reward, only food and dry tinder. What do you gain from your deception?’

‘You’re insane,’ said Calard. ‘On my honour, I killed the beast. Tracked it to its lair and cut its head off. What is this? Some excuse so you can come down here to rob and kill me.’

‘If you killed it,’ said the burgomeister, ‘then why was its head gone this morning? And why was it seen flying above the peaks at dawn? If you slew the thing, how did it kill poor Pieter’s wife and destroy his home?’

‘You are mistaken,’ said Calard. ‘It must have been something else. Wolves, perhaps.’

‘It weren’t no wolves,’ said the burgomeister. ‘I saw it with my own eyes. It was the beast.’

‘I killed it,’ said Calard. ‘On the honour of my family name, I killed it.’

Calard was in a silent rage as he pulled his cloak tight around his neck, trying vainly to protect himself from the blizzard. The storm had finally broken, lashing Calard, Chlod and their steeds with gale force winds and snow, and though it could not have been even midday, it was as dark as twilight.

He could see no more than ten yards in front of him, such was the intensity of the snowstorm. At any moment, Calard expected to be blown off the side of the cliff, falling to his death. He knew they ought to turn back, for the path – little more than a goat track clinging precariously to the side of the mountain – was dangerous in the best of weather, let alone in this blizzard.

They had passed nothing that would have served as shelter in the last hour, and from what he could judge, they were only half a mile or so from the beast’s lair. Calard decided that their best bet was to press on, and to sit the storm out within the wyvern’s cave, as distasteful as the idea was.

For the last half an hour he had been leading his steed by its reins, forging on through the thickening blanket of snow. Their tracks were covered almost instantly, erasing all evidence of their passage.

Calard did not believe for a moment the villagers’ claim. He suspected that this was some ploy by the burgomeister, but for what purpose, he could not comprehend. He planned to return to the monster’s lair, find its corpse and journey back to the village with irrefutable evidence that he had done as he had pledged. He would not have his good name besmirched by mutterings of dishonour.

He leaned into the wind, his head lowered. His face was wrapped in woollen scarves so that only his eyes were exposed to the ruthless elements, and ice had formed a thick crust across his eyebrows.

He turned around, blinking through the blinding snow to see his manservant staggering behind with his mule. The peasant was tougher than he looked, but Calard didn’t think he would last long. Neither of them would. They needed to get to shelter, fast.

The path narrowed up ahead, and Calard pressed close to the cliff face as he edged his way forwards. The cliff dropped off into nothingness below. The Crooked Corridor, some two thousand feet down, was completely hidden in the storm. Calard was not sure what was worse – seeing the ground so far below, or seeing nothing but knowing the drop was there nonetheless.

A steep overhang jutted over the path as he trudged his way onwards, forcing Calard to duck his head to keep away from the cliff’s edge. His steed snorted in protest, pulling against him, but he calmed it and led it on. He recognised this location. They were close.

He emerged from the overhang, and snow pelted him. It was a struggle to keep moving, but he had no other choice. To stop was to die.

He heard a sound amid the gale – a roar? – and turned around, trying to discern its origination. Was it just the wind? Looking back the way he had come, he swore as he saw Chlod hanging over the cliff edge, clutching frantically for purchase. The only thing keeping him from falling were the reins of his mule, wrapped tightly around one hand. The obstinate beast’s head was down, its neck straining as the full weight of the peasant pulled at its mouth. Calard could see instantly that at any moment the beast would slip, and then both it and Chlod would disappear over the edge. Perhaps more importantly, the mule would take all of Calard’s possessions, which were strapped across its back, with it.

Mouthing a curse, Calard began to slide past his horse, moving to the peasant’s aid as quickly as was safe to do so. With his back to his towering warhorse, nothing but open space filled with swirling snow in front of him, he shimmied his way back. His feet were precariously close to the cliff edge, and he prayed silently to the Lady.

There came another roar in the storm, and a monstrous, winged creature appeared out of the blizzard.

It came from below, rising up the sheer cliff face with powerful beats of its immense wings. Its serpentine eyes blazed like embers, and Calard stared back in shock.

For a second he was sure that it was the same beast that he had already fought, but that was madness. No, he had killed that one, there could be no doubt of that; he’d cut its head off and put out one of its eyes. This beast had both its eyes, and its broad, heavy head was firmly attached to its muscular neck.

A second wyvern then, Calard thought. The mate of the first?

Buffeted by the strong winds and borne aloft upon its mighty wings, the beast lunged, huge mouth gaping. Calard’s horse reared, whinnying in terror, and he was knocked to the ground, scrambling frantically not to slip over the cliff edge.

The monster’s mouth clamped shut around his horse, and with a wrench of its neck it dragged the noble steed from the mountain path. One of its hooves clipped Calard’s shoulder, and he slid further over the cliff’s edge. The horse’s arterial blood sprayed, staining the snow, and the wyvern shook its head from side to side. Even through the gale, Calard heard the horrible snap as his steed’s spine was broken. The beast’s wings beat faster to compensate for the additional weight, and it dropped half a dozen feet. A sudden gust dragged it further out from the cliff face, and it disappeared in the storm.

Calard’s hand closed around a jutting rock and he gripped it tightly, forestalling his fall. His legs were dangling over the seemingly bottomless expanse. With a grunt of effort he hauled himself back onto the mountain path, clambering to his feet and unsheathing his sword. He turned and pressed his back against the cliff wall as the wyvern reappeared.

It descended on him, massive hind claws extended. Calard hacked with his sword double-handed, severing two talons, and the beast bellowed. Its other leg raked downwards, carving three furrows in the rock where Calard’s head had been a moment earlier.

The Questing Knight turned his face away as a shower of rock and snow struck him, and as the wyvern kicked at him again he threw himself further down the path. He landed on his chest in the snow, and slid half a dozen yards before coming to a halt, turning and rising to one knee, his sword at the ready.

The wyvern beat its wings and disappeared into the blizzard overhead once more, and Calard risked a glance back along the path. Chlod had clambered from the edge of the precipice, and was staring at him fearfully. The peasant shouted something that was swallowed by the roaring winds and pointed, and Calard glanced movement out of the corner of his eye.

The wyvern was coming down at him again, its wings buffeting him with wind and snow. Its tail stabbed for him and he slashed with his sword as it plunged for his chest, knocking it aside and carving deep into the bony sting.

The beast came in to land, one foreclaw clutching onto the cliff face for balance as it gripped the narrow path with its hind talons. One of them slipped off the edge, dislodging a landslide, but the beast regained its balance and began making its way towards him, moving crab-like along the narrow path with surprising dexterity.

Calard began backing up, seeking to get under the overhang, where the wyvern’s bulk would make it almost impossible for it to come at him. Seeing what he was doing, the wyvern hopped towards him faster, closing the distance in two bounds.

Its jaw snapped towards him, slamming shut less than half a foot away, and Calard slipped, falling to one knee. The beast hopped nearer, its foreclaw and left wing clutching at the cliff face, balancing itself as it leant upon its other wing.

Knowing that he couldn’t get away from the beast, Calard took the only other option that remained for him – he attacked.

With a shout, Calard leapt forward and slammed his sword into the beast’s wing, breaking several of the slender bones that fanned out from its claw. The beast roared, and brought its other wing around in a sharp arc. With no room to move, Calard was smashed into the cliff face by the force of the blow, striking the back of his head hard.

The beast grabbed him around the ankle with one of its foreclaws, dropping him to his back and pulling him through the snow. He fought it, kicking and struggling as he tried to bring his blade to bear, but he was dragged helplessly towards the wyvern.

He kicked the beast hard as its mouth opened, striking one of its tusk-like teeth. If the wyvern felt any pain it gave no indication, and it stretched its neck forward to bite him in half.

Calard managed to thrust the blade of his sword forward, and the beast stabbed itself in the gum as it strained towards him. Blood ran down the blade, and the wyvern hissed and pulled its head back. Calard managed to kick his foot from the monster’s grasp, and he scrambled back away from it as it lunged again.

Part of the cliff path gave way beneath the wyvern’s weight suddenly, and it scrabbled for purchase. Its body slammed into the path as a boulder slipped under its hind legs, and one foreclaw gripped the rock tightly, less than two feet from Calard’s position.

With a shout, he brought his sword down hard upon it, breaking bones.

With a roar, the wyvern lost its grip and fell, tumbling backwards over the precipice. Its left wing would not work properly, the wing-bones broken by Calard’s first strike, and the wyvern tumbled down the cliff face, unable to keep itself airborne. It was gone almost instantly, careening off the cliff face once before being swallowed by the blinding snow.

‘Is it dead, master?’ shouted Chlod in his ear, coming up behind him. Calard shrugged.

‘We must move on!’ he shouted. ‘We’ll be dead if we don’t find shelter.’

With that, Calard stumbled on, fighting through the blizzard, Chlod and his mule close behind.

If anything, the storm had worsened by the time they reached the cave, and they were exhausted and half-frozen as they staggered inside.

They moved to the back of the cavern in an effort to escape the biting winds. Calard couldn’t feel his fingers or his toes, and he had stopped shivering, which he knew was a bad sign. He felt incredibly tired, and the desire to just lie down on the floor and sleep was strong. The rational part of his mind knew that to do so was to die, but another part of him whispered that he would just close his eyes for a moment.

Chlod had collapsed on the ground, a huddled ball of misery, and Calard prodded him with his foot.

‘Fire,’ Calard managed on the third attempt, forming the word with difficulty; his lips were completely numb.

The peasant groaned something indecipherable, and Calard kicked him hard in the side. That got a reaction. The peasant’s face was blue, but the colour started to come back as he prepared a fire.

Ten minutes later, the peasant had a small blaze going, and they crouched over it, warming frozen hands. Calard’s fingers began to tingle painfully as sensation returned. He removed part of his armour, unhooking the iced-up greaves as he attempted to rub some warmth into his limbs.

With his body finally thawing, the firelight casting its orange glow across the interior of the cavern, Calard realised for the first time that the headless corpse of the wyvern was not here.

Frowning, he lifted a burning brand from the fire and stood up, turning on the spot.

This was most definitely where he had fought the beast; he could see evidence of the battle. Dark, rust-like patches marked the floor, and there were cracks in the wall where its monstrous sting had struck, but of the body itself there was no sign.

‘Devoured by scavengers?’ he said, speaking aloud.

‘Master?’ said Chlod, looking up from beside the fire, but Calard ignored him.

The questing knight frowned. It had been only yesterday when he had killed the beast. Surely no scavenger could have devoured it in that time, bones and all, leaving no evidence of it ever having been here except for the bloodstains on the floor. Not even the other wyvern could have eaten it in that time.

Thinking about the immense, crushing jaws of the wyverns, however, he could well believe that they would be fully capable of consuming bones. A brood of wyverns? There had been at least two of the creatures. Could there be more?

The thought was not comforting. The stink of the beast still lingered in the cave even if its body did not, a potent animal smell that made his stomach heave.

Holding his burning brand aloft, Calard ventured deeper into the cave. It went back further than he had thought, and as he advanced the flame of his torch sent flickering shadows across its uneven walls. There were bones scattered within naturally formed alcoves, and he knelt beside them, lifting them up for inspection. Most of them were human, but there were others that were shorter and denser. He found a shattered, fanged skull tucked away in a hollow.

‘Greenskin,’ he said, kicking the skull away.

There were strange markings on the walls, he realised, and he stepped up close to one of them, lifting his torch. Underneath a layer of rock dust and grime he could see that something had been daubed onto the walls. Frowning, he brushed his hand along the crumbling granite, revealing a crude depiction of a warrior: a warrior fighting a winged beast that was unmistakably a wyvern.

‘What in the name of the Lady?’ said Calard.

Stepping back, he saw the walls were covered in similar pictures. Everywhere he looked he saw depictions of wyverns. They were devouring people and shaggy mountain cattle, flying over crudely rendered mountains with blood dripping from their exaggerated teeth and stings. In many of the pictures, there was a solitary warrior fighting the beast. Sometimes this lone warrior stood victorious over the wyvern, his sword plunged into its heart, or its severed head lying at his feet. Sometimes the warrior lay dead at the beast’s feet.

Calard followed the images further back into the cave, intrigued and horrified.

Was this the remnant of some cult, venerating the Chaos beasts? Had there been wyverns in this area for hundreds, even thousands of years? Was there something here, in this cave, that drew them to it, like slivers of metal drawn to a lodestone?

The pictures led him further away from the entrance, and the howling of the wind outside faded. Soon, even the flame of Chlod’s fire had ebbed. Abruptly, the cave ended. The floor sloped downwards, hinting at a deeper cavern, and the images too followed this descent, but he could go no further, for the way was blocked by a pool of dark water.

Ice had formed a fragile crust around the edge of the pool, though its centre was clear. The water was black. Calard cracked the skin of ice with the heel of his boot; it was not thick. He stood there for some moments, wondering where the passage led, before shrugging and turning away. He was hungry and tired. He would have Chlod cook him a meal and then settle down to wait out the storm.

From behind him came a splash, and Calard looked around to see the surface of the black pool rippling.

His sword was drawn and at the ready, the heavy blade held two-handed; the flaming torch was left burning on the ground. His gaze flicked left and right, seeing movement everywhere in the shadows cast by his flaming brand, but his attention snapped back to the pool as it began to bubble, as if it were boiling.

Not taking his eyes off the pool, Calard moved towards the edge.

‘Master?’ called Chlod from some way back, his voice muffled and echoing off the walls. ‘Master?’

Calard ignored the peasant, gripping the hilt of his bastard sword tightly.

Something began to rise from the water; something large.

The tip of its wings emerged first, then its massive head breached the surface, water spraying out as it exhaled sharply from its nostrils and sucked in a deep breath.

Mouthing a curse, Calard saw that it was another wyvern, easily as big as the last two. Black water ran off its grey-green scales, and secondary eyelids flicked back from its hateful orbs. Its pupils contracted as it swung its head towards the bright light of Calard’s fallen torch, and it blinked in the glare.

This must have been where the foul things were originating from. Was there some foetid brood lair in a deeper cave, and this pool was the entrance?

He had been lucky to kill the others, he knew that. Weak and half-frozen, he knew that he would not be able to best this one if he allowed it to emerge from the water fully. It seemed not yet to have noticed him, and so Calard leapt forward as the monster began pulling itself out of the pool. Before the monster could react, he had plunged into the icy water and thrust the tip of his sword straight into one of its eye sockets.

The wyvern shrieked in agony and thrashed its head, ripping the blade out of Calard’s hands and knocking him backwards. Blood was running from the horrible wound, forming an oily film across the surface of the black pool. Bellowing deafeningly, the beast began retreating, dragging itself back the way it had come.

Calard heard Chlod arrive behind him, holding another flaming torch, and the peasant gasped as he saw the wyvern half-submerged in the cave pool. The beast was pulling itself back down the waterlogged cavern, first its curving back disappearing, then its wingtips. Finally, its head ducked under the water, taking Calard’s sword with it.

Determined not to let the beast escape, Calard sucked in a deep breath and dived under the water. His armour weighed him down considerably, and he struggled not to sink. The water was dark, though the flickering light of the torch allowed him to see the vague, shadowy form of the monster as it slipped away from him. In frustration, Calard came up, knowing that to go any deeper was to drown, weighed down as he was.

He swore loudly, and began wading to the water’s edge, unbuckling his breastplate as he did so.

The Lady had led him here for a reason. Perhaps that reason had not been to kill one wyvern, but to butcher the entire brood.

‘Fetch me wood, tinder and flint,’ he ordered Chlod. ‘Wrap it tightly in oilskins. I want it waterproof.’

Chlod’s eyes boggled. ‘Master, surely you are not…’ he began.

‘Do as I say, peasant,’ snapped Calard, before lowering himself to one knee and praying. ‘Quickly!’

He inspected Chlod’s work when he returned and, satisfied, he slung the bundle over his shoulder. He had stripped off his armour and was armed only with his knife, still glowing with a faint light of its own. Chlod was hopping from foot to foot, wringing his hands nervously.

‘Don’t go anywhere,’ said Calard. Then without further delay, he clenched the knife between his teeth and dived into the icy water once more. As far as he understood, wyverns breathed just as he did – or at least he hoped they did – and he judged that there must be air somewhere further along the submerged tunnel.

Kicking out strongly, he passed beneath the rock, and a moment of panic washed through him as he realised that he could not now merely swim to the surface to breathe. He continued on, deeper into the cavern.

His lungs began to burn, but he pushed on, swimming further. He continued on blindly into the darkness, his panic rising. He had gone too far to turn back now.

It took him a moment to realise that he could see light again, a red glare from up ahead, and he kicked towards it in desperation as the last of his air turned to poison in his lungs. There was a ruby glow infusing the water, originating further along the tunnel, and with a final burst of strength Calard kicked towards it.

He came up quickly, breaking the surface of the water and sucked in a deep breath.

He was blinded for a moment by the red light, and he blinked as his eyes adjusted to the glare, all the while treading water to keep afloat. There was a metallic taste that filled his mouth and nose, and his eyes were stinging.

‘Lady above,’ he breathed as he looked around.

He was no longer underground. He was no longer anywhere that even vaguely resembled the Grey Mountains bordering Bretonnia and the Empire.

A sky of fire burned overhead, and the heat was oppressive.

He was in hell.

His heart beating frantically, his mind reeling, Calard swam to the edge of the pool. The water had changed consistency, turning viscous, and he realised in horror that it was not water at all, but congealing blood.

He clambered up onto the gore-slick rocks that rimmed the blood-pool, removing the knife from between his teeth as the contents of his stomach rose into his throat. He doubled over and was violently ill.

Wiping his mouth, his mind rebelling, Calard straightened and turned in a slow circle, taking in his surroundings. A featureless, barren wasteland of red sand and rock spread out as far as the eye could see in every direction.

Rippling flames consumed the heavens, the sky burning from one horizon to the other, an inferno in constant flux.

It was ungodly hot, a merciless dry heat that scorched his lungs with every breath. The horizons shimmered with heat haze, and Calard could feel the moisture on him drying up, leaving a scab-like crust of blood across his skin.

‘Where in the name of the Lady am I?’ he breathed.

He heard laughter nearby, the mocking sound carried to him on the wind, and Calard spun around, his knife at the ready. There was no one there.

The Lady is dead, breathed a haggard voice and Calard jerked in shock, feeling the speaker’s breath in his ear. He turned, but again there was nothing there. Mocking laughter came at him from several sides as he looked around warily, eyes wide in fear.

We’re all dead, said a different voice.

‘Who are you?’ said Calard, his voice cracking.

You’ll soon be dead too, said another voice.

‘Show yourselves, cowards!’ said Calard.

The laughter assailed him from all sides at that, and he heard a multitude of mocking voices.

Show ourselves, he says! laughed one, rough and masculine.

If that is what you desire, said another, giggling.

You’ll be with us soon, said a woman’s voice, filled with sadness.

A deafening sound crashed in on Calard, filled with unholy screams of agony and madness. In that fraction of a second he saw figures all around him: loathsome, terrifying men and women, their flesh flayed and their muscles exposed to the elements. They stood around him in a numberless horde, eyeballs rolling loosely in their sockets, and bloodied hands clutched at him.

As quickly as it came, the vision was gone, taking with it the hellish taunting.

Calard cried out, his body shaking uncontrollably, the knife clasped in his sweaty hand quivering.

‘Lady of mercy, give me strength,’ he breathed.

I’m going to kill you, said a child’s voice in his ear.

Calard turned around on the spot and saw the bones.

He didn’t know how he had not seen them straight away. He was certain they had not been there before.

Beside the blood-pool was the immense skeleton of a wyvern. Calard made his way around the pool towards it, moving warily. There was not a scrap of flesh or skin left on it. The bones were as dry as tinder. It was as if it had been dead for centuries.

We are all dead, came a whispered voice behind him, and Calard’s hackles rose.

Calard’s sword was protruding from one of the empty eye sockets of the wyvern’s skull, and he moved towards it, stepping cautiously. He sheathed his knife at his waist before gingerly lifting his sword clear. It was exactly the same as it had been when he had last held it, and the weight of it was reassuring in his hands.

He turned around on the spot once more before coming to his decision.

He strapped his sword across his back alongside the roll of oiled leather that contained the wood and tinder that Chlod had prepared for him, and, suppressing the disgust that he felt, he began wading back into the blood-pool.

Taking a deep breath, readying himself for the difficult swim back, he dipped his head below the surface of the congealing gore. Diving down, kicking hard, he struck rock. In confusion, he felt around with his hands, thinking that perhaps he had risen up through a hole or a tunnel. Feeling around blindly, he could find no such entrance.

He rose to the surface of the pool, sucked in a searing breath and dived again. Over and over he dived, searching frantically for the way back. After half an hour he gave up, despairing. Pulling himself out of the quagmire of vital fluids, he cried his horror and anguish to the heavens. Laughter all around mocked him.

Calard sank to his knees in the red sand and prayed.

Chlod sat staring at the icy pool of water, biting his lip. It had been two days now since his master had disappeared beneath its surface. He must be dead, he thought.

He didn’t feel any particular grief at the thought, though it certainly made him reassess his options. During his time in Calard’s service, he had never wanted for food. Now he was alone again, he would be forced to fend for himself. Still, he had a mule, and enough supplies to last him a good week or two. He could always sell the mule if need be. Or eat it.

Chlod grinned. Things were working out rather well.

‘Well, that’s that then,’ he said to the ageing rat perched upon his knee, who twitched its nose in response. ‘I reckon we’ve given him enough time. He ain’t comin’ back, so it seems, so we’d best be off.’

Chlod had wanted to make sure that Calard would not return before he abandoned him. In the past five years, he had learnt enough of his master to know that he would not look kindly upon him had he returned to find his manservant departed with all the food. He would not have put it past him to track him down, no matter how long it took, just to see him hang.

Two days he’d waited. Chlod felt confident that Calard was not coming back.

With that decided, he stood up, shoving his pet back into the deep pocket on the front of his tunic.

Leading his mule, Chlod moved towards the cave entrance. He wouldn’t return to Bretonnia, he decided. He would travel back into the Empire, back to one of the enormous cities that he had visited with his former master – Altdorf perhaps.

He was feeling quite cheery as he strode out into the snow. The storm had died down the day before, and the air was crisp and clear. He breathed in deeply, savouring the near absolute silence.

The slight breeze changed direction, and his mule suddenly reared, nostrils flaring and ears flattening against its head.

‘Whoa!’ shouted Chlod, trying to calm the beast. Then his blood ran cold as he heard a low growl from nearby.

Chlod turned slowly to see a massive, shaggy-coated animal padding towards him. It was the size of a draught horse, and its fur was pale and thick. A mane the colour of virgin snow encircled its heavily-muscled neck, and a pair of curving teeth, each the length of a short sword, emerged from its snarling mouth.

A growl to his left announced the presence of a second cat, and he saw a third moving up to his right. He could see dark stripes upon the flanks of the snow-coloured predators, and their massive paws left deep indentations in the snow as they moved towards him.

Chlod turned tail and ran.

He heard his mule’s tortured scream as the cats bore it to the ground behind him. That scream was cut short, and Chlod dared not turn to see if they were now leaping for him. Expecting sabre teeth to close around his neck at any moment, Chlod fled back into the cave, the sound of crunching bones echoing around him.

Ducking down behind a rock some way in, he turned, breathing hard, to see if the mountain cats were following him. One of the beasts came loping in after him. Its predatory gaze was fixed on his hiding place.

Chlod fled further into the cave, falling back as far as he was able. On the cat came, unhurried and following him inexorably. As it closed, it was joined by its pack, which instinctively fanned out to cut off any chance of escape. Chlod backed into the black pool of water.

‘Cats don’t like water,’ he murmured, hoping against hope that he was correct. Perhaps if he waded in deep enough they would leave him be. That faint hope was shattered as the biggest of the sabre-tusks came straight in after him, a deep growl rumbling within its chest.

Seeing no other option, Chlod sucked in a deep breath and turned his back on the sabre-tusks. He heard them roar, and then splash towards him, and with that he dived into the black water.

Calard’s eyes flicked open, the prayer dying on his lips as a shape rose from the blood-pool. In an instant he was on his feet, swinging his bastard sword up in readiness of attack.

At first he thought he was having another horrific vision, seeing again one of the daemonic things that whispered in his ear. It was covered from head to toe in blood, and its thick, malformed body struggled as it tried to pull itself clear of the foul, clinging gore. It looked straight at him, eyes wide and full of terror, and Calard lowered his guard a little.

‘Peasant?’ he said. ‘Is that you?’

‘Master!’ cried Chlod, dragging himself out of the blood-pool to fall at his feet. ‘Praise Ranald, I thought you were dead!’

We are all dead, whispered a voice in Calard’s ear, but if Chlod heard it too, he didn’t make any reaction.

‘Not yet,’ said Calard, answering both.

‘You’ve been gone so long, I was worried, and then there were these sabre-cats and they…’ His words trailed off as he seemed finally to register his surroundings, and his eyes went wide. The hunchbacked peasant looked around him in dawning horror, and a pitiful moan escaped his lips.

‘Gone so long?’ said Calard. ‘I’ve only been here for… what, an hour perhaps?’

‘An hour?’ said Chlod, looking up at him. The peasant shook his head. ‘You’ve been gone for two days, master.’

You are dead, said a voice. You just don’t know it.

‘Did you hear that?’ said Calard. Chlod was starting to shake, and tears were running down his cheeks. Calard could see that the peasant’s sanity was close to breaking.

‘Peasant!’ he snapped, and Chlod jerked, looking up at him with haunted eyes. ‘Did you hear that voice?’

‘Voice?’ said Chlod.

‘Never mind,’ said Calard.

‘What’s in there?’ said Chlod pointing.

‘What?’ said Calard. ‘There’s nothing there…’

His voice trailed off as he followed Chlod’s gesture and saw that there was something nearby, something that had not been there before. Or at least, something he had not seen.

It was a pile of large red boulders, about a hundred yards away, and it looked akin to an old burial cairn. A way in to the cairn was formed by two tall boulders that leant against each other, forming a crude portal. The inside was dark.

Calard wondered how he had not seen it before.

Your eyes are closed, said a voice in his ear. You blind yourself with lies, denying yourself, deluding yourself.

‘Oh, and Chlod doesn’t?’ said Calard aloud.

‘Master?’ said Chlod, eyes darting around to see whom Calard spoke with.

He is a simple creature. He knows what he is. His eyes are open. He does not try to be something he is not.

‘And I do?’ said Calard.

You are dead! said the voice vehemently, the words spoken with hatred.

Chlod was looking at Calard strangely. Ignoring him, Calard moved towards the cairn.

Did he lie to himself? Calard wondered as he made his progress across the searing red sand. He knew the answer, of course. He always had. For years he had tried to be something that he wasn’t. For years he had tried to live up to hopeless expectations: his father’s, his own.

He heard laughter then, filled with self-satisfaction, and Calard pushed the sound and his doubts away as he reached the cairn. This place was insidious, preying upon his mind. He must not let himself succumb to the voices.

With his sword drawn, he stepped inside the cairn.

A man was kneeling in front of a crude shrine, his back to Calard. He was dressed in plate armour, though it was battered and old, covered in a layer of red dust. His hair was long and lined with silver, and he wore a tattered cloak over one shoulder.

Calard held his sword tightly in his hands, standing over the vulnerable figure. He could cut him down so easily.

Do it, urged a voice, making him start.

The man looked normal enough, but Calard knew that nothing in this hellish realm could be trusted. He shuddered as he thought of the other visions he had already seen, the teeming hordes of skinless, hateful daemons that he still felt crowding in around him, just beyond the veil of reality. Was this figure one of them, merely in a guise that might make him lower his guard? If it turned around would its face be missing, nothing but red-raw exposed muscle and veins?

Calard clenched his teeth, his muscles tensing as the urge to cut the man down took a hold of him. This is no man, he thought. This is a daemon. His heart beat furiously in his chest, and he could hear the pumping of blood in his head, deafening him and blotting out rational thought.

Calard tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword as a savage madness took him, and he stepped forward to strike the man down, his face twisting into a snarl.

As he lifted his sword up for the killing blow, he was momentarily distracted by something glinting in the shadows. His gaze was drawn to a small icon standing upright upon the crude shrine before which the man knelt, and as his gaze focused on that pendant, the blood-fury that had claimed him receded.

With a shake of his head, Calard cleared the last vestiges of the savage rage that had almost overcome him. He lowered his sword, hearing disappointed murmurs and bitter whispering all around him, wondering if this was merely some new vision.

The icon was a small brass statuette attached to a necklace. It was perched upright, leaning upon a rock, and depicted a female figure, a large goblet held in her hands over her head.

‘The Lady of the Lake,’ he breathed, in awe.

Dead, said a voice in his ear.

The kneeling figure lurched to his feet at Calard’s voice, swinging a sword around in a gleaming arc. Calard’s own blade flashed, and the two swords came together with a sharp clash, and the two knights were locked together for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes.

The knight’s face was not that of some hateful daemon; it was the face of a man, though it had the hollow, haunted look of one that had seen more than his sanity was capable of enduring.

‘The goddess be praised,’ said the strange knight, his voice cracked and dry. He collapsed to his knees, and tears of relief ran down his ashen cheeks. ‘She has answered my prayers at last.’

Calard stood there, helpless and in shock, looking at a man who was undoubtedly a fellow knight of Bretonnia.

‘There is only the one beast, reborn time and time again,’ said the knight, his voice lifeless and hollow. His name was Orderic of Montforte and, like Calard, he was a Questing Knight, seeking the Lady’s blessing. His armour was of an antiquated style unfamiliar to Calard.

He sat with the knight upon a pair of rocks outside the crude cairn-like structure. Chlod knelt in the sand at Calard’s knee, shuddering and whimpering, glancing around him fearfully.

‘I… I cannot recall how many times it has risen,’ Orderic said. ‘A dozen times? A hundred? I don’t remember. It’s all a fog…’

The haunted knight’s voice trailed off and his eyes clouded over, lost in his vague memories. The knight seemed confused when Calard asked him how he had gotten here.

‘How long have you been here?’ said Calard, breaking the silence that had fallen between them as the knight tried to remember. Orderic jerked and looked at him in surprise, as if he had forgotten that he was not alone.

‘I… I don’t know. A while. There is no night here, so it is hard to judge. A week? A year? I don’t know… The Lady led me. Just as she led you.’

‘So it would seem,’ said Calard, looking around him warily. ‘But I cannot see why she would bring me here.’

‘I know why you came,’ said the knight vehemently. ‘She brought you here that you might relieve me of my vigil. It is your time now to stand guard over the beast, and to slay it when it next rises.’

‘What?’ said Calard. ‘No. That is not why I have been brought here. That can’t be the reason.’

‘You have to take up my vigil,’ said the knight. ‘I’ve been here too long. I… I am losing myself in this place.’

‘But I am embarked on the Quest,’ said Calard.

‘As am I,’ said Orderic. ‘Though I was close to accepting defeat. I have been delayed here too long. Many nights have I prayed for someone to come to relieve me. Those prayers have now been answered.’

Calard bit his lip and looked down. The Lady had led him here. Was this her will? Was this then to be his fate, to take up the knight’s vigil, slowly losing himself to madness until another knight arrived to replace him? Was he to become a pale, haunted shell of a man like Orderic?

‘Why did you take up the Quest?’ asked Orderic suddenly.

‘What?’ said Calard, frowning, as if the question was ludicrous. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Why did you take up the Quest? I took it up for glory,’ said Orderic, laughing hollowly. ‘And this is where it led me. I realise now that I took up the Quest for the wrong reason. The search for glory is not noble. That is why the Lady brought me here. This vigil has been my penance. What did you do to be brought here to this hell?’

‘I… I took up the Quest to prove that my blood was free of taint,’ said Calard, surprised that he had never realised it in such simple terms before. ‘To prove it to myself, and to my knights. And to prove myself to my father. To make him proud.’

He realised how stupid that was as soon as he said it, for his father was dead and could never give him the acceptance he so craved.

‘You are questing for the wrong reason,’ said Orderic. ‘You will never reach your goal until your realise that reason.’

‘What is it?’ said Calard, but Orderic merely shrugged, smiling without warmth.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I have learnt that the Quest is more than a feat of arms. It takes more than just killing a monster to be granted the Lady’s visitation. It is a quest of faith – of faith in the Lady, faith in your belief, faith in yourself.’

‘Faith in yourself,’ echoed Calard, brow creasing as he pondered the knight’s words.

‘You have to take up my vigil,’ said Orderic, pleading, desperate. ‘Please take up my vigil. I… I cannot go on any more.’

The knight’s gaze dropped, and he merely stared blankly into nothingness. Calard did not know what to say.

‘I have denied death for so long waiting for you to come,’ breathed the knight. ‘My Quest is unfinished. I cannot die before it is completed. I cannot. Let me finish it.’

Roiling blood-red clouds rolled across the fiery heavens with unnatural speed, and Calard eyed them nervously as ruby lightning lit them from within. Chlod was rocking back and forth on his haunches, speaking softly to himself, and Orderic continued to merely stare into space. Things flickered at the edge of Calard’s vision, as if in agitation at the brewing storm, and the first drops of rain began to patter down onto the red desert sand.

The light shower grew heavier and Calard blinked as it began to run down his face, and only then did he realise that this was no normal rain.

‘Blood,’ said Calard in horror as warm rivulets ran down his armour and face.

‘It begins again…’ said Orderic, suddenly coming out of his stupor. He drew his sword as he rose wearily to his feet.

‘What is it?’ said Calard, standing and drawing his own blade.

‘The beast is reborn,’ said Orderic, moving in the direction of the blood-pool and the wyvern’s skeleton. His shoulders were slumped in defeat and exhaustion.

Chlod was still rocking to and fro on the ground, and Calard gave him a quick glance before hurrying after Orderic. As he got closer to the blood-pool, he could see that it was bubbling furiously. His eyes widened and he gripped the hilt of his sword tightly as he looked upon the skeleton of the wyvern.

Like a sponge, the porous, dry bones were sucking up the blood, and they were now a deep, bruised red. Sinew and muscle started forming across the skeleton. Ligaments and tendons pulled the bones together tightly, and internal organs formed within the beast’s abdomen. A massive heart grew within its chest cavity, and a spider web of veins and arteries spread across the rapidly regenerating musculature. That heart began to beat, then it was obscured as more muscle and flesh built up over it.

Still not yet fully formed, the wyvern rose from the ground, its red-raw body coiling sinuously, as yet unfleshed wings flexing.

The beast’s massive jaws opened in a silent challenge, its vocal chords not yet formed, and hateful eyes grew within their sockets. The wyvern clawed up the earth as it shuddered and writhed, as if in pain or ecstasy, and finally its green-grey skin began to spread across its flesh.

It all happened within the space of ten heartbeats, and by the time Calard and Orderic closed on it, it was fully regenerated. The beast was already wading into the bubbling pool, and the two knights broke into a run towards it.

‘It cannot be allowed to pass through!’ shouted Orderic, leaping into the pool. He landed knee-deep in blood, and began splashing towards the wyvern. Calard was only a step behind him. The beast swung its massive head around towards them as it registered their presence, and it let out a deafening screech.

Five minutes later, the beast was dead, and Calard and Orderic collapsed on the bank, exhausted and bloodied. The two knights had fought well together. As quickly as it had arrived, the blood shower had passed, the clouds streaking across the sky to disappear over the burning horizon.

Once again, the beast was nothing but bones, dry and brittle; its flesh had turned to dust as Calard had struck the fatal blow, his sword penetrating the wyvern’s heart. In the blink of an eye, the bones were back where Calard had first seen them. Indeed, the only evidence to show that he had not imagined the entire episode were the injuries that he and Orderic had sustained, and the blood on his blade, which the oppressive heat had already dried to flaking rust.

‘There must be a way to end this cycle,’ said Calard, wiping his blade clean. ‘Some way to put the beast to rest once and for all.’

Orderic merely shrugged.

What if there was no way to end the cycle? Was this to be his fate, then, to be stuck here in this nightmarish plane, fighting the beast every time it rose? He thought of the horror and slaughter that would result if the beast passed through the blood-pool, unleashing its fury upon the Old World. Could he in all sincerity turn away, and do nothing?

No, he realised. He could not. If this was what the Lady willed of him, then he would take up Orderic’s vigil. Perhaps it was penance for the tainted blood he suspected ran in his veins. Or perhaps it was as Orderic had suggested – punishment for taking up the Quest for selfish reasons.

‘Faith in yourself,’ Calard muttered. He sighed and shook his head, his shoulders slumping.

You will be with us soon, whispered a voice.

Perhaps this was where he belonged.

Time had no meaning in this hell, and Calard could no longer gauge how long he and Chlod had been trapped there. The peasant had become completely non-communicative, merely rocking back and forth and muttering to himself.

At first, Orderic spoke with Calard about all manner of things, mundane and otherwise. Orderic talked of his homeland, Montforte, and of the things that he missed; the mountain air, the springtime, the endless blue sky.

‘And bluebells,’ he said with a shadow of a smile on his face. ‘I miss bluebells.’

Nevertheless, Orderic had slowly become quieter until he had slipped into a protracted silence, staring into nothingness. His eyes had become vacant and dead, and Calard had given up trying to speak with him. Was that what he would be like, given time? Was he to merely wait here until another came to take up his vigil?

He tried to sleep, but whenever he closed his eyes he saw the skinless daemons surrounding him. Waiting.

Calard took to patrolling the area but there was nothing to see from horizon to horizon, save the blood-pool and the cairn. While he walked, his mind whirled with jumbled thoughts. Was Orderic right? Was he questing for the wrong, selfish reasons? Had he blinded himself with falsehoods, trying to be what he was not?

A thought occurred to him. If Orderic killed the beast each time it arose, then why had he faced it in the Grey Mountains? He wanted to question Orderic, but the knight was completely unresponsive.

The fires of Chaos rolled across the heavens, and the red earth was scorching hot beneath his boots. Sometimes he thought he saw winged black things circling overhead, and at others voices whispered in his ears, telling him things he did not want to hear.

You are already dead, they hissed. You just don’t know it.

Calard probed the blood-pool, trying to find a way back to reality, but it was no use. He was becoming resigned to the idea of staying here in this hateful realm of Chaos, though the thought of doing so filled him with horror. Yet if it were the Lady’s will, what right had he to argue?

It was while testing the depths of the blood-pool that he found the body.

Sweating and breathing hard, his lungs burning, Calard heaved it onto the bank.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Orderic, his voice full of horror, making Calard jerk in shock; he had not heard the knight’s approach. Orderic was staring down at him, panic written on his face.

‘I found…’ started Calard, but his voice trailed off as he stared down at the skeletal remains that he had dredged up from the bottom of the pool.

It was the skeleton of a human, wearing antiquated plate armour. The armour looked familiar…

‘Lady wept,’ said Calard, looking between Orderic and the corpse. ‘You’re dead.’

Orderic was shaking his head in denial, his face a mask of confusion and fear.

‘No, no, no,’ he was saying, backing away, his expression gaunt.

‘The wyvern defeated you,’ said Calard, kneeling over the skeleton. He touched the thick hole in its breastplate, a hole larger than his fist. ‘Its sting punched through your chest. It must have killed you almost instantly.’

Orderic touched his own chest, where now there was a gaping hole, and his hand came away bloody.

‘It is this place,’ said Calard. ‘It’s brought you back, just like it does the wyvern.’

‘I am not dead’ shouted Orderic, clutching his head in his hands and sinking to his haunches.

Calard stood, shaking his head.

‘I’m sorry, Orderic,’ he said. ‘Your Quest is over. You died. Let yourself go.’

‘No, no, you’re speaking lies! Daemon! Sorceror!’ said Orderic.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Calard, edging towards the blood-pool, away from the pitiful sight of the tortured knight.

He knew why the Lady had brought him here.

Calard did not know how much time had passed before the thunder began, and the blood clouds raced once more across the burning heavens. Orderic had disappeared. Calard hoped that the knight had finally moved on, his soul passing to Morr, but he knew that was not the case. The knight would never attain that while his body dwelt in this realm of Chaos.

Calard truly felt sorry for him, but had faith that he was doing the right thing. This was the reason the Lady had brought him here. It was not a test of arms as he had first thought. He had not been brought here to kill the wyvern, or at least not directly. No, he had been brought here to give Orderic his rest eternal.

He had removed the armour from the dead knight’s skeleton and bundled the bones up into a satchel, which he now slung over his back as the blood rain began to fall. Half carrying Chlod, he moved towards the bubbling pool.

The wyvern was in the process of reforming itself, glistening muscles building up over its skeleton, but this time Calard did not draw his sword. He merely waited as veins and sinew grew from blood, and grey-green skin encased its flesh. Fully reborn, it slipped into the bubbling pool.

‘What are you doing?’ yelled Orderic, reappearing suddenly, his sword drawn. ‘It will pass through! It must be stopped!’

‘No,’ said Calard, moving to intercept the knight, drawing his own blade. ‘It is the only way to get back to Bretonnia; the only way that you can attain peace.’

‘You would draw your blade against me?’ said Orderic. ‘You truly are a daemon!’

‘No,’ said Calard, sheathing his sword. ‘I will not fight you. If you wish to cut me down, do it, but I will not stand aside.’

For a moment, Calard thought the shade was going to do it, to run him through then and there, but Orderic relented, dropping to his knees.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Calard, ‘but this is the only way. May you soon find peace, Orderic of Montforte.’

He turned away, and moved quickly towards the blood-pool, dragging the whimpering peasant Chlod along with him. He reached its edge just as the wyvern disappeared beneath the bubbling surface, its spined tail flicking, and he shoved Chlod roughly into it. The peasant was babbling something indecipherable, and Calard was not sure if he had any real understanding of what was going on.

‘Dive!’ he shouted. ‘Dive, you stupid peasant!’

‘You would abandon me here?’ called Orderic, his voice filled with longing and despair, but Calard ignored the plaintive cry. ‘Don’t leave me here alone!’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said under his breath as he waded out into the blood-pool. Praying that this was going to work, he sucked in a deep breath and dived. He had no idea if Chlod was following.

He swam down and down. It was pitch-black, but he was swimming through water now rather than blood.

At last he came up, breaching the surface of the water and he breathed in deeply. The air was freezing, but he smiled broadly, overjoyed to be away from the burning hot otherworld. He was within the beast’s cavern lair, and he thanked the Lady. Still, the wyvern was loose, and more people would likely die if he did not hurry.

Chlod came up after him, half-drowned, spluttering and coughing, and Calard hauled him to the shallows.

‘Come, peasant!’ said Calard, hurrying towards the cave entrance.

He stepped out into the bright daylight, blinking against the glare. There was not a hint of cloud in the bright sky, and Calard smiled up at it, never more thankful to see it. The flaming heavens of that corrupted realm of Chaos had been driving him slowly insane.

The snows had all but gone, only patches of it remaining in the shadowed lee of pine trees and rocks. He shook his head, wondering how long they had been trapped in that hellish realm.

With Chlod in tow, Calard scrambled further up the mountain until he came to a glade within the pine trees. The view was spectacular, overlooking the mountains and down towards the lowlands of Bretonnia, towards Montforte. Bluebells spread out across the grass beneath the trees. It was a place that Orderic would have liked, he decided.

Calard dug a shallow grave and placed Orderic’s bones reverently within. Chlod offered to help, but Calard refused. This was something he had to do alone. He filled the grave with soil, and then spent the better part of the afternoon gathering and heaping stones on top of it in order that wolves and other scavengers did not dig it up.

Atop the burial mound, Calard erected a small tri-frame of pine branches. Around the top of it, he wound Orderic’s necklace, so that the little bronze statuette of the Lady hung above his resting place. It wasn’t much, but it seemed appropriate.

‘Be at peace, Orderic of Montforte,’ said Calard as he knelt before the grave.

The next day, weary and footsore, Calard and Chlod passed a pair of hunters, fresh kills draped across their shoulders. From those simple men, Calard heard a strange tale. They said that a wyvern had been seen abroad the day before, flying above the mountain peaks, but that it had turned to dust mid-flight, to be dispersed on the breeze.

‘What does it mean, master?’ said Chlod after they had bid farewell to the hunters. His eyes were still haunted from the sights he had seen in the Chaos otherworld.

‘It means that my task here is done,’ said Calard. ‘In life the wyvern defeated Orderic, yet he refused to accept death or failure. He became locked in an eternal loop, seeking always to defeat it; sometimes he would win, sometimes he would lose. Granted final rest, perhaps it too was allowed to move on, once and for all.’

Chlod’s brow furrowed, and he picked his nose.

‘Do wyverns go to Morr’s hall too, master?’ he said.

‘It is like speaking with an orc,’ said Calard, shaking his head. The peasant grinned and dribbled.

‘Where do we go now, master?’ Chlod said after a few minutes.

‘For now, homeward,’ Calard said. ‘After that? Wherever the Lady leads us.’

THE MIRACLE AT BERLAU

by
Darius Hinks

Ratboy awoke to a world of silence and pain.

Charred rafters were tumbling from a temple roof to reveal a heavy, pewter sky. Stone lintels were smashing across flagstones, pulling down walls and windows as they went. Fragments of skin, teeth and bone were bouncing across the floor, while overhead, flaming pages of the Deus Sigmar drifted beneath what remained of the vaulted ceiling. But none of it made a sound.

Other senses quickly returned to him. He felt the hard stone of the temple floor pressing into his blistered back, and he could clearly smell the meaty aroma of embers, smouldering on his upturned face; but nothing reached his ears.

He lurched up from the blood-slick floor and noticed something moving through the chaos. A figure was dragging itself through the tumbling masonry. It kept to the shadows and was hard to see clearly, but its awkward, jerking movements unnerved him. He shuddered and closed his eyes. When he looked again it was almost gone. A single, glistening thread was briefly visible, as it slid out through the temple door, then it disappeared into the growing morning light.

A whistling began in Ratboy’s head as he stumbled through the smoke and confusion. He pounded his skull, pummelling the side of his face with his bloodied fist and, to his surprise, this seemed to help. He felt something shift in his left ear and finally, with a fizzing, popping screech, sound returned to him.

As the agony in his head eased, he began to notice other pains: his left side was badly scorched and the leather of his coat had merged with his arm like new skin. Blisters were erupting all over his scrawny neck. He lifted a hand to his face and winced at the smell of burnt flesh, but as he flexed his fingers he smiled. Still works, he thought. He picked the glowing embers from his face, ran a nervous hand over his aching skull and laughed with relief. ‘I’m alive,’ he muttered.

Memory came back to him with a rush of adrenaline. Brother Wolff, he thought, scanning the room. He quickly spotted the old priest, slumped awkwardly beneath a pile of rubble and he limped to his master’s side. ‘Jakob,’ he whispered, taking his hand, ‘My lord.’ The priest’s chest armour was scorched and dented and the grey stubble that covered his head was dark with blood, but he still lived. ‘It’s a miracle,’ said Ratboy, helping him to his feet.

Wolff looked down at his torso and shook his head in despair. ‘I’ve failed,’ he muttered. Then, his bloodshot eyes focused on Ratboy. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snapped, grabbing the boy’s arm.

Ratboy was about to reply when a large section of the roof erupted with fresh flames and they were forced to flee, stumbling punch-drunk from the building.

They fell out into the grey Ostland dawn and clambered slowly up to the edge of the forest. From there, the temple looked a little more stable: one of the walls had given way and the tower was slumped at a slightly odd angle, but it looked mostly intact. The flames were already subsiding. Wolff examined his torso again and began to gingerly remove a row of pouches that was strapped to his chest.

‘They didn’t all explode,’ said Ratboy. ‘That’s why you survived.’

Wolff nodded, then scowled at his servant. ‘Did you follow me from the camp last night?’ Then he took his servant’s head in his hands and peered intently at him. ‘Your ears – are you hurt?’

Ratboy noticed a gentle warmth flowing down his neck and realised he was bleeding from the side of his head. The priest ignored his murmurs of complaint and clasped the boy’s head even tighter. Eventually, a different kind of heat blossomed behind Ratboy’s eyes and he slipped into unconsciousness.

When Ratboy came to, the midday sun was already warming the grounds of the temple. He lay there for a while, looking down across the little clearing and listening to the harsh cawing of ravens perched on the temple roof. He ran a hand over his battered, skinny limbs, struggling to believe they were still intact. The pain in his side had eased a little and he smiled with the simple joy of being alive. Something about the birdsong seemed odd though. He listened to the sounds of the forest; sounds he had thought lost to him. Beneath the birdsong and the creaking of branches, he thought he heard words: soft, singsong voices, calling to him. ‘Firefirefire,’ they whispered. Then an odd smell reached him – an acrid, offal stink that had no place in such an idyllic scene.

He climbed to his feet, suddenly afraid, and limped quickly back down to the temple. ‘Brother Wolff?’ he called, peering cautiously into the gloom. There was no reply. A faint haze of smoke still lingered in the air, but the roof was no longer falling and he decided it was safe to enter. In a far corner, he saw the priest’s shadow, thrown across the wall by a flickering oil lamp. The old man was clearing dust off a headstone and peering closely at an inscription.

‘Brother Wolff,’ he said, crossing the temple, ‘did you kill him? I thought I saw something earlier. I think it was a man, but it didn’t look, well…’

The priest gave no reply and continued staring at the headstone.

‘Lord?’

Wolff looked up at Ratboy with despair on his face. ‘What? What did you say?’

‘The Reaver – did he die?’

The priest frowned for a few seconds, then raised his eyebrows in recognition. ‘Oh, the Norscan, no, I found parts of him over there,’ he gestured to a crumpled mound near the altar, ‘but he survived the blast. Not for long though, I think. Nearly half the powder detonated. He must be burned beyond recognition.’ He looked around at the ruined building and frowned. ‘I seem to have lost my warhammer though. I think it may have been destroyed by the explosion.’

Ratboy knew what such a loss would mean to the priest. The hammer was more than just a weapon – it was a powerful icon of his faith. Wolff would feel lost without it. He could not help smiling at the sight of his master’s familiar scowl however. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again,’ he said.

‘You spied on me?’ replied Wolff.

Ratboy nodded, with a rueful smile. ‘I wondered what had dragged you from your tent so early. Even you don’t usually rise until dawn, so I crept through the moonlight to see what you were up to. I don’t know what you said to those poor engineers, but it seemed to wake them up pretty sharpish.’

Wolff gave a short bark of laughter. ‘What a bunch of rogues. I think they’d only stopped drinking a couple of hours earlier.’ He shook his head. ‘And on the eve of such an important battle.’

‘Well – you seemed to sober them up pretty quickly. I saw them give you those black powder weapons, but I couldn’t understand why you hid them beneath your cloak. Or why you crept out of the camp like that. Why would you head off into the forest on your own, with the enemy camped so close by?’

Wolff sighed. ‘You’ve seen the way the marauders rally at the site of their champion – the Reaver as you called him.’

‘Of course – and I’ve seen the way he watches your every move.’

Wolff nodded and smiled. ‘You have your wits about you boy. Yes, you’re right – he knows me. Even in that pit of corruption he calls a brain he knows what I represent to the regiment: hope. Ever since I rallied Maximillian’s pistoliers at the Battle for Hogel Bridge, he’s had me in his sights. Even then, as I led the charge across to the west bank, I realised he was desperately trying to separate me from the others, but our firepower was too great.’

‘I remember,’ said Ratboy with a grimace. ‘He lashed the marauders half to death trying to get to you, but they just fell in their dozens, their bellies full of shot. The river ran red before he finally gave up.’

‘Yes – and so it’s been in every battle of the campaign, leaving us at this bloody impasse. And he knows this deadlock will continue until one of us dies, but so far he’s been unable to corner me.’ Wolff looked away, as though he were suddenly embarrassed. ‘So, I thought I’d give him the chance he’s been looking for. He knew as well as I did that there was a Sigmarite temple in the heart of this wood; the kind of temple a priest might be foolish enough to visit.’ He paused and took a long breath. ‘I knew I couldn’t survive an encounter with such a creature, but that fitted in with my own plans.’

Ratboy laughed, trying to hide his shock. ‘You wanted to die?’ He noticed that Wolff was not listening, but staring at the headstone again. ‘Brother Wolff?’

‘What kind of a miracle,’ muttered the priest, ‘could happen here?’

Ratboy edged closer to the headstone to get a better look. Most of the engraving was scorched beyond recognition, but the names were still just about legible: Hieronymus and Margarethe Wolff.

‘Wolff?’ asked Ratboy. ‘Are these your relatives?’

The priest looked up at him. ‘My parents.’ He sat down heavily next to the stone and massaged his bloody, shaven scalp. ‘As soon as I led the Reaver into this clearing, I knew I had the right place. He was on me so fast though, I hardly had the chance to look around. I had no intention of surviving, as you guessed, but I was determined not to die alone.’ He paused, and looked up at Ratboy with a feverish look in his eye. ‘My faith has always been a means to an end. Its usefulness was always going to be finite.’

Ratboy’s thin, beak-nosed face flushed a deep red. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

‘Of course you don’t.’ A dull clang rang out as Wolff kicked the headstone with his ironclad boot. ‘This is a mark of my inescapable sin. A sin beyond reckoning. A sin against my own parents. My faith has never been anything more than atonement and today was to be my final penance.’ He snapped the silver hammer that hung around his neck and threw it to the floor in disgust. ‘But now I see that there is no penance. Nothing can atone for what I’ve done. I’ve failed. I can’t even die.’ He looked up at the ruined ceiling. ‘I think my willingness to die gave me an edge though. The Reaver thought me easy prey, out here in the woods, away from our guns and cavalry. His gods have bestowed many gifts on him,’ he grimaced, ‘many gifts.’ He tapped the scorch marks on his breastplate and gave a grim smile. ‘If it wasn’t for my final trick, he would’ve finished me.’

Ratboy’s mind was cast back to the odd figure he saw crawling from the temple, and he shuddered, relieved he had seen no more of the creature. He looked back at the stone. ‘But if these are your parents then this must be–’

‘My home, yes. A place so banished from my thoughts I flinched when I saw it on the general’s campaign map. So great is my shame.’

‘Why should you be ashamed, Brother Wolff? You’re an inspiration to the entire regiment. Your faith shines out of you. How can you dismiss it so easily?’

‘My faith? Oh yes, my faith has always inspired, but to what end? And anyway, what’s the use?’ His voice cracked. ‘What use is a religion so powerless it can’t even erase my own crimes? How could it lift this darkness that hangs over us?’ He sighed and clenched his broad, powerful hands, until the old scars that networked them throbbed a deep red. Then he began to speak in a loud voice, as though addressing a crowd. ‘At the age of ten my parents sent me to a local priest, Aldus Braun, boasting of my piety and learning. Even at that tender age I possessed an unusual, infectious fervour. The priest taught me to read, and I quickly surpassed him. Within a year I had devoured every text in his library. At the age of eleven, I could quote the Deus Sigmar in its entirety, and with such conviction it would make you weep to hear it. It could have ended there, the happy tale of a devout childhood, but my parents wanted more.

‘My older brother, Fabian was a useless wastrel, as is most of our aristocracy. He did no real harm: gambling, duelling, womanising and the like; nothing unusual for a young duke, but he was an embarrassment to my parents, so they focused all their energies on me: their perfect, pious, prodigal son. Soon, I was the sneak of the village. Every suspicious look or deed reported back to Brother Braun, until there wasn’t a crone within fifteen miles who would dare pluck a herb.’

‘So, you were an eager apprentice. I see no shame in that. You were being trained for a lifetime of holy servitude.’

Wolff shook his head and smiled. ‘But they trained me too well, you see. Unbridled faith is a dangerous dog to unleash, unless you know how to call it off. Brother Braun was summoned to Altdorf for a while and I returned to the old house.’ He gestured out through a broken window. ‘If you climbed that hill you could probably still see it, sitting smugly at the north end of the valley. Fabian was too busy chasing peasant girls to entertain his little brother, and as the summer passed I grew progressively more bored. Finally, with my parents away hunting, and the house empty, I found myself rummaging in the attics.’ He paused, and took a long breath. ‘With hindsight, the things I found were so pitifully innocent: just some wooden idols; nature gods, nothing more than that. Relics of a more innocent age, I suppose. But of course, my shining faith, as you so elegantly described it, drove me on.

‘With Braun away in Altdorf, I didn’t know where to turn. My righteous young mind was convinced their souls were in peril. I was mindless with fear, desperate to tell someone before they returned. Otto Sürman was the name of my saviour.’ He looked up at Ratboy. ‘I threw myself on his mercy, much as you did mine. They told me he was a priest of Sigmar, but witch hunter would have been a more accurate description. Or maybe rabid, mindless zealot might have done better. Utterly unhinged. The worst kind of backwater tyrant. Thriving on fear like a vampire.’ He spat bitterly on the floor. ‘I betrayed my family to a monster.’

Wolff gripped the headstone and screwed his eyes tightly shut. ‘As my parents burned, the militia had to hold my brother back, or he would have torn me to pieces. He swore that if I ever stepped foot in the province again, he would rip out my heart with his bare hands.’ He looked at Ratboy with an awful, despairing grin. ‘I can still hear their cries. They begged for mercy as the flames took hold.’

Ratboy lowered his head, afraid of Wolff’s terrible gaze.

‘So you see, you’ve chosen a very poor prophet for your inspiration. I can lead no one to salvation. For these last years my faith has been no more than a useless burden. Nothing I have done in Sigmar’s name has ever eased my guilt. My pain just grew, year on year, until eventually I merely hoped to die in the most effective way possible. I thought that to sacrifice myself here might save the regiment and maybe redeem me at the same time. As soon as I saw the name of Berlau on the map, way back at the start of the campaign, I realised what a perfect symmetry it would make, to die here. I still hoped I could repay the old debt somehow.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘What a fool. Who could repay such a thing? Do you see? There was no occultist in my parents’ house. Just a couple of old dolls; dolls my parents had probably never laid eyes on. They burned for nothing.’ He cradled his head in his hands. ‘I saw guilt where there was only love.’

To see the priest in such despair shocked Ratboy deeply and he could think of no words of comfort. After a while he backed away, leaving Jakob to his grief. He decided to head back to the encampment and fetch help. The priest seemed utterly bereft and Ratboy feared for his sanity.

As he passed the base of the crumbling tower, however, he spotted something glittering in the dust and stopped. A metal block of some kind was sticking out of the rubble. He stooped to investigate, only to be distracted by something even more interesting. The explosion had shifted the tower’s lower stones to reveal a small staircase, leading down into the foundations of the temple. He stepped closer and realised it must have once been some kind of priest hole, now revealed for all the world to see. Intrigued, he lit a lamp and climbed down into the darkness. It was a library of sorts. Most of the abandoned temple had obviously been looted years ago, but this tiny chamber was still intact. Ratboy placed the lamp on the table and opened a book.

Months before, as a starving refugee, he had thrown himself on the mercy of the army as it marched through Ostland but the soldiers had caught him stealing food and punished him cruelly. They were men on the edge of defeat and their fear made animals of them. They spat on his tattered clothes, kicked his filthy, skinny body and christened him ‘Ratboy’. Finally, they chased him from the camp with a leather ‘tail’ nailed to his back. When Wolff found him snivelling and bleeding on the outskirts of the camp he was in a truly wretched state. The old man took pity on him and employed the boy as a servant. The priest was taciturn and ill tempered, but as the army marched on, he kept his new acolyte from harm. More than this, to Ratboy’s delight, as Wolff healed the young boy, he also taught him to read. Ratboy had surprised himself with his own aptitude and, peering now at the graceful script in front of him, he felt a familiar rush of pleasure as he began to read. It was the journal of Aldus Braun, the priest who mentored Wolff all those decades ago. Ratboy poured over the text, reliving the childhood exploits of his grizzled old master. He lost himself in Braun’s tales of his young protégé, forgetting for a while the sorry state Jakob had come to.

Dates were carefully foiled on the books’ leather spines and, before leaving, Ratboy plucked a volume from a shelf to read the priest’s last words. The final entry was written in a more hurried hand than the others. It made for interesting reading:

I can live with this burden no longer. To think that the boy should spend his entire life with such guilt is unthinkable. The fault was never his and he must be told. I am riding tonight to confront the witch hunter, Sürman, and demand he reveal the truth. I fully expect him to comply. It will doubtless be the end of his ‘career’ but I consider that a small price to pay for correcting such a mistake. To have burned the Wolffs on the flimsy evidence of a child was a travesty of justice in the first place, but to then discover the real occultist, and attempt to hide the truth, is beyond the pale. If Sürman will not admit his mistake and reveal the true guilty party, then I will accuse him openly. I am not afraid. I have absolute faith that Sigmar himself will protect me from Sürman’s hungry pyre.

I will ride out this very night to see him.

As Ratboy read and re-read the words his eyes grew wide. He snatched up the book and dashed back upstairs. ‘Jakob,’ he cried, ‘look at this.’

The priest was still crouched by the headstone, gazing into his open hands. ‘What is it?’ he muttered, taking the book. At first he flicked through the pages with a dismissive sneer on his face. ‘Braun. What a yokel he was. How little he knew of the world. Hiding out here in the comfort of his–’ As he turned to the last entry, the priest fell silent. He stood upright and held the lamp over the pages. ‘What’s this?’ he whispered, shaking his head. The colour drained from his leathery skin. ‘What’s this?’ He grabbed Ratboy by the shoulders and lifted him from his feet so that their faces were level. ‘Where did you find–’

The movement that silenced the priest was so fast Ratboy struggled to follow it.

Something flashed in the corner of his eye and he found himself on the far side of the temple, crushed against the altar, fresh blood in his eyes. He wiped his face and tried to draw a breath, but all the air had left his lungs. As he lay there, gasping, he saw Wolff stagger across the flagstones, wrapped in a vision of hell. It was the same creature Ratboy had seen earlier, but this time he could not take his eyes off it. From the furs and skulls, he guessed it must once have been the Reaver. He had witnessed the bloody champion many times, leading the enemy into battle, but he was now transformed beyond all recognition; every trace of humanity gone from him. What was once a man was now a heaving mass of charred skin, pulsating flesh and snarling, hissing jaws. As Ratboy struggled for breath, the already weakened priest struggled in vain to throw off the monster, cursing it bitterly as he staggered backwards towards the exit.

He has no weapon, thought Ratboy with horror. He forced himself to his feet and began to claw desperately around in the rubble, trying to find anything the priest could use to defend himself.

A scream came from outside. The monster had thrown the priest to the ground, thrashing him with countless limbs and attempting to attach one of its gaping maws to his face. Wolff was holding its deformed head at arm’s length, but he was already trembling with exhaustion.

Ratboy dashed to the priest hole, thinking he might find some kind of icon or staff.

Wolff howled in pain and Ratboy turned to see that the creature’s head was now fixed onto his neck.

He ducked down into the priest hole, but to his dismay there was nothing: just books and a desk, not so much as a quill. He groaned with despair and leapt back up the steps, deciding to fight the creature with his bare hands. As he reached the top step, he stubbed his foot on something and stopped to curse. Only then did he realise it was the same shiny object he had noticed earlier. ‘Metal!’ he gasped, and began to clear away the stones, thinking he might have found a candleholder. ‘Sigmar,’ he muttered when he realised what a treasure he had unearthed: the priest’s warhammer.

He struggled outside with it to see that the creature had climbed off the priest and was standing over him, taunting its victim. Its words were lisping and confused as they chorused through a dozen inhuman mouths: ‘Nownownow, littlelittlelittle, manman,’ it slurred as it writhed and danced gleefully over him. ‘Wherewherewhere isisis youryour firefirenownownow?’

Ratboy had intended to hand the hammer over to his master, but Wolff was barely conscious. Blood was rushing from his neck and his eyes were tightly closed in pain.

Ratboy hesitated. The monster was oblivious to him, intent on its prey as it leant closer and drew a long, sharpened bone from within its folds of flesh, all the while singing its gleeful song. ‘Wherewherewhere isisis youryour firefirenownownow?’

Ratboy tested the weight of the warhammer in his hands, unsure whether he could even swing it. I should flee, he decided. I would barely even mark the creature. It would just kill me too. He backed quietly towards the temple.

A memory halted him in his steps: a vision of kindness in the priest’s face as he nursed him back to health all those months earlier. Suddenly the weapon felt lighter. He lunged forward with all his strength, bringing the hammer down in a great sweeping arc towards the beast’s head.

The hammer connected with the misshapen skull and it collapsed inwards with a muffled crunch, as easily as a piece of damp wood. The thing’s writhing ceased and it reached up in a spasm of pain, then sank silently to the floor, dropping its bone knife at Ratboy’s feet.

Ratboy staggered backwards, shocked by his success. The warhammer suddenly regained its weight, and he let it clatter to the floor. ‘I killed it,’ he gasped, looking at his bloodied hands in disbelief. He began to giggle.

A moist popping sound silenced him and he looked down at the beast’s body in horror. In the area where he had destroyed its head, dozens of snarling mouths were quickly bursting from the bloody flesh. Ratboy reeled with shock as the mouths swelled and multiplied, each one hissing and belching merrily at him. ‘Littlelittlelittlemanmanan,’ they sang. ‘Eateateateateateateat.’

It launched itself from the floor and sent him staggering back into the temple, desperately trying to fend off its snapping jaws and flailing limbs.

Ratboy screamed for help, knowing that no one would hear him. In his panic, he barely registered the various wounds appearing all over his face and chest as the monster quickly overwhelmed him. Finally, he found himself pinned against the altar, with no place left to go. The thing pressed him firmly against the stone and placed a blackened tentacle over his mouth to silence him. A terrible stench of rotting innards filled Ratboy’s nostrils and he recognised it as the same smell that had so disturbed him earlier, outside the temple. The beast’s claws and teeth grew still as the largest of its heads stretched forward, until it was only an inch from Ratboy’s face. He could see his own silent scream reflected in the unblinking blackness of its eyes.

‘Eateateateateateat,’ it whispered to him. ‘Eateateateatthethelittlelittlemanman.’

Ratboy closed his eyes and waited for the end.

He felt the thing’s limbs tighten around his body, then its whole body grew stiff and its voices rose in pitch, turning into a furious chorus of snarls and howls. After a few seconds Ratboy opened his eyes in confusion and saw the monster’s bone knife protruding from its own glistening chest.

The creature’s limbs loosed their grip and it slid to the floor with a wheezing sound, a knife through its heart, finally dead.

Ratboy found himself face-to-face with Wolff. The old man managed to stand for a few more seconds, smiling through his pain, then he too dropped to the floor.

As the two men made their slow ascent back up through the forest, sounds of battle began to greet them: the thunder of horses crossing the plain, the lurid drone of enemy horns and the dull thud of steel against leather. Even from here though, they could tell the tide was turning. Without the Reaver to lead them, the marauders were being driven slowly back out of the valley. The long deadlock was finally broken.

Wolff paused to catch his breath, leaning heavily against a tree. Ratboy had bandaged his master’s neck as well as he could, but the cloth was already black with blood. The old priest’s face was grey and drawn with pain. The despair had faded from his eyes though; replaced with a new look of defiance. He looked down at his blistered young servant and smiled. ‘I think there was a miracle in there after all.’ He lifted his warhammer so that the metal glinted in the dappled sunlight. ‘I thought I was saving you that day, when I rescued you from the soldiers, but I think, in the end, you saved me. Thanks to you, my friend, I know my despair was needless.’ He placed a hand on Ratboy’s shoulder. ‘Come,’ he said, staggering back towards the battle.

As the priest left the trees and entered the heaving carnage of the fight, he held his hammer aloft and stood motionless for a moment, smiling up at the roiling sky as bloody figures crashed all around him, like waves breaking on a rock.

As Ratboy ran to his side, he thought he saw a light, bleeding from the old man’s skin, shining out as a beacon to those who would falter and doubt.

NOBLESSE OBLIGE

by
Robert Earl

The cautious scuffling was no louder than a whisper. Most men would not have heard it beneath the rumble of the ocean, or the creak of the ships at anchor, or the roar of the dockside taverns. But then, the watchman was not most men.

He had patrolled the darkness between Vistein’s warehouses for decades, and he was as alive to the rhythms of his shadowy domain as he was to the beat of his own heart. That’s how he knew when to investigate and when to remain deaf. Real criminals were one thing, but the mischief he was hearing within the windowless cube of Visgard’s grain store was quite another.

He floated over to the store’s entrance only to find it was as he remembered. The only way into the building was the narrow gap which age and usage had made between the rat-chewed timbers of the locked door and the missing cobbles of the floor beneath.

A contented smile split the watchman’s face as he stooped to examine the gap. It was too small for any but the skinniest of street children to have squeezed through. That made sense. Who else but street children would be desperate enough to risk a hanging by stealing a few handfuls of grain?

He froze as another muffled sound came from within the warehouse. It was followed by the steady hiss of sliding corn. The little thieves must have managed to get into the grain stores.

He’d make the filthy little vermin squirm before he handed them over.

He always did.

An eager grin split his features and he licked his lips as he opened the shutter on his lantern. In the flickering beam of its butter-yellow light, he selected a key and unlocked the door.

‘No point in trying to escape,’ he said, pleased with the authority that filled his voice. ‘You’re caught in the act.’

Silence.

The watchman stepped forward. Dozens of squat stone bins sat on either side of the store. The light from his lantern seemed unable to banish the oily blackness that lay between them.

‘I know you’re in that bin,’ the watchman said, his voice echoing back from the high vaults. ‘Come on out, now. Don’t make it worse for yourselves.’

When there was still no reply he marched over to the first of the stone bins and flung back the iron door that sealed it.

The stink that rolled out was strong enough to make him gag. As putrid as rotten fish, it had a thick, greasy tang that the watchman could taste as much as smell. He staggered back from the bin and lifted a sleeve to cover his mouth and nose.

Blinking back tears, he raised his lantern and looked into the bin. Where once there had been a healthy golden brown store of grain, now there was a black, congealed mass, a sickening porridge of rot and corruption.

Without removing his sleeve from his nose the watchman turned and selected another bin. This time he was prepared for the smell.

‘Sigmar’s blood,’ he cursed, and hurriedly slammed it closed again. He had never seen anything like this before. He wondered if it was the blight that some of the local farmers had been whining about. But how could the grain have rotted so quickly?

He never had time to give the matter another thought. As soon as he had blinked the last tears from his eyes, he realised that he didn’t have to find the thieves after all. Instead, they had found him.

There were at least a dozen of them. A dozen shapeless silhouettes, which merged indistinctly with the darkness. Some perched on top of the bins. Others lurked in the shadows between them.

Their eyes glittered, as cold as stars in the void.

The watchman felt his heart lurch, but as he squinted at the thieves his confidence returned. Despite the shadows in which they lurked, he could see that they wore the shapeless and ragged clothing of street urchins. Their hunched and twisted bodies looked wasted within their voluminous clothes, and their eyes were unnaturally bright.

‘Now then . . . ‘ the watchman began.

He didn’t finish. As he held up his lantern the flickering light revealed the nearest of the things.

Whatever it was, it was no child.

‘Oh, Sigmar,’ the watchman whimpered, his mouth suddenly dry. He took a step back and felt the stone of the bin behind him. ‘Oh, Sigmar.’

The creature stepped cautiously towards him. Beneath the dark rags of its cloak it moved with a perfect, nimble balance. But it wasn’t the thing’s wiry grace that made the watchman lose control of his bladder. It wasn’t even the scaly lash of its tail. It was the sharp-edged horror of the face which peeked out from beneath its hood.

It had the wrinkled snout and the twin chiselled teeth of a rat, although a rat grown obscenely large. Its eyes flamed yellow in the lamplight. They burned with a horrible, malign intelligence.

As the watchman started to sob, the thing peeled back its thin lips and hissed a question.

‘Alone?’ it squeaked, its features contorted with the effort of using Reikspiel.

The watchman moaned wordlessly and, with a quick twitch of its snout, the thing drew closer to him.

‘Alone?’ it repeated, and a confused tangle of sharp steel angles appeared in its paw. The weapon glistened with yellow slime, and for some reason the watchman thought about the rotten corn in the bins around him.

‘No,’ he said, seized by a sudden, terror-induced inspiration. ‘Not alone. There!’

He pointed to the back wall of the silo and, as every razor-toothed head turned to follow his finger the watchman hurled his lantern at their leader and bolted for the door.

Behind him there was a squeak of rage and a sudden blossom of flame as the lamp smashed on stone. The flare of light only lasted for a second, but it was enough to see the gap beneath the door.

As he sprinted towards it he felt half a dozen thuds on his back and legs. None of them brought more than a pinprick of pain, and in his panic the watchman barely even felt that. He even managed a couple more steps before the poison did its work.

It was a quick death. Almost instantaneous. His lungs collapsed at the same time that his muscles melted, and before he could even feel surprise his heart had stopped. The watchman fell to the ground.

After contemptuously examining their victim, his murderers returned to their work.

‘What!’ Gristwald barked with horror. His plump cheeks reddened and he rocked back as though he had been struck. Fortunately there was a flagon of ale on the table before him. He grabbed it and took a swig to soothe his nerves.

Florin waited until the man had composed himself before repeating his offer.

‘Six coppers.’ He smiled a big white smile, the happiest man in the inn. ‘Six coppers per bushel.’

The merchant looked as though he might be about to cry. But it wasn’t a handkerchief he pulled from within his waistcoat, it was a tin of snuff.

‘Care for some?’ he asked, offering the box to Florin, who shook his head. ‘It keeps the ague away. That’s how I keep so healthy.’

‘Then I don’t mind if I do,’ said Lorenzo, reaching over to take a pinch. The merchant resisted the urge to snatch the box away. If Florin was well dressed, well shaved and as clean as any man had a right to be, Lorenzo was more what Gristwald had always imagined Bretonnians to be.

The merchant watched as the old man dropped the snuff into his already smouldering pipe, and then drew deeply to ignite it.

‘An aid to my health,’ he coughed happily, ‘is exactly what I need in this horrible place. What with the food and the weather, I don’t know how anybody can survive at all in your Empire. The women must make up for it, eh?’

He winked obscenely at the merchant, who hurriedly turned back to Florin. Apart from that ridiculous ponytail the younger man, at least, seemed civilised.

For a Bretonnian, anyway.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘your friend is right. This is the Empire. Now, I’m not saying that you couldn’t get six coppers a bushel in Tilea, or Araby. Maybe you would. But up here it’s a copper a bushel, and that’s for the top quality stuff. I mean, you brought your cargo by sea. Who knows what sea vapours may have gotten into it?’

‘It’s corn,’ Florin reminded him, ‘not perfume. Good, clean corn.’

Lorenzo interrupted them by coughing up a lump of phlegm. He spat it out and nodded approvingly.

‘Good stuff this,’ he said, inspecting the smouldering bowl of his pipe. ‘Can you eat it?’

‘Not really,’ Gristwald said, resisting the temptation to see what would happen if the Bretonnian did.

‘Shame,’ Lorenzo said. ‘What with your crops rotting back into the ground this year, this stuff would have been quite valuable if you could have eaten it.’

Gristwald shrugged and arranged his pinched features into a smile which was as carefree as Florin’s.

‘Luckily, we have enough in the stores. One of the Provost Marshal’s edicts. I don’t care what everybody says,’ he glanced nervously around and leaned forward conspiratorially, ‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t be running the city. People complain because he’s a merchant, but who needs some mad old aristocrat, starting wars and raising taxes? It’s us merchants who know how things work.’

‘We certainly do,’ Florin nodded sagely. ‘Things like supply and demand.’

‘Which is why it’s interesting that you mention the grain stores,’ Lorenzo added.

‘Why?’ Gristwald asked at length.

‘We know about them,’ Florin told him, and tapped the side of his nose.

For a moment the shock was enough to rob Gristwald of his art, and panic showed on his plump features. By the time he had regained control of his face it was too late. Florin knew that the rumour which had brought them all the way from Bordeleaux had been true. As winter approached, Vistein had neither harvest nor stores. Hunger already stalked the streets, and starvation was already closing in.

It was the perfect sellers’ market.

‘It’s up to you,’ Florin decided with a smooth insouciance. ‘We can sit here and talk about the hows and the whys and the wheres of Vistein’s grain stores.’

‘Especially of the wheres,’ Lorenzo interjected.

‘Or we can shake hands, give you a whole ship full of corn, and leave you to make what profit you can on it. No offence, but the weather here doesn’t agree with me.’

‘Nor does the food,’ Lorenzo added with a heartfelt sincerity. Everything that was said about the Empire’s cooking was true. Last night somebody had even tried to sell him a pie with meat in it. It was all wrong.

‘Do we have a deal?’ Florin offered his hand.

‘Six coppers?’ Gristwald asked.

‘Six coppers.’

The merchant thought about how much the grain would be worth when everybody knew that Vistein’s silos were as barren as its fields, then spat on his hand and gripped Florin’s.

‘Done,’ he said, and the deal was closed.

It took less than an hour to finish their transaction. The three men arrived at the harbour within fifteen minutes of shaking hands and, abandoning his façade of bonhomie, the merchant rounded up half a dozen carters. While Lorenzo counted, examined and caressed the coins they had received in payment, Florin watched the merchant’s men empty the Katerina’s hold.

It was a small vessel, one of Bordeleaux’s typical little fat-bottomed herring boats, but her belly had been full, and the carters were soon streaming with sweat beneath the sacks of corn they were unloading.

‘A fine vessel,’ Gristwald told Florin, his beady eyes never leaving the precious cargo that his men were stacking onto their carts. ‘Beautiful lines. Have you had her long?’

‘Not long,’ Florin said. He too was intently watching the merchant’s men.

‘Now that you’re in Vistein, you should go to the Pit,’ Gristwald said, trying to keep the conversation going.

‘The Pit?’ Florin asked. He knew why the merchant was trying to distract him. He had known it the moment they had shaken hands. Although exorbitant, the price he had demanded for his cargo had been far too low.

‘Yes, the… You! Watch what you’re doing, you damned fool! You’ll tear the sack!… Yes, the Pit. The best fighting pit south of Kislev, they say.’

‘I’ll visit it,’ Florin nodded.

‘Aha! I knew you were a sportsman,’ Gristwald smiled approvingly, then rubbed his hands greedily together as the last of the corn was loaded onto the carts. ‘Now you must excuse me. I want to get this under cover in case it rains. And if you can get some more, then maybe we can do business again?’

‘I’ll let you know,’ Florin said.

Florin pursed his lips as he watched Gristwald bully his porters into something approaching a run. Within minutes they had disappeared through the gate that cut through the high stone walls which surrounded Vistein’s harbour.

‘That settles it,’ Florin said, going over to lean against the Katerina’s rail next to Lorenzo. ‘We’ll have to get back home, fill her up again, and make another run before winter closes in. Did you see how eager he was to pay six per bushel? Next time we’ll get a dozen per bushel. A score!’

‘As you say,’ Lorenzo shrugged.

‘And don’t you worry,’ Florin clasped his old friend by one bony shoulder. ‘We’ll definitely be able to do it before the storms close in.’

Lorenzo grunted. He was watching a squabble of sea-gulls fighting over what looked like a fish head on the quayside. The birds didn’t see the pack of children until it was too late. There was a sudden rush, and the slowest of the gulls were caught in grubby hands. There was a brief confusion of squawks and snapping bones and then the urchins were gone, racing off before anybody could steal their bounty. Lorenzo, reminded of the carefree days of his own youth, smiled.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Florin told him, ‘but what you’re forgetting is that the quickening winds will lend us speed. It’s the very fact that the storms are approaching that means we’ll be able to make it before the season ends.’

Lorenzo turned, spat over the railing to the water below, and grinned with all three of his teeth.

‘What shall we do first? Inn or brothel?’

Florin frowned suspiciously.

‘Why aren’t you arguing?’

‘Why should I argue?’

‘Because it’s dangerous. Well, not compared to the profit we can make, but…’ Florin trailed off. ‘You think that Katerina will talk me out of it, don’t you?’

‘Not at all,’ Lorenzo lied happily. ‘Anyway, let’s go. I’m hungry, even for the nightsoil they call food in this Ladyless place.’

‘She won’t, you know,’ Florin told him as he led off.

‘What?’

‘Katerina,’ Florin said more sharply. ‘She won’t talk me out of it.’

‘Remember what we were going to call the ship when we bought it?’ Lorenzo, who was halfway down the gangplank, turned to ask.

‘The Esmerelda. But…’

‘And remember what we bought her for in the first place?’ Lorenzo looked around the harbour to find an inn.

‘Yes, yes, yes. It was to find that temple in Araby. Although…’

‘And what are we doing instead?’ Lorenzo pressed on remorselessly. ‘And where are we doing it?’

The two men looked at each other. Then, at the same time, they both started to laugh.

‘Ah, to the hells with it,’ Florin cried, slapping Lorenzo on his shoulder, ‘so I haven’t got the hang of marriage yet. Forget the inn. Let’s go find this fighting pit Gristwald was talking about.’

If Vistein had possessed a heart it would have been the fighting pit. The pit itself was a natural oubliette, a steep-sided hole which geology had carved into rock upon which the town was built. Its sheer sides had been polished to an unforgiving smoothness and, as centuries of victims had discovered, once you were in it, you were trapped.

Above the stone, three tiers of balconies rose up towards the timbers of the roof. The carpentry was dwarfish, and the ancient oak beams were as solid as stone. They had to be. Each tier crowded slightly closer in than the one below, allowing the audience a clear view down into the bloodshed and violence below.

Florin and Lorenzo, heavy with copper, had taken a box on the bottom tier. It was well appointed. The chairs were padded, the railing was polished, and the table was packed with all the culinary delights of the Empire. Best of all, the box was so close to the fighting pit that they could smell the odour of the rotting blood that stained the sand below.

‘Personally,’ Lorenzo said as he rummaged around through the food on the table, ‘I could never see the point of these places.’ He selected a string of fat sausages. He sniffed them, grimaced, and put them absent-mindedly into his satchel.

‘How can you say that?’ Florin asked. He had been drinking the black, yeasty beer that had been provided. He had needed to drink a lot to make up for the filthy taste of the stuff. ‘Fighting pits are the epitome of civilisation.’

Lorenzo snorted, and critically examined a shapeless brown thing. He might have called it a pudding if it hadn’t been filled with cooked offal.

‘These northerners know as much about civilisation as a drunken ogre,’ he decided. ‘I mean, look at this food. Not a single frog’s leg in sight. Not even any snails!’

Florin shrugged magnanimously.

‘It’s the Empire. Of course they aren’t as civilised as us. Anyway, we’re not here for the food. We’re here for the sport.’

Lorenzo barked with humourless laughter.

‘Sport. Waste of time, more like. If you want to see things being killed, you can go and watch a rat-catcher for free.’

‘It’s not the killing,’ Florin said. ‘It’s the display of heroism. Of courage.’

Lorenzo rolled his eyes as Florin used his teeth to uncork another bottle and pointed excitedly into the ring.

‘Look. Things are starting to liven up.’

As the audience crowded eagerly around the railings, a ladder was lowered into the pit and a plump man, dignified despite the oversized powdered wig he was wearing, clambered down onto the sand. He strode to the middle of the pit, beaming up at the crowd as they shouted obscene welcomes.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he cried. There was a chorus of catcalls, the voices sharp with the anticipation of bloodshed. The pit master lifted his hands to call for quiet. ‘Ladies and gentlemen and his Lordship the Provost Marshal.’

This time there was nothing good-natured about the mob’s derision. Their collective voice was deafening. It echoed around the claustrophobic drum of the building, the hatred in it obvious.

‘Popular fellow, this Provost Marshal,’ Lorenzo said.

‘He certainly has a reputation,’ Florin smirked, and followed the direction of the crowd’s obscene gestures. For the first time he noticed the figure who sat in a gilded box to his left.

It was difficult to see much of him amongst the shadows and torchlight, but Florin wasn’t looking at him anyway. He was looking at the girl beside him. He was looking at the way that her hair shone like liquid gold, and the way that she moved, as slow and easy as pouring honey, and the way that the torchlight caressed her skin, so white and so smooth.

There weren’t many blondes like that in Bretonnia, he thought.

There weren’t many blondes like that anywhere.

‘Sportsmen,’ the pit master continued, looking nervously towards the Provost Marshal as the jeering died down. ‘We are gathered here tonight in the beating heart of our fair city to witness once more the greatest of virtues. Courage. Cunning. Daring. The virtues that make our Empire great, and our city greater.’

The cries of derision gradually melted away as the pit master hurried on.

‘The first match we have tonight,’ he bellowed, ‘involves one of the foulest beings to walk this earth. A creature that is green-skinned and sharp-toothed. A thing which lives for violence, and whose character is blighted by cruelty and blood lust. Yes,’ the man boomed, ‘the true sportsmen amongst you know that I am talking of the foul, the hideous, the orc.’

The boos echoed so long and so loud that Florin could feel the timber reverberating beneath him. The pit master was gesturing towards one of the iron-barred caves that had been cut into the side of the pit. Something moved in the darkness within.

‘And standing against the foul beast is one of our own. A hero of the regiments and of the wars in the North. A man whose courage is a match for any such creature. I give you Heinz van Lundtdorf!’

The boos turned to rapturous applause as van Lundtdorf was lowered from above into the arena. His polished breastplate was alive with reflected torchlight, and his crimson cape flared elegantly as he descended, waving to his fans as he was lowered past them.

‘What a show off,’ Florin said.

Lorenzo grunted. He watched the ensuing slaughter without any of Florin’s animated feeling. Even before the orc had shambled out of the cage, he had known it was doomed. If the local champion ever lost to anything, it would never be to anything at the top of the bill. The sharps who ran the gambling in these places knew better than to allow that.

Five minutes of theatrics later, and the green corpse of the broken creature was hauled away while the gladiator milked the applause. Florin cursed.

‘Anybody could have killed that damn thing,’ he said, taking the pie Lorenzo handed him and hurling it into the pit. ‘It’s ridiculous. It may be the Empire, but at least some of the people here deserve a bit of style. A bit of honour.’

His expression softened as he turned to look at the woman who sat in the Provost Marshal’s gilded box. She appeared to be feeding him strawberries, but when she caught Florin’s eye she winked, a flash of dark eyelashes over impossibly blue eyes.

‘Shallya save us,’ Lorenzo muttered, but his oath was lost beneath the boom of the pit master’s voice.

The gladiator van Lundtdorf ascended back up so as to sit out the next fight. It was between a pack of warhounds and a gaggle of goblins that had been armed with spears. This time Florin, who had a love of the big dogs, cheered with the crowd when the dogs won.

But then the pit master introduced the next fight and all of a sudden this wasn’t sport any more.

‘Who knows what vile pit of sorcerous depravity these things were spawned in?’ he asked the crowd, who murmured with superstitious dread. ‘Only the Ruinous Powers could have created such a hideous agglomeration of beast and man. And not just any beast either – the vilest and most foul. Sportsmen, I give you the duel between our own brave van Lundtdorf and the loathsome beastmen!’

So saying the pit master scuttled out of the pit, and van Lundtdorf descended once more. Another iron gate was opened, and his opponents loped out.

‘Freia’s virtue!’ Florin swore, all thought of sport gone.

‘It is them, isn’t it?’ Lorenzo asked, peering into the pit. ‘Skaven. By the Lady, they’re skaven. These people must be mad to toy with the things.’

‘Watch,’ Florin said. ‘See who’s toying with who.’

The gladiator, confident in his armour, took his eyes off the ragged-looking creatures who had stumbled into the pit and turned to salute the Provost Marshal’s box.

It was a mistake. To anybody who didn’t know the danger, the skaven had looked almost pitiable as they’d entered the ring. But they abandoned their feigned weakness as easily as a burglars casting off a disguise, and now they attacked, quickly closing in on the human.

Van Lundtdorf didn’t realise the danger until they were almost upon him. The first of the skaven, the fastest, was inside his guard before he even had the chance to raise his sword. He punched it instead, a good blow which smashed its snout and sent it tumbling back.

The crowd roared its approval. Their cheers turned to cries of horror as the second of the things leapt nimbly up. Its almost human hands gripped van Lundtdorf’s shoulder while the yellow chisels of its teeth bit down towards his neck.

Van Lundtdorf turned so that the creature’s fangs chinked on his shoulder guard, then swivelled back and hurled it to the sand. He drew his sword and, as the crowd bellowed its approval, he aimed a blow that would have cut the skaven in two had it landed.

But it never did.

As he swung the blade up, the flesh of his armpit was exposed between the heavy steel of his breastplate and the curved metal of his shoulder guard. Both of the other skaven shot towards the unguarded flesh, their wiry bodies arrowing forward with a whiplash of energy.

The first one landed on the warrior’s shoulders. Its tail curled around his neck and it grabbed his sword arm to hold it upraised. The second skaven, finding purchase on the man’s belt, threw back its head and then bit down with a vicious, unerring accuracy into the exposed flesh.

Van Lundtdorf roared with agony, and his assailants allowed themselves to be shaken off. By now pandemonium had broken out amongst the spectators, their cries a confusion of encouragement and horror.

‘They killed him,’ Lorenzo said, his voice lost in the uproar.

Now the three skaven were circling, patient and waiting. Van Lundtdorf was watching the blood that was jetting out from the severed artery beneath his arm. He dropped his sword and tried to press the wound closed with his mail fist, a hopeless effort. As the mob bellowed their encouragement he fell to his knees, an expression of incomprehension on his face as he watched his lifeblood spurting onto the sand.

When his face had been drained white he fell forward, and a heartbeat later the skaven were swarming all over him. One of them claimed the dagger from his belt and, with a graceful economy of movement, carved out his throat. Meanwhile the other two had snapped van Lundtdorf’s sword in two. One of them was wrapping shreds of clothing around the spare shard to form a handle on its improvised weapon.

Florin and Lorenzo watched in horrified fascination as the three skaven first stripped the gladiator of his clothes, then peeled off the rags that swathed their own hideous forms.

‘Stop them!’ Lorenzo bellowed as they started to fashion a rope out of the cloth. ‘They’re trying to escape.’

But even if anybody could have heard him, nobody would have listened. Nothing had ever escaped from the pit. Everybody knew that.

Now the skaven were testing the first of their knots.

‘They’re going to escape.’ Lorenzo turned to Florin, and was horrified to find that he was smiling.

‘No, my old friend,’ Florin said.

That was when Lorenzo noticed the expression that had crept across his old comrade’s face. He knew that expression from old, and he dreaded it.

It was that spark of happy fire that sometimes blossomed behind Florin’s eyes. That sudden aura of wild energy which burned away every ounce of his common sense. That suicidal joy of a man freed by his belief that nothing’s worth a damn.

Lorenzo had seen the mood come over him before. It never ended well.

‘No, those vermin aren’t going to escape,’ Florin assured him with a reckless certainty. ‘Got your cutlass?’

Lorenzo opened his mouth to reply but, before he could, Florin was standing on the balcony’s rail, as poised as an acrobat. He remained perfectly balanced while he turned and bowed towards the Provost Marshal’s box. When he was sure he had caught his lady’s eye he drew his sword, kissed the blade in salute, then leapt down into the fighting pit.

Lorenzo followed his comrade over the side. He hit the sand, buckled his knees and rolled, the momentum of his fall carrying him halfway across the pit.

When he sprang to his feet he saw that Florin was shouting something to him. The words were lost beneath the stamping feet of the delighted mob. It didn’t matter. Lorenzo didn’t need to hear Florin’s warning anyway. In the crystal clarity of his own adrenaline rush, he had already realised that he could only see two of the vermin. He turned, throwing himself to one side as his cutlass arced through the air in a defensive slash.

The skaven, who had been about to pounce, leapt back. Lorenzo bared his teeth in a snarl to match the ratman’s own, and closed in on the thing. He knew that behind him Florin was outnumbered, but he didn’t have time to worry about that now. Now all he had time for was killing.

His foe almost seemed to float as it bounced on the balls of its feet. It was armed with the lower part of the dead gladiator’s shattered sword. The clumsy weapon looked as light and as lethal as a rapier in its paw.

Lorenzo heard the crowd screaming at something that was happening behind him. He swore and decided to take a risk.

Lunging heavily forward with his blade, he kicked the back of his right heel with the toe of his left boot. He staggered back, and fell so heavily that he lost his sword.

Even though he had planned the feint, the skaven moved with such speed that it almost took him. Its claws were scrabbling for Lorenzo’s throat even as it drew back its blade. As it was, the creature’s murderous momentum helped Lorenzo to bury his knife into the thick muscle around its throat.

The skaven squealed, the reek of its breath hot on his face, and he stabbed again. And again. Blood blinded him. Staggering to his feet, he wiped it off of his face and turned to see Florin smiling.

He had dispatched his own opponents. The sodden tangles of their bodies lay behind him. He flashed Lorenzo a wink as he strode across the pit to punch him on the shoulder.

‘That showed them how Bretonnians fight, didn’t it?’ Florin said, his face murderously cheerful beneath the blood that spattered it. ‘They’ll be talking about it in this Empire of theirs for a generation. Ah, look here they come now,’ Florin gestured towards the ladders that heavily armoured guards were lowering into the pit. ‘Let me just pay my respects before we go.’

So saying he strode over to stand before the Provost Marshal’s box, waited for the cheers of the crowd to abate, and then bowed long and low and deep.

‘I dedicate this fight,’ he bellowed, enjoying the resonance the acoustics of the place lent his voice, ‘to beauty.’

The woman in the Provost Marshal’s box smiled, her doe eyes rising to meet his. She licked her full lips with a small pink tongue and curled a stray lock of golden hair around her finger.

Florin was trying to think of something else to say when a heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder.

‘If you’d like to come this way, mein herr.’

Florin turned, and found himself looking into a guard with a face like a clenched fist. Florin smiled at him. The guard did not smile back. Perhaps, thought Florin as he wiped his blade on his cloak, because he didn’t know how to.

‘Lead on,’ he said, and with a last look towards the blonde, he followed the guard towards the ladder that led out of the pit. He was so lost in the remembrance of the look she had given him that he didn’t realise how the audience’s mood had changed until they started throwing things.

‘Why are they booing?’ he asked Lorenzo as he turned to help his friend up and over the parapet.

‘Because,’ Lorenzo said, ‘we’re under arrest, you damn fool.’

The two of them were locked into a storeroom while the guards had rushed off to clear the balconies. They had sat in silence and listened to the sounds above them. A small war seemed to have broken out.

Slowly, the distant sounds of combat were replaced by the noise of hundreds of boots clattering out of the building. Almost another hour passed before the sergeant of the guard finally returned. He had a bruised cheek and a new look of resentment.

‘If you needed a hand,’ Florin told him, ‘you should have asked.’

The sergeant, whose men were peering angrily over his shoulder, just pointed to a chair.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

Florin sat.

‘Right,’ the sergeant said. ‘Somebody wants to speak to you. We’ll be outside the door, so don’t get any clever ideas.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Florin told him.

‘He’s right,’ Lorenzo said, ‘he wouldn’t.’

The sergeant grunted with disgust, then turned and shooed his men back down the hallway. A moment later the door opened again, and when their visitor stepped into the room Florin was instantly on his feet.

It was her.

‘Madame,’ he said, and executed a deep bow. ‘I am Florin D’Artaud, a merchant of Bordeleaux’.

‘And I am Lady Adora Gerber Klumpenstein,’ the lady from the Provost Marshal’s box said, and offered him her hand to kiss.

‘What a beautiful name,’ Florin said as he brushed his lips across the warmth of her hand.

‘Thank you,’ Adora said, and caressed his cheek in a gesture that might have been an accident. ‘And tell me, Mein Herr d’Artaud, who is your companion?’

Florin was too distracted by the softness of her skin on his cheek to answer.

‘I’m Lorenzo,’ Lorenzo said. ‘A friend of his wife’s.’

Florin smiled as he lifted his lips from her hand and stood up straight.

‘You must forgive Le Comte his little jokes, madame,’ He said, and cast a warning look at Lorenzo. ‘He is always lighthearted after facing danger.’

Lorenzo snorted, then grew silent beneath the woman’s suddenly predatory gaze. She was examining him with a cold appraisal.

‘Le Comte,’ she said at length. ‘Enchanté.’

Lorenzo grunted and scratched with the insouciance of the true aristocrat.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ Adora said. ‘I hope that I have come to the right people. I am in such trouble and there has been nobody to turn to. But… no, it hardly seems fair to ask it of you.’

Her perfectly composed features crumpled into a sorrowful expression, and the sapphire blue of her eyes glistened with tears.

‘Madame, we are at your service,’ Florin said, leading her to sit on a packing crate. ‘The problem is that we are slightly inconvenienced at the moment. It would appear that we inadvertently broke some law by saving you from those creatures.’

‘Oh, if only you had saved us!’ she cried, and buried her face in her hands. When she looked up her golden tresses fell forward to frame her face perfectly. ‘But I don’t think anybody can.’

‘Why don’t you tell us the whole story,’ Florin said, sitting down beside her and slipping an arm around her shoulders. So she leaned into him, and told him.

‘It’s because of my fiancé, really,’ she admitted. ‘He’s a philanthropist who cares about this city. That’s why he bought the Lord Provostship from the Elector Count in the first place. The problem is that he’s so kind that he can’t see how anybody could have committed a crime as vile as the Baron Vistein’s’.

‘Tell me more,’ Florin said, enjoying the softness of her curves moulded against the muscle of his body.

‘It was one of my servants who told me. He had found out that the vicious old man had been plotting against us all. He has been working with the creatures you so valiantly slew in the pit tonight. It is those beastmen who are responsible for poisoning the crops.’

Adora shuddered, and moved a little closer to Florin, making sure that no part of the gesture was wasted.

‘We’d always know that the Baron was jealous of my fiancé’s appointment to Provost Marshal. You know, what with him being only a merchant and so on,’ Adora looked up, and Florin found himself shaking his head at the injustice of the world as she continued. ‘But to have stooped to such depths to destabilise him… Why, it’s inhuman.’

‘Awful.’ Florin’s expression matched the sadness of her own, and even Lorenzo looked sympathetic.

‘Anyway, you were so very brave tonight,’ Adora cooed, now leaning close enough for him to feel the beat of her heart beneath her bodice. ‘That’s why I decided to risk it all and ask for your help. My fiancé refuses to believe it, but I know that it’s true. The fact is, the Baron Vistein has been using these creatures to bring down our whole city, and he must be stopped.’

‘But you’ve only just met,’ Lorenzo said.

Adora, her eyes locked on Florin’s, ignored him.

‘Will you do it, monsieur? Will you execute the Baron and free us all?’

Florin, who had been only half-listening, sat up so suddenly that she fell back with a bump.

‘Murder a nobleman?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Oh, I wish it weren’t so,’ Adora brushed her hair back in a gesture of despair. ‘But what else can we do? The wicked man has been using those monsters to destroy our crops and our grain stores. He wants our people to starve so that they’ll follow him in a revolt against the Provost Marshal, and then he can claim his old title back.’

Florin pursed his lips.

‘It sounds incredible,’ he said.

‘It is incredible that a man could stoop so low,’ Adora’s eyes smouldered as she placed her hand on Florin’s stomach, and all of a sudden her words seemed not so much a condemnation as a promise.

‘Our aristocrats aren’t like your Le Comte here.’ She looked at him warmly. Then, seeing that the expression was wasted, she turned back to Florin. ‘They are ruthless and dishonourable men. That is why we need a hero. Somebody who isn’t afraid. Somebody who will execute this vile traitor before it is too late.’

‘Murder an Empire nobleman,’ Lorenzo repeated, if only for the novelty of hearing such madness on his own lips.

‘Yes,’ Adora turned her gaze back to him. ‘It was the only way I could persuade my fiancé to save you from execution.’

‘Execution?’ the two Bretonnians yelped, and Adora deigned to look surprised at their exclamation.

‘Of course. For your wonderful, courageous act in the Pit. It’s the custom in Vistein to execute all who violate the Pit’s sanctity. That’s what made your courage so splendid.’

‘Even so, an Empire nobleman…’ Florin pursed his lips.

‘And the only way,’ Adora added, her eyes as innocent as a child’s but her timing as perfect as any merchant’s, ‘that I could get my fiancé to agree to return your ship.’

Florin and Lorenzo’s eyes met in silent, unspoken agreement.

‘Where does this Baron live?’ Florin asked.

‘Oh, you will do it. You’re so, so brave,’ Adora said and moved so that her body was pressed against Florin’s once more. ‘I knew you would. It sounds silly, but I had a dream that your Lady would send me her Knight Errant.’

‘We are hardly Knights Errant,’ Florin said with an unusual modesty. ‘Our honour and courage don’t depend upon vows.’

‘I know,’ Adora said with a lascivious smile, and her hand slipped lower.

Florin swallowed. Lorenzo just shrugged.

‘What choice do we have?’ Lorenzo asked.

‘What indeed,’ Florin agreed. ‘Lady Adora, we are at your service.’

‘Good. You can start now,’ she said, springing to her feet, ‘before it’s too late. I have a servant, one of the few I trust, who will take you to the Baron’s lair. He lives in the old watchtower on the north spur. Tells everybody he’s a hermit. Do you need horses? How about weapons? Tell me what you need, and you shall have it.’

‘How about our ship?’ Lorenzo asked, but Adora seemed not to hear.

It was after midnight by the time Florin and Lorenzo had followed their guide out of the city gates. Despite the late hour, the Lady Adora had provided them with everything they needed. What’s more, she had provided it with a consummate skill that left Florin speechless.

Where he would have needed a hefty bribe to unlock a gate, she opened it with the softest whisper. What he and Lorenzo could have only achieved by knocking a man down, she did by lightly brushing her fingers across his shoulder. And once, when the Provost Marshal’s stable master refused to give horses to criminals, she had broken his will by displaying the most pitiable expression of disappointment Florin had ever seen.

Now she stood on the city wall, waving her assassins a silent goodbye as they rode out into the moonlit night. Much to Florin’s delight, Lorenzo waved back.

‘Well, well,’ Florin whispered, eyebrow raised at his friends show of affection. ‘I had no idea you were so gallant, Le Comte.’

Lorenzo smiled so wide that all three of his teeth glistened in the darkness.

‘I admire a professional, that’s all.’

Florin glanced towards their guide. They had hardly said a word to the man since he had been introduced as one of Lady Adora’s ‘dear friends’. He was a drawn, grey-haired man with deep, soulful eyes. He seemed to be constantly pining for something and, judging by the way he had looked at her ladyship, Florin had a shrewd idea for what.

Florin lifted his hand and tilted his palm backwards. Slowly he and Lorenzo fell back behind the man, who had in any case been lost in thought ever since Adora had kissed his cheek.

Florin leaned carefully over and whispered into Lorenzo’s ear.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Do you believe all that?’

Lorenzo pursed his lips. ‘No. No, it could be true, but I doubt it. You saw how she operates. Everything about her is a lie. Some men turn into complete idiots when a woman like that gets hold of them.’

‘I was just playing along,’ Florin retorted. ‘Anyway, look who’s talking.’

Their guide, perhaps roused from his reverie by some jealous instinct, glanced back towards them. Florin and Lorenzo were sitting straight in their saddles, looking in opposite directions. Satisfied, the guide turned back to the contemplation of another, happier world in which he and Adora were wed.

‘So if he’s not in league with the skaven, then why have him killed?’ Lorenzo continued.

‘Politics,’ Florin said. ‘You saw how unpopular her fiancé is now. Imagine what will happen when the good people of Vistein find out that the grain stores are gone as well as the crop.’

‘You’re probably right.’ Lorenzo said. ‘Although there must be a lot of the ratmen about if they’re actually getting trapped.’

The two men lapsed into silence as, the hoots of the owls giving way to the cries of seagulls, their guide led them up the narrowing track towards one of the cliffs.

‘Let’s risk it,’ Florin decided. ‘We tell the Baron he’s to be assassinated, let him run, and then get back to Bordeleaux. I’m sick of this place anyway.’

Lorenzo said nothing. He didn’t need to.

They could see the Baron’s refuge from almost a mile away. It jutted up from the wild gorse that carpeted the cliff tops, a sheer stab of stone that clawed up towards the stars. Its black shadow pointed like an accusing finger at the ocean beyond, where the waves, luminescent in the light of the risen moon, boomed and whispered.

‘Is that the traitor’s lair?’ Florin asked, his voice a low murmur. Their guide nodded.

‘It looks sturdy enough,’ Lorenzo grumbled. ‘And I suppose he’ll be guarded by his confederates?’

‘His confederates?’ The guide just looked puzzled. ‘No. No, he lives alone. The better to plot his treachery, her ladyship said.’

‘She is as wise as she is beautiful,’ Florin said, and the guide nodded mournfully, ‘which is why she chose us to handle this matter. This is where we will dismount. Lorenzo, you take the axe. You, hold our horses’ reins and be ready to go. When we come out, we may be in a hurry.’

‘But her ladyship asked me to accompany you.’ Despite his grey hair, the guide whined like a little boy. ‘She trusts me.’

‘That’s why I trust you too,’ Florin said, his voice full of bright encouragement. ‘I wouldn’t be leaving you in charge of the horses if I didn’t.’

‘He wouldn’t, either,’ Lorenzo assured the guide. ‘We know what we’re doing when it comes to stuff like this. Ready boss?’

‘Ready,’ Florin said and, before the guide could object, the two of them had vanished into the undergrowth.

It took them almost an hour to cross the distance to the dark watchtower. They moved with a slow, steady caution, neither speaking nor rising above the undergrowth. When they were close enough to count the stones in the moonlight, the two friends lay down side by side, and listened and watched.

There was nothing but the sound of the sea and the smell of gorse and the frozen glitter of the stars above.

Florin and Lorenzo rose to their feet and, as silently as any other nocturnal predators, they closed in on the watchtower door.

It was a well-made door with a sturdy iron lock, but it was wooden. Lorenzo hefted the axe and again the two men stopped, senses straining.

‘All right,’ Florin breathed. ‘We go in. We grab the man. We convince him to run.’

‘And if her ladyship was right?’

Florin paused, and considered the question again.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘we’re stuffed.’

Lorenzo rolled his eyes, lifted the axe, and hit the iron lock with the flat surface behind the blade.

It was a perfect strike, and the door flew open. As it crashed against its hinges, Florin scraped a shower of sparks onto the wick of the lantern and in the sudden light he rushed into the building.

There was nothing in the dank room that they found themselves in, but for a few barrels and a flight of stone steps that led upwards. Florin leapt towards them, sprinting upwards. The chamber above was just as deserted, and he accelerated as he raced up the final flight of stairs. It was still dark up there, and he dared to hope that he still had the element of surprise.

He didn’t.

The second after he leapt into the watchtower’s upper chamber something hit him on the back of the head. He yelled a warning to Lorenzo as he stumbled forward. In the dancing light of his lantern, he made out the blurred shape of his assailant, and the even more blurred shape of the club he was wielding.

This time the blow caught Florin against his upturned arm, and he felt the crack of wood against bone. Still dazed from the first blow, he collapsed back and hit the wall.

His assailant had turned back to deal with Lorenzo, who was clambering up the stairs. The man aimed a kick that would have flattened him had it connected. But Lorenzo, who had been dodging kicks since he’d been a toddler, grabbed the man’s foot, and pulled him off balance.

The man fell backwards and Lorenzo, maintaining his grip, used the falling weight to pull himself up out of the stairwell. With a roar the man slashed at Lorenzo’s legs with a brutal directness that would have made any sword master proud. Lorenzo leapt over the blow, then stamped on his groin in a move that would have made any sword master wince. Then he kicked the man beneath the chin.

His teeth clicked, his head bounced off the floor, and he lay still.

‘I think that’s him,’ Florin said, and then passed out.

Whether it was the hideous smell of Lorenzo’s pipe or the sound of voices that brought him around, Florin couldn’t tell. Either way, neither sound nor smell did much for his splitting headache. He sat up and touched the damp bump on the back of his head. Then he groaned.

The Baron and Lorenzo turned from the table they were sat at and regarded him critically.

‘Youngsters,’ Lorenzo said, and jabbed at Florin contemptuously. ‘No stamina.’

‘Too soft all around.’ The Baron, who had a heel mark on his chin and bruises around his eyes, shook his head. ‘That’s why it’s come to this. To think, the Provost Marshal of Vistein getting a woman to hire assassins. And foreign assassins at that!’

‘That’s the youth of today, all right,’ Lorenzo sighed as the Baron filled his goblet from the bottle that was between them. ‘No honour, either.’

Florin glared at them.

‘I take it you’ve explained the situation?’ he asked, and climbed up onto a chair.

‘He has.’ The Baron offered him a goblet, and Florin got a good look at him for the first time. Although he held himself with the rigid poise of a nobleman, the Baron’s skin was as weathered as any veteran’s. His white moustaches were waxed into great sabres, and a frosting of silver covered his head, which was neatly shaved in the regimental fashion.

Despite his age, the Baron didn’t seem to mind the beating he had taken any more than he minded the duelling scars that marked his cheeks. Florin felt the bump on the back of his own head again, and winced. The Baron and Lorenzo rolled their eyes, as though a split skull was nothing more than a stubbed toe. Florin drank his wine.

‘So,’ he said. ‘No skaven.’

‘Ha!’ the Baron laughed contemptuously. ‘Skaven. A fairy-tale for children. There are rat-like beastmen, I’ll grant you. Saw a few of ’em in the north. Not skaven, though. The very idea.’

He gave Florin a look of amused contempt, then looked at Lorenzo, who shrugged.

‘He’s not usually so dense,’ Lorenzo confided to his new friend. ‘Must have been that knock on the head.’

Florin scowled.

‘Well, it couldn’t be helped,’ the Baron said, and his eyes softened with nostalgia. ‘It’s been a while since I tasted battle. There’s nothing quite like it. The thrill. The blood.’

‘I can see why the Provost Marshal is afraid you’ll reclaim your title.’

‘The man’s a fool. I didn’t want the title when I came back from the regiments. Why would I have wanted it now? Presiding over a bunch of stinking merchants and squabbling fish wives.’ The Baron snorted at the very idea. ‘No thank you. I was quite happy here, alone with my memories.’

‘But you are going to your brother’s estates in Reikland?’ Lorenzo asked. ‘As we decided?’

‘Oh yes,’ The Baron nodded. ‘I’m going. I’ve been too long on my own here. Too long without any excitement. When all’s said and done, a man has his duty.’

His eyes strayed over to the suit of armour that stood on a rack against the wall. A faded battle flag was furled beside it. It was tattered, and some of it was obscured by a dark stain, but the ash pole it was mounted on still looked strong, and there was no rust on the steel tip.

‘I don’t mind telling you that I only came here after my Agnes died. Somehow I didn’t feel like talking to people after that. Didn’t even want servants around. You know how it is. But meeting you two has done me the world of good. Made me realise what I’ve been missing. You, young ’un. How’s your head?’

‘Never better,’ Florin said, and the Baron laughed uproariously and slapped him on the shoulder.

‘That’s the spirit. Well, can’t sit around all night. You’ve got an “assassination” to report, and I’ve got plans to make.’

‘Do you need a horse?’ Lorenzo asked.

‘No, that’s all right,’ the Baron said. ‘I’ve got everything I need. Old Dietmar’s got a place on the other side of the inlet. I always got on well with old Ingeborn’s son, too. Helped him train his farmhands when he had a problem with orcs a couple of summers back. And Aukshanks. He’s got a few dozen lads to help him with his business. And with the excise men too, the old rogue!’

‘Good,’ Florin said, resisting the urge to touch the back of his head as he stood up. ‘Then we can leave you. But please be gone by morning. If I know Adora, she’ll want to check.’

‘That blood’s handy,’ Lorenzo said, gesturing towards the stain Florin had left on the floor. ‘We’ll say we brained you and then threw your body into the sea.’

‘Yes, of course,’ the Baron said vaguely. ‘How many men at arms would you say the Provost Marshal has? Roughly?’

‘More than enough,’ Florin told him. ‘At least a score.’

The Baron smiled. ‘Typical merchant. My uncle always kept at least a hundred under arms.’

Florin and Lorenzo exchanged a glance. ‘But you are going to leave, aren’t you, your lordship?’

‘Of course,’ the Baron said. ‘I’ll leave as soon as you and your guide have gone to report my death.’

Lorenzo frowned. Florin shrugged.

‘Then let’s go. And good luck!’

The horses, agitated by their guide’s anxiety, whinnied and danced as Florin and Lorenzo appeared out of the undergrowth.

‘Hold them still,’ Florin snapped, and swung himself up onto the saddle.

‘Did you do it?’ the guide asked, his voice an anxious whine. ‘Did you kill him? Where’s the body?’

‘Threw it over the cliff.’ Florin kept his voice soft and low, and stroked his mount’s neck reassuringly. ‘Best not to leave any evidence.’

‘So calm down for Sigmar’s sake,’ Lorenzo said.

‘I’ll thank you not to speak to me that way,’ the guide bridled, and turned to Florin. ‘I must insist that you tell your comrade to address me with more respect. Especially when we meet the Lady Adora.’

Lorenzo cackled happily.

‘Don’t worry about the Lady Adora,’ he said, and gave the guide an obscene wink. ‘She doesn’t strike me as the sort of girl who would mind a bit of rough and tumble.’

‘Stop aggravating him,’ Florin snapped. ‘And you. Lead off. I want to get clear as soon as possible.’

‘Yes, why not?’ said the guide with a smug tone. ‘Let’s hurry back.’

With a last, poisonous glance at Lorenzo he spurred his horse into the night, and his two charges followed him.

The Lady Adora was waiting for them in the cold light of the rising sun. Her carriage was parked just outside Vistein’s walls, its paintwork the single bright thing amidst a dismal landscape of rotten corn.

When the three horsemen stopped in front of her she threw back the hood of her thick green cloak. She smiled a smile that was as warm as a Bretonnian summer, and stepped down to greet them.

The guide tumbled from his saddle, and one of his knees cracked on the cobbles.

‘My lady,’ he said, his voice choked with either pain or passion.

‘Heinrich,’ she said. ‘I’m so relieved to see you. And you, Monsieur d’Artaud. And Le Comte,’ she curtsied towards Lorenzo, who was so delighted by the expression of jealous misery on Heinrich’s face that he bowed in the saddle.

‘So tell me,’ she asked, ‘is it done?’

‘Yes, my lady.’ Heinrich told her, and took her hand to plant a kiss upon it. She let him kiss her hand as she might have let a favourite dog lick it, but her eyes were already on Florin.

‘There’s no doubt?’ she asked. ‘It is done?’

‘No doubt at all, your ladyship,’ Florin told her. ‘The Baron is gone. Whatever schemes he schemed are over.’

Adora smiled, and for the first time it seemed to Lorenzo that her expression was genuine. Although as beautiful as ever, her features had taken on a hard, razor’s edge. She withdrew her hand from Heinrich’s clutches and absentmindedly wiped it on her cloak. Then she sighed, and her eyes narrowed with the dispassionate satisfaction of a chess player who has forced a checkmate.

‘Then, Monsieur d’Artaud, our business is done. Your ship is in the harbour. Much as I would enjoy your company, it may be as well for you to go.’

‘Your ladyship.’ Florin bowed and turned his horse towards the harbour. Lorenzo thumbed his chin at Heinrich, who was too busy looking at Adora to notice, and followed him into the town and down to the harbour.

The Katerina was at her moorings, just as Adora had promised, and Florin thought that she looked like the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her mottled hull glistened with dew, and the upright of her central mast stood tall enough to catch the first beams of sunlight that slipped between the grey slate of Vistein’s high-sloped roofs.

‘I wonder what we should do with the horses.’ Lorenzo said as they clattered through the entrance and into the harbour proper.

‘What do you mean?’ Florin asked, still concentrating on the ship. The harbour was deep enough so that they wouldn’t have to wait for the tide and, judging by the pennant that fluttered from Katerina’s mast, there was a perfect north-westerly wind blowing.

‘I mean,’ said Lorenzo, ‘shall we take them, or sell them, or turn them loose?’

‘You should dismount,’ a voice said.

Florin and Lorenzo turned to find the speaker. They recognised the sergeant who had arrested them the night before. He looked no prettier by the light of day. Nor did the men who were waiting with him. There were maybe a dozen, Florin thought. Then, as more of them appeared from behind bails and in windows he realised that it was more like a score. And each and every one of them had a vicious steel crossbow.

Before Florin could reply there was the shriek of steel against stone from behind him. He spun around, his cutlass half drawn, and saw that a portcullis had fallen into place beneath the arch through which they had just passed.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘You’re under arrest,’ the sergeant told him.

‘What for this time? Riding during daylight hours? Wearing blue? Don’t waste our time. We’re leaving this barbaric place, anyway.’

‘You’re under arrest,’ the sergeant said with relish, ‘for the murder of the Baron Vistein. You will accompany us to the gaol, there to await your trial.’

Florin’s mouth was suddenly dry. He looked at Lorenzo, who was looking at the men who surrounded them. Although their uniforms were mismatched and stained, their crossbows were solid, and they looked calm and professional. He turned back to Florin.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Florin said. ‘We haven’t murdered anybody.’

‘Then you have nothing to worry about,’ the sergeant assured him. ‘Now dismount.’

Florin looked at Lorenzo again, but the older man just shrugged.

‘Too many,’ he said. Florin nodded and, as the guards closed in on them, he kicked out of his stirrups and swung himself off his horse.

‘No need for that,’ he said as one of the guards approached with manacles. The man hesitated and looked to the sergeant, whose face unclenched. He smiled.

‘Humour us poor northern barbarians,’ he sneered. ‘And our stupid customs.’

The shackles snapped shut on the two Bretonnians’ wrists, their sword belts were taken, and they were led to the gaol.

‘Women,’ Lorenzo spat.

Florin said nothing.

There didn’t seem anything else to say.

Baron Vistein savoured the taste of the wind that blew in from Vistein itself. It smelled mainly of rotten seaweed, but he didn’t mind that. It was enough that he could feel the chill of it against his face, and watch it as it lifted the pennants that he had given each of his captains. After spending so long lost within his memories, it felt good to be alive again. Good to be buckled into his armour again.

Good to be at war again.

A wolfish grin lifted the waxed blades of his moustaches as he turned to survey his ramshackle army. It had taken him a week to raise it, and although he could have probably found more followers, he had decided that time was of the essence.

As it was he had almost two hundred men. Two hundred farmhands, fishermen and others. Many were the vassals of his friends. Others were freed men who owed their lands to his family’s generosity. Some were mercenaries; bandits who welcomed the opportunity to do a bit of respectable robbery.

Although they marched in time, their footsteps were the only uniform thing about them. They looked more like a collection of scarecrows than the regiment the Baron had once commanded, but he didn’t mind. He was an old enough soldier to know that you fought with what you had, and his instinct told him that what he had was enough.

He turned back to gaze upon Vistein. It lay below him, snug in the inlet in which it had been built and secure behind the granite of its walls. The Baron felt that old thrill of doubt that always attended the translation of a plan into reality. Then he turned to the man riding beside him.

‘Lift the banner,’ he said, and for the first time in a decade Vistein’s coat of arms unfurled in the breeze. It was faded with age and stained with the blood of countless battlefields, but it was bright enough to set a light blazing in an old man’s heart.

The Baron raised a mailed fist to signal the advance, and his column moved down towards the gates.

‘I wonder if the advance party have done their job, your lordship?’ Aukshanks asked. The Baron turned and winked at his old comrade.

‘Let’s hope so,’ he said. ‘Remember what happened in Eisenberg?’

‘Yes,’ Aukshanks smiled at the memory. ‘I’m trying to remember that, and not what happened at Waldstein.’

The Baron barked with laughter.

‘Never mind,’ he said gleefully. ‘We’re in Sigmar’s hands now.’

But if his life was in Sigmar’s hands, the Baron now saw, at least the gates were in his. The dozen men he had sent ahead had done their work. The gates remained open, and behind the cordon his men had formed beneath the arch of it, the Baron could see their bundled captives.

The Baron drew himself even higher up in his saddle as he led his men through the gates. Some of the town’s citizens fled. Others, knowing what was good for them, started to cheer. The Baron removed his helmet and waved to them.

‘Now, let’s go and have a word with the Provost Marshal,’ he said, and led his column towards the crumbling walls of the palace.

They were no more than fifty yards from the palace when, without warning, the air was suddenly threaded with a lethal steel blur of crossbow bolts.

‘Ambush!’ the Baron cried. He unsheathed his sabre with a flourish and looked eagerly around for his attackers. His horse jittered beneath him as he squinted, searching for the enemies who had so sportingly presented themselves.

Behind him, his followers milled about in confusion as another volley of quarrels hissed towards them. The Baron frowned as he heard the first screams of pain from behind him.

‘Look there,’ Aukshanks told him. ‘They’re hiding in the houses on the right, firing from the upper windows.’

The Baron squinted through the beginnings of cataracts. It was the movement he saw, a glitter of steel as the third volley raked through his men.

He turned back to them and scowled. Any semblance of a military formation was long gone. Instead they clustered uncertainly around their fallen comrades. The Baron may have been half-blind, but a lifetime of war had given him the ability to sense when confusion was starting to give way to panic. Well, he couldn’t have that.

He made a decision.

‘You men,’ the Baron bellowed. ‘Yes, all of you! Get into those houses. Break down the doors. Kill anybody with a weapon.’

Still his men, few of whom had ever killed another human, hesitated. With a roar of frustration the Baron spurred his horse and rode down the line. He circled his sabre above their heads in a gesture that was half encouragement and half threat.

‘Attack!’ he cried, his voice drowning out the hiss of yet another lethal volley. ‘Attack!’

And suddenly the Baron’s rage set his ragtag army alight. With a desperate cheer they hurled themselves at the buildings which sheltered their ambushers. They chopped their way through doors and smashed their way through windows. Here an entire wattled wall caved in, and soon the screams of the inhabitants could be heard above the splinter of timber.

Then the first cries of victory as the ambushers found themselves cornered and cut down.

The Baron listened to the screaming women and children who the battle was now being fought amongst. Here and there bodies were hurled through windows. Some of them wore the washed-out black uniforms of the Lord Provost’s men. Most of them wore no uniforms at all.

Well, that couldn’t be helped.

It wasn’t until the sounds of combat gave way to the cruel laughter and delighted cries of looting that the Baron judged the engagement won. He bullied those he could back into the ranks and led them up to the palace.

By now the doors, heavy oak dark beneath centuries of polish, were locked. The Baron dismounted, strode over to the doors, and banged on them with his mailed fist.

‘Open up,’ he cried. ‘Open up in the name of the true Lord Provost.’

There was no reply. He hadn’t expected there to be.

No matter.

‘Bring fuel,’ he said, ‘and fire.’

After the first two days, Florin and Lorenzo had started to think about escape. Alone in a windowless cell, their lives lit by a single candle, there wasn’t much else to do.

They had considered bribery, although since their copper had been confiscated, they didn’t consider it worth trying. They thought about taking a guard hostage, but the guards had obviously thought about that too, which was why they never entered the cell. Instead food was shoved in through a slit in the iron door.

Eventually they had decided that the only way out was to dig, and so they had set about the mortar, crumbling it up and disposing of it through the open sewer which served as their latrine. By the end of the week they had managed to loosen enough of the stones to discover that there was nothing beyond but the sheer rock of the cliff face.

That’s when the arguments had started.

It was in the middle of one of these arguments that they were rudely interrupted.

The door was flung open and the guards threw a plump man into the cell. He looked vaguely familiar.

‘Traitors,’ the plump man yelled at the guards, although not until after they had shut the door. ‘Dogs! The Elector Count will have you hung for this!’

The effort of his invective seemed to exhaust him. After a nervous glance at Florin and Lorenzo he retreated to a corner and sat down on the hard stone, his face in his hands.

The two Bretonnians, their quarrel forgotten, examined their new companion. Even in the candlelight, it was obvious that his torn clothes had been finely made. The velvet of his jacket alone was worth a good horse. He also had the clear skin and chubby features of a man who had lived well, and his fingers were bruised where rings had obviously been forcefully removed.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Florin said.

‘Leave me alone,’ the man squeaked, and looked at his two fellow inmates with wide, fearful eyes. ‘I’ve got nothing left to steal.’

‘Nor do we,’ Florin said, ‘so we should all get along fine. Are you thirsty? We’ve got some clean water left in the jug.’

The man ran a hand through his well-cut hair and a look of pathetic gratitude spread across his face.

‘I am damnably thirsty, yes. Thank you.’

Florin took the jug and, moving slowly so as not to alarm the man, walked over to him and stooped to pass it to him. As he did so the candle lit his face, and he smiled reassuringly.

‘Thank you so much,’ the man said, taking the jug and emptying it in one, long swallow. ‘You’re very kind. In fact, you look a little familiar. What’s your name?’

‘Florin d’Artaud,’ Florin said and, making up with formality for what he lacked in facilities, he executed a perfect bow.

But the new prisoner was beyond such niceties.

‘You!’ he cried, and suddenly he looked not so much like a beaten dog as an enraged wolf. ‘You! It’s all your fault.’

Before Florin could decide how to handle this outbreak of lunacy, the man swung the clay jug at his head in a clumsy, round house swing.

‘Hey,’ Florin said, springing easily out of his reach.

‘You ruined me. You… You… ‘ the man’s mouth worked as he fought to find adequate words. Finally he gave up his attempt at speech and charged at Florin, podgy fists flailing.

Florin reacted instinctively, jabbing his thumbs into the nerves on either side of his assailant’s neck and then kneeing him in the stomach.

The man fell backwards onto the floor, then backed away until he reached the wall.

‘What in Ranald’s name is wrong with you, you lunatic?’ Florin demanded.

‘You are what’s wrong with me,’ the other man yelled, and although he was still mottled with rage at least he made no further attempt at violence.

‘Gentlemen,’ Lorenzo said, finally standing up between the two glaring men. ‘I can see that you haven’t been properly introduced. Florin d’Artaud, meet the Provost Marshal of Vistein. Provost Marshal, Monsieur d’Artaud.’

‘Oh,’ Florin said. ‘I see.’

Hearing his title seemed to have a pacifying effect on the Provost Marshal. His rage evaporated and he slumped back, defeated once more.

‘She talked you into it, I suppose?’ He asked hopelessly.

Florin cautiously sat down too.

‘Who?’

‘Adora, of course,’ the Provost Marshal said. ‘That stupid, scheming bitch.’

‘That’s no way to talk about the Lady Adora,’ Florin told him, and was rewarded with a look of absolute contempt. The contempt disintegrated into a miserable frown, which finally melted into sobs.

Florin and Lorenzo sat and watched the fat man cry.

‘What I don’t understand,’ Florin said, ‘is what we have to do with you being in here. I mean, whatever we might have said to the Lady Adora, we didn’t actually kill anybody.’

For a moment it looked as though the Provost Marshal was about to fly into another rage. Instead he leaned back against the grimy wall of his gaol and sighed.

‘I know you didn’t kill him, you fool,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m in here. Because you told that old lunatic the Baron that I wanted him dead, he decided to come and take the town back. It’s so unfair. Apart from anything else, I didn’t want him dead. I was going to sell my corn, ask him to take the lousy title back, and then take a ship to Estalia before everybody found out how bad things are. It’s nice in Estalia,’ he added ‘Sunny. But would Adora listen to reason? Oh no, she just had to be Lady stinking Vistein. I don’t know why I offered to marry her. I must have been mad.’

Florin was no longer listening.

‘That’s fantastic news,’ he told the Provost Marshal, who looked at him blankly. ‘If the Baron is in charge, we’ll be freed. Didn’t I tell you not to worry, Lorenzo?’

‘Yes,’ said Lorenzo, who was gnawing his lip.

‘Didn’t I tell you that the Lady would provide?’

‘By the way,’ Lorenzo ignored him and turned to the Provost Marshal. ‘How is the Lady Adora?’

‘Oh, she’ll be all right,’ the man said bitterly. ‘She always is.’

‘Cheer up,’ Florin told him. ‘We’ll put in a good word for you. The Baron is a reasonable man.’

The thoughtful silence that followed lasted until the next day. Then another day passed.

And another.

By the end of the week Florin and Lorenzo were as close to losing hope as the Provost Marshal himself was. But before they could, the guards returned with orders to bring all three before the Baron. They locked shackles around the prisoners’ wrists and led them out into the cold light of a brand new morning.

It wasn’t until they had been chained to the side of a wagon with a dozen other beaten and bruised men that it finally occurred to Florin that the Baron was perhaps not as reasonable as he had hoped.

But by then, of course, it was too late.

The Baron wore the traditional wolfskin mantle around his shoulders. It still stank of smoke, but the Baron didn’t mind that any more than he minded the dents in his armour. Such souvenirs were as good as any medal.

The fighting in the palace had been fierce but brief. Once he had killed half a dozen of his opponents, slaughtering his way through them with a howling glee, the rest had broken, leaving their employer hiding behind his throne, much to the Baron’s hilarity.

Neither the victory or the bloodshed had done anything to diminish the Baron’s renewed vigour. Quite the opposite. Within the first twenty-four hours of his reign he had discovered the extent of the famine facing Vistein, and he attacked that problem with as much verve as he had the palace. First he had sent a messenger to the Elector Count with a letter requesting aid. Then, much to their horror, he had confiscated all of the grain the merchants had been hoarding. He set up a system of rationing which, inadequate as it was, promised to alleviate the worst of the approaching famine.

Sigmar had also sent him the opportunity to get to the root of the problem. When a group of the verminous beastmen had been found tampering with the remaining stores he had sent a party of men after them; men with orders to track them back to their lair.

When neither the troops nor the messenger had returned, the Baron would probably have become concerned, and taken further steps. But by the end of the week he had met Adora.

The rekindled passion which had roused him from his retirement had been bright, but the passions she stoked in his old chest had been devouring. He couldn’t remember a woman like her. There was something about Adora. Something about the way that she reached into his soul and plucked at the strings of his desire as expertly as a musician with a harp.

Within days the flame of the Baron’s love had eclipsed almost every other thought. It had been her idea to clear the gaol with pardons and executions and the Baron, as exhausted as he was entranced, had agreed to this as easily as he had agreed to let her take charge of the rationing.

So it was that as Florin, Lorenzo and a dozen other unfortunates came clinking into the crowded square, he watched them from his throne with a jaundiced eye. The wolfskin cape, which only a week ago, had worn like an Emperor’s cloak, now hung around his body like an invalid’s blanket, and his right hand, which only a week before had wielded his sabre like the judgement of Sigmar himself, was trembling.

Perhaps that was why a gibbet had been set up in the square. The nooses which hung from it swayed in the breeze with an easy, murderous promise which the Baron could unleash with nothing but the lift of his finger.

‘Thank the Lady you’re here,’ Florin shouted to the Baron as he and his fellow prisoners were lined up in front of Vistein’s new lord. ‘I wondered how to get word to you. Congratulations on your victory.’

The Baron peered at the Bretonnian, and his moustaches drooped in a troubled frown.

‘You were wise not to listen to our advice,’ Florin declared. ‘Although, of course, we only had your welfare at heart.’

‘Which is why we warned you,’ Lorenzo added, although without Florin’s cheerful confidence. He had already seen the cause of their problem.

Adora wore a sable coat, one of many gifts that she had received since taking control of Vistein’s dwindling grain stores. The black fur set off the sunlit glow of her hair so that it shone like gold on onyx, the dull lustre only matched by the deep blue of her kohl-framed eyes.

She sat beside the Baron, and as the Bretonnians had been speaking she leant over and whispered into his ear. He frowned and then nodded.

‘These men,’ he pointed towards Florin and Lorenzo, ‘are oath breakers. They have dishonoured the great name of this city, and like all who have done so, they will pay the price.’

‘Oath breakers?’ Florin cried. ‘We saved your life, you old fool!’

‘Oh, well done,’ Lorenzo muttered. ‘That’s the way to persuade him.’

The Baron frowned again, and doubt crossed his features momentarily. Adora leaned forward and whispered again, and the Baron nodded.

‘They’re to be hung,’ he decided with an impatient gesture.

‘Wait,’ Florin cried, but it was too late. Hands gripped them and they were already being dragged away towards the scaffold. The crowd cheered as nooses were looped around their necks, but it was a half-hearted cheer.

Florin looked at the Visteiners who had gathered for the morning’s entertainment. He saw their gaunt faces and hungry pallor. These were not the same people who had cheered him at the fighting pit barely a week before. An air of hopelessness hung over them.

An air of hopelessness hung over the Provost Marshal too. He had been lost in his own private world of misery since his imprisonment and even now, as he was dragged forward to face his nemesis, he seemed hardly to care.

It wasn’t until he saw Adora, as sleek and beautiful as a well-fed cat, that his despair gave way to rage.

‘You Jezebel,’ he roared, lifting his manacled hands to point an accusing finger at her. ‘You betrayer.’

Adora never wavered as she watched him. If there was an expression on her face, it was the expression of a woman regarding a poorly-sculpted statue, or a badly-daubed painting.

The Baron, though, lacked her reserve. Bad enough that this commoner, this merchant, had forced him to return to Vistein, but he’d be damned if he’d stand by while he insulted a lady.

‘Silence,’ he barked. ‘You are here to be judged, you dog. A Provost Marshal of Vistein does not hire assassins. Especially,’ he pointed towards the two Bretonnians who were even now having their nooses tightened, ‘foreign ones. Empire killers not good enough for you, you damned traitor?’

The Provost Marshal spared the Baron a look of quick contempt, then turned back to his wife.

‘You will burn for this,’ he told her, his face glowing with terrible enthusiasm. ‘When I get to hell I’ll set such daemons on you that you’ll burn for an eternity.’

The Baron, outrage lending him some of the vitality which Adora’s attentions had so depleted, sprang to his feet.

‘I told you to keep silent,’ he roared, and the Provost Marshal, having exhausted his store of curses on Adora, turned to her new lover.

‘And you, you old fool. May Manaan strike you down for your stupidity.’

He raised his manacled hands above his head as if to summon the very god himself.

And maybe he did.

As he finished his curse the Baron felt a sudden, stabbing pain in his chest. He staggered back, clutching at his heart and feeling for the arrow which he was sure had pierced him. When he found that he was unwounded he glanced around the crowd, his brow furrowed with unaccustomed confusion.

He hit his chair with the back of his knees and sat down heavily. All at once he realised that he had lost all feeling down the right side of his body, and that he was drooling from one numbed corner of his mouth.

‘My lord?’ Adora whispered, clutching at his arm with the concern of somebody seeing their livelihood slipping away. She took one of his hands in time to feel it curl up into a hard claw of agony. He turned to look at her in a last moment of shock, then his eyeballs rolled back up into his forehead and he died.

The crowd stood dumbfounded. The guards looked to each other in their confusion, and even the Provost Marshal seemed shocked by the efficacy of his murderous prayer.

Adora reassured herself that the Baron’s pulse had beat for the last time, then looked around her with a fierce intelligence. This wouldn’t be the first time she had been forced to improvise.

But Florin was even quicker off the mark. Ignoring the way the noose scratched the skin beneath his jaw he took a deep breath and bellowed out in a fit of religious fervour.

‘Praise Manaan,’ he cried and, as all eyes turned to him, he contrived to smile with sickly fire. ‘Praise Manaan for his judgement. See how he has stricken the unworthy so that the true Provost Marshal may save us from hunger.’

An excited murmur ran through the mob, although the guards were regarding him with critical eyes.

He regarded them back.

‘Praise Manaan,’ he continued, ‘for saving the city from starvation and the Emperor’s intervention.’

The guards looked doubtful. The Emperor’s interventions were well known for their bloodthirsty enthusiasm.

‘Praise Manaan…’ Florin went on, and found that he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

The Provost Marshal, perhaps inspired by his own unguessed-at powers, took over.

‘My friends,’ he cried, clambering onto the stage so that he stood between the crowd and the corpse of their previous ruler. ‘In honour of the glory of the great God Manaan, I propose that we hold a feast day, and I insist that the city lets me pay for it.’

There was a cheer, hesitant at first but growing in strength.

‘And praise Manaan,’ one of the merchants said, ‘for an end to rationing.’

The Provost Marshal looked at him and nodded. As the merchants raised their voices in acclamation, the guards unchained their restored master. At his command they then unchained the rest of the prisoners.

‘I don’t know about you,’ Florin said as he rubbed some life back into his hands, ‘but I think it might be time to head for home.’

Without another word the two of them ran to the docks.

Adora had thought about fleeing. Then she had thought better of it. It would be difficult to talk the Provost Marshal around, she knew, but it could be done. Anything could be done. Sometimes doing so could be brutal, or cruel, or degrading. Sometimes it could be a lot worse.

But nothing, nothing, was impossible.

That was why she hadn’t run, and why she had allowed herself to be locked in her boudoir. Her jewels were gone, but her comb and her mirror remained. She sat in the oil light, admiring her reflection as she combed her hair. She had no plan, but as the soothing strokes of the brush whispered though the gloom, she knew that she was ready.

When she next saw Harrald, who was once again the Provost Marshal, she would know how to handle him. She would know it instinctively. She always did.

When she had finished a hundred brushstrokes she turned down the oil lamp and slipped into bed. Another captive might have had trouble sleeping, but not Adora. She was never more relaxed than when in the eye of a storm. Within minutes she was snoring. It was the one imperfection in the perfectly controlled, perfectly contrived image she had created.

She awoke to the sound of screaming and the smell of smoke.

Flipping out of bed she pulled on a loose gown and girdled it around her waist. There was no way of telling what time it was, but that hardly mattered now. The screams she heard from outside her window were rising into a hellish chorus, and she knew that something terrible was happening.

Heading to the window, Adora could see the moon low on the horizon, but there was no need of the wan light it cast to see the sack of Vistein. The blaze of the burning fleet lit the whole town. The ships’ hulls burned like funeral pyres, and their masts jutted up like huge candlewicks. Here and there the fire had spread to land, and the houses clustered around the dock were already burning with an unnatural ferocity.

Adora scanned the narrow streets and cramped plazas for any attempt to fight the fire, but there was none. Instead the city was alive with struggling figures, blurred by smoke and distance. Small, dark figures moved amongst the townsfolk, and as Adora peered down into the confusion she saw the glitter of firelight on the chains which bound a whole street full of people together. She saw the flicker of what might have been whips, then a cloud of billowing smoke obscured her view.

When it had cleared, the people were gone. In their place a gang of longshoremen, recognisable by their high boots and billhooks, had taken their place. A man in the middle was shouting orders as they moved down the street in a ragged formation.

They didn’t get far. As Adora watched there was the sound of shattering glass and clouds of green smoke rose up amongst them. The men died tearing at their own throats, eyes wide enough for her to see the whites even at this distance.

The door banged open behind her. Adora span around and felt a flash of relief when she realised that it was Harrald. Then she saw the things that were chasing him and the relief vanished.

Even in the firelight she recognised them for what they were. The wiry bodies. The sharp noses. The even sharper teeth. These were the things that the Bretonnians had killed in the arena.

‘Help me,’ Harrald cried as he rushed towards her.

As last words went, they were hardly original, she thought as a blade buried itself between the Provost Marshal’s shoulder blades. Suitable for the fool, though.

She dodged out of the way as his body fell forwards and looked at the two beastmen who followed him into the room. They stank. Even over the acrid odour of the burning town, they stank. She kept the grimace off her face as she met their murderous eyes. One of them raised another one of the vicious throwing stars which had felled Harrald.

Adora dropped to her knees and, a sudden memory of the line of chained captives flashing through her memory, offered up her wrists.

She waited for the sting of the creature’s weapon. Instead she received only the shock of its voice.

‘This,’ it shrieked, its voice like claws drawn down a slate. ‘Your king?’

‘Not now,’ Adora said. ‘Now, you king.’

The creatures made a gurgling hiss and Adora looked up in time to see the distrustful grimace that passed between them. She began to hope.

‘I obey you,’ she said and offered her wrists. ‘I see you are king.’

When the iron clicked around her wrists it felt no heavier than any other piece of jewellery she had been given, and by the time she had been dragged out of the palace to be chained with the other captives her fear had already gone.

She would survive. She always did.

Her sails were fat with the full wind, and the Katerina scudded briskly over white-capped waves. It was cold on deck. Beneath the sharp sting of the sea spray the air was chill with the approach of winter, and the smell of brine was mixed with the tang of the thunderclouds that brooded on the far horizon.

Florin, snug in a seaman’s leather tunic, sniffed the air and sighed happily. It smelled like freedom.

The stink of Vistein’s gaol was behind them. They had been running ahead of the season’s biting winds for three days now, and the city was safely behind them. Florin thought briefly of the gold they had lost there, but only briefly. He had his freedom and his wits and his ship, and for a man with those three blessings opportunities were always beckoning.

Author’s Note.

Nobody ever did learn exactly what happened to the people of Vistein. There were rumours, of course, each as unlikely as the last. In time there were even legends, ridiculous children’s stories about ratmen and enslavement and long, endless journeys through long, endless passages.

Fortunately, the Empire’s scholars are too wise to pay heed to such nonsense. Many towns are deserted after the crops fail. That’s simple economics. As to the dark maggot holes that had gnawed their subterranean way out of the cliffs and into the caverns that surrounded the town, well, what of them? Geology is a new science in the Empire, and one day they will be explored. One day.

In the meantime, Vistein’s crumbling bones are left to the sea and the wind and the weeds, and if ghosts still dwell there, they dwell alone.

THE LAST RIDE OF HEINER ROTHSTEIN

by
Ross O’Brien

They rode along the course of the stream: two hundred men, an honour guard. Each man kept his thoughts to himself, and his horse in line. The hunt was almost at its end; they would pass through the gates of the Ulricsberg tomorrow as triumphant men, trophies held high.

Wolfram brought them to a halt at the rise of the hill. They were in a clearing in the Drakwald, big enough for their campfires. He gave the familiar orders and men broke from formation, dismounted, and set about their tasks. He doubled the number of sentries to twenty.

Finally he came to the pistoliers’ former commander.

The body of Heiner Rothstein sat on his old palomino, propped up against the standard he had captured from the marauders. He seemed to be staring at Wolfram, waiting for orders.

Wolfram took a flask from his belt and began to drink. ‘Now we celebrate, father,’ he said.

Around him, the men began to remember Heiner’s glories.

Erik Herzklüge stood, pistol raised, feet apart, legs bent in the stance of a rider. He struck quite the pose in the flickering campfire light: blond-haired, bold-featured, and unblemished by the ravages of age or battle. He would not have looked out of place recounting his story in an Altdorf theatre, where bravado was tantamount to bravery. Riders of Middenheim, hardened by Ulric, had different standards. But then the listeners were young, and it was their first campaign.

‘From here to that tree,’ Herzklüge bragged, the pistol pointing at a birch some two hundred yards distant. He mimed the cock of the pistol and the firing of the shot, and he jerked his head back a second later, conveying the marauder falling from his horse. To some applause, Herzklüge flourished by rearing his ‘horse’ and turning away to reload and regain distance.

‘But the ball kept going!’ called Keefer Adler. The outrider had perched his saddle on a tree stump behind the seated pistoliers, so when they turned they had to look up at him. ‘There aren’t many men who could shoot one beast off another at that distance, but Erik Herzklüge is no ordinary man!’ The greybeard leant forward conspiratorially. Herzklüge, flattered, held an impressive pose and smiled. ‘He,’ Adler crowed, ‘shot down the moon!’

Herzklüge’s smile vanished, his face flushed pink. Adler rocked back in his saddle, cackling. The listeners looked away, their rapture stolen. ‘Rest assured,’ said Herzklüge, cold as the grave, ‘if I had hit the moon, it would have landed on your head.’

‘Enough!’ called Wolfram Rothstein, stepping into the circle, between the two men. ‘Or I will shoot both moons, one for each of your heads!’ His right hand rested meaningfully near the pistol in his belt. It was a dangerous suggestion, he knew, and an invitation to stupidity; Herzklüge’s pistol was already drawn, and Adler had a lifetime’s experience of shooting.

‘Erik,’ Wolfram said, more softly, ‘put your pistol away, and tell your story. Keefer, go see to the horse. We ride into Middenheim tomorrow, he needs to look good.’ Another moment passed. ‘Now, gentlemen.’

They looked contemptuously at him rather than at each other, and nodded. Wolfram turned and stepped away. Out of their sight, he could wipe his palms down his lean face and wring the sweat from them. He touched a finger to his temple, feeling his headache begin to fade.

It was not, Wolfram decided, a moment worthy of Ulric’s halls. Adler knew better than to heckle a story told on the night after a battle, but Herzklüge made a target of himself. He hadn’t yet learned the art of telling stories in which other people could be heroes. He was a good shot, though, almost half as good as he boasted. Another year or two and the Knights of the Howling Wolf might take him, if he survived that long.

Wolfram regretted the thought instantly, but the bitterness remained. His own commission waited for him in Middenheim, and the men knew it. He could not command the same respect that his father had, and they only respected him now because his father had fallen. Without a Rothstein in command, there was every chance they would be disbanded upon their return.

‘We didn’t plan for them,’ he said softly. His gaze moved once more to the banner, and the body which lay beneath it. ‘The entire korps is here, but you didn’t think about them, father. Just the family name. Just the honour. You die in battle, I become a knight. What about them?’

His father, unsurprisingly, did not respond. The banner wafted impassively over his head.

Wolfram averted his gaze. There was something intensely uncomfortable about it, though that was to be expected. It was a patchwork of jagged leather pieces, each daubed with obscene runes. In battle they had glowed ablaze. Now they were a dull orange, but no less disturbing. Each piece was a different texture, and Wolfram thought they had been torn from the hides of many mutated beasts. Some had probably been human.

Instead he moved to better inspect his father’s appearance. Blankets covered the bandages where the bone staff had pierced his chest, and his scarlet cloak covered the blankets. His sabre and pistols, meticulously cleaned and polished, were at his side. He was thin, despite the good foraging and his investment in good rations.

His face looked serene.

That was good. For Heiner to have died silver-haired, wasted away and nauseous in bed, would have terrified him and shamed them both. But it could have been days, even weeks from now.

As Ulric judged fates, this was a good death.

‘Wolfram!’

The urgency of the voice turned Wolfram’s head. Four men were brawling in the dirt behind him. Other men had gathered around to cheer them on.

Could they not keep their tempers for one night?

The rightmost man was easiest to recognise. Ghislain Langmeier, his father’s old lieutenant, was a tall man resembling a walrus, bald and bearing a great white moustache, waxed in the outrider tradition. It was he who had shouted Wolfram’s name. He had grappled Steffan Drescher from behind, hooking his arms around the other’s wiry frame, and was trying to pull him out of the fight. The sweat from the exertion made his head shine.

Not four men brawling, Wolfram realised. Two men brawling, and two men trying to end it.

‘Good man, Ghislain! Hold him down!’ shouted broadly built Konrad Trauss, stepping after the two. His right arm moved back, fingers clenching into a fist. The last man, Magnus Glöeck, grabbed at the arm from behind, but Trauss smashed his elbow back into the man’s jaw. Glöeck twisted on one foot and collapsed to the ground.

Drescher struggled to escape Langmeier’s grip. ‘Let go, Ghis! I can’t knock his lying teeth out from here!’

‘Come on, Wolfram!’ called Langmeier.

Wolfram lowered his shoulder and charged into Trauss’s side. Even forewarned, Trauss was caught off balance and went down with a yell. The big man’s weight forced them both into a roll away from Drescher. Wolfram’s head thudded across the earth, dizzying him. Trauss barrelled over the immobile Glöeck, flattening the young man. The impact brought them to a halt with Wolfram’s left arm trapped under Trauss.

‘Some bloody gratitude,’ swore Trauss, and he threw a punch at Wolfram. It was clumsy and lacked power, but it stung his cheek. Fury swept through Wolfram and he thrust his free hand forward, grabbed Trauss’s shoulder and dragged him into a head-butt. Trauss cried out and fell back over Glöeck’s prone form.

Wolfram pushed himself up quickly and sat on Trauss’s chest, pinning him down. He rubbed his bruised left arm. Trauss made no effort to rise, but stroked his fingers under his nose, touching blood. Langmeier sat back, holding Drescher in his resolute grip.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Wolfram asked.

‘I sabed his hibe from the naraubers,’ whined Trauss.

Wolfram looked to Langmeier for explanation. Langmeier sighed. ‘Stories told around a fire, Wolfram,’ he said. ‘Konrad said he shot an axeman on horseback, bearing down on Steffan here.’

‘Shod him through the gneck.’

‘Lying scum,’ said Drescher. ‘His head fell off! Heiner cleaved through his neck with his sabre.’ Drescher’s face broke into a grin. ‘He dropped his axe, he was that surprised.’

At the mention of his father, Wolfram turned his piercing gaze on Trauss, looking for any intent to offend. He raised his fist to strike. The big man was still grimacing in pain, but his eyes were open, challenging – and honest. As Trauss saw things, he hadn’t lied or exaggerated.

Wolfram tried to recall such a moment in the battle. His head throbbed with the effort. Then he gave up, unable to remember. No doubt he had been busy fighting other marauders at the time.

He returned his attention to Trauss, who looked around him. Suddenly aware of the men standing around them, Wolfram forced his fingers to unclench.

He eased himself up and addressed Drescher. ‘I’m damned if I know what this is about, but this ends now. Get whatever you need from wherever you can find it. Treat their wounds,’ he indicated Trauss and Glöeck, ‘then stay away from Konrad for the rest of the night. Are we clear?’

Drescher struggled again in Langmeier’s grip. Langmeier gasped but held tight, then squeezed his arms together, reminding Drescher of his strength. Drescher thought better of his predicament and then bowed his head. ‘Yes.’

Wolfram nodded to Langmeier, who released his grip. Drescher reached his hand to his neck, which seemed to be irritating him, then set about his task.

Langmeier grabbed at his left shoulder, which was causing him some discomfort. He got to his feet and stepped away from the fallen men to stand nearer to Heiner and the banner. The gathered crowd dispersed, their entertainment over.

Wolfram’s anger flared and then evaporated. He could not blame them. Their comrades had fought over some point of honour and they had stood in support. There was no shame there.

‘You took your time,’ Langmeier grumbled, behind him.

Wolfram turned to face the veteran. Langmeier had been his father’s brother-in-arms, always riding by his side or guarding his back. He had the distinction of having fought beside Heiner for longer than any other man in the korps, and they greatly respected him. Few others could have interrupted a vigil without condemnation.

Langmeier reached out his hand towards the standard. The wind flicked up around them at that instant and the banner snapped at him. He withdrew his hand and reappraised the banner as he would an opponent. Wolfram began to think he was wondering in which direction to circle it.

‘It’s an unholy trophy, Wolfram,’ he said. ‘I can’t say I’m comfortable riding through the Ulricsberg under this thing.’

‘You’re right,’ said Wolfram, dryly. ‘We should only fight marauders who can embroider properly.’

Langmeier stared at the banner a while longer, and then he got the joke and laughed. His shoulders shook stiffly, still sore.

‘You should get that seen to.’

‘No point,’ replied Langmeier. ‘I have reached the age where it will never heal completely. It will be one of those wounds that aches when rain or battle approaches. But you, you should get your head seen to. You’ve been jabbing your fingers into your temples all evening.’

‘Only when the men fight,’ said Wolfram. ‘Then it hurts. Why are they so restless?’

‘Perhaps it’s the spirits,’ Langmeier quipped. He produced a small wooden flask from a pouch, uncorked it and proffered it. Wolfram took the bottle. He sniffed at its neck.

‘What,’ he winced, ‘is this?’

‘It’s good. You’ll like it,’ said Langmeier, mischievously. ‘Does wonders for headaches.’

Wolfram took a swig. He spluttered some of it across Langmeier’s breastplate before he could cover his mouth completely. ‘Wonderful,’ he croaked. Both curious and anxious, he inspected the sticky amber liquid on his hand. ‘What is it?’

Langmeier grinned. He already had another flask in hand. ‘To your father,’ he said. Wolfram raised his flask in kind. ‘And Rothstein’s Pistoliers.’

They drank. The headache eased off.

‘Did you see my father draw his sabre?’

Langmeier considered a moment. ‘I don’t remember. Who do you believe?’

‘I should believe Konrad. He aimed and fired his pistol. I don’t know where Steffan’s attention was, but he was too close to the marauder to save himself.’

‘You want to believe your father saved him?’

‘That doesn’t matter. I’ve been walking the camp half the night. I’ve heard men argue about battles they’ve fought, victories they’ve won, glories they’ve achieved… but I’m sure most of it never happened. They’re not rowdy, or drunk, or upset. They’re just misremembering everything.’

He lowered his head, looking at the body in its fine scarlet cloak. ‘It’s his last ride tomorrow. Sitting on that white horse, propped up by that damned banner, escorted into his home city…’ Wolfram thought for a moment, sighed, and continued.‘ Surrounded by two hundred of his best friends who can’t remember what he’s done.’

Wolfram stopped talking, ashamed he’d failed to keep his doubts to himself, afraid to let any more slip. No one, not even this long-trusted friend, knew about his father’s malady and his desperation for a glorious end. He had only spoken to his father about it.

Langmeier took another swallow from his flask. ‘You’re keeping them together. No one’s shot anyone yet.’

‘Yet,’ repeated Wolfram.

‘Yet,’ agreed Langmeier, shrugging. Wolfram realised that Langmeier wasn’t simply in a congratulatory mood. There was something on his mind too, but it was neither grief nor pride. Langmeier leaned forward, smiling easily, and pointed a finger at Wolfram’s facial hair. ‘Wolfram,’ he said, ‘have you considered waxing that moustache?’

‘No,’ Wolfram said. He grimaced, working out what Langmeier was really getting at. Then things came together in his mind. ‘I thought that brawl was strange. You’ve been a fighting man longer than any man here. You know how to end squabbles. Konrad’s a big man, and ten years younger than Steffan. Young Magnus never fought a battle before today. He didn’t stand a chance against Konrad. So why did you take on Steffan? You wanted me involved,’ accused Wolfram. ‘You wanted to make me feel needed.’

Langmeier stopped smiling. He twitched uncomfortably. ‘Rothstein’s Pistoliers is a pistolkorps with a noble history, Wolfram, but it is also a name with a lineage, and you are now the last of that line. Without you it is only a name. I am proud of you and your father, for getting you your commission, but the korps ends with you. No one here can afford to buy it and its reputation. No one here wants it to end.’

‘You want to trap me in my own name, and keep me here for your own comfort?’ said Wolfram. ‘This was not what my father wanted.’

‘Your father wanted you to be a knight. To command respect. You could have ended the fight with just your voice. Instead you took a tumble in the muck with Trauss. I wonder now if you could command him into battle if we were attacked tomorrow.’

Wolfram’s eyes narrowed, but he did not rise to the bait. Nothing could be gained from it.

Instead he raised his flask. ‘To my father,’ he said, ‘and to the future.’

‘Better,’ said Langmeier. He repeated the sentiment. They drank.

Somewhere behind him, around another campfire, he heard more voices rising in anger. Two of the buglers, Wolfram recognised.

‘If he cannot play the full overtures into battle, he has no place playing them into the gates of the Ulricsberg!’

Predictably one’s fist cracked against the other’s skull, but by then Wolfram was rushing in, his head already pounding.

The clouds brightened in the east, shielding the sun.

For Wolfram Rothstein, the night had never ended. At shifts of the moons, he would retire the scouts and the sentries to let them sleep or enjoy the fires, and rouse their replacements from their warm blankets. Men continued to drink and argue. His headache came and went, usually with one disgruntled rider or the other being ordered to check the horses’ blankets and tack, or stand watch.

The arguments had been petty. Forgotten details from one skirmish or another, the confusion of who killed what, or where. A few scuffles over seniority, and the right or rank to ride nearer to Heiner’s horse as they entered the city.

Ulric’s beard, but there were protocols for that! Traditions, ways to spare a grieving family of the frustrations of deciding which old friend took the senior position, and which feuds were more politically affordable. His head swam, unable to track the details.

‘You’re going around in circles, boy,’ Adler told him. The greybeard had returned to his saddle upon the tree stump where Herzklüge was still recounting his extraordinary battles, and had caught Wolfram’s attention during a circuit around the camp. ‘Sit down a while.’

‘I’ll stand,’ said Wolfram. He was in no mood to be talked down to. Langmeier hadn’t been the only man during the night to suggest he join the outriders instead of the knights. ‘Has he stopped talking at all?’

‘I doubt it. You’ll want to sit for this,’ Adler said. ‘I think Erik has a new opponent.’

Wolfram looked towards the blond pistolier. One of Herzklüge’s younger friends had just play-acted a fall to the ground, and Herzklüge was strutting in victory. Thirty others, sitting around the fire, had cheered or banged their pistol butts against their helmets in applause, and in the new silence Herzklüge began his latest tale.

‘The last beast was the biggest of them all,’ he started. He gestured to the largest man in the circle. ‘Reiniger, come here. The beast was twice as big as Reiniger, can you believe it? Reiniger, lift your thumbs to your ears, point your fingers to the stars. Yes, yes, he looked exactly like that!’

Reiniger grinned. Unlike Herzklüge, who had only supped enough to stop his throat from drying, Reiniger had indulged in somewhat more drink. He gambolled on the spot in pretence of riding a horse, and several young pistoliers cupped their hands in applause to make the clip-clop noise.

‘You don’t like Erik,’ said Wolfram to Adler. ‘You never have. You’ll find a way to spoil this story like all the others. Why can’t you just… do something else for one night?’

‘I enjoy his stories,’ Adler said. ‘You’re right, I can’t stand the man. Tremendously self-important. But he is good fun to listen to when he’s wrong.’

‘My pistol spent,’ said Herzklüge, theatrically returning the pointed fingers to his side, ‘I drew my sabre.’ The hand emerged again, forefingers touching the thumb as though holding a weapon, and flourished a figure eight. Absent an actual sword, the gesture was dramatically pathetic, but the young men cheered anyway. Except for Reiniger, who for his part had started to snort and growl.

‘The beast was huge,’ Herzklüge insisted. ‘Their leader, no doubt. With his thick right arm he wielded an immense sword, as long as a man is tall, twisted as a snake.’

A wavy branch of pale-coloured yew was produced. Reiniger held it like a weapon and flicked his wrist constantly to wobble the end. A few men sniggered. Reiniger made a number of more suggestive gestures at them, and more of the men sniggered.

‘Wolfram,’ Adler whispered, ‘I think, when the day is done, and you’ve taken up your commission, I might offer to buy the pistolkorps from you.’

Wolfram fought to retain his composure. Adler wasn’t a stupid man. As one of his father’s lieutenants, a certain shrewd counsel and independence of thought was required. What Adler had chosen to say, he was saying where everyone would try to ignore him.

‘I can’t afford your name, of course,’ he continued. ‘Rothstein’s Pistoliers ends with your father’s victory, as it should be. But the rest of us need keeping out of trouble.’

Reiniger was waving his branch in one hand, and had taken up another branch, aflame, from the fire in the other. Men were covering their bottles and their beards.

‘It’s not just a name and an academy,’ said Wolfram. ‘It’s a responsibility.’

‘I may have to settle down a little,’ Adler admitted, chuckling. ‘The only way I can make it work anyway is with a dowry. What do you think Erik will do when I ask for his sister’s hand in marriage?’

Wolfram smiled. ‘He’ll make sure that’s the only bit of her you get.’

Adler cackled dryly. ‘Yes. It’ll annoy him plenty. He’ll find a way to win from it, though. He’s quick-witted, that one.’

‘Quiet. Someone might hear you saying something nice about him.’

It didn’t appear so, though. The crowd was rapt with the action. Herzklüge sidestepped to circle Reiniger, right hand to right hand, fingers-sabre to sapwood. Some of the men were still making clip-clop noises.

‘I’ll tell you something, Wolfram,’ Adler confided. ‘Erik can’t remember the battle. Look at him. He’s prancing from side to side. He’s trying to picture Reiniger as the marauder, and he knows he’d have broken away or been killed. But he also has a crowd to please.’

Wolfram watched Herzklüge’s eyes, his focus on the big man in front of him, the ‘sword’, the torch. He only vaguely recalled such a marauder on the battlefield himself.

‘He’s been making up opponents all night. Reiniger, Horstern, they’ve all stepped up and fought him, and he’s beaten them all, but he can’t remember what he actually did in the heat of the moment. Ulric’s blood, I can’t remember what I did either.’

‘I charged him,’ said Herzklüge, fingers drawn back to swing at Reiniger. Reiniger held back the sapwood, posing as to take Herzklüge’s head off with it. Wolfram kept his attention on Herzklüge, on how much the young man was concentrating.

Herzklüge pulled his left hand up, fingers in another formation.

‘Stupid brute. My other pistol was still loaded!’

There was another cheer for Herzklüge’s cleverness in battle. Wolfram cheered. Adler didn’t, of course.

Herzklüge grabbed at Reiniger, reaching to grab the torch in one hand. ‘I pointed it into his chin,’ Herzklüge said, wrestling Reiniger around him, fingers to his throat, ‘and…’ The fingers folded into a fist and connected with Reiniger’s jaw. The big man smiled and fell over backwards, his fall broken by another man’s lap. Wine was spilled. They laughed.

‘And I took the banner!’ Herzklüge crowed triumphantly.

Wolfram’s head snapped up.

There were more cheers, at first, before the meaning of Herzklüge’s words sank in. Herzklüge was shaking the torch in his raised hand like a trophy, smiling. He was the last to notice the silence, or that his audience had grown in number, as men gathered to check that they had heard him correctly. The firelight reflected their faces, young and old.

Perhaps Erik Herzklüge realised the magnitude of his insult, in that moment; perhaps not.

Wolfram broke the silence, his words pained. ‘Heiner Rothstein cap–’

There was a shot, and Herzklüge’s body dropped.

It was Adler who had fired, pistol drawn and smoking, stood beside his commander.

‘Stupid brute,’ Adler said. He swore, and muttered something else, which only Wolfram heard. It involved a girl’s name.

Horstern cautiously crept across the embers and put his head over Herzklüge’s chest, listening for a heartbeat or sign of breathing. When he stood again he pointed his pistol at Adler.

Then thirty men, all of them young and the worse for drinking, stood and drew their pistols, pointing them at Adler.

Adler, and thirty more, all older and no better for drinking, raised their own pistols.

Wolfram, drawing his pistol, stood wondering where to point it.

And then they heard the sound of a bugle, and a shout from the eastern sentry.

‘Marauders!’

Thank Ulric, Wolfram thought; an enemy.

Rothstein’s Pistoliers retained enough discipline to move quickly and smartly. The remaining fires were doused. Pistols were holstered, sabres were checked, and flasks were returned to pouches in belts. Blankets were folded and stowed in saddlebags. Breastplates were fastened, lanyards were untangled and ruffles in sleeves were smoothed out. Men put on their helmets and mounted their horses.

Wolfram and Langmeier stood at the edge of the camp. Langmeier had the spyglass.

‘How many?’ Wolfram asked.

‘Sixty, or near enough,’ said Langmeier. ‘They look ready for a fight.’

‘Good. Our orders were to find them and give them one,’ said Wolfram.

Numerically the pistoliers were superior, he thought, but some of them hadn’t slept and many had been drinking. He took in the lay of the land. The route east was rough but open ground, with plenty of space for a horseman to manoeuvre. The marauders were riding through the centre of the fold and directly towards the camp, staying far from the stretches of the Drakwald to their north and south.

Wolfram took the spyglass. The marauders’ mounts were huge, muscular creatures, black as ash, thundering across the ground. The warriors who rode them wore blood-matted furs over plates of bronze and iron and darkened oily leathers. They bore jagged-edged shields daubed in lava-coloured symbols, and were loosening long hammers from straps and sheaths.

He sought out the leader, the one who would be keeping them all in line. To his dismay the largest warrior was at the point of the charge, bellowing orders. Such a foe led by fear and purpose. The marauders were coming for them.

To the leader’s left rode a wizened fighter wearing a helm capped with rams’ horns, his beard white but stained a deep blood-red. He carried a bone-white staff. The icon at the top end of the staff was ornate but undeniably sharp.

Wolfram pointed out the fighter to Langmeier. ‘That’s the one who stabbed Heiner.’

‘Didn’t we kill him yesterday?’

‘Perhaps Ulric has gifted us the chance to kill him again.’

The remaining lieutenants gathered around them on horseback. As Adler joined the lieutenants, the younger pistoliers cued their horses to keep their distance, and to face him as he passed. If he noticed, he showed no sign of it.

The men, once mounted, congregated by lieutenants wearing the same colour sleeves. Adler wore blue sleeves. Several men had already exchanged coins and bottles for white-sleeved shirts.

Adler took a look at the advancing horde through the spyglass. ‘They could have waited until after breakfast,’ he said.

Wolfram pointed to either side of the oncoming warband. ‘Adler, you’ll take the blues down the south side. I’ll take the north.’

‘Hit and run, hit and run,’ Adler confirmed. Wolfram noticed that none of them addressed him as they would a commander, but neither did anyone question his orders. He remembered that they were used to fighting in smaller companies for other generals, and competed amongst themselves for glory. Perhaps none of them wanted to challenge his authority in front of the others. Perhaps that was the best he could hope for.

Langmeier accepted the reins of his mount from Drescher. Wolfram cast his gaze back into the camp, looking for men who weren’t ready yet. The western sentries crested the rise and made haste towards the remaining horses.

In the centre of the camp, still, stood the captured banner.

Like the marauders’ shields, the symbols upon it were radiant, no doubt sensing the foul stench in the wind. Wolfram knelt beside it and uprooted it. An unpleasantly sticky slime had oozed along the pole of the banner, but it unnaturally receded around Wolfram’s fingers, leaving enough room to grip it and feel its warmth.

Langmeier spat. ‘You think we should ride into battle under a piece of filth like that?’

Wolfram hefted the banner. ‘It might make them think twice before attacking us. And in a strange way, we are fighting for it.’

‘I’ll ride with Keefer,’ said Langmeier.

Only one of the saddles had been fitted so the banner could be lashed to it and borne triumphantly forward. So Wolfram sat high upon his father’s white horse, the pole strapped in front of his left leg, the fervent cloth flapping behind him in the wind.

He turned in the saddle to address his troops. ‘Rothstein’s Pistoliers! White sleeves, with me. Blue, with Adler. For Middenheim and Heiner, we ride!’

With a swift kick, he led off. The pistoliers cascaded down the slope behind him. He flicked at the reins, urging his horse into a gallop, then looped them around his wrist and pulled to the left, Horstern and Trauss at his sides. Adler and Langmeier broke off to the right, a hundred blue-sleeved pistoliers behind them.

They pounded across the scrub, keeping the marauders to their right. The white-sleeves had the advantage: they were right-handed and the marauders held their shields to the south. They drew their pistols, pointing them to the right, finding spaces between each other to pick out victims, keeping pace.

Wolfram picked out the lead marauder, gauging his distance. The warrior’s head, between the horns protruding from his helmet, seemed the most exposed part. A hundred and fifty yards, he reckoned. If the marauders intended to attack, rather than riding past, then now was the time for their leader to decide on which formation to charge. Wolfram kept pace and direction, his attention snapping between his horse and his enemy’s.

A hundred yards. A little closer. He started to drift his aim to the right, ahead of the pack. Up and down, up and down with the horse’s thundering steps.

The lead marauder veered his horse to the north. From the rear of the warband, warriors peeled off, heaving their hammers up and around. They’ve picked us, Wolfram thought, flicking his reins again. Closer, closer. He couldn’t think to the riders behind him, only trust that perhaps forty had a clear view to fire.

‘Fire!’ he yelled, pulling the trigger. A ripple of explosions thundered behind him, a startling noise for all the horses. The lead marauder twitched in the saddle, and the man to his right screamed from a shot through the chest. Wolfram kept his mount in check, allowing his pistol to swing from its lanyard and drawing the other.

The second volley fired like the first. This time it rippled along the flank of the marauders. Black steeds toppled over broken legs, pitching their masters to the ground. The pistoliers rode on, east and away from the wheeling warriors. They turned in their saddles to reload their pistols. South of them, Adler’s riders emptied their pistols at the marauders’ rear and veered north and around to get a second shot.

The white-sleeves fanned out into a long row and wheeled tightly, individually. Once more they reformed behind Wolfram, charging back towards the camp. The marauders, too, had spread out for a wider frontage. Coruscating lights drew his attention to the warrior bearing the bone staff. Sorcerer, Wolfram realised.

‘Again! South,’ Wolfram shouted. Horstern, several horses behind him, blew at his bugle, two short blasts. The pistoliers veered to the left. Wolfram furiously reloaded his second pistol, spilling powder across his thighs. Men who hadn’t fired picked out individual marauders. Wolfram trained his eye on a broad-chested barbarian with a great axe and no breastplate.

The man to Wolfram’s left fired, sudden and alone. Wolfram swivelled. Keefer Adler, far to his left, slid from his horse mid-wheel. He could not close his eyes before Langmeier’s horse inevitably trampled him.

Herzklüge – Herzklüge? – smoothly swapped his pistols and pointed the second past Wolfram’s back, at the sorceror.

Wolfram’s fingers tightened around the reins. His head was pounding, pounding again. He held his own pistol out to the right, aiming for the marauders’ right flank. He could hear chanting. He fired, fired wild, and it continued. He heard the discordant reverberations of forty more shots, and forty more, cracking, cracking to the right. A howl and roar of heavy cavalry riding into battle; the screams of anguished riders and their steeds suffering burns to the head and face.

Then… silence.

No sound of hooves, nor crack of gunfire. No battle cries, nor cries of pain. No chants.

He could smell heather, thick and fragrant.

‘The veil is lifted,’ he heard.

The cacophony of battle returned, as suddenly as it left, in all its screaming glory. The damned banner burst into flames. Thick, burning amber pus splattered over him, scorching his face. He clutched at his eyes to clear his vision, pulling hard at the reins. His horse, shrieking in agony, careened from the formation.

‘You can hear me,’ Wolfram heard.

He whirled in his place, seeking the origin of the voice. Hurriedly he waved his sleeves across his horse’s back, wiping the foul liquid away. He drew his knife from his boot, and razored it swiftly across the banner straps. They were bound tight, and hard to cut.

‘I can see the colours of Rothstein beneath that foul banner.’

He heaved the horse to a halt and looked around. The pistoliers, their divisions indistinguishable, surrounded the marauders’ position on all sides. He could see Langmeier to the north, drawing his sabre. Horsten, blasting his bugle, sounding the call to break away again. Brave, stoic Drescher at the south, aiming his pistol at Trauss’s back.

Keefer Adler, impossibly alive, riding once more into the fray.

A cold chill took him, turning his breath to steam. An awareness of things not right. The banner still sat, warm in the saddle, urging him to surrender his awareness and return to battle.

Magic, he thought, cursing. Sorcery. ‘Show yourself!’ he demanded.

‘Look upon us,’ he heard.

He sought the bone-white staff above the wall of riders. A rod, gleaming white, rose and fell, here and there. A gap appeared briefly among the pistoliers, and thirteen great horses penetrated it. Thirteen great warriors rode them.

Twelve wore wolfskin pelts over their shoulders, grey and dusty. Their armour shone silver. Fur tails hung from their immense warhammers, which were hooded in black cloth. Their breastplates were blue, their livery red. The last wore a black cloak over black armour, and bore a great sword.

White Wolves.

Red Company, to be specific, and a templar of the Black Guard of Morr.

‘Do you see your crime, Rothstein?’ the voice accused. ‘Can you perceive the pain you have wrought, the wrath invoked, the vengeance demanded?’

The sorcerer emerged into view: a haggard wizard, his amber cloak ragged and blackened by shot. His white staff crackled with power.

The banner erupted once more. Wolfram shoved the banner away, staggering the horse to one side. The oily fluid singed and bit at his wrists and his steed’s mane, but most of it splashed harmlessly to the ground.

‘Surrender your illusions, Rothstein!’ ordered the wizard. ‘Cast aside your taint. It is not foul marauders you have hunted and slain these past four months. They were innocents! Foresters and woodsmen. Timber merchants and their wagons. Travellers across the Middenland. Men! Women! Children!’

‘Lies!’ Wolfram snarled. They had hunted the warriors who had preyed on the innocent. They had slain them all. They had been glorious.

Yet now they were killing Ulric’s own templars. He couldn’t deny it.

No marauders, he realised. Sorcery. He sawed frantically at the straps now, severing one, starting another.

No honour, he cursed. Four months!

A second cord split. The banner pitched to his right, spewing in protest.

What atrocities have we committed under you, he fumed. How many dead?

‘It is not enough to discard the standard, Rothstein,’ said the wizard. ‘It must be destroyed utterly. Bring it to me.’

He cut the final strap, and looked again to the fight, the spiralling riders, indiscriminate now in their carnage. Reiniger shot at a Wolf and hit Langmeier. Horstern cleaved his sabre at Adler and decapitated a Wolf. Petty feuds perpetuated, amplified. Tainted.

The White Wolves fell, and Rothstein’s Pistoliers endured.

No more, he decided.

He drew both pistols, aimed them into the air, and discharged them. He tore open the saddlebag of black powder and let it spill. Then he hefted the banner pole under his arm like a lance, and kicked his heels against the flanks of his steed.

I shall shoot both moons, he had said to Adler and Herzklüge. Now he would bring them down upon their heads.

He charged towards the wizard. The whitebeard lowered the staff and cast an invocation. The staff crackled once more with white lightning, and struck out at him. The banner, defiant, pounded in resistance in his head. Wolfram held true. With every juddering step his horse took, a piece of flaming leather snapped off and fluttered to the ground.

He remembered. He remembered the pain.

The axeman who severed Drescher’s head from his neck. The warrior who broke Langmeier’s shoulders and ribs with his great snaking sword. The dying marauder with no teeth, throwing with his last breath the almighty hammer which had crushed his own skull. All these and more, the pistoliers had killed.

He let it all burn away.

The horned totem atop the pole roared with fury, screeched its last, and died.

His head felt clear, elated. He rocked back in his saddle, victorious. The sounds of tankards thumping on oak tables and of hearty salutations filled his mind. This was a tale worthy of Ulric’s halls, he thought. He would enjoy telling it to his father.

The pistoliers’ ghosts, as one, vanished.

Leaving one pistolier still riding.

The banner pole lanced the sorcerer through the chest, thudding between his ribs, and snapped. He cannoned from the horse and struck the ground, his limbs suddenly slack. The bone staff whirled away into the scrub.

Heiner Rothstein tossed the broken stick aside and looked around for more enemies. When he couldn’t see any, he swore, turned his horse around and whipped the reins, kicking it into a gallop. His scarlet cloak thrashed in the wind.

The sorcerer’s mount, a chestnut creature, heard the pounding of hooves behind it and accelerated. He urged his horse to match its velocity, and drew his pistol from his belt. He couldn’t get closer than fifty yards; his steed was tired.

Heiner fired and the chestnut fell, driving its nose into the earth.

He returned to the field of carnage and picked a warhammer from the weapons of the fallen. It didn’t do to leave a horse suffering. As he pulled the black cloth from the warhammer he heard a deep voice behind him. He turned. Perhaps there was still a chance.

A pale-skinned man wrapped in a black cloak knelt beside a dead warrior, performing rites over the body. A dark helm, resembling that of a templar of the Black Guard, sat at his foot. Heiner concentrated on it, disturbed by the lack of corruption. It had no horns or teeth.

The man looked at him and then stood, the flow of his robes betraying the outline of his black breastplate and a scabbard, at his left side. Surprisingly he made no attempt to draw the sword, or attack. He stood still. In the man’s left hand, Heiner recognised the shard of the banner pole he had discarded only minutes earlier. The loss of the standard was fresh in his mind and he roiled at the thought of even a piece of it being recaptured.

‘The sorcery has ended,’ said the man. ‘The unquiet souls are free.’

Heiner gripped the warhammer’s haft more tightly. ‘Draw your weapon,’ he challenged.

The man’s voice was soft and measured, entrancing and without anger, rejecting him without confrontation. ‘This foul artefact has ended enough lives already. We will not serve it further.’

What new marauder trick is this, Heiner thought?

‘My duty, Rothstein, is to those deceased who were denied Morr’s peace by this ruinous standard, and enslaved to battle by your desires for glory. I must ensure their final rest, and you are my best chance of finding and consecrating their remains. But make no mistake: this is your only chance for penance, and if you make any other choice I will send you to the father of Death myself. Will you yield your quest?’

The question hung in the air between them. Heiner’s eyes narrowed, his gaze hunting in the other man’s eyes for the twitch before the inevitable attack.

‘Rothstein, for the sake of your son, will you yield?’

‘For the sake of my son, I will not!’ Heiner yelled. Suddenly he swung the hammer upwards. The warrior threw himself backwards but it crashed against his breastplate, sending him thundering to the ground. He struggled to rise but Heiner hit him again, cracking his ribs. ‘My son. My glory. Nothing else matters! Draw your weapon, maggot!’

The man drew his sword between difficult, heaving breaths, and fought to hold it upright, towards Heiner’s heart. Heiner lifted the hammer again and brought it down, at the same time pushing his chest upon the point of the blade. Frustratingly, the man spasmed and died. The sword clattered to the floor.

He cursed. Could none of these whoresons kill him in battle?

The men were quiet tonight. It made a change. Most nights they argued constantly; it kept him awake. The boy irritated him especially, talking incessantly.

Heiner turned the leg over the fire until the smoke blocked out the smells of the carnage around him, the fumes of intestine and bowel.

The horseflesh was all he had found worth eating. It would do. It wasn’t salted beef, and he hadn’t any red wine, but such was war. The rations would only stretch so far, and the men would need to save something for the ride home. The boy in particular was fond of the port, and he’d kept a flask aside for the boy to toast his memory with after he was gone.

He chewed slowly, and swallowed with difficulty. He hoped his face wasn’t too blotchy. He was taking a strange pride in looking his best at the moment, and he was running out of wax to keep his moustache springy. His hair was getting patchier. If they couldn’t track down something to kill him soon he was sure he would go demented.

Crows flew overhead, drawing his attention to the east. There, Heiner Rothstein saw the dust of more riders cresting the horizon.

BROKEN BLOOD

by
Paul Kearney

They broke cover in the afternoon, just as the snow was starting again. Morgan spat over his horse’s ears as Arundel cantered up to him, as breathless as his mount.

‘Out of the trees – maybe eight score of them. They’re heading for the river.’

‘How far?’

‘Half a mile. Not more. Briscus has it in hand.’

‘Get back to him, Arundel. Hold them there. This is a feint, or I’m a lady’s maid. They’re trying to pull us out. You get back to Briscus and tell him to hold his lines.’

Arundel, a slim, ruddy-faced youth barely out of his teens, slapped his gauntlet to his chest. ‘They won’t get by us, general.’

Off he went again, kicking the ribs of his horse. Gabriel Morgan smiled. Was I ever that young, he wondered? Methodically, he opened his saddle-holsters one by one and checked the slim matchlock pistols within. They were dry and loaded, their grips as familiar to him as the hilt of his sword.

Beside him, Jubal Kane sat impassively. ‘That boy has done some growing up these past five months,’ he said in his bass rumble. The words seemed to emerge from his beard. His eyes narrowed – the closest he came to smiling.

‘They’ve aged us all, these last months,’ Morgan retorted. He clapped shut the holster-covers. Time enough yet to light the match.

‘You think they’ll make the main move here, at the ford?’ Jubal asked him.

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘We should perhaps call in the other wings, then.’

‘Not yet, Jubal. They’re all afoot. We can dress our lines quicker than they can. Briscus and Harpius will hold where they are for now.’

A grunt in reply. Jubal Kane was not a man to waste words. He stroked the thick neck of his warhorse with one gauntleted fist. He looked old, sitting there in a cloud of his own breath. Frost had whitened his beard, giving him the aspect of an aged man, and his eyes were set in a tired mesh of lines and folds, dramatically so at the corner of the right one, where a livid scar buckled the skin in ridges. But the cold eyes were clear and bright – as hard as the icicles which hung in the lee of every rock, this high up in the Troll Country.

He and Morgan had ridden at each other’s side these past twelve years, and knew each other better than most brothers.

Most brothers.

Morgan twisted in the saddle and looked behind him. The wide white high-country extended to the horizon, a blinding snowscape dotted by black scattered woods. To the east, the Worlds Edge Mountains were a mere glimmer on the edge of sight, and to the south the open country rolled in a white waste of rocky ridges and scattered pinewoods, all the way down to the Urskoy River, perhaps some thirty leagues away. Erengrad, their base of operations, was three days, hard ride from here. If they were bested on this field, there would be no sense in retreating. They had no place to run.

And these men behind him had followed him here without question, perhaps to their deaths. Morgan turned his mount with a twitch of the reins to look up and down the lines. Perhaps two hundred men on horseback stared back at him, arrayed in two ranks. Their pennons whipped and snapped in the rising breeze, and the snow was already spotting the manes of their horses. Morgan touched the flanks of his own mount with his heels and the big animal limbered forward, kicking up the snow. He clicked his tongue and spoke to the animal softly, sensing its weariness. ‘Ho, now, Arion, my brave. Head up for the lads. Come now, boy.’

The big warhorse seemed to understand him. It lifted its gaunt head and pranced a little under him. Poor Arion was half-starved, as were they all. Not much for a horse to pick at, up here in the steppes of the Troll Country.

He rode down the lines, catching the eyes of the men as he passed, nodding, smiling, raising his gauntlet to the officers. They grinned back at him, hollow-cheeked and unshaven, many mounted on scrub mountain ponies for want of better. They wore an eclectic mix of harness: light brigandines of leather reinforced with iron scales, chainmail, and here and there a few pieces of white plate, relics of past glories. Their lances were all pointed skywards, butts in the stirrup-cups, pennons snapping. The lance-shafts were all of pine, here. In past years they had been of ash, down in the forested Empire, and cornel-wood in the foothills of the Grey Mountains.

At the pommel of every man’s saddle were two leather holsters, and from these protruded the grips of his matchlocks. They had not yet lit their match, but that time was almost upon them. It would be soon, now, very soon.

The traditional ribaldry, or a skeleton of it, flashed out as Morgan rode down the ranks.

‘General, any chance of a drink? I’m pissing hailstones.’

Morgan smiled. He saw faces which had been riding at his side for a decade – though precious few of them now. And he saw faces which had been part of his command for only a few months, like young Arundel. They all met his eyes – that was good. They would be here with him until the end.

He reined in his horse, and stood upright in the stirrups. A flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye: Jubal had raised an arm, and the banner bearer, young Kyriel, was slowly waving the battle-flag at the centre of the line.

‘Light your match, lads!’ Morgan called out at once. ‘It’s time to melt those icicles!’

He kicked Arion into a canter, wheeling him around on the spot. The big horse leapt forward off his haunches, like some huge, predatory feline – he had caught the sudden quickening of his master’s mood.

Morgan galloped back up the line as the men uncovered their firepots and began blowing their match into life. They clicked their lances into their back-straps so as to have both hands free, and soon the evocative reek of gunpowder was eddying down on the breeze. Morgan wiped snow from his face and reined in Arion. The big destrier was snorting and blowing and prancing now as though he were a colt again; he always loved the moments before battle. He had been bred for this.

As was I, Morgan thought.

‘What do we have?’ he snapped at Jubal.

The big man tilted his head to one side, looking north-east down the slope to the grey blade of the river. On the far bank the eaves of the forest loomed, dark and ominous.

‘I think our friends are making their move, Gabriel,’ he said mildly. Then he donned his helm, a battered, disreputable bowl of iron with a beak-like nose guard.

Morgan stared at the gloom-wreathed foot of the wood. There was movement there, all along the riverbank. For perhaps four hundred yards the forest was bristling with half-guessed moving shadows.

‘Take Garnedd’s squadron forward,’ he said calmly to Jubal. ‘Get them down to the water.’

‘Cold day for a bath,’ Jubal said, and his eyes narrowed in cold humour. He raised an arm. ‘First squadron, on me – at the trot – hold your ranks, you lazy bastards!’

A dry cheer went up, and horses whinnied up and down the line. The long-awaited battle was happening at last.

Morgan turned to the little knot of aides who had come forward out of the ranks as he waved his fist.

‘Krauz, go to Briscus and tell him to break off and get his wing back here at all speed. Tell him they’re going to force passage of the ford. Feldtir, you go to Harpius. He’s to make his way here at a walk. Tell him to keep an eye on his right flank as he advances. They may yet feint out to the east.’

Both men slapped gauntlets to chest, and galloped off in a cloud of flurried snow.

Morgan began to hum, an old hymn he had learned as a child. He patted Arion’s neck as the warhorse snorted under him.

It’s been a long time coming, he thought, but it ends here today.

He stared at the blank eaves of the pinewood across the river.

And you brother, are you there now, watching me from the shadows? Can you remember who you were, and what we did together, or is there nothing of your memories left now but the crazed mire of the Dark Gods?

Michael Morgan, my brother, eldest and best. My brother, whom I loved, and who must die today.

It had been ten years. Ten years of restless journeying, of fighting under a half dozen different banners. Once, the brothers Morgan had led a legion of volunteers, soldiers from Altdorf and Nuln and Talabheim and Middenheim; the great cities of the central Empire. Such had been the glory of their name that men had flocked to fight under the twin eagles of their banner, and the Grand Theogonist himself had blessed their undertaking. He had recognised in the Morgans two men of incorruptible virtue, who fought for glory and for the gods of men, who scorned every attempt to buy their services, who travelled freely about the Empire and pitched in wherever they were needed with their famed cavalry. They had fought orcs in the Black Mountains, ratmen in the Forest of Shadows, and beastmen in the Reikwald. Their numbers had been decimated many times, but always a hard core of veterans remained, and there were always more than enough young soldiers ready to make up the numbers, to share a little in the glory. They had become something of a legend.

And then there had come the news from the North, rumours of a great Chaos host rebuilding itself after the wreck of their armies at the Ulricsberg, eight years before. Michael and Gabriel had taken the army north, past the Middle Mountains, up to the Troll Country. Close to the haunted ruins of Praag. There, they had encountered a great host of Chaos warriors, still forming, and had pitched into it with their customary savagery, relying on the punch of cavalry to smash open the enemy ranks and put them to flight.

And they had prevailed.

Gabriel Morgan thought back on that day, the last time he had seen his brother alive.

‘We have them, Gabe,’ Michael cried, grinning. He beat the flat of his sword against his armoured chest. ‘One more push and they’ll run all the way to the sea!’ He turned to his trumpeter, old Gimmelman. ‘Sound me the pursuit, Lars. And keep blowing it until every mother’s-son of us is on their tail.’

The battle-horn rang out in the wild halloo that signalled the pursuit. At once, the ordered ranks of the cavalry opened out across the plain, the compact fists of the squadrons unclenching. Now the hard fighting was over, and something like sport could begin. The pace of the cavalry quickened. They set up a great shout and let their horses have their heads.

For perhaps two miles, the hosts of the enemy were running for their lives, a serried crowd of lumbering men and beasts in muck-spattered armour, snarling and slavering as they ran. Michael had killed their great champion, Graakon, in single combat, before unloosing the heavy horse. The Chaos hordes had held for almost an hour before breaking. Now they were a scattered mob, intent only on making their way to the rocky hills and forests to the east, wherein they had their filthy lairs.

Jubal Kane rode up and joined the brothers as they watched the destruction of the Chaos army, the wild pursuit that harried it to its death.

‘A fair morning’s work,’ he said. ‘I have the reserve in hand, ready for your orders.’

‘What of our own casualties?’ Gabriel asked him.

‘Too soon to say. They were heaviest out on the left, where Briscus and Harpius held the line. Good men, those.’

‘Yes,’ Michael said at once, eyes still fixed on the crowded, teeming battle-plain before them. ‘They should be promoted. They did well today… Gabe – do you see that, out to the north-east?’ He pointed with one bloodied hand.

‘They’re reforming,’ Gabriel said. ‘Maybe a company of them.’

‘I’ll be damned,’ Jubal said. ‘General, let me take a squadron out and teach them some manners.’

The Chaos warriors were cohering into a distinct line, just on the lower slopes of a small, rocky knoll maybe a third of a league to the right of their main body. Perhaps a hundred of them had halted there, and more of their fellows were joining them moment by moment, pulling out of the general rout.

‘We don’t scatter those bastards quick, we may have the morning’s work to do all over again,’ Jubal rumbled.

Michael donned his helm, a high, silver-inlaid affair with a black plume. His face disappeared; he became a shining mask, one that struck terror into his enemies.

‘Jubal, bring up the reserves. I shall lead them in. Gabriel, keep up the chase with the main body. We must cripple them before they reach the forests.’ He reached out a hand, and Gabriel took it. ‘I will see you before dark, brother.’

‘Tonight. We’ll drink on it,’ Gabriel said.

Then Michael Morgan turned his horse and cantered off, the two hundred cavalry of the reserve coming up around him with Jubal Kane at their head, the twin eagle banner snapping above them.

Afterwards, when the fighting had ended, and even the most savage of the army’s veterans had tired of the slaughter, they sat around the campfires in the long night that followed, too weary to even march far from the battlefield. Around them the jackals and wolves of the Troll Country padded in packs, feasting on carrion and other, nameless things feasted with them in the darkness, a night unlit by stars, the moon hidden by heavy cloud.

The wounded had been laid in lines upon the frozen ground, and the army physicians were at their bloody work among them. Now and again the night would be rent by an agonised scream as they pieced slashed flesh and broken bone back together. Gabriel sat on a discarded saddle, staring into the fire, and around him were clustered most of the senior officers of the army, all silent, all aghast at the news Jubal had brought among them. In the firelit gloom the rest of the army were as silent as a great host can be, as though trying to listen in on their betters. Only in the horselines was there any noise, as the tired destriers bickered amongst themselves and shifted restlessly, surrounded by the stink of blood and dead flesh.

‘How did it happen?’ Gabriel asked dully.

If men were trees, Jubal Kane was an oak, a stout, massive, unyielding oak which would break rather than bend. But now he could not meet Gabriel’s eyes, and in his own there was a shadow, a memory of horror which even he, as hardened a veteran as ever walked, could not yet bring himself to recall.

Jubal had taken a sword-cut to the face; by his eye the flesh had been stitched back together. He touched it now, as though that contact could somehow bring back the memory of the evening’s work. About him, the officers of the army waited, staring, and beyond them thousands more about a hundred other campfires sat quiet in the firelight, as though they, too, could hear his words.

Only Gabriel did not look at Jubal Kane. He stared into the fire at his feet, his eyes bright with tears that would not fall, his face as set as something hewn out of stone.

‘Speak, Jubal,’ he said.

‘We piled into them head-on, a sword-charge. We hadn’t bothered to reload the matchlocks. They were standing along a line of broken stones, so a lot of horses went down in the first contact: cartwheeling, broken legs, a pile-up here and there. We smashed their line though, broke it into pieces, and they withdrew up the knoll in front of us. Michael – the general – he reformed us, and decided to dismount to finish off the survivors, because the knoll was bad going for the horses, all crags and loose scree. We left the horseholders at the foot of the hill and continued up on foot, some seven score of us in an extended line. We outnumbered them maybe two to one. Men were laughing as they slogged up the hill, and the general was talking about how good a tall beer would taste round about then.’

Jubal paused. He seemed unwilling to go on. Then Gabriel raised his head and stared at him, a red light in his eyes.

‘The last of the enemy gathered in a huddle at the summit of the knoll. They did not even seem to be aware of our approach. There was chanting, a kind of drumming we could feel right through the soles of our boots, and then a weird light started up from the midst of the enemy, and a stink, Sigmar help me, a reek that was as foul as anything I have ever known. Like corpses in high summer, or living flesh scorched on a griddle. Our line halted maybe fifty yards from the enemy; it became hard to will oneself to go on. We froze there. Finally the general laughed. He made himself laugh, I’m sure of it. He doffed his helm and shouted at us, called us milkmaids and poltroons, to be scared of a little witchery. He strode forward alone, and he was smiling. But I saw sweat pouring down his face, and his face was as white as a tablecloth.

‘But he shamed us with his courage. Men stumbled forward after him – as did I. We followed him up that hill, though I was more mortally afraid at that moment than I have ever been in my life before.

‘And it happened. It was like standing next to a Nuln bombard as it goes off, only without the noise. There was a great flash of red light. The enemy soldiers on the hilltop were flattened, and we were staggered, some men falling. Even Michael fell to one knee.

‘And out of the light erupted a great shape, a roaring, scarlet-winged fiend. It spread its black wings and rose above us in a great spray of gore. It was as tall as a tower, horned, with a beast’s face and cloven hooves and a long tail…’

Jubal stopped. His face was slick with sweat. He wiped it with the back of his hand and dragged open a stitch in the middle of his wound, so that it seemed he was weeping tears of blood.

‘A daemon prince,’ Gabriel said into the shocked silence that followed. ‘They called up a daemon from their realm.’

Jubal nodded, the blood running unheeded down his face.

‘It swooped down on us like a storm, scattering men like skittles. I was knocked off my feet. Men threw down their swords and ran away. Others froze like statues, their fear petrifying them. But Michael stood fast. I saw him kiss his sword-blade. He was smiling, Gabriel, I swear he was still smiling. And he launched himself at this thing, one man alone. He was transfigured.’

The fire cracked, loud in the silence. No one spoke for a long time. Finally, Gabriel said. ‘So it’s true. He is dead, my brother. It killed him.’

‘No.’ Here, Jubal’s face twisted in grief and shame. ‘That is the thing. That is the terrible thing. Gabriel, it did not kill him.’

‘What?’

‘It took him, Gabriel. It grasped Michael in its claws and took off into the air like some monstrous bat. It flew off with him. It took him alive.’

There was a flurry of exclamations and denials, the quiet around the fire shattered by this news. Gabriel rose from his seat. He grasped Jubal Kane by the shoulders.

‘Jubal, by the blood of Sigmar, are you sure of this?’

The older man nodded.

Dark, slim Harpius spoke up from the shadows, his clear voice rising above the others. ‘We saw it, out on the right. We saw it fly away in the distance, and did not know what to make of it. It went north, deep into the Troll Country.’

‘We must go after it!’ Briscus snarled. ‘Hunt the bastard down – if we have to burn out every bolt hole from here to Norsca.’

A chorus of agreement was shouted about the campfire, the officers of the army gesticulating and arguing with one another, all rank forgotten. Gabriel drew a deep breath, his hands falling from Jubal’s shoulders.

‘Quiet!’ Gabriel shouted. At once, a hush fell.

‘I command this army in my brother’s absence. And I say this – yes, we will go after him. We will hunt down the thing that took him and we will free him, if he yet lives. We will do this thing – I swear it to you.’ He looked them up and down, dominating them with the glare of his bloodshot eyes. ‘But not tonight, nor yet tomorrow. We fought a hard battle today, and we have wounded. We are low on fodder for man and beast. The army must rest and be refitted ere we take up this quest – do you hear me? We must go back, back south. This will be no easy campaign, and we must prepare for it. In the morning we bury our dead and ride for the Empire. That is my will. Those who disagree can leave this army now, and make their own way.’ He hesitated, and then added, ‘It is what my brother would have done.’

That had been the better part of two years ago. Since that night, Gabriel Morgan had led the army of the twin eagles up and down the wastes of the north, hunting down every rumour, every scrap of story and tall tale he could find, trying to discover the whereabouts of his brother. They had fought innumerable battles, had frozen and starved in the crags and forests of the desolate places of the world. And they had bled and died by the hundred, the thousand, until they had become a mere remnant of what they had been. The new recruits had slowed to a trickle, without Michael Morgan’s name to draw them, and the grim quest in the deserted north did not have the glamour of their former campaigns in the Empire.

They became a hardened band of grimy warriors, kept together by the promise they had made, and by their loyalty to the one surviving eagle, the younger brother, who in Michael’s absence had grown into a hard-faced general, a leader of men whose exploits still inspired songs and stories. But Gabriel Morgan had become something else, and his men with him. In the Empire now, they were spoken of in whispers. Men said they were all doomed, destined to ride forever, until the enemies of man finally accomplished their destruction. Their luck, it was said, had deserted them.

It may be they are right, Gabriel thought, as he watched Jubal and Garnedd take their men down to the river. But we can do no other. This is what we have set ourselves to do, and we cannot turn away from it now.

Five months, this current expedition had lasted. They had long forgotten what it was like to sleep in a bed, or to walk without the weight of armour on their backs. This was the end, here today. The rumours had thickened and congealed until they had become fact. A Chaos host had reformed in the Troll Country north of Erengrad, and it was led by a great champion, a man who had once been a knight of the Empire, a man broken and twisted by hideous tortures in the lairs of the enemy until he had become one of them. A man with the face of an archangel, and the black heart of a daemon.

My brother.

I will see you again today, Michael, Gabriel thought. For the last time. This is where the journey ends.

Jubal Kane sat on his mount easily as the big animal loped forward at a steady canter. The ground was thundering, echoing back the hooves of the fifty horsemen behind him. He could smell horse sweat and leather, cold iron, and the reek of the slow-match burning. The perfume of war. He looked momentarily to the blank sky and the thickening curtain of the falling snow.

Sigmar, look upon us, we who do your work in this land. Watch over us, and welcome us to your halls when we go into the darkness.

‘Tighten up!’ he barked at the men behind him. He saw the enemy break cover to his front, a black mass of them coming out of the wood, like a tide of monstrous cockroaches.

‘Out pistols! Open ranks!’

Garnedd, the squadron captain, drew level with Jubal and grinned as he donned his helm, his black mustachios jutting out like tusks.

‘First blood to us, Jubal.’

‘Aye. Let’s see if we can’t make this river run a little red, Jonas. Take the front rank in.’

The leading line of horsemen quickened their pace, the second rank pausing, their horses half-rearing under them, fighting the bit to lunge forward. Jonas Garnedd drew his sword and stood up in his stirrups, his teeth a flash of white under his moustache. ‘Come on you bitches – this is what we’ve been waiting for!’

The line plunged forward, the men resting the barrels of the long matchlock pistols on their shoulders, their lances bobbing on their backs. The snow was falling more heavily; they looked like monstrous, grunting ghosts as they cantered down the slope to the fast-flowing river below.

Jubal watched the enemy host clear the open ground and splash into the shallows of the ford. The river was grey and white, as raw as the mane of a wolf, with patches of livid ice coursing through it. The leading ranks of the enemy infantry paused a mere second, and then splashed into it, a blunt-headed column some dozen files wide. More of their fellows were crowding out of the forest now, blackening the ground. Gabriel had been right; this was the main effort here; the move to the north had been a mere feint, no more.

You always guess it right, you big bastard, Jubal thought, and his mouth curved in something like a smile. Maybe you and he still think the same way after all… And then he frowned, and put the thought out of his mind.

The enemy infantry were halfway across the ford now, thigh deep, splashing up white flashes of foam as they waded across. Jubal could see the broad, fur-fringed breastplates, many splashed with crimson paint, and the closed helms with horns topping them. Some had human skulls spiked to their armour, while the harness of others had been wrought and forged into the leering likenesses of daemons and foul beasts.

Men of Khorne, the Blood God.

In his heart, Jubal cursed them with silent venom.

Garnedd drew up his line in the southern shallows of the ford. The snow shifted and blew, so that it seemed to Jubal a grey veil was fluttering across the field. He heard the roar of the Khornate infantry as they sighted the Imperials, and then faint on the wind, Garnedd’s commands.

‘Present your pieces – level your pieces – give fire!’

And then the staccato rattle of the matchlocks, and a bloom of smut-grey smoke with stabs of yellow light spitting out in the midst of it. The front rank of the enemy crumpled, staggered, and dark hulking forms splashed head-first into the icy water. Their fellow warriors bellowed with rage and stepped over the bodies.

Jubal stood up in his stirrups and drew his sword, an old scimitar, taken in the days when they had fought as far south as the sands of Araby. Like all of them, it was a long way from home.

‘Forward! Ready pistols!’

The second line followed him down to the river at a fast walk.

Garnedd’s men fired their second pistol over the cruppers of their saddles as they withdrew. The enemy column seemed snarled by its own dead, staggered by the power of the mountain river. Bodies were rolling half-buried in foam downstream. A tattered, horse-skull standard bobbed in the midst of the Khornate host, and the things under it were growling like animals.

‘Open ranks!’ Jubal shouted, and Garnedd’s squadron came through his line, the horses wide-eyed, nostrils blood-red and open, pluming hot steam.

Jubal’s men trotted forward. The enemy was halfway across the river now, a solid mass unfazed by the casualties they had taken. One of their champions, bare-headed, his skin white as carrion, lifted a great polearm and roared defiance at the Imperials.

Jubal turned to the trooper next to him and pointed with his scimitar. ‘Shoot me that whoreson!’

Another volley. The enemy champion went down, a heavy matchlock-ball smashing through his skull. His fellows paused for a second, slavering with fury. Jubal’s second volley sowed more chaos in their ranks. But only for a few moments.

‘Back, back!’ Jubal shouted. ‘Fall back to Garnedd’s line – move, you clodpolls!’

One man was not fast enough. As the horsemen turned tail, his mount stumbled and went down. He rolled in the shallows of the river, the horse screaming. A knot of the enemy lunged forward and engulfed horse and rider. The poor beast thrashed in the middle of a crowd of dark, gleaming forms as they congregated about it and hacked it to pieces in the water. The trooper disappeared, engulfed as though he had never existed.

Jubal joined Jonas Garnedd up the riverbank. He wiped his mouth with the back of one leather gauntlet.

‘I call that cutting it close,’ Garnedd said casually.

‘Aye, But we did turn the river red, didn’t we?’

‘Lances?’

‘I believe so, Jonas.’

The horsemen unclicked the short pennoned lances from their backs and hefted them in their right fists.

‘In and out quick, lads, like you’re with someone else’s wife!’ Jubal bellowed, and up and down the line men laughed.

‘Charge!’

The line erupted into a canter, then a full gallop. The lances came down from the vertical and the hammering thunder of the heavy horses seemed to shake the very ground. With a wordless shout, the Imperials poured down the slope to the ford, where the first of the Khornate warriors was stepping onto the southern bank. The front ranks of the enemy seemed to shrink as the cavalry swooped down upon them.

And struck.

The wicked points of the lances went in at chest-height, and driving them came the armoured men on horseback, with all the momentum of their charge. The enemy warriors were impaled, smashed off their feet, trampled, and as the front ranks recoiled, so they collided with those coming after them. The head of the enemy column was driven in, the ford erupting in a tangled, evil scrum of flesh and iron and blood and icy water. Horses reared and screamed, men shouted, shrieked, flailed at each other, brutal murder carried out again and again in the white whipped fury of the river, the foam rising red about their legs.

Jubal pulled back, sawing on the bit of his maddened horse. The cavalry were at a standstill, fighting with swords, their lances lost or broken. Their momentum had carried them halfway across the ford. But now the enemy was flooding in around them, scores of enemy warriors thrashing through the deeper water on either side of the ford, up to their necks, many carried away by the current. Heedless of their losses they came on, hoping to surround the horsemen.

‘Withdraw!’ Jubal shouted. ‘Jonas – get them out! Lads, fall back up the hill!’

By ones and twos, they hacked their way free of the carnage. The Khornate warriors mobbed the horses, chopping at their legs with great axes, hauling the Imperials off their mounts to be torn apart in the water. A mob of horsemen broke out of the melee – Jubal decapitated a fanged enemy intent on hamstringing his own horse, and then followed his men out.

They galloped back up the slope, out of the river towards their own lines. Jubal looked about him as he rode clear, counting heads. Garnedd was beside him, his moustache stiff with blood, his horse lacking an ear but otherwise hale.

‘On me, on me!’ Jubal bellowed. The stink of blood was sickening – it was congealing in his beard. His entire right arm was scarlet to the shoulder.

The horsemen drew together on the upslope, panting, their eyes still wide with the fury of the fight. The horses shifted and danced under them, in pain and fear. The Khornate infantry was across the river, on the southern bank. In the midst of the ford the bodies were rolling and turning downstream in the grip of the cold water, a ghastly flotsam. The enemy column continued its relentless march out of the forest.

Jubal counted heads as they sat their horses looking down upon the enemy advance. Fifty-one had gone down to the river. Twenty-nine had returned.

Morgan watched the struggle in the ford with a face as stiff and drawn as a marble statue. He turned to his trumpeter.

‘Galloran, sound me the recall.’

The grizzled trooper put the slim brass horn to his lips and blew, eyes closed. The long, mournful note rang out into the falling snow. After a moment, Morgan saw Jubal and his men turn and begin trotting up the slope to the main body. So few of them. Jubal had lost near half his men.

The two armies had disengaged, like fighting dogs. A flurry of violence, and then all was fluid again, and they were watching each other, ready for the next lunge. Gabriel felt the ground trembling under his horse and looked west to see Briscus bring in his wing, a hundred heavy cavalry to join the main body, a cloud of steam hanging above the labouring bodies of the horses. Looking east, he saw Harpius on the move also, another hundred men. In a few minutes his ragtag army would be reunited, the fists clenched, ready for the knockout blow.

Jubal rejoined him, breathing hard. The big man began to methodically reload his pistols, spitting the bullets down the muzzle of each one and ramming them home.

‘You really think he’s there, Jubal?’ Gabriel asked.

‘He’s there – someone is directing all this, with some skill, too. He’s won the ford and almost caught us divided with his feint moves. No Chaos champion I’ve ever fought before would be so subtle.’

Gabriel smiled weakly. ‘It’s all too familiar, Jubal. He was always a one for playing with the enemy before the main event. He’ll form up now, south of the river, and then come on in a body.’

‘What do we do?’

‘Let them dress their ranks. I want a horde of them with their back to the river. Once they have a few hundred on our side of the water, we charge, and pull out again as quick as we can.’

Jubal reholstered his pistols with a grunt. ‘The charge part is easy – it’s the getting out again that takes a little work. Gabriel, if he sits behind his men, he’ll break us down in the end. There’s a few thousand of them in the trees – they can soak up all we throw at them and ask for more.’

‘What, then?’

Jubal would not meet his eyes. ‘Call him out. Fight him sword to sword. See if he’ll accept single combat. This Chaos scum is no more than rabble once their leader goes.’

‘You’re assuming I could beat my brother if it came to a single combat, Jubal.’

‘I did not say it would have to be a fair fight,’ Jubal growled in reply. ‘Get him out from behind his phalanxes, and we’ll kill him if it takes every one of us – that’s what we’re here for isn’t it?’

‘That’s what we’re here for,’ Gabriel agreed, but the words were mechanical.

‘We’ll see what a charge or two can do first,’ he said.

Jubal opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again. He knew better than to argue with the look in his general’s eye.

The afternoon drew on, and the winter’s night grew closer, the light fading as the sun began to climb down into the Sea of Chaos, far to the west. The Chaos host advanced out of its forest fastness and crossed the river, company by company. From the dark ranks of the enemy obscene insults, animal bellows and crazed shouting came and went. Individual champions strode forward of the main ranks and shook their standards at the silent cavalry on the hill above them. The snow drew off a little, becoming a thin, stinging veil which whitened the horses, and made of Gabriel’s men a ghost army, a grey, looming shadow lining the high ground.

And finally the commander of the Chaos forces appeared. Flanked by columns of goat-headed warriors, he rode a monstrous steed, which might once have been a horse, but which had been warped and bloated into something else. It bore him into the middle of his stamping, cheering, roaring host, and the whole riverbank erupted into a howl of hate and fury and triumph, so that the snow slid from the boughs of trees at the very sound.

‘It’s him,’ Gabriel said. ‘He’s come at last.’ He turned to Jubal and saw that his grizzled comrade was looking down at the maddened spectacle below with a rictus of hatred slashed across his face, and tears in his eyes.

Gabriel drew his sword, and kissed the blade.

‘Galloran, signal me the advance.’

The high, fierce notes of the horn sounded out across the river-valley, and the horsemen on the hill began to move. A flash of movement went down their line as they unholstered their matchlocks, the smoke from the smouldering match-coils at their pommels leaving a skein of dark lines behind them as they advanced. Below them, the warriors of the Chaos host paused in their gibbering and dancing, to stare up at the wolf-grey line, ominous in its silence. For a moment the valley was almost still, save for the rushing of the river, and the rising tremor of the earth as the heavy horses passed across it, the rumour of a distant war.

‘A quick volley, then straight in with the lances,’ Gabriel said to Jubal. ‘Pass it down the line.’

The pace of the cavalry quickened. They broke into a trot. The Chaos horde set up its clamour again, and some of the more frenzied of its warriors broke ranks to run up the hill at the horses in a mad rage.

Eighty yards from the enemy line Gabriel reined in. He raised his sword. ‘Give fire!’

The front rank erupted in fire and smoke, two hundred matchlocks going off as one. The vanguard of the enemy staggered, the heavy bullets blasting warriors off their feet, blowing away limbs, blasting skulls to fragments. Scores of them went down, hardly a round missing its target in that tight-packed mass of muscle and iron.

‘Fire!’ Gabriel shouted again, his face red with the blood-pumping effort. Spittle flew from his lips; he felt the bones in his fist grate as he gripped his sword until the ivory hilt creaked in his fingers.

Another volley. The enemy had begun to surge forward, but this one set them back again. A ghastly windfall built up before them, a tangled mass of corpses, some half-supported by the press of their fellows. The snow blushed scarlet under them. For a few minutes the Chaos host was dazed by the double-strike of the volleys. The wounded shrieked in pain and anger and were kicked aside by their comrades, the ranks choked with maimed and dead figures.

‘Out lances!’ Gabriel shouted, and to Galloran, ‘Sound me the charge!’

The horn-call rang out, clear and clean in the darkening winter afternoon. It was repeated up and down the line, and then the horsemen began to move once more, their mounts springing up under them, straight into a canter. The riders kicked them on frenziedly, and the big horses screamed, put their heads down and thundered forward, a tide of muscle and iron, with the lances levelled before them.

They piled into the van of the Chaos horde like a hammer. The heavy horses bowled over the front ranks, smashing deep through the enemy formation, every lance finding a target, and kept going until the sheer press and mass of the enemy warriors brought them to a rearing, butting, kicking halt. The warhorses bit and lashed out and reared, whilst their riders drew their swords and began hacking at every half-glimpsed skull and unguarded piece of flesh they could see. The entire Chaos army was shunted backwards, scores trampled underfoot, hundreds more packed so tight they could not even raise their arms.

Gabriel’s men fought like fiends, until they were no longer the grey ghosts they had seemed on the hillside, but bloody apparitions of slaughter, slathered with the innards and blood of friend and foe alike, their eyes wide under their helms, and the big horses churning below them like dark engines of battle.

Now, Gabriel thought, this is the heart of it. Now you will come to me brother. This is the time.

Galloran was still beside him. Gabriel yelled at him over the torrential roar of battle. ‘Sound the withdrawal, and keep sounding it!’

The call rang out, was interrupted as Galloran decapitated an enemy warrior, then rang out again. It was picked up by the trumpeters of the other wings, and the army began to pull back. Rear ranks first, then those caught in the middle, and then in knots and groups, the men at the very front.

As they turned about, many died, dragged from their horses or stabbed through from behind. Gabriel saw one great destrier go down riderless with at least a dozen enemy warriors clinging to it, hacking at its legs, stabbing its eyes out as it collapsed. He rode over bodies, swung Arion round so the destrier could strike another Khornate berserker who was trying to disembowel him. The wide iron-shod hooves smashed the foe to the ground and crushed his ribcage as they stamped down on him.

Jubal was here, beside him, and Garnedd and Kyriel his standard-bearer. Galloran had gone down in the muck and murder of the roaring press, never to rise. The army was breaking free, galloping by the hundred back up the slope behind them, while the Chaos warriors struggled over mounds of their own dead to follow, shrieking like demented animals.

They were out, Arion at a canter. The big animal had taken a slash along the neck and, as his muscles worked the blood sprayed back in Gabriel’s face, masking him in scarlet. He reined in back up the hill and stood up in the stirrups, waving the vermilion length of his sword.

‘On me! On me! To me, brothers!’

They gathered on him, and their surviving officers set them back in rank. Dozens were afoot, and stood at the rear, gasping, vomiting with the effort it had taken to run up the slope in full armour. Gabriel looked around and with a dozen years’ experience knew at once that he had lost a third of his men.

Back down at the river, the Chaos regiments which had crossed the ford were milling in a crumpled wreckage of corpses, all order lost, and perhaps half their number now lying broken and gutted upon the ground and in the red-running shallows of the ford. Those who were still on their feet were busy mutilating the corpses of Gabriel’s men who had fallen there. One Chaos champion reared up the dismembered head of a great warhorse on a pole, and danced under it as the blood rained down from the stump onto his face. None of the enemy showed any great inclination to continue their advance however.

‘We gave better than we got, at least,’ Jubal said, teeth bared. ‘Think it’ll bring him out?’

‘It’s got to,’ Gabriel replied, wiping his face. ‘Look at them. We’ve cut the head off this chicken, and now it’s doing a dance. If he wants them to come up this hill after us, he’ll have to lead the way himself.’

Jubal spat a tooth into the snow along with a gobbet of scarlet phlegm.

‘I hope you’re right, because we’ve maybe one more charge left in us, and then we must say goodnight.’

The two men looked at one another. ‘It’s been a long road,’ Gabriel said at last.

‘Aye, but we’ll have rest soon enough. One way or another.’

They leaned over on their horses and grasped each other’s forearms in the warrior salute, their vambraces clinking together.

‘You didn’t have to do this,’ Gabriel said quietly. ‘Jubal, I would have thought no less of you had you walked away.’

Jubal spat again, wincing. ‘My arse, walk away. You are my friend, as was your brother. I do not walk away from friends. A man does that, and he’s not much of a man at all.’

Garnedd joined them, doffing his helm to show a face streaked black with his sweat-soaked hair. ‘Warm work for a winter’s day.’ His moustaches were drooping and crusted with filth, but he was smiling. The smile faded as he looked down the slope to the river. ‘Sigmar! Do you see that, Gabriel?’

The ranks of the Chaos host were opening, and their commander was now splashing through the icy waters of the ford on his great beast, as casual as though he were out for a morning’s ride. In his wake fresh regiments were mustering and waiting to cross, thousands strong. As the thing which had once been Michael Morgan set foot on the southern bank, so they set up a great clamour, a sneering, triumphant roar which seemed to shake the very landscape. The broken lines began to reform, and the enemy army seemed to take fresh heart at once.

‘This is it then,’ Gabriel said. ‘One last charge, brothers, and the thing is done.’

‘What of… Michael?’ Jubal asked.

‘You leave him to me.’

Jubal leaned over. In a low voice he said, ‘That thing is no longer your brother – remember that, Gabriel. You kill it any way you can.’

‘I know, Jubal. And I will.’

In later years, men of the northern Empire would speak of that last battle of the eagles. They would conjure a picture of the swift onslaught of Morgan’s grey horsemen, riding down to meet their doom. In the story, the great horses would thunder into the enemy with the force of a thunderbolt, and make of the Urskoy Ford a fabled battlefield.

In reality, three hundred exhausted and bloodied men, most on horseback, but many on foot, threw themselves down the hillside to the bloody ford with a kind of resigned despair. They did not waste breath on battle cries, for they had none to spare. They did not appeal to the gods, for they no longer expected an answer to any of their prayers. If there was one thing in each man’s mind as they made that final charge, it was a determination to die well. And that, the storytellers got right, as they told the tale in hushed and crowded taverns in the years to come. For what man does not wish to make a good end of his life?

This time the Chaos host surged up the hill to meet them, and the lines crashed together south of the ford. Once again, the heavy cavalry smashed deep into the enemy lines, and once again the Chaos host recoiled from that fearsome impact. But this time they had the numbers on hand to soak up the charge. Gabriel’s men were drawn deep into the enemy formation, and more warriors fanned out to left and right along the river, seeking to outflank the cavalry whilst they were embroiled in a savage melee to their front. This time, there would be no withdrawal.

In the forefront of the charge were Gabriel, Jubal Kane, Garnedd and Kyriel, the young standard bearer. These four stayed together, whilst behind them their line was chopped to pieces, and the warhorses were brought down neighing and screaming one by one, their riders pulled from their backs and torn to pieces on the ground. Dismounted men fought back to back with sword and pistol-butt and finally with their fists and teeth. The enemy mobbed them, dragging them down by sheer weight of numbers. Four and five of the Khornate warriors would attack a single trooper at a time, and though one or two might go down, the rest would smash blow after blow into the beleaguered soldier until he was on his knees. Then he would fall to the ground to be mutilated, his innards spread far and wide, his limbs amputated and held aloft as trophies.

Arion had taken a deep stab wound in his stomach, from which a rope of intestine was protruding, but still the valiant animal kicked and fought and answered his master’s rein. Atop him, Gabriel fought as he had never fought before. He had never felt so alive, so in tune with his surroundings, so aware of each and every movement of his blade. Never in all the years he had been a soldier had he ever known such savage joy in battle. All his life, he felt, had prepared him for this. It was the culmination of his existence.

‘Michael!’ he bellowed out the word with a kind of happiness. His brother was mere yards away, and turned his head. He took off his helm, and the thing which was underneath was indeed Michael Morgan, and yet it bore little resemblance to the handsome, dark-haired knight that Michael had been. The hair was gone, the skin was sallow and ridged with scars, the lips were blue and hacked, drawn back from long yellow teeth, and in the eyes there was a light like that of a wolf’s eye caught in lamplight. But the essential bones were still there; the face was still a shape that Gabriel knew.

‘Gabriel!’ the thing shouted, grinning horribly. Its tongue was long and black, and seemed to have changed the voice also. There was nothing human about it.

‘Come, make way there for my brother, you scum! I wish to embrace him!’

The ranks of the enemy opened out before Gabriel. He kicked Arion forwards, hardly aware of the cataclysmic roar of the battle all about him. Behind him, Jubal and Garnedd and Kyriel and a few others were still fighting desperately for their lives, but no enemy warrior raised so much as a knife against Gabriel Morgan as he rode forward to meet with his brother.

Michael dismounted from his misshapen steed and drew a sword, a crooked, uneven blade with a serrated edge. He wore red armour trimmed with fur and hung about with chains, and seemed taller than he had ever been before. He towered over Gabriel as his brother dismounted also, old Arion wheezing and grunting with pain.

‘You have come a long way,’ Michael said, still grinning, his black tongue slipping in and out from behind his teeth like a snake.

‘As have you,’ Gabriel said calmly. He rested one arm on Arion’s neck. In his other hand was his sword, and blood was dripping from the point of it to make a dark circle in the muddied snow. The tiredness was seeping into his bones now, but he stood up straight, taking strength from the dying horse beside him.

If Arion can stay on his feet, then so can I, thought Gabriel.

‘I have missed you, brother,’ Michael said, and stepped forward. ‘I cannot tell you how much I have wanted this moment, how I have desired to see your face again.’

‘And I yours,’ Gabriel said, and meant it.

What did they do to you, for the love of all the gods, my brother, what did they make of you – what agonies did they inflict to bring you to this?

Despite himself, Gabriel felt the heat of tears start behind his eyes. He had not expected that – he had not thought he could still speak to his brother.

‘You are here to kill me,’ Michael said. ‘I know that, and do not blame you for it. It is what you are. You are the best of men, little brother, the very best of men. It is for that reason I speak to you now. Gabriel–’ Michael drew closer, until Gabriel could smell him. He stank like a beast, and there seemed to be a heat off him, something unearthly, preternatural. The light in his eyes was hard to meet. Gabriel dropped his gaze.

‘I wish to have my brother back again, at my side,’ Michael said. ‘You and I together again, riding at the head of an army – it is what we were born to do, Gabriel, is it not? Join with me. Cast aside your delusions, the half-baked fancies we had bred into us from childhood. The hard, real world is not what we think it is. Reality is not all that it seems…’

He drew closer. ‘There are great and wonderful powers within and without this petty little world we stand upon, powers which are eternal, and who know how to reward good service. We could rise very high, you and I. Gabriel – listen to me! We could become immortal.’

Gabriel raised his head, and met his brother’s bright eyes. A tear ran down his face, cutting a streak of white through the blood. It must be done now.

‘No,’ he said.

His sword came up, as quick as an adder’s strike, the point aimed at his brother’s throat. He put all of his remaining strength into the blow, and felt the pure, perfect movement of his arm as his thrust went home–

And was beaten aside. The sword was flicked out of his hand in a movement too fast for the eye to follow.

Michael shook his head. ‘You disappoint me, Gabriel. You are a grave disappointment. I had not thought my brother to be a fool.’ He backed away. For a tiny moment, a flicker of something like grief passed over his face. Then it was gone. To the warriors who stood clustered around he snapped: ‘Kill him. Kill him now, and that damned horse beside him.’ He turned his back on his brother, and walked back to his monstrous beast.

Gabriel swayed on the balls of his feet. The Chaos warriors around him hacked at Arion. The big horse was too far gone to fight back, but he strove stubbornly to stay on his feet. Then he fell to his knees on the ground, and Gabriel leant against him as a sword-blow took him on the shoulder, numbing his left arm. He bowed his head, seeing Arion blow bright bubbles of blood out into the snow as they stabbed him in the lungs, feeling the cold steel enter his own body as they thrust at him, and saw under his nose the worn leather of the saddle-holster. He opened the flap, gripped the pistol within, raised it and cocked it all in one smooth, fluid motion. A nub of match remained, still smouldering a dull red on the wheel.

In a clear, cold voice, he called out: ‘Michael.’

His brother turned.

Gabriel pulled the trigger.

The Chaos host opened out and broke like a rotten apple. A small group of still fighting men, all on foot, held together as something like a wave of panic engulfed their enemies. These men cut their way south, away from the river, as mobs of the enemy flashed past them, somehow bewildered, lost, hardly caring to even make a fight. At the top of the hillside upon which the cavalry had formed up that morning, Jubal Kane finally called a halt. He looked around him like a man who had woken up in a strange room.

‘Who have we here? Garnedd, Harpius, Arundel? How many are we?’ he closed his eyes, swaying.

‘The general did it,’ Garnedd said. ‘Their leader fell. They fell apart straight after, like ants when you kick open their nest.’

Jubal straightened, and looked down into the valley below, a charnel house where the dead were more populous than the living. The enemy companies were wading in disorder back across the river, disappearing into the trees of the dank forest beyond. It was hard to make them out as anything else than a dark stain on the snow, for darkness was finally upon them, and in the dark the snow was thickening.

Perhaps a dozen men stood around him, all of them bloodied in some fashion or other, all with that look in their eyes, the tired resignation of men who have seen enough. Even as he noted their features, they seemed to fade into the darkness, faceless men who had expected to die today, and were somewhat taken aback to find themselves still alive.

‘The brothers Morgan are no more,’ Jubal said in a stronger voice. ‘One of them undid the sin of the other. Both were my friends, whatever became of them. They were the finest men I have known.’

‘They’ll be drinking with Sigmar tonight,’ Harpius said in that clear, singer’s voice of his. ‘I honour them. They are at peace.’

‘And what about us? What do we do now?’ young Arundel asked, shivering.

Jubal sighed, and lifted his face to the invisible kiss of the snow.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

THE JUDGEMENT OF CROWS

by
Chris Wraight

Johannes Kreisler kept running. He was not good at it. His fat legs laboured under his heaving frame. A thick layer of sweat pooled across his skin, flicking into the night as he swung his heavy arms. Branches whipped across his face. The marshes were no place to be at night at the best of times. And these were most emphatically not the best of times.

He ploughed through a sodden patch of bogweed and briars, staggering as he went. His hose and jerkin were ripped and caked with slime. His old heart thumped furiously.

He risked a backward glance. Nothing. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there. They were silent, right until the moment they came at you. All he could hear was his own frantic panting; all he could see was his frozen breath against the dark night air. Kreisler felt like a great panicked bull, crashing his way through the soft earth, announcing his presence to every horror skulking in the shadows. There were too many of them, scuttling in the gloom like spiders. All it took was one hand to drag him down, one claw to pull him into the thick folds of the cold earth, and he would be forgotten forever. Just like Bloch. And Ulfika. And all the others. He should have known better. You couldn’t go into the marshes. Not since they had come back.

Kreisler plunged across one of many treacherous pools of oily, freezing water. He no longer felt the sharp chill on his breeches. He was fuelled by fear alone, the kind of feral, energising fear which came from being hunted.

Suddenly, he saw lights ahead. Brief, strangled hope rose in his gullet. He’d almost made it. Pulling deep into his last reserves of strength, he pushed on. His flat feet sunk far into the sodden earth. For the first time, he began to believe he might get back, that everything might be all right.

Then they caught him.

The grip on his shoulder was crushing. A spear of cold pierced him, and he screamed, stumbling into the black mud beneath. There was a deathly clatter all around him. Kreisler fell heavily, rolling over in the grime. His hammering heart felt like it would burst. Frantically, hands flailing, he tried to push them off. Their fingers were like beaten iron, not a scrap of warm flesh on them. He felt more of them tug at his clothes. Something was dragging him back into the marshes.

Kreisler let out a second agonised scream. He couldn’t see. His eyes were splattered with mud. He could feel them scrabbling all over him, pawing at his portly, warm body. He could hear them too. They were whispering to each other in voices that must once have been human. Even in the midst of his blind panic, he could make out a few words.

‘Come with us,’ they said, their words resonating like the memory of a nightmare. ‘You are full and hot with blood, fat man, just as we were. Come with us…’

Kreisler felt his throat constrict with terror. His screams died. Whimpering, he tried to push himself away from them, to crawl from the whispering horrors clustering over him, to push their knife-sharp fingers from his throat. Then he saw one of their faces thrust over his. There were teeth, human teeth, framed by flaps of leathery skin. A single eye hung precariously in a socket. Old blood streaked the pale skin. Fingers reached for his face; pitiless rods of bone and sinew.

His heart shuddered, his vision went black. So this is death, he thought.

But the final gouging never came. Kreisler felt the flames before he saw them. There were voices, men’s voices, and torches. A thin screaming broke out around him. He opened his eyes, and saw bone smashed, flesh ripped. There were heavy footfalls. A brazier was tipped over, and flame surged through the undergrowth beyond. Rough hands pulled him away from the inferno.

‘Mother of Sigmar,’ grunted a familiar voice close to his ear. ‘He’s a fat bastard.’

‘Just pull,’ came another, the note of panic high.

Kreisler felt his senses returning. He was surrounded by men. His own kin, Herrendorfers. In the flickering light, their faces were drawn and terrified. They were all armed. In the middle of the group was the familiar hunched silhouette of Boris.

His vision whirled back to the trees. His pursuers were still there. Some were doused in fire, twitching madly; others hung back from the flames. Their faces were pale in the shadow. Dozens of them. More than ever before. They began to shuffle forward again.

‘Back behind the walls!’ the old man croaked, his ragged voice breaking in the cold air.

Kreisler was pulled backwards roughly. The noise of burning and screaming rose. He began to regain some strength, and started to stumble along on his own account. The others clustered around him, and they scraped their way back to the gate. They made it, passing under the heavy gatehouse with relief.

Robbed of their prize, the wailing of the dead rose from the marshes. None came after them. They weren’t strong enough to take on the axes of the entire village. Not yet.

The gates slammed shut. Kreisler was dropped unceremoniously on the earth inside the walls. He felt nauseous. He couldn’t focus, and lay back, pulling air into his lungs in shuddering heaves. Men were running everywhere, lighting fresh fires, calling out instructions. The village was preparing to defend itself, just as it did every night.

Kreisler looked around him. The familiar wattle huts and buildings looked back, as if mocking his failure to escape. They were all filthy, strewn with mud and mottled damp. Pools of oily water lay in the streets, and a low mist curled around the base of the rundown houses. Many of the windows were empty, or covered with rotten wooden planks. Perhaps a little over half of them were still inhabited. The rest belonged to those who had been taken. Or maybe to the few who had got away. Where they were now, none could tell. They had left behind nothing but squalor and despair.

After some time, Boris came back over to Kreisler. The old priest’s robes flapped in the icy wind. The torch he carried threw his lined grey face into savage relief. Kreisler felt a surge of emotion.

‘Father!’ he gasped, tears breaking out across his flabby cheeks.

The priest looked down at him grimly.

‘More all the time,’ he said, almost to himself.

Boris gazed down wearily at the icon of Sigmar hanging from his neck. He didn’t ask why Kreisler had been out in the marshes, or admonish him for putting other lives at risk. He seemed tired and distracted.

‘We need help,’ he muttered, grudgingly. ‘What a wizard starts, a wizard must finish.’

Boris sighed deeply, and looked over towards the gates. Kreisler watched him in confusion, barely understanding his words. Behind him, the doors were sealed with heavy beams, and more braziers were lit. Women came to tend to his wounds. None would sleep in Herrendorf that night. Not until the grey morning came and the horrors shrunk back into the marsh.

Boris limped off, his face creased with concern. Kreisler sagged back against the mud and matted straw of the floor, his vision swimming, ignoring the fussing voices around him. From beyond the village walls, agonised cries of frustration soared into the air and drifted away.

They had been denied their prey this time. But they would be back.

Katerina Lautermann pulled gently on the reins, and her horse came to a halt. Taking advantage of the rare high ground, she looked around her. In every direction, the bleak marshland stretched towards the horizon. The sky was heavy and low. Rain fell steadily, turning the ground below into a thick soup of filth. Stunted, twisted trees vied with strangling gorse and black grass to cover the landscape. The place looked blighted, ruined, and weary. She felt utterly alone.

She found herself wondering how any people could make a living in such a forsaken place. The squalor and wretchedness of the Ostermark’s populace never ceased to amaze her. However pox-ridden, bandit-infested and debauched you thought the last place had been, the Empire was always capable of surprising you. Whispering a minor cleansing spell to keep her nostrils warded from the more noxious of the marsh smells, she pressed on, pushing the horse gently down the long incline towards the village ahead. She’d been told it was cursed. Having seen the country in which it nestled, she could well believe it.

As she went, Katerina stretched her limbs slightly in the saddle. She was cold and stiff after the long ride from Bechafen. The weather was relentlessly chill and damp, the scenery bleak and unremitting. Not for the first time, she found herself cursing Patriarch Klaus, the head of her order. Ever since that business with the orcs in the Grey Mountains, he had become more unpredictable, perhaps vexed by her visible success. So it was that she was given such miserable tasks to perform for him. On her return, things would have to change.

Nevertheless, the message from Herrendorf had piqued her interest for another reason. Radamus Arforl, one of the mightiest wizards of her order. She knew of his lore from when she had been an acolyte. He had done much in the early years of the College to augment its prestige, and then, like so many of their number, had fallen in battle. For three long centuries, no reports of his fate had come to light. Only now, quite without precedent, tidings had come from a forgotten outpost of humanity where his name was remembered with veneration. It piqued her curiosity. Though if she’d known quite how much mud she would have to wade through to get there, she might have been less enthusiastic.

She approached the village. The low trees retreated slightly, creating a wide and mournful clearing. The ground was heavy and waterlogged, and what fields there were looked like they produced a meagre crop. A few thin animals grazed warily at the edge of the forest. In the centre of the open space, the village itself stood. It was walled, and the dark stone rose twice the height of a man on all sides. Though crudely made, the defences looked formidable. Few of the buildings within protruded above the height of the wall. She guessed the houses in such a place would be low, mean affairs. What little wealth Herrendorf had had clearly been placed in its wall. That didn’t bode well.

Katerina came up to the gate. There were dark bundles tied to the walls. As she drew closer, she saw what they were. Dead crows, dozens of them, suspended from makeshift gibbets in bundles. She swallowed her distaste, and dismounted. As she landed, filth splattered over her fine leather boots and cloak. She hissed a curse under her breath, and led her horse towards the sturdy gatehouse. Her arrival had been anticipated. There were men clustered under the low arch, waiting. Like frightened children, they looked unwilling to come into the open to meet her. Katerina took a deep breath. Much as she hated peasants, if this business was going to be concluded properly, she’d need to keep civil and bite her tongue.

As she neared the group, one figure limped towards her. He wore the robes of a priest of Sigmar, though they had long since passed their best. He was heavily hunched, and his skin was pale and sickly. Deep rings of grey underscored his eyes, and his thin fingers clutched a staff for balance.

‘Welcome, my lady wizard,’ he said in a scratchy voice. ‘You’ve found us at last.’

Katerina nodded politely.

‘You’re Boris, the one who sent the letter?’ she asked.

‘I am,’ said the priest, escorting her towards the crowd. ‘Now that the headman has been taken, I’m the last vestige of leadership these people have. Not much for them to rally around, you might think. Maybe so. But I will not leave them.’

He ushered her towards the rest of the villagers.

‘This is Albrecht, the gatekeeper,’ said Boris, motioning towards a low-browed brute of a man who was holding one of the heavy oak doors open for them.

Katerina surveyed the group of men around her with distaste. They looked back at her with similar animosity, and parted to allow her entry to the village. They seemed extremely protective of the gatehouse, as if it was some kind of enchanted barrier. Dark eyes watched her with that steady, stupid curiosity so common in the mean folk of the Empire. Katerina had to stop herself from turning around, jumping straight back on her horse and riding as fast as she could back to civilisation.

‘This is Gerhard, the blacksmith,’ continued Boris, apparently oblivious to her discomfort, tediously reeling off the names of the all the men in the welcome party. ‘And Weiss, the carpenter.’

The last one looked, if possible, even surlier than the rest. He had a heavy face, marked with days-old stubble. His skin was pale and blotchy, his clothes ragged and poor. He looked at her with open belligerence. This was getting ridiculous. Katerina found her pride getting the better of her. She was an Imperial wizard of the Amethyst order, capable of razing the whole place to the ground with a single word, and these peasants were being insolent in the extreme.

‘Greetings, Herr Weiss,’ she said in a voice calculated to belittle him. ‘Perhaps you could take my horse. We’ve been riding long, and she needs water.’

Weiss glowered at her.

‘I don’t hold with witches,’ he said in a thick voice, and turned away, pushing his way through the crowd.

Katerina felt her cheeks flush. There were murmurs of approval from the others. Boris snapped his fingers and a fat man came to his side.

‘Kreisler, take the lady’s horse and see that it’s stabled,’ he said sharply, giving his fellow villagers a hard look.

At least that ended the round of introductions. Boris swiftly escorted Katerina to his dwelling place. They passed through the squalid main street, stained with the ever-present pools of filmy marshwater. The villagers seemed to have given up trying to staunch the filth with straw. Piles of refuse had been allowed to gather at the corner of the tired streets, and flies buzzed lazily in the shadows. The buildings, most of which were wooden-framed wattle-and-daub houses with dark thatched roofs, had been allowed to run to near-ruin. Some had even collapsed, and their wooden structures stood open to the chill marsh wind like carcasses.

The priest’s chambers were in better order, but still bore the marks of neglect. A stale, damp smell had settled over the whole place, and the windows were dark. It took Katerina a few moments before she ducked under the low lintel and into the gloom of the interior. Once inside, Boris ushered her to a low wooden bench. Clumsy from the ride, she sat down heavily. The priest lit some tallow candles and poured her a flask of beer. She drank greedily, ignoring the sour taste and the acrid smell of the candles. This was as good as it was going to get.

‘I apologise for the others, my lady,’ he said, sitting opposite her in a battered old wooden chair. ‘We get few visitors.’

‘Can’t imagine why,’ said Katerina, dryly, and took another swig.

The priest’s chambers were sparse, but relatively clean. Old-looking wooden icons of Sigmar hung from the bare stone walls. On a low table a few leather-bound books rested. They looked well-used. Clearly the man could read, then.

‘So,’ she said, making herself as comfortable as possible on the bench. ‘The place is cursed. That much I can see myself.’

Boris nodded.

‘There’s no doubt about it, my lady. Each night more come. The unquiet dead. We recognise some of them, folk of Herrendorf we buried years ago. Others we don’t. They come from the deep marshes. We can drive them off by fire, but they grow bolder. Something is disturbing them.’

‘You’ve not tried to leave?’

‘Some of us did, in the first days. Perhaps a few made it out of the marshes back then. Now none of us do. They wait for the dark, and then they come. I have seen it myself. If we’d delayed sending our tidings much longer, no messenger could have escaped them to tell our tale. The very fact you are here at all is a blessing from Sigmar.’

He looked at her with his rheumy, sombre eyes.

‘In any case, this is our home. It is all we have. We have worked here and died here. We cannot leave it to the dead. I will not, at any rate. They are an abomination.’

Katerina looked at him carefully.

‘And you think I can help you,’ she said. ‘Unusual, for a priest to summon a wizard to do his work. If you needed aid, why not ask for it from your own kind?’

Boris shook his head dismissively.

‘None could do more than I have,’ he said, with a trace of pride. ‘I purified the village with the rites of my order, placed wards on the walls, performed rituals of exorcism where the resting places of the corpses were known. None of it works. We are mindful of our history here. A century and more ago, it was a wizard that ended the first of these plagues. An Amethyst mage at that, just like you. It was his spells that laid the dead back in their graves and has kept us warded from evil since. You must work the same spells again, my lady. Nothing else will suffice.’

‘You speak of Arforl,’ said Katerina, carefully. ‘The circumstances of his death have long been unknown to my college. If he indeed died here, my master will be interested.’

Boris nodded eagerly.

‘Radamus Arforl. We know the name here, even though so many years have passed. The story is told to our children. We don’t forget. He died in the marshes, fighting the living dead. Somewhere out there he still lies, his mausoleum watching over the source of the evil.’

Boris broke into a cough, and for a few moments his ragged body shook. He recovered himself with difficulty. A weary smile flickered on his lips.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Age, and the burden of care.’

Katerina frowned, ignoring the man’s discomfort.

‘His mausoleum is in the marshes?’ she said. ‘I’d like to see it.’

Boris shook his head.

‘It has been lost for many years. Now only the legend remains. Some of us have tried to find it, especially now the plague has come again. I tried myself, though I didn’t get far. None have done so. It may have been destroyed. Or perhaps it’s hidden from ungifted eyes. I hoped there would be secrets there, something to give us a reason for the dead rising again. We don’t know why they’ve come back. If there is an answer, it must surely lie in the past.’

Katerina examined the priest closely as he spoke.

‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, guardedly. ‘The two plagues may be unconnected.’

Boris smiled tolerantly.

‘I am an old man,’ he said. ‘Morr will take me soon. But when I was younger and strong enough to travel, I did all I could to delve into the past. There are scraps of parchment, hidden here and there, fragments of the old chronicles. If you had read them, you would be in no doubt. Arforl was here, my lady, as were the dead. He died here. He saved us. Just as you will do.’

Katerina felt a twinge of disquiet at that. She had no lack of faith in her abilities, but magic was a complicated art, and these villagers couldn’t be expected to understand the subtleties involved.

‘We’ll see about that,’ she said. ‘You said little in your letter. The dead do not rise by themselves. Did your chronicles name a necromancer?’

‘There’s a single name in the legends. The Master of Crows. It was he who summoned the dead from the marshes. Arforl defeated him. He destroyed the necromancer’s body and cursed his soul. It was in doing so that he was wounded to death. Since then the dead have not returned.’

‘Until now.’

‘That is so. We don’t know why. Some of the stupider members of the village here have even started killing crows. They catch them and hang them from the walls, as if such a thing would ward against the ancient evil. I tell them that the Master of Crows is dead. Even if he’d survived the magic of Arforl, age would have taken him long ago.’

Katerina pursed her lips thoughtfully.

‘The necromantic arts are powerful,’ she murmured. ‘A man may live for as long as the dark magic sustains him. In any case, he may have had a disciple.’

She remembered the surly looks of the villagers, and shook her head.

‘Just speculation,’ she said. ‘I won’t know until I begin work. I must see this plague for myself. When will they come again?’

Boris let a shadow of foreboding pass across his face.

‘Every night,’ he said, his voice lowered. ‘You’ll see them as soon as darkness falls.’

‘Good,’ said Katerina, smiling coldly, flexing her fingers slightly. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

The night was lit by flame. Braziers had been hauled up on top of the gatehouse and torches mounted high on the walls around the village. In the flickering red light, Herrendorf took on a nightmarish aspect. The flames did little to banish the pervasive cold, and the dim illumination faded quickly towards the eaves of the forest. Low cloud blotted out the stars. The villagers waited for the invasion. Men gripped pitchforks and notched swords, muttering prayers to Morr and Sigmar.

Katerina stood alone in front of the arch of the gate. The doors were open behind her. Only she barred the way. Her dark hair lifted slightly in the chill breeze. She held her staff lightly, letting her thumb rub absently against the smooth wood. Her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. Though her physical body gave little hint of it, her mind was entirely turned in on itself. She was probing, testing, seeking. The winds of magic were strong, and their unseen currents flowed in long, smooth waves around the entire place. Her magical senses, long used to the lore of death in all its forms, picked out the presence of the wind of Shyish amongst them. Katerina could almost taste it, almost inhale its pungent smell, even though it had neither savour nor aroma. The sombre notes of the lore of mortality were unmistakeable.

Whereas other magical winds, like that of Aqshy, blazed with force and majesty, the amethyst force was subtle and elusive. Even some of the great magisters of the colleges had to work hard to detect it. Katerina was one of the few who had never had to try. For some reason, the strange currents of death had always been obvious to her. Now she let her consciousness reach out to caress the fronds of unnatural energy as they coursed through the aethyr.

‘What do you see?’

Her concentration broke. Irritated, she snapped her eyes open. Boris had come to stand beside her. He leant heavily against his staff, wheezing slightly. His breathing sounded painful. Like everyone in this wretched place, he was clearly afflicted with some malady or other. In his free hand, he carried a burning torch.

‘I sense the power here,’ said Katerina, looking back towards the marshes with her normal sight. ‘It is old and strong. Something is stirring in the trees beyond, roused by the lore of death. It hangs heavy over the whole place.’

Boris followed her gaze dispassionately, wincing slightly as his laboured breathing slowed to normal.

‘So it is every night.’

As he finished speaking, the first of them emerged from the trees. A low murmur rose from the village behind them. There were men high on the walls. Others stood in the open space behind the gates. All looked exhausted. Katerina recognised Gerhard and Kreisler amongst them. All trace of their earlier belligerence had gone, and their faces were drawn.

The unquiet dead approached steadily across the fields, limping and dragging limbs. Katerina surveyed them calmly. She had seen horrors of all kinds in her career, and the figures hauling themselves from the trees were unremarkable. They had once been men, women and children of the Empire, full of life and health. Now their cadavers, entrusted to the earth with the blessings of Morr, had been revived, compelled to rise and stalk the world of the living once more. Some of the undead bore the signs of age; old farmers and their wives who had passed away peacefully in their sleep. But most were young, killed by war, plague or accident, a grim testament to the troubles of the age. Most troublingly of all, amongst them tottered the young, infants who had barely walked in life but who now staggered onwards, their little eyes blank to all but bloodlust. The shambolic host was a mockery of Herrendorf itself, a mirror image of those who drew natural breath.

‘So many,’ breathed Katerina, grimly.

Boris nodded.

‘More all the time. The day will come when there’ll be too many.’

‘Not while I’m here,’ Katerina said firmly, hefting her staff and kindling amethyst magic along the length of it. She raised the shaft high above her head and called out words of power. The wood blazed with lilac energy.

‘By the wind of Shyish, by the lore of the dead, I command you to return to the realm of departed souls!’ she cried, letting the power in her fingers flow through the staff and into the night.

The amethyst wind rushed to her aid, curling around her cloak and arms. The undead paused for a moment. Some of them cocked their ruined heads to one side, as if listening to some far-off, unheard speech. The stragglers at the back stopped, and began to turn back. Katerina allowed herself a smile of satisfaction. This would be easier than she had thought.

But then the amethyst wind began to drain away, as if extinguished by a gust of chill air. The sickening harmonics of dark magic rolled across the sodden earth, pooling in the hollows and rising up against the smooth stone of the walls. Katerina cast a hasty warding spell around her, and Boris took a step back. The magnitude of the new force was surprising. Where was it coming from?

Heedless of all but the dread commands of their unseen summoner, the undead began their slow march towards the village once more. Where their eyes had been empty before, now they shone with a cold green light. Like a constellation of corrupted stars, the glowing pairs of eyes closed in on the walls.

‘What have you done?’ hissed Boris, looking at Katerina with consternation. ‘This has never happened before.’

Katerina frowned, and fed more power to her staff, soaking up the amethyst wind where it still lurked.

‘The power behind them has responded,’ she said. ‘It looks like we have a contest.’

The wizard took up the staff and lilac sparks spat from its tip.

‘I will not command you again!’ she cried, her voice echoing around the clearing. ‘Depart while you may, and never return! Your tortured souls may yet find peace. But if you resist, your essence will be shattered for all eternity, never to return either in this world or the next!’

A few of the undead responded as before. One child-figure, once a little girl with pigtails, now a grey-fleshed, eyeless horror in a torn dress, stopped in its tracks, looking up in fear. But the others seemed uncaring. They began to pick up their pace. Parched flesh flapped in the wind as they came, and old bones ground against each other. The silence in their ranks was broken. A weird whispering broke out, the mindless chatter of lost souls. From behind her, Katerina could hear the growing murmurs of unease.

‘Close the gates!’ came an urgent hiss from somewhere in the crowd of nervous men.

Katerina shook her head with irritation, and planted her staff heavily before her. This would have to be brought to a conclusion. If the undead could not be banished, they would have to be destroyed.

‘So be it,’ she said in a low voice, and stretched her left arm in front of her.

With a whispered spell, Katerina turned her palm face up. A purple flame burst into life, flickering in the eddying wind. She closed her eyes, and continued to murmur arcane words. Then, with a sudden snap of her wrist, her fist closed over the flame. It extinguished with a sharp snap.

Instantly, the undead nearest her collapsed, clutching at their exposed innards with scrabbling fingers. They clearly had some memory of pain, even if they could no longer truly feel it. Dozens of the limping figures lurched over and crumpled into the mire with streams of lilac energy leaking from their bodies. In place of the green light in their eyes, an amethyst glow now possessed them. Like a rampant swarm of insects, the purple fire swarmed all over them, stripping the scant strips of skin from them, powdering bones, dissolving cartilage. The whispering was replaced by a frantic high-pitched squealing as the spell did its work. One by one, the walkers were immolated, crushed and blasted apart by the deadly flames of Shyish. Katerina kept her fish clenched, pouring more strength into the casting.

Boris’s face lit up, and he dared to hobble back out of Katerina’s shadow.

‘You’re killing them!’ he hissed, his eyes alive with relieved glee. Katerina could hear the men behind her inch forward for a better look. But she knew better. The spell was powerful, but it was also draining. For every undead villager who fell, another resisted. The ones most steeped in dark magic were not being destroyed. Slowly, as the weak were swept away, the ranks of stronger attackers came forward. They stalked as slowly as ever, creeping inexorably nearer. They whispered as they came, and now they were close enough for the words to be audible.

‘Human creatures, hot with blood,’ they chanted in scratchy voices, half-snatched by the wind. ‘We were once like you. Soon, you will be like us!’

Katerina felt fresh eddies of dark magic drift towards her, polluting her casting, dousing her power. An icy gust of the unseen wind swept the clearing, and she gasped. Her fist dropped a little, and the amethyst energy consuming the undead flickered and went out. Boris looked at her in consternation, and crept back under the archway again. Renewed mutters of ‘Shut the gate!’ rose in volume. The nearest of the skeletal attackers were now within a few yards of Katerina.

With a cry of frustration, Katerina let her consuming spell dissipate. She grabbed her staff in both hands, and it blazed with fresh fire. The flames flared into a scythe shape, crackling and spitting with arcane forces. She swung the blade in a wide arc, and once more the zombies were blasted apart, their loose bones and tendons sent flailing into the dark. Like a harvester, the Amethyst wizard mowed them down as they came.

None came to help her. The villagers, cowed by the ranks of undead closing on them and by the magical forces unleashed, shrunk behind the shelter of the walls. Only Katerina stood between the horde and the entrance, a lone figure wreathed in blistering layers of magic, holding back the growing tide of lurching bodies.

They kept coming. More crept from the cover of the trees. How many? A hundred? Two hundred? It was hard to tell. Katerina began to feel her strength fail. With a fresh cry of anger, she unleashed a fearsome blast of power. The undead near her were flung backwards, clattering into the ranks behind, clearing a wide space. For a moment, the wizard paused, surveying the scene. The undead were in disarray, but even as she watched the fallen were regaining their feet. She couldn’t possibly destroy them all. It was as if a lost army had been raised and directed towards her.

With a disgusted shake of her head, she retreated back under the gatehouse.

‘Bar the gates!’ shouted Boris, and a dozen men ran forward, eager to have the one weak point in the wall sealed off. The thick doors were shut, and heavy oak beams slammed in place. From outside, the whispered chanting began once more. Children’s voices were heard wailing in the village as the horrifying voices of the undead permeated the night. With the gates secure, the men went to their positions. Katerina caught unpleasant glances from the villagers as they walked past her. Gerhard and Kreisler averted their eyes. Only the surly Weiss seemed to be missing, which was something of a relief.

Katerina sank back against the interior of the wall, and let the waves of fatigue finally wash over her. Her staff clattered weakly to the floor. With her removal from the clearing, there was nothing to stop the advance of the undead. Soon the sounds of scratching and gouging came from the other side of the stone.

Boris limped up to her. He wasn’t obviously angry, but he couldn’t hide the disappointment in his face.

‘They’ve never scaled the walls yet,’ he said, perhaps by way of consolation. ‘We have some success with fire. But there are more tonight than I’ve ever seen, and even the flames won’t stop them forever. It can’t be long now.’

Katerina looked up at him, trying to maintain her dignity in the face of defeat. The noises of scrabbling and chanting grew louder.

‘This is a setback, nothing more,’ she said defiantly. ‘Every spell can be countered. You just need to know how to unlock it. Trust me.’

Boris didn’t change his expression, but looked worriedly at the gates. Something on the far side had started banging against them rhythmically.

‘Of course I trust you,’ he said, resignedly. ‘What choice do I have?’

The dead failed to breach the walls that night, but they kept coming until dawn. If any looked like scaling the high barrier, they were hurled back again by the tip of a pike. But the gates were battered, and the walls scored with gouges. Only with the coming of the morning sunlight did the assault relent.

They returned the following dusk, and the one after that. No spell was sufficient to break their advance. Though Katerina’s magic could blast dozens of them apart as they came, no fire would burn fiercely enough to destroy them all. With every assault they grew bolder, climbing further up the slippery walls on piles of their own fallen, clawing at the gates with growing zeal. Boris was right. They would soon break into the village. Once inside, they would be unstoppable. Time was running out.

After another long night of fruitless spellcasting, Katerina slumped heavily on the bench in Boris’s chambers. The cold sheen of dawn had crept across the eastern sky, but it brought little comfort. She had slept little, and the scorn of the villagers had begun to wear on her spirits. It was clear to her that some power had been roused that was beyond her. If a way couldn’t be found to counter it, they would all die, far from any possible help.

The thought of leaving entered her mind. If she rode hard, kept to the roads, warded herself carefully at night, she might make it. It wasn’t as if she owed the stinking inhabitants of Herrendorf much. And yet, there was still one avenue open. One that offered not only the chance of survival, but of uncovering the secrets of the past as well. Her pride would not allow her to give up on it easily.

As she turned over the various options in her mind, Boris entered the chamber. He had been purifying the gates with holy water. No one thought it would do any good. The old priest sat opposite Katerina. His face looked, if anything, even more sickly than normal. He was at the end of his strength, and clutched on to his staff tightly as he sat down.

‘I may have been mistaken,’ he said at length, grimacing from some hidden pain. ‘Perhaps magic isn’t the solution. Or maybe the Amethyst College isn’t as powerful as it once was.’

Katerina ignored the dig. The cleric looked bitter.

‘Do not lose faith just yet,’ she said, quietly. ‘There is something else we could try.’

Boris looked at her with little hope in his eyes.

‘They were defeated before,’ said Katerina. ‘The Amethyst wizard Arforl did it. Maybe he knew something that we don’t.’

‘And what use is that to us?’ said Boris. ‘Arforl is dead. He can’t save us a second time.’

‘You forget yourself,’ said Katerina, choosing her words carefully. ‘I am an initiate of the lore of death. There are many secrets I am privy to. You said he was buried in the marshes. If I could find the place, his spirit may yet dwell there. There are ways of calling it back to the body. It may be our only hope.’

What little blood there was in Boris’s face drained away. A look of horror distorted his features.

‘You can’t mean…’

‘Don’t be a fool!’ snapped Katerina. ‘You know well enough what I mean. To summon a shade of Arforl, to interrogate it, to learn the secret of his victory.’

‘That is heresy,’ whispered Boris, looking as if he had stumbled on a den of Chaos worshippers in his own chapel.

‘And if it is?’ said Katerina, impatiently. ‘In the next week we’ll all be dead. The horde of undead continues to grow. Even if we left this place now, all of us, we’d never make it out of the marshes. What you call heresy is our only means of survival. There’s no piety in being eaten alive by your former flock.’

Boris looked tortured, and didn’t reply at once. Katerina let the idea sink in.

‘We’ve never found the mausoleum,’ the priest protested weakly. ‘I told you. We tried.’

‘You didn’t have me with you then,’ said Katerina. ‘There are hidden signs I can read. Arforl was an Amethyst wizard. Even in death, I’d sense his presence. I just need to get close enough.’

Boris shook his head again.

‘It’s madness. The marshes are crawling with the dead. If we leave the village we’ll never return. Your failure has deranged you.’

Katerina felt her temper rising. There was only one chance, and the fool was incapable of seeing it.

‘They’re fixed on destroying the village,’ she said. ‘I have powers of my own. If we stay here, we’ll be overwhelmed within the week. Better to risk doing something than die doing nothing at all.’

Boris looked back at her, his face riven with indecision. She could tell he didn’t like the idea. But there was something else there, a flicker of something like defiance. Perhaps not all his spirit had been crushed by poverty and sickness. Maybe some spark of ambition remained, buried deeply.

The old priest sighed profoundly, and got up from his seat with difficulty. He walked over to his pile of tomes and parchment, and began to leaf through the pages.

‘It’s been a while since I looked at these,’ he said. ‘Perhaps there’s some clue I missed. I don’t like it, but there’s little else on offer. I’ve pledged to defend this place, after all. And the mausoleum must be out there somewhere.’

Katerina sat back against the hard bench with some satisfaction. He had been convinced. Now the dangerous work would really begin.

The sun was low in the western sky. The stink of marsh gas and rotting vegetation was everywhere. In the grey light, deep green shadows lay like pools of oil. Fronds of mist curled around the wide boles of the trees. Strange, half-recognisable cries of animals echoed deep within the dank hollows. The deep marsh was no place for humans. The hand of man had barely scraped the surface of this country. Herrendorf, like the other scattered settlements in the region, was just a minor pock-mark on the ancient wilds of the Ostermark. If the undead wiped it from the surface of the earth, its passing would be unnoticed, much less mourned.

Katerina found herself reflecting as she trudged through the grime and murk. What was she doing here, far from the bright centre of Altdorf, stuck in a probably hopeless campaign to liberate one stinking settlement from destruction? The reputation of Arforl had intrigued her, it was true. But in future she would have to start being more selective. All of which assumed, of course, that she emerged from the current situation alive.

She turned to see where Boris was. He struggled to keep up with her. After only a few hours of travel out of Herrendorf, he had begun to wheeze thinly. His grey cheeks flapped as he laboured, digging his staff deep into the yielding earth, pulling his feet with effort from the sucking, cloying mud.

He came up to her, his chest heaving, his eyes bloodshot. He looked little better than the undead themselves.

‘Are you able to go on?’ asked Katerina.

Boris waited a moment for his breathing to settle before replying. When he had recovered, he gave her a wan smile.

‘You’re despairing of me, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should have brought men with us.’

Katerina inwardly rolled her eyes. A self-pitying priest was the last thing she needed. If he hadn’t claimed to have some insight into where the mausoleum might be, she would have been better off on her own.

‘What help would more bodies be, except to draw the dead to us?’ she said, scornfully. ‘None would come, anyway. We need to make better progress. Night’s nearly on us. And we know what that will bring.’

Boris bowed his head at her admonition.

‘You needn’t pity me, lady wizard,’ he said. ‘You must have seen what the others have. I’m too old and too sick for this world. I’m dying, whatever the fate of Herrendorf. A year, maybe. No more.’

He raised his face to hers, and there was a determined light in his rheumy eyes.

‘So, you see, it doesn’t really matter to me what the outcome of this is. I’m dead anyway. I would rather leave this world in the knowledge that my kin have been saved. That’s all.’

The priest spoke with conviction, and his voice shook a little. Katerina held his gaze for a few moments. The man meant what he said. This was his task, the one he had studied his whole life to achieve.

‘Then we must press on,’ she said, curtly. ‘We’ve an hour of light, no more. After that, both our lives will be at risk.’

She turned and walked heavily back into the marsh. The stinking mud clutched at her boots. Slowly and with effort, the old priest limped after her.

Only a few stars glinted through the cloud. The gloom lay heavy. Katerina’s staff glowed with a pearlescent light. It wasn’t hard to maintain the spell. For some time, she had sensed they were walking into an area thick with the rumour of death. The wind of Shyish hung thickly on the ground. She could almost reach out and touch it, and her augmented vision could see great eddying swirls of the unnatural force nestling in the gaps between the trees. This reassured her. Wherever the Amethyst wind lurked, her powers were strengthened. It was lucky to have come across such promising signs so soon. Boris may simply have stumbled on the right direction, of course, but it was also possible a more subtle power was at work. Even in death, perhaps the soul of Arforl was dimly aware of their quest. After all, they were both, or had been, wizards of the same colour.

She turned back to see how far behind Boris was. She saw him a few dozen paces off in the gathering darkness, a dark, hunched shape lumbering against the gloom of the half-drowned forest. As her eyes adjusted, a sudden chill passed through her. She stood stock-still, her heart suddenly beating faster.

Boris came up to her laboriously.

‘What is it?’ he asked through deep breaths.

Katerina pointed her staff back the way he had come. She whispered a brief word, and the glowing tip burst into bright flame. The dark branches around them were thrown into sudden relief.

Boris looked back in the direction the staff pointed. After a moment, he looked back at her.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

Katerina frowned.

‘Really? You see nothing at all?’

She whispered some more arcane words, and the flame changed hue. A thick purple light emanated from it, dousing the trees like liquid. Boris peered into the shadows, screwing his eyes up and squinting grotesquely.

‘I don’t–’ he began, and then suddenly stopped. ‘Holy Sigmar…’

Katerina smiled with satisfaction, and released the spell.

‘As I suspected,’ she said with pleasure. ‘You could’ve walked past this place a thousand times, and seen nothing but trees. This is an illusion of the highest order. I almost missed it myself.’

Where it had appeared that there was nothing more than a close thicket of gnarled and stunted foliage, Katerina’s magic had revealed a circular space amidst the wild marshes. The real trees hung back, looking as if every tortured branch was straining to grow away from the clearing. There was a low hill in the centre of the space, perfectly circular and smooth. No grass grew on its bare flanks. In the very middle, a dark tower rose against the night sky. It was unadorned and simple, a single column of ancient stone protruding from the earth. Katerina’s illumination glinted coldly off its worn surface. The stench of death was suddenly strong, even to un-gifted senses.

Boris became extremely agitated.

‘That is it,’ he breathed.

All weariness seemed to have left him, and he began to hobble towards the tower. Katerina accompanied him more watchfully. It was almost certain the place was Arforl’s mausoleum. There could be little else in such a desolate place. The slender edifice stank of magic. Thankfully, there was also no sign of the undead. Perhaps they feared the site of their ancient defeat. That alone was reason to be grateful to the long-dead magister.

They approached the base of the tower. There was no device or insignia on the stonework, nor any windows. The walls rose up sheer for maybe forty feet, and were crowned by a simple conical roof. The place was silent. The noises of the forest beyond were strangely muffled. It felt like they had passed into another world.

‘There’s no door,’ said Boris.

He looked at the chill edifice with wonder, the way a child looks at a new wooden toy.

‘There’s always a door,’ said Katerina.

She raised her staff again, and breathed words of uncovering. The tower seemed to sigh, and the stones shimmered in and out of focus. After a few moments, features on the masonry began to reveal themselves. At the summit of the tower, almost lost in shadow against the deepening night sky, a balcony appeared. Narrow windows emerged along the walls, and a low arch was revealed at ground level. The doors were made of banded iron, pitted and worn with age. A heavy stone lintel sat atop the entrance, marked with the rune of Shyish.

Katerina looked at the markings carefully.

‘The rune is worn,’ she mused. ‘It almost looks more like Ulgu than Shyish. They’re similar, but still…’

Boris limped over to the door excitedly.

‘The legend spoke truly,’ he croaked, his grey hands reaching toward the locks on the metal doors, before suddenly hanging back. His nerve seemed to fail him at the last. ‘After so long,’ he breathed. ‘Now that I see it, I wonder if I can face it?’

Katerina ignored him, and approached the doors.

‘We’ll be safer inside than out here,’ she said, calmly breaking the bonds with a gesture. She could sense wards of protection around the place, and powerful magic leaking from between the stones, but the spells were old and nearly exhausted. Clearly, Arforl’s entombers had trusted in the power of illusion to keep his resting place hidden.

The doors opened, and a sigh of stale air rushed out. The darkness within was complete. Katerina let her staff give out a little more light, and she went inside, Boris at her heels. The interior of the tower was narrow and claustrophobic. Immediately to her right, spiral stairs coiled upwards. There was nothing else, no adornment, no inscription. They began to climb. The stairs were smooth and without visible blemish. They must have rested here, untrod, since the mausoleum was sealed.

Katerina glanced back. Boris was keeping up as best he could, wheezing and puffing. He seemed to have forgotten his earlier horror at her intentions. Indeed, he was the most animated she could remember him.

They emerged from the stairway into a circular chamber. They were at the top of the tower. Four windows had been set into the otherwise unbroken and unmarked walls. A single open doorway led out to the balcony beyond. There was no moon, but faint starlight limned the ironwork of the railings.

The chamber itself was almost empty. No symbols had been engraved into the stone, and the bare floor was unadorned. Only one item disturbed the room’s cold symmetry. In the very centre lay a marble tomb. It was jet black and as smooth as glass. The light from Katerina’s staff seemed to soak into it, and there were no reflections. Boris stared at it, fascinated. Maybe he could sense the magic around it. To Katerina, it was bleeding with arcane force. Even in death, Arforl’s essence still lingered, buried but not obscured.

‘Now we must do what we came to do,’ she said, quietly. Her faint words echoed eerily around the circular chamber.

Boris turned to her, his hands shaking slightly.

‘Very well,’ he said, a nervous expression on his face. ‘Waste no time. Even as we linger, Herrendorf must surely be besieged.’

Katerina raised her staff, and the thick Amethyst magic rose to greet it. Great gusts of the deathly wind surged along the length of the shaft, pulsating and resonating powerfully. She closed her eyes, and began to utter the words of power. They were sucked into the stone around her as soon as they were uttered. As she spoke, the chamber began to tremble. Dust drifted down from the ceiling, and Boris took a nervous step back.

Katerina continued, letting her staff channel and refine the raw magic circling the tomb. Her voice rose as the spell picked up momentum. For a few moments, the black casket seemed unaffected. But then, gradually, a soft light kindled above it. The illumination spread slowly, drifted over the glassy surface, bathing it in a dim light. A faint rushing noise could be heard, as if from far away.

Katerina let the magic build up. Despite the travails of the past few days, she felt powerful. It was as if the presence of Arforl augmented her latent strength. The spell was working. The barrier between life and death, never strong in the case of wizards, was being eroded. If anything remained of Arforl, it would not be long in coming. Inwardly, she smiled.

She slammed her staff on the stone. All at once, the light flickered out, and the sound of rushing ceased. The chamber was plunged into darkness. For a heartbeat, nothing stirred. Katerina stayed still and silent. This was the moment. The chamber was drenched in what the ignorant called the magic of death. Only the initiated knew it as it really was, the lore of life unbound. Now it had done its work and the secret of Herrendorf’s salvation would be revealed.

‘Rise,’ she said simply.

There was a mighty crack, and a blaze of light. Boris staggered back, dazzled. Even Katerina had to avert her eyes for a moment. When she looked back up, the casket was just as it had been before. Over it, however, hung a faint shape, insubstantial and vapid. It swayed uneasily, seemingly hovering just on the edge of perception. It looked like the reflection of sunlight on moving water, rippling and transient.

After a few moments, the apparition clarified. It was the shape of a man, tall and forbidding, with a high brow and raven hair. He was dressed in robes of the Amethyst college, and bore a wizard’s staff. He looked half-asleep, and his translucent eyes were ill-focused.

‘You were Radamus Arforl, wizard of the Amethyst college?’ said Katerina, relishing the power flowing through her.

The shade looked at her uncertainly. His eyes still seemed locked somewhere else.

‘That was my name,’ came a chill voice. It was barely audible, and sounded as if it was coming from far away. ‘Who asks?’

Katerina smiled.

‘Master wizard Katerina Lautermann, also of the Amethyst college,’ she said confidently, allowing her staff to blossom once more with light. Between that and the unearthly radiance of Arforl’s shade, the chamber was bathed in a strange mixed light.

‘No, you are not the one,’ said the shade, looking steadily more alert. His gaze became increasingly fixed. It seemed as if he was solidifying. His piercing eyes swept around the chamber, and alighted on Boris.

‘You are the one,’ said Arforl, fixing the priest with a pitiless gaze.

‘Yes!’ cried Boris, rushing forward, letting his staff clatter to the ground. ‘It was me! I called you, roused your power! You know what I seek! Grant me it, lord of life and death!’

Katerina whirled around, suddenly consumed by doubt. For the first time, she noticed the crescendo of magic in the room was being fed by another source. Arforl was not merely a passive shade. He was aware, and had been so for some time. Something was wrong.

‘Boris?’ she said, raising her staff protectively. ‘What is this?’

Before the priest could answer, Arforl let slip a sneering laugh.

‘The wizard knows nothing!’ he said, before turning his baleful gaze on her. ‘What did he tell you? That I hold the secret of defeating the unquiet dead? You fool. They’re my minions, just as they were a generation ago. Even in my slumber I can rouse them. And yet this place was just enough of a prison to keep my body confined. Only a wizard could break the bonds. You were arrogant, Lautermann. Now there’s nothing to contain my power.’

Boris rushed forward.

‘So I have served you, my lord!’ he cried, a look of ecstasy in his ruined eyes. ‘Now heal me! End the pain. I’ve done as you commanded.’

Katerina was stunned. She felt the waves of dark magic rearing up around her. She began to unravel the unbinding spell, but now nothing would answer her call. Arforl’s magic began to blot out all else in the chamber. The shade ignored her. Arforl’s image was growing in strength. The waves of malice emanating from him were sickening.

‘Heal you?’ Arforl said to Boris. ‘You’re as stupid as she. You’ll provide me with a body, and that is all.’

At that, the shade swooped over the horrified priest and locked him in a crushing embrace. Boris screamed, and his limbs flailed jerkily. There was a brief confusion, as the swirling green-tinged vision of Arforl sucked itself on to Boris’s jerking body, clawing at his eyes and mouth.

Then the struggle was over. Boris’s limbs went limp, then straightened. There was no more hunching or limping. His ravaged form was animated by a new will. Just as the undead had done at Herrendorf, Boris’s eyes glowed a sickly green. His lips twisted in a lurid smile. There was a shudder beneath his skin, like cats fighting in a bag, but that too was stamped out. Arforl had consumed him.

Katerina stepped back, placing her staff between her and the possessed Boris.

‘These people think you saved them,’ she said warily, trying to piece together what was going on.

Arforl laughed using Boris’s mouth.

‘I know. Ever since this fool dabbled in powers he could not master and began to wake me, the irony has been pleasing. He knew the truth, of course. But the knowledge of death does strange things to a man. I sent him dreams of a cure, an end to his pain. All lies, sadly for him. There is nothing but pain! Pain and power. You have given him one, and me the other.’

Katerina looked disgusted.

‘A traitor, then,’ she spat. ‘Enough. I may have woken you, but I will not release you.’

She swung her staff around, and waves of amethyst energy screamed across the narrow chamber. Arforl was blasted backwards, hitting the stone wall with a crack. Katerina let her anger flow freely. Her staff sang with energy, hurling bolt after bolt at the unnatural creature before her. She was hurting Arforl, and for a moment he was pinned, writhing, against the edge of the chamber.

‘Damn you!’ he roared, and a vast well of dark magic burst from his flailing hands.

The shadow tore across Katerina, raking at her eyes and snatching at her staff. She gasped, feeling the icy chill stab at her. She staggered backwards. Her amethyst magic tore away in ribbons. Arforl righted himself, and sent a barrage of seething necromantic essence towards her. She raised her staff for the parry, and the force of the blow nearly broke her arms. His power was unbelievable, as strong as iron and as crushing as stone. She was beaten back, step by grudging step.

Almost before realising it, she had been driven to the far side of the chamber, towards the open doorway to the balcony. She whirled her staff around, trying to combat the waves of dark magic coming from Arforl. Within his torrents of energy she could make out the shapes of jaws snapping and claws rending. There were fleeting, morphing animal shapes in his magic. As quickly as she tore them apart, they re-formed and came at her. She felt cold sweat break out at the nape of her neck. She was being beaten. Arforl came towards her, his eyes glowing eerily, hands outstretched.

‘Now you’ll pay the price for your curiosity,’ he sneered. ‘This ruined body repulses me. When your power is spent, yours will make a more fitting vessel.’

Katerina’s face distorted in disgust, and she sent a searing stream of amethyst fire directly at him. It halted his advance, but he was equal to it. He replied with spitting bolts of dark force, hurled at her with all the malice he could muster. Katerina desperately parried. Her staff took the brunt of the assault, but one deadly shaft got through, slicing agonisingly into her shoulder. She cried aloud, and staggered backwards. Too late she realised she was out on the balcony. She was dimly aware of high, dark clouds above her, and the whistling of a chill wind. Arforl came towards her, his face still locked in a gloating smile.

Katerina raised her staff wearily, preparing for the final blow. Then she heard the whispering from below. She stole a quick glance over her shoulder. The ground below was crawling with dim shapes.

‘Can’t tell what they are?’ jeered Arforl. ‘They’re my children, flocking once more to my call. Now, at last, I can join them.’

He clapped his hands together, and a pale green light kindled at the summit of the tower, bathing the scene in a sickly radiance. Katerina could see the hundreds of undead milling at the base of the tower. They were pawing at the stone, though none had yet entered the tower.

Katerina took a deep breath, and gripped her staff tightly. There was no way out. She began to prepare her final defence. She laced the spells with words of destruction and immolation. If Arforl defeated her, there would be nothing left of her body to deface. She wouldn’t share Boris’s fate.

Arforl raised his arms, and dark magic snaked around him.

‘This is the end, Frau Lautermann,’ he said.

But then a shudder seemed to pass through the entire tower. Arforl momentarily faltered, and his magic wavered. Katerina looked back over her shoulder warily. A strange presence could be sensed. Below, the horde of undead seemed to turn in on itself. There was a new focus for their mindless bloodlust.

Arforl’s face twisted in amazement.

‘So he survived,’ he murmured, turning his attention from Katerina for a moment.

There was a cry of frustration from the undead below, and a bird-like shape broke from their clutches and into the air. Dark grey wings flapped, and it seemed as if a great carrion crow was heading for the tower. Katerina retreated along the narrow balcony, trying to get away from both Arforl and the newcomer. The traitor wizard followed her out from the chamber, but his attention was focused elsewhere. He hurled a stream of pale green light from his crooked fingers, sparking and crackling as it tore through the night. The wheeling crow evaded the deadly stream of necromantic energy, and landed on the balcony in a flurry of feathers. The shape transmuted with dazzling speed, and soon there was a cloaked figure standing between Katerina and Arforl. He was a Grey wizard, dressed in archaic robes. His staff hummed with power, and his eyes blazed with anger.

Arforl glared at him contemptuously.

‘You should be dead,’ he said, acidly.

‘So should you,’ replied the Grey wizard, returning the irony.

He raised a hand, and grey strands of shimmering magic sprung up, clinging to Arforl and pulling him back into the chamber. With a spasm of irritation, the traitor shrugged off the attack. His hands like claws, he summoned a whip of pure dark magic from the aethyr. It curled around his head. He cracked it at the Grey wizard, who leapt with surprising speed to evade the blow.

For a moment, Katerina was stunned. She fell back, trying to work out what was going on. Whoever this interloper was, it was clear he had no love for Arforl, and that at least was reason to be thankful for his intervention. The best course of action seemed to be to join him. With a deep breath, she raised her staff again and resumed her attack. The flow of amethyst fire rekindled, snapping towards Arforl in flaming barbs. Confronted with two sources of magic, Arforl was beaten back into the chamber. The space was soon swimming in unnatural power. Katerina and the Grey wizard pressed forward, hurling bolts and orbs of sparking energy at the traitor. Arforl responded with equal vigour, blasting gobbets of dark matter at them, slicing at them with his whip. The tower was filled with light and noise. The masonry above them began to shake at the power unleashed, and lines of dust spiralled down from the arched ceiling.

Katerina started to feel her strength ebb. She had been casting magic for days and, despite the ever-present wind of Shyish, she was near her limits. The mysterious Grey wizard beside her was potent, and kept Arforl tied up with a series of unbroken attacks. But Arforl was equal to them. Indeed, the two adversaries seemed strangely well-suited, as if their fighting styles were intimately known to each other. They circled around each other, trading blow after blow. Neither spoke, but their eyes never left the other’s. Katerina found herself pushed to the edge of the battle, her contributions increasingly ineffectual.

And then came the sound she had been dreading. The whispering she had come to loathe so much at Herrendorf, the clatter and rustle of dry bone and skin. They had broken through the wards. They were coming up the stairs. The undead had answered their master’s call.

She whirled around, just in time to see the first of them clamber into the chamber. Arforl and the Grey wizard remained locked in combat. Katerina swung her staff at the lead skeletal figure, smashing his frame apart and sending the bones skidding across the stone. She was weary to her core, but dredged up the reserves of energy required to ignite her staff with magic once more. Amethyst light blazed from its tip, mixing with the diffuse grey light of the newcomer and the lurid green of the necromancer. She strode forward to meet the shambling host of undead as they emerged into the chamber. Like a blacksmith at his forge, she used her crackling staff to slay them where they stood. She knew that if they managed to enter the chamber in numbers, the fight was over. Just as she had done at Herrendorf, she guarded the doorway alone, the only bulwark against the whispering host of unquiet dead.

Arforl laughed then, a ragged, strangled sound.

‘How long can you keep this up, wizards?’ he cried, mockingly. ‘They’ll keep coming forever!’

Katerina knew he was right. She stole a glance at the traitor, desperate for some sign of weakness, some way of turning the tide.

Arforl’s face was locked in a rictus of triumph, but there was something manic about his grin. For the first time, it looked forced. There were beads of sweat on his grey brow, and an odd rippling seemed to be taking place under his skin.

‘Boris!’ hissed Katerina, suddenly aware of what was going on. The old priest was still fighting for his body. This wasn’t over yet. There was a chance, but the moment was almost gone.

Ignoring the chattering horrors behind her, Katerina turned and hurled herself towards Arforl in a last, desperate lunge. Summoning all of her remaining strength, she sent a column of raging purple flame coursing towards him. All her residual energy went into the blast, and as it left her she felt stars spin before her eyes. If this failed, then there was nothing left.

The flame smashed into Arforl, dousing him in a raging torrent of amethyst essence. The Grey wizard waded in with spinning balls of cloying matter. The essence of Ulgu splattered into shards on contact with Arforl, digging into his flesh, tearing at his robes. The necromancer was hurled back hard, nearly knocked off his feet by the combined blast. He reeled, staggering against the stone wall, his eyes blurry once more. With a heavy gesture he countered the magic, but then something changed. His skin rippled once more, and his eyes bulged. Arforl let out a choked scream, and started to claw at his own face.

Katerina and the Grey wizard retreated back towards the balcony. Arforl staggered back to his feet, blundering straight into the crowd of undead entering the chamber. Some shrank back in mute reverence. But Boris’s body was no longer controlled by a single soul. Others of them sensed the presence of the old priest, and withered hands reached out. Nails clawed against flesh, and blood spurted from Boris’s flesh. A mingled scream of two voices rose from the priest’s lips. With the scent of blood in the air, the undead went berserk. They rushed forward, biting, scratching, gouging, tearing. With a sickening speed, they tore the body to pieces. Just as the old, ruined head was dragged down into the crowd of scrabbling hands, Katerina thought she glimpsed Boris’s rheumy expression in his eyes for a final time. Then he was gone, lost in a hail of dark blood and gore.

For a moment, the undead were locked in their blood frenzy. Katerina and the Grey wizard watched grimly. Over the gorging undead, the insubstantial shade of Arforl appeared once more, ragged and barely visible. His old features were back, though racked with pain. The shade looked around the chamber as if for the first time, a mix of fury and fear marking the once noble face.

Katerina knew she had nothing left, and slumped back against the stone wall. The Grey wizard took command. He raised his staff high, and a vortex of grey energy surged towards it. The wind of Shyish joined the wind of Ulgu, and a potent mix of the lore of shadows and death, combined into a maelstrom of shimmering magic. The shade of Arforl, weakened by the death of its host, was sucked into the storm. With a throttled wail, the ghostly form was hurled down once more. A sighing noise escaped from the casket, and Arforl was dragged back within it. The light appeared briefly over the glassy lid, and was extinguished. Bereft of Arforl’s necromantic light, the chamber sunk into near darkness.

The undead completed their grisly meal, and pale eyes looked up at the two wizards remaining in the chamber. The green light which had animated them had faded, and they now looked hesitant.

The Grey wizard raised his staff a final time.

‘Go now,’ he said, in a low, quiet voice. ‘Your summoner is defeated. Return to the earth. Sleep. Forget. Trouble the living no more.’

There was magic in his speech, but not much was needed. The animating will behind the living dead had been withdrawn. Slowly, one by one, the vacant, bloodstained faces turned. The skeletal figures withdrew back down the stairs, into the night, and out to their resting places in the wilds. The whispering ceased, and the natural noises of the forest returned.

In the east, a thin line of silver marked the dawn.

Katerina sat wearily on a fallen tree trunk beside the tower. The pale morning chilled her to her soul. Even wrapped tight in her fine cloak, the cold found some way in. She shivered, and looked back up at the slender stone building. The Grey wizard was re-establishing the wards around it. When he was finished, he cleared the lichen from the lintel over the entrance. The rune of Ulgu was revealed more clearly. The tower had never been a place of Amethyst lore. Why hadn’t she seen it earlier? Arrogance, perhaps. Or maybe just being too hasty. The error had proved costly.

The wizard came over to her and sat beside her. As he did so, the windows and doors of the tower sunk back into the stone around them. As it had been before, the tower looked impregnable.

Katerina looked up at him.

‘The Master of Crows?’ she said, letting some bitterness at her conduct stray into her voice.

The Grey wizard nodded, a thin smile on his face. He had ancient-looking features.

‘That’s what they call me, I believe,’ he said.

Katerina sighed, and leant back on her arms. Her body was bone-tired.

‘So, the legend was corrupted. You should tell me what’s happened here.’

The Master of Crows lost his smile, and sat down opposite her in the mire.

‘In the beginning, I didn’t know myself,’ he said. ‘I’d defeated him, all those years ago. I discovered his treachery late, and by the time I found him he had grown strong. I was alone. He raised the dead against me, and I was nearly overcome. But I had more strength then. As the end neared, the dead were destroyed, and we fought a last duel out in the wastes. It must have created quite a show, had there been anyone around to witness it. Four days and nights we fought. The pain was terrible. In the end, he made a mistake. Just one, but it was enough. I defeated him, and believed that I’d killed him. But it proved otherwise.’

He looked wistfully back at the tower.

‘Magic’s a strange thing,’ he said. ‘As it turned out, we unleashed something together here. Something in us merged. I don’t think he’ll ever properly die. And, as it turns out, neither can I. I should have done, years ago. And I should have left this place too, years ago. But I can’t do that either.’

Katerina frowned.

‘What do you mean? There’s nothing stopping you.’

The Grey wizard shook his head.

‘For you, that’s true. For me, there’s no escape. I could follow you along the road to Bechafen for a few miles. And then, sooner or later, you would strangely forget about your companion. I would crest a rise, and be back in Herrendorf. Much as I hate the place, this is home. Forever.’

Katerina looked at him with scepticism.

‘But I didn’t see you, not when I was there.’

A shudder passed across the Grey wizard’s face. For a moment his expression was strangely blurred, and then Weiss’s surly features re-established themselves.

‘I don’t hold with witches,’ he growled in his thick, slurred accent.

He grinned.

‘Not bad, eh?’ he said, retaining Weiss’s appearance and demeanour. ‘I haven’t lost all my skills. And the wind of Ulgu is strong here, just as Shyish is.’

Katerina shook her head in disbelief. Of all the strange things she had seen, this was amongst the most bizarre.

‘So you live amongst them still?’ she asked, fascinated despite herself.

Weiss nodded.

‘Where else can I go? I need to eat. That, at least, hasn’t changed. And at first, I was the proper hero. The fact I couldn’t leave Herrendorf was strange, but I was confident I could overcome it. Then they noticed I didn’t age. For years, I tried to hide it. But you can’t, not in a place like this. When I saw children I had known begin to pass into dotage, with me the same as ever, I realised something had to be done. The people here are neither wise nor over-kind. Anything unnatural is culled. So my old self disappeared, and the illusions began. Henrik the cobbler. Johan the farmer. Some others. And now Weiss the carpenter.’

Katerina looked down at the ground, pondering the man’s fate.

‘And over the years, the story changed,’ she murmured. ‘Was that Boris’s doing?’

‘No,’ said Weiss. ‘The passage of time corrupts all things. Arforl’s prison became, in people’s minds, Arforl’s memorial. You must remember that his reputation in the Empire was then impressive, while we Grey wizards are ever in the shadows. As memory faded and the stories became confused, I must have seemed the more likely villain. And it suited me, after a while. Who cares who defeated whom, as long as the dead lay in their graves? I tended the mausoleum, guarded against Arforl returning, and lived the best life I could. I thought it would last until the End Times. But Boris did stumble across the truth somehow.’

He paused for a moment, looking down at the sodden ground between his feet.

‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ he said. ‘He was racked with pain, and death was a terror. When he realised the necromancer was the one in the tomb, not his destroyer, it must have turned his mind. For all his faults, he was a subtle man, Boris. It was he that reached out to the shade and began to rouse it. He was not the first to seek escape from death, nor will he be the last. But he couldn’t complete the task. For that he needed a wizard. You.’

Katerina pursed her lips, feeling her mood sink further. She had been duped, and the knowledge of it was bitter.

‘I have caused great pain here.’

Weiss shook his head.

‘You were not to know. I am the guardian of this place. I was too slow to suspect the priest. I looked for the secret of Arforl’s revival in the wrong place. Of all those who could have been responsible, I thought the old man was least likely. It’s my dereliction which has brought this on Herrendorf.’

‘You’ve been here on your own too long,’ said Katerina. ‘You’ve given up your secret to me. I could bring help. This magic could be unravelled.’

Weiss gave a gruff laugh.

‘Unless the witch hunters are now more tender than I remember them, my presence had better remain a secret, I think. I am an abomination, Frau Lautermann. Arforl’s necromancy sustains me. It would be the interrogation chamber for me, if they could somehow drag me to it.’

Katerina started to protest, but then saw the look in his face. She let her eyes drop. She knew the ways of the Temple of Sigmar just as well as he did. It would be hard enough explaining Boris’s death to them.

She slowly climbed to her feet, and brushed her clothes down. It was hardly worth the bother. They were streaked with dried mud.

‘I should go,’ she said. ‘The plague has been ended.’

Weiss nodded.

‘What will you tell them about Arforl?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know yet. No one likes to discover that their hero is a traitor. But perhaps I’ll have to tell the truth.’

Weiss looked back at the tower.

‘You could say he still watches over Herrendorf,’ he said, grimly. ‘That’s true at least.’

‘It’s not him, though, is it?’ she said. ‘You’re the guardian of this place. I’ll study Arforl’s records when I get back to Altdorf. If I find anything, I’ll send tidings. There may be a cure.’

Weiss bowed in thanks.

‘I hold little hope. There’s neither death nor honour for me here. But such is the way of the world. We were never promised happiness, were we?’

Katerina found herself lost for words. It was time to go. He recognised it too. She bowed, and began to walk away. After going down the path for a few paces, she looked back over her shoulder. Weiss had gone in the opposite direction, back into the marshes. His Grey wizard’s robes had returned. As he disappeared into the thin mist of the morning, a solitary crow flew high in the pale sky. It shadowed him for a few moments, before flying west, away from the rising sun. There was a bitter caw, and it was gone.

WOLFSHEAD

by
C. L. Werner

Trees loomed thick and brooding on every side, casting weird shadows by the sickly light of Morrslieb. The gibbous moon glowered like the face of some malignant god from the starless sky, its more wholesome companion Mannslieb just a thin silvery sliver cringing against the horizon like a whipped cur. What had started as a clear and distinct path through the forest had degenerated into little better than a boar run, overgrown shrubs and bushes pressing in to reclaim the ground.

It was rough going for the two horses that forged their way through the overgrown track, but for the man who walked behind the beasts, the passage was nothing short of tortuous. His lean face was a scabby bruise from where branches had whipped across it, his rough homespun garments were tattered and torn by the ravages of thorns and his goatskin boots were almost shapeless within thick layers of dried mud. The man stumbled, his arms pulled taut ahead of his body and his hands crossed and lashed together by a thick cord of rope. Its other end was tethered securely to the tack of the smaller of the animals, a grey packhorse, its back laden down with bundles and sacks, a small wooden keg lashed to its side and the ugly hook of a halberd peeking from beneath rolled blankets.

‘Shallya’s blood!’ the man cursed as another branch smacked across his nose, splitting the skin. ‘It’s too dark to go on!’

The rider on the foremost horse, a huge black destrier, turned in the saddle, cold eyes staring from behind the visor of a steel sallet helm. The captive blanched as he felt those eyes bore into his own.

‘I don’t like it any better than you,’ the rider said, his tone as menacing as the purr of a panther. ‘I don’t like it when they want the merchandise delivered still breathing.’ He leaned over in the saddle, spitting the taste of his cigar into the brush. ‘You might mention that to Judge Vaulkberg when you see him.’

Beads of sweat peppered the prisoner’s face as he heard the name of the magistrate. Viktor Schwartz had fled the Reikland when he learned the infamous Judge Vaulkberg was looking for him. The confidence man had gone too far when he had assumed the title of ‘Baron von Schwartzhelm’ in his last racket. The real von Schwartzhelms had taken offence at the indignity of their name being appropriated by a criminal and made their displeasure known in no uncertain terms. He had thought Stirland would be beyond Judge Vaulkberg’s reach. He hadn’t thought about the fat bounty Vaulkberg had set on his head to appease the von Schwartzhelms, nor how far the ruthless breed of men who made their living as bounty killers would go to collect that reward.

Viktor had certainly never imagined a man as tenacious and relentless as the one who had finally caught him. Single-handed, the bounty killer had dragged him from the nest of river pirates with whom he had taken refuge. The confidence man shivered as he recalled the gruesome epilogue to that murderous scene. The bounty killer had set fire to the pirate lair, then shot down the outlaws as they came out the door, only he had been spared such a miserable death. That had been barbaric enough, but afterwards he had been forced by his captor to help him poke among the cinders for any bodies recognisable enough to turn in to the riverwardens. Viktor turned his horrified eyes to the wooden keg lashed to the side of the packhorse the bounty hunter grimly called Paychest and felt his stomach turn. He ran his hand against his neck, imagining the steel teeth of the killer’s knife sawing through flesh and bone.

Brunner was nothing if not pragmatic. Why drag the entire body away, when just the head would do?

The bounty killer cut a formidable aspect upon the back of his grim black warhorse, a Bretonnian steed named Fiend. The man wore a suit of weathered brigandine armour, metal studs poking through the layers of reinforced leather. Steel vambraces shielded his forearms, a breastplate of thick gromril covering his chest. Bandoliers of crossbow bolts and throwing knives criss-crossed his torso and from his leather belt a riotous array of weapons dripped like venom from a serpent’s fang. The fat-bladed knife with its serrated edge, the morbid Headsman Viktor had seen in action among the ashes of the pirate lair. A thick hatchet, its wooden heft deeply stained from its blood-drenched career. A pair of slender, almost-delicate looking crossbow pistols hung at his hips, their blackened steel frames almost melding with the sombre coat of Fiend as they slapped against the horse’s flanks. Across his belly, Brunner wore a holstered duelling pistol, one of the killer’s hands lingering close to the grip of the firearm. Against the bounty hunter’s left hip, the sheathed length of a murderous falchion, a butchering blade capable of tearing the steel from a man’s grip as easily as it could gut the man himself.

Brunner’s face was largely hidden beneath the visor of his rounded sallet helm, but what Viktor could see was a hard, unforgiving countenance with a mouth turned down in a perpetual scowl and a shallow grey scar pulling at the chin. He knew the man was a Reiklander by his speech and accent, but highborn or low commoner was something Viktor found strangely difficult to extract from the bounty hunter’s voice. Certainly the hunter’s casual disdain for Viktor’s attempts at bribery to secure his release bespoke no commoner scraping to earn his living by such a dangerous profession. Though, perhaps, this was simply because he had not offered enough?

‘You know,’ Viktor began without preamble. ‘I have some rather influential friends who would make it well worth your while…’ He paused as another branch came slashing into his face, opening an oozing cut in his cheek. Viktor cursed lividly, then struggled to refocus his thoughts. ‘My friends would pay well to have me back safe and sound, and wouldn’t be too particular about who they paid, or why.’

Viktor felt rather than saw Brunner’s steely glare as he swung back around in his saddle.

‘Friends like your pirates?’ the bounty hunter sneered. ‘All the money I want from that sort I can put across Paychest’s back.’ Brunner tapped the metal handle of the Headsman in a grim gesture. ‘As for you, I’d consider what I had to say very carefully. I’m not a tolerant man and my indulgence is over.’ Brunner turned back around, spitting the stump of his cigar into the darkness. ‘Vaulkberg wants you alive. He didn’t say anything about with or without tongue.’

All the colour drained out of Viktor Schwartz as he heard the threat, stunned into silence by the casual manner in which it was made. Shocked into silence, the outlaw was almost pulled from his feet as the bounty hunter’s animals continued their march through the benighted forest. Too terrified even to curse, Viktor stumbled along in his effort to keep up.

Suddenly, Viktor found himself crashing into the rump of Paychest. The grey packhorse stood stock still, its eyes wide with alarm, its ears standing up, its hooves pawing nervously at the ground. Ahead, he could see the black bulk of Fiend and even the warhorse seemed agitated, swinging its huge head from side to side as though trying to spot some hidden menace. The bounty hunter upon its back was likewise rigid with concentration, listening for any errant sound among the shadows. His hand had fallen to the grip of his pistol, slowly inching the weapon from its holster.

All was silence, even the chirping of crickets seemed to be muted by some unseen malignance. Viktor could hear his heart hammering in his chest, feel his throat going tight from fear. He could feel it now, as surely as the horses and the hunter. There was something out there, something obscene and unnatural.

From somewhere deep in the forest, a piercing howl rose into the night. It was a savage, feral sound, both deep and sharp, seeming to echo in the very bones of those who heard it. It was not unlike the cry of a wolf, but of such volume and magnitude that defied belief. Viktor muttered a quiet prayer to Taal, god of the beasts and the wild, as he heard it. The bounty hunter’s horses nickered and stamped their hooves in agitation. For his part, Brunner drew his pistol and checked to see that the firing cap was secure upon the weapon’s steel nipple.

A chill wind rustled through the brush, fanning the terror of the two horses, forcing the bounty hunter to forget his weapon for the moment to quieten his steed. Viktor dodged out of the path of the bucking Paychest until the bounty killer dismounted and calmed the draft horse as well.

When he turned from his chore, Brunner ripped the pistol back from its holster, allowing his other hand to slip around the hilt of his falchion. Ahead, in the darkness, a shape moved, creeping through the brush towards the two men.

Brunner aimed his pistol at the approaching shadow, his finger loose around the trigger. The slightest pressure would send a lead ball blasting through the head of the advancing wraith. Though he could make out nothing but a darker shadow beyond the bushes, the manner in which Fiend and Paychest reacted to the unseen denizen of the dark was enough to make him aware that it was no natural thing. The woods and forests of the Empire were havens for all manner of goblins and beastmen, as well as other, less wholesome inhabitants. A few more steps, and Brunner would make the wilds of Stirland safer by one less monster.

The bounty hunter gave a sharp cry of alarm as the pistol fell from his gloved hand. The leather smoked where the suddenly white-hot weapon had seared him where he gripped it. The spectral chill of sorcery whirled around him, creating a sinister contrast to his burned hand. Brunner tore his falchion from its sheath, staring into the darkness, ready to rush his spell-slinging foe. The shadow he had seen before was no longer there. The bounty hunter’s instincts caused him to spin around towards the other side of the path.

A dark figure smiled at him with a ratty, gap-toothed grin as Brunner raised his falchion to strike.

‘None of that, sweetie,’ the figure croaked in a voice that was withered with age and evil. ‘It’s no harm Mamma Miranda means to you. It’d be a true pity for me to have to burn your other hand now.’

As she spoke, the woman stepped forwards into the dim light of the moon. She was a little creature, barely tall enough to touch the fetlocks of Brunner’s charger, her back almost as crooked as a woodsman’s bow. She leaned upon a knobbly cane of oak and was wrapped tight in a dark woollen shawl, the hood pulled close about her scraggly white hair and shrivelled head. It was a desiccated, reptilian face that stared from the frame of the hood, the skin splotched with brown blemishes and wrinkled like old leather. Her nose was a little bulb set above her wide, rodent-like mouth and the eyes that gleamed from either side of it were strangely luminescent in the darkness. A tangle of charms and talismans rattled about her throat and dangled from her wrists, bearing symbols of Ahalt the Drinker and other, even more unspeakable gods.

Brunner slowly lowered his sword, carefully returning it to its sheath. Miranda watched the action with seemingly rapt attention, then her rat-like grin hardened.

‘Don’t think I don’t see you going for your knife while you put yon boar-cutter away,’ the old woman cackled. ‘It’s a good turn I mean you and you have nay right to bear me such ill.’

‘Is that so?’ the bounty hunter returned. He folded his arms across his chest in a seeming gesture of defeat. ‘What have I done to warrant the interest of a witch?’

Miranda scowled at the word and her glittering eyes took on an even uglier appearance. ‘It’s careful you should be about baiting me, child. There’s Powers I be beholden to and They be the ones what have an interest in you, nay old Mamma Miranda. Left to me, and I’d leave you to have your bones picked clean and your guts spilt across the forest!’

‘I care nothing for your daemons or your magic, witch!’ Brunner growled back. The fingers of his left hand slipped gradually beneath the vambrace on his right arm, reaching for the slender throwing knife hidden there. ‘I have business in Reikland and no desire to waste words with a heretic hag!’

The witch uttered a cackle of scornful amusement. She stabbed a crooked finger at Viktor. ‘Your dead man will never reach the judge, and weeds will grow through your gnawed bones and a fitting end it would be too.’ Miranda’s scowl grew even sicklier and she fingered one of her talismans, a metal sliver of moon intersected by a disc. ‘Unfortunately it would sit ill with my Masters if I were to allow harm to befall you because of my magic, and Their displeasure is not a thing to be taken lightly.’

With a speed that even Brunner found amazing, the old woman removed a bundle of weeds from beneath her shawl and threw them at the bounty hunter’s feet. ‘You are not the only hunter abroad this night, Brunner of Drakenberg. When the beast picks up your scent, you must burn these herbs.’ Miranda saw the incredulous twist of Brunner’s mouth. ‘There are things against which lead and steel are not enough,’ she warned. ‘That is when you might be thankful for an old witch’s magic!’

Brunner bent down to retrieve the bundle of herbs, using the motion to cover his hand as he finished pulling the knife from beneath his armour. His eyes were only off the witch for an instant but, when he straightened to hurl his weapon at her, he found himself staring only at the night-blackened forest. He fought back the twinge of supernatural dread the hag’s vanishment evoked.

‘She… she disappeared… right there! While I was… was watching!’ stammered Viktor, pointing with his tethered hands at the empty bushes.

Brunner stalked over to his captive, checking his bonds. The witch might have vanished, but his prisoner wasn’t going to follow her example.

‘She… she was a witch!’ Viktor gasped. He grabbed Brunner’s arm in a desperate gesture. ‘She said I would never reach Judge Vaulkberg, that I was a dead man!’

Brunner shook off Viktor’s grasping hands. ‘The hag was wrong,’ he hissed. ‘You should be worried about what the judge is going to do to you, not some crazed hedge mage’s predictions.’

The bounty hunter walked back to Fiend, his contempt for the witch’s words still ringing in Viktor’s ears.

That Brunner did not discard the bundle of dried weeds, but stuffed them carefully in a saddlebag was an observation the frightened Viktor failed to make.

He was too busy listening to the renewed howling in the darkness and trying to convince himself it was not closer than it had been before.

The wolf howl dogged Brunner through the long hours of the night, sometimes closer, sometimes farther, but always there. The persistence of the howl had made Paychest all but unmanageable, and even Fiend was on edge. As for his captive, he had been forced to tie Viktor to his own saddle to prevent the fear-crazed man from trying to scramble into a tree every time he heard the howl. A broken leg would make getting him to the Reikland a good sight more difficult and Brunner would just as soon avoid such complications.

It was when the howling dropped off entirely that the bounty hunter came on edge. Viktor, oblivious to Brunner’s increased wariness, took the silence as sign that the wolf had forsaken them to find less formidable prey. The continuing agitation of the horses made it clear that the predator was still close.

When the attack came, it was of such speed and ferocity that even the bounty killer was caught unprepared. One instant there was the darkness of the path, the brambles and thickets pressing close to the overgrown trail. The next a pair of red eyes shone from the blackness. Brunner drew his pistol even as a terrible growl rumbled through the night. Branches snapped as something lithe and powerful lunged from its hiding place.

Brunner had an instant to observe the sleek black shape as it leapt upon him, bowling him from the saddle and smashing him to the ground. It was a wolf, a huge specimen of its breed. Its jaws flashed white in the moonlight, froth dripping from its jowls. Brunner fired his pistol into the beast as its leap brought it crashing against him, shocked when the brute did not so much as yelp when the weapon discharged inches from its snapping fangs. A misfire was always a possibility, but the smoke and fire should have been enough to scare the animal off.

His second shock came as he struck the ground, the beast atop him. Brunner felt fingers close around his wrists, pinning him to the ground. As he stared up at his attacker, he saw only the canine snout and black-furred head of a wolf, its eyes gleaming with a cruel intelligence. Nursery fables and half-remembered legends flooded into Brunner’s mind as he felt the baleful gaze of the wolf fixed upon him. He fought down his superstitious dread with more difficulty than he had in his encounter with the witch. Natural or child of Old Night, the surest way to die beneath a predator’s jaws was to show fear.

Unfortunately, the same lesson had not been taught to Viktor Schwartz. The outlaw pulled at his tether, shrieking and wailing like a lost lamb. The noise of his terror brought the wolf’s head snapping about. Whatever intellect might lurk within the beast, it had no mastery over its savage instincts. Brunner felt a heavy weight press down on him, then the wolf was away, springing off of him and pouncing upon the screaming Viktor.

The prisoner fell beneath the beast’s weight, crushed to the earth with savage violence. Blood spattered the bushes as the wolf’s claws tore into him, each of its hand-like paws ripping into his body with feral brutality. Viktor’s high-pitched screams degenerated into a bubbly gargle as the wolf’s fangs snapped close around his neck and began to worry at his throat. Arterial spray, almost black in the moonlight, spurted from the wound, bathing prey and predator in Viktor’s blood.

Brunner staggered to his feet, his chest still feeling the crushing weight of the wolf against it. He drew the crossbow pistols from his belt, taking aim even as he watched the beast slaughter his prisoner like a wayward calf.

‘Your pelt better be worth three hundred crowns, cur!’ Brunner snarled, loosing the bolts from his pistols into the wolf’s back. Both missiles struck home, stabbing into the beast. Brunner took a step back, once again struck with shock and horror. The bolts had struck true, but their effect could have been no more useless had he loosed them into a side of beef. The wolf barely deigned to notice their impact, but continued to savage the quivering body of its prey. As it snapped and slavered, the bolts seemed to work themselves loose from its body, falling into the mush of dead leaves on the ground.

Brunner tried to tell himself it was some trick of light and shadow, but the effort was too great. It was no wolf that held its prey in paw-like hands, and no beastman who defied bullets and bolts. It was something else, something that, as the witch had warned, did not respect steel and lead.

The bounty hunter pulled his tinderbox from a pouch on his belt, hurriedly trying to light the withered weeds the old woman had thrust upon him. The wolf-beast seemed to take notice the instant he began. It dropped Viktor’s gory carcass, its muzzle pulled into a snarl as it fixed him with its scarlet eyes. The creature slowly crept towards him, an angry growl rumbling through its powerful frame, keeping itself upright upon two legs, its clawed hands closing and opening in their eagerness for violence.

The weeds had just begun to smoulder, the first faint hint of noxious smoke rising from them, when the wolf-beast lowered its head and coiled its body into a crouch. Brunner dropped his tinderbox and dragged the hatchet from his belt. The move was only just in time as the wolf lunged for him, uncoiling in a black-furred streak of bestial fury. The bounty hunter twisted as it jumped, staggering from the glancing impact instead of being crushed beneath the beast’s body as he had before. As the wolf dove past him, he lashed out with the axe, slashing its edge through fur and flesh, hearing the steel scrape against bone. But when the beast was past and he looked at his axe, he found the blade unmarked by blood. He did not need to be a witch to know that the wolf’s hide was similarly unmarked, preserved by whatever unholy forces gave it power.

The wolf coiled to spring again, but as it did so, it began to shake its head, snuffling loudly. It brought a forearm scratching against its muzzle, then rolled its face in the dirt. Brunner could see that the bundle of weeds was now smoking fiercely, the pungent reek almost overwhelming. Its effect on the wolf-beast was even worse and, with a mournful wail, like the whine of a child, the brute darted towards the trees.

Before it could vanish, Brunner was pulling his sword from its scabbard. If the weed could wreak such havoc on the beast, perhaps they had also foiled its invulnerability to steel. He started after the wolf, but the familiar sound of an explosive crack caused him to drop. The trunk of a nearby tree exploded with splinters as a bullet slammed into it.

Brunner rolled onto his belly, watching for the hidden shooter, the wolf having already vanished into the undergrowth. After a few moments, he could hear the unmistakable sound of a rider ploughing his way through the undergrowth. The glow of a lantern appeared in the murk of the forest, soon followed by the one who held it.

The rider was a well-dressed man, the doublet beneath his engraved breastplate was extravagant and colourful, his stiff cavalry boots monogrammed with gilded letters, his rounded helm sporting outrageous plumes of ostrich feathers. The sword that hung from his belt was thin and rakish, with a jewelled hilt and silver etchings along its scabbard. The man’s face was clean, handsome in the classical Imperial style, with well-tended moustaches waxed into twisted curls. Pale blue eyes regarded Brunner with alarm and a smoking pistol almost fell from the rider’s beringed fingers.

‘Taal’s mercy!’ the rider gasped. ‘I didn’t see you there! Morr’s oath, I saw only the wolf!’

‘Then you missed,’ Brunner said, picking himself from the ground and gesturing at the injured tree. The bounty hunter’s eyes were narrowed and filled with menace, scrutinising the horseman and his weapons.

The rider’s face flushed somewhat at the remark and he shoved the pistol back into its holster with an embarrassed motion. ‘I am truly sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know there were other hunters abroad tonight. Those damn Kislevites will be whoring and drinking by this time and, well, they are burying Otto in the morning.’

Brunner stalked over to his horses, trying to quiet them down. Only the fact that it was tied to Fiend’s saddle had prevented Paychest from bolting during the ghastly encounter. He paused to regard the rider, his interest piqued not by apologies for slovenly marksmanship, but by mention of hunters and a hunt.

‘What’s this about a hunt?’ he asked.

The rider seemed to be taken aback by the question. ‘Then you weren’t engaged by my father?’

‘I don’t even know who your father is,’ Brunner said, patting and rubbing the neck of his packhorse.

The rider straightened in his saddle, throwing out his chest in a manner that would have looked out of place even in a Sierck play. ‘I am the Baronet Dietrich Hartog, son of his lordship the Baron Friederick Hartog.’

‘An awful lot of barons for one stretch of forest,’ Brunner muttered under his breath, looking sadly at the gory wreckage of Viktor Schwartz.

‘I am sorry about your friend,’ Dietrich said. ‘I will help you take him back to the village for burial.’

Brunner turned away, shaking his head and pulling himself into Fiend’s saddle. He cut away the tether and threw it onto the ground beside the body. ‘Leave him,’ the bounty hunter said, his voice cold. He cast a last glance at the mangled corpse. ‘He’s no good to anyone… now.’

As Dietrich Hartog led him through the forest, the baronet filled Brunner in regarding the situation in his father’s domain. Roughly a year before, a strange predator had appeared, preying on the herds and generally wreaking havoc through the district. Every effort made by his father’s gamekeepers to track it down failed and before long the beast progressed from picking off the odd goat or calf to feeding on those who tended them. Once a month, when Morrslieb the Chaos moon was at its height, new outrages would shock the district. Those few who had seen it and survived described an enormous black wolf, bigger than a steer and possessed of unnatural strength and boldness.

Dietrich was not prepared to endow the wolf with such powers, though he grudgingly admitted it was far more cunning than common for its breed, ‘more fox than wolf ’, he mused. It was too smart for local hunters to bring down and his father had been forced to recruit hunters from all across Stirland to try and defeat it. One and all had failed, many of them becoming victims of the wolf themselves. In desperation, the baron had finally increased the bounty on the black wolf to five hundred crowns and had dispatched couriers to bear news of the reward to the far corners of the Empire.

The swollen bounty had brought wolf hunters swarming upon the district, but even experienced marksmen from Hochland and veteran woodsmen from the Drakwald had failed to best the beast.

‘My father can hardly increase the bounty any more than he already has,’ Dietrich said as they emerged from the tangle of the forest and into the open fields beyond. In the distance, little snakes of smoke marked the village and beyond it, with the morning sun just beginning to peek above its battlements was the looming bulk of Castle Hartog. ‘And if the wolf isn’t stopped, the peasants will start abandoning us in droves.’

Brunner gave the nobleman a shrug. ‘They expect the baron to protect them. That’s why they pay him taxes and give him their fealty. If your father can’t honour that obligation, then he has no right to expect them to stay.’

Dietrich’s face flushed with outrage at the impertinent words, his hand falling to the jewelled hilt of his sword.

Brunner seemed to ignore the angry gesture, pointing instead to a curious structure standing in the middle of the fields. ‘What is that?’ he asked, nodding his chin towards the ring of crude stone monoliths and the little wood hut nestled in their shadow.

‘A shrine to Rhya, the Earth Mother,’ Dietrich answered, almost automatically. ‘It has stood here since before the time of Sigmar, so they say,’ he added with a surly note.

‘Your people must be extremely pious,’ Brunner said, watching as a line of figures draped in black emerged from the hut and began to walk into the stone circle. Closer now, he could see a pile of wood at the centre of the circle. Towards this, the figures bore a burden covered in a linen shroud.

‘The nearest priest of Morr is three hundred miles from here,’ Dietrich said. ‘It is imprudent to wait for him to visit us, so we consign the dead to Morr’s gardens in the old way.’ He pointed at the shrouded body. ‘I don’t think Otto will complain.’

The mourners laid their burden upon the pile of kindling, then began to step away from the mound. Brunner put his spurs to Fiend’s flanks as he saw another mourner emerge from the hut, a flaming brand in her hand. Dietrich cursed and spurred his own mount after Brunner, taken aback by the bounty hunter’s sudden rush toward the circle.

Brunner reined his horse before the woman bearing the torch, blocking her from the pyre. He saw now that he was mistaken, she was not one of the drab mourners, but a priestess. Beneath a cape of woven leaves and a mantle of flowers, she wore a shrift of thin white cloth, a garment so fine it might have been crafted from strands of gossamer. The almost transparent robe left nothing of the woman’s supple body to the imagination and the face that regarded him from beneath the flowery headdress was of almost divine beauty. There was no accusation in her soft blue eyes, no hardening of her velveteen lips as the huge black charger blocked her path. She simply gestured at the sky and spoke in a voice that was like the sigh of a breeze through long grass.

‘The morning grows apace, child,’ the woman said. ‘If this poor man’s soul is to be entrusted into Mother Rhya’s care, I must consign him to fire in time for the flames to meet the first rays to shine upon the sacred circle.’

‘I will only be a moment,’ Brunner told her, turning Fiend and moving towards the pyre. He barely looked up when he heard Dietrich reach the standing stones, the nobleman’s face contorted with restrained rage and something more, an expression of profound relief.

Brunner reached down and pulled back the shroud, staring intently at the face, then passing his gaze along the length of the man’s mutilated body.

‘You dare interrupt the ceremony?’ Dietrich challenged. This time he would have drawn his sword, but for the slender hand that restrained him.

‘There is time yet,’ the priestess said. ‘And it is fitting there should be one mourner here who did not come because of the baron’s largesse.’

Brunner watched the exchange, noticing the way the priestess’s eyes lingered on Dietrich, the way her hand tightened almost imperceptibly around that of the baronet. He filed the observation away with the others he had already made.

Brunner pulled the shroud back in place, leaning back in his saddle. He nodded to the priestess. ‘I don’t recognise him, or at least he doesn’t look like anybody I’m interested in.’ He stared at Dietrich. ‘It looks like the wolf played a bit of havoc with your man.’

‘Maybe you should reconsider your interest in my father’s reward,’ came Dietrich’s cold response.

‘Maybe,’ mused Brunner. ‘But your wolf has already cost me three hundred gold crowns. It would be nice to make that back, and with interest.’

Confusion showed on Dietrich’s face. ‘My name is Brunner,’ the bounty killer explained. ‘I hunt men. That carrion we left in the forest was bound for Reiksfang prison and the court of Judge Vaulkberg.’ Brunner smiled thinly as he saw the disgust on the nobleman’s face when he mentioned his profession. ‘I admit that wolves aren’t my usual quarry, but for five hundred crowns I’d pull a troll from its hole. Besides, is a wolf really so much different from a man?’

Brunner let the nobleman consider the barb, turning instead to regard the comely priestess. He made an expansive gesture to the pyre. ‘I’m done. You can burn him now.’

Baron Friederick Hartog was an old man and the years had not been kind to him. Only wisps of hair clung to his scalp, his wrinkled skin sunken against his weary bones. His toothless mouth drooled from the corner where a stroke had paralysed his face and the eyes which stared out from deep within their sockets were heavy with melancholy and despair. The rich purple robe he wore seemed almost to smother him and press down upon his weakened frame with its weight. A page ran after him, carrying his ring and crown and other badges of rank and office. The old baron wheezed as he sank into his gilded chair at the head of the long table in the castle’s grand hall.

The arrival of the bounty hunter, and his harrowing escape from the wolf, had provoked the baron into holding a feast. Brunner suspected it was an excuse to hold the celebration, a futile effort on the old man’s part to escape from his problems, if only for a few hours.

Brunner found himself seated close to the baron, much to the chagrin of the courtiers and landed gentry who surrounded him. He suspected that, in the current crisis, the baron had more use, and more reason to entertain, the company of men such as himself than fawning hangers-on who could offer no solution to his troubles.

At the baron’s side, glowering at Brunner whenever his eyes strayed in the bounty hunter’s direction, was Dietrich. The baronet had tried to convince his father that even in their duress they did not need the services of a hired killer such as Brunner. Indeed, Dietrich had argued the subject with surprising vehemence until finally roared down by a diatribe that brought a fit of coughing from his father’s wasted body.

When he was not glowering at the bounty hunter or trying to soothe his father’s fears, Dietrich’s eyes would stray down the table and linger on a slender figure seated among the district’s aristocracy. A less observant watcher might have missed the coy glances shared between the baronet and the raven-haired beauty from the stone circle. She had discarded her thin robe and leaf mantle for a more sociable emerald gown and doeskin gloves. This, Brunner learned, was Frieda, the priestess of Rhya and the district’s spiritual mentor. Brunner had heard little about the worship of Rhya, her faith was suborned to that of Taal in less backward provinces. Only in Stirland did she still receive worship in her own right rather than as the wife of the nature god Taal. He wondered what manner of strictures the Old Faith had regarding its priestesses and how Mother Rhya might take one of her servants dallying with a baronet.

‘This damnable wolf!’ the baron cursed, spilling wine from his goblet as he slammed it angrily against the table. The cheery lute music of the minstrels died away and conversation around the table fell to a hushed whisper. The celebration had done nothing to snap the baron from his brooding thoughts and now he was giving voice to his outrage.

‘I can feel its damn fangs at my throat!’ Friederick said, closing his clawed hand about his neck. ‘It is bleeding me dry. The peasants are too frightened to work the fields, too terrified to tend the herds. My land is dying around me and there is no one to save it!’

‘We have try, great boyar,’ the words came from a dusky ruffian seated to Brunner’s right. He was a stocky, powerfully built man, bald but with bushy eyebrows and a moustache. His clothes were the furs and leather of a colder clime, heavy bearskin boots and a furry goat-hide jacket. The stink of sweat and kvas had soaked into the garments so that even the smell of the feast could not mask them. This, Brunner understood, was Kazan, one of the Kislevite wolf hunters.

‘I have hunt the wolf in many land,’ Kazan continued, pausing to noisily slurp down a goblet of wine and snap his fingers at a servant to bring more. ‘I have the many pelt to show for my skill. One of my wolf, his hide sit in the Tsarina’s palace, and no lie!’ He tapped his chest. ‘When Kazan tell you this wolf, he is clever, then you know it is truth. But he will no get away from Kazan and Pujardov!’

Kazan reached his arm beside him, grabbing the shoulder of the man seated next to him. Pujardov was much younger than Kazan, his thick black hair tied back in a long scalplock, his face just starting to darken with beard. Like the elder Kislevite, he wore rude garments of hide and leather and around his neck was a crude necklace of bear claws, talons that looked to be sharper than daggers, even when removed from their original owners.

‘Will that be before or after the crops fail!’ quipped one of the aristocrats. Kazan glared at the courtier, but the arrival of another goblet of wine distracted him from the object of his ire.

‘The wolf, very soon he is being mine,’ Kazan promised. ‘Pujardov saw sign of him only this night.’

The baron sneered at the boast. ‘Nurse that wine, Kazan. It is liable to be the last you take from my table.’ The old man scowled at the two wolf hunters. ‘So your son found sign of the wolf, did he?’ A crooked finger pointed at Brunner. ‘This man saw more than sign. He saw the beast itself! That is more than you Kislevite layabouts have done in six months!’

Dietrich closed his hands on his father’s shoulders, easing him back into his seat. ‘They have done better than the other hunters,’ he reminded his father. He stared directly into Brunner’s icy eyes. ‘The others were all killed by the wolf.’

Brunner set down the sliver of cormorant he had been eating. He stared back at Dietrich and smiled. ‘If it is a wolf,’ he said. He had kept certain things from Dietrich and his father, but the boasting of the Kislevites had made him think that perhaps he had made a mistake in doing so.

‘What you mean, “if it is wolf”? You no think Kazan know wolf when he see his tracks!’ The Kislevite grabbed the breast of Brunner’s tunic, pulling the bounty hunter to his feet. ‘You say that again!’

Brunner said nothing. Instead he buried a fist in the wolf hunter’s gut, doubling the man over, then brought his forearm smashing into Kazan’s neck, spilling him onto the floor. A kick to the head ensured the Kislevite would stay there. Brunner stabbed his finger into Pujardov’s face as the youth surged towards him, pointing straight between the boy’s eyes. The menacing gesture brought the young Kislevite short and he took a step back.

‘Enough of this!’ shouted Dietrich. ‘If you scum cannot conduct yourselves like civilised men, you can go take your supper in the kennels!’

Brunner shook his head and chuckled as he returned to his seat. A pair of servants dragged the unconscious Kazan away. Pujardov lingered for only a moment, then hurried after his father, pausing only to rip a bottle of wine from the hands of a valet.

‘At least it smells better now,’ the bounty hunter said, returning to the roast cormorant on his plate. Dietrich continued to glare at him, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by his father’s voice.

‘You say it is not a wolf, Kazan insists it is,’ Friederick said. ‘One of you must be wrong.’

‘Kazan is an experienced wolf hunter,’ Dietrich interrupted. ‘What does this… this assassin know about hunting wolves?’

‘It isn’t a wolf,’ Brunner repeated coldly. ‘Did you ever see a wolf that walked upon its hind legs or had hands to close around its prey? Has Kazan told you how a wolf can ignore lead bullets and steel bolts, how it can dance away unmarked after being struck with an axe?’

‘Then if it is not a wolf but some invulnerable monster, how did you escape?’ Dietrich asked, his voice thin and mocking.

For an answer, Brunner tossed a few burnt weeds onto the table. The dramatic gesture brought gasps from those closest to him and those further away craned their necks to see what he had produced. Frieda rounded the table and stepped over Kazan’s vacated seat to examine them.

‘Hawthorn,’ she pronounced, drawing away in revulsion. ‘A strange weapon to use against a wild animal. How did you think to burn hawthorn to drive it away?’

Brunner rubbed a hand through his close-cropped hair, scanning his audience, trying to judge their mettle. Any community so far from the niceties of civilisation was likely to be more pragmatic than pious. Whatever he said, if they thought he could help end their problem he would be safe enough.

‘I encountered an old woman in the forest,’ Brunner said. ‘It was she who gave me the weeds and told me how to use them.’

The reaction of the other listeners was nothing beside that of the baron. He straightened himself in his chair, leaning forward, gazing intently at Brunner.

‘The woman! How was she called?’ growled the baron. It was a demand, not a question.

‘Miranda,’ Brunner answered. ‘Mamma Miranda.’

The baron’s face became ashen. Trembling, he rose from his chair, then stumbled, relying upon his son to help lead him from the dining hall. Shocked silence followed his exit.

Brunner watched the noblemen leave, then looked over at Frieda. ‘I guess that means dinner’s over.’

As a valet showed Brunner to the room that had been prepared for him, he found himself suddenly face-to-face with the baron and his son. The old man was still visibly shaking, the sadness and defeat in his eyes even more pronounced.

‘You were not lying when you spoke at my table?’ the baron asked.

‘I don’t lie to people about to pay me five hundred crowns,’ Brunner answered, his words clipped with irritation.

The baron grabbed his hand, holding it tight in his withered claw. ‘You shall have a thousand, two thousand!’ The offer faded into a wracking cough. Dietrich tried to assist the baron, but the old man waved him back.

‘The witch!’ the baron continued. ‘Find her again. Tell her to lift this curse she has placed upon my lands! If she won’t,’ he paused, wondering if he dared voice the words. ‘If she won’t, kill her and bring her head back to me! Do this, and you shall have a fortune!’

Brunner remained impassive, detaching the baron’s fingers from his hand and brushing them aside. ‘Why not send a messenger to Wurtbad. You can have witch hunters here inside a week, and they will work much cheaper.’

The baron started to speak, then cast a nervous glance at his son and the valet. ‘I need her gone now!’ The authority drained out of his voice and his words became desperate, almost pleading. ‘You will do it for me!’

‘I’ll take it under serious consideration,’ Brunner answered, motioning for the valet to lead on. The servant hesitated, unsure if his master had finished speaking with his guest, but when the baron made no protest, he motioned for Brunner to follow him down the stone-walled corridor.

‘Two thousand crowns!’ the valet whistled once they were out of sight of the baron. ‘You could buy all of Wurtbad with that much money! Still, to go after a witch…’

Brunner interrupted the lad’s thoughts. ‘You know where the Kislevites sleep?’ he asked.

The valet blinked, confused by the abrupt question. ‘Yes, of course.’ He shivered as the bounty hunter took something from his belt and tossed it at him. Instinctively, the boy caught it, apprehension turning to joy when he found it to be a silver shilling.

‘You’ll have to earn that,’ Brunner warned him, causing the valet’s grin to soften. He reached into his belt again, removing a small pouch. He handed it to the boy. ‘I want you to grind that into their boots. They can’t see you doing it and once it’s done you can’t say anything about it.’

The boy gulped at the implied threat, but nodded his understanding.

‘One last thing,’ Brunner told him. ‘I want to know as soon as the Kislevites leave the castle tomorrow. There’s an extra shilling in it for you if I can still smell kvas at the gates.’

Brunner motioned for the valet to be off on his clandestine errand. He watched him race off, then turned and entered his room. It was not thoughts of witches and wolves that occupied him, it was the memory of Viktor’s body and the marks the wolf had left upon it. How very different from the marks on the dead wolf hunter’s body. Those wounds had looked like the sort of thing that might be left by a bear claw honed to razor-keenness.

Brunner strode across the courtyard of Castle Hartog, the chill of morning turning his breath to mist before him. He stepped into the stables. A young stable boy was sleeping just inside, nestled within a mound of hay. A kick roused the boy from his slumber. He blinked at the bounty hunter, eyes going wide with fright.

‘You’ve been here all night?’ he demanded. The youth nodded, too afraid to speak. ‘What did the Kislevites ask you to do to my horse?’

The boy shuddered, quickly scrambling to the pile of hay and digging in it for something. He swiftly turned back around, displaying a pair of cruel-looking triangular pieces of metal.

‘He asked me to put these in their hooves,’ the boy confessed. ‘But I didn’t do it! I swear I didn’t, no matter what they paid me!’ The lad’s face turned a sickly green. ‘I had a look in that barrel when we removed the tack from your packhorse. I wouldn’t do nothing to provoke you, as Rhya is my witness I wouldn’t!’

‘Well spoken,’ the bounty hunter’s chill voice answered. He watched as the boy wilted beneath his gaze. ‘A wise decision. Now I need you to fetch me a pig, the leaner the better, and a length of rope to use as a leash.’ He waved the boy away. ‘I’ll take care of saddling my own horse.’

The bounty hunter cast a strange sight as he left the castle. Mounted on the back of his charger Fiend, he was crouched low in the saddle, watching the pink and brown swine the stable boy had found for him as it tugged and strained on the end of its leash. He set the beast down. Instantly its nose was snuffling against the ground, and it uttered a sharp squeal. The pig strained at the end of its rope. Brunner chuckled grimly to himself. Farmers in Bretonnia would train hogs to hunt truffles and they held that the noses of their hogs were sharper than any hound. He was counting that the snouts of the Empire’s swine were no less keen. If there was one thing a pig enjoyed eating more than a truffle it was a snotling. The snotling dung he had the valet grind into the boots of the two Kislevites was something he doubted the slovenly wolf hunters would even notice but, to the pig, it was the scent of a most delicious supper.

Brunner let the eager pig lead the way. Wolf and witch would wait. First he would need to attend to his rivals. He had no intention of ending up like Otto and however many other hunters the treacherous Kazan and Pujardov had ambushed and killed.

For most of the morning, the boundless appetite of the pig guided Brunner through the winding paths of the forest. Even by day, there was a brooding intensity about the place, an air of lurking menace. The trees pressed in close about him and he found himself watching every shadow for signs of movement. He knew that Fiend would sense the wolf-beast long before he did, but he felt there was no reason not to be cautious just the same.

It was nearly noon before a sharp cry echoed through the forest. The bounty hunter was not surprised to find that the sound came from the direction the pig was leading him. He tied the end of the swine’s leash to a branch and pressed on ahead. It seemed he had been harsh belittling the skills of the Kislevites. In only a few hours they had managed something it seemed the baron had never been capable of. They had caught the witch.

The two wolf hunters were crouched in a small clearing, a little fire burning on the ground between them. Lying on the ground, trussed up like a Sigmarzeit goose, was the old hag Mamma Miranda. Her feet, thrust full in the flames, had blackened, blood oozing from the split skin. Pujardov, kneeling close to her head, kept pouring kvas down her mouth each time she seemed about to pass out, the burning spirit snapping her back into awareness.

‘It is so simple, little mama,’ Kazan scolded. ‘All you do is lift curse. I tell Lord Dietrich, Pujardov pulls your feet from fire and everyone happy.’ The Kislevite stabbed a curved dagger into the soil, snorting with agitation. ‘Why you so stubborn? You like to hurt? That is what make you glad?’ He stood and drew an ugly-looking axe from his belt. ‘It is your choice, little mama,’ he sighed. ‘Pujardov, hold out her hand. I start with thumb and work the way around.’

So intent were they on the vicious torture that the first the two wolf hunters were aware of Brunner’s presence was when Fiend bolted out from the brush. The charger slammed into the stunned Kazan, knocking the man into the fire. He squealed and shrieked as he rolled across the ground, trying to douse his smoking garments. Pujardov rushed at Brunner, a spiked club in his hand. Brunner swung Fiend around, a kick of the charger’s hoof sending the hunter’s furred cap flying into the bushes and throwing the man himself to the ground.

‘I kill you!’ Kazan snarled, rising to his feet, the axe still clenched in his fists. ‘I kill you, you son of…’

Brunner’s pistol barked and Kazan’s threat died in a gargle of blood. The bounty killer holstered the spent weapon and dropped down from the saddle. Pujardov groaned as Brunner strode past the prone Kislevite. Brunner reached down, grabbed hold of the youth’s scalplock and slammed his face into the ground until he stopped moving.

Brunner rose from the unconscious wolf hunter and walked to the abused wreck of the old woman. Fire, it seemed, had not been the first motivational tool the two Kislevites had used on her.

Miranda’s eyes fluttered, but she forced them to focus on the bounty hunter as he loomed over her. A vindictive smile spread across her face. ‘So you took Mamma Miranda’s advice,’ she cackled, oblivious to the trickle of blood streaming from her mouth as she spoke.

‘The baron is paying me two thousand crowns to end your curse,’ Brunner told her. ‘Whether you live or die doesn’t interest him so long as the curse is lifted.’

The witch laughed, spitting gore into the grass. ‘So he remembers me, does he? As well he should. It’s not every man bold enough to take the virtue of a priestess.’ A sly grin worked its way through her pain. ‘Though you might say it is a trait of the Hartogs!’

‘The curse, witch!’ Brunner growled. He was not certain what kind of magic there was in the old woman, but he did know what kind of damage had been done to her. Whatever she would do, she did not have long to do it.

‘The curse!’ Miranda cackled. ‘Oh yes, it will survive old Mamma Miranda, have no fear. There’s some things it is easier to invoke than send away.’ She looked sternly into Brunner’s eyes. ‘Take no part in it!’ she hissed. ‘My Masters will not forgive me if you die because of my magic and death is no refuge from Their wrath!’

‘Then end your enchantment!’ Brunner said.

‘You don’t understand what I’ve done,’ the witch answered. ‘What is done can’t be taken back! “Even the noble heart, that fears not Old Night, may be cursed and damned, by the werekin’s bite!” It was the blood of the werekin I mixed into the philtre, to damn and destroy the baron’s preening son!’

Brunner found himself recoiling from the hag’s slobbering words. The werekin, men that wore the shape of beasts at the full of Morrslieb, things so terrible that most insisted they were nothing more than fable and traveller’s tales. He remembered the strange paws of the wolf and the terrible intelligence in its strange eyes. Was that what the witch had summoned to work her revenge?

Miranda was laughing again, forcing herself onto her elbows. ‘End the enchantment you say?’ Blood dribbled down her chin as she laughed. ‘Oh, aye, that I can do, and won’t the baron and his son be so happy when it is done!’ Brunner thought the words would be her last, as the ravaged body shuddered in a spasm of coughing. But the witch had strength enough to point at the curved dagger Kazan had stabbed into the ground.

‘There is your key, Brunner of Drakenberg!’ she hissed. ‘Cut the beast but once with that blade and the enchantment will be broken! Aye, the enchantment will be broken!’ Another fit of laughter gripped her, but this time there was no strength to sustain the toll it took from her body. She collapsed, her last breath wheezing from her bloodied lips.

Brunner bent to the earth and retrieved the dagger from the ground. He slid it beneath his belt and moved on to the chore of binding Pujardov. The wolf hunter regained awareness just as he was finishing the labour. Pujardov struggled against his bonds, but found himself trussed tightly to the trunk of an oak tree.

‘Save your energy,’ Brunner advised Pujardov as he stepped away. ‘You’ll need it.’

Pujardov hurled curses at the bounty hunter, then gave a wail of horror as he saw his father’s body strewn along the ground. ‘You killed my father!’

Brunner looked up from reloading his pistol. ‘Be thankful I need live bait to lure the wolf to me, or you’d have gotten the same,’ he warned.

Brunner looked at the position of Mannslieb and judged that another hour had passed. He raised his pistol into the air and fired. The report echoed through the forest. He was playing a dangerous game, he knew, but he was trusting that he had guessed the lay of the land correctly. Coiled in the branches of a big oak at the edge of the clearing, the bounty hunter looked down at the bait tethered to the trunk below.

Pujardov glared up at him. ‘This won’t work, murder swine! The wolf won’t come where it hears hunters!’

Brunner poured powder down the barrel of the pistol. ‘If it was a wolf, you’d be right. But this beast, I think, likes to fight. That is why Dietrich paid you and your father to kill all the other hunters and make it look like the beast’s work.’ Pujardov’s sullen silence was all the confirmation he needed. ‘He pays you to make sure no one hurts the beast?’

‘Clever,’ a sharp voice snarled from the shadows. Brunner swung around, firing his pistol at the voice. He swore as he heard the round smash against a tree.

‘No more of that!’ Dietrich growled, stepping into the clearing, his pistol pointed at Brunner. The bounty hunter was perched in the tree above Pujardov, a vantage point that allowed him to watch almost every approach to the clearing and his bait. ‘Unless you want to die where you stand!’

‘You won’t kill me,’ Brunner told him. ‘You can’t afford to now.’

A tinge of doubt crept into Dietrich’s hate-filled eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’ He glanced at Pujardov, a terrible suspicion growing in his mind.

‘Your assassins didn’t get anything out of the witch before she died,’ Brunner said. ‘But I heard a few things. Something about a philtre and how to break an enchantment.’

Dietrich’s body trembled with rage. ‘Tell me what she said!’ he ordered.

‘No,’ Brunner answered. ‘We bargain for that. Throw away your pistol.’

Indecision crawled across the baronet’s face, his anger warring against his fear. It was the fear that finally won out. ‘Throw away yours first,’ he said, gesturing at Brunner’s crossbow pistols. The bounty hunter nodded, carefully unfastening the weapons and letting them fall to the ground. With a sour expression, Dietrich threw his own weapon away.

The instant the threat of the pistol was gone, Brunner dropped from the tree, using Pujardov’s body to cushion the fall. The Kislevite’s livid curses went unnoticed as the bounty hunter rolled across the ground. As he straightened, a slender throwing knife flew from his hand. The blade slashed into Dietrich’s arm, biting deep into his noble flesh.

The baronet recovered from his surprise almost too quickly for Brunner. The jewelled sword was in his hand a moment before the heavy falchion of the bounty killer came smashing down. Instead of collapsing the noble’s skull, the blade only grazed his shoulder. Dietrich paled at the sight of his own blood on Brunner’s sword.

‘Surely the man who hunts wolves with neither spear nor bow isn’t afraid of a little blood,’ Brunner snapped. ‘Because I assure you, there is more where that came from!’

The bounty hunter ripped his falchion free from Dietrich’s parrying steel, nearly breaking the slender blade of his enemy in the manoeuvre. He swung the falchion at the nobleman’s face, at the same time bringing his boot cracking into his shin. The unexpected move staggered the baronet. Brunner moved in for the kill.

The deathblow never struck. From the darkness, something black and savage exploded, smashing into the bounty hunter with the force of a lightning bolt. Brunner was knocked sprawling. He felt fangs scrape against his helm as he rolled on the ground, felt claws catch in his armour. The bounty hunter smashed a fist into the wolf-like face of his attacker, then brought the iron pommel of his falchion crushing down on one of its hand-like paws.

The wolf yelped more from surprise than pain, but its cry was picked up by the wounded Dietrich.

‘Don’t dare strike her, you scum!’ he raged. ‘Don’t you dare touch my Frieda!’

As it heard the name, the wolf-beast disentangled itself from Brunner. With a quick, loping trot, it ran to the wounded nobleman. Dietrich’s vengeful advance was halted in a piteous display of affection as the wolf nuzzled its face against his body, licking timidly at his wounds. The baronet’s hand stroked the wolf’s pelt, not with the idle touch of man and beast, but the adoring caress of lovers.

‘She cheated me!’ Dietrich raged. ‘The witch cheated me. She said the philtre would make Frieda love me despite her vows to the goddess. She said nothing about… about… this!’ He turned tear-rimmed eyes to the she-wolf. ‘He won’t hurt you, my love! None of them will ever hurt you!’

Brunner staggered to his feet, another throwing knife in his hand. The wolf-beast turned, snarling at him. Dietrich glared at the bounty hunter, some trace of reason overcoming his concern for his lover.

‘You can’t hurt her,’ he smiled. ‘When she is like this, no one can. So what does your knife matter!’

‘It’s not for her!’ Brunner growled back. In a fluid motion, he sent the knife whistling through the air and slamming into the nobleman’s injured shoulder. Dietrich screamed in pain, his agony exciting the wolf-beast’s adoring fury. The monster lunged at Brunner, covering the clearing in a single bound.

The bounty hunter was ready for her, the witch’s curved dagger slashing through the black pelt. The she-wolf wailed as the blade struck her, blood bubbling from the wound. Brunner leapt back as the beast clawed at him. He readied himself for another attack, then hesitated as he saw the wolf-beast’s body shudder. He remembered what Miranda had told him about breaking the enchantment.

If he expected the wolf to change back into a woman, however, he was disappointed. It was still the lupine face of a beast that regarded him when the convulsions passed and the wolf lifted herself from the ground. The only change that had come upon it were the eyes. No longer blazing red, they were a soft blue, filled with horror and disgust and shame. Filled with so many things, but not a trace of love.

‘Frieda!’ Dietrich screamed, rushing to the fallen wolf.

Again the wolf-beast reacted to hearing her name. Understanding shone in her eyes. She knew all that had been done to her and why. She also knew who had forced this nightmare upon her.

With a snarl that was more than that of an animal, the she-wolf leapt upon Dietrich, her fangs closing about his throat. Savagely she worried at the nobleman’s flesh, scattering his blood across the clearing. The baronet shrieked, wailing in agony that was more than physical. His hand closed about the heft of a jewelled dagger and with a moan of utter despair, he drew the blade and sank it into his lover’s side.

Man and beast slumped to the ground, each quivering as death crept into their limbs. Dietrich struggled to touch his hand to the she-wolf’s head, the wolf struggling just as hard to pull away from his noxious touch. In the end, it was the beast who won and an almost human smile spread across its muzzle as it saw the baronet’s hand slump into the grass just out of reach of her.

Brunner dropped to the ground, watching through the night. If tradition was right, then the carcass of a werekin would change back into its human shape with the dawn. It was a terrible thing to consider, the only thing the body of a dead priestess would earn him would be a noose. Still, he did not want to risk the legends being right. After all, the dagger Dietrich had stabbed into the beast had been a silvered one, and silver was the only metal that could bring harm to a werekin.

‘You’ve got your beast!’ snarled Pujardov, struggling against his bonds. ‘Untie me!’

The bounty hunter shook his head, then a grim smile started to form. What was it the old witch had said? The bite of the werekin would make a courageous man into a werekin? If so, then it would certainly do the same to a murderous Kislevite slug. Brunner walked towards the hunter, releasing him from the tree but leaving his hands tied. He shoved Pujardov towards the body of the wolf-beast. The hunter cringed away from the carcass in mortal terror, but another shove from Brunner pitched him to the ground beside it.

‘You’ll die for this! And for what you did to my father!’ Pujardov threatened.

Brunner ignored the curses raging off the Kislevite’s tongue, instead seizing the man’s arm and shoving it between the gaping jaws of the wolf. Eyes wide with horror, Pujardov tried to squirm away as Brunner pushed the jaws of the dead beast close, sinking their sharp fangs into the Kislevite’s flesh.

A dead priestess was worth nothing, but a live monster, that would be worth a considerable reward, enough to warrant waiting at the castle until the next time Morrslieb was full. When the baron watched Pujardov change, whatever the Kislevite tried to tell him would be forgotten.

On the ground beside him, Pujardov wailed in agony, horrified at what the bounty hunter had done to him.

Brunner shook his head. ‘What are you crying about? You would have made a lousy orphan anyway.’

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ROBERT EARL

Robert Earl graduated from Keele University in 1994, after which he started a career in sales. Three years later though, he’d had more than enough of that and since then he has worked and travelled in the Balkans and the Middle East. He now lives in England, and his credits for the Black Library include the Florin and Lorenzo series and Ancient Blood.

DAVID EARLE

David Earle was born and raised in the state of Maryland. He minored in creative writing at Washington College, where he also learned how to speak in binary cant. When not writing he makes a living as a programmer and all-round computer geek.  The remainder of his free time is spent reading and nursing an Xbox addiction. David and his wife, Sarah, are proudly owned by a Pembroke Welsh Corgi. ‘The Assassin’s Dilemma’ is the first published work he will admit to.

DARIUS HINKS

Darius Hinks’s first novel, Warrior Priest, won the David Gemmell Morningstar award for best newcomer.

Since then, he’s refused to let anyone prise the award from his claw-like grip, which has made writing slightly harder (the award keeps clunking against his keyboard and adding entirely inappropriate scenes). He struggled through this adversity to produce a second novel, Sigvald, before his keyboard collapsed. he is now in the market for a nice quill pen.

PAUL KEARNEY

Paul Kearney studied at Lincoln College, Oxford where he read Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse and Middle English and was a keen member of the Mountaineering Society and the Officer Training Corps. He has published several titles including The Sea Beggars to critical acclaim, being long-listed for the British Fantasy Award.

NATHAN LONG

Nathan Long was a struggling screenwriter for fifteen years, during which time he had three movies made and a handful of live-action and animated TV episodes produced. Now he is a novelist, and is enjoying it much more. For Black Library he has written three Warhammer novels featuring the Blackhearts, and he took over the Gotrek and Felix series, starting with the eighth instalment, Orcslayer. He is currently writing the Ulrika the Vampire series.

ROSS O’BRIEN

This incarnation of Ross O’Brien hails from Stockport, England, where he plays Warhammer and gets tipsy on tea. The Last Ride of Heiner Rothstein is his first published attempt to make fiction stranger than truth.

ANTHONY REYNOLDS

After finishing university Anthony Reynolds set sail from his homeland Australia and ventured forth to foreign climes. He ended up settling in the UK, and managed to blag his way into Games Workshop’s hallowed design studio. There he worked for four years as a games developer and two years as part of the management team. He now resides back in his hometown of Sydney, overlooking the beach and enjoying the sun and the surf, though he finds that to capture the true darkness and horror of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 he has taken to writing in what could be described as a darkened cave.

C. L. WERNER

C. L. Werner was a diseased servant of the Horned Rat long before his first story in Inferno! magazine. His Black Library credits include the Chaos Wastes books Palace of the Plague Lord and Blood for the Blood God, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy. In 2009, he began recording the exploits of the notorious Thanquol with the novel Grey Seer. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the world of Warhammer.

CHRIS WRAIGHT

Chris Wraight is a writer of fantasy and science fiction, whose first novel was published in 2008. Since then, he’s published books set in the Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40,000 and Stargate: Atlantis universes. He doesn’t own a cat, dog, or augmented hamster (which technically disqualifies him from writing for Black Library), but would quite like to own a tortoise one day. He’s based in a leafy bit of south-west England, and when not struggling to meet deadlines enjoys running through scenic parts of it.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2010 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Clint Langley

© Games Workshop Limited, 2010, 2011. All rights reserved.

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ISBN 978-0-85787-369-9

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