THE OLD WORLD TIMELINE

A brief guide to the history of the Warhammer World

Year | Event
0001 | The time of Sigmar - founder of the Empire, and its first Emperor. The Goblin Wars end as the Goblinoid hordes are driven back over the World's Edge Mountains into the Dark Lands.
0050 | Sigmar takes his magical Warhammer back to the Dwarves who made it and is never seen again.
1111 | Devastating outbreak of Black Plague reduces whole populations throughout the Empire.
1500 | Religious war between Tilea/Estalia and Araby.
1547 | Grand Duke of Middenland declares himself the rightful Emperor without election, starting the Age of the Three Emperors.
1750 | Kislev separated from the Empire.
1839 | Birth of Genevieve Dieudonne (future heroine of Drachenfels), in Parravon. 
1851 | Count Drachenfels sacks Parravon.
1855 | Genevieve is turned into an immortal vampire by Chandagnac the Ancient (cf Drachenfels). 
1937 | Drachenfels' poison feast; death of Emperor Carolus.
1979 | Empress Magritta becomes last elected Emperor for 400 years.
2150 | Sea Elves return to the Old World.
2177 | Death of Chandagnac the Ancient - vampiric 'father' of Genevieve Dieudonne.
2262 | Birth of Yevgeny Yefimovich, future high priest of Tzeentch - the Chaos God known as The Changer of the Ways.
2302 | The Incursions of Chaos begin a new assault on the Old World. Magnus the Pious appears in Nuln to deliver his now legendary rallying call to arms. Under Magnus' leadership, the chaos forces are beaten back. Magnus is crowned Emperor, and goes on to restore the Empire's former glories.
2369 | Death of Magnus the Pious, the crown passes to Count Leopold of Stirland.
2370 | Birth of Gotrek the Dwarf - future Trollslayer.
2401 | Disappearance of Emperor Matthias IV.
2429 | The Burgomeisters of Marienburg declare the Wasteland's independence and secede from the Empire. Emperor Dieter IV is deposed.
2446 | Birth of Vukotich the mercenary - future retainer of the von Mecklenbergs of Sudenland.
2456 | Birth of the mercenary, Wolf - future companion of Konrad. 
2460 | Birth of 'Filthy' Harald Kleindeinst (hero of Beasts in Velvet). 
2459 | Birth of Oswald von Mecklenberg - Imperial Elector, Baron of Sudenland and father of Johann and Wolf (cf Ignorant Armies). 
2465 | Birth of Orfeo (narrator of Zaragoz, Plague Daemon, and Storm Warriors). At 8 months of age he is adopted as a foundling by the Wood Elves of the Loren forest. 

2470

Harmis Detz - veteran soldier of the Border Guard of Khypris in the Border Princes - witnesses the first in a new series of attacks by followers of chaos. Against his better judgement, Harmis joins in the hunt for the plague daemon, Ystareth (cf Plague Daemon). 

Vukotich in the Northern Forests/Chaos Wastes in the service of Tsar Radii Bokha.

2471 | Birth of Detlef Sierck, greatest playwright and impressario of the Warhammer world.
2475 | Birth of Johann von Mecklenberg, son of Oswald, the Baron Sudenland.
2477 | Prince Oswald von Konigswald recruits a band of adventurers - including the vampire Genevieve Dieudonne - and leads them into the Grey Mountains to seek out and destroy the evil enchanter Drachenfels.
2478 | Birth of Konrad; Birth of Wolf von Mecklenberg - Johann's younger brother.
2483 | Vukotich impressed into the service of the von Mecklenbergs as Johann's tutor.
2490 | In a village on the edge of the Forest of Shadows, the young Konrad rescues Elyssa from a Beastman, and their friendship begins (cf Konrad). 
2491 | The Chaos Champion Cicatrice mounts a raid on the summer home of the von Mecklenberg family, in the Southlands. While Johann and Vukotich escape the slaughter, Wolf is captured (cf Ignorant Armies).  Emperor Luitpold dies, and is succeeded by his son Karl-Franz. Birth of Prince Luitpold.
2492 | On the island of Morien, Herla, King of Plenydd, and his bard Trystan come up against the malevolent influence of a group of strange Elves. Trystan later travels to Great Albion, then on to Bretonnia (cf Storm Warriors). 
2495 | Gotrek the Trollslayer, accompanied by his human companion, Felix, investigate strange goings on in the Reikwald Forest (cf Ignorant Armies). 

2496

On their way to search for treasure in Carag Eight Peaks, Felix and Gotrek join up with the followers of Baron Gottfried von Diehl, travelling through the Black Mountains to exile in the Border Princes (cf Wolf Riders). 

Far beneath Carag Eight Peaks, Felix retrieves the lost sword Karaghul (cf Red Thirst). 

Summer solstice - Konrad's village is attacked and razed by Beastmen. Konrad meets up with the mercenary Wolf, and agrees to be his squire for 5 years (cf Konrad). 

Around this time, the wizard Litzenreich is in Middenheim, experimenting with warpstone.

Trystan Harper meets Orfeo in Bretonnia and tells him the tale of Storm Warriors. 

2499 | Orfeo meets Harmis Detz in the Border Princes and hears the story of Plague Daemon.  Konrad and Wolf employed in gold mine near Belyevorota Pass in Kislev. Litzenreich the wizard is in the service of Gustav the Mad of Talabecland. 
2500 | Siege of Praag - this Kislevite city in the far north of the realm is attacked by massed forces including followers of all four of the Great Chaos Powers. 

2501

Johann and Vukotich finally catch up with Cicatrice and Johann's brother, Wolf, in the Northern Chaos Wastes (cf The Ignorant Armies). 

Summer solstice - Konrad and Wolf head north in search of treasure buried in an abandoned Dwarven temple.

Following his escape from a warband dedicated to Khorne - the Chaos Power known as the Blood God - Konrad joins forces with the wizard Litzenreich. Driven out of Middenheim for pursuing forbidden warpstone experiments, they travel to Altdorf (cf Shadowbreed). 

2502

Under the patronage of Prince Oswald von Konigswald of Ostland, Detlef Sierck attempts to stage his play Drachenfels in the Castle Drachenfels itself. The performance nearly ends in disaster when the Great Enchanter returns to claim his revenge... (cf Drachenfels). 

Konrad uncovers the true enormity of the Skaven scheme in Middenheim and Altdorf (cf Warblade). 

In Estalia, Orfeo the Minstrel becomes embroiled in the internal politics of Zaragoz, and barely escapes with his life (cf Zaragoz). 

2503

Orfeo is captured by the pirate Alkadi Nasreen, and recounts to him the tales of Zaragoz, Plague Daemon and Storm Warriors. 

Following the breakdown of Grand Theogonist Yorri, Lector Mikael Hasselstein, the Emperor's confessor, becomes the most powerful individual in the Cult of Sigmar (cf Beasts in Velvet). 

2506

A vicious murderer stalks the streets of Altdorf. The tough copper Filthy Harald and the scryer Rosanna desperately search for the killer against a backdrop of growing civil unrest and the machinations of Chaos (cf Beasts in Velvet). 

Johann von Mecklenberg returns to his family's estates in Sudenland as Baron and Elector.

Genevieve leaves Altdorf.

Contents

Geheimnisnacht by William King

The Reavers and the Dead by Charles Davidson

The Other by Nicola Griffith

Apprentice Luck by Sean Flynn

A Gardener in Parravon by Brian Craig

The Star Boat by Steve Baxter

The Ignorant Armies by Jack Yeovil

The Laughter of the Dark Gods by William King

GEHEIMNISNACHT

by William King

"Curse all manling coach drivers and all manling women," muttered Gotrek Gurnisson, adding a curse in Dwarvish.

"You did have to insult the lady Isolde, didn't you?" said Felix Jaeger peevishly. "As things are, we're lucky they didn't just shoot us. If you can call it lucky to be dumped in the Reikwald on Geheimnisnacht Eve."

"We paid for our passage. We were just as entitled to sit inside as her. The drivers were unmanly cowards," said Gotrek. "They refused to meet me hand to hand. I would not have minded being spitted on steel, but being blasted with buckshot is no death for a Trollslayer."

Felix shook his head. He could see that one of his companion's black moods was coming on. There would be no arguing with him. Felix had other things to worry about. The sun was setting, giving the mist-covered forest a ruddy hue. Long shadows danced eerily and brought to mind too many frightening tales of the horrors to be found under the canopy of trees.

He wiped his nose with the edge of his cloak then pulled the Sudenland wool tight about him. He sniffed and looked at the sky where Morrslieb and Mannslieb, the lesser and greater moons, were already visible. Morrslieb seemed to be giving off a feint greenish glow. It wasn't a good sign.

"I think I have a fever coming on," said Felix. The Trollslayer looked up at him and chuckled contemptuously. In the last rays of the dying sun his nose-chain was a bloody arc running from nostril to earlobe.

"Yours is a weak race," said Gotrek. "The only fever I feel this eve is the battle-fever. It sings in my head."

He turned and glared out into the darkness of the woods. "Come out, little beastmen," he bellowed. "I have a gift for you."

He laughed loudly and ran his thumb along the edge of the blade of his great two-handed axe. Felix saw that it drew blood. Gotrek began to suck his thumb.

"Sigmar preserve us, be quiet! Who knows what lurks out there on a night like this?"

Gotrek glared at him. Felix could see the glint of insane violence appear in his eyes. Instinctively Felix's hand strayed nearer to the pommel of his sword.

"Give me no orders, manling. I am of the Elder Race and am beholden only to the Kings Under Mountain, exile though I be."

Felix bowed formally. He was well schooled in the use of the sword. The scars on his face showed that he had fought several duels in his student days. He had once killed a man and so ended a promising academic career. Still he did not relish the thought of fighting the Trollslayer. The tip of Gotrek's crested hair came only to the level of Felix's chest but the dwarf outweighed him and his bulk was all muscle. Felix had seen Gotrek use the axe.

The dwarf took the bow as an apology and turned once more to the darkness. "Come out," he shouted. "I care not if all the powers of evil walk the woods this night. I will face any challenger."

The dwarf was working himself up to a pitch of fury. During the time of their acquaintance Felix had noticed that the Trollslayer's long periods of brooding were often followed by brief explosions of rage. It was one of the things about his companion that fascinated Felix.

He knew that Gotrek had become a Trollslayer to atone for some crime. He was sworn to seek death in unequal combat with fearsome monsters. He seemed bitter to the point of madness and yet he kept to his oath.

Perhaps, thought Felix, I too would go mad if I had been driven into exile among strangers not even of my own race. He felt some sympathy for the crazed dwarf. Felix knew what it was like to be driven from home under a cloud. The duel with Wolfgang Krassner had caused quite a scandal.

At that moment however the dwarf seemed bent on getting them both killed, and he wanted no part of it. Felix continued to plod along the road, casting an occasional worried glance at the bright full moons. Behind him the ranting continued.

"Are there no warriors among you? Come feel my axe. She thirsts!" Only a madman would so tempt fate and the dark powers on Geheimnisnacht, Night of Mystery, in the dark reaches of the forest, Felix decided.

He could make out chanting in the flinty, guttural tongue of the Mountain Dwarves, then once more in Reikspiel, he heard: "send me a champion!"

For a second there was silence. Condensation from the clammy mist ran down his brow. Far, far off the sound of galloping horses rang out in the quiet night. What has that maniac done, Felix thought, has he offended one of the Old Powers? Have they sent their daemon riders to carry us off?

Felix stepped off the road. He shuddered as wet leaves fondled his face. They felt like dead men's fingers. The thunder of hooves came closer, moving with hellish speed along the forest road. Surely only a supernatural being could keep such breakneck pace on the winding forest road? He felt his hand shake as he unsheathed his sword.

I was foolish to follow Gotrek, he thought. Now I'll never get the poem finished. He could hear the loud neighing of horses, the cracking of a whip and mighty wheels turning.

"Good!" Gotrek roared. His voice drifted from the trail behind. "Good!"

There was a loud bellowing and four huge black horses drawing a black coach hurtled past. Felix saw the wheels bounce as they hit a rut in the road. He could just make out a black-cloaked driver. He shrank back into the bushes.

He heard the sound of feet coming closer. The bushes were pulled aside. Before him stood Gotrek, looking madder and wilder than ever. His crest was matted, brown mud was smeared over his tattooed body and his studded leather jerkin was ripped and torn.

"The snotling-fondlers tried to run me over," he yelled. "Let's get after them!"

He turned and headed up the muddy road at a fast trot. Felix noted that Gotrek was singing happily in Khazalid.

Further down the Bogenhafen road they found the Standing Stones Inn. The windows were shuttered and no lights showed. They could hear a neighing from the stables but when they checked there was no coach, black or otherwise, only some skittish ponies and a pedlar's cart.

"We've lost the coach. Might as well get a bed for the night," said Felix. He looked warily at the small moon, Morrslieb. The sickly green glow was stronger. "I do not like being abroad under this evil light."

"You are feeble, manling. Cowardly too."

"They'll have ale."

"On the other hand, some of your suggestions are not without merit. Watery though human beer is, of course."

"Of course," said Felix. Gotrek failed to spot the note of irony in his voice.

The inn was not fortified but the walls were thick, and when they tried the door they found it was barred. Gotrek began to bang it with the butt of his axe-shaft. There was no response.

"I can smell humans within," said Gotrek. Felix wondered how he could smell anything over his own stench. Gotrek never washed and his hair was matted with animal fat to keep his red-dyed crest in place.

"They'll have locked themselves in. Nobody goes abroad on Geheimnisnacht. Unless they're witches or daemon-lovers."

"The black coach was abroad," said Gotrek.

"Its occupants were up to no good. The windows were curtained and the coach bore no crest of arms."

"My throat is too dry to discuss such details. Come on, open up in there or I'll take my axe to the door!"

Felix thought he heard movement within. He pressed an ear to the door. He could make out the mutter of voices and what sounded like weeping.

"Unless you want me to chop through your head, manling, I suggest you stand aside," said Gotrek.

"Just a moment. I say, you inside! Open up! My friend has a very large axe and a very short temper. I suggest you do as he says or lose your door."

"What was that about short?" said Gotrek touchily. 

From behind the door came a thin, quavery cry. "In the name of Sigmar, begone, you daemons of the pit!"

"Right, that's it," said Gotrek. "I've had enough."

He drew his axe back in a huge arc. Felix saw the runes of its blade gleam in the Morrslieb light. He leapt aside.

"In the name of Sigmar," shouted Felix. "You cannot exorcize us. We are simple, weary travellers."

The axe bit into the door with a chunking sound. Splinters of wood flew from it. Gotrek turned to Felix and grinned evilly up at him. Felix noted the missing teeth.

"Shoddily made, these manling doors," said Gotrek.

"I suggest you open up while you still have a door," called Felix.

"Wait," said the quavering voice. "That door cost me five crowns from Jurgen the Carpenter."

The door was unlatched. It opened. A tall, thin man with a sad face framed by white hair stood there. He had a stout club in one hand. Behind him stood an old woman who held a saucer that contained a guttering candle.

"You will not need your weapon, sir. We require only a bed for the night," said Felix.

"And ale," grunted the dwarf.

"And ale," agreed Felix.

"Lots of ale," said Gotrek. Felix looked at the old man and shrugged helplessly.

Inside, the inn had a low common room. The bar was made of planks stretched across two barrels. From the corner three armed men who looked like travelling pedlars watched them warily. They had daggers drawn. The shadows hid their faces but they seemed worried.

The innkeeper hustled them inside and slid the bars back into place. "Can you pay, Herr Doktor?" he asked nervously. Felix could see the man's adam's apple moving.

"I am not a professor, I'm a poet," he said, producing his thin pouch and counting out his few remaining gold coins. "But I can pay."

"Food," said Gotrek. "And ale."

At this the old woman burst into tears. Felix stared at her.

"The hag is discomfited," said Gotrek.

The old man nodded. "Our Gunter is missing on this of all nights."

"Get me some ale," said Gotrek. The innkeeper backed off. Gotrek got up and stumped over to where the pedlars were sitting. They regarded him warily.

"Do any of you know about a black coach drawn by four black horses?" Gotrek asked.

"You have seen the black coach?" asked one of the pedlars. The fear was evident in his voice.

"Seen it? The bloody thing nearly ran me over." A man gasped. Felix heard the sound of a ladle being dropped. He saw the innkeeper stoop to pick it up and begin refilling the tankard.

"You are lucky then," said the fattest and most prosperous-looking pedlar. "Some say the coach is driven by daemons. I have heard it passes here on Geheimnisnacht every year. Some say it carries wee children from Altdorf who are sacrificed at the Darkstone Ring."

Gotrek looked at him interestedly. Felix did not like the way this was developing.

"Surely this is only legend," he said.

"No sir," the innkeeper shouted. "Every year we hear the thunder of its passing. Two years ago Gunter looked out and saw it, a black coach just as you describe."

At the mention of Gunter's name the old woman began to cry again. The innkeeper brought stew and two great steins of ale.

"Bring beer for my companion too," said Gotrek. The landlord went off for another stein.

"Who is Gunter?" asked Felix when he returned. There was a wail from the old woman.

"More ale," said Gotrek. The landlord looked astonished at the empty flagons.

"Take mine," said Felix. "Now, mein host, who is Gunter?"

"And why does the hag howl at the very mention of his name?" asked Gotrek, wiping his mouth on his mud-encrusted arm.

"Gunter is our son. He went out to chop wood this afternoon. He has not returned."

"Gunter is a good boy," said the old woman. "How will we survive without him?"

"Perhaps he is simply lost in the woods?"

"Impossible," said the innkeeper. "Gunter knows the woods round here like the back of my hand. He should have been home hours ago. I fear the coven has taken him, as a sacrifice."

"It's just like Lotte Hauptmann's daughter, Ingrid," said the fat pedlar. The innkeeper shot him a dirty look.

"I want no tales told of our son's betrothed," he said.

"Let the man speak," said Gotrek. The pedlar looked at him gratefully.

"The same thing happened last year, in Blutroch, just down the road. Goodwife Hauptmann looked in on her teenage daughter Ingrid just after sunset. She thought she heard banging coming from her daughter's room. The girl was gone, snatched by who knows what sorcerous power from her bed in a locked house. The next day the hue and cry went up. We found Ingrid. She was covered in bruises and in a terrible state."

He looked at them to make sure he had their attention. "You asked her what happened?" said Felix.

"Aye, sir. It seems she had been carried off by daemons, wild things of the wood, to Darkstone Ring. There the coven waited with evil creatures from the forests. They made to sacrifice her at the altar but she broke free from her captors and invoked the good name of Sigmar. While they reeled she fled. They pursued her but could not overtake her."

"That was lucky," said Felix drily.

"There is no need to mock, Herr Doktor. We made our way to the stones and we did find all sorts of tracks in the disturbed earth. Including those of humans and beasts and cloven-hooved daemons. And a yearling infant gutted like a pig upon the altar."

"Cloven-hoofed daemons?" asked Gotrek. Felix didn't like the look of interest in his eye. The pedlar nodded.

"I would not venture up to Darkstone tonight," said the pedlar. "Not for all the gold in Altdorf."

"It would be a task fit for a hero," said Gotrek looking meaningfully at Felix. Felix was shocked.

"Surely you cannot mean..."

"What better task for a Trollslayer than to face these daemons on their sacred night? It would be a mighty death."

"It would be a stupid death," muttered Felix.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

"You are coming, aren't you?" said Gotrek menacingly. He was rubbing his thumb along the blade of his axe. Felix noticed it was bleeding again. He nodded.

"An oath is an oath."

The dwarf slapped him upon the back with such force that he thought his ribs would break. "Sometimes, manling, I think you must have dwarvish blood in you. Not that any of the Elder race would stoop to such a mixed marriage, of course."

"Of course," said Felix, glaring at his back.

Felix fumbled in his pack for his mail shirt. He noticed that the innkeeper and his wife and the pedlars were looking at him. Their eyes held something that looked close to awe. Gotrek sat near the fire drinking ale and grumbling in dwarvish.

"You're not really going with him?" whispered the fat pedlar. Felix nodded.

"Why?"

"He saved my life. I owe him a debt." Felix thought it best not to mention the circumstances under which Gotrek had saved him.

"I pulled the manling out from under the hooves of the Emperor's cavalry," shouted Gotrek.

Felix cursed. The Trollslayer has the hearing of a wild beast as well as the brain of one, he thought, continuing to pull on the mail shirt.

"Aye. The manling thought it clever to put his case to the Emperor with petitions and protest marches. Old Karl-Franz chose to respond, quite sensibly, with cavalry charges."

The pedlars were starting to back away. "An insurrectionist," he heard one mutter.

Felix felt his face flush. "It was yet another cruel and unjust tax. A silver piece for every window, indeed. To make it worse all the fat merchants bricked up their windows and the Altdorf militia went around knocking holes in the side of poor folk's hovels. We were right to speak out."

"There's a reward for the capture of insurrectionists," said the pedlar. "A big reward."

Felix stared at him. "Of course the Imperial cavalry were no match for my companion's axe," he said. "Such carnage. Heads, legs, arms everywhere. He stood on a pile of bodies."

"They called for archers," said Gotrek. "We departed down a back alley. Being spitted from afar would have been an unseemly death."

The fat pedlar looked at his companions then at Gotrek, then at Felix, then back at his companions. "A sensible man keeps out of politics," he said to the man who had talked of rewards. He looked at Felix. "No offence, sir." "None taken," said Felix. "You are absolutely correct."

"Insurrectionist or no," said the old woman. "May Sigmar bless you if you bring my little Gunter back."

"He is not little, Lise," said the innkeeper. "He is a strapping young man. Still I hope you bring my son back. I am old and I need him to chop the wood and shoe the horses and lift the kegs and..."

"I am touched by your paternal concern, sir," said Felix. He pulled his leather cap down on his head.

Gotrek got up and looked at him. He hit his chest with one meaty hand. "Armour is for women and girly elves," he said.

"Perhaps I had best wear it, Gotrek. If I am to return alive with the tale of your deeds as I did, after all, swear to do."

"You have a point, manling. Remember that is not all you swore to do."

He turned to the innkeeper. "How will we find the Darkstone Ring?"

Felix felt his mouth go dry. He fought to keep his hands from shaking.

"There is a trail. It runs from the road. I will take you to its start."

"Good," said Gotrek. "This is too good an opportunity to miss. Tonight I will atone my sins and stand among the Iron Halls of my fathers. Great Grungni willing."

He made a peculiar sign over his chest with his clenched right hand. "Come, manling, let us go."

Felix picked up his pack. At the doorway the old woman stopped him and pressed something into his hand. "Please, sir," she said. "Take this. It is a charm to Sigmar. It will protect you. My little Gunter wears its twin."

And much good it's done him, Felix was about to say but the expression on her face stopped him. It held fear, concern and perhaps hope. He was touched.

"I'll do my best, Frau."

Outside, the sky was bright with the green witchlight of the moons. Felix opened his hand. In it was a small iron hammer on a fine-linked chain. He shrugged and hung it round his neck.

Gotrek and the old man were already moving down the road. He had to run to catch up.

"What do you think these are, manling?" said Gotrek, bending close to the ground. Ahead of them the road continued on towards Blutroch and Bogenhafen. Felix leaned on the league marker. This was the edge of the trail. Felix hoped the innkeeper had returned safely home.

"Tracks," he said. "Going north."

"Very good, manling. They are coach tracks and they take the trail north to the Darkstone Ring."

"The black coach?" said Felix.

"I hope so. What a glorious night! All my prayers are answered. A chance to atone and to get revenge on the swine who nearly ran me over." He cackled gleefully but Felix could sense a change in him. He seemed tense as if suspecting that his hour of destiny were arriving and he would meet it badly. He seemed unusually talkative.

"A coach? Does this coven consist of noblemen, manling? Is your Empire then so corrupt?"

Felix shook his head. "I don't know. It may have a noble leader. The members are most likely local folk. They say the taint of Chaos runs deep in these out-of-the-way places."

Gotrek shook his head and for the first time ever he looked dismayed. "I could weep for the folly of your people, manling. To be so corrupted that your rulers could sell themselves over to the powers of darkness, that is a terrible thing."

"Not all men are so," said Felix angrily. "True, some seek easy power or fleshly pleasure but they are few. Most people keep the faith. Anyway the Elder Race are not so pure. I have heard tales of armies of dwarfs dedicated to the Ruinous Powers."

Gotrek gave a low angry growl and spat on the ground. Felix gripped the hilt of his sword tighter. He wondered whether he had pushed the Trollslayer too far.

"You are correct," said Gotrek, his voice soft and cold. "We do not lightly talk about such things. We have vowed eternal war against the abominations you mention and their dark masters."

"As have my own people. We have our witch-hunts and our laws."

Gotrek shook his head. "Your people do not understand. They are soft and decadent and live far from the War. They do not understand the terrible things which gnaw at the roots of the world and seek to undermine us all. Witch-hunts, hah!" He spat on the ground. "Laws! There is only one way to meet the threat of Chaos."

He brandished his axe meaningfully.

They trudged wearily through the forest. Overhead the moons gleamed feverishly. Morrslieb had become ever brighter till its green glow stained the sky.

Fog had gathered and the terrain they moved through was bleak and wild. Rocks broke through the turf like plague spots breaking through the skin of the world.

Sometimes Felix thought he could hear great wings pass overhead, but when he looked up he could see only the glow in the sky. The fog distorted and spread so that it looked as though they walked along the bed of some infernal sea.

There was a sense of wrongness about this place, he decided. The air tasted foul and the hairs on the nape of his neck constantly prickled. Back when he had been a boy in Altdorf he had sat in his father's house and watched the sky grow black with menacing clouds. Then had come the most monstrous storm in living memory.

Now he felt the same sense of anticipation. Mighty forces were gathering close to here, he was certain. He felt like an insect crawling over the body of a giant that could at any moment awake and crush him.

Even Gotrek seemed oppressed. He had fallen silent and did not even mumble to himself as he usually did. Now and again he would stop and motion for Felix to stand quiet then he would stand and sniff the air.

Felix could see that his whole body tensed as if he strained with every nerve to catch the slightest trace of something. Then they would move on.

Felix's muscles all felt tight with tension. He wished he had not come. Surely, he told himself, my obligation to the dwarf does not mean I must face certain death. Perhaps I can slip away in the mist.

He gritted his teeth. He prided himself on being an honourable man, and the debt he owed the dwarf was real. The dwarf had risked his life to save him. Granted, at the time he had not known Gotrek was seeking death, courting it as a man courts a desirable lady. It still left him under an obligation.

He remembered the riotous drunken evening in the taverns of the Maze when they had sworn blood-brothership in that curious dwarven rite and he had agreed to help Gotrek in his quest.

Gotrek wished his name remembered and his deeds recalled. When he had found out that Felix was a poet he had asked Felix to accompany him. At the time, in the warm glow of beery camaraderie, it had seemed a splendid idea. The Trollslayer's doomed quest had struck Felix as excellent material for an epic poem, one that would make him famous.

Little did I know, he thought, that it would lead to this. Hunting for monsters on Geheimnisnacht. He smiled ironically. It was easy to sing of brave deeds in the taverns and playhalls where horror was a thing conjured by the words of skilled craftsmen. Out here though it was different. His bowels felt loose with fear and the oppressive atmosphere made him want to run screaming.

Still, he consoled himself, this is fit subject matter for a poem. If only I live to write it.

The woods became deeper and more tangled. The trees took on the aspect of twisted uncanny beings. Felix felt as if they watched him. He tried to dismiss the thought as fantasy but the mist and the ghastly moonlight only stimulated his imagination. He felt as if every pool of shadow contained a monster. Felix looked down on the dwarf. Gotrek's face held a mixture of anticipation and fear. Felix had thought him immune to terror but now he realized it was not so. A ferocious will drove him to seek his doom. Feeling that his own death might be near at hand, Felix asked a question that he had long been afraid to utter.

"Herr Trollslayer, what was it you did that you must atone for? What crime drives you to so punish yourself?"

Gotrek looked up to him, then turned his head to gaze off into the night. Felix watched the cable-like muscles of his neck ripple like serpents as he did so.

"If another man asked me that question I would slaughter him. I make allowances for your youth and ignorance and the friendship rite we have undergone. It would make me a kinslayer. That is a terrible crime. Such crimes we do not talk about."

Felix had not realized the dwarf was so attached to him. Gotrek looked up at him as if expecting a response.

"I understand," said Felix.

"Do you, manling? Do you really?" The Trollslayer's voice was as harsh as stones breaking. Felix smiled ruefully. In that moment he saw the gap that separated man from dwarf. He would never understand their strange taboos, their obsession with oaths and order and pride. He could not see what would drive the Trollslayer to carry out his self-imposed death sentence.

"Your people are too harsh with themselves," he said.

"Yours are too soft," the Trollslayer replied. They fell into long silence. Both were startled by a quiet, mad laugh. Felix turned, whipping up his blade into the guard position. Gotrek raised his axe.

Out of the mists something shambled. Once it had been a man, Felix decided. The outline was still there. It was as if some mad god had held the creature close to a daemonic fire until flesh dripped and ran, then had left it to set in a new and abhorrent form.

"This night we will dance," it said, in a high-pitched voice that held no hint of sanity. "Dance and touch."

It reached out gently to Felix and stroked his arm. Felix recoiled in horror as fingers like clumps of maggots rose towards his face.

"This night at the stone we will dance and touch and rub." It made as if to embrace him. It smiled, showing short pointed teeth. Felix stood quietly. He felt like a spectator, distanced from the event that was happening. He pulled back and put the point of his sword against the thing's chest.

"Come no closer," he said. The thing smiled. Its mouth seemed to grow wider, it showed more small sharp teeth. Its lips rolled back till the bottom half of the face seemed all wet glistening gum and the jaw sank lower like that of a snake. It pushed forward against the sword till beads of blood glistened on its chest. It gave a gurgling, idiotic laugh.

"Dance and touch and rub and eat," it said, and with inhuman swiftness it writhed around the sword and leapt for Felix. Swift as it was, the Trollslayer was swifter. In mid-leap his axe caught its neck. The head rolled into the night; a red fountain gushed. This is not happening thought Felix.

"What was that? A daemon?" asked Gotrek. Felix could hear the excitement in his voice.

"I think it was once a man," said Felix. "One of the tainted ones marked by Chaos. They are abandoned at birth."

"That one spoke your tongue."

"Sometimes the taint does not show till they are older. Relatives think they are sick and protect them till they make their way to the woods and vanish."

"Their kin protect such abominations?"

"It happens. We don't talk about it. It is hard to turn your back on people you love even if they change."

The dwarf stared at him disbelievingly, then shook his head.

"Too soft," he said. "Too soft."

The air was still. Sometimes Felix thought he sensed presences moving in the trees about him and froze nervously, peering into the mist, searching for moving shadows. The encounter with the tainted one had brought home to him the danger of the situation. He felt within him a great fear and a great anger.

Part of the anger was directed at himself for feeling the fear. He was sick and ashamed. He decided that whatever happened he would not repeat his error, standing like a sheep to be slaughtered.

"What was that?" asked Gotrek. Felix looked at him.

"Can't you hear it, manling? Listen! It sounds like chanting." Felix strained to catch the sound but heard nothing.

"We are close, now. Very close."

They pushed on in silence. As they trudged through the mist Gotrek became ever more cautious and left the trail, using the long grass for cover. Felix joined him.

Now he could hear the chanting. It sounded as though it was coming from scores of throats. Some of the voices were human, some were deep and bestial. There were male voices and female voices mingled with the slow beat of a drum, the clash of cymbals and discordant piping.

Felix could make out one word only, repeated over and over till it was driven into his consciousness. The word was Slaanesh.Felix shuddered. 

Slaanesh, dark lord of unspeakable pleasures. It was a name that conjured up the worst depths of depravity. It was whispered in the drug dens and vice houses of Altdorf by those so jaded that they sought pleasures beyond human understanding. It was a name associated with corruption and excess and the dark underbelly of Imperial society. For those who followed Slaanesh no stimulation was too bizarre, no pleasure forbidden.

"The mist covers us," whispered Felix.

"Hist! Be quiet. We must get closer."

They crept slowly forward. The long wet grass dragged at Felix's body, and soon he was damp. Ahead he could see beacons burning in the dark. The scent of blazing wood and cloying sickly-sweet incense filled the air. He looked around, hoping that no latecomer would blunder into them. He felt absurdly exposed.

Inch by inch they crawled forward. Gotrek dragged his battleaxe along behind him and once Felix touched its sharp blade with his fingers. He cut himself and fought back a desire to scream out.

They reached the edge of the long grass and found themselves staring at a crude ring of six obscenely-shaped stones amid which stood a monolithic slab. The stones glowed greenly with the light of some luminous fungus. On top of each was a brazier which gave off clouds of smoke. Beams of pallid, green moonlight illuminated a hellish scene.

Within the ring danced six humans, masked and garbed in long cloaks. The cloaks were thrown back over one shoulder revealing naked bodies, male and female. On one hand the revellers wore finger cymbals which they clashed, in the other they carried switches of birch with which they lashed the dancer in front.

"Ygrak tu amat Slaanesh!" they cried.

Felix could see that some of the bodies were marked by bruises. The dancers seemed to feel no pain. Perhaps it was the narcotic effect of the incense.

Around the stone ring lolled figures of horror. The drummer was a huge man with the head of a stag and cloven hooves. Near him sat a piper with the head of a dog and hands with suckered fingers. A large crowd of tainted women and men writhed on the ground nearby.

Some of their bodies were subtly distorted; men who were tall with thin, pin heads; short fat women with three eyes and three breasts. Others were barely recognizable as once having been human. There were scale-covered man-serpents and wolf-headed furry creatures mingling with things that were all teeth and mouth and other orifices. Felix could barely move. He watched the entire proceeding with mounting fear.

The drums beat faster, the rhythmic chanting increased in pace, the piping became ever louder and more discordant as the dancers became more frenzied, lashing themselves and their companions till bloody weals became visible. Then there was a clash of cymbals and all fell silent.

Felix thought they had been spotted, and he froze. The smoke of the incense filled his nostrils and seemed to amplify all his senses. He felt even more remote and disconnected from reality. There was a pain in his side. He was startled to realize that Gotrek had elbowed him in the ribs. He was pointing to something beyond the stone ring.

Felix struggled to see what loomed in the mist. Then he realized that it was the black coach. In the sudden shocking silence he heard its door swing open. He held his breath and waited to see what would emerge.

A figure seemed to take shape out of the mist. It was tall and masked, and garbed in layered cloaks of many pastel colours. It moved with calm authority and in its arms it carried something swaddled in brocade cloth. Felix looked at Gotrek but he was watching the unfolding scene with fanatical intensity. Felix wondered if the dwarf had lost his nerve at this late hour.

The newcomer stepped forward into the stone circle.

"Amak tu amat Slaanesh!" it cried, raising its bundle on high. Felix could see that it was a child, though whether living or dead he could not tell.

"Ygrak tu amat Slaanesh! Tzarkol taen amat Slaanesh!" The crowd responded ecstatically.

The cloaked man stared out at the surrounding faces, and it seemed to Felix that the stranger gazed straight at him with calm, brown eyes. He wondered if the coven-master knew they were there and was playing with them.

"Amak tu Slaanesh!" He called in a clear voice.

"Amak klessa! Amat Slaanesh!" responded the crowd. It was clear to Felix that some evil ritual had begun.

As the rite progressed the coven-master moved closer to the altar with slow ceremonial steps. Felix felt his mouth go dry. He licked his lips. Gotrek watched the events as if hypnotized.

The child was placed on the altar with a thunderous rumble of drum beats. The six dancers now each stood beside a pillar, legs astride it, clutching at the stone suggestively. As the ritual progressed they ground themselves against the pillars with slow sinuous movements.

From within his robes the master produced a long wavy-bladed knife. Felix wondered whether the dwarf was going to do something. He could hardly bear to watch.

Slowly the knife was raised, high over the cultist's head. Felix forced himself to look. An ominous presence hovered over the scene. Mist and incense seemed to be clotting together and congealing, and within the cloud Felix thought he could make out a grotesque form writhe and begin to materialize. Felix could bear the tension no longer.

"No!" he shouted.

He and the Trollslayer emerged from the long grass and marched shoulder-to-shoulder towards the stone ring. At first the cultists didn't seem to notice them, but then the drumming stopped and the chanting faded and the cult-master turned to glare at them, astonished.

For a moment everyone stared. No-one seemed to understand what was happening. The cult-master pointed the knife at them and screamed; "Kill the interlopers!"

The revellers moved forward in a wave. Felix felt something tug at his leg and then a sharp pain. When he looked down he saw a creature half woman, half serpent gnawing at his ankle. He kicked out, pulling his leg free and stabbed down with his sword.

A shock passed up his arm as the blade hit bone. He began to run, following in the wake of Gotrek who was hacking his way towards the altar. The mighty double-bladed axe rose and fell rhythmically and left a trail of red ruin in its path. The cultists seemed drugged and slow to respond but, horrifyingly, they showed no fear. Men and women, tainted and untainted, threw themselves towards the intruders with no thought for their own lives.

Felix hacked and stabbed at anyone who came close. He put his blade under the ribs and into the heart of a dog-faced man who leapt at him. As he tried to tug his blade free a woman with claws and a man with mucous-covered skin leapt on him. Their weight bore him over, knocking the wind from him.

He felt the woman's talons scratch at his face as he put his foot under her stomach and kicked her off. Blood rolled down into his eyes from the cuts. The man had fallen badly, but leapt to grab his throat. Felix fumbled for his dagger with his left hand while he caught the man's throat with his right. The man writhed. He was difficult to grip because of his coating of slime. His own hands tightened inexorably on Felix's throat and he rubbed himself against Felix, panting with pleasure.

Blackness threatened to overcome the poet. Little silver points flared before his eyes. He felt an overwhelming urge to relax and fall forward into the dark. Somewhere far-off he heard Gotrek's bellowed war-cry. With an effort of will Felix jerked his dagger clear of its scabbard and plunged it into his assailant's ribs. The creature stiffened and grinned, revealing rows of eel-like teeth. He gave an ecstatic moan even as he died.

"Slaanesh, take me," he shrieked. "Ah, the pain, the lovely pain!"

Felix pulled himself to his feet as the clawed woman rose to hers. He lashed out with his boot, connected with her jaw. There was a crunch, and she fell backwards. Felix shook his head to clear the blood from his eyes.

The majority of the cultists had concentrated on Gotrek. This had kept Felix alive. The dwarf was trying to hack his way towards the heart of the stone circle. Even as he moved, the press of bodies against him slowed him down. Felix could see that he bled from dozens of small cuts.

Still the ferocious energy of the dwarf was terrible to see. He frothed at the mouth and ranted as he chopped, sending limbs and heads everywhere. He was covered in a filthy matting of gore, but in spite of his sheer ferocity Felix could tell the fight was going against Gotrek. Even as he watched a cloaked reveller hit the dwarf with a club and Gotrek went down under a wave of bodies. So he has met his doom, thought Felix, just as he desired.

Beyond the ruck of the melee the cult-master had regained his composure. Once more he began to chant, and raised the dagger on high. The terrible shape that had been forming from the mist seemed once again to coalesce.

Felix had a premonition that if it took on full substance then he was doomed. He could not fight his way through the bodies that surrounded the Trollslayer. For a long moment he watched the curve-bladed knife reflecting the Morrslieb light.

Then he drew back his own dagger. "Sigmar guide my hand," he muttered and threw. The blade flew straight and true to the throat of the High Priest, hitting beneath the mask where flesh was exposed. With a gurgle, the cult-master toppled backwards.

A long whine of frustration filled the air and the mist seemed to evaporate. The shape within the mist vanished. The cultists looked up in shock. The tainted ones turned to stare at him. Felix found himself confronted by the mad glare of dozens of unfriendly eyes. He stood immobile and very, very afraid. The silence was deathly.

Then there was an almighty roar and Gotrek emerged from amid the pile of bodies, pummelling about him with ham-sized fists. He reached down and from somewhere picked up his axe. He shortened his grip on the haft and laid about him with its shaft. Felix scooped up his own sword and ran in to join him. They fought until they were back to back.

The cultists, filled with fear at the loss of their leader, began to flee into the night and mist. Soon Felix and Gotrek stood alone under the shadows of the Darkstone Ring.

Gotrek looked at Felix balefully, blood clotted in his crested hair. In the witch-light he looked daemonic. "I am robbed of a mighty death, manling."

He raised his axe menacingly. Felix wondered if he were still berserk and about to chop him down in spite of their binding oath. Gotrek began to move slowly towards him. Then the dwarf grinned. "It would seem the gods preserve me for a greater doom yet."

He planted his axe hilt first into the ground and began to laugh till the tears ran down his face. Having exhausted his laughter, he turned to the altar and picked up the infant. "It lives," he said.

Felix began to inspect the corpses of the cloaked cultists. He unmasked them. The first one was a blonde haired-girl covered in weals and bruises. The second was a young man. He had an amulet in the shape of a hammer hanging mockingly round his neck.

"I don't think we'll be going back to the inn," Felix said sadly.

One local tale tells of an infant found on the steps of the temple of Shallya in Blutroch. It was wrapped in a bloody cloak of Sudenland wool, a pouch of gold lay nearby, and a steel amulet in the shape of a hammer was round its neck. The priestess swore she saw a black coach thundering away in the dawn light.

The natives of Blutroch tell another and darker tale of how Ingrid Hauptman and Gunter, the innkeeper's son were slain in some horrible sacrifice to the Dark Powers. The road wardens who found the corpses up by the Darkstone Ring agreed it must have been a terrible rite. The bodies looked as if they had been chopped up with an axe. 

THE REAVERS AND THE DEAD

by Charles Davidson

Helmut Kerzer realized that he was going to die when he saw the ship. He'd seen the sail long before the ship itself was visible, but somehow it had lacked immediacy; it was an abstract warning, not the reality itself. Here be reavers. But now the ship itself was visible, a dark hull slicing through the waves less than a mile offshore. The day's catch was still in the nets of the fishing boats, and the village was five scant minutes inland, and Helmut felt his guts turn to water as he saw what was about to happen. 

The worst element of the situation was the most obvious. Helmut couldn't cover the short distance to the village to warn them, couldn't sound the alarm, and buy time to disperse the young and the ancient into the forest. Because - he gritted his teeth - if he did warn them they would only ask what he had been doing up on Wreckers' Point. And when they found out they would kill him. 

Necromancy was almost as unpopular as piracy in these parts.

Not that Helmut was anything like a full-blown corpse raiser - oh no. He grinned humourlessly at the thought, as he watched the black sail of the pirates draw closer. Dead mice and bats! It was the unhealthy hobby of a youth who would have better spent his time mending nets, not the studied malevolence of a follower of dark knowledge. He looked down and saw, between his feet, the little contraption of skin and ivory that paraded there. The creature had died days ago; it seemed so unfair that it might cost Helmut his home or his life. His cheek twitched in annoyance and the vole fell over, slack and lifeless as any other corpse. 

Death. Here on the edge of the Sea of Claws they knew about death. It stared his father in the face every time he put out to sea to snare a living by the whim of Manann; it had taken his grandfather and uncles in a single gulp, to cough them up again, bloated and putrid on the beach three days later. He'd been a child at the time, too young for the nets and ropes; he'd hidden behind his mother's skirts as she, and his father, stood stony-faced in the graveyard when they laid three-quarters of the family's menfolk in the ground. It had been then that he'd wondered, for the first time: what if death was like sleep? What if it was possible to return from it, as if awakening to another grey, sea-spumed dawn? But he already knew that they had a word for such thoughts, and he stayed silent.

Wreckers' Point was thickly wooded; shrouded by a dense tangle of trees and dark undergrowth that stretched south towards the great forest. It was a place of ill omen. In times gone by the wreckers had worked here, lighting beacons to guide rich traders onto the rocks of the headland. They were long departed, hounded by the Baron and his men of yesteryear, but the spirit remained; a tight-minded malaise that seemed to turn the day into a washout of greyness, waiting for the night and the lighting of deadly fires. Rumour had it nowadays that the hill was haunted - and the worse for any child who might wander up there.

Helmut gritted his teeth in frustration as he thought about it. His dilemma. That Father Wolfgang might wonder what he'd be doing, and summon the witchfinder. That some lad might follow him, to see what he did alone and unseen in the undergrowth. That if such a thing happened he might never learn... Fingernails dug into his palms. The anger of denial.

The ship was plainly visible now, rounding the headland and turning towards the beach where the boats lay. Any advantage had been squandered by the beating of his heart. Suddenly he realized that he was terrified; a cold sweat glued his shirt to his back as he thought about red-stained swords glinting in the light of the burning buildings. Reavers! If one of them should look up... could he see me? Feeling exposed, Helmut turned and pushed his way back into the treeline. Where was it...? Ah yes. The path. A run, really, perhaps the work of a wild boar some time since - there was no spoor, or else Helmut's surreptitious use had scared the animals away. 

The path led downhill, at an angle that would miss the village clearing and the highway by more than a bowshot. Helmut trotted, trying to duck and brush beneath the branches in silence. Afraid of betrayal. If anyone sees me... he reminded himself. Warning ritual, a prayer to whatever nameless god watched over him. Going to live forever. Which meant not getting caught. Another fear gripped him; sick anticipation. That he should not warn the village, that the raiders might catch all unawares and kill them. He would see his mother and father and young sisters gutted, wall-eyed, flies crawling over black-sticky blood. His family he might spare, but some of the others... 

A memory rose to haunt him: Heinrich. Heinrich was a year older than he, and had marched off to join the Baron's guard two summers past. Heinrich and two nameless youths tormenting him. Bright light of spring in a meadow back of the Inn. Face pointed to the midden as they held his hands behind him. Childish chanting: "Helmut, Helmut, weakling no-man, eating flies and telling lies, sell his soul to Nurgle's hole." Did they mean it? No more than children ever did. But they'd made his life a misery.

The other two meant nothing; but Heinrich had persisted, had appointed himself the dark messenger from the gods, sent to torment Helmut for sins unremembered.

Then he arrived at the far end of the path, and slowed, panting slightly, to look carefully around for intruders. No-one else would normally visit this place... but it did no harm to check. He looked around.

No, the graveyard was deserted.

To call it a graveyard was to call the village shrine a cathedral; overstating the facts a little. Tilted, crudely-hacked slabs of slate bore mute witness to the cost of life on the edge of the sea. Moss-grown, age-cracked stones abutted new chunks hacked from the cliff face. Wee remember Ras Bormann and hys crew, lost these ten days at see. Canted away from its neighbour by subsidence and the gulf of decades. There was a small, decrepit shrine at one end, and a low wall around it; but nobody came here except for a funeral. Nobody wanted to be reminded. Other than Helmut. 

He glanced round swiftly, furtively, then made a dash for the shrine. It was little more than a hovel, with an altar and a rough table on which to lay the coffin; such vestments as the village possessed were kept by Father Wolfgang. But beneath the altar - which now, wheezing slightly, he struggled to move - Helmut had made covert alterations. He'd been twelve when he discovered the ancient priest's hole and found it to his liking. Since then...

Ragnar One-Eye glared more effectively than many a whole-sighted man, even with his patch in place. When he chose to remove it, the contrast - livid wound and burning eye - rooted strong warriors in their boots like grass before a scythe. He was not known as Ten-Slayer for nothing among his followers. He leaned on his axe-haft and waited, knowing where the Rage would take him; red and fast and furious, a tunnel running from his ship to the village of the fisherfolk by way of severed necks and gutted peasants and blood everywhere.

Where Ragnar trod, his bondsmen shivered, the whites of their eyes showing beneath the shadows of their helmets. Wolf-fur cloak and an axe that had shed rivers of gore, and a tread that had made many a foemans' blood turn to water. He stood in the bows as the fast, clinker-built raider ran for the shore, and turned to face his men.

He raised his axe. "Listen!"

The rays of the twilight sun caught the edge of his blade, flashing feverish highlights in their eyes. "We go to war, as ever. We will fight, we will loot, we will take honour and booty home when we leave, and the wailing of their women will be nothing in our ears. But. This time is not the same."

He paused. Before him, the priest was readying his infusion, oblivious to the tension in the warriors around him. The cauldron bubbled as he stirred a handful of ground cinnamon into the ritual wine. Ragnar felt a great hollowness in his chest, a lightness in his head as he inhaled the fumes.

"Listen!" he shouted hoarsely. "The fisher-rats have gone too far. Their desecration offends the gods. Their dark magic has brought famine to our coasts; the fish rot in our nets and the enemies of Ulric walk in the lands of man. This time is different! Let our swords be red and our arms strong as we punish them for their evil!"

A roar answered him. If any of the soldiers had reservations they kept them well concealed. And soon, as soon as the priest was finished, they would have none.

Ragnar looked down with his one eye, and the priest looked up. Black eyes glittered in the man's thin, pinched face; he opened his mouth and spoke impassively. "The host is ready, lord and master. Will you officiate?"

Ragnar grunted impatiently. "Yes, by Ulric's blood. Now!"

The priest wordlessly held up the bowl, and a long, small spoon. Ragnar took both, and holding them, intoned: "Blessed are they who drink the wine of Ulric, for they shall reign supreme in the field of battle, and dying shall experience the delights of heaven. Banish fear and doubt from our hearts and inner reins; make strong our hands to smite the enemy. Let us commence. Wulf!"

Wulf, a hulking lieutenant, stepped forwards. Ragnar raised the spoon to his face; wordlessly Wulf sipped from it, and turned away. A queue formed, in rigid order of rank. Presently, all had drunk from the bowl; and the ship was running through the breakers. Ragnar raised the pot to his face and, glaring out towards the beach, drained the mouthful remaining in it.

The slaughter was about to begin.

Maria Kerzer was not a happy woman. She was not old, but time had attacked her savagely. Married young, she had given her husband only one son before the sea stripped his family from him; and that one had grown up sickly and introverted. And her husband's lot had sunk, for when the ship bearing his father and brothers was lost, so was much of their fortune. So he drank, and brooded, and Maria raised chickens and geese and vegetables and prayed that she might yet bear him another son; and meanwhile the years stole up on her with the harsh, scouring winds of the coast.

That evening he returned from the beach early, stern-faced and angry. "Where's that layabout son of yours?" he demanded, seating himself heavily on the stool by the fireplace where Maria did her spinning.

She shrugged. "He does as he will, that lad. What's he done now?"

Klaus cast a black look at the door. "He was to have mended the trawls, but I've seen hide nor hair of him since noon. Doubtless the dolt's in hiding somewhere. If the net's not sewn he'll not eat, I promise you."

Maria cast a critical eye at the hearth and poked it with an iron. "Needs more wood," she observed.

"Then fetch it yourself. I'll not be trifled with by the whelp!" His indignation vast, he settled down on the stool until it creaked. Maria wordlessly opened the door and went outside. A few moments later she returned, bearing an armload of branches from the store.

"I smell smoke," she said. "Can you believe some man be burning wood outdoors at this time of year?" Her shoulders hunched in disapproval, she bent to place a length of kindling on the fire.

Klaus sighed. "Woman," he said, in an altogether softer tone of voice than he had used previously, "how long have we been married?"

She answered without turning round, "'twill be a score years next summer." Still bent, she stirred the kettle of fish soup that hung on chains above the range.

"'Tis long enough that I forget the oath that bound me to thee. The boy casts a long shadow." Maria turned, to see a distraught look cross her husband's face. It gave her pause to wonder. Gloom she saw there often - but sorrow?

He stood up and reached out to take her hands. "Forgive me," he said roughly, "I should not blame you. But the boy."

"The boy," she said, "worries me as well. Not the scribin' stuff he had from Father Wolfgang, but the other." She shivered. "Wanderings at night and never there when you call. That fever the other year. And then," she paused in recollection; "when we laid the stone for your father. His face itself might have been rock." She looked up to meet her husband's gaze. "Good sir, I might rather he'd been some other's than mine."

Klaus hugged her gently. "Be that as it may, there might be others yet. And - what's that?"

They stood apart. Carried plainly on the wind was the noise of one bell tolling. There was only one bell in the village; and it only tolled for one reason. Danger.

Helmut fumbled the flint but caught it before it hit the damp floor. A scrape, a spark, and there was a brief flare of light from the tinder that settled down into the thin, yellow glow of a candle. It smoked in the damp air of the crypt. The halo of light caught Helmut's face, casting stark shadows on the walls. He reached up and pulled the altar back into place with a tug; now there was no sign to betray his presence. Gingerly he ducked forwards, then inched down the time-worn steps that led into the bowels of the earth.

Once there had been terror and evil in this crypt, but now there was only the oppressive weight of time, the press of centuries. Helmut knew about the Liche. Long ago, decades before some mendicant priest had consecrated this altar to Morr, it had seen sacrifice to another, darker deity. Perhaps time had withered the Liche away to dry bones and whispering dust, but in those long-gone days it had struck terror into the hearts of all who passed this isolated headland. Strange fruit rotted among the branches of the oak trees, and when the flesh of living things had perished the naked bones walked the moonlit earth once more. The sacrifices were not of blood, but of something altogether less innocent. And this was the burial crypt of that source of ancient evil. 

Impelled by some sense of urgency he only half-comprehended, Helmut headed for the nether reaches of the dark tunnel. It led downwards, dropping a step every yard or so; narrow enough that men might walk in single file only, low enough that their heads must be bowed. Ten yards inside the musty entrance, Helmut passed a pair of niches in either wall. Within them, pathetic and crumbled by time, lay two skeletons wrapped in cerements that had long ago assumed the texture of mummified skin.

The tunnel was now far from the graveyard. Passing the guardian niches, he held the candle before him. The stones had resisted the grinding of roots and the infiltration of damp; the air was dry and musty, the floor thick with dust. As if in a trance he paced out the steps of the mausoleum, descending towards a doorway which suddenly loomed in front of him, oppressive and dark. Pillars to either side were carved into the semblance of twisted mummies, their mouths open in an eternal shriek. With a strange thrill Helmut realized that they might well be real, petrified in their dying terror by the ancient monster within.

This is it, he thought. He'd been here once before, but no further. The closed door with the human jawbone, yellowing with age, that served as a handle. Inviting him in. Is it worth it? He felt a hot flush. Yes! He reached out and grasped the bone, seeing in his mind's eye the battle that rolled chaotically up the beach, already shedding limbs and lives like the skin of some strange and bloody serpent. It was not for him; nothing of the kind. He had a destiny, and it was greater by far than that. 

The oak door opened with a screech of dry hinges, and Helmut pushed through. The sight that greeted him held him paralyzed like a rat before a snake, or a priest feeing a god. The Liche held his eyes with a burning vision, grinning from empty eye sockets above a throne as shapeless as black fire. Welcome, it seemed to say in his head; I've been waiting a long time for you. Helplessly, he felt himself drawn forward by the deathless bony gaze. And the door closed behind him. 

Klaus Kerzer's first reaction was to protect hearth and home. As Maria stood immobile, hearing the brassy clangour of the bell, he was already reaching for the heirloom which hung in oilcloth above the lintel. He swept it down from its pegs, swiftly unrolling the swaddling of greasy rags that protected the blade from damp. He looked at his wife grimly.

"Smoke you smelt," he said; "at high tide, and the bell tolling." He breathed deeply and pulled the door open. "Quick woman, rouse out your neighbours! Good wife Schlagen, the Bissels. Everyone. Get them to the temple and take sanctuary there, or else wherever the rest go. But hide - I fear the reavers are coming."

Her freeze broke. She embraced him swiftly, tears forming in her eyes. "Come back to me," she whispered.

"Go," he grunted, turning his head away. The sword lay naked on the rough table, edge gleaming and sharp. His throat was dry. Despite his bulk and his brooding temper, Klaus Kerzer was no warrior. The sword merely emphasized how his family's fortunes had sunk over the years. He grunted again, in the back of his throat, then inexpertly took the weapon in both hands. It was long and heavy, and he hoped that he remembered what his father had taught him of its use. Behind him, Maria slipped into the darkness of the night. The bell still clanged mournfully, but now there was no mistaking the noises that carried from the beach on the chill night breeze.

He stepped outside just as the first of Ragnar One-Eye's soldiers reached the village.

Oblivion's sweet and sickly sea floated Helmut away. It was dark in the crypt, and he knew he slept - no one could, waking, face the Liche and not flee screaming - for he sat on a stool that crackled beneath his weight and payed attention to the ancient monster.

Long ago, it seemed to say, things were not as they are now. The people of this land were not poor fisherfolk and peasants, oppressed by the Imperial nobility and the ravages of war and piracy. Things were better - far better. They had me. Whether it was truly dead or only half so remained a mystery. But there was no sign of malevolence, nor arrogant disdain; it talked to him quietly, like a friendly uncle or a visiting scholar. As if it sensed an affinity in him, and wished to enlarge upon it. 

As he gazed upon the candle-lit skull of the robed and bejewelled corpse that sat, enthroned, against the wall opposite him, Helmut seemed to see visions of that far-gone time. It had been a bright age, golden in colour. The Nameless One had ruled mercifully for centuries from his fastness on the headland, exacting a tax of corpses and little else from his domain. Those who lived there closed their minds and their souls, leaving their mortal remnants to the high one; only foreigners chose to dispute his supremacy.

There had been endless days and endless nights of splendour in his fastness. The elixir of life, served from a golden bowl beneath a chandelier of fingerbones; the butler a black-robed skeleton. The dark studies of the eternal overlord who sought to extend his knowledge into every niche, temporal and spiritual, from pole to pole. The searing light of dawn, seen by eyes grown too sensitive for daylight but which yet anticipated a billion tomorrows. His Nameless splendour had ruled for five hundred years while all around him were little more than barbarians.

There came a time, the mummy seemed to say, when the burden became tiresome. When night alone was sufficient for me, and I chose to sleep, and meditate, for I had much to think upon. I had lived a hundred lifespans, and it happened so that I barely noticed the decline of my powers. It grinned at him from the shadows. Helmut grinned back, lips curled in a rictus of fear and longing. Shapes speared out of the darkness to either side of the Liche's throne; edges of boxes, a lectern, great leather-bound books clasped shut with bony locks. I have been waiting a long time for my heir, the skeleton stated in a silent voice which seemed as dry as the desert sands of Araby. 

"Yes." Helmut was surprised to hear his own voice, itself as dull as the rocks around him. "Yes," he repeated. How did you know? he asked. How did you know what I wanted? What I was afraid of? It seemed so right, to him, that he should be chosen. Heir to, to  -  

The dominion. Dominion of Helmut Kerzer, necromancer. Yes, that was it. 

"I accept," he said, and although the corpse stayed seated in frozen splendour, a wind seemed to blow through the chamber. His candle guttered and died, but he didn't need it any more; Helmut saw with a clarity he had never known before. Behind the throne lay a flight of steps leading down, down to the rooms and abode and workshops of the Nameless One. Down to his new home. It had been waiting patiently for him, or for someone like him, for many centuries.

A feverish exaltation coursed through Helmut's blood; there was much for him to do, much that would need preparing afresh. Knowledge to be gained, books to be read, unspecified tasks to be carried out. As he pushed eagerly past the throne, its skeletal ruler slumped with a brittle crackle of time: dust rose in final release. It would be years before Helmut came to understand the nature of the spell he had succumbed to, and by then it would be far too late to escape. For now he was blinded by the promise of dark things.

First they came ashore; then they burned the fisherfolk's boats as they found them. Horst the Hairless was still there, bundling his nets for the morrow, and he remained there afterwards, albeit with half his brains in his lap and the flies buzzing huge and hungry around him. Ragnar One-Eye voiced a wordless, ululating battle-cry; hefting his axe, he led a stream of soldiers up the trail towards the village.

"Forward and kill them!" he roared. "Take what you want and torch the rest. Leave none behind!" Succinct; and, more to the point, exactly what the men wanted to hear. The holy rage of the host was upon them, and they were in no mood for restraint. They charged towards the village in a stream of iron.

Ahead of them, Klaus Kerzer heard Horst's death-cry and Ragnar's deep voice. Shocked into a slow run, he made for the village hall. "Foe! Fire! Murder!" he shouted raucously at the top of his lungs.

As Klaus staggered up the track, one of the foemen hit him with a thrown dagger. Shock and pain seared through him, and he fell heavily. As he lay groaning in the dirt, the raider paused to finish him off; but, unexpectedly, Klaus caught the reaver in the hamstrings with a desperate sweep of the heirloom sword, and the man fell cursing to the ground. With a gasp, Klaus raised the aged sword again, but this time the younger and more experienced fighter was far too quick for him: the reaver stabbed the older man in the throat, and Klaus' life began to bubble away. The sword fell at his side.

Klaus' yells, added to the mournful tolling of the bell, had brought the angry, frightened fisherfolk swarming out of their hovels. Some of them bore scythes and other farm implements of dubious vintage; one or two of the richer ones possessed genuine weapons, but none were armoured or trained, and collectively they were a pathetic match for the raiders.

The villagers milled around in front of the hall, incapable of forming any sort of battle order. The local priest had turned out, but there was no sign of real authority; no lord or knight to muster a defence around himself. The berserkers laid in with a will, hacking negligently at the terrified peasants. Ragnar snarled wordlessly, his axe-blade dripping; he was truly in his element. The ruddy glare of fire added a surreal element to the scene as one of the thatch-roofed cottages caught alight. Whether the blaze had been started deliberately or by accident was irrelevant - it spread rapidly, leaping from roof to roof like a ravenous beast on the prowl. The crackling roar thrummed through Ragnar's blood, heating his battle-fury to the boil.

Fleeing women and children fell victim to the raiders. A party led by one Snorri Red-Hair came upon a group of them from behind. Blood flew and screaming rent the air, as terrible as in any slaughterhouse.

Klaus Kerzer had been one of the first villagers to go down, his precious old sword in his hand. Thanks to that weapon, one at least of the berserkers limped whey-faced from the fray, blood pumping from severed veins. But Klaus never heard the screams of his wife, never saw the swinging axe-stroke that half-beheaded her. He died where he had fallen, wondering at the last why this had happened to him now - and where young Helmut had been when he should have been mending the nets.

Presently the fighting ceased for want of a living target for the berserkers' frenzied blows. Ragnar One-Eye looked down on the field of battle from a giant's perspective, his soul floating huge above his body. Corpses lay scattered like trees after a storm, and the steady crackle and snap of burning homesteads was the only constant sound. That and the quiet moaning of the few of his soldiers who had been lax enough to fall victim to fishermen and peasants.

At his feet, a body twitched and opened its eyes. Ragnar looked down incuriously, and saw that it was a priest. In the darkness his cassock was blacker than night, sticky with blood oozing from a deep gash in his belly. The putrid smell told him that the sacerdote would not live long.

The man was trying to speak. Ragnar payed little attention. He was trying to warn him...

"The curse... " Father Wolfgang gasped. His guts were cold now, and he knew what that meant. "The evil of the headland. You'll release it, you fools!" The hulking barbarian showed no sign of interest, no indication that he understood. Wolfgang stopped trying. It was very cold, and in any case he wasn't sure that he should warn the raiders. A fate worse than death, perhaps, befitted them. Meanwhile, he could just relax a little. Shut his eyes. It would be all right; everything would... 

Ragnar looked down. The priest was undoubtedly dying, if not dead already. A frown furrowed the Norseman's brows slightly. Had he tried to lay a curse on him with his dying breath? Angered by the thought, he stomped away towards the blazing village hall. Heretics! Spawn of daemons! Worshippers of evil! These weak Imperials. Clean them out!

It was necessary, of course. Since the winter when the fish had been pulled rotting from the sea, netloads of grisly putrescence blighted by dark magic. The divinations of the shamen, oneiromancy and chiromancy, had shown the source of the pollution to be this coastline. His town had starved out the winter, eating rats and drinking the blood of their horses to survive. Practitioners of evil lived hereabouts and must be wiped out. It was as simple as that.

Ragnar vacantly relieved himself against the charred remnants of what had once been the house of the Bissels, as inoffensive a family as could be conceived of. Then, feeling more himself, he looked round. Yes, it would do. Back at the beach they could camp for the night, bind such wounds as they had and prepare for the voyage home. He nodded gloomily.

Home...

Home. Helmut Kerzer in his new home. A study and a laboratory, and the library of a necromancer who had been vast in his power and great in his terrible majesty. A bedchamber - or a crypt - fit for a dead prince. A robing-room where the heavy robes of the mage hung in dusty rows. A dark exultation took hold of Helmut. It was as if he was returning to himself, after a childhood of darkness and ignorance. Somehow he knew where everything was; knew what the rooms were; as if he had lived here before in some past incarnation.

Nobody had ever told him of the dread life-in-death of the great necromantic wizards; much less of the whispered, rumoured ability some had to take possession from beyond the grave. In accepting the domain of a Liche, Helmut had accepted far more than the old monster's possessions. Already he felt a power in himself that was new; a confidence and a knowledge dark in its intensity and external in its origins. 

First Helmut lit the lanterns that, scattered through the mausoleum, shed a gloomy light upon the ancient dwelling-place. In the robing-room he paused for thought. Surely...? He shook his head. He had never possessed a garment that was not much-patched, handed down from some previous owner. Rags! A black cassock hung waiting. It crackled with age as he pulled it over his head, but it fitted well. The hood came over his head and he laughed grimly, satisfied. The very image of a wizard.

Next he proceeded to the library. Shelves that bowed under the weight of mighty codices stretched to the ceiling on two sides. There was no reading desk, but there was a lectern in the shape of a hunchbacked, screaming skeleton. A tome was already positionioned on it, open to one leathery page. Helmut walked round it, admiring the binding which was of a curiously light, fine leather that could only have come from one source. Then he looked at the first page.

It was in a script and a language with neither of which he was familiar. But he could read it, or something in him could; it made perfect sense. He laughed again. Voles and mice and dead squeaky bone-things in the forest! Such toys seemed ludicrous now. Then he frowned, remembering the reaver ship. It had been heading for the beach, a landing at high-tide twilight, full of warriors dreaming of the mystery of the axe. Impersonally he realized that there would be plenty of material on hand for his new-found-trade; plenty of familiar faces in strange, twisted contexts...

He turned the page and heard the electrifying crackle of trapped power. Runes glowed on the parchment, gold-encrusted shapes that sizzled with potential. Illustrations of death and the unstill life beyond it, hermetic monsters and people of the twilight. On the raising of corpses and the ghastly perfection of skeletons. On the touch that brings pain and death, and the touch that restores a semblance of life. On the nature and treatment of vampires, ghouls, and the like. The elixir of life, and of death-in-life. His fingertips glided from page to page, subtly memorizing the more useful items.

Then a thought struck him. A thought or a vision. His spine chilled as sweat stood forth on his brow - cold sweat. In his mind's eye he saw a picture of burning houses and villagers butchered, the priest's body gibbeted by the wayside. Barbarous raiders retreating to the beach to feast and celebrate their victory. His parents lying unnoticed among the dead, until the worms and beetles and small furry things came out to feed on human flesh.

The book shut with a crack, dust flying from the spine at either end. Helmut stood with head bowed, a terrible tension in his shoulders. They would test me, would they? he thought with massive, terrible indignation. I, the heir! He still lacked the actuality of power, but nightmarish vistas were opening up to his dark imagination. With what he had here he could rule the headland for miles around. Poison the fish in swarms so that those who failed to fear him would starve, learning their lesson as their bellies bloated and ate the flesh from their bones. Did you do this, master? he asked silently. Did you prepare them for my arrival? Did you? 

There was no reply, but somehow he was sure he heard a chuckle from beyond the grave.

Shaking his head, Helmut took the tome and placed it on one of the shelves; by instinct he slotted it into the correct location. Pausing to consider, he selected another. The lectern creaked with a noise like a man racked by torture, as the codex settled onto it. The candles that lit this room smoked eerily with a smell like bacon; the fat of which they were made was wholly appropriate and readily available to any necromancer. He barely noticed the passage of time as he studied, feverishly trying to cram comprehension into his inexperienced skull. Spells and incantations normally beyond one of his experience seemed to be just barely accessible, falling into place with a curious, demented logic of their own. As if he already knew them, as if he had used them before.

Hours passed. Oblivious to time, Helmut slaked his thirst for forbidden knowledge at a well polluted by a subtle foulness.

The power grew in him until he felt that his head should burst if he committed to memory another incantation. It was a monstrous feeling. Presently he shut the cover of the book, this time with delicacy and an almost lascivious feel for the well-tooled human leather of the covers. He looked about, then blinked and rubbed his eyes. Yes, it was time.

There was another exit from the hidden suite of the Nameless master, and Helmut found it without difficulty. He himself had entered by the back door, so to speak; since when had a necromancer not desired easy access to the nearest graveyard? Deep within the forest he found himself climbing a short flight of steps to a trapdoor. It had been buried beneath soil for years, but the bearings were so well-balanced that, despite a small flurry of dirt, it opened effortlessly in the darkness.

Finding himself in darkness, Helmut clapped his hands softly, and muttered a cantrip he had known even before his accession to power. A soft, lambent light began to glow from an amulet that he swung on a chain before him. Let there be light, he thought ironically. Enough to see by, at any rate. Tangled roots wove like ghastly tentacles across the ground, and the trees rose into the gloom of the forest like the legs of giants waiting to step on and crush mortals. 

Helmut instinctively made his way towards the graveyard path that led to the village beyond. He never questioned how he knew where the path was - nor even why it had remained in the same place from century to century, down through the ages - but he found it all the same. He made his way towards the settlement quietly, pausing to sniff the air from time to time. The scent of woodsmoke and charred meat told its own story to his sensitive nostrils, a story of despair and suffering and pointless cruelty. The raiders didn't know - could not have known - that their target was not at large in the village when they struck. That their target had nothing to do with the village. That their ashes would be dust on the wind before the night was out. A cold anger grew in Helmut's breast as he drew near to the scene of the massacre. And a ghastly anticipation. 

The first victim he saw was a child. Julia Schmidt, baker's daughter. Blood on her dress, dark in the moonlight. Her mother lay nearby. He walked on. There were more corpses now; the reavers had fallen upon a fleeing band of women and children, slaughtering them like sheep. In the gloom they might have been sleeping, in cruel, uncomfortable postures forced upon them by the positioning of strange breaks in their limbs.

Helmut kept rein on his anger. These were his people; firstly the people he had lived among - and latterly the people destined to be his subjects. Then he came to the village.

It was a scene of utter carnage. There were bodies everywhere; twisted and hunched peasants with their weapons still in their hands, oddly pathetic heaps of cloth containing mortal remnants. The wreckage of the houses still smouldered under the moonlight, ashes glowing red around paper-grey cores of charred wood. There was blood in the street.

He slowly turned around, until his eyes had taken in the entirety of the ghastly scene, No-one was left alive; any survivors had fled. He felt no guilt, though. Guilt towards such as these was beneath him. But it wasn't always so, something nagged deep inside. He stilled the dissenting inner voice, and steeled himself for the final act. 

No good. Tension and anger curled into knots around his spine. Straightening, he surveyed the corpses. Not one of the reavers had died here! The sight stiffened his resolve. Slowly he stretched out an arm, heavy beneath the sleeve of his black robe, and began to chant a soulless, evil rhyme.

Among the trees a strange rustling could be heard. A shuffling of ragged clothing, a sound like the sighing of the breeze that swung the felon on the gallows. Stick-figures were beginning to twitch and stir. Helmut continued remorselessly. Perhaps a minute passed, and then one of the bodies which was stretched lengthwise along the ground sat up. Moving slowly and arthritically, Hans-Martin Schmidt - the baker - crawled to his feet. He stared vacantly about with a face out of nightmare: mashed-in nose, a jaw that hung below his face by a tatter of drying meat. Seeing a scythe at his feet he bent and laboriously picked it up.

Helmut continued his spiritless, mournful chant. Julius Fleischer rolled over twice in the dust before he too sat up, clutching at the stump of a leg. The leg twitched towards him slowly, forced towards unnatural reunification with its master. The energy pouring into Helmut from the will of the dead Nameless One engorged him with a dark sense of evil; he was one with the night and the magic, as his servants crawled to their feet and, vacant-eyed, shambled towards him.

Finally the incantation was complete; the spell of summoning in place. Zombies were still staggering in, but already a hard core surrounded him. He looked about. The eyes that met his gaze were lifeless: some were merely gouged sockets, while others were hazed and dulled by the flies' feeding. For the most part these were the menfolk of the village, armed in death as in life. His eyes continued their search, until he saw his father. It might have been his father; its neck and head were too badly damaged for him to be sure in the darkness.

"Follow me," he commanded in an ancient tongue, the learning of which was not possible in a night - not without enchantment. "The enemy lies sleeping. In death ye shall reap your revenge for the afflictions of life; whereafter ye shall seek peace through my ministrations. Forward!"

He pointed down the path towards the beach and, slowly at first but gradually gathering speed, the horde of zombies plodded towards the reavers.

Ragnar One-Eye and his men were no amateurs. They had not forgotten to place a watch, nor to light fires on the beach. But a single guard was no match for the horror that swarmed out of the darkness in total silence save for the slithering of rank, battle-scarred flesh and the clanking of metallic death.

The guard stood transfixed for two fatal seconds, mouth agape; then he screamed "attackers!" He was too late. The horde of death was already scrabbling and clawing its way over the sleepers, knives flickering in deadly arcs.

Helmut stood watching, controlling the attack by force of will alone. Something within him was crying out: if you hadn't dabbled, hadn't experimented with corruption, hadn't wakened the thing under the graveyard... No matter. He pushed the thought aside. Some of the reavers retreated to the boats, making to cast off and push them into the sea and escape. A couple of his zombies followed, but he recalled them with a peremptory tug of willpower. Let the survivors bear warning to whoever had sent them! A cold smile that was most certainly not Helmut's own played about his lips as the last of the sleepers died beneath a struggling mound of noisome flesh. The first light of dawn was already beginning to show along the horizon: he turned and, ignoring the destruction around him, walked back towards the Liche-crypt. 

It was as he had left it. The fighting hadn't reached the graveyard; a few poppies bobbed fitfully in the morning breeze as he pushed aside the altar stone and again descended into the musty darkness. But this time when he reached the inner chamber he paused before the throne and genuflected. "Thank you, Father. I am most grateful for your assistance," he murmured as he contemplated the heap of bones piled there. The skull grinned at him.

It might almost have been his imagination that as he reentered the apartment a bone-dry whisp of a voice behind him said: Think nothing of it, my son. 

But then again, it might not.

THE OTHER

by Nicola Griffith 

The city of Middenheim reared up on its fist of rock, blocking the glitter of weak autumn sunlight and throwing a shadow across the line moving patiently up the slope of the viaduct towards the east gate. The air creaked with harness; iron-rimmed wheels rang softly against stone. Stefan stood up in his stirrups to get a better look at the jam of carts and foot travellers.

"It's more than two weeks yet until Carnival." He pulled at his reins in irritation; the horse snorted and curvetted.

"Stefan," his father said mildly.

Stefan relaxed his grip a little, patted the horse on the neck. Herr Doktor Hochen nodded approval. Stefan's attention wandered.

He stared down at the back of a craftsman's neck. It was creased with dirt; the rough leather jerkin had rubbed a sore into the skin. It ought to be cleaned with good lye soap before it festered. He imagined the edges of the sore swelling, glistening red and tight as the poisons accumulated; he could almost taste the thick sweet smell of decay.

His horse danced, sending a stone skittering. Stefan swallowed bile.

"It's going to take longer crawling up this viaduct than to ride from Hunxe." He tried not to think of the man's neck, swelling, swelling. "We should have ridden on last night and not bothered staying at the inn."

"The gates would have been closed at that hour."

"They would have recognized you."

"Perhaps. But the Watch might be a little overzealous about its duties at this time of year."

Stefan looked at the sunlight gleaming on his father's soft-tanned boots and brown riding velvets, and wondered why a physician important enough to be summoned all the way to Grubentreich to minister to the son of Grand Duke Leopold would not be prepared to force the Watch to recognize him. Whatever the hour.

Privately, he suspected that it was because his father was getting too old to sit his horse comfortably for any length of time.

"Perhaps we should have taken a coach from the inn at Hunxe."

His father's shoulders hunched in anger but he spoke quietly, without looking up from his reins.

"You might be eighteen, Stefan, and old enough to have applied for your own physician's licence, but it seems you do not yet have sufficient manners to mind me to grant it."

Stefan knew an apology would only make things worse. As it was, his father would probably delay the licence for a week or so. He stayed quiet and concentrated on trying to ignore the ache of two days' riding.

Ahead, the faint background noise grew louder. Stefan thought he could hear shouting.

"Sounds as though there's a fight in front." He stood up in his stirrups but could not see what was happening.

The shouting got louder; a ripple of movement spread outward, reaching them in the form of a rustling of clothes as people shifted from foot to foot. Several scrambled up onto their carts to get a better look.

"Hoy!" Stefan called. "Can you see what's happening?"

"Someone's had his wagon turned right over on its side."

"Ask him if anyone's been hurt," his father said.

"Can't tell," the man shouted, "but the Watch are coming out." He paused. "They're coming this way."

"Tell them we're physicians."

Under the direction of two members of the Watch, the wagon had already been hauled upright by unwilling bystanders. A guardswoman led them through the crowd.

The air was sharp with the reek of wine which still poured from the shattered barrel. A man wearing the coarse clothes and leather gauntlets of a waggoner lay on his back in shadow. A woman knelt at his side, gently probing his shoulder.

Herr Hochen handed his bag to Stefan and looked around. He walked over to a flat-bedded cart.

"Lift him up here," he said to the guardswoman.

The woman kneeling at the man's side stood up, shadow line slicing across her body diagonally from collarbone to hip. One knee of her pale green trousers was stained with wine, like a bruise. A cotton scarf, the same colour as the wine stain, was tied around her upper left arm. She was wearing a light cloak against the autumn chill but it was slung back over her shoulders, out of the way, and pinned with a wooden brooch. She was young, seventeen perhaps, but fatigue or something else made her seem older. Her hair, light brown and just long enough to be tied back, was dull with travel dust.

"He should not be moved until his leg is splinted," she said.

"I need to get a good look at him, my dear."

"His shoulder may be broken too."

"He'll be taken good care of, don't worry. Are you his daughter?"

"No."

"I see." He turned to the guardswoman. "Lift him up please."

Stefan turned away from the injured man's pain as two guardsmen heaved him onto the cart. The woman stooped to pick up a leather satchel which she slung over her back. Stefan recognized it as the kind of thing travelling musicians carried and wondered how she knew about splinting bones. She saw Stefan watching her. He blushed, but walked over.

"You don't agree with my father's methods."

"No."

"Don't you know who my father is?"

"No."

"Herr Doktor Franz Hochen."

"So now I know his name, as well as the fact that he doesn't know his job."

"He's the most well-respected physician in Middenheim. In fact, my father is the representative of the Guild of Physicians and a member of the Komission for Health, Education and Welfare."

"Then if he is not ignorant, he has caused that waggoner suffering wilfully."

"That man was poor, you could tell by looking at him. If we treated him here, we'd get no fee. So that cart will take him to the Temple of Shallya where the initiates take charity cases. Later, if it turns out he has got funds, then my father would be pleased to treat him. As it is, my father is probably paying for the use of that cart out of his own pocket. He's too generous."

"I see."

It was the exact tone his father had used earlier.

"We could prosecute you for practising healing without a licence," he said.

"You wouldn't." It was a statement. "Who authorizes these licences?"

"My father. He makes recommendations to the Komission from the applications received by the guild. Why? Do you want to apply?"

She studied him a moment.

"Perhaps."

And then she turned and forced her way into the crowd.

Stefan was left staring at the people she had pushed past. He felt foolish. He did not even know her name.

The night was mild and damp. Stefan walked along the Garten Weg slowly, enjoying the smell of grass and wet leaves. He stopped and listened to the unusual quiet. When he set up his practice, he would buy a house somewhere in clean, orderly Nortgarten, overlooking Morrspark where it was always peaceful. He smiled. Today, his father had handed him a parchment stamped in blue and fastened with the Komission's seal; he could set up his practice whenever he liked. He walked north and then east along Ostgarten, leaving the quiet behind.

Burgen Bahn heaved with people. It was nearly midnight but with only a week to Carnival, hawkers and pleasure-seekers lit lamps against the dark and did business while they could.

Stefan stooped through the doorway of the Red Moon. A fire blazed at one end and torches sputtered around a stage at the other; the room was full of noise. His cloak steamed in the heat.

"Stefan!"

He waved and made his way over to his friends' table. They poured him wine while he took off his cloak.

"Welcome, Herr Doktor Stefan," one of them said, handing him a leather cup.

Stefan grinned.

"Thank you, Josef."

He sipped and leaned back in his chair to get a good look at the stage, letting the heavy wine slide over his tongue. Tonight was his night, he wanted to savour every moment. To one side of the stage, a heavy-set man was tuning his rebec while another sat cross-legged, running through some repetitive tune on the pipes.

Stefan missed the point at which the rebec began to thread the room with the counter melody; it was just there, weaving the audience in tight. Two women began to dance. They moved easily, perfectly in time, ignoring the audience. To Stefan, it seemed that they danced for each other, swaying in and out of each other's reach but never touching. He watched, fascinated, as they stepped in close and silk skirts slid up the smooth muscle of their thighs at the same time. They held that position, close enough to feel the heat of each other's skin, for several heartbeats.

When the music finished, Stefan clapped as loudly as the rest. Several of his friends threw money onto the stage. Eva always hired the best entertainers in the city.

"And that was just the first act." He filled his goblet and took a long swallow, waving the wineboy over for more.

"Look," Josef nodded over to a tall woman in a cloak who had just arrived. "Eberhauer's here."

Janna Eberhauer, the deputy High Wizard, took her seat next to the owner of the Red Moon who smiled and stroked her arm, then stood, gesturing towards the stage.

"Looks like Eva's going to introduce the next one herself."

"...for our next performer. She's young but very, very talented. Katya Raine."

A young woman walked onto the stage carrying a pair of hand drums. Stefan leaned forward. It was the girl he had met by the east gate, the healer. Her loose trousers and sleeveless shirt were soft black. The scarf tied around her arm was black too. Her feet were bare. She sat down and settled the drums between her legs.

"Tonight, we sit well fed and snug, with the carnival moons overhead and wine lying warm in our bellies." There were a few cheers and shouts. "But tonight I will sing of a different place, a village where hungry people sit in their houses roofed with straw while autumn hardens to winter."

The audience was silent while Katya's hands moved over the drums, stroking and tapping, cupping the sounds, bringing them to life. They spoke of ground brittle with frost, of breath steaming in air bright as glass, of a deep and waiting cold. Power built under her fingers. Her eyes glittered with reflected torchlight and she swayed slightly, her head moving from side to side with the beat. Shadows caught and dissolved on the planes and ridges of her cheek and neck. Her fingers moved blindly, gently as moths. She sang...

... of a young woman kneeling on the floor of an old cow byre, feeding a fire with chips of goat dung. She was excited, impatient. Finally, satisfied with the height of the flames, she opened a small leather pouch and slid a stone onto her palm. It was dull and red. Using tongs, she held the stone over the flames. Now she would see if she was right: if it was heartsblood stone, it would glow in the heat and then, cooled in wine, it would be a treasure beyond price. The wine could be used in many healing tinctures, drop by precious drop. Or so she had been told by her great-grandmother.

With a flat crack, the stone exploded; she coughed in the smoke. Her left arm was stinging and when her eyes stopped running, she saw that it was smeared with blood. A sliver of stone must have caught her. She examined the charred dust on the end of the tongs: whatever the stone had been, it was not heartsblood.

That night, she woke in pain. Her arm was hot and swollen. Careful not to wake her sister who shared her pallet, she slid from under the sleeping furs and went outside into the moonlight. Around the puncture hole, her arm was puffy and tender. There was still something in there. It would have to come out.

The next day, the arm was sore where she had cut into the flesh but it no longer felt unnaturally heavy and hot. The woman wondered what the stone could have been. That night, she woke up again. She unwound the bandage; the arm was healing well but she felt strange, lightheaded. Outside, she did not feel the cold, it seemed that voices and hot breath whispered over her skin. Her body sang with excitement. She ran, laughing and mad, through the freezing night. It was dawn before she returned to her family's cottage, exhausted and bewildered, with blood on her hands and lips. Frightened as she was, she had the wit to wash herself before she lay down to get what rest she could.

The young woman tried everything, all her healing arts, to fight the madness growing inside her. But her efforts were useless; the stone which had shattered into slivers had been warpstone, and one speck of warpstone dust could wrench away sanity and mutate a body into something not human. Day after day, she fought the urges swelling up inside her. At night, when the dark influence pulled at her mind, she lost all memory of what she did. When she did sleep, her dreams were full of killing and tearing. Under the scarf tied about her left arm, her skin healed in a scale pattern, like a snake.

And then the morning came when she woke from her madness to find her whole arm covered in green scales and her nails hooked into claws. Inside the cottage, her entire family lay with their throats ripped out, stiffening in their own blood. She felt no doubt: she had done this thing. She was no longer human.

By noon, she had laid a huge fire in the centre of the cottage. She fastened the shutters from the outside, then she went inside and locked the heavy door. Using a twig, she pushed the key under the door out of reach. Now there was no way out. She lit the fire and burned herself to death.

Katya sat silently on the stage, her drums beside her. The glitter was gone from her eyes. Janna Eberhauer, the deputy High Wizard, watched her intently. The whole room was still. She had made them look into the face of a fear they lived with day by day, the horror that was warpstone - its power to pervert healthy daughters and well-loved sons into mutated forms who, shunned by law-abiding people, lost their sanity and turned to the worship of unspeakable gods. In silence, Katya picked up her drums and left the stage.

The audience stirred, then began to applaud. Coins showered the stage. Wineboys scraped the money into a pile for her to collect later. Stefan drained his cup, filled it and drank again.

"Hoy!" He called a wineboy over. "Parchment and quill, quickly."

When he had finished he folded it, scrawled Katya's name on the front and gave it to the waiting boy along with a shilling.

The boy smirked but threaded his way past the crowded tables and through a curtain at the back. A few moments later, Katya stood by his table, holding the note.

"Did you write this?" She tossed it onto the table. "I can't read."

"It says...uh, it asks would you like to join me for some wine?"

She sat down.

"I enjoyed your performance."

"Thank you."

"Yes. Though I've never heard of heartsblood stone."

"Before she died, my grandmother's mind wandered. She talked about strange red stones and how good fairies would reward hard work with pots of gold all in the same breath. When you're young you believe anything. Especially if you want to believe it."

"I could almost believe that you sang from knowledge."

"Only almost?" she asked.

Stefan's friend Josef looked at the scarf tied around Katya's left arm.

"Clever. Nice bit of deception, that. But maybe it's not deception," he said boldly, "maybe you really are a mutant." He was drunk.

She looked amused, not shocked.

"Have I sung my song so convincingly that I must take off my scarf to prove I'm not some creature of the night?" She turned to Stefan. "I'd like that wine now."

He beckoned another wineboy.

"Bring a bottle of wine, and a cup for the lady. Make it one of your best and there'll be some coppers in it for you." He handed the boy five gold crowns, then felt embarrassed at his extravagance.

"I'm celebrating," he told her. "I got my licence today."

"I have applied for mine," she said.

The wine came before he had to reply. He poured for all of them.

"Where will you practice?"

"No idea yet," he said.

"You have no real vocation for healing, have you Stefan?' she said quietly. Close up, he saw that her eyes were dull with fatigue and ringed with blue. She seemed thinner.

He shrugged.

"I wouldn't call mixing potions to aid the overtaxed digestions of rich people a holy duty, if that's what you mean."

"The rich are not the only ones who need care." She looked at him steadily.

His nostrils filled with the stench of people lying in their own filth, rotting from inside with disease, and the sound of their thin cries deafened him. His stomach rippled; he did not see the wineboy approach the table.

"Fraulein Katya? The deputy High Wizard wishes to speak with you."

Without a word, she stood and followed him.

Stefan's hand shook as he reached for his wine. A few tables away, Janna Eberhauer leaned close to Katya, talking softly.

Josef followed his gaze. "Don't take it too hard, Stefan. She's probably happier with her own kind." He laughed. "I wonder how Eva's feeling about this."

Stefan turned to look at him, full of revulsion. Who for, he was not sure.

Over the next few days, images of Katya haunted Stefan; he saw her as he had that first time, by the gate, stained with wine, sure of her skill; he heard her singing, remembered the glitter of her eyes. But he dreamed of a different Katya, a Katya who slipped her arms around him from behind and kissed him until he moaned. And when he turned to reach for her, the arms she held out to him were scaled and taloned.

"Stefan, what catches your interest in here?"

His father sounded pleased to find him in the room which doubled as library and record repository. Stefan turned round, a scroll pushed through his belt.

"I was just looking through a few records to see if I could find an exact definition of a mutant." The lie came easily.

His father looked interested.

"Exact definition? Can't say I've ever really thought about it." He went over to a cupboard and rummaged around. "There might be something in the... ah, here we are." He dragged a volume from an orderly pile and laid it on the table. "Now, let's see."

"Perhaps I should look. You've always found references for me. Now that I have my licence, I ought to do my own reading too."

His father looked so pleased that Stefan was ashamed of his deception.

"Well then, I'll just take what I came for and leave you to it." He gathered up the pile of scrolls on the table; Stefan held the door for him. "There have been times when I've doubted you would ever make a physician, Stefan, but perhaps I have been wrong, perhaps after all you will be sorting through this pile of licence applications one day. I'm proud of you."

Stefan pulled the parchment from his belt and sat down. Application for Licence, Physician's Guild: Katya Raine he read. She must have hired a scribe. 

He scanned the contents. She came from Schoninghagen, almost a hundred miles to the south and west. What had made her travel all the way to Middenheim? He tucked the scroll back into his belt and left.

It was one of those rare autumn afternoons when the sun streamed clear and warm into the city. Stefan had not bothered with a cloak. He shouldered his way through the crowds along Burgen Bahn. With only three days to go until Carnival, he was thankful that the Red Moon was not in the middle of the Altmarkt where it was certain to be even more crowded.

The closer he came to the Red Moon, the slower he walked. Katya's application rubbed against his skin where it lay hidden beneath his shirt. He did not know what he wanted of her. To talk to her, maybe. Or maybe not. She attracted him but made him uneasy. By the time he saw the distinctive brick of the Red Moon, warm against the grey stone of the other buildings, he was considering abandoning the whole idea and walking straight past.

The door of the Red Moon opened and Katya slipped out, carrying her satchel. She turned down Zauber Strasse. Stefan peered around the corner after her; she had not seen him. He followed.

Two thirds of the way along the street, she turned into an alleyway. She walked swiftly between houses without pausing to look around; she must have travelled this way several times before. She turned again, left then right, and Stefan almost lost her, just catching a flicker of blue as she went in the back entrance of a big house. He marked the colour of the paintwork and the style of roof tiles. It should be possible to recognize the right house if he worked his way back through the alleys to the front.

It was Janna Eberhauer's. He should have known.

Eberhauer, the Deputy High Wizard. And Katya. He felt as though he could not breathe. It took him a few moments to realize that he was shaking with rage. And around and around in his head, like a temple chant, ran the thought: he should have known, he should have known.

He went round the back again and settled against a wall where he could see the door but where he would be out of sight of anyone leaving. No matter how long it took, he would wait. Then he would find out what was going on.

By the second hour, the sun was sinking, leaving the alleys in shadow. He stamped his feet to keep them warm and wished he had worn a cloak.

His legs began to ache and he was hungry. The wall he was leaning on was damp. Doubts gnawed at him: what if she had left by the front door? He pushed it to the back of his mind.

The stars were showing. The remains of his rage sat in his stomach like an undigested meal. He would not give up, but he was achieving nothing here.

Stefan reached the Red Moon just before midday. His muscles were stiff and aching, and he wore a cloak against the freezing mist. He hoped he would not have to wait long.

This time she did not carry the satchel with her drums but a different bag. Something a physician might carry. Instead of turning down Zauber Strasse, she walked south along Burgen Bahn. It was easy to follow her through the crowds without being seen. It became even busier as she led him along Ost Weg; by Markt Weg the crowds had become so dense that he had difficulty keeping her in sight. When they reached the Altmarkt, he moved to within three strides of her back, trusting to luck that she did not look round.

Luck almost abandoned him when she went into an apothecary's. Trying to duck out of sight, he crashed backwards into a barrow full of fruit alongside a stall. He panicked when the owner shouted at him then calmed as he realized Katya would not be able to pick out one noise from another in the din: fruit sellers hawked their wares; a mother pulled down her child's breeches and held him over the gutter while he shrieked in protest; a woman, passing the mother and child, got splashed and began to shout. Stefan helped the angry stall owner to pick up the fruit.

When Katya came out of the shop, she turned out of the Altmarkt towards the Old Quarter. Stefan's heart thumped. The Old Quarter was not a safe place to be, at any time. There were no crowds to hide behind here. He wished he was carrying a knife, even though he had never used one before, except to cut meat. He turned a corner. Alleys led off in all directions. He panicked; Katya was nowhere to be seen.

There was no warning; a kick caught him behind the knees and he went down, his arm twisted up his back and a knee on his spine. Stone scraped his jaw as his attacker pulled his head around to get a look at his face.

"It's you." Katya made a sound of disgust and let him up.

Stefan stood up slowly. She had knocked the wind out of him.

"Are you hurt?"

"No," he managed.

"Good. Explain why you're following me."

He wanted to shout at her, tell her how much she had frightened him.

"Why are you practising without a licence?" he blurted instead.

"I have applied. It's only a matter of days before I receive the official stamp of approval. Then your orderly mind can rest from its worries about proper paperwork."

He said nothing, remembering the parchment against his ribs.

"Come with me and see the people I treat. Then tell me I need a licence before I lift a finger to help them."

He was so close that he could smell the damp wool of her cloak, her sandalwood perfume. Mist stung his scraped chin; she could have broken his neck while he lay on the ground. Unease knotted his belly.

They walked through the worst part of the old quarter.

"Those I treat are poor, sick, old. They are not gentle people. Prepare yourself for that."

Splintered buildings gaped at him like broken teeth, waiting to swallow him, trap him in their rotteness and despair.

"This way."

They climbed over rubble blocking a doorway. Her sandalwood was not strong enough to counter the smell of filth and neglect. Inside, it was gloomy; many windows were boarded up. Stefan jumped as a shadow moved nearby.

"They wonder who you are." She put her bag on the floor near the remains of a staircase and took off her cloak. She gave it to him to hold. "Wait here."

She climbed the stairs and disappeared into the darkness.

Stefan tried to concentrate on the cloak in his hands. It felt rough. When he was rich, he would buy her a cloak of fine, heavy wool, lined with silk. A green cloak, the same colour as the trousers she had been wearing by the east gate. Then he remembered Eberhauer.

Something moved.

"Who is it?" Sweat wormed down his back. "Anyone there?" His voice was swallowed by the dark. Something was watching him.

A shadow inched its way across the floor towards the dim light. It sat back on its haunches and tried to speak. Panic leapt like lightning up Stefan's spine. He ran.

He did not look where he was going, he just ran, pursued by visions of the mutant with lumpy and misshapen limbs and running sores, whose elephantine skin grew too far across its eyes and stretched over its mouth making speech almost impossible.

When Katya found him he had stopped retching. He pulled himself into a ball.

"Leave me alone."

She squatted down beside him and felt for fever.

"Keep away from me!" He pushed her hand away.

After a while, he asked, "Why do you do this?"

"Because they need me."

"Mutants don't need anyone."

She was silent so long he thought she was ignoring him.

"The one who frightened you is called Siggy. He is not a mutant. When he was two years old, his father spilled burning lamp oil on him. The burns were so bad that his arms and legs healed all out of shape and his skin thickened and grew back in all the wrong places. He can't stand properly and it hurts for him to move around even a little. Without proper attention, his skin dries out and cracks. I can help him with that."

Stefan tried to remember Siggy's face but the memory was slippery. He did not know what to think. Burns might explain the disfigurement.

"Are you telling me the truth?" His voice was hoarse.

"Siggy is not a mutant."

He was uncertain.

"I could still report you for not having a licence." It was like a talisman, a ritual chant to dispel confusion.

"I can help some of them, Stefan. You could too."

He wanted to believe her but his fear was real. She stood up.

"Come on."

She reached down to help him up. Her cloak slid back to reveal the scarf tied around her arm. Fear slammed through him again.

"Show me," he licked his lips, "show me what's under that scarf. Then I'll help you."

She went still.

"I won't bargain with you."

"Why not? There will be things you need, certain ingredients you won't be able to buy without showing a licence. I could get them for you." He pushed himself upright. "Show me what's under the scarf."

"You don't know what you're asking."

"Show me."

"When I sing, Stefan, I do more than mouth a few words to a pretty tune. I give an audience mystery, myself an air of otherness." She touched the scarf gently. "This is my mystery."

"Show me. That's the price of my help."

She was silent a moment.

"It may not be what you want to see."

She unwound the scarf. Stefan's stomach curled in a tight fist as the last twist of cloth fell free.

"Look."

The arm was perfect and unblemished. Where the scarf had been, the skin was pale. Stefan reached out to touch it with his fingertips. It was warm and smooth.

There was no relief; the tension burrowed deeper into his stomach. He did not understand why. He wanted to walk away and never see Katya Raine again and could not; he had made a bargain.

"Make me a list of the things you need. I'll deliver them tomorrow."

The Red Moon looked smaller in daylight. It smelled of stale wine and ash: the remains of last night's fire lay in the grate. An elderly woman had gone to tell Katya he was here.

Stefan was tense and his head ached slightly; he had not slept well. He flinched when Katya entered the room. She was limping slightly.

"I tripped over my drums in the dark last night," she said, gesturing at her leg. "It's bruised, but nothing a bit of comfrey won't cure."

Stefan could not imagine Katya being clumsy.

"I have everything you asked for." He placed a small sack on the table between them.

"Thank you. How much do I owe?"

"I don't want your money." Confusion made him abrupt. He did not want to touch anything which had been near her. But she was beautiful.

"Thank you again." She paused. "Would you like a drink while you're here?"

"No. I have to get out. I mean, I have to go."

He retreated ungracefully.

He walked slowly along Burgen Bahn, not wanting to go home. On the Ostgarten Weg, dwarfs were building a huge wooden platform overlooking the park. Graf Boris and his family would sit there tomorrow and watch the Carnival fireworks. The hammering and hoarse shouts as pieces of timber were lifted into place and fastened together were muffled and unreal. He turned left off the Garten Weg and down Grun Allee which ran along the southern edge of the Altmarkt. Here, he found what he wanted: noise and bright colours to push the fear he did not understand from his mind. He wandered there for hours.

As the afternoon began to turn to evening, he found himself standing next to an old woman, watching a sleight-of-hand artist who had set up his table between a flower barrow and a beer seller. The man was pulling eggs and brightly coloured scarfs from his mouth and tossing them into the audience. There was scattered applause. He bowed, then took a cage from under his table. Inside, a snake hissed; its tongue lickered in and out. Stefan stirred uneasily.

The old woman poked him in friendly fashion.

"All done with misdirection," she said, nodding at the magician who was holding up the snake while displaying its empty cage, assuring the crowd that there was no hidden trapdoor or false base.

"What?" Stefan said. He was poised on the edge of realization.

"I said, it's all done with misdirection. While we're looking at that empty cage, he's..."

Misdirection. Now he knew why there had been no relief at the sight of that unblemished arm. Oh, gods, misdirection.

"Here, are you all right?" The woman's voice seemed miles away. "You're white as a bedsheet."

He had been fooled. She had fooled everyone. He had to do something, tell someone.

Janna Eberhauer stood silently by her fire, contemplating the flames. Her hair was loose and she was wearing her bed robe.

"What are you suggesting?" she asked mildly.

"That perhaps she is not all she seems," Stefan said carefully.

"And you came to me."

"I don't want anything to happen to her. But if she..." He swallowed. "Mutants are an abomination. You're the deputy High Wizard."

The curtain screening the room from the sleeping area drew back. Katya limped through, brushing her hair. She looked ill. Stefan stared, immobilized by shock. She had been there all the time. She limped towards him.

"Keep away from me."

"Stefan, I'm not evil."

"Why are you risking so much?" he asked Eberhauer. "You can't help her. Nobody can."

"Yet you came to me, to ask for help."

Faced with the wizard's calm, he felt foolish and graceless. Katya lowered herself into a chair. He saw how carefully she moved.

"What's the matter with her?" he asked Eberhauer.

"I can still speak for myself," Katya said. She reached for a cup of water and took a sip. "The story I told, the song, is essentially true in one respect." She put the cup down and began to roll up the bottom of her trousers. It was an obvious effort. Eberhauer moved to help her.

Fear flexed like a snake in Stefan's belly.

"No," he croaked, "I don't want to see."

Eberhauer looked up from the bandage she was unrolling.

"You accuse and meddle without knowing anything," she said calmly. "Now you will learn."

"No!" Horror lapped at his reason. "I can't!"

"You can."

Eberhauer rose and took his hand. He could not resist as she led him over to where Katya leaned back in the chair, her eyes closed in exhaustion. Her right trouser leg was rolled up past the knee. Bloody bandaging lay in a heap on the rug.

Stefan looked.

There was a slash across the back of her calf, the sort an inexperienced swordsman might make trying to hamstring an opponent. It was a recent injury, beginning to scab over. He frowned.

"I don't understand."

"Examine it closely."

Around the healing gash, almost too faint to be seen, was a tracery of cracks. In a scale pattern.

"We tried to excise the speck of warpstone that must still be in there," Eberhauer said, impossibly calm.

"It's evil," he whispered.

"Listen to me. Katya is not evil. Warpstone acts on her flesh and its madness pulls at her mind. But that is not evil. As to the madness, she is strong. She resists still."

"But her skin..."

"I am not evil," Katya said from the chair. "I am not mad."

Stefan refused to hear her, he spoke to Eberhauer.

"But she will be, in the end."

"Without help, yes."

They were both looking at him. The air was thick and sticky, difficult to breathe.

"Oh gods, you want me to do it. You want me to hack at it again, slice into the muscle, bone deep, and cut, and cut. No." He backed towards the door. "It won't work, it just won't work. Even if I cut the whole leg off."

Eberhauer was silent a moment, watching the flames.

"Warpstone dust is materialization of Chaos-matter into solid form. Magic is the manipulation of energies inherent in Chaos." She looked at him directly. "I am a wizard. This thing is possible."

They helped Katya onto the bed; Eberhauer stroked her hair and began to hum while Stefan gathered what they would need. He rolled up the rug and laid the gloves, bowl, bandages and other things on the floor. The wizard stood, letting the sound build as she raised her arms over her head and down again in a slow circle. She nodded to Stefan: Katya slept. He wiped the leg down and poured raw alcohol over his knife.

Though he had never cut into living tissue before, he used the knife easily, like a quill, marking the edges of the excision then sliding the blade in sideways to part skin from muscle. He mopped at the blood. The muscle was red and plump beneath his fingers. He cut into it. Around him, the humming became more insistent, singing through his hands.

He stopped at a tight knot of tissue. The vibration in his hands became an angry jangle. This was what he was looking for. He probed at it, eased what looked like a fleck of dirt onto the tip of his knife. This was the focus of all his nightmares; so small. It was glowing. He lifted it out into the air.

Eberhauer's humming swelled into a sound thick enough to stand on; Stefan could feel the force of it flowing down his arm, recoiling from the malignancy poised at the end of his knife. His fear became anger, a refusal of the torment of Chaos, for his sake, for Katya's sake. He joined his negation to Eberhauer's. The warpstone dimmed and began to smoke, curling smaller and smaller until there was nothing left.

Stefan sat by the bed and watched her breathe. There were still hollows under her cheekbones but the dark circles under her eyes were fading. Outside, the first fireworks of Carnival stained the sky.

Janna Eberhauer came and stood behind him.

"She'll leave us, won't she?" he said.

"Yes."

"Where? Back to Schoninghagen?"

"She told me she's always wanted to see the north. She will go there I think, to the snow and ice."

"You want her to stay." He knew how much the wizard had risked, and perhaps why.

"I want whatever is right for her. And she has found all she came here for."

"Not quite." He reached inside his shirt. The scroll of parchment was stamped with Katya's name and sealed with the blue of the Komission. He laid it on the coverlet near Katya's hand, stood up.

"Tell her it might be useful if she ever comes back. And tell her," he looked down at the woman sleeping on the bed, "tell her I plan to work at the Temple of Shallya a while, until I know what I want."

He closed the door quietly behind him and stepped out into the splash of light and colour which was Carnival.

APPRENTICE LUCK

by Sean Flynn

Karl Spielbrunner had been apprenticed to Otto von Stumpf for six months now, more than long enough for him to realize how much he hated the antiquarian book trade. Karl had a fatal combination of vanity, ambition and intelligence, and he knew well enough that unless his luck changed all he had to look forward to was ending up with his own poky little shop, as bent and crabbily reclusive as von Stumpf. Of course, there were far worse fates in Middenheim, the great and terrible City of the White Wolf. If Karl's dead father - the only family Karl had, apart from some country cousins he had never seen - had not been a drinking companion of von Stumpf's, no doubt Karl would be just another orphan trying to scratch a living on the streets now, a likely victim for drug pushers, racketeers, pimps or cultists.

Far worse fates, yes, but not by much, Karl thought, as he stood at the dusty window and watched the shabby, narrow street and the occasional passer-by. It was summer, and stiflingly hot in the shop. A fat bluebottle buzzed in one corner of the window; the husks of others were scattered on the leatherbound tomes which leaned against each other in the window.

There was so much going on in the world, and Karl was stuck here in charge of a lot of tattered dusty books. A wizard had moved into some rooms down the street, for instance, a tall mysterious foreigner. Some said he was a necromancer; everyone said he was up to no good. And something was rumoured to be stirring in the myriad tunnels that undercut the rock on which the city was founded. The Watch was on maximum alert, and only last night the body of a goat-headed man had been found near one of the main sewer inlets.

For a moment, Karl saw himself at the head of one of the elite patrols, a grim-faced Watch Captain armed with a glittering sword, maybe a decorative scar on one cheek. Then the bluebottle buzzed loudly at the dusty window and Karl's daydream collapsed stillborn. Musty smell of crumbling paper, shadowy ranks of outdated books looming into shadow: this was his fate. His only consolation was that as usual his master was away at the Wolf's Grip, the grim little tavern which drained most of the shop's profits. Otherwise Karl would certainly have been put to some useless task or other, recataloguing stock or sweeping away the sticky cobwebs which festooned the crumbling plaster of the low ceiling - and no doubt von Stumpf would be giving him a lecture in that nagging, whiny voice of his, telling Karl how lucky he was, to be apprentice to the venerable firm of von Stumpf and Son (Karl didn't know what had happened to the Son, but he guessed that he had run away as soon as he could). And if von Stumpf had been there, Karl wouldn't have been able to take his chance when his luck suddenly changed. 

It arrived in the unlikely form of Scabby Elsa, a bent, hooknosed old crone who specialized in reselling rags stripped from the corpses thrown from the Cliff of Sighs. Just as Karl was settling to a forbidden snack of black bread and cheese, she pushed open the door and hobbled laboriously over the uneven floor with something clutched to her shapeless bosom. The bluebottle left off bumbling at the window and spiralled around the greasy shawl wrapped over her head, attracted by the sour, rank stench of her layers of rotting rags.

"A little something for you, young master," Scabby Elsa said, and set what she had been carrying on the scarred rubbish-strewn table which served as a counter.

It was an old, old book, text handwritten in an upright clerkly style on octavo parchment, bound in fine-grained leather with gilt stamping on the spine, the front somewhat buckled and stained. Karl took only a moment to realize it had to be valuable; much as he hated the book trade, he had taken care to pick up the necessary knowledge and tricks. Now it looked as if that care might actually be about to pay off.

"I'll take a gold crown for this fellow," Scabby Elsa said. Her smile revealed blackened gums, and the stench of her breath almost knocked Karl down. "No less, now, but no more either. That's what I needs, and that's what I takes."

"Ten shillings," Karl said quickly. "The cover is damaged, no one would offer more."

"It fell a long way, like its owner. Lucky it fell on someone else, or it would look a lot worse. Fifteen, then."

"Twelve, and that's my final offer."

"Done," Scabby Elsa said.

Karl kept what little money he had managed to save tied in a corner of his shirt. He undid the knot and counted out the price. Scabby Elsa scooped up the coins with a surprising deftness and hobbled out of the shop, pursued by the bluebottle, which had fallen in love with her - or at least, with her smell.

His heart beating quickly and lightly, Karl pulled down the window shades and locked the door. With luck, von Stumpf wouldn't be back until at least the end of the afternoon. He had plenty of time to examine his prize.

The book was a grimorium, a handbook of magic, and written in old-fashioned but plain language, too, not some kind of code. From the style of binding and the yellowing of the edges of the parchment pages, it had to be at least three hundred years old, from the time of the Wizards' War perhaps, or even before. Karl leafed through crackling pages. A spell of bafflement. A spell of binding. Hmmm. He would take it to the shop of Hieronymus Neugierde, the largest antiquarian shop in the city. He was bound to get the best price there... maybe enough to escape his apprenticeship.

Karl began to examine the book more closely. He would need to know as much as he could to get the right price. He realized with a start that the leather cover was not made of tanned animal hide, but human skin; he could make out the pores, even little hairs. It felt clammy to his fingertips, as if somehow still alive. He opened the book again and laid it face down, peered down the spine; there were often clues about a book's origin and age to be found in the binding sheets. Sure enough, there was a scrap of paper inserted there. When Karl fished it out, an insect, a shiny-backed beetle, came with it, scurrying across the table and falling to the floor before Karl could crush it.

Some kind of map had been drawn on the scrap of paper, the ink fresh and no use in dating the book. All the same it was interesting, a carefully marked route snaked through intricately labyrinthine passages, avoiding all sorts of traps and deadfalls and pits, to a sealed chamber marked with a single word written in red. A treasure map, maybe, although there was no indication of what the treasure was.

Karl studied it for a long time before he realized that it must be a map of part of the system of tunnels which the dwarfs had long ago cut through the rock on which the city stood. When he had riddled all he could, he put it in his pocket, then went into the back room where he slept and hid the book under his pillow. He would examine it further tonight, and tomorrow sell it for the best price he could and then thumb his nose at von Stumpf and live the way he wanted, not at some old fool's beck and call. He might even be able to sell the treasure map to some gullible adventurer - and there was no shortage of such people in the city - foolish enough to venture into the dangerous tunnels beneath the city.

Karl was thinking of all he could do with a pocketful of Gold Crowns as he let up the blinds. And then he jumped back in shock. The foreign wizard was peering through the dusty glass, his face only inches away from Karl's own. When he saw Karl he straightened up and pushed at the door, and although Karl hadn't unlocked it, the door opened at once.

"I am looking for a book," the wizard said.

"Well, we have all sorts of books." Karl's mouth was dry. The wizard was very tall, and despite the summer heat wore a sweeping black cloak, its red lining embroidered with all manner of weird signs of power. His face was long and white, framed by untidy black hair and a black beard. A pair of small round spectacles perched on the end of his long nose; they magnified the wizard's fierce blue eyes as he peered down at Karl.

"A very particular book. A book that may have been brought to you, or may be about to be brought to you. A large handwritten volume, with an unusual binding. I will pay very well for such a book." 

"You would have to speak to my master," Karl managed to say. He was thinking furiously. If the wizard wanted the book, then it was even more valuable than it looked, and he would certainly get a better price at Neugierde's than from this itinerant hedge-wizard.

"Your master, eh?" The wizard drew himself up. He was so tall that his head almost brushed the cobwebby rafters of the ceiling. "Very well. You give no choice but that I come back. I hope your master will be more helpful. I will call again tomorrow. And remember this, young man."

The cloak flew up and Karl jumped back, but the wizard was too quick. His cold hand fastened around Karl's wrist, pulled. Then Karl was leaning half across the table, his face only inches away from the wizard's.

"Remember this," the wizard said, softly.

"I don't forget anything," Karl managed to say. He met the wizard's gaze, trying not to be intimidated. But there was an odd tingling between his eyes, as if he was about to cry, and after a moment he had to look away.

"Things may be more than they seem, or less." The wizard let go of Karl's wrist, drew his cloak around himself. "Good day to you, young man, and good luck."

Somehow, Karl managed to behave as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened when Otto von Stumpf came back in the evening, although the old man had drunk so much of the Wolf's Grip's vinegary ale that he probably wouldn't have noticed if Karl had grown another head. After a meagre supper of boiled barley flavoured with fatty scraps of mutton, von Stumpf had Karl help him up the winding stairs to the filthy garret where he slept. Then Karl curled up on the mattress in the stockroom behind the shop and gloated over the book and the map by the light of a tallow candle. But it had been a long day, and soon enough he fell asleep.

He woke with a start to moonlight falling through the room's only window, thinking someone had touched him on the hand. But it was only a beetle clambering over the hollow of his palm, its antennae waving furiously. Karl flicked the insect away, and then realized with alarm that the book was gone.

He managed to get the candle lit, and saw that the book was lying in the curtained doorway between the shop and the stockroom. Shadows seemed to scatter from it as he went over and bent to pick it up. Nervous, and fully awake, Karl went into the shop and listened at the crooked stairs that led up to von Stumpf's garret, and grinned when he heard the old man's rasping snore. Still befuddled by sleep, Karl was about to go back to bed when he happened to glance out of the window, and saw a black-cloaked figure moving past, towards the door. It was the wizard.

In an instant, Karl was through the back room, fumbling at the bolts of the door to the yard. He managed to get it open just as the lock of the shop's door sprang with a heart-stopping click. And then he was over the wall of the yard, almost falling on top of the figure that stood in the alley below.

For an instant, Karl thought that the wizard, who obviously had found out about the book, had somehow magicked himself from one side of the building to the other. But then the man pushed back his hood and said, "Come with me - be quick now."

Karl was about to ask who the stranger was and why he should follow him when an eerie blue light flared on the other side of the wall. Without a further thought he took to his heels, clutching the book to his chest.

The stranger ran as though his feet were skimming an inch above the cobbles, his cloak streaming behind him. After dodging through the alleys, they came out on the bustling Burgen Bahn, where bands of students roved noisily among crowds of ordinary citizens. By this time Karl was panting hard, but the stranger hardly seemed to be breathing at all. His eyes glittered as he looked about alertly, one hand on the hilt of a long sword; he was a young smooth-skinned handsome man wearing baggy corduroy trews and an embroidered leather vest under the cloak - curious, old-fashioned clothes. Seemingly satisfied that they weren't being pursued, he turned and looked down at Karl, who shrank a little under that glittering unforgiving gaze.

"You have what we came to take back," the swordsman said. He had an odd, harshly buzzing accent, probably from some country district or other. That would explain the old-fashioned cut of his clothes, too.

"If you mean the book, I came by it fairly. I'm a bookseller, and I bought it," Karl said, more defiantly than he felt. After all, he was telling the truth. More or less the truth.

"We pay," the swordsman said, "even though it was stolen from us." He effortlessly plucked the book from Karl's grasp, then dropped a heavy drawstring purse to the ground. Karl pulled the purse open as the swordsman paged through the book, and gasped when he saw that it was crammed full of Gold Crowns. Then his gasp turned to a frightened squeak as the swordsman grabbed the front of his shirt and lifted him clear off the ground. "The map," the swordsman said, his face inches from Karl's own. His breath was sharply acid, and his eyes glittered crazily in the light of a nearby street-lamp. "We want the map."

"Put me down and I'll tell you where it is," Karl managed to gasp, and then his heels struck the pavement hard as the swordsman let go. Karl tugged at his dishevelled shirt, hotly aware of the group of students who had turned to snigger at this contretemps.

"Where," the swordsman said.

"Back at the shop," Karl lied, knowing it was in his pocket. He had seen an opportunity to make even more money, enough to set him up for life, maybe. A purse full of Gold Crowns could be spent in a night, if you were foolish enough. But if the map led to buried treasure, and there were legends of all sorts of dwarfish hoards hidden in the catacombs and corridors of the city beneath the city, then anything was possible. And although Karl was clever, he was also inexperienced enough to harbour the belief that no matter what, he wasn't anywhere near to dying. 

So he added quickly, "But we don't have to go back there, and face that wizard. He was the one who stole the book from you, wasn't he?"

"His apprentice," the swordsman admitted. "We nearly caught him, but he jumped over the edge of the Cliff of Sighs, and when we got down amongst the trees and found his body, the book was gone."

"But now you have the book, and fortunately for you, I am at your service. I found the map, and looked at it long enough to memorize it." This was the truth; Karl had an exceptional memory for things that might be useful to him. He said, with more confidence than he felt, "I can take you past the traps, lead you to the treasure, once we are close enough."

"Treasure," the swordsman said. "You wish to share this treasure."

"Let's call it a finder's fee."

The swordsman closed his eyes and began to mutter to himself - or more precisely, buzz and chatter in his odd dialect. Obviously he was thinking hard, and obviously thinking hard did not come easily. At last he said, "We are agreed, then. You help, for a fee."

"On your word that you will give me ten per cent of what we find, and not harm me in any way," Karl said, as steadily as he could.

"We give our word," the swordsman said, with an alacrity that made Karl wish he had asked for fifteen, or even twenty per cent. He added, "Now you will lead us to the nearest entrance to the sewers, where we will begin our journey."

Karl smiled. "It's easy to see you're a stranger to the city. The main sewer entrances are guarded by the City Watch. Even a swordsman like yourself will not be able to outfight the Watch. Er, what is your name, anyhow?"

"You may call us Argo."

"Well, I'm Karl. But don't worry, I know another way, although you may have to pay a kind of admission fee. There's a tavern down in the Ostwald district, the Drowned Rat, which has a way into the sewers in its cellar. You just have to pay the landlord, that's all."

"You have all the money, now."

"Do I? Oh, I see. Well, I suppose it is a kind of investment. Come on then, Argo. The place I'm thinking of is on the other side of the city."

Karl wasn't as confident as he had sounded. He knew about the Drowned Rat and its secret passages into the sewer network only by rumour, and he had made up the story about the entrance fee on the spot. As he and the swordsman made their way deeper into the narrow streets of Ostwald, what little confidence Karl had soon evaporated.

There were no streetlights in Ostwald, and the mean, crowded streets were illuminated only by what light fell through heavily curtained windows, or the red flames of torches a few people carried. Karl kept as close to the swordsman as he could - not an easy task, because the man strode along at a rapid pace, the darkness and the ill-favoured crowds slowing him down not at all.

There were probably no more drunks here than along the Burgen Bahn, but while on that prosperous street drunkenness was merely the end result of too much high spirits, here it was due to a kind of savage desperation. Men far gone in their cups staggered along shouting curses at the world in general, and from more than one alley came the noises of fighting. Beggars with every kind of disfigurement and disease bawled out for alms, ignored by the poorly-dressed labourers and better-dressed thieves alike, their cries scarcely louder than the shrill cries of the whores who shouted down at potential clients from upper-storey windows of the close-packed timber-framed buildings.

Karl looked for the sign of the Drowned Rat with increasing desperation. For all his pretended knowledge of the city, he had rarely been in Ostwald, and didn't like it. He wanted nothing more than to find the tavern and get into the sewers beneath these dangerous streets, forgetting for the moment how much more dangerous the sewers could be. But when at last he did spy the sign, the last of his confidence seemed to ooze from the soles of his boots.

It was a tall, narrow ramshackle building, set a little apart from its neighbours, its filthy windows glowing sullenly, its door in deep shadow. Even as Karl and Argo approached it, a man staggered out, clutching the top of his head. Blood streamed down his face, suddenly bright as he staggered through the light of a nearby lamp set in the window of a whorehouse. He turned and bawled out, "Cutthroats! Lousy thieves! Sons of diseased mutant whores!" Then he groaned and clutched his head again and staggered on.

Argo, hardly seeming to notice the man, strode through the shadows and ducked beneath the tilted lintel of the tavern. Karl had to hurry to catch him up, slipping through the door just as a couple of heavyset thugs pushed it closed.

The main room of the tavern was almost as dark as the street outside, and hazed with yellow-grey smoke which gathered in thick reefs just beneath the sagging ceiling. Wolfish looking men sat at half a dozen rough tables scattered along the walls, and all were staring at the swordsman in unnerving and hostile silence.

Argo crossed to the counter, his boots rattling the loose floorboards, and said softly to the large, bearded man behind it, "We wish to enter the sewer system. We will pay whatever is necessary."

One of the ruffians behind Karl chuckled and dropped a huge, scarred hand on Karl's shoulder. "Your friend is a bold enough fellow, laddie. I always do like 'em bold."

The landlord spat into a glass and smeared the spit around with a grey rag. "We don't like strangers coming in here, friend. On your way now. I can't help you."

"We'll just have a word with 'em," the man holding Karl said. "Straighten 'em out, like."

"Whatever you want, lads," the landlord said indifferently, turning away as the second ruffian, his head brushing the ceiling, stalked towards Argo, a weighted cosh dangling from one paw. Karl started to shout a warning, but a foul-smelling hand clamped over his mouth and nose. Argo turned, his cloak flaring, as the cosh swept towards his head... and then suddenly he was to one side of the man, his sword flashing through the smoke. Something hit the floor with a thump, blood pattering after: it was the ruffian's hand, still holding the cosh. The wounded ruffian shrieked, and then Argo's sword flashed again, and the ruffian fell to the floor, his throat spraying blood.

The thug holding Karl started to back towards the door, ignoring the apprentice's struggles. There was a tingling pressure between Karl's eyes, at the bridge of his nose. For some reason he remembered the wizard's humiliating stare, and when the ruffian let go of Karl's mouth to pull at the latch, Karl managed to shout out the spell of bafflement he'd seen in the book. It was the only thing he could think of, but to his amazement it worked.

The man let go of him and scratched at his head, his pig-like features twisted in confusion. He didn't seem to notice his companion, fallen on the floor in the centre of a widening pool of blood, or Karl, or Argo, who pushed Karl aside and ran the ruffian through with his already bloody blade, its steel scraping against ribs as he drew it out. For a moment, the man didn't seem to notice his mortal wound either, but then he gave a bubbling groan and toppled full-length, his fall rattling every flagon in the room.

Now the silence in the room had a different edge to it. Karl discovered that his nose was bleeding, and dabbed at it with his sleeve. He pulled the dead man's knife from his belt while everyone was watching Argo. The latter stepped around the body of the ruffian who had first attacked him, kicking aside the severed hand, and up to the counter. He pulled at the landlord's beard, lifting the big man half over the counter and repeating his request to be allowed into the sewers, as if nothing at all had happened.

The landlord's eyes crossed in disbelief. For a moment, the sound of his beard coming away at the roots was the only sound in the room. "The cellar," he managed to say at last. "Of course. You just follow me."

The cellar was reached by a steep winding stair, its stone steps slippery with water that dribbled down the walls. Things moved in the darkness beyond the light of the landlord's upheld lantern. Rats, the landlord said, but the thing Karl glimpsed was twice as big as any rat he'd ever seen, and seemed to scurry away on more than four legs. Argo, indifferent to any danger as usual, followed the landlord into the darkest recess of the vaulted cellar without hesitation, past rotting casks and heaps of rubbish and broken furniture.

There was a low door set deep in the wet stones of the wall, barred with iron and held shut by massive bolts, which the landlord threw back with some effort. A rush of hot malodorous air gushed out as the landlord pulled the door open. Argo started through, and Karl said loudly, "We'll need light." He didn't want to go down there, but he could hardly expect to be allowed out of the tavern alive any other way. If he was going, he wanted to be able to see.

Argo turned and plucked the lantern from the landlord, then ducked under the lintel. As Karl followed, the landlord swore and slammed the door shut on their backs, yelling through the wood that they'd never get out, he'd see that they didn't. There was a rattle as he threw the bolts home. And then there was only the drip drip drip of water from overhead, and the faint rush of water somewhere below.

A winding stair led down to one of the sewer tributaries, a smelly brick-lined tunnel scarcely tall enough for Karl to stand up in, through which a stinking stream of brown liquid gurgled. In turn, this gave out onto one of the main channels, where high stone walks ran either side of a fast-running, filthy stream.

Argo raised the lantern, peered at Karl. He brushed a cold finger over the drying blood on the apprentice's upper lip, and put it in his mouth. "The price of magic," he said, after a moment.

"It was only a little spell, something I read in that book. I didn't even think it would work, but there was nothing else I could do."

"You are modest. But do not try and use your Art against us, I warn you. We are not bound by it."

Karl looked up at him, a shadow behind the lamplight, eyes glittering. "I didn't even know the spell would work," he said again. "Really. Now, where do we go?"

"We will take you to the beginning of the maze," Argo said. "Then you must lead the way."

Karl thought hard. "The map showed that there was a kind of big round room from which the maze started. There were drawings of statues all around its walls."

"I know it. That is where we must begin."

Black rats scampered away from the light of the lantern Argo carried. Looking back, Karl could see a hundred pairs of little red eyes watching from the safety of the darkness. Sometimes, tantalizingly, he could hear the noises of the streets above, the cries of beggars or food sellers, or the rattle of wagon wheels over cobbles. But soon Argo led him away from the main channel, down a rubble-strewn slope that dropped steeply through the living rock, down into the necropolis beneath the living city.

Karl soon lost all track of time. He knew only that he was tired and hungry and frightened... and thirsty too, for the tunnels that wound ever deeper into the rock were surprisingly dry, their floors coated with dust as fine as flour. With every moment he was growing more and more afraid, and he was beginning to wish that he had never seen the book, or tried to cheat von Stumpf of its price.

Worst of all, he kept thinking that he heard footsteps in the darkness at his back, a steady even pace that always stopped a moment or two after he stopped to listen. Although dwarfs still lived in certain parts of the underground tunnels, most were rumoured to be inhabited by mutants and worse. Anything could be out there in the darkness, anything at all, and the knife he had taken from the dead thug in the tavern seemed little enough protection. But Argo ignored Karl's fears, and, rather than growing tired, the swordsman seemed to gain strength as they descended through the tunnels. As if he were at home in them, as if the darkness and the weight of rock above - the weight of the whole city - were comfortably familiar. Certainly, he knew the way to go, although that was strange, too, now Karl thought about it. Hadn't Argo said that he was a stranger in the city? There was much more to the handsome young swordsman than met the eye.

Most of the tunnels were narrow and low-ceilinged, and once or twice they had to stop and backtrack when they came upon a cave-in that had blocked the way forward. On one occasion they disturbed a colony of bats which exploded around them in a fury of leather wings. Argo stood his ground, unperturbed, but Karl huddled on the floor until the creatures were gone. On another, they passed through a high ruined chamber, fungi of every description growing over the wreckage of a wooden floor. Some toadstools were taller even than Argo, and bracket fungi stepped up the rock walls, glowing with a virulent green light. On the way across, Karl stepped on a round growth which exploded in a cloud of spores that burned his nostrils like a dose of boiling hot pepper, making him sneeze uncontrollably. Argo, who didn't seem to be affected, had to wait until Karl could go on.

As they ducked through the narrow crack that led out of the chamber, Karl heard stealthy padding footsteps, many of them, all around in the darkness and coming closer and closer. Argo raised the lantern, and Karl saw a hundred or more small shadowy figures creeping along high ledges, stepping down slopes of rock scree. None was taller than three feet, and all were naked but for loincloths, their warty green skin smeared with dirt, their wide fanged mouths grinning, their pointed ears rising above bald pates. They were armed with pointed staves and crude hammers or axes. A tribe of dwarf goblins.

In the time it took Karl to realize what the creatures were, and to draw out the knife he had taken from the dead ruffian, the first of the goblins scuttled towards Argo, who drew out his sword while still holding up the lantern. The creatures hissed with fear and started back - even as Argo cut off their heads with a level sweep of his weapon. Others higher up began to pelt him with crude bombs stuffed with fungus spores. The poisonous dust fumed thickly around him, crackling in the flame of the lantern, but seemed not to affect him at all. He split one goblin almost in half, lopped off the arm of another. Two jumped on his back, and he ran backwards and crushed them against the rock wall.

Meanwhile, others were advancing on Karl. He managed to stick one with his knife, but it fell backwards, squealing in dismay, and pulled the haft of the knife from Karl's hand. Its companions grinned widely and raised their crude weapons higher, their slitted yellow eyes burning upon him. Karl backed away until stone hit his back, watching with dismay as the lead goblin, no bigger than a child but with the face of a psychotic toad, raised its notched axe. Karl felt the tickling pressure between his eyes again, and before he knew what he was doing he had thrown up his hands and gabbled out the spell of binding he had read in the book.

Instantly, every goblin in the chamber froze. One or two toppled off-balance and fell stiffly to the floor. The pressure between Karl's eyes became a knife blade prying at his brain. He fell to his knees and felt blood gush from his nostrils, as rich and hot as fresh gravy.

Argo calmly sheathed his sword and helped the apprentice to his feet. He ordered Karl to follow, and set off amongst the frozen goblins as if nothing had happened. Karl staggered after him, so weak that he could hardly stand, but frightened of being left in the dark with the goblins, who surely wouldn't remain bound by magic for long. The front of his jerkin was soaked in his blood, and he couldn't seem to stop the flow completely, although he pinched the wings of his nostrils shut, and later stuffed cobwebs up them. The price of magic. It was lucky there hadn't been any more goblins, and that they had been small, too. Otherwise the magic needed to bind them might have burst his body like an overripe tomato.

At last, they reached a huge round chamber, tall statues standing around its walls. In the centre was a kind of altar, a stone table ringed with skulls, its surface cut with channels and bearing the torn remnants of some obscene sacrifice. An animal, Karl hoped, and didn't look too closely in case his worst fears were realized. On the far side of the chamber a statue taller than all the rest was carved out of the living rock wall, half man, half beast, so tall that it was beheaded by darkness. Its right hand clutched a dozen snakes; its left held a staring human head by the hair. Between its hoofed feet was the narrow entrance to the maze.

"Now you will lead us," Argo said, and handed Karl the lantern, his eyes glittering in the light.

Through the red veils of his exhaustion, Karl called up his memory of the map. It was still in his pocket, but he didn't dare draw it out. Argo could take it from him and leave him there, alone in the dark, prey to whatever was following them.

The passageways of the maze were high and narrow, carved roughly out of granite as dark as obsidian. The rock absorbed the light of the lantern rather than reflecting it, so that Karl had to find the way by only the feeblest of glows. Still, considering the circumstances, he thought that he was doing well enough, turning right and left and right again, avoiding passages that turned into steep slippery slopes dropping to water-filled shafts, slabs set in the floor that would tip the unwary into deep pits, a dozen sorts of mechanical trap that couldn't be revealed by magic.

Perhaps he was overconfident; or perhaps he was simply tired. In any event, he didn't realize his mistake until one of the paving stones gave slightly with a fatal click under his foot, like a bone breaking. There was an ominous rumbling above, and then a steel grip snatched him back as the massive weight slammed down, fitting the passage precisely. The wind of its falling blew Karl's hair back; the noise of its impact half-deafened him. When Argo let go of his shoulder, he fell to his knees. "You are a fool," Argo hissed in his ear. 

"You can bet I'll try and do better," Karl said. The smooth stone of the deadweight was only inches from his tender, bloody nose. He was so shaken that he almost took out the map to make sure of the way, but he remembered that if he did Argo would take it and leave him here in the dark - with his head cut off too, as like as not.

Right and left, deeper into the bowels of the rock. The crushing weight of it seemed to press all life out of the stale black air. Karl had no room in his head for his fears or what he would do when they reached the treasure, no room for anything but remembering the route. Right and left, deeper and deeper until they reached the heart of the maze.

It was a square chamber, with no way out but the passage which led into it. But dimly outlined by the glow of the lantern which Argo held, sketched in faded paint, was an ornate doorframe, the way to the treasure.

Argo threw back his head and opened his mouth amazingly wide, and let out a chattering, inhuman cry. Karl's heart froze. Striding out of one of the dark passageways behind them came three skeletons, yellow bones gleaming in the lantern-light, feet clicking on the stone floor, eye sockets holding fell red glows. Each carried a notched, rusty sword, and one wore a golden helmet that an age ago had been cleft by a fearsome blow.

"Our brothers," Argo said, and whirled on Karl, his smooth, handsome face without expression. "Now you will tell us the password."

"P-p-password?"

"You know it. Either you speak it now, or we will kill you and have your corpse speak it for us, when it has rotted enough for the magic to take hold." Argo's breath smelt like crushed ants; his eyes glittered more fiercely than ever. "Now, boy - "

There was a flare of blue light. Argo collapsed and the three skeletons burst apart, bones crumbling to powder even before they hit the floor. Blinking, Karl saw the wizard step out of the shadows of the passageway, his white face grim.

"A strange place to find a bookseller's apprentice, and strange companions for him, too," the wizard said. "Do you have any idea of how deeply you have meddled, my boy?"

Karl could only shake his head. Blue spots still floated in his vision.

"My apprentice was killed by this creature of Chaos," the wizard said, nudging Argo's body with the steel-shod toe of his boot. "He was bringing to me a map which led to a certain ancient treasure, treasure that in the wrong hands could do untold harm. He had hidden the map in a book of simple spells, the kind of thing a wizard's apprentice would carry. But still, somehow, he was found out. He managed to gain entrance to the city, but before I could come to his rescue, he was cornered, at the Cliff of Sighs. He was a brave boy, and knew what would happen if the map were taken."

"So he threw himself from the cliff, and was torn to pieces by the trees far below. Before I could rescue the book, and before this creature could lay his hands upon it, one of the scavengers found it, and brought it to you."

"You knew I had the book," Karl said.

"Oh yes. Never lie to a wizard, boy. Let that be your first lesson in your new life. I lent a little of my power to you, and waited until the creature found you. When you used the spells in the book, I was able to follow you by the traces of magic you left. Luckily enough for you, I arrived here just in time to use a simple necromantic spell to unbind the magic which held the skeletons together."

"And Argo? Why was he - " And then Karl understood. "He was undead too! That's why the spell of binding that I used on the goblins didn't affect him. And why their spore bombs didn't affect him either."

"Indeed. Some poor man whose corpse was revived through necromancy." The wizard pulled at his long black beard. "And now, you will want to see this treasure, no doubt. You may speak the password."

"I've had enough nosebleeds, thank you."

"The magic was laid down by the efforts of someone else, long ago. The word merely releases it." The wizard held up the scrap of paper he'd somehow taken from Karl's pocket. "If you won't say the word, then I will."

So Karl said the word of unlocking, and a wooden door suddenly appeared in the sketched doorframe, and flew open with a thud that brought a cloud of dust from the ceiling.

"The first thing you've done right," the wizard said, and stepped forward.

Karl followed - and then was struck from behind, and thrown across the chamber. As he got to his hands and knees, he saw that Argo had thrown his cloak over the wizard's head, pinioning his arms and cutting off his breath at the same time. Without thinking, Karl picked up one of the rusty swords and swung at Argo's legs.

Blunt though the blade was, it cut through to the bone. But instead of blood, hundreds of small insects gushed out of the wound. Argo wailed and let go of the wizard, tried to staunch the flow. Beetles were everywhere; some had even taken to the air, and were battering at the lantern, maddened by its light. Their wings glittered just like Argo's eyes. Argo fell to his knees; he seemed to be shrinking inside his skin. And then the wizard managed to gasp a spell, and the swordsman's clothes and skin flew apart, revealing a seething mass of beetles still clinging to the skeleton within. The wizard said another spell, and there was a sudden acrid smell in the chamber, and the beetles all stopped moving. A thousand brittle little corpses rained from the air.

"My fumigation spell," the wizard said, picking up his spectacles and examining them. "Who would have thought I needed it against one of the undead? Those insects must have been acting as one organism, using the skeleton and a false skin to give them human form."

"He always said we," Karl ventured, "never I." 

"Indeed. When I used the spell of unbinding, they must have been only temporarily discommoded, and soon knit the bones back together again. Chaos spawns more kinds of evil than we can ever imagine." He set the spectacles on the end of his long nose. "Now, let's get to the treasure. Bring the lantern."

Together, they stepped into the room beyond the door. Karl held up the lantern eagerly... and then groaned aloud. All around, on shelves carved into the rock, covered in dust yet still giving off that familiar sweet musty smell, were hundreds, thousands, of leather-bound books.

"Not all treasure glitters," the wizard said. "This is the library of Fistoria Spratz, the greatest dwarf wizard in the last thousand years, preserved and hidden here by the last of his magic. You understand why the forces of evil should not gain hold of it. And now, my boy, I must prepare a teleportation spell that will take us and these marvellous books back to my rooms in the city above. It will take a little while, time for you to consider if you would become my apprentice." He held up a beringed hand. "Think carefully. I will say that you have what it takes. The door would not have opened if you did not have some trace of the power, nor would you have been able to channel the power I lent you so easily. You are a trifle vain and arrogant it is true, but you are also brave, and more than a little lucky. Be quiet, and think."

But Karl did not have to think. He was ready with his answer long before the dark rock faded around him, and he found himself together with the wizard and stacks of dusty books in a bedroom overlooking the familiar dingy street where Otto von Stumpf's bookshop stood. Karl took a deep breath, and said the one word that would unlock a long life of adventure.

A GARDENER IN PARRAVON

by Brian Craig

This tale, said the story-teller, was told to me by a man of Parravon in far Bretonnia. He said he had no wish to add to the evil reputation which the city of his birth already had, but that he did not care to bear alone the burden of speculation as to whether his late friend Armand Carriere was as utterly and completely mad as everyone chose to believe.

You have heard of Parravon, and know of it what everyone knows. You know that it lies beside the great river Grismarie in the foothills of the Grey Mountains. You know that it is a prosperous city, whose wealthy folk are numerous and much devoted to the arts, as all men are when they need not work for their living and must find some idler way to spend their time. You also know that the beautiful face which it presents in the daylight wears an ugly mask when darkness descends, and that strange and evil things are said to stalk its streets.

The man who told this tale, whose name was Philippe Lebel, recommended that those who might have occasion to listen to it should also bear in mind certain other features of the town, which do not figure so large in its reputation, but which have some relevance to his story.

Firstly, he asked that hearers of the tale should remember that the crags and crannies of the chalky cliffs which rise around the city provide nesting-sites for very many birds, including some which are seen nowhere else in the Old World. Eagles can often be seen about the taller peaks, and it is said that both firebirds and phoenixes have nested there. It is also said that some of the creatures which fly by night about these rookeries are neither birds nor bats, but other things with wings.

Secondly, he asked that hearers of the tale should remember that among the arts of which the leisured classes of Parravon are fond, the construction of beautiful and exotic gardens has a special place, and that it is by no means extraordinary for men to devote their lives to the cultivation of rare and special flowers.

Thirdly, he asked that hearers of the tale should remember that although the people of the town are apparently orthodox in their religion, following the familiar gods, other kinds of worship are conducted there in secret. There are druids in the neighbouring hills, whose mysterious ceremonies are attended by some of the humble folk of Parravon - and there are other gods, perhaps older still, whose veneration is forbidden throughout the Old World, whose true nature none know and few care to contemplate, but whose influence on the affairs of men is sometimes felt in incidents of a specially horrible nature, which may befall the incautious and the unlucky alike. 

Philippe Lebel had known Armand Carriere since boyhood, and yet had never really known him. Although their fathers were both respectable corn-chandlers, like enough in their habits and beliefs to pass for brothers, Philippe and Armand were very different. Where the former strove always to follow convention and to fit in with the society of his peers, the latter set himself apart, finding anything ordinary dull. He came to fancy himself an artist of sorts, though he was equally unskilled as painter, poet and gardener, and Philippe often thought that his friend's "art" was simply an ability to see the world from a strange angle, from which it seemed more magical and more malign. He was certainly attracted by all matters unusual and arcane. 

With the aid of this tilted perception Armand might have become a spellcaster's apprentice, but his parents would not hear of such a thing, and he excused himself from going against their wishes - and hence excizing himself from his father's will - by declaring that the wizards of Parravon were in any case a poor and shabby lot, far less powerful than they claimed.

(Those of you who have travelled will know that this is a common opinion; familiar spellcasters, if measured by their accomplishments, always seem less able than they claim to be, and less fascinating than more distant wizards whose abilities can only be measured by rumour and reputation.)

Young Carriere's affectations offended his family, but he saved himself from total disgrace by working hard to master the arts of reading and writing, which his illiterate father commended on the grounds that they might prove very useful to a man in trade. Armand, alas, had no intention of employing these arts in such a vulgar manner; his aim was to entertain himself with books of a questionable character, and seek therein the secrets of arcane knowledge.

The Carriere house was tall, and set upon the ridge of a small hill. Armand's room was considered a poor one, set just beneath the eaves on the side of the house which never caught the sun. He liked it, though, because his was the only window which faced that way, looking upon the wilder part of the hill, which was thick with thorn-bushes.

The only other building which overlooked that part of the ridge was a tower-house situated at its further edge, nested among dark trees alongside a high-hedged garden. Ever since boyhood Armand had believed that there was a mystery about that lonely house and its garden - whose hedges were so unnaturally high as to exclude the sun's direct rays, save for a brief period around the hour of noon.

While Armand studied his books and practised his script he would often sit by the window of his room, looking up occasionally to stare at the hedge. He knew that the plants which grew in the garden must be curious, partly because it was lighted for such a short time each day - and presumably contained only those flowers which could adapt to such a strange regime -  but partly because the hedge was so clearly designed to keep prying eyes at bay. Once or twice when he had been a child he and Philippe had run the gauntlet of the thorn-bushes to reach the bounds of the garden (for there was no path between the two houses), but they had never been able to see what was within.

What Armand could see, however, was a certain strange traffic between the garden and the cliffs where the birds of Parravon made their nests. 

Most of the gardeners of Paravon considered the birds their enemies, for they would come to peck the new-laid seeds, to spoil the pretty flowers with their droppings, and to devour the fruits which grew upon the bushes. The gardener of the tower-house seemed to be an exception, for there was never any indication of birds being shooed away, though they seemed to come in considerable numbers, especially in the hours when the garden was shadowed from the sun. At dusk, when the birds of Parravon were wont to wheel about the roofs, calling to one another stridently as they assembled in flocks before returning to their roosts, the birds which visited this particular garden would rise more sedately, one at a time, and drift away into the gathering gloom.

The more Armand watched, the more he became convinced that far more birds flew down to the garden than ever flew up again. Armand called the attention of Philippe Lebel to this phenomenon on more than one occasion, but Philippe believed that his friend was trying to make a mystery out of nothing, and paid no attention. This disinterest served only to make Armand more determined to find a mystery, and he began to seek through the pages in his books for records of carnivorous plants which could trap birds. He found various travellers' tales containing believable accounts of plants which trapped insects, and rather unbelievable accounts of plants which devoured men, but no trace of any rumour about plants which fed on birds.

Investigation of the hillside beyond the tower-house revealed that there was no proper road to its gate, but only a path. Armand began to linger at the bottom of that path, waiting to catch a glimpse of the owner of the house - whose name, his father had gruffly told him, was Gaspard Gruiller. When Armand had asked further questions his father had simply disclaimed any further knowledge, and had stated that honest men did not pry into their neighbours' affairs.

Armand soon ascertained that Gruiller emerged from his solitary lair only two or three times a week, carrying two large bags which he took to the marketplace and filled up with food. He began to study the man, from a distance, and twice followed him into the town to watch him go about this humdrum business. Gruiller was tall and bald, with eyes which were very dark yet seemed unnaturally keen and bright - but if he noticed that he was under observation by Armand he gave no sign of it.

Armand asked several of the tradesmen who dealt with Gruiller what they knew of him, but none of them could tell what manner of man he was, or how he earned his coin, or to what gods he addressed his prayers. None of the tradesmen had a word to say against their customer, but on one occasion Armand saw a gypsy woman make a sign as he passed, which was supposed to ward off the evil eye.

This might have meant nothing at all, for gypsy women are ever so anxious to ward off spells that they frequently make such signs without any reason or provocation, but Armand was nevertheless encouraged to believe that she might have a reason. He knew that gypsies were usually followers of the Old Faith, and wondered whether this Gaspard Gruiller might be known to the druids as a bad man - and perhaps a cleverer one than any of those who went about the city boasting of their prowess as spellcasters. 

On two or three occasions when he knew that Gruiller was not at home Armand approached the lonely house, and peered through its windows. He tried to peer through the hedge, too, as he had done when he was a boy, but it was very thick as well as very tall, and he could see no more now than he ever had. He could hear something from the other side, though, and what he heard was a low rustling sound, which might have been the sound of birds fluttering their wings as they moved among the branches of bushes, or even the murmur of their voices as they clucked and chattered to one another. These sounds fed his curiosity so temptingly that he hungered to find out more, and this hunger grew in him by degrees, until he became determined that he would one day find a way to look into that garden, to see what went on there in the shady hours of the morning and the afternoon. 

It was unfortunately typical of his frame of mind that he never once considered taking a straightforward course, seeking to make the acquaintance of Gaspard Gruiller so that he might quite legitimately ask what plants the garden contained.

Armand knew that he must get higher up if he was to see over the hedge of the enigmatic garden, and there was only one way to do this that was immediately obvious to him. There was no other room above his, but the house had a steeply-sloped roof of red tile, and a chimney-stack, which could offer him an extra twelve or thirteen feet of elevation if only he could scale it.

Because this seemed a hazardous project he called upon the help of his friend Philippe, asking him to secure a rope within his room and pay it out yard by yard while he climbed, so that if he fell the rope would save him from serious injury. Philippe agreed, reluctantly, and waited impatiently when Armand had clambered out, wondering what possible account he could give to the Carriere family should the escapade go wrong. But he need not have worried, because Armand soon came back through the window unharmed, in a state of some excitement.

"What did you see?" asked Philippe, caught up for once in the tangled threads of the mystery.

"I could not see so very much," replied Armand, "but more than I have seen before. There is a trellis-work erection -  perhaps a kind of summer-house, though I could only see the top of it - which is longer than it is broad, having the house at one end and an open space at the other. The trellis-work looks like the sort which is sometimes placed against the wall of a building to assist climbing roses and honeysuckle, but I could not tell whether there was a wall within. The roof of the trellis bears flowers of several different hues - huge flowers, with heads like trumpets. There are birds there, wandering about."

"And did you see these flowers seizing and devouring the unfortunate birds?" asked Philippe.

"No I did not," admitted Armand. "But I have not seen the like of those flowers before, and I feel sure that there is something strange about them."

"Oh Armand," said his friend, "are you not satisfied? Must you still insist that although what you have seen is by your own account most ordinary, what remains hidden from you must be something unparalleled in its strangeness?"

"The birds are ordinary," replied Armand, insistently. "But their situation is not. I have never seen the flowers before, nor have I seen such a structure to mount them. What pleasure could it give a gardener to place his best blossoms on the roof of a structure, where he could not see them?" 

"Ah," said Philippe, "but he can see them, can he not, from the upper windows of his own house? And you have said yourself that the garden gets too little sun - is it not probable that the entire purpose of this structure is to lift the flowers up, so that they receive more?" 

If this speech was intended to set Armand's mind at rest it failed, for Armand was no longer listening. Instead, he was standing by his window looking out in the direction of Gaspard Gruiller's house.

Philippe went to stand by him, to see what he was looking at, and saw that the shutters of the one window which faced this way - which had been closed only a few minutes before - had now been thrown back. There was a man standing at the window, just as Armand was standing at his, and he was staring at the Carriere house. Philippe drew back reflexively, but could not resist peeping around the angle of the window to see what would happen.

After standing there for little more than a minute, Gruiller went away, leaving the shutters undone.

"He must have seen you on the roof!" said Philippe.

"I suppose he must," replied Armand. "But what of it? A man may climb upon the roof of his own house, if he wants to!" Despite the bravado of his words, however, Armand's face was pale, and frightened; it was as though all his excitement had been turned by that cool stare into anxiety.

"And yet," muttered Armand, hardly loud enough for his friend to hear the words. "There is some secret about that garden, and I would dearly love to know what it is. I feel an attraction to it, as though it had placed a spell on me." 

"It is only a garden," said Philippe, soothingly, "And by no means the only one in Parravon to contain special blooms whose owner strives to hide them from potential thieves."

That night, Armand closed the shutters of his window tightly, as he always did - as all men do in Parravon, if they have any sense. But in his sleep he had a very curious dream, in which there was a tapping at those shutters, and a fluttering sound of wings in hectic motion, and a sharp scraping sound as though a claw was dragged momentarily across the outer face of each shutter.

Had he been really awake Armand would have clapped his hands to his ears and prayed for the morning to come, for he knew well enough that monsters were reputed to haunt the night in that city. But he was not awake, and in his dream he rose from his bed to go to the window, and threw back the shutters, so that he looked out boldly into the starlit night, as he had never dared to do before.

He was startled by the eerie brightness of the light which the stars gave, and as he peered out into that imperfect gloom he saw black shadows moving within it - sinister night-flyers larger by far than those birds which filled the sky by day.

Though he could not follow these shadows as they wheeled and soared in the starry sky, he became convinced that it was around the roof of the tower-house that they gathered. And when he looked at the tower-house he saw that the window from which Gaspard Gruiller had looked out in the daytime was unshuttered, with a red light burning within it, and that someone stood there looking out, just as Armand was - perhaps Gruiller, perhaps another. And there was a strange scent in the air, like exotic perfume, which made him intoxicated as he breathed it in, and made him almost ready to believe that he could fly.

The next day, when he tried to recall this dream, he could remember it up to that point, but not beyond - he did not know what had happened next, if anything farther had happened at all. He told what he could remember to Philippe Lebel, and found himself quite carried away when he told it, so that he argued very fiercely that the night-flyers he had seen were too huge to be ordinary birds. They might, as he assured Philippe with rapt insistence, have been anything. 

"Well," said Philippe, "what of it? In our dreams, we may see whatever we will. We meet more daemons there than we ever could in everyday life."

Armand did not take offence at this remark, but simply took his friend to the window, where the shutters had been thrown back to let in the daylight. He pulled one of them back until it was closed, and invited Philippe to crane his neck and inspect its outer surface. Then he opened that one and pulled the other back in order to allow a similar inspection.

Philippe saw that there were three long scratches in the wood, extending across both shutters, and when he measured their span with his hand he shuddered to think what manner of claw it might have been which had made them.

"But after all," said Philippe, "even if the scratching sound was real, the rest was only a dream - for you did not actually rise from your bed and open the shutters, did you?"

"Did I not?" said Armand, quizzically. But then, after a moment's hesitation, he threw the shutters wide again. "You are right," he said. "I did not - and I surely never will."

Armand attempted to put Gaspard Gruiller out of his thoughts for the remainder of that day, and returned with a new will to the study of a book he had found which had much to say about the tenets of the Old Faith. He tried not to dwell on the matter of the garden, but could not help pausing whenever he found a reference to flowers, lest he find some clue regarding the nature of the unknown blooms which he had seen upon the trellis in the hidden garden. But there were far too many flowers mentioned in connection with the worship of the Old Faith, with far too little in the way of description to allow them to be easily identified.

The next night, and the next, he slept very fitfully. Once or twice he was convinced that he heard the nearby flutter of wings, but nothing tapped at his shutters and nothing scratched the wood. He did not dream - indeed, it seemed that whenever he was about to escape from anxious wakefulness into the comfort of a dream he was snatched back from its brink so that he might continue to toss and turn upon his pallet.

By day he tried to tell himself that he had done everything he could to fathom the mystery, and must be content to let it alone. Indeed, he came close to convincing himself that he had had enough of Gruiller's garden, and did not care about it any more. But this was a mere sham, which could not stand the test of temptation.

Three days after his expedition on to the roof Armand and Philippe were walking in the street, intent on their conversation, when they suddenly found their way blocked. When they looked up to see who had accosted them, they were most surprised to discover that it was Gruiller.

"You are Carriere's son, are you not?" he said, addressing Armand, after directing a brief but polite smile at Philippe. "You are my nearest neighbour, I believe. You are interested in my garden."

All the colour had drained from Armand's cheeks, and he was too surprised to reply.

"I would like to show it to you, now that the proper season has come," Gruiller continued, amiably. "The birds love to visit it, as you must have observed."

Armand still did not seem disposed to reply, so Philippe intervened, saying, rather uncertainly: "You are kind, sir. Armand and I would be pleased to see your flowers."

Gruiller responded with a litle bow. "The time is not exactly right just yet," he said. "I think you will see the blooms at their very best in three days time. I would like you to see them at their very best." 

"Shall we come at noon?" asked Philippe.

"That would be perfect," replied the other, bowing again and walking on.

"Well," said Philippe proudly to his silent friend, "here is something to set your mind at rest for once and for all. We will see his garden, and the mystery will be extinguished. But I do think you might have spoken to him yourself - he seems a pleasant enough fellow, after all."

Armand seemed to be about to disagree, but in the end he simply nodded, and said: "Perhaps it is all for the best. We will go together, and see what there is to be seen."

At the appointed hour, Philippe and Armand made their way up the path to Gaspard Gruiller's door. Armand had told his father about the invitation, and had asked again what he knew about his neighbour, but the elder Carriere had simply shrugged his shoulders and said that tradesmen had no right to pry into the affairs of others unless their credit was suspect, and that as far as he knew, Gaspard Gruiller had no significant debts.

When Armand knocked he was promptly answered, and Gruiller took them through his house to the side door which was the entrance to the garden. The rooms through which they passed were well-furnished, the quality of the rugs and wall-hangings suggesting that Gruiller was not a poor man, but there was no clue to his occupation. They did not linger in the house, passing rapidly into the garden.

As they came through the garden door such a sight met their eyes that Philippe drew in his breath very sharply, and Armand released a gasp of surprise.

As they had already discovered, the centre-piece of the garden was a rectangular trellis-work erection, which formed a kind of tunnel, arching over a path which led from the doorway of the house to the open space at the garden's further end. This tunnel now extended before them, so that they saw it from the inside. It had many open spaces like small windows in the top and the sides, and because the sun was high in the sky the ones set in the roof were admitting distinct shafts of sunlight slanted from the south, which made a pattern on the paving stones beneath the bower, as if to mark out a series of stepping stones.

There were no green leaves or coloured flowers inside the tunnel. Its walls were matted with dangling tendrils, which were white or pale pink in colour. The great majority of these tendrils lay limp and still, though some trembled even though they were not busy. The minority, however, had a most curious occupation, for they were wrapped tightly around the still corpses of birds, writhing ceaselessly as they played with their prey and passed the shrivelling bodies slowly along the wall.

While they watched, Philippe and Armand saw a tiny bird come from without to perch upon the rim of one of the windows, peering into the tunnel with evident curiosity, as though wondering whether it had somehow stumbled upon a paradise of edible worms. But then it began fluttering its wings in panic, trying to launch itself back into the air, as it became aware that its tiny feet had been caught and held. Within thirty seconds the tendrils had pulled their victim inside, away from the window, and were dragging it across the inner face of the tunnel.

Its struggles were short-lived, though Philippe could not tell precisely how it had been killed.

Gruiller said nothing at first, but simply watched his guests, smiling at their confusion. Eventually, he said: "I know that you have not seen their like before, my friends. There is nothing like this in any other garden in Parravon. But this is not a pretty sight, and I am sure that you would prefer to look at the lovely flowers."

He led the two youths to the outside of the bower, where they could see the woody trunks of the climbing plants embedded in the soil, and the pale green leaves which surrounded the huge blossoms. The nearest flowers grew just above head height, and there was little foliage close to the ground because that part of the bower never caught the sun at all. The growth was lush, but the pattern of the trellis-work could clearly be seen from without, whereas it had been masked within by the sheer profusion of the clinging tendrils.

There were many birds fluttering about the garden. They were all - as Armand had lately observed from the roof of his house - perfectly ordinary. They wandered aimlessly about, as though they too were visitors invited for a leisurely inspection, come to enjoy the beauty of the blooms. They went unmolested as they perched on the outer stems and branches; only when they alighted by the windows, within reach of the pale tentacles, were they seized and pulled inside, without so much as a cry of alarm.

The flowers, as Armand had reported, were of many different colours, but all of one shape. Each flower was the size of a man's head, shaped like a bell, with a bright waxen style which rather resembled (Philippe could not help but notice) a male sex organ - but there were no stamens gathered around the styles, unless they were confined to the most secret recesses of the bells.

"These flowers are very rare," Gaspard Gruiller assured them. "You will not find their like anywhere in Bretonnia, save perhaps for the deepest parts of the wild forests. Nowhere in the world, I think, are so many gathered in any one place, for these plants are usually solitary. The bower is my own design, and I am proud of it - I knew that unusual steps would have to be taken if these beautiful things were to be persuaded to grow in such profusion as this. Perhaps Parravon is the only place in the world where it could be done - where else could one find so very many silly birds?"

Neither of his guests knew how to reply, but this time it was Armand and not Philippe who found his tongue. "They are very beautiful," he admitted. He reached up to touch one, and ran his finger around the rim of the bell. Then he touched the tip of the style - which Philippe would have been embarrassed to do, given its shape - but took his hand away suddenly, with a slight start of surprise. He looked at the tip of his finger, where there was a tiny droplet of liquid, red as blood.

"Do not worry," said Gaspard Gruiller. "When the flowers are at their best, they produce wonderful nectar." He reached upwards to another blossom, so that his sleeve fell away from his unusually thin arm, and Philippe was surprised to see that his hand was slightly deformed, and that the fingers were like the claws of a bird. Gruiller did as Armand had done, and brought his finger away from the flower-head with a drop of red liquid on its horny tip. He put the finger to his mouth, licking away the drop with the tip of his tongue.

"It is sweet," he said. "Please try it. It will do you no harm."

Armand hesitated, but then put out his tongue and touched the liquid to it.

"Oh yes," he said, with evident surprise. "Very sweet indeed."

They both looked at Philippe, inviting him to try the experiment for himself, but he looked away and pretended not to notice.

While this occurred they had been walking along beside the flowered wall, and now they came to the further end of the bower, to the open space which separated the trellis from the hedge. Here there grew in a ragged circle five remarkable things which looked like giant toadstools, each one with a thick chitinous pedestal and a wide cap coloured black and silver. This colour was so odd that Philippe thought at first they might be carved from stone, but when he came closer he saw that they had the proper texture of fungal flesh. He did not want to touch one merely to make sure, but Armand was not so shy, and placed his hand upon the nearest one.

"It is warm!" he said, in surprise.

"An ugly thing," said Gruiller, apologetically. "But not everything rare and precious is beautiftil, and these are no more common than my lovely blossoms. They are not so attractive to birds, but they have their own place in the scheme of Nature, as all things have."

This little speech reminded Philippe of Armand's earlier conviction that Gruiller was known to the followers of the Old Faith, and he wondered if the man might be a druid spellcaster, who cultivated these strange things because of some virtue which they had, but it was not the sort of matter which could be raised in polite conversation, and so he held his tongue.

As Gruiller led them back to the house he said: "I am sure that you will think my garden odd, and so it is. Perhaps you will think it cruel to raise flowers which feed on birds, but they are very beautiful flowers, are they not? And Parravon has no shortage of birds, as you must certainly agree. There is room in the great wide world for many different gardens, and many different kinds of beauty."

Afterwards, he watched them as they walked down the path towards the town, but he had gone inside by the time they turned the corner to walk around the foot of the ridge, returning to the house where Armand lived.

Philippe was eager to discuss what they had seen in Gaspard Gruiller's garden, but Armand was disinclined to accommodate him. It had surprised Philippe to learn that Armand's wild surmise about the fate of the birds which visited the garden was actually correct, and it seemed to him an item of gossip worth spreading (for Gruiller had not asked them to keep silent about what they had seen). Armand, on the other hand, seemed only to desire solitude and the company of his books, so Philippe soon left him alone.

When night fell, Armand closed and locked the shutters of his window as usual, and went to his bed in a state of some exhaustion, having slept so badly of late. This time, however, sleep came very quickly to claim him, and he did not toss and turn at all. He was later to tell Philippe that he believed he had slept dreamlessly for a long while before he was visited by a very dreadful nightmare.

The nightmare began, as had his peculiar dream of some days earlier, with the sound of something attempting to gain admission at his window - first by rapping as though to demand that he open the shutters, and then by tearing at the edge of the wood with clawed fingers.

In the end, Armand explained, his dream-self had risen from the bed and gone to the window, unlocking the shutters and throwing them open. There, hanging upside-down from the eaves like a great bat, was a monstrous creature with brightly-coloured feathered wings and a manlike face with thick, rubbery lips. Its body resembled a plucked bird, the skin all puckered and dappled, and its limbs (of which there were four in addition to the wings) were like the limbs of eagles, scaly and taloned.

This creature snatched at Armand's dream-self, and lifted him as though he weighed hardly anything at all - but this action was not hostile, and almost seemed protective, for as the daemon launched itself into flight it hugged Armand to its bosom as a mother might clutch a child. Fearful of falling, Armand wrapped his arms about the waist of the peculiar creature, as though accepting and returning its embrace. He reported that as they flew he could feel the beating of the great muscles in the daemon's breast, where his face was pressed against the wrinkled skin.

There were, he said, no teats upon that breast at which an infant could suck.

The flight was but a short one, for it took him only to the further end of the ridge, where Gaspard Gruiller's house stood, with the facing window wide open and brightly-lit, as though the tower were a lighthouse for the insidious things which haunted Parravon at night.

Armand was delivered by his carrier into the garden beside the house, and found himself in the space between the end of the bower and the five great toadstools, which did not form a circle - as Armand now perceived them - but a pentacle.

Inside the pentacle stood a creature like the one which had brought him, but bigger by far, standing almost as tall as that strange high hedge. Its vast wings were feathered like the legendary firebird, glowing from within, all glorious in red and gold. Its capacious arms were stretched aloft, with the claws widespread as though to catch the silver light of the bountiful stars. Its slender legs had flattened feet like those of a fowl, so that it could stand upon the ground instead of searching for a perch, as its smaller companions must.

The expression on its face, as it looked at Armand, was paradoxical, for the face - so Armand said - was uglier than he could ever have imagined, with horrid bloodshot eyes and a nose like a huge serrated beak, mounted above a mouth crowded with sharpened teeth.

And yet, said Armand, the gaze of those foul eyes was not predatory but fond; and the black tongue which crawled in serpentine fashion between the cluttered teeth was not licking the outer lips as though in anticipation of a meal, but teasing him with its little motions as a mother might tease her child with friendly grimaces.

When his dream-self had borne this inspection for a few long minutes, Armand felt himself taken up again, and lifted to the roof of the bower where the brightest and the best flowers grew, and he was tenderly placed among them, in the middle of a crowd of perching daemons.

He already knew what to do, and bowed his head immediately to a succulent bloom, taking the central style into his mouth as all the others were doing, sucking greedily at the milk which was within, carefully prepared by the wondrous flowers from the tender flesh of captured birds.

The taste, so Armand said, was sweeter than he ever could have imagined - though his father's table, at which he had feasted throughout his life, had been as well-supplied with sugary delicacies as that of any tradesman in the city of Parravon.

When Armand related this dream to Philippe he told him that there had been more, and that his wild adventure must have continued for several hours, but that the rest of it evaded his waking memory, and could not be recalled.

Philippe was more impressed by this dream than he had been by the first which Armand had related. He was almost ready to believe that there was something truly awful about the garden which they had seen, and that Gaspard Gruiller might actually have signed some dire pact with the daemons of Parravon. And yet, he told himself as he listened to Armand's feverish recital, a dream is only a dream, and the shutters at the window had never in fact been opened - nor were there any additional scratches to be seen upon their outer face.

With these doubts in mind, Philippe told Armand that his nightmare, however frightening it may have been, could not be taken seriously as a revelation. Perhaps, he suggested, the dream had been a kind of release, by which all the anxiety Armand had been storing up had at last been discharged.

Armand dismissed this explanation out of hand.

"There is more," he said, excitedly, "for when I woke this morning, and went to my book, I discovered at last the passage for which I have been searching - the passage which helps to explain what manner of things these monstrous flowers are, and what dreadful harm they can do."

So saying, Armand placed the open book before his friend. But Philippe could not read, and Armand was forced to say aloud what was written there.

"The followers of the Old Faith," he quoted, "believe that every living element of the natural world is properly destined for the nourishment of others."

"As the flower feeds the bee which will make honey for the bear, so the leaf feeds the worm which will later take flight as a brightly coloured thing, which will feed the bird which feeds the hawk, which will fall in time to earth, as the bear falls also, to feed the tiny things which crowd the fertile soil, where the roots draw nourishment to feed the flower and the leaf."

"So it is that everything which lives is born from the soil and the sea and the air, and must return in time to soil and sea and air, so that all may be renewed, forever and ever without pause or end."

"But the followers of the Old Faith say also that there is an evil in the world, which seeks to pervert the weave of destiny. There is an evil which alters the flower or the leaf to become the nourishment of daemons, so to spread the seed of chaos within the world." 

"Those who believe this have the following warning to give to the unwary: Beware the treasonous beauty of that which is food for daemons, for though it harbours the milk of ecstasy, it promises destruction." 

When he heard this, Philippe Lebel felt a chill in his heart, and for just one moment he saw the world as Armand Carriere saw it: as a peculiar and magical place full of threats and confusions, in which no man could live in comfort and safety. It was not the kind of world in which he desired to spend the remainder of his days.

"Can you not see," said Armand, "that Gruiller keeps his garden for the nourishment of daemons, who fly there by night? I cannot tell whether he is their servant or their master, or what he may have to do with the other horrid things which happen in Parravon by night, but this I know: that man's soul is not his own, and his garden is a thing so vile as to terrify the mind of any honest man!"

But Philippe would have none of this. "Armand," he said, truly believing that he was reaching out a helping hand to save his friend from unworthy fears, "this is nonsense. The Old Faith is for gypsies and the ragged men of the forests. We are of the town, and have better gods to guide us. The excellent gardeners of Parravon have shown us that the flowers of the wild are there to be tamed, arranged and regimented to our pleasure. Gaspard Gruiller is but a gardener, after all. He does not seek to make a secret of his garden, but willingly took us into it to show off his pride in his achievement. Lay down that book, I beg you, and take up another, which will teach you the ways of the merchant in the market, and the arts of civilized men."

Philippe said that his friend looked long and hard at him then, but said nothing, and finally laid the book aside. They both went to the window, to stare across the ridge at the tower-house and the tall dark hedge which surrounded its garden.

"Did we really play along that ridge when we were children?" asked Philippe, with a small laugh. "The thorn-bushes must have been sparser then, for I am sure that we could not find a way among them now."

"It was a long time ago," Armand replied. "And we were children then, very different from what we have become."

Early the next day, Armand's mother came to his room to search for him, because he had not come to breakfast. She found the room empty, with the bed in disarray and the shutters wide open. She went to the window and looked out, and immediately saw her son's body, some little distance from the wall, deep in the bosom of a thorn-bush.

It was not easy to reach the body, and the elder Carriere had to call upon the assistance of his neighbours to hack a way through to it. Philippe was one of those who helped with this dire work, and thus was able to see the corpse of his friend before it was taken - with great difficulty - from the bush.

It was plain that Armand had fallen into the bush from a height, and the only sensible hypothesis which could be offered in explanation was that he had undone the shutters of his window during the hours of darkness, climbed up on to the sill, and launched himself from it in a prodigious leap, which had delivered him inevitably to his fate.

The thorns had punctured him in very many places, hard-driven by the force of his fell, and when they had finally pulled him free of the bush they saw that there was hardly an inch of his flesh unmolested.

It was as though he had been ripped and rent by many wicked claws.

When the company returned to the Carriere house Philippe told them all about the dreams which Armand had suffered, and about their visit to Gaspard Gruiller's strange garden.

Because it was the first time he had told the story it was far more confused in the telling than the version which you have just heard, but it would probably have made no difference if every detail had been in its proper place, for these were townsmen and tradespeople, and though they bolted their doors most carefully at night, they were inclined to believe that whatever the dark might hide was no concern of theirs. Nightmares, they agreed, were a sign of madness and folly, and if any more proof were needed that poor Armand had been utterly deranged, one only had to look at the peculiar books which he had chosen to read.

As for Gaspard Gruiller, the elder Carriere and all his friends were unanimous in declaring him a good neighbour. If the plants in his garden captured and devoured birds, that was certainly peculiar, but Parravon had no shortage of birds, and the great majority were a nuisance to other gardeners, so Gruiller's activities must be counted to the public good.

And if any further proof were needed that the gardener was worthy to live among honest tradespeople, there was the universally acknowledged fact that he was a man with no significant debts.

THE STAR BOAT

by Steve Baxter

"You're drinking alone?" The stranger's voice rasped against the friendly hubbub of the tavern.

Erik lowered his tankard and thought it over. Between campaigns, Erik - the one they called Erik the Were - always drank alone. Everyone knew that.

So who was this? He had made enough enemies on his many campaigns. Had one found him now?

The weight of his battle-hardened axe pressed against his thigh. He turned slowly, wiping froth from his moustache.

A rich purple cloak swaddled the stranger. No face could be seen in the hood's shadows. The stranger stood utterly still, like a lizard.

"Yes, I drink alone," Erik growled.

"Then let me buy you another." The stranger reached out a gloved arm.

Erik wrapped the thin wrist in one hand. The stranger spat like a snake and snatched back his arm. Beneath its covering the flesh had been cold.

"I mean no offence." Trembling, the stranger sat on a precarious stool opposite Erik. He had no drink and he kept his hood over his head. "I know of you," he hissed, breathing hard. "You are Erik. A mercenary. A fighter whose fame passes far beyond your forsaken Norsca." Erik caught a glimpse of yellow eyes deep inside the hood. "You have just returned from Araby?"

"Yah. So?"

The stranger shrugged. He indicated the rest of the tavern, half-armoured Norsemen waving money at serving women. "I can see it was a rewarding trip," the stranger said drily. "But you're not a man to throw money around, are you?"

Erik remembered Araby...

The sunlight stamped down on fire-hot sand, scalding the blond bodies of the Norsemen. He stood ready with the ulfwerenar, the wolf-kin. The werewolf warriors howled their discomfort.

The metal of his sword burnt his hand. He closed with Arabs whose breath stank of spices and who fought with knives clutched in long teeth; a growl built deep in his throat and he felt his lips stretch around a thrusting jaw; a red mist covered the sun and his teeth sank into dark flesh -

Erik the Were.

His breath rattled in his throat. The stranger was watching him. He forced himself to relax, to loose his grip on his tankard.

"I risk my life for my pay. Why throw it at some fat barman?"

"Very admirable."

Raucous singing drifted through the crowd.

"Ah." The stranger cocked his head. "I'm no expert on your aboriginal music, but I can make out the sentiments. Companionship, the bond of death." Again the shadowed head swivelled at Erik. "And where are your companions, Erik?"

Erik worked his hand around his tankard. "I choose my own company," he growled.

"Really?" The stranger leaned closer; his sibilant hiss turned to a whisper. "You see, I know why they call you the Were. You have a trace of the ulfwerenar in your veins, but your blood is not pure. You are both wolf and man... but you are neither wolf nor man. Are you?" 

"So?"

"I've seen your type before. The wolf in you makes you a formidable warrior... the little you dare release. But you are a warrior wary of himself. Eh, Erik? And none of your comrades in arms, human or Were, see you as one of your own. Do they, man-were? How many of them will drink with you now? Is your wolf blood a gift or a curse, Erik?"

Erik slammed one fist on the tabletop. Heads turned. When they met his glare they turned away.

"What do you want?"

"My name is Cotza." The stranger stood. "I travelled here to find you. I have an assignment for you. A challenge for the great and courageous Erik the Were. A journey to the northern wastes; a search for ancient treasure... I have a room in the tavern called the Dragon's Tooth. Come at dawn." Cotza reached into a deep pocket and threw a handful of coins onto the table. "Here," he said. "Until then, drink and forget your loneliness, man-were." And he turned and strode out of the tavern, his gait awkward and rolling.

With a snarl of disgust Erik brushed the coins onto the floor.

A little before dawn Erik settled his account and left the tavern. His breath frosting over his beard, he walked through Ragnar's deserted streets. At the edge of the little town he climbed a small rise.

Pine-clad mountains swept down from behind Erik and pushed ridged fingers into the sea. The stars began to die; frost glistened. The lights of Ragnar and a dozen other small towns glittered in the fjords.

Mist covered the sea, and the mournful sound of a longboat's dragon horn floated out of the fog. Grumbling voices drifted up to him out of Ragnar. The house of the Husthing - the town council - shouldered its way above the mass of squat buildings, its bell tolling the hour.

It was all very ordinary, human, comforting. Erik shivered and turned away, and looked to the north. Darkness clung like smoke to the northern earth, oblivious to the dawn.

Far to the north lay the great waste. It was a land of night. That lingering dark was the banner of the Chaos Powers.

Something in him stirred. He touched the mat of fur that covered his upper cheek. The cloaked stranger's words had carried truth. Erik was a solitary man. Others could sense the seeds of Chaos in him, the traces of were-blood, even when the physical signs went unnoticed.

He remembered a child goaded day after day by his fellows - a child who wasn't like the others, a child who was thickset, hirsute...

That child had never dared to do what he longed to do, to howl and bark and bite into the throats of his tormentors. For what if the wolf refused to subside, what if the wolf overcame the little boy and trapped him somewhere inside?

Erik the Were. A child terrified of himself.

The stranger had seen into his most secret heart. Erik felt exposed, weakened; anger coursed through his thoughts. He pulled his cloak tighter around him and stalked back into town.

He rapped at the door of the Dragon's Tooth. The innkeeper was fat and bald. He grumbled as he led Erik up to Cotza's room.

Erik pushed open the door. There was no bed in the room. A large iron bath held water that steamed in the draught from the door. A massive trunk stood open in one corner. On a table a plate was stacked with damp greenery. It looked like seaweed. The dish was garnished with the mashed-up remains of insects.

Cotza stood motionless in the centre of the room, facing Erik. He still wore his purple cloak.

"What are you, Cotza?"

Cotza nodded, the hood's shadow falling over his chest. "I expected you..."

"No more games." Erik strode towards him.

Cotza raised thin arms. Erik brushed them aside and grabbed handfuls of cloak. The material was rich and thick, but it parted easily.

Cotza cried out. It sounded like a child weeping. The remnants of the cloak fell away, and Erik stood back and stared.

Cotza resembled a toad stretched upright to stand like a man. His face was mottled, his mouth wide; a white throat bulged. Eyelids like plates slid across yellow eyes. He wore a suit of something like rubber; fine pipes embedded in the suit were wrapped around Cotza's limbs and torso. From one pipe water was leaking. Blue feathers protruded from the neck of the suit, and china-blue tattoos covered webbed hands.

The great mouth opened and a forked tongue flickered. "You are satisfied, strong man?"

"You're a Slann." Erik felt numb, unable to react.

Cotza bent to pick up his torn cloak; Erik saw how his legs hinged outwards like a frog's. "Obviously I'm a Slann. But not just a Slann." He stroked the feathers around his neck. "I was once an Eagle Warrior. High rank, too." He waved Erik to a chair and walked awkwardly to the door, pushed it shut. As he moved Erik saw how the rubber suit showered his face and neck with water.

Erik sat. "But Slann never leave Lustria."

"Of course not! How bright you are this morning." The Slann limped to the table and picked up the plate of food. He waved it at Erik. "Breakfast?"

Erik eyed the insects. "No."

The Slann's tongue wrapped like a fist around particles of food. Cotza kept talking as he ate, the words coming from the back of his mouth. "There's no such word as 'never', my friend. But it is true that the Slann hardly ever travel. It's such a fuss." He waved a webbed thumb at the bath, the rubber suit. "You may know we're amphibians."

The word meant nothing to Erik.

"I need to be warm and wet," said Cotza impatiently. "Your damn country is cold and dry. So I have to carry my own warmth and wetness." The tongue flicked at the insects. "And you've no idea how hard it is for me to get decent service in these taverns."

"What do you want from me, Cotza?"

"Ah. The man of action. Straight to the point, eh? What do you know of the Slann?"

Erik shrugged. "What I need to know."

"Which is how to kill them with the least effort, I imagine." The Slann pushed aside his plate and patted delicately at his lips. "Erik, let me tell you about the Slann. We are the world's oldest race. Some legends say we built the world, and others besides. We travelled between our worlds in great ships - like longboats among the stars. Do you understand?"

"I understand you're telling me children's stories."

Cotza rolled huge yellow eyes. "Try to let me penetrate your ignorance, Norseman. Our star boats travelled by passing through Warp Gates. There was a Warp Gate on this world, far to the north of Norsca. But on the other side of the Warp Gates was a strange ocean, an ocean ridden with Chaos. The boats sailed this sea to the stars, you see, and Chaos - ah -  filled their sails. One day the ocean broke from our control. Contact with other worlds was lost. The Gates became centres of instability and horror. We Slann retreated to Lustria, and degenerated into the barbarism we endure today."

Erik removed his horned cap, loosened his furs in the steam-laden air. "How do you know this?"

"Legends. The Slann have tales of the past, garbled of course, and so do the Elves." Cotza's frog face split into a wide grin. Legs bent, throat working, he looked more toad-like than ever. "There are many legends, and they fit together, like the pieces of a shattered plate. Do you understand?"

"Far to the north of here, across the Sea of Darkness, lies the lost Warp Gate. It is the centre of a region so damaged that no material thing can survive, and around that in turn lie the Chaos Wastes."

"Now. We will have to penetrate the fringes of the Wastes, travel to places no mortal has seen in hundreds of years -  "

Erik reached out and grabbed one skinny shoulder. "Slow down, Slann. What are you talking about?"

The Slann hissed, nodding. "My apologies. I will explain. Please." Erik relaxed his grip; Cotza rubbed his flesh. "Why venture to such a place? I will tell you. The Elves have a story..."

They were the great days of the Slann. The Warp Gate was an arch ten miles high, constructed of the finest obsidian. It loomed over the frozen pole of the world and turned with the planet.

It was the heart of a glittering city. There were stars inside the Gate. Slann traders passed through the Gate in their star boats to a million worlds; a hundred races mingled in the Gateway city.

One day fire billowed out of the Gate. Death and destruction rained over the Gateway city. Cubic miles of ice turned to slush.

Now a landing craft came lurching out of the Gate. Damaged in some unknowable accident, it trailed fire. It flew hundreds of miles before ploughing into the ground.

There were no survivors. The Slann cordoned off the area. The wrecked star boat sank hissing into melted ice.

Slowly the ice froze over. The city was rebuilt. Gradually, over centuries, the incident was forgotten...

Erik thought it over. He'd travelled in longboat convoys to the New World often enough to pick up a little navigator's lore. Yes, the world was round. And it turned like a top around a spindle somewhere to the north. But - other worlds? Star boats?

He stood, gathering up his armoured cap. "I've told you, Slann, I've no need to hear your children's tales."

Cotza hissed. "Of course not. Since no human woman is likely to bear you children of your own. Is that right, were-man?"

Erik turned his back and walked to the door.

"You see," Cotza said, "the wrecked boat flew far enough south to leave it close enough to reach. It is only a few hundred miles to the north of here, across the Sea of Darkness - on the ragged edge of the Wastes. I intend to find that crashed Slann boat, and I want you to come with me."

Erik hesitated, turned. "No mortal creature has ever travelled so far north and survived."

Cotza smiled. "No mortals have taken the precautions we will take." He looked at the Norseman intently. "Well, Erik?

Will you join me?"

Erik shook his head. "I will not throw away my life for a Slann's dreams."

Cotza opened his mouth wide. "Ah, but what dreams do you have, Erik? Are they human or Were? Listen to me. There is nothing for you here. It will be a great adventure. Perhaps we will start a few legends ourselves..."

Erik grinned. "Of course, there's one small problem."

"What?"

"How will you find this star boat? The Wastes are large..."

The Slann nodded rapidly. "There is a way. The old Slann made a map, showing the wreck. It was drawn on an indestructible parchment. This map survived the fall of the Slann; it has become a priceless artifact."

Erik's interest stirred. "You are moving from fable to fact, Slann. Show me the map."

Cotza grinned, throat wobbling. "I don't have it. I've never even seen it."

"Then how -  "

"But I know where it is."

"And?"

"And I want you to steal it for me. Here." The Slann scuttled to his trunk. He rummaged through a disorderly pile of cloaks, spare pipe suits and food parcels. He drew out a small leather purse, spilled it on the floor before the Norseman.

Erik looked down. Gold coins; scores of them. They bore a scowling frog visage.

"The face of Mazdamundi, Lord of All the Waters of the World Pond," said Cotza. "Call this an advance. Against unimaginable wealth to come."

Erik looked up and studied the grinning Slann. "Where?"

Cotza hissed in satisfaction. "Have you ever visited Kislev?"

Erik knew Kislev.

Kislev is in the chill north of the Old World. Its great cities -  Urskoy, Praag, the sea port of Erengrad - stand on rivers that drain a continent.

Kislev's fortune is its trade. Its curse is its location. For Kislev is a buffer between the Old World and the servants of Chaos, who roam the Wastes to the north.

Two hundred years ago, said Cotza, there was an Incursion of Chaos. Thousands of lives were lost. Praag was laid waste. But at last the Champions of Chaos were put to flight. In one famous victory, the Governor of the port of Erengrad defeated a Chaos Prince, seized his booty.

Among the grisly trophies - the severed limbs, the skull fragments - the Governor's men found a treasure. It was a map, printed on an indestructible parchment...

What Erik needed was a way to get to Erengrad. He found a small whaling boat in Ragnar harbour. Its timbers were stained with blood; a necklace of shark teeth draped the crude dragon's head at its prow. The corpse of a whale bumped against the hull.

Erik found the boat's master in a tavern. He was a fat, cheerful Norseman called Bjorn. Over a couple of tankards, bought with Slann money, Bjorn told Erik tales of how the boat worked the Great Western Ocean. Now it was on its way to Erengrad to sell its latest catch. Over more tankards Erik talked his way into a berth.

The lights of Ragnar disappeared into the freezing fog. Bjorn handed Erik a bone-handled knife. "This is a whaler," he growled. "Not a damn pleasure yacht."

Erik sighed and stripped off his furs.

There were twenty Norsemen in the crew, all broad and well-muscled. They plastered grease over their faces and hands to keep out the chill winds, and - with Erik - sliced their way into the carcass of the whale.

On the evening of the tenth day Bjorn grabbed Erik's shoulder. Erik was flensing a man-sized slab of meat; whale epidermis lay at his feet like discarded clothes. He straightened up, the muscles of his shoulders aching as they never had before. He was coated with blood and bits of blubber.

Bjorn pointed. "Erengrad," he said. "We'll dock soon."

Erik grinned at Bjorn, feeling dried blood crackle over his face. "Thanks."

Bjorn snorted and clapped Erik's back with one huge hand. "Listen, you earned your passage. If you ever need a job, find me."

"I need to clean up."

Bjorn shrugged. "Then dip a bucket over the side. The water's fresh here; we're already in the mouth of the Lynsk..."

Erengrad spread around the mouth of its river. Shadowed hills cupped the city to the north. In the gathering twilight Erik could see coach lights gleaming from onion-shaped cupolas.

An island sat like a mile-wide toad in the river mouth. It bristled with docks. A broad bridge arched from the island to the mainland; the bridge stood on wooden piles wider than a man's height.

The whaling boat nuzzled against one of the piles. Erik saw tough wood coated with seaweed and barnacles. A ladder of rusty iron was stapled to the pile. Erik and the rest of the crew filed up the ladder to the bridge's road surface. Then, grinning with anticipation, they made their way towards the city.

Carts and coaches of all kinds crowded the bridge; the air was thick with the scent of horses, of tar, fish, fresh-cut timber, with the babble of a dozen tongues. A party of merchants clattered past on a truck piled high with casks of wine and oil. Their sing-song voices drifted over the hubbub; white teeth flashed in dark faces. "Estalians," Bjorn said, pointing. "From Magritta, maybe."

"Bjorn, when do you leave?"

"After a day and a night," Bjorn growled. "At dawn. Long enough to unload and get our credit. You coming?"

"Don't wait for me."

Bjorn nodded, showing no curiosity; then, with a backward grin, he melted into the evening crowd.

Erik spent the night quietly, attracting no attention. He hired a room, ate and slept, kept his mind a blank.

The following afternoon he took a walk through the bustling heart of Erengrad. Temple towers loomed over streets of low government buildings. Pale lawyers, clerics, civil servants eyed him curiously.

The palace of the city Governor was a jumble of cupolas and minarets. Effete, Erik decided. It was surrounded by a wall of granite twice Erik's height. He eyed it speculatively. Then he returned to his room.

Dawn had already touched the sky when he arose. The whaler was due to leave very soon. He imagined the crew drifting out of the taverns, rubbing their eyes and gathering their furs...

He tied a thong of leather around his waist, pushed into it his heavy iron axe and his short sword of beaten bronze. Then he slipped out of the room.

A dozen campaigns had taught Erik how to move his bulk in silence. Now he moved like a shadow through the sleeping streets of Erengrad. He approached the Governor's palace from its darker side, the western. Outside the palace wall he waited a dozen precious breaths. No movement; only the peal of a bell.

Then he scrambled up and over the wall, fingers digging into crevices in the granite. He landed softly and hurried into shadow.

He was in a rich garden. Loamy flower beds were crisscrossed by gravel paths. The palace itself sat in the heart of the greenery. It looked like a sweetmeat in fancy wrapping, Erik thought in disgust.

Light crept higher into the sky; more bells tolled somewhere outside. There were no guards. Nothing moved.

Erik walked over the silent soil of a flower bed to the palace. The doors were squat and massive, but there was a window at head-height protected only by an iron grill. A moment with the blade of his axe and the grill scraped free. He lowered the grill into a spray of flowers and put his hands on the window ledge -

A footstep like thunder. A growl like a shout in a cavern. A breath on his neck, damp and stinking. Careless, careless -

He whirled, reaching for his sword.

It was a giant, at least three times Erik's height. The giant thumped a chest the size of a small room. His huge belly was swathed with the skin of three oxen; three boneless ox heads dangled from his hip, mouths gaping.

The giant bent over Erik and thrust forward a moon-like face. Erik peered into filthy nostrils that were wider than his fist. The great mouth opened in pleasure, revealing teeth like flagstones.

The giant clapped huge hands together, pinning Erik's arms to his sides. Erik felt his ribs grind, his lungs strain. He gripped the handle of his axe with fingers that pounded with trapped blood.

Think, he told himself. Use his strength against him -

The giant grunted and squeezed harder. Silently Erik called to his were blood. His jaw ached as if growing; the muscles of his back grew supple and strong. He fixed his eyes on a particularly corroded tooth. Then he arched his spine backwards, lifted both feet and slammed his heels into the base of the tooth.

The giant stared, as if puzzled. Erik kicked again and again. Enamel crunched beneath his feet. At last the pain found its way to the giant's brain. He roared. Erik's skull rattled. The huge fingers relaxed, just slightly; the giant began to straighten up.

Erik braced his feet against a stubble-thick chin and shoved as hard as he could. He flew backwards out of the giant's grasp; he wrapped his arms about his head before he could hit the palace wall - but, as he'd intended, he passed with a bump through the window frame and rolled into the palace.

He landed on his back in a darkened room. A hand like a side of beef crashed through the window after him. Carpet-roll fingers wriggled; the giant bellowed in frustration.

Erik pushed himself to his feet, ribs grating, and scuttled away from the window. Then he stood stock still, eyes closed, blood rushing in his ears. Gradually the Were subsided.

When his thoughts had cleared of their red tinge he hurried into a corridor. Widely spaced lanterns cast pools of light. He heard raised voices, the clatter of footsteps.

He grinned into the darkness. He hefted the axe in his hand. He had maybe seconds. Working by instinct he ran through the rambling corridors.

He came to a carved doorway. Gold handle. A human guard who stared at him with wide, startled eyes -

A single blow to the windpipe. The man fell, unconscious and silent. There was an ornate lock; a thrust of Erik's shoulder and he was in the room.

The Governor was dressed. He sat calmly on the edge of his bed, a small, portly, middle-aged man. "I heard the commotion. I've expected you, Norseman."

Erik stared wildly around the walls. Was the map here?

"I have a network of ears," the little man said mildly. Strands of Norse-blond hair lay over his bare scalp. "I need to know, you see. And there is a whaling crew in town who have been bragging about a mysterious Norseman who buys ale with Slann gold..."

There. In a gold frame, a parchment of china blue. There was a thick red line that looked like the coast of Norsca.

A drumbeat of running footsteps. There was no more time. Erik smashed the frame with a blow of his axe, pulled out the parchment and thrust it into his tunic.

"Norseman!" the Governor snapped. "Do you know what you're stealing? That map is a trophy of our victory over the Incursion. A memorial to thousands of lost human lives."

Despite his urgency Erik hesitated. "So?"

"Give it to your Slann master and you betray your race."

Erik stared at the serious, brave little man. He remembered the seductive words of Cotza: "Outcast, neither man nor Were... what is your loyalty, Erik?"

Erik spat onto the Governor's thick carpet. Then he turned and ran out of the room.

A party of soldiers to his left. Erik ran right, booted feet pounding on carpet. He came to a kind of crossroads. He paused. The chasing party was closing, waving polished swords. And ahead there was another troop. They saw him and began to run at him.

Erik waited, let them rattle so close he could feel the draught from their waved swords -

- then ducked to the right. The two parties clattered into each other in a jumble of swords and ornate helmets.

He came to a window, kicked out the grill, somersaulted to the garden below. He was in a battered flower bed. The sky was light enough to show traces of blue. The giant lurched towards him, one finger probing at a bloody tooth.

Erik saluted him. Then he sprinted at the wall and took it in a single vault.

He ran across the bridge, dodging early traffic. Breath rasped in his lungs. He risked a look back. Soldiers filled the bridge like a thick fluid; they shouted threats and shoved aside cowering traders.

The little whaling boat had already cast off. It was about twenty paces from the quay. The crew, swearing and bleary-eyed, hauled at rigging. Bjorn saw him and waved. Erik didn't slow. He sailed off the bridge and smashed into the water a body's-length short of the boat; two quick strokes and the grinning Norsemen were hauling him over the side.

Soldiers gathered on the bridge. Spears and arrows sailed over the boat and plopped into the water. The Norsemen fished them out and threw them back, spitting insults at the Kislevites.

Erik lay in the bottom of the boat, panting. The smell of whale blood was like a welcome home. Bjorn stood over him, mouth twisted in amusement.

Erik made to speak, but Bjorn waved him to silence. "Tell me later. Haul on this. We've got work to do." And he handed Erik a rope.

Erik sighed and struggled to his feet.

On his return to Ragnar Erik made for Cotza's lodging.

"Now," the Slann hissed. "Now we begin." He drooled over the map, black tongue wriggling. Erik watched for a moment, flesh crawling at the reptilian strangeness of the Slann, remembering the Erengrad Governor's accusation of betrayal.

Suddenly he was disgusted with himself. He turned to leave.

Cotza rasped: "Wait! Norseman, where are you going?"

"You have your map. I've been paid. That's it."

The Slann walked up to him, pasted feathers rustling. "But I want you to travel with me. Follow this map; find the ancient treasure."

"Venture into the Wastes, for an idle frog dream?"

Cotza showed no reaction to the insult. He said smoothly, "I offer you riches."

"You offer me death."

The Slann stared into his eyes, white throat working. "I offer you salvation, Erik. A way to face the Wastes... a way to face yourself. Are you afraid of that?"

Anger and disgust boiled in Erik. His fists bunched. The Slann stepped back rapidly.

Erik breathed hard, tried to remain composed. "Cotza," he spat, "I've fought with Slann. You're like no Slann I've ever heard of. Slann are ritualistic. Governed by arcane practices. For a Slann there is no looting; no individual glory. But you -  you're greedy. Ambitious. Selfish. Grasping. Devious." Erik barked contemptuous laughter. "Almost human... What are you, Cotza?"

Cotza shook his wide head impatiently. "Must all Slann be alike? Are all humans alike? How little of the world you have seen, Norseman. How little you understand."

Erik studied the quivering Slann for a few more seconds, then turned once more. "Goodbye, Cotza."

"Norseman! I leave Ragnar in six days. Remember my offer..."

Another murky dawn broke over Ragnar. Erik left his lodgings, holding his furs closed against the chill. He walked through frosted streets towards the harbour.

Ragnar was unusually busy. Lights shone already in the Husthing. Carts clattered along the cobbled roads, grease lanterns making arcs of light in the darkness. Mist billowed from the nostrils of horses.

Erik reached the harbour. All along the waterfront metal clanked, wood thumped, men swore. Light moved over a row of ten longboats. Today Cotza was leaving for the north, and he was creating quite a spectacle.

Erik walked along the rough harbour wall and stood over a longboat and its crew, relishing the familiar sight of their preparations for departure. The boat was at least fifty paces long. It rode high in the brisk waves; as it pitched Erik could see water streaming off the boat's overlapping timbers. Strands of seaweed clung to iron bolts with heads as big as his fist.

A forest of oars now sprouted from the boat's sides; shouting sailors dipped them into the grey water. The light caught the boat's dragon prow. The wooden beast stared into the sea.

A team of mighty warhorses, towering over their human handlers, was led onto one boat. The handlers' overseer was a bluff, plump Norseman. He cursed his men continually.

He turned at Erik's approach.

"Bjorn..."

The big Norseman grinned and clapped Erik's shoulder. "Ah, my mysterious friend! You are joining our crazy voyage with the frog man?"

"I... don't know yet," Erik admitted. "But if I do I'll be glad you're there."

Bjorn shook his hand, then returned to his work.

The sky brightened and the square sails of the boats were furled and unfurled. The sails all bore a brilliant sun-symbol.

"The emblem of the Emperor Mazdamundi," a voice hissed behind Erik. "The ruler of the sun. Shining over these frozen barbarians."

Erik turned. Cotza stood there in a fresh cloak of purple; he tossed back the hood to reveal a wide grin. Jets around his neck sprayed mist into his face.

"Why the horses?"

"You will see when we land on the coast of the Wastes." The Slann pulled his hood over his head and walked along the harbour wall. Then he stopped, turned his face to Erik, waiting.

Erik glanced towards Ragnar, his mind a whirl. Not one person on all this stretch of coast, he reflected, would wonder where he was this morning. None would miss him -

"Chaos," Cotza whispered. "It's in your blood, Erik. Face it, man. You have no choice."

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Erik walked after him.

The convoy of longboats pushed cautiously through the ice floes. The fur-clad Norse sailors respectfully mucked out the warhorses, shifted and lashed the tons of cargo. They laughed, joshed and wrestled each other; for the first few days Bjorn's tongue was rarely idle.

But as they moved further north the men grew subdued. A sheet of darkness fluttered like a flag across the northern sky, even at noon. It was a constant reminder of their destination, and many a blond head turned to that mysterious gloom.

They made landfall on a beach crisp with ice. Erik clambered into the water with the rest. The cold stabbed through the wool and fur that swathed his legs. Swearing, the Norsemen hauled their longboats high up the beach. The warhorses clattered through the wavelets, snorting, utterly fearless.

The coast was a sheet of barren rock. The wall of darkness loomed over the beach, dwarfing the tiny Norse camp.

Using their war axes the Norse broke up one of the longboats and built a series of fires. The flames cast little puddles of light into the hostile darkness. That first night Cotza let them break open casks of mead, and the foreign shore rang with songs of the Norse warrior gods. But, despite the drink, few slept easy.

The next morning Cotza began to reveal his plan. First sweating workers carried bricks from the longboats and began to construct a crude smelting oven. Then, some yards away, another longboat was taken apart and the fat timbers of its keel laid out in a rectangle about twenty paces long. Erik worked with the rest as a framework twice as tall as a man was erected over the rectangle.

Cotza stalked about the site, his flat face poking out from under a woollen cap. His jaw was wreathed in steam. He pointed and hissed instructions to the cursing Norsemen.

After some hours he let the men take a break and began patrolling around the hut-like construction, poking and pulling at joints. At last he seemed satisfied and stood back.

Erik walked up to him. "You are constructing an elegant little house, Slann. What do you intend to do? Grow flowers on the ice?"

The Slann spread his mouth wide in his parody of a grin. "The best is to come, my friend. You are a fighting man. There is a battle formation called the 'turtle'. Do you know of it?"

Memories returned to Erik. Of a dozen men huddled under a carapace of upheld shields, cutting their way into an enemy horde -

"Yes. I know the turtle."

"Well, then. This hut is to be our turtle. We will ride inside its shell into the mouth of darkness... all the way to the star treasure. Now, the armour!" He clapped his gloved hands.

Grumbling, the Norsemen got to their feet and began hauling metal plates from the longboats.

Cotza brought a sample of the armour to Erik. It was a helmet. The Norseman turned it over in his hands. It had a lustre like old silver.

"Mithril armour," hissed Cotza.

"I know what it is. I've seen it. Never held a piece before. Too damn expensive."

Cotza hauled his coat higher around his neck. "Mined by the Dwarfs of the smith-city of Zhufbar. Too hard to work - except by magical means."

Erik handed back the helmet. "So they say."

"And shot through with charms against the Powers of Darkness."

"And on this legend you're going to gamble our lives?"

Cotza did not reply. Steam puffed from his slit nostrils. Erik turned. The pile of unloaded armour had grown taller than a man. "I'll say one thing, Slann. You're not short of resources."

"As you say, Erik, I am gambling my life. I have no interest in economy."

Now Cotza's design became clear. Under the Slann's direction the Norsemen began to plate the armour over the structure. The mithril was too hard to work or pierce, so they used huge iron clips to staple it to the wood.

The smiths carried ladles of iron from their oven. They poured the iron like toffee into the gaps between the armour plates. Metal dripped to the ground; snow flashed to steam.

Snow was packed over the cooling joints. Then the smiths beat at the hardening metal with massive hammers. Walls of metal began to build up, shining softly in the low polar sunlight. Even the floor of the turtle was lined with armour.

The labour continued for a day and a night.

Erik touched one twinkling wall. The armour had retained its curved forms - here he could recognize a chest plate, there a broad helmet pushing out of the surface. It gave the plating a crusted look oddly reminiscent of a real turtle shell.

He stood there, pulling at his moustache. Then he stepped inside the turtle and began kicking at the mithril plates. Iron seals cracked and plates tumbled to the snow. The Norsemen stood back and watched, bemused. Cotza came stamping into the turtle. "Norseman! What in the name of the Under-Light do you think you're doing?"

Planting, Erik faced the Slann. "I'm saving your life, frog."

"By kicking apart my turtle?"

Erik bent and picked up a back-plate. A rough rim of iron clung to it. "Mithril armour might stop the assaults of the Powers. But this pig-iron certainly won't." Cotza stared at him, his throat working. "Then what do you suggest?" he rasped.

"Clinker-build."

"What?"

"Overlap the mithril armour. As we overlap the planks that make up a longboat's hull. Caulk it with iron, as we caulk our boats with animal hair. Then you will be surrounded by an unbroken shell of mithril."

For long seconds Cotza's breath sawed through his nostrils. Then he turned and stamped out of the turtle. He summoned Bjorn. "Do as he says."

When all but one wall of the turtle had been finished, the warhorses were led in. They were divided into two teams of six and were made to stand on twin belts of thick leather. The belts were crusted with strips of mithril, and they passed in continuous loops over heavy wooden rollers. The horses, stamping and neighing, were tethered into place by a web of leather harnessing.

Erik stared at this arrangement and scratched his head. "I admit to being baffled, Slann. How can the horses draw the turtle if they themselves are carried within it?"

Cotza laughed and patted the nose of one of the huge animals. "You will see, my friend."

The warhorse peered at him with contempt, and after a few moments the Slann shied away.

Now provisions were lugged into the turtle: lamp grease, furs, tight bales of hay, Cotza's trunk, food and skins of water. Erik noticed the Slann's heavy bath being dragged from the boats.

The irreverent Norsemen fixed a longboat's dragon head to the box-like turtle. Its wooden eyes peered into the mists of the Wastes.

At last Erik took his place with the Slann inside the machine. The last plates were stapled into place. The molten iron caulking filled the turtle with smoke. Erik coughed until Cotza produced a ring of gold about a foot across, which he fixed to an overhead beam. A cool breeze played out of the ring and over Erik's face. He watched wisps of smoke disappear out of the ring.

"Just a little gimmick," Cotza murmured.

Now the arctic daylight was shut out. Cotza and Erik lit grease lamps and suspended them around the cabin. In the lamps' yellow light the turtle seemed an absurdly cosy place, the hulking horses reduced to fireside pets.

Three heavy bangs on the shell. Bjorn, Erik realized, signalling that all was finished.

Cotza opened his mouth wide. "It begins! Now, Erik. The horses!"

He handed a bemused Erik a heavy crop, and together they began to work the horses. The beasts neighed and dipped their heads, but at last their huge hooves began to move, pulling at the leather belts. With a sudden jolt the turtle lurched forward.

"You see it now!" Cotza cried. "The horses drag the belts -

and the belts drag the turtle, inch by inch to our prize -  "

Erik heard a cheer from the watching Norsemen. He made out Bjorn's muffled voice. "I will wait for you here, my mysterious friend. Bring me back a Slaanesh love daemon!" There was ribald laughter.

Excitement growing in him, Erik urged the horses harder. With the sunlight glittering from its enchanted shell the turtle began to crawl northwards.

The warhorses worked tirelessly, apparently not needing sleep. As he fed them Erik patted their great nuzzles and talked to them seriously.

Cotza took a disc from his trunk. He showed it to Erik. It was polished and black, about the size of a dinner plate. The disc was obsidian. It bore a dim representation of a landscape, of piles of grey ice. The picture looked to Erik like an etching, a drawn thing of lines and shading. Then Cotza wiped off the picture with his sleeve and returned the disc to Erik, grinning.

The picture slowly redrew itself. It reminded Erik of watching frost gather on glass. But the view it showed was slightly changed, as if drawn from a different place.

"An obsidian mirror," the Slann explained. "As used by the great emperor Mazdamundi, to study his empire as if through the eyes of a flying bird. It will serve as a window in the wall of our turtle."

Erik peered into the murky plate. Silently he promised himself that if it ever looked as if they were about to drive into a crevasse he'd kick a hole in the damn wall and see for himself.

Cotza spread his map over the turtle's floor and squatted over it, legs folded under him. He pored over the map, comparing details with what he saw in his disc. He used his mirror and map to pick a way through the jumbled landscape. If he wanted to steer the turtle he would goad one team of horses harder; the turtle would swing about with a teeth-jangling scrape.

The polar cold lanced through the thin metal of the turtle's shell. Erik hung furs over the inside surface of the shell; the furs trapped the horses' body heat and the temperature became tolerable.

Cotza had Erik set up his metal bath and light a small fire below it. Steam filled the turtle. The horses snorted complainingly and tossed their heads; to Erik's disgust, Cotza discarded his suit of tubes and stripped to his yellow-grey skin. He squatted happily in the water, his nostrils poking above the surface.

Erik spent long hours working at his muscles, keeping them hard and fast, or resting with his back to the wall of mithril armour. When he slept he wore his weapons.

As they headed further north the sun disappeared from the sky. When the obsidian plate was turned towards the Wastes the sky turned into a thing of whirls and jagged lines.

The warhorses snorted, their huge legs working.

Erik started awake. The turtle rocked, swaying like a drunkard as it crawled on its way. The Slann sat in his bath. He clung to its sides with widespread webbed fingers. His eyes were fixed on Erik. "What is it?"

Erik pressed his ear to the metal wall. He heard voices, like girls laughing teasingly, receding from and approaching the mithril. And there were scents like fine perfumes; he felt blood pool in his loins...

"I would guess it is a welcoming party from Slaanesh," said Erik drily. "The Pleasure Lord of Darkness." He stood, rested lightly on the balls of his feet. He relaxed the strapping around his battle-axe.

The heady laughter whirled around the turtle. Erik's imagination showed him the daemonettes of Slaanesh... their stigmata - the single right breast, the green eyes... and their unbearable beauty. And all the while the subtle scents probed at his mind, stirring his thoughts.

There was a pounding on the shell. It was as if a huge fist were beating against the metal. Cotza screamed. The turtle shook. The warhorses stumbled. Their leader raised his muzzle to the roof and growled like a cat.

And now came another sound: a whirring, a grinding against the metal like a knife-sharpener's stone.

Cotza whimpered. "That's a chain-sword. They're trying to cut their way in."

Erik stared up at the armour. He grabbed a grease lamp and held it up to the roof, inspecting the seams. "It's holding," he breathed.

"For how long?" the Slann cried. He wrapped his huge face in his hands.

"Your Eagle Warrior courage is comforting," spat Erik.

Cotza stared up at the shuddering roof. "What by the emperor's teeth are they?"

"Daemonettes, probably," Erik said, recalling old battles. "They fight as if insane. Perhaps there are Warriors of Chaos, humans who have sold their souls to the Pleasure Lord - "

At that Cotza's huge eyes flicked away from Erik's face. His mouth worked and his hands spread once more over the rim of his bath. Erik noticed the sudden reticence. Now, what did that mean? What was his dubious ally hiding?

The pounding, the grinding went on and on, unceasing. But without breaching the mithril. When he was satisfied of that, Erik resumed his seat and closed his eyes.

Erik had survived many a battle. He didn't let the hammering of Slaanesh daemons, the whimpering of a mysterious Slann, stop a light sleep from stealing over him. But he kept his weapons to hand.

The days in the swaying turtle turned to a blur of noise. Erik chewed meals of dried meat. His dreams were filled with smiling women; their cheeks bore a soft down and their eyes were green -

Cotza moaned continuously. He stirred in his bath, lost in his own erotic nightmares.

Then it stopped. The turtle rocked to stability. The horses stumbled at the suddenness of it, then found their feet. The belts whirred once more over their rollers.

Cotza sat bolt upright in his bath. His skin was grey, slick with slime. Bones showed through limp flesh. "It's over," he whispered. "We're out of the reach of Slaanesh."

"I'm sure we'd be welcomed back," Erik said.

"So we're safe. The mithril worked!" The Slann's long legs flexed. Then he reached into a pile of supplies and drew out a handful of dried cockroaches. Greedily he shoved the insects into his wide mouth.

Erik watched in disgust. The scents of Slaanesh were gone. But his memories populated the silence outside with other servants of Chaos, with an infinite arsenal of silent death.

Cotza feasted. Erik kept his hands on his weapons.

Their passage became smooth. Ominously so, Erik thought. The days passed rapidly. It grew hot. Sweat steamed from the horses. Erik discarded his furs. He stood beneath the Slann's air-breathing ring; a breeze still rustled out of it, but for some reason it didn't refresh him. He wiped sweat from his face, sat again and tried to rest.

Even the Slann complained. "Why should it be hot?" he whined. "It should get colder as we go further north, not hotter."

Erik smiled. "I told you. Don't expect experience to be a guide. Not here. Take what comes. And fight it."

The obsidian mirror showed a land of darkness. Cotza held it to the roof and tried to guide their progress by the stars...

Suddenly he screamed. Erik jerked awake and reached for his weapons -

- and was slammed backwards by a punch in the chest. It could have come from the fist of that Kislevite giant. He felt the wooden floor splinter under him.

He struggled to his feet. There was nothing to see in the flickering light of the grease lamps. But something was smashing its way around the turtle, like an invisible bird. Heaps of supplies were blasted open and scattered around the cabin. The horses reared; their harnesses snapped.

Cotza was picked up bodily, tubes dangling, and slammed face-first against the ceiling. Then he was dropped with a splash into his bath. "Norseman! Help me!"

The lamps blew out. Now the only light came from the fire under Cotza's bath.

"Erik, what is it?"

Erik struggled to keep his feet. "It's an elemental. A daemon of the air."

"Our armour is breached -  "

"No." The elemental shoved past him; he felt a meaty slap to the face. "It's your breathing ring, Slann. It's got in that way, bit by bit."

"Then we're doomed."

"What?" Erik staggered to the bath and grabbed the Slann's shoulders. "What in hell are you talking about, Cotza? You Slann are supposed to be great wizards. Use magic. Fight it off with a spell!"

The Slann struggled out of his grasp and curled into a ball. "I can't," he moaned. "I have no magic. Save us, Norseman."

Erik stared at him, unbelieving. Then the elemental hit him in the back and knocked him flat on his face. The creature pounded at his spine, roaring like a gale. Erik gritted his teeth, arms trembling. He howled, arched his back, pushed the hard pads of his paw-hands into the floor. The fur on his face stood erect.

For a few seconds Were fought elemental. Then the daemon slithered from his back. Erik struggled to his feet, fighting the impulse to snap and howl. He had to control the Were, think clearly, find a way to drive out the elemental...

Cotza's fire.

Erik grabbed the rim of the metal bath and pulled it off the fire, tipping out the wailing Slann. Then he rummaged through their piles of supplies until he found a block of lamp grease. He pulled the sticky stuff apart and flung it at the fire.

Flame roared up; heat blasted into his face. The Were flinched; the man stood his ground. The Slann scurried into a corner. Smoke poured through the cabin, making Erik's eyes sting. The horses stamped in complaint. Erik hurled more grease into the blaze.

Hot air blasted up. The atmosphere became a mass of smoke and turbulence. It was as if a second elemental had been released into the cabin.

But this one was controlled by Erik. The elemental slapped at his legs and back. Erik heard it slam into the walls...

But it was weaker. Erik grinned, wiping soot from his face. As he'd hoped the elemental was beginning to lose its cohesion in the disrupted air.

There was a wail that filled the cabin. Then air began to rush out of the breathing ring. In a few seconds it was over.

The fire burned steadily now. Erik, coughing, began to relight the lamps. He found Cotza buried in a pile of furs. Erik poked with one booted toe. "Come out," he said. "It's over."

The Slann uncovered one eye.

"Take down your breathing ring," Erik growled. "It was the only breach in our defence. And it almost killed us."

"But we'll suffocate."

"We keep it down until we have to. Understand? Now, help me fix this damn mess."

He walked to the warhorses and began to calm them with firm words.

Cotza hissed like a snake. Erik started awake. Painfully he pulled himself to his feet. His head pounded. In the days since they'd closed off the feed the air in the turtle had become thick and stinking.

Automatically he looked to the horses. The huge beasts laboured at their treadmill, their coats matted with sweat. The Slann was hunched over his obsidian device. His lips popped together, mouthing words unknown to Erik. Then he said quietly: "Erik. We have succeeded."

Erik strode through the swaying cabin and snatched up the plate. It showed the usual murky scene, a sky of loops and whirls over a formless land. But there was something new, a sharp image about the size of Erik's thumb.

"It's the star boat," breathed Cotza. "See how clear it is? It was designed to travel to other worlds. And so it has survived the centuries of degradation in this forsaken place. It shines in that plate like a pearl in mud -  "

The star boat was a spindle, its prow and stern trailing to needle-fine points. Erik judged the boat to be about five times the length of the turtle - perhaps a hundred paces in all. He could see no sails, no oars.

"I can't see any clinkering," he said. "And... it seems to be closed over, all around. More like a house than a boat. Why should that be?"

"How would I know?"

"Why would you roof over a boat? Suppose... suppose it was to move under water as well as over it -  " Erik shook his head.

"Or," said Cotza, "instead of keeping something out, the closed hull was to keep something in."

"Like what?" Erik said.

"Air? Suppose the ocean this boat sailed is as empty of air as the air is empty of water."

"That's crazy."

Cotza laughed. "The ways of the ancient Slann aren't going to be comprehensible to us for a long time. Perhaps not ever."

He took back his obsidian plate and wiped it over. The boat's image began to slip below them; Cotza had to tilt the obsidian to trap it. "We're passing over the boat," he said. "It's buried in the ice..."

"We're nearly over it." Erik hurried to the horses and pulled at their bridles. The turtle shuddered to a halt. Erik gathered armfuls of hay and scattered them at the feet of the panting animals.

Cotza scampered over the floor of the turtle, scanning the buried boat with his obsidian plate and making crude sketches on a parchment. He showed Erik glimpses of detail: plates of buckled metal, panels covered with obscure rectangular designs. "What a treasure!" he crooned.

"Don't get excited, Slann. We haven't worked out how to reach it yet."

Cotza snorted and continued his studying. At last he spread out the results of his labours. It was like a sketch map of the star boat. "Here," he said, tapping with a thumb. "See how the plates are breached, torn apart? There's a hole wide enough to let in a man. Even one as broad as you, Norseman," he added jovially.

Erik studied the map, then paced around the turtle. At length he selected a spot and cleared away clutter from the floor. "The hole's here," he said.

"Yes." The Slann nodded excitedly. He stood and clambered into a purple cloak. "Well, Erik? Let's see this boat for ourselves."

Erik touched his weapons. He felt reluctant to breach the protecting mithril shell...

But he'd come a long way for this. And you can only die once. He grinned fiercely, raised one booted leg, and stamped down on the deck.

The wooden flooring splintered and broke up. Then his boot reached the clinkered armour beneath. Iron seals cracked and fractured. Soon two plates were loose enough to prise aside. "That's enough," Erik growled, lifting the loosened plates. "Let's keep the breach small."

Ice gleamed dully in the hole. Erik probed at it with one finger - and jumped back with a yell as ice flashed to steam. The Slann laughed. "The normal rules don't work here, remember?" he taunted.

Erik glared; then, with the butt of his battle-axe, pushed at the popping ice until it had all vapourized. Tendrils of steam filled the cabin. The Slann sniffed contentedly.

Under the ice the earth was greyish and dead, like fine sand. Erik used the blade of his axe to scoop it out. Then his blade clanged on something hard, metallic.

Erik looked up. The Slann stared into the hole, tongue wriggling out of his lips. Erik bent into the hole and brushed away the remaining layer of dirt.

The hull-metal of the star boat gleamed like polished bronze. The Slann sat beside Erik and touched it in awe. "It's perfect, after so many thousands of years," he whispered. "But look how it's crumpled."

Erik searched through the dirt until he reached the breach in the hull. The last few grains of earth fell into a circular patch of darkness. It was about an arm's length wide. Erik stared into it, saw nothing. "Give me a lantern."

Cotza brought him a simple candle in a clay bowl. Erik lowered it cautiously into the boat. The flame flickered but burnt on.

"So the air's not foul," Cotza hissed.

Erik made out a floor of metal, perhaps ten feet below him. He looked up at Cotza and shrugged. "We can't learn anything from out here. I'm going in."

"Let me hold the lamp."

After checking his weapons Erik swung his feet into the hole. His waist passed through easily, his axe bumping against the lip of the hole. Then he lowered his body until he was dangling from his fingertips.

He let go. His feet hit the metal with a soft thud. He landed at a battle crouch, sword in hand.

Silence. Darkness, broken only by a disc of yellow lamplight above his head. The Slann's silhouetted head appeared. "Erik?"

"I'm safe. There's nothing here. Give me the lamp."

The Slann's bony arm extended into the boat. Erik reached up, took the lamp, turned with the light in his hand -

A white face loomed at him, jaws wide and gaping. Erik yelled. He grasped his sword and smashed, smashed again -

"Norseman! What is happening?"

Erik stepped back, breathing hard. There was a chair before him, large and fine enough to be a throne. Now it was covered by fragments of smashed bone. Bone dust drifted in the musty air.

"Nothing," Erik said. "There's no danger. It was a skeleton, a thing of bones in this seat, facing me."

The Slann's nodding head reappeared in the hole. Erik laid his lamp on the floor, then reached into the chair and pulled out a shard of a skull. The head had been large, flat. "What do you think it was?"

"Slann," said Cotza. "Just like a modern skull - perhaps a little larger, a little finer. No doubt we've coarsened since our fall. I think that was a sailor, Erik. A Slann who took this boat to the stars, and who died when the boat ploughed into the ice," Cotza dangled his flippered feet into the hole and dropped through.

Erik raised the lantern and began to explore. They were in a sharp-edged box about as large as the turtle. Erik looked close but could see no joints between the wall plates.

Another skeleton, intact, sat before a table. The table was encrusted with buttons and slivers of glass. The chair held a pool of dust - perhaps the residue of the Slann's flesh. Shreds of some ancient material clung to the wide rib cage.

A spindle the size of Erik's fist hung in the air above the table. Erik looked for wires suspending it, but could see none. "Look at this," he said. "It's like... a toy version of the boat. A model."

Cotza peered, poked with a tentative thumb. There was a spark where he touched, a crack like a gunpowder cap. The Slann leapt back. The little model rocked in the air... and the star boat groaned and shifted around them, like a bear stirring in its sleep. Cotza looked about fearfully; Erik heard himself growl.

The model came to rest. The groaning ceased. Cotza looked at Erik. "You know what this is, don't you?"

"What?"

"It's for controlling the boat. It's like... a rudder. Yes, a rudder. Move the toy and you move the boat. See? Some races have spells which work on the same principle."

Erik peered doubtfully at the model. "Well, it's like no rudder I've ever seen..."

Now Cotza approached one wall. It was coated with panels of dark glass. Below each panel was a plate covered with a close, unrecognizable script. "Obviously this room is only a small part of the boat," murmured the Slann.

"So what's in the rest?"

Cotza shrugged. "Maybe the sails - or whatever it was they used to drive this boat." He pushed his broad muzzle close to the black glass. "This stuff is obsidian. Come and look..."

There was a picture in the obsidian plate. Erik saw stars. And something round and shining. The world? The Slann said, "I think we're seeing what the sailors saw on this boat's last voyage. Erik, it's true. This boat really did travel between worlds."

"So maybe this cabin is a kind of observation post," Erik mused. "Like a look-out posted in the rigging of a longboat."

The Slann nodded absently. His black tongue shot out and licked wide lips. "I believe there's more obsidian in this single room than in the whole of Lustria."

He reached up his right hand.

"Cotza, don't touch anything. Remember the rudder thing. There might be some kind of protection."

"I'm a Slann, Norseman," Cotza said haughtily. "This is my heritage. If we can get this obsidian loose, it alone will make me richer than I could have dreamed. And who knows what else we'll find..."

The Slann peeled off his right glove and spread webbed fingers.

"Cotza! Don't - "

Cotza touched obsidian. The cabin filled with fire and thunder.

Erik was hurled against a bulkhead. He felt the skin of his face blister in the sudden heat. His nostrils filled with the scent of scorching - his hair, beard, clothes.

The red glare faded; the noise echoed to stillness. Coughing, wiping tears from dazzled eyes, Erik struggled to his feet.

His weapons were in his hands. Good. He looked around quickly. The grease lamp had blown out, but blood-coloured light leaked from the plate Cotza had touched. Above Erik's head he could see the hole leading out into the turtle. And, beyond that, he could see stars.

So the explosion had breached the mithril. They were naked to Chaos. Despair closed around his heart. He shook his head. One thing at a time. He looked for Cotza.

The Slann was crumpled into one corner like a wad of rag. He was staring in disbelief at his right arm. It ended in a stump, a few inches below the elbow. Thick blood pumped like a dismal fountain.

Erik had seen such injuries before. He had seconds to save the Slann. He grabbed the edge of the Slann's robe and tore away a strip. He wrapped the strip around the stump and twisted until he felt the cloth bite to bone. The blood flow slowed, stopped.

Then Erik got to his feet and picked up the Slann, boosted him through the roof and back into the turtle. It was like lifting a child.

Erik jumped, grabbed the lip of the hole with his fingertips, and hauled himself up. The Slann lay limp on the floor, groaning softly. Erik ignored him, looked quickly around the turtle, weapons to hand.

The horses whinnied and stamped. The air in the turtle was cold, damp. A wind like a fist slammed through the breached roof. Erik reached up with one hand and felt around the breach until his fingers closed around a dislodged mithril plate.

Soft fingers brushed his wrist. He ground his teeth and hauled the plate over the hole. The wind died to a whisper. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do.

He kicked something in the debris. It was the spindle, the rudder-toy from the star boat; it must have been blown clear in the explosion. He poked it tentatively. There was no reaction. Impulsively he tucked the little model into his shirt.

Now, the Slann. Cotza could still die if the wound wasn't treated. And Erik was determined that he would stay alive until he provided some answers. He reached for a handful of grease and slapped it over the nearest lamp. A small fire roared up. Then he knelt and pulled the shattered right arm out from under the amphibian's body. Cotza groaned, stared up at Erik with empty eyes.

Erik thrust the damaged arm into the fire. The Slann's scream was unearthly. He struggled feebly. Erik held the arm fast until he could see that all the blood vessels had shrivelled closed. He lifted the Slann, who was unconscious at last, into his metal bath, and lit the warming fire beneath it.

Cotza slept for hours. Erik waited until the watery eyes fluttered open once more. Loops of slime clung to the Slann's eyelids. He turned his head, looking dimly around the turtle. Then his eyes met Erik's.

"You're no Slann," said Erik quietly. "I suspected when you had no magic to ward off the air elemental. Then there's your character. Your greed. Your ambition. Like no Slann. And you're a coward; you could never have been an Eagle Warrior. Now I have proof. That obsidian plate would not have harmed a true Slann. It's time for the truth. What are you, Cotza?"

Cotza dipped his head into the murky water, rubbed at slimy nostrils. Then he said: "I'm human."

Cotza told Erik that he had been born of a peasant family in northern Bretonnia. He grew to awareness in filth and squalor. Strutting Breton lords ruled the villages with a severity matched only by their corruption and incompetence.

Cotza was a weasel-like boy, weak and resentful, despised by his fellows. His only consolation was the tales of the old men of his village. They would recount fantastic legends of lands and times far distant, and Cotza would sit open-mouthed at the edge of their ruminative circles.

And most of all he loved the tales of the old Slann, with their wonderful machines which could spit fire and fly through the air. In his dreams Cotza was a God-Emperor, studying through obsidian his boundless dominions...

Cotza had reached a bitter manhood when, one overcast day, the sergeants of the army of King Charles rode into the local market square. The colours of their helmets' plumage shone out against drab mud walls.

The sergeants drew their dandified pistols and gathered the young men, Cotza among them, into a rough platoon. The King, the sergeants said, intended a plundering raid over the border into Estalia. They needed volunteers.

Two men were shot to encourage the rest. Then the peasants were marched away, hands clasped on their heads.

So Cotza found himself recruited into the fyrd - the peasant backup to Charles' professional troops. He was given a crude heraldic design to sew onto his brown shirt, was supplied with a stubby sword and an axe. He found life in the army of the King brutal and unrewarding. He watched officers strut around the battlefields intriguing against each other and showing off their dazzling standards.

Meanwhile the fyrd was thrust into battle in great disorganized mobs. Peasants died en masse. Cotza was a coward. He hid, ran, earned the contempt of his fellows. But he survived.

There was magic on the battlefield, Cotza learned. While peasants bludgeoned each other in the mud, he watched knights in their enchanted armour ride out and join in battle under magic standards.

He saw strange things. A man suffered grievous wounds to the head, yet fought on. For a few seconds a knight split mysteriously into two copies, baffling his opponents. Massive warriors would inexplicably turn, drop their weapons, and run howling from the field.

And at the centre of it all was a strange figure, a frail-looking old man who could nevertheless walk through a crowded field and have the burliest warrior step aside for him. This was Rufus, a powerful Wizard in the pay of the King. His bony face was masked by a florid beard and he wore a cloak that was stiff with sewn-in runes, shards of bones, bits of shattered blades; habitually he carried faded spell-scrolls stuffed under his arms.

Once he dropped a scroll. It steamed as it lay in the mud. None dared to pick it up for him. Rufus seemed to shimmer as he walked. The aura of power around him was almost tangible. It hurt Cotza to stare too long.

King Charles' campaign drew to a muddy close. The ragtaggle army headed back over the Breton border. Cotza thought about returning to the village, to a life of poverty and dirt...

They crossed an old battlefield. The rotting bodies of friend and foe filled the air with a fetid stench. The army made camp; Cotza, exhausted, spread his threadbare blanket across the ground, lay down and closed his eyes. But sleep would not come. He wriggled on the hard ground, suffering the curses of his comrades. There was something wrong. The ground was warm beneath him.

Warm?

He waited until the dead of night and then, by starlight, lifted the blanket and scraped aside the mud. Then he sat back and stared, breathing hard. He had found a spell-scroll, dropped and trampled into the dirt, glowing softly like coal burning from within.

Someone groaned in their sleep. Cotza hastily packed the earth back over the scroll and lay down again, heart pounding. This was his chance.

The next morning he made his way to the ornate tent of Rufus, and waited at its entrance until the Wizard emerged. Rufus scowled like thunder. The bits of shattered weapons sewn into his cloak glinted at Cotza like hard eyes. Cotza quailed... but he stood his ground. He told Rufus about the scroll. The Wizard asked him to describe it, and as Cotza did so Rufus' eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he asked where the scroll was.

Blood pounding, Cotza proposed a deal.

The Wizard mocked his bargaining, eyes burning. But Cotza got his deal. He led Rufus to the scroll. The Wizard lifted it reverently from the ground and returned to his tent, nodding slowly at Cotza as he passed.

It took the Wizard some days to complete his preparations. Then he sent a messenger to summon Cotza to his tent.

Now that the moment was here fear nearly overwhelmed Cotza; but he pushed himself to his feet and followed the messenger, ignoring the curious stares of his fellow peasants. He entered the gloomy interior of the Wizard's tent. The Wizard was a vague form in the shadows. On a wooden table lay the stinking corpse of a Slann.

Cotza whimpered and almost fell; he felt a shaming warmth spread damply down his legs. But, under Rufus' directions, he climbed onto the table beside the corpse.

It took three days. The pain was more than Cotza could bear... almost. Then, on the fourth day, he opened new eyes. The world was stained pus-yellow. The Wizard held up a mirror.

A Slann face stared back at Cotza.

"You see, soldiers - even peasant soldiers - share stories, legends, from all over the world," Cotza told Erik. "I listened to the tales of Elves and Dwarfs, sifted through the rubbish, searched for grains of truth, sought opportunity..."

"I remembered those boyhood tales. I learned that the Slann are the oldest race on the planet. Their powers, though lost, were once the greatest. Then I heard the legend of the star boat. I decided this was my chance. In return for the scroll the Wizard gave me gold... And I asked him to make me a Slann. I would seek out the star boat, take its treasure and power."

Erik studied the broken amphibian body without pity. "You were so stupid as to desire... this? To be a Slann?"

"It was my childhood dream," whispered Cotza. "A chance to reach the machines of the ancient Slann. It was a gamble. For the highest stakes - for the chance of power such as no mortal has wielded for five thousand years. Perhaps the power never to die."

"But you've lost," Erik snapped. "You fooled me, but you couldn't fool the Slann machinery. Could you?"

Cotza hung his head, nursing his ruined arm. Erik left him. There was no more to be said.

The turtle crawled over the ice like an injured slug. Erik had tightened the horses' harnesses, goaded them into turning their armoured belts once more. The horses stamped and complained. They were less willing to work together and progress was slow.

The belts moved with a grind. At least one of the wooden rollers was cracked, Erik decided. He tried to fix the loose mithril plates in the roof and floor. But they rattled and slid, and Erik grimly sensed invisible limbs probing into the breached machine.

For the first few days Cotza guided their way with his map and obsidian, but he grew duller and more apathetic. At last he crawled into a pile of furs, dangling his stump of an arm.

The air grew colder. At last frost began to rime the furs suspended over the metal walls. Erik rested with his back to the mithril. Behind the wall he could hear gloating laughter. His own body was a battleground. In his dreams his hands turned to wolf paws which tore into his human face. He awoke sweating despite the cold, the fur on his cheeks and hands erect and itching.

The grease lamps leaked dim patches of light. The turtle became a place of shadows, sinister and huge, no longer a sanctuary. He approached the horses, thinking to feed them. They reared at him, shouting like huge cats, a menacing mass of hooves and ragged manes. Erik stumbled back.

Something stirred under a heap of dirty furs. Erik poked aside the furs with a booted toe. The thing that had been Cotza blinked up at him. He stank of blood and urine. A few blue feathers still clung to his skin.

The fake Slann held up his smashed arm. Something was growing out of the stump. It had a tiny face with a mouth that opened and closed. Cotza stared at it emptily.

Erik pushed the furs over the degenerating creature and returned to his resting place. For a long time he clutched his arms around his body, trying to stop his trembling.

They fell under the sway of Slaanesh once more. And once more the fists of nightmare beat at the shell of the turtle.

This time the roof buckled. Erik clung to a shuddering wall. The horses roared. The Cotza-thing squirmed in his pile of furs, mewling. The turtle was rocked, picked up and dropped; rollers cracked and Erik heard the belts grind the broken wood to splinters. There was a smell of sawdust.

Still the turtle lurched on, its fraying belts spinning. But now Erik heard a sound at first as soft as a heartbeat, a tumble of hooves that grew to a stampede until at last -

- with a crash like thunder one wall of the turtle imploded. Mithril plates shattered and ripped. The last of the lamps went out and the turtle teetered once, twice, tipped sideways.

Erik tumbled, arms wrapped about his head. Furs and filth and grease rained down over him. He caught a glimpse of a huge, wool-covered face, of horns like swords.

The turtle was left on its side, its rollers spinning uselessly. With a massive laugh of victory, the minotaur stomped away across the landscape.

Erik pushed debris from his body and tried to sit up. The riven armour admitted a gloomy light. Remnants of the snapped belts littered the cabin. The warhorses were a dark crowd that fought and bit at their harnesses. Erik heard toughened leather snap like thread. The animals drummed their hooves against the nearest wall until armour plates tumbled like leaves. Then the horses burst through the wall and galloped away.

Erik pushed his way to his feet. Cautiously he worked his way through the debris to the breached shell and peered out.

The turtle lay in a landscape of rocks, of a few stunted trees. The sky was a dim grey. There was a scent, as if a beautiful woman had passed this way-

Nothing moved. And yet Erik sensed inhuman eyes watching, waiting for him. Unprotected he wouldn't survive more than minutes out there. He needed the mithril.

He found a breastplate and helmet among the debris of one wall; he tied on the breastplate with a strip of leather and jammed the helmet on his head, ignoring the scratching of its pig-iron rim. He searched for shreds of drive belt. Strips of mithril still clung to the bits of frayed leather; Erik wrapped the shreds around his limbs. He fashioned crude mittens and boots. He swathed his face with belt material, leaving only slits for his eyes.

Then - encased in mithril, axe and sword to hand, and with the rudder-toy still lodged inside his shirt - he left the turtle.

A kind of slime coated the machine; it dripped like mucus over Erik. The dragon head had gone. There were teeth marks in the neck stump.

Something called after him. "Erik... Help me." And another, tiny, voice echoed the first mockingly: "Erik... Erik..."

Cotza was lost. Erik couldn't help him. He didn't look back.

The land seemed empty of light. It was neither day nor night. At times the horizon seemed impossibly distant, at times absurdly close, as if the world itself were swelling and subsiding like the chest of a breathing giant.

Erik shook his head. He was on the border of the Wastes themselves. "The rules don't apply," he growled to himself. He stumbled on.

Occasionally the lid of clouds would break and Erik could make out the stars. They flickered and wavered, as if seen through tears; but they were there. Erik squinted up at them, searching for the North Star. When he found it he turned his back and limped onwards. South. Always south.

Occasionally he heard rumbling over the horizon, saw flashes of light. The hordes of Slaanesh...?

Erik ran until his lungs rattled in his chest, away from the terror. But there was no sanctuary. Even at the quietest hour, even in the most lifeless wasteland, ghostly fingers clutched at him, prying and probing. He would whirl, weapons ready; but there was nothing there.

They were watching him. Biding their time. Perhaps arguing over the spoils. He shook his head and stamped onwards. He didn't dare sleep. He knew that if he lost consciousness he would not be allowed to regain it.

The days wore away, and with them his strength. Finally his knees buckled. He slumped to the ground, pressed face down by the weight of his armour. Dust crept over his legs and buried them.

No - From somewhere he found the strength to push himself upright, to drag his calves from the malevolent dirt. Then, with a howl of defiance, he drove one foot ahead of the other. 

His howl had been a wolf's, he realized. He dug his fingers into palms that seemed thicker, more padded, than before. All his life he had battled to retain his humanity. Only on the battlefield had he used his Were power. But now his human strength was draining and the wolf was emerging. Would he die an animal, his mind full of blood and death?

Eyes half-closed, body crusted with scraps of mithril, Erik the Were stumbled on through the deadly landscape.

Dimly he noticed that the land was changing. The trees disappeared and the dust was replaced by a surface that was smooth and yielding. A coarse black grass sprouted from the pitted ground. A tuft of grass wrapped itself around Erik's foot. He clattered to the ground.

The earth was warm. Body hot. With his ear to the surface Erik could hear a thumping. Like a huge heartbeat. Groggy, disgusted, he tried to rise, push himself away from this ground of flesh. But strands of the black hair-grass wrapped themselves around his ankles and wrists, pinning him.

A face pushed out of the epidermis beneath him. A human face; the face of a boy. Fur sprouted over high cheekbones. The boy cried and stared into Erik's eyes. "Erik," he said softly. "Erik..."

Erik struggled against the thongs of hair. The tortured face was his own, as a child.

Now there was a soft growling. The face was lengthening. Whiskers sprouted from the stretching muzzle and a wide mouth grinned, filled with razor teeth. It was the face of a wolf. A female. She licked her lips, flicked her pink tongue at him.

Her body thrust out of the epidermis, wriggled against his. The body was a human woman's. Erik barked softly, aroused. His armour was in the way; he began to shrug it aside. The lithe body of the female moved beneath him -

"No -  " His voice was a growl.

He ripped free one arm and touched his face. There was a suggestion of a muzzle; the bones of his jaw ached unendurably, as if they were being stretched. "No, no, no -  "

The human words seemed to cut through his hot, muddled thoughts. He pulled free his limbs. The hair-grass ripped out by the root. The land bled. He stood erect, breathing hard. It was an effort to keep his balance, not to drop to all fours.

The wolf-face laughed at him; the body writhed. But now Erik could see that the eyes were green, that the body had a single right breast.

The stigmata of Slaanesh. Laughing, the daemon sank once more beneath the surface.

There was a snorting, a clattering of hooves behind him. Erik whirled around.

The warhorses. They ran towards him in a mist of sweat and saliva. Their hooves left little bloody craters in the living earth. Sudden hope filled him. If he could catch, mount one of them...

The horses drew closer, still packed together. Now he could see how the heads and limbs of the horses thrust at random out of the herd. Nostrils flared and eyes rolled as the dozen heads snapped and bit at each other; legs clattered at random into the ground, some broken and dangling.

Erik's hopes evaporated. He clutched his sword, braced his legs. This was no ally of Erik's. The herd was a single creature, a bag of dark skin out of which protruded the remnants of the warhorses. The horse-thing was a chimera, a monster of Darkness.

The chimera struggled to a halt just before Erik; the nearer horses tried to rear, and twenty hooves waved at the Norseman. Erik faced it, sword and axe held ready-

There was a bulge in the sack of flesh. A reptilian face thrust out towards him. A wide mouth opened. Two arms pushed out, beseeching. "Erik." The voice was muffled. "For pity's sake. I am still alive, and sane, inside this thing. Help me!"

"Cotza..."

The horse-thing reared again and advanced, looming over him. And now a face erupted out of the right arm of the buried Cotza-thing, a tiny caricature of Cotza's. "Erik," it hissed. "Erik." It lunged at his throat, snapping like a snake.

Erik smashed at it with his axe. Cotza wailed in agony. A hoof caught Erik's chest. Armour spun away, gleaming. More hooves rattled over his head, his back.

He lost his axe. He went down, arms over his head. Under the flailing hooves the living ground turned to a bloody pulp. There was a smell of urine and sweat.

He reached deep inside himself, sought all the Were strength in his being. And unleashed it.

With a howl that was at once wolf and human, he rose to his feet and stabbed at the thing above him, thrusting again and again.

There was blood and dirt and pain. Erik crawled away, slumped to the ground, looked back. The chimera still raged. But it was being held from him, pushed back by a dark shape that howled and leapt. Shining teeth ripped throats and gouged eyes.

It was a wolf. For one second it looked at Erik with a kind of understanding. Then it turned, scrambled onto the multiple back of the roaring chimera, and fought on.

Erik struggled to his feet, pulled his tattered armour around him, and staggered away.

The land turned to dust again. Then ice crunched beneath his feet. Erik shivered with the renewed cold. But he rejoiced. It was a natural cold, a sign that he was leaving the shadow of the Wastes.

Day and night resumed their cycle. The stars no longer wavered. Erik dared to sleep, huddled in a blanket of snow.

He reached an empty coast. The frozen sand crackled. A single longboat remained. Bjorn saw him approach, hailed him, came running from the little camp to greet him -

- then hesitated a few paces away. "Erik?" he asked doubtfully.

Erik opened his mouth - then licked his lips, worked his stiff tongue and tried again. "Bjorn. What is it?"

"So it is you," the Norse overseer said wonderingly. "But you've changed..."

He took Erik's arm and led him to the edge of the sea, bade him stare at his own reflection in a sheet of ice. Erik saw a smooth face, a thin tangle of beard, cheekbones that were low and free of fur. The mark of the wolf had gone.

Erik looked back to the northern shadow... to where his despised Were half had remained to save him from the chimera. Perhaps it fought on even now.

"Come on," Bjorn said, wrapping an arm around Erik. "Let's get you to the camp. We've got stew and mead... and we'll set off for Norsca in the morning. I'll bet you've quite a story to tell."

Norsca... He would return as a hero, and fully human. No longer Erik the Were. Erik the man.

Inside his shirt he could feel the slim form of the model star boat, warm against his skin. A toy for his son one day...

Life stretched ahead of him like a sunlit room.

"Yes," he told Bjorn. "Quite a story."

THE IGNORANT ARMIES

by Jack Yeovil

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

- Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"

Settling Tsarina down, he saw the frozen blood around her hooves. The last blacksmith's nails had gone too deep. The horse's ankles weren't good, and the last three weeks' ride had been hard on her. She'd barely been worth the price they'd paid for her when she was fresh. Now, she was a dependent. And they couldn't use dependents.

"There, Tsarina, there," he said, smoothing the horse's mane, feeling her fragile warmth through thick hair. Her flesh wouldn't be warm much longer. Not through another snow, another skirmish, or another day's ride. As always, Vukotich had been right. When they had bargained successfully with the trader months ago, Johann had suggested calling the pair Tsar and Tsarina in honour of the ruling house of Kislev. The Iron Man, face unreadable under his scars, had snorted and said, "Johann, you don't give a name to something you may have to eat." 

Vukotich had been in the Northern Forests of Kislev before, as a mercenary in the service of Tsar Radii Bokha, subduing an insubordinate boyar, fending off minor incursions from the Wastes. He had known what he was talking about. This wasn't the Old World, this was a cruel country. You could see it in the faces of the people, in the iron-hard ground and the slate-coloured sky. In the forests, you could see it in the gallows-trees and the looted graves. Everything had been hacked and scarred into misery. In the hostelries, the songs had been brutal or gloomy, the food was like spiced leather, and all the jokes referred to filthy practices involving the livestock.

In the dusk, Johann saw Vukotich, a spiky shadow in furs, emerging from the trees with an armload of firewood. Stripped of the ice-threaded bark, the wood would burn smokily, but it would burn the night through. Vukotich dumped his load in the centre of the dark brown circle from which he had cleared the snow. What little light was left in the sky had to fight its way down through four-hundred foot trees. They should have made camp an hour ago to be relatively secure by nightfall, but they had been pushing on, Tsarina had been limping, and - just maybe, without consciously working at it - they had wanted to be a temptation to Cicatrice's tail-draggers. Sigmar knows, Johann thought, it would be sweet to be done with this business.

The horse whinnied, and Johann felt her hot breath on his wrist. He loosened a drawstring, and pulled off his glove, making a fist against the cold. Then he stroked the horse again, twining his fingers in her mane. The beast knew, he could tell. He could see the panic in her clouded eye, but she was too tired, too resigned, to fight back. Tsarina would welcome death. Vukotich stood over man and horse, his hand on his knifehilt.

"Do you want me to do it?"

"No," said Johann, drawing one of his own knives - a hunter's pride, one edge honed to razor sharpness, the other serrated like a joiner's saw. "I named her, I'll finish her..."

He breathed into Tsarina's nostrils, soothing the horse with his naked left hand, his gauntleted right bringing up the knife. He looked into her eyes, and felt - imagined he felt? - the animal willing him to be swift. He got a good grip, and drove into Tsarina's neck, puncturing the major artery. He sawed through muscle and gristle to make sure the job was well done, and then shuffled back on his knees to avoid the spray. He felt the frozen earth through his padded knee-protectors. His britches would be speckled with Tsarina's red tomorrow. The horse kicked, and emptied fast, the spirit flown forever. Johann made silent prayer to Taal, the God of Nature and Wild Places, one of the few gods he bothered to appease these days. He stood up, and brushed bloody snow from his clothes.

Vukotich knelt, and put his hand in the flow of blood as one might put one's hand in a mountain stream. Johann had seen him do the like before. It was some superstition of his native land. He knew what the man would say now, "innocent blood". It was like a little prayer. One of Vukotich's sayings was "never underestimate the power of innocent blood". If pressed, the old soldier would invoke the blessed name of Sigmar, and trace the sign of the hammer in the dust. Johann shied away from magic - he had had some bad experiences - but all knew of Sigmar's harsh benevolence. If there were miracles to be had, only he could be even half-counted upon. But Sigmar's mercy, Sigmar's hammer and Sigmar's muttered name had done nothing for the horse. She was still now. Tsarina was gone, and they had meat for two weeks' journey in this forest.

Vukotich wiped his hand clean, flexed the fingers as if invigorated, and produced his flint. Johann turned, and saw his companion had constructed a simple pyramid fire, building a tent of logs over a nest of twigs. Dry grass was hard to come by here, but Vukotich could root out mosses and combustible fungi to start a blaze. Vukotich struck his flint, the fire took, and Johann smelled the fresh smell of woodsmoke. His eyes watered as a cloud of smoke wrapped his head, but he kept his place. Best to ignore the discomfort. The smoke column passed, twisting around to reach for the other man. It was an infallible rule of the fire, that it would have to smoke in someone's face.

"So it's horse tonight?" asked Vukotich.

"Yes, we'll have to cure the meat tomorrow if we're to carry on."

"Is there any question of that?"

"No," Johann said, as he always had.

"You wouldn't lose any honour if you were to return to your estates. They must have gone to ruin since we left. I'll continue the tracking. I'm too old to change. But you needn't keep up with it. You could make a life for yourself. You're the Baron now."

He had heard the speech before, and many variations on it, almost from the beginning. Never had he seriously considered returning to his ruined home, and never - Johann thought - had Vukotich expected him to. It was part of the game they played, master and servant, pupil and tutor, man of iron and man of meat. In some circumstances, Johann knew, meat breaks less easily than iron.

"Very well."

Johann set to butchering the horse. It was one of the many skills he wouldn't have acquired had he been a better shot at a sixteen. If his shaft hadn't missed the deer and pierced Wolf's shoulder... If Cicatrice's band hadn't chosen to lay waste to the von Mecklenberg estate... If the old Baron had employed more men like Vukotich, and less like Schunzel, his then-steward... If...

But young Johann had been fumble-fingered with a longbow, Cicatrice had realized too well the weakness of the Empire's outlying fiefdoms, and Schunzel had fussed more over wall-hangings and Bretonnian chefs than battlements and men-at-arms. And now, when he would ordinarily have been currying favour for his family at Karl-Franz's court in Altdorf, Baron Johann von Mecklenberg was gutting a nag in a clearing dangerously near the frozen top of the world. The Arts of a Nobleman. If he were ever to write a book, that's the title he would want to use. 

Together, they pulled strips off the carcass and hung them on a longsword supported over the fire by two cleft branches. It was black from many previous services, stained by dried-in grease, and could never be used in a polite engagement. Throughout his education, Johann had been taught that weapons were the jewels of a nobleman, and should be treated as a master musician would his instrument, a sorcerer his spells and spices, or a courtesan her face and figure. Now, he knew a sword was a tool for keeping you alive, and that meant filling your insides far more often than it did exposing someone else's.

"You saw the tracks today?" asked Vukotich.

"Four, more-or-less human, travelling slowly, left behind for us."

Vukotich nodded. Johann sensed his teacher's rough pride in him, but knew the old man would never admit it. The schooling was over, this was life...

"They'll turn soon. If not tonight, then the next night. Two of them are weak. They've been on foot from three days into the forest. The skaven is lamed. Pus in his bootprints. If he lives, he'll lose a foot to the gangrene. They'll all be tired. They'll want to get it over with while they still have an advantage."

"We're on foot too, now."

"Yes, but they don't know that." In the firelight, Vukotich's face was a dancing mass of red and black shadows. "Two of them will be broken, given this duty because Cicatrice wants to get rid of them. But since the Middle Mountains, he will have stopped underestimating us. He lost enough raiders in that pass to make him think us more than a nuisance. So, two of them will be good. One of them will be a Champion, or something very like. It'll be altered. Twisted, but not crippled. It's something big, something enhanced. Something they think will take care of us."

His eyes shone with flame. "I'll watch first."

Johann was aware of the aching in his back, his legs, the cold that had settled into his bones when they crossed the snowline and would never - he dreaded - depart. How much more would Vukotich, with his many past wounds, with the increasing weight of his years, feel the aches and the chills? The Iron Man never complained, never flagged, but that didn't mean he had no feeling, no pain. Johann had seen him when he felt unobserved, seen him sag in his saddle, or massage his much-broken left arm. After all, the man couldn't go on forever. Then what?

What of Cicatrice? What of Wolf?

They ate, chewing the tough meat slowly, and Vukotich mulled some spiced wine. Warm inside at least, Johann climbed into his bedroll in his clothes, pulling the furs about him. He slept with his knife in his hand, and dreamed...

The Baron of Sudenland had two sons, Johann and Wolf. They were fine boys, and would be fine young men. Johann, the older by three years, would be Baron after his father, and an Elector of the Empire. He would be a warrior, a diplomat and a scholar. Wolf, who would be his regent when the business of the Empire took him to Altdorf, would be Johann's strong right hand. He would be a jurist, a master huntsman and an engineer. Joachim, the old Baron, was proud to have two such sons, who would, upon his death, preserve his lands and bear his responsibilities. And the people of the Barony were pleased they would not have to live under the whims and woes of petty tyrants, as did so many others throughout the Empire. The old Baron was much loved, and his sons would do him honour. New words were made up for old songs, celebrating each achievement of the growing boys.

The old Baron engaged many tutors for his sons; tutors in history and geography, in the sciences, in the ways of the gods, in etiquette and the finer accomplishments, in music and literature, in the skills of war and the demands of peace, even in the rudiments of magic. Among these was a warrior who had served throughout the Old World and beyond. The survivor of numberless campaigns, he never talked of his origins, his upbringing, even of his native land, and he had but one name. Vukotich. The Baron had first met Vukotich on the field of combat, during a border dispute with an unruly neighbour, and had personally captured the mercenary. Neither man spoke of it, but after the battle, Vukotich put aside his profession and swore allegiance only to the House of von Mecklenberg.

The Baron had many homes, many estates, many castles. One summer, he and his retinue chose to spend time in an isolated stronghold at the edge of the Barony. There, in the greenwood, his sons would learn how to hunt game, and win their trophies. This Joachim had done when he was a youth, and this his sons would now do. With pride, the old Baron watched from the towers of his castle as Vukotich took his sons off into the woods, accompanied by Corin the Fletcher, his arms master. Whatever Johann and Wolf killed would grace the Baron's table that evening.

Wolf was a born huntsman, and was blooded his first day in the woods, bringing down a quail with a single quarrel. He soon became proficient with the longbow, the crossbow, the throwing lance, and all manner of traps and snares. Wolf, it was said partly in jest, was well-named, for he could stalk any beast of the forest. From birds, he progressed to boar and elk. He was equal to them all, and it was said that Wolf might be the first von Mecklenberg in generations to bring home a unicorn, a jabberwock or a manticore as trophies of his prowess in the woods. Corin had discovered that Andreas, one of the stable boys, had once been apprenticed to a taxidermist, and soon had the boy assigned to the preparing and mounting of Wolf's trophies. Within a month, there were more than enough to fill his corner of the Great Hall of the von Mecklenbergs.

But Johann found the chase not to his taste. Early, he had developed an interest in the animals of the wood, but he couldn't see them through a hunter's eyes. Shooting at straw targets, he could best his brother with any weapon; but with a living, breathing creature before him, his hand faltered and his eye was off. He was too moved by the magnificence of a full-grown stag to want to see it dead, beheaded and stuffed, with glass eyes and dusty antlers. Everyone understood, which made it much worse for Johann, who was foolish enough to think compassion a womanish weakness. The old Baron, seeing in Wolf his younger self, nevertheless recognized in Johann the makings of a better man than either of the huntsmen could be. To Vukotich, he confided "Wolf's delight in the hunt will make him a good regent, but Johann's instinctive turning-away from killing will make him a great Elector". But Johann tried to overcome his quirk of the mind. He would not give up eating meat, and he believed he could not honourably eat if he could not hunt in good conscience, so he applied himself. 

Still, one day, while out with Wolf, Corin and Vukotich, Johann missed a deer he had a clear shot at, and his arrow slipped through the trees, lodging in his brother's shoulder. It was a clean, shallow wound and Corin dressed it quickly, but Vukotich was sufficiently cautious to send the boy back to the castle. Johann had felt bad enough then, but later this incident would come to haunt his nights. If his life had a turning point, that careless shaft was it. Afterwards, nothing was as it was supposed to be.

There had always been outlaws, of course. Always been evil men, always been the altered ones. Especially in the forests. There had been raids and battles and bloodshed. There were many areas of the Empire where the servants of the Law dared not venture. And there had been many campaigns against the dark. But there had never been a Champion of Evil like Cicatrice. So named for the livid red weal scratched across his face by the claw of a daemon in the service of Khorne, Lord of Blood, Cicatrice had come out of the Wastes transformed beyond humanity. With his so-called Chaos Knights, Cicatrice had terrorized the Southlands, unfettered in his bloodlust in victory, eluding capture even in defeat. Emperor Karl-Franz himself had placed 50,000 Gold Crowns upon his head, but -  though many had tried, and failed to survive the attempt - none had claimed the reward. The songs of his crimes were dark and dramatic, full of blood and fire, and just barely tainted with fascination. For the people of the Empire, used now to the comforts and pettiness of civilization, Cicatrice was an important figure. He was the outcast, a monster to remind them of the things waiting beyond the circle of light.

Cicatrice had seen a weakness in the summer home of the von Mecklenbergs, and mounted a raid that had shocked the Empire. An Elector murdered, his household put to the sword, his castle razed to the ground, his child - and the children of his retinue - stolen away. Never had there been such an atrocity, and rarely since did the other Electors travel anywhere remote without a force of men capable of besting a small army. Hitherto, stealth, poison and treachery had been the favoured weapons of the Night. Cicatrice had changed that. Truly, he was a Chaos Champion, and even the warlords of the Empire credited him as a brilliant strategist. If only because he was still alive and at the head of his Knights twenty years after his first raids, Cicatrice was unique among the servants of evil.

In his dreams, Johann kept being pulled back to that burning castle. He saw his father again, hanging in pieces from trees twenty feet apart. He saw poor, fat, silly Schunzel, the fires in his face and belly still alight. He saw Vukotich, in a rage he had never shown before or since, hacking at a wounded Beastman, screaming questions for which there would be no answers. Then there were the slaughtered horses, the violated servant girls, the unidentifiable corpses. Absurdly, he remembered the tennis lawns - not a scrap of green among the red - with its pile of eyeless heads. A skaven had been left behind, a rat-faced mutant he found among the carcasses of his tutors, sawing off fingers for rings. For the first time, Johann had killed without effort. He had never since hesitated to kill, higher race or beast. He had learned his last lesson.

There was another Elector now, a cousin who called himself Baron, and claimed that Johann had given up his rights to the title by deserting the remnants of the House of von Mecklenberg and setting off on his travels. Johann would not have argued with him. The business of Empire had to continue, and he had other business.

Even with his shoulder wounded, Wolf would have fought.

But he was not among the dead. He was among the missing. At thirteen years of age, he would have interested Cicatrice.

That had been ten years, and inconceivable miles, ago. They had followed Cicatrice's band in ragged circles around the Empire; up through the Grey Mountains to the borders of Bretonnia, surviving ambushes on the waterfront of Marienburg, then through the Wasteland into the Drak Wald Forest - where Johann and Vukotich had been enslaved for a spell by a mad dwarf with a magic mine - and up through the Middle Mountains - where they had fought off a concerted attack, and lost Corin the Fletcher to a goat-headed monstrosity - into the Forest of Shadows. Then, down into the Great Forest and east through Stirland towards the World's Edge Mountains where the powers of darkness are paramount, and where they struggled against phantoms that were sent against their minds by powerful enchanters. The seasons came and went, and the slow progress continued. Johann knew they had been close more times than he could count, but always something had intervened. He had forgotten how many ravaged settlements they had passed through, seeing themselves mirrored in the numb rage of the survivors. Cicatrice's band was unstable, and they had met deserters, cast-offs or defeated would-be champions. Vukotich had more scars now, and Johann wasn't the youth he had been. Back and forth, up and down, the wandering had progressed across the land, constantly at the edges of the Old World, constantly at the extremes of experience. Johann had seen horrors beyond the imagining of his tutors, had learned not to concern himself with the caprices of the gods, and had survived so far. He had given up expecting to see each day's dawn, he had almost given up expecting to see Wolf at the end of it.

But still, even to the top of the world, they kept on Cicatrice's tracks. By day, Johann tried not to think about the past, or the future; by night, he could think of nothing else. He had long since become used to sleeping badly.

The hand on his shoulder shook him awake. He opened his eyes, but didn't say anything.

"They've turned," said Vukotich, his voice low and urgent, "their stink is in the air."

Johann slipped out of his bedding, and stood up. The forests were quiet, save for the drip of snow, and the laboured breathing of Vukotich's horse. The fire had burned to ash, but was still casting a glow. The chill had not left his bones. Ice daggers hung like lanterns from the lower branches of the trees, mysteriously lit from within.

They rolled furs into man-sized humps, covered them with bedding and arranged them near the fire. In the dark, they would pass. Vukotich took his crossbow from his saddle, and selected a quarrel. He checked the sleeping horse Johann couldn't help but think of as Would-Have-Been-Tsar. Then, they withdrew into the forest.

The wait wasn't long. Johann's sense of smell wasn't as acute as Vukotich's, but he eventually heard them. His tutor had been right; there were four, and one was limping. The noises stopped. Johann pressed close to a tree-trunk, shrouding himself in its shadow.

There was a sound like the tearing of silk, and the bedding rolls shuddered. Each was pierced with a crossbow bolt where the head would be. They glowed green, and emitted little puffs of fire and smoke. Johann held his lungs. He didn't want to breathe even a trace of whatever poison that was.

The flares died, and nothing moved in the clearing. Johann gripped the hilt of his sword, while Vukotich brought up his crossbow. He didn't favour poison, but with his eye he didn't need to.

Johann heard his heart beating too loud, and fought against all the imagined sounds in his head. Finally, the real sounds came.

A human shape detached itself from the darkness and ventured into the clearing. It limped badly, and its head was elongated, with shining eyes and sharp little teeth. It was the skaven. Piebald, with tatters of clothing over oddments of armour, the ratman was distorted in the emberlight. It stood over the murdered bedrolls, its back to them. It wore the eye-in-the-point-down-pyramid symbol of the Clan Eshin on its ripped blackhide jacket, and the stylized scarface worn by all the followers of Cicatrice. Vukotich put his bolt through the eye. The skaven breathed in sharply, and half-turned. Vukotich's arrowhead stuck out bloody a few inches from its chest. The ratman went down.

Johann and Vukotich circled away from their spot, until they faced the direction from which the thing had come. There were eyes in the darkness. Vukotich held up three fingers, then two. Three against two. It had been worse before.

Fire exploded above them, as arrows pinned balls of burning rag to trees. The balls exploded, and rained streamers of flame around them. Three figures came into the clearing, tall but shambling. Johann could smell them now. One of them wasn't alive.

Vukotich put a quarrel through the throat of the creature in the centre, but it still kept walking. It walked to the fire, and Johann saw a rotted ruin of a face. It was leaking dust from its split neck. It had been female, once. Now, it wasn't a person, it was a puppet. One of the others must have raised it, or been given the reins by the magician who had. Like many of Cicatrice's Knights, it had a line of red warpaint across its face, echoing its leader's scar. It moved awkwardly because of its mortal wounds, but that wouldn't stop it from being deadly.

"We'd better do something about that," said Vukotich, "before it gives us the Tomb Rot."

Together, Johann and Vukotich ran forward, and counted coup on the undead woman, whipping it with their swords, taking care not to touch the diseased thing. Johann felt brittle bones breaking inside it. The thing staggered from side to side as it was struck, and stepped onto the embers of the fire. Its tattered shroud caught light, and so did its dessiccated shins. When the flame reached its pockets of rancid flesh, they cooked through with a foul hiss. With an awful keening, the creature became a writhing mass of fire. Johann and Vukotich stepped back, prodding it with swordpoints, staying out of its burning reach.

Its companions came forward now, faces flickering in its dying light. Johann parried a blow, and felt its force ringing throughout his entire body. His opponent was taller by a head, and heavily armoured, but its reactions were slower, and its helmet was distorted by a head that seemed to have expanded inside it. It was an altered of some sort, a human being under the influence of the warpstone, that unclassifiable substance so many Servants of the Night had about them, turning into the physical image of whatever dark desires or fears it had harboured. The changes were part of the bargain made with whatever forces they owed allegiance, Johann knew. He had seen too many barely human things left in Cicatrice's wake. This thing was plainly in the throes of some fresh alteration. Under its helm, it would be some new monstrosity.

Johann stepped back, and slashed across the creature's chest, denting its breastplate, caving in the scarface symbol etched into the metal. Suddenly, he felt arms around him, and pain at his back. The burning thing had hugged him. He shook free, smelling his scorched clothing, ignoring the pain, and ducked away from a blow that could have sheared his head from his shoulders. The undead got in the way again, and the Knight reached out with a huge hand. The giant got a grip on its flame-haloed head, and with a grunt crushed it to dust. It fell, useless now, and the Knight returned its attentions to Johann.

Vukotich was grappling close with a toad-faced altered with too many limbs, and green ichor was sizzling in the snow around them as his knife went in and out of the thing's bloated stomach. It didn't seem slowed by its many wounds. Vukotich had an arm around its neck, pressing down its inflating ruff.

Johann faced the Knight, and made a few tentative passes at its legs. It was already slow, a few bone-deep cuts would make it slower. He realized that the thing was roaring. Johann wasn't sure, but it sounded unpleasantly like the laughter of the heroically insane. The altered's dented breastplate sprung outwards, spiked from within by hard eruptions springing from its mutating body. Whoever it had once been, it was under the warpstone now, progressing far beyond humanity. The Knight screamed its poison mirth, and tugged at its armour. The breastplate came free, and Johann saw the growing spines and plates on its skin. Cicatrice's face was tattooed on its chest. The helmet stretched outward, cracks appearing in the beaten steel, horns pushing through above the eyeholes like bulbshoots emerging from fertile soil. Johann thrust at the altered's chest, but his sword was turned aside by the creature's armoured hide. The Knight wasn't even bothering to fight back. Johann struck at its neck, and his sword lodged deep. It still laughed at him, and his sword wouldn't come free. He pulled two knives from his belt, and sunk them into the altered's body, aiming for the kidneys. The laughter continued, and the Knight began to peel away the ruined sections of his helmet.

Eyes peered at Johann from bone-ridged cavities. There were seven of them, arranged across the Knight's forehead. Two were real, five were polished glass set in living flesh. Johann prayed to the gods he'd ignored for years. The Knight dislodged Johann's sword from its neck, and threw it away.

"Hello, Master Johann," it said, its voice piping and childish, almost charming. "How you've grown."

It was - it had been - Andreas, the von Mecklenberg stable boy, the mounter of trophies. He had found other tutors since Johann had seen him last.

The great hands reached for him, and Johann felt weights on his shoulders. The fingers gripped like blacksmith's tongs. There was no longer ground under his feet. Johann smelled Andreas' foul breath, and looked up into his former servant's mask of expanded flesh. He pulled the knives from the altered's sides, and sawed away at its stomach and groin with them. He merely cut through altered flesh that grew back as he ravaged it. Andreas pushed him, and he flew twenty feet through the air. He hit a tree, for a moment dreading that his back was broken, then fell. The earth was hard, and he took the fall badly.

Vukotich's opponent was downed, and the tutor strode towards the Knight, two-handed sword raised. Andreas put out an arm to stop him, and brushed aside the swinging blow. He grapped Vukotich's wrists with one hand, and forced the Iron Man to his knees. The altered was still laughing. Daemons screeched in his laughter, and murdered children wailed. Andreas pushed Vukotich back, bending him double, shoving his head towards the still-burning remains of the undead, forcing his own sword towards his face. Vukotich struggled back, and Andreas' huge shoulders heaved as he exerted pressure on the dwarfed human. The sword was fixed between their faces, shuddering as they threw their full strength at each other. The knight shrugged off his back armour, which fell from him, and Johann saw a streak of white down the creature's mottled and encrusted back.

Ignoring the pain, he ran across the clearing, stepping in the mess Vukotich had made of his toadman, and hurled himself onto Andreas' back. There, the alterations were not quite complete. He drove his knives in between the Knight's horny shoulderblades, where a patch of boyish skin remained between the bony plates, and sawed down the line of his spine, going as deep as he could, cutting through ribs. Blood gushed into his face, and at last he felt his thrusts sink into the real, unaltered Andreas, doing some damage.

The laughter stopped, and the altered stood up, trying to shake Johann from his back. Johann gripped Andreas' waist with his knees, and continued his sawing. His hands were inside now, and he was hacking at random, hoping to puncture what was left of the heart. Something big in Andreas' torso burst, and he fell writhing to the ground. Johann kept riding him, his hands free now, stabbing where he could. Andreas rolled over, and Johann disengaged himself from the dying Knight. He stood up, and wiped blood out of his eyes.

Andreas lay face-up, red froth on his lips, the light fast going from his face. Johann knelt, and took his head in his hands.

"Andreas," he said, trying to reach through the Knight of Darkness to the stable lad, "what of Wolf?"

The Knight gathered phlegm in his throat, but let it drip bloodily from his mouth. In the two living eyes, Johann saw something still human. He plucked the glass eyes from the face, and threw them away.

"Andreas, we were friends once. This wasn't your fault. Wolf. Where's Wolf? Is he still alive? Where is Cicatrice taking him?"

The dying man smiled crooked. "North," he gasped, broken bones kniving inside his flesh as he spoke, "to the Wastes, to the Battle. Not far now. The Battle."

"What battle? Andreas, it's important. What battle?"

The ghost of the laughter came again. "Baron," Andreas said, "we were never friends."

The stable boy was dead.

Vukotich was hurt. The toadman had lost his dagger early in their struggle, and his barbed hands hadn't proved a threat. But, when cut, he bled poison. The green stuff ate through clothing, discoloured skin, and seeped dangerously into the body. Vukotich had spilled a lot of it on himself. When the morning light penetrated to the clearing, Johann saw the irregular holes in Vukotich's leggings, and realized his tutor was having trouble standing. He tottered, and fell.

"Leave me," Vukotich said through clenched teeth. "I'll slow you down."

That was what Johann had been taught to do, but he had never been a model pupil. With handfuls of snow, he rubbed at Vukotich's wounds, working away until most of the poison was gone. He had no idea how deep the blight had sunk into his flesh, and also didn't know anything about the properties of the toadman's blood. But if it were fatal, Vukotich would have told him so, in an attempt to get Johann to leave him. He tore a spare shirt into rags, and bandaged where he could. Vukotich was quiet, but winced throughout. Johann didn't ask him if he were in pain.

With branches, and strips of leather from their fallen enemies' clothes, Johann made a stretcher which he fixed to Would-Have-Been-Tsar's halter. It was rough, but padded with furs it sufficed. He helped the unprotesting Vukotich onto the stretcher and wrapped him warmly. The old soldier lay still, gripping a sword as a child grips a favoured toy, his face still stained green in patches.

"We're going north," Johann said. "We'll be out of this forest by night. There'll be some settlement before the steppes."

That was true, but didn't necessarily imply a welcome, a healer and a warm bed. There was a saying, "in the forests, there is no Law; on the Steppe, there are no Gods." This was still Kislev, but no Tsar reigned here. Beyond the steppes were the Wastes, where the warpstone was the only rule, changing men's minds and bodies, distorting souls, working its evil on all. It was Cicatrice's spiritual homeland, and the only surprise was that his trail hadn't brought them there earlier.

They travelled slowly, and Johann was proved wrong. By nightfall, they were still in the forest. Vukotich slept fitfully as he was dragged, voicing the pains he would never admit to when awake. Would-Have-Been-Tsar plodded on like a machine, but Johann knew the horse wouldn't outlive the moon. They'd need fresh horses on the steppes if they were to keep up with Cicatrice, and Vukotich would need healing.

The next day, after an undisturbed night's camp, the trees began thinning, and the gloom lifted. There was even a trace of sun in the dead sky. Johann had seen tracks, had found the spot where Cicatrice had camped - the gutted corpse hanging by its feet from a tree was an obvious signpost - and knew they continued on the right trail. Beneath the corpse, someone had scrawled TURN BACK NOW in the snow in fresh blood. Johann spat at the message.

It took a while to realize how strange this country was. There was no birdsong, and he had long since ceased to notice any animals. At first, he was so relieved not to be constantly on guard against wolf and bear - he had three rakemarks on his back to remind him of an old encounter - that it didn't occur to him quite how ominous the lack of life was.

The forest finally died. Johann passed through a thick stretch where tree corpses leaned against each other, or rotted where they lay, and emerged onto the barren steppe. It was like passing from night into day. Looking back, he saw the edge of the forest like a wall extending to the horizon on either side. The trees were packed together like the fortifications of a castle, and didn't seem to fall outward.

If the forest was dead, the steppe was deader. There were scraggy clumps of grass, and areas of naked, frozen earth. The snows had been thin, but still remained here and there. In a hundred years, this would be desert.

In the distance, a trail of grey smoke spiralled up into the empty sky, and something large and ungainly with wings flapped slowly through the air.

"There's a village ahead, Vukotich."

They rested a while, and Johann dripped some water - they had been reduced to melting snow - into his tutor's mouth, then fed the horse. It had been over a month since they'd seen another creature who'd not tried to kill them. Perhaps, by some miracle, there would be some hospitality to be bought at the village. Johann wasn't too hopeful, but hadn't developed Vukotich's automatic distrust. Men still had to earn his enmity.

Vukotich wasn't speaking, conserving his strength, but Johann could tell his tutor was mending. In him, life was like a seed that lives through the arctic winter to sprout when spring brings a trace of warmth. Twice, Johann had thought him dead and been proved wrong. Cicatrice's bandits had given him the name Iron Man.

Johann chewed a long strip of Tsarina as he rode towards the smoke, and tried not to think about Andreas, not to think about Wolf. He remembered the stable lad as a cheerful youth, and could not see in him the beginnings of the Chaos Knight. But they had been there. Perhaps it had always rankled with Andreas that he was born to serve, while Johann and Wolf were born to the Barony. The ways of the warpstone were subtle. They could steal into a man's heart - a child's heart - and find the resentments, the petty injuries, the flaws, then work on them until the heart was rotten as a worm-holed apple. Then, the outer changes began. In Andreas, in the toad-thing, in the many others they had seen over the years. The goat-headed altered that had killed Corin the Fletcher had once been a simple cleric of Verena, Goddess of Learning and Justice, lured into evil by a desire to glance at the Forbidden Books. Cicatrice himself had been a distant relative of the Prince-Elector of Ostland, posted to the Wastes by a jealous rival during a family feud, changed now beyond recognition.

What could warpstone have done to Wolf? Would his brother remember the unlucky arrow in his shoulder, and greet his rescuers with a murderous attack? Would he even recognize Johann? With each year, the likelihood of his putting up any resistance diminished. Now, most probably, he would have to be rescued against his will. And even then, he might prove too far gone in the ways of darkness to help.

Johann and Vukotich had not discussed the end of their search. It had always been assumed between them that Wolf would be rescued. But just lately, Johann had begun to wonder. He knew that he could never bring himself to raise an arm against his brother, but what of Vukotich? Did the Iron Man feel it would be his duty, if Wolf could not be saved, to put an end to him by the sword? Vukotich had mercy-killed before, in his wars, even along their trail. Would it be so different? And would Johann try to stop him? He suspected that, even wounded, Vukotich was the better duellist.

Something crunched under Would-Have-Been-Tsar's hooves, jolting Johann out of his unhappy reverie. He looked down. The animal was standing on a clean skeleton, his right foreleg buried in a ribcage that gripped his ankle like a trap. Johann dismounted, and pulled the old bones away. The skeleton was nearly human, but for the horns on the skull and the extra rows of teeth.

They were in the middle of a sea of bones, stretching as far as the horizon. This must be the site of some ancient plague, or some calamitous conflict...

Andreas had spoken of a battle.

Johann got up on the horse, and continued, proceeding slowly. The stretcher dragged through long-undisturbed bones. Some of the skeletons were barely recognizable. Johann shuddered, and kept his eyes on the smoke. He could see now that it was coming from a group of low buildings, more an outpost than a village. But there would be people. What kind of people would live among the detritus of massacre?

When Vukotich awoke, Johann would ask him about the battle. He would know who had fought here, and why. As if it mattered. Some of the skeletons were hundreds of years old, he thought. Their armour and weapons long stolen away, only their useless bones remained.

Then the smell hit him. The smell he'd become used to. The smell of the zombie that had been with Andreas, the smell of all recently-dead things. The stench of decay.

The quality of the dead had changed. These skeletons were clothed with rags of flesh. They were more recently dead, or else preserved by the cold. They didn't crumble under the horse's hooves or the trailing edge of Vukotich's stretcher. It was a bumpy ride. Johann half-turned in the saddle, and saw Vukotich waking up. The stretcher rose over a huddled corpse, dragging it a few feet before leaving it behind. Empty eye sockets looked up, and a second mouth gaped in its throat. One of its arms was a man-length clump of tentacles, now withered like dry seaweed. It had been stripped naked.

"The Battlefield," said Vukotich.

"What is this place?"

"Evil. We're close to Cicatrice. This is what he's come for."

Vukotich was in pain again. Talking hurt him, Johann knew. The tutor slumped back on his stretcher, breathing hard.

The dead were around them in heaps. Some were obviously fresh-killed. There were birds now. Unclean carrion-pickers, tearing at exposed flesh, pecking out eyes, fighting over scraps. Johann hated the carrion birds. There was nothing worse than living off the slaughtered.

Armies had passed this way, less than a day ago by the looks of some of their leavings. And yet they had been following a band of raiders, not an army. Cicatrice could command only a hundred Knights at his best, and his band was well below strength since their exploits in the Troll Country.

"The gathering," Vukotich got out, "is here. Cicatrice will be one among many."

A pack of rats, close together like a writhing carpet, swarmed over a skeleton horse, and swept towards the stretcher. They skittered up over the branches, and fastened on Vukotich's legs. He waved his sword, and sent them flying away. The cutting edge was red. Johann could see his tutor had been bitten.

"Damn. The plague'll get me yet."

"Easy. We're nearly at the village."

Vukotich coughed, and shook on his stretcher. He spat pink froth. "By nightfall," he gasped. "We must be there by nightfall."

The skies were reddening when they reached the village. It consisted of a scattering of shacks around a central long, low hall. The buildings were all sunken, little more than roofed cellars with slit windows and fortifications. Johann was reminded of the shelters he had seen in lands afflicted by tornadoes and hurricanes.

There were no dead among the buildings. Indeed, the corpses seemed to have been cleared away from a rough circle around the village. There was a hitching rail by the hall. Johann dismounted and tied Would-Have-Been-Tsar to it.

"Yo," he shouted, "is anyone here?"

Vukotich was awake again, shivering in his wrappings.

Johann shouted again, and a door opened. There was a depression in the earth beside the hall, and the entrance was in it, surrounded by bags of dirt. Two men came out of the hall. Johann touched his sword-hilt until they were in full view. Neither was significantly altered. One, who stayed back near the door, was a beefy, middle-aged man with a leather apron and a gleaming bald pate. The other, who came forward, was scarecrow thin, a wild-haired individual with a tatty mitre perched on his head. He was weighed down with amulets, badges, medals and tokens. Johann recognized the icons of Ulric, Manann, Myrmidua, Taal, Verena, and Ranald. Also, of the Chaos Powers, including the dreaded Khorne; the Gods of Law, Alluminas, Solkan; Grungni, Dwarven God of Mining; Liadriel, Elven God of Song and Wine. The hammer of Sigmar Heldenhammer, Patron Deity of the Empire, was there. No priest could truly bear the talismans of so many disparate, mutually hostile, gods. This was a madman, not a cleric.

Still, it is best to treat the mad with courtesy.

"Johann," he said, extending his empty hand, "Baron von Mecklenberg."

The man approached sideways, his gods tinkling as he did, smiling the smile of an imbecile.

"I'm Mischa, the priest."

They shook hands. Mischa darted away, cautious. Johann noticed he wore the dagger of Khaine, Lord of Murder, as well as the dove of Shallya, Goddess of Healing and Mercy.

"We mean no harm. My friend has been injured."

"Bring them inside," barked the bald man. "Now, before nightfall."

Vukotich had mentioned nightfall. Johann had a bad feeling about that. He had had an unrelishable experience with a certain vampire family in the Black Mountains.

"Come, come," said Mischa, gesturing to Johann to come inside the hall. He danced a little on one foot, and waved a loose-wristed hand in the air. Johann saw the blood in his eyes, and held back.

He turned to Vukotich, who was struggling to sit up, and helped his friend. The Iron Man was unsteady on his feet, but could stumble towards the hall. Johann supported him. The bald man came out of his hole in the ground, and lifted Vukotich's other shoulder. Johann sensed strength in him. Between them, while Mischa darted around uselessly, they got Vukotich through the door.

When Mischa was in, the bald man slammed the door behind him, and slid fast a series of heavy bolts. It took Johann a few moments to get used to the semi-darkness inside the hall, but he gathered immediately that there were others inside.

"Darvi," asked someone, "who are they?"

The bald man let Vukotich sag against Johann, and stepped forward to reply. The interrogator was a dwarf who held himself oddly.

"This one calls himself a Baron. Johann von Mecklenberg. The other hasn't spoken..."

"Vukotich," said the Iron Man.

"Vukotich," said the dwarf, "a good name. And von Mecklenberg. An Elector unless I miss my guess, and I never miss my guess."

"I've abdicated that responsibility, sir," said Johann. "Who might I be addressing?"

The dwarf came out of the shadows, and Johann saw why his movements were strange.

"Who might you be addressing?" The dwarf chortled, and bowed very carefully, the hilt of the sword shoved through his chest scraping the beaten earth floor. "Why, the Mayor of this nameless township. I'm Kleinzack... the Giant."

Kleinzack's sword was held in place by a complicated arrangement of leather straps and buckles. It stuck out a full foot from his back, and seemed honed to razor sharpness. Johann was reminded of the apparatus used by actors to simulate death, two pieces fixed to a body to look like one speared through it.

"I know just what you're thinking, your excellency. No, this isn't a trick. It goes all the way through. A miracle I wasn't killed, of course. The blade passed through without puncturing anything vital, and now I daren't have it removed for fear the miracle won't be repeated. You can learn to live with anything, you know."

"I can believe it, Mr Mayor."

"You've met Mischa, our spiritual adviser. And Darvi, who is the keeper of this inn. Come share our meagre fare, and be introduced to the rest of us. Dirt, take his cloak."

A hunched young man with limbs that bent the wrong way shuffled out of the shadow at Kleinzack's order, and took Johann's cloak from his shoulders, carefully wrapping it as he crept away.

A madman, a cripple, a dwarf... This was truly a peculiar community.

Kleinzack took a lantern, and twisted up the flame. The interior of the hall became visible now. There was a long table, with benches either side. A young woman in the remnant of a dress that mightn't have been out of place at one of the Tsar's famous balls passed by the diners, doling out a stew into their bowls. They were as tattered a collection of outcasts as Johann had ever broken bread with.

Kleinzack climbed a throne-shaped chair at the end of the table, and settled his sword into a well-worn notch in the back.

"Sit by me, your excellency. Eat with us."

Johann took his place, and found himself looking across the table at an incredibly ancient creature - perhaps a woman -  who was enthusiastically sawing at a hunk of raw meat with a large knife.

"Katinka doesn't favour civilized cuisine," said Kleinzack. "She's a native of this region, and only eats her meat raw. At least it's helped her keep her teeth."

The crone grinned, and Johann saw teeth filed to nasty points. She raised a chunk of flesh to her mouth, and tore into it. Her cheeks were tattooed, the designs crumpled by her wrinkles.

"She's a healer," said the dwarf, "later, she will tend to your friend. She can do all manner of things with herbs and the insides of small animals."

The young woman splashed stew into Johann's bowl. He smelled spices, and saw vegetables floating in the gravy.

"This is Anna," the woman curtsied with surprising daintiness, balancing the pot of stew on her generous hip, "she was travelling with a fine gentleman of Praag when he tired of her, and left her for our village as repayment for our hospitality."

Anna's eyes shone dully. She had red hair, and would have been quite pretty cleaned up. Of course, Johann realized, he wasn't himself much used to baths and scents and etiquette. That part of his life was long gone.

"Naturally," laughed Kleinzack, "we don't expect such gratitude from all our guests."

Various diners joined in, and banged their fists on the table as they guffawed. Johann didn't find the hilarity pleasant, although the stew was excellent. The food was the best he'd tasted in some months, certainly better than smoked horse.

The meal passed without incident. No one asked Johann what his business was, and he refrained from asking anyone how this village came to be in the middle of a battlefield. The villagers were too busy eating, and Mischa the priest made the most conversation, invoking the blessings of a grab-bag of gods upon the night. Again, Johann felt uneasy about that.

Katinka took a look at Vukotich, and produced some herb balms which, when applied, soothed his wounds a little. The Iron Man was asleep again, now, and didn't seem to be suffering much.

The hall was sub-divided into sleeping chambers. Several of the villagers scuttled off to them when the eating was done, and Johann heard bolts being drawn. Kleinzack produced some foul roots, and proceeded to smoke them. Johann refused his kind offer of a pipe. Anna - who didn't speak - fussed with the dishes and cutlery, while Darvi drew ale from casks. Dirt shuffled around, keeping out of the way.

"You're a far from home, Baron von Mecklenberg," announced Kleinzack, puffing a cloud of vile smoke.

"Yes. I'm searching for my brother."

"A-ha," mused the dwarf, sucking at his pipe, "run away from home, has he?"

"Kidnapped by bandits."

"I see. Bad things, bandits." He found something funny, and laughed at it. Dirt joined in, but was silenced by a cuff around the head. "How long have you been after these bandits?"

"A long time."

"Long, eh? That's bad. You have my sympathy. All the troubled peoples of the world have my sympathy."

He stroked Dirt's tangled hair, and the bent boy huddled close to him like a dog to his master.

Something fell out of Dirt's clothing, and glinted on the floor. Kleinzack's face clouded, and Johann noticed how quiet everyone else was.

With elaborate off-handedness, Kleinzack downed his pipe and picked up his goblet. He drank. "Dirt," he said, suavely, "you've dropped a bauble. Pick it up and bring it to me."

The boy froze for a moment, then scuttled to the object. His fingers wouldn't work, but he finally managed to squeeze the thing between thumb and forefinger. He laid it on the table in front of Kleinzack. It was a ring, with a red stone.

"Hmmn. A nice piece. Silver, I do believe. And a ruby, carved into a skull. Very nice."

He tossed it to Johann.

"What do you think?"

Johann could hardly bear to handle the thing. It was somehow unpleasant to the touch. Perhaps he had been seeing too many skulls lately. This one was slashed diagonally. It was a familiar scar. Cicatrice was nearby.

"Crude workmanship, but it has a certain vitality, eh? Your excellency doubtless has many finer jewels than this."

Johann put it down on the table. Kleinzack snapped his fingers, and Anna brought the ring to him. He gazed into its jewel.

"Dirt." The boy looked up. "Dirt, you evidently want this trinket for your own." The boy was doubtful. A rope of spittle dangled from his lips. "Very well, you shall have it. Come here."

Dirt shambled forwards on his knees and elbows, advancing like an insect. He held out his hand, and Kleinzack took it.

"Which finger, I wonder..."

The dwarf jammed the ring onto Dirt's little finger, then bent it savagely back. Johann heard the snap as the bone went. Dirt looked at his hand, with its finger sticking out at an unfamiliar angle. There was blood on the ruby. He smiled.

Then the din started outside.

Johann had been in enough battles to recognize the noise. The clash of steel on steel, the cries and screams of men in the heat of combat, the unforgettable sound of rent flesh. Outside the village hall, a full-scale war was being fought. It was as if armies had appeared out of the air, and set at each other with the ferocity of wild animals. Johann heard horses neighing in agony, arrows thudding home in wood or meat, shouted commands, oaths. The hall shuddered, as heavy bodies slammed into it. A little dust was dislodged from the beams.

Kleinzack was unperturbed, and continued to drink and smoke with an elaborate pretence of casualness. Anna kept efficiently refilling the dwarfs goblet, but was white under her filth, shaking with barely suppressed terror. Dirt tried to cram himself under a chair, hands pressed over his ears, eyes screwed shut as clams. Darvi glumly stood by his bar, eyes down, peering into his pint-pot. Katinka bared her teeth, apparently giggling, but Johann couldn't hear her over the cacophony of war. Mischa was in his corner, kneeling before a composite altar to all his gods, begging at random for his own skin.

Outside, one faction charged another. Hooves thundered, cannons boomed, men went down in the mud and died. Johann's ears hurt. He noticed that Darvi, Katinka and a few of the others had padded wads of rag into their ears. Kleinzack, however, did without; evidently, he was far gone enough to last a night of this.

They were all mad, Johann realized, maddened by this ghost of battle. Could it be like this every night?

He went to Vukotich, and found his friend awake but rigid, staring in the dark. The Iron Man took his hand, and held it tight.

Eventually, incredibly, Johann slept.

He awoke to silence. Rather, to the absence of clamour. His head still rung with the memory of the battle sounds, but outside the hall it was quiet. He felt hung-over, and unrested by his sleep. His teeth were furred, and his muscles ached from sleeping sitting up.

He was alone in the hall with Vukotich. Light streamed in through slit windows. His tutor was still in deep sleep, and Johann had to work hard to slip his hand out of the Iron Man's grip. His fingers were white, bloodless, and tingled as his circulation crept back.

Puzzled, he went to the door, and found it hanging open. He put a head round it, and saw nothing threatening. Hand on sword, he went outside, and climbed up the steps cut into the earth. The air was still, and smelled of death.

The village stood in the middle of a field of the dead and dying. There were fires burning, carrying on the wind the stink of scorching flesh, and weak voices cried out in unknown tongues. Their meaning was clear, though. Johann had heard the like after many a combat. The wounded, calling for succour, or for a merciful blade.

At the hitching post, he found what was left of Would-Have-Been-Tsar. An intact head still in its bridle, hanging loose from the wood. The rest of the horse was a blasted, blackened and trampled mess, frosted with icy dew. It was mixed in with the limbless remnant of something small. A dwarf or a goblin. It was hard to tell, the head being mashed to a paste in the hardened mud. From now on, Johann would walk.

Ghosts or not, the armies of night left corpses behind. He scanned the flat landscape, finding nothing by the remains of war. Where did they come from? Where did they go? All the dead bore the marks of the warpstone. He could sense no pattern to the battle, as if a multitude of individuals had fought each other for no reason, each striving to kill as many of the others as possible.

That made as much sense as many of the wars he had seen on his travels.

Dirt came from the other side of the hall, his body strapped into the semblance of straightness by leather and metal appliances. He was still a puppet with too many broken strings, but he was upright, even if his head did loll like a hanged man's, and he was walking as normally as he ever would. Johann noticed his broken finger splinted and bandaged, and wondered if he'd come by his other twisted bones in the same manner. He was carrying a double armful of swords, wrapped in bloody cloth. He smiled, revealing surprisingly white and even teeth, and dropped his burden onto the earth by the hall. The cloth came apart, and Johann saw red on the blades. He had learned about weapons - formally and by experience - and recognized a diversity of killing tools: Tilean duelling epees, Cathay dragon swords, two-handed Norse battle blades, curved scimitars of Araby. Dirt grinned again, proud of his findings, and fussed with the swords, arranging them on the ground, wiping the blood off, bringing out the shine. 

Johann left him to his business, and went among the dead.

The villagers were on them like carrion birds, stripping armour and weapons, throwing their booty into large wheelbarrows. He examined one catch, and found rings, a silver flask of some sweet liqueur, an unbloodied silk shirt, a bag of Gold Crowns, a jewel-pommelled axe, a leather breastplate of Elven manufacture, a good pair of Bretonnian boots. Anna was filling this barrow. She worked delicately with the corpses, robbing them as if she were a nurse applying a poultice. As he watched, she slipped the rings from the stiff fingers of a dandified altered, then progressed to his filigreed armour. Without pausing to appreciate the workmanship, she loosed the leather ties on his arm-plates, and pulled them free. His skin was rotten beneath, and had been even before the battle. She eased his dragon-masked helmet from his head, and a knotted rope of silky hair came loose with it. His features were powdered and rouged, but had decaying holes in them. His eyes opened, and his limbs spasmed. With a small, ladylike move, Anna passed a knife under his chin, and he slipped back, blood trickling onto his chest. He sighed away his life, and Anna worked his body armour loose.

Sickened, he turned away, and saw Kleinzack. The dwarf was bundled up in furs, and wore a ridiculous hat. In daylight, the sword through him looked more bizarre than ever.

"Good morning, excellency. I trust you slept well."

He didn't reply.

"Ah, but it's fine to be alive on such a morning."

Mischa appeared, laden down with more religious tokens - some still wet - and bent low to whisper in Kleinzack's ear. The Mayor laughed nastily, and slapped the mad priest. Mischa scurried off yelping.

"The gods have made him mad," said Kleinzack, "that's why they tolerate his sacrileges."

Johann shrugged, and the dwarf laughed again. The mirth was begin to grate on him. He was unpleasantly reminded of Andreas' deathly laughter. Truly, he had fallen among madmen.

Darvi and another man were building corpse fires. They couldn't hope to burn all the dead, but they were managing to clear the area nearest the hall. Those too big to be carried whole to the blaze were cut up and thrown on like logs. Katinka came to Kleinzack and offered him a bracelet she had found.

"Pretty-pretty," he cooed, holding the bracelet up so its jewels caught the light. He slipped it over his wrist, and admired it. Katinka hovered, bowed down, waiting for an indulgence. Kleinzack reached up and stroked her ratty hair. She hummed to herself in idiot contentment, and he sharply tweaked her ear. She cried out, and he pushed her away.

"Back to work, hag. The days are short, and the nights are long." Then, to Johann, "Our work is never done, you see, excellency. Each night there are more. It never ends."

A hand fell on Johann's shoulder, and squeezed. He turned. Vukotich was up, a broken lance serving as a staff. His face had kept its greenish look, the scars standing out white and hard, and there was pain behind his eyes. But his grip was still strong. Even hobbling, he radiated strength. He was still the Iron Man who inspired terror even in Cicatrice's worst.

"This is a Battlefield of Chaos, Johann. This is what Cicatrice has been heading for all along. It's nearly over. He'll be close by here, sleeping, with his creatures about him."

Kleinzack bowed to Vukotich, shifting his sword slightly. "You know about the battle, then?"

"I've heard of it," said Vukotich. "I was near here once, when I was younger. I saw the Knights coming here."

"For over a thousand years, they've been fighting among themselves, proving themselves. All the Champions come here sooner or later, to see if they've got what they say they have. And most of them haven't. Most of them end up like these poor dead fools."

"And that's how you live, dwarf," spat Johann. "Robbing the dead, selling their leavings?"

Kleinzack didn't seem offended. "Of course. Someone has to. Bodies rot, other things don't. If it weren't for us, and for our forebears, this plain would be a mountain of rusting armour by now."

"They sleep in great underground halls nearby," said Vukotich, "sleep like the dead. This is an important stage in their development, in their alteration. They lie comatose by day on warpstone slabs, changing form, ridding themselves of the last traces of humanity. And by night, they fight. In small groups, in single combat, at random, they fight. For a full lunar month, they fight. And if they survive, they go back into the world to spread their evil again."

"And Cicatrice?"

"He'll be here. Asleep now, as befits a General. We'll find him, and Wolf with him."

Vukotich looked tired. From his eyes, Johann could tell it would be over soon, one way or another.

"You," Vukotich addressed Kleinzack, "carrion crow. Have you found anything bearing this symbol?" He produced a cloak-clasp with the emblem of Cicatrice's band, the stylized human face deformed by a red lightning bolt in imitation of their leader's daemon-claw scar. The dwarf held up a hand, and rubbed his thumb against his fingers. Vukotich tossed him the clasp, and he made a great show of examining it as if appraising the workmanship.

"I can perhaps recall some similar item..."

Vukotich produced a coin and cast it at Kleinzack's feet. The dwarf looked exaggeratedly insulted, and shrugged helplessly. Johann dropped a purse of coins to join the single crown, and Kleinzack smiled.

"It all comes back to me. The scar." He passed a finger diagonally across his face, kinking a little over his nose. "Very distinctive. Very unusual."

"It's an unusual man we're after."

"The man whose followers bear this design?"

"Yes. Cicatrice, the bandit."

Kleinzack laughed again. "I can do better than show you a man who bears the image of this scar..."

The dwarf spun the clasp in the air and caught it.

"... I can show you the man who bears the scar itself."

A claw grasped Johann's heart, and squeezed.

"Cicatrice?"

The dwarf nodded, smiling, and held out his open hand. Johann gave him money. Kleinzack made a great pretence of examining his payment, biting into one Gold Crown, leaving shallow marks across the Emperor's face. He looked at Johann and Vukotich, savouring his momentary power over them.

"Come," he said, at length, "follow me."

Vukotich was still slowed by his wounds, but managed to hobble along with the dwarf. Johann felt frustrated by their measured pace as they went their way through the heaps of the dead, out onto the bloody steppe. For ten years, he had been waiting to confront Cicatrice. That scarred face - which he had never seen, but which eternally recurred on his men's emblem - had haunted his nights. He had never exchanged a blow or a word with the bandit, but Johann knew his history as well as he knew his own, and felt that by following in Cicatrice's tracks, he had become as close to him as to a brother. A hated brother. Now, he remembered their separate battles. He measured his bested foes against Cicatrice's, wondering whether he was truly the Chaos Champion's equal in battle. He supposed he would find out soon enough.

Johann was impatient. Ten years was too long. It was well past time to get this over with.

No. He slowed himself, keeping in step with Vukotich and Kleinzack, helping his tutor over the rougher patches of ground, reining in his unruly imaginings. He would not hasten now. He had stayed alive for this day, kept himself going beyond all human endurance. He would not fumble at the last, and chance Wolf's life. He found a calm in the centre of his heart, and let it seep through his being. The tightness in his chest eased. He began to see with a deadly clarity.

Almost unconsciously, he checked his weapons. His knives were in their greased sheaths, his sword hung easily from his belt. The blades could be in his hands faster than a human eye could register. After ten years on the trail, he could kill sometimes faster than he could think. It was a habit of which he looked forward to purging himself.

He remembered the initial arrow, brushing the deer's hide, proceeding with what had seemed like supernatural slowness towards his brother's shoulder. Johann hadn't used a longbow since, preferring to concentrate on hand-to-hand iron and steel.

"It's not much further," wheezed Kleinzack. The dwarf was out of breath, and his sword shivered each time he filled his lungs. "Just over this ridge."

The ridge was not a geographical feature, it was an arrangement of dead horsemen and their steeds, cut down by a row of cannons. The third or fourth charge had broken through, but the casualties had been appalling. Johann tried not to think of the ranks upon ranks of flesh underfoot as he helped Vukotich up over the obstacle. Kleinzack swarmed with surprising agility over the cavalry corpses, pulling himself along using belts and saddles as hand-holds.

Darvi and a group of rangy, dead-faced men were hard at work, cutting valuables loose from the bodies with saws and shears. They were working on a pile of felled knights. One man was tugging at a plumed helmet whose owner was still feebly resisting, despite the depth and number of his mortal wounds. This one was in the latter stages of the changes, limbs barely recognizable as human, leathery batwings torn and crumpled benath him, torso swollen up by a breastbone that was thrusting through papery skin like a knifeblade. The tatterdemalion's head twisted this way and that with the helmet, but finally his robber got a good enough grip and with one determined tug pulled his prize away.

The altered was old, his cheeks sunken and serrated, all his teeth gone save for two yellow tusks that had worn grooves in his lips. His hair was white and sparse, knotted in rat-tails on one side where he had once been partially scalped. And a red scar ran diagonally across his face, kinking a little over the nose.

Their search was over.

But this was not the Cicatrice Johann had pictured. This was a dying misfit, altered beyond practicality, lost even to himself.

"I want to talk to him," Johann told Kleinzack.

"That's of no mind to me, your excellency..."

The dwarf wandered off, signalling Darvi and his men to follow. There were still pickings to be had. Something was screaming a few hundred yards away. Kleinzack's crew ambled towards it, their killing tools ready for use.

Johann and Vukotich stood over the man they had followed for so long. He hardly seemed aware of their presence, being absorbed in the business of dying. Cicatrice was still vaguely trying to stand up, but ankles broken and swollen to the thickness of a normal man's waist wouldn't support him. Uncomprehending eyes opened and blinked on his bare shoulders, purposeless tendrils waved languidly in the flow of blood from the rib-deep wound over his heart.

"Cicatrice," said Johann, feeling the syllables of the name on his tongue, "listen to me..."

The old altered looked up with fast-dimming eyes, and managed a smile. Red treacle oozed from his mouth.

"Cicatrice, I am the Baron von Mecklenberg."

Cicatrice coughed, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and turned his head to Johann. For the first time, the hunter and the hunted looked upon each other. Johann saw recognition in Cicatrice's eyes. The dying monster knew who he was. And he would know what he had come for.

"Wolf. Where's Wolf?"

Cicatrice raised a six-taloned hand, and pointed down at the earth, then made a general gesture, indicating the whole area.

"Here?" Cicatrice nodded.

"What have you done to him?"

"What... have... I... done to... him!" Cicatrice gathered his voice, and forced the words out. "What have I done to him? Why, my dear Baron, surely you should ask... what has he done to me?" 

He held a claw to his opened breast, and dipped it in the blood.

"Wolf fought you? Wounded you?"

The laugh came again - the laugh Johann had been hearing from too many throats since this began - and Cicatrice's smile became cruel and indignant. Johann could see the shadow of the fearsome warrior chieftan's face over the shrunken and abused features of this poor creature.

"Wolf has killed me."

With a certain pride, Johann turned to Vukotich. The Iron Man was an iron statue, his face unreadable. "You see, Vukotich," he said, "Wolf resisted all these years. Here, in the heart of darkness, Wolf has turned on his captors, and escaped."

"No," said Cicatrice, barely able to control his spasming now. These were his last minutes, last seconds... "No, he has not escaped. Wolf now leads my army. For two years now, he has ridden at the head of our columns, planned our raids. I'm an old man. I've been tolerated. Until now. Now the Scar is dead, and the Young Wolf will have his time."

Cicatrice reached into his wound, and pulled at his beating heart, holding it up.

"At least your brother chose to kill me face to face. His blade didn't come from the back."

Blood ran through Cicatrice's talons. His heart puffed up like a toad, and then collapsed. With his last strength, the bandit squeezed out his own life.

On the way back to the village, it was Vukotich who supported Johann, guiding him as an enchanter might one of the raised dead. Suddenly, the thousands of miles he had travelled in the past ten years weighed heavy upon him, as if each were a measure of time not distance. He had been concentrating so hard upon his search, his quest, that he had failed to perceive the shifting circumstances that now rendered the whole endeavour all but meaningless.

Wolf was in no need of rescue. A few days ago, Wolf had sent four creatures to kill his brother. In the last two years, how many traps and schemes had he created? How he must wish him dead!

"It's not Wolf," Vukotich said. "Whatever he has become, it's not Wolf. Your brother died a long time ago, in the woods, in Sudenland. He spilled his innocent blood. What we must find - find and destroy - is like the thing we burned in the forest, a monstrosity using what's left of his body." 

Johann had no argument.

By the time they were back in the village, the sky was already darkening. Days really were short this far north. Johann heard distant thunder, in the ground, and imagined the hordes stirring from their sleep, examining themselves for new alterations, new improvements.

Would he even recognize Wolf?

Kleinzack was standing before his hall, surrounded by his people. Mischa was chanting, and dancing epileptically, invoking long-dead deities, calling for protection from all manner of perils. The villagers had stowed their day's prizes, and were preparing for another night of cowering.

Johann would have to stay outside this night, and search through the carnage for his brother, seek to challenge him to mortal combat. He had no doubt that he could survive in the thick of a melee, but he wondered if he could come so close to the creatures of the warpstone, with their roiling auras of evil, without himself beginning the long, slow metamorphosis into monstrosity. If he were to start altering, he thought he could trust Vukotich to stick a spear through him.

A circle noosed around his left ankle, biting into the leather of his boot, and he was pulled off balance. He saw the wire rising out of the earth as it was reeled in. Kleinzack jumped aside as the whirring machine behind him pulled the steel thread in yard by yard. Darvi was working a handle. Johann fell badly, jarring his back, and was dragged too fast across the ground to sit up and free himself. His clothes were abraded, and his sword-hilt dug into the ground like a plough. A net was thrown over him, and he felt a metal-tipped boot impact with his ribs. His arms were tangled in the net, and he felt heavy weights on them. Anna and Katinka were kneeling, pressing him to the ground as they hammered pegs down, pinning the net, limiting his movement.

Twisting his head, he saw Vukotich spinning his broken lance, surrounded by six or seven of Darvi's brawny corpse-strippers. He gored one through, but his weapon was tugged out of his grip and the circle closed. He went down under it. Later, when they'd avenged their friend with a severe pummelling, they dragged him to the hall and pinned him out beside Johann.

Approaching carefully, Kleinzack and Darvi extracted the weapons from Johann's sheaths. He tried to resist, but only got another kick for his pains. The dwarf made a great play of examining the sword, appreciating the workmanship, and then taking it away.

All the while, Mischa danced, sprinkling foul-smelling liquid on Johann, daubing arcane symbols on the earth, and reciting from various scrolls of manuscript he kept about his person. Johann gathered he and Vukotich were being laid out to appease the gods. At least, that was what Mischa was telling the villagers.

Eventually, the mad priest stopped, and went inside with the rest of the villagers.

Above the net, the sky was nearly black. The subterranean sounds were louder now, and Johann could feel the earth under him shaking. He tensed all his muscles and exerted as much pull as he could. One of the pegs popped out of the ground, and his right hand was free. He strained again. The pegs were loosening, but it would take time to fight his way out of the net.

Then a shadow fell over him, and he heard the now-familiar laugh. It was Kleinzack.

"Happy now, excellency? You'll soon see your brother. I'm only sorry I shan't be here to witness your touching reunion, to see your first embrace after so many years..."

The dwarfs hands were on him, patting pockets for coins.

"Of course, your brother has already paid me well for arranging this little get-together, but I don't see why I shouldn't also extract some tribute from you. It's only fair."

Kleinzack took the pouches from Johann's belt, and the amulet with the family crest from his neck. Then he tried to work off the signet ring from his right hand.

Johann grabbed the dwarfs hand, and held tight. Kleinzack thumped him, hard, but was still held. He spat in the dwarfs face and, summoning all his strength, sat up. Pegs burst free -  those driven by Anna seemed a shade less well-rooted than those Katinka had seen to - and the net gathered in Johann's lap as he fought loose of it.

Kleinzack's gloating smarm had bubbled away, and his face was a mask of terror. He started blubbering, begging for mercy.

The ground was trembling constantly now, and he could hear hooves, the clanking of armour, shouts of defiance, and other, barely human, sounds. A great many creatures were coming this way.

He held Kleinzack at arms' length. The stubby legs kicked, but the mayor couldn't reach Johann's torso. He had adjusted his grip now, and held the dwarf by a fistful of jerkin, just under the protruding hilt of the sword.

"You've left me here, unarmed, to die, dwarf."

Kleinzack didn't say anything, just drooled. His bowels had let go, and he was dripping.

"You took away my sword. Up here, that's as much murder as taking away my life."

There were creatures around them in the darkness, human and otherwise.

"You owe me a sword, Kleinzack. I'll take yours."

He threw Kleinzack upwards. The dwarf seemed to hang in the air for a moment, eyes wide with disbelief. Johann reached out and grasped the hilt of the sword in the mayor. The dwarfs weight dragged it down. Kleinzack screamed as the sharp blade shifted in his chest. The point of the sword dug a few inches into the ground. He put a boot on Kleinzack's belly, and pushed the dwarfs body down the length of the sword. The straps and belts came free, and Kleinzack flailed, the long-ago killing stroke finally accomplishing its purpose.

Johann drew his new sword from its scabbard of flesh, and kicked the dead dwarf away.

The fighting had begun, and the dark was pierced by bright flashes. Fires were started, and creatures hurled themselves against each other. An altered head rolled past Johann's feet as he cut Vukotich loose from his net. A cannonade exploded close by, and Vukotich took a peppering of shot in one leg. Johann felt blood pouring down his face, from a chip lodged in his forehead, and tried to smear it away.

Nobody was paying particular attention to them, although Johann killed anything that came within a few yards of them, just to make sure. Vukotich took a two-bladed, dagger-topped waraxe from a fallen troll, and split the face of a bear-faced Norse warrior who was hefting a sword at him. As the bearman fell, Johann saw the scarface design on his belt-buckle. He had been one of Cicatrice's.

No, one of Wolf's.

Johann and Vukotich fell back against the hall, leaning on the roof. It was a defensible position. Before them, the warriors hacked and slashed at each other, not caring who they wounded. Ribbons of blood flew through the air. The killing continued.

They didn't have to wait long.

Among the frighteningly random conflict there walked one group who seemed cooler, murderous but purposefully so. They fought their way through the throng towards the hall, towards Johann and Vukotich. There were less than they might have expected - Wolf must have taken bad losses during the last week of fighting by night - but they were death-hardened. Each wore, somewhere about him, the scar.

And one luxuriously-maned, red-eyed, fang-snouted giant wore it as a blood-coloured tattoo across his face.

Wolf.

Wolf growled, low and feral in the back of his throat. Then the growl rose to a snarl, and spittle flew from his lupine snout. Then the snarl ended with a gulped intake of air, and Wolf's chest swelled. He howled like the animal he had become, baying at the skies. He clutched and unclutched his great, furred fists.

He carried no weapons but the three-inch, razor-edged claws that ended his fingers and toes, and the rows of teeth in his face. Johann guessed that with those natural assets he wouldn't need to.

Again, Vukotich had been right. There was nothing, that he could see, left of his little brother.

Then the wolf smiled at him, and passed a claw through the air, bidding him come forward.

Wolf's bandits held back, keeping the rest of the battle away from the area now marked out for the fight to the death.

"Forgive me," Johann said, as he lashed out with Kleinzack's sword. Wolf threw up an arm, tendons shifting beneath his pelt, and the swordblow was deflected. The altered Wolf must have iron in his muscle and bone. Johann's strike had left a graze, which trickled blood, but no more. It should have sheared through, severing the arm.

Wolf moved fast, and Johann had to stumble backwards, losing his footing, to avoid the snipping of the claws. Wolf kicked out with a barbed, bootless foot, and a claw-toe raked across Johann's stomach, cutting through his layered-leather armour. He pushed upwards as he stood, grabbing Wolf's ankle with both hands and turning it, off-balancing the creature that had been his brother. Almost immediately, he lost his grip and Wolf was righting himself. He stood like a man, ready to wrestle with the arts they had been taught as boys, but he fought like a beast, who had to use tooth and claw or go hungry tonight.

Vukotich was still leaning against the sloping roof of the hall, breathing heavily. He was watching his pupils, but also wary of Wolf's comrades, ready to pitch in with an axe if the strangely altered rules of fair combat were breached. Otherwise, he was leaving Johann and Wolf to their struggle.

Johann saw that Wolf had indeed grown with his alterations, finding a shape to fit his name, yet retaining every spark of his intelligence. His eyes were cruel but gleamed with sharpness of mind. The claw-stroke across his face marked him as a leader. He would never have been Baron, but he had proved that he could rise to power by his own designs.

Had Johann not missed his deer, what would Wolf have made of himself? How would his strength, now perverted into monstrosity, have been made manifest? Truly, the division between Hero and Hellspawn is fine, no thicker than a slender arrow...

The cut at his belly had gone deeper than he thought, and he felt his own blood soaking the inside of his clothes. Knots of pain were forming, too, and he tried not to think of the depth of his wounds. He had seen men vainly trying to coil their insides back in, and knew how permanent damage to the vitals was. Wolf showed no sign of hurt, although he had struck him again and again with the edge of Kleinzack's sword. His brother's hide was thicker than any armour.

They circled each other, like wrestlers looking for a good hold. He remembered that he had always bested his brother when they were boys. The three years between them gave him the advantage, and Wolf had been shamed only when Johann, hoping to give his brother a taste of victory, had held back and allowed himself to be beaten. Had that experience festered in the captive boy's mind while the powers of the warpstone were exerted on him? Was that the secret anger that had fuelled his alteration?

Johann bled from the shoulder now, almost the exact spot where he had wounded Wolf so many years ago, and wondered whether that claw-thrust had been a deliberate reminder.

Wolf wore a metal shoulder-piece with the mark of Cicatrice picked out in jewels, covering the site of his long-healed wound. It was one of several for-show scraps of armour adorning his body.

Wolf jabbed again, with a blade-tipped forefinger, and again gored his shoulder. Now, he was sure it was deliberate. Wolf was drawing the fight out, reminding him of the long-ago error that had brought them to this...

He heard a clash and a scream, and glimpsed a tableau behind Wolf. One of the bandits had gone for Vukotich, and was on its knees in front of the Iron Man, axe embedded between its eyes. The axe came free, and Vukotich whirled to take on another attacker. Things were coming to an end, and Wolf's men were clearing up the side issues.

Wolf dropped to all fours and charged like an animal, his long, still-golden hair streaming behind him. His back arched, and Johann saw the points of his vertebrae thrust against his skin. With a two-handed grip, he sliced into Wolf's humped back, aiming for the spinal column. Hide peeled, and the sword jarred in his hands. Wolf roared, apparently feeling pain for the first time in the fight. He twisted away, rolling in a ball, and then stood like a man again, and closed with his brother.

Johann's swordpoint touched his breast, and he froze. Wolf looked at Johann, the sword held between them. Johann had a good grip, and Wolf leaned forward into it. His hairy skin dimpled around the sharp end of the blade, and Johann felt the hilt pushed against his stomach. He could let go of the sword and it would stay between them, held by their bodies. For an instant, the brothers locked eyes, and he knew he was lost. Wolf snarled, strings of saliva hanging from his snout, and coals glowed deep in his blood-filled eyes.

Wolf held his shoulders, and pulled his brother towards him in a killing embrace. The sword should have burst through the skin, and pierced his heart neatly...

Instead, the sword bent. First, it simply strained, and Johann felt the pommel driving painfully into his wounded gut. Then, with an agonizing creak, a natural weakness in the iron was worked on, and the weapon bent as easily as a green branch. Wolf's snarl continued, and the sword was pulled out of Johann's hand. It fell away, useless.

Vukotich was still fighting. Three of Wolf's men were out, but the last two had him pinned to the roof, and were cutting him. The Iron Man was bleeding badly, and his blood had an unhealthy, greenish tinge.

Wolf and Johann grappled with each other, wrestling again. He felt the claws going into his wounded shoulder, digging deep in the flesh. He brought his knee up, and slammed into Wolf's rock-hard belly. The blow had no effect. He took a handful of Wolf's hair, and tugged it sharply. A patch came away bloody, but Wolf didn't flinch. Wolf made a fist, and aimed for Johann's face. He took the blow on his chin, and reeled back, his head ringing, his vision shaking.

His shoulder was a fiery mass of pain now. And his left knee wasn't working properly. And he had no weapons save for his hands. And his mind.

Wolf howled, with a note of triumph, and came after him. He was tempted to turn and run. But he wouldn't get ten feet in the battle anyway. He might as well die by Wolf's hand as by that of an unknown minion of the night.

He made a hard-edge of his hand, as the monks of Nippon were known to do, and chopped at Wolf's neck. Wolf moved before the blow could land, and he skinned the leading edge of his hand on the jewelled armour plate.

Wolf screamed, and lashed out clumsily, claws closing in the air a foot to the left of Johann's face.

That was the reminder he needed. That was the message what was left of his brother had been giving him. He felt the pain in his own shoulder, but ignored it, and took hold of the scarface-marked armour piece.

He wrenched it off, and looked at the patch of untreated, rotted wound beneath. Worms writhed in it, a flash of bone could be seen in the mangled meat. The fur around was grey.

Wolf looked at Johann with the eyes of the boy he had been, and silently begged for it to be over.

Johann found a sword on the ground, bloodied but unbroken. Wolf was down on one knee, as if waiting to be knighted. Johann calculated that he could drive the blade through the old wound, past the shoulderbones, and into his brother's heart.

The flow of blood from his temple had halted, but there were tears on his face, salt stinging a cut on his cheek.

Johann hefted the sword aloft, and held it point-down above Wolf, ready to thrust deep, ready to finish his quest...

But things changed, and Vukotich was under him, between the brothers, mortally wounded but still moving. Johann had already begun to bring the blade down. It slipped into the Iron Man just below the v of his throat, and slid through flesh and bone.

Incredibly, he stood up. Johann backed off. Wolf was curled up behind Vukotich, cheated of his death. Vukotich turned, and pulled the sword from his neck. He held the weapon against him, point lodged beneath his chin, and then drew it across his body.

He opened himself, and his blood fell upon Wolf. Innocent blood.

There was a coppery smell, and Vukotich glowed with a violet light. He was mumbling at the last, reciting some charm or spell of his homeland, bleeding all over the thing he had once nurtured, taught and loved as a son.

Then he fell sideways, dead.

Johann went to Wolf, reaching for the sword in Vukotich's already-stiffening hands, and found the source of the violet light. Wolf was glowing, surrounded by a man-shaped cloud of insubstantial mist. The glow pulsated, and the mist grew thicker. Johann couldn't see his brother through it.

Innocent blood. Never underestimate the power of innocent blood, Vukotich had said.

He tried to touch his brother, but his gloved hand couldn't penetrate the mist. It was yielding, but refused to break.

An enormous male altered with four-foot antlers charged them, and Johann brought his sword up, scraping the velvet from a tine. The stagman howled, and his face was engorged purple with rushing blood. Johann cut him down expertly, and took on the two twin goblins who followed, tricking them into spearing each other. Then came an octopoid monstrosity with the eyes of a beautiful woman, and a tiny-headed giant with four mace-handed arms. And others, and others.

As if possessed, Johann fought them all. He stood over his cocooned brother, and held off the hordes until morning.

At first light, the battle stopped. It was like a combat sport. An unheard referee had ended the match, and everyone could go home. Johann had been trading blows with an androgynous popinjay who wielded a thin, deadly rapier. When the sun first tainted the sky, the creature sheathed its sword and bowed elaborately to Johann, swishing a ruffled sleeve through the air. All around them, combatants had left off trying to kill each other and were breathing hard. The sudden quiet was unnerving.

Johann looked at his enemy of the moment. There was a disturbing touch of invitation, of frightful promise, in its womanish smile. Its beauty was almost elven, although its neutered but well-muscled form was human.

"Until tonight?" It said, gesturing in the air.

Johann was too exhausted to reply. He simply shook his head, conscious of the blood and sweat falling from his face.

"A pity," it said. It kissed two fingers, and pressed them to Johann's lips, then turned and walked away, a gorgeously embroidered cloak swinging from side to side, the buds of horns poking through its girlish hair. Johann wiped the scented blood taste from his mouth. It joined the others, and they trudged wearily away, leaving behind the losers of the night's conflict. They were tonight's losers, or the next night's, or a hundred nights from now and far from this place's. When you fight for Chaos, you fight with Chaos. And you can't fight with Chaos and win.

Johann fell to his knees beside Wolf. Vukotich's corpse was stiff as a statue now, and had suffered much abuse during the course of the night. But his normally hard face had softened. Johann realized just how little he really knew about the man he had lived with, fought alongside, travelled with and eaten with for ten years. At the end, though, Sigmar was with him. And magic had been in his blood. He traced a hammer in the earth.

Wolf's cocoon had stopped glowing, and was dry and papery now, with thick veins. Johann touched it, and it broke. Wolf was stirring. The unidentifiable matter fell away in dusty scales.

Johann tore it away from his brother's head.

A thirteen-year-old face appeared.

There were people about now. Anna, Darvi, Dirt, Mischa. The mad priest gave thanks to another dawn. With a single glance, Johann convinced Darvi not to fight him. Dirt bent down by the brothers, and grinned.

"You're the Mayor now," Johann told him, "get Katinka. My brother's been hurt, and needs a poultice."

There was an arrow wound in Wolf's shoulder, fresh and clean and bleeding.

THE LAUGHTER OF DARK GODS

by William King

From the back of his dark horse Kurt von Diehl stared into the Chaos Wastes. A strange red haze hung over rainbow-coloured ground and the outline of the land seemed to shift like sand-dunes in a breeze.

He turned to look down at Oleg Zaharoff, the last survivor of his original gang. The rat-like little man had followed him all the way from the Empire through the steppes of Kislev to these poisoned lands at the edge of the world. Now their path led clearly out into the desert.

"It's been a long road," said Zaharoff. "But we're here."

Kurt raised his hand and shielded his eyes with one black-gauntleted hand. He drank in the scene. Visions of this place had haunted his dreams ever since he had slain the Chaos Warrior and claimed his baroque black armour and his runesword. He rubbed the inlaid skull on his chest-plate thoughtfully.

"Aye. Here hell has touched the earth and men may aspire to godhood. Here we can become masters of our own destiny. I have dreamed about making my way to the uttermost North, to the black Gate. I will stand before great Khorne and he will grant me power. We will return and claim my inheritance from the brothers who ousted me."

He spoke as a man speaks when he has a vision in which he does not fully believe, as much to convince himself as to convince any listener. He had his doubts but he pushed them aside. Had not the armour already granted him a measure of the strength of Chaos?

He made himself savour thoughts of his coming revenge. Soon he would reclaim his ancestral lands from his treacherous kinsmen who had banished him to the life of an outlaw.

Guided by the call that had lured him across a hundred leagues, Kurt nudged his steed on down the path. With a last look back towards the lands of men, Oleg Zaharoff followed him.

Night came, a darkening of the haze that surrounded them, a flickering of fearful stars in the sky. Far, far to the north a dark aurora danced, staining the sky a deeper, emptier black. They made camp for the night within a ruined building, surrounded by grasping, fungus-covered trees.

"This must have been a farm once, before the last Incursion of Chaos," said Zaharoff. Kurt slumped down against a blackened wall and gazed over at him interestedly. Zaharoff was a Kislevite and knew many tales about the Wastes that bordered his native land, none of them reassuring.

"Two hundred years ago, when the sky last darkened and the hordes of Chaos came, they say that most of Northern Kislev was overrun. Magnus the Pious came to my people's aid and the host was driven back. But Chaos did not give up all the ground it had conquered. This must have been part of the overrun land."

He picked up something, a small doll that had lain where it had been thrown aside. Some freak of this strange land must have preserved it, Kurt decided. Sadly he found himself wondering what had become of its owner. Shocked by his own weakness, he tried to push the thought aside.

"Soon the horde will march again," he said. "We will drown the world in blood."

Kurt was startled. He had said the words but they were not his own. They seemed to have emerged from some hidden recess of his mind. He felt something lurking back there, had done since the day he put on the armour. He wondered if he was going mad.

Zaharoff gave him a strange look. "How can you be so sure, Kurt? We don't really know that much about this place. Only what you have dreamed - and that your armour came from here. How can you be sure that we will find what we seek and not death?"

The words echoed too closely Kurt's own darker thoughts. "I know I am right. Do you doubt me?"

Zaharoff threw the doll to one side. "Of course not. If you are wrong we have lost everything."

"Go to sleep, Oleg. Tomorrow you will need your strength. Doubt will only sap it."

Kurt laid his sword and axe near at hand and closed his eyes. Almost at once he fell into blood-stained dreams. It seemed that he climbed towards some great reward over a mound of ripped and squirming bodies. No matter how fast he climbed he could not reach the top of the pile. A long way above him something huge, with baleful eyes, watched his struggles with amusement.

The sound of scuttling awoke Kurt. He snapped open his eyes and seized up his weapons. Looking across at Oleg he saw his companion was gazing around in fear.

"They come," he said. Zaharoff nodded. Von Diehl arose and made towards the entrance. Before he reached it, he saw his way was barred by small bearded figures clad in dark-painted armour and clutching axes and hammers. Their skins were green or white as the bellies of fish from some underground pool. They were the height of children but as broad as a strong man. Kurt knew they were Chaos Dwarfs - kin to true dwarfkind, but seduced to the path of Chaos.

"Khorne has provided us with a sacrifice," said the leader in a voice deep as a mine. Kurt beheaded him with one swift stroke, then he leapt among them, striking left and right with sword and axe.

"Blood for the Blood God!" he cried, bellowing out the war-cry which echoed through his dreams. "Skulls for the skull throne!"

He ploughed into the dwarfs like a ship through waves, behind him he left a trail of red havoc. Small figures fell clutching at the stumps of arms, trying to hold in place jaws that had been sheared from their faces.

Kurt felt unholy joy surge through him, searing through his veins like sweetest poison. It seeped into him from his armour. With every death he felt a little stronger, a little happier. Mad mirth bubbled through him, insane laughter frothed from his lips. He had felt pale a foretaste of this madness before in previous battles but here in the Chaos Waste, under the eerie moons, it was like nectar. He was drunk on battle.

"Kurt, look out!" he heard Oleg cry. He twisted and took the stroke of a hammer on his armoured forearm. His sword fell from numb hands. He saw what Zaharoff had tried to warn him of. Two masked and goggled dwarfs were manhandling a long tube into position, bringing it to bear on him. He punched the hammer wielder in the face, feeling a nose break under the spiked knuckles of his gauntlet, then swung his axe back and threw it. It went spinning through the air and buried itself in the head of the leading dwarf.

The dwarf fell backward, the tube lurched skyward, and a gout of flame erupted from its tip. A white-hot sheet of flame blazed past Kurt's face. Something impacted on the structure behind him. The building exploded, the horses whinnied with terror.

He turned to look at the ruins of the old farm. Everyone else did the same for one brief moment. Kurt stooped and picked up his sword. The remaining dwarfs looked at him.

"Chosen of Khorne," said the nearest one. "There has been a mistake. We did not realize you were one of the Blood God's champions. Lead us and we will follow."

He bowed his head to the ground. Kurt was tempted to hack it off, to continue the bloodletting, but he restrained himself. Such followers might be useful.

"Very well," Kurt said. "But any treachery and you all die."

The dwarfs nodded solemnly. Kurt began to laugh till red tears ran down his face. His laughter died in his throat. He pulled off his helmet to check for cuts and he saw Zaharoff start, a look of pure terror crossing his face.

"What is it?" he asked. "What do you see?"

"Your face, Kurt. It's beginning to change."

Kurt and his warband pushed on further into the wastes, seeking foes to slay and booty to plunder. Each day as they marched Kurt's face became more twisted, more like that of a beast. At first there was discomfort, then pain then agony, but he endured it stoically. The Black Dwarfs seemed pleased, taking it as a sign that their master was blessed by the Blood God. Kurt noticed that Oleg could no longer look him in the face.

"What is wrong?" asked Kurt. They were standing atop a butte of wind-sculpted ebony, looking down at a landscape where crystalline flowers bloomed. In the distance, far to the north, Kurt could see dark clouds gathering.

"Nothing, Kurt. I am uneasy. We have encountered no-one for days and a storm is coming from the north. By the look of those clouds it will be no natural tempest."

"Come, Oleg, you can be honest with me. We have known each other long enough. That is not what worries you?"

Zaharoff looked at him sidelong. Behind them the dwarfs were stowing their gear, pitching small black tents with frames made from carved bone. Zaharoff licked his lips.

"I am troubled. I do not like this place. It is so vast and strange and empty. It could swallow a man and no-one would notice he was gone."

Kurt laughed. "Having second thoughts? Do you wish to turn back? If you want to return I will not stop you. Go! If you wish to."

Zaharoff looked back the way they had come. Kurt could tell what he was thinking. He was measuring the length of the way against his chances of survival on his own. To the south something large and black flapped across the red-tinted sky. Zaharoff shook his head, his shoulders slumped.

"I am committed. For good or ill, I will follow you." His voice was soft and resigned.

Yorri, the dwarf chief, approached. "Bad storm coming, boss. Best be prepared."

"I'm going to stay and watch," said Kurt. The dwarf shrugged and turned to walk away.

Overhead black clouds boiled. The wind roared past, tugging at the fur of his face. Pink lightning lashed down from the sky. He watched the horses buck and leap with fear. They could not break free from the iron pins to which the dwarfs had tethered them. He could see foam on their lips.

Thunder rumbled like the laughter of dark gods. Another bolt of lightning split the sky. The crystal flowers pulsed and flared with many-coloured lights as the bolts landed in the grove. For a moment the after-image of the flash blinded him. When he looked back the grove was transformed. Pale witch-fire surrounded the blossoms so that there seemed to be two sets of flowers, of solid crystal and shimmering light. It was a scene of weird, alien beauty.

Among the mesas of the tortured land dark clouds prowled forward like giant monsters. He watched as the dust-clouds swept over the crystal flowers, obscuring their light. Flecks of dust drifted up over the edge of the outcrop on which he stood.

He watched rainbows of dust particles dance and spiral in the air before him. They seemed to trap the energy of the lightning and glittered like fairy lights. Where the dust touched him his face tingled and his armour grew warm to the touch.

Once more the lightning flashed. Exultation filled him. He stood untouched and unafraid in the elemental landscape. It seemed that part of him had come home at last. He raised his sword to the sky. Its runes glowed red as blood. He laughed aloud and his voice was merged with the thunder.

"Damn dust gets everywhere," said Oleg Zaharoff. "It's in my hair, my clothes. I think I even swallowed some."

"The dust is powdered warpstone," said Yorri. "Ash from the gatefires that still burn at the Northernmost pole, where the fires of hell spill over into the world. Soon changes will start."

"You mean around here?" asked Oleg.

"The land. Our bodies. What does it matter?" The dwarf cackled.

Oleg smiled crazily. "I do feel different."

"Chaos will make us strong," said Kurt, trying to reassure himself.

A dwarf scuttled closer. He came right up to Kurt. "Master, we have sighted prey. Coming into the grove of flowers is a warband. By the colour of their armour and the lewdness of their banner I would say they are followers of thrice-accursed Slaanesh."

At the mention of the name Kurt felt inchoate fury fill him. Visions of slaughter rose unbidden before his eyes. Sweet hate filled him. Ancient enmity lay between Khorne and Slaanesh.

"Prepare your weapons! We will attack them as they leave the grove." The order had left his lips before he even had time to think.

The dwarf grinned evilly and nodded. Kurt wondered, was it just his imagination, or were the slave-dwarfs' teeth growing sharper?

They waited at the edge of the grove where the path ran between two great mesas. The dwarfs grumbled happily in their own tongue. Zaharoff nervously sharpened his weapon till Kurt told him to stop. They crouched behind the shelter of some boulders. Nearby Yorri and his crewman had set up their fire-tube ready to blast the first target that came in sight.

The enemy came slowly into view. They were led by a woman clad in lime-green plate mail. Her yellow and orange hair streamed behind her in the breeze, and she smiled to herself as if in the throes of some secret rapture. Her mount was bipedal, bird-like, with a long snout and deep human-seeming eyes. The woman carried a huge war-banner. Spiked to its top was a child's head above the carven body of a beckoning woman.

A long chain of slender metal links bound a gross, bull-headed giant to the woman's saddle. The minotaur was half-again as tall as Kurt and muscled like a dwarven blacksmith. It looked at the woman with adoring, worshipful eyes.

Behind it marched half a dozen beastmen. Each had one exposed female breast, although the rest of their naked bodies were obviously male. At the rear were two twisted elves, clad in thonged black leather and carrying crossbows. When the dwarfs saw them they gibbered excitedly to each other.

Kurt gestured for the dwarfs to be silent. The Slaaneshi moved ever closer, seemingly oblivious to their peril.

"Aazella Silkenthighs," muttered Yorri. Kurt looked at him. "She is favoured by the Lord of Pleasure. Beware her whip."

Kurt nodded and drew his finger across his throat. The dwarf once more fell silent. Kurt gave Aazella his attention. He noticed that behind her the storm had affected the crystal flowers. They had grown to be higher than a man, and seemed thinner and more translucent, like blooms of glazed sugar. Bloated black insects moved over them, gnawing the leaves.

The enemy were no more than a dozen yards from them when the eyes of the impaled head above the banner opened. It licked its lips and spoke in a horrid, lascivious voice: "Beware, mistress. Foes wait in ambush."

Kurt leapt to his feet. "Blood for the Blood God!" he shouted, gesturing his men forward with a motion of his axe.

With a roar, the dwarvish tube spat forth its projectile. The missile buried itself in the chest of the man-bull, knocking it from its feet. It fell to the ground, its entrails pouring from its ruined abdomen.

His men raced forward to attack as Kurt charged the woman on her steed. The animal licked out at him with a flickering tongue, long as a rope, glistening stickily. It reminded him of the tongue of a toad. He chopped at it with his runesword, cutting it in two. The beast retracted its tongue, whimpering in pain.

He closed and struck it with his axe. The blade failed to bite on the creature's resilient hide. Above him the child's head kept up a babbling stream of obscenities.

Aazella lifted the standard and smashed it into his chest. The blow landed with surprising force and knocked him from his feet. Above him the beast of Slaanesh skittered and danced. Despite the black spots floating before his eyes he managed to roll clear of its talons.

He lashed out with his blade, hamstringing the creature. It fell to one side as he pulled himself to his feet. The woman let go the standard and rolled from her saddle. With amazing agility she performed a handspring and came to land in a fighting stance, pulling a long metallic whip from her belt.

She licked her red lips, revealing fanged incisors. Then she smiled at him. "You seek a pleasurable death, warrior. I shall see you writhe in ecstasy before you die."

"Die, spawn of Slaanesh!" Kurt bellowed, rushing at her. "Die in the name of Khorne!"

As he invoked his dread lord's name he once more felt the strength of murderous bloodlust flow through him. He aimed a stroke which would have split her in two. She avoided it like a gazelle leaping from a lion's spring, then stuck out a foot, tripping him.

"Clumsy man," she taunted. "You'll have to do better."

He growled like a wild animal and leapt to his feet. This time he advanced towards her more cautiously, feinting gently with his sword, preparing to swing his axe. Somewhere he could hear the voice of a child, taunting him.

He struck with the axe and once more she evaded it. This time she struck at him with her whip. It looped around his throat, blocking his breath. As it completed its last coil, he found himself glaring into serpentine eyes. The head of a snake tipped the lash. It hissed and bit into his cheek.

Knowing he was poisoned drove him to redoubled effort. Determined to at least sacrifice her in the name of his god, he dropped his weapons and with both hands grabbed the whip's metallic line. He jerked her towards him.

So sudden was his move that she did not let go the weapon but was drawn towards him. He let go the whip and grabbed her throat with his mailed hands. He began to tighten his grip.

They fell together like lovers. From the bite in his cheek waves of pure pleasure pulsed, mingling with his berserk hatred. He shut his eyes and squeezed ever harder as the pleasure mounted. It burst inside him as intense as pain and then he knew only darkness and cold.

"What happened?" Kurt heard a deep, gruff voice ask. The words were his own.

He raised thick fingers to his face to feel the fur of his forehead. His arms felt like treetrunks, thick and bloated. His chest felt broader. His voice seemed to rumble from a chasm deep within him. From off in the distance he could hear an agonized scream which ended in mad, gibbering laughter and a moan of pleasure.

"I thought you were dead, Kurt." said Oleg. His face drifted into view. It looked blotched and leprous. Two small growths had appeared on his forehead and his shoulder seemed to have a hump on it.

"You're not looking too well, Oleg," growled Kurt.

"You have not been well. After you killed the woman, you fell into a feverish swoon. You lay and gibbered for two long days."

"What happened to her?"

"An unnatural thing. You both fell. Your hands were about her throat. I approached to give her the coup-de-grace but her armour rose from the ground and walked off into the wasteland. Her eyes were closed. I could have sworn she was dead."

"We have seen the last of her," boomed Kurt. "What became of her men?"

"Yorri and the lads ate the beastmen. You can hear the screams of the elves."

The little man shuddered. "Truly, Kurt, we are in hell."

"Greetings, brother, whither goest thou?" The speaker was garbed in rune-encrusted plate. A full helmet obscured his face except for reddish glowing eyes. He was tall and thin, predatory-looking as a mantis. Behind him was ranged a force of mangy beastmen. They loomed menacingly against a landscape of redly glowing craters.

Kurt studied the other warrior warily, suspecting treachery. "I am bound for the deep lands near the Gates."

"Truly thou art the chosen of Khorne," said the other mockingly. "A thousand years ago I spoke similarly. I am sure the Blood God will reward thee suitably."

"Do not mock me, little man." said Kurt dangerously.

"I do not mock thee. I envy thy determination. I had not the will to progress further in the service of our dark lord. I fear I was over-cautious. Now I wander these lands forlornly. 'Tis a drab existence."

Zaharoff spoke. "You do not seriously expect us to believe this tale? A thousand years!"

The slender warrior laughed. "Ten years, a century, a millennium, what does it matter? Time flows strangely here at the world's edge. All who dwell within the Wastes learn that eventually."

"Who are you?" asked Kurt.

"I am Prince Dieter the Unchanging."

"Kurt von Diehl."

"May I join thy quest, Sir Kurt? It may prove mildly amusing."

"I'm not sure I believe in you, prince. A foppish, cowardly servant of Khorne."

Once more the black prince laughed sweetly. "You will find, Sir Kurt, that Chaos holds all possibilities. Here nothing is impossible."

Zaharoff moved closer to Kurt. "I do not trust this one. Perhaps it would be best to kill him."

Kurt looked down at him. "Later. For now he is useful."

The beastmen fell into ranks beside the dwarfs. Dieter rode beside Kurt. Zaharoff limped along somewhat apart, keeping a cautious eye on their new companions.

They travelled across what once had been a battlefield. Here lay the bones of thousands of combatants. Rib-cages crunched under the hooves of Kurt's strangely mutating horse. The dwarfs kicked a goat-horned skull between them, laughing and making coarse jokes.

Over the whole field arced an enormous skeleton. A spine as high as a hill was supported by ribs greater than Imperial oaks. Riding beneath it was like passing below the roof of an enormous hall. After a while even the dwarfs fell silent as the oppressiveness of the place grew.

"The Field of Grax," remarked Prince Dieter conversationally. "What a pretty fray that was. The massed hordes of Khorne faced the armies of Tzeentch, the Great Mutator. Sadly we fought near the lair of the Dragon Grax. The clash of our arms disturbed his beauty sleep. He was a trifle annoyed when he was roused. I think our Lords picked this place deliberately. It was their little joke."

"I do not like the way you speak of the Dark Powers, prince," said Kurt. "It smacks of blasphemy."

The prince tittered. "Blasphemy 'gainst the Lords of Chaos, the arch-blasphemers themselves. Thou art a wit, Sir Kurt."

"I do not jest, Prince."

The prince fell silent and when he spoke again his tone was bleak and absolutely serious. "Then thou art alone in that here. Even our dark masters enjoy a joke. All thou hast seen here, all the worlds even, exist only for their amusement. The Four Powers seek to while away eternity until even they sink back into the Void Absolute. All we are is their playthings."

Kurt stared at him, fighting down the urge to draw his sword and slay the strange Chaos warrior. Walking across the field of bones, underneath the spine of the gigantic dragon, he felt dwarfed into insignificance and very alone.

The screams of the dying echoed in his ears. By the light of two bloated moons he fought and slew. He raised his sword and hacked through the dogman's shield. His blow sounded like a blacksmith hitting an anvil. It ended with a pulpy squelch.

They fought against other followers of Khorne, honing their skills, winnowing out the weak.

He looked up and he saw the radiant dark aurora in the sky. He shrieked his war-cry and drove on towards the remainder of his foes. Nearby he saw Zaharoff gnawing at the throat of one of the dead. Blood stained the downy fur of his face, his eyes were pink and his long hairless tail twitched.

Guiding his horned steed with his knees, Kurt charged towards the enemy banner, hewing down anyone who stood in his way. A great beast, long and hideously canine, snapped at his leg. He wheeled the horse round and brought its hooves thudding down on the creature's head. He leaned forward in the saddle and hacked at the thing with his rune-blade. With a whimper it died.

In the distance he saw Prince Dieter fighting his way through a group of dog-headed soldiers, a long silver blade gleaming in his hands. He showed a delicate skill that seemed out of place in a wearer of the dread black armour of Khorne.

A shock ran through him and he looked down to see another Chaos warrior, a tall helmetless man with the long hair and beard of a Norseman. He frothed at the mouth and gibbered berserkly. His huge hawk-beaked axe had opened a cut in Kurt's leg.

"Blood for the Blood God," roared the Norseman.

"Only the strong survive," bellowed Kurt, bringing his own axe down.

The berserker ignored the fact that Kurt had caved in the side of his face and continued to chop away. Kurt smiled in appreciation at the man's bloodlust before cleaving his head clean off. Even after this the Norseman continued to hack away mechanically, lashing around him blindly, chopping into the ranks of his own men.

Red rage mingled with pain as Kurt charged the enemy's standard. At that moment he felt a vast presence loom over him, leering approvingly as he butchered his opponents.

He looked up and briefly he thought he saw a gigantic horn-helmed figure silhouetted against the sky. The figure radiated bloodlust and insane approval like a daemonic sun. The feeling of approval increased with every foe Kurt slew.

Invigorated and exalted, he rode down the last few who barred his way, threw his axe at the bearer and snatched up the enemy standard. He broke it one-handed, like a twig. The enemy broke and fled and he rode them down.

"The field is ours," he cried.

Afterwards when the killing-lust had gone, he surveyed the field. The tremendous feeling of divine approval had gone and he felt empty. The battlefield seemed meaningless, the triumph hollow. Bodies were strewn everywhere in random patterns, like incomprehensible runes written by an idiotic god. The whole scene was like a painting, two-dimensional and cold. He felt disconnected from it.

He gazed out with empty eyes and for the first time in months found himself thinking of home. To his horror, try as he might, he could not recall what it looked like. The names of the family who had dispossessed him would not come. It was as if he dimly remembered another life. He had to fight back the suspicion that he had died and been reborn in a hell of unending warfare.

Staring at the devolved figure of Zaharoff, ripping haunches of flesh from the dead, revulsion overcame him. He was sick. He heard the trotting of hooves coming ever closer.

Prince Dieter looked at him and surveyed the carnage he had wrought.

"Truly, Kurt, thou art the chosen of Khorne."

His voice held a mixture of mockery, awe and pity.

"Will we never get to the Gates?" asked Kurt, looking back at the warband balefully.

Yorri scratched his head with the claw of his third arm. Zaharoff looked at him and twitched his tail. Kurt noted the red ring that surrounded his mouth.

"We may never reach them," said Prince Dieter. "Some say the Gates stretch off into infinity and that a man could ride from now till Khorne's final horn-blast and not reach them."

"You are a little late in telling us this, prince."

"It may not be the case. There are many tales about the Chaos Wastes, often contradictory. Sometimes both are true."

"You speak in riddles."

Dieter shrugged. "What one traveller meets, another may not. Distances can stretch and shrink. The stuff of reality itself becomes mutable around the Gates as the raw power of Chaos warps it."

Kurt stared off across the lake of blood. On it he could see ships of bone. Perhaps their sails were flayed flesh, he mused.

"I have heard it said that around the Gates one enters the dreams of the Old Dark Gods, that it is their thoughts that shape the land. And what the traveller meets depends on which Power is in the ascendant."

"What are the Gates?" asked Zaharoff. Kurt looked at him in surprise. It had been a long time since the little man had shown any interest in their quest. He seemed to have withdrawn into himself.

"They are where the Lords of Chaos enter our world, a doorway from their realm to ours," said Kurt.

Dieter coughed delicately. "That may be true but that is not the whole story."

"Of course thou knowest the whole story," said Kurt sardonically.

"Some say that one of the mighty sorcerers of old tried to bring daemons here but he got more than he bargained for. Some say that the Gates were a mechanism of the Elder Race known as the Slann, used for their ungodly purposes. The mechanism ran wild and a hole was created through which Chaos came into the world."

"It was all the fault of elves," said Yorri.

"It doesn't matter," said Kurt. "We will not find our goal by standing here talking."

"Why dost thou wish to reach them?" asked Dieter.

"It's why I came here," said Kurt. The trek was the only purpose he could latch on to that made any sort of sense in this terrible realm.

He could see how easy it would be to become like the doomed prince and simply drift from place to place in search of battle. In the realm of the damned, purpose was more precious than jewels.

They fought more battles and with every battle Kurt's power grew, and as his power grew so did the number of his followers. To Kurt every day merged into a dream of bloodlust. His life became an endless battle. His ladder to power was made of the bones of fallen enemies.

At Caer Deral, among the burial mounds of long-dead kings, he fought against the followers of the renegade god Malal. Beneath the eyes of a huge stone head he slew the enemy leader, a man whose face was white as milk and whose eyes were red as blood. He tore the albino's heart out with his bare hands and raised it still pulsing as an offering to the Blood God. The mark of Khorne's pleasure were the twisted goat horns that sprouted from his head. A company of red-furred beastmen marched from the waste to join him.

By the banks of a river of filth he routed the fly-headed followers of Nurgle and would have slain their leader, a gaunt woman on whose skin crawled leeches, had not something vast and soft and deadly risen from the mire and driven him and his men off. Khorne was displeased and Kurt's face changed once more, features running till his nose was two slits over a leech mouth.

After the siege of the Keep of Malamon, which warriors of Khorne had struggled to take for a century, he rode on his mighty steed through the courtyard to look on the body of the once-mighty sorcerer. Two Chaos marauders had raised the corpse on the end of a pike while the host revelled through the wreckage of the castle. In a pool of the wizard's blood, by the light of blazing torches, he caught sight of himself. He saw a huge and monstrous creature with an ape-like face and tired, lost-seeming eyes.

Along with his mind he seemed to be losing even the form of a man, as the corrosive influence of his surroundings worked to transform him.

After that night, he tried to re-dedicate himself to Khorne, to lose himself in the wine of battle and drown out thoughts of his fading humanity in gore.

The host left the siege of Malamon and swept across the wastes like fire through dry scrubland. Everything it met died, whether allied with Nurgle, Tzeentch, Slaanesh or Khorne. Within the councils of its leaders Kurt rose by virtue of his desperate ferocity.

Even among these, most violent of the violent, he stood apart by virtue of his ruthlessness and insane courage. Khorne showered him with rewards and with each gift his humanity seemed to fade, his sick hopelessness to withdraw, to form a small solid kernel buried deep in his mind.

Memories of his homeland, friends and family had all but gone, like old paintings whose pigment has faded to the point of invisibility. He became only dimly aware of the beings about him, seeing them only as victims or slaves. When after one desperate struggle Zaharoff's chittering voice called him "master" he never gave it a second thought but took his former friend's servitude as his natural due.

Under a blood-red sky he fought with bat-winged daemons till his axe chipped and broke. From the body of a dead knight of Khorne he snatched up a strange and potent weapon, a crossbow which fired bolts of light and whose beams caused the bat-things to shrivel and curl out of existence like leaves in flame.

In a blizzard of ash he struggled against creatures even further down the path of Chaos than himself, amoebic shapes from which protruded stalked eyes and questing orifices. After that his armour fused to his flesh like a second skin. Zaharoff and the dwarfs came ever more to resemble the creatures he had defeated.

The host's casualties mounted and Kurt continued his progression towards its leadership. And everywhere he went Prince Dieter the Unchanging was close behind, his permanent shadow, whispering advice and encouragement and words of ancient evil wisdom.

Every day Kurt became more aware of the presence of the Blood God in his heart. Every death seemed to bring him closer to his dark deity, every foe vanquished seemed to extinguish some small spark of his humanity and mould him further towards Khorne's ideal.

All his dark passions seemed to fuse and come to the fore. He became unthinking and unrestrained, acting on whim rather than conscious thought.

He lived in a state of permanent barely-restrained frenzy. The slightest infraction of his command, the smallest thing which annoyed him resulted in someone's death. A warrior only had to glance at him the wrong way to feel the sting of Kurt's weapons.

And yet during all this time a small part of his spirit stood apart and watched what was happening to him with growing horror. Sometimes he would be struck with doubt and feelings of terrible loneliness which all his triumphs could not assuage. Part of him was nauseated by the unending violence that was his life and felt sick guilt at the joy he took in slaughter. It was as if his mind had become host to some malevolent alien creature which he did not understand.

It seemed to him in his more lucid moments, away from the drug of combat, that he had become a divided man, that his soul had become a field over which an unequal battle was being fought between his lust for power and blood and what remained of his humanity. There were times when he found himself contemplating falling on his sword and ending his torment, but such was not the way of Khorne's champions.

Instead he was always first into every skirmish, accepted every challenge to personal combat and chose the mightiest opponents. Invariably he was successful and the gifts of changed body and warped soul that Khorne granted reinforced the dark side of his nature.

The end came swiftly. The host was progressing across a smooth plain towards mountains of glass. Its banners fluttered in a dry, throat-tightening breeze, it advanced in full panoply. Under a standard bearing the skull rune of the Blood God, the army's commanders rode and bickered.

"I say we ride north," said Kurt, still obeying the command of some half-forgotten impulse. "There we will find power and foes worthy of our blades."

"I say we head south and harry the Slaaneshi," replied Hargul Grimaxe, the army's general.

"I am with Kurt," said Dieter. The rest of the warriors fell silent. They all sensed the coming conflict. Among the followers of Khorne there could be only one unquestioned leader and there was only one way to settle the issue.

"South," said Kilgore the Ogre, glaring menacingly at Kurt. Tazelle and Avarone, the other great champions, kept silent. Their followers watched, quiet as huge black statues.

The part of Kurt's mind which still functioned tried to work out how many of the commanders would follow him and what proportion of the army would back him up. Not enough, he decided. Well, so be it.

"North," bellowed Kurt, swinging up his alien weapon and blasting Hargul. The general's head melted and bubbled away.

"Treachery!" yelled Tazelle. All the warriors drew their weapons. Battle began under the banner of the Blood God. It was a spark to dry kindling. Behind him Kurt heard the roar of the army's troops. Soon the screams of dying beastmen and mutating man-things reached his ears as the army fell on itself in an orgy of violence.

Old hatreds, made the more intense by being restrained by the discipline of the army, were suddenly unfetterred. Kurt smiled. Khorne would devour many souls this day.

He brought his weapon to bear on the rest of the commanders and pulled the trigger. Two more died under its withering beam before it was smashed from his hand by an axe.

"Blood for the Blood God!" roared Kurt, drawing his sword and hewing around two-handed. He hacked his way to the centre of the group of Chaos Warriors and seized up the standard. He knew that by instinct the force would rally around its bearer.

Now, as never before, he felt the presence of Khorne. As he touched the banner the laughter of the Blood God seemed to ring in his ears, the shadow of his passing darkened the sky. He was giving his master mighty offerings. Not the weak twisted souls of stunted slaves or mewling men but the spirits of warriors, mighty champions who had much blood on their hands. He could tell Khorne was pleased.

The sweep of his sword cut down any who came within its arc. He was tireless. Energy seemed to flood into him through the standard, amplifying his strength a hundredfold. He became an engine of destruction driven by daemonic rage. Bodies piled up around him as he destroyed all opposition.

He laughed and the sound of his mirth bubbled out over the battlefield. All who heard it became infected by its madness. In frenzy, they fought anyone near, throwing away shields, ignoring incoming blows in their lust to slay.

Kurt bounded over the pile of bodies and found himself face to face with the four remaining champions, the mightiest warriors of the host. Dieter, Avarone Bloodhawk, Kilgore and Tazelle She-Devil.

With a single blow he beheaded the Ogre. He saw the look of astonishment freeze on its face even as it died. Tazelle and Avarone came at him one from each side. He clubbed Avarone down with the standard, as the woman's blow chopped into the armoured plate of his arm. He felt no pain. It was transmuted into raw energy, a fire that burned in the core of his being. He felt as if his insides were fusing in the heat, that he was being purified in the crucible of battle.

The return sweep of the standard sent Tazelle flying through the air like a broken doll. Within his chest the searing power seemed to be reforming into something tangible and heavy. He felt himself slowing.

He rushed towards Dieter, seeking to impale him on the horned skull on top of the standard. Dieter stepped aside and let the momentum of Kurt's rush carry him onto his blade.

Sparks flew as Dieter's long slender sword bored through Kurt's armour and into his heart.

Kurt stopped and looked down, astonished, at the blade protruding from his chest. Lancing pain passed through him, then he reached out, with a reflex as instinctive as the sting of a dying wasp, and with one twist he broke the Unchanging Prince's neck.

"Truly thou art the chosen of Khorne," he heard Dieter say before he fell to the ground.

Now agony lanced through Kurt, pulsing outwards from his chest. It seemed as if molten lead boiled through his veins. Even the energy flowing from the standard was not enough to maintain him. Black spots danced before his eyes and he staggered, holding onto the banner for support.

The sounds of battle receded into the distance and Dieter's words echoed within his head until it seemed that they were echoed by a chanting chorus of bestial voices. At least it was ending, thought the submerged part of him that was still human.

For a moment everything seemed clear and the red fury that had clouded his mind lifted. He looked with fading sight on a battlefield where nothing human stood. Men who had reduced themselves to beasts fought on a plain running with rivers of blood.

Overhead in the sky loomed a titanic figure, larger than mountains, which looked down with a hunger no mortal could comprehend, drinking in the spectacle of its playthings at war, feeding on it, becoming strong.

The chorus of voices in his head became one. It was a voice which held a vast weariness and a vast lust; a voice older than the stars.

"Truly, Kurt, you are the chosen of Khorne," it said. Blackness flowed over him and a wave of elemental fury drowned his mind. He felt the change begin in his body. The black alien being that had nestled within him, like wasp's larvae within a caterpillar, was emerging, entering the world through the husk of his body.

The black armour creaked and split asunder. His chest and skull exploded. Wings emerged from the remains of his body like those of a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. Shaking the blood and filth from itself, the new-born daemon gazed adoringly up at its master and pledged itself to an eternity of carnage.

With a mighty leap it soared into the sky. Beneath it, small clusters of warriors still battled on. It drank in the delicious scent of their souls as it rose. Soon it looked down on tiny figures lost in the vast panorama of a landscape laid waste by war and Chaos. It turned north towards the Gates, beyond which lay its new home.

Somewhere in the furthest recesses of its mind, the thing that had once been Kurt von Diehl screamed, knowing that he was truly damned. He was as much a part of the daemon as it had been part of him. He was trapped in the prison of its being, forever.

In the sky the dark god laughed.

Scanned, layouted and proof-read by Mon 

Version 1.0 