Discover more about Warhammer Chronicles from Black Library

• THE LEGEND OF SIGMAR •
Graham McNeill
BOOK ONE: Heldenhammer
BOOK TWO: Empire
BOOK THREE: God King

• THE RISE OF NAGASH •
Mike Lee
BOOK ONE: Nagash the Sorcerer
BOOK TWO: Nagash the Unbroken
BOOK THREE: Nagash Immortal

• VAMPIRE WARS: THE VON CARSTEIN TRILOGY •
Steven Savile
BOOK ONE: Inheritance
BOOK TWO: Dominion
BOOK THREE: Retribution

• THE SUNDERING •
Gav Thorpe
BOOK ONE: Malekith
BOOK TWO: Shadow King
BOOK THREE: Caledor

• CHAMPIONS OF CHAOS •
Darius Hinks, S P Cawkwell & Ben Counter
BOOK ONE: Sigvald
BOOK TWO: Valkia the Bloody
BOOK THREE: Van Horstmann

• THE WAR OF VENGEANCE •
Nick Kyme, Chris Wraight & C L Werner
BOOK ONE: The Great Betrayal
BOOK TWO: Master of Dragons
BOOK THREE: The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

• MATHIAS THULMANN: WITCH HUNTER •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Witch Hunter
BOOK TWO: Witch Finder
BOOK THREE: Witch Killer

• ULRIKA THE VAMPIRE •
Nathan Long
BOOK ONE: Bloodborn
BOOK TWO: Bloodforged
BOOK THREE: Bloodsworn

• MASTERS OF STONE AND STEEL •
Gav Thorpe and Nick Kyme
BOOK ONE: The Doom of Dragonback
BOOK TWO: Grudge Bearer
BOOK THREE: Oathbreaker
BOOK FOUR: Honourkeeper

• THE TYRION & TECLIS OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Blood of Aenarion
BOOK TWO: Sword of Caldor
BOOK THREE: Bane of Malekith

• WARRIORS OF THE CHAOS WASTES •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Wulfrik
BOOK TWO: Palace of the Plague Lord
BOOK THREE: Blood for the Blood God

• KNIGHTS OF THE EMPIRE •
Various Authors
BOOK ONE: Hammers of Ulric
BOOK TWO: Reiksguard
BOOK THREE: Knight of the Blazing Sun

• WARLORDS OF KARAK EIGHT PEAKS •
Guy Haley & David Guymer
BOOK ONE: Skarsnik
BOOK TWO: Headtaker
BOOK THREE: Thorgrim

• SKAVEN WARS: THE BLACK PLAGUE TRILOGY •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Dead Winter
BOOK TWO: Blighted Empire
BOOK THREE: Wolf of Sigmar

• THE ORION TRILOGY •
Darius Hinks
BOOK ONE: The Vaults of Winter
BOOK TWO: Tears of Isha
BOOK THREE: The Council of Beasts

• BRUNNER THE BOUNTY HUNTER •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Blood Money
BOOK TWO: Blood & Steel
BOOK THREE: Blood of the Dragon

• GOTREK & FELIX THE FIRST OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Trollslayer
BOOK TWO: Skavenslayer
BOOK THREE: Daemonslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE SECOND OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Dragonslayer
BOOK TWO: Beastslayer
BOOK THREE: Vampireslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE THIRD OMNIBUS •
William King & Nathan long
BOOK ONE: Giantslayer
BOOK TWO: Orcslayer
BOOK THREE: Manslayer

• GOTREK & FELIX THE FOURTH OMNIBUS •
Nathan Long
BOOK ONE: Elfslayer
BOOK TWO: Shamanslayer
BOOK THREE: Zombieslayer

Discover more stories set in the Age of Sigmar from Black Library

~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

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

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

LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR
Various authors

HALLOWED KNIGHTS: PLAGUE GARDEN
Josh Reynolds

HALLOWED KNIGHTS: BLACK PYRAMID
Josh Reynolds

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
Josh Reynolds

OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner

RULERS OF THE DEAD
Josh Reynolds & David Annandale

SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds

CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth

THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds

BLACKTALON: FIRST MARK
Andy Clark

GODS & MORTALS
Various authors

MYTHS & REVENANTS
Various authors

HAMILCAR: CHAMPION OF THE GODS
David Guymer

GLOOMSPITE
Andy Clark

THE RED FEAST
Gav Thorpe

WARCRY
Various authors

GHOULSLAYER
Darius Hinks

BEASTGRAVE
C L Werner

To see the full Black Library range, visit the Kobo Store.

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer

Map

Foreword

WHAT PRICE VENGEANCE

BLOOD MONEY

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

BLOOD AND STEEL

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

BLOOD OF THE DRAGON

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Ghoulslayer’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

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

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

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

Foreword

It has been several years since I first began recording the adventures of the ruthless bounty killer Brunner. Originally published in cheap shilling dreadfuls in Tilea, I am surprised at how far these lurid publications have spread. Even the nobility of Parravon seems to have taken an interest in these stories and I am continually called upon by the Duc himself to recount further exploits of this sinister personage. There is undeniably something fascinating about a man of such amoral pragmatism, and it seems even more so to the Bretonnians, who are weaned from birth on elaborate codes of chivalry and honour.

I have prepared this manuscript for publication as a single volume by Altdorf Press. In compiling these stories, I have delved deeply into my notes, spending many a long night reading the words of Brunner in all their chilling brutality. Revisiting the tales of Brunner, I am reminded of the old Miragliano witticism about the best way to remove a rat from a hole being to send in a bigger rat. It is a bit of folk wisdom which is fearsomely appropriate when discussing the bounty hunter, as the story ‘Honour Among Vermin’ will illustrate.

By way of introduction, it would be remiss of me to forget to state that I have decided to lead this collection of stories with a tale that was not told to me by Brunner himself, but which was instead related by a knight in service to the Viscount de Chagney. The one time I mentioned the matter to Brunner, the bounty hunter fixed me with his coldest stare and walked out into the street, abandoning his drink. I could not shake the impression that I was as near to tasting the edge of the Headsman against my neck as I have ever come. A terrifying moment, I can assure the reader and one which I do not intend to repeat. Without Brunner’s corroboration, I cannot vouch for the veracity of the story I have titled ‘What Price Vengeance’ and I leave it to the reader to decide what is truth and what is fiction.

Ehrhard Stoecker

Parravon

I.C. 2509

WHAT PRICE VENGEANCE

The ragged group of riders slowly made their way through the craggy grey piles of jagged stone. The men wore dirty, unkempt clothes, their armour soiled by grime and fresh blood. Mud caked the legs of their steeds. The horses themselves moved slowly, their tired limbs rising and falling with an almost machine-like cadence. The animals were too tired even to protest the continuing march. Their masters, too, sagged in their saddles, fatigue wracking their bodies. They were no less spent than their animals, but, unlike the horses, a greater need urged them forward. In each of the bleary eyes that stared from the riders’ haggard faces there burned an ember, a tiny coal that kept their weather-beaten bodies in the saddle.

The line of riders manoeuvred past an old, half-dead tree, its skeletal limbs pawing at the dark, rain-laden sky. Soon, the clouds would again unleash the storm.

The riders hoped to achieve their destination before the rain came upon them once more, but rain, or no, they would take no shelter save that offered by the castle of Claudan de Chegney, son of the Viscount Augustine de Chegney.

The men rode around the dead tree, their horses barely protesting the abrupt change in the tedium. The next to last horseman paused as he jerked his steed’s head about with the reins. He paused, then fell, his body crashing into the mud beneath him. The man lifted his arm, reaching toward the stirrup of his saddle, his hand trembling from cold and fatigue. He pulled on the stirrup for a moment, then his hand dropped back into the mud and he was still. From a rent in his brigandine, dark crimson seeped into the mud.

‘There goes Tonino,’ the rider in line behind the fallen man reported, his voice expressionless. He was a swarthy man, his moustached face split along one side by the grey slash of an old scar. The riders ahead of him turned in their saddles, tired eyes staring at the comrade who lay bleeding in the mud.

The man at the head of the column nodded his head grimly. It was encased in a dark steel helmet, plated chin guards framing the man’s sharp features. The leader of the riders sighed, sagging a little more in the saddle as he made the sound. One hand released the reins to make the sign of the goddess Myrmidia in the air. Then, the leader turned about once more. After a moment, his men followed suit. Soon, the entire column of twenty had marched on, leaving the body in the mud, the horse to go where it would.

‘We shall just add Tonino to what is owed us,’ the leader of the riders declared, his voice low, harsh, and murderous. The tiny ember of vengeance burned a little more brightly in his eyes.

Gourmand, steward to the Comte de Chegney, stared from the window of the watchtower that loomed above the gate of the foreboding castle that had once been home to the deposed House of von Drakenburg. For centuries, the barons von Drakenburg had guarded the pass through the Grey Mountains, protecting Imperial interests from the ambitions of their Bretonnian neighbours. But such was in the past. For five years now, the lord of the Schloss Drakenburg owed fealty not to the Emperor in Altdorf, but the king in Couronne. Or more precisely, the viscount in the Chateau de Chegney.

Gourmand leaned a little forward from the window, looking over at the armoured man-at-arms by his side. He pointed with a knobby hand at a number of riders slowly making their way down the slope of the pass through the mountains.

‘Bandits?’ the soldier remarked, straining to make out more than the general outline of the men and their steeds.

‘Keep a watch on them,’ he said, clapping the soldier’s mailed shoulder. ‘They appear to be heading towards the castle. I will inform the comte and see what he wishes to do.’

When Gourmand returned to the West Tower with his master, a young, dark-haired man who sported the rakishly short beard and moustache currently favoured in the great courts of Bretonnia, the riders had drawn much nearer indeed. Even the steward’s tired old eyes could make out the battered armour and bloodstained clothes, the mud-caked tack and harness, the wearily plodding steeds and swarthy skinned men.

‘Bandits, my lord,’ stated the sentry Gourmand had charged to keep an eye on the approaching riders.

‘Bandits thinking to storm a castle in the middle of a storm?’ the Comte de Chegney shook his head. ‘Mercenaries, more likely.’ As he made the observation, the nobleman peered still harder at the approaching men.

‘Whoever they are, they’ve seen some swordplay,’ said Gourmand, still covering the riders with a suspicious gaze. ‘Recently too. A few of them look as though their wounds are still fresh. Perhaps they are some free company that thought to raid villages and found the knights of Bretonnia more than they counted upon.’

‘By the Lady, I think I recognise them,’ the comte declared. ‘When last I was at my father’s house, he was engaging a band of Tileans. That man below I seem to remember as being their leader.’ Claudan de Chegney waved at the men below. The leading rider, a man in a tight-fitting steel helm, returned his greeting.

‘Call the archers off,’ Claudan told his steward. ‘I’d not turn away any man in such a state with the Grey Mountains in such an ill humour. That these men are of my father’s house makes it doubly my duty to shelter them.’

‘Your father would not think so,’ grumbled Gourmand, still regarding the riders dubiously.

‘I am not my father,’ the Comte de Chegney snapped, a brief flash of fire in his eyes.

The Comte de Chegney was below in the courtyard when the gates opened and the motley group of haggard horsemen entered the Schloss Drakenburg. Two men-at-arms flanked him, each in the de Chegney livery, and by Gourmand. A scabbard and sword had been donned by the comte, but he wore no armour, the blade at his side more a facet of tradition and decorum than any foreboding of danger on his part. These men had already been in a battle, they were tired, and seemingly wounded to the man. Even were they not loyal to his father, men such as these could hardly pose any manner of threat in their condition.

‘Hail and well met,’ the leader of the troop called out to the Bretonnian noble, his words deeply accented as he translated the Tilean greeting into the softer tones of Bretonnia.

‘I welcome you to the Schloss de Chegney,’ Claudan said, though even he still thought of the castle as Schloss Drakenburg. ‘You may rest here, and shelter within my walls until the foul mood of the Grey Mountains has passed.’

The leader of the horsemen smiled at the Comte de Chegney’s words. ‘Well, that is indeed kind of you, my lord. We were seeking cover from the rain when we sighted your castle. I hope that our presumption is forgiven.’ The man’s tones were the well-tutored semi-servile voice favoured by the mercenaries of Tilea, accustomed to deferring to the mad whims of the ruling merchant princes, while inwardly sneering at the idiocy of these same employers.

‘How came you to be abroad with a storm in the air?’ interrupted Gourmand. He stared past the leader’s sharp features, casting his gaze across the entire company. He noted the blood-caked weapons and armour, the tightly bound injuries. ‘And how came you to be in such a condition? Set upon by orcs, perhaps?’ It was bait; anyone familiar with the region knew that there had been no orcs in this part of the Grey Mountains since the death of the Great Enchanter many long years past.

‘Your castle seems a bit shabby,’ the helmeted Tilean commented, ignoring Gourmand’s words. ‘Not like your father’s.’

‘I asked what happened to you,’ the steward repeated, stepping forward. A glower from the massive Tilean beside the leader made the elderly servant retreat past the closest man-at-arms. The brute favoured the servant with a gap-toothed grimace.

‘That’s the problem with wealth and position,’ the leader continued. ‘Someone always has a little more than you do.’

‘My steward asked you a question,’ the Comte de Chegney said, his voice flat. Now he too was becoming aware of the aura of menace about these men. He had almost forgotten that trickery and treachery had claimed the lord of this castle once before. Now they would do so again.

‘Still,’ the leader sneered, ‘that is the only problem with wealth and position.’

The comte’s eyes were locked on the right hand of the Tilean mercenary, waiting for the villain to reach for his sword. Even as the Bretonnian drew his own blade, his eyes were still focused upon the right hand of his chosen foe. Claudan de Chegeny never saw the blade that whipped downwards to slash his throat. He would have understood the means of his death even less, the cunning Tilean device secreted in the sleeve of the mercenary captain, a coil of steel clenched between metal braces, triggered by pressure on a button-like contrivance to shoot a long-bladed dagger from the sleeve of the man’s tunic into the grip of his hand.

As the Comte de Chegney fell, the other mercenaries sprang into action. A crossbow bolt from a weapon that had already been armed before entering the castle and was now aimed with terrible speed and accuracy skewered the throat of the man-at-arms to the left of the dying count. The other soldier was trampled by the powerful warhorse of the brutish hairy Tilean that had seconded the leader even as the Bretonnian raised his pike to ward off the sudden and vicious charge. The hairy Tilean roared like a blood-mad bear as he brought his heavy cavalry mace crashing downwards at the cringing, horrified steward. The old man raised his arm to ward away the blow. The steel weapon snapped the man’s arm, but did no more than graze the old man’s head. Gourmand fell, groaning. On the verge of unconsciousness, he could do no more than roll away from the hooves of the horsemen as they charged up the steps that led from the courtyard into the castle itself.

‘Inside, everybody!’ the leader shouted. ‘Don’t give their archers a clean shot!’ As if to punctuate the mercenary’s words, an arrow flew from the window of a tower to strike one of the rearmost riders in the back. The man fell with a garbled scream. More arrows flew downwards, striking the stone steps and walls as the Tileans charged into the safety of the keep itself.

Ursio looked at his men. Eighteen, there were only eighteen of them now. He had started with fifty-four when he had been engaged by the Viscount de Chegney. Six had fallen when they had seen to the capture of the viscount’s neighbour the Marquis le Gaires’s annual tithe of gold to His Majesty King Louen Leoncoeur. The others had died when the viscount’s own men had ambushed the Tileans, seeking to silence these pawns of their master. Ursio vowed that his treacherous former employer would pay for every man he had lost.

‘Spread out!’ Ursio roared. ‘Search every room! Every hall!’ There was a strangled cry and a man-at-arms who had been storming down the stairs toppled down the remainder of the flight, a black bolt of steel and wood protruding from his chest. ‘We find the boy, we get paid! The mercenaries roared their approval of their captain’s words, many of them tearing away the bandages they had tied about their bodies, for few in the company were as injured as they appeared. The smell of vengeance and the promise of gold lent their fatigued bodies a new vigour. As if sharing in the vitality of their riders, the horses offered no protest as the mercenaries spurred their steeds down hallways and up stairs.

Betraying us, thought Ursio, is going to cost you dearly, viscount.

In the nursery, Mirella de Chegney and her son’s nurse cowered together. They could hear the sounds of battle and bloodshed echoing throughout the castle all around them. A brave woman in her own right, a part of Mirella desperately wished to race from the protection of the as-yet undisturbed nursery to see what had befallen her husband. But a newer and greater concern ruled her thoughts and enthroned a new fear in her heart. A fear for the small, fragile little life she clutched against her body, trying to stifle its crying wail in her bosom.

Suddenly, the door burst inward. A massive brown stallion, flanks caked in mud and dried blood, froth dribbling from its mouth, smashed through the heavy Drakwald timber. The steed whickered in a mixture of protest and pain as the rider upon his back straightened. The man was no less horrid in appearance than his warhorse. A powerful, brutish looking man, his face encased in a mangy black beard, his head sporting a mane of black hair as caked in blood and mud as the flanks of his steed. The man cast blazing brown eyes at the cowering women. With a snarl that was only half laughter, the man dropped from his saddle, shuffling towards the women with an almost hound-like lope.

‘The boy,’ he grunted, his words as thick and heavy as his voice. The man’s huge hands closed about the tiny crying shape pressed against Mirella’s body. The Tilean began to pull the baby from its mother, his bestial strength overcoming the noble-woman’s desperate hold. The Tilean stared at his prize with hungry eyes, jostling the wailing infant in his hands as if to hear the clinking of golden coins.

‘Unhand my son, scum!’ Mirella screamed. The Tilean turned his burning eyes at the woman. He saw the bright flash of metal in the firelight as Mirella drove a knitting needle into the soft flesh of his groin. The improvised weapon was deflected by the metal of the mercenary’s codpiece, but stabbed into the tender flesh of his thigh with scarcely impeded force. With the reflexes of a professional soldier, the Tilean ignored the pain and smashed a meaty fist into the blonde woman’s face. Mirella staggered away as the mercenary ripped the needle from his thigh, ignoring the wailing child he had dropped to the fur-laden floor.

‘You dropped this,’ the Tilean spat as he rushed the reeling Mirella. The woman’s hands left her broken nose as the Tilean drove the knitting needle into her midsection. The butcher wasted no further thought on the dying noblewoman, but turned his attention back toward the wailing baby. He saw the nurse clutching the crying child, trying to soothe its pain and terror, while casting horrified eyes on the Tilean’s advancing bulk.

‘Thinking of killing them too, Verdo?’ a cold voice rasped from the doorway. The Tilean looked over to see his captain framed in the entrance of the nursery. ‘We need the child, and unless you think you can nurse a baby, we need the girl too.’

‘I can wait,’ Verdo growled, snatching a fistful of the nurse’s hair and pulling her to her feet.

Gourmand groaned as another sharp pain rasped against his flesh. ‘Don’t die on me,’ a voice snarled. Gourmand recognised those cold tones, that mocking sneer. It was the leader of the mercenaries, the man who had killed his master. The stricken steward groaned and forced his eyes to settle upon Ursio. The man scowled down at him.

‘I have a message for you to deliver, messenger boy,’ the mercenary captain tossed a leather packet down, letting it settle on the wounded man’s body. ‘You take that to the Viscount de Chegney. You tell him what happened here. You also tell him that we have his grandson.’ Ursio gestured to the courtyard, once again filled with Tileans, and now joined by the mounted figure of the nursemaid and the swaddled form she held in her arms. ‘If he doesn’t want his line to die out with him, he will follow those instructions to the letter. Now on your way, messenger boy. And don’t die until you deliver that to the viscount.’ Ursio’s face twisted into a cold, murderous leer.

‘For the boy’s sake.’

The centuries hung heavy within the great hall of the Chateau de Chegney. For a thousand years the de Chegney family had dwelled in the massive brooding stone fortress, guarding the narrow pass through the Grey Mountains that linked the Kingdom of Bretonnia with the sprawling Empire. The lands ruled by the viscounts de Chegney had alternately prospered or suffered under their lords, accepting the justice and tyranny alike with the dogged stoicism and subservience of the Bretonnian peasant, but seldom had they bowed their heads in fealty to so terrible a man as he who now sat brooding within the castle’s great hall.

The Viscount Augustine de Chegney was no longer a young man, yet his build bespoke an animalistic strength and vitality. The man was not tall; indeed his stature was somewhat squat, slightly below that of the average Bretonnian. But the viscount’s shoulders were broad, his head rising from those shoulders on a thick bull’s neck. The head perched atop that neck was likewise massive, the viscount’s forehead sloping immediately from his thick brows to join his steel-grey hair, cut in the bowl shaped fashion of the Bretonnians. The man’s nose was broad, his mouth a thin gash above his scarce chin.

The viscount lounged in his high-backed chair wearing a tunic of scarlet trimmed with the fur of a wild cat, a bejewelled dagger thrust through the leather band of his belt. His leggings were tucked into a set of high leather boots, their toes shod in steel and silver. A trim of wolfskin had been sewn to the mouth of the boots, the grey fur exactly matching the cold eyes of the viscount’s face.

It was the eyes of Viscount Augustine de Chegney that unnerved those who met them. Like the wild cat and the wolf, there was a ferocious cunning and ruthlessness about them, a quality of vicious determination that offered no quarter to those who might stand between the man and his desires. Even the closest of the viscount’s associates dreaded the steely gaze of their master, more so when the fire of emotion crept into them and glared from behind the icy grey pools to strike with the force of a basilisk’s stare.

Elodore Pleasant was facing such eyes at this moment, nervously adjusting his weight from one foot to the other. Pleasant was Augustine de Chegney’s oldest and closest crony, and had become his master’s seneschal following the sudden and unexpected death of Augustine’s father. A slender, haggard-looking man, Pleasant’s pate was bald, a thin mane of unkempt white hair fringing the back of his head. The merest suggestion of a moustache struggled in the shadow of Pleasant’s sharp, birdlike nose. The man wore a long black robe fringed in gold, his hands heavy with over-sized rings. Indeed, if Augustine de Chegney suggested some feral predator, then Elodore Pleasant suggested a vulture. Only in the eyes were the two men similar, for both viewed the world through cunning orbs, though the craftiness behind Pleasant’s pale blue eyes was akin to that of the fox.

‘Tell me,’ the viscount mused, sloshing the last mouthful of wine about the bottom of his crystal glass, ‘why do they call you “pleasant”?’ The grey eyes narrowed and the nobleman rose from his seat. Angrily the viscount hurled the glass against the wall, its gleaming debris scattering across the hall. ‘For as long as I have known you, I have heard only ill tidings from your mouth!’ the viscount snarled.

‘It is better that a friend deliver such news,’ Pleasant replied, trying to keep his tone even, not let any anxiety cloud his words. ‘One who knows your heart and might better council you in such matters as these.’

‘Was it not your counsel that advised I let that dolt Norval deal with Ursio and his men?’ challenged Viscount de Chegney, his tone low and full of menace.

‘Yes, my lord,’ agreed Pleasant, bobbing his head like the carrion bird he so resembled. ‘We have employed him for such matters before, and never had cause to regret…’

‘My son is dead!’ roared the viscount, clenching his fist in anger. ‘And now this foreign rabble have my grandson as hostage, demanding I pay them twice the fee for their services as payment for his safe return!’ The viscount scratched at the hairy growth on his throat and jowls. ‘Tell me, Pleasant, what do you advise that I do? Hmm? Shall I pay these animals for killing one heir to ensure the return of another?’

‘Begging your leave, my lord,’ the black-garbed seneschal stuttered, ‘but I do not think that paying them will achieve anything. They have been betrayed, and seek more than gold as compensation.’

‘Do you think that thought has not occurred to me?’ snorted the Viscount. ‘But what other choice do I have? I have spent a lifetime expanding the realm and fortune of the de Chegneys, I shall not see it fail for want of an heir! We shall pay these vermin ten times what they ask, but I will have my grandson returned!’

‘There is another way, my lord,’ Pleasant said, not daring to let his eyes settle upon the viscount in his present humour. ‘We could recover the child ourselves. That would ensure his return and not force you into a compact with this mercenary rabble.’

‘These men are not morons,’ snapped the viscount. ‘I would not have engaged them in the first place if they were. If Ursio even thinks my men are close to finding him, he will kill my grandson.’

‘Then we shall not use any of your men,’ Pleasant offered. ‘I agree, the Tileans would certainly discover an armed force sometime before they themselves were in peril. But a single man? One man could discover their hiding place, infiltrate it and recover the child.’

‘Know you of such a man?’ the viscount asked, his tone dubious.

‘Our smuggler friends in the Empire speak of a bounty hunter, a man named Brunner,’ Pleasant answered. ‘They say that once he is on a man’s trail, he will follow them to the Wastes themselves, and return with his prey.’

‘A bounty hunter?’ scoffed the viscount. ‘You would entrust the safety of my grandson to a bounty hunter?’

‘They say that this Brunner is of noble blood, that when he takes a commission, he always sees it through to the end,’ the seneschal responded, somewhat defensively. ‘His reputation is quite terrible amongst our friends, and in this case, that is to our benefit.’

The viscount considered Pleasant’s counsel for a moment, his feral eyes narrowing as he thought. At last he turned his gaze back upon the vulture-like seneschal. ‘Very well, Elodore, if you can find this bounty hunter, engage him. Tell him to bring me my grandson. Or Ursio’s head.’

Pleasant bowed before his master. ‘Judge Vaulkberg is making his circuit amongst the towns of Reikland. This Brunner is known to work for the Judge quite often. If the Lady’s grace is with us, I think the bounty hunter might be found with the Judge.’

The townsfolk of Albrechtswolhtat lined the dirt street or peered from the second-storey windows of their wood-frame homes and businesses. The men of the village jostled one another for a better view of the lane even as the womenfolk ushered children back indoors. Despite the eagerness of the townsfolk to watch the procession now making its way through their settlement, on every face was stamped an expression of nervousness and dread. They cast suspicious looks at one another, for none of the townsfolk could say with absolute certainty that some accusation made by one of their neighbours might not bring them before Judge Tscherpan Vaulkberg.

The magistrate’s procession made its way through the town. First came four riders, each in gleaming plate armour, their massive steeds as white as snow. Colourful ostrich plumes graced each of the knights’ helmets and upon the tip of each lance the Reiksguard held was the blue and red banner of the Imperial Capital of Altdorf. After the Reiksguard came twenty armed footmen, each soldier bearing either a halberd or crossbow, each wearing the blood-red livery of Judge Vaulkberg over his lightweight armour. After the soldiers came a massive black coach drawn by six equally massive horses, their hair the colour of pitch. The curtains were drawn upon the coach, offering no view of the grim and terrible occupant of the carriage. Few saw the infamous Judge until they were called before him.

When the Judge’s carriage had passed, the rear of his caravan stomped into view. Towering a monstrous twelve feet, garbed in a suit of foul smelling leather armour above which the crimson livery of Judge Vaulkberg hung was the Judge’s personal executioner, the ogre Ghunder. The beast’s face was partially covered by a black leather hood, exposing only his broad nose and enormous mouth, one broken fang protruding from the right side of his lip. The tool of the headsman’s trade was carried over his shoulder, an axe so large that any three men in the on-looking crowd would be needed to lift it, much less wield the butchering weapon. But wield it the ogre did, often. Some said that the ogre was always trying to top the distance the condemned’s head flew when he chopped it from their body. His current record was reckoned at sixty paces.

The entrance of the ogre brought gasps of horror and dread from many of the onlookers. Even the Burghermeister, a distant relation of some minor dignitary at the Imperial court found himself trembling, having seen before what manner of damage the monster could inflict upon a human body with his bestial strength. The Burghermeister cast a nervous gaze at his bodyguard, not favouring their chances should it come to a contest between his men and the Judge’s entourage. At the Burghermeister’s side, the ranking priest of Sigmar in Albrechtswolhtat muttered quiet prayers to the Patron deity of the Empire. Vaulkberg was known to save his harshest judgements for priests who failed in their duties, and was equally notorious for performing only the most rudimentary of investigations before pronouncing a man’s doom.

Only one man in all the throng gazed upon the procession of Judge Vaulkberg without any trace of fear. He was a tall figure standing to the rear of the assembly. The man’s build was the well-muscled frame of a professional soldier, displaying a quality of strength rather than the undisciplined mass of a common labourer. The man’s garb also suggested a martial bent. Black leather boots with steel toes encased the man’s legs to a height just below his knees. Dark steel cuisses clothed his upper legs; each emblazoned with a tarnished gold emblem that might once have been an eagle rampant. A sombre suit of brigandine armour encased the man’s torso, a breastplate of rare gromril fastened over the cloth-and-metal armour, protecting the man’s chest. The dull tan of the man’s shirtsleeves was largely hidden by the steel vambraces that encased his arms. Black leather gauntlets clothed each of his hands, the knuckle of each gauntlet sporting a tiny spike-like stud of metal. The man’s head was covered by the rounded bowl of a sallet-helm, the face of the helm concealing the man’s features as completely as the executioner’s hood. Icy blue eyes regarded the procession from behind the visor of the helm while the exposed mouth below the armour chewed at the remains of a smouldering cigar. The ogre Ghunder paused as his steps drew his massive frame opposite the armoured spectator. The helmeted head of the spectator inclined slightly within its veil of cigar-smoke. The executioner’s mouth twisted in a slight semblance of a grin, then he turned and continued after his master’s coach.

‘What is this one charged with?’ Judge Vaulkberg’s dry, scratchy voice intoned as his hand closed about the goblet of brandy resting at his elbow. The Judge had established himself in the ballroom of the Burghermeister’s residence, having decided that the town hall of Albrechtswolhtat was beneath the dignity of his office. The Burghermeister had immediately agreed to the magistrate’s proposal, moving a heavy table and a dozen chairs into the room, heedless of the damage done to the polished oak floor.

‘The accused was responsible for damaging the horse of one of His Imperial Majesty’s roadwardens,’ stated the gaunt, cadaverous Weichsle, Vaulkberg’s prosecutor. ‘His cart was overturned in the lane leading into the town. In avoiding the obstacle in question, the horse injured its leg, necessitating the animal’s destruction.’ Weichsle pronounced the last as if describing the most unspeakable heresy ever committed by a man.

‘Seizure of half the condemned’s property, forty lashes and five month’s hard labour in such function as His Imperial Majesty’s roadwardens find suitable,’ pronounced Judge Vaulkberg, his tone heavy with boredom. He waved the gilded mahogany gavel in a dismissive gesture. Two of his crimson-liveried guards began to escort the unfortunate prisoner away. Suddenly, the man broke free, rushing toward the table and the seated Judge.

‘But I have entered no plea!’ the man protested. Judge Vaulkberg fixed the prisoner with a withering gaze. Vaulkberg’s face had been described once by a poet as being as craggy and imposing as any peak in the Worlds Edge Mountains. The Judge had agreed with that assessment of his features, then ordered the poet hung for defamation of character anyway.

‘And what plea would you care to enter,’ baited the Judge.

‘Not guilty!’ exclaimed the prisoner, not seeing the trap.

‘“Not guilty,”’ repeated Vaulkberg with a sneer. “Not guilty,” he repeated again, looking over at Weichsle. Then the magistrate turned his gaze upon the prisoner. ‘There is no such plea as “not guilty” in this court!’ he thundered. ‘You will forfeit all of your property to His Imperial Majesty,’ the Judge pronounced. ‘You will receive forty lashes administered by my ogre,’ the Judge paused. ‘Then you will be taken to the town square, there to be hung by the neck until dead, may your filthy soul rot in Hell,’ the Judge waved his gavel again and his guards seized the shocked prisoner more securely than before and dragged the screaming man from the chamber.

‘I will not have my time wasted by such scum protesting their innocence,’ Judge Vaulkberg said under his breath before taking another sip of his brandy.

After the last case had been decided by Judge Vaulkberg, a matter involving a thief and resolved by one quick stroke of an axe, the only man bold enough to observe the proceedings of the court detached himself from the rear wall of the ballroom and advanced toward the Judge.

‘Brunner,’ the Judge greeted the armoured figure as he strode toward the magistrate. ‘Ghunder told me he saw you as we came into town.’ Judge Vaulkberg removed the white coils of his powdered wig and set it within a velvet-lined hatbox. ‘What have you brought me?’

The bounty hunter casually tossed a rough sackcloth bag onto the table. The object landed with a thump and the Judge reached for it, pulling it towards him. He peered into the bag, sighing.

‘Klag Vandries,’ the bounty hunter stated, spitting the after-taste of his cigar onto the Burghermeister’s floor. ‘Sometimes called the Bellycutter.’

‘Wanted for the murders of some fifteen people on the road between Altdorf and Talabheim, two of them persons of name, as well as brigandry, theft of sacred objects, horse-thievery and failure to respond to a summons from this court,’ the Judge rattled off the dead highwayman’s offences, clearly considering the last to be the man’s most despicable act. ‘I was looking forward to getting my hands on this scum,’ the Judge continued. ‘But I was hoping to get him alive.’

‘We don’t always get what we want,’ Brunner replied, one hand stretching out to the magistrate, palm upwards.

‘I will only pay twenty-five crowns,’ declared Judge Vaulkberg. ‘You should try and bring me some of this vermin alive once in awhile. They get off far too lightly when they escape the justice of this court.’

‘Vandries didn’t seem to think he was getting off lightly when his life was pouring out of his belly,’ Brunner said, his cold voice dropping to a glacial tone. ‘And your posting said quick or dead. You owe me the full fifty.’

Judge Vaulkberg hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should acknowledge the threat in the bounty hunter’s murderous tone. Eyeing the man for a moment, eyes lingering on the heavy crossbow strapped across Brunner’s back, the heavy falchion sword sheathed at his hip, the numerous daggers and knives, both visible and unseen about the bounty killer’s person, Vaulkberg decided to let the insolence pass with a wry smile. He nodded at his prosecutor, who had been watching the exchange between the two men with an ever-increasing amount of agitation.

‘Pay the man for his service to the Emperor,’ Vaulkberg told the gaunt lawyer. ‘And see that this gets a proper burial in the nearest sewer,’ the Judge added, tossing Weichsle the sack. The lawyer held the unpleasant thing as far from his body as his arm could manage and fumbled about at a heavy iron casket, eventually opening it and withdrawing two sacks of coins.

‘Always a pleasure, Judge,’ the bounty hunter took the sacks from the lawyer, weighing them in his hand before turning on his heel and marching from the chamber.

Elodore Pleasant and his hulking bodyguard pushed their way past a gang of drunken farmers and entered the cave-like gloom of the Braying Ass, the most disreputable of Albrechtsburg’s taverns. Pleasant brought a perfumed handkerchief to his nose, trying to blot out the vile mixture of cheap beer, unwashed humanity and dry urine that wafted out of the tavern. Beside him, the bodyguard rolled his eyes, annoyed that his charge had already broken his advice to keep a low profile in this thieves’ nest. Pleasant did not pay his protector the slightest notice but arrogantly pushed his way into the darkness.

Pleasant doubted if the rumours about the man’s nobility could be true. How any person of note could allow themselves to be surrounded by such filth and squalor was beyond the Bretonnian’s ability to comprehend.

Pleasant scanned the room, his eyes lingering on every dirty bearded face, his gaze taking in the large oak bar, its surface nicked and pitted by countless brawls and endless games of mumbeley-peg. The burly Bretonnian man-at-arms beside Pleasant nudged the seneschal’s arm, drawing his master’s attention away from the antics of a fat coachman and a serving wench. Pleasant’s gaze settled upon the dark corner his henchman indicated. The two Bretonnians headed toward the isolated table and its sole occupant.

‘Do I have the distinction of speaking with the gentleman known as Brunner?’ Pleasant said in his most fawning manner as he approached the darkened corner.

‘Who wants to know?’ came the guarded reply.

Pleasant’s dour face broke into a wide grin. ‘I am Elodore Pleasant, seneschal to his lordship the Viscount Augustine de Chegney,’ the man said, lowering himself into the chair opposite that of the bounty hunter.

‘I don’t recall asking for company. Who invited you to sit down?’ There was a note of challenge and warning in the bounty hunter’s voice that froze Pleasant in mid-motion, his rear inches from the seat of the chair, his face inches away from the killer’s. It was as if he had come face to face with a snarling wolf. Beads of perspiration gathered about Pleasant’s brow. The hulking bodyguard took a step forward, hand falling to the pommel of his sword.

‘Before he can draw that frog-stabber of his,’ the bounty hunter’s menacing voice rasped, ‘I’ll have your throat slit.’ In the second it took the bodyguard to digest the threat, the bounty hunter erupted into action. A silver flash of metal caught the tavern’s dim light, then was pressed against the skin of Pleasant’s throat, a bead of crimson surrounding the point.

At the same time, the bounty killer’s other hand rose from beneath the table, a small crossbow gripped in his gloved fist.

‘We don’t want any trouble,’ Pleasant declared, rising slowly from the chair, the bounty hunter’s dagger rising with him. A sidewise gesture of his hand made the seneschal’s henchman sullenly back away. The bounty hunter set the crossbow pistol down upon the table, its lethal dart still pointing at the bodyguard, and removed the dagger from the chastened functionary’s throat.

‘Why are you looking for me?’ demanded Brunner.

‘I understand that you hunt men,’ Pleasant stammered, dabbing at his bleeding throat with his perfumed handkerchief. ‘And that you are the best there is to be had in that line of enterprise.’

‘That much is obvious,’ Brunner looked across the dingy tavern. ‘It would take quite a reputation to bring so fine a gentleman as yourself to a place like this.’ The bounty hunter lifted a small wooden cup to his lips. ‘What’s the job?’ he asked before sipping at the schnapps.

The anxious look on the Bretonnian’s face eased somewhat and Pleasant smiled. ‘The castle of the viscount’s son was ransacked by mercenaries discharged from my lord’s service,’ the seneschal began. ‘They killed my master’s son and his wife, as well as very nearly every living thing in the place.’

The bounty hunter slowly set the cup down, his cold eyes locking on those of the functionary. ‘I have already heard news of the unpleasantness across the border.’ Pleasant was visibly shocked by the bounty hunter’s words. ‘I make it my business to be well-informed,’ Brunner explained. ‘A man’s life sometimes balances upon the merest shred of information.’

‘The brigands have taken the viscount’s grandson with them,’ Pleasant continued. ‘They are demanding ransom for his safe return.’

‘I collect bounties, not children,’ Brunner replied, lifting the wooden cup to his mouth again.

‘The viscount is prepared to pay you very well,’ Pleasant reached into the breast of his tunic and withdrew a large leather pouch. ‘Two hundred gold crowns,’ the Bretonnian said, setting the bag down on the table.

Several sets of eyes turned toward the scene as the distinct report of coins jostling against one another insinuated itself into the clamour of the tavern’s atmosphere. Brunner reached a hand toward the bag, running his gloved digits across the cool leather surface. ‘One hundred now, the rest when the viscount’s heir is safely returned.’ Brunner turned his helmeted head away, leaning back in his chair so that his back rested against the tavern’s peeling plaster on wood wall.

‘A fair price,’ the bounty hunter admitted. ‘But I am not interested.’ Brunner bolted the rest of his schnapps and set the cup down upon the table.

‘I could speak to the viscount,’ Pleasant said, his tone desperate. ‘He would surely agree to any reasonable sum.’

Brunner sucked his teeth and stared at the Bretonnian. ‘I don’t want your money,’ he said, his tone menacing. ‘I’ve had more than enough of you Bretonnians and your lordly ways. I am my own man, not some foppish snail-eater’s errand boy.’

Pleasant’s mouth dropped in disbelief as the bounty hunter’s crude words impacted upon his ears. The functionary trembled in outrage, wishing he had more of the viscount’s men with him so he could teach this villain some manners. The seneschal’s tongue worked itself to voice a retort but all that emerged was a feeble croak. The bounty hunter turned away, motioning for a serving wench to bring him another drink, his would-be patron already dismissed from his attention. Balling his fist in outrage, Pleasant rose and stormed away from the table.

‘This has been a fool’s errand,’ Pleasant snapped as he passed his bodyguard. The other Bretonnian took his place at the seneschal’s side. The two men marched their way toward the feeble light seeping under the tavern’s door. Neither man noticed the scruffy figures who had preceded them into the street, or the two rat-faced men who followed after them.

Elodore Pleasant’s face was a mask of sullen, brooding rage as he stomped through the dirty streets of the township. The seneschal dabbed his handkerchief against the cut the bounty hunter’s blade had left on his throat. The outright audacity of the scum! Pleasant wondered if he might not use some of the funds he had quietly diverted from the viscount’s coffers towards seeing some justice meted out upon the arrogant vermin. But such thoughts of revenge were for another day. For now, there was still the matter of rescuing the viscount’s grandson, or seeing his abductors dead.

Pleasant was so lost in his thoughts that he did not notice the darkened lane his steps had carried him into, nor the warning hiss of his bodyguard. It was only the sight of three men standing in his path that snapped Pleasant from his dark humour, bringing his attention back to his surroundings. Pleasant looked at the men, their dirty, grimy clothes, their unwashed faces and gap-toothed grins. The Bretonnian’s face wore an expression of contempt as his eyes met those of the men, but the flesh that hung from his cheeks trembled with nervous anxiety as he noticed the clubs and blades the men gripped in their dust-blackened hands. He chanced a look back at his bodyguard, noticing for the first time that the soldier’s sword was drawn, and that two more ruffians had closed upon them from the opposite side of the lane.

‘I am on my master’s business,’ Pleasant said in a voice he hoped conveyed more authority than the fear that was building within him. ‘Give me space to pass.’

One of the ruffians swaggered forward, a short-bladed sword clutched in his hand. He flipped a strand of dirty blond hair from his forehead as it fell into his eyes. The man grinned, exposing a set of yellow and pitted teeth. He spat a glob of phlegm into the dust.

‘We ’eard ’bout yer little errand in da Brayin’ Ass,’ the ruffian said, his voice raspy. ‘Two-hunert gold fer retrievin’ some wine-swiller’s brat.’ The ruffian clucked his tongue. ‘That’s a pretty price, no mistake.’

‘I am afraid that I am not at liberty to offer that particular commission to anyone but the man my master considered skilful enough to accomplish it,’ Pleasant tried to keep his cool, but was all too aware of the beads of sweat trickling from his brow.

‘Is that so?’ the blond-haired man sneered. ‘So we can’t take this little job from yer? Can’t earn us the two-hunert?’ The man cast a mock regretful look at his companions and sighed. ‘Well, I guess we’ll just have to settle fer the hunert yer carry’n!’

The men laughed as they advanced toward Pleasant. The hulking Bretonnian bodyguard was soon beside the seneschal, trying to interpose himself between both the three men closing upon his charge and the other two quietly advancing from the rear. All five robbers were chuckling under their breath, their eyes gleaming like those of a wolf pack lighting upon a tethered horse.

‘Easiest money I ever done made,’ the leader of the thieves snorted as he closed upon Pleasant, drawing his sword back for a sideways swipe at the Bretonnian. The man’s chuckle trailed off into a gurgling death rattle as a spike of steel impacted into his throat. The sword clattered from his hands and he fell to his knees, dirty hands fumbling at the crimson tide gushing from the hole in his windpipe where the crossbow bolt had torn its way through his neck.

The other muggers were thrown into confusion and disarray by the sudden death of their leader. It only lasted a moment, but even so slight an instant was enough. The hulking Bretonnian smashed his shield against the leg of one of the club-wielding men closing upon the Bretonnians from behind. The bone snapped under the impact and the ruffian fell to the dirt street, howling with agony.

The bodyguard lashed out at the other robber with a downward stroke of his blade, the thief barely managing to raise his own sword to parry the blow.

The men facing Pleasant snarled and made to leap at the seneschal, determined to claim the weighty purse of gold before making good their escape. But even as they sprung into action, a new player introduced himself into the fray. A heavy falchion sword ripped through the spine of one of the men as the steel blade was thrust through his body from behind. The man didn’t scream, his eyes instead staring in incomprehension at the bloodied steel that protruded from the gory ruin of his belly. The eyes had glassed over by the time the blade was withdrawn and the robber’s body fell into the dust.

The other thief turned, glaring at the black-helmed figure that had seemingly materialised from nowhere to spoil their game. He raised his stout club, its fire-blackened wood further enhanced by a cluster of iron spikes driven into the cudgel. With an oath that might be voiced by any cornered animal, the robber charged at his foe. The face below the visor of the sallet-helm smiled as the ruffian came towards him. With one hand, he raised the falchion sword, notching the thief’s wooden weapon as he swung at him. The robber spat a second curse and renewed his attack. Again the armoured man parried the robber’s attack with his bloodied sword, but this time the man’s other hand leapt into action. As the thief was again repelled by the man’s guard, the armoured fighter’s left hand smashed into his face, plunging the blade of the dagger it held into the robber’s eye.

The robber dropped to the ground, screaming and writhing in agony, burying his bleeding face in the dirt. Brunner smiled as he strode towards the thief and calmly raised his falchion. There was a final cry of pain and the crunch of breaking bone as the bounty hunter plunged his sword between the wounded robber’s shoulders.

Pleasant stared about him, his mouth gaping open at the carnage he had witnessed. He had seen many combats in his time, but seldom had he seen a conflict begin and end with such swift dispatch. He looked for his bodyguard, finding the man already walking back towards him, wiping blood from his blade. The seneschal then turned his gaze back upon the bounty hunter. He watched as Brunner withdrew a rag from his belt and wiped the blood from his sword before sheathing the weapon. The bloodied dagger he returned to his gloved hand as he advanced toward the Bretonnian.

‘We were lucky you came along,’ the nervous seneschal stammered, the corners of his mouth twitching. ‘It would have been a near thing. I am no warrior, and all five of these men against my bodyguard might not have turned out so well for me.’

Brunner didn’t speak, instead his eyes turned toward the blond leader of the robbers, his breath still gurgling from the wound in his neck. ‘Let’s not be all day about it,’ the bounty hunter’s harsh voice hissed. Leaning over the dying man, Brunner raked the dagger across his throat, letting the new-made corpse pitch forward into the street.

‘There was no luck in my finding you,’ the bounty hunter said, turning his eyes toward Pleasant. ‘I followed you from the tavern.’

‘Followed us?’ Pleasant asked. ‘Then you have reconsidered the commission from the Viscount de Chegney?’ Hope flared in the seneschal’s devious heart.

‘Reconsidered?’ there was actually a suggestion of mirth in the bounty killer’s voice as he repeated the Bretonnian’s comment. ‘I intended to take the job the moment you sat at my table.’

Pleasant’s eyes sharpened, his face screwing into a suspicious leer. ‘Then why did you refuse my offer?’

Brunner rose and stalked toward the other side of the lane. The ruffian the bodyguard had smashed with his shield was trying to crawl away. Brunner set a booted heel against the man’s broken leg, pinning him in place and bringing a fresh cry of pain from the robber.

‘You made yourself a target, showing your wealth in such a den of jackals,’ the bounty hunter shook his head. ‘I had to see what sort of rats would scurry out of the shadows to relieve you of that fat pouch of gold.’ Brunner looked down at the groaning man at his feet. ‘Though I must say I am less than impressed by the results. I doubt if I shall get more than thirty silver for these sorry cutthroats.’

‘You used me as bait!’ howled Pleasant. His earlier glee at the bounty hunter’s acceptance of the viscount’s commission had once again been overtaken by a fervent desire to see the arrogant commoner painfully put back in his place.

‘I would prefer to think of it as seizing an opportunity that presented itself.’ Brunner returned his attention to the man at his feet.

‘I trust that you will show more expediency in retrieving the viscount’s grandson,’ Pleasant declared, choking down the more choice words that threatened to explode from his mouth. ‘Time is of the essence in this matter.’

‘I just have a few things to finish here,’ Brunner said, still considering the man at his feet. ‘If time is so valuable, I suggest you attend to effecting your return to Bretonnia. You can give me the details I will require on the road.’

Pleasant bristled under the bounty killer’s tone. He, a viscount’s seneschal, was being dismissed by a hired sword? Perhaps there was truth in the rumours of Brunner’s noble birth; Pleasant had never encountered such audacity in anyone that did not have some manner of breeding in their background. With a sharp word to his bodyguard, the fuming seneschal turned away from the bounty hunter.

‘Oh, messenger,’ Brunner called after the Bretonnian. Pleasant turned to face the killer again. Brunner held a gloved hand in the Bretonnian’s direction. ‘The hundred gold crowns.’ With a muttered oath, Pleasant savagely dug the pouch from the pocket within his tunic and tossed it to the bounty hunter. Brunner caught the jingling sack one-handed and tucked it into his belt.

The bounty hunter casually set a few more sticks into the circle of his campfire and unlimbered his packhorse of its tack and harness, hobbling the animal’s legs to keep it from wandering too far. His riding horse, a magnificent bay, he left untethered. There were few things the bounty hunter placed any trust in, but the fealty of his Bretonnian warhorse was one. He could be certain that the animal would stay by his side, come fire or sorcery. Brunner patted the great horse’s muzzle with a black gloved hand and returned to preparing his camp.

As Brunner continued to arrange his packs and blankets, the bounty hunter’s attention was only minimally upon his task. This was the place Pleasant had named as the rendezvous with the kidnappers. Brunner had a deep knowledge of this region, certainly a more intimate familiarity than a rabble of Tilean mercenaries could acquire in a few months of employment. He had counted three men watching the barren glade from supposed places of concealment. He could have easily disposed of them but he had no way of knowing what other precautions the ransomers might have made against any treachery on the part of the viscount. Brunner had thus ridden into the lurking mercenaries’ supposed control, and prepared to let the Tileans make the next move.

Brunner settled himself down upon a blanket, propping his back against his saddle. The killer faced the fire, seemingly unconcerned by what might be transpiring in the trees all around him. But the bounty hunter’s steely gaze was all the time scanning the edges of the clearing, all the time his ears were listening for the sharp crack of a twig or the rustle of a branch. Beneath the cover of his blanket, Brunner’s hands kept a loose grip upon his weapons.

‘Hallo to camp,’ an accented Tilean voice shouted from the darkness. ‘May I share your fire?’ There was a note of question as well as suspicion in the Tilean’s voice. Brunner allowed himself an inward smile. His elaborately staged calmness and unconcern had disarmed the men. They were unsure if he was the man they were expecting or just some chance wanderer who had muddled along into their affairs.

‘Provided you be no Ulricite zealot, please yourself,’ the bounty hunter called back.

That reply should further disorder the villain’s mind, Brunner thought.

The Tilean strode forward, the fire revealing his olive-hued features. He was a young man, a bright slash of a duelling scar across his cheek, a thin moustache worming its way across his lip. The mercenary wore a suit of loose-fitting armour, a broadsword at his hip and a crossbow slung over his back. Even as the man strolled forward with a seemingly casual swagger, he rested a hand on the pommel of his blade.

‘I might be spending a cold night in the crook of a tree,’ the Tilean said, his eyes taking in Brunner’s figure, a smile flickering on his face as he saw the sword and other weapons resting near the reclining man. Near enough to reach should any visitor to his camp think to cause him any trouble, but not near enough to reach should that visitor have friends lurking in the dark with crossbows trained upon the warrior before that trouble began.

‘Then, by all means, warm yourself,’ Brunner offered, inclining his head towards the fire. The Tilean advanced, making a display of warming his left hand above the dancing tongues of flame. His other hand still hung at his side, casually resting on the pommel of his sword.

‘It is by Taal’s grace that I saw your fire,’ the Tilean commented, his eyes still studying what he could see of the face below the visor of his host’s helm. ‘How came you to be in this blighted place?’

‘I should ask you the same question,’ Brunner replied, his gaze piercing that of the mercenary.

‘My horse threw me,’ the mercenary answered. ‘I was acting as an outrider for a wine merchant who hopes to establish a new route through the pass to sell his grapes in the Empire. I must have ridden too far out for them to hear my oaths as the wretched pony unseated me and ran into the hills. You can be sure I will have some words with the man who sold me that gangly brute.’

A smile appeared on Brunner’s face. He had been listening to the creaks and cracks emanating from the dark, gauging the position of those who made the sounds. His watchers had drawn closer, eager to catch every word of the exchange.

‘Strange,’ Brunner said, spitting into the dust. He fastened his eyes on the Tilean once more, the mouth below the black slash of his helm split in a mocking smile. ‘Do you not find it strange that a wine merchant would employ a foreigner as an outrider, rather than a man native to the region?’

An angry snarl appeared on the Tilean’s features. An accomplished liar the man might not be, but to be caught in a lie was insulting to him all the same. The blade at his side flew from its sheath, the firelight dancing in the exposed fang of steel.

Thunder and smoke rose from the reclining figure on the blankets. Fiery pain blazed into the Tilean’s chest, pitching him backward with such force that he crashed upon his back in the campfire. The mercenary’s body rolled from the flames, his armour smoking, a wail of suffering rising from his throat.

The violent flash and boom of the discharge of the blackpowder gun the bounty hunter had fired through the fabric of the blanket momentarily startled and disoriented the two crossbowmen in the trees. The veteran killers did not hesitate for more than a breath before snapping the strings of their weapons, sending two steel bolts slamming into the target they had carefully marked. But in the thick grey smoke, the Tileans were not able to see that their would-be victim had thrown himself into motion even as the crack and boom of the gun’s firing resounded across the night. Brunner had flung his body to the side at once, rolling away from the blankets and the saddle, away from the carefully laid out weapons to the left of his previous position. One bolt impacted in the centre of the blanket; another struck midway between the blanket and the weapons.

Brunner kicked aside the pack of provisions, lifting a pair of slender crossbow pistols he had secreted beneath the leather bags. Brunner sent one missile crashing into the chest of the crossbowman to his left before the mercenary even had time to register the fact that his prey had escaped his carefully prepared shot. The second man had a single moment to react as Bruenner spun the second crossbow in his direction. Panic seized the man and instead of dropping to the ground, the Tilean fumbled at his weapon, trying to reload it. The bounty hunter’s bolt punched through the wooden stock of the Tilean’s weapon and embedded itself in the man’s lung. The mercenary fell then, a fraction of a second too late to save his life.

Brunner strode across the clearing, fetching up his sword from the display of weapons and calmly walked over to the still writhing man he had peppered with the blast of his firearm. The Tilean was cursing freely, his body wracked with pain. As he sensed his enemy drawing near, the Tilean stretched a bloodied hand towards his sword. Brunner set his boot on the mercenary’s hand. He flipped the mercenary onto his back with his other foot. The armour was flecked in blood and pitted by the small steel pellets the bounty killer’s gun had disgorged.

‘You’re lucky,’ Brunner observed as the Tilean’s face twisted into a grimace. ‘The armour stopped most of the impact. The shot barely nipped your skin.’ In truth, Brunner had been thankful for that armour. He needed one of the men alive.

‘In case you are wondering,’ Brunner said, turning his eyes from the wound in the mercenary’s chest to the man’s face, ‘Viscount de Chegney did send me.’ The information brought a groan not entirely of pain from the Tilean. ‘He wants his grandson back, but he prefers to pay for him with steel instead of gold.’ The bounty hunter put all of his weight to the boot crushing the man’s hand, bringing a new cry of pain. ‘Perhaps you would like to tell me where the viscount’s heir is?’

‘If I tell you, how do I know you won’t kill me?’ the Tilean snarled through clenched teeth. Brunner favoured the man with a frigid smile.

‘Because if I killed you after you lied to me and made me lose the bounty the viscount is offering for his grandson, I wouldn’t be able to kill you later for lying to me.’ Brunner ground the mercenary’s hand under his heel, twisting the broken bones against one another, wrenching another cry from his prisoner. ‘So, where are your friends hiding?’

Under cover of night, Brunner replaced his gear on his packhorse and threw his saddle onto the back of the towering bay. He spared a single glance at the man he had tied to the trunk of the gnarled old tree the locals called the Wizard’s Bones. The Tilean glared back at him from above the linen gag the bounty hunter had shoved down his throat.

‘You seem to harbour me some ill will,’ Brunner commented as he lifted himself onto the back of his charger. ‘Perhaps you have called down all manner of curses on my head.’ Brunner smiled beneath his helm. ‘But consider this. If your friends kill me, do you think they will come back here looking for you? Do you think anybody is going to happen along here before hunger or thirst does for you? Or perhaps a pack of wolves will decide to pick your bones clean before that.’

Brunner clicked his tongue and turned his steed’s head away from the clearing.

‘Just something to keep your mind occupied,’ the bounty hunter said, as he disappeared into the night.

The lonely grey tower stabbed into the night sky like the defiant fist of some fallen giant. Brambles and weeds encircled the structure, choking doorways and windows with dry brittle limbs. Massive grey stones littered the ground all about the forlorn tower, falling prey to the same verminous growths that had surrounded the fort from which they had fallen.

Cold, hard eyes gazed at the tower from the shadows of the forest. Brunner noted the faint flicker of firelight in one of the lower windows of the tower. The captured ransom collector had told the bounty killer the truth, but, then, Brunner had never doubted that he would. Perhaps the bounty hunter would even hold to his part of the bargain and return for the man before the wolves made a meal of him.

Brunner considered the tower. Once there would have been a scarlet pennant flying from the now broken roof, displaying the drake rampant that was the device of the Baron von Drakenburg. Once there would have been four sentries patrolling the rampart that peeped from below that roof, each dressed in the von Drakenburg livery, each a veteran marksman, for the Baron von Drakenburg would hire only the most capable of men. The face beneath the black helm smiled mirthlessly. Perhaps the baron had not been such a good judge of men, for he had been betrayed in the end, after all. Although, it had to be admitted, that even the traitor had been very capable.

Brunner studied the rampart again, satisfying himself that only a single man patrolled the roof, a weary looking Tilean with a crossbow who barely spared a glance towards the forest as he made his regular sweep of the battlement. Brunner watched the mercenary, studying his regular, unvaried movements. The sentry was slipping into that dire, inattentive boredom that always threatened to dull a sentinel’s wariness. With the man’s mind wandering away from the tedium of his duties, his eyes might miss a dark shape emerging from the cover of the forest. No doubt his watchfulness was not so far-gone that he would fail to see that same figure creep to the base of the tower itself. But there would be no need for the bounty hunter to test the guard’s capability that far.

Brunner made his way to a large overgrown bush, a massive thorny brute that promised no berries or leaves to any that might show interest in it, only the sting of dagger-like nettles. Brunner grabbed the bush, pulling it back from the small rise it leaned upon. As the bush moved, a dark opening revealed itself, a hole that dug its way into the rubble-strewn plain. Without hesitation, the bounty hunter worked his body past the unwholesome plant and into the darkness of the narrow tunnel. A predatory smile crossed Brunner’s features. The Tileans might have made the fortalice their lair, but they would soon discover that they knew very little about their temporary stronghold.

The mercenary wiped the crust from his eyes and refocused his attention on the dim landscape beyond the fortalice. The narrow window afforded only a slight view of the terrain, but Ursio had wanted a man stationed here just the same. He was taking no chances that any party of the viscount’s knights bent on revenge would fall upon the mercenaries without warning. Hence Ursio had placed two watch-points, one atop the tower, in the ruin of its roof, and a second here, in a damp room midway up the tower’s height. The wily captain was always a careful man. Men sneaking up on the tower might see the sentry above, and hide themselves from his vision, but having seen one sentinel, they would not think to look for a second and would perhaps reveal themselves to the concealed watchman.

It was a sound theory, but it did not change the fact that the Tilean’s post was a cold, dreary and boring one. Not for the first time, the Tilean began to recite old ballads to himself, imagining the times when he had first heard them, carousing with his comrades through the taverns of Luccini after a successful campaign.

The mercenary’s soft humming ended in a ghastly gurgle as blood bubbled into his throat. He toppled forward, his body sliding off the dagger blade that had neatly punctured the back of his neck.

‘You were off key,’ the grim figure of the mercenary’s killer stated, wiping the blood off the dagger with a bit of rag. Brunner turned away from the corpse and made his way back to the far wall of the chamber. His gloved hand caressed a worn stone several inches above the height of his head. Soundlessly, the wall sank inward. Brunner waited a moment, then slipped into the darkness from which he had emerged to kill the watchman.

Brunner emerged from the shadows that claimed the collapsed section of tile and timber which sagged across the greater portion of the roof. He watched the Tilean crossbowman making his rounds for a moment. The bounty hunter had finished scouting the tower. He had found that there were nine villains within it. Three were bivouacked in a long chamber that had once served as a barracks for the tower, busily playing at dice, gambling with the ransom money they had not yet earned. Another had been keeping watch over the horses, though now the horses were keeping watch over his body. Three others, one of whom he took to be the leader, were with the child and a nursemaid, busily plotting a triumphant return to Tilea and the strengthening of their depleted band. The other two had been the watchmen, the dead one below and the man death now stalked.

The drowsy sentinel finished his circuit and turned to retrace his steps. His mouth dropped open in shock as he found himself face to face with an armoured figure, its face hidden within a helmet of blackened steel. Icy eyes burned back into the young Tilean’s stunned gaze.

A sharp stabbing agony shot up the left side of the mercenary’s body and the crossbow clattered to the stone floor. The bounty hunter withdrew a bloody fang of steel, the same he had already used to send two of this man’s companions to Morr’s realm this night. The young mercenary gasped as the pain seared into his vitals and blood seeped from his side. The bounty hunter’s gloved hands gripped the wounded man’s body. He turned the sentry towards the crenelated wall. Stealth had played its part. Now it was time to let the sheep know that the wolf had arrived.

‘Scream for me,’ the bounty killer’s murderous voice hissed into the Tilean’s ear as he flung the injured man from the top of the tower.

The sentry’s wail of horror echoed through the corridors of the fortalice in the brief instant before it was silenced in a dull crunch of bone. Cries of surprise and alarm sounded from the two rooms still occupied by the Tilean kidnappers. Ursio met the gaze of the foremost man from the former barracks.

‘Find out what is going on!’ the mercenary captain snarled. ‘And kill it!’ he added, slamming the door shut after him.

The trio of mercenaries crept up the stairway, swords held before them, making their way to the roof. They had already discovered the body of the lower watchman, removing any question that someone was loose in the tower. The men were wary, cautious and more than a little enraged. At least one more of their comrades gone, another debt of blood to be collected in this vendetta with the Bretonnian viscount.

The rearmost of the Tileans was only a few paces behind the leading pair when he paused. He had heard a sound: the scrape of stone against stone. He turned, facing a dark opening in the wall that had not been there a moment before. He opened his mouth to shout, but found his words silenced as a length of steel tore into his gut.

‘Aren’t you pleased you found me?’ Brunner asked the dying man as he pushed him off his sword. The bounty hunter turned his body as he emerged from the concealed passage and made ready to meet the attack of the other Tileans as they reacted to the sound of their companion’s demise. Brunner smiled to himself. The men would join their friends soon enough.

Ursio stared at the door of the room that had once served as the quarters for the commander of the tower. The sounds of combat, the ring of steel on steel and the gasping cries of dying men had sounded from beyond that now closed portal. The mercenary captain cast a nervous look over at his remaining men. The wiry, scar-faced Vernini nodded at his commander, hefting the loaded crossbow in his hands. Vernini was the best shot among all his men. Whoever opened that door would be rewarded with Vernini’s quarrel in his heart.

The brutish mass of Verdo glowered at Ursio. The homicidal thug was still chafing from the violent reprimand his captain had given him. When they had discovered that there were intruders in their hideout, a fit of rage had consumed the black-bearded mercenary. Before Ursio could stop him, Verdo had snapped the neck of the abducted nursemaid with his bare hands and was lumbering toward the basket that contained the baby before a blow from the hilt of Ursio’s sword had restored some degree of reason in the thug’s murderous mind. Verdo stood, his heavy cavalry mace clenched in his hands, his chest heaving, every muscle in his body tensed in anticipation. Ursio thought his brutish comrade was not unlike a hound straining at the leash, or a Norse berserker working himself into a frenzy.

Ursio’s roving eyes rolled to the basket and the crying form within. The mercenary captain had lost everything because of the Viscount de Chegney’s treachery. The small life in that basket represented the only way Ursio could make his deceitful former patron suffer. The Tilean’s face settled into a snarl. He pulled his long-bladed dagger from its sheath and moved toward the woven basket.

Just then, the heavy door swung open, its rusty hinges groaning. Vernini did not hesitate. The sharp snap of his crossbow discharging drowned out the creaking sound of the old hinges. The bolt sped into the shape that filled the doorway, smashing through leather tunic, flesh and ribcage. The body jerked as the bolt impacted, then fell forward as it was pushed into the room.

Brunner wasted no time discarding his cadaverous shield, shifting to the right as the body pitched to the floor. Vernini was already hastily reloading his crossbow, swinging his body about to bring the still unloaded weapon to bear on Brunner. Ursio froze above the basket, dagger in hand; his eyes locked upon the black-helmed figure that had slain so many of his men.

‘Blood of Khaine!’ the mercenary swore as recognition came to him. ‘Brunner!’

As if to punctuate the Tilean’s oath, the bounty hunter fired the smouldering weapon gripped in his left hand. The shot from the black powder pistol smashed into Vernini’s forehead with a force far greater than that of the marksman’s crossbow. The mercenary’s face disappeared in a red ruin as the shot punched through the Tilean’s skull and the man was dead before his body finished falling. Brunner let the spent pistol fall too, dropping the weapon and drawing the heavy falchion from the scabbard at his side.

As the roar of the firearm began to fade, it was replaced by a thunderous bellow no less violent. Verdo charged forward like a maddened bull, swinging his mace at the bounty hunter as if it were the avenging maul of Ulric himself. The bounty hunter managed to dodge the powerful but clumsy blow, kicking the brute in the knee. Verdo grunted, but did not stagger. Howling his wrath, the Tilean lashed out at Brunner again, this time finding his weapon blocked by the intercepting steel of the bounty killer’s sword.

Ursio cursed again, gathering up the child from the basket, heedless of the wailing infant’s cries. Keeping the baby pressed against his chest, the mercenary captain circled around the duelling figures of Brunner and Verdo. He did not favour his thuggish comrade’s chances against the notorious bounty hunter, but perhaps Verdo could keep the hunter occupied long enough for Ursio to effect his own escape. As if to speed Ursio’s flight, as he neared the doorway, he saw Brunner’s blade slip past Verdo’s guard, slashing the man’s left arm almost to the bone.

The Tilean was running when he passed from the chamber of death and into the corridor outside. His steps were heavy and swift. He did not see the tiny glittering objects strewn about the floor, the sinister little steel spiders that met his weighty footfalls. They were caltrops, metal spikes designed to cripple warhorses, dropped by the bounty hunter to maim any escaping prey. As Ursio’s booted foot encountered its first caltrop, the metal spike pierced leather and flesh, gouging a hole through the sole of his foot. Ursio cried out in pain, flinging both child and blade from him as both hands instantly sought to arrest his fall. The mercenary captain landed badly, another caltrop punching through the palm of his hand, three others digging into his chest and legs as he impacted against stone, another puncturing his right cheek.

Ursio writhed in pain, trying to dig the caltrop from his face with his uninjured hand. The sound of boots scuffling against flagstone brought a new horror to the Tilean. Ursio looked up to see Brunner framed in the doorway, wiping the lifeblood of Verdo from his sword with a rag torn from the mercenary’s tunic before sheathing his blade. Ursio saw the bounty hunter cast a glance at the small swaddled object that lay against the wall, now silent and unmoving. The face below the visor of the helm was unreadable as Brunner strode toward Ursio’s prone form.

‘Wait!’ the mercenary stammered. ‘I’ll go with you! I won’t try to escape!’ Ursio knew who had set the infamous bounty hunter on him, he knew that he could expect slow death and torture when he was delivered to the sadistic Bretonnian viscount. But it would take days to reach the viscount’s castle, and Ursio was desperate to gain even so small a respite from his journey to the gardens of Morr. ‘You can take me to the viscount. I won’t resist!’

Brunner leaned over the pleading sell-sword. ‘I will take you to the viscount,’ his cold voice stated. Ursio’s eyes grew wide with fright as he saw the bounty hunter draw a large serrated knife from its sheath. ‘But the viscount is only paying me for your head.’

‘My grandson is dead then?’ the question emerged from Viscount Augustine de Chegney’s mouth like the forlorn growl of a wretched and dying wolf.

Brunner looked up at the seated nobleman upon his raised throne-like chair. He could imagine the man sitting there – not as he was, a morose creature who had seen his last chance for posterity taken from him, who knew that his long and noble line would now end with his last breath – but as a cruel and sadistic brute, resplendent in treacherous triumph. He could imagine the viscount sitting there, slowly sipping his wine as a sobbing maiden with long golden hair washed his feet with her tears, begging with the beast that had become her father to spare the battered and broken man whose blood still stained the stones of the hall’s floor. He could almost hear the viscount’s words of conciliation, of acquiescence to the pleas of his daughter-in-law. He could almost see the shabby, lice-ridden shapes of the slavers standing in the shadows of the room, there to ensure that every promise the viscount made to the maiden would become a lie.

‘They never had the boy,’ the bounty hunter’s cold voice said. ‘After leaving the castle, they killed the nurse and the baby, feeling that their prisoners would be too much of a burden to maintain. They never intended to return the child to you,’ the bounty hunter concluded. He reached over and carefully unwrapped the small knotted cloth bundle that sat at his side upon the floor. The soiled cloth unfolded itself and the head of Ursio cast its sightless eyes upon the viscount.

The viscount trembled with emotion, one hand rising to conceal his face from the bounty hunter. With his other hand the nobleman gestured to his seneschal. ‘Pay the man,’ the viscount spoke through his fingers.

Elodore Pleasant shambled forward, withdrawing a leather pouch from the breast of his tunic. Brunner rose, opening his hand, letting the heavy sack of money sink into his palm. The bounty hunter bowed slightly to Pleasant.

Brunner favoured the viscount with a final icy stare. The viscount looked back, seeing only the hired killer his henchman had engaged. Brunner bowed again, leaving the viscount to consider all that he had lost.

The armoured traveller emerged from the rear room of the tavern, leaving the young woman and the quietly sleeping baby behind. He turned his black-helmed head towards the innkeeper, a slightly balding man in early middle age. The merchant gulped as he met the icy eyes of the bounty hunter.

‘When I brought the child here three days ago,’ the voice beneath the helm rasped, ‘I promised you gold if you would care for him.’ The man’s gloved hand placed a leather pouch upon the counter of the bar, the sound of clinking metal whispering across the tavern as the bag came to rest. The innkeeper stepped forward, placing a protective hand on the bag of money.

‘Rest assured, sir,’ he said, his voice betraying his nervousness, ‘I shall look after him as though he were my own.’

‘You will do better than that,’ the warrior said, his tone slipping still lower. ‘Look after him as though his life were your own.’ The bounty hunter strode towards the door. ‘Because it is.’

‘I shall return from time to time,’ Brunner said over his shoulder as he opened the door of the tavern. ‘To check on my grandson, and to bring you more gold. Take good care of him, Wiedemann.’ The bounty hunter’s last words seemed to linger as he closed the door.

‘I’ll find out if you don’t.’

BLOOD MONEY

PROLOGUE

For me, it all began one hot summer night in the sweltering back streets of the Tilean city of Miragliano. I was in my second year of exile from the place of my birth, grand Altdorf, that emperor of all cities, that symbol of human endeavour, might, learning and faith. It followed, as some may recall, the publication of my own retelling of history’s most fearsome villain: A True History of the Life of Count Vlad von Carstein of Sylvania – the Vampyre that my troubles began.

True, the name of Ehrhard Stoecker became known far and wide across the Empire. There was even an invitation to visit the tsarina in Kislev, a land fascinated by tales of the aristocracy of the night. But in my own land, even as fame and fortune crept towards me, implacable foes arose between me and the rewards of my labours. My work was denounced by no less a personage than the Grand Theogonist himself, and the High Priest of Ulric in Middenheim even called the novel ‘contemptible’. Literary critics, ever bowing their craven heads to the mood of the pulpit, decried my work as doggerel and claptrap, the work of a barely literate hack who ‘doubtless thinks Sylvania is a province in Bretonnia’.

I could contend with such spiteful and petty detractors, for my publishers happily informed me that with every harsh word the Grand Theogonist deigned to hurl upon my volume, another five hundred copies were sold. And it is in the matter of coin, perhaps, that public opinion has always been, and shall ever be, expressed. No, it was not the vitriol of the critics, nor the scorn of the pulpit that drove me to distant lands to lose myself from the Empire. It was one late night in a darkened street, when I discovered that there were others who had taken offence at my work, and that not all my detractors were human. It was then that I distanced myself from the land of my birth.

So it was that I, Ehrhard Stoecker, came to be sitting in the burrow-like interior of a filthy tavern in the seediest district in Miragliano, that notorious port of merchant princes, swashbuckling privateers and dastardly smugglers. I had found my status much reduced. I, who had once put to pen some of the most well-known and sinister tales of horror to ever grace the libraries of the Empire.

The last of my monies from A True History of Vlad were fast failing and I had been impressed upon by a most unscrupulous Tilean by the name of Ernesto – a publisher of thin tomes foisted upon seafarers to lessen the tedium of their ocean voyages – to turn my talents to furnishing him with fodder for his schilling dreadfuls. I found my days spent lurking in the taverns of Miragliano, dutifully committing to memory the tales of seamen and mercenaries as they sank into their cups, wading through their crude dialects and inveterate boasting to seize any germ of truth behind the stories they related.

It was not unlike being put to the question by an Estalian torturer, those long hours of trying to endure some simpleton’s vanity as he explained how he was the mightiest hero since Sigmar, or at least Konrad. Still, Ernesto needed as much material as I could furnish, and the pittance he paid for each page ensured that I furnished him with as many manuscripts as I could compose.

I was deep in my cups one evening, sitting in a dockside dive known as the Maid of Albion. I was not, however, as deep as my companion, a petty banditti named Ferrini, who was drunkenly slobbering out his life story. He explained to me how he had become a veritable bandit prince after being villainously spirited away from the household of a noble family in Tobaro by agents of his younger brother, who desired the title for himself. I was finding myself unable to decide if even Ernesto would be able to swallow the lout’s lies, when the door of the tavern opened and my companion suddenly became sober as a priest of Morr. I followed his ashen gaze to the figure that had made its way into the room.

He was a tall man, lean yet muscular, after the fashion of a professional duellist, or a professional assassin – men whose need of strength is seconded to their need for agility. The man wore a suit of brigandine armour about his body, a breastplate of gromril, that fabulous metal of the dwarfs, over his chest. Belts of knives, crossbow bolts and other weapons encircled his waist and crossed his chest above the armour. A heavy falchion sword swung from his hip. The man’s face was partially obscured, the region above his upper lip hidden behind the rounded surface of his black steel helm. As I gazed upon him, he turned and for a moment the icy blue eyes that stared from behind the visor met my own. The man at my side muttered a word under his breath.

‘Brunner,’ Ferrini croaked. He cast a desperate look at the two brutish men who had been with him before my arrival. The pair of bandits was already in motion, one pulling a long-bladed dagger from his belt, the other hefting a heavy club of steel and oak. As the man Ferrini had identified as Brunner began to walk towards our table, Ferrini’s comrades assaulted him. There was a flash of light as a knife whipped from one of the armoured man’s gloved hands and I saw the club-wielder drop his weapon as the blade sank into his forearm. Even as he screamed, Brunner turned on him, kicking in his teeth with a steel-toed boot. The other bandit charged the killer from behind. Brunner dodged the stabbing blade. I did not see what transpired next, however, though I could hear the man screaming a moment later. For I was hurrying out of the side door of the Maid of Albion, hastening after my drinking partner who had risen from the table and scurried away the instant Brunner’s attention had been diverted to the other bandits.

Had I been even a moment tardier in my pursuit, I should never have caught up with the weasel-faced bandit. The door opened upon a narrow alley, and my former companion was already half way down its length. It took a tremendous effort to catch him. When I did, he spun on me, a dagger clenched in his fist. He recognised me in an instant and withdrew the blade, then turned to run. I placed a hand on his shoulder and told him I knew of a place where he could hide. He sighed a moan of thanks through heavy breaths and the two of us slid down a dank alleyway toward the dingy little hostel where I kept my rooms.

Ferrini immediately went to the single window that looked down upon the street, quickly searching for any sign of pursuit. Finding none, he hastily slammed the shutters, sealing off the window. Then, feeling a bit safer, some of the old bravado wormed its way up in the bandit, and he began to tell me about this figure of dread, this walking herald of death and judgement.

Brunner was a bounty hunter, Ferrini explained. The man’s name was a fearful whisper among bandits, pirates and highwaymen as far away as the forests of Bretonnia and the villages of the Reikland. It was said that once Brunner had set out to catch a man, that man’s days were numbered not in years, but in weeks. It was said that the bounty hunter had spirited a buccaneer captain from the sanctuary of the pirate stronghold of Sartosa, that he had brought down a traitor to the King of Bretonnia in the court of an Arabyan sheik, and that he had pursued one notorious smuggler to the depths of Black Crag and returned with his prey from the bowels of the goblin fortress. Or at least, the man’s head… With sword and bow, there were few men who could match him, and none who could claim supremacy over him in both. The tales went on, each more terrible and grim than the last.

Then Ferrini’s face went white once more. I turned to see what had horrified the bandit so. Standing in the doorway was the armoured figure of the bounty hunter. So silently had he come, I never heard even the softest footfall, the merest creak of the door. It was as if some daemon prince had snapped his fingers and summoned the man from thin air.

Ferrini fumbled for his sword. I heard the rasp of steel as the bounty hunter drew his own. Ferrini shrieked and threw down his weapon, scrambling for the window, and throwing open the shutters.

The bounty hunter was on him in an instant. Ferrini became a dead weight in Brunner’s gloved hands, sobbing like a child. A liquid stench rose from the bandit’s trousers. The bounty hunter did not hold onto his prey, but hurled him screaming through the window. There was a dull thud as the man landed on the cobblestones three floors below.

The bounty hunter leaned from the window as screams of pain rose from the street.

‘Just his leg,’ I heard a voice as cold and chill as an open grave grumble. ‘Thought he’d break his neck. Guess I’ll just have to drag him back up here and try again.’ The armoured figure turned from the window and began to stalk towards the door with long, pantherish steps.

Brunner exuded an aura of menace, a tangible feeling of impending violence, a promise of death. But there was something about him that at once captivated and fascinated me. I thought of the sparrow who sees the serpent, knows it for what it is, yet cannot tear its eyes away and fly from its company. I was also reminded of an old saying, a favourite of my father’s: ‘The Great and the Good are not always one and the same.’ I at once decided that I must speak with this man. The idea had sprung into my mind that the exploits of such a man would be no boastful lies told by some loutish ruffian seeking to enlarge a drunken ego. No, whatever words might pass between myself and a man like this, they would be the truth. A dark, brutal, murderous truth, but truth is not always a pleasant thing. And Ernesto was not paying me to pen parables for the cult of Shallya.

I must confess that my voice was like the squeak of a mouse when I addressed the bounty hunter for the first time. The man’s face, clothed as ever in the steel mask of his helm, fixed upon me, as if becoming aware of my presence for the first time.

The breath caught in my throat, and for a moment I was certain that I had foolishly invited Morr to reach up from the shadows and pull me into the kingdom of the dead. But after a second, the bounty hunter relaxed his grip on the hilt of his sword. The icy voice spoke again, demanding to know what I wanted.

I stumbled over my words several times as I tried to relate the idea. It seemed no less suicidal than walking up to a sleeping dragon, knocking it upon the head and loudly proclaiming its mother to be the lowest form of lizard. The bounty hunter listened for a moment, and I watched as a curious light crept into his eyes, as if the blue glaciers behind the visor of his steel face were melting. There was silence. I finally said that I could pay him, and proffered the leather purse that contained monies I had earned from a month of prying stories from the addled memories of pirates and thieves deep in their cups.

A gloved hand closed about the bag, and stuffed it into his belt. I later came to understand how unusual a gesture this was, for Brunner did not count what I had given him. Whatever moved him to speak with me that night in my dingy little room, the money was nothing more than a dressing, a garnish.

The bounty hunter walked back into the room, closed a hand about the back of the single wooden chair that was a part of my furnishings, and set it beside the window, in order that he might keep an eye on the moaning man in the street below. I hastened to my table, digging quill, ink and parchment from their cubby holes and set myself upon the floor, eager to begin recording the bounty hunter’s adventures before he thought better of such a charitable impulse. He waited until I was ready, and then the icy voice began to speak…

CHAPTER ONE

THE MONEY-LENDER’S PRICE

We talked long into the dark hours. I am still uncertain what motivated the bounty hunter to confide in me, for as he related a lengthy and gruesome catalogue of bloodshed and depravity, I was certain that no other ears had heard these things before. I was momentarily reminded of a pilgrim listing his misdeeds to a confessor in one of Verena’s temples. I cannot help but wonder if Brunner spoke to me out of a similar need to unburden his soul of the filth that encrusted it. As I came to know him better, I often wondered at this grim parody of penitent and confessor, but I am certain that Brunner has never asked anyone – man or god – to absolve him of anything he has ever done. For him, the gold that crosses his palm is absolution enough.

Brunner told me many tales that night, of his travels across the Known World and his battles with hideous beasts and equally vile things that were more horrible for their humanity. He told me about his lengthy service under another bounty hunter, a fellow man of the Empire, named Kristov Leopold, until he at last learned all he could from the crafty veteran and surpassed his teacher in the skills of his gory trade.

At one point during the night, Brunner suddenly rose from his chair and removed the crossbow from the clamp on his left vambrace. He leaned out the window, snarling down at Ferrini in a voice more laden with threat than any red-eyed thing I had encountered in the darkened streets of Altdorf. I heard the bandit sob, and the bounty hunter hiss a second command. Then he fired the crossbow and Ferrini’s wails of pain rose from the street, lingering on for sometime before shock and fatigue caused the bandit to fall silent. I later learned that Ferrini had started to crawl away, seeking to escape while we spoke. By what means the bounty hunter knew his prey was escaping, I do not know, but it was almost as if some sixth sense warned him. The sight of the crossbow aimed at him from the window instantly caused the bandit to plead for his life. Brunner ordered the man to place his hand against the wall next to him, holding it above his prone body. Without a moment’s hesitation, the bounty hunter fired, the bolt smashing through Ferrini’s hand, pinning the man to the wall.

Satisfied that his prey would be going nowhere, and seemingly paying him no further thought, the bounty hunter resumed his tale, telling me about a money-lender named Volonté…

The little, sharp-eyed man scuttled through the grimy, manure-ridden back streets of Miragliano. He wore an ill-tended dark purple tunic above coarse homespun breeches. A slender poniard graced a leather sheath attached to a belt around his emaciated waist. The man did not seem particularly nervous as he passed a band of boisterous mercenary marines on leave from some wealthy merchant vessel berthed in the harbour. The frail-looking man kept his eyes averted from the mercenaries as they lurched their way to the next tavern on this, Miragliano’s most notorious street: the Strada dei Cento Peccati. Taverns, brothels, weirdroot dens, fighting pits and other, even less savoury, places of diversion prospered here. It was said that even the most dour priest of Morr could not walk the breadth of the street without discovering something to make him forget his clerical vows.

This lane of illicit pleasure was the most dangerous in the entire city. Murder was more rampant than venereal disease and alcoholism, and not a night passed without a cart of bodies being removed in the morning, destined for the lime pits outside the city. It was whispered that many more died without their bodies being found, slaughtered in dark rituals or spirited away to the abodes of necromancers. It was also rumoured that some of the taverns and brothels, and especially weirdroot dens, were not above drugging their patrons, the unlucky victims waking up to find themselves in the secret holds of some barque bound for the slave markets of distant Araby – a fate perhaps worse than death.

It was a lawless district, where even the watch did not dare to come during the hours of night. It was just the sort of place where the most wretched and depraved of men would thrive. And it was precisely where Rocha would find the man his master had sent him to look for.

The sound of loud, volatile cursing intruded into his thoughts as a gaudily dressed sailor was flung from the darkened doorway of a beer hall to his left. The man landed noisily in the dung-ridden gutter. He raised a soiled hand and screamed obscenities at the massive figure looming in the door, his high, nasally tones carrying the accent of a Sartosan. The bearded man in a grimy suit of armour glowered at the cursing sailor for a moment, then stalked from the doorway, his steps swift, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

The Sartosan started to rise, nervous fear stalking through his anger. Even as he tried to scuttle away, the bearded man was upon him. Rocha heard the sound of a mallet-like fist crashing into the sailor’s face, but he ignored the violent scene, having seen its like too often to be interested in its finale. His gaze drifted away from the brawlers and came to rest upon the wooden sign swinging beside the doorway. Depicted upon it was a dark, massive porcine creature. Crude characters beneath the slavering brute spelled out the name ‘The Black Boar’ in Reikspiel.

Stepping around the huge man raining punches upon the now slack form of the Sartosan sailor, Rocha entered the beer hall. Merchants and ships from all over the Old World came to Miragliano, from Marienburg and the Empire, to Araby and the near mythical elf realm of Ulthuan. And for every breed that came to Miragliano’s cluttered markets and swarming docks, there could be found a drinking hole to match their particular cultural tastes. The Black Boar, Rocha knew, was a beer hall operated by a displaced Reiklander brewer, and catered especially to the needs of men from the Empire – a familiar setting in a foreign land. Rocha was certain that at some point, the man he was looking for would show himself in the beer hall.

Rocha entered the dark building. The ceiling was much higher than might have been expected, for the floor was set well below street level. The cause of this architectural irregularity was clustered about the end of the massive bar. It was a bar that sloped from the chest height of a man, to terminate at just above knee-height at its far end. Numerous dwarfs, their dress ranging from the robes of tradesmen to the armour of mercenaries, were clustered about the short end of the bar, downing overflowing steins of white-capped beer.

The dwarfs were not the only ones who clustered within the tunnel-like hall, seeking a taste more substantial than the thin Tilean wines and Bretonnian ales of other taverns. Rocha could see men from such diverse places as Marienburg, Altdorf and Nuln. A dour group seated about a large round table had the fur caps and drooping moustaches of the far north: Kislevite horsemen, come to sell their martial prowess to the merchants of the south.

The Tilean turned his eyes from the Kislevites and scanned the dark niches cut into the far wall of the beer hall. There were small private tables for those who wanted to see what manner of patron entered the Black Boar without themselves being seen first. The gleam of steel reflected in the dim light cast by the hanging lanterns of the tavern caught Rocha’s eye and he advanced upon one of the darkened niches.

Rocha removed his hat as he approached, wringing it in both hands. It was partially a gesture of nervousness, but also a measure of caution, lest he accidentally make any motion that might be construed as a play for the dagger in his belt.

‘Say your piece,’ a steel voice intoned from the shadows, halting Rocha in his steps.

‘My master, the most esteemed merchantman Ennio Corbucci Volonté…’ Rocha began, bowing slightly to his shadowy accoster.

‘Volonté,’ the shadow scoffed. Rocha could see a head leer from the darkness. It was clothed in steel, a black helm in the rounded sallet style favoured by Imperial militia. Cold eyes stared out from the visor of the helm. A gloved hand raised a small clay cup to the exposed mouth below the edge of the helm. ‘Volonté is a leech and a parasite, who lends money to men who can ill afford to repay what they have borrowed, let alone the extortionate interest.’

The man in the shadows shifted forward still more, exposing a lean, muscular body clothed in a suit of brigandine armour, a heavy-bladed falchion sword strapped to his side, a belt of long knives crossing his chest. ‘That bloodworm has never been one to spend the gold he makes. My price is more than he can stomach. Let him deal with street thugs and unemployed duellists, let him look to the gutter trash he knows so well.’

Rocha smiled fawningly, diplomatically overlooking the slights upon the name and reputation of his master. He bobbed his head in appeasement. ‘It is true, my master has never had cause to engage a – collector – of your calibre. But he now finds himself set upon by a matter not only of errant debitry, but also of familial honour.’

The bounty hunter mulled over the Tilean’s words for a moment, keeping to himself any dubious thoughts about Volonté’s familial honour. He rose from the darkness, striding towards Rocha from the depths of the niche.

‘You have earned my interest,’ Brunner stated, retrieving a small compact crossbow from the bench. ‘Lead on,’ he gestured with a gloved hand towards the steps leading back up to the street. ‘But your master had better have conquered his miserly ways,’ the bounty hunter warned. ‘Men who take me from my vices only to waste my time do not find me agreeable company.’

The room was cold and clammy, almost like the preparation room in a temple of Morr. A lavish portrait of nubile wood nymphs consorting with horned satyrs dominated one wall, its gilded frame tarnished in the gloom, its colours overtaken by mildew and rot. A similar fate seemed destined for the exquisite marble statue of some slender and naked maiden that loomed beside a massive oak table that formed the focal point of the room. Behind it, seated in a high-backed chair, was a great greasy puddle of flesh that might once have resembled a man. He stared at the bounty hunter.

Ennio Corbucci Volonté was one of many money-lenders in Miragliano, but his were the fattest fingers, the greasiest thumbs. His bribes went higher than most men, his retinue of thugs and enforcers more brutal than any. It was said that Volonté would loan a gold crown to anyone, because he would see five returned to him before the month was out. And if he did not, the streets of Miragliano were teeming with beggars who sought to placate the toad-like man, even after his enforcers had reduced them to penury. And, darker rumours averred, the money-lender even had ways to turn a profit from the dead – passing their parts off to alchemists and herbalists for use in the concoction of remedies and elixirs, and selling the refuse to sausage makers who, it was also said, had never laid eyes upon a hog.

The fat man rolled forward in his chair. His maggot-like fingers were fitted with rings, the rolls of fat flesh almost engulfing the bands of gold.

Volonté swept a greasy lock of black hair from his face, staring into the eyes of the bounty hunter with his own swine-like orbs.

‘Bertolucci,’ the fat man wheezed, as if every breath spent away from the plate of roast fowl set before him came at great exertion. ‘I want Bertolucci, bounty killer.’

‘So your minion explained,’ Brunner returned, unfazed by the money-lender’s attempt to affect an air of superiority. His gloved hand casually rested about the pommel of the heavy falchion sword at his side.

‘He has wronged me terribly,’ the money-lender croaked. ‘I lent him a tremendous sum, in good faith, to fund a business venture I wanted to invest in.’ Brunner noted that Volonté was careful not to mention the exact sum, lest he give the bounty hunter any ideas about his own fee. ‘But more than this, he insisted that I allow my daughter, my lovely Giana, my only child…’ The thin, rasping noises issuing from Volonté’s throat resembled belching more than sobbing and were silenced quickly as the money-lender continued to speak. ‘Bertolucci insisted that I make my daughter wed his pig of a son! To seal our pact with blood! As if his were some great and noble house!’

‘Get to the quick of it, fat man,’ Brunner’s icy voice intoned.

‘Ninety in silver,’ the money-lender croaked. ‘Ninety in silver when you bring me Bertolucci’s heart.’ Volonté’s fat fist opened in a clutching, clawing motion. ‘When you place it in my hand.’

‘Ninety it is,’ the bounty hunter said, his voice level and emotionless. ‘But it will be gold, not silver.’ Brunner gestured with his gloved hand. ‘This is a matter of revenge, not restitution, as I understand it. Passion such as that is costly. And besides,’ Brunner said as he turned away from the scowling face of Volonté, ‘she was your only daughter.’

The dingy cellar beneath the tannery stank of rotten cabbage and spoiled fruit. Strips of wet cloth were hung from the beams that supported the floor above, in a desperate attempt to fend off the heat of day. Brunner picked his way through the wet strips of cloth, penetrating the maze-like veils to reach his goal – a shabby wooden cot that crouched like a crippled beast in the far corner of the cellar, where the stench was less and the shadows more. A form stirred upon that cot, and Brunner watched as it reached out to light a stubby candle with a strange device of flint and steel.

‘Ah, Brunner,’ the voice of the figure called out as the light of the candle revealed the bounty hunter’s armoured shape. The form on the cot was revealed as well: an emaciated thing, little more than a bag of bones, withered by age and unnatural disease alike. The face of the man was skull-like, his skin dark with small bony growths like little nubs of teeth embedded in the flesh of cheek and forehead. One hand was a perfectly natural, albeit shrunken and gaunt. The other was a trio of long, worm-like digits, short tentacles that gripped the candle in a loathsome parody of fingers. The bounty hunter strode forward, undisturbed by the sight of the mutant.

‘I need information, Tessari,’ the bounty hunter said, seating himself in a battered wooden chair opposite the cot.

‘No one ever just comes just to visit me,’ the mutant sighed, his watery eyes rolling skyward. ‘They always come because they want something.’

‘Maybe it is because your son charges three pieces of copper to let anyone come down here,’ Brunner replied. Tessari drew himself up as straight as his frame would allow.

‘Hmph! That bastard! I should have brained him when he was a babe in arms!’ The mutant leaned toward the bounty hunter. ‘Do you know that that rascal has started letting children pay their way down here? “See the Beast in the Cellar”, let the urchins have their morbid little eyes gawk at my affliction.’

‘I came here to ask what you knew about Ennio Volonté and Goffredo Bertolucci,’ the bounty hunter snapped. ‘There was a time, before your affliction, when you knew quite a bit about everyone in Miragliano. But perhaps the rot has crawled into your brain as well as your hand.’ Brunner rose from the chair, but Tessari’s human hand beckoned him to sit once more.

‘Not going to grace me with the pleasure of human company and a few kind words?’ the mutant asked, his voice heavy. Noting the lack of compassion on the bounty hunter’s face, the mutant sighed. ‘You always were a ruthless bastard, Brunner. What do you want to know?’ Brunner leaned forward, his helm gleaming in the candlelight.

‘Bertolucci has fled Miragliano,’ the sharp voice of the killer rasped. ‘Where would he have gone?’

‘How can you be certain he has left the city?’ the mutant challenged.

‘Because if he hadn’t, Volonté’s men would have found him by now. Bertolucci, his son, Volonté’s daughter and about twenty of his household have vanished. Almost as if the Chaos gods plucked them from his villa and whisked them away to the Wastes.’

‘Bertolucci does not have much money,’ Tessari mused. ‘After this thing with Volonté, he is almost as badly off as myself. Now where might he go?’ Tessari turned his face to stare into Brunner’s eyes. The palm of his human hand was turned upwards. Brunner placed a pair of silver coins in the mutant’s hand.

‘In better days, many of the wealthy families of Miragliano kept villas in the country, before the beastmen and the orcs drove them back into the stink of the city.’ The mutant laughed, the sound dry and moist at the same time. ‘The Bertoluccis had a villa somewhere to the north of here, a winery as I recall. Perhaps he has decided that the dangers of the city outweigh those of the country. Perhaps he has gone home.’

‘Thank you,’ Brunner said, plucking the coins from Tessari’s hand. The mutant sat bolt upright, snarling at the bounty hunter. His face twisted into something as bestial as his tentacled hand.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back,’ Brunner said. ‘You’ll get paid when I return.’

‘Do you actually think Volonté is going to pay you for killing Bertolucci?’ the mutant sneered. ‘Did he tell you why he wants Bertolucci dead?’

Brunner turned back towards the mutant. ‘Something about his daughter and a broken business deal.’

Tessari laughed again, the sound both louder and more liquid-laden than before.

‘Is that what he told you?’ the mutant gasped between cacklings. ‘Volonté’s daughter and Bertolucci’s son had for months been secretly attending one another in the long hours before dawn. They are in love, you see. But that toad Volonté was not about to give away his only daughter without a substantial profit. I think the reptile had thoughts that he might marry her off to some petty lord and thereby ooze his way into the noble classes. Be that as it may, he at last relented, but only on condition that Bertolucci allow Volonté into a business dealing that promised a great reward.

‘Spices. Spices from Araby, Brunner, worth their weight in gold. That was what Volonté wanted. For his consent to the marriage, he was allowed to invest in Bertolucci’s enterprise, though the money-lender forced Bertolucci to squeeze out all of the other investors. The money-hungry maggot could not bear the thought that other men might profit alongside himself. This destroyed Bertolucci’s reputation and made enemies of many that were once his friends. And many of those laughed when news arrived that the ship bearing the spices from Araby was lost – claimed by pirates, storm, or some horror of the deep. You can imagine that Volonté was the most upset of them all. He had lost his investment and the chance to marry his daughter to some great advantage. So now he sends you, the wolfhound, to bring his prey to ground and slake his thirst for retribution.’ The mutant’s eyes glittered in the flickering candlelight, studying the reaction his words had caused.

After a moment, the bounty hunter turned his back to the mutant.

‘I care not for the whys of it,’ Brunner said, stalking away. ‘Only that there is money waiting at the end.’

The countryside beyond Miragliano was rolling, hilly terrain, marked by isolated pockets of humanity, but, more often, vast stretches of uninhabited wildland. Streams and brooks snaked their way along the deep hollows between the hills, encouraging the thick woods that filled each of the valleys. To the north side of the boulder-strewn hills and their forested hollows was a great plain of sandy, level ground. Stands of thin, scraggly trees were scattered in clumps, sometimes only a few dozen, other times a few hundred, forming an irregular forest.

The occasional stretch of level, grassy earth showed where farms had once stood, or, more rarely, where some hardy peasant still fought to wrest a living from the land. A path of brown dirt snaked its way between the trees and rocks, passing each of the farms, deserted or occupied, a relic of the time when there had been peace and safety in the hills of Tilea.

Two travellers made their way along the path, haste warring with caution for mastery over their steeds. One of the travellers was a large man, his powerful body encased in a tunic of hardened leather further toughened by strips of steel riveted to the garment. A rounded helm covered the man’s head, the low cheek-guards fanning outward to join the rounded rim. A long sabre hung from a scabbard at his side and a heavy crossbow was strapped to the saddle of his horse. The man cast wary glances to right and left as they proceeded on their journey, his hard features betraying none of the fear that gripped him. There were things abroad, the soldier knew, things inhuman and unclean.

The other rider was mounted upon a short, shaggy-pelted burro. The little creature kept pace with its larger kin with great effort, its shorter steps causing it to fall behind several lengths before a brief burst of speed would bring it beside the horseman once more. No saddle graced the burro’s back, only a thick blanket of wool. Seated upon that blanket, her legs thrown across the left side of the animal, rode a woman dressed in a hooded robe of pure white. Her face, framed by the fringe of her hood, was not unhandsome, but the stamp of age was creeping into it, the first webwork of wrinkles trickling away from the corners of her eyes.

Elisia had been a priestess in the service of Shallya for most of her life. Her family had been taken from her by plague; a husband and three children lost to an outbreak of the dreaded red pox. Somehow, though she too had become ill, she had recovered, and in her survival had seen the mercy of the goddess. She had devoted her life to Shallya, joining a shrine deep in the countryside, catering to the needs of the poor peasants and farmers who braved the wild to feed the swarming cities. Somewhere, in the long years of healing the sick, tending the wounded and soothing the bereft, Elisia had discovered within herself another woman, a woman far different from the one whose life the red pox had ravaged.

The priestess brought her burro to a halt as the soldier reined in his horse. She looked up at the armed man, a questioning look on her face.

‘What is it, Gramsci?’ she asked. ‘Do you see the villa?’

The soldier kept his armoured head staring down the path even as he replied to the priestess. ‘There is a man on the road ahead.’ He pointed his finger toward a figure, only distantly visible, ahead of them upon the road. The horseman slapped the reins in his hand against his steed’s neck, urging it forward.

‘Stay here, sister,’ he called back as he left, ‘I shall see what he is about.’

Gramsci rode towards the man he had seen, scanning the trees and brush for any sign of lurking banditti. He doubted that any brigands would be so bold as to attack a priestess, but it was not unknown for some follower of Ranald to return the contempt of Shallya’s followers with the edge of a knife.

‘That is close enough,’ a cold voice arrested Gramsci. The soldier came to a halt as the armoured man before him pointed a crossbow in his direction. Gramsci tried to peer at the face of the man, but it was hidden behind the steel mask of his Imperial-style helmet.

‘I mean you no harm, sir,’ Gramsci offered, raising his hands. ‘I am but escorting yon priestess upon an errand. Let us pass and we shall be upon our way.’

The bounty hunter stared at the soldier, then his attention turned away from Gramsci. The soldier stifled an annoyed groan as he heard the clopping steps of the burro draw up beside him.

‘It is true, sir,’ Elisia stated, not at all intimidated or threatened by the crossbow aimed at her. ‘I am a servant of Shallya on a mission of mercy to aid this worthy swordsman’s household. Please, sir, let us pass, for we bear you no threat.’

Brunner lowered the crossbow, striding back to the horses he had left tethered at the side of the road. ‘If your travel takes you north of here,’ the bounty hunter remarked as he returned the crossbow to a scabbard set into the harness of his packhorse, ‘I should advise you to turn back now. Just this afternoon, I was set upon by three beastmen. Their numbers will only grow when the sun fades.’

The bounty hunter’s words brought a gasp of alarm from the priestess, who for the first time noticed the slight limp in the bounty hunter’s gait, the small flecks of crimson staining his leggings. At her side, Gramsci glowered at the armoured killer, suspicion in his eyes.

‘And what became of these beastmen?’ the soldier asked. Brunner favoured him with a cold stare.

‘They will not trouble you,’ he said, ‘but I cannot speak for whatever friends they might have.’

‘What causes you to be abroad in the wilds alone?’ Gramsci persisted, trying to inch his hand towards the sword at his side. The bounty hunter’s eyes locked upon the slight motion. Gramsci scowled and let his hand drift away from the hilt of his blade.

‘My business is my own affair,’ Brunner stated.

Elisia interposed herself between the two men.

‘This fencing with words is pointless,’ she declared. ‘We are yet distant from our destination, are we not, Gramsci?’ The soldier, eyes and scowl still trained on Brunner nodded his head reluctantly.

Elisia turned to face the bounty hunter. ‘What you say about beastmen alarms me greatly, and it seems to me that you are just as far from shelter as we. Please, ride with us and make camp in our company this evening. We shall be safer with a second sword should the fell creatures chance upon us in the night. And I can tend your wound, for I see that you did not emerge from your combat unscathed.’ The priestess’s eyes were bright, pleading and hopeful. Brunner inclined his helmed head.

‘I shall join you, at least for the present,’ he said, striding back towards his animals.

‘And what are you named?’ Gramsci called at the bounty hunter, his voice betraying his belligerence and suspicion. The bounty hunter halted, one hand upon the horn of his saddle.

‘I am named Habermas,’ the bounty hunter said, raising himself into the saddle.

‘Then be warned, Habermas,’ the Tilean soldier continued. ‘Do not think to take advantage of us.’

Brunner turned the head of his steed, facing the Tileans once more. ‘If I did,’ the bounty hunter’s voice was as frigid as a Norse breeze, ‘you would not stop me.’

Brunner sat beside the fallen rubble of a chimney, all that remained of a long-departed farmstead. He let his gaze pass warily from the dark shadows beyond the light of the fire the priestess and her companion had started. He locked eyes with the scowling Gramsci, then let his stare linger on the tired, frightened features of the priestess. He let his hand rest for a moment on the compress the woman had pressed against the injury in his leg. Elisia did good work, the bounty hunter had to admit as he flexed his knee, noting only the faintest trace of pain. It was just as well for her that he had discovered them. And just as well for him, if their destination was the one that he suspected.

‘Still annoyed by my fire, Habermas?’ Gramsci snorted from his place beside the fire pit.

‘I have already told you that it is unwise,’ the cold voice beneath the steel helm responded.

The Tilean soldier favoured the other warrior with a friendless smile, heedless of the fact that the man was not looking at him. ‘A good fire will keep any animal away. They fear flame. Anyone knows that.’

‘Your knowledge of woodcraft is quite good for a city dweller,’ Brunner stated. He focused his attention on a patch of shadow. His keen ears could not be certain, but had there been the whisper of a sound from there? The bounty hunter fingered one of his knives.

‘Is it possible that the question of the fire could be put to rest?’ asked Elisia, her patient temperament worn away by the long verbal skirmish.

‘This fool thinks the fire will drive away the haunters of the night,’ the bounty hunter said, almost under his breath, his eyes still focused on the shadow. ‘Beastmen are not so craven as wolves or wild cats. Far from keeping them away, your fire is attracting them. It is like a beacon letting them know that there is food to be had here.’

The priestess stifled a gasp as she heard Brunner’s words, so firm and sure was his tone. Gramsci just scowled anew, tossing another branch into the blaze.

‘If that is so,’ the Tilean said, ‘then where are they?’

In that instant, the darkness exploded into life as howls, bleats and whinnies sounded from the shadows surrounding the camp. The noise of hooves, feet and claws crashing through the underbrush told of the swift and hurried advance of many large bodies. A thin, whiny and inhuman voice shrieked above the clamour. ‘Skulls for the Skull Throne! Blood for the Blood God!’

The first beastman broke from the patch of midnight. A wiry brute with a mangy pelt of tawny fur, its face like a housecat, save for the glittering, multi-faceted eyes that gleamed in the dancing light of the campfire like two diamonds. A massive stone-headed axe was gripped in its long-fingered, clawless hands, a ghastly skull rune worked into the crude edge of the blade. The creature let a snarl, like the drone of a wasp, emerge from its fanged mouth as it sprang into the clearing. A moment later, the axe fell from slackened hands and the droning challenge faded into a bubbling gurgle as Brunner’s throwing knife sank into the fiend’s throat.

But even as the cat-beast died, its fellows swarmed into the camp: things with goat-like heads, others with dog faces, and still others sporting a twisted, almost human form. Brunner did not hesitate. He fell back toward his horses, sending another throwing knife whirling into the Chaos throng. The blade embedded itself in the long snout of a slavering hound-headed creature. The beastman dropped its swords to tear at the steel that had bitten into its face. A towering brute turned a goat-like face in the direction of the bounty hunter as it heard its fellow cry out in pain. The monster roared, pushing its companions aside to charge towards the knife thrower.

Gramsci rose from beside the fire, sword in his hand. A small beastman, its form more human than many of its fellows, its lope more steady and regular, fell upon the Tilean, smashing at him with a bone club. Gramsci’s blade slashed through the crude weapon, and bit through the forearm behind the cudgel. The beastman wailed in pain as gore slopped from the stump of its arm, a look of agony frozen on its features as a quick thrust of Gramsci’s blade pierced the monster’s heart.

But the soldier did not have time to savour the beastman’s death, for already more of its fellows had surrounded him, jabbing at him with spears, gesturing at him with rusted swords and stone axes. Fanged mouths drooled froth and spittle as the creatures of Chaos promised the soldier a bloody death in their inhuman voices.

Elisia fled from the fire and ran towards Brunner, instinctively hurrying to the side of the more capable of her two defenders. As she did so, one of the beastmen, a smaller version of the goat-headed horror that led the throng, capered after her, snarling and snapping at her heels. The monster swung a heavy wooden club at the woman, missed, and raised its paw to try again. A cry of pain arrested its attack, and the brute rolled against the ground, clawing at the small crossbow bolt that had smashed into his breast. Elisia, with a last burst of speed, reached the bounty hunter, as he lowered the small crossbow pistol he had fired into the inhuman attacker.

‘I had meant that for him,’ Brunner gestured with the point of his sword at the huge goat-headed thing that was now so near that the stink of its lice-ridden fur brought tears to the priestess’s eyes. The bounty hunter handed the pistol to Elisia, pushing her behind him. The beastman’s yellow eyes narrowed as it watched its foe, its fanged mouth twisting in a parody of a smile.

‘Blood for the Blood God,’ it hissed, its voice low and rumbling. The monster stepped forward, the lengths of chainmail dripping from the crude hide armour that encased its twisted form swaying and clattering with its every step. A mask, daubed with the skull rune of Khorne clothed the monster’s face. Small lengths of chain had been driven into the brute’s horns, and from the end of each dripped a fresh human scalp. The monster slapped the massive axe into the palm of its left hand. No thing of wood and stone, but a weapon of bronze, haft and head, and it seemed to call out for blood.

Brunner gestured at the beast with his sword, a motion that he was certain this debased thing would interpret as challenge. The beastman showed the rows of fangs, wicked and sharp, gleaming in its muzzle. One of the smaller creatures that had gathered about their leader shrieked and leapt forward, a rusted sword in its hands. The hulking leader split its minion in half with a sweep of its axe, the bloodied debris thrown across the clearing. The meaning was clear: none but the goat-headed chieftain would be allowed to offer this skull before their gory god.

The beastman loped forward, its hooves punching into the ground with every step. Brunner stood defiant, his sword in a guarding position, his left hand held immobile at his side.

Brunner smiled up at the hulking brute. The chieftain raised its bronze axe, gripping it with both hands. With a last snarl it leapt forward. Brunner’s left hand rose in tandem with the brute’s attack.

A white cloud engulfed the masked face of the beastman as it charged. The bounty hunter had quietly worked the packet of salt kept in the sleeve of his tunic into his palm, puncturing the little pouch of sackcloth with his fingernail. Now the mineral did its work, stinging and biting into the Chaos monster’s eyes. Brunner lashed out with his sword, taking advantage of his enemy’s blindness and surprise. The sword stabbed at the monster’s belly, but the bounty hunter’s strike was deflected by the crude armour of hide and steel – upon which had been carved all manner of strange and loathsome runes. Instead of opening up the monster’s belly, Brunner’s falchion gored a patch of the monster’s thigh. The beastman let a howl of pain, terrifying like a human scream, rise from its throat before toppling backward. Its brutish followers stood in a stunned silence.

‘Come on!’ Brunner snapped, spinning and racing toward his horses, dragging the stunned priestess with him. ‘They won’t be confused for long, and they will be twice as enraged when they recover!’ Brunner slashed the tether of his steed with the edge of his sword, spinning and doing the same for his packhorse. He scrambled into the saddle, pulling Elisia up behind him. The woman pulled at his arm, trying to direct him back toward the fire, back into the camp. He spared a look to where the Tileans’ animals had been tied, seeing the swarm of beastmen upon them. His gaze canvassed the clearing, noting Gramsci holding off the press of monsters, though he was cut in both leg and arm, and his blade was not as quick in warding away adversaries as it had been.

‘Do you know the way he was taking you?’ Brunner asked.

‘Y–yes,’ Elisia muttered, her gaze wavering between Brunner, the beastmen and her embattled bodyguard.

‘Good,’ the bounty hunter said as he saw a beastman’s spear puncture Gramsci’s side. ‘Because your guide is dead.’ Brunner turned and quickly brought the horse to full gallop, dragging his packhorse behind them as they raced through the midnight wilds.

Behind them, a monstrous shape rose, snarling beneath its mask of flayed skin. The beastman chieftain watched as its chosen offering to Khorne escaped into the night. Infuriated, the monster reached out, snapping the neck of one of its fellows that had come closer to examine its master’s wound. As the creature died, and the blood bubbled from its mouth, the wound in the beastman’s thigh stopped bleeding. The masked brute turned its head, gazing at the still gaping wound. No, it thought, the wound shall remain until it is salved by the blood of a proper offering. The chieftain turned its head in the direction of the vanished bounty hunter. Its sharp bark of wrath and command brought the other brutes loping away from the gory, butchered bodies.

The hulking monster pointed its axe into the night, in the direction its prey had retreated.

‘Blood for the Blood God!’

The villa crouched on the summit of a lonely round-topped hill. The overgrown ruin of the vinefields that had surrounded the estate formed a buffer zone between hill and forest, a few scraggly, thin trees ignoring the boundary and providing patches of shadow upon the grassy expanse. The crumbling remains of a wall appeared beside the dirt path that had once been a road, a narrow strip of dirt wending its way from the rotten wooden gate through the overgrown fields to the hill at their centre.

It had taken Brunner and his guide the better part of two days to reach this place, and once again the dark cloak of night was falling upon the land. They had ridden long and hard, with the bounty hunter pausing only long enough to give the animals such rest as they might require to keep up the pace. And even those brief stops had been forsaken since the afternoon, when Brunner had sighted the first of their pursuers. The beastman had loped off before the bounty hunter could get a shot at it. Not long after, the sound of many bodies crashing through the brush to either side of the path had lent speed to the horses’ efforts. The beastmen were masters of the wild, and where the path turned and twisted like some serpentine river, the Chaos creatures could travel through the undergrowth and hidden trails known only to these children of the wild.

Many times, Brunner had heard hooting and snarling, and was certain that an ambush was about to be sprung. But the anticipated attack never came. Recalling the hulking chieftain’s casual slaughter of its overeager follower, the bounty hunter could guess the reason for the reluctance of the monsters to attack.

Now, as they at last reached the villa, the sounds of pursuit had grown louder, and Brunner guessed that the entire pack had caught up with them now – even the brute he had crippled during their brief encounter. The sanctuary of the ruined Bertolucci villa had come none too soon. Brunner whipped his steed into a final effort, the packhorse obediently following after the leading horse.

The villa had been opulent and splendid in its day. A two-storey structure, the upper floors had been devoted to bedchambers, music rooms, dining halls and the every pleasure of its noble owners, while the larger lower floor had served as quarters for servants, as stables and kennels, kitchens and storerooms. The villa’s walls were still intact, but its wooden shutters and doors had long ago collapsed into rotten ruin. As Brunner rode up, he could see swarthy Tilean faces peering out at him from every opening. But a loud cry from the woods forced the attention of the watching men away from the bounty hunter and his companion for a moment – all eyes were trained upon the treeline. Brunner rode his horse through the gaping maw of the old main entrance, whose double doors rotted on the floor just inside the portal. He lowered Elisia from the saddle, then dismounted after her and led the horses to where ten other steeds were tethered.

‘Praise be to Shallya!’, a voice cried out. A young man, wearing a suit of well-tailored clothes and a leather jupon studded with steel raced from one of the four doorways leading into the entrance hall. He was fair-featured, his black hair short, after the style favoured by the merchant princes themselves. He had the air of a man used to quality in his life, but as Brunner’s gaze took in the newcomer’s appearance, he noted the calluses upon his hands, the worn spots in the knees of his breeches, the abrasions on his boots. Here may be a man of quality, but he had not shirked from his part in labour, now that things were not so prosperous as before.

The young man strode towards the priestess. ‘I feared that you would never come! My wife is very near her time, please hurry!’ Then, as if noticing Brunner for the first time, the young man froze. ‘Who are you? And where is Gramsci?’

‘Questions which I was about to ask,’ a second voice spoke from another doorway. The speaker was an older man, but shared the facial qualities of the younger. He was dressed like the other, his fine clothing perhaps not quite so well worn. His aged hands had been hardened by a life in which pleasure and comfort had been all too infrequent.

‘His name is Habermas,’ the priestess said. ‘Your man and I met him on the road as we journeyed here. We were set upon by beastmen.’ A sad look crossed Elisia’s face and she bowed her hooded head in the direction of the older man. ‘I fear that the monsters killed Gramsci. We barely escaped with our lives.’

‘We have not escaped yet,’ the bounty hunter’s cold voice sounded for the first time. He turned his helmeted head towards the elder man. ‘The monsters that set upon us have followed us here.’ The news brought startled and fearful expressions to both men’s faces. ‘Even now they surround this ruin.’

The older man quickly recovered himself. ‘Alberto,’ he snapped, ‘lead the priestess to Giana, then find me! I’ll get the men together.’ He turned toward the bounty hunter. ‘I am no soldier, sir,’ he addressed Brunner. ‘The house of Bertolucci has seldom produced military men. If you have any notion of how best we might defend this place, I would like to hear it.’

Seven bodyguards had remained loyal to Bertolucci after his fall from grace, and one of these had been Gramsci. That left only eight men apart from Brunner himself to hold the ruined villa. The bounty hunter snapped his orders as quickly as he could. Below, in the woods, the grunting and lowing of the monsters reached the villa’s occupants, indicating that others were making their plans as well.

It was decided that those armed with crossbows would be positioned in the upper floor, descending when the brutes crossed the clear ground surrounding the hill. This accounted for five men. The remaining men, including Bertolucci and his son, were to stand with Brunner. They would guard two chambers: the larger entry hall where the horses were tethered, and the small parlour that abutted it and gave entry to the stairs leading to the upper floor. It was where the non-combatant servants and Alberto’s expectant wife had retreated.

Hasty barricades were thrown across the windows and doorways, leaving only narrow places from which the defenders could peer out and Brunner could fire his own crossbows. It was a ramshackle defence, but it was the best Brunner could manage. Two things favoured their chances: the fact that most beastmen were too simple to manage even the most rude missile weapon, and the fact that the notion of burning the villa down about their ears would likewise not occur to them. The brilliant blue-silver light cast by a full and engorged Mannsleib did much to favour the defenders; it made the grounds of the villa almost as visible as under the noonday sun. Only beneath the surrounding trees were the shadows still long and the grip of darkness tight.

No sooner had the preparations been made, and the Tileans sent to their posts, than the beasts began their attack. Brunner watched as a number of the brutes loped from the edge of the trees, a lanky thing with a snake’s head squirming from its shoulders bearing a standard of flayed skin. Brunner raised a clumsy-looking contraption of wood and steel. He aimed the tube-like barrel at the creature. The weapon sparked and a loud crack of thunder sounded with the brilliant flash of its discharge.

The standard bearer howled and fell, crushing its flag beneath its bleeding body. The other beastmen gave bleats of fright and capered back into the woods.

‘That should give them pause,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘Though I don’t think that leader of theirs will let them hide for long.’ As if in response, ten brutes stole from the trees once more. The bounty hunter watched as several of them cried out, dropping as crossbow bolts pierced their flesh. The wounded hastened back into the trees, leaving the dead ones lying in the field. The scene was repeated on each side of the villa, and soldiers shouted down news of the monsters’ advance and retreat in the face of each volley.

‘What are they doing?’ Alberto asked the bounty hunter, unable to find a reason for the beastmen’s tactics.

‘Testing us,’ replied Brunner. ‘They are trying to see what kind of defence we have, how many archers. Where we are strongest and where we are weakest.’

‘But their probing has cost them ten of their number,’ marvelled the elder Bertolucci.

‘No doubt they can spare twice as many,’ Brunner responded, watching the trees. ‘I had the ill fortune to face the thing that leads these animals, a worshipper of the Blood God. Like its god, it cares not whose blood it sheds.’

A loud cry of savagery rose from the darkness, and the beating of drums rolled from the woods. Horns sounded, their moans low and warped. Shouts both near-human and unhuman roared into the night sky. At the edges of the trees, shapes appeared.

‘Looks like our friends are done playing strategist,’ Brunner remarked, raising his crossbow. Then the frenzied, inhuman mob burst from the shadows.

The battle was short, but fierce. Ten more beastmen were wounded or slain by crossbow bolts before they could reach the hill. Brunner had added his own fire to that of the Bertolucci soldiers. As the monsters reached the ruin, Brunner gave the first one to try and batter down the barricade in front of the wide entry a blast from his handgun. The monster shrieked and toppled backwards, its chest a mass of chewed meat. Others were quick to follow it. A second beast perished, its body draped across the barricade as Brunner’s crossbow pistol sent a bolt slamming into its eye. Then he drew his sword and joined the other defenders.

Four of the bodyguards had descended, two of them joining Bertolucci and their other comrade in the far room to protect the stairs. The others joined Alberto and the bounty hunter in the makeshift stable. The horses whinnied in fear as the stench of blood and the mangy pelts of the beastmen reached them. One of the soldiers broke away to try and quiet the animals that were straining at their tethers.

‘Leave them to their fear,’ Brunner called to the man. ‘If you want to help, help us drive this scum away.’

Despite the best efforts of the men, the barricades were not holding. Great holes had been chopped and clawed into the wooden debris, and at each opening a slavering monster snarled. One hound-like thing with a spider-like assemblage of legs and a single clawed hand erupting from its belly leaped through an opening. It capered wildly about in the room, and snapped at the men with its claw before a blow from Alberto’s sword sent the deformed limb sailing away from its body. A stroke from the nearest bodyguard’s blade detached the snapping dog-head from its body. The thing’s abnormal corpse sagged, as a bubble of blood oozed from the stump of its neck.

One of the soldiers cried out. Brunner looked round to see the man’s torso fly away from his legs, and land in a bloody smear against the far wall of the chamber. A massive shape smashed its way through the barricade, its goat-like head craning from side to side, scanning the room for its prey. The monster now wore the severed head of Gramsci about its neck, a length of the man’s intestines tying the trophy to the monster’s neck.

The sight of the gruesome ornament caused Alberto and the remaining bodyguard to fall back in fear. Brunner met the monster’s gaze, his icy stare unflinching before the yellow orbs peering from the beastman’s mask. As the two locked eyes, the sounds of battle died away. The other beastmen fell back, their eyes gleaming in expectation and fear. Each howled for blood, but none of the beastmen wanted that blood to be their own.

The chieftain gestured with its gory bronze axe, a crude parody of Brunner’s own challenge. The bounty hunter raised his sword and closed upon the beast. He circled the monster, as it circled him, its steps uneven as it favoured its uninjured leg. Then it roared and attacked. The axe swung down in a gleaming arc of death – only Brunner’s quick reaction saved him from a blow that would have split him down the middle. Sparks flew as the axe bit into the tile floor.

The beastman recovered as Brunner lashed out at it, catching the killer’s strike on the haft of its great bronze axe. The beastman spat bloody phlegm into Brunner’s face, the gory drool trickling down the side of the bounty hunter’s helm. Brunner replied by kicking a steel-toed boot at the monster’s injured leg. The beast staggered, roaring in anger and pain. Brunner darted in once more, but the monster proved quicker than its great bulk would suggest, and the axe was slashing towards Brunner even as he began to move. The bronze blade scraped across the gromril breastplate, digging a deep scratch in the hard metal.

The bounty hunter arrested his charge; the beastman regained its feet.

Brunner glared at the monster, taunting it with his sword. The beastman snarled back and tensed itself, preparing for some brutal effort. Then it noticed Brunner’s left hand, lying slack and immobile at his side. A flash of warning widened the monster’s eyes and it raised both its hands to ward off the coming attack as Brunner thrust his left arm forward. This time, however, no cloud of salt enveloped the creature’s face. Instead, Brunner slashed the creature’s good leg, cutting through its knee with the blade held in his right hand.

The Chaos abomination screamed as it staggered from the maiming blow. It lashed out at Brunner once more, but the weight of the bronze axe overbalanced the crippled thing and it fell. The bounty hunter was quick to pounce upon his fallen adversary, slashing its right arm with his sword as his left hand stabbed a dagger across the brute’s face. Thick blood streamed from the ruptured eye, and the beastman’s body twitched in spasms of agony. The Tileans watched in horror as it strove to rise again. But its right arm was nearly severed, and the terrible bronze axe slipped from its slackened grasp.

As the axe clattered to the floor, Brunner darted in once more, stabbing his blade into the monster’s throat, above the gruesome necklace it had crafted. The beastman’s head sagged forward as the bounty hunter withdrew the blade, and it crumpled to the floor like a wilting flower.

The mutant throng at the barricade watched in silence as their champion died. Then a few loped into the room, their clawed hands empty. Brunner and the Tileans watched warily as the creatures converged on the body of their leader. Gripping the carcass under the arms and by the legs, two brutes carried it back through the doorway. A third beastman, its face almost human but for the horns sprouting along the bridge of its nose, grabbed the bronze axe with its clawed arms and followed its comrades.

Slowly, the brutish throng retreated. When the horses at last grew quiet, the men knew that the last of their foes had truly gone.

Brunner made his way to the barricade and peered down on the moonlit clearing below.

‘I truly hate working for free,’ the bounty hunter muttered to himself.

Brunner watched as the silent beastmen bore the corpse of their champion into the gloom of the trees. He looked over at the younger Bertolucci leaning against the doorway. The young man’s face was smeared with dirt and dried bestial blood, his clothing ragged and torn, his leather tunic sporting a gash that had nearly penetrated the skin beneath.

‘Think they will come again?’ the merchant asked. ‘Slink back into the woods and rally?’

Brunner shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘They take their hero away for their own profane rites, which is more important to them than the prospect of man-flesh for their bellies. They will take that monster that led them and tonight, when the rot has had a chance to set in that creature’s carcass, they will take their fangs and their knives to him.’ Brunner saw Alberto recoil in horror, his face blanching at the image. ‘They think that if they consume the meat of a champion like that, they will absorb his strength. There will be a great falling out as they try to determine who will partake in the feast. By this time tomorrow, that rabble will have scattered, none of them in the same pack.’

The sound of rustling cloth brought both men away from the view afforded by the doorway. Elisia stepped from the room beyond and moved toward Alberto. The youth hastened to the priestess’s side.

‘My father?’ he asked, his voice heavy with concern. The priestess shook her head, smiling.

‘No, your son,’ she replied. It took a moment for the import of her words to sink in, then a light of joy and understanding gleamed in Alberto’s face. He grabbed the priestess’s arms.

‘My son? When? How?’

‘Yes, a boy, as healthy and wonderful as any I have seen,’ Elisia responded. ‘He arrived during the night.’ A dour look came upon her. ‘Battle or no, he had decided this was his time.’ A smug smile replaced her dour look. ‘As to the how of it, perhaps you might ask your wife about that, if you have forgotten. She is with your son in the far room.’

With hardly another look at either Brunner or Elisia, Alberto hurried from the chamber.

The priestess watched him go, recalling for an instant the many hundreds of times she had seen men, great or poor, react in the same manner when she bore such tidings.

‘And what of the elder Bertolucci?’ the cold voice of the bounty hunter intruded. Elisia turned and stared into the emotionless face beneath the mask of steel.

‘He is down in the kitchen, warming some porridge. He was injured, but his wound is not serious, and I have taken precautions so that infection should not set in,’ she answered. A sudden questioning look entered her eyes. ‘You have not troubled yourself about anyone else in the brief time since I have met you. Even when you rescued me from the beastmen, it seemed more for your own convenience than any concern for me. Why does Bertolucci interest you so?’

The bounty hunter made no reply, leaving the priestess’s question unanswered as he strode into the inner chambers of the ruined villa.

The old kitchen was a shambles. Its tiled floor was cracked and broken, and grass peeped from between broken squares. Dead, ragged brambles were strewn in the corners where Bertolucci and his men had cast them hurriedly away. From dozens of places, sunlight shone down into the chamber, bringing light into the shadowy ruin, but also the chill of the dawn dew.

In the old hearth, a small fire smouldered, heating a large black cauldron. It was an original implement of the villa, a relic of the old days that neither time, nor weather, nor looter had touched. And it had served the exiled merchant well; he boiled a mash of grain and vegetable into something that might feed his retinue after their long, hard night of battle. But Bertolucci was not so altruistic as to think only of his men. He sat before a cracked, leaning wooden table, on an even more feeble bench, and noisily slopped the contents of the wooden bowl with a jagged piece of brown bread.

The sound of armour caused the merchant to look up from his meal. His eyes focused upon those of the man who had entered the kitchen.

Bertolucci stared into the helmed visage of the stranger who had arrived with the priestess. A premonition of dread froze him for a moment, but he soon recovered, reaching forward and ladling some of the porridge into a second bowl.

‘I hope that you do not mind,’ the merchant apologised, ‘but I felt I should do something useful if I could not be at the wall. And, since I did make it...’ Bertolucci finished his statement by biting down on the dripping bread.

Brunner stepped towards the table.

‘I’ll eat later,’ the bounty hunter said, the eyes behind the visor of his helm burning into Bertolucci’s. The merchant finished his mouthful of food and rose from the table.

‘I should have guessed,’ the man said, the dread once more crawling down his spine. ‘Couldn’t you just tell Volonté you didn’t find us?’ His look was resigned; he already knew the killer’s answer before it was spoken.

‘I have a commission,’ Brunner explained. ‘The only thing in this world I honour. But Volonté only wants you. Your children are not my concern.’

Bertolucci was thoughtful for a moment, some measure of relief and hope filling him even as fear gnawed at his guts. ‘I saw you fight,’ the man said. He placed a hand on his wounded arm. ‘Even whole, you would have made short work of me.’ The merchant reached into his tunic, noticing the bounty hunter’s grip tighten about the hilt of his blade. He continued anyway, drawing a leather purse from his clothing.

‘Tell me, what is the market value of a swine in the streets of Miragliano these days?’ the merchant asked, his eyes returning Brunner’s icy gaze with a hateful flame.

‘Eighty copper pieces, when last I passed the swineherd’s lane,’ the bounty killer responded. The merchant carefully counted out an equivalent measure of gold and set the coins on the table. He sighed and set the leather pouch beside them. Brunner nodded at the man, and drew his sword.

Bertolucci never saw the blade that sliced through his neck, so swift were the bounty hunter’s movements. As blood spread from his cloven neck, the last thing the merchant’s eyes saw were the gloved hands scooping up the coins he had placed on the table, never disturbing the leather purse beside them.

The sound of booted feet brought Brunner up from his gory labour. He spun about, seeing the joy fade from Alberto’s features. He had rushed here, after tearing himself away from his wife and child to usher his father upstairs to see his grandson. Now a different purpose filled the youth.

‘Assassin!’ he hissed, ripping his sabre from its scabbard. Brunner did not wait to trade words with the boy, but met Alberto’s first strike with a parry. The youth did not fully recover from the fended-off attack, but turned the deflection into a sideways swipe at the bounty hunter. His mind clouded with rage, Alberto had forgotten all his schooling in the art of swordplay and duelling. It would have been easy for Brunner to kill him.

The bounty hunter’s sword licked out, penetrating Alberto’s almost non-existent guard, and lashing upwards towards the boy’s head. At the last moment, however, Brunner adjusted his strike, smashing the flat of his blade into the boy’s shoulder, rather than the edge. Alberto dropped to his knees, staggered by the blow. Brunner smashed the pommel of his sword into the stunned man’s head, rendering him insensible. Under the care of the priestess of Shallya, he knew, the boy would recover. But not until long after he had gone.

The sound of more running feet announced the hurried advance of the remaining retainers. The men cast murderous looks at the bounty hunter when they saw the two bodies lying behind him. They drew their blades as one.

‘It is the elder I came for,’ Brunner stated in a voice like a chill winter wind. ‘Alberto Bertolucci will recover.’ One of the men sheathed his sword and cautiously manoeuvred his way around the bounty killer. He reached the prone form of Alberto, clasped its wrist and nodded at his fellows.

‘If you wish to die for your former master, I shall oblige you,’ Brunner declared, his piercing gaze meeting each of the guards in turn. ‘But it seems to me that your duty lies with your living master now.’ It took but a moment for the men to reluctantly return blades to scabbards. They too had seen the contest between the bounty hunter and the beastman.

Brunner strode down the hall, towards the cavernous entry chamber where the horses were stabled. As he passed the stairs, he met the accusing glare of Elisia.

‘You never cared about any of us,’ she snarled. Brunner smiled at her and stalked away.

‘Only about Bertolucci, and the price on his head,’ the bounty hunter said, making his way toward his animals. ‘Pray to your goddess that I never have cause to care about you.’

The bloated figure stood before the slowly mildewing painting of nymphs and satyrs, studying the painting, and its creeping corruption. A pity, the money-lender thought for a moment, for it had been a very vibrant and arousing piece, in its day. He had accepted it in exchange for not breaking the owner’s hands for missing a payment – though that rendezvous with mutilation was only deferred by a few months, when the man again fell behind in his debt. Volonté sucked at his teeth. Yes, soon he would have to see about having this one replaced. It never occurred to him to actually see to the care of his possessions. The acquisition was all that mattered to him. And now he wondered which of his debtors might be the owner of something of equal style and quality.

A sound in the shadowy room caused the massive man to turn. He could dimly see a figure standing in the flickering candlelight, light dancing upon a helmet of steel.

‘Who’s there?’ the money-lender choked, fear seizing him. As the bounty hunter stepped more fully into the light, Volonté breathed a deep sigh of relief. ‘Brunner,’ he laughed. ‘My servants did not announce you.’

‘I found my own way in,’ the bounty hunter explained. He lifted his hand, showing Volonté the leather-wrapped object he had carved from Bertolucci. The money-lender’s piggish eyes settled upon the gruesome thing, a smile widening across his face.

‘You have it!’ he chortled. ‘Bertolucci’s heart!’ He held out his hand, gesturing for the bounty hunter to give him his grisly trophy. Brunner stepped forward, dropping the leather-wrapped object in the fat-man’s swollen paw. Volonté hurriedly unwrapped it, revealing the gruesome, blood-soaked organ within. The fat man laughed deeply.

‘Your daughter was there as well,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘She has just given birth to a child, by Bertolucci’s son.’

‘Ha!’ the money-lender laughed. ‘With that old thief dead, the slut will come crawling back to me soon enough. Her husband can keep their bastard whelp for all I care.’ The fat man leaned over the disembodied heart, sniffing at it with flared nostrils, and savouring the stench of the butchered flesh. He snapped his head about, reaching into the table, withdrawing a cloth pouch, his hand trembling with the weight as he lifted it.

‘Your price, bounty hunter,’ the money-lender said. ‘You have done a good, if expensive, job for me.’ A sudden gleam of hate flickered across Volonté’s face, and he drew the bag close to his breast. ‘But before I pay you, I want to hear about his death. I want to hear how Bertolucci grovelled before you and begged for his life. I want you to describe his screams as you cut his heart out!’

Brunner took another step forward. ‘Then I must disappoint you.’ A sullen look of anger contorted Volonté’s obese features. ‘Bertolucci did not beg, nor did he grovel. When he learned who I was, and what I had come for, he did not try to run.’ Brunner looked into Volonté’s eyes, seeing the dissatisfied look there. ‘He simply asked me what the market value of swine was in Miragliano these days.’

A puzzled look replaced the scowl on Volonté’s face. Brunner took another step closer.

‘He paid me eighty pieces of copper before he died,’ Brunner said, his hand gripping the pommel of the long-bladed and serrated-edged knife sheathed at his hip. Volonté laughed nervously.

‘Not enough to buy a man like you, eh?’ the money-lender stammered, sweat beading along his brow.

‘It is the quarry that determines a bounty hunter’s price,’ Brunner said, closing the distance between the men. ‘A pig is worth much less than a man.’

Volonté’s servants roused in their slumbers as a sharp scream echoed through the walls. The sound seemed to come from the study where their master was in the habit of going over his records of debts late at night. Apparently he was not alone this evening. The thought did not unduly disturb Volonté’s household, and many of them went back to sleep. There would be time enough to divide up the money-lender’s possessions in the morning.

CHAPTER TWO

WOLFSHEAD

There are few horrors of the night that have so thoroughly captured the imagination of rural folk as the werewolf. Peasants, hunters and woodsmen sit about their midnight fires on chill winter nights and tell bloodcurdling tales of these monsters stalking through the darkened woods, their jaws slavering in eagerness to sink their fangs into the tender young flesh of a lone shepherdess or a lost child. Such folklore is common throughout the Old World. In barbarian Norsca they speak of feral Wulfen and flesh-eating Werekin, still farther north there are tales of the skin-changing Ulfwernar. In Ostermark and Ostland, it is the Balewolf that haunts the night, passing its lupine curse to any hardy enough to survive a bite from its fangs. In Stirland, there are tales of sub-human hillmen who shed their human forms when the sickly light of Morrsleib casts its foulness across the night sky. In Middenland, such creatures are known as Ulricskinder and actually venerated by the cult of Ulric. The debased inhabitants of ghoul-haunted Sylvania speak of Doom Wolves and hulking bestial fiends called Varghulfs. The Bretonnians speak of ‘les loups garoux’, another terror to be protected from by their knights.

As widespread as stories of werewolves and belief in such creatures is among the unlettered rustics of the country, very little serious scholarship has been conducted into the truth of such legends. Indeed, even the most complete bestiaries treat the subject with only passing mention, if at all. There are few accounts of the werekin made by what could be considered an educated witness that have been handed down. Discounting the spurious report by Felix Jaeger of his encounter with the Children of Ulric in his sensationalistic My Travels with Gotrek, Vol. II, we are left only with the unsatisfying record of the Red Moon Killer who terrorized Altdorf as recorded in the pamphlet The Private Life of the Great Sage-Detective of Altdorf, As Recounted by his Faithful Manservant and Companion. This later work is a tawdry volume published in the Moot and authored by a halfling simply addressing himself as ‘Vido’. Given such an unreliable source, this account of the renowned Zavant Konniger catching a were-beast in the middle of the Imperial capital can be safely discounted.

I was considering the paucity of reliable stories of werewolves one evening while sitting in the Black Boar. Being a bit deeper in my cups than usual, I began inquiring if there were any legends of such creatures told in Miragliano. As I should have expected, I was soon up to my ears in ridiculous stories about verminous underfolk stealing babies and grain, but these were hardly the sort of thing I was interested in. I said as much, hoping to curtail the barrage of fables being foisted on me and again reiterated my interest in creatures that were not a hodge-podge of beast and man, but ones that could change from one to the other and back again. As I expected, silence rewarded my outburst.

The silence was broken by a familiar cold voice from the shadows. I turned in surprise, for I had not seen my grim collaborator sitting there in the darkness. I hurriedly sat down at the table and fumbled for quill and parchment as Brunner began to tell me of his own encounter with a werewolf in the lonely forests of the Empire…

Trees loomed thick and brooding on every side, casting weird shadows by the sickly light of Morrslieb. The gibbous moon glowered like the face of some malignant god from the starless sky, its more wholesome companion Mannslieb just a thin silvery sliver cringing against the horizon like a whipped cur. What had started as a clear and distinct path through the forest had degenerated into little better than a boar run, overgrown shrubs and bushes pressing in to reclaim the ground.

It was rough going for the two horses that forged their way through the overgrown track, but for the man who walked behind the beasts, the passage was nothing short of tortuous. His lean face was a scabby bruise from where branches had whipped across it, his rough homespun garments were tattered and torn by the ravages of thorns and his goatskin boots were almost shapeless within thick layers of dried mud. The man stumbled, his arms pulled taut ahead of his body and his hands crossed and lashed together by a thick cord of rope. Its other end was tethered securely to the tack of the smaller of the animals, a grey packhorse, its back laden down with bundles and sacks, a small wooden keg lashed to its side and the ugly hook of a halberd peeking from beneath rolled blankets.

‘Shallya’s Blood!’ the man cursed as another branch smacked across his nose, splitting the skin. ‘It’s too dark to go on!’

The rider on the foremost horse, a huge black destrier, turned in the saddle, cold eyes staring from behind the visor of a steel sallet helm. The captive blanched as he felt those eyes bore into his own.

‘I don’t like it any better than you,’ the rider said, his tone as menacing as the purr of a panther. ‘I don’t like it when they want the merchandise delivered still breathing.’ He leaned over in the saddle, spitting the taste of his cigar into the brush. ‘You might mention that to Judge Vaulkberg when you see him.’

Beads of sweat peppered the prisoner’s face as he heard the name of the magistrate. Viktor Schwartz had fled the Reikland when he learned the infamous Judge Vaulkberg was looking for him. The confidence man had gone too far when he had assumed the title of ‘Baron von Schwartzhelm’ in his last racket. The real von Schwartzhelms had taken offence at the indignity of their name being appropriated by a criminal and made their displeasure known in no uncertain terms. He had thought Stirland would be beyond Judge Vaulkberg’s reach. He hadn’t thought about the fat bounty Vaulkberg had set on his head to appease the von Schwartzhelms, nor how far the ruthless breed of men who made their living as bounty killers would go to collect that reward.

Viktor had certainly never imagined a man as tenacious and relentless as the one who had finally caught him. Single-handed, the bounty killer had dragged him from the nest of river pirates with whom he had taken refuge. The confidence man shivered as he recalled the gruesome epilogue to that murderous scene. The bounty killer had set fire to the pirate lair, then shot down the outlaws as they came out the door, only he had been spared such a miserable death. That had been barbaric enough, but afterwards he had been forced by his captor to help him poke among the cinders for any bodies recognisable enough to turn in to the riverwardens. Viktor turned his horrified eyes to the wooden keg lashed to the side of the packhorse the bounty hunter grimly called Paychest and felt his stomach turn. He ran his hand against his neck, imagining the steel teeth of the killer’s knife sawing through flesh and bone.

Brunner was nothing if not pragmatic. Why drag the entire body away, when just the head would do?

The bounty killer cut a formidable aspect upon the back of his grim black warhorse, a Bretonnian steed named Fiend. The man wore a suit of weathered brigandine armour, metal studs poking through the layers of reinforced leather. Steel vambraces shielded his forearms, a breastplate of thick gromril covering his chest. Bandoliers of crossbow bolts and throwing knives criss-crossed his torso and from his leather belt a riotous array of weapons dripped like venom from a serpent’s fang. The fat-bladed knife with its serrated edge, the morbid Headsman Viktor had seen in action among the ashes of the pirate lair. A thick hatchet, its wooden heft deeply stained from its blood-drenched career. A pair of slender, almost-delicate looking crossbow pistols hung at his hips, their blackened steel frames almost melding with the sombre coat of Fiend as they slapped against the horse’s flanks. Across his belly, Brunner wore a holstered duelling pistol, one of the killer’s hands lingering close to the grip of the firearm. Against the bounty hunter’s left hip, the sheathed length of a murderous falchion, a butchering blade capable of tearing the steel from a man’s grip as easily as it could gut the man himself.

Brunner’s face was largely hidden beneath the visor of his rounded sallet helm, but what Viktor could see was a hard, unforgiving countenance with a mouth turned down in a perpetual scowl and a shallow grey scar pulling at the chin. He knew the man was a Reiklander by his speech and accent, but highborn or low commoner was something Viktor found strangely difficult to extract from the bounty hunter’s voice. Certainly the hunter’s casual disdain for Viktor’s attempts at bribery to secure his release bespoke no commoner scraping to earn his living by such a dangerous profession. Though, perhaps, this was simply because he had not offered enough?

‘You know,’ Viktor began without preamble. ‘I have some rather influential friends who would make it well worth your while…’ He paused as another branch came slashing into his face, opening an oozing cut in his cheek. Viktor cursed lividly, then struggled to refocus his thoughts. ‘My friends would pay well to have me back safe and sound, and wouldn’t be too particular about who they paid, or why.’

Viktor felt rather than saw Brunner’s steely glare as he swung back around in his saddle.

‘Friends like your pirates?’ the bounty hunter sneered. ‘All the money I want from that sort I can put across Paychest’s back.’ Brunner tapped the metal handle of the Headsman in a grim gesture. ‘As for you, I’d consider what I had to say very carefully. I’m not a tolerant man and my indulgence is over.’ Brunner turned back around, spitting the stump of his cigar into the darkness. ‘Vaulkberg wants you alive. He didn’t say anything about with or without tongue.’

All the colour drained out of Viktor Schwartz as he heard the threat, stunned into silence by the casual manner in which it was made. Shocked into silence, the outlaw was almost pulled from his feet as the bounty hunter’s animals continued their march through the benighted forest. Too terrified even to curse, Viktor stumbled along in his effort to keep up.

Suddenly, Viktor found himself crashing into the rump of Paychest. The grey packhorse stood stock still, its eyes wide with alarm, its ears standing up, its hooves pawing nervously at the ground. Ahead, he could see the black bulk of Fiend and even the warhorse seemed agitated, swinging its huge head from side to side as though trying to spot some hidden menace. The bounty hunter upon its back was likewise rigid with concentration, listening for any errant sound among the shadows. His hand had fallen to the grip of his pistol, slowly inching the weapon from its holster.

All was silence, even the chirping of crickets seemed to be muted by some unseen malignance. Viktor could hear his heart hammering in his chest, feel his throat going tight from fear. He could feel it now, as surely as the horses and the hunter. There was something out there, something obscene and unnatural.

From somewhere deep in the forest, a piercing howl rose into the night. It was a savage, feral sound, both deep and sharp, seeming to echo in the very bones of those who heard it. It was not unlike the cry of a wolf, but of such volume and magnitude that defied belief. Viktor muttered a quite prayer to Taal, god of the beasts and the wild, as he heard it. The bounty hunter’s horses nickered and stamped their hooves in agitation. For his part, Brunner drew his pistol and checked to see that the firing cap was secure upon the weapon’s steel nipple.

A chill wind rustled through the brush, fanning the terror of the two horses, forcing the bounty hunter to forget his weapon for the moment to quieten his steed. Viktor dodged out of the path of the bucking Paychest until the bounty killer dismounted and calmed the draft horse as well.

When he turned from his chore, Brunner ripped the pistol back from its holster, allowing his other hand to slip around the hilt of his falchion. Ahead, in the darkness, a shape moved, creeping through the brush towards the two men.

Brunner aimed his pistol at the approaching shadow, his finger loose around the trigger. The slightest pressure would send a lead ball blasting through the head of the advancing wraith. Though he could make out nothing but a darker shadow beyond the bushes, the manner in which Fiend and Paychest reacted to the unseen denizen of the dark was enough to make him aware that it was no natural thing. The woods and forests of the Empire were havens for all manner of goblins and beastmen, as well as other, less wholesome inhabitants. A few more steps, and Brunner would make the wilds of Stirland safer by one less monster.

The bounty hunter gave a sharp cry of alarm as the pistol fell from his gloved hand. The leather smoked where the suddenly white-hot weapon had seared him where he gripped it. The spectral chill of sorcery whirled around him, creating a sinister contrast to his burned hand. Brunner tore his falchion from its sheath, staring into the darkness, ready to rush his spell-slinging foe. The shadow he had seen before was no longer there. The bounty hunter’s instincts caused him to spin around towards the other side of the path.

A dark figure smiled at him with a ratty, gap-toothed grin as Brunner raised his falchion to strike.

‘None of that, sweetie,’ the figure croaked in a voice that was withered with age and evil. ‘It’s no harm Mamma Miranda means to you. It’d be a true pity for me to have to burn your other hand now.’

As she spoke, the woman stepped forwards into the dim light of the moon. She was a little creature, barely tall enough to touch the fetlocks of Brunner’s charger, her back almost as crooked as a woodsman’s bow. She leaned upon a knobbly cane of oak and was wrapped tight in a dark woollen shawl, the hood pulled close about her scraggly white hair and shrivelled head. It was a desiccated, reptilian face that stared from the frame of the hood, the skin splotched with brown blemishes and wrinkled like old leather. Her nose was a little bulb set above her wide, rodent-like mouth and the eyes that gleamed from either side of it were strangely luminescent in the darkness. A tangle of charms and talismans rattled about her throat and dangled from her wrists, bearing symbols of Ahalt the Drinker and other, even more unspeakable gods.

Brunner slowly lowered his sword, carefully returning it to its sheath. Miranda watched the action with seemingly rapt attention, then her rat-like grin hardened.

‘Don’t think I don’t see you going for your knife while you put yon boar-cutter away,’ the old woman cackled. ‘It’s a good turn I mean you and you have nay right to bear me such ill.’

‘Is that so?’ the bounty hunter returned. He folded his arms across his chest in a seeming gesture of defeat. ‘What have I done to warrant the interest of a witch?’

Miranda scowled at the word and her glittering eyes took on an even uglier appearance. ‘It’s careful you should be about baiting me, child. There’s Powers I be beholden to and They be the ones what have an interest in you, nay old Mamma Miranda. Left to me, and I’d leave you to have your bones picked clean and your guts spilt across the forest!’

‘I care nothing for your daemons or your magic, witch!’ Brunner growled back. The fingers of his left hand slipped gradually beneath the vambrace on his right arm, reaching for the slender throwing knife hidden there. ‘I have business in Reikland and no desire to waste words with a heretic hag!’

The witch uttered a cackle of scornful amusement. She stabbed a crooked finger at Viktor. ‘Your dead man will never reach the judge, and weeds will grow through your gnawed bones and a fitting end it would be too.’ Miranda’s scowl grew even sicklier and she fingered one of her talismans, a metal sliver of moon intersected by a disc. ‘Unfortunately it would sit ill with my Masters if I were to allow harm to befall you because of my magic, and Their displeasure is not a thing to be taken lightly.’

With a speed that even Brunner found amazing, the old woman removed a bundle of weeds from beneath her shawl and threw them at the bounty hunter’s feet. ‘You are not the only hunter abroad this night, Brunner of Drakenberg. When the beast picks up your scent, you must burn these herbs.’ Miranda saw the incredulous twist of Brunner’s mouth. ‘There are things against which lead and steel are not enough,’ she warned. ‘That is when you might be thankful for an old witch’s magic!’

Brunner bent down to retrieve the bundle of herbs, using the motion to cover his hand as he finished pulling the knife from beneath his armour. His eyes were only off the witch for an instant, but when he straightened to hurl his weapon at her, he found himself staring only at the night-blackened forest. He fought back the twinge of supernatural dread the hag’s vanishment evoked.

‘She… she disappeared… right there! While I was… was watching!’ stammered Viktor, pointing with his tethered hands at the empty bushes.

Brunner stalked over to his captive, checking his bonds. The witch might have vanished, but his prisoner wasn’t going to follow her example.

‘She… she was a witch!’ Viktor gasped. He grabbed Brunner’s arm in a desperate gesture. ‘She said I would never reach Judge Vaulkberg, that I was a dead man!’

Brunner shook off Viktor’s grasping hands. ‘The hag was wrong,’ he hissed. ‘You should be worried about what the judge is going to do to you, not some crazed hedge mage’s predictions.’

The bounty hunter walked back to Fiend, his contempt for the witch’s words still ringing in Viktor’s ears.

That Brunner did not discard the bundle of dried weeds, but stuffed them carefully in a saddlebag was an observation the frightened Viktor failed to make.

He was too busy listening to the renewed howling in the darkness and trying to convince himself it was not closer than it had been before.

The wolf howl dogged Brunner through the long hours of the night, sometimes closer, sometimes farther, but always there. The persistence of the howl had made Paychest all but unmanageable, and even Fiend was on edge. As for his captive, he had been forced to tie Viktor to his own saddle to prevent the fear-crazed man from trying to scramble into a tree every time he heard the howl. A broken leg would make getting him to the Reikland a good sight more difficult and Brunner would just as soon avoid such complication.

It was when the howling dropped off entirely that the bounty hunter came on edge. Viktor, oblivious to Brunner’s increased wariness, took the silence as sign that the wolf had forsaken them to find less formidable prey. The continuing agitation of the horses made it clear that the predator was still close.

When the attack came, it was of such speed and ferocity that even the bounty killer was caught unprepared. One instant there was the darkness of the path, the brambles and thickets pressing close to the overgrown trail. The next a pair of red eyes shone from the blackness. Brunner drew his pistol even as a terrible growl rumbled through the night. Branches snapped as something lithe and powerful lunged from its hiding place.

Brunner had an instant to observe the sleek black shape as it leapt upon him, bowling him from the saddle and smashing him to the ground. It was a wolf, a huge specimen of its breed. It jaws flashed white in the moonlight, froth dripping from its jowls. Brunner fired his pistol into the beast as its leap brought it crashing against him, shocked when the brute did not so much as yelp when the weapon discharged inches from its snapping fangs. A misfire was always a possibility, but the smoke and fire should have been enough to scare the animal off.

His second shock came as he struck the ground, the beast atop him. Brunner felt fingers close around his wrists, pinning him to the ground. As he stared up at his attacker, he saw only the canine snout and black-furred head of a wolf, its eyes gleaming with a cruel intelligence. Nursery fables and half-remembered legends flooded into Brunner’s mind as he felt the baleful gaze of the wolf fixed upon him. He fought down his superstitious dread with more difficulty than he had in his encounter with the witch. Natural or child of Old Night, the surest way to die beneath a predator’s jaws was to show fear.

Unfortunately, the same lesson had not been taught to Viktor Schwartz. The outlaw pulled at his tether, shrieking and wailing like a lost lamb. The noise of his terror brought the wolf’s head snapping about. Whatever intellect might lurk within the beast, it had no mastery over its savage instincts. Brunner felt a heavy weight press down on him, then the wolf was away, springing off of him and pouncing upon the screaming Viktor.

The prisoner fell beneath the beast’s weight, crushed to the earth with savage violence. Blood spattered the bushes as the wolf’s claws tore into him, each of its hand-like paws clawing into his body with feral brutality. Viktor’s high-pitched screams degenerated into a bubbly gargle as the wolf’s fangs snapped close around his neck and began to worry at his throat. Arterial spray, almost black in the moonlight, spurted from the wound, bathing prey and predator in Viktor’s blood.

Brunner staggered to his feet, his chest still feeling the crushing weight of the wolf against it. He drew the crossbow pistols from his belt, taking aim even as he watched the beast slaughter his prisoner like a wayward calf.

‘Your pelt better be worth three hundred crowns, cur!’ Brunner snarled, loosing the bolts from his pistols into the wolf’s back. Both missiles struck home, stabbing into the beast. Brunner took a step back, once again struck with shock and horror. The bolts had struck true, but their effect could have been no more useless had he loosed them into a side of beef. The wolf barely deigned to notice their impact, but continued to savage the quivering body of its prey. As it snapped and slavered, the bolts seemed to work themselves loose from its body, falling into the mush of dead leaves on the ground.

Brunner tried to tell himself it was some trick of light and shadow, but the effort was too great. It was no wolf that held its prey in pawlike hands, and no beastman who defied bullets and bolts. It was something else, something that, as the witch had warned, did not respect steel and lead.

The bounty hunter pulled his tinderbox from a pouch on his belt, hurriedly trying to light the withered weeds the old woman had thrust upon him. The wolf-beast seemed to take notice the instant he began. It dropped Viktor’s gory carcass, its muzzled pulled into a snarl as it fixed him with its scarlet eyes. The creature slowly crept towards him, an angry growl rumbling through its powerful frame, keeping itself upright upon two legs, its clawed hands closing and opening in their eagerness for violence.

The weeds had just begun to smoulder, the first faint hint of noxious smoke rising from them, when the wolf-beast lowered its head and coiled its body into a crouch. Brunner dropped his tinderbox and dragged the hatchet from his belt. The move was only just in time as the wolf lunged for him, uncoiling in a black-furred streak of bestial fury. The bounty hunter twisted as it jumped, staggering from the glancing impact instead of being crushed beneath the beast’s body as he had before. As the wolf dove past him, he lashed out with the axe, slashing its edge through fur and flesh, hearing the steel scrape against bone. But when the beast was past and he looked at his axe, he found the blade unmarked by blood. He did not need to be a witch to know that the wolf’s hide was similarly unmarked, preserved by whatever unholy forces gave it power.

The wolf coiled to spring again, but as it did so, it began to shake its head, snuffling loudly. It brought a forearm scratching against its muzzle, then rolled its face in the dirt. Brunner could see that the bundle of weeds was now smoking fiercely, the pungent reek almost overwhelming. Its effect on the wolf-beast was even worse, and with a mournful wail, like the whine of a child, the brute darted towards the trees.

Before it could vanish, Brunner was pulling his sword from its scabbard. If the weed could wreak such havoc on the beast, perhaps they had also foiled its invulnerability to steel. He started after the wolf, but the familiar sound of an explosive crack caused him to drop. The trunk of a nearby tree exploded with splinters as a bullet slammed into it.

Brunner rolled onto his belly, watching for the hidden shooter, the wolf already vanished into the undergrowth. After a few moments, he could hear the unmistakable sound of a rider ploughing his way through the undergrowth. The glow of a lantern appeared in the murk of the forest, soon followed by the one who held it.

The rider was a well-dressed man, the doublet beneath his engraved breastplate was extravagant and colourful, his stiff cavalry boots monogrammed with gilded letters, his rounded helm sporting outrageous plumes of ostrich feathers. The sword that hung from his belt was thin and rakish, with a jewelled hilt and silver etchings along its scabbard. The man’s face was clean, handsome in the classical Imperial style, with well-tended moustaches waxed into twisted curls. Pale blue eyes regarded Brunner with alarm and a smoking pistol almost fell from the rider’s beringed fingers.

‘Taal’s Mercy!’ the rider gasped. ‘I didn’t see you there! Morr’s oath, I saw only the wolf!’

‘Then you missed,’ Brunner said, picking himself from the ground and gesturing at the injured tree. The bounty hunter’s eyes were narrowed and filled with menace, scrutinising the horseman and his weapons.

The rider’s face flushed somewhat at the remark and he shoved the pistol back into its holster with an embarrassed motion. ‘I am truly sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know there were other hunters abroad tonight. Those damn Kislevites will be whoring and drinking by this time and, well, they are burying Otto in the morning.’

Brunner stalked over to his horses, trying to quiet them down. Only the fact that it was tied to Fiend’s saddle had prevented Paychest from bolting during the ghastly encounter. He paused to regard the rider, his interest piqued not by apologies for slovenly marksmanship, but by mention of hunters and a hunt.

‘What’s this about a hunt?’ he asked.

The rider seemed to be taken aback by the question. ‘Then you weren’t engaged by my father?’

‘I don’t even know who your father is,’ Brunner said, patting and rubbing the neck of his packhorse.

The rider straightened in his saddle, throwing out his chest in a manner that would have looked out of place even in a Sierck play. ‘I am the Baronet Dietrich Hartog, son of his lordship the Baron Friederick Hartog.’

‘An awful lot of barons for one stretch of forest,’ Brunner muttered under his breath, looking sadly at the gory wreckage of Viktor Schwartz.

‘I am sorry about your friend,’ Dietrich said. ‘I will help you take him back to the village for burial.’

Brunner turned away, shaking his head and pulling himself into Fiend’s saddle. He cut away the tether and threw it onto the ground beside the body. ‘Leave him,’ the bounty hunter said, his voice cold. He cast a last glance at the mangled corpse. ‘He’s no good to anyone… now.’

As Dietrich Hartog led him through the forest, the baronet filled Brunner in regarding the situation in his father’s domain. Roughly a year before, a strange predator had appeared, preying on the herds and generally wreaking havoc through the district. Every effort made by his father’s gamekeepers to track it down failed and before long the beast progressed from picking off the odd goat or calf to feeding on those who tended them. Once a month, when Morrslieb the Chaos moon was at its height, new outrages would shock the district. Those few who had seen it and survived described an enormous black wolf, bigger than a steer and possessed of unnatural strength and boldness.

Dietrich was not prepared to endow the wolf with such powers, though he grudgingly admitted it was far more cunning than common for its breed, ‘more fox than wolf’, he mused. It was too smart for local hunters to bring down and his father had been forced to recruit hunters from all across Stirland to try and defeat it. One and all had failed, many of them becoming victims of the wolf themselves. In desperation, the baron had finally increased the bounty on the black wolf to five hundred crowns and had dispatched couriers to bear news of the reward to the far corners of the Empire.

The swollen bounty had brought wolf hunters swarming upon the district, but even experienced marksmen from Hochland and veteran woodsmen from the Drakwald had failed to best the beast.

‘My father can hardly increase the bounty any more than he already has,’ Dietrich said as they emerged from the tangle of the forest and into the open fields beyond. In the distance, little snakes of smoke marked the village and beyond it, with the morning sun just beginning to peek above its battlements was the looming bulk of Castle Hartog. ‘And if the wolf isn’t stopped, the peasants will start abandoning us in droves.’

Brunner gave the nobleman a shrug. ‘They expect the baron to protect them. That’s why they pay him taxes and give him their fealty. If your father can’t honour that obligation, then he has no right to expect them to stay.’

Dietrich’s face flushed with outrage at the impertinent words, his hand falling to the jewelled hilt of his sword.

Brunner seemed to ignore the angry gesture, pointing instead to a curious structure standing in the middle of the fields. ‘What is that?’ he asked, nodding his chin towards the ring of crude stone monoliths and the little wood hut nestled in their shadow.

‘A shrine to Rhya, the Earth Mother,’ Dietrich answered, almost automatically. ‘It has stood here since before the time of Sigmar, so they say,’ he added with a surly note.

‘Your people must be extremely pious,’ Brunner said, watching as a line of figures draped in black emerged from the hut and began to walk into the stone circle. Closer now, he could see a pile of wood at the centre of the circle. Towards this, the figures bore a burden covered in a linen shroud.

‘The nearest priest of Morr is three hundred miles from here,’ Dietrich said. ‘It is imprudent to wait for him to visit us, so we consign the dead to Morr’s gardens in the old way.’ He pointed at the shrouded body. ‘I don’t think Otto will complain.’

The mourners laid their burden upon the pile of kindling, then began to step away from the mound. Brunner put his spurs to Fiend’s flanks as he saw another mourner emerge from the hut, a flaming brand in her hand. Dietrich cursed and spurred his own mount after Brunner, taken aback by the bounty hunter’s sudden rush toward the circle.

Brunner reined his horse before the woman bearing the torch, blocking her from the pyre. He saw now that he was mistaken, she was not one of the drab mourners, but a priestess. Beneath a cape of woven leaves and a mantle of flowers, she wore a shift of thin white cloth, a garment so fine it might have been crafted from strands of gossamer. The almost transparent robe left nothing of the woman’s supple body to the imagination and the face that regarded him from beneath the flowery headdress was of almost divine beauty. There was no accusation in her soft blue eyes, no hardening of her velveteen lips as the huge black charger blocked her path. She simply gestured at the sky and spoke in a voice that was like the sigh of a breeze through long grass.

‘The morning grows apace, child,’ the woman said. ‘If this poor man’s soul is to be entrusted into Mother Rhya’s care, I must consign him to fire in time for the flames to meet the first rays to shine upon the sacred circle.’

‘I will only be a moment,’ Brunner told her, turning Fiend and moving towards the pyre. He barely looked up when he heard Dietrich reach the standing stones, the nobleman’s face contorted with restrained rage and something more, an expression of profound relief.

Brunner reached down and pulled back the shroud, staring intently at the face, then passing his gaze along the length of the man’s mutilated body.

‘You dare interrupt the ceremony?’ Dietrich challenged. This time he would have drawn his sword, but for the slender hand that restrained him.

‘There is time yet,’ the priestess said. ‘And it is fitting there should be one mourner here who did not come because of the baron’s largesse.’

Brunner watched the exchange, noticing the way the priestess’s eyes lingered on Dietrich, the way her hand tightened almost imperceptibly around that of the baronet. He filed the observation away with the others he had already made.

Brunner pulled the shroud back in place, leaning back in his saddle. He nodded to the priestess. ‘I don’t recognise him, or at least he doesn’t look like anybody I’m interested in.’ He stared at Dietrich. ‘It looks like the wolf played a bit of havoc with your man.’

‘Maybe you should reconsider your interest in my father’s reward,’ came Dietrich’s cold response.

‘Maybe,’ mused Brunner. ‘But your wolf has already cost me three hundred gold crowns. It would be nice to make that back, and with interest.’

Confusion showed on Dietrich’s face. ‘My name is Brunner,’ the bounty killer explained. ‘I hunt men. That carrion we left in the forest was bound for Reiksfang prison and the court of Judge Vaulkberg.’ Brunner smiled thinly as he saw the disgust on the nobleman’s face when he mentioned his profession. ‘I admit that wolves aren’t my usual quarry, but for five hundred crowns I’d pull a troll from its hole. Besides, is a wolf really so much different from a man?’

Brunner let the nobleman consider the barb, turning instead to regard the comely priestess. He made an expansive gesture to the pyre. ‘I’m done. You can burn him now.’

Baron Friederick Hartog was an old man and the years had not been kind to him. Only wisps of hair clung to his scalp, his wrinkled skin sunken against his weary bones. His toothless mouth drooled from the corner where a stroke had paralysed his face and the eyes which stared out from deep with their sockets were heavy with melancholy and despair. The rich purple robe he wore seemed almost to smother him and press down upon his weakened frame with its weight. A page ran after him, carrying his ring and crown and other badges of rank and office. The old baron wheezed as he sank into his gilded chair at the head of the long table in the castle’s grand hall.

The arrival of the bounty hunter, and his harrowing escape from the wolf, had provoked the baron into holding a feast. Brunner suspected it was an excuse to hold the celebration, a futile effort on the old man’s part to escape from his problems, if only for a few hours.

Brunner found himself seated close to the baron, much to the chagrin of the courtiers and landed gentry who surrounded him. He suspected that, in the current crisis, the baron had more use, and more reason to entertain, the company of men such as himself than fawning hangers-on who could offer no solution to his troubles.

At the baron’s side, glowering at Brunner whenever his eyes strayed in the bounty hunter’s direction, was Dietrich. The baronet had tried to convince his father that even in their duress they did not need the services of a hired killer such as Brunner. Indeed, Dietrich had argued the subject with surprising vehemence until finally roared down by a diatribe that brought a fit of coughing from his father’s wasted body.

When he was not glowering at the bounty hunter or trying to soothe his father’s fears, Dietrich’s eyes would stray down the table and linger on a slender figure seated among the district’s aristocracy. A less observant watcher might have missed the coy glances shared between the baronet and the raven-haired beauty from the stone circle. She had discarded her thin robe and leaf mantle for a more sociable emerald gown and doeskin gloves. This, Brunner learned, was Frieda, the priestess of Rhya and the district’s spiritual mentor. Brunner had heard little about the worship of Rhya, her faith was suborned to that of Taal in less backward provinces. Only in Stirland did she still receive worship in her own right rather than as the wife of the nature god Taal. He wondered what manner of strictures the Old Faith had regarding its priestesses and how Mother Rhya might take one of her servants dallying with a baronet.

‘This damnable wolf!’ the baron cursed, spilling wine from his goblet as he slammed it angrily against the table. The cheery lute music of the minstrels died away and conversation around the table fell to a hushed whisper. The celebration had done nothing to snap the baron from his brooding thoughts and now he was giving voice to his outrage.

‘I can feel its damn fangs at my throat!’ Friederick said, closing his clawed hand about his neck. ‘It is bleeding me dry! The peasants are too frightened to work the fields, too terrified to tend the herds! My land is dying around me and there is no one to save it!’

‘We have try, great boyar,’ the words came from a dusky ruffian seated to Brunner’s right. He was a stocky, powerfully built man, bald but with bushy eyebrows and moustache. His clothes were the furs and leather of a colder clime, heavy bearskin boots and a furry goat-hide jacket. The stink of sweat and kvas had soaked into the garments so that even the smell of the feast could not mask them. This, Brunner understood, was Kazan, one of the Kislevite wolf hunters.

‘I have hunt the wolf in many land,’ Kazan continued, pausing to noisily slurp down a goblet of wine and snap his fingers at a servant to bring more. ‘I have the many pelt to show for my skill. One of my wolf, his hide sit in the Tsarina’s palace, and no lie!’ He tapped his chest. ‘When Kazan tell you this wolf, he is clever, then you know it is truth. But he will no get away from Kazan and Pujardov!’

Kazan reached his arm beside him, grabbing the shoulder of the man seated next to him. Pujardov was much younger than Kazan, his thick black hair tied back in a long scalplock, his face just starting to darken with beard. Like the elder Kislevite, he wore rude garments of hide and leather and around his neck was a crude necklace of bear claws, talons that looked to be sharper than daggers, even removed from their original owners.

‘Will that be before or after the crops fail!’ quipped one of the aristocrats. Kazan glared at the courtier, but the arrival of another goblet of wine distracted him from the object of his ire.

‘The wolf, very soon he is being mine,’ Kazan promised. ‘Pujardov saw sign of him only this night.’

The baron sneered at the boast. ‘Nurse that wine, Kazan. It is liable to be the last you take from my table.’ The old man scowled at the two wolf hunters. ‘So your son found sign of the wolf, did he?’ A crooked finger pointed at Brunner. ‘This man saw more than sign. He saw the beast itself! That is more than you Kislevite layabouts have done in six months!’

Dietrich closed his hands on his father’s shoulders, easing him back into his seat. ‘They have done better than the other hunters,’ he reminded his father. He stared directly into Brunner’s icy eyes. ‘The others were all killed by the wolf.’

Brunner set down the sliver of cormorant he had been eating. He stared back at Dietrich and smiled. ‘If it is a wolf,’ he said. He had kept certain things from Dietrich and his father, but the boasting of the Kislevites had made him think that perhaps he had made a mistake in doing so.

‘What you mean, “if it is wolf”? You no think Kazan know wolf when he see his tracks!’ The Kislevite grabbed the breast of Brunner’s tunic, pulling the bounty hunter to his feet. ‘You say that again!’

Brunner said nothing. Instead he buried a fist in the wolf hunter’s gut, doubling the man over, then brought his forearm smashing into Kazan’s neck, spilling him onto the floor. A kick to the head ensured the Kislevite would stay there. Brunner stabbed his finger into Pujardov’s face as the youth surged towards him, pointing straight between the boy’s eyes. The menacing gesture brought the young Kislevite short and he took a step back.

‘Enough of this!’ shouted Dietrich. ‘If you scum cannot conduct yourselves like civilised men, you can go take your supper in the kennels!’

Brunner shook his head and chuckled as he returned to his seat. A pair of servants dragged the unconscious Kazan away. Pujardov lingered for only a moment, then hurried after his father, pausing only to rip a bottle of wine from the hands of a valet.

‘At least it smells better now,’ the bounty hunter said, returning to the roast cormorant on his plate. Dietrich continued to glare at him, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by his father’s voice.

‘You say it is not a wolf, Kazan insists it is,’ Friederick said. ‘One of you must be wrong.’

‘Kazan is an experienced wolf hunter,’ Dietrich interrupted. ‘What does this… this assassin know about hunting wolves?’

‘It isn’t a wolf,’ Brunner repeated coldly. ‘Did you ever see a wolf that walked upon its hind legs or had hands to close around its prey? Has Kazan told you how a wolf can ignore lead bullets and steel bolts, how it can dance away unmarked after being struck with an axe?’

‘Then if it is not a wolf but some invulnerable monster, how did you escape?’ Dietrich asked, his voice thin and mocking.

For an answer, Brunner tossed a few burnt weeds onto the table. The dramatic gesture brought gasps from those closest to him and those further away craned their necks to see what he had produced. Frieda rounded the table and stepped over Kazan’s vacated seat to examine them.

‘Hawthorn,’ she pronounced, drawing away in revulsion. ‘A strange weapon to use against a wild animal. How did you think to burn hawthorn to drive it away?’

Brunner rubbed a hand through his close-cropped hair, scanning his audience, trying to judge their mettle. Any community so far from the niceties of civilisation was likely to be more pragmatic than pious. Whatever he said, if they thought he could help end their problem he would be safe enough.

‘I encountered an old woman in the forest,’ Brunner said. ‘It was she who gave me the weeds and told me how to use them.’

The reaction of the other listeners was nothing beside that of the baron. He straightened himself in his chair, leaning forward, gazing intently at Brunner.

‘The woman! How was she called?’ growled the baron. It was a demand, not a question.

‘Miranda,’ Brunner answered. ‘Mamma Miranda.’

The baron’s face became ashen. Trembling, he rose from his chair, then stumbled, relying upon his son to help lead him from the dining hall. Shocked silence followed his exit.

Brunner watched the noblemen leave, then looked over at Frieda. ‘I guess that means dinner’s over.’

As a valet showed Brunner to the room that had been prepared for him, he found himself suddenly face-to-face with the baron and his son. The old man was still visibly shaking, the sadness and defeat in his eyes even more pronounced.

‘You were not lying when you spoke at my table?’ the baron asked.

‘I don’t lie to people about to pay me five hundred crowns,’ Brunner answered, his words clipped with irritation.

The baron grabbed his hand, holding it tight in his withered claw. ‘You shall have a thousand, two thousand!’ The offer faded into a wracking cough. Dietrich tried to assist the baron, but the old man waved him back.

‘The witch!’ the baron continued. ‘Find her again. Tell her to lift this curse she has placed upon my lands! If she won’t,’ he paused, wondering if he dared voice the words. ‘If she won’t, kill her and bring her head back to me! Do this, and you shall have a fortune!’

Brunner remained impassive, detaching the baron’s fingers from his hand and brushing them aside. ‘Why not send a messenger to Wurtbad? You can have witch hunters here inside a week, and they will work much cheaper.’

The baron started to speak, then cast a nervous glance at his son and the valet. ‘I need her gone now!’ The authority drained out of his voice and his words became desperate, almost pleading. ‘You will do it for me!’

‘I’ll take it under serious consideration,’ Brunner answered, motioning for the valet to lead on. The servant hesitated, unsure if his master had finished speaking with his guest, but when the baron made no protest, he motioned for Brunner to follow him down the stone-walled corridor.

‘Two thousand crowns!’ the valet whistled once they were out of sight of the baron. ‘You could buy all of Wurtbad with that much money! Still, to go after a witch…’

Brunner interrupted the lad’s thoughts. ‘You know where the Kislevites sleep?’ he asked.

The valet blinked, confused by the abrupt question. ‘Yes, of course.’ He shivered as the bounty hunter took something from his belt and tossed it at him. Instinctively, the boy caught it, apprehension turning to joy when he found it to be a silver shilling.

‘You’ll have to earn that,’ Brunner warned him, causing the valet’s grin to soften. He reached into his belt again, removing a small pouch. He handed it to the boy. ‘I want you to grind that into their boots. They can’t see you doing it and once it’s done you can’t say anything about it.’

The boy gulped at the implied threat, but nodded his understanding.

‘One last thing,’ Brunner told him. ‘I want to know as soon as the Kislevites leave the castle tomorrow. There’s an extra shilling in it for you if I can still smell kvas at the gates.’

Brunner motioned for the valet to be off on his clandestine errand. He watched him race off, then turned and entered his room. It was not thoughts of witches and wolves that occupied him, it was the memory of Viktor’s body and the marks the wolf had left upon it. How very different from the marks on the dead wolf hunter’s body. Those wounds had looked like the sort of thing that might be left by a bear claw honed to razor-keenness.

Brunner strode across the courtyard of Castle Hartog, the chill of morning turning his breath to mist before him. He stepped into the stables. A young stable boy was sleeping just inside, nestled within a mound of hay. A kick roused the boy from his slumber. He blinked at the bounty hunter, eyes going wide with fright.

‘You’ve been here all night?’ he demanded. The youth nodded, too afraid to speak. ‘What did the Kislevites ask you to do to my horse?’

The boy shuddered, quickly scrambling to the pile of hay and digging in it for something. He swiftly turned back around, displaying a pair of cruel-looking triangular pieces of metal.

‘He asked me to put these in their hooves,’ the boy confessed. ‘But I didn’t do it! I swear I didn’t, no matter what they paid me!’ The lad’s face turned a sickly green. ‘I had a look in that barrel when we removed the tack from your packhorse. I wouldn’t do nothing to provoke you, as Rhya is my witness I wouldn’t!’

‘Well spoken,’ the bounty hunter’s chill voice answered. He watched as the boy wilted beneath his gaze. ‘A wise decision. Now I need you to fetch me a pig, the leaner the better, and a length of rope to use as a leash.’ He waved the boy away. ‘I’ll take care of saddling my own horse.’

The bounty hunter cast a strange sight as he left the castle. Mounted on the back of his charger Fiend, he was crouched low in the saddle, watching the pink and brown swine the stable boy had found for him as it tugged and strained on the end of its leash. He set the beast down. Instantly its nose was snuffling against the ground, and it uttered a sharp squeal. The pig strained at the end of its rope. Brunner chuckled grimly to himself. Farmers in Bretonnia would train hogs to hunt truffles and they held that the noses of their hogs were sharper than any hound. He was counting that the snouts of the Empire’s swine were no less keen. If there was one thing a pig enjoyed eating more than a truffle it was a snotling. The snotling dung he had the valet grind into the boots of the two Kislevites was something he doubted the slovenly wolf hunters would even notice, but to the pig, it was the scent of a most delicious supper.

Brunner let the eager pig lead the way. Wolf and witch would wait. First he would need to attend to his rivals. He had no intention of ending up like Otto and however many other hunters the treacherous Kazan and Pujardov had ambushed and killed.

For most of the morning, the boundless appetite of the pig guided Brunner through the winding paths of the forest. Even by day, there was a brooding intensity about the place, an air of lurking menace. The trees pressed in close about him and he found himself watching every shadow for signs of movement. He knew that Fiend would sense the wolf-beast long before he did, but he felt there was no reason not to be cautious just the same.

It was nearly noon before a sharp cry echoed through the forest. The bounty hunter was not surprised to find that the sound came from the direction the pig was leading him. He tied the end of the swine’s leash to a branch and pressed on ahead. It seemed he had been harsh belittling the skills of the Kislevites. In only a few hours they had managed something it seemed the baron had never been capable of. They had caught the witch.

The two wolf hunters were crouched in a small clearing, a little fire burning on the ground between them. Lying on the ground, trussed up like a Sigmarzeit goose, was the old hag Mamma Miranda. Her feet, thrust full in the flames, had blackened, blood oozing from the split skin. Pujardov, kneeling close to her head, kept pouring kvas down her mouth each time she seemed about to pass out, the burning spirit snapping her back into awareness.

‘It is so simple, little mama,’ Kazan scolded. ‘All you do is lift curse. I tell Lord Dietrich, Pujardov pulls your feet from fire and everyone happy.’ The Kislevite stabbed a curved dagger into the soil, snorting with agitation. ‘Why you so stubborn? You like to hurt? That is what make you glad?’ He stood and drew an ugly-looking axe from his belt. ‘It is your choice, little mama,’ he sighed. ‘Pujardov, hold out her hand. I start with thumb and work the way around.’

So intent were they on the vicious torture that the first the two wolf hunters were aware of Brunner’s presence was when Fiend bolted out from the brush. The charger slammed into the stunned Kazan, knocking the man into the fire. He squealed and shrieked as he rolled across the ground, trying to douse his smoking garments. Pujardov rushed at Brunner, a spiked club in his hand. Brunner swung Fiend around, a kick of the charger’s hoof sending the hunter’s furred cap flying into the bushes and throwing the man himself to the ground.

‘I kill you!’ Kazan snarled, rising to his feet, the axe still clenched in his fists. ‘I kill you, you son of…’

Brunner’s pistol barked and Kazan’s threat died in a gargle of blood. The bounty killer holstered the spent weapon and dropped down from the saddle. Pujardov groaned as Brunner strode past the prone Kislevite. Brunner reached down, grabbed hold of the youth’s scalplock and slammed his face into the ground until he stopped moving.

Brunner rose from the unconscious wolf hunter and walked to the abused wreck of the old woman. Fire, it seemed, had not been the first motivational tool the two Kislevites had used on her.

Miranda’s eyes fluttered, but she forced them to focus on the bounty hunter as he loomed over her. A vindictive smile spread across her face. ‘So you took Mamma Miranda’s advice,’ she cackled, oblivious to the trickle of blood streaming from her mouth as she spoke.

‘The baron is paying me two thousand crowns to end your curse,’ Brunner told her. ‘Whether you live or die doesn’t interest him so long as the curse is lifted.’

The witch laughed, spitting gore into the grass. ‘So he remembers me, does he? As well he should. It’s not every man bold enough to take the virtue of a priestess.’ A sly grin worked its way through her pain. ‘Though you might say it is a trait of the Hartogs!’

‘The curse, witch!’ Brunner growled. He was not certain what kind of magic there was in the old woman, but he did know what kind of damage had been done to her. Whatever she would do, she did not have long to do it.

‘The curse!’ Miranda cackled. ‘Oh yes, it will survive old Mamma Miranda, have no fear. There’s some things it is easy to invoke than send away.’ She looked sternly into Brunner’s eyes. ‘Take no part in it!’ she hissed. ‘My Masters will not forgive me if you die because of my magic and death is no refuge from Their wrath!’

‘Then end your enchantment!’ Brunner said.

‘You don’t understand what I’ve done,’ the witch answered. ‘What is done can’t be taken back! “Even the noble heart, that fears not Old Night, may be cursed and damned, by the werekin’s bite!” It was the blood of the werekin I mixed into the philtre, to damn and destroy the baron’s preening son!’

Brunner found himself recoiling from the hag’s slobbering words. The werekin, men that wore the shape of beasts at the full of Morrslieb, things so terrible that most insisted they were nothing more than fable and traveller’s tale. He remembered the strange paws of the wolf and the terrible intelligence in its strange eyes. Was that what the witch had summoned to work her revenge?

Miranda was laughing again, forcing herself onto her elbows. ‘End the enchantment you say?’ Blood dribbled down her chin as she laughed. ‘Oh, aye, that I can do, and won’t the baron and his son be so happy when it is done!’ Brunner thought the words would be her last, as the ravaged body shuddered in a spasm of coughing. But the witch had strength enough to point at the curved dagger Kazan had stabbed into the ground.

‘There is your key, Brunner of Drakenberg!’ she hissed. ‘Cut the beast but once with that blade and the enchantment will be broken! Aye, the enchantment will be broken!’ Another fit of laughter gripped her, but this time there was no strength to sustain the toll it took from her body. She collapsed, her last breath wheezing from her bloodied lips.

Brunner bent to the earth and retrieved the dagger from the ground. He slid it beneath his belt and moved on to the chore of binding Pujardov. The wolf hunter regained awareness just as he was finishing the labour. Pujardov struggled against his bonds, but found himself trussed tightly to the trunk of a fir tree.

‘Save your energy,’ Brunner advised Pujardov as he stepped away. ‘You’ll need it.’

Pujardov hurled curses at the bounty hunter, then gave a wail of horror as he saw his father’s body strewn along the ground. ‘You killed my father!’

Brunner looked up from reloading his pistol. ‘Be thankful I need live bait to lure the wolf to me, or you’d have gotten the same,’ he warned.

Brunner looked at the position of Mannslieb and judged that another hour had passed. He raised his pistol into the air and fired. The report echoed through the forest. He was playing a dangerous game, he knew, but he was trusting that he had guessed the lay of the land correctly. Coiled in the branches of a big oak at the edge of the clearing, the bounty hunter looked down at the bait tethered to the trunk below.

Pujardov glared up at him. ‘This won’t work, murder swine! The wolf won’t come where it hears hunters!’

Brunner poured powder down the barrel of the pistol. ‘If it was a wolf, you’d be right. But this beast, I think, likes to fight. That is why Dietrich paid you and your father to kill all the other hunters and make it look like the beast’s work.’ Pujardov’s sullen silence was all the confirmation he needed. ‘He pays you to make sure no one hurts the beast.’

‘Clever,’ a sharp voice snarled from the shadows. Brunner swung around, firing his pistol at the voice. He swore as he heard the round smash against a tree.

‘No more of that!’ Dietrich growled, stepping into the clearing, his pistol pointed at Brunner. The bounty hunter was perched in the tree above Pujardov, a vantage point that allowed him to watch almost every approach to the clearing and his bait. ‘Unless you want to die where you stand!’

‘You won’t kill me,’ Brunner told him. ‘You can’t afford to now.’

A tinge of doubt crept into Dietrich’s hate-filled eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’ He glanced at Pujardov, a terrible suspicion growing in his mind.

‘Your assassins didn’t get anything out of the witch before she died,’ Brunner said. ‘But I heard a few things. Something about a philtre and how to break an enchantment.’

Dietrich’s body trembled with rage. ‘Tell me what she said!’ he ordered.

‘No,’ Brunner answered. ‘We bargain for that. Throw away your pistol.’

Indecision crawled across the baronet’s face, his anger warring against his fear. It was the fear that finally won out. ‘Throw away yours first,’ he said, gesturing at Brunner’s crossbow pistols. The bounty hunter nodded, carefully unfastening the weapons and letting them fall to the ground. With a sour expression, Dietrich threw his own weapon away.

The instant the threat of the pistol was gone, Brunner dropped from the tree, using Pujardov’s body to cushion the fall. The Kislevite’s livid curses went unnoticed as the bounty hunter rolled across the ground. As he straightened, a slender throwing knife flew from his hand. The blade slashed into Dietrich’s arm, biting deep into his noble flesh.

The baronet recovered from his surprise almost too quickly for Brunner. The jewelled sword was in his hand a moment before the heavy falchion of the bounty killer came smashing down. Instead of collapsing the noble’s skull, the blade only grazed his shoulder. Dietrich paled at the sight of his own blood on Brunner’s sword.

‘Surely the man who hunts wolves with neither spear nor bow isn’t afraid of a little blood,’ Brunner snapped. ‘Because I assure you, there is more where that came from!’

The bounty hunter ripped his falchion free from Dietrich’s parrying steel, nearly breaking the slender blade of his enemy in the manoeuvre. He swung the falchion at the nobleman’s face, at the same time bringing his boot cracking into his shin. The unexpected move staggered the baronet. Brunner moved in for the kill.

The deathblow never struck. From the darkness, something black and savage exploded, smashing into the bounty hunter with the force of a lightning bolt. Brunner was knocked sprawling. He felt fangs scrape against his helm as he rolled on the ground, felt claws catch in his armour. The bounty hunter smashed a fist into the wolf-like face of his attacker, then brought the iron pommel of his falchion crushing down on one of its hand-like paws.

The wolf yelped more from surprise than pain, but its cry was picked up by the wounded Dietrich.

‘Don’t dare strike her, you scum!’ he raged. ‘Don’t you dare touch my Frieda!’

As it heard the name, the wolf-beast disentangled itself from Brunner. With a quick, loping trot, it ran to the wounded nobleman. Dietrich’s vengeful advance was halted in a piteous display of affection as the wolf nuzzled its face against his body, licking timidly at his wounds. The baronet’s hand stroked the wolf’s pelt, not with the idle touch of man and beast, but the adoring caress of lovers.

‘She cheated me!’ Dietrich raged. ‘The witch cheated me. She said the philtre would make Frieda love me despite her vows to the goddess. She said nothing about… about… this!’ He turned tear-rimmed eyes to the she-wolf. ‘He won’t hurt you, my love! None of them will ever hurt you!’

Brunner staggered to his feet, another throwing knife in his hand. The wolf-beast turned, snarling at him. Dietrich glared at the bounty hunter, some trace of reason overcoming his concern for his lover.

‘You can’t hurt her,’ he smiled. ‘When she is like this, no one can. So what does your knife matter!’

‘It’s not for her!’ Brunner growled back. In a fluid motion, he sent the knife whistling through the air and slamming into the nobleman’s injured shoulder. Dietrich screamed in pain, his agony exciting the wolf-beast’s adoring fury. The monster lunged at Brunner, covering the clearing in a single bound.

The bounty hunter was ready for her, the witch’s curved dagger slashing through the black pelt. The she-wolf wailed as the blade struck her, blood bubbling from the wound. Brunner leapt back as the beast clawed at him. He readied himself for another attack, then hesitated as he saw the wolf-beast’s body shudder. He remembered what Miranda had told him about breaking the enchantment.

If he expected the wolf to change back into a woman, however, he was disappointed. It was still the lupine face of a beast that regarded him when the convulsions passed and the wolf lifted herself from the ground. The only change that had come upon it were the eyes. No longer blazing red, they were a soft blue, filled with horror and disgust and shame. Filled with so many things, but not a trace of love.

‘Frieda!’ Dietrich screamed, rushing to the fallen wolf.

Again the wolf-beast reacted to hearing her name. Understanding shone in her eyes. She knew all that had been done to her and why. She also knew who had forced this nightmare upon her.

With a snarl that was more than that of an animal, the she-wolf leapt upon Dietrich, her fangs closing about his throat. Savagely she worried at the nobleman’s flesh, scattering his blue blood across the clearing. The baronet shrieked, wailing in agony that was more than physical. His hand closed about the heft of a jewelled dagger and with a moan of utter despair, he drew the blade and sank it into his lover’s side.

Man and beast slumped to the ground, each quivering as death crept into their limbs. Dietrich struggled to touch his hand to the she-wolf’s head, the wolf struggling just as hard to pull away from his noxious touch. In the end, it was the beast who won and an almost human smile spread across its muzzle as it saw the baronet’s hand slump into the grass just out of reach of her.

Brunner dropped to the ground, watching through the night. If tradition was right, then the carcass of a werekin would change back into its human shape with the dawn. It was a terrible thing to consider, the only thing the body of a dead priestess would earn him would be a noose. Still, he did not want to risk the legends being right. After all, the dagger Dietrich had stabbed into the beast had been a silvered one, and silver was the only metal that could bring harm to a werekin.

‘You’ve got your beast!’ snarled Pujardov, struggling against his bonds. ‘Untie me!’

The bounty hunter shook his head, then a grim smile started to form. What was it the old witch had said? The bite of the werekin would make a courageous man into a werekin? If so, then it would certainly do the same to a murderous Kislevite slug. Brunner walked towards the hunter, releasing him from the tree but leaving his hands tied. He shoved Pujardov towards the body of the wolf-beast. The hunter cringed away from the carcass in mortal terror, but another shove from Brunner pitched him to the ground beside it.

‘You’ll die for this! And for what you did to my father!’ Pujardov threatened.

Brunner ignored the curses raging off the Kislevite’s tongue, instead seizing the man’s arm and shoving it between the gaping jaws of the wolf. Eyes wide with horror, Pujardov tried to squirm away as Brunner pushed the jaws of the dead beast close, sinking their sharp fangs into the Kislevite’s flesh.

A dead priestess was worth nothing, but a live monster, that would be worth a considerable reward, enough to warrant waiting at the castle until the next time Morrslieb was full. When the baron watched Pujardov change, whatever the Kislevite tried to tell him would be forgotten.

On the ground beside him, Pujardov wailed in agony, horrified at what the bounty hunter had done to him.

Brunner shook his head. ‘What are you crying about? You would have made a lousy orphan anyway.’

CHAPTER THREE

THE DOOM OF GNASHRAK

Prowling the streets of Miragliano one day, in search of an elusive merchant who had a supply of Arabyan inks at a suspiciously low price, I found myself unexpectedly staring into the black steel face of Brunner’s helmet. I was surprised at our sudden meeting; it had been some months since our last conversation. The bounty hunter nodded, relaxing the grip his hand had assumed on the hilt of his sword as he saw my own unarmed condition. I believe that the bounty hunter had a certain fondness for me, but I doubt if he trusted anyone.

I greeted Brunner warmly, happy indeed to have stumbled upon him, thoughts of stolen ink at once banished from my head. My initial recounting of the man’s exploits had proven extremely popular. Indeed, I was still living off some of the proceeds the pamphlet had won me, and I was eager to repeat my past success. I wasted no time in unleashing a barrage of questions, asking him where he had gone these past months, what feats of bravery (and avarice, though I kept that thought firmly to myself) he had accomplished. Brunner batted away my questions, saying that the street was no place to talk. He began to walk away, and as he did so, I noticed the stiff manner in which he moved and the fact that some pieces of his armour appeared to be new, as though the old ones had required replacements. The thought occurred to me that perhaps his lengthy absence had not been due to some long and difficult string of hunts, but because this grim and forbidding man had actually encountered a foe who was his equal. Perhaps he had spent these long months recovering from injuries received in battle?

Thrilled by the prospect of such a tale, I hurried after him, a feat made easy by the slowed nature of his stride. As I had half-expected, Brunner’s path led me to the Black Boar. I found the bounty hunter seated, as usual, at one of the rear tables, a tankard of beer set before him. I noticed a second tankard opposite him and quietly chastised myself for being so foolish as to think that my contact had not seen me dogging his tracks.

I took the unspoken invitation, and seated myself at his table. I sipped at my beer a moment, noting the dents and scratches on his armour, and observing once more the stiff, awkward movements of his left arm as he lifted the cup to his mouth. I inquired as to what mishap had discomfited Brunner so, not daring to suggest that he had fallen prey to injury or illness.

The bounty hunter sipped at his beer for a moment then set his tankard down, fixing me with cold blue eyes. In a low voice that was kindred to the sound of a raven gliding toward a gallows, he asked me if I had ever hunted orcs…

Smoke billowed from the blazing rubble, fingers of flame clutching at the darkening, overcast sky. Screams and sounds of slaughter rose into the darkness, as if to welcome the advent of night. Beside the inferno that had moments before been a barn, a massive, brutish shape loomed, glaring at the burning building.

The dancing flames picked out details of the figure. The shape belonged to no human body. The legs were short, bandy, almost bowed. The arms were long, much longer than a man’s: more like the limbs of the fabled apes of the South Lands and rippling with such a quantity of muscle that even the strongest man could not match. The shoulders were broad, nearly four feet in breadth. The head jutted forward from the shoulders, supported by a thick stump of a neck. Its skull was thick, the forehead sloping away so quickly from the creature’s face as to be almost nonexistent. Sharp, wolf-like ears adorned the sides of the head. One of them was notched and sported dozens of steel and brass rings, blades of rusting metal dangling from each loop.

The face of the beast was dominated by a massive maw, the lower jaw of the creature’s mouth jutting forward, allowing its tusk-like fangs to stab past its upper lips and cheeks. Each of the tusks was tipped by a cap of steel pinned into the living ivory of the fangs. The tips of the two longest fangs rested against the edge of the deep-set eye sockets that sank into the creature’s skull from either side of its small, smashed, snout-like nose. Beady red eyes glowered from the shadowed pits of the creature’s face, offsetting the dark green hue of its leathery, weathered hide.

The monster had come from the impenetrable depths of the mountains in the south known as the Vaults, and wore the tale of his travels upon his grotesque body. Armour encased his form, armour ripped from the bodies of butchered foes. The shoulder plates that protected his upper arms had been beaten from the helmets of human knights, the chainmail hauberk that dripped about his chest and hung below his waist had once graced an ogre mercenary, the steel leggings had been cobbled together from the greaves of a dozen militiamen who had been unfortunate enough to discover the beings that had been preying upon their mountain village’s cattle.

The piecemeal armour was held together by numerous leather straps and bits of wire, and it creaked and groaned as the orc moved. But the blade held in his ham-like fist was no looted and violated craftwork of man. The work of his own people’s brutish smiths, it was a massive, cleaver-like blade, its edge nearly three and a half feet in length, honed to a dull sharpness that would punch through bone and steel without notching the blade. A thick, round stump of steel formed a crude handle for the orc’s fist to grip at the bottom of the blade. A sideshow strongman would have been hard pressed to even lift the mass of steel. The orc lifted it above his head in one hand without even a grunt of effort from his lungs. The cleaver was like the orc who wielded it – and whose people had crafted it – massive, monstrous, ugly and murderous.

The orc’s mouth gaped open, exposing bits of rotting meat caught between the fangs. Its voice roared over the screams, over the crackle of the flames. It was like the boom of a cannon, and carried with it the grating harshness of a knife scraping bone. The slobbering, brutal tones sounded like shredding metal. The monster was howling to his minions in the harsh Orrakh tongue.

The orcs had fallen upon the village like one of the Grey Mountains’ capricious storms: suddenly, without warning, and utterly devastating. The villagers, peasant farmers and a few craftsmen, had fallen before the orcs like wheat before the scythe, and the greenskin marauders had reaped that harvest in a frenzy of murder and butchery. The terrified Bretonnians had mounted no form of defence. They had run before the orcs, fleeing for their lives rather than standing to fight. The sight of their human adversaries fleeing had driven the raiders into an even more berserk rage. They had come for loot and slaughter, it was true, but above all else, they had come for battle. Now, with the entire hamlet in flames, the last survivors cowered within the quickly burning barn.

Gnashrak turned his attention toward the barn as the wooden door opened. A coughing man emerged, thick black smoke billowing from behind him. Several soot-stained, sobbing faces appeared in the doorway behind him, gasping for fresh air.

Gnashrak’s beady red eyes studied the man. He was a burly sort for a human, most likely the protector of this nest of cattle. A simple leather contrivance hung about his neck and was tied to his knees. The man held a large hammer in his hands, but one look told Gnashrak that it was a tool, not a weapon. The orc’s gruesome face twisted, as though he had eaten something distasteful. He spat a blob of phlegm as if to remove a foulness from his mouth. Still, the warboss hefted his huge blade and shambled forward.

Gnashrak growled at the leather-aproned human. The man hesitated, glancing back at the burning barn. Then he walked forward. He shifted his grip on the hammer, his knuckles turning white as he firmed his grasp. The man spread his legs apart, adopting a combat stance. It had been long years since he had raised a weapon against bandit raiders, but the blacksmith was no coward. He fought down the fear in his breast, staring at the mob of greenskinned monsters with his best defiant glare. Gnashrak and his followers laughed at the pathetic sight. The blacksmith rushed at them, hate overcoming his fear as their grunting laughter washed over him. Gnashrak’s lips twisted into a parody of a smile.

The orc warboss loped forward, the brutal length of his cleaver held straight up beside him. Thick lines of foamy spittle trickled from the corners of the fiend’s mouth as he anticipated the coming fray. The blacksmith was the first man in the entire village to turn and fight him, and Gnashrak intended to savour the moment.

‘Orc scum!’ the man screamed in a voice filled more with terror than rage. He leapt forward, bringing the hammer down in a smashing blow. The orc leader stepped back, turning his body, and letting the clumsy blow strike the armour of his shoulder guard. Gnashrak glared at the man. The orc’s jaws dropped to their full cavernous extent and a deep, rumbling roar issued from its bellows-like lungs. The blacksmith cringed, holding the hammer across his chest, as though to make a barrier between himself and the greenskin marauder.

Gnashrak lifted his massive blade and brought the weapon crashing down. The crude cleaver snapped the steel hammer like a twig, and sliced into the flesh of the man cowering behind the crude weapon, crunching through his ribcage and severing him crosswise from shoulder to waist. Blood exploded from the wound that slid apart, the dismembered halves slipping into the dirt. The faces at the doorway of the burning barn wailed in horror. Gnashrak paused to hawk a glob of phlegm on the dead body. He turned and roared at his followers.

The orcs rushed forward, not using their weapons to kill, but to herd the survivors back into the burning barn. Gnashrak watched his mob for a moment, then craned his bull neck about, casting a last disgusted look at the mutilated blacksmith. He turned his eyes from the body, towards the orcs herding the cowering survivors back into the blazing barn, with the points of spears. The screams brought a slight smile to Gnashrak’s face, but it was not enough. As the clouds at last released the slightest of drizzles, the orc nodded to himself.

Somewhere to the north, he would find the knights who owned the sorry cattle he and his mob had claimed. Then there would be a slaughter worthy of an orc, a proper fight to make the name of Gnashrak Headkrusher. The peasants thought the harvest was past, but the orc would teach them and their masters differently. There was a second harvest coming. A harvest reaped not with sickles, but with swords.

Opening his massive maw once more, Gnashrak voiced his bestial howl of ambition into the falling night.

The castle of the Marquis de Galfort loomed over the flat meadowlands. Tall towers thrust upward from every corner of the curtain wall, while still taller pillars of stone rose from the keep. From the height of the tallest tower, the marquis could look down upon his entire domain, even to the distant green apparition on the horizon that marked the easternmost limit of his realm, the edge of the faerie-haunted wood of Loren. He could see every farm, every village, every little hovel the peasants of his land called home.

It was a sight the aged marquis never tired of: looking down upon his land, his possessions, knowing that they were his, his by decree of Bretonnia’s king and the grace of the Lady, Bretonnia’s patron deity. He would drink in the blue of the sky, the gold of the fields, the green of the meadows long into the afternoon. Then the sun would begin its downward descent and the marquis would return to his chambers within the castle and attend to such duties as were necessary to manage his domain and could not be delegated to his wife or his steward.

But this morning, the view had been spoiled, befouled by a thick stream of black smoke rising from the south, in the direction of the distant mountains. This was where a few hamlets stood, dwellings for the rugged peasant miners who clawed salt from the slopes of the Vaults and helped de Galfort’s domain prosper. Later in the day, the wasted, worn-out form of a peasant was brought to the castle, discovered by one of de Galfort’s game wardens wandering through the forest. Yet this sorry, terrified creature was no poacher and the tale he told the marquis turned his blood to ice. Not since the time of his own grandfather had the domain of the de Galforts been set upon by orcs. When last the marauders had come, it had taken two generations to repair the damage.

Now the aged Marquis de Galfort sat in his throne room, deep in disturbed thoughts. He had ordered messengers to be sent at once to the neighbouring counts, barons and dukes, letting them know of this peril that had come upon his domain and threatened them all. There was no question that all were at risk, for orcs respect no boundaries, and it would not matter to them if the village they plundered belonged to de Galfort or some other. No, his neighbours would react as decent Bretonnian nobles, and would send a company of knights and such armsmen as they might muster to augment de Galfort’s own forces and hunt the orcs down. But it would take time, much time, for the aid to arrive. And the orcs would be free to loot and despoil until then. Unless the marquis were to act on his own, without the support of his neighbours.

The marquis looked up from his chair and stared down into the eager young face of his son, Etienne, and wondered if he had ever borne such inexperience and naiveté in his own youth.

The boy had pleaded with him all morning, ever since the tale of orcs and slaughter had been related, to release to him the household knights, to let him ride down these monsters and make them learn the folly of trespassing upon lands protected by the de Galfort name.

The marquis’s observation that the peasant had no idea how many orcs were in this raiding party, that an entire army of the greenskinned monsters might have been vomited from the mountains, had done nothing to dim the boy’s enthusiasm. He was young, not yet learned in the ways of war; the only blood he had ever shed was that of wolves, wild cats and bandits. He reckoned this to be a similar task, perhaps a bit nobler, putting more faith in the favours of the Lady and good Bretonnian steel than he did in the strength of monsters he only knew from legend and travellers’ tales.

Truth to tell, it had been a long time since any in de Galfort’s domain had laid eyes upon an orc. Even the marquis himself had only seen stuffed specimens in the castle of the Duc de Vilifere – never a living, breathing greenskin. And the marquis was an old enough hunter and soldier to know that it is folly to pursue a foe, beast or man, whom you know nothing of.

A servant entered, bowing low before the two noblemen and hastened toward the seated marquis.

The marquis raised a thin hand, the fur-trimmed cuff of his voluminous robe falling away, and gestured for the servant to speak.

‘By your leave, my lord,’ the servant said, his voice low, his eyes downcast. ‘I felt that you would like to be informed that the outlander is making ready to depart.’

The marquis rose from his chair, an excited light blazing in his eyes. His wrinkled skin cracked into a smile. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Why did I not think of it before?’ He fixed his gaze on the servant. ‘Hasten to the gate and inform Sir Doneval that the outlander is not to be allowed to leave.’ A sly look entered the marquis’s eyes. ‘Tell him to bring the bounty hunter to me.’

The marquis stroked the scraggly moustache that spread from the thick grey hairs of his nostrils to the corners of his chin. It was a nervous habit, a peculiarity of temperament that afflicted him whenever he was discomfited. Normally, it only struck him at balls and masquerades and other such public functions of pomp and pageantry. But there was something decidedly unsettling about the man who stood before him, his face unreadable behind the steel mask of the black helm he had not doffed upon entering the presence of the marquis, as custom demanded. Nor had he bowed, as had the armoured bulk of Sir Doneval, who was now crouched upon one knee.

But the marquis had expected such disregard for his station from the man. Had he not behaved so the previous day? Had he not strode to the marquis’s throne with such arrogance that he might have been the Emperor himself? Had he shown any consideration for the delicate sensibilities of the women of the court when he had presented the marquis with the grisly object that had brought him to de Galfort’s domain?

No, it was not the contempt for nobility which the bounty hunter showed that unsettled the marquis. There was an aura about the man, something which the aged marquis, with one foot in Morr’s domain already, could see with his tired old eyes. It was as if an air of dread hung about the man like a shroud, a miasma of blood and death.

The marquis had not shied from the sword in his younger years, and he had known knights who had been as steeped in blood as any Sartosan corsair or Norse reaver. But there had been reasons for the lives they took, a cause that ennobled their deeds, a chivalry that governed their actions. There was no such honour about the bounty hunter. Though he walked with death, like a comrade in arms, he did not respect it. Death was nothing more than a commodity to him, a ware to be traded at market.

‘I understood our business to be at an end,’ the bounty hunter rasped icily. Beside him, Sir Doneval tensed, one hand dropping to the pommel of his sword. The bounty hunter let his own gloved hand caress the butt of the pistol nestled against his belly.

‘There is another service I would ask of you,’ the marquis said, choosing to ignore the bounty hunter’s words. ‘I shall pay you twice what you collected for Lorca the Estalian and his brigands.’

Brunner stared up at the seated noble. Silence lingered for so long that it seemed to become an almost tangible thing. At last he nodded his head, the gloved hand adopting a slightly more casual position on the butt of the pistol. ‘You have my interest,’ Brunner said at last. ‘Who do you want me to kill?’

‘Not who, but what,’ the marquis corrected. The bounty hunter’s eyes narrowed behind his visor, though from suspicion or interest, the noble could not be sure. ‘Yesterday, a band of orcs invaded my land, torched one of my villages, and murdered my peasants. I want you to track them down.’

‘I’ve fought orcs before,’ Brunner replied. ‘Their raiding parties come in many sizes. A horde numbers thousands and a warband consists of a single bull. I have no desire to trade swords with either.’ The bounty hunter touched a finger to the brim of his helm, turning on his heel to leave.

‘I do not ask you to kill them yourself,’ the marquis hastened to say, hoping to keep the killer from leaving. He wondered whether his men would be able to detain him. Fortunately the bounty hunter stopped and faced him once more. ‘I ask only that you lead my son and a company of my finest knights to these brutes.’

‘And if they number more than your men can handle?’ Brunner asked pointedly. The kneeling Sir Doneval bit down the protest welling up in his massive chest.

‘I pay you only to track these monsters, not to fight them. If they are more than the men I send with you and my son can handle, you will return here, to await the reinforcements I have requested from the neighbouring domains.’

‘And who shall make the decision as to how many orcs are too many?’ Brunner asked, his sharp tone suggesting that he already knew the answer before it was given.

‘My son shall be in command, Brunner,’ the marquis replied, refusing to be intimidated in his own castle. ‘You shall defer to him in all matters of command.’

Brunner stood still for a moment, and the Marquis de Galfort wondered if he would refuse the task. But at last the bounty hunter nodded his armoured head. ‘Very well, I agree to the terms. But it will be three times what you paid me for Lorca. More if I have cause to use my sword.’ The bounty hunter fixed the marquis with a penetrating gaze. ‘With orcs, one is never sure who is the hunter and who the hunted.’

The company of horsemen rode from the yawning maw of the castle gate, the ponderous weight of armoured knight and barded warhorse causing the timbers of the drawbridge to shudder and creak. Fifty of the Marquis de Galfort’s knights and their lightly armoured squires had been delegated to accompany Etienne de Galfort and the foreign bounty hunter. The young de Galfort was certain that it was too many noble men to dispatch upon so rude a quest, positive that a dozen knights would be more than an equal for any brutish adversary. Brunner had refrained from commenting on the boy’s enthusiasm.

‘The thin column of smoke there on the horizon,’ Sir Doneval pointed a steel-clothed finger toward the south. Brunner followed the knight’s gesture. ‘That was the hamlet of Villiers.’

The bounty hunter nodded. ‘What is the closest habitation to Villiers?’ the icy voice asked.

‘Of what concern is that?’ interrupted Etienne de Galfort. The visor of his helm had been lifted, exposing his smooth-featured, handsome face, and an eager gleam in his eyes. He did not flinch as the bounty hunter turned in his saddle and fixed him with a cold stare.

‘The orcs will head for the next closest village,’ Brunner explained. ‘With our horses, we should be able to engage them before they reach their destination.’

‘Such is your view on the situation,’ objected Etienne. ‘But what if the orcs do not proceed as you say? We shall have wasted our time, and worn out our steeds in pursuit of phantoms.’

‘At least we would be able to warn the peasants,’ Sir Doneval said. ‘They should be able to retreat back to the safety of your father’s castle.’

‘And shall we ride across the whole domain and warn every little hovel to pack its belongings and fly to the castle?’ Etienne de Galfort responded, shaking his head. ‘We would be weeks rounding up every miner, woodsman and shepherd.’ The young nobleman clenched his mailed fist. ‘No, we serve them best by running these monsters to ground before they can cause further harm.’

Brunner leaned forward, the leather of his saddle creaking, the blue eyes behind the visor glaring at Etienne. ‘And how do you propose to accomplish this feat?’

‘We shall ride to the hamlet of Villiers,’ replied Etienne. ‘There you shall do what my father is paying you to do. You shall pick up the trail of the orcs and follow their tracks back to their lair.’ The nobleman snorted with contempt. ‘Then you will be free to pull back as we attend to the monsters.’

Brunner spat into the dust of the road. ‘These are orcs on the march,’ he explained. ‘They have no lair. They sleep only when fatigue overpowers them, and lie where they fall. They can march for days without rest, and their wind will carry them longer than even the best of your horses. If you try to wear them down, they will wear you down, and fall upon you when you are tired, and most in need of rest. No, it is better to anticipate them, to lie in wait for them.’

‘I am in command here,’ Etienne snapped. ‘We ride for Villiers, and you will find the trail these orcs have taken. That is an order. This is a hunt, bounty killer, not some Tilean pirate prince’s game of skulk and dagger. I think you will find these monsters much less capable of matching Bretonnian vigour than you imagine.’

So saying, Etienne reined his steed about and set it galloping down the southward spur of the track. The other knights and their squires followed. With a last, surly look at the castle and the aged marquis who had impressed him into accepting this task, Brunner turned Fiend, his own bay, about and rode after the line of Bretonnians.

Old Marcel whistled a tune as he made his way down the rocky terrain, back toward the little mining camp. The heavy wicker basket of salt rocks was lashed to his back, but it was a weight the miner had borne many times, and he no longer even felt the burden except when it was no longer there. The Bretonnian thought about the meal his wife was preparing for him: the small fowl his young son had claimed with his bow the day before would make good eating after boiling over a small flame for the day.

The miner suddenly pitched to the ground, misjudging his step. Marcel crashed onto his belly, skinning his knee on the loose stones, the rocks of salt spilling from his pack. He gave voice to a curse as he crawled toward the nearest of the crystals. But a deep, rumbling sound froze him in place. He turned his face to see what could utter such a harsh, unpleasant sound.

Beady red eyes gleamed back at the man from a scarred visage of fangs and leathery green skin. The orc laughed again. It had not been a misstep that had tripped the old Bretonnian but a shove from the orc’s massive paw. Marcel began to crawl away from the hulking monster, noting with alarm the massive axe gripped in its other paw. The monster watched the man retreat. Marcel could see amusement fade from the greenskin’s eyes, and a cold look of death creep in. The orc uttered a low snarl and raised the huge axe, taking a step towards the old miner.

The column of armoured men was silent as it emerged from the tree-lined trail that led to the smouldering remains of the tiny village. They had ridden hard from the desolation that had been the hamlet of Villiers. It was shortly after the knights had arrived at the site of the earlier massacre that a squire had spied the plume of smoke rising from the east. At once, the horsemen had set out at a gallop along the narrow track that slithered its way through the trees and grassy fields toward the looming rocky slopes of the mountains.

Etienne de Galfort stared up at the severed head that watched the knights emerge from the wood. It was a grisly thing, the face nearly cleft in half by a gruesome cut that sank deep into the bone of the skull, the flesh darkened by flame. It had been spitted upon a crude spear, from which other ghastly talismans dangled, and swayed in the breeze from the smouldering remains of a large bonfire. The young nobleman’s expression was unreadable as he considered the hideous object. He raised a mailed hand to his face, and motioned with his other for a squire to come forward and bury the vile totem.

It was a repetition of the scene they had found at Villiers: every building put to the torch. Butchered bodies lay strewn about the devastation. At the centre of each carnage, a great fire had been built from wood and debris ransacked from the dwellings, and before each fire had been placed a gory talisman of limbs and skulls.

Etienne looked at the hulking figure of Sir Doneval beside him, the older knight’s face completely hidden within the great helm he wore. Then he cast a guilty glance at the bounty hunter. Brunner had dismounted and was examining the footprints exactly as he had done at Villiers.

The footprints were all inhuman. They were sunk to a depth even a fully armoured knight’s weight did not manage. The feet were broader and shorter than human feet, so that even the smallest betokened an immense size. Some of the feet were shod, others were bare. Brunner had informed Etienne that there had been at least twenty-five individual orcs at Villiers, based upon the prints. Now he rose from a cursory examination and faced the nobleman.

‘This was the same mob,’ the bounty hunter declared. ‘No question. I have both three-toe and the one with the clubbed foot here. There can’t be two orcs with feet like that rampaging about in your father’s domain.’

Etienne sighed loudly. He looked away from the bounty hunter, staring about the clearing. The lightly armoured squires had spread out, their bows held at the ready, their keen eyes scanning the trees. The knights were moving their steeds through the ruins, examining the handiwork of the orcs. The sight added fire to the outrage boiling in their hearts. Finally, Etienne turned towards Brunner.

‘You were right,’ he said. ‘We should have come here first. This is my fault.’

Brunner stared back. ‘We might have saved these people, but the orcs would have only hit someplace else.’ The bounty hunter noted the confused look entering Etienne’s eyes. He hastened to explain. ‘You have to understand something about orcs. It is true they live for plunder and massacre. But above all else, they lust after battle. These totems, those bonfires, they are a challenge.’

‘But if they want to fight, why won’t they face us?’ Etienne demanded, his knightly pride insulted by the thought of such creatures questioning his courage.

‘Because whatever bull is leading this mob is no fool,’ Brunner said, spitting into the dust and ash. ‘An orc leader is a mixture of raw strength, charisma, and cunning. This one seems to have a bit more cunning than usual. He wants a fight, but he is smart enough to want a fight that he can win. He has maybe thirty orcs with him. You have fifty horsemen.’ Brunner let a harsh laugh escape his lips. ‘He might not be able to count, but he can certainly recognise a lop-sided pairing.’

‘Then what do we do?’ Etienne asked. ‘He won’t stand and fight, you say that tracking him would only wear us down, and if we don’t give chase, he’s just going to burn down every settlement in the domain!’

The bounty hunter’s voice became a low, harsh whisper. ‘We split the force. We give him a fight more in keeping with what he is looking for.’

Brunner rode at the front of the small group of horsemen. Five knights and their lightly armoured squires were ranged about along the trail behind him. The bounty hunter looked over at his side, meeting the gaze of Sir Doneval. The knight swatted a horsefly away from his face.

‘How long do you think it will take?’ the knight asked.

‘Not long,’ the bounty hunter replied. ‘We’ve been watched since we left the mine.’

The killer’s words brought a startled gasp from the knight. He spun about in the saddle, scanning the trees and underbrush that lined the trail. ‘If they are out there, what are they waiting for?’ Sir Doneval demanded.

Brunner let a short laugh rasp from his throat.

‘Oh, the boss of this mob is indeed a rare one,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘He’s holding them back until he is certain that Etienne isn’t following us. He’s making sure it isn’t some sort of trap.’

‘And when he is satisfied that Etienne isn’t coming?’ the knight asked.

As if in answer, a black-fletched arrow shrieked out of the undergrowth, striking the knight’s armoured breastplate and bouncing from the metal. More arrows followed, some striking horses, others striking men. The knights, in their suits of metal plate, were immune to the fusillade of arrows, but the horses and squires were not so fortunate. Screams – human and equine – tore into the breeze.

‘Is there open ground near here?’ Brunner shouted at Sir Doneval. The knight nodded his helmeted head.

‘There is a clearing not far to the north,’ the knight shouted, pointing his sword towards the path. A second barrage of arrows sped from the shadows, accompanied now by the grunts and howls of the orc archers.

Brunner lashed his horse into action, racing forward down the path, the knights and their retinue following his lead. Behind them, they left three squires, their bodies pierced by the orc arrows. One of the men, pinned beneath his maimed horse, shouted for aid. Sir Doneval did his best to ignore the squire’s plea. To turn back now would mean death to them both and the possible failure of the bounty hunter’s plan.

A massive shape appeared in the road before Brunner. The orc was just over six feet in height, a double-bladed axe and a crude wooden shield gripped in his clawed hands. The skin of a bear covered his back and his body was encased in a hodge-podge of metal scraps and bits of chain and ring mail. A battered kettle-helm covered the brute’s head.

The monster snarled, and leapt toward Brunner. The bounty hunter drew the pistol from his belt and sent a bullet crashing through the orc’s eye, into the tiny brain within his thick skull. The orc moaned, staggering into the middle of the road, his primitive body not understanding that it was dead. The massive shape was bowled under by the charging Bretonnian horses, their hooves smashing and crushing the thick bones underfoot.

As the riders raced along the wooded trail, they could hear the savage cries and snarls of their foes. Brunner risked a look over his shoulder and could see massive shapes racing after them along the trail. One paused to hurl a spear at the retreating cavalry, the shaft just missing the hindmost knight.

Ahead, the sunlight grew brighter; it was the clearing Sir Doneval had spoken of. Brunner lashed at Fiend for a final burst of speed.

The clearing was wide, with a small mound at its centre – a tomb of some long lost tribe. A small circle of standing stones, relics of the Old Faith, had once adorned the top of the mound, but had since toppled into piles of rubble. Brunner turned his horse at once toward the old barrow. The Bretonnians followed his lead once more, less concerned with offending the ancient dead that slept within the mound than with joining them.

The hindmost knight’s steed shrieked and fell just as he emerged from the trees. Three arrows had sunk into the animal’s flesh and the wounds had at last overcome its strength and noble heart. The knight managed to push the dead animal off and limp away. One of the other knights wheeled about, riding back to his injured comrade. Brunner could hear Sir Doneval shout for the man to come back, but the choice had already been made.

Two greenskinned giants loped out of the trees. Spying the knights, the orcs let savage cries of rage and bloodlust rip through their fanged jaws. The mounted knight drove his steed forward, putting himself between the orcs and the wounded man. The orcs roared with approval, standing their ground before the horseman. The knight lashed downwards with his sword, catching one of the brutes in the shoulder. The blade crunched through the orc’s crude shoulder-guard and bit deeply into the flesh and bone beneath. Dark green blood spurted from the injury. The orc stumbled backwards from the force of the blow, a heavy club of metal and bone dropping from his suddenly nerveless arm.

The other orc gave vent to a savage cry of murderous fury. The knight turned his head to see the cleaving blade of the orc’s axe swinging towards him. The butchering blow caught the knight just below the knee, the awesome power of the orc’s muscles punching the axe-blade through the metal armour, through the leg within and into the side of the knight’s charger. Horse and man screamed as one. The orc tugged at his weapon, trying to wrench it from the meat of the steed. The maimed animal whickered shrilly, then toppled onto its side, crushing the greenskin beneath its weight and snapping the neck of its rider.

The dismounted knight saw the fate of his valiant comrade and limped back to the animal. He stared down at the orc, its head and shoulders sticking out from beneath the slain charger. The orc snarled up at him and tried to push and wriggle his way free. The knight raised his sword over his head and stabbed it into the orc’s skull with a downward thrust. Then he turned his armoured head to face the howling mob that burst from the trees. The rest of the pack had arrived. Several of the brutes raced forward to see the defiant knight standing over the dead orc, but a towering figure dressed in piecemeal armour and sporting steel-capped fangs pushed and punched his way to the fore.

Gnashrak roared, the sound booming across the clearing. Then he charged, bringing the giant blade of his cleaver hurtling toward the knight. To his credit, the knight did not flinch, but brought his own sword up from the skull of the dead orc to meet and parry the warboss’s attack. The crude, massive bulk of the orc’s weapon slammed into the knight’s elegant steel, sparks flying.

The knight staggered backwards, his blade now sporting an inch-deep notch from where the orc’s cleaver had met it. Gnashrak tensed his powerful frame backward, ready for another strike. The other orcs momentarily grew silent, watching in awe as their fearsome champion demonstrated his incredible strength and power. Across the field, Brunner and the remaining knights and squires did the same; all eyes were drawn to the uneven contest unfolding only a few dozen yards away.

It ended the only way that it could. With another booming roar, Gnashrak slashed at the knight once more. Again, the man tried to meet the orc’s crude metal weapon, but this time the notched blade snapped before the orc’s massive blow. The cleaver continued unhindered, smashing into the mail standard about the Bretonnian’s neck. Chain links snapped apart before the blow and a crimson fountain erupted as the cleaver passed clean through the neckbone. The knight’s helmet flew ten feet from the man’s body, rolling into the long grass, blood spurting from the head within.

Gnashrak pulled his cleaver back towards him, his beady eyes examining the gory metal. A long, dog-like tongue dropped from his ponderous jaws and licked at the blood. Then the orc fixed his gaze on the small band of men clustered amongst the ancient stones atop the mound. He took a step forward, his foot smashing through the ruin of the fallen orc’s skull.

The warboss raised the cleaver again, and pointed it at the Bretonnians. His jaws opened again and he roared at the watching soldiers. Though they could not understand the orc’s crude language, its meaning was clear – the Bretonnians could expect no mercy from their attackers.

Like hounds loosed from the leash, the orcs under Gnashrak’s command howled and began charging across the clearing, swinging their weapons overhead. A few, remembering the bows they carried, sent some black feathered arrows ahead of them, the ill-aimed shots bouncing harmlessly from the stones. The squires nestled among the rocks were more effective with their own longbows; each of their arrows found its way into orcish flesh, but none had enough stopping power to drop their hulking targets. Orcs closed their monstrous paws about the shafts that stuck from the flesh of arm, leg or breast and ripped them free, seemingly immune to the pain. Neither did they heed the meat clinging to the barbed arrowheads that they discarded with contemptuous snarls.

The figure of the bounty hunter emerged from behind the rocks, the long steel barrel of his gun held before him. He set a match to the flashpowder, then braced his legs as the explosive discharge of his weapon shook his body. A huge orc suddenly spun about, green blood bursting from the smoking hole in his chest. The orc slammed into the ground, his body shuddering for a long moment. The beast pressed his hands to either side of his prone body, and started to lift himself, but then he shuddered and dropped once more, his body bleeding out from the gaping crater where his heart had been.

Brunner did not spare the orc a second thought. He dropped the spent handgun, and reached beside him for the loaded crossbow he had leaned against a stone. He raised the weapon to his shoulder, sighted, and sent a steel bolt slamming through the helmet of a second orc as the brute was pulling a Bretonnian arrow from his chest. The orc’s head snapped about, with an even more angry leer on his face. His little eyes focused upon Brunner, and widened as they saw the crossbow in the man’s hands. The orc snarled, bellowing like a maddened steer. Then the green blood seeping from his helmet blurred his vision.

The orc raised a paw to his head. A clawed finger probed the hole in his helmet and the skull within. The orc’s legs suddenly gave out and he fell onto his rump, his finger still lodged within the wound in his head. A slight whimper hissed from the orc’s jaws, as the massive body fell onto its side. Then the greenskin was still.

A third orc was nearly at the base of the mound when he dropped, succumbing to the three arrow wounds in his chest. The orc behind him hurdled the body, and then fell as another Bretonnian arrow transfixed his throat. But a full twenty of the marauders reached the mound. And behind them loped the massive steel-toothed figure of their leader, his gory weapon held over his head as he bellowed war cries in his own harsh tongue.

The remaining knights met the charge of the orcs, two of the squires drawing their own swords to stand beside their lords and masters. The third squire let a shriek of terror escape his lips as he sprinted from the cover of the rocks, and raced for the nearer edge of the clearing. Three orcs loped after the fleeing man, their swift gait quickly closing the distance between man and pursuers.

Brunner sent the bolt from his smaller crossbow into the face of the first orc that closed with him, the dart sticking from the monster’s cheek like a steel pimple. The orc clutched at the bolt, his clawed fingers working to pull it free. So intent was he upon the bolt, that he did not react as Brunner brought the cleaving edge of his falchion sword slashing through the brute’s forearm. The severed limb still had claws locked about the bolt protruding from the orc’s face. With the severed arm dangling, the orc snarled, and raised his remaining arm that clutched a savage length of sharpened steel. But the reaction was too slow – already Brunner’s falchion was slashing downwards, splitting the orc’s skull open like a melon. Green blood and snot-like brain matter bubbled from the ruin and the orc slumped against the side of the toppled stone plinth beside him.

A second orc leapt forward, crying in savage triumph to find a worthy adversary in the bounty hunter. The orc’s axe bit down, glancing along the heavy gromril breastplate that encased Brunner’s chest. The bounty hunter staggered under the impact of the blow, the dwarf metal resisting the cleaving edge of the orc’s weapon.

The orc, unbalanced by the strike, began to recover both his stance and his weapon. Leaning before the shaken but unharmed Imperial warrior, the orc began to rise. With one hand, Brunner plunged a knife into the orc’s neck, while his falchion sliced through the beast’s backbone. The orc let a whimper of agony sigh from his enormous lungs and fell prone before the bounty hunter. The greenskin twitched for a moment, hands clutching at the knife buried in the back of his neck. Brunner turned away from the dying creature, looking for that next monster to challenge his blade.

The battle was faring badly for the Bretonnians. Both squires and one of the remaining knights were down, and there were only two orcs lying beside the corpses of the men. As the bounty hunter looked, he could see the huge warboss attacking Sir Doneval, the bulky knight dwarfed by the enormous orc’s twisted form. The knight dodged the orc’s awkward blows, so the orc’s huge cleaver sparked each time it bit into the old plinths. The knight slashed and thrust at the beast each time it recovered, and the orc was bleeding from numerous cuts in arms and chest. But the monster was hardly slowed, his inhuman vitality and resistance to pain carrying him forward.

Sir Doneval at last misjudged the sweep of the orc’s cleaver, slipping to the left when he should have dodged to the right. The warboss’s cleaver mashed the knight’s arm, splitting the metal and tearing the flesh beneath. Dark blood oozed from the wound and Sir Doneval staggered away from the triumphant roar of his hulking adversary.

Brunner drew the reloaded pistol from its holster and fired at the orc leader’s back. The weapon spat a flare of flame, and emitted a sound like the crack of thunder. An acrid stench wafted from the weapon. The warboss turned his head slightly at the sound, then returned his attention to the reeling knight. Brunner stared in disgust at the Nuln-made weapon, casting the pistol into the face of the horn-helmed reaver closing upon him. The weapon crashed into the monster’s face, smashing his nose and splitting his lip. The orc paid no attention to the injury, but swept his massive sword at the bounty hunter. Brunner ducked under the sweep of the orc’s blade, stabbing out with his own sword and piercing the crude leather that covered the orc’s breast. Dark green liquid bubbled from the wound and the orc fell, his heart cleft by the bounty hunter’s blade.

Gnashrak chopped down at the knight. Sir Doneval raised his shield, blocking the blow yet again, but this time the orc was in a position to put his whole weight behind the blow. The knight’s arm broke under the impact. Sir Doneval let out a cry of pain from behind his helm. The orc grinned at him – a toothy, comfortless steel smile. Then the orc’s massive cleaver was swinging downward in a two-handed strike.

The metal of Sir Doneval’s breastplate was cut to shreds by the cleaver’s impact, as was the ribcage beneath. A final scream of agony bubbled from the knight’s mouth as the orc raised his weapon from the gory husk of the knight’s mangled torso. Gnashrak’s beady eyes considered the carnage all around him. Then his red eyes found the black-helmed bounty hunter rising from the corpse of one of his orcs.

Gnashrak let a bloodthirsty leer spread across his leathery face. He remembered him, cowardly trying to shoot him in the back with the fire and smoke weapon. But Gork and Mork had protected their savage child, and the magic of the backshooter’s weapon had failed. Gnashrak ran a clawed finger through the gore dripping from his cleaver. He would teach this snivelling cur how a proper fight was conducted.

Brunner watched as the hulking warboss rose from Sir Doneval’s body and advanced towards him with heavy, thudding steps. The bounty hunter drew a throwing knife from the belt at his chest and waited, turning his body to present the orc with his side and the blade in his other hand. He doubted if the orc would recognise the purpose of the knife, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

The orc shuffled forward, his enormous weapon held across his chest. Brunner let him take a few more steps, then threw the knife. The orc grunted in surprise as the knife streaked across the distance between them. The blade sank into the corner of the orc’s eye socket. The huge brute howled in pain, letting go of his cleaver, and closed his hand about the knife. Brunner scrambled to reload his crossbow pistol while the orc paused. He looked up as the warboss gave vent to a wild cry of pain. The massive paw came away with the knife, dark green blood flowing from the wound. The orc fingered the knife for a moment, then bent and lifted the huge cleaver with his other hand. The orc stared into Brunner’s eyes and uttered a deep growl.

‘Come try it,’ the bounty hunter snarled. The orc roared again, displaying his enormous steel-capped fangs and charged forward like a blood-mad Estalian bull. Brunner fired his crossbow pistol at the oncoming avalanche of greenskin flesh, but the shot was hasty and the bolt smashed into the beast’s knee. The orc did not seem to feel the impact of the bolt as it charged onwards. Brunner dropped back, letting the monster crash into the boulder he had been standing before. The stone cracked as Gnashrak struck it. Not even winded by the bone-jarring impact, the orc lashed out with his steel cleaver, missing the bounty hunter’s body by mere inches.

Brunner struck out with his own weapon, dealing the orc’s arm a deep gash that severed tendons in his hand. The huge cleaver dropped from the suddenly useless hand. But Gnashrak’s other hand was already in motion, feeding Brunner’s left shoulder the point of his own knife. Brunner twisted from the injury, a cry of pain ringing out from below his helm. The orc grinned back, his massive paw closing about the armour on the bounty hunter’s injured shoulder.

Brunner screamed again as the orc’s hand crumpled the steel and bruised the bone beneath. As though tiring from the sound of the man’s shrieks, the orc clubbed the black-steel helm with his useless arm. The metal rang and an indentation formed in the sallet helm. Brunner shook his head against the bludgeoning blow.

The bounty hunter’s sword sank to the hilt in the meat of the orc’s thigh. The monster released his grip on the bounty hunter’s shoulder to wrench it free. Given the momentary respite, Brunner spotted the bolt protruding from the orc’s knee. With a roar as savage as any the orc had given voice to, the bounty hunter kicked his steel-toed boot into the bolt. The steel spike sank through the orc’s kneecap, and the monster toppled onto his side.

Brunner staggered back, breathing heavily, pulling the serrated knife from his belt and another throwing dagger from the bandoleer across his chest. The orc snarled at him from the ground, his clawed hands already closing about the grip of his cleaver. The orc lifted himself to his feet, foam drooling between his steel fangs. Then his head snapped around and a deep bellow of wrath rumbled from his throat. Brunner listened to the sound, then heard the shrill note that had alarmed the orc. The bounty hunter’s battered body shook with laughter.

Gnashrak’s voice was raised, shouting deep roaring commands in his own brutal language. But it was too late. His mob had also heard the call of the horn. Their bloodlust whetted by the slaughter of the Bretonnians, they were already racing from the mound, across the clearing toward the sound, eager to sink their blades into more human flesh. The orc cursed again, then spun about, his remaining eye locking onto Brunner’s.

Then the massive brute loped away – not towards his mob, but into the trees. Three other orcs spotted him and gave chase, their loyalty and fear of the warboss overcoming the bloodlust surging through their frames. Brunner saw them disappear into the trees, then watched as Etienne de Galfort and the rest of his command burst from the tree-lined path, lances at the ready. Lost in the madness of their frenzy, the orcs did not appreciate the slaughter that ensued, not until they were reduced to a field of crushed, broken bodies.

Etienne de Galfort looked down at the work of his men, then raised his gaze to the mound. He shouted a greeting as Brunner staggered into view. The knight rode toward the bounty hunter, removed his helmet and smiled.

‘We won,’ the Bretonnian laughed. ‘Just as you said, they couldn’t resist the bait. And once we whetted their appetite, they wouldn’t be able to control themselves and run when we came upon them!’

Brunner nodded his head. ‘I was starting to think you weren’t coming,’ he said, his voice heavy with fatigue.

‘I waited until the sands in the glass were half gone,’ the noble replied. ‘Then we came galloping at all speed.’ Etienne suddenly looked closer at the bodies strewn among the stones upon the mound. ‘The others?’

Brunner shook his head. ‘No.’

The smile died on Etienne’s face. ‘Still, at least we beat them.’

‘You’d have caught their leader if you had come a little sooner,’ the bounty hunter said after a pause.

‘He escaped?’ Etienne asked, suddenly sick in his stomach. The bounty hunter just slumped onto the ground. He raised a hand to his damaged helm and pulled it free, running a gloved hand through the close-cropped brown hair. The glove came away streaked with sweat and blood.

‘Don’t worry,’ the bounty hunter said, fixing Etienne with his piercing blue eyes. ‘He’s finished. Among orcs, only the strong lead. The injuries I dealt that monster…’ Brunner shook his head. ‘By tonight, some young bull is going to be calling himself warboss and cooking this brute for dinner.’

‘Then it’s over,’ Etienne said.

‘It’s over,’ Brunner agreed.

Night settled about the mountainside of the Vaults like a magician’s cloak. Four figures sat about the small fire, their beady red eyes gleaming in the flickering light. One of them moved, pushing another log upon the fire. But as he did so, the greenskinned face stared not into the fire, but at the massive shape of one of his companions, a figure from which only one eye gleamed.

Gnashrak let another sigh shudder from his huge body and put a finger into the empty pit of his face to scratch at the irritating eye socket once again. Thoughts were already swirling about in his thick skull. Thoughts of revenge. He would return to this land, burn and pillage it as no orc had ever done. He would gather an army this time, a mighty war host with boar riders and siege engines, packs of trolls and shrieking hordes of goblins to soak up the Bretonnians’ arrows. Then he would rip the heart from the man who had cost him his eye and hand. He would take his throbbing heart and eat it before the human’s fading eyes.

The gleam of ambition burned in Gnashrak’s eye, more fiercely even than the fire before him. The orc yawned and stretched his massive frame. As he finished stretching, he looked about for a place to sleep, then his eye caught the gaze of his remaining followers. For the first time, fear wormed its way into Gnashrak’s savage heart. The look in the eyes of the other three orcs was one Gnashrak recognised only too well. It was the gleam of ambition.

Gnashrak reached for the slender Bretonnian sword that he had been reduced to carrying since he lost his hand, noting as he did so the furtive knowing looks of the other orcs. There was still some fear in them, but not much. Not enough.

With the sword in his hand and sleep tugging at his mind, Gnashrak settled down, wary of his companions.

CHAPTER FOUR

BLOOD MONEY

I entered the Black Boar one evening, looking for my literary contact, a hulking Norseman-turned-pirate named Ormgrim – a surprisingly loquacious man, for all his resemblance in appearance and odour to a mountain bear. I had been considering a collection of stories recounting the reaver’s exploits, from his days upon the Sea of Claws, stalking the shores in the fabled dragon-boats, to his time as a pit fighter in the lawless fighting arenas of the Border Princes. I dearly hoped that I would be able to catch him early in his cups, before drink would sodden his small brain. Otherwise he would only be able to utter three word sentences in crude Reikspiel that many goblins would find laughable. It would be but a short step from there to the kind of violent outbursts that had resulted in a week of bedridden misery for this unlucky writer who was not nimble on his feet.

As it transpired, however, I had a much more lucrative prospect than another night of Ormgrim’s half-coherent drunken ramblings. Seated at a back table of the smoky, tunnel-like beer hall, I spied the black-helmed shape of Brunner. He was sipping at a small bottle, which I did not doubt contained schnapps. I had seen him like this before, and knew that this was how he indulged himself after a particularly successful hunt. I at once made my way toward his table. The bounty hunter looked up at me, then gestured with a gloved hand, indicating that I might sit. I asked him how he was faring, and if he might share his good fortune with a friend. He smiled at me, unoffended by the directness of my words and began to relate events that had transpired recently in the realms of the Border Princes.

It was a tale long in the telling, and as he spoke, I found my eyes continually drawn to the large wooden cask that rested beside him on the floor. My horror of the object grew steadily as the story unfolded, for I came to understand that Brunner still had merchandise to dispose of…

A lone rider made his way through the timber gate that led into the town of Greymere. The guards atop the walls eyed the man with looks of suspicion, for in the realms of the Border Princes it paid to trust no stranger. War between men in these lawless regions was almost as common as war with the marauding tribes of orc and goblin. The rider paid his coin to the sergeant at the gate, and suspicion or no suspicion, the man was allowed to enter the town, leading a dappled grey pack horse behind his own black and brown bay.

The merchants and peasants that ambled about the muddy lanes of the town paused to favour the stranger with curious glances, for he presented a compelling, almost sinister, sight. The man wore armour about his lean frame, his head was encased in a helm of blackened steel, and knives and other blades hung all about his body. On either side of the man’s saddle, sheaths had been attached: one bore a large crossbow, the other a wood and steel frame of a blackpowder weapon. His second horse laboured under assorted burdens, barrels, packs and rolls of cloth. But with one look at the man, all could tell that those packs did not contain merchandise, and that he was not some sort of wandering peddler.

The stranger stopped before the crude timber face of the town’s only inn. He dismounted. Casting his visored gaze about the street, as if challenging any thieves who might be watching, he left his horses and stalked into the building. Although several sets of eyes cast covetous looks upon the animals and the gear they carried, none did more than look.

Shortly afterwards a man emerged from the inn, his face as white as a sheet. Quickly and cautiously the man slunk away from the building into the nearest alleyway, losing himself in the confusing spaces between the town’s maze of huts and pigsties.

Brunner, the man thought, smoothing the front of his leather tunic and wiping the perspiration from his swarthy brow. The Tilean licked his lips and placed a reassuring hand on the sword at his side. Then, a sudden thought of just who it was he feared brought a fresh burst of speed to the man’s steps. By Ranald and Morr, what is he doing here? Whose head is he after? The answer came to Vincenzo’s mind almost immediately. The meagre price on his own head would not have dragged the bounty hunter away from the city states, but there was someone in Greymere who did merit such a price.

The grey-haired man swept a bone brush through the massive moustaches that crouched upon his lip, training them back into the upward-pointing horns fashionable among the nobles of the Empire. It was unwise, he knew, to affect such an appearance, but years of habit were hard to escape and the former Baron of Kleindorf was not about to give up the few, miserable trappings of his former station that he was able to maintain. Not for the first time, the man who had once been Bruno von Ostmark, and now called himself Drexler, considered his surroundings with a snort of disdain. The house he kept in Greymere was lavish by the standards of the Border Princes: it had a stone façade and wooden floors and roofing that did not consist of thatch and straw or logs thrown across support beams. Only the keep of the ruler of Greymere, Prince Waldemar, was more extravagant and sumptuous. Yet, the baron could not help but remember the castle that had once been his, the estates and private forests that had been his possessions. Even his kennels had been larger than his present home.

Drexler finished sweeping his moustaches into the desired shape and began to dress himself. Here, too, he thought of his fall. Once, three servants would have busied about his person, preparing him to face the day in whatever raiment he chose from closets larger than the bedroom he now sat in. The exiled baron sighed loudly and slumped into a velvet-backed chair and slowly pulled a leather boot onto his foot. Such extravagance was beyond him now. The few servants that he could afford had more pressing duties – matters of business, that would keep Drexler from slipping down the ladder of life. For the nobleman was realistic enough to understand that, miserable as his surroundings might seem, there were far more wretched levels of squalor into which he could sink, and never emerge.

A sharp knock at the door interrupted the nobleman turned merchant as he stuffed a stocking-covered foot into his other boot. He turned towards the door, snarling at this intrusion upon his routine. Drexler stifled the impulse to hurl the shoe at the door as it opened. The men now serving him were hardly domesticated, and hardly as meek as those who had cowered before the Baron von Ostmark. One had to be careful about berating and insulting them, lest the dogs snap at the hand of their master.

The wiry, dark-skinned shape of Vincenzo, Drexler’s Tilean aide, assistant and confidant slipped through the portal, slowly closing it behind him. Drexler stared at the Tilean, suspicious of his furtive manner and quiet steps. The merchant reached under the fur blankets of his bed, fingering the dagger hidden within the bedding.

‘Well?’ the merchant demanded. ‘What news is so important as to drive you to disturb me before I have properly risen? What troubles you that you cannot await a more decent time to speak to me?’ Drexler tensed his grip on hilt of the dagger as Vincenzo sidled across the floor towards him. The Tilean licked his lips and a cold sweat glistened on his face. Drexler could practically smell the fear dripping off the man.

‘Have you ever heard of a man named Brunner?’ the Tilean said at last. Drexler shook his head, staring at the thief and smuggler with a questioning gaze.

‘He is the most notorious bounty hunter in all of Tilea,’ Vincenzo explained.

Drexler pursed his lips in thought. ‘And you think this killer, this Brunner has come to Greymere looking for the Baron von Ostmark?’

‘The reward offered by the Count of Stirland is quite substantial,’ Vincenzo pointed out. ‘What other reason could there be for the bounty hunter to come to Greymere?’

A troubled expression grew upon Drexler’s features. He pounded his fist in his palm. ‘No, of course. Somehow he heard of me, found me. But he won’t get me!’

‘I could ask Savio to attend to it,’ Vincenzo offered. Drexler smiled.

‘Yes, do that,’ the merchant said. ‘I have never seen a man who could match Savio’s blade. Now, leave me. We have to negotiate with the dwarfs again regarding the transport of their beer to the Moot and I want to look my best.’

The stranger sat at a small table in the rear of the large tavern that dominated the ground floor of the two-storey structure. A few off-duty soldiers from the prince’s guard eyed the armed bounty hunter with thinly veiled antipathy. Mercenaries were a common sight in Greymere, and their arrival often heralded the replacement of one of the other soldiers in the pay of Prince Waldemar. The other occupants of the tavern, a trio of dishevelled peasants who were nursing their beers in order to savour the expensive luxury for as long as they could, did their best to avoid looking at the black-helmed man.

A buxom barmaid made her way between the largely empty tables and set a stein of beer before the bounty hunter. The visored head lowered, staring at the frothy mug for a moment before setting a few copper coins on the table. The woman leaned forward, scooping up the coins with one hand, while her eyes maintained their hold on the face. The cloth covering her massive chest hung loose as she bent over the table, and the woman licked her lips with a wet, pink tongue. She hesitated a moment, lingering over the table, watching for any sign of interest the warrior might exhibit.

The bounty hunter reached a gloved hand forward and closed it about the body of the clay stein. He drew his hand back and raised the frothy drink to his lips. The barmaid stood, shaking her head in an angry gesture and stalked away – hopes of supplementing her wages diminished by his indifferent air. As she turned, Brunner let a slight smile play on his face. It had been a long ride here from Remas, but not that long.

The door of the inn opened, bearing with it the smell of dust and excrement from the street outside. A single man entered: short, but with wide shoulders and muscular arms. He was wearing a foppish-looking cap of red silk, with a purple falcon’s feather sticking out from a gold button on its left side. A shirt of chainmail encased his body, the skirt falling to his thighs, where green leggings completed his costume. Leather shoes with bright brass buckles set a jingling echo across the tavern’s earthen floor with each step the man took.

Bright blue eyes set in the dark-skinned face of a Tilean considered the tavern and its inhabitants. The face of the man was dominated by a bristly black beard, cut to a point. When his eyes closed upon the figure of the bounty hunter, the beard became distorted as his mouth curled into a predatory smile. The Tilean let his gloved hands caress the hilts of the long-bladed dagger and rapier that hung from his belt. He shrugged and the red cape he wore fell from his shoulders and onto his back. The man strode across the room, each face in the tavern watching his every step – save the bounty hunter, who continued to quietly sip at his drink.

The Tilean stopped beside the table, staring down at the seated warrior. Slowly, Brunner set the stein down, and peered up at the Tilean through his visor.

‘Your name is Brunner?’ the Tilean asked, his tone arrogant, his accent that of the merchant princes of Tobaro. Brunner let his left hand emerge from beneath the table, his small crossbow pistol now visible in his gloved hand.

‘Who would like to know?’ his icy voice asked.

The Tilean pulled a velvet glove from his hand. ‘My name is Savio,’ the man said, dropping the glove on the table. A light of recognition blazed in Brunner’s cold eyes as the Tilean spoke. ‘I make my challenge. If you are a man, you will face me.’

‘Not in here!’ bawled the massive bald-headed innkeeper from behind the bar. ‘It stinks bad enough without blood seeping into the floor.’ The off-duty guards seemed to share the innkeeper’s thoughts, and Brunner let his grip on the crossbow relax when he heard the men draw their swords.

‘It seems here is not the best place,’ the bounty hunter said. The duellist nodded back at him.

‘I shall await your pleasure outside then,’ the man said, spinning about and retracing his steps across the tavern. Brunner watched him go. As soon as the door had shut behind him, the innkeeper strode to the bounty hunter’s side.

‘Whatever you have done to earn the notice of Savio,’ the man shook his head. ‘He is the most feared swordsman in all the Border Princes. He has killed more people in Greymere than dysentery.’ The man’s expression changed to one of mock regret. ‘Could you please settle your bill before you go outside? And if you will add a little extra, I can send a boy to fetch the priest from the shrine.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ the bounty hunter said. He reached below the bench he sat on, and pulled a leather-wrapped object onto the table. The innkeeper stared as the bounty hunter removed a heavy object of steel and wood.

‘If you don’t pay for the priest, they won’t bury you,’ the innkeeper muttered. ‘They’ll just strip your body and toss it over the side of the wall for the wolves and the crows to pick at.’

‘Well, they have to eat too,’ the bounty hunter said, not looking at the bald man. He removed a small tube of paper from a pouch on his belt. The ends of the paper tube had been twisted closed. The gloved hands tore one end of the tube open and up-ended the paper cylinder over the mouth of the steel weapon. A foul-smelling black grain-like substance poured into the barrel. ‘And if I can choose, I’d rather feed wolves than worms.’

‘I am happy that you can joke about it,’ the innkeeper said, wringing his hands on his apron and looking anything but happy. ‘But if you think you can match swords with Savio, then you have no idea who you are facing.’

The bounty hunter packed down the grain in the barrel with a long wooden rod. He set the rod down and removed an iron ball from another pouch on his belt. ‘I know who Savio is,’ he said. He dropped the steel ball into the weapon, packing it down again with the wooden rod. ‘In Tobaro, in Miragliano, in Luccini, his name is reckoned as that of the greatest duellist to ever practise the art of the vendetta.’

The innkeeper’s eyes grew wide with alarm as he heard Savio’s name associated with such great cities. Suddenly the professional swordsman had become more frightening than even the innkeeper had imagined. ‘There is a back door,’ the bald man said. ‘You could slip through it and be out of Greymere without Savio seeing you go.’

A loud voice called from the street, demanding that Brunner emerge, and berating the bounty hunter as a rogue and a coward without honour.

‘And keep him waiting even longer?’ Brunner asked. He removed another packet of paper from a third pouch on his belt. He tapped the light, flour-like powder from the folded square of paper into a covered pan at the rear of the gun, just below the steel latch of the hammer. The bounty hunter rose from the table, bearing the loaded handgun with him.

‘What are you going to do?’ the bald man asked, voicing the question on the mind of everyone in the tavern.

‘Before he left Tilea, Savio killed the son of one of Luccini’s most prosperous guildmasters,’ the bounty hunter replied, snatching up a shabby cloak from a hook beside the door, and draping it over his right arm to hide the weapon he now carried. ‘More than enough to pay for the replacement of a bullet and some powder.’

Savio stood in the centre of the muddy lane, men and animals giving him a wide berth as they passed. The thin-bladed, lightweight sword was gripped in his still-gloved hand. His other arm was covered by the heavy fabric of the red cape, the slender fang of his dagger gleaming from the fist that emerged from the folds of the cape. As the duellist saw Brunner emerge from the tavern, he uttered a short, sharp laugh.

‘I was thinking that maybe I would have to go inside and drag you out,’ he laughed. ‘Many is the time when some churlish cur would refuse to answer the demands of honour and unman himself before the duel even began.’ The Tilean’s blue eyes focused on the shabby cloak draped about the bounty hunter’s right arm. ‘Oh? You think to fight me in the style of a Tilean streetfighter?’ The duellist laughed again. ‘The trick is to employ the cape as not only shield but weapon. Catch your enemy’s blade in its folds, if you can, but there is many another trick.’

The duellist made a quick swipe with his sword into the empty air, then pranced a pace forward, whipping the edge of the cape forward, like a boy cracking a wet towel. ‘Strike the hand of some handsome noble and watch them recoil from so minor a blow, dropping dagger or sword from fingers stung by so little a thing.’ The Tilean withdrew, then danced forward a step, unfurling the cape and casting it about an invisible foe, as the sword lashed out again. ‘Then one can always cast one’s cloak about the enemy. He will panic, trying to fend off your cloak, and exposing himself for one instant to the steel in your hand.’

‘Your swordplay is as extravagant as your mouth,’ Brunner’s voice sneered. The Tilean lost the playful expression, and his words their jocular tone.

‘I have never met my equal with the sword,’ the duellist said, staring at the armoured figure of the bounty hunter.

‘And you never will,’ Brunner stated. He lowered the gun held upright at his side. The hammer responded to the tug of the trigger, smashing into the pan and the powder contained there. The powder lighted under the impact, in turn igniting the gunpowder in the barrel. The black powder exploded with a flash and boom, forcing the iron ball from the weapon. The bullet shot across the few yards separating the two men and crashed into Savio’s breast, tearing through the chainmail shirt as though it were not there. The duellist toppled backward, his head crashing into a pool of mud and horse urine.

A stunned silence settled upon the street as the echoing report of the handgun slowly faded away. Brunner stalked across the mud, crouched down beside the body of the Tilean and pulled the large knife from his belt. The serrated edge gleamed in the light for a moment before he brought the blade against the neck of the dead man. A woman screamed as Brunner set about his gruesome labour.

‘Always make sure that the man you want to kill is playing by the same rules,’ the bounty hunter said as he lifted Savio’s head from the corpse.

Brunner looked about the street, his gaze canvassing the horrified onlookers. He settled upon a young boy standing near the door of the inn, and tossed a gold coin to him.

‘Fetch me a sack of salt,’ he told the boy. ‘Keep a few coppers for yourself, but bring the rest back to me.’ The boy rushed off, the menace in the bounty hunter’s voice ensuring that he would return as speedily as his young feet would allow. Brunner pushed open the door of the tavern with the still-smoking barrel of his gun and disappeared into the darkness with his trophy.

On the edge of Greymere, a crude amphitheatre of wooden tiers had been erected for what passed as cultural pursuits in the brutal and savage realm of Prince Waldemar. Vincenzo quietly made his way through the noisy, raucous crowd seated in the wooden benches that rose above the muddy ground. Far below the wooden tiers, in a stone-lined hole, a nearly naked man held a shortsword in a massive fist, his other hand encased in a razor-sharp cestus. Five wiry creatures circled the man, their red eyes gleaming in the light of the torches set about the pit.

Vincenzo ignored the sight below and made his way toward the front of the viewing stand. He could see several soldiers clustered about the front seats, heedless of how their armoured figures might intrude upon the view of those sitting behind them. Vincenzo kept his hands at his side, in plain sight, as he advanced upon the warriors and the two men seated in the middle of them.

Prince Waldemar was young, his frame powerful and muscular. He wore a robe of wolfskin, his dark red hair bare save for the simplest circlet of gold. A slim scabbarded sword was resting across his knees as he craned his sharp-featured face forward to look at the spectacle unfolding below. Beside the prince, Drexler roared his enjoyment of the fight. But his roar faded as he spied Vincenzo worming his way toward them.

‘Excuse me, your lordship,’ Vincenzo said to the prince. Waldemar hardly paid the merchant a second thought as Drexler rose. Down below, one of the slender-limbed green-skinned creatures darted towards the pitfighter’s belly with a wicked sickle of steel. The goblin’s face exploded into a mash of green paste as the gladiator smashed the studded arm-guard of his cestus into the monster’s long, narrow nose. The spatter of dark green blood flew to where the prince was seated and Waldemar howled his appreciation.

‘You are making a habit of appearing where you are not wanted,’ Drexler told his underling as they stepped away from the royal box, if such a formation of guards could be so called.

‘It is Savio,’ the Tilean said, his voice low and grave.

‘Tell him to wait. I’ll pay him after the fight,’ Drexler turned to return to his seat.

A gasp of shock rose from the crowd behind the two men. Down in the pit, the goblins had worked their way around the gladiator. Three of them jabbed at him from the front and to his left while the fourth circled the man’s back. The sinister titter of the greenskins echoed gruesomely from the stone walls of the pit.

The gladiator chanced a look over his shoulder and was rewarded by a sharp stab of pain as one of the goblins, armed with a spear, dealt him a slash across his side as payment for his inattention. The pitfighter snarled in pain and batted away the goblin’s weapon. The goblin behind him took the opportunity to leap onto the man’s back, raking his naked flesh with its black-nailed hands, and digging runnels into his skin. The goblin’s grip held as it locked its legs around the man’s waist and soon the greenskin’s fanged mouth was snapping at the man’s shoulder.

The gladiator bellowed his rage, the sound causing the other three goblins to nervously retreat back from their adversary. The goblin on the man’s back looked up, its green mouth smeared red with blood. A look of horror worked itself into the inhuman features as the goblin saw its fellows back away. Had they remained steadfast, they could have easily penetrated the gladiator’s guard, but now, due to their craven souls, the opportunity had been lost. Moreover, the goblin on the man’s back would pay for that lost opportunity.

The pitfighter let a savage war cry rumble from his throat as he launched himself into motion. Running at full speed, the man charged backwards, smashing into the stone wall of the pit. A sickly liquid sounding crunch rose from the arena. The gladiator stepped away from the wall, not bothering to look at the dark green smear marring the rocks, nor at the limp and broken thing that slipped from his back to twitch pathetically as life fled its broken, shattered form.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ Vincenzo muttered. ‘Savio is dead!’

An incredulous look gripped Drexler’s features. ‘Dead?’ As Vincenzo nodded his head in affirmation of the fact, the exiled baron slumped against the low wall bordering the pit. His limbs trembled as though a chill wind licked at them. ‘Dead?’ He shook his head. Then he stared at Vincenzo. ‘The bounty hunter killed him?’

‘Shot him down in the street like a wild dog,’ the Tilean replied, his tone mirroring the merchant’s fear. ‘Savio challenged him. Brunner put a bullet in his heart, then cut off his head.’

‘Cut off his head!’ Drexler put his hand to his mouth, biting down on the horror that welled up within him.

‘There is quite a bounty for Savio in Luccini,’ Vincenzo explained.

In the pit down below, the remaining goblins tittered maliciously as they jabbed at the barrel-chested gladiator with their weapons. The scar-faced man fended off the more well-directed blows, knocking away the point of one goblin’s spear, and smashing back the sword of a second with the return sweep of his blade. A wicked smile spread across the leathery face of a third goblin, displaying a massive set of needle-sharp teeth. The goblin rushed in, a notched iron axe gripped in his green hands. But as the creature came close enough to strike, the pitfighter’s booted foot rose and delivered a savage sideways kick to the small monstrosity.

There was a loud crack and the goblin’s leg snapped at the knee. The greenskin howled in agony, letting his axe fall from his hand. Eyes upon the still armed goblins, the pitfighter circled around the pit until he stood above the wailing creature. He brought his booted foot down once again, smashing the goblin’s neck beneath his heel. There was a final snap of bone and a froth of dark green liquid bubbled from the goblin’s over-sized mouth. The laughter of the last goblins turned nervous as the cheering of the spectators rose to a thunderous clamour.

‘Perhaps it was Savio he was after?’ offered Drexler, weakly. Vincenzo shook his head.

‘Were that so, then why is he still here?’ the Tilean asked. ‘Savio was a bonus to him. But whoever Brunner is after, he has yet to collect them.’ A crafty look entered the Tilean’s eyes. ‘I have an idea,’ he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I know of a man in Adlerhof. We could hire him. He could be here in three days.’

Drexler ignored his companion, looking down into the arena below. The gladiator was charging at his remaining greenskin foes. The goblin with the spear shrieked, threw his weapon at the massive pitfighter and raced to the nearest wall, black-nailed hands scrabbling desperately for purchase on the smooth stones.

The other goblin swung his sword, trying to hamstring his human opponent. The gladiator leapt over the goblin’s blade. The man’s shortsword gleamed in the light as he brought it down to the goblin’s head. The creature did not even have time to scream as the force of the man’s blow split his skull in two, green blood and greasy brain matter spilling from the goblin’s head.

The last goblin cast a terrified look at his comrade’s demise and scratched at the wall with an even greater frenzy. The gladiator sneered at the little creature. He bent down and picked up the goblin’s discarded spear. With a snort of contempt, the man hurled the spear across the pit, smashing its point into the goblin’s back, pinning the greenskin to the wall.

Sparing the dead no further thought, the pitfighter raised his arms over his head and revelled in the joyous roar of the crowd.

‘Do as you like, Vincenzo,’ Drexler said, his eyes glittering with cunning as he cheered the triumphant pitfighter. ‘But an idea has just occurred to me as well.’

Brunner emerged from the inn, his helm catching the sunlight as its golden rays briefly penetrated the haze from hearths and cookfires that hung over Greymere like a shroud. The bounty hunter considered the peasants and merchantmen rushing about the muddy street. It was a habit of his to study every face, each person he encountered for some trait that he might recognise. It was the telltale mark that would put a name to the face and transform the person from just another member of the mob to a piece of merchandise to be acquired and sold.

After a moment, the bounty hunter moved on, stalking down the muddy lane toward the stables where his animals had been taken. He did not trust any hand but his own with his horses – the magnificent Bretonnian bay, Fiend, and the dour, overworked packhorse from Tilea, he called Paychest. It was the bounty hunter’s routine to inspect his animals daily, and to ensure that those he entrusted with them had not abused that trust, or his property. The bounty hunter had very high expectations for his animals and woe betide the stablemaster whose care was negligent.

As the bounty hunter turned from the inn, he did not see the barrel-chested, scar-faced shape detach itself from an alley and follow him. The scar-faced man had traded the loinclout of the pit for a set of leather breeches and a sleeveless black tunic that displayed his massive arms. The shortsword that had done such deadly work the night before swung from his belt, and the look in his close-set eyes was no less murderous than that with which he had favoured his inhuman adversaries.

The bounty hunter entered the darkened stable, the odour of animals and dung wafting from the cave-like gloom. He marched across the straw-strewn floor, paying scant notice to the grizzled stablemaster until he was only a few feet away. Brunner addressed a few cold words to the man, inquiring where his animals could be found. The dirty man pointed a brown-stained hand deeper into the building and shambled off to return to whatever duties Brunner’s arrival had interrupted.

Brunner found his steed and packhorse tethered to a wooden post set into the wall, forming a stall that separated the animals from their fellows. The massive Bretonnian bay snorted happily as the bounty hunter’s gloved hand stroked his flank.

Brunner examined the animal’s body, looking for the telltale signs of lash and whip. Then he examined each of the horse’s hooves, checking that the shoes had been replaced, and the horn tended to. Satisfied with his examination, he moved toward the grey packhorse. As he rose, however, the bounty hunter noticed the figure of the stablemaster slipping out of the front door. A premonition washed over Brunner and he turned just as a massive figure closed upon him.

Brunner caught the wrist of the hand that gripped the shortsword just as the scar-faced man was thrusting the blade toward his belly. The bulging muscles on the pitfighter’s massive arm were like steel cords, and before the man’s strength, the bounty hunter found his own restraining grip thwarted, the fat-bladed sword inching closer towards his vitals.

The bounty hunter twisted his body, catching the pitfighter off guard. The gladiator’s massive body now pressed against Brunner’s back, the shortsword thrust away from the bounty hunter’s belly.

The gladiator snarled, catching Brunner’s neck in the crook of his free arm. Like the legendary pythons of Lustria, his powerful arm began to constrict about the bounty hunter’s throat, choking the breath from him. Brunner released a hand from the pitfighter’s wrist to rake the man’s eyes, but swiftly returned his hand to the wrist as the sword began to turn back towards his body. The gladiator grunted and increased the pressure about the bounty hunter’s neck.

The contest continued for a long while, the men’s feet jostling in the straw and dung for greater advantage, or some purchase that might tip the balance. Finally, the bounty hunter went limp, his grasp on the sword slackened. The gladiator sneered and increased the pressure on his throat. But the bounty hunter’s head suddenly snapped backwards, exploding the pitfighter’s bulbous nose with the steel crown of the helmet. The killer released his prey, staggering back a pace. Brunner gasped for breath, but even as he sucked air into his starving lungs, he managed to smash his steel-toed boot into the stunned gladiator’s knee. The scarred man crumpled and as he rose, a second kick caught him under the chin. Teeth and blood scattered across the stable, adding to the agitation of the animals.

Brunner stood over the man, and watched the rise and fall of his massive chest. As his icy eyes narrowed, the bounty hunter smashed the toe of his other boot into the side of the gladiator’s head. There was a sickening sound like an egg cracking and the pitfighter’s body trembled. Again the boot kicked out, this time caving in the side of his foe’s skull. The rise and fall of the man’s chest eventually grew still.

The bounty hunter crouched, sucking in more precious air, one gloved hand massaging his ravaged throat. He was studying his prey, taking in the build, the scars and what remained of the face. A smile, like that of a wolf as it spies a lone sheep, spread across the bounty hunter’s face. There was something familiar about this one. The gloved hand left his throat and grasped the hilt of the long knife hanging from his belt.

The bounty hunter made his way back toward the inn, every eye on the street watching as he walked past with the dripping head of the gladiator swinging from his left hand, where he gripped it by the hair. As he neared the inn, the wiry shape of a young boy detached itself from the shade of a haycart and scrambled toward him, straining to make his small legs keep pace with Brunner’s lengthy stride.

‘Will you be needing more salt, master?’ the boy asked, a tone of eagerness in his voice. Even at his tender age, he had witnessed death often enough, and heads of criminals adorning pikes set before the town’s main gate were commonplace. The gory object in Brunner’s hand disturbed him less than the gaggle of flies buzzing about a nearby pile of dung.

Brunner paused, staring down at the boy. The young face stared back at the steel visage. ‘Ever seen him before?’ the bounty hunter asked, holding the pitfighter’s mashed face forward for the boy to get a better look.

‘No,’ he replied after a moment. ‘I am sure that he was a stranger, from outside Greymere.’ Brunner continued to stare at the boy, then reached into a cloth pouch on his belt and tossed the child a copper coin.

‘Let me know if you see any more strangers,’ the bounty hunter’s cold voice said. Without a further look at the boy, he proceeded on his way to the inn. As he passed, the child bit the flat wedge of metal, to see if it would bend. When it did not, a gleeful expression washed across his face and he raced off, to be lost in the dingy streets of Greymere.

The bounty hunter was deep in thought as he pushed open the log door of the inn. Since he had arrived here, two men had tried to kill him. The duellist, Savio, had been known here. But the brutish man who had ambushed him in the stable apparently was not, assuming the boy and the stablemaster were to be trusted. Brunner did not doubt that there would be a third attempt.

Drexler bolted down the glass of Estalian brandy as if it were cheap marshbrew from the inn. He cast a withering look at the attending servant and the man hastened to refill his glass. The door of the parlour opened and the exiled Imperial nobleman turned his head, his hand slipping away from the glass to fumble for the crossbow leaning beside his chair. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw Vincenzo enter, and the ashen pallor faded slightly from his face.

‘I have not left this room in two days,’ the merchant growled, fear making the sullen tone more whiny than intimidating. ‘He killed the pitfighter.’ To punctuate his last statement, Drexler drained the glass of brandy.

Vincenzo nodded his head, removing his cloth hat with a hand grey with traildust. ‘I could have told you that it would turn out like that. You hired a killer to do an assassin’s job.’

‘I encouraged the prince to arrest the man,’ Drexler said, looking down at the floor. ‘He would have done so, had the bounty hunter not already appeared before him. It seems this pitfighter was once a Sartosan corsair, with a price on his head in every port in Tilea.’ Drexler sighed, waving his hands in an expressive gesture. ‘If it had been the bounty killer’s word alone, perhaps I might have prevailed upon Waldemar to arrest him, but the pitfighter’s manager came forward to affirm the hunter’s claim! Damn fool was hoping to share in the reward, and gain some last bit of profit on his fighter!’ Drexler shook his head. Ordinarily, he would have admired such limitless avarice, and the ability to ferret out the last copper from an investment, but this time boundless greed had worked against him.

Suddenly Drexler raised his head, and turned to face his Tilean friend. ‘What did you say a moment ago?’ he inquired, a subtle tone to his query.

‘I made contact with Louis,’ Vincenzo replied. ‘He will arrive in two days’ time.’ Drexler shook his head, waving away his words.

‘No, you said something about this being an assassin’s job,’ he said, a sinister gleam in his eye.

He thought for a moment, motioning for Vincenzo to be silent. A smile cracked his face and he nodded. ‘Perhaps we do not need to wait two days.’

‘What are you planning?’ Vincenzo asked, not following the merchant’s thoughts.

‘Drugo,’ the exile said, his smile broadening as he saw the frightened look in Vincenzo’s eyes.

‘Drugo?’ he scoffed. ‘Prince Waldemar will never stand for that. You may as well send for Vogun and have him do the job – and smash down half the town in the process.’ The Tilean shook his head. ‘Besides, Drugo is locked away in the prince’s dungeon, to entertain us all on Pflugzeit when he is drawn and quartered.’

The calculating look remained on Drexler’s face as he stood from his chair. ‘I am very old friends with Waldemar. I think he will find that it is easier to catch an assassin like Drugo than it is to keep him.’ He laughed, snatching the bottle of brandy from his attendant and pouring a measure into his glass. ‘At least he will after I finish speaking with him about it.’

‘This bounty hunter considers killing a business,’ Drexler snickered. ‘Let us see how he fares against someone who considers it a religious experience.’

A figure of blackness watched from the shadows beside a ramshackle wainwright’s as the last light on the upper floor of Greymere’s inn went dark. The face grinned in the darkness as widely and hideously as any goblin from the Badlands. No laughter accompanied the manic leer as the shape detached itself from the wall against which it had been pressed. A shadow crossed the muddy street. It had the faintest suggestion of a man’s figure, cloaked and hooded in a garment cut from midnight itself. It crossed the street, fading into the looming darkness before the inn. No sound accompanied it, not the sound of breath, the squelching of mud under booted sole, or even the rustle of fabric. The heavy door of the inn, firmly secured from within, was covered by darkness for one fleeting moment. Then it opened by the smallest margin. The shadow slipped through the opening and the heavy door shut behind it.

Drugo replaced the bar his thin, wire-like hook had lifted and scanned the silent building. A dog lying near the door did not even raise its head as the assassin stalked past. The man grinned down at the animal, fingering the dagger clutched in his hand. It had been two weeks since he had slaughtered anything, and the last blood he had drawn had been from his jailer when he bit off his fingers as he spooned food into his mouth. The assassin’s tongue darted out, licking his chin and cheeks, as if to recall the taste. The man leaned towards the dog, a murderous urge rising within him. But the moment passed and he turned away, gliding up the narrow stairway that led to the rooms of the inn.

He had been forced to swear oaths before the grey moustached man had released him. Oaths to his patron god, Khaine, the Lord of Murder. The only oaths he would honour, and the man had known it. He had sworn to leave Greymere, sworn never to return, sworn to kill no more of its denizens. With one exception: the bounty hunter.

Drugo knew that his prey would be found up here, in one of the private rooms. It was to be expected. Poor men never warranted a sanction, never rated the expense of hiring a killer. Gold given for the services of an assassin of Khaine was sacred, and only a large amount was acceptable. For who would dishonour a god by offering up a pittance?

Drexler had been most upset at Drugo’s insistence that his freedom was not enough, and still more upset when he heard the price. But he had paid, in the end. When the fear set upon them, they always paid.

The assassin glided down the hall, his approach so stealthy that a rat scurried past him along the opposite wall without turning a whisker in his direction. He reached the first door on his left and paused a moment to defeat the lock. He pushed the door open by the slightest of cracks, then closed it again, the brief intrusion unnoticed by those within. The fat man had certainly not been a bounty hunter, his companion even less. The assassin glided away, passing from one door to another, pausing at each, before moving on.

Finally, he reached the room he sought. There, on a battered table, rested the helmet he had had described to him by the merchant. There was a body in the bed, the heavy blankets pulled about it to guard against the chill of the night.

Drugo’s blood surged and pounded through his veins. He shut the door behind him and silently moved to the bed. At last, his breath came hot and hard to him, the killing frenzy seething through his body. It had been far too long since he had made an offering to Lord Khaine!

The assassin’s dagger slashed downwards, into the blanket, into the spot where Drugo judged the neck to be. It was a killing blow, but the frenzy was upon him, and the blade struck the blankets again and again. The grinning leer became still more wicked and depraved, the gleam of madness still more maniacal as his dagger rose and fell, rose and fell. Then, the smile died, the gleam faded. The assassin’s hand reached out, tearing away the blankets. He watched as feathers slowly flew from the butchered pillows, feathers, but no blood, pillows but no body upon them. The assassin leaned forward, unable to believe his eyes.

There was a loud explosive sound and the assassin fell backwards, half his face turned into a charred, gory mess. Flecks of black powder sizzled in his flesh, as his blood dribbled into the floorboards and leaked down to the tavern below.

The bed creaked as a form emerged from beneath it. Brunner lit the lamp beside his helm. The smoking gun was clenched in his hand, mirroring the smoke rising from where he had fired through the raised pallet that served as a mattress. He lit a cigar on the lamp, and as the dark smoke rose from the stubby tube of dried weeds, he bent over the dead man, to examine what was left of his face.

There was a din and clamour in the hall outside, and a frenzied battering at the door of his room. The bounty hunter stalked over to the door, opening it, staring into the bald visage of the innkeeper.

‘Just an uninvited guest, maybe you know him,’ he said, motioning for the innkeeper to enter and look at the man he had just killed. The man gave a gasp as he recognised the carcass.

‘That’s Drugo!’ he exclaimed. ‘A cultist of Khaine. But he is supposed to be locked up in the prince’s dungeon!’ The man did not protest as Brunner gripped his arm and led him back toward the door where the faces of the rest of the staff and guests peered in.

‘Then he might be somewhat appreciative when I return Drugo to his custody in the morning.’ Brunner started to close the door.

‘My sheets!’ the innkeeper shouted, suddenly realising what else he had seen in the room.

‘Yes, I’ll need a new set,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘But you can give them to me in the morning.’ With that he shut the door in the face of the innkeeper and those behind him.

Brunner walked across the floor, back toward the bed. He reloaded his firearm, then, cradling the weapon against his chest, slipped under the pallet, letting the sheets once again drape over the edge. The bounty hunter was not unused to hardship, with many months every year spent hunting things that were almost men, and men who were barely human. A soft bed, even a not so soft bed, was now too strange to enjoy. And, besides, there was always some jackal ready to murder a person in his sleep. It was always best to give him a tempting target, but never the right one.

The bald man with the grotesque paunch reached to the shelf behind him and twisted the tap on the cask of beer. The light, urine-hued liquid sloshed into the clay stein. The man set the stein down upon the counter of the bar with such violence that the white-topped brew rolled over the sides of the cup.

‘Careful,’ the cold voice of the man on the other side of the counter admonished the bald bartender. ‘You are spilling my drink.’ The innkeeper turned on the bounty hunter, an angry look on his face.

‘You can have this one at my expense, just so long as you do not spend another night under my roof!’ the man exclaimed. ‘Half of my guests left this morning, and the other half have demanded I reduce their bills. All because of you and that visitor of yours last night.’

Brunner regarded the man with a face that was as expressionless as the steel mask of his helm.

‘You would think that I had not done your community a great service this past night,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘Kept you all from being murdered in your beds as I nearly was.’

‘As you should have been,’ the bald man retorted. ‘Beds are meant to be slept on, not to be crawled under! What kind of place do you think I am running here?’

‘I am glad that your prince was more appreciative,’ the bounty hunter’s voice warmed as his hand caressed the slight bulge in the breast of his tunic. ‘Twenty gold crowns is not my best work, but then my commissions are seldom so obliging as to come to my rooms looking for me.’

Brunner looked over as the tavern door opened, one hand slipping to a throwing knife, grasping its hilt. The bounty hunter relaxed slightly as he saw the salt boy enter. The boy caught the man’s eye and ran over.

‘I saw another stranger, like you asked about,’ the boy said. ‘Riding into town.’ Brunner dug a silver piece from his belt, holding it in his upraised hand where the boy could see it.

‘Now,’ the bounty hunter said, ‘describe this stranger for me.’ He looked over his shoulder at the innkeeper. ‘And I may be wanting to use that back door you spoke of earlier.’

The slender man rode his white horse through the muddy streets, stopping well short of the inn that was the first place of interest to visitors to Greymere. He was a young man, his brown hair worn short, in the rounded bowl pattern of a Bretonnian peasant. But the suit of well-tended leather armour that clothed him, the metal boots, the slender blade at his side, the hard set of his features – these belonged to no peasant. The man slipped down from the saddle of his steed, tethering the animal to a post.

He stared up at the high wooden tower of the building beside him, then glanced back down the street, his hawklike gaze training on the door of the inn. He turned, removing a long curved length of wood from the saddle of his steed.

The man carried the length of wood with him as he walked into the building. There was no one about in the little timber temple to the goddess Myrmidia, as he had hoped. The Bretonnian paused, and drew a long cord from his belt that he fixed to one end of the haft of wood. He studied the wooden shaft, admiring the grain of its surface, the shape of its cut, the intricate carved runes and script that flowed along its length – too precise, too artful to be any man-made construction.

Straining, the Bretonnian bent the shaft of wood into a bow shape that transformed it from a length of wood into a deadly weapon. The string, made of the hair of elf maidens woven together with consummate skill and craft, was made fast at the other end of the bow.

Louis had dwelled long in his homeland, with his family, on the very edge of the Loren Forest. They had known the forest folk, as few men did, and the bow had been gifted to his father by one of the wood elves. It was that bow that had cost his father his life, when their knightly liege had demanded the weapon, claiming that such a bow was unfit for peasant hands.

Louis smiled, recalling how the knight had died, drowning in his own blood, how he had reclaimed his father’s bow, and how he had made the armoured lords of Bretonnia pay for their cruelty and oppression. At last, the feared archer known as the Black Feather – after the crow feathers he adorned his arrows with – had been forced to leave his homeland, to range far across the Known World to escape the vengeful grasp of the king.

Louis walked over to the simple ladder that would take him into the tower. Now he was an assassin for hire, employing his skill and the elegant weapon he bore for the crude pursuit of gold. But some day, he would return to Bretonnia, and cause his former masters to again fear the forests, to fear the death that struck from afar, without warning.

The marksman made his way into the small stand atop the tower, and crouched down onto his belly. He pulled a black-feathered arrow from the quiver at his side, putting it to the string of his bow. He sighted down the street, fixing his gaze on the door of the tavern.

He stretched the arrow back, keeping the string taut and the sight at the door of the inn. When the bounty hunter came out, he would never see the arrow that pierced his heart.

Long hours passed, the sun lowered in the sky. Still the Bretonnian kept his arrow nocked, ignoring the strain of his muscles, and the tension and fatigue setting into his limbs.

Louis waited, still as a statue. Eventually, the bounty hunter would emerge. Then he would die.

‘Intent on holding that thing back all night?’ a cold voice asked from behind the Bretonnian. The stillness of the archer seemed to actually increase. Louis turned his head slightly, seeing a black boot at the edge of his vision, resting on the edge of the sloped roof.

‘Wondering how long I’ve been here?’ the bounty hunter asked. ‘Almost as long as you, waiting for you to make a move.’ There was a steel edge in Brunner’s voice. ‘I finally got tired of waiting.’

The Bretonnian didn’t move as the man he had been hired to kill spoke, as his sword touched the small of his back. ‘When I learned that a stranger had ridden in, alone, sporting a fancy bow, I reasoned it out: that you were here to kill me. That you would be up here, the highest ground in this mud hole. I would be here too if I were going to put an arrow in somebody before they could do something about it.’

The Bretonnian craned his neck around, to glare at the bounty hunter.

Brunner stared back, his face unreadable in the dark. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘You move a muscle, and you’re dead. And I’m sure you’d rather have your bones rest back in Bretonnia, Louis.’

The use of his name enraged the former peasant. The tone of the bounty hunter’s voice echoed his former lord’s. With a snarl, the archer turned, gasping as Brunner’s sword stabbed into his side. The elegant bow slipped from the archer’s shocked fingers, toppling back down the dark pit of the tower. Louis clutched his side, blood seeping between his fingers.

‘Now,’ the bounty hunter’s chill voice spoke again, ‘what I want to know is who paid you to kill me.’ The words dripped with the promise of death if they were not obeyed. Again, Louis heard the echo of the knight’s voice as he demanded his father’s bow.

Louis’s hand flew to the hilt of his sword. Brunner lashed out with his foot, kicking the man in the chest. A strangled scream howled from the Bretonnian’s lips as he was pushed from the tower.

The bounty hunter heard the dull thud of the man’s body in the mud far below. He peered over the edge of the tower at the body down in the street, its limbs skewed about it in unnatural, broken angles. He shook his head.

‘Well, at least your head will make it back to Bretonnia,’ he said, caressing the hilt of the long knife at his belt.

Drexler sat upon the back of his horse on the low hill just outside Greymere, six of his men clustered around him. He had spent a day and a half hiding out here, less afraid of the denizens of the wild than he was of the seemingly unkillable bounty hunter. The sweat of fear dampened his brow as he thought of the man and the massive knife, and the use to which he put it.

Drexler pulled the small steel flask from his belt and drained away more of the Estalian brandy. A few of his men muttered something under their breath, but a withering gaze silenced them.

‘You have something on your mind?’ he snarled.

‘Yes,’ one of the men, a one-eyed thug who had been a bandit before Drexler had turned him to the marginally more legitimate trade of smuggler, replied. There was a defiant, worrisome tone in his voice. Some of the other men grumbled their support.

‘Out with it,’ Drexler demanded.

‘If you go ahead with this,’ the eye-patch thug went on, ‘there is no way Prince Waldemar is going to let us keep on operating in Greymere. Things have been good for us here, the town is a secure haven, close to the trade routes and caravan trails from the coast.’ The man looked over at his comrades. ‘You should wait this thing out. Hide until he gives up looking for you.’

‘Hide?’ the question rumbled from Drexler’s breast. ‘Like some damn rabbit?’ The level of outrage in his voice caused the one-eyed man to start. Drexler was all the more upset because he had been doing just that since the death of the marksman Louis. ‘I’ll not hide. Nor wait for this murderer to pull me from my hole in the middle of the night and cut my head off with that knife of his! No, we finish this thing! And if we must move on afterwards, then so be it.’ The glare in Drexler’s eyes told his men that there would be no further debate on the matter. Suddenly all eyes turned from the merchant as a horseman rode up. It was Vincenzo. Beside the Tilean lumbered a massive, brutish form.

It stood well over ten feet tall, its monstrous shoulders easily as broad across as the bed of a wagon. Thick arms, like dirty tree trunks, burst from the vest of tanned hide that clothed the bulging, muscular torso. Legs like pillars crunched across the ground, leaving clawed footprints inches deep in the hard earth. A vacant face considered the assembled men from beneath a low, bony brow. A cap ripped from the back of a bear rested on the creature’s head, flies swirling and dancing about the rotting fur. The slash-like mouth displayed the broken, rotting, jagged stumps of tusk-like teeth, one of them digging into the leather-like cheek beside the bulbous, squashed nose.

Two beady, grey-hued eyes stared from sockets set deep in the thick skull. Vogun the ogre let his hand twitch – a hand that gripped a club larger and more massive than any two of the men staring at him in a mix of awe and fear.

‘I see you found Vogun,’ Drexler said, trying not to betray his intimidation. He had used Vogun before, both to protect his own caravans and to prey upon the wagons of his rivals, but he never failed to be awed by the sheer size of the brute. ‘Does he know what to do?’

Vincenzo looked at the ogre. ‘Down below, in Greymere…’ he began. The ogre’s brow knitted as he tried to puzzle out the meaning of the words. The Tilean pointed his hand at the town below. ‘Down there, Greymere,’ he said. The ogre followed Vincenzo’s hand, nodding as he saw the town, but once again became muddled when the Tilean called it Greymere. ‘The town,’ Vincenzo explained. ‘In town, there is an inn,’ once more Vogun’s brow knitted in concentration.

Vincenzo rolled his eyes in disgust. He rode to the ogre’s side, his horse snorting in aggravation as the stench of the behemoth’s clothing struck its nostrils.

‘See?’ he asked, pointing his finger under the ogre’s nose. The ogre leaned forward, sighting along the line of the Tilean’s finger like an engineer aiming a cannon. He saw the finger stabbing at a two-storey structure in the middle of the town. Vogun nodded his massive head.

‘Yer, da place dat looks like a lunchbox. Vogun see it,’ the ogre’s deep, rumbling voice growled.

‘There is a man there,’ Vincenzo went on. ‘In the building. His name is Brunner. He wears a black steel helmet shaped like a bowl. It covers his face,’ the Tilean gestured with his hands, trying to show the ogre what he meant. Vogun put a bony knuckle against his brow, as if pressing against his skull would enable him to make some meaning of the Tilean’s words.

‘By the grace of Morr!’ Drexler exclaimed, reining his horse beside the ogre. ‘Do you see that building?’ the merchant asked. Once again, Vogun bent forward, sighting along Drexler’s pointed finger.

‘Yer, da place dat looks like a lunchbox. Vogun see it,’ the ogre rumbled.

‘Go there. Kill anyone inside.’

The ogre nodded enthusiastically. Here were orders he could understand. Drexler tossed the ogre a leather pouch and the creature’s face broke into a toothy smile as he saw the glittering coins inside. With a deep bellow, the brute turned and lumbered off down the slope toward the town. Drexler turned in his saddle, facing the incredulous looks of his men.

‘We’ll be leaving Greymere anyway,’ he said.

There were shouts of alarm in the street. Behind the bar, the balding innkeeper cast a curious look at the door, wondering what was going on outside. He noticed the lamp hanging beside the door begin to jump on its hook. Ponderous steps thudded up to the door. Then the portal was smashed open. A hulking shape bent almost in half, moving sideways to fit through the doorway.

The face of every man in the tavern stared, mouths dropping wide with horror. The ogre straightened up to his full, towering height, hitting his head on the low ceiling. Then he bent his neck down and rubbed a gnarled hand against his bearskin cap.

Complete silence ruled the tavern, not a man dared to move a muscle. Vogun stared at the men, his beady eyes passing from one frozen figure to the next. He stuck a thick pink tongue between his lips, trying to concentrate. The boss had sent him here to do something. Something important. A name flickered in the ogre’s addled memory, and with it came the recollection of what he was supposed to do.

‘Brunner!’ the ogre bellowed, raising his club and smashing it backhanded across the nearest table, scattering a pair of off-duty guardsmen.

The ogre lumbered forward, backhanding a third guardsman as he charged at him, the powerful blow caving in the man’s ribcage, and sending his body hurling across the room with such force that he dented the timber wall where he struck it.

‘Brunner!’ the murderous roar boomed from the ogre’s mouth. His club crashed down onto another table, sending a shower of splinters and debris across the long room. Men were on their feet, screaming, shouting and running in all directions away from the ogre.

‘Brunner!’ the ogre rumbled again. For a second, he paused, his club raised in mid-strike, a trembling peasant huddled beneath him. The man dared to look up, saw the puzzled look on the ogre’s face, and scurried away, crawling between his column-like legs and running through the smashed door behind him. The ogre’s lips silently worked as his mind tried to remember what the word he was shouting meant. He shrugged and smashed the club down where the fleeing peasant had stood.

‘Brunner!’ the deep voice boomed once more. The hulk turned, stomping towards the bar. The bald innkeeper heard the monster coming, reached beneath the counter and retrieved the last bottle of Bugman’s Brew in the place. He downed the fine, expensive beer and mouthed his lips in a silent prayer.

‘Up here,’ a cold voice called out. The ogre turned, paused a moment, trying to remember if he was here to kill someone or just destroy the place. He shrugged again, he would just have to do both. But first he would kill. Even the ogre understood that a building doesn’t run away.

Vogun lumbered back into the hall, scanning the long common room on the other side. There was a loud whistle and the brute turned, facing the stairway. He looked up and saw a man in armour standing at the head of the stairs. The ogre’s thick fingers tensed about the grip of the club.

‘Brunner!’ he bellowed again. His massive foot smashed down on the bottom-most stair. The wood splintered and burst under his mammoth weight.

‘That’s right,’ Brunner’s cold voice called down to Vogun. The bounty hunter puffed away at his cigar, then revealed the object he held in his hand: an unhooded flask of oil from the lamp in his room. The ogre stared stupidly at the earthenware pot, then stepped forward again, crushing another stair in his advance. The bounty hunter smiled, hefted the flask and threw it full in the face of the oncoming brute. The ogre snarled, gasping in pain as the oil stung his eyes. He dropped his club, grasping at his face, trying to batter away whatever had stung him with his fists. On the stair, Brunner sighed. He lifted a twisted paper taper to the end of his cigar. Another puff, and the paper took flame. The bounty hunter let it linger for a moment, until it was well and truly on fire, a thick orange flame quickly eating the taper.

‘Hardly worth the effort,’ the bounty hunter said, tossing the flaming taper at the oil-soaked ogre.

‘How long do you think he will be?’ Drexler asked his confederate as they sat looking down at Greymere from the top of the hill.

‘That depends,’ Vincenzo replied. ‘Do you think he will be able to find his way back here?’

Drexler clucked his tongue. ‘I should have told him that I would pay him when he got back. Like as not, I could have convinced him he had already been paid for the job if I had done that.’

‘Look!’ exclaimed one of Drexler’s thuggish hirelings. Down below, the streets of Greymere were once more plunged into chaos. A massive, flaming shape staggered through the middy streets, blindly groping its way.

‘Drop to the street,’ Drexler cursed under his breath. ‘Douse yourself in mud.’ But the burning ogre just staggered on, bellowing in agony.

‘Well,’ commented one of the hirelings, ‘so much for the ogre dealing with Brunner.’ Drexler cast a withering gaze on the man.

‘Perhaps he finished him off before the bounty hunter got him,’ Vincenzo offered. ‘Ogres take a long time to die. I’ve seen many a man fighting an ogre that had an axe-blade in his skull.’

Drexler thought for a moment, then whipped his horse down the hill. ‘Yes, we must see for ourselves.’ The hirelings and Vincenzo quickly followed their employer towards the town.

The front gates of the fort were gaping wide. The mashed remains of the watch captain who had thought to turn back the ogre were lying in a puddle in the middle of the road. The rest of his command was still hiding in whatever burrow they had fled to. As Drexler wheeled his horse around the gory remains, he considered just how inept peace had rendered Greymere’s soldiery. Perhaps it was just as well that he was moving on. Because next time the orcs came up out of the Badlands, he doubted if Prince Waldemar’s men would repulse them.

The riders made their way to the inn. The streets around them had grown silent, only the occasional face peering from a doorway telling them that people yet lurked in the town. The burning corpse of Vogun smouldered beside the road, his enormous vitality and dull nervous system at last overcome by the fire that still chewed on his flesh. Drexler did not give his former lackey a second glance, but reined his horse before the battered doorway of the inn.

Vincenzo and his henchmen followed Drexler into the deserted building. They made a cursory examination of the lower floor, but found nothing. Then Vincenzo set up a shout. He had discovered a trail of blood leading away from the bar, up the shattered stairway and to the hall above. Drexler smiled and ordered his men to follow the trail. If nothing else, the ogre had wounded the bounty hunter. Terrible as he might be, Brunner would be no match for Drexler’s mob wounded.

The trail of blood led to a room at the end of the hall. The men filed into the chamber, looking about. The room was empty save for a bed, a small rickety looking table, and a large lamp. The men wrinkled their noses at the rotten smell in the room. The henchmen looked under the bed, examined the small chest set in one corner, as if their prey might have crawled into it.

‘Where did he go?’ Drexler demanded. The trail of blood led into the room, there could be no doubt about that. Vincenzo looked away from the chest, back at his employer. Then the Tilean’s eyes grew wide with alarm. Drexler turned to see what had upset him, and all the colour left his face.

The lamp, its wick burning away, was no lamp. It was a small wooden keg. And, as the wick burnt away, carrying the flame into the keg, the stench of gunpowder overwhelmed the vengeful men.

Outside, Brunner stared up at the inn, slowly counting down. He reached three when there was a loud explosion. The bounty hunter spat his cigar into the mud. ‘Cut the fuse a little short,’ he commented to himself, and strode across the street, drawing his sword.

Brunner marched up the stairs, toward the end chamber where smoke still boiled. He peered into the room, his eyes studying the moaning, dying men and those already past their suffering. Then he nodded in satisfaction, gripping the chin of the nearest body, lifting the face to study its features. The dying thug’s moan grew to a shriek as the bounty hunter forced his neck to crane upward on the savaged flesh that connected it to his chest. He let the man’s head fall back. No money to be had from him.

The rest of the room was a shambles, and Brunner idly considered the steel balls embedded in the timber walls. It would take some doing to remove the steel bullets from the walls. Most likely the innkeeper would leave them, perhaps throwing some planks or paint over them to conceal them from his next patron.

The improvised bomb had been a trick borrowed from a dwarf he had known. His entire supply of steel bullets had been loaded into a small keg, then filled with black powder. A crude, but highly effective way to attend to the gang of would-be murderers.

Brunner had guessed that the ogre represented the last hopes of whoever was trying to kill him. He surmised the man behind the whole thing would come to see for himself if the bounty hunter was dead, bringing enough muscle with him to feel safe. The bounty hunter had borrowed some blood from the dead soldier in the tavern below, thinking he would not mind anymore. It would be necessary to get them quickly to his room, lest the bomb detonate before they were inside, or close enough to be stunned by the explosion. He smiled again. It seemed that his bomb had got the entire mob, which was more than he had hoped for.

A wheezing breath brought the bounty hunter spinning around. He stared at a ragged lump of human debris that had crawled away from Brunner’s room, leaving a swath of blood behind him like the trail of a snail. The man raised a gory hand to his moustache, smoothing the curved horns of hair. He glowered at the bounty hunter, his fading eyes burning with a sullen defiance. The steel helm of the bounty hunter nodded as the eyes behind the visor drank in the wounded man’s face. There was an unmistakable air of authority about him that was evident even in his dying state. Clearly, this was the person behind all the attacks against Brunner.

Drexler glared at Brunner, waiting for him to draw his butchering knife. Now that death had set upon him, he found that he was prepared for it. He would enter the realm of Morr knowing that he had fought to the last.

‘Why?’ the bounty hunter’s cold voice rasped.

Drexler’s eyes grew wide with shock. The killer didn’t even know who he was! The bounty hunter hadn’t come to Greymere looking for him at all!

The dying man began to laugh at the absurdity of it, but the sound faded as a bubble of blood rose in his throat and burst. He had walked into his own death!

Drexler’s head slumped against the floor with a thud.

Brunner turned away from the dead man and headed back into the room, pulling the headsman from his belt. There were a few faces in the chaos he thought he recognised. One might even belong to a Tilean thief named Vincenzo, on whom some petty sum was being offered in Miragliano. And there was no sense in letting perfectly good money rot in the bellies of crows and wolves.

A few hours later, a dark armoured figure rode through the gates of Greymere, where a group of soldiers was clearing away the remains of the former watch captain. Behind him trailed the dappled grey packhorse, a large barrel strapped across its back. The kidnapper Brunner had been waiting for would never show his face in Greymere now, not with alarm rampant in the town. It would take weeks for the place to calm down again.

Brunner cast a look over his shoulder at the barrel. He might not have met up with the man he was hunting, but at least he had turned a profit by his dalliance in the border prince’s town. The bounty hunter smiled. Besides, there were those who would pay ten times more for the collection of salted meats he carried than the price on the kidnapper’s head.

The bounty hunter lashed the reins of his steed and set out on the long road back to the city states of Tilea.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TYRANT

Late one evening, I made my way along the dingy streets of Miragliano, bound for the Black Boar. A cluster of dwarfs was deep in debate with a narrow-eyed Marienburger, their voices hushed and low. A hairy Middenheimer and a moustached Ostlander were tossing hatchets at a target set against a wooden support post. A sinister-looking man in the colourful robes of the Colleges of Magic was intently studying a black-bound volume, some treasure no doubt procured that very day from some crafty Tilean book dealer.

As was usual for the tavern, there was a raucous crowd of men from all across the Empire drinking and telling lies of their exploits in the Tilean states. But I had eyes for none of these men, whatever tales they might have to tell, for I found my prize sitting at his usual table. The bounty hunter was sipping from a small glass, which I knew must contain his beloved schnapps. Seeing him thus engaged, I at once determined that his spirits must likewise be high, and advanced upon his table. Those infrequent periods when Brunner was in a good humour had provided me with a great wealth of material for my pamphlets. For a certain loquacious impulse would overcome him, and he would regale me long into the night with tales of his past enterprises.

The bounty hunter looked up at me, gesturing for me to sit. The gloved hand that beckoned me then caressed the sheathed blade that rested across the table. I stared at it for a long time, remarking its elegance. It was a longsword, that trusted blade of the Empire, its hilt crafted in the shape of a dragon, its guard forming the outstretched wings of the beast, the pommel forming its horned head. Hilt, guards and pommel were all gilded, the golden surface glittering in the dim light of the tavern. Brunner’s gloved hand again slid along the length of the blade.

‘It is magnificent, is it not?’ the chill voice of this grim killer asked me. I nodded my head.

‘I have seldom seen so fine a weapon,’ I confessed. ‘Even in the court of Karl Franz, I doubt if you could find its better.’

‘It is named Drakesmalice,’ the bounty hunter’s voice spoke. ‘A weapon borne by one of the noble houses of our homeland, bound to their bloodline, a part of their very being. It is said that it was forged during the Great War against Chaos, that it was carried with the crusading army that followed Magnus to the very gates of hell.’ The gloved hand patted the gilded dragon. ‘They say there is magic in this steel, magic that awakens only in the hands of those whose birthright it is to wield it.’

I stared again at the magnificent sword, imagining its long and bloodied history of noble service to the Emperor. There was a power, a lurking strength within that sword, far beyond the might of steel.

‘How did you come to possess this impressive blade?’ I asked. Brunner stared at me, his face expressionless. A lengthy period of silence passed between us. I was certain that I had somehow offended him, that he was not going to answer me. But at last, the tense quiet was broken and the icy voice of the bounty hunter began to speak of events far from Miragliano, in the lands of the Border Princes…

Five grunting, straining bodies filled the narrow lane that wound its way between the mud-brick hovels. The men were of vastly different ages, ranging from those who had just become men to an old grey-head. But beyond their ages, the men were alike. They wore filthy breeches of much patched crude wool, held about their waists by the merest length of rope. Sweat glistened upon their bare muscular chests and trickled into the scarred grooves in their backs where the lash had done its work. The men were clustered about the wooden bulk of an ox cart, their backs bent as they tried to lift the overladen wagon. One of their number was to slip a new wheel upon its axle, and replace the splintered disk that rested against the wall of one of the hovels.

A grim-visaged man observed their labours. His face too was scarred by a long slash that ran from forehead to cheek. Unlike the peasants’, his was the mark of a sword, not a whip. The overseer wore a suit of dark brigandine armour, a collar of chain and an open-faced bowl-like helm. A narrow-bladed longsword rested against his hip. The man’s features were hard, his nose broad, his eyes small and cruel. His skin, like that of the labourers, was dark, marked by the attentions of the hot Tilean sun. The mercenary fingered the grip of the heavy leather whip that hung from a loop on his belt.

‘Let’s not be all day!’ the soldier snapped. ‘The baron wants this grain in the keep and accounted for before the sun sets.’ The Tilean’s words were sharp and lashed at the straining peasants like the whip he carried. A few turned their heads to stare at the quickly declining sun.

Suddenly, the sound of horses made every man turn away from the disordered wagon to face the three mounted men who advanced upon the accident. The peasants hastily diverted their eyes when they saw the lead rider, staring at the ground with the intensity of frightened beasts. Their overseer bowed his head, but kept a wary eye on the nearby peasants.

The leader was a lean man, just beginning to show signs of a paunch. His face was thin, his cheeks high, his brow furrowed by wrinkles. The man’s hair had the salt and pepper hue of black hair becoming white, and was cropped close to his skull; he clearly enjoyed the regular attentions of a barber’s knife. His nose was a sharp beak, perched above a sharp slit of a mouth. His eyes were wide and glittered with a feverish intensity as his gaze swept over the tableau that filled the narrow lane. Velvet gloves covered his long fingers, white fur trimming the crimson garments. He wore long boots of black leather that rose to mid-calf. A sombre-hued hose and tunic completed his garb.

A slender sword hung from a jewelled scabbard at his side, fixed to a wide leather belt by a slender silver chain. The hilt of the sword was gold, cast into the semblance of a dragon, with the guard shaped like outspread wings. The golden hilt glittered in the fading light of the sun.

The two guards were dark-skinned like the overseer, but their commander had a fair northern complexion.

‘Lord baron,’ the overseer said.

The man raised a gloved hand and removed the blue cap that covered his close-shorn hair. He cast an indifferent gaze across the ox cart and the human beasts of burden beside it, trembling in their naked feet. The rider’s gaze settled upon the Tilean mercenary. There was a cool, expressionless look in the man’s sapphire eyes.

‘Aldo,’ he said, his voice flat, almost petulant. ‘The keep is proving most tedious this evening.’ The rider let a sigh whisper from his chest. He began to idly turn his hat about. ‘I was wondering if I might borrow one of these creatures.’

‘My lord baron,’ the Tilean replied, nervousness entering his voice. ‘Do you think that wise? I… I mean there… there is still much work to do… to bring in the harvest. And you have already, ah, entertained twice this week.’

‘Aldo, I was wondering if I might borrow one of these creatures,’ the rider repeated as though the Tilean had never spoken. The mercenary swallowed loudly, bowing even lower before the rider.

‘Of course, lord baron,’ he said. A thin smile slithered across the rider’s face. He turned his gaze to the cowering labourers. The eyes of each man stared up, though not one dared to raise his head.

The rider replaced the blue cap, smoothing it into place, and began to wag his finger playfully from one peasant to another. At last, the finger stopped and settled upon one of the younger peasants.

‘Yes, I think you will do,’ his deep voice stated. The peasant looked up, fear warring with hate for command of his dirty, scarred features. Hate won and before the rider could move, a blob of spittle landed squarely on his boot. Aldo and the two mounted bodyguards moved forward. The scar-faced Tilean brought a booted foot crashing against the knee of the defiant peasant, forcing him to kneel. The grey-headed peasant looked up, a look of horror and anguish twisting his tired face.

‘My lord baron, I beg you!’ the man implored. ‘He is only a boy!’ The rider favoured both men with a withering stare. The other three peasants turned their eyes back to the ground, as if to distance themselves from the events. The rider nodded and his two mounted guards dropped down from their horses and caught both of the older man’s brawny arms.

‘You know,’ the rider said, training his angry gaze upon the old man, ‘I do believe that you are right. You will provide much better sport than that vermin.’ The rider turned his gaze to Aldo. ‘Gut him,’ the rider snapped. The old man shrieked, straining against the two armoured mercenaries holding him. The overseer brought a dagger from his belt and raked it across the belly of his captive, finally letting the dying man pitch forward into a pool of his own blood.

‘Emil!’ screamed the old man, watching as his son twitched in the dirt. He looked once more at the rider. ‘Bastard!’ he roared. The guard gripping his left arm kicked him in the stomach, forcing the wind from his lungs. The old man bent double, gasping for air. The rider raised his hand when the other guard prepared to deliver another kick.

‘Now, now,’ the rider reprimanded. ‘If you break him, he won’t be any good to me. Take him to the keep.’ The rider did not wait to see his guards remove the gasping man, but turned his eyes once more to Aldo.

‘This mess,’ the rider said indicating both the ox cart as well as the corpse lying in the street. ‘Have it cleaned up right away.’ He cast a wrathful look at the three remaining peasants. ‘And see that this lazy rabble attends to it.’

‘My lord baron,’ the Tilean spoke. ‘Five men could not repair the cart, how will three manage it?’

The rider smiled, wheeling his horse about, to face the animal towards his timber keep. ‘Just tell them that if they don’t, they will be joining the old man. That should give them an extra burst of vigour.’ Chuckling at his own jest, the rider galloped back towards the timber fort.

An hour later, Albrecht Yorck, self-styled Baron of Yorckweg, sat down in the padded seat resting atop a small awning-clothed viewing stand. It overlooked a small, timber-walled arena beside the tyrant’s timber-walled fortress. The Imperial renegade had taken many years to secure his small holding in that lawless region known as the Border Princes. He had fought long and hard against man and beast, orc and goblin, even the wilds themselves to make his township survive. He had little to show for his efforts, but Yorck was determined to enjoy what small pleasures he could wring from what fruits his labours had provided.

This tyrant of Yorckweg looked at the frail peasant girl at his side, whose eyes stared at the timber floor of his viewing stand. He gestured with his hand and the girl quickly filled a horn cup with dark Tilean wine. He gestured again and the woman slunk to her former posture. Yorck let the fluid sit in his mouth a moment before letting the warm taste slide down his throat. It was as if, with every glass, he could taste the terror of the peasants who created it. It was a taste that was much to his liking.

He had known terror, once, and it was that memory that made the fear of others pleasing to him. He knew that he was now the source of fear, that he was the dread sovereign who held the life and death of hundreds in his hands. He understood now what pleasure fear must have given his former noble masters; it was the power to destroy a life with a simple word.

The tyrant leaned forward as the old peasant man from the road was shoved through the log door at the far end of the arena. The portal closed at once behind him. The old man stared about him, with horror in his eyes, then he looked up at the viewing stand. Yorck smiled down at him, the cold, humourless smile he had seen real barons and counts make into an art form.

Again, memory struck Yorck. He could remember his last moments before such a paragon of nobility. It had been in the throne room of the Viscount Augustine de Chegney, following the successful completion of the viscount’s brief campaign of expansion into the Empire. Yorck’s role had been instrumental in the campaign, but it was a thankless role, and the viscount had no intention of honouring their arrangement. There would be no elevation of Yorck, no rise for the spy and turncoat to a position befitting a gentleman. No, the viscount had shrewdly decided that a man who could betray a good master would betray a wicked one just as easily. Yorck could remember the Bretonnian lord’s laughter as he pleaded for his life. But it was not Yorck’s words that stayed his hand, rather it was the look of hate from the man he betrayed that saved his life. The hate between the viscount and his prisoner was deep and it would stoke the fires of rage in the prisoner’s heart if the viscount let him go, and so it had been done.

Yorck stroked the dragon-hilted sword at his side and the cruel smile spread across his face. ‘If you beg for mercy,’ he called down, ‘I may spare your life.’

The fear in the old man’s eyes was at once replaced by hate. The man spat at the distant figure of the tyrant, the spittle falling far short of its target. Yorck shook his head.

‘Come now,’ he goaded, reaching into the small wooden bowl at his side, and removing a handful of small stones. ‘You must have something to say.’ The tyrant threw a rock at the peasant, stinging his arm. He repeated the attack, but the peasant refused to beg, or cry out as the small missiles struck his body. His hateful glare remained focused on his tormentor.

‘Insolent,’ the tyrant declared with a disgusted tone. He dropped the few remaining stones back into the bowl. He reached for a rope that hung from the wooden awning that screened the viewing stand. ‘Go join your son, you filthy cur,’ Yorck snarled, pulling the rope.

A section of the arena wall below the viewing stand rose upwards and two massive creatures slunk forward from the darkness. They were dogs – monstrous war hounds from faraway Norsca. Each of the canine giants was nearly four foot at the shoulder and twice as long. Their pelts were brindle, sporting a brown field with darker black patches and stripes. The hides were drawn close about their lean bodies and were marked by bare grey patches of scarring where the lash had done its work. The skin was tight over the ribs and the heaving of each animal’s chest was quite visible as they loped into view. The massive, wide jaws dropped wide, letting thick tongues loll forward as streams of drool dangled from their jowls. The two animals began to pace towards the peasant in an eerie silence: the tyrant had long ago had their vocal cords severed.

The peasant looked away from the dogs as they advanced upon him, and trained one last, wrathful glare at the chuckling Yorck. Then, the hounds fell upon him, pulling him down to the earth. Yorck snapped his fingers as screams rose from the arena floor. Averting her eyes from the gory spectacle below, the serving girl refilled her master’s cup.

Elsewhere in Yorckweg, shabby figures carefully made their way through the shadow-lined streets of the village to an old disused barn. It was a structure Yorck had given his peasants long ago to hold surplus crops; a surplus that never materialised no matter how large the harvest. By ones and twos, the silent figures made their way to the darkened meeting place. A few, hearing the sounds of screaming from the fort, turned back, retreating to the mock safety of their hovels. But many more heard the cries and strode even more purposefully toward the barn.

There was no light inside, for the eyes of Yorck’s guards were everywhere, yet each person managed to find a place, leaning against a wall or sitting upon the floor. Several crawled onto the roof, to act as sentries should one of the mercenaries stray too near the meeting place.

In low, fearful whispers, the men began to speak. It was not so much a debate – it had already been decided what must be done. But it was no easy thing to act. The baron was ruthless and cruel when given little cause. If they should fail to oppose him they would bring even greater misery upon their heads. Yet, who among them did not cringe in terror every waking moment, fearful of the sadistic whim of their master that could see them spirited off to his torture chambers, and thence to the arena and the bellies of his dogs? Fear reaches a point where it can grow no greater, and it ceases to be bearable. The peasants of Yorckweg had reached such a point.

The small stash of coins was removed from its hiding place in the barn. Gathered over five years, stolen and hidden from Albrecht Yorck and his soldiers, the tiny hoard represented the last hope of the villagers. A quick debate was held, a swift conclusion decided upon and a young boy, one who might not be missed, was selected to bear the coins away, to the neighbouring settlement of Brezano and hire a warrior – a professional killer – to rid Yorckweg of its merciless tyrant.

The decision reached, the men stole once more from the barn, in ones and twos, disappearing into the night. The chosen youth, a lad named Jurgen, stood for a moment with his father, then set off, carefully making his way toward the perimeter wall and one of the small holes burrowed beneath the timber palisade. His father watched him go, proud of his boy, but fearful that the entire endeavour might be for nothing.

Another pair of eyes also watched Jurgen depart. Geier was an old man; a crippling blow from Yorck’s soldiers had made him more wretched and poor than his fellows, a beggar among beggars. It shamed Geier to live off the charity of those who had nothing to give. And that shame steeled the man’s maimed shreds of pride. Carefully he stole his way towards the baron’s timber fort. Yorck might pay well to know what had occurred at the meeting, well enough that Geier would not have to beg – well enough that the cripple might feel like a man once again. There was no real hope that the boy would actually find anyone, and this way, at least one of the people of Yorckweg would prosper from their desperate scheme.

The young peasant made his way through the massive stone walls, staring in open-mouthed marvel at the large iron-bound gates either side of the wall. A sentry, wearing ringmail and a scarlet tabard, began to make his way toward the boy, but noting his shabby dress and dirty countenance decided that there was little chance of collecting either duty or bribe from the wretch. He hastened back to the shade beside the gate.

As a town, Brezano was much larger than Yorckweg, and Jurgen was amazed at the activity in the streets. Carts and beasts of burden lumbered along the way, carrying sacks of meal, bolts of cloth, casks of wine and other goods he could not even begin to recognise. There were soldiers rubbing shoulders with wool-garbed shepherds, who manoeuvred their flocks with the aid of small yapping dogs. He saw vendors standing beside wooden buildings selling chickens and other fowl to every man that looked to have coin in their pocket.

As he slunk along the press of people, he saw a pair of diminutive figures wearing dark, sombre armour and carrying wide-bladed axes upon their shoulders emerge from a large twin-storeyed building. The peasant had heard of dwarfs before, in folk-tales, but never before had he laid eyes upon one. He stared openly at the two as they lumbered through the throng. Turning around, he looked at the building the two dwarfs had emerged from and decided to investigate.

Jurgen peered into the darkened interior, marvelling at the fact that the building had a wooden floor. He stood in the doorway, gazing across the rows of tables, and narrow benches. The room was the largest he had ever seen – larger even than the barn in which he and his confederates had met, and it was filled with a noisy crowd of people. Raucous laughter and calls for more ale, beer and mead rose from every table. Jurgen smiled to see such merriment, a thing he had never experienced in Yorckweg. But the smile was banished in an instant when a massive, barrel-chested man appeared before him.

The man looked at Jurgen from beneath thick bushy eyebrows and at once laid a paw-like hand on his shoulder. Before the boy could react, the bouncer spun him around and booted him through the door with a savage kick.

‘No beggars,’ the bouncer snarled. ‘If you can’t pay, you can’t come in.’ The huge man turned on his heel and stalked back into the tavern.

Jurgen watched as the bouncer’s broad back disappeared into the gloom of the building. Without thinking, he reached into his pocket, pulling out the coins he had been given. But it was too late: the bouncer had already gone. Jurgen hastened to return the coins to his tunic and rose to his feet, wiping the dust of the street from his clothes.

‘You don’t want to drink there anyway,’ a slender man said from beside Jurgen. The boy jumped in surprise. The man beside him was tall, a full head taller than the boy, but lean. His clothes were much patched and a slim dagger graced his leather belt. The man’s skin was swarthy, darker than most Tileans’, and his hair was a mass of oily black curls. His mouth was screwed into a wide smile that displayed a set of blackened teeth. ‘I can take you to a place where they don’t put half so much water in their beer.’ The man laid his hand on Jurgen’s shoulder and led him away from the crowded street.

‘Thank you,’ muttered Jurgen. ‘But I am looking for someone.’ The Tilean’s face brightened and a look of surprise entered his eyes.

‘Oh? Perhaps I have seen him?’ the man said, gently nudging the peasant boy around the corner of a small brick building. ‘Or is it a her you’re looking for?’ The Tilean’s beady eye snapped shut in a knowing wink.

‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ Jurgen responded. ‘Actually, I am not sure exactly who I am looking for.’

The Tilean stared back at Jurgen, the smile withering on his face. ‘Well, I know who I have been looking for,’ the man hissed, drawing the dagger from his belt. ‘I’ll have that silver you are carrying.’

Jurgen gasped, looking from the threatening thief, to the confining walls of the alley the man had guided him into. Seeing no avenue of escape, Jurgen put a protective hand on the pocket that contained the coins. ‘You can’t,’ he almost screamed.

‘None of that,’ the Tilean snarled. ‘If you make a noise, I’ll have to cut you. More trouble for both of us.’

He took a step forward. Then the dagger slipped from his fingers. The thief’s eyes grew wide, staring at Jurgen without seeing him. A bloody bubble burst from the man’s mouth and he slumped into the dirt, toppling on top of his discarded dagger.

A man appeared behind the fallen body, wiping blood from the knife he had stuck in the thief’s back. The newcomer wore a suit of brigandine armour, a breastplate of dark gromril covering his chest. A steel sallet helm of blackened metal covered the upper portion of his head and face. The man finished cleaning his knife, then replaced the blade in a leather belt across his chest.

The bounty hunter did not spare a glance at Jurgen but instead knelt beside the body of the man he had killed. He pulled an even larger knife from the belt around his waist – a massive blade with a serrated, saw-like edge. ‘This time you will stay caught,’ an icy voice said from beneath the blackened helm.

Jurgen looked away as the bounty hunter brought the edge of his blade against the neck of the dead man. In only a few minutes, the bounty killer had cleaned his knife and returned it to his belt. He produced a sack and dropped the Tilean’s head into it, twisting the end closed. The armoured figure then stood and turned, heading out of the alley.

‘Wait!’ Jurgen cried out, hurrying after the withdrawing figure. Brunner turned his steel-clad head, to stare at the peasant from the slit-like visor. The boy slunk away from the terrible gaze, his limbs trembling.

The bounty hunter turned again and began to stalk from the alleyway. Jurgen bit down on his fear of the intimidating figure and hurried forward. The armoured head twisted around slowly, the cold eyes narrowing on the boy.

‘Th… Thank you,’ Jurgen managed to force the words from his mouth. The look in the icy eyes remained the same and more words stumbled their way from the boy’s lips. ‘For saving me from… from that…’ The boy cast a look at the headless corpse lying in the alley, its blood draining away into the dirt.

‘Don’t thank me,’ the cold, flat voice of the killer rasped. ‘If that maggot hadn’t had a price on his head, he could have cut your heart out and offered it to the Blood God and it would have been none of my affair.’ Brunner turned away again, slinging the sack over his shoulder.

‘You killed that man for money?’ Jurgen gasped, horrified and excited by his harsh emotionless words. ‘You’re an assassin?’ he added in a slight whisper.

‘I’m no assassin,’ Brunner snapped, a cold fire in his voice. He rounded on the boy, glaring down at him. ‘I’m a bounty hunter, and there is a difference, though a moron peasant looking to get his throat slit in a back alley wouldn’t be able to understand it.’ Again, Brunner headed toward the street. Jurgen hesitated a moment, then followed the bounty hunter.

The press of bodies was no less than it was before, but Jurgen noticed as he followed the bounty hunter that merchant, peasant, soldier and craftsman alike all made way for the grim figure. Slipping behind in Brunner’s shadow, the boy discovered that his own passage was not so unobstructed and found his body squirming between the foot traffic as the people closed ranks and resumed their travel.

Brunner walked back down the street, toward the tavern from which the burly guard had so summarily ejected Jurgen only minutes before. As the boy advanced toward the building, the steel face of the bounty hunter turned towards him again.

Jurgen squeaked with fright as he saw that Brunner’s gloved hand was closed about the hilt of his fat-bladed sword and that an inch of steel gleamed where he had begun to draw the weapon from its scabbard.

‘I trust you have a reason for following me,’ the bounty hunter challenged, every inch of the trained killer tensed for action. Jurgen began to back away, but the sudden image of his home, his family, the frightened, desperate faces in the gloom of the barn forced him to hold his ground, to raise his face and stare defiantly at the bounty hunter.

‘Yes,’ the boy said in what he hoped was like the commanding tone he had heard the baron employ so very often, but which emerged as the high-pitched yip of a frightened fox. ‘I want to hire you.’

Jurgen thought he saw a flicker of amusement twitch across the hard mouth below the line of his helm. But it was only for a brief moment. The armoured figure turned and strode through the door of the tavern, waving a gloved hand for Jurgen to follow.

The boy re-entered the tavern. The huge bouncer again rose from his stool, striding toward the doorway, smacking one meaty fist into the palm of his other hand. But the bully had taken no more than a few steps before he saw the man waiting for Jurgen inside. A fearful look made the bouncer’s eyes grow wide and the hairy man returned to his stool, studiously avoiding the peasant boy and hardened killer who had preceded him into the drinking hole.

Brunner advanced to a table in the corner of the room, resting his back against the wall. He casually dropped the sack containing the head of the thief upon the table, paying it no further attention. He motioned with his hand for Jurgen to sit at the other side of the table, then snapped his fingers. An ashen-faced barmaid walked toward the table, her steps reluctant, her bodice heaving with short, frightened gasps. The bounty hunter barely looked at the young woman, as he snapped an order for a stein of beer. The barmaid cast a look at the peasant boy, then back at the bounty killer.

‘He can drink after I am paid,’ Brunner snapped, dismissing the woman. Leaning forward, the bounty hunter’s cold blue eyes stared at the peasant boy. ‘So you have a job for me?’ There was nothing mocking in the killer’s tone, only a deadly seriousness. ‘You should know that I don’t come cheap.’

Jurgen reached into his tunic, pulling the coins from the inner pocket his mother had sewn above his heart. It held the combined wealth of the town’s oppressed people. The boy reached toward the bounty hunter, but Brunner tapped the table instead of reaching for the boy’s hand. Jurgen nodded and set the coins down next to the rough cloth sack. Brunner’s gloved hand hovered over the coins, turning each of them over with a finger. Then he stared into the boy’s eyes.

‘And what could be worth so much to you, I wonder?’ his cold voice asked.

A light gleamed in Jurgen’s eyes. Was this man, this horrible killer, really considering helping them? He had been told that they could not trust to greed alone to dispose of their cruel tyrant, but also to the compassion of a noble heart, to the sense of justice that moves some men with no thought of reward. But Jurgen dared not hope that any such emotion stirred within the heart of this fearsome man.

‘My village lies only a few days from here,’ Jurgen began. ‘It was called Elsterholz, and our lord was the Count Schlaesser. But about five years ago a man came, the leader of some soldiers. Our lord hired them, for there was rumour that wild tribes were on the march again. But the man had no intention of protecting the count – he seized control. They killed the soldiers loyal to the count, then their leader hung our count from the village gate and declared himself our lord. The Baron Yorck.’ Jurgen fairly spat the name. The bounty hunter leaned forward, his face inches from the peasant boy’s.

‘Describe this Yorck for me,’ Brunner hissed. As the boy recounted the visage of the grim tyrant, the steel head of the bounty hunter nodded in affirmation of each detail.

‘He wears a sword, does he not?’ Brunner asked, interrupting the boy. ‘A nobleman’s blade? A slender fang of steel with a hilt of gold fashioned in the shape of a dragon with outspread wings?’

The boy nodded, amazed that he had so exactly described the baron’s sword. A moment of silence hung in the air. At last, Brunner nodded his head. ‘I will consider this commission you have offered me.’ Some of the hope drained from Jurgen’s face.

‘If the money is not enough, we can offer more,’ the boy hurried to explain. ‘We have food and mead and some of the girls in the village are very beautiful.’ The boy’s face dropped as he saw that Brunner’s expression had not changed at all. ‘And there is more! The baron has all manner of treasures in his fort. Gold from the dwarf mines and silver and gems from the south.’ Brunner snorted. Jurgen misunderstood the expression, thinking the imaginary wealth was still not enough to entice the hunter. ‘The baron has the horde of a dragon in a secret chamber, from his days as a mercenary and adventurer. If you help us, the town elders will let you claim all that you can carry!’

‘I said that I would consider your offer,’ Brunner repeated, leaning back against the wall again. Jurgen reached forward to reclaim the coins, but Brunner’s gloved hand intercepted him. ‘Leave those. They will help me in reaching a decision.’

‘But that is all the money we have!’ the boy exclaimed. ‘That is all the wealth we have been able to steal and keep hidden from the baron’s men!’

‘Then I know that you won’t be seeking to hire some other while I make my decision – unless you can find some fool who will work for unseen dragon gold,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘Return to your village. You will have your answer in a fortnight.’

The boy rose from the table, slumped in defeat. As he walked away, he cast a last look at the bounty hunter. Brunner was drinking from the clay stein that had been brought to the table, his eyes staring at the other denizens of the tavern. The coins remained on the table, gleaming in the feeble light. The last hope dripped from Jurgen’s body.

At least the man in the alley had been an honest thief.

It was dark when Jurgen slipped through the crack in the perimeter wall of Yorckweg. It was a burrow dug by the children of the village long ago to escape the notice of their parents and slink unseen into the woods to play their secret games. But now the hidden hole in the wall served a much more important role and those who used it could no longer be properly called children.

Jurgen made his way along the deserted, muddy lanes. His tattered clothes were slick with sweat and covered in the dust of the road. He stole cautiously to the flimsy plank that served as the door of the mud-walled hovel he shared with his parents and three siblings. He paused, listening to the sounds of soft sobbing coming from inside. The boy was certain that it was his mother’s voice. A sudden sense of urgency filled Jurgen and he pushed the plank aside.

Jurgen saw his mother kneeling beside the cooking fire that dominated the main room of the hovel, stirring the contents of the iron pot. Her face was drenched in salty tears, their snail-like trails glistening in the flickering light. There was no sign of his brother and sisters, who should have been sleeping on their straw-lined pallets against the far wall. The boy could hear a stirring in the back room, but a thin blanket over the opening of the room obscured his view.

The woman looked up as she heard her son enter. The look on her face was of utter horror. Her mouth opened to scream, to warn her son away, but another voice silenced her. Mother and son both looked to the opening of the back room. The blanket was pulled aside, but the man standing in the doorway was not Jurgen’s father. Though wearing only a long white nightshirt, a sword was clasped in his hand.

‘We missed you, Jurgen,’ he said in a low, mocking voice. ‘I understand you have been far away and have much to tell.’ Aldo stalked toward the stunned youth. ‘I think the baron will be most interested to hear what you have to say.’

Albrecht Yorck emerged from his stone-walled chamber beneath the timber fort. There was a contented smile spread across his cruel features. The wailing sobs of guilt mixed with groans of pain sounded from the cell he had left. They replaced the shrieks that had echoed through the halls for the last two hours. A burly Tilean appeared behind Yorck, fastening a chain and lock to the wooden door. The bare-chested man then turned to his master, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of a hairy hand.

‘Get a little wine and some food,’ Yorck said. ‘We’ll have another go at him in a few hours.’ Yorck’s smile curled into a vile leer. ‘Just to be certain he told us the truth.’ The torturer bowed and departed. The tyrant turned and faced the henchman who had waited outside the cell for his master’s orders.

‘Did he tell you anything?’ Aldo asked.

‘We knew much of it from that idiot Geier,’ Yorck laughed. It did his wicked heart good to recall the peasant who had informed him of the plot. Purely out of loyalty, Geier had claimed, though he seemed quite eager when Yorck mentioned a reward.

And Yorck had been most generous, giving him fifty gold crowns for being such an altruistic and loyal man. Of course, Geier had been a bit alarmed when the gold coins were brought to him on a wooden plate, as a meal… Poor man, it seemed that his eyes were bigger than his stomach. Or at least his throat. That was one lesson Yorck had learned from the Viscount de Chegney – never trust a traitor. ‘But the boy did fill in some of the gaps, more so than his father or any of the others. It seems he found a man in Brezano willing to kill me. A bounty hunter, or so the rascal claimed.’

Aldo’s scarred features narrowed. ‘A bounty hunter?’

Yorck nodded his head. ‘An expert killer, according to the boy. Get some of your men together. Ride for Brezano and kill this scum. Bring his body back, so we can show this rabble what happens to those who oppose me.’

The Tilean soldier bowed and turned to leave when a nagging thought stirred in what passed for the man’s conscience. He turned to his despotic leader. ‘What are you going to do with the boy? Hang him in the gibbet with his father?’

Yorck smiled with chilling excitement. ‘Dear me no, he might be able to wiggle his way through the bars. No, I think he should have a spot of sport with my pets. It has been some time since they were fed.’ The tyrant laughed at his own jest, then turned sternly to his henchman. ‘I have my affairs to get in order and you have your own to pursue. I suggest that you go find this man. The boy won’t make much of a meal for the dogs.’

That evening four riders set out from the main gate of Yorckweg. Aldo had chosen his companions both for their martial prowess and their experience as cold and ruthless murderers. These were men who would not shrink from putting a dagger in a sleeping man’s back or striking out with a crossbow bolt from the shadows. Each man bore an expression of cruel determination. Long years serving their usurper lord had driven whatever compassion and rectitude they had from their souls. They had done far worse things under Yorck’s orders than murder an unarmed man in cold blood – one more crime would weigh no more heavily upon their already blackened hearts.

Aldo’s scarred features scanned each of his armed cutthroats. ‘Remember,’ he cautioned, ‘we must bring his body back. The baron wants to make an example of this bounty hunter, and to let the villagers know that no one can oppose his rule.’ The rider to Aldo’s left bowed his head, the steel of his rounded kettle hat gleaming in the feeble light cast by Mannsleib and its darker sibling. But just as he raised his face, a spike of steel slammed through his nose, crunching through the cartilage and bone. The soldier fell from his horse, clutching at his wound, an inarticulate bubbling gurgle frothing from his face.

Aldo shouted for his men to take cover, but even as he did so, a second crossbow bolt tore through the chest of the man to his right. The mercenary screamed, slumping down in his saddle as his steed raced off into the darkened countryside, frightened by the sudden slaughter.

The remaining soldier turned his horse about, making to ride back to Yorckweg. Aldo saw the bright flash of a blackpowder hackbut exploding from the tree line, and he heard the loud crack of the report echoing. He watched as the bullet took the soldier’s steed in the neck, dropping it instantly. The man was crushed beneath the animal’s weight, pinned to the earth and screaming piteously from above his crushed legs and pelvis.

Aldo did not wait for another attack, but leapt from his saddle and dived into the brush. He landed hard, twisting his foot. He bit down on the pain, and drew his sword, cursing as his horse raced away, bearing his crossbow on the back of its saddle.

The man pinned beneath the dead horse was still screaming when Aldo heard hooves drawing near. The sound of hoofbeats stopped, then only the occasional rattle of chain-links or the scuffing of an armoured boot upon a loose stone indicated that someone was coming closer.

Aldo watched as a dark figure cautiously advanced, stalking toward the wounded soldier with all the caution of a lone wolf on the hunt. The scar-faced Tilean gave a start when he saw the man: the blackened steel sallet helm and the dark gromril breastplate. Somehow he had known that it would be him. Only the bounty hunter would have had cause to ambush them; only he would have had the skill to accomplish such a feat.

Aldo had chosen his band of killers well, but he had not reckoned with facing an even more callous, cunning and ruthless adversary. The bounty hunter closed upon the wounded soldier, raising a small hand crossbow. He pointed it at the wounded man’s head and silenced his screams of agony. There had not been even a second of hesitation, a moment to consider mercy, to pity the man he had broken with his gunshot.

Aldo lifted himself from his hiding place, hoping to slink off into the night. At the sound of the rustling movement, the bounty hunter spun about, dropped his crossbow and drew a blackpowder pistol from a holster across his belly in one fluid movement. There was another loud report and the barrel of the pistol erupted into flame.

Only one thing spared Aldo’s life from the shot – his injured foot gave way beneath his own weight, causing him to topple just as the bounty hunter fired his weapon. Brunner did not hesitate to address the misaimed shot, holstering the pistol and pulling his fat-bladed falchion from its scabbard. Aldo lifted himself to meet the charge, with a dagger in his left hand, and a longsword in his right.

Brunner closed upon the Tilean with a sinister silence that unnerved Aldo more than any orc’s brutal war-howl. With the speed of a viper, the bounty hunter struck out with his heavy sword, the blade barely intercepted by Aldo’s much lighter longsword. The bounty hunter strained, pushing the Tilean’s sword to the side, exploiting the mercenary’s weakened leg to offset the man’s superior brawn.

Aldo snarled, the scar on his face livid with anger. He sent his dagger-gripping hand forward toward the bounty hunter’s vitals. But a gloved hand closed about his wrist, pushing the blade back, and twisting the point of the dagger back at its wielder. Aldo felt his grip being turned and reasserted his strength, turning his hand around in the gloved grasp, even as he sought to free his sword from the weight of Brunner’s falchion.

The two men jostled for position in the shadows, each struggling to subdue his foe. In the darkness, the dagger stabbed into flesh and a dry gasp escaped the throat of a man who was clearly dying.

The guards atop the gate of Yorckweg hailed the lone rider who made his way toward their post. It was still dark, but they could easily recognise the distinctive helmet and armour of Aldo. The mercenary sergeant led a second horse behind him, a body thrown across the saddle. The commander of the watch called out his congratulations on his successful and speedy hunt, and hastened down from the tower to examine Aldo’s prize. One of the other guards followed the officer, sharing in the excitement of the moment. He left only one man to work the heavy counterbalance that would raise the timber gate.

‘Didn’t think to see you back so soon,’ the officer said, sparing only a brief glance at the mounted Tilean before hastening to the packhorse. ‘Are the others behind you, or did they go on to Brezano for a bit of rest?’

The officer laughed. There was little enough entertainment to be had in Yorckweg, and what little there was, the baron hoarded for himself. It took very little to get any of the men to take an unauthorised furlough to any of the neighbouring settlements. The armoured Tilean just nodded his head, and began to dismount from his horse.

The officer reached for the body slumped across the saddle. He lifted the head, and stared at the face beneath the black visor of the sallet helm. A deep gash spread from beneath the armoured helm to the end of his cheek. It was a scar that the officer had seen many times before. Even as the soldier turned to confront the impostor, six inches of Tilean longsword were driven into his gut. The officer’s cry of alarm emerged as a low gasp and he slumped to his knees, pawing at the mud with his hands. The soldier who had followed him down from the tower barely had time to see his officer fall before the impostor sent a throwing knife through his throat. The soldier fell onto his back, writhing in his death throes as blood bubbled between the fingers clasping his neck.

Brunner dropped Aldo’s sword into the mud and lifted the small crossbow he had tethered to his wrist with a leather lace cut from the mercenary’s boot. The lone guard in the watchtower was reaching for the alarm bell when the small bolt struck him in the back. He shouted once, hands clutching at the dart, but was unable to reach it. He staggered for a moment, pain driving out thoughts of alerting his lord and master.

Brunner calmly reloaded his weapon, and sent a second bolt smashing into the man’s face. This time, the shot was fatal and the soldier pitched forward, his body hanging over the wooden railing of the tower, his steel helmet falling from his head and landing with a moist thud in the muddy mire below.

Loading the weapon for the third time, the bounty hunter removed his own heavy falchion and its scabbard from the packhorse. He pushed Aldo’s body into the mud and belted the weapon about his waist once more. Stooping to retrieve his black helmet from the dead man, Brunner attached that too to his belt, shifting it so that the helmet rested against the opposite hip from his sword. The bounty hunter cast a long look at the timber fort that rose above the village, nodded his head grimly, then stalked down the muddy path that wound its way between the peasant hovels and ended at the fort of their tyrannical ruler.

Brunner had needed no time to consider the boy’s offer. He had followed the peasant back to his home village, keeping behind lest the boy should sight the armed killer on his trail. Then he had hidden himself in the woods overlooking Yorckweg, waiting for an opportunity to gain access to the small village. Aldo and his pack of killers could have been no more timely had the bounty hunter written ahead and requested an invitation.

Now it was time for a long deferred reckoning.

Albrecht Yorck sat in his padded seat, his sadistic, grinning features illuminated by the flickering torches set about the small wooden arena. The man snapped his fingers and a serving maid hurriedly refilled the iron-bound flagon on the short table beside his seat. Wine was well enough during the day, but Yorck felt that something more substantial was in order to fend off the chill night air. The local-brewed mead would serve such a purpose admirably. He had intended to wait for morning before indulging in his favourite sport, but the peasant slattern his troops had brought to him had proven less than acceptable. If it were not for the fact that it would spoil his dogs to give them too much food, he might have added the little witch to the menu. Perhaps in a few weeks’ time when the dogs had worked up more of an appetite…

Yorck thought again about the stupid peasant rabble and their audacious plan. For such low-born worms to think that they could actually match wits with a man who had attended a baron of the Empire, who had fought with the Reiksguard in his youth, who had managed to escape the grasp of the treacherous Viscount de Chegney – a feat few men could boast of – it was beyond absurd. Yorck’s subjects simply had to learn that they were not his people, they were his property.

The tyrant spared another impatient look at the wooden gate at the far side of the arena. It was taking them quite some time to bring the boy. He might have to see about having one of his soldiers play with the dogs after this, to teach him not to keep his master waiting. Yorck nodded to himself. Yes, that might indeed be a valuable, and highly entertaining, measure to maintain discipline.

The girl at Yorck’s side suddenly gasped in alarm. Yorck turned on her, and slapped her with the back of his hand. The girl flinched from the blow, but as the despot recovered from the attack, he saw what had made her cry out. A tall, lean man in armour was standing on the top of the steps that led up to the platform. A dark, black sallet helm covered his head, exposing only the lower part of his face. He clutched a fat-bladed falchion sword in a gloved hand. The other hand held a second helmet and as he tossed it forward, Yorck recognised it as belonging to his henchman Aldo.

‘I’m afraid that tonight isn’t going too well for you,’ an icy voice rasped from below the visored steel. ‘First your killers get themselves killed, then someone changes your evening’s entertainment.’ The bounty hunter took a step forward. Needing no further encouragement, the frightened serving girl darted past the armoured killer and flew down the steps, disappearing into the night.

Yorck stood slowly, backing away. His eyes were wide with fear. He cast a glance toward the log gate in the arena below. Brunner followed the man’s gaze.

‘I’m afraid that I already met your men,’ the bounty hunter stated, his voice carrying all the warmth of an open grave. ‘I convinced them that the boy was a little too small for what you had in mind.’ The bounty hunter let the point of his sword jab forward. ‘It took a little effort to convince them, but not much.’

Yorck gripped the dragon hilt of his own sword and the bounty hunter took another step forward, his icy eyes suddenly blazing into fiery life. The tyrant withered before the glare, hastily raising his hands into the air. For far too long Albrecht Yorck had been content to command the swords of others, for far too long he had taken life in cold blood rather than hot. The warrior Yorck had once been – the bold scheming villain who had betrayed one throne and seized another – had become a petty, hedonistic reptile that now shivered before the threat of honest battle.

‘Whatever they are paying you,’ he stammered, sweat cascading down his forehead, ‘I will triple it!’

A low snarl roared from Brunner’s chest and he sprang forward. Yorck lifted his hands still higher even as he sank to his knees, trembling in terror. Brunner set the point of his falchion against the tyrant’s belly. The man flinched from the cold metal. Brunner’s free hand closed upon the buckle of the man’s sword belt, unlatching the clasp, pulling the belt free. He held it in his hand with two fingers as the others worked loose the clasp of his own sword belt. The worn leather fell to the timber floor and Brunner placed the other sword belt into its place with one hand.

‘You like that sword?’ Yorck muttered, fear cracking through his voice. ‘It is yours! I want you to have it! My gift to you!’ Brunner’s eyes narrowed and he pressed the point of the falchion a bit deeper so that it indented the flesh of the usurper’s belly. ‘Anything you want!’ Yorck squealed. ‘You can be the baron! Just let me live!’

‘The word of some men can’t be bought,’ the bounty hunter hissed, his voice dripping venom. The bounty hunter clasped Yorck’s shoulder and with a savage push plunged the falchion through the tyrant’s belly, releasing it as Yorck slipped away. The man stumbled on his feet, with three inches of the heavy sword’s blade sticking from his back. The man stared at Brunner for a moment, but the bounty hunter’s steel-tipped boot kicked the man backwards, so that he broke through the low-wooden railing onto the muddy floor of the arena.

The bounty hunter looked down. Behind the gate beneath the platform, Yorck’s starving pets clawed at the wood, driven into a frenzy by the smell of their master’s blood.

Brunner turned his gaze to the dying Yorck as he forced himself to a sitting position. The fallen tyrant bore a questioning gaze. Blood bubbled from his mouth as he tried to speak.

‘How… much? How much… did they… pay youuu…’

Brunner reached into his belt and threw several small objects to the muddy floor of the arena. Yorck’s eyes focused on the three silver coins and the clutter of copper groats.

‘Everything,’ an icy voice replied. His hand now rested on the dragon-shaped hilt of the von Drackenburg blade. Yorck was still staring at the coins, beyond comprehension, when Brunner’s other hand pulled down on the rope and two lean, slavering shapes lunged from the darkness.

The two gaunt hounds circled their master, fangs bared, muzzles twisted into the silent snarls. Yorck raised a trembling arm to ward off the huge beast that snapped at his neck. Its fangs buried themselves deep into the meat of his arm, worrying the limb away from his body, and leaving the throat exposed for the other dog. The second hound was quick to seize the opening, hot breath panting from its excited, eager lungs. Yorck shrieked as the animal’s jaws closed upon his windpipe, and crunched his neck as though it were an old soup bone.

Like the bounty hunter, the dogs had taken many lives, but never had they savoured the kill for so long, or so well.

CHAPTER SIX

HONOUR AMONG VERMIN

I left the city of Miragliano as I had quit the Imperial city of Altdorf – a frightened cur with its tail tucked between its legs. I had terror in my soul, and prayed fervently to Sigmar that I might pass unnoticed by the powers of the Old Night.

It happened late one evening. I had been speaking with Brunner for many hours. We were situated in a small wine shop near my own rooms. The hour was late when the bounty hunter at last declared that I would have to question him further some other time. We left the wine shop, the light of Mannsleib bathing the filthy streets in a pale silvery light. My companion, as was usual for such a predatory nature, carefully considered the night streets, his piercing gaze covering the entire street at a glance. He did not linger over any one person, nor upon any window, doorway or darkened alley mouth. Yet I had the feeling that he saw as much with his quick glance as I would in an hour of close examination – his keen mind picked out every detail. Brunner had, as I have mentioned, an amazing memory and a craftsman’s eye for detail.

Abruptly, Brunner asked if there were any free rooms at the boarding house where I lodged, for we were quite close by. I replied that I believed that there were, and the matter was settled. The bounty hunter led me through the dark streets, saying that he would see for himself what manner of luxury his recollections furnished me with.

We reached the boarding house and Brunner secured a room quite close to my own, at a price considerably lower than my own. Once more, I reflected that the best champion of honesty is fear. I followed the bounty hunter up to the room the landlord had allocated to him. He gave the room a glance, then settled in, taking his leave of me without a word. Feeling for all the world like a dismissed servant, I made my way to my own chamber. However, I had only just begun to tug off my boots when the door opened. The bounty hunter gestured with a thumb at his room.

‘It ill suits my level of comfort,’ he hissed. ‘You sleep there, I’ll take your room.’ I sputtered out a protest but Brunner reminded me that it was his stories that elevated my livelihood. Like a scolded dog, I gathered up my boots and nightclothes and left the room, hoping that the landlord’s daughter Maria did not think to pay me a visit this night. The bounty hunter was capable of most anything. With his ruthless impulses and lightning-fast reflexes, he might kill the girl before he was even aware who had stolen into the room. Or he might welcome the company. I was not sure which scenario troubled me more.

So it was that I woke in the small hours, a foul stench filling my lungs. I did not rise from my bed, for I recalled Tilean tales of the Strigoi, the blood-sucking fiends who smelled of the grave and ripped the throats of their victims as they slept in their beds. After my encounter in Altdorf, vampires held an especial horror for me, and I became as still as a corpse, hoping that whatever exuded such a stench would not notice me. Yet, even in terror my mind was analysing the situation.

The odour was not that of a rotting corpse, but the reek of filthy fur, like an ill-tended beast from a menagerie. My hearing became ever more sensitive as my fear mounted, and I could hear the soft padding of naked feet stealing across the wooden floorboards. The soft, furtive steps drew ever closer towards the bed and with them, the stench filling my lungs increased. I held my breath, trying to wish the intruder away, and screwing my eyes shut desperately, lest I should see what horror now hovered over me.

The shrill titter that sounded from above me chilled my spine; it was a sound of cruel and inhuman amusement. Almost against my will, I opened one of my eyes. In the soft light streaming through the unshuttered window, I saw a hideous shape from the realm of nightmares. It was shaped like a man, though slender and small, its back crooked. A dark cloak covered its shape, and its paws were coated in a verminous black fur. Two red eyes gleamed from the shadows of the hood, and a long, rodent muzzle peeked forward, whiskers twitching as the nose scented my terror. Two long, chisel-like fangs jutted downward from its upper jaw. And I could see the moonlight dance on something metal clutched in its paw.

It was a horror from childhood, a nursery fable given flesh. How often have we tried to frighten naughty children with tales of the skaven, those scheming rat-men who lurk in the shadows, plotting the destruction of humanity? How often do we laugh at their fear at such tales, for we in our wisdom know such tales to be foolish and fantastic? Can we no longer remember our own childhood terrors? When did we decide that such things were not real? And who told us that such things could not be…?

I watched in horror, frozen to the spot by my disgust, by the sudden flooding of my heart with all those childhood nightmares. The skaven drew a long, foul dagger from the worn leather belt about its waist. The red eyes gleamed more brightly and I knew that I looked upon my death.

Suddenly, the door was thrown open. The skaven uttered a sharp squeal of surprise, and leapt from the bed, scrambling toward the window. But it never reached its escape. The dull thok of a crossbow sounded. Once, twice, and yet a third time, all in rapid succession. The monster’s body twitched as the first bolts slammed into its mutated flesh, and as the third bolt struck its cowled head, it fell to the floor. A long, naked tail twitched for a moment, then fell still as the vile creature breathed its last.

Brunner walked into the room. He still wore his armour, though he had removed the almost ever-present helmet. I watched his hard, grim face as he stared at the expired monster, turning its carcass over with the toe of his boot. He had the curious repeating crossbow pistol still aimed at the rat-man. He did not seem horrified by the monster’s loathsome visage, or concerned at its presence here.

‘You knew it would come here!’ I accused, my fear giving me enough courage to confront the bounty hunter. ‘You used me as bait!’

The bounty hunter reached down and removed a small pouch from the skaven’s belt. I heard the jingle of coins as Brunner hefted the sack. He opened it, smiling as he saw the gold it contained. Then he withdrew something else from the sack, a piece of leather that still bore fur on one side. He read whatever message was written on it, then replaced the scrap of leather in the pouch.

‘What is this all about?’ I demanded. ‘By the shadow of Morr, what is that thing?’

Brunner nudged the corpse with his foot one more time. ‘Just a messenger, from someone making good on a debt.’

The bounty hunter then began to speak, to spin a tale of what had befallen him in my home city, in Imperial Altdorf, beneath the very feet of the Emperor.

Niedreg crept softly through the dark room. His silent steps went unerringly past piles of books, tables laden with scrolls and jars, past the dozens of black obstacles that awaited him in the near lightless room. But the young man was no stranger to this environ; he had been this way many times before, though never with such purpose as now moved his thin, lean body.

A small pool of light blazed in the midst of the shadows. Niedreg paused, catching his breath, and stood still, watching, listening, and most of all waiting. His eyes gleamed in the flickering flame of the old copper-bound oil-lamp that had its origins in the desolate wastes of far-off Araby. The lamp was resting atop the large worktable of dark Drakwald wood that dominated the room. Papers were piled in one corner of the table, while books and jars of dark liquids were spread across every remaining edge of the wooden surface. In the only break in the mountain of leather-bound books and glass pots, a stoop-shouldered man was bent forward, his pale, long-fingered hands working within the sphere of light cast by the lamp. The man’s head was covered in long grey hair, topped by a rounded cap of black felt marked with symbols and stars of silver and azure.

Niedreg watched as the wizard continued his labours. The old man stabbed a lengthy needle-like device into a small bowl, then removed a tiny scrap of flesh from it. With his free hand he grasped one of the glass jars, and pulled it into the sphere of light. He dipped the needle into the jar, and shook it until the fragment of flesh fell free and slowly sank into the dark liquid. Then he thrust the needle into the blazing flame of the lamp until its tip burned red, then withdrew it and set it upon a sheet of moist vellum, to steam and sizzle.

The old man leaned over the glass pot in which he had dropped the fleshy fragment. Then he turned to a steel frame that held up a thick piece of glass in a brass claw. He raised a wrinkled hand to his head, pulling back the long strands of hair that threatened to slip into his eyes. Looking through the piece of glass, he concentrated on the fragment of flesh, the dark liquid, and what effect their union was having.

Niedreg licked his lips nervously and drew the knife from his robe. It was still in its sheath of dark leather, but the young man imagined he could feel heat ebbing from the blade. He had been warned to keep the weapon sheathed at all times, until the very instant he was to strike. He had been told that the merest touch, the simplest contact with the naked blade would kill, but not quickly, or cleanly. Niedreg cast an apprehensive look at the sheathed weapon and took a deep breath.

The seated figure was so involved in his labour that he did not notice Niedreg’s shadow fall upon him. It was almost a summary of their relationship: the old wizard had never paid any but the most cursory notice to his apprentice. Niedreg had served Lothair the Golden for five years, and in all that time his magical training had amounted to little more than hurrying about Altdorf securing the compounds and chemicals his mystic patron required. While it was true that Lothair had shown some compassion by schooling him after the Colleges of Magic had so summarily rejected his application, Niedreg felt that his apprenticeship had been steadily degrading into nothing more than servitude. But now the would-be wizard had found a new patron, one who promised to teach him far more than Lothair ever could have.

The apprentice drew the knife from its sheath. The weapon glistened wetly in the flickering light, its black surface coated with a foul ichor that seemed to ooze from the very metal of the weapon. Niedreg spared the knife only a moment’s glance, for the grey head of his mentor had lifted, as though he sensed something was amiss. Whatever warning sense disturbed the old wizard it was not quick enough, for Niedreg swiftly stabbed the black blade into the wizard’s back, piercing his heart. A long, low gasp sounded from the magician and he slumped over his table, disturbing the flasks and jars.

Niedreg stepped back, leaving the still-dripping dagger in the old man’s back. He watched as green drops slithered from the blade’s edge and sizzled on the fabric of the wizard’s robe.

Niedreg bent forward to retrieve the blade, but as his eyes fell upon the blood flowing from the wizard’s mouth where he had bitten through his own tongue, he flinched away from the dagger. The blood that was pooling on the table was not simply crimson: there was a thick streak of dark foul corruption mingled with it. Once again, the young man recalled his patron’s words of caution: do not handle the blade for longer than you need to. But he would need to touch it again to accomplish the rest of his task, for his benefactor had told him that the blade must not be found in the wizard’s body. Even a charred, blackened skeleton would look the part of a murder victim with a dagger in its back.

Niedreg squatted on the floor, pulling a heavy book from the top of a pile. He opened the leather-bound volume, ripped several pages from the binding, and clasped them in his hand to form a crude mitten. He stood again and reached for the dagger sticking from Lothair’s back. With as quick a motion as he could manage, he pulled the dagger from the wound and tossed it onto the table. The slimy drops of venom still sweated from the gory blade. Niedreg hastily tossed the pages in his hand over the weapon. He did not watch as they darkened and curled when they came to rest upon the dagger. He smiled nervously, fearing and envying the lethal enchantment upon the blade. He reached toward the flickering lamp, to engulf the evidence of his crime in fire, when a thought occurred to him. He was not without his own magic.

Picking up the violated book once more, Niedreg began to mutter, and rub a dark, salt-like powder between the fingers of his left hand. As he continued his low incantation, he ripped pages from the book with his now blackened fingers. He tossed the pages about the room, careful to place most of them around the dead wizard and, just as importantly, the subject of his final study. When each page came to rest, the paper burst into flame. Very quickly, a dozen small fires were blazing about the room. Very shortly the entire study would become a raging inferno, obliterating all trace of Niedreg’s crime.

The apprentice paused, admiring the flames his magic had brought into being. No lesson of Lothair’s had ever been so grand. No, the spell the apprentice had invoked had been taught to him by his new benefactor – a small sampling of the secrets and powers Niedreg’s new patron would reveal to him as payment for this night’s work.

Shouts of alarm from the street outside brought Niedreg out of his reverie. The room was now engulfed in flame, the ancient books and carefully collected relics shrivelling and cracking as the flames licked about them. At the table, Lothair’s body was burning like a torch, the artefacts on the table before him already lost in the dancing fire. Niedreg tipped his fingers to his brow and saluted the old wizard’s corpse as he hurried from the room.

From the shadows, a pair of beady red eyes watched the flames dance from an upper floor window across the cobbled street. A small hiss of excitement escaped the watcher’s mouth as he saw the fire ravage the home of the wizard Lothair. His agent had performed just as he had anticipated, but he had ever been a good judge of men, able to determine their capabilities and find their weaknesses. Now all that remained was to sever the link between himself and the fool turned assassin and he would be in the clear, with no connection between himself and his mistake.

The household of Duke Verletz had been taken ill; indeed most of the household had perished, including the duke himself. His death would firmly put an end to the lunatic idea to renovate the sewers of Altdorf. The duke had a mad notion to install piping and tubing in the hundreds of thousands of buildings in Altdorf, to let the waste of each house be carried directly into the sewers without first being dumped into the street and carried away by the dung gatherer or rainfall. It was the ambitious scheme of a maniac – a maniac with the Emperor’s ear. And there were those who did not like such a state of affairs. So, the duke’s household had become ill, and the wizard Lothair had been summoned to try and identify the nature of the seemingly sorcerous ailment, and find a way to neutralise it. This too was a state of affairs that could not be tolerated, because an entirely different neck was on the line should the wizard succeed.

The observer fought down the nervous impulse to chew on the object clutched in his hands. There was no need to fear: his error was now going up in smoke and flame. All that remained was to meet with Niedreg one last time and give him the reward that was his due.

The watcher’s face twisted into a snarl. The fire was burning quite well now, but still the fool had failed to emerge from the building. Suspense was not something he enjoyed so there would be an extra measure of pain when he caught up with Niedreg for creating such a strain. There were enough causes to instil fear in him, not the least of which were those to whom he himself was answerable. He did not need some one-use man-tool upsetting him so.

The watcher hissed a sharp curse and slid lower in the basement window from which he observed the scene. Niedreg had emerged from the burning house, but he had dawdled too long inside. He was carrying a large chest in his arms and a bulging pack was dangling from one arm. Instead of looking like an innocent witness to the unfortunate fire, it now looked obvious to everyone that Niedreg was a thief and a murderer. The watcher cursed again as a trio of figures in gleaming armour plate with deep rich ostrich plumes flowing from the crowns of their helmets converged upon the idiot. Niedreg tried to run, but did not release his hold on the burdensome chest and pack. The knights easily caught up to him, smashing him to the cobblestones with the butts of their halberds.

Skrim Gnaw-Tail succumbed to his nervous habit and clenched the much-abused end of his long, naked tail into his fanged mouth, nibbling at the scarred flesh with his chisel-like teeth. He slunk away from the window, drawing the shabby cloak of black wool still tighter about his mottled grey and brown fur. He turned his long-muzzled rodent face toward the two larger figures beside him in the basement.

Skrim let his tail drop again, tucking the much abused appendage beneath his cloak with two furry, long fingered hands. He barked a sharp command and the two slaves scuttled forward. They were larger than Skrim – the size of a decently grown human, though leaner and much less broad of chest. The two slaves were naked save for filthy loincloths of tanned rat-hide, and their brown-furred bodies bore the marks of lash and fang. Most horrible of all, their mouths had been sewn shut with a crude cross-stitch of rat-gut.

Skrim gestured imperiously with one of his paws. The skaven scurried forward and pulled up a loose stone in the floor of the basement, exposing the narrow tunnel that wormed its way from the cellar to the vast sewers beneath the ancient Imperial capital. The two slaves stood aside, for their master to go in first. Skrim set a foot on the edge of the pit, then snarled and gestured for one of the slaves to go first. It was doubtful if anything would be waiting for them below, but the skaven would feel better with at least some warning if there were. After the mute rat-man disappeared down the hole, Skrim climbed down, leaving the last slave to replace the heavy stone behind him.

The skaven scampered down the tunnel behind his slave, his keen eyes finding a path even in the absolute darkness. As he hurried along, Skrim’s thoughts turned to what he would do now. His luck had betrayed him at every turn in this enterprise. An hour more and that idiot would have fallen into the skaven’s paws, removing the last link between him and the duke’s death, and the true facts concerning that demise. Nor could Niedreg be arrested by any guardsman. But a patrol of the Reiksguard, the Emperor’s own! Which meant that instead of gracing some common keep’s dungeon, Niedreg was now enjoying the hospitality of Karl Franz’s own prisons, beneath the Imperial Palace itself, a place Skrim Gnaw-Tail would not risk trying to enter.

Indeed, even the most skilful of the Clan Eshin assassins would be loath to chance the Emperor’s dungeons, for measures had been taken to protect the place from Skrim’s kind – sorcerous alarms that would react to the presence of any creature of Chaos. Any assassin Skrim sent to finish the job might ask too many questions, and worse, might ask them of the wrong skaven.

No, Skrim decided, as he emerged into the foul-smelling labyrinth of the sewers, a human was responsible for getting him into this mess and it would take another human to get him out of it.

The Dancing Fox was a sinister-looking building, a three-storey structure that dominated one corner of a broad market square. The narrow windows faced outward like the arrow slits of a castle wall, framed by wooden shutters that had been painted in the same black that coated the exposed support timbers. There was always a crowd in the establishment: merchants fresh from their custom in the square; patrons who managed to have coin within their purses after visiting the hawkers and tradesmen who filled the square each market day and those of a more larcenous bent: thieves and pickpockets who preyed upon seller and customer alike. But the thieves had their own predators.

Brunner sat at a table, peering from the shadows. He was studying each face as it passed into the vast, triple-tiered common hall of the tavern. A black steel helmet concealed his face and he wore a belt of throwing knives across his chest. A long-barrelled pistol of exceptional craftsmanship rested upon the table before him. From his clay stein some white froth slowly slithered its way to the stained wooden surface of the table.

He watched a pair of men enter the tavern, noting the notched, maimed ear the fatter one had. His memory dredged up a name to go with the ear, and a price to go with the name. He let a thin smile split his face and reached for the beer stein, his gloved finger wiping away the foam to grip the handle of the clay mug. Now he would wait for the fat man to conclude whatever business he had in the tavern. Providing no better mark presented himself, Brunner would follow the fat man as he left. There was not a large contract on the smuggler, but it was enough to justify the three-day journey to the Reikland town where the itinerant magistrate Judge Vaulkberg was currently located.

Brunner watched the fat smuggler boisterously greet a pair of well-dressed men who had the look of the port city of Marienburg about them. Just then a dark shape slipped into the chair opposite the bounty hunter’s seat. Brunner gave a start, his hand gripping the pistol on the table. Rarely was the bounty hunter surprised, especially in a tavern and on the hunt as he now was. Yet the wiry figure in the shabby cloak had been so furtive in his advance that even Brunner’s cautious, roving eye had failed to notice him. Brunner immediately forgot about the fat smuggler, focusing his angry gaze on the seated interloper, as well as the barrel of his pistol.

The figure raised its hands in a placating gesture. Brunner noted the slender, thin hands, covered by rough gloves of coarse and dirty wool. The cloak was of more crude material, though it had been dyed black at some point. The scent of a cheap, pungent perfume wafted from the figure. As the unwanted guest raised his head, Brunner could see that beneath the hood a mask of black cloth completely concealed his features.

‘No harm,’ the man said, his voice thin and shrill. Brunner stared at him dubiously, keeping the pistol trained upon him. ‘I speak–say,’ the man paused, uncertain how to elaborate. ‘Need hunter,’ he said at last. ‘Man-hunter.’

Brunner tried to follow the butchered Reikspiel. The speaker was certainly not a native of the Empire, though even Brunner’s wide-faring ears were unable to identify his accent. It was not of Kislev, nor even of the Tilean cities. Nor did the shrill tones suggest the melodious speech of elves or the thin whispers of goblins. But the next words, however poorly spoken, rang like music to the bounty hunter and quieted the questions aroused within his mind.

‘Much gold I pay–spend,’ the cloaked figure said. The gloved hand scratched within the folds of the cloak and placed a pouch upon the table that chinked loudly with the metallic ping of coins rubbing against one another. Brunner, with one hand still on his pistol, for his doubts had not been banished, reached for the bag. He slid the pouch across the table, undoing the thin cord that bound the pouch. He let his eyes fall to the open pouch, and then looked once more at the masked visage of his companion. He removed one of the gold coins and tapped it against the edge of the table, as though the sheen might scratch away to reveal lead underneath. But the sheen held true, the coin was indeed gold, as were its many comrades in the pouch.

‘You have my interest,’ Brunner stated flatly.

‘Give twice, more when kill–slay,’ the voice scratched as the figure leaned back. Seeing Brunner’s hand relax on the grip of his pistol, the cloaked head darted about, to see what eyes might be watching their transaction.

‘Who’s the mark?’ the bounty hunter asked. The cloaked figure cocked his hooded head, as though confused. ‘Who do you want me to kill?’ the bounty hunter explained.

‘Wyrd-maker, warlock,’ the man hissed.

‘A wizard?’ Brunner asked. The figure grew silent for a moment, as though considering the bounty hunter’s question. Then the head bobbed in a crude approximation of a nod.

‘Wiz-ird, yes,’ he agreed. A gloved hand slipped into the folds of the cloak, removing a rolled piece of stained leather. ‘Prisoner,’ the voice added as Brunner unrolled the leather scroll, to reveal a scrawl of lines and scratches. It was a map – a crude map – but a map all the same. ‘Locked-kept in Emperor-man burrows,’ the speaker paused, again seeming to collect his thoughts, and to translate them into the structure of the Imperial tongue. ‘Much-like wyrd-maker not leave burrows,’ the speaker said. ‘Not have wyrd-maker say-speak to Emperor-man.’

‘The map,’ Brunner said tapping the leather scroll with a gloved finger. ‘A section of the sewers?’ The head tipped in a slight, faltering nod. ‘Beneath the dungeons? How do I get in?’

A hand pointed at a small scratch mark near one of the lines. ‘Tunnel in wall,’ the shrill voice explained. ‘Open into man-hutch.’

‘The wizard’s?’ Brunner asked. The cloaked shape shrugged, a gesture the figure seemed comfortable doing. Brunner sighed. ‘Do you know how large the dungeons of Karl Franz are?’

‘Work–earn gold,’ the cloaked man snapped, his temper making his voice even more shrill and unpleasant. ‘Not give-all, must look-seek!’ The hooded head again scanned the room to see if anyone was listening. Brunner gave a short laugh.

‘All right, I get the idea,’ he reached forward and closed his hand about the sack of gold. ‘I’ll figure out where your friend is.’ Brunner set the pouch into a leather box fixed to his belt. ‘And send him your regards.’ The cloaked head cocked, like a bird puzzling over a worm. The bounty hunter sighed. ‘I’ll slit his throat. Then he won’t say anything you don’t want someone to hear.’

The tittering laugh that hissed from behind the mask made Brunner’s hand return to his pistol, such was its unnerving, unnatural sound. The speaker flinched as the bounty hunter stared hard into his masked face. The bounty hunter’s blue eyes gazed into the red crescents that peered from behind the mask.

‘Where do I meet you when the job is done?’

‘Alley-run behind butcher-lodge, Fleischer-weg,’ the shrill voice replied. Brunner nodded his head.

‘When?’

‘When wyrd-maker dead,’ the shrill voice hissed, ‘hunter-man come when dark, when butcher-lodge alone. Hunter-man find gold then. Need wyrd-maker slay-kill soon, or not give-spend gold. Day and night, not more.’

‘All right, but bring twice as much money when you meet me. The death of a wizard is not an easy thing,’ the bounty hunter stated, studying the sinister man. In truth, what he had been paid already was enough for him to accept the job. And that was what made him uneasy. The strange figure’s reaction to his raising of the fee was not what the bounty hunter expected.

‘Gold not problem,’ the voice uttered with the same unsettling titter of laughter. ‘Small wyrd-maker, easy strike-kill, but gold not problem.’ Still laughing, the lean figure rose from the table.

‘This wizard have a name?’ Brunner asked, a demanding tone in his voice. The cloaked patron froze, cocking his head to one side, as though it was a curious thing to require the name of the man upon whom he had put a death mark.

‘Niedreg,’ the voice pronounced, before slipping away into the shadowy crowd.

Brunner watched the figure disappear, and considered the gold in his pocket and the mysterious shabby man. He reached forward, tipping the stein to his mouth, to wash away the after-scent of the departed man’s cheap perfume.

Skrim Gnaw-Tail looked from side to side as he scuttled toward the mouth of the sewer. When he was satisfied that no one was looking his way, he dropped to all fours and scampered across the filthy alleyway like the vermin he resembled. He slipped through the narrow opening, dropping ten feet to the dark tunnel of muck-lined stone walls. The skaven’s nostrils drank in the stench of the sewer, but even that mighty reek could not entirely drown out the odour of the cheap perfume he had been forced to douse his fur with.

Skrim removed one of his gloves and raised a grey, hairy paw to his nose. His face wrinkled with disgust and he cast a murderous look at the two mute slaves who had been waiting for his return. He slashed his claws against the face of one of them, enjoying the way the brute flinched. It was not their fault that Skrim had been forced to don his unpleasant disguise and walk among the man-things again, but nothing lessened the irritation seething in Skrim’s scheming mind. Such petty retribution – even against a hapless lackey – eased the skaven’s mood somewhat.

The skaven walked over to the edge of the slime-coated walkway, peering at the foul brown water. The sharp tang of the filth caused Skrim’s nose to twitch, but he was more accustomed to this than the overpowering reek of the perfume. To a creature who saw the world through his nose as much as his eyes, it was like being nearly blinded. With another sullen look at his slaves, the skaven dropped into the filthy water, splashing about in the slime for a moment before submerging entirely. When he emerged, clumps of waste and even more unsavoury substances clung to his wet dripping pelt, and a foul odour wafted from his fur, but at least the stinging scent of the perfume had been washed away.

Skrim snapped a command and the two slaves fell into position: one before and one behind their master. The skaven paid his guards no further attention as they made their way through the dark sewers.

He was lost in his own thoughts. The man-creature he had hired was well known amongst the smugglers and traitors Skrim had occasion to deal with, and his reputation was indeed terrible. He would be able to accomplish the task, Skrim was certain of that.

With Niedreg gone, there would be no further connection between Skrim and the unauthorised use of the red pox he had employed against the mad duke. With Niedreg gone, he could stop worrying about the retribution the fanatics of Clan Pestilens would exact upon him if they connected Skrim, the plague-spores that had infected the house, and the plague monk agent who had stolen the spores for him.

Skrim was saddened by the loss of the filthy creature; it was rare to find skaven amongst the plague monks who were capable of being bribed. Still, Skrim believed in the old adage that it is a wise skaven who collapses his tunnels behind him.

Once Niedreg was gone, there would only be one more link to sever. It would be easy enough – humans were, after all, inferior and witless creatures. Skrim raised his tail and began to nibble at it nervously. Still, the stories they told about this bounty hunter were not to be discounted. He looked at the slave ahead of him, then cast a glance over his shoulder at the other one behind. Perhaps he would purchase a few more guards before he met the bounty hunter behind the slaughterhouse to give him his reward.

A shiver crawled through Skrim’s body. Yes, he would get some more guards before facing those merciless eyes again. Caution was not cowardice, and even if it were, only skaven with very short lives held cowardice with any manner of contempt.

The sound of booted feet striding through the inky blackness beneath Altdorf disturbed the dark brown rat as it nibbled at the wing-bone it had wrestled from a pile of dung. The scavenger turned its beady eyes toward the sound, hissing. The vermin cringed from the bright light and with a squeak it abandoned its meal and leapt into the filthy channel of reeking brown water. The rat’s naked tail writhed behind it as it swam off, into the darkness that was its proper home.

Brunner strode along the narrow walkway, a blazing torch held before him. He moved with caution, his armoured head turning about, staring at the mouldy walls and foetid water that slowly coursed past only inches from his feet.

The sewers of Altdorf were ancient, dating back almost to the foundation of the city. They had been designed by dwarfs, it was said, as a tribute to Sigmar himself. It was also said that the sewers that served Altdorf were better planned than the streets, as they ran beneath the capital in orderly ranks whereas the lanes and pathways of the capital wound and crossed one another in maddening disorder.

All sorts of strange stories were told about the sewers. It was rumoured that an ancient dwarf steam engine hissed and churned in the bowels of the city to flush the filth through the underground streams. But there were darker stories too, tales of ghouls lurking in the tunnels, waiting to prowl the streets while the city slept and Morrsleib lorded over the night sky. More gruesome yet, it was said that during the siege of Altdorf by the undead hosts of Vlad von Carstein, entire companies of the living dead had entered the sewers, seeking to enter the city from below, and that some of those deathless monsters still wandered in the dark foulness, doomed to spend eternity there. There were other tales too, of secret covens of profane cultists living beneath the foundation of Sigmar’s faith, whose rites summoned up hideous things from the Realm of Chaos.

But Brunner’s mind was not on such fears and fancies; his eyes and ears sought more natural dangers such as pockets of mephitic vapour that might explode in his torch’s flame, and packs of starving rats that might not be too discerning about their next meal. Crumbling stonework and archways that waited for a victim before succumbing to the ravages of time and damp. To his mind, these were the adversaries to be feared, not the bogies the foolish and the fearful claimed were in the tunnels.

He paused to glance down once again at the map, black powder pistol held at the ready. Brunner studied the scrawled pattern of slashes and curves, then stared at the dark openings that yawned away twenty paces to the left, twenty-five to the right and still again to the left at the very limit of his vision. Each of the brickwork archways appeared equally forbidding; a filthy brown stream crawled from the mouth of every one. He made his way forward, then, bracing himself, leapt across the foul waters, nimbly landing on the narrow ledge opposite. He leaned his body against the muck-crusted wall to steady himself.

Torch in one hand, pistol in the other, the bounty hunter entered the right-hand tunnel, the tunnel that would, in time, worm its way beneath the Imperial Palace itself.

Fifteen eyes opened as the distant light and the unfamiliar sound of booted feet made themselves known. The eyes blinked – a thin membrane snapping over each yellow, pus-hued orb, dulling the unfamiliar, stinging light. A huge bulk undulated through the water, its mass glowing from the phosphorescent filth that sweated from its lumpy, fungus-like hide. Claws clicked against one another, anticipating the rending of flesh. Sensitive nostrils flared, scenting the almost forgotten odour of man. The hulk slithered through the waste, leaving a glowing wake behind it. Ahead of the thing, rats squealed in terror, scampering away from the unnatural haunter of the dark.

The creature had lurked within the tunnels below Altdorf for many long years, far longer than the reigns of Karl Franz and his father Emperor Luitpold combined. And in the darkness, it hungered. It did not need food, no, indeed, it was well beyond that simple need, its Chaos-ridden flesh preserved and sustained by no worldly meat. But it still felt the pangs of appetite, the needs of hunger. Its horrible, twisted form was not made for the hunt, however, it was far too cumbersome to track down rats and other vermin; its smell, noise and glowing warned away all the creatures of the sewers well before its approach. In the last year, it had fed only twice: once on a river stork that had flown into the sewers and got trapped. The other time, it had discovered a number of men, loading sacks into a small skiff. They had been too busy to see the peril until it was upon them. Only one of the half-dozen smugglers had escaped. Yet even with the bodies of five men rotting in its gullet, the thing had not been sated.

The torchlight was growing brighter, the footsteps were coming nearer. Body quivering with anticipation, the thing submerged beneath the filthy brown water. It did not understand that even with its body beneath the foulness, it left a film of phosphorescence floating on the water to betray its presence. Even so simple a supposition was now beyond the mind that had once composed volumes of learning and lore and had pondered the true nature of the Winds of Magic.

Brunner continued to make his way along the embankment, watching his steps as often as he stared at the leather map. The stones were slick and slimy, caked in the filth that had accumulated over the months since the River Reik last swelled its banks and rushed through the sewers, cleansing them in return for the stream of pollution that befouled the mighty river. The bounty hunter smiled. Even if one of Karl Franz’s jailers did know of the secret entrance, he was sure no one would endure the path leading there.

His smile faded as a new stench struck him: a sickly odour like rancid milk mixed with spoiled cabbage and poured over a pile of vomit. Even in this labyrinth of nauseating stenches, the smell was distinct and overpowering. Tears formed in his eyes, such was the quality of the reek.

Brunner paused to wipe his eyes. The door was not far, at least according to the map. If it were not, he may have decided to quit the sewer entirely until he could equip himself with a fragrant pomander to out the stench. As it was, there could not be more than fifty yards between him and his goal. He would force his senses to endure the smell for such a short distance.

With his gloved hand Brunner wiped his eyes, then retrieved his torch. As he lifted the brand from the small crack in the wall which had served him as an emergency sconce, his eyes fell upon the sewage that slowly flowed past the embankment. There was an odd glow about it, a decidedly eerie green luminance. The bounty hunter cocked the hammer of his pistol and thrust the map through his belt.

The monster rose from the waste, its twin mouths uttering a maddening wail, like the mewling of an infant married with the sound of a dying elk. The thing dripped waste and sewage, streams of filth flowing across its massive back, and down its pulpy, shapeless chest. Five groping, slender limbs flailed about from its trunk-like body, each tipped by a series of sharp claws, like the mandibles of an ant. A cluster of short stalks writhed between the limbs, each sporting a leprous eye that blinked in fascination at the man. Two gaping mouths yawned where breasts might be found, were the thing human. The mouths drooled a digestive venom that sizzled and consumed its own slimy hide. They were toothless and pulpy and seemed to alter shape each time they opened and shut, as though controlled by muscular contractions rather than jaws.

The creature was immense, larger than a bear, and rose from the filth on a set of legs as broad and powerful as those of an ogre. The legs were short, stumpy and loathsomely human in appearance, but they were covered in small pink fibres that fluttered and danced when they emerged from the gangrenous skin of the abomination.

Brunner recoiled as the numerous eyes struggled to focus upon him. He raised his weapon, firing at the clustered eyes. The boom and crack of the weapon was almost deafening, the flash of its discharge blinding in the darkness of the sewer. Brunner did not pause to see what effect his shot had had, but began to race from the loathsome being. He could hear the water sloshing behind him as a tremendous bulk surged through the channel.

Brunner dared a look over his shoulder. The Chaos spawn was nearly upon him, undulating through the water in a hideous, boneless fashion like an eel. The cluster of eye-stalks had been blackened by the pistol shot, a pulpy, fibrous drizzle of yellow pus surrounding the injury. Yet from the base of each ruined stalk, a new eye, the hue of a rotten egg, peered from the gore. And each of the intact eye-stalks now acted in concert, fully aware and focused upon the fleeing bounty hunter.

Brunner spun around, thrusting his torch toward the oncoming mass. The eye stalks snapped shut before the bright glare, but even as the warrior thought the flame might keep the fiendish mutant at bay, one of the snake-like limbs shot forward, wrapping about his arm. He found himself pulled toward the sickly horror, the strength of the thing nearly pulling his arm from the socket. A second tentacle curled itself about his waist as he grasped the dragon hilt of his sword. The spawn pulled Brunner from the brick ledge, and held him above the filthy mire of the channel. The jawless mouths of the abomination slavered, opening and closing with a sickly sucking sound, bubbling fluid sizzling from each maw.

The bounty hunter’s hand worked at the trapped sword, straining against the constricting steel coils of the monstrosity. As the beast wrapped tighter about its prey, the breath was crushed from Brunner’s lungs. Dark spots blurred his vision and the bounty hunter could feel the icy touch of death. Was he going to die here, devoured by some faceless horror of the dark, all his plans unrealised? Were his bones to fester in filth and dung until they were no more? Wrath blazed in his fading vision. With a burst of hate-fuelled strength, Brunner’s grip upon the blade grew firmer and he pulled the ancient sword of the von Drackenburgs from its sheath.

It was an effort fuelled by more than physical strength; it was an effort made possible by the force of will and spirit. And still, the blade only rose a few inches. Yet it was enough. The coil that held arm and sword firm was cut by the sharp steel edge as it crawled from its scabbard. As the cold steel touched Chaos-ridden flesh, it carved its way through the substance like a red-hot knife through butter. The coil sizzled and burned, a foul green mist rising from the wound. The steel seemed aflame, glowing a brilliant crimson.

The Chaos spawn wailed – a sound all the more horrible for its kinship to the cry of a mortal man. The coils withdrew and unwound with a speed that set Brunner’s body spinning. The bounty hunter crashed to the floor of the sewer, legs landing in the filthy channel, chest crunching into the brick embankment, the breastplate cracking the mouldy brickwork.

Taking deep breaths to feed his violated lungs, Brunner stood quickly, not allowing his mind to register the many hurts he had suffered. The von Drakenburg sword was held before him and there was no mistaking the writhing fire that crawled about the blade; the mystical flame cast a hellish glow upon the brown water and the crumbling vaulted ceiling above. Brunner let a curse escape his lips, bracing himself for the creature’s next attack. And, though the din of its ululating howl still thundered all about him, the ghastly glow of the horror’s phosphorescence was receding into the dark.

Brunner breathed a sigh of relief, then stared about him, finding the discarded torch resting, by some miracle of chance, upon the far embankment.

Leaping across the channel, the bounty hunter retrieved the firebrand, then retraced his steps. He dug the map from his belt, employing the hand that still gripped the sword Drakesmalice. Brunner studied the curious scrawl on the map and replaced it in his belt. He was eager to be out of the sewers, for at least the foes he might encounter in the Emperor’s dungeons would be human.

Trotzel stirred on his pallet of straw and lice. The thin, haggard man wore rags that had once been red and blue, though now their colour matched the dirt and grime of his cell. The man’s narrow, calculating eyes canvassed the small expanse of his cell: the cold grey stone walls, the bits of bone and rag that littered the floor, the small wooden bowl that served as his slop and the even smaller bowl that held his daily ration of water.

The thief glanced at the heavy oak door with the iron fittings that separated him from the corridor beyond. He was trying to discern sounds and movement from outside. Perhaps one of the gaolers had decided to administer a beating to work off a bout of boredom.

A sound to his left roused him from his disconsolate thoughts. Before his stunned eyes, a section of the wall sank inwards, revealing a blank expanse of darkness.

Trotzel rose from the floor, taking furtive, uncertain steps toward the strange opening in the wall. He had taken no more than a few steps when a gloved hand reached out from the shadows. Even as the thief recoiled, the fist closed about the neck of his tunic. Uttering no more than a frightened squeal, the thief found himself pulled forward, his head smacking against the stonework. Trotzel moaned and slumped to the floor as the hand released him.

Brunner emerged from the opening, casting a satisfied glance at the unconscious man. The prisoner would be insensible for some time, perhaps even hours; long enough to serve the bounty hunter’s needs.

Looking the man over, a thought formed in Brunner’s mind and a new plan began to form. Turning away, the killer strode to the heavy door, removing a series of small hooks and lead weights from his belt. He expertly assembled the objects, then snaked the slender metal hooks through the small barred grille set in the face of the door. A few moments of play with the hooks slid the bolt of the door back. Brunner retrieved the hooks, then crouched and began to work at the lock with a slim piece of curled metal. There was a click, and he pulled the door inward, peering into the dimly lit corridor beyond, to ensure that no patrol was making its rounds. Then he slunk into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind him and throwing the bolt back into place.

Softly, he crept along the stone passages, moving from shadow to shadow. To every side, the corridor stretched away, lit by torches in iron sconces set at twenty foot intervals. More dark hallways intersected with the corridor along the northern wall for as far as his hawk-like eyes could see. Occasionally, a moan or cry of despair would sound from behind one of the iron-bound doors along the walls, but Brunner paid them no heed. The prisoners could not be expected to have any useful information about the dungeons, the quickest path to the torture chambers or halls of interrogation. He could spend days checking every cell, looking for a man whose name and profession he knew, but whose appearance he did not.

The sound of jangling keys and booted feet brought him to a halt. Brunner crouched in the nearest and deepest patch of shadow, a slender dagger gripped in each hand. He waited as the sounds gradually drew closer, then watched as a trio of soldiers, each garbed in the red and blue of Altdorf’s soldiery, with the double-headed Imperial eagle upon his livery, strode the hall. Each soldier wore a sword at his hip, and the leader, a man who wore a bright ostrich plume in his steel helm, marking him as a sergeant, carried a massive ring of keys on his belt. Brunner listened for further soldiers and a grim smile flashed across his face. He slowly set one of the daggers back in its sheath and removed the small crossbow pistol from his belt. Setting the other dagger down on the floor, and keeping his eyes on the three guards, the bounty hunter loaded a quarrel into the weapon and cranked the steel string back. Retrieving his dagger from the floor, the bounty hunter aimed his weapon at the guardsman to the left.

The guard fell instantly. The sergeant and the other soldier laughed, thinking the man had stumbled, that perhaps he had enjoyed a bit too much ale when they had visited the guardroom. But the sergeant almost instantly uttered a low curse as he saw the blood pooling beneath his fallen trooper. Yet still his thought was of fatigue. Only when he spotted the small steel bolt protruding from the man’s neck did he understand what had truly happened. And by then it was too late.

As the sergeant turned his face to alert his remaining soldier, Brunner lunged from the shadows. The soldier had no time to react, for the first he saw of his attacker was the bounty hunter’s dagger sliding across his throat. The sergeant pulled his sword from its sheath, opening his mouth to shout an alarm. But he was too close, and the bounty hunter pitched the dying body of the other soldier into the sergeant, both men falling in a jumble of limbs and steel. At once, Brunner jumped upon the struggling sergeant, crushing his wrist beneath an armoured boot. The officer’s eyes were wide with alarm, his face ashen where it was not concealed by thick dark moustaches. Brunner slammed the palm of his free hand over the sergeant’s mouth as he began to scream, muffling the sound before it could carry far. He pressed the point of his dagger against the man’s cheek, just below his eye.

‘Stop trying to shout,’ he hissed. ‘Tell me what I want to know, and I may let you live.’

The sergeant’s eyes went wide with fear, but the jaws beneath Brunner’s grip closed. Brunner removed his dagger and stared into the sergeant’s eyes. ‘There is a man here, a wizard named Niedreg.’ A look of recognition flared through the guard’s terror. Brunner smiled inwardly. ‘I need to find him.’ He put a slight degree of weight on his blade, drawing a bead of blood from the soldier’s face. ‘I want you to tell me how.’ The sergeant nodded his head.

‘Th… they brought him in… yestereve,’ the man licked at his dry lips. ‘He is down in the third level… where they keep all the special prisoners.’ The sergeant stared at the bounty hunter, his eyes filled with fear, but slightly narrowed. ‘Down this corridor you will find the stairs. Take them down, to the second level. Follow the corridor to a large door with a double-eagle marked upon it. That will bring you to the hallway that leads to the lower level. The wizard is kept in the fourth cell from the third turn to the left of the stairway.’

Brunner leaned back, considering the sergeant’s words. ‘You are sure that you’ve told me what I want to know?’ The sergeant nodded hastily, emphatically.

‘Anything else I should know about? Traps? Guards?’

The soldier shook his head and a slim, cruel smile appeared on the bounty hunter’s face.

‘You know, if you are lying to me, I will be back. I won’t kill you for lying to me. No, I’ll not let you off so lightly.’

Pallor crept back into the soldier’s face.

‘I’ll carve the eyes from your head and cut out your tongue. Then I’ll sever the tendons in your arms and legs. There will be pain and agony like you’ve never known, even in this hellhole. But you’ll recover, like these poor bastards sometimes do when the torturers have had their fill of them. You’ll be a sightless, voiceless sack of meat, not able to see or touch or speak ever again. Just a sack of meat that will beg for death with every breath, but unable to speak that desperate plea.’

Brunner leaned his face downward so his visor was now only a few inches from the trembling body of the sergeant. ‘But perhaps you were confused by my question. Perhaps you would like to amend the directions you gave me?’

Brunner waited in the dark corridor, watching another three-man patrol pass from view. He had spent a considerable time dragging the bodies of the soldiers back to the cell, and now he was thankful that he had. The guards might notice the traces of blood in the corridor, but he hoped that they would think the marks had been left by some wretched prisoner. It would not do to have the alarm raised when he was so close to his quarry.

The cell Niedreg was in was on this very level of the dungeons – not more than a few hundred yards from where Brunner had entered the maze-like halls of darkness and despair. The sergeant had also told the bounty hunter that one of the Emperor’s torturers might still be there questioning the arsonist and that one of the dungeon scribes might be in attendance to record any confession. Brunner had thanked him by killing him cleanly with a quick stab of his dagger in the neck.

He crept along the dimly lit halls with slow deliberate steps toward the cell he had been directed to. As he stole forward, he could hear a harsh voice coming from beyond the door. A shout of pain answered the voice, and with it came the sound of sizzling meat. Brunner smiled. The sergeant had indeed spoken the truth when he had changed his story.

The cell door was neither bolted nor shut entirely. It had been left ajar, as much to let the screams reach the nearby cells as to let fresh air trickle in to offset the smell of burned flesh. Brunner’s gloved hands pushed the heavy door slowly inward, so as not to draw the attention of those within. As the sergeant had said, there were three men in the cell. Brunner could see a thick bear of a man, his naked chest glistening with sweat, his arms corded with ropes of muscle. He was slowly turning long rods of steel in a brazier of coals. At his side, seated upon a stool, was a nondescript man in blue and gold, carefully scribbling down every word spoken within the room. He was dabbing his plumed pen in a small inkpot on a second stool and using a small wooden board as a writing table. The third man was young, naked, and shackled by iron manacles to the rear wall of the cell. Ugly raw wounds marked the man’s body: the burns of the heated irons the torturer had set against the prisoner’s bare skin. As Brunner watched, the torturer removed another iron from the fire and advanced upon the prisoner, holding the glowing red point before him.

The bounty hunter pushed the door again, the loud creak bringing the torturer spinning around. The man’s ugly twisted face took on a look of outrage, a look that was frozen on his brutal features as the bounty hunter’s bolt took him through the eye. The torturer toppled, the brand falling from his hand to set the straw on the floor aflame.

Brunner pounced upon the scribe as he rose, casting pen and parchment aside. Strange words whispered from the man’s mouth and an ugly light began to gather in the outstretched palm of his hand. Brunner had suspected that there might be a low-level initiate of the colleges watching over the magician. Still, the initiate’s wizardry had not warned him of the danger that prowled the tunnels and corridors below the Imperial Palace. It would take valuable seconds for the wizard to summon even the feeblest enchantment – seconds the man did not have.

Brunner’s sword rasped from its sheath and the slender blade slashed through the clerk’s neck, painting the wall a bright crimson. The wizard stood for a moment, as though he might ignore mortal injury, but then what magic had been summoned faded and he fell to join the torturer on the cell’s dirty floor.

The bounty hunter hurried to stomp out the fire with his armoured feet. Only then did he meet the jubilant gaze of the young magician hanging from the shackles.

‘Thank the gods you’ve come!’ Niedreg gasped. ‘I knew that Bosheit would not abandon me!’ The young murderer watched with some apprehension as the silent rescuer bent to retrieve the scattered pages from the floor. ‘I didn’t tell them anything,’ he hastily explained. ‘I have been loyal. I didn’t tell them anything, no matter what they did!’

‘I can see that,’ Brunner said as he collected the pages, scanning a few of them before thrusting them into his belt. He favoured the bound murderer with a friendless smile. ‘Whatever you did say,’ he added, drawing a dagger and walking toward the prisoner, ‘my job remains the same.’ Niedreg’s eyes widened with fright. A last protest, a last snivelling plea to spare his life formed on his lips, but it died there as the bounty hunter slammed the dagger into his heart. Brunner took a step back, waiting for the corpse to become still, and for the dead apprentice’s bowels to empty. Then, drawing the large saw-edged knife he had named The Headsman from his belt, the bounty hunter advanced once more upon Niedreg’s corpse.

Trotzel stirred in his cell, groaning as consciousness returned. The ugly bruise on his skull throbbed with pain. He rolled onto his side, then sat up straight, eyes wide with alarm. Lying beside him in the cell were three dead guards. Trotzel’s mind tried to puzzle out who had killed the soldiers. Had the opening in the wall been real then? Had he really been struck by some dark figure from the shadows? A fresh thought drove these questions from his mind: perhaps whoever had killed the guards had also left the door of his cell unbarred! He scrambled to his feet and hurried to the door.

Trotzel reached for the heavy oak portal, but no sooner had he reached it than the barrier swung inward. Trotzel retreated from the door and hurried to the body of one of the dead guards, leaning down to take a sword from the man’s belt.

‘I shouldn’t touch that,’ a low, hissing voice snapped. ‘Not unless you want to stay here.’

Trotzel turned around, watching as a tall man in armour, wearing a black sallet helm, entered the cell. There was a naked body slung over his shoulder. The thief gasped as he saw that the arms ended in ragged red stumps, and cringed when he saw that the severed hands had been tied around the corpse’s neck.

‘Come here,’ the icy voice commanded. The thief took a few tenuous steps forward. As he did so, the bounty hunter kicked the door of the cell closed with his foot. ‘I’m not going to hurt you unless you force me,’ he added, ensuring that the threat did not go unnoticed. The thief forced down his apprehension and hurried to the armoured figure.

‘Hold this,’ Brunner said, dropping Niedreg’s body into Trotzel’s arms. The thief staggered under the weight, but managed to hold onto the corpse. Brunner strode forward and crouched over the bodies of the dead soldiers.

‘Who… who are you?’ Trotzel asked, shifting his body to compensate for the weight of the dead man. Brunner did not look up, but instead removed the sword from the dead sergeant, adding it to the ring of keys he had taken earlier.

‘Do you care?’ the bounty hunter replied. He bent towards the soldier shot with the crossbow, and dug the bolt from his wound, removing his sword as well. ‘I should think your freedom would be enough to occupy your mind.’

‘It is,’ Trotzel admitted quickly, eager not to seem ungrateful lest the menacing man leave him behind. He watched as the bounty hunter strode to the rear wall of the cell and placed his hands against two of the stones set in the wall. Once again, the wall sank into darkness.

‘Aren’t you going to take his sword?’ the thief asked, nodding his head at the unplundered body.

‘Two will be enough,’ the bounty hunter declared. He nodded his head to indicate the opening. ‘Bring the body here.’

‘Certainly,’ Trotzel replied, hurrying forward as best he could. ‘A friend of yours?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Brunner replied, pushing the slim thief through the doorway. The bounty hunter followed Trotzel. A moment later, the wall slid back into place, leaving no trace of thieves, killers or wizards.

‘Oh yes,’ Trotzel’s voice crackled with malicious mirth. ‘There are quite a few people who are going to be sorry to see old Trotzel again! You can count on it!’ The thief let his words turn to another crackle of laughter. Brunner turned to the little man, uttering still another snarl for the fool to shut his mouth. It would serve to cow the man for perhaps another dozen paces or so, and then the thief’s eagerness to plot his revenge upon those who had caused him to be thrown into Karl Franz’s dungeons would bring the words tumbling out once more.

The bounty hunter paused, glancing at the map in his hands. A few more turns, and he would be back at the place where he had encountered the monster. For the third time since returning to the sewers, in fact. Brunner cast a disgusted glance at Trotzel and the corpse the little man was carrying over his shoulder.

‘I tell you, when I get my hands on Ilsa, it won’t be a quick thing,’ the thief cackled, resuming his vengeful plots. ‘That little trollop! All for a few crowns reward!’ The thief hissed a low curse about the caprices of women. ‘I’ll have a grand time getting even with her!’

A sickly stench brought Brunner’s head about. A smile formed on his face. He turned and spoke to the thief once more.

‘Almost there now,’ he rasped.

‘About time!’ Trotzel groused. ‘Your friend here isn’t exactly weightless you know!’

Brunner watched as the phosphorous patch in the slimy water moved towards them along the channel.

‘Ranald’s blade! What is that smell?’ Trotzel exclaimed. ‘We must be under the privy for the Count of Ostland’s ogres!’

Brunner faced the thief. ‘Can you swim?’ he asked.

‘What? In that?’ A look of horror crossed Trotzel’s face as he stared at the reeking channel. ‘We’re going to swim through that?’

‘Not “we”,’ the bounty hunter explained. ‘You.’ Gloved hands shoved the thief and the corpse he was carrying into the water. The bounty hunter turned from the floundering man just as the slick of glowing scum surrounded him. Brunner could hear the man’s shouts of anger and disgust become high-pitched screams, but he did not dally to watch the Chaos spawn devour the man. The creature was quite probably mindless and would perhaps not remember the man who had injured it mere hours ago. And Brunner had no desire to test his strength against that of the abomination a second time.

The bounty hunter looked at the map again, now following it back towards the exit that would take him to the streets of Altdorf. He paused, dropping the keys and swords he had taken from the dungeon guards into the waste-carrying channel. He watched them sink into the reeking mire. Like the bodies of the two men he had removed from the dungeons, they would never be found.

Brunner smiled at his planning. He had left every indication that Trotzel and Niedreg had worked together to escape the prison. Whatever questions might arise from the escape would be blamed on the wizard’s magic, and the blame for Niedreg’s escape would fall on the shoulders of whichever magician had examined him and pronounced his powers weak and inconsequential. There would be no suggestion that the wizard had died in the dungeon, nor that his slayer had been an intruder from the sewers.

Now there was one last thing to see to. Brunner would have to collect the remainder of his reward from the sinister little man with the unpleasant laugh.

Skrim Gnaw-Tail peered around the corner of the alleyway. Darkness had settled upon Altdorf, and in the now deserted Fleischerweg, only a handful of streetlamps were lit. There was little custom for beef and pork during the long hours of the night and what foot traffic was still abroad was seeking the taverns, inns and houses of entertainment scattered throughout the Imperial capital. At such an hour, the district of butchers was as lonely as the gardens of Morr. Still, there was always the unlikely chance that a patrol of the city watch might happen by. Skrim would have preferred to end the matter down in the sewers, but there was too much chance that he might be seen; that one of the numerous spies of the other clans and factions of the skaven might see his encounter with the bounty hunter and wonder what was going on.

The skaven could see the bounty hunter in the lonely alleyway, sitting upon a rickety rain barrel that had long ago ceased to serve its purpose. Except for the lines of sheets and towels strung across the alleyway that were used by the slaughterhouses to sop up blood and entrails, and a few battered crates, the man was alone.

Skrim flinched back around the corner, muttering under his breath. His hand began to lift the scarred end of his tail to his mouth, but he dropped the appendage angrily when it touched his wiry whiskers. Why was he feeling so nervous, the skaven wondered? It was only one man, and once he was attended to, there would be nothing linking Skrim to the late Duke Verletz.

The skaven turned his head and snapped a command at the figures lurking behind him.

Brunner stood up as the small cloaked figure stepped into the alley, and advanced a few paces, fingering the small crossbow pistol in his hand.

‘I have been waiting for hours,’ he said. ‘I was starting to think you weren’t coming.’ Menace dripped from Brunner’s voice as he continued. ‘I was starting to think I’d have to go out and find you.’ The cloaked figure answered with another unpleasant tittering laugh.

‘All dead now,’ Skrim cackled. ‘All gone, but man-killer!’ The skaven leader dodged to the wall as six more rat-men scrambled into the narrow lane. They were all lean with filthy, verminous pelts of brown fur clinging to their scarred and malnourished frames. In shape, they were somewhat human, but their hands ended in long claw-like nails and long bare tails snaked from their backs. Their heads were narrow and long, and sported whiskered muzzles and thin, pointed ears. Their mouths had been stitched shut, so that the only sound the creatures could utter was a low hiss. Each clutched a rusty steel blade.

Brunner drew back from the oncoming pack of skaven, and Skrim chittered as he watched the man recoil. Over the centuries, the skaven had been forgotten by the Empire, and reduced to legendary bogeymen to frighten bad children. It was a misconception the skaven constantly tried to foster among the lawmakers and learned men of the great Imperial houses. If confronted by these mythical creatures, even the bravest warrior could be overcome by a superstitious dread that would delay his actions by dangerous seconds.

But there was no such inaction in the human hunter. Brunner fired the bolt from his crossbow, catching the leading skaven in the chest. It fell, twitching in the alleyway, tripping up those scampering behind it. The bounty hunter drew his sword, but did not rush to meet the remaining foes. Instead, he pointed the blade upwards and slashed it across one of the hanging sheets. A rain of small glittering objects fell from the ruptured sack, striking the stone paving of the alley and bouncing across the lane. The naked paws of the charging slaves sank into the spiked edges of the caltrops and they shrieked in pain, several tearing the stitches from their lips in their agonised wails.

Brunner had expected some sort of double-cross, for anyone as free with his money as his mysterious patron might take it into his head to reclaim what he had spent. But he had expected to confront men, not monsters. Still, he had faced inhuman adversaries before, and no matter what shape they wore, he would meet their challenge.

The bounty hunter charged into the injured skaven, his sword passing through the neck of the closest one, sending its head rolling across the alley. The second skaven tried to parry his blow, but it overbalanced and fell against the stones, causing more caltrops to sink into its mangy hide. The slave shrieked, but its cry ended in a low rattle as Brunner’s sword transfixed its heart.

The bounty hunter removed his blade from the twitching corpse, glaring at the other attackers, but the fight was over – the injured rat-men limped away as best they could, back to the hidden entrances to the sewers and the comforting safety of the dark tunnels.

A loud snap sounded from the entrance of the alley and something whizzed past Brunner’s face, smacking into the wall beside him. He turned as another snap sounded, and staggered as something struck his breastplate, ricocheting off into the darkness. It had dented the almost indestructible metal. He quickly drew a throwing knife and sent it arcing through the darkness to strike the figure at the mouth of the alley. There was a sharp squeal and something clattered to the cobbles.

Brunner strode towards the cloaked figure, watching with some amusement as it tried to tug the knife from where it had caught the garment and pinned it to the wall. The murderous creature had been lucky, the knife had missed its arm.

Brunner stooped and removed the strange-looking weapon the skaven had fired at him. It was similar in some ways to a crossbow, but it had a box-like device set atop the string. The steel string itself had a mechanism that instantly pulled it back after firing. He paused to admire the weapon for a moment, then turned his icy eyes on the struggling creature.

‘I suppose you didn’t bring me the rest of my money,’ he sighed.

The skaven suddenly slipped free and dropped down out of the pinned cloak. Skrim scrambled from the alley on all fours, like the giant rat he resembled. Brunner muttered a low curse, letting the unfamiliar crossbow fall back to the street and grasping for one of his own throwing knives. He had an instant to watch the long, naked tail and grey-furred backside scramble out of sight around the corner. He snarled again, giving chase, turning the corner just in time to see the tip of the fleshy tail slip into a narrow sewer drain.

‘No,’ the bounty hunter said after gazing at the dark drain. He sheathed the knife and walked away. ‘I am not going back down there unless I am sure I’m getting paid.’ Still watching for any sign of lingering ambushers, he strode back to the alleyway to reclaim the skaven’s abandoned weapon. The exotic weapon would be compensation for the money his treacherous, inhuman employer had failed to pay out.

Skrim was muttering to himself as he sloshed his way through the murky tunnel. He nibbled at the tip of his tail, savouring the taste of his own blood. Flecks of foam fell from the corners his mouth, splashing against the grey fur of his chest.

The human would pay, the skaven swore to himself. The filthy man-creature would suffer untold agony, have the flesh gnawed from his bones by Skrim’s own fangs. He would spare no expense to have his revenge. He would set the finest assassins in the Under Empire upon that treacherous cur…

Skrim stopped short, a hunted look entering his eyes. Yes, he could set the nastiest, sneakiest, stealthiest, most skilled assassins in the Old World on the bounty hunter’s trail. There were enough warptokens in his many caches of wealth to afford them. But could he be certain that the killers would stab first and ask questions later? What might they be able to learn from this man-killer before they slew him? For that matter, what might that dolt Niedreg have told him before he was killed? Skrim’s head whipped about, his narrow eyes darting at every shadow, trying to see what they might conceal.

He was in the same bind. He could not set one of his own kind after the bounty hunter; he’d have to use another human for the job. Yet even then, there was no surety of killing the man-killer. He had a decidedly skaven-like penchant for distrust and cunning. Skrim had to admit that it was an almost admirable quality. Perhaps he was being hasty in his thirst for blood. After all, those cowardly slaves were more to blame than the man-creature. If they had not been so easily frightened, they might have been able to better the human. It took Skrim quite some time to convince himself, but at last he decided that the escaped slaves were the cause of his humiliation and near-death experience. He’d see them skinned alive for causing such anguish.

As for the man-creature, he seemed to hold no loyalty beyond his need for the yellow metal all the humans lusted after. Perhaps he might be of use at some later time? Enough gold, and perhaps he might even forget about their unfortunate misunderstanding.

Skrim’s eyes glistened in the darkness as his devious mind began to hatch new plots and intrigues, plans in which a human bounty hunter was a rather prominent player.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE BLACK PRINCE

Many are the legends told in the misty shadows of the Grey Mountains, that nigh-impenetrable fence between the Kingdom of Bretonnia and the grand Empire. Here was the birthplace of such legends as the infamous Blood Keep and the vampiric red duke. The location of the haunted dwarf minehold of Bhurali-dwar is said by some to worm its way through the roots of jagged fangs of rock. And, here too, once stood that monument to the Dark – the fortress of Drachenfels – and the unholy being who inhabited that blighted palace.

Some of these tales are naught but stories told to frighten young children, and to keep ignorant peasants from straying too far from their masters’ lands. But others hold the seed of some dark and terrible truth, some secret the teller of such stories is better off not guessing. For sometimes truth comes at a high price and can raze the fortunes of the most prosperous, sap the strength of the most mighty, and savage the soul of even the most stalwart.

Among the legends of the Grey Mountains, there is the tale of a grim and fearsome haunter of the darkness, a Black Prince, master of a shadowy kingdom of thieves, bandits, murderers, assassins, kidnappers and slavers. A Black Prince who rules from a stronghold hidden within the Grey Mountains, and collects tribute from his nefarious subjects within both Bretonnia and the Empire. Some even say that his spectral reach extends even beyond these great lands, so that cut-purses in Tilea, highway-men in Estalia, Sartosan pirates and even marauding mercenary free companies in the Border Princes pay their tithe of blood and gold to this man. It is whispered that not all of the Black Prince’s slaves are human; that in the dark woods twisted things bray and growl their oaths of allegiance to him. And, it is also whispered, the Black Prince himself is not human, but some creature of the Ruinous Powers, a daemon thing set upon the world to cultivate the seeds of corruption and decay, to weaken the bastions of humanity and pave the way for the next great push by the forces of Chaos.

Chief amongst those tradesmen who harkened to tales of the near-mythical figure of the Black Prince was that hard and brutal breed – the bounty hunter. Though the Black Prince himself might only be rumour, the reward offered for his head was only too real. Held within a vault below the King of Bretonnia’s castle in Couronne, the bounty for his capture was the ransom of a king. It had been kept under lock and key for three hundred years following the notorious kidnap and disappearance of the elf envoy from Athel Loren. Yet even after all this time, no man had ever stepped forward to claim the reward, and so the infamy of the Black Prince grew and grew.

The siren lure of the Black Prince summoned that grim and terrible figure, Brunner the bounty killer, to the pleasant land of Bretonnia. And on this epic hunt, I became more than Brunner’s chronicler – I became a part of his deeds, a part of the contest between the limitless cruelty of the Black Prince and the unerring ruthlessness of the bounty hunter.

I doubt if I shall ever feel clean again…

1

The tavern was full despite the late hour. Peasants spent their meagre earnings on cups of watered-down ale, trying to warm the chill of autumn from their bent, overworked frames. A down-on-his-luck minstrel sat near the fire, despondently plucking away on a battered lute. A pair of caravan guards tested their strength in an arm wrestling contest, trying their best to ignore the whiny-voiced muleskinner who tried to incite everyone to wager their coin on the outcome. An off-duty watchman bounced an overweight, middle-aged serving wench on his knee half-heartedly. A woodsman spread a set of skins out on his table, examining them in the feeble light cast by the lanterns on the rafters.

Near the bar, a well-dressed merchant from the Empire ordered another flagon of ale for himself and his son. The merchant sported the elaborate moustaches favoured by the well-to-do of his land. His face was plump and well-fed, but bore the mark of the weather in the hardness of its cast and the roughness of its skin. The eyes glittered with humour, but there was also a mark of sadness in them – a scar left by years of experience in times that were neither so pleasant nor so prosperous as the present.

Otto Kretzer took the two leather mugs from the obese Bretonnian behind the bar and made his way back to the table. A younger man rose to help him, but Otto shooed him away.

‘I’m not so old as I can’t handle myself, you know,’ the ageing man scoffed. He set the flagons down on the table and let a big sigh heave from his chest as he slumped into one of the chairs. ‘Of, course, I’m not so young as I used to be,’ he admitted with a wink, taking a deep draught of ale from his cup.

‘As you are very fond of reminding everyone when it’s time to load the wagons,’ the younger man laughed.

Josef Kretzer was the very image of the merchant, though not as plump, or as well dressed. A slender branch of black hair curled upwards from the corners of his mouth, framing a sharp nose. His hair was cut short, though not in the military fashion of the older merchant. His leather tunic was not elaborate, but his boots bore a pair of glittering silver buckles that contrasted richly with the simple laces and clasps that graced the older man’s leggings.

Josef reached a soft-skinned hand forward and grasped the leather jack. Pulling it toward him, he wrinkled his face. Otto laughed.

‘If you are going to take over the route, then you will have to learn to stomach Bretonnian drink,’ the merchant sniggered and downed another mouthful of the amber liquid. ‘You’ll find few enough places that serve beer, and even fewer that serve anything even the lowest dive in Altdorf would dare to pass off as tea.’

The younger man pushed the jack away from him after taking a brief sip. ‘I may just have to turn to tea,’ he said, ignoring the glowering look the tavern keeper cast at him from behind the bar. ‘I don’t suppose there would be room in the wagons for a few kegs of decent drink?’

‘And lose valuable cargo space?’ Otto returned with mock incredulity. His companion smiled and shook his head. As he did so, the younger man noticed a nondescript figure sitting in the far corner of the tavern. Otto followed his son’s look and focused upon the solitary traveller.

The figure was slim, almost obscured by the shadows cast by a support beam and a stuffed boar’s head mounted on the wall. The man appeared tall; even seated his height was apparent. A worn brown cloak was cast about his head and shoulders, the hood pulled up over his face. Gloved hands rested sombrely on the table before him. The lower part of the man’s face was obscured by a wrap of dark cloth; the skin above it was pale and shone like marble in the little light that touched him. Narrow eyes, almost shaped like almonds, stared from above the slender bridge of his nose. They were focused intently upon the door of the tavern. His eyes had their own glitter; they seemed to twinkle with an unholy light.

There was a menace in those eyes, a stamp of death and violence. They were eyes that had seen death many times. They were eyes that had seen murder, many times.

Otto shuddered and turned away, drinking from his tankard. ‘Gruesome sort,’ he muttered. ‘Best lock our door tonight.’

‘Who do you think he is?’ wondered Josef. ‘I see he doesn’t drink. Perhaps he’s a pilgrim.’ A sudden look of horror crossed Josef’s face as he considered the covered face. ‘Perhaps he’s a leper!’ he gasped.

‘He’s probably neither,’ Otto replied. ‘I’d wager he’s a foreign mercenary, a hired killer or an assassin. De Chegney and the Marquis le Gaires may have a treaty, but don’t think for a moment that it’ll last. Things’ll get nasty before too long, mark my words.’ Otto winked at his son. ‘That’ll be good for business. And de Chegney doesn’t have le Gaires’s prejudice against firearms. We might even be able to unload that cannon from Nuln on him when the time comes.’ Otto smiled as he considered what profit that particular transaction would turn.

Suddenly, the heavy door of the tavern was kicked open. Startled oaths died on the lips of guests and staff alike as two men strode into the room. One was a thin, scowl-faced man dressed in animal skins, a heavy crossbow gripped in his hands. The other man was taller, and broader of shoulder. He was clothed in a suit of chainmail. The colourful surcoat of a Bretonnian knight was tied about his waist. He held a huge-mouthed weapon of black steel and wooden stock. The business end of the blunderbuss slowly canvassed the room as the bandit turned his body at the waist. The room grew still and silent as the grave.

The silence was broken by the sound of metal jingling against metal. A tall figure – surely the bandits’ leader – strode in from the street, his dark form highlighted by the red glow of the fading sun. An imposing figure, he was clothed from head to foot in armour: boots of lustreless metal rose to his knees, and from his waist hung a skirt of mail, the links of which were so small and fine they looked like scaly hide. His arms were protected by the same fine armour, with long vambraces of dark metal covering his forearms. Sharp spikes marched along the length of the armour pieces, and his ornamented metal breastplate depicted a rampant drake.

The warrior’s head was encased in a high-browed helm of black steel, with bat-wing vanes sweeping back from either ear. A crawling trim of gold snaked above the face of the helm, before stabbing downward along the nose to form a vulture-like beak.

His face was hidden by a featureless mask of steel, only two narrow slits for eyes interrupted the polished silvery surface of the visor. A pair of slender, matched blades completed the figure’s trappings, one set upon either hip, each sporting a brutal guard of thorn-like spikes.

The bandit leader advanced, stalking past the two mercenaries. With every step, the musical tingle of his armour sounded. The denizens of the tavern parted before the advancing warrior, not a soul daring to breathe as he stepped past them. He let an armoured hand rest on the pommel of a slim dagger fastened across his belly and slowly turned his helmeted head. His eyes were alive with a cold fire, a subtle malevolence that caused the soul to shudder.

Other figures entered the tavern behind the bandit leader, but none of the denizens of the room could draw their gaze away from the black-clad warrior. As the warrior stared at Josef Kretzer, the boy suddenly realised how similar the bandit’s eyes were to those of the solitary mercenary.

The warrior turned away from the merchant’s son and looked into the shadowy corner where the lone traveller sat.

‘It is a very long road to walk,’ he spoke from behind the shining mask of steel. The voice was beautiful yet cruel. It was a harsh beauty that had nothing in it to warm the soul. It was the voice of a daemon, a sound of the night, the seductive call of the darkness.

‘It is a very long road to walk,’ the bandit leader continued, ‘to find only death.’

The lone figure at the table slowly stepped forward, casting the shabby brown cloak from him. He was indeed tall and lean of frame. His garments were of fine black cloth, his boots of black scaly hide. Three weapons hung from a leather belt round his waist: a long dagger, a barbed sickle-like blade, and a needle-thin hooked shortsword. His head was unclothed, save for the dark mask that covered his mouth and nose. His skin was very pale, contrasting with the inky darkness of his fine black hair. Sharp ears of inhuman length pointed from the long black locks. An elf, Josef realised in surprise, though he had never set eyes on one before.

The elf cast a chill glare upon the armoured warrior.

The warrior spoke again, but no longer in words that were known to any in the tavern save himself and the one he addressed. It was a melodious language, but spoken with great malice. ‘What news from home?’ the armoured figure asked. ‘Do they still allow that feeble fool to babble and rave? Do our people still bow to impotent beings that promise victories they do not know how to achieve?’

The masked traveller drew two of the weapons from his belt: the dagger and the sickle-shaped spineblade. The warrior chuckled mirthlessly, and drew the sword sheathed upon his right side.

‘Dagger and ghlaith,’ the bandit lord said. ‘Are there then no new tricks they teach in Ghrond?’

The assassin moved forward, as lightly as a leaf blown across a graveyard by a midnight wind. As he came closer, the hand with the dagger shot forward, a bright flash of light exploded from the gem that had been secreted in the palm of his glove. The bandits at the door groaned and covered their eyes; many patrons of the tavern screamed, clenching their hands to their faces to blot out the blinding light.

The assassin leaped at the bandit leader, sweeping the sickle-shaped ghlaith in a sideways stroke that should have cut through the bandit leader’s mail skirt and ripped his kidneys and bowels from his armoured body. He moved the dagger upwards, seeking his enemy’s armpit, hoping to thrust through the lightly armoured join and stab into the lung. The sound of metal clashing against metal echoed above the moans and cries filling the room. As the bright light dissipated, the assassin found both of his weapons blocked and held by the jagged, thorn-shaped blades of his enemy’s swords.

‘Right now,’ the bandit leader said, ‘you are wondering how such a thing is possible. I am sure that trick has always worked before. But I am beyond the petty tricks of the witch elves now.’

The elf assassin drew away, spinning about on his heel. The blades in his hands were a blur of motion – such was his inhuman speed. To the returning vision of the watching bandits and tavern patrons, it was like trying to see a gust of wind. The assassin reversed his weapons, slashing the spineblade upwards towards his foe’s neck in a move that recalled the decapitating skills of the executioners of Har Ganeth. The dagger slashed downwards toward the groin in a despicable manoeuvre favoured by the man-hating witch elves of Khaine. Once again, the murderous eyes widened with surprise as the ring of metal on metal echoed through the room. His foe had matched the preternatural quickness of his attack, each weapon again intercepted by a thorn-bladed sword.

‘Very good,’ the warrior congratulated his attacker with the patronising tone of a fencing tutor. ‘That was almost exciting.’ The bandit leader’s armoured hands twisted the swords about, nearly ripping the weapons from the assassin’s grip and the elf recoiled, stepping away from his adversary. He raised his right hand, facing the palm toward the armoured warrior and flicked the spent gemstone at him. Matching the same fey quickness of the assassin, the armoured warrior swatted the oncoming missile aside with his sword. The gemstone crashed against the far wall, exploding in a violent discharge of smoke and flame.

The assassin did not hesitate, charging forward, a feral cry roaring from behind his mask. The ululating cry caused the onlookers to cringe, many openly crying out in terror. The tall, black-garbed warrior was unfazed, matching the flurry of blows the assassin struck at him with his own intercepting blades.

‘Ah, one of the secret names of Khaine,’ the bandit leader laughed. ‘Is that supposed to make me tremble? Frighten me?’ The steel boot lashed out, nearly catching the elf assassin’s knee. He danced back, but this time his enemy followed him. ‘I have no fear of your impotent god,’ the warrior leader sneered. ‘I have found older gods, better gods.’ He lashed out with his sword, penetrating the assassin’s defences and slashing his right arm. The jagged cut bled freely, but the assassin ignored the disabling blow, lashing out all the more fiercely with his left hand weapon.

‘Do you not wonder why the long war continues?’ the warrior asked, the tone conversational, calm and unconcerned by the lethal blade that danced before him. ‘It is because the ancient fool who rules us does not wish it to ever end.’ The assassin redoubled his attacks, and the armoured warrior casually swatted him aside. ‘Now, now, you must use your fury, not let it use you,’ he scolded. ‘The others who came before you made that mistake. I drink feeble human wines from goblets crafted from their skulls.’

The assassin swept the spineblade toward the armoured belly of his enemy, then adjusted his grip, dropping to his knees and trying to slash the back of his legs. The warrior caught the crescent blade with the tip of his sword, and sent it spinning from the assassin’s grasp. The weapon clattered against a table before it fell to the floor. The assassin started to draw the remaining blade, but the point of one of the swords nicked the back of his hand, and drew a thin trickle of blood.

‘I think the dagger will serve you better than the lakelui,’ the bandit leader calmly observed.

With a look of withering hate, the assassin bent to retrieve his blade, but as he crouched, his hand darted to the wrist of his injured arm, drawing three slender darts from the sheath there. The assassin rolled and threw the small missiles at his enemy. The swords rang out once more, and the three darts thunked into the counter of the bar where the warrior’s deflecting blows had knocked them.

‘You are becoming tiresome,’ the bandit leader said. ‘The dagger, if you would.’

Scowling behind his mask, the assassin crept forward to grab the dropped blade. Instead, he rolled forward, lashing out with the thin, jagged lakelui. At the same time, he raised his other arm, neither so numb nor so useless as he had led his adversary to believe. He gripped his mask, pulling it down, then rushed the armoured man. The assassin’s mouth fell open and he spat a black mist at the bandit leader. The mist settled upon the face of the helm, and sizzled upon the black steel.

The warrior’s long blade swept forward, slashing the assassin’s hand from his wrist. The assassin screamed in pain and clutched the bleeding stump to his body.

The black-armoured warrior moved forward, sheathing his bloody sword. The poison the elf assassin had spit upon him still sizzled upon his armour, all save the shiny visor that clothed his face, which was unmarked and unharmed. He bent and picked up the severed hand, pulling the lakelui from the nerveless fingers.

‘I told you not to favour the lakelui,’ the warrior said, the tone as pleasant as that of a huntsman consoling a comrade upon a missed bowshot. The assassin sank to his knees, cradling the bleeding stump to his breast. As he did so, the fingers of his remaining hand covertly worked their way into his tunic. ‘Thinking to offer my soul to Khaine? Yes, I suppose feeble old Malekith would expect nothing less.’ For the first time, there was true emotion in the warrior’s voice, a wrathful, wicked venom to his tone. ‘Still, incompetent kings should not be surprised when their incompetent servants fail.’

The assassin’s eyes hardened. Slowly, he worked his hand back from the tunic.

‘What new trick do you think to use upon me?’ the bandit leader asked. In a sudden blur, the lakelui leapt forward, thrust through the assassin’s throat, six inches of the long blade protruding from the back of his assassin’s neck. The body slumped to the floor. ‘I am sure it would have been tedious and boring, in any event,’ commented the warrior.

The hand of the assassin fell open and a four-pointed throwing star fell out, edges dripping with a sticky green poison.

The armoured warrior bent down and pulled the lakelui free. He raised the bloody weapon before his face, and held it there for sometime, as though savouring the smell of the blood.

‘When you see Khaine,’ the voice said to the elf’s corpse, ‘ask him why he failed to protect you. Ask him why my gods kept your tricks from disabling me, and why your wicked skills were not equal to the task.’

The armoured warrior turned away from the body and gestured to the mass of figures gathered in the doorway. A beastman loped forward. Its head was like that of a wide-muzzled dog, its powerful frame covered by greasy grey hair. The creature wore only a simple skirt of braided hair about its waist and a huge double-headed axe was slung over its shoulder. Iron-shod hooves crunched across the tavern’s wooden floor, indenting each plank they struck. The creature focused its questioning gaze upon its master.

‘Take him,’ the warrior chief commanded. ‘Leave nothing that was his. Sop his blood from the floor, and bind his wounds. Wrap his possessions in soft wool. I wish to savour every trace of the smell of Naggaroth.’ The warrior’s armoured head swung around, regarding the beastman again. ‘I shall feast when we return and drink that rarest of wines from a goblet made from this one’s skull.’ A trace of menace entered the melodious voice. ‘Urgmesh,’ he hissed as the beastman lifted the body of the assassin to his wide shoulders, ‘no nibbling.’

The beastman nodded his shaggy head and loped back towards the door of the tavern. Other, more human, figures hurried in to gather up the discarded weapons and sop the elf’s blood from the floor boards. The black-clad warrior absently handed one of the men the assassin’s lakelui.

The armoured warrior cast his gaze toward his followers bunched in the door. They were a varied lot: motley-armed, foul-visaged men in grimy armour and piecemeal mail stood beside mangy-pelted twisted beastmen. But one figure stood out among them, and the black knight pointed an armoured hand towards him.

The figure stepped forward. He was tall, thin and garbed like his master in a fine mail aketon and skirt, a breastplate of steel and a high-browed helm. The helm was open, displaying his finely featured face, its skin pale and smooth like alabaster. The elf bowed as he stepped toward his master.

‘Not as entertaining as I had hoped,’ the bandit leader said.

‘It is well that my lord is unharmed,’ the elf replied. The black knight waved away his minion’s concern.

‘Such as they will never be able to match the gifts of the Dark Gods,’ the bandit leader declared, not deigning to look back at the dead assassin as he spoke. ‘There will be others, and they shall find the same end awaiting them.’ He cast his eyes upon another of the figures gathered in the doorway. He could see the sweat beading on the man’s forehead, a nervous twitch in his limbs. ‘Still, our country-man came here expecting to meet someone.’ He let his voice switch to the harsher, clumsier Bretonnian tongue. ‘Someone thought to betray me to my enemies,’ he hissed. ‘Someone who has not learned how to obey me. I must teach him a lesson.’

The sweating man made to run, his portly frame smashing through the bodies nearest him. Before he could make the street, however, the paw of the huge beastman Urgmesh punched the traitor, knocking him back into the room.

‘Bors,’ the dark noble clucked his tongue, and shook his armoured head. ‘You have been with me for such a long time. I elevated you from poaching and thieving in the brambles around Parravon, and this is how you thank me. Such a waste.’ Urgmesh lifted his massive axe and held the blade over the stunned traitor. His master called him off.

‘No, nothing so quick, nor so crude,’ the bandit chief scolded. ‘Bind him. He returns with us. I must remind him that his life and death are my possessions, as are all of yours.’ The dark noble’s eyes considered each of his minions. ‘To be able to see another dawn is because I have allowed it. He must learn that death is a gift only I can bestow. Only when his pleas for death have become tiresome will I consider letting him die.’ The bandit leader waved one of his metal-sheathed hands and two of the watching bandits gathered up their former comrade and carried him outside.

‘What of these others?’ asked the elf lieutenant. The noble turned, regarding the frightened peasants as if seeing them for the first time.

‘This is an unfit stage to host my skill with the sword, and this rabble is an unfit audience,’ the black knight decreed. ‘Kill them all, and burn this place to the ground.’ The noble stalked toward the door. As he did so, shouts of rage and fear sounded from the cowed patrons. One of the mercenaries rose, charging forward, only to be hurled back by the blast of the blunderbuss. Before the liveried watchman could raise his sword or push the obese serving girl from his lap, a crossbow bolt sprouted from his chest.

Otto Kretzer roared his own defiant fury, but before he could take more than a few steps, he was cut down by the black knight’s thorn-like sword. As his father fell, Josef Kretzer lunged forward, his sword forgotten in his rage, and his hands held before him in a clutching, choking grasp.

The young merchant collided with the noble as he turned from the body of the older man. His grasping hands closed about the bevor, trying to grip the black warrior’s neck. The knight brought his armoured knee upwards, smashing the wind from the youth’s midsection. The boy’s body slipped to the floor, his trailing hands clutching at the dark armour as his body sank to the floor. When he came to rest, the dark warrior turned and strode towards the door.

‘Burn this refuse,’ the warrior lord called from over his shoulder. ‘We return to the stronghold tonight.’

The black knight strode from the building, paying no attention to the screams and cries sounding from the tavern. He raised his armoured head and stared up at the dark, moonless sky. He smiled beneath his metal mask. No, Morrsleib, the Chaos moon, was still there, dark and invisible against the night sky, but it was still there, watching all that transpired in the mortal world. The bandit prince offered up a silent thanks to the generous power that he felt looked down from that dark star of Chaos. Once again, the Eye of Tchar had served him well, as it had so often before.

His body trembled as the sorcerous power ebbed from his limbs, and the magical vitality that had filled him dissipated into the night. It was dangerous to hold such power within a vessel of flesh and bone for too long, and the dark elf was eager to purge it from him. It was the very stuff of Chaos, the intangible corruption that twisted men into beasts and beasts into monsters. He himself had no desire to suffer such an end. Yet the power had been necessary – no, vital – for the duel. Only with such other-worldly aid could he have matched and bested one of the murderers of the temple of Khaine. That, too, he had seen with the Eye of Tchar.

The elf noble strode to his steed, a huge black maned stallion, taken from the icy wastes of the north – the blighted region men called the Troll Country. There was something of the Ruinous Powers about the creature, for even in Naggaroth, the dark elf had never seen its match. It was as savage as any of the reptilians, but without their dull wits and cold-blooded reactions. The horse snorted as its master stroked its mane. He removed a small morsel and fed the scrap of meat to the stallion’s fang-ridden jaws. As the animal chewed the flesh, the elf wondered what thoughts stirred within its head. Was it still a horse in its mind, or was it now something else? How much of the Dark Ones’ favours could one command before one was no more? Did he command the Power, or did it command him?

The noble shook his head. They were the old thoughts, the old fears. He was druchii – for him, there should be no fear. He had seen mere humans wield the power, so how could he doubt his own command of it? The Eye of Tchar was his, he was not the Eye’s.

The bandit leader lifted himself into the saddle and turned his steed’s head. He looked back at the tavern, and watched the first tongues of flame lick about the windows. He watched his slaves hurry from the building, and mount their own horses. He gestured with his hand and the entire force galloped away from the burning structure.

Once again, his enemies in his homeland had thought to strike him down. Even after three hundred years, they still remembered him. He sighed. He had been among humans too long. For them, three hundred years was almost beyond their ability to imagine. For elves, it was nothing – the space between youth and manhood. As he had said, there would be others.

There would always be others. For his enemies would never forget him.

They would never forget the Black Prince.

A ragged form crawled from the burning tavern, taking in the dull, dirty faces that watched the building burn. He wormed his way into the street and rolled about in the mud to smother the flames that rose from his garments. The peasants and tradesmen considered the survivor with expressionless looks. None of them moved to help the man, just as none moved to fight the fire that was consuming the tavern.

Josef Kretzer rose to his knees and glared at the spectators. He opened his mouth to hurl abuse upon the craven mob, but only a wracking cough escaped his lungs. As he coughed, he became fully aware of the object he clutched in his hand: the long, thin blade in the curious black, fish-skin sheath. His groping hands had torn it from the belt of his father’s killer, after the black-garbed figure had smashed his knee into Josef’s body.

The young merchant studied its curving, thorn-like shape. He felt some satisfaction as the eyes of the idle spectators grew wide with alarm and they backed away from him. He returned the dagger to its sheath and set the weapon on the ground before him, covering it with both his hands.

Josef bowed his head toward the burning ruin and spoke in a slow, heavy voice. It was an oath – an oath to all the gods of the Empire – he would find the one whose blade he now bore. He would find his father’s killer. He would bury the dark knight’s own dagger in his black heart. And he would ask no further favour of the gods than this, that Josef Kretzer might live just long enough to watch the life fade from the killer’s eyes as he had seen it pass from his father’s.

II

Dour-faced villagers quietly shuffled down the lane that passed for Falbourg’s thoroughfare. Occasionally, one of the peasants would pause to stare at the wood-frame expanse of the village’s tavern, when another cry of pain exploded from behind the building’s walls. But even these curious minds found that their errands required haste after all when the door of the tavern opened and a grim figure in armour and helm emerged.

Brunner strode from the tavern, wiping blood from his glove onto the scrap of cloth he held in his other hand. It had taken a bit of persuasion, but he had finally persuaded the recalcitrant brother of the notorious highwayman Gobineau to confess the whereabouts of the outlaw. Indeed, Brunner considered that it had been a fairly profitable morning. But the sound of booted feet at his back caused the bounty hunter to forget thoughts of profit and prey. With a single fluid motion, he spun about, tossing the cloth from his bloodied hands.

‘If you have a name, you’d better use it,’ he ordered, his hand pulling his gunpowder pistol from its holster and pointing the weapon at the man who stood only a few paces away.

Framed in the sunlight of morning was a young man wearing a shabby and worn-looking hauberk of toughened leather reinforced by steel studs. A round kettle hat perched atop the stranger’s handsome features, a thin fringe of closely-cropped black hair peering from beneath the rim of the heavy iron helmet. His face was set with a harsh scowl of cold determination, and his brown eyes were narrowed in a penetrating look of intense scrutiny. The man’s smooth-skinned hand rested casually upon the steel pommel of the broadsword sheathed at his side.

‘I understood that I can find the bounty hunter called Brunner here,’ the young man said, adjusting his stance so that he might be able to draw his weapon easier. ‘I am Josef Kretzer, son of Otto Kretzer of Imperial Schrabwald. If you are indeed the man I seek, I have come to hire you.’

‘Indeed,’ Brunner said, his voice dripping with doubt. ‘It is a very skilful or a very lucky man who can find me when I am already on the hunt.’ Menace overwhelmed the bounty hunter’s tone. ‘Either way, it is a very foolish man who intrudes upon my business.’

‘I came here to retain your services, not to be threatened,’ Josef snapped, arrogance seeping into his words, mingling with the rage that lurked just beneath his cool veneer. ‘I wish to hire you to lead me to the murdering bastard that killed my father.’

‘Does this man have a name?’ Brunner asked, keeping the pistol trained upon Josef.

Josef paused, gathering his thoughts, recalling the frightened whispers of the peasants in Gambrie. ‘It is my understanding that this animal is known as the Black Prince.’

A trace of amusement crawled across the bounty hunter’s face, and tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘You come all this way chasing a fable. There is no Black Prince. Better to ask me to bring you the head of Thorgrim Grudgebearer, the dwarf high king, boy. At least he is real.’

‘I have seen him!’ Josef roared. ‘I watched him kill my father with my own eyes. With my own hands I took this from him!’ Josef reached to his belt and drew the thorn-shaped dagger from its scabbard. Brunner’s gaze fixed upon the weapon.

Brunner returned his pistol to its holster and stalked forward. He motioned for the boy to hand over the dagger. The bounty hunter stared intently at the weapon, turning it over, letting the light of the morning play across its dark metal surface.

‘You took this from the Black Prince?’ he asked.

‘He was very substantial for a myth,’ the youth shot back. Brunner snorted a brief chuckle.

‘If this really came from who you say it did, then we should talk.’ The bounty hunter stared at the young merchant. ‘Meet me in the stables.’ Brunner reached forward and tucked the dagger back in its scabbard on the boy’s belt. ‘And don’t go showing that to anyone else.’

‘Then you will help me?’ Josef asked, his voice still flat, betraying neither hope nor suspicion.

The bounty hunter had to admit that the young merchant was very good at giving nothing away. He nodded his armoured head.

‘That remains to be seen, but you have my interest now,’ the bounty hunter replied.

Brunner found Josef Kretzer sitting upon a low wooden box beside a pile of yellowed hay in the shadows of the village stable. The building stank of dung and the sweat of animals, yet the bounty hunter could detect no sign of displeasure on the merchant’s face. Perhaps he was a bit tougher than his soft-skinned hands indicated.

Brunner strode past the youth, not pausing to greet him as he rose from his seat. He walked straight to the massive bay tethered to the rear wall of the wooden stable, the animal’s reins looped through a simple ring of iron. The bounty hunter laid a soothing hand on his steed’s neck, stroking away some of the horse’s tension.

‘Have you considered my offer?’ Josef asked, following the bounty hunter as he stepped away from Fiend and made his way over to his sturdy grey packhorse, Paychest. Brunner removed a small carrot from one of the pouches on his belt, giving the treat to the often over-worked animal. He looked up, staring at the youth.

‘That dagger you stole,’ Brunner watched as a venomous quality fought its way through the boy’s calm façade. The bounty hunter chuckled. ‘Let us say claimed then,’ it was as close to a word of apology he had given for five years. ‘Do you have any idea what it is?’

Josef drew the knife again, trying to discern what the bounty hunter gleaned from the weapon during his brief examination of it. ‘The balance is wrong, the space between hilt and pommel is unwieldy for a single-handed blade,’ Josef observed. ‘Probably some foreigner’s weapon, where they have curious ideas about warcraft and swordplay.’

Brunner nodded his head, reaching to the massive burden that was balanced upon the back of Paychest. He undid several straps and a long length of leather fell open, displaying an elegant-looking bow and a number of steel arrows, their heads barbed.

The bounty hunter undid the thongs that held the bow and lifted the weapon from its pack. The bow was slender, crafted in pale, almost white wood. Engravings scrolled across almost all its length.

It was quite possibly the most beautiful weapon Josef had ever set eyes upon, more like a work of art than a tool of war. The bounty hunter tossed the weapon to the merchant. Josef studied the bow, again astounded by the curious grip and the awkwardness the weapon was imbued with. A sudden realisation made him look back at the bounty hunter.

‘It is like the dagger,’ the youth exclaimed. Brunner motioned for Josef to return the weapon.

‘I took that from a hired killer in the Border Princes a year past,’ the bounty hunter said, ‘but it was crafted for no human hand.’ Brunner let that knowledge sink in a moment as he returned the bow to its place and refastened the leather roll to his pack horse’s burden.

‘Elves?’ the boy gasped. He had seen elves a few times in his life: tall, graceful and impossibly beautiful beings. There were a few who could be found in Altdorf, and a veritable community of so-called Sea Elves in the city-state of Marienburg. Josef thought again about the unwieldy grip of the dagger. Shaped for hands longer than those of a man, for fingers thinner and more delicate than the harsh paws of a mere human?

Brunner nodded. ‘It is the only thing that makes any sense.’ The bounty hunter stepped away from Paychest, facing the young merchant. ‘How much do you know about this Black Prince?’

‘Only what I have been told by the villagers in Gambrie and what the Viscount de Chegney told me when I petitioned him for aid in hunting down my father’s killer.’ Josef thought again about that humiliating encounter in the viscount’s castle. De Chegney had been displeased to hear about the entire affair, but had done no more than provide Josef with a set of battered and discarded armour and a feeble horse that must have been selected as supper for the viscount’s kennel before he had given it to Josef. Only one other thing had the viscount given him, a word of warning that he should forget about everything and return to the Empire and enjoy his father’s estate.

Brunner shook his head at the mention of the viscount, but kept his thoughts to himself. Instead, he spoke in a low, icy voice. ‘They have been telling stories about the Black Prince for hundreds of years,’ he said. ‘He is always described as an arrogant, tall, slender figure in black armour. An expert swordsman able to best even the noblest of knights. He commands men and beasts; he is a bandit host that preys upon the land like a murderous plague.’ The bounty hunter let a thin laugh rasp from his throat. ‘You have heard, no doubt, of Bretonnia’s Grail Knights, who search all across the kingdom in quest of the holy cup of the Lady of the Lake? The Black Prince is a bounty hunter’s holy cup. Three hundred years ago, the then king of Bretonnia placed a price of five thousand pieces of gold for the head of the Black Prince after the death of the envoy from the forest realm of Loren. Yet in all that time, no one has claimed that reward. Most men of my calling consider him a myth, a bogeyman called upon by inept sheriffs and larcenous caravan masters to explain every theft this side of the Grey Mountains.’ Brunner paused, staring at the boy again, a crafty look narrowing the icy eyes behind the visor of his helm. ‘Tell me everything that happened that night, exactly as it happened.’

Josef began to relate the events of the night his father died. He told of the sinister traveller and his duel with the leader of the bandits. He told of the impossible speed with which both of them moved and the amazing swordcraft of the Black Prince. He told of the monster’s cruel mockery of his overmatched foe and of his equal savagery when he casually commanded his minions to burn down the tavern and its occupants. He especially detailed for Brunner the strange armour the Black Prince wore, that was at once hideous and beautiful. When he had finished, the bounty hunter moved toward Fiend, untying the animal from the iron ring.

‘You will help me then?’ Josef asked as the bounty hunter led his animal from the stall.

Brunner removed a rag from the pack on the side of his saddle and tossed it to the boy. ‘With five thousand gold crowns in the balance, I may not even charge you.’ Brunner pointed a gloved finger at the dagger. ‘Cover that up, and don’t show it to anyone unless I tell you.’ He smiled. ‘We don’t want anyone else getting any ideas about where that dagger came from.’

The seated figure gazed towards the balcony, watching the morning sun turn the grey stonework white as its rays banished the shadows. Such a glorious morning: not a cloud in the sky. Once again, the noble on the black throne felt melancholy spirits tugging at his normally steadfast heart. Once again, he thought of the perpetual darkness and gloom of his home, the icy northern gales that howled through the towers and battlements of his city like a legion of screaming banshees. They bore with them the soft white snow of the north, which glittered with the chromatic taint of the Chaos Wastes – magic captured by the clouds and born to the south by the power of Naggaroth’s sorcerers.

Dralaith sighed and adjusted the sleeve of his long silk khaitan, as he remembered his lost homeland. He would return some day, not as a corpse, or as a prisoner. He would return as a conqueror. Even the Dark Gods would not deny him this. For were they not the cause of his exile? Were they not the reason he had become the Black Prince?

He cast his eye upon the locked box of blackened teakwood that rested upon a cushion beside his throne. It was an heirloom of his family, captured by some long-dead ancestor during a raid on Cathay. Within the box, however, was an artefact of far more recent vintage, captured by Dralaith himself, and torn from the neck of a Norse seer when Dralaith’s ship had met the barbarian’s dragon boat.

Dralaith thought back to that day, when he had led the corsairs down onto the deck of their captured prize. The Norse were rugged and powerful for humans and far more manageable than orcs in the mines and slave pits. The dark elves fought a bitter battle, hindered by a reluctance to kill too many of the barbarians lest their slave-taking be reduced to unprofitable levels. In fact the corsairs had been almost bested by the Norse. Then withering blasts of eerie blue light had come, and the flame that struck down dozens of corsairs, left their armour steaming, but their skin unmarred.

Dralaith had fought his way to the prow of the ship as his corsairs perished all around him. There he had found the cause of the sorcerous assault: a huge human dressed in a mangy black robe of dyed leather, the leering skull of some fanged and horned beast over his head like a helmet. The seer had been a massive, powerful man once, but now he was like a withered giant. Weak of arm or not, as the seer turned about, his clawed hand opened to reveal the gleaming jewel it held. Dralaith knew that he was dead then. Yet it was not the dark elf’s eyes that showed fear, but those of the seer. He snarled a brutal oath, but the jewel in his hand did not obey – sheets of mystical fire did not consume Dralaith’s body.

The dark elf had not waited for the seer to recover, but had darted in at once and removed the Norseman’s hand. A pair of corsairs lunged forward to secure the maimed mystic while Dralaith recovered the jewel from the pools of blood that swamped the deck.

He had learned later, after his torturers had administered their art upon the seer – that the jewel was called the Eye of Tchar. The Eye acted as a focus for mighty powers, powers that could instil vitality and strength in a man, powers that could summon daemons from the nether realms to rend the flesh of the wielder’s foes. But this was not the greatest of its powers. He had learned that it showed its owner the future, that the depths of the gem would reveal any danger that threatened, and that it would show the owner of the jewel how that danger might be undone.

But there had been one question that had troubled Dralaith. Why had the Eye of Tchar not warned the seer about him? The seer had laughed then, laughed until the torturers had broken him beyond the point of return. Only as life seeped from his mutilated form did the Norse stop laughing. He smiled up at the dark elf noble. He commended Dralaith on his wisdom, but he could give him no answer, for the seer had never thought to ask that question when he had taken it from a marauder chieftain long ago before he was a sorcerer.

The Black Prince gazed back to the long table set before his throne. A nervous human was seated there, his garments reeking of filth, his hair greasy with dirt and grime. The dark elf tried to recall the man’s name, but could not. He could not even remember why he had been imprisoned in his dungeons. He dismissed his concerns. Whatever he had done, it was unimportant. The Black Prince snapped his fingers. Four servants shambled into the chamber. The first carried a crystal bottle, something that had been salvaged from the cellars of the tower when the Black Prince had reclaimed it from the goblin vermin who had lived there for centuries. The dark elf smiled as he saw the dark crimson liquid within the bottle. The second servant bore a large goblet, its surface covered in silver. The cup of the goblet was crafted from the skull of the latest assassin that sought his life.

The last two servants laboured under a heavy tray, upon which a pile of meat steamed. The Black Prince inhaled, savouring the odour. Then he snapped his fingers and all three objects were set before the prisoner.

‘You are hungry,’ the Black Prince declared. ‘See what a feast I have prepared for you?’ The man looked up at the dark elf, then cast his eyes again at the steaming roasted meat before him. ‘Eat,’ the dark elf commanded as the man hesitated. One of the servants began to pour the thick red liquid from the bottle into the skull-goblet, careful to spill not a single drop, lest he too be asked to join in the hideous repast.

Trembling with loathing and terror, the prisoner clutched at the goblet, and fought down his disgust as he let the salty fluid pass his lips. As he did so, the seated lord began to murmur almost inaudibly, the melodious sounds drifting across the room with a life of their own. The almond-shaped eyes of the Black Prince began to glow with a mystical light and he let out a satisfied hiss. ‘Exquisite,’ he declared. ‘Now try some of the meat.’ The prisoner moaned, but reached forward and tore a small morsel from the tray. The Black Prince smacked his lips as the diner reluctantly ate.

It had been hundreds of years since Dralaith had savoured food with his own mouth. The venoms with which the nobility of Naggaroth coated their bodies invariably killed the senses of taste and touch. Only by sorcery, or by forcing his mind to bond with that of another, could the Black Prince experience the taste of food and wine. It was not something that he could do often, for there was always a toll exacted by such frivolous use of magic. But sometimes there arose occasions when he would indulge himself.

The Black Prince considered what the Eye of Tchar had shown him upon his return to the stronghold. One of his bandits, a weaselly little Bretonnian named Ferricks, a close confederate of the traitor Bors, had not returned with him. The Eye of Tchar had revealed the thief hastening back to his home village. He was filled with terror that Bors would implicate him in their crude little plot. But what the Eye had shown him afterwards, the way the Black Prince might steer events, that had been truly enlightening. The dark elf smiled, not even noticing that the diner had stopped eating and was trying his best not to vomit up what little he had consumed.

It was such a simple plot, and the Black Prince was astounded that it had never occurred to him before. And the Eye of Tchar had not shown him such a scheme before this. Not for the first time, the dark elf wondered if he was in control of the jewel, or if it was in control of him. The Black Prince dismissed such concerns as soon as they took shape. It was a talisman, nothing more. And there was nothing he needed to fear with it guiding him. Certainly there was nothing he had to fear from some coarse human bounty killer.

The Black Prince pointed a slender finger at the diner, then pointed again at the steaming ribcage on the tray. ‘More meat,’ his melodious voice commanded.

The Black Prince settled back in his throne, adjusting his body on the fur coverings. He would enjoy to the fullest measure this meal. It was not every day that he had meat from Naggaroth to savour.

III

Josef fought to stay awake and remain upright in the saddle of his horse. The bounty hunter had left the village almost as soon as they had met. They were riding south, despite Josef’s words of protest. After their talk in the stable, Brunner had become silent. Not a word had passed between them in all the long miles they had covered since the morning sun had faded into darkness. Whether the bounty hunter was in some foul mood or whether his mind was lost in thought, the youth could not decide. Josef had long ago resolved to stop trying to disrupt the killer’s silence.

Abruptly, a dark expanse rose ominously before them, stretching as far as Josef’s tired eyes could see. A forest rose from the expanse of meadows and fields like a living wall. Josef could see small dark objects scattered between the edge of the forest and the meadowland. In the darkness he could not decide if they were merely boulders or something of design, monuments or cairns perhaps. Josef’s horse stopped as Brunner brought his own animals to a halt. Josef rubbed his eyes, trying to force awareness into his mind. Without a word to the youth, Brunner swung his leg over the horn of his saddle and dropped to the grassy ground.

Somewhere in the night, an owl hooted. Brunner strode forward, advancing toward the dark boulders. Josef wondered idly if he should follow the bounty hunter, but decided that in his state he would be more likely to fall in a hole than be any assistance if anything was lurking in the shadows. For a moment, alarm raced through his fatigued frame, fear that a horde of beastmen and goblins might erupt from the dark expanse of the trees. But the fear quickly died away. As tired as he was, Josef could not care less. His head sagged forward, his chin resting on his chest. A moment later, the boy slipped into a half-sleep.

Brunner made his way through the old standing stones, not pausing to consider the curious markings that had been burned into the rock. Instead, he bent down to gather some small white pebbles. When he had a fistful of the small stones, he began to clear a small patch of ground by kicking rocks and twigs away with his boot. He crouched down, carefully arranging the small pebbles on the ground. Then he stood up again, and stared down at the design he had marked out with the stones. He looked up, his icy eyes considering the dark, brooding shadow of the forest. Then he turned and walked back to Josef and the horses. Brunner climbed back into Fiend’s saddle and reached a gloved hand over, to shake Josef back into a semblance of wakefulness.

‘Wha… what?’ the youth spluttered.

‘We’re done here,’ the bounty hunter stated. ‘If we make good time, we can be at Haustrate’s inn for the night. Not the best, but better than sleeping under the light of Morrsleib.’

Josef did not argue. He merely indicated with a tired wave of his hand for the bounty hunter to lead the way. Soon all three horses were moving down the dirt road at something approaching a run.

Behind them, in the shadows of the forest, an owl hooted its cry into the night.

Josef followed Brunner into the dark coaching inn – a battered, faded wooden sign proclaiming it to be Le Canard Etranglé. A large, two-storeyed building, the inn was protected by a tall stone wall, a fortification absent in many of Bretonnia’s villages and townships. The inn served travellers on business and those on pious devotion. And there were enough itinerant peddlers and pilgrims wishing to view the sites where the grail was seen to keep René Haustrate a busy, and very prosperous, man.

Even at this late hour, the coaching inn was far from deserted, its guests far from asleep. A pair of Bretonnian knights with colourful surcoats covering their suits of mail were seated at one table. Their loud, boasting voices carried across the room. A pair of green-garbed squires, their dark hair cut in the bowl-shape favoured by the common folk of Bretonnia, hastened to ensure that the two knights’ tankards never went dry. They constantly fetched fresh pitchers of ale as the lords drained the old ones dry. A wiry-looking man, with a face cast in a perpetual scowl, slowly sipped at a mug of ale while idly toying with a small tin box he had removed from the bulging pack at his side. Near to the tinker sat a group of fur-clad trappers, each of the burly, smelly men describing some adventure in the wilds with his hands, having realised that there was no hope of talking with the noisy knights so near.

Brunner strode to the counter, ordering a tankard of ale when he discovered that Imperial schnapps was not to be had. Josef joined him, placing his own order that the pleasant-mannered barkeep was happy to meet when he saw the youth’s coin. Josef turned his back to the counter, mimicking the bounty hunter’s movements. His eyes also canvassed the room, studying every face.

Josef did not know what he was looking for. Then it suddenly occurred to him what his companion might be hoping to see. A face, a scar, a peculiarity of dress that might identify an outlaw to the bounty hunter’s elephant-like memory.

Josef continued to study the other denizens of this common room, then caught his breath. Seated at a table at the back of the room was a tall, slender figure garbed in a dull green cloak. Josef could make out the pale skin under the hood of the cloak. The hands were folded beneath the table, though Josef could not tell if they held a blade or not. A leather jack of ale sat on the table, but the silent figure did not seem interested in it. Josef leaned forward, trying to see if the lower half of the cloaked figure’s face was covered. A gloved hand pressed against his chest and pushed him back.

‘Easy,’ the bounty hunter’s voice hissed. ‘Turn around and enjoy your drink.’ The bounty hunter turned round to face the counter, and Josef followed his lead. ‘Now, I am going to take the dagger and go have a talk with our friend over there.’ Josef could feel the bounty hunter’s hand take the covered weapon from where he had thrust it through his belt. ‘Just stay here. I’ll be right back.’

From the corner of his eye, Josef saw Brunner walk across the room, nimbly dodging the two squires racing past to secure another pitcher for their drunken lords. He headed straight toward the table where the sinister figure was seated. Josef could see that the bounty hunter’s gloved hand rested lightly upon the hilt of his sword, but he wondered just how loose that grip really was.

The figure did not stir as Brunner sat down opposite him. Josef could see Brunner’s lips moving, but no trace of a whisper managed to fight its way back to him over the boisterous knights. He watched Brunner speak and had the impression that the cloaked figure was also conversing. Then the bounty hunter withdrew the wrapped dagger. With careful, deliberate gestures, Brunner removed the blade from its cloth covering and then its leather scabbard.

The cloaked figure leaned forward. Two thin, pale hands closed about the weapon and pulled the blade towards him. The stranger stared down at the dagger, turning it around and around in its hands. The head rose again, and Josef could see Brunner voicing a reply to some question. Then long, inhuman fingers carefully returned the dagger to its sheath, and wrapped the cloth around it once more. The cloaked figure hesitated a moment and Josef could see the bounty hunter speak with violence. Slowly the hooded head nodded and pushed the dagger back into the bounty hunter’s care. Brunner rose from the table and made his way back to the bar.

‘What was that about?’ Josef asked. ‘Was he an elf? Like the other one?’ Brunner stared at his young companion.

‘We’ll get rooms here tonight. Continue on in the morning, for Parravon.’ The bounty hunter lifted his neglected tankard and drank deeply.

‘But who was that?’ Josef turned to indicate the cloaked figure, but as he looked, he saw the table was now empty.

‘Someone who answered a question for me,’ Brunner replied. ‘Though he was not very happy about it.’ The bounty hunter drained the last dregs of his ale and would say no more about the man in the green cloak.

Josef rolled over, clenching the coarse wool blanket still tighter about his body, trying to defend himself against the chill morning dew. A booted heel pushed the boy onto his back. He spluttered into a dim sort of awareness, snapping his bleary head about in a series of quick side-to-side motions. The man who had awakened him strode away, to examine the harness on his warhorse.

‘Learn to sleep more lightly,’ Brunner called to the boy, ‘or you might not wake up at all.’

Josef emerged from under the blanket, and wiped the dirt and grass from his clothing. ‘It is a wonder I was able to sleep at all,’ he groused. He looked about, not seeing any sign of a fire. The boy sighed and walked over to his pack, removing his belt and weapons. ‘No breakfast today either?’

‘If you wanted breakfast, you should have stayed at the inn,’ the bounty hunter reminded him. He had tried to impress upon the boy that he should forsake continuing his little quest for revenge and allow the bounty hunter to continue unimpeded. But Josef was not about to listen to such talk, however valid Brunner’s arguments might have been. Josef had a suspicion that the hired killer was not really eager to lose him, either – though what use the killer intended to put him to, Josef could not hazard the slightest guess.

It had been a long, hard ride from the inn. They had been on the road two days now heading northward. Before them, like a distant shadow, the dark peaks of the Grey Mountains steadily grew larger and more imposing. To their right, the vast expanse of the forest of Loren edged to the road itself. It was a dark, forbidding mass of greenery whose branches and leaves permitted not even the slightest glimpse of what might lie within.

Josef could not put the vast forest from his mind, imagining all sorts of nameless things watching them from the shadows. Each night they had camped under the stars. The bounty hunter had slipped into sleep almost as soon as they made camp. He attended to his horses as if he was not troubled in the slightest by the nearness of the forest and the fell creatures that might walk its shadowed paths. For Josef, however, sleep was much more elusive, and he spent hours watching the shadows, listening to the rustle of brush, the calls of night birds and the chirping of insects. Only when fatigue at last dulled his wary senses would he finally sink into a fitful sleep.

‘We should reach Parravon today,’ Brunner stated. ‘By early afternoon, if the viscount’s nag can keep up the pace.’

‘What is in Parravon?’ Josef asked, thrusting the wrapped dagger into his belt.

‘A… a friend,’ the bounty hunter said after a pause. He faced Josef, staring into the boy’s eyes. ‘Someone who might be able to tell us a bit more about this Black Prince of yours.’ Suddenly, Brunner spun around, his left hand gripping his pistol, his right hand closed about the hilt of his drawn sword.

‘If I intended to kill you,’ a soft voice said, ‘you would never have seen the morning.’

Josef watched in amazement as a tall, thin figure emerged from behind a patch of berry bushes. The figure was garbed in a long green cloak, but this time the hood was drawn back, exposing a fine-featured face with a long sharp nose, a high brow and thin eyes. Long, flowing gold hair cascaded about the figure’s shoulders. Josef could see that a slender sword with a hilt of polished horn was sheathed at the figure’s side and the stranger was carrying a carved bow of the same white wood the bounty hunter had shown him when they met.

The elf wore a tunic and breeches of fine, smooth brown leather, a fur-lined quiver hanging from his side by a shoulder-strap.

‘Lithelain,’ Brunner said, keeping his weapons at the ready. ‘I can hardly say that I am surprised to see you. You will forgive me if I remain suspicious.’

The wood elf smiled, an expression that seemed subtly mocking and haughty. ‘I am afraid that you have more pressing concerns,’ the elf said, his voice retaining its soft tone. ‘Your steps have been dogged by more than myself. Five riders have been on your trail for the past day and a half.’

‘Would you care to elaborate?’ Brunner asked, keeping his pistol trained on the elf’s forehead.

‘I should be very foolish if I did that without compensation,’ Lithelain responded.

‘I am not giving up the dagger, or my chance at the Black Prince,’ the bounty hunter snarled.

Brunner’s words caused Josef to clutch the wrapped dagger more closely and draw his own sword. He ignored the fact that the bounty hunter seemed to consider the dagger his own property, and concentrated on the suggestion that the elf had come to take it.

‘Of what concern is he to you?’ the elf’s voice had a harsh, angry quality to it now. ‘For you he is just another bounty, but to me, he is a matter of honour, a slight upon my race.’

‘For me he is enough gold to choke a dwarf,’ the bounty hunter corrected. ‘If you think I am going to give that up, you’ve been out of the business for far too long.’ Brunner’s mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll bring proof to you that he is dead after I collect the reward.’

Lithelain sighed, but the tenseness in his posture seemed to wilt away. As the elf relaxed, Brunner became more wary.

‘You may keep your filthy blood money, Brunner,’ the elf said. ‘But it will be my hand that slays him.’ There was no mistaking the threat in the soft, musical voice.

‘Are you proposing a partnership?’ Brunner asked.

‘Wait,’ protested Josef. ‘That bastard is mine to kill!’ The bounty hunter and the elf considered the angry merchant for a moment, then both let a brief flare of amusement flicker across their faces. Brunner holstered his weapons.

‘He does have a prior claim,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘You’ll have to wait your turn.’

Lithelain looked intently at Josef, his copper-hued eyes considering the young boy. The elf’s graceful features shifted into a look of sadness. ‘I admire your determination,’ he said, ‘ but there is enough innocent blood on the Black Prince’s hands already.’

Josef began to voice an angry protest, to tell this arrogant non-human creature that when he met the Black Prince, it would be the villain, not he, who would fall. But Lithelain had already turned his attention back to Brunner.

‘These riders, they should catch up to you in another few hours,’ the elf stated.

‘I don’t like being hunted,’ Brunner said. ‘I think we should wait for our pursuers. Maybe turn the tables on them. Perhaps ambush them on the edge of Grimfen.’ The bounty hunter paused again, considering his options. ‘Do you have any idea who they might be?’ The wood elf shook his head.

‘I saw them only from a great distance,’ Lithelain admitted. ‘I could tell only that they were following you.’ Brunner nodded as the elf spoke.

‘Well, I think this time you will get a better look at them.’

The three men crouched amongst the rocky rubble of a wall. Fifty years ago, the local duke had tried to make this section of road between Quenelles and Parravon a toll road. The terrain was ideally suited for his purposes. To the east, the impenetrable and vast expanse of the Forest of Loren loomed – an intimidating barrier to travel, a haunted and ill-reputed land populated by all manner of fey creatures by the imaginations of the Bretonnian people.

To the west, for several miles, the gently rolling landscape sank into a deep depression, the meadows and fields giving way to a foul, stinking morass known as Grimfen. The morass was a bowl of mud and twisted, stunted trees. Small wooded islands dotted the dismal swamp – refuges for boar and wild cats from the arrows of Bretonnian hunters. Vast stretches of grey mud crawled between the islands and the deep pools of black, scummy water. Only the lightest of birds, fishers and web-footed cranes, could navigate the mud flats with any manner of impunity; any heavier creature would find itself gripped by an implacable grasp, pulled steadily downward into the greedy mire. There were reputed to be navigable channels through the fen, but only a handful of peasant hunters and poachers knew how to manoeuvre their shallow skiffs through the swamp.

Between the swamp and the forest was a narrow track of solid land. Under the orders of the duke, that land had been undermined. Much of it crumbled away, expanding the limits of the fen until only a slender path remained. Then the duke had constructed his tower and his gate, demanding tribute from all who travel ‘his road’.

The duke’s toll road existed for less than a year. Some said that vengeful spirits, offended by the duke’s greed, emerged from the forest and cast down his tower. Others told of some hulking atrocity – a creature of the Dark Gods that lumbered out from the depths of Grimfen and reduced the fort to rubble in a frenzied attempt to slay the soldiers within. A less popular story held that the duke’s own soldiers set fire to the tower, hoping that its destruction would see an end to their lord’s plans for the road and would also see an end to what they viewed as a loathsome and intolerable posting. Brunner could see the possibility in that tale, for he could not imagine any man being able to endure the stench of the fen, much less live with it for months at a time.

Lithelain placed a thin finger on Brunner’s shoulder and nodded at the road. In the distance, Brunner could see a small group of mounted figures making their way towards them. The bounty hunter sighted along the length of his crossbow, casting a sidewise look to ensure that his spare crossbow and loaded handgun were still propped against the rock at his side.

‘Make out any details?’ the bounty hunter asked.

‘They do not look out of the ordinary,’ the elf replied. ‘Armed peasant rabble, it would seem. None of them appear to have more than a sword and bow upon them.’ The elf paused, squinting his eyes. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I think there may be a knight with them, though he wears no tabard and his horse is not clothed.’ The elf concentrated upon the armoured rider. ‘He is certainly their leader. I don’t think he is a Bretonnian, however. His skin is too dark.’

Brunner scowled, maintaining his aim. He spoke from the corner of his mouth. ‘He is wearing a suit of plates, and his head is covered by a large brimmed hat. The man’s face is marked by pox-scars and he wears a cavalry mace and a small crossbow at his side.’

‘You see him then?’ the elf asked, a trace of astonishment in his melodious voice.

‘I certainly can’t make out much,’ Josef spoke. He had tried to impress Brunner to give him one of the crossbows, but had been refused. With only the broadsword given him by the Viscount de Chegney, Josef was feeling ill-equipped for the coming battle. He briefly thought that perhaps the bounty hunter was trying to protect him. But then he realised that Brunner was merely worried that he might announce their presence too soon if he was given a ranged weapon.

There had been quite an argument when Josef heard the bounty hunter wanted to ambush the riders and kill them all before they had time to react. To Josef, it seemed a dastardly and despicable way to fight. The bounty hunter had snarled that the graveyards were full of men who thought battle a nobleman’s game. A smart man didn’t worry about how he killed an enemy, as long as it was his enemy and not himself who felt the kiss of steel.

‘The leader of those men is an Estalian. It is Osorio,’ Brunner sighed.

‘I thought you killed him,’ Lithelain said, watching the five riders approach.

‘So did I,’ the bounty hunter admitted. ‘If he comes back from the dead again, he’ll have me believing in that daemon god of his.’

‘Excuse me,’ interrupted Josef, ‘but who exactly is this Osorio? I mean, if he is trying to kill us, I’d at least like to know why.’

‘He’s a bounty hunter,’ Lithelain stated. ‘Same as Brunner.’

Brunner glared at Lithelain. ‘I’m nothing like him,’ he spat. ‘Osorio is a fanatic, a butchering maniac. A self-styled witch hunter in the service of Solkan, the Fist of Retribution.’ Brunner uttered the name of the god of vengeance as though it had laced his tongue with foulness as he spoke it.

‘I understood that you worked with him once,’ Lithelain said, staring at the nearing riders.

‘Aye, two years ago,’ the bounty hunter replied, following the elf’s lead and returning his eyes to the road. ‘We were both hunting the daemonologist Dacosta, who was said to have relocated himself to Tobaro after fleeing the king’s guard in Magritta. We came upon one another in the daemon-haunted crypt Dacosta had claimed as his new lair. We made an agreement to combine our strength against him. But after overcoming Dacosta’s daemons, and after my bullet had stilled the wizard’s heart, Osorio turned on me, saying that the reward belonged neither to me nor him, but must be given to Solkan’s temple in Remas. He tried to put a bolt through my head, but I put my steel through his chest first. I left him there, in that forgotten crypt beneath the streets of Tobaro. I heard rumours that he survived, but did not credit them.’

‘Now is your chance to try again,’ Lithelain said.

The riders were only a few dozen yards from the heaped mound of rubble. As the elf had observed, four of them were rustic, ill-kempt Bretonnian louts, rusty swords thrust through a loop of rope tied about their waists. Each of the men had a quiver of arrows lashed across his back and a long, curved Bretonnian bow lashed to his saddle. They all wore tunics and breeches of homespun wool and leggings crafted from fur. Their faces were cruel, the harsh features set in a greedy leer.

The leader of the men was obviously the armoured figure that rode behind them. He was clothed from shoulder to toe in a suit of dull steel plate armour, his powerful frame seeming to strain the metal that encased it. A brutal-looking mace hung from a leather thong fastened about his wrist while a small, compact crossbow was fitted to an iron hoop on his belt. The man’s height was further emphasised by the tower-like broad-brimmed brown hat that clothed his head. His features were dark, baked to a leather-like consistency by the hot Estalian sun. Crater-like scars littered his face, remnants of a childhood pox. The man’s eyes were dark green, with a low, hairy brow. A crooked nose, like the bent beak of a hawk, dominated the hardened features.

Brunner stared at his one-time ally, and fingered the trigger of his crossbow. He saw the other bounty hunter’s green eyes narrow with suspicion as he and his men drew closer to the heap of rubble. As soon as Brunner saw the Estalian pull back on his mount’s reins, he fired. The bolt caught the horse in the neck, pitching the wounded animal sidewise, and carrying itself and its rider into the black morass of the fen.

Even as the horse’s cry of terror and death sounded, Lithelain leapt up from concealment and sent an arrow through the face of the foremost Bretonnian. The man did not even gasp as he fell from his horse, his body crashing into the dust. Before any of his comrades could act, a second arrow was already nocked and fired, pitching a second rider from his saddle, with an arrow through his chest.

Brunner retrieved his handgun, and aimed it down at the last riders. The weapon discharged its deadly missile with a loud explosion.

The roar and boom of the gun caused the Bretonnians’ horses to rear upwards in fright and terror. One of the men was thrown screaming into the black water. The other clung desperately to the neck of his animal as the animal raced past the mound of rubble. Brunner sighted his other crossbow at the fleeing man, but as he did so, he saw the hands gripping the horse go slack and the rider fall. The gory wound caused by the bounty hunter’s ball wept from the Bretonnian’s breast.

A shriek of anguish rose from the fen as the last Bretonnian struggled upward from the mire. A brown leathery mass the size of a fist was stuck to the man’s face and Josef watched in horror as the Bretonnian’s hand ripped the giant leech off, pulling away a round chunk of his own cheek. Lithelain did not hesitate, but sent an arrow into the fen. The Bretonnian was knocked from his feet and sloshed backwards as the arrow hit him. As the dead man’s body rolled over in the water, a half-dozen leathery bubbles of flesh could be seen clinging to his back.

A whistling sound caused Brunner to spin about. As he did so, a crossbow bolt smacked into a stone block a few feet away. The bounty hunter could see Osorio throw the spent weapon away from him. The Estalian’s armour was dripping with slime and he was having difficulty moving through the mire. The brown hat was gone and blood flowed from a wound in the man’s scalp, where he had torn one of the rapacious leeches from his body. As Osorio sloshed his way forward, he wiped his mailed hand across his brow, trying to keep the blood out of his eyes.

‘You faithless spawn of a maggot!’ the Estalian cried out. ‘Face me, Brunner! We’ll fight for the dagger.’ Brunner stared down at the enraged killer, maintaining a stony silence. ‘I know all about it! I spoke with Gobineau’s brother.’ Osorio paused, breathing heavily. His violent fall into the fen was making breathing difficult. The Estalian paused, gathering his strength. ‘You are not worthy to face the Black Prince!’ Osorio screamed.

‘I told you,’ Lithelain smirked. Brunner shook his head.

‘Face me like a man, Brunner, you bastard!’ roared Osorio, sloshing his way forward, the cavalry mace gripped in his right hand. Brunner lifted his crossbow and aimed it down at the Estalian.

‘I would,’ the bounty hunter sneered, ‘if I was challenged by a man and not a dog.’ Brunner fired, the bolt smashing through the dented armour above Osorio’s knee. The Estalian screamed, pitching forward into the foul dark water. A steady stream of obscenities rose from the fen. ‘I only hope you don’t make the leeches and crows sick,’ Brunner said, turning away.

‘You’re not going to leave him like that?’ Josef asked, horrified. ‘At least put him out of his misery.’

Brunner fixed an icy glare upon the youth. ‘Don’t ever tell me my business again, boy. If that scum had done even a single decent thing in his miserable life, I would. But there isn’t a hell foul enough for that kind of bastard.’ Brunner pointed a gloved hand to where they had hidden their horses. Josef could see that Lithelain had already mounted the magnificent roan stallion that he had called from the forest when they had ridden from their camp that morning. ‘Mount up. I want to make Parravon before nightfall.’ Brunner pushed Josef ahead of him as he gathered up his weapons and strode toward the horses. Behind them, Josef could hear another cry of rage sound from the morass of Grimfen.

‘We’ve wasted enough time here,’ Brunner said. The bounty hunter’s jaw was set and Josef fancied that he saw a look of dreadful satisfaction in the eyes that peered out from behind the visor.

The shadows stretched across the high-ceilinged hall, as though trying to grasp at the chamber’s sole occupant. For long hours, the thin figure upon the black throne had sat immobile, staring intently at the faintly glowing contents of the box he was clutching.

A sound like chimes brought Dralaith’s attention away from the fascinating scene he had witnessed within the Eye of Tchar. Even his dark heart was filled with a certain sense of admiration for the ruthlessness of the bounty hunter, however crude his methods. The Black Prince hesitated for a moment, then closed the lid of the teakwood box. The chiming continued. It was familiar, a sound that recalled the halls of his castle in lost Naggaroth. For a moment, the dark elf enjoyed the nostalgia, then a foul humour settled upon him. He rose from his throne just as two armoured figures strode towards him.

The slim figures bowed their heads, and slapped their hands to their breasts in the manner they had been instructed; a gesture that showed due fealty and deference to a Druchii lord.

The Black Prince stepped down, his dark silk khaitan flowing about his slender figure. He looked at his lieutenants. The two virtually identical faces were so very like his own. Both elves were dressed in full armour, mail aketons worn over their own sombre-hued robes of silk, with breastplates of polished steel.

The Black Prince reached a pale hand out, and idly played with the small steel barbs that dangled from the shoulder guards of his lieutenants’ armour on delicate silver chains. He stared at the jagged, thorn-like hooks. He had not seen their like since leaving Naggaroth.

Savagely, the Black Prince slapped the face of one of his minions.

The lieutenant did not flinch, though his pale flesh began to colour. The Black Prince smiled at his slave’s resolve. He reached out with both hands, tearing the array of flesh hooks from the armour of both elves. With a contemptuous gesture, he threw the ornaments across the room.

‘Where did you get those?’ the Black Prince asked.

‘From Slaich, my master,’ the dark elf that had been struck answered.

‘He crafted them for us,’ the other lieutenant added. ‘He said that they were the emblems of your family, that all the knights who serve our master wear them into battle.’ The Black Prince stalked forward, gripping the elf’s chin with his hand, digging his fingers into the delicate skin.

‘And are you a knight? Are you nobles, you two mongrel curs?’ The Black Prince flung the lieutenant from him. ‘If you ever again forget your place, I shall cut your tongues from your mouths and sew them to your foreheads, that all may see what becomes of ambitious fools!’ The Black Prince waved his hand. Without another word, the two dark elves turned and marched from the chamber.

The Black Prince watched his servants depart. What did they know of nobility, what did they know of the longest war? What did they know of Naggaroth? Only what Slaich had told them.

The Black Prince turned his eyes to the discarded flesh hooks, those talismans of heritage and badges of honour. They had been crafted by Slaich. A feeling almost of sadness came upon the dark elf. Slaich had been with him for many years, more years than any of his servants. The old torture-master had served his own father before Dralaith had assumed mastery of his house – before the Eye of Tchar had shown him how to safely murder his sire and place the blame where it would profit him most.

Slaich had not been a part of the events the Black Prince had foreseen in the Eye of Tchar. Slaich had much knowledge in his old white-capped head, knowledge that could undo his master’s schemes. The dark elf sat back in his black throne, resting his hands on the rests, sinking deep into thought.

It was not how to dispose of Slaich that was troubling him, it was how he should be prepared… Perhaps basted in his own blood? That might provide an interesting dining experience.

IV

The grey haze of smoke rising from the city of Parravon was visible long before the city itself came into view. More of a fortified town than a city, Parravon was a thin sprawl of houses and buildings nestled between the Upper Grismerie River and the white cliffs that marked the beginning of the Grey Mountains. So near did the white cliffs loom, that many houses had been built right into them; only their doors and windows and sometimes a narrow portico marring the sharply sloping barrier of rock. Jagged chasms dropped away on two sides of the city. The walls of the Grey Mountains and the narrow finger of the river formed the settlement’s remaining boundaries. Tall walls of stone, supported by still taller towers formed further defences against attack. A small dock was cut into the riverside wall, allowing traders to make their way along the Grismerie to unload their merchandise in Parravon.

As Brunner and his companions rode nearer, the sound of thousands of birds could be heard – the multitudinous flocks that nested in the cliffs above the Bretonnian city and who were the bane of the many gardens kept by Parravon’s great and noble.

A large fort crouched upon the only landward approach to the city. It was a massive bridge, an ancient relic from the days of the elves, and was still as strong as the day it was built. Josef was struck by the slender, gracefully arching ribbon of stone stretching across the boundary of one of the chasms. He was amazed that such a functionary structure could have such a sense of poise about it. The merchant idly wondered how much such a construction had cost, and how wealthy the kingdom that could have afforded such a frivolous expense.

‘I shall await you here,’ Lithelain announced as they rode towards the gatehouse to petition the guards for access to the bridge. There was a look of distaste on the elf’s face, as his eyes stared at the sprawling mass of thatched roofs and tile-topped towers. ‘The smell of the place is offensive enough from here. I shall never understand how men can dwell in such confinement and squalor. And to think that you call such filthy places cities and speak of them with pride.’ Lithelain shook his long hair.

‘City?’ scoffed Brunner. ‘This village? You need to travel more. This isn’t a city. In the Empire, there they have cities.’ The bounty hunter turned Fiend about and began to walk the horse toward the gatehouse. ‘Stay here if you want,’ he called back. ‘We’ll not be more than a day if my friend hasn’t moved on.’

Josef lashed his nag forward, catching up with the bounty hunter just as he was paying the watchmen within the yawning mouth of the gate. He did not pause, but dismounted and led his animals across the slender bridge. Josef fumbled for the coin the gatekeepers demanded then hurried to catch up with the bounty hunter.

The two men walked their animals across the bridge. Although slender, there was enough room for the men and their mounts to walk abreast. There was little traffic this morning and the two were alone save for a distant figure in a torn grey mantle pushing a rickety handcart toward the city. Josef risked a look over the side of the span, and recoiled in fright as he beheld the distant bottom of the chasm they now walked over, and the jagged, fang-like rocks that covered it. Heights had always been one thing that the young merchant did not enjoy dealing with. He turned his attention back to the bounty hunter, and locked his gaze on him.

‘I’ve not had dealings with elves before,’ Josef said when they had traversed half the length of the bridge. ‘Can he be trusted?’ Brunner’s steel face regarded the boy for a moment, his reaction masked by the black metal of his helm.

‘It depends what you wish to trust him to do,’ the bounty hunter said, staring ahead at the nearing streets of Parravon. ‘You can depend upon Lithelain to honour his word, a rare thing for those who ply my trade.’ Although Josef was certain that Brunner spoke of himself, he could detect no trace of self-reproach as he implied that he was a man who did not honour his own word. The thought made Josef’s eyes narrow, and he gazed with a new suspicion at the hired killer. Until that moment, the boy had not fully appreciated how much he had come to trust Brunner’s judgement and allow himself to be led by one who was a stranger to him.

‘Who are we meeting here?’ the young merchant asked at last, trying to keep his words even and level.

‘An old… friend,’ the bounty hunter answered.

‘You seem a bit uncertain about this “friend”,‘ Josef observed. Brunner faced the young avenger.

‘I have not seen him in over a year’s time,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘When we parted, it was not on the best of terms. Still, there is no better man to speak with about legends and myths, and what seeds of truth might lie buried under centuries of embellishment and invention.’

Brunner turned away again as they reached the other side of the bridge and its fortified gatehouse. Beyond the crouching barrier, they could see the handful of narrow, twisting streets that formed the township of Parravon.

Bells tolled in the streets, summoning the folk of Parravon to their morning devotions. The man seated at the table in the centre of the small bar looked up from his scattered sheets of parchment and squinted at the light streaming in from the open window. He looked about for the landlord, seeing the powerfully-built man stumbling his way down toward the bar.

The man blinked his eyes, staring for a moment at the bottles of Bretonnian wine and Estalian sherry arrayed in ordered ranks behind the counter. The landlord grunted with disgust and reached over the dark wood of the counter. He retrieved a clay jar from beneath the bar, pulled the cork stopper from its mouth, and took a deep swallow of the contents, coughing as the fiery liquid burned its way down his throat.

The man at the table wrinkled his nose as the strong smell of Kislevite vodka wafted up from the jar. ‘How can a man drink that vile brew so early in the day?’ he observed.

The landlord wiped the sleeve of his shirt across his mouth and resealed the jar, setting it back behind the counter.

‘You should talk,’ the landlord laughed. ‘You do see that the sun is up? I don’t know why I charge you for your room; you never use it. Unless of course Yvette is around,’ the innkeeper winked lasciviously at his patron.

‘The duc wants this history of Parravon completed in a few weeks,’ the man at the table said. He reached for a leather cup resting amidst the scattered documents and a half-filled inkwell. ‘Complete with all but the most outrageous lies his forefathers have handed down over the centuries.’ The scrivener frowned as he observed the depleted nature of his cup. The landlord chuckled and nimbly retrieved a bottle from the rack and made his way to the table.

‘I mean why commission a historical work if you don’t even care if the facts are correct?’ the writer complained. ‘“And nothing about elves, if you please,”’ the man continued, mimicking the voice of his benefactor. ‘“We find them a most dull and insignificant part of our city’s lineage.”‘

The innkeeper laughed again and made his way across the wood floor of the bar. ‘Best to keep such talk to yourself,’ he warned. ‘Otherwise you’ll be without a patron and I’ll have to throw you into the street.’ He smiled, but the writer did not doubt that the man would be as good as his word if the duc’s silver were to suddenly dry up.

The innkeeper moved toward the door, intending to let some fresh air into the building to clear some of the stink from last night’s patrons. As he opened the door, however, he found himself staring into the dark metal of a steel helmet. The man beneath the helmet pushed his way past the burly innkeeper. A smaller, younger man followed the warrior inside. A protest formed on the innkeeper’s tongue: the inn could not open until after the morning devotions had ended at the chapel, but a second look at the sinister figure caused him to rethink his choice of words.

The writer looked up, his face growing slightly pale. He reached for his cup, almost draining it in one swallow. The armoured intruder stared down at him, the eyes behind the visor of his helm burning into the seated man. After a moment of tense silence, the bounty hunter spoke.

‘You look well, Ehrhard,’ the steel voice rasped. ‘Parravon seems to agree with you.’

Stoecker nodded his head, some of the colour returning to his features. ‘Brunner,’ he said. ‘I did not expect to see you again.’

‘The world is full of unpleasant surprises,’ the bounty hunter stated. He cast a side-wise look at Josef. ‘Show him,’ Brunner ordered. Josef hesitated, annoyed by the killer’s tone, but withdrew the carefully wrapped dagger from his belt. Stoecker reached forward, taking the weapon from the youth. The writer gasped as he unwrapped the blade, marvelling at the elegant, thorn-like edge, and examining the engraved hilt and pommel.

‘What can you tell me about this?’ Brunner asked.

‘It is elvish,’ the writer responded. ‘I can’t make out the writing, however. I doubt there are many men who could.’

‘I already know it is of elf make,’ Brunner said. ‘If it is any consolation, even an elf was unable to decipher that script. He did say that it had certain similarities to family honours inscribed in the heirlooms of his own people, however.’ The bounty hunter gestured at the weapon with a gloved finger. ‘He also said that it is an especially ugly thing, tooled to rip and tear, to leave ugly wounds that will bleed greatly and not close if the blade is stabbed deep enough.’

‘I’ve seen items like this before,’ Stoecker said, still turning the dagger about in his hands. ‘Though never an example so fine.’ He looked up, focusing his gaze on the bounty hunter. ‘In collections and museums in Marienburg and Brionne, you may see such things, scavenged from the field of battle and carefully preserved. Swords, axes, spears, all with the same thorn-like look, all with the hooked spurs at the mid-point of the edge. They are the arms of the dark elves, the corsairs who sail from across the sea to wage their campaigns of slaughter and pillage.’

‘This did not come from a battlefield,’ Brunner stated, retrieving the dagger and handing it back to Josef. ‘This boy took it, from the Black Prince himself.’

‘The Black Prince?’ Stoecker exclaimed, a look of profound interest dispelling the last lingering traces of trepidation. ‘Are you certain?’

A look of suspicion entered the writer’s eyes. ‘Is that why you came? You already knew about the dagger’s likely origin from your elf friend. You came here to ask me what I know about the Black Prince.’

‘You’ve been here long enough to have collected every hag’s tale and minstrel’s fable,’ the bounty hunter answered. ‘Unless you’ve changed since Miragliano, I imagine your chambers must be cluttered with myth and nonsense.’

‘I have changed since Miragliano,’ Stoecker said, reaching for his cup once more. ‘I learned things it was better not to know, if you recall.’ The writer sighed, collecting the scattered pages of the duc’s manuscript and setting them into a neat stack. ‘Still, you are right, I have collected many stories about the Black Prince.’

‘Then let us see if you are as good at sifting truth from legend as you are at weaving lies from true life,’ Brunner said. The writer rose from the table, looking from the bounty hunter to Josef and back to Brunner.

‘There will be a price,’ the writer said.

‘I will meet it,’ the bounty hunter replied. ‘Provided,’ he raised a gloved hand, and stabbed a finger at the exiled Imperial novelist, ‘your information is of value.’

For several hours, the three men sat in the small garret Ehrhard Stoecker had leased from his Bretonnian landlord. Stacks of parchment, paper and vellum were cast all about the tiny room as the writer sifted through the haphazard arrangement of legends and travellers’ tales he had been recording.

It was long, tedious work, but the elusive image of the Black Prince began to form around them. At times, Stoecker would ask Josef about the being that killed his father, then he would seize upon some small detail and tear through the documents for some scrap of story that might relate to Josef’s attacker, even if the Black Prince had not been associated with the account.

In the end, however, there was little of value in Stoecker’s exhaustive collection of tales. The Black Prince was alternately reputed to be the bastard son of the former Bretonnian king, Charles de la Tete d’Or III, or some sinister agent of the Empire, who was trying to destabilise the frontier between the two great nations. Some tales said the Black Prince was a creature of the great enchanter, continuing his dread master’s work even after Drachenfels’s demise. Still others claimed that the villain was in the service of another of Bretonnia’s adversaries, the wicked Lichemaster, Heinrich Kemmler, who was using his acts of banditry, securing magical artefacts of unholy power so that the necromancer might continue his war against the king.

No two accounts were the same, and those that told of the possible hiding place of the Black Prince were even more contradictory. According to the legends, the Black Prince’s lair was as near as the haunted and forsaken Blood Keep, or as remote and far off as the blighted Cripple Peak. The few truths amounted to little more than a rough idea of when and where the vile creature had first set foot upon Bretonnian soil. Nearly five hundred years ago, a dark elf fleet had ransacked the countryside in the vicinity of Bordeleaux, and it had been at about this time that the oldest stories of the Black Prince had originated. This information was far too little to appease the bounty hunter.

‘It seems I have wasted my time coming here,’ Brunner snarled. ‘I would do better trying to track down one of his men and beating what I want out of him.’

‘That might be difficult to accomplish,’ Stoecker said, setting the last of his string-bound bundles of parchment on the side of his bed. ‘It might take you years to find him that way, for I doubt if any but the most trusted of his minions is shown his stronghold.’ The writer smiled. ‘And don’t forget, while you are looking for him, he might come looking for you.’

‘If you have another plan,’ Brunner replied, ‘speak. I have no time to spare in fencing words with you.’

Stoecker paced the room, then looked over at Josef. ‘There was something interesting in your account. The man who the Black Prince said betrayed him; his description was interesting. I believe he may have been a man named Bors, once a fairly notorious highwayman in these parts.’

‘How does that help us?’ the bounty hunter asked.

‘You will agree to my price?’ Stoecker answered. The bounty hunter nodded his head. Stoecker breathed deeply, gathering his thoughts. ‘This bandit, Bors, had a partner, a man named Ferricks. A week ago, this Ferricks appeared in Parravon and was arrested by the watch. A rather interesting coincidence, don’t you think?’

Brunner considered the writer’s words. ‘Indeed, a very interesting coincidence. You are thinking that if his friend was behind this plot to kill the Black Prince that Ferricks might also have had a hand in it?’

‘Indeed, and that would explain why he fled and was captured here!’ Josef exclaimed.

‘More to the point, gentlemen,’ Stoecker spoke, in a lecturing tone, ‘if Bors knew the location of the Black Prince’s stronghold, then most likely Ferricks does as well.’

‘Then I think this Ferricks is someone I need to speak with,’ Brunner stated.

‘That may be somewhat hard; he is to be hung at the end of the month. They are keeping him in the duc’s dungeons until his execution date arrives.’ A crafty look entered the writer’s eyes. ‘But I have met the keeper of the duc’s gaol, a knight named Sir Lutriel Tourneur. I have even recorded some of the lies he tells about how he became a knight of the realm. He is a – shall we say – ambitious man. Include him in our little compact, and I think he might very easily arrange a pardon for Ferricks.’

‘And split the reward still further,’ Brunner’s voice rumbled from his throat.

‘I care nothing about rewards, only that this monster meets a just end,’ declared Josef. The bounty hunter did not spare the youth a glance.

‘There might be enough treasure in his stronghold to offset whatever demands your partners make on the king’s bounty,’ Stoecker offered. Brunner nodded his head.

‘Very well,’ the bounty hunter said, ‘we’ll see your gaoler.’

The dungeons of the Duc of Parravon were located beneath one of the watchtowers nestled between the half-timbered houses of the townsfolk. The guard on watch at the tower at once recognised Stoecker, though he cast a suspicious eye at his two companions. The guard told the men to wait while he spoke through the grille in the front of the heavy oak door, to someone inside in the thin, nasally tones of the Bretonnian language.

After a few minutes, the door opened. Five soldiers wearing rounded steel helmets and coats of chainmail beneath their colourful heraldic surcoats emerged from the tower; each man bore a long, hatchet-headed halberd. From the midst of these soldiers, a sixth man strode forward. Tall, imposing in his suit of plates, the man wore the colourful surcoat of Parravon, but with a golden thread edging the chevrons and fleur-de-lys depicted upon fields of blue and yellow. Mixed with the symbols of the city, the knight’s mantle also bore three other symbols – marks of his own battles and achievements: a rampant wyvern, a black star, and a silver raven. The man’s face was hard, framed by a mail coif that covered his head and dripped about his neck. His harsh eyes regarded the three men who sought entry to the tower. The knight’s upturned chin was thrust forward as he studied the men who accompanied Stoecker.

‘Ah, Stoecker, my friend,’ the knight said at last, turning his attention fully upon the writer. His voice was deep, suave and had a self-assured and condescending tone. ‘What brings your esteemed self to my humble post?’

‘Sir Lutriel,’ Stoecker answered, bowing his head. ‘I was telling my companions about your noble self and your important position in the duc’s trust. They simply had to meet such a fascinating figure.’

‘Indeed,’ Sir Lutriel said, a crafty gleam winking from his eyes. But his tone suggested that he had not believed a word of the writer’s flattery for a moment. ‘Perhaps we might retire to my quarters where we can sample some of the duc’s wine. It is not well to be on the streets of Parravon after dusk,’ he added, his tone dropping into a warning whisper.

Very soon, Brunner found himself standing in a lavishly appointed chamber that served the knight for entertaining guests. His critical eye appraised the value of the tapestries and soft rugs he was standing on. A few statues, all nudes, nested on tables between glass carafes of dark, sombre looking brandy and bejewelled boxes. Brunner did not doubt that the keeper of the duc’s prisons was corrupt, but he was surprised at how openly he flaunted his willingness to accept a bribe. The bounty hunter guessed that there could be but one reason for the knight’s lack of subtlety: that any in the hierarchy of Parravon in a position to reprimand him must be thrice the thief that he was.

The knight settled himself in a tall-backed chair behind an extravagantly carved table. He rested his hands on top of the table, steepling his fingers, and stared at his guests.

‘Now then, what did you really come here for?’ he asked, his tone as condescending as before.

‘You have a prisoner here,’ the bounty hunter answered. ‘A thief named Ferricks. I want him.’

Sir Lutriel’s face spread into an amused smile. ‘And what if I am not prepared to hand him over to you?’ The crafty look returned to the Bretonnian’s eyes. ‘I wonder what Brunner, the notorious bounty killer, wants with such a miserable and insignificant villain. I don’t think the duc ever offered more than three pieces of gold for the reptile, and he will hardly offer such a sum for him again.’

‘He may be able to lead us to the lair of the murdering swine that killed my father,’ snarled Josef. Sir Lutriel turned his gaze on the boy, the amused smile returning to his face.

‘It has been my experience that revenge rarely pays well, certainly not well enough to fabricate an acceptable lie for the duc when I fail to produce this man for the noose next week.’

‘This man was one of the Black Prince’s captains,’ Stoecker stated in a flat, almost matter-of-fact tone. The statement brought a look of surprise to the smug knight’s face. The man rubbed at his chin with a gloved hand.

‘The Black Prince?’ he mused aloud. ‘Perhaps in this instance revenge does pay well. Very well indeed.’ He stared hard at the writer. ‘You are certain of this? But of course you are, otherwise Brunner would hardly have come here.’ The knight allowed himself a chuckle, the sound rattling about like bones in a grave. ‘I think perhaps we might be able to do business after all. Of course, I shall expect a generous portion of the king’s bounty.’

‘How much?’ Brunner’s voice hissed.

‘Oh, I am not a greedy man,’ Sir Lutriel gasped, his tone putting the lie to his words. ‘The king is offering a tidy amount for this brigand prince. I think that two thousand is not too much to ask for me to play my role in this enterprise.’

‘You’ll get one,’ the bounty hunter’s voice rasped.

‘Shall we split the difference?’ Sir Lutriel retorted. ‘I will accompany you to ensure the return on my investment. Or perhaps I should just take this man and try and find the bandit’s stronghold on my own?’ The threat lingered in the air between the two men. The bounty hunter stared long and hard at the knight, but even his murderous gaze was not enough to sway the Bretonnian. After a few tense moments, Brunner turned from Sir Lutriel.

‘Take me to Ferricks,’ he said. ‘Before I change my mind.’

Sir Lutriel smiled, enjoying his small victory over the infamous killer. But Stoecker wondered about the ease with which the knight had made his point. He had never seen Brunner back down from anyone before. He doubted the bounty hunter had ever allowed another man to get the better of him.

The writer wondered if Sir Lutriel had truly gained something, or if he had done exactly as the bounty hunter wanted him to.

The dungeons were a maze of dank, narrow halls that wound below the tower in a winding, spiral fashion. Rats scurried from cracks in the walls, snapping at the light cast by Sir Lutriel’s torch before scurrying back into the shadows. Stoecker broke into a sweat every time the rodents appeared; he was unpleasantly reminded of another such creature he had seen in the bounty hunter’s company.

The knight led the men down the spiral of uneven stone steps, deep into the dismal shadow.

As they passed one cell, a thin, pleading voice cried out. Brunner turned, staring at the cell door. He walked over, and peered into the chamber behind the iron grille. A thin, bedraggled figure with a pointed beard stared back at him.

‘Brunner!’ the prisoner cried. ‘It’s me, Mahlinbois! Praise the Lady!’ A set of thin, pale fingers clutched at the bars of the iron grille. ‘You have to get me out of here! They mean to burn me at the stake for consorting with daemons!’

‘And have you been?’ Brunner asked, his voice betraying a spark of humour.

‘How can you ask such a thing?’ Mahlinbois responded. ‘I am an honest conjurer.’ The grimy figure drew himself up with all the pride his tattered raiment would allow.

‘A friend of yours?’ Sir Lutriel’s snide voice interrupted. ‘It is a dangerous thing to be too familiar with sorcerers.’ The bounty hunter turned on the knight.

‘Open the door,’ he ordered. A smug expression appeared on Sir Lutriel’s face, as though a fox had just asked a watchdog for the keys to the chicken coop.

‘You overstep your bounds, Imperial.’ The stress the knight placed on the last word left no doubt that it was said as an insult. ‘This is my tower, filled with my men. I give the orders here, not you.’

‘We need him,’ the bounty hunter stated. ‘Unless you wish to face a sorcerer without any magic of your own?’

‘I should think we would be better off with the duc’s pet wizard,’ Sir Lutriel sneered. ‘This wretch was hardly worth capturing.’

‘And yet you say he summons daemons,’ Stoecker pointed out.

‘If your swine had not waited until I was sleeping off a night of ill-advised excess at the brothel, they would never have laid a hand on me!’ snapped Mahlinbois, his words fiery with outrage.

‘Perhaps he is no daemonologist,’ the knight continued, knowing that such was the case. ‘Still, it does the people of Parravon good to see a wizard burned at the stake from time to time. It shows that their lords are doing something to combat whatever fiendish things stalk the streets at night.’

‘Perhaps you care to explain to the duc exactly why you need to borrow his own magician?’ Brunner interrupted. Some of the smugness left Sir Lutriel’s face and he advanced on the door, removing the heavy ring of keys from his belt and opening the door slowly.

‘You understand, my price is back at two thousand now, and I shall expect an equal share of whatever we find in the Black Prince’s stronghold,’ the knight said as he opened the door.

‘The Black Prince!’ exclaimed Mahlinbois as his thin figure emerged from the dark cell. ‘Is that why you need me?’ The unlucky magic-user tugged at the door, trying to close himself back in his cell.

‘You’re the closest thing to a wizard I could find on such short notice,’ Brunner said. Sir Lutriel’s hand closed on the prisoner’s shoulder and pulled him from the cell.

‘Ranald’s Cloak! I’m an illusionist, Brunner. Nothing I create is real!’ Mahlinbois was shoved to one side as Sir Lutriel made his way back to the head of the group. ‘I’m no graduate of the College of Wizardry! My mentor was just a petty charlatan, playing with the very smallest drafts of the winds of magic! I’m no match for a sorcerer!’

‘Perhaps you would rather stay here and be burned?’ Brunner hissed back.

‘Actually, I think I would,’ the frightened illusionist agreed.

‘Too bad, the choice isn’t yours to make,’ Brunner turned, gesturing for Sir Lutriel to proceed. ‘But when this is over, I can bring you back here and they can burn you.’

Mahlinbois waited for a moment, then followed Josef and Stoecker down the stairs.

‘Why couldn’t I just have been an honest thief like my father?’ the magician grumbled as he descended after the bounty hunter.

Ferricks was a rat-faced, spider-like man. As Sir Lutriel hauled him from his cell, and the greasy man blinked up at the group, Brunner found himself wondering if skaven ever sired offspring with goblins.

‘I understand that you haven’t told us quite everything,’ Sir Lutriel said, glowering down at the little man.

‘What? I’ve told you everything I know, about things I haven’t even done and people I never even met,’ the thief uttered his words without pausing for breath. ‘Whatever you want to know now, I did it, and whoever you want to pin it on was there as well.’ The thief uttered a sharp bark of fright as he saw the thorn-like blade Josef had unwrapped.

‘No! I know nothing about that! Not a thing!’ Ferricks’s eyes were wide with fright. He wiped his sweaty palms on his filthy breeches.

‘These men say otherwise,’ Sir Lutriel scoffed. ‘Perhaps some more time on the rack might jar your recollections?’

‘You’re a dead man already,’ Brunner said, stepping toward the little bandit. ‘Does it matter if they hang you here, or if the Black Prince does it later?’

Ferricks looked about him with a shifty, narrow-eyed expression trying to recover from his start at hearing the Black Prince named. ‘What are you proposing?’ the thief’s whiny voice asked.

‘It is within my power to pardon you,’ Sir Lutriel said, acting as if the thief’s decision was of no concern to him. ‘Tell us what we want to know, and you will be a free man.’

‘Sure, and then the Black Prince’s men will find me and kill me, but not quick and nice like your hangman.’

‘Not if I kill him first,’ Brunner’s murderous voice rasped. Josef turned, eyeing the bounty hunter.

‘If you kill him?’ Ferricks laughed. ‘He’s not human. He’s been around hundreds of years and nobody has been able to put him on the spot. Why should you be any different?’

‘Ferricks, may I introduce Brunner, the bounty hunter. I rather imagine that his reputation precedes him?’ Sir Lutriel enjoyed watching the small thief slink away from the bounty hunter much like a man who has nearly stepped on a snake.

‘If anyone can do this thing, it would be Brunner,’ Stoecker said. ‘Besides, do you really have any other choice?’

‘I show you on a map where the Black Prince’s tower is, and you let me go?’ Ferricks said, trying to make certain he understood.

‘No,’ Brunner’s icy voice spoke. Even Sir Lutriel stared at the bounty hunter with a look of open surprise. ‘You guide us there. That way anything that happens to us, happens to you as well.’ Ferricks cringed back still further, his back against the stone wall. But he found himself nodding in agreement.

‘If I help you, I want a share of his treasure,’ the thief said.

‘If you help us,’ Brunner’s voice snarled, ‘I’ll consider not bringing you back to the Viscount de Chegney for the reward he has on your scrawny neck.’

From his dark throne, the Black Prince watched the lithe figure of the slave girl strut and whirl across the floor. He smiled as he considered her smooth, unblemished skin. Truly, it had been such a shame to loose Slaich. Such a master with the whip! It had taken him years to get this animal to perform, years of discipline with the lash. Yet there was not a mark on her body, as the brief garment that clung to her hips allowed the elf to determine. True, the girl might be reckoned a beauty to humans – for what they knew of such things – but the real measure of her worth was the way in which she performed. It was the savage dance of the witch elves, those maniacal temple maidens of Khaine in his native Naggaroth. But there was an added element lacking in the dances of those dangerous elves, an element that thrilled the Black Prince and made his breath short. It was fear. The girl exuded it, as the memories of the pain Slaich had inflicted upon her added to the frenzy of the dance.

The Black Prince looked away from the sweating, wide-eyed woman, his eyes falling to the teakwood box. The lid was open and the gleaming gemstone of the Eye of Tchar stared back at him. The dark elf smiled. The bounty hunter had discovered Ferricks, just as the Eye had foreseen. It annoyed the elf to allow the traitor to draw another breath, but he knew that the vermin’s days were numbered. He had seen that as well within the Eye.

The Black Prince raised his new goblet, and let the last of Slaich’s blood slip past his pale lips. The rest had been imbibed by one of his slaves, so the dark elf might savour the taste, but this last cup he would drink himself. It was a final honour to bestow upon his old servant.

Slaich was the first of the sacrifices his current scheme would force him to make. It had been the hardest one, taking the dark elf a few heartbeats to decide upon. Those which were to follow would not disturb him in the slightest.

V

The small group of riders left Parravon early the following day, just as the first gleam of pre-dawn began to glow above the peaks of the Grey Mountains. By nightfall, they had camped in a break in the woods that clothed the base of the trees. Running a cold camp, the bounty hunter had allowed no fire. The encampment was a tense place, made all the more so by the distrust and rivalry festering in the hearts of the members of the small band. Mahlinbois loathed and despised Sir Lutriel, who in turn was quite open about his own suspicions about Lithelain, who he believed would betray them to seek his own, separate vengeance. Ferricks was in obvious terror of the Black Prince: he started at every shadow, terrified that the evil creature’s reach would find him. The wiry thief was also in obvious terror of both Brunner and Sir Lutriel; as fearful of the two men as he was of the brigand lord he was betraying. And Josef, too, harboured his own suspicions, wondering if he could trust the bounty hunter.

Only the writer, Ehrhard Stoecker, seemed without prejudice. He flitted from one person to the other, engaging each in conversation. Josef wondered if this was why the bounty hunter had allowed the man to accompany them. Not to indulge Stoecker’s desire to have some grand adventure of his own, but to keep the bounty killer’s company from cutting each other’s throats in the night.

Eventually, Stoecker finished his circuit of the camp, and seated himself beside Josef. The young merchant looked over at the writer. Stoecker must have noticed the boy’s glance, for he smiled and asked what was on Josef’s mind.

‘I can understand why everyone is here, except for the elf,’ the youth confessed. ‘Ferricks and Mahlinbois are being driven by their fear of the hangman or Brunner. Sir Lutriel wants a share of the bounty. You are here to experience one of the adventures you write about. But why is Lithelain with us?’

Stoecker smiled, nodding toward the elf making his way into the trees, to take his position for the long night watch. ‘I’ve spoken with him before, a few years ago, in Miragliano.’

‘Miragliano?’ the youth asked. ‘Why would a wood elf be in a Tilean port-city?’

‘The same reason he is here now, the same reason you are here. He is looking for revenge.’ Stoecker noted the start Josef gave as he heard the declaration. ‘You see, many years ago, centuries actually, the wood elves sent an envoy to the king of Bretonnia. But she never returned to Athel Loren. She was ambushed, her retainers and guards killed by the Black Prince. For a hundred years, Lithelain searched for the envoy, but all he could discover were rumours, and legends about a shadowy bandit king. Then, one day, as he followed yet another lead, he met a rider on the road. The rider was silent, and wore a silk robe that clothed her from head to foot. As he drew nearer, the smell of death struck his nose, and the buzz of flies sounded in his ears. The rider was a corpse, lashed to the saddle. A wooden frame held it upright. As Lithelain looked closer, he saw that the corpse was that of the missing envoy, and it was only hours old. I will not mention the atrocities that sorry body bore witness to, but cut into the flesh were savage, twisted elf runes, runes that spelled out a simple message: Compliments of the Black Prince.’

Stoecker fixed Josef with a stern, saddened gaze. ‘The envoy was his sister.’

Josef stared up at the tree the elf had climbed into, with a sudden understanding in his eyes. He might not be certain about whether Brunner would cheat him of his revenge, but he could be certain that nothing would keep the elf from killing the Black Prince with his own hands. Josef knew this because the same determination filled his own heart.

Josef awoke with a start, a clammy hand clamped across his mouth. He stared up into the face of Sir Lutriel.

‘Don’t make a sound, or we are undone,’ the knight’s calm voice whispered. He removed his hand. Josef sat up, seeing that the knight was fully dressed, his sword sheathed at his side.

‘What’s this about?’ the youth asked. The knight gave him a knowing, superior look.

‘Tell me, do you honestly think you have any chance of getting what you want if you stick with Brunner?’ Sir Lutriel replied. ‘Do you honestly think the elf is going to let you cheat him of his vengeance? Or do you think that Brunner is going to allow you to jeopardise his chance of collecting the bounty on the Black Prince’s head?’

‘A bounty which you want for yourself,’ Josef observed.

‘Naturally,’ the knight admitted. ‘But I am rather loath to share it.’

‘What do you intend?’ the merchant inquired, his mind racing, trying to see where the Bretonnian was leading him.

‘I’ve just had a most illuminating discussion with our friend Ferricks,’ Sir Lutriel confessed. ‘He told me about an old goblin tunnel that burrows its way into the Black Prince’s stronghold – a tunnel that is never used, and never guarded. He also told me how to find the valley where the Black Prince’s stronghold is hidden. It might be possible for two determined men to make their way in and collect that valuable head.’ The knight smiled. ‘Actually, Ferricks came to me with the idea. It seems he is inordinately fond of the idea that the Black Prince might already be dead when Brunner drags his sorry hide back there. In fact, he even said that he would keep the bounty hunter riding in circles for a few days, to give us enough time to kill his former master and be away before Brunner can do anything about it.’

‘Why me?’ Josef wondered, suspicions rising in his mind. ‘Why not do it yourself?’

‘I need someone to watch my back. I have no idea what risks might be involved. I need an accomplice.’ Sir Lutriel’s voice dropped still lower. ‘And you are the only one I can trust. The others are too connected to Brunner, and if I take Ferricks, I lose my decoy. Brunner would be after me like a shot in that event.’ The knight paused, studying Josef’s reaction to his words.

‘It is the only way you’ll get your chance at the murderer of your father,’ he said.

‘You will let me face the Black Prince?’ There was a note of disbelief in Josef’s tone.

‘Oh, by all means. And when he kills you, there will be no one to share the reward with,’ the knight admitted, his voice as friendly and superior as ever. Josef considered the brutal honesty of the statement.

‘Very well,’ the youth said. ‘Give me a moment to gather my things.’

Josef and the knight made their way down the narrow path, careful not to dislodge any of the jagged stones that lined it. It was a secret way into the small valley where the Black Prince had made his stronghold; a way supposedly known only to Bors and Ferricks, though Sir Lutriel had expressed his doubts, and had kept his sword ready. It was not only men that served the dark elf, and the knight knew enough about beastmen to know that if their minds were less than human, their senses were more than human.

The path had started in a grove of tangled trees, then climbed up the side of a hidden, narrow ravine that laced through the Grey Mountains. On one side, the narrow path was bordered by soaring dark cliffs, on the other it dropped away into a deep chasm. The surface of the trail was damp and slippery, forcing the two travellers to move very slowly, lest they lose their footing and tumble to their deaths on the jagged rocks below.

It was a highly defensible route, and Sir Lutriel did not doubt that it would indeed take an army to force their way into the valley should its inhabitants be aware of their approach. But Sir Lutriel had never been one to take the direct approach when a knife in the back or a loose saddle-strap might serve his purpose just as well.

They had left the horses hobbled in the small grove of trees, where the Bretonnian hoped they would not be discovered, and had then set upon the winding trail that Ferricks had described. They climbed the grey rock of the mountain, at times nearly vertical with the face of the grim rock, then descended by a treacherous path to the valley floor.

The valley itself was small, but again proved perfect for the purposes of the bandit lord. A small stream ran down from the mountains, rolling across the rocky, barren ground before plummeting down the deep gash that snaked its way across the valley floor.

The narrow crack was decidedly unnatural in appearance, much like the runnels cut into the valley floor. But where the runnels showed the remains of ancient trenches and earth-works, the crack was an altogether different sort of scar left by a long forgotten battle. The crack started at the opposite side of the valley, in the shadow of the mountain, and ran almost to the valley’s centre.

The crack was the last vestige of an ancient tunnel dwarf sappers had blasted in an effort to reach the stronghold of their enemy – before the unnatural wards and defences of their foes had caused the tunnel to collapse and crumble into the caverns under the Grey Mountains. The collapsed dwarf tunnel had left behind a long jagged cut twenty feet wide and hundreds deep.

Rising from the centre of the barren valley was a slender round tower of white stone. Fluted buttresses supported the crown of the tower, where a tiled roof enclosed the upper parapet. Several balconies opened out from the sides of the tower at varying heights, each edged by triangular crenellations that added to the symmetry of the structure. In places, the stone was chipped or fractured, but it was still an imposing and fabulous sight, a relic of the days of elf rule over the Old World, before the War of the Beard caused them to abandon their colonies and withdraw back to the enchanted shores of Ulthuan.

Neither of the men who gazed upon the tower for the first time could guess how many battles it had seen unfold. Nor could they fathom the deep satisfaction its present occupant drew from claiming such a relic of his cousins for his own. As they observed the tower, a pair of gangly, man-sized creatures silently circled the spire on grotesque bat-like wings. It was difficult to make out any detail at such distance, and neither of the men desired a closer look than their position allowed.

Sir Lutriel pulled Josef close, motioning with his hands how they would next proceed. Ferricks had told them of an underground passage, a tunnel built by the goblins during their infestation of the tower, that wormed its way from the mountainside to the stronghold. He did not know if the Black Prince knew of its existence, but Ferricks was certain that his former master had not put the old tunnel to any use. There might be other secret ways into the tower, but this was the only one Ferricks had ever learned about.

The knight and the merchant made their way carefully across the open expanse, casting fearful glances at the tower, wary of any sign of watching sentries. The ground they had to cover between the trail and the opening of the old goblin hole was not far, but it was the most dangerous. Both men sighed with relief when they gained the cover of a cluster of rocks. Between a pair of massive boulders, the dark, gaping mouth of the goblin tunnel beckoned to the men.

The opening itself was tight, and Sir Lutriel found himself obliged to squirm his way between the rocks, not daring to fill his lungs as he slithered through the tight passage. The tunnel itself was an equally miserable experience: a low-ceilinged affair, with an uneven floor and frequent disorienting changes in pitch and direction. The men had to bend double with their backs parallel to the ground, their swords held before them. Josef lit a small torch he had brought with him to illuminate the jagged passageway. Old bones, the last remains of the original inhabitants, were crunched into powder beneath their boots.

After what seemed an eternity in the clammy, dark silence of the tunnel, the ceiling suddenly grew much higher, and the men could stand upright. The tunnel had opened into some sort of chamber. Josef could see that a great pile of goblin bones rested against one wall, while the other opened into a deep, sloping passage. The remaining wall was remarkable as well, for it was smooth, moulded by skilled hands rather than gouged from the living earth.

Josef looked at Sir Lutriel. The knight nodded, dropping the face of his helmet down and firming his grip on the hilt of his sword. Josef set the torch down and began to rub his hand across the smooth surface of the wall. Down near the bottom, his palm encountered a slight spur, a blemish in the face of the wall. There was a faint, barely perceivable click, and a section of the wall slid outward.

‘Remember, he is mine,’ Josef whispered, then stepped through the opening. He could see that the door had opened upon a hall, its walls, ceiling and floor crafted from the same smooth white stone. As he took in his surroundings, a bright flash of light exploded before his eyes. Stunned, the youth was unprepared when a clutching hand tore the sword from his hand. Josef could hear a grim Bretonnian curse, and guessed that Sir Lutriel had also been captured and disarmed. Burly limbs wrapped themselves about Josef’s arms and the boy was savagely pulled into the centre of the hallway.

‘It seems I have visitors,’ a melodious voice purred.

Josef found himself staring into an inhumanly handsome face. It was not unlike the visage of Lithelain, in many ways, but to call them identical was to call a swarthy-visaged Arabyan a pale Kislevite nomad. The paleness of the speaker’s skin was more marked, it was more pallid than the creamy hue of the wood elf. There was a harsh cruelty about this elf’s features, a stamp of wickedness that tainted the fine sharp lines with menace. The hooded eyes regarded Josef and Sir Lutriel with an almost bored expression.

Josef let his gaze fall from the elf’s face, starting as he saw the black armour, the twin swords, and the long dangling length of silk and steel skirts. He had not seen the face of his father’s murderer before, but he recognised the garb of the Black Prince.

Rage surged through his lean frame and the boy struggled against the grip holding his arms. But the powerful hold could not be broken.

The elf smiled, drawing his thin lips tight. He idly flicked a lock of long black hair from his face. ‘Whatever shall I do with my delicious guests? It is so seldom that I am called upon to entertain.’ Coarse laughter echoed in the Black Prince’s words and Josef became aware that there were others with him. Hard-faced men, wearing all manner of motley armour filled the corridor behind the bandit lord. Two more elves, their faces mirroring their master’s, their armour fashioned to echo and mimic that of the Black Prince, flanked the dread figure. Their own beautiful faces were twisted into sneers of sadistic amusement. Other figures, twisted and inhuman, loomed above the elves and men, or slithered their warped shapes between the bandits to get a better view of the prisoners.

‘But look,’ the elf exclaimed with mock astonishment. ‘One of my guests has brought a gift.’ The Black Prince’s thin hand reached to Josef’s belt, nimbly plucking the covered dagger from him.

The elf held the dagger beneath his nose, and closed his eyes as he savoured the smell of the Naggaroth steel. ‘I much regretted the loss of my dagger,’ he said. ‘It is an heirloom of my family, and there are few enough of those left to me, in these less prosperous times. I thank you for its return.’

‘The Lady’s curse be on you!’ roared Sir Lutriel, struggling to free himself from the embrace of the hulking beastmen that held him fast. The Black Prince turned and faced the Bretonnian.

‘The Lady?’ the dark elf asked. Then his eyes widened as if with sudden recollection. ‘Ah yes, that heathen deity you animals pray to. Truly, can you do no better? I have borne curses bestowed in her name for centuries now. Now, I ask you, even for a god, don’t you think that is a bit slow to act?’

‘Damn you!’ Sir Lutriel snarled. ‘Give me a sword and I’ll cut that smirk from your face!’

The Black Prince laughed. ‘I fear that such a contest would be quite dreary. I’ve faced your sort before, even your masters. In Naggaroth, they would not have even been allowed to cross swords with a cripple.’ The knight roared anew at the villain’s mockery, but the Black Prince had already turned his back on the man. ‘Do not fear, I shall arrange for you to show me just how skilled you are with the sword.’

‘We will be avenged, my father will be avenged!’ cried Josef as the Black Prince began to withdraw into the shadows along with his retinue. The elf paused, considering the boy once again with his disdainful face.

‘Surely you do not mean the bounty hunter and his comrades?’ the Black Prince laughed. He watched with amusement as the rage on the boy’s features faded into shock. ‘Yes,’ the elf’s voice sank into a soothing whisper, ‘I know all about them. In fact, I was just going to arrange a proper welcome for them.’ The reptilian smile returned to the monster’s face. ‘It is so rare for me to receive visitors.’ He looked at the beastmen holding the two prisoners. ‘Take the boy to my audience chamber.’ He pointed a slender finger at Sir Lutriel. ‘Take that to the pit, and prepare it for this evening’s festivities.’

The Black Prince did not pause to watch the beastmen drag their burdens away, but regarded his two attentive lieutenants. The elves bowed their heads as the Black Prince stared at them. ‘Drannach, Uraithen, attend me. There are things we must discuss before my other guests arrive.’ He walked away, the two dark elves following a respectful ten steps behind their master.

The Black Prince stood at the gate of the tower, once again armoured for battle. He was flanked by Lieutenant Drannach and the hulking hound-faced beastman Urgmesh. Before him, mounted on a coal-black steed, the other dark elf lieutenant stared down at his master. Like the Black Prince, he was garbed for battle, his fine, sharp features staring out from the open face of his helm. Behind him, a dozen grizzled horsemen awaited his command.

‘Hunt down these swine and bring him and his companions back to me, alive,’ the Black Prince’s melodious voice intoned from behind the mask of his helm. ‘I have already despatched the harpies to watch the mountains, lest the worm think to deceive us by taking the more difficult road. But I think it most likely that he will try the pass.’

‘And if they should elude us?’ the lieutenant asked.

‘We keep a watch here,’ the Black Prince gestured with a slender, mail-clad finger, pointing above his head. ‘I shall post watchmen above, to warn us should our visitors approach the tower, and keep a force below to greet them should they use the tunnel.’

‘I think you should find a single sentry of more service,’ the lieutenant offered. ‘A single watcher might go unseen and unnoticed. One sentinel with keen eyes would be more certain to carry warning than a dozen, who would surely be seen before the bounty hunter emerged from cover.’ The lieutenant grew quiet, then spoke again. ‘Perhaps Gruzlok; his eyes are the best of all your servants.’

‘The beastman is also simple,’ the Black Prince scoffed. ‘A dog would be hard pressed to maintain a discourse with Gruzlok.’

‘It takes no great wit to detect a company of riders approaching the tower,’ observed the lieutenant. ‘And his phenomenal vision may prove of great benefit.’ The Black Prince nodded his armoured head.

‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘I shall act upon your suggestion.’ The elf waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. The mounted lieutenant looked over at his men, inclining his head, and motioning for them to follow him.

The line of riders galloped from the tower to the narrow floor of the valley. The Black Prince watched them for a moment, then faced Drannach. ‘Come, let us see how our guests are faring,’ he said. The two dark elves withdrew back into the tower, the gate closing behind them.

The Black Prince smiled. Things were proceeding just as the Eye of Tchar had revealed. Very soon now, the events he had allowed to unfold would speed to the conclusion he had seen. The harpies – if the miserable gruesome Chaos beasts he had secured from a travelling menagerie could honestly be allowed to bear the name – would nestle amongst the crags of the Grey Mountains, to await his command to return. He had not seen them in the Eye of Tchar, so he did not want them close by when his present scheme came to fruition.

As for his lieutenants, well, they were another matter.

The Black Prince entered the great hall of the tower, striding past the bowed heads of his bandit soldiers and misshapen beastmen, not sparing a glance at any of his servants. Drannach and the beastman Urgmesh followed at his heels.

The bandit leader walked to a low dais set before a great gaping pit. With measured strides, he climbed the steps, seating himself on the high-backed seat that was a copy of the chair in his throne room. The elf considered the fiery gaze directed at him by the young boy chained at the foot of the dais, by a large dog-collar fixed about his neck. The Black Prince chuckled as he felt Josef’s hate wash over him.

‘In good time,’ the bandit lord said. ‘But first, you should enjoy the hospitality of the Black Prince.’ The elf laughed again as, with a flourish, he spread the skirt of his aketon and robe and took his seat. The noble brought his steel-clothed hands together in a single, metallic clap, then gestured with one of his hands to the pit below.

Josef hesitated for a moment, glaring at his oppressor, then risked a glance at the pit. It was a large, circular depression in the floor, some twenty feet deep, lined with steel spikes all about its upper lip. The base of the pit was covered in sand, the walls pitted with deep scratches and stains that were certainly that of spilled blood.

Bones, cracked apart by some tremendous pressure, were scattered about in the sand. The unpleasant thought occurred to Josef that they had been snapped to get at the soft marrow within. But the most terrible sight was the lone figure standing in the centre of the pit, staring at the gloating minions of the dark elf lord with eyes that were as filled with rage and fury as Josef’s own. Sir Lutriel had been stripped down to a loincloth, his back bearing the dark bruises of his treatment at the hands of the beastmen. The defiant Bretonnian knight’s gaze shifted to the massive wooden portcullis that dominated the far wall of the pit. A sound, like the shuffling of some enormous being, sounded from the darkness beyond the portal.

‘I understood that I would be given a chance to display my swordsmanship,’ Sir Lutriel bellowed. His voice was calm and still carried a note of superiority and scorn. The Black Prince laughed and gestured to one of his human brigands. The grimy killer stepped to the rim of the pit. Laughing boisterously, the bandit tossed a long-bladed knife to the sandy floor below. Sir Lutriel bent down and retrieved the knife.

‘Thank you for your graciousness,’ the knight said, bowing to the seated lord. As he rose, Sir Lutriel’s hand came upwards, hurling the blade at the Black Prince in a single, blinding motion. The steel turned end over end, then was caught by an iron-clad grasp inches from the breastplate of the dark elf. The Black Prince handed the knife to Drannach without even glancing at it.

‘You can hardly fault me for trying,’ Sir Lutriel’s voice rose from the floor of the pit. Another shuddering step mixed with a low snarl sounded from behind the gate. The knight turned to the portcullis.

‘A pity,’ the Black Prince’s musical voice purred, ’now you shall have to face Marius without the benefit of that swordsmanship you were so boastful of.’ The elf clapped his hands again, the sharp ring of metal upon metal echoing across the hall. A pair of human brigands at once leapt into motion, gripping a great wheel set into the wall. With quick wrenching movements, the two men turned the wheel. In the pit below, the wooden portcullis rose.

The dark elf lieutenant led his riders down the narrow neck of the valley, spurring his steed onward. His keen gaze was able to discern the slightest detail at a great distance. He studied the terrain, watching the rocks and trees for any sign of movement or anything unusual. He did not expect to find the bounty hunter’s little band of would-be assassins at the very doorstep of the stronghold, but caution was something in his very blood.

The lieutenant wondered how things were faring back in the tower. Had the bounty hunter already arrived? Was he even now confronting the Black Prince? The elf allowed himself to smile. But his amusement swiftly faded as he turned his body around, staring with suspicion at a nearby stand of trees. He cursed himself for his lack of attention. He had travelled this path more times than he could count, yet never had there been a stand of trees where he now saw them.

The elf shouted a warning to his followers as he pulled back on the reins of his horse. But it was too late. A loud boom sounded from the trees. The dark elf felt a powerful impact strike his chest, lifting him from the saddle. His shifting mass unbalanced the startled horse, its footing already disturbed by the lieutenant’s hasty pull on the reins. The animal nickered in terror as it fell sideways. With inhuman agility and speed, the elf leaped from the saddle, determined not to be crushed under the weight of the animal. But the horse was not falling toward the ground, it was toppling over the lip of the collapsed dwarf tunnel that snaked its way down the breadth of the valley. The elf’s leap carried him further over the precipice and his scream of horror was added to that of his animal as both fell into the rift.

As the bandits watched their leader fall, they were set upon. Arrows whistled from the trees, smashing men in their throats and chests, pitching them to the ground. Before the men had even begun to react, three of their number lay on the ground, dead or dying, a fourth slumped in his saddle, his hands clutching at the arrow embedded between his ribs. The sharp report of a crossbow was added to the whistle of the arrows, and two more of the men fell dead as they spurred their horses back toward the tower. The remaining bandits retreated, another of their number falling as an arrow caught him in the back.

‘A good shot,’ mused Brunner as he reloaded his crossbow. Lithelain nodded solemnly.

‘I loathe striking an enemy in the back, but it will perhaps convince them to keep going,’ the wood elf said.

‘You could have got more of them if you’d given me one of your crossbows,’ moaned the weaselly thief Ferricks. He was sitting on a large rock, idly drawing in the dirt with a twig. ‘After all, I have proved that you can trust me. I’d have nothing to gain by betraying you at this point.’

Brunner considered the thief. ‘I feel better knowing that I don’t have to keep an eye on you,’ he declared.

‘Do you still need the trees?’ gasped the illusionist Mahlinbois. Sweat dripped from his brow, and his breathing was laboured. For nearly half an hour Mahlinbois had maintained the illusory woods, concealing the bounty hunter and his companions – ever since Lithelain had reported riders emerging from the tower. The phantom trees had seemed real enough to anyone gazing upon them from a distance of ten or more feet away, but within the area of the illusion, the trees had been nothing more than a slight, shadowy mist-like apparition, offering only the slightest impediment to the vision of the bounty hunter and his comrades.

‘No, your sorcery has served its purpose,’ Brunner said. Mahlinbois sighed, closed his eyes, and snapped the small branch he had held in his right hand to focus the illusion. The phantom trees dissipated like mist rising off a morning lake.

‘I am no sorcerer,’ Mahlinbois snapped. ‘How many times must I remind you of the fact? I am no equal to a sorcerer!’

‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’ Brunner said, his voice colder than usual. The illusionist drew back, words of protest dying on his lips. The bounty hunter stalked over to where Ehrhard Stoecker stood, holding the reins of the company’s horses. He advanced upon Paychest, removing a long black cloak from a leather bag at the side of the animal. As he turned to walk away, the bounty hunter caught the sullen look with which the writer stared at him. He turned on the man, staring into Stoecker’s disapproving face.

‘Something bothering you?’ the bounty hunter demanded.

‘You knew they were coming,’ Stoecker stated. ‘Even before Lithelain saw them, you knew they were coming. I have to wonder, how did you know? And where have Sir Lutriel and Josef gone?’

‘You ask too many questions,’ the bounty hunter grumbled, starting to walk away. Stoecker reached out, grabbing the bounty hunter’s shoulder turning him back around. He did not flinch as he saw Brunner’s hand close about the dragon-hilt of his sword.

‘You used them,’ the writer accused. ‘You knew they would go off on their own, try to beat you to your precious bounty and get captured.’ A sudden thought brought an angry hue to Stoecker’s face. ‘You’ve been using that boy all along! You’ve never cared in the slightest about his quest to avenge his father! At least Lithelain is seeking justice for his sister. You’re just trying to line your own pockets. Tell me, if Sir Lutriel hadn’t come with us, would you have sent the boy on his own to lure out the riders?’

‘Maybe I would have sent you with him,’ the bounty hunter answered. He left Stoecker, walking back toward Lithelain, the long black cloak in his hands.

Sir Lutriel retreated from the opening gate, the smug defiance falling from him as his eyes began to appreciate the massive shape moving in the shadowy chamber beyond. Slowly, the form emerged into the light. First came a sharp, black beak of bone. Behind the black beak came a massive head, clothed in dark brown feathers and edged in white. The feathers were caked in filth and blood. The bird-like head turned from side to side, in a monotonous, idiot motion. Open holes of scarred flesh marked where the beast’s eyes had once stared from the avian skull.

Two powerful, feathered legs stepped from the shadows onto the sandy floor. Six-inch claws of sharp black tipped each digit upon the foot. The body moved forward, exposing a powerful chest that was also covered in feathers, where it was not marked by welts and scars. Two raw, disgusting growths sprouted from the shoulders above the forelegs, the plucked remains of once mighty wings.

The idiot motion of the creature’s head stopped abruptly as it caught the scent of the knight. The griffon uttered a sharp, shrieking roar and stumbled the rest of the way into the pit. The rear quarters of the beast were covered in a yellowish fur, where they had not been branded and scarred. The lean, lanky body was like a leopard, the ribs pushing the feline skin from within. Great dewclaws tipped each talon of the rear legs, but the long feline tail had been cropped, worn down by a jagged cut to a small stump. Even in its mangy, tortured state, however, the maimed griffon was an impressive sight. Fifteen feet long, and six feet at the shoulder, it was still a magnificent and terrible creature.

The Black Prince laughed as the griffon shrieked again. ‘Don’t you wish you had your knife now?’ he hissed at the frightened knight.

The griffon hobbled forward, one of its rear legs displaying a debilitating break that had never healed properly. The blind head snapped forward, the beak shutting with a sharp crack. Sir Lutriel knew that it would take a single bite from those jaws to rip an arm from his body.

The knight began to slowly move around the edge of the fighting pit. There was no plan of attack. Even the possibility of retreating into the monster’s den was denied as the bandits lowered the portcullis once more. The knight merely hoped to win as many more minutes of life as his agility and strength might allow.

The griffon shrieked once more, a sound that was echoed by the wasted gurgle of its famished belly. The beast lunged forward, and only a last moment dive saved Sir Lutriel his life. The griffon, still smelling its adversary, lashed out with its forefoot, scraping its claws along the stone wall, leaving a series of deep scratches in the rock. Realising its error, and with surprising quickness, the monster turned, its blind head bobbing about for a moment before scenting the knight again. Once again, the claws just missed the knight as he dodged aside.

From above, Josef watched the uneven contest with open horror. There could be no doubt as to the outcome of this contest. It was like baiting a bear with terriers. The laughter of the Black Prince’s men as they watched the pathetic display sickened the boy, and gnawed at his soul. He turned his eyes once more to the figure of the dark elf on the throne. Somehow, some way, by Sigmar and all the gods of the Empire, he would kill this gloating fiend.

From his position atop the tower, the goat-headed brute watched the small group of riders slowly approach the tower. He had spied them some time ago, but he was still trying to decide exactly who they were. The black-cloaked leader might be the departed dark elf lieutenant, Drannach or Uraithen, the beastman never could tell the two apart. There were fewer riders than there had been before, and the monster was certain that some of them were not men who had left the tower with the elf. The monster considered alerting his master, but the thought seemed somehow elusive. As soon as it occurred to him, it slipped away. No, he decided, best to make certain who was approaching the tower before bothering the Black Prince. The beastman grunted as he thought about that. It was almost as if it was not his own thought, but the idea of someone else.

The brute stared down at the riders. The leader certainly looked like Uraithen, or Drannach, but then again, he didn’t… He should alert his master. Or not… The beastman shook his head, trying to clear the muddle of thoughts rattling about in his thick skull. He reached over, pulling the chain that would lift the gate from the entrance down below. If the elf had to wait to gain entry to the stronghold, he would receive a beating. But was he certain that it was the dark elf? The monster grunted once more in confusion, bashing a fist against his horned head to try and force his thoughts into some semblance of order.

One of the riders, a tall human wearing a black helmet, pulled a small device from behind his back. A steel bolt shot upwards from the small crossbow, smashing through the beastman’s eye. The brute fell from the balcony, striking the ground without a scream.

‘Nice shot,’ Lithelain congratulated Brunner. ‘Especially with such a clumsy weapon.’ The elf cast the cloak from his shoulders, and handed it back to the bounty hunter.

‘Remember, he is mine,’ the wood elf warned.

‘You can have everything but his head,’ Brunner responded, reloading his weapon, nudging his horse toward the open gate.

The party slowly made their way past the entrance, eyes alert for any sign of other guards. Last of all came the illusionist, Mahlinbois, who was wiping away the tarry residue from the small gunpowder-laced candle he had used to disorder the beastman’s mind. The magician was discomfited by the ease of their entrance to the tower. The Black Prince was a master of sorcery, so it was said. Mahlinbois appreciated that magic of any sort thrived upon misdirection and confusion. Were they the hunters, or were they the prey? Were they walking into the Black Prince’s lair, or were they walking into his trap?

Once again, the illusionist cursed the day he had ever set eyes upon Brunner. There was an aura of invincibility about the man, but Mahlinbois knew only too well that such protection would not extend to himself, or any of the bounty hunter’s allies. Indeed, he knew that to Brunner’s way of thinking, they were all expendable, just like the boy and the gaoler.

The watching brigands hooted with laughter as Sir Lutriel again narrowly escaped the lunge of the crippled griffon. The monster’s neck craned about as the man dived away, the beak snapping inches from the knight’s back. Sir Lutriel’s body was caked in sweat and sand, his breathing heavy. The effort of avoiding the lethal talons and jaws of the griffon was telling on him. Fatigue clutched at him with a suffocating grasp that would kill him if he succumbed to it. The knight doubled over and gulped air into his lungs while keeping a frightened watch on the hulking shape of the monster.

The griffon too was suffering from the speed and nimbleness of its prey, its movements becoming slower and more clumsy as it lunged and leaped about the arena, trying to fill its starving frame with the fresh meat it could smell just beyond its reach. The harder it tried to fill its belly, the more impossible the task became. As the griffon ran towards the knight, flapping the plucked stumps above its shoulders in a sorry reminder of when they had been wings, it stumbled, landed heavily on its belly, one of its legs twisting beneath it. The monster raised its head, as if to cry out in pain, but sound was beyond its infirmity. As the blind eagle-head turned about, it happened to face toward the knight as he gathered his strength. The griffon stumbled back onto its feet, taunted by the nearness of the man’s scent. With hobbling, awkward steps, the blind monster walked toward Sir Lutriel.

On the dais the Black Prince extended his hand. Without a glance or a word from his master, Drannach placed the knife the knight had discarded into the Black Prince’s outstretched hand. The mailed fingers closed about the hilt.

‘This has become tedious,’ the Black Prince stated, his voice dripping with scorn. With a quick, blinding move, the elf lifted his hand and hurled the knife down into the arena. The blade sank into the meat of the Bretonnian’s leg. The knight crumpled, his voice opening in a scream that was born more of terror than of pain. The griffon, only five steps from him now, suddenly went mad as the smell of blood reached it. It reared up on its hind legs, and emitted a deep clacking roar that was like the scream of a hawk and the bellow of a bull.

Sir Lutriel tried to leap to the side as the monster barrelled straight toward him, but his injured leg gave out. He crumpled to the floor of the pit and began to crawl away, but it was too late. His agility was gone now, while the griffon, driven berserk by the smell of blood and the gnawing hunger that wracked its frame, had found a new strength.

The beast fell upon the knight like an avalanche. One of the paws smashed into Sir Lutriel’s back like a dwarf steam-hammer, pulverising his pelvis and spine. The black talons sank deep into the flesh and bone. Even as a bloody cry of agony bubbled from the Bretonnian’s lips, the powerful neck of the griffon craned downwards and the beak closed about his head. The jaws closed with a snap, and the knight was instantly decapitated. The griffon raised its head, swallowing Sir Lutriel’s head whole. Then the gore-stained beak descended once more, tearing bloody goblets of flesh from the mangled body beneath its paw.

‘Mongrel cur!’ roared Josef, lunging at the seated noble, the chain about his neck arresting him so that his clawing fingers were just unable to reach the Black Prince. ‘He didn’t have a chance!’ the youth accused.

‘I know,’ said the elf, his melodious voice rising above the coarse merriment of the bandits despite its softness. ‘But that spectacle was becoming uninteresting. I shall have to think of something more special for you.’ The dark elf’s armoured visage stared down at Josef, and he cringed away from the merciless cruelty in those almond-shaped eyes. Then the Black Prince stared at the farther end of the hall. A cry of alarm sounded from one of the bandits near the southern extremity of the chamber, a cry that trailed off into a scream.

Brunner let the arming mechanism of his repeating crossbow pistol load a second bolt, and took aim once again. Not for the first time, he considered the weapon a fair exchange for the gold the skaven had cheated him of. At his side, Lithelain held his bow at the ready. Stoecker gripped his sword with a steady look of determination, while Ferricks licked his lips as he fingered the small sword the bounty hunter had given him. His eyes darted from one side to another, looking for some avenue that would take him away from the bounty hunter and the armed brigands that now faced them. Behind all of the men, the illusionist Mahlinbois readied another of his curious firework-candles. Only the sweat beading on his forehead betrayed the calm, concentrated effort the magician put into his work.

Before them, the long chamber was filled with the followers of the Black Prince. Thirty armoured brigands stared in a mixture of surprise and outrage as the man Brunner had shot writhed on the floor, clutching at the bolt buried in his belly. The lows and grunts of the beastmen added to the snarls of the bandits. Men began to draw their swords, a few scrambled toward the walls of the chamber to pluck spears and halberds from ornamental brackets set into the stonework. On the dais, the armoured figures of the Black Prince and his lieutenant glared at the intruders.

‘Kill them,’ the Black Prince commanded. ‘Kill them all.’ He gestured with his hand, stabbing a clawlike finger at Brunner. The bandit throng roared and surged forward. Even as the first men began to move, the bounty hunter fired. The bolt sped across the hall, smashing into the breastplate of the bandit lord. The Black Prince staggered for a moment, then turned, glaring at the bounty hunter, a dent marring his engraved breastplate. Brunner did not have time to send another shot at the dark elf, for the oncoming bandits demanded his attention more.

‘You have a sorry notion of a fair fight,’ complained Mahlinbois, still fiddling with his magical implements. The illusionist risked a look up, seeing three more bandits lying on the floor: two with the feathered shafts of the wood elf nestled in their bodies, a third with a bolt between the eyes.

‘Then do something to balance matters,’ snarled Brunner, firing the last bolt into a mangy-pelted beastman that was nearly upon him. The monster staggered away, mewling as it pawed at the spike of metal jutting from its cheek. Brunner spared the monster not a second thought, and drew Drakesmalice from its sheath in a flash of steel. Beside him, Lithelain sent a final arrow speeding into another bandit, then tossed his bow aside, drawing his own sword.

The Black Prince watched for a moment as his minions crashed into the flashing steel of the bounty hunter and his allies. He could hear the sounds of conflict, howls of pain and cries of triumph as men matched swords. He had seen its like often before. But he had not expected it this day. The bounty hunter should never have gotten so far, not with the precautions that had been taken. The dark elf smiled beneath his armour. Of course, he had been betrayed. How could he have been so stupid? He had been reared on treachery and double-dealing, it was in his blood. How could he not see it when it stared him in the face? But he would know how to deal with his betrayer.

‘This battle vexes me,’ the Black Prince said, his tone redolent with boredom. Drannach looked up at him, a puzzled look marring his fine features. ‘Attend to this,’ the noble declared, stepping down from the dais, the silk robe swirling about him. The Black Prince strode the short distance to the door, disappearing into the dark corridor beyond. The lieutenant watched him go, then drew his sword, stalking away from the dais and toward the knot of fighting men.

Left alone on the dais, Josef struggled against the iron chain that held him. As he struggled, his eyes turned to the open doorway. The sight of the corridor down which his father’s killer had gone let a new strength, an energy of pure hate, fill him. The young merchant tore at the spiked collar, his hands becoming raw and bloody as the spikes bit into his flesh. But despite his determination, the metal held fast.

Brunner’s sword lashed out once more, clipping a bandit’s hand. The man fell back, cursing, then screamed as he stared at the red stumps of his fingers. Brunner had no more time to consider the man, however, for other opponents were filling the space left by the maimed man. At his side, Lithelain was keeping seven enemies on their guard, the elf’s astounding speed confounding their best attempts to surround and butcher him. But the elf was doing no more than holding his foes at bay. He was unable to do more than deflect their steel, lest he expose himself to another’s blade by extending his reach too far. A gash in the elf’s side told of where one halberd-armed bandit had been able to momentarily defy the intercepting curtain of flashing steel, but no other had been able to match that feat. The weapon he had wielded lay upon the stone floor, cut in two by the elf’s vengeful return.

Perhaps realising that they were almost inconsequential, Stoecker and Ferricks found themselves faced by only a few of the bandits. Even so, the two men were far from experts with the sword, and were hard pressed to preserve their lives. The writer kept his back against the wall, knocking back the swords of the two bandits who faced him. He was trying to recall the time he had spent in the company of a Reiksguard fencing tutor, to slip back into half-remembered patterns of feint, parry and thrust.

The wiry Ferricks, a steady deluge of pleading and begging slithering from his tongue, kept worming around the steel of the men vainly trying to kill their former comrade. Despite his whining pleas, the thief was not averse to striking back, stabbing one through the knee when the brigand’s lunge carried him too far forward, slicing another along the side when he wormed his wiry body around the man’s sword.

From the pit, the roars and bellows of the griffon rose as the sounds of violence and the smell of blood drifted down to the creature. The monster’s cries provided a sinister accompaniment to the battle, and nearly all the combatants paused when the sounds suddenly stopped.

The great brown-and-yellow shape of the griffon lunged upwards from the pit, tearing two of the jutting fangs of steel from the stone-work, one of them digging deep into its shoulder. The monster’s hind legs scrabbled at the edge of the pit for a moment, gaining purchase, then it propelled itself upward. The plucked stumps of the creature’s wings beat furiously as it stepped forward. The bandits drew away to look in horror at the huge bestial shape that had leapt into their midst. The griffon’s blind head rolled from side to side for a moment, then the beaked maw opened once more, uttering a loud, frenzied shriek.

The griffon leapt forward, pinning an ape-like beastman beneath its mass, and crushing its ribcage with a loud crack. The griffon’s jaws snapped around, slashing through the armour and collarbone of another bandit, and dropping him in a screaming pile of wreckage.

As the bandits scrambled to attack this new and unexpected adversary, Brunner gave voice to a cry of his own. Two bandits found the bounty hunter’s steel in them before they remembered their original opponents. At his side, Lithelain pressed his attack, racing through the men who had held him at bay, sweeping his sword in a blur of motion that none of the brigands could individually counter.

The bounty hunter watched the elf’s actions with some misgiving. Lithelain was not seeking to finish off his enemies – he left many of them with only painful scratches or disarmed. The elf was only trying to make his way past the men, towards the door at the far end of the hall. Brunner brutally smashed the dragon-hilt of his sword into the nose of his current enemy, splattering the man’s face with his own blood. As the man clutched at his disfigured face, the bounty hunter kicked his groin with his steel-toed boot. The bandit doubled over and Brunner flung him aside, over the lip of the fighting pit.

A shriek and a satisfying liquid impact carried up from the arena.

Beyond the edge of the battle, Mahlinbois watched as the griffon wreaked havoc among the bandits. The huge monster was bleeding from dozens of wounds, not the least of which being the great tear in its shoulder where the spike had bitten into the beast’s flesh. But the frenzied monster seemed not to even notice the many injuries that had befallen it. It was a berserk engine of death now; already seven mutilated bodies lay strewn about it, where its claws and snapping jaws had done their work. Only death would stop it now.

Perhaps, in some way, the monster was exacting its own brand of vengeance against the Black Prince for the suffering that had been inflicted upon it. The illusionist smiled, snuffing the candle out with his finger. There was no need to concentrate further: in its current state, the griffon was beyond any of his mind-tricks. He had employed his craft to convince the creature to forget the crippling injuries done to its wings, to convince it that its feathery body was whole once more. So simple a mind, it was easy to disorder the past. The griffon had recalled the time when it had soared high above the Grey Mountains, when it had dived from the heights to fall upon prey its keen gaze had found far below. Convinced that it could fly once more, the griffon had lunged upwards, towards the sounds of battle, the smell of blood; its conviction drove it with a strength that its captors had believed beyond its tortured form.

The illusionist considered the battle at large. Stoecker, the writer, was matching swords with a single bandit now, and gaining the better of the man. Able to concentrate his attention on one man, Stoecker was proving himself a capable swordsman.

Ferricks was nowhere to be seen, though Mahlinbois could see one of the men the thief had been fighting lying on the floor with a deep gash in his belly. The magician’s gaze followed the battle back to the griffon. He watched as Lithelain made his way past the hulking monster, ducking under the sweep of the beast’s claws as he matched swords with another bandit. The elf spun about, catching the bandit’s steel on his own. He twisted his hand and rolled the blade past the man’s steel, ripping into his face. The injured bandit dropped, howling, and the sound was his undoing. As the bandit looked up from his mutilated face, the griffon’s claw disembowelled him with a sweeping slash. But the wood elf was already beyond the beast.

Brunner had advanced around the flank of the griffon, carefully keeping his distance from the monster. He lashed out at another bandit, puncturing the man’s lung with the point of his blade, then hurled the injured man into the pit to join his comrade. A slender fang of steel struck the edge of Drakesmalice, and the bounty hunter found himself staring into the inhumanly slender face of the dark elf lieutenant. The creature sneered at him.

‘You shall regret coming here, animal,’ Drannach spat. ‘I shall carve every inch of your flesh before I allow you to die.’

The bounty hunter pushed the elf back, blocking his return with a hastily drawn knife. ‘You’re not worth a shilling to me,’ the bounty hunter snarled. ‘Step down, and I may let you live.’ The man’s words brought a look of outrage to the pale features of the elf and he lunged forward, catching the bounty hunter’s knife on the projections on his vambraces. He turned the blade and broke it with a snap. Drakesmalice and the elf sword groaned as they slid across one another, as their wielders glared at one another from behind the crossed steel.

The dark elf suddenly twisted his blade, escaping the guard of the bounty hunter. Then he dropped low, sweeping his blade at the bounty hunter’s legs, seeking a crippling blow. The sword slashed at Brunner’s calf, but he dodged backwards just as Drannach made his attack. The bandit’s steel scraped across the surface of Brunner’s leg armour. Drannach hissed, lunged forward, then twisted his sword about at the last instant, turning the feint into a sidewise slash.

The sword cut into Brunner’s shoulder guard, nearly penetrating the metal. The bounty hunter counter-attacked, but found the elf’s sword about to intercept his own. Taking a note from his foe, Brunner dropped low, letting the blade slide across the top of his helmet. The dark elf at once realised his exposure and brought his sword whisking downward to intercept any new attack.

Instead of lashing out at Drannach, Brunner thrust with his sword to his side and rear, slashing at the furred flank of the embattled griffon. The dark elf’s eyes grew wide with fright as the monster turned about, snarling, ropes of gore dribbling from its claws and beak. The smug self-assurance of Drannach faded and the elf brought his sword up to block the talon-ridden paw that slashed out at him. The blade broke as the griffon’s ponderous blow batted it aside. The paw smashed into the dark elf, throwing him across the hall and into the far side of the pit. Drannach’s fall was arrested as his body struck the fangs of iron that framed the pit, the force of his impact impaling his body on the spikes. The minion of the Black Prince spat thin, greasy blood, then grew still. As life faded from his frame, his dead weight caused his body to slowly slide from the spikes and complete its descent to the sandy floor.

Brunner took advantage of the griffon’s attack on the dark elf to dive under its legs, choosing the most dangerous, but most certain route away from the monster’s snapping beak. A kettle-helm wearing bandit attacked him as he rolled clear of the monster, but the bounty hunter’s left hand grasped a throwing knife as he completed his roll, and it was but the blinking of an eye before the bounty hunter had hurled the weapon deep into the bandit’s chest. As the man sagged to the ground, two of his comrades closed on Brunner, while the rest of their number, led by the hulking beastman Urgmesh, desperately tried to stop the griffon’s rampage.

Lithelain skewered the throat of the last bandit foolish enough to get in his way, and sprinted toward the open doorway. As he ran, a voice from the direction of the Black Prince’s throne called to him. The elf hesitated, seeing Josef chained to the dais, his hands outstretched in a pleading gesture. The elf muttered a low curse and ran to the boy. He raised his sword as he reached Josef, then brought the edge against the taut length of chain with a swift and steady strike. The chain parted, the severed link flying off into the shadows. Lithelain nodded his head solemnly at the freed youth, then turned to continue his pursuit of the Black Prince. But no sooner had he turned, than a solid weight smashed into the back of his skull. The elf gasped, then slumped on the dais steps.

Josef let the length of chain he had coiled about his hands fall slack, and stooped, removing Lithelain’s sword from his slackened grasp. Josef looked down at the stunned elf, his face a study in hate and determination.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but the bastard is mine.’

Firming his grasp on the curiously balanced sword, Josef jumped from the dais and ran into the dark corridor.

The griffon continued its onslaught, catching another spear-armed bandit and slashing the man in half with its claws. The bandit beside the butchered man gave a cry of terror, turning to flee. But he found his retreat blocked by a massive, shaggy form. Urgmesh ripped the halberd from the man’s hands, then flung him aside.

In silence, the huge beastman closed upon the griffon, allowing the monster to be distracted by the war cries and screams of a cluster of human bandits who were trying to attack its flanks. The dog-headed brute lumbered forward, raising the halberd over his head, and watching as the griffon swung its own head from side to side, swiping with first one paw, then the other. With a snarl, the beastman attacked, letting the heavy axe-blade smash through the thick bone of the griffon’s foreleg.

The griffon screeched in agony as the maimed limb hung limp and broken. It snapped at Urgmesh, but he had already withdrawn, growling for the human rabble to attack. A half-dozen swords and spears stabbed into the tortured creature’s flesh. The griffon stumbled about, its movements slow and even more ungainly than before. Blood cascaded from the punctures along its body, drenching its fur and feathers with gluey red gore. The griffon’s beak opened and a great bubble of blood burst from its stained beak.

Urgmesh snarled a new command, and a bandit who had kept himself from the fighting thus far advanced. He wore the colourful surcoat of a Bretonnian knight tied about his waist, and in his hands he held a wide-barrelled contraption of steel and wood. Alone among the bandit throng, he had come armed with more than sword and dirk. He was carrying his valuable blunderbuss more to guard it against the thieving inclinations of his comrades than any premonition of trouble. Now the brigand crouched and aimed the weapon at the wounded monster. A murderous smile split the man’s coarse features as the blind head of the griffon swung in his direction once more. The man released the hammer of his firearm and the mouth of the blunderbuss spat a gout of smoke and flame. The griffon howled in agony as a hail of metal shrapnel tore through its face, digging pits into its skull. It reared onto its hind legs, roaring in fury and pain, then slumped onto its side, smashing a bandit beneath its dying bulk. The other bandits attacked the monster’s body with a vengeance, stabbing it again and again.

Brunner watched the griffon fall, and uttered a curse on all the fickleness of all the gods of battle. He looked about the chamber. Stoecker was duelling with a lone bandit, a heavy-set lout with a wolfskin cap. Mahlinbois was fumbling in the leather satchel that held his implements, desperation now filling his face. Looking at the dais, the bounty hunter saw that Josef was gone. Ferricks and Lithelain were likewise nowhere to be seen. But there was no dearth of enemies: fully a dozen of the Black Prince’s scum were still in condition to do battle. The bounty hunter cursed again, drew his pistol from its holster and prepared to meet the onslaught of the brigands.

Urgmesh roared, the sound bestial and triumphant. The beastman’s misshapen head turned about the chamber, looking for another foe to slay. His eyes fell upon the dark haired man fencing with one of the bandits. The monster snarled again, eager to kill. Urgmesh rushed forward, charging past the rest of the brigands. He closed upon the embattled writer. The first sweep of the halberd nearly beheaded both men, as it swept above them, striking sparks from the stone wall. The bandit gave a yelp of fright, withdrawing from the hulking beastman’s advance. Urgmesh ignored the rogue, his rage-filled eyes locked on Stoecker.

The writer adopted a defensive stance, not relishing his chances against the inhuman bruiser. The beastman snickered derisively as he saw the swordsman prepare himself, enjoying the sight before hurling his huge body at the writer. The halberd slashed downwards, only narrowly missing Stoecker’s body as the writer forced the cleaving blade aside with the flat of his sword. The beastman grunted, then lashed out again. This time, the strength of the monster’s blow pushed Stoecker back several steps, and he groaned with horror as he saw the deep notch the axe-head had made in the metal of his blade.

The first rule of swordplay, the writer recalled, was to keep all emotion from your blade. Fear, anger, could turn even the most skilled sword into the clumsy cleaver of an orc. A swordsman who was in complete command of himself, who knew he would triumph over his foe, was more deadly than the most flamboyant Talabheim rake. Stoecker tried to cling to the half-remembered speech the fencing instructor had made, but with the hulking, stinking beastman inches from his face, its hot breath washing over him, he felt anything but calm.

At the very edge of the battlefield, Mahlinbois wrapped the length of musty grey cloth about the gunpowder candle. Muttering a prayer to Ranald the Trickster, the illusionist began his incantation. The cloth had been torn from the shroud of a reputed necromancer. Now the Bretonnian magician would discover if the man’s deeds had indeed been as vile as rumour had coloured them.

Brunner closed upon the bandits, the shot from his pistol blasting apart the skull of his first enemy. He reversed his grip on the firearm, wielding its heavy butt like a mugger’s sap. He met the attack of the men advancing upon him, smashing the sword from one man’s hand with the pistol, crushing the bones of his fingers. Meanwhile he swept the edge of his blade through the knee of one of his companions.

The bounty hunter was under no illusion about his ability to overcome so many foes, but he was determined that he would give them such a reckoning before he fell that those who walked away from this fight would speak his name with fear all the rest of their days. As the men continued to slash at him, and as he found himself hard pressed to block their attacks, Brunner’s eyes beheld the bandit with the blunderbuss reloading his weapon. There was a sneer on the rogue’s face as he rose from his crouch, aiming the loaded weapon at the bounty hunter. Brunner cursed once more, realising that there was little chance of avoiding the weapon’s blast. It might not kill him at this distance, but even a minor injury would leave him open to the swords of the blackguard’s comrades. And the bounty hunter knew that the bandit would not hesitate to fire, even with his companions in the way.

Suddenly, the face of the gunner grew pale. The bandits facing Brunner grew similarly fearful, as they gazed in horror at the corpse of the griffon. The body was twitching, and rippling with motion. As the rogues watched, the skin spilt apart along the monster’s back, like the rind of a melon under the attention of the hot Tilean sun.

From the tear in the beast’s flesh, something gaunt and white emerged. First, a claw, then a long leg bone. From the corpse of the slain monster, its skeleton crawled forth, animated with some hideous mockery of life. The griffon’s skull, pock-marked by the blast of the blunderbuss, swayed from side to side. Then the neck craned about, holding the skull rigid. The sightless sockets of the griffon’s skull stared at the bandits with a soundless malevolence.

The bandit with the blunderbuss screamed, firing his weapon at the undead horror, heedless of the men before him. Three bandits squirmed away as the blunderbuss roared, two clutching at painful burns and gashes in their sides, a third writhing on the floor, clawing at the weeping back of his head. The skeleton was unmoved; the shot had only dug new pock-marks in the bones. The creature took a step forward, loping toward the brigands.

The silent advance of the skeletal abomination was too much for the men. Screaming, the gunner dropped his treasured blunderbuss and ran from the chamber. Those of his comrades who were able to, followed as best they could, injured men forcing maimed legs to work despite their wounds. Brunner watched the men flee, casting a suspicious look at the skeletal horror looming at his side. A smile flickered on his face.

Stoecker batted the cleaving blade of the monster aside again, feeling the jarring impact rattle his very bones. Urgmesh grunted, showing his fangs. The beastman would rip the meat from this one’s bones for making him work so hard to kill him. The writer’s sword was notched and ruined, his strength was failing, and his movements slowing. He would not last much longer. But every second he denied the kill to Urgmesh was an insult to the brute. He felt the old man-hate, the fury the Black Prince had taught him to quell, welling up within him once more. The beastman reared his head back, and uttered a deep lowing roar. He recalled the howls of devotion to the Dark Gods he had uttered long ago at the sacred herdstones of his kind. He saw a satisfying look of terror on the face of the frustrating little man, and knew that it was good that the man should know fear. It would make his flesh taste all the sweeter.

It was the last thing Urgmesh saw. A heavy mass of steel and wood crashed against his head, smashing in the side of his skull, bashing his head against the stone wall, crumpling it as it impacted with the hard wall. The beastman sank to his knees, sliding down the wall, leaving a gory slick behind as he fell. Brunner took no chances, however. He lifted the blunderbuss over his head with both hands and brought it crashing down into the beastman’s skull once more, snapping his neck. The bounty hunter looked away from the foul corpse, and stared at the writer.

‘Happy you came along now?’ the bounty hunter asked. ‘Not quite like one of your stories, is it?’

Stoecker offered no reply, staring in horror at the skeletal thing that had emerged from the corpse of the griffon. The writer pointed a trembling finger at the apparition. Brunner followed the extended finger, chuckling as he saw the source of Stoecker’s terror.

‘I think you can cease your conjuring,’ the bounty hunter said. Almost at once, the skeletal thing disappeared. Where it had been, the corpse of the griffon still sat, unchanged from its moment of death.

‘I do not believe I could have maintained the illusion much longer in any event,’ Mahlinbois gasped as he walked toward Brunner and Stoecker. His step was shaky, his limbs trembling with their effort to maintain enough strength to keep him on his feet. Sweat fell from the magician’s pale face.

‘You did well enough,’ the bounty hunter said, handing him the battered blunderbuss. Brunner turned, striding toward the doorway near the abandoned dais.

‘Where are you going?’ the illusionist and the writer said almost simultaneously.

‘After my money,’ the bounty hunter answered.

‘But what if they come back?’ asked a frightened and outraged Mahlinbois.

‘Threaten them with that,’ Brunner replied, pointing at the blunderbuss.

‘But it isn’t loaded!’ complained the magician.

‘Convince them it is,’ commented the bounty hunter, striding into the shadowy corridor.

The Black Prince stood in his throne room, crouched above the teakwood box. He burned with fury. He saw the shape of things now, saw how he had been betrayed, and led to the edge of ruin and death by deception and trickery. But he would set matters right. He would get his revenge. The dark elf threw open the teakwood box, then stepped back.

Empty. It was empty! A cold, lethal fury gripped the Black Prince as he looked at the cushioned vacancy of the chest. He was still staring at the empty box when, with an almost casual move, he intercepted the sword that sang through the air, whirling towards his neck, catching the blade on the spines on his vambrace. His armoured face turned about. Cruel eyes stared at Josef as the Black Prince closed the steel glove of his free hand about the blade of the stolen sword. The Black Prince tore the weapon from Josef’s fingers, casting it aside like a piece of garbage, then he backhanded the boy with his other hand. Josef landed in a jumble of limbs, his lip split and bleeding. The Black prince rose from his crouch, hand almost casually falling upon the pommels of the twin swords sheathed at his side.

‘I am not in a fair humour,’ the elf’s melodious voice stated. ‘Curse whatever gods you hold dear that you are the first to find me in such a mood.’ The elf drew one of the thorn-bladed swords from its sheath. Josef spat blood from his lip at the monster’s feet.

‘You killed my father!’ the boy snarled. The elf stood immobile for a moment, as though taken aback by Josef’s outburst. Then the disarming sound of the fiend’s laughter echoed through the chamber.

‘And you are ungrateful enough to curse me for such a boon?’ the Black Prince shook his masked head. ‘You should thank me for preserving you from the lies and machinations of your elder. Only with the passing of the father can a son truly become all that he is destined to become, only then can he emerge from the shadow that hovers above him.’ The elf laughed again, noting the enraged fire in Josef’s eyes. ‘But this is something I myself did not learn until this very hour, and you are but vermin and will find no value in the truth.’ The Black Prince stepped toward Josef, watching as the boy scrambled away, crawling before him like a mouse scurrying before a cat. The elf lifted his sword, preparing to stab the steel downward into Josef’s body.

‘Face me if there is a drop of courage in your craven carcass!’ a soft, yet thunderous voice called out. The Black Prince hesitated, then turned his body, so that he might keep one eye on the vengeful youth, and another trained upon the challenging voice.

‘You shall atone for your misdeeds, monster!’ declared Lithelain, stooping to retrieve his sword from where the dark elf had thrown it. The wood elf extended the blade, pointing it at the Black Prince. The dark elf bowed with mock graciousness, stepping toward Lithelain.

‘Ah, a more worthy adversary presents himself,’ the dark elf declared. The Black Prince held his sword against his side, drawing the second blade from its sheath, gripping it by the point where blade and hilt met. Lifting the blade, out to one side, the Black Prince made as if to discard the weapon. But just as he began to toss the weapon aside, he reversed his hold upon it, hurling it like a spear at the wood elf. The thorn-bladed sword nicked the side of Lithelain’s leg, cutting through his leather breeches.

‘So, you are one of those filthy tree-dwelling aborigines,’ the Black Prince stated as Lithelain recovered from the unexpected injury. The wood elf swung at the gloating fiend, but the Black Prince’s sword easily caught Lithelain’s blade, and turned it back with a slight push. ‘No Druchii would have fallen for so obvious a deception. But why should I expect cunning from one whose kind could not even outwit those disgusting dwarfs?’ The Black Prince sneered, lashing out with his sword. He met Lithelain’s intercepting steel, twisted about it, and slashed the elf’s shoulder.

‘This would already be over if we fought in Naggaroth,’ the Black Prince’s voice laughed. ‘They duel with envenomed blades there.’ The Black Prince struck out again, feinting high, then lunging forward, catching the arm that held Lithelain’s sword with his own free arm. He pulled the wood elf’s body in close and slashed his belly with the fighting spines of his vambrace, while he dug the thorn-like projections of his sword’s pommel into the wood elf’s back. The dark elf released his foe, spinning about as he backed away to again intercept the wood elf’s steel.

‘But one must make concessions for savages,’ the Black Prince said. ‘Otherwise there is no sport in butchering one of your kind.’ The Black Prince lashed out again, Lithelain parrying the fiend’s blow aside. Turning his body, the wood elf avoided the fighting spines of the dark elf’s other arm. The wood elf smashed the hilt of his parried sword into the reflective visor of his enemy. The dark elf staggered back.

‘You shall pay for every drop of blood you have spilled,’ the wood elf swore, attacking once more. The Black Prince intercepted the avenger’s sword, catching it between his vambrace and sword.

‘Shall I?’ the dark elf sneered. ‘Then I must have run up quite a debt.’ The Black Prince surged upwards, throwing the wood elf aside. The dark elf’s sword flickered toward Lithelain, barely intercepted as the fighter recovered. ‘But do you think that you shall be the one to collect it?’

Lithelain spun his body about, sweeping his sword in a low arc. The Black Prince leapt above the striking blade, thrusting his own sword through the wood elf’s breast. The Black Prince pushed his body forward, digging the steel deeper into Lithelain’s chest. The wood elf gasped, fighting for breath, his eyes widening with rage and disbelief.

‘This has been utterly boring,’ the Black Prince declared, his face only inches from the dying elf’s face. He twisted the blade about in the wound, bringing a fresh spasm of agony to the gasping elf’s features. ‘There are people I must find, and kill,’ the Black Prince stated. He tore the sword from Lithelain’s body, and a great flood of blood bubbled from the triangular cut. Lithelain dropped, his fading eyes locked on the figure of the Black Prince.

‘Don’t worry, your bones will feed the crows and your memory will become a jest told to your children when I tire of making them scream.’ The Black Prince stepped away, his foot sliding beneath the naked steel of the wood elf’s sword. The dark elf worked his toe under the blade and flicked it across the chamber once more. The sword clattered across the floor to where a horrified Josef had watched the swift, brutal fight. The boy reached toward the sword.

‘I hope you were paying attention,’ the Black Prince’s musical voice said as he strode away from Lithelain’s corpse. ‘I expect better from you.’ The dark elf walked toward the boy, sword held at his side. ‘Though I doubt that I shall receive it.’

A roar and crack thundered through the Black Prince’s throne room. The dread figure of the bandit lord shuddered as a red mist burst from his chest. The sword fell from suddenly lax fingers. A shaking hand rose to the wound that marked the very centre of the Black Prince’s chest. The mailed hands probed the aperture, coming away and rising before the reflective face-plate. The eyes behind the metal mask stared in wonder and disbelief at the crimson staining the metal fingers. The Black Prince turned, falling to his knees as the strength failed in his legs. With an effort, he looked up as his killer walked toward him.

‘Sorry,’ the icy voice of the bounty hunter reached the Black Prince’s ears, ‘I was getting bored myself.’

Brunner returned the smoking pistol to its holster and strode forward. The Black Prince coughed within his helm, red liquid seeping from the joins of his visor and gorget. ‘And there are people waiting for me, and that ugly head of yours.’

The Black Prince slumped forward, his death rattle gargling in his throat.

Brunner watched the dark elf expire, then fingered the grip of the long-bladed knife he morbidly termed The Headsman. Before beginning his macabre task, the bounty hunter looked up at Josef.

‘I could have let you have your chance at him,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘But somehow, I don’t think you’d have liked that.’ Josef nodded his head, a surly look of guilt and anger mixing with profound satisfaction on his face.

‘Now come over here and help me get this bastard’s armour off,’ Brunner called out. ‘I want to make a good cut. After all, it has to be pretty enough for a king.’

Ehrhard Stoecker sat his battered body down in the chair, casting a furtive look around the bar of the inn. There was no sign of Yvette, however. The woman had been rather upset at him when he had returned to Parravon, after leaving for weeks with no warning, and she had used more than words to express her ire. She had been most unwilling to listen to his explanations. Even the gold he had brought back with him had done nothing to assuage her anger when she had discovered the bruises the writer had earned in his brief combat with the beastman.

Stoecker sighed and sipped his wine. His share of the Black Prince’s booty had amounted to more than a few hundred gold pieces, a tidy fortune before the duc’s tax men had decided what their portion should be. Perhaps he should have gone with Mahlinbois and Josef after all, and returned to the Empire. But, no, there were too many reasons for him to stay as far from Altdorf as he could. He recalled only too well the old Imperial proverb that all roads led to the Emperor’s city.

Once again, Stoecker found himself lamenting the fortune that must have once been hidden within the Black Prince’s vaults. But the fleeing brigands had had a considerable headstart, and they had known where to search. The bandits had further benefited from the skills of the thief Ferricks, who, having excused himself from the battle, had slunk down to the treasure rooms, disarming the many cunning devices set to protect them. All except the last one. Stoecker didn’t think he had ever seen a more surprised look that the one on Ferrick’s corpse when they found him stuck to the wall by a spring-launched javelin.

They had split what the bandits hadn’t taken – at least he, Mahlinbois and Josef had. Brunner had angrily stated that he worked for his money, and wanted no part of the plundering. Stoecker had thought the bounty hunter foolish, but, as it turned out, the price on the Black Prince’s head had far exceeded what they could loot from his tower. After they had parted company with Mahlinbois and Josef, Stoecker had suggested to Brunner that he might split the bounty. The bounty hunter had laughed, responding that he never asked Stoecker for any portion of what he earned from the lies he wrote about the killer.

Stoecker shook his head, wondering where the fearsome warrior was now. He cast an eye at the door of the inn. He laughed to himself and sipped at his wine. It did not matter where Brunner was. Sooner or later, the writer was certain, he would again walk through that door. Stoecker had never been more certain of anything in his entire life. And strangely enough, he found himself eagerly anticipating that meeting, found himself wanting to hear about every treacherous, ruthless step of the bounty hunter’s travels.

A shape shrouded in black moved through the darkened chamber, disturbing the flies that buzzed about the headless corpse rotting on the floor. The shape did not pay the corpse a second thought, but moved toward the dais. It looked over at a smashed teakwood box and smiled beneath its hood. Then it climbed the steps to the throne-like chair. A slender, pale hand caressed the armrest, sliding its fingers along the length of the wood until there was a click. The hand reached into the hinged opening of the seat, removing the silk-wrapped object within. The apparition’s eyes glittered as they stared at the Eye of Tchar. The slender hands drew the gem back to the cloaked body, and the magical scrying stone disappeared in one of the pouches on the figure’s belt.

The shadow turned away from the throne, stopping this time beside the headless corpse. The black-garbed shape bent down, and lifted the discarded helmet from the floor. The face under the hood smiled as it considered the helm. It almost dropped the piece of armour, but a stray thought caused it to tuck the helmet with its reflective visor beneath its arm.

All had unfolded just as the Eye of Tchar had shown him. News of Dralaith’s death would reach Naggaroth. There would be no more assassins, for he knew that one day, one of their number would succeed and all his plans would come to ruin. He had sacrificed much to accomplish the deception, but gold was trash, easily collected by one of his skill and intelligence. His followers were likewise trash, and easily replaced. He cast another look at the headless corpse of Uraithen. It was not the first time he had cause to allow one of his lieutenants to momentarily assume his guise as the Black Prince. But it would certainly be the last. It was no matter, the two departed elves were nothing but mongrel half-breeds sired upon a filthy aborigine. No true Druchii would ever have allowed themselves to be so easily deceived. In death, his sons had proven how pathetic and unworthy of his blood they truly were. Dralaith spat on the floor, a gesture denoting the contempt he felt for the spirits of such worthless beings.

Only one thing disturbed him. It was the thought that somewhere, a miserable human was walking the earth, boasting that he had killed the Black Prince. Indeed, he very nearly had. The dark elf had nearly fallen to his death when his horse had toppled over the precipice, and it had taken him several hours to climb up from the chasm. It alarmed him somewhat that the Eye had not shown him that particular event. Once more, Dralaith pondered the Norse shaman’s laughter.

A most vexing thought, the dark elf mused as he left his throne room for the last time, and walked the empty halls of the abandoned elf tower. It was an itch that would have to be scratched – one day.

BLOOD AND STEEL

PROLOGUE

The world is beset on all sides by great and terrible perils, creatures of the Old Night, things far beyond the imaginings of those safe in their beds within the sturdy walls of Altdorf. Evils, both mortal and supernatural, stalk the lands of men, from the green pastureland of Bretonnia to the swarming cities of the Empire. From the harsh deserts of Estalia to the crumbling strongholds of the dwarfs, dread forces move and dark deeds are consecrated to the most abominable of powers.

My chosen vocation is as a chronicler of such things, for I have ever been drawn to the workings of evil, as a moth is drawn to a flame. Indeed, it was my notorious work, A True History of Vlad von Carstein, and the unwanted attention it gathered, which caused me to flee my native Altdorf. For I discovered that supernatural monsters lurk even in the very shadow of the Emperor’s palace and hunt in the very streets of his capital.

But even in exile, a man is still who he is. I continued to write tales of mystery and adventure, drawing upon the life experiences of sometimes less than reputable sources. Sometimes, far too rarely, I would uncover some valiant and noble heart who had stood defiant before the forces of ruin and Chaos, who had heroically challenged the powers of darkness and driven them back into the shadows. More often, however, I learned the depths of greed and avarice to which a human soul can sink. Gold, I discovered, had stirred more men to action than any righteous cause. For the promise of gold, a man might stand his ground against the most terrible of monsters, the most debased and degenerate parodies of humanity, and thank steel rather than the gods that he emerged triumphant.

I had good cause to consider such things as I sat within a small tavern in the Bretonnian city of Parravon. It was to here that I had migrated after my hasty departure from the Tilean city of Miragliano in the south, and it was to here that I had returned after my brief flirtation with adventure, chronicled in my pamphlet The Fall of the Black Prince. Many months had passed since I had parted ways with my companion on that enterprise. Occasionally I would hear a rumour of his activities, a tale of murder and mayhem from some desolate corner of the realm. But of the man himself, there was no sign until the first thunderheads began to slip down from the looming heights of the Grey Mountains.

It was a dreary, chill evening and the sun was just beginning to forsake the sky. Overhead, thunder rumbled, echoing through the streets of the narrow Bretonnian township. I stood just outside the door of the tavern, watching the play of lightning in the distance. I was minded of old stories of storm gods and their capricious battles amongst one another. The flash of lightning was said to be the gleam of their swords as they struck one another’s blades, the boom of the thunder was their raised voices as they contested in the sky above the storm. It was a fabulous display, each blue flash of light cast by the weather making the craggy heights of the mountains manifest from the deepening shadows like some spectral apparition.

For many long minutes I lost myself, fascinated by the awesome display of elemental might unfolding before me. It reminded me that there are things so much greater than fragile mankind, and that all his works, all his advances in civilisation, in science and wizardry, must seem as small and worthless as an ant hill beside them. What was man beside such forces as those that assailed him? The borders of his lands were ever threatened by the howling hosts of orc and goblin; the forests within his domains were the refuge of twisted, horrible things: mutants and beastmen, the children of dark gods and perverse corruption. Fiendish predators stalked the streets of even the greatest of his cities, fearsome monsters who had long ago forsaken their humanity for a loathsome parody of immortality. Beneath those same streets, other things lurked – the foul skaven, warped rat-like creatures of Chaos, working their foul intrigues below while the people living above discounted their very existence as spurious myth and superstition.

More loathsome than any of these, however, were the still human degenerates who had willingly betrayed all that was decent and good and bowed instead before the altars of the Ruinous Powers in hidden covens, forsaking their very souls in exchange for unspeakable promises. Evil was everywhere, lurking, waiting, biding its time until the hour of doom should arrive, and too few were those who might stand against it.

I looked away from the storm, distressed by the course my thoughts had wandered on. The sky was fast growing dark and I turned to go indoors. Even in Parravon, with its gardens and cobbled streets, its high walls and guarding cliffs, even here did the reach of evil extend. For generations some nameless thing had prowled the city after dark, so that none would willingly risk travelling the narrow lanes after the sun had forsaken its post. I had learned that it is often wise to heed such customs, as past experiences had taught me that many legends are more real than we would like to believe.

As I turned to re-enter the tavern, I noticed a figure striding through the gloom. There was something familiar about that walk, and I hesitated.

The man who approached was tall, his build lean, betraying a quality of muscle and power. He wore a suit of brigandine armour about his frame, over which a breastplate of gromril encased his chest. At some point, that fabulously hard metal had been scratched by a tremendous blow. Steel vambraces, darkened black to prevent any betraying shine, enclosed the man’s forearms, while mismatched shoulder guards protected his upper arms. Hard leather boots with steel toes rose to meet the steel leg greaves that protected his thighs.

The man was a walking arsenal, a small crossbow pistol dangled from a clamp set upon one of his vambraces and a belt of knives crossed his chest. An expensive-looking pistol sheltered in a holster set across his belly while a thick-bladed hatchet swung from his belt just above his right leg. A massive, cruel knife nestled beside the hatchet, a blade with a serrated edge that its owner had morbidly named the ‘Headsman’. A scabbard on the man’s left side held a longsword, its pommel and guard shaped in the form of a golden dragon with outspread wings. Its name was ‘Drakesmalice’, a sword with some history and reputation in the lands formerly owned by the house of von Drakenburg, and now claimed by the Viscount de Chegney.

The warrior continued to stride towards me out of the darkening twilight. His face was largely concealed by the mask of a rounded sallet helm, of the sort favoured by the militia and soldiery of Reikland. It was of black steel and a dent in its surface gave evidence to some past service it had performed for its wearer. Cold blue eyes regarded me through the visor.

‘Stoecker,’ the man addressed me in a hard voice.

‘It has been a long time, Brunner,’ I said. ‘Over half a year.’

‘I’ve been busy,’ Brunner replied.

‘No rest for the wicked?’

‘Not until they put me in the ground,’ was his response. ‘And you? I should have thought you would have left a backwater like Parravon a long time ago.’

‘I keep myself busy,’ I lied. In truth, the tedium of the place, the unending chore of transcribing the Duc of Parravon’s grossly enriched family history, had been working on me and I had begun to consider moving on. ‘The climate here agrees with me,’ I elaborated. Actually, the climate had become fairly hostile ever since Yvette had forsaken my company for that of a dashing young guardsman, who seemed unable to cope with the presence of a former paramour of his beloved.

‘Perhaps we might repair indoors,’ I said, noting with alarm the rapid onset of night. Brunner inclined his head, motioning for me to lead the way. It was a short walk back to the tavern, and I soon secured a table and two tankards of mead, for they had long since run dry of anything approaching beer. Brunner sat at the table, leaning back against the wall, his eyes canvassing the room, studying each face with a practiced gaze.

Brunner was a bounty hunter, one of the most notorious in the Old World. From the bandit strongholds of the Forest of Shadows, to the lowliest thieves’ nest in Gisoreux, his name alone was enough to make outlaws shudder with fear. His reputation was something of a legend in and of itself, and it was said that he never failed to bring in his prey once he was on their trail. Death was the only escape from this relentless hunter, and even then there was no guarantee that he would not yet bring his catch back. The ‘Headsman’ was not so named casually, that gruesome instrument had earned its name. I had often seen the evidence of this for myself.

I had met Brunner in the south, during my years of exile in Miragliano. At the time, I had been penning adventure pamphlets for a spurious publisher named Ernesto, and the bloody career of the bounty hunter had formed the basis for some of these shilling dreadfuls. There was something at once terrible and fascinating about the man, repulsive and compelling at the same time. I should have never had anything to do with him after the events that led to my hasty flight from the Tilean city, yet when he had arrived in Parravon on the trail of the infamous Black Prince, I had not only renewed our association, but even accompanied him on his perilous hunt. Now I found myself once again sitting over drinks with the remorseless killer.

‘I unearthed one of your books in Gisoreux,’ Brunner said after he had sipped at his mead. ‘Amazing how far those things have travelled.’

‘Everyone appreciates a hero,’ I said. ‘It gives them an escape from the hardships of everyday life.’

Brunner leaned forward over the table. ‘You should try writing the truth sometime. Write about what really happened. Not some tripe about a noble warrior on a white horse, riding off to right wrongs and champion the weak and punish the wicked.’

‘Indeed,’ I shot back, ‘you would prefer me to write about a heartless bastard who would put his sword through Sigmar reborn if he saw gold in such a deed!’ The bounty hunter glared at me for a moment, then laughed grimly.

‘Perhaps you have the right of it,’ he said. ‘Nobody wants to face the way things really are. They like their lies and fables.’ He sipped again at his drink. ‘I don’t think many people would appreciate some of the things I’ve seen and done.’

It is one of the failings of my personality that I have a morbid fascination with tales of horror and the macabre, but I must also admit to a profound interest in the less than stalwart deeds of men such as Brunner. Their very existence on the fringes of society, their ability to kill without question or pity, their amazing knack for surviving against even the greatest odds has become a compelling mystery to me. As I heard the haunted tone in Brunner’s voice, my ears picked up and I set about trying to draw the story out of him. At last, he relented.

Brunner finished off his mead, wiping the sleeve of his tunic across his lips. Then he settled back and began to speak.

‘As you know, some time passed between your departure from Miragliano and my coming to Parravon,’ Brunner rumbled. ‘There are a great many things that happened to me while you were away…’

CHAPTER ONE

BENEATH THE VAULTS

Nicoletta slowly made her way from the raucous commotion of the large common room that dominated the lower floor of the Purple Kitten. It was a busy night for the notorious Miragliano brothel. No less than seven merchant vessels had docked in the harbour during the day, each having just returned from a long and dangerous voyage to the northern port of Marienburg. But the eagerness of the sailors and mercenary marines to squander their wealth was not attractive to Nicoletta this night. Her mind was troubled, making it difficult for her to abide the crude gaiety of the common room, much less the physical aspects of her trade. Though the hour was not very late, Nicoletta had given her sisters of the night her share of the custom and was now making her way to her small room on the upper floor of the bordello.

Of course, such a dereliction of her duties was not without its hazards. If Madame Livia were to discover her absence, the best she could expect would be a beating. More likely, the wizened hag would detail Nicoletta to entertain some of the brothel’s more curious customers, and their less than common tastes. Normally, the least appealing of the girls was given such duties, but Madame Livia never failed to threaten her prettier workers with the detail when they were not compliant with her wishes and the demands of business.

The woman paused before her door. She could hear sounds coming from the other rooms and a part of her mind chided her for her foolishness, for throwing away all the silver and gold she might earn if she would just forget about things. There was nothing she could do, and worrying would solve nothing. She was risking the wrath of her madame by not working. All it would take would be for one of the other girls to discover that she had slipped away and inform the madame and she would have even more problems to occupy her mind. It was no good – the softer, less practical instincts were too strong to wish away with common sense. Nicoletta could not help worrying about her beloved, nor could she distance herself enough from him to ply her trade.

She had met him years ago, right here in the Purple Kitten. He had cut a dashing figure, a handsome rogue sailor, an adventurer who had travelled to nearly every port Nicoletta had ever heard of. He’d seen the great statues of all the old emperors in Altdorf’s Konigplatz. He’d sailed his ship beneath Marienburg’s high bridge and passed within view of the craggy coasts of the fabled and dreaded Norsca. She’d at once warmed to his rakish charm, aided in no small way by the gold and jewels he had lavished upon her. He’d promised to take her away from the Purple Kitten when he had amassed enough wealth to provide her with a home in whatever city she chose. Unlike the many other infatuated sailors and mercenaries she had entertained, she’d believed Bruno Brega. The small treasures he presented her every time he made port in Miragliano convinced her of his sincerity. One day, Bruno Brega would indeed take her away from Madame Livia and her customers. And, Nicoletta decided, living with the good looking smuggler wouldn’t be such a bad price to pay for her liberty.

She opened the door and stepped into the darkened room. At once a foul animal reek struck her. She clutched her nose against the smell, her powdered face twisting into a grimace of disgust. It was as if every dog on the Strada dei Cento Peccati had rolled around the overflowing gutters and then pranced about in her room. Nicoletta snarled a curse and stamped across the small room, past the large bed and toward the sole window to lift the shutter and allow the disgusting smell an avenue of escape.

As the trull made her way through the shadowy room, a patch of darkness detached itself from the wall. Before the woman could react, the apparition had placed itself between her and the door. An arm, wrapped in leather bindings, extended from the shadow; its hand fastened upon the door, and slammed it closed.

Nicoletta opened her mouth to yell – possibly to gain the attention of the burly toughs that protected Madame Livia’s girls – as she backed away toward one of the walls. But the sound died on her lips as the feeble light from the window illuminated the hand. It was not human at all, but something clawed and twisted and horrible.

The shadow advanced upon her, and as it came forward, the animal stench filled her lungs. She could only just make out the basic outline of the sinister figure: it was a tall, lean creature, shrouded in a hooded cloak that fell to its thighs. The legs seemed wrong in some way. As the interloper came forward, it seemed as if its knees folded backward and forward at the same time. Hard boots that reflected the dim light from the street encased its feet.

Nicoletta retreated before the fearsome presence, cringing into some tiny corner of her soul, sobbing like a child. The animal stench grew and Nicoletta could see the visage that observed her from beneath the shadowy hood. The lower face was wrapped in a thick, heavy scarf of rough material, but above the scarf the skin was coarse and swarthy, hirsute and weathered. Eyes gleamed from the masked face – eyes that burned and glowed with an orange light in the darkness.

Nicoletta trembled, fumbling at the pocket of her dress for the small knife she kept hidden there. The shadow laughed, and then it spoke.

‘Ah, my mangy dove,’ the shadow’s voice rasped. It was like a foul wind blowing across a dank bog, bubbling with corruption and decay. ‘I have waited so very long for you to return to your roost.’

Nicoletta lifted the knife, and held it between herself and the horrible spectre. A scratchy bark-like sound rumbled from below the scarf and with a slow, deliberate gesture the malformed hand gently pulled the knife from the woman’s grasp, dropping the weapon casually upon the floor.

‘Do not worry, my mangy dove,’ the shadow laughed. ‘Your dubious honour is safe with me.’ Nicoletta wept a tear of terror as the malformed hand caressed her cheek and slowly slid down her face, lingering on her chin for a moment, before falling to her chest. ‘I have pressing concerns this night, and no time to squander.’ The hand on her chest knocked Nicoletta backwards, causing her to crash on the floor beside her bed. ‘More’s the pity,’ the shadow hissed with a touch of regret.

Nicoletta started to pick herself up from the floor when the intruder closed upon her once more, pulling her head upwards by the long locks of dark hair. His fingers twisted inside bunches of Nicoletta’s hair, forcing her to stare into the ghastly eyes.

‘Tell me what I need to know, my mangy dove, and I shall be about my business.’ The hand gave a hard yank, bringing a sharp gasp of pain from Nicoletta. ‘You do want to be a good little whore and tell me all I want to know, don’t you?’ The shadow paused, relaxing his grip so the girl could nod her head.

‘Good,’ the shadow hissed and bubbled. ‘That will save us much unpleasantness. You do, of course, know a man named Bruno Brega?’ Nicoletta’s eyes widened with fear when she heard the gruesome creature speak the name of her beloved, the very man whose well-being had so discomfited her. ‘I need to find him. There are people very interested in his whereabouts. People with very deep purses. Tell me, my mangy dove, where is your admirer?’

Nicoletta felt a surge of dread welling up inside her – not for herself, but for the man she loved. This greater fear coursed through her, steeling her and providing her with a paltry simulacrum of courage. She croaked a response to the pitiless deeps of the stranger’s cat-like eyes.

‘I… I do n–not know… any such man!’ The hand in her hair pulled back hard. She cried out in pain.

‘So,’ the shadow’s loathsome voice rasped with mock regret. ‘I see we must do this in a more time-consuming manner.’ Her captor reached beneath the folds of his cloak and drew out a small metal tube, no larger than her knife. One end of the tube was angled and sharp, like the point of a scribe’s pen. The entire implement was hollow like a flute.

The intruder crouched over Nicoletta, twisting her head around so far it almost snapped her neck. He stared into the woman’s terrified orbs. Her mouth opened again, but the hand clutching the metal tube pressed itself against her lips, stifling her words. A trio of short sounds issued from the shadow, like the gentle reprimand of a disappointed parent.

‘I lied, of course, my mangy dove,’ the shadow rasped. ‘No matter what lies you chose to tell me, we would have come to this. Perhaps you even have a mind to tell me the truth, now.’ He laughed once more. ‘I shall know soon enough what there is in that pretty little head.’

With a swift motion, the intruder stabbed the metal tube into Nicoletta’s skull. There was a dull crunch as the implement broke through bone. The woman’s body spasmed in the shadow’s grasp, but the iron grip held her firm. The shadow’s distorted hand pawed at its face for a moment, pulling the scarf away.

Its lips hovered over the metal tube and then the shadow began to drink the dying woman’s memories.

On the landward side of Miragliano vast marshlands stretched for many leagues – shallow lakes of tall marsh grass interrupted by small islands of more stable ground. Scows and barges were the means of transport here. Enterprising merchants collected the fresh water of the marsh to sell to the thirsty citizens of the city. Beyond the many leagues of the marshlands were gently sloping hills and meadows, vast cultivated fields of grains and vegetables, orchards of fruit trees, rambling vineyards and great spreads of pasture for cattle and sheep. This was Miragliano’s breadbasket, protected by forts garrisoned by the soldiers of Prince Borgio himself, who was strategist enough to understand that a hungry army would win none of Miragliano’s many wars.

But soon after the last fort had been passed, the cultivated lands faded. Here the landscape grew more desolate, stands of thin-boled trees grew in unmanaged, confused clusters, brush crept ever nearer to the few roads and paths, threatening to consume them. The rolling hills sheltered deep shadowy hollows, places where the hot Tilean sun could not reach. This ungoverned region was home only to a few hardy trappers and woodsmen, hunters and foresters who wrenched their livelihood from the wilds. Packs of beastmen roamed these places; small tribes of orcs and goblins eked out a miserable and tenuous existence preying upon the weakest of the merchant caravans that dared to brave the ill-kept roads. Bands of human predators lurked alongside the monsters – outlaws and deserters from the numerous mercenary companies employed by the many merchant princes. Wise was the traveller who trusted no man he encountered in these lonely wilds.

Five men stood in a small circle before the ruins of an old, ramshackle hunter’s cabin. On the ground between them, a sixth man lay, arms and legs spread to either side of his body. He was secured to wooden stakes by thick loops of rope. The standing men all sported similar dark clothing, piecemeal armour and a motley array of weapons. They each wore an expression of cruelty and avarice.

The darkly handsome Tilean features of the man on the ground were ashen with fear. He knew these men, and he knew he had every reason to be afraid.

‘Come now, Bruno,’ a giant of a man grunted through his thick black beard. ‘Tell us where you hid the gold, so we can just kill you and have done with it.’ The huge man’s dirty hand fell to one of the dozen knives criss-crossing his massive belly on a worn leather bandoleer. ‘Otherwise I’ll have to cut you some. I’d like that, but I can guarantee you won’t enjoy it!’

‘I told you before,’ the man stretched between the stakes spoke from his bruised face. ‘He didn’t pay me! The bastard tried to kill me after I delivered it to him!’

‘Don’t lie to us!’ spat a thin man whose nose was scarred with a knife wound. ‘You should have played square with us, Brega!’ He kicked the prostrate man in the ribs, bringing forth a groan of pain. ‘Not so smart after all, eh? Cheatin’ us is the last thing you shoulda done!’

‘I should have let them hang you in Tobaro when I had the chance, Sollima!’ snarled Brega, struggling against his bonds. The thin Sollima rewarded the captive’s efforts with another boot into his ribs.

‘Are we gonna beat him to death or find out where he hid the gold?’ growled another of the men – a tall man wearing a studded leather tunic and an old battered helmet.

‘You heard him, Bruno,’ said the giant with the collection of knives. ‘Do you tell us where the gold is, or do we beat you to death?’

‘The Dark Gods rot your flesh, Nuccio! There is no gold!’ Brega lifted his head from the ground to roar at his captors.

‘As you like, Bruno,’ the hulking Nuccio replied, drawing a knife from his bandoleer. ‘Two of you hold him down. It takes a steady hand to peel flesh from bone.’

Two of the men descended upon Brega, grabbing hold of his body and forcing him to lie still. Brega spat a glob of phlegm into the face of Nuccio as the butcher leaned over him. The giant paused a moment, wiping the spit from his beard, then a grim smile grew across his features. This was going to be fun.

‘Ranald’s cloak, who is that?’ exclaimed the thin Sollima in a whiny tone. Nuccio looked up, the knife now inches from Brega’s face.

An armoured shape strode into the clearing, its chest encased in metal, and its face hidden by the blackened steel of an Imperial-style sallet helm. A cloak of grey cloth was draped about the man’s right arm. His left arm rested casually against the hilt of the sword sheathed at his side.

The five ruffians glared at the lone warrior.

‘I hate to intrude upon your entertainment,’ the warrior said in a voice as cold as steel, ‘but I need your playmate.’

‘A poor jest,’ grunted Nuccio, as he rose to tower above his fellow smugglers. Each of the men was now fingering the hilts of their weapons. The prisoner was momentarily forgotten. ‘And one that is going to cost you.’ Nuccio nodded to two of his comrades who began to stalk away to the right, while the others began to circle to the left. ‘If you have a god, pray to him.’ Nuccio took a step forward, drawing a fat-bladed sword.

The warrior did not wait for the man to close in on him, nor did he wait for the other ruffians who were tightening the circle around him. Throwing back his cloak, he revealed the curious crossbow gripped in his gloved hand. It was a strange device of inhuman construction, with a box-like mechanism set on top of it. Before Nuccio could more than register the fact that the interloper held a weapon in his hand, the steel bow string had snapped three times in rapid succession. The first bolt smashed into the large man’s breastbone. The second tore through his windpipe. The third broke his teeth before burying itself in the rear of his mouth. The brutish thug silently toppled backward, like a felled tree.

Brunner turned from the slain Nuccio, and trained the skaven-made weapon on the rogues to his left. The men were staring in open-mouthed horror at the carnage the bounty hunter had delivered upon their leader. As soon as they realised that Brunner’s weapon was now trained on them, the two thieves turned and ran. Brunner could hear their comrades to his right already crashing through the brush and brambles.

The bounty hunter cradled his weapon in his arms. The murderous bow was indeed a fair payment for his infiltration of the dungeons of Karl Franz. He was grateful to the sinister little rat-man he had met in the Dancing Fox.

Brega emitted a muffled groan. Brunner strode forward, and stared down at the man pinned beneath the giant Nuccio. He coughed, the dead weight of Nuccio crushing the air from his lungs. Brunner smiled down at the trapped man, then rolled the hulking body to one side.

‘The grace of all the gods be yours, stranger,’ gasped Brega after he had recovered his breath. ‘I thought I was carrion for certain.’ Brega tugged at the bindings lashed about his left arm, as if to alert his saviour to his predicament. But his saviour had other matters to attend to. The bounty hunter turned from the prisoner and crouched over Nuccio’s corpse.

Brega craned his neck as far as he could to see what the killer was doing. He soon wished that he hadn’t. Brunner was leaning on the slain ruffian’s chest, a flat wedge-like device gripped in his gloved hand. Brega watched in horror as the man quickly pried the three crossbow bolts from Nuccio’s body. He raised each bolt to his visor as he pried them from the corpse. The one dug out of Nuccio’s chest was discarded into the dust. The others he put back into the box-like magazine of the crossbow. Then the bounty hunter’s hand fell upon the pommel of the massive knife sheathed between pistol and sword on his belt. Brunner freed the blade, its serrated edge gleaming in the light, then he leaned back over Nuccio’s body.

Eventually the bounty hunter rose, dropping his dripping trophy into a small sack. Then he turned and strode over to Brega’s bound figure once more.

‘My name is Brunner, and this is your unlucky day,’ his icy voice rasped. Brega cried out just as the man’s gloved hand smashed into his face, but the smuggler was unconscious before the sound could fully be uttered.

Bruno Brega awoke slowly, moaning in pain. His first thought was infuriation that he should be feeling pain. The priests always said that there was no suffering in Morr’s realm, only eternal rest and silence. He tried to raise a hand to feel the lump he sensed bulging from his forehead where the bounty hunter had smashed him, but the bindings prevented him from doing so. For a moment, the smuggler was puzzled – he was clearly no longer stretched out on the ground between the stakes. As he opened his eyes, Brega realised that he was lying across the back of a horse, his wrists and ankles bound together underneath the animal’s belly. The motion he had sensed was now clear to him: he was being carried like a sack of goods by a pack animal. He tried to twist his wrists inside his bindings, but they were held securely.

Brega wondered if his luck could desert him any more completely. Everything had gone wrong for him since he had stolen the old clay pot from Altdorf. It was clearly an artefact of immense antiquity, some relic from the vast deserts of Araby. Even Brega had heard the old legends brought back by the crusaders about the daemons of the desert, the mythical djinn, who were imprisoned in sorcerous vessels long ago, so that they might be enslaved by the most reckless and power-mad of Araby’s mystics. When he had first seen the old clay pot, he had sensed its disturbing air of unnaturalness, and wondered what might lie within it. One of his fellow smugglers, well versed in antiquities, had claimed that the picture writing on the pot was older than the scratch-script of Araby, from before the birth of the Empire even. He had seen such picture writing before, in the curio shops of Luccini and Miragliano, where relics looted from the Land of the Dead sometimes found their way.

Other hands had stolen the jar from a private collection, but Brega and his band of smugglers had been given the duty of getting the ancient artefact out of the Empire. There was a man in the Tilean city-state of Remas who was prepared to pay a small fortune for the object. The agent of the Tilean had given Brega and his men a most handsome advance.

The journey, however, had gone badly. On the Reik, as they were making their way towards Marienburg, the smugglers had been attacked by river pirates of a most despicable cast. They were led by a bearded madman, a devotee of the terrible Blood God. Several of Brega’s mob died before their vessel finally eluded the pirates. Ironically they had taken protection from the imposing cannon of the infamous Reiksfang prison as the running battle drew close to its walls.

Further along the River Reik, a winged thing – some nightmare horror – had fallen upon their decks, wantonly slaughtering men before it was disposed of, and its foul corpse pushed overboard. In Marienburg, Brega’s ship had joined a small flotilla that was making its way to the southern ports of Tilea. This was the first good omen since leaving Altdorf, but it did not take long for the tide of ill fortune to catch up with them again. Norse raiders struck the fleet shortly after it left Marienburg, and seven ships were left burning as the fleet fled the fury of the Northmen. Off the shores of Bretonnia, some ghastly sea beast had plucked seven crewmen from the deck of the ship nearest Brega’s. Rounding the horn of Estalia, a thick fog had enshrouded the fleet. When the fog eventually lifted, the leading ship began to sail back towards the west, and its deck was not manned by human shapes…

Brega was certain that they would never reach Remas. He had even considered tossing the pot into the sea, certain that it was accursed. But the prospect of the gold awaiting him at the end of the journey stayed him. In the end, they did reach Remas, and Brega immediately set about meeting their mysterious employer. They met in a darkened back room of a dockside tavern. Brega could not get a decent look at the Tilean, such were the shadows in the chamber. He had presented the man with the clay jar, at which the Tilean had laughed – an unnerving, insane sound. Brega rose from the table, shocked by the mad laughter, just as the Tilean leapt to his feet, drawing a sword. Brega drew his own sword then, prepared to teach the cackling madman to honour his contracts.

The villain had rounded the table, emerging into the feeble light that filtered into the room from the gaps between the planks of the door. Brega could see that the man was dressed well, a fashionable black cloak fell from his shoulders and a gaudy gold buckle gleamed from his belt. Of the man’s face, however, he could see nothing, for it was covered by a glistening red mask, such as might be worn to a masque ball, shaped like a fang-mouthed skull. From the deep pits of the grotesque mask’s sockets, crazed eyes blazed with maniacal emotion – exhilaration mixed with bloodlust to form a psychopathic frenzy. Brega had not seen such insanity, even in the eyes of Chaos-worshipping pirates.

For a brief second Brega was able to study his duplicitous employer. But as he rounded the table, the man had brought his sword slashing toward Brega who barely managed to turn it aside with his own weapon. The madman’s stroke had not been skilful; it was too wild and bloodthirsty to belong to any school of swordsmanship. But what it lacked in skill, it made up for in strength. As Brega met the man’s blow, his body shuddered with the force. The madman’s sabre deflected toward the table, and crunched through it like a hot knife through cheese. As the table fell apart, and his attacker recovered from his failed strike, Brega brought his own sword upward to a guarding position. It was then that he saw how deeply the lunatic’s hit had bitten into his own blade. There was a deep notch in the smuggler’s sword, so deep that barely an inch of steel held the two halves together.

Dread bubbled up within the smuggler. Even a madman should not have such strength; no mere human foe could call upon such immense power. Brega cast his ruined sword into the face of the ruby mask and turned, fleeing from the tiny dark room and the bloodthirsty horror that lusted after his life.

For what seemed like hours, the smuggler fled through the streets of Remas, trying to lose his maniacal pursuer. There was something evil in that jar, he was sure, and he had unwittingly delivered it to someone who would put it to some dreadful purpose.

In a heroic tale, Brega would have tried to find and undo the terrible evil he had unwittingly brought to the city, but he was too sensible to be a hero. He stole a horse and fled Remas at the first opportunity. He had ridden first for Miragliano and the company of his mistress, retrieving a small cache of money he had left in her care. Then he had ridden for this old hideout, to recover still more loot. But he had been too slow. Nuccio and some of his former comrades had been waiting for him, mistaking the reason for his flight from Remas. They were determined to get their share of the money that Brega had never collected.

Now he was free of his murderous comrades, but he had traded them for someone worse. Brega had never set eyes upon the bounty killer called Brunner, but he had heard enough tales whispered about him in thieves’ dens across the Old World to know that he did not want to.

Brega looked about him. He could see the grim figure of the bounty hunter, mounted upon a massive bay horse, scabbards dangling from the steed’s harness. Behind the bay was a smaller grey packhorse, laden down with numerous sacks and equipment, and a few small wooden kegs. A rope connected the packhorse’s bridle to the bounty hunter’s steed, and another rope connected Brega’s mount to the packhorse.

Not only had Brega’s situation changed, his surroundings had as well. The cabin and its clearing, indeed the entire forest, were no small distance behind them. Brega could see the monstrous slopes of the Vaults towering before him. The terrain was hilly and rocky, the path upon which their animals marched little more than a game trail. Brega could see traces of worked stone lying toppled among the raw boulders scattered along the side of the trail. They were half-formed columns and unfinished faces, abandoned long ago to the mercy of rain and wind.

The bounty hunter turned his head and stared at his prisoner. The black steel of his helmet nodded in satisfaction.

‘Good to see you’re coming around,’ the cold voice said. ‘I was afraid that I might have hit you too hard. You’re no good to me dead.’

The chill manner in which the bounty hunter voiced this twisted parody of concern caused Brega’s heart to skip a beat. The smuggler mumbled a feeble prayer to Ranald under his breath. More loudly he said: ‘I have done nothing! I was set upon by bandits and thought you to be my rescuer! My family is poor, they cannot afford to pay you a ransom.’

Brunner laughed, a dry chuckle that was as menacing as the snarl of a rabid wolf. ‘Perhaps, but Judge Vaulkberg has deep pockets. Deep enough to satisfy me.’

The bounty hunter’s words caused Brega to moan with despair. Judge Vaulkberg! The most notorious magistrate in the Empire, infamous for his harsh judgements and wanton cruelty. There was a tale that he had once ordered that a priestess of Verena’s lips be branded with a heated iron for speaking out against the execution of a man who failed to doff his cap in Vaulkberg’s courtroom. And that had been one of Vaulkberg’s more lenient judgements. More often he set his ogre executioner to cause limbs to bend in unusual ways.

‘You are mistaken!’ Brega declared.

The bounty hunter twisted about in his saddle, fixing him with a cold stare.

‘I don’t make mistakes,’ Brunner said. ‘You are Bruno Brega, a petty smuggler. You usually operate moving black lotus on the Upper Reik, when you are not sneaking grain past the Emperor’s excise men in Altdorf.’

The smuggler’s head sagged back down against the side of his horse. He knew that any feeble attempt to convince the bounty hunter that he had the wrong man would not work. Ahead of him, the hired killer chuckled.

‘I know all about you, Brega,’ Brunner stated. ‘I came all the way from Altdorf to look for you.’ The bounty hunter laughed again. ‘Ordinarily I wouldn’t cross a county for a reptile like you, but Vaulkberg’s put a very pretty price on your head, a very pretty price. It seems that last cargo of beef you smuggled into the capital was tainted, corrupt. It also seems that Vaulkberg’s mistress ate some of it and died. The judge has spent quite a few lonely nights thinking about what he wants to do to you.’

Brega stifled a sob of horror. Judge Vaulkberg was a cruel, sadistic fiend when he was in good humour. The smuggler didn’t even want to think what he would be like angry.

‘I have hidden quite a bit of money,’ Brega let the words hastily slip from his lips. ‘I can pay you well!’ The bounty hunter shot the smuggler a withering glare from behind his visor.

‘When I accept a commission, I see it through,’ he snarled. ‘If you offer me money again before we get to the Reikland, I’ll stuff a gag in that scheming mouth of yours. And that might make eating a bit difficult.’

Brega bit down any reply. He didn’t really want to find out whether the bounty hunter was bluffing. Instead he looked past Brunner, casting his gaze toward the towering peaks of the Vaults. Unlike most of the teeming masses of humanity, Brega could read a map, and had seen them on many occasions. Knowing where one was and where one was going was vital for a smuggler. But that knowledge brought home a frightening realisation. Brunner meant to take him back to the Empire, to the Reikland. There was only one problem with that, and Brega was looking at it.

The Old World was divided by a series of mighty mountain ranges. The Apuccinis formed the eastern boundary of Tilea, separating the merchant princes and their holdings from the lawless Borderlands. The Irranas, marking the northern limit of Tilea, acted as a barrier between the city states and the kingdom of Bretonnia. Running northward, the legend-haunted Grey Mountains, the fence between the Empire and Bretonnia.

The Black Mountains formed the southern border of the domain of Karl Franz; it was the Empire’s rocky wall that kept out the orcs of the Badlands. Each of these ranges stretched for hundreds of miles, uncrossable save for a handful of closely guarded passes.

All four of these massive formations met in the north-east corner of Tilea, crashing together in a vast, titanic upland known as the Vaults. It was an impenetrable region of towering rock larger than the entire Plain of Luccini. Some of the Irranas and the Apuccinis reached heights of ten thousand feet and more. Amidst the Black and Grey Mountains, there were peaks that exceeded fifteen thousand feet. Even the tallest of these was a mere hill compared to the peaks of the Vaults. They loomed above the converging ranges like giants, the smallest of their number near the twenty thousand foot mark. The tallest were nearly five thousand feet higher still. Only the World’s Edge range could boast loftier heights in all the Old World.

The peaks of the Vaults were perpetually shrouded in snow. Even in the most sweltering Tilean summer, the ice held its grip upon the uppermost slopes. The mountains were steep, jagged and twisted like the fangs of some gargantuan rock daemon. Deep crevices wormed their way amongst them, their depths unknown and unknowable. Even the most reckless of mountain explorers had not dared the inner reaches of the Vaults, for they understood that the giant formations of stone and earth did not offer adventure and discovery, only the promise of a lonely death.

‘You’re taking me to the Reikland?’ Brega asked, a new tone of horror creeping into his voice.

‘Worked that out on your own, did you?’ Brunner replied, without turning to look at his prisoner.

‘But the Vaults!’ exclaimed the smuggler. ‘Surely you can’t mean to cross the Vaults?’ The bounty killer did not reply. Terror welled up within Brega. ‘You can’t cross the mountains! Even if we don’t get eaten by beasts or orcs, there isn’t a path through them! We’d freeze on the high slopes, or plummet into a crevasse! You can’t go over the mountains!’

Brunner twisted around in the saddle. ‘Who said that we are going over them?’

Four grimy men sat in the darkened interior of a long unused cabin. Two of them pulled heavy cloaks tighter about their bodies as the cold night wind slithered between the gaps in the log walls. One of them despondently tended the small fire that had been made in the shallow pit at the centre of the cabin.

‘Such valiant scum I keep company with,’ snorted Sollima. He cast a surly look at his comrades. ‘Let that vermin just swoop in and steal Brega right out from under us!’ He placed a finger against his gruesome nose. ‘From right under our very noses!’

‘I didn’t see you standing your ground after he killed Nuccio!’ snarled the man tending the fire.

‘I was too busy chasing the coat tails of my very brave friends!’ spat Sollima.

‘Call me a coward again, you rat, and I’ll take the rest of your nose!’ grumbled the fire-stoker, his grimy hand falling to the sword at his side.

The other two smugglers shrugged free of their cloaks to draw their swords. The older of the two, whose head was encased in a steel helmet, moved between the arguing men.

‘Settle down, both of you!’ he ordered. ‘We should be thinking how to get Brega back, not trying to kill one another!’

‘And who elected you boss?’ snapped Sollima. The smuggler beside the fire pulled his sword free from its sheath.

‘I’ve had my fill of the lot of you!’ the fire-stoker growled through his beard. ‘I’ll get him on my own, and I can guarantee Brega will spill what he knows when I get my hands on him!’

‘And you think you’ll be able to kill that bounty hunter on your own, do you?’ scoffed the helmeted smuggler. ‘Think a bit of slink and strike will work on his sort?’

The companion of the helmeted smuggler worked his grimy hand toward the hilt of the dagger on his belt, prepared to back whatever play for leadership his friend was about to make. As he did so, he noticed a peculiar and foul odour. He glanced toward the open doorway of the cabin, grimacing at the thick animal stench coming from that direction. He wondered what sort of animal had slunk its way past the thin curtain of hide covering the doorway, and hoped that it was not a rat or some equally noxious creature. The growing ire of the other smugglers, however, quickly drew his attention from the vile smell and whatever bore it.

‘I suppose you have a better idea?’ hissed Sollima.

‘As a matter of fact–’ the smuggler began to reply. But his words trailed off into a dry rasp as a shaft of wood blossomed from his breast, red feathers turning a deeper shade of crimson as the smuggler’s lifeblood engulfed them. The man fell, dropping his sword from nerveless fingers. His helmet rolled away as his body struck the earthen floor.

The other rogues sprang into action. The smuggler at the fire sprang away from the pit, seeking the safety of the shadows. Sollima dived for his gear, hastily retrieving a small wooden shield. No sooner had he gained the shield than an arrow thudded into it, the force of the impact causing him to fall onto his back.

The last smuggler ran for the door of the cabin, sparing no thought for his comrades. All he wanted was to put as much distance as he could between himself and the thing that had set upon them. His cowardice marked him as the second to die. As he ran for the door, a figure rose from the shadows near the portal. It was indistinct, with only a vague suggestion of a human form. The smuggler could see a bow gripped in one of its hands. The other struck out at him. He had a moment to feel fingers of steel close about his throat. His remaining seconds of life were nothing but pain.

The stricken smuggler stumbled back into the centre of the cabin, hands clamped about the gory weeping hole beneath his jaw, torn tissue trying to give voice to his silent scream. The dying man stumbled into the pit, toppling into the flames. For a moment, he tried to pull himself out, but didn’t have enough strength to do so. His clutching fingers finally grew still as the life faded from his body.

Sollima and the bearded smuggler watched their comrade’s demise. Both men gave a yelp of fright as a gory object was tossed into the area illuminated by the fire. It landed beside the dead smuggler’s arm. It was his throat.

Their attacker strode forward, its movements peculiar and inhuman. An animal reek overwhelmed even the stink of burning flesh rising from the fire pit.

Eerie eyes stared from the black shadow of its head, reflecting the flickering light of the fire with an orange luminosity. It was roughly human in shape, shrouded in a hooded garment cast about its shoulders. As the two smugglers watched, their shadowy attacker drew a curved sword from a scabbard on its belt.

‘I have questions,’ the shadow spoke in a terrifying rasping croak. ‘You will answer them for me.’ The thing stepped further into the light, allowing the two men to see its twisted form. Its head swept from side to side, fixing each of the men with its ghastly gaze, despite the darkness. ‘You will tell me everything,’ the rasping voice gurgled, ‘before you die.’

With a snarl of his own, the bearded smuggler fired his crossbow at the monster. The shape dropped to a crouch with impossible speed and the bolt whistled over its cowled head. Before the man could reload, the shape sprang up and leapt forward like a pouncing tiger. Sollima could not see the creature any longer, as it disappeared into the patch of darkness the other smuggler was hiding in. But he could hear what ensued. The sound of screams. The sound of tearing cloth. The sound of flesh being ripped from bone.

Orange eyes gleamed at Sollima from the shadows. The smuggler watched as the creature walked back into the light. Blood covered its arms and dripped from its hands. It gestured toward Sollima with its unbloodied sword. The smuggler cringed backwards, his back crushed against the timber wall.

‘You are dead,’ the creature hissed. ‘Slow or long, it is your choice how you die. Choose quickly.’

Sollima gave a shriek of fright, throwing his sword and shield away. He scrambled forward, dropping to his hands and knees as he entered the circle of light. Tears of terror dripped from his eyes, and inarticulate sobs escaped from his chest.

‘Please,’ he gasped between sobbing breaths. ‘I’ll tell you whatever you want! Don’t kill me!’

The shadow bent down over the weeping smuggler. One of its malformed hands closed about the man’s chin, forcing his face upward. The other wiped away the man’s tears, leaving smears of blood as it removed the watery trails. The orange eyes burned from the shadows of the hood.

‘Tell me, little rabbit,’ the rasping gurgle croaked. ‘Where is Bruno Brega?’

The shadow was as immobile as a statue. Between choking sobs, Sollima related what had befallen them, how they had captured their former leader only to lose him to the armoured bounty hunter. When the smuggler had finished his story, the shadow made a strange, dry sound like the yapping of a parched jackal.

‘Brunner,’ the shape chuckled. ‘You think to take my merchandise to market.’ Another bestial laugh hissed from the grim shadow. ‘I think not. I’ve followed your scent before.’ Orange eyes fixed their gaze upon the cringeing, pitiful man at the shadow’s feet.

‘You’ve done well to tell me this,’ the shadow croaked. ‘But it is best that I ensure the truth of your words.’ Sollima gave another squeal of fright as the hand on his chin closed about his lower jaw, crushing the bone with a grasp as strong as steel. He squirmed in agony, batting ineffectually at the hand that held him. His thrashings became still more desperate as he saw the shadow remove a small hollow tube of metal from its clothing.

‘You’ve been deceived, little rabbit,’ the shadow hissed, firming its grip upon the metal implement. ‘You have no choice in how you die.’

‘Under the mountains,’ Brega mumbled to himself for the hundredth time as Brunner led the horses along a narrow deer run that wove its way through the tall, imposing pines that had surrounded them for the past two days. Since they had resumed their journey after their camp on the first night, the bounty hunter had at least allowed him to sit upright on his horse. It was some small comfort not to be lugged about like a sack of grain. The smuggler straightened himself up in the saddle, and sneered down at the bounty hunter as he walked ahead of his mount, the massive bay, Fiend. ‘You know, you have quite a reputation,’ he said. ‘But I had never heard that you were mad!’

Brunner did not deign to reply, intent upon the meagre trail ahead. Suddenly, the bounty hunter turned his head, staring off into the woods. Behind him, Brega stiffened – cold fear ran through his body. What had the killer heard, he wondered? Bound as he was, Brega would be defenceless if they were attacked. And in the wild and forsaken foothills at the base of the Vaults, anything could be stalking the forest. ‘What is it?’ Brega demanded, his voice somewhat shrill. ‘What did you hear?’

‘Nothing,’ replied the bounty hunter, stalking back to Brega’s steed. Brunner grabbed the smuggler about the waist and roughly shoved him from the saddle. Brega crashed to earth, landing hard in a patch of ferns. Groans of pain emanated from the man. Brunner ignored them. He strode over to the fallen thief and pulled him to his feet.

‘What are you doing?’ Brega groaned. Suddenly a vile odour, like an army’s privy, washed over them both.

‘Hunting,’ the bounty hunter responded, drawing a black powder pistol from its belly holster. With his other hand, he grabbed the rope binding Brega’s hands together. ‘You’re going to help me.’

Without another word, Brunner strode from the trail, dragging the protesting smuggler behind him.

The foul stink grew as Brunner led Brega deeper into the forest. Brega corrected himself: it was more like the stench of an enormous army privy. He was amazed that anything could grow in such an atmosphere, that the leaves on the ferns and bushes hadn’t curled up and died from being immersed in such a vile miasma. His fear increased as the bounty hunter continued onwards. There could be no question, he was heading toward the source of the smell. Brega trembled as he contemplated the manner of hideous charnel that might be the source of the reek. Worse, he wondered what sort of beings might dwell in such a place? Nightmare tales of undead horrors and the twisted perversions of Chaos gathered in his mind.

At last, when the smell had grown strong enough to bring tears to Brega’s eyes, the trees parted into a slight clearing. A massive old oak tree dominated the far side of the clearing. It was ancient, its bulk as wide as a house. It was also dying: half of its branches were bare and twisted as the claws of a skeleton, many others sported sickly yellow leaves. The huge, serpent-like roots of the tree bulged from the dirt. And beneath them, the ground had been undermined, small holes angled downward into the earth. Only a few yards from the holes lay a huge pile of greasy black and green matter. Black horseflies buzzed about the reeking pile. The sight of the dung mound made Brega retch.

Small figures prowled about the openings of the holes. They were slight, thin-limbed creatures, somewhat like malnourished children in overall shape. Their heads were large, with long sharp noses, and pointed dog-like ears. Their grinning mouths were filled with sharp teeth. None of them was more than twenty inches high, and none wore more than a grimy scrap of cloth or fur about its waist. The pallid green skin of the creatures was hairless and glistened like the hide of a salamander.

The miserable things turned as the two men entered the clearing. Scores of tiny red eyes considered the bounty hunter and his prisoner.

Brunner did not meet their confused, idiot gazes, but carefully sighted his pistol on the largest of the snotlings, whose arms were cradled about a rusty kitchen knife as though it were a great sword.

Brunner fired the pistol. The shot pulverised the tiny goblinoid, shattering its head and shoulders, and spraying its fellows with a greasy green paste. The other snotlings mewled pathetically as the roar of the pistol echoed about the clearing. They dropped whatever they were carrying and scrambled back into their holes.

Brunner holstered his pistol and pulled a leather bag from his belt.

‘That will keep their heads down until their tiny brains forget why they are hiding,’ Brunner declared. He thrust the bag into Brega’s hands.

‘What do you want me to do with this?’ the smuggler demanded. Brunner pointed a gloved finger at the pile of snotling shit.

Brega blanched. ‘Shoot me now! I’m not touching that!’ Brunner shrugged his shoulders and began to draw the Headsman from its sheath.

‘Why do you want snotling manure?’ Brega asked as he stepped toward the offensive heap. Brunner slid the partially drawn knife back into its sheath.

‘Where we are going, it will be beneficial for us to stink like a snotling set,’ the bounty hunter explained. ‘Anything that catches wind of us will think we are snotlings.’ Brunner gestured at the exploded snotling carcass. ‘Not much meat on those. Not many creatures can stomach eating something that wallows in its own dung. The things that do put snotling on their menu are small, and easily dealt with.’ Brunner gestured for Brega to get to work.

‘Can I at least have something to shovel with?’ Brega complained as he crouched beside the mound, face wrinkled in disgust.

‘No,’ Brunner answered. ‘And make sure you fill the bag.’

The bounty hunter’s destination came into view a half-day’s ride from the snotling set. From the rise of a low hill, Brunner stared down, his keen gaze focused upon the great gaping hole in the side of the mountain.

It was a colossal, imposing portal that put the great city gates of Altdorf to shame. Nearly fifty feet wide, and just as tall, the massive doorway was supported by gigantic granite columns that were twenty feet broad at their base. The entire length of the columns was engraved and sculpted. Scrolling and runes had been carved with consummate skill into the tough, ancient stone. Several figures had once been carved into the sides of the columns, ordered in ranks like a silent company of guardsmen, but they had all been defaced and vandalised. Shards of their stone faces peered upward from the rubble that had collected beneath the archway between the columns. Crude symbols in blood and other rude pigments had been daubed over the figures, robbing them further of their silent dignity.

Between the hill and the doorway, the land was littered with boulders and heaps of stone, their sprawl quietly suggesting the outlines of long-collapsed buildings, of forgotten walls and ruined towers. From a small grassy knoll, part of a grim, bearded marble head glowered at the two riders, as though it were angered at this additional violation of the dead settlement. Brunner did not spare a second glance at the giant stone head. He did not honour his own gods, and he would not honour those of another race.

‘Ranald’s cloak!’ exclaimed Brega. ‘Where are we?’ There was awe in his voice. He had visited some of the greatest cities of the Empire such as Altdorf and Marienburg but the ponderous mass here belittled the walls and fortresses of men.

‘It is our road through the mountains,’ explained Brunner, eyes still prowling the wasted piles of rubble. His gaze sought to penetrate the dark, shadowy cavern between the columns. ‘I learned of this road years ago, from a dwarf who once plied my trade. In ages past it was a great stronghold of the Ever-Kingdom. But it fell, like so many of the great dwarf cities. To fire and earthquake and goblin, it fell, nearly a thousand years ago.’ Brunner’s voice had dropped into a strange, sombre tone, as if the age of the ruins, and the weight of their history, had forced a measure of respect into his tones. ‘Only a few of the dwarfs still use this road, for it is long and perilous. Even among their kind, there are not many brave enough to enter the darkness beneath the Vaults. Among men, there are even fewer.’

Brunner favoured Brega with a cold, icy smile. ‘After the shadows of Karag-dar, you may find even the Reiksfang prison a comforting sight.’

The bounty hunter nudged Fiend with his spurs and the horse began to walk slowly down the hill, pulling his grey packhorse Paychest and Brega’s steed after it.

‘There are things in dark, forgotten places more fearsome than pain and agony and the red ruin of Judge Vaulkberg’s mercy,’ the bounty hunter said in a low voice.

Ahead, the great cavern-like door of Karag-dar yawned like the mouth of a giant beast, eager to consume them.

Beyond the gaping doorway of Karag-dar, all was darkness and silence. The brooding antiquity seemed tangible; even the horses were ill at ease. Brega swallowed the lump in his throat, his breath turning to laboured gulps, as though the pressure of the weight of the Vaults was seeping into the tunnel and making even the air heavy. Ahead of him, Brunner dismounted, and made his way back to Paychest to remove a lantern and some oil from a pack fastened to the animal’s back.

The light of the lantern revealed a gigantic chamber just beyond the great doorway. Tall rectangular columns reached up into the mountain, each of which was topped by a bearded dwarf whose outspread arms and arched back supported the ceiling high above. Each of the twenty pillars was thus adorned. But no two of the giant statues were alike; each one was meticulously sculpted to preserve the likeness of some ancestor lord who had died before Karag-dar was founded.

The bounty hunter played the light of the lantern across the length of the chamber. Once this had been a sort of trading post, where the dwarfs had swapped weapons of steel for grain and meat with the primitive tribes who would one day become the Tilean people. Great doors of steel had once towered within the doorway, protecting this hall from any outside invader. But those doors were now broken and dismantled, their steel scavenged by goblins and orcs to craft crude implements of slaughter. Brunner considered the empty doorway for a moment, the light of the sun streaming between the columns, past the ranks of defaced stone sentinels. Then he trained the light towards the interior of the mountain.

The stalls of the dwarf merchants were long gone, the stone cast down and carried away, the wood rotted and decayed into dust. Only the great flute of the canal that had run from deep within the stronghold to this chamber broke the emptiness of the hall. A thin trickle of water still flowed along it, feeding into a simple granite cistern, the fish and cave frogs carved upon it broken and defaced, and covered with a spongy yellow mould.

Playing the light of the lantern still further into the hall, Brunner could see the far wall, flanked by columns just as ponderous and elaborate as those at the entrance to the mountain. There, he knew, was the true beginning of the stronghold, the true entrance to the night world that had once been Karag-dar. He stared for some time at the dark, gaping opening between the columns where a second set of steel doors had once stood. At last, he was content that there was no furtive shape lingering in the darkness. Nevertheless he listened for a moment more, then turned his attention back to Paychest. He removed a bundle from the packhorse and strode back towards Brega.

‘You’re mad,’ the smuggler gasped. ‘We’ll die! You can’t take me in there!’

The bounty hunter ignored him and removed the foul-smelling sack tied behind Brega’s saddle. Then he strode back toward Fiend. Undoing the first bundle, Brunner removed some crude hide leggings, slit along their backs. He tied four of these to Fiend’s legs. Then he dipped his hand into the bag of snotling filth. Fiend snorted in protest as the bounty hunter lifted the dung from the sack. Brunner patted the animal’s flank by way of apology, then began to smear the muck on the hide leggings.

‘I’ve used this road before,’ Brunner commented as he rose from his task and repeated his labour on Paychest. ‘And come out alive.’ The bounty hunter looked over at his prisoner. ‘Keep your head, and you will too.’ Brega found the chuckle that accompanied Brunner’s remark almost as unsettling as the tunnel itself.

‘Look, I have quite a bit of gold stashed away…’ Brega pleaded. Brunner strode toward the smuggler’s horse. He looked at the man for a moment, as though considering his proposal. Then, without warning, he pushed Brega from the saddle. The bound man struck the floor hard, crying out as he landed. Brunner ignored the man’s painful moans and tied the remaining hide leggings to Brega’s steed.

‘I warned you once before that I would gag you if you made that offer to me again,’ the bounty hunter said, not looking at his prisoner. ‘I have a mind to fill your mouth with this before I shut it,’ he added as he rubbed a handful of snotling dung into the hide leggings. Brega whined in terror as Brunner rose from his task and stalked toward him. He began to scramble away on his hands and knees, but the bounty hunter’s foot pinned down the end of the rope that bound his hands together, causing him to fall and crash his chin against the unyielding floor. Brega rolled onto his back, yelling in protest as Brunner loomed over him, his gloved hand filled with reeking filth. The bounty hunter smiled and rubbed the excrement on Brega’s tunic.

‘Can’t have some critter down here thinking that you are for eating, can I?’ Brunner laughed. He bent down, picked up the rope and began to walk off. Brega scrambled on his knees after the bounty hunter, trying to keep from being dragged by his captor.

Brunner fastened the rope to the saddle on Fiend’s back, then calmly checked the magazine of his repeating crossbow as he drew it from its holster on the saddle.

‘The gun’s not loaded,’ he said, indicating the weapon sheathed on the other side of the horse. ‘And I thought it best if I kept hold of this.’

‘You can’t take me in there without any protection!’ cried Brega.

‘I’m your protection,’ the bounty hunter replied. ‘You’re worth a lot to me… alive. I don’t intend to let anything happen to you.’ Brunner smiled at his prisoner. ‘Not until I’m paid, anyway.’

The bounty hunter turned away, narrowing the beam of the lantern to a slender dagger of light. Taking hold of Fiend’s reins, he began to walk both the animals and Brega toward the deeper darkness beyond the inner doorway.

‘The dwarf tunnels run clean through the mountain,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘It will take us a week to reach the far side. Keep quiet. Keep alert. Listen for the slightest noise.’ Brunner cast a final look back at Brega.

‘Remember,’ he warned, ‘if I die, you’re goblin food.’

It was some time before the bounty hunter at last found a place for them to rest. They had trudged for long hours through the darkness. Brega had been impressed by the mammoth size of the main tunnel while they had remained within it. It seemed to grow even more massive as they journeyed deeper into the mountain; rising into the very heights above. A few stretches had crumbled and collapsed, leaving giant boulders and huge chunks of worked stone strewn about the tunnel floor. For a time, Brunner had navigated a path through the debris, relying more upon the light of his lantern than the feeble sunlight that trickled downward from cracks in the ceiling.

Brega noted the mouths of other tunnels branching off from the main hall, but the bounty hunter had ignored them, never pausing to look at the intricate carvings, nor the often defaced statues that loomed beside them.

All was silence save for the muffled sound of the horses’ hooves. Brunner had fastened fur boots around the feet of the animals to soften the sound. Only the gentle babble of the faint stream of water flowing along the old channel added to the noise of their progress.

Brunner paused but once, stopping to examine more closely a crude banner wedged into a pile of rock. He stared at it for some time, so Brega had a chance to look as well. It was a homely thing, a length of poorly cured hide stretched between two braces fashioned from the bones of some creature.

The glyph upon it was a simple representation of a snarling mouth, with black fanged teeth bared for violence and battle. Soon after, Brunner had diverted their route into a side tunnel. The ceiling in the second passage dropped alarmingly – from the towering height of the main hall to only fifteen or twenty feet. It was only then that Brega became aware once more of the heavy brooding pressure of the mountain above.

Brunner had explained the detour after Brega had pestered him for some time about it. ‘This area was controlled by the Sharp Nose clan the last time I passed through these halls. Over the years, I’ve come to a sort of understanding with the Sharp Nose goblins. They leave me alone and I don’t kill them.’

‘Then why the detour?’ Brega asked.

‘Because that totem we found was from the Black Fangs. Nasty bastards, even by goblin standards. I’d prefer to steer clear of them. We’ve never come to any sort of understanding, you see.’

They had continued on along the side tunnel, taking several turns until Brega could not be certain if they were running parallel to the main hall or were now working their way back toward the entrance. They passed numerous rooms and chambers, the bounty hunter pausing to make sure the rooms were empty as they passed. Once, Brega heard something huge moving in the darkness. Brunner had grown tense, creeping forward to investigate the sound. He had soon returned, wiping sweat from his brow, before replacing the helmet.

‘Only a stone troll,’ he said with relief. ‘We’ll wait here until it moves on.’

‘What did you think it was?’ Brega asked nervously. The bounty hunter just shook his head.

‘Something that should be very far from here, a thing the dwarfs named Arijogk.’ Brunner uttered a nervous laugh. ‘In Khazalid, as I understand, it means “Slaughter”. A Chaos troll, from the Wastes themselves. Come down during the Great War Against Chaos, or so the dwarfs say.’

‘Have you ever seen it?’ Brega wondered, fear creeping into his voice.

‘I’ve seen what it can do,’ Brunner replied. ‘That was enough for me.’

At length, when the bounty hunter decided that the stone troll had moved on, he began to lead the way onward into the blackness.

They made camp at last in a small room that branched off from the tunnel. Brunner chose the site because it had two entrances, which would make it more easy to defend and would give them an escape route if they were set upon by enemies or wild beasts. There was also the fact that he heard water running in the room and a quick examination revealed an old cistern fed by iron pipes. Brunner tasted the water, deciding that it was relatively pure, so the thirsty horses could drink.

The bounty hunter slipped Brega’s rope from Fiend’s saddle. Keeping the smuggler’s hands tied, he let his captive drink at the cistern while he retrieved a coarse blanket from Paychest’s load and settled himself on the floor.

Brega greedily drank the water. It had a stale, metallic taste to it, but it was welcome just the same. The smuggler rose from the cistern and began to move about the room, inspecting his surroundings.

‘Don’t go wandering off,’ Brunner advised, not rising from the blanket. ‘Something might find you before I do.’

Brega ignored the threat, and gazed at the carvings cut into the walls. He was struck by the craftsmanship of even the smallest details, the gently whirling scrollwork at the base of the walls, the savage, flowing cuts of the dwarf runes. If any of it was portable, it could probably fetch a tidy sum in Altdorf or Marienburg. The smuggler walked the length of the room, stopping when he encountered a small statue in the corner opposite the cistern.

‘The dwarfs certainly do good work,’ Brega declared. He reached forward, his hand sliding along the smooth surface of the small statue. ‘I doubt if any sculptor in Tilea could match this statue. It almost seems alive.’ Brunner did not pay the smuggler any attention. He was busy cleaning his sword.

‘Why, you can even see the folds in the statue’s cloak, the chips in its teeth,’ Brega continued his observations. ‘Such detail. And on a statue of a goblin, of all things.’

Brunner leapt from his seat on the floor, advancing swiftly toward Brega, his longsword, an ancient blade named Drakesmalice, gripped tightly in his hand. The bounty hunter placed great value on the sword, and never removed it from its sheath without good reason. Brega cringed back from the bounty hunter’s fearsome advance, but Brunner had his eyes focused upon the stone goblin.

‘It’s all right,’ the smuggler muttered weakly. ‘It’s only a statue.’

Brunner pointed at the goblin. ‘More details you didn’t notice. See these shiny things along its nose? They are steel spikes, mark of the Sharp Nose clan. That knife thrust through its belt is steel as well. How do you imagine a sculptor managed that?’ Brega stared in a mix of wonder and horror at the goblin, pondering the bounty hunter’s question. The bounty hunter nodded. There might be some risk in examining the statue, but it was slight compared to the possibility of running into its creator. Brunner pulled a hatchet from his belt and smashed its blunt end against the statue. The statue rocked in place, then crumbled apart with a second blow of the hatchet. The sound of the stone breaking echoed from the chamber walls. The smuggler winced at the sound, wondering what sort of things might be drawn to the din.

Brega smelled the foul odour of rotten meat even over the stench of the snotling dung. Brunner replaced his hatchet and drew a knife. On the floor, the broken pieces of the goblin lay in a heap. The seemingly solid statue had been revealed to be hollow, its interior filled with grey, decayed flesh. Brunner stabbed the meat with the tip of his knife.

‘Dead a few weeks, at least,’ he said, rising from the petrified corpse. ‘Hopefully what did this is far away by now.’

Brega cringed from the gruesome remains, now understanding that the statue had once been a real goblin, a creature of flesh changed to stone by some hideous sorcery. The skin on the back of his neck began to crawl as he considered the horror of such an unnatural death.

‘Like I said,’ Brunner called out to his prisoner as he sat back down, moving his crossbow to a more readily available position beside him. ‘Don’t wander off.’

A few hours later the bounty hunter was back on the march, making his way through the darkness of the abandoned dwarf stronghold. Brega was at a loss to understand how the man was able to navigate with nothing but the slender beam of light emanating from the lantern. It seemed an almost unnatural skill, as if some sixth sense was guiding Brunner through the forgotten passages, showing him a path through the vacant halls and silent chambers.

Brunner stopped abruptly. Crouching, he examined something on the floor and nodded his armoured head. He trained his lantern on the walls, and examined them closely. Then he turned, stalking past Brega to the packs and sacks lashed to Paychest’s back. The bounty hunter removed a long pole of about four feet in length. He moved back to the fore of his little train and slowly urged Fiend to back up. When he had made the animals retreat a satisfactory distance, he returned his attention to the object he had spotted on the floor.

Brega watched in silence as Brunner carefully worked the tip of the pole underneath a tripwire – a length of tough sinew – stretched across the corridor. The bounty hunter slowly lifted the wire until at last it snapped. There was a flash and a large crude blade of steel fell from a crack in the wall, scything across the corridor just in front of Brunner like an Estalian pendulum. The pole snapped with a loud crack as the blade struck it. The murderous length of steel ended its fatal swing by crashing against the other wall, the metal trembling from the force of the impact.

‘We’re lucky you saw it!’ Brega exclaimed. By way of response the bounty hunter readied his crossbow.

‘I’ve been expecting something like that,’ he said, eyes scanning the darkness.

‘Expecting it?’ Brega asked, his voice nervous.

‘It explains why they’ve been waiting,’ Brunner said. ‘We’ve been followed for the last mile,’ he added.

Before Brega could ask his captor what he was talking about, shapes launched themselves from the shadows, shrieking and snarling with shrill, gibbering voices. The bounty hunter aimed back along the length of the horses and fired. There was a meaty sound of steel punching into flesh and a high-pitched scream. Brega heard a body fall and something metal clatter along the stone floor.

Brunner turned and faced the passage before them. Red eyes gleamed in the darkness, and small shadowy shapes raced forward. The bounty hunter did not wait – he fired two more bolts into the oncoming creatures. Two sets of red eyes pitched to the floor, whining in pain. Brunner turned once more, firing another bolt into one of the creatures closing upon the horses. There was another shriek of pain as the bolt found its mark. The horses were agitated now, snorting and moving about the narrow corridor. Brega braced himself, certain that the bounty hunter’s huge steed was going to crush him against the wall.

Brunner drew his sword as the first of their attackers began to close upon him. With his other hand, he threw open the lantern, allowing its light to engulf the corridor. The light revealed their attackers. There were at least a dozen of them, each no larger than a small child. The creatures wore dark hooded cloaks, ropes of dried animal gut tied about their waists. They had short, bandy legs and long, spidery arms. The faces that grinned from beneath the hoods were twisted and malicious. Each of the goblins’ long noses was marked by a set of small steel spikes driven into the spongy flesh.

As the light of the lantern was released, the goblins drew short their charge, raising their arms to their faces to protect their eyes from the sudden light. Brunner did not hesitate, for that might give the greenskins a chance to recover, an opportunity to decide if they would use the axes and clubs gripped in their hands or turn tail and flee before the light. The bounty hunter’s sword slashed through the face of the first goblin he closed upon. The creature was flung aside by the force of the blow and crumpled into a shrieking heap against the wall.

A second goblin was disembowelled, its green-black blood spraying the walls. A third was decapitated, the head still mouthing a shriek as it sailed from its shoulders. A fourth goblin found Brunner’s steel crunching through its chest. The bounty hunter kicked his foot against the mutilated goblin, tearing its body from his blade.

Still blinded by the unexpected brilliance of the lantern, the other goblins could hear the rapid and brutal demise of their fellows, their deaths all the more horrible because they couldn’t be seen. The remaining goblins dropped their weapons, crying and wailing in piteous, simpering tones as they began to retreat. Blinded, the goblins crashed into one another in their reckless haste to escape the fearsome man they had hoped to claim as their prey. To speed them on their way, Brunner grabbed hold of the slowest by its hood and smashed its skull against the murderous steel pendulum.

Brunner turned from the carnage he had wrought, and stooped to clean his blade with the cloak of a slain goblin.

Brega stared in awe at the scattered goblin bodies. The entire fight had taken perhaps two minutes, yet the bounty hunter had managed to kill nine of the creatures in that time.

‘Sharp Noses,’ Brunner declared as he stepped forward to take Fiend’s reins. ‘Fortunately they don’t have any skill with a bow, otherwise they might have given me some trouble. That probably explains why their clan is so small.’

Brega fixed an angry glare at the bounty hunter. ‘I thought you said you had an understanding with the Sharp Noses!’ he accused.

‘I do,’ Brunner said. ‘But sometimes you have to kill a few of the young ones. Remind them why they should listen to their elders.’

For long hours they continued on, through the endless night of Karag-dar. Brega could tell that the area they were now travelling in was derelict even by the standards of the former dwarf stronghold. There was no sign of activity in this area, though the walls were pitted in places by the rude tunnels and caves that he had come to understand were the work of goblins. Yet unlike the rest of the tunnels and halls they had walked, there was a sense of an even longer neglect here, as though even the savage inheritors of Karag-dar had forsaken this place. Cobwebs were everywhere, dust lay thick upon the floor. As they moved onward, there was a scratching sound. Brega looked up. With some horror he discovered the source of the sound. A thin trickle of dust fell from overhead. That was the reason these tunnels were abandoned, the smuggler realised with dread. Goblins were not great miners, like the dwarfs, but even they could recognise when a tunnel was ready to collapse!

Brega cleared his throat of the lump that had risen there and opened his mouth to speak. The bounty hunter turned on him, a gloved finger upon his lips.

‘Be quiet,’ Brunner whispered. ‘Make any noise here and you may just bring the entire mountain down on us.’ The killer smiled coldly. ‘Before you go thinking that would be a nice death, consider that you might not die outright in the collapse. You might be trapped, trapped under tons of stone and rock, where even the gods won’t be able to find you. Buried alive in the shadows of Karag-dar. Starving, suffocating, spending long miserable hours waiting for the end. Or perhaps the rats of Karag-dar might find you first and hasten your passing.’

Brega shuddered as the bounty hunter detailed such a terrible death. Brunner smiled as he watched his prisoner recoil from the image he had painted for him. He turned once more, leading the horses still deeper into the silent, brooding dark.

‘Mind the cobwebs,’ Brunner warned. ‘The spiders grow quite large down here.’ The bounty hunter’s last whispers drifted back to Brega as a disembodied sigh. ‘They need to.’

It seemed like days later before the bounty hunter called a stop, though Brega knew that so much time could not possibly have been spent on the march. The lengthy periods of tedium had been interspersed with moments of absolute horror as dust drifted down or rocks shifted overhead. Once, Brega had been certain the entire tunnel was going to collapse when he saw the numerous goblin holes that had been cut into the walls, weakening the ancient surety of the dwarf construction. But in the end, he and the horses had received only a bath of dust and a few bruises from small stones that rained down upon them.

At last the unstable section was behind them. Brunner trained his lantern frequently on the ceiling, studying it and peered into the rooms and side passages that they passed. Finally he smiled, nodding for Brega to come forward and see what he had discovered.

‘Bats?’ the smuggler asked as he saw the squeaking shapes clutching to the ceiling of the room.

‘They don’t settle in areas that are weak,’ the bounty hunter explained. ‘Like rats on ships, they have a certain sense for such things. It means we can finally take a rest.’ The bounty hunter pushed Brega back into the corridor. ‘I’m sure the horses would appreciate a bit of a break.’

Quickly the bounty hunter examined a side passage beyond the room where the bats had made their nest. After a keen study of the floor, Brunner began to unburden the horses. Brega stood aside, letting him work. He had learned not to get in Brunner’s way, and his hand still pained him from the last time he had drawn too close to one of the bounty hunter’s many weapons.

He sat on a rock and watched as Brunner removed the saddles and harnesses from his animals. When he had finished watering and feeding the horses, Brunner removed a blanket from the unloaded packs and sat down, his back against the rough wall, crossbow at his side.

Brega watched Brunner dig a piece of dried meat from a pouch on his belt. His mouth watered as he watched the bounty hunter eat, his stomach groaning in protest at the sight.

‘Don’t I get anything?’ he asked. Brunner looked over at his prisoner.

‘You ate yesterday,’ the cold voice of the killer stated between bites.

‘I thought you wanted to bring me to Vaulkberg alive,’ protested Brega.

Brunner stared at his prisoner. ‘Alive doesn’t mean well-fed,’ he said. ‘I keep you hungry, I keep you weak. I keep you weak, and there is less chance of you getting into any mischief. You’ll eat tomorrow.’ Brunner tore another bite from the salted beef. ‘If you behave. Maybe.’

Brega slumped, gazing at the floor, trying to ignore the sounds of Brunner chewing. He was all right when it came to fighting the Emperor’s customs men, or fleeing the city guards through midnight streets, but this perpetual, unremitting ordeal was more than his courage could endure. The reality of his situation suddenly smashed him flat as the last, foolish shred of hope deserted him. He had held out hope that somehow, by some trick of fate or stroke of fortune, he would escape this hideous situation. He had thought that, despite everything, he might be able to outwit his captor. But now he faced the cruel, harsh reality. There was no escape. In a dozen ways, his captor had seen to it, a hundred measures to crush the very thought from his mind.

‘What… what do you think… he will do to me?’ Brega asked, his voice hollow, broken.

Brunner stopped eating, stuffing the rest of the meat back into its pouch. He paused for a moment, as if to consider the question.

‘I’ve seen Vaulkberg’s ogre pull limbs out of their sockets,’ Brunner said, his voice emotionless. ‘He’s quite good at it. Of course, the judge also keeps an entire staff of professional torturers at the Reiksfang. Perhaps he’ll let them have a go at you for a while. I’ve heard they can keep a man at the edge of death for weeks.’

Brega broke out into a cold sweat, his swarthy skin paling beneath its dusky tones, as the bounty hunter’s casual description of his end stabbed into his mind like a hot knife.

‘Of course, perhaps he’ll just make you face Raubfalke, Vaulkberg’s champion. I’ve heard that even Ludwig Schwarzhelm lost a fencing match to him. But somehow I think that Vaulkberg will have something more inventive in store for you than simple trial by combat.’ Brunner suddenly looked away, pulling the helmet from his head. A look of intense concentration marked his weathered features. Brega began to mumble a half-coherent offer of wealth and fortune for the bounty hunter to consider. Brunner fixed the man with an angry glare.

‘Be quiet,’ he hissed. ‘We have company.’

The bounty hunter’s words brought Brega instantly from his mournful state. A new and more immediate fear stiffened his frame. Brega stared into the dark of the tunnel, his eyes trying to detect a trace of motion in the dark. The bounty hunter was silent beside him, his body tense, waiting.

By degrees, a sound began to manifest itself. It was a strange, curious noise, like the clacking of wooden shoes across a cobblestone lane, or the sound of a fisherman cracking open a lobster’s shell. It was a strange, indecipherable sound, and it made Brega slink back towards the bounty hunter, taking refuge in the evil he knew.

The sound grew louder and louder. The horses reacted as it drew closer, stomping their booted hooves and tugging at the ropes that bound them to iron spikes set into the floor. The bounty hunter remained vigilant, the strange repeating crossbow held at the ready, the lantern burning brightly. There was still no sign of whatever was making the sound, but it was growing louder, definitely advancing towards the camp.

At last, the light from the lantern revealed something large, shiny and black in the dark. Brunner fired the instant he saw the reflected light. The sound of the bolt punching through a solid mass was punctuated by a liquid, popping sound. But whatever it was did not cry out in pain; it merely advanced more quickly. Brega gave a shriek of fright, and leapt to his feet making to run past the frightened horses. Brunner spared a glance at him, stamping his foot down on the dangling length of rope that bound the man’s hands together. Brega’s flight was brought short, and he crashed to the cold stone floor. It seemed he had not learned his lesson the last time he had tried to flee.

Brunner fired again as the shape scuttled forward. Once more the bolt found its mark, punching into the oncoming mass. Once again the creature did not seem to notice the injury it had been dealt. As it charged more fully into the light, its form was revealed: it was an immense black beetle, a mammoth insect as large as a pony, huge rending mandibles spread before its armoured head. Multi-faceted blue eyes gleamed weirdly in the feeble light. Brunner’s bolts had impacted against the insect’s thorax, and from each wound, pulpy green paste bubbled and oozed, like rancid porridge boiling from a pot.

Brunner sighted at the monster and fired again, the bolt smashing into the insect’s eye. The eye broke apart under the impact, and a burst of pulpy material spewed from the wound.

The insect kept coming, the long antennae before its head weaving about, the mandibles clacking together like the jaws of a bear trap. Brunner fired again, the bolt smashing through a leg segment. A thin fluid drooled from the injury and the insect’s pace slowed a fraction. Yet still it came.

Brega wailed in horror as he saw the seemingly unkillable monster scuttle forward. The horses echoed the man’s fear. Brunner drew his sword, glaring at the monster. The insect did not meet his gaze. Its antennae were twitching before its damaged head, seemingly intent on the struggling horses. Brunner turned around, severing the rope holding Brega’s horse with one clean stroke. The horse turned and galloped away as soon as it was freed. The beetle, antennae still twitching, scurried after the fleeing animal. Brunner shook his head and sheathed his sword.

‘Damn things are like orcs,’ he commented. ‘They don’t know when to lie down and die.’ He looked at Brega. The man was still curled up on the ground, his head hidden within his hands. Brunner kicked the man with the toe of his boot.

‘Rest time is over,’ he said. ‘We’re moving on.’

Brega looked around, turning his head to try and find the monster. ‘Where did it go?’ he asked.

‘It must hunt by something other than sight down here, in all this dark,’ Brunner replied, lifting a heavy blanket to Paychest’s back. ‘Movement, if my guess is right. I just gave it something a bit more lively than us to occupy it.’ Brega looked around again, noting for the first time that his horse was gone.

‘Hope you like walking,’ the bounty hunter commented as he tied a bundle to the back of his packhorse. ‘You’ll have a fair amount to do even when we get out of here.’

A few hours later the passages they had been following emptied out into a vast, cavernous main hall. The hall was hundreds of feet tall, the upper limits of the pillars supporting it disappearing into darkness overhead. The columns were vast, like giant trees, so wide that six men would be hard pressed to link hands around their bases. The far ends of the hall stretched beyond the vision of the two men, vanishing perhaps half a mile away where the inky darkness became absolute. At first, Brega thought that they had emerged outside, so bright was the vista, so immediately did the sense of pressure lessen. But the smuggler’s elation soon dissipated as he saw that they were still in the subterranean world of Karag-dar.

This section of the main hall was lit by some means that Brega could not fathom. He could not have guessed that he was seeing distilled sunlight, captured and reflected a dozen times over by crystal lenses scattered like a series of sentinels between the main hall and the side of the mountain far above. The light came down as a grey filmy thing, reflected from the white columns and pillars that supported the ceiling. Arches spread between the pillars, ornamental supports from which had once hung tapestries and banners depicting the triumphs and glories of the Ever-Kingdom. But such glories had long since rotted away, claimed by the ages. The sombre, silent statues of bearded dwarf warriors loomed from the walls, each scarred by axe and hammer and defaced by crude goblin glyphs.

In the centre of the hall, the shallow water channel emptied into a wide pool before diverting north and south to bear its life-giving waters to deeper halls within the mountain. The light gleamed and danced upon the waters, casting weird shadows upon the forest of pillars and the rubble piles where some had fallen. A low gallery and an upper walkway wound among the pillars, leading toward chambers and tunnels even higher in the mountain.

Brunner observed these carefully before leading the way into the hall, his keen gaze constantly alert for goblins. He was not certain how far the Black Fangs’ territory extended, but it would be in keeping with their vile and craven nature to lurk upon the upper walkways and pepper an enemy with arrows rather than trading sword strokes.

At last, satisfied that no goblin waited upon the upper floors, and that the piles of rubble were likewise clear, Brunner began to lead the way into the main hall. It would only take a day or so now to reach the Reikland side of Karag-dar, but the bounty hunter was intent on remaining wary every step of the way.

The arrow nearly placed itself squarely in Brunner’s face. Had the bounty hunter not hesitated, warned by some sudden feeling of unease, it would have struck him down. Instead, as Brunner’s step faltered, the arrow swept past the visor of his helm. Brunner dropped into a crouch at once, taking cover behind Paychest, pulling Brega down with a savage tug on the man’s leg.

In the darkness, something hissed its displeasure, sending another arrow screaming from the blackness to sink itself in the large salt-filled keg lashed to the packhorse. Brunner snarled an oath, moving his animals toward the sparse safety of a pile of rubble. A third arrow nearly caught the bounty hunter once more, striking the vambrace encasing his left arm. Brunner could feel the impact rattle his bones as the arrow was deflected by the armour. He dropped down into the cover of the rubble, pushing Brega down onto his face.

‘Stay low,’ Brunner ordered, hefting his repeating crossbow. ‘There is only one of them, but it will only take one arrow to make you worthless to me.’ The bounty hunter looked over the edge of the rock pile, trying to see where the attacker was firing from. Another arrow smacked into the stone, missing Brunner’s head by a matter of inches.

‘Give up the smuggler!’ a rasping, bubbling voice called out from the darkness. ‘You’ll never leave here with him, Brunner.’ The voice trailed off for a moment into a deep, grunting laugh. ‘Not alive, anyway.’

Brunner crouched low behind the rubble, cursing under his breath. He knew that voice – it had the nightmare tone that stayed with a man to the end of his days. He had hoped to never hear it again, but at the same time, he had known that their paths would inevitably cross again.

‘Think it will be that easy?’ Brunner called back. ‘Krogh!’

Krogh. An ugly name for an ugly thing. It had been human, once. It had been a soldier, though where and when, Brunner had never known. But something had happened to Krogh, something terrible. Something had slowly, insidiously and completely consumed his humanity. Most men would have destroyed themselves. Others would have run into the wilds, to become the beasts their bodies had come to resemble. Still others would have quietly waited for the witch hunters to cleanse them with scourge and flame. But Krogh had found another path. He had abandoned his homeland, turned to the city states, to Tilea, where decadent, corrupt men would hire the unspeakable to perform the unthinkable. He had not embraced the kiss of Chaos, but neither had he denied it. Whatever Krogh had once been, he was now only a hunter. A hunter of men.

‘We can make a deal,’ the rotting voice of Krogh hissed. Brunner tried to follow the sound, but it seemed to dance and echo from every crack and flaw in the walls.

‘What kind of deal?’ Brunner called back. He caught the look of absolute horror that had found its way onto Brega’s face. It seemed he was more afraid of being handed over to the source of that ghastly voice than remaining with Brunner.

The bounty hunter smiled. Brega had good reason to be afraid.

Brunner gestured with his crossbow, making it clear that Brega would not get far if he decided to make a break for it.

‘If you hand over Brega, I’ll let you live,’ Krogh’s voice croaked. Another arrow struck the pile of rocks, just to lend a little weight to the offer.

Brunner smiled. He had a fairly good idea where his enemy was now. If he could just keep him talking, he might get a better fix. ‘I’ll kill him myself before I hand him over to you!’ Brunner snarled. Brega’s eyes grew even wider and more alarmed. The smuggler couldn’t understand how things could keep getting worse.

An inhuman, bestial laughter hissed its way from the shadows. ‘Kill him then! I don’t need him alive to collect my bounty!’ The mutant laughed again, the sound becoming a daemonic chorus as it bounced from pillar and stone.

‘Hand him over, Brunner!’ Krogh ordered. ‘Give him up, and I spare your life. Walk away, Brunner. Cut your losses.’

Brunner risked another look over the edge of the rubble pile. He was certain now that Krogh was slowly circling in the shadows. He had slipped into a pattern. Brunner was pretty sure where the mutant’s steps would bring him.

‘Don’t insult us both!’ Brunner called back as he ducked down behind the rocks. ‘I know as sure as a toad has warts that as soon as I walk out, you’ll put a shaft through my face. And you know that if you let me walk away, I’ll get Brega back before you can slink back to the entrance!’

Krogh laughed again. ‘I’m being paid seven hundred gold ducats for the smuggler,’ he boasted. ‘But I’ll kill you for free!’

‘I’m glad you feel that way,’ Brunner muttered to himself. The bounty hunter leapt from his cover, firing the repeating crossbow in a quick series of shots. The bolts hammered into the darkness behind a tall column beneath one of the causeways. Brunner was certain that he heard the shots impact against something solid, but did not hedge his bets. He rolled back into cover behind the rocks. He waited for some time, ears straining for any suggestion of sound.

‘Did you get him?’ whispered Brega, his voice filled with nervous terror. Brunner threw his prisoner a sour look. He flipped his crossbow around, then removed his helm, placing it over the stock. Gripping the weapon by its front, he slowly edged the stock over the top of the rocks. Almost instantly, something struck the helmet, ricocheting off into the dark.

‘Apparently not,’ Brunner sighed, recovering the crossbow. He stared for a moment at the new dent in his blackened helm, before replacing it on his head.

‘Hand him over now,’ Krogh’s rasping voice commanded. ‘I’ll not ask again!’

Awareness slowly roused the monster from its slumber. Heavy, leathery lids snapped open. Crescent-shaped pupils narrowed and expanded as they adjusted to the meagre light. The monster shifted its weight, working stiffness from its muscles. After a moment, its tiny mind considered what had disturbed its slumber.

For many thousands of years had the monster’s kind prowled the darkness of Karag-dar. Even in the time when the halls had been ruled by the dwarfs, had they been there, slinking through the shadows. The monsters had some slight intelligence: over the centuries, they had learned to equate the slightest vibration in the rock with the presence of prey – lone miners and craftsmen toiling in the darkness.

It did not concern the monster that its lengthy tail was already fat and bloated with so much digested nourishment that it could safely sleep for months without needing to hunt. Indeed, the world was very simple for the monster; it was reacted by only two stimuli: danger and food.

The monster began to creep through the dark tunnels, drawn by the slight vibration its incredible senses detected: the impact of an arrow upon a pile of stone.

Brunner considered his situation. In his previous encounters with the mutant bounty killer he’d been lucky to escape with his life, and it seemed luck would have to play a part in his survival this time. Krogh had him pinned down, and his attempt to shoot the mutant with his crossbow had been his best chance of outsmarting his rival. Now, he knew, Krogh would be twice as wary, his inhumanly keen senses and reflexes ready for Brunner to try again. That would be a mistake, and Brunner knew that he had already used up his quota of mistakes in this deadly game. No, if he was to regain control of this situation, Krogh would have to make the next mistake.

Brunner looked over at the cowering Brega. The bounty hunter drew a deep breath. He was reluctant to do what he was now considering, but it had become a matter of his own life, and no matter how much gold Judge Vaulkberg was offering, it would do him no good if he could not collect it.

The bounty hunter removed his helm. His cold eyes met his prisoner’s. Brunner held the helm before his gaze for a moment, then looked back at Brega.

‘Ever thought about becoming a bounty hunter?’ Brunner’s icy voice asked.

Brega wailed in horror as he realised what Brunner was planning. The smuggler began to scramble away, crawling from his captor. Brunner pounced upon the man, rolling the struggling Tilean onto his back. The bounty hunter smashed a fist under Brega’s ribs, knocking the wind out of him. The smuggler’s struggle became a boneless pained twitch. Brunner did not give the man time to recover. He held the helmet over Brega’s head, and slowly lowered it.

A sudden noise caused him to stop. His head whipped about, eyes seeking out the source of the sound. It came again, a sickly, hollow trumpet note. Brunner replaced the helm on his own head, rising from his groaning captive.

‘Change of plan,’ Brunner said in the same frigid tone.

Krogh spun about in the shadows, a bestial snarl rumbling from his twisted frame. He sprang away from the column he had been hiding behind, lest Brunner heard the sound and trained his crossbow on him. Krogh had been taken by surprise by the other bounty hunter’s earlier attack – one of the hastily fired bolts had skinned his leg. Krogh had no desire to tempt Brunner’s aim a second time.

Now the situation had become decidedly more complicated. Sullen rage built up within Krogh as he heard the horn sound again. Given enough time, he could have worked his way around to Brunner’s position and come upon him from behind. When the need arose, Krogh could move so quietly that even an elf would be hard pressed to hear him. But such stealth would take time, and time was something Krogh no longer had.

The mutant bounty hunter hissed again, a soft, angry sound, and crouched behind the toppled head of some forgotten dwarf king. The interlopers would pay dearly for intruding upon his business this day. The beast would slake its thirst for blood on these foolish things. Then it would be Brunner’s turn to die.

The horn sounded again. Brunner risked a glance around the edge of the rubble. He swore as he saw what was slowly making its way out of the shadows. He had hoped for something to distract Krogh, but not something that put him in jeopardy as well. The bounty hunter turned his head – shapes were also stealing out from the mouth of the northward tunnel. Looking upward, he saw more diminutive figures stealthily slinking across the causeways, descending towards the main hall from the upper corridors.

They were little more than indistinct shadows, but Brunner knew all too well what they were. Each of the tiny shapes was the height of a child, and wore a black hooded robe about its scrawny frame. Brunner knew that those garments would carry the red eye of the night goblin tribes, and that, unlike the Sharp Noses, these goblins would bear no ritual scarring. Instead, they would sport mouths filled with teeth blackened by fungus-distilled pigments. Krogh had chosen to set up his ambush within the territory of the Black Fangs.

Several of the tiny figures gathered upon the causeways, facing towards the pool. They unslung small short bows and nocked arrows to the weapons. One goblin, slightly larger than the others, lifted a horn crafted from the dried and hollowed stem of a gigantic mushroom and blew out another whiny, diseased note. In reply, more goblins began to slink forward, with spears and a motley arrangement of weapons held at the ready. Brunner could hear the monsters whispering in their thin voices, presumably relishing the prospect of adding more trophies to the halls of the Black Fangs.

Brunner took aim, deciding that the archers were his most pressing concern. He fired his crossbow, smashing a bolt into one of the robed creatures. The goblin uttered a shrill shriek as it fell from the causeway. The goblins below abandoned their caution, and began squealing like enraged swine as they charged. The goblins above let loose their arrows. Most of the missiles fell well short of Brunner’s position, many more were ill-aimed, striking into shadowy spots far removed from the bounty hunter. Only a very few bounced from the rubble pile.

Brunner took no satisfaction in the erratic aim of the goblins. He knew that the Black Fangs often coated their arrows in vile poisons, and that only one of them would need to find its mark to finish him.

The bounty hunter rose from his cover once more. There were perhaps twenty goblins below, cackling and gibbering as they ran towards him. There were at least another twenty above. He weighed up his chances. Among the Black Fangs, the more capable warriors became bowmen, preferring to kill an enemy from a distance than to risk their own neck at close quarters.

The goblins below were closer, but far less dangerous than those above. Brunner made his decision and fired again. Once more a black-garbed creature howled in horror as the bolt found its mark and the archer fell from his lofty height. Brunner smiled as he heard a second crossbow, somewhere to his left, hit another goblin archer. It seemed that Krogh had reached the same decision. Abandoning stealth, the mutant had turned to the stopping power of his own crossbow rather than the quiet of his longbow.

Brunner emptied the remaining bolts in the repeater, hitting two more of the goblins, though one was only wounded by his shot. Another goblin fell as Krogh’s weapon punched a hole in its head. Its body fell within Brunner’s line of sight, and he watched as it exploded in a bright burst of green blood upon striking the unyielding stone floor. The bounty hunter drew his pistol and sword, bracing himself for the melee of armed goblins.

Twenty to one were poor odds, but Brunner was determined that the greenskins would pay a heavy toll before they got him. The odds became better, however, when half the goblins broke off to charge towards Krogh’s hiding place. Above him, the archers had been maintaining sporadic fire. The arrows were more concentrated now, aimed either at Brunner’s position or that of his rival. As their kindred charged forward, a goblin arrow smashed into the back of a spear-wielding wretch. The creature gave a yelp of pain and surprise, then fell on its face. The goblin beside it snarled a curse in its own whispery tongue, and hurled its own spear back at the distant archers. The weapon fell short of its mark, but the archers replied in kind. Both the spear-thrower and a goblin bearing a spiked mace fell, shrieking and whining as black-fletched arrows sank into their bodies.

The first goblin to reach Brunner screamed a savage war cry. Brunner blew its head apart in a spectacular discharge of his pistol. The goblin scrambling up behind it screamed in horror as the greasy brain matter of its comrade splashed across its face. The bounty hunter’s sword lashed out, cleaving the goblin’s head from its shoulders before the creature could recover.

A third goblin rounded the rock pile, snarling angrily. It held a great hatchet in its thin hands. Brunner struck the weapon with his sword, knocking it from the goblin’s grasp. A look of amused embarrassment overcame the goblin’s grinning face as the hatchet skidded across the floor. Brunner smashed the flat of his sword at the grinning mouth, knocking the creature away, and leaving it to choke on its broken teeth. Another goblin crawled its way to the top of the rock pile, its red eyes gleaming with sadistic merriment. Brunner roared at the little creature, causing the goblin to flinch and slide away back down the rock pile.

More goblins were rounding the barrier. Brunner drew the short hatchet from his belt, turning his body from side to side to favour all of his wretched foes with his cold stare.

‘Come on!’ Brunner snarled. ‘Which of you little vermin is tired of living!’

Krogh’s sword flashed downwards in a murderous arc. The goblin did not even have time to scream as its body was cut cleanly in two. The two goblins to either side of the brutally slain creature gave simultaneous squeaks of fright, fleeing as fast as their tiny legs could move them. The beast within Krogh wanted to pounce, and chase after them, but the mind subdued it. To chase after them would be to forsake his cover, to tempt the goblin archers above. Krogh darted aside as another group of goblins closed upon him. The mutant’s hand whipped out, grabbing the haft of the spear the foremost goblin thrust at him. The wood splintered under Krogh’s iron strength. The goblin tried to pull the weapon back, but Krogh’s hand had already released it, and was darting for the goblin’s throat.

With a loud snap, Krogh cracked the goblin’s neck. He lifted the still-twitching body and threw it into the other goblins.

They fell in a tangle of limbs and curses, three pairs of hands trying to push aside the weight of their dead comrade. But even as they struggled, Krogh pounced, landing amid them, his bare hands ripping and tearing. The whiny sounds the goblins made as they died rose from the blackness, and unsettled the archers on the causeway above. They were not sure what sort of intruders they were fighting. And the little monsters wondered if they really wanted to know.

Brunner pulled his hatchet from a black-cloaked body, watching as his last adversary turned and ran. He had added four more goblins to his tally. Drakesmalice was slick with green blood and pulpy bits of goblin flesh. The bounty hunter spat, wiping his weapons clean on the cloak of the last goblin he had slain. The sickly mushroom horn sounded again. Brunner looked over the rock pile, trying to see what new mischief the goblins were planning. He snarled a curse on the heads of any gods that happened to be listening.

A strangely clad goblin had appeared on the causeway next to another fifteen archers who were still sporadically firing their weapons downwards. A new mob of black-robed archers scurried after it, bows held in their scrawny fists, adding another score to the ranks of his adversaries. This new goblin was taller and thinner than the others, its black robes picked out by crude embroidery that looked like yellow flames. He watched the thin goblin exchange words with the horn-bearing chief, then saw the creature draw a large white object from a big leather bag. The chieftain nodded his head, his shrill laughter inciting merriment among the archers. Brunner picked up the skaven crossbow and began to quickly reload it.

The Black Fangs had earned a fearsome reputation among the few who dared the forsaken passages of Karag-dar. It was not their skill as warriors that made them fearsome, nor some uncanny expertise with the bow. It was their knowledge and use of all manner of poisons and venoms that earned them their sinister infamy.

The masters of that despicable art were their shamans: twisted, depraved, maniacal creatures, hated as much as they were feared. The shamans drew their sorcery from the spirit force of their tribesmen, and turned their aggressive energies into murderous spells. The goblin gods were known for their fickleness, however, and the shamans had long ago learned not to rely solely upon their sorcery. These shaman were masters of more than magic. They cultivated deadly strains of noxious fungi unknown to even the chieftains of the Black Fangs, and cemented their power by offering death in innumerable sinister guises should their divine edicts be questioned.

The tall goblin held the white ball in front of it and began to chant in a low, scratchy voice. The chieftain slunk away, putting ten feet between himself and the chanting shaman. Brunner fumbled to get the bolt into the crossbow’s magazine, knowing that time was running short. But even as he did so the chieftain blew on his horn again. Brunner turned his gaze to the tunnels. He was not surprised to see more black-garbed shapes pouring into the main hall. But a sick sensation gripped his stomach as he saw what was with them.

Amongst the rabble of armed night goblins there were four hulking shapes, great greenskinned giants, crude armour lashed about their bodies, massive blades clutched in their monstrous paws. These new monsters squinted beneath their helms as their eyes adjusted to the light, their massive, tusked faces snarling. Beside them, a goblin with its hood drawn back capered, gripping a small staff with jawbones dangling from its tip. Like the teeth of the goblins, the jawbones had been dyed black, and the symbol of the Black Fangs was carried on in the large tattoo that covered the goblin’s bare scalp.

It tittered wickedly, gesturing with its staff. The lumbering monsters beside it snorted in contempt, but strode forward just the same. Brunner shook his head, his eyes straying to the shaman above. The tall goblin had finished its chant and Brunner could see that the round white ball had turned yellow – whatever magical preservation the shaman had worked upon the puffball was dispelled. The fungus was active now, a lethal spore bomb.

Taking courage from the four orc mercenaries in their midst, the goblins were charging forward, twenty strong. Brunner swore again. They would be on him far too soon, and orcs, he knew, would not go down as easily as their smaller kin. Against four orcs, the bounty hunter did not favour his chances. But they would still be better than the certain death the shaman held in its claws.

The monster scuttled forward. It was not able to detect sounds very well, but it could sense the impact of running feet; it could see the warm bodies racing about in the darkness ahead. Warmth, like the gentle vibration in the rock, was also a sign of food. The monster increased its pace.

Its heat-based gaze settled upon the nearest warm body. The monster prepared to attack.

The goblin shaman cackled, a dry rattling sound. It was enjoying the fear and awe of its fellows on the causeway. The creature paused for an instant to let the terror of its fellows, and the absolute dread of the terrible weapon invigorate its black heart. Suddenly, the warm feeling coursing through the shaman’s veins was interrupted by a powerful force that smashed into its ribs. The shaman twisted about, spun by the force of the impact. Even wounded, with a death-dealing bolt in its lungs, the monster maintained a careful hold of the spore bomb, its own fear of the weapon greater than that of its impending death.

The shaman’s thin shriek caused the orcs to look upward. The goblin mystic was lost in a cloud of white gas as a red-fletched arrow pierced the puffball. The white explosion engulfed ten of the nearest archers, their shrill screams echoing across the great hall. The dust drifted outwards, catching a dozen other archers. The goblins shrieked as the caustic spores dissolved their flesh, ate away their eyes and liquefied their bones. Still screaming and pawing at their crumbling forms, the archers collapsed into their black cloaks, the garments filthy with the lethal white powder.

Two more goblins leapt from the causeway, preferring to topple to their deaths than brave the deadly spores. The other archers scrambled to race back into the upper tunnels.

The horn-bearing chieftain blew furiously on his instrument, trying to stem the rout. But even as he tried to assert his authority, a well-aimed shot from one of the archers silenced him. An arrow transfixed his throat.

Some of the goblins were charging toward the rubble where Krogh had fired his deadly shot. The black fanged creatures tittered frenziedly as they advanced, spears held before them, swords and clubs waving wildly above their heads. The goblins were trying to incite a maniacal courage in their craven hearts, trying to convince themselves that they would overcome their foe and take long, bloody pleasure in avenging their fallen shaman.

A black shape lunged out of the shadows, landing on the foremost goblin, and crushing the creature beneath its feet. The broken warrior squealed in agony as green blood exploded from its mouth. Krogh did not spare a thought for the writhing form beneath him; he lashed out with his sword, cutting the arm from another of the startled would-be attackers. The goblin went down, thin screams replacing its earlier howl of retribution. Krogh turned from the maimed greenskin and lashed out at another of his adversaries, opening the neck of a club-bearing goblin. Only the cloth of the creature’s hood prevented the head from flying from its body.

The tattooed goblin noticed that the attack on Krogh had begun to falter. Snarling at the top of its voice, the goblin gestured at the tattered figure of the bounty hunter, and shook his staff at his enemy. The biggest of the orcs favoured the goblin with another sneer, then barked a brutal string of grunts at one of his fellows. The orc broke off and charged toward Krogh. The others, still supported by a dozen goblins, sprinted toward the other adversary.

Brunner spat on the floor, shaking his head angrily. ‘Sure, send only one of those bastards for Krogh,’ he hissed. Raising his crossbow, he sighted at the oncoming brutes. The bounty hunter fired, and the bolt smashed into the helm of one of the orcs. The bolt bit into the metal, and Brunner could see a thin trickle of green ooze running into the orc’s face. But the bolt had not punched its way deep enough into the brute’s skull; it had not ruined the orc’s tiny brain. The orc kept coming, barely affected by a shot that would have instantly slain a human foe.

Brunner swore. Noticing the laughing goblin boss dancing about behind its orc mercenaries, Brunner fired again. The laughter was silenced as the bolt smashed through the goblin’s forehead and the tattooed monster was thrown across the floor. The bounty hunter knew that he should have at least tried to bring one of the orcs down. But knowing that the snivelling vermin that had led them to battle was carrion made Brunner feel a great sense of satisfaction.

He lifted the crossbow again, sighting on the biggest of the orcs. The brute was at least six feet tall, built like a brick privy. It wore a necklace of teeth about its thick neck, fangs and molars dug from the mouths of past victims. In its massive paws was a crude axe, like a great butcher’s cleaver. It was pitted and rusted, crumbly flakes of dried blood crusting its edge.

If he could kill their leader, it might make the orcs forget their bloodlust and flee. Brunner knew that the goblins would have no stomach for the fight if the orcs were to break. Disdaining to offer a prayer to any god, he took aim.

The goblin stared for a moment at the splattered remains of the archer. It was one of the night goblins that had decided to jump rather than face gruesome death by the shaman’s ruptured spore bomb. The goblin was not bothered by the ugly sight – its red beady eyes were focused on the weapon still clutched in the paws of its dead fellow. It reached down, and pulled the bow from the rigid fingers. Cackling happily, it tested the string, then reached down once more to remove the quiver of arrows from the corpse. With a bow of its own, the goblin would be one of the great warriors of its clan. The goblin had been close enough to the shrouded mutant to know that it never wanted to be near such an enemy again.

The goblin looked upward as its keen ears caught a sound. Its first thought was that the archers had returned to the causeway and were going to strike down the shrouded beast with their deadly arrows. But it froze in terror as it realised its mistake. The sound had come from beneath the causeway.

A monstrous creature was gripping the underside of the causeway. It was larger than a bull; its body covered in shiny brown and black scales where its skin was not pale and peeling. The upside down monster maintained its hold on the causeway with eight powerful legs – the sharp black claws of each foot sunk deep into the stone. A bloated, fat tail drooped from the monster’s body.

As the horrified goblin watched, the creature’s horned, reptilian head turned towards it. A membrane snapped into place over the monster’s eerie yellow eyes as it focussed on its prey. As the goblin tried to run, a bright flash of searing energy passed from the eyes of the basilisk to those of the goblin. In an instant the transforming Chaos energies spread from the goblin’s eyes to the rest of its body. The goblin’s terrified paralysis became permanent as its skin was turned to stone. The basilisk’s scaly jaws opened in a hungry yawn.

The bright flash of light spoiled Brunner’s shot. The bolt went wide, speeding off into the dark of the hall. But his misfire was not noticed by his enemies, for their attention was drawn to the source of the unnatural light. The orcs and goblins gawped at the stone goblin, with Chaos energies steaming from its body. A huge shape dropped from the underside of the causeway, falling to the ground with a meaty thud. The basilisk righted itself with a quick roll, then lumbered toward the stone goblin. A powerful blow from its long, fat tail shattered the statue, casting fragments about the hall. Steam rose from the super-heated meat within the stone shell. Once again the giant lizard monster smacked its scaly jaws, and a jagged, barbed tongue flitted from its mouth. It closed upon the nearest of the fragments and began to scrape the steaming meat from the stone shell with its barbed tongue.

The goblins whined amongst themselves as the predator fed, but the snarls and curses of the orcs stilled their fear. With a great roar, the orcs charged the feeding monster, the brutes thinking what a mighty trophy the fangs of such a beast might make. The basilisk seemed indifferent; it was intent upon its food. Only when a goblin spear was thrown into its side did the reptile look up.

Brunner continued to feed bolts into his crossbow as he watched the basilisk react to its attackers. Whichever way the fight went, he knew that he would have more killing to do.

Bruno Brega could hear the shouts and snarls of the battle. He did not know what was going on, nor did he have any great desire to find out. For the moment, Brunner was nowhere to be seen, and that was enough for Brega. The smuggler pulled himself to his feet, gripping a fallen boulder with his bound hands. Brega tested the lashings once again. There was no give in the ropes. He looked around him, sighting Paychest, and the numerous bundles strapped to the animal’s back.

Brega was sure he would find a blade somewhere amongst the bounty hunter’s gear. He needed something to cut through his ropes. He paused for a moment, gathered his courage, then decided upon his course of action. Swiftly, he moved toward the bounty hunter’s animals. As he did so, a dark shape rounded the pile of rubble that Brunner had employed as cover.

The goblin snarled wickedly as it ran towards Brega. The smuggler stopped, eyes wide with fright as the goblin slashed at him with its sword. In dodging the attack, Brega fell, and landed on his back. The goblin’s malicious laughter seethed through its fanged mouth as it noticed its enemy was bound. The vile creature scrambled forward.

Finding the conflict with the bounty hunters and the basilisk too perilous, the goblin was eager to slake its thirst for blood on a defenceless prisoner. The leering visage of the goblin’s malevolent face filled Brega’s vision as the greenskin lifted its sword for a murderous downward stroke.

The basilisk rounded on its attackers, hissing as it drew a deep breath. The goblin that had thrown the spear squeaked in fright, turning and fleeing as fast as its legs could carry it. Two other goblins hesitated, uncertain whether to press the assault or flee as well. Their hesitation made the decision for them. Angered by the wound in its left rear leg, the reptile scuttled forward at great speed. Powerful jaws snapped closed on the foremost goblin while a swipe from one of the reptile’s legs tore open the other. The basilisk crushed the maimed goblin under its foot, breaking those parts of the goblin its claws had not ripped apart. The giant lizard lifted its head, swallowing the still struggling form of its enemy whole. Then the monster was among the rest of its foes.

The basilisk’s movements were swift and brutal. The powerful tail lashed from side to side in battering blows that broke bones whenever it struck. As the enraged lizard lumbered amidst the greenskins, its claws slashed and ripped, its fanged jaws closing on green flesh as often as empty air. Mangled goblins were hurled about like rag dolls, their screaming bodies landing in tattered heaps to moan and whine in agony, and to painfully crawl from the rage of their monstrous foe.

The reptile’s rampage carried it through the goblins and their orc allies. Brunner readied himself as the maddened beast came near. He fired the repeating crossbow, and the bolt crunched into the thick bone just above the creature’s eye. The lizard reared back from the painful injury, its tree-like tail lashing the ground. Brunner fired again, this time putting a bolt into the monster’s cheek. The basilisk’s frenzied motion became even more agitated and it worked its injured jaw to try and remove the hurtful bolt embedded in its flesh.

The basilisk began to bob its body up and down in an angry, threatening display, its breath hissing loudly, wrathfully. Brunner fired again, the shot once more narrowly missing the monster’s eye. This time it sank into the flesh of the reptile’s neck. The bounty killer swore as he saw the membranes snap close over the lizard’s yellow eyes. The terrible Chaos energies were building up within the reptile. Brunner hastily averted his eyes, knowing as he did so that he left himself open to the rending claws and snapping jaws of the beast.

A thick, powerful axe-blow severed one of the basilisk’s rear legs. It spun about, its small brain too angry now to take any great notice of this new wound. The basilisk’s attacker lifted his axe for another cleaving stroke, but his piggish red eyes found themselves transfixed by the petrifying gaze of the monster. The orc did not emit any sound as the transforming energies flowed into his body, hardening his scarred hide into a shell of stone, as the Chaos power cooked his innards.

The necklace-wearing orc was charging the monster even as his comrade was turned to stone. The goblins were dead or running, the other orc lying somewhere, broken by the basilisk’s tail. Now the brute’s last ally had been slain. The orc roared a throaty challenge through his tusked mouth and ran at the giant reptile. The orc’s great weight slammed into the stone carcass of his comrade, toppling its body onto the head of the lizard. The statue broke apart as it smashed into the basilisk’s skull, dashing its head against the hard floor.

The orc did not hesitate, but leaped onto the back of the stunned reptile. The greenskin’s sword rose and fell, gouging great cuts into the basilisk’s body. The lizard shook its body from side to side, trying to dislodge the clinging orc straddling its back. As the lizard’s neck craned about to try and fix its foe with the petrifying gaze, a steel bolt shot out of the darkness, exploding the basilisk’s left eye. The lizard rolled onto its back, crushing the orc beneath it as it writhed in agony.

Brunner watched as the basilisk rolled across the floor and smashed against the archway of a tunnel, its mass dislodging the remaining dwarf warrior that stood against the wall. The massive statue broke apart at the waist, crashing downward. A sound like a hundred thunderbolts roared about the hall as blocks of stone cascaded onto the floor. The massive pillars trembled with the violent impact, and swayed slightly in their positions, like mighty oaks disturbed by a raging hurricane. In the darkness, the echoes of the collapse boomed like cannon fire, carrying the message of destruction through the length of Karag-dar. It reverberated through every chamber and goblin-hole within the ancient dwarf stronghold. The world disintegrated into a grey mist as dust exploded from the destruction, and billowed outward in a gritty cloud.

When the dust had cleared, the tunnel was lost to sight, now buried beneath tons of rubble. The basilisk had been caught in the rockfall; now the only sign of the reptile was a twitching leg sticking up from the broken stonework.

Brunner gazed about the hall. Dozens of black-cloaked bodies lay strewn about the ground – some were moving, many more were still. The bounty hunter looked over towards where Krogh had made his stand. A great number of goblin bodies had been thrown about the area, many torn limb from limb. Amid the carnage, Brunner could see a single orc, its jaw ripped from its head, a gaping hole at the centre of its chest. Of the mutant, there was no sign.

A movement nearby made Brunner draw Drakesmalice from its sheath. Brunner cast his cold eyes on the shape of the orc champion. Most of its bones had been crushed under the basilisk’s weight, there was dark green blood bubbling from its mouth, and still the brute struggled to stand. The bounty hunter walked toward the dying orc.

‘Thanks for the help,’ Brunner said as he met the angry creature’s eyes. The bounty hunter swung Drakesmalice in a decapitating blow. ‘I appreciate it,’ he added as the head bounced across the floor.

Brunner returned to his horses, thankful to find them unharmed, then looked around for Brega. Near to the horses, he found the smuggler’s bindings, and beside them the body of a goblin. Brunner examined the goblin for a moment, noting the marks about its neck, the way its tongue protruded from its face. A man without a sword has few options left to him. Strangulation was one.

Brunner followed faint traces in the dust. He cursed when he saw where Brega had run. The tunnel through which the smuggler had made his escape was blocked by the massive rockfall caused by the basilisk. Worse, it was one of the ones from where the goblins had emerged. Brega had escaped his captor all right – by running even deeper into the territory of the Black Fangs.

With a sigh, Brunner returned to his animals. The corridors and halls of Karag-dar were a near-endless maze. It would take days, perhaps weeks, to find Brega’s trail. The bounty hunter knew that others would find the scoundrel first. Smarting with the slaughter wrought in the great hall by the bounty hunters and the basilisk, Brega could expect a very nasty reception from the Black Fangs.

The bounty hunter shook his head and started to lead his animals back the way they had come. The reward Judge Vaulkberg was offering was only good if Brega was delivered to him alive. It was a stipulation that Brunner always found tiresome, but, under the present circumstances, it had become impossible. Since first taking up his bloody and violent trade seven years ago, Brunner could count on one hand the number of times he had failed to collect his prey. But he was also pragmatic enough to know when it was pointless to continue the hunt. His only comforting thought was that Brega wouldn’t be boasting of his escape to anyone… at least anyone that wasn’t green.

Bruno Brega could see the brazier just beyond the circle of grinning, leering green faces. The barbed, hook-like irons were slowly beginning to glow. The large goblin standing beside the brazier licked his black-dyed fangs eagerly.

Brega moaned again, struggling against the ropes that held him against the top of the crude stone altar. He was, he admitted, in virtually the same position as when he had been discovered by the bounty hunter. But whatever Nuccio and his other former comrades had planned for him would have been quick and clean compared to whatever his present captors were intending. Once again, Brega wondered what he had done to so offend Ranald for his fortunes to continually spiral downward. At least, the smuggler thought, things have finally struck rock bottom.

The night goblin crept away from the brazier, a glowing iron gripped in its thin-fingered hand. The other goblins cackled and snickered as the torturer moved toward Brega. The goblin leaned over the prisoner’s body and Brega could feel the heat of the iron as the goblin held it over his chest.

‘Make pretty sound,’ the goblin’s whispery voice hissed. Brega let loose with a scream that echoed from the walls of the dingy cave-like room. The goblins laughed and snickered once more.

‘Want better,’ the torturer commented as his own laughter died away. Brega tensed his body, waiting for the iron to sear his flesh.

The loud thok of a crossbow firing echoed in the room. The goblin torturer was thrown back as a bolt smashed into his throat. Brega wept tears of relief as the other goblins began to scramble away, shoving and punching one another in their haste to escape. The smuggler had not dared to hope that Brunner might still find him, that the bounty hunter would search the halls of Karag-dar to track him down. Whatever horror Judge Vaulkberg intended for him, it would be pleasant compared to the attentions of the goblins.

Brega craned his neck upward to stare over the altar as he heard his rescuer draw near. The colour faded from his face as the shabby, cowled figure strode towards him. Orange eyes glowed from the hooded face of the shadow.

An animal stink filled Brega’s lungs as Krogh leaned over him. The mutant bounty hunter reached into the folds of his tunic with a twisted hand and drew a hollow steel tube from a pocket.

‘For you,’ the rasping, bubbling voice of Krogh hissed from beneath the folds of the scarf covering his face, ‘this is a very unlucky day.’

CHAPTER TWO

SICKHOUSE

The Atmosphere in the dingy little cellar room was, if anything, even more stifling than the sweltering Miragliano streets overhead. Strings of wet linen had been set between the thick wooden posts that supported the tannery above the cellar, yet far from cooling the dank chamber they had served only to increase the humidity. Coupled with the rich stink of rotten vegetables and the other refuse that lay heaped in piles all around the chamber, the effect was not unlike entering one of the blighted swamps that crouched beyond the city walls. Certainly the cellar’s lone denizen should not have looked out of place in such an environment.

The feeble creature that sprawled upon the rickety cot rolled onto his side, stretching a thin, wasted limb toward the small oil lamp that rested on the floor beside him. Thick, wormy digits that were more tentacles than fingers raised the flame, increasing the illumination within the miserable rat-hole. The mutant scowled as his visitor sank into the chair facing him without invitation. The creature muttered under his breath. Manners were often lacking in those who still deigned to visit Tessari the information broker.

‘What you want to know will cost you two pieces of silver,’ the mutant croaked. The man sitting in the chair smiled thinly at the crippled monster.

‘And how do you know that, Snake-Fingers?’ the visitor’s harsh voice sneered. ‘I haven’t said anything yet.’ There was a note of suspicion and challenge to the man’s voice, an unspoken threat behind his words. Tessari leaned back, his eyes narrowing.

‘There is no mystery to my price, bounty killer,’ Tessari replied, putting as much distaste in the title as his visitor had in describing the mutant’s affliction. ‘I need two pieces of silver to secure a new supply of blankets before winter sets in. Therefore, whatever it is you wish to know, the price is two pieces of silver.’

For a moment, the bounty hunter was silent, as though pondering Tessari’s price. At length, he nodded his head in agreement. ‘Very well, cellar-rat, I am looking for the thief Riano. So far, I haven’t been able to find him. Rats have ears, tell me what you have heard.’

‘Have you tried searching the back rooms of the Maid of Albion?’ Tessari inquired. ‘Riano has done favours for the owner of that drinking hole in the past.’

‘I’ve already looked there,’ the bounty hunter snarled. ‘Riano’s nowhere in Miragliano.’

‘How can you be certain?’ Tessari pressed, his tones bubbling with interest. The wormy fingers of his hand twitched in a loathsomely boneless fashion.

‘Because if he was in Miragliano, I’d have found him already,’ the bounty hunter retorted, his temper rising. ‘It seems clear to me that you do not know anything, Maggot-Hand.’ The killer began to rise from the chair.

‘Don’t be hasty!’ Tessari cried out, surging forward, reaching toward the bounty hunter. ‘Sit, and talk with me.’

‘I’ve better ways to spend my time than wasting it down in this rat’s den of yours,’ the bounty hunter snapped. ‘If you can’t help me, I’ll find someone who can.’

‘The man you are looking for has left Miragliano,’ Tessari called out to the killer’s back, frightened by the prospect of being left alone once more within the dank cellar. ‘If so, then he has gone somewhere he can lie low until the price on his head diminishes. Someplace he will feel safe.’

The bounty hunter hesitated, turning slowly, one hand gripping the weapon hanging from his belt. ‘And where would that be?’ he demanded. Tessari held out the less deformed of his hands, waiting until his visitor walked back and placed a silver coin in his palm. The bounty killer held the other one poised between his thumb and forefinger.

‘I’ll give you this one if your information is useful,’ he informed the mutant. Tessari shrank back into his bedding.

‘Riano grew up in the small village of Decimas,’ the mutant stated. ‘If he has fled Miragliano, he can only have gone back to Decimas, where he has many friends. Friends who might make things rather hard for men of your profession.’

‘I doubt it,’ the bounty hunter told Tessari, tossing the other coin to the mutant. The bounty hunter turned away once more.

‘Wait!’ Tessari cried. ‘There is more, something else that would be of interest to a man like you.’ The visitor turned back, glaring down at the deformed man.

‘I grow tired of these games, lice-breeder,’ the warrior hissed. ‘What else do you have to say?’

Tessari’s twisted face spread into an avaricious smile. ‘It will cost you another silver piece.’ The bounty hunter drew another coin from a pouch fixed to his belt, holding it once more between his fingers.

‘There is another man looking for Riano, a bounty killer like yourself.’ Tessari leaned forward, voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Would it interest you to know that two days ago another man was standing where you are now, asking me the same questions you’ve been asking?’

‘Out with it, dung-eater! Who else is on Riano’s trail?’

‘Brunner,’ Tessari told his visitor, enjoying the sudden unease that manifested upon the other man’s features. The mutant grimaced as the bounty hunter returned the silver coin to its pouch. ‘That was mine!’ Tessari growled.

‘And how much did Brunner pay for his information?’ his guest demanded. Tessari glared at the other man, wormy fingers coiling like angry pythons. The bounty hunter smiled back. ‘Since he has a head start on me, I’d be a fool to pay more than he did.’ The man withdrew through the gloom of the cellar. Behind him, the twisted Tessari hurled obscenities at his back.

The sun hung high in the sky, glaring down from the azure plain, causing tiny ripples of heat to shimmer upwards from the scraggly brown grass below. The barren dirt and rock of the narrow road that crawled between the underbrush and the sickly trees had been baked to the solidity of granite, for in this season there would be no kindly rains to counterbalance the sun’s tyrannical attentions. No birds flew upon the hot breeze, hiding within whatever shade they could find. The only sign of life was a large grey lizard, its long-taloned fingers clutching the sides of a large stone resting upon the road. The reptile’s eyes were closed, its body bobbing up and down in repetitious motion as its cold flesh soaked up the blazing rays. Suddenly, the lizard’s scaly lids snapped open and it cocked its head, listening to the vibrations that had disturbed it. With almost blinding speed, the reptile lunged from its perch, streaking across the road to skitter into the sanctuary afforded by a patch of yellowing brambles.

The rider whose approach had disturbed the creature paid its departure little notice, his steely eyes dismissing the lizard as soon as they had reacted to the sudden motion, then returning to their study of the road itself. Behind the rider, a ragged grey packhorse plodded, its back laden down with numerous packs and bags, and several things that were clearly sheathed weapons. The rider’s mount, a massive bay warhorse, turned its head, seeming to glance sympathetically at its doughty companion. The rider gave a gentle tug on the reins, recalling his steed to its course. The sooner he found what he was looking for, the sooner all of them would be able to find rest.

The rider was a tall man, panther-like in his build. His features were solid, harsh and weathered, cold blue eyes squinting from the leathery face beneath his close-cropped brown hair. A suit of brigandine armour hung about his frame, a breastplate of dark metal encasing his chest. Weapons dripped from the belts that crossed his torso and circled his waist – the steel fangs of knives, the gaping maw of a pistol, the cruel edge of a hatchet. Upon one hip rested a huge knife with jagged teeth, a savage instrument which its owner had named ‘the Headsman’ in a moment of sadistic humour. From the other, its golden hilt fashioned in the shape of a dragon with outspread wings, was sheathed the warrior’s longsword, the fabled blade named Drakesmalice. From the horn of his saddle, swinging from the leather straps that bound it in place, the rounded steel frame of the bounty hunter’s sallet helm cooked beneath the sun’s merciless attentions.

Brunner lifted his eyes from the road, glancing at the sign that stood beside the deserted path, its three fingers pointing in every direction save that dominated by the woods at its back. The killer smiled grimly as he noted the topmost sign. Scrawled upon it in charcoal letters was the word ‘Decimas’. Brunner shook his head, looking away from the sign. As he did so, he noticed a sorry figure sprawled beneath the sign, almost hidden by the rock pile that formed the signpost’s support. Brunner eyed the shape warily, watching for any sign of movement or breath. Without removing his eyes from the prone form, the bounty hunter drew his pistol and carefully dropped down from Fiend’s saddle. With cautious glances to either side of the path, the bounty hunter slowly walked toward the shape.

It was a man, dressed in the tattered homespun common to the peasants that populated the Tilean countryside. Brunner nudged the man’s side with his steel-toed cavalry boot, watching the body for any sign of reaction. It simply rocked in its position. Putting more effort behind his thrust, Brunner pitched the body onto its back. The bounty hunter stepped away from the sight that greeted him, a gloved hand reaching to his face to keep the smell from his nose.

The man was dead, but neither beast nor man had claimed him. The swollen tongue that protruded from the corpse’s contorted face had nearly been bitten clean through during the agonies that had gripped the man. Upon his skin were livid red boils, some nearly the size of Brunner’s thumb, each weeping a filmy, scarlet pus. The bounty hunter continued to back away. He had seen too many bodies like this recently. The red pox had returned to Tilea, rampaging across the countryside, striking down all who tempted its pestilent attentions.

Brunner turned away from the corpse, eyes considering the bleak expanse toward the south. His destination lay in that direction, but if the sorry corpse at his feet had come from there, if the red pox was rampant in the south, then in all likelihood he would be making a wasted journey. The dead did not last long when the red pox was abroad, so long as there were still healthy men to burn the diseased corpses. It would be difficult to turn in a pile of ash and blackened bones if Riano had already been claimed by the plague.

The sound of a twig snapping spun the bounty hunter around, lifting him from his thoughts. Brunner cursed under his breath. Worrying about the red pox had made him careless, sloppy. His natural caution had been subordinated to concern about the plague that hovered about the land. The bounty hunter chastised himself. He’d been around long enough to know that a moment of distraction could often last for all eternity.

The creature that had caused the sound rose from where it had been crawling, realising that its stealth had been compromised. It was a miserable, twisted shape, a rotten mockery of the human form. Ragged linen hung about its lean, wasted frame, tied about its waist with a length of rope. Its pallid skin was blotched with ugly red welts and crater-like scars, its face a broken shambles, crazed eyes swollen within their sockets, nose rotten away into a scabrous stump of cartilage. Upon its forehead, the miserable creature had carved a brand, three bloated circles, linked at their centres, each sporting a jagged arrow. The brand was the only vivid thing about the creature’s face, weeping a vibrant green pus each time the thing drew a breath. But it was the object clutched in the creature’s withered hand that arrested Brunner’s attention – a fat-bladed shortsword.

The bounty hunter did not give the twisted abomination a chance to close upon him. With a single deft motion, he ripped his pistol from the holster resting across his belly and fired into the diseased abomination’s rotten skull. Watery brain tissue erupted from the back of the creature’s head as the bullet tore its way through. The plague-ridden thing did not cry out as its head exploded, but simply crumpled into the road with all the grace of a wilting flower.

The shot’s echoes had yet to fade before the bounty hunter discovered that the diseased attacker had not been alone. Other twisted shapes scrambled into view, descending upon the road like a pack of jackals upon a fresh carcass. Some were similar to the one Brunner had put down, ragged, tattered figures that might have been men before their flesh was consumed by the unholy foulness which now claimed them. Several though had never borne the mantle of humanity, their feet ending in cloven hooves, their shapes clothed in mangy fur, their heads cast in the manner of goats and kine. Upon these monstrosities, too, was that pestilent brand, filthy pus drooling from the mark and caking the fur of the beastmen with reeking filth.

Brunner tore his sword from its sheath, cursing anew as the diseased abominations sprung their ambush. There were at least a dozen of them, far too many to face with sword and axe. As the bounty hunter considered this fact, his cold eyes stared longingly at the repeating crossbow lashed to the saddle of his warhorse. He was a master with the weapon, and with it in his hands four of his attackers would have found death. But already there were beasts and once-men between him and his animals, converging on the horses in a frenzied mob. Brunner watched as Fiend reared back, the massive warhorse’s iron-shod hooves lashing out and splitting the skull of a degenerate plague-mutant as though it were an egg shell. Whether intent on plunder or horseflesh, the mutants would not claim the horses without a fight.

The bounty hunter braced himself to meet his own attackers. Three of the mutants and a pair of goat-headed pestigors had split from the main pack, their lust for slaughter and bloodshed overwhelming their desire for plunder and meat. The creatures glared at Brunner with rheumy eyes, strings of spittle dripping from slackened mouths. Brunner was not deceived by the apparent simple-mindedness of his attackers, he had seen goblins beneath the haunted caverns of the Vaults given over to similar fits. And though their attacks might have been crude and lacking in co-ordination, their befuddled brains had seemed incapable of understanding pain, even as limbs were hacked from their bodies.

The first of the attackers charged with a wet, gurgling war cry, his mutated face resembling nothing so much as a grinning skull. Brunner prepared to meet the monster’s assault, ready to cut the rotten head from its decaying body. But the killing stroke proved unnecessary. With a loud crunch, a five-inch spike of steel smashed into the mutant’s face, spilling it to the ground and tripping up the lice-ridden pestigor that followed behind it. The bounty hunter did not waste time considering his good fortune. Even as the mutant dropped he was in motion, his sword lashing out to meet the axe of the mutant closing upon his right. The keen edge of Drakesmalice smashed into the rotten wooden haft of the axe, just beneath its rust-pitted head, shearing through the weapon and severing the reed-thin arm behind it.

The mutant recoiled from the stroke, its stump dripping a filth that was far too dark to be proper blood. The creature seemed to regard the mutilating wound as little more than an inconvenience, reaching down with its remaining arm to retrieve the blade of its axe. The bounty hunter’s gut churned at the unnatural sight, stabbing downward between the mutant’s shoulders as it bent down. Spitted on the tip of the longsword, the mutant’s body trembled for a moment, then grew slack. Brunner tore the weapon free from the corroded body, spinning about to meet his next attacker.

It was the hulking beastman that had fallen over the mutant felled by the mysterious steel spike. The other beastman was down, another of the strange steel spikes sprouting from its heart. It was just as well, Brunner considered as he sized up his adversary. One such foe was more than sufficient.

The pestigor gnashed its fanged jaws, its clawed hands tightening about the grip of its spike-headed mace. The monster’s eyes were weeping a filthy yellow ooze, gnats and flies buzzing about its goat-like head. Upon its chest, livid where it had been burned into the mangy fur, the pestilent brand stood out. Brunner felt disgust welling up within him as he beheld the hideous rune, fighting down his revulsion just in time to push aside the monster’s brutal attack. The pestigor reared back, snarling some obscenity in its own harsh tongue, then lashed out once more, the bounty hunter managing to turn aside the powerful blow only by putting the weight of his entire body behind his own blade’s retort.

From the corner of his eye, Brunner could see the other mutant working his way toward the bounty hunter’s back, a short boar-spear gripped in its malformed hands. Unable to free himself from his duel with the pestigor, Brunner knew there was little he could do to protect himself from a stab in the back. The bounty hunter tried to manoeuvre his massive foe around, to place the pestigor between himself and the spear-bearing mutant. But the beastman would have none of it, accepting a slash to its forearm in return for holding its ground. It too had seen the mutant moving toward Brunner’s back and was not about to surrender such an advantage.

The sound of steel crunching through bone rumbled through Brunner’s ears, followed by the impact of a body falling somewhere behind him. The pestigor’s goat-like face contorted into a mask of feral rage and the bounty hunter could guess the source of its fury – the spear-bearing mutant had just been shot down. Brunner did not give the pestigor time to turn its rage into strength. Slipping past the monster’s guard, he slashed his sword along its gut, spilling its entrails into the dust. The beastman stumbled backward, the mace falling from its claws as it reached down for the ropy mess hanging from its belly. Brunner slashed at the monster again, this time nearly severing its forearm. The pestigor lifted its horned head, roaring its rage into the barren sky, bloody froth spilling from its jaws. As Brunner moved in for the kill, the pestigor lowered its head, spitting a stream of filth into his face.

It was the bounty hunter’s turn to stumble back from his foe, one gloved hand wiping away at the gory muck that now covered his features, finding with disgust that the pestigor’s bloody spittle was alive with writhing, wormy shapes. Brunner cleared his eyes just in time to see the pestigor bearing down on him, its remaining claw crunching down about his shoulder, its powerful grip seeking to pull the bounty hunter into the massive horns that curled against the monster’s skull. Brunner stabbed into the beastman’s side with his blade, punching the length of his sword into the monster’s corrupt flesh, transfixing its blackened heart. The pestigor fell to its knees, its eyes glaring into Brunner’s own as its unclean life slowly drained from its twisted form. The grip on his shoulder loosened and Brunner watched dispassionately as the pestigor fell backwards and crashed into the dust.

The bounty hunter looked away from his fallen foes, looking back toward his animals. Three mutants lay sprawled about them, and two others looked to have fallen victim to the mysterious sharpshooter who had so fortuitously come to his aid. The others were fleeing back down the road, forsaking the promise of loot and provisions in their haste to save their own hides. Brunner strode toward his horses, keen to inspect the animals for any sign of injury and to recover his crossbow from Fiend’s saddle, lest the twisted ambushers regain their courage. As he approached, Fiend and the packhorse, Paychest, retreated from him and it was only with slow steps and soothing words that he was able to keep the horses from bolting. Patting Fiend’s neck with a gloved hand, Brunner quickly removed his crossbow from its holster, slapping the box-like magazine into place. He turned his head in the direction from which he judged the mysterious steel shafts to have originated. He was not surprised to find a lone rider descending the jagged slope of a low hill. Leaning against the side of his horse, keeping his crossbow at the ready, Brunner awaited the approach of his unknown benefactor.

His wait was not a long one, and soon Brunner found himself confronted by a tall, slender man mounted on a white steed of similar build, a mount built for speed rather than war. The man himself was garbed in black, from the leather boots that encased his feet to the leather hat on his head. A leather belt crossed the man’s chest, long steel spikes fitted into the loops that rose along its surface. A number of box-like pouches were fitted to the belt that circled the warrior’s waist, along with a longsword and poinard, both of the simple, utilitarian style favoured by Tilea’s professional duellists. Resting upon the saddle before the rider was a strange device, a thing of steel and bronze that looked as though it could not decide if it were musket or crossbow.

Brunner looked up into the face hiding within the shadow of the rider’s hat. It was a gaunt, hungry face, with cruel eyes that gleamed with an almost feral cunning. The man’s sharp nose stabbed downward above a thin, almost lipless mouth and a slender black moustache. It was the kind of face Brunner knew only too well. The face of a predator. The face of a man like himself.

‘I hope you don’t mind the intrusion,’ the rider said when he brought his horse to a stop a few yards from Brunner, ‘but it looked like you had bitten off more than you could handle.’ The weasel-eyed man chuckled with grim humour. ‘Even the infamous Brunner isn’t the equal of a dozen beastmen.’

‘Perhaps they didn’t know who I was,’ Brunner returned, ‘or they would have brought twice as many.’ The jest brought another sardonic chuckle from the rider. Brunner fixed the other man with his cold stare, the leather of his gloves creaking as he firmed his hold on the crossbow. ‘Tell me, Sabarra, how is it that you happen to be in the right place at the right time? I’ve never been one to place much trust in providence.’

Sabarra grinned back at the other bounty hunter. ‘If you are thinking I was expecting you, then you’d be right. There are things we should discuss, you and I.’ The rider leaned back in his saddle, gesturing at the dead mutants strewn about the road. ‘But it can wait until we put a little distance between ourselves and the road. Just in case their friends stop running and decide to come back this way.’

The two bounty killers took the southern stretch of road, a move that took them away from the village of Decimas. Sabarra’s eyes narrowed, studying his rival with undisguised interest and suspicion. For his part, Brunner seemed to be paying little attention to the Tilean, rubbing at his face with a cloth he’d dampened from his waterskin. Sabarra was not fooled by the display, he knew that the Reiklander was even now turning any number of schemes to rid himself of Sabarra over in his mind.

‘You know of course that I’m after the same mark as you,’ Sabarra declared. It was better to get the matter out in the open sooner rather than later. ‘It’s a handsome price Riano has on his head.’ Brunner did not turn to regard Sabarra, instead dousing the cloth in his hand with more water from the skin. ‘Enough for two men, if they aren’t greedy,’ Sabarra elaborated. Brunner turned cold eyes onto the weasel-faced killer.

‘And what if the men in question are greedy?’ he inquired. A cruel smile split Sabarra’s features.

‘Then things could get very upsetting,’ Sabarra said. ‘One of the men might get there before the other. That might not be so good if Riano has some friends with him.’ The bounty hunter’s gloved hand whipped upward, catching a buzzing fly between its fingers. ‘And, of course, he’d also have to worry about his back,’ Sabarra warned, crushing the fly in his fist. ‘Because even if he won out, he’d still have something the other man wanted.’

‘And what if the men decided they weren’t greedy?’ Brunner asked, lowering his hand. Sabarra’s eyes narrowed with concern as he noticed how near to his pistol Brunner’s hand was now poised.

‘They might decide to share,’ the Tilean suggested. ‘Split everything down the middle. The dangers and the gold, divided up equally between them. Rather a good idea with the countryside crawling with beastmen and half-mad with plague.’

Brunner nodded thoughtfully, then lifted the cloth back to his face. ‘Of course, they would be foolish to stop watching their backs,’ he warned. Sabarra didn’t bother hiding the cunning look in his eyes. ‘But let’s say these men did reach an agreement, where would they start?’

‘By sharing information,’ Sabarra told him. ‘For instance, why are we riding away from Decimas rather than toward it?.’

‘Because, as we both know, Riano isn’t there,’ Brunner said. ‘Decimas is gone, the red pox has already done its work there.’

‘Then why south?’ pressed Sabarra. Brunner continued to rub at his face.

‘You should spend more time learning about your prey,’ Brunner said. ‘Don’t place all your wager on a single informant. I have my reasons to believe Riano headed south if he had to quit Decimas.’

‘And those would be?’ Sabarra asked.

‘I prefer to keep that information to myself,’ Brunner replied. ‘That way I won’t have to watch my back.’ The Reiklander continued to dab at the blistered skin of his face, trying to soothe the raw, irritating itch that had seeped into his skin. Sabarra’s smile widened as he noted the ugly rash.

‘I’d be worried about that,’ he told Brunner. ‘Who knows what foulness was in that animal’s blood. I’d get myself to the nearest hospice of Shallya if I were you. Let the priestesses bleed the contamination out of you. Maybe let someone else finish this hunt for you, bring you your percentage later.’

Brunner threw the cloth down. ‘Either I die or I don’t,’ he told Sabarra. ‘I’ll not go crawling to anybody, not even the gods. I’m through with all of that, through playing their games.’

‘Have a care,’ Sabarra warned his rival. ‘You die and I might never find Riano. I’d hate to miss that payday because an impious fool went and caught the plague.’

Brunner’s response was spoken in a tone as menacing as the grave. ‘Then I suggest you start praying I don’t get sick.’

The disease-ridden mutant crept into the foul-smelling hovel, bent almost in half, cringing at every step as though it were a whipped cur rather than a man. The room he had entered was a shambles: furniture overturned, walls fouled with blood and mucus, the air filled with buzzing flies. Bodies littered the floor, their skin blackening as necrotic bacteria speedily consumed their diseased flesh, the final trademark of the ghastly red pox. But it was not this reminder of the hideous disease that so unnerved the once-human wretch. It was the five armoured shapes looming against the far wall.

The warriors were huge, hulking monsters, their powerful forms encased within suits of plate armour, the steel pitted with corruption. Upon their breastplates had been stamped the mark of their deity, the daemon god to whom each of the corrupt warriors had pledged his life and soul. Three circles and three arrows – the mark of Nurgle, Grandfather of pestilence and decay. The close-faced helms of the Chaos warriors did not turn to regard the mutant as he slowly crept toward them, intent instead on the miserable figure sprawled upon the filthy floor before them. It was an old man, his body disfigured by the profusion of red boils that peppered his skin. His diseased frame trembled and shook as the agonies of the plague ripped at him, yet the Chaos warriors made no motion to end his suffering. Plague was the handiwork of their god, and to the Chaos warriors, what they were witnessing was a holy sacrament, and they stood as if in the presence of their loathsome deity.

Nervously, the mutant cleared his throat, allowing a dry croak to escape his drawn, placid lips. The sound caused the warriors to turn their steel faces upon him, fixing him with their burning eyes. The mutant fought back the urge to flee, holding his ground as the centremost of the armoured warriors strode toward him. He was a brute, his steel armour fading into a mass of green corruption, leather straps hanging from spikes set into his shoulder-guards displaying a variety of festering trophies. The warrior’s helm was cast in the shape of some mammoth insect and there was no sign of any eyes behind the sieve-like holes that pitted the helm’s face. The mark of pestilence branded into the warrior’s breastplate glowed with a leprous light, marking the creature as favoured by his daemon master – a champion of Chaos.

‘Zhere izz reazon why you dizurb uzz,’ the droning, buzzing voice of the champion echoed from within his helm. The mutant cowered before the unnatural voice, falling to his knees before the ghastly creature. Pulstlitz gave the mutant only a moment to answer before growing impatient, his armoured hand falling to the massive sword at his side, a gigantic blade of rusted steel that drooled a murky scum from its pitted edge, the filth falling to the floor in sizzling droplets.

‘Mercy dread master!’ the mutant cried in a voice that seemed to bubble from the bottom of his stomach. ‘Your slave did not mean to disturb your devotions! I came to bring word that Folgore is not coming back.’

A seething growl rasped behind the insect-helm. Pulstlitz took another menacing step toward the mutant. ‘That vermin darezz defy my command! I will carve the name of Pulzlizz upon hizz bonezz for zhizz betrayal of Nurgle!’ The other Chaos warriors watched their master warily, knowing too well that when their champion was in such a state, death hovered near. The mutant buried his face into the floor, unwilling to gaze upon the favoured of the Plague God.

‘Folgore is dead, master!’ the mutant whined. ‘Slain upon the road by a traveller who wore not the blessings of the Grandfather!’

‘You rizked attack when I commanded you here?’ Pulstlitz demanded, the droning buzz of his voice seeming to come not from one but a dozen throats. ‘When I need every mangy beazman and acolyte? When I prepare to raze the hozpizz of thrice-accurzed Zhallya? It izz at zuch time you zee fit to dizobey?’ The enraged plague champion lifted his armoured foot, bringing it smashing downward into the abased mutant. Bones cracked as Pulstlitz brought his weight down upon the mutant’s neck, then ground the creature’s skull into the floor beneath his foot. When nothing solid remained beneath his boot, Pulstlitz turned to his warriors.

‘We wait no longer!’ the Chaos champion droned. ‘Zhiz night we ride for the hozpizz! I will zee it burn!’ The warriors did not pause to question their leader’s command, but hastened to follow the monster into the night, leaving the old man to complete his communion with the Plague God in solitude and silence.

Sabarra watched as the white walls of the structure finally manifested in the distance. The bounty hunter cursed under his breath. It was about time he encountered some manner of luck. Since setting out after the price on Riano’s head, he’d been met by obstacle after obstacle. It was as if the gods themselves were hurling every misfortune they could conceive in Sabarra’s way, as though he were some mighty hero from some Luccini fable rather than a hired killer just trying to maintain a comfortably hedonistic lifestyle. The bounty hunter spat into the dust of the road. The gods! As though they were paying any manner of attention to him. They certainly were not in the mood for answering prayers.

The bounty hunter looked over his shoulder, back at the train of animals that slowly plodded along behind him. Slumped in the saddle of the rearmost horse was Sabarra’s old rival and recent partner, Brunner. The Tilean cursed again. He’d warned Brunner against mocking the gods, but the miserable Reiklander had remained unrepentant. Now he was sick, contaminated by whatever filth had lived within the loathsome blood of the pestigor he’d killed. For three days now, Brunner had been slipping in an out of consciousness as the disease wracked his body.

Sabarra shook his head, cursing his ill luck. During his lucid moments, which were becoming less and less frequent, Brunner’s mind had wandered, crawling through the muck of the bounty hunter’s bloody career. But he’d still retained enough coherency that he did not respond to Sabarra’s promptings for more information – most especially with regards to Riano and whatever hole the thief had relocated himself to. Some deep-rooted instinct of self-preservation stilled Brunner’s lips at such times. The bounty hunter’s eyes had cleared for a moment, boring into Sabarra’s own. ‘Get me to a healer,’ Brunner’s voice had rasped. ‘Then I’ll tell you what you want to hear.’

By rights he should have left Brunner behind. Sabarra had seen enough of the red pox in his time to recognise its early stages. But the image of the gold being offered for Riano’s head had been too tempting. So, Sabarra had lifted the sickly warrior into the saddle of his horse, tying Brunner’s hands about the animal’s neck, his legs beneath its belly. With Brunner secured to his animal, Sabarra had set out for the only place he could think of where a man suffering from the red pox might find sanctuary and succour. He only hoped that Brunner would last long enough to reach it.

The white walls grew steadily in size, the narrow cross-shaped windows and massive supporting buttresses breaking up the smooth alabaster façade. Sabarra could make out ragged figures huddled in the shadow of the walls, a great sprawl of wretched humanity. The bounty hunter’s spirits fell another notch. Just how widespread was this plague? It looked like half of Tilea was camped outside the walls. He risked another look over his shoulder, striving to see if Brunner had reacted at all to the sight, but the man remained as he had for more hours than Sabarra wanted to count. The Tilean looked back toward the walls, noticing this time the vast pit that had been torn from the earth some distance to the west of the structure. Dour, hooded figures were busy there, throwing naked bodies into the yawning chasm as though tossing seed across a field. It was a minute before Sabarra released the breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding. Of all the ends he could imagine, being consigned to a plague pit was probably about as bad as it got. Sabarra looked back once more at his charge and scowled.

So long as he found out what he wanted to know, Sabarra didn’t much care where Brunner wound up. All the Reiklander had to do was cling on to life long enough to become lucid one last time.

An aura of misery so intense that it seemed to clutch at Sabarra’s face greeted the bounty hunter as he drew nearer the white-walled structure. The Tilean struggled to avoid looking down, tried not to see the dejected, forlorn creatures that sprawled upon the ground all around them. Many looked dead already, only the glazed eyes that rolled within their boil-strewn faces betraying the fact that they yet drew breath. Some of these miserable creatures had managed to build crude tents of rag and fur, but the vast majority just lay upon the ground, exposed to the open air and the chill of night. Sabarra tried not to imagine how many of these lost souls would make the journey past the portal of Morr before the sun again rose. Perhaps it was even a kindness to allow them to expire from exposure rather than the suffering the red pox would wrench from their bodies before it was through with them.

Sabarra slowly moved the horses through the sprawl of diseased refugees, the animals hard-pressed to avoid stomping on the miserable wretches. The bounty hunter allowed a slight sigh of relief to escape his throat as he saw the arched doorway that led into the structure behind the white walls and the shimmering marble dove that loomed above the arch’s cornerstone. ‘Well, friend,’ Sabarra declared, glancing back once more at the still unmoving Brunner, ‘this is it. The Shrine of the Seven Mercies. The hospice of Shallya.’

As if in response to his declaration, several men suddenly appeared beneath the arch, emerging from the interior of the hospice. Three of the men wore suits of armour, narrow helmets crushed about their ears. Their eyes were red-rimmed and their faces bore a pained, tired expression. But there was nothing fatigued in the way in which they held their spears. Three other men, dressed in the simple sack-cloth of supplicants of Shallya, laboured under the weight of a scrawny, pale burden. Behind the men carrying the corpse, a pair of white-garbed priestesses followed, one bearing a torch, the other carrying a bundle of rags that Sabarra imagined had once clothed the dead man. It was a common custom in cases of the plague. The body was hastily buried, but the clothes and bedding were burned, lest they pass the contagion on to another.

The priestess bearing the torch stared up at the mounted bounty hunter, her eyes red-rimmed and brimming with fatigue. Sabarra was somewhat surprised to find that the priestess was quite comely beneath the lines of worry and overwork. It had always been his experience that the ranks of the priestesses were commonly filled by daughters deemed unfit for a profitable marriage by their fathers. The bounty hunter’s face twisted in the faintest hint of a lewd smile. Instantly the woman’s eyes narrowed with disapproval, the shadows cast by her hooded robe seeming to grow thicker about her face.

‘What do you want here, mercenary?’ the priestess asked, her voice soft, yet demanding. Sabarra noted that it was a voice used to the burden of command and guessed that the priestess must be highly ranked among the sisters of the hospice, perhaps even the Sister Superior in charge of the entire shrine. Taking that into consideration, and remembering why he had come, the smile died on the bounty hunter’s face. He was all business now.

‘I seek the solace of the shrine,’ Sabarra answered. ‘I am in need of Shallya’s mercy and blessing.’

The priestess took a step forward, the torch banishing the shadows from her face. ‘You are ill?’ she asked. Sabarra shook his head.

‘No,’ he replied, then gestured to the horses standing behind his own. ‘But my friend is in dire need of healing.’ Sabarra’s voice dropped into a chill whisper. ‘I fear it is the red pox.’

The priestess nodded her hooded head, sighing regretfully. ‘Your friend is not alone. Many have fallen victim to the pox, and many more must follow before this evil has run its course. The mercies of Shallya are in much demand these days, our hospice is filled far beyond its capacity and still we cannot provide sanctuary for all who would enter.’ She extended her arms to indicate the wretched masses clustered about the walls. ‘The red pox is swift, once it has a hold on the flesh it is difficult to exorcise. We cannot forsake those in whom the infection is little, those who might recover, to give false hope to those for whom it is already too late.’

Sabarra gritted his teeth. When he first saw the miserable camp on the hospice’s doorstep he should have expected as much. He stabbed a finger at the body being carried away. ‘It seems there is at least one bed without an owner.’ The priestess shook her head.

‘And there are twenty already waiting to fill it,’ she said sadly, turning to follow the grim procession.

‘Dammit! At least you could look at him!’ Sabarra snarled. The priestess turned again, her eyes boring into the bounty hunter’s. At length she sighed and strode toward the warhorse standing behind Sabarra’s own. The woman’s steps slowed as she neared Fiend, as her eyes fell on the man lashed to the animal’s back. It was a trembling hand that reached out toward the sick man, that lifted his head and stared at his face. The priestess recoiled as though it were a serpent she held in her hand.

‘There is no room,’ she repeated, her voice quivering. The man lashed to the saddle tilted his head and spoke in a shallow whisper.

‘Even the goddess of mercy picks and chooses her prey,’ Brunner’s fading voice managed to hiss before his head sagged back down into Fiend’s mane. The priestess glared at the sick man, then turned her head back toward Sabarra.

‘Bring him inside,’ Elisia told Sabarra. ‘Sister Marcia will show you where.’ Elisia did not wait for a response from the bounty hunter, but went after the funeral party, her steps hurried, fed by the doubt and fear that had closed icy fingers about her heart.

She had hoped never to see that face again, hoped never to hear that harsh, unforgiving voice. It had been almost a year since she had undertaken her mission of mercy for the Bertolucci family, wealthy merchants from Miragliano who had fled to a country villa in order to escape enemies in the city. But those enemies had sent an agent in pursuit of them, a hired killer to root them out from their hiding place. Brunner had ‘chanced’ upon Elisia as she was making her way to the villa, circumstance causing the grim bounty hunter to become her protector against the beastmen that prowled the countryside. Little did the priestess know that both of them had business at the villa – she to bring a new life into the world, the bounty hunter to remove an old one from it. Guilt and despair had wracked her for months afterward, that she had allowed herself to be the unwitting accomplice of the killer, that her actions had helped bring about a good man’s death.

How she had wished death upon Brunner. It was true that he had saved her on the road to the villa, but only so that he could use her. She owed the merciless killer nothing. And now, her wish was coming true, Brunner was in the grip of the red pox, its poison coursing through his body. He would die, slowly and in great agony. Why then had she admitted him into the hospice?

Because it was her sacred oath to combat the forces of pestilence, because Brunner had questioned her integrity, made her consider whether she would violate that sacred duty simply to indulge her own desire for vengeance. Far from a wish fulfilled, the bounty hunter’s arrival might prove the most arduous test of her faith she had ever endured.

Elisia hesitated, casting a worried look over her shoulder at the white walls of the hospice. Yes, it was a test, but was she equal to that test?

Sabarra stood aside as a pair of burly supplicants lowered Brunner onto a straw pallet in one of the hospice’s overcrowded wards. Designed to hold perhaps twenty inmates, every spare inch of space had been scavenged to provide room for nearly fifty. The men moved aside, allowing a dour priestess to inspect their latest charge. The old woman produced a small knife and began to strip away the bounty hunter’s clothes and armour, her deft hands nimbly plucking weapons from Brunner’s belt. The stricken bounty killer did not stir until the old woman’s hand tugged at the dragon-hilt of Drakesmalice. Like a shot, Brunner’s hand clutched at the weapon, fingers tightening about the blade until his knuckles turned white. The priestess tugged at the imprisoned weapon, trying to free it from the sick man’s grasp.

‘He doesn’t want you to take his sword,’ Sabarra stated. ‘I suggest you leave it with him.’ The old woman cast a sour look at the Tilean, but released her grip on Drakesmalice, hurrying to remove the rest of Brunner’s armour. When she had finished, she gathered up the bounty hunter’s gear and without a backward glance, strode from the ward. Sabarra waited until she had gone, then crouched beside Brunner’s pallet. The reaction to the priestess trying to take his sword encouraged Sabarra that his rival might have slipped back into a moment of relative coherence.

‘We’re in the hospice, Brunner,’ Sabarra told him. The stricken man turned his head weakly in Sabarra’s direction. ‘You’re in the Seven Mercies.’

Brunner’s eyes snapped open as he heard the name. The bounty hunter stared at Sabarra for a moment, then cast his gaze across the rest of the ward. Even knocking on the gates to Morr’s realm, he seemed to be studying the faces of the men around him, looking for any sign that might put a name to a face and a price to a name.

‘You said if I brought you here, you would tell me where Riano has escaped to,’ Sabarra reminded Brunner. Brunner’s head rolled back to where he could again face the rival bounty killer. A slight smile pulled weakly at his mouth.

‘I… I have… recon… reconsidered… the arrangement,’ Brunner’s words escaped him in a ragged whisper. Sabarra’s features flushed crimson with anger and the killer’s hand fell to the poinard sheathed at his hip. ‘You… you should… start praying again,’ Brunner advised the Tilean, seemingly oblivious to Sabarra’s fury. ‘Pray now that I… that I recover…’

Brunner’s words trailed off into oblivion and his eyes closed. Sabarra watched the bounty hunter’s body go lax, a part of him hoping that the disease had finished the Reiklander. But another part of him was relieved to note the steady rise and fall of his chest. While Brunner yet drew breath, there was still a chance that Sabarra could draw the information he wanted from the dying man.

The Tilean rose, casting a disgusted look at the wretched, moaning shapes strewn about the room. Sabarra drew the garlic pomander he wore beneath his tunic, lifting the herb to his nose, inhaling its septic fumes. Garlic was said to be proof against disease, but the bounty hunter had no great desire to test that belief any more than he had to. One way or another, he would be rid of Brunner soon. Turning on his heel, Sabarra marched from the ward, determined to find some cleaner air to breathe.

Never take the life of a human being. Elisia knelt before the simple altar that stood within the tiny chapel. There were three such chapels within the grounds of the shrine, but this was the only one that still retained its intended purpose. The others had been transformed into makeshift infirmaries, as had the small courtyard and many of the cells inhabited by the priestesses themselves. They shared rooms now, sleeping in four-hour shifts.

Elisia lifted her eyes to the small marble statue that stood atop the altar – the image of a beautiful woman crafted in the classical Tilean style, a golden heart held in her hands, as though offering the shimmering organ to the supplicant kneeling before the idol. It was symbolic of the selfless sacrifice of the Goddess of Mercy – offering of her own body that others might find solace and peace, the sick might be healed and the halt made whole. It was an example that the priestesses of her faith were expected to follow, a standard to aspire toward.

Never refuse healing to those in need. Such had been the oaths she had taken when she had cast aside the ruin of her old life and become a servant of Shallya. But never before had she felt their weight. Her oaths bit into her, like heavy chains that coiled about her body and strove to crush the breath from her.

The bounty hunter. Why had he come here, of all places? He was dying, Elisia had seen that much in the brief moment when her eyes had again regarded that cold, calculating face. The red pox had already gained a stronghold within his flesh. There was nothing she could do to save him.

Or was that simply what she wanted to believe? It would be so easy to simply step aside, let the disease run its course. That would be just retribution for how Brunner had used her, just vengeance for all the blood that stained the man’s hands.

Never take the life of a human being. Elisia cringed as she muttered the oath under her breath. Would she be any better than Brunner if she allowed him to die? She had been wracked with guilt and anguish over being the unwitting accomplice to one man’s death, how could she live with being the instrument of another man’s? How could she continue to serve Shallya with blood on her own hands?

If the disease claimed Brunner, she would never be certain that she did not allow it. That doubt would always linger behind her eyes, within the pits of her soul.

Elisia rose, walking toward the altar. There was only one thing to be done. She circled the altar, lifting up one of the flagstones set behind it. From the hole beneath the stone she removed a bottle of dark Bretonnian glass. The holy waters of the Temple in Couronne, the blessed spring from which Shallya’s tears dripped into the world of men. They were precious beyond the weight of gold, for within the Tears of Shallya were the divine healing powers of the goddess herself. The Seven Mercies had never had a large supply of the Tears, only enough to guard the priestesses themselves against the diseases they hoped to cure, for what good would a healer be if she were to fall victim to the plague?

Elisia lifted the bottle to her breast, holding it close to her heart. What she was doing might be considered blasphemy by others of her faith, squandering some of the precious holy water on a killer and assassin. But it was the only way she could be sure, the only way she would ever know peace again.

Brunner groaned as soft hands lifted his head from the straw pallet, as cold glass was pressed against his lips. The bounty hunter’s eyes snapped open, staring into the sullen face of Elisia. The priestess glared back at him, hatred burning behind her eyes.

‘I’ve come to finish it,’ she told the bounty killer, her voice a low hiss. She pushed the bottle higher, letting its contents trickle into Brunner’s mouth. The bounty hunter coughed as the cold waters worked their way down his swollen throat.

‘Damn you for ever coming here,’ Elisia spat as she withdrew the bottle. Already she could see the miraculous waters beginning their work, the redness in Brunner’s eyes beginning to fade. ‘I have squandered a precious gift on inhuman vermin when this hospice is overflowing with men and women worth a dozen of your kind.’

‘Because I… I saved… your life?’ the bounty killer asked. Elisia shook her head and turned away from him.

‘Because I am too selfish to let you die.’

Pulstlitz glared upon the white walls of the hospice, disgust and loathing welling up within his polluted form. The blessing of Nurgle, Lord of Pestilence, was a sacred thing, a divine gift handed down to men by the most powerful of the gods. Yet there were so very few who would accept that blessing, clinging to their tired old lives like rats to a sinking ship. The cult of the goddess Shallya had arisen to feed on that foolishness, to drive the breath of Nurgle from the bodies of man. The Chaos champion gripped the hilt of his decaying sword. This would be more than a simple raid, more than slaughter in the name of the Dark Gods. For Pulstlitz, this would be avenging sacrilege, exterminating an affront to the god whom he served.

The plague champion directed his gaze to the ragged figures encamped outside the walls of the hospice. He could see the sickly green aura that seemed to hover over each one, the mark of the Plague God. These were men in whom the blessing of Nurgle had firmly established itself, beyond the power of the Shallyan priestesses to drive from their bodies. They were already claimed by Nurgle, already walking the road that would lead them to the Plague God’s realm. But before that, they would serve Nurgle one last time.

Pulstlitz looked over to the brooding ranks of his warband – black-armoured Chaos warriors, ragged diseased mutants and cultists of the Plague God, and the furred shapes of goat-headed pestigors. The champion allowed their feral anticipation to wash over him, letting their eagerness to avenge this insult to their god fire his own ambition. He drew his rusted sword, filth sizzling upon the grass at his feet.

‘Drive the rabble to the wallz!’ the droning voice of Pulstlitz bellowed. ‘Let them know we have come! Let them know Death iz here!’

Sabarra stood within the old courtyard, sitting upon an upended barrel that had been cast aside by the priestesses when its contents had been distributed among their charges. The bounty hunter tried not to think about the sickly wretches lying all around him, focusing instead on the task at hand. The steel frame of his arquebus rested on his knees as the bounty hunter busied himself with scrubbing the inside of the barrel, removing any residual powder lingering within the weapon. It was a tedious, automatic task for Sabarra, and his mind did not need to concentrate upon his work. Instead, he mulled over his arrangement with Brunner and the price on Riano’s head. Every hunt had its dangers, but with the red pox all around him, Sabarra was quickly coming to the conclusion that the wealth being offered for Riano was not equal to the risk.

The sound of screams tore Sabarra from his labour. The bounty hunter turned his head in the direction from which the sound had come. It was repeated, and joined by others, becoming a cacophony of terror rising from outside the walls of the hospice. Sabarra jumped up, racing toward the narrow, cross-shaped windows that opened from the walls. He was swiftly joined by temple guards, priestesses and those supplicants still healthy enough to care about what was going on outside.

The bounty hunter’s view was partially blocked by the frightened, ragged bodies of the sick rabble that had been camped outside the hospice, their dirty hands and boil-ridden faces filling much of the window. But there were infrequent views of other figures beyond them, the creatures that had put the fear into the rabble and driven them to claw at the walls, begging for sanctuary. Sabarra grimaced, for he had seen their like not long ago – the same sort of diseased, mutated scum he had helped Brunner fight on the road to Decimas.

The bounty hunter pulled away from the window, removing a small paper tube from one of the pouches on his belt, ripping it open with his teeth and pouring the blackpowder down the gaping mouth of his arquebus. Sabarra’s hand rose to the belt of steel garros he wore, removing one of the deadly darts. But he hesitated as he prepared to pound the spike into the barrel of his weapon. He turned his eyes back to the windows, now completely filled by groping hands and desperate faces. He’d never be able to find a target with the rabble crowded so close to the temple. Whatever warlord led the Chaos vermin assaulting this place was crafty, herding the sick toward the walls to foil any archery that might be brought to bear on him.

The sound of frenzied pounding at the massive wooden doors of the hospice rose above the screams and cries for mercy. The sounds of terror grew louder from the direction of the door and were soon punctuated by other sounds Sabarra knew only too well; the sounds of blades cutting into flesh and men choking upon their own blood. Temple guards tore themselves away from the windows, hurrying toward the doors. Several of the men put their shoulders to the portal, prepared to defend it against the coming attack.

The guards leaning against the door withdrew, screaming in mortal agony. Sabarra cringed as he saw the skin sloughing away from their arms where they had been holding the door, the links of their chainmail visibly corroding as rust gnawed at them. Behind them, the door was similarly being assailed, the aged wood beginning to crumble and crack as rot consumed it. Iron fittings fell to the floor, devoured by rust. Wooden panels cracked and warped, as though infested with fungus. Far quicker than the eye could follow, the doors aged and withered, at last crashing inward.

Armoured figures filled the opening beyond the door, grim shapes of steel and corruption, their faces hidden behind gruesome helmets. Beside them, leaning tiredly upon a staff of human bones, a goat-headed monster gestured proudly at its sorcerous handiwork. The armoured warriors paid the shaman little heed, striding forward across the ruined portal, crushing its rotten substance into dust beneath their feet.

One of the warriors lifted his sword, filth dripping from its edge, pointing it at those cowering before his approach. A wrathful voice droned from behind the warrior’s insect-shaped helm. ‘Make of thizz plaze a zacrement to Nurgle!’ the monster’s voice roared. ‘Leave none alive!’

In response to the plague champion’s wrath, three white-clad priestesses stepped forward, their voices lowered in a soft chant. Despite the severity of the situation, and the fact that in all likelihood he was going to die horribly in a matter of moments, Sabarra felt a sense of calm flow into him. The reaction of the Chaos warriors was markedly different. The armoured monsters flinched, taking several steps backward, seemingly repulsed by the soothing chant. The insect-helmed leader looked over toward his bestial shaman. The creature nodded its horned head and began to mutter in its own braying voice.

Almost instantly, the sense of calm began to fade as the beastman’s dark invocation fouled the very air. The Chaos warriors strode forward once more. The few temple guards who had not been reduced to screaming husks by the decaying sorcery of the shaman rushed forward, interposing themselves between the five warriors and the priestesses. Pulstlitz waved his warriors forward, content to allow them to slake their fury on the spearmen, just as he had been content to let the mob of mutants and pestigors bloody their blades on the rabble outside the walls of the hospice. The Chaos champion was interested in only one sort of prey, and with the few soldiers occupied there was no one to stand between himself and his prey.

Pulstlitz glared down at the white-clad women. They refused to open their eyes, concentrating entirely upon their sacred prayer. The plague champion snorted derisively. Sometimes the most satisfying things in life were also the easiest to acquire. ‘Tonight, you zhall cower before my god and beg hizz forgivenezz!’ Pulstlitz lifted his blade, pausing to savour the moment, then brought the polluted steel rushing downward.

The plague blade stopped short of striking flesh, the sound of crashing steel ringing out as another blade intercepted it. A dull fire seemed to glow within the keen edge of Drakesmalice as the enchanted blade crashed against the polluted metal of the Chaos sword. Pulstlitz recoiled from the unexpected parry. He turned his insect-eyed helm to face the fool who thought to stand between himself and those who had profaned his god.

The brown sack-cloth of a supplicant hung about Brunner’s pale figure, sweat dripping from his frame as he struggled to remain on his feet. The Tears of Shallya were posed of miraculous properties, but they were not able to instantly erase days of inactivity and fatigue. The plague champion chortled within his corroded helm. Here, perhaps, was a man worthy of killing, a soul that warranted being sent screaming to the Plague God. Pulstlitz nodded, then swung his foul blade at the bounty hunter’s neck. Brunner intercepted the powerful stroke, turning it aside with a manoeuvre he had learned from a Tobaran duellist. The foolish man was skilled, Pulstlitz conceded, but he could not hope to fend off the plague blade indefinitely and it would take but a single scratch from the infected steel to kill him.

However long their little struggle might last, Pulstlitz was certain of the outcome.

Sabarra lifted the heavy arquebus to his cheek, his narrowed eyes considering the carnage unfolding all around him. The guards were almost all dead, but the plague warriors had been mobbed by a desperate pack of supplicants, their malnourished forms clinging to the butchers, slowing the armoured giants with the weight of their dying bodies. Closer at hand, the leader of the plague warriors had been engaged by Brunner. How Sabarra’s rival had been able to rise from his sick bed, much less find the strength to wield a sword, was a problem Sabarra would worry about later. The Tilean was relieved that Brunner had stopped the insect-helmed monster, because he had a feeling that if the plague champion were to reach the priestesses, then no one would be leaving the hospice alive. There was another struggle going on, apart from the crash of swords. Gods were at battle here, striving against one another through their chosen priests.

Sabarra turned the arquebus toward the archway, where the twisted shaman continued to bray and moan in its grisly voice. Sickly green light gleamed from the monster’s eyes. Sabarra muttered a prayer to Shallya, then put the smouldering hemp match to the touch pan of his arquebus. The weapon shook as the blackpowder ignited and the roar of the discharge overwhelmed all other sounds. Almost at once, the sense of soothing calm returned to Sabarra. As the echoes of the shot faded, the chanting of the priestesses returned, now strident and loud, as though the tones were a caged river flowing through a broken dam. The smoke began to clear and Sabarra was pleased to see the steel spike of his garro sheathed in the dead beastman’s skull.

The plague warriors moaned as they reacted to the fading magic of their sorcerer. The loathsome runes carved upon their armour began to weep blood, and it was with painful, awkward movements that the monsters retreated back toward the archway. Outside, the frightened wail of the other plague creatures sounded, followed by the frenzied retreat of malformed shapes, slinking back into the comforting darkness of the woods.

Pulstlitz shuddered as the protective magics of the priestesses surrounded him. Without the baleful power of the shaman to counteract the magic energies, the antagonistic energies wracked the plague champion. He felt the healing powers of the goddess entering him, sapping his strength and coordination. The plague champion lifted his blade to ward off the bounty hunter, but the move was too slow. Brunner’s sword bit into Pulstlitz’s hand, tearing through the corrupt armour. The steel gauntlet dropped to the flagstones with a crash, the plague blade tumbling from its slack fingers. No hand filled the polluted glove, instead a mass of black-shelled cockroaches scuttled into the light, their hideous shapes crumbling as the hostile energies drove the corruption from their tiny shapes.

Pulstlitz, clutching the stump of his arm to his chest, retreated before Brunner. The monster gave a droning howl of fury, then turned and raced from the courtyard. Brunner watched him go, sagging weakly to the ground. He was not one to leave an enemy alive, but what strength had been restored to him had been all but spent during their brief duel. He had a feeling, however, that their paths would cross again, and that only one of them would walk away from that encounter.

Sabarra walked toward the Reiklander, crouching beside him on the flagstones. The Tilean looked Brunner up and down, a cold smile tugging at his weasel-like face.

‘So,’ Sabarra said, ‘it looks like you’re recovered. Suppose we have that little talk now?’

Brunner stalked through the corridors of the hospice like a wolf on the prowl. He had mended his armour, wearing it now once more, his weapons again hanging from his belt. The last traces of the red boils were slowly fading away, sinking back into his skin. Miraculous was the only word to describe the fantastic elixir Elisia had given him. The bounty hunter saw the priestess crouched beside one of the pallets in the ward he had so recently inhabited. He strode down the narrow path between the sick beds toward her.

Sabarra had been quite hasty in his departure, leaving Brunner to complete his recovery on his own. Brunner hoped that his rival was having a nice time in the little village of Montorri. He hadn’t lied to Sabarra, Montorri was indeed where Riano’s uncle lived. He had simply failed to mention that he no longer had any reason to believe Riano would be found there.

Elisia looked up as the bounty hunter’s shadow fell across her, the hate undimmed in her eyes. Brunner respected that, a woman of principle and standards. It had been out of respect for that quality in her and what she had done for him that he had waited this long. The smart move would have been to act as quickly as possible, to reduce how much time Sabarra had to realise his mistake. Instead, Brunner had bided his time.

‘How is he?’ the bounty hunter asked. Elisia glared at him, wiping a lock of stray hair from her face.

‘What you have been waiting for has happened,’ she told him, her voice as hard as the roots of the Grey Mountains. ‘The red pox has won. He is dead.’ Elisia smoothed the front of her robe as she rose to her feet. ‘You are no better than a vulture, a jackal,’ she spat. Brunner did not bother to contradict her, instead he stared down into the dead man’s face, the face he had recognised when Sabarra had brought him into this room. The face of Riano. When plague had struck Decimas, the outlaw had fled here. If Brunner still gave any thought to the gods, he might have seen the workings of fate that he and Riano should meet by so strange a turn of circumstance. But the bounty hunter no longer gave much thought to gods, only gold.

‘Have some of your people help me drag him outside,’ Brunner told Elisia, his gloved hand closed about the massive serrated knife he had named the Headsman. ‘That way you won’t have far to carry the part I don’t need.’

CHAPTER THREE

DEATHMARK

The bounty killer sat in the shadows at the back of the Black Boar, slowly sipping at his stein of beer. Normally, the transplanted Reikland beer hall would be almost deserted at such an early hour. But today the hot Tilean sun had punished the city of Miragliano with a vengeance, baking the streets with the fury of a raging kiln. Many were those who had retreated from the oppressive temperature and the foul stink of sweating unwashed bodies for the cool innards of the many taverns on La Strada dei Cento Peccati. The Black Boar, with its clientele from the cooler northern climes of the Empire, had swelled almost to bursting point.

Brunner watched as a mob of dwarf warriors made a game of tossing throwing axes at a wooden target that looked rather suspiciously like an orc in size and shape. A pair of dour-looking wool merchants from the Sudenland were drinking away their sorrows, and trying their best to ignore the raucous din set up by the hulking figure at the table beside them. He was a mountain of a Norse pirate named Ormgrim, and he was currently trying to discover if the beer barrels in the Black Boar’s storeroom really were bottomless. Along the counter of the bar was a group of mercenaries from across the Empire, who had recently arrived in Miragliano as part of a trade caravan from the rival city state of Remas in the south.

A dark, rail-thin man slipped into the beer hall. No displaced product of the northern lands was he – his swarthy skin betraying the harsher, punishing sun of the south. He was an older man, certainly well past his prime, but without the crushed, defeated stoop of an elderly peasant who had been abused by his overlong years. His face was pinched into a perpetual look of suspicion, his fleshless cheeks stretched tight over the bones of his jaw. He wore a dark coat of soft fabric, his feet shod in leather shoes fronted by elaborate brass buckles. The extravagantly frilled cuffs of a pristine white shirt exploded from beneath the black coat, and engulfed the man’s slender hands.

Brunner watched the thin man walk across the tavern, his head glancing from side to side as though in search of someone. Several times, the thin man was jostled by glowering Northmen as they crossed his path. Twice an extended boot caused the man to stumble. The patrons of the Black Boar considered the inn a home away from home, and they viewed any Tilean setting foot in the tavern as an intruder.

At last, the man appeared to find what he was looking for. Brunner watched impassively as the man walked over to his table. Beneath the table, however, he kept a steady grip on a small pistol-sized crossbow.

‘You are the man they call Brunner?’ asked the thin man. Although he looked like a Tilean, his accent bore the telltale inflections of Estalia. ‘You are the fearsome bounty hunter?’

‘Perhaps,’ Brunner said, sipping at his drink.

‘I am Ortez,’ the Tilean said. ‘In the service of her ladyship the Contessa Carlotta de Villarias.’ The man waited a moment, as if expecting Brunner to be awed by the name. When the bounty hunter’s expression did not change, the Estalian hurriedly continued. ‘My mistress has sent me to find you. She has a job for you.’ The man paused again, then added, ‘It will pay very well.’

Brunner set down his drink and rose from his seat, replacing the crossbow pistol to its place on his vambrace. The Estalian’s eyes went wide as he saw the weapon appear and breathed a sigh of relief when it was put away.

‘I have my own ideas of what a well paying job is,’ Brunner told Ortez. ‘But we’ll go and see your mistress and find out what it is she wants me to do for her.’ Ortez smiled and nodded his head, leading Brunner back through the tavern.

As they passed the bar and the group of mercenaries, a surly voice accosted the bounty hunter.

‘You there! Thief!’ the speaker growled. Brunner turned, finding himself staring into the angry countenance of a face that had been weathered and reshaped by years of hardship and battle. The man was originally from the western part of the Empire, Reikland or Altdorf to judge by his accent. But he had been long from his homeland; his once fair skin had been baked almost brown by the brutal sun of the south, his moustache and beard trimmed away into the rakish style of the Tileans. Indeed, were it not for the blond hair and piercing blue eyes, the man could quite passably present himself as a native of the city-states rather than some imported sell-sword. An elaborately engraved breastplate encased the man’s chest, while a rich blue shirt billowed out from beneath the armour.

Mercenary and bounty hunter stared at one another for several tense moments. Ortez was sliding away from Brunner, eager to distance himself from any conflict.

‘If you are looking for trouble,’ the bounty hunter’s chill voice warned, ‘I suggest you look elsewhere.’

The mercenary captain was not to be intimidated. Instead, he took a step closer, and curled his lip into a disdainful sneer. The bounty hunter casually slid his hand to the butt of his pistol.

‘Brave words for a thief!’ the mercenary snarled. He pointed his leathery hand at the golden dragon-hilt of Drakesmalice. ‘I’ve seen that sword before,’ the inebriated warrior said. ‘You could not have come by it fairly!’

The tense situation erupted into violence. The drunken mercenary moved to pull his sword from its sheath, but discovered that he did not have enough room to draw it. At the same instant, Brunner surged forward, smashing his metal vambrace into the man’s face, then grabbing him about the throat with his arm. The bounty hunter kicked the stunned man in the back of his knee, forcing him into a forward fall. The mercenary’s head smashed into the counter. Brunner held him there, drawing his pistol and thrusting it into the face of the brutish bearded ruffian who had run forward to help his leader. Brunner turned his attention back to the man who was choking in his hold.

‘You know this sword, do you?’ the bounty hunter asked.

‘It is the blade of the Baron von Drakenburg!’ accused the mercenary between gasps.

Brunner leaned forward and hissed into the mercenary’s ear. ‘I don’t know any von Drakenburg,’ he stated. ‘I took this sword from a self-styled baron a year ago. He lived in a miserable muddy hovel down in the Borderlands. Perhaps he stole it.’

‘What was his name?’ demanded the mercenary, despite the pressure on his throat. Brunner released his hold and stepped away.

‘The scum was named Albrecht Yorck,’ the bounty hunter declared. He removed the pistol from the face of the other mercenary and backtracked to the door. Behind him, the drunken mercenary sobbed into the wooden counter.

‘Yorck!’ the man cried, slamming his fist into the wood. ‘It was Yorck who betrayed us!’

Brunner left the man to his sorrow, emerging in the sweltering, stinking street. Ortez hurried to catch up with him.

‘What was that about?’ the Estalian asked as he fell into step beside the bounty hunter.

‘Nothing,’ Brunner answered, not meeting Ortez’s gaze. ‘Ancient history.’

Miragliano was not the chaotic warren found within the walls of most Imperial cities. The city was formed of distinct and identifiable districts, as removed and independent from one another as individual nations. Partially, this was due to the elaborate civic improvements and planning orchestrated by the genius Leonardo da Miragliano. Under his direction, Prince Cosimo had devastated much of the old city, to replace it with a well-ordered and easily navigated metropolis. The inner reaches of the city, which were most difficult for attackers to reach, became the homes of the wealthy merchant princes and those who had earned their favour. These were also the districts of the artistically enriched temples which were showcases of the city’s wealth and piety. The outer sections were given over to mercenary barracks, the taverns and brothels that served them, and to the labourers and seamen who toiled to fill the coffers of the princes. Around the entire city, thick walls guarded against invasion, and numerous towers leaned upward from their soggy foundations to protect those walls.

But it was not the genius of the engineer that kept the districts from swelling beyond their boundaries as they had in the cities of the Empire. It was the fact that much of the city was built on numerous small islands, so that in many places, canals took the place of streets, and thick walls and guarded gates maintained the inviolate boundaries between merchant and servant.

The scarecrow-like Estalian led Brunner to one of Miragliano’s most prosperous districts. It was in the very heart of the old city, and was protected from the sprawl around it by its own thick stone wall. Located as it was on a separate island from the warren-like maze of warehouses, shops and taverns that catered to the merchant fleets and their crews. Brunner and the emaciated Ortez were forced to embark upon a narrow gondola. The bounty hunter pointedly waited for the thin Estalian to pay the gondolier his fee. The man quietly poled his charges away from the mercantile domain, past the scows and barges of the water sellers, towards the looming wall of the old city. A small pier jutted out from the front of the wall. The gondolier manoeuvred his craft toward the small jetty where a trio of glowering soldiers awaited them.

Brunner could see that these were not members of the mercenary watch hired by the guildhouses to protect their goods and maintain a semblance of law in the mercantile district. These were hard-faced Tileans, scarred veterans who had already cut their teeth as dogs of war. Over their suit of reinforced leather armour, each man wore a tabard decorated with the scarlet field and black tower of Prince Borgio himself.

The scowling soldiers motioned for the gondola to stop at their post, which was set before a massive iron portcullis that blocked the canal’s progress under the wall. One of them produced a long boat hook to facilitate the landing. The other two soldiers fixed their stern gaze on Brunner and his companion.

Ortez smiled back at the guards, thumbing three gold coins from his money belt. The soldier with the boat hook accepted the payment without a word, then nodded at his comrades.

‘Search it,’ the soldier growled. Both men grabbed short spears from a barrel resting on the jetty and began to tap the bottom of the gondola, listening intently for any hollow sound. Satisfied in this respect, the guards looked carefully at the sides of the small boat, their keen eyes searching for anything that shouldn’t be there. As one of the soldiers turned to replace the spear in its barrel, Brunner caught sight of a small, hairy hand-like paw swinging from a leather strap on the man’s belt. It seemed that rat catching as well as gate keeping was part of the soldiers’ duties.

The soldier with the boat hook set the implement down and strode towards the wall. He spoke into a barred grille of a heavy iron door. Soon, the corroded portcullis that blocked the canal was groaning its way upward. The gondolier pushed off and began to navigate his way into the prosperous old quarter.

The canal soon narrowed beyond the wall. Looking back, Brunner could see the creaky portcullis lowering once more. A pair of crossbowmen in burnished bronze armour regarded the passing gondola from the top of the wall, then returned their attention to their duties.

The temperature was noticeably cooler here. The palazzos of the merchants and the Tilean noble houses rose to either side of the canal, their many balconies reaching across the reeking water to within an arm’s length of one another, casting the waterway below into shadow. Brunner studied his surroundings, noting the garish, opulent porticoes that fronted the mansions, each of the colonnaded entryways trying to outdo the next in extravagance and artistry. At times, a tired-looking footman in the livery of some merchant house could be seen leaning against one of the doorways, desperately awaiting some visitor to break the tedium and provide him with a brief escape from the stench of the canal.

The gondolier expertly navigated the confused network of canals, at last drawing his craft toward a massive grey-stoned building. Like the other palazzos, this one sported an extravagant portico, its fluted columns fashioned of black marble. Intricate carvings writhed about the mantle in a manner that suggested serpents as much as they did vines. A thick-necked, burly figure stood at the top of half a dozen steps that descended from the door to the canal. As the gondola approached, the doorman descended, accepting the rope the gondolier offered him and fastening it to an iron fixture cast in the shape of a swan.

‘The house of my lady, the Contessa Carlotta de Villarias,’ Ortez announced proudly as he stepped from the gondola. Brunner waited for a moment before following the scarecrow-like steward. He spared a moment to once again observe the elaborate portico. There was indeed an opulence to it, but there was also a touch of decay. Dirt had infiltrated the scrollwork, and cobwebs had gathered in the corners. It was an observation that gave him some misgiving. Was his prospective patroness the inheritor of a failing fortune? It had been the bounty hunter’s experience that there were few creatures more dangerous than an expiring dynasty seeking to preserve the illusion of wealth.

‘The contessa, she wait in the black room,’ the massive doorman growled, his accent thick with the tones of Miragliano’s most debased street thieves. Brunner took note of the brief, furtive glance between Ortez and the doorman when the thug mentioned the black room. He made a pretence of scratching at his forearm, as though the armoured vambrace were chafing at his skin. But he was actually ensuring that the needle-sharp spring-loaded stiletto he had relieved from the mercenary Ursio years ago was ready for plying its murderous function.

‘This way,’ Ortez gestured, showing the bounty hunter the door, as though Brunner had been ignorant of its presence. The scrawny Estalian hovered on the threshold as the doorman pushed the portal inward. The swarthy-visaged scarecrow looked into the room beyond for a moment, then turned his eyes back on Brunner. He had a puzzled and somewhat annoyed expression on his wrinkled features.

‘After you,’ Brunner said, his voice icy, one hand caressing the pistol across his belly. Ortez favoured him with a nervous smile, then entered the palazzo. Brunner trained his eyes upon the thuggish doorman, watching him for the slightest suggestion of untoward intentions. The big Tilean just glowered back, his expression no less unfriendly than it had been upon their arrival. The bounty hunter smiled back, his mind working to place a name to the hulking ruffian’s face, and a price to fit the name.

The palazzo of Contessa de Villarias was a cold, clammy place. Despite the heat outside which slowly boiled the filth floating in the canals, the air in the noblewoman’s residence carried a definite chill. The marble floors were dusty, and the bounty hunter’s eyes were quick to note the trails that disturbed that dust. He mentally filed away the prints, cataloguing each distinct set, and slowly calculating how many others had been privileged to disturb the Contessa de Villarias’s dust.

The winding corridor and stairway that Ortez had conducted him through bore all the traces of a wealthy house. Statues of quality and antiquity adorned marble pedestals spaced along the walls. Where the statues were absent, portraits took their place, displaying the fading features of once powerful men. Each was the work of a master, though it was evident no one hand had painted any two. Moreover, many of the portraits featured men in costume dressed after the fashion of noblemen from ages past. It was a curious collection, for it was apparent that the portraits bore no familial connection. Perhaps the contessa was an eccentric spinster trying to fill her empty halls with a tiny trace of that which she had never claimed?

Everywhere amidst the artwork and elaborately engraved moulding that framed every doorway was the air of decay. Dust had silently gathered in the corners, in the cracks and crannies of the skirting, on the frames of portraits and on the brows of statues. Cobwebs dangled from the narrow space at the top of the vaulted ceilings. Brunner considered the paltry number of footprints he had seen. It was obvious that the contessa did not maintain a large household. It was equally obvious that what servants she did keep were tasked to duties other than maintaining the palazzo.

The man stopped before a set of double doors, massive things of dark Drakwald timber, with a pair of leering gargoyles carved into the face of each panel. Ortez placed his hands on the steel handles and pushed the doors inward. Brunner paused an instant then followed the man inside.

The black room had been named well. The floor was of onyx, the lustrous black stone shining in the flickering light cast by a hanging chandelier. The walls were draped in heavy black cloth, a slight draught making the cloth rustle with a faint motion, as though the room itself were alive. Brunner noted the walls with particular suspicion. He studied each motion of the cloth, watching for anything that might portend more than a mere draught. The room itself was almost devoid of furnishings, the only exceptions being a small claw-footed table and a tall leather-backed chair. A decanter of some dark, smoky crystal stood upon the table. In the chair sat the Contessa Carlotta de Villarias.

The noblewoman wore a soft velvet dress that had been dyed to match the floor and the walls. The neckline was cut low, in a v-shaped pattern and trimmed with intricate spider webs of lace. A great, ponderous pendant of gold hung from her neck. It was a gleaming trinket that resembled a terrible eye as much as it did the unblinking disc of the sun.

The contessa lounged in the chair, posing to accentuate every curve of her voluptuous figure. Above the pendant, the woman’s face regarded the bounty hunter from within a frame of sleek black hair. Hers was a sort of timeless beauty that had been aped throughout the ages by Tilean painters and sculptors. Her delicate nose was like a small button set at the centre of her face. The full, slightly pouting lips were at once inviting and mocking. The high cheeks and slight chin were clothed in soft, pale, unblemished skin, as flawless as polished marble, as cool and inviting as the soft sands of the shores of Ulthuan. The sensual green eyes shrouded by long lashes taunted the observer to gaze into their emerald depths, and to dare unlock the secret thoughts and unspoken knowledge that rested behind them.

‘I welcome you, bounty hunter,’ the contessa said, her voice soft, inviting. ‘I am pleased that you have accepted my commission.’ As she spoke, she stroked a small, short-haired cat resting in her lap.

Brunner found himself unable to turn his eyes from the beautiful figure seated before him. Emotions long abandoned welled up within him, and the more controlled part of his mind became ever more unsettled. She was beautiful. Her voice was soft as new-fallen snow. Her eyes were the most captivating he had ever seen. The contessa Carlotta de Villarias was the most lovely woman he had ever encountered. He needed to clear his head. It had been a long time since he had succumbed to such thoughts. He was here for business, he needed to focus on that.

‘Something troubles you?’ the noblewoman asked, her slender hand hesitating in its stroking of the cat. The black-furred animal turned its head to face the bounty hunter. Its great eyes snapped open in its head. They were eyes of jade, dull imitations of those of its mistress.

Brunner stared back at the woman, meeting her piercing green eyes. She was indeed beautiful, but the colour of her gold would be more so. The bounty hunter considered his need for the woman’s wealth, using his lust for revenge to counter the desires that had risen unbidden within him. A brief flicker of emotion crossed the contessa’s face, something that conveyed amusement and annoyance almost as a single expression.

‘It remains to be seen if I will accept your commission,’ Brunner stated, struggling to keep his voice level. The contessa smiled back, nodding her head.

‘Do not let the condition of my Miragliano house deceive you,’ she said. ‘It has been many long years since I last had cause to visit this palazzo in the city. As my servant has no doubt explained, I am a native of Estalia, and it is there where I make my home. Moreover, I wanted to keep my arrival in the city as unremarkable and unnoticed as possible. Bringing sufficient staff to restore this place would have been detrimental to my present concerns.’ The contessa allowed herself a slight, hollow laugh. ‘Rest assured, bounty hunter, I can well afford your services.’

Brunner adjusted his stance, once again eyeing the curtained walls with suspicion. ‘I have not yet heard what it is you wish to hire me to do. I don’t take a job until I know what it is.’

‘Right to the point. All business,’ the contessa observed. ‘I find it is a rare thing to find men who are so, ah, professional. Very well. I wish to hire you to secure an item which was stolen from me, and to eliminate whoever is in possession of it.’

‘That would depend on the nature of the item,’ the bounty hunter stated, ‘and who is in possession of it. I am hardly going to accept a commission to murder Borgio the Besieger because he happens to have stolen some bauble of yours.’

‘Do not worry,’ the contessa said. ‘Those who have stolen from me are no great princes or merchant lords. They are thieves, simple robbers and nothing more. Whoever they might have traded my possessions to is also criminal scum. You won’t be decorating one of Miragliano’s leaning watch towers by accepting my assigment, I assure you.’

‘I just wanted to make it clear to you that there are some lines which I will not cross,’ Brunner explained. ‘Suicide is one of them.’ A slight smile of mockery and amusement tugged at the noblewoman’s features.

‘If you are half the man they make you out to be, then you will have little problem in reclaiming my stolen property.’ The contessa gestured with her hand, indicating a stack of small pamphlets resting beside the decanter. Brunner could see that they were a collection of Ehrhard Stoecker’s adventure stories, tales that Brunner himself had related to the man.

‘All right,’ the bounty hunter said, doing his best to ignore the contessa’s reference to what he himself considered to be spurious fabrications diluted from his real exploits. ‘Just exactly what is it you wish me to find?’

The contessa straightened herself in her seat, upsetting the cat, which cast a sullen look up at its mistress. The noblewoman paused for a moment, the tip of her tongue licking her bottom lip as she collected her thoughts. Finally, having decided where to begin, or, more likely, how much to tell, she began to relate her story.

‘Several months ago, I came into possession of a map which showed the location of a previously undiscovered tomb in Nehekhara. I have always been fascinated by the ancient civilisation of the pyramid builders, and fortunately have enough wealth to indulge my penchant for such antiquities. I travelled to Araby and arranged to outfit an expedition to the tomb. I myself did not go, of course, but I did send a number of representatives along with those Arabyans I employed.

‘Two months passed before my representatives returned. Some of the Arabyans I had employed had deserted the expedition, taking with them a number of priceless artefacts. My men had observed that one of the Arabyans had displayed some knowledge of Miragliano and its black market. In fact, he had been trying to convince the other men to desert with him and to bring away a greater portion of the loot. With this report, I at once made arrangements for passage to Miragliano and hoped to reclaim my property.’

‘And have you?’ asked Brunner.

‘Only partially,’ sighed the contessa. ‘Many of the smaller items have been recovered by my own people, but one of the most noteworthy items has not.’ She paused again, wetting her lip. ‘The preserved mummy of a Nehekharan priest-king has eluded our best efforts to recover it.’ When she paused again Brunner could see the first trace of life in her compelling eyes. They were wide with fear. ‘The mummies of Nehekhara are valuable in themselves, but not in the same way as gold or gems or even scrolls and books. The mummies are sometimes sold to apothecaries, who chop them to bits to make powerful medicines. But there is a much darker possibility. It is possible that the mummy has been sold to a necromancer, to provide the degenerate wizard with a mighty relic for his warped experiments.’ The contessa paused again, fixing Brunner with her gaze. ‘It is that possibility which I fear the most.’

‘You want me to recover something that may be in the hands of a necromancer?’ Brunner questioned, a trace of disbelief and shock in his voice. The contessa inclined her head slightly.

‘Indeed,’ the contessa replied. ‘Find whoever has the mummy. Kill them and destroy the mummy, lest it has absorbed some unholy sorcery while in the possession of such a fiend. I will sleep safer knowing it has been destroyed, and that by my actions no nameless horror will have been unleashed upon the world.’ The noblewoman’s face became softer, the fear in her eyes becoming a more desperate pleading.

‘You will help me? You will destroy this thing I caused to be taken from the Land of the Dead?’

Brunner stared back. ‘For two thousand gold crowns,’ he replied. ‘Fighting sorcerers and the living dead is not something I do on the cheap.’

He wasn’t entirely convinced by the contessa’s claims that she was worried what someone else might do with this mouldering relic. But if she paid him enough gold, he didn’t care if she was going to grind it up herself and poison the king of Estalia with it. The colour of gold could silence many questions.

The Contessa de Villarias’s face twisted into an angry glower, but it quickly faded. ‘If gold is all that moves your heart,’ she said at last, ‘then gold you shall have. But you must act swiftly, lest my fears come to pass!’

The bounty hunter inclined his head. ‘Just have the money ready,’ he commented, his tone surly. ‘I’ll provide the bodies. Dead and even more dead.’

The thing that had taken the title of Contessa Carlotta de Villarias watched the bounty hunter depart. He was an unpleasant creature, the sort of vermin whose neck she would happily snap like a twig without giving it a second thought. There was only a residue of the higher emotions within him, not even enough for her to play upon and exploit. Gold and the pursuit of wealth were the only desires that motivated the bounty killer. Even for one of her kind, dealing with such a despicable creature made Carlotta feel soiled and unclean.

Still, it had to be admitted that the villain was not without his positive attributes, particularly if a callous and ruthless nature could be considered a virtue. Brunner’s reputation for getting a job done bordered on legend among the thieves of Miragliano. The merest rumour that the bounty hunter might be on their trail was enough to make many men relocate to another of Tilea’s walled cities.

Carlotta had been surprised when she had discovered that the street novels of the exiled Altdorf author Ehrhard Stoecker contained more than a germ of truth in them. If anything, the writer seemed to have downplayed the fear with which the underworld of Miragliano held his subject. The bounty killer had acquired a truly formidable reputation. Carlotta had read the spurious pamphlets out of simple curiosity. After all, Stoecker was of some slight interest to members of the Aristocracy of the Night after his scandalous True History of Vlad von Carstein. But as she read, she had become intrigued, and saw the bounty hunter as a solution to her present troubles.

The man was no less impressive in the flesh, what she could see of him at any rate. He was well built, without the grotesque overabundance of muscle favoured by many men who depended upon violence as their trade. The wary manner in which he carried himself, the cunning, calculating light in his eyes – as though prepared for attack – had made their impression upon her. Indeed, he was a man that she might have dallied with, maybe even allowing him to cross the threshold of Morr and become one of her thralls. But he was also possessed of an arrogant and disdainful manner. He seemed to lack deference to those of a loftier station than his own. True, he might be brought to heel, but Carlotta had a feeling that breaking the man might not be so easy. His will was strong; he had even resisted her attempt to beguile him into her service. Seldom had the ancient vampire encountered a mortal who could manage to deny her ethereal charms, her mastery of the art of seduction with the merest glance. Carlotta pondered whether she might be able to transfix the man, should she be forced to deal with him herself. Might he throw off her compelling gaze? Might he even be able to raise his hand against her?

The vampiress considered the possibility. But it was just such an indomitable will that she was in need of. She needed a hero, a man who might stand against the most dire of horrors, and fight against beings that even the undead feared. He might even prevail against it.

Carlotta shuddered as she pondered the creature she had sent the bounty hunter to destroy. She had spent the better part of her existence living in fear of the day when the thing might walk again. Even among the deathless, certain names still carried an awful power. Among these was that of Nehb-ka-menthu, priest-king of the ancient city of Khareops, the city of pillars.

The memory of her first meeting with the priest-king was clearer to the ancient vampiress than any she had collected in her thousands of years of unlife. The great army of Alcadizaar the Conqueror had fallen upon Lahmia, crushing the city utterly and completely for Queen Neferata’s partaking of the elixir of Nagash, the great necromancer. The vampires had fought with all the fury and wrath they could muster, but the army of Alcadizaar was driven by a religious frenzy. They had come to punish the city for adopting the heresies and blasphemies of the accursed Nagash. They had come to put to the torch all trace of the necromancer’s evil work. Or so Alcadizaar had supposed. Among his army was the host of Khareops, and leading that host was the priest-king of Khareops, Nehb-ka-menthu. He did not come to wash his soul in righteous slaughter. He had come to plunder, and steal the dark knowledge Lahmia had acquired. For the priest-king harboured his own hideous ambition: he hoped to elevate himself far beyond even the eternal life and supernatural might of the vampires. The insane priest-king hoped to become something much greater. He aspired to become nothing less than a second Nagash!

So much became clear to Carlotta after she had been captured by a group of Khareopan soldiers during her attempt to flee the doomed city of Lahmia. Nor was she alone. Ten other vampires were locked in silver-lined boxes by the soldiers of Khareops, to be transported back to the city of pillars. Nehb-ka-menthu had protected his dark secret, ordering the death of all the surviving soldiers who had taken part in the siege of Lahmia as his force returned to Khareops. The hundreds-strong force had taken turns removing the heads of their comrades, the last of their number ripping open his belly with a flint knife. Then the priest-king had conducted his secret plunder into the heart of the pyramid that had been erected in preparation for his eventual death.

There are torments that can break even the will of the undead, and Nehb-ka-menthu had discovered them all. Over many years, the other vampires gave up their secrets, as the insane priest-king probed their bodies with salt and silver and hawthorn. He bled them, drinking the vampiric ichor so that he might perpetuate his own life. One by one, Carlotta’s fellow captives had been used up, their remains fed to wild dogs so they might never rise again. The vampiress herself had nearly succumbed before history conspired to set her free.

The Great Ritual had struck all of Nehekhara as Nagash perpetuated his final blasphemy against his ancient homeland. The lands of Nehekhara had long been poisoned and plagued by the great necromancer, but now, the few who remained amongst the living had perished, and the ancient dead had been stirred. The Great Ritual struck the whole of the ancient kingdom, and Nagash’s black magic did not spare the city of pillars. Those who still walked the streets of Khareops perished as the dark energy smothered them. In the dungeons of his pyramid, Nehb-ka-menthu had been drawing ichor once more from Carlotta’s weak, withered form when the awful power of Nagash’s spell struck him down. As life drained from the priest-king, Nehb-ka-menthu had not cried out in pain. Instead, he had declared, ‘Such power shall be mine!’

Carlotta had fled the dead city of pillars, and crawled into the desert like some vermin in human form. From the dead things that now walked the lands of Nehekhara, she could derive no nourishment. She was reduced to preying on the thin fluids of scorpions and scarabs – the only creatures hardy enough to have survived Nagash’s spell of doom.

It had taken her months to finally make her way to the mountains, and to feed on the equally rancid blood of orcs and goblins. In this way she at last found her way to the north, to the domains carved out by those who had escaped the doomed city of Lahmia. It had been centuries since she had endured such privation. The taste of such noxious provender had been expulsed from her by countless feedings on the rich warm blood of hearty men and supple women. She had left the sands of Nehekhara as a wretched, almost animal thing, but she had been reborn in the north as an elegant and lethal predator, an angry goddess of the night whose displeasure was as certain as the vengeance of any deity.

The final words of Nehb-ka-menthu still filled Carlotta with terror, a dread she had not known since she had become a vampire. She could still recall the nauseating horror that had filled her when she had been prowling the musty old museum in Magritta and seen the shard of pot bearing the glyph of Khareops. The sands of the desert had consumed the city of pillars, or so she had been told. Yet now it seemed that Khareops had been rediscovered, and that what should have remained lost had been found again. Carlotta knew fear again as she considered what might have been taken from the dead city.

It had taken years to trace the relic in the Magritta curio-house back to its source. Carlotta had learned from the now elderly tomb robber how he had found the cursed city, and what he had found within it. The city, it seemed, was largely intact despite the sand and the centuries, unspoiled by time and tomb robber. She wondered if this could be true, if Khareops and that which it held had indeed survived the ages. She decided that she could not take the risk that it had. The vampiress had indeed organised an expedition to the tomb, but she did not send them to claim lost treasures. She sent them to destroy the remains of Nehb-ka-menthu.

But her plan had backfired. Not wishing to endanger herself, Carlotta had sent a vampiric thrall with the expedition, and her surrogate had been destroyed by the faithless Arabyans. Worse, when she had finally caught up with some of the treacherous thieves in the city of Ka-Sabar, she discovered that they had found the lost city of Khareops, and had already penetrated the tomb of Nehb-ka-menthu.

As Carlotta had suspected, the undying liche priests of Khareops had mummified the remains of their slain king in the wake of the Great Ritual. The Arabyans had seen the mummy with their own eyes. Recalling her orders, several of them had decided that some potent magic must lie within the priest-king’s mouldering remains. They conspired to bear the mummy away to the coast and transport it to the Tilean city of Miragliano. One of the men was certain his contacts in the black market would enable them to dispose of the carrion at great profit.

Carlotta did not like to think what the ancient priest-king might have become in death. The embalming arts of the liche priests would have prevented his spirit from abandoning his dead form. But what effect might the vampire blood he had so laboriously extracted from his Lahmian captives have had upon him? In life, it had held back the sands of time, but in death? What sort of monster had the foolish Arabyans taken from the dry wastes of Nehekhara, and what might happen if the awful thing were to stir from its centuries of slumber? Nehb-ka-menthu’s mummy might be nothing more than a wasted corpse, but could she take that risk?

The black drapes parted and a pair of darkly handsome figures drifted across the onyx floor to stand beside their mistress. They were very alike in many ways, possessing the same pale skin, the same hungry cast to their lean faces and similar lustreless eyes. The vampire thralls had waited in hiding, to guard against any sudden aggression on the part of the bounty hunter. The contessa did not know whether her guest had been instructed in the detection of vampires by his literary chronicler. And she had learned that one could never be certain how the fragile living would react to the presence of the undead.

‘Mistress,’ spoke the vampire who had emerged from the left side of the room. He was a tall, well-built man. Two hundred years ago, before Carlotta had taken a fancy to him, he had been the premier duellist in Miragliano. He still wore his heavy duelling cloak, and still bore the light duelling rapier at his side. Carlotta reflected how even after hundreds of years, her kind were very much creatures of habit. ‘Why engage the mortal? You do not need him.’ The vampire’s voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I can find this carrion you so greatly fear.’ He drew his sword, letting the exposed steel gleam in the candlelight. ‘Time has not dulled my skills. I am still the greatest blade in all Tilea!’

‘Do you think that mere swordplay is enough? It would take more than a sword to strike down anything my lady fears,’ scoffed the other thrall. He was shorter than the other vampire, but no less handsome. He wore a set of elegant clothes with large frilled cuffs. His elaborately trimmed tunic resembled those that might be worn to the elaborate balls held by the wealthiest of Tilea’s merchant princes when they were not making war against one another. Indeed, Torici had once been a fixture at such functions: a dashing, witty rogue who had a reputation for making even the coldest heart warm to him. Carlotta had been amused by his wit, by his clever observations on the world, and she had taken him, that he might continue to entertain her into the long night. While Relotto was her brawn, Torici was her brain. The two thralls naturally complemented each another.

Relotto scowled back at his rival, baring his elongated fangs. Torici ignored him and continued to speak. ‘I must observe, with all deference my lady, that I am also at a loss to understand why you hired a vulgar bounty killer instead of sending one of us to deal with this matter.’

Carlotta fixed her slave with a withering look. ‘Because I do not wish there to be any trail that might lead back to me. If what I fear is true, if he walks again, I want no chance that he might find me! If I sent you, he would know I was behind the attack, because he would taste me in the blood that courses through your carcasses. But the bounty hunter is a different matter. There is nothing in him that will lead my enemy back here.’

‘Do you really think the warm-blood has any chance?’ Relotto remarked. ‘If the Vile One has not awoken, he might be able to destroy it, but if the Vile One walks again?’

‘Yes,’ replied the contessa. ‘You are quite right. I must keep an eye on my bounty hunter. I must know if he succeeds or fails.’ The vampiress lifted the animal nestled in her lap, and turned it so that she might whisper in its ear. She stood and gently set the animal on the floor. The cat swiftly scurried away and was soon lost in the deepening shadows of the corridor beyond the black room.

The cat shared some of Carlotta’s unlife; it was itself a thing removed from the living. By concentration and exertion of her will, the vampiress could see through the feline’s jade eyes. Her familiar would follow the bounty hunter. When Brunner found the hiding place of the priest-king, Carlotta would know. And if he found the mummy still locked in its ancient rest, and if he put the abomination to the torch, Carlotta would be close at hand to reward the villain for the boundless effrontery he had shown her.

Carlotta looked again at her devoted minions. ‘Notify the servants that we are leaving,’ she said. ‘In the event that the bounty hunter does fail, I want to be ready to quit the city immediately.’

The vampiress settled back in her chair as her minions returned to the shadows to carry out her orders. She reached a slender, pale hand for the crystal decanter, poured the rich red liquor into a small glass and daintily sipped. She held the blood on her tongue, savouring its salty, vibrant taste. And as she drank, she found herself hoping that Brunner would survive his task.

She was curious to know what his blood would taste like.

The dingy cellar was dark and cool, like the hole of some rodent. Brunner strode through the darkness, dodging the wet strips of cloth dangling from the wooden supports, and heading toward the rearmost corner of the underground room below the tannery. The stink of garbage and rotten vegetables assailed his senses as he pushed aside the damp rags. A faint light beckoned from the shadows.

‘Ah, my old friend!’ a frail-sounding voice coughed from somewhere near the light. ‘You’ve come to visit me once more and relieve my loneliness!’

Brunner advanced on the speaker. The man was spindly and old, his bones wrapped in wrinkled skin. The man’s skull-like face bore ghastly tooth-like projections. One of the hands that protruded from the sleeve of his thin nightshirt was malformed; it resembled a set of boneless tentacles. The human wreckage lay upon a rickety cot, with a small wooden chair set before it. An old lantern hung from a hook set into the beam above his feeble figure.

‘Tessari,’ Brunner said, as he seated himself in the old wooden chair. The mutant smiled as he heard his name, and his large, watery eyes misted with emotion.

‘It is so nice to hear my name spoken by another voice,’ Tessari confessed, tears slithering down his malformed face. ‘Sometimes I almost forget what it sounds like.’ He closed his eyes, his wasted body heaving with dry sobs. ‘Sometimes I almost forget what it is. I have to recite it to myself in the night so that I will remember.’

Brunner sighed, adjusting his position on the chair. ‘If you could delay the onset of madness for a few minutes, I have some questions for you, old man.’

Tessari’s eyes snapped open, the tentacles of his hand writhing and twitching. He contorted his features into a grimace of distaste. ‘I was forgetting myself. Forgetting who I was talking to. Tell me, Brunner, is there even a trace of pity in that stone heart of yours?’

‘None,’ the bounty hunter replied. ‘And since you seem so forgetful, I think I’ll just take my questions somewhere else.’ Brunner rose to leave. Tessari waved him to sit down again with his still-human hand.

‘There are many things I still remember,’ Tessari said, his tone sullen. He tapped his forehead with one of the worm-like digits of his altered hand. ‘There are still a few things in this skull of mine.’

‘Let’s just hope that what I need is in there,’ Brunner commented as he sat back down.

‘Perhaps,’ Tessari responded. ‘But this time I want my fee paid in advance.’ The mutant’s tentacles clenched in a macabre parody of a closing fist. ‘And no tricks this time,’ he warned.

‘Of course not,’ assured Brunner. He lifted his helmed head to consider the hanging lantern. ‘After all, I see that you put your previous fee to a good purpose.’

‘Just so we understand one another,’ wheezed Tessari, settling himself back into his cot. ‘Who are you hunting this time?’

‘Not “who”,’ the bounty hunter corrected. ‘I am paid to find a “what” this time. A relic stolen from an expedition in Araby. My patron has reason to believe it is here in Miragliano.’

Tessari made a disgusted groaning noise. ‘Stolen property in Miragliano,’ the mutant laughed. ‘You might as well seek an individual snowflake on the ice fields of Kislev!’

Brunner favoured Tessari with a knowing smile. ‘I imagine that this particular item might be unusual enough to be remarkable. What was stolen was the mummified body of a Nehekharan priest-king.’

Tessari’s wormy digits convulsed as they tried to make the signs of Shallya and Morr together. ‘Gods preserve us!’ he exclaimed.

‘I imagine that would be most people’s reaction,’ Brunner stated. ‘There can’t be too many men in Miragliano willing to deal in such wares. Even fewer who would have ties to thieves from Araby.’

‘There is only one whom I can think of,’ Tessari said after a moment’s consideration. ‘Abdul-Qaadir bin Shereef. Normally, he deals chiefly in Crimson Shade and other narcotic herbs from the South Lands, but he is not above dabbling in slaving and the black market. He is an Arabyan, but has lived in Miragliano for the past ten years. He is a ruthless and cruel man, utterly without morals. It is said he fears neither god nor man. I should think he would be just the sort of person who would buy or sell this thing you seek.’

‘This Abdul-Qaadir does indeed sound like the man I am looking for,’ Brunner agreed, tossing a set of silver coins onto the edge of Tessari’s cot. ‘Where can I find him?’

‘Abdul-Qaadir maintains a warehouse off La Strada di Falco,’ Tessari answered, lifting his body so that he might retrieve the coins. ‘But be warned, he keeps much of his illegal merchandise there, and the warehouse is always guarded. Abdul-Qaadir is not like Ennio Volonté. He knows when and where to spend his money. His guards won’t be the usual gutter-trash.’

Brunner rose. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘I was getting worried that this job wasn’t going to be interesting.’

‘It might be more interesting than you can handle,’ cautioned Tessari. ‘You have given thought to the possibility that Abdul-Qaadir has already sold the mummy? Ask yourself what sort of man would want such a thing? Ask yourself what he might hope to do with it?’

‘I’ve already been warned of those possibilities, old man,’ Brunner retorted, caressing the pistol holstered across his belt. Tessari shook his head.

‘Once, when I was still young, the caravan I led happened upon a barrow mound just off one of the back trails to Monte Castello. Trust me when I tell you that guns and swords are no proof against the restless dead.’

Brunner stood still for a moment, considering Tessari’s advice. ‘What is?’ he asked.

‘Faith,’ the old mutant replied. ‘Faith in the good and noble gods, faith that they will preserve and protect you against such abominations.’

Brunner snorted contemptuously, stalking away from Tessari, and making his way back through the maze of damp rags. ‘I’m afraid that my faith in anything has run pretty low, especially faith in the gods. I prefer to put my trust in steel. And in gold.’

Tessari shook his head, and listened as the bounty hunter’s steps carried him from the cellar.

‘Steel and gold won’t help you, Brunner,’ he said to himself. ‘They won’t help you at all.’

Abdul-Qaadir pushed his swarthy hand into the wooden box, immersing it in the crisp dried leaves that filled it. The Arabyan smiled, stroking his scruffy beard with his free hand. This shipment of Crimson Shade that had been smuggled into Miragliano was the largest and freshest he had ever received. The noxious herb leaves felt like wealth, like power.

The broad shouldered black marketeer removed his hand, bringing with it a fistful of the leaves. The Tileans were fanatics for this maniac art they called the vendetta. Many of them fancied themselves masters of the sword, true artists of the duel. But a Tilean did not like to leave anything to chance. He would plot and plan, laying schemes within schemes to ensure that events would transpire toward the end he sought. It was the same with the duellists. Their skill with the blade might indeed be remarkable, but they always liked extra insurance. Some would coat their weapons in garlic or some other blood poison so that the merest scratch would finish their enemy. Others preferred to make certain that theirs would be the swifter blade. Such men were easily lured into the use of Crimson Shade, an exotic herb that would speed up their reflexes and reactions.

Abdul-Qaadir smiled again. That Crimson Shade was also dreadfully addictive was a side-effect his customers discovered for themselves. The Arabyan looked up and gestured for one of the hulking mercenary guards who stood watch in the sprawling warehouse. The hired sword walked over, his hands twitching on the grip of his halberd. Abdul-Qaadir handed him the leaves he had scooped from the crate.

‘A bonus, my friend,’ the black marketeer said. ‘You did well in ferreting out Emir’s thankless thievery.’ The Arabyan shook his head sadly. ‘Poor Emir, such a disappointment. He, more than anyone else, should have understood that there must be honour among thieves.’ Abdul-Qaadir gave the big Tilean a knowing look. He knew that the mercenary had informed on Emir, but it was only because he had been too stupid himself to figure out a way to steal from his employer. The black marketeer dearly hoped that the mercenary would continue to be thick-headed. Smart men made poor guards.

The swarthy Arabyan looked about the warehouse. It was a broad, squat building, crowded with the crates and barrels that held the black marketeer’s wares. In one corner was a massive iron cage. It was a little early yet to collect drunks from La Strada dei Cento Peccati. The Arabyan barques with their secret holds would not be in port for several months yet, and feeding prospective slaves for weeks on end would cut into Abdul-Qaadir’s profit margin. Profit was the black marketeer’s lifeblood. He’d sold his own mother to a caliph’s harem when he was a boy for the price of a camel. No matter what leader’s face graced the coin, Abdul-Qaadir knew the value of a piece of gold.

There was a furtive rapping on the heavy wooden door that opened onto La Strada di Falco. The guard nearest the door listened as the series of knocks was repeated. Abdul-Qaadir did not pay it much attention. The code had been given. It was one of the petty addicts who peddled Crimson Shade to Prince Borgio’s soldiers in the many taverns and brothels scattered throughout the city. It never failed to amaze the Arabyan how the street peddlers always knew when he had a new shipment. It was almost as if they could scent the leaves like a pig with a truffle.

The mercenary opened the door, and stared down at the heavily cloaked figure beyond the portal. Abdul-Qaadir’s herb-sellers often arrived in shabby disguises. The guard swore an oath and stepped through the doorway. He held his halberd in one hand and balled a fist with his other.

‘The boss will send for you when he wants you,’ the guard growled. ‘You’d be smart to stay away from here until he does.’ The guard lashed out with his fist, aiming a punishing blow to the man’s belly. He was shocked when the cloaked shape dodged aside from his blow. A surprised look froze on the guard’s face when a slender stiletto sprang into the figure’s hand and the cloaked killer punched a needle of steel into his throat. The guard slumped into the doorway, supporting himself against the halberd, as his fingers clutched at the spurting wound in his neck.

The cloaked figure tucked the stiletto back into its place beneath the armour enclosing his forearm. Other weapons filled the bounty hunter’s hands.

It had not taken Brunner long to find one of Abdul-Qaadir’s Crimson Shade vendors. It had only taken a little longer to extract the information he needed from the wretch: the coded knock that would gain the man entry to the Arabyan’s warehouse. Now he only hoped that Abdul-Qaadir would be as forthcoming.

Brunner checked his weapons and kicked open the door that had been left ajar. Across the street, a tiny shape observed the prelude to death and violence. It was a small black creature with jade green eyes.

Abdul-Qaadir turned as the door of the warehouse slammed noisily. A ragged-looking man wearing a shabby brown cloak stood in the doorway. The Arabyan could not make out the man’s face beneath the hood of the cloak; much of it was masked by the visor of a steel helm. The curious-looking crossbow and heavy blackpowder pistol gripped in the man’s gloved hands, however, were menacingly identifiable.

‘Jafar’s rotting soul!’ Abdul-Qaadir exclaimed. ‘Brunner!’

Even as the Arabyan spoke, the bounty hunter had sprung into action. He sprinted across the room, closing upon the stunned black marketeer. The hulking Tilean Shade addict moved to intercept him.

Brunner’s repeating crossbow sent steel bolts smashing into the guard’s stomach and breastbone. He fell to the floor in a bleeding pile.

Abdul-Qaadir made to draw the curved blade from the colourful sash that crossed his midsection, but the business end of the bounty hunter’s pistol made him reconsider. The remaining five guards surged towards the intruder who had killed two of their number and was now menacing their employer.

‘I wouldn’t,’ growled the bounty hunter, as he gestured with his repeater crossbow. ‘Any closer, and your boss dies.’

‘You can’t get us all,’ snarled one of the Tileans.

‘Maybe not,’ agreed Brunner. ‘But I can get at least two more of you before you reach me. Who’s it going to be?’ The bounty hunter uttered a short, mocking laugh as he saw the mercenaries falter, and doubt and indecision worked their way onto their faces. ‘I should warn you, I coat my bolts in garlic. A trick I learned from you noodle-slurpers. That way if the bolt doesn’t finish you, poison will.’

The mercenaries were all but cowed now, their grips on their weapons becoming lax.

‘You’re professionals,’ Brunner said. ‘You understand that no matter what, I’ll splatter your boss’s brains all over this place. If he dies, the paydays dry up.’

‘Listen to him!’ pleaded Abdul-Qaadir, staring into the yawning barrel of the gun. ‘Don’t try anything stupid!

Suddenly the Arabyan was finding himself regretting hiring men who were not the greatest thinkers. A clear-headed man would understand that there was no way to help him except to obey the bounty hunter. But what lunacy might the idiots he had hired contemplate?

‘All of you,’ Brunner snapped. ‘Outside! I have a few questions I need your boss to answer. Then you can all get back to your swindling, stealing and smuggling.’

‘Do as he says!’ urged Abdul-Qaadir when he noted his men were hesitating. With muttered oaths and murderous looks, the guards filed out of the warehouse, into the street.

‘I thought they would never leave,’ Brunner said, training his attention on the prisoner. ‘I have a few questions for you,’ he said in a dry, icy whisper. ‘And trust me, you won’t like it if I have to ask you twice.’

Abdul-Qaadir swallowed the lump in his throat. He brushed sweat from his brow. ‘You could ask me for the keys to my daughters’ chastity belts and they would be yours!’ affirmed the Arabyan, his voice cracking with fear. He could well imagine that if Brunner were to discharge his weapon, there would be nothing left of him above his beard.

‘Good,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘We’re going to get along quite nicely.’ The icy menace returned to his voice and he pressed the tip of the gun barrel against the Arabyan’s hawkish nose. ‘Tell me, what do you know about mummies?’

The Black Boar was even busier than it had been when Brunner was first contacted by Ortez. The bounty hunter stalked through the crowd of merchants from Marienburg, mercenaries from Reikland and sailors from Kislev. He made his way to the bar, and grabbed the sleeve of the balding barman.

‘Where is Mahrun?’ he asked, speaking so that he could be heard over the din of Reikspiel spoken in a dozen contrasting dialects. The barman nodded towards a door set towards the rear wall of the tavern. Brunner turned and strode toward the back room.

He did not knock before pushing the oak door aside. The room was small and dark. It smelled of beer and the unwashed. A few miserable specimens of humanity shuffled out of the bounty hunter’s way as he entered. They watched him pass with furtive, frightened looks. These were wretches, the slovenly displaced Imperials who had been stranded in Miragliano when their money dried up or their luck ran out. The owner of the Black Boar allowed such men to spend what few coins they could beg or steal, but he did not want them cluttering up the main room. He also found it useful to keep a few such men on hand in case some ship’s captain was looking for a few bodies to increase his crew. Men such as these would never rise again from their squalor and misery; they were marking time until they passed beyond the gates of Morr.

There was only one man among these whom the tavern keeper took genuine pity on. That man was Mahrun. Brunner found him seated on a wobbly, warped chair, staring despondently into a dented tin stein. He wore a shabby brown robe similar to the one Brunner had worn on his visit to Abdul-Qaadir. The man’s blond hair was long, scraggly and filthy, his beard unkempt and matted. Brunner walked over to the wretch, staring down into the man’s rheumy, drunken eyes.

‘Mahrun,’ the bounty hunter said. He produced a pair of copper coins from his belt, and held them tantalisingly before the drunk. ‘Would you like these?’ Mahrun snatched at the coins, but his clumsy reach was easily avoided by the bounty hunter. ‘You have to earn them,’ Brunner stated.

‘What can I do?’ the wretch asked, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘What use am I?’

‘None at all,’ the bounty hunter replied. ‘But maybe you have something that is worth buying? Let’s get your things and have a look.’

Mahrun slunk from the back room, and crept out into the main hall. He made his way through the kitchens and into the storeroom where the taverneer was hiding his few possessions. The taverneer was trying to protect them from Mahrun’s impulses, but the wretch had discovered where they had been hidden. It was not stealing, for however low he sank, there were things Mahrun would not do, even in his most drunken stupor. The things he retrieved really did belong to him; they were relics from another life.

Brunner watched the drunk return, cradling a bundle wrapped in black cloth. The man set down the bundle, and spread out his belongings like a bazaar merchant displaying his wares. The bounty hunter glanced over the objects, and nodded his head as he saw a funnel-shaped cylinder of wood resting beside the mouldy old Sigmarite prayer book.

Gotz Mahrun had once been a warrior-priest in the service of Sigmar, tasked to a band of templars that was charged with rooting out a nest of vampires from a haunted fortress in Averland. Whatever had happened in that blighted place, Mahrun’s companions had died. Apparently, the warrior-priest’s courage and faith had not stood up to the unnatural horror of the undead.

Mahrun had fled, eventually ending up in Miragliano. He had become a broken shell of a man, plagued by inner daemons of guilt and self-loathing.

The more valuable of Mahrun’s possessions – the silver buttons of his black priest’s habit, the silver Sigmarite hammer that had once hung from a slender chain about his neck, the massive steel hammer he had been taught to wield upon the enemies of the Empire – had long ago been transformed into beer by the wretched priest. All that was left were objects that had no great material value – unless one had a specific use for them.

‘The stick,’ Brunner said. ‘I’ll buy that.’ He tossed the copper coins down to Mahrun. The wretch grabbed the money, and stuffed it into the top of his tunic. Then he reverently handed the long wooden stake to Brunner.

‘It is hawthorn,’ Mahrun explained. His thumb twitched, brushing one of the inscriptions that had been carved into the stake. ‘Blessed by the temple. Invocations to Sigmar carved into the wood. A very potent weapon,’ Mahrun’s voice slipped into a hollow whisper, ‘against them.’ The man slumped down onto the floor, tears streaming from his eyes. ‘Would that I had had the courage to use it. Would that I had been worthy of serving mighty Sigmar.’

Brunner left the wretch to wallow in self-pity. He considered the weapon for a moment, then thrust it into his belt and made his way out of the den of lost humanity.

Abdul-Qaadir had been very forthcoming with information; Brunner had only been forced to cuff the man with the steel barrel of his pistol three or four times. Through his split, bleeding lip, the Arabyan had informed Brunner that he had sold the mummy to a Tilean, a man named Carandini. Another slap of the steel and Abdul-Qaadir had admitted to Brunner that Carandini was reputed to be a practitioner of the dark arts, a black magician who had turned to the black marketeer in the past to provide him with unspeakable, abominable things.

The confirmation that the mummy of Nehb-ka-menthu had indeed fallen into the hands of a necromancer did not discourage Brunner, but it did make him cautious. He knew that it was best to fight magic with magic, and while he might no longer honour the gods, he knew that they were not without their own magic. He always felt it was better to err on the side of caution. Mahrun’s wooden stake would provide him with a little extra insurance.

The house in which the necromancer could apparently be found was in one of the easternmost districts of Miragliano. The land had begun to sink here, the entire island was slowly crumbling away to join the marshes beyond the city walls. It was a dilapidated district, abandoned, and all but deserted. The canals had become so choked with mud and overgrown with weeds, that they were no longer navigable. The network of dubiously maintained bridges had to be crossed to move about the district. Only the thick walls that surrounded the area had been kept up. Their bases had been shored up with rocks, boulders, gravel and rubble, to prevent them from sinking, and to preserve the integrity of Miragliano’s outer defences.

Brunner walked through the derelict neighbourhood. Fallen tiles from rotting roofs crunched beneath his feet as he strode the broken cobblestone streets and decaying bridges. The only sign of human life he encountered was a work crew removing the heavy statue of a cavalry hero from the forlorn remains of a piazza. They were obviously salvaging the work of art before the swamp could consume it. The Tileans were rather odd when it comes to art, thought Brunner.

Although human life had forsaken the district, it was not without other denizens. A family of red-feathered shrikes had established a gruesome nest in the broken window of a dilapidated palazzo, numerous frogs and insects impaled on the broken splinters of the window’s shutters. Great brown rats scuttled along the edge of the street, descendants of that plague of vermin that brought the red pox to Miragliano centuries before. A solitary vulture, its scrawny neck fringed by a circle of white down, pecked at a rotten cadaver that swayed from the only visible guard tower in the district.

The bounty hunter made his way through the silent streets. Even the sound of water lapping at the edges of the stone-lined canals was missing from this blighted area. On every side, doorways yawned, their ornately decorated panels looted long ago, like the glass that had once filled the empty windows above them.

Brunner paid the desolation scant notice. He was not interested in the lost glory of this neighbourhood, much less in the sorry abandonment it languished in. He was intent on finding the red-roofed three-storey building that Abdul-Qaadir had informed him served as the lair of the necromancer Carandini.

It was nearly an hour before Brunner found the house. The abandoned district was a confusing maze of streets, and some sections were unreachable now that the canals had become a muddy quagmire. This was a part of the old city that had never been reconstructed by Prince Cosimo to match the orderly planning of the great Leonardo da Miragliano. The bounty hunter was annoyed by the delay and determined that when the job was finished, he would be paying a visit to a certain Arabyan black marketeer and discussing his skill at giving directions.

Brunner checked his pistol, then unslung the curious skaven crossbow from his back. Examining the magazine that held the crossbow’s bolts, he slid it into place on the weapon. Patting the large wooden stake thrust through his belt, Brunner set out for the warped, leaning building.

As the bounty hunter worked his way along the street, he took advantage of every shadow and doorway so that his arrival might not be detected. But he did not see the pair of green eyes watching him from the mouth of an alleyway. The lithe feline watched the bounty hunter for a while, then turned and strolled away, obeying some summons only the ears of an immortal cat could hear.

Brunner mounted the steps that led to the second floor of the ramshackle palazzo. It was a broad, sprawling building that leaned towards the necromancer’s lair – the second floor balcony that rose above the portico almost touched the red-roofed building. The bounty hunter peered through the doorway of the room that opened onto the balcony. Seeing no sign of activity in the house across the narrow street, he swiftly made his way through the empty room and onto the balcony. A moment later, he climbed on top of the stone railing. Brunner did not even glance at the empty street below as he stepped across the gap between the two balconies. His left foot touched the wooden railing of the far balcony and he shifted his weight, letting his body fall into place after his foot. His quarry might reasonably be expected to have taken pains to guard against intrusion from the doors and windows on the street, but it had been the bounty hunter’s experience that very few men took the same precautions against intrusion from above. Many were the second-storey burglars whom he had hunted down in the thieves’ quarters of the Old World’s cities, men who had gained entry to the supposedly well-protected domains of their victims with almost contemptuous ease.

No, the necromancer might have placed traps or spells to guard the lower floors, but it appeared he had fallen into the same trap that many a wealthy merchant had come to regret.

The bounty hunter peered into the darkened room off the balcony. It was not quite as empty as the one opposite. Piles of rubbish and heaps of mouldering clothing littered the room. Brunner kicked at one of the rubbish piles, noting with indifference the rotting head which rolled free, disturbing the enormous rat that had been gnawing at the carrion. Brunner kicked a second rubbish pile, to reveal a number of human bones. Apparently the necromancer employed this room as a repository for the refuse from his studies.

As he strode across the room, one of the piles of rubbish rose awkwardly to its feet. The shape that confronted Brunner was only partially human, made all the more hideous for its rapidly diminishing kinship to the race of man. Its skin was pallid. Ugly green boils were scattered across its flesh, and a loathsome, mouldy-looking rash covered half its face and neck. The head was misshapen, like a melon crushed out of symmetry by a strongman’s grip. Scraggly scraps of hair dangled from a diseased scalp. The face was devoid of humanity, a rotten stump of nose perched atop a wide fang-filled mouth. Scraps of clothing clung to the creature’s lean frame, and it was caked in filth and gore.

More horrible though was the activity Brunner had interrupted. As the monster’s eyes glared at Brunner from the pits of its face, it dropped the decaying arm it had been chewing on and wiped the back of one of its clawed hands across its bloodstained mouth. The bounty hunter could hear the ghoul’s wasted belly growl with hunger as it took a step towards him.

The bounty hunter had heard of such beings before, putrid corpse-eaters that were sometimes kept by necromancers as labourers and protectors. They were not truly dead, these soulless wretches, rather they were insane, morbid men whose unspeakable choice of nourishment had destroyed their own humanity. They were little more than beasts, and no more intelligent than a clever dog. But with its poison-dripping claws, a ghoul had very little need of more than animal cunning.

The ghoul took another step forward, a low moan escaping its bloodied mouth. Brunner could see the muscles tensing in the creature’s emaciated frame as it prepared to pounce. The bounty hunter had no desire to test the quality of his armour on the ghoul’s venomous claws, nor could he risk the commotion of a full-fledged fight. With lightning reflexes, Brunner pointed his crossbow pistol at the slavering corpse-eater and sent a bolt smashing through its left eye.

The ghoul gave a single gasp as its eye exploded, then fell to the floor, twitching for several moments as life faded from its brain. The bounty hunter replaced his weapon. He hoped that the sound of the creature’s fall was no greater than the creature might make on its own, and that it would go unnoticed by its master.

Brunner stalked from the room, pausing in the open doorway. Like most of the buildings in this district, the doors had been salvaged long ago, leaving behind empty frames. He craned his helmed head around the corner, pistol at the ready. He sincerely hoped that the necromancer would not expect an intruder to set upon him from above. But with dabblers in the dark arts, Brunner had found that it paid to take nothing for granted.

He cautiously emerged into the hallway and began a systematic search of the upper rooms. Many of them were empty, but he found two that bore signs of habitation. One of these had even had a bed and a wardrobe.

Descending a rotting staircase, and testing every step before putting his weight on it, Brunner began to examine the rooms of the lower floor. He paused before a heavy wooden door to the left of the base of the stairs. He closed a gloved hand about the knob, trying to open the portal. With a scraping sound, the warped door moved, freeing itself from the equally distorted wood of the jamb.

The bounty hunter tensed, listening for any sound that suggested he had disturbed something in the house. After a moment, he pushed the door open fully, pistol held at the ready. The room was dark, lit only by a dingy light filtering through dust-choked windows. Several inches of water pooled over the floor, and the broken remains of chairs and tables lay amid the brackish, stagnant water.

A mottled orange and green salamander slid away from the dry area near the door and swam off into the dark waters.

Brunner left the room and pulled the door closed. Even a necromancer would not use rooms in such a state. He looked about him, studying the hallway. There was evidence of seepage now that he looked for it: the walls were warped and discoloured several inches above the floor. Just as he began to turn to retrace his steps and examine the third floor of the house, he noted something peculiar. The height of the water damage was noticeably less further west along the hall. Clearly the ground upon which the house had been situated had begun to shift, causing the once level ground to tilt. Not enough to be readily visible perhaps, but enough to cause the intrusive moisture to remain in the eastern section where the depression was greater.

The bounty hunter made his way along the corridor, opening the few rotting doors to inspect the rooms beyond. He knew that the subjects of a necromancer’s science were bodies – heavy, fragile corpses stolen from graves and gibbets. If the villain were able, he would have set up his laboratory in one of the lower rooms, rather than hauling heavy specimens up flights of treacherous stairs. And the laboratory would be where he would find the mummy of Nehb-ka-menthu.

It was the third door Brunner opened that led to the laboratory. It was a large low-ceilinged chamber, the height of the room being further diminished by a secondary flooring of old doors, shutters and other pieces of scavenged wood – a precaution against the wetness, no doubt, as the old floor had been rotted away by the creeping damp. A number of shelves lined the walls, their upper ranks laden with scrolls, books and what looked like pieces of alchemical apparatus, while the lower ones were bare. Hanging from the support beams were a number of gruesome paintings, their subjects various necrotic bodies in assorted degrees of dissection and decay, charts to lead the necromancer in his studies. Two partially decomposed bodies rested against the north wall of the room, like a pair of logs, so stiff and rigid were their dead shapes.

Brunner looked over the room quickly, unmoved by the horror and loathsomeness of the things the necromancer had accumulated in his twisted studies. What interested the bounty hunter was the object lying upon a long wooden table in the centre of the room.

The mummy stretched nearly the entire length of the seven-foot table. Encased in mouldering funeral wrappings that had become grey-green with age and decay, the corpse was like some withered ogre. Brunner could see that in life, Nehb-ka-menthu had been a powerful man, broad of shoulder and long of limb. The bounty hunter strode closer, curious despite himself to get a better look at the long-dead priest-king of Khareops. He could see that the wrappings still bore faint traces of pigment, like oily smudge marks, presumably the last remains of the once vivid and vibrant picture writing of the liche-priests of Nehekhara.

The cloth was stretched tight about the shrivelled remains and Brunner could make out the face of the dead ruler through its mask of grey-green. The face was largely intact, displaying a dome-like brow, high cheeks and a firm jaw. There was a look of power and cruelty about the dead face that suggested an implacable will and a ruthlessness that might endure even the trial of the grave.

Brunner drew away from the mummy, pulling Mahrun’s holy stake from his belt. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to have run into you when you were alive,’ he muttered to the motionless husk. ‘Let’s just make sure you don’t cause me any problems now that you are dead.’ He lifted the stake, holding it above the sunken chest of the mummy, and placed the point against its left breast.

The bounty hunter found himself suddenly and violently thrown to the floor, the stake rattling across the wooden covering. He cursed his lack of caution. He should have heard someone approaching, but he had been so intent upon examining the mummy, that he had failed to hear his attacker’s approach. As he began to lift himself from the floor, a powerful kick lashed into his midsection, throwing him back. The bounty hunter crashed against one of the shelves, knocking books and bones from the upper shelves and snapping one of the lower ones in half as his body smashed into it.

On his back, Brunner could see his attacker now. He was a huge man, thick cords of muscle wove about his limbs, and his chest was a great mass of meat and sinew. He wore ragged clothing, much befouled by mud and less mentionable stains. The man’s head was covered only by a few patchy spots of blond hair, his features broad, his mouth open in an idiot grin. Auburn eyes stared dimly at Brunner, fixed in a bleary dullard’s gaze. In many ways, the bounty hunter was reminded of the thing he had killed in the room above. Perhaps this brute was also becoming a ghoul, sustaining himself on whatever his master did not employ in his foul experiments. The man made some inarticulate sounds with his thick, useless tongue, then shambled toward the intruder, setting down a leather sack he had been carrying.

The half-wit stooped to grab at Brunner’s body, to lift him from the floor in a crushing embrace. The bounty hunter did not give him a chance. He rose to meet the muscle man, swinging around the object his questing fingers had closed on – a broken length of shelf. The splintered wood smashed into the idiot’s face. Bright red blood and yellowed teeth sprayed across the wall behind him. The big man staggered back, one hand clutching at his injury, blood drooling from his ravaged mouth.

Brunner did not give the idiot a chance to recover, but was on him in an instant, smashing the board once again into the man’s head. The wretch staggered with the force of the blow, and retreated from the bounty hunter, making pathetic noises with his malformed tongue. His dim eyes stared stupidly at the man who was now attacking him. Brunner swung the board around a third time, this time cracking the wood across the big man’s skull. The idiot dropped like a pole-axed ox, his big body splintering the scavenged wood on the floor as he fell. Brunner closed upon the prone body, kicking the man’s head with his steel-toed boot. He had felt the strength in those arms and was not about to take the chance that the dreg might get back up.

Panting with his exertions and trying to reclaim the breath the idiot’s kick had forced from his lungs, Brunner knelt and retrieved the wooden stake from the floor. Pausing for a moment to collect himself, he strode back to the table and the withered corpse resting upon it.

‘Where were we?’ he asked as he placed the point of the stake once more over the mummy’s shrivelled heart. Once again, he was kept from finishing his task.

‘Leave that alone and get out of here!’ shouted a voice from the doorway of the laboratory. Brunner spun around, dropping the stake to draw his pistol from its belt. Framed in the doorway was a thin, scraggly apparition. The man wore a loose cassock of dark blue trimmed with grey fur and tassels of hair. His brown hair was greasy and hung in ratty ropes about his unpleasant, slippery face. His skin had an unpleasant, sickly hue, as though he had bathed in pus and not dried the filth from his body.

Like his servant, the necromancer also bore a leather sack, which he dropped to the floor in alarm. From it, the butchered remains of a freshly exhumed corpse spilled onto the floor. The bounty hunter had chosen a good time to make his entrance, the necromancer had been away, securing his sickening materials from one of Miragliano’s morgues. But fortune had deserted Brunner just as readily. The necromancer was home now.

The necromancer did not wait to see if the intruder would comply with his command. In one of his filthy hands, he gripped a severed hand, green with rot. Before Brunner could fire his pistol, the necromancer growled a word of loathsome power. The severed hand gave off a sickly light. The necromancer threw his free hand forward, casting a fistful of dust at the bounty hunter. Brunner dodged the particles of corruption that glowed with the same hue as the wasted extremity held by the necromancer. The dust impacted against the shelves behind Brunner, sizzling like acid as it withered the wood and corroded the leather bound tomes.

Carandini uttered a sharp hiss as Brunner rolled away from the attack. The bounty hunter fired at the necromancer, the shot passing through the loose garment and burying itself in the rotten wood of the door. Brunner swore under his breath. Either some flaw in the symmetry of the ball had thrown off his shot or some dire sorcery warded his target. He rose from his crouch, holstering the pistol and unslinging the repeater crossbow from his back.

The necromancer glared at Brunner, eerie witch-fire gathering in the hollow pits of his eyes. Carandini let the severed murderer’s paw fall and clutched at the empty air with his wasted, claw-like fingers. Low, filthy sounds dribbled from the man’s puffy pink lips. Brunner took aim hastily, determined to put a bolt between the necromancer’s eyes before he could work his black sorcery. But before he could fire, a vice-like grip closed upon his boot, crushing his ankle with the fury of a wolf-trap.

Brunner stared down at his feet. Dull, idiot eyes stared back at him from a cracked and splintered face. There was no question that Carandini’s feeble-minded assistant was dead: pulpy coils of brain hung from the ruptures in his skull. What animated the hulking brute’s movements, what enabled him to reach out and grab his killer, was only a twisted perversion of life, a horrible violation of the laws of death brought into being by the necromancer.

The pressure on Brunner’s foot increased until he thought the clutching fingers would crack his very bones. Clearly the strength of the already powerful dreg had been increased by this unnatural state of pseudo-life. Brunner brought the crossbow swinging low, firing into the monster at his feet. The first bolt exploded the zombie’s skull, spilling brains and dark blood across the floor. A second bolt burrowed into the monster’s back. The zombie grew tense as its unnatural life ebbed away, and its twice slain muscles tensed into the wooden rigidity of death. Brunner howled as the grip on his boot increased with the zombie’s destruction.

Brunner had no time to extract himself from the crushing grip. The sound of shuffling feet demanded his attention. The two bodies he had noted leaning against the wall had been stirred into motion by Carandini’s incantation. The zombies moved forward with stiff, awkward steps, rotting garments and flesh hanging from their wretched forms in ragged strips. Lifeless eyes were trained upon the trapped bounty hunter as they ponderously advanced upon him. The necromancer gloated from behind the long table. He was peering above the embalmed hulk of the priest-king, using the ancient body for cover. Brunner considered loosing one of his remaining crossbow bolts at the fiend, but decided that the shot would be too uncertain.

Instead, he fired his last two bolts into the oncoming zombies. The first walking corpse staggered and fell as the steel bolt punched through its rotten skull and embedded itself in the wall behind the undead automaton. As it hit the floor, a greasy putrid fluid bubbled from its wound, yellow with corruption, black with the dried remnants of the corpse’s blood. Brunner fired his last bolt at the other zombie. The missile impacted in the corpse’s face, sticking from its cheek like a macabre growth of bone. The zombie staggered from the force of the impact, but uttered no sound of anguish or injury. It merely swung its body around and began to shuffle relentlessly towards the bounty hunter once more.

Brunner threw the spent skaven crossbow at the approaching zombie and drew Drakesmalice from its sheath. Gripping the sword tightly, Brunner swung it downward, severing the wrist that had closed upon his ankle. He stepped away, favouring his uninjured foot. The other zombie took another shambling step forward, its wasted limbs groping toward him. Brunner leaned his body away from the necrotic thing and swung Drakesmalice at its neck. The sword clove easily through the rotted flesh and the desiccated head flew from its shoulders, bounced from the near wall and rolled across the floor. The headless body stood for a moment, devoid of motion, before toppling sidewise to the floor, rigid in its second death.

Carandini gave a yelp of fright as he watched the last zombie expire. He bounded away from the long table, scrambling toward the doorway. Brunner hobbled towards the man, murderous eyes blazing from beneath his visor. Carandini had chosen his cover only too well, for by positioning himself behind the table, he had also placed the bounty hunter between himself and the door. The necromancer hissed like a serpent, spun around and dashed toward one of the shelves. The bounty hunter paused, pulling a throwing knife from the bandoleer across his chest.

‘Wait!’ pleaded Carandini. The necromancer held a small glass vial he had removed from the shelf in an upraised hand. Brunner pulled back his own hand to hurl the knife into the wizard’s body. ‘This contains bog fire!’ Carandini declared, his slippery voice at once threatening and pleading. ‘If I drop this, this entire room will go up!’

Brunner hesitated. If the vial did indeed contain bog fire, the eldritch vapour might react with the air just as the necromancer threatened. The room, and everything in it would be incinerated by the volatile explosive gas. The entire house with its rotting timbers would quickly go up in flames. He might escape the room if Carandini were to drop the glass, but with his injured foot, Brunner was not sure he would escape the fire that would follow. Slowly, and reluctantly, the bounty hunter replaced his knife.

‘That’s right,’ sneered the necromancer. ‘Now put away your sword.’

‘I can’t do that,’ commented Brunner, taking a few hopping steps forward.

‘Why?’ demanded Carandini, his eyes blazing with anger.

‘Because I need it to remove that ugly head of yours from its neck.’ Brunner took another series of shuffling steps, rounding the long table. Carandini cringed away from the killer’s approach, straining to lift the glass vial still higher.

‘I will drop it!’ he shrieked. ‘I’ll destroy us both! Stop right there!’

Brunner’s voice was as flat and icy as any grave-born horror. ‘I have a better idea. It involves you setting that thing down. Do that, and I’ll give you five minutes before I come after you.’ The bounty hunter took another menacing step around the long table. ‘Trust me, it’s the best deal you’re going to get.’

Whatever response the necromancer was going to voice died in his throat as a gasp of terror forced its way upward. Carandini’s eyes grew wide with fright, his sickly finger pointing accusingly at the bounty hunter. But he was looking at something else entirely. Brunner followed his gaze and found himself leaping back from the table, injured foot or no.

Carandini’s voice returned in a wheezy groan.

‘I told you not to touch the mummy!’

Light slowly intruded upon the perpetual darkness, awareness slowly returned to the mind of the ancient sleeper. A flicker of power had disturbed his dark dreams of dusty tombs and obelisk-lined necropolises. How long had he slept the sleep of the tomb? Seven centuries? Ten?

Memory stirred, recollections of a time as parched and empty as the sands of the desert. Of a great and powerful spell, a sorcerous apocalypse that had fallen upon Khareops, Numas and Khemri and all the great land of Nehekhara, which had in an instant robbed the most ancient kingdom of man of all life and vitality. It had stilled the heart and sucked the breath of every living thing in Khareops.

It had been the Great Ritual, cast by the Accursed One so that he might reclaim his throne and rule over an empire of the dead. Withered lids slid back from the dry hollows of the mummy’s face, flakes of crusty decomposed skin scattering like sandy tears. Nearby, someone had drawn upon similar power, and he could feel the faintest echo of that tremendous act of evil.

More memories rose within the desiccated husk of Nehb-ka-menthu. The priest-king could recall the moment of his own death, and yet death had not been the end. His soul had not left his mortal frame. Like a spectator, he had watched as the liche-priests had prepared and embalmed his body, watched as the unliving priests, the only things in all Khareops that now walked the dead streets of the necropolis, bore his body in its golden sarcophagus to his pyramid tomb.

For some time he had remained within his tomb, detached from his body, detached from all thought, existing in the dark limbo of the dead. Was it months or aeons that he remained thus? But at last, the power had made itself felt across the Dead Lands once more. The Accursed One had awoken once more, and the power of his black resurrection made itself felt across the carrion realm of Nehekhara. The power had reached out and stirred other things from their ancient graves. So it was that Nehb-ka-menthu had emerged from his tomb, to contest with his own ancestors for the rule of Khareops.

The mummy’s right arm moved, falling from its chest to the side of the table. Slowly, so slowly that it did not seem to be moving. And yet how incredibly swift must such a motion seem to a body that had lain silent and still in the cool dark of its grave for hundreds of years?

When had Nehb-ka-menthu last walked the earth? Had it been when he had mustered the dead hosts of his city, when he had set out to find the phantom tower of Nagash’s disciple, the liche king Arkhan the Black, to ransack that place of darkest sorcery, to bear away its terrible secrets? Had it been when he returned in defeat from the dread city of Khemri and his attempt to force his way into the profane Black Pyramid of Nagash itself? As in life, so in death did Nehb-ka-menthu lust for the power of the dark magic. As in life, so too in death did that knowledge elude him, straying almost within his very reach then dancing away once more.

The mummy moved its other arm, letting it fall to its side. The sound of battle intruded upon the corpse’s thoughts and slowly, the lingering traces of the power began to wink out around him. The sense of fading dark energy snapped the mind of Nehb-ka-menthu from his memories, from recalling ancient battles and inglorious defeats. No, he was not the match for Arkhan, who guarded the secrets of his master in his spectral Black Tower. He could not contend with the might of Settra, king of Khemri, who watched the Black Pyramid for any sign of his immortal enemy’s return and prevented any from entering that place of timeless blasphemy and nameless horror. The secrets, the knowledge, the perversions that Nagash had discovered were not yet his. But they would be. The power would be his!

As Brunner disposed of the last of the zombies, the eyes of the mummy began to glow with a faint luminance, a ghostly green flame. Nehb-ka-menthu focused his will, his thoughts, his spirit back into its carriage of decayed flesh. The hands of the mummy turned over, the powerful talons within the grey-green wrappings splintering the wood of the table as they gripped it. The arms lifted and slowly the body of the mummy began to rise.

In the course of his travels, Brunner had encountered many strange and terrible things, but never had he stood before something like this. The hulking corpse of the long-dead priest-king had been unnerving enough at rest, exuding its aura of ancient decay and loss, the faint scent of lands forgotten and ruined. It was as bittersweet as the most tenderly recalled nostalgia and as hideous as the blood-howl of an enraged orc. It was a feeling of regret and despair that clutched at the soul. The bounty hunter would have breathed easier once the thing had been destroyed and the fear creeping into his stomach had been dispelled.

How much more horrible was that withered husk now that it had been endowed with motion, now that its strong sinews and supple limbs caused it to rise from the table, to set its cloth-wrapped feet upon the rotting wood on the floor? Brunner only realised that he had been backing away from the undead abomination when his back struck the rear wall of the room. Beside him, Carandini was also gripped by terror, and did not even notice that the bounty hunter was beside him, his eyes locked upon the supernatural figure of the mummy.

The skull-like face of the mummy slowly turned from side to side with stiff, jerking motions, as it took in the room and its contents. As the head passed over Brunner and Carandini for the second time, it froze. Luminous fires of ghostly light burned in the pits of its face, regarding the two men with an inscrutable gaze.

Carandini’s teeth were chattering, his muscles relaxing as he lost control of them. Suddenly the glass vial fell from his slackened fingers. Brunner caught the faint motion and watched in horror as the vial shattered against the floor. He gritted his teeth against the coming explosion, and braced himself for a quick and certain death.

A moment passed and Brunner drew another breath. He looked down at the smashed vial, and at the putrid blood it had contained seeping into the floor. Then he turned to Carandini. The necromancer had torn his eyes away from the mummy, and was glancing downward at the shattered glass. He gave Brunner a frightened, embarrassed smile; his deception had been revealed. Brunner’s lip twisted into a snarl and he thrust Drakesmalice through the necromancer’s belly as a reward for his bluff. Carandini groaned and slid to the floor, clutching at his punctured body, and trying to quell the flow of blood and bile spilling down his legs.

The bounty hunter did not hesitate to round on the tomb king. The mummy began to storm forward, its stride long and swift. Brunner lashed out at the undead horror, trying to pierce through the shrivelled heart in the monster’s breast. Before Drakesmalice could sink into the mummy’s flesh, however, an iron grip closed about the blade, arresting his strike. Brunner tried to pull his sword free, but it was trapped as firmly as gold dust in a dwarf’s fist.

The mummy tore the sword from Brunner’s grasp as if the bounty hunter was a sickly child. Casually, it tossed the weapon aside. Then it reached forward to grab the man who had been presumptuous enough to attack it. The bounty hunter dodged the mummy’s grasp, drawing a throwing knife and hurling it at the monster. The blade sank into the mummy’s chest, causing a puff of corpse dust to rise from the wound. The monster did not pay the slightest attention to its injury, but reached out once more for its foe.

Brunner scrambled from the groping creature. Planting a hand firmly on the top of the table, he jumped over it, placing it between himself and the undead horror. The mummy did not pause; it strode forward and closed its claws around the edge of the table. Effortlessly, the mummy flipped the heavy piece of furniture onto its side and swatted the obstruction from its path.

Brunner retreated once again. As he stepped back, his foot struck something lying on the floor. The bounty hunter glanced down to see Mahrun’s blessed stake lying beside his boot. Quickly, he retrieved the weapon and held it dagger-like in his fist.

The mummy did not hesitate to surge forward, its claws lunging for the bounty hunter. Summoning up every ounce of his courage, Brunner met the monster’s attack, and braved the clutch of its skeletal hands to plunge the stake deep into the mummy’s chest. The undead monster did not seem affected by whatever holy power had been woven into the stake. With the wooden spike protruding from its breast, its hands now closed about Brunner’s body.

The bounty hunter felt himself being lifted up by the monster, and swept up from the ground as though he were a rag doll. The mummy shifted its grip, holding Brunner over its head by his shoulder and thigh. The bounty hunter fumbled to free his axe from his belt. He had already driven Ursio’s stiletto into the monster’s palm as it clutched him – with no effect. Every motion was a test of his will power. His mind began to darken, as pain surged where the mummy’s crushing fingers bruised his bones. As Brunner struggled, he felt the first hint of pressure on his spine as the mummy began to bend his body.

Suddenly, the pressure lessened. The mummy’s head turned, as though it had been distracted by a noise. Dismissively the mummy tossed Brunner aside, sending him crashing into the shelves again. Brunner lay in a heap on the splintered floor, as still as the other bodies lying about the room.

Nehb-ka-menthu paid the hired killer no further thought. It had sensed a familiar presence, a presence he had not encountered for thousands of years. After so many centuries, it would be interesting to renew his acquaintance and finish what had been left undone.

The sun was casting its dying rays across the derelict district. The lingering twilight highlighted a black coach that almost blocked the narrow street. A pair of coal-black stallions snorted agitatedly before the elegant carriage, resisting the best efforts of a pasty-faced coachman to calm them. A group of armed men, nearly a dozen strong, clustered about the carriage, staring at the door of the coach and at the red-roofed building behind them.

Contessa Carlotta de Villarias pulled aside the thick, veil-like black curtain that shrouded the windows of the carriage. She flinched from the fading orange light of the setting sun. Unlike many vampires, de Villarias was able to endure the rays of the sun, for a time, though she was weak during the bright hours of the day, and became filled with a sickness of stomach and heart. Her two devoted thralls were not so strong and they cringed in the coach, horrified at being outside before night had fully fallen.

De Villarias smiled, as she always did when she forced her slaves to endure fear and hardship. The power of command, the compelling force she could exert over others was one of the few remaining things that still gave her pleasure. It was another reason she would exact her own measure of retribution on the bounty killer. In defying her, and refusing to submit to her beguiling gaze, he had denied her the satisfaction of dominating his will.

Very well, the vampire would just have to extract a different measure of satisfaction from him. De Villarias licked her lips hungrily.

‘Is this wise, my lady?’ asked Torici, cringing as far into the dark leather seat as he could. He was squinting distastefully at the faint light. The Lahmian turned her face toward her creature, irritation written on her features.

‘I have to agree with the fop,’ snarled Relotto. His hand closed about the hilt of his duelling sabre, as though he might brandish the weapon at the sun to hasten its withdrawal. ‘If the bounty killer has failed, it may be dangerous here. My lady should not endanger herself so.’ Relotto smiled, showing his fangs. ‘Leave this to me, my lady. I can deal with a mere mortal.’

De Villarias considered her creature’s words. Why was she here? If the bounty hunter had failed, if the withered husk of Nehb-ka-menthu contained even a fraction of that madman’s hideous soul, then this was the last place she should be. The vampiress stroked the sleeping cat curled in her lap, seeking to dispel some of her doubt and fear in the comfort of the animal’s fur.

She was here because she needed to know. She needed to know if the bounty hunter had succeeded, if the deed had been done. She needed to know if that awful thing had been destroyed at last, whether the shadow that had haunted her through the centuries was no more. She could not sit idly within her decrepit palazzo and await word of the bounty hunter’s fate – she had to see for herself, run her hands through the ashes of her ancient tormentor.

But Relotto was right. What if the bounty hunter had failed? What if the foolish necromancer had awoken that dread carrion husk, to make even a vampire know fear? De Villarias shuddered at the image of that dry cadaverous shape swathed in the funeral wrappings. Of a tomb king clutching at her, bearing her back to the sandy wastes of Khareops, and resuming his vile experiments upon her. She pushed aside the curtain once more, watching the last rays of light fade.

‘You are right,’ she said, staring out the window. ‘Relotto, take the mortals and see what has transpired in the house.’ She turned her piercing gaze on the thrall. ‘If the bounty hunter is still alive, bring him to me.’ She let her voice slip into a menacing undertone. ‘Bring him to me alive, Relotto,’ she warned. The duellist twisted his face as though he had swallowed something unpleasant, but nodded his head.

‘And the mummy?’ asked Torici, hoping to unnerve his rival by suggesting that Relotto might have to deal with the abomination as well.

De Villarias struggled to keep fear from her voice. ‘See that it has been destroyed,’ she answered after a pause. ‘Whatever has happened, see that it has been destroyed!’

Relotto led the contessa’s human guards toward the ramshackle palazzo of the necromancer. They were a motley group of bewitched mercenary vermin, the sort of trash Relotto had cut open in countless street duels. True, they were devoted to the contessa, bound to her by supernaturally enforced chains of devotion and adoration. In the service of their mistress, these men would break before no enemy, no matter how terrible. Still, the vampire considered the mortal warriors with contempt as he addressed them. He was more than capable of dealing with the bounty hunter, and a shambling, stiff pile of bones. He would cut the head from that thing and present it to his mistress. He would show her that he alone was worthy of her attentions.

‘When we get inside, spread out and search every room,’ the vampire ordered. ‘If you find the bounty hunter, call out.’ A cunning smile crossed the duellist’s face. He had seen the way de Villarias had looked at the mortal. Did she really think that he had not seen her intentions toward him? Did she really think he would allow her to replace him with that scum? He tolerated Torici as he would a small, yappy dog, but the bounty hunter was another matter. ‘I will deal with him myself,’ the vampire hissed.

Suddenly the wall of the house exploded in a shower of wood splinters and dust. Relotto and his warriors flinched from the violent display, covering their faces to ward away the flying debris. Striding from the wreckage was a tall, wiry figure, a cadaverous giant with glowing green eyes. The mummy did not pause; it advanced like an unstoppable juggernaut. It closed upon the nearest of Relotto’s men, grabbing the warrior’s sword arm and ripping it from its socket as a man might pull a drumstick from a cooked chicken. The mutilated warrior screamed wretchedly and fell, blood spurting in a crimson torrent from his mangled shoulder. While the man toppled, the withered corpse was in motion, chopping its hand into the face of a second swordsman, pulverising the front of the man’s skull, leaving him trying to scream through the crimson puddle that had replaced his face.

The mummy turned from the ruin of the two warriors, finding its path blocked by the vampire Relotto. The duellist feinted toward the creature with the long dagger clenched in his right hand. For an instant, the green witch-fires burning in the monster’s face focused on the weapon. The vampire struck, driving his sword into the mouldering wrappings that shrouded its emaciated remains. The fang of steel penetrated deep, its point emerging from the other side. The mummy, however, was not as easily disposed of as the vampire’s usual prey. A powerful fist crashed down on the sword, snapping the blade.

Relotto backed away, staring in momentary horror at the useless hilt he now held. Before him, the mummy clawed at the transfixing length of steel, pulling it back out of its body.

The cold, emotionless movements of the mummy infuriated Relotto more than any amount of bravado could have done. He gripped his dagger in both hands, bared his fangs and leapt at the ancient cadaver with the full fury of his supernatural strength. It was an attack that the vampire had resorted to in the past when overcome by anger and red rage. In such a frenzy, he had once torn apart a bear with no more than his bare hands and unholy might. How much easier would the rotten remains of the priest-king crumble apart under his mangling claws?

Relotto fell away from the mummy, his berserk leap transformed into an agonising fall. The vampire pawed at his chest where the mummy had driven the snapped steel of his own blade. Relotto tried to draw it from his cold, blood-ridden heart. The vampire paused in his labour to look up, to stare at the shadow that had fallen upon him. The mummy of Nehb-ka-menthu was tossing aside the torso of an axe-wielder it had torn in two when the man had tried to come to the vampire’s aid. It did not look down as it raised its cloth-wrapped foot and brought it crashing down upon Relotto’s head, grinding the vampire’s skull as a man might grind a beetle under his heel.

Torici and the contessa had emerged from the black carriage. They watched as the mummy massacred the vampiress’s minions with a contemptuous ease. Fear had driven out all thought in the undead noblewoman’s mind. She watched the mummy’s relentless advance with the same mute horror she had seen on the faces of the countless people she had fed upon through the ages. Nehb-ka-menthu walked again! Could any horror in all the world fill de Villarias with the same mortal terror? The mummy glanced away from the headless body of a valiant spearman. Again a blade was removed from the monster’s dried out body. Its ghostly green fires fixed upon the woman beside the coach. The terror filling the vampiress increased a thousandfold as she saw the skull beneath the funeral wrappings smile at her.

The few remaining retainers noted their mistress’s terror and renewed their desperate attack on the monster, throwing away all caution in their frantic attempt to protect their beloved contessa. But it was like setting terriers against a lion. The lives of the reckless men would quickly be spent.

Torici quickly roared for the coachman to remove the kerosene-filled lamps from the sides of the driver’s box. The vampire and the coachman soon had the lamps removed, the lanterns still burning inside, the hot metal singeing the hands of the coachman. The last of the contessa’s defenders raced toward the murdering mummy.

The green witch-fires of the mummy’s eyes considered the improvised flame bombs with contempt. It extended its clawed hand, pointing imperiously at the coachman.

A dry hiss, like the whisper of sand falling through an hourglass, emerged from the cadaverous skull of the priest-king. As the thin tones of the ancient incantation were uttered, the lantern clutched in the hands of the coachman exploded, bathing the man in flame. The enflamed servant uttered a long wail of torment. He became a walking torch that staggered blindly away from the coach, collapsing at last in the muddy trench of the nearby canal.

Torici gave vent to a shout of rage as he saw the mummy dispose of the coachman. It was now left to him alone to protect his mistress. He lunged forward, casting the remaining lantern at the undead horror.

The glass facing of the metal cage shattered on impact, as did the bowl of the lantern, bathing the dry brittle shape of the priest-king in kerosene. But even as the lantern impacted, its effectiveness as a bomb expired; the taper had blown out as it was thrown. The mummy cast its malevolent gaze on the vampire, advancing on the coach with great strides.

‘Run!’ urged Torici, staring at his mistress. The vampire thrall reached past de Villarias and wrenched a wooden spoke free from the front wheel of the coach.

Snarling like a wild beast, the vampire fop flung himself at the mummy, smashing the creature’s head with the side of the spoke. The wood burst like a rotten forest log upon impact with the mummy’s supernaturally strong bones. Torici did not ponder his thwarted attack, but jabbed the splintered end of the improvised weapon into the monster’s face. The vampire gouged the wood into the skull-like countenance, grinding away at the mummy’s features.

Torici was flung back as the mummy’s fist punched through his breast. Nehb-ka-menthu lifted the black, gleaming slab of the vampire’s diseased heart and tossed the ruptured organ at the feet of de Villarias. Once again, the withered features of the ancient priest-king seemed to twist into a mocking smile of triumph and sadistic anticipation.

Carlotta de Villarias stared at the discarded heart of Torici, viewing her minion’s gruesome demise as nothing compared to what her ancient foe would do to her if she did not free herself from her nameless dread. She, who had walked the paths of darkness for centuries, who had outlasted the gods of Nehekhara, who had watched from the shadows as the history of the Old World took shape and form – all that she was would end here, in a filthy, forgotten Miragliano slum. It was a demise fit for an animal, not an aristocrat of the night. Yet such would be her fate unless she were to act. Nehb-ka-menthu had butchered all her servants; the only thing left standing was de Villarias herself.

The horses screamed in terror as the smell of the mummy reached them. The animals strained and pulled at their yoke, threatening to snap the sturdy wood. The mummy paid the panicked animals no heed, but strode resolutely toward its immortal prey. As it did so, a small, lithe shape launched itself at the walking corpse, scratching at the layers of grey, mouldering funeral wrappings with sharp claws and savage fangs. The mummy was quick to pull the clawing cat from its chest, crushing its body in its powerful grip, and casting the limp, broken remains aside.

The sight of her familiar’s death, the shock of its mental scream as Nehb-ka-menthu destroyed it, broke the terrible spell of fear that had conquered the vampiress. The contessa spat at her adversary like a desert asp. She hissed her wrath at the monster. The vampiress did not simply remove a spoke from the coach, she ripped the entire wheel free, and hurled the heavy missile at her enemy. It smashed into the mummy, hurling the creature back, and knocking it to the ground.

Talons grew from de Villarias’s hands, transforming them into the claws of some great jungle cat. The fangs in her mouth extended into great ivory sabres. The feral sound that rolled over those fangs was unlike any human could have made. De Villarias pounced upon the cadaverous shape of Nehb-ka-menthu as the undead creature began to rise and slammed the desiccated mass back against the hard surface of the street.

De Villarias pawed at the monster, her claws tearing at the funeral wrappings. Bits of ancient cloth and brittle flesh were thrown into the air with every sweep of her hands. Lost in the frenzy of her attack, her mind little better than a beast’s, de Villarias sank her fangs into the withered neck of the mummy. She began sucking uncontrollably at the empty collapsed veins of the shrivelled corpse.

The tomb king of Khareops did not long suffer such abuse. Its claw grabbed hold of the vampiress and hurled her away. De Villarias struck the ground a good dozen feet away and slid across the stones as though dragged by stallions – such was the awesome strength in the withered corpse’s arm.

The vampiress turned the slide into a roll, nimbly coming to her feet after the violent rebuff. Some of the red rage had left her now and she began to watch the mummy rise with trepidation. She knew what this being had been capable of in life, and now she had felt its infernal might in death.

Nehb-ka-menthu regarded the vampiress for a moment, then strode toward the coach once more. Not for her a destruction brought about by some spell plundered from the books of Nagash. No, the priest-king would end her unnatural life with his own hands.

De Villarias backed away from the mummy, and rounded the carriage. She needed to keep its mass between herself and her enemy while she worked out some way of fighting the undead horror. Nehb-ka-menthu kept up with her, trying to catch the vampiress as she went round the coach. De Villarias had looked with loathing on those of her kind who shed their beautiful shapes for the cruder forms of bats and wolves, but now how she wished that she had learned such arcane secrets.

At last, the horses could tolerate the presence of the mummy no longer. With a scream of fright, the stallions broke loose from the carriage, snapping their traces and galloping away into the darkened, deserted night. The already unbalanced coach groaned and shuddered before turning onto its side, catching Nehb-ka-menthu beneath it. The mummy was lost to sight as the heavy framework of iron and ponderous panels and seats of wood crashed down upon it.

For a moment, de Villarias thought that the weight of the coach had accomplished what her slaves had been unable to do. She dared to hope that the carriage had crushed the old bones of the priest-king; that it had pulverised to dust the withered corpse of her ancient adversary. But her hopes were short-lived.

The mummy rose again, lifting the carriage as it freed itself. It let the heavy coach crash back onto the street after it had cleared the wreck. Nehb-ka-menthu glared at the contessa with eyes of green witch-fire, then grasped the upper railing of the coach, ripping a great length of it loose. The mummy hefted its improvised spear of wood and turned towards the vampiress.

Suddenly, the mummy’s upper body jerked as it was struck repeatedly from behind. Four steel darts exploded from the monster’s chest and tore through its rotten husk. Nehb-ka-menthu paused as the force of the missiles upset its balance. The unliving tomb king was quick to recover, however, and resumed its steady march.

Brunner cursed as he witnessed the ineffectiveness of his attack. The priest-king’s powerful assault had left him dazed, but the wiry bounty hunter had recovered quickly, pulling free two of his knives. He was determined to combat this supernatural foe with his every breath. But he was surprised that the monster was no longer interested in him. He had watched the mummy’s rampage after it had burst through the laboratory wall. He had considered his options as he reloaded his weapons. Watching Relotto and Torici’s impossibly swift movements, the bounty hunter had come to realise that there was something unnatural about his patroness, but even he had been shocked when the woman had grown claws and fangs and leapt upon the mummy with the fury of a feral wolf. Legends and rumours filtered their way up into the bounty killer’s consciousness: tales of unholy things that stalked the night, and feasted on the blood of the living to prolong a profane existence. Contessa Carlotta de Villarias was such a fiend, a vampire, a creature of the dark.

Brunner’s first instinct had been to walk away, to leave the undead creatures to destroy one another, to let these abominations from beyond the grave fare as they would. But a colder, more cunning part of his mind caused him to linger. The bounty hunter emerged from the building just as the mummy freed itself from the coach. He had taken aim with the reloaded skaven crossbow, placing all four bolts into the monster’s desiccated flesh. The deadly missiles had been as effective as pebbles thrown at a giant, their passing not even meriting the notice of the monster.

Nehb-ka-menthu closed upon the vampiress. He raised the splintered shaft of wood like an over-sized javelin. De Villarias coiled her body, preparing to lunge. Escape was not an option, the priest-king would track her down. He would find her in whatever nameless hole she might slink to. But perhaps she could cause some damage to the blighted thing before it could bring about her second, permanent death. Over the mummy’s shoulder, de Villarias could see the bounty hunter racing forward. It puzzled her somewhat that the man had lingered, that he had chosen to involve himself in this struggle of beings that had been ancient before the lands of his birth were founded. The sight of the mortal charging toward his death made the vampiress pause. She had to admit that his was a powerful and fearless will. It would almost be a tragedy to see his life spent so uselessly.

Brunner swung Drakesmalice in a great sweeping arc. The sword dug deeply into the mummy’s side, crunching through ribs and withered organs. This time, the mummy did pay attention to the warrior’s assault; he turned on the man as he withdrew his sword. The green witch-fires in the sockets of the monster’s skull-like face seemed to burn even more brightly. Powerful clutching claws swept the air in front of the bounty hunter, narrowly missing the man. Brunner stepped back, drawing the recharged pistol from its belly holster. He had smelled the kerosene dripping from the dried-out mummy’s rags, and a new plan had occurred to him. As Nehb-ka-menthu took another step towards him, Brunner pulled the trigger of the blackpowder weapon. There was a flash of flame and thunder as the pistol discharged. The bullet tore harmlessly through the monster’s chest. The fiery muzzle flash was another matter.

Fire licked about the grey-green figure of the walking mummy, transforming it into a pillar of flame. Brunner allowed himself a smile of triumph as he holstered the pistol. But his smile faded as the mummy reached out to him, its fire-engulfed claw scraping across the front of his breastplate.

The bounty hunter fell back before the undead horror as the tomb king shambled forward, fire swirling about its figure. The dark shape of the monster’s body could be dimly seen within the flames. Upon the undamaged funeral wrappings, eldritch writing began glowing with an amber light. The faded picture-writing of Nehekhara’s liche priests was blazing into life, revealing figures of primordial gods, wards of ancient and terrible potency. Though fire clung to its form, the mummy of Nehb-ka-menthu did not burn. The protective spells its priests had carefully inked upon every layer of cloth that encased their lord still defended the tomb king. The pillar of fire reached out once more, seeking to draw the bounty hunter into a crushing, fiery embrace.

Suddenly, the mummy was struck from behind, as a great shaft of wood ruptured its belly. De Villarias snarled and drove the spear still deeper, the angle of the weapon causing its tip to sink deep into the gap between the broken stones of the street. The vampiress had been quick to exploit the bounty hunter’s distraction of Nehb-ka-menthu. She had taken up the makeshift stake the mummy had dropped. Now she drove the weapon her enemy had thought to destroy her with through its shrivelled flesh.

De Villarias and Brunner both stood back as the fiery mummy struggled to free itself from the impaling length of wood, like a boar stuck upon a hunting spear. For a moment it seemed as if the monster might not be able to pull itself from the long shaft of wood. Then it lifted its blazing paw and struck the portion of shaft that had emerged from its belly. The wood shattered under the blow as through it were glass. The tomb king straightened, to face the vampiress once more. There was no mistaking the ghastly, inhuman malevolence behind its masks of cloth and fire.

The monster took a few steps, then stopped. Its withered skull craned downward, to stare at its fire-shrouded body. The shaft of wood that had pierced its body was now on fire, burning like a bright finger of flame. Part of that fiery finger was inside the mummy’s dry, withered flesh, underneath the guard of the warding glyphs that covered its outer wrappings. Black smoke began to billow from the mummy’s form as its innards were quickly devoured by the consuming flame that spilled from every cut and wound that had been dealt to its body.

Nehb-ka-menthu did not feel any pain as the fire devoured him from within. He was too close to the truly dead to feel such a sensation. The mummy knew it was being destroyed, that the flames would feed off the nitrates used to preserve and embalm its desiccated flesh. The mummy strode forward once again. If it were to pass into the realm of Ualatp, the vulture-headed god of the dead, then it would not do so alone.

Faster than even de Villarias could have imagined, the mummy was on her. A desperation gripped the monster, a shadow of urgency. It knew that its ancient essence would soon be banished, that it had only moments now to perpetrate one last act of destruction. Nehb-ka-menthu’s claw gripped the front of the vampire’s dress, causing the cloth to smoulder beneath its fiery touch. Foul smoke was now pouring from the tomb king’s body, shrouding it almost as completely as the flames. Little fingers of fire licked outward from the rents and cuts in the mummy’s wrappings. Yet through it all, de Villarias could see the grinning face of Nehb-ka-menthu, wresting a small victory even in his moment of defeat. The mummy’s grasp tightened and it began to pull the vampire towards its burning body and the wooden stake that still protruded from beneath its ribs.

Before Nehb-ka-menthu could impale the vampiress, gleaming steel struck downwards in a cleaving arc. The burning paw of the mummy was severed from the its arm. The monster glared at Brunner as he readied Drakesmalice for another blow. But it would not be needed. The mummy’s belly and chest crumbled, reduced at last to an ash-like state that even Nehb-ka-menthu’s tremendous will could not force to retain its shape. The mummy collapsed in upon itself, its shoulders falling to rise impossibly from its hips.

With the decay begun, the rest of the mummy’s body quickly followed, crumbling into ash. Now, where the almost unstoppable tomb king had stood, there now sprawled a mass of blazing bandages, the ancient hieroglyphs written on the grey-green cloth still glowing with sorcerous energy.

Brunner regarded his patroness coldly as he stepped back from the remains of the mummy. She swatted at the smoking cloth of her dress. The vampire fixed her red-rimmed eyes on the flaming pile of rags, then turned toward the bounty hunter. Her face slipped from an expression of relief into the stern, arrogant superiority she had shown in the black room of her palazzo.

‘Well done,’ the vampiress said. She noted with a faint alarm that the bounty hunter still held his sword at the ready. In his other hand, his gloved fingers clutched a rounded wooden stake. De Villarias could sense the stake’s purpose.

‘Don’t you think you have strained the limits of your luck enough tonight?’ she asked. ‘You won’t find me as easy to vanquish as some story-book monster.’

‘I won’t have to,’ the bounty hunter’s icy voice retorted. ‘Not if I’m paid.’

De Villarias’s eyes burned with smouldering anger. The audacity of this filthy hired sword! The sheer gall of him to speak to her, to suggest that he would destroy her if his vile blood money were not given to him! The vampiress had killed men for lesser affronts, and she had taken great pleasure in each one of their deaths. De Villarias’s fangs elongated, protruding over her lower lip. But the caution born of her centuries of unlife made her hesitate. Perhaps this man truly was a menace and a threat. Had he not held his own against Nehb-ka-menthu? Had he not helped to destroy that ancient and potent tomb lord?

The eyes of the contessa grew soft once more. From behind the visor of his helm, the bounty hunter did not flinch from her gaze.

Her voice was soft and silky when she spoke. ‘Why settle for crude gold when you can have so much more?’ The vampiress let her unnatural guile filter through her words. She stabbed into the bounty hunter’s soul with her gaze. ‘You are a powerful man, a strong man. Impressive even to me. Lay down your weapons and come to me. Let me embrace you. You will be my lover and we shall share the long nights together, force the world to give us all that we might desire.’

For a moment, Brunner’s hold on his sword faltered, and he took a step toward the expectant vampiress. But just as quickly, he regained control of himself, and clenched his weapons more firmly.

‘All I want from you is my gold, bloodworm,’ he said. De Villarias drew herself back, scowling at the defiant hireling.

‘Mortals with such willpower as yours are dangerous!’ she hissed, fangs bared.

‘Not when they are paid,’ Brunner replied.

De Villarias considered the armed killer for a moment, weighing up her chances against the man. She should be able to destroy him quite easily – she had ripped such men apart with her bare hands many times before. But there was something different about this one. The bounty hunter had killed a tomb king of Nehekhara; he might be able to do the same to a vampiress as well. And there was that simple-looking wooden stake he held so firmly in his left hand. De Villarias could sense the energy that swirled about that fang of wood, the power that had been imbued into it, the baneful force that was more than capable of eradicating one of her kind.

The vampiress turned away, pointing a pale finger at the corpse of her former thrall Torici. Already the years had reclaimed him, reducing him to a crumbling skeleton in elegant clothes.

‘You will find your money there,’ de Villarias said coldly. ‘And more besides.’ The vampire watched as Brunner walked over to the skeleton, keeping his eyes on the woman. ‘You can have it all, bounty hunter,’ she said as Brunner set his sword down on the ground and removed a heavy money belt from around the skeleton’s hips.

‘Thanks,’ Brunner said, weighing the belt in his hand, to determine how much wealth such a weight might represent. ‘I’ll take the extra as compensation for some of the things you neglected to tell me about this job.’ There was a tone of threat in his voice. De Villarias chose to ignore it.

‘I will be returning to Estalia,’ the vampiress said as she slipped into the dark. ‘I would suggest that you stay far from that land. It would be unfortunate if you were to cross my path again.’

Brunner threw the money belt over his shoulder and retrieved his sword. He stared into the shadows where the vampiress had vanished.

‘Perhaps for both of us,’ he told the dark, as he tucked the engraved stake under his belt. Without a second glance at the carnage all around him, the bounty hunter made his own way into the shadows.

The morning light revealed the aftermath of the battle. Rats scuttled back into their holes, fat from their night of gruesome feasting. Crows and vultures descended to take their place, their hatchet-like beaks slicing flesh from the stiffening bodies scattered about the lane.

But there was one area that vermin and carrion birds alike avoided: a pile of still-smoking grey-green rags. The ancient evil of the remains kept even such fell creatures at bay. And yet one creature dared to crawl across the broken stones, undeterred by the aura of menace. A five-limbed rat-sized thing crawled onto the pile of rags. Like a bird returning to its roost, the severed hand of Nehb-ka-menthu settled down amongst the funeral wrappings, and burrowed its way beneath them to escape the growing light of the sun.

CHAPTER FOUR

WHERE WALKS THE MARDAGG

I

The room was dark, lit only by pairs of pot-like oil jars set at either end of the chamber. What the flickering, dancing light cast by the flames did reveal was expensively furnished. The table that dominated the room was massive, stained cherry-wood imported from across the sea, its claw-footed legs tipped in silver, a great slab of polished black marble set into its surface. Stern-visaged portraits glowered down from the dimly illuminated walls, secure in their gilded frames. The polished wood-floor was barely visible, much of its surface strewn with expensive fur rugs, the gleaming black hide of the Arabyan jackal, the dun hues of the Ebonian lion and the pristine white of the Norscan ice bear.

Seated behind the table in this room of wealth was a nondescript man of advancing age. He held his hands folded before him, the silver-threaded cuffs of his robes drooping from his wrists. An immense gold medallion hung from a heavy chain about the man’s neck. His name was Masario, chamberlain to the powerful Merchant Prince of Pavona, Bensario. He regarded the armoured figure standing before him in silence for some time, studying the man with an experienced eye. In his role as chamberlain, Masario had often been called upon to engage the mercenaries who would fight Pavona’s wars, years of such duties making him a keen judge of character. The chamberlain could, at a glance, see the limits of a man’s courage, the depths of his greed, the shallowness of his loyalty.

Masario nodded in satisfaction. He could see the determination and ruthlessness in the man before him. Such qualities were, in the chamberlain’s mind, much more dependable than lofty ideals and foolish notions of honour and chivalry.

‘I am pleased that you answered my summons,’ the chamberlain spoke, his voice resonating with the authority of his position. He made a pretence of looking at some of the sheets of parchment strewn about the table. ‘You are highly spoken of,’ he added. ‘Apparently yours is a most fearsome reputation.’

The bounty hunter shifted his stance. ‘What’s the job?’ he asked, in a cold tone of voice.

The chamberlain leaned back in his chair. ‘I had heard that you were a no-nonsense sort.’ Masario leaned forward once more, the subtly amused quality dropping instantly from him. Like the bounty hunter, he too was now all business.

‘I wish to hire you to find a murderer, Brunner,’ the chamberlain stated. ‘I am certain that you have done this sort of thing often before. I wish to employ you, on behalf of his highness, the Prince of Pavona, to find this despicable creature and kill him.’

‘Who and how much?’ Brunner asked the question without a hint of emotion in his voice.

‘Ten thousand gold ducats,’ Masario pronounced. The bounty hunter inclined his head slightly, a gesture that indicated the money was good, though he wondered what made the job worth such a price. The chamberlain easily read the gesture. ‘You will find the “who” a bit more difficult. You see, we do not know the identity of the murderer.’

‘Would you care to explain that?’ Brunner asked.

Masario rose from his seat and paced behind his desk. ‘There was a murder recently in the household of Prince Bensario, a most vicious murder. It occurred two weeks past. The victim was a mere serving maid, one of Prince Bensario’s household, but that is not what is of concern to His Excellency. It is the senseless, savage brutality of the crime that alarms him, the fact that this atrocity was committed under his very roof. The murder could have been no more foul had some blood-mad Badlands orc been smuggled into the palace. And the fact that the murderer is from Remas – the only thing we know about him – has also earned Prince Bensario’s ire.

‘The prince’s eldest daughter, Princess Juliana, has been betrothed to Prince Gambini of Remas. Prince Gambini sent a delegation from his city to conduct his bride back to his palace in Remas.’

‘And the killer was one of the members of this delegation,’ stated Brunner.

Masario nodded his head. ‘Indeed. He was observed by one of the servants as he was finishing his crime. The man was speaking to himself as he butchered his victim’s body, in the accent of Remas. Unfortunately, it took the servant several days to work up enough courage to report what she had seen. The investigation held at the time turned up no clue as to the fiend’s identity, and it is only this witness who points the way to the killer. By that time, the delegation had already left Pavona, conducting Princess Juliana to her wedding.’

‘How many men were in this delegation?’ Brunner inquired.

‘Thirty men, including the soldiers sent to protect them on the road. The others included Prince Gambini’s nephew, a priest from the prince’s household and a few retainers to attend them on the road.’ Masario seated himself once more, staring intently at the bounty hunter.

‘The witness to the crime only saw the murderer’s back. He had bared himself, no doubt to prevent any blood from staining his clothes, and the servant had a clear look at a tattoo on his back, which she described as being a black serpent rearing backwards to strike.’

‘That won’t make finding him easy if the tattoo is the only means to identify him,’ commented Brunner. ‘Unless you propose that I force my way into Prince Gambini’s palace and start forcing his retainers to remove their shirts.’

‘No, you’ll have to be more discreet than that,’ Masario said. ‘This matter must be handled carefully. Prince Bensario hopes to form an alliance with the marriage of his daughter. The support of the Republic of Remas would be of great benefit in quashing once and for all the foolish ambitions of the princes of Trantio. Prince Gambini holds a great deal of influence with the other ruling families in the Republic, and with him on Pavona’s side, Prince Bensario thinks he may just be able to gain Remas as an ally in any forthcoming campaign against Trantio. Obviously, Prince Gambini will not smile too fondly on us should we accuse him of harbouring a maniac in his household. Nor can we simply ignore the danger to the princess by letting such a creature go on living. I mean, such a madman might be capable of anything, even attacking a princess. If the princess were to die in Remas, it would destroy at once Prince Bensario’s ambitions.’

‘All right,’ Brunner’s cold voice spoke. ‘It won’t be as easy as I had hoped, but I’ll find your murderer. What proof do you want me to bring back?’

Cruel, hungry anticipation filled Masario’s face. ‘Bring back the tattoo,’ the chamberlain answered, his voice dropping into a low hiss. ‘The priests at the Temple of Morr have their ways of verifying that the skin truly came from the man I seek.’ An almost maniacal gleam shone in the chamberlain’s eyes.

Masario noticed the curious look the bounty hunter gave him, and quickly strove to compose himself. ‘Just the tattoo,’ he repeated. Brunner nodded his head again and quietly made his exit from the chamber.

Masario waited until he could no longer hear the footfalls of the bounty hunter retreating down the corridor outside, then rose and made his way to a small table set against the wall. He removed the crystal stopper from a fat-bodied bottle of smoky glass and poured a measure of dark Pavonan wine into a glass. The chamberlain’s face became worried for a moment, but quickly some of the fire he had shown at the conclusion of his meeting with the bounty hunter returned.

It had not been a mere serving maid who had fallen prey to the murderer from Remas, it had been Masario’s own daughter. It was not the concern of the prince that motivated his hiring of Brunner, but the chamberlain’s own need for justice. The prince had told Masario to forget the matter, as if the loss of his daughter was of no greater import than the loss of a few hundred ducats at the card table. Prince Bensario was not about to let anything jeopardise his alliance with the Republic of Remas. It was instrumental in his aspirations to be the ruler who finally defeated Pavona’s age-long rival city-state of Trantio, to expand the coffers of Pavona as had no prince before him, swelling them with the plunder of conquest. Trantio had suffered greatly from their defeats by Borgio the Besieger of Miragliano, there would be no better time to strike at them. The alliance would be forged, and nothing would stop it. Prince Bensario was not worried about his daughter’s safety, he had haughtily declared that even a madman would have sense enough to seek out his victims among the lower classes.

The chamberlain downed his wine in a single swallow, his hand tightening about the glass. He would not forget his daughter, would not forgive the atrocities that had been done to her. Prince Bensario might well have Masario’s head if he were to learn what his chamberlain had done. But if that was the price of avenging his daughter, then Masario was willing to pay it.

Brunner emerged from the palazzo of Prince Bensario into the narrow, winding streets of the town. Pavona was the easternmost of the Tilean city states. The streets were haphazardly laid out, the better to confuse and disorient any enemy who managed to force their way through the city’s thick walls. Overhead, numerous bridges arched above the cobbled streets, connecting the palazzos of the ruling elite, enabling the merchants and nobles to avoid the throngs of soldiers, peasants, labourers and servants that filled the lanes as they hurried about their own petty affairs. Located almost at the middle of Tilea, south of the Trantine Hills, on the fertile plains between the River Remo and the Apuccini Mountains, Pavona was blessed by a much milder climate than the lands of the Empire, enjoying almost year round the kindly favours of the warm Tilean sun. Although small, Pavona was a wealthy city, ever at odds with its neighbour Trantio for control of the eastern trade, all seeking to monopolise the market with the dwarfs and the few hardy caravans bearing goods along the famed Silk Road from legendary Cathay. Above the reek of the bodies packed within the streets, there rose the smell of riches and the ambition to secure still greater wealth.

As the bounty hunter made his way through the narrow lanes, pushing aside those slow in clearing his path, he considered his most recent patron. Prince Bensario was a very powerful man in Pavona, second only to the ruling Princess Lucrezzia Belladonna. Indeed, it was rumoured that Bensario entertained hopes to become the famous beauty’s fifth husband, an aspiration which no doubt made Bensario’s current wife both furious and nervous. Brunner suspected that Bensario’s hopes for an alliance with the Republic of Remas were married in some way to his ambitions for the hand of Princess Belladonna. With such lofty pursuits in the balance, it did not surprise the bounty hunter that Bensario would offer such a generous reward for quietly eliminating a possible foil to his plans.

Brunner found the stables where he had left his warhorse, Fiend, and packhorse, a trusty grey he called Paychest. The bounty hunter tossed a few silver coins to the stable master and took charge of his animals. Mounted upon the back of his warhorse, leading the packhorse behind him, he found his progress through the bustle of Pavona’s slender avenues much easier, though he was often forced to bend forward when passing beneath a particularly low bridge. Despite the crowds and his slow advance through them, Pavona was a small city and Brunner soon found himself approaching the massive stone gatehouse that loomed over the city’s western gate.

As the bounty hunter drew closer to the gate, he could see the scraggly rows of mendicants and beggars squatting beside the tower. The guardsmen tolerated the wretches in exchange for a portion of their alms, another way of supplementing their wages in addition to their skim of the modest tax charged on all those seeking entry to Pavona. Yet poor and miserable as they were, sporting deformity, mutilation and the ugly sores left by the red pox and other noxious ailments, all the beggars knew better than to beseech succour from the grim horseman who marched his steed past their line. For his part, Brunner cast a perfunctory glance over the dregs, keeping his eyes peeled for any remarkable feature lurking beneath the filth and rags, something that would put a name to one of them.

The bounty hunter was somewhat surprised when one of the miserable creatures rose to its feet and stepped toward his horse. Brunner’s hand reflexively closed about the grip of his pistol, inching it slightly from its holster. If the scraggly white-headed beggar noticed the action, he was not dissuaded by it.

The man’s age was hard to guess, but he looked immensely old, his limbs thin, his hair long and matted, his beard hanging down to his belly. When he opened his mouth, he displayed a collection of blackened stumps. Foul, stinking breath escaped along with his words, increasing the wretch’s offensive smell dramatically.

‘Let me tell your fortune, sire!’ the old beggar asked in a scratchy voice. Brunner nudged Fiend away from the mendicant, seeking to pass him.

‘Sell your lies to someone stupid enough to put merit in them,’ Brunner snarled. The mendicant was determined however, stepping once more into the path of the horse.

‘Only a copper coin, master,’ the beggar said, peering up at the bounty hunter’s helm. ‘When you undertake a journey, you should see what the gods have planned. Oh yes, you should do that, yes!’ The old man fumbled at his ragged robe and removed a number of animal bones and small pond stones. With a sharp laugh, the beggar tossed the collection into the road, dropping to all fours and scrambling to where each object had fallen. The other traffic coming through the gate drew away from the deranged fortune teller, trying to give him a wide berth. In this they failed, the hooves of mules and the boots of drovers crushing many of the wretch’s divining stones into the dust. Brunner seized the opening and the man’s momentary absence to hurry his animals toward the portal.

The beggar, however, was soon trotting beside Brunner’s horse again, his face a look of imbecilic glee.

‘You set upon paths most dark, noble sire,’ the beggar declared. ‘Where you go, distrust splendour and suspect piety. Suspicion, yes! Dark things await you,’ the beggar’s voice dropped to a low whisper, ‘in Remas.’ The last word caused Brunner to turn in his saddle, meeting the old man’s gaze for the first time.

‘What did you say?’ he asked. Despite himself, the mention of Remas had intrigued him. Now he wanted to hear what else the ragged prophet might have to say.

‘You are caught in a web, bounty killer,’ the beggar hissed. ‘A web woven from darkness and Chaos. Darkness, yes! Chaos, yes! Woven by a mad spider. The spider sits at centre of his web. He feels every step those caught in the strands make. Everything caught, yes! Everything he watches, everything he draws into his plan. Oh yes, yes!’ The beggar gave voice to a short cackling laugh. ‘You’re caught in the web now, Reiklander, the spider knows you now!’

‘Who is this spider you speak of, old man?’ Brunner felt uneasy. It was possible that the old beggar had heard of him, he was certainly well known enough among the thieves and gutter trash of Tilea to be recognised as the infamous bounty hunter Brunner. But how had the man so expertly guessed the realm of his birth? Most Tileans would not know a Reikland accent from that of Talabecland, and in any event, Brunner had long ago lost the tones of his birthplace.

The beggar laughed again. ‘Ahhh, that would be telling. Telling, yes! The gods favour not humble fortune tellers revealing all before the unfolding. You need only know the spider is mad, thinks it can shape the Chaos-web of its creation to its own design. Mad little spider, yes! Thinks it can trick the Dark Gods to do its bidding.’ The old man’s voice trembled slightly as he spoke of Chaos and Dark Gods, but Brunner sensed that his faltering voice was due to excitement rather than dread. ‘Worry not, bounty killer, you will find the mad spider where you are going.’ The old man broke off into another cackle. ‘Or the spider will find you,’ he laughed.

Brunner dug a small piece of copper from a pouch on his belt and threw it down to the hoary old man. ‘Thanks for the oracle, grey one,’ he said. ‘Now I know that both spiders and snakes are in my future.’ With a contemptuous snort, Brunner edged his horse away from the fortune teller, but the beggar staggered forward once more, the copper coin forgotten in the dirt at his feet.

‘Something more. Much more, yes! A warning,’ the old man said, and this time there was a note of fear in his voice. ‘Where you go,’ the man’s voice fell into a low whisper, ‘tempt not the Mardagg.’

Brunner’s horse began to snort in alarm when the beggar whispered the final word of his prophecy, as if the animal had nearly trodden upon a serpent. It took the bounty hunter a full minute to calm his mount. When he turned about to question the beggar further, the old man was gone. Brunner cast his gaze over the ranks of the other mendicants, but the white-bearded prophet was not to be found among them.

The bounty hunter’s thoughts dwelled on the strange old beggar as he passed out from the walls of Pavona. Doomsayers and prophets were commonplace in the great cities of the Old World, deluded and crazed beggars even more so. Still, there had been something unsettling about the wretch, something that made Brunner wonder who and what the man might once have been.

The walls of Pavona began to diminish in the distance as Brunner rode through the farmlands and peasant villages that crowded outside the city, yet his thoughts were still on the old man’s strange words. What would he find in Remas, Brunner wondered?

The bounty hunter had a fair distance to travel. Remas lay to the north and east of Pavona, nearly a hundred and fifty miles as the crow might fly. But it was a much longer distance on the ground, for the roads were few and progressively more ill-tended the further from Pavona they became, marks that the land itself was no longer firmly under the domination of man. Just two days’ ride from Pavona and the only traces of civilisation were the dirt road upon which the bounty hunter travelled and the occasional ruined traces of some villa or farm house lurking just off the path. The days of peace and tranquillity had deserted Tilea, forcing the wealthy merchants from their country villas and back into the overcrowded cities. The wilds were still not quite so hazardous as those of the Empire, but there were enough unnatural things prowling the countryside to make them not so devoid of danger as they had been in ages past.

Late in the afternoon of his fifth day from Pavona, Brunner chanced upon stark evidence of the dangers presented by the Tilean country. Smoke rose lazily from a mass of charred wood and canvas strewn about the road. It soon became apparent that the wreckage was the remains of a dozen or so wagons, their cargo of sailcloth and timber consumed along with the wagons themselves. Scattered amid the wreckage were a number of rotting bodies, the wagon masters and their guards.

Brunner dismounted and inspected one of the bodies, rolling it onto its back with his steel-toed boot. The purple-faced corpse that stared up at him crawled with maggots, big black corpse-flies flitting from the body’s mouth. The skin of the slain guard was blackening, sloughing from his bones. Brunner could see a great gash in the man’s mail shirt, and it seemed to him that where the cut had been made, the metal was corroded. By the evidence of the smoke rising from the charred remains of the wagons, these men had been slain not more than a day ago. Yet the body he looked upon had the rotted look of a man weeks in the grave.

The bounty hunter stalked away from the corpse and remounted his horse. Brunner had seen such remains before, and he knew that the agents of such death were far fouler and more loathsome than orcs or beastmen. He did not look forward to running into such degenerates on his own.

As Brunner rode away from the scene of carnage, his eyes chanced to fall upon a body that certainly did not belong among the slaughtered men of the caravan. Clearly the murderers had not been able to enact their butchery with complete impunity; the slaughtered men of the caravan had evidently brought down at least one of their attackers. It was a bulky form in grey plate armour, great rusty chains lashed about its shoulder pads and interconnected across its chest. Gruesome, rotting trophies dangled from the chains: severed hands, tongues and even less pleasant organs. Great fat worms writhed in the decaying tissue of the trophies, filthy black things that looked like animated veins.

The warrior’s head was enclosed in a great helm fashioned like the head of a scavenger bird. The corpse flies were even thicker around the dead warrior, and rose in an irritated cloud as the bounty hunter rode nearer. As the flies took wing, Brunner could see the crude sign that was emblazoned upon the breast of the dead raider’s armour, and he felt a wave of revulsion seize his gut. It was a simple sign, three interconnected circles, each radiating a single arrow, but its power was not in its complexity, but in what it represented. It was the mark of one of the great powers of Chaos; Brunner had seen it before, in a plague-stricken district near Miragliano some time past.

The bounty hunter fought down his revulsion, spitting a blob of bilious phlegm on the dead warrior’s armour. His wary gaze considered the surrounding countryside more closely than before. Deciding at last that no lurking ambushers had remained behind, Brunner urged his animals onward, his pace slightly faster now. Knowing for certain now that there were Chaos-worshippers prowling the vicinity, and in numbers great enough to strike down an armed caravan, the bounty hunter was even more eager to put the wilds behind him.

A few hours later, as the sun began to set, the bounty hunter came upon a second caravan. The terrain had become even closer, stands of trees with thin trunks and small leaves spreading to either side of the narrow road, permitting only a limited view of whatever might lie just off the road. Brunner was eyeing the woods with great suspicion, knowing that a location such as this would be a prime site to spring another ambush. This caravan, however, was no cluster of burning wreckage and rotting corpses; instead, Brunner found himself gazing upon a half-dozen wagons, laden down with bundles of dyed wool from the north, barrels of olives from the Trantine Hills, and other, less readily identifiable goods.

The caravan was just making camp for the evening, the wagons arranged into a barricade across either end of the road. Brunner could see several of the drovers bustling about tending their horses while other men prepared a fire at the centre of the camp. The bounty hunter could also see a number of armoured figures prowling about between the wagons, inspecting the makeshift barricade.

It would be easy to bypass the encamped caravan, but Brunner considered once more the unpleasant nature of the dead raider he had discovered on the site of the massacre. There were some decidedly nasty things about, and it would pay to be cautious until he was safely arrived in Remas. His decision made, the bounty hunter slowly rode toward the camp, one hand casually resting on the grip of his pistol.

‘That’s far enough!’ a hard voice called out from the line of wagons when Brunner had come within fifty feet of them. The bounty hunter could see three men aiming weapons in his direction, two crossbows and a bulky-looking handgun. Brunner could see at least another dozen men peering over and beneath the beds of the wagons, some of them drawing blades from their scabbards. He also caught a faint motion from the side of the camp and soon heard the furtive rustle of a body moving stealthily through the trees.

Brunner reined in his horse, staring for a moment at the speaker. He was an older man, tending toward fat, wearing a gaudy red coat of some heavy cloth, an outrageously plumed hat scrunched onto his head. The man’s full-featured face bore an air of command, but also a suggestion of fear. Indeed, now that Brunner considered it, he saw the same nervousness on almost all of the other faces he could see, drovers and mercenaries. Apparently the bounty hunter wasn’t the only one who had come upon the massacre site.

‘Who are you?’ the plump man demanded. ‘Speak quickly or my men will shoot!’

‘Just a traveller,’ Brunner replied, keeping his voice as even and pleasant as he could manage. When he saw the doubtful look on the merchant’s face, Brunner straightened his position in his saddle. He smiled grimly as he noted the three marksmen adjust their aim slightly to account for his movement. ‘You must think I’m a ten-fold fool. I can see that you have me in check. Even if your men there miss me, I know you have another fellow flanking me in the woods just to my right.’ A low curse rose from the bounty hunter’s right. Brunner stared out the corner of his helm to see a wiry man wearing black leather armour come stalking out of the trees, a crossbow gripped in his hands. The look on the sneaking marksman’s sharp-featured face was murderous. He lifted his weapon, keeping it trained on the bounty hunter.

‘A traveller, eh?’ the merchant said. ‘And how do we know that’s all you are? How do we know that you’re not in league with the scum that hacked down the caravan we passed this afternoon?’ As the merchant spoke, there were sombre nods from some of his men.

Brunner was preparing a retort when a voice called out from within the camp.

‘He’s what he says he is, Emiliano,’ said a loud voice in a Reiklander accent. Brunner watched the speaker emerge from the cover of the wagons. The man wore an elaborately engraved breastplate over a bright blue shirt. A brace of pistols and a slender longsword dangled from a brass-studded belt about the man’s waist while steel armour covered much of his upper legs. Black leather cavalry boots completed his costume, save for the dull steel helm that guarded his skull. The face of the rounded helm was open, exposing a countenance that had seen too much of the world to still be considered young. The skin was dark and leathery, weathered by years of exposure to the hot sun of the south.

The man’s blond moustache and keen blue eyes betrayed his northern origin however, every bit as much as the rampant griffon upon his breastplate and the accent in his voice.

‘I met him in Miragliano shortly after we arrived,’ the mercenary said, turning away from his employer and walking away from the barricade. ‘Apparently, he is a bounty hunter of some note.’ As the captain made this statement, the marksman in the trees gave a disgusted, hateful hiss. ‘An unpleasant sort, but not a follower of the Ruinous Powers.’

The mercenary captain strode towards Brunner, stopping when he was only ten feet away. Brunner focused his attention on the man. He remembered only too clearly their last meeting. This time, the man was not drunk, and backed by more than a few besotted companions as he had been in the Black Boar. More, Brunner could see by the way the mercenary carried himself that he was a man who knew his business, who knew how to handle a sword and had depended upon it for his livelihood for quite some time. The bounty hunter considered his options, not liking the conclusions he was drawing. Even if he was able to best the mercenary in a fair combat, he knew that the waiting marksmen would quickly avenge their captain’s loss.

‘I see you still carry the sword,’ the mercenary declared, pointing a gloved finger at the dragon-hilted shape against Brunner’s left thigh. The bounty hunter did not speak, fixing his eyes upon those of the sell-sword. The mercenary met Brunner’s gaze. ‘Tell me,’ he asked in a sombre voice, ‘that story you told me about how you came by the sword, was it the truth?’

Brunner sneered at the mercenary. ‘Lies are what we tell those we fear,’ he said. He cast a furtive glance at the black-garbed marksman as the man moved to complete his flanking of the bounty hunter, then returned his attention to the man before him.

The mercenary captain was quiet for a moment, his face unreadable. Then he nodded, reaching a decision. He lifted one of his gloved hands, waving his fingers. Ahead of him, Brunner could see the other mercenaries relax, the marksmen withdrawing their weapons. Brunner looked back to the blond-haired captain and nodded. The Reiklander returned the gesture.

‘If you would share our camp,’ the mercenary said, ‘I would hear a more complete account of Albrecht Yorck’s demise.’

‘That is a small enough thing,’ the bounty hunter replied. ‘But why should it interest you? Of what matter is this sword and a slaughtered pig to you?’

‘My father was a soldier in the service of the man to whom that sword rightfully belonged,’ the mercenary said, indicating the dragon-hilted weapon once more. He turned to make his way back to the camp.

‘What was his name?’ Brunner called after the mercenary.

‘Zelten,’ the mercenary said, turning around once more. ‘Karl Zelten, Rittmeister to the Baron von Drakenburg.’ There was a swelling pride in the mercenary’s voice as he spoke of his father and his position with the deposed baron. ‘I am his eldest son, Manfred Zelten,’ the mercenary concluded with equal pride, turning on his heel and resuming his march back to the encampment.

The shadows had grown long by the time Brunner had finished relating his story to the mercenary captain. Manfred Zelten had listened with marked interest from the folding camp chair he had removed from one of the wagons. Around him, a number of his sell-swords had gathered, eager to hear this tale which so interested their captain, among them the heavy, bear-like warrior who had risen to the defence of Zelten in the Black Boar and the wiry marksman who had tried to flank the bounty hunter during the earlier stand-off.

The story Brunner told was simple enough. He had been hired by the down-trodden people of Yorckweg, a miserable little town in the Border Princes, to remove their despotic ruler, a usurper named Albrecht Yorck. The bounty hunter had infiltrated the town and found the tyrant, feeding Yorck’s belly the full length of his sword before kicking the expiring man down into his fighting arena to be torn apart by his own wardogs. As a way of supplementing the meagre funds offered by the peasants, Brunner had relieved Yorck of his magnificent sword before knocking him down into the pit to meet a well-deserved end.

The relating of Yorck’s gruesome demise brought a look of shock and horror to the face of the merchant, Emiliano Tacca, perhaps more due to the cold, emotionless tones in which it was recounted than anything else. Several of the listening mercenaries chuckled however, applauding the ruthless act with their grim humour. Zelten himself wore a broad smile, clearly pleased by what he had heard.

‘Nothing less than the swine deserved,’ the Reiklander spat. ‘You did the Empire a service removing that scum from the ranks of the living.’

‘I gather you knew this Albrecht Yorck,’ Brunner stated, crouching beside the fire.

‘Indeed, he was seneschal to Baron von Drakenburg, second in command of his soldiers, among other duties.’ Zelten’s face grew hard as he recalled the man. ‘It is because of his treachery that my father and many other brave warriors are dead.’

‘I suspect that you have your own tale to tell,’ the bounty hunter observed.

Zelten looked over at the heavily-muscled bear-like man. ‘Horst, ensure that the rotation schedule for the sentries is maintained. Two in camp, one in the trees at either side of the road. I want no tired eyes watching over us when Chaos is abroad.’ The bear-like Horst Brendle nodded, muttering a curse on all those who would bow before the Dark Gods, and strode away to carry out his captain’s orders.

‘I fear that my own story has a less pleasing finish than yours,’ Zelten admitted when he returned his attention to the bounty hunter. ‘As I mentioned, my father was captain of cavalry to the Baron von Drakenburg, a noble house whose lands lie upon the Reikland side of the Grey Mountains. He was a very wealthy man, as his domain included Iron Pass, a slender finger through a break in the Grey Mountains which allowed passage between the Empire and Bretonnia. Unfortunately, the Baron’s Bretonnian neighbour was a very ambitious man, a villain named de Chegney, a viscount with less honour and decency about him than an orc.’

The bounty hunter’s gaze became even harder as he heard the treacherous Bretonnian lord mentioned. ‘Much of the baron’s wealth was poured into building forts and arming soldiers to protect his lands from the viscount’s numerous and unrelenting attempts to expand his domain eastward. It is a testament to the baron’s tactical acumen and the quality of his soldiers that the Viscount de Chegney was repulsed every time, sent back to Bretonnia to lick his wounds.’

Zelten snapped his fingers and an elderly looking soldier advanced. The old veteran wore a suit of often-mended plate mail about his lean yet-powerful frame, the faded outline of a laurel-wreathed skull visible on his greaves and breastplate. The veteran cast a dubious look at his captain, his wrinkled face further disfigured by a worried scowl. The mercenary handed his captain a lead flask which Zelten took from him without a word. The younger man took a long pull from the bottle, then stared at the flask for a moment before handing it back to the veteran. There was something akin to relief in the older man’s face as he returned the flask to a pouch on his belt and withdrew.

Fortified by whatever he had imbibed, Zelten continued to speak. ‘For many years this went on, until at last, the viscount himself proposed an end to the fighting. He proposed a treaty with Baron von Drakenburg, a treaty that would be sealed with blood. The viscount’s son would marry the baron’s daughter, thus uniting their houses and fortifying the peace with a bond stronger than mere words. After much thought and consultation with his advisors, the baron at last agreed to the marriage and the treaty.’ Brunner listened to Zelten speak, clenching and unclenching his swordhand, as though eager to grip the hilt of his blade. The mercenary did not notice the gesture and continued with his tale. ‘Although no coward, the baron had grown weary of the constant skirmishes and raiding, and this proposed alliance seemed the only chance for bringing peace to his realm. The marriage was announced, to be held on neutral ground, a glade located along Iron Pass, midway between the two realms. The two factions would each bring however many soldiers they desired and the ceremony would be conducted by both a priest of our most Holy Sigmar and a cleric of Bretonnia’s Lady of the Lake.

‘The wedding itself passed without incident. Indeed, even the most sceptical of the baron’s men had to admit that it seemed that at last his troubled realm would know peace. How could they have imagined the black-hearted deceit that was the true intention of the viscount? How could the baron have imagined how deep the Bretonnian’s foul reach had stretched into his own barony? Riding back from the wedding, with his loyal,’ the mercenary fairly sneered the word, ‘seneschal Albrecht Yorck by his side, the baron dared to hope that the security and happiness of his land had been secured, that it would know no more the sound of battle, at least in his time. But the wedding feast had been long, and the hour had grown late. At the suggestion of Yorck, the baron’s party did not head back toward the massive walls of the Schloss von Drakenburg, but instead diverted their path toward a small border fort. It seemed a most reasonable thing to do, with the sun long faded from the sky and many hours’ travel before reaching the warm halls of the Schloss.

‘But it was not comfort the baron found, but darkest treachery. The fort had been betrayed. While the viscount had toasted the peace and prosperity of both their realms, mercenaries in his employ had taken over the fort, sneaking past its defences by means of an escape tunnel whose location had been told to them. They had put the baron’s garrison to the sword, then had awaited the baron’s coming. As the baron’s party reached the keep, the mercenaries sprung their ambush. First they dropped the portcullis, cutting the baron’s forces in half. Then their archers opened fire, both on the men within the keep’s courtyard and those without. Surprised, their reflexes and wits dulled by the excesses of the wedding feast, the baron’s company were easy prey. Only three of his horsemen escaped the ambush, riding off to alert the castle and summon aid.

‘One of these men was my father. Mortally wounded by one of the viscount’s archers, he reached the castle nevertheless. He told of the treacherous ambush, and of what he had seen through the keep’s gate ere he had ridden off, the loyal seneschal Albrecht Yorck with his sword at the throat of the man he had professed to serve. He said these things, before his wound finished him, another victim of the viscount’s plotting and Yorck’s betrayal.’

Zelten clenched his own fist as he recalled these memories and Brunner could imagine the man’s knuckles whitening beneath his gloves. ‘I took up my father’s sword and marched out with the soldiers who had remained at the castle. We thought that if we could reinforce the keep that held the pass, we might yet force the viscount to undo his villainy. But the wily Bretonnian had been swifter. His men had not removed themselves very far from the site of the wedding feast and were much closer to the mouth of the pass than we. Worse, the viscount’s traitor had been at work on the fort’s garrison. Fully half of the men were in his pay, and the faithless curs wasted no time in murdering their still-loyal comrades when Yorck gave the order. We found the pass held against us, and the viscount’s knights ready to take full advantage of a foe tired from having marched since dawn. If ten men escaped the ensuing slaughter, then Morr was cheated his due. It is to my shame that I was among those who did not die that day.’

‘The only shame in this world is spending your life on a useless cause,’ the bounty hunter interrupted, his voice chill and grim. ‘You and the other men at the castle should have taken service with one of the neighbouring barons rather than spending your lives needlessly on a fallen lord.’

The mercenary captain took to his feet, bristling with outrage. ‘Indeed yours is an honourless breed!’ he snapped. ‘I should have taken service with the likes of them? That princely scum? They were as much traitors to the baron as that vermin Yorck! Each one of them had been bought off by de Chegney, told that they might partition the holdings of the von Drakenburgs in exchange for their complacency. Had they stood against him, the viscount would never have dared to move so boldly and treacherously. Instead, they had stood aside and allowed the viscount to overthrow their fellow noble lord, hiding behind the marriage of de Chegney’s son to the baron’s only child as a moral excuse to not interfere. I’ve served many masters since making my way south, since taking up the profession of the sell-sword, but never have I served men so vile!’

Brunner smiled at the mercenary. ‘Cling to your high ground while you may,’ he said. ‘Go on thinking there is some honour to be found in this dirty world we live in. You should have learned from the story you’ve told me. Trust is a fatal flaw for a man to have, and loyalty is just as foolish a notion to nurture in your heart. No man, no cause is worth dying for.’ The bounty hunter patted the sword at his side with a leather-covered hand. ‘This is the only friend you can count on.’ He stared hard at the mercenary, his eyes like chips of ice behind the visor of his helm. ‘If your baron had understood that, he wouldn’t be dead now.’ Brunner rose from his crouch and strode away. Zelten and those around him watched the hardened killer walk toward the far end of the encampment, near where his animals were tethered. The bounty hunter removed a blanket from one of the bundles he had earlier taken from the packhorse. Casting the blanket to the ground, the bounty hunter settled himself for the night.

‘That sort of man makes even my blood turn sour,’ commented Schtafel, the wiry marksman who had been caught flanking the bounty hunter. He was one of Zelten’s best men, and had been with Zelten throughout the long march south through the Empire. For all of that, he knew little about the man. Whatever secrets were in his past, Schtafel kept to himself. Truth be told, Zelten had been quietly impressed that the bounty hunter had noticed Schtafel’s stealthy approach. He’d seen the crossbowman sneak up on even orcs and beastmen without the monsters noticing.

‘I’ll second that,’ shuddered a tall mercenary, his face framed by the close-fitting cheek-guards of his Tilean-style barbute helm. ‘I’ve drunk with ogres that were better company.’

Zelten considered his fellow mercenaries for a moment, then rose from his camp chair. ‘If that Chaos warband is still about, you’ll be glad to number him with us,’ he stated. ‘That caravan we passed today was twice our size. If fortune betrays us and we run afoul of those marauders, you’ll be glad of every sword.’ So saying, Zelten departed, to seek his own bed. Schtafel watched his captain go.

‘The captain can think what he likes,’ the marksman confided to his companions. ‘But I’ll feel better the further I am from that bastard.’

II

Behind the thick stone walls of Remas, among the clustered warehouses, tenements, inns, taverns, shops, palazzos, temples and barracks, innumerable shadowy, hidden places existed, forlorn refuges for thieves, murderers and men guilty of still darker crimes. In one of these secret places, a single candle burned, its flame dancing in the pitch black all around it.

A figure moved within the tiny circle of light cast by the lone candle. Soft hands, their fingers long and thin, worked within the light, moving with an almost inhuman grace. The hands performed long sweeps above the floor, with each movement allowing a trickle of dark powder to fall upon the rough stones. As the hands continued to weave their invisible, intangible pattern, the trickle of dust described the movements upon the stones. By degrees, the shape of an octagon began to form. When the shape had become firmly established, when the last trace of the powder had fallen from the cupped fists of the hands, the figure drew away from the light. The crinkle of rustling cloth sounded within the dark, secret place as the shadow rummaged about in the blackness. Soon the opening and closing of some box with a ponderous wooden lid added to the rustle of the garments. Then the hands appeared once more in the flickering candlelight.

Now the hands did not hold something so insubstantial as powder. The left was closed about the hilt of a wavy-bladed copper dagger, the blade defaced by a gruesome skull totem set close to the guard of the knife. The other was closed about something even more unsettling: a tiny, struggling grey-furred form. It might have been a field mouse once, before corruption had settled into its flesh and bone. Now it was a disgusting thing, two scaly heads squirming against the fingers that held it, a long tail bearing suckers like an octopus curling about the wrist of the hand. The mutant thing had no voice and continued its struggles in silence. Those struggles ceased entirely when the copper dagger slashed through both its throats in one swift motion.

The dead aberration spilled its corrupt sapphire-hued blood into the centre of the octagon. Instantly the steaming blue liquid began to disperse, running in straight lines to each point of the octagon. Where bare stone had been before, now a crude arrow had formed. The blood of the slain mutant began to glow, shifting colours as it grew in brilliance, fading from red to green then to blue once more.

Steam began to rise from the unnatural blood, forming into a cloud of weirdly glowing smoke. As the smoke changed colours, a hazy image began to form within it, a small caravan encampment somewhere in the wilderness of Tilea’s countryside. The conjurer could see that the wagons had been formed into a barricade to protect the wagon masters, their beasts and their wares from the night. Mercenary soldiers patrolled the perimeter of the camp, wary eyes studying the dark for any sign of danger. Yes, there was danger here. The caravan was destined for Remas. There was a man in the camp who could prove dangerous if he were to reach the city, dangerous to the magic-maker’s schemes. He should have dealt with him before, but had always hesitated to do so. Now there would be no more doubt, and no more delay.

A pale hand swiped at the swirling smoke. The image faded, the smoke bubbled like boiling soup as it congealed to show a new scene, the shape of an immense armoured warrior, slumped against a rotting log. The magic-maker’s head nodded as the image took form, pleased by what had been revealed. From the darkness, soft words whispered. The warrior stirred slightly as the words intruded upon his dreams. The magic-maker spoke again, the words becoming more forceful. The armoured warrior shook his head, the grotesque insect-like helm shaking as the conjurer’s words consumed and supplanted his dreams. The words stopped flowing and the caster smiled once more. All that had been needed to be done this night had been accomplished.

The pale hands moved within the yellow glimmer of the candle once more. This time they moved only twice above the octagon and the glowing cloud hovering above it. Then the left hand dropped a silver coin into the centre of the octagon. Instantly, the mist vanished, as though it had never been. A terrible chill filled the dark chamber, blowing out the feeble candle. It was the icy cold of unclean, fathomless reaches, of places beyond the confines of time and substance, the chill of ancient and inhuman evil. The conjurer paid the chill no notice, for many times had he felt its touch. He relit the candle, and bore it away as he made his way through the silent, benighted passages that led away from this secret, profane place.

The caravan decamped in the small hours before dawn. By first light the wagons were once more under way, their mercenary guards walking alongside. Ahead of the wagons, the few mounted members of the mercenary band rode ahead of the column. Beside them rode Brunner, though his inclusion in the marching order had drawn a number of complaints from some of the mercenaries, chiefly the crossbowman Schtafel, but the protests had been overruled by Zelten. Again, the captain pointed out to his men that they would appreciate every sword if they were set upon by raiders. However, the captain’s words were not enough to keep suspicious eyes from glaring at the bounty hunter, nor nervous fingers from staying close to the hilts of knives and swords.

Zelten rode beside Brunner, as much to forestall any impetuous act on the part of one of his men as to assure his soldiers that he was keeping a watchful eye on the bounty hunter. For his part, Brunner seemed to pay no notice to the quiet hostility around him, his keen eyes scanning the stands of trees, patches of thick brush and piles of boulders that dotted the landscape.

‘You expect trouble?’ the mercenary asked, trying to follow the direction of the bounty hunter’s ever shifting gaze.

‘I always expect trouble,’ Brunner replied, not looking at Zelten. ‘It’s what keeps me alive.’

Zelten smiled, clearly having expected such a response from the hired killer. ‘We made a thorough search of the site of the massacre. One of my men used to be a game warden on the estates of Count Capritti of Luccini. He reckons there were about fifty in the warband that hit the other caravan.’

Brunner nodded his head, eyes still scanning the trees. Zelten noticed that the bounty hunter’s hand lay upon the grip of his pistol, gloved fingers slowly drumming on the polished wooden frame of the gun. ‘That sounds about right. It would take at least that many to hit a caravan of that size and prevent anyone from escaping.’

‘Fifty,’ Zelten said, as if considering the number. ‘We have about that many among us.’ The mercenary snorted a humourless laugh. ‘Of course, that includes the labourers and wagon masters. Our actual fighting strength is nearer to thirty-five.’ Zelten laughed again. ‘Of course, a few of my men are worth more than most I’ve fought beside. Horst, for instance, is worth five men on his own.’

‘That might count for something,’ Brunner replied, his voice grim, ‘if we were worried about fighting men. But what destroyed that other caravan long ago abandoned any right to call themselves human.’

‘I’ve fought the servants of the Dark Gods before,’ Zelten commented, his tone somewhat defensive. ‘I know all too well what to expect from their kind.’

Brunner faced the mercenary for the first time. ‘I’ve dealt with their kind as well, often enough to know one thing. Where Chaos has extended its hand, you can never know what to expect.’

It was an hour after sunrise when they saw the raiders. The keen eyes of the bounty hunter noticed them just as the foremost of Zelten’s riders did, the swarthy former game warden Guglielmo. The Tilean turned around in his saddle shouting a warning to the rest of the column. The mercenaries began hastily readying themselves for conflict, breaking into small groups of four: three men armed with spears or swords providing support and protection for a fourth man armed with either a crossbow or a long-barrelled black powder weapon. The wagons tried to manoeuvre themselves into a defensive wedge behind the groupings of mercenaries, but it was taking the wagoners time to force their animals to obey, despite the orders and curses being shouted by the merchant Emiliano Tacca.

Ahead of the column, at the top of a small rise, a cluster of armed shapes could be seen, numbering at least a score. They had been hidden from view until the caravan had rounded the last rock pile, yet they were still far enough away for Zelten’s marksmen to knock down their numbers before the raiders would be able to reach the formation. Or perhaps not, the bounty hunter reconsidered as he noticed the nature of their foes. Most of them wore armour, and lots of it, though Brunner knew from experience that even the thickest armour was no proof against a bullet, nor certain protection from a close-fired crossbow bolt. And he suspected, these were no normal men, but vile followers of corruption and pestilence. Their flesh would be bloated, puffy with disease and corruption. Followers of the plague god were almost immune to pain, even more so than orcs and their ilk. Their necrotic flesh was largely eaten away by disease, there was little left of them that could be injured or hurt. The fire of Zelten’s marksmen would have to be very good, for only a kill-shot would bring one of these degenerates down.

‘Prepare to repel attackers!’ Zelten called out in strong, harsh tones. The mercenary captain brandished his sword overhead, waving it like a standard. ‘Let’s make them regret taking on Zelten’s Dragons!’ The officer’s words were greeted with whooping war cries from his men. The other horsemen readied their own weapons, forming a line before the infantry. Zelten gave orders to the other cavalry to stand their ground until the raiders had come halfway across the gap between them. The idea was to give the marksmen as much time as possible to whittle down the numbers of their attackers. Then the cavalry would strike the weakened enemy, holding them back for the marksmen to gain still a few more opportunistic shots before their enemies could reach the small infantry formations.

Brunner watched as the armoured warriors upon the rise began to advance, setting up a fierce howl of devotion to their profane god. The keen eyes of the bounty hunter studied the ranks of the hideous Chaos warriors.

‘I count thirty-two,’ the bounty hunter observed.

Zelten nodded his head as the first volley of fire struck the armoured raiders. Four of the warriors were hit, one of them dropping his halberd as a bullet exploded his unarmoured shoulder, another falling with a bolt through his neck. The other two just shrugged off the attack; whether the bolts had failed to penetrate their armour or whether they had simply failed to hit a vital area, it was impossible to say. The crippled warrior tossed his heavy shield aside and retrieved his weapon from the ground, gripping it in his other hand.

‘They seem to be taking their own time about getting over here too,’ commented Zelten. The mercenary shouted at one of the other horsemen. ‘They’re baiting us!’ he told the horseman, the same old veteran who had produced the flask the previous evening. ‘Leave Horst here with me and take the rest of the horse to the rear. Be ready for an ambush!’

The veteran saluted with a sharp, precise gesture more befitting one of the Empire’s knightly orders than some ragtag Tilean mercenary company. The old warrior barked orders to the other horsemen and at once they were racing to the rear of the column. Left behind, the bear-like Horst swung his heavy flail back and forth beside his horse, clearly eager to crack an enemy’s skull with the brutal weapon. Zelten watched them go, then turned his attention forward. He was slightly surprised to notice that the bounty hunter was still at his side.

‘Not joining the rearguard?’ he asked. Brunner continued to watch the plague warriors advance as another volley struck their ranks. Once again, only one of the armoured warriors fell, though this time the other warriors struck seemed to notice their injuries a bit more. The marksmen had learned where to place their shots after the first barrage.

‘I think the real action is going to be up here,’ Brunner commented, drawing his pistol. ‘Even if your bearded bear is worth five men, I think you’ll need me here.’

‘You don’t think the rest of them are planning an ambush?’ Zelten asked, a worried note in his voice. There were any number of reasons why the number of their enemies was so low. The rest of the warband might be watching another part of the road, lying in reserve, or perhaps they had simply overestimated how many of them there could be. However, the deliberate hesitance of the raiders’ advance could only be evidence of some subterfuge.

‘Oh, they are going to spring something on us,’ Brunner commented as a third salvo struck the plague warriors, this time felling two of the diseased madmen. ‘But this is where the main assault is going to be.’ Brunner nodded his head toward the slowly advancing ranks of armoured reavers. ‘I suspect these are his good troops. The ambush is a double-bluff to draw your best troops elsewhere. The real attack is going to be here.’

Zelten cursed, the hand gripping the reins of his steed slapping his leg in frustration. ‘Damn it man, why didn’t you say so before I sent the cavalry back!’

‘Because if you hadn’t, we won’t be able to draw out their leader,’ replied Brunner in a cold voice. ‘Bringing him down is going to be the only way to rout this vermin. Do that…’ the bounty hunter’s words trailed off as he noted a horseman appear at the top of the rise.

The horseman was surrounded by a cloud of flies, leaving no doubt as to his allegiance. The horse itself looked like something that had been rotting in a field for upwards of a week. Clumps of fur had fallen out, exposing sickly green skin. Great pustules clumped about its neck, trailing off towards its belly, open sores wept yellow filth from each of its legs. Leather barding studded with spikes of rusting steel and bronze covered the diseased animal, a mask of leather enclosing its entire head, save for its drooling, black-toothed mouth and rheumy eyes.

Atop the plague steed was an even more disordered apparition, a huge shape in a grimy suit of plate armour, the green, corroding metal covering every inch of the rider, baring not the slightest portion of the form within. The armour itself was green with corrosion, grimy rust-like crust dripping from every edge or join upon the pieces of steel plate, as though the metal had become contaminated by whatever disease the vile plague god had seen fit to gift his servant. Visible between the rotting trophies that dangled from thick leather cords fastened to studs on the warrior’s shoulder guards, the interlinked circle symbol of the Grandfather of Pestilence could be seen etched across the breastplate of the armour.

The helmet that rose above the breastplate was fashioned in the shape of some noxious insect, numerous tiny holes in the bulging eyes of the insect mask allowing the warrior within to see the world upon which he preyed. Gripped in the gauntlet of the bloated Chaos champion was a huge sword, its blade pitted with decay, clotted encrustations of blood and brain staining the length of the giant weapon.

Brunner saw the rider, swearing under his breath. ‘Pulstlitz!’ he snarled. Zelten glanced over at the bounty hunter as he heard Brunner name the Chaos rider. It had been nearly a year since Brunner had crossed swords with the filthy plague knight. The bounty hunter was not looking forward to repeating the experience.

Zelten roared an order back at his men. ‘Concentrate your fire on the leader!’

‘Keep firing on the foot soldiers!’ Brunner snarled, his voice riding the echo of Zelten’s order. ‘Foul magics watch over that bastard, don’t waste your shots on him!’ After a moment of indecision, the marksmen opened fire again, still directing their shots at the slowly advancing plague warriors. Zelten cast a suspicious look at the bounty hunter, but did not protest his countermand of his orders.

Pulstlitz stared down at the battlefield for a moment, then lifted his sword overhead, swiping it through the air and the cloud of flies hovering about him. Then the plague knight charged, barrelling down the slope of the rise. As he did so, the slowly advancing foot soldiers broke into a run, roaring their profane war cries. The war cries were answered from a large pile of rocks behind and a few score yards to the right of the caravan. A motley mob of enraged, howling creatures scrambled out from the cover of the rocks. They wore little armour, many of them were just scrawny, sickly peasants with rusted swords and axes, but mixed among their numbers were a half-dozen or so larger loping shapes, filthy fur hanging in mangy strips from their twisted bodies, massive horns rising above their bestial heads. In all, the ambushers added another thirty to the numbers of the caravan’s attackers.

The spirits of the mercenaries faltered as they saw the diseased mob sprinting toward them. Many of the wagoners gave cries of horror and despair, leaping down from their seats and racing to escape the beset convoy. The mercenaries watched them flee with contempt. They were not any more hopeful about their chances, but to a man they would prefer to die standing their ground and smiting their enemies rather than cringing in the woods to be hunted down and slaughtered like an animal once the battle was over.

‘Sigmar watch over us!’ grunted the bear-like Horst, making the sign of the hammer with the hand that gripped his horse’s reins.

Brunner shook his head. ‘He may watch, but expect nothing more.’ The bearded mercenary glared at the bounty hunter’s impious remark. ‘Look to your steel, that is the only thing that will see you through to the day’s end!’

Then the time for talk and prayer was at an end as the Chaos warriors struck the mercenaries’ line.

The marksmen had accounted for eight of the armoured Chaos warriors by the time the degenerate plague worshippers closed with Zelten’s front line. There was more than enough to go around for Zelten, Horst, Brunner, and the half-dozen foot-troops who had advanced to support them. Half of the other mercenaries had fallen back to support the rearguard, taking two of the marksmen with them, leaving only Schtafel and another crossbowman to continue to pick at the raiders attacking their front. The fighting was brutal and savage, with no quarter asked or given by the combatants of either side. The plague worshippers fought to honour their diseased god, throwing themselves into combat with a reckless abandon, giving no thought to defence as they slashed and hewed at their foes. The mercenaries fought with just as great a determination, knowing that their lives and possibly their souls would be forfeit if they failed to repel their awful adversaries. But the mercenaries fought more defensively than the plague warriors, and they fought as soldiers, not frenzied beasts, each man acting as a part of a whole, supporting and assisting their comrades. The plague warriors fought as individuals, pushing one another aside to reach their foes, giving no thought to helping their fellows, only to rending the clean, unblemished flesh of their enemies. For every one of the mercenaries who fell, two of the plague warriors spilled their life from pierced bellies and split skulls.

Yet they were losses that could be ill-afforded. The weight of numbers was in the favour of the plague warriors. Brunner swore as he slashed the edge of Drakesmalice through the helm of a Chaos warrior, removing the top of the degenerate’s skull. It was the third such to fall to his sword, yet still it was not enough. Four of the mercenaries were down, and the last two were hard-pressed by four of the remaining plague warriors. Two more of the armoured scum were sprinting toward the wagons, determined to end the sporadic fire coming from the remaining marksmen.

Zelten was down, his horse gutted by a plague warrior’s axe, and the mercenary captain was now trying to finish off the raider who had killed his mount. Horst was still in his saddle, his flail clotted with blood and brains. Brunner could see perhaps a half dozen plague warriors strewn around the man, their helms crushed out of shape by the mercenary’s violent blows. Horst’s eyes cast a vacant, empty glance across the battlefield, unsettling even to the bounty hunter in their homicidal intensity. Foam dripped from the man’s beard as he gave voice to a loud war cry and rode toward the embattled swordsmen.

Brunner took in the state of the battle around him quickly, then his eyes watered as an unspeakably vile stench filled his lungs. Fiend reared beneath him, threatening to toss him from the saddle. Brunner fought to restrain the warhorse. He could not fault the animal its reaction, he had himself hoped to never endure that smell again. A black buzzing host of flies swirled about Brunner as a huge monster charged toward him, the hooves of its diseased horse crushing the bodies of mercenary and plague warrior alike as it surged forward.

‘Brunner!’ the droning echo that served Pulstlitz as voice buzzed from the Chaos champion’s helm. ‘Zhiz zhime you die!’

The bounty hunter watched as the plague knight rode toward him. With a smooth, fluid motion, Brunner released Fiend’s reins and drew his pistol. He’d known as soon as he’d recognised Pulstlitz that this moment would come and had prepared for it as best he could. Yet he had not counted on Fiend’s violent agitation to the plague champion’s aura of filth and pestilence. If the horse reared now, he’d be thrown.

The pistol exploded as Brunner pulled back the trigger. The steel ball hurtled into the avalanche of corroded steel and diseased flesh that was Pulstlitz and his loathsome steed. The rheumy ball of pus that served the plague steed as an eye burst like a squashed grape, spattering mucus-like phlegm across its barding as it ruptured. The ball tore through the decaying substance of the infested animal’s skull, ripping apart its brain. The plague horse gave a low, painful neigh, rearing away from the discharge, arresting its advance. Then the horse fell, slamming onto its side, pinning its diseased rider beneath it.

Brunner breathed a sigh of relief as he dropped the pistol from his gloved hand and reclaimed the reins. As if sensing its master’s danger, Fiend had quieted the moment he had released his grip. The bounty hunter muttered a few words of gratitude, then urged his horse toward Pulstlitz’s slain mount. He found the loathsome plague champion trying to wriggle out from underneath the dead mass of his steed. The insect-shaped helm shifted, glaring at Brunner as he advanced. Pulstlitz grasped for where his sword had come to rest after his fall, but the diseased warrior was unable to reach the blade.

‘This time you don’t walk away,’ declared Brunner. Pulstlitz snarled up at his enemy, the sound rumbling from deep within his armour. Suddenly, Brunner was struck from behind, falling from his saddle to crash down on the top of Pulstlitz’s slain horse.

The bounty hunter found himself lying on his belly, his lungs filled with the rotten stink of the diseased horse. Brunner lashed out blindly with Drakesmalice to fend off whatever had attacked him, sweeping the sword behind his back. He rolled his body, facing upward just in time to ward off the blunt knobby head of a massive iron mace.

The shape behind the crude weapon could no longer be called human, if it could ever have been. It was a hulking mass of lice-ridden fur and boil-blemished flesh, its huge chest rippling with muscle despite the sickly green that coloured fur and flesh alike. The beastman roared, its goat-like head lifted in feral anticipation of crushing the skull of its defiant foe.

Brunner tried to stab his sword through the Chaos monster’s unprotected belly, but found that he was unable to rise. Powerful steel-clothed hands had closed about his shoulders, holding him down. From beneath the carcass of the horse, Pulstlitz laughed in the bounty hunter’s ear. ‘Zhiz zhime, you donz walk away,’ the droning sound of the Chaos champion buzzed.

Brunner struggled against the plague champion’s clutch, his eyes locked on those of the diseased beastman as it raised its weapon. The pestigor’s inhuman features split into an expression of supreme confidence and triumph.

A moment later, its expression was one of shock and horror as the beastman’s foul blood cascaded down its face from the wound in its forehead where a crossbow bolt had ripped through its skull. The knobby mace fell from the pestigor’s suddenly lax claws and a moment later the monster crashed to the ground beside its weapon.

The grip of the plague champion grew slack for a moment as Pulstlitz watched his warrior fall, as surprised as the pestigor by its sudden demise. Brunner exploited the diseased marauder’s moment of inattention to break away from his grasp. The bounty hunter quickly regained his feet, staring down at the trapped Pulstlitz. He brandished Drakesmalice before the struggling Chaos knight. The metal of Brunner’s sword seemed to blaze with orange flame, reacting dramatically to the overpowering taint of the Chaos champion. Despite himself, Pulstlitz recoiled from the magic blade as a spasm of fear wormed its way into his diseased frame. The Chaos champion, with a superhuman effort stretched his trapped body, his hand closing on the hilt of his fallen sword. As Brunner swung Drakesmalice downward, Pulstlitz swept his rotted blade upward, its infected metal crashing against the blazing edge of Drakesmalice.

The two swords groaned as they met, Drakesmalice burning yet more brightly as it came into contact with the plague champion’s blade. There was a bright flash of light, then the shriek of tearing steel as Pulstlitz’s sword was shorn in two. Unimpeded, Drakesmalice drove downward into the arm behind the broken blade, tearing through the plague knight’s armour.

The droning tones of Pulstlitz’s voice echoed in a mad scream as his arm fell away. From the ruptured, penetrated armour, hundreds of shiny black bodies crawled forth, scattering across the battlefield. Brunner smashed one of the fleeing cockroaches under his steel boot as it fled, then lifted Drakesmalice once more.

‘Now you meet your filthy god!’ the bounty hunter snarled, swinging Drakesmalice into the neck of the Chaos champion. The insect-like helm flew away, clattering across the ground. A fountain of vermin exploded from the hole at the top of Pulstlitz’s body armour, the insects spilling to the ground in a crawling flood. Brunner could see that more of the disgusting insects were also creeping from the empty helm of the Chaos champion. He smashed several more underfoot and walked over to the helmet. Brunner kicked it over, gazing at the now empty steel. Long in the service of the Chaos Lord of Decay and Corruption, Pulstlitz’s body had been consumed by the evil he worshipped, until at last he wore not one body, but thousands. Now, with the controlling spirit of the Chaos champion gone, the vermin were evacuating the armour that had contained them and given the plague knight form and substance, crawling back to the filthy holes from which they had once been summoned.

Brunner lifted Pulstlitz’s helmet high over his head then set up a loud cry, hurling the empty helm at the closest of the Chaos warriors. The diseased raiders set up a cry of agony and horror as they saw the evidence of their champion’s defeat, at once abandoning their fight with the mercenaries. News of Pulstlitz’s death quickly spread to the rabble and pestigors attacking the rear of the column and the ambushers quickly turned tail and ran. Their flight was hastened by the frenzied one-man charge of the mercenary Horst, who rode down and slaughtered as many of the degenerates as he could catch before they reached the security of a nearby patch of forest.

The bounty hunter turned away from the empty armour of Pulstlitz, sheathing Drakesmalice and clutching at the spot on his side where the pestigor had struck him from Fiend’s back. The armour had absorbed most of the force of the blow, and Brunner could detect no broken bones beneath the skin, yet such knowledge did little to offset the numbing pain. Still, he had little time to spare for his own hurt, and made his way about the battlefield to reclaim his horse. He leaned upon Fiend, resting his weight on the warhorse as his eyes swept the area for any sign of his pack horse. He was still in such circumstances when Manfred Zelten strode towards him, the old veteran Mietz and the wiry marksman Schtafel at his side.

‘How’d we do?’ the bounty hunter asked Zelten as he came near. The mercenary’s expression was grim, but not entirely without an air of triumph.

‘We lost ten, and I have another four wounded that probably won’t make it to Remas,’ Zelten stated. ‘Especially since their wounds are certain to become infected. The magic of these plague worshippers is potent, and fast.’ Zelten shook his head. ‘Still, we took nearly three times as many of them. Though I have to confess that if you hadn’t taken their leader and broken their resolve, it might have gone the other way.’

‘You should thank your man there,’ Brunner said, pointing a gloved finger at Schtafel. ‘If he hadn’t finished that brute who was preparing to brain me, I wouldn’t have had my chance at their leader.’

The marksman looked away, somewhat unnerved by the statement. When he looked back, his eyes were just as suspicious and wary as before. ‘Sometimes a man has to decide between two evils.’

Brunner’s eyes were just as cold as he returned Schtafel’s stare. ‘Then I am glad the decision went my way,’ he said.

It took an hour before the caravan was under way again. The wounded had to be made secure in the wagons and Zelten insisted on burying their own casualties, though the swiftly decomposing bodies of the plague worshippers were left to rot where they had fallen. In that time, a few of the wagoners emerged from the trees to rejoin the convoy. Emiliano Tacca overrode any talk of waiting for the other men to return, decrying them as miserable cowards, though the stout merchant had spent the battle cringing under the bed of one of his wagons. It was noted that the merchant seemed especially wary of the trees and rocks, and it was the return of the raiders, not his men that so agitated the man.

There were now only five riders to form the vanguard of the column, the other two claimed by the diseased spears of the pestigors, and Brunner took his place among them.

III

The sun was just dropping into afternoon as the caravan drew within sight of Remas. The road had been long, but after the attack by the plague warriors, there had been no further attacks. Seated on their horses, Brunner, Zelten and the other mercenaries gazed upon the mighty city. Built upon the tip of a vast peninsula, nearly one hundred miles in length and almost half as broad, the city completely surrounded a giant lagoon, a body of water almost perfectly round in shape. Long had been the speculation that the lagoon was no natural formation, but some vast undertaking constructed by the long departed elves. Great blocks of masonry stabbing upward from the lagoon like fangs of stone and other ruins lying just beneath the water certainly gave evidence that the elves had exploited this place, even if they had not created it.

Whatever its origins, the elves were gone now, and where their outpost may once have stood, men had reared a still greater city. The tiled roofs and plastered walls of Remas spread across either side of the lagoon, surrounding it completely on its landward edges. The mouth of the lagoon was also claimed by the city, a colossal bridge spanning the entire length of the lagoon’s narrow mouth, rising high above the water on mighty stone piers, allowing the swift, sleek warships of Remas easy access to the sea. Upon the bridge, grand palazzos stood, their balconies facing outward toward lagoon and sea. These were the houses of the wealthiest of Remas’s merchant princes, those who made up the ruling council of fifty and the triumvirate who was elected from those ranks to decide how that rule would be directed and enforced. On either end of the bridge, great towers stood, leaning away from the bridge at impossible angles, as though at any moment they might escape the support of their many buttresses and crash into the sea.

On either side of the bridge, the vast sprawl of the main city stretched. An inner wall of massive stone blocks enclosed the oldest portion of the city, hugging the coastline in places. This eventually met a second wall, larger and thicker than its predecessor, which likewise hugged the coast before sweeping inland to enclose a still larger amount of the peninsula. Along the coast, this second wall met and joined with an equally enormous wall of much later construction and even more impressive proportions. Twenty men standing one atop the other should not have been able to reach the top of the outer wall, and the thickness of the barrier was such that two companies of double-ranked pikemen could pass one another without disturbing their formations. Towers and guardhouses rose from this wall every hundred feet or so, crossbowmen keeping a wary watch as they patrolled the battlements. Like the older walls, the outer wall hugged the coastline for much of its distance before turning inward and bisecting the peninsula, forming an unbroken barrier of stone from shore to shore, completely enclosing the lagoon and the city built around it.

Between the first two walls, on a great rise of land, the skeletal remains of the mighty fortress of Remas yet stood. It was a relic of older, darker times, when tyrannical despots lorded over the city, long before the enlightened rule of the republic. The fortress had been largely cannibalised by the citizens of Remas in the centuries after the founding of the republic, the stones from its walls used to build the palazzos of the city’s leading families upon the giant bridge at the mouth of the lagoon, for it was felt that the very presence of such a castle in the city would feed the ambition of some future tyrant and no man could be trusted with ownership of the place. The fortress had briefly risen from the rubble into which it had fallen during the short despotic rule of Omilo Mondo as the self proclaimed Prince of Remas tried to repair the castle and so fortify his rule. But with Mondo’s death, the reconstruction of the fortress was once again prohibited and it now languished as a forlorn pile of rubble overlooking the inner city.

Much more impressive was a mammoth structure located in the outer city, overlooking the sea. Its spire reaching nearly two hundred feet into the sky, the Temple of Solkan had taken nearly three hundred years to complete. A vast, megalithic building, giant columns of flawless white limestone imported from Araby fronted the plaster-covered walls that enclosed the shrine to the grim god of vengeance and order. Nowhere else in the Old World had the worship of harsh Solkan, the Fist of Retribution, found so firm a hold as it had in Remas, and such a gigantic shrine to the Master of Vengeance was unique to the city. Even from the distance at which they gazed upon the city, Brunner could see the giant golden fist topping the spire of the temple gleaming in the sunlight, as though it would reach up and drag down the sun should that celestial body offend the pitiless deity.

‘Remas,’ muttered Zelten as they slowly began to descend toward the peninsula. ‘Never thought I would ever think of such a place as being home.’ He smiled and stared over at Brunner. ‘I imagine a man like you has travelled widely?’

‘No,’ Brunner replied, his eyes still fixed on the familiar symbol of Solkan. He’d had an unfavourable experience with an Estalian bounty hunter named Osorio, a fanatic worshipper of the Fist of Retribution, a few years past in the city of Tobarao, an event that had coloured his attitude toward Solkan and his followers. ‘I’ve been to many places, but never Remas.’

Zelten’s expression grew somewhat severe. ‘You should stay with us for a time,’ he commented. ‘When in Remas, it is best to be in the service of one of the merchant princes. Very unwise to be independent.’

‘I’ve always depended on no one but myself,’ the bounty hunter stated.

‘Let me put it this way,’ sighed Zelten. ‘In Remas, you need friends, and the more powerful the better. A man on his own could find himself in very bad trouble. The kind that you don’t walk away from.’

Upon reaching one of the three massive gates that provided entry through the outer wall, the caravan was forced to halt. The gateway was teeming with activity, no less than three other caravans vying for entry into the city. The mules and horses of the other traders snorted and stomped at the rancid city smell wafting outward from the gateway even as their drovers tried to quiet them. Mercenary guards in the armour of a half dozen lands glowered at one another, their already foul moods turned still more sullen by this last delay to their journey’s end, this final obstacle between themselves and the taverns and brothels of Remas. In the gateway, the merchant owners of the caravans haggled with the guards at the gate, trying to reduce the custom the soldiers expected to exact on their wares. The raised voices of the merchants drifted back to Brunner as Emiliano Tacca climbed down from his wagon and made his way toward the gate. Tacca spoke a few quick words to one of the guards, imposing himself between the soldier and one of the other caravan masters. The man’s angry glare became somewhat homicidal as the soldier nodded his head and waved Tacca’s caravan forward. The other trains parted before the caravan, the muleskinners and mercenaries glaring at Brunner and his companions as they passed by.

Beyond the gates was a wide square, large numbers of burly-looking men sitting in the shadow of one of the walls. As they saw Tacca, representatives from each gang hurried forward, loudly offering their services to unload the wagons for the merchant. Tacca dismissed the men, and the imposing sight of Horst and several of the other mercenaries did much to silence the protests of the draftsmen. They settled back into the shadow to await the next caravan. Other individuals hastened forward as the draftsmen retreated, peddlers and street sellers offering sips from jugs of water and dried fruits to the newly arrived travellers. These fared a little better than the draftsmen had, and several of Zelten’s soldiers and Tacca’s drovers parted with their silver for such welcome refreshment.

Brunner took in the city he now found himself within. The walls at his back were high, imposing things, casting their shadow across much of the square, yet the buildings in the immediate vicinity were much less imposing, most of them no more than two storeys tall. There were a number of inns and stables fronting on the square, each sign swaying before their doors promising better service and lower prices than that of their neighbours. The street leading away toward the south was wide, and Brunner could see quite a bit of foot traffic trailing away in the direction. Toward the north, the street ended in a small plaza surrounded by inns. A number of streets snaked their way toward the west, but unlike the wide lane leading south, these were narrow and Brunner could see no one walking them.

Tacca’s wagons and several of the mercenaries turned south, destined for the warehouses where the merchant would store the goods they had brought back from Miragliano. Zelten shared a few words with the merchant, then brought his horse around.

‘I’ve left Mietz in charge of things here,’ Zelten told Brunner. ‘We’re going to go ahead of him and let Prince Gambini know that we’re back.’

‘Prince Gambini?’ Brunner asked, his eyes suddenly narrowing with suspicion.

‘Oh, yes,’ Zelten said. ‘He is our employer. He charged us to accompany Tacca up to Miragliano. Apparently Emiliano Tacca has some hopes of arranging a new trade agreement with Prince Borgio. I’m certain that he will be most anxious to know that we have returned.’

The bounty hunter remained silent as he followed the mercenary captain into the narrow streets of the city. Once away from the teeming press of bodies near the outer wall, and the traffic passing to and from the city, the numbers of people began to diminish, falling off drastically the further the two men rode away from the wall. Soon, only a few furtive figures were visible on the street ahead: fearful, downcast citizens hurrying along the streets, eager to reach their destinations. Compared to the din of hawkers, travellers, and beggars that filled the air in the other cities Brunner had been in, the silence that filled the streets of Remas was eerie and unnatural.

‘This place is like a graveyard,’ the bounty hunter commented as they made their way along yet another deserted stretch of road. Zelten favoured Brunner with a grim look.

‘It is much more lively the closer you get to the docks and the tavern district,’ Zelten said. ‘But up here, the people keep to themselves.’

Brunner shook his head. ‘Keep to themselves? I’ve smelled fear before, and I can tell you that it is thick enough here to choke the life from a man.’ Brunner looked around, watching as a swarthy face hastily withdrew behind the edge of a window. A moment later a thick wooden shutter slammed close. ‘What I don’t understand is what these people fear. I see no soldiers about, and by all accounts the rulers of this city are fair-minded and even-handed in their policies, no worse than any other and better than most.’

‘Better not to ask, my friend,’ Zelten advised. ‘Those who get too curious don’t prosper very well in Remas.’

Suddenly a sharp scream broke the silence. Brunner and Zelten at once grasped their weapons and the bounty hunter spurred Fiend ahead, eager to find the source of the sound. Ordinarily, he was much more cautious about minding his own affairs, but the almost tangible dread in the city had set him on edge and it was with an amount of eagerness that Brunner anticipated confronting whatever trouble lay ahead. Zelten hesitated a moment, then spurred his own horse to keep up with that of the bounty hunter.

The screams had died down into frightened, choking sobs and a harsh voice, shouting. The sounds came from directly ahead of the two riders and soon the source of the trouble became all too clear. Brunner’s gloved hand slowly worked his pistol from its holster and he noted Zelten’s grip on his sword tighten.

The two men found themselves at the mouth of a small plaza, a large, ornate fountain bubbling in the centre, depicting some impossible mixture of man and fish spitting water into a great stone clam shell. The buildings opening upon the plaza had the look of shops, but their doors and windows were closed tight, shutters drawn. There was but a single exception, a small baker’s shop. The door to this establishment had been knocked from its hinges and was lying in a splintered pile just within the threshold.

In the centre of the square, in the very shadow of the fountain, a group of men stood. They were dressed alike, white cloaks thrown over leather tunics and breeches, their faces covered in plain, featureless masks of polished white wood. Though featureless, the faces of the masks were not without expression, locked as firmly into a single emotion as the classic tragedy and comedy masks employed by the playhouses of the Empire. The expression so firmly stamped upon the wooden masks was that of an angry, judgmental disdain. Upon the left breast of each of the men’s cloaks was worked the symbol of a golden fist.

Two of the men struggled to hold onto a squirming woman, her clothing drenched and in disarray, her long black hair hanging about her face in long dripping strands. A third cloaked man had a grip on her head, the eyes behind the mask that hid his features fixed upon a fourth cloaked figure. This masked man stood slightly distant from the fountain, shouting in a loud, stern voice, turning his head frequently that he might address each of the buildings fronting the plaza, clearly intending his words for those citizens cowering behind their locked doors and shutters.

‘Know that this foul creature, this harlot and speaker of falsehoods has blasphemed against you!’ the speaker stabbed a bloodied finger at the sobbing woman. ‘She has profaned the marriage bed, deceived her husband and lord!’ The masked man pointed his finger upward, indicating a badly beaten, water-logged shape dangling from a noose cast across the outstretched arm of the fountain’s central statue. ‘She has drawn him to wretchedness and iniquity, to value her vile flesh more than the honour of obeying and serving Mighty Solkan, he whose justice is certain, whose retribution is swift!’ The speaker inclined his head slightly and the man holding the woman’s head savagely forced her face into the pool of the fountain.

‘Know that this woman, through her profane lusts has been seduced by those powers righteously called ruinous! Through her lusts, she has nurtured Chaos within this most exalted city, this temple to our divine protector! She has profaned and defiled the immortal spirit of her own husband and cast him screaming from the grace of Mighty Solkan!’ The masked speaker nodded his head again and the woman was withdrawn from the pool, gasping and spitting water from her lungs. ‘She shall confess her evils, Mighty Solkan, before your swift retribution shall bear her to the black pit of atonement that is the reward for all who would hearken to the lures of Chaos!’ The zealot glared at the sputtering, gasping prisoner and nodded his head again. Once more, the woman’s head was plunged into the pool.

Brunner watched the scene unfolding before him with a mixture of loathing and anger. The pistol gripped in his hand began to rise as his cold gaze locked upon that of the shouting zealot. Almost instantly, a gloved hand reached over and arrested the bounty hunter’s action.

‘Don’t,’ warned Zelten, his voice almost lowered to a whisper. ‘There is nothing you can do. This sort of thing happens all the time in Remas. The cult of Solkan is powerful here, and its followers most zealous.’ Zelten released Brunner’s hand and turned his horse’s head. ‘Come, we’d best find another path to the palazzo.’

‘Too late,’ commented the bounty hunter. As Brunner said the words, the temple militia began to detach themselves from the fountain, leaving only one of their number to restrain the woman. Zelten groaned as he saw them walking forward, each of the white-garbed zealots drawing a heavy wooden cudgel from beneath his robes. They seemed almost unreal as they advanced, phantom forms without shape, their white wooden masks stern and uncompromising.

‘For Sigmar’s sake,’ Zelten addressed Brunner through the corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t kill any of them!’

The bounty hunter’s face twisted into a feral smile. ‘That depends entirely on them,’ he told the mercenary. The foremost of the Solkanites was just rounding Fiend’s head, the brown eyes staring out from behind the wooden mask fixed upon Brunner. A second zealot strode toward Zelten, while the third maintained a position in front of both riders, clearly thinking to grab the reins of the animals should the two men think to flee.

The militiaman near Brunner looked the bounty hunter over from head to toe, then looked to the other zealots. ‘More foreign scum!’ he declared. ‘Mercenary swine brought from lands where they know not the light and the glory of Mighty Solkan!’ The ringleader of the zealots glared into Brunner’s icy eyes. ‘How long must we suffer such filth to profane the streets of our holy city with their…’

Whatever words the Solkanite thought to conclude his diatribe with were knocked back down his throat as Brunner smashed the heavy wooden butt of his pistol into the man’s mask, cracking both the white wood face, and the jaw beneath it. The zealot fell into a heap, coughing and spitting blood and teeth through the splintered mask. At the same time, Brunner drove his spurs into his horse. Fiend reared up, front legs kicking forward. The zealot before the animals fell back, alarmed by the sudden eruption of violence from the animal and the man who rode it. But he did not withdraw far or quick enough, one of Fiend’s flailing hooves crunched against the side of the man’s skull, tearing the white cloak and throwing the stunned militiaman to the ground.

Zelten reacted to Brunner’s attack far more quickly, kicking his foot into the midsection of the Solkanite beside his horse before the man had time to even begin raising his cudgel to strike the mercenary. Air exploded from the zealot and the man doubled over, clutching his chest and trying to gulp air back into his lungs.

Brunner had some satisfaction watching the last standing zealot in the plaza release his hold on the woman and race off down the street. But what satisfaction he felt was quickly vanquished as a second group of white-cloaked men strode into the square from one of the side streets. This time, there were ten of the masked men, many of them carrying swords or axes instead of clubs. Still more intimidating, however, was the towering apparition who led them. Nearly seven feet tall, his body encased in a suit of blackened plate armour, a black hooded cloak cast about his shoulders, the face of the leader was hidden behind a mask similar to those worn by the zealots, but made of gold rather than wood.

The sight of the huge warrior made Zelten curse colourfully under his breath.

‘An inquisitor of Solkan!’ the mercenary swore. ‘Now we’re in the fire!’

The towering warrior Zelten had identified as an inquisitor strode forward, well ahead of the white-garbed temple militia. As he did so, the huge warrior drew an enormous hand-and-half sword from its scabbard, the polished metal of the blade gleaming in the sun. Brunner could see the fiery, fanatic gleam in the eyes watching him from behind the golden mask, could see that here was a foe who would show no quarter, who was as prepared to die as he was certain that no man would best him in battle. The bounty hunter began to raise the pistol still gripped in his hand, then noticed that in smashing the zealot’s face, he had dislodged the firing cap.

With a disgusted motion, Brunner holstered the weapon and drew Drakesmalice from its sheath. The bounty hunter was an excellent judge of a man’s combat prowess, able to ascertain from the way a warrior moved, the way he gripped his sword, the look in his eyes, how proficient with the blade he was. The man he now faced displayed the qualities of a master duellist, with the build of an ogre to support his skill. Even if Brunner might hope to match the inquisitor’s ability, he knew there would be no way to match his prodigious strength.

The inquisitor halted several paces away from the horses, his gaze encompassing both the riders and the injured militiamen strewn about them. When the armoured giant spoke, it was with a voice of steel and thunder. ‘You have laid hands upon servants of Mighty Solkan engaged in their holy duties,’ the inquisitor stated, his rumbling voice surprisingly level for all the fire in his eyes. ‘To do so is to forfeit one’s life.’ The zealots filed to either side of the inquisitor, their weapons held before them.

‘Prepare to taste holy vengeance!’ the inquisitor snarled. He took a step towards Brunner, his gigantic sword raised. Then the sound of numerous hooves clattering upon the cobbles caused the huge man to step back. Brunner and Zelten each risked a glance behind them. Racing toward them was a group of five riders.

Zelten’s face broke into a wide smile as he recognised the features of Horst and some of his other men. The mercenaries rode straight toward their captain, falling in line between himself and Brunner.

The huge inquisitor cast his stern gaze across the figures of the mounted mercenaries, then stared at the masked militia to either side of him. Brunner could almost read the hulking war-priest’s thoughts. The men he faced were hardened, professional warriors, the men with him were untrained fanatic rabble. He might have been willing to confront two warriors with such a force as he had, but he was less sure of his chances against seven. With a snarl, the inquisitor slammed his sword back into its sheath and slowly stalked to the side of the plaza. The zealots followed suit, some of them scuttling forward to assist their stricken comrades. When the last of the masked fanatics was out of the way, Zelten urged his horse forward at a careful, wary trot. Brunner and the other mercenaries followed close behind the Reiklander.

As he passed the huge inquisitor, the armoured giant’s steel voice addressed Zelten. ‘The memory of Mighty Solkan is long, blasphemer! When you no longer cringe beneath the skirts of your decadent nobles, you shall answer for this day! The Master of Vengeance is not to be denied!’

Zelten spat onto the cobbles after the inquisitor spoke, maintaining his steed’s trot. Soon, the plaza was behind the riders, the glowering temple militia and the huge priest-warrior lost to view. Brunner rode up on the mercenary captain’s left while Horst fell in on the man’s right.

‘That went well,’ the bounty hunter commented dryly.

‘We were lucky to ride away from that,’ said Zelten. He looked over at the wild-haired Horst. ‘If you hadn’t chanced to take the same path back to the palazzo, I wouldn’t like to think about what might have happened.’

Horst cast a sullen look at Brunner. ‘Actually, we followed you. When Meitz told us you had ridden off alone with the bounty hunter, none of us felt too good about it.’

Brunner gave a short chuckle as he fixed a new firing cap to his pistol. ‘In my line of work, I get pretty used to profiting by people’s fear.’ Satisfied that the firing cap was firmly in place, the bounty hunter holstered the weapon. ‘But I never thought I’d do so in quite that way.’

IV

The Gambini palazzo was located midway along the enormous Great Reman Bridge. As Zelten’s party drew near the massive structure, Brunner found himself impressed by the massive dimensions of the bridge. It was nearly two miles long and almost a quarter of a mile wide, constructed entirely of polished granite, the heavy grey rock supported from below by gigantic stone piers. It was construction on a scale that should have even impressed a dwarf, though there seemed no trace of the influence of demi-human engineers in the simple architecture that bolstered the span.

Both sides of the bridge were entirely covered by massive, elegant palazzos, each of the opulent dwellings trying to outdo the other in the richness of their adornment and the majesty of their facades. The palazzos reached upwards three, four, even five storeys, their structures leaning far beyond the foundations of the bridge itself, supported by their own piers of steel and wood.

Gigantic columns and statuary dominated the fronts of each palazzo, while colourful banners and flags depicting the heraldry of Remas and that of each of the noble houses snapped in the cool sea breeze from every tower and spire rising above the palazzos. In addition to the heraldry, the pennants of numerous mercenary companies flew above the palazzos, a silent reminder to the enemies of a particular house of which band of hired soldiers protected the family and its interests.

The surface of the bridge itself was alive with the traffic of those who had business with the merchant princes, those who would petition the noble houses about some matter of government, servants hurrying about their masters’ needs and anxious tradesmen hoping to peddle their wares to the inmates of one of the palazzos, be they master or servant. It was a completely different world from that of the silent, subdued streets where the fearsome cult of Solkan held sway.

Each end of the bridge was protected by a massive iron gate, supported on either side by a pair of towers. Soldiers, elements of the Republican Guard engaged by the Council of Remas for the protection of all the noble houses and ostensibly for every citizen of the city, carefully monitored the traffic passing onto the bridge, turning back any who looked too ragged to have any proper business to conduct. The towers to either side of the gate were enormous, rising high above the bridge, twice the height of even the tallest of the palazzos and leaning out over the water at insane gravity-defying angles that seemed impossible even with the many stone buttresses that rose from the water to support them.

As the small group of riders passed through the gates, they were examined by the guards. However, it was obvious that Zelten and his men were known to the sentries and though they cast a few lingering looks at Brunner, the riders were passed with only a cursory inspection.

Making their way along the bridge, Brunner could see that each of the palazzos was very sturdily built, a small fortress in its own right, despite the ostentatious extravagance that clothed the structures. The windows of the lower floors were narrow, far too small for even a goblin to wriggle through. Only the upper floors were given to great stained-glass panels and enormous skylights, yet even these were less prevalent than Brunner had seen in similar wealthy districts in Luccini and Miragliano.

Between the rich palazzos, at regular intervals, squat grey forts stood, small two-storey structures. One of the mercenaries riding beside him mentioned that each of the forts held a battery of cannon. It appeared that many centuries past, the Great Reman Bridge had been sacked by a fleet of elf corsairs, an event that had never been forgotten or forgiven. If such a fleet were ever to dare such an attack again, they would rue the decision.

At length, very near the centre of the bridge, the palazzo of Prince Gambini loomed before the riders. It was one of the larger palaces on the bridge, its plaster walls decorated with extravagant murals and tile mosaics. Before the gates that led into the courtyard of the palace was set a giant stone statue, a leering gargoyle-lion from legendary Cathay. Four halberdiers in heavy steel armour, their helms rising into a short sharp spike, stood at attention before the gate. Zelten broke away from the other riders and saluted Prince Gambini’s guards. The sergeant in command of the detail returned the salute, then stepped forward to talk with the mercenary.

‘The prince has been very eager to hear of your return,’ the sergeant stated. ‘You have news for him?’

Zelten shrugged his shoulders. ‘Tacca is seeing about getting his trade goods secured for the night. He will be better able to tell his lordship the details of his meeting.’ The sergeant nodded as he considered Zelten’s words. The guard seemed most sympathetic; the workings of merchants were something far beyond his understanding as well. Then the guard noticed the new man among Zelten’s troop.

‘New recruit?’ he asked, some of the suspicion of a trained sentry slipping into his voice. Brunner met the sergeant’s gaze, keeping his own face expressionless and indifferent to the man’s interest in him.

‘We ran into some trouble on the road back,’ Zelten confessed. ‘I fear that his won’t be the only new face I’ll be bringing here.’ The sergeant nodded his head, then snapped orders to his men to open the gates. Zelten favoured the man with another salute and made his way into the courtyard, the other mercenaries following behind him. Brunner came last of all, leading Paychest after his own steed. The bounty hunter stared at the walls of the courtyard, at the massive doors of the palazzo itself. He was near his prey now, the bounty hunter could sense it. Now he just had to figure out how he would get his target to reveal himself.

The old warrior loomed above the long table, his keen eyes considering the charts and maps strewn across its surface. The man’s grizzled, powerful features wore a look of intense study, a wrinkled finger slowly tapping against a waterway shown on one of the maps. The ring that adorned the finger was huge, depicting a lion’s head with a large red ruby stuffed between its jaws. It was as much a symbol of position and authority as the bronze pectoral that hung from a thick gold chain about his broad neck. They were the emblems of rank belonging to a man who had once commanded the army of Remas, the most powerful soldier in all the city.

The general lifted his hand, scratching at his thick grey eyebrow as he considered the map again. It was an old map, dating back many centuries, and he wondered how much accuracy he could allow in the antique document. None of the newer maps showed the canal that had arrested his interest. Had it ever been there? Or perhaps it had been filled, perhaps simply blocked up? Mandalari considered that point. The city of Miragliano had destroyed a good number of their canals after the plague had stricken their city and they had forced back the hordes of the verminous skaven. Tradition held that many of these canals had not been filled in, only bricked over. If this old canal had indeed been simply covered rather than filled, it might be of value to him. He would have to have his next batch of spies check on it, determine what its current state was.

Mandalari stood, stretching his once powerful frame. He was still far from an infirm man, he had not allowed the stamp of age to wither his body, but had fought its approach through a brutal regimen of exercise and the painful ministrations of a waterfront witch purportedly crafted to extend his vitality. Yet the general had to admit that he was but a poor shadow of the man he had once been. Once he had led victorious armies through the still burning streets of half the great cities of Tilea, he had taken his part in the fighting, seeking out the staunchest resistance his enemies could muster and crushing them with his own hands. The general’s craggy features split into a stern smile. That had been the life, those moments in the midst of the fray, lungs filled with the smell of blood and fire, ears filled with the war cries of the valiant and the screams of the slain.

But that life was no more, only a mocking shadow of all that he had been now remained. Mandalari limped away from the table, making his way across the cedar-wood floor toward a tall mahogany cabinet. As he walked, his crimson robe swirled about him, exposing the dark wooden post that completed his left leg below the knee. The base of the post was fashioned in the shape of a dragon’s paw, and upon its surface had been etched depictions of the general’s past victories.

As Mandalari hobbled his way to the cabinet and began to rummage about for yet another folio of maps, the general grimly pondered his artificial leg. The real limb had been crushed by a stone cast down from the walls of Miragliano twelve years past, when Remas had been handed a humiliating defeat by Prince Borgio.

Mandalari smashed the palm of his hand against the side of the cabinet as he recalled the ignominy of his wound. It had turned the tide of the battle, he knew in his heart that had he not been struck down, he would have seen through Borgio’s ploy and it would have been Mandalari the Magnificent not Borgio the Besieger who would have carried the day. Instead, the surgeons in his camp had taken his ruined leg and the great mercenary army of Remas had taken to its heels, routed by the timely counter-assault of the Miraglianan host.

The old general savagely pulled the desired folio from among the numerous leather-bound folders within the cabinet and turned to hobble his way back toward the table. But as he turned, Mandalari froze, startled to find that he was not alone. Recognition of his visitor calmed the general’s initial surprise and the soldier continued toward the table.

‘You should announce yourself before intruding upon your betters,’ the general observed. He set the folio down on the table and looked up at his visitor.

The man he addressed idly considered a marble bust resting atop a pedestal near the door leading into the general’s bedchamber, a slim hand running along the cold jaw line of the sculpture. Casually, and in his own time, the visitor returned the general’s gaze.

‘I apologise,’ the visitor said at last. ‘I did not realise you wanted our arrangement to be better known in the palazzo. I had thought that you wanted me to see and hear and report.’ The man smiled, a mocking, snide expression. ‘I was unaware that I was to be seen and be heard. I was unaware that a spy should be noisy in his comings and goings. Shall I seek out some of the ogres engaged at the Old Tower and see if one of them might teach me a few things about subtlety and silence?’

Mandalari glared at his agent, his eyes hardening to a sharp edge. ‘Do not make light of me,’ he warned. ‘I am still a general and I will be respected.’

‘Indeed,’ sighed the visitor, voice heavy with sympathy. ‘I sometimes forget that you are a man of such distinction, easily capable of standing on your own.’

The general’s mouth twisted into a snarl. ‘One day your wit will be the death of you,’ he said.

‘But not so long as I have such interesting things to say,’ the agent winked at Mandalari. ‘Isn’t that so? I hear and see so many things. There are so many places I can go that you can’t. Up steps, for instance.’

‘Make your report,’ Mandalari growled, face reddening from his agent’s scornful abuse. When he once more commanded the armies of Remas, he would take great pleasure in rewarding his spy for the humiliation and indignity of his mocking tongue. Perhaps he would even hand the villain over to the Temple of Solkan. Their inquisitors had a way of making a man regret every breath he had ever drawn before they were finished exacting their god’s cruel definition of retribution. For now, however, he would have to continue to endure the spy’s flippant bearing.

‘Tacca has returned from Miragliano,’ the spy said. ‘Is that not good news? Does it not do your heart good to see the tensions between our two cities healed by the search for ever bigger markets, ever higher profits? Is not greed the mightiest peacemaker of them all?’

Mandalari grew pensive for a moment, then stared hard at his agent. ‘Did they… did they meet with any trouble on the way back?’ he asked at last.

‘Some,’ the spy favoured his master with a knowing smile. ‘They have lost some men.’ The agent’s smile broadened into one of condescension and mockery. ‘Manfred Zelten was not among those who perished on the road.’

The general smashed his hands against the surface of the table. ‘Ulric and Myrmidia!’ he roared. ‘Everything I have built is threatened by that foreign filth!’ Mandalari pointed a thick hand at his agent. ‘You will keep your eyes and ears upon this Reiklander! I will not permit this scum to threaten my plans with Prince Gambini! I have worked too hard to set my plans into motion to have them denied by a mere captain of a ragtag band of brigands!’

‘Of course not, general,’ the man near the door said, brushing a strand of hair from his face. ‘This man will not endanger your ambitions.’

‘No, he will not,’ the general declared, the thunder of his enraged outburst lurking within his quiet tones. He pointed again at his agent. ‘Keep an eye on him. See where he goes and what he does. And report his activities to me.’

‘Is that not what I always do?’ asked the spy as he turned and slipped away. Mandalari watched him go, then turned his attention back to the table, his eyes burning into the cluttered maps.

There would be war with Miragliano, he would have his revenge upon the city. And no man, be he prince or peasant, would stand in his way.

Within the Gambini palazzo there was a room as bright as the white sands of Araby’s shore, as cool as the summer breeze across the plains of Bretonnia. Thick matting of soft pristine fabric covered the floors, vibrant murals depicting quiet pastures alive with wild flowers graced the walls. The furnishings were slender and graceful, crafted of some pale wood from the slopes of the Abasko Mountains, the legs of the dainty tables and chairs forming the downward curves of swan necks, the heads of the birds forming the feet. Upon the tables reposed slender-waisted vases, intricately painted vessels from far Cathay, each worth more than even a modest nobleman in the Empire could brag his fortune into amounting. Each of the vases was filled with fragrant bouquets of fresh white roses, seemingly chosen for their ability to match the trim of the walls, the hue of the furnishings and the dye of the rugs.

The room had been appointed many months ago by Prince Umberto Gambini. In previous weeks it had been alive with the noise of decorators, the protests of artists angered at the hurrying of their trade, and the glowering sentries who ensured that the expensive accoutrements of the chamber did not stray from it.

Now the room held but one occupant, a tall, slender woman with lustrous black hair and milky skin. She wore a long dress of soft velvet, the luxurious fabric hugging her with just a trace of immodest tightness about the waist and bosom. She sat lounging upon a small couch, gazing up at a small delicate cage in which a small black songbird trilled its dainty notes. The lady’s eyes were hooded in the half-sleep of idle contemplation, her thoughts far beyond the room, as though carried away by the bird’s warbling lyrics. Her comely features held breeding and power in them, and her mouth was pinched into the quiet, secret smile that often heralds the ruin of men.

The sound of light footfalls intruded upon the woman’s thoughts and she looked away from the caged bird. Rising to her feet, she seemed almost to glide across the room, so effortless were her movements. As she neared the outer door to the sitting room, the sound of tiny bells jingling overcame the light footsteps she had heard. The lady paused before the door as the portal began to open. For a second, a brief glimmer of worry clouded her fine features, but as she saw who her visitor was, the cloud passed and her face wore a look of excitement and anticipation.

‘My lady,’ the visitor said, as he bowed deeply before the woman. ‘Manfred Zelten has returned.’

Brunner had to admit that the Gambinis had indeed found ways to make the most of the reduced space that dwelling upon the bridge had forced them to accept. The stable to which Zelten and the other mercenaries had led their horses was three storeys high, a wooden ramp within the building allowing the animals to be led to the upper tiers and berthed directly above their fellows. Brunner was also surprised to see that the animals on the ground level were not elegant, light-limbed riding horses, nor heavy, plodding carriage horses. Instead, he found himself looking at a motley collection of scarred, thick-boned warhorses. Zelten seemed to read the bounty hunter’s thoughts as he made the observation.

‘The good horseflesh is kept up top, well beyond the muck and the smell,’ the mercenary laughed as he handed the reins of his steed to a haggard-looking groom. ‘Actually, old Mandalari, the man in charge of Prince Gambini’s guard, gave the order to keep all cavalry horses on the lower level where they would be ready if they were to be needed at short notice.’

‘Pretty sound reasoning,’ commented Brunner as he removed a crossbow and a large leather bag from his packhorse. He nodded to one of the waiting stablehands and the young boy came forward to lead the animal away.

‘I understand that he served as general of Remas’s army before he lost his leg in battle with Miragliano,’ Zelten shook his head. ‘Still, if his body is weaker, his mind is still sharp and displays some good tactical sense. Prince Gambini listens to him too. I don’t think any other palazzo on the Great Reman Bridge is more ready for another insurrection if such a thing were to come to pass.’

Brunner faced the mercenary, seeming to study him closely. ‘That sounds almost like a street hawker’s pitch,’ the bounty hunter said. Zelten nodded his head.

‘You could do worse than hire on with Prince Gambini,’ Zelten said. ‘Trust me, he’s a lot better than most I’ve taken service with. He actually understands that he doesn’t know everything about everything and listens to those around him when they have advice to give. He’s not the sort to throw away his men on some mad scheme to retake the Badlands, and that means a lot to a mercenary.’

‘That might be why it means little to me,’ commented Brunner, unfastening his long-barrelled handgun from the side of Fiend’s saddle. ‘I’m not one of your mercenaries.’

Zelten reached forward and gripped Brunner’s shoulder. ‘You could be,’ he said. ‘I saw you fight, you’re good, probably better than me. I could use you. I’m short ten men after the fight with the plague warriors. Recruiting you would go far to filling out that shortfall.’

Brunner shook his head. ‘I agreed to come here with you. There was mention that Prince Gambini might be prepared to offer some reward as recompense for my part in defeating Pulstlitz and his mob. That’s why I’m here.’

‘Don’t you get tired of it?’ Zelten asked. ‘Always on the move, calling no man friend or comrade? Always having to keep one eye open for that knife at your back?’

Another groom came forward and led Brunner’s bay towards the stall in which Paychest had been placed. The bounty hunter looked back at Zelten. ‘I’ve done pretty well on my own,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’d do so well splitting the money.’

Whatever retort Zelten was preparing was lost as the noise of jingling bells sounded from the entrance to the stables. The mercenary and the bounty hunter both turned around. Brunner expected the noise to have originated from some expensive and outrageous harness on some equally expensive and outrageous horse. Instead he found himself looking at one of the oddest creatures he had ever seen.

The man was tall, his arms and legs on the thin side and seemed too long for his body. His face was sharp, the nose upturned slightly, like the bent bill of a finch, the cheek-bones high and his skin somewhat pallid, despite the Tilean cast of his features. The man wore a checkered tunic and matching checkered breeches, pale-blue against bright grey. A matching rounded cap sporting an enormous red feather perched atop the man’s head of lengthy black hair. The man’s thin hands sported a number of gaudy rings and gripped a tall staff of dark wood. Topping the staff was a bronze head, fashioned to resemble a grinning goblin, a pair of silver bells dangling from each side of the head. The eyes that regarded the stables were bright and friendly and his long face was spread by a broad smile.

‘I am pleased to be the first to greet you, captain,’ the tall man said, bowing slightly at the waist. Zelten strode forward quickly. Brunner noted the haste in his companion’s steps and discreetly fingered the grip of his pistol. He relaxed slightly, however, when he noted the bright, eager look in Zelten’s eyes. Clearly whatever this foppish shape represented, the mercenary did not regard him as a menace.

‘Corvino!’ the mercenary shouted. The foppish man bowed his head once more as the mercenary addressed him. Before Zelten could add anything to his greeting, Corvino spoke again.

‘I was here to give you a message,’ he said, ‘and to conduct you to the palazzo with all haste.’

Zelten nodded to the tall man, then looked over at Brunner. ‘This may take some time,’ he apologised, his words rapidly spoken. ‘Please consider my offer again. When Tacca arrives, I’ll present you to Prince Gambini.’ Having said his piece, the mercenary turned and was led away by the garishly costumed Corvino.

‘And who exactly was that?’ Brunner asked, directing his question at Horst. The large, wild-haired soldier was leaning against the wall support of the stall in which his horse stood.

‘Corvino, Prince Gambini’s fool,’ replied the warrior, casting a sour look after the departed men.

‘You don’t sound like one of his admirers,’ the bounty hunter said. Horst detached himself from the wall and strode toward Brunner.

‘Let’s just say I don’t share his sense of humour,’ the bearded man said, sucking at his teeth. ‘Manfred’s had some dealings with him, the fool is always bringing him messages at all hours of the day. I’m sure he’s gotten Manfred involved in some matter he’d be better off not being entangled with.’

‘So, all is not quite as idyllic in the Gambini household as your captain would paint it,’ commented Brunner. The bounty hunter rolled his shoulders, resettling the weapons and bags he had removed from his horses. ‘Perhaps you might show me where you men are billeted. This gear isn’t getting any lighter.’

Horst nodded his head. ‘Come along, I’ll show you where our barracks are.’ Brunner began to follow the warrior out of the stables.

‘Once I’m situated, perhaps you might also suggest a good tavern in the vicinity,’ Brunner said. ‘I imagine that Tacca will be some time ensuring the safe storage of his goods. Long enough that I might have a chance to wash the taste of the road from my mouth.’

Horst chuckled as Brunner spoke. It was the first sign of anything approaching human feeling the bearded mercenary had heard the bounty hunter give voice to. He did not know that the bounty hunter was not looking for ale and wine. His desire to find a drinking hole was not to find drink, but to fish for information. It had been the bounty hunter’s experience that taverns gathered as much lore within their walls as any library, you just had to know how to ferret it out. If the soldiers of Prince Gambini frequented a particular establishment, there might be some useful information that the seemingly indifferent barkeeps and serving wenches might have heard and remembered.

Brunner was led past the towers on the edge of the bridge, before turning left, toward the lagoon and the waterfront. The bounty hunter knew that Horst’s reasons for escorting him were based on suspicion rather than any concern for the bounty hunter’s safety, but he was also realistic enough to know that it would save him considerable time having a guide in the unfamiliar city, whatever the man’s motives might be. If he decided that he did not want the bearded mercenary looking over his shoulder, it would be easy enough for him to lose the big man.

The streets leading from the Great Reman Bridge to the waterfront were a marked contrast to the blighted, fear-haunted lanes Brunner and Zelten had travelled before. Instead of dour, silent buildings, here thrived all manner of businesses. Alehouses, wine shops, taverns and grog shops were in abundance, their wooden signs displaying names often as creative as they were vulgar. Brothels, fighting pits, gambling houses and weirdroot dens openly enticed their patrons from the street with vividly painted depictions of the vices they offered to sate. Remas was a prosperous city, thriving upon both the mercantile goods brought to the port from lands as near as Luccini to as distant as Marienburg, and as exotic as the cities of Araby. It was not unknown for a trading ship of the elves of Ulthuan or one of the great steam-powered ironclads from the dwarf port of Barak Varr to visit the city. Beyond such trade, the city of Remas boasted the most prosperous fishing fleets in the Old World, their fishermen pulling catches from the surrounding waters and the inland lagoon itself that were unrivalled in any other land. Indeed, much of the vast catch was preserved in salt and shipped across the length and breadth of Tilea, drawing still more gold into the coffers of the city.

The salty tang of the sea was heavy here, the occasional grey-feathered gull circling overhead, its squawking cry adding to the din of the street. Though the close streets denied him any view of the lagoon, evidence of its nearness was everywhere. The streets were filled with men from dozens of lands. Brunner could see sailors from Tobaro in their stripped, loose pantaloons rubbing shoulders with scar-faced mariners in the blue and gold of Marienburg. Dusky skinned Arabyan traders, their heads encased in wound turbans, jostled against black moustached ship captains from Estalia, croaking, cawing birds perched upon the shoulders of their crimson tunics. Sometimes a common fisherman would push his way through the crowd, a net filled with wriggling scaly shapes dripping from his back, destined for the larder of some nearby grog shop or tavern.

Interspersed between the houses of entertainment were crammed all manner of stalls and shops, virtually any ware imaginable presented to entice the custom of passers-by. Here, the bounty hunter’s progress was hindered by larger crowds of people and animals, the air a constant murmur of voices speaking in a dozen dialects and nearly as many languages. He could see hawkers peddling everything from dried fish to rusty old pieces of armour to trained, swan-necked fisher-birds wherever a bare patch of wall gave them a place to stand.

Entertainers blocked the mouths of alley ways, small crowds gathered about them, watching with rapt attention as they performed, sometimes tossing copper, or more rarely silver, into the upturned hat or bowl set before them. Brunner saw an Arabyan snake charmer carefully taunting a fell-looking hooded serpent, swaying its body in time with the Arabyan’s movements, the dusky skinned man sometimes leaning forward to tap the reptile’s head with his finger, much to the thrill of the crowd. Just a few yards away, across the narrow street, a pretty Strigany woman danced before a cheering crowd of sailors and soldiers, her shapely hip batting against the tambourine held in her hand as she whirled before them.

Brunner was just considering that obviously the stern, unrelenting discipline of the cult of Solkan must not apply to this district, that the disciplinarian temple must confine its activities to the outer reaches of the city, when he noticed a pair of white-cloaked figures stalking through the crowd, their faces hidden behind their wooden masks. The bounty hunter tensed, hand falling automatically to the hilt of his gigantic knife. Normally, he thought of the Headsman more as a tool than a weapon, but in the thick press of bodies around him, a sword would be unwieldy. What was coming would be work for a knife.

Horst noted Brunner’s action and chuckled. ‘No reason to be worried about them,’ he laughed. ‘Not here, anyway. The temple knows better than to try and push the people here. It would be bad for business, and the council wouldn’t look too favourably on that.’ The bearded mercenary laughed again. ‘Besides, the people around here would push back! No, those fanatics prowl around here just to remind people that they’re around, to remind the credulous that their heathen god is always watching.’

‘I’m surprised that the rulers of Remas tolerate them at all,’ commented Brunner as he watched the crowd swallow up the two zealots. Horst shook his head.

‘This isn’t the Empire,’ he said. ‘They have strange ideas down here in the south. Odd ways of waging war and odd ways of governing their cities. Remas, for instance, is a republic. No single ruler, but a council of fifty elected and appointed by the good people of Remas, with a triumvirate of their choosing above them. In theory, any citizen could sit on that council, though in practice only the richest of the merchant princes ever do. But even so, they have to be very careful about just how much power they exhibit. There have been numerous wars here, uprisings when some ambitious triumvir decided to try and seize control from the council and the other triumvirs, or when the council itself grew too corrupt and self-serving. Insurrection is probably the biggest thing the inhabitants of this city fear.’

The two men continued to make their way through the crowd. Brunner noticed a few soldiers in the colours of the republican guard walking past them, clearly headed back toward the bridge. What made them noticeable to the bounty hunter was the fact that they were the first soldiers he had seen since leaving the towers behind. As if picking up on his thoughts, Horst continued to explain the state of things in the city.

‘Above all, the people feel that they control the government, even if they do nothing more than change which faces fill the council every few years. They don’t like any show of force, don’t tolerate a large army within their walls, an army that could be used against them.’ Horst paused before a man selling small iron bucklers, inspecting one of the small shields before handing it back to the trader and continuing. ‘That is where the Temple of Solkan comes in. While the people won’t tolerate the council sending companies of soldiers through the streets, who are they to question a god? When the temple was first founded, they were just another cult, just another pack of priests preying on the gullible.’

Brunner caught a note of resentment and scorn in the mercenary’s voice as he spoke of the gullible. ‘But slowly the council began to see a way that they might turn the cult’s fanaticism to their advantage. They began to turn a blind eye to the temple’s witch hunts, to their often violent excesses of faith. Those who protested the actions of the temple to the council somehow were found out by the cult and exposed as daemon-worshippers and heretics. Naturally, very soon there was no one willing to stand up against the temple. Where an army of soldiers could not be used to keep the people in their place, an army of religious fanatics has. So long as they don’t interfere with the mercantile interests of the city and don’t bother the nobles, the temple is allowed to conduct itself pretty much as it pleases.’

Brunner shook his head, marvelling at the ruthless politics of the city. Better a tyrant secure in his position than a gathering of politicos frightened about maintaining their own status.

The two men continued to walk along the busy street, the light of day slowly giving way to the long shadows of the night. Lamplighters began to appear, igniting the numerous oil lanterns fastened to the walls of the buildings that lined the street. Ahead, Brunner could see that the street made a sharp turn. Set in the angle of that turn was a small wooden stage. The bounty hunter could see a pair of the white-cloaked followers of Solkan flanking the structure, though their presence did not seem to deter a small crowd from gathering to watch the performance.

Drawing nearer, Brunner saw that what was going on was a puppet show. A number of robed puppeteers stood above the stage, manipulating several wooden dolls by means of numerous strings leading from the dolls to the wooden handles held by the entertainers. Brunner paused for a moment, watching the curious performance. A number of tiny wooden figures in small cloth costumes pranced about the stage, in what was clearly intended to be fright. A much larger puppet dominated the centre of the stage. It was clothed in a long black cloak, its face that of a grinning skull. In its hands it held a huge scythe. As the deathly puppet swung its scythe, several of the other puppets dropped as though they had been slain.

‘I did not realise that the cult of Solkan had dealings with the cult of Morr,’ Brunner observed, indicating the puppet show. Like the masked men flanking the stage, the puppeteers also wore white cloaks. Clearly the performance was intended as some sort of passion play, a disguised sermon to minister to the wayward souls of the Reman waterfront.

‘No, that’s not meant to be Morr,’ replied Horst. ‘Though I thought so myself. It is some sort of daemon, some fell creature that supposedly nearly destroyed Remas long ago, just after the elves had gone away. According to the cult of Solkan, the daemon was only stopped when Solkan sent a good spirit to do battle with it. They fought, so the cult says, for a year and a day before the good spirit overcame the daemon and imprisoned its soul in a bottle.’ Horst allowed himself a short laugh. ‘The cult says the spirit sent by Solkan was called a Viydagg, though an elf ship captain I once talked to said that such spirits are associated with a goddess called Arianka, not Solkan. All heathen nonsense if you ask me.’

A feeling of dread began to crawl up Brunner’s spine as he watched the puppet daemon continue to cut down the little wooden people on the stage. ‘What about the daemon?’ he asked. ‘Does it have a name?’

‘Yes,’ Horst answered. ‘They call it the Mardagg.’

V

He lay rigid in his bed, every muscle tensed. The man’s skin seemed to crawl where it touched the blanket, as though it was alive with thousands of lice. The man slammed his fists against the mattress, trying to will the sensation away. There was nothing in his bedding, the man knew this, he knew that it was impossible for anything to be crawling across his skin. He boiled his bedclothes every night, accepting the warm dampness in exchange for the possibility of any six-legged thing scuttling across his flesh.

The man gritted his teeth against the tormenting sensation, knowing that he had to overcome it before it grew worse, knowing that he would not. The smell of burning flesh filled his nose and the man groaned. He knew that it was not a real odour, that it was some phantom of his mind, but still its sickly stink made his stomach turn. He fought against the bile rising in his throat. He smashed his fists against the bedding once more, trying to force his senses to obey.

Next would come the sounds. He moaned, praying, begging any god that would listen to spare him the sounds. But no god, it seemed, cared to hear him. First the rattle of chains slithered into the man’s ears. Then the sound of harsh, brutal voices, voices snarling and laughing, cruel and wicked in their tones. Then the screams, such screams, echoing through his brain. Louder, louder, and louder still they grew. Why could they not just kill him? Why would the screams refuse to end? The tormented man folded the edge of his blanket and bit down upon it to keep from repeating the shrieks pounding upon the inside of his skull.

He spat it out with disgust. It tasted like blood and filth, the flesh of a rat, raw and salty, its excrement staining its rancid fur. The man moaned again, fighting to keep the sound from rising into a scream.

What would happen if he opened his eyes, he wondered? Would he see anything? Would there be anything to see? Oh please, let there be something to see! Let there be light in his cell! Let his captors have had that much pity! But he knew it would be dark, he knew that his captors were without mercy. If he opened his eyes, he would see nothing, only the blackness of his prison.

The skin upon the man’s back began to crawl. It felt as if it was trying to rip itself free from his body. The agony built and built, like a red-hot iron slowly pressed against his naked flesh. The tortured man clenched his teeth against the pain. He must not give in, he must not submit!

The man’s eyes snapped open as his scream filled the room. His body shook as he felt the agony wash away. No, it was still there, like a dull ache in the back of his skull, just waiting to rise up and devour him once more. The man looked around him. He was still in the palazzo of Prince Gambini, as he knew he must be. He had endured the terror many times, yet he was always shocked to find himself somewhere other than the Caliph of Martek’s dungeons. He sometimes wondered if his escape from that place and all that had happened after was nothing more than some dream concocted by his tortured mind. Had he ever really left that blighted place?

The man shook his head, cradling it in his hands. Yes, he had escaped the dungeons of Martek, and he had brought their evil with him. He could still feel the sensation of the skin on his back crawling. The evil was there, waiting, hungering. Soon it would need to be fed.

The man cried softly, pulling his knees to his chest and slowly rocking upon his bed. Soon he would have to allow the evil to feed.

It was quite late when Brunner at last returned to the Gambini palace. He had spent some time in the tavern Horst had led him to, an establishment named the Red Horse. As Brunner had suspected, the mercenary was a prodigious drinker, and he found it not too difficult to slip from the man’s company once he was in his cups.

Unfortunately, there was little to be learned in the tavern. Many of the Gambini soldiers did indeed frequent the Red Horse, but if the man he was after was among them, he had left no clues among the serving wenches and bar keeps. A few pieces of gossip and rumour about the Gambinis were related to Brunner, the eccentricities of Prince Gambini’s uncle, the elderly Remaro (none would be so bold as to call the old aristocrat mad) and the peculiarities of Remaro’s son, the decadent Alfredo Gambini. But there was little of real value to Brunner’s hunt. Certainly a few of the soldiers who had been involved in escorting Princess Juliana down from Pavona had spoken of their important duty, but the few names Brunner was able to pry from the serving wenches’ addled memories hardly accounted for all of them. Still, it was a start.

The bounty hunter helped a drunken Horst back to the palace, placing him in the custody of the gate sentries as soon as the guards had allowed the two men back into the courtyard. Brunner paid no attention to their demands that the bounty hunter conduct the nearly insensible mercenary back to the barracks. He had carried the hulking soldier far enough, he reasoned. If he had been certain that the sentries would have allowed him back into the palace without him, Brunner would have left the man to sleep it off in the tavern, to be robbed or rolled into the street as the tavern keepers decided.

Brunner made his way into the darkened palace, picking his path through the marble-floored halls, past the fluted columns that supported the high arching ceilings. He knew his way well enough from earlier to find his way back to the mercenary barracks, though he would feel better once he knew the layout of the rest of the palazzo. It always paid to know the lay of the land.

As Brunner made his way through the dark, quiet halls, his footsteps echoing only slightly on the polished marble tiles, he suddenly saw a light ahead. Instinctively, the bounty hunter stopped, pressing his back against the wall. Most likely it was just some servant getting an early start on the day’s duties, but the bounty killer’s cautious habits were something that were second nature to him and he had no mind to put them in check.

Brunner watched and saw that the light emanated from a half- open doorway just ahead. He could see two figures framed in the doorway, illuminated by a candle in an ornate brass holder, held by a hand that was elegant and smooth, its milky skin as flawless as the marble upon the floor. The woman holding the candle was clad in a thin shift of pale, gossamer-thin cloth, possibly even silk from distant Cathay. The thin garment did nothing to conceal the shapely curves of the woman’s figure, displaying her charms as readily as if it had been absent. The woman turned her head at some faint sound from elsewhere in the palace and Brunner could make out her pretty face in its frame of lustrous dark hair. The woman turned back toward her companion, accepting a heavy fur wrap with her free hand and casting it about her shoulders. She leaned forward, kissing the man beside her, then turned and stealthily made her way down the hall.

Brunner waited until the light of the candle had vanished, then continued down the passage toward the barracks. His stride was slower now, his pace careful and measured. When the woman had leaned forward, he had seen the face of the man she had kissed. The bounty hunter had no great desire to alarm Manfred Zelten by catching up with the mercenary as he was stealing away from his midnight rendezvous.

Brunner rose early the next day, long before most of the mercenaries who shared the hall-like barracks. Horst had said that there were five of these rooms, each given over to a separate mercenary company. After the losses incurred by the warband of Pulstlitz, the chamber held more empty beds than sleeping bodies. Brunner armed himself and marched past the sleeping soldiers, pausing for a moment before Horst’s loudly snoring body. Apparently the sentries at the gate had decided to carry him back to his billet after all rather than leaving him to sleep it off in the courtyard.

Near the door to the room, Brunner could see the wiry form of Schtafel sitting in the corner, a blanket thrown about his dozing body, his crossbow lying across his waist. The bounty hunter studied the man for a moment. Clearly he was still extremely nervous about Brunner’s presence. The mercenary must have noted his return sometime in the night and decided to stand guard against the bounty hunter. Brunner hoped that the marksman was ready for many such nights of discomfort. He had no idea how long it might take him to sniff out his target, and he had no intention of leaving the Gambini palazzo until he had his prey.

In the hall outside the barracks, Brunner was somewhat surprised to see Zelten emerging from his room. All of the mercenary commanders had their own private quarters, as befitted men of their position. After the man’s late night, the bounty hunter had assumed that Zelten would be much later in rising. The mercenary smiled as he sighted Brunner and walked toward him.

‘I have spoken with Prince Gambini,’ he said. ‘He is most anxious to meet the man who saved his caravan. I think I can easily talk him into engaging you if you were to take a position in my company.’

‘Perhaps,’ Brunner said, noncommittally. ‘I’d like to get the feel of the place better before I make any decision.’

‘Of course, of course,’ beamed Zelten, pleased that the bounty hunter had not flat-out rejected his proposal as he had the previous day. If the truth be told, Zelten was not entirely certain why he was so pleasantly disposed toward the grim warrior. Perhaps it was simply the sword that he wore, a symbolic link to Zelten’s destroyed past. Or perhaps it was simply his way of showing gratitude to the man for killing the traitor Albrecht Yorck. Whatever his reasons, and despite the short time he had known him, Zelten wanted to number the bounty hunter among his friends. ‘The prince is arranging a feast tonight in celebration of his coming marriage to Princess Juliana Bensario. All of his officers are invited to intend. As a gesture of his gratitude, he has asked that you attend also.’

Brunner was quiet for a moment as the two warriors strode down the marble halls. At last he nodded his head. ‘Yes, I think that might prove rather instructive. You may tell the prince that I will accept his invitation.’

Zelten clapped Brunner’s shoulder. The bounty hunter winced slightly at the hearty slap, feeling once again a slight sting from the old wound he had been dealt by the orc warlord, Gnashrak. ‘I am certain the prince will be pleased to be informed that you will be attending the feast.’ The mercenary suddenly looked up. Their steps had carried them toward the main hall, where a large flight of stairs rose toward the upper floors of the palazzo. Descending the stairs were two regal-looking figures. The first was a broad-shouldered, handsome featured man wearing a red tunic embroidered with silver braid, sporting tight breeches and polished leather shoes adorned with large bejewelled buckles. He was holding the hand of a young woman. Despite the long, heavy dress of dark green fabric she now wore, Brunner recognised her instantly.

‘Ah, you can tell him yourself,’ Zelten said. ‘There is Prince Gambini now.’ The mercenary was surprised when Brunner’s gloved hand closed about the front of his tunic and the bounty hunter pulled him back out of the hall.

‘What do you mean by this?’ demanded Zelten, his voice indignant.

‘Tell me who that woman is!’ demanded Brunner, speaking in a low snarl.

‘That is the Princess Juliana Bensario,’ the mercenary replied. Brunner released his grip on Zelten and pushed him away.

‘Are you insane, or just an idiot?’ demanded the bounty hunter, keeping his voice low.

‘Explain yourself!’ hissed Zelten, hands balling into fists at his side.

‘I saw you last night,’ Brunner said. ‘Leaving a storeroom. You weren’t alone.’ He watched as the colour drained from Zelten’s face. ‘The question remains, are you insane, dallying with a princess, and the betrothed of your master, no less?’

Zelten tried to voice some explanation, but the words caught in his throat several times. Brunner waited for the younger man to collect his thoughts. ‘I… I met her when the prince was trying to arrange his marriage with her. My men were charged with protecting Prince Gambini’s representatives on the road to and from Pavona. We… we were attracted at once. I don’t know how it happened, it just did.’

‘They might be saying the same thing when they find your throat slit,’ snapped the bounty hunter, his voice tinged with disgust at the mercenary’s recklessness.

‘You… you won’t say anything?’ asked Zelten. Brunner shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I have few enough friends in this world to go around arranging their murders.’ Brunner paused for a moment, staring hard into Zelten’s eyes. ‘I won’t tell anybody, but I suggest you show a little more care in your meetings with her, if you are so stupid as to continue them.’ The bounty hunter’s voice changed suddenly, becoming less emotional, more calculating. ‘I won’t say anything, but I want to meet with your mistress. There are some things I’d like to ask her.’

Inwardly, a part of Brunner felt disgusted by his exploitation of Zelten’s reckless dalliance, but the bounty hunter quickly dismissed the feeling. He had done far worse things than exploiting a friend’s misjudgement, things he had never felt any regret for having done. Indeed, this would provide him his best chance at tracking down his prey. The princess was the only person who had left Pavona who he could be certain was not the murderer, and as such was the only one who had made that journey he could make inquiries of without risking alerting his target that someone was on his trail. With knowledge of her activities with the dashing mercenary captain, Brunner would be able to get all the information he needed from the woman. Then it would only be a matter of time before he would be filling his pockets with Prince Bensario’s ducats.

Prince Gambini smiled at his bride as they descended the wide staircase. They had spent the morning discussing petty arrangements for their wedding, simple things such as the colour scheme that would be used to decorate the small chapel of Shallya that was the venue for the ceremony, the seating arrangement for the guests who would be arriving from Pavona, and a host of other equally small matters. Umberto Gambini was surprised to find that he did not begrudge the time spent on such trivial things. He did not deceive himself that the coming wedding was anything more than a political alliance, a business arrangement to strengthen the ties between Remas and Pavona, designed to cultivate more favourable trade agreements between the two cities. But the fact that his intended bride was such a beautiful and charming lady did not distress Umberto in the slightest. He even considered that he might break off relations with his mistresses once they were wedded.

Umberto laughed at some witty remark Juliana made, squeezing her hand slightly. She made him feel young, as though the weight of position and power were not heavy upon his shoulders, crushing his vigour long before its time. In her presence, it seemed like all the trade agreements and political manoeuvres he found himself dealing with every day were meaningless, as trivial as any of the hundreds of colour schemes and seating plans they had discussed that morning.

The sight of two men climbing the stairs made the smile die on Umberto’s face. He had hoped that the day might remain light and somewhat carefree, yet already, it was destined to turn unpleasant.

The foremost of the two men was dressed in a long yellow robe, stylised sirens and sea monsters embroidered upon the fabric in blacks and reds. The man wearing the robe was old, his head worn down to a thin, fleshless shadow of what it had once been. Scraggly wisps of hair were plastered upon the top of his head in a vain attempt to cover it. The old man strode forward, his eyes darting from the prince to his bride with every step he took. Behind the old man, the garishly dressed figure of Corvino followed, looking almost like a devoted puppy, were it not for the sneering, superior look he favoured the old man’s back with.

‘Uncle Remaro,’ the prince greeted the old man. ‘You should be in bed,’ Umberto cast a chastising look at Corvino. ‘The morning chill is not good for your old bones.’

The old man stared at the prince for a moment, then reached out a withered claw. He gripped the princess’s dainty hand, pulling it toward him. Juliana smiled nervously, clearly disliking the clammy touch of the old man’s cold skin. Umberto, however, remained unmoving, hoping that what he was observing was some sign that his uncle had at last accepted his bride. There had been several instances already where the half-mad Remaro had upset Juliana.

Remaro studied Juliana’s hand for a moment, patting it as though it was some small pet. Juliana cast a pleading look at Umberto. Before the prince could react, however, a strange look came over Remaro’s face. The old man’s hairy nostrils sniffed at the air. With surprising quickness, he lifted the woman’s hand to his nose, sniffing at it like a hound. Juliana removed her hand from the old man’s feeble grasp, staring at him in open disgust.

‘Smells like man’s hands,’ the old man cackled. ‘Have you been touched by a man? Man’s hands been touching you? Eh? Hmmm?’ Remaro cackled again, climbing past the shocked prince and his bride. Umberto glared down at Corvino as the fool started to follow after the old man.

‘I told you to keep him in his rooms,’ the prince growled. ‘I do not want my uncle upsetting Juliana.’

‘I apologise, my lord,’ said the fool, bowing his head. ‘I thought that it would be safe to take him for a walk while you were busy discussing the wedding arrangements in the sunroom. I did not think you would be about until your uncle was back in his own rooms. I certainly did not intend any discomfort for her ladyship.’

‘See that it doesn’t happen again,’ Umberto said, his voice surly. ‘And keep my uncle out of his cups. He has little enough of his wit remaining, I don’t want him further put out of sorts by drinking too much.’

‘Only a little wine, my lord,’ Corvino explained. ‘The physicians say it will help strengthen his blood.’

‘More than a little, I trust,’ sighed Umberto. ‘So far as sneaking bottles from the cellar, my uncle’s mind is still as sharp as a knife.’ He returned his gaze to the fool. ‘Keep a better watch on him,’ he said.

Corvino bowed again, then hurried up the rest of the stairs, the bells upon his staff jingling madly as he raced to catch up with the elderly nobleman.

General Mandalari settled his body into a leather-backed chair, his clawed wooden leg stretched before him on a small stool. The general slowly swirled the dark brown liquid around in the crystal goblet he held. Then he looked away from his contemplation of the thick Estalian brandy and stared at his guest.

‘I am disappointed in you, inquisitor,’ the general confessed, unspoken menace lurking in his voice. ‘My contacts with the temple recommended you very highly. They said that Gualtiero Bocca was one of the most zealous of the sacred warriors of Solkan.’ The general gave a contemptuous snort. ‘In my army, I would have had a man like you chopped up and fed to the ogres.’

The man he addressed stood like a black shadow across the room from the seated general, one armoured hand resting on the top of the map-strewn table. Whatever expression Inquisitor Bocca wore, it was hidden behind the cold, judgmental expression of his golden mask. When the inquisitor spoke, however, his voice was anything but cowed.

‘The mercenary has only delayed the inevitable,’ the priest’s words rumbled from behind the mask. ‘Those who evoke the wrath of Solkan will find his justice in due time. The Fist of Retribution is as inevitable as the rise of the sun and the turn of the tide.’

‘Then your god had best act swiftly,’ the general commented impiously. ‘Every hour that worm draws breath threatens my plans.’ Mandalari sipped at his drink, then set the glass aside. ‘If someone else discovers his affair with Princess Juliana, my hold over the woman will crumble. I have worked too long and too hard to allow that to happen.’ The general gestured with his hand to indicate the map-strewn table.

‘I’ve urged the council to pursue a new war with Miragliano for five years now. I have the support of one of the triumvirs, but I need two of them to make my campaign a reality. I can bring Prince Gambini to my view, but not if that scheming harpy from Pavona is whispering in his ear every night. She stood against my plans as soon as I revealed them to her.’

‘So you use blackmail to keep the tramp in line,’ observed Bocca with scorn. The inquisitor was disgusted by the wanton ways of the nobility, but especially by this display of infidelity even as preparations were underway for the woman to be wed to one of the most powerful men in Remas. Once again, the inquisitor thought how much better the city would be without any of the merchant princes, how much nobler the people of Remas would become under the stern discipline of the Temple of Solkan alone.

‘Yes,’ admitted Mandalari with a laugh, ‘I use her own infidelities to ensure her loyalty.’ He gave the inquisitor a hard look. ‘You should approve of anything that furthers my plans, Bocca. Your temple stands to gain much when my army marches on Miragliano.’

Indeed, the cult of Solkan had been promised a piece of the plunder. Not in gold and treasure, but in power. Mandalari’s army would help the cult gain a foothold in Miragliano, help them establish themselves in the conquered city as the cult had established itself in Remas. The high priests of the temple were eager to expand the dominion of their faith in such a manner, to bring the discipline and vengeance of Solkan to the godless scum of the northern city. And from there, who could say. Perhaps every corner of Tilea might yet recognise the supreme authority of the Fist of Retribution.

‘You place far too much value on the mercenary,’ said the room’s third occupant. Bocca and Mandalari both looked over at the general’s spy. ‘Prince Gambini would not trust rumour and suggestion, he would need evidence. He is deeply in love with his princess, something which you did not account for when you suggested the marriage. It will be hard to convince him of anything that besmirches Princess Juliana’s character.’ The spy shook his head. ‘No, better to forget the mercenary. The pressure that the inquisitor’s friends can put upon the council should be enough to sway Prince Gambini. This blackmail of his wife is a useless sideshow that can only hurt your ambitions in the end.’

The spy’s face widened into a smile. ‘Besides, there is a more immediate problem. You are aware of this mysterious benefactor who aided Zelten’s mercenaries in the ambush?’ Mandalari nodded his head. He had been alarmed when his spy had informed him that the ambush had failed, especially after he had likewise assured the general that the expedition to Miragliano would never return to Remas alive.

‘I have learned that his name is Brunner,’ the agent said. ‘A notorious bounty hunter, who often operates out of Miragliano.’ The spy paused, enjoying the puzzled and slightly uneasy look of Mandalari’s face. ‘I understand that he assassinated some petty baron in the Border Princes not too long ago. I also understand it is not the first time he has plied the assassin’s trade.’

‘You think he may have been sent here to kill me?’ asked Mandalari guardedly.

‘It seems rather a coincidence, does it not?’ replied the spy with a smugness in his words. ‘An assassin-for-hire leaves Miragliano and arrives in Remas, conveniently managing to gain entry to the very house in which the guiding force behind a plan to overthrow the ruler of Miragliano is dwelling. I think it would be very dangerous to assume that Prince Borgio has either forgotten you, or would underestimate your desire to avenge your defeat.’

‘He’ll not see another sunrise!’ roared the general, clumsily lifting himself to his feet. ‘I’ll send the head of this bastard back to Borgio in a box!’

‘Do not worry, general,’ soothed the spy. ‘I shall deal with the bounty hunter. I would never allow any harm to threaten you. Leave it in my hands.’

The spy turned to depart, then faced the general once again, shifting his gaze from the wooden-legged soldier to the masked inquisitor. ‘If you feel you should kill Captain Zelten, do so. He may be working with the bounty hunter. But forget this scheme to coerce the princess. It will only hurt our plans in the long run.’

VI

Brunner had to admit that when Prince Gambini held a feast, he held a feast, and spared no expense. He could not even name half of the delicacies offered to Gambini’s guests. Of those that he did recognise, there were Arabyan dates and figs, Estalian duck basted in the hot chilli peppers favoured in that land. A massive marlin, easily nine feet long from tail fin to the point of its sword-like nose, formed the centrepiece of the table. Brunner was surprised at the variety of wines presented to the prince’s guests, even including the fabulously expensive yellow-white wine of Lustria among the selections from the prince’s cellar.

Despite his usually cautious nature, Brunner was tempted to let himself relax and enjoy himself. Manfred Zelten certainly showed no qualms about doing so, delving into his food with a boisterous gusto which the courtiers seated around him found alternately offensive and amusing. But any inclination to let his guard down was pushed aside when a hulking man in black armour entered the dining hall. His face was hard and craggy, nose and mouth conspiring to form a perpetual scowl. He might not be wearing his golden mask, but Brunner knew he was the warrior who had led the ambush in the streets the previous day. A hush spread amongst the diners as the inquisitor strode past them, making his way to the head of the table and sitting down beside an intense old officer with one leg who Brunner had learned was General Mandalari, commander of Prince Gambini’s soldiers and mercenaries.

The murmur of conversation began once more, this time focusing on the inquisitor, whose name was Bocca. It appeared that the Solkanite had been invited by Mandalari, as a way of including the temple of Solkan in Gambini’s celebration. It was a political move, but one, it was generally felt, which was in poor taste.

To invite a priest of Solkan might have been understandable, to invite one of the grim inquisitors was not. They were a cheerless, stern and unrelenting sort, suspicious of anyone who did not devote themselves to the temple, seeing heretics and followers of the Ruinous Powers in every face. The inquisitors, the guests whispered, never removed their armour, or their swords, save perhaps within the Temple of Solkan itself. It was a constant reminder to everyone seated at the table that the inquisitor suspected the presence of corruption even at a dinner such as this, and that he was ready to confront it.

Prince Gambini sat at the head of the enormous table, his bride on his left, his uncle, the elderly Remaro, on his right. Beside Remaro was the old man’s son, Alfredo Gambini, a rakish youth with a calculating glint in his eye. Seated beside the two Gambinis were the merchant Emiliano Tacca and a black-robed priest of Morr named Scurio.

Scurio was the personal priest of the Gambinis, attending to daily services devoted to honouring the ancestors of the house, as well as performing last rites whenever tragedy might rear its head in the palazzo. On the opposite side of the table, General Mandalari and Inquisitor Bocca took the places to the left of Princess Juliana. It seemed that even the high and mighty were disconcerted by the presence of the inquisitor, even Mandalari, who had apparently invited the man.

The only exception to this trend appeared to be Alfredo Gambini. Bocca took only small portions of the most plebeian of the dishes set before him, causing those around him to rather self-consciously limit the amount of food they placed before themselves. Alfredo Gambini, however, attacked the dishes with gusto, heaping his plate high, openly relishing every bite, sometimes directing a haughty sneer at the grim Solkanite.

Two incidents intruded upon this quietly tense situation, both of which drew Brunner’s rapt attention. The first followed close on the performance of Prince Gambini’s fool, Corvino. The fool had just recited a particularly ribald bit of prose for the enjoyment of the diners, bringing colour to the faces of the ladies present, laughter from the men and a look of condemnation from Bocca. As Corvino rose from bowing before his audience, he noticed a servant hurrying past him. With a deft manoeuvre, the fool caught the servant’s tray with the end of his staff, knocking it from the man’s arms.

The servant bit back a curse, bending to retrieve the platter. Corvino, however, pinned it in place with his staff, then began to slide it about the floor, moving it just as the man would bend down to retrieve it, forcing him to chase the platter about the dining room. The fool’s antics brought fresh laughter from the diners. Prince Gambini’s laugh trailed off in a fit of coughing and the aristocrat fumbled for his wineglass.

‘Careful, my prince,’ Mandalari laughed. ‘You don’t want your young lady thinking that you are some sickly, bedridden wretch!’

‘I am quite certain of my betrothed’s vigour,’ Juliana replied, smiling at the prince.

‘He gave us some scares when he was born,’ the general retorted. ‘His mother died bringing him into this world,’ he explained, seeing Juliana’s questioning look. Prince Gambini grew somewhat sombre as Mandalari recounted the tragedy. ‘It looked certain that he would follow her, but his father was not about to lose his entire family. He stayed with the infant all night, keeping him warm with his own hands, telling him over and over again that he would not die, that he would live and be strong.’

‘Yes,’ muttered Remaro from across the table. The old man’s hand was shaky as he spilled some wine onto his lips. ‘I stayed with him that night, all through that long night. It was by your father’s will alone that you survived.’ The old man shook his head, sagging into his seat. ‘Would that my own son had been so fortunate.’ Remaro began to weep.

Prince Gambini smiled awkwardly at his bride. ‘My eldest cousin, Giovanni, was born two months before me. He died shortly after I was born.’

‘My son,’ Remaro sobbed. Alfredo reached toward him to calm the old man while the others looked away, embarrassed by the dotard’s drunken melancholy. As Alfredo touched the old man’s arm, Remaro drew away from him, staring at his son as though he were some sort of verminous reptile. Alfredo shook his head with disgust and returned to his meal.

‘My son, my son,’ Remaro continued to cry. Prince Gambini looked over at Corvino, indicating that the fool should take his uncle back to the old man’s room. Even as he was led from the room, the old man’s sobbing calls for his infant son echoed across the dining hall. It took several minutes before anything resembling the previous murmur of conversation was restored.

The second incident began when Princess Juliana asked a question of the inquisitor. The cult of Solkan was all but unknown in Pavona, the city’s experience with the cult limited to a few wandering witch hunters in that grim god’s service, and she was naturally curious about this strange religion that held such power in her new home.

‘Tell me, inquisitor, do you burn all of the heretics you uncover?’ she asked.

Bocca turned his face towards her, his craggy features displaying the first trace of pleasure since he had seated himself at the table. ‘When we are able, lady,’ he replied, his voice a deep rumble. ‘Sometimes the heretics are so steeped in their wickedness that they will not submit to the righteous judgement of Solkan. When that happens,’ the inquisitor spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness, ‘we must force them to see reason, with whatever means we may muster.’

‘Is that true?’ Alfredo interrupted from across the table, sucking a shred of marlin from between his teeth. ‘I had thought that even the most degenerate follower of the unnamed powers would just shrivel up and die as soon as you mentioned the name of your god.’ Alfredo laughed at the remark, though those around him did not seem to find the flippant comment particularly humorous.

‘You would do well not to mention such powers aloud,’ warned Bocca. ‘They are more real and dreadful than you imagine. Than any here imagine, else they should discard these trappings of power and wealth and take up the mantle of the temple. For it is the strength of Solkan that keeps the Dark Gods from devouring us all, body and soul.’

‘Are you an expert on the Dark Gods, inquisitor?’ Alfredo sneered. ‘I would have thought such knowledge would be heresy.’ Alfredo’s voice dropped into a grave tone. ‘You aren’t a heretic, are you, inquisitor?’

Bocca’s eyes were like daggers, stabbing the baiting nobleman across the table, his hands balled into fists where they lay upon the table. ‘I know their signs, how to find their vile followers. That is all the lore of the Ruinous Powers which it is safe for a man to know, and even that little must be given only to those strong enough of mind and spirit to remain steadfast before such foul forces.’

‘Men such as you, inquisitor?’ Alfredo asked. ‘Tell me, would you not be better able to recognise the followers of these powers you call ruinous if you had first been one of them? Like setting a half-wolf cur to sniff out the lair of a wolf pack?’

‘Those that ally themselves with the Dark are forever tainted,’ Bocca stated, a tone of threat within his voice. ‘Be they great or small, long in the service of the Dark or newly converted to blasphemy and wickedness, they are likewise unclean. Only the fire can redeem them, only flame can purge their evil from the land.’

‘No!’ interrupted the priest seated beside Tacca. ‘That is not so, inquisitor.’ Bocca turned his gaze to the dour cleric, some of the hostility he had been directing at Alfredo passing from his eyes. ‘With all due respect to your temple, and your position, inquisitor, I believe that the Ruinous Powers are more insidious than you give them credit for. There are entire nations that bow before them in the north, beyond the Sea of Claws and the Troll Country. In every dark place in the Empire, and even here in the valleys of Tilea, twisted, malformed things cry out to them from their filthy lairs. Why then, with so many, do these Powers relentlessly try to seduce men from civilised lands to their vile worship?’

Scurio paused, letting his question linger. ‘It is because we know what evil is,’ he stated. ‘What does a Norse reaver know of evil? He has been born into the profane worship of the Dark Gods, taught from the cradle to honour and respect them, to pray to them and serve them. It is all that he knows, he has never known any other way. But a man from Luccini, or Tobaro, or Pavona, such a man knows what good is, and has been taught to recognise evil. Because he must be brought into the service of the Dark Gods from without, he sees them for what they are, he has a greater understanding of what they represent. He knows what good is, what decency and humanity are, and he rejects them in exchange for the dark promises of the Ruinous Powers. And because he has made this choice, because he has polluted his soul with his own hands, he has greater value to them.’

Alfredo shook his head, laughing slightly as he returned to his meal. Prince Gambini and the other courtiers nearby continued to regard the priest, considering his words. Bocca turned away, rising to his feet.

‘Whatever has put the taint upon them,’ he told Scurio, ‘their fate is still the same. Heretics burn.’ Bocca strode from the dining hall, his black cloak billowing about him.

He hurried his way along the corridors, the skin writhing on his back, as though it were trying to rip itself from his bones. It had been agony to remain at the feast, to sit quiet and polite, nodding his head at the inane prattle of the prince and his guests. The nature of good and evil indeed! There was only one thing that mattered, and that was the cessation of pain! Anything that could accomplish that was the greatest good in all the world, nothing was higher and mightier than that which would provide relief from his suffering.

The man tried to control himself, pausing beside a column as a pair of servants hurried past, hands knotted into fists at his sides. He wanted to scream, to cry out, but he knew that if he opened his mouth, he would never stop screaming. Because they would call him mad and throw chains about him and toss him into some pit where the pain would devour him like a hungry beast until not even his bones would remain. He watched as more servants passed him, their arms laden down by the soiled plates and bowls from the prince’s table. It would be an easy thing to fall upon someone who was encumbered in such a manner. The easiest thing in all the world. Before they would even be able to react, it would be too late for them.

The man clenched his eyes shut, his breathing growing rapid and heavy, like a hound that has just run a hare to ground. He fought to steady his breath, fought to keep the desperate, reckless thoughts from gaining a foothold in his mind. He would be found out, he kept telling himself. He had to wait, had to wait until it was safe.

‘Feeling well?’ a voice asked. The man opened his eyes, almost sobbing with relief as he saw the man who spoke to him.

‘Help me,’ he gasped. The man he addressed smiled, uttering a disapproving chuckle.

‘So soon after the last one?’ the jovial voice spoke. ‘You should try and get some control of yourself. After all, one can’t indulge the flesh all of the time, or so the priests say.’ He laughed again, a withering, punishing sound.

The tortured man fell to his knees, reaching up with pleading hands. His pained mouth moaned a single word. ‘Please.’

The laughter stopped and a soft hand reached down, patting the man’s head. ‘Just wait a little longer. I’ll bring you something very soon.’ The speaker detached himself from the pleading man’s embrace, ignoring the muttered thanks that trailed after him as he continued on his way down the gleaming marble hall.

There was a single sharp rap on the door of Manfred Zelten’s room, then the portal began to swing inward. Quickly, a figure dressed in black and red checks slipped inside, closing the door behind him. Corvino leaned on his staff, staring at the man seated on the bed that dominated the small room.

‘The prince is occupied with Emiliano Tacca,’ the fool told Zelten. ‘He will be quite some time going over the details of Tacca’s audience with Prince Borgio’s chamberlain. If you insist on seeing her ladyship this evening, you must do so now.’

‘He didn’t insist, jester,’ a cold voice spoke from the corner of the room, just to the right of the door. Brunner stepped into the light cast by the lantern beside Zelten’s bed. Corvino recoiled before the sudden appearance of the grim, armoured killer. ‘I did,’ Brunner stated.

‘Brunner has learned of the matter between Princess Juliana and myself,’ confessed Zelten, his voice heavy with guilt. Corvino fixed the mercenary with an outraged, accusing glare. ‘He has agreed not to speak to Prince Gambini, but only if he is allowed an audience with the princess.’

Corvino stood for a moment, eyes hooded in a glower of suspicion. At last he nodded his head. ‘If such is the agreement you have reached,’ his voice was sullen, and there was a tone of menace in it, a quality of barely restrained anger, ‘then I must conduct you to her ladyship.’ The fool turned to open the door once more. But before reaching outward for the handle, he stabbed the end of his staff against the floor, causing the bells attached to the brass head to jingle madly. ‘But if any treachery is plotted by either of you towards the princess…’ Corvino left the threat lingering in the room as he opened the door and stalked out into the corridor.

Once more, Brunner entered the crowded streets of the Reman waterfront, guided by a grumbling Horst Brendle. His interrogation of Princess Juliana had been a tense, but necessary affair. Having spent days upon the road with the entourage, she was easily able to recall who had made the journey from Pavona to Remas, though she did not, of course, know the names of each soldier and servant. She did recall that the captain of the soldiers was a man named Giordano, and that he had ten men under his command. There had also been Alfredo Gambini, representing the interests of his cousin, the prince, and the dour priest of Morr, Scurio, as well as three servants to attend Alfredo’s needs.

Brunner decided to start with the soldiers, as both Scurio and Alfredo, given their positions within the Gambini household, would prove more troublesome if one of them turned out to be the man he was after. The bounty hunter preferred to start his search with much more easily eliminated possibilities. The captain, Giordano, would be a good start. Even if he was not the man he was after, Giordano would know the names of the other soldiers.

It took only a few words of inquiry on Zelten’s part to discover that his fellow mercenary captain was not in the palazzo, but had rather boisterously stated his intention to spend a two-day leave at a bordello called the Pink Rose. Zelten detailed Horst to show the bounty hunter the way. Intent on sleeping off the imported Stirland beer Zelten’s men had been given as recompense for not being invited to share in the feast, the bearded warrior was as surly as the animal he resembled. Brunner was not entirely off-set by Horst’s bear-like mood. Should any of those zealots of Solkan get in their way this night, they would be leaving with more damage than broken noses and bruised bones. The presence of the inquisitor at the feast had removed any doubts in the bounty hunter’s mind as to whether the attack on himself and Zelten upon their arrival had been coincidence or a planned ambush.

After a half-hour of pushing their way through the late-night crowd of revellers, the Pink Rose stood before the two men. It was a large building, standing almost as tall as the Gambini palazzo, but its opulence was a façade; the white plaster covering its walls was chipped in places to expose the stonework beneath, the paint upon the wooden balcony that fronted the structure flaking away. Yet, for all its somewhat decayed exterior, the building certainly had a large amount of traffic passing through its front door. A young man in a brightly-coloured tunic, an outrageous ruffled hat scrunched on his head, stood before the building, his loud voice extolling the delights to be had within in rapid, quickly spoken words. Horst and Brunner pushed their way past the bawd and entered the main parlour of the brothel.

Horst gave a delighted gasp as his eyes took in the lavishly appointed chamber, his surly humour instantly clearing. The room was large, dominating much of the ground floor, filled with cushioned divans, large, potted ferns and palms from Araby, vases of flowers in every shape and colour imaginable, and an ornate fountain with a centrepiece that depicted something Brunner considered to be physically impossible. As rich as the furnishings were, they were but a setting for the smiling faces that regarded the two men as they entered the room. There were at least twenty women lounging upon the divans or sitting beside the fountain, each more lovely than the next, and each in such a state of undress that it seemed to be a competition to see who could display the most flesh without exposing her charms entirely.

Horst let his eyes linger over the company, his face broadening into a grin. ‘I take it back, bounty killer,’ his words came from the corner of his mouth. ‘This was worth crawling out of a beer keg.’ Without a further word, the mercenary strolled toward one of the divans, striking up a conversation with a seated woman with the blonde hair and pale skin of the Empire while slipping his thick arm about the waif-like waist of a dusky Tilean wench standing beside the couch.

Brunner removed his helmet and strode further into the chamber. He was still for a moment, his practiced gaze studying the room, lingering for a moment on the hulking brutes who sat on chairs against one wall, big Arabyan-style scimitars propped against the wall beside them. The bounty hunter raised his eyebrows. A bullet might not even stop one of those brutes. Brunner hoped that he could accomplish what he needed without attracting the attention of the guards.

‘See anything you like?’ a soft voice inquired from beside him. Brunner turned his head, finding himself looking at a dark-skinned Tilean woman wearing a loose gown of bright red silk, her generous cleavage straining against the web of white lace that fronted the garment. The woman’s heart-shaped face was marked by a knowing smile, a lock of her dark brown hair dangling down against her cheek.

‘Actually, I was hoping to speak with the owner of this establishment,’ Brunner said, smiling back. ‘I have a business proposition for him.’

‘Indeed,’ the woman commented, shaking her head slightly. ‘And what sort of proposal would this be?’

‘The sort of proposal that involves gold,’ Brunner stated, tossing a small cloth pouch in his gloved hand. The woman’s face brightened noticeably as she heard the sound of jingling coins.

‘In that case, I think she might be very interested in your proposal,’ she said. ‘So long as it is within reason,’ she added with a wink. She extended her hand toward Brunner with a gesture that mocked the grace of queens and duchesses. ‘Madame Rosa, owner of this house of entertainments,’ she introduced herself.

Brunner nodded his head, kissing the woman’s slender hand. ‘I am certain that it will be a pleasure doing business with you, madame.’

Giordano propped himself up on the pillow, staring at the door of the small room, a smug look of pleasure on his face. This was indeed a good way to work off his frustration. He had needed to get away from the Gambini palazzo for a few days, at least until all the unwarranted attention being given to Zelten and his mob of rabble died down. It was woefully unfair, Giordano and his men had escorted the princess herself to Remas, an event of vast import to the future of Prince Gambini. Yet Prince Gambini had thrown only a minor feast in honour of their return, a peasant’s supper compared to the event he had arranged for Zelten. All because the cursed foreigner had butchered a mob of starving, pox-ridden bandits! Giordano shook his head at the inequality of it all.

The mercenary’s face brightened as the door opened and his supple bedmate of the last few hours slipped into the room. He always liked coming to the Pink Rose. Rosa kept the cleanest girls in Remas, and every one of them was learned in tricks that would shame a sultan’s harem. Giordano smiled again as the long-legged girl strode across the room. Then he noticed the heavy iron manacles clutched in her tiny hands. Giordano chuckled.

‘Are those for me, or for you?’ the soldier laughed.

‘They are for you,’ a cold voice said. Giordano tore his eyes away from the strumpet. A tall man had followed the girl into the room. He had the look of the Empire about him, his brown hair cropped short, his piercing blue eyes fixed upon Giordano. It was the pistol clutched in the man’s gloved hand, however, which drew Giordano’s attention. The girl touched his wrist with her dainty hand, causing the mercenary to flinch away. The mercenary froze when he heard the hammer of the pistol draw back.

‘Just let her do her job, if you please,’ Brunner advised the soldier. Giordano snarled at the bounty hunter, but did not resist as the harlot locked the manacles about his hands after working their chain through the iron bedstead. Her task done, the girl hastily left the room. Brunner strode forward.

‘I have a few questions for you,’ the bounty hunter said.

‘I’ll tell you nothing, Morr rot your bones!’ Giordano spat.

Brunner sighed and holstered his firearm. ‘I had hoped that we could do this the easy way.’ Giordano’s eyes grew wide with terror as he saw the bounty hunter remove the massive knife from his belt, the serrated edge of the blade gleaming in the dim light cast by the candles in the room.

‘Wait!’ he cried.

‘I’m glad you have decided to be reasonable,’ Brunner stated, making no move to return Headsman to its sheath. He had already found out from the girl that Giordano was not the man he was after, there was no tattoo, of a snake or anything else, on his back. But he could still provide the names of the men under his command who were a part of the entourage that was in Pavona.

A few minutes later, the bounty hunter had learned all he needed to know. As he walked toward the door, Giordano struggled against the manacles.

‘I think it best if I leave you here while I finish my work in Remas,’ Brunner told the man. ‘Keep you out of the way. It shouldn’t take more than a few days. I suggest you make the best of it.’ The bounty hunter closed the door on the stream of curses and obscenities the mercenary hurled at him.

‘You found out what you needed to know?’ Rosa asked Brunner as he exited the room. Brunner nodded his head.

‘At least all he could tell me,’ he said. Brunner looked at the door, then back at the shapely Tilean madam. ‘You’ll keep him here for three or four days?’

Madam Rosa smiled. ‘We’ll see that he’s well taken care of.’ Her eyes lingered on the bounty hunter, looking him over from head to foot. ‘You know, I don’t really think that was worth what you paid me,’ she said. ‘I feel rather bad about taking your money for such a small thing.’

‘Then I suppose we should figure a way to work out the difference,’ Brunner commented, allowing Rosa to lead him away.

Night hung heavy on Remas when Brunner emerged from the Pink Rose. The streets in the waterfront district were not quite deserted at this hour, certainly more lively than the lanes of the inner city in late afternoon when Brunner had first arrived, sailors staggering back to their ships or else trying to figure out which taverns they had yet to be thrown out of, a handful of street walkers trying to earn a few extra silvers before the custom died away completely, even the odd armed watchman, ensuring that no enterprising souls took it upon themselves to open any of the shops without the knowledge of the shopkeepers.

The bounty hunter was alone, not having waited for Horst to emerge from whatever diversion he had discovered in the Pink Rose. Having been led to the brothel, he could easily find his way back to the bridge and the Gambini palazzo. Brunner adopted his customarily cautious manner as he made his way through the shadowy streets. There might not be many people about, but he knew well enough that it only took one man to slip a knife in someone’s ribs.

By degrees, the bounty hunter’s wary senses paid off. He could detect furtive footfalls trailing him, stopping when he stopped, mirroring his own pace. Brunner smiled grimly at the inexpert shadower and continued on, a gloved hand resting on the grip of his pistol. He saw a small alleyway ahead and strode towards it. The bounty hunter was not one to ignore a menace, however slight, and the time to deal with this one was at hand.

Brunner slipped into the alley, proceeding down it a few steps. As he had anticipated, the sudden move caused his shadow to hasten his pace, trying to get the bounty hunter back in his sight. Brunner saw his pursuer turn into the alley, his lean frame illuminated by the flickering light cast by the lamps on the street. The bounty hunter strode forward, raising his pistol, letting the cold metal barrel gleam in the lamplight. He was certain that his pursuer would not fail to notice that the weapon was aimed at his face.

‘You should find a new line of work,’ Brunner snarled. ‘You’re no good at this one.’

The bounty hunter had expected the supposed thief to retreat before the threat of his gun, or else fall to his knees and plead for mercy. The last thing he expected was for the man to charge at him. With a bestial howl, the lean figure lunged forward. Brunner’s reflexes were instant, the pistol’s flash exploding in the darkness as he sent the steel ball crashing into his attacker’s face.

In that brief flash, the face of his attacker was revealed to Brunner, and it was not human. The face was almost hairless, only a cluster of wispy strands standing out in ragged patches upon its scabby scalp. The features of the visage were sharp and angular, a knife-blade nose with distended nostrils, slanted eyes that bulged wildly from their sockets. The gash-like mouth was filled with pointed fangs, a long snake-like tongue darting in and out between them.

Brunner braced himself for impact even as he heard the ball rip its way through flesh and bone. The lean body ploughed into him, causing the bounty hunter to lose his footing and fall to the ground, the body of his attacker crushed against his chest.

Brunner gagged at the sickly sweet odour of the thing as he strove to push its weight aside. As soon as he began to shift the creature, however, it sprang into life once more. Brunner felt powerful hands pressing down against his chest, as his attacker pushed himself back to its feet. As the monster loomed over him, the bounty hunter could see the light from the street shining through the savage wound that had replaced the left side of its face.

Brunner tore one of his knives from its sheath and hacked at the monster’s wrist. Hot blood gushed from the wound and the monster uttered a shrill cry of pain. The powerful hands clawed at his armour, pulling Brunner to his feet. No sooner had the bounty hunter been lifted from the ground than the enraged creature tossed him aside like a sack of rubbish. Brunner hit the floor of the alleyway, rolling on his shoulder back into the street.

His shoulder pained him, the bounty hunter could feel blood trickling down his arm. His violent fall had probably torn open the scar tissue clothing the injury he had been dealt by the orc Gnashrak. Brunner forced the affected arm to move, pulling a throwing knife from the bandoleer across his chest while his right arm pulled Drakesmalice from its scabbard, the metal of the blade rippling with flame. Carefully, Brunner backed away from the darkened alley, eyes focused on the shadowy corridor. The few people on the street paused to watch, eager to witness whatever violent confrontation was going to unfold before them. Yet these would-be spectators gave voice to screams of terror as they saw the bounty hunter’s adversary emerge into the street.

It was the same size and shape as a man, perhaps it had even been a man at some point in its existence. But now, through magic or mutation, it bore only a trace of humanity. The thing’s body was twisted, almost curled over in a perpetual stoop, its legs somehow too short for its body. The rough cloak that covered the creature bulged at the centre of its chest, speaking of some horrible malformity beneath the cloth. The face was more loathsome than before, the left eye-socket blasted into ruin, greasy brain tissue and the pulp of its eye dangling from the wound. Even for a mutant, such a wound should have been final, there was something even more unclean about this creature and a chill swept up his spine as Brunner put a label upon his thoughts: daemonic.

The possessed creature gave voice to a shrill snarl and lunged once more at Brunner, leaping ten feet in a single hop. The bounty hunter lashed out with both weapons, Drakesmalice slashing across its leg, his knife digging at its belly. He was gratified to hear the thing cry out in pain, even more pleased to see it hobble away. The wound in its belly wept a dark mixture of blood and bile, the gash on its leg bubbled and sizzled like bacon in a pan. Brunner could sense the monster’s alarm. Blades and bullets of steel might injure the creature, ruin its host body, but the enchanted blade of Drakesmalice could attack the thing itself. The sword might even be able to kill it, if such a creature as this could ever be truly killed.

Cries of alarm sounded nearby. Brunner risked a glance and saw three white-robed men rushing forward, heavy wooden cudgels in their hands. The bounty hunter cursed. Alone against the daemon-creature, he would be pressed hard enough. Having to deal with it and three of the Solkan fanatics, he wasn’t so certain of his chances. However, as they ran forward, the white-robed fanatics paid no attention to the bounty hunter, converging on the daemon-thing instead.

The monster grabbed the first zealot by the hood, tossing him aside. The man crashed into the wall with a shuddering impact, howling in agony as he clutched at broken ribs. The second and third brought their clubs smashing into the daemon-thing’s body, punishing it brutally. The daemon recoiled for an instant from the attack, the pain inflicted on its physical host momentarily stunning it. Brunner saw the cloak fall away from the monster’s body, exposing the single tear-shaped breast that rose from the centre of its chest. The sight of the monster’s grotesque body caused the militiamen to pause in their attack, allowing their daemonic adversary a chance to recover and regain the initiative.

Or so it might have, had the bounty hunter not charged forward. The creature’s injured head swung around to glare at him, snarling its shrill growl. Drakesmalice swept outward in a fiery arc, crunching through the monstrosity’s neck. The head fell away, the wound bubbling as though it had been bathed in corrosive troll vomit. A pale light rose from the body as it slumped to the ground, and the sickly sweet stench of the monster intensified for a moment, almost overcoming the zealots and the bounty hunter. Then there was a high-pitched, almost human scream and the light flickered away, the smell vanishing with it.

Brunner breathed heavily, leaning over the body. On the corpse, just below the unnatural mammary growth, the bounty hunter could see a sign branded into the flesh. The bounty hunter knew little of arcane matters, but he had taken enough jobs for religious officials in the Empire to recognise this one. A full moon, a downward pointing crescent and an upturned sickle-shape moon, all united by a thick shaft. The sign of the most seductive of the Ruinous Powers, the perverse Lord of Pleasures.

Brunner strode away from the quickly putrefying body. It would be easy to dismiss the attack as coincidence. The ways of the Chaos gods and their creatures had no pattern or reason to them. Yet somehow, the bounty hunter felt that the horrible daemon-thing had been sent especially to kill him. It seemed that more than one man in Remas wanted him dead. Unless there was some schemer wily enough to manipulate both the powers of Chaos and the fanatic worshippers of the gods of Law.

‘Why do you bring your suspicions to me?’

The room was dark, its cheerless grey stone walls laid bare, unadorned by either tapestry or portrait. The only furnishings were a pair of bronze braziers, a large dais with five high-backed chairs and an iron ring set into the floor just before the dais. It was a room designed to crush the warmth within a man, to remind him that life was a trial, and that it would be judged at its end. Or perhaps just before.

Only one of the chairs was occupied now, the one on the rightmost side. A tall, powerful figure in black armour sat there, his golden mask resting beside him on one of the armrests. Inquisitor Bocca’s face was suspicious as he spoke his question. There was the usual hint of threat and menace in his tones, the promise that the answer had best meet up to his expectations.

The man standing below the dais bowed his head once more. ‘If my suspicions are correct, who else would I turn to?’

Bocca uttered a short, doubtful laugh. ‘I find it difficult to believe a man of your sort would do anything if he did not stand to profit by it. If General Mandalari is, as you say, playing false with the temple, I doubt any pious concern would cause you to bear such tidings to me.’

The informer fell silent, staring at the floor for a moment before lifting his eyes once more. ‘You are right, inquisitor, it is not piety that makes me warn you. It is fear.’ A look of interest filled Bocca’s eyes for the first time since granting the man his audience with him. The informer hastily continued. ‘I was not certain until I heard him talking after the feast. I am certain that he has hatched some sort of plot with Alfredo Gambini.’ The man paused as a look of intense hate filled Bocca’s face. ‘I am also certain that Alfredo Gambini,’ the informer’s voice dropped into a frightened whisper, ‘is a servant of the Dark Gods.’

‘Indeed,’ commented the inquisitor. ‘And how reliable should I hold your information?’

‘There is to be some manner of profane ceremony soon. This much I have learned. Perhaps in only a few days. I could follow Alfredo, discover where his filthy coven is to hold their ceremony. Then you would be able to arrest them all!’

Inquisitor Bocca was silent as he considered the possibility. To capture Alfredo Gambini, cousin to the most powerful merchant prince in the city, in the midst of some ritual to the Ruinous Powers! Such an event would shake the very structure of the city. The temple would be able to prove its suspicions that corruption had wormed its way into the houses of the rich and the powerful. It would be able to insist that the families of the council submit themselves to the investigations of the inquisition of Solkan. No longer would the decadent nobility be above the justice of Solkan. The filthy waterfront district could be razed, its thieves, drunkards and whores put to the torch. Bocca looked aside, glancing at the centre chair upon the dais. The man who brought about such things would be great in the eyes of Mighty Solkan, he might even aspire to inheriting the position of grand inquisitor when the time came.

Bocca leaned forward, his armoured finger stabbing at the informer below. ‘Return to the palazzo then. Keep your eyes and ears open. If this is true, if we discover that Alfredo Gambini is indeed a worshipper of the Dark Gods, you will be richly rewarded.’ The inquisitor’s voice slipped into a rumbling growl. ‘But if you lie to me, I shall take great pleasure in making you confess your falsehoods!’

VII

The Red Horse was swarming with patrons as the sun sank into the sea. Many were merchants and shop keepers relieving throats dried out by the day’s haggling and cheating. Others were sailors and dockhands, simply trying to drown their bodies in enough drink to make them forget their tired muscles and fatigued frames. A few were none of these things, however. They were of an even harder stock, flint-eyed men who wore armour and weapons, the worn condition of their equipment letting all in the tavern know that they had had cause before to use them, and had been skilled enough to walk away afterwards. These were the mercenaries, drinking their wages as often as their masters would let them slip their leash. One such group of six hardened sell-swords had taken over one of the large round tables that cluttered the main floor of the tavern.

Manfred Zelten stood amidst his men, saluting each in turn with his beer stein. The old veteran Meitz nodded his head and returned the captain’s salute. The wiry marksman Schtafel smiled and made a show of tossing the stein from one hand to the other without spilling a drop of its nearly overflowing contents. The tracker Guglielmo, having no taste for the drink of his cohorts from the Empire, had to employ the clay cup he was drinking dark Reman wine from to return Zelten’s salute. The thick-bearded Horst Brendle managed a semi-articulate grunt from behind his stein as he guzzled down its contents.

‘And let us not forget our friend,’ Zelten said, turning to regard Brunner. The bounty hunter sat beside the mercenary captain, quietly nursing an expensive glass of imported schnapps from Marienburg. ‘Even if he should be back at the palazzo resting his wounds.’ There was more than a suggestion of reproach in the look Zelten gave Brunner.

‘I’ve suffered worse,’ Brunner stated. The truth of it was that his old injury was still stinging his shoulder, reopened by the daemon-creature’s powerful assault, but the bounty hunter was not one to let a little thing like injury interfere with his hunt. There was also a nagging sense of danger tugging at the back of Brunner’s mind. He wasn’t entirely certain what it might portend, but he did know that if it heralded another attack such as he had faced the night before, he would prefer not to meet it alone.

As if sensing the bounty hunter’s thoughts, Guglielmo spoke. ‘You shouldna let old Horst sleep himself off in the Pink Rose. He would be good fellow to have with you with a monster at your throat.’ Horst grunted his assent through the foam of his fifth tankard of the night.

‘I’ve already heard,’ Brunner commented. ‘He’s worth any five men.’

‘He certainly can drink like any five,’ laughed Zelten.

‘And eat like five,’ complained Mietz, rolling his eyes.

‘And wench like five,’ chimed in Schtafel, his voice bubbling with amusement. He looked over at the bear-like man. ‘Horst ever tell you he was the best pit fighter in Middenheim?’ the crossbowman asked, redirecting his gaze at Brunner’s helmet-shrouded face. ‘Oh yes, he was renowned in all the big fighting arenas. He used to draw more people into the Baiting Pit than it could hold. There was a saying on the streets of the city that Horst Brendle had killed more men in Middenheim than the red pox.’

‘So what happened?’ Brunner asked, sensing that Schtafel would go on and on extolling the exploits of his comrade until dawn if left on his own.

‘Ah, that is a story in itself,’ the wiry marksman laughed. Horst shot a sullen, warning look over at Schtafel, but the man continued to speak anyway. ‘One day, Horst is walking down the street and he comes across a preacher, a missionary of Sigmar! In the bastion of Ulric no less! Anyway, Horst is attracted by the mob shouting down the preacher, tossing stones and vegetables at him. Just as he is about to join in however, Horst starts listening to the priest and his words start making sense to him. The preacher is talking about how the people of Middenheim must repent their ways, must cease putting the White Wolf ahead of Most Holy Sigmar. He says that the Day of Doom is soon, and that the people must scour themselves, that through their pain they might atone for their heathen ways and spare their souls being devoured by the Dark Gods when they consume the world.’ Schtafel nodded his head toward Horst and grinned. ‘This idiot bought the whole rigmarole, gave away all his belongings and put on a sack cloth robe, joining the mob of flagellants trailing this preacher across half the Empire.’

‘He was a crackpot, a deluded madman profaning Sigmar’s holy name!’ growled Horst, slamming his stein against the table.

‘I was getting to that,’ grinned Schtafel. ‘So, Horst here follows this lunatic to every pigsty and peasant shack between the Middle Mountains and Mootland for five years. Five years, living on unleavened bread, water and boiled cabbage! No drink, no meat, and no women!’

‘That’s why he indulges himself so much now,’ commented Guglielmo. ‘He’s making up for lost time!’

‘Anyway,’ Schtafel continued, ignoring the Tilean’s interruption, ‘after five years of this, Horst suddenly realises that the world still hasn’t come to an end. The Dark Gods haven’t eaten the sun, the rocks haven’t started to bleed, orcs aren’t singing in Altdorf opera houses, in short, there is nothing to indicate that everything this nutjob has been prophesying is coming to pass.’

‘So I strangled him in the middle of another of his heretical prophecies,’ Horst finished the story, his voice cold and murderous. ‘The others he had deceived didn’t understand what I had done, so I was forced to defend myself against them.’

‘His wits might have been a bit addled after five years of living as a crazed wandering mendicant, but Horst still had sense enough to put as much distance as he could between himself and twenty corpses rotting beside the Talabheim-Altdorf road.’ Schtafel added, draining his own stein. The other mercenaries muttered their own grim chuckles at the recounting of the impressive, if murderous, feat.

Brunner did not share in the merriment of his companions. While Schtafel had been speaking, he had been watching a lean man wearing a leather tunic and an expensive-looking ruffled hat talking to a large, scar-faced warrior with the weathered look of an Estalian about him. The bounty hunter had caught the man in the hat looking over at their table several times over the course of the night. In turn, he had kept an eye on the furtive character. Now he saw the man turn away from the Estalian. The soldier moved toward another table, speaking with a number of armed men sitting there. Brunner watched as the men rose.

‘Trouble,’ he warned his comrades from the corner of his mouth. At once, the laughter and conversation died. Each of the mercenaries stared at the bounty hunter.

‘Where?’ asked Zelten.

‘Ten men, heading our way,’ Brunner answered, not moving. ‘There’s an ugly-looking rogue wearing an Estalian helmet and breastplate at their head.’ The mercenaries looked away, easily spotting the warriors making a path through the crowded tavern. Brunner turned his head and stared at Schtafel.

‘These men were paid,’ the bounty hunter said. ‘There’s a man in a ruffled black hat standing beside the bar.’ Schtafel nodded as he spotted the man Brunner indicated. ‘Whatever else happens, don’t let him get away.’ Once again, Schtafel nodded his understanding.

The warriors had closed almost to Zelten’s table now. The crowd had drawn away from the warriors, as if sensing the coming violence, allowing the hired killers to advance more quickly. Other patrons drew away from the proximity of Zelten’s table, clearing some room for the coming violence to unfold. Closer now, it was obviously apparent that, like Zelten’s crew, these men were mercenaries, displaying a motley collection of races and nations between them.

One by one, Zelten and his men drew their swords, Horst producing the massive chain flail he had employed in the battle with the plague warriors. Brunner rose slowly, dragging Drakesmalice from its sheath. The metal was cold and lustreless, which the bounty hunter took as a good sign. At least these were foes unmarked by the Chaos powers. In his other hand, Brunner held his pistol, drawing concerned looks from the rival mercenaries. At this range, the bounty hunter’s bullet could not help but hit a target.

For several minutes, the two groups stood, glowering at one another in silence. Then a hulking, swarthy man with the bristly moustache and beard of an Arabyan fixed his glaring gaze on Zelten. ‘Sigmar was a drinker of his own piss,’ the Arabyan spat.

With a roar of maniacal fury, Horst upended the table, hurling it at the rival mercenaries. So sudden and intense was the bearded man’s rage that even the goading Arabyan was taken by surprise as Horst exploded into violence. The table smashed against the foremost of the warriors, smashing two of them to the floor. Even as the table was coming to rest, Horst was lunging on top of it, swinging his flail in a brutal arc that crushed a slow-moving swordsman’s jaw, showering the man beside him with blood and teeth.

Brunner fired his pistol as Horst leapt forward, the shot ripping through the throat of a pale-eyed Tilean bearing a cutlass and a duellist’s dagger. The man collapsed into the arms of his nearest comrade, leaving the man exposed to Zelten’s blade. The Reiklander stabbed past the body of the man Brunner had shot, puncturing the other mercenary’s lung. Guglielmo and Meitz moved forward to support their commander, trading sword strokes with a pair of flint-eyed Tileans. In only a few short, vicious moments, the attackers had lost their numerical advantage. That knowledge did not rest easy on their minds, and they fought defensively, with one eye peeled for any chance of escape.

The patrons of the Red Horse were no strangers to violence, many of them practiced mercenaries themselves. Immediately wagers began to sound from several quarters, even as swords, axes and virtually any other weapon conceived by man found their way into callused hands, in the event that the combat were to expand beyond the space the onlookers had allowed it. Behind the bar, the scarred proprietor studied the tide of battle, trying to determine if the potential for damage to his establishment would outweigh the value of whatever loot could be plundered from the bodies of the losers. A handful of more timid patrons trickled out onto the street, suddenly deciding that perhaps it was time to retire for the evening.

Brunner found himself matched with a leather-faced man who looked to be at least partially Estalian, reluctantly conceding that the man was indeed quite capable with the large, notched sword he wielded. The bounty hunter caught a motion out of the corner of his eye and decided that he had no time to play with the swordsman. Brunner let his opponent crush Drakesmalice downward, seeking to trap the blade against the floor. As he did so, the mercenary left himself exposed to Brunner’s left hand. The man sneered as he saw the bounty hunter swing his seemingly empty hand, more than willing to trade a punch for the chance to disarm his enemy. But as Brunner swung, he depressed the catch on the spring mechanism concealed beneath his tunic. The short, sharp blade he had claimed from the body of the kidnapper Ursio shot from underneath Brunner’s sleeve and into his hand, and from there into the soft jelly of the mercenary’s eye.

Brunner turned away from his dying enemy and looked for Zelten. He saw the Reiklander fighting a fair-faced man with the look of Marienburg about his clothes and armour. The two swordsmen were fairly evenly matched, though Brunner could see that the Marienburger was tiring far more quickly than Zelten, putting too much of himself in each strike. A mistake of inexperience rather than skill. Then Brunner saw the swarthy figure closing on Zelten from behind and realised that perhaps the Marienburger had no need of conserving his strength. The Estalian drew his arm back for a stabbing blow to Zelten’s kidneys. The first Zelten knew of the man’s presence was when he screamed, one of Brunner’s throwing knives piercing his neck.

The death of their captain decided the fight. The remaining members of his mob hastily removed themselves from their adversaries, turning and fleeing out of the tavern’s side door. As they left, Brunner took stock of their situation. Mietz was being helped into a chair by Guglielmo, one of the old veteran’s arms covered in bright blood. Horst was crouched over the Arabyan, smashing the man’s face into the floor and snarling into his ruined features to recant his blasphemy before slamming his head once more into the floor.

Zelten wiped the blood from his sword with a rag torn from the sash about the dead Estalian’s waist. The captain looked about the carnage.

‘Schtafel?’ he asked. Brunner nodded to a man quickly making his way through the spectators.

‘Did you get him?’ Brunner asked when Schtafel emerged from the crowd. The wiry man nodded.

‘He made it to the street, but he won’t get far,’ the marksman reported, sheathing his dagger.

Brunner turned toward Zelten. ‘I doubt if our friend with the hat was the mastermind of this attack,’ he said. ‘You can be sure that whoever wants you dead will try again.’

Zelten looked over the dead and dying men strewn about them.

‘Let us hope then that we fare as well next time.’

The dying man stared up into the pale face of the man who stood over him. He reached toward the stranger, but his hand was bloody and the man standing above him drew away, not desiring to stain his long black cloak. The wounded man gurgled a supplication to the black-cloaked figure, but his plea fell on deaf ears. The stranger in the black cloak strode away even as the man with the ruffled hat bled out into the gutter.

He had recognised the dying man, had seen him several times before in the Gambini palazzo. He was General Mandalari’s valet. Briefly the black-cloaked man wondered how the valet had come to meet such a dismal end, then he saw the band of warriors emerging from the Red Horse. They were helping a wounded man into the street. The observer at once recognised Manfred Zelten. That answered his question, then. Clearly Mandalari was moving ahead with his plans. The man in the black cloak considered the fact for a moment then sighed.

He had other friends to help this night. The general would have to wait. The man in the black cloak was careful to walk in the opposite direction to that taken by Zelten and his men. It did not matter, really, there were harlots to be had on any street near the waterfront, and he had yet to meet one that did not become agreeable at the sight of gold.

Not that the woman he engaged this night would ever be spending whatever she was given.

VIII

The man in black released his hold on the harlot’s hand. He reached forward and opened the door that stood before them. By secret paths and hidden doors had he brought the woman here, deep within the Gambini palazzo. No one had remarked their coming.

‘In there,’ the man said, noting the girl’s hesitancy. ‘Do not worry, my master will pay you very well, even if the room is dark.’ The mention of money seemed to dispel much of the girl’s fear. Firming herself, she stepped into the darkened room. No sooner had she crossed the threshold, than the man in the black cloak slammed the door shut. The woman turned, rushing at the door, beating on it with her fists. Outside, in the hall, the dark man held the portal closed, his ear pressed to the panels. He did not want to miss the sound of what would soon transpire.

The harlot beat on the door, trying to escape the trap she had been led into. But it was already too late. There would be no escape. Powerful hands closed about her waist, pulling her away from the door. She screamed, but the sound did not penetrate the thick stone walls of the room. Savagely, she was thrown to the floor. The woman rolled onto her side, slightly dazed from having struck her head against the unyielding floor. Then she felt the deep gash in her side, where the hands had clutched at her, felt the warm blood seeping through her fingers and she screamed again.

In the darkness, her attacker licked the blood from his knife. The taste washed away the torment racing through his body, stilling the skin on his back as it tried to tear itself free from his body. He knew that he would need more, much more to satisfy the agony, to spare him its attentions for a few more days. But there was more blood in the woman, much more. And he would spill every drop.

Outside, the man in dark clothes listened to the sounds of butchery within the room. His friend was indeed insatiable tonight. It would take quite a bit of effort to clean up after him this time. It was just as well that the usefulness of his friend was almost at its end, there were only so many times they could get away with these offerings to the evil within him. With every taste of blood, the darkness grew still stronger within his friend’s soul. Much longer, and it would manifest itself of its own accord. And that would not do anybody any good, least of all himself.

The eavesdropper let a light giggle pass his lips as he heard the slaughter within the room grow still more frenzied. The hour would soon come when sounds such as these would echo across all of Remas.

Some time later, the man in the black cloak crept along shadowy halls. He paused before one door in particular, his pale hand emerging from the dark folds of his garment to softly rap upon the portal. The dark man smiled as he heard sounds of movement within the room. Presently the door opened, revealing the bleary features of Alfredo Gambini.

‘What do you mean, disturbing me at such an hour?’ the nobleman snarled when he recognised his visitor. By way of explanation, the dark man dropped a large sack onto the floor of the corridor. Alfredo swore. ‘Again?’

‘Quite so, quite so,’ the dark man smiled. ‘It was necessary to make a special offering to our lord,’ he explained. ‘The possessed brother you sent to dispose of the bounty hunter was itself destroyed.’

Alfredo’s face grew ashen. ‘Destroyed? How?’

‘I warned you that the bounty hunter was here to assist the temple of thrice-damned Solkan,’ reminded the aristocrat’s visitor. ‘How else would he be prepared to confront a true believer who had married his soul with that of a daemon?’

‘But he was attacked by the followers of Solkan when he first arrived,’ protested Alfredo Gambini.

‘You should be used to the deceits and tricks of the Solkanites by now,’ chided the dark man. He directed a sour look at the aristocrat. ‘But perhaps we can discuss the whys of it later, when you do not have an offering sitting on your threshold.’ The reminder of just what it was that his visitor’s sack contained evoked a haunted look in Alfredo as the nobleman considered how dire events would become were such a thing discovered here.

‘What is it you wish me to do?’ he asked.

‘Take the offering to the temple, and gather the true believers,’ the dark man said. ‘Prepare the ceremony. We must apologise to our lord for the death of his servant.’ The man’s pale hand flipped toward Alfredo in a dismissive gesture. Alfredo hastily withdrew into his room, quickly dressing himself. He reappeared minutes later, stooping to retrieve the heavy sack from the floor.

‘Stay at the temple and make sure that all of the preparations are in order,’ the man in the black cloak stated. ‘I will join you when the ceremony is to begin.’ He paused, smiling once more. ‘I shall be bringing a new initiate to our faith with me.’ The dark man waved his hand again, shooing away the burdened nobleman as he might ward off an annoying dog. Alfredo Gambini scuttled off into the dark, the heavy sack slung over his shoulder.

The dark man watched Alfredo go, then reached beneath his cloak. He withdrew a scrap of cloth from a pocket in his tunic. The cloth was stained by the still wet blood of the murdered harlot. He considered the rag for a moment, then wiped it against the handle on the door to Alfredo’s room. Once he was satisfied that enough blood had been smeared onto the bronze fastening, the man replaced the rag in his pocket. Whistling a morbid dirge in a high, jaunty note, the man slipped away into the darkness.

Princess Juliana Bensario could not sleep. For the past four hours she had paced the floors of her sitting room, trying to decide how she could escape her current dilemma. She had passed the crippled General Mandalari shortly before retiring. As she had walked past the old warmonger, he had slipped her a piece of paper. It was the contents of that paper that had occupied her mind so completely. The general had not veiled his words in flowery script, nor couched them in suggestion and innuendo. No, with the brutal straight-forwardness of a soldier, he had stated quite plainly what he knew, and what he expected of Juliana. In exchange for the general’s silence, Juliana would support the general’s war plans. Otherwise, Prince Gambini would be informed of his bride’s dalliance, the wedding would be called off and Juliana would have to return to Pavona in shame to face the scorn of her city.

So lost in her troubled thoughts was the princess, that she did not hear the hall door of the sitting room open.

‘Princess?’ a familiar voice spoke. ‘I saw your light from the hall. Are you well?’ Princess Juliana looked up to see the concerned features of Corvino staring down at her.

More than any other soul in the Gambini household, Juliana had formed a bond with the fool, attracted by his pleasant manner and sympathetic ear. Perhaps, in her own home in Pavona, she might not have trusted someone so much, but in the still unfamiliar setting of Remas, she had needed a confidant. Had Corvino not aided her in her affair with Manfred? Knowing that the fool was privy to half her problem, she handed him the note from Mandalari, that he might learn the other half.

Corvino quickly read the letter. Juliana watched as the fool’s expression faded from worry to anger and finally to rage. His soft hand clenched into a fist, crumpling the letter, then tearing it into ribbons with both hands.

‘That scoundrel dares threaten you!’ he hissed. The fool’s face had twisted into an animalistic snarl. His eyes met those of the princess and his expression softened. He stepped forward, cradling one of her hands in his own.

‘I shall teach that scheming swine the price for such roguish audacity!’ he declared. He saw the confusion in Juliana’s face.

‘How can you do anything to help me, Corvino?’ she said. ‘You are only a jester. He is a general.’

‘I shall, you will see,’ asserted the fool. ‘I would do anything for you, my lady.’ Corvino dropped to one knee, staring up at the noblewoman with wide, watery eyes. ‘There is nothing a man would not dare for love.’

Juliana recoiled from Corvino, pulling her hand away. She retreated a few paces, as though the fool were a noxious serpent.

Corvino saw the emotions play across her beautiful features. Shock, disbelief, then disgust. It was the last emotion, however, that thrust into the fool’s breast as though it were a dagger. The final feeling that won control of Juliana’s face. Pity.

Corvino rose to his feet, a tear sliding down his gaunt face. ‘I do not presume that you could ever return my affection,’ he confessed. ‘I am no grand prince, worthy of your hand. I am not even a dashing young mercenary captain to win your eye. As you have said, my lady, I am only a fool. All I can expect, all I can ask, is the joy of serving you. That is my honour, that is my reward.’

Juliana tried to compose herself as Corvino spoke. She stepped forward to speak, but the tall fool lifted his hand, motioning for her to remain silent.

‘Let me serve, my lady,’ Corvino begged as he backed away, moving toward the door. ‘That is all I can ask.’ Juliana watched the sorry spectacle of the man trying to recover the scraps of dignity he had worn before entering her sitting room. ‘Allow me to remain near you.’ He reached behind him and opened the door.

‘But, know this,’ Corvino said before slipping back into the hall. ‘The man who troubles you, will not trouble you again.’

Mandalari awoke, staring upward at the canopy of his bed. The old soldier rolled his head, trying to focus on whatever had disturbed his sleep. By degrees, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he began to detect a man’s figure standing beside his bed. The general acted at once, dragging a long knife from beneath the mass of pillows that supported his aged frame.

‘Forgive the intrusion,’ the calm, modulated tones of Mandalari’s spy addressed him, their suggestion of scorn just a bit more pronounced than usual. ‘I have learned things that are of great importance.’

Mandalari relaxed his grip on the knife, staring at the dark silhouette of his agent. ‘Indeed,’ he grumbled. ‘Of such importance that it could not wait until a decent hour?’

‘I fear not,’ the spy stated gravely. ‘I have learned that someone is going to try and kill you.’

General Mandalari’s face betrayed the shock that his spy’s report caused, but quickly the bluster of a man who had faced death on dozens of battlefields rose once more to the fore. ‘Indeed,’ Mandalari snarled. ‘And what is the name of this gallow’s bait that seeks my life?’

‘Someone very close to you,’ the spy replied. The arm of the silhouette swept towards the old general and the mauling force of heavy cold-wrought iron smashed into his chest. The old man was knocked from his bed by the blow, crashing against the floor in a crumpled heap. He moaned, trying to disentangle himself from the bed clothes twisted about his body. His attacker circled the bed, standing over him once more, blood dripping from the iron mace he gripped. The spy smiled down, watching the general’s frantic efforts.

‘It appears you got up on the wrong side,’ the spy said. The general howled in agony as his attacker swung the heavy iron mace at his leg, sending it crunching into the man’s remaining leg with a loud crack. The general turned his shriek into a snarl of rage, clawing at the assassin, who swiftly stepped away. Mandalari tried to twist around, to reach toward the knife lying on the floor near where he had fallen. As he exerted himself, however, he screamed again, his body wracked by frenzied spasms in its attempts to free itself from the twisted sheets that were wound about him like some insect’s cocoon.

‘Now you don’t have a leg to stand on,’ the assassin sighed, watching Mandalari struggle to reach the knife once more. ‘But let’s make certain of that, shall we?’ He brought the mace crashing downward once more, pulverising the already maimed limb once more.

‘Gods’ pity!’ howled Mandalari between screams, his outstretched hand forsaking the knife to clutch at his broken limb. ‘Have mercy, Corvino!’

The fool smiled down at his former patron, the mocking sneer more pronounced than ever before. He sent the mace crashing down again, cracking the general’s ribs. Mandalari howled, bright red drops exploding from his mouth.

‘I warned you about pursuing your plans regarding Princess Juliana,’ Corvino said regretfully. ‘But you wouldn’t listen.’ He swung the mace into Mandalari’s side again. ‘I trust you know better now.’ Corvino let the mace break the general’s arm as the old soldier roared at him and tried once more to gain the knife lying on the floor, then he tossed the weapon away. He walked toward the headboard of Mandalari’s bed, lifting a large object propped against the wall there.

On the floor, the general writhed in torment, his mouth muttering garbled words between groans of agony. Corvino looked down at Mandalari. ‘It is no good calling for your valet,’ he said. ‘I saw him earlier, bleeding his life away in the gutter.’ Corvino snorted with contempt. ‘You couldn’t even manage to kill that mercenary without botching it.’ Mandalari’s eyes grew still wider with horror as he saw what his former spy held.

He lamely reached his hand upward, muttering through his pain-wracked lips.

‘Now now,’ chided Corvino, lifting the heavy wooden leg high over his head. ‘None of that please, I detest long goodbyes.’ The fool brought the claw-footed leg down, smashing into the general’s head. And again. And again… Only when the sound of babbling voices began to drift into the bedchamber from the outer door of his sitting room did Corvino tear himself away from his gory distraction, slamming the wooden limb one last time into the puddle that had been Mandalari’s face.

The fool quickly made his way to the small concealed door he had used to visit Mandalari in his capacity as the general’s spy. Just before slipping into the hidden passage, he glanced back at the general’s mangled body, a mad giggle rasping from his throat.

‘I always said you knew how to put your foot down,’ he laughed, before disappearing into the darkness.

It was two hours after the fight in the Red Horse before Brunner and his companions returned to the Gambini palace. The men had taken the injured Meitz to a doctor dwelling in the district, forcing the leech out of a sound sleep to attend the old veteran. Zelten had refused to leave until he was satisfied that Meitz was past any immediate danger, though the doctor made it a point to remind the mercenary captain of the possibility of infection setting into his man’s wounds.

Meitz had been left to rest in the doctor’s parlour, the Tilean tracker Guglielmo remaining with him to ensure that infection was the only thing that would arise to hinder the warrior’s recovery. The others had left to return to the palazzo, and investigate something Schtafel had observed about the mysterious man who had hired their assailants. The marksman was almost certain that he had seen the man at the palazzo before, attending the crippled General Mandalari.

But whatever confrontation Zelten had been planning between himself and the old general was at once put aside by the scene outside the general’s room. Half the household seemed to be gathered in the corridor, Prince Gambini and Princess Juliana among them. A number of the household guards were forming a barrier between the servants and lesser courtiers and the doorway itself. They made to bar the way for the mercenaries as well, but one look at the grim visages of Zelten and his companions made the men think better of getting in their way.

A small cluster of people were gathered about a shrouded form lying upon the floor. Standing over the body was the dour-faced priest Scurio, his black robe drawn tight about his body. The priest bore a look of solemn detachment, those others around him who had seen the corpse were ashen faced, some showing signs of sickness about their mouths.

‘Poor Mandalari,’ Prince Gambini commented. ‘Whatever could you have done to make someone do this to you?’ The merchant prince shook his head.

‘He is not going to answer you,’ observed the elderly Remaro, leaning against the tall slender figure of Corvino. For once, the fool’s smile was absent from his face, and he was clad only in a long white night shirt, instead of his normally extravagant attire. Corvino patted the old man’s shoulder, trying to soothe him into silence.

‘If my lord will allow,’ Scurio said, bowing before Prince Gambini. ‘It is within my ability to attempt to speak with the spirit of the departed.’ The priest’s dirge-like voice became still more grave. ‘Perhaps he may be able to reveal the identity of his killer. If I could remove the body to the chapel, I have everything I need to perform the necessary rituals there.’

Prince Gambini waved his hand, giving Scurio permission to attempt his ritual. Brunner noted a quick fearful glance that Juliana directed first at Corvino, then at Zelten. The mercenary captain shook his head, trying to assure the princess that he had not been involved in the general’s demise. Corvino’s face, however, remained impassive, even after the frightened, accusing glance the princess had given him. The bounty hunter wondered about this, filing the fact away in his steely mind.

‘I shall perform the ritual at once,’ the priest stated.

Scurio gave instructions to two of the soldiers standing near him to gather up the body. The two warriors walked toward the bed, removing a heavy blanket that had not fallen to the floor along with Mandalari. The mercenaries laid the blanket on the floor beside the dead general and rolled his ruined body onto it. Juliana hid her face as the full extent of the man’s injuries was revealed. Even Brunner was impressed, at once recalling Masario’s description of the slain serving wench in Pavona, a murder that looked like the handiwork of a blood-mad orc. Suddenly the murder of the old general assumed a professional interest for the bounty hunter.

The soldiers each took two corners of the blanket, lifting it and the messy remains of Mandalari from the floor. The prince and the other onlookers parted as the two soldiers followed Scurio from the room.

Prince Gambini looked over at the nearest of his palace guards. ‘I want all the sentries doubled,’ he stated. ‘I want the whereabouts of everyone in this house accounted for. I will find the murdering swine who dared this outrage within my house!’

The prince’s tirade was interrupted as a guard forced his way into the room.

‘My lord,’ the man called out. ‘Your cousin is not within his rooms. We went there to ensure that he was safe, as you ordered, but he was not to be found.’ The guard paused, then added, ‘There was blood on his door!’

This report caused the room to fall silent once more. It was Corvino who broke the quiet. ‘Can it be?’ he asked in a horrified voice. ‘Can it be that Alfredo committed this hideous crime?’

The fool looked over at his master as he voiced the thought, then shifted his gaze to Juliana, favouring her with a knowing look. Brunner noticed the sudden pallor that crept into the woman’s face, the frightened widening of her eyes. There was something here that wasn’t being spoken, something that might prove of profound interest to the bounty hunter.

Prince Gambini considered the fool’s accusation for a moment, then faced his guards once more. ‘Search the palace from gable to cellar! Find Alfredo and bring him to me!’

The soldiers hastened to obey the prince, Zelten and his men departing with them. Brunner stood in the room a moment longer, considering the body for a moment before jogging after Zelten.

‘Well,’ he said as he caught up with Zelten in the corridor, ‘if Mandalari was trying to kill you, he certainly isn’t now.’

Zelten shook his head. ‘Assassins I can deal with. Searching every dark corner of this palace looking for a madman is another matter entirely.’ The Reiklander laughed grimly. ‘This is no work for honest sell-swords and bounty hunters.’

Brunner considered for a moment the look that had passed between Corvino and Juliana, then decided that perhaps it was something entirely unrelated to the murder. Perhaps the princess numbered men other than Zelten among her lovers. After all, he was certain that Corvino had been in Remas when Masario’s serving wench had been butchered. That fact decided him. ‘On the contrary,’ Brunner corrected him. ‘I believe I may have been looking for this man ever since I arrived.’

In the corridor outside the small chapel of Morr within the Gambini palazzo, the once more gaudily dressed Corvino looked down at the young servant standing beside him in the corridor. The fool explained what he wanted in a soft, almost conspiratorial voice.

‘You must take it straight away,’ Corvino said, thrusting a rolled slip of parchment into the boy’s hand. ‘Don’t let anything stop you. It is very important,’ he emphasised, tousling the boy’s short black hair with his pale hand. ‘After all, you wouldn’t want the inquisitor to be angry with you.’ With the warning spoken, Corvino dismissed the boy, watching as his messenger raced along the hall. Nearly every soldier in the palace was hunting for Alfredo; they wouldn’t pay a lone youth too much notice. The awful terror that the Temple of Solkan inspired in the common people of Remas would ensure that even if he were questioned, the boy would say nothing of Corvino’s letter to Inquisitor Bocca.

The fool smiled, whistling a funeral dirge in a disrespectfully jaunty fashion. As he strode toward the chapel, the bells on his staff jingling with his every step, Corvino considered how very quickly everything was falling into line. Poor Mandalari. If the idiot had just taken his advice, the general might have died in a more pleasant manner. A simple knife across the throat, or perhaps a dagger in his heart. But the man simply had to try and threaten Juliana despite everything his valued spy Corvino had warned him of. That had made things a bit less professional between them.

Corvino had already decided that Mandalari had to die, of course. He needed to have some victim for ‘Alfredo’s’ murderous rampage and the general had been the obvious choice. The failed attack on Manfred Zelten had only firmed Corvino’s decision, the crude attempt to blackmail Princess Juliana had made that decision personal. Of course, the general had long ago outlived his usefulness to Corvino’s plans. He no longer needed the general’s contacts and wealth to support his own ambitions. Everything was prepared now, all the pieces in their places. All except for one, the fool corrected himself.

Corvino opened the heavy oak door, stepping into the dark, musty chapel. The room was only dimly lit by the flickering candles set about the altar. Corvino watched for a few moments as the black-robed priest moved around the carcass strewn atop the altar, old piles of rag and canvas sopping up the blood dripping from Mandalari’s ruined head. The priest of Morr was muttering the secret incantations of his order, those sacred mixtures of words and tones that would place Scurio into contact with the soul of the slain man. As he chanted and circled the altar, Corvino could see the priest casting a mixture of grave dust and salt upon the body. There were few people who had the nerve to stand by and watch a priest of Morr conducting his strange, sinister rituals. It was almost like watching a necromancer working his spells. As the fool stood just within the doorway, he could feel the room growing cold, as though all the warmth and life was being drained to power Scurio’s incantation. It was little wonder then that the guards who had brought Mandalari’s body here had not lingered to watch Scurio work his magic.

The fool could see the black-robed priest suddenly stop in his circling of the altar. The candles flickered as their fires began to dim. Scurio stood stock still, staring down at what once was Mandalari’s face. A faint, pale light seemed to be glowing from the corpse. Corvino’s smile broadened as he imagined what the old general might have to tell the priest. Somehow, however, he didn’t think the dead man’s knowledge would be leaving the chapel. Indeed, as fascinating as Scurio’s ritual was, Corvino had little time to waste.

A sharp shrill note echoed through the chapel as Corvino whistled through his fingers. As soon as the sound intruded upon the ceremony, the blue corpse-light vanished, the chill began to lessen and the candles returned to their normal level of illumination. Corvino saw the black-robed figure of Scurio hurry around the altar and come toward him. The fool grinned as he saw the look of fear and disgust in the priest’s eyes.

‘A splendid performance,’ Corvino congratulated Scurio, clapping his hands softly. ‘You should have been a tragedian instead of,’ he paused to allow his face to slip into a mask of mockery and derision, ‘what you are.’

‘Why did you kill him?’ Scurio demanded in a low, harsh whisper, the calm, rigid demeanour of a priest of Morr absent from his voice now.

‘I had nothing better to do with my evening,’ the fool replied. ‘I don’t understand why you are so upset, I didn’t leave nearly so much a mess as you, my friend.’ Corvino put a warning emphasis on his last words.

Scurio looked at the marble floor, fighting against the remorse and guilt welling up within him. Corvino left him to his self-reproach for a moment, then spoke again.

‘I have news that should lift your spirits,’ again, he put a twisted emphasis on the word. ‘All is in readiness for the ritual.’ Scurio looked up, his face lifted into an expression of rapturous joy.

‘When?’ he asked, hands closing about Corvino’s arms. ‘When is it to be? When am I to be free of this daemon that torments me?’ Corvino brushed the priest’s hands from his body.

‘Soon,’ the fool said. ‘This very night! Would you like to go there now?’ Corvino listened for a moment to the pleading, grovelling entreaties streaming from Scurio’s lips, then held his hand up, motioning the man to be silent. ‘I thought you might feel that way. Follow me.’

The fool strode from the chapel, down the marble halls, watching as Prince Gambini’s soldiers continued their search, smiling at their fool’s errand. These men would never see Alfredo Gambini, not on this side of the veil, in any event.

Alfredo Gambini was already where he needed to be, as were all the other pieces in the puzzle Corvino had carefully put together. But the cornerstone of that enigma, the key to the entire plot, that piece of the puzzle, Corvino would put into its place himself.

The fool looked over his shoulder at the dark-garbed priest following after him. Poor Scurio, he thought, he can’t even begin to understand what an important man he is.

Brunner strode toward the gate leading out onto the Great Reman Bridge from the Gambini palazzo, Horst and Schtafel close behind. Brunner had informed Zelten of his suspicions, and had asked that he be given the use of the mercenary’s two soldiers. Zelten himself had insisted on remaining behind, ostensibly just in case Brunner was wrong, but the bounty hunter suspected that concern for the safety of his beloved Juliana was more to blame for the Reiklander’s reluctance to leave the palazzo.

‘And why aren’t we helping search the palazzo for the killer?’ Schtafel asked in a snide voice. ‘I know there was a reason, but it seems too slippery to keep hold of.’ The crossbowman’s flippant attitude faded as Brunner rounded on him, fixing him with his icy stare.

‘Because if he has half a mind,’ the bounty hunter said, ‘he isn’t in there. He had enough time to slip away before anybody thought to go looking for him?’

‘But how does that help us?’ Horst questioned. ‘I mean, how do we know where to even start looking for him?’

‘I’ve been trying to fit things together ever since I arrived in this mixed-up city,’ Brunner said. ‘I have a feeling that Alfredo may have some connection to the thing that attacked me outside the Pink Rose.’ The bounty hunter drummed his fingers on the grip of his pistol. ‘I think it might not have been mere coincidence that the creature I fought was lurking near the brothel.’

‘So that’s where we start our search?’ Horst asked.

‘That’s where we start,’ the bounty hunter stated. ‘I have a feeling that where we wind up won’t be anywhere so pleasant as Madam Rosa’s establishment.’

IX

For many centuries it had stood, just within the innermost wall of Remas, overlooking the cliffs and the sea below. The great Temple of Morr had served the funerary rites of the people of Remas for as long as the citizens could remember, consecrating the bodies of the deceased before dumping them over the wall and into the sea. It was said that the spirits of the dead would guide fish back towards the city, that it was by this custom that the fishing fleets of the city prospered, that their nets were always full. None considered that perhaps the fish were drawn by the free meals each funeral provided them.

There had been times in the past, often when Remas found itself at war with the southern city-state of Luccini, where the Great Mausoleum of Morr was located, when the priesthood of Morr had fallen out of favour in the city. But in the last decades, with the hold of the Temple of Solkan tightening about the city, the worship of the other gods, even of Morr, had become dangerous. Zealous militia in the white robes of Solkan had set fire to the temple, killing most of the priests. In the aftermath of the atrocity, which was publicly condemned by the priests of Solkan, the funeral rites of Remas had been taken over by the Solkanites, altering the rituals to include cremation before casting the ashes into the sea, thereby preventing any impurity in the flesh from tainting the waters which supported the life of the city. The Temple of Morr was never repaired, but was abandoned and forgotten, left to rot beside the wall. Those priests of Morr who escaped the purge sought sanctuary with the houses of the rich and powerful, men who would gladly continue the old traditions if only to flaunt their disdain before the inquisitors.

But if the priesthood of Morr no longer had any use for their temple, there were others who did. Over the course of long years of furtive excavation and laborious nocturnal construction, another temple had been built within the cellars of the first.

It was this undertemple that was now alive and vibrant. Several scores of people danced and cavorted within a massive chamber, hundreds of feet long, its ceiling formed by the stones of the floor fifty feet above their heads. Heavy stone columns flanked the chamber, arching overhead into supports from which dangled colourful pennants and streamers of fur and feather and silk. Upon some of these had been daubed profane symbols, upon others had been painted the outlines of human figures in all manner of poses and lascivious activities. Great bronze pots, filled with oil, were spaced about the chamber, casting a diabolic light about the capering congregation.

The celebrants wore long white robes, their faces masked in parody of the servants of Solkan. But where the robes of the Solkanites covered them almost completely, those of the cultists were loose, slit down the front and sides to expose the sweating bodies beneath. The masks were not just of wood, but of leather and fur and paper, adorned with sequins and feathers and lace. Each suggested an emotion, but all were more passionate and wanton than the faces of stern judgement the Solkanites hid behind. Amidst the dancing celebrants there were some who wove their way among them swinging large censers. From some of these instruments exuded the fumes of an exotic perfume, from others came the stench of animal dung, for fair or foul, both odours excited the cultists equally. From one side of the undertemple, a drummer and a pipe player set a raucous, discordant tune snaking about the columns, exciting the senses of the Slaanesh coven still further.

At the very centre of the chamber, upon a great altar of blackened, burned wood, stood the profane shrine to the power which the gathered throng prayed to. It was a great statue carved from the same light, white wood the Temple of Solkan constructed the masks of its devotees from. But this was no stern-faced god of vengeance: it was something else entirely. Standing nearly eight feet tall, it was the lithe figure of a woman, her belly swollen with life, her hips tilted in sensuous suggestion, wooden breasts drooping about her chest. Yet the head of this vision of depraved lust was not that of a beautiful seductress, but the bovine face of a cow, pointed antelope horns arcing from its brow. It was the Mother of Mystery, a foul relic carved by a madman in Tobaro five hundred years earlier. Now it once more stood before those who gazed upon it with adoration, wantonness, and despair.

Standing before the statue was a man, his face bared before the inhuman idol. He lifted the butchered portions of a human body, smearing the blood from each scrap about the statue’s feet before tossing the meat to the closest of the capering cultists. Like wild beasts, the Chaos worshippers fell upon the discarded offerings, savaging the meat with their teeth, eager to savour the taste of their loathsome repast.

Alfredo Gambini did not linger to watch the ghoulish display, but turned back toward the shrine, continuing to make his offering to the Dark Prince of Chaos, drawing yet another scrap of flesh from the heavy brown sack.

Into the celebrant throng, a tall, sinister figure strode, clad in a costume of red and black checks, the bells upon his staff jingling with every step. Corvino paid no attention to the startled, curious looks the cultists gave him and the man following at his heels. The fool had eyes only for the shrine at the centre of the undertemple and the cult leader standing before it.

Alfredo Gambini met the fool’s stare, then looked past him at the nervous Scurio. The leader smiled. ‘I understood that you had a new initiate to the circle,’ he chuckled. ‘But I did not imagine you would bring us a priest!’

‘Is all in readiness?’ Corvino demanded, his tone short and hurried. ‘You have completed the ritual?’

‘Fear not,’ Alfredo assured the fool. ‘All is in readiness for his initiation. I have just completed the offering to the Mother of Mystery which you were gracious enough to provide me with.’

It was Corvino’s turn to smile now, his face spreading into a corpse-like rictus. He ignored the cultists who drifted forward to remove Scurio’s black priest’s habit from his body, his eyes instead locked upon those of the cult leader. Despite all the hideous rites he had presided over, despite calling daemons from the very pits of the Realm of Chaos, Alfredo felt his pulse quicken as he met the fool’s insane gaze.

‘Excellent,’ Corvino laughed. ‘Now it is time for the game to truly begin!’

Three sets of eyes watched the wanton ceremony of self-indulgence unfold within the great hall beneath the abandoned Temple of Morr. The observers were concealed behind one of the huge stone urns scattered about the undertemple, a sickly sweet perfume rising from the urns’ smouldering contents. None of the men placed much trust in the defensibility of their position should they be discovered. Fortunately, the cultists seemed entirely lost in their own perverse acts, so there was little risk of discovery from that quarter.

‘Now, if temple was a bit more like this, they might have made a Sigmarite out of me,’ joked Schtafel, though there was little humour in his voice. Horst ignored the marksman’s irreverent comment and stared at the bounty hunter.

‘Looks like you were right,’ the bearded warrior growled, stabbing a finger outward, pointing at the altar. ‘That’s Alfredo Gambini lording over this sacrilege.’

Brunner just nodded his head. It had actually taken surprisingly little time for them to find this place, for all that it was supposed to be a secret. The bounty hunter had been certain that there were devotees of Slaanesh in the city, and that Alfredo Gambini was in all likelihood one of them. He also knew that such degenerates were constantly seeking ever deeper levels of depravity to experience, craving new sensations to expose themselves to with the same consuming passion of a weirdroot addict.

He guessed that such human fiends would not be unknown to a place like the Pink Rose, in fact, he supposed that they would be rather notorious. Madam Rosa had been extremely forthcoming when Brunner had told her what sort of individual he was looking for. Exposing the patron to the Temple of Solkan might have given her house a bad name, turning him over to the bounty hunter seemed a more respectable venture, especially since the man wouldn’t be saying anything afterwards. A bit of gold smoothed over the lingering traces of reluctance on her part to point Brunner in the right direction.

The bounty hunter had found the man in an upstairs room, ‘fortifying’ himself before a meeting of his decadent cult. For a man whose doctrine would have him look forward to pain as just another experience to be savoured, it had taken the bounty hunter surprisingly little time to drag the location of the cult’s meeting place from the man’s bleeding lips.

One thing Brunner had neglected to ask the man before he had allowed Schtafel to finish him, had been how many were in his vile little congregation. The bounty hunter had never guessed that there might be so many. Even with the threat of a gruesome execution at the hands of the Solkanites, the lure of Slaanesh was still attractive to the people of Remas.

Brunner looked over at his two comrades.

‘Now that we know he’s here,’ Brunner said, ‘I think it’s time we sent for reinforcements.’ Schtafel eagerly nodded his head at the suggestion, but Horst just continued to glare at the Chaos worshippers, a burning frenzy growing in his eyes. Brunner tugged at his arm. ‘Even if you think you’re Magnus reborn, there’s too many for you,’ he informed the warrior. Then he saw two new figures stride into the unhallowed ritual.

Brunner watched in silence as Corvino led the dark-robed Scurio to the altar. The fool traded words with Alfredo Gambini for a moment, as several cultists detached themselves from the celebration and busied themselves with stripping Scurio of his robe. As they did so, Brunner became stock still, his vision narrowing to include nothing except his view of the priest’s back.

There, in black ink, the long, sinuous length of a fat-bodied serpent had been applied to Scurio’s flesh. The mark of the killer from Pavona. The serpent was the hooded adder of Araby’s great deserts, the style of tattoo clearly the crude and painful needle-work of that southern land.

Brunner watched as the cultists continued to tug Scurio from his robes. The bounty hunter lifted his pistol from its holster.

‘What are you doing?’ hissed Schtafel, eyes wide with alarm.

‘Change of plans,’ Brunner told him. ‘We’re staying.’ Horst Brendle looked over at the bounty hunter and grinned a murderous smile.

Then the undertemple exploded into confusion and carnage.

Inquisitor Bocca stormed into the chamber, his gigantic sword gripped in one hand, the severed heads of the two cultists who had been left as sentries in the ruin above dangling by the hair from his other fist. Around him, dozens of temple militia swarmed into the vast hall. Bocca tossed his gruesome trophies into the midst of the shocked cultists as they faced the intruders.

‘Cleanse this place in the blood of the corrupt!’ roared the inquisitor’s bellowing voice. ‘The Day of Judgement is at hand!’

The cultists were scrambling for weapons or trying to dodge their way around the temple militia as the white-robed fanatics fell upon them, hewing and cudgelling the armed and the defenceless with equal zeal, sparing neither the aged nor the young their righteous rage. Through the carnage, Bocca stormed towards the altar, his sword cutting down any cultist who either in flight or in attack chanced to cross his path.

None of these scum would escape this place. Bocca would present their bodies and the filthy altar before which they worshipped to the temple fathers and the grand inquisitor. It would be a fitting tribute to Solkan, and a momentous note in the inquisitor’s career. Only one thing would make his victory any greater. Bocca turned his gold-masked face from side to side, searching for the one man he would bring before the grand inquisitor alive. Death was too good an end for Alfredo Gambini. At least a quick death.

Brunner observed the Solkanite militia crash into the Slaaneshi cultists like leopards falling upon sheep. The slaughter was horrible, but no better than the depraved cultists deserved. He was disturbed to see the hulking figure of Inquisitor Bocca among the zealots, wondering how coincidental it was that the inquisitor should happen to discover this place only now. There had been entirely too much coincidence occurring in this city since he had arrived.

The bounty hunter swore as he saw three men racing towards the back of the temple. Brunner was not interested over much in what fate might befall two of the men, Corvino and Alfredo Gambini were of no import to him. But the third man, clutching his black cloak about his midsection as he ran, he was of importance to the bounty killer. Brunner leapt from his cover, intent on cutting off Scurio’s escape. Horst followed the bounty hunter’s example, dashing forward to join the zealots in their attack. Schtafel called out after his friend, scrambling out from behind the urn in an attempt to stop Horst’s reckless charge at the Chaos cultists.

Brunner looked over at Schtafel. ‘Watch Horst’s back!’ he told the wiry marksman. ‘I’m going after Scurio!’ Brunner did not give the mercenary a chance to object, racing off into the midst of the swirling battle, trying to keep the fast retreating shape of his prey in sight. A white-robed figure loomed before Brunner and he discharged his pistol into its mask, heedless of whether his shot bore through wood or leather. Neither side in this frantic melee could be considered friendly to the bounty hunter. He replaced the pistol in its holster, relying upon Drakesmalice’s sharp edge to fend off any others that got in his way.

Soon, Brunner was clear of the melee. He could see Corvino leading the other two men down a small stairway at the back of the undertemple, beyond the rear wall, whose opening closed up behind them, leaving only a flat surface of pitted black stone, as though the door in the wall had never been. The bounty hunter swore under his breath, not looking forward to trying to find whatever mechanism controlled the hidden door, still less happy with the time such a delay would give his quarry to escape.

Such thoughts were put aside as a hulking shape in black armour turned toward Brunner. The inquisitor had forsaken the melee, seeking instead to destroy the profane idol of the cultists. But now the war-priest stalked out from behind the altar and its hideous icon, intent on a more personal form of retribution. Bocca’s golden mask silently condemned the bounty hunter as it came around to face him. The cloaked inquisitor’s eyes were like fire behind his mask.

‘You!’ Bocca roared as he saw the bounty hunter. He had not expected to find the man who had escaped him in the plaza only a few days ago here in the Slaaneshi temple, but now that he had, Bocca would only be too happy to visit the vengeance of Solkan upon the wretch. The inquisitor lifted his huge sword in anticipation of what he was certain would be a swiftly decided struggle.

Brunner watched the hulking giant advance upon him from the right, firming his own grip upon Drakesmalice. So intent had he been on Scurio’s fleeing shape, he had not seen the inquisitor straining at the Mother of Mystery, trying to knock it from its altar. Now there was nothing to do but face the imposing priest. He would hardly be able to find the hidden door with an inquisitor of Solkan hacking at him with five feet of steel. It seemed that he should have saved his pistol shot. It looked like he was going to need it.

‘Where are we?’ Alfredo demanded as Corvino lit the only candle in the small, cell-like room to which the fool had led them. Alfredo took quick note of as much of the room as the candle revealed, seeing a dark opening in the far wall that might indicate a passageway. The sounds of battle sounded from overhead, clearly indicating that they were only a few feet below the undertemple. Upon the floor, daubed in dried, crusty blood, was the eight pointed symbol of Chaos.

‘You might think of this as an “under undertemple”,’ Corvino laughed. ‘I had it constructed shortly after I led your cult to this place,’ the fool added, removing a wavy-bladed copper dagger from a pocket within his tunic.

‘Why?’ the cult leader asked, not understanding.

‘We must all have our secrets, must we not?’ Corvino said. He looked past the cult leader to Scurio. The priest had recovered his robe, once more garbed in his black priest’s habit. ‘Scurio, be so kind as to take hold of Alfredo’s arms,’ he calmly ordered the priest. Alfredo struggled in Scurio’s grip, but found the hold upon him surprisingly strong and unyielding.

‘You see,’ smiled the sorcerer, speaking with the superior tone of a lecturer, ‘this is a very special temple. The priests of Morr never desanctified this place, it was still devoted to Morr when your cult profaned it with your first ritual to the Lord of Pleasure. And now I shall doubly profane this place by making an offering which I am certain Slaanesh would find most disturbing.’

Corvino stepped closer, showing Alfredo the skull rune inscribed upon the blade. The Slaaneshi cultist paled as he saw the loathsome symbol of that other power.

‘My friend here, Scurio, is rather unique too,’ continued Corvino. ‘You see, he really is a priest of Morr. He was captured by Arabyan corsairs many years ago, tortured and tormented by them night and day for months on end. He should have died, but in his despair, he called out to any power that would heed him. And one did, though Scurio did not expect the price that power would demand.’

‘Please,’ Scurio moaned, ‘you said tonight was the night! You said tonight I would be free of this evil inside me!’ Scurio could feel the hideous thing that had been inked into his back writhing, crawling under his skin, striving to be released.

‘Quite so,’ stated Corvino. With no further warning, he reached up and ran the dagger across Alfredo’s throat. ‘Blood for the Blood God,’ he snarled into the man’s face. The cultist gargled on his own blood as the crimson liquid bubbled from the wound in a river of red. Corvino observed the blood for a moment, ensuring that most of it dripped into the Chaos star daubed upon the floor. Then the fool turned away, striding over to an iron-bound wooden chest that formed the only visible furnishing in the room. He lifted the heavy lid and removed a small clay jar from within.

Scurio let the dying Alfredo fall to the floor as Corvino returned. ‘You said you would free me!’ he shouted. ‘I can feel the evil swelling within me! You must hurry!’

Corvino smiled at the frantic priest. ‘I shall free you of the evil that has haunted you these many years,’ he said. He directed Scurio to step forward and stand at the centre of the eight-arrow symbol, and the expanding pool of Alfredo’s blood, then the fool handed the priest the clay jar. It was an artefact of great antiquity, discovered in Araby during some long ago crusade and brought back to the Imperial capital of Altdorf. Through General Mandalari’s contacts, Corvino had arranged to have the artefact stolen and smuggled into Remas. Now he would put the object to the use for which it had waited throughout the ages.

Corvino smacked the dagger’s hilt against the lead seal of the jar, each time speaking the Blood God’s name. Scurio’s eyes were wide with horror as he heard the vile sound issue from the fool’s lips. The priest trembled as he held the jar, struggling to keep from dropping the ancient clay vessel. All his hopes depended upon this ritual.

When the dagger struck the lead seal for the eighth time, the old metal crumbled away, falling to the floor in a crusty black ash. The stench of rancid, ancient blood issued from within the jar. Corvino waved his hand at Scurio, instructing the priest to inhale the fumes issuing from the mouth of the clay jar.

‘That’s it!’ crowed the fool, as Scurio breathed deeply of the filthy vapour. ‘You must breathe in as much as you can if we are to solve your little affliction.’ Corvino laughed as he watched the priest struggle to keep from vomiting as the stench filled his lungs. The priest’s trembling grip at last faltered and the old clay jar fell to the floor, shattering within the eight-pointed star drawn upon the floor. A black mist rose from the shards, quickly dispersing.

‘The pain!’ screamed Scurio, clutching at his chest. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he shouted, sizzling as it struck the floor. Corvino continued to smile as he watched the priest’s body convulse in agony.

‘Of course there is pain,’ the fool said. ‘No new life is born without a lot of pain, and much blood.’ Corvino leaned down to stare into Scurio’s face. The man’s eyes were pools of crimson now, sanguine tears rolling down his face. The priest opened his mouth to speak but no sound issued, only a great bubble of black blood. Corvino patted the stricken man’s head, as if consoling a frightened puppy.

‘Poor Scurio,’ the sorcerer said, his voice laden with regret. ‘You can’t imagine how hard it was, finding you, recognising what had made a home within you. Compared to that, finding the old Arabyan jar was a mere conjurer’s trick. Think of it, for the first time since it was vanquished, the spirit of the Mardagg has come into contact with the vessel that holds its essence!’ the fool laughed loudly, paying no heed to Scurio’s hacking cough, or the blood spilling from his mouth. Corvino looked at the shattered clay fragments. ‘Or perhaps I should say the vessel that held the Mardagg’s essence? Seems that it isn’t holding much of anything now.’

Scurio doubled over, crouching on his hands and knees over the ruinous symbol drawn upon the floor. His blood was pouring from him now, as though he was trying to vomit every drop from his body. As the crimson liquid fell on the floor, it steamed, gnawing at the stones like acid. In response, the dried blood that had been used by Corvino to create the eight-arrow symbol began to glow with a hellish light.

‘So very many things to do this right!’ he called down at Scurio, oblivious to the fact that the priest was so far gone in his pain to hear anything the fool was saying. ‘This place, for instance, twice profaned. I don’t think you really appreciate the power of that. And poor Alfredo, a devoted servant of Slaanesh! What better sacrificial offering to attract the attention of Khorne the Blood God than a priest of his most despised rival? Why, even yourself, my dear Scurio, you too were a priest of a rival deity. The spirit of the Mardagg did well when it chose you.’ The fool laughed again. ‘But, then, even before it made a home within your mangy skin, you had ever so much in common. I mean, you both were very interested in death.’ Corvino paused for a moment, deep in thought. ‘Actually, I think that is about all you have in common.’

Scurio reached out, his hand gripping Corvino’s shoe. With an extreme effort, he looked up into the sorcerer’s face. Though no words emerged from his mouth, Corvino could easily understand the word the priest’s dripping face mouthed. It was a last, desperate plea for help. The fool shook his head.

‘I’m afraid that it is much easier to free the evil of you rather than you of the evil,’ the fool explained. Scurio groaned, falling onto his face within the eight-pointed symbol. ‘You did a very nice job of feeding it all these years, fattening it up on blood. Your filthy evil little body is just the thing to house a daemon after it has been locked up in a nasty old jar for a thousand years or so.’

Corvino watched with eager eyes as the blood gurgling from Scurio’s wound began to thicken and darken. Soon the priest’s body began to twitch beneath its cloak upon the floor.

The fool leaned down, reaching toward the hand clutching his shoe. The skin was already beginning split, cracking open like the fabric of a moth’s chrysalis. The flesh beneath was wet and gleaming, withering even as the bones beneath began to swell. Corvino brought the dagger raking across one of the fingers, cutting it free. He gripped the digit and cackled at the mutating body at his feet.

‘Now I shall lead and you must follow,’ he told the growing shape on the floor. Corvino dashed towards the passage at the rear of his sanctum. The daemon was now bound to its host body, all of its host body. Even removed from Scurio, the finger was still a part of him, and the daemon a part of it. The Mardagg would be drawn after the severed digit, tracking it like some loathsome hound, compelled to find it by an all-consuming compulsion. Of course, the daemon would need blood to keep it from decaying while it hunted down its finger. But in a city as large as Remas, Corvino did not think it would have any trouble satisfying that need.

‘I shall lead and you must follow,’ he laughed again, before slipping into the dark tunnel. The passage came out very near the Great Reman Bridge, he would be back inside the Gambini palazzo within only a score or so minutes. The daemon, however, would use a different route. After a thousand years of cold captivity, its spirit wandering from one madman to another, Corvino knew that it would be in no mood to hide and slink in the shadows. It would find a route that would allow it to appease its hunger. And where it walked, so too would walk death and destruction on a scale the city had never seen.

Corvino considered this to be a rather wonderful bonus to all his plans. Oh yes, the fool thought as he ran down the subterranean tunnel, there would most assuredly be a hot time in old Remas tonight.

X

Old Remaro Gambini sat within his bedchamber on one of the upper floors of the palazzo. The elderly man stared at the wall, not seeing it. After being led to this room, his mind had deserted his surroundings, focusing instead, as they had so often in the last few years, upon his son. He had known the secret since the beginning, and had borne it stoically for decades. But now, as his life began to ebb from his tired old bones, Remaro found that the secret was crushing him, squashing him like an insect under the hoof of an ox. It was choking him, robbing the air that filled his lungs of its sweetness. He should never have agreed, should never have allowed it to happen. But he had, and it was far too late to try and undo what had been done.

Still, to have his son gaze upon him, looking upon him as a son should look at his father, now that seemed to be the only thing he wanted out of his life, the only thing that could allow him to rest easy in his grave.

‘Are they still looking for Alfredo?’ a quiet voice asked. Remaro swung his head around, watching as the red and black clothed Corvino emerged from the depths of his wardrobe. There was a secret door in that closet; Remaro wondered how the fool had come to learn of it. The old man smiled at Corvino, the only man in the palazzo who seemed to listen to him any more.

‘I’m afraid they won’t find him,’ the fool sighed, flopping down into a chair. As he did so, Remaro noticed that there was blood on Corvino’s clothing. Seeing the old man’s reaction, the fool realised what he’d seen. ‘I apologise, uncle, I must present such a sight.’ The fool pointed at his sleeve, the red fabric stained a darker hue. ‘That, I believe, is Scurio.’ He pointed to a large splotch across his chest. ‘This, I’m afraid, is Alfredo.’ The old man stared at him stupidly, as though wondering why he should be concerned by the death of Alfredo. ‘I might still have some Mandalari on my shoes,’ he quipped, hopping to his feet.

All at once, something Corvino had said registered within Remaro’s addled mind. The old man’s eyes bulged with horror, as if seeing the fool for the very first time, seeing him for what he truly was. Corvino’s smile spread into the grinning rictus of a skull.

‘Very good,’ he hissed. ‘I was wondering when you’d come around.’ Remaro turned to scurry to the door, but Corvino was on him in an instant, tossing him to the floor with contemptuous ease. The fool brought the edge of his staff cracking into the old man’s head, opening a gash in his scalp. Remaro’s trembling hand patted the flowing crimson.

‘I must insist that you stay, dear uncle,’ Corvino snarled. ‘There is a reckoning between you and I. It can’t be delayed any longer, dear brother of my father.’ The fool lashed out again with his staff, cracking the old man in his ribs. ‘Usurper!’ he spat.

‘It was the only way,’ Remaro gasped. ‘You were born…’

‘I know what I was born!’ shouted Corvino. ‘Do you think you need to tell me of my deformity, of the stamp of ruin upon my body? How my father must have cursed all the gods when he saw me! So proud to have sired a son, an heir, until he saw that clawed foot at the end of my left leg!’

‘He killed your mother before I could stop him!’ Remaro exclaimed. ‘But you I saved! You were only a babe, I couldn’t allow him to kill you.’

‘So you proposed a trade? Your son for my father’s?’ Corvino sneered maliciously as he saw the pained look on Remaro’s face. ‘Ah, I see, it was he who proposed the substitution. It must have seemed such a good deal, one mutant whelp for the security of your son, for letting little Giovanni inherit the title, the property, the position! How that must have pained you, dear uncle, to in one instant make your line the future of the house Gambini.’

‘Do you think it has been easy?’ Remaro asked. ‘To see my son every day, to watch him grow before my very eyes and never be able to acknowledge him as my son?’

‘You could have kept me,’ Corvino pointed out. ‘But, no, what would the Temple of Solkan say if one of our enemies were to tell them that a Gambini had sired a mutant? We couldn’t risk that, any more than we could risk my ever learning who I was. Ever discovering that I am Umberto Gambini!’

‘He wanted you destroyed,’ Remaro said, reaching toward Corvino. ‘It was I who sold you to a travelling band of Strigany entertainers. It was I who got you away from your father’s bloodlust.’

Corvino smiled down at the old man. ‘Then I have much to thank you for,’ he said. ‘The Strigany sold me in their turn. They saw my… disability… and sold me to a sorcerer. He reared me as his apprentice, but he was more deserving of the title “fool” than I have ever been. Through his dark arts, he learned who I was. Through his stupidity, I learned who I was. When I had learned enough from him, I left, stealing what I would need to work my vengeance.’ Corvino lifted Remaro back to his feet. ‘You see, I’ve come home to claim my kingdom!’

Corvino looked down at the front of his tunic. The cloth was moving, as something within one of the inner pockets wriggled against his shirt. He looked back at Remaro, this time his smile was neither cruel nor mocking, but apologetic. ‘It was a very potent ritual I stole from my teacher, uncle, a spell that even he did not dare contemplate. Sadly, it is well under way now, and I have much to do before my guest arrives.’ Corvino suddenly whipped the length of his staff against the floor in a savage, one-handed motion, snapping it in half. He lifted the upper portion, staring at the goblin head and its jingling bells. ‘If I don’t want the daemon to cheat me, I have to finish this now!’

‘Not my son!’ wailed Remaro as Corvino drove the bronzed head of his staff against the old man’s head. For a minute or so, Remaro struggled against the fool’s assault, but at last he choked, slumping to the floor.

‘Oh, most certainly your son,’ the fool told the corpse as he walked away. ‘He presumes that everything that belongs to me, belongs to him. I simply have to correct that delusion.’ Corvino paused as he opened the door, tapping his chin contemplatively.

‘But first I think I’ll go claim my bride.’

Brunner staggered back as the inquisitor’s sword struck his blocking blade. The bounty hunter snarled, feinting an overhand return, then swiping low toward the inquisitor’s knees. Bocca second-guessed his adversary, and once more Drakesmalice crashed against the man’s intercepting steel. Brunner stepped away to recover and instantly Bocca was following through with his own attack. Brunner barely managed to avoid the murderous downswing of the inquisitor’s blade, dancing backward just as the priest’s steel flashed past his face. The bounty hunter did not have time to consider this latest in a series of narrow escapes, for Bocca was already swinging at him once more.

He had expected Bocca to be no mean hand with a sword, but Brunner found himself woefully outclassed by the fanatic. The bounty hunter had fought all manner of swordsmen in his time, from the most skilled to men who would have been better off using a farm tool to defend themselves. Generally, the more practiced swordsmen were cool, calculating men, taking the measure of their foe and awaiting their chance to strike at some opening in their defence. Bocca was a different sort of creature entirely. He had the knowledge and instincts of a fencing master, but these skills were suborned to his fanatic lust to spill the blood of heretics. The inquisitor threw himself completely into the attack, trusting to his thick black armour to guard his body from any attacks that an enemy might manage to strike at him.

It was a deadly combination, Brunner could only think of a trained bear from Kislev he had seen once that some lunatic had taught actual wrestling moves, filling the brute mind of the animal with the knowledge that would allow it to exploit its bulk and strength to its best advantage. Bocca was no less a monster than the bear had been, a blood-crazed animal devoting its learning toward one solitary goal, restraint and self-preservation cast aside in a fit of bloodlust. He was just the sort of man Brunner would never have chosen to face in close combat. If ever there had been a man meant for a crossbow bolt or a pistol shot, that man was Bocca. Brunner would have laughed if he had enough wind to do so. The way things were looking, the inquisitor might not have gone down if Brunner had fired a cannonball into him.

The bounty hunter had already attempted several times to tip the odds back into his favour. He had stabbed at the inquisitor’s knee with one of his knives early in the fight, but the war-priest’s thick armour had deflected the thrust, causing Brunner’s knife to sink into Bocca’s calf rather than the vulnerable tendons of his knee. Later, exploiting a brief opening, Brunner had driven the slender stiletto concealed within the sleeve of his tunic into the inquisitor’s neck, but the slim blade had again missed the intended target, striking the edge of Bocca’s armour and snapping like a twig.

The inquisitor showed no sign that he was becoming fatigued by the long battle, nor any trace of concern or impairment from his leg wound. The bounty hunter only wished that he could say the same. It was becoming an effort for him to maintain the speed and strength required to meet and match the fanatic’s blows. Brunner cursed whatever unnatural power kept the inquisitor from tiring like any normal man.

The gold mask of the zealot considered Brunner with its unmoving, disapproving face, the eyes staring from behind it burning with a feral fury. There was triumph in that mad gaze, and Brunner knew that unless he thought of something to upset the tide of the contest soon, that triumph would not be long in coming.

Suddenly both of the combatants staggered as the ground beneath their feet shuddered. Brunner recovered first, but even as he lashed out at the inquisitor, the floor rumbled again, nearly knocking the bounty hunter from his feet. It was as if a giant steam-hammer was pounding on the floor from below. Bocca stared at the floor for a moment, then tried to steady himself as it shuddered yet again.

Brunner began to warily back away from the disturbance, eyes locked on the black-garbed inquisitor. Bocca saw his enemy withdrawing and began to follow, his huge sword held upward at his side. Yet the gold-masked priest had taken no more than a few steps when an even greater tremor rocked the undertemple. The sound of tearing stone screamed across the vast hall, dust and chunks of rubble exploding from a great rupture in the floor.

A thick, sanguinary stench billowed upward from below, causing many of the surviving cultists and temple militia to retch, all thoughts of battle momentarily slipping from their minds. A dark shape loomed up through the hole, a black silhouette within the stone dust. A miasma of dread rolled across the chamber like a tide of terror. Moans of despair and screams of fright sounded, echoing from the walls and the ceiling high above.

Brunner watched as a shape strode forward from the dust. The bounty hunter could make out little more than a shadow within the murk, but what he could see added to the air of dread that suddenly filled the hall. The shape was huge, looming up at least twelve feet above the floor, its frame gaunt and scrawny for such an imposing height.

It had been some time since the bounty hunter had known fear. He had never known terror such as gripped him now, as the monster emerged from the shadows and the daemon’s ancient aura of merciless evil washed over his soul.

Juliana considered the chaotic turn events had taken in the last few hours. Mandalari was dead, and the prince’s cousin appeared to be the killer. Things were happening much too fast for her to handle. She was used to politicking and double-dealing from her life in the Bensario palace, but all those years of learning how and who to manipulate had never prepared her for this!

The princess tore at the cloth clenched in her delicate hands, trying to work the tension from her body into the tortured rag. The thought that a madman might even now be prowling the halls of the palazzo made her skin crawl. Prince Gambini had posted five men outside her door, however. Even a madman would have a hard time getting to her through that many guards.

‘You look ravishing this evening,’ a familiar voice spoke from behind the princess. Juliana spun around, shocked by the unexpected voice. She was greeted by the sight of a smiling Corvino emerging from a panel in the wall, a secret door whose existence Juliana had never even guessed. There was blood on his checkered clothes, and an ugly glimmer in his eyes. The princess gasped, licking her suddenly dry mouth. She’d been upset enough pondering her own private suspicions regarding who had killed the old general. Now the subject of those thoughts stood before her. She began to tremble as she saw the mad gleam in Corvino’s eyes. It was like facing some rabid animal, a deranged, unpredictable beast that might pounce at any instant.

Juliana tried to control the trembling in her limbs, tried to calm her breath, lest her agitation disturb the lunatic. Slowly, carefully, Juliana backed away from the fool.

‘But, then, brides always look beautiful on their wedding day,’ Corvino said, walking around the divan upon which Juliana had been sitting.

‘What do you want?’ the princess demanded, though somehow she could not quite force any real measure of authority into her voice. She continued to back away as the fool advanced.

‘Why, I have come for you, my love,’ he said, reaching his pale hand out to her. There was blood on his wrist, blood on his sleeve. ‘You do intend to marry Prince Gambini, do you not?’ Juliana cringed away from the mad gleam in his eyes, and only then realised her mistake. She had allowed herself to be backed into a corner, away from the outer door, where the guards were positioned.

‘Prince Umberto Gambini? That is the man you are going to marry?’

‘Please, Corvino,’ she sobbed, wondering if she dared provoke the man by screaming for help.

‘Corvino?’ the fool asked, touching his hand to his breast. ‘Why, there is no one of that name! There never was! I am Prince Gambini, Prince Umberto Gambini! I am the real prince! That man you thought to marry was but an impostor, a usurper! I am the man you want!’

Juliana tried to run towards the door, but the fool was quicker, grabbing her wrist in a vice-like grip.

‘Oh yes, it is true,’ Corvino assured her. ‘I’ve just spoken to my treacherous uncle about it at some length.’

Juliana started to scream, but Corvino’s other hand closed upon her mouth. With her free hand, the princess tried to rake her attacker’s eyes, but Corvino leaned away from her clutch, causing her hand to tear at his tunic instead. Something fell on the floor, wriggling upon the rug. Juliana stared at it in horror, too frightened even to scream when Corvino removed his hand from her mouth.

It was a severed finger, enormous and skeleton-thin, the bone-like length of it a dark red, like old blood. And it was alive, wriggling on the floor like some hideous worm. It struggled in Corvino’s grip as the fool retrieved it.

‘We really must hurry,’ Corvino told Juliana as she passed out. The fool stepped forward, catching her body as she swooned. He stared down at her, patting a lock of hair away from her face. ‘You see,’ he added as he replaced the loathsome finger within one of his pockets, ‘the priest is already on his way.’

It stood twice the height of a man, shrouded in what looked like the black hooded habit of a priest of Morr. The long garment only reached to its waist, the legs beneath it standing bare. They were thin, little more than bones, as were the long arms that extended from the sleeves of the robe. The skeletally thin limbs were the colour of blood, seemingly composed of a slimy sheen of gore. The face that stared from beneath the cowl of the priest’s habit was that of a skull, though it was no such skull as any clean creature had ever been born to. The jaw was long, the teeth pointed fangs each three inches long. Bony growths resembling hound-like ears rose to either side of the skull, disappearing into the depths of the cowl. Like the rest of the apparition, the skull too was red, composed of a glistening, writhing sheen of blood.

The daemon turned its head slowly, causing drops of blood to fall from its face, sizzling upon the stone floor. The sockets of its eyes were empty, filled only by a black vacancy, yet Brunner could feel the homicidal hatred of the daemon’s stare surging from those dark, empty pits.

The daemon uttered no sound as it inspected the undertemple. Solkanite zealots and Slaaneshi cultists alike stood in a horrified silence, eyes locked upon the ghastly shape, terror numbing legs that wanted nothing more than to flee, to run until the walls of Remas were many leagues in the distance.

The daemon took a step forward, sizzling blood dripping from its body. The sight of the monster moving dispelled the paralysis gripping the onlookers, and as it stepped forward, they took a collective step back. The abomination seemed to notice their reaction, and it extended its bony arm. Gleaming blood began to boil around its hand, extending in either direction from the skeletal claw. The blood began to solidify, to take on a shape of its own. Soon, a gleaming scythe composed of the daemon’s otherworldly substance was gripped firmly in its claw.

Screams sounded once more and the onlookers fled as the daemon resumed its unhurried advance. Cultists scrambled alongside militia, forgetting their mutual hatred in their desperation to escape the nightmarish being. Only one man retained his courage in the face of the baleful manifestation. Inquisitor Bocca firmed his grip on his sword, stepping into the path of the skeletal daemon.

‘Test my faith, filth!’ Bocca cried up at the horror. ‘I shall let the city of Mighty Solkan be profaned by neither man nor hell-sent abomination!’

Brunner had to admit it was a display of bravery as immense as any lie he had ever heard recorded in legend and song. The bounty hunter turned, hurrying toward the stairs that led to the abandoned Temple of Morr high above. Unlike the legends, he didn’t think Bocca’s heroic stand was going to fare very well.

The Mardagg stared down for a moment at the defiant mortal who stood in its path. The daemon gave Bocca no more thought than a steer swatting flies with its tail. The sickle-bladed scythe of the Mardagg descended in a swift, murderous arc. Bocca did not even have time to understand that he had been killed as the daemon’s weapon clove through his thick steel armour as neatly as a knife through cheese.

The upper half of the inquisitor was hurled across the chamber by the force of the blow, crashing against the wooden altar, causing the Mother of Mystery to splinter, such was the intensity of his impact. A stream of blood sprayed upward from his severed waist for a moment, like some macabre fountain, before his muscles relaxed and the dead man’s legs fell to the floor.

The Mardagg strode onward, crossing the hall of the undertemple. Like all creatures of the Blood God, it was attracted to the sounds of conflict, to the smell of blood. It had been unable to resist the combat unfolding just above its head as it consumed Scurio’s body, once more manifesting itself in flesh. But now, it felt another pull, something else drawing it onward.

The daemon’s claw flexed, feeling the absence of its severed digit.

It would reclaim its flesh from the fool who had called it into being. And then it would complete the task it had started long ago, offering the lives of all upon the peninsula to Khorne.

Brunner was astonished to find Schtafel and Horst waiting for him in the street just outside the ruined temple. The bearded mercenary was injured, a gash running along one side of his face, courtesy of a temple militia man. Schtafel supported his friend. Both mercenaries gave a sigh of relief when they saw the bounty hunter emerge.

‘Praise be Myrmidia!’ exclaimed Schtafel. The wiry marksman was pale as a corpse, his hands trembling. Brunner considered that it would probably take such a shock to make the warrior show a religious streak.

‘What are you two doing here?’ demanded Brunner.

‘Horst wouldn’t leave without you,’ explained Schtafel. ‘What the hell is that thing?’

‘Some devil from the very heart of Chaos!’ Brunner answered. He reflected upon the black cloak the daemon had worn, and where he had seen that garment last.

‘Get Horst somewhere safe,’ Brunner told the crossbowman. Schtafel started to scuttle off down the street.

‘What about you?’ Schtafel asked, looking back.

‘That thing isn’t going to stay down there,’ Brunner stated in a grim voice. ‘I think I know where it is heading, and if I’m right, somebody had better go and tell Zelten!’

The mercenaries might have pressed him further, but the sound of stone crashing within the ruins of the temple brought a renewed look of terror to Schtafel’s pale features and the marksman began to hurry away with all the speed the cumbersome weight of Horst would allow.

Brunner looked over at the temple. The sounds of destruction continued. The bounty hunter could easily guess their origin, as the daemon kicked the rubble from its path. He could feel its intense aura of evil, of bloodlust emanating from the ruins. In his hand, Drakesmalice could sense the immense Chaos energies of the monster as well, the blade glowing red-hot. Brunner knew that the ancient sword had been forged for the Great War against Chaos, that upon it had been worked potent spells to smite the creations of the Ruinous Powers. But a sword was only as good as the hand that held it, and against such a monstrous, unnatural foe, the bounty hunter did not trust his own resolve.

People were starting to appear in the street now, wondering what had caused so many temple militia and masked revellers to race past their homes. They murmured amongst themselves in whispers of wonder as a dark shadow began to move within the temple. A few, the smartest, began to back away. Brunner did not linger to wait for the Mardagg to emerge onto the street, but began to sprint along the street, dodging past the citizens who now cluttered it. He did not know how long he would have to reach the bridge and the Gambini palazzo, but he felt that it would not be long.

Behind him, as if to confirm his suspicions, screams began to echo from around the old temple.

Prince Umberto Gambini stormed down the wide staircase, a dozen of his guards behind him. The aristocrat’s face was one of sullen rage. Things had been going so well only the previous day. Now his military advisor and commander of his household guard was dead; his own cousin, the apparent killer, missing, possibly hiding somewhere within his own house. Now a messenger had arrived from the garrison at the bridge gate informing him that sentries standing watch in the tower had reported what appeared to be some sort of riot spreading from the old Temple of Morr, and advancing toward the bridge. The prince was not sure which god had decided to heap misfortune upon him, but he swore that he would have the faith proscribed within the walls of the city.

Prince Gambini was almost at the base of the stairs when a low, solemn note echoed along the marble halls. The nobleman and his soldiers looked down the passage, wondering if they had indeed heard what they thought they had heard. The note sounded again, confirming their first impression.

‘I’ll wring the neck of whatever dolt is ringing the alarm gong!’ snarled Prince Gambini, racing off down the hall, all thoughts of riots and bridge guards momentarily pushed aside.

The alarm gong was located within the palazzo’s great hall, the room in which the prince held court and strove to impress petitioners and enemies alike with his wealth and authority. The floors were covered in expensive Arabyan rugs, the walls covered in tapestries depicting great moments in the history of the Gambini line. At the centre of the chamber, upon a small dais, stood a throne of dark wood, supposedly brought from the forests of Ulthuan, the scrollwork upon the carved armrests and back detailed in silver. Beside the throne, the heavy bronze gong was still vibrating from the final blow struck against it.

Others had heard the sound and when Prince Gambini arrived, he found a large number of servants and mercenaries already gathered there. He also saw the smiling figure seated upon the throne, one leg dangling over the armrest, swinging in the air, one hand idly toying with the hammer with which the gong had been struck. Seeing the beautiful woman sprawled at the base of the chair, the outraged nobleman surged forward, only stopping when a powerful grip took hold of his arm and restrained him.

‘No, my lord,’ Manfred Zelten spoke into the prince’s ear. ‘He’ll kill her if you try to approach him.’ The prince stared angrily into the mercenary’s face, then tore his arm free of Zelten’s grip, but did not try to advance toward the throne.

‘Ah, there you are!’ crowed Corvino, tossing the hammer away over his shoulder as he sighted the nobleman. ‘I was beginning to think you’d never get here!’ The fool shook his head. ‘I don’t think we’ll be able to make anything of someone with such poor notions of time-keeping. I don’t think you’d even make a good fool!’ Corvino laughed, a soulless, grating sound devoid of reason and humanity.

‘You scum!’ bellowed Prince Gambini, drawing his sword and once more advancing on the throne. With a speed even an elf might have envied, Corvino whipped out a long copper dagger, aiming its point downward at the throat of Juliana, lying sprawled and unconscious at his feet.

‘Don’t force me to do something I’ll regret later,’ Corvino threatened. ‘I have other plans for the princess, I’d hate to have to change them.’ Prince Gambini lowered his sword, meeting the mad gaze of the fool.

‘What do you want?’ he asked, his voice filled with defeat.

‘What do I want?’ repeated Corvino. He looked around the room, then back at the prince. ‘Why, everything, right down to the fleas in the kennel.’ The fool’s jovial tone slipped into a murderous growl. ‘But for now, all I want is for everybody to just stay where they are, like nice little statues.’ The death’s head grin spread across Corvino’s face once more. ‘I am expecting company.’

At that instant, a soldier from the gate rushed into the chamber. The man stopped short when he saw the curious scene, but soon recovered from his surprise. Putting his questions aside, he ran to the prince.

‘Prince Gambini!’ the man exclaimed. ‘There is a daemon loose in the streets! It is herding the people towards the bridge, cutting them down like wheat!’ The man’s voice dropped into a frightened whisper. ‘My lord, they say it is the Mardagg!’

Brunner rushed toward the gate of the Great Reman Bridge. The sounds of horror, madness and death rising from the streets behind him had been growing louder and more terrible the farther he had run. Ironically, the sounds were drawing more and more people from their homes and onto the streets. A single scream might not disturb the people of Remas, but this sort of clamour was entirely unique in a city where the Solkanites kept things peaceful and quiet. And because it was so unique, curiosity, not fear took hold of the people, at least until they saw the source of the panic for themselves.

At first, the crowds had kept ahead of the daemon quite easily, and its slow, steady gait had been easy to distance. But as the crowd fled, they increasingly came into the unyielding bodies of other citizens, ones who had not seen the monster and wondered what the commotion was about. They stubbornly refused to move, and in their desperation to get past, the frightened crowd had come to blows with those who stood in their way. The flight had degenerated into a desperate brawl. And as the conflict grew in violence and vigour, the daemon had hastened its steps. The Mardagg struck the rear of the terrified herd of human cattle, lashing out with its scythe, cutting men in half with every sweep of its weapon. The image was like some diabolic parody of a farmer harvesting his crop as the Mardagg cut its way through the field of struggling bodies filling the street before it.

Those who by chance or design managed to get out of the line of the Mardagg’s path did not entirely escape the daemon’s horrible presence. Many were driven mad by such close proximity to a being of such timeless malevolence and terror. Others suffered an even more virulent madness, as drops of sizzling blood fell from the daemon’s body, burning into their flesh. All who were so marked became ravening beasts, falling upon those around them with clawing hands and gnashing teeth, only the urge to kill left within their maimed minds. In the wake of the daemon, mobs of crazed killers loped off into the streets of Remas to spread terror and death throughout the city.

Brunner was certain that he knew where the hideous abomination was heading. The stairs the bounty hunter had seen the three cult leaders escape by had led downward, the very direction from which this nightmare horror had emerged. Brunner suspected that it was one of them, in a desperate effort to destroy Bocca’s men, who had summoned the daemon. And if a creature summoned by any of those men was now heading toward the bridge, there could be only one place its destination could be. Perhaps it was even, in a twisted sense, going home. The black robe hanging about the monster’s upper body was all too similar to the robe of a priest of Morr. That seemed to confirm Brunner’s suspicions as to what the daemon had once been. The prospect of bringing Scurio to Pavona did not look very feasible now.

Brunner rushed to the iron bars of the gate between the towers that blocked the entrance to the bridge. The fleeing mob was not so far from him now, only a few dozen yards. The guards at the gate were barring the portals against the seeming riot. The bounty hunter hastened his gait, slipping through just as it was closing. The guards on the other side closed upon him, spears aimed at his chest.

‘I bring a report on the cause of the riot for Prince Gambini!’ Brunner declared as he recovered his breath. The guard captain cast him a suspicious look, but at that instant the foremost of the fleeing citizens crashed into the gate, clawing at it and screaming for entrance. The captain was too busy snarling demands at the frightened wretches and orders to his men to trouble himself any further with the bounty hunter. As Brunner resumed his sprint, he could hear new screams sounding from behind him. The captain, fearing that the panicked citizens would topple the gate by sheer weight of numbers, had ordered his spearmen to begin stabbing their weapons through the bars. If the Mardagg had hastened its stride to indulge in the violence of a duel, Brunner did not want to consider how much more eager it would be to reach the site of this atrocity.

The bounty hunter sprinted across the bridge, trying to ignore the sounds of death and terror rising from the distance. The bridge was alive with activity. Soldiers were pouring out of several of the palazzos, some hurrying toward the towers and the iron gate, others forming up around the families of their noble lords as the merchant princes hurried toward the opposite side of the bridge. Dozens of servants, their arms burdened with chests, sacks, and all manner of other containers filled to bursting with the valuables of their masters scuttled across the bridge, sometimes beside the entourage of their masters, other times doing their best to put distance between themselves and some shouting nobleman.

Brunner saw a dozen men trying to run towards the far shore while straining to carry a massive bronze sculpture, some art treasure their master was not willing to leave behind, even with a horrible daemon stalking ever nearer his door.

Other palazzos were being sealed shut, armed soldiers forming up within the gates, marksmen leaning from every window. At least some of the rulers of Remas were not going to abandon their homes without a fight. A small band of mercenaries was even removing a small cannon from one of the guard houses scattered across the bridge, moving it into the centre of the span, in anticipation of the monster’s breakthrough at the gate.

The gunners did not have long to wait. The screams had risen to a hellish din, wailing sobs of mortal terror that could be heard even on the opposite side. Then the screams faded and in their place there came a dull, echoing thump, a tremendous blow struck against the iron gate. Brunner could hear the frenzied shouts of the guards at the gate and the mercenaries who had run to their position to support them. Every back was straining to hold the gates before that which knocked upon them, the mortal strength of scores of men pitted against the power of the daemon.

It was not enough. The thunderous boom sounded once more as the Mardagg beat upon the metal portal with its bony, club-like fist. The soldiers were pushed back as the gates sagged inward. The men desperately reasserted themselves, pushing the portals back, stark terror now giving them an impossible strength. Still it was not enough. When the daemon knocked a third time, the gates broke open, spilling soldiers onto the flagstones of the bridge. The Mardagg stood for a moment framed in the gateway between the two towers. The guards and mercenaries stared up at it, every man shuddering with horror.

Then the daemon ducked its hooded head and stepped onto the bridge.

Some of the soldiers tried to fight, jabbing at the Mardagg with spears, pikes, halberds and swords. A small group of hackbut men fired on the abomination with their rifles, though more of their shakily aimed shots struck fellow mercenaries than found the unnatural flesh of the daemon. Other soldiers ran at all speed away from the monster, cutting breastplates free of their bodies with knives and daggers as they fled, that they might run all the faster. Some dove from the bridge, all but a few of them sinking like stones to the bottom of the lagoon in their armour. Still others simply cringed before the daemon, sobbing and crying, their minds broken by the Mardagg’s aura of death and blood.

The daemon was pierced in dozens of places by bullet and pike, yet it gave no sign that it had felt any of the injuries. Before the horrified eyes of the soldiers, the Mardagg’s red, bubbling hide closed up behind each wound shortly after it was inflicted. Then the daemon swung its scythe, hewing down ten of its adversaries in a single sweep. What resistance remained broke at once, the surviving mercenaries fled before the skeletal apparition. The Mardagg pursued, cutting down any that were too slow to escape its lengthy stride.

Brunner found the gate before Prince Gambini’s palazzo standing open, several soldiers standing outside it on the main path of the bridge to observe the scene unfolding between the towers, still undecided as to whether they should try to secure the palazzo’s gate or simply join the frightened exodus fleeing the bridge. The sound of the cannon crew firing on the daemon boomed across the waters as the bounty hunter entered the courtyard. Brunner grabbed one of the sentries, a man he recognised as belonging to Zelten’s regiment.

‘Where is your captain?’ the bounty hunter demanded. The mercenary, taken aback by Brunner’s fierce tone, simply pointed back at the palazzo. The bounty hunter relieved the man of his crossbow and hurried across the courtyard. Within the palazzo seemed to be deserted, at least until Brunner heard raised voices sounding from the direction of Prince Gambini’s throne room. He hurried in that direction.

‘It seems my friend is quite near now,’ Brunner heard the laughing voice of Corvino boast. ‘You did not think you were the only one with powerful friends, did you?’

Brunner stopped at the entrance to the great hall, spying out the scene within.

At an instant, he observed the stand-off: Corvino leaning before the throne, crouched above the prone form of Princess Juliana, a wavy-bladed dagger in his hand. Prince Gambini, Zelten and a large number of servants and guards stood in a circle around the madman, chafing at their helplessness. From behind him, Brunner could hear shouts and screams, much nearer now than before.

‘You’re insane, Corvino,’ Prince Gambini stated. ‘Give this up now and I promise no harm will come to you.’ The nobleman couldn’t quite manage to get enough anger out of his voice to make the offer sound convincing.

‘I have told you already!’ roared the fool. ‘I am Umberto Gambini! And why would I trust the word of a man who treated his own father like a pariah, who turned against his own brother?’ Corvino began to giggle, a weird, unnerving sound. ‘Mad? Perhaps, but in the land of the blind, the madman is king!’ He puffed out his chest proudly as he made his declaration.

Horrified screams sounded from outside the palazzo, perhaps originating from as near as the courtyard. All heads within the great hall turned toward the sound. Upon the dais, Corvino stood, laughing once more. ‘My friend is here!’ he cackled. ‘I called him up from the abyss and now he is here!’

‘That’s all I needed to hear,’ a cold voice said from the shadows near the doorway. Corvino turned his head toward the voice. As he did so, a steel crossbow bolt punched into his chest, throwing him from the dais.

Brunner stepped into the light, dropping the crossbow. ‘You cost me ten thousand gold ducats,’ he spat.

Zelten and Prince Gambini rushed the dais, both men reaching the unconscious form of Juliana at the same time. While the mercenary supported her, the prince slapped her face, trying to rouse her from her stupor.

‘You might want to wait on that, gentlemen,’ Brunner called to them. ‘There’s a damn big daemon heading this way!’

Screams erupted from the gathered servants and many of the soldiers and for an instant, Brunner wondered at the reaction to his words. Then the unforgettable stench of spilled blood, the chilling aura of dread and death washed over him. The bounty hunter turned his head, leaping further into the room as the hulking shape of the Mardagg lumbered down the corridor. The daemon’s blood-scythe lashed out, cleaving through the marble wall and missing the bounty hunter by the merest fraction.

Brunner drew Drakesmalice, the sword blazing white hot in the proximity of a being so steeped in the ruinous energies of Chaos. The daemon seemed to take note of Brunner’s weapon, turning from its path to glare at him with its eyeless sockets. Now, closer to the monster, Brunner could see that where before the daemon’s flesh had simply resembled running blood, now there were tiny faces within the monster’s liquid skin, small screaming images of those who had fallen beneath its scythe. The Mardagg was not merely killing its victims, it was collecting them, gathering them to present before its master, Khorne. Brunner froze as he considered the enormity of the horror the daemon represented. Then the murderous scythe was lashing toward him once more, the daemonic weapon glistening in the light.

It was instinct, not thought, that saved the bounty hunter’s life. As the gore-hued blade swept toward him, he lifted Drakesmalice upward to block the blow. Indeed, had Brunner considered the action, he might have remembered the ease with which the Mardagg had sliced through Inquisitor Bocca’s plate armour and never have trusted his own steel against the daemon’s might. But Bocca’s armour had not been guarded against the dire energies of Chaos, and the blade of Drakesmalice held against the Mardagg’s scythe. But even if the cleaving blow was thwarted, the awesome strength of the daemon was not. Brunner was lifted from the floor by the sweep of the Mardagg’s weapon and cast aside like a gnat. The bounty hunter crashed against one of the walls, the heavy tapestry cushioning the impact.

The daemon stared for an instant at the bounty hunter lying on the floor, then its skull-like face came around to regard the other occupants of the chamber once more. The daemon glared at them with its empty sockets and slowly began to advance again, drawn to the wriggling finger hidden within the slain fool’s tunic.

Manfred Zelten was the first to react to the monster’s steady, silent advance. Ripping his pistols from their holsters, the mercenary stepped away from Prince Gambini and his unconscious bride.

‘Get her out of here!’ the mercenary snapped at his master. ‘We’ll try and hold this abomination while you escape!’

Umberto Gambini did not need any further encouragement, rising to his feet and hurrying toward the far door of the chamber, Juliana draped across his arms. Those servants who had still not fled hastened after their master.

The Mardagg lumbered closer, the murderous scythe held in its bony clutch. Zelten stood in its path, casting a sidewise glance at the soldiers to either side of him. There were a half dozen of them whose loyalty to Prince Gambini had overcome their inclination to flee. Many of them held hatchet-headed halberds in their hands, and grim fatalistic expressions on their faces.

Zelten gave voice to what he hoped was a stirring war cry and fired one of his pistols at the daemon. The shot blasted into the skull-like face, disrupting the oozing, bloody substance, until it flowed back into place a few seconds later, filling the wound as though it had never been struck. At the same time, the halberdiers rushed at the daemon, thrusting and slashing at it with their weapons. As the Mardagg reacted to the men slashing at its legs, Zelten ran forward, firing his last pistol into the monster’s bony chest. Once again, the bubbling, oozing substance closed over the wound almost as soon as it had been dealt. The skull-face of the Mardagg glared down at the Reiklander. Zelten dodged back as it swept the scythe in his direction.

‘Pistols aren’t going to work,’ a cold voice informed Zelten. The mercenary was somewhat surprised to see Brunner on his feet again.

‘I noticed,’ Zelten snarled, hurling the discharged pistol at the monster’s head and drawing his sword. The Mardagg paid the futile gesture no notice, busy trying to fend off the attacks of the halberdiers. Two of the men were forced to retreat as the daemon’s weapon cut through the wooden shafts of their halberds, their remaining comrades trying to distract the daemon away from their now unarmed fellows.

‘Any ideas?’ Zelten asked the bounty hunter.

‘Maybe,’ Brunner replied, eyes focused intently on the daemon. Was it his imagination, or was the creature slower? Clumsier? He’d never heard of a daemon becoming fatigued, yet this monster, after its brutal march across Remas, was showing signs of tiring. Perhaps they might actually have a chance against it.

The bounty hunter lunged forward, striking at the daemon’s flank. Drakesmalice impacted against the gleaming, screaming skin of the Mardagg, scouring its unnatural flesh. The Mardagg spun about, but too slowly to catch the bounty hunter before he dodged away. Where Drakesmalice had struck it, the oozing flesh had taken on a ridged, dark quality, almost as if the sword had caused the flowing blood to coagulate. Brunner grimly shook his head. The sword had certainly done something to the creature, but perhaps nothing more injurious than a scratch. Slow as it might be, Brunner knew firsthand the awful power within that skeletal frame, and knew that it would take only a slight slip, the merest fraction of slowness on his own part to give the monster another chance at him.

Brunner fell back to where Zelten stood. ‘Well, I guess we now know that it can be hurt,’ he commented between panting breaths. Zelten didn’t respond, instead staring not at the Mardagg but at the glowing blade gripped in Brunner’s hand. A scream of mortal terror brought the mercenary out of his thoughts and back to the situation at hand. One of the soldiers, emboldened by Brunner’s attack, had lunged at the Mardagg, slashing at it with his sword. Unlike Brunner’s blow, however, the sword had failed to injure the monster. Nor had the soldier been quick enough to avoid the Mardagg’s return. Pausing for an instant, gaping at the ineffectiveness of his attack, the guard had waited too long to leap away. The Mardagg’s scythe ripped through his back, exposing a fist-deep section of his spine.

There was no mistaking the effect the man’s death had upon the daemon. At once its movements began to quicken, the speed of its scythe increase. The Mardagg swept the scythe low, coming in under the guard of the halberdiers, killing one of its opponents, strewing the bleeding halves of the man on the ground before it. A second died as Brunner charged towards it, the man’s body flung across the hall by the immense scythe, smashing into a brazier of coals set against the far wall. The Mardagg turned on its last enemy as the man’s halberd ineffectually hacked into the daemon’s side. The man turned to flee, leaving his halberd still lodged in the Mardagg’s side.

‘It feeds on death and slaughter!’ the bounty hunter shouted to the remaining soldiers. ‘Every man it cuts down makes it stronger!’ Brunner slashed at the daemon’s back once more, Drakesmalice tearing through its glistening flesh. Once again, the skin seemed to harden and took on a darker hue. The Mardagg spun about, and this time Brunner missed the daemon’s retaliation by a hair’s length, the heat of the daemon’s weapon washing over his face as it swept past. ‘Get out of here!’ he shouted to the last soldiers. There was a slim chance if the daemon could be denied its grisly nourishment that it would die. The already terrified men did not need much encouragement, taking to their heels. As they fled Brunner noted that the tapestries and rugs near the brazier overturned by the Mardagg were burning. Brunner could see that if the flames were left unchecked, it would not take long for the entire room to become engulfed in flame.

The Mardagg’s scythe swept forward once more. Again, Brunner barely missed being cut by the deadly blade, jumping back at the last instant. The cold, empty sockets of the Mardagg stared down at him, and Brunner had the unpleasant sensation that the daemon was enjoying their deadly game, like a cat toying with a mouse. Unfortunately, in this game, Brunner had no illusions as to who was the cat.

Brunner started to retreat before the Mardagg, finding that he was being pushed deeper into the chamber by the daemon. He understood its intention now, as the heat and smoke began to grow behind him. Perhaps Drakesmalice had taught the daemon to be a bit more cautious. It was herding him, pushing the bounty hunter toward the flames. Fire might not harm the daemon, but it knew that its adversary could not boast such an immunity.

Suddenly the Mardagg spun around once more, swiping at something behind it. Brunner saw Zelten stabbing at the daemon’s already injured flank. The mercenary intercepted the Mardagg’s descending scythe with his sword. It was an expert parry, one that should have turned even that murderous blade. But the daemon’s weapon was anything but normal. The scythe slashed through Zelten’s sword, and continued on into the man’s side, ripping through his flesh. Entrails erupted from the wound just below Zelten’s ribs and the Reiklander fell in a mass of gore.

Brunner seized the moment it took the Mardagg to recover from its slaughter of his friend. Fuelled by hate and rage, the bounty hunter slashed at the back of the daemon’s skeletal leg, cutting it just behind the knee. The skeletal limb bubbled and steamed where the enchanted sword struck it, cleaving halfway through the monster’s leg. The daemon turned toward Brunner, its skull-like face as emotionless as ever. A wave of blistering heat billowed about Brunner as he firmed his grip upon Drakesmalice. The Mardagg’s empty sockets stared down at him for a moment, as though savouring the man’s hopeless defiance. Then the daemon’s gaze shifted, staring at something beyond the bounty hunter.

For a moment, Brunner considered attacking the daemon as it stalked past him, seemingly oblivious now to his very existence. But he quickly dispelled the thought. Somehow, he had been granted a reprieve. He’d stared at death, and it had let him slip from its fingers. Only a fool would tempt its attention once more. The bounty hunter hurried towards the corridor, away from the intense heat and smoke surging outward from the blazing ruin of Prince Gambini’s throne room. He looked back into the chamber, seeing that much of it was engulfed in crackling, snarling sheets of fire.

At the very centre of the room, through the leaping flames, Brunner could just make out the dais. He was surprised to see that Corvino was seated once more in the throne, having dragged his body back up the steps of the dais. The fool kept one hand around the crossbow bolt protruding from his chest, while pulling his body forward with the other. The madman was holding something that to Brunner’s eyes looked to be a large, skeletal finger. Then a massive shape loomed above the dais. The black cloak about the Mardagg’s shoulders was on fire, flaming scraps of cloth dropping from the burning garment, but the daemon was oblivious. Its skull-face glared down at the dying madman, its skeletal hand reaching out toward Corvino.

What more there was to see was obscured by the collapse of the supports for the floor above, fiery timbers and marble blocks raining down into the room. The bounty hunter retreated before the flames, heading back down the hallway. As he did so, he noted a mangled form lying upon the floor. Brunner paused and crouched over the ravaged frame, recognising it as Manfred Zelten. There was still some life in the mercenary and his eyes opened as Brunner knelt over him.

‘Juliana?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper. Dark blood bubbled from his mouth as he spoke.

‘Safe,’ Brunner assured him, seeing the man’s body relax as he heard the news. ‘Prince Gambini got her out.’ The bounty hunter removed his helmet, staring down at the dying man. The roar and crackle of the flames was growing louder, smoke was filling the air, yet Brunner paid them little notice. There was something he had to know.

‘Why didn’t you go with them?’ he asked. For a moment, he thought he had voiced his question to a corpse. Then Zelten’s eyes focused on him once more. A faint smile twisted on the dying man’s face.

‘Dra… mali…’ Zelten coughed. ‘Only one… who can… use it.’ The mercenary’s gaze grew intense. ‘He’s… not… dead…’ The words trailed off into a strangled gargle.

‘No,’ Brunner told the corpse as he stood. ‘No, not dead. The bounty hunter’s gloved hand closed into a fist. ‘Waiting.’

The room was engulfed in flames now, the rear half of the chamber a veritable firestorm as the musty old tapestries burned. The bounty hunter paused in the doorway a moment, staring back into the conflagration. He could not see either the dais or the daemon through the fire and smoke, but just for a moment, he thought he heard a sound rise above the roar of the flames. The sharp, cutting, maniacal laughter of the lunatic Corvino.

Brunner slowly rode out the gates of Remas, his packhorse trailing after him, attached by a rope to Fiend’s saddle. Brunner left behind him a city in turmoil. Hundreds had died in the Mardagg’s brief rampage, and hundreds more had been killed by those the daemon’s madness had infected. In the aftermath of the riots and turmoil of that night, the long-suffering people of Remas had collectively and loudly risen up against the brutal Temple of Solkan, blaming them for not protecting the city from the manifestation of Chaos. It would be some time before the Solkanites regained their hold over the people again, some time before their white-robed militia would be able to walk the streets instilling fear.

The power and prestige of Prince Gambini had been severely crippled. The fire that had started in the throne room had raged out of control for much of the night, devouring the support timbers within the palazzo. As a result, two-thirds of the structure had toppled off the bridge and into the sea. Ambitious political enemies had taken the opportunity to undermine Gambini’s position within the government, placing blame for the unrest on his shoulders. It was doubtful if Gambini would remain a triumvir after the next election, doubtful even if he would still sit on the Council of Fifty.

With the failing fortunes of Prince Umberto Gambini, Princess Juliana Bensario was summoned back to Pavona by her father. Among her entourage, the princess engaged the remains of Manfred Zelten’s mercenary command. Brunner was certain that Schtafel and Meitz would find the smaller, quieter city more to their liking. Horst would probably sign up with the next expedition to reinforce the Border Princes after a few weeks of such surroundings.

The bounty hunter might have ridden with them, to take safety in numbers on his own journey back to Pavona, but he had no stomach for the woman’s company. She had played no small part in the death of Manfred Zelten, it had been to cover her escape that the mercenary had stayed behind to fight the daemon. If not for her, Zelten might yet be alive. Brunner did not number so many among his friends that he could dismiss the death of one lightly. And there was another reason the bounty hunter had for wishing to remain alone. He glanced over his shoulder, staring for a moment at the leather bag lashed across Paychest’s back.

The Temple of Morr would be a shunned place for decades, if not centuries. Not lightly would the people of Remas enter its dilapidated walls, recalling all too clearly the frightful abomination that had emerged from within. The place’s dire reputation would grown until every dark imagining of the citizens would come to haunt its abandoned halls. Eventually, perhaps in a few hundred years, some prince would decide to prove to his people that he was above their superstitions and have the ruins razed, but until then, the shadow of the Mardagg would continue to linger on the city.

The bounty hunter, however, was too practical for such imaginings. The daemon had left the structure, and he doubted if, so soon after its dissolution, it would be able to exert any great influence over the place of its summoning. And there had been a chance, albeit however slight, that Brunner might have been wrong in his assumption, that the body of Scurio might yet lie beneath the Slaaneshi cult’s undertemple. It had taken him two hours to find the secret to unlocking the concealed door that led to Corvino’s sanctum. Within, he found a small chamber, the body of Alfredo Gambini lying upon the floor. But he had also discovered something else.

It was a strange and horrible thing, lying just beyond Gambini’s body, draped across the floor like a flat man, thin as parchment, lying on the stones like some flesh-coloured shadow. Brunner stared down at the thing, studying it for a moment before he understood what it was. The flesh-shadow was Scurio’s skin, shed by the daemon like a serpent sloughing its scaly hide. It was split down the centre, almost like a suit of clothing. Brunner turned the macabre skin over with his foot, flipping the light, leathery husk onto its belly. The face below the brim of Brunner’s helm parted in a grim smile. Staring up at him, almost perfect, was the hooded asp tattoo.

The bounty hunter had lost no time, rolling up the morbid skin like a blanket and stuffing it into a leather sack. Masario had wanted proof that the murderer was dead, had wanted the tell-tale mark of the killer brought to him. Brunner only hoped that whatever spell his wizard employed to verify that Scurio had been the killer didn’t draw the attention of that which had consumed the murderer’s body.

Masario’s gold would go far to lightening the heavy spirits that had settled upon Brunner. The bounty hunter caressed the hilt of Drakesmalice. Too many reminders of the past had beset him during this hunt, too many old wounds had opened up again. Manfred Zelten had reminded him of much that he had put aside.

Brunner considered the young mercenary captain for a moment. There were too many men like Zelten and his father whose lives had been destroyed through treachery. Perhaps the time was coming for them to be avenged. Yes, perhaps Brunner would leave the squabbling politics of Tilea behind him for awhile, and ply his trade in the Empire or Bretonnia for a time…

The bounty hunter was lost in thoughts of faraway places and long ago times as he rode out the great gates of Remas. He did not notice the scraggly old beggar with the long white beard who watched him depart. Had he done so, he would have been surprised to recognise the same mendicant who had cast bones to tell his fortune in the streets of Pavona.

The old beggar cackled to himself as he watched the bounty hunter ride away. The hired killer had been a useful pawn, just as his foundling apprentice Corvino had been. It was always wise to get someone else to cast the most dangerous spells. One did not last long in the service of the wily Changer of Ways without learning never to put one’s own neck on the chopping block. The spell to free the Mardagg was almost certainly lethal to the one who invoked it; removing its spirit from its human host was an even more certain form of death. Fortunately, Corvino had thought he would be able to control the daemon. If he had only paid attention, perhaps the little fool might have seen how he was being used, that his ambitions were nothing to the Dark Gods. All his schemes had been used solely to return one of Khorne’s prized servants to the Realm of Chaos, nothing more. Poor Corvino, he had never understood that no man uses Chaos; it uses him.

The sorcerer looked again at the diminishing figure of the bounty hunter. He hoped that the man would fare well wherever his trail led him.

‘The Ruinous Powers,’ he prophesised, ‘may yet have a use for you.’

BLOOD OF THE DRAGON

CHAPTER ONE

It had been nearly a year since the affair of the Black Prince and my parting with the bounty hunter, so it had been quite unexpected when I had encountered him, his raiment caked in the mud and dust of travel, armour sporting the beginnings of rust not uncommon among warriors on the march, making his way along the narrow winding streets of Parravon. Yet, somehow, though unexpected, it had not been surprising to see Brunner again. And despite the events that caused me to forsake the Tilean city of Miragliano for the quiet Bretonnian township of Parravon, despite the treachery and ruthlessness that permeated Brunner’s hunt for the Black Prince, despite even the violent and menacing aura that surrounded the man himself, I found that I was quite pleased to see my old collaborator again.

My name is Ehrhard Stoecker, originally of Altdorf until events surrounding my notorious history detailing the infamous vampire count Vlad von Carstein made it prudent for me to emigrate from the lands of my birth. However, even in exile, I found it impossible to keep my mind idle and my pen from parchment. In Miragliano, I began recording the exploits of the adventurers I would come upon in that city’s many taverns and wine shops and none of those exploits had been so bloody or so fascinating as the career of the bounty killer Brunner. Now, forced by the requirements of an empty belly to pen the atrociously bloated and self-aggrandising family history of the Duc of Parravon, I found myself drawn more than ever to the violent, often horrific journeys of Brunner. It was with great enthusiasm that I invited my old confederate to join me at the inn where I had made my abode, eager to learn more of his travels and the dark deeds that accompanied them.

Brunner spent some time regaling me with tales of his time among the Tilean city states following my abrupt and hasty retreat from Miragliano. I heard many things that disquieted me and made me ever more pleased that I had forsaken the south for the safety of Bretonnia and the protection of its valiant knights. The bounty hunter told me of the horrors that lurked beneath the slopes of the Vaults, the unclean vermin who now claimed the halls of the old dwarf lords of Karag-dar. He told me of dead things that stalked the nighted streets of Miragliano itself, and I shivered as I recalled the experience that had made me flee Altdorf so long ago. He told me too of the corruption that was rife throughout the Tilean countryside, of dread emissaries from the realms of the Dark Gods and the zealous madmen who opposed them, the infamous Inquisition of Solkan. I hastened to record every detail of Brunner’s accounts, my pen darting across each page as the bounty hunter piled horror atop horror. When he had finished, Brunner leaned back in his chair, sipping at a tankard of mead, watching me as I hurriedly completed my notes.

I looked upon my companion and was once more struck by his imposing figure. He wore brigandine armour about his lean, yet somehow powerful frame. Over the cloth and metal was fixed a breastplate of gromril, that fabulously strong metal whose secret is known only to the dwarfs. Steel vambraces and greaves protected arm and leg, blackened to prevent any betraying shine. Upon the table, the bounty hunter had set his helm of blackened steel, the dark shadow of its empty visor staring up at me with a menacing gaze. Beside it rested a small crossbow, a weapon which I knew my companion would be able to employ in the space of a breath should he have need. I knew that there would be other weapons ready at hand, the array of knives that crossed his breast in a worn leather bandolier, the wicked hatchet that swung from his hip, or even the expertly crafted pistol holstered across his belly. Two weapons in particular had a certain notoriety attached to them. The first of these was the huge knife with a serrated edge which Brunner had morbidly termed ‘the Headsman’, and it was the last thing many a wounded outlaw had seen in this life.

The other was a long sword, its slender blade crafted long ago in the forges of the Reikland, its golden pommel and hilt fashioned in the shape of a winged dragon. Drakesmalice it was called, and I had seen for myself the skill and felicity with which the bounty hunter could employ it. The sword itself had some history in the region, until the utter destruction of the line by the Viscount de Chegney it had been the traditional heirloom of the barons of the house of von Drakenburg. Given the unspoken animosity which my collaborator had always displayed toward the viscount, it was somehow fitting that the weapon of that villain’s vanquished enemy should find its way into Brunner’s hands.

I roused myself from my study of the bounty hunter, forgetting once more the deep gashes and dents in his armour and the stories that lay behind each one. I looked into the man’s harsh features, meeting his icy blue eyes.

‘That accounts for your exploits in Miragliano,’ I told him, dipping my pen once more into the ink well. ‘But it has been two seasons since you brought down the Black Prince and I cannot believe that a man such as yourself has been idle for all that time.’

Brunner leaned forward, the legs of his chair rapping against the floor. He set the tankard of mead down upon the table and favoured me with a grim smile.

‘Oh, I have been anything but idle,’ he told me. ‘You need not trouble yourself on that score.’ Again, that unsettling, wolf-like smile came upon his face. ‘You have perhaps heard rumours, stories about trouble in the east?’

The breath caught in my throat. There had indeed been stories in recent weeks, tales of destruction and horror that had spread like wildfire, unsettling the knights of Parravon, making them restless. It was expected that any day the duc would announce some campaign against the source of these troubles, a quest to destroy the beast who ravaged the eastern dukedoms. Indeed, if there was any truth in the rumour, knights all across the kingdom were already riding to test their mettle against this challenge, to prove their bravery and their embodiment of the old virtues.

‘The dragon?’ I gasped. ‘You had something to do with that?’ My mind exploded with a thousand questions, and my hand was unsteady with excitement as I strove to write down the bounty killer’s responses. ‘You have seen it? It is real?’

Brunner nodded his head slightly and his voice fell into a low whisper. ‘It is real,’ he told me. ‘And I have seen it.’

There was a haunted quality to Brunner’s voice that had never before manifested itself in our conversations, the echo of lost tomorrows and vanished yesterdays.

With a final sip from his tankard, Brunner began his account…

Sicho craned his neck about within the ring of coarse rope that encircled it. Was it not bad enough that they were going to hang him, did they have to drag it out as well? The rope was chafing his skin to the point where it was becoming unbearable, an itch that his hands, tied behind his back, couldn’t scratch.

The poacher and sometime bandit looked over to where the warden continued to drone on and on about his crimes, the despicable nature of his soul, and how he was deserving of an end far more terrible than the simple hanging proscribed by the duc’s law. Sicho rolled his eyes, turning his attention to the muddy, manure-strewn square and the ramshackle hovels that passed for the thriving hamlet of Veleon. The crowd that had gathered was much larger than he had anticipated, there were perhaps fifty people in the onlooking mob, far more than a puddle of pig piss like Veleon could support. Most likely the duc had declared a holiday so that the peasants of the neighbouring villages and hamlets might have the opportunity to see his execution. Most considerate of him, considering that Sicho’s death might be the most exciting thing to intrude upon the dull drudgery of their lives for years. Of course, the duc was motivated more from hopes that seeing Sicho swing might throw cold water on the ambitions of any fledgling poachers and bandits among the peasantry.

Better to die quickly than take a slow death like those idiots, Sicho thought to himself. I’ll wager half of them have never even tasted meat, the bandit added as he found a particularly wretched crone gawking at him with a mouth completely devoid of teeth. Sicho twisted about as much as he was able and glared at the bloated figure of the warden. The man was droning on now about an incident Sicho had nearly forgotten involving the theft of a knight’s bones from a village outside Brionne.

‘Can you hurry it up?’ the bandit snarled through his split lip and bruised face. The militia men who had captured him had been quite enthusiastic in their work. The warden rolled up the leather scroll from which he had been reading, slapping it against his meaty palm. ‘At the rate you’re going, we’ll be here half the night.’

The rotund official shook the rolled scroll at the condemned man, taking a menacing step toward the bandit. ‘You might show a bit of contrition for all your filthy crimes, you snivelling cur!’ the warden spat. ‘For you’ll answer to the Lady and the gods for your misdeeds, brigand! When that rope goes tight and the air is strangled out of you, the time for repentance will be past.’ The warden looked past Sicho, locking eyes with the two brawny militia men who held the other end of the rope tied about the outlaw’s neck. Between them stood the old signpost over which the middle section of the rope had been thrown.

‘At least I’m an honest thief!’ Sicho cursed. ‘Tell me, what lets you keep that fat belly of yours full? Not millet and gruel I’d wager.’

The warden bristled under the insult, as much for its truth as the venom with which it was voiced. The fat man’s face darkened until it was nearly the same hue of red as the worn leather tunic that struggled to encase his girth. ‘We’ve been about this long enough, dog!’ he hissed back. The warden looked again to his two men. He lifted the hand that held the scroll. ‘When I lower my hand, pull the rope and send this animal to the gods.’

As the fat man’s hand began to fall, however, there was a sharp snap and the sound of splintering wood. The downward descent of the official’s hand was arrested, the scroll it gripped fixed to the wall behind him, pinned in place by the dull steel of a crossbow bolt. Gasps broke out from the crowd and the warden turned away from a fruitless attempt to free the proclamation. The fat man’s eyes went wide with surprise and apprehension as he saw the figure regarding him from the back of the milling mob of peasants.

The man was an imposing sight, his upper face hidden within the blackened steel of a foreign-style helmet, a suit of weathered brigandine armour enclosing his slim figure, a breastplate of dark metal encasing his chest. It was like looking at some shabby imitation of the knights the warden served, some crude and base mockery of the shining plate and colourful tabards of Bretonnia’s great warriors. Even the horse upon which the man was seated was dark and grim, a far cry from the noble and valiant chargers of the knights.

But the warden saw these things only in passing, his attention fixed upon the strange weapon the warrior held at the ready. The warden had never seen a crossbow, though he had heard such a weapon described for him by a relative who had once travelled to Couronne. The curious, almost box-like device set upon the weapon puzzled him, he couldn’t imagine how such a weapon might work. The fat man turned his eyes back to the expressionless steel face of the stranger’s helm.

‘I need to have a few words with that man whose neck you are about to stretch,’ the warrior’s cold voice told him.

The colour returned to the warden’s features as he noted the assumed authority in the stranger’s tones.

‘You dare to interrupt an appointed representative of the Duc de Vertain in the execution of his official duties?’ the fat official snarled. He might never have seen a crossbow before, but he had a good idea of how they worked, and this stranger had already fired his missile. He looked over at his militiamen. The two soldiers hastily tied off their end of the rope and began to stride forward, hands resting easily on the hilts of their swords.

The strange weapon gripped in the rider’s hands jerked and the groan of the steel bowstring firing sounded again. The two militiamen froze as a pair of bolts dug into the ground at their feet. The warden looked with horror from his subdued men back to the rider. He staggered back, cowering against the wall as he saw the repeating crossbow swing in his direction.

‘Next time I aim higher,’ the rider told him. ‘But if you’ll oblige me, I’ll have a few words with your prisoner and then be on my way.’

The warden nodded his head slightly, slinking behind the nearest of the dirty, muttering crowd.

The bounty hunter urged his horse forward, pushing his way through the peasants until he looked down upon Sicho.

‘You’re a little late to collect the price on this head,’ the bandit sneered, spitting a blob of phlegm into the dust. Brunner gave the condemned man an icy smile, reaching his gloved hand forward and letting his fingers grip the rope rising behind Sicho’s neck. The brigand rose to his toe tips as Brunner pulled slightly at the noose.

‘I had hoped you might be more co-operative,’ he told Sicho, pulling once more on the rope, enough to make the bandit’s next breath turn into a gasp. ‘Maybe I’ll have them cut you down after you’ve hung a bit. See if that loosens your tongue.’ Brunner released his hold on the rope, leaning back in the saddle of Fiend, his warhorse. ‘If that doesn’t work, we can always try it again. As often as we need.’ The bounty hunter reached beneath one of his vambraces, removing a rolled scrap of leather. ‘They’re going to hang you, Sicho. How many times they hang you, that’s your decision.’

Sicho rotated his head in wide circles, trying to loosen the grip of the noose about his neck. The bandit curled his lip, snarling back at the bounty hunter. Then his eyes fell upon the object held in those gloved hands, and the portrait that had been drawn upon the wanted poster. The hostility drained away, replaced by a peal of laughter.

‘Gobineau!’ the condemned outlaw cried out. ‘You are looking for Gobineau!’ Tears were running down Sicho’s grimy face as he continued to laugh.

Brunner rolled up the poster, stuffing it back into its place beneath his armour. He looked back at the laughing prisoner. ‘You sometimes ran with Gobineau. I want to know where he could be now. When did you last see him?’

Sicho’s face contorted into an ironic smile. ‘When did I see him last?’ he scoffed. ‘He is the reason I am here! Trying to outrun this bloated toad and his half-witted swamp cats! The warden and his men were on our trail after we relieved a horse breeder of a few stallions he didn’t need. Gobineau was worried that they would catch us on the open road, so as we were riding he reached over and slashed my saddle, dumping me into the road. Of course, this idiot,’ Sicho gestured with his chin at the scowling warden, ‘was so happy to catch me, he completely gave up chasing Gobineau.’ The bandit spat into the dust once again. ‘I’ll be waiting for that bastard at the gates of Morr!’

‘Tell me where Gobineau was heading and maybe I can give him your regards,’ Brunner told the prisoner. Sicho’s smile broadened and his features lit up as he contemplated how well his treacherous ally would fare with the notorious bounty hunter on his trail. The thought of such a revenge warmed the condemned man’s doomed soul.

‘We were stealing the horses to outfit a new band Gobineau is gathering together in the hamlet of Perpileon in the realm of Montfort,’ the bandit provided. ‘I am sure, if you were to hurry, you’d catch him there.’

Brunner nodded his head, turning Fiend away. ‘Oh, I’ll catch him,’ the bounty hunter assured Sicho. ‘You’ve troubles enough without worrying about that.’ The bounty hunter walked his horse slowly back through the crowd. He glanced over at the warden as he passed the still subdued official. Brunner touched a finger to the brim of his helm in a clipped and somewhat nonchalant salute. ‘Thank you for your consideration, warden. I won’t be needing anything else from your prisoner. You may see to your duty now.’

There were many trails that wound their way between the pastures and fields of Montfort, skirting the edges of the forests and detouring around the scattered patches of moor and swamp that dotted the realm’s landscape. The largest and most prominent of these were the roads that connected the more important towns and villages to the few cities that rose amid the green farmlands and savage wilds of Bretonnia. Though little more than dirt paths by the standards of more cultured lands such as the Empire and Tilea, the roads of Bretonnia served the same function, moving people and goods from one place to another, nurturing the few tradesmen of the kingdom, assisting the devotions of pious pilgrims and facilitating the wanderlust of the knights out to earn their colours and their name, and those who employed them to darker pursuits.

The road that wound past the holdings of the Marquis de Galfort on its way to the distant Grey Mountains and the fortified city of Parravon was well known to be the haunt of highwaymen and brigands. Bretonnian peasants called it ‘the Widow’s Way’ and did not deign to travel its course, instead detouring through the many game trails and cattle runs that meandered through the wooded hills. Still, there were some few, strangers to the district or aristocrats secure in their own aura of invulnerability, who were foolish enough to tempt fate and travel along the ill-rumoured length of road.

It was for just such foolish prey that three men had concealed themselves within the thick bushes that fronted upon a bend in the course of the Widow’s Way. They were kindred spirits, members of a cruel and lawless breed, their faces as brutal and bestial as the filthy furs they wore about their lean, wolfish frames. The leader among the three openly flaunted his contempt for the rulers of the land and their laws, the torn tabard of a knight of the realm tied about his waist like the loin-wrap of a Southlands primitive.

The tall bandit leader grinned as he saw the small mule-drawn cart plodding toward them upon the road. It had been several weeks since they had eaten the last of their horses. No matter how humble, whatever loot the cart might hold would be most welcome.

Dogvael looked over at his companions, motioning for them to draw their swords. The brigand leader stared at the notched, rusty blade in his hands. It was at times like this that he most missed the reassuring feel of the powerful hand-cannon he had liberated from one of the Viscount de Chegney’s foreign mercenaries. But it was no good brooding on more pleasant times. Now, a bit of mutton would be exotic enough for the bandit’s tastes.

The three men waited until the mule cart was only a few yards away before they exploded from behind the bushes. The man to Dogvael’s left rushed forward and seized the bridle of the animal while the other two bandits menaced the man seated on the cart behind it with their swords.

‘Stand and deliver, scum!’ Dogvael snarled. It was all traditional, of course, like reciting lines in a play. Dogvael had no intention of letting his victim live, no matter how forthcoming he was.

The man seated on the cart drew back in horror, dropping his whip in his fright. Dogvael smiled at the peasant’s cowardice.

‘Bandits!’ the man shuddered. ‘Whatever shall I do?’

Dogvael’s eyes narrowed as he noticed the almost comic extreme of the cart master’s fear, the curled hands clenching at the youthful face. Then he noticed the black leather boots that protruded from the hem of the shabby homespun cloak worn by the driver, boots far too fine for any simple peasant. The bandit drew away in alarm, eyes darting to either side of the road. Even as he did so, the whine of arrows slashing through the air sounded in Dogvael’s ears. The brigand holding the bridle of the mule cried out as a shaft crunched into his breastbone. The stricken man fell to the muddy earth, the agitated mule adding to his misery as its hooves pulped his left knee and shattered both of his arms. A moment later Dogvael’s other minion cried out, hands clutching impotently at the arrow sticking in his belly. The man pitched to the earth and rolled onto his side, body shuddering as it bled out into the mire of the pathway.

Dogvael turned to run, not knowing who had fired upon his men, nor caring to find out. Even as he turned, however, a third arrow flew from the shadows, striking him in the small of the back and spinning him back around so that he once more faced the cart that had lured him and his companions to their doom.

The owner of the cart was leaning forward, soothing the mule with soft words and a reassuring hand. The man looked up from his labour, staring at Dogvael, all trace of fear, real or exaggerated, now absent from the man’s handsome, rakish face. He smiled at the injured bandit, dark eyes twinkling with a roguish mischief, then stood, casting the shabby cloak from his shoulders and displaying a lean, muscular frame encased in a black leather tunic and dark leather breeches. An expensive-looking belt trimmed in fur and edged in gold completed his outfit, save for the slender longsword hanging from said belt.

‘I’m afraid that you were a bit… tardy,’ the young rogue told Dogvael. He spread his arms in a lavish gesture to encompass the mule cart. ‘You see, this cart has already run afoul of bandits.’ The rogue smiled again, swinging down from the seat of the mule cart, his booted heels landing upon the now still form of the man who had taken hold of the mule’s bridle. The grinning thief looked down at the corpse under his feet, then daintily hopped across the spreading pool of gore emanating from it.

‘Rather sloppy operation, you know,’ the rogue told Dogvael, stepping closer to give the wounded brigand a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘I mean… you really should be using bows.’ He turned his head, staring at each of Dogvael’s dead companions. ‘Probably get a few more men, too,’ he advised the bandit in an almost conspiratorial whisper.

Men were now emerging from the woods behind the mule cart, advancing upon the violent scene. The rogue gave an airy flick of his hand to indicate the approaching men.

‘I have five men in my little company,’ he told Dogvael. ‘With bows,’ he added almost as an afterthought. ‘We do quite well for ourselves.’ A harsh, hostile note slipped into the rogue’s voice. ‘Which is why we did not take too kindly to finding out that a pack of sloppy amateurs had set up shop in our hunting grounds. The ducs aren’t the only ones can’t abide poaching, you know.’

The bowmen were striding forward now, inspecting the bodies of Dogvael’s men, rolling them over with the toes of their fur boots, rummaging about their clothing for any scrap of loot.

The cart master watched as his companions went about their ghoulish work, giving another wink of conspiracy to the injured man sitting near him. ‘They’re quite thorough, you know. Clean those boys as nice as a pig with a soup bone.’ One of the archers, a big brute with a full black beard and a filthy hauberk loped toward Dogvael, pushing the injured man onto his back with a sharp kick.

‘I was conversing with that fellow,’ the leather-clad rogue called out in mock outrage as the bearded man began to search Dogvael’s person.

‘You can play around on your own time, Gobineau,’ snarled the bearded brigand as his massive hands ripped brass buttons from Dogvael’s tunic and patted down his chest in search of any hidden pockets.

‘Neither manners nor memory,’ Gobineau chided the other bandit. ‘Our friend there has a bit of a reputation. Don’t you recognise him?’

‘By the Lady?’ gasped one of the other bowmen. ‘That’s Dogvael!’ Gobineau spun about stabbing a triumphant finger at the man who had called out.

‘Precisely! One of the Black Prince’s old custom collectors,’ Gobineau said. ‘I’m sure everybody here hasn’t forgotten paying their tithe to that old tyrant.’

‘If Dogvael is here,’ another of the brigands observed, ‘then the rumours must be true. The Black Prince is dead!’

‘That seems a distinct possibility when one of his old lieutenants starts playing at honest work again,’ agreed Gobineau. He turned away from the discussion however as he saw the bearded archer remove something from Dogvael’s body. The bulky man gazed at it intently a moment, then made to stuff it within his tunic.

‘Hello, Manfret,’ Gobineau called out. ‘What is it that you have there? Not holding back on your fellows, are you?’ The tone of warning did not go unnoticed by the others, and fingers began to play with bowstrings and arrows.

‘Bit of scrimshaw the pig had on him,’ Manfret snarled. ‘I took a fancy to it, is all.’

‘Perhaps I should have a look at it,’ Gobineau pressed. ‘I’ve been known to fancy scrimshaw too.’ He held one hand out toward the sullen Manfret, the other hand closed about the hilt of the sword sheathed at his side.

‘Damn you!’ snarled Manfret. ‘I killed the pig, so I get first pick of whatever he’s got on him!’ The bandit’s hand closed a bit more tightly about the object he had lifted from his victim. Gobineau could see that it appeared to be a cylinder, perhaps six inches in length, apparently crafted from bone, its surface elaborately carved.

‘I thought that we agreed that all loot was to be divided evenly,’ Gobineau said, more for the benefit of the other bandits than the defiant Manfret. He peered sternly into the bandit’s eyes. ‘I suppose you know exactly how much that bauble of yours is worth, and where you can sell it?’

‘Go hang yourself!’ roared Manfret. ‘I’ve heard enough from that slippery tongue of yours, Gobineau! I killed him, so it’s mine. You lot can split the rest of it!’

Gobineau shook his head, laughing with disdain. ‘No, no, no. I don’t think that would be very wise. That little bit you’re holding might just be worth more than the rest of this garbage put together.’ Gobineau’s voice dropped lower, into a scandalised whisper. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to cheat your mates now, would you?’

With another low curse, Manfret drew his own sword, backing away from Gobineau. The other bandit sighed with disappointment and, with one swift move pulled his own sword from its sheath, darting forward with the quickness of a viper. Manfret’s blade fell into the mud as Gobineau’s sword slashed open his hand. Before the bearded brigand could finish his cry of pain, Gobineau struck again, this time thrusting the point of his weapon into the other man’s throat. The stricken Manfret fell, joining his discarded blade in the muck, a sickening gurgle sounding from his punctured vocals. Gobineau casually wiped the blood from his sword and returned it to its sheath.

‘Never could abide a man who would cheat his friends,’ Gobineau commented, spitting on the dying Manfret. Reaching down, he removed the engraved cylinder from the dying man’s hand. He was immediately struck by the craftsmanship of the object, the interlocking symbols that wound about its surface and the elaborate silver base that sealed one end of the cylinder. His earlier observation that it was bone proved false, for it was crafted from ivory, a substance he had only ever encountered before adorning the jewellery boxes of lonely countesses and duchesses in Bretonnia’s great cities. Gobineau looked away from his study of the object as he heard the other members of his band approaching.

‘A fine piece, lads,’ he told them, holding the cylinder up so that all of them could see it. ‘No wonder Manfret took a fancy to it!’

‘I’ve taken a fancy to that silver on it!’ cried out one of the brigands, bringing soft laughter from the others.

‘Some good drinking money to be had when we chip that off and sell it!’ commented another.

Gobineau turned an incredulous look on his companions. ‘Chip it off? Can’t you lads see the craftsmanship, the quality of this piece of art? Why the entire thing must be worth far more than the price of the silver on its base!’

‘The silver will be good enough for me,’ grunted a balding man with a lean, wolf-like face.

‘That is why you are still a bandit,’ Gobineau told the man. ‘You don’t ever think things through, don’t look to see the grander scheme of things.’

‘You’re talking like some sort of boss-man now,’ complained the wolf-faced man.

‘We agreed that we wouldn’t have no leader!’ chimed in one of the others. Gobineau spun about, pointing at the second man who had spoken.

‘That’s right! We agreed to have no leader,’ he said. ‘So listen to me and do what I say. We can get a lot more for this piece if we don’t break it up and try to sell it whole.’

‘And who would buy it?’ groused wolf-face.

Gobineau smiled, holding up his hand like an instructor who sees an opportunity to press home his point. ‘Ah, first we need to know exactly what it is, then we can find out how much it is worth and who might want to buy it.’ Gobineau pointed at the symbols carved across the surface of the cylinder. ‘These fancy letters my friends, were written by elves.’ The other bandits drew a step back as they heard Gobineau mention the fearsome fey folk. ‘Now we all know that elves are rich in magic. So it follows that we should take this artefact to somebody who knows a thing or three about magic.’

‘You know such a man?’ asked one of the brigands.

‘Indeed I do,’ Gobineau replied with a look not unlike that of a cat who has just swallowed a songbird. ‘There’s a little town near here, Valbonnec, and in that town they have a wizard, a conjurer they call Mad Rudol. We’ll go and see this wizard and see what he can tell us about this treasure we’ve come upon.’ The other bandits nodded their heads, seeing the sense in Gobineau’s proposal. The outlaw continued to smile, regarding the ivory cylinder one last time before tucking it through his belt.

Perhaps it had been some badge of office given to Dogvael by the Black Prince. Perhaps it was some piece of the Black Prince’s own treasure that had been looted by Dogvael when his employer had been slain. Or perhaps it was simply a piece of the bandit’s own plunder, taken from some wandering knight returning from some quest to distant and exotic lands. Whatever the history behind it and how it had come to find its way into the dead man’s possession, it was Gobineau’s now, and he would see to it that he wrenched every last groat from it before he was through.

The chill of night tugged at the dying man as he dragged himself from the road. He did not accept the fact that he was dying, any more than he understood why it was so important to reach the shadows of the trees. There was little enough of reason left in his mind, fogged over by the pain wracking his frame and the indignity of how easily he had been brought down. Dogvael, once one of the Black Prince’s trusted servants taken by a simple bandit’s trick every brigand from Kislev to Araby learned before he was out of swaddling. The blow to his pride pained him even more than the hole in his back. He’d allowed himself to get sloppy, allowed his wit and cunning to be dulled by the miserable poverty to which he had been forced into after his lord’s demise.

The sound of horse’s hooves slowly clopping along the mud and dirt lent a new strength to Dogvael’s fading vitality and like some grotesque turtle, he tried to scramble at speed toward the safety of the shadows. He heard the animal turn towards him, walking with slow and deliberate steps to place itself between the stricken bandit and the refuge he sought. Dogvael could see the coal-black socks of the animal looming before him, the horse’s hair spattered grey with the muck of its travel. A black boot rested in the stirrup of the saddle and as Dogvael craned his head upward, he found himself staring into the cold steel mask of a Reiklander’s sallet helm. The bandit gasped in fright, for that helm and the man who wore it were not unknown to him.

‘I am looking for someone,’ Brunner called down to the wounded brigand. ‘From the looks of things, I think you may have run into him.’

Dogvael scrambled in the mud, turning his pained body and tried to scuttle away. With a slow and deliberate contempt, Brunner directed his steed to once more impose itself between the bandit and the refuge of the brush. Dogvael stared up once more into the cold, stern countenance of the bounty hunter and, with a sigh of resignation, slumped down into the muck.

‘Who did this?’ the bounty killer demanded, pointing the barrel of the pistol gripped in his hand at the arrow protruding from Dogvael’s body. The bandit licked his lips, trying to force some moisture into his voice as he tried to answer.

‘Gaw… Gaw…’ the bandit tried to speak, trying to voice the name he had heard his killers use to address the smiling, mocking rogue who had been in the cart.

‘Gobineau?’ Brunner prodded. Dogvael nodded his head slightly. The bounty hunter leaned forward. ‘Do you know where he went?’

Dogvael nodded his head again, gulping down a mouthful of air in hopes that it would help his words. ‘Walbec… Valbec… Wiza…’

‘Gone to Valbonnec to look for a wizard,’ the bounty hunter mused aloud. ‘Most interesting.’ Brunner replaced his pistol in its holster and looked down at Dogvael, studying the wretch for a moment. ‘You’ve been most helpful, Dogvael,’ the bounty hunter’s words were like frost clawing at glass. His gloved hand fell toward the huge knife hanging from his belt, a butcher’s tool which he had morbidly termed ‘the Headsman’ long ago.

‘Just one more thing you can help me with,’ Brunner told the bandit as Dogvael tried once more to drag his paralysed body off the road. The giant knife with its serrated blade gleamed in the moonlight as Brunner gripped it in his gloved fist and dismounted. ‘A little matter of fifty gold crowns,’ the bounty hunter stated as he closed upon the squirming Dogvael.

CHAPTER TWO

The room was small and dark, stinking of mouldering weeds and rank liquids. Tangles of mangy animal pelts hung from hooks fixed to the walls and overhead beams, alongside the severed claws of birds and bundles of dried herbs. The few walls not given over to such macabre oddities were dominated by shelves alternately filled with clay jars and glass bottles, or else by bundles of parchment scrolls and leather bound books, their pages slowly conspiring to free themselves of their rotted bindings.

Illumination came from a bronze, bowl-like lamp resting upon the surface of a long table of unfinished timber. Men clustered about that lamp, disturbed by the weird décor of the magician’s workshop, their eyes turning away from the reassuring flame to consider the wicker cages that formed a part of that décor and the small croaking things that scrabbled and clawed at their bars.

Two of the men, however, did not share in the discomfort of the others. One of these was the unacknowledged leader of the others, a tall rakish man in black armour. His eyes did not stray to the darkness, nor the weird and unnatural bric-a-brac of the room. His attention was focused solely upon the man seated at the table, inspecting the slender ivory artefact set before him. Gobineau was no less intimidated than his men by the aura of menace that pulsated from the walls of the wizard’s study, that indeed seemed to be exuded by the very wizard himself. But he was too old a scoundrel, too veteran a thief, to allow his unease to disorder him. He’d taken many a pilfered necklace or stolen ring to fences in his time and knew that studying the face, trying to read the thoughts of the man who was appraising the goods was every bit as important as the theft itself. Instinct told him that in the present circumstances, there was no difference between this wizard and a fence, and that his hopes for a tidy profit might rest upon his observations.

The wizard in question was seated, his intense gaze fixated upon the strange object Gobineau had brought to him. At times, the wizard would turn his attention to one of several decrepit books he had set beside him at the table. Gobineau peered at one of the books, the one which the wizard consulted the most, seeing that it appeared to be written in two different scripts: the flowing, graceful symbols of the elves and the much more angular and harsh letters of Reikspiel. The wizard’s long, spidery fingers slithered among the pages, rummaging among them as he inspected the carvings that covered the ivory cylinder and its silver base.

The wizard’s name was Rudol, and like Gobineau, he was garbed in black, a long flowing robe of fine cloth that was wrapped about his lean frame as though woven from shadows and the darkest hours of the night. As the wizard had descended the stairs that led from the tower above into his workshop to receive his petitioners, it had seemed as though stars had twinkled from within the depths of his garment. A skullcap of dark blue cloth rested upon his head, bound about the brow by a circlet of silver adorned at the centre by a polished piece of moonstone. Upon the breast of his robe, the golden outline of a comet had been woven.

The man beneath the robe was thin, of no great stature or strength. Yet even so, Gobineau could recall few men who had presented so intimidating an impression. The wizard’s skin was dark, betraying his foreign blood, carrying with it the swarthiness of the southern Empire and lands such as Averland and Wissenland. His hair was black, and despite the evident age in the wizard’s face, it was as dark and lustrous as any Gobineau had ever seen, without even the faintest suggestion of grey and silver.

Rudol’s features were hard, a thin cruel mouth that was locked in a perpetual smirk of sinister amusement, a narrow knife-like nose and two dark eyes that gleamed with all the feverish obsession of a weirdroot addict. Even the wizard’s hands were unsettling, the fingers long and thin, like two pale spiders rather than human hands.

As the wizard continued his examination, he glanced up at Gobineau. The bandit licked his lips nervously as their eyes met and it seemed to him that the smirk became slightly greater as Rudol returned to his study.

Rudol had been a promising student of the Empire’s colleges of magic, before impatience and ambition had earned him the distrust and enmity of his instructors. He’d been kicked out for his reckless refusals to accept the caution and restraint the elder wizards were forever trying to drive home to their students. It had been as good as a death sentence, for Rudol knew that those who were banished from the Colleges always attracted the dangerous attention of the witch hunters, who hunted down most zealously any who delved into the forbidden arts without official patronage. So it was that Rudol had been forced to flee his homeland, staying one step ahead of the witch hunters as he rode for lands beyond their reach, the green and pleasant realms of Bretonnia.

Of course he had not done so empty-handed. The better part of one of his instructor’s personal libraries had found its way into Rudol’s keeping. Some day, Rudol had promised himself, he would return to Altdorf and collect the rest of that library.

The green and pleasant realms of Bretonnia had not offered much to further such ambitions. True, he had eluded the witch hunters, who seldom ventured into the lands claimed by the King of Bretonnia, but he found himself a foreigner in a land where even its natives were gripped in a hideous and perpetual poverty. He could find employment with none of the noble lords he had offered his services to, dismissed alternatively as a beggar, a charlatan or worse, hounded across the countryside as an Imperial spy if the knights proved particularly paranoid and distrustful of outsiders. Denied the patronage of the nobility, Rudol had been forced to eke out a living off the peasants, people who had little enough for themselves, much less enough to pay for the services of a wizard.

For twenty years, Rudol had found himself crushed beneath the same system of poverty that kept the peasants of Bretonnia in a state often worse than the conditions in which they kept their cattle and swine. He found himself keeping frost from fields for nothing more than a few bowls of soup and a wedge of cheese, calling up rainstorms for a handful of copper coins and perhaps a live chicken or two. And yet, amidst the peasants, even so poor a wage made him wealthy, respected and feared. The small, two-storey stone tower in which he dwelled had been built on that fear, constructed by the villagers during the long hours of the night after they had returned from their herds and their fields, fearful that the wizard might place a curse upon them should they refuse his demands.

Rudol smiled as he remembered that event. He had felt a tiny taste of the power he desired that night. But it would be no peasant rabble who would cower before him. It would be his own peers, the wizards who had cast him out from the Celestial College in Altdorf. They would repay Rudol for the years of misery he had endured, the hardships he had been made to suffer. They would hail him as the greatest of their order and confess their jealousy and envy even as they grovelled in the dirt and pleaded for his forgiveness.

The wizard’s eyes turned once more to the pages of the book laid out beside him. It was a translation of many of the characters used in the elven Elthárin language into the more readily understandable letters of the wizard’s native Reikspiel. With every step in his translation of the story carved upon the piece of ivory, Rudol’s pulse quickened and his breath sharpened, hardly daring to believe what he was reading. The artefact was ancient, predating the establishment of Bretonnia and even Sigmar himself, preserved from the ravages of time by the lingering magic of the elves with which they protected most of what they made. The carved characters told a story, an ancient moment from a vanished time. It was the tragic story of an elf prince who fell during the legendary war between the elves and dwarfs that had raged while the tribes of the Empire still wore the skins of beasts and hid inside caves. The prince had been a great warrior and leader among his people, and he had commanded the wyrms of the earth to serve him and carry him to victory in battle.

Rudol let a sharp gasp escape as he considered what the importance of that might mean. Could it be? Could it truly be? He had read legends, legends related by the elves of Marienburg, about a potent talisman used by the elves to summon dragons, to bind the mighty reptiles to their will. It had been called the Fell Fang, to give its closest Reikspiel translation, and legend said it had been lost when its princely owner had fallen in battle with the dwarfs. Could the lord spoken of on the ivory cylinder have been the wielder of the fabulous talisman? Another thrill swept up the wizard’s spine as he considered another part of the old legend, that which referred to the size of the magical artefact. The object resting before him matched very closely the dimensions given in the elf legend.

There was only one problem, and the excitement bled out of Rudol as he considered it. The stories were adamant about the material from which the Fell Fang had been crafted. The talisman had been made from the tooth of a dragon. The object he had been studying was unquestionably whale ivory, the sort of scrimshaw often worked by the so-called sea elves on their long voyages. Rudol’s brow knitted for a moment as he considered the quandary. He stared intently at the cylinder, bringing one of the strange crystal lenses he had liberated from the Celestial College to bear upon the object. The wizard studied every inch of the artefact once more, this time ignoring his translations of the engravings and concentrating upon the surface itself. He laughed with joy as his closer scrutiny revealed a minuscule gap between the ivory and the silver cap that formed its base.

‘You have discovered something?’ Gobineau inquired, reacting to the wizard’s sudden excitement.

‘It is hollow!’ Rudol exclaimed. The words electrified the observing bandits, each of the brigands drawing still closer to the table, thoughts of hidden treasure vanquishing their uneasiness. Rudol ignored the eager anticipation of the men around him, seemingly oblivious to their presence, his long slender fingers slipping among the engravings, pressing upon them.

‘I have seen this sort of thing before,’ the wizard spoke, his words directed at no one. ‘It is like a Cathayan puzzle box. The question is, how does it open?’ The wizard’s fingers continued to press and pry at the elaborate engravings upon the ivory cylinder and its silver cap. Gobineau watched every movement, eyes locked upon the mystic’s crawling fingers. He heard the faintest click as Rudol’s index finger stabbed at a small sickle-shaped symbol upon the silver ring. The wizard laughed again, tugging the ivory cylinder free.

Gobineau had never seen such a look of greedy rapture as the one that flashed across Rudol’s face when the wizard laid eyes upon the thing which had been hidden within the cylinder. The artefact was like a reliquary, like the small silver boxes in which pious peasants might carry the finger bone of a saint, or a lock cut from the hair of one of the Lady’s holy damsels. But the thing which had been hidden within the artefact had never come from any man, however holy or heroic. Nor had it been part of an elf, however ancient and fabulous. It was a six-inch curve of blackened bone, its tip sharp as a dagger even after so many centuries. The surface of the bone was pitted in places by deep holes, each of the holes ringed in some light, shiny metal that was unknown to Gobineau and his men. Just as the cylinder had been hollow, so too was the object it contained. An evil, sickly smell seemed to fill the room as Rudol exposed the thing, and Gobineau started to feel hot with excitement.

‘Magnificent!’ Rudol gasped. ‘It is true!’ The wizard’s fingers caressed the blackened relic, as though exploring the soft skin of a beautiful woman.

‘Then we have found a very valuable treasure?’ Gobineau inquired, intruding upon the wizard’s glee.

‘Valuable?’ Rudol scoffed, so lost in his discovery that his words came without thought. ‘It is beyond value! A king’s ransom would be but a trifle next to the value of this artefact! All the gold in the Grey Mountains would be but a pittance to the worth of this…’ Rudol snapped out of his reverie, looking up at the hungry faces staring at him, noting the greedy gleam of the bandits’ eyes.

‘Of course I speak from the view of a scholar,’ Rudol explained, his voice uneven. ‘It would command no great price from someone who was not interested in such things,’ the wizard elaborated weakly. He rose from the table, the artefact still gripped in his hand. Gobineau reached forward, grabbing hold of the relic before the wizard could remove it. For a moment, brigand and mystic stared at one another, each clutching the relic. At length, with an almost apologetic shrug, Rudol relented, allowing Gobineau to reclaim the ivory cylinder.

‘Naturally, you should be paid something for your efforts,’ Rudol explained as he walked towards a section of shelving that lined the wall behind him. ‘For the value of the silver, if nothing else,’ he continued. Gobineau watched the mage, the hair on the back of his neck starting to stand on end. He observed Rudol remove a leather bag from behind a brass astrolabe, the distinct and familiar chink of coins striking against one another sounding as the wizard lifted the pouch.

‘Perhaps three gold crowns would serve as recompense?’ Rudol asked. Alone among the bandits, Gobineau looked away from the moneybag Rudol held towards them, observing the wizard’s other hand. The long, spidery fingers were twitching and clawing in an elaborate series of motions.

Gobineau cursed himself for a fool and threw himself to the floor. He’d let his greed get the better of him, allowed it to overcome his natural caution. He hadn’t appreciated that Rudol might decide to keep the elven artefact for himself. And, most disastrous of all, he’d momentarily forgotten that the strange old man was much more than a strange old man. He’d failed to keep at the forefront of his mind that Rudol was a wizard!

The bounty hunter slowly slogged his way down the muddy lane that formed the main road of Valbonnec. Peasants hurried from his path, seeking the safety of doorways from which to peer in surprise and dread at the armoured figure and his foreign garb. Simple, hard-working folk, most of them had never been more than a few miles from their village and the only warriors they had ever seen were the resplendent knights who were both their lords and protectors. The man now striding down the narrow strip of mire was something different, his garb dishevelled and without the flamboyant heraldry of a knight. His weapons were strange, devices that none of the onlookers could quite figure out, but which they decided were deadly all the same. The eyes that stared out from the visor of his plain, unadorned helm were like chips of ice, more like the eyes of a wolf than the eyes of a knight. There was an air of menace about the man, a smell of blood and death, more than enough to make the quiet folk of Valbonnec keep their distance.

Brunner paid little attention to the frightened faces of the villagers. Their fear would keep the peasants from getting in his way. He’d hate to accidentally kill someone he wasn’t going to get paid for.

The bounty hunter paused as he saw the spire of a tower. It was only two floors and yet even so it was the tallest building in the village. The lower floor was built of stone, unworked blocks of granite crudely fitted together. The upper floor crouched above it like the cap of a toadstool and was built of timber. It was like a coarse parody of the sort of place a merchant of the Empire might make his home, an unrefined copy of the sort of tower in which a real wizard would lair.

Brunner glanced away from the tower, eyeing the pistol holstered across his belly, ensuring that the cap was still fitted to it, then the bounty hunter caressed the heavy wood and steel frame of his repeating crossbow. With any luck, he could disable most of Gobineau’s friends before it came to swordplay. Of course, he’d have to spare the bandit leader the worst of his attentions; no bullet or crossbow bolt for him. The bounty on Gobineau, at least the largest one being offered, the only one that was of interest to Brunner, specified that there would be a deduction of five hundred gold crowns if the villain was brought in dead. The Reiklander had no intention of being wasteful.

As the bounty killer studied the small tower, examining it for alternate means of entry, by which his quarry might effect an escape, a sudden commotion sounded from within the structure. It had sounded like an explosion of some sort, punctuated by the cries and wails of several men. Brunner spat into the dust, running toward the tower at a brisk jog. Perhaps this Rudol was less charlatan and more genuine wizard than he had presumed. Perhaps the bounty hunter wasn’t the only one interested in the price on Gobineau’s head. Amidst such desperate poverty as he’d seen in Valbonnec, Brunner could see even a wizard lending his abilities to more mercenary purposes.

Not that it mattered. No one was going to get between Brunner and his quarry, not even a wizard.

The room was a shambles, scrolls fluttering across the floor, feathers spinning slowly after being ripped from the bizarre collection of croaking birds that nestled amongst the wizard’s cages. Gobineau found himself lying upon his back, sprawled beneath a smelly old wolfskin that had been torn from where it had been nailed to an overhead beam. Blood drizzled from his nose, his cheek also lacerated by the heavy pewter cup that had crashed into his face. The brigand pulled a white cloth from his belt, trying to stem the flow of crimson before it had a chance to stain his garments. Moaning voices sounded from all around him, telling Gobineau that his men were likewise alive, if not unharmed.

Rudol stood behind the table, glaring at the men with an expression that was as much a thing of contempt as it was annoyance. The wizard held his hand extended before him, the fingers splayed so that they formed something that resembled the claw of a vulture. It had been from that hand that the power had struck. Gobineau had once numbered piracy amongst his catalogue of crimes, preying upon fat merchantmen as they tried to slip into the port city of Marienburg. What had exploded within the wizard’s room had been every bit as fierce and terrible as any gale born over the Sea of Claws, a blast of howling wind and invisible might that had smashed everything and everyone before it. Then, as suddenly as it had struck, the burst of wind had ceased, only the destruction it had wrought giving evidence that it had indeed occurred. Gobineau fancied that he could see a weird light slowly fading from Rudol’s eyes, a wan blue energy that chilled the bandit’s thrice-cursed soul.

Rudol’s lip curled into a sneer as he returned the brigand’s gaze. ‘You fools!’ he snapped. ‘You dare think you can cheat Rudol of what he desires!’ The fingers of his outstretched hand closed into a white-knuckled fist which the wizard shook angrily at the stunned bandits. ‘You have felt but the smallest measure of my power! Give me cause and I shall destroy each and every one of you!’ The wizard snarled, turning his fist toward the door. He extended his index finger and by his command, the heavy wooden portal crashed inward, ripped open by unseen hands. ‘Leave while I am of a mind to let you live,’ Rudol ordered, the words brooking no defiance. Gobineau turned his head to see the least shaken of his men already on their feet and sprinting toward the door. He turned his head back toward Rudol as he heard the wizard laugh derisively and reach toward the artefact still lying upon the table.

The bandit cast aside his blood-soaked rag, ripping the sword from his belt as he leapt to his feet. Gobineau roared at his fleeing henchmen, putting all the command he could in his tones. ‘Will you let this charlatan swine steal our fortune, lads?’ The look the wizard turned upon him almost froze Gobineau’s heart, yet the rogue continued to shout his defiance. ‘He’s no Wastes-spawned daemon! Prick his hide and he bleeds red like any other thief!’

What effect, if any, Gobineau’s bold words might have had on his men was uncertain, and irrelevant. As the first of the brigands who had gained their feet reached the door, they found their path blocked by a grim figure in armour. The foremost of the men found his belly caving in under the short punch delivered by the armoured warrior’s fist. The bandit crumpled to the ground, his last meal splashing on the wall. The man behind him hesitated, eyes wide with fright, hand fumbling for the blade thrust through his animal-gut belt. The sword was never drawn, however, for the warrior blocking the doorway lifted the heavy crossbow gripped in his right hand and sent a steel bolt crunching its way through the Bretonnian’s skull.

‘Ranald’s grace!’ Gobineau heard one of his henchmen cry out as he sighted the killing machine that now strode into Rudol’s workshop. ‘It’s Brunner!’

If the Blood God himself had clawed his way into the room, Gobineau didn’t think the other bandit’s voice could have been more filled with terror. Observing the heavy crossbow the notorious bounty killer held in his hands, Gobineau dropped back onto the floor he had so recently risen from. He was not ignorant of the price offered for his head, even if he did treat it with a boastful contempt. For someone like Brunner to be in a hog-hole like Valbonnec, there could be only one reason, and Gobineau was not terribly pleased by the prospect.

Instead he shouted at the top of his voice: ‘There’s Rudol! He’s the one you want!’

The words did nothing to distract the bounty killer, who was already singling out Gobineau from the other bandits that cringed behind the room’s wrecked furniture. Gobineau hadn’t expected it to. The wizard, however, was another matter. Rudol had heard the terror with which Gobineau’s man had named the armoured newcomer. And Gobineau was willing to bet that a wizard from the Empire living in poverty and exile did not do so without a few skeletons in his past, skeletons that might have long memories and thick purses.

Rudol snarled, spitting a string of foul words that seemed to sear the air. His hand crackled with a wild ribbon of light, a rope of electricity that the wizard sent streaking toward the bounty hunter. Brunner reacted far more quickly than Rudol had anticipated, hitting the floor and rolling behind the central column that supported the floor above. The lightning bolt swerved as it snaked about the room, exploding against the column that was now between it and its intended victim. The stone sizzled and blackened under the impact, shrieking like a banshee. The bounty hunter was unfazed, however, darting from behind his cover to fire a bolt from his weapon in Rudol’s direction. The missile missed the wizard’s neck by a hair’s breadth, chipping the stone wall behind Rudol as it impacted.

‘You shall die for trifling with me!’ Rudol shouted, his words almost unintelligible as his accent contorted them. One of Gobineau’s men sprang from cover, hurling himself toward the door. The wizard reacted to the motion, sending another bolt of lightning from his clawed hand. The electrical discharge slammed into the fleeing bandit, his scream reaching such a pitch that Gobineau was certain the man’s vocal cords must snap. The stench of ozone and seared flesh filled the room as a jagged black hole was bored through the bandit’s torso. The man fell against the floor with a meaty impact, acrid smoke rising from his ghastly wound.

Once again, Brunner emerged from his cover to fire on the wizard, taking advantage of the distraction presented by the unfortunate brigand. The repeating crossbow sounded once more, the steel bolt hurtling toward Rudol’s chest. Once again, the missile missed its target by the merest fraction, burying itself in the splintered wood of the wizard’s table. This time, Gobineau was certain of something he thought he had only imagined when the bounty hunter had missed his first shot. The pattern of stars on Rudol’s cloak had shifted, moving across the black cloth. Gobineau’s flesh crawled at this further manifestation of Rudol’s black arts.

The wizard retaliated once more, a snake of lightning punching a hole through the rear wall of his workshop, narrowly missing the bounty hunter as he dove for the shelter of an upended barrel. Rudol snarled again, a thick Averland curse, and sent another streak of lightning blasting into the barrel, causing it to explode in a shower of splinters and melted iron. But Brunner was already rolling across the floor, taking shelter once more behind the sanctuary offered by the support column.

‘Gobineau!’ The rogue turned as he heard his name called out. He glanced over to where the last of his bandits had found cover. The man shouted to be heard above the sizzle of lightning as Rudol sent bolt after bolt slamming into the column. ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ the bandit called. ‘Now, while they are trying to kill each other!’

‘A capital suggestion,’ Gobineau remarked, amazed that someone thought it necessary to voice something so painfully obvious. ‘Why don’t you go first, Pigsticker!’ the rogue called back. The other bandit muttered a short prayer to Ranald, then made the sign of the Lady for good measure and broke from his shelter, scrambling on his hands and knees until he was across the threshold and out in the street. Still frenziedly assaulting the stone column, Rudol paid the brigand’s departure not even the slightest notice. Gobineau braced himself for a quick sprint for the door, chancing a last look back at the enraged wizard.

The brigand chief’s eyes fell away from Rudol and the magic lightning crackling from his hand, drawn instead to the ivory cylinder lying upon the table. Gobineau smiled as a new idea fixed itself in his mind. ‘No reason why I should leave empty handed,’ the rogue observed. He crawled across the floor until his legs were beneath the timber table. He braced himself and with a double kick of both feet, upended the table, spilling it onto Rudol. Gobineau heard the mage cry out as the table struck him down, but the rogue did not linger to see what damage he’d done. His hand closed upon the ivory reliquary that had been sent skittering about the floor.

Laughing, Gobineau scrambled to his feet and sprinted for the door, back bent low so as to present the smallest possible target should the wizard have already recovered, and keeping one wary eye on the badly damaged support column. He might have incapacitated Rudol, but that would be small comfort should a crossbow bolt from the bounty hunter’s weapon dig into his chest. The dreaded shot did not come, however. Instead, there was a loud explosion and a bright flash of blue light. Gobineau risked a look back and shuddered at what he saw.

Rudol had freed himself from the timber table, splinters of wood surrounded him, oily black smoke slowly spiralling from the debris. The wizard’s black cloak fluttered about him, the cloth whipping about in an unnatural breeze. Crackling energy snaked about Rudol’s body, filling the air with a smell of ozone. The mage’s eyes had gone white, lost within the eerie power that now filled his frame. The exile’s face was contorted into an embodiment of pitiless hate and rage. His clawed hands gestured, sending rapid blasts of lightning flickering in every direction, disintegrating wood and cracking stone.

‘Thieves! Scum!’ the maddened Rudol was shouting. ‘The Fell Fang is mine!’ As the wizard continued his merciless assault, heavy wooden beams groaned overhead and clouds of dust fell from the ceiling. Gobineau could see the badly damaged support column shudder and moan, the horrific sight snapping him from the fascinated paralysis that had gripped him. With a leap worthy of a mountain goat, Gobineau jumped through the doorway and out onto the street.

Behind him, Rudol looked upwards, the colour returning to his eyes as the energy drained from him. His pupils dilated in fear as the entire structure began to tremble. Hastily he started to shout out in a strange language, words that no human throat was ever meant to utter. Even as he raised his arms up to make arcane gestures, the ravaged support column, unable to bear the weight of the rooms above, cracked and flew apart, followed a second later by the entirety of the upper floor and the timbered roof.

Gobineau burst onto the street, a cloud of dust billowing out behind him as the wizard’s tower collapsed in upon itself, the outer walls no longer able to stand without the bracing support of the floors within. The bandit scudded through the mire of the street, then turned to face the structure that had so very nearly become his tomb. He looked away from the pile of wreckage, considering his torn and stained clothing. ‘Damn poor waste,’ he muttered as he considered the long gash that had manifested in the sleeve of his tunic. Then he considered the ivory cylinder still clutched in his hand and laughed heartily. ‘I can buy new clothes,’ he concluded.

A sound from behind him made the rogue spin around in alarm, his free hand pulling out his sword. He chuckled again when he found that it was only the other remaining members of his gang.

‘You got it,’ commented Pigsticker. The greasy bandit’s eyes were once again displaying the cold gleam of greed that had shone within them when the bandits had overhead Rudol’s appraisal of the artefact. Gobineau shot an angry look at the man, but quickly let it slip into a friendly smile. Gobineau did not favour confrontations that were two to one, or even confrontations with more equitable odds, unless the other party involved had his back to him.

‘We’re rich, lads!’ Gobineau exclaimed, casting another lingering look at the pile of rubble that had so lately been Rudol’s tower. ‘The world is now our oyster!’ He nodded back toward the wreckage. ‘But let’s discuss our fortune a good distance from this place. I half expect that wizard bastard to dig his way out of there!’

‘What about Brunner?’ wheezed the third brigand, his breathing still short from the brutal blow the bounty killer had introduced to the man’s stomach.

‘I wouldn’t put it past him to dig his way out of there either,’ Gobineau agreed. ‘More reason for us to get a long way from here.’ He pointed a finger at the brigand. ‘Dux, you go and get the horses from the stables. Pigsticker and I will meet you at the mill just outside the village.’

Gobineau watched as Dux hurried down the street, still clutching at his belly. When the bandit was out of earshot, he turned to his remaining confederate. ‘There’s a stable at the southern end of the village. I suggest we go and relieve him of his two fastest horses and make ourselves scarce.’

Gobineau did not wait for the other bandit to comment, but slipped into the alley that wormed its way between the mud-walled hovels. The other bandit hurried after him.

‘Why are we going to steal more horses?’ Pigsticker complained. ‘We already have some!’

Gobineau smiled at the other thief’s lack of foresight. ‘Tell me, from everything you’ve heard about him, do you think Brunner would let himself get crushed beneath a wizard’s disintegrating manse?’ The other bandit paused, his bleary eyes deep in thought.

‘You think he’s alive?’ Pigsticker asked. Gobineau shrugged his shoulders by way of reply, kicking at the foremost of a gaggle of geese that was blocking the path of the two thieves. The birds hissed angrily, but diverted their march.

‘Who knows, but I’d rather err on the side of caution,’ Gobineau told him. ‘Something to do with the rather extreme value I place upon my own neck.’ The rogue stopped, turning to look at his companion. ‘You’re a bounty hunter who has tracked down his prey. The only problem is that they just happen to be in the process of being cooked alive by a mad wizard. The smart man cuts his wager, slips away and hopes his mark makes it out in one piece so he can be caught later.’ Gobineau smiled, an expression of calculating admiration. ‘From what I hear, this Brunner is a very cagey sort. He’d probably figure that if any of us made it out of that carnage alive, we’d head for our horses, straight as an arrow.’ Gobineau chuckled darkly. ‘I’m betting he’s waiting there right now.’

Pigsticker surged forward, his callused hand closing about the neck of Gobineau’s tunic. The larger bandit slammed the rogue against the mud wall of the hovel they were standing beside. ‘And you sent Dux there to get killed!’ Pigsticker accused.

‘Not at all,’ Gobineau replied, his voice strained as he tried to suck in a full breath. ‘I sent him there to buy us time. If Brunner is there, and he sees only Dux, he might figure Dux was the only one who made it out of there in one piece. Meanwhile, you and I are sneaking away in the other direction.’

The rogue’s calculating words gave the other bandit pause. Pigsticker slowly released his hold on the dapper brigand. Gobineau tried to smooth out the wrinkles caused by the bandit’s clutch.

‘I know people in Mousillon who will pay quite nicely for what we have,’ Gobineau told the other bandit. ‘And I’d rather split the haul two ways than three.’ Pigsticker smiled back at the rogue, nodding in agreement.

Fifteen minutes later, Pigsticker sat slumped on the ground, his head lolling against his breast, eyes locked on the dark liquid spilling from his belly. He looked up as he heard a horse trot close by. The dying bandit’s face twisted with hate as he recognised the rider as Gobineau.

The rogue threw him a mocking salute. ‘Many thanks for your help dealing with the farmer,’ Gobineau called down to his former comrade. He slapped the flank of his new horse. ‘They really do raise some fine animals in this area.’ The rogue sighed deeply, turning the head of his animal so that the horse began to trot away.

‘It’s a pity you can’t come with me,’ Gobineau called back. ‘But sadly, I prefer not to split loot at all than split it two ways.’

The dying bandit watched his treacherous companion ride off, fury and rage suddenly overcoming even the cold chill of death pulling at his limbs. Pigsticker was unusual for a Bretonnian, he could read and write after a fashion, a skill he had learned during a brief legitimate phase as a warehouse warden in L’Anguille. Now he put that half-remembered skill to use, dipping his fingers into the pool of bubbling crimson that covered him. Pigsticker stabbed his fingers into the dirt beside him, slowly, one-by-one, drawing the letters that would betray his betrayer.

It was nearly sunset when the bounty hunter found the body of Pigsticker, on the outskirts of the village. Brunner’s scrutinising gaze took in the gruesome scene, reading at once the story it told. The bandit had been stabbed at close quarters and from the front, the wound too small for that of a sword, more likely the work of a knife or dagger. The bandit’s own weapons remained in their sheaths. Quite clearly, the blow had been unexpected, unexpected because it had come from a man the bandit had thought to be his friend. A belly wound such as that would give the dying bandit a long time to consider the treachery of his murderer. It was with a smile of triumph that Brunner read the words the dying brigand had painted into the dirt with his own blood. It was the name of a place, the place to which, undoubtedly, his killer was heading.

Brunner had already gone through much trouble to find his prey. The battle with the wizard had been one the bounty hunter had been utterly unprepared for. Had it not been for Gobineau’s timely distraction, Brunner might not have had the opportunity to escape, diving through a hole blown into the rear wall of the tower by one of the wizard’s lightning bolts. The bounty hunter had then hastened to the stables, to await the arrival of any survivors from the bandit gang as they tried to reclaim their animals. There had been only one, and not the man he was after. But the bandit had confirmed that Gobineau had escaped from the wizard, and that the rogue was to meet him at the old mill. When Gobineau had not been where the bandit said he would be, Brunner had guessed at the rogue’s cunning and duplicity, quickly riding a circuit around the village in the hopes of catching Gobineau’s trail. That had led him to Pigsticker, and the simple message the man had left behind.

The bounty hunter considered again the name and the place it represented. There were few places that Brunner hesitated to go, however, it seemed that his prey was making for one of them, the haunted, decaying city of Mousillon. Brunner let his gloved hand slip to the hilt of the Headsman. Gobineau was clever, in his way, but if he thought a little thing like hiding in the most reviled place in all Bretonnia was going to help him, then the rogue was going to quickly discover that his cleverness had run its course.

The wind wailed and moaned through the tiny copse of trees, causing the scattered leaves to crackle and spin. Had anyone been there to observe it, they might have marvelled at the strange motion of air, a spiral of force that was contrary to the light breeze that moved the tops of the trees. The weird motion of air began to intensify, stripping loose bark from the trunks of the poplars, uprooting grass from the fragile soil. As the spirals of force became still more intense, it seemed they became visible, glowing with a pale blue light. The spectral display intensified until its brilliance seemed to rival the sun.

Then it was gone – force and wind and glow. In its place, amid the stripped bark and uprooted vegetation, there stood a figure garbed in black. The wizard turned his body, staring with eyes that were pools of fury at the distant cluster of poverty that was Valbonnec. Rudol’s lip twisted in a spiteful sneer and his long-fingered hand spread into a claw, then snapped close into a clenched fist, as though crushing the village within his grip.

They had called him too emotional for proper mastery of the arts of wizardry and magic, too given to excess and the free rein of his emotions. The masters of the Celestial College spoke of restraint, of carefully measuring the power a wizard called into himself, of letting that power be used with care and caution lest it run wild and beyond the magic wielder’s control. It galled Rudol to no end that they were right, he was given to excess, given to allowing his emotions to overwhelm him, letting his anger rather than his intellect direct the power he took from the winds of magic. In his tower, he’d allowed the celestial energies to almost overwhelm him, allowed them to destroy indiscriminately, allowed the power to build to such a level that it might have consumed him. Rudol had seen what could happen if a wizard allowed too much magic to gather in his blood. The lucky ones would die, exploding in a brilliant blaze of light or simply dropping as though pole-axed by an ogre. There were others who survived such things, their bodies consumed and degenerated by the awesome energies that had run rampant through their systems. Spawn they called them, living manifestations of the dread force that was father to all magic: Chaos.

Rudol’s limbs trembled, unsteady and weak from the energies that had crackled about them. With a fumbling hand, the wizard opened a pouch on his belt, removing a small clay phial of filthy, tar-like liquid. The substance’s narcotic smell steadied Rudol’s hand and the wizard lifted the tiny bottle to his lips, letting his tongue lap some of the syrupy liquid from its container. At once, the calming effect of the drug surged through the wizard’s wasted veins, calming twitching muscles and throbbing nerves. Essence of weirdroot was not easy to come by, especially in Bretonnia where the knights were quick to punish those reckless enough to grow the forbidden herb, punishment that as often as not meant quartering for the criminal. Yet it was a vital substance, an essential tool to maintaining Rudol’s prowess with the black arts, keeping the wizard from reducing himself to a seizure-ridden cripple after one of his zealous magical outbursts.

The spell he had used, one that allowed the caster to vanish from one place and translocate himself to another, was a dangerous one, which called upon different winds of magic. To draw upon more than one of the colours of sorcery increased the risk of allowing too much Chaotic power to build within the wizard’s body. Even a reckless man of Rudol’s temperament hesitated to risk such things, yet there had been no other way to escape his crumbling abode save to embrace that risk and employ the Grey magic he had learned so long ago.

The wizard turned his gaze toward the south. He could sense it, the Fell Fang, being carried away by the filthy bandit scum who had brought it to him. The thief no doubt was unaware of the glamour Rudol had placed upon the artefact when he had guessed what it was. So long as the spell was maintained, Rudol would know exactly where the coveted relic was. It would not be long before he tracked down that snickering brigand.

Rudol considered his options. He could, of course, try and kill the bandit and whatever confederates he had with him when the time came, but if he did that he ran the risk of allowing the power to run away with him again. The Fell Fang was much too important to risk losing forever due to an excess of magic and his own impatience. No, he would be better served by securing swordsmen of his own, blades to cut down Gobineau and his trash while Rudol relieved the scum of their treasure. He would need an ally, a patron in this matter.

The wizard’s sinister laughter cackled into the night. He had a good idea where to find such a patron, a man ruthless enough to support the wizard’s schemes, so long as Rudol led him to believe that he too would profit by them. He looked south again, imagining the fleeing Gobineau, scuttling back into whatever spider hole he called his home. He hoped that the smiling rogue made good use of the days left to him, for they were most certainly numbered.

CHAPTER THREE

The small town of Alelbec was little more than a hog wallow by the standards of the Empire, but for the sparsely populated countryside of Bretonnia it was a thriving centre of commerce and trade. It boasted not simply one but two taverns, each of which, it was said, put more ale than water in their drinks. It boasted an inn, an ironmonger, a couple of horse traders, and even a glass blower, though this artisan’s wares mostly found their way into the cities of Gisoreux and Couronne. Indeed, the inn had the only glass windows and wood floors for a hundred miles. Such prosperity owed its existence to the location in which the town was situated, sprawling across the main roadway leading from Gisoreux to the royal court at Couronne, making the place a welcome stop for weary travellers, common and noble alike, to wash the dust from their mouths.

But by Imperial standards, it was still a slum and a pigsty, and Otto Kroenen would be quite happy to see the little dung heap retreating into the distance when he continued his journey. The toy maker despised his trips away from his native Reikland, most especially the ones that took him into Bretonnia. It never ceased to astound him the exceedingly low value the Bretonnians placed upon personal comfort. Quite the contrary, they seemed to take an almost sadistic pleasure in privation and hardship. Still, the lords of the kingdom took delight in Kroenen’s clockwork mechanisms and never ceased to delight in watching his little tin knights unhorse one another. The lords of Bretonnia might not spend a groat to clothe their peasants, but they were certainly willing enough to trade gold for cunning mechanisms far beyond the ability of their own artisans to produce. In the Empire, there were many toysmiths with whom Kroenen had to compete, many of them, if he were honest, quite a bit more clever and inventive than himself. But in Bretonnia, Kroenen was almost unique.

Which still did not spare him the perpetual discomfort of sleeping under the draughty roofs of Bretonnian hostelries and drinking the thin, lacklustre brews that the peasants dared to call ale and wine.

Kroenen’s mood turned even more sour as he sampled the amber liquid that festered within the wooden cup set before him on the counter. The only comforting thought was that his companion was enjoying himself even less. Kroenen turned a smug eye toward the small figure who brooded at the end of the long wooden bar. The short warrior’s body was covered in a suit of chainmail augmented by sections of elaborately engraved steel plate. A helmet trimmed in gold shared the same theme as the plates, interconnecting spirals of runes that each seemed to be some sort of stylised axe-head. From belts affixed about the short warrior’s broad shoulders and prodigious girth, a number of far less esoteric axes hung, keen edges gleaming from slits in the faces of their leather holsters. A far larger axe leaned against the counter beside the stout fighter, its shaft crafted from some exceedingly dark steel alloy, its double-bladed head gleaming with the keenness of a razor.

The warrior himself was grizzled, his skin dark and leathery. A flowing blond beard cascaded down his chest, the wiry hair obscuring almost his entire face saving the broad nose and narrow, surly eyes.

Kroenen considered himself rather fortunate to have engaged so capable a bodyguard as Ulgrin Baleaxe. Normally the services of a dwarf axeman would have been beyond the miserly inclinations of the toysmith, but Kroenen had happened upon the dwarf when his career had entered a decided slump. All the dwarf wanted now was a way to earn enough gold so he could return to the Empire without looking like a penniless mendicant.

It had been relatively easy for Kroenen to take advantage of the dwarf’s misfortune. He suspected that Ulgrin was going to refuse his offer, the dwarf had certainly fingered his axe in a most unpleasant way when Kroenen had mentioned how much he was willing to pay, but he knew the dwarf was desperate. He couldn’t return to the Empire without some coin to his name. He might be willing to have men see him as a near-beggar doing odd jobs for food and ale, but he’d certainly not suffer the eyes of his fellow dwarfs to see him in such a state. It was a part of the stubborn pride that had allowed men to advance their own engineering knowledge to a state where it was almost the equal to that of their ancient teachers, while the dwarfs themselves had scarcely advanced at all since the time of Sigmar.

Except in the arena of toy making... Kroenen made another sour face that had nothing to do with ale. He took a certain twisted joy in observing Ulgrin’s discomfort, a vicarious revenge for all the times he’d been bested by dwarf toysmiths in the great houses of the Empire. Kroenen imagined that there would be another tense scene involving the dwarf’s axe when the toysmith informed Ulgrin that the thin Bretonnian ale which the dwarf was imbibing by the gallon was being deducted from the warrior’s fee.

Ulgrin slammed down another wooden cup. He raised a grizzled fist and motioned for the tavern keeper to bring him another. ‘And see if you can’t keep from washing your feet in it before you serve it,’ the dwarf added. His harsh words were swiftly noted by a cluster of onlooking soldiers. Professional men-at-arms, they were part of the retinue of some petty lord who was journeying back to the royal court, and they had taken an instant dislike to the distinctive foreigner. Bretonnia did not enjoy the strong ties and shared history with the dwarfs in the way the Empire did, and it had been many centuries since more than a handful of the stout breed had travelled the green lands of the king.

The trio of soldiers rose from their table, an air of hostility preceding them as they strode toward the bar. Kroenen noted their advance, retreating deeper in the tavern to place a greater distance between himself and his bodyguard. After all, it was Ulgrin’s job to attend to such difficulties, that was what he was being paid for. The dwarf, for his part, did not seem to pay the approaching ruffians the slightest notice, maintaining a glowering stare that focused entirely upon the upended wooden cups.

‘Did it say something?’ the foremost of the soldiers asked. He was a tall, lean figure, a rounded cap of steel encasing his skull, a bright tabard of red and yellow displayed over his suit of leather armour, both cloth and armour struggling to maintain the man’s prodigious gut. Though he gripped a leather jack of ale in one hand, his other rested on the hilt of the sword swinging from his belt.

‘I’m not sure. It mumbles so terribly,’ a second, this one sporting a wide-brimmed steel hat on his head, commented.

‘Maybe he is just too deep in his cups to speak,’ the third, a large brute whose helm featured an immense steel nasal guard, said. ‘After all, little men shouldn’t drink so much.’

The dwarf did not turn to face the accosting soldiers, keeping his attention fixed upon the tavern keeper as he set a new cup before him. Ulgrin reached a gnarled hand forward, clenching his fist about the vessel and then made a point of draining its contents in one swallow.

‘Is that supposed to impress us, little man?’ sneered the first soldier.

This time Ulgrin did turn, staring up at the swaggering trooper. The dwarf’s eyes were like tiny fires, just beginning to glow into flame.

‘Not with this pigs’-piss!’ the dwarf spat. ‘Back in the High King’s realm the babies are weaned on stuff stronger than this sewage. Fetch me a decent beer if you want a drinking bout, a contest with this mud would take a month.’

‘I think I heard it insult our Bretonnian ale,’ the brutish soldier grumbled. ‘I think the little man is saying that our drink’s not good enough for him,’ he added with a note of menace.

‘In the habit of thinking too much, or just too little?’ Ulgrin shot back, his deep voice carrying with it the sharpness of a knife. At the far end of the tavern, Kroenen suddenly found a reason to be elsewhere, slipping out the door with a speed that did little to maintain his dignity.

‘What a nasty little temper it has!’ observed the fat soldier, chuckling with his domineering bravado. ‘Short folk should be much more respectful,’ he tutted, waving a warning finger.

‘I think it is that ugly bird’s nest of a beard hanging down his belly,’ the soldier in the steel hat remarked. ‘That must be what makes him so ill-tempered.’

‘Maybe we should give him a shave then,’ growled Brute. ‘Improve his looks, if not his manners!’

Ulgrin rolled his eyes, one hand scratching at his beard. ‘You grobi-fondlers do take a long time picking a fight,’ he complained.

The dwarf’s free hand came swinging around, hurling one of the wood cups from the counter behind him squarely in the face of Fatty. The soldier flung up both hands to protect himself as the cup bounced neatly off his forehead. The ale left in the cup was expelled as he threw up his hands, sending the amber liquid cascading into the face of Steel Hat, the alarmed soldier stumbling away from the unpleasant shower and tripping into Brute as the larger soldier began to draw his sword. The two men-at-arms crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

‘You should hire a few snotlings,’ Ulgrin said, grabbing up his double-headed axe. ‘Might improve your chances!’ Fatty had drawn his sword and although one hand still clutched at the dent in his forehead, the soldier strode toward the dwarf to exact revenge.

Ulgrin smiled at the ungainly advance, firming his own double-handed grip on his axe. As Fatty leaned back to slash down at his antagonist, Ulgrin lunged forward, driving the heft on his axe into the man’s groin. Instantly, the soldier’s sword clattered to the floor, a dull groan of misery flying from his body as though to escape the pain that had given it birth. The man fell to his knees, eyes watering. Ulgrin smiled down at the obese soldier.

‘A word to the wise: always buy a steel codpiece,’ the dwarf told the stunned Bretonnian before bringing the blunt heft of the axe smashing up under his chin and breaking the soldier’s jaw. Ulgrin turned away from the unconscious Fatty as the man’s comrades untangled themselves and rose from the floor.

‘He’s mine!’ snarled Steel Hat as the soldier considered the ruin Ulgrin had made of his friend.

The man-at-arms came lunging at the dwarf in a hate-ridden charge that was long on violence and short on grace. Ulgrin was reminded momentarily of the blood-mad rushes of orc warriors, but Steel Hat had neither the overwhelming bulk nor the unthinking ferocity to make such an attack problematic for the old dwarf veteran. Ulgrin brought his great axe upward, meeting the sweep of the soldier’s sword. The Bretonnian steel shuddered as it impacted against the black steel of the axe. The runes upon the weapon seemed to glow for a moment, giving off a faint blue light. Undaunted, Steel Hat brought his blade slashing downward again. This time, the sword did not simply rebound from the cruel dwarf weapon, but snapped like a twig, the upper length of the sword skittering across the room. Steel Hat stared in horror and disbelief at his mangled weapon, then at the glowering dwarf. Ulgrin hefted his axe and took a menacing step forward.

‘He’s yours!’ Steel Hat cried as he fled past the brutal-looking soldier, dropping the remains of his sword as he ran, struggling to push his way through the other patrons of the tavern who now choked the exit.

Brute snarled as he stalked forward, murderous eyes intent on the dwarf. ‘You’ve made quick work of my friends, little man,’ the thug growled. ‘Now let’s see how you do against me!’

The big soldier moved toward Ulgrin with more caution than Steel Hat had, clearly taking his enemy with a sobering degree of care. Ulgrin smiled beneath his beard. Sometimes too much caution was a bad thing.

The dwarf shifted his upper body, starting to bring the butt of his axe forward. Brute reacted by dropping his sword downward to intercept any crippling blow aimed at his vitals. But the dwarf had no intention of repeating his earlier attack on Fatty. In mid-motion, Ulgrin swept the upper part of his weapon around. Already leaning forward to protect himself, Brute’s face was in easy reach of the double-headed weapon. The colour drained from his features as he saw the steel flash before his eyes. Something struck the floor with a loud thud. Brute cast his gaze downward, his flesh going even paler as he saw the severed nasal guard staring up at him.

Ulgrin leaned on his axe, glaring at the shocked Bretonnian. Brute looked away from the cleanly cut steel and it was with dread filling his gaze that he stared upon his adversary. Ulgrin’s face split in a cruel smile of both mockery and challenge.

‘You should probably go away now,’ the dwarf told the Bretonnian. ‘Before I take it into my head to give you a shave,’ he threatened. ‘With this,’ he added, patting the shaft of his axe. Brute needed no further encouragement, slamming his weapon back into its sheath and running with all speed for the tavern’s exit.

Ulgrin smiled coldly, turning around and beginning to make his way back to the bar. As he did so, the sound of two hands clapping together brought the dwarf to a stop. Firming his grip upon the axe, the dwarf peered into the shadowy recesses of the tavern. Ulgrin watched intently as his applauding spectator stepped out into the light. The dwarf was somehow not surprised that he recognised the man. The grip upon the axe became a bit tighter.

‘Brunner,’ the dwarf addressed the man from the shadows. ‘Still slinking around like some damn tunnel goblin I see.’

The bounty hunter strode forward, one gloved hand dropping to rest on the butt of the pistol holstered across his belly.

‘Still carrying around that monstrosity, Ulgrin?’ Brunner asked. The bounty hunter let a faint laugh escape his lips. ‘Of course, I suppose you’d no longer be called Baleaxe if you were to lose it.’ Ulgrin stared back, clearly finding no humour in the bounty killer’s jest.

‘What brings you snooping around, Brunner?’ the dwarf’s voice was heavy with suspicion.

‘Just heard that an old friend was in the area,’ the bounty hunter replied, his voice level and even.

Ulgrin snorted with grim amusement. ‘You don’t have any friends, Brunner,’ the dwarf stated. ‘And if you did, I wouldn’t be one of them.’

‘Still angry about that?’ the bounty hunter shook his head. ‘I would have thought with that sharp dwarf memory of yours you’d be able to recall that I found him first. Besides, Judge Vaulkberg doesn’t like dealing with dwarfs. He’d have dropped his price if you’d brought Selber in.’

‘That’s supposed to make me feel better?’ the dwarf growled. ‘Fifty or sixty gold in my hands is still better than none.’ Ulgrin let his hands clench and unclench about the haft of his weapon, a silent display of his eagerness to use it.

‘What if I told you I was looking for you?’ Brunner told the dwarf.

It was true, after a fashion. The bounty hunter had known his old rival was in Bretonnia for some time now, he just hadn’t seen any reason for their paths to cross before. Now the dwarf bounty killer could be of use to him. ‘I need some help securing the mark I’m hunting. A good set of eyes to watch my back.’

Ulgrin laughed contemptuously. ‘The great Brunner in need of help,’ the dwarf jeered. ‘Why do I find that story a bit hard to swallow?’

‘The man’s name is Gobineau. He’s wanted for banditry, piracy, murder, arson and the deflowering of a small army of noblemen’s wives and daughters.’ Brunner paused, staring straight into the sullen eyes of Ulgrin Baleaxe. ‘The reward being offered is two thousand gold crowns. If you help me, we split it right down the middle.’

The dwarf let his axe droop to the floor, shifting his grip so that one gnarled hand could scratch at his chin. Ulgrin’s eyes gleamed with a new light, the glint of goldlust. ‘A thousand gold,’ the dwarf muttered. ‘More than enough to buy my way out of this wretched country and make my return in style.’ Ulgrin turned his attention back to the bounty hunter. ‘You have my interest, Brunner. Now let me see how the land lies. Why do you need my help?’

Brunner smiled at the other bounty hunter, considering his words carefully. ‘You have heard of Mousillon?’

‘The cursed city?’ the dwarf said, his tone incredulous. ‘They say that ghosts hold court in broken castles and toppled towers there, that ghouls prowl the streets and devour whatever flesh they find. It is said to be a haven of disease and plague, where madness is commonplace and children are born twisted and warped. They say…’

‘…many things,’ Brunner interrupted. ‘Many of them are lies, but there is enough truth to the stories to make Mousillon a shunned and dangerous place.’ The bounty hunter’s tone became sombre as he continued. ‘The man I am seeking has fled to Mousillon. That is why I need you.’

Ulgrin’s gaze dropped, staring intently at the floor as the brain behind those eyes considered the bounty killer’s offer. ‘Two is safer than one, is that it?’ the dwarf said at last. ‘Sounds rather like how they hunt trolls in Karak Izor. They take a big old boar into the tunnels. The boar gets a sniff of the troll and takes off after it thinking it’s going to find some nice tasty mushrooms. Of course, when it discovers a troll at the end of the trail, it starts squealing bloody murder, which gets the troll riled enough that its one thought is to smash the boar. That usually gives the troll hunters time to bring the thick-witted brute down before it can shift its attention over to them.’ Ulgrin glared suspiciously at Brunner. ‘I suspect you want me to be the boar,’ he accused.

The bounty hunter’s smile did not change. ‘Let’s just say that somebody with your flair for chopping heads first and taking names later might be a nice complement to my own methods.’

‘Meaning I draw the enemies out while you pick them off from the shadows,’ the dwarf sneered. He was quiet for a moment more, then gave voice to a boisterous laugh. ‘For a thousand gold crowns, I can do that! You have yourself a partner, bounty killer.’

‘You’ll need a horse,’ Brunner pointed out. ‘It’s a long walk to Mousillon.’ The bounty hunter knew that dwarfs as a rule disliked riding, though he’d seen some manage well enough on mules and ponies. Ulgrin nodded his head.

‘The slime I was working for, Otto Kroenen, gave me a mule so I could keep up with him on the road,’ Ulgrin said. ‘It’s in the stable now. I’m sure he won’t miss it.’ The dwarf swung his massive axe, letting the blade rest against his shoulder. ‘We’ll just consider it my severance wage,’ the dwarf laughed, following Brunner’s lead toward the exit.

The lone traveller sat in a bleak, forsaken corner of the small inn. The little structure’s floor was a morass of mud, planks of wood crudely thrown over the morass to provide relatively stable places upon which to walk and stand. A few ox-skins were stretched over the walls, a feeble and ultimately futile attempt to keep the all-intrusive chill at bay. Trickles of water dripped from the ceiling where the thatch had at last yielded to the harsh pounding it had taken since the rain had started some hours before. The villages that peppered the road leading toward the forsaken city of Mousillon were noteworthy for their poverty, even by the exceedingly low standards set by the peasantry of Bretonnia, and the shanty town that supported the desolate little inn was no exception to the rule.

The Griffon’s Nest, the owner of the dive dared to call it. The Spider Hole might have been a more honest title to bestow upon the wretched hovel, at least in such a direction went Gobineau’s thoughts. Still, the proprietor, a one-armed grey-head named Gaspard, did have a rather endearing quality. Maimed in his youth for the crime of poaching, Gaspard had little love for the knights who ruled Bretonnia and maintained the peace. The innkeeper was notorious for his lack of interest in those who chose to patronise his establishment, whatever their crimes or the prices on their heads. Or perhaps it was simply that only an outlaw would endure the slovenly standards of Gaspard’s food and drink, and the positively hideous condition of the long straw-strewn stable where he allowed his patrons and their beasts to strive toward achieving some pale shadow of sleep and rest.

Gobineau shook his head in disgust as a cockroach large enough to give a housecat a decent fight sloshed its way through the mud and scurried under a gap in the nearest wall. A sigh worked its way from the rogue’s chest as he considered the misery of his surroundings. Only two months ago he had been sleeping on sheets of Cathayan silk and dining upon roast pheasant and duck. Of course, his very eager and accommodating hostess did have that slight marital problem, as in the noble lord’s five-month quest to root out a nest of beastmen in the Forest of Chalons had only taken three. Of course, the stunned look on the knight’s face had almost been worth a cold flight through the nighted streets of Couronne, though Gobineau did regret leaving such a fine pair of boots behind.

Thoughts of finery caused the rogue to remove the ivory reliquary that he had tucked within his tunic. He studied the artefact that had so impressed the wizard, impressed him enough to try killing Gobineau and his entire bandit gang. With a twist of his wrist, Gobineau slid the upper portion away, exposing the item Rudol had called the Fell Fang, though Gobineau did not like to ponder the size of a creature that could have fitted something of such size within its jaws.

There was no mistaking the quality of the artefact, its graceful, peerless craftsmanship. And, if Rudol was to be believed, there was something magical about the device. That would make it especially valuable where he was going. Duc Marimund had been a sometime patron of Gobineau’s when the rogue had operated in the southern half of the kingdom. Mousillon was a prime base of operations, if one had a constitution bold enough to resist the pestilent air that clung to the blighted city, and didn’t mind leaving the hours of darkness to the unspeakable things that emptied from the city’s graveyard at dusk. There were few knights in Bretonnia who would brave the cursed city, seeing it as a place of ill omen and sacrilege. That was very helpful when trying to escape a particularly determined baronet or marquis’s warriors.

The duc was also obsessed with all things magic, hoping to achieve his mad dreams of restoring the glory days of his rotting city through sorcery and the black arts. He’d be quite interested in what Gobineau had to show him. And, of course, while Marimund was occupied with his new toy, his pretty young wife might be interested in a few hours’ dalliance with her old paramour. Gobineau smiled again at that thought. His mind half-taken with amorous deeds, he eyed the fang once more, again noting the irregular holes that seemed to have been drilled into its surface. The rogue lifted the relic to his lips, blowing through the silver cap into the hollow fang, intending to evoke one of the many haunting melodies he had collected in his travels and which he employed to help melt even the coldest maiden’s heart.

The rogue looked in annoyance at the fang when no sound issued from it. He drew a deeper breath, blowing into it once more, then chided himself for his foolishness. It was some hoary old elf sorcerer’s talisman, not a minstrel’s flute. Laughing at his flight of fancy, Gobineau slipped the curve of bone back into its ivory case, admiring the carvings once more before again concealing it within the folds of his tunic.

He’d need to set aside his thought of romantic trysts and glittering gold. It was more important that he watch himself on the road to the cursed city, especially now that he was only a day’s journey from the safety of Mousillon’s walls. He’d make an early start on the morrow, and be in Mousillon long before nightfall. It wouldn’t pay for some knight to chance upon him now that he was so close.

Of course, there was another thought that lent speed to Gobineau’s intentions. He’d ridden two horses into the ground, abandoning the dying steeds and stealing replacements, during his flight from Valbonnec, yet Gobineau was not so certain that he had eluded all pursuit. The bounty hunter Brunner was notorious for his tenacity, and infamous for his brutality when he brought his hunts to a close. The thought that the bounty killer, despite all of Gobineau’s craft and care, might be close at hand chilled the rogue far more than the draught seeping in under the ox-skins.

The rogue lifted the watery mead that Gaspard had given him to chase down his dinner of lukewarm porridge. He’d be safe enough once he was in Mousillon, the rogue told himself as he tried to strengthen his nerves with what little fire was in his drink. Even a fanatic like Brunner wouldn’t follow him there.

The castle’s great hall was all but deserted, the sycophants of the court dismissed by a snarled command from their lord. A number of servants had remained, cringing in the background like badly whipped curs who knew not from which direction their master might kick them next. A second, even more murderous oath from the lord of the castle sent even these wretches scuttling off through the stone archways that opened into the hall. In their wake, the crackle of the fire was the only sound that intruded upon the silence.

In the centre of the chamber, where a vast array of benches and tables had been assembled for the recently interrupted feast, a high-backed throne stood, its occupant glowering at the two men standing before him. He was a cruel-featured man, his nose broad, his mouth a thick gash above his slight chin. His body was not one of height, but one of strength, limbs rippling with muscle, raw brute power visible even beneath the silky blue robes the nobleman wore. His neck was thick, like the stump of a tree, and about it hung a massive golden chain and pectoral. Upon the pectoral was a slavering wolf, the coat of arms of the Viscount de Chegney, a man as notorious for his tyranny as he was for his ruthlessness.

Augustine de Chegney leaned forward in his chair, fixing his intense, smouldering gaze upon his seneschal.

‘Your story intrigues me, Pleasant,’ the nobleman growled. ‘Now that we are alone, I would hear more of the particulars.’ There was an unspoken threat in the viscount’s words, a promise that if the rest of the report was not as promising as the seneschal’s intimations had been, then the viscount’s underling would pay a stiff penalty for presuming upon his master’s ambitions.

The man addressed was a tall, lean figure, wearing a long brown cloak over his red tunic and breeches. His features were sharp, almost bird-like, his head bald except for the fringe of white hair that persisted behind his ears and the faint wisp of moustache that hid beneath the shadow of his nose. Elodore Pleasant lifted a hand heavy with gold rings and pulled at his chin. He smiled nervously, then continued to make his report.

‘This man,’ Elodore pointed behind him at the dark-garbed stranger who had come to the chateau seeking an audience with the viscount, ‘is the wizard of whom I spoke.’

‘I have eyes, fool,’ the viscount snarled, ‘and the wit to use them.’ De Chegney turned his attention away from his underling and stared at the man who had accompanied him. The wizard was not so thin and frail as the seneschal, though far from powerfully built. He wore a robe of black upon which tiny stars seemed to blink and flicker with the wizard’s every movement. The fiery, intense eyes of the mage did not waver as the feral glare of the nobleman peered into them.

‘This weapon you have told Pleasant about,’ the viscount said. ‘It will do what you have said it can do?’

‘The true level of its power may be far beyond even what I have described,’ Rudol boasted, his voice rippling with excitement. ‘With such a weapon at your command, no enemy could hope to stand against you!’

‘My enemies do not dare to stand against me now, conjurer,’ de Chegney declared. ‘I have the finest army in the Grey Mountains, and my enemies know it.’

‘But if your enemies should band together…’ Rudol explained. ‘There is always that threat, is there not? That you might become problem enough that even the least amiable of your adversaries might find common cause in working your ruin?’

‘And there is the simple truth that we cannot easily both defend ourselves and mount a decisive strike on le Gaires,’ interjected Pleasant. ‘The wizard’s plan offers us a way to achieve both.’ De Chegney waved a meaty hand indicating that his servant should curb his enthusiasm.

‘This talisman you speak of,’ the nobleman asked. ‘It will truly enable you to control dragons?’

Rudol’s eyes gleamed with an even more fanatic intensity as he responded to the viscount’s question. ‘It is a device worked by the elves long ago. Mortal wizards have never dared imagine such a device! With the Fell Fang, I can call the dragon which was bound to the talisman and bind him to my will! I can command him to destroy whomever you command. You can annihilate your enemies from afar, keeping your army intact and be ready to deal with anyone foolish enough to oppose you after you display your power!’

‘What is in this for you?’ de Chegney inquired, trying not to let himself become distracted by the fantastic prospect Rudol had laid before him.

‘I am but a wizard,’ the exile said, bowing humbly before the seated noble. ‘I am no ruler, I can prosper only by serving a man who is firmly in command of the mundane matters of a mundane world, freeing me to pursue my researches into the mysteries of the arcane world. If I do this for you, I would expect your protection and patronage in exchange for my services.’ A crafty quality entered Rudol’s features and the smile he turned upon de Chegney was one of smugness. ‘I should point out that it takes one well versed in the black arts to employ the Fell Fang, to rouse the dragon from its slumber. It is no dog whistle that any idiot can put to his lips!’ The wizard nodded his head. ‘We need each other, viscount. Neither of us can achieve his ambitions without the other.’

De Chegney leaned back in his chair. ‘You have asked for protection as you secure this talisman from the man who has it.’ The nobleman paused as he considered the request. ‘I shall put twenty men at your disposal. One of my knights shall accompany them.’ The viscount’s tone became lower, more threatening. ‘Sir Thierswind will be in command of the soldiers. You may voice suggestions to him, but make no mistake that he is in command of this little expedition.’ The viscount lifted a warning finger. ‘Be advised, Rudol, if Sir Thierswind once suspects that you intend to betray me, I have given him my blessing to remove your head from its shoulders and bring both it and the talisman back to me.’ The viscount snorted with grim humour.

‘After all,’ he laughed, ‘I can always find another wizard.’

La Isla de Sangre was a barren scrap of volcanic rock jutting out of the ocean some two hundred miles off the coast of Estalia. It was an ill-regarded place, shunned by man and beast alike. The rocky slopes were devoid of all but the hardiest of mosses and weeds, their scraggly, skeletal stalks clothing the parched and stony earth. Except for the grotesque crabs that nightly crawled out of the muck and filth of the island’s lagoon to prowl and hunt, the place was almost devoid of animal life. A few petrels and razorbills contested lordship of the island with the crabs, when the north was gripped by the frosty attentions of Ulric, Lord of Winter, their croaking cries audible for leagues out to sea.

Even pirates had forsaken La Isla de Sangre as a place from which to mount their raids and hide their treasure. Perhaps it was the blood-red sand of the beach, which had lent the island its name, that so disconcerted them. Perhaps it was the towering volcano that loomed above the island, an omnipresent spectre of impending doom as it smoked and rumbled. Or perhaps it was legend, the old stories that said the island had once been a lush paradise, home to a great and noble race of people. The tales went that the island had been turned into a barren wilderness after a single night of destruction and carnage, when a horrific force had descended upon the island and consumed all upon it. The legends did not agree upon what shape the destroyer had taken; some spoke of an angry god that dwelt within the mountain, others of a towering daemon who wore a crown of flame, still others of a rain of firebolts that had showered down from the sky to burn the island clean of life.

In primitive times, the crude ancestors of the Estalians had paddled their rafts to the island once a year to leave an offering upon its shore, hoping to placate the angry god of the mountain with their sacrifice. Even in more recent times, Estalian sailors would throw a small animal overboard when they passed within sight of the island. It was never wise to tempt daemons from their slumber.

Within the sulphurous depths of the gigantic network of lava tubes that snaked their way through the mountain, a vast form stirred upon its bed of glittering metal. Claws of polished black scratched at the golden coins that supported them, causing them to slide in an avalanche of wealth. A long tail lashed against the wall, knocking stones from the ceiling overhead. The rocks crumbled and broke upon the massive armoured back beneath them. Leathery lids rolled back to expose cold amber eyes, their slit-like pupil narrowing and widening as it roused itself from centuries of slumber.

A low hiss, like the sizzle of a thousand forges, rasped from the creature’s immense form. Fully emerged from its interrupted slumber, the reptile’s mind at once focused upon what had disturbed it. An ancient insult had been repeated, the stabbing, probing pain had lanced once more through its mind. The cold mind of the reptile suddenly blazed with a rage as fiery as the molten rock that surged in the caldera that warmed its lair.

Powerful limbs clawed at the heaped treasure that formed the wyrm’s nest, pulling the mammoth shape through the lava tubes. A low rumble pounded from the reptile’s body as its breathing increased, as strength began to surge once more through its gargantuan frame. A long, purplish tongue shot out from the colossal jaws that fronted the monster’s wedge-like head, flickering as it tasted the air. The monster hissed again, crawling toward the faint suggestion of fresh air it had detected. The wyrm’s colossal bulk widened the narrow lava tubes, grinding stone from the smooth walls with its passing. At last, it neared its goal. The tremendous speed of the reptile lessened as it neared the fresh air, and it was with a suggestion of caution that the monster approached the mouth of the tunnel.

Like a gigantic serpent, the dragon crawled from the mouth of the lava tube, sending a rockslide tumbling down the mountain as he wriggled his body to widen the hole. The enormous horned head looked skyward, staring with cool alien interest at the stars he had not seen for five hundred years and more. The weird light of the twin moons lent a colder hue to the reptile’s crimson scales and black talons, but did nothing to ease the wrath boiling within the creature. The dragon freed his shoulders, twisting his body and sinking his halberd-like claws into the side of the volcano. With a speed that seemed beyond something of such a mammoth construction, the dragon crawled from the mouth of his lava tunnel up the sheer face of the mountain, stopping only when he reached the truncated peak of the volcano.

The dragon stared down at his desolate island, his predatory gaze considering the jagged rocks and scarlet sands. The dragon’s eyes dismissed the scuttling shapes of the crabs, lifting to watch the placid surface of the wide ocean. There would be porpoises and whales there, meat enough to fill even the fiery belly of the ancient wyrm. A trickle of sizzling drool fell from the dragon’s mouth as he contemplated such a feast. Then the monster’s eyes narrowed as his mind returned to that which had disturbed him. As intense as the hunger chewing at his innards was, there was a still greater force motivating the mammoth reptile.

Leathery wings slowly folded open from above the dragon’s shoulders. The pinions, as black as night and larger than a galleon’s mainsail, fluttered up and down as the dragon tested them in the warm wind rising from the volcano. With a snap, the wings opened fully and the dragon let a mighty roar rasp from his powerful lungs, golden flames billowing from his jaws. Without further preamble, the two hundred foot-long monster launched himself from the side of the mountain, powerful wings keeping the giant reptile aloft.

Malok circled the island twice, then banked, speeding away in a new direction. What he wanted to find was not on La Isla de Sangre. No, it would be found somewhere else, somewhere in the north. Malok did not know where he might find it now, but he knew where it had been.

For now, that would be enough. If it was not there, then the dragon would simply extend his hunt. When enough of the land was cinder and ash, there would be no place for the little vermin to hide.

CHAPTER FOUR

It lay strewn upon the banks of the River Grismerie like the festering carcass of some colossal sea beast dredged up from the pits of the ocean to die upon the shore. The once gleaming walls of the city were now broken, charred black in places by fires that had raged unchecked, or had toppled when the foundations had been devoured by the boggy landscape. Smaller structures lay crushed beneath those tumbled-down walls, the immense stone blocks driving the shops and hovels that had clustered in their shadow deep into the mire so that only the occasional wooden strut or shingle protruded from the quagmire. The rotting remains of towers could be seen beyond the wall, the forlorn remnants of once proud castles from which the descendants of Lord Landuin had once ruled. To the north and the west of the city, great cemeteries sprawled, vast mausoleums and tombs meant to endure through the ages, now crumbled and cracked by the twin evils of flood and earthquake, and by the neglect that had afflicted all of Mousillon.

Beyond the walls of the dead city, all was foul stinking marshland, a filthy bog of mud and mire formed by the river’s frequent floods. The giant shantytown that had sprung up around the walls of Mousillon during the Dark Age of Bretonnia was now half sunk into the mire, second storey floors now level with the mud as the swamp consumed the floors beneath. Roofs peeked out from the morass, black croaking crows and grunting grey gulls making their nests in the ruins of chimneys and gable windows. Near the river, the last remains of quays and docks could be seen, half sunk into the mud banks that had built around them, the waters of the river many yards from the ends of the piers. Boats and ships of all shape and size were likewise trapped in the mud, their broken hulls displaying jagged gashes and splintered wood. The shore of a siren’s island could have been of no greater grimness than the decaying port of Mousillon.

From the quays, a great stretch of crumbling warehouses and workshops sprawled, reaching back towards the city walls before completely slipping back into the mire that had devoured the shantytown. Here, a number of crude grauben hauses had been built, a structure employed by only the most backward and poverty stricken within the Empire. Little more than tents crafted from swamp reeds and driftwood, the tiny plumes of smoke rising from the structures suggested that they were not without their denizens, lairing within the mud like river vermin.

The two bounty hunters stared down on the miserable city from a small hillock. They were on foot now, their horses and mule left with a farmer some distance from the city, one whom the promise of gold and the threat of retribution had made certain to take good care of the animals. Ulgrin had grumbled about the tactic, but Brunner had informed his companion that it was unwise to bring the animals too near the blighted city. In a place as poor and desperate as Mousillon, horseflesh was as prized as Mootland steak.

‘Filthy looking place,’ Ulgrin commented, rolling his shoulders to ease the weight of his axe. ‘I’ve burned down goblin villages that were more pleasant to look upon.’ Brunner turned and stared down at the dwarf.

‘This place is more dangerous than any goblin hole,’ he told Ulgrin. ‘Keep your eyes and ears open. The people who live here are desperate, miserable and without conscience. They’d kill a stranger simply to boil the leather in his shoes.’ Brunner caressed the grip of his pistol. ‘Make no mistake, friend Baleaxe, you’re going to earn your thousand gold.’

‘You speak with the voice of experience,’ the dwarf observed, a tone of suspicion in his voice.

‘I do,’ Brunner returned, marching down toward the riverbank. ‘I have been here once before, though it was a long time ago.’

Ulgrin hurried after his companion, knowing that he would get no more from the close-mouthed killer. The dwarf was somewhat cheered by the notion that Brunner had risked the dread city once before and emerged alive. Then the relief drained from his heart as the dwarf wondered whether the bounty hunter had brought someone with him on that occasion as well, and whether his companion on that venture had likewise escaped the city.

A dirty, foul-visaged fisherman had ferried the pair of hunters across the wide expanse of the Grismerie, poling his flat-bottom skiff across mudflats where barely a foot of water covered the filth. For his services, the gap-toothed old wretch had been paid a pair of brass coins by the stern-faced Brunner, a pitiable sum back in the Empire, but something approaching a fortune for the dejected humans who cringed in the shadow of the cursed city. The fisherman had instantly thrust the coins into his mangy cloak, then shook his head as his passengers disembarked, hopping from the skiff to the rotten remains of a pier that lay close by. In his many years wrenching a living from the filthy waters of the bog, the old man had escorted only a few travellers into the city. He’d yet to see any of them leave. But, with the pragmatic survivor’s instinct that had kept the fisherman alive in so blighted an environment, he decided that the wanderings of fools were no concern of his. Without a backward glance, he poled his skiff back into the morass and toward the deeper, cleaner waters of the Grismerie’s far bank.

Brunner led the way, carefully negotiating the treacherous ruin of the old pier. Beneath the bounty hunter’s tread, the rotted boards groaned and bent, reaching down toward the bottomless muck beneath them. Once, pressing his weight upon a seemingly sound plank, the bounty hunter had been startled by a sharp crack. Instinct caused him to press backward, restoring his weight to his opposite foot. The board upon which he had pressed snapped as neatly as a dry twig, the jagged ends slipping down into the grey mud. Within a few seconds, the broken plank sank completely into the morass and was lost to sight.

Behind him, Ulgrin Baleaxe whistled appreciatively. ‘Wheew, now that’s some nasty stuff!’ the dwarf exclaimed. ‘Even the tar pits below Karak Kadrin don’t work that fast.’ Ulgrin leaned forward, spitting into the greedy slime.

‘Maybe you’d prefer to go first,’ Brunner commented, extending his hand to indicate the dozens of yards of treacherous walkway yet to be traversed. ‘I’ve always heard that dwarfs have a keen sense about unsafe paths.’

Ulgrin stepped back, setting the head of his axe against the pier, crossing his arms and resting them on the weapon’s butt. ‘That’s true enough down in a decent mine or tunnel. We can feel the changes in the rock and the air that let us know when something’s wrong. But with this,’ Ulgrin gestured with his bearded chin to indicate the bog all around them. ‘This isn’t so much earth as water masquerading as ground. Only men would be foolish enough to build in such a place, so I’ll be quite content to let a man risk his fool-all neck figuring out what can be walked on and what can’t.’

Brunner turned away, stretching his leg to test the plank to the other side of the recently created gap. Finding it firm, he stepped across and proceeded to progress along the dilapidated pier. ‘At some point Ulgrin, you do intend on earning your half of the bounty, or would that be an unwise assumption?’ the bounty hunter called back. Ulgrin bristled under the comment, slinging his great axe back over his shoulder and following after Brunner with awkward hops and leaps.

‘No dwarf ever accepted charity from anyone!’ Ulgrin snapped, fighting to maintain his balance as he jumped across another gap left by a rotten board. The dwarf stared at the hungry mud below him for a tense moment before regaining his footing. ‘And no dwarf ever took payment unless he earned it fairly,’ Ulgrin added, his voice somewhat uneven as he considered how quickly the plank had been devoured.

‘Don’t concern yourself on that count,’ Brunner stated. ‘Unless Mousillon has changed a great deal since I was last here, these mud flats are the least of what this city will throw at us.’ The bounty hunter pressed on, a series of jumps placing him several yards ahead of his diminutive companion.

‘Now there’s a pleasant thought,’ Ulgrin grumbled to himself. He stared back at the grey mire. ‘If that bastard had mentioned this gobbling muck, I’d have told him to go hang himself!’

A quarter of an hour later, the end of the pier was within a dozen feet. Several times the bounty hunters had suffered a close call, treacherous planks shifting or breaking beneath their weight. Twice, Brunner had had to lift Ulgrin from the filth, the dwarf’s desperate cries alerting the bounty hunter to his companion’s distress. Only the timely speed with which Ulgrin had planted the head of his great axe into a support had prevented the dwarf from slipping entirely beneath the muck. It was with visible relief that Ulgrin beheld the relatively solid ground that rose beyond the end of the pier.

‘Tell me that we have to cross that filth on the way back, and I’ll cut your throat here and now,’ Ulgrin snarled, wringing yet another clump of mud from his beard. ‘If I never see this devil’s porridge again, that will be soon enough!’

Brunner ignored Ulgrin’s mutterings, his icy eyes instead watching the crumbling warehouses and dilapidated shops that crouched and slumped near what had been Mousillon’s waterfront. The killer smiled grimly as he spied a shadow move within the darkness of one of the doorways. ‘In a few minutes, you may be only too happy to see this sludge again. At least with it, you know where the danger lies.’

Ulgrin scratched at his unkempt beard, ignoring the other bounty hunter’s cheerless comment. As he pawed at the matted, muddy mess, his eyes fixed upon a small shape scrabbling across the mud flats. He pointed a stubby hand at the tiny apparition.

‘Looks like we should have engaged that cat as a guide,’ the dwarf laughed. ‘He seems to know the safe places.’

‘He’s not heavy enough to sink,’ Brunner replied, only shifting his gaze for a second to observe the small animal. ‘If he stops for a second, the mud will slurp him down just as hungrily as it tried to get you.’ The bounty hunter kept his voice even, his stare steady and regular. The last thing he needed was to let the three or four shapes he’d seen moving inside the wasted innards of a wine shop know they’d been seen. ‘Besides, he’s got problems enough of his own.’

Even as Brunner spoke, the dwarf watched in astonishment as a dark, loathsome creature wriggled its way across the muck. It was not entirely unlike the cave eels he’d seen beneath the Worlds Edge Mountains, but it was much larger and its scales much darker, its back sporting a fringe of spike-like spines. The ugly thing moved with a strange sideways undulation that kept only the smallest portion of its body in contact with the mud, lending it a speed that the bedraggled cat could not hope to match. The dark furred feline howled in fright as the grotesque snake-fish reached it, the creature’s long jaws snapping close about the animal’s scrawny neck.

‘Hashut’s bald beard!’ the dwarf swore. ‘What madness is this, where fish hunt cats?’

‘Better have that axe of yours ready,’ Brunner said, his eyes still studying the rotting structures of the waterfront. ‘We could be next on the menu.’

Ulgrin cast a curious eye on the bounty hunter, but did as he had been told, releasing the snaps that held his throwing axes in their holsters, firming his grip on his trusty great axe.

‘How many?’ the dwarf whispered.

‘We won’t know that until they attack,’ Brunner replied, taking the first step from the pier. His boot squelched into the muddy ground, but the earth was firm enough beneath his tread to walk upon. ‘Might be a dozen, might be a hundred.’

Damnit, Brunner!’ the dwarf hissed. ‘You’ve a bad idea of fair odds! I’ve met slayers who wouldn’t look for fights that uneven!’

Brunner lifted his repeating crossbow from its sheath across his back, ensuring that the weapon was loaded and ready. The smile on the bounty hunter’s face seemed only half-joking when he addressed Ulgrin’s concerns. ‘If things get too bad, we can always run. Then they might only get the slowest one.’

For long, tense minutes, the two warriors negotiated the winding, devastated streets of the waterfront. Everywhere the crumbling, decaying wretchedness closed in upon them, filling their lungs with the rank stench of rotten fish and human sewage. Vacant-eyed warehouses considered them like hungry giants, the broken boards of their walls grinning at them like jagged teeth. Workshops and what might once have been the homes of merchants and ship captains sagged and slouched at awkward, impossible angles, unimagined even by the eccentric architects of Miragliano’s famed leaning towers. A filthy thing Ulgrin took to be a scrawny dog scurried down an alleyway, the bony remnants of a fish gripped in its mouth, but when it turned back, the dwarf shuddered to see a child’s face, though he would still swear the limbs the creature loped away upon were not those of a man.

Furtive sounds, like the scrabbling claws of rats, followed the two hunters, dogging their steps like an audible shadow. Soon, Brunner and his dwarf comrade were catching glimpses of things regarding them from the narrow necks of alleys and the dark recesses of rotted doorways. They wore the most wretched of rags, mismatched scraps of cloth, fur and leather wrapped about scrawny limbs and twisted backs. Many faces were hidden beneath sackcloth hoods and thick scarves, others displayed their pock-marked, rash-ridden faces openly. The two bounty killers watched the ruins pressing in on them, having no idea how many miserable scavengers lay hidden within.

Brunner paused as they neared what had once been a cobbled market square. The stones were obscured now by the thick layer of semi-dried mud that coated them, the fountain at its centre long ago broken apart by the probing roots of weeds. A scraggly-looking man stood near the fountain, a long bill-hook clutched in his mitten-covered hands. The wretch turned his thin, boil-ridden face toward the two strangers. The eyes were as pale as boiled eggs, yet there was a cold, loathsome vision within them. The two bounty hunters simultaneously gestured at the dreg with their weapons, Brunner aiming his crossbow for the greasy forehead, Ulgrin hefting his massive great axe in a motion that promised a swift and messy demise.

The old wretch seemed unconcerned by the display, standing his ground with a deliberate calmness. As the two killers strode closer, they could smell the rotting odour crawling from the man’s diseased skin, see the watery filth oozing from his sores. The apparition did not seem to mind their scrutiny, favouring the two with a gap-toothed idiot’s grin. Brunner noted that the man’s eyes were focused intently upon himself, their bleary gaze matching his own icy stare. Then, for the briefest of instants, the eyes flickered, looking away from the bounty hunter, gazing instead on the ramshackle guildhall that fronted upon the square.

In an instant, Brunner spun, firing his crossbow as the first of the lurking ambushers leapt from the building. The target of his first bolt was garbed from head to toe in slimy rags and as the bolt smashed into its chest, the cry that sounded from the creature was more like the chirp of a frog than the scream of a man. A second bolt ripped through the throat of the wretch immediately behind the slimy frog-man, pitching him to the ground to gargle upon his own fluids.

Beside the bounty hunter, Ulgrin leapt into action, charging into the sudden surge of ragged attackers that swarmed up the narrow street they had so recently travelled. A ropy limb holding a fish-bone knife flew off into the mob, even as its former owner howled in agony. The frenzied mob pressed forward, heedless of the dwarf’s brutal axe, stabbing at him with crude spears and such base weapons as bits of jagged glass and sharpened stone. Ulgrin sent a leprous woman’s head flying from its shoulders, only to have a spear-wielding hunchback push the still trembling body aside to stab at his prey. A twisted man with eyes on the sides of his head followed close on the hunchback, slashing at Ulgrin with a morning star fashioned from a belaying pin and a number of nails.

Brunner sent the remaining bolts from his weapon into the dregs swarming from the guildhall, dropping one with every shot. With the weapon spent, and no time to reload, he let it fall to the ground and drew his pistol from its holster, calmly exploding the head of a screaming wretch who hoped to cave in the bounty hunter’s skull with a stone hammer. With even this weapon expended, Brunner pulled Drakesmalice from its sheath, the sword slashing outward the instant it was drawn, spilling the guts of an axe-armed attacker.

A snarl that might have come from some feral beast, were it not for the few syllables of the Bretonnian tongue mixed into it, caused the bounty killer to twist his head around. The wretch that had awaited the two men in the square was now entering the fray, spinning the bill-hook with an elaborate, yet murderous, skill. Brunner watched the madman advance with misgiving. The bill-hook was effectively a polearm, giving the villain a much longer reach than the bounty hunter’s sword. And with a pack of howling peasants closing upon him, Brunner did not have the time to spend warding off the wretch’s attacks until he could move in for the kill. Snarling an oath of his own, the bounty killer palmed the small pouch of salt hidden within his glove. Puncturing the fragile bag, Brunner cast the grainy mineral into the face of his approaching enemy.

Brunner’s enemy gave voice to an undulating cry of such agony and mortal terror that even the two bounty hunters were momentarily stunned. The attacking mob fell away, creeping back from the ghastly tableau. As the wretch’s bloodied hands fell away from his face, Brunner could see the steaming muck that dribbled from his now empty eye sockets. Whatever mutating taint had afflicted the dreg’s eyes, it had reacted most spectacularly to the touch of clean salt. The screaming man crumpled to his knees, grinding his face into the muck in a vain, desperate effort to soothe his horrible injury.

The two bounty hunters used the momentary respite to retreat deeper into the square. Standing back to back, the two killers watched as their malformed attackers began to regroup. The mob spread out into the square, chittering and cackling with voices both mad and inhuman.

‘I thought you said you were going to make a break for it?’ Ulgrin mumbled to the other bounty hunter as the disfigured mob began to encircle them.

‘I reasoned that a braggart like yourself wouldn’t keep them occupied long enough to do me any good,’ Brunner responded.

A huge, lanky brute with something crawling inside his mouth that was too thick to be a tongue was eyeing the bounty killer, a curved, scimitar-like blade fashioned from a piece of anchor gripped in his meaty paws. The dreg opened his mouth to shout some battle cry, or else to simply howl in animalistic fury, when a black-feathered arrow suddenly sprouted from his forehead. The big brute fell instantly, crushing a smaller wretch who failed to leap away from the toppling corpse.

The mob set up a loud cry of terror and fear, racing back into rotted buildings and down narrow alleys, many of them dropping their makeshift weapons in their disorderly rout. Ulgrin set up a loud laugh, chiding the retreating murderers for their cowardice. Brunner paid more attention to the small company of armed men who had appeared on the other side of the square.

There were seven in all. Six of the men were on foot, garbed in suits of rusted chainmail over which they wore tattered black and gold mantles. Half of the force bore Bretonnian longbows, quivers of black-fletched arrows hanging from their belts, the other three carried antique halberds that looked to have seen a few too many wars in their centuries of use. The seventh man was mounted, his steed a midnight black that reminded Brunner of his own warhorse, Fiend. The plate armour that clothed the mounted knight was likewise black, and the tabard and caparison of man and horse, though in better repair than the liveries of the men-at-arms, was black and gold.

The knight gestured with a gauntleted hand, causing the archer who had fired to return to his position among the other soldiers. Then the mounted warrior fixed his attention upon the two bounty hunters.

‘It is seldom we receive visitors to our humble city,’ the knight spoke his Bretonnian with a lilted, antiquated quality. ‘I fear that the prejudices and superstitions of the peasant rabble are not very accepting of strangers,’ the knight continued.

‘Empty bellies and starving children have a habit of doing that,’ Brunner retorted. The knight chose not to take offence to the surly remark, shaking his helmeted head sadly.

‘It is true,’ the knight admitted. ‘Our fair city is far from its glory days and the minds of the common folk are plagued with doubts and petty fears.’ The knight straightened in his saddle. ‘Still, I apologise that you should be met with such discourtesy.’

‘We accept your apology,’ Brunner agreed, turning to recover his weapons.

‘Though it might ring a bit more sincere if laced with a touch of gold,’ Ulgrin informed the knight.

Brunner froze in place, looking closely at the mounted warrior. The knight’s face was hidden behind the steel of his great helm, betraying nothing of the emotion that might be playing across his features. The knights of Bretonnia were quick to take offence to any attack upon their honour, and Brunner had begun to suspect that this strange black knight was more than a trifle mad. The bounty hunter braced himself for the explosion of indignation and outrage he was certain would soon issue from the knight.

Instead, the helmeted head regarded Brunner exclusively, ignoring Ulgrin entirely. ‘If you are seeking employment, you may find the situation in Mousillon slightly less than vibrant,’ the knight informed him. ‘Still, for a man of such skill with the blade and such ruthless determination, I might have a position available.’ The knight chuckled inside his helmet, a sound that reminded Brunner of the sickening, insane giggle of the jester Corvino who had summoned the daemonic Mardagg to wreak havoc upon the city of Remas. ‘You see, we had a very nice view of the whole thing. You impressed me, and I couldn’t very well let the scum butcher your bones. Not when you might serve a nobler cause.’

‘You saw the whole thing and did nothing to stop it?’ snarled Ulgrin, fingering his axe. The men-at-arms tensed, the archers nocking arrows to their bows.

The knight waved a dismissive hand. ‘What is past is past,’ he proclaimed. ‘I had to make certain of the quality of my hirelings before discussing such complexities as payment.’ The mention of payment stilled any further protest on the part of Ulgrin.

Brunner nodded his head in agreement that the issue was settled. He could even appreciate, in a way, the twisted efficiency of such an exploitation of the murderous wretches. Still, it sickened him to have slain men whose bellies had growled even as they shrieked their half-hearted war cries. It sickened him more to see such suicidal desperation so ruthlessly utilised.

‘What is your proposition?’ the bounty hunter asked, keeping his distaste to himself.

The knight looked askance at the crumbling buildings all around them, peering into the shadows. ‘This is no place to talk. Every mouse has ears, after all. You will follow me to a place where we may speak more freely and more openly.’

The place to which the black knight led the bounty hunters was just within the massive stone wall that had once surrounded the city. Here the ground was more solid, scraggly bushes occasionally poking through the sickly soil. The buildings were less dilapidated than those beyond the wall, though they were still a far cry from being well-maintained. Holes in the plaster and wood walls were haphazardly patched with dried mud and straw, gaps in tile roofs were stuffed with bundles of thatch. The few denizens of this inner district that the men encountered were still miserable to gaze upon, but their limbs seemed to match and what covered their backs bore a passing resemblance to clothing. The stamp of desperate poverty was still omnipresent, however. One old woman, upon sighting the approaching warriors, fished her meal from the boiling pot resting on the ground before her, cradling the half-cooked rat to her chest with a scalded hand.

At length, amidst the misery, the knight stopped before what must once have been a prosperous eatery and inn. The black-clad figure dismounted his warhorse in a single fluid motion, then turned his obscured face back toward his guests. ‘We can talk here,’ the knight informed the two bounty hunters. ‘The owner of this establishment can be trusted to keep his mouth shut.’ Again the sinister chuckle echoed from within the knight’s great helm. ‘Not that a man without a tongue can do much talking anyway.’

As if dismissing whatever threat Brunner and Ulgrin might pose to him, the black knight ordered his soldiers to remain outside, to guard his horse and ensure that their meeting went undisturbed. Inside the inn, the men found a large common room, a gaggle of mismatched chairs and tables staggered about the floor. A large fireplace, from which many of the hearthstones and most of the iron work had been stripped, dominated one wall. A collection of mangy, lice-ridden animal heads adorned another. A faded painting, depicting some past lord of Mousillon riding out to war, rested behind the bar, green spider webs of mildew already picking at the pigment.

The knight sat down with a bold flourish at one of the tables, indicating with an armoured hand that his companions should take seats beside him. The warrior looked away, stabbing a finger at the little, gnome-like man who stood dejectedly behind the bar. The man hopped into action, snatching up a chipped crystal glass and a clay bottle, hurrying to place both before the knight. Brunner noted the extremely pale liquid that the knight poured into his glass, wondering for a moment just how much water had diluted the brew. He also noted that the knight made no motion to remove his helmet or lift his glass. And, of course, the fact that the innkeeper had brought only one glass was not lost on the two bounty hunters.

‘You spoke of a position?’ Brunner inquired after the uncomfortable silence had persisted for too long. The knight seemed to rouse himself from some inward contemplation, lifting his helmeted head to stare at the bounty killer. ‘What is it that you need us to do?’

The knight leaned back in his chair, his armoured bulk causing the wood to groan in protest. ‘That should be obvious,’ he said. ‘I need you to kill someone. Someone who has made the atmosphere within Mousillon quite unpleasant of late.’

‘I wouldn’t think it would be possible to make this place any less pleasant,’ muttered Ulgrin, picking splinters from the tabletop. Again, the knight chose to ignore the flippant comment.

‘There is a malcontent, you see,’ the knight stated. ‘One whose interests are at odds with those of the other noble houses yet left to Mousillon. Often violently so,’ the knight left the vision of murder and battle hang in the air a moment before resuming his speech. ‘As you may know, after the heresy of Duc Maldred, the realm of Mousillon was effectively destroyed and the position of duc abolished by the king. Our best farmlands were given over to Lyonesse and the rest left to rot and fester in whatever fashion the gods might deem fitting. Of course, those of us who were left, after Maldred’s madness and after the red pox had run their course, tried our best to rebuild our land with what was left to us. It is more by sufferance and indifference on the part of the king and our neighbours that we are allowed to do so. If any of them felt that our humble city was again becoming a threat, it is not impossible that the king might declare a new Errantry War to dispose of us for once and all.’

‘All very interesting, I am sure,’ Brunner interrupted. ‘But how does all of this concern me?’

‘I was just coming to that,’ the knight responded, a faint suggestion of annoyance in his lilting voice. ‘This miscreant I have mentioned, one Marquis Marimund, has made himself a threat to the other noble houses of Mousillon, and indeed to the city itself. Like a bloated leech, he preys upon this city, sucking the life from it, scavenging every last scrap of power and control he can seize. From his castle in the north-east quarter, Marimund’s ruffians have made themselves the horror of the peasants, exacting a gruelling tribute from them, leaving nothing for the rightful rulers of the other districts to collect and claim. His thugs do battle with our soldiers in the streets, dozens of bodies are dumped into the bog each day, with no end to the strife in sight. But worse than all of this, Marimund has started to call himself Duc Marimund, and begun to cast his eyes beyond the walls of this city. That would bring down the wrath of the king upon us, and we cannot defend ourselves against his ire.’

‘Why not attend to this Marimund yourself?’ Brunner asked.

‘We have tried,’ the knight stated frankly. ‘He does not fight his own battles but leaves them to his champion, an honourless brute named Corbus, who has yet to even be scratched by our best knights. His blade is swift and his strength is that of a titan. The heads of a score of heroes who fell before Corbus now grace the gates of Marimund’s castle. And then there is his enchantress, a dire witch who now serves the Duc Marimund and his twisted ambitions. Her spells warn him of any ambush we ready to capture him. Between Corbus and the witch, Marimund has managed to keep himself beyond our reach.’

‘It sounds like a challenging prospect,’ Brunner said. He lifted himself from the table. ‘But I am no assassin. I have come here looking for a man, a stranger to Mousillon like myself. I have no time to intrude upon local politics.’

The black knight’s mailed fist came crashing down with such force upon the table that the rotten wood crumbled beneath it. ‘Damn your insolence, sell-sword! You will do whatever I tell you to do!’ The fiery words seemed to explode from within the great helm, echoing like the roar of a troll. Brunner’s hand closed about the hilt of Drakesmalice, drawing it several inches before he was even aware of the motion. Ulgrin had fallen from his chair, startled by the violent outburst, yet was quick to regain his footing, and his axe.

Yet the tirade was over as soon as it had begun. With elaborate calmness, the black knight began plucking wooden splinters from between the steel plates of his gauntlet. ‘For this service, I shall pay you the princely sum of one hundred golden crowns,’ the knight spoke as though Brunner had never taken issue with the offer. ‘As for this man you are looking for, I can tell you that yourself and your little friend are the first strangers who have found sanctuary with any of the nobles of Mousillon. Perhaps the man you are looking for has found shelter within Marimund’s household. Otherwise, you should look to the graveyards and the bellies of the ghouls for this man you are seeking.’

‘It is a simple plan, really,’ the knight informed the two bounty hunters. ‘Sadly, we need an unknown quantity such as yourselves for it to work properly. I had a very promising Norscan who happened into our city to serve the role I would hire you to play, but sadly the fellow simply could not heed my advice to stay off the streets at night. The ghouls, you understand.’ Brunner had the impression that the face behind the helm was favouring them with a mocking smile. ‘Luckily, everything is still in place, just waiting for a man of your particular skills. Tomorrow, in the old hay market, I have arranged for one of my squires, a man named Feder, to be collecting tribute from the corn farmers. Of course, Marimund will get word of this and send his champion and a gang of his animals to secure that tribute for himself. I’m afraid that quite a fight will unfold when Corbus discovers that the information regarding how many men-at-arms are with Feder is a bit, shall we say, on the conservative side. That is where you come in. You will intervene in the fight on the side of Corbus. Impress him enough and he is certain to offer you a position with Marimund’s guard.’ A chortle of anticipation bubbled from behind the helm. ‘That will get you inside the castle, and get you close to Marimund. The rest, I leave to you.’ The knight waved his gauntlet in a dismissive manner. ‘Bring me the scoundrel’s head when you are finished and you shall have your payment.’

Brunner glared at the arrogant armoured warrior for a moment, then thought better of pursuing any confrontation with him. The bounty hunter simply nodded his head, turning on his heel and marching for the door. Ulgrin hesitated a moment, then hurried after his comrade. When the two stood once more upon the desolate street, it was the dwarf who spoke first.

‘Surely you don’t mean to accept that braggart’s offer?’ Ulgrin inquired. ‘One hundred gold crowns!’ he scoffed. ‘That might be pretty money, but not to someone searching for two thousand!’

‘He might be right, if he’s telling the truth,’ Brunner observed as he began to lead the dwarf away from the inn. A pair of the black-and-gold garbed soldiers followed them at a discreet distance. ‘Gobineau had a definite purpose in mind when he rode for this place. If he’s not taken up with any of our patron’s friends, then perhaps he has sought shelter with Marimund.’

‘What if that other possibility is what happened?’ growled Ulgrin. ‘What if the fool got himself killed or eaten by the scum that infests this dung-heap?’

Brunner smiled down at the surly dwarf. ‘In that case, we’re wasting our time.’

‘Ah well,’ Ulgrin sighed. ‘I suppose splitting a hundred is better than splitting nothing at all.’

‘Oh, he won’t pay us,’ Brunner told the dwarf, speaking from the corner of his mouth. ‘He can’t afford to. Even if we do all that he hopes, even if we kill Marimund, Corbus and the witch, our friend back there won’t pay. They have peculiar notions about honour and nobility in Bretonnia. A knight may kill another knight, but for some untitled commoner to strike down even the most hated nobleman is a great affront, something that simply cannot be tolerated.’ Brunner shook his head. ‘No, if we were to kill Marimund, we’d be putting a death mark on our own heads. Besides,’ the bounty hunter continued, ‘I don’t like being hired like some gutter-crawling assassin. There are certain lines that even I won’t cross.’

‘So what do you propose that we do?’ Ulgrin demanded.

‘I’ll go ahead with our friend’s plan,’ Brunner informed him. ‘It’s far too good an opportunity to gain entry to Marimund’s castle to pass up and it will convince our friend back there that I’m following his plan.’

‘I couldn’t help notice that you were referring only to yourself,’ Ulgrin pointed out, his face contorted into a scowl beneath his dishevelled beard. ‘What about me?’

‘You, my friend, will need to find another way into Marimund’s castle,’ Brunner said. ‘After all, we might not be able to get out the same way I got in. I’d prefer to have another route open to me.’

‘And why does the dwarf get to find this magic entryway?’ Ulgrin grumbled, kicking a loose corner of paving stone down the narrow street.

‘I’ve been here before,’ the bounty hunter reminded him. ‘The castles of Mousillon all share one common feature, something of a rarity in Bretonnia. They were built with a drainage system, a network of underground culverts that empties into the Grismerie. Who better to send sniffing around for a tunnel than a dwarf?’

Ulgrin Baleaxe nodded his head as he considered the wisdom behind Brunner’s plan. ‘You always were a cautious character,’ the dwarf declared. ‘But I see the sense in these schemes of yours. When do I go looking for this secret slop chute?’

‘When it’s dark, naturally,’ Brunner returned, looking past the dwarf to stare at the two soldiers trailing after them. ‘Better chance of losing any unwanted hangers on that way.’

‘One way, or another,’ Ulgrin replied, his fists clenching about the heft of his axe.

‘Just make certain you don’t get yourself killed,’ Brunner warned the dwarf. ‘At least not until after we’ve found Gobineau if he’s there and found a way out of the castle.’

Night had fallen upon the cursed city, casting its darkness upon the rotted ruins and festering slums like some dour priest drawing a shroud over the face of a corpse. Screams and laugher sang out from the desolation, insane sounds that seemed loudest where the light and life were least. The broken, burned-out ruin of one castle, which Brunner had been told once belonged to Duc Malford, glowed with an unearthly shine. From its darkened halls, the faint strains of a waltz seemed to issue, the ghosts of the perpetrator of the infamous False Grail and his court of the damned forever cursed to haunt the mouldering passages and corridors.

Ulgrin Baleaxe crept through the blighted streets, cursing once again the folly that had made him set aside the past and join forces with Brunner. The bounty hunter’s plan had sounded feasible enough in the light of day, but now, with the desolate city seeming to crawl with unnatural, unholy energies, the dwarf was regretting ever agreeing to Brunner’s plan. It was not the dark that so disquieted Ulgrin, indeed, he had spent most of his life in tunnels and mines far less illuminated. It was the wispy shapes he’d seen dancing about the collapsed balconies of castle towers, the disembodied merriment that rang out from the most dilapidated and abandoned buildings. The dwarfs were a people who venerated and worshipped their ancestors, to them, the thought of dead spirits walking the earth in perpetual madness and misery was an obscenity beyond sacrilege, a horror that plucked at the very soul.

The dwarf shuddered as furtive noises issued from an alleyway to his left. Ulgrin thought of the grotesquely oversized rats he’d seen beneath Zhufbar, their fur matted with filth, their chisel-like teeth gleaming with the fresh blood of their prey. The warrior shuddered, bringing his great axe down from his shoulder so that he gripped it across his chest. He’d already seen the loathsome, sub-human corpse-eaters once this night. A pack of the ghastly scavengers had erupted out of a similar darkened alley, swarming about the dwarf, clawing at him with their long black claws, snapping at him with their fanged mouths. Ulgrin had stood his ground before the ghouls, removing the arm from the boldest of the pack, and taking the head from one of its friends. That had taken the fight out of the others. They had sullenly withdrawn, retrieving the corpses of their former comrades. Ulgrin guessed that burial was far from their intentions.

A scream had sounded from the street behind him. Turning, Ulgrin had found that the soldier detailed to follow him had maintained his vigil, even after the dark had settled upon Mousillon. The poor wretch had fallen prey to a second pack of ravenous ghouls, the scrawny, leather-skinned monsters pressing upon the man-at-arms from every quarter, bearing him down with sheer weight of numbers. Briefly, the dwarf considered intervening in the fight, he doubted if he’d leave even an elf to such a fate. But the soldier’s screams had suddenly died into a liquid gargle and as one of the ghouls turned its rat-like face toward Ulgrin, the gory object hanging from its jaws had told him that it was much too late to help the man.

Ulgrin listened as the scuffling noise faded away. Ghoul or phantom, whatever had made the sound was moving away from him, heading back toward the graveyard. The dwarf continued on his way, seeing the black bulk of Duc Marimund’s castle looming up out of the darkness ahead. Torches flickered on the battlements and the dwarf could make out the sentries, high above. The sentries seemed competent enough, being careful to match their movements so that no quarter might remain unseen. The dwarf snarled a colourful oath under his breath. He had hoped things might get easy for him at some point during the night.

Even as he cursed his luck, the gods seemed to answer Ulgrin’s complaint. A foul, raw smell wafted past the dwarf’s nose, the stink of sewage and stagnant water. The dwarf turned from his contemplation of the castle’s battlements and followed his nose. He had followed the rank stench for some time, allowing it to lead him down narrow alleys and across crumbling lanes, before he saw it, a slick of black sludge oozing from beneath the street. The dwarf hurried forward, scraping away at the muck and mud until he exposed the stonework beneath. There could be no mistake, the slime was indeed issuing from between two of the stones. Pressing his head against the ground, Ulgrin could hear the trickle of water flowing below. Surely the underground culvert Brunner had spoken of.

The dwarf lifted his axe above his head, driving it downward with all of his tremendous strength. The blade of the weapon sank into the join between the two stones. With an exclamation of victory, Ulgrin lent his entire weight into sliding the blade back and forth between the rocks. As he worried at the gap between them, the stones began to shift, crumbling apart where moss and mould had already weakened them. Before long there was a mighty crack and one of the rocks crumpled in upon itself, slipping into the darkness it had contained. A fountain of filth vomited from the opening, a black tar-like sludge that engulfed Ulgrin from head to toe. The dwarf retreated from the deluge, vainly trying to wipe the crud from his face and beard. After several minutes, the bubbling filth subsided, whatever blockage had caused it dislodged by the change in pressure.

‘Damn you, Brunner,’ Ulgrin swore, slapping a cake of filth from his helmet onto the ground. ‘We’re going to have another discussion about the split after this!’ the dwarf decided. He sloshed his way through the abominable stream and gazed down into the culvert. It was a small tunnel, crude in the way that any man-built tunnel was bound to be. It was just wide enough for Ulgrin to fit into however, and high enough that the dwarf could walk through if he bent his body at the waist. An unpleasant prospect, but far more pleasant than crawling through the filthy tar that coated the bottom of the tunnel. Biting down his disgust, the dwarf dropped down into the culvert.

The dwarf’s eyes, hardened by the perpetual murk of the mines and caverns his people called home, adjusted almost instantly to the blackness about him. Realising that his great axe was far too large to manage within the narrow confines of the sewer, Ulgrin strapped the weapon to his back, opting instead for a throwing axe gripped in each of his hands.

Ulgrin stopped for a moment to imagine Brunner, safe and warm within the black knight’s inn, far from corpse-eating ghouls, laughing ghosts and tunnels reeking of excrement. The dwarf snarled a colourful curse on the bounty hunter’s parents before beginning his trek into the darkness. He had not gone far, however, before a sound ahead of him made him stop in his tracks. It was a strange, moaning whine, somehow familiar yet magnified in such a fashion as to be unsettling and horrible. The dwarf’s keen ears could detect the sound of something sloshing through the muck ahead, the sounds pausing every time the strange wail-chirp filled the tunnel, then resuming with a wet, slimy flopping noise.

The dwarf’s sharp eyes could dimly see something moving in the tunnel, closing upon him with a strange, irregular undulating motion. Ulgrin fished a match from his belt, striking it upon the cold steel of his throwing axe. The light flared up, bringing a shudder of protest from the thing before him. The dwarf could only stare on in shock. In size it was no larger than a goat, but its shape was that of some gigantic frog. Webbed paws waved before its slimy green body, trying to ward off the light while mammoth black eyes blinked shut.

Ulgrin had only a moment to take in the shape of the tunnel monster, for the huge mouth that sprawled beneath its head snapped open and something wet and leathery wrapped itself about his hand, extinguishing the match. The dwarf struggled to maintain his footing as the loathsome frog began to retract its tongue, pulling the bounty killer towards its cavernous mouth. The slime coating the floor gave poor purchase for his feet and it was with a cry of frustration that Ulgrin slammed down onto his side. From his prone position, the dwarf slashed upward at the amphibian’s ensnaring tongue, striking it a glancing blow with his first attack. Instantly the dwarf felt his hand released as the injured tongue snapped back into the frog’s mouth. The dwarf could hear the flop-splash of the giant frog as it retreated back up the tunnel, no doubt to find prey that didn’t bite back.

The dwarf lifted himself from the slime, recovering the hand axe he had lost during the brief combat when the frog’s tongue had wrapped itself about his hand. ‘Oh yes,’ the dwarf grumbled. ‘We are most definitely going to discuss the split.’

The now dreaded wail-chirp resumed, this time sounding from the darkness behind the dwarf. With an air of weary disgust, Ulgrin turned to face the approaching monster. The wail-chirp of the second giant frog was soon joined by others singing out from the gloom beyond it.

‘Damn you, Brunner!’ Ulgrin snarled as he prepared to meet the attack.

The room in which Gobineau awoke was cold and dark and had the distinctive smell of an old latrine. The rogue groaned as his senses returned to him and the pounding inside his skull began anew. He tried to move a hand to press down on his throbbing head, but found that they were held, bound to the stone wall behind him by thick iron chains. The bandit licked his swollen lips. Obviously Marimund was taking no chances with him.

Things had seemed to be going so very well. He’d gotten into Mousillon without too much trouble, managing to avoid the more thickly populated slums and their perpetually hostile denizens. There were still enough men in the city that remembered him and had not become quite so desperate to murder indiscriminately. One of these old acquaintances had led Gobineau by the safest route to Marimund’s castle on the edge of the city. The duc had permitted him entry into his castle without even any sort of haggling on Gobineau’s part. It had truly seemed Marimund was pleased to see him after all these years.

Then things had gone wrong. It had started when the duc had personally offered Gobineau a cup of wine. Instead of placing it in the rogue’s hand, the duc had smashed it against the side of his head, dropping Gobineau to the floor. Then the kicking had started and the duc was quickly joined by a dozen or so of his men. Somewhere along the way, he’d mercifully lost consciousness, to awaken within what must be Marimund’s dungeons.

He’d have to talk to Tietza, try to get word to her of his predicament. Gobineau was certain that she’d be able to soothe her husband’s temper and arrange to have him released from the dungeons.

‘I would not entertain that particular hope,’ a soft, melodious voice spoke from the shadows. Gobineau lifted his head, seeing a tall, slender figure illuminated by the light of a single candle standing in the doorway of his cell. As his eyes adjusted to the feeble light, Gobineau could see that it was a woman, garbed in a heavy cloak of red cloth fringed in fox fur. The woman’s details were sharp and noble, and chilling in their impossible perfection of beauty. The long hair that hung about her shoulders caught the light like spun gold, and her eyes, impossibly, seemed of no less vibrant a hue. Gobineau had never seen one before, but he was certain that he looked upon the face of one of the fey folk, the mysterious elves of tale and legend.

‘Why… why should I not have hope?’ the rogue asked. ‘Is that not the right of every prisoner?’

The impossibly perfect lips drew back in a soft smile. ‘Yes, but your own hope is impossible,’ the woman told him. ‘Have you not wondered why Duc Marimund received you in such a manner?’ As she voiced her question, the light from the candle narrowed, shining out like the beam of a lighthouse. The ray of light settled upon a skeleton shackled to the wall not three feet from where Gobineau was imprisoned. The necklace that hung about the skeleton’s neck stirred memories.

‘It seems the duc forgot to feed her,’ Gobineau commented. ‘I hope he doesn’t have the same in mind for me. Starvation is a pretty unpleasant way to go.’

‘I should not worry about it,’ the elf told him. ‘After learning of your tryst with his wife, the duc has had many years to reflect upon exactly what he will do with you. I am certain that it will make starving look rather appealing.’

Gobineau spent a moment imagining just what plans Duc Marimund might be considering, then decided that he certainly didn’t want to be around for any of them. He tried to straighten himself as much as the shackles would allow, favouring the strange elf woman with his most ingratiating smile. He hoped that his face wasn’t too badly bruised as to spoil the effect.

‘You know, I am not an entirely impoverished man,’ Gobineau told her. ‘A bright, bold lass like yourself might make a good deal for herself if she were to help me.’

The elf’s laughter was light, like the tinkling of tiny bells.

‘You spoke much in your delirium,’ she said. ‘I’d sooner trust a serpent to watch over a songbird. Yet it is possible that you can help me. In your fever, you said that you were being hunted by someone. I would hear more about him.’

‘And why should I tell you anything?’ Gobineau demanded. The elf laughed again.

‘Because as Duc Marimund’s enchantress, the exact manner of your passing has been left to me to devise. How inventive your death is will depend upon how much you tell me and whether your information pleases me.’

The elf witch’s voice dropped into a low whisper that carried with it an overwhelming aura of command. ‘Tell me what you know of the man they call Brunner.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Squire Feder was an unpleasant man to look upon. A quarter of his teeth were missing, victims of his violent temper and proclivity for engaging in fierce brawls when deep in his cups. His nose had been bent at an awkward angle by some bruiser’s fist, spoiling the symmetry of his face. As though not already ugly enough to look upon, the squire’s skin had contracted a livid red rash, some noxious yet non-lethal reminder of the dread red pox that had once decimated Mousillon. It was a commonly held superstition in the cursed city that the ‘Blood Blight’ only afflicted the cruellest and most wicked of the city’s population, a curse visited upon evil souls by the Lady herself. Feder did little to discredit such superstitions.

The squire was seated behind a crude table formed by placing a rotting board atop a pair of barrels. A third barrel offered the thug a place to sit. His bleary gaze was only partially focused upon the set of iron scales that had been set upon the table. The corn farmers were obliged to provide a full measure every week during the harvest for their masters, a measure that had to match the one which balanced the scales. It was an unspoken understanding between squire and peasant that there was a lead bar hidden within the bundle of corn which the farmers had to balance. Feder felt the pretence of doing things honestly would be a waste of everyone’s time.

Today, however, Feder had even less interest in the proceedings than usual. The squire looked around him, studying the narrow streets that opened into the old hay market. Soon, the dirty little square would be resounding to the sounds of battle, the screams of the dying, the pleas of the wounded. Feder smiled in anticipation. He appreciated combat, looked forward to it like a lover’s embrace. The squire shifted his gaze to take in the four black-garbed men-at-arms who stood near his table, leaning on their spears with feigned boredom, but whose eyes were watching the streets every bit as keenly as the squire’s.

Marimund’s lackey, Sir Corbus, was expected to arrive before Feder had concluded his collection of tribute, at least so his master had told him. Feder dearly hoped that the brutal champion would show, because he had another twenty men hidden within the buildings that faced the square. Even Corbus would have trouble dealing with such odds. It was a pity that his master’s orders did not allow for Feder to remove Marimund’s champion once and for all, because the squire was certain that this time such a feat could be accomplished. Still, orders were orders, and Feder had seen far too often what became of those who displeased his master.

The frightened screams of peasants brought the squire out of his reverie. The smile grew broader on his ugly face, and he loosened his sword in its sheath. A trickle of peasants ran into the square, hastening toward the lanes that exited on the far side. Those farmers who had already begun to present their goods became panicked as well, joining the newcomers in their flight. Feder did not try to hinder them. They would only get in the way of what was coming, and besides that fact, few of the farmers had had the presence of mind to recover their crop before fleeing.

The source of the peasants’ alarm was a group of armed men, only five in number. Sir Corbus had a very high opinion of his own abilities and would have deemed it beneath him to take any more soldiers along with him on his sordid little raid than he was expecting to face. The knight’s arrogant contempt for his adversaries was one of the most predictable things about him. Feder smiled as he watched the minions of Duc Marimund stalk into the square, their steps sure and certain, as though they were within their own district, not deep within that of another of Mousillon’s ruling nobles.

Marimund’s soldiers were armed and equipped slightly better than Feder’s. Each of the four halberdiers flanking Corbus wore a shirt of chainmail beneath his crimson and grey mantle and the kettle helms that shadowed their faces did not display the same signs of wear and rust that Feder might have expected to see. Sir Corbus himself was an imposing sight, fully a head taller than any of his men, his towering stature enhanced by the steel wings that formed the crest of his helmet. The knight wore a suit of armour that had been stained a dark crimson, every inch of the breastplate and greaves engraved so as to resemble the scaly hide of a serpent. The face that glared outward from the open face of the knight’s helm was at once handsome and feral, like some great beast masquerading as a prince of men.

Sir Corbus lifted his sword, snarling an unintelligible command to his soldiers, pointing his sword at Feder. Despite the lurking troops awaiting only his word to spring the trap, the squire felt the colour drain from his face as the fiery eyes of Corbus burned into his own. Suddenly, he was not quite so eager to accept the imposing knight’s challenge. Perhaps it would have been better to have brought thirty men, even forty?

Feder began to back away from his table, the sudden motion causing his chair to tumble onto its side and roll away. The squire’s bodyguard watched their leader’s nervous reaction, uncertainty written on their faces.

‘Don’t just stand there!’ the squire hissed. ‘Protect the tribute, you fools!’ The four men-at-arms lifted their spears, shuffling forward to place themselves between Marimund’s men and the sacks of corn that had already been collected.

Corbus paused in his steps to utter a laugh fairly dripping with contempt. He interposed his blade before the nearest of his own soldiers, motioning for his henchmen to hang back. Feder marvelled as he watched the crimson knight stride forward once the advance of his men had been halted. Surely even Corbus was not so arrogant as to face four spearmen by himself?

Corbus gestured with his blade once more, pointing it toward Feder. Despite the distance involved, the squire flinched. ‘I allow you the honour of facing me,’ the knight’s voice bellowed like the roar of a lion. ‘Impress me and I shall show mercy.’

Feder backed away from the imposing warrior, sweat trickling down his broken features. After a moment he composed himself, snapping his gaze from Sir Corbus to his own spearmen. ‘What are you waiting for?’ the squire cried. ‘You are four to his one! Kill him!’

The spearmen cast worried looks at the glowering red knight, then slowly, almost reluctantly, began to approach him. As they did so, the soldiers spread out, seeking to enclose their adversary within a semi-circle of spear points. Corbus did not react to their approach beyond a twisting of his lip and a disappointed sigh. The knight kept his intense stare fixed upon Feder, who now had his back to the warped wooden wall of an old storehouse. His eyes still bore into the squire’s when the first spearman attacked.

The soldier to the extreme left of Corbus thrust with his weapon for the comparatively weak join between the armour plates that enclosed the knight’s front and those that guarded his back. It was one of the few places where a spear might be expected to penetrate the armour and injure the man within. The man-at-arms, however, did not anticipate the speed and agility of his enemy. With an almost inhuman snarl, Sir Corbus spun, lashing out with his sword, parrying the weapon with such force that the spearhead and nearly a foot of wooden shaft was severed from his attacker’s weapon. Unbalanced, the soldier fell to the ground, staring with horror at his mutilated spear.

Hoping to capitalise upon the attack of his comrade, the spearman to Corbus’s right thrust his own weapon at the knight’s back as he spun. Yet even as the soldier struck, the knight was recovering from his own attack. Corbus bent at the knees, dropping into a crouch that let the spear stab harmlessly into empty air. As he bent, the knight also spun his body, bringing the murderous edge of his sword sweeping around. The sharp steel edge passed beneath the out-thrust spear, gnawing through the leg of the man who wielded it. The soldier spilled to the ground, shrieking, as he held the bleeding stump that had once been a knee.

The other spearmen hastily fell back to their original position, risking worried glances back toward their leader. The disarmed soldier scrambled up from the ground, hurrying to rejoin his companions. Corbus noted the sudden movement and with astonishing speed fell upon the fleeing man, his sword slashing downward and opening the soldier’s back. The man pitched to the dirt in a bloodied heap that moaned and writhed in its death agonies.

From his position near the storehouse, Feder had watched the entire gruesome display. He closed his gaping mouth, snapping out of his horrified fascination. The squire drew his own weapon now, but made no move to draw any closer to the knight who had challenged him. Instead, the squire gestured with the naked blade toward the buildings that opened onto the old hay market. His signal given, the lurking troops that had been hidden within burst forth, spears, swords and axes gripped in their sweaty fists.

‘Now you’ll see what happens to curs who nip at their masters’ hands!’ Feder shouted, emboldened by the now overwhelming numbers he commanded. Corbus reacted to the sudden appearance of twenty armed men in the colours of his enemy with little more concern than he had shown to Feder’s spearmen. The red knight stalked back toward his own halberdiers, who were themselves slowly forming into a defensive circle. Still, Corbus fixed Feder with a look that was more murderous than any the squire had ever met. Feder reconsidered his original intention to join his men in the attack. He’d stay back and co-ordinate things from a position where he might better be able to judge the situation.

He watched as one of the men-at-arms took a swipe at Corbus with a long-handled axe. The knight’s sword clove through the man’s shoulder and his return stroke sent the soldier’s screaming head bouncing across the square.

Yes, definitely better to keep himself in reserve, Feder concluded.

Brunner watched from the shadow of an alley as Feder’s men sprung the ambush. He had to admit that the trap was a convincing one. It spoke volumes about how desperate the aristocrats of Mousillon were to be rid of Marimund that they should invest so many resources and so much effort in what was little more than a diversion. As the bounty hunter watched the crimson-clad Sir Corbus hack a chunk of meat the size of a melon from the side of a swordsman who had foolishly pressed the assault, Brunner also came to appreciate just how little human life meant to those same aristocrats. They would expend the lives of their own men without compunction or care, seeing them as just another resource to be gambled and replaced. The bounty hunter shrugged. Dwelling in a disease-ridden pesthole like Mousillon, he could understand how the value of human life might become a bit skewed in the minds of the city’s nobility.

Ironically enough, it looked as though Feder might actually stand a chance of succeeding with the ambush. Brunner could see two of the red- and grey-clad halberdiers lying on the ground, and one of those who yet remained was favouring his left leg and the ghastly slash that had been dealt to it by an opponent’s spear. Of Feder’s men, only four of the ambushers had been taken out of action, three of them the handiwork of Sir Corbus. Always a quick judge of the fighting prowess of prospective enemies, the bounty hunter was suitably impressed by the amazing speed and brutal strength the knight possessed. It was almost as if someone had stuffed an ogre into the suit of red plate mail and then given it a heavy dose of Crimson Shade. Brunner had seen orcs sometimes work the sort of maiming, mutilating force that was behind Corbus’s sword, but orcs did so with much less skill and efficiency. Still, Brunner calculated that even a formidable foe like Sir Corbus must eventually acknowledge the simple weight of numbers arrayed against him. Feder still had eighteen men, pitted against Sir Corbus and his two surviving halberdiers.

It was time to shift the odds.

The bounty hunter emerged from the alleyway, his prized repeating crossbow clutched in his gloved hands. Without warning, or waiting for Feder’s soldiers to notice him, Brunner fired into the black-mantled attackers. His first bolt tore through the back of an axeman harrying the injured halberdier, the force of the impact spinning the axeman and causing his body to roll as it struck the ground. The second shot exploded the shoulder of a swordsman who had hoped to exploit an opening in Sir Corbus’s greatly beleaguered defences.

The man cried out, dropping the sword from his now useless arm. Alerted to the backstabber’s presence, Corbus spun, his own blade neatly opening the injured man’s windpipe.

Two spearmen were the objects of Brunner’s remaining shots, both men lingering at the fringes of the body of attackers, awaiting an opening through which to thrust their weapons. One of the men screamed in agony as his knee was pulped by the powerful steel missile, falling to the dirt and clutching his wound. His comrade, turning to see what had happened to the other spearman was rewarded with the last bolt, the steel dart crunching into the man’s lower jaw. He crumpled into a gargling mass of agony.

The swift, brutal attack had its desired effect. The men-at-arms became disordered, their slow methodical effort to whittle away the defences of Corbus and his men broken by Brunner’s unexpected attack. The bounty hunter smiled beneath his helm as he saw several of the black and gold liveried soldiers turn towards him, obscene Bretonnian oaths spilling from their lips. He knew that Feder had been informed as to the true purpose of the ambush, but it would be just like the cold, calculating mind of the man’s master to also withhold that information from the men who would be doing the actual fighting. After all, the ambush had to be realistic.

Brunner let his crossbow hang from the leather strap that was affixed to its stock and wrapped about his own shoulders. The bounty hunter replaced it with the cold steel of Drakesmalice and the gaping barrel of his pistol. He suspected that the men rushing toward him did so not merely from anger at the bounty hunter’s intrusion into their trap, but from thoughts that Brunner would prove a much easier kill than Sir Corbus. The bounty hunter smiled grimly once more. That was an illusion he would very quickly dissuade them of.

The foremost of the men-at-arms was thrown back as Brunner’s pistol sent a bullet slamming into the man’s chest. The loud report of the firearm was amplified by the narrow square, causing weird echoes as the sound danced amid the broken walls and rotting shingles. The three men who had followed after him came to a stop as though they had struck an invisible wall. Gunpowder was a rare thing in Bretonnia, and seldom employed in weapons. To the men-at-arms, the sudden death of their companion seemed an act of sorcery, and it was with the awe and horror of such dark magics that they regarded the smoking ruin left at the centre of his torso.

Brunner did not allow the men time to snap out of their shock, lunging forward into their midst before they had begun to recover. The bounty hunter’s longsword slashed down the shoulder and chest of one startled spearman, dropping him before he could even raise his weapon. The swordsman beside him was given a killing thrust to his stomach, Drakesmalice’s keen edge tearing through the antique leather armour that enclosed the man’s body as easily as parchment. The third attacker saw the bleeding bodies of his comrades and gave voice to a pathetic cry of terror, flinging his weapon from him and running with all speed for the nearest alleyway.

Brunner looked up from his handiwork, not surprised to see that the other remaining men-at-arms had fallen into a rout, scattering across the hay market like rats flying from a sinking ship. Three more of their number had been killed, the bodies bearing the butchering wounds of Sir Corbus’s sword. The red knight was glowering at the fleeing men, clenching his mailed fists in silent frustration. Then his gaze turned toward the storehouse at the far end of the square. The knight stooped and lifted a halberd dropped by one of his slain soldiers. Corbus hefted the heavy weapon in his hand, as though judging its weight and balance. Before Brunner could grasp what the knight was doing, Corbus drew his body back and threw the heavy halberd across the square as effortlessly as though it were a javelin. The halberd crashed into the door of the storehouse with a meaty thunk and the shriek of splintered wood. The rotten wood of the door gave way as the dead weight behind it toppled forward, the blade of the halberd embedded in the dead man’s chest. The bounty hunter decided that Feder should probably have found a better place to hide.

The red knight turned away from his amazing feat, a deep and satisfied smile on his face. He paused, staring intently at the bloody carnage all around him, then made his way toward the bounty hunter. He found Brunner recovering his crossbow bolt from the skull of a spearman. Corbus paused long enough to stamp the throat of the corpse’s injured comrade beneath his armoured boot. The bounty hunter pretended to pay no attention to the knight’s advance, discreetly sliding the hilt of Drakesmalice around so that it might be easily drawn.

‘Your advent in this affair was opportune,’ Corbus growled down to him. ‘I find myself wondering why? You are not one of Duc Marimund’s men, and any man who would strike his enemies from behind and at distance is hardly going to take offence at an uneven fight.’ There was both challenge and suspicion in the knight’s voice, and Brunner had the impression that it was but the tip of a vast iceberg of rage boiling within the knight.

‘You are quite correct,’ Brunner replied with an elaborate calm, stuffing the recovered bolt into a leather box fixed to his belt. ‘I have no scruples when it comes to a fight. Results are what matter, not outmoded concepts of honour on the battlefield.’ The handsome features of Sir Corbus contorted into a feral snarl as the bounty hunter voiced his disdain for all rules of combat. For a moment, Brunner froze, wondering if perhaps he had overplayed his hand, antagonised the knight beyond any traces of gratitude Corbus might be entertaining. The knight’s hand closed about the grip of his sword, and did not move from there.

After a tense moment of silence, Brunner continued: ‘I spent some time watching the fight before deciding which side to help,’ he admitted at last, moving to recover the bolt that had exploded the other spearman’s knee.

‘Why then did you help me?’ Corbus demanded.

The bounty hunter stared into the knight’s burning eyes. ‘I reasoned that your enemies had everything rather well in hand,’ Brunner told him. ‘Certainly they might lose a few more men to your admirable swordsmanship, but in the end, they would carry the day. And they would hardly be interested in hiring a passing mercenary who saw fit to invite himself to their ambush. You, on the other hand, looked as though an extra man might come in very handy. You might be interested in engaging the services of a warrior who helped pull your bacon from the fire.’

Corbus shook his head, snorting with contempt. ‘They had no real hope of victory. No matter how many of them they sent, I would have killed them all. There is not a sword in Mousillon that has yet impressed me.’ The knight’s voice fairly dripped with scorn and frustration. Brunner realised that Corbus was not boasting when he said that he could have slain twenty foes on his own; the man truly believed it. Brunner wondered if there was a sane knight to be found in Mousillon.

The knight gestured at the bodies strewn about, several of them Brunner’s handiwork. ‘Your skill with the blade is not entirely beneath contempt,’ Corbus admitted grudgingly. ‘But your tactics display no discipline, no nobility.’ The knight sneered at Brunner. ‘Such a man is like a wolf, a savage beast unworthy of trust, unworthy of honour.’

‘Perhaps your master will see things otherwise,’ Brunner retorted. ‘Especially as you’ve lost two men this day. Possibly three, if your master does not have a healer in his employ.’

Corbus turned to gaze at his remaining men. The unharmed halberdier was helping the wounded one limp his way across the square. After a pause, the knight nodded his head.

‘What you say is true, sell-sword,’ Corbus said. ‘Duc Marimund’s forces have been diminished as a result of this treacherous attack. He may indeed find a use even for an honourless dog such as yourself.’ The knight paused again, displaying his gleaming teeth in a mirthless smile.

‘At least until warriors of quality can be found.’

Brunner was led away from the carnage of the hay market, back to the castle of Duc Marimund. Corbus was at the head of the little procession, the two halberdiers following in his wake with Brunner forming the rearguard. The red knight paused several times to flash a hostile glare back at the bounty hunter, seemingly annoyed to find that Brunner was still there.

The journey took rather longer than Brunner had expected, winding through the rotting, dilapidated husk of the old city. Corbus seemed utterly unconcerned that they might encounter any wandering patrols in the service of Marimund’s enemies. The memory of Corbus’s insane boast that he could have prevailed against twenty enemies did nothing to ease Brunner’s concerns. However, as luck or fortune would have it, the only people they encountered in their trek were some scrawny peasants, who quickly took flight back into the shadows of their hovels. Finally, when the position of the now distant ruin of Duc Malford’s castle told him that they were nearing the landward edge of the city, Brunner saw the black mass of Marimund’s fortress rise from the squalor.

It must have started its existence as a gatehouse, the bounty hunter decided, that role no doubt voided as the swamp beyond the walls had continued to grow in its rapacity and the once vibrant port of Mousillon became choked with mud, squalor and ill-favour. With its old role voided, one of the aristocrats of the city had taken it upon himself to expand the old fortification, adding a curtain wall that formed a large courtyard. Towers had come later, and then still another curtain wall. Brunner could imagine all the homes and shops that had been levelled to make room for the castle’s expansion. The result was something as defended from an attack originating within the city as the unlikely event of an attack issuing from the depths of the swamp.

A narrow trench surrounded the three sides of the castle that were within the confines of the city’s outer wall. The depression had filled with seepage from the swamp, foul stagnant water from which reeds and lily pads protruded. Brunner stared at the moat as they made their way toward the drawbridge that spanned it, surprised to find a reptilian eye staring back at him from the scum that floated upon it. Apparently swimming hole was not one of the moat’s other functions.

Sir Corbus dismissed the two halberdiers after the group had passed over the drawbridge and beneath the steel portcullis that loomed above the castle gate. The two men hobbled away to find relief for the injured man’s wounds. Corbus paid them no further attention, instead focusing his intense stare on Brunner, snarling for the bounty hunter to follow him if he still intended to see Duc Marimund.

The duc’s throne room was not unlike every other great hall Brunner had been conducted into within the realm of Bretonnia. A good deal shabbier, to be certain, but much the same. Trophies hung from the walls, mostly taking the form of the heads of mighty beasts slain in single combat by the valiant knights of the household, but scattered amongst them were the odd banner of some invading army and the helmet of a vanquished rival. The animal heads were showing signs of mould and rot, the old helmets starting to display the rust quietly gnawing at them. Brunner imagined that Duc Marimund did not spend a great deal of his wealth on servants. The great hall in particular displayed the marked lack of a woman’s touch.

Marimund himself was seated in a high-backed chair of some dark wood that had been polished to a bright shine. Brunner guessed that it could even be crafted from mahogany, a rare wood originating in the stinking jungles south of Araby. If such were the case, it was a relic from the days of Mousillon’s prosperity, and as such a valuable symbol for any man whose ambition was to restore that prosperity. Any noble brought before Marimund could not fail to note the antique, exotic chair, and recall the splendour that had once made such things commonplace in the halls of the aristocracy.

The duc was a less imposing sight: of no extraordinary stature or physical strength, he was fairly dwarfed by the hulking knight he had chosen to be his champion. Indeed, the features of Marimund’s face were soft, though with a cunning quality about them.

The noble’s dark eyes were studious, cold and had a calculating shine to them. The duc wore his black hair cropped short in the rounded fashion favoured by many Bretonnians. His clothes were simple, a red tunic upon which was worked a rampant wolf in silver thread. The duc’s leggings were grey, his boots black leather polished to a shine that rivalled that of his throne. A silver belt, inlaid with gemstones, circled his waist, a small jewelled dagger hanging from it.

The duc’s keen eyes studied Brunner for a moment. Marimund turned to mutter a command to the two soldiers who flanked his throne, then returned his attention to Corbus and his guest.

‘News has already reached my ears,’ Marimund stated, ‘of the aid you provided my champion when he was attacked by the treacherous forces of the malcontents within my city.’ The seated noble extended a hand that was heavy with jewelled rings to indicate the glowering red knight. ‘It is seldom that Sir Corbus is in need of assistance. However, you have the gratitude of Mousillon’s rightful liege lord.’

Brunner took a step forward, ignoring the surly snarl that hissed from Sir Corbus. ‘I am but a humble warrior, my lord,’ Brunner told the seated nobleman. ‘If I have earned enough favour with your excellency that you may see fit to hire my sword, then such is reward enough.’

‘Reward?’ repeated Marimund, as though the word was strange to him. ‘You would have me engage your services as a way of repaying the assistance you gave my champion?’ A cruel smile spread across Marimund’s features. ‘Are you not content to serve a single master?’ the duc asked, his voice maintaining its cool, unemotional tone. ‘Do not think I am unaware of your identity, Brunner. Nor why you have come here, assassin!’

As Marimund spat the last word, the guards flanking his throne surged forward. The bounty hunter, his body already tense, coiled for the attack, was in motion even before Marimund’s guards had started to move, drawing his sword and pistol. Brunner was not certain exactly what had gone wrong, but the bounty hunter vowed he would not go down without taking several of his enemies with him.

Quick as the bounty hunter was, he was not quick enough. With a speed that Brunner would have judged to be impossible, Sir Corbus lunged at him, the knight’s armoured hands closing about Brunner’s own. The bounty hunter struggled in the powerful grip, feeling the awesome strength of Corbus as the knight’s gauntlets clenched tighter. Brunner cried out in pain, unable to maintain his grip on his pistol. The weapon clattered to the floor, quickly recovered by one of Marimund’s guards.

Brunner fought against the incredible pressure, striving to maintain his grip on Drakesmalice. But it was like struggling against a bear; the bounty hunter’s efforts seemed to go unnoticed by the red knight. Sir Corbus began to lift his arms, pulling Brunner upward so that only the tips of his boots maintained contact with the floor. Then the knight began to twist his grip, savaging Brunner’s wrist until Drakesmalice began to slide free of the bounty hunter’s wavering clutch.

Brunner snarled through the red tide of pain pulsing through his body. Leaning back as far as he could, he sent his head smashing forward, the black steel of his helmet crunching against the knight’s exposed face. Corbus gave voice to his own snarl, tossing the bounty hunter across the room as though he weighed no more than a child. Brunner struck the marble floor on his side, skidding across the polished stone. The impact forced the air from his lungs and succeeded in tearing his sword free of his grip. The bounty hunter rolled onto his back, dazed by his fall.

Corbus glared at the prone bounty hunter with eyes that no longer resembled anything human but glowed red within the dim light of the great hall, like twin pools of blood. The greasy, translucent treacle that flowed from where Brunner’s helmet had broken the knight’s nose was no such thing as should flow through the veins of mortal men.

The knight stalked forward, not deigning to draw his blade. ‘I generally do not lower myself to preying upon beasts,’ Corbus hissed, his voice brimming with fury. ‘But I find myself of a mind to make an exception.’ The knight smiled again, this time displaying his powerful wolf-like canines. The enraged vampire reached down and gripped the front of Brunner’s armour, lifting him from the floor with one hand while the other bent the bounty hunter’s head back, exposing his neck.

‘He is of no use to you dead,’ a soft, melodious voice cautioned. During the combat, another figure had emerged from behind the duc’s throne: a tall, slender woman garbed in a red flowing gown. She laid a delicate pale hand upon the armrest of Marimund’s throne.

‘Ah,’ smirked the nobleman, ‘but it is so rare that I am allowed to enjoy watching Corbus do what he does so very well.’ Marimund seemed to revel in the momentary flicker of disgust that crossed the woman’s sharp, striking features.

‘It can be dangerous to indulge such distractions, my lord,’ the woman told him. ‘This man may know things that we do not. For instance, can you be certain that your enemies have repeated their past error and sent only a single assassin?’ The enchantress hid the satisfaction she felt as she saw Marimund’s eyes droop with a mixture of doubt and concern.

‘You are quite right, as usual, my dear,’ Marimund concurred. ‘It might be rash to waste such an opportunity out of hand. Corbus!’ The nobleman’s shout froze the vampire. The undead knight turned to regard its lord. ‘I want that man alive,’ Marimund decreed. The vampire scowled as though it had eaten something rotten, but relinquished its grip upon the bounty hunter, letting his body fall none-too-gently onto the marble floor.

‘A wise decision, my lord,’ the elf maiden told Marimund. ‘There are spells I can employ to pry information from this man, information that might be of benefit when dealing with the men who sent him here.’

‘Your sorcery certainly does have its uses,’ Marimund replied, his voice as cold as a serpent’s. ‘But I am afraid that I am still a bit old fashioned when it comes to matters of torture.’ He redirected his attention to the still glowering Sir Corbus. ‘Take that scum to the dungeons,’ Marimund declared, punctuating his remark with an imperious wave of his hand. ‘Make him regret the day he was ever born,’ the nobleman added. ‘Just see that he remains alive.’

Corbus grinned, reaching down and lifting the dazed bounty hunter once more. The huge knight waved aside the guards who came forward to help with its burden, striding toward the great hall’s exit as though the man he carried weighed no more than a chicken. From beside the throne, the elf enchantress Ithilweil watched the vampire depart, a worried expression on her face.

‘Do not fret so,’ Marimund consoled her. ‘If Corbus does not get the information we require from the assassin with his methods, then we can always try your sorcery later. It should not be of any great importance if your subject is a little worse for wear, or missing the odd finger or two.’

The wind howled, gnawing at the fragile walls of the Griffon’s Nest. It was a fell, stagnant zephyr, thick with the stink of smoke and death. Under its unseen assault, the thatch roofing began to be stripped away, disappearing from the ceiling in ragged clumps. The proprietor of the inn, old Gaspard, emerged from the heavy bundle of fur blankets that covered his sleeping form. He squinted into the tearing sting of the wind, watching as the furs and strips of cloth he used to cover the holes in his establishment’s walls danced and writhed in the gale. The sound was like thunder, a deafening din that grew ever louder.

Gaspard rose to his feet, at once struck by the foul stink that filled the air, a sickly evil smell that caused the bile to rise in his throat. Some of the guests of his inn were already stricken by the loathsome stink, spilling their dinners into the muck that passed for the floor of the Griffon’s Nest. Gaspard, through determination, kept his own dinner in its proper place, and staggered into the bar room. The old man’s mind was at a loss to explain what was happening. Storms were common enough, and they had savaged his ramshackle dive more than once in the past. But this felt different somehow, this breeze was not cool, but hot, almost sweltering. Then there was the abominable stench. The innkeeper determined to look outside and discover if the smell had afflicted the rest of the village or simply his own establishment. Perhaps a lodger had died the past night and gone unnoticed.

As suddenly as it had begun, the gale abated. However, though no more thatch was stripped away and the fur wall hangings ceased to dance and sway, the sound of the wind had not abated. It was still as discernible as ever, rasping like some mammoth bellows. And the sickly smell had grown as well. Abruptly, the entire building shook, rocked as though a giant had kicked the inn’s foundations. Gaspard was thrown to the floor and it was only with some difficulty that the one-armed man regained his feet. He could hear curses of annoyance and fear sounding in the darkness as his guests reacted to the sudden tremor.

What was going on, the innkeeper asked himself? Steeling himself to find the answer, Gaspard reached out and threw open the front door. A blast of withering heat caused him to cover his face, the overwhelming concentration of the evil stench making him stagger. As he blinked through tearing eyes, he saw a shape beyond the doorway, but it was only a small part of some far vaster whole. There was an impression of powerful muscles, red scales and black claws. A hissing shriek such as might herald the murder of the sun shook the night. The innkeeper screamed as he clamped his hand to his bleeding ears, the terrible roar having ruptured them.

Then the ceiling crashed inward, brought to destruction by the gigantic clawed foot that smashed down upon it from above. The sight of the timber and thatch rushing down upon him was the last to fill the horrified eyes of Gaspard. He was already dead when the flames came, rushing through the Griffon’s Nest, consuming wood and flesh and stone with equal ferocity. And as the inn burned, there sounded once more the hissing roar of something that was already ancient when men were finding names for their gods.

In the morning, only a stretch of blackened slag marked the place where the Griffon’s Nest and the village that had surrounded it had once stood. The few survivors hid beneath rocks deep within the surrounding woods, their minds half-broken by the awesome force that had annihilated their homes and families. In frightened whispers, they gave a name to the mighty destroyer, a name as ancient as that of any god. The name of dragon.

CHAPTER SIX

The bounty hunter awoke to find himself in a place of pain and darkness. Memory struggled to return to him even as the chill of the damp stone floor bit into the bare flesh of his back and legs. Brunner clenched his jaw against the sudden red hot rush of agony that shot through him as he rolled onto his side. The stirring memories told him that Corbus had done this to him, lifting his body like a rag doll and dashing him against the stone walls with the knight’s inhuman strength. Yes, Corbus and the torturers who had assisted the monster had been very thorough, brutalising their captive for several hours before tiring of their sport. If his cell was not absolutely without light, Brunner imagined that his body would seem like a single gigantic bruise.

More memories began to trickle in. The red-gowned witch who had stood beside Duc Marimund in his throne room, and who had later come to the torture chamber to remind Sir Corbus that their mutual lord and master did not want the prisoner killed. He remembered Corbus’s snarled oath that they were simply ‘softening him up’, that they wouldn’t even start asking questions until the next day. The witch had grown angry at the knight’s surly, unapologetic remark, but had held her tongue, her strange eyes narrowing with a mixture of caution and fear.

Brunner slid his battered body across the floor, biting down on another cry of pain as his scarred back met a cold stone wall. He turned his face in the direction in which memory told him the door of his cell lay. He knew that two men had been left to guard him, men who had seemed properly motivated when Corbus had informed them to keep a careful watch on the prisoner. Brunner strained his ears to detect any sign that the guards had heard him. He needed time to think, time to work out some plan of action and time to begin recovering from his injuries. The bounty hunter worried that if the guards knew he had awoken, they might fetch Sir Corbus, so the inhuman knight could again sate his wounded pride with another round of torture.

The sound of movement and the flicker of light in the hall outside his cell brought a curse rolling from Brunner. Since arriving in Mousillon, he’d had nothing but ill luck and misfortune. Perhaps that was the real reason the city was called cursed.

He’d wondered why his captors had not bothered to shackle him to the wall. Now he had his answer – because Corbus did not intend him to stay in the cell for very long. The bounty hunter groaned as he struggled to his feet, forcing his protesting body to obey. He folded his hands together, making a hammer from his locked fists. If they thought to drag him from his cell, they would not do so unopposed.

The light grew brighter behind the door, shining through the narrow barred window, illuminating for Brunner the small extent of the miserable hole in which Corbus had discarded him. The bounty hunter braced himself against the wall as he heard the sound of iron keys rattling. Slowly, the door began to inch open. Brunner did not wait a moment, lurching clumsily at the retreating portal and pushing it outward as fast and violently as he could. The bounty hunter knew the rushed attack was foolhardy, but had decided that even if his bravado were rewarded with a sword in his gut, it would still be a much quicker end than being left to the mercies of Corbus.

Brunner’s lunge forced whoever had opened the door to retreat to the far wall of the corridor to avoid being struck by the hurtling portal. He stumbled after the retreating figure, bringing his locked fists over his head in order to drive them into the skull of his enemy with the maximum amount of force. Brunner paused in his attack, however, when he found that he faced not one of Marimund’s guards, but the witch who had shown such marked interest in him since his arrival in the castle.

Now that he saw her up close, without Corbus’s fist smashing into his face every few seconds, Brunner saw the source of the unsettling grace which had haunted the woman’s movements, the strange beauty that had characterised his impression of her. Marimund’s enchantress was an elf, something that did little to ease Brunner’s mind regarding his chances of escape. Even when dealt with from a position of strength, elves were dangerous folk to trifle with. Their minds were far older than those of men, filled with secret knowledge even the wisest wizard would find difficult to comprehend, their bodies possessed of an agility and quickness that made a mockery of even the most skilled acrobats. Brunner saw that Marimund’s witch had replaced her red robes with a tight-fitting leather tunic, breeches and knee-high boots. There was nothing about her lean, supple form to suggest the physical weakness and frailty of those human sorcerers Brunner had encountered in his travels.

‘Stay your hand, Brunner,’ the witch commanded, her piercing eyes fixed upon the bounty hunter’s. ‘I have come to help you,’ she told him. ‘My name is Ithilweil. I have put a powder in the guards’ wine that will make them sleep for hours.’

‘Why would you help me?’ Brunner demanded, his voice filled with suspicion. He kept his locked fists raised, though with the element of surprise gone, he doubted if he would be able to so much as touch the wiry elf woman. ‘You are Marimund’s sorceress. You told him I was coming.’

‘Yes,’ Ithilweil admitted, nodding her head in apology. ‘It was I who told the duc about your intentions.’ The elf’s face twisted into an embarrassed smile. ‘I have my reasons for not wishing to see Marimund dead.’ This last was spoken in such a manner that it was obvious to Brunner that there was no love lost between Marimund and his enchantress.

‘You fear Corbus,’ the bounty hunter observed. A faint trace of the fear he had seen there before briefly flickered in the elf’s eyes.

‘Corbus is a monster, a foul perversion of the blackest sorcery,’ Ithilweil stated. ‘Only men, with their short lives and shorter vision, could have imagined such a loathsome use for magic.’ The elf shook her head, sickened by the mere contemplation of such things. ‘Corbus is one of the undead, a vampire. He clings to the martial pride and chivalric honour that were his in life, using them to try to prevent being completely devoured by the terrible urges that torment him. He took service with Marimund shortly after arriving in Mousillon. It is that oath of service that gives Marimund control over his vampire.’

Brunner fought not to show the horror that gnawed at his gut. He’d had encounters with the undead before and had always found their chief weakness lay in their lack of skill as warriors. But he’d seen Corbus in action, seen him to be perhaps the finest swordsman the bounty hunter had ever encountered. To learn that the unholy powers of the vampire were behind that blade… Brunner decided that the greater the distance he put between himself and Sir Corbus the better.

‘That explains why you didn’t want me to kill Marimund,’ Brunner said. ‘But it does not answer my question. Why free me afterwards?’

Ithilweil took a step toward the bounty hunter, reaching forward with a slender hand, the pale flesh hovering inches from Brunner’s discoloured chest. ‘Because I need your help,’ she confessed. ‘I am as much a prisoner here as yourself. I was aboard one of my people’s ships, a research expedition dispatched by the arch-mages of Saphery. We were to collect specimens of the strange plants that the mystics of Araby employ in their crude experiments. But there was a terrible storm, one even our magic had not foreseen. The storm blew our vessel north, at last driving the ship into the mud banks that surround Mousillon. Though the city had an ill air about it, we decided to seek the assistance of its denizens in repairing our ship. The first poor wretches we saw fled at our approach, taking us to be daemons. But it was not long before they returned, in huge, howling mobs. They blocked our escape back to the mud flats, filling the streets and alleys behind us with their numbers. It was with great reluctance that the warriors among us lashed out, so miserable and dejected were their foes, and it was that reluctance that doomed them. They waited too long, letting the mob draw too close. One by one they were dragged down and ripped apart by fishbone knives and driftwood spears. The rest of us fled the only way we could, retreating deeper into the city. But we found no refuge there.

‘In the end, only I escaped. My flight had taken me to an old, decaying stone chapel. I had sensed the sleeping power of the place, the faint echo of a magic that was kindred to my own. There was a man in the chapel, an armoured knight. It was Marimund, and he at once demanded to know why I had disturbed his devotions. I explained as well as I could what had happened, thankful that this man, at least, seemed rational. Marimund was silent for a moment as he considered my story. When he spoke, it was to offer me protection if I would serve him. With the sound of the pursuing mob drawing close to the chapel, I had no choice but to accept his offer. In exchange for my magical talents, Marimund keeps me safe from the superstitious peasants and from the soldiers of the other nobles, who hate and fear me as the Red Enchantress.

‘I must escape. Time for me is running out,’ Ithilweil continued, her voice filled with dread. ‘But I fear to do so on my own. I do not know my way through the city, Marimund has always been careful to keep me within the walls of his castle. And my skill lies not with the sword were I to encounter trouble. I need a strong, skilled warrior to take me from this accursed place.’ Her eyes took on a crafty quality as they stared deep into Brunner’s own. ‘One who has just as pressing a need to be far from this place as I.’ She reached into a pouch fitted to the belt that crossed her waist, her hand emerging with a lump of dun-coloured paste.

‘This healing salve will restore your strength and ease your wounds,’ she told the bounty hunter. ‘Agree to help me and I shall administer it to you.’

Brunner was quiet for a moment. He was not certain just how much of the enchantress’s tale he could trust. She had betrayed him to her master once before, and Brunner could tell that there was something she was not telling him. Perhaps his escape was nothing more than an elaborate hoax, a way for her to outshine Corbus in the esteem of their master? Brunner considered the possibility, then shrugged his shoulders, a motion that caused a fresh jolt of pain to surge through his body. He had nothing to lose by accepting Ithilweil’s terms.

‘I agree,’ he told the elf.

Ithilweil smiled at him, her pale hand lighting upon his forearm, kneading the paste into his skin. Brunner could feel his flesh tingle as the paste did its work, numbing the pain.

‘I have brought the uniform of one of the guards,’ Ithilweil said, moving her ministrations to the bounty killer’s scarred chest. Brunner winced as her fingers passed over a jagged slash that recalled to him the brutal strength of the orc warlord Gnashrak. The elf did not pause, knowing that the bounty hunter’s discomfort had no connection to her salve. ‘You are much more likely to pass unnoticed dressed as one of the guards,’ Ithilweil continued, a slight flush coming to her graceful features, ‘than you are clad in naught but a loincloth.’

Brunner nodded his head in agreement. ‘So long as you brought along his sword as well,’ the bounty hunter told her. ‘I do not intend to be recaptured.’

Several minutes later, Brunner slid the mail coif over his head, completing his transformation from prisoner into guard. The bounty hunter tossed aside the heavy kettle helm, which had proven too large for him. Perhaps the guard to which it belonged suffered from a swelled head even when he wasn’t drinking drugged wine. Brunner grinned as he gripped the longsword that went with the uniform, carefully studying its balance.

‘Any idea where Marimund took my sword?’ Brunner asked as he made a few practise swipes with his new weapon.

‘He has taken your equipment to his own chambers,’ Ithilweil told the bounty hunter. ‘Marimund was impressed by the unique character and foreign cast of your arms and armour. He is obsessed with all things magical and no doubt intends to compare them with the enchanted devices illustrated in the many scrolls and books he has collected.’

Brunner stopped practising with the stolen sword. He fixed the elf woman with a demanding stare. ‘How well guarded are the duc’s chambers?’

‘When Duc Marimund is within them, very well guarded,’ Ithilweil told him. ‘However, I have arranged for the duc to be occupied elsewhere in the castle, a minor enchantment I arranged that should keep him distracted for some time. With him gone, there should only be two guards.’

Brunner nodded his head. ‘Two men should not prove an insurmountable challenge.’ A sceptical smile broadened across the bounty hunter’s face when he looked back at the enchantress. ‘Why did you arrange the distraction? How did you know I would ask after my belongings and not simply drag you to the nearest exit? What is it that you are looking to steal from Marimund?’

Ithilweil took her time in answering, her eyes narrowing with annoyance that the bounty hunter continued to treat her with such suspicion, and annoyed that she now had to give voice to the fear that had been gnawing at her for days, the fear that had at last spurred her to action.

‘Several days ago,’ the elf said at last, ‘Marimund captured another prisoner, a petty thief who led the duc’s wife astray some years in the past. This thief had on him a device, a magical talisman crafted by my people.’ The elf’s features became stern, as unyielding as marble. ‘I cannot leave here without it.’

The bounty hunter pondered Ithilweil’s confession. ‘It was from this thief that you learned of me? He told you that I was hunting him? That is how you knew my name?’

‘Yes,’ Ithilweil admitted. ‘When I heard the story of how you helped Corbus, I knew that you had made a deal with the other aristocrats, and there are only three people in this castle they hate enough to see assassinated. I could not trust to luck that it was Corbus they wanted dead.’

Brunner waved aside Ithilweil’s explanation. ‘If this dog still lives, I want you to take me to him.’ The bounty hunter clenched his fist in anticipation of the gold Gobineau would bring him when he got the rogue back to Couronne.

‘He is not important,’ the elf protested. ‘Leave him to Marimund. It is more important that we get the Fell Fang and escape!’

‘He’s important to me,’ Brunner countered. ‘As for this artefact of yours, we’ll still make a detour in our escape to collect it. If Marimund has promised Gobineau as pleasant a stay here as he did myself, we may even find him most eager to help us.’ Ithilweil opened her mouth to argue, but the bounty hunter motioned her to silence, gesturing for her to lead the way.

Gobineau stirred within his cell, alarmed by the sounds emanating from the corridor outside. Had Marimund decided his fate already? The rogue ground his teeth together. He knew that he shouldn’t have trusted the elf witch. With a fatalistic sigh, Gobineau watched as the faint gleam of torchlight began to grow in the window of his cell.

The door swung open, revealing the elf witch. Gobineau stared for a moment, drinking in the sight of her lithe body in its new covering of leather, much more appealing than the voluminous red gown she had worn on their first meeting. So enthralled was he by Ithilweil’s slender figure that Gobineau did not notice the armed guard with her until the man made his way into the cell. The rogue quickly forgot about the elf’s shapely body when he sighted the sword clutched in the soldier’s fist. Gobineau flinched away from the bared weapon, squirming against the wall.

The guard fixed Gobineau with a stern gaze, his icy eyes boring into the bandit’s own. Hastily concocted pleas and entreaties died on the tip of Gobineau’s tongue. A man with such eyes as these was beyond calls for mercy and promises of gratitude. There was more chance in reasoning with a wolf.

The warrior spoke in a harsh, brutal tone. ‘Do you want to live?’ he demanded. For the first time, Gobineau noticed the set of iron keys gripped in the guard’s other hand.

‘After careful deliberation, I would have to answer yes,’ the rogue told him. He did not have any idea what was going on, but anything that would see him unchained had to be an improvement.

The guard continued to glare at the prisoner, making no move to unlock his chains. ‘If I free you, you will do as I say until we have made our escape? Upon whatever gods you honour?’

‘You cannot trust him,’ Ithilweil stated from the doorway. ‘Time is short. Leave him.’ Gobineau rolled his eyes toward the enchantress. Most certainly it was an unwise man who trusted any woman, even an elven one. He scowled at her, then returned his attention to the soldier.

‘If it means seeing this castle at my back, you can tell me to walk on fire, and I would just start walking,’ Gobineau declared. The guard considered him for a moment longer, then unlocked the manacles fixed to the rogue’s wrists and the iron bindings that crossed his waist. Ithilweil uttered a sharp whistle of disapproval from the hallway.

‘By the Lady,’ Gobineau crowed, massaging his wrists, ‘you’ll not regret this! My gratitude and friendship are legendary across all of Bretonnia! I am in your debt and shall never be able to repay you, though I shall endeavour to do so until the crows come for my eyes and the worms nip at my feet.’

‘You can make a start by shutting that flapping mouth of yours,’ the guard growled, turning to leave the cell.

‘One question,’ Gobineau said, hurrying to keep pace with his rescuer. ‘Why free me? Not that I am complaining,’ he hastily added. The guard shot Ithilweil a warning look.

‘Strength in numbers,’ he told the rogue. ‘The more people Marimund is looking for, the less likely he is to catch them.’ The soldier tossed the key ring aside, the iron ring clattering down the corridor as it rattled its way into the darkness. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I don’t trust the elf.’

That, at least, Gobineau decided, sounded very close to the truth.

Ithilweil walked at the rear of their small procession, her face contorted with misgiving. Perhaps she had made a mistake in pinning her hopes on the bounty hunter. Brunner seemed intent on only one thing – securing the gold he hoped to gain when he returned Gobineau to the royal court in Couronne. He was hardly the noble hero she desperately needed, nothing more than a mercenary parasite, a lone wolf intent only on filling his own belly.

Still, there was little chance that she would have another opportunity. There was small hope that one of her own people would miraculously appear in Mousillon – let alone survive the superstitious mob that had claimed her own shipmates. She might hope for one of the wandering knights of Bretonnia to arrive, but after seeing the examples of Bretonnia’s knighthood that Mousillon had presented her, she could hardly take comfort in that possibility either. In any event, time was running much too short. She had to act now.

The Fell Fang. It was little more than a legend, a sorcerous device crafted long ago by disillusioned princes from the realm of Caledor. Caledor had once been the mightiest of the realms of Ulthuan, and the elf princes of that land had ridden to war upon the backs of their mighty allies, the dragons who dwelt in the mountains of Caledor.

But over the ages, the dragons had fallen into deep slumber so that fewer and fewer of them would answer the call to battle and war. Some among the nobility of Caledor had resented the waning might of their realm that resulted from the long slumber of their allies. A faction had set out to restore their prestige by crafting sorcerous talismans that bound the sleeping dragons to their will, enslaving them and forcing them to rouse when their masters called upon them. But such a reckless and greedy use of magic had been deemed not only cruel and dangerous by the other princes of Caledor and the arch-mages of Saphery, but also a despicable act of treachery upon creatures who had been and still were the friends and allies of the elves. The disillusioned princes had been exiled, branded as the Grey Lords, never to set eyes upon the shores of Ulthuan again.

Ithilweil had studied the great books of lore kept in the Tower of Hoeth in her native Ulthuan, and in one of those books she had learned of the Fell Fang. The thing that Gobineau had brought with him looked very much like it – too much so to be mere coincidence. One of the exiled Grey Lords must have made his home in the colonies that had once existed in the lands of Bretonnia, and he must also have continued his experiments with the dangerous sorcery he and his fellow renegades had proposed.

Now Marimund had in his possession a device of such awful potency that he could not begin to appreciate it even if he understood what it was. The Fell Fang had been intended to enslave the dragon to which it was bound, but even the strongest willed of the Grey Lords had found such control beyond them. They could rouse the wyrms from their slumber, this much they had achieved, and they could even manage to communicate with the reptiles, their minds touching upon those of the ancient creatures in a spectral communion. But true control was beyond them, and the ire of the dragons when forced from their sleep had been a thing to bring nightmares even when dulled by centuries of memory. How much worse should it be were an unthinking, unknowing man call upon such forces without the slightest idea of what he did? An entire nation might burn if the dragon bound to the Fell Fang were to stir.

There was another danger as well: Corbus, Marimund’s pet vampire. The undead knight had once been a noble and heroic example of his kind, if the history she had heard the monster speak was more than simple lies. Corbus had taken up the quest, riding across the green lands of Bretonnia, answering the challenges of man and monster as he found them, hoping that he might prove worthy enough to find the sacred grail of his land’s patron goddess, the Lady of the Lake. But in his quest, he had been brought low, his courage and valour proven to be wanting and unworthy. He had encountered a black-armoured knight in the shadows of a haunted forest. He had answered the rival knight’s challenge, and had contested his foe in combat for nearly an hour before his rival had struck him down. But the blessing of an honourable death was not to be for Sir Corbus. The other knight had removed his helm, revealing the pale features and elongated fangs of a vampire. Corbus had impressed the vampire enough that it had decided that he must share in its curse.

Corbus had been inducted into the foul order of the Blood Dragons, a brotherhood of vampiric knights who existed by their own twisted code of honour, a perverse mockery of the chivalry and martial pride that had filled them in life. They existed only to find foes worthy enough to face them in combat, the search for ever greater challenges the only motivation in the dark and miserable midnight of their existence, despising and hating the loathsome, uncontrollable monsters they had become. Corbus had forsaken his quest, slinking to Mousillon, the city that had been cursed by Malford’s false grail, the only place in Bretonnia vile enough to endure the beast he had become. The vampire knight had found service with Duc Marimund, desperately clinging to the oaths of service and loyalty he had sworn to the nobleman as if they were the final bridge between the monster he was and the man he had been.

But that would all change if Corbus were to find out what Marimund had. The vampire had not been there when Gobineau had told the duc what the artefact was and what it was reportedly able to do. Marimund himself had not believed the rogue’s wagging tongue, but Corbus would have. The Blood Dragon would have seized upon it with the same desperation a drowning man would a floating piece of wood. For there was a tradition, a myth common to the accursed order of vampire knights. If ever one of them should taste the fiery blood that flowed through the veins of a dragon, then that vampire would never again be stricken by the red thirst, never again feel the need to slake his unholy hunger upon the blood of the living. To achieve such a thing, Ithilweil knew, the vampire would do anything. He would be beyond anyone’s control, even the oaths he had sworn to Marimund would not restrain him if he thought that he might rid himself of his curse.

No, Corbus would seize the Fell Fang and use it the instant he learned of it. Ithilweil shuddered as she considered what that might mean. The vampire would call up a monster that would be beyond its control, beyond anyone’s control, a monster that would seek out and destroy the fool that had called it, and anything else it found in the vicinity.

She would have to trust that it was not already too late, that Corbus had not somehow learned what his master possessed and that Marimund himself had not been toying with the dread artefact.

The trio continued to make their way through the narrow maze of corridors that led upwards from Marimund’s dungeons, past dingy cells and iron-doored storerooms and the faded tapestries that hung like mouldy cobwebs from the dank stone walls. Ithilweil had directed Brunner to the safest route, the one that held the least possibility of being patrolled at such a late hour. True to her word, the halls had been empty of life. Now if the path she had chosen to bring them to Marimund’s chambers was as easily achieved, Brunner would be extremely content.

A sudden smell brought them to a stop. Ithilweil’s face contorted as the full reek struck her more discerning senses. Gobineau fell back a step, trying to place both the guard and the witch between himself and the corridor ahead. Brunner firmed his grip upon his sword, shooting a warning look at Gobineau as he stalked forward, reminding the rogue that whatever else might occur, he was not going to be forgotten.

A short, dark shape shambled into view, the stink increasing as it did so. There was a gleam of steel in its hands, the razor-keen edge of a massive axe. Brunner shifted his stance so that he might be better able to address the difference in height should trouble occur.

‘Hand over that scum!’ the shape snarled. ‘Or I’ll see your heads lying on the floor!’

‘You’re late,’ Brunner replied. The dark shadow crooked its head, staring at the man who had spoken. A grim chuckle rolled from the dwarf.

‘I didn’t recognise you, Brunner,’ Ulgrin laughed. ‘A good disguise.’ The dwarf gestured with his axe at Gobineau. ‘I see you’ve saved me the trouble of fetching him.’

The bounty hunter spun, kicking out with his leg as Gobineau braced himself to flee back down the hall. Brunner’s foot struck the rogue’s knee, spilling the prisoner to the floor amid a flurry of curses and snarls. He loomed over the prone man, the steel edge of his blade hovering near Gobineau’s throat.

‘He was playing nice until you gave the game away,’ Brunner snarled at the dwarf. ‘Now I’ll have to watch him twice as carefully.’ He leaned forward, letting the blade touch the soft skin of Gobineau’s neck. ‘Or we could just settle for the reward his head will bring.’ The rogue went pale as he heard Brunner’s words, balled fists opening into empty hands.

‘You know this disgusting creature?’ Ithilweil interrupted, her features trying to conceal the horror she felt as her senses were assailed by Ulgrin’s smell and filth-crusted appearance.

‘My partner,’ Brunner informed her. ‘Ulgrin Baleaxe, renowned dwarf huntsman and mercenary.’ Ithilweil stared even more intently at the muck-crusted figure. She’d read many accounts of the terrible war between her people and the stubbornly vindictive and irrational dwarfs, but had never actually seen one before. She rubbed at her nose as Ulgrin’s stink continued to assail her. She had never imagined them to be so disgusting, wallowing, it seemed, in their own filth. Suddenly, war between her people and these foul tunnel rats did not seem so tragic as inevitable. Indeed, she marvelled that there had ever been peace between her kind and such offences against nature.

‘I don’t suppose you could shoo him away?’ Ithilweil asked, her voice distorted by the fingers pinching her nose close.

‘Not after what I’ve gone through to get here!’ Ulgrin cursed. The dwarf gestured again with his axe, this time at the other bounty hunter. A clump of filth tumbled from Ulgrin’s arm. ‘I’ve had to hide from ghouls, sneak past ghosts and hack apart a street just to get here! Then I get half-drowned by a geyser of filth before crawling through a muck-hole no wider than a cart wheel!’ The dwarf patted at the blackened patch of mud that had once been his beard. ‘And let’s not even start talking about the frogs!’ he snorted. ‘Those damn things are going to cost you fifty gold each!’

Brunner’s eyes narrowed, his mouth becoming a straight-edged line. ‘We agreed on one thousand, and one thousand it stands,’ he warned. Ulgrin took a threatening step forward. An expectant silence drifted between the two bounty hunters for a moment before the slender shape of Ithilweil interposed itself before them.

‘You two can argue over gold later,’ the elf said, her angry glare encompassing both man and dwarf, an aroused temper overwhelming even her offended senses. ‘After we do what has to be done and escape this place.’

Brunner and Ulgrin slowly looked away from one another, each of them casting a surly look at the enchantress. At length, Ulgrin shrugged his shoulders, adopting a less combative stance.

‘My ancestors would skin me for saying it,’ the dwarf hissed, ‘but tall-ears here is right. Best we settle this when the timing is better. But I can tell you right now, I’m not splitting my reward with an elf!’ Ulgrin tipped his head, indicating the way he had come. ‘I’ll lead you to the tunnel, but if we run into any more frogs, you’re the one who gets to play with them. I’m not touching another one unless we agree on how much they are worth first!’ Ulgrin turned to begin to lead the way out.

‘We’re not leaving yet,’ Brunner said. The statement brought looks of shock to the faces of Ulgrin and Gobineau.

‘Not… not leaving,’ the dwarf sputtered incredulously. ‘Why not!’ he demanded.

‘If there is some sort of disagreement,’ Gobineau said, rising to his feet. ‘Why don’t I just go with the dwarf, and you can go off and do whatever you have to do here.’ The rogue put on his most disarming smile. ‘I can assure you, I’m as eager as anybody to get away from Marimund, even if it means a hanging in Couronne.’

Brunner turned to glower at his prisoner. ‘I’d trust you out of my sight about as much as I’d trust a hungry halfling in a pantry.’ The bounty hunter looked back toward Ulgrin. ‘I’m not leaving here without my sword,’ he told the dwarf. ‘Ithilweil knows where Marimund put it. I’d rather have you with me on this than kill you over it.’

Ulgrin chuckled at the bounty hunter’s words. ‘Kill me? I think you’ve got a distorted opinion of how that particular fracas would resolve.’ The dwarf smiled beneath the filth crusting his beard. ‘But I might help with this foolishness you are set on… for another hundred gold added to my share. And another ten for any more frogs I have to kill.’

Brunner eyed the dwarf for a long moment, then nodded his head. ‘Watch the thief,’ he muttered as he pushed past Ulgrin, motioning for Ithilweil to again lead the way. Ulgrin laughed, slinging his axe so that it once again rested on his shoulder. The dwarf took up position at the rear of the odd procession.

‘Ten gold for a frog,’ Gobineau whistled as he walked in front of Ulgrin. ‘That has to be an even bigger act of robbery than anything I ever tried.’

‘You haven’t seen the size of the frogs,’ Ulgrin snarled back.

Gobineau stopped, favouring the dwarf with an embarrassed smile. ‘I’m sorry, but do you mind switching places. I’m afraid you’re standing upwind,’ the rogue told him.

Ulgrin sighed deeply, taking a step forward before realising what he was doing. With another snarl, the dwarf pushed Gobineau forward.

‘Well, it was worth a try,’ Gobineau commented.

Sir Corbus descended the narrow stairs that led from Marimund’s cellars to his dungeons. The vampire’s mood was foul, the thirst burning in his veins. It had all been that miserable elf witch’s doing. She’d placed some sort of enchantment upon one of the duc’s cisterns, causing it to change water into wine. Marimund was entirely enthralled by the spectacle, ordering every cask and barrel in the castle brought down and filled. Corbus didn’t trust the witch, and wondered what sort of trick she was playing at. Perhaps the enchantment would only last for a few hours, or perhaps the wine would all change back when dawn broke. There was some sort of mischief in her magic, of that he was certain. Her excuse that her efforts had worn her out and that she needed to sleep and restore herself had rung hollow in his ears as well. Still, Marimund had been too engaged to pay her departure any notice. That was just as well, she would not be there to mollify him when the magic at last failed, and then Corbus would have the pleasure of seeing her try to appease the duc’s anger.

Such a sight would bring Corbus a great deal of pleasure, not the least reason being the way the sight of all the churning red liquid filling the cistern had awoken his own thirsts. Corbus existed precariously, striving to control and subjugate the unholy hunger that always threatened to consume him. It was an effort not to fall upon slain enemies like a feral beast, a torment not to rip open the throat of a peasant in the street and drain her of her life’s blood. But Corbus did manage to exert some control, denying his hungers as long as he could, until at last they built up within him to such a degree that it seemed he must burst from the pent-up demand. Then he would indulge his abominable hunger, falling upon the wretched prisoners Marimund kept in the dungeons for just such a purpose.

The vampire stalked into the guardroom that opened into the lower dungeons, then stopped. His eyes blazed into crimson embers as he saw the two men-at-arms lying asleep on the floor. Striding forward, Corbus lifted both men from the ground, one in either hand, and shook them like rag dolls until they awakened. Their stupor vanished in an instant, their eyes growing wide with horror as the vampire’s enraged countenance glared at them.

‘You shall wish your mothers barren for this dereliction!’ Corbus roared. He flung one of the soldiers from him, the man crashing against the table that stood at the centre of the room. ‘Go and check on the prisoners!’ Corbus snarled as the guard rolled out from the wreckage. The man-at-arms scrambled out of the door that connected with the cells. A few moments later he returned, his face paler even than Corbus’s undead flesh.

‘The… the assassin…’ the soldier sputtered. ‘And… the… the one… the one who…’

‘Go and tell the duc about the escaped prisoners!’ Corbus roared. As the vampire spoke, his powerful grip intensified, snapping the neck of the guard he still held. The soldier’s body shuddered and twitched as life fluttered from it. The other guard needed no further encouragement, racing past Corbus and toward the cellars.

The vampire’s fury blazed within his cold body. So, the elf bitch was feeling tired after her efforts? Corbus would make her suffer for betraying their master, the faithless witch! The undead knight sank his teeth into the neck of the still twitching body gripped in his hand. The dying man’s warm blood coursed into the emptiness of the vampire’s husk. Corbus did not intend to satiate his thirst, just sip enough to make his hunger more keen, to make his sense sharper. He would find the assassin and the adulterer and the elf witch. Between the three of them, the vampire intended to have a full belly indeed.

Duc Marimund’s private chambers were opulent, by the impoverished standards of the aristocrats of Mousillon. The floors were covered in rugs of bearskin and shaggy windswept hide, and even included a few patterned carpets from distant Araby, quietly rotting relics from Mousillon’s prosperous past. The furnishings were likewise relics, dark wood from Estalia, the Drakwald and even more distant lands, carved by skilled artisans so that every inch of their surface was engraved. In one corner, a suit of armour worn by a distant ancestor of Marimund’s stood in solemn silence, the grail standing out in bright gold upon the steel breastplate, testament to the heights of chivalry and virtue the dead worthy had achieved. A great marble fireplace stood against one wall, bronze lions flanking it, their forepaws raised in challenge. A mahogany bath stood in another corner, a patterned screen imported from Tilea standing beside it.

One large bookcase held a variety of curious objects – a small, rusty dagger, a wickedly grinning wooden fetish, a battered shield. These were the enchanted relics Marimund had acquired down through the years, items about which the aura of magic had gathered. Upon a large table were strewn the oddities the duc had collected more recently, those which he had yet to determine if they warranted a place in his collection, if they had indeed been imbued with a touch of sorcery. Here rested the arms and armour of the bounty hunter, a dragon-hilted sword, a dented steel helm, a breastplate of gromril. Beyond those things taken from the bounty hunter, there were only a few other curios. One of these rested near the edge of the table, a long cylinder of ivory, engraved with strange lettering and curious carvings. Marimund had discovered the secret of the cylinder, twisting it open to expose the strange relic that lay within – a darkened crescent of hollow bone. This sat beside its casing, forlorn and forgotten.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The route Ithilweil had chosen was a rambling one, straying down side corridors and circumventing the main hallways, but Brunner was impressed by how alone their path had left them. Even in the desolate environs of Mousillon, Brunner knew that a nobleman of such station as Duc Marimund would have a host of servants seeing to the upkeep of his castle and the personal comfort of his household. Then, there were the duc’s soldiers to consider. Given the hostile climate in which Marimund was surrounded, there would be quite a few men-at-arms residing within the walls of the castle as well. All things considered, the fact that they had not encountered a living soul was quite remarkable.

Gobineau had an answer for that. As they turned yet another corner only to find the hallway beyond vacant, the rogue cast an appraising look at Ulgrin. ‘It must be the perfume you’re wearing,’ the man quipped.

Ulgrin’s face contorted into a scowl beneath his beard and for a moment, it seemed he might allow Gobineau a much closer view of his axe. Then the glint of greed twinkled in the dwarf’s eyes, draining the hostility from him as though he’d been drenched in ice-cold water.

‘Five hundred gold if he dies,’ Ulgrin muttered to himself, reciting it over and over again as though it were some holy mantra from far away Cathay.

After several more twists and turns, Ithilweil motioned for her companions to stop. She removed a large iron key from her belt, slipping across the hallway. Pressing her long, slender fingers to the stone wall, she slid one of the bricks upward, exposing a hidden keyhole. Ulgrin shuffled forward to get a better look at the cunning piece of engineering, wearing a look of interest that was no less appraising than that which Gobineau had favoured the dwarf with minutes earlier. The enchantress placed a pale hand to her face, recoiling from the dwarf’s filth-caked figure. Ulgrin grunted angrily and stepped back once more. With the dwarf withdrawn to a less odorous distance, Ithilweil inserted the key, twisted it in the lock, then motioned for Brunner to assist her. The bounty hunter nodded, stepping forward to press his hands where the elf had indicated. Together, the two began to push the wall inward, exposing a hidden passage.

‘This was used by the old lords of the castle, back when Mousillon was prosperous and the noble families more bound by the laws of honour and propriety,’ Ithilweil told Brunner as they stepped into the passageway. Ulgrin, pushing Gobineau before him, stomped in after the pair. ‘They found that such a hidden corridor allowed a certain discretion when seeking out dalliances that might have proved embarrassing were they to be known.’

‘Where was this when I was dallying with Tietza?’ Gobineau commented, eyes carefully studying the passageway. The passage was narrow, the monotony of its length broken every forty feet by a steel lever mounted beside a cogwheel. As Gobineau inspected the nearest of these devices, peering over the shoulders of an equally curious Ulgrin, the elf stepped to the device and released the lever. Instantly, the wall that had been pushed inward shot back into its former place, taking with it the light from the hallway.

‘And how might an elf learn of such a hidden path?’ Ulgrin asked, glaring even more suspiciously than usual at Ithilweil. ‘A dwarf might spot a trick like that straight away, but how does some slinking tall-ear pick up something of that sort?’

Brunner ignored the dwarf’s surly voice, removing a torch leaning outward from an iron sconce fitted to the wall and thrust it toward Ulgrin so that the dwarf might light it, illuminating the narrow passage for all with eyes less used to the dark than the cavern-bred dwarf. Ulgrin’s annoyance hissed out from behind his beard, but he soon had a small tinderbox in his hand. A moment later, the torch blazed into fiery life. The first thing the bounty hunter saw was the icy smile that Ithilweil had forced onto her face. She bowed with strained, exaggerated courtesy toward the dwarf.

‘I have been a prisoner within these walls for some time,’ she spoke the words as though instructing a slow-witted child. ‘I have had many lonely days to wander these halls, learning every crack in the stones. In time, even an elf might be expected to take notice of so elaborate an artifice.’ She turned away from the glowering dwarf, facing Brunner once more. ‘These halls are sealed, so that neither light nor draft might betray their existence. We can travel along the length to the far end of the corridor, which will place us just outside Marimund’s private chambers.’

‘You spoke of guards,’ Brunner reminded her.

The elf nodded sadly. ‘They will have to be dealt with,’ she replied. ‘If we are fortunate, there will only be two. They will be stationed outside the door.’

The bounty hunter nodded his head. ‘If the wall retreats faster from the inside than it does from the outside, we can be on them before they know what is happening,’ Brunner stated. ‘That is, if there are only two.’

‘If there are guards,’ Ulgrin snorted, ‘then they are your problem. I’m perfectly happy leaving this place right now.’ He turned a menacing eye on Gobineau. ‘I have what I came here to collect.’

‘Gobineau stays with me,’ Brunner warned, glaring down at the dwarf. ‘If you want to hang back in this passage, do so. But the bandit goes where I go.’ Ulgrin held the other bounty hunter’s hostile gaze, then smiled beneath his beard.

‘As you want, Brunner,’ the dwarf agreed. ‘I might even be persuaded to help you. Say for five gold pieces each guard.’ Both of the bounty killers fingered their weapons, waiting for the other to make the first move. Gobineau appeared at Ulgrin’s shoulder, waving his hands to gain the attention of his captors.

‘If it is all the same,’ he said, ‘why don’t I stay in the passage with the dwarf? You can do what you have to do and we’ll still be here waiting when you get back.’ The rogue clenched his fist, shaking it for emphasis. ‘You have my solemn word of honour on the matter.’ Both bounty hunters rolled their eyes.

‘Just keep an eye on him,’ Brunner snarled, pointing a finger at Gobineau. ‘If there’s any killing to be done, I’ll do it.’ The bounty hunter looked once more at Ithilweil. ‘Lead the way, if you would.’ The elf nodded her head, clearly eager to proceed. She had watched the haggling between man and dwarf with obvious impatience.

‘This way,’ she said. ‘We must hurry. I do not know how long we may expect Marimund to be away.’

Brunner and Ithilweil started down the corridor. Ulgrin Baleaxe and Gobineau watched the two walk away. The dwarf’s eyes began to narrow with suspicion. Brunner had agreed to allowing him to stand guard over their prisoner far too easily. Were the roles reversed, Ulgrin certainly would not have trusted Brunner with a captive worth two thousand pieces of gold. The dwarf rubbed at his beard as he considered the problem. He groaned in disgust as he reached the only possible conclusion.

‘What… where are we going?’ Gobineau demanded as the dwarf pushed him down the corridor, urging the man to hurry so they could catch up with Brunner and Ithilweil. ‘Aren’t we going to stay here?’

Ulgrin snarled at his prisoner to close his mouth and keep quiet. Very cunning of Brunner, very cunning indeed. There was only one reason the other bounty hunter would have risked Ulgrin making off with Gobineau while he was away. Retrieving his precious sword indeed! That elf witch had told Brunner about some hidden treasure of this mad duc, a treasure that would make the bounty on Gobineau’s head look like pig slop by comparison. So, Brunner thought he could cheat Ulgrin of his share in such a find, especially after all the hardships the dwarf had endured to sneak his way into the cursed castle! Well, if he thought dwarfs were such fools as that, then he’d been listening to that elf wench far too long!

The sentries standing watch outside the chambers of their lord, the Duc Marimund, leaned tiredly upon their spears. Theirs was a dull, uneventful post. The possibility of any intruder making his way into the castle was remote, some might say impossible. None had done so for years, not since one of the rival noblemen of Mousillon had employed an Estalian assassin to attempt to remove their master’s claim over the city in a rather forceful fashion. So it was that the two soldiers were less attentive and wary than they might have been, their minds more focused upon the dice games unfolding in the barracks during their absence then they were upon the quiet, lonely stretch of corridor.

Abruptly, impossibly, the wall across the hallway disappeared, replaced by a patch of shadowy blackness. Even as the two men-at-arms snapped out of their fatigue and stared in amazement at the strange sight, a figure rushed from the shadows. He was dressed in the same manner as the two sentries, and the minds of the two guards puzzled over this as much as the hidden passage from which the man had emerged. Was he some herald, some spy of the duc’s carrying with him a vital message for their lord?

The confused guards hesitated, allowing the other soldier to close upon them before another fact registered in their minds – the man approaching them held a sword in his hands. Far too late, the two sentries began to raise their spears. Brunner’s stolen sword split the belly of one before he had even begun to point his own weapon forward. The man shouted in agony, falling away to clutch at his mortal injury.

The other guard fared slightly better, stabbing at Brunner with his spear. But the guard’s reflexes were still slow, his reactions dulled by the abrupt intrusion into his midnight snooze, and the thrust passed harmlessly to one side of the bounty hunter. Safely past the stabbing point of the man-at-arms’s spear, Brunner lashed out with his blade, the sharp edge of the sword crunching down into the side of the soldier’s neck. A gargling scream rasped from the maimed man, and he too fell to the floor beside his dying comrade.

Brunner studied his handiwork for a moment. Armed with his own equipment, he’d have been able to dispatch the two men-at-arms much more swiftly, sending a bolt into each of them before they’d even registered the opening of the secret passage. The bounty hunter did not avoid combat, but he preferred to save it for occasions when there was a price attached to his opponent. Men who had no value were better disposed of from a safe distance.

‘Sloppy,’ the gruff voice of Ulgrin grated upon Brunner’s ears. The bounty hunter turned to observe his companions emerging from the hidden passage. Ithilweil looked upon the two dying soldiers, her strange eyes subdued by a covering of pity. She shook her head, then strode toward the doorway the two dying men had given their lives to protect.

Brunner watched with interest as the elf extended her hand, the delicate fingers lightly touching the cold bronze handle. Behind him, he could hear Ulgrin snort with contempt. ‘If she thinks that door isn’t locked, then she really is an idiot.’ Ithilweil paid the dwarf’s jibe no mind, concentrating upon the door. Faintly, Brunner could hear her speaking in a strange, somehow musical language. Though he could not understand the words, the bounty hunter knew that there was magic within them, drawing power into the elf maid’s fingers. Soon, the sound of groaning metal could be heard above the whispered incantation of the enchantress. With no further warning, the heavy bronze handle, and the iron lock to which it was fixed, fell from the door, clattering upon the stone floor. Where they had been fitted to the door, Brunner could see that the wood was charred and blackened. A faint mist of steam rose from the swiftly cooling lock.

Ithilweil indulged in a smug smile, directing the expression back at Ulgrin before pushing the door inward. The dwarf grumbled into his beard, pushing Gobineau ahead of him as Brunner followed the elf into Marimund’s chambers.

‘Any damn fool can pick a lock with sorcery,’ the dwarf spat under his breath, his hold upon his axe a trifle firmer than it had been before the elf witch had displayed her magic. The dwarf was even more sullen when he saw the nature of the duc’s room. There was a modest degree of wealth displayed in the furnishings and appointments that graced the chamber, but hardly anything that would impress someone who had walked through the halls of dwarf kings. Since deciding that Brunner’s true motivation in coming here was to loot Marimund’s wealth, Ulgrin had built up an image in his mind that might have impoverished an Arabyan sultan.

The dwarf’s eyes narrowed, however, as a new thought came to him. Perhaps Marimund didn’t like to flaunt his wealth? Maybe he kept it hidden, a small chest filled with gold coins, or a jewellery box overflowing with diamonds… Ulgrin stabbed a finger at Gobineau.

‘Stand right there!’ the dwarf commanded Gobineau, pointing at a spot almost at the centre of the room. ‘Move and I’ll chop your legs off and feed them to you!’ he added when the thief opened his mouth to protest.

Ulgrin saw Brunner and Ithilweil striding toward a large table set against the wall, their eyes focused upon the clutter of objects strewn upon it. The dwarf smiled. Even the most slovenly of noblemen was not going to leave valuables in such disarray. He left the bounty hunter and the elf to their foolishness, dropping into a crouch and peering under the duc’s bed, hoping to discover a hidden strongbox.

Alone in the centre of the room, Gobineau’s eyes strayed from one bounty hunter to the other, then gazed longingly at the door which connected to the hallway beyond. Now knowing about the hidden passage, the rogue was confident he’d be able to elude Marimund’s guards were he to gain his liberty. The real problem lay in getting some distance between himself and the two bounty killers. The dwarf might be distracted with his hunt for hidden valuables, but the sour glances he directed at Gobineau told the outlaw that he was far from forgotten. He decided that he wouldn’t forget about two thousand gold crowns either, no matter how high his hopes to better his fortune.

The rogue pursed his lips, watching and waiting. An opportunity might yet reveal itself if he was observant and patient. And perhaps a little lucky, Ranald willing.

Brunner fastened the weapon belt about his waist, sliding the familiar length of Drakesmalice into its sheath. There were few things the bounty hunter placed any value upon, but the famous sword of the barons von Drakenburg was one of them. With the sword back in his possession, the gnawing sense of unease and loss that had afflicted him since Ithilweil had released him from the dungeons left him. He felt whole once more, complete. He began to wrap another weapon belt about his body, this one holding the array of knives he employed in his bloody vocation, the heavy weight of the Headsman, a massive butchering knife with a serrated edge, resting against his right hip. His prized repeating crossbow and blackpowder pistol were also among the objects scattered upon the table, and their recovery brought a grim smile to Brunner’s harsh features. Marimund would regret not killing him when he had the chance. Brunner would make certain of that before he saw the last of Mousillon. His hands closed about the carved spike of wood he had purchased from an impoverished Sigmarite priest in the Tilean port city of Miragliano nearly a year past. Perhaps he’d attend to the vampire knight Corbus as well, if the opportunity presented itself.

While Brunner occupied himself reclaiming his weapons, Ithilweil lifted the Fell Fang from the table, feeling a great surge of relief well up within her. The dread artefact was safe now, out of the reach of fools who did not understand its power, and even greater fools who might be mad enough to use it. The elf took the carved ivory covering, slipping it back over the Fell Fang, concealing the ancient tooth once more. There would be much more to do now. The bounty hunter would need to get her out of the filthy human city. She was certain that she could prey upon the debt he owed her for his own release to at least get her that far.

After that, things were more nebulous. She would have to find a way to get back to her own people, for the Fell Fang’s potential for destruction and ruin would only be fully averted once it was safely locked away within one of the vaults beneath the Tower of Sorcery in Ulthuan. There was a small colony of her people in the city of Marienburg, far to the north. She would have to try for that and wait for the next ship to return her to her native land. The bounty hunter might be less agreeable about accompanying her that far; she might very well need to engage others to protect her on the long road to Marienburg. That was a problem she would deal with when the time arrived. For now, she should allow herself to enjoy the successful acquisition of the Fell Fang before it was too late.

If it wasn’t already too late. The thought sent a chill of dread coursing through the elf, purging her of the relief that had filled her only moments before. What if Marimund had been toying with the thing in his examination of it? The fool might have accidentally awakened powers he knew nothing about. If the dragon that had been bound to the Fell Fang were still alive, it would be ancient, older even than the vaunted Empire and the kingdom of Bretonnia and all the other realms which the humans pompously called ‘the Old World’. Dragons were things that did not diminish with time, but continued to grow in might and power until death at last stilled their fiery hearts. The monster bound to the Fell Fang would be a thing of such power, more like a living storm than a mortal creature. And if that fool Marimund had been playing with the Fang, if he had awakened the beast, it might even now be flying for this castle. Even now, wings of doom might be descending from the night sky to crush the city into ash and cinder.

So lost in these morbid thoughts of dread was Ithilweil, that she did not notice the path her steps took her as she backed away from the table. Her slender shape strayed close to where Ulgrin had ordered Gobineau to stand. The rogue watched her approach with baited breath, seeing an opportunity about to present itself. The outlaw’s eyes narrowed as he noticed the object the elf held in her hands, the same object he had come here to try and sell to Marimund. The Fell Fang. Perhaps there really was power within the object, Gobineau decided, if both a crazed wizard and an elf witch coveted the thing with such recklessness as to risk their lives to gain it.

The rogue changed his plan even as he moved forward to implement it. After all, why should he escape without taking something with him to redress the trials he had been subjected to? Gobineau was certain now that there was a very real power encased within the ivory cylinder. He was not certain how, but he would use that power, use it to establish himself in the luxury that was his due, some place far from jealous husbands and bloodthirsty bounty killers.

Gobineau caught Ithilweil by the wrist, spinning her lithe body around so that his arm wrapped about her throat. The sudden movement caught the elf completely off guard, so absorbed was she by her own thoughts of dread. Her reaction, however, was far swifter than Gobineau had allowed for, a boot smashing into his calf with a strength the outlaw would never have imagined within so lightly built a person. The elf spun away from the clutching brigand as he crumpled painfully to one knee. But as she did so, Gobineau twisted the hand holding her wrist. Ithilweil grimaced in pain and the Fell Fang clattered to the floor. Before she could recover, the rogue had regained his prize.

Gobineau twisted the hidden catch, satisfying himself that the hidden relic was still safe within its vessel. Looking up, the bandit shuddered. His sudden assault on the elf had drawn quite a deal of attention. The looks in the eyes of Brunner and Ulgrin Baleaxe were as murderous as any the rogue had ever seen. He began to raise his hands in a gesture of submission, fearing that he was only a few seconds from having the unpleasant experience of either the dwarf’s massive axe or Brunner’s recently recovered sword bisecting his face.

‘Stop him from using the Fang!’ Ithilweil shouted, momentarily drawing the attention of the two bounty hunters.

Gobineau’s thoughts raced. Use the Fang? And exactly how by all the Dark Gods was he supposed to do that? Still, there was no mistaking the terror in the elf witch’s eyes. Gobineau noticed that he’d been lifting his hands when she had shouted and that the one holding the artefact was poised near his own face. A sudden thought occurred to the outlaw.

‘That’s right!’ Gobineau called out in what he hoped was a threatening tone. ‘Take one step toward me and we’re all in trouble!’ He set the hollowed out bone against his lower lip, bringing another gasp from Ithilweil. It seemed that his guess might have been right after all. He really must remember to tithe a bit of his next haul to Ranald to thank the mischievous god of thieves for the turn his luck had taken.

Unfortunately, Brunner and Ulgrin did not seem to be sharing the elf’s fright. The two bounty hunters passed a look between them, then began to circle around their prey. Gobineau swallowed nervously. Hadn’t Brunner said something about ‘alive’ not meaning ‘unharmed’? The rogue inhaled sharply, the breath rasping against the surface of the Fang. Ithilweil winced in tandem to the bandit’s breath.

‘Don’t antagonise him!’ she cried. ‘If he sounds the Fang, we will all die! He’ll call up a monster that will bring this whole castle crashing down about our ears!’ The already pale skin of the elf was now the pallor of alabaster as the warmth drained from her flesh, cringing within her fear.

‘She’s right! I’ll do it!’ Gobineau called out, trying to add as much support for whatever nonsense the elf was shrieking as he could. ‘You two had better step back,’ Gobineau warned when it became obvious that the bounty hunters weren’t listening. Brunner’s icy eyes glared into the rogue’s own.

‘Do as he says!’ pleaded Ithilweil. To Gobineau’s amazement, Brunner took a step backward. The outlaw felt a smile warming on his face.

‘That’s better,’ he crowed. ‘Now lower your weapons,’ he added with a hopeful note. To his relief, Brunner slammed his sword back into its scabbard.

Ulgrin looked at his partner, the dwarf’s eyes wide with disbelief. ‘Since when do we take orders from some hussy tall-ear?’ the dwarf demanded.

‘We don’t,’ Brunner replied, removing his pistol from its holster. Ulgrin laughed grimly as the bounty hunter pointed the intimidating weapon at Gobineau. ‘I just decided I didn’t really feel like doing any more work today.’

‘How do you know it’s still loaded?’ Gobineau protested feebly.

‘How do you know it’s not?’ the bounty hunter retorted, his voice as cheerless as an open grave. The outlaw sighed loudly, glancing about the room around him, trying to find some way to salvage the situation. To his left, Ulgrin glared at him, the edge of his monstrous axe gleaming wickedly. To his right, a much more composed, though still visibly shaken, Ithilweil was beginning to step nearer.

Gobineau imagined she might be planning on replaying the little scene that had initiated the stand off, and he didn’t think his chances of overcoming the elf were terribly good. Before him, the infamous Brunner had a pistol pointed at his face.

‘Khaine’s black blood,’ Gobineau cursed as he exhaled into the Fell Fang. Whatever monster the magic artefact was going to conjure up, it couldn’t be any worse than what he was already facing. The outlaw screwed his eyes shut, expecting a sound of thunder, an explosive display of sorcery as some daemonic horror manifested itself in answer to the Fang’s summons. Instead there was only silence. Opening his eyes again, Gobineau saw the elf witch shaking, leaning against a chair to prevent herself from falling, such was the lack of strength in her limbs. Not exactly some hell-spawned abomination with claws and fangs, but he wasn’t going to complain. Turning to regard the bounty hunters, however, Gobineau learned that his desperate gamble had not been universal in its effects.

‘I don’t think they’ll mind if he’s missing his hands when we turn him in,’ Ulgrin growled, stepping forward. Once again, Gobineau found his eyes focusing on the wickedly sharp edge of the dwarf’s gigantic axe.

No doubt about it. The next time he passed a shrine to Ranald, he was going to set fire to it.

Even as the two bounty hunters began to close on him, Gobineau’s luck reasserted itself. Without warning, the door to Marimund’s room exploded inward, propelled by some tremendous force. All eyes turned to the doorway to see the red-armoured figure of Sir Corbus standing in the corridor. The knight’s face no longer resembled anything human, eyes blazing with wrath, gash-like mouth parted in a feral snarl, wolf-like fangs exposed. The knight held his sword in his hand, but it seemed to all observing him that he was more likely to rip them apart with his bare hands than remember to use his weapon.

‘Traitor witch!’ Corbus roared. ‘Is this how you return the protection and support your lord has given you! Freeing his prisoners and robbing his rooms!’ A trickle of bloody froth oozed from the corner of the knight’s mouth as he spat his accusations at Ithilweil. ‘I’ll strip the skin from your flesh and toss the screaming carcass to the rats for your faithlessness, slattern!’

So intent was Corbus on the objects of his ire, the figures of Gobineau, Brunner and Ithilweil, that he had paid scant notice of the room’s other occupant. Ulgrin listened to the vampire’s hissed maledictions, his own anger boiling up within the dwarf.

With a savage cry, Ulgrin lunged at the red knight, swinging his axe in a gleaming arc of destruction.

‘By the gods of my ancestors!’ Ulgrin bellowed. ‘I’ve had enough of this city!’ The blade of the axe struck Corbus’s breastplate with all the strength the dwarf’s brawny frame could muster. The metal shrieked as it split under the cleaving edge and the axe chewed into the flesh beneath. ‘You’re not going to stop me from getting out of here!’ Ulgrin ripped his axe free, leaving a great gash in Corbus’s chest, torn flesh and fragments of bone clinging to the weapon as it was withdrawn. The vampire’s face contorted in an expression of still greater fury, but before Corbus could react, the axe slammed into his body once more, knocking the knight to the floor. Ulgrin stood above the snarling creature, chopping into the prone vampire as though hacking at a log.

‘Killer frogs!’ Ulgrin cursed, chopping into the vampire’s chest again. ‘Cannibal madmen!’ Again, the axe was ripped free. ‘Acres of quicksand!’ Once more the axe rent the knight’s breastplate. Ulgrin leaned forward to howl into the vampire’s face. ‘I’ve done enough work to earn ten times what this scum is fetching and I’ll be damned if I’ll just hand him over to some preening, posturing manling knight!’

Ulgrin stared into the knight’s eyes, waiting to see the life fade from them. With the carnage he had visited upon the warrior as the dwarf vented his frustrations, Ulgrin was certain that he would not have long to wait. Instead, the knight’s eyes blazed into pools of crimson fire and his mouth opened in a grisly snarl. The knight’s right hand came sweeping upward, striking the dwarf with a strength that would shame a full grown ox. Three hundred pounds of armoured dwarf sailed across the room, pulverising the glass curio cabinet as Ulgrin landed.

Sir Corbus rose to his feet, simply tilting his body upright rather than lifting himself from the floor. The knight’s crimson armour was a ruin of twisted metal, deep and grisly wounds visible through the rents in the armoured plate. Any one of the wounds would have been fatal to any normal man, but Corbus seemed oblivious to them. He took a step forward, his mailed fist closing about the handle of the huge axe Ulgrin had left buried in his breastbone. With a single sharp tug, Corbus wrenched the axe free, dropping it to the floor with such casualness that it might have been no more than a splinter removed from a finger.

The vampire’s face broadened into a predatory sneer, the face of a cat preparing to pounce.

‘The little man has seen many of the ills of this abominable city,’ the vampire hissed. ‘Now I shall show you the true nature of horror!’

Brunner had watched the brief battle between Ulgrin and Corbus with a gnawing sense of doom. He knew what the knight was; he had seen similar creatures before and his experiences had told him that it took more than a strong arm and a sharp blade to destroy such a being. As Ulgrin had hacked away at the undead knight, Brunner had shifted his pistol into his off hand and once again removed Drakesmalice from its sheath. He had seen for himself that the enchanted blade could harm beings immune to natural steel. Had not the blade bitten deep into the daemonic flesh of the horrific Mardagg during the death elemental’s rampage in the city of Remas? Perhaps it might prove no less effective in dealing with the spectral vitality of a vampire.

As Corbus stalked forward, Brunner noted that the elf Ithilweil had fallen behind the bounty hunter. He could hear the elf muttering in the same strangely musical voice she had used before destroying the lock. Brunner hoped that whatever magic she might be conjuring, it was quick and far more potent.

‘You would cross swords with me?’ the vampire sneered as he stopped an arm’s span from Brunner. ‘I’ve killed men whose boots you are not fit to lick with but three passes of my blade! Amuse me assassin, before I cut your filthy soul from your mangy carcass.’

Brunner dodged the first thrust made by Sir Corbus, exploiting the knight’s attack to slash at him with the edge of Drakesmalice. But the bounty hunter had underestimated the unnatural speed of the vampire. With a blur of motion, Corbus recovered from his thrust, bringing his blade sweeping around in a parrying block. Such was the angle of the blow and the tremendous strength behind it that Drakesmalice was ripped from Brunner’s gloved hand, the longsword bouncing from the far wall as it was flung away.

‘Die like the vermin you are!’ the vampire snarled, springing forward, his fangs bared. The bounty hunter retreated back a space, bringing up his other hand, slamming the barrel of his pistol under Corbus’s chin.

‘Take your own advice,’ Brunner growled. The bounty hunter’s finger pulled the trigger, the pistol roaring in response to the action. The violent explosion of flame and smoke set the vampire’s flesh smouldering, the lead bullet smashing through the knight’s face, breaking his jaw and cracking his cheek before bursting through the edge of his left eye. Shards of bone and black ichor sprayed from the monster’s injury even as his strangled cry ripped across the chamber. Corbus toppled to the floor, armoured hands clutching at the smoking ruin of his face. Brunner glared down at the monster then kicked the vampire, waiting for any sort of response, but Corbus was as still as the grave he’d cheated. The bounty hunter nodded, then fingered the carved stake he had bought from an exiled Sigmarite priest months before in Miragliano. Maybe a vampire couldn’t survive with half its face blown apart, but Brunner didn’t like taking chances. Every tale he’d ever heard agreed that a vampire most certainly didn’t survive a wooden stake stabbed through its heart.

‘You can quit your spellcraft,’ Brunner said, noticing that Ithilweil had not ceased her conjuring. ‘He’s as dead as he’s going to get,’ he elaborated, fingering the stake. ‘Or at least he’s about to be.’ He glanced back at the elf, surprised by what he saw. The enchantress had ceased her conjuring, whatever spell she had worked upon Corbus now at its end. The bounty hunter had no way of knowing that it had been the elf’s spells that had preserved him, that had slowed the Blood Dragon’s unnatural reflexes to a point where a mere mortal might gain even the faintest hope of besting him. Now Ithilweil seemed oblivious to the vampire, oblivious to everything. Her eyes were focused upon the ceiling, darting back and forth as though she expected a horde of daemons to drop down upon her. The strange tongue she spoke seemed to be locked into a rhythm, repeating itself over and over. Her entire body was trembling, shaking like a river reed in a winter wind. Brunner took a step towards her, reaching out and carefully touching her shoulder. Ithilweil’s head snapped around, her fear-filled eyes fixing upon the bounty hunter. The sing-song rhyme died as reason reasserted itself within the enchantress’s mind.

‘The Fang!’ she gasped. ‘The fool used the Fang! He’s called death down upon us all!’

The mention of ‘the fool’ caused Brunner to forget his interest in the elf woman. He spun back around, eyes scouring the room. He saw Ulgrin rising from the ruin of the curio cabinet, the dwarf’s meaty hand rubbing at his bruised head. He saw Drakesmalice lying near the wall. But he saw no sign of Gobineau. The rogue had taken advantage of the vampire’s attack to slip away once again. Brunner cursed under his breath. Forget taking the man’s hands, when he caught up with the outlaw, he was going to take his legs to make sure the scum didn’t run off again.

The bounty hunter shook his head. Ulgrin was right, catching this vermin was more work than it was worth. A cold smile flickered on Brunner’s face. At least he’d be able to repay Corbus for the fun times he and the vampire had shared. But as Brunner turned back toward the vampire’s body, he cursed again. The red armour was still there, but it was now empty. Looking past the spot, the bounty hunter saw a great black rat with a mangled face pause at the mouth of a crack in the wall to glare malevolently back at him. Brunner reached for a throwing knife, but as he started to move, the rat scuttled away down the hole.

‘The Fang,’ Ithilweil was beside him once more. ‘We have to get it back! Before it’s too late.’ Brunner ignored her, walking to the wall and retrieving Drakesmalice. He looked back at Ulgrin, watching as the dwarf stumbled groggily away from the ruined cabinet. He’d be just as happy to leave the dwarf, but he needed to know where the tunnel entrance to Marimund’s castle was.

The bounty hunter grabbed the dwarf, pushing him toward the door.

‘I only care about catching that scum,’ Brunner told the elf. ‘That nick nack he stole from you is your concern.’ The bounty hunter cast a worried look at the rat hole. ‘You help us find Gobineau, you help yourself.’ He did not wait for Ithilweil’s reply, but strode out into the hallway, leaving her to make her own decision.

The elf hesitated a moment, then hurried after the departing bounty hunters. She’d made her play, now she had to see it through.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The quartet of men-at-arms standing watch in the guardroom behind the ponderous gates that fronted the massive keep of Duc Marimund’s castle were more attentive than those who had been charged with guarding their master’s private chambers. The threat of an intruder was not much greater, but the chance of a sudden inspection by one of Marimund’s knights was, and not a man among them did not bear some scar to remind him that any deficiency in their duty would be harshly rewarded. So it was that the four men turned as one when they spied a ragged-looking figure race around the corner of the wide corridor that communicated between the gates and the keep’s innards. The four men hurried into the hallway, spears at the ready, blocking the path of the runner, standing between him and the open gates.

‘Hold,’ the ranking soldier commanded, his hand lifted in an imperious gesture. The ragged man came to a skidding halt before the trooper and his comrades. He gazed at the menacing spear-points, then at the glowering, scarred countenances of the men who held them. A smile crawled onto the man’s handsome features.

‘Praise the Lady!’ he cried, his voice carrying such relief and joy that it took the troopers by surprise. ‘Then they’ve not gotten this far!’

‘Who?’ the leader asked, the tip of his spear lowering slightly as it responded to the soldier’s distraction. ‘Who’s not gotten this far?’

‘The prisoners,’ the ragged man declared, a note of superiority and disbelief in his voice now, as though he could not believe his interrogator would need to voice such a question. ‘There was a riot in the dungeons. Many of the prisoners have escaped and are running loose through the castle! His lordship is even now leading the hunt to track them down.’ The man nodded his head once more in relief. ‘But it seems none of them have made it past your vigilance.’

‘No,’ the leader said, his tone still displaying the confusion that filled his squinting gaze. ‘You are the first person we’ve seen since two bells.’

‘Excellent,’ the stranger clapped his dirty hands together in pleasure. ‘Then we may be certain that none of them have escaped this way.’ He smiled again, stepping closer to the leading soldier. The other men-at-arms hesitated, uncertain whether they should continue to guard against the man’s advance. ‘I’ll need to spread the alarm to the guards posted on the outer wall,’ he told the sergeant. The leader cocked his head to one side, hostility dispelling the confusion in his eyes.

‘Are you saying that me and my men can’t keep a bunch of half-starved dungeon rats from taking this portal?’ the soldier growled. He looked up and down his accuser, studying his grimy black leather garments and filthy skin. ‘For that matter who, by all the Dark Gods, are you? I’ve never seen you before!’

‘Nor have I,’ chimed in one of the other soldiers, his spear poised for a quick thrust into the ragged man’s kidneys.

Gobineau sighed, then met the suspicious stare of the commanding soldier. ‘I am Percival, assistant torturer,’ he announced with a note of pride. Around him, he heard the uneasy shifting of feet that his pronouncement caused. It would explain his dirty garments and unkempt appearance, and unless Marimund had changed vastly over the years, Gobineau knew that his men-at-arms were not exempt from being victims of his dungeons should they fail in their appointed tasks. The threat that they might one day be victims of the evil toys kept in Marimund’s torture chamber tended to keep even the most sadistically curious of his soldiers far from the place. He doubted if more than a handful of men within the castle knew what Marimund’s torture master looked like, or if the man had assistants. If Ranald were still being gracious, none of the soldiers he now faced would be one of them. He’d already been lucky in the fact that none of them had been involved in his capture in Marimund’s throne room.

The leader looked somewhat taken aback by Gobineau’s statement, but one of the other soldiers suddenly had a stroke of inspiration, probably the only idea that had entered the lout’s head in a fortnight. ‘How do we know that you ain’t one of the prisoners?’ the man-at-arms demanded. Gobineau maintained his smile, while inwardly cursing the god of thieves. Ranald certainly wasn’t going to let him get out of this easily.

‘If I was one of the prisoners, would I run up to a group of armed soldiers telling them there had been an escape from the dungeons?’ Gobineau put a withering amount of arrogance and contempt in his tone. The accusing soldier could not maintain Gobineau’s stare, glancing down at the floor.

Gobineau turned back toward the leader of the guards. ‘Now, I must spread word to the outer guards. Not as any lack of faith in your ability to hold this portal, which I have the utmost confidence you shall do, but because there is always a chance in their desperation that these wretches might try to climb down the walls from one of the windows.’

The explanation satisfied the sergeant, who moved aside, allowing the outlaw to stride past him. Gobineau paused beneath the archway.

‘Close these behind me, and be vigilant,’ he told them, addressing the guards as though he were some mighty general and they a vast horde of local militia. ‘The prisoners may have armed themselves, and they are quite desperate. Don’t take any chances with them. His lordship will be just as pleased with them dead as alive.’ A sudden thought occurred to Gobineau and he grinned. ‘Beware of the elf witch,’ he told the soldiers. ‘She is the one who freed the prisoners. Don’t give her a chance to place a spell on you! If you see her, cut her down as swiftly as you can!’

The outlaw turned to withdraw, but the sergeant rushed up beside him. Gobineau bit down on the sudden horror that seized him. Turning, he was surprised to see the soldier proffering him the sword that had formerly rested at the sergeant’s side.

‘You are unarmed and if, as you say, some of the prisoners have circumvented our post, you may have need of a weapon,’ the sergeant told him. Gobineau accepted the weapon, bowing his head in gratitude.

‘You are a quick thinker, sergeant,’ the rogue told him. ‘The duc could use more men of your penetrating intelligence and wisdom.’ Gobineau allowed the man to bask in the compliment a moment before resuming his sprint across the courtyard. He heard the heavy doors of the keep slam shut behind him.

If the guards on the outer wall were as easily duped, he’d be quit of this place in only a few minutes. Of course, now he had something to fall back upon should his glib tongue not work its magic twice. Gobineau adjusted his grip on the guard’s heavy broadsword. Truly, Ranald provided all things in his own devious way.

Even as he saw the outer gatehouse drawing closer, Gobineau turned his thoughts back to what must be unfolding within the castle. He’d studied the elf’s secret passage mechanisms well enough during his brief travel through them to use them to effect his own escape – after some judicious tampering with the door mechanisms to ensure that the two bounty hunters would not be following him, even if they did survive their battle with the vampire. The rogue had almost been caught himself when he’d emerged from the passage, nearly running headfirst into a large group of men-at-arms and knights with a furious Marimund at their head, heading toward the room Gobineau had recently quit. Fortunately, they hadn’t seen him. He imagined that even in the unlikely event that Brunner did best the vampiric Sir Corbus, the bounty hunter would hardly be able to fight his way through the force Marimund was bringing.

All things considered, Gobineau did not think he’d have to worry about Brunner following him around any more. The only thing that still puzzled him was the absolute terror the elf witch had shown of the musty old artefact. She had regarded it as though it were the knife of Khaine. Gobineau hadn’t seen that it possessed any strange powers or the ability to work dark miracles, unless of course it had been responsible for Corbus’s timely arrival.

Yet even as his thoughts turned in this direction, a strange sound impressed itself upon the outlaw, not unlike the soft roar of ocean waves washing upon a barren shore. The night seemed to have grown strangely warm as well, and Gobineau imagined that the air had gained a curious, acrid odour to it.

‘We’re close now,’ Ithilweil gasped as she led the way down yet another narrow corridor. Brunner turned his head in her direction for only a moment, then returned his attention to the hallway behind them, his crossbow held at the ready. The bounty hunters could hear their pursuers cautiously advancing to the last corner they had turned. With two of their number already having been rewarded for their zealous pursuit with one of Brunner’s crossbow bolts sprouting from their chests, the remaining soldiers of Duc Marimund were playing things more carefully. Unfortunately, Brunner didn’t think they’d stay careful for too long, and if the score or so men chasing them decided to rush them all at once, even if he brought down a man with every shot, it would hardly stem the charge.

‘By Grimnir!’ Ulgrin snarled from his position beside Brunner, a gleaming hand axe in each grubby fist. The dwarf’s huge battle axe had been left behind in Marimund’s private chambers, the dwarf having been too disoriented to think of recovering it until the duc himself and two dozen of his men stood between him and his beloved weapon. But if Ulgrin’s spirits had been volatile, they were fanned into flames when Ithilweil announced that she knew where the old escape tunnel was located, making the route he had charted superfluous. ‘What did I get myself covered in this filth for if we aren’t even going to use the tunnel?’ the dwarf spat.

‘Maybe I just don’t feel like paying you extra to kill more frogs,’ Brunner directed the withering comment at the dwarf, keeping his eyes fixed on the hallway. An armoured head briefly darted around the corner, making certain that the persons they were hunting were still in sight. The observer lingered just a second too long and had his bravery answered by the steel bolt that punched into his forehead. Unseen hands dragged the body back behind the corner.

‘Time to move,’ Brunner told his companions. He gave Ithilweil a hard look. ‘If this escape route of yours isn’t close, we’re dead. They won’t let me pick them off one by one much longer. Pretty soon now, they are going to decide risking a massed charge gives them better odds.’

Ithilweil nodded her understanding. ‘Only a few turns more and we will be there,’ she replied. It would have been much easier on them if they’d been able to employ the secret passage again, but Ithilweil had been unable to reopen the hidden door, stating that someone had sabotaged the mechanism. Gobineau, without question, ensuring that he’d gain time on any pursuit the bounty hunters mounted. The real fiasco had been Ulgrin’s insistence that he could get the door open again. A few moments of waiting for Ulgrin to manage this small miracle had seen Marimund and his soldiers storming down the corridor toward them. Even the stubborn Ulgrin had relented and abandoned his labour when he sighted the armed company racing toward them.

The elf witch led the pair around several more twists and turns in the corridor. As they passed a narrow flight of stairs that wound deep into the foundations of the castle, Ulgrin hesitated and pointed a stubby finger at the gloom below.

‘That’s the way we came up,’ Ulgrin stated proudly. ‘There’s no tricking a dwarf when it comes to stonework.’

‘That’s nice,’ Brunner told him. ‘But we’re going this way,’ he added motioning for Ithilweil to lead on. Ulgrin spat a foul-sounding Khazalid curse into his beard, but hurried after his companions.

‘Just around the next turn there is an old storeroom that is never used,’ Ithilweil told Brunner as they paused before the mouth of a four-way intersection. ‘The storeroom has a large cask inside it. But it is really a door that leads into the tunnel. I’ve followed it as far as its end, but it lets out in the very centre of the city. Not a very safe place for me to be.’ Brunner imagined that the elf’s pallid skin coloured slightly as she spoke. ‘At least, not without an escort.’

‘We’ll get out of here,’ the bounty hunter assured Ithilweil. ‘Then we’ll pick up that maggot’s trail.’ Brunner tried to give the elf a reassuring smile, but found that he was woefully out of practice. ‘Gobineau won’t stay free for long.’

But as he turned the corner, the sight that greeted the bounty hunter’s words made him question the veracity of his last statement. The flickering light of torches cast eerie reflections in the polished steel armour of the half-dozen knights who filled the passageway, flanking the grinning, weasel-faced nobleman standing at their centre. Suddenly the seeming timidity of their pursuers was explained. They weren’t supposed to catch the bounty hunters and the elf, but simply herd them into the trap, keep them looking behind instead of ahead. Brunner cursed his own lack of foresight. He should have expected Marimund to know every inch of his own castle, most especially something as vital as an escape route!

The duc’s sneer was as vicious as the toothy grin of a goblin. Marimund considered each of the fugitives in turn, letting his keen, calculating eyes settle on each for a moment before looking to the next. His eyes blazed briefly with a restrained rage when he stared at Ithilweil.

‘Most inconsiderate of you to return my hospitality with such,’ Marimund hesitated, biting down whatever word he had intended to use, selecting a less vituperative replacement, ‘malfeasance.’ Brunner weighed his chances. He still had three bolts loaded in his crossbow. That would allow him to kill Marimund, maybe manage one of his knights before the others fell upon him. The bounty hunter discarded the idea. Marimund was the only chance of talking his way out of the standoff. The nobleman stared at the bounty hunter, as though reading his thoughts.

‘You think you can kill me with that disgusting weapon of yours,’ Marimund scoffed. ‘The Lady protects her noble children. Have you never heard of the grace she bestows upon the valiant, turning aside the craven arrows of cowardly swine that they may be forced into honourable combat?’ Marimund rapped a knuckle against his own chest. ‘I am the legitimate ruler of the once proud realm of Mousillon! The blessing of the Lady flows through my veins! What need have I to fear your filthy arrows?’

‘By Grimnir’s axe!’ Ulgrin hissed. ‘Is every nobleman in this damn city insane?’ The dwarf’s outburst caused a flicker of discomfort to cross Marimund’s face, then a cold fury to smoulder in his eyes.

‘Kill them,’ Marimund declared, waving a hand at the knights around him. The armoured warriors started to move forward. In that instant, Brunner acted, firing his crossbow at the only target that would possibly have any effect.

Marimund crumpled in a screaming heap, his sword fallen to the floor beside him as he clamped both hands at the steel bolt protruding from his knee. Several of the knights immediately turned away from Brunner and his companions, rushing back to aid their master. The bounty hunter turned and raced back the way they had come, the feet pounding to either side of him telling him that Ithilweil and Ulgrin had not hesitated in following his lead. Behind them, the clatter of armour told Brunner that some of Marimund’s knights had ignored their lord’s cries, intent on following his last command. Still, at least a few of them would be detained helping their injured master. With Marimund dead, they would have had all of the knights on their tail, focused on avenging their slain lord. This way, at least the odds were somewhat reduced.

Now if they could just reach Ulgrin’s tunnel without running into the troops that had been herding them toward Marimund...

Marimund snapped at the men carrying him away from the scene of his wounding, lashing them with his tongue every time a fresh trickle of pain surged through his body. He’d have that filthy assassin’s body carved into dog meat and his head would rot upon a pike until the flesh turned black beneath the sun. The audacity of the dog to strike him, him, with his filthy coward’s weapon!

And the anguish he would visit upon the assassin’s remains would be as nothing compared to what he was going to do to that traitorous elf witch. Marimund dearly hoped that she at least was taken alive. His knights were zealous in their work, and an elf witch, a single assassin, and some odd-looking shit-covered gnome were hardly going to give them a decent fight. But at least they would know it was by Marimund’s command that they died, and that was just as good as the nobleman’s own sword accomplishing the deed.

A foul, acrid stench impressed itself upon the duc, causing him to forget his pain for a moment, so strong and unsettling was the odour. Marimund wondered for a moment if something might not be burning in one of the rooms of the castle, perhaps some feeble attempt by Ithilweil to distract him and his men from their pursuit. But the duc did not have long to consider this thought, for he suddenly had much more important things to consider as the corridor around him shook and swayed as though he were within a ship at sea. The knights carrying him fell against the walls as the castle shuddered, dropping their noble burden to the floor. Marimund screamed anew as his maimed leg struck the hard flagstones.

Marimund began to lift himself from the floor when the castle shook again, knocking him flat once more. The impact was vastly more powerful this time, as though someone were hurling massive boulders into the side of the fortress. Marimund could hear the heavy stone blocks groaning and grinding against one another, thick trails of dust raining down from the ceiling overhead. He covered his head as the roof began to give way, rocks and heavy blocks of stone tumbling downward now. Again the castle shook as some incredible force shook it. The duc had seen mighty hurricanes sweep across Mousillon, and those relentless tempests had not even evoked a fraction of the force now assaulting his home.

The realisation of what must be happening dawned on Marimund just as the corridor shook again and the walls collapsed around him.

The guards in the tower that rose from the north wall of Marimund’s castle only just had time to scream before they died, as they witnessed the gigantic crimson shape that had fallen upon them from the night sky. Claws the size of ox carts had gripped the fortification, talons sinking into the stonework as though it were crafted from soft clay. Without losing any of its momentum, the swooping fiend had ripped the top of the tower free, spilling tiny figures from its battlements, and with a graceful motion had turned its sudden descent, ascending back into the firmament once more. But as it did so, the massive claws flung the broken tower at the brooding mass of the keep, lending it some of the ghastly power of the creature’s momentum. The immense weight of the tower smacked into the side of Marimund’s castle with the force of a dozen catapults, rupturing its northern face like the shell of an egg.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the huge shape disappeared once more, vanishing from sight as it was consumed by the night. Behind it, it left a foul, mephitic smell, like the musk of serpents mixed with the stink of charcoal. The few soldiers standing gap-mouthed on the outer walls of the castle could not believe what they had seen, doubting their very sanity. All had happened so quickly, it was hard to believe it had happened at all.

It was a man-at-arms in the south tower who saw the first flicker of fire shine out from the blackness above. Soon, all eyes were watching as the flame hurtled downward, speeding toward the keep. There was no shout of alarm, no cry of horror. Somehow, the soldiers had a sense that what they were witnessing was too big for fear. They watched in an awed silence as the flame became more distinct in its descent, as it resolved itself into a fiery steam billowing out from the jaws of a gigantic visage. The hurtling leviathan crashed into the top of the keep and the awed silence was shattered by the shriek of wood and the rumble of stone. A vast cloud of grey dust blossomed about the immense creature, engulfing it for a moment like some grainy fog. Then the dust fell away and the watching soldiers were able to shout and scream, every voice crying the same word.

‘A dragon!’

It was vast, gigantic. Two hundred feet from the tip of his snout to the pointed barb that terminated his immense tail. The dragon wore crimson scales upon his limbs and sides, fading into a thick armour of black bony plates upon his back. From these plates rose a rank of sharp spines, like a column of pikemen, their wicked points gleaming in the flickering glow of the dragon’s exhalations. Each of the wyrm’s legs was massive, thick as a tree trunk and bulging beneath its scaly covering with muscle and power. From the shoulders, colossal wings were stretched, great leathery pinions set in a framework of finger-like bones. The dragon’s head leered before his body, supported upon a neck as thick as a river barge, long black horns stabbing back away from the face from just above the sunken sockets of his cold, yellow eyes. From the crater-like nostrils, an orange smoke wafted, illuminating the mighty beast and casting eerie shadows upon the enormous jaws beneath the dragon’s head. Rank upon rank of jagged teeth, each longer than a man’s arm, shone out from their setting of crimson scales.

The observers had one and all heard the legends of noble knights riding forth to slay marauding drakes, rescuing fair damsels and golden treasures from the caves of such scaly monsters. Such stories were common in the lore and legend of Bretonnia, and well known to even the poorest of its peasants. But none had ever seen the creatures spoken of in these tales, perhaps taking comfort in believing such beasts to be a part of the history of their land rather than something that might return in their own time. As terror overcame the awe that had gripped the hearts of the soldiers, the men-at-arms scrambled over one another in their haste to be quit of the battlements, to abandon the fortress to the legendary horror that had fallen upon it from the grim night sky.

Malok paid the fleeing soldiers little notice, intent upon pulverising the stone structure beneath him. The dragon’s impact had shaken the very foundations of the keep, though the tough body of the wyrm had felt little of his violent collision with the unyielding fortification. Now he brought his heavy clawed legs smashing again and again into the cracked rubble that roofed the structure, causing the already weakened stonework to shudder and groan. Malok could feel the castle shifting beneath him as rooms and corridors collapsed below, shifting tons of stone to crush the little vermin within.

The dragon reared his head back, roaring into the night, a sound like the scream of hot steel thrust into icy snow magnified to such a degree that the eardrums of the human witnesses threatened to burst under such duress. Gouts of flame, like the expulsions of a blast furnace, flashed from Malok’s jaws, staining the night sky a hellish hue. The dragon maintained his violent, boastful display of wrath and retribution for a lingering moment, letting his display of power build until he could feel the fiery heat swelling within him. Then the dragon turned his head downward, expelling a long stream of golden flame into the structure beneath his feet.

Wooden support beams exploded as the dragonfire consumed them, turning oak and pine into ash and steam. The already weakened pile caved in beneath the reptile as the supports were destroyed. Three floors of castle crumpled, crushing downward, pushing outward against the walls. Malok beat his wings, lifting himself free as the castle disintegrated into a pile of rock and debris, smoke and dust billowing about him as the mighty wings caused the air to swirl and writhe.

The hovering dragon glared down at his handiwork, reptilian eyes narrowing into dagger-like slits as he contemplated the destruction. Deciding it was not enough, Malok drew in another breath, expelling a second stream of flame into the rubble, sending tons of stone exploding into the air as the fiery column struck.

The dragon snarled down at the rubble, a deep and satisfied hiss, then wheeled away, now intent on attending to all the tiny little men who had been running away from the curtain wall and guard towers. After all, any one of them might be the vermin who had driven the dragon to come here. And that was a summons Malok was not going to let pass unanswered.

‘This should be far enough,’ Ulgrin announced, his eyes narrowing as he studied the black muck-encrusted brickwork overhead. ‘We’re past the keep now. Nothing to come down about our heads now. Except of course the courtyard,’ the dwarf added with a morbid chuckle. Much to the annoyance of his companions, Ulgrin seemed to be almost enjoying himself as they crawled through the filthy, cramped confines of the tunnel. Brunner suspected the change in Ulgrin’s attitude had much to do with the fact that his companions were so clearly discomfited by their circumstances. While the low ceiling of the tunnel made Ulgrin walk with a slight stoop, it forced the much taller Brunner and Ithilweil to creep along almost bent double, their hands groping into the muck coating the walls to maintain their balance. The dwarf’s almost supernatural ability to sense the pressure of the stone above them had been the only real guide as to how far they had come, and how far they might yet have to go before reaching the exit.

They had reached the tunnel well ahead of the heavily armoured knights Marimund had sent after them, but they didn’t have much of a lead over their pursuers. The knights of Bretonnia, for all their arrogance and pride, were some of the most dangerous warriors any land had to offer. In their armour plate, only the most powerful or expertly aimed blows had any hope of wounding the knight within, nor was the warrior likely to stand still while his enemy attempted such a strike. Their style was far more direct and brutal than the elaborate feint and deceive flourishes of Tilea’s duellists, but the swordsmanship of a Bretonnian knight was no less intimidating, something Brunner felt better challenging from fifty paces away with a crossbow than in the cramped confines of a dungeon where room to manoeuvre was limited and every advantage lay with the knight.

The bounty hunters had decided that the only course of action, upon gaining the dank tunnel, was to wait out their pursuers and strike them down as they tried to follow, a tactic which Ithilweil opposed as being utterly base and cowardly. Neither Brunner or Ulgrin paid the slightest interest to her moral complaints. This was the real world, not some duel between princes in an elven court with all its rules of etiquette and tradition. There were trained, well-armed killers pursuing them, men who would strike them down without the slightest hesitation should they catch them. The bounty hunters were determined not to give them such an opportunity.

The first knight, almost crawling as he progressed through the narrow tunnel, his helmet removed in order that he might not be rendered completely blind, had found himself surprised by Ulgrin when the dwarf’s axe bit cleanly through the warrior’s mail coif and the neck beneath. The knight following the decapitated man rose in alarm, his mouth opening to give voice to a cry of warning. The sound was silenced when a bolt from Brunner’s crossbow sank into the knight’s forehead. After that, the pursuers had shown a bit more caution. They must have been joined by the larger company that had herded the bounty hunters toward Marimund, for the next men sent crawling through the dank tunnel were lightly armoured squires rather than bulky knights in plate mail. Brunner and Ulgrin waded further into the passage, weapons ready to repeat their grim labours. Then the walls shook.

The tremor was followed by others, far greater in strength and ferocity. All within the tunnel could hear the crash of stone and the screams of doomed men and women sounding from the castle. The groan and roar of toppling stone grew into a dull, almost organic thing, pounding against their ears with such violence that it seemed determined to deafen all who were victim of it. The squires who had been sent into the tunnel scrambled forward like panicked rats scurrying from a sinking ship. They had been closer to the mouth of Ulgrin’s tunnel and had heard more distinctly the noise of their comrades being crushed beneath tons of stone.

In their heedless flight, the squires found themselves easy prey for the waiting blades of Brunner and Ulgrin. It was not a fight, it was a slaughter, but the bounty hunters had done far worse in their black careers than take advantage of disoriented foes; the slaying of the squires would be forgotten almost as soon as it was achieved.

Then another tremor shook the castle and the rumble of stone sounded from much nearer. The high-pitched death shriek of a squire cagey enough to linger back while his fellows met the blades of the two bounty killers told a terrifying story. The tunnel was collapsing behind them! The three fugitives began a mad scramble back down the dismal corridor, struggling to stay ahead of the roar behind them. Ulgrin, with a long history of mining and the cave-ins that are the constant worry of the miner, was better able to judge the nearness of the collapse. His words of gruff, oath-strewn encouragement lent a new speed to Brunner and Ithilweil’s tired legs.

It was the elf who spoke now, wiping some of the muck from her soiled garments with as much dignity as the cramped confines of the tunnel would allow. ‘It came,’ she said, her voice heavy with resignation. ‘The fool called it and it came.’

‘What came?’ Brunner asked, his voice low and cautious.

‘The dragon that is bound to the Fell Fang,’ Ithilweil responded. ‘It must have been very near to have come so swiftly. And that fool called it, without any idea of what he summoned or how to control it!’

‘Are you saying a dragon caused the cave-in?’ Ulgrin demanded. Ithilweil nodded her head in response.

‘By now, in its fury, it must have reduced Marimund’s entire castle to a pile of rubble,’ she stated. The two bounty hunters stared at Ithilweil, as though struggling to grasp the magnitude of the power her words bestowed upon this creature.

‘Then that’s the end of our hunt!’ Ulgrin snarled, smacking a fist against the tunnel wall. ‘Unless you have a few months to try and dig his bones out from under tons of rock.’

‘Maybe,’ Brunner told his partner. ‘But maybe not. Don’t forget, Gobineau was no friend of Marimund’s either. He wasn’t just trying to escape from us, but from the castle in general.’ The bounty hunter paused, considering his own words. ‘I think that with Marimund distracted by ourselves, our rather valuable friend might have gone a bit farther than we did.’

Ulgrin’s eyes lit up as the possibility that Gobineau yet survived was presented to him. At the same time, Ithilweil’s expression became one of dread.

‘We must make certain,’ she declared. ‘We have to be sure he is dead.’ She looked deeply into the eyes of first Brunner and then Ulgrin Baleaxe. ‘Don’t you understand? If Gobineau is still alive, and he still has the Fell Fang, then this horror might occur again! Any time! Any place!’ Noting the stone cold expressions of both killers, Ithilweil’s voice became more imploring. ‘It might be one of your own cities next time! Your own people crushed beneath its feet or incinerated by its breath!’

Brunner let the elf speak, then shook his head. ‘We’ll find Gobineau, dead or alive, but not for your reasons. This talisman that calls dragons is your concern, the price on Gobineau’s head is ours. As I said before, so long as you don’t get in the way, you’re welcome to tag along.’ The bounty hunter tossed aside the kettle helm that formed part of his guard’s disguise and replaced his own steel sallet helm over his features. Without further word, Brunner began to make his way forward once more. Ulgrin paused to regard Ithilweil for a moment before hurrying after his partner.

‘And don’t get any funny ideas about sharing the bounty!’ the dwarf growled. ‘The shares aren’t big enough the way things are, I’ll be a grobbi’s wet nurse if I’ll let ’em shrink even more because of a tall-ear!’

Duc Marimund was dying. With each breath, a fresh bubble of gore dripped from his chin. He could feel the broken wreckage of his ribs, the cracked ruin that had once been his pelvis. Every inch of the would-be ruler of Mousillon was agony. Crushed beneath the walls of his own fortress, the nobleman’s vision now swam, black and red dots flaring over the dust and rubble that reason told him he should see.

Marimund could not imagine what could have been responsible for the destruction of his inviolate fortress. It had withstood storm and earthquake and even siege, but now, in less time than he would have believed possible, the castle had been stamped into ruin and all his dreams of power crushed along with it. Was this the judgement of the gods? Had he, far from being chosen by the Lady, been cursed by her? Was he in reality the evil heretic Malford rather than the legendary hero Landuin?

Even as the mangled duc considered the renowned Landuin, first lord of Mousillon, his thoughts strayed to the mighty deeds the legendary knight had accomplished. And suddenly Marimund knew what force had destroyed him. Landuin had slain a dragon among the mighty feats of his long career. The adulterous wretch Gobineau had brought a strange old artefact with him, a device he claimed would call dragons to the one who wielded it. At once the nobleman recalled the horrific sound he had heard, or imagined that he had heard, a malefic roar bellowing behind the rumble of falling walls and collapsing floors. Marimund’s lip twisted into a sneer. So, Gobineau’s claim had been more than a frantic talltale to save his hide!

A shape slowly manifested itself before him. Marimund’s vision flickered, but slowly he began to understand that the shape was that of a man, one of his knights. Sir Corbus was without his crimson armour now, clad only in a long wool shrift, his pale skin exposed. The knight’s face was a grotesque ruin, one eye socket expanded in a ghastly and hideous manner, one jaw blasted and broken by some terrible force. Still, despite his horrible injuries, Marimund’s most loyal follower had come for him. The nobleman tried to crawl toward his saviour but found that he could move only his left arm.

Corbus stopped very near the trapped Marimund, staring down at him with a single, baleful eye. The vampire’s broken jaws worked to create a dry, hissing sort of speech.

‘You were speaking,’ the Blood Dragon said. Marimund closed his eyes, trying to remember. Had he been speaking? Was his delirium such that reason had flown from his tongue? The vampire leaned down, his hideously ruined face only inches from Marimund’s own. ‘Tell me more about this man who has the power to summon dragons.’

Marimund blinked. Why should Corbus concern himself with such things when his lord and master was dying at his very feet? The nobleman opened his mouth to remind the knight of his oaths and vows, but staring into the burning eye of Corbus, Marimund felt his soul shudder. For the first time, the would-be lord of Mousillon understood just how abominable a creature he had allowed to take service with him. Instead of calling for the vampire’s help, the nobleman gasped out a name.

‘Gobineau,’ he said, bloody froth punctuating his words. Corbus smiled with what was left of his face. Gobineau. He had seen that wretch with the assassin and that traitor elf bitch in Marimund’s chambers. So, it was Gobineau who had this power, this ability to summon the mighty dragons of earth and sky. The vampire let a low hiss of expectancy and depraved lust slither through the wound in his throat. Finding the thief would be the first step towards the only salvation left for one of his diseased kind, the only way of ending his disgusting curse and redeeming his lost honour. Corbus looked back at the trapped Marimund.

‘Gobineau,’ the vampire repeated. ‘Thank you, Marimund,’ Corbus continued, speaking his former master’s name without hint of deference or respect. The vampire’s eye fixed upon the froth bubbling from the nobleman’s mouth. His long, wolf-like tongue flicked forth and licked his dagger-like fangs. ‘There is just one more thing you can do for me,’ Corbus whispered, leaning toward the trapped man so that he might feed.

From the darkness of his bolt hole, Gobineau cast his eyes skyward, trying to pierce the haze of smoke and darkness for another glimpse of the awesome form that had descended out of the night. His body still shivered as he remembered the sight: the huge reptile, clad in its armour of crimson scales, borne aloft by its midnight wings. No fresh young wyrm, this mighty destroyer that had answered the rogue’s call, but a monster hoary with the crust of age and legend. Gobineau had been able to get a good look at the dragon as it rose from the rubble of Marimund’s castle, soaring low above the castle grounds and the surrounding district. It was enormous, its scales scarred and dulled by the relentless march of time. The gigantic drake bore the marks of its long and terrible life – a great patch of blackened flesh marked its left shoulder and the side of its neck. Along its side ran a deep trench-like scar, as though some titan had raked the tip of his sword along the dragon’s belly. Yet such old injuries did not seem to disturb or slow the malevolent creature as it rose into the night sky, its cruel yellow eyes scouring the landscape for the tiny fleeing figures that had scattered before its fury.

Gobineau clasped the talisman a bit more tightly in his trembling fist. He had been lucky to have escaped what had followed. The dragon, snarling like a starving panther, had circled above the outskirts of Mousillon, watching the fleeing guards. Then it had opened its jaws, and a great sheet of flame had fallen upon the running men. They were turned into living torches by the intense fire, screaming brands that shrieked and howled as they continued to run. The dragon had hovered in the air, turning its horned head with almost bird-like motions as it focused upon isolated groups of men before reducing them into charred piles of burned flesh. Nor did the wyrm seem inclined to distinguish between the guards flying from Marimund’s fortress and the desolate peasants its rampage flushed from their hovels. Even a jaded villain of such experience as Gobineau had covered his ears against the screams and shrieks that sought to drown out the crackle and hiss of flame.

Then the dragon had turned its attention upon the miserable hovels themselves, raining its fiery exhalations upon them in a relentless fury. But in this, the dragon was somewhat thwarted, for the mouldering structures were damp with the rot carried to them from the swamp and they burned only with great reluctance. Only by concentrating its flame upon isolated structures could the dragon persuade them to collapse into heaps of cinder and ash, something the great wyrm quickly grew tired of. With a last malefic roar that rattled the teeth in Gobineau’s mouth, and a sideways glance to ensure that no other scurrying figures remained in the streets below, the dragon had wheeled away, rising back into the smoke and the fiery night sky. In its wake, it left a hundred burning bodies lying upon the streets and a dozen fires smouldering in the blackened ruins that had once surrounded Marimund’s fortress.

Gobineau again thanked Ranald the Trickster for bestowing such good fortune upon him. As near as he could tell, he alone had escaped Marimund’s castle and the dragon’s wrath. Ducking into a small outhouse, the rogue had eluded the dragon’s keen eye, and so been spared the fiery death that had run rampant all around him.

Then the bandit considered the talisman clutched in his hand. Perhaps it was more than luck? Perhaps the talisman had not only called the dragon, but protected him from the monster as well? Gobineau had certainly been desirous of seeing everyone in the castle destroyed – perhaps through the Fell Fang the dragon had sensed his wishes and simply acted upon them? Marimund, Brunner, neither of them would be troubling Gobineau on this side of Morr’s black kingdom, and Gobineau had the dragon to thank for such a boon.

The power to call such a creature and have it obey his wishes! No wonder mad Rudol had tried to kill him for the artefact.

Gobineau’s face split in a sly smile. This was a power beyond his wildest imaginings. It would take some careful thought to decide how best to exploit it. But already several interesting possibilities were stirring in the outlaw’s mind.

CHAPTER NINE

Leaving the cursed city of Mousillon proved a much easier task than entering it had. No mobs of desperate, violent wretches roamed the haunted streets, no packs of hungry ghouls prowled the alleys. Even the armed patrols of Mousillon’s decadent aristocrats seemed to be content to remain within the decaying castles of their masters. The city was as deserted as an open grave; only the croaking of vultures and the scuttling creep of rats disturbed the sepulchral silence that hung over the place.

The cause of such fear that even the degenerate inhabitants of a place like Mousillon hid behind locked doors was easily discovered when the bounty hunters and their elf companion emerged from the dank sewage tunnel Ulgrin Baleaxe had discovered. The castle of Duc Marimund was now just a pile of rubble, three of its outer walls collapsed entirely as though the fist of an angry god had smashed the fortress flat. The blighted districts of rotting houses and shops that had surrounded Marimund’s stronghold were blackened and charred, scarred by a flame intense enough to prosper even in the mouldy swamp-tainted wood that prevailed in these environs. Dark silhouettes of bodies littered the cobbles of the streets, the only reminder left of men struck down by the all-consuming flames. The bounty hunters had resisted Ithilweil’s desperate, terrified insistence that Gobineau had called down the wrath of some ancient monster with the artefact she had called the Fell Fang. Then, confronted by the evidence of their own eyes, they had had no choice but to believe her.

But there was little time to consider the desolation and the awesome power that had caused it. Every moment that passed put more distance between the hunters and their prey, if indeed Gobineau had been fortunate enough to escape the doom he had summoned. The assumption of his death, however, was not something Ithilweil was prepared to allow, nor one the bounty hunters preferred, for if the man was dead then he was either buried beneath the castle or one of the blackened lumps of slag sprawled upon the streets. In either case, there would be nothing to take back to Couronne for a reward.

Though unchallenged in their passage through the streets, the trio of hunters were not alone. On occasion a furtive shape might be seen picking through the ruins, desperate avarice overcoming the fear that gripped most of the city. Some of these fled at the approach of Brunner and his companions, others defiantly stood their ground, determined to protect whatever garbage they had discovered. The promise of a few copper coins or a glowering threat rumbling from Ulgrin’s harsh mouth bought information from these wretches. Some had seen the fall of Marimund’s fortress and described in exacting detail the horrific monster that had brought about such carnage. A few, at the prompting of Ithilweil, recalled the handsome rogue they had seen slinking away from the castle after the dragon had passed. They pointed with grimy fingers toward the south and the outer walls of the city. Brunner was not surprised. Freed from Marimund’s dungeons, there was nothing to keep their quarry in Mousillon any longer.

Brunner insisted on checking every hovel and farmstead they came upon once they themselves were quit of the city. He knew that a man like Gobineau would not remain without a horse for long. Learning how near to the city he had been able to steal one would give them some idea as to how much of a lead the outlaw had on them. It was also of little surprise that the bandit had stolen the first animal he had come upon, a miserable old plough horse that represented the only possession of worth for its grey-headed owner. Reaching the farm where Brunner had stabled his own horses and the dappled mule Ulgrin rode, the bounty hunter paid a half dozen pieces of silver to secure a mare for Ithilweil, again earning a surly reminder from Ulgrin that the elf would not be taking any part of his own share in the reward.

It was not long before they were once again travelling the road leading south. Brunner was of the opinion that their nefarious quarry might be seeking refuge within one of the small pirate communities that could be found nuzzled amid the rocky shores of Aquitaine and Brionne.

But the keen eyes of Ithilweil caused Brunner to reconsider his thoughts when, on their first day out from Mousillon, the elf detected a black spiral of smoke rising in the east.

‘It could be anything,’ Ulgrin snarled. ‘Some damn fool peasant setting fire to his hut, or maybe some nobleman removing an unsightly wood from his domain.’

‘Or, more likely the beast is on the prowl,’ Ithilweil replied, her tone sharp. The dwarf had baited her remorselessly throughout their journey and even her patience was coming to an end.

‘You think our friend might be there?’ Brunner asked. There was no question in his mind that Ithilweil had the right of it, that the smoke she saw was likely related to the dragon. The enchantress shook her head.

‘Perhaps, if he is fool enough to use the Fell Fang again,’ she replied. Brunner nodded, turning Fiend’s head so that the horse began to head across a field that bordered the road. Ulgrin noted the action, sputtering a protest.

‘You can’t simply ride off on this tall-eared harpy’s say-so!’ the dwarf yelled. ‘We don’t know that the dragon caused that fire, or that Gobineau is idiot enough to go chasing after such a monster!’

‘Please yourself,’ Brunner called back to Ulgrin. ‘But I think Ithilweil may be right. I think Gobineau did call that thing to Mousillon, and I’m betting two thousand in gold that where the brute is, Gobineau won’t be far away.’ Without any further word, the bounty hunter turned and continued to ride eastward, his packhorse trailing behind. Ithilweil indulged in a smug smile thrown in Ulgrin’s direction before riding forward to join Brunner.

‘Two thousand gold,’ the dwarf grumbled. ‘That bastard forgets a thousand of that is mine!’ Ulgrin dug his heels into his mule, urging the animal to keep up with the others.

Night found the hunters encamped within the ruins of an old farmhouse. It seemed that the caprices of storm and snow had doomed the structure rather than the ire of a giant fire-spewing reptile, and it had been many seasons since anything larger than a squirrel had called the roofless remains home. It made a decent enough shelter, providing defensible barriers should trouble present itself. The lands of Bretonnia were not without their predators. It was not unknown for wolves to become famished enough to try their paw at human prey and the grey wild cat of central Bretonnia, a beast almost as large as a small stag, was well known for a taste for horseflesh. And, of course, there was always the threat of human predators. The knights of Bretonnia were not so widespread and all powerful as to completely eradicate the bandits and highwaymen common to other, less chivalrous, lands.

Ithilweil turned away from her contemplation of the darkening landscape. To her elven eyes, the starlight served her almost as well as that of the sun, allowing her to watch the owl as it swooped down upon the field mouse, to observe the fox as it silently padded along a rocky outcrop. Only to the north-east was her vision obscured, denied by the thick blackness that told her they were nearing the carnage she had spotted many hours before. The warm breeze that picked at her garments and rustled through her hair carried with it the faint suggestion of the same acrid musk they had smelled about the ruins of Marimund’s fortress: the sickly stink of dragon.

The elf shuddered. The beast was near, so very near that she could almost imagine its eyes watching her from the darkness, its ancient, evil soul contemplating her with a cold, unfathomable regard. She had listened well to those terrified wretches they had come upon during their exodus from Mousillon, and she had shared in that terror. They had good reason to know fear, for Ithilweil knew the name of the beast Gobineau had aroused, and knew its awful history.

Ithilweil turned back to the camp, stepping back toward the campfires Brunner and Ulgrin had set. The dwarf was crouched beside his flame, roasting a skinned squirrel. The dwarf had set his own camp at the far end of the ruin, as far from Brunner and Ithilweil as he could manage, even keeping his mule with him, as though it might become infected were it to linger near the elf’s mare.

Ulgrin looked up from his cooking, a fell look in his eyes.

‘Catch your own, tall-ear!’ Ulgrin spat. ‘This one is mine!’

‘I had thought it little improvement on your looks after you cleaned yourself,’ Ithilweil retorted. ‘But at least you might have cleaned your mouth when you bathed everything else.’ The elf’s words brought a fresh stream of half-articulate invective from the dwarf. Ithilweil did not linger to wait for Ulgrin to run out of curses but strode instead toward the other campfire.

Brunner was seated before the fire, still garbed in his shabby brigandine armour. His helmet and weapons lay nearby, arranged about the makeshift bed of blankets and saddlebags the bounty hunter had created for himself. Only the slender length of his sword, Drakesmalice, was still with the warrior, resting across his knees as he stared into the fire. Ithilweil stopped, fascinated for a moment by the harsh shadows the flickering flames threw upon the killer’s weathered features. There was something painful about that face, something that seemed to call out to her.

Such pain, such unspoken suffering. She could see it there, crushed beneath the scowling turn of his mouth, the jagged scars that creased his cheek and forehead. It was there in the eyes, frozen within the chill that had consumed the man’s soul. Something terrible had happened to this one, something that had devoured his world, taken from him everything that had made his life worth living and in one final cruelty denied him the sanctity of a decent death, abandoning him to a ghostly existence among the shadows and the darkness. Perhaps only Ithilweil had ever seen such things in the cold eyes of the killer, the piteous tragedy that fed the ruthless hunter. For his were eyes not unlike those of her own people – a phantom race lingering among the forlorn remains of a once glorious civilisation whose hour of glory had passed.

‘What do you see in the flames?’ Ithilweil dared to ask. The bounty hunter did not look up at her as he replied.

‘Things that never were,’ Brunner told her. His eyes rose to meet her own, the tragedy subdued once more, overcome by the fire of hate. ‘Things that will yet be.’

Ithilweil stepped closer, letting herself sink gracefully to the ground beside Brunner. ‘There is a fable among my people that if one looks too long into a night fire, one sees one’s own death in the flames,’ she told him.

The bounty hunter shook head, a grim smile on his face. ‘I see the death of other men, not my own,’ Brunner stated. ‘But death is too little to take from the man I see in the flames. He owes me much more.’ The bounty hunter’s hand clenched into a fist and his voice dropped into a low whisper. ‘From him, I will take everything.’

‘Those who give their lives to revenge are ultimately consumed by it,’ the elf cautioned. ‘I have seen what becomes of those who give themselves over to hatred. They are grim, wraith-like creatures, never knowing the solace of a soft touch or the warmth of a loving voice. You remind me of them, the lost people of Nagarythe.’ Ithilweil shook her head sadly. ‘We call them shadow warriors, but not because they dwell in the shadowy canyons of their broken homeland, nor because they strike their hated kinfolk from the cover of darkness. No, we call them shadows because that is all they are. They are not whole, for all the light and love has gone out of them, leaving behind only the hate, only the thirst for revenge.’

‘Sometimes,’ the bounty hunter cautioned, ‘hate is all the gods care to leave us with.’

Man and elf were silent for a long time then, each staring into the flames, as though mesmerised by the dancing tongues of fire. It was Ithilweil who at last tired of the sight, turning her back to the fire with a shudder. The bounty hunter reached out to her, placing his hand on her shoulder.

‘I know who he is,’ Ithilweil spoke, her voice hollow, as though she were gripped by fatigue.

‘Indeed,’ Brunner said. ‘Jean Pierre Gobineau, worth two thousand gold crowns, less five hundred crowns if he is brought back dead.’

‘Not the rogue,’ Ithilweil said, ‘the dragon. The beast the grave robbers in Mousillon described, it is known to me.’ The elf saw that she now had Brunner’s complete interest, the bounty hunter’s eyes gleaming with curiosity. ‘The blackened neck upon a body of crimson scales, the jagged scar running along its belly. Such were the marks spoken of long ago, by the refugees who left these lands when the eastern colonies were abandoned. They spoke of a great dragon, a horrible beast that brought fire and death upon those trying to make their way to the sea, hunting them as a wolf hunts a flock of sheep.’

Ithilweil paused, recalling the horrifying firsthand accounts she had read in the libraries of Saphery. ‘I cannot doubt that this man’s foolishness has brought the same beast back into the world, the one they named Malok – the destroyer!’

After centuries of slumber within the fiery heart of La Isla de Sangre, the dragon Malok was two things: angry and hungry. The merciless destruction of the Duc Marimund’s castle in Mousillon had temporarily sated the former of these two qualities, but the expenditure of energy and effort had fanned the fires of the second. The dull pang of appetite that had been clawing at the back of the dragon’s mind had become a desperate need, pulling him away from the prospect of laying waste to the already desolate city in order to silence the protests of his belly.

In the predawn that glowed above Bretonnia, Malok’s crimson scales seemed to catch flame, glowing like smouldering embers amid the ashes of an expired flame. The early-rising peasants, slinking through the waning darkness in order to tend their fields and herds, looked up in horror at the spectral visitation, their shrill cries of fright warning the countryside that a monster was abroad. For his part, the dragon paid the shouting, fleeing wretches little mind. He could crush them easily, but there was little meat on a man. Malok was interested in something that could satisfy his hunger, not simply tease it. The dragon had stirred often enough through the long centuries since the rise of the kingdoms of men to know that where men were to be found, so too would more satisfactory prey-animals.

After only a few moments since first sighting the fleeing peasants, Malok spied what he was looking for, his belly grumbling in anticipation. The dragon was not concerned that the large herd of cattle being led to pasture belonged to the Marquis Duvalier, nor that his herds produced the finest bulls in Bordeleaux and had done so for nearly a thousand years. He was not concerned with the men who tended the herds, loyal yeomen whose families had served that of the marquis for centuries and to whom the care of the prized herds was something dearer to them than their own households. All the dragon saw was meat, and that was enough.

Like a thunderbolt hurled by an angry storm god, Malok descended, jaws agape in a roar that could shake the roots of a mountain, fire and smoke flaring from his nostrils, black wings spread like the grim shroud of Morr himself. The terrified herdsmen stared at the mammoth shape of the dragon, faces turning pallid, mouths dropping open in horror. The herds around them began lowing in fright as soon as the acrid stink of the wyrm offended their noses, arousing ancient fears. To their credit, the herdsmen tried to contain the fright of the cattle even as they fought against the terror gnawing at their own hearts. But it was like trying to stand against a stormy tide. The huge herd of the Marquis Duvalier began to stampede, smashing the herdsmen beneath their hooves as they fled before the dragon.

Malok watched the herd stampede, swooping down low to intercept the cattle, to change their direction. Occasionally, the dragon would cast a quick gout of fire from his fanged jaws when the looming shadow of his form alone was not enough to turn the cattle, the fire repelling the bullocks instantly. There was a box canyon ahead, nestled between a cluster of small hills. The dragon was guiding his prey toward the natural, bowl-like depression. It would take more than a single bullock, more than any dozen, to fill the dragon’s belly. The reptile intended to gorge himself on the entire herd.

The leading cattle encountered the stone wall of the canyon, slamming into it as the weight and momentum of those running behind bowled into them. Slavishly following the example of the animals before them, the stampede continued to pack itself into the canyon, filling the declivity with a solid mass of lowing, frightened beef. Even as the rearmost animals began to turn around, to escape the trap into which they had fled, the enormous shape of Malok dove upon the entrance of the canyon, like a lion pouncing upon a jackal. The dragon’s gigantic bulk and evil scent turned the cattle yet again, crashing backwards into one another in their fruitless quest for another way out. Malok watched the animals for a moment, then drew his head back, allowing the fires within him to build and gather.

For several days now, the peasantry of Bordeleaux had been reporting that a dragon was despoiling the dukedom, slaughtering entire villages, and laying waste to crops and fields. Such reports had travelled far, taking on a life of their own, the awful aspect of the creature growing with each retelling, the record of atrocities laid at its feet increasing with every league the stories travelled. The lords of Bretonnia understood their humble people, knowing that they were a superstitious and simple folk, given to flights of fancy and populating their imaginings with all manner of dread beings. But they knew also that for such stories to have become so widespread that there must be some grain of truth behind them. Though no dragon worthy of the name had been seen in Bretonnia for centuries, such creatures had once been a common enough menace before their breed was all but exterminated by the valiant knights who bent their knee before king and Lady. Was it possible that one such monster had perhaps escaped the fate that had befallen all its kin? The very possibility ignited the ambitions of young knights wherever the stories spread. It was not long before isolated bands of bold Knights Errant eager to earn their name and stalwart knights of the realm intent on proving their mettle against a beast of legend found themselves on the ill-tended roads of Bordeleaux, journeying toward the lands from whence the tales had originated.

Among these knights was one who had taken up the quest, searching for the holy chalice of the Lady. When first he heard of the dragon, Sir Fulkric knew that this was the mighty quest the Lady had set him, the task he must undertake to prove himself worthy of drinking from the grail.

As Sir Fulkric rode southward, toward the region where it was said the dragon could be found, he encountered the small bands of knights who were likewise intent on smiting the wyrm. Once again, inspiration took its hold upon Sir Fulkric, and as he encountered these small bands of dragonslayers, he invited them to make their journey with him. Fulkric knew that it was just possible that he might prove unworthy, that it might be the beast and not himself to emerge triumphant in their contest. If such were to come to pass, it must fall to another to end the monster’s rampage.

Many of the knights he encountered agreed with Fulkric’s point of view, understanding that more than their own honour and prestige, the death of the dragon must be achieved for the good of the land. It was decided that they would take turns in attempting to smite the vile beast, the most valiant and noble of their company being allowed to make the first attack upon the monster. If that worthy should fall, then the next most heroic of their gathering should be allowed the chance of avenging his fallen companion and vanquishing the horrible monster.

Sir Fulkric’s squire took down the names of each knight who joined the ever growing company, recording their deeds and honours and ranking them by these accomplishments, determining their place in the roster that would challenge what they had taken to calling the Beast of Bordeleaux. As a knight who had taken up the quest, and as the warrior who had organised the growing crusade, Sir Fulkric humbly allowed his own name to appear at the top of the list.

By the time the force of knights and their attendants reached the burned out cinders of a small village on the road to Mousillon, they numbered over a hundred men, including knights from as far away as Aquitaine and Lyonesse.

Early in the morning hours, as the knights began to stir from the tented pavilions their servants had erected some small distance from the ashes of the village, the sharp-eyed squire of a knight from Gisoreaux announced that there was smoke on the horizon. Thick and black, roiling like some sea-borne tempest, it was clear to every man in the company that what they saw was no simple peasant cook-fire. The call to arms was shouted and squires hastened to help their masters into their gleaming suits of steel plate and colourful tabards. Warhorses were dressed and armoured, lances and swords sharpened in anticipation of the coming battle. It was little different from the eve of war, save that the light of ambition shone a bit more clearly in the eyes of each knight.

The armoured warriors spurred away from their camp at speed, leaving their retainers and many of the squires behind. The pillar of black smoke danced and writhed in the sky before them, as though calling out to them, beckoning them. At the fore of the knights, Sir Fulkric murmured a prayer to the Lady that his heart would hold true, that his courage would strengthen his arm, that his sword would strike cleanly. There was no question of the beast’s doom, not with so great a company riding forth to smite him. Even if the dragon were able to slay some of them, each knight would take his toll on the monster. Once, a visiting dignitary from Estalia had described the bullfights of his homeland, how the fighters would attack the bull in waves, each man not seeking to kill the powerful animal, only to injure it and draw off more of its strength, until the time came when the matador would step forward to finish the animal. The dragon could fare no better than the bull, not with so many knights opposing it.

For much of the morning they rode. Fulkric had to curb the eagerness that filled each knight’s breast, that they might not fatigue their horses before they drew within sight of their quarry. It was nearing noon when the knights finally reached the source of the smoke. They reined in their horses at the base of a hill, beyond which the thick clouds boiled. Clearly the dragon had set fire to whatever lay beyond the hill, indulging its malevolent desire for wanton destruction and wickedness. The horses shied, clearly disliking the smell of the smoke, though the only odour the knights could detect was that of cooked beef. Fulkric, however, was inclined to trust the instincts of his charger. The smell of dragon was said to upset animals, and if that was the case, then the reptile might yet be near.

Sir Fulkric called out to his squire, who dutifully rode forward. The knight ordered his servant to read out the roster, that all in the company might know their position and take up his place should his turn arise. The squire had called out only a dozen names when the horses began to whinny in fright. Now there was no mistaking the thick, acrid stink, the reptilian musk of a great wyrm, overpowering even the reek of three hundred charred cattle. The knights, almost as a man, looked away from the squire’s recitation, lifting their eyes to stare at the top of the hill.

A head slowly rose above the brambles and stones, an enormous wedge-shaped head, coated in scales of crimson. The knights stared in awe at the sight, for it was as large as a carriage, and the blackened object hanging from its jaws was, they realised, the entire carcass of a full grown bullock. For a long moment, the dragon did not move, gazing off into the distance, its head framed by the black smoke billowing behind him. Then the monster’s gaze shifted, its yellow, snake-like eyes transfixing the warriors arrayed at the base of the hill. The mammoth jaws opened, freeing the carcass to tumble down the face of the hill. A roar like the splitting of the earth itself bellowed from the dragon’s maw, a shriek that rippled across the valley.

Sir Fulkric looked upon the awful sight, dumbfounded by the enormity of it. It was bigger than anything he’d ever seen, bigger than even the largest river barge or merchant ship he’d heard of, if the rest of the creature’s titanic size matched that of its head. The idea of a single man trying his sword against such a beast seemed utter lunacy. He looked aside at the knights around him. He could almost feel their pride and courage withering beneath the dragon’s gaze, and could almost see their noble hearts shuddering beneath their breastplates of steel. Nor was he alone in his imaginings. After its first wrathful stare, the dragon uttered a low snort of contempt, then the awful countenance withdrew behind the hill once more.

Fulkric fought to steady his steed as he drew his sword. If he did not act now, then the entire company might break apart, scattering as their fear devoured their honour. This, then, was why the Lady had led him here. Not to slay this terrible creature on his own, but to lead these worthy and valiant warriors in ridding the kingdom of this rampaging horror. This was his test, and Fulkric was determined that he would be worthy of it.

The knight raised his sword high above his head, lifting his voice in a great shout that drew the attention of his fellows, even those struggling to maintain control of their steeds. In a voice filled with the courage that had led him to victory in battle against the beastmen of Chalons and mercenary soldiers in the hinterlands of Couronne, Fulkric called upon the other knights not to allow their fear to unman them, not to cast aside their honour in the face of some malevolent beast. He extolled them to place their hearts and their faith in the Lady, to trust in her grace to see them through this mighty deed. Many of them might perish in the coming battle, but it was the manner of a knight’s death that was the final testament to the worthiness of his name. And what more noble death could there be than sparing their beloved kingdom from the rapacious pillaging of this monster?

There was no cheer of approval, no mighty shout of support for Fulkric’s impassioned words. But as the knight turned his horse about, facing the mouth of the little valley behind the hill, the little canyon that was now choked with a virtual wall of smoke, he found that he was not alone. To a man, the other knights reined their horses beside him, lances at the ready. There was no longer any thought of personal honour or prestige. This battle would be one they would share, one that would be fought for the glory of Bretonnia, not that of any one man. Fulkric held up his hand, and looked over at his waiting squire.

‘Take the list back with you,’ he told his servant. ‘Let them know who it was that fought here this day. Let them know that in the hour of its need, the knights of Bretonnia did not abandon their people and their land!’ Fulkric concluded his speech by dropping his hand, leading the charge into the thick black smoke.

His squire lingered until the last knight had disappeared into the valley, then turned away, riding with all haste back to their camp.

The squire’s list would be used to inscribe the memorial that would stand for centuries at the mouth of the canyon. Beneath it, there was a grave, a single grave for Sir Fulkric and his knights, for the identities of the ash and heat-twisted suits of mail that were recovered from the valley could not be told. As one they had charged into the valley to face the dragon, as one they had died, and as one were they entombed. In Pace Requiescat.

From the top of a small hillock, a group of men watched the smoke billowing in the distance. As they looked on, an enormous shape of crimson and black emerged from the smoke, its leathery wings beating the air with powerful strokes. Beneath the awful shape, a trio of mounted figures rode madly away from the mouth of a narrow canyon. Even from so great a distance, the shine of sunlight upon the armour that clothed the riders announced to the observers that the horsemen were knights.

The huge dragon circled above the racing steeds, then like some fiery comet, came hurtling down upon the earth. Like a hawk falling upon a hare, the immense reptile struck one of the riders, crushing both man and horse into the ground beneath its own tremendous bulk. The other riders did not spare a backward glance at their slain comrade, but spurred their own animals to greater effort. The dragon simply remained as it was, one claw poised above the mashed ruin of the rider it had struck down. It seemed the other knights had been granted a reprieve as the monster made no effort to lift itself back into the air. Then the dragon’s head reared back like a coiling serpent. Flame and fire exploded from the dragon’s jaws, engulfing the two riders as they tried to escape, igniting the hair, cloth and even skin of the stricken men and beasts. The knights fell from their chargers, boiled within their suits of steel plate. The chargers themselves continued to run – living torches that were soon lost behind a tangle of brush and trees.

Even from their vantage point miles in the distance, the watchers could hear the mighty roar of triumph the dragon sent lashing at the heavens. It was a sound to make even the most valiant of men shake and tremble. For the less stalwart hearts that had sworn their services to the Viscount Augustine de Chegney, the terror was even more profound.

Only one man among the small group of watchers seemed undisturbed by what they had seen. Indeed, upon the black-cloaked man’s cruel face, an avaricious smile had formed and a greedy light had entered his eyes. Rudol, renegade wizard of the Celestial Order, pointed a claw-like hand to the spectacle unfolding in the distance.

‘Look upon it, Thierswind! Look upon that magnificent brute!’ Rudol cackled. ‘What may stand before the might of such a monster!’

The man to whom the wizard spoke was a huge figure, easily towering above Rudol and the dozen men-at-arms who stood nearby. Sir Thierswind wore a suit of plate armour much like that favoured by the now vanquished men who had fallen prey to the dragon’s ire. His helm, which he held beneath his arm, bore the likeness of a bull, great horns spreading out from either side. Normally, the dark coloured tabard of de Chegney would have been worn over his armour, but the viscount had called for discretion in this matter and anything that would boldly proclaim the identity of his servants was to be avoided. The knight had served his master long enough to know the danger of disobeying his wishes, even if they chafed at what remained of the knight’s pride.

Thierswind’s harsh, almost brutish, features did not display the same enthusiasm as the wizard, and it was with great unease that the warrior at last spoke. ‘You told his lordship that you could control this monster,’ the knight reminded Rudol. ‘But how is any man able to do such a thing?’ Once more, Thierswind’s eyes strayed to the gigantic reptile, now picking bits of bone and flesh from between its talons.

Rudol laughed, a harsh and mocking sound. ‘When I have the Fell Fang back in my possession,’ the wizard proclaimed, ‘even that fearsome beast will be nothing more than a slave, a faithful dog to obey my every command! Think of it Thierswind! That mighty beast descending from the midnight sky to burn down the homes of my enemies, to grind their bones into dust beneath his claws!’

‘You mean his lordship’s enemies,’ Thierswind warned, reminding the wizard of his loyalty. The knight’s hand was closed around the hilt of his sword. Rudol carefully considered the knight, and his blade, then nodded his head in apology.

‘Of course, the wishes of the master come first,’ Rudol said, his voice absent of the enthusiasm it had shown only a few minutes before. ‘I fear that I let my excitement overcome me. Please, accept my humble apologies.’

Thierswind continued to regard the wizard dubiously, his hand still closed upon the hilt of his sword. He did not trust Rudol, nor did the viscount. The wizard needed their help, it seemed, in obtaining this artefact, but once it was secured, perhaps he would have no further need of the oath of service he had taken. De Chegney had warned his knight to take no chances with the dangerous sorcerer, to strike fast and true at the first sign of treachery. A master at betrayal and subterfuge himself, the viscount had an uncanny knack for sensing duplicity in others.

As if sensing the turn in Sir Thierswind’s thoughts, Rudol’s face darkened and his voice became stern. ‘I would not use that sword, Thierswind,’ he cautioned. ‘Only I can sense the geas I placed upon the Fell Fang. Only I can lead you to it. Your master will not thank you for denying him such a weapon.’ Rudol smiled as Thierswind released his hold on the sword.

‘A very wise decision,’ the wizard told him. He turned, staring off into the distance. ‘The man we are hunting is near now, but moving again.’ He pointed with a clawed hand, indicating the south. ‘Let us hasten to relieve him of this burden he carries. Then we shall all gain what we desire.’

The handsome bandit was feeling a bit more himself now that he had put the cursed city of Mousillon and the dungeons of his former patron the Duc Marimund behind him. With most of the city cringing within their hovels in the aftermath of the dragon’s attack, leaving Mousillon had been relatively easy. Just the same, he had paid a quick visit on Jacques, the old brigand who had led him to Marimund’s castle, ensuring that he was not unduly harassed by the impoverished and desperate rabble dwelling in the streets. Perhaps Jacques had not known how Marimund’s feelings toward Gobineau had changed. Perhaps his old friend really hadn’t understood what he was leading the outlaw into. Still, Gobineau did not believe in letting any debt pass uncollected, and besides which, he’d needed some decent clothes and some travelling money after his stay in Marimund’s dungeons. Jacques certainly wouldn’t be needing them any longer.

Gobineau watched impassively as the rather plain looking serving wench brought the plate of mutton to his table. The inn prospered chiefly because of its location near the hunting grounds of no less than three local lords, and after a hard day of hounding boars and chasing stags, the knights were often of a mind to stop at the inn and sample its cellar. Fortunately, Gobineau saw no evidence that any of Bretonnia’s chivalrous defenders were about this evening. If the rumours he’d heard were to be believed, they were probably out chasing after his dragon. After what he’d seen in Mousillon, Gobineau didn’t think anyone would be hearing from any knight who found what he was looking for ever again.

The maid set the steaming mutton down before Gobineau, batting her doe-like eyes at him as she did so. The outlaw looked up at her, sucking at his teeth as he considered her charms. Not much to work with, he decided. His stay in Marimund’s dungeon hadn’t been long enough to lower his personal standards quite that much. He waved the woman away, paying her reluctant retreat little mind as he prepared to attack his meal with his knife.

‘Ranald’s cloak!’ the thief cursed as he hastily withdrew the mutton from his mouth. He glared at the serving wench who was now timidly returning to his table, drawn by his outburst. With a violent motion, Gobineau hurled the plate at her. ‘I said I wanted this cooked!’ the outlaw roared. ‘This is as cold as an eel!’

The serving maid knelt, retrieving the spilled mutton from the floor. ‘But it was cooked,’ she protested, cowed by the anger in the outlaw’s voice. ‘Any longer in the flame and it would have burnt.’

‘Then burn it!’ Gobineau snarled back. ‘You mud-grubbing peasants might be used to eating your victuals raw, but I am accustomed to finer things!’ He gestured at the girl with the point of his knife. ‘Now take that back to the kitchen and see that it is prepared properly this time!’ Gobineau let his furious eyes linger on the woman until she had retreated back through the door that led to the kitchens, then turned his gaze on the few other patrons scattered about the inn’s common room, daring any of them to take issue with his harsh tones. Not a one cared to match the outlaw’s eyes.

Gobineau turned his attention back toward the tankard of ale sitting on the table before him, one hand reaching up to scratch at his shoulder. Whatever cinder had struck him had certainly done its wicked work well. Examining it after liberating a horse from a peasant farmer a few miles outside Mousillon, the rogue had found his shoulder to be raw and red, as though someone had placed a hot iron there. The skin had peeled away and what lay beneath was wrinkled and slick with pus. Gobineau supposed that it was worry over this ailment that made him so irritable, there were enough diseases running rampant through Mousillon to make an ordained healer from the temple of Shallya shudder. The bandit desperately hoped that he had not contracted one of them.

A loud, bellowing voice thundering from the entrance of the inn snapped Gobineau from his worried thoughts, causing the thief’s sword to leap into his hand, even as he dropped into a crouch that placed the bulk of his table between himself and the doorway.

‘Jean Pierre Gobineau!’ the voice roared. The rogue relaxed slightly as he saw the man who shouted his name. He was a tall, muscular brute with a full black beard where it was not interrupted by the criminal brand that graced his left cheek.

The bearded man strode across the inn as though he owned the place, his face showing that he took a great deal of amusement in Gobineau’s reaction. The outlaw slowly rose, but kept his sword drawn.

‘Hubolt,’ the rogue greeted the newcomer, keeping his voice level and without either enthusiasm or hostility. ‘I should have thought that ugly face would have been sitting in a basket by now.’

‘Not for lack of trying on the part of the king’s men,’ Hubolt grinned back. ‘I’d have imagined you knifed by some woman’s outraged husband.’

‘I still might if old friends see fit to shout my name across public places,’ Gobineau retorted acidly.

Hubolt laughed at the outlaw’s comment. ‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that here,’ the bearded man assured him. ‘Not with this rabble. They wouldn’t dare tell somebody about one of Hubolt the Black’s friends tarrying here.’ The big man paused, directing his gaze at the low-born patrons of the inn. ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ he repeated in a deep growl. Those who had been observing the exchange between the two rogues hastily looked away, finding the wood grain of their tabletops of much greater interest.

‘Still playing the brigand?’ Gobineau inquired casually as he resumed his seat. Hubolt retrieved a chair from another table and sat down beside the other outlaw.

‘Aye, and a bit of poaching as well,’ Hubolt said. ‘Still a fair bit of money to be made smuggling things into Mousillon too, if you have the nerve and the contacts.’ There was a suggestive spark in the brigand’s voice, one that Gobineau readily interpreted.

‘Not for me, thanks,’ the rogue replied. ‘In fact, I’ve just come from there. I think I’ve seen enough of Mousillon to last me for some time.’

‘Driven off by this dragon everyone is talking about, eh?’ Hubolt laughed. ‘They say it burned down half of Mousillon. Every knight from here to Quenelles seems to have taken it into his head to ride off and kill it.’ The brigand laughed again. ‘Ah well, while the cat’s away chasing shadows, the rats have free run of the mill!’

‘What if this dragon was more than a mere shadow?’ Gobineau said.

Hubolt smiled back at him, as though waiting for the gist of the jest. Gobineau allowed the brigand several moments to wait. An idea was forming in the rogue’s mind, a scheme so audacious it was worthy only of a man of his own boldness and cunning. But he might need to take on a few partners to make it work. Hubolt had been a tractable enough fellow in the old days, neither stupid enough to endanger his fellow rogues nor clever enough to worry about him usurping Gobineau’s schemes for his own.

‘Bah,’ the brigand scoffed, taking a deep swallow of the ale in Gobineau’s tankard. ‘I’ve never seen a dragon, nor met anyone who wasn’t a liar who had!’

‘I’ve seen it,’ Gobineau stated, staring hard at Hubolt, daring the larger man to call him a liar. ‘I watched it smash Duc Marimund’s castle into dust.’ Hubolt was silent for a long moment, digesting this information.

‘Then the knights will be coming back soon,’ the brigand grumbled. ‘Seems the good times are going to be short.’

‘The good times are only beginning,’ Gobineau contradicted him. ‘Any knight that goes looking for that monster is only going to find his own death. I’ve seen it, seen what it can do. The only way those men are coming back is in caskets.’ A sly grin manifested itself on Gobineau’s face. ‘These are times made for men bold enough to take what they want.’

Hubolt nodded his head. ‘I can’t say I’d miss the knights, but I also can’t say I believe in this knight-slayer of yours. There may have been dragons before, there might even be one now, but in every legend I’ve ever heard, its always been the dragon that came out worst.’

Gobineau reclaimed his tankard, taking another sip of his ale. ‘If you’d seen what I have seen, you’d know that there is a great discrepancy between legend and fact.’ A cunning light gleamed in the outlaw’s eyes. ‘But let us tarry in the land of legend for a moment. What if I told you there was a way to call this dragon? A way to make it do what you wanted?’

Hubolt laughed again, grabbing back the tankard. ‘I’d say you’d been drinking something a lot stronger than this swine-piss!’

Gobineau smiled back. That was the reaction he’d expected to hear.

‘Ah, but there are some people who might not find the possibility so funny,’ the outlaw stated. ‘They’d take it very seriously indeed. Might do anything to keep a bad man from whistling for his dragon. They might pay anything too.’ Suddenly Hubolt’s face was entirely serious.

‘You’re saying a clever man might use these dragon stories to line his own pockets?’ The brigand rubbed his hairy chin as he considered the prospect.

Gobineau leaned forward, lowering his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. ‘We tell them that if they don’t pay us, we’ll call the dragon down on them. Burn their crops and their homes and their plump little children.’

‘But what do we do if they won’t pay?’ the brigand pointed out. ‘They’ll need some convincing.’

‘Why, we call up the dragon and burn down their village,’ Gobineau said. ‘Then the next village will require less convincing.’

‘Call up the dragon,’ Hubolt snickered. ‘I like that, Gobineau. Of course, you mean that you have me and my boys set a few fires in the middle of the night, eh? Burn ’em out while everybody is sleeping and leave none to tell the tale?’

‘Something like that,’ Gobineau grinned back. He looked away from Hubolt, watching as the serving wench emerged from the kitchens with another platter of mutton.

‘Sounds like a fine scheme!’ Hubolt agreed. ‘Especially with all the knights busy chasing after their tails! Might make a tidy profit before folks get wise.’

The brigand gave a sour look to the servant girl as she set the plate down before Gobineau and hastily retreated. ‘Where do we start?’ he asked, returning his attention to the outlaw.

‘I was thinking we might start with Quenelles,’ Gobineau told him, eliciting a boisterous laugh from Hubolt as the brigand imagined the preposterous magnitude of working such a deception upon an entire city. Gobineau left him to his laughter, attacking the blackened mutton with his knife. Once again, he spat the meat from his mouth.

‘May the Dark Gods rot your cook’s soul!’ the rogue snarled. He rose to his feet, impaling the larger portion of mutton on the length of his sword blade. Hubolt watched in perplexity as Gobineau strode to the roaring fireplace that rested against one wall of the room. The rogue thrust his sword into the fire, letting the flames crackle and claw at the mutton. For long minutes, he concentrated upon his task, ignoring the whisperings and mutterings his actions evoked from the peasants watching him. At length, Gobineau retrieved his blade and marched with it back to his table, sliding a blackened chunk of charred ash onto his plate. Hubolt watched in morbid fascination as his friend began to eat the almost cremated mutton.

‘It’s so hard to find people who know how to prepare food properly these days,’ Gobineau complained between crunching mouthfuls of charred meat.

CHAPTER TEN

The trail the bounty hunters followed was a grim one, a path of ash and ruin, littered with the wreckage of human bodies. The smoke that had beckoned them away from the south had been rising from a small box canyon, the fire still chewing away at whatever brush and twisted trees yet remained. The floor of the valley was a blanket of ash, reminding Ulgrin of the volcanoes that sometimes misbehaved in the southward stretches of the Worlds Edge Mountains. Poking up from the black cinders were broken bones and slabs of heat-ravaged steel. The devastation was obvious, the power of the force that had wrought it almost beyond belief. Brunner quickly tired of the morbid game of counting helmets in an attempt to decide how many knights had fallen here. Much of the armour was so warped and blackened by the dragon’s fire that it was difficult even to determine sometimes if what he thought to be a helm might not instead be a breastplate or a piece of barding. The far end of the valley was heaped with the bones and burnt carcasses of hundreds of cattle.

‘Quite an appetite that lizard has,’ Ulgrin commented, but even his jest was half-hearted, voiced to try and fend away the dread that was building within the normally stalwart dwarf.

They did not linger long in the valley, following still more distant columns of smoke rising in the east. For the rest of the day, the three hunters found themselves journeying from one scene of tragedy and ruin to another. Here a farmstead blasted into a crater, there an orchard, its trees stripped and barren in the aftermath of the dragon’s flame. Once, they came upon what seemed to be a knight sitting beside the road. Ithilweil had dismounted to investigate the man when he did not respond to Ulgrin’s hail. She would not speak of what lay behind the knight’s visor when she lifted it, saying only that the warrior was dead.

They made camp that night beside a narrow gorge overlooking the River Grismerie. Brunner selected the ground because it made a good defensible position, the severe drop effectively forming a bulwark against attack from the south and the west. Unless of course the attacker were able to fly, such as a dragon. Of course, if that were the case, Brunner knew firsthand that even a castle was no stronghold against such a creature.

Ithilweil again stared out into the night, as though trying to cast her gaze far enough to see the creature whose tracks they followed. There was no faint glow upon the horizon, no thick pall of smoke marring the night wind. Ithilweil took that to mean that the dragon had settled down somewhere, perhaps resting after indulging its lust for destruction. But she knew that it would only be a matter of time before the wyrm roused itself once more and the fires burned anew.

‘Ithilweil.’ The elf turned as she heard Brunner call out her name. The bounty hunter was seated before the fire, still wearing his armour and weapons, having removed only his helmet. Nearby, Ulgrin sat on a mossy stone, chewing nervously at the pipe protruding from his beard. ‘You gave a name to this monster. What more can you tell me about it? If Gobineau decides to call on it again, I’d like to know as much as possible about what we will be facing.’

The elf glided across the campsite, sitting upon the ground beside the fire. ‘Much of what I know about him is rumour, the rest speculation.’ Ithilweil paused, collecting her thoughts. ‘The dragon is named Malok, a name that is heaped with horror and suffering.’

‘Bah! Malok is known to my people as well!’ interrupted Ulgrin. ‘The name itself is from the old Khazalid. It means “malice”, and you’ll find that there is an entire page in the Book of Grudges with that gold-stealing lizard’s name upon it!’

‘Perhaps he had another name in the tongue of my people,’ Ithilweil said, ‘but if so, that given to him by the dwarfs soon displaced it. It is known that when war broke out between my people and the dwarfs,’ the elf paused, expecting some surly outburst from Ulgrin, but he remained silent, ‘the dragon served a prince of my people who had settled in the lands now known as the Grey Mountains. I can now imagine how that prince caused Malok to serve him, for surely he was one of the exiled renegade lords of Caledor.’

‘It would figure that there would be elf sorcery at the back of all this,’ Ulgrin grunted, spitting a blob of spittle into the fire.

‘Then this prince was the one who created the Fell Fang?’ Brunner asked.

‘Or had it made for him,’ Ithilweil said. ‘But it would have been his will that made the artefact work, the strength of his own soul that bound the dragon to him. The Fell Fangs are terrible things, dominating the spirit of one creature by crushing it with the will of another. That was why they were denounced by the rulers of Ulthuan. And they are dangerous, even for the most strong-willed, for control is never assured. It is easier, less taxing to force a dragon to do something that is in its nature, but far more difficult to subdue its own urges. There was also speculation that the imposing of spirits might not be a one-way door as the Fell Fang was designed to be. It might be possible for the dragon’s fiery spirit to bleed over into the body of the one using the artefact. In any case, control is tenuous at best, and once lost, the ire of the dragon will focus itself upon the possessor of the Fell Fang. For it will be able to sense the exact location of the Fang’s user, however great the distance.’

‘So, our reptilian friend might have had a fair journey when Gobineau called him to Mousillon,’ Brunner observed. ‘But next time the dragon will be closer, have less distance to travel and be there much sooner.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the elf. ‘Without a powerful will to restrain him, Malok will find the Fell Fang, kill the one using it and probably level everything within a hundred miles. There are few among even the oldest and noblest of my people who would be able to restrain a creature like Malok, for his power and malevolence can only have increased through the ages. Among men, I don’t think such strength exists. I am certain that if it does, it is not nestled within the avaricious dung heap that your Gobineau employs as his soul.’

‘Leave it to elves to create something anybody can use but nobody can control!’ Ulgrin swore, spitting again into the fire.

‘What I still do not understand,’ Brunner said, ‘is how this elf prince ever lost control of Malok.’

‘He used Malok against the dwarfs when there was war between our two peoples,’ Ithilweil replied. ‘The scars that so easily identify the wyrm were given to him during that conflict as the prince drove him against his enemies. The wound along Malok’s belly was earned when the shaft hurled by a dwarf bolt thrower nearly skewered the dragon during the battle of Ilendril’s Hill. Such was the potency of whatever runes the dwarf smiths placed upon the enormous spear that even a dragon, centuries later, still bears the scar. The other wound was inflicted during the scourging of the dwarf stronghold our chronicles named “Iron Peak”, a jagged bolt of sorcerous lightning called down upon Malok by the high priest of the dwarfs.’

‘Aye,’ agreed Ulgrin, ‘and well do we dwarfs remember that day, when the elf’s pet monster gobbled up one of the oldest and wisest runesmiths in the kingdom.’ Ulgrin ground his teeth together. ‘That’s a crime both the dragon and those who set him upon us will answer for one day.’

‘But that still does not tell me how and why they lost control of the dragon,’ Brunner interrupted, hoping to stem the brewing argument between elf and dwarf.

‘It was decided to abandon the war after the Phoenix King was slain at Tor Alessi,’ the enchantress stated. ‘The war with the dwarfs was taking too high a toll, the killing far too senseless to endure any longer. It was decided to abandon the colonies, to return to Ulthuan. A great exodus of my people left the towered palaces and shining cities they had built for themselves here, to board the ships that would carry them back to the lands of their birth. The elf prince who controlled Malok charged his monster with guarding and watching over his people as they marched toward the shore. But protection and preservation was not a thing that came easily to Malok; the dragon longed to kill and destroy, as he had when waging war against the dwarfs. The ordeal of restraining Malok’s rebellion would have taxed the prince day and night, until at last his control was lost. There is a tremendous pride within the fiery heart of a dragon, and Malok must have despised sharing in the stigma of the retreat. Perhaps it was this injured pride that at last enabled him to overcome the control of the Fell Fang. However it came about, Malok slew his master and then set about destroying every elf he could find, raining fire down upon the weary refugees as they slowly crept toward the sea.’

‘Then at least the old lizard did some good,’ Ulgrin muttered, clearly less than sympathetic to Ithilweil’s tale of woe. ‘Perhaps the records in the Book of Grudges are a bit too harsh on him.’

‘It sounds to me as if this Fell Fang is more of a curse than a blessing,’ Brunner observed. ‘We may just be doing Gobineau a service by relieving him of it.’ The bounty hunter stopped speaking as Ithilweil suddenly shot to her feet, frightened eyes scouring the darkness beyond the campfire. Brunner had enough experience with the sharp senses of the elves to know better than to question them. In an instant, he too was on his feet, the cruel length of Drakesmalice in his hand. A moment later, the horses and Ulgrin’s mule began to stamp their hooves and voice their own unease as some faint scent offended them.

Ulgrin rose slowly, a sturdy hand axe gripped in each of his meaty fists. ‘Any idea what has the animals upset?’ the dwarf asked from the corner of his mouth. ‘You don’t think the lizard is hungry again?’ he added in a subdued tone.

‘No,’ Ithilweil told him, ‘but what is waiting out there in the night is just as much an abomination.’ Brunner noticed the familiar quality of fear and loathing that edged the elf’s voice. Shifting his grip on his sword, the bounty hunter lowered his left hand, unobtrusively palming a small object secreted beneath his vambrace.

A tall figure stalked out from the shadows. The intruder’s heavy steps crunched into the dirt, betraying the fact that heavy armour pressed down upon his steel-shod feet. The faint smell that had alarmed the animals grew more pronounced, rising to such a stink that it carried itself to the much less discerning senses of Brunner and Ulgrin. It was a smell both warriors had encountered many times before – the rank stink of death, the vapour of an old battlefield. Both bounty hunters stepped closer to the fire, careful to keep their eyes averted from the flame and ruining their night vision. By degrees, a single baleful eye could be seen, twinkling from the dark shape as it reflected the fire, cat-like.

‘A fine tale you spin,’ a fell, pustulent voice hissed from the darkness, ‘for a faithless elf slut!’ Ithilweil visibly flinched as she heard the grotesquely distorted yet sickeningly familiar and hated voice. ‘You said much that interested me,’ the vampire continued. ‘Enough so that I would have a few questions answered before I rip that lying tongue from your pretty face!’

‘Corbus!’ Ithilweil breathed with horror. The enchantress retreated slowly, retracing her steps so that she stood beside Brunner. The bounty hunter took a step forward, lifting Drakesmalice so that the blade interposed itself between the enchantress and the vampire.

‘There is reason enough for me to spill your life,’ Corbus growled at Brunner.

The vampire knight strode into the circle of light cast by the campfire. Ithilweil gasped in shock as she saw the vampire’s mutilated face. A pulpy mass of pus-hued filth was beginning to fill the warped, ruined socket, raw lengths of tendon and muscle had begun to reattach themselves to the vampire’s shattered jaw.

The vampire smiled, displaying his fangs and further distorting his already mangled features. ‘It will take many nights feasting on the thin blood of peasants to restore my face,’ Corbus spat. ‘How will you fare after I peel yours from your skull, assassin?’

Brunner kept silent, evaluating the foul knight of the Blood Dragons. Despite the hideous injury to his face, Corbus moved with a grace and strength that would put a professional dancer to shame, and he did so wearing a suit of heavy crimson plate armour that might have been the twin to that destroyed by Ulgrin’s battleaxe. The thick Bretonnian broadsword clutched in the vampire’s mailed fist was held against the creature’s side, but Brunner was not deceived. He had seen the monster in action before and knew that with his inhuman speed, the vampire’s unguarded pose was nothing more than an illusion.

‘Kill him slowly, Brunner,’ Ulgrin snarled. ‘That scum owes me a battleaxe!’ Despite the dwarf’s bravado, Brunner noted that his fellow bounty killer was steadily backing away from the approaching vampire. He could not be certain if the dwarf was intent on his gear, intent on equipping himself with something more imposing than a hand axe, or if his mule and a speedy departure was Ulgrin’s intention. The bounty hunter was unwilling to turn his gaze from Corbus long enough to make certain.

‘Your filthy blood is not even worth taking,’ Corbus hissed at the dwarf. ‘Had you kept that foul tongue silent, I might even have allowed you to continue to defile the ground upon which you walk. Now I shall simply gut you like the vermin you are.’ The vampire’s burning eye turned away from Ulgrin, staring past Brunner at the enchantress sheltering behind him. ‘From you I will hear more of this man who calls dragons. I am most eager to meet him.’

‘The only one you meet this night is Morr!’ Brunner roared, lunging forward, slashing at the vampire with the edge of Drakesmalice. With almost contemptuous ease, Corbus blocked the blow, the strength of the vampire’s arm causing the bounty hunter’s longsword to tremble. With his sword grinding against Brunner’s own, the Blood Dragon’s other hand closed about the bounty hunter’s throat, undead talons clasping living flesh with a clutch of steel.

‘You should have stuck to your tricks, assassin,’ the vampire snarled. Corbus’s jaw cracked as the vampire’s mouth snapped open, far beyond the limits imposed upon it in life. The gleaming, wolf-like fangs shone like polished ivory in the flickering firelight as Corbus brought his ruined face toward Brunner’s exposed neck.

‘Who says I gave up my tricks?’ Brunner managed to choke beneath the vampire’s grasp. His left hand flashed forward, a white cloud billowing about the mutilated half of Corbus’s face. An ear-piercing shriek erupted from the vampire’s mouth as the creature recoiled, dropping Brunner to the ground. Greasy grey smoke steamed from the Blood Dragon’s injuries, carrying with it the reek of burning meat. Brunner did not pause to recover from the vampire’s brutal grip, instantly lunging forward, swiping at the monster with Drakesmalice even as his other hand removed an object from his belt.

Even in the midst of his agony, the skills and instincts of the life-long warrior exerted themselves and Corbus brought his own sword around in a parrying stroke that easily batted Brunner’s blade aside. But with one hand still clutching at the sizzling wreckage of his face, Corbus left his other side exposed. The bounty hunter had put little force behind his feint with Drakesmalice, saving his energy for the true attack. The polished length of the wooden stake he had bought from a disgraced priest of Sigmar in the Tilean port of Miragliano dug into the vampire’s side, sinking into the gap between the breast and back plates. The vampire shrieked again as Brunner drove the stake into his unclean flesh. The bounty hunter danced backward as Corbus lashed out at him with an ungainly slash from his broadsword.

The Blood Dragon staggered back, gasping and snarling as he fought against the pain assailing him. Corbus glared at the bounty hunter, his single remaining eye boring into Brunner’s own. Then the undead knight lifted his broadsword once more, holding it as though it were a lightweight javelin being readied for a cast. Brunner’s hand hovered near the butt of his pistol. He would have no chance of matching the speed of the vampire, but if the creature was as pained as it seemed to be, he might be able to exceed it in the matter of accuracy.

A loud crack and roar from the other side of the camp decided the question. Before Corbus could hurl his sword, the vampire was thrown back, his breastplate exploding as an iron bullet smashed into it. Having backed to the far side of the camp, the vampire was fortuitously poised near the edge of the gorge. The impact of the bullet was enough to knock him over the side. The vampire’s wail of frustrated rage echoed from below as he plummeted down toward the banks of the Grismerie.

Brunner turned to find Ulgrin Baleaxe sitting on the ground, smoke rising from the wide-barrelled mouth of his huge rifle, a dwarf weapon known as a thunderer for the imposing noise its discharge created. The recoil from the weapon had knocked Ulgrin from his feet, landing him on his backside. The dwarf grumbled into his beard as he struggled to regain his dignity.

‘Five gold crowns for the cost of powder, shot, and accuracy,’ Ulgrin declared once he was on his feet again. ‘To come from your share of the reward, naturally.’

Brunner shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he told the dwarf. ‘Your throat would have been next on his list. Chalk it down to the cost of staying alive.’

Ulgrin snickered, leaning on the broad mouth of his weapon, then recoiling when he found it to still be hot. ‘You don’t get me that easy,’ he said. ‘That bloodsucker would have been after tall-ears next. More than enough time for me to slip away if I was of a mind to.’

Mention of Ithilweil caused Brunner to look back at the elf. She still stood in the same spot to which she had retreated to avail herself of Brunner’s protecting sword. As the bounty hunter stepped nearer, he could see the unfocused glaze in her eyes, hear the faint, musical words whispering through her lips. Carefully, Brunner reached forward, placing his hand on the elf’s shoulder. Instantly, the melody stopped and Ithilweil’s eyes regained their normal vibrancy.

‘Thank you,’ the bounty hunter told her, guessing at the purpose of her incantation. It had been more than pain dulling the vampire’s unnatural speed and reflexes.

Ithilweil took several deep breaths, trying to restore her composure after her hasty spellcraft.

‘It is always dangerous to draw upon the winds of magic when the sun is past and the dark powers are in their ascendancy,’ she stated. ‘But to allow you to be slain by that abomination would have been worse.’ She gave Brunner an approving look. ‘That was a clever trick, hurling salt into that monster’s face.’

‘I told you that I like to know about my enemy,’ the bounty hunter replied. ‘I’ve had dealings with such creatures before, and after my first encounter with one, I determined to learn their weaknesses.’ He looked back at the edge of the precipice. ‘By itself, the salt would only have pained him. But that wooden shaft I drove through his side was crafted for the express purpose of destroying his kind, blessed by the priests of Sigmar, if the good intentions of priests and gods have any merit.’

‘Then that is the last we’ll be seeing of that leech,’ Ulgrin commented.

‘Let us hope,’ Ithilweil replied, a haunted quality of uncertainty in her voice. ‘But I should feel much better if we were far from this place.’

‘I don’t think any of us would get much sleep knowing that thing’s body is down below,’ Brunner agreed, replacing Drakesmalice into its sheath. ‘We’ll risk a bit of night travel. Who knows,’ the bounty hunter observed with grim humour, ‘we may even find ourselves sharing the same inn as Gobineau.’

There were five rogues in Hubolt’s little mob, though Gobineau would not have put much stock in any of them should problems arise. Two of them looked old enough to be Hubolt’s father, if any man had ever cared to accept that dubious honour. Another was young enough that Gobineau wondered if his chin had even considered sprouting hair yet. The other two were little different from the simple peasant rabble he’d shared the inn with the previous night, though they wore swords at their sides. None of these men had that ruthless, predatory air, the chill in their eyes that marked the veteran bandit. Whatever notoriety these men had garnered was due entirely to their leader.

Still, Gobineau knew such men were easily manipulated: lacking the proper experience or cunning to think for themselves, they were apt to follow most any command before questioning the intent behind it. No, Gobineau would have nothing to fear from such a quarter. Hubolt, however, might be a different matter. If he was reduced to allowing such men to call him captain, then the bandit must have fallen much farther than he had admitted to at the inn. There was no smuggling scheme with Mousillon, these men would be stripped and eaten five minutes after setting foot in that city. Probably not much thievery either, beyond some poaching and rustling. Hubolt would indeed bear watching, it would take only the tiniest spark of ambition to cause the man to think of better things.

The bearded bandit stared back at Gobineau from the forefront of their small column. They were riding through a narrow strip of woods skirting the edge of a vast tract of farmland. After some discussion, the two had decided that Gisoreaux might make a more viable base of operations than Quenelles. Apparently the predations of the dragon had disturbed more than just the knights. There were tales that the wyrm’s presence had driven twisted beastmen from their lairs deep within the Forest of Chalons. Hubolt was not willing to put such rumours to the test, and after seeing the man’s company of rogues, Gobineau was inclined to agree with him. He’d not trust such men against a mob of children. Besides, if beastmen were roaming about the countryside near Quenelles, then the peasants would already have troubles enough to concern them than the threat of a dragon destroying their homes.

‘Now, friend,’ Hubolt said, his lips twisted into a grotesque leer because of the brand marring his face. ‘We’ve yet to discuss the split for this scheme of yours.’ It was a topic that had been suggested a few times. Gobineau noticed that Hubolt’s demeanour was becoming more unruly the deeper into the country they rode. Perhaps the bandit was already starting to decide that he didn’t need his partner? Gobineau had hoped to delay that eventuality a little longer. ‘Since I have my five men to think of, perhaps I should receive the larger…’

Whatever percentage Hubolt was about to mention was lost in the strangled cry that rose from his throat. A red-feathered arrow protruded from the brigand’s chest, its momentum knocking him from his saddle and spilling him into the road. Gobineau did not spare a second look for his erstwhile ally, but quickly scanned the road ahead. Emerging from cover were a half-dozen leather-clad archers, an armoured knight with a horned helmet mounted upon a great black warhorse behind them. However, it was the mounted man seated next to the knight that caused Gobineau’s breath to fall short. How Rudol had found him was not quite so important as what the wizard wanted and was likely to do in the way of getting it.

Just the same, even as his instinct of self preservation stirred, another emotion began to assert itself. The desire to crush these men who dared to oppose him, to still their hearts and leave their burning carcasses smouldering beneath the sun. Gobineau caught himself just as he began to put spurs against the side of his horse, to initiate his mad and suicidal intention. With terror, Gobineau fought down the insane aggression that had flared up within him. He was not about to lose his life fighting knights and wizards. Not when there were others to fight his battles for him.

‘Ride them down before they can fire again!’ Gobineau shouted, drawing his sword and waving it above the neck of his horse like some Kislevite cavalry officer. Hubolt’s vermin did not think twice, but dug their spurs into their own mounts and charged forward. Gobineau had to hand it to Hubolt, at least he had an eye for collecting morons.

The outlaw turned his own mount around with a savage tug on the reins. With any luck, the sacrifice of Hubolt’s men would buy him enough time to put some distance between himself and the wizard.

Rudol glared down at Sir Thierswind. The knight had dismounted, prowling amongst the bodies of the men his archers had slaughtered, checking each one for the object the wizard had described for him so often since they had left the Chateau de Chegney. The wizard fairly burned with irritated frustration, enraged at this arrogant swordsman’s stupidity. Rather than listening to the wizard, rather than hastening with all speed after the man who had escaped, Thierswind had insisted on searching the bodies of the slain for the Fell Fang, sending only two of his men in pursuit of the escaped man. Thierswind made no secret of his distrust of the wizard, suspecting Rudol’s every suggestion and warning him that any deception on his part would be reported back to the viscount.

‘It seems you were right,’ Thierswind conceded as he rose from the last corpse. ‘We should have pursued the man who escaped.’ There was no note of apology in the knight’s voice. Indeed, if anything, his tone was even more arrogant and hostile than before.

‘And what will you do now?’ Rudol sneered. Thierswind glared back from behind his helm.

‘We question the one who is still alive,’ the knight snarled back. Two of the men-at-arms dutifully lifted the injured Hubolt from the ground, the arrow still sticking from his chest.

‘Who was the man that escaped?’ Thierswind demanded. The bandit gave the knight a mocking smile.

Thierswind closed his armoured hands into fists. ‘Tell me or…’

‘Or what?’ Hubolt wheezed. ‘You’ll kill me? You’ve already done that, so there’s no reason to fear you now!’ The bandit began to laugh heartily, enjoying the knight’s impotent rage. But the laughter passed into a shriek of mortal agony as violet energy blazed into the arrow, searing through the wooden shaft into Hubolt’s body. Seeing what was happening to their captive, the soldiers backed away. Sparks of energy rippled about Hubolt’s body. Smoke rose from the stricken man, whose body twitched and shuddered as though seized by a fit. The magical lightning continued to stream into Hubolt until the man’s body began to cook from the inside out, his screaming voice cracked with the shrillness of its tormented shrieks. Only then did the sorcerous attack subside, allowing the smoking corpse to topple to the singed earth.

Thierswind and his men looked with open horror upon Rudol as the wizard straightened himself in his saddle, the last flickers of power fading from his eyes. It was his turn to indulge in arrogance, now that he had shown the knight and his scum just who was in command of this little enterprise, that he could destroy each and every one of them with a simple gesture of his hand.

‘We will do as I say now,’ Rudol declared, daring Thierswind to protest. The knight did not rise to the lure, earning himself a reprieve from Rudol’s wrath. ‘The thief who has the Fell Fang knows we are after him. He will seek to lose himself in the nearest city. We will need to stop him before he can do so.’

‘And how are we to accomplish this?’ Sir Thierswind managed to ask. Rudol smiled at him indulgently, as though the knight were no more than an idiot child.

‘My magic will tell me where the Fell Fang is, always,’ Rudol stated. Then a broad smile began to spread on the wizard’s features. ‘Perhaps two men were enough,’ he hissed. ‘It appears that our prize is coming back to us.’

Brunner dismounted from Fiend, taking a closer look at one of the red-feathered arrows lying beside the bodies of the slain men. They had chanced upon a shepherd who recalled having seen Gobineau pass his fields, riding in the company of a half dozen men with ill-favoured looks. It was a simple matter to follow the trail of the riders, until it at last led them into a stretch of woods and the massacre they now gazed upon.

‘Looks like our bandit met some of his fellows,’ Ulgrin observed with grim humour. ‘No honour among thieves, eh?’ he hissed over at Ithilweil. The elf enchantress seemed distracted, out of sorts ever since they had come upon the ghastly scene.

‘This was not done by a pack of rival bandits,’ Brunner stated. The bounty hunter’s voice was laced with such intense hatred that Ulgrin’s hand instinctively fell to the small axe nestled beneath his belt.

Brunner snapped the shaft of the arrow he had been examining.

The dwarf wondered at the sudden change in his partner. What could there have been about a simple arrow that could get under the skin of so cold a character as the infamous Brunner? Ulgrin did not know, but suspected that such information might be of great interest and possibly of even greater profit.

‘I see,’ the dwarf commented, stabbing a finger at the charred remains lying in the middle of the road. ‘Our dragon has taken up archery as a hobby.’

‘This was not done by a dragon,’ Ithilweil stated. ‘That poor man was struck down not by dragonfire but by the darkest magic.’

Brunner looked at the corpse, giving it only the briefest of examinations. It was too large to be the man they were hunting. Beyond that fact, he had no interest.

The bounty hunter remounted his warhorse. ‘I’ve seen a man who could work such sorcery,’ he declared when he had regained the saddle. ‘We are not the only ones hunting Gobineau.’

‘Then someone else has claimed the bounty,’ Ulgrin grumbled, immediately contemplating the expense of time and effort that he had wasted pursuing the outlaw.

Brunner shook his head. ‘I don’t think the wizard and his allies are interested in the bounty,’ he told the dwarf. ‘They are after the Fell Fang, as Ithilweil is.’ He stared intently at the tracks leading away from the massacre. ‘It looks as if they might have gotten what they were after too.’

‘Then we must find them quickly,’ Ithilweil told the bounty hunters. ‘The Fell Fang in the hands of a fool who doesn’t know what he has is bad enough, but it is much more dangerous in the possession of someone who actually thinks he knows what it is!’

Brunner stared back at the red-feathered arrows, remembering another time he had seen them sprouting from the bodies of fallen men. ‘We’ll find them,’ the bounty killer said, confidently. ‘Gobineau was with these men. It is likely he is now the prisoner of the ones who killed his comrades. That actually makes our job easier. Gobineau is an outlaw, a man so used to covering his tracks that it comes as easily as breathing to him. The men who have captured him are not, they are knights, trained warriors too arrogant to cover their tracks, too certain of their own abilities to bother about such things.

‘We’ll find them,’ Brunner repeated. ‘My concern is what will be waiting for us when we do.’

The waning light cast by the setting sun did little to disconcert the croaking ravens gathered about the broken corpse. The hungry birds had been drawn by the smell of death hovering over the lands in which the dragon now roamed. But there was little left in Malok’s wake upon which to feed, only cinders and ash. So it was that the body lying upon the sandy bank of the Grismerie River provided a welcome meal for many hungry creatures. For long hours, their sharp beaks pecked away at the exposed flesh, trying to dig fresh morsels from beneath the coat of steel plate that encased much of the corpse.

One raven picked at the back of the face-down corpse’s neck, throwing its head back and letting another sliver of meat slide down its gullet. But the bird had eaten its last: with the retreat of the sun, a new vitality filled the dead thing sprawled beneath the raven’s claws. The bird croaked in fright, but as it rose to take flight, a powerful grip closed about it. The raven struggled to free itself even as its former meal shifted its body and rose from the sand.

Corbus glared at the scavenger, then lifted the struggling bird to his mangled, freshly burned face. The vampire’s jaws clamped about the raven’s body, swiftly draining it of the tiny amount of blood coursing through its veins. It was a pathetic meal, and did nothing to satisfy the vampire’s growing thirst. But it would nourish the monster, give him strength to find other, more satisfactory prey.

The undead knight threw the broken bird from him, then closed his hands about the wooden shaft protruding from his side. It had been a near thing: the treacherous assassin had nearly killed him with his dishonourable deceits. The salt had badly burned his already mutilated face, but the stake had come near to destroying him. Only the mail he wore beneath his plate armour had prevented the bounty hunter’s blow from piercing deep enough to penetrate his heart. To come so close to destruction when he was so near to redemption was a thought that made Corbus seethe with fury. The assassin would suffer for the indignities he had heaped upon him. By the oaths he had sworn to the Blood Dragons, Brunner would be a long time in meeting his end.

The vampire’s jaws distended to utter a long painful howl as, with a tremendous effort, Corbus ripped the stake from his body, casting it into the swift moving waters of the Grismerie.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Gobineau cursed again the fickleness of Ranald, god of thieves. Things had seemed to be going so well for him. He’d escaped from the vengeful Duc Marimund and the blighted city of Mousillon, left the notorious bounty killer Brunner buried beneath an entire castle, and made the rather profound discovery that the hoary old elf artefact actually was able to do what myth claimed it could do: summon dragons. Gobineau had just decided on a course of action to exploit his discovery when misfortune had again reared its ugly head. The wizard Rudol had found him, no doubt by some sorcerous means. At first Gobineau had counted himself lucky yet again, making good his escape while Rudol’s men slaughtered the sorry remains of Hubolt’s bandit gang.

But things had taken a bizarre turn then. Two of Rudol’s men had ridden off in immediate pursuit of him, determined that no one should escape the massacre. Even so, their horses had been chosen for war, while Gobineau’s had been selected for speed. It should have proven an easy matter to elude his pursuit. Then the same compulsion that had nearly claimed him when the ambush had been sprung came over him once again. Instead of fleeing, Gobineau had turned his steed around, charging headlong into his pursuers. One of the men he had struck down with the edge of his sword, but the other had exploited the demise of his comrade, slashing at Gobineau’s horse and causing the injured animal to hurl the outlaw from the saddle. Gobineau had struck the ground hard, and before he could recover his wits, the remaining soldier had disarmed him and bound his hands.

The outlaw had considered that his luck might have been restored when he was brought back to Rudol and the wizard did not kill him outright. The conjurer had immediately relieved Gobineau of the Fell Fang. The outlaw viewed the theft with a surprising degree of relief, something working on a primal level within his soul taking joy in the absence of the enchanted artefact. Then things had started getting worse. First Gobineau learned that the men aiding Rudol were soldiers in the service of the Viscount Augustine de Chegney, a man infamous for his cruelty and villainy. Then he had learned why Rudol had not killed him as the wizard began interrogating the rogue regarding Gobineau’s experience with the Fell Fang and how the talisman was employed. For all of his knowledge of legend and lore, the wizard knew far too little about the treasure he coveted.

Gobineau shuddered as he considered their present destination, and the reason Rudol continued to suffer the outlaw to live.

Sir Thierswind rode at the head of the small column of riders, the wizard Rudol beside him. Though the knight towered over the wizard, everything about him dwarfing the thin sorcerer, there was no mistaking the subdued air that hovered about him as he spoke with his companion.

‘Why do we not simply return to the Chateau de Chegney?’ Thierswind asked once again.

Rudol gave the knight a thin, irritated smile. The professional warrior was becoming even more obnoxious now than he had been with his pompous ego intact. Thierswind kept asking the same question over and again, as though Rudol might change the answer.

‘We must ensure that the Fell Fang will do what it is supposed to do,’ the wizard told him. ‘The viscount would not be terribly forgiving if we presented him with an artefact that does not work. I would rather not trust to his forgiveness if such a thing were to happen, would you?’ Rudol turned his attention back to the road ahead. ‘We shall find the dragon, and make certain that it will obey the will of he who holds the Fell Fang. Only then will the viscount hear of our success.’

‘The bandit,’ Thierswind said, gesturing to the centre of the column where the bound outlaw rode the horse of the man he had killed. ‘Why keep him alive?’

Rudol was beginning to understand why a suspicious despot like de Chegney trusted a man like Thierswind to command his troops. The man had probably never had an original idea in his life.

‘He used the Fang,’ Rudol stated. ‘He knows how it works firsthand. I have been learning all that he knows, but it is always possible that he is holding something back. The nearer we draw to the dragon, the less keen our prisoner will be to keep things from me. After all, whatever happens to us will happen to him as well.’

Rudol stood upright in his saddle, stretching a claw-like hand forward at the darkening twilight. ‘On the horizon!’ he shouted. Visible in the distance was an expanse of jagged hills and low mountains. The creature they were looking for was there, Rudol could sense it. Since gaining possession of the Fell Fang, he found that his geas spell had persisted, now attuning itself to the monster bound to the artefact’s power. Just as he had been drawn to the Fang, so now the Fang was drawn to the dragon. ‘The Massif Orcal! We will find our dragon there!’

Brunner rose from the path, wiping the mud from his breeches before climbing back into Fiend’s saddle. There was no question about it, the men they were hunting had turned south. It made little sense, he knew these men were in the service of Augustine de Chegney. By rights they should be heading east, toward the Grey Mountains and the viscount’s domain. Instead they had turned toward the Massif Orcal. There could be only one reason: the wizard was running the show now. And the bounty hunter had a very bad feeling he also knew why Rudol might be so interested in the mountains. It had been several days since they had last seen any sign of the dragon, no new pillars of smoke rising from cremated towns and villages. Ithilweil had offered the possibility that Malok was resting, waiting until the Fang goaded him into activity once more. It was a theory that fit all of the facts, and every tale he had ever heard regarding dragons claimed they preferred to make their lairs in the mountains.

‘They are heading for the mountains,’ Brunner told his companions.

Ulgrin’s face lit up and he grinned beneath his beard. ‘Good! Should prove easy to ambush them then!’ The dwarf rubbed his hands in anticipation of a swift conclusion to the hunt. His enthusiasm dimmed when he saw that he was the only one pleased by the news.

‘The wizard,’ Ithilweil said. ‘He must know where Malok has gone. With the Fell Fang in his grasp, there are spells he can use to divine the location of the dragon’s lair.’

Ulgrin spat into the dirt. ‘Well, that collapses the shaft then! There’s no way we can go up against a dragon and a mad wizard!’

Brunner shook his head. ‘Maybe we won’t have to. If the dragon is sleeping, we might not need to worry about it.’

‘Which just leaves us with a mad wizard to deal with!’ Ulgrin protested. ‘And even if the dragon is sleeping, all this Rudol lunatic needs to do is blow on that damn elf whistle and the thing will be down on us like a cave fly on filth!’

‘We’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t get the chance to use it,’ Brunner told his fellow bounty hunter. ‘But if your courage has deserted you, then Ithilweil and myself will see this thing through.’

‘Are you saying this wench has more stomach than I do?’ Ulgrin growled. Before the dwarf could continue his tirade, the person in question span around in her saddle, looking back down the road they had been travelling upon. Ithilweil’s eyes scanned the darkness, her ears listening to the sounds of night. Brunner and Ulgrin both became silent, watching the elf with keen interest.

‘What do you see?’ Brunner asked at last, his pistol in his hand.

‘Nothing,’ Ithilweil admitted. ‘But I heard something, a rider, some distance away. And there is a foul scent on the wind.’ She looked straight into the bounty hunter’s face. ‘A smell of death.’

‘The vampire,’ Ulgrin groaned. ‘We can’t fight a dragon and a mad wizard and a vampire!’ he exclaimed, ticking each adversary off on his fingers.

‘No, we can’t,’ agreed Brunner, dropping back down to the surface of the road. He strode over to his packhorse and removed a torch from one of the sacks fixed to its harness. ‘So why don’t we see if we can’t persuade our friend back there to join our side.’

Sir Corbus strode out from the night like some nightmare visitation. The vampire was, if anything, even more foul in appearance than he had been when he had attacked the bounty hunters’ camp. The monster’s face was still scarred and mangled from the salt Brunner had cast into it and the bullet that had broken its jaw. Great gaping holes in the monster’s flesh showed where carrion crows had been at work and the putrid ruin of the vampire’s destroyed eye was missing entirely now, leaving his socket an empty pit. The vampire knight led a tired-looking draft horse, a hastily secured replacement for the animal he had lost following his fall from the cliff.

Brunner stood his ground in the centre of the roadway, waiting for the vampire. In one hand he held a lit torch, the other was closed about a clay jar filled with lamp oil. Some legends held that vampires could be destroyed by fire. The bounty hunter earnestly hoped that Corbus had heard the same legends.

Ithilweil and Ulgrin were hidden behind the trees. The elf had slipped into the trance-like state that characterised her enchantments, already working to disorient the vampire’s mind with her spellcraft. Beside her, Ulgrin stared down the barrel of his thunderer, a double charge of powder and an extra load of shot crammed down its barrel. The dwarf was determined that Corbus would not shrug off his next shot so easily.

The vampire glared about him, his broken face twisting into a sneer as his unnatural vision easily spotted the dwarf and elf hiding off the road. Then the Blood Dragon turned his attention back to the man facing him. The wolf-like fangs glistened in the flickering light cast by Brunner’s torch.

‘I had expected you to keep on running like the craven cur you are,’ Corbus hissed. ‘This will make things much easier.’

‘I wanted to speak with you,’ Brunner told the monster. ‘I have a proposition to discuss.’

‘Keep your lies to yourself!’ the vampire snarled. ‘I’ve already had a taste of your treachery!’ Corbus waved an armoured hand before the ruin of his face. ‘Nothing you have to say will keep me from my vengeance!’

‘Then revenge means more to you than finding the dragon?’ Brunner asked. It was a dangerous gamble, to weigh this creature’s fury and hate against his need for drinking the blood of a dragon and purging himself of the curse that ran through his polluted veins. But, as the vampire heard his words, Brunner could see the indecision shining out from his eye, see some of the ferocity drain from the vampire’s body. Good, the bounty hunter thought, I have his interest.

‘I can find the man who carries the Fell Fang on my own,’ Corbus growled. ‘I don’t need you.’

‘But you do,’ Brunner corrected him. ‘The man who stole the Fell Fang isn’t alone. There are others with him.’

‘One or twenty, no man can stand against me!’ the vampire knight boasted.

Given the horrendous toll he had taken from Marimund’s enemies in Mousillon, Brunner was somewhat inclined to give Corbus the benefit of the doubt.

‘One of them is a wizard,’ the bounty hunter informed Corbus. This seemed to deflate a bit of the vampire’s self-assurance. Even a creature like him was ill-at-ease around sorcerers and had a healthy dread of the unnatural powers such men could call upon.

‘How can I trust you to honour any truce we make?’ Corbus demanded, his voice dripping with suspicion.

‘Because I have no desire to face a wizard either,’ Brunner confessed. ‘And he has allies now. I’d rather balance the scales a bit more in my favour.’

The bounty hunter could see the vampire considering his proposal. ‘All I want is the bandit; the dragon is your affair,’ Brunner told Corbus. ‘If the wizard wins out, then neither of us will get what he wants.’

‘There is still a score to settle between you and I,’ the vampire warned.

‘It can wait until the wizard is dead,’ Brunner promised, his tone as menacing as that of the vampire.

Corbus considered his words, then nodded his head.

‘You have my oath,’ Corbus told him. ‘Until the wizard is dead,’ he added.

Even with the vampire’s oath, Brunner maintained his caution. ‘They are heading for the Massif Orcal,’ Brunner informed Corbus. ‘They are sticking to the main road, but there are other paths I know of that might allow us to reach the mountains before them.’

The vampire nodded his head. ‘Then I shall continue to follow your trail,’ he said.

Corbus turned his horse around, walking the animal back into the darkness. ‘I shall meet with you an hour after sunset until our agreement has run its course,’ the Blood Dragon stated. ‘Look for me in the night.’

Brunner kept his eyes fixed on the vampire’s back as the creature withdrew. His every instinct cried out for him to destroy the foul, loathsome creature, to oppose it with every ounce of his strength. But the bounty hunter had learned long ago to subdue his instincts. As long as the monster was useful, he would continue to make use of it.

The sound of Ithilweil and Ulgrin emerging from their hiding places caused Brunner to turn.

‘I still say that this is a dangerous thing you contemplate,’ Ithilweil told the bounty hunter. ‘Corbus is determined to kill you. A creature like that does not change its ways.’

‘Yes,’ Brunner agreed, ‘but at least our intention to kill each other is out in the open. No surprises there. Better than watching our backs all the way to the mountains waiting for him to strike.’

Ulgrin began unloading his rifle, dumping the powder onto an old blanket so he could return the explosive to his powder horn. The dwarf looked up from his labour. ‘Just so long as that bloodsucker knows I’m not splitting the reward with him!’

Sir Thierswind removed his helmet, staring with thinly disguised anxiety at the masses of craggy rock looming up on every side. The Massif Orcal was a barren, desolate place, a blighted region almost devoid of life. Scraggly pines clung to some of the upper heights, and equally sickly-looking brambles crept about the lower slopes, vainly trying to wrest moisture from the thin layer of soil that powdered the rocks. This was a miserable region, shunned by the men of Bretonnia. There was no game to be hunted here, no mineral wealth to be wrested from the mountains, no fertile land to claim and build upon. Only orcs and goblins called this place home, foul remnants of the once great hordes that had been scoured from the lands of Bretonnia during the founding of the kingdom. The ruined battlements of old watchtowers and keeps built long ago to guard against the threat of greenskins sometimes loomed into view, slowly crumbling away upon some distant hilltop, forlorn reminders of a time when the goblins could still sometimes muster great armies to despoil the lands of Quenelles and Bastonne. Indeed, the path upon which the wizard led his allies was too even and regular to be any accident. Thierswind guessed that they travelled upon the remains of an old road built to facilitate the movement of troops between the watchtowers.

There had been no sign of life since entering the mountains. Not a bird or beast made its appearance known to the riders; the only sound that disturbed the silence was the ever present clop of their horses’ hooves. Thierswind would almost have welcomed the shrill war cry of a goblin or the bull-like bellow of an orc, but whatever had frightened the animals seemed to have likewise kept the greenskins in their caves.

It was growing dark once more when Thierswind noticed the smell – the thick, cloying, acrid musk that permeated the air. It was the same smell that had clung to the lands the dragon had despoiled, the scent of the old wyrm’s scaly body.

Rudol looked over at the knight, reading the apprehension in the warrior’s face. ‘Yes, it’s close now,’ he told him. ‘Ready your torches,’ Rudol called to the other soldiers. ‘We ride until we find the wyrm!’ The wizard’s words did little to encourage the men, who grumbled fearfully but made no move to obey. The brief flash of energy crackling within Rudol’s eyes, however, lent the men-at-arms a certain eagerness and vigour in producing flaming brands to light their way. None of them had forgotten the ghastly and unnatural death of the bandit Hubolt.

They rode onwards for several hours, following the narrow road as it wound its way between the jagged rocks, through the wind-swept valleys that slithered in the shadows of the mountains. With every step, the unease of man and beast alike began to build. Men muttered to themselves, holding holy icons close to their hearts. Horses snorted and refused to advance until spurs were dug into their flanks. Only Rudol seemed oblivious to the growing aura of dread, his face lit by an expression of feverish anticipation that caused all who gazed upon him to cringe.

At last, the narrow road opened into a broader expanse. Thierswind could see similar roads emerging from several other valleys to merge before a stretch of land as flat and featureless as a tabletop. The flat stretch was bordered on three sides by craggy mountains, and on the fourth by a deep chasm nearly a hundred yards wide. Beyond the chasm, the road continued, rising across a small hill and disappearing over its top. The chasm itself was spanned by a narrow bridge, just wide enough for two horsemen to ride across side by side. Thierswind knew that no human hand had ever built the span. It was too delicate, too wisp-like, to have been crafted by the same race that had produced the ponderous castles and fortresses of Bretonnia. The knight had seen the bridge leading into the city of Parravon, which was reputed to have been built by elves, and the span he now gazed upon reminded him of that one.

‘Across the bridge,’ Rudol said. ‘What we are looking for is on the other side.’ Given the degree to which the musky stench of the dragon had increased, Thierswind was inclined to believe the wizard’s statement. Rudol looked over to the man-at-arms holding the reins of Gobineau’s horse. The wizard leaned close, sneering into the outlaw’s face.

‘Perhaps there is something you’d like to say?’ Rudol asked. Gobineau shook his head, eyes wide with fear. The wizard withdrew. ‘Keep him close,’ he ordered the soldier. ‘I want him near me at all times.’

The passage across the bridge was an especially unpleasant one. The drop was prodigious. One of the soldiers had flung his torch into the abyss to test its depth and the light had been a long time in reaching the bottom. Thierswind imagined that its end might lie at the very roots of the world. It was a possibility the knight did not like to dwell upon. He was thankful when Mannsleib rose into the night sky, the pale moon bathing the ruinous landscape in soft silver light, allowing him to make out the road ahead in greater detail. He could already see Rudol and the foremost of the men-at-arms on the far side. The wizard was pointing angrily back the way they had come. Thierswind looked back over his shoulder, surprised to see four riders emerging from one of the valleys. The knight cursed: whatever mischief the newcomers might portend, there was nothing he could do about it until he gained the other side, the bridge being far too narrow to turn around on.

The knight was nearly the last of his party to reach the far side. Looking back across the chasm, Thierswind could see that the newcomers were already on the bridge and making their way across. He looked over at Rudol. The man’s face was twisted into an angry scowl.

‘The bounty hunter thinks to meddle in my affairs again!’ Rudol spat. His stormy eyes fixed upon Thierswind’s. ‘Cut that scum down!’ the wizard ordered. Thierswind nodded, removing his great helm from where it was tied to his saddle and settling it over his head.

The prospect of battle, far from agitating the knight, had a profoundly calming effect. Dragons, wizards and hoary old artefacts were things beyond Thierswind’s understanding. Sharp steel and spilled blood were arenas of knowledge in which he was far more comfortable. He would dismiss the unease, the doubt and fear that had been plaguing him with the blood of these interlopers, whoever they were.

Thierswind led his soldiers back onto the bridge, moving with such haste as they dared muster to meet their foes. The knight had always found combat to be an invigorating experience, a purifying ritual that purged soul and mind. He felt his confidence swell. Was he not a champion of Augustine de Chegney, the most feared lord in the Grey Mountains? Had he not been tried by the fires of battle time and again and always emerged victorious? When he returned from dealing with this rabble, it would be time to remind Rudol that a wizard was just as human as anyone else and that two feet of steel would spill his guts like any other man.

Brunner watched the soldiers return to the bridge, galloping across the narrow span with as much speed as they dared. The bounty hunter’s fist closed about the hilt of Drakesmalice, his knuckles whitening beneath his gloves. He recognised the colours these men wore, the heraldry that belonged to Viscount Augustine de Chegney. More, he recognised the bull-horned helm of the knight riding at the forefront of the soldiers. Sir Thierswind. It had been at the end of another life that Brunner had last laid eyes on the knight. Now it was time to settle that score and send de Chegney’s dog to yap at the gates of Morr’s dark realm.

Beside him, the vampire knight Sir Corbus grinned with the ghastly ruin of his face. For the vampire, battle was the only thing left of his former life, the only way he could experience again what it was like to truly be alive. Brunner could sense the eagerness boiling within the monster as Corbus drew his sword.

‘The knight is mine,’ Brunner cautioned the vampire. Corbus gave the bounty hunter a savage look. ‘Consider it a term to our agreement,’ the bounty hunter added in a voice too chill to brook argument. Perhaps there was still enough humanity left within the vampire to remember what it was like to feel honest human hate.

Corbus gave Brunner a grim nod, then put the spurs to his steed, charging forward at a reckless speed. Brunner hissed a command into Fiend’s ear, urging his own horse to keep pace with the vampire.

Behind them, Ithilweil and Ulgrin hung back, understanding that any adversaries who made it past Brunner and Corbus would be their problem.

Corbus was the first to reach their enemies. The vampire’s blade flashed in the moonlight as the monster drove it with hideous force through the neck of his enemy’s horse, slashing deep into the animal’s flesh and removing the hand gripping its reins. The fury of the stroke caused the dying animal to topple, pitching over the side of the bridge and carrying its screaming rider into the abyss. The vampire did not delay for even a second in considering his enemy’s death, but leapt from his saddle, crashing down upon the stonework of the span. Corbus snarled up at the approaching riders, licking blood from the slaughtered horse from his face and hands. The riders paused in their approach, horrified by the ghastly sight. Even Brunner hesitated, seeing first hand how very close the vampire had been to losing control of his bloodlust during their long ride through the Massif Orcal. Now the monster acted without restraint, glorying in his bloodthirsty assault.

One attacker was not as timid about fighting the vampire, however, and Brunner urged Fiend forward to block the man’s attack. If anyone on the bridge would cross swords with Thierswind, it would be Brunner. Drakesmalice crashed against Thierswind’s sword of blackened steel, a metal cry not heard for many years. The knight tried to batter away the bounty hunter’s stroke, but found that the angle of his attack was ill-suited to such a parry.

‘You should have hunted easier prey,’ Thierswind snarled. ‘This one belongs to the viscount.’ The knight slashed down at Brunner, but found Drakesmalice once again between his blow and his target.

‘Leave it to de Chegney to send a jackal like yourself to steal another man’s property,’ the bounty hunter snarled back. He returned Thierswind’s attack with one of his own, the edge of Drakesmalice deflected by the knight’s thick armour.

Thierswind snorted disdainfully at the bounty hunter. ‘You face your death, scavenger. I’ve put fifty men in their graves, one more will not trouble me.’

‘How many of those were women and children?’ Brunner retorted, his blade lashing out once more. Thierswind allowed it to glance from his vambrace, snarling back at his antagonist. Good, the bounty hunter thought. Puncture that pompous arrogance of yours and you throw all your skill and training right out the window. Nice to see that some things never change.

Rudol watched as the battle on the bridge unfolded. Brunner seemed to have picked up a rather motley group of allies. The two hanging back were a dwarf and some woman, one with more than a little touch of the power about her. The armoured warrior who had ridden forward with Brunner was amazing, a whirling engine of slaughter and destruction. Rudol had seen men work some incredible feats when gripped by the juice of Crimson Shade, but the bounty hunter’s ally put even such impressive moments of brutality to shame. His first stroke had nearly decapitated a horse, and since then he had accounted for another of Thierswind’s men, ripping the soldier from his saddle and tearing out his throat with his teeth. Thierswind himself was beset by the bounty hunter, seemingly unable to deal the man a deciding blow while Brunner managed to land minor strikes against the knight’s legs and arms. It was an old trick that the knight should have recognised, a tactic designed to sap the strength from his limbs, but Thierswind seemed lost in some mindless frenzy.

Rudol smiled. It was about time he ended the show anyway. The outcome of the battle was inconsequential, no one would be leaving the bridge alive in any event. The outcast celestial wizard began to draw the power into his body, feeling the magic energy writhing through his veins. Yes, indeed, it was time to end this.

‘Get a firm grip on his horse,’ Rudol ordered the only soldier remaining on his side of the chasm. The man-at-arms dutifully strengthened his hold on the reins of Gobineau’s animal. Then the wizard raised a claw-like hand, gesturing toward the bridge. In response to the words of power whispering from his mouth, a fierce gale howled across the span. Rudol watched as men and beasts struggled against the gale, fighting to retain their footing upon the narrow strip of stonework. The first to fail in the struggle was one of Thierswind’s men. Toppling from his saddle, the wretch fell screaming into the chasm, his cry strangely distorted by the shrieking tempest. The others seemed to have better sense, dismounting as the wind began to grow. Rudol could see the animals racing for the far side of the span, abandoning their masters to the sorcerous storm. One of the animals crashed against the woman he had noticed earlier, causing them both to fall onto the edge of the bridge. Inhumanly nimble, the woman just managed to grab hold of the horse’s reins as she was pushed off the bridge, hanging above the abyss. A valiant effort, but it would not avail her. The storm was going to grow much worse before it expended itself.

The wizard looked aside at his remaining lackey and his prisoner. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘There is nothing more to be done here, and much to be done on the other side of the hill.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

The unnatural wind continued to howl across the ancient bridge. Brunner had forsaken the saddle to crouch against the stonework, presenting the clawing tempest the smallest target. Through eyes tearing with the effort of staying open under the snapping gale, the bounty hunter took stock of his situation. The only horse he could see still on the bridge was one a dozen yards behind him, lying prone upon its side. The other animals were even now galloping away into the shelter of the narrow valleys. Brunner could see Ulgrin Baleaxe crouched low in the saddle of his mule, trying vainly to turn the frightened animal about before dwarf and steed vanished down one of the valleys. On the bridge itself, he could see the bodies of two of Thierswind’s men slowly being rolled by the gale, the broken soldiers sliding inexorably toward the edge of the span. Of their killer, there was no sign. The vampire knight Sir Corbus had vanished as completely as dew on a warm summer’s morn.

One other form stirred upon the bridge, however. Brunner could see the armoured shape of Sir Thierswind struggling to his feet. So intent upon punishing the bounty hunter for his caustic insults was the arrogant knight that he tempted even the sorcerous windstorm called down by Rudol’s foul magic. The steel-clad warrior swayed unsteadily as the wind clutched at him, but, with slow, faltering steps, he began to make his way forward.

Brunner watched Thierswind advance, drawing his pistol as the knight drew closer. The knight paused for an instant as he noted the motion, then uttered a snarl of contempt, raising his sword and striding forward once more.

Firearms were rare in Bretonnia, and its warrior nobility despised them as being unworthy of their profession even more so than the longbow. Brunner had profited greatly in the past by the lack of knowledge Bretonnians often displayed toward foreign weapons. No doubt Thierswind reasoned that a gun was no different from a bow, that its shot would be cast aside by the tremendous wind just as an archer’s arrow would be diverted from its mark. The bounty hunter smiled. Over a long distance, the knight’s assumption might have proved correct, but with every step he took toward his enemy, the chances of the bullet going astray diminished considerably.

Thierswind glared down at Brunner, the knight’s body swaying in the gale. He lifted his blade, intending to end the life of this miserable commoner vermin that had dared to insult his honour and that of his lord. He could see the bounty killer lifting his crude pistol and snorted contemptuously. If the man expected him to show fear before that toy of his, then he was sorely mistaken. If he’d had any confidence that the weapon could have stopped the knight, he would have used it long before now. Thierswind took another tottering step forward and prepared to deal the coup de grâce to his prone adversary.

The familiar crack and roar of the pistol was lost in the howling gale. The acrid black smoke of the discharge was blown back into Brunner’s face, forcing him to shut his eyes against the foul-smelling smog. When he opened them again, Thierswind had slumped to his knees, hands clutching at the gory wound smoking at the centre of his belly. The knight was no longer able to resist the wind, but fell to his side, sliding remorselessly toward the edge. Desperately, he clutched at the lip of the span with one hand while the other tried to hold his injury closed. Brunner slowly rose to his own feet, his body buffeted by the clawing tempest. Step by careful step, the bounty hunter made his way to the knight’s side. He lifted Drakesmalice, displaying it to the wounded knight, waiting until he saw Thierswind’s eyes widen with recognition.

‘When you get to the gates of Morr,’ Brunner shouted above the shrieking wind, ‘be sure to prepare a place for your master!’ With a savage downward stroke, he brought the edge of Drakesmalice slashing into Thierswind’s hand. Such was the strength of the blow that the armoured digits were severed, tumbling away over the edge of the chasm. Thierswind screamed in horror as he lost his grip and his body began to slowly slide across the bridge once more. The sound of the doomed knight begging the bounty hunter to save him struggled to oppose the howling winds and the cold hate that filled the eyes of the bounty hunter. In the past, pleas for mercy had gone unheard by Thierswind, now his own fell upon deaf ears.

Brunner sank down to his knees, his body swaying and rocking in the wind and watched as Thierswind at last fell into the abyss, his final scream drowned out in the shrieking gale.

The windstorm at last dissipated and Brunner rose to his feet. Except for the fallen horse he had noticed earlier, the bridge had been cleared by the wizard’s magic. Brunner turned his eyes toward the far side of the chasm. It was fortunate indeed that Rudol had not tarried to ensure the potency of his sorcery. The bounty hunter was determined that the wizard would not get the chance to try again.

Just as he began to sprint toward the far side, a cry sounded from behind him. Brunner turned and raced to the source of the sound. He leaned over the crippled horse and gazed down into the chasm. Below, the reins of the animal wrapped about her arm, Ithilweil swayed in the lingering breeze. The elf’s face was even paler than usual, and the arm wrapped within the coils of the leather reins was twisted, either broken or dislodged from its socket by the sorcerous gale. Brunner returned Drakesmalice to its sheath and began to slowly, carefully pull Ithilweil upward. The elf did not cry out, but Brunner saw her face contort with pain as pressure was put on her damaged arm. Yet once she was safely back on the bridge, her thoughts were not concerned with her own injuries.

‘The wizard,’ she gasped as Brunner set her down against the fallen horse. ‘Did you get him?’

Brunner shook his head. ‘No, he escaped over the hill just after the storm started,’ he told her. ‘Ulgrin’s mule got away from him, took him back into the valley. I don’t know what happened to Corbus.’

Ithilweil seemed to digest this information for a moment, then turned her penetrating eyes back on Brunner. ‘You must take me to the wizard. We have to stop him before it is too late.’ She reached upward with her uninjured arm. Brunner accepted it and lifted her to her feet, letting her lean on him for support.

‘How do you know it isn’t too late already?’ the bounty hunter cautioned her. The elf’s answer was a grim one.

‘Because we are still alive.’

The wizard stood in the bowl-like depression that lay sprawled beyond the hill, glorying at the awesome sight lying before him. He had seen the dragon from a distance and so knew what to expect in theory. But he had failed to appreciate the true enormity of the creature, the immense power that emanated from its body even in sleep. The crimson scales were as thick as armour plate, the claws that tipped each of the monster’s feet looked capable of tearing apart mountains. Rudol stared intently at the reptilian face, the long snout with its rows of jagged fangs, the leathery lids concealing the wyrm’s ancient eyes. A sound like a bellows rasped through the reptile’s flared nostrils as the dragon slumbered.

Rudol looked down at the crescent of ivory clutched in his hand. The fools in Altdorf would regret their mistake. He would make them pay, level their puerile institution and cast their charred corpses into an open pit while the entire city watched. He would show them who was the great wizard and who was the frightened fool. Rudol turned his eyes back toward his remaining companions: Gobineau and the soldier he’d kept to guard the man.

‘You stand at the crossroads of history,’ Rudol told them. ‘You stand witness to the moment when Rudol claims his destiny!’ The wizard’s triumphant cackle was diminished as he saw the powerful warrior in the crimson armour emerge from the rocks behind Gobineau.

Rudol’s confidence began to waver as he recalled the ferocious power the knight had displayed when butchering Thierswind’s men. With a speed that was almost beyond belief, the vampire sprung forward, falling upon the last soldier like a lion pouncing upon a goat. The doomed man managed a single cry of horror as the vampire gorged himself on the soldier’s blood.

Rudol turned, lifting the Fell Fang to his lips. Whatever unholy force gave such strength and ferocity to the red knight, it was about to be consumed by an even greater power.

Ithilweil and Brunner rounded the hill just in time to see Corbus pounce upon Rudol’s sole surviving guard. As the vampire attacked, Brunner could see Gobineau running for the far side of the bowl-like depression, striving to put as much ground between himself and the vampire as possible. Then the bounty hunter’s attention became riveted on the immense reptilian shape sprawled about the base of the depression. While he watched, the dragon’s claws began to flex, the steady breathing became uneven, and Malok began to stir.

Ithilweil stabbed a slender finger at the black-cloaked source of the dragon’s discomfort. Rudol had lifted the Fell Fang to his lips, urging Malok from his slumber.

‘You must stop him!’ the elf shouted needlessly.

Brunner cast one last look at the fleeing Gobineau, then began racing toward the wizard, Drakesmalice clutched in his hand. Ithilweil watched the bounty hunter hasten to put an end to Rudol’s magic, then forced herself to enter the trance-like state that would allow her own magic to play its part in the conflict. It was madness, what she was contemplating, even the most powerful mages in Ulthuan would have found what she was going to try difficult, if not impossible. To try and influence the will of a dragon, to disorient and confuse a mind so ancient, was a thing on such a scale as she had never dared imagine before. But she also knew that if she failed, then all of them would be dead in a matter of seconds.

Rudol laughed as he watched Malok stir, removing the Fell Fang from his lips and shouting triumphantly at the mammoth beast. ‘Yes! Yes! Awaken my pet! Hear your master’s call!’ The massive shape contorted its body in a long, serpentine stretch, then swung its head around to face the wizard. The leathery eyelids slid open, the huge yellow orbs behind them staring intently at the cackling conjurer. The dragon’s long tongue slid from between its jaws, tasting the air and the scent of the sorcerer. Rudol gloried in the moment as the dragon became aware of its new master. Then he turned around, glaring back at the hill. The red knight had cast aside the carcass of the soldier and was now rushing down the hill, his pale face streaked in blood. Behind him, Rudol could also see the bounty hunter, Brunner, likewise charging down the hill. Still further distant was the slender figure of the young woman from the bridge, wisps of magical power billowing about her as she worked some spell of her own.

The wizard’s lip curled in contempt. ‘Kill them, Malok!’ he cried. ‘Kill! Kill! Kill them all!’ His voice swelled with the fury and outrage that filled him. These vermin thought to come between himself and his destiny; now they would become the first victims of his new power.

Ahead of him, Brunner could see the mammoth reptile begin to move, its head swinging about to regard Rudol with serpentine eyes. The bounty hunter could feel terror gnaw at his stomach as he watched Malok sluggishly stir into motion, but another emotion overwhelmed his fear and lent a new speed to his legs. His mind became clouded with darkling thoughts of the future. His eyes shifted their focus from Malok to the red-armoured Sir Corbus, the knight’s sword clenched in his mailed fist. During the long nights riding toward the Massif Orcal, the vampire had repeated over and again his intentions, the dream that relentlessly drove him onward: to drink the dragon’s blood and purge his body of the loathsome thirst that plagued him.

Brunner redoubled his efforts, lunging toward the vampire. Drakesmalice flashed toward the knight’s back, striking the monster in the small of his back. It was a telling stroke, but the sturdy armour worn by Corbus held and instead of sinking into undead flesh, Brunner’s sword merely scraped across the steel plates. Corbus spun about, dropping to his haunches, his broken face snarling up at the bounty hunter like some feral beast.

‘He’s no good to me dead,’ Brunner hissed at Corbus, his longsword slashing at the vampire’s face.

Corbus raised his own blade, blocking the bounty hunter’s blow.

‘Treacherous maggot!’ the vampire roared as he repelled Brunner’s attack.

‘My word is only as good as who I give it to,’ the bounty hunter responded. The mangled visage of Corbus seemed to glow with the fury boiling up within him. But the vampire was not so lost to his anger that he did not notice Brunner’s other hand swinging around. With incredible speed, the undead knight sprang backwards, beyond the cloud of salt the bounty hunter hurled at him.

Corbus hissed at his enemy, every muscle in his body coiling for the next attack. The bounty hunter had used his last trick, now he would become the last victim of the unholy thirst raging through the vampire’s veins, the last supper before Corbus claimed his redemption. He tensed his body, like a tiger preparing to pounce.

Just as the vampire leaped, a gigantic crimson claw smashed into the ground before him, throwing Corbus back as the earth exploded beneath the dragon’s strength. Brunner leapt from beneath the dragon’s other claw as the monster brought its leg crashing down upon him. Broken fragments of rock pelted the bounty hunter as he rolled away from the reptile’s assault.

Malok glared down at the bounty hunter, his yellow eyes narrowing with annoyance as he saw his prey elude his attack. With a growl, Malok slashed out at the man once more, his claws cutting across the ground like steel rakes, digging deep furrows in the rocky terrain. Once again, Brunner managed to leap from the path of the dragon’s assault.

Malok continued to savage the ground as he alternately slashed at Brunner and Corbus, always missing his intended prey. Rocks exploded beneath the dragon’s crushing blows, the earth trembled beneath the pounding force of his attacks. There was no doubting the deadly strength of those claws, and it would only take a single misstep to be smashed into oblivion beneath them. Yet it also seemed to Brunner that Malok’s attacks were somehow clumsy, as though the dragon were not able to focus completely upon his prey. He risked a look back up the hillside, seeing Ithilweil standing near its top, as still as a statue. That he had not already been crushed beneath one of Malok’s massive claws was due to her subtle magic disordering the dragon’s mind, of this he was certain.

Brunner dodged another of Malok’s strikes, jumping back as the ground where he had been standing exploded into grey dust. Their section of the depression’s floor was rapidly becoming choked with rock dust, a grey curtain that was beginning to obscure vision. If it was difficult to avoid the dragon’s attacks now, the bounty hunter did not even want to consider how much worse it would be when he could no longer see them coming.

The sound of rattling armour caused Brunner to spin about. The dark figure of Sir Corbus emerged from the clouds of dust, his bloodstained armour now grey from the dust clinging to it. The vampire’s mangled face twisted into an evil leer and with an animalistic snarl, he charged at the man who had broken faith with him.

Before Corbus could reach his prey, Malok’s claw slashed downward, crushing the vampire beneath it. With his attention fixed upon Brunner, Corbus never saw the blow that hammered him into the rocky earth. Malok lifted his scaly paw from the crater he had pounded into the ground. Corbus hung from one of the black-tipped claws, the vampire’s belly impaled upon the talon, the bright red blood of his recent victims spilling from the grotesque wound. Malok shook his claw, like a man wiping something from his finger, flinging the broken vampire across the depression as though he were nothing more than a crushed insect.

‘Yes, Malok!’ Rudol shouted, his voice cracking with the delirious ecstasy filling him. No one would stand against him now. ‘Destroy the other one, Malok! Destroy Brunner!’

Malok’s reptilian head swung around once more, the snake-like eyes gazing down upon the black-garbed wizard. The dragon had almost forgotten this little shouting rat. But now he had drawn the dragon’s focus back to him. Malok glared at Rudol, a low growl rumbling from his chest.

‘Malok, do as I bid you!’ Rudol roared at the dragon. ‘Kill the bounty hunter!’ The wizard felt anger well up within him when the dragon did not move. ‘I am your master, do as I command!’ To emphasise his authority, Rudol held out the Fell Fang that his gigantic slave might know the uselessness of resisting his commands.

The dragon’s head drew back, the scaly mouth opening in a hiss of hatred and disgust. Malok recognised the ancient talisman, remembered the long years he had suffered the elves to dictate where and what he would destroy. But this fool had no such power over him as the long dead elf prince who had once tried to control him. Nor would the wizard ever have the chance to gain such knowledge.

Malok hissed down at the threatening wizard and for the first time, doubt crept into Rudol’s eyes, quickly followed by a horror that rose from the very depths of the man’s soul. Rudol waved the Fell Fang before him, as though it were a protective charm. ‘Malok, do as I say! I am your master!’ Rudol cried, but now his shouts were those of desperation, not command.

The dragon drew back then swatted the wizard. The enormous scaly paw struck Rudol with the force of a lightning bolt. The wizard’s enchanted cloak flashed for a moment, then faded into dull black, its magic unable to deflect an attack of such magnitude. Like a broken rag doll, Rudol was flung aside, every bone in his body cracked and splintered by the dragon’s assault. His corpse struck the rocky side of the depression, then crumpled against the ground like a wilted weed.

Malok threw back his head, roaring with triumph. The maggot who had disturbed his sleep was no more, the vermin who thought to enslave him was destroyed. The dragon’s roar shook the craggy mountains that surrounded the depression, causing tiny rockslides to trickle down their gnarled faces.

The dragon exulted in his victory for only a moment, then swung his head downward once more. There had been others here who had earned his wrath. Now they too would join the foolish wizard in annihilation.

Brunner watched as Malok hurled Rudol across the depression. In that instant, the bounty hunter could see the Fell Fang locked in the death grip the wizard’s hand had fastened about it. Cold ambition filled him, and the bounty hunter began to sprint across the depression, racing through the very shadow of Malok, intent on gaining Rudol’s body.

The dragon noticed the movement, once more glaring down at the bounty hunter. Brunner watched as Malok lifted one of his feet and slashed down at him like an angry cat swatting at a mouse it has grown weary of playing with. There was none of the clumsiness that had plagued the wyrm’s earlier assaults, only by the merest of margins did the bounty hunter escape from beneath the smashing blow, throwing himself flat against the ground just beyond the dragon’s strike. The earth behind him exploded, throwing up large chunks of rock that battered the bounty hunter’s body. Brunner felt a rib crack as one jagged rock smashed into his side.

The bounty hunter rolled painfully onto his back, fighting to block out the pain assailing him. His eyes glanced momentarily at the hilltop, and saw that Ithilweil had gone. Whatever sorcery she had worked upon Malok, the dragon was now free of her enchantment. Brunner looked back at the crimson-scaled monster, watching as death glared back at him.

Malok hissed as he gazed at the broken man, lowering his head and flicking out his tongue to taste the sweet smell of fear rising from his prey. All the crude beasts of the world knew fear when they stood in the shadow of death, and dragons had ever been the very incarnation of that shadow, the prophets of doom and destruction.

As Malok leaned closer, a battered figure leapt upon the dragon. With his armour ravaged and crumpled, with blood and the black filth that coursed through his veins continuing to drool from the gaping hole in his belly, Corbus lunged at the dragon. Even with his body crushed and mangled, the vampire’s inhuman strength and unholy desire spurred him onward. Corbus’s leap found him poised upon Malok’s shoulder. The undead knight lifted his sword high above his head, then sent it stabbing down into the blackened scar beneath him.

The dragon roared in pain as the vampire’s sword bit into him, twisting his head and shaking his body in a desperate effort to dislodge Corbus. The knight held firm, however, sinking against his sword, fastening his fangs about the broken flesh torn by his blade. Like some hideous tick, the vampire began to drink. Malok continued to roar, stomping about the depression in a maddened effort to remove the sucking parasite. At length, the dragon’s struggles met with success, one of the horns on his head striking the feeding vampire and ripping him free.

Corbus struck the ground hard, feeling his shoulder disintegrate against the rocky ground. But the vampire had little concern for such injuries, his mind focused on the fiery sensation surging through his diseased body. He could feel the dragon’s blood burning and gnawing at the corruption within him, feel it scouring the loathsome thirst from him. Never more would he feel the foul desire to feed, to fatten himself upon the blood of others. He would become a man once more. No, more than a man, for the strengths of the vampire would still be his, all of the power of the Blood Dragons and none of their weakness. He would be a god.

The vampire howled his rapture into the night, but the cry of victory was short-lived. Malok’s mammoth claw smashed into Corbus, crushing him back into the earth and pinning him beneath it. The dragon glared down at the trapped vampire, then drew back his head. Since becoming a vampire, Corbus had forgotten what the sensation of fear was like, but the undead monster remembered it now. His remaining eye widened with horror as Malok’s head shot downward once more, jaws agape. Orange flame exploded from the reptile’s mouth, engulfing its foot and the monster pinned beneath it. The scales of Malok’s paw resisted the dragon’s flame, the vampire trapped beneath it did not. Corbus shrieked as he was consumed, as his body was annihilated by the dragon’s breath, reduced to ash in the batting of an eye.

Slowly, painfully, Brunner tried to crawl away. He knew it was a vain struggle, but perhaps Corbus would distract the dragon long enough for him to effect some manner of escape. The sudden blast of heat that washed over the bounty hunter as Malok expelled his fiery rage told him that whatever distraction Corbus might have presented, the vampire would be one no longer. Brunner looked back as Malok lifted his paw from the blackened crater that marked the grave of the vampire. The dragon’s horned head swung around to stare at him, the reptile’s yellow eyes narrowing as they fixed upon him. With tremendous strides that caused the ground to shudder, Malok stalked toward the wounded man.

Then, abruptly, the monster froze, Malok’s eyes becoming unfocused, almost dazed. Brunner could see the dragon’s muscles twitching beneath his scaly hide. The bounty hunter also became aware of a light, a fiery brilliance emanating from where Rudol’s body had fallen.

Ithilweil was standing above the wizard’s broken remains, the Fell Fang clutched in her hands. Waves of heat and light were pulsing from her body as she blew into the hollow crescent of ivory, a strange and ghostly melody rising from the ancient artefact. Brunner watched in morbid fascination as the elf strove to increase the pitch of the haunting music, as she blew ever more deeply and forcefully into the Fang. As she did so, the waves of heat boiling from her increased as well and the bounty hunter could see her clothing and hair begin to catch flame, as though ignited by a fire emanating from within her. The bounty hunter recalled the words she had spoken long ago, warning him that only the strongest of wills could effectively use the Fell Fang, that any lesser spirit trying to employ it would be destroyed, consumed by the very power they tried to wield.

Brunner began to crawl toward the elf enchantress, knowing as he did so that he would be too late. Ithilweil’s clothes had burned away completely now, exposing a body that had become blackened and charred. Brunner could see the scaly skin that now clothed the woman split, could see tiny wisps of fire and smoke rising from the cracks in her flesh. The magical energies the elf was drawing upon were consuming her as surely as a lamp consumed oil.

Above him, the transfixed bulk of Malok stirred. The dragon uttered a low growl, then unfurled his wings. The bounty hunter covered his head as the dragon fanned the air with his mighty pinions and rose into the darkened sky. The immense crimson shape rose into the night, circling the small depression once before turning, flying off towards the south. Brunner watched the dragon depart and as Malok faded from view, so too did the awful heat and light pulsating from Ithilweil. The bounty hunter saw her smoking body collapse to the ground, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Brunner forced himself to his feet, ignoring the pain in his side and ran to the fallen enchantress.

She was no longer recognisable as the beautiful elf woman who had journeyed with the bounty hunter from the cursed city of Mousillon. Her skin was burnt and blackened, and her eyes had had all the life and vision seared from them by the intense heat of the energies she had tried to command. Only the faintest spark of life clung to the ruin of her body.

As Brunner reached her side, Ithilweil spoke to him. ‘I had to use the Fang,’ she gasped. ‘It was the only thing left to do. I knew the rituals, the proper way to make it work.’ She groped desperately at Brunner’s hand, her blind eyes seeing only darkness. Brunner reached down and gently took her charred hand in his own. ‘I knew it would destroy me,’ she said. ‘I knew that I was not strong enough.’

‘But you were,’ Brunner told her. ‘The dragon is gone.’

The ruin of Ithilweil’s once beautiful face twisted into a thin smile. ‘All I did was to heighten a desire that was already within Malok’s mind. The dragon wanted to return to his home, and that is where I sent him. If the desire had not already been there, I could not have placed it there.’ A shudder shook the dying woman and her grip upon Brunner’s hand tightened. ‘It has consumed me, Brunner. I had to feed my soul into the Fell Fang, had to use my life to fuel its power, to overcome Malok’s will.’ Ithilweil shuddered again, then lifted her other hand. Brunner could see the Fell Fang, unmarred amid the burned flesh. The elf held the artefact out to the bounty hunter.

‘I cannot destroy it now,’ Ithilweil told him. ‘You must do it for me.’ The enchantress seemed to sense the doubt that flared up within the bounty hunter. ‘Don’t let your hate rule you Brunner, or it will destroy you. That is the lesson my people learned far too late. Your pain has taken enough from you, don’t let it take everything.’ The elf was gripped by another shuddering convulsion. ‘Promise me you will destroy the Fell Fang,’ she begged, her words fading into a whisper.

‘I will destroy it,’ Brunner told her as Ithilweil’s body grew slack, as her last breath sighed past her charred lips. The bounty hunter held onto her hand a moment longer, feeling the strength fade from her tortured flesh, then he rose to his feet, pausing to remove the Fell Fang from her slackened grasp.

Brunner stared at the carved ivory tooth, studying the runes and inscriptions crawling across its surface. He thought again of Malok, of the dragon’s sinister gaze and awful power, of a rain of fire and of castles falling into dust. Brunner’s fist tightened about the artefact and with a savage motion he thrust the fang beneath the loop of his belt.

‘I will destroy it,’ the bounty hunter told the uncaring night. ‘When I am through with it.’

Gobineau continued to make his way through the narrow, jagged valleys. The outlaw was under no illusions that his situation was desperate. Alone, lost within the goblin-infested Massif Orcal, his hands bound, the rogue decided that his situation was just about as bad as any he had ever faced. Still, he knew that things could have been much worse. He could still be back at the depression with Rudol and Corbus and the dragon Malok. None of them were creatures Gobineau cared to be near, much less all three at once. The roars and screams and rumblings sounding from behind him told the thief that flight had indeed been the wisest course to pursue. Let them kill each other; when it was all over there would be a decided drop in the number of Gobineau’s enemies.

As the bandit rounded a corner in the narrow fissure, he suddenly felt his breath flee his body as the solid mass of a steel axe slapped into his mid-section. Gobineau fell to his knees, wheezing with pain. Through tear-stained eyes, the outlaw watched as his attacker glared down at him.

‘Well, well, well,’ Ulgrin grinned. ‘This must be my lucky day. The notorious Gobineau, and all trussed up like a birthday present. I’ll have to remember to thank my ancestors for favouring me with good fortune.’

Gobineau opened his mouth to speak, but Ulgrin drove the flat of his axe into the man’s stomach again, spilling him to the ground.

‘Be a good boy and keep quiet,’ the dwarf told him. ‘We have a long ride ahead of us, and I intend to make it in record time. There’s a purse of gold waiting for me and a piece of old rope waiting for you when we get to Couronne. It would be a shame to waste them.’

Ulgrin Baleaxe kicked the outlaw until he regained his feet, then pushed him towards his mule. The dwarf hesitated a moment, glancing from one side to the other, then smiled again. No sign of Brunner. Ulgrin allowed himself to imagine his erstwhile partner resting in the belly of the dragon and his smile broadened. He was hardly going to split the reward with a dead man, was he? And if Brunner did turn out to still be among the living, well, he’d just have to hope he could catch up to Ulgrin before he reached the Bretonnian capital.

The dwarf started to whistle an old miner’s work song as his mind began to spend two thousand pieces of gold.

EPILOGUE

Elodore Pleasant quietly withdrew from his master’s presence, his head nodding vulture-like as he retreated back towards the heavy oak doors that loomed against the entryway. He had served the Viscount Augustine de Chegney long enough to read the volatile nobleman’s dark moods and knew when the man’s temper was about to explode. At such times, it was healthy to be as far away as possible.

The viscount sat upon his throne, scowling down at the object the messenger had brought him, fury and fear striving for mastery of his features. It had been several weeks since the wizard Rudol had come to him, fuelling his ambitions with wild tales of dragons and the power to command them. Since that time, there had been no word from the sorcerer and the soldiers de Chegney had sent with him. Then, Sir Thierswind’s horse had returned to the castle – riderless. Within one of the animal’s saddlebags had been found the object that was the cause of de Chegney’s ill humour.

It had been wrapped in the bloodstained black cloak Rudol had been wearing, a large flattened object roughly the size of a soup bowl. As soon as he laid eyes upon the leathery, crimson plate de Chegney knew what it was. Rumours had already reached him of a monster, a gigantic dragon ravaging the lands to the west, decimating entire companies of knights and leaving dozens of villages burning in its wake. At first the rumours had excited him, as he connected them to the wild tales Rudol had spun and he had seriously begun to believe the wizard might be able to deliver what he had promised. Now they filled him with dread.

The object was a reptilian scale, such as might be plucked from the hide of a snake, only far grander in size and toughness. That it had come from the dragon, de Chegney did not question for a moment. But it was the symbol carved into the tough leathery scale that caused fear to gnaw at the Bretonnian’s stony heart. De Chegney had not seen that sign in many years, but it was as familiar to him as his own coat-of-arms. It was a crude representation of a drake rampant, rendered in the stylised manner of the Empire. When de Chegney had last seen that symbol, it had been upon the coat-of-arms of his vanquished adversary, the Baron von Drakenburg.

He’d thought the baron long dead, worked to death beneath the hot desert sun by Arabyan slave masters. Such was the fate he had condemned his old enemy to in the aftermath of his victory. But as he stared down at the symbol carved into the dragon scale, de Chegney knew his enemy had survived. He could feel it in the very pit of his soul. The horse, the wizard’s cloak, and the scale were all part of a message: I live. I know what you were hunting. The power you sought is mine now and it will come for you.

De Chegney rose from his throne, letting the scale fall to the floor. The nobleman began to pace the empty expanse of his great hall, his footfalls echoing from the stone walls. He realised now what it must be like for the prisoners rotting within his dungeons, certain they were doomed to die but never knowing the hour when the executioner would call their name.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Age of Sigmar novels Overlords of the Iron Dragon and The Tainted Heart, the novella ‘Scion of the Storm’ in Hammers of Sigmar, the Warhammer novels Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague series. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer worlds.

An extract from Ghoulslayer.

Gotrek was snoring, attacking the night with brutal barks. Even asleep he was savage, hammering Maleneth’s skull with every snort. The sound rattled through the Slayer’s chest and shook the chain linking his ear to his nose. The brazier in his rune-axe was still smouldering, but the light had faded from his filthy muscles. He shifted, as though about to speak, let out a ripe belch and then lay still again. He had drunk for hours, downing ale like water, before finally collapsing next to an outhouse, surrounded by the corpses of brigands who had had the ill-conceived idea of trying to rob him. There was no dawn in this particular corner of Shyish, but even the endless gloom could not hide the rune buried in Gotrek’s chest. A great slab of burnished power. The tie that bound her to him. The face of a god, glaring from his ribs, demanding that she hold her nerve.

She stepped gracefully through the dead, as though gliding through a ballroom, scattering flies and gore, a dagger held lightly in each hand. The Stormcast Eternal had gone, scouring Klemp for news of his own kind, and she was alone with the Slayer.

The heart-shaped silver amulet at her throat flickered, revealing the vial of blood at its core. Now. This is your chance.

Maleneth ignored the voice, creeping closer to the Slayer, wincing at his stench. He was grotesque. A graceless lump of scarred muscle, bristling with porcine hair and covered in knotted tattoos. Even by the low standards of the duardin race he was primitive – like a hog that had learned to stand and carry an axe. He was shorter than the brigands he had carved his bed from, but twice their width and built like a barn. The stale, sweet smell of beer shrouded the bodies, mixing with Gotrek’s belches and stinging Maleneth’s eyes. She could see the dregs glistening in his matted beard as she leant closer, keeping her eyes fixed on the rune. The rune stared back.

Despite her loathing she hesitated, knives trembling, inches from his body.

The amulet around her neck flickered again. Coward.

That was enough to spur her on. Her dead mistress was right. Klemp would soon be rubble, just like all the other towns they had passed through. The whole region was in uproar. And when the fighting started, who knew where the Slayer would end up? Once he was in one of his rages there was no way of predicting what he would do next. It was a miracle she had stayed with him this far. This might be her last chance. The Slayer’s skin was like iron, though. She would need to punch the blade home with all her strength to get the poison into his bloodstream. She tightened her grip and leant back to strike.

‘Maleneth.’ The voice echoed down the alley, heavy with warning.

She whirled around, blades lowered.

Trachos’ armour glimmered as he limped through the darkness, sparks flickering from his ruined leg plate. He was wearing his expressionless helmet, but she could tell by the way he moved, careful and slow, that he understood what she was planning. His head kicked to one side and light crackled from his mouth grille. He gripped the metal, holding it still, but the damage went deeper than the mask. All that god-wrought armour had done nothing to protect his mind.

He stopped near the corpses, staring at her, lights flickering behind his faceplate.

He remained silent, but the way he raised his warhammers spoke clearly enough. That rune is mine.

They stood like that for a long moment, glaring at each other across Gotrek’s snorting bulk.

Trachos came closer, his metal boots crunching through broken weapons and shattered armour. The sky had grown paler, outlining him, and she saw how confidently he gripped the warhammers. Damaged or not, he was still a Stormcast Eternal. A scion of the thunder god. He was several feet taller than a normal man and, even broken, his plate armour made a fearsome sight.

Maleneth stepped through the pile of bodies, readying herself. She had always known this moment would come. They could not both claim the rune. There was a rent in Trachos’ leg armour from his left knee to his left boot. It had been there when he first approached Maleneth months ago, wandering out of the hills like a deranged prophet. He was in desperate need of medicine, or repairs, or whatever help Stormcast Eternals received when they returned to the Celestial Realm. Every step he took was difficult, and his Azyrite armour sparked whenever he moved. She smiled. Usually, such a warrior would be a test for even her skills, but in this state he should be easy prey. There would be blood for Khaine this night.

Maleneth dragged one of her blades across a vial at her belt. The crystal broke in silence, but she could smell the venom as it spilled across the metal.

Trachos dropped into a crouch, hammers raised.

The two warriors tensed, preparing to strike.

‘Grungni’s arse beard!’ cried Gotrek, lurching to his feet and grabbing his rune-axe. ‘Don’t you people know when you’re beaten?’

He swayed, obviously confused, still drunk, piercing the night with his one, scowling eye, trying to focus, trying to spot an opponent. Seeing none, he turned to Maleneth.

‘Aelf! Point me to the simpletons.’

Maleneth lowered her weapons and Trachos did the same. The chance was gone. She shook her head. ‘All dead.’ She backed away from Trachos with a warning glare.

Gotrek’s face was locked in a thunderous scowl and his skin was as grey as the corpses. He kicked one of them. ‘Lightweights. They could barely swing a sword. Even splitting skulls is no fun in your stinking realm.’

Trachos’ hands trembled as he slid his hammers back into his belt. ‘This is no realm of mine.’

‘Nor mine,’ said Maleneth, looking around at the peculiar hell Gotrek had led them to. The sky was the colour of old pewter, dull, bleak and riveted with stars. The stars did not shine but radiated a pitiless black. Points of absolute darkness surrounded by purple coronas, wounds in the sky, dripping fingers of pitch. And the town was equally grim. Crooked, ramshackle huts made of warped, colourless driftwood. There were panicked shouts in the distance and the sound of vehicles being hastily loaded. Columns of smoke stretched across the sky, signalling the approach of another army. They looked like claw marks on dead skin.

Gotrek muttered a duardin curse and picked his way through the corpses. ‘Where’s the ale?’

‘You drank it,’ replied Trachos.

The Slayer frowned and scratched his shaven head, causing his enormous, grease-slicked mohawk to tremble. Then he glared at the ground, his massive shoulders drooping and the haft of his greataxe hanging loosely in his grip. He whispered to himself, shaking his head, and Maleneth wondered what he was thinking. Was he remembering his home? The world he claimed was so superior to the Mortal Realms? She suspected most of his thoughts concerned his past. What else did he have? There was something tragic about him, she decided. He was like a fossil, revived by cruel necromancy and abandoned in a world where no one knew his face.

‘You’re right,’ said Gotrek, looking up with a sudden smile. ‘We need more ale.’

Maleneth shook her head in disbelief. She and Trachos were glaring at him. Anyone else would feel their hatred like a physical blow, but the Slayer was oblivious. He waved them back down the alley, away from the outbuilding, humming cheerfully to himself as he headed out onto the main street.

They stumbled into a chaotic scene. There were wicker cages rattling against every lintel and doorframe – hundreds of them, the size of a human head and crammed with teeth, skin and bones. Alongside the offerings to Nagash there were wooden eight-pointed stars, hastily hammered together and painted in gaudy colours. Braziers spewed clouds of blue embers across wooden icons that had been painted with the faces of daemons and saints. And all of this jostled happily against yellow hammer-shaped idols that had been scored with an approximation of Azyrite runes. Every corner revealed some desperate attempt to appease a god. And through this carnival of colours and shapes, people were rushing in every direction, hurling belongings from windows and clambering into carts. There was a cold wind whipping through the streets that seemed heavy with portent. Men and women howled at each other, arguing while their children fought in the dust, like a premonition of the violence about to be visited on the town. For weeks, seers across the region had been wracked by agonising prophecies. Some sprouted mouths in their armpits and spewed torrents of bile, others were visited by horrific, sanity-flaying visions, and some had found their voices replaced by a bestial, guttural language they could no more understand than silence. Whatever the nature of their visitation, all of them agreed on one thing – death was coming to the region. Most people had taken that as a cue to flee, but Gotrek, still furious at not finding Nagash, had decided to stay, relishing the coming fight as a distraction if nothing else.

As Gotrek swaggered onto the wind-lashed street, he almost collided with an enormous beast that was being led through the crowds – an armour-clad mammoth, draped in furs and sacks and scraping tracks through the dirt with its tusks. Dozens of fur-clad nomads were crowded into its howdah, and more were swarming round it, driving it on with sticks and insults, trying to goad more speed out of the plodding creature.

Gotrek halted, glaring at the nomads, and Maleneth guessed immediately what had annoyed him. She hated to admit it, but she was starting to understand him. He was brutal and heartless in many respects, but there were a few things that seemed to offend his primitive sensibilities. The sight of a wild creature bound into servitude was one of them. For a moment, she thought he might accost the nomads, but then he shook his head and marched on, barging through the traders and making for the largest building on the street, muttering into his beard.

Maleneth struggled to keep up as the Slayer booted the door open and plunged into the gloomy interior of the Muffled Drum. Despite the scenes of panic outside, Klemp’s only inn was crowded with languorous, dazed patrons – people so far gone they lacked the sense to try to save their own skin, calling the prophecies scaremongering nonsense. There were more nomads, wearing the same filthy furs as the travellers outside, but there was also a bewildering array of other creeds and races – humans from every corner of the Amethyst Princedoms and beyond. Maleneth saw hulking savages from the east, as heavily tattooed as Gotrek and looking just as uncouth. There were waif-like pilgrims, dressed in sackcloth and wearing charcoal eye makeup that had been smeared by the beer they were lying in. In one corner there was a party of duardin, dispossessed travellers, hunched over their drinks and eyeing Gotrek from under battered crested helmets.

Gotrek made a point of ignoring the duardin and stormed straight across the room to the bar, where a tall, fierce-looking woman was looming over one of her customers, shaking him back and forth until coins fell from his grip and rattled across the bar.

‘Next time,’ she snarled, ‘it’s your guts I’ll spill.’

The man fell away from her, collapsing in a shocked heap on the floor before scrabbling away on all fours as Gotrek strode past him and approached the woman.

‘Still no good,’ said the Slayer, looking up at her.

She shook her head in disbelief, then leant across the bar and stared down at him, peering at his impressive gut. ‘You drank all of it?’

Gotrek pounded a fist against his stomach and belched. ‘For all the good it did me.’

The woman looked at Maleneth as she reached the bar. ‘He drank it all?’

Maleneth nodded, grudgingly, annoyed to notice that the landlady looked impressed.

Gotrek studied the bottles behind the woman. ‘Got anything stronger?’

She stared at him. ‘Are you with them?’ she asked, nodding at the party of duardin.

Gotrek kept studying the drinks, ignoring the question. The only sign of a response was a slight tightening of his jaw.

She shrugged, taking a bottle from the shelf and placing it before him. It was the shape of an elongated teardrop and it was clearly ancient – a plump dollop of green, murky glass covered in dust and ash. There were fragments of something suspended in the liquid.

Gotrek grabbed the bottle and held it towards a fire that was crackling by the bar, squinting at the whirling sediment.

The woman grabbed one of his tree-trunk biceps. ‘It’s not cheap.’

Gotrek threw some coins at her, then continued eyeing the drink.

He jammed the cork into the bottle with his fat, dirty thumb, and a heady stink filled the room.

Maleneth coughed and put a hand to her face.

Gotrek sniffed the bottle and grimaced. ‘It’s not Bugman’s.’

‘Don’t drink it then,’ said Maleneth, remembering what had happened the last time the Slayer got drunk. There was no way they would leave Klemp intact if Gotrek picked a fight just as an army came over the horizon.

He gave her a warning glare.

‘What about Nagash?’ she said, the first thing that came to mind.

His scowl grew even more fierce, but he did not put the bottle to his lips.

‘You dragged us all this way to find him.’ Maleneth looked over at Trachos. He was standing a few feet away, watching the exchange, but as usual he seemed oblivious, locked in his own personal hell. Realising the Stormcast would be no help, she turned back to Gotrek. ‘And now, just as his armies are about to reach us, you’re going to drink yourself into a stupor. You could miss the very chance you’ve been looking for. The chance to face him. Or whatever it is you were hoping to achieve.’

Gotrek glowered. ‘He’s not here. Gods don’t have the balls to lead from the front. Nagash will be hiding somewhere, like the rest of them.’ He drank deeply from the bottle, holding Maleneth’s gaze.

Then he paused for breath, threw more coins on the bar and took the bottle to one of the benches that lined the room. The wood groaned as he sat.

There was an elderly man sitting at the bench, and he watched with interest as Gotrek drank more of the foul-smelling stuff. He was tall and slender, sitting stiff-backed and proud, and as he sipped his drink he moved with the precise, delicate movements of an ascetic. Unlike everyone else in the Muffled Drum, he was immaculately dressed. His tunic, cloak and trousers were embroidered with golden thread, and his receding, slicked-back hair was so adorned with beads and semi-precious stones that it resembled a skullcap.

When Gotrek lowered the half-empty bottle onto the table, the man leant over and whispered, ‘You have business with the necromancer?’

The drink had clearly not affected Gotrek yet. His hand shot out with surprising speed and locked around the man’s scrawny neck.

‘Who wants to know?’

A strange noise came from the man’s chest. It might have been laughter.

Gotrek cursed. Rather than grabbing skin and bone, his hand had passed through the man’s neck and was left holding a fistful of ash. The powder tumbled through his fingers as he snatched back his hand. He glared at the man.

For a fraction of a second, the old man had no neck, just a landslide of fine dust tumbling from his lower jaw onto his shoulders. It looked like sand in an hourglass. Then the dust solidified, and the man’s neck reappeared. He stroked his greasy hair and looked at Gotrek, his eyes glittering and unfocused, as though he were looking into smoke.

Gotrek’s cheeks flushed with rage and he gripped the haft of his greataxe. ‘What are you? A spirit? In my day we burned the restless dead.’

‘I’m quite well rested, thank you,’ said the man, with a vague smile.

Maleneth and Trachos approached the table.

‘What are you?’ demanded Maleneth.

The man ignored her question, studying the rune in Gotrek’s chest and the barbs on Maleneth’s tight-fitting leathers. Then he looked at the shattered gilded sigmarite of Trachos’ war gear. ‘You don’t look like servants of the Great Necromancer.’

‘But you do,’ said Gotrek, taking another swig from the green bottle. ‘Why don’t you…’ He hesitated, looking at the bottle with a surprised expression, rolling his head loosely on his shoulders. ‘Actually, this isn’t bad.’

He looked over at the landlady and gave her a nod of approval.

To Maleneth’s disbelief, the ridiculous woman blushed.

‘Like you, fyreslayer, I kneel to no god,’ said the man, looking at Gotrek with an expression that was hard to read.

‘I’m not a fyreslayer, and you’re nothing like me.’ Gotrek stood up and started away from the table. He stumbled and had to grip the bench to steady himself. ‘This is good.’ He sat back down, and the bench gave another groan.

‘Why do you wish to reach Nagash if you don’t serve him?’ asked the stranger.

‘What are you?’ repeated Maleneth, gripping her knife handles. ‘Are you human?’

‘I’m Kurin,’ he replied, holding out a hand.

Maleneth eyed it suspiciously.

Gotrek had closed his eyes, leaning back against the wall, and when he opened them again, he had to blink repeatedly to focus.

‘You’re drunk,’ muttered Maleneth.

Gotrek grinned. ‘And you’re ugly. But tomorrow I’ll be ugly and you’ll still be…’ His words trailed off and he shook his head, frowning. ‘No, wait… I mean, tomorrow I’ll be ugly and you’ll still be drunk.’ He shook his head, muttering to himself, trying to remember the joke he had cracked every day for the last week.

‘I belong to an order of magisters called the hush,’ said the man, ignoring Gotrek’s rambling. ‘Shrivers, as some used to call us.’

‘I’ve never heard of you,’ replied Maleneth, eyeing the man with suspicion. There were a lot of people who would like to get their hands on the rune in Gotrek’s chest. Perhaps it was no accident that Kurin was in the Muffled Drum at this particular moment.

‘Not many have,’ said Kurin. ‘Our skills are no longer in much demand.’

‘Skills?’

He held out his hand again, draping it before Maleneth in such a languid, aloof manner that she wondered if he was expecting her to kiss it. Then he flipped his hand around so it was palm up.

Maleneth, Gotrek and Trachos all leant closer, watching in surprise as the lines of his palm rose from his hand, spiralling up into the air like fine trails of smoke.

‘Touch them,’ he said.

Maleneth shook her head, and the other two leant back.

He shrugged. ‘We’re an ancient order. We ruled these kingdoms once, long before any of these ill-mannered barbarians who are currently trying to claim lordship. We are one with the dust. We share none of the failings of mankind – no doubts, no regrets, no grief, no shame. The sod is our flesh and the ground is our bed. It makes life simple. Mortal concerns do not bother us, so we have time to concentrate on more elevated matters.’

Gotrek managed to focus. ‘You don’t care about anything?’ He picked a shred of meat from his beard, stared at it, then ate it. ‘Doesn’t sound particularly “elevated”. Even I’ve managed that.’

Kurin smiled, his hand still outstretched, his skin still spinning a tiny storm. ‘I sense that you care about more than you would like to admit. But I can shrive you of your crimes. We are able to see into souls, Slayer – we see their value and we see what haunts them. Take my hand, tell me what drives you to drink so eagerly, and I will take the memory from you.’

Gotrek sneered, but then hesitated and stared at the man’s hand. ‘Take it from me?’

The Slayer had never told Maleneth much about his former life, but she knew he wished to atone for a past deed. He sought glorious death in battle as a kind of penance. Her pulse quickened. If Gotrek was able to forget the thing he wanted to atone for, he would stop charging headlong towards his own destruction. She could simply lead him, like an offering, back home to Azyr, with Blackhammer’s rune intact.

Kurin was still smiling. ‘Or, if you do not wish to be rid of your painful past, I can give you a chance at reconciliation. I can rouse your ghosts, Slayer. I can drag your shadows into the light. Is there someone you would wish to accuse? Or apologise to? My reach is long.’

‘A charlatan,’ sneered Maleneth. ‘I suppose you tell fortunes too. And how much does this all cost?’

‘No money. Just honesty. Nagash has persecuted my order for countless generations.’ Kurin waved vaguely, indicating the streets outside. ‘And left me surrounded by people so stupid they worship all the gods when they should worship none.’ He looked at the three of them in turn, with that half-smile still on his lips. ‘And now I hear you three are seeking him. While every other wretch in Klemp is snivelling to Nagash, you want to take him on. It’s a long time since I heard anything other than fear.’ He looked at the rune in Gotrek’s chest. ‘There is something different about you.’

Maleneth nodded. ‘So if we tell you why we’re seeking the necromancer, you’ll relieve Gotrek of his guilt?’

‘If that’s what he desires.’

The Slayer was still staring at Kurin’s hand, but Maleneth sensed that his mind had slipped back into the past again. His usually fierce expression was gone, and robbed of its normal ferocity, his face looked brutalised rather than brutal – a shocking mess of scars and buckled bone.

‘Do you?’ prompted Kurin, an odd gleam in his eye.

Gotrek was staring so hard Maleneth wondered if the drink had finally made him catatonic. Then he laughed and leant back, relaxing as he took another swig. ‘These realms are so damned subtle. I see what you’re doing, sorcerer – you would rob me of my past and leave me beaming like an idiot. You would have me forget my oath.’

Kurin frowned, confused, shaking his head, but before he could disagree, Gotrek continued.

‘There’s no solace for me, wizard. No absolution. No bloody shriving. Not until I find my doom.’ As the Slayer’s anger grew, his words became more slurred. ‘And, one way or another, the gods will give it to me.’

‘Gotrek,’ said Trachos. ‘We have no idea why he wants to know your business.’

Maleneth looked up in surprise. The Stormcast Eternal hardly ever spoke, and when he did, it rarely made sense.

Gotrek laughed and leant close to Kurin, waving dismissively at Trachos. ‘My friend here isn’t digging with a full shovel. He thinks I need to worry about you. If he knew half the things I’ve slain, he’d know I don’t need to worry about someone with brains for dust.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean dust for brains. You’re muddling my thinking, damn you. Keep out of my head. The past is the one place I’m still happy to go. I’ll thank you not to ruin it.’

Kurin nodded politely. ‘Of course. I hope I have not offended you.’

Gotrek stared at the table and shook his head. ‘Mind you, you’ve actually spoken the first sense I’ve heard since arriving in these realms. Gods are idiots. Worshipping gods is the pastime of idiots. You’re right.’ He waved clumsily at Maleneth and Trachos. ‘This pair think they can earn a place at the head of some glorious, divine host if they make a prize of me.’ He laughed. ‘Look at them, dreaming of being holy footstools.’

Kurin smiled sadly. ‘The curse of the devout. Praying so cheerfully to the cause of their pain.’

‘Aye to that.’ Gotrek’s tone was grim as he clanked his bottle against the old man’s drink. ‘The gods are good for nothing,’ he muttered. ‘Apart from catching my axe.’

Maleneth shook her head, not keen on how the old man was hanging on Gotrek’s every drunken word. ‘Trachos is right,’ she said. ‘We should keep our business to ourselves.’

‘Our business?’ cried Gotrek. He scrambled up onto the table and bellowed at the room. ‘It’s my bloody business, and I’ll share it with who I like!’

The buzz of conversation died away as everyone saw the crazed, oversized Slayer swaying on the table.

Maleneth put her head in her hands.

‘I’ve come here for Nagash!’ shouted Gotrek, brandishing his axe. ‘You cowardly whelps can run and hide all you like, but I’m going to find him and bury this useless blade in his useless skull.’ He slammed the axe down and it split the table in half, hurling drinks and leaving Gotrek sprawled on the floor.

There was an explosion of yells and curses as people leapt to their feet, grabbing weapons and hurling abuse at Gotrek, outraged by his accusation of cowardice.

A glowering mob formed around the Slayer as he climbed to his feet and retrieved his weapon.

Maleneth drew her knives and leapt to his side, still cursing under her breath. Trachos grabbed his hammers from his belt and stood at Gotrek’s other side. The trio made an unusual, impressive sight, and the drunks hesitated.

The duardin that had been watching Gotrek since he arrived rushed to stand with him, and Gotrek glared at them furiously.

‘Don’t come near me, you pathetic excuse for a dwarf,’ he snarled, rounding on the nearest of them.

There was a chorus of gasps as the mob staggered away from Gotrek, clutching their throats and choking. The veins beneath their skin suddenly knotted together and began writhing like serpents. Some of the men dropped to their knees, murmuring and whimpering as they tried to breathe, while others stumbled towards the door.

‘Wait!’ cried Kurin, wiping pieces of table from his robes as he stood and crossed the room. He was holding up one of his hands with a beneficent smile. The creases of his palm had risen up in a miniature tornado again, whirling and twisting between his fingers. ‘Lower your weapons, my friends. There is no need for discord. I’ll pay for any spillages.’

He closed his fist, and breath exploded from dozens of lungs as people managed to breathe again.

There were more disgruntled cries, but no one attacked. They looked at Kurin even more warily than they did Gotrek. As they crawled back to their seats, muttering and wheezing, it occurred to Maleneth that until Gotrek had sat beside him, Kurin had been completely alone at the bench. No one had dared sit near him.

‘You robbed me of a fight, wizard.’ Gotrek hefted his axe a little higher and gave Kurin a warning look. ‘And there’s precious little else to do in–’

‘I can reach Nagash,’ Kurin said, smiling.

Gotrek froze.

Kurin’s presence unnerved even the most hardened warriors in the room. As he walked slowly towards Gotrek, they backed away into the darkest corners of the inn. Maleneth had seen the same thing countless times. Few mortals were happy to risk the ire of a sorcerer.

Kurin nodded towards the street outside. ‘We can talk in my rooms.’ He carefully placed some coins on the bar and went to the door, waving for Gotrek to follow him.

The Slayer eyed him suspiciously, then shrugged and headed out into the gloom, Maleneth and Trachos rushing after him.

A Black Library Publication

This omnibus edition first published in 2010.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Stepan Alekseev.
Map by Nuala Kinrade.

Brunner the Bounty Hunter © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Brunner the Bounty Hunter, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78999-451-3

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.