Nurgle’s Gift
Guy Haley


 	The charnel reek escaped the graveyard, and hung heavily over the village. It came from every rough wooden doorway, from every window, from every byre. It came from the dead lying unburied in the streets and it came from the living.

 	A fine timber church dominated the village. Hymns sung from ragged throats croaked outwards, like the calls of carrion birds. But no carrion bird came to the village. They would not feast upon the dead there.

 	 Outside, two troubled worthies stood. Neither was untouched by the plague. One was the mayor, Sarna Torel, a tall man, handsome features blighted by clusters of purple sores. By him was Gulveeg, village preceptress. Bent and old already before the sickness came, her face stared always now at the mud, and her hands shook upon her staff. She coughed often, and hard. ‘The sickness grows worse,’ she said.

 	‘We must pray to the Emperor,’ he said. ‘It is our only salvation.’

 	She laughed. All too quickly it became a dreadful hacking. She spat blood. ‘Did He come when the raiders burned our homes? Did He come when the drought struck? Did He come when our children died of the bloody flux? He did not,’ she said. ‘The Emperor has turned his face from us, that is the truth of it.’

 	Sarna Torel was not shocked. Devout in her youth, experience had destroyed Gulveeg’s faith, wearing it away like a tooth’s enamel, to leave an exposed nerve of resentment. She peered at him from under her thatch of coarse grey hair, expecting rebuke.

 	‘I will not scold you for your blasphemy, Gulveeg, not today. I am numb from all this. But I will pray, for there is nothing else to do.’

 	‘You think I am right then?’ she said.

 	Sarna Torel did not reply.

 	Encouraged, Gulveeg went on. ‘There are others to whom we could raise our voices. One who could cure our sickness.’ She looked up into the mountains surrounding the village. Grey trees clung to their sheer faces, the peaks hidden forever in shrouds. ‘There is a blighted spot in the forest. A cave with a foul odour, a triple gong hanging from a crooked tree. If we gave our prayers to the Old One there, He who is a true power and not our careless Emperor, then perhaps we may live.’

 	Sarna Torel was appalled. ‘Take that back, preceptress! You damn yourself! What if the Emperor were to hear? You will be cast away from His light.’

 	Gulveeg stared at the church, listened for a space to the unlovely singing.

 	‘He stopped listening a long time ago, Sarna. There is no light.’ She limped away. Torel watched her go into the rising evening mist, tainted by the smoke of pyres.

 	Torel did not follow Gulveeg’s advice. Soon he was dead. But someone went to the crooked tree, through the toxic fogs of the valleys. There they found the triple gong. No matter how many times it was thrown down from its hanging and destroyed, the gong was always replaced. Village priests, the bishop from the city, once even an off-world confessor – all thought they had succeeded in their exorcism, but come the next visitor, the gong was there again.

 	The gong sounded loudly over the village one watery noon. A harsh clang, not musical at all, that spoke of rusted metal and raps on sealed tomb doors. It darkened the minds of those who heard it, but brought comfort to them also, so dire was their suffering.

 	Who rang it, they never knew. People were dying all the time.

 	One week later, the fogs crept down from the mountains in earnest, and they came. They strode from the mists unannounced, six ancient warriors, as if they walked from one room to another. Perhaps that is all they did, these giants, for the world to them is not as it is to us. They are made mighty by the Great Father. 

 	The boy Marven saw them first, as he chopped feebly at hard clay. Few were working the fields, so many were sick. Marven had six siblings, all ill. His parents were dead of the plague. He, the youngest, was yet healthy. They said he was blessed. But he was hungry. There was no one to provide the village with its food, and his arms grew weaker every day. He was not big enough to successfully tend the field at the height of his strength, now his efforts were pathetic. He cried as he dug, knowing he could never feed his brothers and sisters.

 	The gritty squelch of the mattock in the clay took up time, like a song. Marven paused, thinking he was losing his mind. Silence, he heard nothing. He glanced about the wet fields fading rapidly into the mists, the black line of the causeway their abrupt horizon. Marven began digging again, and almost immediately stopped. This time he heard the song for certain, a dirge punctuated by jovial shouts. He stopped his efforts, laying down his mattock. Six giant shadows strode through the fields on the causeway. He watched them go, mouth open. They were misshapen and shambled, although they moved quickly. The song and the figures were swallowed by the fog. He stared after them, unsure what to do. 

 	Unexpected pain stabbed at his calf. He cried out, and looked down at the cause of his injury. A fat, malicious creature leered up at him from the mud, teeth pink with Marven’s blood. It pointed a bent finger at him and tittered. Only then did Marven run.

 	Six warriors of the Great Father strode into the square. The villagers present stopped whatever listless tasks they were about. Cries went up and more villagers came until a thin crowd had gathered.

 	The warriors were as tall as the mountains and as ravaged, blessed prodigiously by the Great Father. A potent miasma cloaked them. They were clad in ancient wargear, rusted edges biting into puffy skin. Their weapons had fitments of slimy wood. Every one of the men exhibited the signs of terrible disease. Their flesh was pitted with sores. Many were missing extremities – nose, fingers, jaws or ears. Their armour was let out in the middle, for the sake of their bloated bellies. Others had disposed of part of their harness that would no longer accommodate a distended foot, or a swollen arm. A few fat flies buzzed about. When these came close to the villagers they recoiled in fear, for human faces stared back from black-haired bodies.

 	For all their horrible appearance, the warriors were tall and proud. They surveyed the crowd haughtily. When they adjudged the number of people present sufficient, their leader spoke.

 	‘Children of the Great Father! You called upon us, and we have answered!’ His voice gurgled. He stared around the square with rheumy eyes. The whites were yellow, patterned with bright red veins. They were dangerous, those eyes. A sharp mind was behind them, but the edges of it were as corroded as the edges of his armour, nibbled at by insanity. His skin was scabbed and scurf clung to the corners of his mouth. His teeth were grey. ‘We will bless you, as you have requested. We have one amongst us who has the ear of the Great Father!’ 

 	He pointed at a slobbering monster in their midst. Its flesh was like wax heated, let to run then set again. His eyes were stretched teardrops, his mouth a long, drooping orifice into which was jammed a filthy metal pipe. His hands were fingerless, like mittens. One leg was a nest of writhing tentacles that plucked at the soil. So repugnant was he, those that looked directly at him felt their minds slipping away. His armour was all that gave him the shape of a man. ‘Through our brother, the Great Father will bestow upon you his gift, for ours is a god who listens. He is not insensitive to the suffering of his children.’

 	Silence, coughing. The remaining villagers looked on with terror admixed with hope.

 	There was a commotion at the edge of the crowd. Gulveeg hobbled forward. She had worsened, her face a yellow and purple mass of bruises. She coughed every other word. ‘They came, they came! Do you see? Do you see now? I was right! The old ways are strong here, stronger and truer than the corpse-lord.’ This would have once earned her a painful death, but the others did not move against her. She pulled herself a little higher on her staff so that she might look into the eyes of the leader.

 	‘What is the price of our salvation?’ she asked.

 	‘You are wise,’ said he.

 	Gulveeg coughed and spat bloody phlegm into the filth of the square. The leader’s ruined lips smiled at this.

 	‘Nothing of value is given freely,’ she said.

 	He nodded. ‘We ask only this of you. Among your number is a boy, untouched by plague. Bring him to us, and we will be gone, and you will be free.’

 	‘One boy?’ she asked. ‘One boy for all of us?’

 	‘Yes,’ he nodded. His goitre creased repulsively around the gorget of his armour.

 	Whispers from the crowd. ‘Marven, he means Marven!’

 	Some of the crowd were against this sacrifice. Not many. That they stood listening to such creatures at all spoke volumes for their moral flexibility.

 	Gulveeg stood as tall as she could against the pressure of her bowed back. ‘It is one of us! That is all, one to save all the others!’

 	Muttered debate went among the villagers. The warriors waited patiently, and not for long. In short order a party of the least sick was despatched. Marven was brought. His skin had become waxy and he sweated profusely, but he struggled desperately.

 	‘Here he is! Here is the only one who is free of the plague!’ said Gulveeg. Hope had given her strength, and her voice was clearer.

 	Marven could not get away. The hands that were laid upon him were feeble with disease, but he was only one, after all, and his limbs were by now burning with infection.

 	He ceased his efforts and was slung to his knees before the warriors.

 	‘Will you kill me?’ he asked.

 	‘Do you wish to die?’ asked the leader.

 	‘No,’ said Marven. ‘I do not.’

 	‘Who does?’ the leader laughed. His men joined in; an unwholesome sound. ‘We will not kill you, but take you from here. See! The bite.’ The leader pointed. The giants crowded in to look. ‘This is from one of the Great Father’s creatures. Such a wound should be fatal within minutes, but you live still, although not for much longer. Do you not see, boy? You are blessed. You have already been chosen.’

 	‘For what?’ said Marven. His face was white, and from more than the imp’s poisons.

 	‘To become one of us. We have waged the Long War for millennia. Death takes us all eventually. We need be seven, for the number is sacred. There are but six of us, as you can see.’

 	Marven struggled to his feet. The giants did not move, but his neighbours and kin blocked his escape.

 	‘We are sorry, lad,’ they said, and pushed him into the arms of his new masters.

 	‘Do not grieve. Ours is a jolly lord, and long life awaits,’ the leader said to him. Two of his warriors took Marven’s shoulders in their huge diseased hands.

 	The giants left, the mist growing thicker to envelope them one by one.

 	‘Sirs! Sirs! What of your blessing?’ said Gulveeg desperately.

 	The leader turned back from the fog swallowing his men.

 	‘Why, it is already done!’ he said. ‘Be merry! You are blessed. You have Nurgle’s Gift.’

 	‘You have cured us?’

 	The leader was genuinely perplexed. His ruined features creased. ‘Why would we do such a thing? This plague is a rich present from the Father! It is not ours to take.’ He turned and walked into the fog. His shape became indistinct.

 	‘Then kill us then! End our suffering!’ called Gulveeg.

 	‘Do not be frightened. You will not die. You will never die.’

 	He was gone.

 	And they did not die. Ever. The village is no longer there, nor is the fane on the mountainside. But it is said that on foggy nights the gong can be heard. It is unwise to linger then, for the mists can trap a traveller upon roads he never intended to travel. He might find himself stumbling into the square of that village, where the lost souls of its people are tormented still. They are agonised by disease, and will never find release.

 	Such is the nature of Nurgle’s Gift.