01 - Empire in Chaos

by Anthony Reynolds - (ebook by Undead)

  She stepped around an ancient stone tomb. The woman cowered in the corner, her face mostly hidden beneath an unruly mass of dark hair. She was wearing the robes of a priestess.

  “You are one of the Sisters of Shallya, aren’t you? It’s alright; there is nothing here now. They have gone.”

  She moved closer, and dropped to her knees, steadying Tomas onto his feet. He stared at the woman curiously.

  “Where are the others of your order, sister?”

  The woman looked her in the eyes then, and they were filled with pain and fear. Her face was dirty and streaked with tears, and she began rocking back and forth.

  “Gone,” she said, shaking her head. “They’ve all gone. Just Sister Margrethe and I left…” She looked up at Annaliese frantically. “I don’t know where Sister Margrethe is. I… I heard her screaming.”

  “She is not in pain anymore,” said Annaliese, and the woman slumped down against the wall.

  “I prayed for her. They are gone?” she said fearfully. “They are truly gone? They were animals, they attacked us, braying and shouting…”

  “Shh,” said Annaliese softly, hugging Tomas. Seeing the boy the woman’s eyes seemed to clear a little and she smiled through her tears. “And what is your name, young man?”

  “Tomas,” he replied shyly.

  “Tomas—a strong name for a strong boy,” the woman replied.

  “You don’t need to cry,” said the boy, and the priestess laughed, wiping away her tears.

  “Bless you, boy,” she said. Annaliese stood and offered her arm to the woman, who took it and allowed herself to be helped to her feet. “The strength of the innocent is a wondrous thing—here am I, old enough to be his grandmother and I have gone to pieces, yet a boy not more than five years old can still smile.”

  “How far is it?” asked Annaliese to the priestess, whose name was Katrin. With her face and robes cleaned, Annaliese could see that she was a handsome woman of middling years, and though her eyes were haunted, she had a way with the child.

  “Two days’ walk, no more,” Katrin answered. She turned and smiled at Annaliese. “You have travelled far—I am grateful that you are escorting me to the temple. I do not think I could have faced it alone—to be honest I do not think I would ever have summoned the strength to leave the crypt.”

  “I am glad that we found you,” she said, staring up at the towering Black Mountains before them. “Though I am sorry we did not arrive sooner.”

  “There would only have been more pain and death had you arrived any sooner,” said Katrin.

  “We might have been able to stop them.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way there would have been more death and violence, and that is anathema to our order. It would have made the goddess weep.”

  “Is not your order dedicated to life? To living?”

  “Of course it is, but not at the expense of the life of another, Annaliese,” she gently chided. She sighed deeply. “I already miss Sister Margrethe greatly—she was a gentle, simple girl.”

  “I’m sorry to remind you, sister,” said Annaliese.

  “Pff,” said Katrin, waving away the apology. “Grief and sadness is a part of life, and not something to hide from,” she said, looking into Annaliese’s eyes. The girl looked away quickly, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword.

  “The boy is strong and healthy,” said Katrin, judging Annaliese’s mood and changing the subject. The boy was running ahead, looking back anxiously to see if they were still following. “Though there is pain hidden away inside him that will take a lifetime to heal. If it ever does.”

  “You are good with children,” said Annaliese.

  “As are you. You are what—seventeen years? You have no children of your own?”

  “No. I… never married.”

  They walked on in silence. Eldanair was out in front, an indistinct grey shadow a hundred yards ahead.

  “You certainly keep strange company,” commented Katrin, shaking her head. “An orphan and an elf.”

  Annaliese smiled, and nodded.

  “Why did your order leave your temple, Katrin? Why was it only you and Margrethe that were left behind?”

  The older woman sighed again.

  “The Empire is beset by foes, surrounded on all sides by enemies deadly and jealous. The head of my order was visited by a vision of the Lady Shallya herself in a dream. The goddess was weeping, for she knew of the horrors yet to come. When the head sister awoke, she ordered the others to ready themselves to travel to Black Fire Pass, to the temple of Sigmar there. That was where we would be needed in the dark days to come,” Katrin said.

  “But why were you chosen to stay behind?” asked Annaliese.

  “In truth? I requested it. I am tired, Annaliese, and I have seen much horror in my life. Though I know the head sister wished for me to be at her side, I asked to be the one to remain behind, to tend the weeping shrine until the order returned.” She shook her head with a sigh. “Strange how things turn out, but it is not my place to question the will of the gods.”

  “It must be peaceful, living within the temple,” said Annaliese. She immediately went red. “Under normal circumstances, I mean,” she hastily added.

  “Peaceful? Yes, I was never more at peace than I have been in the years since joining the order. Sad? Yes. Difficult? Yes. But you are correct; I am at peace in myself.”

  “You could join the temple, Annaliese,” Katrin said after a pause. “You would find a home amongst us. And I can see that you have the healing touch within you.”

  Annaliese blushed again. Lightning flashed above the Black Mountains.

  Katrin sighed to herself. She had spoken the truth, and the girl could find a home amongst the Sisters of Shallya, but she would never become one of their order.

  Another god had already claimed her as his own.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The lightning flashing across the skies above the mountains in the distance made the mood of the camp grim. In Grunwald’s experience, soldiers were a superstitious bunch, and seeing the flashes in the direction they were travelling could be seen as a bad omen.

  He had no time for omens and he was far from a superstitious man, even when he had been a regular soldier in the army of Nuln. He had always been devout, and was careful to pay due respect to the gods—invoking Manann whenever he stepped aboard a ship, and giving thanks to Verena whenever justice was rightly served—but he frowned upon the ignorant, uninformed rural practices, oaths and lucky charms that many claimed warded against bad omens and spirits. Such things had the reek of infernal practices, and they were a way that one could inadvertently slip towards damnation.

  The state soldiers had picketed in orderly lines, with eight men to each simple canvas tent, and the air was filled with the smells of cooking and the chatter of men. Merchants and whores moved around the encampment, selling their wares—camp hangers-on were common when an army marched, for it provided safety as well as willing customers with little else to spend their money on. Not that there was much money to go around—he had learnt that these soldiers had not seen a coin for months.

  In the centre of the camp were the lavish tents of the officers and nobility, flying pennants and banners high. Each was larger than the house of an average Empire citizen, and their fabric was decorated with gold and heavily embroidered, as if each was trying to outdo the other, which was probably the case. It made Grunwald sick.

  He had glimpsed the military commander of the state troops, a foppish inbred noble said to be the second cousin to one of the contenders for the disputed position of Elector Count of Averland. The noble wore weapons glittering with jewels and ornamentation, and wore a gold-plated breastplate moulded to represent a heroic, muscled torso. A limp-wristed fop who played at war, was Grunwald’s assessment. Averlanders generally had a reputation within the Empire for extroverted displays of wealth and ornamentation, yet this nobleman took that to a whole new level.

  The Knights of the Blaz
ing Sun had no overt political association with the state, nor with any other, and they were picketed separate from the Averlanders. Grunwald had learnt that the temple that these knights had come from was within Stirland, and there was little love lost between Stirlanders and Averlanders. Nonetheless, they had come at the behest of the Emperor himself, and they were utterly devoted and honourable servants of the Empire.

  “I am still intrigued as to how travelling to Black Fire gets you closer to the battlefields in the north,” said Grunwald. The preceptor laughed.

  “The dwarfs have some machine here that will shorten the journey,” he said. “I will need to see it with my own eyes to believe it, but it is said to be a monstrous creation of steam and metal,” he shrugged.

  A pair of Averlanders, clearly more than a little drunk and with their arms draped around a trio of women reeking of cheap perfume, staggered past Grunwald’s campfire, laughing raucously. As they caught sight of the glaring witch hunter they fell silent and hurried on their way.

  “You know, I think your presence is making the state soldiers nervous,” remarked Karl.

  “Only the guilty need fear my presence,” replied Grunwald. Karl smiled from across the campfire at the grim witch hunter.

  “My, you are an uplifting, positive character to have around, aren’t you?” he said, his eyes full of humour.

  “Being uplifting and positive doesn’t really go hand in hand with my occupation,” said Grunwald, scowling. In truth he liked the young knight—he was easy company after spending weeks on the road with the dour ironbreaker, Thorrik. The dwarf lowered his bulk and sat down noisily alongside the pair, and within moments was puffing on his dragon-headed pipe.

  The witch hunter liked the fact that the knight seemed utterly unfazed by him—he was not cowed in the slightest by his appearance, manner or occupation, and he found it a refreshing change.

  “You should try it sometime though,” continued the knight. “It might put people more at ease—and when people are at ease, that’s usually when they’ll say something wrong and implicate themselves.”

  “People are pretty good at implicating themselves when they are very much ill at ease,” said Grunwald in reply, twisting his knife in front of him before eating the hunk of meat off its tip.

  “I’d imagine that is correct,” said Karl. He was a handsome, blue-eyed man, probably in his early twenties, Grunwald gauged. His wavy hair was fair, and hung to his shoulders now that he wore neither his chainmail coif nor his black-lacquered helmet. Vain, thought Grunwald—long hair had a tendency to catch painfully in chainmail. Long hair, in his opinion, was impractical for warriors at the best of times. It gave the enemy something else they could use against you. Still, he was certain that many of the younger women camp followers were besotted with the dashing young knight, so longer hair clearly had some benefit. He snorted at his own line of thinking. “What?” asked Karl.

  “Nothing. I was just thinking that you make me feel old,” Grunwald said.

  “Yes, you are getting a bit long in the tooth, grandfather, and there is more than a bit of grey in your moustache. You must be pushing, what, thirty?”

  Grunwald snorted again. “Thirty-three, and you should learn to respect your elders—I’m not so old that I couldn’t break that pretty nose of yours.”

  “Thirty-three,” guffawed Thorrik. “Ha! I remember thirty-three! Barely past suckling at a teat!” Karl burst into laughter, and Grunwald smiled.

  Weary beyond words, Annaliese climbed the high mountain road, the sleeping form of Tomas clinging around her neck. Night had long fallen, and they travelled in silence. Eldanair stalked out in front of them, bow in hand, his every movement sharp and wary. Katrin walked at her side, the hem of the sister’s robes dirtied from days of travel.

  The rough road had been hewn into the side of the mountain, and to her right it rose steeply, covered in dense fir trees. To her left the ground fell away sharply, the mountainside rocky and steep.

  Far below in the dark valley glinted the lights of the small settlement, Priesterstadt, and on the far side the mountains rose against the dark sky. The valley fed into Black Fire Pass itself, and though nothing of it could be seen in the darkness, merely being in such close proximity to the hallowed place filled her with awe. It was said that the earth had spewed forth molten rock and fire which had cooled and hardened and filled the valley with the craggy, black surface that gave the pass its name. Annaliese was unsure of the truth to the story—rock that ran like water and burned like wood sounded even more far-fetched than the idea of giant rats that walked upright like men and lurked beneath the surface of the world.

  At Black Fire Pass the mighty Sigmar had stood with the united human tribes and their dwarfen allies and fought the greatest battle ever to have taken place in the Old World. A horde of greenskins the likes of which had never before been seen was set to pass through the valley and into the fertile lands beyond—it would have spelt the end of human civilisation. Sigmar stood against this force and fought it to a standstill for days on end. He slew the mighty greenskin warlord and the unity of the orc and goblin tribes was shattered. It was the most important victory in the history of mankind, and it heralded the dawning of the Empire itself.

  Annaliese had listened as a child at the knee of her father, her mouth agape as he recounted the tale of Sigmar’s victory. She never grew tired of the story, and would beg her father each night before bed to retell it. He would embellish it and invent new, super-human exploits for the blond warrior-god, but the essence of the tale was always the same. A single man refusing to be beaten that brought about salvation for all.

  A single man was all that stood between victory and defeat, her father had always said. If just one warrior had turned to flee that day, it would have caused an unstoppable rout that would have been the end of the Empire before it was even formed—but none ran, even though most must have believed that their doom had come. And they held only because of their belief in a single, brave warrior.

  All it takes, her father would often say, is one person to stand up against oppression and overwhelming force for others to stand with them—just one person to show bravery in the face of death for others to overcome their fear. This, he said, was the most important lesson he could ever teach her, and he would repeat it often. The smallest things win battles, he said—a single man turning and running, a single man standing tall and defying the enemy when all seemed lost.

  There was the distant howling of a wolf, and she shivered, glancing back at the way they had come.

  In the far distance, there was a score of tiny flickering lights. More travellers coming late at night to Black Fire Pass?

  The vista would have been stunning in daylight, and she wished that she could see it. Still, it mattered little—she had decided that she would stay at the temple to aid the Sisters of Shallya in their sacred duty. She would have many days before her to witness the grandeur of Black Fire Pass.

  She felt a sense of calm come over her as she thought about the years that lay ahead having made the decision. To spend her years dedicated to the goddess of mercy tending the ill and the wounded would be both heart wrenching and satisfying, she thought. And it would allow her to remain with Tomas and Katrin, and that in itself made her pleased.

  Her long journey was almost over, and she was glad of it. She felt stronger than she ever had done, and she had travelled Sigmar knew how many miles across the Empire, but her journeys had brought her to where she felt in her heart she was meant to be; a pilgrimage of sorts.

  They came upon an impassable, crenelated wall that protected the approach to the temple. A powerful, squat gatehouse was positioned squarely in the road, its massive gate barred and a black iron portcullis standing before it.

  Sentries stood upon walls lit with burning braziers, and Annaliese saw the glint of metal from the tips of halberds. One of the sentries gave a shout as the weary-travellers approached, and crossbows were aimed down at them through the crenelatio
ns. Even this could not dampen Annaliese’s feeling of well-being, and she felt a shiver of anticipation as she saw the bronze icon above the gate of a twin-tailed comet, the symbol that was said to herald the coming of Sigmar himself.

  Eldanair loosened the tension on his bowstring as more crossbows were aimed towards them, and he lifted his hands into the air to show his weapon was not readied.

  “Who goes there?” came a shout, and Katrin stepped forwards so that the light of the braziers fell upon her.

  “I am a Sister of Shallya, come to rejoin my order who have come to the temple to give aid where it is needed,” she said. This was met with a muffled conversation, and Annaliese could hear the sound of a heavy bar being lifted by several men. A small door inset into the massive double-doors of the gate was opened and a sleepy looking warrior appeared. He blinked as he saw Katrin standing before him, and cast a quick eye over Annaliese and Eldanair, who had drawn his hood over his head. He nodded, yawning.

  “You will have to wait for one of the priests, I am afraid, good sister. None may pass through here after dark without their express permission.”

  Katrin nodded her assent, and the wooden door closed. It was opened a moment later by the same sentry.

  “Can I get you anything, sister? Water? Bread? It’s nothing fancy, I’m afraid.”

  “Thank you but no,” she replied. “We will wait until I am rejoined with my sisters to take refreshment.” The door clicked shut once again.

  Ten minutes passed before the sound of turning gears and levers heralded the lifting of the spiked, iron portcullis. One of the large double-doors opened with a heavy groan of wood to show a powerful warrior priest waiting for them, leaning on an immense double-handed hammer. He was thickly set, and dressed in armour of plate steel beneath his robes. He looked every inch the veteran soldier.

  “Sister, it is late to be travelling these parts,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft as he ushered her forwards. “There are dangers abroad.”