by Rob Sanders
‘Where are we going?’ the priest shouted at the passing warrior.
Kastner considered. They needed a place to rest and collect themselves. Somewhere he could think and devise a more decisive course of action. He turned to look at the red-faced Dagobert and Giselle, who was still clutching Emil’s crossbow. The templar made a decision.
‘Home,’ Kastner told him.
CHAPTER VIII
‘…on aery lips, that whisper dead men’s names
Through forests ancient and ruins new.
He, like a traveller
In cursed lands of rack and ruin, bore an aspect
of misgiving, worn to habitude.’
– Tanhauser’s Ode to Fear
Kastner Estates
Gruber Marches
Blutig Wellentag/Ersten Aubentag im Erntzeit, IC 2420
The trees creaked with the ropes of the innocents hanging from them. Oberon took the beech-lined path up to the mansion at a grim trot, his rider rolling in the saddle in stunned disbelief. With each crunch of gravel, it became clear that Riesenweiler and his Sigmarites had come to Fort Denkh by way of the Marches. The beautiful manor house still stood – the knights having had little time to torch it on their way to intercept Kastner and the damned tome he was escorting to safety in Altdorf.
Kastner saw Kiefer the groom, swinging in the breeze, the boy’s face frozen with the horror of the moment he realised he was going to die. Old Wendal – the Lady’s bailiff – had taken a monstrous beating. Even Fitchling, purser of the estate, swung for the bad fortune of attending the manor house the day of the knights’ arrival. The housekeeper Frau Valda and her serving girls – all still in their aprons and strung from the branches above the Great Lawn.
Dagobert and Giselle were silent on the front of the wagon. Even Gorst, who had somehow found them again after their flight from Fort Denkh, held back his ramblings. Kastner brought Oberon along the length of the Kastner mansion, halting the steed before the large oak doors of the entrance. There was paint splashed across the worm-eaten wood – the words scrawled with passion: HERETIC. Before the accusation, Lady Kastner – Lady Angelika to those who knew her – hung like a canting scarecrow from the stone porchway. Lady Angelika, whom Kastner had come to love, not like a mother, but like a beneficent goddess or patron. Cruelly neglected by her husband, her heart was kind and her mind sharp – steering the Kastner estates through the financial ruin of her husband’s foolishness and drunken abandon. Such hardships had not cooled her compassion for others, and upon arriving in the Gruber Marches with a templar’s steed, an ancestral blade and a dubious story, Diederick had found not only a home but a name of his own and the opportunities that went with it. He owed Angelika Kastner his life. The life falling apart around him.
Before the templar knew it, night had fallen. His torso – healing with almost supernatural speed and determination – glistened with sweat and glinted with the reflection of stars in dark sky above. Even his limp was fading. The shovel bit into the rich brown earth of the estate. He had been digging graves all day. His bones ached and his mind was numb. Gorst had helped him with the bodies and was now sitting behind a finely trimmed hedge, unusually quiet. As the last few shovels of earth hit the mound, Kastner patted them down. On the simple marker he had painted the name ‘Trudi’. He had never known the serving girl’s family name.
A lantern approached from the manor house. It was Giselle, with a stein and a jug of milk. She hung the lantern off the handle of a pick buried in the ground. It rested with Kastner’s hammer swinging from its chain – the silver hammer Father Dagobert had given him before the young Diederick had left to be a knight’s page. The novice poured the milk in silence and handed it to the templar. Despite all they had been through, Kastner detected fear in a face unaccustomed to such an emotion.
‘What is it, girl?’ Kastner demanded.
‘Father Dagobert said you should keep up your strength. You’re still healing,’ Giselle told him. Kastner drank deep. The milk was cool from the cellars. He thrust the stein forward for more. The sister obliged him. ‘My cousin Johan once–’
‘Tell Dagobert that I need him,’ Kastner cut her off. ‘Someone should say something for these people.’
‘Then why don’t you?’ Dagobert’s voice carried through the darkness. The priest walked up behind Giselle – the heretical tome both the Knights of the Fiery Heart and the winged marauders were searching for under one arm. ‘You know the words.’
‘They stick in the throat,’ Kastner told him grimly.
‘As a servant of Sigmar, you’ve presided over many funerals,’ Dagobert said, walking into the lantern-light.
‘I knew these people…’
‘All the more reason you would want to honour them.’
‘You think after today, it wise to lecture me on funeral etiquette?’ Kastner said, his anger rising. ‘Conduct the bloody lamentations – would you, please?’
‘Humour me, Diederick,’ Dagobert pressed. ‘Help me with first rites.’
Kastner glared at the priest. His lips parted but nothing proceeded from them. He tried again and again he failed. Kastner clenched his teeth and stabbed the shovel into the ground.
‘You know the words won’t come,’ he said finally.
‘And what of this,’ Dagobert said, indicating the silver hammer he had given to the templar. The hammer he had worn around his own neck. He moved forward. Kastner flinched. Not afraid of Dagobert but himself. The priest took the lantern from the pick handle and held it up to the knight’s chest. There, in the flesh, masquerading as a wound or injury, was a hammer-shaped mark. Like a burn, the silhouette was red, agitated and covered in scratches where it had irritated the templar’s skin.
‘You cannot speak His words, nor tolerate His sigil against your flesh,’ Dagobert said.
Kastner looked down at the mark on his chest. His head rose slowly and thoughtfully. His pain and anger was spent. He felt tired. Looking up at the priest, he stared deep into Dagobert’s eyes.
‘What is happening to me?’ Kastner asked, his voice barely a whisper on the night air.
‘You are marked,’ Giselle said. ‘Any fool can see that. Marked by the Dark Gods…’
‘Silence woman,’ Kastner snapped. ‘Don’t speak such things.’
‘Someone must,’ Dagobert said.
‘Why didn’t they kill us?’ Giselle asked. ‘In the fort, the marauders could have killed us with all those other people. Why didn’t they? The Hammerfall. The villages. The fort – but not us. Are we marked with you?’
‘I’m warning you…’
‘They could have taken the book from our corpses,’ Dagobert said, pulling the damned tome from beneath his arm.
‘I don’t know,’ Kastner told them, his gaze on the ground.
‘I think I do,’ Dagobert said. ‘In the manor house, in view of what has come to pass, I thought it worth the risk to consult this Ruinous volume further. While you were out digging graves for those whose blood is on your hands…’ Kastner’s head came up sharply, but the harsh words the templar had for Father Dagobert died on his lips. ‘I have been using the primer to translate this wretched thing. It has answers for us, Diederick, but answers you are not going to want to hear.’
‘But I think that we need to hear them,’ Giselle said, her arms folded before her. She looked from Kastner to the priest.
‘You accuse me of being marked by Ruinous Powers,’ Kastner said, kicking at the earth, ‘but it is the two of you with your noses in the pages of outlawed texts.’
‘We seem to be at the heart of events of some significance. The marauders. The Knights of the Fiery Heart. The Grand Theogonist of the Empire. Sigmar himself, for all we know. I have been sitting for hours, trying to conceive of why Hedrich Lutzenschlager would have ordered his knights to destroy us. You know t
hat I have few good words to say about that man. Court politics and cult conspiracy put a toad like Lutzenschlager on the Grand Theogonist’s throne, not the God-King’s will. Men who opposed him were banished to the way temples of the northern coast and the wilds of Hochland. He’s deluded. He’s devout. His soul is a bottomless well of ambition, tapped falsely in the name of the God-King. But a murderer of convenience?’
‘He’s a walking corpse,’ Kastner hissed through his teeth. ‘That’s all we need to know.’
‘You’re going to march into one of the most fortified cities in the land?’ Dagobert challenged. ‘You are already a hunted man. You mean to execute the most well-protected man in the Empire – bar the Emperor himself – in his own cathedral? I wish you a miracle in such an endeavour, my son, because you are going to need one.’
‘No,’ Kastner said in words of flint, ‘just a blade and powerful will.’
‘And a heart full of vengeance?’ Dagobert said. ‘Would you not know what placed such fire there?’
Kastner’s expression soured, ‘Pray continue.’
Dagobert held the tome up before Giselle and the templar.
‘Despite its macabre appearance,’ he said, ‘it seems free from any kind of physical corruption. Leather cover, iron clasps, ink and vellum. If evil resides in its pages, it hides itself well. The reason, it seems, for the tome’s heretical status and inclusion in the vaults of the mighty Hammerfall, is the knowledge it has faithfully carried to us through the ages. It is called The Liber Caelestior or The Celestine Book of Divination. You have helped me catalogue such books brought to us at the temple, Diederick, false prophecies that preach the God-King’s absence in the world, foretellings derived from celestial congress…’
‘Horsecrap,’ Kastner said.
‘Agreed,’ Dagobert said, ‘the ramblings of madmen, hardly worthy of notice, hardly worthy of cataloguing and securing. These writings are nearly a thousand years old and belong to a professed Tilean seer called Battista Gaspar Necrodomo. He was an astromancer who prophesied what he called the End Times – the end of the world, my friend.’
‘Doesn’t mean it’s not horsecrap.’
‘The Reman priests and inquisitors of Law and Light didn’t seem to think so,’ Dagobert said, ‘and neither did Sigmar’s devout servants. When it found its way to the Empire, it was buried in the Hammerfall.’
‘Even learned men can be wrong,’ Kastner assured him.
‘Necrodomo tells that the End Times will be heralded by the coming of a great warrior from the north – a man who would be favoured through his deeds by all of the Ruinous Powers in unison. A man who would be their chosen – their Everchosen, as the Tilean terms it.’
‘And how might one man alone bring about the end of the world,’ Kastner said darkly.
‘He wouldn’t,’ Dagobert replied. ‘Warriors flock to stand beside great men for the promise of battle, glory and victory. Harnessing their strength, Necrodomo claims he would overcome the trials set for him by the Dark Gods and earn their sponsorship. With their armies – their unified power – his advance would be irresistible. He would destroy the Empire – nay the world. Without people to pray to them, gods like our own would be lost to history and the existence of man, with all other races, would be plunged into an eternal darkness.’
‘Does this doom-monger have a name?’
‘His name is Archaon.’
‘Then perhaps this Archaon leads the marauders we saw yesterday,’ Kastner said.
‘Perhaps…’
‘A dread tale indeed.’
‘Not a tale, Diederick,’ Dagobert said. ‘Tales do not come true in the telling.’ Kastner shook his head.
‘It tells of truths?’
‘That have already come to pass, my boy. How the tome itself came to be in our possession. The death and destruction in its wake. The doom to follow. Interpretations, true – as is the case with the translation of any ancient text. Even allowing for that, the predictions are uncanny ‘
Kastner burned into Dagobert with his gaze.
‘You think I am this Archaon?’
‘From where I stand, it seems possible,’ Dagobert said slowly.
Kastner roared, snatching up the shovel. Swinging it about him, he let the tool sail into the canopy of the surrounding trees.
‘No!’ Kastner bawled at the priest, as the shovel clanged its way through the branches and down into the earth below. He stabbed a finger at Dagobert. ‘That cannot be so.’
‘You are marked, good templar,’ Giselle said.
‘I should end you both for suggesting such a thing,’ Kastner seethed. ‘And burn that tome for the lies it tells.’
‘Burning the book would not stop the prophecies coming to fruition,’ Dagobert said. ‘We would simply be blind to them.’
‘How can you know?’ Kastner said, his chest rising and falling – his face contorted and his eye filling. ‘How can you know?’
‘I don’t,’ Dagobert admitted, shamed by the pain of Kastner’s reaction.
‘What is your proof?’
‘The north and the south meet in Archaon’s blood.’
‘What does that mean?’ Kastner bawled.
‘You were undoubtedly born here,’ Dagobert said. ‘You were brought to me a newborn. But look at your skin, your hair. You are a northerner from head to toe.’
‘Proof of nothing…’
‘Before serving the Ruinous Powers, Archaon found service in Sigmar’s name.’
‘So have many,’ Kastner said. ‘The Dark Gods delight in the corruption of virtue. Some of the God-King’s boldest and best have fallen to that path.’
‘Not many of his templars, I would hope, my son,’ Dagobert said. ‘Knights pledged in earnest to his cause. Men who were already chosen to stand as our protection against such darkness.’
‘A templar?’
‘The agreement of events and the people at the heart of them is compelling,’ Dagobert said. ‘The tome tells of this all, the unfolding tragedy of these times.’
‘No,’ Kastner spat. ‘This is not true. You are wrong. You are deceived.’
‘And sometimes we deceive ourselves,’ Dagobert warned.
‘I am a changed man,’ Kastner admitted wretchedly. ‘And events would seem to have conspired against me, certainly since this girl brought the calamitous thing into our lives. How can we know she is not a dark servant herself?’
Giselle took several steps back.
‘You have already damned us all by your wretched company,’ Giselle spat. ‘I cannot return to the Hammerfall. This good Father here will never see the inside of a temple as its priest. You wallow like a sow in its sorrow but cannot see the ruin you visit upon others.’
Giselle ran forward with her hand outstretched to slap him, but the templar’s own came up, locking around her wrist. He pushed her back with a snarl, causing the novice-sister to fall across Trudi’s fresh grave.
Dagobert helped her up as Kastner glowered at them both.
‘My child, even if Archaon stands before us,’ the priest said to Giselle, ‘as far as I can glean from the early sections of the volume, the Dark Gods complot against him. He is no more to blame than the animal in the hunter’s trap. He did not choose but was chosen. It is the reason I stand with him – why we should stand with him – in hope that he might be extricated from the snare he finds himself in.’
‘Is there no hope?’ Kastner said, crumbling slowly to his knees.
‘Always, my child.’
‘Should I not just select a noose from the many that hang in these trees?’
‘I doubt fate would allow such an ending,’ Dagobert mused.
‘What does that even mean?’
‘I knew a young man once,’ Dagobert said. ‘A man the plague had left ber
eft of wife and child. He tried to follow them through the noose of a rope…’ Dagobert seemed to stall – the story difficult to tell. Giselle and Kastner watched the priest struggle. ‘The timbers of his cottage had been as rotten as his fortune, however, and they broke under the weight of the attempt.’
‘What happened to him?’ Giselle asked.
‘He pledged the life that had been granted him, to helping others through their difficulties, rather than sinking into his own.’
The girl nodded, still not quite understanding, and attempted a weak smile.
‘I never knew that,’ Kastner said, still on his knees.
‘Well here’s something that you should know,’ Dagobert said. ‘There is a page missing from The Liber Caelestior. An important one. Torn straight from the tome itself. The page, it seemed, was going to reveal the identity of the warrior who was to become this Archaon. Without it, we cannot be certain of anything. We need that page.’
‘Where is it?’ Giselle asked.
‘It must reside – for safety – with the only man with authority in the land to have your matriarch grant him access to the tome in the first place.’
‘The Grand Theogonist?’
‘Well that is it then,’ Kastner said after a pause. ‘Lutzenschlager sent the knights. The page has told him who he is looking for.’
‘Even learned men can be wrong,’ Dagobert said, attempting a smile of his own. ‘Diederick, I can continue with my translations, but you will not know any kind of peace until you know for sure. We need that page. It’s time to start praying for a miracle.’
Kastner looked down at the freshly turned grave earth. He didn’t think he was capable of such prayers. Not to the God-King, at any rate. The devotions would close up his throat. He pushed himself to his feet, nodding slowly in agreement. He would know what business destiny had with him. Besides, there were marvels and miracles in the world for which the God-King was not responsible. Miracles that required neither prayer nor devotions.