But the closer he got to it, the more his sense of foreboding increased. The column of smoke grew thicker, and he began to realise that this was far too large a conflagration to be a mere bonfire. The last part of the path took him down the slope of the valley wall, behind an outcrop; just as he hoped to be able to see more, a sprawling limb of the surrounding hills obscured his view.
Down here the valley floor was in shadow, and a faint chill made him shiver. The breeze he’d found so invigorating when he left the stench of Kohlstadt behind was less pleasant now, developing a keener edge as the narrowing defile compressed and intensified it. He picked up his pace, hoping to pass out into the warmth of the sun again before too long.
The stronger wind was bringing the scent of burning with it, and for a moment he relaxed as he identified the familiar odour of combusting wood. It was a bonfire after all. He began to chide himself for his overactive imaginings. Then he caught wind of another smell entirely, and his hackles rose. Roasting meat. Surely they hadn’t had to slaughter the livestock?
He knew some of the animals had fallen ill on the farmsteads as the fields blighted, their symptoms remarkably similar to the human victims of the plague. Such a loss was catastrophic: the single sheep or pig many of the smallholders owned represented a significant proportion of their worldly wealth. Consigning them to the flames was an act of utter desperation. Clearly the travails that had hit the Altman family were serious indeed.
A faint flurry of thick grey ash, like filthy snow, began to settle around him, making him cough as his throat became raw. The wind was bringing something else too, he realised, a faint, dull roar, interspersed with pops and crackles like a hearthside on a winter’s night.
At first, as the farmstead came into view, he could barely believe it. The cottage was on fire. It was burning fiercely, the thatch a dancing crown of vivid orange flames, the walls scorching and buckling from the heat that beat at his face like a physical blow. He checked his stride for a moment as he rounded the sheltering outcrop of rock.
“Herr Altman!” he called, despite the small voice within him, which was telling him there would be no one to hear. “Rudolph! Elise!” Neither the farmer nor his two children responded. “Frau Altman! Is anyone there?”
All he could hear in reply was the roar of the flames. Despite the heat he trotted forwards, hoping to find some sign of life, circling the burning house as closely as he dared.
Around the back was a field of cabbages, a few of them showing the telltale signs of blight. Most were still free of contagion, so far as he could tell, but it was hard to be sure, as the ground and the bulk of the growing crop had been heavily trampled. As he glanced down at the footprints punched into the soft earth his mouth went dry, and his heart began to hammer in his chest. There was no doubt about it: these were the same tracks as the ones he’d first seen in the forest that fateful day. The beastmen had been here. They had raided one of the isolated farmsteads, as everyone had feared.
He glanced around with sudden apprehension. The tracks were recent and there was still enough left of the burning cottage to indicate that the attack had been no more than an hour or so before. That meant that the creatures could still be in the vicinity, searching for fresh victims.
The thought terrified him. He looked around desperately for some kind of weapon, vowing he’d never leave the safety of the village without his bow again, however inept he might be with it. Short of throwing cabbage stalks at a charging assailant, which he suspected wouldn’t inconvenience a beastman much, there was nothing visible that promised anything in the way of defence.
He had to get out of here and report what he’d found to Sergeant Littman and the burgomeister. They’d know what to do. He’d seen no sign of the beastmen on the path he’d taken, so that would be the safest route back to Kohlstadt, as well as the quickest. He turned to go, skirting the crackling flames as closely as he dared.
As he moved he couldn’t resist gazing at the fire. It drew his eyes towards it despite his efforts to keep scanning the middle distance for any sign of a bestial marauder. Caught between distractions he neglected the placing of his feet, an oversight he was forcibly reminded of as they tangled in something. He went sprawling forwards onto an uncomfortable carpet of cabbage and soil.
Muttering imprecations at his clumsiness he rose, spitting out mud. Then he turned to look at what he’d tripped on.
“Sigmar’s hammer!” He retched, bringing up the soup Johannes had sold him a few hours before. He’d found Herr Altman, or most of him at least. The farmer’s left arm was missing, torn out at the root, and he’d been gutted by a blade that had been very large and cruelly serrated judging by the wound it had left. Other, lesser injuries, which would have seemed hideous enough under most circumstances, had battered and slashed the body into a state almost beyond recognition.
Almost, but not quite. The bushy moustache, for which the farmer had been famous throughout the valley, was clearly visible on the face of the corpse, battered and bloody though it was. Rudi forced himself to look closely, to be sure, but there was really little doubt. He was no stranger to death: infirmity, disease and accident reaped a rich harvest even in so quiet a backwater as Kohlstadt used to be. And he had butchered enough animals not to be squeamish at the mere sight of blood and entrails. But this was harsh, bloody and violent. It was something different, something new to him, and he felt a profound sense of shock.
As he willed himself to tear his eyes away, he noticed something else. Though the sheer amount of spilled blood had obscured them at first, he could make out a cluster of pustules on the skin of Altman’s chest, where his shirt had been ripped open. So he’d had the fever too, and had tried to conceal it, no doubt desperate to keep his farm running for as long as possible. For a moment he found himself concerned for the man’s family, who were undoubtedly at risk from infection, before then the realisation hit home that sickness would be the least of their worries in the unlikely event that they were still alive. In any case Greta would want to know about this. If he was right the pestilence had spread even farther than they’d suspected.
Despite his reluctance he squatted and forced himself to turn back the flap of crimson-sodden material. It felt thick and stiff from the congealing blood. He dropped it as soon as he could, and scrubbed his fingers in the soil until they felt clean. There could be no doubt: the man’s chest was covered with pustules. There was something else under his shirt too, on a thin chain around his neck. Rudi felt an irrational impulse to reach out and pick it up. So strong was the feeling that his hand moved almost before he was aware of it, and he had to force himself to check the motion with a conscious effort.
It was a charm or amulet of some kind he supposed, composed of three discs linked somehow at the points of a triangle. Each was covered in intricate designs, which the spilled blood obscured. He’d never seen anything like it before, just the hammer of Sigmar which many people wore for luck or protection, and occasionally the signs of other gods: Heinrich Littman, like many soldiers, wore the wolfs head of Ulric, and Hanna occasionally sported the dove of Shallya. Despite his curiosity, he realised that plucking it from the middle of a cluster of buboes might be a quick way to catch the pestilence, so he resolved to leave it where it was. Maybe Father Antrobus would recognise it. As he pulled his hand away he was surprised to feel a stab of disappointment, which was out of all proportion to the thwarted satisfaction of a mild curiosity.
He rose slowly, scanning his surroundings for signs of the beastmen who had caused all this. There was no sign of them, and the cottage continued to burn with undiminished vigour. As he turned away the roof collapsed with an ear-splitting crash and a flurry of sparks flew upwards like vengeful daemons.
Once he was moving he started to pick up the pace, breaking into a trot, and then a run, until he exerted a little reason and forced himself to slow down. The Altmans were beyond help now, and there was no point in exhausting himself. He might need the energy later if he had t
o run from the beastmen. True he hadn’t actually seen one yet, but…
A new sound scratched at his attention, a low moan, like a cow in distress. He hesitated, trying to pinpoint it. Probably just the wind, he told himself, or his imagination working overtime, but he couldn’t ignore it. Perhaps one of the family was still alive and terribly injured, trying to attract his attention. He listened intently, trying to filter other sounds from the pop and crackle of the burning cottage.
There it was again. He moved towards the source, slowly and cautiously, with every muscle tensed to bolt if danger threatened. A rustle came from a neighbouring field still waist-high with sagging grain, the stalks beginning to bow from the corruption eating away at them from within. If it hadn’t been upwind of the conflagration it would have caught fire from drifting sparks by now. Rudi clambered over the low stone wall separating it from the cabbage field.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” There was another low moan, and the stalks a few yards away rustled. Rudi moved towards the sound, parting the stalks as he went, like a man fording a waist-deep river. Up ahead he could see a patch of clear ground, and some freshly turned earth. For a moment he wondered why anyone would have been digging in the middle of a ripening crop, then realised that Altman had probably hoped to separate the diseased grain from the rest in the vain hope of stopping the blight from spreading. Many other farmers had tried the same thing, with a conspicuous lack of success.
Without warning, and with a roar that seemed to echo in his bones, something surged up out of the grass, bearing down on him with a speed and ferocity that froze the blood in his veins. A beastman! It was larger and fouler than anything his imagination could have conjured up, covered in matted fur, its eyes blazing with bestial fury, and thick skeins of drool running from the corners of its mouth. It had horns like a goat’s, and its face was elongated like one, but it walked upright like a man and smelled like a midden.
Abruptly its legs buckled, and it fell to the ground, sprawling close to his feet. Rudi leapt back, his throat constricted with terror, unsure of how the thing meant to attack him. Then he saw the blood matting the fur at its back, and the mattock embedded deep in the thing’s spine. It choked, and a spatter of dark ichor sprayed from its mouth.
Rudi began to understand what must have happened. Altman had been attacked as he was uprooting the plants, and had defended himself with the heavy agricultural tool. After losing his makeshift weapon he had fled towards the cottage, hoping to barricade it perhaps. But he had been overtaken and cut down. The other beastmen had either thought their comrade dead, or had forgotten him entirely in the ensuing orgy of slaughter, so they’d left him behind when they went.
The creature scrabbled towards him, malevolent fury in its eyes. It was clearly intent on taking at least one more victim to hell with it. No human could possibly have lived for so long with a wound like that, but it was obviously weakening. Nevertheless its insatiable desire to kill was burning as strongly as ever.
“Stay back! I’m warning you!” The words burst from his lips involuntarily, and he marvelled at his audacity. He was standing his ground and threatening a formidable killing machine. But he dared not turn his back on it. Who knew what such things were capable of? If he tried to flee it might still have the strength to catch him. He glanced desperately around for a large rock he could use to smash its skull, or some other improvised weapon, but the wheat field was as devoid of such things as the cabbage patch had been.
His back scraped against the stone wall around the field. He scrambled up on it, hoping he could pry part of it loose. But the beastman had stopped moving, and was regarding him with something resembling curiosity in its eyes. For a moment it seemed almost intelligent.
“Rashagharr kragharr rhuarrdhee?” It looked up at him with an expression which, had it been human, might have denoted astonishment. Rudi felt his jaw drop in equal amazement. The thing was obviously trying to speak to him in whatever language the creatures used, although what it meant he had no idea. The last word had sounded almost like his name, if the abhuman larynx had been able to pronounce it, but that just had to be a coincidence.
“I don’t understand,” he said, still not quite able to believe that the creature possessed enough intelligence to use language at all, however debased. His hands still scrabbled for a loose rock, but Altman had made his walls well, so nothing came loose. But he had no use for it. The beastman raised its head, looked him in the eyes, and expired, with a death rattle, which resonated in the pit of his stomach.
Rudi sat where he was for a while, shivering. The encounter had been unnerving enough, but there was one thing that stuck in his mind and haunted him, even more so than the word that had sounded like his name. When it looked into his eyes, just before it died, the thing had unmistakably smiled.
CHAPTER TEN
The sun was perceptibly lower on the horizon by the time Rudi returned to the burned-out farmstead, the first taint of orange in the upper air uncannily resembling the embers glowing in what remained of the cottage. Littman and the handful of militiamen he’d been able to round up stood beside the young messenger at what had once been the gate in the wall around the smallholding, shocked into silence. As they’d hurried up the road from Kohlstadt, Rudi had tried to prepare them for the scene of devastation awaiting them, but his descriptive powers had proven hopelessly inadequate to the task.
The outline of the building remained, sketched in tumbled walls and charred timber, and faint pops and spits could still be heard coming from the heap of ashes. At the sergeant’s urging a couple of men began to probe the edge of the ruins, advancing cautiously, so as not to suffer severe burns. The heat emanating from the glowing embers was ferocious enough to steal the breath away.
“It’s a bad business all right.” The old soldier shook his head, looking weary for the first time that Rudi could recall. “But these things always are.”
“You’ve seen attacks like this before?” Rudi asked.
Littman sighed. “More often than I can remember. But you never get used to it.”
Rudi could well believe it. When he spoke of his life before he came to Kohlstadt, Littman tended to speak of campaigns and old comrades, of battles he’d been in and desperate fights against particular foes, with special emphasis on the greenskin who had almost cost him his leg. He’d never mentioned burned houses and slaughtered farmers, although in his campaigns against the abhuman enemies of the Empire he had undoubtedly come across scenes like this many times before. Now he roused himself from his bitter reflections, and donned the mantle of duty and authority once again. “You found a dead beastman in the wheat field, you say?”
“Yes. Over here.” Rudi led the way in silence. He had been sparing with the truth when he’d gasped out his story back at Kohlstadt, skipping over the part where the creature had tried to speak to him. He didn’t know what that had meant, and didn’t want to. Littman stared at the hideous corpse, and spat on it.
“One of the puny ones. Altman must have got lucky.”
“He didn’t look so lucky when I found him,” Rudi said, more sharply than he’d intended. The sergeant didn’t take offence at the remark, he just nodded thoughtfully.
“That’s the thing about luck, lad,” he said. “Sooner or later it always runs out.” He sighed. “Where is he?”
“Over here.” Rudi clambered over the wall, not far from where he’d crossed it before, and waited while the old soldier swung his stiff leg over the obstacle. He pretended to scan the cabbage field to get his bearings, so as to spare the man’s feelings. “I should warn you, he looks…” he searched for a suitable phrase, and gave up. Littman nodded grimly.
“I’ll have seen as bad before,” he said.
“Where do you think the others are?” Rudi asked, unable to stop himself.
“Dead if they’re lucky. If not…” Littman shook his head. “Just better not to think about it.” Something about the flatness of his tone warned Rudi not to pursue the subject. H
e was just steeling himself for the sight of Altman’s body again when one of the militiamen probing the ruins of the cottage with the tips of their spears called out urgently.
“Sergeant! Over here!” Without a word Littman veered off to join him. Rudi followed, anxious not to be left alone with only a mutilated corpse for company.
The militiaman, a thin-faced fellow who normally worked at the bakery and seemed less put out by the searing temperatures than anyone else, pointed at something round and greyish in the carpet of ash. He leaned forward to probe at it with the tip of his spear. Littman watched impassively.
“Careful, Schuller. Don’t want you toasted like one of your figgins.” The warning was more than a mere pleasantry. The waves of heat rising from the embers were enough to stir the hairs on Rudi’s arms. Schuller seemed unconcerned, however; he hoisted the object he’d found from the glowing embers on the point of his weapon as casually as if he were removing a tray of loaves from his oven.
“Thought so.” The baker didn’t seem terribly happy at having guessed correctly, and Rudi could see why. The object was a human skull, charred and made brittle by the furnace heat. As Schuller dropped the grisly find onto the scorched earth, baked to the hardness of brick by the inferno above it, it shattered like a cheap pot. “Any idea who it was?”
“One of the kids, judging by the size,” Littman spat into the embers. The gobbet of spittle sizzled into steam in an instant. “Chances are we’ll find the others in there too when it cools down enough to look.”
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