Zavant

by Black Library

  No, Vido was not looking forward to the ritual processes of fasting and bodily purification he knew he would shortly be required to undergo, but he knew also that greater issues were at stake here than his own personal comfort.

  'Master, this matter is not yet over, is it?' he asked Konniger as they were escorted away through the maze of passages and stairwells that made up much of the interior of the cathedral. Acolytes and Church servants scurried hurriedly out of the way ahead of the procession, and there were hushed, ner­vous whispers and fearful, peering eyes from behind many half-opened doors. Clearly, some version of the happenings in Brother Vallus's cell had preceded them in their journey through the cathedral. The news of the mysterious death of a brother priest was a thrilling scandal for all the cathedral to share, but the presence within these holy walls of any­thing Chaos-tainted was an abomination too awful to be considered.

  'No, Vido, it is not yet over,' answered Konniger, seemingly oblivious to the invisible yet almost palpable aura of fear now spreading through the holy Church of Sigmar. 'Despite what the general laity and many of the learned members of the Church may think-', the note of scorn in Konniger's voice was plainly evident in his use of the word 'learned' when talking of his former brethren in the Church, 'I have found little evidence that the corruption of Chaos is spread in the manner of a curse or spell, or that it is anything as simple as an outward, physical manifestation of some inner, private sin or wrongdoing. It is something more akin to a poison or disease, Vido. There are means of spreading such a poison, and it is possible that the wretched Brother Vallus's mutations were caused by his coming into recent contact with just such a source of contamination.'

  'But how, master? If he was a kind of bookworm recluse who rarely ventured out of his room, how could he have come into contact with such a source of contamination?' asked Vido.

  'Good questions, and well asked, Vido,' replied Konniger, his mind doubtlessly already formulating possible solutions and theorems. These are the matters we must now endeav­our to answer.'

  Two

  Arek van Daul stood on the slope of the low hill behind the small hamlet, looking out over the scene below and savour­ing the aftermath of his warband's handiwork. The breeze from the far distant Sea of Claws carried up the smoke from the burning dwellings below, and his Chaos-heightened senses savoured the smoky scent of roasted human flesh and freshly-spilled blood. From the fields beyond the hamlet - Arek had never troubled to learn the name of the place before deciding to wipe it off the face of the Empire - came the strangely human-sounding screams of terrified animals as Arek's beastmen ran lustfully amok amongst the hamlet's surviving cattle herds. Arek smiled to himself; when he and his warband departed, the human survivors of the attack would come creeping back out of the woods to rebuild their burned homes, replant their ruined crops and recapture their scattered herd animals. If they had any sense, thought Arek, they would slaughter any surviving animals they found, oth­erwise there would be some monstrous surprises awaiting them come next lambing and calving season.

  Still, it was not his way to concern himself with the trou­bles of these human peasants, whose paltry, short lives were scarcely any less wretched and unimportant than the cattle beasts they tended. Once, perhaps, the well-being of such insignificant human chattel might have concerned him, when he was a young and proud Knight Panther dedicated to the defence of the Empire and its inhabitants. But that was more than a century ago, before he had been illuminated into the Dark and had swore his soul to service of the Gods of Chaos.

  Arek stood and watched Vorr, his chief beastman hetman, struggle laboriously up the hill towards him. The creature's two cloven-hoofed feet were not made for climbing up steep, slippery inclines, and Arek's enjoyment of his ser­vant's discomfort was only heightened by the fact that the beastman was also laden with battered, mismatched strips of rusting metal armour stripped from a dozen or more long-dead battle-kills. There was fresh blood on the blade of the heavy, crudely-cast scimitar that the beastman carried, and more fresh blood stained the mangy fur of the area around the creature's powerful, dog-like horned snout and jaws. It had killed during the raid, and fed recently.

  The beastman finally arrived and stood before him, bow­ing its heavy, horned head not in salute - Arek cared little whether his warband followers respected him, just as long as they feared him - but in discomfort against the harsh, unsea­sonable sunlight that shone on this late autumn day. Beastmen disliked natural sunlight, Arek knew, and Vorr's natural habitat was the sunless depths below the thick, light- shielding tree canopy of the Forest of Shadows. This was where he had first found the beastman and his tribe-brothers, binding them to his service and leading them to this ran­domly-chosen massacre site in the haphazard trail of destruction they had wreaked across the face of the Empire's northern reaches these last two years.

  'The earth of the fields has been despoiled? The well has been polluted? You have sought out any hidden grain stores and seen that they too have been properly tainted?'

  Each of Arek's questions was met with a grunt and a nod of the beastman's savage head. Then you have done well,' relented Arek, praising the towering, bloody-jawed beastman

  as if it were some kind of faithful mastiff or hunting hound. 'Gather your tribe brothers and make ready to be gone from this place. The gods are pleased, and our glorious work here is done.'

  Arek cast his gaze out across the landscape of this remote portion of the province of Ostland. It was a fine, clear day and far to the east he even thought he could see the glint of silvery sunlight reflecting off the waters of the River Talabec. If he followed the course of the river, he would soon come to far more tempting prizes than the small villages and ham­lets that had been his warband's targets for the last two years - larger settlements, towns and finally the great city of Talabheim itself. But, of course, there would also be organ­ised militias and Imperial soldiery. Arek had not survived a century or so of near continuous raiding in the lands of men by ever allowing himself to be drawn into battle against any superior and more numerous foe.

  By the time any vengeful pursuit force arrived at this place, he and his warband would be long gone, disappearing once more into the sheltering bowers of the dense forests which covered much of the face of the Empire. Still, he smiled, even after they had gone, their presence would continue to be felt in the months and even years to come, as the sinister Chaos gifts that they had left behind in the wells, soil, granaries and even in the bellies of the herd beasts began to make them­selves known.

  Vorr shuffled uneasily, making a low grunting sound. Arek turned in response to the figure seated on the misshapen steed behind him. 'Our valiant captain of the guard wishes to know our next destination,' he called out mockingly. "What shall we tell him?'

  Sorren the Foresworn shifted awkwardly in his saddle, careful to keep his hands and face out of direct sunlight. While Arek had remained relatively physically unchanged by his service to the Ruinous Powers - the only outward sign being a further deepening of the look of arrogant cruelty to the cast of his refined, aristocratic features - the hunch­backed sorcerer had not been so fortunate. A thick, black woollen, all-enveloping cloak protected his Chaos-altered form from the worst effects of exposure to sunlight, while a metal-beaded mask screened off the garment's deep cowled

  hood, hiding his face from view. The voice that emerged from behind the beaded barrier - bloated and rasping, heavy with the promise of mutated horror - hinted much of the abomination lurking within.

  'I have already cast the bone runes. To go west, of course, would be folly. That is the way we have come, and they will already be searching for us there. The omens are good to the north and east. The bone runes speak of many vulnerable villages and farmsteads and few military patrols, but I now sense something else, something which the runes do not speak of.'

  Arek felt it too. A strange beckoning at the back of his mind, a subtle but distinct mental calling to him from afar. He had experienced this sensat
ion only twice before in his time of servitude to the Lords of Chaos, and recognised it for what it was.

  A summons. A rallying call for the champions and follow­ers of the Powers of Chaos to assemble at the will of some greater daemonic being. Its call was irresistible; its urgency undeniable.

  The warlord turned his head in the direction of the sound­less call. 'South!' he ordered, the beastman turning to follow the direction of his pointing finger. 'We go south, into the Drakwald Forest.'

  The daemon-thing brooded in the darkness of the place that was for it part prison, part refuge. It cursed the foolishness of its servants beyond the confines of its prison, already aware which one of them had acted too precipitously, spreading its Chaos gifts too far, too soon. Now there was danger too: a human whose mind burned with a brilliant and frightening fury, a human coming from afar, following the journey made by one of those gift vessels, even now tracking it back to its secret source.

  It was troubling indeed, especially so close to the immi­nent time of blessed rebirth, but the daemon-thing was wise and cunning, and not without means to protect itself. It had sent out the mystic call, and already it could sense its puppet- followers - several warbands of vile, feral beastman creatures - making their way through the dark forests in answer to its summons. Poor servants they might be, the lowest of the

  ranks of the legions of Chaos, but they were still capable of accomplishing the task required of them. They would inter­cept and kill this human before he even reached its sanctuary-prison, the daemon was sure.

  Afterwards, when it was free from its prison, when it had emerged to claim the full mantle of daemonhood, it would be able to dispense with the services of such serf-creatures.

  The possibility that the human might survive its traps buzzed through the daemon-thing's nebulous mind. It paused for a moment, contemplating the thought, then dis­missed it.

  Even if its servants in the forest failed, it gloated, even if the human somehow survived to his journey's end... Well, this place was the daemon's home, and it had its secret ser­vants ready within these walls. If the human came here expecting to find a place of blessed sanctuary from the Chaos warbands who were even now converging on it from all sides, then he would soon - but, crucially, too late - realise the fatal enormity of his error.

  Three

  'Beastmen, sir! There amongst the trees!'

  The scout came riding back down the track from the front of the column, waving his lance pennant in urgent alarm. Already Gustav could hear and dimly see the dark shapes of bestial creatures crashing through the dense foliage of the woodlands on either side of the road.

  'Ambush! Guard your flanks!' he called, as a wave of crude, bronze- and flint-headed spears flew out from the tree-line. Gustav spurred his charger forward, galloping into the fray and raising his shield. Instantly, he felt an impact as a spear that could well have impaled him through the chest struck the warbird-painted metal shield and was instead deflected harmlessly away.

  Elsewhere, others of his company were not so fortunate. Gustav watched with dismay as one of his men - Haider, an experienced veteran of many hard-fought campaigns - was struck by a beastman missile, the heavy spearhead tearing through the thick, protective material of his leather jerkin and mail hauberk and slashing a deep wound across his side.

  Haider cried out and slumped in his saddle, somehow man­aging to keep hold of his mount's reins. The wound was not necessarily fatal, but Gustav feared the worst: wounds from beastman weapons frequently led to terrible and often fatal infections. He had seen too many good men's lives carried away by whatever vile poison or ordure the Chaos creatures smeared on the blades of their primitive weapons.

  There was another human-voiced scream from nearby, and, seconds later, a riderless horse galloped past. Gustav cursed; in the last two days of the long journey from Altdorf, he had lost almost a quarter of his company in similar beast­man attacks and ambushes. By Sigmar, a journey through these darker parts of the Drakwald Forest was no walk in the meadows, he thought, but he had never before encountered so many beastman warbands except in the Forest of Shadows itself. The attacks had been relentless in the last day or so, and Gustav and his men had been hard-pressed to fend off the last few of them.

  And this one looked to be the fiercest they had encoun­tered so far.

  Still, he grimly reminded himself, he had sworn an oath to safely deliver those under his protection to their destination, and neither he nor his men would falter now. The Templar Order of the Red Griffon might not be the most numerous or illustrious of the Empire's many knightly orders, but they yielded to none in terms of their fealty and bravery in the service of the memory of Lord Sigmar.

  There was a barking cacophony of inhuman shrieks and howls from the foliage, and then a mob of beastmen charged out from the trees, running straight for the group of mounted knights and men-at-arms, and the trio of covered wagons at the centre of the protective skirmish formation. 'No lances!' shouted the young Templar commander, aware that the limited space on the narrow forest track had already robbed the knights of their greatest assets - manoeuvrability and the devastating terror of the mounted charge. 'Swords and hand weapons only! Drive them back into those trees they're so fond of skulking amongst!'

  He ran down the nearest beastman, knowing, as any cav­alryman does, that in mounted combat the first blow is the most important, putting everything into a savage downward

  sword-swing, smashing through the creature's crude wooden shield and cleaving into its shoulder and chest.

  His next blow sliced the top off another beastman's goat- horned head. His third blow impaled one of the things through the chest, the sword lodging itself firmly inside the creature's smashed ribcage. Without hesitation, Gustav relin­quished hold of the pommel, leaving the precious weapon - a relic of the order - stuck inside the body of the dead crea­ture. He wheeled his mount, and took up the heavy mace that hung from the side of his saddle. The weapon's flanged metal head was designed to smash through armour plating, although Gustav had found it to have equally satisfactory results on the dense, horned skulls of beastmen these last few days.

  Searching for his next opponent, he risked a quick glance around him, seeing how the rest of the battle was going. The fringes of the track were scattered with dead or dying beast­men, but two riderless horses testified to possible losses among his own men. They were weakest on their right flank, but even as he realised he saw three beastmen break through the ragged line of Templars and run unerringly in that strange, shambling gait of theirs straight towards the covered wagon in the middle.

  The wagons to the front and rear of it contained only sup­plies and provisions, but it was this central wagon that carried the cargo that was the purpose of the Templars' mis­sion here.

  Gustav looked round, knowing that if he broke ranks to intercept them it would only open up an equally vulnerable gap in their left flank.

  'Go!' shouted his deputy, Waasen, fighting on horseback nearby and immediately understanding his commander's dilemma. Voss and I will hold the line here!'

  Gustav turned his horse, and charged towards the three beastmen. He kept a tight hold of the reins, sensing his mount's uneasy fear. Empire warhorses were trained for bat­tle, and were not ordinarily unnerved by inhuman opponents, not even the pungent-smelling greenskins, but the scent of creatures that carried the taint of Chaos in their blood repulsed and terrified the acute senses of most ani­mals.

  The beastmen saw him coming, pointing and communi­cating between themselves in a short series of guttural barks. Two turned to face him, one of them hurling a crude, flint- headed handaxe at him. Gustav deflected it easily with his shield and spurred his charger forward straight towards it, swinging the mace round his head and yelling a batde-cry of Sigmarite devotion. He knew the two beastmen were sacri­fices, blocking his way to delay him while their brother abomination went for the main target in the central wagon.

  Diversions and sacrifices they may be, but that
did not mean that Gustav would take no relish in ending their foul existence.

  They came at him from either side. The one on his shield side was the slower and clumsier of the two. Gustav lashed out with his foot and raked the points of his spurs across its face. Blinded, it stumbled and fell to the ground, bleating as it died beneath the iron-shod hooves of Gustav's mount. The other feinted, and darted forward to try and hamstring or disembowel the charging warhorse with its rusting scimitar. Gustav saw the move coming and struck out with his mace, an unconventional but effective uppercut blow that caught the creature on the underside of its goat-like face, turning its lower jaw into powdered bone and lifting its whole body off the ground with an impact that must have surely shattered its horned skull.

  Gustav charged onwards, but the third beastman had already reached its objective. The armed squire who had been driving the wagon was dead - killed by a fearfully accu­rate and powerful beastman spear pitch - and so there was no one to stop the monster as it eagerly leapt up onto the pillion seat and pulled aside the canvas covering only to tumble backwards again, hands clasped to its neck as its lifeblood gushed out onto the ground from a knife-slash to its throat.

  Gustav had witnessed more than enough bloodshed dur­ing his time of holy service to Sigmar to recognise expert knife-work when he saw it. He doubted that it was the hand­iwork of his distinguished bookworm charge, so Gustav guessed that his initial impressions of the man's halfling manservant were indeed correct. His father had been a mag­istrate in Wolfenburg, and as a boy he had learned much of

  human nature from watching his father give judgements at the city's daily assizes. The Templar was not fooled by the benign appearance of the bookworm's manservant; he could see through the facade of false innocence to the criminal nature that lurked beneath, a look he was familiar with from the many wretches who had appeared before his father's bench. However, whatever sins or crimes the halfling might have been guilty of, Gustav was prepared to forgive them all as long as he continued to put his dubious skills to use killing off the followers of Chaos.