As he moved off to freedom and safety, with his prisoner slung across the back of his horse, Verdammen heard a sickening roar—the sound of something large, angry and hungry.
The horrific noise was soon joined by the appalled cries of those who had been left behind. Verdammen didn’t know what was happening and didn’t intend to find out. With another shout of encouragement to his steed he galloped out of the doomed village, with his warband, leaving the people of Grunhafen and their insane accusers to their late. He had business elsewhere.
FOUR
The Raven’s Feast
“Famine is the embodiment of the ecstasy the servants of the Prince of Chaos seek when all other sensation has lost any meaning for them. It is extreme, perverse, unhealthy, and can only end in death.”
—From the sermons of
Saint Hildegard the Chaste
By late spring of the year 2521 the news of an impending invasion from the north had been building for some time. At first it had been mere rumour and superstition, brought about by the strange omens and dire portents that had beset the land, such as the appearance of the fiery twin-tailed comet in the skies above the Empire. The reactions of those who led and protected the people of the mighty realm were mixed and contradictory.
Many who feared the political, social or mercantile instability that rumours alone might bring discounted the rumours as doom-mongering of heretics who would see the Empire fall. Suspected agitators were rounded up, put to trial and executed. In the wool town of Feuerpfahl alone one hundred and thirteen panic-spreaders were brought before the courts and burnt at the stake in a series of mass executions. It was said that the air around Feuerpfahl smelt of burning fat for weeks afterwards.
Others reacted to the stories that the End Times were almost upon them by cutting themselves off from the rest of the world, either in the vain hope that they might escape the impending disaster or to simply face the end, when it came, in seclusion, with their loved ones.
Others saw it as their role to take the fight to the enemy before the enemy came to them. Musters of free companies occurred throughout the Empire, from Ostermark to as far south as Wissenland. Men who had once fought in the standing armies of the elector counts quit the homes they had bought with their army pensions and reported for duty once more. Villages and towns prepared to defend themselves. Great sprawling cavalcades of fanatical holy men and their zealous followers wandered the land, doing what they saw as Sigmar’s work.
The cathedrals, temples and shrines of Sigmar had never seen their congregations so numerous, or their collection plates so full. And yet it seemed that there had never been so many cults and heretics publicly turning their back on the faith of Sigmar. Idolaters went so far as to ransack a church in Turmstadt and raze it to the ground.
Bands of babbling heretics roamed the land in hordes, attacking the faithful even while at prayer. They carried out their own blasphemous trials of prominent religious figures, who they accused of failing the common people, lining their own pockets whilst the common folk starved, hiding in cathedral-strongholds whilst the people faced the predations of darker things. Beastmen, cultists and even the vile skaven emerged from the bowels of the earth to feast on the dying carcass of the Empire.
People spoke of the rise of the ratmen, the spread of plague and the increase in monstrous, deformed births as signs that the End Time was upon them. Omens had been scryed by soothsayers, sorcerers and village wise-women in crystal balls, and in the patterns described by the stars, as well as the mutations of the afflicted. How could anyone doubt it?
Some said the regular forays of beastmen herds from the forests of the Drakwald and the Forest of Shadows proved that the power of Chaos was on the increase. Others said that the raids were nothing unusual and simply proved that life was continuing as normal.
Scholars who had read of such things in the secret histories of the Imperial archives said the Empire was in the same state it had been before the destruction of Mordheim, that depraved city of the damned, or before the last great Chaos incursion over three hundred years before, which had been repelled by Magnus the Pious.
Some began decrying the state of the nation, saying that there were no more heroes like those of old. Those who were braver, or more foolish, than the rest went so far as to accuse the Emperor Karl-Franz himself of not doing enough to halt the advance of Chaos. The people began to look for new heroes to save them, and in the Reikland rumour said that such a hero had been found.
With the initial incursions into the frozen land of Kislev by the marauder hordes of the north, what many had suspected for a long time could no longer be denied. The sense of doom and panic pervading the Empire, already bad, grew worse.
Yet this was also a time of great optimism. Differences between rival noblemen were put aside, personal aggrandisement were forgotten by some political leaders, and the needs of the many were put before the needs of the few. Temples emptied their coffers to aid the preparations for the battles to come.
It was a time of contradictions; a time of Chaos.
As news continued to stream in from Kislev and the north-eastern edge of the Empire, the official call to arms went out and the muster of troops began in earnest. Every province and city-state prepared to defend itself against attack by the daemonic armies of the north.
Far to the north of the Empire, in the shadow of the Middle Mountains, the sentinel city of Wolfenburg, domain of Elector Count Valmir von Raukov, also made ready. As his standing army prepared to hold back the tide of evil that scouts declared was heading their way, word reached Valmir that troops were coming to the aid of his city. Whether out of some noble sense of duty or an attempt to stem the tide of Chaos sweeping south, it mattered not. What mattered was that help was on its way.
The city of Wolfenburg was far from a defenceless target. Its ancient walls had held back countless sieges in the past, and its standing army was proud and strong. It had often led the offensive against the enemy into the querulous borderlands or mountain reaches where renegades and rebels gathered, along with bandits and other inhuman enemies. The city’s forces were combined with a number of Templar orders who saw it as their holy duty to protect this edge-of-the-Empire bastion and safeguard the security of the rest of the nation that lay beyond the wilds of Ostland.
The stern-faced elector count expressed relief when he heard that a cannon train had been dispatched from the smelting works of Schmiedorf to bolster the defences of the sentinel city.
While the guards watched and Wolfenburg waited, reports of the Chaos hordes’ steady encroachment into the lands of mortal men continued. Doom-mongers were heard to whisper a name that froze the hearts of men. Mention of it made men make the sign of the hammer, touch iron or bless themselves.
And the name was Archaon, dread lord of the End Times himself.
This was a Chaos incursion unparalleled in the history of the Empire and Sigmar’s people were crippled by their fear.
As they sharpened their sword blades in the armouries, or tended to their steeds in the stables, certain Templar knights heard the name, the rumours, and the terror in the voices that spoke it. They resolved then that it was time to honour the holy vows they had made.
* * *
On the twelfth day of Pflugzeit dawn broke cold and brittle. Despite the unseasonable chill, the severe weather that had plagued Ostland for the last month seemed to have passed, for that morning the sun rose, no longer cloaked by cloud.
An hour after dawn, the hazy yellow-white disc of the sun travelled a path across the firmament and mist began rising from the meadows outside the city walls. The great gates of Wolfenburg were heaved open to emit a host of knights who rode out from between the gate towers.
The thunder of their horses’ hooves resounded as twenty riders, two abreast, their captain and standard bearer ahead of the charge, emerged from the city. They were knights of the Templar order of Sigmar’s Blood.
They were truly a sight to behold: lustrous helms
, glittering vambraces and cuirasses flashed silver in the morning light; lances were raised high, and a forest of spear tips gleamed in the sun’s rays. The horses’ hooves beat a tattoo of war on the ground. Pennants and banners of white cloth embroidered with red and gold flapped above the riders’ heads.
One standard carried at the head of the armoured force was greater and more impressive than all the others. Its cloth was aged and threadbare, the colours of the silks on the crest faded and worn. The metal mountings of the dark-stained banner pole were tarnished with the patina of age and dented out of shape. Compared to the other flags and pennants carried by the host, it was dull, dark and dusty, a relic of another age.
It was a standard that had seen war; that had been carried into battle at the head of many a victorious army. This standard had never been captured, and had always returned to its venerated resting place in the chapel of Sigmar at the Elector Count of Ostland’s castle seat. The mere presence of the standard filled the knights with a resolve as strong as steel. They would complete their task and conquer any foe they met on their mission.
The knights of Sigmar’s Blood were riding to meet up with an artillery train that was journeying to Wolfenburg from Schmiedorf, bringing cannon to help defend the city from attack. The knights would ensure that nothing befell those who came to the sentinel city’s aid and would do their best to protect the precious artillery.
Captain Jurgen Enrich glanced over his shoulder at his Templar host. His horse panted beneath his armoured weight, and the knight could feel its powerful muscles heaving under his saddle. His heart swelled with pride at the sight of the host cantering in lines behind him. They moved as one, so well practiced were they. In times of discord and disorder, the sight of twenty of the most adept and devoted of knights would fill any honest folk with hope that the gathering storm of Chaos could be overcome.
Each one of the Templar warriors was a formidable force in his own right. Skilled with the lance, sword, axe and hammer, any one of the knights of Sigmar’s Blood could face and fell a dozen attackers.
Mounted on their mighty warhorses, they were even more deadly foes. It would take a powerful opponent to best one of these knights in battle. As far as Captain Jurgen Enrich was concerned, such a thing would never happen. The paladin knights would return, with the cannon train, to be greeted by jubilant cheers from the townsfolk of Wolfenburg. They would drive the hosts of the enemy from their land, back to the barren Northern Wastes, routed and broken into pitiful warbands. The knights would bury their blades in the bodies of the degenerate followers of the lord of the End Times and make a raven’s feast of his armies.
Enrich kicked his spurs into his steed’s flanks and spurred the horse into a gallop. The rest of the armoured host followed suit, maintaining an orderly distance, and never breaking their formation. Clods of turf flew from the horses’ hooves as they careered down the incline of the hill away from the ancient city.
As they turned into a spur of woodland, the knights disappeared beneath the trees, out of sight of the guards at the city gate. One last pennant briefly fluttered in the wind, with its tip glinting in the morning light, and then that too was gone.
The first thing that Lector Wilhelm Faustus noticed about the place, after he got through the clouds of smoke, was the stench of disease and decay in the air. The second thing was the unnatural stillness: the only sounds he could hear, other than those made by his own small entourage—the jangling of harness, the scuffing of boots on the ground, and the scrape of weapons being unsheathed—was the crackling of dying embers and the soft moan of the wind that blew flurries of dirty ash into their faces in irritating gusts. The men had followed him after the “miracle” he had performed back in Steinbrucke.
Grunhafen, the sign read. So that was the name of the place.
The village was still partially surrounded by a stockade of sharpened tree-trunk posts, torn down in places. It had not take long for the warrior priest’s party to discover why. A series of bonfires had been built up around the outskirts of the settlement.
Grunhafen seemed to have suffered the same fate as the other settlements they had passed through. At first Wilhelm thought the fires had been lit to purify the air of the contagion that had afflicted this region.
But something else had happened to this apparently once-prosperous village. Not just fires had been burning. What had happened here, and where were the people of Grunhafen?
Then the priest saw the first of the bodies.
It was the body of a man, face down on the road in front of them as they advanced warily towards the heart of the village. It was revealed as a coil of smoke was blown clear by the uneasy air. The man was wearing a monk-like habit of heavy sackcloth.
The warrior priest’s entourage hung back, not as comfortable around dead bodies as the lector. Wilhelm approached the prone figure, half-consciously making the sign of the hammer over his heart.
Putting his strong calloused hand on the man’s shoulder the lector turned him over. The dead eyes had rolled into the top of the man’s head, and his face was disfigured by disease. The front of his robe, which was blood-stained and filthy, bore an embroidered twin-tailed comet. The man’s midriff had been split by a massive wound, the purple-grey coils of his intestines spilling out.
The stench was horrendous and Wilhelm was forced to put a hand over his nose and mouth. Behind him he heard one of his entourage retch and lose his breakfast.
“What in Sigmar’s name happened here?” one of his men asked, his voice weak and wavering.
“By all that’s holy, I intend to find out,” Wilhelm growled, standing up again. “Come on, this way,” he instructed, looking back at the motley collection of men who now followed him.
And with that the party continued into Grunhafen.
As the warrior priest stepped over the corpses littering the streets, including women and children, he tried not to dwell on the carnage but recalled instead how his latest entourage had come to join him.
It had been after that fateful night in Steinbrucke when he had battled the undead. The odds would have appeared insurmountable to a man without Wilhelm’s faith, but for this warrior priest of Sigmar, the outcome had never been in doubt. By dawn the revenants had been returned to the grave, the uneasy souls sent on to their eternal rest. He had broken the dark path of the necromantics.
Before leaving the village, Wilhelm had set to work restoring the neglected chapel to a holy shrine once more. As he worked in the chapel, righting pews and sweeping leaves from the chalky flagstones, the first of the penitents had come to him, full of trepidation and remorse, and seeking absolution.
The lector pointed out that absolution had to be earned through acts of repentance. While some had drifted back to their godless homes, others had sworn to fight at Wilhelm’s side, in the name of Sigmar, until the slate of their sins had been wiped clean.
Wilhelm stepped out from between the skeletal shells of two charred buildings into the centre of the village. “Sigmar’s hammer!” he gasped, hefting his great warhammer in his gauntleted hands, ready to fight.
There was not much that could provoke such a response from the warrior priest, what he had seen had shaken him to the core. Wilhelm took a deep breath and uttered the prayer of the humble penitent. In a moment his steely resolve returned and his face became a mask of grim determination.
Before him stood the remains of a huge bonfire, some twelve feet across. Amidst the ash and embers Wilhelm could quite clearly see the partially burnt and blackened bones and skulls of human beings. Lying around the village square, at the edge of the white circle, there were more bodies, villagers and robed figures. Sharp-beaked ravens and other dark birds probed the soft bodies for the choicest scraps.
What horrified Wilhelm most was that he could see symbols of the Sigmarite brotherhood: twin-tailed comets, smiting hammers, and the sharply angled “S” of Sigmar amidst this carnage. It was clear that his own order had been dealt a terrible wrong.
He gave a shout and the ragged carrion birds rose into the air, their harsh cawing echoing through the remaining buildings around the village square.
Wilhelm closed both his eyes—the seeing one and the blind—and breathed deeply, intoning Saint Asmodius’ prayer of protection as he did so. He opened his eyes and gazed upon the ruins of the village with his one good eye. He saw the smoking fires and the charred corpses but now the scene was awash with something beyond normal sight. It was as if there were colours he could smell, scents he could hear, sounds he could taste, flavours he could touch and vibrations he could see.
The priest was sensitive to powers that moved through and alongside the earthly plane. His awareness came from his focus on the godly power of Sigmar that worked through men’s souls. He had sensed the… the wrongness—it was the only way he could think of it—in these currents. It was as if dark energies were being drawn to this place, in much the same way as a whirlpool would draw in the waters of the deep.
The lector began to pace around the funeral pyre. What crime could these people have possibly committed to deserve such a terrible fate? Or were they simply the victims of a plague that no one had the power to cure?
Smoke continued to rise from the smouldering embers. The latent heat distorted the air above it into a shimmering haze as though it were a summer’s day.
The crows continued to harry the priest’s entourage with their cawing. The charcoal skeletons of kindling crunched under Wilhelm’s boots and the wind moaned softly. Then the priest became aware of another sound. He paused.
It was the sound of something living, but it was so horrid it would have turned a weaker man’s stomach. It was the sound of feasting, the tearing of flesh and the cracking of bones.
[Warhammer] - Magestorm Page 6