Wilhelm Faustus had first heard the call to fight for Sigmar decades before. But he had heard the call anew only a matter of months ago, at the turning of the year recorded in the Imperial record as 2521.
In fact, if people had had the eyes to see it, it would have been witnessed throughout the Empire. It had been present in all the dark and ominous portents that were seen across the countryside and in the towns as well, from Hochsleben and Wissenburg to Salzenmund and Bechafen. The message could not have been clearer: the Heldenhammer asked that those who still held their faith fight back against the rise in Chaos, and hold back the tide of evil that threatened to sweep through the lands.
So it was that the warrior priest had readied his horse Kreuz, and packed for a long journey. He was to set off for the lands that lay under the shadow of the north. Lector Wilhelm Faustus’ holy destiny lay, he believed, in him taking the fight against evil unto the very wastes of Chaos.
Of course, as he travelled ever northwards through the blighted baronies and principalities of the Empire, he saw corruption and heresy all around him. His own religious fervour would not let him merely stand by and ignore the servants of the Dark Powers that worked their evil in the communities of the good people. As a consequence, his travels had been interrupted on many occasions as he saw to the spiritual and physical needs of Sigmar’s people. Sometimes he had worked alone and sometimes others had assisted him in his holy labour.
And so he had returned to Steinbrucke and the curse their village was under. The villagers might have once been counted among the good people of the Empire but they had allowed their faith to wane. Rather than seeing the call of their god to take up arms against the visions and signs abroad throughout the land, the villagers of Steinbrucke had only seen the collapse of what little civilisation remained in their part of the world.
If such a lapse of faith was allowed to continue it could spread and grow like a canker, and corrupt the very heart of the Empire. And it could spell the downfall of the rule of the Emperor Karl-Franz and his noble upstanding elector counts.
But it was not Wilhelm’s way to punish the guilty by doing away with the innocent. The people’s lack of faith was like an illness, to be purged from them. They needed a demonstration of the power of Sigmar for all its god-emperor’s awe-inspiring glory. In time he hoped such an approach would have satisfying consequences for the Empire and its loyal subjects.
And if the rumours, which had led him to Steinbrucke were to be believed, such a demonstration would not be hard to arrange. For it was said that foul things had been seen lumbering through the fields at night and unearthly moans broke the peace of night time slumbers. Unnatural powers were at work in this place.
He had first heard talk of the village in the taproom of The Goat’s Head in Hirschalle. He heard of the inhabitants’ fear and faithlessness and the powers of darkness that had taken hold, drawing doom-loving essences to its lands. In Galgenbaum he had heard that the village of Steinbrucke was now shunned by all but the most implacable or desperate travellers. Apparently there had not been a priest there for some months. At night the people hid behind their sturdy stone walls whilst the dead expelled from the earth by the dark power walked the streets and tried to reclaim the homes that had once been theirs.
With these thoughts, Wilhelm urged Kreuz forward and began to descend the track that led to the ancient stone bridge and the cowering village beyond. His horse’s iron-shod hooves clacked on the flinty track, and his trophies rattled on the harness.
A light rain had begun to fall and there was a distinctly un-springlike chill in the air. Wilhelm pulled his cowl over his head, throwing the grim features of his face into shadow. He appeared sinister, like some prophet of the End Times.
As he entered the village, feeling the rain pattering his bald head through the fabric of his hood, Wilhelm was greeted by a succession of doors and shutters being slammed firmly shut. Was this welcome just for him or was it in part because dusk was falling and the dark things were about to approach?
The lector realised that, if nothing else, the slamming doors were a sign that he was not welcome here. After all, the people of Steinbrucke had long ago abandoned any notion that the priesthood of Sigmar could assist them. He had come to this place uninvited and if he had any sense he would ride straight through and find shelter elsewhere before nightfall. Whatever might befall him if he chose to remain was none of the villagers’ concern; he had brought it upon himself.
The settlement, which looked as if it had once been reasonably well-to-do, appeared to have fallen on harder times in recent months.
Wilhelm had already seen how poorly tended and weed-choked the fields beyond the village had become. Many of the buildings were also beginning to show signs of neglect. Wilhelm noticed that some hasty repairs had been made to missing tiles on the roofs of the houses and saw strange scratches on many of the now closed doors and window shutters, which looked suspiciously like claw marks.
But it was the establishments that had previously relied on passing trade that showed the worst neglect and disrepair. The paintwork on the frontage of the inn was faded and peeling and the drinking house did not even seem to be open. But then if, as Wilhelm now strongly suspected, the rumours he had heard about unnatural things infesting this place were true, then no one would want to be out after dark on any night, no matter what the weather.
The great wheel of the mill that stood at the edge of the village creaked mournfully as it rotated. It served no purpose now that the farmers took their precious harvests elsewhere.
“If you would save your village and yourselves,” Wilhelm called to the shadowy shapes of buildings around him, as if berating their occupants, “then pray now to your saviour, Lord Sigmar himself!”
The rain continued to fall on Steinbrucke, puddles forming in the hoof-prints left by Kreuz’s heavy tread. Through the drizzle the village looked even more dour and desolated. Wilhelm had thought he had seen the most neglected of Steinbrucke’s properties and places until, guiding Kreuz between the homes and boarded-up businesses, he saw a smaller, low domed building at the edge of the village.
It was a chapel, its stonework cracked and crumbling. Ivy and lichen covered almost every square inch of the building. Surmounting the dome of the roof was a statue of a noble warrior holding a stone warhammer in his strong hands; it was doubtless meant to be an image of the Heldenhammer himself.
The door to the chapel and the few shallow steps leading up to it were choked with weeds. The carved faces of saints peered forlornly, with sadness in their stone eyes, from between the fronds of greenery that smothered the holy place.
Hot, righteous anger flared within Wilhelm. How could anyone have allowed such a thing to happen? For a moment he felt like abandoning Steinbrucke to its fate; they must have brought it upon themselves.
Then the priest took a deep breath, closed his eyes and cast a prayer to Sigmar, asking his forgiveness. No, he had come here to rid the village of whatever was plaguing it, and to prevent the powers of darkness from gaining further footholds in the blessed lands of the Empire.
Wilhelm dismounted. Having tied Kreuz’s reins securely to a tree branch that hung over the wall of the cemetery, he gazed upon the derelict building in front of him, hefting his consecrated warhammer in his gauntleted hands.
Wilhelm’s warhammer was comprised of a shaft of wood, braced with iron. It was five spans long and surmounted with a heavy iron head. The otherwise flat hammer-face was studded with brutal spikes, and inscribed on one side with a curling “S” that was set within a representation of a twin-tailed comet. The end of the warhammer was bound with leather and culminated in a loop of chain. Feeling the weapon’s reassuring weight in his hands, the priest walked purposefully towards the chapel.
As the last light seeped from the sky above the rim of the valley, Wilhelm could just make out the shadows of broken tombstones in the graveyard—crooked black shapes just darker than the land from which they rose. His eyes s
teadily adjusted to the deepening darkness. The only sounds were those of the rain pattering down around him and the eerie keening of a light breeze as it blew through the branches of the yews trees around the edge of the graveyard.
Reaching the top of the chapel steps, Wilhelm cautiously pushed open the door with the head of his hammer. All that met him was a deep darkness.
Closing his eyes again and focussing his mind as if in a state of meditation, Wilhelm prayed to Sigmar to aid him in his task to purge Steinbrucke of evil. Returning to his steed beside the cemetery wall, Wilhelm unpacked a lantern from the horse’s saddlebags. Once the lantern was lit, he braved the shrine. The warm, golden glow banished the creeping shadows from the interior of the neglected chapel.
Then he heard it: a skittering of loose earth and stones, and the eerie keening of the wind that sounded like moaning. Wilhelm turned from the chapel door and raising the glowing head of his warhammer above him, peered into the cemetery beyond.
At first he could see nothing between the broken tombstones and the occasional age-cracked crypt. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of shifting soil. Immediately focussing on the spot, Wilhelm saw something push itself free of the disturbed ground. Five, thin nubs of bone appeared, followed by the gleaming dome of a skull.
The warrior priest could feel his heart beating against his ribs but he consciously kept his breathing deep and slow, channelling the adrenaline now rushing through his system. He was readying himself to act calmly, rather than letting the foe force him into careless action.
This was not the first time he had witnessed the dead rise from their graves. He had been party to all manner of disturbing and supernatural phenomena in his quest to bring the holy light of Sigmar to the darkest corners of the Empire.
The human skeleton, its bones held together by strips of rotted muscle and leathery sinews, struggled free of its grave and rose into a hunched stoop. After a moment’s pause, whilst the bony silhouette swayed disconcertingly from side to side as if it were finding its balance, the animated human remains crept unerringly towards the lector. Its movements were insect-like and unsettling.
Wilhelm was now aware of the sound of other bodies pulling themselves free of the tainted ground. Swinging his glowing warhammer around and above him, Wilhelm caught glimpses of age-yellowed bone, grave-soil smeared pallid skin, grey-green flesh, clumps of matted hair peeling from bloodless scalps and decomposing faces distended by slack-jawed moaning mouths. They were all stalking and stumbling towards him.
Now was the time to act!
Gripping the warhammer firmly in both hands Wilhelm felt the muscles in his arms bunch as his legs propelled him towards the rising revenants. Closing the distance between himself and the risen corpses, Wilhelm swung with his weapon. The hammerhead connected with the grey skull of the first skeleton, exploding its cranium into shards of bone as it was knocked clean from the vertebrae of its neck. What remained of the skeleton took a few more unsteady staggering steps before Wilhelm’s counter swing quite literally took its legs from under it. The bones clattered onto a fallen, lichen-stained headstone, the ribcage coming to rest amidst a thicket of thistles.
Night had fallen completely, and the rain began to pelt down more heavily than before. Unperturbed, the revenants continued to pull themselves free of the dampening ground, and advanced towards the warrior priest, slipping drunkenly through the mud.
Adrenaline filled Wilhelm with religious fervour. He continued to lay about him, smiting the undead before they could get their filthy, clawing talons within reach of him. The warhammer glowed more brightly every time it connected with a corpse, shattering bones and pulverising partially decomposed flesh under its blows.
But the number of the revenants was steadily increasing and, although they did not move quickly, they were slowly but surely closing in on Wilhelm, eventually trapping him between the crush of their bodies. As he backhanded a stinking cadaver that was chattering the broken stumps of its teeth at him incessantly, the priest felt something scrabbling at his boots. He kicked out and was dimly aware of a wet splintering sound as his foot connected brutally with something at ground level.
Splintered bony talons scraped across the metal of Wilhelm’s breastplate and snagged against the straps and buckles holding it in place. The priest kicked out again, knocking the fleshless husk of a corpse far enough away to take a swing at it with his hammer. The weapon shattered its ribcage and backbone before it pulverised the face of a green-tinged flailing zombie. Decomposing grey matter spurted from the newly opened cracks in its skull.
There were too many of them, and they were getting too close. He was outnumbered by more than twenty to one, he guessed. The undead were relentless, never tiring, and where one fell, three more were already pulling themselves free of the mouldering earth to take its place. They did not feel pain and fought on even when they had sustained injuries that would have felled a living creature. In fact, their unremitting attacks were too much for one man.
But Lector Wilhelm Faustus was not just any man. He was a man of god and with his faith in Sigmar he would overcome these spawn of evil.
Driven into a state of furious ecstasy, Wilhelm called on his god to intervene again. He could feel every fibre of his body being charged with the divine power of the Heldenhammer. A warm golden glow suffused every part of him. He felt as if he was surrounded by a halo of golden, shimmering light.
There was a moment’s silence and then a burst of sound like a roaring fire that swallowed all noise before it. Energy erupted from the warrior priest in an explosion of brilliantly bright blazing light, and it lit the graveyard with its incandescence. Raindrops hissed, evaporated by the heat blast.
The sound of the wind in the yew trees returned in an even more agonised howl as the bodies of the dead were blasted apart by the sheer physical force of Wilhelm’s faith. Rotten flesh melted and sloughed from bones in the face of the explosion. Parchment-dry skin burst into flame. Mouldering bones clattered against the side of the chapel as soul fire ripped through the pack of undead.
The echoes of the explosion of retribution died and the sounds of the night returned. Wilhelm’s skin was a mass of gooseflesh and his muscles tingled with the power that had been channelled through him. He gazed upon the broken stones of the cemetery that were now littered with the charred and bubbling remains of the undead.
Then he heard it again: the skittering of shifting soil, the hollow tap and scrape of naked bone against granite, the splintering of rotten coffin wood. The dead certainly did not rest easily in Steinbrucke.
Wilhelm felt exhausted, the drawn-out battle and expulsion of holy energy had drained his vital strength. Yet despite feeling the strain, the priest prepared to fight on regardless and hastily muttered another prayer to Sigmar.
He straightened his breastplate and shook coffin-dirt from his monk’s robe. Then he drew his hood tight about his head again before hefting his warhammer in both hands and striding further into the cursed graveyard.
He would not rest until every last one of the corpses advancing towards him over the sodden ground was dead and buried for ever.
Gottfried Verdammen surveyed the smouldering ruins of the tower, a look of grim resignation in his steely eyes. The Tower of Heaven had once stood at the top of this crag overlooking the rushing rapids of the unnamed tributary below. It had been the highest point of land for leagues around, before the roots of the Middle Mountains rose leagues away to the west. It had stood one hundred feet tall, isolated and remote: the ideal location for a sorcerer like Kozma Himmlisch to practise his mysterious art. And now it was nothing more than blackened rubble.
Fire had ravaged the structure. The conflagration must have been furious and intense: the interior of the tower had been gutted and its foundation stones cracked, so that the astromancer’s ancient home had collapsed utterly.
Cold fury simmered beneath the surface of Verdammen’s coldly calculating mind. It seemed that the rising tide o
f Chaos was determined to thwart them at every turn. The witch hunter did not rate his chances of finding the celestial wizard alive as being very good.
The rest of the witch hunter’s party began to search the tumble of masonry, the mastiff straining on the end of its chain-leash as it sniffed through the debris for any bodies. Verdammen himself could see the twisted metal corpse of the colossal telescope amongst the masonry; a paradigm of some sorcerer-scientist’s art now destroyed forever.
His party had travelled for five days since leaving Keulerdorf. They had ridden in the face of relentless wind and rain through the wilds of Ostland, over rocky hills, between the cathedral-pillar trunks of twisted, brooding woodland and across the bleak wind-swept emerald-black moors until they had reached the Tower of Heaven.
At least the rain seemed to have subsided. This morning had been the first to dawn for a week without a blustery shower. It still didn’t feel like spring, though.
Verdammen was shaken from his reverie by the warhound’s strident barking.
“Herr Verdammen!” the scar-faced Gunther called from the shattered remains of an arched window. “The dog’s found something!”
The witch hunter hastily made his way to his associate. The mastiff was straining on its chain as it scrabbled and worried at something buried under the blackened timbers and fire-cracked stones. Gunther held the slavering animal back as Verdammen heaved a charred beam free.
There, at the centre of a blackened patch of ground, which the rain had turned into ashy mud, was a blackened corpse, transfixed by a twisted and melted spear of metal.
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