Warhammer Anthology 07

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Warhammer Anthology 07 Page 6

by Way of the Dead


  It was not one of her friends lying behind the bush; indeed, it was no such creature as Keren had ever seen in her short, isolated life. It looked like a little man, certainly not more than five feet tall had it been standing. Its overall shape was that of a man but where human features should have rested there was the porcine countenance of a farmyard swine, its brutish flesh covered in a soft golden down, almost like the fur of a duckling. The creature was wearing a dark robe and Keren could see that one of its legs was twisted beneath the black fabric at an unnatural angle. As she watched, pale blue eyes stared at her from the swinish head with an almost human look of alarm.

  Keren was still staring into those pale orbs when Kurt ran to her side, alarmed by the girl’s scream. When he saw the strange creature lying almost at Keren’s feet, he halted abruptly, his mind seized by fear. The two still stood there, frozen to the spot, when Paul and his sister joined them. Therese let out a shriek when she saw the beast, the sound seeming to jar the other children out of their paralysed fright. They all ran away from the bestial form, far enough to be out of its reach should it decide to lunge at them. The children were silent, not one daring to speak, though one and all peered through the bush, to make certain that the strange beast was truly there.

  Keren caught a hint of the creature’s gold fur and looked away in disgust, the memory of the creature in its entirety refreshing itself in her mind. She regarded the other children, noting the faces of her playmates as she did so. They all bore expressions of horror tinged with childish fascination, yet none had the courage to take the lead. Keren forced her own face to curl into a haughty and disdainful sneer, adopting the expression she had seen the elder Mueller adopt on many occasions when addressing some cowed villager. She was not afraid, not like these farm whelps. She would show them what true superiority was.

  Keren pushed Kurt toward the bush. The boy resisted her efforts, scrambling back to his original position. The girl glared at the brawny youth. ‘Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a dying pig,’ the girl scolded in her most imperious and high-handed tone. Kurt’s face reddened and the boy stomped toward the bush, determined to redeem himself. Keren followed the boy, at what she judged to be a safe enough distance. A glare brought Paul and Therese hurrying to be at her side. By degrees, the timid gang advanced upon the bush. At last all four children stood over the twisted, brutish shape once again. Kurt bent down and picked up a large stick. Timidly, the boy poked the tip of his improvised weapon into the creature’s side. A human-sounding groan emerged from the porcine snout.

  ‘Is it a monster?’ asked Kurt, his voice trembling.

  Keren looked intently at the gruesome, bestial thing. It was hideous, certainly, but as she looked into its gentle, pleading, strangely human eyes, the girl was not so very certain that it was actually dangerous. It was very obviously hurt and weak. She knew, if she wished, she could have it crushed as a beetle. The other children gawped, fearfully, and Keren knew that they were unconsciously waiting for her judgement.

  ‘That’s stupid,’ she declared, ‘monsters are big and fierce. This poor little thing doesn’t look like it could scare anybody.’ She chose to ignore the sudden shock she had experienced when she had stumbled upon the creature. The others were afraid of it, and that made it all the more important that she showed them that she was not.

  ‘Goblins aren’t big,’ Paul protested, ‘and they’re monsters.’

  Keren scoffed at the tavern boy’s argument. ‘Stupid, everybody knows goblins are just baby orcs. That is why they’re little.’ Keren returned her attention to the little creature, fascination overcoming her lingering horror. The little creature moved one of its delicate, long-fingered hands feebly as she watched it.

  ‘I am going to go get my father,’ Paul decided, pulling on his sister’s hand. Keren turned on the boy with her most venomous glare.

  ‘Paul Keppler, if you do that I will hate you!’ Keren screamed as the boy started to pull his sister away. Paul looked at the girl with an apprehensive gaze. Keren decided to press the attack. ‘If you go telling about this, you won’t be playing with me or any of my friends ever again!’

  The threat was a dire one for any of the children of Marburg. Keren Mueller was the most popular child in the village; her whims of friendship and dislike decided the hierarchy among the children. Those she did not like, like the young bell-ringer at Marburg’s Sigmarite chapel, were virtual pariahs, teased and tormented by all the other children at every opportunity. With his scarred features, Paul was already the object of her ridicule; only his sister’s close relationship to Keren kept him from being an object of complete scorn. Paul looked at his sister for a moment and then released her hand. Keren’s bullying threat had been enough to cow the boy.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ Paul asked as he returned his gaze to the swine-headed creature.

  ‘He’s hurt, maybe sick,’ the girl declared. ‘If we help him get better, maybe he’ll get us presents.’ She was now certain that the creature was a bewitched prince and surely a prince would be able to give her gifts if she helped him recover.

  ‘But where will we take him?’ Paul asked, hoping yet to foil Keren’s plans with reason. There was something horrible about the creature; he could not understand why Keren was not frightened of it. ‘What will we do with it? We can’t very well take it home; mother would never let that thing sleep in the house.’

  Keren thought about the problem for a moment before the light of an idea gleamed in her eyes. ‘I know a place!’ she declared. The girl swatted Kurt’s stomach with one of her dainty hands, rousing the boy from his embarrassed silence. ‘Help Paul pick the prince up and follow me,’ the girl commanded.

  As the boys grabbed his arms and legs, a smile split the porcine features of the sorcerer Thyssen Krotzigk. None of the children noticed that smile, nor its malevolent twisting at the corners of his mouth.

  KEREN LET ANOTHER distinctly unladylike oath escape her lips as the underbrush grabbed at her dress and scratched at her legs for the umpteenth time. She had not figured on the disused path to the old mill being in such a sorry state. Had she known that getting there would be such a chore, she would never have suggested the ruin. The girl looked over at the two boys, struggling to keep the creature’s body high enough to escape the clutching brambles. Their legs were even more scratched and bruised than her own. An impish smile graced Keren’s face as she saw the boys enduring their discomfort simply because she had told them to. Keren looked away from the gasping, sweating pair and looked again at the crumbling wooden structure which was their destination. Once, it had been the business place of Ludwig Troost, the man who had dared to try and end her father’s monopoly. Herr Mueller had begun a campaign of sabotage and slander to destroy Marburg’s other miller. In the end, friendless and destitute, Troost had crushed himself beneath his own mill wheel. Keren’s father liked to talk about his vanquished rival, and he had shown his daughter Troost’s abandoned mill many times since the man’s suicide. Few other people would come here, believing the place to be haunted. It was the perfect place to hide their strange secret.

  The inside of the mill was as decrepit as its exterior. Over the years some of the supporting beams had toppled from the roof to repose in angled pillar-like positions. The floor appeared to be the final resting-place for every dead leaf in the forest, filling the building with a rotting ankle-deep carpet. A brace of crows cawed from the shadowy top of the monstrous mill wheel. A rusted chain dangled from the end of the wooden yoke Troost had once hitched his mule to when working the wheel, swaying slightly in the breeze. Under Keren’s direction the children carried their patient to a raised wooden platform that was slightly less debris-laden than the floor proper. They set him down beside a pair of neglected barrels and quickly stepped away.

  ‘Kurt, go and see if you can get some blankets from your brothers,’ Keren told the burly boy. Kurt hesitated a moment and then made his way through the ruinous mill to the clean air outside. Ke
ren turned her attention to Paul and Therese.

  ‘He needs some food. Why don’t you get some from the tavern?’ Keren said to Paul.

  ‘You mean steal it?’ the boy’s voice was almost incredulous. Keren’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Your father owns the tavern. How can that be stealing?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Paul confessed.

  ‘Maybe I should just have Therese do it, if you are too scared,’ sighed Keren.

  ‘No, I’ll do it, I’ll get some bread,’ Paul hastily agreed. It was one thing if he got into trouble, but he did not want his younger sister to suffer their father’s wrath. Keren smiled at the boy’s easy submission.

  Thyssen Krotzigk listened to the children squabble, the smile again crossing his swinelike face. Truly the Dark Gods were watching over him, the sorcerer thought. It had taken only the slightest suggestion to the girl’s mind to bend her to his intent. She was a naturally bullying and haughty soul, full of pride and arrogance, such easily manipulated qualities. It was indeed fortunate that they ran so strong in the girl’s make-up, for, if Krotzigk admitted the truth to himself, in his present condition, he was beyond any but the most minor of evocations. The little sorcerer shifted his weight, trying to relieve the pressure from his twisted leg. Krotzigk bit down on the sudden pain, refusing to cry out and alarm his newfound patrons.

  Memories flooded the sorcerer’s mind as his hands tried to massage the torment from his mangled limb. Memories of Talabheim and his initiation into the priesthood of Morr. Krotzigk smiled at the recollection. Even at an early age he had been what most people considered morbid. He had always been drawn to the dark side of things. It was this quality which had led him to the rites and rituals of the God of Death and then, in time, to the forbidden study of the ultimate darkness, Chaos itself. He could not remember now how he had come upon the book, a vague treatise on all the dark and forbidden cults that lurked in the shadows of man’s great kingdoms. The book had told of the foul worship of Morr’s brother Khaine, the Lord of Murder, and Malal the Fallen. More, it had told of the great Ruinous Powers - Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh, the Dark Gods who were the chief aspects of Chaos. That simple book, meant to warn, to outrage its studious reader with such blasphemous and heretical rites, instead had ignited a sinister passion within Krotzigk’s already morbid heart. Perhaps his superiors at the temple had sensed the change in their colleague for it was shortly thereafter that he received his transfer to an isolated way temple in the back-country of Stirland. It was little more than a shrine and a cemetery really, serving the scattered villages and towns for a dozen miles around when one of their denizens was called to Morr’s kingdom. But if his new situation did not bring with it prestige and advancement, it brought with it something far more important to Krotzigk’s darkening soul - seclusion.

  Krotzigk could not remember for how many years he had practised the profane rites of Chaos in his blasphemously reconsecrated temple. From the peasants who sometimes visited the temple, he carefully recruited followers, more souls for the Dark Gods. He led them in the dark worship of Chaos in its most pure and absolute form, conducting them in blood rituals on Geheimnisnacht, sacrificing travellers his loyal following provided. More, he conducted them in sacrilegious rites on Death Night, twisting the rites of Morr into a celebration of the Great Powers.

  And his zeal was rewarded, not with the paltry powers of one of Morr’s adepts but with true sorcerous might. Krotzigk found that his aptitude in the magical arts had increased to a degree far beyond his wildest desires. True, there was a price to pay: a necessary humbling which the Chaos Gods inflicted upon Krotzigk even as his magical powers grew. His once handsome face twisted and distorted itself into that of a swine; a soft golden fur covered most of his body. His tongue had split like a serpent’s and his body had shrivelled and shrunk into an almost dwarf-like state. If Krotzigk needed any proof of the awful power of Chaos, he had only to stare at his own reflection. Worse would befall him, he knew, if he ever betrayed his new lords. They would not remain silent and inactive like Morr. To offend Chaos was to invite worse than death.

  After years of isolation, there came an inspector from the temple in Talabheim. The wily old priest had at once detected the hideous rededication of the temple. It had not preserved his life, however, but it had been the beginning of the end for Krotzigk. In response to the vanishing of an aged and respected scion of the temple, the High Priest of Morr had despatched not another band of priests but the cult’s templar knights, the feared Black Guard of Morr.

  Krotzigk had been fortunate to escape with his life; none of his followers had been so lucky. The power of Chaos had delivered him, even if it had not spared him the agony of a broken leg. Perhaps it had been another lesson in humility, the sorcerer considered. And now, after weeks of dragging himself painfully across the wilds, almost at the very brink of death, the Ruinous Powers had again delivered their faithful servant from his suffering. Krotzigk turned his pale eyes on the squabbling children.

  They had delivered him, that he might deliver unto the Chaos Gods a dark harvest of souls.

  THE WIND HOWLED through the boughs that lined the small dirt road. It was the chill wind of late autumn that stirred the fallen leaves on their way, the chill cousin of the icy gales of winter. It was a time when travel was all but absent from the back-roads of Stirland, when only the few cities of that lonely province still drew wanderers to their gates. Still, a shadowy apparition made its way down the disregarded path.

  Had anyone else been roaming along the lane, they would have been impressed by the sinister horseman that shared the road, and made the sign of Sigmar as they passed the silent wanderer. The steed was a magnificent warhorse, dark as the dead of night, a swarthy shroud-like caparison clothing the animal almost from head to hoof. The man mounted upon the horse’s back was also garbed in black, ebony armour of forged obsidian over which he wore a heavy, monklike habit of coarse sombre fibre. Etched upon the breast of the habit was a raven in flight, the sign of the grim god of death. The silent rider was no mere sellsword or freelancer, but one of the dread Black Guard of Morr.

  The templar’s head lay upon his chest as his horse slowly trotted down the path. The caparison and habit, which clothed the two, were torn and muddy, the man’s armour soiled with the dust and grime of many weeks of travel on the back-roads of the Empire. A sudden bolster of the wind’s strength caused the templar’s hood to fall away from his head, revealing the hard, toughened visage of a veteran warrior. The man’s nose was broad and splayed, the result of being broken one time too many. Between his brow and his close-cropped black hair there was the grey furrow of an old knife wound. His left cheek had puckered into a vile patch of withered flesh, through which his cheekbone and even his jaw and rearmost teeth could easily be seen. The withered edge of the templar’s lip trembled and the napping guardsman awoke with a start. Immediately his right hand released the reins and clutched at his left arm, only to close upon the empty sleeve of his habit.

  Ernst Ditmarr grimaced as his mind roused itself to full wakefulness. He released the empty sleeve that had once clothed his left arm and wiped beads of perspiration from his brow before awkwardly shifting his body in order to recover the discarded reins. The same dream, always the same dream. The templar had not passed an hour in slumber without suffering from its baleful intrusion.

  He saw himself, once again leading his command of Black Guard to the way temple of Curate Krotzigk. Once again he saw the deranged Chaos cultists attack them, throwing themselves upon the guard’s swords with a maniacal fervour. And once again he saw the hideously twisted thing that had at one time been a priest of Morr. He saw the monster hurl unholy power upon his knights, reducing men and horses to ash and slime. He saw himself charge the filthy sorcerer, leaping from his saddle to tackle the vile creature. He saw it writhe from his grasp, fleeing up the rough-hewn steps that led to the roof of the small temple. Finally, he saw himself, his great sword clutched in
his hand, his skull-shaped shield held before him as he advanced upon the cornered cult leader. Power danced about the bestial mutant as it summoned its last reserves of sorcerous might. Ditmarr raised his shield to protect his face even as he struck out at the beast with his sword. Searing agony enveloped him as a blast of green flame seared through his shield, knocking him on his back. The dark shape strode triumphantly towards his prone body, unholy power crackling in its hands, utterly unfazed by the templar’s savage attack. The swinish head glared down at him and the sorcerer laughed as it sent a second blast of dark magic into Ditmarr’s body.

  No, that was not how it was. The sorcerer had not gloated over the templar as he lay writhing on the roof of the shrine. Dimly, Ditmarr seemed to recall seeing a black shape topple over the side of the roof even as he himself fell. Clearer memories provided the rest. His awakening in the back room of a healer’s, the gruesome sight of his left arm, withered down to the elbow, every bone showing through the sorry parchment-like skin. He could see his second, Sergeant-Acolyte Ehrhardt, nodding grimly to the healer. He could see the serrated blade in the old man’s hands as Ehrhardt held down the withered arm…

  Ditmarr clenched his teeth against the memory of that pain; a dead arm cut from a living body. If it took him a hundred years, he would find the blasphemer who had taken his arm, his honour and his life. And when he did, Krotzigk would discover that the vengeance of a god betrayed was terrible indeed.

 

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