by ich du
Slowly, but with increasing power, the breath of the gods had begun to take its toll. Bjordrin's skin became flaky and then as it fell away in great clumps, glistening silver scales were revealed beneath. Gird could barely carry Kurt's standard, his fingers on both hands having gradually fused into crude, dark-skinned claws, while his back twisted and hunched as a tail grew from his spine. Each new discovery was greeted as a gift from the gods; proof positive that the Powers of the North were indeed aware of them now.
When Undar's armour split apart, burst open by his bulging muscles threaded with veins like ropes, they stopped and thanked the gods for their power. The shaman led their prayers, cavorting back and forth gabbling in a tongue none of the others understood. Orst, who had been to these lands before, suffered badly. His eyes had dimmed and his behaviour showed almost no sign of intelligence. Bony spines now erupted from his fur-covered body and his neck had elongated, while extra eyes had sprouted from his forehead, a disturbing pale blue with no pupils.
Kurt fought hard against the breath of change, though he could feel it working within his own body, splitting and tearing, knitting and reshaping his bones and flesh. He found that if he concentrated hard, exerted his will on the forces ravaging his form, he could control the mutation, even shape it. He had not learned this trick before a vast, curved horn had extruded from his skull, seemingly made of marble. His hair fell out, and small knuckle-like nodules dotted his scalp. Under the skin of his back he could feel something writhing and moving, as his flesh warped and eddied like liquid under the constant barrage of magical energy.
Jakob perhaps suffered most, his hand now fused to the staff that he had carried, fingers of wood entwined with the shaft, while leafy branches grew out of his arm and shoulder. He had lost an eye, covered over with a scabrous mass of pulsating flesh that beat like a second heart. His other eye was now like a sphere of pure gold, though he claimed he could see perfectly well. His teeth protruded over his lips from bleeding gums, carving grooves into his flesh. It was impossible to say when it happened, but at some point the rune-stones that he had once carried at his belt had moved and fused to his flesh, seven glowing fist-sized rocks. Stars circled at their core, and when Kurt looked into them, he thought he could see distant lands: towns of the Empire, the sparkling domes of Araby, the dark jungles of the Southlands.
Ever northwards they continued, the Realm of Chaos exacting its influence on their bodies and minds. Over an untold time they had met and fought other warbands, and men had died and men had joined Kurt's service, but he no longer knew nor cared about them. Existence - for there was no true life here, no hunger, no thirst, no sleep - had become a never-ending battle. It was a battle against the challenges of the gods, who poured forth their power to turn him back from his quest. It was a battle against other champions, half-remembered men in armour or furs, with writhing tentacles and faces like beasts, who fell to Kurt's flaming sword. Whenever he unleashed his power now, fireballs erupted from the blade, and the ground itself burned at his feet.
And still the voices were always there, goading and taunting him, urging him on, whispering promises and threats from somewhere inside his head, until he was not sure whether the voices belonged to others or they were his own thoughts. Sometimes they said such beautiful things, conjuring images of silver-watered streams pouring through luscious forests. Other times they described places of nightmare, where walls of burned flesh caged men in pits filled with twin-tailed snakes.
The waking dreams never ceased now, and Kurt often walked with his eyes screwed shut, trying to blank out the voices, not looking at the scenes around him. When he relented he would find himself walking through a town, or down a rocky hillside, or wading through crimson pools of blood. Wailing faces appeared in upthrusts of quivering rock, and fanged maws opened up beside him, gnashing together like mantraps.
At times he was a child again, in the warm redness of the womb, listening to his mothers heart, or a child of a few years old toddling excitedly across the gardens of his father's manor house. Many times he thought he had been sleeping, as he awoke with his heart pounding, plagued by images of his father, mother and sister burning at the stakes.
With these memories came greater resolve. Kurt dragged himself onwards, back from the brink of madness he had teetered along. Soon one scene was all that he could see - van Diesl and three burning figures, who cried out to him with ghostly voices to avenge them. Anger grew with the memory, and anger turned to cold hatred. Fire and death would engulf the Empire as the Empire had engulfed Kurt's life with fire and death. From his birth-family to his wife and child, the flames had consumed them all. Now he would bring the fire of the gods to the south, and raze the Empire to ashes, and choke their corpulent leaders on the smoke.
The promise pleased the gods and he could feel their approval wash over him in waves of golden strokes, invigorating him, hardening his flesh, strengthening and building him. He felt buoyed up by their energy and at times would break in to a run, to reach them all the quicker, though in this land such things as distance and time could not so easily be defined.
They spoke little to each other, each man following his own path, enduring his own challenges. Bayor had long since disappeared without trace, though Kurt suspected that his mangled, misshapen body lived on somewhere behind them along with the other unfortunates who had succumbed to the breath of the gods.
It was with some surprise then, that Kurt heard a voice that was not inside his head. The first human voice he had heard in a whole day, or perhaps a hundred days, he could not be sure. Looking around, as if seeing through a fog, he saw Vlamdir. The short warrior's armour had fused into his skin, a shifting, metallic layer of muscle and sinew, pierced with rivets and hung with the same chains that he always worn. His face was almost unrecognisable, the skin peeled away and hanging in folds to reveal tendons and white fat, thin blue veins tracing a maze across his flesh, his eyeballs bulging in their sockets.
'Did you say something?' Kurt said, surprised at the sound of his own voice. For a moment he had to think hard, working out whether he had really spoken at all, or whether he had just imagined that he had.
'We are being hunted,' Vlamdir said, and he pointed out to the left, and then to the right.
Canine shapes could be seen loping alongside the warband, dark shadows that drifted in and out of sight. Vistas of snarling trees that seemed to fade into existence masked them, and they skulked behind rocks that were not truly there. For a while they were beside them, sometimes closer, sometimes just a reddish shadow in the distance. Other times they were being tracked from behind, and as Kurt walked on he would often glance over his shoulder, certain that he heard a panting breath or distant howl. Now and then they seemed to be leading the party onwards, as Kurt stumbled across shallow paw marks larger than his hand, which dissolved away as he bent to look at them. The stench of blood hung heavy in the air.
'What are they?' Kurt asked Vlamdir, perhaps straight after the Kurgan had spoken, although to Kurt it felt like several days had passed since they had first sighted their stalkers.
'They are the hounds of blood, the hunters of Kharga,' Vlamdir replied. 'Once they have caught the scent of their prey they will hunt them anywhere, across seas, mountains and forests, to the ends of the earth.'
'Why do they not attack?' Kurt said, glancing left and right as he caught flickers of movement at the edge of his vision.
'I do not know,' admitted Vlamdir. 'Perhaps they are seeking only one of us, and are waiting for him to fall behind.'
They walked on in silence as a great shadow fell over them. Above, a great skull-shaped rock floated in the skies, an impossibly angled tower atop like a clawed crown. Flocks of winged creatures, little more than specks from this distance, poured from the gateway and battlements, circling like vultures overhead. Kurt blinked and the image was gone, an after-shadow remaining for a few moments before melting away.
A bestial howl tore the air and they all stopped, looki
ng in different directions. The howl reverberated again, coming from all places and none, and a moment later they were surrounded by eight hounds, which paced back and forth, throwing their heads back and howling, growling and pawing the ground.
Each was almost as large as a horse, furless except for a heavy black mane. Their skin was leathery and crimson, taut muscles rippling beneath. Their heads were long, jaws filled with dagger-long teeth. Each had pure white eyes that glowed with inner fire, and wore a great spiked collar of brass. Snake-like tails lashed to and fro in the thick air. They growled and snapped as the warband drew their weapons, closing in towards each other, facing outwards.
Slowly, the hounds of blood advanced, their footprints burning briefly on the ground, leaving a trail of molten snow and burned grass. The air shimmered around them, giving glimpses through into the daemon world from which they were spawned - a clashing swirl of colours and darkness, streaming together and coalescing into vaguely recognisable shapes, faces forming from the magical mist, and scenes of people going about their lives.
The beasts circled cautiously, getting closer and closer. Kurt adjusted his grip on his sword, realising how damp his palms were. To his left he heard Bjordrin spit and mutter something under his breath. He could hear the laboured panting of Orst to his right.
One of the hounds stopped directly in front of Kurt and stood there. The others joined it, circling just a few yards away, their blank eyes staring at the group of warriors. When all eight were standing in a line, they raised their heads and howled, a deafening noise that sounded inside the skull as well as in the ears. The nightmarish noise echoed with the sound of death rattles and tortured screams, of whetstones on blades and the clash of metal on metal and the crackling of flames. It was a howl of battle and death.
One by one, each finished howling and sat back on its haunches, looking at Kurt. Silence descended, broken only by the heavy breathing of the hounds and the odd whisper from the men behind Kurt. He was aware of his heart beating in his chest, and odd double-thump against his ribcage, unnatural in its speed and power.
Kurt stepped forwards, flaming sword in hand, and the hounds simply waited. Slow step by slow step, Kurt walked towards them, sheathing his sword and stretching out his hand. He could hear them sniffing the air, their gaping nostrils expanding even more. Eventually he was standing right in front of them, close enough to touch the muzzle of the nearest. He heard relieved laughter from his followers, but barely registered it. In the eyes of the hound he could see reflections of himself, in blood-red monochrome.
Turning to the north, Kurt began walking again, this time flanked by the hounds, four to his left and four to his right. Now he was certain that the gods wished him to succeed.
ONWARDS AND NORTHWARDS they travelled, faces ever turned into the harsh winds of power that emanated from the Gate of the Gods. The closer their eternal march took them, the stranger the lands became. Warped and twisted creatures fluttered in and out of existence around them, taunting them with cackling laughter, telling them to turn back. Lascivious apparitions appeared before them, begging them to stay and indulge in all manner of pleasures of flesh and soul. After much walking, they crested a ridge to look out at the realm beyond and be greeted by a sea of roiling mists that ebbed and flowed around their feet, revealing glimpses of distant places and times.
Kurt saw his mother as a young woman, being courted by his father in the grove around their family home. The birth of his sister, bloodied and screaming as his father paced nervously along the corridors outside. Strangers, in long robes and wide-brimmed hats, sat in a circle and chanted as incense burned around them, the sound of a gong reverberating in the background.
As they walked through the flow of unreality, clouds gathered overhead, a roiling mass of colours that boiled against one another, while shadow-shapes flitted on wings of silver and gold. The ground seethed under their feet, flinging them to their knees and backs, as titanic forces shifted beneath them, spires of metal and bone crashing up around them in spiralling patterns, until they towered high into the skies and melted away once more. Explosions of energy detonated across the heavens, sending showers of blood and offal raining down onto them, coating them in a patina of gore.
Onwards through the nightmare madness they pushed, Kurt ever at the fore with his hounds leading the way. One by one they succumbed once more, some wandering into the mists, drawn by bobbing lights, others falling to the ground, their bodies a pulsing mess of flesh as uncontrollable energies seethed through them, distorting and breaking, twisting their frames into unrecognisable conglomerations of flailing limbs, mewling mouths and foaming orifices.
Kurt could hear nursery rhymes from his childhood, sung by cackling, evil voices. They begged him to come with them and play, half-shades that coiled around his legs. The daemon-hounds snapped and snarled at these creatures, chasing them away and then returning to their master. They hacked their way through a forest of trees that grew clawed hands and grasped at them, while roots tripped them and tried to drag them into the sucking mud. Four-winged birds fluttered from the treetops, nesting in leaves of spiked gold, swooping down in great flocks to tear at their faces and arms as they swung swords to keep them at bay.
The storm broke with clashes of thunder that echoed with deep laughter, and flashes of green and purple lightning that burned into the eyes leaving white afterimages. A hot wind blew up around them, a cyclone of power that battered at their flesh and tore at mutated skin. Men were sent tumbling by daemons that rode on the currents of the wind, their clawed hands snatching at weapons and shields, their whipping tails lashing across thighs and arms.
Jakob could see the centre of the vortex a short way ahead, and Kurt was walking straight into it, arms by his side. The whirlwind of power enveloped the chosen warrior and the beasts that walked beside him, obscuring him from view. The shaman felt something was wrong, more wrong than anything they had yet encountered. With his golden eye he could see a great gaping rip in the land and the sky, a tear in the fabric of everything, and Kurt was stepping into it. With a yell, Jakob rushed forwards.
It was too late. As the winds died down and the mystical tornado subsided, the gash upon reality had sealed. The hounds stood there, bolt still, staring at the spot where Kurt had been. They snarled at each other and then turned away, loping off at speed. Jakob stopped still, shocked to the core.
Kurt was gone.
KURT COULD NEITHER see nor hear nor feel, his body awash with power and sensation that overloaded his senses. Torment after torment was visited upon Kurt's mind. He could hear the voices more clearly now, questioning him, doubting him.
You still love her.
'I do not,' Kurt snarled between gritted teeth. 'She destroyed my family.'
You are not strong enough.
'I will prove you wrong. I am strong enough!'
Why do you care for her still?
'I do not care for her. I will kill her and destroy the land she loves.'
You killed your father.
'The witch hunter killed my father, and he is now dead. I will destroy the temples of his god and burn the false priests that sent him.'
You abandoned your son.
'My son was murdered!'
You are frail and mortal.
'I shall become immortal, and by the will of the gods I shall bring destruction upon those who would fight againstthem!'
The gods do not care about you.
'It is not for the gods to care.'
We will eat your soul.
'My soul does not belong to you, it is sworn to the gods, with fire and blood. The gods would not give up such a prize.'
Your enemies are strong, they will defeat you.
'Glory is not in the victory, but in the fighting. I will fight for the gods and if they grant me victory, I will be blessed.'
You are no wolf, you are the southern pup. You do not belong here.
'All men belong to the gods, no matter where they are born. They have
guided my hand and I have repaid them with my life.'
You dare to question the gods. They do not even see you.
'I will make them see me! I shall stand before them and declare myself to them!'
You are all alone.
Kurt did not reply, suddenly sensing that the voices had gone. His hounds were not by his side, and he was struck by the sudden silence. Turning around he saw that he was indeed alone, his warband nowhere to be seen. The storm had passed, and he found himself standing on green grass. Around him the fogs swirled and parted, revealing a large house built in the style of the east Empire, with square garrets jutting from the many roofs and two great chimney stacks at either end. The image shimmered for a moment and then solidified.
As he watched, he saw a pale-skinned woman opening the wide doors that led into the ballroom, wearing a yellow dress. It was his mother, singing in the beautiful voice he had not heard for so many long years. He was back at his father's estate, which had been burned to the ground a lifetime ago. Kurt nearly collapsed, stunned by the realisation of where he was.
He was home.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Unexpected Welcome
Wolfenburg, Early spring 1712
THE PEAKS OF the Middle Mountains were shrouded in low, dark clouds, threatening a spring storm. Magnus Simeon looked at them with an antipathy bordering on hatred. He disliked rain intensely, and clouds just as much. Perhaps it had been brought about by the long years in a leaky loft above his old master's house, damp and cold in the night, musty in the day, making it difficult to study. Clouds also made it difficult to see the stars, and when one earned payment as an astrologer, clouds could prove troublesome. He could remember the words of his old master as clear as a crystal ball, as Magnus had sat there with his books open, the strange diagrams and symbols meaningless.