by C. L. Werner
Mandred was quiet a moment. It was so difficult to put his feeling into words. ‘No, it’s something deeper than trust. Faith, perhaps. Maybe that’s why she frightens me. I’m not the only one though. Ar-Ulric can’t say three words when she’s near, yet at the same time he can’t take his eyes off her.’ He pointed to the edge of the forest where the old priest stood alone, watching the trees. Hulda had trotted off into that forest less than an hour before, warning Mandred to keep his army out of the Laurelorn until she returned. Throughout her absence, Ar-Ulric had maintained a silent vigil. It was hard to read the priest’s attitude. Was he concerned that Hulda wouldn’t return or was he more concerned that she would? Ar-Ulric had been a fixture of the Middenpalaz and Middenheim for as far back as Mandred could remember. In all that time he had never seen the priest in such a light. For the first time, there was an uncertainty in his manner, a hint of doubt in his dogmatic resolve.
‘Perhaps your highness would be advised to heed the council of Baroness Carin,’ Beck suggested. The knight remained at a respectful distance from Mandred and Mirella, yet near enough that the bodyguard could defend his master at a moment’s warning.
Mandred arched an eyebrow at Beck’s interruption. ‘You appear to have taken an interest in the baroness,’ he said. ‘Someone admitted her to my tent before we left Carroburg. I’ve wondered who could be so bold as to forget themselves like that.’
Beck turned towards his master, the scar running beneath his eyepatch vivid against his skin. The puckered wound seemed to point accusingly at Mandred when the knight spoke. ‘My duty is to the Graf of Middenheim. It has always been my duty,’ Beck stated. He inclined his head slightly towards Mirella. ‘If I pay undue consideration to Baroness Carin, it is because others close to your highness exhibit their own concern.’
When Mandred looked at Mirella, he saw the rush of colour that rose to her cheeks, the hasty downward cast of her eyes. He smiled at his misunderstanding. It wasn’t the beauty of Hulda that worried her.
Before Mandred could reassure his lover that nothing existed between himself and Baroness Carin, a commotion at the front of the column drew his attention. Mad Albrecht and a few of his scouts, posted just ahead of the main body of the army were breaking from their cover, bows drawn as they slowly worked their way back to the column. The wiry Drakwalder shook his head anxiously as he approached his sovereign.
‘It’s too quiet, your highness,’ Albrecht reported. ‘All of the little rustlings and noises of the small animals scurrying about have gone silent. Even the birds have flown away.’ He saw the confusion on Mandred’s face. Albrecht pointed to a starling clearly visible in a tree nearby. ‘Not here,’ he explained, then pointed a not-quite-steady hand back at the edge of the Laurelorn. ‘There,’ he said, his voice just falling to a whisper.
Almost in concert with Albrecht’s report, the lone figure of Hulda came prowling out of the forest. As before, her approach had gone unobserved by the scouts, lending her appearance an eerie suddenness. She paused only once, glancing at Ar-Ulric, before she walked in sinuous grace to Mandred.
‘The way has been prepared,’ she stated. ‘You may enter the forest. The horsemen must walk their steeds and take pains to keep them calm. There must be no fire of any sort. The path will be marked. Any who stray from it… must be left to the forest. Take neither wood nor game, even a single fallen leaf will be perilous.’
Mirella faced Hulda, staring hard into the witch’s eyes. ‘If this place is so dangerous, why do you lead us there?’
‘It is because it is dangerous that I lead you here,’ Hulda said. ‘It is because it is dangerous that it offers safety.’ Teeth gleamed white as she smiled at the Reikland noblewoman. ‘Those who remember their respect, and my warnings, will see the other side.’ She turned away from Mirella, regarding Mandred with a severe expression. ‘You must go first,’ she told him.
Beck bristled at the very suggestion. ‘If you think we’re going to allow his highness to walk alone…’
Hulda rounded on the angered knight, her own gaze blazing with such fierce challenge that Beck was taken aback. ‘I did not say alone. The graf may bring whomever he chooses. But he must go first. Only then may the column follow.’ She turned, glancing back at the Laurelorn. ‘It is what the forest demands.’
Mandred nodded slowly. ‘Then it is what I must do,’ he said. ‘Whatever awaits us here can be no worse than running into the skaven at Salzenmund.’ He reached to his belt, checking that Legbiter slid free in its scabbard, the only display of uneasiness that broke his otherwise firm demeanour. ‘Pass Hulda’s warning to the officers. Tell them to ensure that every man in the column has been instructed how to behave.’
‘You must take a guard with you,’ Beck insisted, still watching Hulda with his one good eye. ‘We cannot risk our leader.’
Mandred heard the anxiety in his knight’s every word. Despite the peculiar feeling of belief he had in Hulda, he couldn’t help but share Beck’s doubt. From her manner and her words, Mandred felt that they were dealing with something that went beyond her control, something that had to be appeased before they could proceed.
‘Volunteers only,’ Mandred told Beck. ‘No men with families,’ he amended his statement. The order brought a grim nod from the knight.
‘Volunteers,’ he repeated, staring past the graf to the forest beyond. For all its apparent beauty, it was quickly becoming the imposing place the Nordlanders had warned about.
Slowly, Mandred and his escort approached the forest, following Hulda as the witch led them towards a pair of immense oaks, their branches twining and merging into a living archway. Moss hanging from the trees created a green veil.
What lay behind it, Mandred felt, was something beyond the ken of men.
The atmosphere within the forest was murky, the light subdued by the verdant canopy overhead. Graf Mandred’s small group had walked only twenty paces into the Laurelorn before they were met. His escort consisted of Beck and Ar-Ulric, Kurgaz Smallhammer and Mad Albrecht, half a dozen Knights of the White Wolf, an exceedingly terrified liaison from the Nordland contingent and a few rangers from Drakwald. Leading the way was Hulda, picking a path through the lush undergrowth with an ease that made even Albrecht and the rangers seem clumsy. By command of their sovereign, the men entered the forest without drawn weapons, but there wasn’t a hand that didn’t keep an easy grip about the heft of a hammer or the grip of a sword.
Seemingly from nowhere, three figures appeared ahead of Mandred’s group. They were tall, slimly built people, human in form but endowed with an almost ethereal quality of beauty and poise. When they moved it was with the same careless grace as water flowing in a stream or sunlight filtering through a cloud. They were arrayed in smooth breeches of emerald green, loose shirts of jade and light boots that appeared smoother and finer than the softest calfskin. Curious cloaks, apparently woven from leaves, clung to their shoulders, bound by neither clasp nor chain, but simply merging with the shoulders of their shirts.
The humans were dumbstruck, unable to do anything but gaze in wonder and admiration as these almost spectral creatures manifested from the lush greenery. It was Kurgaz who found his voice and gave a name to the forest people. ‘Elves,’ the dwarf growled, spitting the word off his tongue as though it were the vilest abomination.
The elves turned their heads almost in unison, first directing an indifferent stare at Kurgaz, then turning back to Hulda. ‘We did not agree to the presence of diggerlings,’ one of the elves intoned, his reproach carrying with it a sharpness that somehow accentuated the mercurial tonalities of his voice, rendering his command of Reikspiel at once precise yet conveying a curious accent, as though perhaps the elf hadn’t spoken this tongue in so long that his command of it belonged to generations long dead and buried.
Hulda stared back at him. ‘I was unaware that it was your decision to make,’ she countered. Turning, she gestured to M
andred. ‘This is the one they have named “Wolf of Sigmar.” It is he who seeks passage through the forest.’
The elf didn’t bow or acknowledge Mandred’s rank in any way, though it was obvious he was fully aware of the titles the human held. ‘You would bring dwarfs into this place?’ the elf challenged. He deliberately ignored the burst of hostility that streamed from Kurgaz’s mouth and the warhammer the dwarf had started to pull free from the sling across his back.
Mandred met the elf’s strangely piercing gaze. For all their beauty, there was a ghastly alien quality about the eyes of an elf, a window into a mind as different from that of a man as a man’s was from a lowly ant. He could feel the weight of incredible depths of time studying him, weighing his every twitch and breath, judging him in ways he couldn’t begin to imagine, much less understand.
Some of the old idealism rose to his tongue, the impulsiveness that had once caused him to ride into the plague-infested squalor of Warrenburg and to fight depraved cultists on the very walls of the Ulricsberg. Mandred forgot all the careful diplomacy and candour of his court and his position, falling back upon the one thing he felt was all too easily obfuscated by the proprieties of state. What he told the elf was the simple truth.
‘I march against the foul ratkin who infest the lands of men,’ Mandred told the elf. ‘Those who would help me in this noble work, I am honoured to call friend. Those who would forsake their own homes and their own people to help mine reclaim their homes from this vile enemy are more than friends. They are brothers.’
No flicker of expression crossed the elf’s face, but it was clear from his speech that he had caught the barb of accusation in Mandred’s words. ‘All creatures have their obligations to the land,’ he said. ‘It is how we choose to interpret those obligations that defines us. We have forsaken the path of smoke and the wheel. To embrace those who yet walk that path is not permitted to us.’
Kurgaz spat on the forest floor. ‘The perfidy of elves. Tell you to shove off and then make you feel like the one who should be ashamed!’
‘Of all peoples, the dwarfs should appreciate what we have sacrificed to find a place for ourselves,’ the elf retorted, for the first time a flicker of emotion crossing his serene features. ‘We have withdrawn from the world that would have consumed us, found our own sanctuary.’ The elf looked away, becoming attentive as the trees creaked and groaned. Calm settled onto his face as he addressed Mandred once more.
‘We are sympathetic, but we will not fight your wars,’ the elf stated. ‘It is enough that we do this for you. We have begged the forest permission to allow you passage. Know that you trespass here under the strictest sufferance. The path has been marked, but understand that any who allow themselves to be lured from the path will not return. Do not look for them. Do not tarry. If you once stop, if you once linger, there is no protection we can offer you.’
‘Protection?’ Mandred asked. ‘Are your people so hostile to my kind that they would attack us?’
‘It is not my people who threaten you here,’ the elf said. The creaking groans of the forest seemed to swell to louder volume though none could feel any wind rustling through the woods. ‘Stay on the path. Do not stop. Do not linger.’
Mandred shook his head. ‘It is impossible. It will take us weeks to cross your forest. The army will need to camp, to rest.’
The elf was unmoved by the statement. ‘Do not stop,’ he warned. ‘You move in the eye of a storm. If it descends upon you, you will be lost.’ His expression became impossibly grave, more dour than the most doleful Morrite priest Mandred had ever seen. ‘There is something more, something you must do to appease the forest.’ An actual shudder passed through the elf’s body. He gestured to the undergrowth the men had trampled in their advance. ‘There must be recompense for the scars left by your passing. The forest demands a sacrifice.’
A wail of horror escaped the Nordland liaison, and the man had to be restrained by two of the White Wolves to keep from running away in a fit of abject fear. Kurgaz drew his hammer, glaring at the elves, fairly daring any of them to move towards him. Mandred stared accusingly at Hulda.
‘You knew of this?’ he demanded. The anger in his voice was fed by a feeling almost of betrayal.
‘It comes easy to tyrants to demand sacrifice from others,’ Hulda stated. ‘It comes harder to those who would be leaders. To sacrifice themselves is less bitter to them.’
Mandred stood in silence for a moment, fuming at Hulda’s deception. Before he could say anything, before he could decide between forcing a path through the forest regardless or going around and daring the attentions of the skaven, Albrecht had loosened his sword belt and let it drop to the forest floor. Hesitantly, the former poacher walked towards the elves.
‘Albrecht!’ Mandred shouted at the man.
The Drakwalder turned and gave his sovereign a wistful look. Then he threw back his shoulders and walked more boldly to the elves. Exhibiting a surprising degree of respect, two of the elves led the man off into the trees where he was soon lost to sight.
Mandred drew Legbiter from its sheath. Before he could order those around him to rescue Albrecht, he felt a firm hand close on his shoulder in a restraining grip. He almost expected Hulda’s hand to be there and was surprised to find that the hand was Ar-Ulric’s.
‘Do not cheapen what your friend has done for you,’ the priest said. ‘Allow him this moment to repay what you have done for him. An act of pure selflessness is the most sacred thing. The gods themselves will pay tribute to Albrecht.’
The groaning of the trees was becoming more agitated now. To Mandred’s ears there seemed an unspeakable suggestion of hunger woven into the cracks and pops of swaying branches. He shuddered at the loathsome expectancy of the noise. Mad Albrecht, the refugee from shattered Drakwald, a man just crazed enough, beholden enough, to give his life for his adopted monarch.
There was no scream, no cry, no sign of what happened to Albrecht. The poacher’s fate was something that was felt, a mocking shudder that seemed to course through the grass beneath their feet and the leaves overhead. Mandred knew his friend was gone, knew it as certainly as if he had watched Albrecht’s throat slit before his eyes.
‘The skaven will pay,’ Mandred swore. ‘They will pay for every drop of Albrecht’s blood.’ He glared at Hulda, then at the elf. ‘My army is going to cross your forest. You have warned us, now let me warn you. Let anything try to stop us at its peril.’
The elf bowed in acknowledgement of the message. ‘Your words have been heard. I will try to make their meaning understood. If you are fortunate, they will be satisfied with what they have already taken.’
As the army moved into the forest, the trees seemed to close in around them. Soldiers muttered anxiously to one another, scarcely daring to raise their voices in more than the feeblest of whispers. The horses were led by their dismounted riders, blankets thrown over their heads to prevent the animals from seeing anything that might set them into a panic. The normally stoic dwarfs marched in a tight phalanx, weapons at the ready, eyes scanning the enclosing greenery fearfully. At Hulda’s urging, the dwarfs left their pipes in their pockets, heeding the witch’s warning against even the slightest flame.
There was no question of scouts or rangers creeping ahead of the force. Even the most misanthropic of the former poachers and huntsmen longed for the presence of his fellow man. They clung to the column with the same eagerness as the infantrymen and camp followers, taking some slight comfort from those around them.
Comfort, but not security. The elf’s allusion to the eye of a raging storm struck Mandred as a chillingly precise appreciation of what their passage through the forest was like. The ‘path’ the elf had told the army to follow wasn’t anything visible. It was instead a sensation, a feeling that squirmed through the mind of man and beast alike. A soldier would know when he strayed from the path allowed to him by the forest when he felt the
hairs on his arms prickle, when his pulse suddenly quickened. It was all the warning given. It was all the warning needed. None who felt it failed to divert their march back into the unseen cordon laid out for them.
Beyond the invisible barriers of that cordon, the trees pressed close to the path. Their branches reached down like skeletal talons, their roots spilled across the earth like giant serpents. Leaves fluttered down from their boughs, evoking in Mandred’s mind the memory of an angry mob throwing garbage at a criminal locked in a pillory.
Small animals and an amazing variety of birds regarded the column from the branches, an eerie sentience seeming to shine in their eyes as they watched the men march by. Beyond the trees, there were ponderous crashings and thrashings as though mammoth shapes were stirring in the depths of the forest. Sometimes, just from the corner of his eye, Mandred fancied he saw a face peering at him, inhuman countenances of weathered wood and moss. Sometimes he saw a gnarled arm beckon to him. Always, when he stared directly at these apparitions, they would assume the innocuous form of a tree trunk or a fallen log. Mandred wasn’t sure which vision, however, was the illusion.
Shouts of alarm, cries of panic sounded throughout the march as men discovered comrades who had gone missing. Despite the terror around them, there were some who allowed themselves to be lured from the path. Mandred even caught Beck straying towards the trees, convinced he’d heard a woman’s soft voice calling out to him. It was a voice Mandred, walking just beside him, had been unable to hear.
As the day began to darken, all in the column dreaded the thought of spending a night in the ghastly Laurelorn. The Nordlanders were especially upset. It took a cordon of White Wolves and dwarfs to keep Baroness Carin from ordering her men to make a break for the countryside. Mandred sympathised with her. The idea of camping in the forest was terrifying. At the same time, he had come to appreciate the awful power of this place. He was convinced that if the Nordlanders did try to force their way out then none of them would ever be seen alive again.