by C. L. Werner
As the terror of spending the night in the Laurelorn was reaching the proportions of a general panic, as Mandred was debating the impossibility of the injunction not to stop and not to tarry given to them by the elves, there came a sudden lessening of the brooding intensity of their surroundings. With a suddenness that was as unexpected as it was unanticipated, the forest opened out into a grassy plain.
At first, Mandred believed they had simply reached some incredibly vast clearing deep in the forest. Then the cries of disbelief and incredulous moans that sounded from the Nordlanders made him aware of the truth. Some of the natives of the province recognised this terrain, knew it to be land far from where they had entered the Laurelorn. Impossibly far. They recognized the hills and valleys of the northern fiefdoms, the burned-out shells of windmills and the toppled heap of an old Jutone castle.
In only a handful of hours within the haunted forest, the Army of Middenland had crossed a distance that should have taken them weeks. They had entered the Laurelorn at the southern extremity of Nordland. Now they found themselves only a day’s march from Dietershafen on the coast.
‘Do not question ancient magic,’ Hulda advised him. Mandred gave a start, unaware that the witch had come up beside him.
‘This is why you wanted us to go through the Laurelorn?’ he asked, gesturing to the sprawl of countryside before them. ‘You knew this would happen?’
Hulda bowed her head. ‘The forest was eager to be rid of you, so it sped your passage through it.’
Mandred scowled. ‘Not all of us,’ he said, thinking of Albrecht and all those who had been lured from the path. How many had there been? Dozens? Scores? It would need an accurate head count, a roster of the army to be certain. Mandred dreaded knowing how many the forest had claimed. How many he had led to such a strange death.
‘The price of such magic is high,’ Hulda conceded. Her expression became grave as she added. ‘It is a price that must always be paid.’
‘The cost is too high,’ Mandred said.
Hulda cocked her head to one side, puzzled by his attitude. ‘How many would you have lost had you walked into the skaven waiting for you at Salzenmund? Even with my warning? And you would still be far from your objective. The hunger of the Laurelorn has been cheap. Or are the only deaths you can accept those which happen on a battlefield?’
Mandred turned away from her, his fists clenching at his sides. ‘The only deaths I can accept are those of skaven.’
Altdorf, 1121
Already it was being called ‘the Night of the Holy Knives’. Messengers from across Reikland and from as far away as Nuln had been riding into Altdorf to bring tidings of the wave of murder and massacre that had exploded across the land. In an Empire already ravaged by plague and war, a few isolated deaths would have gone unnoticed. This, however, went far beyond something that could be ignored. Hundreds were dead, killed in a single night. Given the size of the Empire and the perils of travel, the dead might number in the thousands if the same slaughter had been carried out in Averland and Nordland, Sylvania and Ostermark.
Kreyssig sat on the Imperial throne, feeling his stomach tighten as the officers of his Kaiserjaeger marched into the council chamber and delivered each new report as it was brought to the palace. He could easily picture each victim; it was no stretch of the imagination, simply a quick consultation of his own memory. A week before he’d been summoned to the Courts of Justice by the gaoler who maintained the Catacombs, the private dungeons of the Kaiserjaeger. The guards who had been posted in the Dragon’s Hole were dead, dispatched by sword and dagger. Kreyssig had worried that his prize prisoner, Grand Theogonist Gazulgrund’s daughter Gudrun Schoppe had been rescued by some agent of the priest’s.
What he found instead was far more disturbing. The woman was laid out in her cell, her throat slit from ear to ear. It was obvious someone had dallied to compose the body, folding her hands across her breast and placing a simple wooden icon between her dead fingers. It was a Sigmarite hammer, and the message being conveyed couldn’t be any clearer. An agent of Gazulgrund had been here, but he hadn’t come to rescue Gudrun. He’d come to break the hold Kreyssig had over the Grand Theogonist, to break it in such a way that he would never be able to reclaim such power again.
If Gazulgrund’s decision to execute his own daughter was chilling, what followed was absolutely terrifying. Across the city other murders were discovered. Murders of little men, murders of important men, some killed by blade, others by bludgeon. The uniting factor in the deaths, beyond the synchronicity of their timing, lay in the little wooden hammers their killers had placed in their folded hands. It was only when Kreyssig learned that the wealthy von Reisarch family, relations of Altdorf’s Arch-Lector von Reisarch, were among the dead that he suspected an even more horrible connection. It took only a short investigation for his spies to confirm his suspicions. All of the dead, or at least those who had been the targets of the attacks as indicated by the icons stuffed into their dead hands, were the kinfolk of highly placed members of the Temple of Sigmar. They had been fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, wives and children of Sigmarite priests.
Gazulgrund had severed the hold Kreyssig had over him and, with the same stroke he was ensuring that no other priest in the Temple could be coerced in similar fashion. The utter ruthlessness, the cold-blooded calculation of a massacre on such a scale was horrifying even to someone of Kreyssig’s amoral ethics. These weren’t strangers the Grand Theogonist had ordered killed; these were the families of his own priests. His own daughter.
The scale of the massacre grew with each passing hour. Beyond Altdorf, Gazulgrund’s killers had seemingly been at work in every town and village. Anyone with direct blood ties to one of the Temple clergy had been murdered, always with the same little wooden hammer in their dead hands. The lengths to which Gazulgrund had gone to protect the Temple from outside influence went beyond anything a sane mind could conceive.
As more reports reached his ears, Kreyssig appreciated the terrible mistake he’d made when he’d thought Lector Stefan Schoppe would make a pliant and easily dominated Grand Theogonist. Normally a keen judge of character, he’d grossly underestimated the man he himself had made supreme authority of the Sigmarite faith. He’d never suspected that beneath the priest’s humility there might burn the fire of a true religious fanatic.
How could he control a man who genuinely believed he was the instrument of his god’s will? How could Kreyssig reason with a man who had ordered the slaughter of entire families? In elevating Stefan Schoppe, Kreyssig realised now that he’d created a monster he couldn’t control.
The Temple of Sigmar had been made strong with Kreyssig’s help. He knew only too well how strong. He’d planned to use the clergy to rouse the peasants for the eventual overthrow of the nobles. He appreciated fully the hold the Sigmarites had over the commoners now. While it had been firmly under his control, he had been pleased to let the Temple’s power grow.
Now, things were different. Gazulgrund had even delivered a sermon in the Great Cathedral, admitting to what he called the ‘Sacrifice of the Innocents’. He spoke of those murdered by his killers as martyrs, justifying every drop of their blood as an offering to Sigmar. He disparaged the worldly ways of the clergy and spoke of a need to return to a spiritual purity in order to revitalise the Temple and renew the sacrament between Sigmar and the Empire he had built. The great famines, the terrible Black Plague, the insidious skaven themselves, all of these were tribulations set upon the people as a warning that they must repent their iniquities and return to the faith of Sigmar. The priesthood, being nearer to Sigmar, naturally had to aspire to a greater piety and selflessness than their flock. The earthly ties of blood and family had to be severed that their minds might be focused solely upon the divine.
Strangely, while there was dissension and even outrage among the clergy – and many of the most outspoken of these dissenters mysteriousl
y vanished in the weeks after the massacre – Gazulgrund’s sermon found fertile soil in the hearts of the commoners. When the Grand Theogonist spoke of martyrs and sacrifice, he gave the impression that all was done for the good of the peasants, to relieve the suffering that ravaged their communities. By restoring the grace of Sigmar to the Empire, he promised to scour away these calamities, to bring back the days of peace and plenty for those who would keep the faith. The very barbarity of the massacre cried out to the peasants in a voice of thunder. This was the length to which Gazulgrund would go to ease their suffering, to intervene with Mighty Sigmar. The other temples might promise similar things, but Gazulgrund had done more than simply make promises, he had put action behind his words. He had given his own daughter’s life that his own soul and his own mind might be made pure enough to facilitate a greater communion with their god.
The peasant mob, that great weapon Kreyssig had thought to wield against the nobles, now belonged to Gazulgrund.
There was no power in Altdorf that could oppose the Grand Theogonist now. Kill him? The thought brought a bitter laugh to Kreyssig’s lips. That would only make him a martyr as well, and his death might ignite the peasants into full revolt. Even if he could put down such an uprising, it would mean the end of Kreyssig’s authority. If he were forced to neutralise the peasants, he would lose the threat that kept Duke Vidor and the other nobles under his thumb. They would fall on him like a pack of wolves and carve him to ribbons.
The cat resting in Kreyssig’s lap became agitated, raising its head and arching its back in a sudden display of alarm. The Protector rose from the throne, looking anxiously around him for any secret place one of the ratmen might be concealed. His anxiety turned to a disgusted sneer when he saw the animal swatting at an insect. He watched the cat for a moment, leaping to and fro as the bug buzzed around its head. A bee of some sort. They were a nuisance in the palace, persisting despite strenuous efforts to eradicate them. Kreyssig suspected they were coming from Boris’s old apiary, some tiny hole in the walls. It was tempting to send someone down there to cleanse the chamber, but doing so would mean breaking down one of the walls and Kreyssig wasn’t anxious to explain what they’d find inside. Baroness von den Linden should be left to rest in peace. The last thing he needed was the Lady of Sigmar’s corpse reappearing while the Grand Theogonist was whipping up the rabble.
Kreyssig sat back on the Imperial throne. Killing the witch might have been a mistake. Though her own ambitions had been dangerous, she at least was strong enough to oppose Gazulgrund. The Grand Theogonist knew it too, that was why he had persuaded Kreyssig to dispose of her. Even then, Gazulgrund had been preparing for the Night of the Holy Knives. He’d been preparing for it ever since he’d taken the name Gazulgrund, christening himself after the dwarf god of death. He knew killing Gudrun would break Kreyssig’s hold over him. Baroness von den Linden had represented the only threat to him. With the peasants championing her as the Lady of Sigmar, the witch could fight Gazulgrund on his own ground.
To break Gazulgrund’s power, Kreyssig would have to engage the priest in that spiritual arena. It was a fight he was ill-equipped for. His were the weapons of fear and intimidation, not hope and faith. He might be a hero to the people of Altdorf for vanquishing the skaven, but they would never entirely forget that he was also the Commander of the Kaiserjaeger and the man who had been the Emperor’s Hound.
Kreyssig drummed his fingers against the pearl-inlaid arm of the throne as a thought came to him. He might not have the ability to fight Gazulgrund on his own terms but perhaps there were others who could. Reports had reached him from Drakwald and Middenland about the Graf of Middenheim. There were wild stories about some sort of miracle relating to Graf Mandred, and his subjects had taken to calling him the ‘Wolf of Sigmar’. He was reported to have fought the skaven in Nordland and was marching his army into Ostland. Such was his hatred of the ratmen that many claimed he was going to drive them from every province in the Empire.
Such altruistic pretensions didn’t fool Kreyssig. Mandred was making a bid to make himself Emperor, to buy the Imperial crown with skaven carcasses. It would be only a matter of time before he turned his army towards Altdorf and tried to realise that ambition. A healthy greed for position and power was something Kreyssig could understand and exploit far more readily than the religious mania of Gazulgrund. To eliminate the Grand Theogonist, he was prepared to make overtures to Mandred. After all, the Middenheimer would need a powerful ally in Altdorf if he were to legitimise his rule. To ensure his own survival, Kreyssig had to ensure that ally was himself.
Yes, he would pit the Wolf of Sigmar against the High Priest of Sigmar, match them like two dogs in a fighting ring, play the heroic campaigns of the one against the pious sermons of the other.
Kreyssig struck at the bee as it came buzzing past his face. Angrily he kicked the cat away as it came leaping into his lap in pursuit of the insect. The bee made one last pass, and then went buzzing off down the hall. The Protector of the Empire chided himself for allowing the bug to capture his attention.
He had far greater annoyances to dispose of than an errant bee.
Chapter VIII
Nordland, 1119
After the terrifying ordeal of the Laurelorn, it was with profound relief that the Army of Middenland made camp in the Rol Valley. Once the valley had been home to dozens of villages, farming communities which had prospered in the rich soil. Vast swathes of grain had filled the slopes, transforming the valley into a swaying sea of gold whenever a brisk northern breeze blew down into it. Entire flotillas of Nordland ships had set out for Marienburg with their holds filled with grain, bearing back the wealth and wares of Westerland’s capital. It was a lucrative trade, one that would have made Nordland the breadbasket of the whole Empire had dark times not conspired against the province. First had come the Norscan conquest of Marienburg and Westerland, denying them the rich market that had served them so well. Then had come their invasion of Nordland itself. Though the barbarians had been thwarted in their ambitions for Nordland, the havoc they wrought had left terrible scars on the land. The Rol Valley had been the scene of Jarl Ormgaard’s last stand, the rich farmlands scorched black in the flame of war. The nobles of Nordland had just set their peasants to clearing away the wreckage of Ormgaard’s marauders and restoring the prosperity of the valley when the Black Plague came. The soil might be as rich as ever it had been, but now there were too few to work it and too few to buy the crop to make such labour worthwhile. The Rol had been abandoned to rot.
The stands of grain growing wild in the valley were quickly trampled under by the great host of men and beasts that now marched into the depression. The blackened husks of huts and granaries became bivouacs for soldiers; the decaying frames of barns became stables for horses. Weed-choked shrines to Taal and Rhya and seafaring Manaan were cleared by pious warriors, gathering about them small encampments of men desperate to placate the gods and beg some token of divine protection from them.
Mandred established his own headquarters in the toppled husk of a timber fort that had been ransacked by the Norscans almost a decade before and never rebuilt. Two of the outer walls remained sturdy and serviceable, affording at least some small measure of protection against any sudden attack. Though there were no signs that the skaven had afforded the Rol any degree of interest, it was never foolish to take precautions where the ratkin were concerned. The rangers and scouts attached to the army were even now patrolling the edges of the valley, watching for any sign that their presence had been noticed and that the enemy was stirring from their nests in Dietershafen. Hard, capable men one and all, they followed their orders with less enthusiasm than they had shown before. More than most, these men of the wilds had been unsettled by their experience in the Laurelorn and to that shaken confidence the sacrifice of Mad Albrecht had to be added. The Drakwalder had become something of a leader to these men and it was only in his absence that his importance wa
s truly felt.
Mandred considered that sacrifice and the disappearance of nearly a hundred others during their passage through the Laurelorn. The appreciation of such loss poured iron into his heart, making it impenetrable to the cautious advice of his council. His generals urged for a respite of three days, time for the army to recover from their long march and the ordeal in the forest. To take the men into battle as they were, with only a single night’s rest, was perilous they warned.
‘It would be more perilous if the skaven learn we are here,’ Mandred countered. He thrust his finger at the map of Nordland stretched across the table before him. It was a remarkably detailed illustration of the province, executed by one of the Tilean masters fifty years ago, commissioned no doubt on monies earned off Rol Valley grain. Beneath the graf’s finger, the slashed course of the valley snaked its way towards the coast, ending well before the cliffs and salt marshes. Near its far end, depicted as a tower of blue ink, stood the city of Dietershafen. ‘While we keep to the valley, we may be safe from their eyes and noses, but we cannot trust too much in such security. Kurgaz warns that the ratkin are steeped in black sorceries and witchcraft. What man can say how such fell magics may be employed?’
‘But if we march now…’ Grand Master Vitholf threw up his hands. ‘Even among my White Wolves, morale is low. It is worse among the Dienstleute and the peasant conscripts. The Nordlanders are close to desertion and the Drakwalders look as if they would rather fall on their own blades than…’
Mandred slammed his fist against the blue tower of Dietershafen. ‘They are men, and no man worthy of the name will forget what has been done to his land. Middenheim, Nordland and Drakwald, all have suffered the scourge of the ratkin. This army is weary because it has marched long and hard, its courage has faltered because it has experienced unnatural horrors. Yet where you see weakness, I find strength. These men have endured all of this. They have pushed themselves this far. You say push them no farther. You say that their strength is spent. I say let these men but see the enemy, let them but smell his rancid stink, and a fire shall burn within them! They will remember why they fight and they will glory in the opportunity to do so!’