Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  With that, all the emotions he had been forcing to the depths of his mind as he navigated the forest came pouring out. Everything he had thought he knew about himself, everything he thought he could rely on in this world, had been torn away from him. He felt like a sleepwalker who finds himself on a narrow window ledge, clad in a nightshirt, as a winter storm whips him with hail. He felt he was going mad with despair, uncertainty and impotent rage at the world that had brought him to this state.

  The river rushed past, untouched by his agony. It would be easy to surrender to their implacable flow, to swim out to the middle of the current and stop, letting the cold waters carry him away, filling his lungs and mind with their dull emptiness. The Reik would tumble his pale corpse downstream, gnawed by fishes, under the stone bridges of Altdorf, and on through the Empire, past Marienburg and out into the Sea of Claws, lost and gone.

  No. That was a coward’s way out. He was afraid, but he was not a coward.

  He felt a desperate need to talk to someone about what was happening to him, but all his friends were either in Grünburg, or in the army, or burnt at the stake. He could not visit those who were alive without endangering them and himself; and he could not know what the dead were thinking. Or could he?

  He walked to his horse and unbuckled the saddlebags, drawing out the cloth-wrapped bundle he had recovered from the Cathedral of Sigmar. Braubach was dead, but perhaps the words in his journal would still bring peace and reassurance, or at least advice.

  He opened it, turning the pages until he reached the first entries after he had arrived in Altdorf. Braubach’s writing was sharp and unsmudged.

  “Altdorf, 30th Vorgeheim

  I do not trust Lieutenant Hoche, and I do not think he will do well.”

  Everything was against him. He drew back his arm to hurl the book into the middle of the river, but stopped. This was all the advice he would get, and too many of the Untersuchung’s books had been burnt already. He reopened the book and read on.

  “I do not trust Lieutenant Hoche, and I do not think he will do well. His strengths are his ambition, his military mind and his willingness to receive advice. These are also his weaknesses. He is too ready to take things at face value, and lacks guile and suspicion. Something in his manner reminds me of Andreas Reisefertig, and that worries me.

  Yet he has the seeds of a good agent within him. Give him space and the time to reflect and consider his new position, and I believe he will come to terms with his new role.”

  He closed the journal. It might not be the finest advice, but he had no other ideas. Solitude, a time to come to terms with what had happened to him, far from the distractions of humanity—it seemed to fit.

  He clicked his tongue and the horse lifted its head from cropping the grass and ambled over. It didn’t seem worried by his change. He had heard animals were more sensitive to such things than men, but it didn’t seem true. Maybe, he wondered, that was because it was a witch hunter’s horse, accustomed to such vileness. Maybe it was just stupid. Maybe he thought about these things too much.

  He climbed into the saddle and rode downstream.

  In late afternoon he came to a cluster of houses, where foresters and woodsmen sold timber and skins to river-traders. A wide flat-bottomed punt was moored at the dock, and he was able to find the boatman and persuade him to ferry rider and horse across the river for sixpence. He knew he had no money or kit to barter for the ride, so as the punt’s bow touched the far bank he threw himself onto his horse and galloped away down the towpath to the sound of the ferryman’s fading curses. He hated himself for doing it, but he had no choice.

  After a mile or so he dismounted and looked around. The river marked the western edge of the Great Forest, stretching untroubled by towns or roads to the Barren Hills in the east. It was a darker place than the Reikwald forest, the trees older, taller and less tamed. Folklore filled it with marauding orcs and goblins, beastmen, even lost elven settlements. Few ventured here. It was a perfect place for a man to lose himself.

  Judging from prints in the path’s soft black mud, this side of the river had more foot-traffic. That was good. He needed a few supplies before setting off into the forest’s depths: an axe, a tinderbox, some twine to make snares. He should have stolen them from the trading village but it was too late for that now. But the number of fresh tracks showed he would find other settlements on this side of the river before long.

  The sun was low over the trees. It would be dusk soon. He rode north beside the river.

  After a mile he saw a hut. Even in the fading light it looked dilapidated and no smoke rose from its chimney. As he drew closer he saw something lying outside it, a figure in dark clothes face-down in the mud and unmoving. It looked like the aftermath of a raid or a robbery, or perhaps the hut’s inhabitant had collapsed and died outside from his dwelling.

  He felt he had to investigate, to see if the body was still alive, or at least if it had any items or clothes he could use. Besides, the hut would be a good place to spend the night. He dismounted, lashed the horse’s reins around a tree, and walked towards the body in the mud.

  There was no sign of movement or breath. There was no sound apart from the flowing of the river. The world around was silent as he approached the corpse. It was wearing a loose shirt, tattered trousers and no shoes. He could not see any wounds. He studied it for a moment, then kicked it in the ribs.

  It flinched. ‘Bastard!’ it said.

  Hoche’s hand went instinctively for his sword, taking a bewildered second to remember he did not have one. He grabbed at the other hip where his knife was sheathed, but the body was already scrabbling across the ground to get away.

  Drifts of dead leaves in the undergrowth exploded as figures reared up, charging towards him with swords and cudgels. They were vilely shaped: one huge like a bear, one with weirdly stretched arms and no head on its shoulders, one with horns. He didn’t have time to take in the others before they were all around him.

  He was completely outnumbered. Even back when he was in the Reiklanders he could not fight more than two people at once, and that had been when he was fit and fed. He was far from that now.

  He backed towards his horse, making feints with his dagger that kept them away. How many were there? He had been too startled to count as they appeared, but now there were four—no, five.

  His horse whinnied and he jerked sideways. A dub whirled past his head. He twisted, thrusting with his knife at something at the edge of his vision. The figure dodged but the blade slashed it open and it shrieked in pain, leaping away. Hoche tried to regain his defensive stance, but something exploded against the side of his head.

  Stunned, he tried to turn. Behind him was a man with bizarre lumps on his skin, swinging a heavy club. He dodged clumsily. The first blow must have barely hit him; if he had taken the full impact he’d be flat in the mud.

  One of the creatures thrust with a sword. He parried it with the dagger but his angle was wrong. The knife was knocked from his hand and spun away. His knees felt weak.

  His pain-dulled mind realised these creatures were all mutants. By luck he had chanced upon his own kind. Maybe they could help him, tell him how to live in his new body. He had to make them understand he wasn’t their enemy.

  “Wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “Stop. I’m—”

  The largest, a head taller and a foot wider than any of the others, stepped towards him.

  “—one of you,” he said. A fist the size of oblivion crashed into his face. He felt his nose disintegrate in a gout of warm blood.

  He staggered backwards, to be caught from behind. He tried to speak, but before he could he was pushed forwards. The huge figure in front of him, more like a bear than a man, smiled with foul teeth and smashed him in the face again.

  Then they were all on him, punching and gouging, kicking, scratching, pulling at his clothes.

  It seemed to last a very long time.

  Finally there were no more blows. He was lying
on the ground, his face covered in flowing blood, his body afire with pain. They stripped his cloak, jerkin and shirt, and his boots too, holding him down as he struggled. Now they stood round as one, a pale-haired youth, knelt over him. The boy had three arms, and in his right hand Hoche recognised his own dagger.

  “I’ll do the bastard,” the boy said.

  “Leave him, he’s no use,” the wart-skinned man answered. “All skin and bone, no flesh. We’ve got his horse, that’s meat for a fortnight. Come on.” The boy looked back at Hoche for a second, hatred in his eyes, and jerked the dagger at him. He flinched. The boy grinned, spat, and jumped to his feet. The pack moved off, leading his horse away, disappearing into the darkness of the forest.

  Hoche rolled over and climbed to all fours, then to his feet. “Come back,” he cried through the blood in his mouth, staggering after them into the twilight. “I must—I have to…” He didn’t know what he had to do.

  One of them was coming back, stepping through the trees. It was the pale youth, and he was carrying a sword. Hoche felt weak and uncoordinated, but adrenaline and aggression were surging through his body, letting him ignore his pain. He saw a broken tree-branch on the ground and picked it up, swinging it, striding unevenly towards the boy.

  “Come on,” he bawled. “Come back, I’m ready for you this time. You want a fight, I’ll show you…”

  The youth crossed the distance between them in a skipping run. As he came in Hoche swung at him with the branch, but he dodged past it and drove his fist into Hoche’s stomach. Hoche doubled and collapsed into the dark mud again. The youth looked down at his contorted body, face oddly tranquil in the fading daylight, and then kicked him three times in the back. “Bastard,” he said, turned and walked into the forest.

  Hoche lay in the mud, bleeding, feeling sore and void. He stared through the crossed branches of the trees into the black-blue early evening sky. The first stars were visible through streaks of cloud. It was cold and the air was still.

  He thought about moving, but he didn’t. He couldn’t see the point.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Letting Go

  He lay still for a long time. His attackers had left no sign they had been there, apart from him and his injuries. From where he was, lying on his back half out of a shallow puddle among the trees, he could still hear the river. The sound of its waters was low, like wind in leaves. Somewhere in the forest a wood-pigeon called and another answered. The mud around him was cold against his bare skin, but at the same time it felt somehow comforting. It was difficult to breathe through his ruined nose.

  He had been a long time falling. The sight of the two hearts at the centre of the Mondstille feast had reminded him of how long it had been, and how far he had descended from the real world into hell. Since he had walked across the moors with Schulze almost exactly a six-month ago, there had not been one moment where he had felt stable or settled, confident in his own abilities, comfortable with his situation. Or happy.

  Slowly, one thing after another, all he had wanted from his life had been cut off. The paths to all the futures he had imagined for himself had been blocked. He had been taken from the army and the job he loved. He had been forced to lie, to cheat and to kill in cold blood. His colleagues in the Untersuchung had been killed. He had been made a criminal and a heretic, without ever committing the crimes that had been laid against him. And finally, just as he felt he was free, he had been stripped of his humanity and his soul.

  He would never see his home, his family, his friends. He could never speak to his beloved Marie again. He could never hold another human being for fear of tainting them with the curse he carried. He had been forced away from everything he had ever desired. And now he lay wounded in the wilderness, brought so low that even filthy mutants found him so vile that they wouldn’t kill him and eat him.

  Everything went back to that first moment, that first contact with the two hearts of Chaos under a summer night sky. It seemed such a small thing, so long ago. It was almost funny. If he wasn’t in such pain, he might have laughed.

  The last traces of daylight ebbed from the sky and the universe of stars revealed themselves in their icy patterns against the darkness. A cold breeze caressed his skin and stirred the dry winter leaves, blowing them against the side of his body. His face was still bleeding. He could feel the blood running from his nostrils, over his stubbled cheeks, and dripping to the ground.

  Why had this happened to him? Why had the gods singled him out for this fate? Why had Sigmar, his lord and patron, abandoned him to the powers of Chaos, robbing him of his life? For the first time since the inn, the anger that had burned under his confusion found a focus and he remembered Braubach’s words as the two of them had stood before the great cathedral, looking up into a drizzling sky.

  “Times will come,” his teacher had said, “and you’ll be confronted with things that rip away all the nice words you’ve ever learned about the gods. That’s when you’ll find if Sigmar really is your strength.” There had been more, and at the time he had thought it heresy. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Braubach had claimed Sigmar wasn’t a strong or wise god. He didn’t know about that. But he knew that for the first time in his life he desperately needed the strength of spirit and certainty of purpose that his god had promised, that would show him why he should get up from this place and carry on. He reached out for it, to the place within his heart where he had always thought it would be when he needed it, and there was nothing there. His faith had deserted him.

  He felt abandoned, empty and desolate. He had no determination, no strength of will any more. What had happened? In the Reiklanders he had been a leader, one who was liked and respected. Now he couldn’t even command his own body. But before, he had always had a reason to carry on. He had been part of a larger whole, the intricate machine of the army, following its orders and purposes. Here, now, he was more alone than he had ever been. There was nobody he could turn to for help. Not even his god. Not even himself.

  The moon had risen and was making slow progress across the heavens. The stars were disappearing as clouds dragged themselves across the sky from the north, thick, bulbous and potent. If the sky was covered then there was less chance of a frost. His nose seemed to have stopped bleeding for the moment. His feet and legs were numb with cold. The shape of a large bird, a night hunter of some kind, moved silently across the trees. In the undergrowth nearby something small scurried away.

  When had he lost his confidence, his sense of direction? Had it been in prison, in the endless dark, or before then? Was it when he had let himself be caught and tricked by the cultists in Marienburg? When Hunni had told him that his dramatic, dangerous entry into the Untersuchung had all been arranged to force him into joining? Or had it been a combination of all of them, wearing away at him with uncertainties, changing the rules of the game while he was still trying to work out the previous set?

  He was a different man now from the soldier who had ridden out from the Grey Hills six months ago, and not just physically. With each new twist his world had changed and he had been forced to change to keep up with it, to find a new way of coping. From soldier to recruit, from recruit to undercover agent, to heretic, prisoner and fugitive. And now one more: mutant.

  He remembered something that Braubach had said early in his training. They had been walking down the Street of Tailors, buying the new clothes Hoche would need as an Untersuchung agent. It was mid-afternoon, a bright late-summer day. Braubach had a good eye for workmanship. No bright colours, no distinctive details unless they could be removed quickly. Nothing that would restrict movement or that might catch your sword as you drew it. They had been talking about disguises.

  “You still think like a soldier. We have to teach you how to think like someone else,” Braubach had said. And: “I’m asking you to put on a mental disguise, a mask over your own thoughts.”

  He remembered it. At the time it had sounded like a part of the training. But, he thought, it may
have been a lesson I learned too well. I was struggling to survive those weeks, the intense work, the strangeness of it all. Yet I couldn’t show my true feelings: the confusion and uncertainty. So I pretended. The Karl Hoche they saw was always confident, alert, ready to learn, eager to do well and gain promotion. And all the time the real Karl Hoche was torn with doubts about the Untersuchung and what he was doing there.

  I never stopped thinking like a soldier. Instead, without realising I was doing it, I hid the soldier behind the mask of a new Karl Hoche, tailored for the Untersuchung. When I went to Marienburg, and when I returned to Altdorf, each time I created a new mask to fit the needs of the situation. I masked my own thoughts so well with the roles I was forced to play that not even I realised I was doing it.

  “You must learn to play a new role so deeply that it becomes your life,” Braubach had told him, and he had done that without realising it. And each change of circumstance, each new role that he had been thrown into had tapped his real self, draining away the drive and determination of the old Karl Hoche, depriving it of the things that would sustain it.

  Now, finally, there were no more masks. He could not disguise the mark of Chaos that he carried, create a personality to hide it, or pretend it did not exist. For the first time in six months he was naked, stripped bare, without anything to hide behind.

  He looked at himself, and saw how diminished and raw he was, how wounded, how scared. How helpless. How useless. How little of him was left. The year had exhausted him, left him directionless, empty, hollow and void. The codes and values that he had used to define his old self had been proved false and broken, the structure that held his former life together loosened until it fell apart. Was there anything of Karl Hoche worth saving?

  He stared at himself and could find nothing.

  Perhaps it would be better if he died here.

  He heard the raps of raindrops striking earth and leaves, then the rattle of rain though the bare branches above him. Hard drops splashed against his chest and face. He closed his eyes and let the cold water drench him, washing away some of the blood and some of the pain, numbing his flesh. There was a deep tiredness in his body: he had not eaten or slept properly in days and now he was suffering the consequences. Somehow it didn’t matter. He opened his mouth, savouring the moisture on his tongue and lips. He could feel his eye-hollows filling with water.