Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  The strange winged figure scrambled across the open ground, crossed the stream and disappeared into the night. The other mutants were nowhere to be seen, but the flaps of their doors twitched and he knew they were watching and listening.

  He strode to the fire, its flames low, and turned to face the silent huts. “I hear everything,” he declared to the camp, “and I do not sleep.” Lies, but lies they would believe, he hoped. He threw the axe onto the embers, stirring sparks into the air, and the flare of heat was warm on his skin.

  He went back into his hut and slept, and his sleep was not disturbed by anything more than dreams of fire and blood.

  He woke before dawn and rose at once, crossing the camp in the half-light of sunrise, washing himself in the pool of the stream. The cold water carried away the last of the filth and the blood. Gingerly his fingers felt out the new shape of his nose: flatter, lopsided, curved downward now. A mark of his new self.

  Many of his smaller cuts were already scabbed over and disappearing. It had only been a day and a half. Perhaps that was another effect of the mutation, the influence of Chaos making him heal faster. He thought back to the prison, and feet that should have been ruined and useless. He had not felt a twinge of pain from them in the last two days. Unless it had been something in the prison food, he could not think what else might have had such an effect on him. Perhaps mutation might have some beneficial side-effects.

  Would he continue to change? What would be next? Would it ever stop?

  He walked back to the embers of the fire, using a stick to stir them up and threw a handful of kindling on the glowing remnants. A sound came from behind him and he turned to see the wart-skinned mutant, the one he had marked as the leader, emerge from another of the huts. He looked wary, arms folded in an unconvincing show of confidence.

  The warty mouth moved unpleasantly. “Morning.”

  He didn’t look away from the fire. “Morning.”

  The leader shifted his weight. “Going to stay long?”

  He’s frightened of me, he thought, and of the fact I could become the leader of this motley band in an instant. For now I need them more than they need me, so I have to convince him I’m not a threat. Tough, but not threatening.

  He looked up and touched the mouth on his neck. It twitched under his fingers. “I need to learn what this means,” he said. “I need to understand why I have it, and how I live with it. Have I been cursed? Have the gods of Chaos marked me as one of theirs?” He paused. That much was true enough. “Can you tell me?”

  There was a long pause as the mutant considered his answer. Finally: “What’s your name?”

  It was a good question. Since he had spent the night in the mud, he had not needed a tag for his new identity. He had snuffed out the soul of Karl Hoche within him, but did that mean he could never use any part of his history again? The old name felt comfortable. He remembered what Braubach had taught him about identities and disguises. He was no longer Karl Hoche, but he could use that as a mask. He would have to be careful not to slip into old familiar ways, but it would do for now.

  “Karl,” he said.

  “I’m Max,” the mutant said. “The one you want to speak with about Chaos is Nils, but you scared him off last night. And, —” he raised his hands defensively “—I had nothing to do with that. It was purely him. They’re a difficult lot to control, this lot, you’ve got to know how much rope you can give them, and they still sometimes pull it out of your hands.”

  Karl watched the muscles of the man’s face tighten, heard his voice a fraction too controlled, watched how he stopped describing his words with his hands, and knew it was a lie. Max might not have ordered the failed assassination, but he had been involved.

  “Did Nils come back last night?” he asked. Max chuckled.

  “After you told him you’d have his head? He won’t be back till he knows it’s safe. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.” He paused. “Breakfast?”

  The other members of the group emerged one by one from their huts and while more strips of horsemeat roasted over the fire, he was introduced to them. The huge man, his nose and mouth elongated into a snout and his face and hands matted with fur, was Rolf. The three-armed youth was Hermann, the son of Luise, the only woman in the group, a bizarre hyper-feminised figure with exaggerated breasts and hips, a small mouth with fat lips in a perpetual pout, and blue eyes three inches across, under thick blonde hair that did not move. Karl noted there was no mention of Hermann’s father. Nils, the absent one, was the group’s priest and spiritual leader. Max made it clear he was in charge, giving orders and bossing the others around.

  “How did you all meet?” Karl asked, chewing a strip of flesh.

  “Followed the smoke,” said Luise. “I fled my town when I realised something was… that I was changing. We’d had witch hunters through that spring so I knew what they did to mutants. I begged my way downriver for a few weeks, then headed into the woods. I was almost starving when I saw smoke. And it was Max’s fire.”

  Max nodded. “There’s a lot of wild folk in the forest,” he said. “Some of them far gone too, mad or worse. Beastmen also, vicious sods. Many keep away from each other, and everyone stays clear of the beastmen. But the smoke’s like a beacon. Worth the risk. It pulls in all sorts.”

  “Elves?” Karl asked. Max shrugged. “Folk say they’re around. But I’ve never seen one.” He stood up and stretched, his lumpy skin creaking. “Come on. If you’re staying there’s work to be done.”

  “Work?”

  “Gathering firewood and cutting trees. We’re clearing a bit of land. I want to plant some wheat or vegetables come spring. No need to look for food today—we’ve meat to last us for a few days.”

  “What about digging a grave for—” Karl tried to remember the name. “For Walther?”

  Max looked surprised. “It’s waste not, starve not out here. He’s part of the meat.”

  Karl decided to prepare his own food.

  He watched how the mutants lived. It was a poor sort of life. Most days revolved around searching for the things that would keep them alive: food and firewood. Max boasted of how good things were, how bad it had been when they were on their own, and making grandiose plans of growing crops and raising livestock—rabbits, chickens, maybe even goats—but the days were hard and the living was poor.

  Karl pushed himself into the work. His body was thin and his muscles atrophied from the time in prison, and the relentless physical effort gave him release. All day he would cut trees or dig up the stumps from the ground Max wanted to clear, then eat in front of the fire and ask questions, return to his hut exhausted, sleep, wake up stiff and aching, wash himself in the stream, and start again. It gave him a fierce appetite but he was careful to eat only the horsemeat. Eating human or mutant flesh was a taboo he wouldn’t break.

  Nils sneaked back into the camp early on the third morning, and when Max introduced him to Karl he pretended they hadn’t met. Karl shook his hand, squeezing it until he felt the bones twisting, and smiled conspiratorially. Nils looked down, unable to meet his eyes. The man’s face changed constantly, bones and muscles shifting under the skin, his eyes changing shape and colour. At one moment he might resemble a youthful aristocrat with a hawked nose and arrogant mouth, the next a haggard Tilean, a vellum-faced scholar or even an elf.

  Most of them were first-generation mutants, the change having come upon them spontaneously. The exceptions were Hermann, who glowered at Karl every time he saw him with the sulky rebelliousness of a lonely adolescent, and Rolf who could not speak but used a language of gestures that Max interpreted for the others. Max claimed Rolf was the offspring of a woman who had been raped by a bear, and from whose womb he had exploded. Karl suspected he was making it up.

  When anyone asked about him he was non-committal, eluding the details of his history. He didn’t think they would take kindly to a former Chaos-hunter.

  The fifth afternoon broke into hard hail, fusillades of ice firing from the sky
and forcing them into the huts for shelter. Karl followed Max and Nils into the leader’s hut. The conversation was stilted and awkward. Nils looking anywhere except at Karl. Max did not try to make things easier between them. In fact, Karl thought, it felt like the opposite.

  Questions came to him that evening and blocked him from sleeping. What was he doing here? He had hoped to learn the ways of mutants and the nature of Chaos at first hand, and yet this impoverished crew seemed to have nothing to teach him. But that did not mean he had nothing to learn. There were ways of thinking and behaving he had never known before, but which his new self would need in the future. He had to learn how to be manipulative, deceptive, destructive, and ruthless.

  He lay still on his bed and listened to the night. He could hear voices. No, a single voice. It was Max, his tones guarded, with long pauses between his sentences. Karl slipped from the bed, crept to the doorway and peered out. Two figures were silhouetted against the glow of the fire, and from its size the second had to be Rolf. He was moving his hands in agitation, using the secret language only he and Max understood. Karl watched and listened.

  “No,” said Max. “No, I agree with you, there’s something not normal about our new friend. He took Walther down like he was a trained killer, he beat Nils. I mean, he survived that beating we gave him on the riverbank. By rights he should be dead three times over.”

  Rolf gestured, making shapes with his huge hands.

  Max sniffed. “No, you’re right, he doesn’t like you. He told me during the hailstorm. He’s afraid you’ll become a monster and go berserk. Says he used to know a witch hunter who told him that happens sometimes, in cases like yours. But I said—”

  The bear-like man threw back his head, his hands carving frantic gestures in the air. Max was silent, waiting for him to finish. “No, no,” he said. “I’m not saying you’re right, but I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’ve had the same thoughts myself. We need to watch him carefully, you and me.”

  More gestures.

  “No, we need all the live bodies we can get to make it through till spring. We’re a man down already, and it’s only midwinter. What if beastmen attack? Or wolves? But if you see any funny business, anything that gets your hackles up, tell me and we’ll do him.”

  Rolf pointed to the huts and made a low growl. Max put his hand on the beastman’s arm. “No need to tell the others,” he said. “They’re women and children, likely to panic or make him suspicious. You and me, we’ll have to do it alone. Till the spring brings some fresh recruits, anyway. I’ll make sure he doesn’t tell anyone else about what that witch hunter said. It’s all nonsense anyway. Witch hunters don’t know anything.”

  The figures sat silent and unmoving for a while, then Max stood up. “Don’t let me down. You know you’re the only one I can trust.” He slapped Rolf on the back and walked back to his hut.

  Karl returned to bed. He had known the others would be suspicious of him, but he hadn’t reckoned on Max using it to help keep them on his side. He would have to move more slowly from now. The thought came that he could leave, but he still had too much to learn from these unhappy beings: about life as a mutant, about the nature of mutation, about treachery and subterfuge and manipulation.

  He remembered his first night in the camp, and his declaration that he did not sleep and heard everything. Max and Rolf had picked an obvious spot for their late-night discussion. Had he been meant to overhear it? Was it a warning, or were they testing him? Max wasn’t a fool, and did little by accident. Was he not meant to hear their talk, meant to hear, or meant to hear but disbelieve? Truth, bluff or double-bluff?

  A man could go mad trying to unravel such things. He turned over and went to sleep.

  * * *

  The next day was fairer, and Nils left the camp early to check the snares in the woods, set to catch unwary rabbits and the occasional fox. Karl waited a minute and set off after him, following his trail through the dead bracken and leaves until they were out of earshot from the camp. He waited until Nils was crouched by an oak-tree, busy extracting a thrashing rabbit from one of the devices of twine and wood that had caught its leg, and crept up behind him.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said.

  Nils turned, startled, and dropped the rabbit. It fled for a patch of brambles, dragging the remains of the snare from its foot. He backed away from Karl. His face looked as if it had been scarred by fire, the skin tight and red.

  “Please don’t kill me,” he said.

  “I’m not here to kill you,” Karl said. “I bear you no malice. I want to talk.”

  Nils’s eyes were questioning for a moment. “It was Max’s plan,” he said. “He said he was too heavy-footed to carry it off, and gave me the axe. I’m sorry.”

  Karl nodded. “It’s okay. I’d have done the same thing,” he lied. “I wanted to ask you about Chaos.”

  “What about it?”

  “Tell me about mutations.”

  “Mutations,” said Nils. He put down the broken snare and lifted his eyes to the sky. “Mutanto mutantis, the alteration of the flesh, the gift of the Lord Seench, the changer of the days, the ineffable, unknowable lord of the Chaos lords, upon those he has marked for his schemes for generations, yes, generations upon generations sometimes, the mutation of one to be passed down the bloodline till the mad god’s scheme bloom out to fruition…”

  It was gibberish. It might fool these people but it exasperated Karl. He stopped Nils with a wave of his hand.

  “I heal faster than I used to. Is that an effect of the mutation?”

  Nils nodded sagely. “A blessing from Lord Seench, that is. Rolf’s the same. He broke his arm once, and it was fixed in a week.”

  “Does everyone pray to this… Lord Seench?”

  Nils nodded.

  “When they pray for his blessings, are they asking for more changes, or less?”

  Nils looked at him strangely. It was clear he didn’t get into many theological discussions. “The true believers ask for Seench to work his mysteries through them. More gifts for some, stability for others. The chosen of Seench are ever-changing.”

  Karl said nothing. The strange-faced mutant studied him for a moment, then walked to the low-hanging branch of a nearby oak. A few acorns still hung in clusters on its twigs, and he reached up to pull them down. Karl expected him to eat them but instead he put them in the pockets of the jerkin. Nils turned and smiled sheepishly.

  “If you roast them in a fire,” he said, “and grind them like flour, and boil them in hot water, it tastes like coffee.”

  “How much like coffee?” Karl asked.

  “Not much,” Nils admitted, “but more like coffee than dandelion tea tastes like tea.”

  He sat down against the trunk of the tree and sighed. “It’s not much fun, this life. But it’s better than the alternative.”

  Karl said, "I’m still trying to get the measure of some people. Does Hermann ever say anything except ‘bastard’?"

  “Not much.” Nils smiled with the plump face of a matron. “But he’s still young.”

  “Old enough to know better.”

  “He’s six, Karl. Luise was pregnant with him when she arrived.”

  “Six?” It was impossible to believe.

  “Yes. He had hair on his balls by the time he was four. You can forgive him a lot if you remember that. Luise tries to be a good mother, but it’s hard for her.” Nils paused. “I like Luise, a lot.”

  Karl nodded. He’d noticed it. But Luise flirted with everyone except Max, and that indicated a different relationship between those two. “I’m not sure about Max,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “His plans. He’s been in the forest longer than anyone, and what has he achieved? You still have no regular supply of food. How many years is it going to take to clear that field? And you’re setting snares for rabbits, but not for waterfowl down by the river, or leaving lines or nets for fish. That’s not sense.”

  “Max is a
good man,” Nils said. “He’s a good leader. He does his best. He plans the ambushes and keeps the others under control.”

  “Under control?” Karl remembered the conversation he had overhead.

  “Yes.” Nils paused, hesitant. “When I found the village, I told them I was a priest of Lord Seench. The others were frightened of my powers. They were plotting to kill me or drive me back into the forest. Max let me know, and he talked them into letting me stay. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”

  And Rolf was afraid he might turn into a monster. “I see,” Karl said. He saw a skilled manipulator, controlling a group by making them fear each other, pretending he was their only ally against the rest. He wished Nils luck with the rest of the snares, walked back to the camp and chopped wood all day, thinking.

  On the tenth morning Max came to him. “Meat’s low. You’re going hunting with Rolf. See if you can bring back a deer or a wild boar. Rabbits if there’s nothing else.”

  “I thought you ambushed people on the river-path?”

  “In summer, but there’s not enough traffic this season. We got lucky with you, saw you crossing on the bargeman’s boat. Ran ahead and set up a welcoming committee.”

  “What weapons do we hunt with?” Karl asked.

  Max rubbed his nose, dislodging one of its warty growths of flesh. He put it in his mouth and chewed. “There’s a sling or a spear. Or your knife.”

  Karl thought of Schulze, walking in summer moonlight and talking about poaching. “I’d prefer a bow.”

  “I’ll hike down the armoury and get one. Would m’lord like a suit of armour and a warhorse while I’m about it?” Max gave him a look of contempt that faded into thoughtfulness. “Though if you know about bows, you could make one. There’s a yew-tree not far off, and you could take some sinews from your horse’s legs. That’d be right useful.”

  Karl took the spear, left the hut and followed Rolf into the woods.