Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  The going was not hard, but Rolf walked fast and surprisingly quietly, and it was hard for Karl to keep up. Several times Rolf would stop, look back over his shoulder and raise a hairy finger to his lips and Karl, admonished, would try to move more carefully through the maze of branches and brambles, until he found he was dropping behind again.

  Here and there he saw deer-tracks in the black earth, and their teeth-marks in the soft bark of the birch-trees, but the animals had gone and their trail could have been hours or days old. At least, he thought, there’s no sign of the forest’s other inhabitants.

  They visited thickets of birch, pools in the stream and other places animals might gather, but they found nothing except old tracks and spoor. There was a light wind that made the air cold and the walking hard.

  Around noon they paused, and sat on a fallen tree to eat the dried meat they’d brought with them. Karl studied Rolf, and Rolf studied the forest, sniffing the air and not looking at Karl at all. How scared of me is he? Karl thought. How much has Max made him fear me and what I’m supposed to know about mutations? Because this would be an easy place for me to have an accident.

  “Rolf,” he said, “I’d like to learn how you talk with your hands.”

  The great hairy head turned slowly to study him. If there was an expression on Rolf’s face it was impossible to read it. “It would be easier if someone apart from Max could understand you,” Karl added.

  Rolf shook his head slowly and took another bite of horsemeat.

  “You’re happy that Max is the only one who knows what you’re saying?” he said. Rolf nodded.

  “So it’s a private language between the two of you.”

  A nod.

  “You don’t want anyone else to understand you?”

  Another nod, slow and deliberate.

  “Did Max told you that you’d be in danger if the others knew what you were saying?”

  Rolf nodded. He trusts Max implicitly, Karl thought, and in all things. I wonder how deep that trust runs, and how fragile it might be, and where a man could strike to break it.

  He was about to ask more, but Rolf raised a hand and pointed. Through the trees Karl could see a deer, a good-sized doe three or four seasons old. It was cropping bark from a tree some sixty yards away.

  Rolf slid down from the tree-trunk, crouched low and began to move towards it. How could someone so large be so quiet? Karl let him get five or ten yards ahead and then followed, watching his feet to make sure every step was silent.

  The breeze shifted, and a second later the deer raised her head, looked at them, and with a flick of her white tail was gone into the depths of the forest. Rolf gave chase, sprinting between the trees, his feet pounding the earth. Karl, taken by surprise, watched for an astonished second. He tried to follow, but his boots were still on Max’s legs and the cloths he had wrapped around his feet for protection did not make running easy.

  The doe leaped round bramble-patches, darting to avoid webs of interwoven branches or piles of fallen leaves. Rolf ignored them, his bulk and speed crashing a new trail through the undergrowth. If it hurt him he did not show it. The deer changed direction to avoid another fallen trunk; Rolf had anticipated the movement and was already moving to cut it off. It jumped, twisting between the trees. He followed. It slowed for an instant and he leaped, knocking it down.

  Karl stopped and watched. The deer was struggling to get up but Rolf reached out, grabbed one of its legs and pulled its flailing form towards him. His other hand wrapped around its thick neck and squeezed. The deer’s legs thrashed the ground. Karl could see it tossing its head, trying to move away from the crushing pressure on its windpipe, but Rolf held it firm. Slowly it ceased to move.

  Karl approached, holding his spear and feeling redundant. The deer’s tongue was extruded between its slack lips and its eyes were glazed. He stared, still not quite believing what he’d seen. A man had run down and strangled a deer.

  Rolf looked up and smiled. His teeth were long, and this smile showed all of them. Karl tried to smile back.

  “Tell me,” he said, “wouldn’t it have been easier to break its neck?”

  Rolf made a circle round the deer’s neck with his two hands. Huge though they were, the neck was thicker: too large and flexible for the bear-like giant to snap its spine. But he had completely crushed the deer’s windpipe with one hand. The imprint of his fingers were still visible there. Karl looked at it and shivered, hoping he never felt Rolf’s hand around his own.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Practice

  The days passed until he lost track of them. He cut more wood, felling trees, splitting them into logs and carrying them to the rock in the centre of the camp. His muscles grew, and his appetite with it. For a week it snowed and they huddled in Luise’s hut like rabbits in a burrow, conserving warmth. They caught no meat that week, the snares useless in the snow, and the stocks of food began to dwindle. When the snow cleared Luise showed him how to grub up the roots of plants below the frozen earth, and for some days they ate the few they could find. Then Rolf killed another deer and there was meat for several more days.

  The worst of the winter passed and the trees began to produce signs of hard buds. The forest was quiet, the inhabitants out of sight. Food was scarce and the hunting trips more frequent. Rabbits and roots were the usual fare. Some days they had nothing. Karl began to yearn for the taste of horsemeat.

  All the time he watched the others, judging how they interacted, thinking about how he could disrupt the network of control and lies that let Max keep his leadership of the group. It was clear that none of the others wanted to lead, but it was also clear that Max had arranged things so that the subject was never discussed. Each mutant thought Max was his ally against the rest, who hated their particular aberration and wanted to see them ousted or killed. The only exception was Luise, and Karl had noticed that though she and Max never slept in the same hut, they were often absent from the camp at the same time. He knew Hermann knew that too, because he saw the boy watching the two of them.

  Spring was coming. It was time for a change.

  The date meant nothing in the forest; only the sky, the temperature and the slow growth of the new buds on the forest branches were important. This day was grey. In the morning the snares had been empty, and their bellies too. It was a hunting day.

  Karl and Nils went north, Rolf and Hermann south. Max and Luise stayed behind, ‘in case someone passes on the river path’, they said. Karl doubted it. There had been a late frost in the night and the ground was chill under his feet. Nils was wearing extra clothes, including a jerkin that Karl recognised. It had been his once.

  The forest was empty and still. In the upper branches sparrows and starlings twittered and squawked, but at ground level there was nothing. They walked in silence, Karl content to let Nils take the lead. Once Nils gestured to him to stop, hefted his sling and crept forward to peer round a bramble patch, but on the other side was only a rabbit-warren, with no sign of life. Nils muttered something about ferrets and they walked on.

  It was past noon when they stopped at the edge of a stream, near a tall elm tree that spread great ridged arms to the sky. The water was cold and clear, filling their stomachs in the absence of food. They sat to rest for a few minutes: Nils with his back to the elm, Karl on a fallen branch a few feet away. The clouds were heavy with unfallen snow, and the light in the air was muted. It was a depressed day.

  Karl toyed with his spear, spinning its shaft in his hands, looking at its two pointed and fire-hardened ends. “Where did you learn about Chaos?” he asked.

  Nils looked at him sharply, his face with the features of a young girl, though drawn with hunger. “I stood at the right hand of the great priest of darkness in the city of Nuln,” he said, “head of the covenant of pain, the congregation of Lord Seench the changer of the days, but I was driven away when my visions threatened his status, forced by his followers into the forest…”

  “What I’m asking mysel
f,” Karl said, “is how you picked up the few bits of information you do know, when you’ve never been near a dark rite in your life. For a start it’s Tzeentch, not ‘Seench’, and he’s the changer of ways, not days. You repeat the one name you know, but you make up the rest as you speak.”

  Nils didn’t move for several seconds. Then he said, “Am I so obvious?”

  “Who are you really?” Karl asked. “What did you do? You know enough to have tricked Max, and he’s no fool. But you were never a priest of Chaos.”

  Nils paused. “I did work at the temple in Nuln,” he said, and paused again. “The temple of Morr,” he added, dug an acorn from his pocket and chewed on it. “I was a gravedigger. One of the priests was teaching me to read. He said I had potential and I might find a place inside the temple, in the brotherhood. Then my wings started sprouting, and I fled.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Seven summers. Seven years in this forest. It’s not been easy,” Nils said. His face slowly became lined and worn, growing dew-lapped, pock-marked and sad. He fished another acorn from his pocket and offered it to Karl. “You won’t tell Max, will you?”

  Karl took the acorn and ignored the question. He said, “This is what interests me. None of us had any contact with Chaos before we started to change.” Except me, he thought, and I’m not telling you that. “If we had been Chaos worshippers, we’d have seen the mutation as a gift from our gods, not a reason to flee. Yet here, instead of cursing Chaos and turning to Sigmar and Morr, you and the others follow this debased form of Tzeentch-worship, a god you know almost nothing about. Is there something endemic in mutation, that it turns the bearer towards the Chaos gods? Or is it in the nature of Man, that we feel the need to grovel towards whatever power seems to control our lives? Because if it’s the former—”

  A thudding crash came as something ploughed through the undergrowth, heavy footfalls shaking the earth, breath snorting like thunderclaps. Karl was on his feet in a second, spear raised. Nils scrambled up as a huge black boar bolted through the bushes. It looked as large as a horse, with yellow tusks six inches long. Its breath was plumes of steam in the cold air.

  Karl held his ground, one end of the spear planted in the earth, braced against a tree root. He didn’t move. Nils did, diving round the trunk of the elm, trying to keep it between the boar and himself, shouting words in panic. The beast changed its course. It struck him on the back of the leg, its tusk tearing his flesh, its momentum pushing him down and crushing him. There was the snap of bones. Nils, on the ground, screamed.

  “Hoi! Hoi!” Karl yelled.

  The boar stopped, turning to the noise. Karl stamped his feet, moving from side to side, distracting it. The beast stood for a moment, tossing its head, its wet button eyes glinting. Its black fur gleamed dully. Three hundred pounds, Karl guessed, and all of it muscle, fury and near-blind aggression.

  It snorted and charged. Karl bent low, bracing the spear’s point level with its neck. The tactic had worked before, with the wolves in the Grey Mountains and with the assassin in Altdorf. He hoped three times was the charm.

  The animal flung itself forward, directly at Karl. He faced it, his legs tense, his heart thudding, until the last possible moment, then he stepped left to let the beast’s rush carry it onto the spear, as he reached to his waistband for his knife. The boar reacted to his movement faster than he imagined, swerving to follow him. The spear pierced it above the leg, and the thin wood bent and splintered. The boar’s great angular head lunged sideways and one tusk ripped through Karl’s thigh with searing pain.

  He felt himself falling, and twisted forward towards the mass of black hair. Moving away would be death; if he was on the ground the boar would gore him. There was only one safe place to be.

  He landed across the boar’s back, forcing it down. The beast squealed and tried to move away but its wounded leg and the remains of the spear would not let it. In a moment Karl had his arms around its neck, hanging on, slashing desperately at its throat with his knife. Hot blood gushed over his hands.

  The boar bucked, bellowing in agony and rage, throwing itself across the clearing. Karl felt his new muscles strain and tear, and dug the knife in as hard as he could. Then as the monster rolled over to crush him, he let go and dived away, grabbing for the other end of the broken spear on the ground.

  The beast heaved, blood gouting from its neck and pooling on the forest floor. It clambered to its feet as Karl did the same, and stared across the short distance that separated them. Its dark eyes were full of bloodlust and hatred. Karl stared back, implacable, his half-spear held ready for a final charge. Neither moved.

  The huge animal exhaled with a fierce heave, sank to its knees, and died.

  Karl stood, not breaking his stare. For a second he could hear nothing but the sound of its blood as the thick liquid ran down the hilt of his knife protruding from the boar’s neck, and streamed to the earth. There was a lot of blood. The beast’s bristled flanks were covered in it, and more coated the ground. Red and hot, it steamed in the winter air. Its blood was drying on his hands and forearms like a second skin.

  It called to him.

  Karl

  Blood was what he needed.

  Karl

  He raised a hand to his mouth, to lick.

  “Karl!”

  Nils lay at the foot of the elm, one leg twisted wrongly, as if it had a second knee. “I can’t get up!”

  Karl shut his eyes and shook his head hard, to clear it. Was this bloodlust or something worse? He’d never felt a thing like it before—no, he had, riding on the road from Altdorf. The thought made him feel sick. Something was terribly wrong. He had to concentrate. He had business to finish.

  He walked over to Nils, limping from the wound in his thigh, and knelt to touch the bent leg, making the mutant grunt in pain. The flesh was torn open and the bone was shattered. “Is it bad?” he asked.

  “It’s a clean break,” Karl said.

  “That’s good. We can use your spear as a splint to get us back to the village. Tear strips from your cloak, bandage it, tie the splint on.”

  “My cloak?” Karl said. He stood up slowly, inspecting his own wound. It was long but not deep; enough to slow him down but not stop him.

  “I don’t understand why it didn’t attack you first,” Nils said.

  Karl indicated the body. “You moved. Beasts like this see movement better than they see shapes. You see, Nils, this is what I was talking about. You did something you thought was sensible, but it wasn’t. You shouted something as you ran, too. You made yourself the victim.”

  “That was stupid of me.” Nils tried to shift, and winced.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Karl looked down at the mutant, helpless on the ground before him. “Do you remember what you shouted?”

  “It… no.” Nil’s features were agitated, unable to settle on one face or expression.

  “It was ‘Seench’, Nils. You shouted the name of a god you don’t know, that you admit you don’t understand. By sense, you should have no faith in this god, and yet in your distress you called his name.” Karl stepped away, limping around the clearing, testing his leg. He bent over the still carcass of the black boar and pulled his knife from its throat, wiping it clean on his trousers. “You answered my question.”

  “What question?” Nils looked agitated.

  Karl didn’t look at him. “Whether the worship of Chaos among mutants is a conscious reaction against old gods who have abandoned us, or whether it lies deeper. Does the fact that we bear the mark of Chaos make us things of Chaos? You, Nils, you were closer to the old gods than any of us. But in your panic you didn’t call for Morr or Sigmar. You called for Tzeentch, the god who made you this thing of corruption.”

  From behind him he could hear Nils shift position, probably towards a weapon of some kind. “So what?” the mutant asked. “What does that have to do with getting back to the camp with a t
on of pork and a man with a broken leg?”

  “It’s about what you believe,” Karl said. “I believe that the works of Chaos are intolerable and must be destroyed. And though I believe you do not understand it, and you think yourself a good man who has been used cruelly by fate, you are in your heart a thing of Chaos.”

  “But you can’t exorcise the Chaos out of me,” Nils protested. Karl stood and turned, tucking the knife into his trousers. He picked up the broken spear, adjusting his grip on the wood, and advanced across the clearing. Nils saw his expression and tried to scrabble away, around the trunk of the elm.

  “Seench! Seench!” he whimpered. “Why like this? Why didn’t you let the boar kill me?”

  “I wanted you to know why you’re going to die,” Karl said, “It’s not personal. All things of Chaos must be destroyed, it’s as simple as that.”

  Nils kicked out with his good leg. Karl dodged it and put one foot on the mutant’s broken limb, pressing down. Nils screamed in pain, flailing his arms, tears streaking his bizarre face.

  “For pity’s sake,” he pleaded.

  “I pity you, but that will not save you,” Karl said. He took aim with the spear, careful to avoid the jerkin.

  “But you’re marked by Chaos too!” Nils squealed.

  “My time will come,” Karl said, and thrust downwards.

  He staggered into the circle of huts at a limping run, his trousers torn and bloody. “Nils is hurt!” he shouted. “He’s been gored by a boar!”

  The curtain of Max’s door flapped open and Max lurched out, pulling on a jacket. “Seench!” he said. “Badly?”

  Karl nodded. “It smashed his leg and ripped him open on the ground,” he said. “But he was still alive when I started back.”

  “Where?”

  Karl pointed. “About three miles, by the big elm by the stream.” Max nodded. Behind him Luise emerged from his hut. Her hair was perfectly in place, but her hair was always perfectly in place.

  “Nils?” she said. Karl nodded. “He looked pretty bad,” he said.

  Max pursed his lips. “What happened to the boar?”