Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  Karl passed his half-finished bowl to the man next to him, and walked up the hill to the white tent where the surgeons and priests of Shallya tended the sick and injured.

  It smelled like all such places did: of vomit, rot and not enough incense. The patients lay on low beds, some moaning, some silent and still. Armin was four beds down, his head shaved and capped with bandages. His eyes moved to watch Karl as he approached and sat on the bed, but he showed no recognition and said nothing. His skin was pale

  “Armin, it’s Lieutenant Hoche,” Karl said. “I heard about your injury. I—” He noticed a clean horizontal cut on the man’s forearm. It looked recent and deliberate. He beckoned to a priest.

  “What’s this mark?”

  The priest looked down. “This man has blood-poison. The surgeons have bled him to arrest its spread, and we are praying for him.”

  Blood-poison again, Karl thought, and the same treatment that didn’t work for Old Langstock. He didn’t like the sound of it.

  Back at his tent, Kurtz thrust a bowl of stew into his hand. “I saved you some, sir. Hope you’ve still got an appetite.”

  “Thanks, Kurtz.” Karl retreated into his tent. He was hungry; hungrier than he’d realised. The stew smelled like yesterday’s, meat and vegetables in rich gravy, but today there were dumplings too.

  Then his stomach wrenched and he staggered, almost spilling the bowl, gasping in pain. Simultaneously the mouth on his neck yawned open, wide, trying to get free of the bandage wrapped around it.

  The pain eased. He sat, put down the bowl and pressed his belly, feeling where it hurt. The mouth was quiet. Then the feeling came again: the mouth stretched and his stomach spasmed with a primeval, bestial hunger, so deep it hurt.

  It’s taking over my body, he thought in panic. It wants to be fed. Dare I? What will happen if I do?

  The pain struck a third time, knocking him to the ground with its intensity. He lay there as it ebbed away, feeling helpless, loathing what was happening to him. Cutting his throat, he reminded himself, was not an option. He had things to finish first. But this was crippling him. For now, though he hated himself for it, he had to give in.

  He crawled to the flap of his tent and tied it closed. Then he unwound the bandage from his neck, glad he had no mirror or way of seeing the mark that had damned him. He could feel it grinding its teeth.

  He plucked a lump of lukewarm meat from the bowl with his fingers and, hating himself, fearing what might happen, slowly brought it close to his second mouth. The sharp teeth snapped at it and he jerked away in panic, then steadied himself and gingerly touched the meat to his other lips. He felt them part, the tongue wrap itself around the offering and draw it inside. Then he felt it chewing and, after a long, ghastly while, he felt it swallow.

  He wanted to vomit. He wanted to cut the thing out of him. He wanted to scream madly into the twilight. Instead he took another piece of meat and fed it to his infection.

  It refused the sixth lump he offered it and he slumped onto his bed, his nerves and mind exhausted and terrified by what he had done. He slept and his dreams were filled with terrible visions. Then he woke and could not remember them, only the fear they put in his heart.

  It was still evening. Outside the tent, the men were talking about wives and girlfriends, and for a second he thought of Marie and his eyes pricked with tears, until he remembered those feelings would not help him now.

  He did not want to sleep again so he roused himself and left the tent, nodding a greeting to the group round the fire. The sun had set, the stars were out and the camp was preparing for sleep. He walked aimlessly past groups of soldiers cleaning their kit, talking, laughing, singing songs of love, beer and death, and he felt apart from them. He had no connection to their lives. Surrounded by these soldiers, men with whom he had once shared a common bond, he felt utterly alone.

  His feet carried him unthinkingly to the infirmary but the tent doors were closed. A field surgeon was sitting outside, his bag of surgical instruments and ointments open in front of him, and he was rummaging in the contents. He looked up as Karl approached.

  “Can I help?” he asked. “Do you have a medical problem? A pain, perhaps?”

  It would be so easy to surrender and say yes. “No,” said Karl. “I want to see a lad from the Fifth Reiklanders, Armin. Head-wound.”

  The field surgeon nodded and disappeared into the tent. A lamp flickered within and there were low voices. A minute later the surgeon reappeared.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “He died a half-hour ago.”

  Karl froze. He was no stranger to death, but this had been unexpected, and fast. There was no reason to die from a head-wound like that.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  The corners of the surgeon’s mouth tightened. “Blood-poison,” he said. “You know.”

  “I know,” Karl said. “May I see the body?”

  The surgeon led him around the tent to a separate area at the back, half morgue and half storage area, and left him there. Armin’s corpse lay on the end of a row of wooden pallets, naked apart from a loincloth. Even in the lamplight Karl could see his skin was as pale as candle-tallow. There were two more cuts on his arm. What had Kurtz said about Langstock? “They bled him and bled him.” Blood-poison or not, they had drained the life out of the lad.

  He saw a sheet spread out over a pile of equipment and went to take it, to drape over Armin’s body. It was the smell that hit him first: heavy, cloying and sickeningly familiar. Under the sheet lay a bucket filled with thick crimson fluid. He knew what it was. But this was a medical tent, and bleeding patients was a normal part of treatment. There was no reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary.

  All the same…

  He left the tent and walked away, making a five-minute loop through the camp and returning from a different direction. Maybe it was only morbid curiosity that made him want to know how the camp disposed of blood and bodies, but he had learnt to trust his feelings. He hunkered down behind a supply-cart and waited.

  A while later, after the camp had gone to sleep and the only activity was the guards patrolling the ramparts in the distance or figures heading to the latrines, the shadow of a man crept down the aisle between the tents. There was even less moon than the previous night and Karl could not see his face, much less recognise it. The figure slipped into the tent and emerged a minute later with a bucket in either hand. From the way he staggered, both were full. He set off down the aisle.

  My night to be the follower, Karl thought. This was probably nonsense. The man would pour the buckets into the latrine, or at the worst into the ditch around the camp, or to the pigs. It was done after dark because blood made some soldiers squeamish. But then he remembered the field of the cloth of blood, and shivered.

  The man was making steady progress. Karl kept his distance but kept following. With a dreadful inevitability he realised what lay at the end of this aisle of tents. He had come this way last night. It led to the mess-area where he had spoken to Reisefertig.

  He hoped that the man would turn aside, but he did not.

  He wished the man would not walk up to the great iron cooking-pot, suspended over the embers, but he did.

  He closed his eyes and prayed he would not hear, but the sound of thick liquid being poured into echoing iron carried through the night air with horrible clarity, and he knew why his new mouth had craved the stew.

  He did not sleep that night. He lay awake, afraid of what his dreams might bring.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Blessed Friends

  The morning was overcast and the men seemed the same. Karl moved among them, joining in conversations, answering questions and trying to build morale, but it was as if a cloud had fallen over this part of the camp. Their spirits were damp and Karl’s presence drew glowering looks and silences. This was not going well.

  He called the section leaders together, gave them their routes and sent the men out into the valley. Then he sat beside the
fire and thought. He was hungry, but he would not touch the breakfast meats.

  After half an hour he knew he had to confront Duke Heller. He did not know what was going on, how all the strange pieces fitted together or what bizarre picture they would form when they did, but he was sure that if the duke was not at the centre, then he was at least involved. That left the question of who might be running the plan, whatever it was.

  Reisefertig? Reikhart the regimental priest? Someone else, keeping their profile low? Even the mysterious forest-rider from the day before?

  Those paths were blocked. He had to follow the one that was open, even if it might lead into a trap. He got to his feet, drank a cup of water, turned the collar of his uniform up, and climbed the hill to talk to the duke.

  He heard him before he saw him. At the centre of the half-circle of tents around the duke’s, a group of men had formed a second crescent. Two figures danced and darted at its centre, sword-blades glinting, the ring of clashing metal reaching his ears a split second after he saw the strike. The men wore heavy padded tunics and helmets but the swords were full-length battle-weight blades.

  A third man entered the fight; tall, light on his feet, favouring an Estalian style of attack. It was two against one, but the one did not give ground. His parries quickened and flowed into ripostes, and his blade whirled with feints and thrusts as he held off both men, forcing them to change their guards and sidestep unanticipated swings. It was a virtuoso display.

  One of the attackers was struck a ringing blow across the helmet and fell back, but his place was immediately taken by a man with a shortsword and a shield. The defender changed his stance, moving to circle his fresh assailant, trying to keep him between himself and the other swordsman, probing for gaps in his defence, adapting his style in a second depending on which man he faced. The three stalked each other.

  In an instant it was over. The second swordsman charged past his ally in an all-out assault. The lone defender parried and sidestepped simultaneously so his riposte came from the flank, sweeping under his guard to strike at his legs. The swordsman dodged back to avoid it, into the shield-wielder’s guard. He stumbled. The clangs of the defender’s sword ringing off his assailants’ helmets echoed out over the camp.

  Karl walked up as the victor stripped off his own helmet and handed it to a squire, revealing a face cragged with experience and sporting a brush of a moustache. It was the duke. “Good,” he said to the crowd. “You’re getting better. After breakfast, three on one.” He turned towards his tent and the crescent of men parted to let him through.

  “May I speak with you, sir?” Karl asked. The duke turned to look at him. “Good morning, Lieutenant Hoche,” he said. “I was wondering when you’d make another trek up the hill. We can talk now if you don’t mind watching me eat.”

  Inside, the tent’s fittings were as luxurious as they had been in the south the summer before. Andreas Reisefertig rose from his desk as the two men entered, but the duke waved him down. “The lieutenant is breakfasting with me, Johannes. You remember Lieutenant Hoche, don’t you?” Not waiting for an answer, he passed through into the inner room. Karl caught a scowl from Reisefertig, and followed.

  The duke was loading a plate with meats from dishes on a sideboard. “So, lieutenant,” he said without turning round, “you’ve been sniffing around.”

  Karl’s guard was up as fast as the duke’s outside. That was a statement meant to confuse him, draw him out and make him confess what he knew. But he had to keep the upper hand in this conversation.

  “Yes,” he said, “and something smells.”

  The duke walked to the table and put his plate down, then looked at Karl before sitting. “Not going to eat?” he asked. There was a smile on his lips. The fingers of his left hand tapped out a short staccato rhythm against the rim of his plate.

  Karl said, “When you chose to camp here in the shadow of the ruins of Castle Lössnitz, did you know it was the field of the cloth of blood?”

  “Sit,” Duke Heller said, pointing at the chair at the other end of the table. Karl sat. The duke forked a kidney, put it in his mouth and chewed. “Of course I did,” he said through the meat. “I’d be a damned fool if I didn’t. Most of my officers think I’m intent on expunging the shame of that battle, but they’re fools if they believe that. Tell me why.”

  “Because you’ve not defended the flank that made the camp vulnerable two centuries ago,” Karl said.

  “Exactly,” said the duke. “You’re a good soldier, Karl. Sadly you’re a bloody awful negotiator, or you wouldn’t be here. Let me save us some time so we can get this finished before the poached eggs go cold. You’re going to tell me you’ve seen things that make you suspicious. I shall nod sagely. You will ask why there was no proper investigation of the Knights Panther last summer. I say because there was no need. You present more evidence and reveal you suspect me as a worshipper of Khorne or at least sympathetic to those who are, and you threaten me with investigation. I look shocked, and tell you that in my desk I have a warrant for your arrest on grounds of heresy, murder of a witch hunter and escape from Imperial prison, so you’d be on thin ice there. You are silent. I ask for your motives. You decline to answer, but ask me why I didn’t arrest you. I say I wanted to let you show your hand in your own time. You ask what hand. I say that I never believed for a second your story about being attacked by mutants and recuperating in the forest, because I know you joined the Untersuchung, a heretical organisation covering for a Chaos cult, and spent months working with them. You say that proves nothing and possibly you protest your innocence. Again I nod sagely, before telling you that I’d like to believe you, but I don’t.

  “When you returned, Karl, I thought you’d worked out our scheme, helped by your Untersuchung masters, and you’d come to be a part of it. But we’ve watched you these few days, my colleagues and I, and I’m not so sure. It’s possible you’re part of the great work, on our side. But I think you’ve been looking a little too hard for that. I think the shocked expression on your face is in earnest, and that you’re horrified that one of the Emperor’s most respected generals—though I flatter myself—could be in league with dark powers.”

  The duke speared another kidney on the tip of his knife and waved it to emphasise his words. “So that’s the way the discussion would have gone,” he said. “Don’t worry. Nobody can hear—nobody who isn’t already one of us. All secrets are safe between friends, and Karl, it comes down to that: are you our friend? Either you show me proof that you’re a follower of the true gods, or I shout for the guards and you’ll be arrested, tried and burnt before noon. Your word against mine, and I run this bloody army. Go ahead.” He bit down on the kidney.

  Karl fought to find a clear thought amidst the hubbub in his mind. The upper hand was completely forgotten. Duke Heller, a great man, a hero of the Empire, had admitted he was a follower of the Chaos powers. Thought he was a follower of the same warped gods. Was inviting him to join with them—or die.

  He was supposed to prove he was a cultist? His spirit rebelled against that; death would be a more honourable course. But honour was something that had belonged to the old Hoche. It had no place in his new life.

  How could he prove he was a cultist? He thought back to his Altdorf training. Cults used signals to reveal themselves to other members: gestures, movements, tics, styles of clothing, secret hand-shakes, phrases, tattoos, anything that a layman would miss but another member of the cult would recognise. What had he missed—not just now but when he first entered the camp? What had the duke done earlier in their meeting, that he had dismissed as a habit or a nervous tic?

  A tune echoed in his mind, a short rhythm of staccato beats. The duke had rapped it on the rim of his plate minutes ago, and on a goblet two days before. Reisefertig had knocked it on the mess-bench with his knuckles. Then they had paused, and then they had lied to him.

  That must be it. If it wasn’t, he was finished.

  He lowered his fist to the ta
ble and beat out the same staccato rhythm.

  “Good,” said the duke, “but your Untersuchung could have taught you that. I need more to know you’re a friend.”

  “I am a blessed friend,” Karl said, and he turned down the collar of his uniform to reveal the mouth, his mark of damnation.

  Duke Heller stared for a long moment. Then he rose to his feet, walked round the table to the sideboard and lifted the cover off a dish. Steam rose. “Still warm,” he said. “Excellent. Nothing worse than a cold poached egg. Eat up. Then we’re going for a ride.” He caught Karl’s expression and grinned under his moustache. “Don’t worry, it’s clean food,” he said. “Inedible muck, but clean.”

  After breakfast they took two horses and rode out of the camp across the plain. Wind rustled the grass and shook the branches of the few trees. To the north the forest spread, dark and ominous, like a carpet before the grey might of the Middle Mountains. Below the ground, the ancient blood of Empire soldiers fed roots and worms. Duke Heller reined in his horse and began to talk.

  It was a long talk and it rambled, and Karl didn’t know how much of it to believe. As far as he could tell the duke trusted him, but he didn’t know if he could trust the duke. The man was filled with enthusiasm but there seemed to be gaps in his understanding of the scheme. Or, Karl thought, there were things he wasn’t saying.

  It boiled down to this: the stories about the field of the cloth of blood were true. Two hundred years ago there had been a great massacre. The duke wanted to recreate it, but not to slaughter another army. This was not a sacrifice to Khorne, it was to be the creation of a great army of Khorne that would sweep down and destroy the Empire’s heart.

  The door that led to it all was the location. As Karl had realised, the camp was vulnerable to a sneak attack from the north, and that was where the attack would come from. Repeating a great art reinforced it, gave it potency and allowed the power of the first act to be tapped and used for new ends. Not magic, just ritual, acceptable in the eyes of Khorne.