Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  The lock was a feast day, the equinox, two days away. It was a holy day and a time of power, of balance between light and darkness, each holding the world in equal sway. A push could swing it either way.

  The key was the blood. Blood in the land and blood in the food, one giving the camp’s site dark power, the other priming the men, like a goose being fattened, not knowing that Mondstille is coming. When the time was right and the correct rites were performed, the power of Chaos would flood through the army, their bodies fed on the blood of their comrades, and change them.

  “Change them? You mean twist their minds to follow Khorne?” Karl asked.

  The duke smiled. “Not just that. We will have them body, mind and soul.”

  “Who turns the key?” Karl asked.

  “Old friends,” said the duke.

  “Old friends?” Karl said. “From where?”

  The duke looked at him, smiling under his moustache. “From last summer,” he said.

  Suddenly it all fitted together. All of it. “Sir Valentin and the Knights Panther,” Karl said.

  The duke shook his head. “Knights Panther no longer,” he said. “You think you had a hard winter? They’ve been up in the Chaos Wastes at the top of the world, fighting to survive and to learn. They have gone through the great change to become knights of Khorne, true servants of the Blood God. They’re out in the forest, waiting, and we shall all join them soon.” He chuckled in his throat. “It’s been a long time since I had a promotion.”

  “Where are they now?”

  The duke shook his head. “Enough. They’ll be missing us back at the camp. I need to out-fence a few more of them or they’ll think I’m losing my edge.”

  They rode back in silence, Karl trying to understand what he had learned. His thoughts shot off at tangents. The plan sounded insane: only a madman would try it, and only a madman would dream it could work. Back in Altdorf, Jakob Bäcker had said Khorne worshippers did not use rituals. But the symbols from last summer had come from a sect that had left written records. Bäcker would have known more, and could have told him if the plan might work. He felt a sudden tremendous fondness for the baby-fat man and his obsessive knowledge of the ways of Chaos. That learning and the rest of the Untersuchung’s wisdom had risen to the sky as ash or run down the gutters of Altdorf as molten fat.

  Not all of it. There was still Braubach’s journal. He vowed to spend the afternoon combing it for anything that might explain what was going on, help him stop it, or simply to make him feel more in control of the situation. He felt out of his depth, bewildered, with nobody to turn to. Even a strong swimmer can drown if stranded in midstream.

  He went back to his tent and the place under his mattress where he had left the journal, and it was not there. He shouted for Kurtz, but Kurtz had seen nothing and nobody all day. He searched the tent, checking the mattress three times. The journal was gone.

  He stalked round the tent swearing under his breath. He had deliberately delayed reading Braubach’s thoughts, partly for fear of learning something he didn’t want to know about himself, and now he had lost the chance. Who had taken it?

  He could think of only one person: Reisefertig, who had manipulated him once before, and who now seemed to be pushing him into a confrontation. Very well, he would talk to Reisefertig, but at least this time he knew who was playing games with who.

  The open space at the top of the hill was unoccupied and empty. Inside the duke’s tent Reisefertig sat at the desk in the outer chamber, reading papers in the daylight that filtered through the canvas. He looked up as Karl entered.

  “Lieutenant Hoche,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “You have taken something not yours, and I need it,” Karl said. Reisefertig smiled wryly.

  “The same applies to you, lieutenant. You have acquired information that I need. Perhaps we can effect a trade.”

  So that was it. Reisefertig wanted to know what the duke had told him.

  Karl couldn’t believe he knew anything that the oily aide-de-camp had not already learned but he had sensed a shred of jealousy that morning, when the duke took him in to breakfast. Well, the trade could be useful to them both.

  “Are we safe to talk?” he asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Reisefertig. “The duke is touring the camp and will be gone an hour at least. Though perhaps we should move outside to be sure we are not overheard.”

  They stood overlooking the camp. Grey clouds rolled across the sky as Karl told Reisefertig the scheme that the duke had unfolded to him. A line of blue began to appear in the south.

  Reisefertig was silent a while. “Heller hadn’t trusted me with half of that,” he said. “How did you wheedle it out of him? What do you have that I don’t?”

  “You don’t want what I have,” Karl said.

  “It is an extraordinary plot,” Reisefertig said. “Not a regular piece of Khornate scheming. Almost as if—”

  “It had come from a book or copied from history?” Karl said, remembering what Bäcker had said about the cult’s rituals from the summer before. Reisefertig shook his head.

  “No. This is too exact, too planned for this particular situation. Old Heller didn’t come up with that on his own. I’m not even sure he understands it. He’s too literal, too straight-ahead. He likes to make it seem he is at the head of things, and perhaps he believes he is, but someone else is running this scheme.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “No,” said Reisefertig. “But of course I could be lying to you. You can’t trust me. I could even be the person behind it all. This could be a test.”

  Karl smiled humourlessly. “I hadn’t ruled that out,” he said. “But will the plan work? Positioning a camp to be attacked by Chaos forces is one thing, but having thousands of Imperial soldiers taken over by the will of the Blood God is a different kettle of—”

  “You state the obvious,” Reisefertig said. “It could work. It doesn’t fit the rigid structures of magic theory, but it’s not implausible. It’ll be interesting to see.”

  “To see? You want it to go ahead?” Karl was aghast. “You are part of it!”

  Reisefertig shook his head. “I’m here in… ah, an observational role.”

  Karl eyed him through narrowed lids. “I don’t believe you. I don’t understand your purpose for being here, but I don’t believe you’d sit in the background and let this happen or fail. A horror like this forces all men to take sides.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” The aide shrugged. “Whether it works or not, you have to admit it’s an extraordinarily bold scheme.”

  “Feeding blood to his own troops,” said Karl. “It’s monstrous. Bestial.”

  “Those are the ways of Chaos,” Reisefertig said. “Still it could have been worse.”

  “How?”

  “It could have been Khornish pasti—hold on, what’s that?”

  In the valley below, a long column of men had appeared on the road from the south, marching in military ranks.

  Supply wagons and baggage carts followed them. Banners flew over their heads. Both Karl and Reisefertig shaded their eyes and stared at the tiny figures in the distance.

  “Greatswords from Altdorf,” Reisefertig said. “Two companies of them, unless I miss my guess. Another five hundred skulls for Khorne’s skull throne.”

  “They’re not alone,” Karl said. At the back of the column he could see another banner, this one not a battlefield pennant. It bore the crest of a golden warhammer, the symbol of the Order of Witch Hunters. He watched as it drew closer, and could not work out if it presaged good or ill.

  “Should we go and see what this means?” he said, but found he was addressing the air. Reisefertig was nowhere to be seen. The man had gone without fulfilling his side of the bargain, the return of the journal.

  He shrugged and walked down the hill and through the camp as the first of the soldiers arrived at the main gate, a sea of blue, white and red uniforms, their mounted offi
cers directing them to the site where they would pitch their tents and mingle with the rest of the army. He waited by the gate, watching as the men streamed through the narrow opening, followed by their baggage train.

  The witch hunters were at the rear of the column: four men on horseback in sombre robes, riding at each corner of a large carriage. Its windows were curtained and he could not see its occupants, but baggage was piled high on its roof and rear stand. It was the last vehicle to enter the camp. The earth around the gate had been churned to rutted mud by the wheels of the laden carts that had gone before, and it lurched between the gateposts, dropped into a fresh furrow, and stuck there.

  Karl heard a voice shout, “Watch out, you oafs!” from inside the carriage, and he turned his face away before anyone looking out through a crack in a curtain might see him. He recognised the voice. It still haunted his dreams, laughing and taking pleasure in his torment. Lord Thaddeus Gamow, Lord Protector of the Order of Witch Hunters, had come to Castle Lössnitz.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Betrayed

  Karl watched the carriage roll into the camp, wondering why Reisefertig had disappeared so suddenly. Did he have a reason to fear Lord Gamow, or was there a more prosaic explanation? Of course: as Duke Heller’s aide-de-camp he would have to warn his superior of the new arrival, and prepare him for the meeting and questions that would inevitably follow. Karl smiled.

  He had no reason to like the witch hunter in the carriage, but the man’s zeal and his ability to sniff out conspiracies was unmatched. His appearance would put the cat among the rats in Duke Heller’s tent. That, Karl thought, was a meeting he would give much to witness. Keeping his distance, he followed the carriage through the camp.

  It stopped at the base of the hill, and Lord Gamow clambered out of its narrow door and down its steps, looking up at the ruins of the castle above. Then he turned back to the carriage and held out his hand to help someone else climb out. She emerged backwards, her legs and bottom appearing first. It was a shapely bottom, in the robes of a priestess. By the time her long fall of black hair appeared, Karl knew it was Sister Karin. Today was proving to be full of interesting incidents.

  They stood and talked a while, then Lord Gamow started up the hill towards Duke Heller’s tent, flanked by his entourage of riders. Sister Karin began to follow but he waved her back towards the carriage. She walked back towards it, and Karl started in her direction. As she reached it a soldier stepped in to hold the door for her but Karl caught his eye and signalled him to move away, then strode over, took the door and saluted, making sure his hand hid his face. The priestess did not look at him, but climbed up the steps and into the carriage. Karl rapped the painted panel beside him, and as the carriage began to move he swung himself up the steps and inside, swinging the door closed behind him.

  “Forgive my intrusion, sister,” he said, “but I never thanked you properly for the horse you lent me at Mondstille.”

  The interior of the carriage was dark and intimate. For a moment Sister Karin did not reply.

  “Lieutenant Hoche,” she said quietly. “This is unexpected. You are aware there are warrants for your arrest.” She leaned towards him. “By the grace of Sigmar, what happened to your face?”

  “I shaved,” he said. “Sister, there is much wrong in this camp, and I need to know who I can trust. You helped me three months ago. Do you still have any loyalty to the Untersuchung and its ideals?”

  She said, “That was last year, and much has changed. I told you in Altdorf that we each had to find a new path for our lives. I have found mine, with Lord Gamow. Gottfried Braubach was a good man and you should treasure your memories of him, but live your own life now.” She turned away and stared ahead. The carriage rumbled slowly through the camp.

  So, Karl thought, here we have gathered: Braubach’s three pupils, all of us working for different sides. An unlikely reunion, and a poor epitaph for a man who deserved better. Then he thought: did Braubach mention Sister Karin in his journal? Is there enough detail for Reisefertig to be able to work out that she used to be part of the Untersuchung too?

  He looked Sister Karin in the eye, determined to try once more to persuade her. “I don’t think you understand me,” he said. “Foul, vile things are happening here. Chaos warriors are gathering in the woods. A bizarre ritual is planned. The men are being fed on human flesh…”

  Something in her expression that stopped him, a hint of a smile. “What?” he said.

  “I’m surprised that horrifies you,” she said, “given your recent past.”

  “What do you mean?” He felt outrage. The memory of the winter in the forest, the long days of hunger because he would not eat the flesh of men or mutants, was still sharp. With vile guilt he thought of the night before, feeding lumps of foul meat to his other mouth. But there was no way she could know of that.

  “In prison, Karl,” she said. “The meat you were given. Did you not know, or guess?” Her smile had gone, replaced by pity. “Thaddeus has been studying the effects of Chaos on the flesh of civilised races. He is writing a treatise on mutation, and working on a greater theory of change and transformation. When a mutant in the prison dies, he gives its flesh to the others. It accelerates their changes and brings on new ones.”

  They didn’t give me meat until Gamow saw my neck, Karl thought. They gave me meat after that. There was damnation in the meat. Part of what I am is his fault. Oh, Sigmar, Sigmar, Sigmar. I will kill him. I do not care if he can put an end to this Chaos plot, he will die for what he did to me.

  The carriage stopped and the coachman shouted something that Karl didn’t catch. Sister Karin leaned forward and placed a hand on his knee. “I know what’s going on in this camp,” she said. “You have a part to play in what is to come, Karl, though it may not be the part you expect. Remember, when the time comes: heart is better than head. Now help me down from the carriage.”

  The reunion was over. Karl opened the door, stepped out and held her hand as she descended. She walked away from him without a second look.

  They had stopped by the space where the Altdorfers were pitching their tents, the rows of canvas hard up against the north rampart of the camp. Karl watched her walk through the sheets, ropes and baggage, towards where a larger tent was being erected. He turned and stared out at the edge of the forest a few hundred yards away. Deep in the trees lurked a force of unspeakable evil, but he had no idea where, or how to stop it. And the same was true of the evil within the camp.

  Sister Karin had given him no clues, only raised new questions. He needed to talk to Reisefertig again. The man owed him answers, and he had to get Braubach’s journal back. He began to make his way back up the hill.

  Outside the general’s tent, officers in the uniforms of Talabheim and Hochland were talking to their newly arrived fellows from Altdorf, sharing news, gossip, stories of past campaigns and fallen comrades. Karl pushed through them, trying to give the impression of a man in a hurry, possibly with important news. They parted for him and moved back after he passed as if he had not been there.

  Reisefertig’s desk was empty, his chair cold. Karl tried the drawers to see if he had been careless enough to leave the journal there, but found nothing except parchment, quills and reports from the quartermaster. Most likely it was in the man’s quarters, wherever they were.

  Voices drifted faintly from the inner chamber and he felt his hatred rise as he recognised them: the duke’s rumbling tones, heavy with consonants, and Gamow’s higher replies, more nasal and vowel-filled. He could not make out what they were saying and moved closer to the heavy brocade curtain that separated the two chambers, to hear more clearly.

  So they were in a private meeting already. That did not bode well, Karl thought, particularly for him. If the duke mentioned that he was here, Gamow would demand that he be arrested and burnt.

  Could Gamow be a part of the scheme? Impossible. Karl had experienced his religious zeal at first hand. But it did not alter the danger to him. If Gamo
w was untainted by Chaos he would see Karl as a mutant and cultist; if he was within the conspiracy then he would know Karl was not. Whatever happened, he would have to keep a low profile.

  “…with the cavalry,” the duke was saying. “And the usual trouble with deserters. Plus there are superstitions about this place, so local mercenaries have been hard to come by, and the ones we’ve been able to recruit have mostly been a shifty lot.”

  Don’t mention me, Karl prayed. Don’t say my name, don’t even refer to the mercenaries again.

  “But we’re up to the strength we need?” Gamow asked.

  “Close to it. I still…” The duke’s voice was obscured for a few seconds, “…any day soon. There will be more than enough come Mitterfruhl.”

  There was a break in the conversation, and the faint clinks of crockery and cutlery. “Is a site prepared?” Gamow asked.

  The duke’s reply was muffled. Kidneys, thought Karl. “We have a place,” he said, “though it waits for your approval. The chapel in the castle ruins. The old altar is…”

  The next few words were unclear. A breeze blew through the tent, making the heavy curtain move. Karl stepped back in case a shadow gave him away. What if someone catches me listening, he thought. But he could not leave now. He had to hear more, to see if Gamow was part of Duke Heller’s plot. Something was planned, but it could have been as simple as a rite to bless the troops, or an investigation, or a trial. Though why the second-highest witch hunter in the Empire would travel hundreds of miles for that, he did not know.

  When he stepped back to listen, the conversation had moved on. “…showing the necessary dedication to the plan?”

  Gamow’s response was hard. “Do not question my commitment. I am prepared to die for this, you know that.”

  “Of course.” There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “…things in Altdorf?” the duke asked. “The Emperor’s son, how is his health?”