by James Wallis
He wanted to go back to the river and see if any of the men had survived, like a leader should, but he knew that was death. They were all dead. Braun, Kurtz, Josef, Dodger, Ewald and Julius, all the men who had trusted him. All of them.
And he was responsible. It was his fault they had been cut down. Not because his plan had been bad, or his leadership poor. The weird cry that had raised the alarm and roused the forces of Chaos had come from him. He had felt the mouth on his neck open, draw breath and scream.
He had killed them all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Transformations
“To arms!” he shouted as he galloped through the gate past the sleepy sentries. “The enemy is coming! To arms! To arms!”
The alarm was like a stone dropped in thick oil: it disappeared and for a moment seemed to have no effect, and then the waves began spread through the tents, growing outwards as the word was passed on. Lights appeared as men emerged and thrust torches into the embers of their fires or stoked braziers to new life. Cries came back: “What?”, “Where?”, “Who’s coming? What enemy?”
“Defend the north wall!” Karl shouted but his voice was lost in the hubbub. Lights spread up the hill as people carried the word to Duke Heller and his officers. The soldiers closest to him were standing in confusion. “Put on your armour!” he screamed at them. “They’re coming from the north!” There was no reaction. He wheeled his horse, riding further into the camp towards the mess area, shouting as he went. Milling bodies blocked his path. One man blundered into his way wearing a night-shirt and carrying a mace. “Give me that!” Karl shouted and snatched it from his hands.
The mess area was as empty as it had been the last two times he had visited it at night. There was no sign of the gong used to signal meals, but the huge cooking-pots hung cold and empty from their tripods. He jumped off his horse, ran to the nearest and swung the mace against it. The shock jarred his hands but sent a booming clang across the camp. He hit it again and again until the clangs merged into a single continuous note of warning. Soldiers began to move towards him, looking for orders or clarification.
Karl could see torches moving in the tents on the hill, and figures milling in their light. I’ve sprung your trap early, he thought, and your plan is useless. Mitterfruhl is two nights away and Gamow’s ceremony is not ready. Men will die but the forces of Chaos will be destroyed.
A rider was galloping down from the ruins, the hoof beats of the horse audible above the confused noise of the camp. It turned and headed for Karl, and he recognised the man on its back. It was Duke Heller. Karl dropped the mace as the general rode up to him.
“Good evening, sir,” he said and drew his sword.
“You bloody fool,” the duke said. “You bloody, bloody fool.” Then he raised his voice. “Soldiers! Arrest this man! He is a servant of Chaos and a mutant!” Karl lunged for him but his horse stepped nimbly away. Someone grabbed Karl from behind, pinning his arms behind him. His sword was knocked away. Rope was lashed round his wrists.
“What should we do with him?”
“Kill him,” the duke said. “No. Take him to Lord Gamow, in the old chapel in the ruins.” Then to Karl, “This doesn’t change anything. Two days is nothing. We have been ready for weeks.”
Karl did not look at him. He was staring down at the camp, and the edge of the circle of illumination created by the mass of torches and fires within it, pushing back the night beyond the ramparts and ditches of the wall. The air was warm, thick and still, heavy in his lungs. He heard hoof beats from the north.
The Chaos knights galloped out of the night, charging for the north wall. The lead rider hit the line of stakes and it did not slow him. His horse leaped the ditch and slammed into the wooden wall with a crash that shook the earth. The wall gave way, timbers falling. The huge horse stumbled but did not fall, and galloped on into the camp. Its rider swung his massive sword one-handed and one of the Altdorf greatswords fell. A brazier toppled over onto a tent. Flames leaped and dry canvas blazed.
Another knight hit the wall, punching through it. Soldiers scattered in panic.
“Doesn’t change a thing,” Duke Heller repeated and spurred his horse, heading off into the camp.
One of the soldiers kicked Karl in the back and he staggered forward. “Come on, you bastard,” Four men grouped round him, leading him up the hill. Around them soldiers ran in disorder, half armoured, trying to find officers or anyone who would tell them what to do. The air was full of shouts and cries.
From the bottom of the hill came the bellowed war-cries of the knights, screams, and the crackle of flames. It was chaos.
“Look over there,” said one of his guards and Karl turned to see men in the field below trying to form up a wall of pikes, blocking one of the aisles between the tents in both directions. As he watched the tent next to them was knocked aside by a charging horse that ploughed into the middle of their ranks, its rider swinging his axe through the few men who did not flee.
Something was happening to the soldiers below. Their bodies were wrong. He squinted, trying to focus on them, but the air seemed thick and blurred.
“Keep walking,” muttered one of the three escorts. Three? A second later there were two, and one had bloody hands and a knife. The two faced each other. “Run if you know what’s good for you,” one growled. The other ran.
“You said you were here as an observer,” Karl said as Reisefertig used his knife to slice the ropes from his wrists.
“I said we shared an enemy,” the man said. “Why in hell didn’t you tell me you were going to start things tonight?”
“You disappeared when the witch hunters arrived,” Karl said. “There was no more time. Lord Gamow would have recognised me.”
Reisefertig grimaced. “Me too. I—look out!”
With hoof beats that shook the earth, a dark rider charged at them. He whirled a huge axe above his head. Splintered stakes and the remains of pikes hung from the horse’s armoured body, dripping with blood. It did not notice them. Reisefertig dived to the left, yelling. Karl snatched up a longsword from one of the corpses. If he tried to flee, the great horse would ride him down. He faced it and stood his ground. The horse thundered in. The axe swept down.
He judged its curve and sidestepped, ducking. The blade whistled inches from his head as he turned to slash at the back of the horse’s galloping foreleg. His sword bit through muscle and ligaments. The horse flew past, the hoof landed for another pace and buckled. Karl heard the bone break. It started to fall to the left, its momentum carrying it forward, its head dropping even as its back legs pushed it onwards. The rider threw himself to the right.
The horse hit the ground and a gout of blood erupted from its mouth and nose. One of the stakes embedded in its flesh had been pushed deep by the impact, puncturing heart or lungs. It was finished.
From the other side of the horse rose a mountain of red and black armour, ribbed, curled and spiked, brandishing the axe. Its helmet was dented, and it ripped it away to reveal a twisted, skull-like face, a mouth distorted into a horrific grimace, red eyes with pinprick pupils. Karl recognised him.
“I have followed your tracks a long way, Sir Valentin,” he said. Sir Valentin, the Champion of Chaos, the leader of the men who had once been Knights Panther. He showed no recognition of his name.
Reisefertig charged in from the Chaos warrior’s flank, swinging his sword down. Valentin reached up one mailed fist with incredible speed and snatched the weapon out of the air by its blade, pulling it out of Reisefertig’s grasp. He smashed the hilt across his assailant’s face and, as the dark-haired man staggered back, twisted the weapon round and thrust a foot of the sword through Reisefertig’s chest.
“A skull for the skull throne,” he said in a voice like iron grating on rock and turned to Karl. Behind him, Reisefertig’s knees gave way and he fell to the ground.
Valentin bent to retrieve his axe. Part of its blade had broken off. He straightened up, a foot taller than Karl,
clad from head to foot in Chaos-blessed plate armour. His ghastly mouth smiled and he hefted the axe.
Karl swallowed and prepared to die.
Then he felt his neck twist under his metal collar, and a second later his other mouth gave voice to the same unearthly sound that it had used to warn the Chaos warriors of the ambush. Valentin stood transfixed for a second, then moved his head to study Karl with unseeing eyes.
What fresh hell is this? Karl thought. Am I becoming one of them? Do they recognise me as one of their own?
Valentin turned and strode away across the camp. A man ran out of the darkness at him, yelling, sword raised, and he decapitated him without breaking stride.
Karl went to Reisefertig. The man was curled on the ground, six inches of sword emerging from his back. His face was distorted from pain, but there was no blood in his mouth.
“It’s in my lung,” he said, his voice husky and weak, “but he missed my heart.”
“Don’t move,” Karl said.
“I can’t.”
“You can do one thing,” Karl said. “Tell me why Lord Gamow would recognise you.”
Reisefertig tried to suppress a cough. “I was a witch hunter once.”
“You were?”
“I was. Lord Gamow sent me to infiltrate the Untersuchung.”
There was a scream and something rushed out of the darkness towards them: half a soldier, his flesh melted and twisting into new forms as he ran. In his left hand was a sword. In a movement Karl was on his feet. He knocked the clumsy attack aside and thrust through the decaying man’s heart. Blood arced wide, splashing him, but the man didn’t fall. He turned and tried to bring his sword to bear. Karl thrust again; the man offered no defence, but he would not die. He swung. Karl parried and swung his sword with both hands, slashing through the man’s neck. His head lolled as blood gouted and he fell backwards, snarling and dying.
“It’s begun,” Reisefertig said. “Nice work.”
“What was that?” Karl asked, but he already knew. The soldiers were being warped into new forms by the force of Chaos. Body, mind and soul, the duke had said. At least he had saved his men from this unholy fate.
He stared at the corpse. The skin was flowing off its bones like liquid. What about me, he thought? I ate the food too. Does my damnation make me immune, or more likely to succumb?
He could feel the atmosphere of the camp thickening, heavy with the smell of blood and the sense of death. It was powerful. He could feel its tug on him.
“How do I end this?” he asked.
Reisefertig coughed again. “Only you can answer that, Karl. But remember that Chaos rules the emotions, not the intellect. Let your head rule your heart.”
“My heart?” Karl said. “Andreas, what are the two hearts? What do they mean?”
Reisefertig shook his head weakly. “Two hearts? I don’t understand. Lovers, perhaps?”
Lovers. That fitted. “I have to stop Lord Gamow,” Karl said.
“Give him my regards,” said Reisefertig.
“I will come back for you,” Karl said. He turned to look down into the camp below. It was a scene from hell. Half the tents were ablaze, shedding flickering yellow light over the corpses that strewed the ground. Some of the Chaos knights had fallen, others had lost their horses. Shrieking men twisted and deformed, their limbs reshaping in the vile atmosphere, becoming living weapons, servants of Khorne, to rejoin the battle on the other side. Soldiers clustered in groups as the great figures of the Chaos knights swept past them. The earth was dark with blood and the air was full of screaming. In the distance, the river’s water was red in the firelight.
Unholy things were walking the cloth of blood.
He made his way towards the ruins, stepping over the burning remains of tents and the bodies of dying men. The ground under his feet was soft with blood. Behind him, he could hear battle-cries, the clash of weapons and the sound of great death.
The castle stood like a ghost against the night, its walls reflecting the light from the flames below, imperial and oblivious. The ruins of the keep stood cracked and crooked and at the other end, by the rubble of what had been the curtain wall, a lone watch-tower still held together, gazing out over the devastation below. It had seen it all before, and it did not care.
Within the ruins, torchlight danced and flared. Voices chanted, insistent low rhythms filling the night. This, he could sense, was the heart of everything that was happening here; without this ceremony, the carnage in the camp would be nothing but bloodshed. Yet there were no guards, nobody watching or protecting the ritual that was going on within. Karl found that strange.
He climbed over fallen limestone blocks, encrusted with lichen, unmoved for centuries, and made his way through the network of fallen walls and overgrown rooms to the heart of the place.
Two walls of the chapel still stood. Poles had been stuck into the ground and torches strapped to them. The altar, a raw stone block the size of a butcher’s counter, stood draped in a dark red cloth. Karl knew what it was. He did not have to look up to the watchtower to know the Imperial standard was missing from its pole.
On the altar, a knife and a bowl gleamed silver. Around it, four witch hunters, their eyes covered by hoods, droned the low notes of the chant. Two figures knelt before the altar, their heads uncovered, praying soundlessly: Lord Gamow in his Imperial uniform, and Sister Karin in the formal robes of a priestess of Sigmar. It was as if they had been waiting for something, or someone.
Karl looked at them, considering and planning. He was too far to charge across the uneven ground and catch them off their guard, before they could draw swords. He had no throwing knife to end this quickly. And he wanted to hear what Lord Gamow had to say.
He walked forward, his sword held loosely at his side. Lord Gamow looked up and rose to his feet. “At last,” he said. “The mutant. The final card in the spread.”
Karl stared. “The two of hearts,” he said.
“No, you vile fool. The two hearts are much more important than you. The two hearts must be pure.” Gamow pursed his lips in a sneer. “You don’t understand, do you? For all your sniffing and searching, for fooling Duke Heller into telling you our plan, you still have no idea why you’re here. If this is the best the Untersuchung could manage, little wonder it was so easy to have you all burned.”
He’s trying to goad me, Karl thought, and it’s working. He felt his anger rising. “Let us end this,” he said, raising his sword. Lord Gamow laughed. Under the rising sound, the witch hunters’ chant droned on.
“Yes,” he said, “let us finish this. I started this by making you the filthy thing you are, so it’s justice that I should finish it too.” He drew his sword.
Why is he doing this, Karl asked himself? Why challenge me when he has a ritual to complete? But it was not the time to think about reasons. This was a time for vengeance: for his fallen friends, for his soldiers, and for himself. This was a time for blood.
Under his collar, his second mouth began to make a sound, a low moaning drone that merged with the witch hunters’ chant. So he was part of the ritual now. Well, so be it. Gamow must die. He lunged forward, and their blades met with a crash that shot sparks flying. Gamow smiled, his mouth wide and white. Behind him Sister Karin had risen to her feet and was watching the fight, her hands clasped hard in front of her.
“Avenge the Untersuchung, Karl!” she shouted.
Karl easily parried Gamow’s thrust, turning it back into a low cut the other only just avoided. Avenge the Untersuchung? Hours ago she had told him to forget the Untersuchung and find a new path.
But what else had she said? Heart is better than head. And that he had a place in the scheme. Was this his place? Fighting Gamow? Was he meant to fight this duel and lose, and become a sacrifice to Khorne? That made no sense.
Too much thinking; not enough blood. He wanted to kill Gamow; that was all that mattered. He wanted to slice through the man’s flesh, watch him fall to the ground, cut off his head, rip
out his heart and squeeze the blood from it. Then he would do the same to the woman. Their deaths were all that mattered.
Gamow came at him with a flurry of blows and he knocked each one away, blocking Gamow’s advance and advantage. He thrust forward. Gamow’s parries were slowing.
“Come on, you abomination,” cried Gamow. “Show me you mean to finish this!” Karl’s rage surged forward, and as it did the chanting from his second mouth grew louder. The swords rang against each other as the two duellists moved across the chapel. Nobody else moved. Nobody tried to stop the fight. The chant continued.
Heart better than head, Karin had said. Two hearts better than one. The two hearts must be pure. Reisefertig had said two hearts meant lovers. So Gamow and Karin were the lovers, that was clear. But what did the two hearts signify?
Gamow was tiring now, his blows slow and his parries weak. Karl roared his hatred and moved in to kill. Gamow dropped to his knees, offering no defence. Karl swung his blade at the man’s unprotected neck, the instinctive move of a killer faced with a helpless victim. All the emotion of the last year was in that blow, all the sorrow, all the vile thoughts and self-loathing, all the desire for vengeance concentrated into pure animal rage and directed at one point of soft flesh. The killing blow.
No!
His blade stopped an inch from Gamow’s neck, frozen by the power of his new will. The muscles in his arm shook with the effort of restraining the sword-stroke. He was meant to kill Gamow, here, like this. His place in the ceremony was to sacrifice the priest, the leader of the ritual. That was what they had meant, and that was why they had goaded him, making his bile rise. That was why his mouth had responded. The man of learning had to be destroyed by the thing of Chaos, raw emotion, and bloodlust.