Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

“Because I have had enough.” Karl sheathed his sword. “I have seen Chaos win too many battles, and destroy too many lives. There comes a time when a man has taken all he can. I have taken all I can, and I will take no more. You called for help. I was there. Thank Sigmar and think nothing more of it.”

  “We will thank Sigmar,” a voice said from behind Karl. Oswald started. Karl didn’t look round.

  “You’re the priest,” he said.

  “I am the priest,” the speaker said, walking into his line of sight. Black robes, bald head, thin beard tinged with grey: Karl had seen a hundred men like him. “We will thank Sigmar tonight, and at the service on Festag, and whenever we meet to give praise to the gods. And we will show you our hospitality tonight. You have done us a great service.”

  “And you left me in the mud, bleeding to death for all you knew or cared,” Karl said. “Your idea of gratitude puzzles me.”

  The priest smiled apologetically. They must teach them that, Karl thought. “It is the nature of Chaos. You were crushed by the beast, covered in its blood. Its poison may have been in you. We cannot be too careful.”

  Karl gestured at his wet shirt. “But a little water has cleared me of the deed, it seems,” he said. “And now I am pure again, you would feast me and give thanks for my selflessness. Well, reverend father, let a priest’s son give you some advice. The next time a man risks his life for your village, you can stuff your salted meats and rum-pots filled with last summer’s fruit. They would be ash in my mouth, given from duty, not from true gratitude. Thank a man when he needs it when he’s lying half-dead with broken ribs. Next time you’ll have a dead hero.”

  The priest seemed sympathetic. Karl knew he wasn’t. “But you’ll stay tonight?”

  “No. I must be in Grissenwald by nightfall. I have a boat to catch.”

  Oswald stepped forward. “I am heading to Grissenwald. I can show you the way.”

  Karl pointed north. “I follow the road till it reaches the town. It’s not steam-tank science.”

  “But there may be other beastmen…”

  “If there are, I’m hardly in a state to fight them off.” His ribs grated and Karl grimaced. “But there’s room on my horse for a bony old pilgrim, if that’s what you’re asking. Go and fetch it if you want to come with me.”

  Oswald went. The priest stayed, studying Karl, making small nervous movements. “I am sorry, truly,” he said, “but I could not—” He paused.

  “Could not what?”

  The priest took a breath. “If you had been infected,” he said, speaking fast, “if the Chaos-beast’s blood had got into your veins and mingled with yours, would you have wanted to live? Wouldn’t you have wanted to bleed to death and die a man and a servant of Sigmar, rather than change and become some vile spawn, losing your soul…”

  Karl took three paces across the square until they were face to face. “Pray you never have to ask yourself that question, man of Sigmar,” he said.

  There was an ugly silence until Oswald arrived with the horse. Karl helped the thin pilgrim into the saddle, climbed up in front of him, and geed the horse into motion, riding away. He did not look back.

  Random acts of spontaneous heroism, he thought. He had done a good deed, and though he hated the priest’s sanctimonious attitude, he knew the man had only been trying to protect his community. He had no doubt that he would be remembered in the village’s prayers many times over. And then when the witch hunters followed his trail here in a few days or weeks, and told the peasants that the man who risked his life to save them from two beastmen was Karl Hoche the traitor, mutant and servant of Chaos, how would that change the way they thought of him?

  He had no idea, and did not want to think of it. They were sheep, river-weed, letting themselves be swayed this way and that by the current of the times, never making a move to take their destiny into their own hands, and unable to even think of the possibility of doing it. They were too scared to even help someone who had saved their lives; too scared or too contemptuous. Too many people were like them, thinking inactivity was a form of protest or defence. It was not even denial. It was stupidity and fear, and he hated them for it.

  “So why are you going to Grissenwald?” he asked Oswald and felt the pilgrim shift on the saddle behind him.

  “There’s a temple,” he said. “They have a part of Sigmar’s cloak. I have never seen it.”

  “Sigmar’s cloak?” Karl said. “My father once said that so many temples have a piece of it, if they were all stitched together the cloak would be as big as a physic garden, and as many-coloured.”

  Oswald sniffed. “Sigmar must have worn many cloaks in his life. I wish to see this one. I dreamed about it when I was in Ruhfort, and it called to me. I find it wise to follow my dreams. Do you?”

  “I do not dream,” Karl said. “And I do not make a habit of lying to people, particularly if they have saved my life.”

  Oswald was still.

  “You’re a pilgrim and a preacher, and you must have passed up and down the Reik twenty or thirty times. Did you think I’d believe that you’d never seen the temple at Grissenwald? Every boat stops there.”

  Oswald was silent.

  “You don’t owe me the truth,” Karl said, “but it would be polite. And we may be able to help each other.”

  Oswald shifted. “I have to meet some people.”

  “In Grissenwald?” Karl’s heart jumped, reacting a second before his head. Then he realised it was not the men he wanted to find there. “It’s about Luthor Huss, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yes. How did you know?” The man behind him stiffened with tension. “Who are you? I don’t even know your name.”

  “Hans Fr—” Karl stopped himself. “Leo Deistadt. A traveller, carrying news north from Nuln.”

  Out of his sight, Oswald said, “You don’t owe me the truth, but it would be polite.”

  Karl was silent. The horse plodded on. Behind the clouds, the sun sank towards the wooded horizon, a circle of light like a hole to another universe, a different place and time, a better existence. In an hour it would be gone.

  “I am Karl Hoche,” Karl said. “The Empire has declared I am its enemy, but it is wrong.”

  “I too, and many who believe what I believe. Well met, Karl Hoche,” Oswald said. “Why are you going to Grissenwald?”

  “Enough secrets for now,” Karl said, and dug his heels into the horse’s flank to speed it on.

  The sun had gone and the last of the light was fading from the sky. Karl stood at the eastern end of the wooden wharfs projecting out into the river. Downstream, past the moored boats, the waters of the River Grissen flowed east into the waters of the Reik, which swallowed it and continued its uninterrupted path north. The rivers were black in the twilight, the lights of Grissenwald reflecting dully from the rippled surface.

  The wharfs were crowded but there was not much traffic on the dockside. Grissenwald was a popular stopping-point for river traffic but not a major port or trading centre. Outside of harvest-time it had few goods to offer, save what might have been brought down by traders from Dunkelberg and other communities further west towards the Grey Mountains, and many of those goods were destined for further afield, or for the dwarf shanty-town that butted up against the south wall of the town. The dwarfs kept themselves and their trade to themselves.

  There was no sign of the Eider. Rationally he hadn’t expected the wherry to be there, but a part of him had hoped it might be, that Herr Stahl might be in the town or on the ship, ready to answer his questions, to explain, to make it clear that it had all been a misunderstanding. But the boat wasn’t there. Now he stood facing the last of the warehouses, hoping it might have some answers.

  A couple of dockhands sat on rough-wrapped bales outside the wide doors, the red points of the tobacco in the clay pipes in their hands glowing and moving like the eyes of some sinuous river-monster as they gestured and gesticulated to emphasise their conversation. Karl walked up to them, his hand on the
hilt of his sword.

  “Is this the Oldenhaller building?” he asked.

  They stopped and looked at him, their eyes guarded by shadows.

  “I’m looking for a boat,” he said. “A wherry, the Eider, up from Nuln. I have urgent news for her.”

  The man on the right scratched his balls. The other said, “You’ve missed her,” and took a suck from his pipe, its embers glowing brighter.

  “When did she sail?”

  “Noon.”

  “Did anyone get off? Any passengers?” The smoker shrugged. His friend said something low that Karl didn’t catch. He was about to say something else, to protest that he had to speak to the men on the Eider, but realised he would get no further here. Possibly a bribe would help. Or possibly something else.

  He took his right hand from the hilt of his sword and raised it slowly and deliberately across his chest, to scratch his left ear with his little finger, as both Stahl and the Imperial messenger had done. He felt self-conscious and a little foolish.

  The docker who had spoken got slowly to his feet and with the same deliberate movement that Karl had used ran his left hand through his hair. Karl watched the gesture, a knot of tension in his stomach. Was that the proper response? Had he just given himself away?

  Then the man cleared his throat and said, “Now you mention it, friend, I recall two men did leave the boat. If they’re still in town, they’re likely staying with the master.”

  “The master?”

  “Karsten Oldenhaller.”

  Karl digested this. “Thank you,” he said, and walked back into town.

  Grissenwald reminded him of home. Grünburg, where he had grown up, was about the same size: it was closer to Altdorf but on the banks of the Teufel, a smaller and less important river than the Reik. The mix of docks, traders, shops and merchants, taverns and itinerants felt familiar: the blending of rich and poor, easterner and westerner, human, elf and dwarf; and in the background the ever-present rushing of the river, the world coming to and flowing away from the town.

  Everybody he asked knew where the Oldenhaller house was: towards the western edge of the town, two streets away from the main market square. It stood within its own ornate garden, almost arrogant in its isolation and modernity. We, it said, are a breed apart.

  Karl strode up the flagstoned path to the front door and rapped hard on it. After a few moments it opened at the hands of a footman in red and black livery who studied Karl with the same look of arrogance that the house possessed. Behind him lay a hallway decorated with Arabyan silks hung on the walls, contrasting incongruously with the dark wood beams of the ceiling. New money, Karl thought, and not enough to spend it on. Or possibly they got stuck with a cargo of fabrics they couldn’t sell, and decided to make the most of it.

  “Yes?” the footman said.

  “I have urgent news from Nuln for a man I believe is staying here,” Karl said. “He arrived on the wherry Eider yesterday.”

  There was an imperceptible pause. “What is the name of the person?” the footman asked.

  Karl hesitated. He had no idea if the names he had been given were real. But if not then at least there was a good chance they were code-names and would be recognised, and judging from the response of the man at the warehouse, the Oldenhallers were somehow involved in the organisation as well. “Herr Stahl,” he said, “or, if he’s here, Herr Scharlach.”

  “Wait here.” The footman turned on his heel, and kicked back against the door as he walked away. It slammed in Karl’s face. He muttered an oath about overweening house-staff, then leaned forward and pressed his ear to the damp elmwood, to see if he could hear anything.

  The sound was muffled, but he could make out the footman’s steps across the stone floor, and the change in sound as he reached the end of the hallway and onto wood boards. After a moment there were voices. He couldn’t identify words, but recognised the sound of the footman’s local accent, followed by a more well-bred, mannered voice, rising in the inflection of a question. The footman again, then manners, then the footman, and a third voice. It sounded agonisingly familiar. Was it Herr Stahl? Without words, it was impossible to tell for sure. Manners, the footman, and then the footsteps coming back. He pulled away. The door swung open.

  “Herr Scharlach is not here at present,” the footman said, “though he is expected back this evening. If the message is a package or a letter then I will pass it on…”

  “It is for his ears,” Karl said, “and his alone.” trying to sound assured. He thought he detected a momentary moue at the corner of the man’s mouth, a tiny gesture of real irritation. Good.

  “We will send a messenger for you on Herr Scharlach’s return,” the footman said. “Where will he find you?”

  Karl kept his face calm and still as he tried to remember the names of any of the inns he had passed on his way into town. What was the place where Oswald Maurer was staying? “The Lost Preacher,” he said.

  The Lost Preacher’s beer was weak, the company in its front room subdued, and the conversation low. Karl held off eating in hopes of an invitation to dinner with the Oldenhallers but eventually his hunger got the better of him and he ordered a chop. When it was served he realised he should have specified the animal: it could have been pork or mutton, but he had a suspicion it was something unidentifiable the innkeeper had found floating in the river.

  Oswald was sullen and withdrawn. Karl tried to start conversations about his history, the sights he had seen, and about Luthor Huss and his crusade, but with each opening the man raised tired eyes and slowly shook his head, or responded in monosyllables until Karl grew dispirited and stopped trying. Across the room another group of men in priests’ robes sat in silence. Were these the men that Oswald was here to meet, and if so why didn’t they retire to a private room to discuss their business? Or was it important that they were seen in public behaving as if they didn’t know each other? Karl had only been in the service of the Untersuchung for a few months but in that time had seen people do stranger things—people paranoid about security, safety, and terrified that there were listeners and spies everywhere. Sometimes they had been right.

  Slowly the others retired to their rooms upstairs, to sleep. Karl sat up until midnight, as the serving-boy swept the floor under his feet. Nobody was coming for him. He had no need to go to bed, but went anyway: the silence and stillness would give him a chance to think, and he still needed to clean the bandage over his gag, over his mutation.

  He did not sleep, but lay on his bed, allowing his broken ribs to rest, and let his mind wander. It had been a strange two years since his first encounter with the followers of the Chaos gods, and the path of his life had twisted and turned so many times since then that if he tried to retrace the route in his mind he ended up feeling lost and confused. There was no point in looking back. The past was as dead as most of the people he had known there. Focusing on the future kept his mind clear, his sense of self unsullied, and his hatred sharp.

  If only he knew what direction he should take. There were many ways he could set himself against Chaos. Herr Stahl’s organisation was only one option, and it seemed to be raising more questions than it answered at the moment. Killing the beastmen this afternoon had felt good, almost purifying. He was still a soldier at heart, enjoying the tactics and chase of conflict. The intrigue and confusion that seemed to begin every time he entered a town or city was a distraction from his true task. Chaos lived here too, but it was harder to root out.

  “It is hard to pull weeds in hard soil, and easy for them to regrow there,” he quoted to himself. That was from the Testaments of Sigmar, and originally about greenskins in the World’s Edge Mountains, but it seemed to fit here.

  A faint noise in the corridor outside his room distracted him. A mouse, probably, or the inn cat after one. He stared at the door. It was little more than a black rectangle against the room’s white walls, but then something moved in the darkness and he saw the motion of the latch rising. It made no sound. />
  Karl lay still, watching through half-closed eyes, his hands around the knife he kept under his pillow. The shape of the door’s outline changed as someone pushed it open from the other side. The hinges did not creak or scrape. For a long moment nothing moved, and then a head appeared through the gap, cocked to one side, listening. Karl breathed slowly, reassuringly. The rest of the silent figure slipped into the room, moving like a shadow.

  Who was it Karl wondered? The figure was nothing more than a silhouette. Not Oswald: this man was too short. Could it be Herr Stahl? The angle was tricky; if he pulled the pillow away and threw his knife the other man would have time to dodge or draw a weapon. Karl’s instincts told him the man was a threat, his mind said he might not be. Best to wait.

  The figure moved across the room, becoming a blur at the edge of Karl’s vision. He was standing by the wooden dresser, moving. Putting something on it? It was hard to tell. But if he moved, he would give away the fact he wasn’t asleep.

  There was a flick of movement, a gesture of some kind. Something light landed in a scatter-pattern across the bed. What the hell? He did it again. The smell of it hit Karl a moment later. Lamp-oil.

  Karl threw himself off the bed as a third shower of droplets flew from the man’s hand. He was grasping for a box—a tinderbox. Karl lunged towards him with the knife but it was dark and he was able to dodge along the wall towards the door. Karl jumped onto and over the bed, trying to block his exit.

  He wasn’t sure what happened next. There was a sound, the room was lit by flames, and he was on fire. His clothes were ablaze. An instant later he felt the heat begin to sear his skin.

  In the sudden light he saw the face of the intruder, and recognised him. Not Herr Stahl, but the dock-worker from the Oldenhaller warehouse, the one who had responded to his gesture. What had caused this? What had he done now? He lunged wildly for the man but missed him. The brightness of the burning oil on his sleeve distracted him. There was a ewer of water on the dresser. He went for it, grabbing it with both hands and splashing it over his front, soaking his clothes, trying to beat the remaining flames out. There was too much. His hands were burning: there must be oil on them. He was spreading the blaze over himself.