Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  “Your face is familiar.” Karl said. “Perhaps our paths crossed in Altdorf. Or some other time in Kemperbad?”

  “I have been there only once before, on my way between Talabheim and Altdorf,” Rhinehart said, “and I did not stop.”

  “Do you have news for me to take back? Or orders?”

  “No news. When I have some, I will communicate it to you in the usual way.”

  What was that? Karl wondered. There were many similar questions that he wanted to ask, but if he did his pretense would be revealed.

  Rhinehart looked up, and Karl followed his eyes. A dark shape was circling in the sky: the raven he had seen earlier, or possibly a different one. Rhinehart made a movement under his cloak and suddenly he had a full-size crossbow, drawn and nocked, aimed at it. He sighted down the quarrel.

  “Out of range,” he said. “Always just too far away. But one day it will grow incautious, or curious, or brave, and I will have a bolt through its head.” He lowered the weapon. His horse made a sound with its nose and moved sideways, uneasy.

  Karl felt stymied. If he asked too much then he risked revealing his identity; if he asked too little there was no point in him being here. Common sense told him the latter was a better course of action than the former, but he had little respect for common sense these days.

  “What of your special orders from Brother Karin?” he asked.

  “What do you know of that?” Rhinehart demanded.

  “Have you learned anything?” Karl asked again.

  Rhinehart cocked his head on one side. “I know who you are,” he said and raised his crossbow. Karl’s hand went to his sword but knew it was a futile gesture: Rhinehart would fire before the blade cleared the scabbard, and the witch hunter was out of sword range. He let the weapon slide back, watching Rhine-hart helplessly.

  Rhinehart moved his horse forward a few steps, turning, so he could support his crossbow on the arm that was holding the reins. The weapon did not waver from Karl’s heart.

  This is it, Karl thought. I have reached my end. Is he going to arrest me or kill me here? He is ill; if we were to ride to the nearest town with a chapter-house I could easily surprise him and overpower him along the way. If I was him, I would kill me now.

  “You bastards,” Rhinehart said, and coughed hard. There was a split-second where Karl could have leaped from his horse and maybe overpowered him, but there was something about Rhinehart’s use of the plural that made him hesitate. He said nothing.

  “You’ll get nothing from me,” Rhinehart said. “I’ve lost too many good brothers to your wiles and deceptions. I won’t listen to you and I won’t tell you another word.”

  “I have no idea what you’re—” Karl said.

  “Shut up!” Rhinehart waved the crossbow. “You’re a travesty of that uniform. The man you once were would be ashamed of what you’ve become. Sneaking, skulking, listening and observing, without pride or purpose. I told Altdorf you were here, among the crusaders, and I suppose it was inevitable you’d try to recruit me too.” His horse was agitated, and he struggled to keep it under control. “Go on, go back to your cloaked brothers. Tell them you got nothing from me. If I see you again I’ll shoot you.”

  “I’m going,” Karl said, turned his horse and rode away. Rhinehart’s tirade had given him the information he needed—not about Brother Karin’s plans and schemes, but about who the witch hunter had thought he was.

  “Go back to your cloaked brothers,” he had said. Karl had met one of the Cloaked Brothers before, Andreas Reisefertig, a man of deception and infiltration, a ruthless, self-serving and amoral being. The Cloaked Brothers, Reisefertig had told him, were a clandestine sect of former witch hunters who had grown disaffected and frustrated with their order’s hidebound and dogmatic adherence to outmoded rules and standards. They were not a criminal organisation or a Chaos cult, but the Empire’s forces did not recognise them, and that gave them the ability to infiltrate other groups, probing them for signs of corruption or sources of hidden knowledge. They were information-gatherers, putting the pieces together, working out the big picture. As far as Karl knew they did not make arrests, pass information to other groups or use their information to eliminate agents of the dark powers or block their plans. He did now know what game they were playing but it was a long one, and he did not like it.

  Rhinehart had said there were Cloaked Brothers in the crusade. He had not considered that there might be, but it matched the way they would work. They would probably be close to Huss, maybe even his advisors: that was the Brothers’ usual pattern. He should be warned.

  Could Herr Stahl and his men have been Cloaked Brothers?

  There was something else that Rhinehart had said. “The man you once were would be ashamed of what you’ve become.” He had thought Karl was someone else, a former witch hunter, but the words had still rung true. The old Karl Hoche would be dismayed by the thing of Chaos that he had become. Or would he be? Oswald’s words came back to him: “You didn’t do it for glory or money, you did it because it was right.” How many servants of Chaos had he killed in the last year? How many innocents had he saved? He had spurned their thanks, thinking himself not worthy of it. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps there was a sense of honour and pride to be found in what he was doing. Perhaps Oswald and Huss were right. He should try to find it, and this was as good a place as any.

  Besides, he had always enjoyed the army life.

  The crusade’s camp rose out of the landscape before him, and he hastily took off his hat and cloak, stowing them in his pack. There was no telling what the sight of a witch hunter riding into sight would do.

  It was mid-afternoon. No urgency to speak with Huss yet, and still much to do. He entered the camp, the horse picking its way carefully between piles of packs and blankets, campfires, exhausted flagellants, puddles, altars, dogs. “Anyone who can use a weapon,” he shouted, “anyone with military service or Watch training, anyone who’s served as a temple guard or Templar, anyone who can handle themselves in a fight, gather in the field towards the stream, on the far side of the crossroads.” Out of sight of Rhinehart, he added mentally. He rode on through the bedraggled crusaders. Heads turned curious looks towards him. A few people began to clamber to their feet. “Anyone who can use a weapon, anyone with military service…”

  The field lay wide and open, stretching down to the stream at the bottom of the valley, covered in low, verdant spring grass, dotted with occasional trees. He guessed there were two hundred people here, standing in loose groups, looking at him. Maybe half of them had brought weapons. He rode across the field twice, studying them, then halted his horse, stood in the stirrups and gave his first orders.

  He made them form ranks and squares, watching to see who moved smartly and who dawdled or seemed confused. Then he dismounted and walked along the lines of men, women and children, looking at them in turn, tapping some on the shoulder. Then he told the people he’d tapped that they should go; they were not ready. That left a hundred and thirty.

  He borrowed a two-handed warhammer from one of the priests and showed them how to hold it, how to swing it, how to use it to defend and parry. He charged a solid old oak tree twenty yards away, swinging the hammer as he ran, striking the trunk smartly three times so that the wood rang with the impacts.

  He passed the hammer to the first man. “Do the same, then give the hammer to the next person,” he said, and watched.

  Anyone who dropped the hammer, or hit themselves with it, or didn’t run at full tilt, or missed the tree, or tried a fancy move, or didn’t follow his orders exactly, Karl shouted, “Three!” If the person looked unsure of themselves, or struck the tree but Karl couldn’t hear all three impacts from where he stood, or looked uncomfortable, he shouted “Two!” The others he shouted, “One!” Then he told the Threes to go away. That left just under ninety.

  He asked if anyone was unwilling to die for their faith. Nobody left. He asked if anyone was not willing to die, gutted like a pig, staring
as their slashed intestines poured from their belly, drowning as their lungs filled with their own blood, their limbs smashed and broken, in unimaginable pain, possibly for hours or days, hearing the screams of their comrades, dying alone and unblessed. That left fewer than eighty.

  Finally he told anyone who had disobeyed an order to leave earlier that they should go. Nobody did. He went up to a boy of barely fifteen, standing in the ranks. “You were tapped,” he said, and to the men either side of him, “and you saw him tapped. None of you did anything. All three of you, go. There’s no place for you here.”

  Five other people left then.

  He did a head-count. Seventy-one. The Grünburg town-guard was larger.

  “Form two groups,” he said. “All the people I counted as Ones, you are the first platoon, fighting with warhammers. Can any of you ride?” Eight hands went up. “Commandeer horses from the other crusaders. Recruit their owners as your grooms and squires. You’re the cavalry section. The rest of you, the Twos, you’ll be the second platoon, fighting with pikes.” Because any idiot can learn to use a pike as long as they can think like a soldier, he thought, and if we’re defending ourselves against mounted men we’ll need something with a bit of range. Bowmen would be nice, or crossbows, but they need money to buy, or time and skill to make and more of it to learn.

  “Anyone here worked as a carpenter or an armourer, or ever used a pike before?” A few hands went up. “First business, take the men to that copse over there. I spotted some pollarded ash trees there earlier. Get the wood for a pike for everyone. The rest of you, fall in.”

  He drilled them till the sun set. When the pikemen came back from the wood, bearing long branches, he drilled them too. They were all very bad.

  Karl picked his way between the campfires, speaking to a man here and there, congratulating them for good work, encouraging them, giving words of advice. He was looking for two men in particular: young, strong and silent, one with short-cropped blond hair, the other with shaggy curls like a spaniel’s ears and a moustache that didn’t suit him. He found them together.

  “Brothers,” he said.

  They looked up at him from their bowls of soup. “A seat, brother?” the curl-headed one asked.

  “No,” Karl said. “I only have only a question or two. You came this afternoon and did well, though I fancy you are more familiar with blades than with warhammers. When I made it clear that I was forming a defence force you both left, but you stayed at the edge of the pasture and watched the training.”

  “What of it?” the blond asked.

  “It’s an idle thought,” Karl said, “but were either of you witch hunters once?”

  “What of it?” the other repeated.

  “Who do you report to now?” Karl said. “Where does the information you gather end up? Why shouldn’t I tell Luthor Huss to expel you from this crusade tonight?”

  “Four questions in all,” the blond one said. “A man with a healthy curiosity.”

  “But he’s not a man, is he?” the other said. “Yes, we are the people you think we are. And as to the question you don’t want to ask, we know who you are too.”

  “Leave us be,” blond said, “and we’ll leave you be. We might even be able to help each other.”

  Karl stared down, feeling his face turn red. He felt overwhelmed. They reminded him of the only other Cloaked Brother he had met, Andreas Reisefertig, and he remembered how much he had disliked him. “I doubt it,” he said, and walked away.

  “The crusade is full of spies,” Huss said, “but I’ve never heard of these Cloaked Brothers. Are you sure they’re a threat?”

  More to me than to you, Karl thought, but he did not say it. “I thought you should know,” he said. “It seems that at the moment you may have more to fear from enemies within than enemies outside.”

  Huss shrugged and pulled his cloak closer around himself. The night had turned cold. “We need to be prepared to defend against both,” he said. “How fares our army?”

  “Badly,” Karl said, “but give me some time and I believe I can make soldiers out of them. Tomorrow I want to start them on weapon practice.”

  “That can’t be done,” Huss said. “We’re moving out tomorrow morning.”

  “Moving? Where?”

  “Stimmigen,” Huss said. “There are stories I hear from one of its villages, Lachenbad. They ring true. I want to hear more of them.”

  “You think his words are worth moving almost a thousand men over a hundred miles?” Karl asked. Huss nodded.

  “The crusade is my protection, and besides they believe as fervently in the cause as I do. It’s a fortnight’s journey, probably more. You can train them in the evenings once we’ve made camp.”

  “It could be a trap to lure you away from Altdorf,” Karl said.

  Huss regarded him with granite eyes. “Then train your men well.”

  “Stimmigen.” In his head Karl drew the route-map between their present position and the trading-town. A hundred and forty miles as the crow flew, probably closer to two hundred looking for ambush-sites, possible battlegrounds along the way. What he found did not comfort him. “We go south through the forest?”

  “There’s no way south through the forest. We’ll follow the river up a few miles to Worlitz, then take the Carroberg road west through the forest till we reach the River Teufel. Then we follow that south.”

  “That route will take us close to Grünburg.”

  “It’ll take us through Grünburg,” Huss said. “Why do you look worried?”

  Karl tried to calm his expression. “It’s nothing. I have some history there.”

  Huss cocked an eyebrow. “Recent history?”

  “A lifetime ago.”

  “‘The past is a foreign country,’” Huss quoted, “‘filled with liars, traitors and things we have exiled.’”

  Karl nodded. I am the exile, he thought, but could not say it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Gate

  Karl roused his recruits at dawn and put them through an hour of weapon-handling practice before they broke to breakfast, pack and pray. The crusade moved off around mid-morning amid chants and hymns, a shuffling mass of humanity, weighed down by the weight of their packs and their troubles. Karl guessed that many of them were undernourished, badly in need of a decent meal, or suffering from dysentery or St Anthony’s fire. Every army he had ever marched with had had a proper support system: a baggage-train, cooks, regular supplies and the funds to buy more food if it ran scarce. But this was not an army.

  He was glad to see his men were behaving like soldiers, marching with weapons ready, watching the road ahead and behind, keeping dawdlers moving. He watched them carefully, reprimanding two who were abusing an old priest who was clearly lame, and when he saw a pikeman throw an insult at one of his cavalry and the horseman swing at the footsoldier he took both their weapons and told them they were not fit to fight for Sigmar. Some people’s first reaction to authority was to abuse it. He put the old priest on the now-spare horse and let him ride.

  The crusade made camp that night at the edge of woodland. Karl called his force together and asked if any of them were tired. A few raised their hands and he let them rest while the others practised combat in twos and threes. Karl walked among them, giving advice, demonstrating grips, thrusts, stances and defences. He noted which of them showed natural aptitude, which of them were showing their comrades how to strike, feint and parry, rising naturally to places of leadership. He’d talk to them later and give them positions as officers, and their first orders.

  Then he went to the men who had asked to rest, and told them to set guard-rotas for the night.

  “The crusade doesn’t need guards. Sigmar guards us,” one said.

  “I saw an army wiped out because they didn’t post guards,” Karl said. “If we find Sigmar, he can take his turn on the guard-roster. Until then, you do it.”

  After sunset, after meals had been eaten and prayers had been said, he sneaked away
down the darkening road and made a wide circle around the camp into the woods. He sat among the dark branches, watching the slow traverse of the moons across the star-filled sky and listening to the scuffling of the nocturnal wildlife and the low sounds from the camp. At intervals he approached the camp from different directions, not taking any particular care to be silent.

  All night only three of the guards challenged him. One was either oblivious or too scared to move, and the others were asleep at their posts. Karl crept up to each in turn and tapped them on the forehead, so that as they woke the first thing they saw was his face, mud-smeared, teeth bared, a foot from their own. Two of them screamed, one wet himself, and none of them fell asleep again. It was a poor start but at least none of them had fled in terror. Once they reached Worlitz he would begin them on basic fortifications, the sort that a travelling army could throw up in an hour or two.

  The rest of the night, he closed his eyes and thought about Grünburg. It was the small town where he had grown up; the place that for his early years had been his whole world. For the last few years it had seemed very small and very distant, and now suddenly it loomed huge on his horizon.

  It would be much changed, he thought. The docks had probably grown again. His friends and contemporaries would be older, they’d have wives, husbands, children; have started businesses, maybe moved away. Who was the mayor now? Who was on the council? Who ran the town guard? Some people would have died too.

  What of his family? Were his parents still alive? Was his father still the senior priest of the temple, or had he retired? He would be getting old. Perhaps he had been disgraced, forced out by the shame of his son who had become a mutant and a traitor whose name was reviled across the Empire. His mother too, how had she taken the news? And Marie, the woman he had loved and still in a corner of his heart loved now. What had happened to her? How was she? Did she still think of him, and if so then how? With fondness, sorrow, hatred? And would he find the answer to these questions, and did he want to?