Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  “Martinus met them on the road, and…” The warrior-priest’s normally strident voice tailed off into a croak. “You think that…?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Karl said. “I don’t know.” It was hard to believe the Martinus had been an agent for the Purple Hand, though it was how the cult would work—place a person close to the leader, in a position that would give him some responsibility and a lot of influence. But Brother Martinus? He had seemed so trustworthy. Perhaps that was the point.

  “I’m not saying that he was a cultist,” he said, “but we should assume that the Purple Hand know our plans, and also that Emilie and her scheme failed. They know they won’t get a second chance at converting Valten to their side. And they have a wizard trained by the Golden College with them.” Karl reached over and removed the metal circlet from Huss’ head, placing it over his own. It was warm.

  Huss glanced at him, then pulled the hood of the robe up over his head, becoming just another priest.

  “Witch hunters after you,” Gottschalk said, “followers of Chaos after me—how much worse can the Purple Hand make things?”

  “They have at least one powerful wizard. A member of the Golden College.”

  Karl looked at Huss, and caught sight of the man’s eyes under the hood of his cloak. There was a haunted, hunted look in them that he had not seen since Rottfurt, and if there was any spare space in his heart not already filled with apprehension and terror, it was now filled with dread. He would have to be Luthor Huss in more than appearance; Martinus’ betrayal had plunged the true Huss back into his world of self-doubt and it was down to him, the pretender, to take the lead now. His mind churned, thoughts spilling one on top of the other, solidifying, becoming coherent.

  “Don’t get in the coach,” he said. “It’ll be the obvious target for any cultists. Get Oswald out as it passes. Get him to cast all the protective spells he has, and keep them running. Blend with the crusaders as far as you can, then make your own way to the Theogonist’s palace. Take a roundabout route. You know the way?”

  “I’ll take them,” Holger said.

  “Shouldn’t you be in Gendarmenmarkt,” Karl said, “arresting me?”

  Holger smiled humourlessly. “Shouldn’t you be on your way there?” He swept back his cloak, as if about to draw a sword, and Karl noticed he had two scabbards strapped to his belt. He untied one of them and held it out.

  “Your sword,” he said. “The one we took when we captured Oswald Maurer. I thought you might need it. It’s a fine blade, fit for a general.”

  “It ought to be,” Karl said. “I stole it from one.” He took it in both hands, feeling its familiar weight, then passed it back. “Thank you, but no. Luthor Huss does not carry a sword, and today I must be Huss. Keep it for when you keep your promise.”

  “My promise?”

  “You said you would kill me one day. I expect you to keep your word.”

  Holger, brow furrowed, took back the sword. Huss passed Karl his warhammer and the transformation was complete: a bald, heavily armoured warrior-priest of Sigmar and a blond-haired man with bulky muscles, wearing the clothes of a rural blacksmith. Next to them, two anonymous priests in black, hooded robes.

  “We have to move,” Huss said from under his hood. “To wait any longer will invite suspicion.”

  Karl nodded. Huss raised his head so his eyes were visible, staring at his lookalike.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said. “Gottschalk can go alone. Or we can march in unafraid, with Sigmar and I at the head of the crusade. This way means death for you.”

  “Look at me,” Karl said. “I am an abomination. With every day, Chaos takes a little more of my body, and a little more of my mind. I will see you safe to the Emperor’s door, and then I trust that Brother Anders will use that sword to do his duty. I will welcome death, if it comes with honour.”

  Huss held his gaze for a moment more, then pulled his hood down over his face. “As you say,” he said.

  “I have to go,” Holger said. “Questions will be asked if I am away from Gendarmenmarkt too long. Karl, I hope you can come up with a new plan.”

  “I have a new plan,” Karl said. “I’m going to stay the hell away from Gendarmenmarkt.”

  They walked out from the shadow of the gate-arch, two men followed by two thousand. The streets of Altdorf were waiting for them, lined with people two or three deep, watching, expectant. Karl had expected noise, cheers or shouts or taunts, but there was little of that. What noise should you make when you see a man who may be your god? Nobody seemed to know. There were murmurs, whispered conversations, and sometimes the sound of chanted prayers, just audible above four thousand marching feet on cobblestones.

  Karl felt the crowd’s eyes on him and Gottschalk. What did Altdorf make of them? He tried to mimic the way that Huss would walk: the long, confident stride, the slight sway of the shoulders, the relaxed grip on the warhammer, the head held up, the eyes fearless, the mind calm. It did not come easily to him. He walked on.

  There is no street that runs directly between the south-west gate and the cathedral square. Uhlandstrasse runs north-east from the gate meeting Hermannstrasse beside the forbidding granite walls of the Emperor’s palace. Hermannstrasse runs for several hundred yards through some of the most prosperous areas of Altdorf, then turns a sharp left beside the barracks of the Knights Panther, and heads north. It is wide and lined with the sort of properties that can afford to be on such a street: inns and hostelries, guild halls, regimental headquarters, the bases of religious orders and the offices of the Empire’s major trading families who want their clients to forbear the squalor of the docks. The houses present frontages like their owners: tall, fashionable, well appointed, yet with a solidity and demeanour that shows a superiority borne of money, class and the great weight of history.

  Along its route the street passes through two road-junctions wide enough to be termed squares: Fischmarkt and Kirchplatz, as well as two crossroads with other major streets and a miscellany of side-streets and alleys, cut-throughs and mews. Each one was blocked off by groups of soldiers, weapons drawn, and crowds behind them. Their faces were impassive and implacable, their eyes fixed on him. They knew something; they had been warned. Karl’s first thoughts after he had heard Holger’s news had been to turn aside along the route, slipping away down an alleyway, but he saw this was impossible, and his heart sank.

  They passed along Hermannstrasse. Karl watched the crowd. Everyone, it seemed, was there: young and old; Imperial and foreigner; human, dwarf, elf and halfling. After the Convocation of Light had broken up and its members spread across the Empire to raise their armies, there must have been few parades, little for the citizens to look at. They blocked possible escape-routes as surely as if they had been soldiers, or piles of corpses. Karl would do nothing that might lead the innocent to harm. He hoped the witch hunters would have the same forbearance.

  They entered Hermannstrasse. Karl paused a second, staring at the left-hand branch of the wide mouth of Uhlandstrasse leading away to the north-west. That was the route that Valten and Huss needed to go, but the soldiers had dragged wagons and barrows to block the way. He caught Gottschalk’s eye, and they turned to the right, the south-east, hearing the rattle of raised pikes clashing in the air as their small army behind them changed direction abruptly.

  Karl knew this area. Ahead, he could see the high stone walls of the Knights Panther barracks, and hoped that none of its soldiers would be stationed along the route. Obviously the plan was to lure him into Gendarmenmarkt, and ambush him there, but the Knights Panthers’ dislike for him was strong enough that they might try something. Karl’s discoveries had placed an indelible stain on the reputation of their order, and while killing him would not wipe it clean, it would go a little way to helping them feel better.

  Staring ahead, to the point where the Hermannstrasse turned left to Gendarmenmarkt, he could not see any of the Panthers’ distinctive uniforms or banners. The na
rrower road that led straight ahead was blocked by men in Reiksguard colours. Beyond them, the angular steeple of the temple of Saint Botolphus soared above the jagged rooftops.

  Karl stared at it, and knew his next move.

  The lack of noise was unnerving. Once, shortly after the Battle of Wissendorf when Karl had been promoted to lieutenant, he had marched with his regiment through Altdorf. They had been cheered until the sound rang from the city walls; citizens had thrown flowers and waved flags, and when he had come back to the city a month later he had not needed to pay for a single drink for the length of his stay. This time, he felt he was not being celebrated but scrutinised. Not a glorious victor, but a fanatic, a possible heretic, a man who might be the saviour of the Empire, or burnt at a stake before the week was out. Perhaps there were some in the crowd who might have spoken out, or cheered, if they had not feared the scorn of their neighbours and the justice of the witch hunters. But, he reminded himself, perhaps there were cultists too, aiming crossbows at him even at this moment.

  The ranks of Reiksguard soldiers stood like fence-posts, static and impassive in their dark chainmail vests, only their eyes moving under their helmets as Karl and Gottschalk approached them. Clearly the troops expected the two men, their phalanx of pikemen and the throng of crusaders following them to turn left and proceed up Hermannstrasse and into Gendarmenmarkt. They did not.

  “Stand aside!” Karl demanded, raising a hand. His voice was a little high for Huss, and a little strained. He tried again. “In the name of Sigmar, stand aside!”

  The soldiers stood firm, but a couple of them looked less certain of themselves and their solidity. From twenty yards down the street, a young officer left the ranks and came towards them.

  “Proceed on to the cathedral square,” he said. The tone of command was strong, but underlaid with a layer of nerves.

  Karl squared his shoulders. No, not his shoulders; Luthor Huss’ shoulders. “We have been in the wilderness a hundred days and nights. We have endured attacks from the ungodly and the Chaos-driven. We have seen our comrades cut down beside us. We have found this man, reborn. And now—” he let his voice, Huss’ voice, grow in his chest, following the natural stresses of the words “—before we present ourselves before the grace of the Emperor, we must clean ourselves of the dirt of the road, and we must pray.”

  He raised the warhammer as Huss would have, single-handed, at arm’s length, to point over the heads of the assembled soldiers, to the steeple of Saint Botolphus’ beyond.

  “Stand aside!”

  He never knew if Gottschalk had given a signal or if it was purely his voice that did it, but behind him a hundred pikes swept down into the horizontal position to repel an attack—or to make one. In front of him a few of the Reiksguard raised their swords, though their faces said they knew it was a futile gesture. Karl kept his glare on the face of the young officer, focusing calm power on him.

  The officer held on for a moment, then his eyes dropped and he took a pace backwards. “Stand aside,” he ordered, and the soldiers moved back, and the crowds moved with them. The road opened, and Karl and Gottschalk walked on towards Saint Botolphus’ as if they had been waiting for a farmer’s cart to move out of their way.

  Saint Botolphus’ was not a large temple, but it was built solidly enough to repel a siege. Karl hoped it would not come to that, but there was no question that word would have reached the witch hunters in Gendarmenmarkt that their plan had been diverted, and they would be on their way to the temple. He might have exchanged one hopeless situation for another, but at least this time he would not be walking into a trap, and every second that the forces of Empire spent converging around this building was another second for Huss and Valten to make their way to the Grand Theogonist’s palace, and the Emperor.

  He splashed water from the font on his face and looked around. Gottschalk was up by the high altar, praying with two of the temple’s resident priests. A few other men from the crusade had entered, but the pike-men were still outside, guarding the entrance. He didn’t know what the other crusaders had done or where they had gone, but the crush of their crowd would make it harder for the witch hunters to manoeuvre through the streets. All in all, this was a good position to be in, for now, strategically speaking. All he had to do was work out how he was going to get out of it alive.

  “Karl!”

  The shout startled him from his thoughts, and not just because it was his name. It was a voice he had hoped to not hear again that day. It was Luthor Huss, running down the central aisle towards him, pulling back the hood of his cloak. Valten was hard behind him. Further back, leaning on a pillar by the temple’s entrance, was Oswald. He looked out of breath and pale.

  Karl struggled to find words. “What are you doing here?” He could see the note of panic in Huss’ eyes again.

  “It was hopeless,” the warrior-priest said. “They were waiting. All the roads were blocked off by soldiers; they wouldn’t let us past for any reason. And we knew the cultists were there. They attacked the carriage first—”

  “What happened?”

  “One wheel collapsed. Very cunning, but too convenient to be an accident. Then we saw people joining the crusaders from the side of the road, dressed like us. They were going from man to man, pulling back hoods and checking faces. So we ran forward.” He looked around. “This was a good plan.”

  “It was meant to buy you time, not give you sanctuary,” Karl said. Possibilities flashed through his mind: witch hunters assaulting the temple or cutting them off inside until they surrendered; cultists somehow destroying the building; he and Gottschalk going back outside to distract the witch hunters while Huss and Valten made another attempt to reach the Emperor; Huss taking the pikemen and leaving him defenceless. None of them contained more than a shred of a chance of success.

  He turned to Huss. “Any ideas?”

  Huss was silent, lost in thought. Karl observed him for a moment more then, realising that no answer would be coming for a while, left him and walked down the aisle to the back of the temple, where Oswald had slumped onto a wooden bench. He looked drained and exhausted.

  “Enjoying the walking tour of Altdorf?” he asked.

  Oswald looked up. “Leave me here,” he said. “I will only hold you back. Leave me.”

  “And let the witch hunters carry on where they left off?” Karl asked. “You’re coming with us if I have to carry you.” He paused. “Oswald, I know you’re tired and still recovering from your wounds. If it’s needed, can you perform your magic? Cast spells?”

  “A little,” Oswald said. “I think. Nothing highly charged. Some wards and protections, perhaps.”

  Karl nodded, about to say more, but as he was preparing his words he heard the sound of the crowd around the temple change. He stopped, moving in shadow towards the opened door, gesturing to the others to come and see.

  The witch hunters were there. He hadn’t realised there were so many of them in Altdorf. Beyond the phalanx of pikemen, the wide street outside the temple was corrugated with rows of men in black tunics and silver buttons, high hats and implacable faces, like the darkest night, studded with cold gleaming stars. Their numbers stretched away down the roads on both sides of the temple, surrounding it. They were silent. Behind them, the muddled numbers of the crusaders stretched away into the distance, stilled and neutered.

  In the centre of the road was a plinth with a statue of the saint, bare-headed, his features drawn smooth by centuries of rain on his soft stone complexion. One witch hunter had climbed the plinth and stood next to Saint Botolphus, a head and shoulders shorter than the martyr. He stared above the forest of pikes to the temple door, and Karl recognised him.

  “Karl Hoche!” Theo Kratz’s voice boomed. “Mutant, heretic and enemy of the Empire, hear my voice! We know you have disguised yourself as Luthor Huss. We know the man with you is not Valten, the man you claim to be Sigmar risen. Leave the temple and surrender yourself to us, or we shall show no mercy to you or your
comrades. You have a count of five.”

  Karl met Gottschalk’s startled gaze. Behind him, Huss and Valten were moving forward towards the door.

  “Five.”

  Oswald stood up shakily, opened his mouth, didn’t say anything. Karl looked from face to face: Gottschalk shocked, Oswald Maurer, Valten unreadable, Huss thoughtful and confident.

  “Four.”

  “I’m going out,” Huss said.

  “What? You can’t!” Karl said. “What about the cultists?”

  “Three.”

  “Let them take their chances,” Huss said, striding towards the door. Karl grabbed Oswald by the shoulders, turning him to face the sunlight. “Protective spells, now,” he said. Oswald nodded.

  “Two!”

  Gottschalk and Valten ran across the marble floor to the door, hard on Huss’ heels. Karl almost set off after them, but stopped himself. If he showed his face now, it would all be over.

  Outside, Huss’ voice was like a landslide.

  “I am Luthor Huss,” and the words echoed back from the high buildings in the street, above the silent crowd. “I have brought a man to meet the Emperor, a man who the prophecies tell will save the Empire in its darkest hour.”

  Karl moved around, staying back so he could not be seen from outside, but able to observe Huss and the others. Valten was on one side of him, Gottschalk the other. Valten had given Gottschalk his cloak and the latter wore it, hood over his face.

  Behind them, partially obscured by Huss’ frame, was Oswald. He was weaving a spell, his hands making patterns in the air. Karl could not see if Theo Kratz or the other witch hunters could see him. It reminded him of the moment outside the walls of Grünburg, where Huss had faced off against Erwin Rhinehart.

  “And you will let us through,” Huss proclaimed. There was quiet, and tension, and a sense of expectation. Then Karl’s senses jumped, flaring and he knew, suddenly knew, just as he had known at Grünburg, that someone had fired a crossbow.