Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  “I’d kill myself first,” Karl said, and knew it was true. He had been tortured by witch hunters before.

  “Or like that old woman,” Kratz said, pausing about ten feet away. “The one from Oberwil who told us you’d gone to Nuln.”

  Frau Farber. So they’d found her. So she was dead, then. Such a trail of death he left behind him. If he died here, would there be anyone left alive who remembered him, to mourn him? Part of him desperately wanted to ask Rhinehart about his father; whether the witch hunter had done as he had been instructed and had left the man alone, or if the old man had died too. But this was not the place, and there was no time.

  Rhinehart raised the crossbow, and Holger took a step forward, sweeping his sword up. Karl turned, aware an instant too late that the gesture was a feint and that a great dark shape—Kratz—was rushing at him from the right. He turned back, trying to step away, raising his right arm instinctively to protect himself from the blow and his left with the knife in it, to throw it. But Kratz was on him.

  The sword swung, a sharp sweep aimed at the left arm. Karl’s injured right arm interrupted the flat of the blade just below the elbow. He heard the bones snap with a clean, clear crack like pieces of kindling snapping underfoot. Like frost-dried twigs in the forest. Like a pattern of sticks on the carpeted floor of a cottage in Oberwil.

  One will bend and two will break, he thought in the moment of pure clarity afforded him by adrenaline and pain. Then Kratz’s body slammed into him, wrenching the broken arm sideways with excruciating pain, knocking him down towards the floor.

  As he fell he slashed out with his left hand in panic, and connected. The tip of the dagger scribed a line across Kratz’s face, from his jawbone across his cheek to his nose, missing the socket of his eye and carving a line across his brow. It was a shallow cut, almost a graze, a white line across the skin.

  An instant later Karl’s back hit the stone floor, knocking wind from his lungs. Above him Kratz dropped his sword, grabbing with each hand for Karl’s wrists, forcing the left one back to slam it against the stone. His fingers cracked and the dagger skidded away, out of reach.

  Kratz’s other hand found Karl’s right wrist, bending it back to the floor. The ends of snapped bone grated hard against each other. The pain was unbearable. Karl was held fast, pinned down like an insect.

  Then the blood began to pour from the cut across Kratz’s forehead, running down his brow, through his blond eyebrows, and into his eyes.

  There was a lot of blood.

  Kratz blinked frantically and swore. It must be blinding him, Karl thought.

  The blood ran down Kratz’s face in vivid red smears. It ran across his cheeks and down his chin. Karl stared up at the man above him, hoping he would raise a hand to wipe his face clean. It was his only hope. Kratz did not.

  The blood was dripping down onto Karl’s face. Kratz shook his head, trying to get the thick liquid out of his eyes, covering Karl in a viscous spray, but he did not release his grip on Karl’s arms. The pain was filling his mind with awful dark shapes that writhed.

  On the side of Karl’s throat, his damned mouth thrashed, its teeth snapping and grinding against each other. It had done that once before, a year ago, in the presence of human blood. Karl had sworn then that it would never taste such stuff again.

  What was better? That he die here and now, or that he demean himself further, but lives long enough to kill Brother Karin?

  There was only one choice.

  He twisted his head to the side, so that the foul mouth was uppermost on his neck, directly under Kratz’s bleeding face and his tight-shut eyes. The red-trails were drying at the edges but the air continued to ooze and the blood continued to flow, and to drip.

  He felt it drip, felt the mouth stretch wide, exposing its sharp teeth and its pointed tongue. He felt the droplets land on it with tiny splashes. And an instant later he felt energy surge through him—a dreadful, unholy, unearthly energy that drew his muscles together into tight knots of power and lifted him to his feet, pushing Kratz above him.

  In a single movement, one-armed, left-handed, he hurled Kratz away from him, down the steps of the apse and into the aisle between the temple’s pews. Kratz crashed into them, knocking them askew.

  Rhinehart raised his crossbow and fired. The bolt took Karl in the left breast, slightly below the point where he had been shot at Grünburg, just where he carried the silver flask his father had given him. But he had left that on a slab in Grünburg, with what else remained of his family’s love and protection.

  The bolt passed straight through him, ripping through flesh, glancing off ribs, tearing an exit-wound below his left shoulder-blade, leaving him in a spurt of fluids and shattering with a report like a musket-shot against the wall above the altar.

  Karl staggered. His hellish strength was gone from him, as if it had never been. Bright blood pulsed into the thick cloth of his robes.

  For luck, he thought. For luck’s sake.

  “No,” he said, and felt blood from the punctured lung rise in his throat. “Not like… no.” He was aware of the witch hunters staring at him. Even Kratz was moving his head, his eyes open, to watch him die. Good. A good man, Kratz. At heart.

  He could not let this happen. He could not die here.

  He reached into his mind, pushing away the red mists of pain, the dark blues and greens of shock and the utter darkness of blood-loss. He knew what he must find: the strength he had felt once before, at midnight, at year-end, in a frozen forest, that had enabled him to get up and walk away from death once before.

  He could not find it. It was not there anymore. The man he had been then, he was not anymore.

  He found the face of Luthor Huss, calm and serene in the certainty of his faith, and tried to draw strength from it, but he saw it change into the man who had sat in the corner of a filthy hut in Rottfurt and whimpered with fear. He found his father’s face and saw only the man he had left in the temple at Grünburg, telling him to go, denying him as his son. He found Oswald’s face, the old man’s good nature, and watched him fall on the steps of Saint Botolphus again, unable to help him.

  There was nothing there to help him. He was alone. Bleeding to death from a heart-wound.

  On his neck, his second mouth stretched wide in a movement that could have been a scream or a shout. Something, the voice in his head, told him to look back, to think again. Part of him wanted to ignore it but it was a part of him that became drowned in pain and weakness, and was silenced.

  Grünburg. The temple, on the slab, after the last time he was shot. He had been weak then, Rhinehart facing him. And he had uttered a silent prayer, to help him save his father.

  All the gods, that was who he made his plea to. All the powers of the universe, and everything in him. And something had answered. He had never asked himself what. After all, he had been in a temple of Sigmar. What power would come to his aid in a temple of Sigmar?

  He knew now it had not been Sigmar.

  “Surrender, Karl,” Brother Karin said from where she stood at the side of the steps, “and we’ll save your life.”

  He made no reply. He could not; he did not have the strength. His body wavered on its feet, unstable and weakening.

  He was going to die. Regardless of what he did now, he was going to die anyway. And his soul was already damned.

  He only needed a little strength.

  His blood soaked the front of his robes and dripped to the floor.

  He had always used Chaos’ powers to fight Chaos. This was not a surrender. This was just—more of the same.

  All the gods, he thought. Sigmar, Manaan, anyone who’s listening. All the powers of the universe. Everything within me and everything without: I need just a little strength to finish this.

  “No surrender then?” Karin said. “Very well. Anders, Erwin, finish the job.”

  Karl lifted his head slowly. “No,” he said. “No.”

  Under his robes, where the sodden fabric touched his sk
in, he had felt the wound close. He felt strength ebb back into him; felt the clouds of numbness recede, to be replaced by the agony that was his right arm. He felt wretched. He had given in to darkness. Twice damned.

  “Brother Holger,” he said, and there was blood on his words. “You wanted the name of the traitor in the witch hunters. Brother Rhinehart already knows it.”

  Holger, advancing, stopped. “He does?” he said.

  Rhinehart looked up from where he was using a goats-foot lever to reset the string of his crossbow, paused and looked up. “I do?” he said.

  Karl smiled, and felt the mouth on his neck smile too. The denial by question was unconvincing, a poor way to lie.

  “You do,” he said. “Your new friends in the Cloaked Brothers told you.”

  “The Cloaked Brothers?” Rhinehart said, and that too was unconvincing, and that was enough to convince Karl. He had guessed that Rhinehart would have been told Karin’s true allegiance, and the lie was confirmation.

  “Do not listen to him!” Karin said, a touch too loud. “His mind is touched, he sees conspiracies everywhere. Do not hesitate. Kill him now.”

  Holger, his sword extended, turned slowly. “Brother Rhinehart,” he said. “Suppose, hypothetically, a Cloaked Brother had told you of a Chaos worshipper in our order. Who would that be?”

  “Kill him!” Karin shouted.

  “He’s going to die anyway,” Rhinehart said quietly, “and I would prefer my brother not to be distracted at this moment. Yes, Anders, I know who the heretic means, and they are very close. This vile thing before us made me unclean, and polluted me with his blood. I am not fit to remain in our order. I have joined the Cloaked Brothers, but there are far worse evils, and they—”

  He choked and staggered. The crossbow, unstrung, clattered to the tiles.

  “Bastard,” said Theo Kratz from the floor behind Rhinehart. He pulled his blood-slicked sword down and out, from where he had thrust it up through the small of Rhinehart’s back, inside his ribcage and deep into his vital organs.

  Rhinehart sank, collapsing to his knees, his body folding down. His hands twitched. One leg jerked in spasm, sending his body sideways, lurching into the end of a pew. His head hit the woodwork with a crack. There was blood at his mouth, and his nose. His eyes were open, staring uselessly. He did not move.

  Holger, just a few feet from them, was watching in slack-jawed disbelief. In the shadows on the other side of the steps, Karin had not moved or said a word. Karl, feeling strength slowly seeping back into his body, stood to see how the drama would unfold. His knife was a few steps away, but if he went to it he would break the spell.

  Kratz turned slowly away from the corpse of his brother witch hunter and tried to sit up. From his awkward, pained movements it looked like his hip might be broken, or the upper part of his leg. “Erwin, a Cloaked Brother,” he said. “I trusted him. I can’t believe…”

  “It was you,” Holger said.

  Kratz seemed to take a second to understand, then raised his left hand. “No!” he said. “You heard him, he admitted it, he was a Cloaked Brother…”

  “He was about to give you away,” Holger said, and swept across the floor like a charging bull. His sword—Karl’s sword—swept low.

  “No!” Karl shouted.

  At the last second Holger snatched the sword up out of its course. It cut the air above Kratz’s head and whistled round as its bearer turned to face Karl. The tip of the sword pointed at his throat.

  “It’s time for you to tell me everything,” he said. “If not Theo then who? You?”

  “Kill him,” Karin said, and stepped from the shadows towards the fallen Kratz. “That’s an order. Kill the mutant and we can get this finished.”

  “No,” Holger said. “He knows something I have to know.”

  “Kill him!” Karin said. There was an icy control in her voice. Karl did not take his eyes off her, but moved a step to the side, towards his throwing-dagger. Holger gestured threateningly with the sword and he stopped.

  “Who?” Holger asked.

  Karl made a small shrug; his right shoulder still hurt too much for more. “You’d believe me if I told you? I don’t think so.”

  “Anders,” Kratz said, “I swear I am no traitor. Erwin was trying to warn you. So—”

  Karl’s view of Kratz was blocked by Holger, so he could not see exactly what happened next. Brother Karin seemed to move unnaturally swiftly across the stone floor, her strides almost inhumanly long, and there was a crack and a thick wet sound that was awful and familiar. Karl had heard too many men die in the last two years, and he hated to hear it again. Clearly Holger recognised the sound as well: he turned fast, his sword still out.

  “What?” he said.

  “It’s her,” Karl said.

  “Her?” His eyes were wide.

  “The Chaos-traitor.”

  Karin was bent over Kratz’s slumped form, but as the two men watched she straightened up. She seemed to have one hand on Kratz’s head. Then she lifted it, spattered with blood, grey matter and flecks of white bone, and there was a sucking sound as it came free of the cavity she had punched through the top of his skull and down into his brain. She raised the bloody fist to her lips and licked it. Behind her, blood poured from Kratz’s nose and mouth as if from a fountain, making a wide pool and running along the cracks between the tiles, spreading out.

  “Yes,” she said, “me. You’ve done well bringing me the mutant Hoche, Brother Holger. But I can’t let you tell anyone what happened here, and the Blood God must have blood.”

  She took a step forward, and Holger moved in to meet her, his face set in a tight mask of fierce intention. Behind her, Kratz’s corpse slumped to the floor, his brains oozing from the hole in his head. She punched through his skull, Karl thought. She punched through his skull.

  Holger took a pace forward, blocking her path with his sword in a classic guard pose. Karl felt the pain in his chest recede, sensing his strength return to his limbs, though his right arm still hurt like a daemon had it in a vice. He could, he thought, fight. It was possible that the newly reknitted tissues would rip apart, the wound would reopen and he would bleed to death. But that was less important. All he needed was a few seconds.

  Brother Karin paused in front of Holger’s blade. Her right hand rested on the hilt of her sword, but it stayed in its scabbard and she made no effort to draw it.

  “Lay on,” she said. “The gods enjoy a good fight.”

  Karl looked desperately for a weapon. He knew something bad was about to happen, something awful. He had no idea what it would be, but he needed a weapon.

  The throwing knife was still lying where Kratz had knocked it. Karl went to it and scooped it up, left-handed. Behind him, fabric tore.

  He spun round, in time to see Brother Karin’s arms unfold, tearing through the sleeves of her uniform, thin white points slicing through the dark leather and cloth. Each arm looked like the blade of a clasp-knife was twisting out from its handle, hinged at her wrists, forcing her hands back, making them quillons of flesh.

  Twin blades of bone, slick with her blood, each one as long as her forearm—no, longer, because these had no need to obey laws of physics or anatomy; they were gifts from her daemonic lords and followed no earthly rules. Each one was two feet long, two inches wide at the base, rising to a vicious point, sharp along both sides. The sleeves of her uniform jacket draped uselessly at her elbow, like a fool’s long cuffs.

  She smiled, and her smile was terrible to behold.

  She was truly a warrior of the Blood God.

  How could he have not realised that she was a mutant? How could he have been so stupid?

  Karl took a pace back, and an instant later she dived at Holger, her blades slashing, keening through the temple’s still air. The witch hunter staggered back, parrying each one frantically. His swordsmanship was excellent, Duke Heller’s blade moving in his hand like liquid metal or a strip of ribbon, but it was no more than a tool, an ext
ension. Karin’s blades were a part of her, and she used them as deftly and as swiftly as a gesture, a flick, a glance, her movements organic and as fast as thought. There was no question: Holger was outclassed and outfought. The bones rattled against the steel of his sword as he parried and parried again, fending blows from left and right, high strokes and low thrusts. Each blow forced him back a little further, towards the steps to the apse.

  Karl stepped sideways, away from the duellists, looking for an opening. Karin’s concentration was on the fight, her eyes fixed on Holger’s face. Karl knew he could not get in close enough to attack her, not with just a dagger, but he didn’t need to. He twisted the knife in his left hand: it felt strange there but this was a simple shot. In a single movement he raised the blade and flung it at Karin’s head, aiming for her temple.

  Without shifting her eyes from Holger’s face she flicked her right arm at it, and swept it away from her. It tumbled across the nave and clattered against the far wall.

  Holger took the chance to launch a rare attack though her momentarily distracted defences. She parried it expertly, wrenching his sword down in an unnatural angle, and Karl saw Holger’s wrist bent too far, the muscles strained, the pain evident on the witch hunter’s face. Her other blade was ready for attack, for a sweep that would finish her opponent.

  Instead she lowered the twin blades of her arms and turned to look at Karl. Her eyes were deep brown, the same eyes he had first seen in the face of a young priestess so long ago. The bone-structure of her face looked the same, but something in it had changed, something undefinable and indescribable, that had ripped the humanity from it and left it a smiling mask, hiding something vile.

  Holger leaped back, recovering his grip on the hilt of his sword, using his spare hand to massage his hurt wrist for a second. “Flee, Karl!” he shouted. “Get help!”

  “No,” Karl said, staring deep at Karin, not breaking that exchange of views. He had thought he was damned, but he saw now that hers was a soul so utterly damned and lost that not even she began to understand how deep she had fallen. There was depth in her eyes, but it was a depth empty of anything that might still be human. He wondered how she had managed to survive like this for so long, and then realised she had found the perfect place to hide: among the witch hunters, the only people in the Empire as fanatical, unswerving and vicious as she was.