Wolff shoved the acolyte violently across the room and as he tumbled over the broken furniture, Ratboy heard a great weapon slam into the ground where he had just been standing. He gasped in pain, winded by a chair leg that jabbed him in the stomach as he landed. As he rolled onto his back, groaning, shapes whirled around him in the darkness, crashing into walls and tables and grunting with exertion.
Sparks flew as weapons collided and in the brief flashes of light, Ratboy saw Wolff fighting desperately against a creature so big it had to stoop beneath the chapterhouse’s vaulted ceiling. The light was gone too fast for him to be sure of the monster’s shape, but he was left with a vague impression of massive, coiled muscle and long, curved horns.
Ratboy tried to draw breath, but retched instead, powerless to call for help. As he felt around in the dark for his knife, he heard Wolff muttering something nearby. Then, as the priest uttered a final, fierce syllable, glittering light flooded the chamber and the creature looming over them was revealed in all its monstrous glory. It was obviously the same species as the bodies outside, but even more grotesquely oversized. As holy light poured from Wolff’s hammer, shimmering and flashing off the whitewashed walls, the creature bellowed and swung an axe at the priest’s head. The weapon was almost as big as the priest himself, and as he leapt out of the way it smashed into the wall, cutting into the stone with such force that the whole building shook, sending masonry tumbling from the ceiling. The priest’s warhammer slipped from his grip as he landed, clattering across the flagstones and disappearing from view.
The room plunged into darkness once more.
The grunting and smashing sounds continued until Ratboy heard Wolff cry out with pain. As the monster moved back and forth, brief bursts of light crept in from the outside, and in one such flash he suddenly saw the beast lifting Wolff from the ground, about to smash him against the wall, swinging him as easily as a straw doll.
Ratboy tried desperately to rise, but he was still unable to breathe and fell to his knees again, whimpering pathetically as he crawled towards the two combatants.
There was a final, deafening bang and then silence filled the chapterhouse.
As Ratboy crawled painfully towards the doorway, the acrid stink of saltpetre filled his nose and he saw another figure stood just inside the doorway, with a thin trail of smoke drifting from its raised hand.
‘I told you we didn’t need more men,’ said von Gryphius, lowering his flintlock pistol with a high-pitched laugh. The colour had drained from his face and his eyes were rolling with fear. As he helped Ratboy to his feet his thin voice sounded slightly hysterical. ‘What exactly was that?’ he asked, gesturing to the huge mound that lay at his feet.
‘Good work, obermarshall,’ came Wolff’s voice from the darkness. He stepped into the shaft of light coming through the doorway and looked down at the monster’s body in confusion. ‘I’m amazed your shot could pierce such a thick skull.’
Von Gryphius nodded slowly, still staring at the huge corpse in amazement. ‘I’m a regular at the Giselbrecht hunt,’ he muttered. ‘And that fellow’s left eye was conveniently large.’
The ghost of a smile played around Wolff’s lips as he studied the general, then he took Ratboy’s arm. Once outside, they both fell to the ground, exhausted. When he had caught his breath, Wolff took the ring from his robes and looked at it thoughtfully as it glittered in the sunlight. The dove was stained with the blood of its previous owner.
‘I must talk with Anna,’ he said.
Chapter Five
The Restless Dead
Recently, Erasmus had begun to speak to the bodies as he worked. He knew it was a little odd, but with each passing day, he found the mortal world harder to understand and had come to think of these waxy, shrouded shapes as his friends. Their stillness comforted him and sometimes he would give them voices; replying to himself as though the dead were answering. His talk was endless and anodyne: the changing of the seasons and the consistency of his porridge were the most regular topics. He doubted the corpses minded though. After all, his were the last mortal thoughts that would ever be directed at these poor, lost souls.
The garden of Morr at Elghast was a humble temple, but its crypt was a bewildering maze of tunnels and chambers. The priest’s flickering lamps had only ever illuminated a small fraction of it. Four generations of his family had tended the dead in this place, but as far as he knew, no one had ever attempted to map out the full extent of the catacombs. The limestone arches had once been ornately carved in the likeness of skulls and black rose petals, but over the centuries the pillars and cornices had shrugged off their sculpted edges, reasserting their natural, ragged shapes.
A more inquisitive mind might have wished to explore the distant, ancient chambers, but not Erasmus. As he performed the funerary rites, he sometimes heard movements from deeper inside the network of tunnels, and felt obliged to investigate, but it usually turned out to be nothing more than rats, feasting on the dead. The rest of the time, he left the rows of crumbling mausoleums alone.
The clapping of large wings announced the arrival of Udo, fluttering in through the half open door that led back up to the temple. As the raven settled on her perch, she cawed repeatedly at the black-robed priest, tilting her head to watch him as he shuffled from corpse to corpse.
‘Really?’ replied Erasmus, pausing in the act of cleaning a knife to look up at the bird. ‘That’s most unfortunate, old girl, but owls have as much right to eat mice as you do. All creatures have a right to live.’ He carefully lifted a shroud and plunged the knife into something soft and yielding, causing a thin arc of fluid to patter gently across the stone floor. ‘At least, for a while they do.’
He chopped and sliced in silence for a few minutes, frowning in concentration. Then he paused. ‘Now then friend, what’s this?’ he muttered, tugging an arrowhead from his subject’s chest with a moist popping sound. He held the bent piece of metal closer to his lamp and peered at it. ‘I don’t think you’ll need this in the afterlife.’ He dabbed at the wound with a cloth and muttered a quick, sonorous prayer, before dropping the arrowhead in a little copper bowl with a clang. ‘Was it really worth it, I wonder,’ he said, taking a jug of oil from a nearby table and tipping a little onto the corpse’s chest. As the chamber filled with the scent of rosewater, he shook his head. ‘What cause was worth losing everything for, at your age? How old were you exactly?’
‘Early thirties,’ he replied to himself in a deep voice. ‘Thirty-five at most.’
‘I see. Old enough to have a family then, maybe, and people who loved you, but that wasn’t enough – you had to look for something more. Something exciting.’
‘There’s no love out there anymore, father: covetousness, maybe; the desire for other men’s land; bloodlust perhaps, but no love.’
Erasmus sighed as he continued to anoint the body. ‘Yes, I suppose you might be right.’ He paused, frowning at something. Then, with another wet pop, he removed a second arrowhead. ‘There certainly doesn’t seem to have been much love for you.’
He wiped down the second wound and finished applying the scented oil. Then, placing the knife back in a leather roll, he shuffled across the chamber to a small recess in the damp rock, filled with a collection of bottles, jugs and mildewed books. He selected one of the texts and returned to the body, where he began to pray. He wished the deceased a quick journey to the afterlife and begged Morr to grant him safe passage.
Natural light hardly reached down into the crypt, but after a few more hours’ work, Erasmus’s stomach announced quite clearly that it was midday. He stroked his tonsured head and gave a little yawn. ‘Oh, Udo, I think it might be time for some lunch.’
The raven gave no reply.
He extinguished all the lamps apart from the one in his hand and fully opened the door that led back up to the temple, allowing a little more distant, grey sunlight to penetrate the immemoria
l gloom. He extinguished his final lamp and began to climb the rounded steps, holding out his arm for Udo to perch on. ‘Bless me!’ he exclaimed, slapping his head with his hand and turning around. ‘I’m such a doddering old fool. I forgot all about our new guest.’ He climbed back down, relit his small, iron lantern and closed the door again, shuffling back towards the furthest recesses of the chamber. The single flickering light picked out a corpse that was such a recent arrival the priest had yet to find a shroud for it. ‘I can’t leave you like this all afternoon, now can I?’
‘No,’ he replied to himself. ‘You should at least show a little respect for a fellow priest.’
‘I know. I know. I’m sorry, brother,’ he muttered, lifting some muslin from a shelf as he approached the body. ‘Are you actually a priest though?’ he wondered aloud, holding the lantern over the remains. The body was that of a wiry old man, with thin, greasy hair and puckered, weather-beaten skin. ‘This certainly seems to suggest you were a man of faith,’ he said, holding the light over a symbol on the old man’s stomach. The sagging folds of skin below his ribs were branded with the shape of a flaming hammer. ‘But there’s something about your expression that makes me wonder.’ He stooped until his clouded, myopic eyes were just an inch or two from the corpse’s face. ‘There’s something a little wild about you.’
‘I’m a mendicant,’ Erasmus said to himself in the same sonorous voice he gave all the dead. ‘That’s why I look so emaciated.’
‘Well, yes, that would explain the sunburned skin too, I suppose, but what about this injury? It looks to me more like the wound of a soldier, or a fanatic even. You certainly didn’t get this in a temple.’ He moved the lantern across the body, illuminating a large, ragged hole, just beneath the man’s left shoulder. ‘And I suppose this must have been the work of your servant,’ he said, fingering the crude attempts at bandaging.
‘You’re a naïve old fool,’ Erasmus replied to himself in a deep voice. ‘Hiding away in the dark for all these years, as the world turns on its head. You think that priests don’t get murdered? No one’s safe anymore. Violence is the only currency people understand in these dark times. You remember what Ernko said, when he delivered his brother’s remains. The whole of Gumprecht is consumed with madness – they’ve turned on each other, hunting down their own families like dogs. They’ve burned their own houses to the ground. All because they think there’s a heretic somewhere in their midst – someone who might draw the gaze of the Ruinous Powers in their direction. And remember that ferryman from Hürdell? He said the people from his village had begun dressing as goats and eating grass, in the hope it would appease the creatures of the forest and spare them from attacks. And if that merchant from Ferlangen was correct, half the cities in the province have fallen to the enemy.’
Erasmus shook his head in surprise as he peeled back the dark, damp rags that covered the wound. ‘What kind of weapon did this to you?’ he muttered. In truth though, after the horrors of the last few years, there was little that could shock the priest anymore, and he began to hum a little ditty to himself as he worked. He reopened his roll of tools and fetched another bottle of ointment. Then, he paused. ‘Looks like you’ve still got something in there, friend,’ he said, peering into the bloody hole. ‘Is that a splinter of wood?’ He took a small scythe-shaped tool from his roll and slid it into the wound.
The corpse gave out a deafening, tremulous scream.
Its eyes opened wide in terror and one of its sinewy hands shot up, grabbing Erasmus’s shoulder in a tight grip.
Erasmus dropped the knife to the floor with a clatter and stared back at the animated corpse in confusion; then he began to scream too. He tried to pull back from its grasp, but the corpse’s second hand shot up, grabbing him firmly by the other shoulder.
The corpse’s face was twisted in horror and confusion as it looked from Erasmus to the surrounding darkness. The vague shapes of the other bodies were just visible, and the corpse shook its head wildly, before turning back to the priest. ‘I’m not dead,’ it breathed in a croaky whisper. ‘For Sigmar’s sake, I’m alive!’
‘I work here mostly on my own,’ said Erasmus, shuffling cheerfully in and out of his bedchamber. ‘My brother, Bertram, visits occasionally.’ His lips twisted into a grimace. ‘He only comes to help when he has to, thankfully – only when there’s too much embalming for me to handle alone. Mind you, that seems to be more often than not lately.’ He lifted Sürman up into a sitting position and handed him a cup of water. ‘Lately it seems like the dead outnumber the living.’ He chuckled as he pulled open the shutters, filling the small room with flat grey light. ‘Another cheerful Ostland day,’ he said, watching the autumn rain slanting across the forest below.
Sürman watched him carefully over the top of the cup as he took a gulp of the water. He immediately spat the liquid out and burst into a series of hacking coughs, spraying flecks of blood all over the bed’s woollen sheets.
‘Be careful,’ said Erasmus, dashing to his side and snatching the cup from him. ‘You need to drink it slowly.’ He shook his head and gently patted Sürman’s bony, hunched back. ‘It’s a miracle you’re alive. That wound must have missed your heart by an inch.’ Once the coughing fit had passed, he handed the cup back and sat on a stool next to the window. ‘Your man brought you to me certain that you were dead.’ Erasmus looked at the floor to hide his embarrassment. ‘There are various tests I would have performed before beginning the embalming, of course. I was just going to remove a couple of the splinters.’
Sürman sipped the water again, carefully this time, and he managed to hold it down. His hollow, stubbly cheeks were still as grey as the rain clouds rushing past the window, but his breath was coming a little easier now, and he was beginning to think he might even survive. ‘Who brought me here?’ he asked in a strained whisper.
Erasmus’s long, pale face lit up with a smile. ‘You sound so much better!’ He clasped his tapered fingers together and muttered a prayer. ‘My skills as a healer are rarely called upon. It’s been a long time since I practiced herb lore. I wasn’t sure if that poultice would be powerful enough to draw out the illness.’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘You’re made of sterner stuff than you look, old man.’
No hint of emotion crossed Sürman’s face. He took a slow breath and then repeated his words a little louder. ‘Who brought me here?’
The eager smile remained on Erasmus’s face as he replied. ‘As I said, it was your man.’ He looked up at the ceiling and drummed his fingers on his knees. ‘I think he said his name was Albrecht or Adolphus, or–’
‘Adelman,’ interrupted Sürman, with a note of impatience in his voice.
‘Yes! That’s the one. He’d travelled with you for days, trying to find help, but he’d finally given up hope of reviving you.’ Erasmus narrowed his eyes and looked back at Sürman. ‘He seemed eager to leave. As though he were worried I would ask him the reasons for your condition.’ He shrugged. ‘But the truth is, my friend, the actions of the living are rarely Morr’s concern. Whatever we do in life, we all reach the same destination.’
‘There are many different routes to that destination,’ muttered Sürman, looking down at his ruined body.
‘Aye,’ replied Erasmus, finally letting the smile slip from his face. ‘That there are.’ He gestured to the hammer on Sürman’s stomach. ‘Are you some kind of priest then, friend?’
‘My name’s Otto Sürman, and yes, I’m a High Priest of Sigmar.’
Erasmus raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘A High Priest, you say? I’d have expected a little more finery.’
‘Adelman has robbed me, you idiot,’ snapped Sürman, rising up from the bed and twisting the sheets in his bony fists. He looked up at the ceiling of the priest’s cell and groaned with frustration. ‘That witch did this to me. She must have summoned Wolff somehow – knowing he would save her. And now she goes free and Adelman has taken every
thing.’ He flopped back onto the bed and glared at Erasmus.
Erasmus looked appalled. ‘Your servant hasn’t robbed you. At least, I don’t think so.’
‘Idiot. Do you think I travel the province naked and penniless? Adelman’s taken my robes and my books too.’ His eyes bulged as a terrible thought hit him. ‘And all of my relics – my priceless relics.’ Sürman drew a breath to hurl more insults at the priest, but before he could speak, the bed dropped away from beneath him and his stomach lurched horribly. He groaned with nausea and clamped his eyes shut in fear. When he opened them again, he was still lying in the priest’s bed and Erasmus was watching over him with a concerned expression on his face.
‘You should calm yourself,’ urged the priest. ‘You’re not through the worst of it yet. The wound was full of illness and spores of corruption. I was forced to use a more powerful mixture than I would’ve liked.’
Sürman’s vision blurred and his temples began to throb. He tried to focus on the priest, but as he peered at him, Erasmus’s long, patrician features began to stretch and elongate: sliding from his face to reveal vivid pits of red flesh beneath his eyes that gradually drooped down towards his mouth. Sürman tried to reach out and push the flesh back into place, but his limbs refused to obey and he groaned in fear. ‘Your face…’ he murmured, as the walls closed in around him.
‘What is it?’ asked Erasmus, leaning forward, so that the remaining flesh peeled back from his head and revealed the glistening skull beneath. ‘You should rest,’ he said, splashing thick blood all over the bed, but Sürman’s eyes were already closing as sleep washed over him.
Anna had sprouted great, black, oily wings and as she stepped towards Sürman she croaked in a harsh, inhuman voice. She drew a knife from beneath her feathers and brandished it playfully at him. Catching the candlelight on the edge of its curved, serrated blade.
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