The Empire Omnibus

by Chris Wraight

  Then they caught him.

  The grip on his shoulder was crushing. A spear of cold pierced him, and he screamed, stumbling into the black mud beneath. There was a deathly clatter all around him. Kreisler fell heavily, rolling over in the grime. His hammering heart felt like it would burst. Frantically, hands flailing, he tried to push them off. Their fingers were like beaten iron, not a scrap of warm flesh on them. He felt more of them tug at his clothes. Something was dragging him back into the marshes.

  Kreisler let out a second agonised scream. He couldn’t see. His eyes were splattered with mud. He could feel them scrabbling all over him, pawing at his portly, warm body. He could hear them too. They were whispering to each other in voices that must once have been human. Even in the midst of his blind panic, he could make out a few words.

  ‘Come with us,’ they said, their words resonating like the memory of a nightmare. ‘You are full and hot with blood, fat man, just as we were. Come with us…’

  Kreisler felt his throat constrict with terror. His screams died. Whimpering, he tried to push himself away from them, to crawl from the whispering horrors clustering over him, to push their knife-sharp fingers from his throat. Then he saw one of their faces thrust over his. There were teeth, human teeth, framed by flaps of leathery skin. A single eye hung precariously in a socket. Old blood streaked the pale skin. Fingers reached for his face; pitiless rods of bone and sinew.

  His heart shuddered, his vision went black. So this is death, he thought.

  But the final gouging never came. Kreisler felt the flames before he saw them. There were voices, men’s voices, and torches. A thin screaming broke out around him. He opened his eyes, and saw bone smashed, flesh ripped. There were heavy footfalls. A brazier was tipped over, and flame surged through the undergrowth beyond. Rough hands pulled him away from the inferno.

  ‘Mother of Sigmar,’ grunted a familiar voice close to his ear. ‘He’s a fat bastard.’

  ‘Just pull,’ came another, the note of panic high.

  Kreisler felt his senses returning. He was surrounded by men. His own kin, Herrendorfers. In the flickering light, their faces were drawn and terrified. They were all armed. In the middle of the group was the familiar hunched silhouette of Boris.

  His vision whirled back to the trees. His pursuers were still there. Some were doused in fire, twitching madly; others hung back from the flames. Their faces were pale in the shadow. Dozens of them. More than ever before. They began to shuffle forward again.

  ‘Back behind the walls!’ the old man croaked, his ragged voice breaking in the cold air.

  Kreisler was pulled backwards roughly. The noise of burning and screaming rose. He began to regain some strength, and started to stumble along on his own account. The others clustered around him, and they scraped their way back to the gate. They made it, passing under the heavy gatehouse with relief.

  Robbed of their prize, the wailing of the dead rose from the marshes. None came after them. They weren’t strong enough to take on the axes of the entire village. Not yet.

  The gates slammed shut. Kreisler was dropped unceremoniously on the earth inside the walls. He felt nauseous. He couldn’t focus, and lay back, pulling air into his lungs in shuddering heaves. Men were running everywhere, lighting fresh fires, calling out instructions. The village was preparing to defend itself, just as it did every night.

  Kreisler looked around him. The familiar wattle huts and buildings looked back, as if mocking his failure to escape. They were all filthy, strewn with mud and mottled damp. Pools of oily water lay in the streets, and a low mist curled around the base of the rundown houses. Many of the windows were empty, or covered with rotten wooden planks. Perhaps a little over half of them were still inhabited. The rest belonged to those who had been taken. Or maybe to the few who had got away. Where they were now, none could tell. They had left behind nothing but squalor and despair.

  After some time, Boris came back over to Kreisler. The old priest’s robes flapped in the icy wind. The torch he carried threw his lined grey face into savage relief. Kreisler felt a surge of emotion.

  ‘Father!’ he gasped, tears breaking out across his flabby cheeks.

  The priest looked down at him grimly.

  ‘More all the time,’ he said, almost to himself.

  Boris gazed down wearily at the icon of Sigmar hanging from his neck. He didn’t ask why Kreisler had been out in the marshes, or admonish him for putting other lives at risk. He seemed tired and distracted.

  ‘We need help,’ he muttered, grudgingly. ‘What a wizard starts, a wizard must finish.’

  Boris sighed deeply, and looked over towards the gates. Kreisler watched him in confusion, barely understanding his words. Behind him, the doors were sealed with heavy beams, and more braziers were lit. Women came to tend to his wounds. None would sleep in Herrendorf that night. Not until the grey morning came and the horrors shrunk back into the marsh.

  Boris limped off, his face creased with concern. Kreisler sagged back against the mud and matted straw of the floor, his vision swimming, ignoring the fussing voices around him. From beyond the village walls, agonised cries of frustration soared into the air and drifted away.

  They had been denied their prey this time. But they would be back.

  Katerina Lautermann pulled gently on the reins, and her horse came to a halt. Taking advantage of the rare high ground, she looked around her. In every direction, the bleak marshland stretched towards the horizon. The sky was heavy and low. Rain fell steadily, turning the ground below into a thick soup of filth. Stunted, twisted trees vied with strangling gorse and black grass to cover the landscape. The place looked blighted, ruined, and weary. She felt utterly alone.

  She found herself wondering how any people could make a living in such a forsaken place. The squalor and wretchedness of the Ostermark’s populace never ceased to amaze her. However pox-ridden, bandit-infested and debauched you thought the last place had been, the Empire was always capable of surprising you. Whispering a minor cleansing spell to keep her nostrils warded from the more noxious of the marsh smells, she pressed on, pushing the horse gently down the long incline towards the village ahead. She’d been told it was cursed. Having seen the country in which it nestled, she could well believe it.

  As she went, Katerina stretched her limbs slightly in the saddle. She was cold and stiff after the long ride from Bechafen. The weather was relentlessly chill and damp, the scenery bleak and unremitting. Not for the first time, she found herself cursing Patriarch Klaus, the head of her order. Ever since that business with the orcs in the Grey Mountains, he had become more unpredictable, perhaps vexed by her visible success. So it was that she was given such miserable tasks to perform for him. On her return, things would have to change.

  Nevertheless, the message from Herrendorf had piqued her interest for another reason. Radamus Arforl, one of the mightiest wizards of her order. She knew of his lore from when she had been an acolyte. He had done much in the early years of the College to augment its prestige, and then, like so many of their number, had fallen in battle. For three long centuries, no reports of his fate had come to light. Only now, quite without precedent, tidings had come from a forgotten outpost of humanity where his name was remembered with veneration. It piqued her curiosity. Though if she’d known quite how much mud she would have to wade through to get there, she might have been less enthusiastic.

  She approached the village. The low trees retreated slightly, creating a wide and mournful clearing. The ground was heavy and waterlogged, and what fields there were looked like they produced a meagre crop. A few thin animals grazed warily at the edge of the forest. In the centre of the open space, the village itself stood. It was walled, and the dark stone rose twice the height of a man on all sides. Though crudely made, the defences looked formidable. Few of the buildings within protruded above the height of the wall. She guessed the houses in such a pl
ace would be low, mean affairs. What little wealth Herrendorf had had clearly been placed in its wall. That didn’t bode well.

  Katerina came up to the gate. There were dark bundles tied to the walls. As she drew closer, she saw what they were. Dead crows, dozens of them, suspended from makeshift gibbets in bundles. She swallowed her distaste, and dismounted. As she landed, filth splattered over her fine leather boots and cloak. She hissed a curse under her breath, and led her horse towards the sturdy gatehouse. Her arrival had been anticipated. There were men clustered under the low arch, waiting. Like frightened children, they looked unwilling to come into the open to meet her. Katerina took a deep breath. Much as she hated peasants, if this business was going to be concluded properly, she’d need to keep civil and bite her tongue.

  As she neared the group, one figure limped towards her. He wore the robes of a priest of Sigmar, though they had long since passed their best. He was heavily hunched, and his skin was pale and sickly. Deep rings of grey underscored his eyes, and his thin fingers clutched a staff for balance.

  ‘Welcome, my lady wizard,’ he said in a scratchy voice. ‘You’ve found us at last.’

  Katerina nodded politely.

  ‘You’re Boris, the one who sent the letter?’ she asked.

  ‘I am,’ said the priest, escorting her towards the crowd. ‘Now that the headman has been taken, I’m the last vestige of leadership these people have. Not much for them to rally around, you might think. Maybe so. But I will not leave them.’

  He ushered her towards the rest of the villagers.

  ‘This is Albrecht, the gatekeeper,’ said Boris, motioning towards a low-browed brute of a man who was holding one of the heavy oak doors open for them.

  Katerina surveyed the group of men around her with distaste. They looked back at her with similar animosity, and parted to allow her entry to the village. They seemed extremely protective of the gatehouse, as if it was some kind of enchanted barrier. Dark eyes watched her with that steady, stupid curiosity so common in the mean folk of the Empire. Katerina had to stop herself from turning around, jumping straight back on her horse and riding as fast as she could back to civilisation.

  ‘This is Gerhard, the blacksmith,’ continued Boris, apparently oblivious to her discomfort, tediously reeling off the names of the all the men in the welcome party. ‘And Weiss, the carpenter.’

  The last one looked, if possible, even surlier than the rest. He had a heavy face, marked with days-old stubble. His skin was pale and blotchy, his clothes ragged and poor. He looked at her with open belligerence. This was getting ridiculous. Katerina found her pride getting the better of her. She was an Imperial wizard of the Amethyst Order, capable of razing the whole place to the ground with a single word, and these peasants were being insolent in the extreme.

  ‘Greetings, Herr Weiss,’ she said in a voice calculated to belittle him. ‘Perhaps you could take my horse. We’ve been riding long, and she needs water.’

  Weiss glowered at her.

  ‘I don’t hold with witches,’ he said in a thick voice, and turned away, pushing his way through the crowd.

  Katerina felt her cheeks flush. There were murmurs of approval from the others. Boris snapped his fingers and a fat man came to his side.

  ‘Kreisler, take the lady’s horse and see that it’s stabled,’ he said sharply, giving his fellow villagers a hard look.

  At least that ended the round of introductions. Boris swiftly escorted Katerina to his dwelling place. They passed through the squalid main street, stained with the ever-present pools of filmy marshwater. The villagers seemed to have given up trying to staunch the filth with straw. Piles of refuse had been allowed to gather at the corner of the tired streets, and flies buzzed lazily in the shadows. The buildings, most of which were wooden-framed wattle-and-daub houses with dark thatched roofs, had been allowed to run to near-ruin. Some had even collapsed, and their wooden structures stood open to the chill marsh wind like carcasses.

  The priest’s chambers were in better order, but still bore the marks of neglect. A stale, damp smell had settled over the whole place, and the windows were dark. It took Katerina a few moments before she ducked under the low lintel and into the gloom of the interior. Once inside, Boris ushered her to a low wooden bench. Clumsy from the ride, she sat down heavily. The priest lit some tallow candles and poured her a flask of beer. She drank greedily, ignoring the sour taste and the acrid smell of the candles. This was as good as it was going to get.

  ‘I apologise for the others, my lady,’ he said, sitting opposite her in a battered old wooden chair. ‘We get few visitors.’

  ‘Can’t imagine why,’ said Katerina, dryly, and took another swig.

  The priest’s chambers were sparse, but relatively clean. Old-looking wooden icons of Sigmar hung from the bare stone walls. On a low table a few leather-bound books rested. They looked well-used. Clearly the man could read, then.

  ‘So,’ she said, making herself as comfortable as possible on the bench. ‘The place is cursed. That much I can see myself.’

  Boris nodded.

  ‘There’s no doubt about it, my lady. Each night more come. The unquiet dead. We recognise some of them, folk of Herrendorf we buried years ago. Others we don’t. They come from the deep marshes. We can drive them off by fire, but they grow bolder. Something is disturbing them.’

  ‘You’ve not tried to leave?’

  ‘Some of us did, in the first days. Perhaps a few made it out of the marshes back then. Now none of us do. They wait for the dark, and then they come. I have seen it myself. If we’d delayed sending our tidings much longer, no messenger could have escaped them to tell our tale. The very fact you are here at all is a blessing from Sigmar.’

  He looked at her with his rheumy, sombre eyes.

  ‘In any case, this is our home. It is all we have. We have worked here and died here. We cannot leave it to the dead. I will not, at any rate. They are an abomination.’

  Katerina looked at him carefully.

  ‘And you think I can help you,’ she said. ‘Unusual, for a priest to summon a wizard to do his work. If you needed aid, why not ask for it from your own kind?’

  Boris shook his head dismissively.

  ‘None could do more than I have,’ he said, with a trace of pride. ‘I purified the village with the rites of my order, placed wards on the walls, performed rituals of exorcism where the resting places of the corpses were known. None of it works. We are mindful of our history here. A century and more ago, it was a wizard that ended the first of these plagues. An Amethyst mage at that, just like you. It was his spells that laid the dead back in their graves and has kept us warded from evil since. You must work the same spells again, my lady. Nothing else will suffice.’

  ‘You speak of Arforl,’ said Katerina, carefully. ‘The circumstances of his death have long been unknown to my college. If he indeed died here, my master will be interested.’

  Boris nodded eagerly.

  ‘Radamus Arforl. We know the name here, even though so many years have passed. The story is told to our children. We don’t forget. He died in the marshes, fighting the living dead. Somewhere out there he still lies, his mausoleum watching over the source of the evil.’

  Boris broke into a cough, and for a few moments his ragged body shook. He recovered himself with difficulty. A weary smile flickered on his lips.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Age, and the burden of care.’

  Katerina frowned, ignoring the man’s discomfort.

  ‘His mausoleum is in the marshes?’ she said. ‘I’d like to see it.’

  Boris shook his head.

  ‘It has been lost for many years. Now only the legend remains. Some of us have tried to find it, especially now the plague has come again. I tried myself, though I didn’t get far. None have done so. It may have been destroyed. Or perhaps it’s hidden from ungifted eyes. I ho
ped there would be secrets there, something to give us a reason for the dead rising again. We don’t know why they’ve come back. If there is an answer, it must surely lie in the past.’

  Katerina examined the priest closely as he spoke.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, guardedly. ‘The two plagues may be unconnected.’

  Boris smiled tolerantly.

  ‘I am an old man,’ he said. ‘Morr will take me soon. But when I was younger and strong enough to travel, I did all I could to delve into the past. There are scraps of parchment, hidden here and there, fragments of the old chronicles. If you had read them, you would be in no doubt. Arforl was here, my lady, as were the dead. He died here. He saved us. Just as you will do.’

  Katerina felt a twinge of disquiet at that. She had no lack of faith in her abilities, but magic was a complicated art, and these villagers couldn’t be expected to understand the subtleties involved.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ she said. ‘You said little in your letter. The dead do not rise by themselves. Did your chronicles name a necromancer?’

  ‘There’s a single name in the legends. The Master of Crows. It was he who summoned the dead from the marshes. Arforl defeated him. He destroyed the necromancer’s body and cursed his soul. It was in doing so that he was wounded to death. Since then the dead have not returned.’

  ‘Until now.’

  ‘That is so. We don’t know why. Some of the stupider members of the village here have even started killing crows. They catch them and hang them from the walls, as if such a thing would ward against the ancient evil. I tell them that the Master of Crows is dead. Even if he’d survived the magic of Arforl, age would have taken him long ago.’

  Katerina pursed her lips thoughtfully.

  ‘The necromantic arts are powerful,’ she murmured. ‘A man may live for as long as the dark magic sustains him. In any case, he may have had a disciple.’