The Empire Omnibus

by Chris Wraight

  Ratboy awoke to a world of silence and pain.

  Charred rafters were tumbling from a temple roof to reveal a heavy, pewter sky. Stone lintels were smashing across flagstones, pulling down walls and windows as they went. Fragments of skin, teeth and bone were bouncing across the floor, while overhead, flaming pages of the Deus Sigmar drifted beneath what remained of the vaulted ceiling. But none of it made a sound.

  Other senses quickly returned to him. He felt the hard stone of the temple floor pressing into his blistered back, and he could clearly smell the meaty aroma of embers, smouldering on his upturned face; but nothing reached his ears.

  He lurched up from the blood-slick floor and noticed something moving through the chaos. A figure was dragging itself through the tumbling masonry. It kept to the shadows and was hard to see clearly, but its awkward, jerking movements unnerved him. He shuddered and closed his eyes. When he looked again it was almost gone. A single, glistening thread was briefly visible, as it slid out through the temple door, then it disappeared into the growing morning light.

  A whistling began in Ratboy’s head as he stumbled through the smoke and confusion. He pounded his skull, pummelling the side of his face with his bloodied fist and, to his surprise, this seemed to help. He felt something shift in his left ear and finally, with a fizzing, popping screech, sound returned to him.

  As the agony in his head eased, he began to notice other pains: his left side was badly scorched and the leather of his coat had merged with his arm like new skin. Blisters were erupting all over his scrawny neck. He lifted a hand to his face and winced at the smell of burnt flesh, but as he flexed his fingers he smiled. Still works, he thought. He picked the glowing embers from his face, ran a nervous hand over his aching skull and laughed with relief. ‘I’m alive,’ he muttered.

  Memory came back to him with a rush of adrenaline. Brother Wolff, he thought, scanning the room. He quickly spotted the old priest, slumped awkwardly beneath a pile of rubble and he limped to his master’s side. ‘Jakob,’ he whispered, taking his hand, ‘My lord.’ The priest’s chest armour was scorched and dented and the grey stubble that covered his head was dark with blood, but he still lived. ‘It’s a miracle,’ said Ratboy, helping him to his feet.

  Wolff looked down at his torso and shook his head in despair. ‘I’ve failed,’ he muttered. Then, his bloodshot eyes focused on Ratboy. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snapped, grabbing the boy’s arm.

  Ratboy was about to reply when a large section of the roof erupted with fresh flames and they were forced to flee, stumbling punch-drunk from the building.

  They fell out into the grey Ostland dawn and clambered slowly up to the edge of the forest. From there, the temple looked a little more stable: one of the walls had given way and the tower was slumped at a slightly odd angle, but it looked mostly intact. The flames were already subsiding. Wolff examined his torso again and began to gingerly remove a row of pouches that was strapped to his chest.

  ‘They didn’t all explode,’ said Ratboy. ‘That’s why you survived.’

  Wolff nodded, then scowled at his servant. ‘Did you follow me from the camp last night?’ Then he took his servant’s head in his hands and peered intently at him. ‘Your ears – are you hurt?’

  Ratboy noticed a gentle warmth flowing down his neck and realised he was bleeding from the side of his head. The priest ignored his murmurs of complaint and clasped the boy’s head even tighter. Eventually, a different kind of heat blossomed behind Ratboy’s eyes and he slipped into unconsciousness.

  When Ratboy came to, the midday sun was already warming the grounds of the temple. He lay there for a while, looking down across the little clearing and listening to the harsh cawing of ravens perched on the temple roof. He ran a hand over his battered, skinny limbs, struggling to believe they were still intact. The pain in his side had eased a little and he smiled with the simple joy of being alive. Something about the birdsong seemed odd though. He listened to the sounds of the forest; sounds he had thought lost to him. Beneath the birdsong and the creaking of branches, he thought he heard words: soft, singsong voices, calling to him. ‘Firefirefire,’ they whispered. Then an odd smell reached him – an acrid, offal stink that had no place in such an idyllic scene.

  He climbed to his feet, suddenly afraid, and limped quickly back down to the temple. ‘Brother Wolff?’ he called, peering cautiously into the gloom. There was no reply. A faint haze of smoke still lingered in the air, but the roof was no longer falling and he decided it was safe to enter. In a far corner, he saw the priest’s shadow, thrown across the wall by a flickering oil lamp. The old man was clearing dust off a headstone and peering closely at an inscription.

  ‘Brother Wolff,’ he said, crossing the temple, ‘did you kill him? I thought I saw something earlier. I think it was a man, but it didn’t look, well…’

  The priest gave no reply and continued staring at the headstone.

  ‘Lord?’

  Wolff looked up at Ratboy with despair on his face. ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘The Reaver – did he die?’

  The priest frowned for a few seconds, then raised his eyebrows in recognition. ‘Oh, the Norscan, no, I found parts of him over there,’ he gestured to a crumpled mound near the altar, ‘but he survived the blast. Not for long though, I think. Nearly half the powder detonated. He must be burned beyond recognition.’ He looked around at the ruined building and frowned. ‘I seem to have lost my warhammer though. I think it may have been destroyed by the explosion.’

  Ratboy knew what such a loss would mean to the priest. The hammer was more than just a weapon – it was a powerful icon of his faith. Wolff would feel lost without it. He could not help smiling at the sight of his master’s familiar scowl however. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again,’ he said.

  ‘You spied on me?’ replied Wolff.

  Ratboy nodded, with a rueful smile. ‘I wondered what had dragged you from your tent so early. Even you don’t usually rise until dawn, so I crept through the moonlight to see what you were up to. I don’t know what you said to those poor engineers, but it seemed to wake them up pretty sharpish.’

  Wolff gave a short bark of laughter. ‘What a bunch of rogues. I think they’d only stopped drinking a couple of hours earlier.’ He shook his head. ‘And on the eve of such an important battle.’

  ‘Well – you seemed to sober them up pretty quickly. I saw them give you those blackpowder weapons, but I couldn’t understand why you hid them beneath your cloak. Or why you crept out of the camp like that. Why would you head off into the forest on your own, with the enemy camped so close by?’

  Wolff sighed. ‘You’ve seen the way the marauders rally at the site of their champion – the Reaver as you called him.’

  ‘Of course – and I’ve seen the way he watches your every move.’

  Wolff nodded and smiled. ‘You have your wits about you boy. Yes, you’re right – he knows me. Even in that pit of corruption he calls a brain he knows what I represent to the regiment: hope. Ever since I rallied Maximillian’s pistoliers at the Battle for Hogel Bridge, he’s had me in his sights. Even then, as I led the charge across to the west bank, I realised he was desperately trying to separate me from the others, but our firepower was too great.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Ratboy with a grimace. ‘He lashed the marauders half to death trying to get to you, but they just fell in their dozens, their bellies full of shot. The river ran red before he finally gave up.’

  ‘Yes – and so it’s been in every battle of the campaign, leaving us at this bloody impasse. And he knows this deadlock will continue until one of us dies, but so far he’s been unable to corner me.’ Wolff looked away, as though he were suddenly embarrassed. ‘So, I thought I’d give him the chance he’s been looking for. He knew as well as I did that there was a Sigmarite temple in the heart of this wood; the kind of temple a priest might be foolish e
nough to visit.’ He paused and took a long breath. ‘I knew I couldn’t survive an encounter with such a creature, but that fitted in with my own plans.’

  Ratboy laughed, trying to hide his shock. ‘You wanted to die?’ He noticed that Wolff was not listening, but staring at the headstone again. ‘Brother Wolff?’

  ‘What kind of a miracle,’ muttered the priest, ‘could happen here?’

  Ratboy edged closer to the headstone to get a better look. Most of the engraving was scorched beyond recognition, but the names were still just about legible: Hieronymus and Margarethe Wolff.

  ‘Wolff?’ asked Ratboy. ‘Are these your relatives?’

  The priest looked up at him. ‘My parents.’ He sat down heavily next to the stone and massaged his bloody, shaven scalp. ‘As soon as I led the Reaver into this clearing, I knew I had the right place. He was on me so fast though, I hardly had the chance to look around. I had no intention of surviving, as you guessed, but I was determined not to die alone.’ He paused, and looked up at Ratboy with a feverish look in his eye. ‘My faith has always been a means to an end. Its usefulness was always going to be finite.’

  Ratboy’s thin, beak-nosed face flushed a deep red. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’ A dull clang rang out as Wolff kicked the headstone with his ironclad boot. ‘This is a mark of my inescapable sin. A sin beyond reckoning. A sin against my own parents. My faith has never been anything more than atonement and today was to be my final penance.’ He snapped the silver hammer that hung around his neck and threw it to the floor in disgust. ‘But now I see that there is no penance. Nothing can atone for what I’ve done. I’ve failed. I can’t even die.’ He looked up at the ruined ceiling. ‘I think my willingness to die gave me an edge though. The Reaver thought me easy prey, out here in the woods, away from our guns and cavalry. His gods have bestowed many gifts on him,’ he grimaced, ‘many gifts.’ He tapped the scorch marks on his breastplate and gave a grim smile. ‘If it wasn’t for my final trick, he would’ve finished me.’

  Ratboy’s mind was cast back to the odd figure he saw crawling from the temple, and he shuddered, relieved he had seen no more of the creature. He looked back at the stone. ‘But if these are your parents then this must be–’

  ‘My home, yes. A place so banished from my thoughts I flinched when I saw it on the general’s campaign map. So great is my shame.’

  ‘Why should you be ashamed, Brother Wolff? You’re an inspiration to the entire regiment. Your faith shines out of you. How can you dismiss it so easily?’

  ‘My faith? Oh yes, my faith has always inspired, but to what end? And anyway, what’s the use?’ His voice cracked. ‘What use is a religion so powerless it can’t even erase my own crimes? How could it lift this darkness that hangs over us?’ He sighed and clenched his broad, powerful hands, until the old scars that networked them throbbed a deep red. Then he began to speak in a loud voice, as though addressing a crowd. ‘At the age of ten my parents sent me to a local priest, Aldus Braun, boasting of my piety and learning. Even at that tender age I possessed an unusual, infectious fervour. The priest taught me to read, and I quickly surpassed him. Within a year I had devoured every text in his library. At the age of eleven, I could quote the Deus Sigmar in its entirety, and with such conviction it would make you weep to hear it. It could have ended there, the happy tale of a devout childhood, but my parents wanted more.

  ‘My older brother, Fabian was a useless wastrel, as is most of our aristocracy. He did no real harm: gambling, duelling, womanising and the like; nothing unusual for a young duke, but he was an embarrassment to my parents, so they focused all their energies on me: their perfect, pious, prodigal son. Soon, I was the sneak of the village. Every suspicious look or deed reported back to Brother Braun, until there wasn’t a crone within fifteen miles who would dare pluck a herb.’

  ‘So, you were an eager apprentice. I see no shame in that. You were being trained for a lifetime of holy servitude.’

  Wolff shook his head and smiled. ‘But they trained me too well, you see. Unbridled faith is a dangerous dog to unleash, unless you know how to call it off. Brother Braun was summoned to Altdorf for a while and I returned to the old house.’ He gestured out through a broken window. ‘If you climbed that hill you could probably still see it, sitting smugly at the north end of the valley. Fabian was too busy chasing peasant girls to entertain his little brother, and as the summer passed I grew progressively more bored. Finally, with my parents away hunting, and the house empty, I found myself rummaging in the attics.’ He paused, and took a long breath. ‘With hindsight, the things I found were so pitifully innocent: just some wooden idols; nature gods, nothing more than that. Relics of a more innocent age, I suppose. But of course, my shining faith, as you so elegantly described it, drove me on.

  ‘With Braun away in Altdorf, I didn’t know where to turn. My righteous young mind was convinced their souls were in peril. I was mindless with fear, desperate to tell someone before they returned. Otto Sürman was the name of my saviour.’ He looked up at Ratboy. ‘I threw myself on his mercy, much as you did mine. They told me he was a priest of Sigmar, but witch hunter would have been a more accurate description. Or maybe rabid, mindless zealot might have done better. Utterly unhinged. The worst kind of backwater tyrant. Thriving on fear like a vampire.’ He spat bitterly on the floor. ‘I betrayed my family to a monster.’

  Wolff gripped the headstone and screwed his eyes tightly shut. ‘As my parents burned, the militia had to hold my brother back, or he would have torn me to pieces. He swore that if I ever stepped foot in the province again, he would rip out my heart with his bare hands.’ He looked at Ratboy with an awful, despairing grin. ‘I can still hear their cries. They begged for mercy as the flames took hold.’

  Ratboy lowered his head, afraid of Wolff’s terrible gaze.

  ‘So you see, you’ve chosen a very poor prophet for your inspiration. I can lead no one to salvation. For these last years my faith has been no more than a useless burden. Nothing I have done in Sigmar’s name has ever eased my guilt. My pain just grew, year on year, until eventually I merely hoped to die in the most effective way possible. I thought that to sacrifice myself here might save the regiment and maybe redeem me at the same time. As soon as I saw the name of Berlau on the map, way back at the start of the campaign, I realised what a perfect symmetry it would make, to die here. I still hoped I could repay the old debt somehow.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘What a fool. Who could repay such a thing? Do you see? There was no occultist in my parents’ house. Just a couple of old dolls; dolls my parents had probably never laid eyes on. They burned for nothing.’ He cradled his head in his hands. ‘I saw guilt where there was only love.’

  To see the priest in such despair shocked Ratboy deeply and he could think of no words of comfort. After a while he backed away, leaving Jakob to his grief. He decided to head back to the encampment and fetch help. The priest seemed utterly bereft and Ratboy feared for his sanity.

  As he passed the base of the crumbling tower, however, he spotted something glittering in the dust and stopped. A metal block of some kind was sticking out of the rubble. He stooped to investigate, only to be distracted by something even more interesting. The explosion had shifted the tower’s lower stones to reveal a small staircase, leading down into the foundations of the temple. He stepped closer and realised it must have once been some kind of priest hole, now revealed for all the world to see. Intrigued, he lit a lamp and climbed down into the darkness. It was a library of sorts. Most of the abandoned temple had obviously been looted years ago, but this tiny chamber was still intact. Ratboy placed the lamp on the table and opened a book.

  Months before, as a starving refugee, he had thrown himself on the mercy of the army as it marched through Ostland but the soldiers had caught him stealing food and punished him cruelly. They were men on the edge of defeat and their fear made animals o
f them. They spat on his tattered clothes, kicked his filthy, skinny body and christened him ‘Ratboy’. Finally, they chased him from the camp with a leather ‘tail’ nailed to his back. When Wolff found him snivelling and bleeding on the outskirts of the camp he was in a truly wretched state. The old man took pity on him and employed the boy as a servant. The priest was taciturn and ill-tempered, but as the army marched on, he kept his new acolyte from harm. More than this, to Ratboy’s delight, as Wolff healed the young boy, he also taught him to read. Ratboy had surprised himself with his own aptitude and, peering now at the graceful script in front of him, he felt a familiar rush of pleasure as he began to read. It was the journal of Aldus Braun, the priest who mentored Wolff all those decades ago. Ratboy poured over the text, reliving the childhood exploits of his grizzled old master. He lost himself in Braun’s tales of his young protégé, forgetting for a while the sorry state Jakob had come to.

  Dates were carefully foiled on the books’ leather spines and, before leaving, Ratboy plucked a volume from a shelf to read the priest’s last words. The final entry was written in a more hurried hand than the others. It made for interesting reading:

  I can live with this burden no longer. To think that the boy should spend his entire life with such guilt is unthinkable. The fault was never his and he must be told. I am riding tonight to confront the witch hunter, Sürman, and demand he reveal the truth. I fully expect him to comply. It will doubtless be the end of his ‘career’ but I consider that a small price to pay for correcting such a mistake. To have burned the Wolffs on the flimsy evidence of a child was a travesty of justice in the first place, but to then discover the real occultist, and attempt to hide the truth, is beyond the pale. If Sürman will not admit his mistake and reveal the true guilty party, then I will accuse him openly. I am not afraid. I have absolute faith that Sigmar himself will protect me from Sürman’s hungry pyre.