by William King
Smoke rose from the corpse as flesh flowed beneath skin. A smell of rot and burning flesh combined filled her nostrils. The mind and the power contained within the deathless frame was moulding it into a new shape, a shape that bore some resemblance to the Daemon Prince’s inhumanly beautiful form. Justine knew that the body would be burned out within minutes, unable to contain the power which pulsed within it, but that did not matter. She needed only a few minutes to commune with her lord and seek his council.
Swiftly she outlined what Rolf had told her. ‘I will go to this place and kill everyone there.’
‘Do that, beloved,’ the Daemon Prince’s lovely voice tolled like a bell from within its corrupting form. Once again she felt the sense of certainty and of worship that she always did in his presence.
‘I will kill the girl. I will give you the hearts of the dwarf and the man if they try to protect her.’
‘Best kill them quickly. They are a fell pair, ruthless and deadly. The dwarf carries a weapon forged in ancient days to be the bane of gods. They are both killers without mercy.’
‘They are both as good as dead. I stand armoured in your prophecy. No warrior will ever overcome me in battle. If what you have spoken is the truth.’
‘Search your heart, beloved. You know I have never spoken anything but the truth to you. And know you this also – if you do this thing, immortality and a place among the Chosen will most certainly be yours.’
‘It will be done.’
‘Go then with my blessing. Spread chaos and terror and leave none of your chosen prey among the living.’
The sense of presence ended. The corpse fell headlong into the dirt, already starting to crumble to dust. Justine turned to her troops and gave them the signal to move out.
Felix looked up at the ornate golden hammer. The sun’s rays fell on it through the open door of the temple, making it shimmer in the early morning light. The runes that encrusted the hammerhead reminded him of those which adorned his own blade. He was not too surprised. His sword had been the prized possession of the Order of the Fiery Heart, a group of Sigmarite Templars. It seemed only natural that the blade should have holy markings.
There were few other people present; just some old women who sat cross-legged on the floor and prayed. Babes and their mothers were outside taking in the fresh air while they could. Felix imagined that it could get very stuffy in here with the door barred.
The temple was a simple shrine. The altar was bare save for the hammer used to sanctify weddings and contracts. Sigmar was not so popular a deity here. Most woodsmen looked to Taal, Lord of the Forests, for protection, but he imagined that the Cult of the Hammer would find some favour. Few wanted to willingly offend the gods. The shrine would also provide a link with the distant capital. It was a sign that there was an Empire, with laws and those who would enforce them. The state cult was the link which bound the disparate, distant peoples of the Empire together.
The walls bore none of the friezes and tapestries so popular in richer areas. The altar itself was carved from a block of wood, not stone. He was tempted to touch the hammer, to find out if it were gilded or simply painted. The carving of the altar was of no ordinary quality, however. He admired the coiling around the edges and a representation of the First Emperor’s head that would not have been out of place among the icons in Altdorf cathedral. He wondered who was responsible for the woodwork. He also wondered whether it would burn when the beasts came.
Felix bowed his head and made the Sign of the Hammer and prayed. He prayed that the town would be delivered, and that his life and the lives of his friends would be spared. He touched his hand to the hammer and then to his forehead for good luck and then rose to depart. He stretched, feeling his joints click. He had spent last night in the blockhouse of Fritz Messner and his family. The floor had been marginally preferable to a cold pile of leaves. He had to admit there were times when he missed his down-mattressed bed in Altdorf; there were times when being the son of a wealthy merchant had been not altogether bad. Right now, for instance, he could be sleeping off a hangover in his chambers rather than awaiting the attack of Chaos in some village no one had ever heard of.
‘Felix…’ It was the girl, pale and unsmiling. ‘Herr Messner told me I would find you here.’
‘He was right, Kat. What can I do for you?’
‘I had a nightmare last night, Felix. I dreamt that something came out of the forest and dragged me away. I dreamt I was lost in the dark and things were chasing me…’
Felix could sympathise with that. Many times he had endured similar bad dreams.
‘Hush, little one. They’re not real. Dreams can’t hurt you.’
‘I don’t think that’s true, Felix. I had the same dream the night before the beasts attacked my home.’
Felix suddenly felt chilled to the bone. In his mind’s eye, he could picture the forces of Chaos marching ever closer, bringing their inevitable doom.
Justine sat high in the saddle on the back of her immense, midnight-black charger. Overhead the storm clouds gathered, huge dark thunderheads that seemed to echo the mood of violent rage that boiled within her. This trail, part of the Imperial Highway, was clear. It had been constructed over the years to allow the Emperor’s messengers to pass quickly.
She thought it ironic that such paths would speed the Empire’s inevitable destruction by Chaos. Invaders from the wastes could use them to move quickly westward. She likened this process to the way diseases used the body’s own bloodstream to spread. Yes, she thought, the Empire was dying and Chaos was the disease which would kill it. Secret cabals of cultists spreading corruption in the cities; bands of beastmen and mutants bringing terror in the forests; champions of the Ruinous Powers crossing the border from Kislev and the wastes beyond. She knew these were not unrelated occurrences but symptoms of the same blight. First the Empire and then all the kingdoms of men would fall prey to it. No – she mustn’t think of it as a disease, she told herself. It was a crusade to scourge the earth.
She looked back on the small army that followed her. First the squads of beastmen; huge, deformed and mighty, each led by its own champion. After them rumbled the great black bulk of her secret weapon, the Thunderer, the long-snouted daemonic cannon which had destroyed the gates of Castle Klein and would make it possible for her to take other fortified towns. It was pulled by teams of captured slaves driven by the black-armoured artificers who would man it. Bringing up the rear were the scavengers, the ill-organised rabble who followed like jackals following a pride of lions. Mutants, malformed and demented, driven from their villages and homes by the hatred of their normal kin. They were driven by hate and ready to revenge themselves on humanity.
All the elements of her own life were there, she thought. This road, the route to death and destruction, was simply an extension of the path she had followed all her days. That thought saddened her. Today more than ever she felt riven. It was as if she were two souls inhabiting the same body. One was dark, driven, fed on slaughter and carnage; it gloried in its strength and despised others their weaknesses. It despised her own weakness. She knew this was the side of her Kazakital cultivated as carefully as the gardeners of Parravon nurtured their hellflowers. It possessed the seeds of daemonhood and of immortality. It was a pure hateful being, driven, determined, strong.
The other soul was weak and she hated it. It was sickened by the unending violence of her life and just wanted it to stop. It was the side of her that felt pain, and the urge to give in to pain and not allow pain to befall others. It had been long submerged and twisted almost out of all recognition by the events of her life. Up until the death of Hugo, she had not even allowed herself to know that it still existed. The thought was too horrible, her need for revenge too strong and urgent. She had made her pact with the daemon seven long years ago; and she had needed to keep it in order to gain vengeance. Now her purpose had been fulfilled and once again s
he knew doubt.
The doubt centred upon the child. She could remember carrying it within her. She could remember feeling it grow and kick. She had borne it during the long, sick period of wandering in the wild, when she had scrabbled for roots and grubs, drunk from streams and slept in the hollows beneath trees. It had been her only companion in the wild days after she had run off in fear and horror. It had been a growing presence within her as hunger, hardship and horror had driven her slowly mad.
She doubted that she or it would have survived if she had not encountered the beastwomen in the forest; if they had not taken her in and guarded her and fed her. She remembered them as being oddly shy and gentle compared to the gors and ungors. They had acted on the instruction of their daemonic patron, that was now clear, but she was no less grateful to them for that. They had taken the child away from her on the day of its birth and she had not seen it from that day to this. She knew now, had earned the right to know through long years of tests and battle, that this had all been part of her patron’s plan, a daemonic strategy designed to allow her to transcend her mere humanity and join the ranks of the Elect. She knew it was her last tie with frail humanity and she despised it – and wondered at it too.
She recalled how it had all begun. The beasts had dragged her before that great black altar in the forest. They had brought her to bow before the black stone inscribed with dreadful runes. They had laid her down on the rock and Grind had slashed her throat and wrists with his razor-edged obsidian blade while his acolytes chanted the praises of the Blood God.
She had expected to die then, and she would have welcomed it as an end to her suffering. Instead she had found the darkest of new lives. Her blood had burst forth, to be caught in the depression on the altar’s surface. She had somehow pushed herself upright, kept on her feet by rage and defiance and a strangely serene hatred that blossomed within her. That was when she had sensed the presence. That was when she had seen the face.
In the pool of her own blood she had seen the daemon’s form take shape. Crimson lips had emerged from the red liquid and mouthed questions and answers and promises. It had asked her whether she wanted revenge on those who had brought her to this. It had told her that the world was as corrupt and evil as she thought. It promised her power and eternal life. It had spoken its prophecy. Somehow she had stood, swaying and filled with pain, throughout the ordeal. Afterwards she seemed to remember that her own blood, blackened and smoking, had somehow flowed back from the altar and returned to her veins. The wounds slurped shut, while poison and power blazed through her.
For days she had lain in burning dreams while her body changed, touched by the daemonic essence carried within her own tainted blood. Darkness twisted her and made her strong. Her fangs grew in her mouth. Her eyes changed so that they could see in the dark. Her muscles grew far stronger than a mortal man’s. She had emerged from her trance knowing that it was not chance which had brought her to this concealed altar in the forest’s depths, it was a dark destiny and the malign whim of a daemon’s will.
From somewhere the beastmen produced a suit of black armour, covered in runes. At the following full Morrslieb they had repeated the ritual. Once more her wrists had been cut, once more the daemonic presence appeared. This time the armour was fixed to her body. The blood had flowed and congealed between its plates, forming a network of muscles, veins and fleshy pads which made the armour a second metal skin. The process had left her weak. Once more she had dreamed, and in that dream she had seen what she must do.
She had left the beasts for long years of wandering. Her trek took her ever northwards, through Kislev, through the Troll Country, to the Chaos Wastes and the long eternal war fought between the followers of Darkness. She had battled and fought for the favour of her dark gods and in every combat Kazakital’s prophecy had proven true. She had overcome Helmar Ironfist, the bull-horned champion of Khorne. She’d sacrificed Marlane Marassa, the flame-hearted priestess of Tzeentch, on her own altar. She had torn Zakariah Kaen, the grossly obese champion of Slaanesh, limb from perfumed limb. She had fought in minor battles and great sieges. She had stalked her humanoid prey in the ruined mines beneath the lost dwarf citadel of Karag Dum. There she had recruited the servants of the Thunderer.
Each skirmish had brought her new gifts and powers. She had acquired her steed, Shadow, by challenging its owner, Sethram Schreiber, to single combat and tearing out his heart as an offering to Khorne. She had taken her hellblade from the mangled corpse of Leander Kjan, the leader of the Company of Nine, after the great battle at Hellmouth. She had overcome mutated beasts and monsters, and grown in skill and power until her patron had told her the time was right to return and take vengeance. And during all that time, as she felt the thrill of triumph and the exultation of victory and the sheer joy of battle sing in her tainted blood, she had sometimes wondered what became of the child, and whether the beasts had spared it.
It was nothing to her now, she knew. There was no connection. It was just another piece of flesh cast loose to live and die hopelessly amid the flotsam of this terrible world. It was the final pawn to be sacrificed in the game which would win her immortality. That was all.
So she told herself. But she knew that Kazakital did nothing without reason, and that the child had been spared for a reason. Perhaps this was the final test. Perhaps the daemon hoped to reveal some ultimate flaw within her for its own perverse reasons. In that case, it was doomed to disappointment. She would prove in the end that she was harder than stone. And let the Dark Gods take any who thought to stand in her way.
Felix watched the clouds overhead. They bolted across the sky, a tumbling billowing mass driven by the fierce wind. The hue of the forest changed from light green to a darker, more ominous shade. It seemed that the trees, like everything else, were waiting.
He stood on the parapet atop the wooden barricade. He stared out over the fields, straining to catch any sight of movement in the undergrowth. He guessed that it was late afternoon. Beside him stood Gotrek, studying his axe disinterestedly. Every ten paces along the walls edge stood an archer – one of the foresters, men who could hit a bullseye at two hundred paces. Beside each were three quivers full of arrows. Measuring the distance to the edge of the trees, Felix realised that the space was a killing ground. Any attackers would get bogged down in the ploughed fields and be easy prey for the archers.
He tried to let the thought reassure him; it did not. Night in the forest was not like the night in the well-lit thoroughfares of Altdorf. When darkness came it was absolute. A man six paces away was a blurred outline. After dark, only the moons provided any light to see by and the clouds would block them out.
Earlier that day the foresters had lined the forest’s edge with traps: sharpened branches bent back and tied that would snap forward when a tripwire was triggered; pits to trap the ankles of the unwary, some filled with sharpened stakes and covered with patches of turf; bear traps and mantraps, spring-driven steel jaws ready to bite any interlopers were there too. If the villagers survived the attack they would have their work cut out disarming their own devices. Perhaps the thoroughness with which they had saturated the wood reflected a belief that they would not survive, he thought.
Felix drummed his fingers on the top of the wall, feeling the rough touch of the lichen-covered wood against his fingers. Gotrek hummed tunelessly to himself, ignoring the irritated stares of the woodsmen. The waiting was always the worst of it. No fight he had ever faced had been as bad as the premonitions he had before it. Once action began he would be fine. He would be scared but the simple business of keeping alive would occupy his mind. For now he had nothing to do but stand and wait, and face the spectres his imagination conjured.
He pictured himself wounded, a great beastman standing over him. He imagined himself facing the woman in black and shuddered. He remembered the slaughter at Kleindorf and his terror strained against its leash of self-control. To comfort himself he tried
to remember how he had felt after surviving the battle with the beastmen; the memory was pallid. He tried to envisage a scene after the battle with himself and the Slayer as the heroes who had rallied the troops and driven off the beasts. It seemed unconvincing.
‘They’ll be here soon enough, manling,’ Gotrek said. He sounded almost happy.
‘That’s what I’m worried about.’
Nightmare shapes drifted to the edge of the wood. In the pale light, Felix thought he could see a great horn-headed figure among the trees. An arrow rushed out from the parapet and fell short. Yes, they were there. More beast silhouettes became visible. Something disturbed the undergrowth. It rustled and moved like water displaced by great behemoths beneath its surface. The clouds parted and the moons leered down. Their glow illuminated a hellish scene.
‘Grungni’s bones!’ Gotrek cursed. ‘Look at that!’
‘What?’
‘There, manling! Look! They’ve got a siege machine. No wonder Kleindorf fell.’
Felix saw the black-armoured figures. They surrounded a great long-snouted machine, like a many-barrelled siege cannon. With whips they drove back a crowd of snarling mutants. As he watched he saw their twisted leader climb up into a seat at the engine’s back. Other dark warriors hurried round the machine’s base, pulling out metal legs to secure the thing in place. As the leader turned a great crank the weapon swivelled to bear on the village. Its barrel was moulded in the shape of a dragon’s head. Even at this distance Felix could hear the creaks from its mounting. More arrows hurtled towards it but again they fell short. Jeering cries echoed from the woods.
‘What is it, Gotrek? What will it do?’
‘Damn them – it’s a cannon of some sort! Now we know what did for the fortifications at Kleindorf.’