THE IGNORANT ARMIES
by Jack Yeovil


	And we are here as on a darkling plain
	Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
	Where ignorant armies clash by night.

	- Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"


	Settling Tsarina down, he saw the frozen blood around her hooves. The last blacksmith's nails had gone too deep. The horse's ankles weren't good, and the last three weeks' ride had been hard on her. She'd barely been worth the price they'd paid for her when she was fresh. Now, she was a dependent. And they couldn't use dependents.
	"There, Tsarina, there," he said, smoothing the horse's mane, feeling her fragile warmth through thick hair. Her flesh wouldn't be warm much longer. Not through another snow, another skirmish, or another day's ride. As always, Vukotich had been right. When they had bargained successfully with the trader months ago, Johann had suggested calling the pair Tsar and Tsarina in honour of the ruling house of Kislev. The Iron Man, face unreadable under his scars, had snorted and said, "Johann, you don't give a name to something you may have to eat." 
	Vukotich had been in the Northern Forests of Kislev before, as a mercenary in the service of Tsar Radii Bokha, subduing an insubordinate boyar, fending off minor incursions from the Wastes. He had known what he was talking about. This wasn't the Old World, this was a cruel country. You could see it in the faces of the people, in the iron-hard ground and the slate-coloured sky. In the forests, you could see it in the gallows-trees and the looted graves. Everything had been hacked and scarred into misery. In the hostelries, the songs had been brutal or gloomy, the food was like spiced leather, and all the jokes referred to filthy practices involving the livestock.
	In the dusk, Johann saw Vukotich, a spiky shadow in furs, emerging from the trees with an armload of firewood. Stripped of the ice-threaded bark, the wood would burn smokily, but it would burn the night through. Vukotich dumped his load in the centre of the dark brown circle from which he had cleared the snow. What little light was left in the sky had to fight its way down through four-hundred foot trees. They should have made camp an hour ago to be relatively secure by nightfall, but they had been pushing on, Tsarina had been limping, and - just maybe, without consciously working at it - they had wanted to be a temptation to Cicatrice's tail-draggers. Sigmar knows, Johann thought, it would be sweet to be done with this business.
	The horse whinnied, and Johann felt her hot breath on his wrist. He loosened a drawstring, and pulled off his glove, making a fist against the cold. Then he stroked the horse again, twining his fingers in her mane. The beast knew, he could tell. He could see the panic in her clouded eye, but she was too tired, too resigned, to fight back. Tsarina would welcome death. Vukotich stood over man and horse, his hand on his knifehilt.
	"Do you want me to do it?"
	"No," said Johann, drawing one of his own knives - a hunter's pride, one edge honed to razor sharpness, the other serrated like a joiner's saw. "I named her, I'll finish her..."
	He breathed into Tsarina's nostrils, soothing the horse with his naked left hand, his gauntleted right bringing up the knife. He looked into her eyes, and felt - imagined he felt? - the animal willing him to be swift. He got a good grip, and drove into Tsarina's neck, puncturing the major artery. He sawed through muscle and gristle to make sure the job was well done, and then shuffled back on his knees to avoid the spray. He felt the frozen earth through his padded knee-protectors. His britches would be speckled with Tsarina's red tomorrow. The horse kicked, and emptied fast, the spirit flown forever. Johann made silent prayer to Taal, the God of Nature and Wild Places, one of the few gods he bothered to appease these days. He stood up, and brushed bloody snow from his clothes.
	Vukotich knelt, and put his hand in the flow of blood as one might put one's hand in a mountain stream. Johann had seen him do the like before. It was some superstition of his native land. He knew what the man would say now, "innocent blood". It was like a little prayer. One of Vukotich's sayings was "never underestimate the power of innocent blood". If pressed, the old soldier would invoke the blessed name of Sigmar, and trace the sign of the hammer in the dust. Johann shied away from magic - he had had some bad experiences - but all knew of Sigmar's harsh benevolence. If there were miracles to be had, only he could be even half-counted upon. But Sigmar's mercy, Sigmar's hammer and Sigmar's muttered name had done nothing for the horse. She was still now. Tsarina was gone, and they had meat for two weeks' journey in this forest.
	Vukotich wiped his hand clean, flexed the fingers as if invigorated, and produced his flint. Johann turned, and saw his companion had constructed a simple pyramid fire, building a tent of logs over a nest of twigs. Dry grass was hard to come by here, but Vukotich could root out mosses and combustible fungi to start a blaze. Vukotich struck his flint, the fire took, and Johann smelled the fresh smell of woodsmoke. His eyes watered as a cloud of smoke wrapped his head, but he kept his place. Best to ignore the discomfort. The smoke column passed, twisting around to reach for the other man. It was an infallible rule of the fire, that it would have to smoke in someone's face.
	"So it's horse tonight?" asked Vukotich.
	"Yes, we'll have to cure the meat tomorrow if we're to carry on."
	"Is there any question of that?"
	"No," Johann said, as he always had.
	"You wouldn't lose any honour if you were to return to your estates. They must have gone to ruin since we left. I'll continue the tracking. I'm too old to change. But you needn't keep up with it. You could make a life for yourself. You're the Baron now."
	He had heard the speech before, and many variations on it, almost from the beginning. Never had he seriously considered returning to his ruined home, and never - Johann thought - had Vukotich expected him to. It was part of the game they played, master and servant, pupil and tutor, man of iron and man of meat. In some circumstances, Johann knew, meat breaks less easily than iron.
	"Very well."
	Johann set to butchering the horse. It was one of the many skills he wouldn't have acquired had he been a better shot at a sixteen. If his shaft hadn't missed the deer and pierced Wolf's shoulder... If Cicatrice's band hadn't chosen to lay waste to the von Mecklenberg estate... If the old Baron had employed more men like Vukotich, and less like Schunzel, his then-steward... If...
	But young Johann had been fumble-fingered with a longbow, Cicatrice had realized too well the weakness of the Empire's outlying fiefdoms, and Schunzel had fussed more over wall-hangings and Bretonnian chefs than battlements and men-at-arms. And now, when he would ordinarily have been currying favour for his family at Karl-Franz's court in Altdorf, Baron Johann von Mecklenberg was gutting a nag in a clearing dangerously near the frozen top of the world. The Arts of a Nobleman. If he were ever to write a book, that's the title he would want to use. 
	Together, they pulled strips off the carcass and hung them on a longsword supported over the fire by two cleft branches. It was black from many previous services, stained by dried-in grease, and could never be used in a polite engagement. Throughout his education, Johann had been taught that weapons were the jewels of a nobleman, and should be treated as a master musician would his instrument, a sorcerer his spells and spices, or a courtesan her face and figure. Now, he knew a sword was a tool for keeping you alive, and that meant filling your insides far more often than it did exposing someone else's.
	"You saw the tracks today?" asked Vukotich.
	"Four, more-or-less human, travelling slowly, left behind for us."
	Vukotich nodded. Johann sensed his teacher's rough pride in him, but knew the old man would never admit it. The schooling was over, this was life...
	"They'll turn soon. If not tonight, then the next night. Two of them are weak. They've been on foot from three days into the forest. The skaven is lamed. Pus in his bootprints. If he lives, he'll lose a foot to the gangrene. They'll all be tired. They'll want to get it over with while they still have an advantage."
	"We're on foot too, now."
	"Yes, but they don't know that." In the firelight, Vukotich's face was a dancing mass of red and black shadows. "Two of them will be broken, given this duty because Cicatrice wants to get rid of them. But since the Middle Mountains, he will have stopped underestimating us. He lost enough raiders in that pass to make him think us more than a nuisance. So, two of them will be good. One of them will be a Champion, or something very like. It'll be altered. Twisted, but not crippled. It's something big, something enhanced. Something they think will take care of us."
	His eyes shone with flame. "I'll watch first."
	Johann was aware of the aching in his back, his legs, the cold that had settled into his bones when they crossed the snowline and would never - he dreaded - depart. How much more would Vukotich, with his many past wounds, with the increasing weight of his years, feel the aches and the chills? The Iron Man never complained, never flagged, but that didn't mean he had no feeling, no pain. Johann had seen him when he felt unobserved, seen him sag in his saddle, or massage his much-broken left arm. After all, the man couldn't go on forever. Then what?
	What of Cicatrice? What of Wolf?
	They ate, chewing the tough meat slowly, and Vukotich mulled some spiced wine. Warm inside at least, Johann climbed into his bedroll in his clothes, pulling the furs about him. He slept with his knife in his hand, and dreamed...
	The Baron of Sudenland had two sons, Johann and Wolf. They were fine boys, and would be fine young men. Johann, the older by three years, would be Baron after his father, and an Elector of the Empire. He would be a warrior, a diplomat and a scholar. Wolf, who would be his regent when the business of the Empire took him to Altdorf, would be Johann's strong right hand. He would be a jurist, a master huntsman and an engineer. Joachim, the old Baron, was proud to have two such sons, who would, upon his death, preserve his lands and bear his responsibilities. And the people of the Barony were pleased they would not have to live under the whims and woes of petty tyrants, as did so many others throughout the Empire. The old Baron was much loved, and his sons would do him honour. New words were made up for old songs, celebrating each achievement of the growing boys.
	The old Baron engaged many tutors for his sons; tutors in history and geography, in the sciences, in the ways of the gods, in etiquette and the finer accomplishments, in music and literature, in the skills of war and the demands of peace, even in the rudiments of magic. Among these was a warrior who had served throughout the Old World and beyond. The survivor of numberless campaigns, he never talked of his origins, his upbringing, even of his native land, and he had but one name. Vukotich. The Baron had first met Vukotich on the field of combat, during a border dispute with an unruly neighbour, and had personally captured the mercenary. Neither man spoke of it, but after the battle, Vukotich put aside his profession and swore allegiance only to the House of von Mecklenberg.
	The Baron had many homes, many estates, many castles. One summer, he and his retinue chose to spend time in an isolated stronghold at the edge of the Barony. There, in the greenwood, his sons would learn how to hunt game, and win their trophies. This Joachim had done when he was a youth, and this his sons would now do. With pride, the old Baron watched from the towers of his castle as Vukotich took his sons off into the woods, accompanied by Corin the Fletcher, his arms master. Whatever Johann and Wolf killed would grace the Baron's table that evening.
	Wolf was a born huntsman, and was blooded his first day in the woods, bringing down a quail with a single quarrel. He soon became proficient with the longbow, the crossbow, the throwing lance, and all manner of traps and snares. Wolf, it was said partly in jest, was well-named, for he could stalk any beast of the forest. From birds, he progressed to boar and elk. He was equal to them all, and it was said that Wolf might be the first von Mecklenberg in generations to bring home a unicorn, a jabberwock or a manticore as trophies of his prowess in the woods. Corin had discovered that Andreas, one of the stable boys, had once been apprenticed to a taxidermist, and soon had the boy assigned to the preparing and mounting of Wolf's trophies. Within a month, there were more than enough to fill his corner of the Great Hall of the von Mecklenbergs.
	But Johann found the chase not to his taste. Early, he had developed an interest in the animals of the wood, but he couldn't see them through a hunter's eyes. Shooting at straw targets, he could best his brother with any weapon; but with a living, breathing creature before him, his hand faltered and his eye was off. He was too moved by the magnificence of a full-grown stag to want to see it dead, beheaded and stuffed, with glass eyes and dusty antlers. Everyone understood, which made it much worse for Johann, who was foolish enough to think compassion a womanish weakness. The old Baron, seeing in Wolf his younger self, nevertheless recognized in Johann the makings of a better man than either of the huntsmen could be. To Vukotich, he confided "Wolf's delight in the hunt will make him a good regent, but Johann's instinctive turning-away from killing will make him a great Elector". But Johann tried to overcome his quirk of the mind. He would not give up eating meat, and he believed he could not honourably eat if he could not hunt in good conscience, so he applied himself. 
	Still, one day, while out with Wolf, Corin and Vukotich, Johann missed a deer he had a clear shot at, and his arrow slipped through the trees, lodging in his brother's shoulder. It was a clean, shallow wound and Corin dressed it quickly, but Vukotich was sufficiently cautious to send the boy back to the castle. Johann had felt bad enough then, but later this incident would come to haunt his nights. If his life had a turning point, that careless shaft was it. Afterwards, nothing was as it was supposed to be.
	There had always been outlaws, of course. Always been evil men, always been the altered ones. Especially in the forests. There had been raids and battles and bloodshed. There were many areas of the Empire where the servants of the Law dared not venture. And there had been many campaigns against the dark. But there had never been a Champion of Evil like Cicatrice. So named for the livid red weal scratched across his face by the claw of a daemon in the service of Khorne, Lord of Blood, Cicatrice had come out of the Wastes transformed beyond humanity. With his so-called Chaos Knights, Cicatrice had terrorized the Southlands, unfettered in his bloodlust in victory, eluding capture even in defeat. Emperor Karl-Franz himself had placed 50,000 Gold Crowns upon his head, but -  though many had tried, and failed to survive the attempt - none had claimed the reward. The songs of his crimes were dark and dramatic, full of blood and fire, and just barely tainted with fascination. For the people of the Empire, used now to the comforts and pettiness of civilization, Cicatrice was an important figure. He was the outcast, a monster to remind them of the things waiting beyond the circle of light.
	Cicatrice had seen a weakness in the summer home of the von Mecklenbergs, and mounted a raid that had shocked the Empire. An Elector murdered, his household put to the sword, his castle razed to the ground, his child - and the children of his retinue - stolen away. Never had there been such an atrocity, and rarely since did the other Electors travel anywhere remote without a force of men capable of besting a small army. Hitherto, stealth, poison and treachery had been the favoured weapons of the Night. Cicatrice had changed that. Truly, he was a Chaos Champion, and even the warlords of the Empire credited him as a brilliant strategist. If only because he was still alive and at the head of his Knights twenty years after his first raids, Cicatrice was unique among the servants of evil.
	In his dreams, Johann kept being pulled back to that burning castle. He saw his father again, hanging in pieces from trees twenty feet apart. He saw poor, fat, silly Schunzel, the fires in his face and belly still alight. He saw Vukotich, in a rage he had never shown before or since, hacking at a wounded Beastman, screaming questions for which there would be no answers. Then there were the slaughtered horses, the violated servant girls, the unidentifiable corpses. Absurdly, he remembered the tennis lawns - not a scrap of green among the red - with its pile of eyeless heads. A skaven had been left behind, a rat-faced mutant he found among the carcasses of his tutors, sawing off fingers for rings. For the first time, Johann had killed without effort. He had never since hesitated to kill, higher race or beast. He had learned his last lesson.
	There was another Elector now, a cousin who called himself Baron, and claimed that Johann had given up his rights to the title by deserting the remnants of the House of von Mecklenberg and setting off on his travels. Johann would not have argued with him. The business of Empire had to continue, and he had other business.
	Even with his shoulder wounded, Wolf would have fought.
	But he was not among the dead. He was among the missing. At thirteen years of age, he would have interested Cicatrice.
	That had been ten years, and inconceivable miles, ago. They had followed Cicatrice's band in ragged circles around the Empire; up through the Grey Mountains to the borders of Bretonnia, surviving ambushes on the waterfront of Marienburg, then through the Wasteland into the Drak Wald Forest - where Johann and Vukotich had been enslaved for a spell by a mad dwarf with a magic mine - and up through the Middle Mountains - where they had fought off a concerted attack, and lost Corin the Fletcher to a goat-headed monstrosity - into the Forest of Shadows. Then, down into the Great Forest and east through Stirland towards the World's Edge Mountains where the powers of darkness are paramount, and where they struggled against phantoms that were sent against their minds by powerful enchanters. The seasons came and went, and the slow progress continued. Johann knew they had been close more times than he could count, but always something had intervened. He had forgotten how many ravaged settlements they had passed through, seeing themselves mirrored in the numb rage of the survivors. Cicatrice's band was unstable, and they had met deserters, cast-offs or defeated would-be champions. Vukotich had more scars now, and Johann wasn't the youth he had been. Back and forth, up and down, the wandering had progressed across the land, constantly at the edges of the Old World, constantly at the extremes of experience. Johann had seen horrors beyond the imagining of his tutors, had learned not to concern himself with the caprices of the gods, and had survived so far. He had given up expecting to see each day's dawn, he had almost given up expecting to see Wolf at the end of it.
	But still, even to the top of the world, they kept on Cicatrice's tracks. By day, Johann tried not to think about the past, or the future; by night, he could think of nothing else. He had long since become used to sleeping badly.
	The hand on his shoulder shook him awake. He opened his eyes, but didn't say anything.
	"They've turned," said Vukotich, his voice low and urgent, "their stink is in the air."
	Johann slipped out of his bedding, and stood up. The forests were quiet, save for the drip of snow, and the laboured breathing of Vukotich's horse. The fire had burned to ash, but was still casting a glow. The chill had not left his bones. Ice daggers hung like lanterns from the lower branches of the trees, mysteriously lit from within.
	They rolled furs into man-sized humps, covered them with bedding and arranged them near the fire. In the dark, they would pass. Vukotich took his crossbow from his saddle, and selected a quarrel. He checked the sleeping horse Johann couldn't help but think of as Would-Have-Been-Tsar. Then, they withdrew into the forest.
	The wait wasn't long. Johann's sense of smell wasn't as acute as Vukotich's, but he eventually heard them. His tutor had been right; there were four, and one was limping. The noises stopped. Johann pressed close to a tree-trunk, shrouding himself in its shadow.
	There was a sound like the tearing of silk, and the bedding rolls shuddered. Each was pierced with a crossbow bolt where the head would be. They glowed green, and emitted little puffs of fire and smoke. Johann held his lungs. He didn't want to breathe even a trace of whatever poison that was.
	The flares died, and nothing moved in the clearing. Johann gripped the hilt of his sword, while Vukotich brought up his crossbow. He didn't favour poison, but with his eye he didn't need to.
	Johann heard his heart beating too loud, and fought against all the imagined sounds in his head. Finally, the real sounds came.
	A human shape detached itself from the darkness and ventured into the clearing. It limped badly, and its head was elongated, with shining eyes and sharp little teeth. It was the skaven. Piebald, with tatters of clothing over oddments of armour, the ratman was distorted in the emberlight. It stood over the murdered bedrolls, its back to them. It wore the eye-in-the-point-down-pyramid symbol of the Clan Eshin on its ripped blackhide jacket, and the stylized scarface worn by all the followers of Cicatrice. Vukotich put his bolt through the eye. The skaven breathed in sharply, and half-turned. Vukotich's arrowhead stuck out bloody a few inches from its chest. The ratman went down.
	Johann and Vukotich circled away from their spot, until they faced the direction from which the thing had come. There were eyes in the darkness. Vukotich held up three fingers, then two. Three against two. It had been worse before.
	Fire exploded above them, as arrows pinned balls of burning rag to trees. The balls exploded, and rained streamers of flame around them. Three figures came into the clearing, tall but shambling. Johann could smell them now. One of them wasn't alive.
	Vukotich put a quarrel through the throat of the creature in the centre, but it still kept walking. It walked to the fire, and Johann saw a rotted ruin of a face. It was leaking dust from its split neck. It had been female, once. Now, it wasn't a person, it was a puppet. One of the others must have raised it, or been given the reins by the magician who had. Like many of Cicatrice's Knights, it had a line of red warpaint across its face, echoing its leader's scar. It moved awkwardly because of its mortal wounds, but that wouldn't stop it from being deadly.
	"We'd better do something about that," said Vukotich, "before it gives us the Tomb Rot."
	Together, Johann and Vukotich ran forward, and counted coup on the undead woman, whipping it with their swords, taking care not to touch the diseased thing. Johann felt brittle bones breaking inside it. The thing staggered from side to side as it was struck, and stepped onto the embers of the fire. Its tattered shroud caught light, and so did its dessiccated shins. When the flame reached its pockets of rancid flesh, they cooked through with a foul hiss. With an awful keening, the creature became a writhing mass of fire. Johann and Vukotich stepped back, prodding it with swordpoints, staying out of its burning reach.
	Its companions came forward now, faces flickering in its dying light. Johann parried a blow, and felt its force ringing throughout his entire body. His opponent was taller by a head, and heavily armoured, but its reactions were slower, and its helmet was distorted by a head that seemed to have expanded inside it. It was an altered of some sort, a human being under the influence of the warpstone, that unclassifiable substance so many Servants of the Night had about them, turning into the physical image of whatever dark desires or fears it had harboured. The changes were part of the bargain made with whatever forces they owed allegiance, Johann knew. He had seen too many barely human things left in Cicatrice's wake. This thing was plainly in the throes of some fresh alteration. Under its helm, it would be some new monstrosity.
	Johann stepped back, and slashed across the creature's chest, denting its breastplate, caving in the scarface symbol etched into the metal. Suddenly, he felt arms around him, and pain at his back. The burning thing had hugged him. He shook free, smelling his scorched clothing, ignoring the pain, and ducked away from a blow that could have sheared his head from his shoulders. The undead got in the way again, and the Knight reached out with a huge hand. The giant got a grip on its flame-haloed head, and with a grunt crushed it to dust. It fell, useless now, and the Knight returned its attentions to Johann.
	Vukotich was grappling close with a toad-faced altered with too many limbs, and green ichor was sizzling in the snow around them as his knife went in and out of the thing's bloated stomach. It didn't seem slowed by its many wounds. Vukotich had an arm around its neck, pressing down its inflating ruff.
	Johann faced the Knight, and made a few tentative passes at its legs. It was already slow, a few bone-deep cuts would make it slower. He realized that the thing was roaring. Johann wasn't sure, but it sounded unpleasantly like the laughter of the heroically insane. The altered's dented breastplate sprung outwards, spiked from within by hard eruptions springing from its mutating body. Whoever it had once been, it was under the warpstone now, progressing far beyond humanity. The Knight screamed its poison mirth, and tugged at its armour. The breastplate came free, and Johann saw the growing spines and plates on its skin. Cicatrice's face was tattooed on its chest. The helmet stretched outward, cracks appearing in the beaten steel, horns pushing through above the eyeholes like bulbshoots emerging from fertile soil. Johann thrust at the altered's chest, but his sword was turned aside by the creature's armoured hide. The Knight wasn't even bothering to fight back. Johann struck at its neck, and his sword lodged deep. It still laughed at him, and his sword wouldn't come free. He pulled two knives from his belt, and sunk them into the altered's body, aiming for the kidneys. The laughter continued, and the Knight began to peel away the ruined sections of his helmet.
	Eyes peered at Johann from bone-ridged cavities. There were seven of them, arranged across the Knight's forehead. Two were real, five were polished glass set in living flesh. Johann prayed to the gods he'd ignored for years. The Knight dislodged Johann's sword from its neck, and threw it away.
	"Hello, Master Johann," it said, its voice piping and childish, almost charming. "How you've grown."
	It was - it had been - Andreas, the von Mecklenberg stable boy, the mounter of trophies. He had found other tutors since Johann had seen him last.
	The great hands reached for him, and Johann felt weights on his shoulders. The fingers gripped like blacksmith's tongs. There was no longer ground under his feet. Johann smelled Andreas' foul breath, and looked up into his former servant's mask of expanded flesh. He pulled the knives from the altered's sides, and sawed away at its stomach and groin with them. He merely cut through altered flesh that grew back as he ravaged it. Andreas pushed him, and he flew twenty feet through the air. He hit a tree, for a moment dreading that his back was broken, then fell. The earth was hard, and he took the fall badly.
	Vukotich's opponent was downed, and the tutor strode towards the Knight, two-handed sword raised. Andreas put out an arm to stop him, and brushed aside the swinging blow. He grapped Vukotich's wrists with one hand, and forced the Iron Man to his knees. The altered was still laughing. Daemons screeched in his laughter, and murdered children wailed. Andreas pushed Vukotich back, bending him double, shoving his head towards the still-burning remains of the undead, forcing his own sword towards his face. Vukotich struggled back, and Andreas' huge shoulders heaved as he exerted pressure on the dwarfed human. The sword was fixed between their faces, shuddering as they threw their full strength at each other. The knight shrugged off his back armour, which fell from him, and Johann saw a streak of white down the creature's mottled and encrusted back.
	Ignoring the pain, he ran across the clearing, stepping in the mess Vukotich had made of his toadman, and hurled himself onto Andreas' back. There, the alterations were not quite complete. He drove his knives in between the Knight's horny shoulderblades, where a patch of boyish skin remained between the bony plates, and sawed down the line of his spine, going as deep as he could, cutting through ribs. Blood gushed into his face, and at last he felt his thrusts sink into the real, unaltered Andreas, doing some damage.
	The laughter stopped, and the altered stood up, trying to shake Johann from his back. Johann gripped Andreas' waist with his knees, and continued his sawing. His hands were inside now, and he was hacking at random, hoping to puncture what was left of the heart. Something big in Andreas' torso burst, and he fell writhing to the ground. Johann kept riding him, his hands free now, stabbing where he could. Andreas rolled over, and Johann disengaged himself from the dying Knight. He stood up, and wiped blood out of his eyes.
	Andreas lay face-up, red froth on his lips, the light fast going from his face. Johann knelt, and took his head in his hands.
	"Andreas," he said, trying to reach through the Knight of Darkness to the stable lad, "what of Wolf?"
	The Knight gathered phlegm in his throat, but let it drip bloodily from his mouth. In the two living eyes, Johann saw something still human. He plucked the glass eyes from the face, and threw them away.
	"Andreas, we were friends once. This wasn't your fault. Wolf. Where's Wolf? Is he still alive? Where is Cicatrice taking him?"
	The dying man smiled crooked. "North," he gasped, broken bones kniving inside his flesh as he spoke, "to the Wastes, to the Battle. Not far now. The Battle."
	"What battle? Andreas, it's important. What battle?"
	The ghost of the laughter came again. "Baron," Andreas said, "we were never friends."
	The stable boy was dead.
	Vukotich was hurt. The toadman had lost his dagger early in their struggle, and his barbed hands hadn't proved a threat. But, when cut, he bled poison. The green stuff ate through clothing, discoloured skin, and seeped dangerously into the body. Vukotich had spilled a lot of it on himself. When the morning light penetrated to the clearing, Johann saw the irregular holes in Vukotich's leggings, and realized his tutor was having trouble standing. He tottered, and fell.
	"Leave me," Vukotich said through clenched teeth. "I'll slow you down."
	That was what Johann had been taught to do, but he had never been a model pupil. With handfuls of snow, he rubbed at Vukotich's wounds, working away until most of the poison was gone. He had no idea how deep the blight had sunk into his flesh, and also didn't know anything about the properties of the toadman's blood. But if it were fatal, Vukotich would have told him so, in an attempt to get Johann to leave him. He tore a spare shirt into rags, and bandaged where he could. Vukotich was quiet, but winced throughout. Johann didn't ask him if he were in pain.
	With branches, and strips of leather from their fallen enemies' clothes, Johann made a stretcher which he fixed to Would-Have-Been-Tsar's halter. It was rough, but padded with furs it sufficed. He helped the unprotesting Vukotich onto the stretcher and wrapped him warmly. The old soldier lay still, gripping a sword as a child grips a favoured toy, his face still stained green in patches.
	"We're going north," Johann said. "We'll be out of this forest by night. There'll be some settlement before the steppes."
	That was true, but didn't necessarily imply a welcome, a healer and a warm bed. There was a saying, "in the forests, there is no Law; on the Steppe, there are no Gods." This was still Kislev, but no Tsar reigned here. Beyond the steppes were the Wastes, where the warpstone was the only rule, changing men's minds and bodies, distorting souls, working its evil on all. It was Cicatrice's spiritual homeland, and the only surprise was that his trail hadn't brought them there earlier.
	They travelled slowly, and Johann was proved wrong. By nightfall, they were still in the forest. Vukotich slept fitfully as he was dragged, voicing the pains he would never admit to when awake. Would-Have-Been-Tsar plodded on like a machine, but Johann knew the horse wouldn't outlive the moon. They'd need fresh horses on the steppes if they were to keep up with Cicatrice, and Vukotich would need healing.
	The next day, after an undisturbed night's camp, the trees began thinning, and the gloom lifted. There was even a trace of sun in the dead sky. Johann had seen tracks, had found the spot where Cicatrice had camped - the gutted corpse hanging by its feet from a tree was an obvious signpost - and knew they continued on the right trail. Beneath the corpse, someone had scrawled TURN BACK NOW in the snow in fresh blood. Johann spat at the message.
	It took a while to realize how strange this country was. There was no birdsong, and he had long since ceased to notice any animals. At first, he was so relieved not to be constantly on guard against wolf and bear - he had three rakemarks on his back to remind him of an old encounter - that it didn't occur to him quite how ominous the lack of life was.
	The forest finally died. Johann passed through a thick stretch where tree corpses leaned against each other, or rotted where they lay, and emerged onto the barren steppe. It was like passing from night into day. Looking back, he saw the edge of the forest like a wall extending to the horizon on either side. The trees were packed together like the fortifications of a castle, and didn't seem to fall outward.
	If the forest was dead, the steppe was deader. There were scraggy clumps of grass, and areas of naked, frozen earth. The snows had been thin, but still remained here and there. In a hundred years, this would be desert.
	In the distance, a trail of grey smoke spiralled up into the empty sky, and something large and ungainly with wings flapped slowly through the air.
	"There's a village ahead, Vukotich."
	They rested a while, and Johann dripped some water - they had been reduced to melting snow - into his tutor's mouth, then fed the horse. It had been over a month since they'd seen another creature who'd not tried to kill them. Perhaps, by some miracle, there would be some hospitality to be bought at the village. Johann wasn't too hopeful, but hadn't developed Vukotich's automatic distrust. Men still had to earn his enmity.
	Vukotich wasn't speaking, conserving his strength, but Johann could tell his tutor was mending. In him, life was like a seed that lives through the arctic winter to sprout when spring brings a trace of warmth. Twice, Johann had thought him dead and been proved wrong. Cicatrice's bandits had given him the name Iron Man.
	Johann chewed a long strip of Tsarina as he rode towards the smoke, and tried not to think about Andreas, not to think about Wolf. He remembered the stable lad as a cheerful youth, and could not see in him the beginnings of the Chaos Knight. But they had been there. Perhaps it had always rankled with Andreas that he was born to serve, while Johann and Wolf were born to the Barony. The ways of the warpstone were subtle. They could steal into a man's heart - a child's heart - and find the resentments, the petty injuries, the flaws, then work on them until the heart was rotten as a worm-holed apple. Then, the outer changes began. In Andreas, in the toad-thing, in the many others they had seen over the years. The goat-headed altered that had killed Corin the Fletcher had once been a simple cleric of Verena, Goddess of Learning and Justice, lured into evil by a desire to glance at the Forbidden Books. Cicatrice himself had been a distant relative of the Prince-Elector of Ostland, posted to the Wastes by a jealous rival during a family feud, changed now beyond recognition.
	What could warpstone have done to Wolf? Would his brother remember the unlucky arrow in his shoulder, and greet his rescuers with a murderous attack? Would he even recognize Johann? With each year, the likelihood of his putting up any resistance diminished. Now, most probably, he would have to be rescued against his will. And even then, he might prove too far gone in the ways of darkness to help.
	Johann and Vukotich had not discussed the end of their search. It had always been assumed between them that Wolf would be rescued. But just lately, Johann had begun to wonder. He knew that he could never bring himself to raise an arm against his brother, but what of Vukotich? Did the Iron Man feel it would be his duty, if Wolf could not be saved, to put an end to him by the sword? Vukotich had mercy-killed before, in his wars, even along their trail. Would it be so different? And would Johann try to stop him? He suspected that, even wounded, Vukotich was the better duellist.
	Something crunched under Would-Have-Been-Tsar's hooves, jolting Johann out of his unhappy reverie. He looked down. The animal was standing on a clean skeleton, his right foreleg buried in a ribcage that gripped his ankle like a trap. Johann dismounted, and pulled the old bones away. The skeleton was nearly human, but for the horns on the skull and the extra rows of teeth.
	They were in the middle of a sea of bones, stretching as far as the horizon. This must be the site of some ancient plague, or some calamitous conflict...
	Andreas had spoken of a battle.
	Johann got up on the horse, and continued, proceeding slowly. The stretcher dragged through long-undisturbed bones. Some of the skeletons were barely recognizable. Johann shuddered, and kept his eyes on the smoke. He could see now that it was coming from a group of low buildings, more an outpost than a village. But there would be people. What kind of people would live among the detritus of massacre?
	When Vukotich awoke, Johann would ask him about the battle. He would know who had fought here, and why. As if it mattered. Some of the skeletons were hundreds of years old, he thought. Their armour and weapons long stolen away, only their useless bones remained.
	Then the smell hit him. The smell he'd become used to. The smell of the zombie that had been with Andreas, the smell of all recently-dead things. The stench of decay.
	The quality of the dead had changed. These skeletons were clothed with rags of flesh. They were more recently dead, or else preserved by the cold. They didn't crumble under the horse's hooves or the trailing edge of Vukotich's stretcher. It was a bumpy ride. Johann half-turned in the saddle, and saw Vukotich waking up. The stretcher rose over a huddled corpse, dragging it a few feet before leaving it behind. Empty eye sockets looked up, and a second mouth gaped in its throat. One of its arms was a man-length clump of tentacles, now withered like dry seaweed. It had been stripped naked.
	"The Battlefield," said Vukotich.
	"What is this place?"
	"Evil. We're close to Cicatrice. This is what he's come for."
	Vukotich was in pain again. Talking hurt him, Johann knew. The tutor slumped back on his stretcher, breathing hard.
	The dead were around them in heaps. Some were obviously fresh-killed. There were birds now. Unclean carrion-pickers, tearing at exposed flesh, pecking out eyes, fighting over scraps. Johann hated the carrion birds. There was nothing worse than living off the slaughtered.
	Armies had passed this way, less than a day ago by the looks of some of their leavings. And yet they had been following a band of raiders, not an army. Cicatrice could command only a hundred Knights at his best, and his band was well below strength since their exploits in the Troll Country.
	"The gathering," Vukotich got out, "is here. Cicatrice will be one among many."
	A pack of rats, close together like a writhing carpet, swarmed over a skeleton horse, and swept towards the stretcher. They skittered up over the branches, and fastened on Vukotich's legs. He waved his sword, and sent them flying away. The cutting edge was red. Johann could see his tutor had been bitten.
	"Damn. The plague'll get me yet."
	"Easy. We're nearly at the village."
	Vukotich coughed, and shook on his stretcher. He spat pink froth. "By nightfall," he gasped. "We must be there by nightfall."
	The skies were reddening when they reached the village. It consisted of a scattering of shacks around a central long, low hall. The buildings were all sunken, little more than roofed cellars with slit windows and fortifications. Johann was reminded of the shelters he had seen in lands afflicted by tornadoes and hurricanes.
	There were no dead among the buildings. Indeed, the corpses seemed to have been cleared away from a rough circle around the village. There was a hitching rail by the hall. Johann dismounted and tied Would-Have-Been-Tsar to it.
	"Yo," he shouted, "is anyone here?"
	Vukotich was awake again, shivering in his wrappings.
	Johann shouted again, and a door opened. There was a depression in the earth beside the hall, and the entrance was in it, surrounded by bags of dirt. Two men came out of the hall. Johann touched his sword-hilt until they were in full view. Neither was significantly altered. One, who stayed back near the door, was a beefy, middle-aged man with a leather apron and a gleaming bald pate. The other, who came forward, was scarecrow thin, a wild-haired individual with a tatty mitre perched on his head. He was weighed down with amulets, badges, medals and tokens. Johann recognized the icons of Ulric, Manann, Myrmidua, Taal, Verena, and Ranald. Also, of the Chaos Powers, including the dreaded Khorne; the Gods of Law, Alluminas, Solkan; Grungni, Dwarven God of Mining; Liadriel, Elven God of Song and Wine. The hammer of Sigmar Heldenhammer, Patron Deity of the Empire, was there. No priest could truly bear the talismans of so many disparate, mutually hostile, gods. This was a madman, not a cleric.
	Still, it is best to treat the mad with courtesy.
	"Johann," he said, extending his empty hand, "Baron von Mecklenberg."
	The man approached sideways, his gods tinkling as he did, smiling the smile of an imbecile.
	"I'm Mischa, the priest."
	They shook hands. Mischa darted away, cautious. Johann noticed he wore the dagger of Khaine, Lord of Murder, as well as the dove of Shallya, Goddess of Healing and Mercy.
	"We mean no harm. My friend has been injured."
	"Bring them inside," barked the bald man. "Now, before nightfall."
	Vukotich had mentioned nightfall. Johann had a bad feeling about that. He had had an unrelishable experience with a certain vampire family in the Black Mountains.
	"Come, come," said Mischa, gesturing to Johann to come inside the hall. He danced a little on one foot, and waved a loose-wristed hand in the air. Johann saw the blood in his eyes, and held back.
	He turned to Vukotich, who was struggling to sit up, and helped his friend. The Iron Man was unsteady on his feet, but could stumble towards the hall. Johann supported him. The bald man came out of his hole in the ground, and lifted Vukotich's other shoulder. Johann sensed strength in him. Between them, while Mischa darted around uselessly, they got Vukotich through the door.
	When Mischa was in, the bald man slammed the door behind him, and slid fast a series of heavy bolts. It took Johann a few moments to get used to the semi-darkness inside the hall, but he gathered immediately that there were others inside.
	"Darvi," asked someone, "who are they?"
	The bald man let Vukotich sag against Johann, and stepped forward to reply. The interrogator was a dwarf who held himself oddly.
	"This one calls himself a Baron. Johann von Mecklenberg. The other hasn't spoken..."
	"Vukotich," said the Iron Man.
	"Vukotich," said the dwarf, "a good name. And von Mecklenberg. An Elector unless I miss my guess, and I never miss my guess."
	"I've abdicated that responsibility, sir," said Johann. "Who might I be addressing?"
	The dwarf came out of the shadows, and Johann saw why his movements were strange.
	"Who might you be addressing?" The dwarf chortled, and bowed very carefully, the hilt of the sword shoved through his chest scraping the beaten earth floor. "Why, the Mayor of this nameless township. I'm Kleinzack... the Giant."
	Kleinzack's sword was held in place by a complicated arrangement of leather straps and buckles. It stuck out a full foot from his back, and seemed honed to razor sharpness. Johann was reminded of the apparatus used by actors to simulate death, two pieces fixed to a body to look like one speared through it.
	"I know just what you're thinking, your excellency. No, this isn't a trick. It goes all the way through. A miracle I wasn't killed, of course. The blade passed through without puncturing anything vital, and now I daren't have it removed for fear the miracle won't be repeated. You can learn to live with anything, you know."
	"I can believe it, Mr Mayor."
	"You've met Mischa, our spiritual adviser. And Darvi, who is the keeper of this inn. Come share our meagre fare, and be introduced to the rest of us. Dirt, take his cloak."
	A hunched young man with limbs that bent the wrong way shuffled out of the shadow at Kleinzack's order, and took Johann's cloak from his shoulders, carefully wrapping it as he crept away.
	A madman, a cripple, a dwarf... This was truly a peculiar community.
	Kleinzack took a lantern, and twisted up the flame. The interior of the hall became visible now. There was a long table, with benches either side. A young woman in the remnant of a dress that mightn't have been out of place at one of the Tsar's famous balls passed by the diners, doling out a stew into their bowls. They were as tattered a collection of outcasts as Johann had ever broken bread with.
	Kleinzack climbed a throne-shaped chair at the end of the table, and settled his sword into a well-worn notch in the back.
	"Sit by me, your excellency. Eat with us."
	Johann took his place, and found himself looking across the table at an incredibly ancient creature - perhaps a woman -  who was enthusiastically sawing at a hunk of raw meat with a large knife.
	"Katinka doesn't favour civilized cuisine," said Kleinzack. "She's a native of this region, and only eats her meat raw. At least it's helped her keep her teeth."
	The crone grinned, and Johann saw teeth filed to nasty points. She raised a chunk of flesh to her mouth, and tore into it. Her cheeks were tattooed, the designs crumpled by her wrinkles.
	"She's a healer," said the dwarf, "later, she will tend to your friend. She can do all manner of things with herbs and the insides of small animals."
	The young woman splashed stew into Johann's bowl. He smelled spices, and saw vegetables floating in the gravy.
	"This is Anna," the woman curtsied with surprising daintiness, balancing the pot of stew on her generous hip, "she was travelling with a fine gentleman of Praag when he tired of her, and left her for our village as repayment for our hospitality."
	Anna's eyes shone dully. She had red hair, and would have been quite pretty cleaned up. Of course, Johann realized, he wasn't himself much used to baths and scents and etiquette. That part of his life was long gone.
	"Naturally," laughed Kleinzack, "we don't expect such gratitude from all our guests."
	Various diners joined in, and banged their fists on the table as they guffawed. Johann didn't find the hilarity pleasant, although the stew was excellent. The food was the best he'd tasted in some months, certainly better than smoked horse.
	The meal passed without incident. No one asked Johann what his business was, and he refrained from asking anyone how this village came to be in the middle of a battlefield. The villagers were too busy eating, and Mischa the priest made the most conversation, invoking the blessings of a grab-bag of gods upon the night. Again, Johann felt uneasy about that.
	Katinka took a look at Vukotich, and produced some herb balms which, when applied, soothed his wounds a little. The Iron Man was asleep again, now, and didn't seem to be suffering much.
	The hall was sub-divided into sleeping chambers. Several of the villagers scuttled off to them when the eating was done, and Johann heard bolts being drawn. Kleinzack produced some foul roots, and proceeded to smoke them. Johann refused his kind offer of a pipe. Anna - who didn't speak - fussed with the dishes and cutlery, while Darvi drew ale from casks. Dirt shuffled around, keeping out of the way.
	"You're a far from home, Baron von Mecklenberg," announced Kleinzack, puffing a cloud of vile smoke.
	"Yes. I'm searching for my brother."
	"A-ha," mused the dwarf, sucking at his pipe, "run away from home, has he?"
	"Kidnapped by bandits."
	"I see. Bad things, bandits." He found something funny, and laughed at it. Dirt joined in, but was silenced by a cuff around the head. "How long have you been after these bandits?"
	"A long time."
	"Long, eh? That's bad. You have my sympathy. All the troubled peoples of the world have my sympathy."
	He stroked Dirt's tangled hair, and the bent boy huddled close to him like a dog to his master.
	Something fell out of Dirt's clothing, and glinted on the floor. Kleinzack's face clouded, and Johann noticed how quiet everyone else was.
	With elaborate off-handedness, Kleinzack downed his pipe and picked up his goblet. He drank. "Dirt," he said, suavely, "you've dropped a bauble. Pick it up and bring it to me."
	The boy froze for a moment, then scuttled to the object. His fingers wouldn't work, but he finally managed to squeeze the thing between thumb and forefinger. He laid it on the table in front of Kleinzack. It was a ring, with a red stone.
	"Hmmn. A nice piece. Silver, I do believe. And a ruby, carved into a skull. Very nice."
	He tossed it to Johann.
	"What do you think?"
	Johann could hardly bear to handle the thing. It was somehow unpleasant to the touch. Perhaps he had been seeing too many skulls lately. This one was slashed diagonally. It was a familiar scar. Cicatrice was nearby.
	"Crude workmanship, but it has a certain vitality, eh? Your excellency doubtless has many finer jewels than this."
	Johann put it down on the table. Kleinzack snapped his fingers, and Anna brought the ring to him. He gazed into its jewel.
	"Dirt." The boy looked up. "Dirt, you evidently want this trinket for your own." The boy was doubtful. A rope of spittle dangled from his lips. "Very well, you shall have it. Come here."
	Dirt shambled forwards on his knees and elbows, advancing like an insect. He held out his hand, and Kleinzack took it.
	"Which finger, I wonder..."
	The dwarf jammed the ring onto Dirt's little finger, then bent it savagely back. Johann heard the snap as the bone went. Dirt looked at his hand, with its finger sticking out at an unfamiliar angle. There was blood on the ruby. He smiled.
	Then the din started outside.
	Johann had been in enough battles to recognize the noise. The clash of steel on steel, the cries and screams of men in the heat of combat, the unforgettable sound of rent flesh. Outside the village hall, a full-scale war was being fought. It was as if armies had appeared out of the air, and set at each other with the ferocity of wild animals. Johann heard horses neighing in agony, arrows thudding home in wood or meat, shouted commands, oaths. The hall shuddered, as heavy bodies slammed into it. A little dust was dislodged from the beams.
	Kleinzack was unperturbed, and continued to drink and smoke with an elaborate pretence of casualness. Anna kept efficiently refilling the dwarfs goblet, but was white under her filth, shaking with barely suppressed terror. Dirt tried to cram himself under a chair, hands pressed over his ears, eyes screwed shut as clams. Darvi glumly stood by his bar, eyes down, peering into his pint-pot. Katinka bared her teeth, apparently giggling, but Johann couldn't hear her over the cacophony of war. Mischa was in his corner, kneeling before a composite altar to all his gods, begging at random for his own skin.
	Outside, one faction charged another. Hooves thundered, cannons boomed, men went down in the mud and died. Johann's ears hurt. He noticed that Darvi, Katinka and a few of the others had padded wads of rag into their ears. Kleinzack, however, did without; evidently, he was far gone enough to last a night of this.
	They were all mad, Johann realized, maddened by this ghost of battle. Could it be like this every night?
	He went to Vukotich, and found his friend awake but rigid, staring in the dark. The Iron Man took his hand, and held it tight.
	Eventually, incredibly, Johann slept.
	He awoke to silence. Rather, to the absence of clamour. His head still rung with the memory of the battle sounds, but outside the hall it was quiet. He felt hung-over, and unrested by his sleep. His teeth were furred, and his muscles ached from sleeping sitting up.
	He was alone in the hall with Vukotich. Light streamed in through slit windows. His tutor was still in deep sleep, and Johann had to work hard to slip his hand out of the Iron Man's grip. His fingers were white, bloodless, and tingled as his circulation crept back.
	Puzzled, he went to the door, and found it hanging open. He put a head round it, and saw nothing threatening. Hand on sword, he went outside, and climbed up the steps cut into the earth. The air was still, and smelled of death.
	The village stood in the middle of a field of the dead and dying. There were fires burning, carrying on the wind the stink of scorching flesh, and weak voices cried out in unknown tongues. Their meaning was clear, though. Johann had heard the like after many a combat. The wounded, calling for succour, or for a merciful blade.
	At the hitching post, he found what was left of Would-Have-Been-Tsar. An intact head still in its bridle, hanging loose from the wood. The rest of the horse was a blasted, blackened and trampled mess, frosted with icy dew. It was mixed in with the limbless remnant of something small. A dwarf or a goblin. It was hard to tell, the head being mashed to a paste in the hardened mud. From now on, Johann would walk.
	Ghosts or not, the armies of night left corpses behind. He scanned the flat landscape, finding nothing by the remains of war. Where did they come from? Where did they go? All the dead bore the marks of the warpstone. He could sense no pattern to the battle, as if a multitude of individuals had fought each other for no reason, each striving to kill as many of the others as possible.
	That made as much sense as many of the wars he had seen on his travels.
	Dirt came from the other side of the hall, his body strapped into the semblance of straightness by leather and metal appliances. He was still a puppet with too many broken strings, but he was upright, even if his head did loll like a hanged man's, and he was walking as normally as he ever would. Johann noticed his broken finger splinted and bandaged, and wondered if he'd come by his other twisted bones in the same manner. He was carrying a double armful of swords, wrapped in bloody cloth. He smiled, revealing surprisingly white and even teeth, and dropped his burden onto the earth by the hall. The cloth came apart, and Johann saw red on the blades. He had learned about weapons - formally and by experience - and recognized a diversity of killing tools: Tilean duelling epees, Cathay dragon swords, two-handed Norse battle blades, curved scimitars of Araby. Dirt grinned again, proud of his findings, and fussed with the swords, arranging them on the ground, wiping the blood off, bringing out the shine. 
	Johann left him to his business, and went among the dead.
	The villagers were on them like carrion birds, stripping armour and weapons, throwing their booty into large wheelbarrows. He examined one catch, and found rings, a silver flask of some sweet liqueur, an unbloodied silk shirt, a bag of Gold Crowns, a jewel-pommelled axe, a leather breastplate of Elven manufacture, a good pair of Bretonnian boots. Anna was filling this barrow. She worked delicately with the corpses, robbing them as if she were a nurse applying a poultice. As he watched, she slipped the rings from the stiff fingers of a dandified altered, then progressed to his filigreed armour. Without pausing to appreciate the workmanship, she loosed the leather ties on his arm-plates, and pulled them free. His skin was rotten beneath, and had been even before the battle. She eased his dragon-masked helmet from his head, and a knotted rope of silky hair came loose with it. His features were powdered and rouged, but had decaying holes in them. His eyes opened, and his limbs spasmed. With a small, ladylike move, Anna passed a knife under his chin, and he slipped back, blood trickling onto his chest. He sighed away his life, and Anna worked his body armour loose.
	Sickened, he turned away, and saw Kleinzack. The dwarf was bundled up in furs, and wore a ridiculous hat. In daylight, the sword through him looked more bizarre than ever.
	"Good morning, excellency. I trust you slept well."
	He didn't reply.
	"Ah, but it's fine to be alive on such a morning."
	Mischa appeared, laden down with more religious tokens - some still wet - and bent low to whisper in Kleinzack's ear. The Mayor laughed nastily, and slapped the mad priest. Mischa scurried off yelping.
	"The gods have made him mad," said Kleinzack, "that's why they tolerate his sacrileges."
	Johann shrugged, and the dwarf laughed again. The mirth was begin to grate on him. He was unpleasantly reminded of Andreas' deathly laughter. Truly, he had fallen among madmen.
	Darvi and another man were building corpse fires. They couldn't hope to burn all the dead, but they were managing to clear the area nearest the hall. Those too big to be carried whole to the blaze were cut up and thrown on like logs. Katinka came to Kleinzack and offered him a bracelet she had found.
	"Pretty-pretty," he cooed, holding the bracelet up so its jewels caught the light. He slipped it over his wrist, and admired it. Katinka hovered, bowed down, waiting for an indulgence. Kleinzack reached up and stroked her ratty hair. She hummed to herself in idiot contentment, and he sharply tweaked her ear. She cried out, and he pushed her away.
	"Back to work, hag. The days are short, and the nights are long." Then, to Johann, "Our work is never done, you see, excellency. Each night there are more. It never ends."
	A hand fell on Johann's shoulder, and squeezed. He turned. Vukotich was up, a broken lance serving as a staff. His face had kept its greenish look, the scars standing out white and hard, and there was pain behind his eyes. But his grip was still strong. Even hobbling, he radiated strength. He was still the Iron Man who inspired terror even in Cicatrice's worst.
	"This is a Battlefield of Chaos, Johann. This is what Cicatrice has been heading for all along. It's nearly over. He'll be close by here, sleeping, with his creatures about him."
	Kleinzack bowed to Vukotich, shifting his sword slightly. "You know about the battle, then?"
	"I've heard of it," said Vukotich. "I was near here once, when I was younger. I saw the Knights coming here."
	"For over a thousand years, they've been fighting among themselves, proving themselves. All the Champions come here sooner or later, to see if they've got what they say they have. And most of them haven't. Most of them end up like these poor dead fools."
	"And that's how you live, dwarf," spat Johann. "Robbing the dead, selling their leavings?"
	Kleinzack didn't seem offended. "Of course. Someone has to. Bodies rot, other things don't. If it weren't for us, and for our forebears, this plain would be a mountain of rusting armour by now."
	"They sleep in great underground halls nearby," said Vukotich, "sleep like the dead. This is an important stage in their development, in their alteration. They lie comatose by day on warpstone slabs, changing form, ridding themselves of the last traces of humanity. And by night, they fight. In small groups, in single combat, at random, they fight. For a full lunar month, they fight. And if they survive, they go back into the world to spread their evil again."
	"And Cicatrice?"
	"He'll be here. Asleep now, as befits a General. We'll find him, and Wolf with him."
	Vukotich looked tired. From his eyes, Johann could tell it would be over soon, one way or another.
	"You," Vukotich addressed Kleinzack, "carrion crow. Have you found anything bearing this symbol?" He produced a cloak-clasp with the emblem of Cicatrice's band, the stylized human face deformed by a red lightning bolt in imitation of their leader's daemon-claw scar. The dwarf held up a hand, and rubbed his thumb against his fingers. Vukotich tossed him the clasp, and he made a great show of examining it as if appraising the workmanship.
	"I can perhaps recall some similar item..."
	Vukotich produced a coin and cast it at Kleinzack's feet. The dwarf looked exaggeratedly insulted, and shrugged helplessly. Johann dropped a purse of coins to join the single crown, and Kleinzack smiled.
	"It all comes back to me. The scar." He passed a finger diagonally across his face, kinking a little over his nose. "Very distinctive. Very unusual."
	"It's an unusual man we're after."
	"The man whose followers bear this design?"
	"Yes. Cicatrice, the bandit."
	Kleinzack laughed again. "I can do better than show you a man who bears the image of this scar..."
	The dwarf spun the clasp in the air and caught it.
	"... I can show you the man who bears the scar itself."
	A claw grasped Johann's heart, and squeezed.
	"Cicatrice?"
	The dwarf nodded, smiling, and held out his open hand. Johann gave him money. Kleinzack made a great pretence of examining his payment, biting into one Gold Crown, leaving shallow marks across the Emperor's face. He looked at Johann and Vukotich, savouring his momentary power over them.
	"Come," he said, at length, "follow me."
	Vukotich was still slowed by his wounds, but managed to hobble along with the dwarf. Johann felt frustrated by their measured pace as they went their way through the heaps of the dead, out onto the bloody steppe. For ten years, he had been waiting to confront Cicatrice. That scarred face - which he had never seen, but which eternally recurred on his men's emblem - had haunted his nights. He had never exchanged a blow or a word with the bandit, but Johann knew his history as well as he knew his own, and felt that by following in Cicatrice's tracks, he had become as close to him as to a brother. A hated brother. Now, he remembered their separate battles. He measured his bested foes against Cicatrice's, wondering whether he was truly the Chaos Champion's equal in battle. He supposed he would find out soon enough.
	Johann was impatient. Ten years was too long. It was well past time to get this over with.
	No. He slowed himself, keeping in step with Vukotich and Kleinzack, helping his tutor over the rougher patches of ground, reining in his unruly imaginings. He would not hasten now. He had stayed alive for this day, kept himself going beyond all human endurance. He would not fumble at the last, and chance Wolf's life. He found a calm in the centre of his heart, and let it seep through his being. The tightness in his chest eased. He began to see with a deadly clarity.
	Almost unconsciously, he checked his weapons. His knives were in their greased sheaths, his sword hung easily from his belt. The blades could be in his hands faster than a human eye could register. After ten years on the trail, he could kill sometimes faster than he could think. It was a habit of which he looked forward to purging himself.
	He remembered the initial arrow, brushing the deer's hide, proceeding with what had seemed like supernatural slowness towards his brother's shoulder. Johann hadn't used a longbow since, preferring to concentrate on hand-to-hand iron and steel.
	"It's not much further," wheezed Kleinzack. The dwarf was out of breath, and his sword shivered each time he filled his lungs. "Just over this ridge."
	The ridge was not a geographical feature, it was an arrangement of dead horsemen and their steeds, cut down by a row of cannons. The third or fourth charge had broken through, but the casualties had been appalling. Johann tried not to think of the ranks upon ranks of flesh underfoot as he helped Vukotich up over the obstacle. Kleinzack swarmed with surprising agility over the cavalry corpses, pulling himself along using belts and saddles as hand-holds.
	Darvi and a group of rangy, dead-faced men were hard at work, cutting valuables loose from the bodies with saws and shears. They were working on a pile of felled knights. One man was tugging at a plumed helmet whose owner was still feebly resisting, despite the depth and number of his mortal wounds. This one was in the latter stages of the changes, limbs barely recognizable as human, leathery batwings torn and crumpled benath him, torso swollen up by a breastbone that was thrusting through papery skin like a knifeblade. The tatterdemalion's head twisted this way and that with the helmet, but finally his robber got a good enough grip and with one determined tug pulled his prize away.
	The altered was old, his cheeks sunken and serrated, all his teeth gone save for two yellow tusks that had worn grooves in his lips. His hair was white and sparse, knotted in rat-tails on one side where he had once been partially scalped. And a red scar ran diagonally across his face, kinking a little over the nose.
	Their search was over.
	But this was not the Cicatrice Johann had pictured. This was a dying misfit, altered beyond practicality, lost even to himself.
	"I want to talk to him," Johann told Kleinzack.
	"That's of no mind to me, your excellency..."
	The dwarf wandered off, signalling Darvi and his men to follow. There were still pickings to be had. Something was screaming a few hundred yards away. Kleinzack's crew ambled towards it, their killing tools ready for use.
	Johann and Vukotich stood over the man they had followed for so long. He hardly seemed aware of their presence, being absorbed in the business of dying. Cicatrice was still vaguely trying to stand up, but ankles broken and swollen to the thickness of a normal man's waist wouldn't support him. Uncomprehending eyes opened and blinked on his bare shoulders, purposeless tendrils waved languidly in the flow of blood from the rib-deep wound over his heart.
	"Cicatrice," said Johann, feeling the syllables of the name on his tongue, "listen to me..."
	The old altered looked up with fast-dimming eyes, and managed a smile. Red treacle oozed from his mouth.
	"Cicatrice, I am the Baron von Mecklenberg."
	Cicatrice coughed, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and turned his head to Johann. For the first time, the hunter and the hunted looked upon each other. Johann saw recognition in Cicatrice's eyes. The dying monster knew who he was. And he would know what he had come for.
	"Wolf. Where's Wolf?"
	Cicatrice raised a six-taloned hand, and pointed down at the earth, then made a general gesture, indicating the whole area.
	"Here?" Cicatrice nodded.
	"What have you done to him?"
	"What... have... I... done to... him!" Cicatrice gathered his voice, and forced the words out. "What have I done to him? Why, my dear Baron, surely you should ask... what has he done to me?" 
	He held a claw to his opened breast, and dipped it in the blood.
	"Wolf fought you? Wounded you?"
	The laugh came again - the laugh Johann had been hearing from too many throats since this began - and Cicatrice's smile became cruel and indignant. Johann could see the shadow of the fearsome warrior chieftan's face over the shrunken and abused features of this poor creature.
	"Wolf has killed me."
	With a certain pride, Johann turned to Vukotich. The Iron Man was an iron statue, his face unreadable. "You see, Vukotich," he said, "Wolf resisted all these years. Here, in the heart of darkness, Wolf has turned on his captors, and escaped."
	"No," said Cicatrice, barely able to control his spasming now. These were his last minutes, last seconds... "No, he has not escaped. Wolf now leads my army. For two years now, he has ridden at the head of our columns, planned our raids. I'm an old man. I've been tolerated. Until now. Now the Scar is dead, and the Young Wolf will have his time."
	Cicatrice reached into his wound, and pulled at his beating heart, holding it up.
	"At least your brother chose to kill me face to face. His blade didn't come from the back."
	Blood ran through Cicatrice's talons. His heart puffed up like a toad, and then collapsed. With his last strength, the bandit squeezed out his own life.
	On the way back to the village, it was Vukotich who supported Johann, guiding him as an enchanter might one of the raised dead. Suddenly, the thousands of miles he had travelled in the past ten years weighed heavy upon him, as if each were a measure of time not distance. He had been concentrating so hard upon his search, his quest, that he had failed to perceive the shifting circumstances that now rendered the whole endeavour all but meaningless.
	Wolf was in no need of rescue. A few days ago, Wolf had sent four creatures to kill his brother. In the last two years, how many traps and schemes had he created? How he must wish him dead!
	"It's not Wolf," Vukotich said. "Whatever he has become, it's not Wolf. Your brother died a long time ago, in the woods, in Sudenland. He spilled his innocent blood. What we must find - find and destroy - is like the thing we burned in the forest, a monstrosity using what's left of his body." 
	Johann had no argument.
	By the time they were back in the village, the sky was already darkening. Days really were short this far north. Johann heard distant thunder, in the ground, and imagined the hordes stirring from their sleep, examining themselves for new alterations, new improvements.
	Would he even recognize Wolf?
	Kleinzack was standing before his hall, surrounded by his people. Mischa was chanting, and dancing epileptically, invoking long-dead deities, calling for protection from all manner of perils. The villagers had stowed their day's prizes, and were preparing for another night of cowering.
	Johann would have to stay outside this night, and search through the carnage for his brother, seek to challenge him to mortal combat. He had no doubt that he could survive in the thick of a melee, but he wondered if he could come so close to the creatures of the warpstone, with their roiling auras of evil, without himself beginning the long, slow metamorphosis into monstrosity. If he were to start altering, he thought he could trust Vukotich to stick a spear through him.
	A circle noosed around his left ankle, biting into the leather of his boot, and he was pulled off balance. He saw the wire rising out of the earth as it was reeled in. Kleinzack jumped aside as the whirring machine behind him pulled the steel thread in yard by yard. Darvi was working a handle. Johann fell badly, jarring his back, and was dragged too fast across the ground to sit up and free himself. His clothes were abraded, and his sword-hilt dug into the ground like a plough. A net was thrown over him, and he felt a metal-tipped boot impact with his ribs. His arms were tangled in the net, and he felt heavy weights on them. Anna and Katinka were kneeling, pressing him to the ground as they hammered pegs down, pinning the net, limiting his movement.
	Twisting his head, he saw Vukotich spinning his broken lance, surrounded by six or seven of Darvi's brawny corpse-strippers. He gored one through, but his weapon was tugged out of his grip and the circle closed. He went down under it. Later, when they'd avenged their friend with a severe pummelling, they dragged him to the hall and pinned him out beside Johann.
	Approaching carefully, Kleinzack and Darvi extracted the weapons from Johann's sheaths. He tried to resist, but only got another kick for his pains. The dwarf made a great play of examining the sword, appreciating the workmanship, and then taking it away.
	All the while, Mischa danced, sprinkling foul-smelling liquid on Johann, daubing arcane symbols on the earth, and reciting from various scrolls of manuscript he kept about his person. Johann gathered he and Vukotich were being laid out to appease the gods. At least, that was what Mischa was telling the villagers.
	Eventually, the mad priest stopped, and went inside with the rest of the villagers.
	Above the net, the sky was nearly black. The subterranean sounds were louder now, and Johann could feel the earth under him shaking. He tensed all his muscles and exerted as much pull as he could. One of the pegs popped out of the ground, and his right hand was free. He strained again. The pegs were loosening, but it would take time to fight his way out of the net.
	Then a shadow fell over him, and he heard the now-familiar laugh. It was Kleinzack.
	"Happy now, excellency? You'll soon see your brother. I'm only sorry I shan't be here to witness your touching reunion, to see your first embrace after so many years..."
	The dwarfs hands were on him, patting pockets for coins.
	"Of course, your brother has already paid me well for arranging this little get-together, but I don't see why I shouldn't also extract some tribute from you. It's only fair."
	Kleinzack took the pouches from Johann's belt, and the amulet with the family crest from his neck. Then he tried to work off the signet ring from his right hand.
	Johann grabbed the dwarfs hand, and held tight. Kleinzack thumped him, hard, but was still held. He spat in the dwarfs face and, summoning all his strength, sat up. Pegs burst free -  those driven by Anna seemed a shade less well-rooted than those Katinka had seen to - and the net gathered in Johann's lap as he fought loose of it.
	Kleinzack's gloating smarm had bubbled away, and his face was a mask of terror. He started blubbering, begging for mercy.
	The ground was trembling constantly now, and he could hear hooves, the clanking of armour, shouts of defiance, and other, barely human, sounds. A great many creatures were coming this way.
	He held Kleinzack at arms' length. The stubby legs kicked, but the mayor couldn't reach Johann's torso. He had adjusted his grip now, and held the dwarf by a fistful of jerkin, just under the protruding hilt of the sword.
	"You've left me here, unarmed, to die, dwarf."
	Kleinzack didn't say anything, just drooled. His bowels had let go, and he was dripping.
	"You took away my sword. Up here, that's as much murder as taking away my life."
	There were creatures around them in the darkness, human and otherwise.
	"You owe me a sword, Kleinzack. I'll take yours."
	He threw Kleinzack upwards. The dwarf seemed to hang in the air for a moment, eyes wide with disbelief. Johann reached out and grasped the hilt of the sword in the mayor. The dwarfs weight dragged it down. Kleinzack screamed as the sharp blade shifted in his chest. The point of the sword dug a few inches into the ground. He put a boot on Kleinzack's belly, and pushed the dwarfs body down the length of the sword. The straps and belts came free, and Kleinzack flailed, the long-ago killing stroke finally accomplishing its purpose.
	Johann drew his new sword from its scabbard of flesh, and kicked the dead dwarf away.
	The fighting had begun, and the dark was pierced by bright flashes. Fires were started, and creatures hurled themselves against each other. An altered head rolled past Johann's feet as he cut Vukotich loose from his net. A cannonade exploded close by, and Vukotich took a peppering of shot in one leg. Johann felt blood pouring down his face, from a chip lodged in his forehead, and tried to smear it away.
	Nobody was paying particular attention to them, although Johann killed anything that came within a few yards of them, just to make sure. Vukotich took a two-bladed, dagger-topped waraxe from a fallen troll, and split the face of a bear-faced Norse warrior who was hefting a sword at him. As the bearman fell, Johann saw the scarface design on his belt-buckle. He had been one of Cicatrice's.
	No, one of Wolf's.
	Johann and Vukotich fell back against the hall, leaning on the roof. It was a defensible position. Before them, the warriors hacked and slashed at each other, not caring who they wounded. Ribbons of blood flew through the air. The killing continued.
	They didn't have to wait long.
	Among the frighteningly random conflict there walked one group who seemed cooler, murderous but purposefully so. They fought their way through the throng towards the hall, towards Johann and Vukotich. There were less than they might have expected - Wolf must have taken bad losses during the last week of fighting by night - but they were death-hardened. Each wore, somewhere about him, the scar.
	And one luxuriously-maned, red-eyed, fang-snouted giant wore it as a blood-coloured tattoo across his face.
	Wolf.
	Wolf growled, low and feral in the back of his throat. Then the growl rose to a snarl, and spittle flew from his lupine snout. Then the snarl ended with a gulped intake of air, and Wolf's chest swelled. He howled like the animal he had become, baying at the skies. He clutched and unclutched his great, furred fists.
	He carried no weapons but the three-inch, razor-edged claws that ended his fingers and toes, and the rows of teeth in his face. Johann guessed that with those natural assets he wouldn't need to.
	Again, Vukotich had been right. There was nothing, that he could see, left of his little brother.
	Then the wolf smiled at him, and passed a claw through the air, bidding him come forward.
	Wolf's bandits held back, keeping the rest of the battle away from the area now marked out for the fight to the death.
	"Forgive me," Johann said, as he lashed out with Kleinzack's sword. Wolf threw up an arm, tendons shifting beneath his pelt, and the swordblow was deflected. The altered Wolf must have iron in his muscle and bone. Johann's strike had left a graze, which trickled blood, but no more. It should have sheared through, severing the arm.
	Wolf moved fast, and Johann had to stumble backwards, losing his footing, to avoid the snipping of the claws. Wolf kicked out with a barbed, bootless foot, and a claw-toe raked across Johann's stomach, cutting through his layered-leather armour. He pushed upwards as he stood, grabbing Wolf's ankle with both hands and turning it, off-balancing the creature that had been his brother. Almost immediately, he lost his grip and Wolf was righting himself. He stood like a man, ready to wrestle with the arts they had been taught as boys, but he fought like a beast, who had to use tooth and claw or go hungry tonight.
	Vukotich was still leaning against the sloping roof of the hall, breathing heavily. He was watching his pupils, but also wary of Wolf's comrades, ready to pitch in with an axe if the strangely altered rules of fair combat were breached. Otherwise, he was leaving Johann and Wolf to their struggle.
	Johann saw that Wolf had indeed grown with his alterations, finding a shape to fit his name, yet retaining every spark of his intelligence. His eyes were cruel but gleamed with sharpness of mind. The claw-stroke across his face marked him as a leader. He would never have been Baron, but he had proved that he could rise to power by his own designs.
	Had Johann not missed his deer, what would Wolf have made of himself? How would his strength, now perverted into monstrosity, have been made manifest? Truly, the division between Hero and Hellspawn is fine, no thicker than a slender arrow...
	The cut at his belly had gone deeper than he thought, and he felt his own blood soaking the inside of his clothes. Knots of pain were forming, too, and he tried not to think of the depth of his wounds. He had seen men vainly trying to coil their insides back in, and knew how permanent damage to the vitals was. Wolf showed no sign of hurt, although he had struck him again and again with the edge of Kleinzack's sword. His brother's hide was thicker than any armour.
	They circled each other, like wrestlers looking for a good hold. He remembered that he had always bested his brother when they were boys. The three years between them gave him the advantage, and Wolf had been shamed only when Johann, hoping to give his brother a taste of victory, had held back and allowed himself to be beaten. Had that experience festered in the captive boy's mind while the powers of the warpstone were exerted on him? Was that the secret anger that had fuelled his alteration?
	Johann bled from the shoulder now, almost the exact spot where he had wounded Wolf so many years ago, and wondered whether that claw-thrust had been a deliberate reminder.
	Wolf wore a metal shoulder-piece with the mark of Cicatrice picked out in jewels, covering the site of his long-healed wound. It was one of several for-show scraps of armour adorning his body.
	Wolf jabbed again, with a blade-tipped forefinger, and again gored his shoulder. Now, he was sure it was deliberate. Wolf was drawing the fight out, reminding him of the long-ago error that had brought them to this...
	He heard a clash and a scream, and glimpsed a tableau behind Wolf. One of the bandits had gone for Vukotich, and was on its knees in front of the Iron Man, axe embedded between its eyes. The axe came free, and Vukotich whirled to take on another attacker. Things were coming to an end, and Wolf's men were clearing up the side issues.
	Wolf dropped to all fours and charged like an animal, his long, still-golden hair streaming behind him. His back arched, and Johann saw the points of his vertebrae thrust against his skin. With a two-handed grip, he sliced into Wolf's humped back, aiming for the spinal column. Hide peeled, and the sword jarred in his hands. Wolf roared, apparently feeling pain for the first time in the fight. He twisted away, rolling in a ball, and then stood like a man again, and closed with his brother.
	Johann's swordpoint touched his breast, and he froze. Wolf looked at Johann, the sword held between them. Johann had a good grip, and Wolf leaned forward into it. His hairy skin dimpled around the sharp end of the blade, and Johann felt the hilt pushed against his stomach. He could let go of the sword and it would stay between them, held by their bodies. For an instant, the brothers locked eyes, and he knew he was lost. Wolf snarled, strings of saliva hanging from his snout, and coals glowed deep in his blood-filled eyes.
	Wolf held his shoulders, and pulled his brother towards him in a killing embrace. The sword should have burst through the skin, and pierced his heart neatly...
	Instead, the sword bent. First, it simply strained, and Johann felt the pommel driving painfully into his wounded gut. Then, with an agonizing creak, a natural weakness in the iron was worked on, and the weapon bent as easily as a green branch. Wolf's snarl continued, and the sword was pulled out of Johann's hand. It fell away, useless.
	Vukotich was still fighting. Three of Wolf's men were out, but the last two had him pinned to the roof, and were cutting him. The Iron Man was bleeding badly, and his blood had an unhealthy, greenish tinge.
	Wolf and Johann grappled with each other, wrestling again. He felt the claws going into his wounded shoulder, digging deep in the flesh. He brought his knee up, and slammed into Wolf's rock-hard belly. The blow had no effect. He took a handful of Wolf's hair, and tugged it sharply. A patch came away bloody, but Wolf didn't flinch. Wolf made a fist, and aimed for Johann's face. He took the blow on his chin, and reeled back, his head ringing, his vision shaking.
	His shoulder was a fiery mass of pain now. And his left knee wasn't working properly. And he had no weapons save for his hands. And his mind.
	Wolf howled, with a note of triumph, and came after him. He was tempted to turn and run. But he wouldn't get ten feet in the battle anyway. He might as well die by Wolf's hand as by that of an unknown minion of the night.
	He made a hard-edge of his hand, as the monks of Nippon were known to do, and chopped at Wolf's neck. Wolf moved before the blow could land, and he skinned the leading edge of his hand on the jewelled armour plate.
	Wolf screamed, and lashed out clumsily, claws closing in the air a foot to the left of Johann's face.
	That was the reminder he needed. That was the message what was left of his brother had been giving him. He felt the pain in his own shoulder, but ignored it, and took hold of the scarface-marked armour piece.
	He wrenched it off, and looked at the patch of untreated, rotted wound beneath. Worms writhed in it, a flash of bone could be seen in the mangled meat. The fur around was grey.
	Wolf looked at Johann with the eyes of the boy he had been, and silently begged for it to be over.
	Johann found a sword on the ground, bloodied but unbroken. Wolf was down on one knee, as if waiting to be knighted. Johann calculated that he could drive the blade through the old wound, past the shoulderbones, and into his brother's heart.
	The flow of blood from his temple had halted, but there were tears on his face, salt stinging a cut on his cheek.
	Johann hefted the sword aloft, and held it point-down above Wolf, ready to thrust deep, ready to finish his quest...
	But things changed, and Vukotich was under him, between the brothers, mortally wounded but still moving. Johann had already begun to bring the blade down. It slipped into the Iron Man just below the v of his throat, and slid through flesh and bone.
	Incredibly, he stood up. Johann backed off. Wolf was curled up behind Vukotich, cheated of his death. Vukotich turned, and pulled the sword from his neck. He held the weapon against him, point lodged beneath his chin, and then drew it across his body.
	He opened himself, and his blood fell upon Wolf. Innocent blood.
	There was a coppery smell, and Vukotich glowed with a violet light. He was mumbling at the last, reciting some charm or spell of his homeland, bleeding all over the thing he had once nurtured, taught and loved as a son.
	Then he fell sideways, dead.
	Johann went to Wolf, reaching for the sword in Vukotich's already-stiffening hands, and found the source of the violet light. Wolf was glowing, surrounded by a man-shaped cloud of insubstantial mist. The glow pulsated, and the mist grew thicker. Johann couldn't see his brother through it.
	Innocent blood. Never underestimate the power of innocent blood, Vukotich had said.
	He tried to touch his brother, but his gloved hand couldn't penetrate the mist. It was yielding, but refused to break.
	An enormous male altered with four-foot antlers charged them, and Johann brought his sword up, scraping the velvet from a tine. The stagman howled, and his face was engorged purple with rushing blood. Johann cut him down expertly, and took on the two twin goblins who followed, tricking them into spearing each other. Then came an octopoid monstrosity with the eyes of a beautiful woman, and a tiny-headed giant with four mace-handed arms. And others, and others.
	As if possessed, Johann fought them all. He stood over his cocooned brother, and held off the hordes until morning.
	At first light, the battle stopped. It was like a combat sport. An unheard referee had ended the match, and everyone could go home. Johann had been trading blows with an androgynous popinjay who wielded a thin, deadly rapier. When the sun first tainted the sky, the creature sheathed its sword and bowed elaborately to Johann, swishing a ruffled sleeve through the air. All around them, combatants had left off trying to kill each other and were breathing hard. The sudden quiet was unnerving.
	Johann looked at his enemy of the moment. There was a disturbing touch of invitation, of frightful promise, in its womanish smile. Its beauty was almost elven, although its neutered but well-muscled form was human.
	"Until tonight?" It said, gesturing in the air.
	Johann was too exhausted to reply. He simply shook his head, conscious of the blood and sweat falling from his face.
	"A pity," it said. It kissed two fingers, and pressed them to Johann's lips, then turned and walked away, a gorgeously embroidered cloak swinging from side to side, the buds of horns poking through its girlish hair. Johann wiped the scented blood taste from his mouth. It joined the others, and they trudged wearily away, leaving behind the losers of the night's conflict. They were tonight's losers, or the next night's, or a hundred nights from now and far from this place's. When you fight for Chaos, you fight with Chaos. And you can't fight with Chaos and win.
	Johann fell to his knees beside Wolf. Vukotich's corpse was stiff as a statue now, and had suffered much abuse during the course of the night. But his normally hard face had softened. Johann realized just how little he really knew about the man he had lived with, fought alongside, travelled with and eaten with for ten years. At the end, though, Sigmar was with him. And magic had been in his blood. He traced a hammer in the earth.
	Wolf's cocoon had stopped glowing, and was dry and papery now, with thick veins. Johann touched it, and it broke. Wolf was stirring. The unidentifiable matter fell away in dusty scales.
	Johann tore it away from his brother's head.
	A thirteen-year-old face appeared.
	There were people about now. Anna, Darvi, Dirt, Mischa. The mad priest gave thanks to another dawn. With a single glance, Johann convinced Darvi not to fight him. Dirt bent down by the brothers, and grinned.
	"You're the Mayor now," Johann told him, "get Katinka. My brother's been hurt, and needs a poultice."
	There was an arrow wound in Wolf's shoulder, fresh and clean and bleeding.