THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD
Darius Hinks

COUNT ROTHENBURG FINISHED his gruesome tale with a wry smile and leant back into the comfortable leather of his chair. As he viewed us over the rim of his wineglass, the light of the fire glinted in his vivid blue eyes, and he gave a mischievous laugh. 'Well? Have I stunned you all into silence?'
There was a round of manly coughs and laughter, as we attempted to dispel the sombre mood he had created. 'Bored us into silence maybe,' chortled one gentleman. 'I've heard that story several times before, and at least once from your own lips!'
'Aye,' said another, with an exaggerated yawn. 'I think maybe you've been enjoying a little too much of your own hospitality.'
With some difficulty I managed to rise from my chair and wander unsteadily over to the window. The count's cellar was stocked beyond the wildest dreams of most of Nuln's citizens, and we had spent the better part of the evening attempting to make a small dent in it. As I gazed drunkenly out into the moonlit splendour of Rothenburg's ornamental garden, I struggled to remove the more unpleasant details of his story from my memory.
Tales of unspeakable horrors and strange happenings seemed to have become the mainstay of our conversation whenever we met. I doubt any of us could pinpoint the exact genesis of this morbid tradition, but it seemed now that every gathering was simply an excuse to plumb to new depths of absurd fantasy. I shivered.
Bravado insisted that we make light of even the most shocking yarns, but I could not help wondering where it might all lead. This passionate desire to outdo each other made me somehow nervous.
Stories sometimes have a way of returning to haunt you.
'I have a tale,' murmured a voice from behind me, 'though... though I am not sure it is right that... that I should share it.'
A ripple of derisory laughter filled the room.
'Ho!' exclaimed the count, leaning forward in his chair, 'what a coy temptress you are, Gormont! ''Not sure it is right'' you say! What a tease! Do you take us for a bunch of prudes?'
I turned from the window and saw that the Gormont in question was a small, anonymous-looking youth I had not previously noticed. He was sat away from the light of the fire, in the shadows by the door, and was obviously very drunk. As the party turned their attention towards him, he retreated back into the folds of his huge chair like a cornered rat, and seemed to regret having spoken.
'Well?' demanded our host, obviously intrigued, 'what have you to share with us, nephew?'
'I'm not totally sure - not sure I should...' he whispered, shuffling nervously in his seat.
There was an expectant silence, as we all waited for him to continue.
'I have brought something with me, you see...'
There was another chorus of laughter, and one of the guests began slapping his thighs dramatically. 'He has something with him! He has something with him! Speak, boy! We demand entertainment!'
I peered through the smoky gloom to get a clearer view. There was a manic quality to the boy's expression that seemed to go beyond mere drunkenness; he was obviously torn between an eagerness to impress his audience, and fear.
For several more moments he prevaricated and evaded, and soon the haranguing of the group reached such a deafening volume that even the servants began to look nervous.
'Very well,' he shouted finally over the din, looking somehow triumphant and terrified at the same time, 'I will speak!'
A grin spread across the count's handsome face and the room grew quiet. I looked around at the circle of rapt faces. The combined effect of the wine and the glow of the fire gave us the appearance of hungry daemons, leering over a defenceless prey. I knew all too well the urbane derision that would greet the conclusion of the boy's tale, yet we were all, to a man, desperate to hear it relayed.
'I must beg of you that this go no further!' hissed Gormont dramatically.
The count rolled his eyes as this cheap showmanship, but shooed his servants from the room nevertheless.
Gormont cleared his throat nervously and began. 'My family has employed the same physician for decades,' he said, turning away from us to rummage in a bag. 'Gustav Insel. You may have heard of him?' He turned to face us questioningly, holding up a few scraps of paper. 'This is his journal. Well, some of his journal, that is. Do you swear to secrecy gentlemen?'
'Get on with it boy!' cried the count in an imperious tone, which caused Gormont to flinch.
'Very... very well,' he stammered. 'I'm sure we all understand these matters require discretion.'
We nodded impatiently, without the slightest idea what he was talking about.
'Yes, Gustav Insel. When I was a child he treated me for every imaginable ailment, and has bled my family regularly for almost every year of my life. Every year, that is, until last year. We heard rumours that he had gone abroad, or been killed even, and my father was forced - at some inconvenience - to find another doctor. However, just a few months back, he returned and the change in him was awful to behold.' An expression of almost comical dismay came over the boy's face. That a man can be so altered, in the space of a year is hard to comprehend.
'I would not have given any credence to this,' he continued, holding up the papers, 'were it not for the fact that some of the incidents mentioned seem to have a basis in actual facts. Ships' records and the like seem to concur; and the baron he describes is no fictional character - I have made some enquiries, and not only did he exist, but also he did indeed disappear in a most mysterious fashion. And the foreigner - Mansoul - I have discovered that he also exists.'
'I cannot bear this!' exclaimed the count, striding across the room and snatching the papers from Gormont. 'We'll all be in our grave by the time you start the first paragraph! Let me read the thing myself!'
Gormont seemed too shocked - or too inebriated - to resist, and Rothenburg marched back to his seat with the journal. He turned the papers over in his hands a few times, and then began to read: 'It is only as a warning to others that I tell this morbid tale...'

IT IS ONLY as a warning to others that I tell this morbid tale. For myself, I would wish nothing more than to wipe the whole tragic affair from my memory. However, my duty is clear, and I could not, in all conscience, allow these terrible facts to go unrecorded. Even now, only months after my return to the south, those events which have so haunted my every waking moment are already becoming indistinct and hazy. It is almost as though such terrible visions are too much for a mortal mind to comprehend; like worms they writhe and twist in my thoughts - elusive and serpentine, eager to avoid a closer inspection. But I will pin them to these pages with my quill. My tale must be told.
We set sail from Erengrad on the good ship Heldenhammer in the year 2325. As ship's surgeon, and close friend of our intrepid employer, Baron Fallon von Kelspar, I was blessed with a cabin that was merely unpleasant rather than uninhabitable. The damp seeped through the bed linen and the rats nested in my clothes, but to have a bed of any sort was enough to earn the enmity of our swarthy Kislevite crew. They eyed me resentfully from within their fur-lined hoods.
Still, if it is possible for me to remember any stage of that doomed expedition with fondness, it would be those first few days. The baron wore the air of a man possessed, and his enthusiasm was infectious. Even the Kislevites seemed affected by it. The whole ship's company was charged with his fervour.
There were, however, rumours of a scandal following closely on his heels, and I heard it said that his journey to the north was one of convenience as much as discovery. Certainly it was true that he seemed to show scant regard for the family estates he had abandoned so suddenly, and he politely evaded any enquiries about the baroness; but nevertheless, I could not doubt him. Seeing him stood at the prow of the ship, leaning forward impatiently into the bitterly cold wind, I found it impossible to harbour any suspicions as to his character. In fact, with the ice freezing in his beard and the snow settling on his broad shoulders, he looked more worthy of trust than any man I have ever served. My faith in him was absolute.

WE HAD MADE good headway around the coast of Norsca, but were in the midst of a five-day gale when the first of many disasters struck. I was up in the slings of the foreyard, struggling to hang on as the ship rolled and lurched, when out across the churning black sea I spied a jagged shape rearing up from the horizon.
'Land,' I called down to the deck where our captain, Hausenblas, was busily bailing water with the rest of the crew, 'to starboard!'
He rushed to the prow of the ship, and shielded his eyes from the snow. Even from my perch up in the swaying spars, I saw the colour drain from his face and, as he hurried back to his cabin, I clambered down the rigging with fear already tightening in my stomach.
Moments later, the baron and I watched helplessly as he pored over his maps and charts with increasing desperation. 'Clar Karond?' he muttered.
'Can we be that far west? It cannot be!' Although the name meant nothing to me, my fear continued to grow, and as I watched him wading through map after map, filling the cabin with a storm of papers, I wondered what it was that I had seen out there across the waves. What could have driven Hausenblas into such a frenzy?
Finally, as his muttered curses seemed on the verge of hysteria, Kelspar stepped forward and calmly placed a hand on his shoulder. 'Captain,' he said, 'is there something you would like to share with us?'
Hausenblas whirled around to face the baron. Kelspar's composed tone seemed to calm him a little, but there was a wild look in his eyes and, as he replied, he could not disguise the tremor in his voice. 'North of the Empire all is damnation and rain, baron, but a sailor of my years can - with the good will of Manann - avoid the worst of the dangers...' His voice trailed off into silence, and he looked distractedly out of the porthole.
'Yes?' prompted Kelspar after a few moments.
Hausenblas grabbed a crumpled piece of parchment and thrust it at the baron. 'It's the Clar Karond peninsular!' he barked. 'The storm has taken us too far west! We've entered the Land of Chill, where the foul corrupted elves dwell!'
I gasped involuntarily. The ship's carpenter had told me many tales and legends concerning that cruel, mysterious race, and the look of fear in the captain's eyes banished any doubt I may have held about their existence.
'They'll be on us like dogs within hours,' wailed Hausenblas, dropping heavily into a chair. 'We don't stand a chance.'
Kelspar stood in silence for a few moments, seemingly lost in thought, then he nodded and strode out into the raging storm.

WITH EVERY OUNCE of his skill and experience, our captain tried to steer the Heldenhammer away from the coast I had spied, but Manann's thoughts must have been elsewhere that day and within hours, sinister silhouettes began looming out of the tempest like ghosts. At first, as I peered out through the falling snow, I thought we were being surrounded by great living creatures - terrible leviathans of the deep, with brutal slender claws and arched ragged wings; but as they grew nearer, I realised to my amazement that they were ships.
They were like no ships I had ever seen before.
Their design seemed the work of some strange, incomprehensible mind; but despite their hideousness, I could not deny that was also a perverse beauty to them. The twisted curves and cruel lines were strangely sensuous, and graceful.
The charismatic baron had a way of making the impossible seem achievable, and whatever the scheme, his men would leap to realise his every whim and fancy. They were not fools, however. An expedition into the unforgiving north, from whence few men had returned was something that required the necessary tools, and from the bowels of the ship emerged an armoury fit to defend a small city: swords, slings, muskets and the like were soon arrayed along the taffrail in their dozens as the men prepared to engage the enemy. Beside them stood all of the crew that could be spared - these were men used to hardship and war, living so far north, and they would not give up their livelihood, or their lives, easily.
The Heldenhammer was no warship, however, and there was little that could be done to prevent the dark elves boarding us. After a brief game of cat and mouse, their grappling hooks and ropes began sailing over the deck, and I finally saw with my own eyes the terrifying nature of our foe. In terms of physical proportions they were not so different from men; but there the similarity ended. Their screaming elongated faces froze my blood in a way that the even the icy temperatures had failed to do, and the twisted, ornate curves of their armour left me gasping with fear - what possible hope could we have against such a foul corruption of nature? I saw in an instant that there was no hope for us against such inhuman opponents.
From out of the dazzling whirling snow they came, falling on us like daemons. Cruel blades glinted in the cold light as the elves hacked and lunged. Frozen fingers fought to grip the hafts of weapons, and warm blood washed over the icy deck. I fought blind, with the snow in my eyes, and in my fear I struck wildly at every shape that came near me. Sigmar preserve me, but in those moments of panic I knew not what, nor whom I struck with my clumsy blows. The battle was not the epic struggle for glory I had so often read about; but rather it was a brutal, ignoble farce with men slipping about on the ice and blood, while others fell clumsily on their own blades.
It was with something akin to relief that I felt a blow against the back of my head; and as I collapsed into the welcoming oblivion of death, I felt as though I had cheated fate in escaping the fight so early on.

IN THE FROZEN wastelands of the north, strange sinews of light flicker in the heavens, fitfully illuminating the blasted landscape; but all else, as far as the eye can see, is darkness.
I did not perish on the rolling deck of the Heldenhammer, but as I stumbled on through the endless night of Har Ganeth - the bleak, frozen tundra that lies far to the north of our glorious Empire - I wondered if that was such a blessing. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight, knowing all that I now know, it would have been a kindness to have died then, innocent of the horrors that were to follow.
It had been the baron himself who plucked me from beneath the mound of corpses, and as I watched him striding through the knee-deep snow, just a few yards ahead of me, I wondered at his fortitude. The battle against the elves had been a grim, brutal affair, and whilst the victory had been ours, it had been hard won. Few of the baron's men had made it off the Heldenhammer alive - it was a pitiful group who remained to set foot on the packed ice of that forbidding wasteland - yet Kelspar seemed utterly undaunted.
As for the rest of us, it was the white heat of our own avarice that drove us onwards through the plummeting temperatures. I remembered all too well the cheery warmth of the baron's drawing room, and the passion with which he had told me his story. It was a tale of the Hung: fierce, nomadic wild-men who roamed the barren north, worshipping foul ancient gods, and feasting on the flesh of their own fallen. It was a tale of frozen lands and unexplored realms; but most of all, it was a tale of gold.
I had seen with my own eyes some of the strange guests entertained by Kelspar over the years: many of them travellers from the east, with gifts of exotic spices and lurid poetry, who regaled the wide-eyed baron with tales of uncountable wealth in the vast steppes of the north. I had heard one man in particular - a small, twitching seer named Mansoul - tell the baron in hushed tones of a great city called Yin-Chi, deep in the realms of the Hung. He whispered of great towers of ivory and gold rising out of the ice-capped mountains, and streets littered with the accumulated wealth of generations of the barbarians. As I turned away to pour the baron and his guest another glass of Carcassonne brandy, I had seen in the cut crystal a sinister fractured image of the room behind me, in which Mansoul discretely leant towards the baron and slipped him a crumpled map. From that moment, my interest was piqued - and my fate sealed.
All the remaining members of our party now shared this vision of riches, and to a man we were consumed with greed.
There were seven of us in all, plus dogs, a sledge, food supplies and other items, including a mysterious chest the baron claimed would guarantee our entry into the fabled city. From his hints I deduced it contained gunpowder, or mage-fire of some sort, with which he presumably intended to create a distraction. In truth, I had not pressed him too hard as to the details of his plan - I knew he had one and, in my fevered lust for wealth, that was enough.

I THOUGHT I had known the meaning of cold before we set foot in that cursed realm... but I was wrong.
It is the nights that I remember the most. As the wind howled outside the tents, we cowered inside, sleepless on bedding too frozen to crawl into, and with terrible cramps in our stomachs from the fat-laden food we were forced to eat.
Then, with no dawn to guide us, we would rise at some arbitrary hour and attempt to don our packs; but by this time our robes were like plate-armour, and our hoods had become soldered to our faces. We would lumber off like a group of bloated revenants, limping and stumbling through the powdery whiteness. Our breath froze and cracked painfully in our beards, and beneath all the layers of coats and tunics, our own sweat became ice. Without the kernel of avarice glowing deep in my thoughts, I think I would have simply lay down in the soft embrace of the snow, and lost myself in the peaceful sleep of the dead.
But, even then I had not experienced a fraction of the horror that was in store for me.
Despite the horrors we had already endured, it was not until the twenty-first day of our slow, tortuous trek that we discovered the true face of terror. It was the dogs that first alerted us to the fact that we were no longer alone in the snow. At first they seemed merely nervous, barking more than usual and hesitating where they had previously been sure-footed. In the pale light of the moon, the all-encompassing whiteness felt smothering and claustrophobic, and the agitation of the animals quickly filled us all with a nameless dread. The younger members of the party began flinching at imagined shapes in the drifting banks of snow, and even the baron seemed to quicken his pace a little.
Soon the dogs became utterly impossible to control. They howled and yelped, seemingly in mortal terror for their lives, and however much the baron cursed and kicked them, they would go no further. The barking sounded alien and muffled in the blizzard, and my mouth grew dry with fear.
Then, suddenly, the noise dropped. The dogs crouched low to the ground with their hackles raised and began emitting a low, pitiful whining sound that seemed horribly ominous.
We all waited.
The sound of my heart thudded so loudly in my ears that I felt certain the others must surely hear it.
I looked over at Kelspar, and saw that his hands were resting nervously on his two long sabres. Something glittered in his eyes. Was it fear or merely impatience? I could discern nothing clearly through my ice-encrusted hood.
Silence reigned, and I sensed the muscles of every man near me tensing with expectation. I felt I might scream just to break the awful quiet.
Then, out of the snow, came the creature from my darkest childhood dreams. My mind split like a shattered glass as I beheld a sight that in one cruel stroke tore apart my every conception of all that was logical and natural in the world. It loomed out of the whiteness like a mighty tree crashing down on us. Its size was immense - ten feet tall at least; but it was not the scale of the thing that tore screams of abject horror from me, it was its form: a shifting writhing mass of muscle and teeth that had no right to exist in an ordered world. Bestial faces howled and moaned in its blood-red flesh, before twisting into other indescribably awful shapes, and cruel weapons appeared from nowhere in claws that had previously not existed.
I'm afraid any greater detail is impossible for me to relate; my mind seemed as incapable of grasping the being's true nature as my hands would be to grasp falling snow. To my shame, my legs gave way completely in the face of such a monstrous assault on my senses and I fell to the floor.
Fortunately, the others somehow retained the strength of their limbs and drew weapons to strike. A burly Middenheimer near to me swung an ice pick at the heaving, thrashing creature, but its muscles seemed to slip effortlessly out of the way of his weapon. As we all looked on in horror the man was lifted up into the air by several pairs of arms, and, with a sound like the ripping of wet cloth, torn clean in half. Another man leapt at the beast with a terrified howl, swinging his hammer at what seemed to be a face, but the creature tore him open like ripe fruit and his remains fell steaming onto the snow.
I saw then that our expedition was over, and that our end had come. I prepared myself for the pain.
The baron had other ideas, however. With a look of determination that seemed absurd in the face of such an unholy apparition, he strode purposefully towards the creature with his musket drawn, and before the lumbering, howling brute had registered his presence, he unloaded his buckshot straight into what currently appeared to be its face.
The pitch of the thing's voice suddenly rose to a high-pitched keening, and for a split second, as a torrent of gore rushed from its head, the beast's form became fixed and solid. The baron seized his chance and, as we all looked on, paralysed with fear, he drew both his sabres, stepped calmly forward, and thrust them straight through the creature's gelatinous eyes.
There was an explosion of noise and blood as the thing reared up in pain, and at that moment, spurred on by their leader's fearlessness, the other men rushed forward and plunged their weapons into its still unchanging form.
This seemed more than it could bear, and with a deafening roar of impotent rage and a spray of blood and viscera, it lurched back into the shadows from whence it came.
'Bloodbeast,' said the baron calmly, wiping the gore from his swords and face.

FROM THAT TIME on, I fear I became something of a burden to the others. My mind seemed irreparably torn and I found even the smallest tasks arduous. The best I could do was to shuffle along behind the others like a simpleton, muttering to myself and flinching constantly at imagined apparitions.
Strangely, little was said of the attack over the following days. The bodies of the dead men were placed in rudimentary graves, and we marched on in silence. It seemed too awful a subject to broach; and what good could come of raising it? We were alone in the wilderness. What could we do? Other than his enigmatic statement after the beast had fled, the baron had said nought else on the subject.
Bloodbeast. What could such a word mean? It festered in my fractured thoughts like a canker. How was it that the baron could put a name to such a monstrosity? What foul tomes had he pored over to discover such a phrase? I itched to interrogate him on the matter; but I feared that what would start as rational speech would descend into the wailing gibberish of a madman. So I simply acted out the mechanics of life and waited for the violent death that I felt was waiting for me out there in the snow.
In the fourth week of our journey we perceived a change in the landscape. We appeared to be crossing a great plateau and occasionally, through gaps in the constant downpour, we spied what might be the distant crowns of a mountain range. The Baron's determination seemed not to have waned one jot and, if anything, at the sight of those peaks, I noticed a quickening of his pace. He began checking Mansoul's map more frequently, and I detected a new urgency in his voice when he spurred us on. Could we be getting near, I wondered, and, like a long forgotten tune my greed returned to me. I felt a new resolve harden in me and I put aside my idle thoughts of lying down to sleep on the crisp white bed of snow.
The turn around in my spirits was, however, short lived. On the morning of the thirty-first day of that journey into despair, I awoke to a nightmare. As the baron and I lurched awkwardly from our tent to raise the others, we saw their tent slashed and flapping in the wind, and their equally torn bodies strewn across the bloodstained snow.
All three were dead.
The scene was too much for me and I retched dryly as I beheld it. Their remains were barely recognisable: it was unmistakably the work of the creature Kelspar had named Bloodbeast.
I searched for hours, but could not find their heads.

MY DESCENT INTO lunacy now seemed complete. I was nothing but a gibbering wretch. I lay on the ground and called out for the beast to come and take me. I begged for death.
I was, however, all that the baron had left by way of a companion and, slapping me firmly across the face, he insisted that I take hold of myself and remember that I was not some raving savage, but a gentleman of the Empire. Through fear of his rage, rather than any real self-control, I managed to make a show of calming myself.
Fortunately, the dogs were miraculously unharmed and I begged the baron to consider returning to the coast. We had a rendezvous arranged with Hausenblas and the Heldenhammer, and if we made good speed we might still evade horrors that waited for us in the snow.
'What?' cried Kelspar, his eyes flashing in the dark. 'You would return now? When we have come so far?' Suddenly I feared him almost as much as anything else in that frozen netherworld. There was a barely checked hatred in his voice as he grasped my jacket and pulled my face to his. 'Are you mad? Only days away from treasures you could not even comprehend and you would turn back?' He hurled me to the ground, and rested a hand on the butt of his pistol. 'We go on, Gustav,' he growled. 'We go on.'
From then on I became little more than a beast of burden to the baron. His dislike for me was painfully apparent, and it seemed I was there simply to lug around the box of explosives and the other luggage, while the baron plotted our course.

WAS IT THE madness and carnage I had endured, or the lack of food? Or was it - as certainly it seemed - the very air that began to warp my senses? My mind seemed gradually to be growing strange to me. Alien thoughts, of no apparent sense, gripped me as we rushed over the snow on the sledge. Scenes of violence and power only to be replaced just as quickly by a grovelling awe of what lay ahead. Now when I saw those mountains through a gap in the blizzard, they seemed near and strangely ominous. Something in their make-up seemed not the stuff of reality, but rather the ethereal matter of dreams and visions.
The shifting, capricious nature of my mind began to distort even my memory. The details of my life leading up to that point would sometimes slip away and be replaced by darker memories filled with blood, and a lust for war. I fear my reason was truly gone by this time and I can only accept that my description of what followed cannot be considered the product of a completely rational mind.
Desire seemed to grow in the baron as we neared the peaks. He seemed now almost unrecognisable as the cultured, urbane gentleman I had met all those years ago in Nuln. His face was now a frozen mask of greed and lust. I could not meet his eye and, as the days went by, I grew to fear him greatly.

I KNOW NOT WHAT day nor week it was, but finally the awful contortions of my mind reached a crisis point, whenever I saw the mountains now they seemed of no fixed shape, but instead they had become a shifting mass - much in the manner of the foul creature that had attacked us. The stone seemed in some places to be formed into monstrous screaming skulls, whilst in others it became impossibly tall towers, whose sinister shapes reared up into the darkness like claws. I even fancied that I saw the faces of beings too hideous and incomprehensible for me to describe, looming above the peaks and beckoning us on.
Finally I could take no more. I knew that the baron was leading me not to wealth and glory, but death and madness. Sigmar forgive me, I began plotting his murder.
The state of my ruptured mind, however, meant that while I had intended to contrive some subtle plan with which I would safely kill my erstwhile protector, I instead leapt on him clumsily with my knife at the first sight of him looking distracted. He was in the process of lifting the heavy chest of explosives from the sled when I attacked, and sent him, the box and myself all tumbling down a steep drift of snow.
We spun and tumbled silently in the soft powdery whiteness, and when we came to a stop I noticed two things: firstly, the baron's leg was lying at a hideously unnatural angle to the rest of his body, obviously broken, and secondly: the baron's wooden chest had split open during the fall, spreading its contents over the snow.
I froze in shock.
Rather than the gunpowder I had been expecting to see, I saw instead the severed, and by now quite frozen, heads of our three murdered companions.
'It was you?' I gasped through a parched throat. 'You killed them?'
'Of course,' snapped the baron impatiently, trying to rise on his one good leg. 'How else does one buy entry into the kingdom of the Blood God, but with skulls?'
My mind reeled. In a heartbeat I saw that Kelspar had never intended to simply plunder some mythical city like a common thief, but rather he wished nothing less than to offer his fealty to the Dark Gods themselves. His years of research into the peoples of the north must have corrupted his mind. The man was a heretic!
I lurched towards him through the snow, raising my knife to strike, but he was quicker, and even balanced on one leg he managed to aim his pistol at my head.
'Fool,' he said, with a bitter laugh, 'you could have joined me in paradise.' And with that he pulled the trigger. I flinched, but felt no pain.
Looking down I saw no blood, and so I raised my eyes to the baron in confusion.
By the look of rage and frustration on his face, I guessed what had happened - the hammer of his weapon had frozen fast.
I took my chance, kicked away his one good leg, and thrust my blade deep into his chest.
I stepped back in horror as he thrashed furiously around with the weapon still protruding from his coat. His cries and curses were too terrible to bear and I covered my ears as I staggered away.
As I turned the sledge around and headed back south, I could still hear his cries echoing weirdly through the darkness - even after several hours had passed, the hideous noise was still there, shaming me with every cry of rage and pain.

AS I SIT here now, by the warmth of my fire, I question all that I once felt so sure about. I question even my opinion of the baron. Maybe he had intended to simply find his treasure and return to the south; maybe it was only after we entered that forsaken realm that his thoughts turned to madness and the unspeakable gods of the north. The one thing I am sure of is that it was no city of the Hung he was leading me towards; if I had followed him over those forbidding mountains, I believe I would have entered another realm completely. Sigmar forgive me, but since my desperate flight to the coast, and my rendezvous with the Heldenhammer, I cannot stop my thoughts straying back to those mountains, and wondering what I may have discovered on the other side.
I find myself sleeping more than is natural, and in my dreams the baron still calls to me; but his cries are no longer full of rage and pain, they are the words of a man who has found a great prize and simply wishes to share it. When I awake, my sheets damp with sweat, his voice still echoes through my thoughts: 'You could have joined me in paradise,' he calls.
As the days crawl by, all that was once so dear to me seems chaff, and I find it harder and harder to resist his call.

THERE WAS A long silence which even Count Rothenburg seemed reluctant to break.
Finally, after several awkward minutes had passed, he spoke, but his voice did not carry the ring of confidence I was used to. 'How did you come by this journal?'
Gormont smiled conspiratorially, obviously revelling in the tense atmosphere his tale had engendered. 'My father's study,' he replied smugly. 'He thinks it secure in his safe, but he has few secrets I am not aware of.'
The count stared at him.
'And where is this ''Gustav'' now?'
'Well,' said Gormont, rising from his chair, and beginning to stroll cockily around the room, 'when he came to us, he was obviously in a very bad way, and so my father took him in out of pity; but he soon regretted it. The man had obviously lost his reason - we would hear him wailing like a lame dog in the middle of the night, and his presence in the house was beginning to play havoc with my poor mother's nerves. Then, thankfully, two nights ago he disappeared as suddenly as he arrived, leaving behind all his possessions - including the journal.'
I had never seen it before, and I never saw it again, but the count was lost for words. He gaped at Gormont as though the lad were suddenly a stranger to him. There was a terrible ring of truth to the tale that had finally silenced us all, and even the count seemed incapable of making light of his nephew's story. He began to reread the journal in silence - seeming to forget that he still had company - and as he pored over the words, a frown of deep concentration settled over his face.
Soon, the guests began to depart, pulling on their great coats in an uncomfortable silence, and disappearing one by one into the cold winter's night.
A little while later, as I stood in the hall buttoning my own coat, I noticed the count leading Gormont away towards his private chambers. As they turned a corner and disappeared from view, I heard a brief snatch of their conversation.
At the time the words seemed of no importance, but since Rothenburg's mysterious disappearance, they have begun to haunt my thoughts. In fact, they have circled my mind now so many times, that I doubt I will ever forget them.
'Tell me again,' I heard the count say to his nephew, 'what you know of the map and the man called Mansoul.'