LEECHLORD Frank Cavallo The man who should have been dead opened his eyes just after sunrise. One of the scouts marching beside Jurgen von Sturm’s stretcher noticed him stirring, craning his neck and reaching out with languid arms. The ranger called out to his superior, a few paces ahead. ‘Sir, he’s coming around.’ The scout captain pulled back on the reins of his horse, slowing its pace until the gurney reached him. The haggard figure that lay upon it looked up at him with bulging, bloodshot eyes. He tried to speak, but the effort produced nothing more than a hoarse whisper. ‘Rest now, my friend. You’re safe,’ the captain said, handing him a flagon of water. ‘And fortunate, by Sigmar. If we hadn’t come upon you when we did, who knows what might have become of you.’ Von Sturm took it, clutching the jug to his lips and drinking every drop without a breath. The instant he was finished, he cast the empty bottle aside. His arms quivering, he grabbed at the captain’s leg, clutching the man’s leather boot with a trembling hand. Von Sturm stared into the captain’s eyes with a haunted, empty gaze, as though looking right through him. ‘He’s mad, you know,’ he gasped. ‘Brilliant. Wise. So very wise… but quite, quite mad…’ His eyes rolled back. ‘The plague. The daemons. He cares for them like… like his own children.’ The forest trail opened into a clearing just ahead. The weathered battlements of Ferlangen rose up from the woodland with flame-scarred granite walls and a black gate of iron teeth. One of the scouts sounded a brass horn as the city came into view, blaring with the proper signal of three short notes and two long, alerting the sentinels atop the bastions. As the gates began to slowly roll open with the heavy clank of steel chains and pulleys, a pair of guardsmen marched out to meet the scouting party. ‘We have a man in need of attention here!’ the captain shouted. ‘Alert the citadel, and call for the Burgomeister’s doktor at once!’ Despite their disparity in rank, the guardsmen openly balked at the captain’s order. ‘The Burgomeister’s own doktor?’ one of them questioned. ‘With all respect, sir, you can’t expect us to send word to the citadel at the return of every wounded soldier.’ ‘This is no common soldier,’ the captain replied. Von Sturm lurched up from the gurney again, reaching out towards the guardsmen with bony fingers. ‘You’re all in danger here,’ he muttered. ‘The doktor… The rat pox… All of you are in danger…’ One of the guardsmen saw the insignia on von Sturm’s cloak. Though tattered, stained with blood and ripped across the centre, the emblem was unmistakable. ‘He’s one of the Black Eagle Guard?’ ‘We think so,’ the captain replied. ‘He was wandering alone on the edge of the Forest of Shadows, babbling just as he is now, talking of daemons and poxes.’ ‘The Black Eagle Guard?’ the other sentinel replied. ‘But weren’t they–’ The captain waved off their concerns. ‘That’s a discussion for another time. This man requires care. Take him to the citadel. He must be tended to by the chirurgeon. General Vormann himself will certainly wish to speak with him. He’s the only one who knows what happened to the missing regiments.’ Doktor Matthias Kohlrek shook his head. ‘It’s no use,’ the chirurgeon said. ‘The man’s totally unresponsive. Whatever horror he encountered in the wilderness, it has left him delirious.’ Von Sturm lay on a bed of wool and straw in the musty, crowded room of the Burgomeister’s personal physician. He stared up at the ceiling, apparently caring nothing for the fact that his presence had brought together some of the most powerful men in the city. General Heinrich Vormann stared down at the pathetic wretch, at a man who had once been one of Ostland’s finest knights. He refused to accept the doktor’s answer. ‘There must be something you can do,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried everything I can think of, for the last twelve hours. Nothing appears to work,’ the doktor replied. ‘It makes no sense. He shows signs of recent injuries, but they all appear to have been healed. If this fever passes and the rashes subsides, he should be just fine.’ ‘We need to know what happened to this man, and to his brothers-at-arms,’ Vormann said. ‘Whatever savagery befell them, it still stalks the dark forests beyond these gates.’ Doktor Kohlrek, a hunched and withered old man, rubbed his fingers into his exhausted eyes. For a moment, the general did not press the physician. Then von Sturm turned from his mindless contemplation of the walls to stare directly at the warlord. ‘The enemy is within! Kill me now, or you will all die here,’ he said, before collapsing back onto the bed. General Vormann’s stoic face paled. He dismissed everyone, sending away his own retainers and the court officials with a wave and a terse command. Once the room had emptied, he looked back to the doktor, now slumped in a chair. ‘There must be something more you can do,’ the general said. Doktor Kohlrek did not respond. General Vormann turned and grabbed the doktor by his dirty apron, yanking him from his seat. ‘The rest of the army is rotting out there in the cold mud,’ he seethed. ‘If there is any chance that he might be able to tell us how that happened, then we’ll do it. You’ll do it.’ ‘There is a chance,’ the doktor replied. ‘But our only weapon now is patience. If his fever is going to break, it will do so overnight. If it worsens, I’m afraid no medicine in the world can help him.’ General Vormann released his grip. He looked over again at von Sturm, writhing in listless delirium on the bed. ‘How soon will you know?’ the warlord asked. ‘I will stay by his side tonight. Return in the morning. If he lives through the dawn, we may yet learn what happened to him out there,’ Doktor Kohlrek said. ‘Shallya only knows what horrors this man has witnessed. I imagine they will torture his mind as the fever burns itself out.’ Jurgen von Sturm stared into the darkness. He heard laughter, echoing in the distance. He smelled brimstone and torch smoke. He sensed a thousand things, all at once. Everything was a blur, every sight, every sound and every thought. Then, in an instant, it all came back to him to him. And his ordeal began again… He was in the forest. He was with his men, riding with his sword unsheathed, though he saw no enemy. On a light-armoured stallion he trailed his comrades as they drove deep into the murky forests of northern Ostland. The grim, familiar parade of the Black Eagle Guard marched ahead; an ordered line of three hundred battle-hardened veterans, always spoiling for a fight. His fellow mounted knights flanked the marching column. Like him, they wore white tunics over their steel plate, emblazoned with the scarlet bull of the Grand Principality, all of them yellowed and frayed from exposure, caked in dust and soot. The bulk of the ranks were grizzled foot soldiers, pikemen with craggy faces and untrimmed beards. They marched in pairs with their longswords and bedrolls slung across their backs, in mail hauberks and gore-stained leather jerkins. Strips of wool were tied around arms, legs and torsos, stained red with the blood of wounds endured over the long weeks of their campaign, battle after battle against an inhuman enemy horde that never seemed to tire. Von Sturm clutched at his own bandaged injury when a gust of cold wind passed over the column. Every time he shifted in his saddle, the steel of his cuirass rubbed against the wound in his side. It brought a wince to his frost-burned face, sweating despite the cold. He grimaced and snarled against the pain, a constant effort to steel himself against the complaints of his own body. He reached under his plate mail to feel the tender swath of broken flesh, where a dirty ratman blade had ripped across his belly. He inspected his hand – the palm of his glove was slick with bloody pus. The wound wasn’t healing, festering now for the better part of five days, since the cowardly vermin had stormed their camp by night, forcing him into combat without armour for the first time in years. But von Sturm shrugged off the infection, even as a chill sent a shudder through him that had nothing to do with the cold. He looked ahead, squeezing his eyes tight to make them focus. He scanned the wintry woodlands, seeking any unnatural movement amid the copses of naked trees, clumped together and shivering in the icy wind. His ears caught every rustle in the thorny underbrush and every raspy squawk in the grey skies. A dead carpet of fallen leaves lay underfoot, layer upon layer of wet mulch and dry brambles. Every footstep and hoofbeat crackled and squished in the loam, sending up tiny divots of foul steam from the permanently composting ground. None of it escaped von Sturm’s awareness, as he kept a mental note of his surroundings: the sights, the smells and the sounds. Ever growing, always changing. It was one of the habits that had kept him alive through more battles than he could name. And the more he concentrated on his environs, the less attention he paid to the pain in his side. Or the chills, the sweats and the cough that now burned in his lungs. The further his column pressed into the Forest of Shadows, the more the haunted woods seemed to close in around them. Winter-shorn, sclerotic trees huddled in gaunt thickets, grown together in tangled clusters that merged into a low-hanging canopy overhead. The branches rattled with every turn of the wind, as if threatening to reach down and clutch at them as they rode beneath. For all the macabre eeriness of the woods however, nothing von Sturm saw troubled him – not until an hour past midday. Then something caught his eye that banished all thoughts of his own pains. It was just a hint at first, a shape in the distance. The outline was hard to make out, only barely visible over a rocky knoll to the far left of his marching column. For a moment he thought it might be nothing but a twisted tree, half hidden in the mist and shadows. As he rode closer though, beyond the hill, he looked again. And this time von Sturm was certain. It was a man. A gauzy curtain of fog shrouded him. Von Sturm squinted, craning his neck and straining to see any detail. Though partly obscured by the dancing shadows of wind-tossed trees, he was able to make out the figure’s shape. What he saw made him shiver. It was no lean warrior or muscular beast. The man’s height was stunted and his frame was fat; a slovenly girth bulging out of tattered robes that seemed to merge with the mist. Legends of the haunted forests had long spoken of such a watcher-in-the-woods. Von Sturm knew the tales well. He knew to dread the ghastly figure whose very appearance was the most grim of portents, an omen of disease and suffering known by many names. The Plague-stalker. Old Sawbones. The Fecundite. He studied the distant figure, mesmerised in a sort of morbid fascination. For a long, eerie moment the stout phantom stood perfectly still, until a shift in the winds broke the fog hanging around him, revealing the mad doktor’s walking staff. Twisted like a petrified black serpent, it was crowned with a daemonic skull marked across the forehead with a blood-rune. As von Sturm strained to see it through the haze, the mist continued to churn behind the ghastly icon, discoloured and fuming as though disturbed by the evil totem. Von Sturm’s lungs seized up, tightening his chest and forcing a pained cough. As if in response, the skull turned its black, empty eye sockets to stare directly back at him. His blood ran cold. An instant later his chest seized again, worse this time. Von Sturm turned away to catch his breath, and to steady his quivering limbs. When he looked again, only a moment later, there was nothing. The strange figure was gone. He gathered himself, taking several long, ragged breaths until his heart stopped pounding like a warhammer in his chest. Then von Sturm left his lieutenant in command of the rearguard, and he rode double-quick for the front of the column. He reined his galloping steed back to a trot when he came within a few dozen yards of the command retinue’s crimson and sable flags. The noble in charge of their expedition, Ludwig Ehrenhof, saw him, and called out to von Sturm as he approached. The youth was as unmistakable for his gaudy gold-plated helmet and matching cape as he was for his beardless chin and boyish face. Though he was seventeen years von Sturm’s junior, as the nephew of Count Valmir himself, the young equestrian had been awarded command of their prestigious order. ‘What brings you from your post this hour, Jurgen?’ Ludwig asked. Von Sturm wasted no time with pleasantries, as he rarely did. ‘My lord, I saw something in the woods. Off to our left, about a mile back,’ he said. ‘Nothing troubling enough for you to sound a general alarm, I see,’ Ludwig replied, no hint of worry evident in his confident tone. ‘What was it?’ Von Sturm pondered the question for a moment. ‘A man,’ he replied at last. ‘At least, it looked like a man. I turned away for a moment, and when I looked back he… it was gone.’ ‘Just one man?’ Ludwig joked. ‘I think our lads can handle that.’ ‘I don’t know that it was a man. I don’t know what it was,’ von Sturm answered, his voice failing as the pain in his infected lungs grew worse. ‘It could have been…’ He let his voice trail off, unsure if he should continue. Ludwig prompted him. ‘It could have been what?’ ‘Festus,’ von Sturm muttered, almost ashamed of himself for saying the name out loud. Ludwig shook his head. ‘Festus? The mad doktor? Are you getting jittery in your old age? My uncle told me that you were the keenest officer he ever rode with. Not a man given to wild imaginings.’ He seemed to take a long moment to look over von Sturm, who was trying hard to fight against the fevered shivering that gripped his bones. Von Sturm growled at the young noble under his breath, raising his voice in frustration. ‘I’m fine. And I’m telling you that we must be careful in these lands. Dangers of every sort lurk in these woods.’ Ludwig’s bare face flushed. He kicked his mount ahead, near enough to reach out and grab von Sturm by the cloak, pulling him close enough to whisper. ‘You may have known me since I was a child,’ he said. ‘But you must never speak to me as one in front of the men. Do you understand?’ He released the knight only a moment later, taking a moment to look him over a second time, closer now. ‘Is it the fever?’ Ludwig continued. ‘You look pale, old friend. And you’re drenched with sweat on the coldest day we’ve had out here. Let the apothecary have a look at you.’ ‘I said I’m fine. Maybe it was nothing. Let me send out a party, so we know for certain,’ von Sturm said. ‘No, our orders are clear. This is not a scouting expedition. My uncle gave us one mission. Search out the warband that savaged Salkalten and destroy every last one of them before they reach any of the villages further south. That’s exactly what I intend to do to those mongrel beasts.’ ‘If you’d just allow me to–’ They both stopped. A horn sounded from somewhere in the woods. It was a low-pitched, moaning call and it echoed between the barren trees. The ghostly howl raised a murmur from the men. ‘Steady, men,’ Ludwig called out. The horn faded away. A tense silence descended, but only for a moment. A shuffling, skittering noise replaced it. The pitter-patter of a thousand footsteps, seeming to come from every side this time. ‘On your guard, men!’ von Sturm commanded, his training and experience taking over. ‘Form up the lines, prepare defensive formation!’ The infantry responded with practised skill – shifting in position, drawing blades and strapping down their shields. They were just in time. The haunted forest came alive an instant later. A chittering horde teemed out of the mist, as though spawned from the foul earth itself. Their lean bodies were covered in coarse, prickly fur. Most were pale brown or the dull grey shade of peat smoke, with inhuman snouts flanked by bristle-like whiskers. Ratmen. They attacked with the same speed with which they scampered out of the shadows, leaping and pouncing from different directions with every slash and thrust. Most carried no shield, instead whirling rusted blades in each claw-like fist. Most were dressed in filthy rags, with only a few sporting small iron breastplates and coats of rusted mail. Upon reaching the battle-line, the horde broke off into smaller groups, setting upon knights or pikemen in parties of three or more. Though each stood about the height of a man, the rats preferred to swarm their enemies, shrinking from single combat and striking from multiple angles at once. Von Sturm drew his blade and slew two of the vermin in short order. The third attacker did not press the fight; instead he yelped, threw a handful of dirt in the knight’s face and slunk back into the shadows in their common, cowardly fashion. Though still coughing and sweating, the ardour of battle brought a surge to von Sturm’s creaking bones. He bounded into the fray atop his stallion, cutting a path through the heart of the swarm. He hacked down at the foul attackers from his saddle, swinging his longsword in a series of practised, deadly arcs. Each punishing sweep ended with the wet thump of edged steel chopping through muscle; the same cruel sound no matter the victim, human, greenskin or beast. Rodent blood splattered across his armour, soaking his riding gloves until every clench of his fists sent red rivulets down his arms. A single lethal stroke felled two ratmen with one swipe, the first disembowelled and the other decapitated. The moment of respite offered him a chance to pull back his steed, and to once again survey the fight, this time from the far side of the field. The distraction cost him. Von Sturm felt his horse lurch and stagger. He turned to find a jagged lance blade sticking through the stallion’s neck. Swathed in warm blood, the halberd was thrust clean through the horse’s flesh, the serrated edge only barely missing von Sturm’s belly. He saw three ratmen howling in triumph underneath, still twisting the shaft of the spear, trying to direct the great, dying stallion to the ground like a felled cedar. He reached down, grabbing one by the throat, hauling it across the saddle like a rag doll. He stared at the whimpering ratman for an instant. Even in the midst of battle, with blood-stink filling the air, von Sturm could smell the nasty sewage reek that clung to its fur. A nest of fleas infested its hide, spilling out from its undercoat as von Sturm tightened his fist into a strangling death-grip. Choking as its larynx collapsed, the ratman hissed, opening its mouth to threaten its captor with two pairs of pointed yellow incisors. Von Sturm held fast, grimacing at the rotten-egg breath and the flecks of bloody saliva it spat with every wheeze, until the ratman finally fell still. Only an instant later, the front legs of his whinnying horse buckled, trapping von Sturm’s left ankle in the stirrup as it twisted on the way down. Von Sturm tried to pull his leg free as the steed fell, and to clutch at his sword simultaneously. He accomplished neither. The murdered stallion did not obey the path the ratmen sought for it, instead crumpling into the gully of a dead riverbed, barrelling von Sturm underneath its great girth like a catapult. Agony tore through him – he felt his thighbones snap as the massive beast rolled over him, pulling his ruined left leg from its socket. He let loose the deepest, longest scream he’d ever uttered. Then everything went black. It was hours before von Sturm’s wits returned to him. He came around slowly, looking out through blurry eyes and muttering what he expected to be his final prayers to Sigmar. The woodlands were littered in every direction with the remains of his comrades, their corpses hacked to pieces in a wasteland of broken armour and mutilated flesh. Mud and blood blended in putrid puddles. Flies swarmed and carrion birds cried overhead, circling the fields before their rancid feast. Still trapped under the carcass of his steed, his broken legs had gone numb. His fever swelled. Every breath burned like cinders in his lungs. Lingering somewhere near the edge of delirium, his eyes wandered over the desolation, overwhelmed by the terrible sights, the awful smells and the pained whimpers of those other cursed few who were not yet dead. But there was something else. Something worse stalked the fields of ruin. A strange flock of creatures fanned out around him, leaping and crawling over everything in sight; some no larger than horseflies, others as large as hounds. The herd was horrific. Some of the beasts were nothing more than torsos dragging themselves along with claw-like hands. Others rubbed exposed organs and intestinal tracts against the rocks, slurping and lurching and drooling as they moved about. Smaller, faster creatures crept between them, neither insect nor reptile nor bird, but bastardised hybrids of all these things. Some had bulging, bullfrog eyeballs dripping with viscous tears; others were without eyes altogether. Prickly grey tongues dangled to the side of maws lined with broken teeth, nestled beside up-turned fangs, the sharp ivory coated in layers of dried mucus. Those daemons not sniffing for carrion or picking through the human debris mounted their packmates, stroking and grooming one another in unnerving displays of affection. A familiar, shambling figure trailed the daemon swarm, ragged and moth-eaten. He ministered arcane rites to the dead and the dying. Carrying his skull-topped staff, the macabre old doktor studied several of the corpses in particular, fiddling with disembodied limbs and scraps of bloody meat like a fishmonger at market. Festus. His immense girth was swaddled in grimy, tattered robes; the demands of his grossly distended physique had ripped and stretched everything he wore. The woollen threads were browned with age, their natural colour soiled in shades of dried excrement and crawling with cultures of green and black mould. Barefoot in spite of the cold, his toes were uncommonly large, dirty and tipped with ingrown, thickened nails. A rusty bandolier chain was slung over his shoulder, dangling boiled human skulls. It was tied with braided scalps to an enormous wooden chest he wore like a rucksack. The open pack rattled with the clinking of dozens of glass vials, most half-filled with milky, bubbling fluids, a few glowing with a poisonous luminescence. Hissing snakes slithered around the enormous crooked staff he clutched in his left hand. The daemonic skull that had fixed its ghostly sights on von Sturm hours earlier still moved with a sinister, sentient independence. His own face was a diseased mess – a bulbous nose dribbled slow, sticky mucus onto chapped lips, while cysts drooled pus down his fat cheeks, pock-marked with open sores of necrotic flesh and mouldering ulcers. His jowls slobbered, submerging his jaw under a neck that bulged like a toad’s. Von Sturm watched him, surrounded by the daemon host, sifting through the bodies of the dead. It was clear that Festus was no thief. He took nothing from the corpses he examined, but he was looking for something. It was only when von Sturm coughed again that he realised what that was. Festus was looking for him. Festus turned at the raspy sound of von Sturm’s straining lungs. Even from a distance, in the dim of the gloaming von Sturm could see his wild eyes lighting up at the sound of the putrid phlegm coughed out from the dying knight’s throat. The fat, dishevelled old doktor ambled closer, navigating the fields of the dead with uncommon grace. He stopped a few feet from von Sturm, looking down at him buried under mud and rotting horseflesh. The mad doktor said nothing; he seemed only to study him, listening to the tortured wheezing that came with every breath, sampling the odours of decay. He appeared to take an interest in even the smallest details of the fallen knight’s predicament, but without any apparent regard for his suffering. ‘I know you,’ von Sturm finally said, his voice hoarse and faltering. ‘I know who you are.’ There was no reply. ‘You’re Doktor Festus,’ he continued. ‘They say you were… the greatest physician in the Empire. That there was no ailment you… couldn’t cure. Yet now, it seems…’ The bloated figure smiled with a wide, crooked grin, exposing irregular rows of rotten teeth, some worn down to stumps, some stained urine-yellow and coated in brown plaque. When he lowered his filthy, green hood his misshapen head was exposed: pallid, veiny skin that had rarely seen the sun, sprouting matted locks blackened from years of sebaceous grease and infested with lice. He lifted his porcine nose like a bloodhound, sniffing over von Sturm’s hands, then his chest and finally all around his face. As if searching for a scent, or following an invisible trail, he nodded with peculiar satisfaction after every different breath. ‘High fever. Cold sweat,’ he said, as though cataloguing rather than explaining. ‘Dark yellow mucus. Pale green rash spreading outwards from the face and throat, covering the extremities. A raspy cough, high in the chest. Yes, it’s just as I suspected. So very rare, and so very beautiful.’ ‘Can you… help me?’ von Sturm muttered. ‘Whatever has become of you now… If it is true that you once mastered the medicine and remedies of every realm… Can you heal my wounds?’ Festus sneered. Rather than answer he continued to study the knight’s symptoms. This time he reached in close and stroked his chubby finger along the edges of von Sturm’s deep, infected wound. A slather of congealed pus and clotted blood coated his digit, which he promptly brought to his lips. Tasting the foetid melange, Festus nodded again, now with a more certain expression. Von Sturm feebly brushed his hand aside. ‘I ask again… do you know how to heal me?’ Again there was no reply, other than a derisive shake of the doktor’s bloated head. ‘Please,’ von Sturm begged. ‘Long have I served the Count of Ostland. Whatever you desire, I will see that he makes it yours, but I implore you, if the power is within you, cure me of these foul afflictions!’ The plea brought a snarl from Festus. His eyes bulged with wrath. He recoiled from von Sturm as though taunted by the deepest of insults. For a long, quiet moment the old doktor looked away, clenching his fat fists and muttering to himself. Finally he turned back to the knight, a devious glimmer in his eyes. ‘Have you any children?’ he asked. Von Sturm puzzled for a moment, afraid of giving away more information than necessary to the deviant, disturbed figure. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘A son and a daughter. They died some years back.’ ‘Died... or were killed?’ The question jolted von Sturm as no blade could have. A tear came to his eye. ‘Murdered. During a greenskin raid on our village,’ he answered, barely above a whisper. The suggestion brought an even more scheming glare to the doktor’s face. ‘It must have been a horrible end,’ he said. ‘Tell me, did you see them die?’ The memory brought an ache to von Sturm’s chest worse than any caused by his injury. ‘No, I was on a campaign north of Kislev when it happened,’ he said. Festus drew closer, near enough that von Sturm could smell the ammonia fumes of his foul breath with every word. ‘If I told you I could run the sands of time in reverse,’ the mad apothecary began, ‘to wind back the years and let you watch their demise… would you? Would you watch your beloved children being killed?’ Von Sturm recoiled, shaking his head to rid himself of the images, straining to control the anger they sparked in his heart. He clenched his fists, shook his head and whispered under his breath. He looked up at Festus, staring back at him with a knowing, sad glare. Then he looked down to the boils festering on his hands, the pus drooling from the wound in his side, the bloody phlegm he’d coughed up onto his own chest. ‘I would no sooner cure you than you would watch your own children put to the sword,’ Festus said. The mad doktor turned from von Sturm, raising his staff and muttering under his breath once more, but this time in a foul, dark tongue. In response, the daemon swarm coalesced, drawing inwards to the call of their master’s strange summoning. The motley horde jammed together, scrambling over one another with scaly tails and claws, all eyes turned to Festus, like a pack of docile wolves panting in anticipation of a command. The Leechlord did not speak. He lowered his staff, pointed it towards von Sturm and nodded. As if in response, the throng surged, lifting themselves in a tide of warped flesh. Roused to action and moving with a single purpose, they descended as one upon von Sturm. The trunks of two massive oaks stood side by side, intertwining as they rose so that the upper branches had grown together. Like a sentinel of the woods, the twins stood apart from the otherwise dense foliage in a wide clearing. The conjoined trunks were thick, bloated and bulging outwards with growths sagging from the grey bark. Few branches grew lower than the height of two men. Those that did sprout off the main rise were as wide and round as full trees themselves, reaching out in weird perpendicular growths. Their joining blotted out all but a few slivers of moonlight. It felt like the interior of a cavern, but the whole of the area reeked – the rank, heavy stench of excrement mixed with the stale smell of death. The daemon-swarm brought the crippled von Sturm there, ferrying him through the woods like a colony of giant ants. A scream howled through the dimness. It wailed as if suddenly roused to agony, then lapsed, fading into a voiceless whimper. A greenish-yellow gleam ignited at the death-knell of the scream. Von Sturm could see the source of the light and the wail, for they were one and the same – a man hung suspended in an iron gibbet, his limbs shackled and his grey, naked flesh pierced with corroded rods. Fitted around his skull like a battle-helm, the top of the iron coffin merged with his head, fused into one being by some black sorcery. It was from there that the sickly light emanated, from a translucent, plasma-churning globe that grew from the poor wretch’s brain. Festus was standing beside him, and quite clearly found no horror in the display. The glow revealed the true nature of his camp. While there were no permanent structures to be seen, it was clearly more than a mere haven in the wilderness; to von Sturm it seemed more like a makeshift workshop, though for only the most foul of experiments. A dozen human effigies lined the periphery. As far as the green light penetrated, rows of corpses hung suspended from the tree limbs. Rotting away in different stages of decomposition, maggots oozed through the flesh of some, while others, the skin desiccated and blackened, were falling to pieces. Each body was suspended on hooks and rusty chains, like slabs of slaughtered chattel in a butcher’s pen. Many were incomplete specimens, missing whole limbs, pieces of limbs or merely other, smaller assets – eyes, noses and ears having been severed and stitched over in gruesome acts of surgery. The swarm laid von Sturm down on a flat section of stone, almost like an altar or a physician’s examination table. He could feel nothing in either leg. Every minute brought new kinds of agony from the wound in his side. His fever had swelled. His vision betrayed him, focusing in and out and settling on a blurry medium, while the cough and the burning in his lungs made him shiver and convulse. Festus stood over him yet again, dismissing the beast-swarm with a wave. The doktor then set down his massive wooden pack. It opened like a cabinet, revealing a portable laboratory stocked with all manner of foul gear. Countless vials, tubes and flasks hung in niches, bubbling and fuming. Hundreds of age-worn scrolls were crammed into slots carved from human skulls beside them, the parchment and vellum yellowed and frayed. There were scalpels of varying sizes, along with needles, clamps, pincers and hooks and a pair of bone-saws with dried blood crusting the teeth. When von Sturm saw the macabre implements, his heart began to race. ‘Foul trickster! What do you intend for me?’ he demanded. Festus ignored him, tending to his vials and rusty tools. ‘If you mean to torture me for information, I will give you none. Do with me as you wish, but I am a loyal servant of the Empire and I would rather die than betray my lord!’ At length, Festus turned back to von Sturm again. ‘You were cut with a skaven blade, wielded by a rat from the Clan Pestilens,’ he said. ‘How do you–’ ‘The metal was coated with rodent saliva, itself infected with a plague that is most common among the short-clawed brown rat populations of the Under-Empire. It is spread among them by the green-winged flea. A particular favourite of mine actually, quite a rare strain indeed.’ ‘Rare?’ ‘In humans at least. Although it was once deadly to them, the rats have grown to live with it rather well. Among men, however, this pox is quite virulent. You should have died days ago,’ he mused, almost to himself. Then he cocked his head to the side and looked at von Sturm again, as if for the first time. ‘Why haven’t you?’ ‘Maybe I’m just lucky,’ von Sturm replied. Festus shook his head, either missing the attempt at humour or looking past it. ‘Do you know what a plague wants?’ he asked. ‘What it desires the most?’ Von Sturm puzzled, rubbing his increasingly blurry eyes. The question made no sense to him. Given the pain rippling through his chest and his head, he could think of only one reply. ‘To kill?’ he wheezed. Festus wagged his fat finger like a school teacher. ‘That is what a plague does, not what it desires,’ he answered. ‘Tell me, what would you say are the greatest plagues of all the ages?’ Again, von Sturm struggled to think, fighting through the delirium to force himself to consider. ‘I don’t know… Blacklegge. The ghoulpox. Gnashing fever, perhaps,’ he replied. ‘I treated them all,’ said Festus. ‘And they killed thousands, perhaps tens or even hundreds of thousands. The dead went uncounted.’ Festus drew in closer to von Sturm yet again. ‘Failures all,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t understand,’ von Sturm croaked. ‘If you mean to kill me, then get on with it. I should have died on the field, not like this.’ Still Festus paid his suffering no mind. ‘Can you guess why they failed, all those terrible plagues?’ Festus asked, continuing the exchange with little urgency. Von Sturm shook his head. He was losing his strength by the moment. ‘It was not because they killed, but because of how they killed. Exactly because they were so very deadly,’ Festus replied. ‘The most successful plague is not the one that kills overnight. On the contrary, the pox that eats through its host too quickly is no use to me at all.’ ‘Why are you telling me this?’ ‘Because you aren’t dead,’ Festus replied. ‘By the gods, you really are insane!’ Festus shook his head. ‘A host,’ he said. ‘That is what every plague desires. A home where it can thrive, a strong specimen with enough resistance to stay alive long enough for the pox to grow, to mature. To spread. You see, my friend, the greatest plague of all is the one that can spread without killing, at least not until it has used its host for all that it has to offer, to spawn new disease swarms to continue on, and on and on. For that it needs a sturdy victim, such a rare thing to find. But when one does appear, there is no more wonderful pairing to be had. A perfect symbiosis – the most virulent of poxes spread by the most durable of hosts.’ Horrible realisation began to dawn on von Sturm. ‘No,’ he replied, his breath failing. ‘Kill me. Kill me now.’ ‘Kill you? I must say, I fear that you have understood nothing I’ve told you,’ Festus replied. ‘No, in fact killing you is the last thing I mean to do, not when you’ve shown such natural talent. No, I mean to leave you even better than I found you. In my hands, you will become perfect.’ ‘Perfect? I don’t understand,’ he wheezed. ‘Do you mean to heal me after all?’ ‘I shall shortly bestow a great gift upon you,’ Festus said. ‘You’re a lucky soul – few who have crossed my path have ever been as fortunate as you. The gods have truly blessed you indeed. I intend to see that your blessing is not wasted.’ Festus raised a vial, bubbling with sickly froth and green fluid. In his other hand he lifted a giant rusty needle, smiling and laughing as he brought them near. Von Sturm breathed and tried to speak, but lost consciousness before the words came to his lips. Von Sturm held his eyes tightly shut. He remembered everything, but he hoped that he was wrong. He hoped he was mistaken. He prayed that it wasn’t true, that all of it was a dream. A nightmare. But when he finally opened his eyes, his worst fears were confirmed. It was morning. Soft, pale light spilled in through a pair of open windows. Everything was utterly still. He was not in the lair of Festus – instead he lay once more in the care of the Burgomeister’s doktor in Ferlangen, with the physician seated beside him, sleeping in his chair. Von Sturm rose from the bed and shakily nudged the slumped figure of Doktor Kohlrek. The chirurgeon did not respond. He grabbed the old man with both hands, trying to rouse him, but his head merely sagged. His neck was limp, his body lifeless. The Black Eagle knight lifted the doktor’s chin, and the reason was immediately clear. Doktor Kohlrek’s face was covered in a pale green rash. His cheeks were swollen with blisters. Yellow phlegm had dried into a crust across his lips. Von Sturm stumbled across the room, clutching at a mirror hanging from the far wall. He stared at his reflection in the polished glass. He froze. His own face was a twisted ruin. Green pustules swelled across his flesh. His hair had fallen out in clumps, leaving patches of mottled, scaly skin. He tore off his tunic, and his blood ran cold. Beneath his clothing he saw that his entire body was mangled by the pox, warped and seething with pus. But he felt nothing. The burning in his lungs was gone, as was the cough, and the fever. He felt no sickness. No malady of any kind. The strength in his legs had returned. He bounded across the room and threw open the door, but no guards stood outside. He realised why – they were slumped against the wall, their flesh riddled with weeping sores. Down the hall, more bodies lay sprawled on the floor, all of them dead from the same affliction. From his affliction. He loped down the corridor, tearing open the heavy front door of the building and stumbling into the open air beyond. A silent horror greeted him, and an unimaginable stench of rotting flesh. The city was no more. Corpses littered every street, collapsed against doorways or horse troughs, frozen in their final moments of retching agony. Soldiers, women and even children lay where they had fallen. Bloated flies buzzed in the cold air. Jurgen von Sturm sank to his knees. The words of Festus echoed in his head. The most virulent of poxes spread by the most durable of hosts. He screamed to the heavens, but there was no one else left alive in Ferlangen to hear him.