MARK OF THE BEAST

by Jonathan Green

TORBEN BADENOV SCOURED the smouldering remains of the peasant village for signs of life, but saw none. The settlement had been razed to the ground. The acrid odour of burning in the air almost masked another, more sinister reek; Torben knew instinctively what it was. His horse whinnied and snorted; she could smell it too, and it made even this hardy, steppe-bred warhorse uneasy. The musky odour was of something both animal and man, less than either but at the same time greater: the stink of the beastman.

For ten days the border patrol commanded by the highborn Captain Yasharov, had been hunting the beastman warband through the snow and ice of the coniferous forests, where the lands of the Taiga met the foothills of the Worlds Edge Mountains.

Torben ran fingers through his tangle of raven coloured hair and looked to where his men waited, as Captain Yasharov and his entourage rode up the wind-scoured slope in front of the broken posts of the settlement stockade.

Torben had been in the army of the Tzar for five years, first as a foot soldier and now as a cavalryman commanding fifteen men. He looked to each of them in turn. There was Oran Scarfen, a rat-faced, whiskered rogue from Talabheim; there was Vladimir Grozny, a huge, heavy-set bald-headed Dolgan. Adjusting the padded jerkin of his leather armour was Alexi of Nuln, one of the Emperor’s men. Alexi was the oldest in the band. Next came the two Tolyev brothers, Arkady and Andrei. Absent-mindedly cleaning the blade of an ebony-handled knife was Manfred of Stirland.

Oleg Chenkov, named the ”Preacher” by the men, sat in an attitude of prayer. Under his chainmail shirt he wore a sackcloth habit. Like so many others, his family had been murdered by the predations of a marauding northmen tribe. The experience had unhinged his mind, driving him into a sanctuary of religious fanaticism, and compelling him to find service in Tzar Bokha’s army that he might smite the enemies of mankind with righteous vengeance. His constant muttering of holy scripture unnerved some of the other men. He was mumbling now.

‘Be quiet, Preacher,’ said a blond-haired giant, seated high in the saddle of the roan next to Oleg. Arnwolf’s huge physique denoted his Norse ancestry. Beside the huge barbarian was Zabrov, a sallow-skinned steppes warrior. He rode saddleless and without reins, as if he had been born on a horse.

Mikhail Polenko was a member of an offshoot branch of the noble household of Praag and was quick to remind people of his proud and ancient lineage.

Then there was Yuri Gorsk who was practically a boy compared to the rest of them. The remaining four had been transferred from the remnants of a unit that suffered heavy casualties in an earlier skirmish. Kiryl, Evgenii, Cheslav and Stefan were their names.

The whole unit was uneasy. It had been only two days since they had last seen evidence of the beast horde’s rampage. Their quarry must be almost within reach: Torben could feel it.

The young cavalryman commander looked at his captain and Arman Yasharov returned the stare with fixed cold eyes. His flat nose and chiselled features spoke of his noble heritage, as did the swathing ermine-lined cloak and fine leather boots he wore.

Torben despised Captain Yasharov, and he was not alone. He was arrogant, ill mannered, short-tempered and lacked any real battle experience. Even in a country with a reputation for raising mighty warriors, there were still those who attained high position by familial influence, money or favouritism.

The unit commanders held the captain in low regard, but none would dare disobey his orders. The only ones who didn’t seem to share the general consensus were the captain’s personal bodyguard, and Torben knew that their loyalty did not come cheaply. So it was that Captain Yasharov was secure in his position as general of one of the Tzar’s armies.

However, Torben could well imagine that Yasharov had been given this border patrol to lead thanks to the machinations of a political rival of his father’s. Somebody, it seemed, with influence even greater than Ramov Yasharov liked him about as much as his own troops did.

‘It’s definitely them,’ Torben told the captain.

‘We cannot be certain that this was the work of the horde we are hunting, commander. There are many such warbands infesting these forests.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but we can be sure,’ Torben said, barely suppressing his frustration at his commanding officer’s irritating incompetence, and pointed over the ridge behind him.

A gust of wind brought the slurry stink of the dung to the captain’s nostrils before his eyes took in the scene. Excrement had been crudely arranged in moist piles to form a particular shape, one that they all now recognised. They had seen it many times since they had begun tracking the beastmen: torn into the bark of trees; daubed in blood on the rent awning of a pillaged wagon or made from the carefully-arranged bones of the warband’s victims. The ”Mark of the Beast”, some of the men had called it. It was a crude, almost runic, representation of a skull: two long, curved horns in the ascendant, two shorter horns framing the oval outline of a long-muzzled head. But they had never seen it on such a scale before. Here, the combined manure of the whole warband had been gathered together and moulded into a symbol that covered an area the size of a field.

The first signs they had come across of the warband had suggested a pack numbering somewhere in the region of twenty creatures. But it had taken more than twenty ruminating digestive tracts to produce this amount of excrement. Either the pack was growing in size or the first group they had encountered was only a splinter force of a much larger tribe, and one into whose territory Yasharov’s army had now strayed.

Torben had heard a rumour that there were more beastmen in the world than men. It was a nightmarish thought and Torben put it down to being just that - an exaggeration. Now he wasn’t so sure.

But something else troubled him. The corpses of several of the razed settlement’s defenders lay amidst the ruins. But they had found no other bodies among the burnt out buildings. Where were the rest of the villagers?

GASHRAKK BLACKHOOF, BEASTMAN champion, Chosen of the Great Beast and leader of the Dark Horn tribe, fixed Cathbad with a piercing black stare that bore into the shaman’s own blinking caprine eyes like a bone-tipped spear. Gashrakk was bigger and bulkier than the most formidable of his bestigors warriors. His whole body was corded with muscle and covered with a tough dark hide. Ridged horns rose proudly from his monstrous goat head. His flesh was pierced with symbols of his dark gods and he had a thick iron ring through his nose.

He was no mere bloodlusting beast. Of course, bloodletting and cruel violence had its part to play in sovereignty but Gashrakk was above those other chieftains who thought nothing of strategy and posterity. He has been blessed by the Chaos Gods, granted a malign, human intelligence combined with savage, animal cunning.

Cathbad the shaman wore a hooded robe that covered his body completely. It was decorated with esoteric sigils, painted with a mixture of blood and soot. Two long horns emerged from holes in the hood. The cloak-robe was tied at the waist with a gut cord and he held a long staff, adorned with animal skulls.

‘You summoned me, my Lord Blackhoof,’ the Dark Horns’ shaman grunted in the guttural words of the beastmen’s ugly tongue.

Gashrakk snorted gruffly, a gust of animal-breath turning the rancid air around him even ranker. ‘I did. I want you to read the auguries for the sacrifice. I need to know if today is the propitious time.’

‘I come prepared.’ The shaman ushered two gor beastmen into the chieftain’s hut. Slumped between them was a human prisoner, gagged and bound. Cathbad pulled a large saw-edge gutting knife from inside his robes, the prisoner’s eyes widened in terror. The gor guards tightened their grip on the panicking man’s arms and his desperate wailing penetrated the gag that stopped his mouth.

Cathbad thrust the serrated knife into the man’s midriff. With a sharp tug the shaman opened him up from stomach to sternum. Eyes screaming, the man watched as the rent in his abdomen bulged and ejected his intestines, the viscera flopping wetly and splashed onto the packed earth floor. The light in his eyes faded but the agonised grimace remained. The beastmen released their hold on the prisoner and the body crumpled to the ground.

The soothsayer stared at the pattern formed by the entrails and the pooling fluids.

‘The omens, are they good?’ prompted the beastlord.

‘The gods smile on this day,’ Cathbad said. ‘The signs are auspicious for the sacrifice. Slaughter the prisoners this night and the Lord of Misrule, the Lord of Beasts, will be freed of his prison, to fulfil the ancient prophecy.’

At the shaman’s words, Gashrakk considered the tribal herdstone, which stood on the highest ground within the camp, like some malevolent grey-black sentinel. The monolith was huge: three gors high, weighing as much as the whole herd. It was adorned with lengths of rusted chain from which dangled the tribe’s trophies and remnants of offerings made to their bloodthirsty gods.

But what made the Dark Horns’ herdstone unusual was the ancient prophecy that wound over the fractured faces of the rock. Carved countless seasons past in still-potent runes, it told of the Lord of Misrule, who had once held great swathes of land in the grip of his anarchic rule; a kingdom of confusion. It told how he had been conquered; how he now slept within a prison of stone, the Cave of Beasts; how he would one day be freed by a champion of the descendants of his tribe, to return order and civilisation to the natural bestial state of chaos and wanton destruction, red in tooth and claw, where beast preyed upon beast.

Gashrakk’s lips formed something approximating a smile. Then tonight it would be. It was Gashrakk’s belief that if he sacrificed enough souls to the daemon-beastlord he would rightly be made the greatest of those champions, and thus rewarded. The Lord of Misrule’s return would throw the lands of men into anarchy and the Dark Horns would rampage across the realms of Kislev and the Empire in a bloodthirsty orgy of killing.

‘Beware!’ Cathbad suddenly declared. ‘I see an army marching on our camp, an army of the hu-men.’

‘Hu-men,’ Gashrakk growled. ‘But the omens are good for the ritual to take place?’

‘Of course, my lord.’

‘Then nothing must be allowed to prevent its happening.’ He turned to one of his guards. ‘You! Take word to Slangar and Barruk! Tell them to marshal their warriors. Nothing must disrupt the sacrifice. We will deal with these hu-men like the litter of runts they are, and paint our fur with their blood!’

IT HAD BEEN easy for Torben Badenov’s scouts to follow the tracks left by the beastman horde. There had been nothing more the Kislevite soldiers could do for the nameless settlement and its lost populace, other than to avenge its memory and not rest until their chieftain’s head adorned a stake outside the army’s camp.

Torben spurred his steed forward, coming level with the sharp-eyed Yuri Gorsk and Mikhail Polenko. The other thirteen mounted men were spread out across the valley behind them. As Torben’s unit scouted ahead through the wild, untamed hills, the bulk of Captain Yasharov’s army trudged through the wilderness, several miles behind them.

Torben felt uneasy. He felt - knew - that something was waiting for them out here in the wilderness of the barren uplands. It was perfect ambush territory. He had not wanted to take this route and had suggested circling around the valley to come upon the beastmen from upwind to ensure a surprise attack. He suspected that the creatures already had the scent of the approaching army. Yasharov had rubbished the idea immediately, laughing at Torben’s, ”inane understanding of strategy”.

‘That could take days!’ he had scoffed. ‘The way to win this is to charge at the heart of the foe as quickly as possible, and rip it out!’

Torben guessed their captain was eager to return to hearth and home, at any cost. Torben scanned the rim of the valley. Its crest appeared almost black against the clouded grey-white of the winter sky. They would have to make the best of the situation. They could not return to Yasharov until they had at least sighted the beastmen.

And then Torben saw them.

At first they were no more than black silhouettes against the stark horizon, lank manes blowing in the wind, flint-headed spears in hand, taking their place in line around the valley sides. Then they were a pelting mass of leaping, bounding bodies. Torben’s men cried out to each other, drawing their weapons as the beastmen set about them.

It was immediately apparent as the pack converged that Torben’s scouts were greatly outnumbered. The horses whinnied and shied but the soldiers did their best to bring them back under control.

Darting glances from side to side, Torben saw four of the filthy, dark-skinned beastmen moving towards him. These were of the breed that some scholars and soldiers referred to as ungors, or un-men. Their bodies were thickly haired with contrasting-coloured fur covering their shoulders and descending the length of their spines to the scraggy tuft of a vestigial tail. Horns protruded from their foreheads, some no more than nubs of bone, others sporting crowns of several darkly ridged projections. All of them carried crude hide-stretched, wooden shields and deadly gutting-spears.

As the first ungor thrust at the mounted Torben, he was ready with a powerful down swing that batted the shaft of the spear away. The beastman stumbled forward on cloven feet, carried towards the mounted soldier by the momentum of its lunge. As a result, Torben’s returning upswing caught the creature under the jaw. Half its face disappeared as the malformed mandible was torn free. The ungor fled, screaming through the ragged, gaping wound.

Torben turned his steed towards his other attackers, as all around him his men engaged with the hollering beast warriors. The reins clenched firmly in his left hand, Torben swept his sword at the stooped figure to his right. He caught the beastman across its shoulders, opening a bright crimson wound in the matted fur.

Another beastman jabbed at Torben’s steed with its spear. The horse reared, whinnying, and Torben’s second stroke missed. But the horse’s hooves came crashing down on the injured ungor’s head, hurling it onto the iron-hard, frozen ground and cracking its skull open.

As Torben despatched those others who had foolishly taken him on, he already knew his men were in trouble, despite the fact that many were holding their own against the ungor pack. Vladimir Grozny, unhorsed, his steed gone, stood drenched in the blood of the foe, with a mound of beastman heads and corpses at his feet.

Arnwolf was in single combat with a beastman that was taller and more heavily muscled than the human-sized ungors. This must be the pack leader, Torben thought. Beastman polearm clanged against Norse axe-steel as Arnwolf deftly parried a two-handed downward strike and then backhanded his opponent across the snout.

The Preacher was delivering divine retribution against the savages with a gore-splattered hammer gripped tightly in his white-knuckled fists. ‘Begone, foul spawn of Chaos!’ Oleg yelled as he shattered the spine of another beastman with his holy weapon.

The skirmish had split into two halves. Torben, Arnwolf, Oleg and half a dozen other soldiers had quickly broken the beastman charge on their side, although the dull-witted beasts had spread their warriors unevenly so Torben’s half had met with the weaker assault.

The rest of his cavalrymen, caught unawares by the sudden ambush, had not fared so well. As Torben galloped to their aid he realised that the bodies of several men and horses lay twitching or motionless on the valley floor amidst the snow and scree. Zabrov lay curled around an ungor spear, which thrust vertically into the air from where it was sunk into his dead body. Mikhail Polenko lay half-crushed beneath the carcass of his own thoroughbred steed, desperately fending off three slavering brown-furred beasts.

At the same time, a number of the ungors, who had at first fled when their ambush had not immediately brought down Torben’s cavalrymen, were regrouping at the other end of the valley, under a filth-encrusted banner that looked like stretched human skin, which bore the Mark of the Beast.

Oran Scarfen, however, was surrounded by more than half a dozen beastmen, and he wasn’t dead yet. As Torben closed the distance between them he saw Oran’s horse dragged down by the beastmen and his friend disappeared from view amidst the excitedly braying ungors.

With a shouted ”Yaaah!” Torben urged his panting mount on even harder.

He felt the rumbling through the vibrations of the rock-hard ground before he heard it, drumming like the cartwheels of a loaded wagon. Looking towards the head of the valley he saw the two chariots thundering towards them, bristling with spikes and slicing blades, iron-shod wheels gouging great ruts in the frost-hardened turf, and pulled by monstrous horned and tusked creatures that combined the very worst and most savage attributes of great boars and brutish rams.

The arrival of the chariots alone could assure the beastmen their victory. Turning his whinnying steed to face the rumbling chariots, Torben prepared to break their charge.

‘AND YOU’RE THE only ones who remain?’ Captain Yasharov asked as he surveyed the survivors of Torben’s unit. ‘Half of you?’

‘That’s correct, sir,’ Torben said. Only eight of them had rejoined the rest of the border patrol. Following the appearance of the chariots, despite Torben’s men managing to wreck one of them, five of his fellows had been seized and carried off by the second tuskgor-drawn contraption - Oran, Manfred, Andrei, Evgenii and Mikhail. Three had died: the steppes warrior Zabrov, the untried Cheslav and Kiryl. ‘We were ambushed.’

‘And you failed to locate the horde’s encampment,’ Yasharov said pointedly.

‘Yes, sir. We were down to half strength and needed to regroup to effect a rescue.’

‘Your orders were to locate the enemy camp. That is what scouts are for, is it not?’

‘If we had continued it is doubtful there would have been any of us left alive to return and tell you the location of the camp.’

‘Well, no matter,’ Yasharov said, smiling coldly, disdain visible in his eyes. ‘Boris Bogdashka’s infantry found it for you. And their scouting mission met with no such misfortune.’

Torben was fuming inside but he said nothing. His survivors had made their way back to the main force to find that the army had made camp, following news of the discovery of the enemy’s stockade, to prepare for the final decisive push. That night the Kislevites would lay siege to the beastmen’s stronghold.

‘The beastman camp is within a stockade atop what remains of an ancient earthwork. It is not far from here, beyond a spur of the pine forest. Order your unit to ready themselves. We attack at dusk. Dismissed.’

Torben remained exactly where he was.

‘I said, you are dismissed,’ Yasharov repeated, fire creeping into his voice.

‘Sir, we should mount a rescue to free my men. I also believe that the beastmen have other prisoners, taken from the villages they’ve raided. Why, I do not know, but I do know it is not the normal behaviour of the warped ones.’

‘Why would you want to rescue them?’ Yasharov asked, an incredulous look on his blunt features.

Torben’s loathing for his commander was increasing by the minute.

‘Other than to save my men from a horrible death, you mean? Men I value and respect, some of whom I consider my friends?’ Torben retorted. ‘Other than that, the beasts must be planning something, I’m sure of it, possibly some dark ritual. It could be dangerous negligence to let such a ritual take place. Who knows what the consequences might be?’

‘We are fighting a war against these mutants and in war there are bound to be casualties. Your men, and any other prisoners the beastmen may have taken, are expendable.’

Torben’s blood was boiling. ‘Good soldiers are a commodity you should do your best to protect,’ he rejoined.

‘I have suffered enough of your insolence! It is time you learnt your place!’

‘I am sorry, my lord,’ Torben lied, ‘but if you would only give me a few hours we could at least try to infiltrate the camp and free the prisoners before the main attack.’

‘In a matter of hours we will be ready to attack the stockade and cull this tribe, dealing with them once and for all.’

‘But by then it may be too late. They know we are coming. The prisoners could have been sacrificed before we can rescue them and who knows what dark blessings such a sacrifice might bestow upon the horde? It could be the difference between victory and defeat.’

‘You cannot even be sure that the prisoners are still alive, if indeed there are any!’

Yasharov was silent for several long, agonisingly drawn out seconds.

‘Very well,’ the captain said at last. ‘You have until nightfall. Then the rest of us go in.’

‘LOOK,’ SAID ALEXI, pointing excitedly at the hilltop from the party’s seclusion within the pines. ‘You can see quite clearly how the stockade has been planted around the top of the earthwork. Those contours aren’t natural. Some long-dead tribe built up the hill and turned it into a fortification.’

Stripped tree trunks had been rammed into the hillside and the palisade strengthened at irregular intervals by massive granite monoliths. Rising above the sharpened points of the great sunken logs they could all see a huge wicker effigy that had been erected inside the camp. It reminded Torben in part of the figures woven from corn stalks at harvest time, only it was constructed from numerous wicker cages lashed together in the form of a colossal beastman. Even from this distance, Torben could clearly see the antlered skull of some Chaos beast mounted on the ”head”. From between the spars of the wooden cages hands and arms waved in pathetic supplication. Torben’s suspicions had been correct.

‘I see what you mean,’ Torben nodded.

‘And that could also provide us with a way in,’ Alexi said, a wry smile forming on his lips.

‘How?’ asked Vladimir.

‘The ancestors of your people often dug secret escape routes through the earth beneath their hill-forts as a way out in dire emergencies. Sometimes they emerge up to half a mile away from the earthwork.’

‘What are you trying to say?’ Stefan muttered.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Yuri said, fixing their newest recruit with a harsh glare.

‘A way out can also be a way in,’ Torben explained.

On foot, avoiding the attentions of the beastmen above, it was not a difficult matter for them to get closer to the hill-crowning edifice and begin their search for a secret way into the camp.

‘OI! SCARFEN!’ A voice hissed. ‘Are I you awake?’ Oran opened his eyes.

‘Manfred?’ Oran replied, trying to look round.

‘Up here.’

‘What’s going on? Where are we?’ Oran’s wrists and ankles had been roughly bound and where the rope rubbed his skin was sore with red welts circling his wrists.

‘Have a look for yourself,’ came Manfred’s disgruntled reply.

Turning his head, Oran saw that he had been squashed inside a wicker cage with several other people, all packed on top of one another. He was pressed against the crossed spars of one side of their prison. Squeezing around within the cramped cage, Oran tried to assess precisely where they were.

The cage was just one of many that had been fastened together to form a much larger structure. He found himself looking out across the entirety of what he realised must be the beast horde’s camp. It was a stockaded hilltop. Beyond it the sun was setting behind the pine-forested horizon, painting the sky and distant snow-capped peaks orange and mauve.

The spaces between the bars of the cage were wide enough for Oran to push his face through. He looked down and immediately regretted the action. His head began to spin; he was over fifteen feet above the ground. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, fighting against the rising vertiginous nausea.

He opened his eyes but this time looked straight ahead. As he took in more of the cages lashed together around him he began to see a definite shape to the structure. It was that of a giant figure and his cage was part of its trunk. The colossus stood on two pillared legs while other cages, hanging from broad-beamed shoulders, formed its arms. Stacked high around the structure’s legs were faggots of wood. There was no doubt as to the intended fate of the captives.

In front of the bonfire stood the granite monolith of the tribe’s herdstone. The menhir was festooned with human remains hung on rusted chains - some no more than skeletons, others still red-raw and glistening. His vision blurred and he felt his stomach turn over as cold sweat beaded on his skin. He had looked down again.

Twisting his neck, Oran was just able to look upwards. The monstrous wicker edifice was surmounted by an equally monstrous skull. He wondered what sort of warped beast had ever existed for there to be such a relic. Every part of the pyre was packed tight with human prisoners. Now he knew what had happened to the inhabitants of the villages. Some of those who were still able moaned and wailed their plight to the heavens, while others huddled together within the cage whimpering or remaining eerily silent.

‘Are there any of the others in here?’ Oran asked of his companion.

‘I can see Polenko through the bars of the cage above me, but I’m not sure if he’s even alive. I know that one of the Tolyevs was brought here with us - Andrei, I think - but other than that, I don’t know.’

Despite his hands being bound Oran was still able to reach inside his jerkin and, with relief, found his dagger still secreted there. By manipulating the sharp blade with his fingers alone he was able to cut through the hemp with ease. However, he didn’t fancy his chances with the blade against the wicker staves of the cage.

‘Can you see any way out of here?’ Oran asked.

‘Yes,’ Manfred’s replied. ‘There’s a door. It wouldn’t be hard to force it open, but we’re not going anywhere trussed up like a couple of game birds.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Oran replied, ‘just worry about forcing that door.’

AS THE LAST light of day leeched away, Cathbad the shaman began the ritual to reawaken the Lord of Misrule.

A hush fell over the assembled herd. Beastman rituals were usually raucous, unruly affairs, but this night the assembled tribe understood that what was occurring was more momentous than anything they had ever witnessed before. They were summoning their god.

Gashrakk gripped the burning brand tightly in a great hairy paw, fingers as thick as a man’s wrist curled around the wood ready to ignite the pyre and make the sacrifice. The flickering flames cast rippling orange shadows over the contours of his slab-muscled torso as Cathbad’s guttural chanting intoned the incantation.

Gashrakk could feel the quickening power of Chaos coursing through his body. He snorted in excited anticipation. In moments the sacrifice would be made, the prophecy would be fulfilled and he would face his destiny, revelling in an orgy of unrestrained bloodlust against the forces of order. All would be returned to its primal, uncivilised state where the only law was to kill or be killed and the beast ruled supreme.

And unseen by Gashrakk, Cathbad or the tribe, high up on the structure of the wicker beastman, two figures emerged from the splintered door of one of the cages and began to scale the monstrous effigy.

THE NAUSEOUS REEK of the dung heap swept over Torben as he emerged from the tunnel. Thanks to Arnwolf’s tracking skills and Yuri’s sharp eyes, it had not taken the rescue party long to locate a half-collapsed opening overgrown by the straggling tangle of a bush, itself half-buried under a drift of snow. Twenty feet into the tunnel, they had discovered that it rose to the height of a man, the tunnel wall reinforced with slabs of rock.

Torben had led the way, a half-shuttered lantern guiding them through the dank darkness. More slabs of stone gave the shaft its form and also provided irregularly distanced steps, creating a rock ladder that led up to the earthwork above.

It had taken them longer than they had hoped to infiltrate the camp. A large, flat stone covered the earthwork end of the escape tunnel, which had itself become covered by the general detritus of the camp. They had smelt the mound of excrement that seemed to be the beastmen’s privy, several feet from the top of the chimney. They now crouched behind it as they took in their surroundings.

‘There’s no fear of them smelling us coming,’ Vladimir grunted disconsolately.

‘Listen!’ Yuri hissed.

Torben did so and realised how quiet it was. A lone braying voice came to them from the southern end of the camp, along with pitiful moans.

‘We’ll be outnumbered Sigmar knows how many-to-one but any time now the rest of the army are going to attack, providing us with just the distraction we need to free the prisoners,’ Torben explained. ‘When we see their torches we need to be in position.’

‘It sounds like the beasts are too preoccupied and dull-witted to be on guard against an attack from right inside their own stockade,’ Arkady suggested.

‘Just the same, watch your backs. We don’t know what sort of creatures they might have keeping guard for them.’

Cautiously, the party began to creep through the abandoned huts of the encampment. There was no need for the lantern now, the night was clear. The flicker of torches could also be seen beyond the solid black shape that towered over the camp.

How long did they have, Torben wondered, before the Kislevite attack came? They had best move quickly, if they were to have any chance of saving their companions. Then, as the party rounded the side of the largest hut, Yuri stopped them again.

‘I hear something,’ he said.

Torben scrambled up onto the crudely thatched roof of the hut. From his vantage point he could see the beastman herd thronged before the towering effigy. And then he saw them; dancing specks of yellow-orange light bobbing towards the hill-camp from the jagged, black silhouette of the pine forest in a snaking line.

Torben cursed. ‘They’re coming!’

‘Let’s pray that we’re not too late to rescue anyone at all,’ Oleg muttered.

GASHRAKK BLACKHOOF SAW the lights too and realised what must have happened. The ambush had failed. It could only have been a skirmish force that Slangar and Barruk’s ungors had fought, not the whole hu-man army. But he wasn’t going to let his plan fail now.

Snarling in rage and before Cathbad could finish the ritual, Gashrakk plunged the brand into the bonfire at the feet of the wicker colossus. Doused with tar, the faggots ignited with an incendiary roar. The shaman looked on in horror, the sacred rite climaxing too quickly, as the caged prisoners’ screams drowned out the beastlord’s triumphant bellow.

ORAN CLUNG TO the bars of the giant beastman feeling like he was going to vomit.

‘Move it, Scarfen!’ Manfred encouraged, only a few feet beneath him.

‘I-I’m trying!’

It had been the only thing to do, Oran told himself, but now, as they climbed higher to escape the rising flames, they only seemed to be delaying the inevitable. It was hard to say whether the fire would claim them or whether they would fall to their deaths first, as vertigo threatened to overwhelm him.

Shrill cries cut through the night air, audible over the excited braying of the beastmen. The two soldiers had shown others a way out of their predicament and some of those who had shared their cage had begun to follow them. However, the prisoners were struggling to climb the wicker structure with wrists and ankles still tied. Some lost their grip, falling into the hungry flames below. Others were being picked off by spears hurled by the beastmen, as the tribe became aware of the prisoners’ escape attempt.

‘Scarfen, move it!’ Manfred roared in desperation.

His whole body shaking, Oran continued his laborious ascent.

‘FOR KISLEV AND the Tzar!’ Torben yelled and flung himself, sabre drawn, at the monstrous beastman standing before the blazing bonfire. Before the creature knew what was happening, Torben had sunk his blade into the thick, corded muscle of its flank.

The monster roared, a sound born of pain and red rage. Torben tugged his weapon free, as the monstrous beastman span round to face him. It was half as tall again as Torben, its long horns curving upwards from its ugly, distended goat-head, adding to his height. His head was slung low, between broad, hunched shoulders and a shaggy mane of hair coveref the muscular neck. Two great yellow tusks jutted from its jaw drooled thick saliva.

It wore a hide loincloth, trophies it had taken, as a champion of the beastmen, hanging from its waist, a macabre testament to its savage prowess in battle. Below the knee the creature’s legs became backward-jointed animal limbs, ending in cloven hooves. No doubt to honour some primitive deity, the beastman had various parts of its body pierced by thick iron. Most impressive of all, however, was the huge ring through its snout. Everything about it spoke of ferocious strength: it looked capable of wrestling a bear and winning. The orbs of its caprine eyes burned with the reflected glow of the roaring bonfire.

The champion hefted its oversized, jagged-edged cleaver and, opening wide its mouth, bellowed. Torben didn’t need to be able to understand the beastmen’s language to know that it was a direct challenge.

The Kislevite needed no second invitation. Yelling his own battle-cry Torben flung himself at the beast.

His opponent was surprisingly fast and agile. Torben parried the beast’s first ringing blow but staggered back under its force, his own muscles protesting as he maintained his position. Out of the corner of his eye Torben saw Arnwolf wrestling with the tribe’s robed shaman, axe and bone-staff locked. Alexi and Vladimir were leading the others against the closest of the startled herd.

Any moment now, Torben told himself. Any moment now the rest of the border patrol would crash through the gates of the stockade like the Sea of Claws breaking against the cold coast of Kislev. But the attack never came - at least not as Torben imagined it would.

He heard the riders galloping past on the other side of the stockade, their horses’ hooves pounding the frozen ground, but it took Torben a few moments to realise what the riders had done. Putting the stockade to the torch, Yasharov’s knights had trapped the beastmen inside and Torben’s rescue party along with them.

Hatred and fury burning in his heart, Torben realised they had been betrayed. Considered expendable by their captain, Yasharov had simply used them as a distraction, so that he could put an end to the beast horde once and for all, condemning the tribe’s prisoners along with their captors.

Sudden, sickening doubt gripped Torben’s stomach, as it became abruptly apparent that the outcome of the battle was no longer as assured as he might have at first hoped. Then steely resolve entered his heart. If it was his destiny to die here and now, then at least he would die fighting!

They traded blow for blow, Torben putting every ounce of his strength and every iota of concentration into the battle while the beastman’s bloodlusting rage, relentless in its ferocity, drove it on against him. This was no scrawny, half-starved specimen but a true monster among monsters. Torben knew there was no way he could win this fight by brawn alone: the brute’s massive body seemed to soak up every wound he managed to inflict against it. He would have to use his brains as well, something that from his experience most beastmen lacked.

The Kislevite and the champion fought on, Torben carefully manoeuvring them away from the heat and smoke of the conflagration towards the trophy-hung menhir. As he jumped backwards, to avoid a swipe of the heavy-headed cleaver, he felt the cold stone at his back and his hand touch the rusted links of a chain. Carried forward by the momentum of his swing, the beastman champion almost lumbered into Torben. This close he could smell its foetid reek, like a cowshed overdue a mucking out.

He thrust his sword forwards at the creature’s unprotected midriff, but this was merely a diversionary tactic. The end of the chain in his hand, he swiftly pushed its hooked end through the iron ring in the beastman’s nose and rattled it through with a strong tug. Snorting, the beastman lowered his horns, preparing to skewer Torben on their sharpened points.

Turning away from the beastman’s goring attack Torben pushed the hook through another link in the chain, which was still securely attached to the herdstone. He backed off hurriedly as the champion swung at him with his brutal weapon again. Missing him, it lunged for Torben.

Torben clearly heard the sickening crunch of cartilage breaking over the roar of the burning wicker beastman, as the chain pulled on the great nose-ring. His opponent bellowed in pain and tried to free itself but the links of the chain remained strong. Torben heard a crash and a screaming roar. Turning to the source of the pain-induced bellow he saw the robed shaman crashing into one blazing leg of the wicker effigy, its body a mess of red wounds dealt it by Arnwolf’s rune-inscribed axe, as it recoiled from another mighty blow from the Norscan. The burning wood of the leg, already weakened by the flames, gave way, the shaman being swallowed by the white-hot conflagration. With one of its supports destroyed, the whole burning structure gave way.

Torben looked up to see the fiery body of cages, packed with roasted peasants, toppling towards him. Despite his wearying battle with the beastman champion, with an almighty leap Torben flung himself out of the way of the collapsing effigy.

GASHRAKK BLACKHOOF, CHAMPION of the Great Beast and chief of the Dark Horns, bellowed his anger to the heavens as the burning effigy of his god crashed down on top of him, a burning spar impaling his instantly combusted body.

ORAN AND MANFRED clung to the antlered skull-head of the pyre as it came crashing down in a blizzard of sparks and fiery smoke. Oran closed his eyes tight when he saw the sharpened tips of the burning palisade coming up to meet him.

Then he was falling, before scant seconds later he hit slushy snow and started rolling down the steep slope of the man-made hill. The head of the towering effigy had cleared the perimeter fence, throwing him and Manfred clear of the flames altogether.

TORBEN, ALEXI, YURI and Arnwolf raced through the blazing stockade, the air around them filled with swirling sparks. There was nothing they could do for their fellows who had died valiantly, battling the beastmen. Oleg, Arkady, Stefan and Vladimir had all succumbed to their animal wrath. Now the four of them who remained, could only hope to save themselves and with a pack of fire-maddened beastmen at their heels, there was no only one hope for them.

Yuri was the first into the tunnel, diving into the hole by the dung heap. The others quickly followed, half-scrambling and half-falling down the shaft cut through the earth and rock. The first of the goatmen plunged headfirst in after them, only to become wedged in the narrow tunnel entrance, being so much broader than its quarry.

At the bottom of the hill again, the four survivors gathered reunited. The Kislevite cavalry who had launched the attack on the stockade were now mere flickering specks within the tree line once again.

The fire consuming the beastman camp lit the hills and forest for a quarter of a mile. As the flames rose high into the night sky, for a fleeting moment Torben fancied he saw a roaring antlered head appear briefly amidst the conflagration before vanishing.

Was it something being banished, he wondered, or summoned?

AS THE STOCKADE continued to burn in the distance, back under the shelter of the trees, the survivors of Torben’s unit found the other Kislevite soldiers gone, assured of the success of their captain’s brutally effective tactics. As far as Captain Yasharov was concerned, the abducted villagers and even his own men could burn if it meant he achieved his goal, without putting himself at risk.

‘I don’t know who I loathe more - the beastmen or Yasharov,’ Torben seethed.

‘It was a massacre,’ Manfred stated coldly.

‘So what are you suggesting we do?’ Alexi asked Torben. ‘Desert?’

‘Yasharov thinks we’re dead already anyway,’ Torben replied, the first hint of a grin creasing his face.

Yuri looked at Torben anxiously: ‘What would we do then?’

‘Do what we’ve always done. Live by the sword - as mercenaries.’

THE NEXT NIGHT the moon hung full and gibbous in the star-pricked sky over the Kislevite camp. Torben Badenov and his companions had watched and waited as their erstwhile fellow soldiers celebrated defeating the beastmen. But now, with half the night gone, the sounds of carousing had finally ceased as drink and sleep overcame Captain Yasharov’s men.

‘Are you ready?’ Torben whispered to the foully grinning Oran.

‘Oh yes,’ the weaselly man replied, playing with the blackened dagger in his hands, ‘I’m ready’.

‘We won’t be long,’ Torben said, addressing Alexi, Yuri, Manfred and the burly Arnwolf, ‘Then we can be on our way.’ He lifted a heavy, bulging sack over one shoulder. ‘We’ve got a delivery to make.’

With that, he and Oran slipped between the tents like fleeting shadows.

THE MORNING AFTER the attack was cold and frosty. Lev Kolenski stumbled through the tents, clumsily strapping on his sword belt, to take his turn at gate duty. The chill morning breeze was clearing his muzzy head and he began to gently whistle, his breath pluming into white clouds.

Reaching the entrance to the camp the soldier froze, the tune dying on his lips. His eyes widened in shock and he put a hand to his mouth to stem the bitter tasting bile that rose up his throat. He staggered backwards, his still unbuckled sword belt slipping onto the frosty ground, then turned tail and scampered back into the camp towards Captain Yasharov’s pavilion.

BORIS BAGDASHA STEPPED quietly into Yasharov’s tent after repeatedly failing to wake him from outside. He stopped abruptly, mortified by the sight that greeted him. Yasharov’s bedclothes were twisted and rumpled, the pure white fur of the top blanket saturated with glistening red blood. Protruding from underneath the sheets was Yasharov’s hand, his fingers bent into claws as if in a paroxysm of agony. His emerald signet ring winked balefully in the morning light. But the thing that lay on the deeply stained pillows made Kolenski double up and vomit violently onto the tents’ lush carpeting. Staring back at him from burnt out eye sockets was the remains of a monstrous and unmistakably goat-like head, severed at the neck, with long curving horns protruding from its charred skull and a blackened tongue lolling from the side of its scorched mouth.

Bagdasha stooped out of the tent, nausea and shock making his head spin. He regained some of his senses when Kolenski, babbling incoherently, hared round from behind a tent and almost bowled him over.

Outside the camp, just past the gates, a huge black rook settled gently on the bald, fleshy lump that sat atop a post driven firmly into the ground. It ruffled its oily coloured feathers and cawed, sharp eyes darting over the land. Then, with a powerful thrust of its neck, it buried its hooked beak into the juicy eye socket and tore free a lump of jellied fluid. The bird began to feast busily, as above more carrion birds began to circle.

And on the wind-blasted plains of Kislev, Captain Arman Yasharov’s dead eyes wept red tears.