A WARHAMMER ANTHOLOGY

SWORDS OF THE EMPIRE

EDITED BY MARC GASCOIGNE & CHRISTIAN DUNN

This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS

Robert Earl

THE WIND CAME fleeing down from the dark wastes of the north. It clamored outside the tavern with a thousand phantom voices, each of them begging for admittance. The men within could feel its hunger as they sat, hungry themselves, around the smoldering fire.

At first they had tried to ignore the storm's plaintive wailing. When that had proved impossible they had tried to talk over it and drown it out with forced good humour. But winter had soon frozen their conversation just as surely as it had frozen the village well. So now they just sat, and listened, and tried not to think of the things that waited outside.

It was difficult. When the wind clawed at the rough-hewn pine of the walls, how could they not be reminded of other, stronger fingers? And when it tore at the reeds of the roof, burrowing its way down like a wolf into a hare's nest, who amongst them could help wondering what might be coming with it? And when it screamed… Well, when it screamed then it was time for more vodka, and to hell with making it last the winter.

Yet still, despite their fear, they remained calm and resolved. They were, after all, Kislevites, and generations of hardship had forged them into a race not easily broken. Even when the first blow was struck upon the oak door, hard enough to ring the icy wood like a bell, they didn't panic. They merely unsheathed their long skinning knives and waited, eyes glinting warily in the firelight.

One long, breathless moment stretched into the next.

The wind howled.

As if in sympathy, the fire flared up, the light of the dancing flames gleaming on the knives of the waiting men. Grigori, the tavern keeper, watched the door and chewed the white whiskered tip of his drooping moustache. Although his comrades mocked him because of the mannerism, it was a habit he'd never been able to break, even after forty years of trying.

'Perhaps,' Danovich ventured, his voice little more than a whisper, 'it was just a stray branch.'

'Perhaps,' Piotre agreed, doubtfully. Grigori, still chewing, said nothing.

Another knock, harder this time, beat against the door, and the men jumped like three puppets on a single string.

'Anybody in there?' a voice yelled, struggling to rise above the wind.

Danovich and Piotre looked at Grigori. He shrugged before rising and walked over to the door; his two friends huddled close behind.

He took a deep breath and pulled out the loose rivet that served him as a spy hole.

Outside there was nothing but the swirling snow, gray beneath the light of a dying sun and a tall figure, standing with his back to the door, shivering beneath his cloak.

'Who's that?' Grigori demanded, squinting out into the half-light.

'Calixte Lesec,' the figure replied, turning back to the door, 'and my man-servant, Viento.'

'Man-servant, my arse!' a voice grumbled from somewhere out of sight.

'Can we come in?'

Grigori hesitated.

'This is the village of Novograd, isn't it?' the stranger persisted.

'It is,' Grigori allowed.

'Then we have business. We met a young man called Petrokov on the road, and he…'

Grigori slammed back the bolts and dragged the door open.

'Come in, come in,' he cried, beckoning the two travellers into the tavern. The wind surged in gleefully behind them as they bundled inside, red faced and glowing with the icy chill of winter. Grigori shouldered the door shut before turning to greet his guests.

'Grigori Calinescu,' he said, offering his hand.

'Calixte Lesec,' the stranger said, shaking it. His cold fingers were thin and smooth, almost effeminate, but there was nothing effeminate about his face. True, it was smooth and fine-boned, from temples to cheekbones to cleanly shaved chin. But there was a hardness apparent in every line that spoke of strength, not fragility. Grigori wondered how old the newcomer was.

'Viento,' the second man said, thrusting out his hand.

'Pleased to meet you.' The tavern keeper nodded, surprised at how similar the two men were. Perhaps they were brothers. 'Come, give me your coats and take a seat by the fire. These are my friends, Piotre and Danovich. Piotre, will you get our guests a drink and some stew while I see to their horses?'

'We have no horses, I'm afraid.' Calixte said, waving his hand in airy dismissal. There was arrogance in the gesture that the tavern keeper didn't care for. After all, he was a free man, not a serf. Still, this was no time to be taking slights. There were more pressing issues.

'And you need not worry about food,' Viento added, patting his belly and winking at his host 'That's where our last horse went little more than an hour ago. A shame, if we'd known we were so near… Well, no matter.'

'Well then,' Grigori said, 'you'll take a drink with us at least.'

'Glad to.' Calixte smiled, baring a set of perfect white teeth.

Grigori went to the counter and filled two cups. He managed to hold back the question that had been burning within him until they had clinked the pottery together and drunk a toast to the Tsarina.

'How long ago did you meet my son?' he asked, even as the fiery spirit burned its way down his throat.

'Petrokov was your son?' Calixte asked. 'I see now why you were so keen to welcome us in. Not that you wouldn't have been anyway, of course.'

Again, that tone of condescension. Grigori ignored it and waited for an answer. Calixte took another drink before obliging him.

'We met him two days ago, on the road to Kislev. It was dusk, so we shared a fire and a meal. That's when he told us of your, ah, problem.'

'So you know? Good, good. But where is Petrokov, now?'

'Don't sound so worried, old man.' Viento chipped in with a patronizing grin. 'He's quite safe. He went on to Kislev.'

'Yes. You see, when he told us of your problem we weren't really interested. No offence, obviously, but we like to be paid in gold, not food and lodging.'

'After all, we're warriors, not plough horses!' Viento exclaimed, and laughed loudly at his own witticism. Piotre and Danovich smiled weakly. Grigori ignored him.

Calixte shook his head and looked apologetically at the tavern keeper before continuing.

'Anyway, the day after we had bid your son farewell, this weather started. We come from the south, you see, and didn't expect it. So we thought that, as we're not going to be able to make it to anywhere civilized until the snows let up, we might as well take up Petrokov's offer. If it still stands, of course.'

'Oh, it still stands,' Grigori said. He realized that he was sucking the tip of his moustache again and hastily spat it out. 'A season's food and board if you kill that… that thing.'

'Thing? You mean the vampire?'

Piotre and Danovich glanced nervously at the door, as if the very mention of the deamon would summon him like a rabbit from a conjuror's hat. Grigori restrained himself, focusing instead of his guest. The young man seemed to be genuinely sanguine about the idea of taking on such a foe. Relaxed, even. It occurred to Grigori that if this was no more than arrogance, then sending the young fool out might do more harm than good.

'Tell me, Lesec…'

'Please, call me Calixte.'

'Calixte, then. Have you ever fought against a… a vampire before?'

'Yes. On occasion. They are terrible to behold, I know. Wonderful and terrible. They are like life. Or rather, life magnified until it becomes unbearable.' Grigori was surprised at the sadness in his guests tone. 'But their weaknesses are as great as their strengths. Even a flame which burns as brightly as the sun can be extinguished.'

'You sound as though you sympathize with them,' the tavern keeper said. Calixte shrugged unapologetically.

'I hunt them. Don't you love the deer your arrows find?'

'Yes.'

'Well then.'

'I meant no offence.'

'Of course not. Don't trouble yourself.' Calixte smiled, his teeth white in the gloom of the tavern. 'Now, what of this vampire? Which of the blood lines is it of?'

'Blood lines?'

'Yes. Which, ah, family?'

Grigori exchanged a puzzled look with his friends.

'I don't know about its family,' the tavern keeper admitted 'Or even that a vampire could have such a thing. Do you think that their might be more than one, then?'

'No, I meant… it doesn't matter. Can you tell me what it looks like?'

Grigori nodded, shifting uncomfortably.

'It is bigger than a man, maybe as big as an ogre. And strong. It tore the door to the Bodoyen's cabin off steel hinges then flung it twenty yards. By the Tsarina, I hope they didn't suffer,' Grigori muttered, the vision of that massacre rising like some dead thing from the pool of his memory. There had been eight of them packed into their cabin, three generations of the same family. Yet when he had called around with the grandfather's monthly jar of vodka, the hovel had been empty, as hollow as a bone with the marrow sucked out.

'And it's cunning, too.' The tavern keeper dragged his mind away from the image. 'It took Ilyich and Radan, and they were nobody's fools. Even when they were drunk they moved through the forest like ghosts, letting it whisper its secrets to them like an old friend. We lost them in the first week of winter. Nothing left of them but blood on the snow. Gods, but I've never seen a brighter red.'

'Yes,' Calixte said thoughtfully. 'And when did it start hunting here?'

'Autumn,' Grigori said, tonelessly. 'That's when it killed the peddler. We found him floating in the shallows of the river, drained. That's how we knew that it was a… vampire.'

'And have you seen it?' Calixte prompted gently, his arrogance gone now, replaced by a sort of breathless eagerness.

'Not me, but my friend, Ivan. He was checking his snares up by the Bear's Teeth when he saw the thing. Big, like I said. Naked, with muscles like knotted rope. Almost like a man, except for the head.'

'The head?'

'Yes. He said it was like a bat's, a giant bat's but without the fur.'

'Let me talk to this man Ivan.'

'You can't. He's gone.'

'Gone?'

'Dead. Suicide.'

The crackling of the fire grew loud in the silence that followed. Grigori stared numbly into its depths. You bastard Ivan, he thought. Why didn't you come and talk to me?

'Why?'

'What?' Startled from his reverie Grigori looked up, seeing the eagerness in Calixte's face.

'Why did he kill himself?'

'The vampire was carrying a child when he saw it. A little girl. She was screaming, he said. And even after the vampire had passed his hiding place and taken her down into the labyrinth he could hear her screaming still. Even when he got home. Even at night. So…' The tavern keeper waved his hand helplessly.

Calixte and Viento exchanged a hungry glance.

'Excellent,' said Calixte, rubbing his hands together with glee. He might have been a small child looking forward to a treat. 'Then we know where the strigoi lives. A hole in the ground. How typical!'

Once more Viento laughed, loudly and alone.

'Tomorrow morning you will take us to this place.' Calixte decided. 'Until then we will sleep. Where are our beds?'

'This way,' Grigori said, rising to his feet. It was no longer in him to resent the mercenary's arrogance. His thoughts were too full of Ivan's hanging body and his son's lonely ride to Kislev.

THE NIGHT WAS long. Although he tried to sleep, Grigori found himself staring blindly at the smoke stained rafters above his cot. It was partly the cold of the draughty loft that stole his rest, partly the sweaty heat of his horrible and nebulous nightmares. Most of all, it was the thought of what he must do tomorrow: what he must face.

Yet when the grey light of dawn did finally come he felt relief more than anything, relief that the waiting was over.

Calixte and Viento were up before him.

'Ah, there you are.' Calixte nodded to him as he made his way down to the tavern room. 'I was about to wake you. Well, come along then. Let's be off.'

Grigori tried to restrain his usual early morning temper.

'We'll go when I've eaten,' he growled, pushing past the two would-be vampire hunters to breathe fresh life back into the fire. That done, he put on water for his porridge and measured out a spoon of dried tea leaves into a mug; after a moment's thought he added another, and then a lump of precious honey. It had come all the way from distant Lustria, according to the peddler who had sold it to him. He had been saving it for a special occasion, but somehow he couldn't shake off the feeling that if he didn't use it now he never would.

'How long will it take you to get ready?' Calixte snapped. Grigori sipped his tea and tried not to smile at the young man's show of nerves. How often had he seen it before, this transformation from fearless warrior to hapless soldier as tavern nights gave way to cold mornings?

'Let an old man finish his porridge and we'll be gone. Have no fear, we'll be there soon enough.'

Grigori was scraping his bowl clean when Piotre and Danovich arrived. With one look at their faces the tavern keeper knew why they had come. He was proud of them.

'Good morning,' Piotre said, swallowing nervously and trying to smile.

'Morning,' Grigori replied. Calixte and Viento grunted.

'Have some porridge?' Grigori offered.

'No, I… no,' Danovich muttered, looking a little queasy.

Conversation stopped so that the only sounds were Grigori's slurping, the hiss of the fire and the tap of Viento's boots as he paced nervously up and down the room.

'Right,' Grigori said, pushing his bowl away. 'If you gentlemen will just give me five minutes for a pipe, then we can begin.'

Calixte sighed theatrically and rolled his eyes.

'I'm ready when you are,' Piotre said, miserably.

'You two are going nowhere,' Grigori told him.

'We want to come with you,' Danovich muttered, unconvincingly.

'Rubbish. Why hire a dog when you can bark yourself?' Grigori inhaled a lungful of smoke and watched Calixte. But if he had heard the insult he gave no sign; he merely beat his fingertips against the well-tooled leather of his scabbard.

'It's—' Piotre began, but Grigori cut him off.

'You're not going,' he said, taking another pull on his pipe. He waited until the bowl was empty before pulling himself to his feet. He handed Piotre the key to the tavern and headed out into the snow.

His two friends watched him go as he led the mercenaries away into the distance. Between the vast grey slabs of sky and snow, the three dark figures looked tiny. Hopeless.

'Good old Grigori,' Danovich said with a sigh of relief.

THE WINDS OF the night before had dwindled and died. Now the air lay still and sullen, as thick as oil beneath the towering weight of the snow clouds above.

Despite the oppressive weather, Grigori felt strangely light-hearted. As he swished through the snow, plodding along on his favorite snowshoes, he caught himself humming. At one point he even began to whistle, the tuneless note drawing stares of disapproval from Calixte and Viento.

And quite right, too, Grigori thought. In this silent wilderness, such shrill noises could bring only disaster.

He looked back at his two companions. They were making heavy going across the snow, stomping and backsliding and kicking up great drifts. More than once he had suggested a rest stop, but the two mercenaries were intent on pushing on.

The tavern keeper was a little surprised by their perseverance, and a new respect for them began to grow. They must be fit indeed to be able to keep up with him whilst stumbling along like that.

Midday came. The sun glowered low and unseen beyond the snow fogged horizon, and they reached the outer tendrils of the Staslav forest. An ocean of black pine stretched, as far as Grigori knew, right up to the edge of the world.

'We'll stop here,' he told his companions, halting on the top of a ridge.

'No, let's press on,' Calixte said, with hardly a trace of the breathlessness Grigori expected. 'We want to take this strigoi during the day. They're weaker then.'

'So I've heard,' Grigori nodded. 'Five minutes won't matter, though. I want to rest and eat something before the last leg.'

For a moment he thought that Calixte was going to argue, but the young man just grunted with barely disguised ill grace and turned to Viento.

'Won't this animal be surprised to see us?' he said, gloating as if their prey was already dead.

'Yes indeed,' his partner agreed with a strange little giggle.

Grigori, chewing on a strip of dried venison, watched the two of them. For the hundredth time he found himself wondering at their confidence. They were hard men, yes: strong and well armed. Yet their eagerness to meet this monster, in its own lair, too, seemed strange.

'Are you ready yet, old man?' Calixte suddenly asked, shifting his weight from one leg to the other in a dance of impatience.

'Yes,' Grigori said, finishing his lunch with a swig of vodka. 'No more speaking, now. We're barely half a mile away.'

'Fine, fine. Off we go then.'

The tavern keeper stood, stretched, and led them into the deepening gloom of the forest.

They went slowly. Even beneath the triumphant sun of high summer the twisting paths that linked one pine pillared cavern to the next remained dim and shadow haunted. Now, roofed with snow, Grigori found that he could hardly see. Had he not hunted within this realm for the last half a century he would have found it impossible to find the way.

As it was, he merely found it difficult. It took little more than an hour for them to reach the jagged grey walls of the Bear's Teeth; granite towers thrown up to loom menacingly over the threesome.

Cupping his hands, the tavern keeper leant forward to whisper into Calixte's ear.

'This is the place. Look there, between the first two teeth. Do you see it? The entrance to the caves.'

Calixte nodded, eyes shining in the gloom as he studied the cave.

'Well done, old man,' he hissed, baring sharp, white teeth in a hungry grin.

'Wait for us here.'

'I'll come with you, I reckon,' Grigori replied.

'No need.'

'You'll be hard pressed to find your way out without me.'

The two vampire hunters exchanged a glance. With a fine boned hand, Viento smoothed a mocking smile off his perfect face. Calixte rolled his eyes.

'Very well. But stay well back.'

'Agreed.'

Cautiously now, hardly making a sound as they picked their way across the snow, the three men closed in on the cave. As they reached the mouth, Grigori reached out to stop Calixte.

'Torches,' he mouthed, unslinging his bundle. Again Calixte and Viento exchanged a glance, the wordless communication of men who have hunted long together, and Calixte shrugged his assent. With a strike of steel on flint Grigori lit his torch, the smell of burning pitch sharp in the cold air. He then followed the two mercenaries as they descended into the blackness beyond.

They moved quickly into the depths, their feet finding silent purchase as they glided forward. Grigori stumbled behind them. He began to sweat with the effort of keeping up.

The torch he held flickered and flared in the drafts that followed them into the fastness of the labyrinth. It painted sudden, looming shadows onto the crumbling walls that sent the tavern keeper's heart galloping into many a false alarm.

Somehow, the vampire hunters ahead of him seemed to have little need of this treacherous light. They bounded forward into the darkness with all the eagerness of unleashed hunting dogs, their supposed guide forgotten as he struggled along in their wake. And even now, as the rain-smoothed stone of the upper reaches began to give way to crumbling shale, the rush of the two men remained as silent and effortless as that of a cat's across a deep carpet.

Grigori, wincing every time he kicked a stone or sent an alarm of shifting shingles echoing around the labyrinth, began to wish he hadn't come. The realization of how badly he had underestimated these two mercenaries was followed by the knowledge that he was becoming a hindrance rather than a help.

Ahead of him, black and orange in the uncertain light of his torch, Grigori saw that a fall of stone had all but blocked the passage. Calixte and Viento hardly broke their pace as they ascended the barrier. Floating upwards like two dark clouds, they disappeared into the blackness beyond.

Grigori, biting back a curse, wiped the sweat from his brow and followed them up the scree. Moving as cautiously as he could, testing each jagged handhold before resting his weight upon it, he crawled laboriously upwards. Even so, by the time he had crested the top of the mound he had sent the echoes of at least a dozen falling stones chasing each other into the labyrinth beyond.

Still struggling' to remain quiet, he worked his way down to the other side of the barrier. At last, with a sense of blessed relief, he felt himself once more on solid ground. After spending a moment tending to his torch he looked up and around in the renewed light. He was completely alone.

'BE CALM,' HE told himself nervously, trapping the tip of his moustache between his incisors and biting down. 'Be calm.'

Trying to ignore the accelerating beat of his heart, Grigori fought the temptation to turn and run. Instead he put one foot in front of the other and lurched reluctantly onwards. As he did so, a mad urge to call out to his companions seized him. It was as attractive and horrifying as the urge he sometimes felt to throw himself off the high precipices of the spring pastures.

'Gods give me strength,' he muttered, blinking a stinging drop of cold sweat out of one eye. 'They can't be far off.'

Yet in the absolute silence of this deep cavern, the only sound was the pumping of his own blood in his ears, the only sight that of shadow and stone. Pressing on, Grigori fought the impression that he was totally alone.

'They can't be far,' he told himself. Repeating the phrase over and over like a mantra, he marched miserably onwards.

After a few hours, or perhaps it was minutes, he felt himself becoming calmer. After all, he had been down here before, many times. He and his father had used these caves as a food cache, just as he had with Petrokov. And as a boy he'd often come down here with his friends, using the claustrophobic depths to test each others' courage. The wind-burnt leather of his face wrinkled into a smile as he remembered jumping out to frighten Piotre, almost a lifetime ago. How the boy had screamed!

Lost in a fog of long forgotten reminiscences the old man trudged on. He remembered hunts and feasts and fights, won and lost. He remembered his wife, dead these eight years past. He remembered Petrokov's birth.

Then the first rumour of his enemy's approach reached him and he remembered why he was here.

It was not footstep or challenge that warned him of the monster's approach. Instead, it was a whispering out of the darkness: a rapid, scuttling rush that was as staccato and insistent as a crone's knitting needles. It echoed around the labyrinth, stroking cold sweat out of Grigori's skin even as it clenched his stomach into a tight fist of nausea.

With a start, the tavern keeper realized that the sound was coming from behind him, blocking any chance of retreat.

'It must be Calixte,' he lied to himself, spinning clurrisily around to face his pursuer.

His torch flared defiantly as it swept it through the air. For a moment its guttering light chased the shadows all the way back to the fall of rocks, the barrier over which Grigori had lost the two vampire hunters. He was beginning to suspect that he'd lost them for good.

The scuttling grew louder, scratching the inside of Grigori's skull.

Reaching for his belt the old man drew his knife. No great sword, this, no weapon for a hero. But it was sharp. Over the years he had honed it down to a sliver of blade that fit snugly beneath his forearm, stretching from Grigori's wrist to his elbow just as neatly as if it were cousin to the bone beneath. Even in the darkness of these depths it gleamed with a dull menace.

Now the patter of claws upon stone seemed closer than the rockslide. Much closer.

Grigori narrowed his eyes, squinting into every shadowed corner, but there was no movement other than that caused by the flickering of his torch.

The old man curled the fist that held the knife backwards, trying to hide the blade behind his sleeve. If he could manage just one slash at this monster… well, who knew?

Now the clatter of claws was so loud that it couldn't be coming from more than a dozen feet away.

'Invisible, are you?' Grigori whispered, teeth bared defiantly.

It drew closer. Faster.

'Where are you?' the old man whispered, eyes flitting nervously from side to side, hunting through the shadows.

Then he looked up.

It was almost upon him, the twisted bulk of its form hanging like rotten fruit from the jagged ceiling of the cave. Even though it was twisting and swinging from one handhold to another, it was terrifyingly quick, filled with all the twitching eagerness of a cockroach.

There was nothing remotely human about it. It had two arms and two legs, true, and the muscles which writhed beneath its leprous skin had their own counterparts on Grigori's own frame, but crawling forward on taloned feet and hands, torchlight gleaming blackly on its carapace of a hide, it looked like nothing so much as a massive insect.

A massive and hungry insect, Grigori thought, stumbling backwards away from it. As he did so, the torch flared and the vampire's head, which had so far been hidden in the shadows, emerged into the light.

Grigori, for the first time since childhood, screamed.

Ivan had described its head as bat-like. It was as good a comparison as any sane man might make: the sharp, ragged ears, the vicious little wrinkle of a snout, sneering over a splintered mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, the tiny, sunken eyes, they all had something of the rodent about them.

There was something more, though, something about the things face that spoke of a horror beyond the power of any natural creature to inspire. Perhaps it was something to do with the intelligence that leered out of the blood red pits of its eyes, an intelligence that was both more and less than human.

Grigori stared stupidly at the thing as it closed the last few feet that separated them. Its mad, insect rush slowed now, as if the beast was gloating as it closed in. Still hanging upside down from the ceiling, it pushed its head slowly forward until its eyes were only inches away from Grigori's own.

He didn't want to meet the thing's gaze. He wanted to close his eyes and hide them in his hands.

To tear them out if need be.

The vampire opened its maw, revealing shards of glistening teeth, and it lolled the arrow point of its slimy tongue out towards Grigori. It switched spasmodically back and forth, rippling as it savored the aura of terror that had wrapped Grigori in its iron embrace.

The tavern keeper felt the acid rush of his gorge rising as the stench of the thing's breath hit him. As sweet and ripe as rotten fish, it hung greasily on the air: the smell of ancient corruption.

With a distant, unrecognized clink, Grigori's knife fell from his nerveless fingers.

In the back of its throat, the vampire made a gargling noise that could almost have been a laugh. Then it drew back a little, rolled its head to one side, and struck.

Grigori's mind remained frozen, mesmerized, a hare in the snake's spell.

His hand didn't.

Even as the vampire's head whipped forward, eyes blinking shut as its tangle of fangs snapped towards the old man's neck, some deep, forgotten instinct sent Grigori ducking backwards, and thrust out with the torch.

So it was that instead of tasting the warm rush of pulsing blood, the vampire tasted fire: clean, bright fire.

It screamed as it fell, but even through its pain it managed to turn, twisting to land on all fours. The slap of its feet punctuated its cry of pain, its sudden leap ended it. One great taloned hand swiped the torch out of its prey's hand and, as the flame crashed against a far wall, Grigori saw it leap.

Darkness, as pure as blindness, rushed in on him.

But before it did the dying flames granted him one last sight. It was of the vampire hunters' return.

They came together, their separate attacks timed with the perfect harmony of a boxer's fists. Viento was the first to emerge from the gloom, appearing like an apparition from the darkness behind Grigori's tormenter. He raced along the roof of the passageway, his fingers obviously as skilled in finding purchase as the strigoi's. Inverted above the trailing volume of his cloak the pale moon of his face shone, its fine features contorted into a mask of unholy joy.

Calixte came from behind the tavern keeper. His porcelain cold fingers pushed down on Grigori's head as he vaulted over him, a rush of displaced air marking his passage. The confusion of his attack - a blur of speed and savagery - was burnt onto the tavern keeper's retinas as his torch died.

Cowering in the darkness, he listened to the sound of the battle, and prayed.

IT LASTED FOR no more than seconds, yet in that time Grigori felt years pass. The screams that echoed from mouths to walls to the inside of his head had a madness in them that made no distinction between joy and pain, terror and lust. Tearing flesh, splintering bone, the splatter and sliver of dismemberment rang out in hellish counterpoint to the unmistakable high pitched squeal of Viento's giggle, his laughter interrupted only by sudden grunts of exertion.

Calixte remained silent.

The worse was the warm, wet rain that began to fall, sticky to the touch and iron to the tongue.

It was too much.

Grigori collapsed helplessly on the cold floor, wracked with spasms of nausea. For a while he remained lost in the world of fear and disgust. Then, slowly, he became aware that the sounds of battle had gone. Once more, silence reigned, broken by neither breath nor movement.

For all of that, though, Grigori was passed falling into any illusion that he might be alone. Bent double he groped forward in the darkness, fingers slipping across newly dampened stones as he searched for his torch.

Still trying not to think about what its rekindled light might reveal, he took out flint and steel and scraped a shower of sparks onto the pitch. The torch took the flame, sputtering out an uneven light. With an effort of will the tavern keeper forced himself to look up.

The vampire hunters stood on either side of their foe's ruined body, bookend statues of tranquility. Neither of them seemed harmed, or even shaken. Blood drooled in thick black slicks from their perfectly carved lips and glistened on their delicate hands, but Grigori didn't think that it was theirs.

'A good fight,' Calixte said with the sigh of a man who has just enjoyed a fine meal. He turned to Grigori and bared his pink stained teeth in a smile.

The tavern keeper tried to return the gesture, pulling his lips back even as he realized that Calixtes eyes now gleamed with the same blood red he had seen in the vampire's.

The other vampire's.

'No…' Grigori said, slumping back into the cold embrace of the wall.

'Now, now,' Calixte said, his smile growing wider as he winked at Viento. 'No need to worry. The deal remains the same. All you owe us is a season's food and board. I'm sure that we won't eat you all out of house and home.'

Calixte glanced at Viento, but his companion was beyond appreciation of any wit. He had the dazed, happy look of a satiated drunkard.

A sudden fear seized Grigori, sharper than any other in this nightmare his life had become.

'Petrokov…' he began, 'my son?'

'Don't worry about him,' Calixte advised, looming up as he approached the tavern keeper. 'You have more pressing concerns.'

One wet, darkly stained hand dropped upon the old man's shoulder. Squeezing as tightly as a vulture's claw, it bruised flesh and ground bones together. Slowly, without any sign of effort, Calixte lifted his host clean off the floor and held him there, the better to gaze into his eyes.

'Now you will take us home,' the vampire told him with all the confidence of a man who has seen the future. And perhaps he had. Perhaps the twice-stolen blood that squirmed and flowed beneath the transparent lenses of his eyeballs granted him that power.

'But, my son…'

'Gone. Now, let us go.'

As gently as a cat with her kitten, he lowered Grigori back to the floor. The old man slumped, his jaw dropping foolishly. Suddenly he looked a lot more than his sixty years.

'Lead on,' Calixte said, with a theatrical bow. 'I'm hungry!'

One step followed the next as Grigori, with the aimless shamble of a broken man, led them back out of the labyrinth and into the world beyond.

THEY EMERGED INTO the icy blast of an enraged wind. It snapped and whipped around them, sending great sheets of blinding snow swooping across the entrance to the cave. Even the two vampire hunters hesitated before venturing out to brave its full fury. Only Grigori seemed unconcerned. He barely broke his step as he trudged out into its embrace, not even stopping for his snowshoes.

'This way,' he said, his voice as flat as ice and as weak as broken straw.

Calixte savoured his guide's despair as he led them out into the storm. He studied the stoop of the old man's shoulders as, stumbling like an octogenarian, he trudged back into the relative shelter of the forest. The vampire was content to let him pick his way hesitantly forward along trails blanketed with thick falls of driven snow, his hood forgotten, his head low.

Calixte smiled, and in that moment decided to let the tavern keeper live. He could be a sort of breathing trophy. Sometimes the subtle pleasures were the best. After all, any animal could destroy a body. It took a master to break a soul.

Here and there, sheltered by overhanging boughs or cleared by strange eddies of the blizzard's energy, dark patches of frost rimed earth glistened black and silver in the gloom. For the most part, though, the ground was a rippling ocean of grey snow, stretching out endlessly in every direction.

'This way,' Grigori repeated, the wind leaping up to snatch the words from his mouth.

The three dark figures tracked through a deep, stone-walled crevasse, the ribbon of water that had cut it hidden beneath deep drifts. Then they began to climb, one crest following the next in a confused jumble of hillocks.

'Grigori!' Calixte called, his voice almost inaudible beneath the gathering storm. 'I don't recognize this place. Are we lost?'

'I'm hungry,' Viento complained, his gaze fastening on the thin strip of flesh visible between Grigori's beard and cloak. Calixte scowled at him.

'Lost?' Grigori repeated apathetically. 'No, this is a short cut. Do you want to go back and start again?'

'No, no,' Calixte grumbled, watching his companion warily. It wouldn't do to kill their guide, especially whilst they still had use for him. 'Just be quicker.'

'Yes,' the tavern keeper mumbled, 'quicker.'

So they marched on. Grigori pushed himself until his clothes became as damp from sweat as from melted snow, so that they clung to his skin in a constant freezing embrace. Soon his legs began to burn with the agony of wading through drifts and over ridges. The pain was unbearable. He bore it anyway.

Night, as tight as a strangler's fingers, closed in around them.

'Are we almost there?' Calixte asked, his tone as light and pleasant as a man enjoying a summer's stroll. He seemed not to feel the frost that covered his forehead, nor the tiny icicle daggers that hung from his frozen hair.

'Not long now,' Grigori assured him, calling back over his shoulder as he led them upwards. He stopped.

Suddenly, with the violence of an axe stroke, the forest ended at a straight-edged cliff. Grigori looked over the edge and, even in this dim light, could make out the forest far, far below. The black-spired pines that clung to the foot of the cliff looked as small and thin as the hairs on his arm.

'How can you see in this light?'

'I can see enough.'

'Liar.'

'No, it's just over—'

Calixte's grasp cut off the old man's word. He had somehow blinked into existence directly in front of Grigori, his silhouette as black as a hole cut out of the snow choked sky beyond. Pressing frozen palms against Grigori's cheeks he held his head and stooped to examine him, rolling the old man's skull back and forth like a strigani with a crystal ball as he peered into its depths.

'Look at me,' he commanded, peering into Grigori's eyes. Calixte grunted. There was something there, hiding behind broken veins and despair. Something…

With a piercing scream he recoiled, flinging the old man to one side as if he were no more than a straw doll. Staggering backwards, his mouth and eyes wide with shock, Calixte's fingers fluttered down to rest, pale as moths, upon the knife hilt which now sprouted from his stomach.

'Liar!' he hissed, plucking the knife from his midriff with a wet, sucking sound. He glanced down at the blade and pursed his lips.

'What's going on?' asked Viento, warily advancing through a curtain of quickening snow. For a moment his master ignored him, turning his attention instead to the vanishing track of their fading footprints. The blizzard, he realized, had been filling them almost as quickly as they had been made.

'Our guide has been trying to get us lost,' he said, absentmindedly brushing the torn cloth of his waistcoat back down.

'You should have tested his obedience before following him out here!' Viento whined. 'I'm hungry!'

'Oh, don't worry. This old fool will lead us back Won't you?' Calixte's grin was invisible in the darkness. Grigori, ignoring the bright flare of pain in his broken shoulder, dragged himself to his feet. A blast of wind crested the edge of the precipice behind him, ruffling his hair.

'Yes, you'll lead us. Take my word for it, you will. I am something of an expert in these things. What will it be, old man? Pain? Terror? The blood kiss? Somehow I don't think it will be gold.'

Grigori took a step backwards. Then another. With the rattle of falling earth the ground beneath his foot began to slip.

He stopped.

'No escape that way,' Calixte gloated, enjoying himself.

'Let's kill him!' Viento suggested, starting forward.

'Not yet.'

'Why not?' Grigori asked in a voice as warm as honey. There was nothing left in it of fear, or of pain. And if there was a despair, well then, it was despair that had collapsed under its own weight into something else, something infinitely more dangerous. 'Why not kill me? Or are you too much the coward?'

For the first time in a century Calixte Lesec found himself at a loss for words.

'No…' the old man continued, with a sneer, 'no courage.'

Viento hissed.

'Ah,' Grigori mused, 'so your monkey has something to say after all.'

'Monkey?'

'Yes, that grovelling thing which follows you.'

The blizzard chuckled appreciatively.

'That's hardly pol… No! Wait!'

Calixte snatched at his companion, but it was too late.

As swiftly as a serpent, as silently as an owl, Viento struck. The impact shattered Grigori's bones like frost-rimed boughs, the snapping of them loud even above the growing cacophony of the storm. And yet, even as the splintered bone bit into his lungs, the old man was screaming out a cry of terrible victory.

'Wait!' Calixte howled at his unheeding companion. He lunged forward, the white claws of his frozen hands crunching as they tore at the ice hard folds of Viento's cloak. With a savage tug the vampire hunter felt himself pulled forward into a sudden slush of blinding snow.

It covered his face, thick and unmelting upon the cold orbs of his eyeballs.

'Viento, stop,' he hissed, blinking furiously.

But Viento was deaf to everything now, the world outside eclipsed by a hunger so intense that it verged on insanity. With a sigh he bit down into Grigori's exposed jugular, battening on to his victim like a leech as the hot blood began to spurt.

Calixte, his foothold crumbling away to nothing beneath Viento's steady advance, tried to release his grip on his companion, tried to push him away.

Tried and failed.

He stared disbelievingly at his hands, his fingers lost in the crackling depths of his companion's cloak. Somehow, beneath the silver gloves of ice that had enveloped his fingers, his fists seemed to have fused into a dead iron grip.

'Viento!' he screamed, ignoring the snap of his own finger bones as he pulled backwards.

But Viento was feeding. With a last, gurgling snarl he hoisted his stricken companion close, oblivious to their peril even as the world began to turn around him.

The ruins of Grigori's vocal chords hissed as he tried to curse and added his own small weight to Viento's maneuvre. With the last of his energy he wrapped his arms around his tormentor and, locked together in an embrace tighter than any lovers, he pulled the three of them backwards and down, down into the void beyond.

Of the three falling figures only Calixte screamed.

FOR A TIME there was nothing left in the world but the roar of the quickening blizzard, and the agonized groans of the forest upon which it vented its fury. The darkness was complete now, the falling snow thicker than pyre smoke as it choked the air between the huddled trees.

And yet, eventually, something crawled back into this terrible world. Something huddled and dark, its form hunched as, hand by trembling hand, it dragged itself up and over the lip of the crevasse.

The wind whined jealously and tried to push the emerging figure back into the abyss from whence it had come. It tore at his clothes, plucked at his hair, pushed against his chest.

Its efforts were all in vain. Slowly, weakened by a dozen terrible injuries and anemic from blood loss, Grigori fought the wind and scrambled to his feet.

He staggered towards the forest, fumbling for his fire tin as he did so. Through the numbness he felt the lump of it, safe in a pocket, and grunted. The expression ignited a flare of red, jagged pain in his throat.

The Kislevite ignored it, just as he ignored the numbness and the small, insistent voice that begged him to lay down in the comforting embrace of the snow and sleep.

He wasn't dead, and he wasn't going to give up.

Not now.

Not ever.

As if to mock him, his left leg chose that moment to give out, sending him sprawling into the snow. The soft, warm snow. How nice it would be to rest here for a while, to sleep safely in the knowledge that when he next opened his eyes it would be to see his wife and son.

Grigori swore, welcoming the pain that the curse brought. It helped him to bully himself back up to his feet and to renew his struggle onwards. The snowstorm followed him close, burying the bloody trail he left as swiftly as a guilty secret.

No. He would never give up. He'd hole up until the storm passed, build a fire and pull together a shelter. When the numbness abated there would be pain, he knew, terrible pain. So be it. He'd endure, as he always had, and find his way back to the village. His way back to Piotre and…

He stopped suddenly, eyes widening in horror. One hand fluttered up to his throat. It flitted over the torn flesh at his throat and stroked the two jagged holes that burned beneath the crusting of snow that clung to his beard.

Beneath the frozen tips of his fingers Grigori felt blood weeping from the torn flesh, the drops sliding sluggishly down into his collar: blood from the vampire's bite! Gradually, even as he probed the wound, the trickle of blood ceased.

Another man might have been relieved. Grigori wasn't such a fool. With a wound this deep the blood didn't stop until the pulse did.

It occurred to the tavern keeper that there was now nothing that could stop him from returning to his village. There was nothing that could stop him from returning to his friends, and their wives and children. Nothing that could stop him from returning to their open arms and unsuspecting hearts.

Had he still been breathing the old man might have sighed. As it was he just turned his face back into the onslaught of the blizzard and stumbled back towards the crevasse.

A burst of driving snow scoured his face as he reached the edge and stood for a moment, peering into the void beyond. Sudden drafts snatched dangerously at his heels, and driving snowflakes brushed into the dead chill of his mouth. They collected there to lay, still and unmelting, upon the icy blade of his tongue.

As the angry shroud of the blizzard wrapped itself around him, Grigori closed his eyes and thought back to a summer long ago when, bathed in the green light of a forest glade, he had taught Petrokov how to dive into a pool.

'It's easy,' he mouthed silently through frost-blackened lips. 'You just stand up straight, throw forward your arms… and dive!'

He hurtled downward, his body slicing through the wild eddies of the blizzard as he fell. And as he plunged towards the jagged rocks that waited below Grigori was smiling, for he heard not the storm's triumphant howl, but the ring of his son's delighted laughter.

MEAT WAGON

C L Werner

The door of the coaching inn was flung open with a loud bang, causing the denizens of the place to look up with varying degrees of alarm and surprise. The figure framed momentarily in the doorway was a brutish one, a head below average height but nearly twice as broad as most men. A leather hat with a wide brim was scrunched about his head, covering the blonde fuzz that clung to his skull. The brute’s face was full and meaty, a bulbous nose crushed in some long-ago brawl looming above an expansive mouth filled with black teeth. In one gloved fist, the man held a coiled whip; the other gripped the edge of the door.

“Coach be leavin’ soon,” the harsh voice of the wagoner grunted. “Suggest you lot get yerselves organised.” With no further word, the hulking drover turned, stomping back out the door and slamming it closed as he left.

“Wretched villain,” muttered one of the seated patrons of the inn’s bar-room. He was a middle-aged man, his body on the downward spiral towards obesity. His raiment was rich, more of his fingers burdened with bejeweled rings than without. “Why I should suffer such disrespect from that creature…”

“Because, like the rest of us, you want to be in Nuln, and you want to be there quickly,” responded the man seated at the table just to the left of the complaining merchant. He was a tall, young, thin man, his striped breeches and double-breasted tunic as refined as the clothes of the merchant, though more restrained in their opulence. The bearded man with the long, gaunt face flipped over two of the small bone cards set upon the table, smiling as he saw the faces of the cards revealed.

“And why are you in such a hurry, might I ask, Feldherrn?” the fat-faced merchant grumbled. “Surely there are pockets you have not yet picked in Stirland?”

Feldherrn didn’t look up, continuing to turn over cards arrayed on the table before him, matching them into pairs and sets. “I don’t hold a knife to anyone’s throat. If a man loses the contents of his purse in my company, it is by his own carelessness. But I am sure that taking the silver of those drunkards who crawl into the bottles of vodka you caravan down from Kislev is a much more noble vocation, Steinmetz.” The gambler looked back at the merchant, then turned his gaze to the person seated beside the fat man. Steinmetz’s sullen glower at the gambler’s words turned into an open scowl as he noted the direction of his antagonist’s gaze.

The woman seated beside Steinmetz was pretty, young and frail in build. Her skin displayed the pallor of the north country, the hue of Ostland and the Kislev frontier where the rays of the sun were weak and the hours of night were long. A flush of red coloured her face as the young girl noted the gambler’s attention. She smiled slightly, but the smile was quickly banished as Steinmetz gripped her forearm, his chubby fingers pinching her skin.

“Ravna,” the merchant called, his tone sharp. A towering, broad-shouldered man rose from a stool set against the back wall of the room. Unlike the other occupants of the room, this man wore armour, steel back and breast plates encasing his torso and similar ones upon his legs and upper arms. The bodyguard marched toward Steinmetz, one callused hand resting easily on the pommel of the longsword sheathed at his side. Without rising from his own seat, Steinmetz pulled the girl to her feet as Ravna came near. “Escort Lydia to the coach,” Steinmetz ordered. “We are to be leaving soon.” With a dismissive flick of his hand, the merchant turned his smirking face back toward Feldherrn. The gambler gave Steinmetz a look that suggested indigestion.

“Indeed, we should all be boarding that travelling termite circus,” rumbled the deep voice of the person seated at the table beside that of Feldherrn. The speaker was a dwarf, just under five feet in height, but broader of shoulder than most full grown men. A long, flowing black beard engulfed his face, only a bulbous nose and a pair of stony grey eyes emerging from the mass of hair. The dwarf tipped the clay stein he had been drinking from, draining the remaining two-thirds of the tankard in a single swallow. With a belch of satisfaction, the dwarf slammed the stein down and returned the rounded steel cap of his helmet to his head.

“Revolting,” complained a voice both rich and husky. It belonged to a woman seated alone, nearer the door. Tall, her features even, too devoid of warmth and softness to properly be termed beautiful, the woman wore a travelling dress of rich green fabric, her gloves and boots trimmed with white ermine. Like the departed bodyguard, she wore a slender bladed sword at her side, but unlike the weapon of Ravna, the woman’s sword bore a gilded hilt and there were gems set into the pommel. The woman stared at the dwarf for a moment, then wrinkled her nose in distaste, putting such effort into the grimace that it set her chestnut-hued tresses bouncing about her face.

“I must agree with you, Baroness von Raeder,” Steinmetz’s thick tones rolled from the fat man’s mouth. “Quite a disagreeable sight. To travel in the company of such crude creatures is more of a trial even than that loutish coachman. Why we must tolerate their kind in our lands…” The merchant cast a snide, condescending look at the dwarf. “They should all crawl back into their burrows in the mountains and stop pretending that they are men.” The dwarf glared back, clenching his fists until the knuckles began to whiten.

“Hardly an enlightened statement,” Feldherrn commented, still intent upon his cards. “When we get to Nuln you might have a look at the walls, or perhaps the sewers. They have stood for centuries, and are as sturdy today as when they were first laid down by Fergrim’s ancestors,” The gambler looked up as he finished his speech. Fergrim Ironsharp nodded his head slightly in the gambler’s direction.

“The walls and sewers are built,” Steinmetz grumbled. “We don’t need their kind anymore.”

“I understood that Herr Ironsharp was to be an instructor at the engineering school?” the Baroness von Raeder commented.

“That is so,” Fergrim said, turning to face the Baroness. “By invitation of your master engineers.” The dwarf smiled at the noblewoman. “I apologise if I offended you, my lady.” The dwarf bowed at the waist and clicked his heels together in the fashion of young officers of the Reiksguard presenting themselves in social situations. The Baroness smiled back at the dwarf engineer. Fergrim jabbed a finger over his shoulder to indicate Steinmetz. “Don’t mind him. He doesn’t like my people because we prefer good wholesome beer that puts meat on a person, not the poisonous bear-piss he brings down from the north.” Bowing again, and with a last malicious look at the merchant, Fergrim left the room. Steinmetz mumbled several colourful oaths about the dwarf’s tastes under his breath.

“We should be going as well,” Feldherrn declared, rising from his chair and gathering up his cards. “Our coachmen look to be just the sort of villains who would leave us behind.” The gambler walked towards the door. As he walked near the noblewoman, he extended his arm. “Shall we repair to your carriage, Baroness?” Her hand lightly resting on Feldherrn’s arm, the noblewoman allowed the adventurer to escort her to the waiting coach.

Steinmetz grumbled a few more coloured expressions as they left, waiting a full minute before rising to his own feet and making his own way outside.

The coach stood just before the small roadside inn. It was a large, oak pannelled carriage with two massive stallions hitched to the yoke at its fore. Dark leather curtains enclosed the carriage itself, providing some insulation from the elements for the passengers within. The roof of the coach was laden down by the packs and luggage of the travellers, lashed into place by heavy ropes. A small iron seat had been folded out at the rear of the coach, a similarly tiny ladder allowing Fergrim to ascend to his position behind the carriage. The dwarf cast an appraising eye at several wooden boxes lashed atop the coach, each box bearing a single dwarf rune burned onto its surface, his keen gaze looking for any hint that they had been disturbed. The other passengers were seated within the carriage itself, awaiting the arrival of the merchant, Steinmetz.

At the fore of the weathered, yet serviceable coach, a thin, spindly man sat upon the fur-lined bench within the driver’s box.

The man’s features were somehow unpleasant, the cast of his face suggesting a furtive and calculating nature. Greasy locks of long dark hair streamed from beneath his feathered hat, disappearing into the collar of his heavy longcoat. The man’s skin was dirty, his thin moustaches displaying traces of bread crumbs and dried soup, his clothing grey with dust and flakes of mud. Yet despite his squalid bearing, three shiny earrings, each a wide hoop of gold, tugged at the lobe of his left ear.

The sinister little coachman cast a sullen gaze at the door of the inn, then looked down from his seat to where the massive frame of his brutish partner stood beside the still open door of the carriage.

“How long does that swine think to keep us waiting?” the coachman’s thin, weasely voice croaked, the words tinged by just the slightest hint of an accent. The coachman kept his voice low, so that the already embarked passengers would not hear his complaints.

“That prig be thinkin’ ta be fashnably late,” the hulking wagoner grinned up at his partner, his paw clenching about the length of whip clasped in his hand.

“It is a real pleasure to have someone of his like among our custom, eh, Herr Ocker?” the coachman hissed, a sly light in his eye.

“Indeed it be, Herr Bersh,” the burly Ocker replied, smiling broadly as Steinmetz strolled casually from the inn, making it a point to display the lack of haste in his stride. “Indeed it be.”

The coach was less than an hour out from the inn when there suddenly appeared a figure standing in the road ahead. Bresh and Ocker slowed the coach down, trying to take in the cut of the man who seemed to be waiting for them. The road wardens did not patrol this particular path too frequently and it would not be the first time they would have found themselves forced to drive off a highwayman. But as they drew closer, and more details became apparent, the wagoners found themselves wishing it was a mere brigand awaiting them.

The lone man was dressed opulently: a scarlet shirt trimmed with gold thread, a long black cape trimmed with ermine. A tall, conical hat with a broad round rim rested atop his sharp-featured face. About his waist a dragonskin belt supported a pair of holstered pistols and a sheathed longsword. The man’s face was thin, a slender moustache beneath his dagger-like nose, a slight tuft of grey beard upon his chin. The grey eyes of the man were focused intently upon the coachmen, silently commanding them to stop.

“Witch hunter!” swore Bresh, almost under his breath.

“Ride ’im down,” suggested Ocker in a low hiss. But even as the man made the suggestion, a second man appeared on the road. Unlike the witch hunter, he was dressed shabbily, his worn leather armour struggling to contain his powerful build. The other man was mounted, leading a second horse. But it was not these details that attracted Ocker’s attention. It was the loaded crossbow in the second man’s hands and the murderous twinkle in his eyes that suggested he would dearly love an excuse to use the weapon.

The coach slowed to a stop as Bresh reined in the horses. A muffled protest as to the stop rose from the carriage but the coachman ignored the complaint.

“How can we help you, templar?” Bresh called down in what he hoped was his most affable voice.

The witch hunter’s cool eyes washed over the coachman for a moment. “I have need of passage,” his sharp voice said. “My horse has thrown a shoe.” Bresh and Ocker looked over to note the second animal being led by the mounted crossbowman. “It is fortunate that you happened along.” The witch hunter strode towards the side of the coach.

“I would normally be most happy to aid a noble servant of mighty Sigmar…” Bresh began to say. In midsentence, the witch hunter opened the door of the carriage and began to climb in.

“I am very happy to hear it,” the witch hunter observed. “It would be a much better realm if everyone observed their duties to Sigmar so well.” So saying, the man disappeared into the coach. Ocker began to climb from the box to protest in a more forcible fashion, but a second glance at the witch hunter’s mounted companion convinced him to reconsider.

“You can continue now,” the witch hunter said, then withdrew his head back into the carriage. Bresh grumbled and flicked the reins, commanding the horses to gallop forward. The witch hunter’s companion fell in behind the coach, still leading the other animal.

“Well, that fixes things,” snarled Bresh in a low voice.

“Khaine take me if’n it do,” swore Ocker. “That fat pig got more on ’im then we seen sin’ Mittherbst! An that dwarf is alwayz fuss’n bout that cargo uv ’is.” The Ostlander twisted his face into a greedy smile. “I figger that’ll turn morn’ a few groats.”

“But the witch hunter…” protested Bresh.

“Yer friends ’ll deal wiv ’im,” Ocker stated. “Like dey alwayz done before.”

Within the carriage, the witch hunter took a seat, forcing Baroness von Raeder to shift her position closer toward the gambler Feldherrn. The templar removed his hat and smiled thinly at his fellow passengers.

“My name is Mathias Thulmann,” he said. “Ordained witch hunter in the service of the most high Temple of Sigmar.” The introduction did little to warm the cool atmosphere within the carriage. Thulmann’s next words made the carriage positively icy. “We have a long ride ahead of us. Perhaps we might pass the time by getting to know each other. Now tell me: who are you, where do you come from and what are you doing?”

It was late in the day when the coach emerged from the embrace of the ominous sprawl of the forest. Ahead of the travellers lay a small hollow of rolling land. Once there might have been lush fields and pastures claiming the open ground, but now it was given over to wild grass and squat thorny bushes. Here and there the remains of a stone wall or a lone chimney jutted up from the grass, the only forlorn evidence that this place had once known the hand of man.

As the coach made its way along a narrow, barely visible path that wound its way through the rolling heights and deep depressions in the hollow, a dark cluster of buildings slowly became visible. For a space, the settlement would disappear from view as the wagon’s path took it into some low indentation in the valley floor or it rounded some small hillock. But always it became visible once more, visible but indistinct, like a mirage flickering across the horizon. Within the carriage each passenger quietly wondered what breed of men would mark out such a lonely and isolated a spot for their habitation.

Then the coach rounded one final hill and, as if some conjurer had suddenly torn away one last obscuring veil, the town loomed before them. A mass of roofs were visible, rising above a clustered mass of buildings, strewn about like litter. The roofs were in ill repair, timbers sticking through long rotten thatching like broken bones thrust through skin. The empty bell tower of a shrine rose above all else, all the more wretched for its diminished sanctity.

A timber gate stood before the cluster of buildings, the doors open, their panels sagging in their crude iron frames, warped by the forces of wind and rain. A small rectangle of wood dangled from a rusting chain, barely discernible letters burnt into the sign.

“Mureiste? What manner of name is that?” wondered the Baroness as she read the faded letters.

“Sounds like some foreign doggerel,” snorted Steinmetz, grimacing as though from a foul odour.

“It is Sylvanian,” stated the witch hunter, his voice low, filled with suspicion.

“Sylvanian?” gasped Lydia, her eyes going wide with sudden alarm, a delicate hand clutching at her throat. Her skin paled to an even more marble-like hue as the innumerable nightmare tales of horror originating from the blighted former province wormed their way at once to the forefront of her mind. Beside her, the bloated fingers of Steinmetz fumbled to form a crude mark of Sigmar.

“But why in the name of Ranald would we be anywhere near Sylvania?” asked Feldherrn, his own face becoming suspicious.

“Indeed,” observed Thulmann. “It is a curious road that leads to Nuln in the south-west by taking its travellers north-east.”

The coach continued on into the town. The buildings, seen close up, were indeed as dilapidated as they seemed from afar. Many of the mudbrick hovels had all but collapsed, great holes pitting their walls, thatch roofs fallen in, doors lying amid weeds and brambles. The wooden structures leaned like drunken men, looking as if they might topple onto their sides at any instant. And yet, as ramshackle as they were, to the witch hunter’s keen gaze, alarming incongruities presented themselves. Some of the buildings bore marks of crude unskilled repair, dried mud pushed into holes, fresh grass and branches thrown upon a thatched roof. Decayed and forsaken the town of Mureiste might be, but there were signs that it was not abandoned.

The coach came to a stop in what once must have been the town square of Mureiste. At its centre, the remains of a once heroic statue stood upon a weed choked stone pillar. The dreary facades of shops and a two-storied guild-hall considered the decayed champion with dark, gaping windows. One side of the square was dominated by a temple, the bronze hammer icon drooping from its steeple proclaiming it as having once been devoted to Sigmar. Alone among the rotting structures of Mureiste, the temple was constructed from stone, great granite blocks that must have been transported at great expense through forest and hollow.

Bresh shared a knowing look with Ocker, then slid back the small wooden window at the rear of the driver’s box to speak to the passengers within the carriage.

“Just a short rest stop,” the coachman assured his passengers. “This is the last fresh water for some distance. We shall see to the horses, then we’ll be on our way again.”

His reassuring smile faded as he saw the barrel of Thulmann’s pistol rise from the compartment and point at his face.

“If either of you scoundrels makes a move to drop from that box,” Thulmann’s voice hissed, “you will have the distinctly unpleasant experience of having your brains blown out of the back of your skull.”

Bresh froze under the witch hunter’s threat, the only motion in his entire frame limited to a pleading sidewise glance at his partner. Ocker slowly pulled the wide-mouthed musket from its place at the side of the bench, well beyond the limited vision of those within the carriage.

“I shouldn’t do that,” snarled a harsh voice from beside the coach. Ocker’s hand froze against the frame of the firearm. He looked over at the mounted ruffian who had accompanied the witch hunter. A heavy crossbow was held in Streng’s hands, the bolt aimed at the Ostlander’s midsection. “Breathe in a fashion I dislike and I’ll split your belly.”

From his position at the back of the coach, Fergrim Ironsharp stood upon the metal seat, trying to peer over the top of the carriage to see what was unfolding before him. The dwarf craned his neck one way then another trying to see past the barrier of boxes and crates. Then he whipped his neck around, staring at the decayed buildings around the coach. His sharp eyes, excelling at piercing the dark like all of his tunnel dwelling kind, discerned motion within the blackened doorway of an old tanner’s shop. Fergrim noticed more motion in the dark recess of an alley, seeing two indistinct figures lurking within the mouth of the shadowy lane. The dwarf licked his suddenly dry mouth. There was something disturbing about those shapes, something unnatural.

“I don’t think we’re alone,” Fergrim declared, but his words did not reach down into the compartment below. The dwarf continued to watch as the shadowy figures began to multiply. Again he muttered an unheard warning.

Suddenly, from the darkness of a dozen doorways, from the shadows filling alley and lane, horrible shapes loped into the fading light. Each was lean, pale skin stretched tight over lanky limbs and wasted bellies, tattered mockeries of garments draped about loins or cast over shoulders. Long claws tipped each of the creatures’ hands, talons more suited to a vulture than anything resembling a man. The faces of each were drawn, the heads bald, long noses perched above wide, fanged mouths. Beady red eyes glared from the pits of each face, burning with an overwhelming hunger. With a low moan-like howl, the loathsome throng began to sprint toward the coach.

“Hashut’s bald beard!” screamed Fergrim, ripping his throwing axe from his belt, knuckles whitening over the haft of the blade. This time the dwarf’s shout could not fail to be heard and the leather curtains were pushed aside, the occupants of the coach screaming their own cries of horror as they saw the fiendish host emptying from the ruinous streets of Mureiste.

At the front of the coach, Streng looked away from Ocker, the witch hunter’s henchman staring in disbelief as the twisted inhabitants of Mureiste howled and wailed in unholy hunger. A slight movement from the driver’s box brought Streng whipping around and he fired the bolt from his crossbow just as Ocker was levelling the musket towards him and drawing back the hammer. The bolt smashed into the villain’s belly and the Ostlander gave vent to a loud scream of agony. He fell from the driver’s box, landing partially underneath the coach. As Ocker’s body hit the ground, the musket still held in his hands was discharged by the violent impact with the ground.

The thunderous boom of the firearm caused the stallions to spring into a terrified gallop. The animals sprinted forward, pulling the carriage after them. The rear wheels of the coach passed over the legs of Ocker, and a fresh scream rang from the wagoner’s lungs as the bones were pulverised under the tremendous weight. At the rear of the coach, Fergrim was jostled, nearly falling from his seat. The axe fell from the dwarf’s hands as his stubby fingers assumed a death-grip on the frame of the roof. Fergrim risked a look over his shoulder, blanching as he saw the first twisted creatures reaching towards him, their claws pawing at the empty air in a desperate effort to rend his flesh.

The speed of the terrified horses soon outdistanced the creatures that had converged upon the rear of the coach. But other twisted monstrosities gathered in the path of the carriage. Atop the driver’s box, Bresh was vainly attempting to get some measure of control over his animals. The stallions plowed into the first of the degenerate things, crushing three of them beneath their hooves. Another of the monsters sprang at the wagon, clinging to the panels like a great spider. The beast’s twisted face peered in through the window, drool dangling from its jaws. Lydia screamed as the hideous thing’s eyes focused upon her.

The Baroness was not so distressed, leaning back in her seat and smashing her boot into the grinning monstrosity’s face. The malformed thing howled anew as the violence of the woman’s kick caused it to lose its grip on the coach and its body was crushed under the wheels.

Bresh was trying to steer the coach away, out of the blighted village. Everything had gone wrong this time, they should never have come here. He should never have let Ocker talk him into bringing the coach here after they had picked up the witch hunter. As he turned the wagon still once more, he saw yet another lane choked with thin, hungry shapes. Bresh cursed once more, slipping into the seldom used words of his native tongue. They should never have come here before dark. He cursed Ocker once more, and as if summoned up by his words, the coachman saw a pile of bones and blood lying upon the ground, a pile of bones and blood wearing the Ostlander’s face. The denizens of Mureiste were indeed hungry this night.

“Make for the temple,” a harsh voice snarled through the window at the back of the box. “If you don’t, we’re all dead!” Bresh swore once again, then directed the horses toward the looming stone structure. The stallions were breathing hard now, bleeding from dozens of cuts, filthy black wounds caused by the claws of the deformed monsters. Bresh knew that they would not last much longer. Cracking the whip mercilessly, he drove the failing animals onward, toward the shrine. The animals almost made it.

One of the lead horses failed a dozen yards from the temple, dropping instantly as its heart was stilled by the poison working through its veins. The momentum of the coach and the sudden violent stop caused it to crash onto its side, snapping the yoke, freeing the remaining stallion to drag its dead comrade a few dozen paces before it too staggered and fell. As the coach crashed, a tiny figure was thrown upwards, rocketing ahead of the wagon and crashing into the short flight of steps that led to the rickety wooden doors. The wagon itself continued onward, plowing across the ground, its momentum pushing it forward. Bresh, with an almost inhuman agility, had leaped atop the carriage as it turned over, clutching to the now topmost side, riding the destroyed coach like a child upon a sled.

Fergrim Ironsharp rolled onto his back, groaning loudly, trying to force the sparks to stop dancing before his eyes. As his vision cleared, the dwarf muttered another curse, watching as the mammoth shape of the coach slid towards him. He braced himself for the crushing impact, throwing his arms before his face. After a moment, he peered through his arms. A great cloud of dust was billowing all about him, and in the centre of the dust cloud, he could see the shape of the coach, ground to a halt so near to him, that the dwarf could reach out and touch the splintered remains of the driver’s box.

Atop the coach, Bresh began to laugh, overwhelmed to have survived the ordeal. The coachman lifted himself, began to slide down to the ground, when a hand closed about his ankle, causing his descent to turn into a fall. The coachman groaned, grasping at his twisted foot. As he turned his eyes upward, he saw the door of the carriage open and the dishevelled form of the witch hunter pull himself from the wreckage. His pistol was gone, but a longsword was gripped purposefully in his hands. Thulmann glared down at the injured Bresh, murder in his eyes.

“Hurry up, Mathias!” shouted a voice from the doorway of the temple. Streng stood at the top of the steps, his crossbow gripped in his hands. “They’ve nearly finished fighting over the horses. They’ll be on us next!”

Mathias Thulmann dropped to the ground, landing beside Bresh. “I have half a mind to leave you for the ghouls,” his harsh tones hissed. The witch hunter gripped the front of the coachman’s tunic, pulling him painfully to his feet. “But there is a rope waiting for you,” Thulmann snarled. “Scum such as you is for hanging.” The witch hunter pushed Bresh ahead of him, following after the coachman’s hobbling steps.

Behind them, other figures were slowly, painfully, emerging from the wreckage. First the Baroness, lifted from below by powerful hands. The woman perched atop the coach for a moment, then slid down to the ground, a glance at the nearness of the ghouls lending haste to her feet. Even as the next occupant of the carriage pulled himself through the door, the noblewoman was already sprinting into the temple, skirts lifted about her knees.

By some miracle of fate, none of the occupants of the carriage appeared to have sustained more than bruises. In short order, the other passengers were free of the wreck, the bulky merchant Steinmetz coming last of all, pulled from the compartment by his burly bodyguard, Ravna. The fat-faced vodka seller froze as he saw the lean, hungry figures rising from their dinner of horseflesh. Faces crimson with gore turned in his direction. For a moment, man and ghoul stared at one another in silence. Then the moment passed. The ghoul’s gory mouth dropped open, a howl escaping its wasted frame. As though it were a call to arms, the sound brought dozens of the creatures to their feet. Soon a mob of the emaciated fiends was sprinting toward the overturned coach.

“Sigmar’s holy hammer,” Steinmetz stammered as his bowels emptied. Ravna tugged at his employer’s arm, trying to get him to move. But the obese man was frozen to the spot, eyes fixed on the quickly advancing horde. Finally, the bodyguard pushed Steinmetz from the top of the wreck. The bulky merchant struck the ground with his shoulder, grunting with pain. He looked about him, as if the impact had snapped him back to reality. A girlish wail rose from his lungs and, with a speed which seemed impossible for a man of his decadent build, he ran for the open doors of the temple.

Ravna was right behind the fat man, leaping down from his perch even as the obese man struck earth. The mercenary saw Fergrim sitting at the base of the steps, the dwarf still trying to shake some sense back into his skull after his flight from the back of the coach. Ravna cast a beefy arm about Fergrim’s waist, lifting the heavy dwarf from the ground. The bodyguard cast a glance over his shoulder, eyes going wide with horror as he saw a gaunt shape scrabbling over the coach.

“A poor place to gather your thoughts, master engineer,” the mercenary commented, leaping across the steps two at a time in his haste to reach the sanctuary of the temple. A pair of ghouls raced after him, snarling and snapping like feral dogs. As Ravna and his heavy burden reached the top of the steps, one of the ghouls let out a cry of pain, spinning about and crashing back down the stairs, a crossbow bolt lodged in its ribs. The other ghoul clawed at the bodyguard with its talons, ropes of gory drool dangling from its jaws. The claws scraped across Ravna’s backplate, scratching the metal but failing to harm the man within. The ghoul was not so fortunate, as a thin sword blade pierced its side. Ravna raced past Feldherrn as the gambler freed his blade from the dying ghoul. Feldherrn cast a single look at the dozen or so other monsters racing toward the steps and hurried after the mercenary.

The wooden doors slammed shut behind Feldherrn, almost in the very face of the foremost of the ghouls. Streng and Baroness von Raeder put their full weight into the effort of holding the doors shut. Feldherrn quickly sheathed his own sword and pounced upon the heavy bronze-bound doors just as they began to inch inward. Ravna set Fergrim down on one of the pews that littered the ramshackle chamber of worship. The dwarf snorted as he was set down. The mercenary looked over at the pale figure of Lydia.

“See if you can do anything for him,” Ravna snapped at the girl, racing toward the doors to help hold them against the hungry mob of cannibals outside. He did not spare a second glance at Steinmetz, cowering behind an old podium, muttering a long overdue prayer for absolution of his many moral failings.

The doors threatened to open once again as the weight and frenzy of the ghouls nearly overcame the strength of the four people desperately trying to keep the barrier closed.

“You know, I once escaped from the Reiksfang prison,” Feldherrn said, his voice loud to be heard over the clamour of the ghouls. “Suddenly having my head separated from my shoulders by Judge Vaulkberg’s ogre doesn’t seem such a bad way to go.”

Streng adjusted his feet to lend more strength to his upper body even as he chuckled at the gambler’s gallows humour. As the professional torturer cast his eyes toward the gambler, he saw a figure in scarlet and black walking toward them from the inner reaches of the hall.

“Lend a hand, Mathias,” the henchman grunted. For reply, the witch hunter drew his remaining pistol. Thulmann advanced upon the embattled doorway. Sighting a hole in the wood, he stuck the barrel of the pistol to it, pulling the trigger. A loud howl of pain sounded from beyond the door and the pressure against the portal faded away almost at once. The witch hunter favoured the four people holding the door with a smile and calmly holstered the smoking weapon.

“That should keep them back for a little while, but I suggest you break up a few of these pews and reinforce that door. When the sun fully sets, I think we can expect them to try again,” Thulmann turned about, his black cape swirling about him. “Sigmar will understand the need. You’ll find some nails in the cleric’s cell. There is also a window behind the altar and a side door next to the storeroom. I suggest you barricade those as well before our friends outside remember them.” The witch hunter began to stalk away.

“And just what are you going to be doing?” demanded the Baroness.

“Interrogating my prisoner,” Thulmann replied without turning around.

Bresh was tied hand and foot, lying upon the floor of the old priest’s cell at the back of the temple. Thulmann had taken the leather thongs from the saddlebags of Streng’s horse, both the henchman’s and the witch hunter’s animals having been brought into the temple along with the thuggish hireling.

The coachman was struggling against his bonds, trying to worm his wrists free when he heard the dreaded stomp of the witch hunter’s boots. Bresh looked up from the floor, flinching slightly as he saw Thulmann’s scowling face.

“Not one of your better days, I imagine,” the witch hunter sneered. He made an elaborate show of removing a number of steel needles from a pouch on his belt, then leaned down toward the terrified man. Thulmann favoured the villain with a cruel smile. “Have you ever heard the old proverb that evil will always reveal itself?” Bresh was sweating now, the salty liquid causing dirt to slip from his face. “It is only by chance that we happened upon your nasty little racket. My friend and I were trying to find a petty noble whose misdeeds warranted the attention of the Temple. We thought we might be able to pick up his trail again if we followed the stage route he used to escape Carlsbruck.”

Thulmann leaned forward, stabbing one of the needles into the coachman’s hand. Bresh snarled in pain, a litany of curses slipping from his lips. The witch hunter nodded his head as the foreign vulgarities continued to stream from the rogue’s mouth.

“I thought so,” Thulmann mused. “You had a certain look about you beneath that grime. I thought at first you might be a Sylvanian under all that filth. Thank you for correcting me.” The witch hunter began to replace the needles into their pouch. “I was wondering how you two cut-throats managed your vile scheme. The good citizens of Mureiste make a meal of your passengers, and you two divvy up their valuables. That is the arrangement, is it not, swine?” Thulmann smashed the toe of his boot into the trussed thief’s side.

“You’ll never leave this place alive!” swore Bresh, spitting at Thulmann. The witch hunter wiped the spittle from the front of his scarlet and gold shirt, then kicked his captive again.

“You were nervous about me being along for the ride,” Thulmann continued. “You rushed things. We were supposed to arrive later, after the sun had set, after your other partner was around to keep the ghouls under control.”

“The Master will kill you, witchfinder!”

Thulmann smiled back at Bresh. “We’ll see about that. This was a temple of Sigmar, and unless someone had a chance to desanctify it, it is still holy ground. That gives me an edge over your ‘master’, Strigany.”

Bresh rolled onto his back, sneering at his captor. “Your Sigmar won’t help you! The Master will drain your body and toss the husk to the ghouls!”

Thulmann turned on his heel, striding back into the chamber of worship. “Keep a happy thought, Strigany. It will make hanging you all the more satisfying.”

Thulmann returned to the main room of the temple. Most of the pews, he found, had been broken apart. He watched for a moment as the dwarf, apparently recovered from his concussion, carted a huge armful of wood towards the front door where the Baroness von Raeder and the gambler Feldherrn were nailing planks in place, reinforcing the portal against a second attack. He could hear more banging coming from the side door within the small storeroom located behind the cleric’s cell. Behind him, he could see Streng forcing the remains of a bench against the iron frame of the single window behind the altar. The witch hunter called out to his minion. Streng hastily finished nailing the wood into place and leapt down from the altar which he had been using as a bench.

“I’d prefer a dozen of Morr’s Black Guard and maybe a cannon or two,” the warrior said, “but with a little luck, we might be able to keep them out.”

“I’m afraid that your luck has run out,” the witch hunter responded. Then his eyes caught the bloated shape of Steinmetz seated on an undamaged pew near the column where the horses had been tethered.

“Our merchant friend doesn’t help?” Thulmann asked, eyebrows arching.

“I would have forced the issue, but his bodyguard said it was just as well,” Streng answered. “He said that he’d not trust a nail driven by that pampered trash. He took the fancy girl to help him secure the storeroom door.” Suddenly the import of something the witch hunter had said sank in. Streng gripped his employer’s arm. “Why do you say our luck is done?”

Thulmann fixed his gaze on his henchman. “Because unless I am much mistaken, in a few moments we are going to be entertaining a vampire.”

Outside the old temple, the ghouls crowded about the old market square. Hungry eyes stared at the building, drool dribbling from gaping mouths. Several of the twisted deformed men stared at the fast fading sun, their eyes gleaming with expectation. On the steps of the temple, a few ghoul corpses lay where they had fallen. They too would become provender for the hideous denizens of the town, but only after they had been left for a time, after the rot had been allowed to sink into their tainted flesh.

It had been a strange break in the routine when the wagon had arrived early, causing the denizens of Murieste no end of confusion. They had watched and waited. But when it appeared that something was wrong, that perhaps the coach would leave, even the most restrained of their number had panicked and surged forward to claim their portion of the meat. Now, with the travellers trapped within the old shrine, the monsters had settled down to await the night. The intruders might have their loud magic which had exploded the face of one who had been at the front of the pack, but the people of Murieste were not without their own sorcerous resources.

As the long shadows engulfed the town, filling each lane and alleyway, darkness truly fell upon Murieste. The sound of leathern wings beating upon the thin night winds descended from above to thrill the eager ears of the ghouls. The monsters looked skyward with an almost religious fervour, pawing at the earth with their claws and uttering a sound that was not the howl of a jackal nor the chanting of a monk, but something kindred to both.

A shape detached itself from the night, hovering and soaring above the malformed mob. A black shadow swept across the square, circling it twice before coming to land at the base of the old hero’s statue. It was a massive, monstrous bat, gigantic fangs jutting from its hideous face like the incisors of a sabre-toothed lion of far away Norsca.

As the creature settled to earth, it wrapped its leathery wings about itself, like a rich burgomaster burrowing into his cloak to keep warm. The talons of the bat slowly grew into muscular legs as it came to stand before the statue. The change that had begun with the legs continued up the animal’s body, fur retreating back into pale, lifeless skin, sleek pinions collapsing into powerful arms bulging with muscle and sinew. The face of the bat slowly twisted and rearranged itself into a leering, diabolic countenance. A great gash of a mouth sporting sharp, over-sized teeth dominated a hairless, deformed head. The eyes of the monster, like two scabby pools of blackened blood, stared at the ghoulish throng, fixing the miserable creatures with a pitiless gaze.

At an unspoken word of command, one of the ghouls scuttled forward, cringing before the vampire. The undead beast towered over the comparatively frail cannibal, and reached downward with a clawed hand. The sword-sized talons of the vampire curled about the ghoul’s chin, forcing the wretch to meet that merciless stare. The vampire locked its eyes upon those of the ghoul, letting its vision linger, draining the ghoul’s memories of the arrival of the coach and all that had transpired after.

The vampire hissed in wrath, pulling its hand away from the ghoul’s chin and swiping at the creature’s head with its other claw in what looked to be a single impossibly swift motion. The head of the ghoul flew across the square, bouncing from the side of the old guild-hall. The vampire pulled the headless corpse to it, fixing its massive jaw over the spurting stump of the corpse-eater’s neck. The vampire sucked the vile-tasting liquid noisily and greedily. It did not pay any notice to the yelps and howls of the ghouls cringing all about the vampire, their pleas for forgiveness and reaffirmations of their devotion.

The vampire let the drained cadaver fall, licking the blood that had coated its chin with a long lupine tongue. It was an abominable feeding, one the vampire was loathe to subject itself to, but it had reason to suspect it would need all the strength it could muster, even such strength as the thin, corrupt blood of a ghoul might bestow. It had seen with the eyes of the slain ghoul the passengers of the coach as they fled into the temple, and the cast of one of them troubled the undead coffin worm greatly. It could recall those long ago years when the great Vampire Counts waged their wars, and the terrible scouring of tomb and grave that had followed when the mortals were again able to hold dominion over Sylvania. It had been a long time since it had cause to fear the stakes of vampire slayers. The corpse-thing cast a wrathful look at the temple. It had no desire to confront such a man in the house of its enemy.

It would just have to send the ghouls in to fetch him out. It was little different than sending hounds to flush a hare from a stand of thorn bushes. The dogs might be injured, but the game would fill the belly just the same.

Mathias Thulmann stood before the old altar, facing the motley collection of people who had escaped from the sinister plot of the coachmen. The witch hunter studied each of his companions, trying to weigh his impressions of them with what he had learned of them from the idle chatter during the ride to Murieste. They were not the sort of people he would have chosen to stand with. Of them all, he was confident only in Streng to stand his ground, only because the henchman knew how useless it would be to run. The dwarf was another dependable quantity, but he was still somewhat disoriented from his fall. Thulmann felt that the engineer could also be trusted not to break, but how effective a defence he would be able to muster was a question he was much more uncertain of.

Of the others, the witch hunter was more dubious. The Baroness von Raeder seemed a very strong-willed and confident woman, but there was something about her which he did not entirely trust. She seemed a bit too strong-willed, a bit too independent. Such tendencies had led to her being sent away by her husband, and Thulmann wondered where such tendencies might yet lead her.

Feldherrn was a professional gambler, little more than a common thief. Thulmann was not about to place any great store in the courage of a thief. The mercenary, Ravna, was much the same, a man who owed more loyalty to gold than anything else, his loyalty went to the man who promised him further payment, even such a man as Steinmetz, whom the mercenary clearly held in contempt. It was a hold on the man, but Thulmann knew that such a tie might easily be severed when the master of Murieste came for them. A man will risk his life for gold, but he won’t give it.

Steinmetz himself was worthless. Thulmann had struck the merchant, trying to knock some courage into the man, but he still slobbered over himself in fear. The merchant’s companion was slightly less hysterical, but she was obviously no fighter. In the coming conflict, neither of them could be relied upon to do anything except distract some of the ghouls should the creatures force their way in.

“I’ve told you all what we are likely to face,” the witch hunter said. Streng had withdrawn several bulbs of garlic from one of the saddlebags and the girl, Lydia, had helped fashion them into makeshift necklaces. Sometimes garlic was useful in his work. The animal familiars of some witches were unnaturally repulsed by them, giving themselves away. Thulmann also knew that common folklore held that vampires detested it as well, and would be kept at bay by the fragrance. Coming from the mouth of a Templar of Sigmar, Thulmann hoped the others would accept the superstition and take heart from their imaginary protection.

“We must hold our ground until dawn, there is no other way out of this. This place is a temple of our mighty Lord Sigmar, bane of the undead, crippler of Black Nagash. The vampire will not dare enter here, for his powers will be weak. But he will send his slaves, and we must defy them. It is not merely our lives which are at risk, but our very souls.” Thulmann doubted that last part. Even if the ghouls did present one of them to their master in anything resembling life, he knew they would strip to the bone whatever the Strigoi left. No chance of coming back from the grave when it is in the bellies of  three score or so ghouls.

Mathias Thulmann pointed a gloved hand at Fergrim Ironsharp and Ravna. “You two will guard the side door. They didn’t attack from that quarter before, but they are better organised now, even if they do not think to exploit it, the vampire probably will.” The dwarf and the bodyguard hastened to their positions, the latter armed with his sword, the dwarf making do with a wood-axe taken from Streng’s saddlebags. The witch hunter considered the Baroness for a moment, then turned and pointed at the blocked window. “Keep a guard on the window. It is unlikely that they will try that way, but be on guard just the same. Any fingers try to pull at those boards, cut them off with your dagger. Above all, cry out. Let us know.” The Baroness stalked past the witch hunter, dagger in her hand.

“I guess that leaves you and me to join your friend at the front door,” sighed Feldherrn.

Thulmann let his eyes pass over Steinmetz and Lydia, then stared at Feldherrn. “Still think Ranald’s luck is with you?” he asked.

“I never put much stock in luck,” Feldherrn replied, walking toward the portal. “A good gambler finds other ways to prosper.”

The witch hunter joined Streng and Feldherrn at the door. As he stood beside Streng, the man removed his eye from the small knothole Thulmann had fired his pistol through. The henchman was visibly upset, his face ashen. Streng gestured for him to have a look for himself.

Thulmann at once saw what had upset his man. Standing before the old statue was a towering monstrosity, a beast that resembled some ghastly daemon of the Blood God more than it did anything that might once have been numbered amongst men. As he watched, the vampire drew back one of its powerful arms, pointing at the temple with a finger that was tipped by a long black talon. The vampire said something, but the witch hunter did not need to understand the words to understand its meaning.

With a low howl, the ghouls mustered in the square leapt to their feet and scrambled toward the temple. “Get ready!” Thulmann yelled. “Here they come!”

The ghouls struck the temple doors as a frenzied mass of hungry meat. The heavy portal shook under the impact as if a battering ram had been brought against it. The defenders found themselves forced to put their shoulders against the doors as several of the boards were ripped from the frame by the concentrated force. The rabid howls and snarls of the creatures sounded from the other side of the door, claws digging splinters from the door, eyes peering in. The defenders found themselves hard pressed to keep the door from sagging inward, despite the reinforcement. Thulmann managed to fumble his reloaded pistol from its holster. The witch hunter pressed the weapon against the same knothole. He pressed the trigger and once again there was a howl of pain.

“At least they are consistent,” he commented, holstering the weapon and redoubling his efforts to hold the door.

Streng cursed aloud as a clawed hand wriggled its way through a weakness in the rotten wood. Splinters rained onto his hair as the ghoulish limb scrabbled about in the opening. Filthy black venom trickled from the ghoul’s claws. The henchman snarled, bringing his hunting knife against the pale flesh. The ghoul outside screamed as Streng sawed at its wrist. The hand twisted and turned in the hole, but try as it might, it could not be withdrawn. Streng kept at his grisly labour, finally cutting the extremity from the ghoul’s arm. The hand flopped to the floor and a piteous wailing could be heard as the maimed creature retreated. No sooner had the first been injured, than another clawed hand was groping through the opening.

“As you said, Mathias, at least they are consistent,” grinned Streng, reaching toward the second hand with his knife.

The sounds of the semi-human monsters battering at the doors of the temple sounded in Steinmetz’s ears like the booming of cannon. The merchant tried to curl his fat body into a ball, choking on sobs of fear. Terror raced through his body like a debilitating poison. At his side, Lydia placed a delicate hand on Steinmetz’s head, stroking his hair, trying to soothe him as she would a frightened babe. Somehow, the intense fear of her employer seemed to lessen her own and she spoke soft words of reassurance and hope into the sobbing man’s ears.

At first Steinmetz did not seem to hear Lydia, then a slight flicker of reason fought its way into his eyes. He uncurled himself, his fat hands crushing hers in a desperate, hungry grip. A feverish tremble set the merchant’s meaty features twitching. Lydia tried not to look alarmed as Steinmetz stared into her eyes.

“The coachman, Lydia,” Steinmetz hissed.

“Please, don’t excite yourself,” Lydia replied, trying to wrest her hands back from the merchant’s strong grasp. “The witch hunter will get us out of this.”

“The coachman brought us here, Lydia,” Steinmetz repeated in a low voice, ignoring her own reply. “He brought us here. He must know a way out!” Lydia freed her hands and drew away from the merchant in alarm. Steinmetz smiled at her sudden fright. “If we help him escape, he will help us escape!”

“No, Emil, you can’t do such a thing,” protested Lydia. Steinmetz rose to his feet, pulling his arm away from Lydia’s attempt to restrain him.

“I’ll pay him,” the merchant continued. “He will accept that. I’ll pay him to get us out of here. Just you and me.” Steinmetz faced the girl again, anger flaring in his face as he noted the look of shocked outrage on her features. “You won’t do it?” he snarled. The merchant’s meaty hand slapped Lydia’s face, knocking her onto her side with the force of the blow. “Then stay here and die! There are fancy girls enough in Nuln to warm my bed.”

Bresh was still lying upon the floor of the old priest’s cell, straining at his bonds when he heard the fat merchant enter. The coachman went rigid with alarm as he saw the obese man draw a dagger from his boot. Steinmetz stared at him for a moment, but Bresh could not decide what thoughts were squirming about behind those eyes. The merchant waddled forward and Bresh braced himself for the sharp stab of steel.

Instead, he found himself turned onto his side, felt the edge of the weapon slicing through his bonds. Words were dribbling from the merchant’s mouth, inane babble about paying the Strigany a king’s ransom to get him away from the blighted village, desperate pleas for the coachman to save him from the ghouls howling for his blood, promises to help Bresh escape from the witch hunter. He smiled to himself. There was no fool so gullible as a fool in fear of his life.

Bresh rose to his feet, rubbing at his wrists and knees to try and restore circulation. The Strigany looked up at his benefactor, his features shaping themselves into a mocking smile. He pointed at the knife in Steinmetz’s hand.

“Will you help me?” the merchant demanded, but it was but an echo of his former pomposity and arrogance that gave the words their sting.

“Of course,” Bresh smiled. “I am in your debt now.” He opened his hand, extending it toward Steinmetz. “The dagger, if you please?”

“Why do you want it?” the merchant asked, voice trembling with suspicion and fear.

“Unless you want to take care of the witch hunter yourself,” Bresh answered. “We shall have to kill him if we are going to get out of here.” The words had their desired effect and Bresh felt the reassuring weight of the weapon slide into his hand. He briefly entertained the thought of returning it to the merchant, opening the conniving tradesman’s belly with his own steel, but Bresh quickly dismissed the idea. It would be much more fun to watch the ghouls dispose of him.

Bresh crept warily back into the shrine. He could see the Baroness, standing atop the altar, her back to him, intent upon the window. She presented a tempting target, but she was not his primary concern. He could also hear the commotion at the storeroom door, where Steinmetz had informed him that Ravna and the dwarf were standing guard. It sounded as if a score of ghouls were trying to beat their way through the small door. He turned his eyes forward. The gambler, the witch hunter and the witch hunter’s man were holding the larger entryway. Their backs were to the main room as they strove to punish the many black-clawed hands that were clutching at them from numerous holes in the wooden doors.

The Strigany smiled. His master would be greatly pleased if he dealt with the witch hunter, perhaps even forgiving him for bringing the man here in the first place. Bresh knew his master’s vile moods and unpredictable temper and knew that anything he could do to strengthen his position would be a matter of life or something worse than death. Bresh tightened his grip upon the dagger and began to move stealthily toward the doors. Behind him, the fat figure of the merchant filled the doorway of the cell, sweating with nervous excitement as he watched the assassin creep across the decrepit hall of worship.

Neither man noticed the small figure that lifted herself from the bench of one of the pews. Lydia watched the Strigany emerge from the priest’s cell, saw the dagger in his hand. She followed the course of his furtive steps, noting where they would eventually lead.

“Witch hunter! Behind you!”

Mathias Thulmann whipped about as Lydia’s scream sounded above the howls and snarls of the ghouls. He saw the Strigany, barely a dozen paces away, the gleaming dagger clutched in his hand. Bresh had turned to see who had betrayed his intentions, losing the opportunity to fall upon the witch hunter’s back in one final, swift, murderous rush.

The scrape of steel on leather rasped from Thulmann’s side as he drew his longsword. The weapon gleamed in the feeble light filtering downward from the temple’s rotting roof. Blessed by no less a personage than the Grand Theogonist of Sigmar himself, the sword was a weapon that could banish daemons and still the black hearts of sorcerers. Thulmann felt it was almost demeaning to force the elegant sword to soil itself with the blood of a mere thief and murderer. But once again, he felt that Sigmar would understand.

Thulmann found the Strigany ready for him, the dagger held outwards and to his side in the manner of a practised knife fighter. Thulmann would have doubted his chances against the man with all things being equal. However, the witch hunter bore no six-inch dagger, but three feet of Reikland steel. It was an advantage none of the Strigany’s tricks could overcome.

Bresh managed to twist his midsection away from Thulmann’s initial strike, but the witch hunter was too far away for the Strigany to follow through with his attack. Thulmann thrust at the villain’s stomach and the Strigany darted to the right, trying to slash the witch hunter’s arm before he could recover. But again, the longer reach thwarted the knife fighter’s instincts.

“Finish him quickly! They’re getting through!” roared Streng. The groan of the doors, the cracking sound of splintering wood grew in volume even as the snarls of the ghouls increased into a bestial cry of triumph. Bresh smiled, expecting the witch hunter to be distracted by the calamitous report. He dove inward for Thulmann’s vitals.

The witch hunter stepped away as Bresh flopped to the floor. He had anticipated the villain to strike, and had met his charge, bringing the longsword stabbing through the Strigany’s throat as the man leaped forward. Thulmann paused only long enough to kick the dagger from the dying man’s reach before hurrying toward the doors.

The ghouls had indeed forced a wide gap between the doors and Streng and Feldherrn were hard pressed to keep them from opening further. The snarling face and wiry arm of one ghoul were thrust through the opening, their owner straining to undermine the efforts of his human prey to force the doors back. An entirely human look of surprise filled the ghoul’s face as Thulmann thrust his sword through its eye. The doors slowly inched backward as Thulmann added his own weight to the efforts of Streng and Feldherrn.

Bresh coughed, a great bubble of blood bursting from the hole in his throat. But the Strigany smiled a weak and crimson smile. He could feel his master’s rage; it burned within his mind. It did not concern Bresh overly that his vampiric master was so furious because it considered Bresh a piece of property that had been ruined. Only one thought warmed the dying man’s soul as it quit his body.

Now the Master will come and everyone here will die!

It burst through the wooden barricade that filled the window behind the altar as if it were paper. The hulking shape fell upon Baroness von Raeder before she could even register the destruction of the barricade. A mammoth hand tipped with sword-claws ripped her in half, tossing her mangled body across the hall to crash into a support pillar.

The vampire roared, its screech sharp and piercing. The undead horror leapt from the altar, springing with panther like agility. The monster smashed to splinters one of the remaining pews as it landed. Blood-black eyes glared about the hall, smelling the hated stench of the living. The vampire hissed, sprinting across the shrine toward the nearest source of that stench. Steinmetz tried to scream, but the sound was ripped from his body as the vampire’s claws tore into him, opening him from navel to collar bone, the bulb of garlic flying into the air as it was severed from the crude necklace. The merchant slumped against the wall, organs spilling from his burst ribcage and stomach.

Lydia screamed, the cry attracting the notice of the fiend. The Strigoi turned its head in her direction, but before it could move, a harsh, commanding voice shouted at it. The vampire hissed anew as it regarded its challenger.

“You are quite brave to enter Sigmar’s house, filth,” Mathias Thulmann snarled. The witch hunter stepped towards the undead monster, sword gleaming at his side. The vampire’s eyes seemed to burn suddenly with an unholy light and there was no mistaking the rage that warped its already twisted features. “Show me how brave you are, coffin-worm!”

The Strigoi leapt forward. The single hop brought it within reach of the witch hunter, and its claw was already in motion even as it landed. Thulmann managed to dodge the blow by only the narrowest of measures, and the sword-sized talons tore into his cape before gouging the stone floor. And even as the vampire’s first attack was avoided, its other hand sought to disembowel him with a crude swipe, blocked at the last instant by the witch hunter’s sword. The undead talons smoked where the holy sword had nicked them and the Strigoi drew its bulk back to hiss at its adversary with renewed wrath.

Even as the duel between man and corpse-thing was being fought, the great double doors of the temple at last gave way to the frenzied ghoul mob struggling to get inside. Streng and Feldherrn gave ground before the snarling mass, their every attention given over to defending themselves from the venomous claws and snapping jaws of their adversaries. Behind the first wave of ghouls, dozens more fought amongst themselves to squirm through the doors, the thought of opening them wider eluding their frenzied, ravenous minds.

Thulmann did not wait for the vampire to recover its balance, but thrust at the undead beast, not with his sword, but with his off hand. The crystal flask gripped between his gloved fingers discharged its contents squarely into the vampire’s face. The Strigoi howled in pain as the blessed water chewed at its rotten flesh, sizzling and steaming like bacon on a hot iron. The witch hunter darted forward, not allowing the vampire time to consider its injury. The longsword sliced into the vampire’s shoulder. Once again, the Strigoi howled in pain, twisting its massive bulk about so as to tear the sword from its flesh even as one of its clawed hands cradled its smoking face. The vampire swiped at Thulmann with its other hand, but the blow was both slow and clumsy. The effect of standing within a holy place was beginning to tell on the corrupt monster, both its strength and speed diminishing rapidly to below mortal levels.

The Strigoi snarled at Thulmann and darted away from the witch hunter, leaping over the heads of startled ghouls, smashing its way through the half-open doors and racing into the night, a trail of putrid smoke drifting in its wake. The ghouls gave voice to a pitiable wail of despair as they saw the vampire flee and began a rout of dismal disorder. Streng and Feldherrn harried the escaping monsters, running several of the degenerate things through the back as they fled.

The witch hunter dropped to his knees, exhaling deeply, thanking Sigmar for the rout of the undead abomination and its followers. But he knew that there were more hours to pass before the dawn and that the vampire would be doubly determined to exterminate them now. Before, they had represented food. Now they represented a threat to the undying horror.

Thulmann took count of the toll the attack had taken. Steinmetz and Baroness von Raeder were dead. The loss of the merchant did not disturb him in the slightest, but the Baroness had represented another pair of eyes and ears that could watch for danger, another blade that could fend off the hungry cannibals. A more telling injury had been dealt at the rear door of the temple. Hearing their vampiric master rampaging within, the ghouls had redoubled their efforts to gain entry, tearing great gashes into the wood. Ravna and Fergrim had kept the pack out, but one of the venom-laden claws had slashed the wrist of the mercenary. He seemed only slightly dizzy at the moment, and protested loudly that it was no more than a scratch, but the witch hunter knew only too well that the poison of a ghoul’s claw was both fast and lethal. He would not last the night.

Mathias Thulmann stood before the remaining survivors. Streng had been set to watch the rear door, Feldherrn peering out of the wreckage that framed the main entrance. There was little hope of defending the doorway after the vampire’s brutal exit and the destruction it had delivered upon the doors themselves. As yet, the ghouls had not returned to exploit the indefensible entryway, but Thulmann knew that they would.

“Listen,” the witch hunter spoke. “We have driven them away, but they will return, more determined than before. The undead thing that rules these wretches cannot afford to let us live to see the dawn. He must return to his crypt when the sun rises and fears that I will find his refuge while he is helpless. It is all or nothing for him, he will offer no quarter.” Thulmann studied each face, noting the expressions of resignation and regret, but finding that fear had passed even from Lydia’s pale face. Men who have accepted their own deaths have no place for fear in their hearts.

“When they come again, we must make our stand,” the witch hunter continued, something of a preacher’s manners slipping into his tones. “Here, in this house of Sigmar, we will show this filth how real men die and make them pay a price in misery these wretches will not soon forget.”

A soft clapping punctuated Thulmann’s brief speech. Fergrim Ironsharp hopped to his feet. “And you folk call dwarfs dour?” the engineer chuckled. “You will forgive me if I am not terribly excited by the proposition of dying to impress a human god, but I think that if I can get back to the coach, I may be able to fix things so we can get out of this graveyard.”

“I don’t think the vampire is going to be bribed with your gold,” scoffed Feldherrn from the doorway. “Indeed, it was probably your ‘valuable cargo’ that made those murderers bring us here in the first place.”

“Gold indeed!” grumbled the dwarf, turning to the gambler. “If I had a hoard of gold I’d have better uses for it than to take it on holiday to Nuln! I speak of explosives! Five hundred pounds of premium Ironsharp blasting powder!”

The revelation swept about the room like wildfire, exciting each survivor.

“You have an idea of how to exploit these explosives?” asked Thulmann, trying not to let any degree of unwarranted hope creep into his words.

“All I need to do is run a fuse to those boxes and the next time our friends come howling at the door, there won’t be enough of them left to feed a crow,” declared Fergrim, puffing himself up proudly. “Just give me somebody to watch my back, and we’ll give that blood-worm a very unpleasant reception!”

It was quickly decided. Streng would remain on guard at the rear door while Feldherrn kept watch inside with Lydia in the event that the vampire again chose to enter through the window. Thulmann emerged from the doorway, his sharp eyes scanning the shadowy town square. The dwarf would have made a better sentry with his excellent night vision, but he had a very different role to play. Ravna, the ghoul venom pulsing through his body now, insisted on accompanying the dwarf. Thulmann noted with some dismay the slow, ungainly steps of the once powerful man.

Fergrim knelt beside the overturned coach, rummaging about amongst the luggage still lashed to the roof. He removed a length of black fuse, traces of gunpowder soaked into the thin line of rope, and then began knocking a hole in the uppermost crate.

Thulmann could hear the sound of many naked feet running in the darkness. He shouted a call of alarm to the dwarf. Fergrim snorted back that he was hurrying. The witch hunter cursed as the sickly grave-stench of the ghouls and their low groans of hunger emerged from the veil of darkness.

“They’re closing in, Fergrim,” he said.

The dwarf remained focused upon his task. From the corner of his mouth he swore at the man. “Perhaps you’d prefer if I made a mistake! We have just one chance at this.” Beside him, Ravna thrust the point of his sword into the ground. Fumbling at his belt, he removed a small tinderbox and a wooden taper. The need for haste had not been lost on the former bodyguard.

The piteous, feral wailing of the ghouls was rising in volume now. Thulmann sighted one of the creatures as it rounded the overturned coach. Aiming quickly, he sent the bullet from his pistol crashing into its skull.

“Grace of Sigmar, dwarf! Move!”

Fergrim finished fixing the fuse to the uppermost box, uncoiling the length of black cord. “You can’t rush a decent job!” the dwarf grumbled. Suddenly the coach shook. Fergrim turned his face upward.

The Strigoi sat perched atop the side of the coach like a crouching panther. The vampire snarled at Thulmann, flexing its claws, promising its enemy a lingering and gruesome death. The witch hunter had emerged from his burrow. Now the advantage was the vampire’s.

So intent was the monster on its enemy, that it paid no attention to the much closer prey. Fergrim stared at the undead horror right above his head and slashed at the fuse in his hands, cutting the line much shorter than he had been planning. Suddenly, a powerful grip closed about his belt and the dwarf found himself stumbling backwards falling on the bottom most steps. Even as he started to voice a colourful oath of outrage, the dwarf saw who had thrown him away from the coach, and what he was doing now. Fergrim leaped up the steps and dove onto his face amid the remains of the doorway.

The Strigoi continued to snarl and spit, waiting while more and more of its ghoul minions rounded the overturned coach. Several of the monsters noted the man crouching against the side of the obstacle, just beneath their master and began to close upon him. But even as they did, Ravna stabbed the lit taper into the hole Fergrim had knocked into the uppermost box of powder.

Mathias Thulmann ducked inside the doorway, letting the heavy stone wall of the temple shield him from the explosion. The sound was deafening, like the angry bellow of a wrathful daemon. The temple shook, tiles falling from its roof. Debris, wooden and organic, rushed through the doorway, propelled by a hot wind. As the boom dissipated the sound of painful screams and moans erupted, the stench of cooked meat permeated the air.

Thulmann stepped back through the door. Near his feet, a stout, short form wriggled itself free of the debris that had covered him like a shroud. The dwarf rolled onto his back, grumbling and bemoaning the loss of his valuable supply of powder. Thulmann regarded the devastated scene before the temple. The coach was blown apart, reduced to burning fragments scattered across the square. The firelight illuminated surviving ghouls fleeing back into the shadows, maimed and injured ones slowly crawling away. A score or more were thrown all about, burned, torn and quite dead. The witch hunter quietly saluted the sacrifice of Ravna and prayed that Sigmar would conduct the man’s soul to one of the more pleasant gardens within the realm of Morr.

Motion snapped the witch hunter from his thoughts. He could see a massive shape writhing at the base of the now toppled statue. He firmed his grip upon his sword and carefully made his way down the temple steps. He could hear the others behind him, filling the doorway, marvelling at the destruction the blast had caused, but the witch hunter did not turn his eyes from the wounded beast. Now hunter had become prey.

The vampire had been thrown backwards at great force by the explosion. Huge splinters of wood from the coach had been driven through its unclean flesh, piercing it through in a dozen places. The violence of the explosion had tossed the creature as though it were a rag doll, causing it to smash into the eroded statue in the centre of the square. The forgotten hero had struck the ground ahead of the vampire, but had rolled backwards, crushing one of the monster’s limbs beneath its weight. The vampire fought to free itself, but the maddening pain of its injuries had reduced its already disordered mind to an animal level. The misshapen fangs worried at the trapped arm, trying to sever it from the Strigoi’s body. Suddenly, a familiar scent caused the vampire to snap its head about, pain and imprisonment forgotten.

Mathias Thulmann stared down at the hideous monster as it regarded him with rage-filled eyes of blood. “When you want to kill someone, do so. Don’t talk about it next time.” Thulmann laughed softly as the vampire hissed up at him. “I forgot. You don’t get a next time.”

Thulmann raised his sword above his head in both hands and with a downward thrust, impaled the Strigoi’s heart, pinning the undead creature to the clean earth below. The vampire struggled for a moment, then its final breath oozed through its jaws in a dry gargle. Thulmann turned away from the dead monster. The blessed steel would serve as well as a stake until he could decapitate the corpse and dispose of its remains in purifying fire. But such work would wait for the dawn.

Mathias Thulmann turned his horse away from the flickering flames. He patted the steed’s neck with a gloved hand and looked over at Streng. “Well, friend Streng, I do not think we will find our man here. If he did have the misfortune to come this way, he is beyond the reach of the Temple now.” The two men began to walk their animals back toward the gates of Murieste. Behind them, three figures stood beside the pyre, each wearing an angry look. “What about us?” demanded Feldherrn.

Thulmann turned about in the saddle. He considered each of the people staring at him. Lydia stared back at him with accusing eyes, Fergrim Ironsharp was grumbling into his beard.

“Do what people without horses have done since the days of Most Holy Sigmar,” the witch hunter advised as he turned back around and continued on his way.

“Walk."

THE CASE OF THE SCARLET CELL

Gordon Rennie

WHAT THEY NEEDED, Varra decided, was a nice war or plague outbreak to get things moving again.

Things had been too slow recently. Business was bad all over. There hadn't been a decent war worthy enough of the name in months, and many of the establishments on Altdorf's legendary - or infamous, depending on which way you looked at it - Street of a Thousand Taverns had either had to lower their prices, or, worse still, relax their door policies and start allowing in the likes of halflings, dwarfs, Averlanders and even Bretonnians to tempt in enough customers to make up for the current chronic lack of free-spending, heavy-drinking mercenaries.

The owners of the Imperial capital's bars and hostelries weren't the only ones to be feeling the pinch, of course. Things were bad down on the Reikerbahn too, Varra had heard. The gambling dens, whorehouses, weirdroot galleries and bawdy parlours there were also suffering from the lack of customers, and many a footpad and cutpurse would be finding the pickings scarce, with so few marks to go round in the ill-lit alleys and back ways of Altdorf's most crime-ridden district. Things were getting so bad in the Reikerbahn, they said, that the rogues would soon have to fall back on robbing each other.

Not that things were any better for those in the fortune-telling business either, Varra sighed to herself Hers was a trade that did well enough when times were good, but often very well indeed when times were bad. Plague, war, famine, disorder, chaos. These were things that all brought fear and uncertainty into the minds of the inhabitants of the Empire, and, when people were afraid and uncertain, they wanted assurances of what the future was going to offer them.

Yes, a nice little war or outbreak of plague to get business moving again, that was what the situation was crying out for. Nothing too major, of course. Maybe just another border dispute with the Bretonnians or a greenskin attack through Blackfire Pass. A Chaos incursion from the north would have been ideal, far enough away from Altdorf not to be of any real danger, but troubling enough to get people nervous and help shake some of the silver out of their purses.

Or maybe she should get herself a gimmick. It certainly worked for that flashy Tilean bitch four doors down, Varra thought bitterly. She put kohl round her eyes, smeared brown unguent on her face, put on a half-veil and a ridiculous Araby accent, called herself Seraphina, Seer of the Desert Sands, and the customers and, more importantly, their gold and silver, just seemed to pour in. In Varra's younger days, before her looks went, her breasts sagged and the crow's feet appeared around her eyes, she had always been willing to oblige those who still believed the old mercenary superstition that it was good luck to bed a fortune teller before setting off to battle, but even that extra money-making opportunity wasn't open to her any longer.

Soon, she knew, she would probably have to give up her prime spot here on Street of the Fortune Tellers, and accept her eventual fate down in the Reikerbahn, selling fortunes and lucky charms for a few miserable coppers a time to drunken river-barge sailors and the down-on-their luck denizens of the Imperial capital's poorest and most infamous district.

The rattling of the beaded curtains at the entrance to her premises and the sound of soft footsteps in the corridor outside told her she would be able to put off that fate for at least one more day yet. She had a customer, and now it was time to get down to work. She hurriedly threw another handful of herbs, cut with just a pinch of powdered weirdroot, into the incense burner on the rug in front of her, adding to the thick, smoky, scented ambience in the place that customers always seemed to expect. She pulled the cowl of her cape up and bent her head down, pretending to be deep in mystical contemplation, as the customer entered the room.

'Take a seat, my friend,' she said, deliberately not looking up, indicating the patched and threadbare silk cushion in front of her. 'Help yourself to a mug of good Reikland wine, if it so pleases you. Three silvers to find out what the fates have in store for you and those dearest to you.'

A jug of cheap, heavily-watered wine and a dirty clay mug lay on the rug by the silk cushion, a small dish beside them. As everyone knew, it was customary to leave a copper or two in payment for the wine. In the fortune-telling business, especially during lean times like these, every little extra helped.

The customer remained standing. The sound of their heavy, ragged breathing filled the small room. A chill of genuine premonition dread suddenly flashed through Varra's mind. She looked into the face of her last customer of the night, and opened her mouth to scream.

Something bright flashed through the air, but it wasn't silver.

Something red spilled across the rug, but it wasn't wine.

'THIS WAY, HERR Konniger,' said the sergeant at arms of the Altdorf city watch solicitously, indicating the way through the press of curious onlookers. City watchmen formed dual lines on either side, pushing back the crowd that had gathered outside the fortune teller's premises.

'Make way!' bellowed the sergeant to the crowd, in a manner considerably less solicitous. 'Make way for Herr Konniger. Make way for the great gentleman sage!'

Casually swung cudgel blows pushed back those onlookers not initially deterred by the watchman's commands. A few people on the fringes of the crowd broke away, running off to spread the big news that would soon bring even more bloodthirsty vultures flocking to the murder scene. If Zavant Konniger, the famous sage-detective of Altdorf, had been brought in to investigate, then it must be something notably gruesome indeed.

Konniger glanced at the excited faces of the crowd. 'The good citizens of Altdorf,' he mused aloud, to no one in particular. 'I've been to the tomb-cities of the Land of the Dead and encountered carrion creatures there that were less ghoul-hungry than the inhabitants of our fair city.'

He pushed through the beaded curtain entrance to the room beyond. Vido, his halfling man servant, trailed along in his wake, scowling at their surroundings. There were streets like this in every city in the Old World, and Vido could never understand why. Humans were always in such an inexplicable hurry to find out what the future held in store for them. In Vido's experience, especially since he entered Konniger's service, the future just contained all sorts of nasty, gruesome unpleasantness, and Vido was in no hurry to find out what any of it might be.

Live for the moment and only worry about all the bad stuff when it finally turned up on your doorstep, that was the only way to look at things, as far as Vido was concerned.

They entered the short corridor beyond the curtain. Konniger sniffed the air with his impressive eagle beak of a nose. Vido smelled it too. The smell of stale wine and cheap incense, but with something else underlying it: the heavy tang of blood and raw meat, serving as a warning of what lay in the chamber beyond.

The warning still wasn't enough to fully prepare Vido for what was waiting there for them.

The corpse of the fortune teller lay sprawled on the floor, her robes ripped apart, exposing her body and the violations that had been inflicted on it. She had been gutted from groin to throat, her ribcage brutally pulled apart, her vital organs torn out of her. Some of them lay on the ground, trampled either by the feet of the killer or, more probably, by the boots of however many blundering watchmen had been in and out of the place before Konniger's arrival. The remains of other organs were stuck to the walls, smeared there amongst the thick, dried splatters of blood that had resulted from the killer's butcher work on the body of his victim.

The woman's face was a mask of gore. The mouth was wrenched open in a silent scream. The lower jaw had been almost completely torn away, and a single, shuddering glance told Vido the tongue inside was gone. More than that, he didn't care to look at.

Konniger kneeled down beside the body, gently laying a hand on the woman's face. At first, Vido thought he was inspecting the ravaged ruins of her face for clues, but then he heard Konniger murmuring words under his breath, and realised his master was intoning a well-known prayer of comfort for the souls of the violently-slain. Before he had become Altdorf's renowned sage-detective, Zavant Konniger had a priest in the service of the Church of Sigmar.

'More light, Vido, if you please.'

Vido searched in his doublet pockets for a tinderbox, striking a flame from it to light one of the lamps lying on the floor. He held it up, spilling out light to better illuminate the most horrific details of the crime scene. Konniger went to work, poking and prying amongst the wounds on the corpse. The compassion of the one-time priest of Sigmar was gone, replaced by the clinical and keenly analytical mind of the sage-detective.

'Hmmm. The tongue's gone, of course. That much is obvious. No immediate sign of it amongst the other removed offal and fleshy detritus.'

More poking. More prodding. 'Ahh… the eyes are gone, too. Be sure to make a note of that, Vido.'

Vido did as instructed, glad of the distraction. He breathed heavily through his mouth, trying to avoid the abattoir stench that filled the small room. The breakfast of ham, eggs and toasted muffins he'd happily consumed only an hour ago rumbled uneasily in his stomach. On past experience in helping his master in his investigations, Vido knew they might be here for hours yet. He could only hope his restless breakfast would remain in place for the same length of time.

Then, abruptly, Konniger rose to his feet, making the traditional hammer sign blessing of Sigmar over the corpse, a clear signal that his inspection was now over.

'Come, Vido. Our work here is finished. Time to report back to our potential new patron.'

Vido followed his master out, practically running for the door and the promise of the reasonably clean Altdorf air outside.

Konniger paused in the corridor, looking at his manservant. 'A dead fortune teller, her eyes and tongue missing. What does that suggest to you?'

Knowing what was expected of him, Vido stumbled for an answer. Very little of his apparent cluelessness had to be feigned.

'Uuuh…'

'It suggests perhaps a killer who is more than some mad or random butcher,' continued Konniger, answering his own question, as was his habit. 'It suggests purpose, Vido. A fortune-teller sees the future with her eyes, and speaks of that future with her tongue. Do you see now where this could be leading us?'

Vido nodded dumbly, not having a clue what his master was talking about, and all too willing to forget the whole business of missing eyes and tongues.

They were outside now, moving through a crowd that had increased in size in the time since they had been inside. There were more watchmen there too, several of them pushing and cudgelling the mob aside to clear a path through for the two of them. An excited murmur rose at the appearance of Konniger, adding to the crowd's bloodthirsty speculation on the exact details of whatever terrible fate they thought might have befallen the old fortune-teller.

'The Reikerbahn Butcher,' hissed a voice in the crowd. 'Sigmar protect us, it's the work of the Butcher! He's come back from the grave to kill us all!'

This piece of speculation caused the murmurs of the crowd to increase accordingly, and brought a new note of fear into their collective voice. Konniger shot a reproachful look at the watchman sergeant. One of his men, or perhaps this fat fool himself, had clearly told someone in the crowd something of what had happened to the fortune-teller, and the collective imagination of the mob would embellish the grisly details to its own morbid satisfaction.

'Continue your investigation, sergeant, and send word to the Temple of Morr for the body to be collected and the usual funerary rites conducted. Tell your superiors they will have my thoughts on the matter before the end of the day.'

The man nodded enthusiastically, barely able to contain his delight at not being saddled with the problems of investigating such a ghoulish, and frankly unprofitable, case. After all, Vido asked himself, how were the brave patrolmen of the Altdorf city watch supposed to collect their usual quota of bribes and extortion dues if they were all out hunting for the murderer of some useless old hag of a fortune-teller?

Konniger pushed past the man, ignoring his salute, and arrived at the decorated carriage that had first brought them to the Street of the Fortune Tellers. Their new patron, a well-to-do merchant called Gustav von Hassen, stood there waiting for them, delicately holding a perfumed silk handkerchief to his nose. Vido wasn't sure if this was intended to ward off the mystic smell of death, or merely just the odour of his fellow but less prosperous Altdorfers.

'You have viewed the cadaver, Herr Konniger?' asked von Hassen, anxiously. 'You have agreed to my offer and will take up the case on behalf of the Vigilance Committee?'

Konniger breezed past the merchant, climbing into von Hassen's carriage as if it were the sage-detective's own property. Vido nimbly scrambled in after him. 'Take me back to my quarters,' Konniger instructed. 'There are certain research materials there I must now refer to before we proceed any further with the investigation.'

So compelling was Konniger's manner that von Hassen's coachman carried out the command immediately, almost leaving his master stranded in the street behind the departing coach. Von Hassen climbed in, accompanied by the ever-silent figure of the handsome and pale-skinned young man who had been with him ever since he had first turned up at Konniger's home earlier that morning. 'My nephew, Sigmund,' was how the merchant had first introduced the youth, although Vido presumed the blood-tie must be on Frau von Hassen's side of the family, since there was absolutely no trace of a family resemblance between the younger man and the corpulent, ruddy-faced merchant.

If Vido had any thoughts on any other basis of a relationship between von Hassen and this ''Sigmund'', then he wisely kept them to himself.

'Research materials?' asked von Hassen, eagerly. 'Then you already have some notion of what kind of a fiend you may be dealing with here?'

'Perhaps,' said Konniger. 'But I need to know more information first. Information which, to save a great deal of time and inconvenience, I was hoping you would be able to provide me with, Herr von Hassen.'

The merchant swallowed nervously. 'Me, Herr Konniger?'

Konniger smiled. 'Indeed. For instance, although I have heard nothing concerning such events, I am almost certain that this has not been the first such murder in the city over the last few weeks, just as I am almost certain that you, my dear Herr von Hassen, can already tell me what I need to know about these other secret killings.'

The merchant swallowed again. Konniger smiled in satisfaction and sat back in his silk-cushioned seat. And listened, as the merchant began to talk.

KONNIGER AND VIDO had been away from Altdorf, visiting the Tilean city of Trantio, investigating the events that Konniger's biographers would later call The Case of the Screaming Statuary, when it all began several months ago. Despite his absence from the city, though, letters sent to Tilea from several of his most trusted information sources in Altdorf had kept him abreast of events back in the Imperial capital. He had a passing acquaintance with some of the events von Hassen talked about, but allowed the merchant to talk without interruption, keen to hear a version of those same events from the lips of one of their chief participants.

'Tell me about the so-called ''Reikerbahn Butcher'' and the formation of this Citizens' Vigilance Committee of yours,' he had instructed the merchant.

Von Hassen, eager to talk about the events that had catapulted him to his current position of almost universal popularity in the city, had been all too happy to comply.

The Reikerbahn Butcher had been the name given to a mysterious madman who had cut a bloody swathe of murder through the poorest districts of Altdorf. Beggars, streetwalkers, drunks and petty criminals had made up the bulk of his victims, and, while his murderous exploits hadn't been exclusively confined to the Reikerbahn, it was the dark, rogue-haunted streets and alleys of that notorious waterfront district that had given him his name.

Despite the Butcher's alarmingly high tally of victims, the city watch had been noticeably slow in their attempts to stop his murder spree. After all, whispered the watchmen in their precinct houses and the city's aristocratic overlords in their mansions and palaces, what real crime was being committed if some blood-crazed madman chose to relieve the city of the unwanted burden of some of its gallows-scum population, just as long as he confined his activities to the lower end of the city's social scale?

As the murders continued, though, public anger intensified, and von Hassen and his now-famous Citizens' Vigilance Committee entered the picture. In a show of public-spirited altruism more or less unheard of from a member of the city's wealthy mercantile class, the man had petitioned his friends and business acquaintances and raised enough funds to form his Committee. Official permission was sought and the right people bribed. Generous rewards for information leading to the capture of the killer were posted. Weapon-carrying patrols of volunteer citizens were recruited, their task to walk the streets of the Reikerbahn at night and apprehend the Butcher at his bloody work. The Committee even went to the lengths, von Hassen whispered in the closest confidence to Konniger and Vido, of coming to a very private arrangement with none other than Vesper Klasst. Klasst was Altdorf's chief crimelord, a man whose grip on power over the city surpassed even that of Emperor Karl Franz itself, many people said. The Reikerbahn was the crimelord's personal fiefdom, and very little happened there that didn't eventually reach his ears.

In the end, though, it had been one of the ordinary Vigilance Committee patrols that had brought about the Butcher's downfall. Alerted to the sound of screams, they had raced into a side street and caught the killer with his latest victim. The Butcher, an insanely strong madman, had turned on his would-be appre-henders and killed or maimed three of them with his bare hands before escaping into the Reikerbahn's maze of alleyways. The alarm had been raised, though, and more Vigilance patrols had closed in on the area from all sides, sealing it off from any chance of further escape. The Butcher had been caught while trying to bend the thick iron bars of a sewer gate, and, according to those who inspected the gate later, had succeeded in bending them almost two feet apart before the Vigilance patrols caught up with him.

Apprehended, beaten half to death by the cudgels and staves of the Vigilance patrol volunteers, he was dragged in chains to Mundsen Keep, the city's chief gaol. The authorities' intentions, to reassure an angry population that they were after all doing something, was to mount a very public trial and then an even more public execution. All such plans ended after they realised just what it was they had captured.

This was the part Konniger had been most interested in hearing, and he leaned forward to listen more closely as von Hassen's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, an evident note of fear creeping into the merchant's tone.

The Butcher had barely been human, von Hassen told them. His broken bones had fully healed in a few short days. His teeth were like fangs, his maw like that of a beast than a man. His hands too were more like the claws of an animal, with long, black nails made of a material that could have been iron. He was never heard to speak anything remotely recognisable as a human word, and answered all his interrogators in bestial grunts and snarls. When the gaolers had stripped away the filthy rags he wore as clothing, they had found patterned marks all over his body, symbols that had been cut or even burned and branded into his skin. A priest of Sigmar was called in, and quickly confirmed what everyone else had now suspected but did not dare say aloud. The Butcher was a servant of the Ruinous Powers, his crimes revealed as some form of insane devotion to the gods of Chaos.

No, there would be no public trial or execution for the madman, for, after his true nature was revealed, he was swiftly handed over to the untender mercies of the witch hunters.

The witch hunters had gone to work on him with their whips and flensing knives, branding irons and thumb-screws, with all the torture devices and cruelly ingenious pain-inflicting methods at their disposal. They had broken his body many times over, but his damned soul retained its strength, and the lowermost levels of Mundsen Keep rang with the echoes of savage laughter that were all the Butcher's interrogators received back in answer to their relentless barrage of questions and demands to their victim that he repent and confess his sins.

Finally, the Butcher's inhuman resilience had exhausted even the witch hunters' appetite for the inflicting of pain, and he had been condemned to death by the usual method decreed for those of his kind: to be burnt at the stake, his ashes collected and cursed then scattered to the winds or dumped into the cleansing waters of the River Reik.

'AND YOU ARE certain the witch hunters' sentence was carried out?' asked Konniger. 'I heard his name mentioned just as we were leaving the Street of the Fortune Tellers. Some of our fellow citizens seemed to have a worrying belief in the possibility of his return.'

Von Hassen smiled. 'I consider myself to be a man of the people, Herr Konniger, but I know just as well as you do that an educated man shouldn't give too much credence to the superstitious mutterings of an Altdorf mob.'

He paused for a moment, bringing out a small silver hipflask from a pocket of his richly-embroidered coat. Vido was keen for a taste of something strong and suitably fortifying to wash away the taste and memory of the air inside the fortune-teller's quarters. Von Hassen, however, took a swig from the hipflask and then replaced it back in his pocket without offering any of the rest of them a draught. Vido's sensitive nose caught a brief but exotic whiff of the hipflask's contents, but was unable to place the scent anywhere amongst his halfling's customary prodigious knowledge of the Empire's many different kinds of strong spirits and liqueurs.

'No, believe me, Herr Konniger. The Butcher is surely dead. We of the Citizens' Vigilance Committee were denied all access to the beast after he had been identified as a servant of the Ruinous Powers,' said von Hassen, making the traditional sign of the hammer blessing at his mention of the Lords of Chaos. 'But certain stories still filtered out from Mundsen Keep about what was happening in there, and we were sent official word by the witch hunters that the madman had been executed.'

'And this was how long ago?' asked Konniger.

'Two months or so ago, or perhaps a little longer.'

'And yet your Committee haven't disbanded after the original purpose of its formation was achieved?'

'The patrols were ended and their licences to bear arms on the city streets rescinded immediately after the Butcher's capture,' explained von Hassen. 'Myself and several others still felt, however, that there was still some need for an organisation such as the Citizens' Vigilance Committee. Altdorf is a large and often dangerous place, and the resources and fortitude of the city watch are sometimes found to be…. well, perhaps ''limited'' might be the best term to use.'

Vido barely suppressed a laugh. If by ''limited'', the merchant meant lazy, brutal, corrupt and sometimes almost as much a threat to the citizens of Altdorf as the footpads, robbers, cutpurses and murderers the watch were supposed to be protecting them from, then, yes, ''limited'' was indeed the very best word to use.

'And the murder of one impoverished old fortune-teller is enough to draw the Committee's attention and make it vote to go to the not inconsiderable expense of engaging my services?' asked Konniger, with an air of mock innocence.

Von Hassen fidgeted with the jewelled rings on his fingers. Vido had noticed them earlier, the former thief in him immediately doing an estimate of their approximate total worth. Whatever manner of trade the merchant was engaged in, business was clearly prospering at present. The wealth on show on just one of those fingers would probably cover a month or more of Konniger's standard fee arrangements.

'As you've already ascertained, Herr Konniger,' answered von Hassen, 'this has not been the first such murder in the city, although it's the first one that will be spoken of openly. I'm afraid I can't tell you how I came by the information - certain vital and secret confidences are involved - but I know for a fact that there have been four other such murders in the city over the last month. You're aware of the recent death of Archlector Heiggler, for example?'

'Of course. He died alone and at bed-prayer in his private quarters in the cathedral palace. His heart gave out, according to the Church's official Proclamation of Mourning,' answered Konniger.

Von Hassen licked his lips, his voice dropping to a quiet whisper again. 'The archbishop died in the House of Sighs, in the bed of one of the employees of that establishment. They were both found together, brutally slain. The archbishop's heart had been torn out and taken by the killer.'

Konniger nodded in understanding. The House of Sighs was one of Altdorf's most exclusive bordellos. Coincidentally, on the same day the archbishop's death had been announced, the city watch, assisted by priests and even Templars from the Church of Sigmar, had mounted a crusading raid on the House of Sighs, declaring the place to be a danger to the moral dignity of the good citizens of Altdorf. The establishment's owner, the formidable Fraulein Heidi Flampt, and her employees, had been herded into caged wagons and transported away to imprisonment in some far distant nunnery, where they would be rigorously educated in the righteous and moral ways of the Faithful of Sigmar. The good citizens of Altdorf, some of whom would surely have sampled the pleasures of the House of Sighs for themselves at some time or other, had sent them on their way, lining the streets and hurling jeering insults and handfuls of mud and dung at them as the wagons rumbled past.

'The Church has always been adept at keeping its own house in order,' noted Konniger neutrally. 'And the other deaths?'

Von Hassen nervously licked his lips again. 'Three of them, all within the space of a week and a half. All of them occurring within the walls of the Colleges of Magic.'

Vido almost fell off his seat at this piece of news. Altdorf's famous Colleges of Magic contained the greatest repositories of magical lore in all the Old World, and were generally held to be the most impregnable locations in the whole city, far more secure than even the Imperial Palace itself. Mere men guarded the walls and gates of the Emperor's residence, but other, far stranger and more dangerous guardians kept watch over the boundaries of the Colleges of Magic.

The inhabitants of the Reikerbahn's thieves' dens lay awake at night dreaming of the untold riches and priceless sorcerous items stored within the colleges' treasure houses. Many optimistic and foolhardy thieves had tried their luck over the years. None of them, as far as Vido knew, had ever succeeded. Or been heard of again, frankly. Their fates were something best not thought of, although Vido had heard certain stories about sorcerous experiments conducted on those unlucky enough to fall into the hands of the magicians there, with the outside world and the guardians of the city's law and order none the wiser about some of the darker things that went on behind the closed doors of the Colleges of Magic.

The idea that some nameless killer could have penetrated the Colleges' invisible defences not once but on three separate occasions in so short a period of time was almost unthinkable.

'Yes, three deaths,' repeated von Hassen. 'Three of the Colleges' most senior practitioners. In all three cases, no magical alarms were tripped, no hint of the killer's passage in or out of the buildings was detected.'

'And the manner of the victims' deaths?'

'Similar to that of the archbishop and the remains of that poor fortune-teller,' confirmed von Hassen, his voice dropping even further, to the level of a horrified whisper. 'Torn to shreds and inhumanly violated. In at least one of the cases, the victim's skull was pulled apart, and the brains inside removed. Consumed, I was told, according to some of the evidence found at the scene.'

Konniger calmly took in all this information. 'Even supposing all this were true, it seems strange that the College masters would do nothing to defend themselves and their kind from this mysterious enemy.'

'They do nothing, because they can do nothing,' replied the merchant, staring at Konniger with an eager intensity. 'With all their magical abilities, they are powerless to stop or even identify the killer. Go to the Colleges of Magic, Herr Konniger. Knock on their doors and enquire about the whereabouts of the college masters. You will be told they are indisposed and are unable to receive you at present. The truth is, they are afraid. Those who have not fled the city have retreated into their innermost lairs, surrounding themselves with the most powerful magical defences their abilities can command. They will not come out again, and those who have already fled will not return, until they are all assured that the threat to them has passed.'

Von Hassen broke off, taking comfort again in the contents of his silver flask. Outside, the city rolled past. They were crossing the Reik now at the Ostlander Bridge, just about to climb the cobbled slope of the Volker Weg towards Konniger's town-house home.

'You see, of course, the pattern that is developing now, Herr Konniger?'

The answer was immediate. 'A holy man of the Church of Sigmar, three senior members of the Colleges of Magic and now a devotee from the Street of Fortune-Tellers. If everything you have told me is true, then someone is killing magic-users in Altdorf.'

'Then you understand exactly,' said von Hassen with a smile of satisfaction. 'The Church and the Colleges can take care of their own, of course, but who will protect the ordinary Altdorfer from this killer? Last week it was the members of the Colleges of Magic the fiend was stalking. Today, it was a humble fortune-teller. Tomorrow, it might be an even more humble herbalist or charm-seller, or, after that, the ordinary people who buy such things. It is like the case of the Reikerbahn Butcher, Herr Konniger. How many of our humblest and most defenceless citizens must die before the authorities finally sit up and take notice?'

'You argue a powerful case, Herr von Hassen,' said Konniger, as the coach drew up outside his home. 'Consider the services of myself and my manservant to be at your Committee's disposal. I will begin my investigations immediately.'

THEY STOOD IN the street and watched as the coach drove away.

'An interesting man, our new patron. Tell me, Vido, does he strike you at all as a very likely champion of the people?'

Vido shrugged. 'Not going by all the sparklers on those fingers. You could feed every beggar and street-waif in Altdorf for a lifetime, and hire enough mercenaries to clean out the Reikerbahn in a night, with the fortune he was wearing today.'

Konniger nodded, keeping his own opinion to himself. 'Ah, yes, the rings. What did you notice about them?'

Vido thought about it for a moment. He had a thief's customary good memory for the sight of wealth that had been flashed before his eyes. Added to that was the extra memory recall skills Konniger had taught him. Concentrating, Vido tried to remember what he had seen on the merchant's fingers.

'A big gold ring with an amethyst stone on the left index finger… next to it, a pair of plain platinum bands, although one of them had a dragon's head on it, with maybe ruby chips set in as eyes… on the left index finger, there was a silver band inlaid with gold scrolling, and with a cluster of jade stones set in it… something similar on the right index figure, except the one there had one of those big, fancy Araby fire-rubies set in it…'

Konniger nodded in approval. 'Very good, Vido, but now think again. Except this time, don't tell me what you see. Instead, tell me what you don't see.'

Anyone else might have been confused by the suggestion, but Vido had been with Konniger for long enough to make some sense of his riddles. The halfling closed his eyes, concentrating, his mind trying to remember what his eyes had already seen. Suddenly, it came to him.

'His right ring finger, his signet ring finger. There was nothing on it! It was the only one of his fingers not wearing a ring!'

Konniger smiled. 'Better and better. Now, if you didn't see a ring there, then what else did you see?'

Vido thought about it again, concentrating harder, using all the memory recall tricks his master had laboured long to teach him. Proper observation is vital, Konniger had always said, but what was the point in observing every minute detail if you were later unable to remember what it was you had seen?

'There was no ring, but there was the mark of the ring there, on the flesh of his finger. The mark of something he must wear a lot, except he didn't have it on today.'

They were through the main door of the house now, Konniger shrugging off his cape and, as was his daily habit, throwing it over the arbalester bust of Magnus the Pious that stood on a teakwood bookcase in the hallway. Later, when Konniger had retired to his study, Vido would retrieve it, brush it down and return it to its usual hanging place.

The sage-detective was already halfway up the stairs and heading towards his study before Vido had time to take off his own cloak. 'Excellent observation, Vido,' he called back down to his manservant, pausing on the staircase. 'But observation is only the servant of deduction. Tell me, what would a man like Herr Gustav von Hassen normally be expected to wear on that finger?'

'A signet ring, probably,' Vido decided. 'Something flashy with his family crest on it, that he'd probably had specially made for him. Or maybe something to show which one of the Imperial merchants guilds he was affiliated to.'

'Yes,' nodded Konniger. 'Something to show where his loyalties lay, whether it be to family or guild. He does wear such a ring, but, for whatever reasons of his own, he had taken it off before meeting us today. Think about that, Vido, and remember to be on your guard in his presence, should we meet with him again.'

With that, Konniger was gone, retreating towards his study.

'It'll be midday in an hour or so, sir. Will you be requiring lunch in your study?' called up Vido.

The answer came back down to him. 'Just a light lunch, I think. A little meat and bread, and some wine. Nothing too heavy, since we'll be back out later this evening.'

'Anywhere special?' Vido tried to sound enthusiastic, knowing just how often Konniger's cases led them to the most squalid or most forbidden regions of Altdorf.

'Someplace where you should feel right at home, Vido,' came the reply, an unmistakable note of amusement in the sage-detective's voice. 'We'll be making a brief stopover in a place near the Kaiserplatz, but, after that, we're off to Mundsen Keep.'

THE KILLER WAS pleased with its latest acquisitions. Added to the others it had collected, it had increased its power immeasurably in the last few days. The heart of the holy man, the minds of the three spellcasting weaklings, and now the eyes and tongue of the fortune-teller witch, and the blood and souls of all of them. Each one added to its growing strength, added to the power of its new body, as it took the souls of its victims and made their power its own. Soon, no weakling spellcaster would be able to harm it. Its new skin was black and iron-hard, able to harmlessly deflect the power of most magics cast against it. The brains of the three magicians, scooped out and eaten raw and bloody, had given it this new ability, just as the consumed blood, soul and heart of the holy man would protect it from the spells of the witch hunters and their brethren amongst the priesthood of the hated man-god Sigmar. The items it had taken from the witch protected it from the mystic gaze of her kind. No spellcaster or prayer-mumbler could see it with their sorcerous farsight, or speak any words of divination about it.

There were many kinds of spellcasters in the city, of course, and other items it could take from them, but patience was not a quality its patron lord looked favourably upon, and the blood-hungry thing that the killer shared its new body with gnawed angrily on the stuff of its soul, demanding it hurry up and complete its mission of vengeance.

Dimly, the killer could still remember a time when it had still been human. It had been a soldier or mercenary, although what its name had been, or what lord or cause it might once had served, was now long forgotten. There had been a battle in some far-off cold and northern place. It had fought well. Too well, as such things are judged by mere humans. A battle-madness had taken possession of him, and he had fought with an insane strength and fury, killing all around him, friend and foe alike. Finally, only he and his inhuman foes had remained alive on the battlefield. They attacked, cutting him down, losing another dozen or more of their number in the process. They had spared his life, though, if ''spared'' could ever be the way to describe what they had done to him next. The favour of the Blood Lord was with this one, they fearfully whispered amongst themselves after witnessing the unholy fury of his battle-madness, and so they had set about the bloody business of making him one of their own.

They had tied him down and gone to work on him with all the boundlessly cruel imagination of their kind. They cut away his manhood and hammered iron spikes into the ends of his fingers, transforming his hands into the claws of a beast. They had smashed out his teeth and replaced them with fangs pulled from the mouths of their own dead. They had wrenched apart his jaws and mutilated his face, stitching it back together to resemble their own bestial features. He had screamed for mercy, pleaded for death, but neither had been forthcoming. They had cut and burned the symbols of their god into the flesh of his body. Then, when they had finished, they had let him go, releasing him to find whatever fate the Blood Lord had decreed for his new follower.

He had wandered south, to this place, the great city on the banks of the Reik, drawn by some secret call. Once here, he had gone about his business, carrying out what he believed to be his duty to his new patron god. They had caught him eventually, of course, imprisoning and torturing him, but he understood now that this further ordeal had all been part of Lord Khorne's plan for him.

They had broken his body, but his soul belonged to Lord Khorne, and that they could never take. Lying on his cell floor on the night before his appointed execution, his smashed and useless limbs bound in chains, he had prayed to the Master of the Skull Throne. His lord had been listening, and had responded to his chosen follower's prayer.

The voice, more cold than the dank flagstones it seemed to seep forth from, had spoken to him from out of the darkness of the lightless cell. It told him what he must do, telling him the full horror of the ordeal he must undergo next, but also telling him of the glories that would soon be his forever afterwards.

He had done as Lord Khorne had commanded, undergoing the ordeal, joining with the other, willingly submitting to the agonies of his bloody baptism of rebirth.

He had been human once, and then something less than human. Now he was something different again, something far greater and more terrible than any mere human. The favour of Lord Khorne was with him indeed. He was now set on the path to true daemonhood. All he had to do to take his first significant steps on that path was deal with the coven of the Blood God's most hated enemies that were hidden in the city, the same coven responsible for his own capture and imprisonment.

With his new farsight senses gained from the eyes of the fortuneteller witch, he could sense their presence in the city. Hiding in their mansions and counting-houses, weaving their foolish plots and schemes against his lord.

The knowledge of their presence awoke the anger of the thing inside the killer. It screamed in silent rage, pushing against the restraints of its new and unfamiliar flesh-bound prison. The killer quelled its screams with a single, harsh command. His control over the other was getting better and better, another sign that Lord Khorne's favour was with him.

Patiently, the killer bent himself to the task at hand, sharpening his new finger-blades against the flesh-shorn skull of one of the weaklings who had inhabited the house that had now become his new lair.

MUNDSEN LUNTZ WAS neither a happy nor a popular man. He was not a popular man, because, for the last twenty-two years, he had been assistant chief gaoler at Mundsen Keep. Mundsen was not his real first name, of course, but that was what everyone called him, to his face, at least. Mundsen greatly suspected they called him other, less polite, things behind his back. No one liked a gaoler, Mundsen knew. They were, like watchmen, witch hunters and Imperial tax collectors, a seemingly necessary evil of life. And, although he didn't know it, the fact that Mundsen had the charm, wit, intellect and, most crucially, the personal hygiene of a sewer rat, was also an important reason for his unpopularity with his fellow Altdorfers.

He wasn't a happy man either. By his reckoning, he'd spent longer in Mundsen Keep than just about every prisoner in the place, and, unlike any of them, had little chance of escape or remission. Like the condemned prisoners kept in the lowest levels, or the lifers in their west tower, he was stuck in that place for the rest of his life. No, gaoler-work was all he knew and all he was good at, so that was what he was stuck doing.

There were compensations, of course. Bribery and corruption were a way of life in any Old World jailhouse, and Mundsen Keep was certainly no exception. The families of prisoners often bribed gaolers to give their incarcerated loved ones better treatment, more food or even clean water. For a small price, messages could be smuggled in and out of the Keep, so that bankrupt merchants and imprisoned ganglords alike could carry on their business uninterrupted while being detained at his Imperial Majesty's pleasure. For a larger price, certain doors could be left unlocked and gaolers bribed to be looking the other way at certain crucial moments, making a prisoner's escape all that more easy. For a larger price still, deaths could be arranged within the walls of the Keep, although that was a service that Mundsen Luntz no longer offered to even his most select customers, not since that time when…

'Ah, Herr Luntz. Just the man we were looking for.'

Luntz swallowed his mouthful of ale the wrong way at the sound of that voice. He fell off his stool, coughing and spluttering. Noticeably, none of the other patrons in the bar rushed to help him stopping from choking to death. The Stout Cudgel, situated near the central city watch building just off the Kaiserplatz, was popular with watchmen, which more or less ensured that no one else ever went there. Even here, though, amongst his fellow members of Altdorf's law enforcement community, Luntz wasn't a popular figure. Too many times had the watchmen here caught some villain and delivered them into Luntz's care, only to see the same criminal inexplicably back on the streets weeks or even days later.

Luntz looked up, already knowing what he was going to see. The stern features of Zavant Konniger stared back down at him. That wretched little gallows-scum manservant of Herr High-and-Mighty Konniger lurked in the background, smirking.

'H-herr Konniger!' spluttered Luntz, climbing back to his feet, doing his best to ignore the sniggers of amusement from the tables around him. Konniger was known here, and nodded a few polite greetings to some of the regulars. There were still plenty of good men amongst the city watch, men who provided Konniger with information, or who occasionally did him services in return for any unofficial help or advice he might have given them in the past.

'No need to be alarmed,' said Konniger. 'At least, not this time. All I want from you is a small favour.'

The occupants of the other tables deliberately turned their attention away as Konniger settled himself on the seat beside Luntz. A mug of wine and a plate of bread and sausage appeared as if by magic on the table in front of the sage-detective. The owner of The Stout Cudgel was a former sergeant in the city watch, and owed the life of one of his daughters to the success of one of Konniger's investigations. Konniger politely sampled the food and drink, nodding in thanks at his host.

Luntz almost started choking again. 'A favour, Herr Konniger?'

'Consider it a return favour, Luntz, if that helps matters any. For helping you keep your job, and maybe for keeping you from becoming an inmate in your own prison.'

Luntz blanched at the memory. Two years ago, one of the sage-detective's cases had centred on Mundsen Keep. As a sideline of the main investigation, Konniger had uncovered the full extent of Luntz's extra-curricular financial activities within the prison.

'I told you before, Herr Konniger. I don't do that kind of stuff any more. I'm a changed man. I—'

Konniger held up a hand, commanding silence. 'I'm not interested in the miracle of your supposed reformed character, Luntz. What I am interested in is the execution of the criminal called the Reikerbahn Butcher, two months ago.'

The colour drained out of the gaoler's face. A not inconsiderable feat, thought Vido, watching with interest, considering how red-faced the fat, smelly idiot was normally.

Luntz's voice dropped to a horrified whisper. 'The scarlet cell! You know about that?'

Konniger smiled. 'Not as much as I'd like to. That's why you're going to tell me all about it. And show it to me too, if possible.'

'But it ain't possible, Herr Konniger. Outsiders ain't allowed into the Keep, not without a letter of permission from Governor Krantz. And when the witch hunters ordered the cell sealed up, they said—'

'Vido, do you still have that letter? The one I was drafting to the city authorities? The one concerning some of the matters I uncovered during our last visit to Mundsen Keep?'

'I've got it right here, sir,' answered Vido making a show of fumbling about in a pocket containing nothing other than his tinderbox, a few coins and an extra throwing knife. 'If you want to check it and sign it now, I can deliver it in person to the Alderman's office or the city watch first thing tomorrow morning.'

'Maybe another time, Vido,' said Konniger innocently, as Lutz's shoulders slumped in resigned defeat.

Konniger gestured to the owner. 'Good man, Luntz. I see now your claims of being a reformed character perhaps aren't so exaggerated, after all. We'll have another drink together, and maybe some of this delicious sausage, and you'll tell us everything that happened two months ago. And then, when we're finished, you'll take us to Mundsen Keep and show us this famous scarlet cell of yours.'

MUNDSEN KEEP. IT squatted on the outskirts of the city, beyond the main city wall, like a shunned and unwanted exile. Vido had been there before with Konniger, but never relished the prospect of another visit to the place. As a one-time expert thief and cutpurse, the twin spectres of Mundsen Keep and the public gallows in the Kaiserplatz had loomed large in Vido's life for many years, and it was still difficult for him to shake off his instinctive fear of the place.

The Keep was everything every thief in Altdorf always thought it was. Dark, dank, riddled with disease and vermin, its stone hallways echoing with the sounds of human misery. The lowest levels, where special category prisoners like the Reikerbahn Butcher were kept, was the worst of all. Mundsen Keep was originally built on the remains of a drained marsh, a fact that became readily apparent once you descended into its warren of underground cells and passages.

The walls there were streaked with thick layers of slime, moss and lichen, some of them weirdly phosphorescent. Some of the passages were flooded with almost a foot of fetid water, and rats swam frantically about the feet of the visitors as they waded though it. Water dripped from the ceiling down onto their heads, splashing onto the hoods of their cloaks, hissing when it met the guttering flame of the torch carried by Luntz. Vido thought things couldn't get any more unpleasant, but he was wrong.

It wasn't water dripping from the walls and ceiling of the scarlet cell. It was blood.

The door had been sealed with holy blessing scrolls and stern warnings marked with the brand of the Imperial witch hunters. All these Konniger had ripped aside with casual disregard, gesturing for Luntz to open the door's heavy iron lock. The gaoler had unwillingly shuffled forward, fumbling with the thick band of keys he wore attached to his belt, nervously fumbling even more as he found the correct key and slid it into the rusted lock. He had muttered the half-remembered, mispronounced words of a Sigmarite prayer of protection as he opened the lock. He had pushed the iron-reinforced door open and stepped aside sharply, holding a filthy rag over his mouth and nose, as if even breathing in the air of the room beyond was enough to infect him with some Chaos-inspired contaminant.

Konniger picked up a damp torch from the metal sconce beside the door, lit it from the torch carried by Luntz and entered the cell. The gaoler remained standing in the doorway, afraid to even cross the threshold of the place.

The air inside the cell was cold, unnaturally and bitterly so. There was something else in the air too, some invisible taint that pervaded through everything in the chamber. Vido drew his cloak around himself while suppressing an involuntary shudder, and followed his master into the room.

Blood dripped from the ceiling. Blood, still wet, coated the walls and floors. Konniger dabbed a finger in it and cautiously sniffed at it.

'Human,' he surmised. 'Make a note of that, Vido. Even in this dank climate, two months after the event, it should have long ago congealed and dried up. Definite sign of extra-natural activity, wouldn't you agree?'

Vido did as directed, scribbling in crabbed shorthand, trying to ignore the sensation of the droplets of blood splashing down upon his head. He felt a warm wetness on his upper lip, and touched his fingers to it in surprise. They came away smeared with red. His nose was bleeding.

'That happens to lots of people who go in there,' confirmed Luntz, calling out from the doorway. 'Unnatural, that's what it is. Daemon-work, that's what it is.'

'Yes, definite signs of extra-natural activity,' confirmed Konniger, dispassionately regarding his manservant's nosebleed. 'Luntz, tell me again what happened here.'

'It was the night before that Butcher maniac's execution. Usually, they make a lot of noise when they start to think about what's going to happen to them at sunrise, when the witch hunters come and drag 'em out of their cells. You'd be amazed, Herr Konniger, at how many of them heretics have a change of heart when they know that big bonfire's waiting there for them in the morning. Not this one, though. We didn't hear so much as a peep out of him until well into the second watch of the night.'

'And then what happened?'

'Screaming, that was what we heard. Not your ordinary screaming, neither. Horrible, it was, like he was already at the stake, with the flames already getting a taste of him. Gave the whole place a shot of the terrors, so it did. There was screaming and moaning coming from half the cells in the Keep. By the time we found out where it had started, we was already too late.'

'And what did you find?'

Luntz gestured helplessly at the red, dripping material that still coated the stone surfaces of the room. 'Just what you see here, sir. That maniac, he was gone, slipped right out his chains, and all we found was this stuff. Daemon-work, that's wh—'

'So, the Butcher, he escaped after all?' asked Vido, confused.

'In a sense, Vido,' answered Konniger. 'He called to one of the Ruinous Powers, and his patron lord must have responded. Part of him escaped, but part of him still remains here.'

Konniger registered his manservant's further look of confusion, and held out a hand to catch some of the falling droplets of blood. 'This is all that remains of the physical form of the Reikerbahn Butcher.'

'So where's the rest of him?' Vido asked, not really sure he wanted to hear the answer.

'Isn't is obvious?' asked Konniger, matter-of-factly. 'His daemon-changed spirit has escaped back into the city and is now busy building itself a new body from the flesh, blood and souls of dead magic-users.'

THEY WERE IN the coach now, travelling back to the city. Mundsen Keep was an ugly memory behind them, darkly silhouetted against the setting sun. Ahead of them was the city, bright with light as the Imperial capital settled in for the night. The markets would be packing up, the farmers making for home before the city gates were closed for the night. The street-girls would be applying their rouge and kohl before going out to ply their trade. In the Reikerbahn, the footpads and cutpurses would be gathering in readiness for their night's activities, and in their precinct houses the watchmen patrols would be teaming up in increased numbers to stop them.

And somewhere there in the city too, according to Konniger, an inhuman killer was also planning its own night's business.

'So what do you make of all this?' asked Konniger, eventually.

'I think the same as you, master. I think our Herr von Hassen has been lying to us. I think he knows more than he's telling about what went on back there in the Keep, and that line he gave us about wanting to catch this sorcerer-slayer because he wants to protect the city is just so much stale ale-slop.'

'Agreed,' nodded Konniger. 'Tell me, Vido, what do you know about the ways of the Ruinous Powers?'

'As little as possible,' answered Vido, truthfully. 'I dare say I've picked up a thing or two since I've been in your service, and maybe some people might judge that I've seen more of such things than is good for me, but as often as not I try my best to forget about as much of it as I can.'

Konniger nodded again. 'A wise policy. But the Ruinous Powers must be confronted, and, to confront and defeat them, there must be those willing to learn all that can be known of their hidden secrets.'

Vido kept silent, knowing that it was just such unorthodox thinking that had finally forced his master to break away from his former brethren of the Church of Sigmar.

'Most people believe these Powers to be a single unified threat opposed to all that is good and sane in this world. There is nothing wrong with such a view in most circumstances, but it conceals the real, more complex truth. The Powers of Chaos are not united as one, Vido, and it is perhaps this sole fact that has prevented them from long ago destroying us all. The gods of Chaos wage war on each other or make alliances among themselves as suits their whim, although each is opposed by another one who is always their most implacable enemy. Their servants mindlessly follow their gods' commands, continuing these battles here in the real world, sometimes even in places like Altdorf itself.'

'That's what's happening here, isn't it?' exclaimed Vido, picking up on the hints his master was giving him. 'The Reikerbahn Butcher, he was serving one of those Chaos gods, wasn't he?'

Konniger nodded again. 'The stories of his atrocities and what we saw tonight in the scarlet cell leave me in no doubt that the Butcher was a follower of the force known as the Blood God, who is perhaps the most terrible and infamous of the Lords of Chaos.'

Vido's mind raced to keep up with his master's train of thought. 'You said each of the Chaos gods had another one that was always their enemy? Who's the enemy of this Blood God?'

'The force known as the Lord of Pleasure, whose followers commit the most foul kind of debaucheries, and whose name I will not speak aloud.'

Konniger lapsed into silence for a moment, and then continued.

'So consider all we have learned, Vido. Who is the most likely enemy of the thing we are now hunting?'

Vido's answer was immediate. 'Von Hassen.'

Konniger smiled in approval. 'Yes, von Hassen. It was he who was responsible for the Butcher's capture, and it's he who seems most anxious for us to capture this new killer whom he pretends not to know is the Reikerbahn Butcher reborn in a new and more powerful daemonic form.'

They were passing through the city gates now. The guardsmen on duty there waved the coach through without a second thought, as soon as they saw who was inside.

'What does the thing that was created in the scarlet cell want, Vido? Why does von Hassen really want it found, and why must he depend on us to do the task for him? If he is what we now suspect he is, then why cannot he and the others of his ''Vigilance Committee'' accomplish it on their own? Work out the answers to these questions, Vido, and you will have solved the riddle of the mystery of the scarlet cell.'

Konniger rapped twice on the roof of the cab and then leaned out the window to shout instructions to the coachman. 'Straight on at the Weiser Kirkus, and then take the western riverside road until I give you other instructions.'

Vido looked at him in surprise. 'We're not going home, then?'

'Not yet, Vido. Events are moving fast now, and we have to move with equal speed to keep up with them. We came into this situation late, too late to save the lives of those that have died already. Too late, perhaps, to now stop events coming to their natural conclusion.'

Vido glanced out the window, taking note of the route they were taking. 'We're going to the Reikhoch?' he asked.

'That's where von Hassen lives. I think it's time we paid our client an unexpected visit. I imagine he might be surprised by how much we've discovered in so short a time.'

THE KILLER CONCENTRATED, focusing all its new-found power to effect the start of the Blood Change. From blood it had come, reborn in that terrible night in its cell deep beneath Mundsen Keep, and to blood it could return, when need be. The voice of the daemon-thing that Lord Khorne had soul-bonded it to rasped in the back of its mind, threatening and cajoling it, telling it what to do with its new Blood Lord-given abilities.

It was getting better at the metamorphosis. The spell-lore it had consumed from within the minds of the three sorcerers had helped it master the intricacies of the change, while the fortune-teller's stolen farsight allowed it to better find the safest routes through to its destination. Lord Khorne hated all magic and all those who practised it, and the killer took only what it needed from its victims, consuming their sorcerous power and using it to kill Lord Khorne's enemies.

It concentrated again, and the Blood Change began. Its physical form bled away into the flagstones of the floor. Down it seeped, through rock and soil, until it reached the stinking sewer-ways beneath the city. It passed along those dark, airless tunnels as a hazy, blood-red mist. This was how it had infiltrated the places where it had found its other victims. At first, it had taken all the killer's willpower and energy to maintain this new form. It had barely been able to kill its first victim, the weak old holy man, and the effort had almost exhausted it to beyond the point of return. It had taken weeks for it to recover, to learn how to add the holy man's blood and power to itself, but, after that, the next one had been far easier. The one after that, easier still. The killer exulted at its new-found abilities, at the gift of the Blood Change that had been granted to it by the Master of the Skull Throne.

It flowed through the darkness, sensing the presence of its new prey in the city built on top of these ancient, crumbling waterways. With the power it had taken from the fortune-teller, it could find them, but they could not find or sense it.

Eagerly, the blood stuff of its new form churning in excitement, the killer rushed on towards the lair of its chosen victims.

KONNIGER AND VIDO stayed well back in the shadows, following their erstwhile employer and his companion through the back ways of the low-rent mercantile and warehouse district to the east of the wealthy Reikhoch district. It was just across the river from the far bawdier and busier Reikerbahn, and some of that district's dismal seediness had spilled across the waters of the Reik to take root here. It was a strange place to find a man like Gustav von Hassen wandering about after the close of business hours. Vido guessed the merchant would probably have property or business interests in the area, but he couldn't imagine that a man of von Hassen's wealth and position would ever actually visit such a place.

Stranger still was the fact that von Hassen and his companion were apparently walking the streets in disguise. Konniger and Vido had arrived at the merchant's richly-appointed mansion just in time to see the two men leaving the place by a side entrance, dressed in clothes far less grand than the ones they had been wearing earlier that day. The sage-detective and his manservant had retreated into the shrubbery of one of von Hassen's neighbours' gardens and watched as the two figures hurried past. Then, with a silent look of agreement, they had set off in pursuit of their quarry.

Vido had followed enough marks through the streets of Altdorf in his time to recognise all the signs of someone on their way to something or someplace that they didn't want anyone else to know about.

Von Hassen hurried through the city streets, taking a route that took them away from the busiest thoroughfares. They could have used the merchant's own coach or hailed down any passing coachman-for-hire, but, clearly, they didn't want any third party to know where they were going. Konniger and Vido followed at a distance, observing them.

They had already recognised the merchant's companion as being Sigmund, von Hassen's supposed nephew. The mysterious Sigmund might have been silent when they met him that morning, but he seemed to be doing more than his fair share of all the talking now. The two men were arguing together, that much was clear. The strange thing was, it was Sigmund who was doing all the complaining, and setting the pace of their hurried walk. Von Hassen had trouble keeping up, and his gestures and body language were strangely subservient and weakly conciliatory as he received the angry beratings of the younger man. Konniger and Vido were too far away to hear any details of the argument. Had they been close enough to eavesdrop, they would have found the conversation enlightening indeed.

'FOOL!' HISSED THE thing that called itself Sigmund. 'I told you not to bring that sage-meddler into our affairs. He suspects us already. You brought him in to find the Khornate, but what is to stop him uncovering the truth about us instead?'

'He suspects us? You know this for a fact?' bleated von Hassen. 'I thought you said his mind was closed to you when you tried to see into his thoughts in the coach this morning?'

'It was. It does not need magic to accomplish such a trick. There are ways a strong-willed human with knowledge of such things can use to mask their thoughts, and to push any further would have risked revealing myself to him. He is clever, this Zavant Konniger. Perhaps too clever, and now far too dangerous to us.'

'The Pleasure Lord will guide us. We will join the others in the temple. Everything has been prepared for our arrival. We will commune with the Prince of Pleasure, and Lord Slaa—'

Von Hassen was cut off by an enraged hiss of warning from his companion. 'Do not speak that name here, in these streets. Only within the sin-consecrated walls of the temple can that blessed name be permitted to be spoken aloud. But, yes, in this much you are right. We will pay honour to the Pleasure Lord, and He will grant us the power to deal with the Khornate savage and this sage interloper, so that we may carry on His great work here.'

The thing that called itself Sigmund broke off, abruptly turning round to scan the empty street behind them. Its eyes narrowed in suspicion, although there was nothing there to be seen. Imprisoned inside this pathetic human shell, its daemon-senses had become weak and dulled, reduced to a mere fraction of everything they should be. Its daemon mind had perhaps sensed something, but its human eyes saw nothing.

It stared for a second longer at the empty street before turning again and hurrying on.

VIDO PEERED CAUTIOUSLY out from the darkness of the shadow-filled doorway that Konniger had pushed them both into a second before the merchant's nephew had turned round so suddenly. With his better-than-human halfling's eyes, Vido could just see the faint dull glow in Konniger's own eyes. That glow was a side-effect of some of the strange and unnatural substances he knew his master occasionally imbibed in the privacy of his study. Vido didn't know what effect these things had on Konniger's soul and sanity, but they sometimes seemed to give the sage an uncanny sense of prescience in moments of danger. Moments like this, for example, when their quarry had almost realised they were being followed.

Vido checked again, seeing their quarry moving off again down the street. He gave his master the all-clear signal and the two of them continued the pursuit, arriving at the cover of the next street corner just in time to see the merchant and his companion arrive at their destination.

It was a nondescript warehouse building, little different from the dozen or so other places that lined this long and deserted stretch of the street. Von Hassen rapped on a side-door in a careful arrangement of coded knocks, simultaneously hissing a few words low under his breath. A moment later, a barred viewing hatch slid open. An unseen watcher inside peered out to confirm the new arrivals' identity. Another few moments later, there was the sound of a lock being opened and a wooden bar being hauled aside, and the door was pulled open. The figures of von Hassen and Sigmund slipped inside and the door was locked and firmly secured behind them.

Konniger and Vido moved forward quickly, taking care to keep out of sight of any hidden watcher that might still be lurking behind that barred side door.

'We have to get inside there, of course,' said Konniger, looking at his manservant. 'Your field of expertise, I think?'

Vido went to work, studying the outside of the stone-walled warehouse building with a practiced thief's eye. The double doors on the main street front, where the wagons of merchandise would be loaded and unloaded during the day, was right out, of course, no doubt barred from the inside. The upper windows and roof looked a better bet, at least for Vido. A skilled halfing thief could scale that crumbling brickwork in half a minute or less. Vido's heavier, larger, far less nimble human master was a far different proposition, however.

A quick reconnoitre of the rest of the building found a better option: a long-disused cellar door set into the ground of the alley behind the building, covered by empty wooden crates and secured by a heavy, rusted padlock and chain. It took Konniger a few moments to clear away the crates, and his manservant only a few moments longer than that to spring the workings of the padlock with the judiciously-applied point of one of his throwing daggers. Together, they silently hauled the doors open, and peered into the darkness of the building's cellarage. The smell of dust, of dirt, of mildew and of perishable trade goods that had been in storage for far too long wafted up. There was something else there too: a sickly, cloying sweetness that smelled to Vido like perfume gone sour. Or the scent of flowers growing out of something irredeemably putrid.

Konniger saw his manservant's nose wrinkle in disgust as he caught another faint draught of the sickly odour. 'Follow the scent,' he instructed, as they descended into the darkness.

They hadn't gone too far into the surprisingly extensive and deep-dug network of chambers and passages beneath the warehouse before they heard the first scream. After that, as more screams rang out through the place, it wasn't hard to trace them back to their source and locate the hidden temple of the Cult of Slaanesh that had been active in Altdorf for these last few months.

THE KILLER CAME up through the floor at them. The environs of the hidden temple were protected by powerful Slaaneshi warding spells through which no enemy creature of Chaos could easily pass. They were woven into the walls of the place, and consecrated by rites and words of power sacred to daemon-kind.

The floor, however, was a different matter. No one had thought to put similar protections into place in the stonework of the floor.

It flew up through the cracks in the flagstones in front of the altar. A living curtain of blood, seething with lethal intent.

It seized hold of the first of them, flaying him alive in front of the other coven members, stripping away his skin with barbed tendrils formed out of the blood-stuff of its new form. Its victim fell to the ground in a bloodied meat ruin heap. When the sun rose tomorrow, the daily assizes held in the great Imperial Courts of Judgment in the Kaiserplatz would be looking for a new chief clerk of the court.

The coven drew its members from some of the most important and wealthy citizens in Altdorf, all of them drawn into the embrace of the Prince of Delights by the lure of pleasures dark and forbidden. The walls of their underground meeting place had rang with screams of mixed ecstasy and horror as new members were initiated into the blasphemous mysteries of the worship of the Pleasure Lord. Now they rang with screams of a different kind as the servant of the Blood God took its revenge on the followers of its god's most hated enemy.

IT SOLIDIFIED, TAKING new shape, the blood-stuff of its body coalescing and drawing inwards to give it physical form. The reverse Blood Change was achieved in moments, speeded by the nourishment it had taken from the dead Slaaneshi worshipper and its eagerness to kill more of its enemies. It stood before them, revealed. Its iron-hard skin was reddish-black, the colour of hardened blood. Its heavily-muscled arms ended in fingers transformed into weapon blades. Its eyes, set into a face which contained the ghost of the memory of the original face of the Reikerbahn Butcher, were blood-red, and blazed with fury as it glared at the enemies all around it. Then it was amongst them, slashing and killing, bringing the crazed savagery of the Blood God to the children of the Pleasure Lord.

A flash of its claws tore away the throat of the youngest son of an ancient Reikland noble family.

A thrust with those same claws ended the life of one of Altdorf's most prominent diamond merchants.

The career of a champion gentleman duellist ended ignominiously as the killer batted aside the thrusting blade of the man's sword and seized the hand that held it, crushing bone and flesh together in a vice-like grip. It seized hold of the dropped poniard and speared it through the skull of the screaming cultist.

A physician who had once attended the sick-bed of a member of the Imperial family received a new anatomy lesson, with himself as the subject, as the killer eviscerated him from stomach to throat.

Everywhere, there was blood. Everywhere, there was panic and terror. Everywhere there was screaming.

KONNIGER AND VIDO followed the sound of screaming, coming through a doorway leading into the antechamber of the main temple room just as a Slaaneshi worshipper ran out the door on the other side of the room, fleeing the scene inside the temple. He was stripped half-naked, his body tattooed with markings normally hidden from sight, markings that signified his secret devotion to the Prince of Delights. His eyes were glazed, either with terror or the effects of whatever powerful intoxicants the cultists took in the worship of their god. He saw them, and ran screaming towards them, drawing a dagger from his belt.

Vido looked at Konniger, who nodded at him once. This was not a time for half-measures, or the taking of prisoners. Vido drew a throwing dagger from its hidden sheath inside the lining of his cloak, and, with one smooth motion, sent it hilt-deep into the cultist's throat. The cultist dropped like a stone. They ran past his corpse and entered the temple.

The air there throbbed with the unnatural, unwholesome vitality of Chaos. The radiance from the lamps round the temple walls spilled out a strange light that hurt Vido's eyes. Everything seemed to be shifting out of focus, with odd shadows and flickering movements appearing and disappearing out of the corners of his vision. The stuff burning in the temple's gold braziers filled the air with a powerful sickly sweet scent that burned his throat and made his head swim. The altar was a strange, unnaturally contoured thing made of an unfamiliar marbled stone and streaked with veins of white and pale purple that made it look more like flesh than stone. There were things lying upon it that Vido didn't even want to look at.

His main focus, though, was on the battle taking place there in the temple. Naked and half-naked bodies lay everywhere. The floor and bed-like silk divans round the sides of the place were splashed with blood. As Vido watched, horrified by his first glimpse of the thing from the scarlet cell, he saw the creature tear open the body of a woman who Vido fleetingly recognised as being a famous actress at one of Altdorf's biggest and most prestigious theatre companies.

Von Hassen was there too, carrying a silver-wrought staff topped with a strange-shaped sigil that resembled too closely one of the signs on that altar for Vido to want to look at it for any longer than he had to. He was screaming words that sounded like unintelligible gibberish but which still managed to make Vido feel as if his head was in the grip of a giant's fist as he heard them. Von Hassen gestured with the staff, pointing it at the thing from the scarlet cell, and the air between them shimmered with power. Something lanced out from the tip of the staff, striking the daemon-thing. Striking it, but seemingly not harming it. The creature's black blood skin sizzled with the heat of the sorcerous blast, but the thing merely bellowed in savage laughter and tore apart another of von Hassen's fellow cultists. The merchant blanched, and prepared himself for another, more powerful attempt to magically strike down the creature.

'Quickly! Slay it! Prove you are worthy of the power Mistress Slaanesh has given you!' hissed Sigmund, from the sidelines. He turned, spotting Konniger and Vido just as they saw him.

Sigmund glared at them in contempt. 'So, the sage-meddler. How much of this is your doing, I wonder?' His mouth opened impossibly wider as he spoke, a long forked tongue snaking out to lick the edges of his rouged lips just as he charged at them.

This time Vido didn't first look to receive his master's permission. The throwing knife flew from his hand, unerringly finding its target as it pierced Sigmund's right eye and struck into his brain. The man staggered, but didn't fall.

Then he reached up and plucked the dagger from out of his eye, as if it were nothing more serious than removing a small splinter from beneath the skin of a fingertip.

The wound did seem to trigger something in the Pleasure Lord worshipper, however. His mouth continued to open wider, and Vido could see the skin starting to split open on either side of that impossibly wide maw. Its right arm swelled obscenely, something there splitting through the clothing and the flesh beneath.

Vido looked on in disbelief as he saw what was happening: Sigmund's arm was transforming into something that looked like a monstrous crab-claw. The thing that had been called Sigmund gave an inhuman hiss and stepped forward, shrugging off the remains of its human disguise the way an actor casts aside a role at the end of an evening's performance.

Vido saw fangs and glittering, purple-jewelled eyes set into a face that was a grotesque parody of painted human beauty. He saw a body that was both male and female, and that was filled with a deadly, lithe grace. Most of all, though, he saw the razor-edged blades of that crab-claw limb as it came snapping towards him.

'A daemonette creature of the Pleasure Lord. If only I'd known we were facing not one but two creatures of the Realm of Chaos,' said Konniger, rebuking himself as he completed the last few gestures of what Vido fervently hoped was some piece of daemon-fighting spellcasting.

Vido's hopes proved correct. The daemon struck the Sigmarite shield of protection blessing as if it had run at full-tilt into a solid wall, sending it staggering back. Vido knew how limited his master's spellcasting powers were, and how much Konniger disliked the use of magic, seeing it as a too-easy solution to problems that could be better solved with good old-fashioned human intelligence and intuition. It was doubtful the sage-detective would be able to rouse up enough of what remained of his priestly powers to stave off the daemon-thing's next and all-too-imminent attack.

In the end, though, it did not matter. The delay, although fleeting, had been enough to allow other events to interfere. A bloodthirsty roar of challenge from the other side of the chamber served to announce that the servant of Khorne had just spotted its Slaaneshi rival. The thing that had once been the Reikerbahn Butcher literally tore through von Hassen and the few remaining cultists to get to its chief enemy. The Slaaneshi daemon turned to face the attack, and the two creatures of Chaos met in a clash of claw and fang that threw out rippling waves of invisible energy that shook the very walls of the temple chamber.

Konniger picked up Vido and pressed him into the cover of a nearby stone pillar. Vido thought his eardrums would burst any second as the air pressure inside the place seemed to increase five-fold, and the atmosphere pulsed with unnatural power thrown out by the rival daemon-things' opposing auras as they clashed together in a battle to the finish.

Konniger mouthed more prayers of protection as the daemonic energies washed over the two of them. 'The battle won't be a long one,' was Konniger's grim warning. 'No matter how powerful von Hassen's own daemon guardian might seem, it can't match the fury of the thing that was created in the scarlet cell. Tonight may already have seen the destruction of one Chaos cult in this city, but it may also see the rise of a new and terrible servant of another of the Ruinous Powers, and that is something we can never allow to happen.'

The first part of Konniger's warning came true all too soon. The blood-creature roared in fury. The Slaaneshi daemon answered with a chorus of its own angry shrieks and hisses, but the exchange ended in one final, hellish scream of impotent rage from the servant of the Pleasure Lord as the Khornate creature thrust its claws into the daemonette's hermaphrodite body and ripped out its heart. The Slaaneshi creature died with a mewling gurgle, its soul cast back into the depths of the Realm of Chaos, its body starting to dissolve into stinking slime even before it fell to the ground.

The servant of the Blood God had not survived unscathed, however. Its body was rent with wounds from the slashing claws of the Slaaneshi creature, daemon-inflicted wounds that could not be immediately healed, even with the blood-thing's unnatural powers of vitality. Hot, sizzling gouts of blood fell from these wounds, forming a red mist in the air around it. It seemed to have difficulty maintaining its Blood Change form, as the material of its Chaos-altered body and some of the essence of its daemon spirit leaked out of it.

Konniger knew it was more vulnerable now than it probably ever would be again.

'Whatever happens, don't try to help me. You can do nothing against a creature like this,' he told his manservant. 'At the first sign that I may fall, run from this place, and never look back. Go to the Church of Sigmar. Use the code words I have already instructed you in, and gain access to the very highest levels of the Church authorities that you can. Tell the brethren everything that has happened here. They will know what to do after that.'

With that, he was gone. Running out into the open. Running to face the blood-thing, running in search of any kind of weapon that might be of any use against the creature.

He found what he was looking for amongst the bloodied litter of bodies on the floor. Von Hassen's staff, still held in the grip of one of the merchant's severed arms. He picked it up, shaking it free of the last remnants of its former owner, and turned to face the daemon.

The creature flowed towards him, leaving a slick blood trail in its wake. Konniger threw a Sigmarite prayer-spell at it, and then cursed himself for a fool, as the daemon deflected it harmlessly aside. It had ritually consumed the heart and absorbed the blood of the late Archbishop Heiggler, and was thus protected against all such magics.

After that, the daemon was on him. He wielded the Slaaneshi icon like a quarterstaff, ignoring the pain as the metal of the Chaos-tainted staff burned into the flesh of his hands. Konniger abjured using weapons whenever possible, but was an expert quarterstaff fighter.

He traded blows with the Khornate daemon, ducking in to try and land a blow, ducking back out to avoid the lightning-quick slashes of its lethal knife-fingers. The pain from his burned hands was intense now, and the blistered and Chaos-seared flesh of his palms would be many weeks in healing.

If the pain was bad to him, though, then it must be nigh on unbearable to the creature of Khorne. The Blood God and the Prince of Delights inhabited opposite sides on the Wheel of Chaos, and anything connected to Slaanesh was an anathema to Khorne and his servants. Each blow Konniger landed with the magically-charged sigil on the end of the staff was like plunging a red-hot iron into water.

The daemon staggered back, roaring in rage. The Slaneeshi staff opened up bubbling wounds in the unnatural material of its body, and the air around it and Konniger was filled with a haze of red steam and the stench of charred, sticky blood-tar. The daemon tried to strike back, but Konniger expertly parried or dodged its blows. Three of the creature's knife-fingers were left smouldering and broken, one of them completely vaporised by contact with the haft of the staff. The pain only added to its rage, while the wounds only left it further weakened.

Konniger knew he couldn't keep this up for much longer, though. Despite its injuries, the daemon's vitality was still superhuman, while his was all-too-human. It would only take one missed blow from him, or one ripping slash from those terrible knife-claws, to reverse the flow of the battle.

He ducked one slashing blow, stepped aside to avoid the daemon's follow-up strike and then stepped back in to strike it across the chest, eliciting another scream of rage from the daemon, and another splatter of bubbling blood from the wound that had been opened up into its flesh.

Almost there, thought Konniger, weaving the staff in a complex pattern of defensive moves that struck the creature several more glancing blows, forcing it back even further. Its next attack he risked allowing through, twisting his body to avoid the thrusting knife-blades, feeling one of them slice through his shoulder instead of piercing his heart as had been intended. Now, though, the daemon had left itself vulnerable.

Konniger made his move, spinning the staff in one hand, flipping it round to reverse it and then catching it again in both hands to plunge its point with all his strength into the blood-thing's chest. The spear-like bottom tip of the staff burned through the daemon's body, emerging out of its back to strike into the flesh-like stone material of the main temple altar directly behind where the Khorne daemon stood.

A violent shock of magical energy pulsed through the air of the place. Konniger released his grip on the staff, just as a blast of energy coursed through it. Had he been a split-second late in letting go, he would probably have lost both his hands. The daemon, transfixed by the staff, directly connected by it to an altar consecrated to the power of its patron lord's most hated enemy amongst the other gods of Chaos, opened its mouth to roar its final bellow of rage, but all that emerged was a steaming hiss as its body melted away around it.

It was gone in seconds, reduced to a spreading pool of bubbling, hissing, burning blood. The Pleasure God's altar was dead too, its surface split and cracked where the staff had pierced into it, its unnatural appearance of life now nothing more than curiously coloured but lifeless marble.

Konniger staggered away, nearly falling, but was caught in time by Vido. The halfling manservant bundled his master away, Konniger wrapping his injured hands in the folds of his cloak, as the spreading pool of burning blood flowed out to find and ignite the cushions and rich furnishings of the Pleasure Lord's temple, as well as the corpses of his followers that still littered its floor.

THERE WAS A fire that night in the riverside warehouse district, A great blaze that was only contained by the concerted efforts of the city watch and the volunteer teams of citizen fire-fighters. There was nothing unusual in the fire itself, but what happened the next morning was enough to raise a few collective eyebrows.

A full company of Templar knights arrived on the scene, quickly dispersing the crowd gathered there and sealing off the streets around the place as priests of Sigmar crawled over the still-smoking ruins of the fire. What they were looking for, or what rituals they performed there remained unknown, although it was said that several items and perhaps even bundles of charred human bones were secretly removed from the ruins before the entire site was cleared and the rubble there carted away to some unknown destination.

Over the next few days, and even weeks, word of various deaths and unfortunate happenings amongst some of Altdorf's most notable circles of citizens began to trickle out. The youngest son of one of Reikland's most venerable old noble families killed in a tragic hunting accident. An announcement from the Imperial Tarrandisch Theatre Company that its star actress Augusts Friedrichsliebe had retired indefinitely from the stage and left Altdorf, suffering from nervous exhaustion. A spate of deaths and sudden tragic illnesses ran through the higher membership ranks of some of the merchant guild houses.

If anyone in Altdorf registered any pattern amongst these happenings, they wisely chose to keep their opinions to themselves. As Konniger had once observed, the Church of Sigmar, this time assisted by the full power of the Imperial authorities, had always been adept at keeping its house in order.

REST FOR THE WICKED

James Wallis

THE KONIGPIATZ IN Altdorf was full of the bustle and hubbub of its morning market. Carts, barrows and stalls blocked the streets and people crammed together, jostling and shoving to move between the sellers, their arms burdened down with purchases. The air was full of the smell of fresh vegetables, roasting meat, fresh-baked bread, lavender and beer. The stallholder's shouts echoed from the tall buildings surrounding the square: ''Who'll buy my schnitzel?''; ''Estalian wines, strong and cheap''; ''Pound of black bread, only sixpence''; ''Horsemeat, fresh slaughtered''; and ''You hooligan - stop!''.

A small man with dark hair and the eyes and long moustache of a Kislevite had leaped onto the shouter's table of pastries. He stood there for a second, looking round in panic, then jumped down into the crowd, pushing his way through. Twenty yards behind him two men were giving chase, one short, slim and blond, one tall and dark, both wearing leather jerkins. The dark one had his sword drawn.

'Imperial officers! Clear the way!' the blond man roared in a voice that seemed to come from a man twice his bulk. His tall partner vaulted the table in a leap and landed beside the stallholder. 'Which way did he go?' he demanded. The man pointed. Dark looked at blond.

'North.'

'The city gate.'

'Let's go!'

They sprinted through the market and down the street, darting through gaps in the crowd, trying to keep their quarry in sight. It wasn't easy; the streets were crowded with early-morning traffic, pedestrians, people on their way to work or heading home after a long night. Carts and horses moved slowly through the throng, blocking the way. There was no sign of the short man. The taller of the pursuers stopped, staring across the packed bodies, trying to see movement.

'This way, Johansen,' the blond man said, pointing to a side street. 'Short cut.'

'Thanks, Grenner.' Johansen followed his partner. The road twisted, then widened, and ahead he could see the stonework of Altdorf's great city walls and the flags flying high above the north gate. Someone shouted in the crowd, people moved aside, and he caught a glimpse of a short man with dark hair and a long black moustache. The Kislevite. Johansen sprinted after him.

Something was happening at the gate. Mounted members of the city watch were moving people out of the way, clearing a path through the crowd as a column of soldiers in Middenland colours rode into the city, two abreast. Behind them was an older man in rich fur-trimmed clothes on a magnificent chestnut stallion, followed by a train of carriages.

As the crowd was parting to let the procession through, the Kislevite dodged through the milling bodies and ducked away, running through the throng towards the gate. Johansen, a few yards behind, found his way blocked by a halberd. The guards were dismounting, using their weapons to keep the watchers back.

'Imperial officers! Let us through!' shouted Grenner, a few yards behind.

The guard's face was stony. 'Can't do that, sir. Not while the elector count's passing.'

'Sigmar's beard…' Johansen put a hand on the halberd. It didn't move. The guard looked past him curiously.

'Sergeant Grenner?' he said. 'Is that you? I haven't seen you in years.'

'Promotion,' Grenner said. 'Let us pass.'

'Orders, sir. We're protecting the elector.'

Grenner swore and started to argue. Johansen watched the procession, knowing it wouldn't make any difference now. The Kislevite had escaped, the operation was blown, three weeks of work was down the cistern, and Hoffmann was going to be very unhappy.

He looked at the man on the horse. Grand Duke Leopold von Bildhofen, Elector Count of Middenland, one of the twelve most powerful men in the Empire. He didn't look powerful; he looked bored and tired, and his horse looked the same. They'd probably been on the road since dawn.

Then the Kislevite broke from the crowd and cut across the open space in front of the soldiers, towards the procession, he darted in front of the elector's horse and it shied, stepping sideways. Then it shuddered for an instant, and Johansen knew something was wrong. He grabbed Grenner, who turned as the great chestnut horse bolted, scattering the soldiers, heading down the street that led to the Konigplatz, its rider thrown forwards onto its neck.

Johansen pushed the guard away from his horse, grabbing its reins, putting a foot in the stirrup.

'Hey, you can't—' one of the guards shouted.

'Someone's got to,' Grenner said, already astride the other horse. They dug their heels in and galloped after the runaway.

The chestnut stallion was at full gallop and the crowds parted like a ripped sheet to get out of its way The north end of the street was clear but the Konigplatz ahead was filled with the carts and stalls of the morning market; if the panicked horse tried to jump one, or slipped on the cobbles, then its rider was a dead man.

They were gaining on the runaway, but not fast enough. The chestnut would be tired from its journey and not used to city streets, while their horses were fresh and properly shod for running on cobbles, but something had panicked the stallion and that gave it the edge for speed. Johansen could see the Grand Duke pulling frantically at the reins, trying to bring his mount under control and failing.

'Can we head him off?' he shouted to Grenner, a few yards away.

'Not enough room!'

'Go either side, then.' The sound of horses coming up from behind would push the chestnut to run faster, but it was the only chance they had.

Grenner went left, Johansen right, each urging their horses to more speed. The gap between them and the elector narrowed. A drop of something wet landed on Johansen's hand and he glanced at it. Blood, but from where? He looked ahead at the stallion, only a couple of lengths away. There was a wet patch of sweat on its neck. No, not sweat; something thicker and darker.

The three horses began to draw level, the chestnut between the two Palisades agents. The Grand Duke's gaze was fixed ahead, on the market square, now frighteningly close. He didn't seem aware of them.

'Lift him!' Johansen shouted and stood in the stirrups. With one hand holding the reins he leaned across and gripped the duke's right arm. The nobleman jerked, his eyes darting to Johansen. Then, as Grenner grabbed his left arm, the two men lifted him clear of his saddle. Without the weight of its mount the chestnut surged ahead. Its muscles moving like wild poetry, it charged into the Konigplatz and tried to leap a cart. Its rear legs skidded on the cobbles, slick with mud and rubbish. It fell. There was a noise of shattering wood, screams, an awful sound of pain. A thrashing that suddenly stopped.

Johansen and Grenner reined in their horses and lowered the Grand Duke to the ground. His face and clothes were spattered with blood. A crowd was staring at the three of them. The Middenland soldiers were cantering up, their swords drawn.

Johansen dismounted and bowed. 'Karl Johansen and Dirk Grenner of the Palisades, your grace. I apologise for any rough-handling you received.'

The Grand Duke looked down at him. 'Good work,' he said, and his voice reminded Johansen of a man speaking to the servant who empties his chamber pot. Then he noticed the Middenland soldiers and turned away to speak to them. Johansen straightened up, awkwardly. Grenner was looking at him.

'They never thank us,' he said.

'They never do,' Johansen said. 'Come on. I want to look at his horse.'

The two men walked into the marketplace where the great chestnut horse lay across two broken carts, surrounded by sausages, cheeses and cauliflowers. Its hind legs were twisted the wrong way. Someone had cut its throat to end its pain.

Johansen knelt and ran a hand over the blood-soaked hair on its neck. There was no sign of a slash or a cut, but his fingers found a pucker on the skin. He drew his dagger and dug into the dead flesh until he found what he knew would be there: the head of a crossbow bolt, strangely twisted, buried deep in the hot muscles of the neck. He cut around it and tugged it out. Its bloody steel barbs gleamed in the sunlight.

'Nobody saw the ASSASSIN?'

'No, sir.' Hoffmann's chamber on the top floor of the Palisades building was not large, nor richly furnished. It had no great glass window with grand views, no wall-hangings, no oak panelling, no bookcases, no crossed axes, suits of armour nor pictures of the Emperor. It had Erik Hoffmann, and that was enough. His voice would have been enough. The deep Salzenmund accent, with its rolled vowels and hard consonants, made every word sound like a growled threat. A woman had once told Dirk Grenner that it was the most alluring voice she'd ever heard. That relationship hadn't lasted long.

'You're certain it wasn't the Kislevite or his comrades?' Hoffmann asked.

'Definite, sir,' Grenner said. 'If he'd known the shooting was going to happen he'd have led us away from it.'

Hoffmann stared at his two officers for a moment. Then he crossed to the window and stared out. 'This is an unholy mess,' he said. 'I've already had Lord Udo von Bildhofen, the Grand Duke's son in here, demanding that every Palisade agent drop what they're doing and guard his father, and wanting to be personally briefed about everything we're doing. The von Bildhofen family dines with the Emperor tonight. A negative report could be very bad for us.' He didn't turn round, but stood silent; a long, tense pause. Then: 'What did you make of the bolt?'

'Custom job, designed to rip open veins and organs,' Johansen said. 'I saw one like it during a Tilean campaign a few years back.'

'Quite right. I sent it down to Alchemics for analysis. The steel and wood are from the south of Tilea.'

'Why would a Tilean want to kill an elector?' Grenner asked.

'More likely a Tilean assassin,' said Johansen.

'One hired by someone who wants the job done properly, I suspect.' Hoffmann turned, walked back to stand by his desk. 'The Grand Duke's nominated successor is his brother, Baron Siegfried. His wife is Tilean.'

'Think he's hungry for power?' said Grenner.

'Find out and stop the assassin. Before anyone important dies.' He picked up a folder of parchment from the desk and leafed through it, then looked back up. 'What are you waiting for? Go. And don't make this the second operation you botch today.'

THE INTERIOR OF the tavern was dark, the ceiling low, the tables crowded, the drinkers Tilean. Curious and hostile eyes looked at the two Altdorfers as they entered, resenting their intrusion. Most of the city's natives had the sense to stay out of the Tilean quarter, and the only ones who ventured into the Villa Bianca were either dupes, foolhardy or desperate.

At the back of the room two richly clothed Tileans were talking earnestly in low tones. Grenner and Johansen found a table, sat and waited.

'Nice place,' Johansen muttered ironically.

'Proof that all men are brothers,' Grenner said. 'Empire, Tilean, Kislevite or Bretonnian - come mealtime we're all in the alehouse.'

The taller of the two ''Tileans'' stood up, kissed the other's hand, and left. The smaller looked around and took a swig from an ornate glass beside him. Another man began to approach him, but he raised a hand, and then gestured to the two Palisades agents. Grenner walked up to the table and bowed. Johansen followed.

'Thank you, Signor Argentari.'

The short Tilean smiled. 'Sit, sit, Sergeant Grenner. It has been a long time. How is your life?'

'Not a sergeant any more, signor. I left the watch some years ago.'

Argantari nodded sympathetically. 'I have heard. How can I help you in your new employment?'

Grenner said, 'Signor, do the Tileans have an argument with the Empire?'

'No more than usual. Why do you ask?'

'This morning someone tried to shoot the Elector Count of Middenland with a Tilean crossbow bolt.'

The signor's expression kept the practised placid look that gamblers, politicians and liars work hard to perfect. Then he shrugged. 'It is to be expected. We are the best crossbowmen in the world.'

'We need this man,' Grenner said.

'What makes you think I know any more than you?'

'Come off it, signor. You know the names of every Tilean in this city, where they'll sleep this night and how much money is in their purses, down to the last copper.'

'That is true,' the Tilean said. 'But my Reman ancestors had a phrase: ''Quid pro quo''. It means: what would I gain from telling you?' He sat back, looking thoughtful.

Johansen leaned forward. 'I'll tell you what you gain,' he said and Grenner heard the frost on his voice. 'If the Grand Duke dies with Tilean steel in him, life goes bad for every one of your people in this city. I'm not just talking about muggings and beatings and arson. Your trade will dry up. Nobody will hire your men. Increased watch patrols. Increased surveillance. Your wives and children will be pariahs, spat at in the street. And worse. Tileans protect their own, Signor Argentari, but you know the Empire does the same. You call yourself the father of Little Tilea. Prove it.'

Argentari shrugged, but Grenner could tell his heart wasn't in it. Then he pulled a pocket-book from his jacket, flipped through it and laid it flat on the table. There was an address on the page.

Grenner looked at it, then at Johansen. 'What's the time?'

'Two bells rang a few minutes ago. Why?'

'The Grand Duke's meeting the Emperor this evening. He's a good Sigmarite, he'll want to pray first. In twenty minutes he'll be walking to the great temple for afternoon worship. Right past that house on Marianstrasse.'

They sprinted out of the Villa Bianca, towards the river-bridge, the palace district and the temple.

THE TOLLING OF the temple bells echoed the agents' footsteps as they ran into Marienstrasse.

'Which house?' Johansen panted. Grenner pointed: he knew the district.

'Half-way down. Sign of the crossed gloves.'

They burst into the glove-maker's shop, past surprised customers in elegant dress and shocked staff in consternation. 'Who lets out the rooms upstairs?' Grenner demanded.

A short, slender grey-haired woman came forward. 'I do,' she said, 'but we don't have any vacancies.'

'You're about to,' said Johansen. Grenner shot him a look.

'A Tilean. Arrived recently. Which floor?' he asked.

'The top. Hey,' she said, 'you can't go through—'

Beyond the door the light was dingy, the stairs narrow and the stale air smelled of boiled vegetables. They took the stairs two at a time, matching their footfalls to the sonorous chimes of the temple bells. The door at the top was shut.

'You get the door, I'll get the suspect,' Johansen whispered, drawing his dagger.

'We need him alive.'

'I hadn't forgotten.'

Grenner looked at the door. It was stout but old, almost certainly locked, and probably barricaded on the other side. The lock was the first problem, and its bolt would be just about… there. He kicked the spot with his heel, hard. There was a crunch as it gave inwards, but only an inch.

'Damn!'

Something moved inside the room. Grenner charged the door, hitting it with his shoulder. It flew open with a crunch, a broken chair scattering across the floor. There was a man standing by the open window, with a crossbow. It was aimed at Grenner's face.

He threw himself sideways and down. There was a twang and things hurtled past his head. Someone went ''Uh!'' and someone else went ''Ah'', and he didn't know if either of them had a Tilean accent.

He looked up. The assassin was still standing by the window. His expression was startled, because Johansen's throwing-dagger was sticking out of his stomach. He began to lift the crossbow.

Grenner scrambled to his feet, grabbing a piece of chair. Why wasn't Johansen following through?

'Drop it,' he warned.

'Grenner,' Johansen said quietly from behind him, 'that's a two-shot bow.'

The Tilean smiled. Blood was beginning to show on the clothes round his stomach-wound. He gestured with the crossbow towards a corner of the room. Grenner let his eyes flick over there, then as the Tilean's followed he hurled the chair leg at him with all his might.

The assassin tried to duck. The piece of wood glanced off his head and smashed through the windowpane. Broken glass cascaded out into the street. It didn't seem to bother him. He moved across the room but the crossbow didn't waver. Grenner watched as his hand tightened on the trigger.

Suddenly the world was too bright. It reminded Grenner of something he'd seen once before and would never forget. 'Down!' he screamed and hit the floor again, his hands over his face.

The room went to awful white and heat and sound, squeezing everything else out of existence. It lasted an eternity, then suddenly it was done. Grenner lay where he was for a second, then looked up.

The Tilean had taken the main force of the blast. His corpse was still on fire. The room around it was destroyed, the walls cracked and cratered, the windows blown out, the curtains ablaze. The crossbow was ashes and burnt metal.

Grenner stood slowly, checking himself. His hair and face were singed, his hands red raw. His clothes were ruined; even the leather was cracked.

'I bloody hate magic,' he said to no one in particular.

'Grenner?' came Johansen's voice, weakly. Grenner turned. His partner lay at the top of the stairs, thrown there by the explosion. A crossbow bolt was sticking out of his chest. His blackened clothes were soaked with his blood.

AS THEY PASSED the landing of the second floor, heading down, Johansen said, 'Let's work through what happened.'

Grenner grunted. 'I've got a better idea. You work through what happened, I'll concentrate on getting you to a physician.'

'That works too.'

'Don't take your finger out of the wound.'

'Right.' Johansen felt light-headed, as if part of him wasn't there. Shock and blood loss, he thought. Shock and blood loss. Stay with it. He didn't take his finger out of the wound.

He wasn't doing a good job of walking. Grenner was doing most of it for him, and Johansen was leaning on his shoulder, an arm round his neck, moving his feet when the moment felt right.

Shock and blood loss. Stay with it.

'Someone chucked magic at us,' he said. 'Not the Tilean. Do this logically. We burst in. We don't take him by surprise but that's our fault. I knife him, and get hit.'

'My throw breaks the window. And—'

'Someone who's watching the building realizes their assassin has been caught, and killed him before he could talk,' Johansen said.

'So the employer is or knows a spellcaster.'

'It's not much to go on.'

'Enough for Hoffmann,' Grenner said.

'Not Hoffmann,' Johansen said. A cough shook through him, and seemed to jar a thought loose in his mind. 'The Untersuchung.'

'The what?' Grenner asked.

'The Untersuchung. They're part of the Reiksguard, an undercover group like the Palisades. They find cults and conspiracies in the army and the court.'

'Witch hunters?'

'No.' Johansen could barely speak. 'Not all cults… are Chaos cults. But the Untersuchung know about magic and they track sorcerers. They're odd, very secretive… but efficient.' He felt himself slipping. Grenner paused to hoist him back onto his shoulder. They started moving again, out onto the sunlit street.

A crowd was milling outside the building, looking up at the top storey. It was on fire. The temple bells were still sounding. They seemed a very long way away. Everything did.

'Look, Karl,' said Grenner, 'I am taking you to a doctor. I am not taking you to question some bunch of nutty army agents while you're bleeding from a hole in your front.'

'You're right,' Johansen said. The bright sky swam in front of him, and his sight was full of gaps. 'You're going to visit them alone.'

ACROSS THE COURTYARD of the Reiksguard stables, just out of sight of the main gate, an anonymous door stood in a plain brick wall. Grenner pushed it and it swung open, unfastened, as Johansen had said it would be. He thought for a second about Johansen, seeing his friend's clothes matted with blood, then stepped into the dark passage beyond.

Ten feet along was a flight of stairs, and at the top another door. He rapped on its hard wood, five knocks. There was a sound of something sliding open and a voice said, 'The sun is in the seventh house.'

'I'm a Palisades officer and this is an emergency,' Grenner said.

'That's not the password,' the voice said, 'but it'll do.' Bolts slid back and the inner door opened to reveal a long narrow room lit by slit windows and candles. Men and women in everyday clothes sat at cramped desks piled with books and documents. Shelves lined the walls. A man in his early twenties, dressed in black Sigmarite robes, stood by the door. Behind him, an older man in a leather coat looked up from his desk.

'You realise this is highly irregular, don't you?' he said. 'Any meetings between our two organisations are supposed to be approved in writing by superior officers, at least two days in advance. Some tedious quill pusher will earn a promotion by asking awkward questions if we give him a chance. So we've never met, this didn't happen, and you're not here. Agreed?'

'Agreed.'

'Good. Let's get to business.' The man stood. He was in his late thirties, greying at the temples, but he still had a soldier's build and scars. 'Lieutenant Gottfried Braubach, and the fellow who looks like he's in mourning is Andreas Reisefertig.'

'Dirk Grenner.' They shook hands.

Braubach sat down, gesturing at another chair. 'How can we help?'

Grenner sat. 'I and my partner were fire-balled a quarter-hour ago, trying to arrest a man who was about to shoot the Elector Count of Middenland,' he said 'The crossbowman was killed. I'm told you can help us identify who threw the spell.'

Braubach looked down at his desk. 'No, sorry,' he said.

'What?'

'Sorry, we can't help you.'

Grenner stared at him. 'Because you don't know anything, or because you're not going to tell me?

Braubach sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. 'Look,' he said, 'I realise you're in a hurry, but you should have gone through the proper channels. How do I know you are who you say you are? You could be anyone, with a thousand unhealthy reasons for asking that question. Get your superior… who is your superior?'

'General Hoffmann.'

'Get him to approve the exchange and we'll talk. Until then it's always nice to make new friends and maybe we can have a drink some evening, but right now you're wasting your time and ours.'

Grenner took a deep breath, held it and let it out slowly. He restrained an urge to punch Braubach in the face. 'You don't care about a lunatic who's tried to kill an elector twice today?'

'We would, except you just told us he's dead. And why would the person who killed the assassin kill the elector too? Actually,' Braubach's brow furrowed, and he leaned forward, 'I can think of several reasons. Look, I don't want to seem unfriendly but I can't let you tread on our toes, and we have big toes. Andreas can help you with some neutral information about magic, but that's all. Now, please excuse me.'

He rose, walked to the rear of the long office and disappeared through a door. Reisefertig watched him go, then turned and leaned against the desk. Grenner half-expected him to apologise, or to say something about his superior, but the man's face was a cold mask, betraying nothing. He looked down at Grenner.

'Let's start with the spell,' he said. 'You said it was a ball of fire?'

'Yes. I was attacked six years ago by a drunk from the College of the Bright Order so I recognise the signs.'

'Which were?'

'Sudden brightness before the explosion, and a slight smell of gunpowder.'

'And the dead assassin?'

'Burnt to a crust. Room completely destroyed.'

Reisefertig stroked his earlobe between finger and thumb. There was something in his gaze that Grenner found uncomfortable. 'Probably not a fire ball spell then, but something like it. Fire balls are too obvious for city-use: people notice the smaller ball of fire that the wizard throws in the casting. My guess would be a blasting spell, more devastating and more subtle to cast. It only works at less than a hundred paces. Does that fit?'

'The caster could have been in the building opposite. Or even in the street. Either would have line of sight.'

'Yes. Blast requires some spell mastery, so it's not some novice or student. But it's general battle-magic, and quite well known. That could mean anyone. Political insurgents, foreign agents, even those Kislevite insurrectionists we hear are running around…'

'Or an Imperial wizard who's gone renegade?'

Reisefertig said nothing.

'It's an obvious possibility,' Grenner said, 'but you left it off the list. Let's not play twenty questions. I'll tell you what I think. Someone tipped off the assassin about the elector's route, both times. That means someone in his entourage or his household is trying to get him killed.'

'Yes,' said Reisefertig. He steepled his fingers, just like Braubach had. 'An interesting scenario.'

'Can you tell me if you know of anyone in the Grand Duke's court who has links to a spellcaster?'

'No.'

'You don't know?'

'I can't tell you if we know.'

'Damn it! I'm trying to protect an elector!' Grenner exploded, on his feet, gesticulating.

'Haven't you realised we might be doing the same thing?' Braubach said quietly from behind him. 'We have our missions and agendas too, and letting electors die is not high among them. Please accept that we cannot give you the information you want. Go back to your general. He may have learned something while you were away.'

Grenner glared at him, but there was a look in Braubach's eyes that made him realise a retort would be pointless. He left without a word.

HOFFMANN SAT IN front of the bare table in his office. He held his brow with one hand and his eyes were closed in deep thought. A wide beam of mid-afternoon sun fell through the window onto the wood floor in front of him, leaving him in shadow.

There was a knock at the door and someone said, 'Message, sir.'

'Come in.' Hoffmann stood as the messenger entered, holding out his hand for the thin strip of parchment the man carried. 'What's the news on Johansen?'

'He's conscious, sir. The physician is with him now, applying leeches.'

'Let me know as soon as they're done.' Hoffmann unrolled the parchment and moved into the sunlight to read its thin, spidery writing. He grunted with dissatisfaction.

'Any answer, sir?'

'No. No, they already know the answer,' Hoffmann said. The sunlight caught the strands of white in his dark brown hair and smoothed over some of the creases on his tired face. 'When Grenner gets back, tell him I want to see him. Immediately.'

The messenger bowed and left. Hoffmann sat back down, placed the parchment on the table and read it again. He was reading it for the fifth time when Grenner knocked and entered without waiting for a reply.

'Sir, I need to talk to you about the Untersuchung.'

'That's why I need to see you.' Grenner looked worried, and Hoffmann waved a hand at him. 'Don't fret. I'm not going to give you an arse-kicking about talking to other agencies without proper authorisation. I've been thinking.'

'So have I, sir.'

'Oh yes? Any conclusions?'

'Some, no thanks to the Untersuchung. Our mystery mage knew the assassin's location this afternoon, and was watching it. I think that Tilean connection is an attempt to implicate Duke Siegfried, the Grand Duke's brother. So we're looking for someone close to the Grand Duke, who wants him and his successor removed. And the Untersuchung were acting like they had something to hide; they clammed up the moment I mentioned Middenland.'

'Hm.' Hoffmann looked amused. 'Well. Let's go and see Johansen.' They left the office and walked down the stairs to the medical wing on the second floor.

'Thanks to you,' Hoffmann said, 'the Untersuchung now know pretty much everything we do about this business. Had it occurred to you that they might be involved?'

'Involved?' Grenner looked aghast.

'Not like that, they're not behind it. But as you suspect they have been running surveillance on members of the Grand Duke's court.'

'I thought that might be why they wouldn't give me any information.'

'Of course they wouldn't. They don't know you from Sigmar. But while you were revealing our secrets, Lieutenant Braubach sent the information you requested to me on a carrier pigeon.' Hoffmann held up the piece of parchment. 'Along with conditions about how we can use it. Here we are.'

Johansen lay in the only occupied bed in the room. He was stripped to the waist, and pale bandages encased his ribs. His skin looked sallow and slack. He looked up at the sound of the opening door, and smiled weakly.

'No grapes?' he said.

'Only sour ones,' Grenner said.

'The Untersuchung been helpful?'

Grenner scowled.

'They've given us the name of the sorcerer,' Hoffmann said. He sat on the corner of the bed, studying the faces of his agents. 'Emilie Trautt, a former student at the Imperial College of Bright Magic. Failed to renew her oath of allegiance to the Emperor four years ago and disappeared. Resurfaced fifteen months ago with the name Sara Koch, working for Lord Udo, the Grand Duke's son, as an advisor. Some say they're lovers.'

Johansen coughed weakly. 'Oh great. The son's trying to take out his father.'

'And frame his uncle for it,' Grenner added. 'Which would make him number one in the line of succession.'

'It gets worse,' Hoffmann said. He held up the parchment. 'Sara Koch is off-limits. We can't touch her.'

'You're joking,' Grenner said disbelievingly.

'I wish I was. The Untersuchung think she can lead them to a sect of renegade wizards somewhere in Middenland. We are not to contact her, harm her, arrest her, or let her discover that she is being watched.'

'Are we sure they'll try again? They've lost their assassin.' Johansen said.

'They didn't lose the assassin, they removed him themselves. They must have a back-up plan.'

'That's not the only problem,' Johansen said. He tried to pull himself up into a sitting position, and winced. 'We still don't have anything solid against Lord Udo.'

'We don't even know if we've got the right man,' Grenner said. 'Sigmar's teeth! It's our job to defend these people, and they're busy trying to kill each other.'

'Defend them,' Hoffmann said. 'Yes. And the best form of defence is?'

'Attack,' the two agents said together.

'Exactly. We have to draw our suspects out; we have to make them prove their guilt - or innocence. And we have to do it fast: they meet with the Emperor in less than four bells.' Hoffmann got to his feet and looked down at Johansen. 'Karl, what did the physician say?'

'I'll be back on my feet in four days, fit for active duty in ten.'

'Mollycoddling nonsense. Be in uniform in fifteen minutes. You two have an appointment with Lord Udo.'

THE HALLWAY WAS ornate and ostentatious, decorated to impress. Thick Araby carpets covered the oak floor. Suits of armour from different eras stood along its length, with trophies from long-past battles fixed to the wall between them: an elf general's helmet; a dwarf axe encrusted with runes; the moth-eaten head of an orc war-boss, stuffed and mounted, Johansen looked at it.

'It looks as happy to be here as I am,' he whispered.

'Shut it,' said Grenner.

Johansen shut it. They'd been standing for almost five minutes and his whole chest ached like he'd been slugged by a club. The blood he had lost made him feel tired and slow. The dark serge fabric of his uniform felt coarse against his skin and tight across the shoulders, where he'd put on weight or muscle since the jacket was made, fighting in these clothes would be hard. All in all, there were many things about this situation that made him uncomfortable.

A footman appeared and ushered them into a larger room, decorated with the same opulence but more taste. In its centre a well-built man in rich robes sat at a table, the shredded carcass of a roast cormorant before him. He was slicing a pomegranate with studied attention, the red flesh of the fruit lying in moist chunks on a silver plate. Johansen and Grenner bowed. It was ten seconds before he spoke.

'I was expecting General Hoffmann to come. Why has he not?'

Grenner cleared his throat. 'My lord, he sends apologies, but he is overseeing the security for this evening's dinner.'

Lord Udo snorted. 'As excuses go, it'll do. But I'm not impressed with your work. Very unprofessional. An assassin killed before he could be arrested, someone casting magic in the streets, and one of my father's favourite hunters is dead. Who's behind it?'

'Kislevites, sir,' said Grenner.

'Kislevites?' Lord Udo looked startled. Johansen worked hard to suppress a smile. He was glad Grenner was doing most of the talking; his own abilities as a liar weren't strong at the best of times.

'Yes, sir,' said Grenner. 'The modus operandi matches a group of Kislevite agents that we've been tracking. At least one of them was in the crowd at the north gate this morning. And everyone knows about Kislevite shamans.'

'But why would Kislev attack the Elector of Middenland? We don't even border Kislev.'

Grenner's face was blank, like a good soldier. 'Exactly, sir. They aim to destabilise the political hierarchy, not settle grudges. The Grand Duke has no links to Kislev, and that makes him an ideal target.'

'Kislevites.' Lord Udo sounded thoughtful. 'The crossbowman, you're sure he was a Kislevite? His weapons too? Crossbows aren't a regular Kislevite weapon.'

'Everything was too badly burnt to be identifiable, sir, but our Alchemics people are working on it.'

Lord Udo toyed with the glass goblet on the table. 'What are you doing to stop these… Kislevites?'

'Agents are watching their known safe-houses and equipment stores. Six of them are already in interrogation,' Grenner said. Johansen was impressed by the direct quality of the lie. 'Meanwhile we believe there may have been a leak of information from inside the elector's household. Tomorrow morning we'll begin interrogating everyone in his employ.'

Lord Udo took a mouthful from his goblet. Johansen noted how his loose sleeve conveniently shielded his expression for a second. The noble replaced the glass carefully on the table and asked, 'How long will that take?'

'Not long, my lord,' Grenner said. 'We're very efficient about these things.'

There was a pause. Johansen and Grenner waited. Lord Udo chewed a pomegranate seed. He seemed to be thinking.

'Tonight,' he said. 'Getting to the palace. What are the arrangements?'

'A secret, my lord. Only the people who need to know actually know.'

The table flew across the floor, crashing down, the goblet shattering, fruit and silverware clattering across the carpet. Lord Udo was on his feet, one fist clenched, Johansen did not move. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Grenner hadn't either.

'How dare you say I should not know about my father's safety?' the nobleman said, spitting each word across the room. 'Tell me the plan, you insolent arse, or I'll have the Palisades closed down tomorrow. My father's life is at risk.'

So far today we've saved your fat father's life twice, and I've taken a crossbow bolt for my pains, Johansen thought, and you're the reason why. 'As you wish, my lord,' he said softly. 'At seven bells the Grand Duke and his household will enter five carriages in the courtyard here. They will be escorted from here to the palace by Middenland soldiers, as well as Palisades riders with crossbows and agents on the stree—'

He paused; his wound had shot a bolt of pain across his chest. Motes of black swam across his vision. Lord Udo was looking at him strangely. He took a breath, held it a second, and resumed.

'Etiquette states the Grand Duke should be in the first coach. That makes it the obvious target, so it will be empty. The Grand Duke will be in the second coach, along with his nominated successor Duke Siegfried, and the rest of the family will follow in the usual order. Each carriage will have its curtains drawn, so nobody will be the wiser. Not even the coachmen will know which passengers they are carrying.'

Lord Udo sat back in his chair, holding his chin in his hand. The jewels on his rings gleamed in the candlelight.

'That sounds workable,' he said. 'And your secret plan, how many people know it?'

'Only the Palisades agents involved in the operation. And now you, my lord,' said Grenner.

'Who else? My father?'

'Nobody else, my lord.'

'Good,' Lord Udo said. 'That is enough, leave me. I must get ready for the dinner.' He turned away from them. Johansen and Grenner bowed and left.

The oak front door of the townhouse closed behind them. The sun was low over the rooftops and the street outside was filled with people on their way home.

'You think he swallowed it?' Johansen asked.

'He doesn't have to digest it all,' said Grenner. 'But if he thinks we're pinning the blame on Kislev instead of Tilea then he knows his uncle isn't going to take the fall for him. He knows he's got to act tonight, and we've given him the idea of blaming it on us. Let's hope he'll bite off more than he can chew.'

THE LONG SHADOWS of evening had darkened and melted into each other, and a few evening stars shone from the clouded sky. Below, the courtyard of the Grand Duke's townhouse was filled with carriages, horses and uniformed men. The workmen and servants had gone, leaving only a corridor of dark fabric between the house's main exit and the first of the carriages. Just inside the gate, an escort guard of Middenland soldiers waited.

Something was making Grenner's horse uncomfortable, and he leaned forward to pat its neck and adjust its blinkers. By the gate he saw Hoffmann and Johansen talking, their horses still. Even in the grey light he could see Johansen's face was pale and pained. Duty like this, even on horseback, was no place for an injured man.

He rode up to the two of them and saluted. The gesture felt odd, but this was a formal occasion and all protocol had to be observed. Hoffmann was in full uniform, his campaign medals spread proudly across it.

'Grenner. Good,' he said. 'How are the preparations?'

'Done, sir. The coachmen and servants are briefed, the family are waiting inside the house. Nobody will know who's riding in which carriage, not even the people inside them.'

'Nobody except us.' Hoffmann smiled slightly. 'Seven bells is about to sound. Give the signal.'

'Yes, sir.' He paused. 'We're putting an elector's life at risk, sir.'

'I know. But better we draw our man out now than let him try to slit the elector's throat in his bed tonight. Give the command.'

Grenner turned his horse and rode to the first carriage, the painted carvings on their ornate woodwork dull in the torchlight. He nodded to the driver, dismounted and walked through the cloth-walled passageway to the house door. He knocked twice and it swung open.

They were all there, standing in the anteroom beyond, glistening with silks, gold and jewels. The Grand Duke and his wife, Baron Siegfried and his wife and son, Lord Udo, Lord Sigismund and Lady Anna, Lord Helmut and Lady Margaret, with their attendants and servants. He snapped to attention.

'Your grace, my lords and ladies, the carriages are ready,' he said.

None of them looked at him. None of them acknowledged he was there. As Grenner turned smartly and walked back out to the courtyard he asked himself, not for the first time, why he cared.

THE CARRIAGES WERE loaded, their passengers concealed behind thick velvet curtains. The Middenland guards began to move forward, out into the street that led north to the Imperial palace. Grenner waited at the gate, signalling to each of the coach-drivers when it was their turn to move into position in the line. One started too early, following the one next to it, but he waved it back in time. If they lost the right order, they lost everything.

Outside, a thin crowd lined the route to the palace, held back by bored members of the city watch. Grenner found himself riding alongside the second carriage and deliberately slowed his horse, dropping back until he was next to Johansen.

'Are you all right?' he asked.

'I feel like hell. I shouldn't be here. I'll be useless if anything kicks off. And I wish it would - better than hanging around at the palace until these fat mosquitoes are ready to come home.'

'If something happens you can bet Hoffmann will have us making reports and interviewing witnesses until three bells tomorrow,' Grenner said.

'The old man's taking a hellish risk.'

'I know. If this goes wrong it's the end of the department. They'll hang Hoffmann. I'm worried that we've based all this on the word of the Untersuchung. Is their information good? Do you trust them?'

Johansen didn't reply. Then he groaned.

'I'm getting too old for this,' he said. 'Time to find a nice young widow who owns a pub, some tall strong blonde who's not too old, settle down…'

Grenner snorted. 'You're not thinking of that northern girl who owns the Black Goat? You wouldn't get an easy life with her. She'd keep you—'

Ahead of them, the second carriage exploded in a burst of white light and a wave of heat. Its body lifted three feet off the ground and hung for a second at the centre of a fierce bright world, until the shock wave slammed it down into the ground. A crashing roar blew past them, echoing off the buildings. Wood and metal whizzed through the air, ploughing into the walls and the crowd.

Grenner reined in his horse, turning its head away from the blast so it wouldn't be panicked. People were screaming and running around him, falling, blocking the street. The other carriages were trying to turn, to get away from the scene. He saw someone fall under the wheels, crushed. Horses were screeching and rearing. The wreckage blazed. Where debris landed, new fires were starting. People were burning, flailing as they died.

'Think fast!' Johansen yelled.

'They always attack from above!' Grenner shouted back. He stared up, looking for a figure silhouetted at a window or against the dark sky, but the after-images of the explosion were blinding him. He heard the thunk of Johansen firing his crossbow, glanced to see where it was pointed, followed the line, and caught a movement on the roof.

He dropped the reins, stood on the saddle and leaped for the front of the nearest building, grabbing its exposed corner-beam with both hands and climbing, hand over hand, grabbing ledges and windows, pulling himself up the wall. He'd done this enough times in the watch, chasing thieves and cat burglars, but never in full uniform. He could feel the heat of the fires on his back through the thick fabric.

Three storeys up he heaved himself over the eaves and looked round. The weird landscape of chimneys and tiled slopes was filled with dark shadows. Would the wizard have run, or be lying in ambush?

Grenner moved forward silently, trying to block out the sounds of panic and pain below, straining to hear anything ahead. There was a scraping of stone; a tile slipping, he guessed. He moved towards it, keeping low, climbing the inclines of the roofs. Then something exploded at his feet and he jumped back with a shout of shock. A roost of pigeons scrambled into the sky in front of him on noisy wings.

Something moved. His quarry knew he was there. Running footsteps headed south, towards the city's south gate. He followed, using chimney stacks for cover at the top of each roof, keeping to places where faint starlight let him see his footing.

There: a fleeing silhouette, robed, moving across the rooftops, not looking back. It was only thirty paces away. Grenner drew his dagger from its shoulder-sheath and moved ahead. They were getting close to the city wall; soon the wizard would have nowhere to run. Keeping the figure in view, he crouched as low as he could and moved forward.

The robed figure reached the edge of the last house. Ahead, across a wide street, was the Altdorf city wall, bright with torchlight from its watch-towers. The wizard stopped and looked back, and Grenner saw her face for the first time. She was younger than he'd expected. A strong face, handsome, not beautiful. Long, dark hair in a braid. She looked frightened.

Grenner stood, his knife in his hand, ready to throw. For a moment neither of them moved or spoke. Then she lifted her hands, almost as if in supplication. She was saying something, but he couldn't make out the words. He moved toward her slowly.

She was casting a spell.

Grenner threw himself back, behind a chimney stack, away from the blast. When, after a second it had not come, he looked up. Her arms were spread like a bird and as he watched she lifted a foot into the air.

Grenner thought for an instant about the exploding carriage, the stampeding horse, Lord Udo, the Untersuchung, Johansen burnt and bleeding, and he flung his knife. It flashed through the air, missed her, struck the stone wall and fell. The wizard hung in the night for a second, then soared across the street and up, over the wall, out into the darkness beyond the city.

He walked to the edge of the roof and began to climb down, slowly, like a man who is thinking of other things.

JOHANSEN AND HOFFMANN were waiting on their horses on the street below.

'You threw a knife at her,' Hoffmann said.

'I aimed to miss,' Grenner said. It was a lie.

'The Untersuchung will be happy she got away.'

There was a pause.

'The authorities are going to need a good explanation,' said Johansen.

'Leave that to me. When the Grand Duke hears that Lord Udo was the only person who had been told he would be in the carriage that was targeted, he should understand.'

'The Grand Duke's safe?' Grenner asked.

'Yes, and his brother. They were in the last carriage, as we planned.'

'How's he going to take the news that his son was in the carriage that exploded?'

'A tragic error by the coachman,' said Hoffmann. 'Lord Udo will have a grand funeral, and there will be no trial for treason and attempted patricide to embarrass the von Bildhofen family. The wizard will not be mentioned. The Grand Duke knows how these things work.'

'What happens to the coachman?'

'He died in the explosion, of course.'

There was another pause. Grenner swung himself up into the saddle. 'It's been a long day,' he said, 'and I need a drink.'

'Have it at the Palisades. Johansen needs rest. And I've got a nice quiet job for the two of you tomorrow.'

'What is it?'

'Finding those Kislevites and making people believe they were behind this.'

Grenner groaned. 'More bloody donkey work.'

'No rest for the wicked,' said Johansen.

Hoffmann smiled. 'Except Lord Udo.'

Grenner was silent for a moment, thinking. 'With your permission, sir,' he said. 'I'd prefer to drink alone this evening.'

'Very well.' They rode north, back towards the Palisades. Grenner watched them go, noticing that their route would take them past the burning carriage. Then he turned and walked towards the river, and a quiet tavern he knew where he could be alone with a bottle of Estalian wine and his thoughts.

THE NAGENHOF BELL

Jonathan Green

THUNDER ROLLED OVER the sleeping market town of Nagenhof, like the grumbling of angry giants. Under the roiling storm clouds the night was as black as the raven of Morr, god of death, himself. The wind, howling like a banshee, whipped around the rooftops and along the main street to the forbidding edifice at its end. The church of Morr appeared to be even blacker than the night shrouding it: black as the eternal night of oblivion. Above the gaping, open doors of the sanctuary the bell-tower loomed over the town like the ruler of the underworld himself surveying the harvest of souls he would inevitably reap. The doors were open even at this time of night and in such weather: the doors to the church of Morr were always open, just as the portal to Morr's kingdom was always open. The dark, brooding structure, with its one hundred-foot tall bell-tower, was taller by far than any other building in all Nagenhof.

Heavy raindrops beat a tattoo on the slates of the church roof and a wailing squall blew rain and leaves under the eaves of the belfry. The three figures labouring there blinked the rain from their eyes and continued to struggle with rope gripped in their straining clutches. With each heave the great bell suspended from it rose closer to its final resting-place.

The first man had a dark complexion, and a week's growth of stubble, while the second was taller with a gangling frame. Both gave the appearance of being people who weren't inclined to ask too many questions, if the money was right. The third was as hunched and deformed as sin itself but his hideous appearance did nothing to belie the obvious strength of his great twisted frame.

Accompanied by a cry of, 'Ho!' the rain-slicked rope slipped in the swarthy man's grasp and the great bronze bell dropped back several feet. Feeling the weight of the bell pull suddenly on his tired arms he let go of the rope altogether. His companion stumbled towards the square hole in the belfry floor before doing the same. The hulking hunchback was left holding the great bell on his own. With a growling roar, muscles corded beneath his skin, he hauled on the rope. The bell's descent was halted with a jerk, causing the clapper to swing against the side of the bell. It struck the dull greening bronze with a dull clang! The two men gagged as a sickening wave of nausea swept over them.

Otto the hunchback glowered at the two rogues with his good right eye. The eye bulged, as if barely contained in its socket, while the lid over the left one remained tightly shut. 'Take the rope!' Otto growled through clenched teeth, his face reddening. His speech was distorted by a mouth as malformed as the rest of his body. Hastily the rogues grabbed hold of the rope again and this time didn't let go until the bell was secured in position at the top of the belfry.

Transfixed, Otto gazed in wonder at the great, cracked, bronze bell suspended before him. The metal it had been cast from glittered with tiny, black-green, crystalline particles. A number of incomprehensible jagged runes adorned the strange artefact. Perhaps they were part of the original casting, perhaps they had been etched on afterwards; it was impossible to tell. It was a work of perverse beauty and insane craftsmanship. He was shaken from his awed reverie by a cough from the swarthy man. 'What?' he asked gruffly.

'Our payment?' the rogue reminded him. 'You said the old priest had a stack of money hidden away. A fortune taken from the collection plate, you said.'

'Yeah, and we want our share of it,' the taller man added.

'Ah yes,' Otto said, suddenly adjusting his manner. 'I have it here,' he added, reaching inside the sackcloth bag tied at his belt.

The swarthy man moved forward in greedy anticipation. 'Yes, here it is,' Otto spluttered and thrust his hand into the rogue's stomach. The man gasped and staggered backwards, the bloodied dagger in Otto's hand slipping free of his victim's doublet.

The rogue fell to his knees, hands pressed to the fatal wound. His companion saw the hunchback's blade and started to back away nervously, glancing from side-to-side, trying to locate the staircase that descended to the nave of the church below. Otto capered towards the tall man, keeping his bulk between the hole in the belfry floor and his quarry, guarding the only escape route. The first man slumped to the belfry floor with a gurgling moan and then was silent.

With a bellow the hunchback lunged. The panicked man sidestepped agilely and struck Otto's arm a double-fisted blow, sending the dagger clattering to the floor. Not waiting to see what his companion's killer would do next the gangling rogue launched himself across the belfry.

Before he had gone two yards a long arm swung round and clubbed him across the back of the head. The blow sent the man reeling. Barely able to keep his balance he stumbled closer to the bell and the gaping hole beneath it. With a bound Otto was behind him. A hand like a sexton's spade slammed the man's face into the side of the bell. There was a crack as the man's nose broke followed closely by a dull bong! The rogue's eyes rolled up into his head as he blacked out. Like a puppet whose strings have just been cut, the man collapsed. His body slumped forward over the hole and, with nothing to support it, plummeted into the darkness below.

The deformed features of his face taking on an expression of grim purpose, Otto took the bell-rope that hung from the bell's flywheel and began to pull on it rhythmically and solemnly. The cracked bell began to ring, discordant peals tolling out over the sleeping town. Exactly as he did after every death in Nagenhof: as he did for every funeral.

It would not be long now before others came to him, creatures as deformed and twisted in the eyes of men as he was. Fellows who would welcome him into their pack and hail him as a hero for what he was about to do. There was no going back now. The summoning had begun.

'COME ON, DIETRICH,' the raven-haired Kislevite was saying. 'It'll be just like old times.'

The innkeeper pulled the pewter tankard he was polishing off the end of the metal hook that stood in place of his right hand and waved it in front of the mercenary. 'With this? I don't think so. It's because of this that I got out of the soldiering game.'

'Ah, come on now,' the mercenary responded. 'I'll wager you're as good with that as you ever were with a sword.'

'Well…' Dietrich considered, admiring the hook as if it were a finely honed Kislevite sabre rather than a replacement for his lost hand.

'And by the looks of you, you haven't gone to fat over the last ten years running this place, so I expect an old warrior like you has kept himself fit by training in the yard out back.' The Kislevite paused to stroke his neatly trimmed black beard and grinned. 'I've seen the notches in that old bear-baiting post. If they weren't made by a sword blade then I'm Baba Yaga's grandmother! Am I right or am I right?'

'I have to do something to while away the lonely hours before opening time,' Dietrich admitted with a laugh and picked up another tankard that needed polishing.

'We need you, Dietrich, now old Alexi's gone and Krakov's left us. And let's face it, if you're stuck out here in this backwater mooning over serving wenches then you need us too!' At that moment a buxom, sprightly young woman brushed past Torben with a tray of empty tankards and gave him a flirtatious smile. 'Mind you, I wouldn't mind mooning over a few of these wenches myself… but that's beside the point. You think about it for a minute or two and then let me know your decision.' And with that the tall mercenary strode somewhat unsteadily back across the bar to join his equally hard-bitten-looking companions seated around a table on the other side of the room.

Absent-mindedly rubbing the surface layer of the tankard, as if trying to remove the pewter itself, Dietrich Hassner considered the bear-cloaked mercenary band noisily enjoying their evening's ale. He knew Torben Badenov from his soldiering days and a more boastful, hard-drinking, gambler, accomplished swordsman and incorrigible womaniser Dietrich had yet to meet, and he had served in some of the roughest armies ever mustered in all the Empire. He knew Torben's weaselly companion Oran Scarfen from his days of active duty as well, and had lost a fair few wagers to the devious man's swindling sleight-of-hand.

The last he recognised was the young, mop-haired Yuri Gorsk, although he knew how much the youth hated being reminded of fhe fact that he had been the youngest in their regiment. Of course that was years ago now, but the tag seemed to have stuck, maybe because of Yuri's petulant nature and lack of confidence. He needed the support and leadership of Torben and the others to convince him that he was as able as the others. He always had, although he was perfectly capable of handling himself on the battlefield.

Dietrich had known Alexi of Nuln as well, of course. The old soldier had been serving in the armies of the Empire before Dietrich was out of swaddling clothes, but now he was gone, slaughtered by a Chaos-thing, Torben had said, although on that subject even the normally ebullient mercenary captain had been unusually reticent.

The other two he'd met for the first time when Torben strode into the Hand of Glory that very afternoon, Dietrich having not seen the Kislevite for over a decade. The bear-like giant called Stanislav Hagar was reputed to have the strength of an ox and Dietrich could well believe it after the handshake he received on being introduced to the smiling, erstwhile trapper. The second was a sullen individual dressed in the garb of a nobleman soldier and carrying an old, as well as valuable-looking, blade, scabbarded at his waist. When just Dietrich and Torben had been talking, the latter had told him that the sombre young man was Pieter Valburg, only son of the mayor of Schwertdorf, who had given up everything to avenge the death of his sweetheart at the hands of some degenerate count of Stirland. The nobleman was sitting apart from the rest of Badenov's band at a stall of his own, hunched over something that he appeared to be reading.

They had enjoyed many good times together, he, Torben and the rest, back when they were foot soldiers in the Tzar's army, as well as many terrifying ones, and he was sure that they would again if he were to join Badenov's band. Torben could be very persuasive - Dietrich was reminded of that hilarious night in Talabheim - and to say he wasn't tempted would be a lie. But something in him now yearned for the peaceful existence he had as innkeeper of the Hand of Glory in Nagenhof.

Drawing a tankard of Wergig's Old Peculiar from a barrel behind the bar Dietrich walked over to Torben's table. He pulling up a stole and sat down amid raucous cheers from the inebriated mercenaries.

'You see, Torben, old friend,' he began, 'it's like this…'

IN THE SILENT stillness of the church of Morr the snip of the hand-shears hung in the cold night air of the nave as the black-cowled priest went about the business of trimming the candles. Another candelabra seen to, the white-haired, stooping Father Ludwik shuffled on to the next.

Hearing a pattering on the flagstoned floor behind him the old man looked round to see a large, black rat scamper across the central aisle of the nave and disappear between the battered oak pews. Father Ludwik cursed in a most unpriestly manner and then made the holy sign of Morr in obeisance. There hadn't even been any rats in the crypt, let alone the church, when he had left to tend to the dying Farmer Hackett in the out-lying hamlet of Weiler four days ago.

How could the boy let things get so out of hand in such a short time? Ludwik had returned that afternoon to find none of the candle-wicks trimmed, leaves blown in by the storm piled in drifts around the pews, rather than disposed of, and no sign of Otto.

It was Otto's job to keep the rats down; it never pleased the bereaved to see that the recently departed had been given the once over by vermin.

He obviously needed to teach the boy a lesson and his lessons were never learnt better than when they were accompanied by a good beating.

'Beat the evil out of you,' the old man used to say, when he wasn't so old and his birching arm wasn't so frail.

The priest was roused from his musings by the scratching of claws on the tiles of the chancel. 'When I find that hunchbacked scoundrel…' he muttered to himself. Putting down the hand-shears, and picking up his lamp, he hurriedly made his way towards the darkened sanctuary, his sandals flapping on the cold flagstones. Despite himself, Father Ludwik was intrigued. He had never seen such a large rat in all his life: lithe and black, more like a dog than a rat really. If there were ones that big roaming the building maybe the church of Morr had a bigger rat problem than he had at first thought, and all thanks to Otto's negligence.

Would that boy never learn? Ludwik would have thought that the half-deaf hunchback would have been grateful for all he'd done for him and repay the priest's kindness rather than let the place go to the rats. Especially because… Ludwik halted that particular train of thought.

He could have let the hunchback die like his gypsy-whore of a mother. Morr had seen fit that the witch passed on into his dark domain and perhaps he had planned that her deformed offspring should go with her. But Ludwik had decided to intervene. Had it been out of pity for the mewling infant? Had it been out of a sense of moral obligation? Or was it simply because…

No, that wasn't why! Morr had wanted the child brought up in his service. Why else would the witch have come to the church that night, all those years ago, if not because Morr had guided her there? It was Morr who had directed him to open the door and let her in. And as the gypsy girl - she really had been no more than a girl - lay bleeding to death in the priest's own cot it was Morr, his master, who had made him take the child in his arms. But still sometimes he wondered why.

The boy and his deformity were a penance that the old priest simply had to bear, a daily reminder of past sins. How long would it be before Morr saw fit that they should be absolved?

Father Ludwik stirred from his musings to find that he had followed the rat to the door to the crypt. The creature squeezed its long, bristly body under the door, its worm-like tail disappearing in a trice. Placing a hand on the door's handle he paused, realising that his heart was pounding. What was he afraid of? Was it because he had been reminiscing about the past? Was it because there had been no sign of Otto since he had returned from Weiler? What did he really expect to find in the crypt? Turning the handle Father Ludwik pushed the door open.

Whatever he had expected to see there it certainly wasn't this! The crypt had gained two occupants since he had left to tend to Farmer Hackett. The bodies of two men - or at least what was left of them - lay dumped on the stone preparation table.

Climbing over the corpses, nuzzling their bloodstained whiskers into the soft parts of the cadavers or gnawing at exposed bones, were dozens upon dozens of disgusting, scabrous vermin.

The rats filled the chamber and a few screeched as the lamplight shone in their eyes. In the flickering illumination Ludwik could see that it was unlikely the two men had met their deaths naturally: his training in the ways of Morr had furnished him with an almost macabre knowledge of pathology and human anatomy. One, what was left of his features displaying a swarthy complexion, appeared to have been crudely gutted, judging by the cut to his belly, although the rats had made short work of his intestines so it was hard to be sure. Over this cadaver had been deposited the body of a taller, long-limbed man. His neck and left leg were twisted at unnatural angles suggesting that he had died in a fall. But what horrified Ludwik more than the arrival of the bodies was what was what had been taken away from the crypt.

At that instant the church bell started to toll and the rats began squeaking in raucous excitement. This wasn't the clear reassuring chime of Morr's bell, informing the townsfolk that one of their number was making their way to the underworld. This sound was more like a cold clanging, rife with discordant harmonics that set Ludwik's teeth on edge, as if the bell were cracked. The ominous tolling chilled Ludwik to the bone, as if it were his own death-knell. Then he remembered. Three nights ago - the night of the storm - he had heard the distant discordant pealing and that night Hackett had slipped into a coma from which he never recovered. At the time Ludwik had no idea that the sound he had heard had come from the bell-tower of his own church but he did know he hadn't slept well that night.

Otto! he thought and bustled out of the crypt towards the other end of the church.

With one hand on the banister of the creaking wooden staircase, Ludwik began to climb the bell-tower. It had been a long time since the old priest had made the ascent; he left it to the boy these days. After all that was one of the hunchback's jobs about the place, that and the fact that the tower was a hundred feet tall. The higher Ludwik climbed the more his aching, ageing joints protested. He stopped to catch his breath halfway up the tower. He had to reach the belfry and command Otto to stop. Then the hunchback could expect the beating of his life. No matter how frail Ludwik might be now, righteous fury would lend him the strength to chastise Otto and teach him the folly of his ways.

With every step his lungs heaved, his heart strained against his ribcage. The closer he came to the top of the tower and the tolling bell, a tightening nausea gripped his stomach. At last, puffing and panting, Father Ludwik stepped onto the wooden floor of the belfry. Opposite him, pulling down on the bell-rope with the rhythm of a failing heartbeat was the hunchback.

'Otto!' the priest gasped. 'What are you doing?'

Then Ludwik's eyes fell on the bell itself. It was as he had feared. In the gloom of the belfry he could still make out the cracked, bronze bell suspended from the oak frame. With each pull of the rope, the clapper rung the hideous artefact and it seemed to Ludwik that the claw-like scratches that formed the runes on its surface glowed with a faint green luminescence.

'Ah, father,' Otto slobbered, his malformed vocal chords distorting the words, 'you're back.'

'Yes, I'm back,' snarled Ludwik, 'and I want to know what's going on!'

Something resembling a smile twisted the hunchback's lips. 'I've been busy since you went away, father!' The bell-ringer almost spat the last word.

'You certainly have, you demented oaf!' the priest shouted over the tolling of the bell. 'Can you explain to me why this accursed thing's hanging here and why there are two dead bodies in the crypt?'

'This is the church of Morr,' Otto retorted.

'Why you impudent wretch!' Ludwik roared, raising his arm as if to strike the hunchback. It was all that was needed to send the maniac bell-ringer over the edge.

Otto loped over to the priest and with a backhanded swipe sent the old man flying across the belfry. Ludwik crashed to the floor in a corner, cracking his head on the stone wall.

'I've been doing a lot of thinking lately,' Otto said as the bell continued to swing unaided behind him. 'About why you took me in.'

'I've told you before,' Ludwik said in angry shock, rubbing the back of his head. 'You were a foundling. Your mother was a gypsy. She died giving birth to you, in this very church. It was Morr's will that I take you in.'

'And why did my mother come here, to the temple of the god of death?' The hunchback was getting closer and closer. 'Why didn't she go to the priestesses of Shallya, in her time of need? Why come to a church of Morr and its lone priest, unused to the ways of women and healing? Why, unless she blamed you?'

Ludwik felt his blood run cold. How could the boy know? Who could have told him? Only Ludwik and the boy's mother knew the truth, and she was dead and he hadn't told anyone.

'I've called you father all these years and I never knew,' Otto said, tears born of rage, pain and a deep sadness running down his face.

Suddenly Ludwik found that he couldn't keep it a secret any longer - there was no point - and the words poured out of him in a torrent: 'She tempted me. She was a follower of the Ruinous Powers. She was a gypsy! She used her dark powers to seduce me.'

'My mother was a follower of Chaos? Really?'

'Well look at yourself! She must have been to produce such deformed offspring as you!'

'More lies! More excuses!' the hunchback cried in misery and frustration. 'If my deformity is a reflection of a parent's black heart then it's yours, old man!' Otto was standing over him now and to his horror Ludwik realised that he was shaking.

'You never really wanted me!' Otto howled. 'I was just an unpleasant reminder of your moment of weakness! All the beatings, all the abuse I suffered at your hands. You said it was to educate me! Well you're about to reap what you've sown!'

There was no way for Ludwik to escape. Grabbing the priest's habit, the hunchback lifted him up in his arms and carried him with purposeful steps towards the arched window of the belfry.

'It wasn't really me you were punishing every time you brought the birch down across my twisted spine. You were punishing yourself for siring me!' Ludwik found he had no words as Otto raised him above his head before the arched opening. 'Well I don't need you anymore. There are others coming who will understand me, welcome me into their family, like you never did. Goodbye, father.'

There was a sudden heave and then only air beneath the old priest's body. As he spiralled down towards the ground, the wind rushing in his ears, Father Ludwik could see Otto, the hunchback's ugly face now an expressionless mask, watching him fall. And above him, spread wide over the pinnacle of the bell-tower, the black wings of Morr's great raven unfurled across the night sky.

'WHAT'S THAT INFERNAL noise?' Oran Scarfen asked grumpily as the harsh knelling of the church bell continued.

'It's starting to grate on my nerves,' said Yuri Gorsk, looking to the mercenary band's leader for guidance.

'What time is it?' Torben Badenov asked their host.

'It's not yet the hour of ten,' Dietrich said looking at the peeling face of the clock above the blazing fireplace.

'Then what's your bell-ringer playing at?' Oran went on. 'Is he mad?'

'Quite possibly,' said Pieter Valburg darkly joining his companions at their table. 'That sounds like no ordinary bell.'

'You're telling me,' Dietrich said. 'The church of Morr's only got a small bell. That tolling sounds like it's coming from something much larger.' The innkeeper suddenly froze as a terrible possibility made itself plain to him. 'Oh it couldn't be,' he uttered in a hushed whisper.

'What?' Torben demanded suddenly sober and serious.

'Well, it's just that ten years ago, during the Battle of Nagenhof, the skaven used a war machine we nicknamed the Screaming Bell against the town. I remember watching from the gate defences as giant rats hauled it into position. A monstrous contraption it was, a gigantic bell suspended from a frame bearing all manner of other bells, carried on a great-wheeled carriage. When the Screaming Bell was struck the town walls shook and men's ears bled.'

'I've read of such things,' Pieter said, cryptically.

'When I was fighting in Liotta's Legion in Tilea, at the Liberation of Sileno, around the campfires the talk was rife with tales of the skaven war machines,' Torben added.

'Well after the battle, when the day was won, the war machine was destroyed but one of the smaller bells from the carriage was saved and put in the church crypt, as a reminder of the town's victory over the ratmen.'

'And you think that same bell is the one we can now hear being rung,' Pieter deduced.

'Exactly. Thinking about it, the bell also rang during the storm three nights ago. It sounded a little strange then, only you couldn't be sure over the noise of the thunder, the wind and the rain.'

'But why would anyone want to ring a skaven bell? Who knows what effect it might have?' reasoned the anxious Yuri.

'Well we're not going to find out sitting around here,' the massive Stanislav said, slamming his drained tankard down hard on the table.

'He's right,' Torben said, rising from his seat.

Their curiosity piqued, the rest of Badenov's band followed suit and, accompanied by Dietrich, walked out of the Hand of Glory into the moonlit street. Other inhabitants of the town had also come out of their houses, men, women and children, some dressed for bed, all gazing towards the brooding church at the end of the street.

'Will you look at that?' Oran said alerting the mercenaries to what was happening at their feet.

'Relatives of yours, Oran?' Torben asked as he watched the rats emerging from the inn behind them. The rodent-faced mercenary scowled. 'Looks like you've got a bit of a rat problem,' Torben said, turning to Dietrich.

'Again!' the innkeeper added, skewering one of the vile rodents on the end of his hook as it tried to scamper between his legs.

'They're all over the place!' Yuri stated in a tone of morbid fascination.

It seemed that every cellar and drain in Nagenhof was spewing forth its verminous inhabitants. No matter where they emerged from, all the rats were heading in the direction of the church and the source of the infernal tolling. The mercenaries watched incredulously, as the rats swarmed unhindered towards the tower. The bell continued to ring.

'If it's calling the rats to the church, imagine what else it could be summoning to the town,' Pieter stated coldly.

'Who'd do such a thing?' Torben asked Dietrich.

'Well there are only two of them in the church: Father Ludwik, the priest, and the hunchback.'

'Hunchback?' Pieter asked, animatedly.

'Yes. Otto, the bell-ringer,' Dietrich explained. 'Only people don't normally see too much of him. Ugly as an orc, that one, and as twisted of form as any Chaos spawn.'

'Really? A mutant…' Pieter mused, gazing towards the church and the black finger of its bell-tower.

'Well, it looks like it's up to us to get to the bottom of this,' Torben said with a rueful grin, as he watched the increasingly agitated townsfolk retreating to the safety of their homes, as the plague of rats grew with no sign of abating.

The excited rush of adrenaline racing through his veins, Torben Badenov led his men at a run towards the church. Dietrich disappeared into the Hand of Glory behind them, only to return moments later with his trusty sword gripped in his left hand.

Just like old times, Torben thought and smiled.

THEY HAD COME in their ones and twos at first, emerging from refuse piles, crawling from hidden nests, and squeezing under cellar doors. Then by the dozen, scampering from the drains and sewers of the old town. At first only a stream of bristling, black bodies wound towards the church of Morr. Then the stream became a torrent of chittering rodents. Cats hissed and dogs barked but all moved out of the way of the growing swarm.

Soon the ever-increasing crush of bodies was like a tide surging through the streets, a seething mass of hairy bodies, naked pink tails, malevolently glinting jaundiced eyes and biting incisors. Some were brown-furred creatures grown fat on the contents of the town's grain stores. Others were sleek and black, their fur wet and spiked from swimming in the sewer channels. Here and there monsters moved among the pack, snarling and snapping at the smaller animals.

But whatever their shape, size or standing within the swarm, all of them moved with a singularity of purpose, worming their way towards the looming church, drawn by the discordant, yet hypnotic, infernal tolling of the great bronze bell.

BENEATH THE STREETS of Nagenhof the sewers wound like some hideously proportioned worm, linking every home, shop, tavern and municipal building with every other. From here an enemy could attack the town from practically any point, or even every point, effectively besieging Nagenhof from underneath. It was rumoured that the old sewer network even connected with some of the catacombs under the church of Morr, constructed long ago by the first people who settled here. Over time, through subsidence and a slapdash attitude to public health, brickwork had collapsed, tunnel floors had caved in and the tunnels had been joined together into an extensive warren of effluent channels and charnel-tunnels. It had only been a matter of time before the industrious and ever-burrowing skaven had found a way in.

The town watch had long ago been relieved of sewer duty - scouring the labyrinthine tunnels under the town for sight, sound or spoor of the skaven. The mayor and councillors of Nagenhof had become contented and complacent, growing fat on the profits of sheep-rearing and arable farming. It had taken them only ten years to forget how easily the ratmen had almost brought the town to its knees once before. Three generations had been more than enough time for the skaven to retreat to their warrens, breed and increase their numbers, ready to try again.

Warm furry bodies surging past him, as the ratmen of Clan Moulder urged their beasts forwards with spiked whips, Nikkit Skar's upper lip curled back and the packmaster smiled. His hastily organised plan was coming to fruition. Only a matter of days before the keen ears of Clan Moulder's spies had heard the deathly tolling of the bell as it rolled over the desolate moorland south-east of the town of Ostermark, the shuddering peals even reverberating through the earth into the skaven tunnels. The spies had informed their masters at the breeding burrows of Warpnest and an expeditionary force had been quickly mustered to retrieve the bell and assess the strength of the man-things' defences.

The skaven scratched distractedly at its ear and its claws found a tick nestled among the bristles, grown fat on Nikkit Skar's warpstone-infused blood. The skaven pulled the parasite's mashing mandibles free of his skin and popped it into his mouth. The tick burst with a satisfying pop as he pressed it against the roof of his mouth with his tongue and he chewed slowly on its fleshy remains.

Behind the mass of rats still swarming around the sewer Skar was aware of another looming, shadowy presence. Almost three times as tall as the tallest clanrat warrior, its barrel chest so broad that it could barely fit within the confines of the brick tunnel, the beast snorted impatiently. As the way before it gradually cleared the monster knuckled forward, its long arms of corded muscle dragging through the effluent stream of the sewer.

The obsequious Killeye fixed the packmaster with his one glowing red eye - the other a scarred milky orb - and snickered.

'Skullcruncher wants to kill-kill. Hungers to taste flesh of man-things.'

The packmaster considered his snivelling underling and swallowed the last of the tick.

'Time it is, yes, yes,' Skar agreed. 'Lead Skullcruncher to the man-things' corpse-nest.' The skaven's lip curled back still further, 'Then the bell with be ours, ours!'

TORBEN SKIDDED TO a halt in front of the gaping portal of the church. The old priest's broken body, his black robes spread out around him like a death-shroud, lay on the ground at the foot of the bell-tower. The dead man's glazed eyes stared up at the heavens, a rictus of horror forever inscribed upon his features.

The ghastly pealing echoed from the walls of the buildings that lined the square in which the church of Morr stood, every knell jarring the teeth in Torben's head. He was having to make a conscious effort to keep his gorge from rising.

'I guess that narrows down our suspects to one,' Torben said to the others who had assembled around him. From their expressions of discomfort it looked as if the bell was having a malign influence on all of them. The broad, open doorway of the church, with its heavy lintel-stone, seemed to beckon the mercenaries into the darkened building.

'Has anyone got a lantern?' Torben asked and a lantern was produced. Once it was lit the mercenary captain advanced through the pillared portal of Morr's temple. His booted footsteps rang from the flagstones of the nave. He paused and glanced back over his shoulder to make sure that he wasn't alone. The rest of his party were congregated around the open doorway apart from Dietrich who had followed him into the along the central aisle.

Holding the lantern high above his head Torben looked towards the apse of the church. A thousand pair of jaundiced eyes reflected the yellow light of his lantern back at him. There were rats everywhere, clambering over the pews, gnawing on black drapes, eating the wax of the candles and defecating on the altar cloth. The reek of the rodents' urine and faeces made him grimace.

Torben could almost believe that the rats were defiling Morr's temple in order to rededicate it to another, altogether less human, deity. A hollow booming resonated around the columns and walls of the church and Torben swallowed hard as he tasted bile in the back of his mouth.

'Right, this is what we're going to do,' he said to the malingering mercenaries. 'We need to— Pieter! Where are you going?'

The young nobleman halted in his ascent of the staircase off the end of the nave that led to the belfry above them. 'To stop the source of the problem!'

'But we need to deal with the rats here!'

'We need to stop the bell ringing!' Pieter argued.

'Look, who's the leader of this outfit?' Torben shouted angrily above the discordant tolling.

Pieter said nothing and resumed his ascent of the tower.

'By Boris Ursa's beard!' Torben cursed, striding back towards his companions.

'Look, old friend!' Dietrich called to Torben, pointing to somewhere behind the mercenary captain.

Looking back, his eyes straining as he peered into the shadows at the far end of the church, Torben could see crouching, heavily built humanoid figures creeping through the gloom, their pointed snouts belying their heritage. 'Skaven!' he hissed under his breath. The creatures were entering the church through an iron-studded door, which he took to be the way to the crypt. He guessed that some of the older crypts joined up with the town's sewers or hidden skaven tunnels from the time when Nagenhof was besieged by the ratmen ten years ago. There was no time to lose: they would have to go with his original plan. Abandoning any pretensions of stealth Torben rapidly rejoined the others.

'We need to trap them in here,' the raven-haired Kislevite told the mercenaries. 'If the skaven leave the church the good people of Nagenhof could find themselves with the kind of vermin infestation rat-catchers only dream about! If we can defeat them while they're contained we'll probably be able to repel the assault outright. From my experiences in Tilea, if the ratmen think the odds are stacked against them they'll turn tail and run.'

'What do you want us to do?' Stanislav asked.

'You, Oran and Yuri get out and stay out,' Torben ordered. 'Barricade us in and set fire to the temple. Use whatever you can to get a good blaze going.'

'Are you insane?' Oran blurted out. 'Trap you in here with them and then set fire to a temple of Morr?'

Torben flashed his weaselly friend a toothy grin. 'Since when has a little arson troubled your conscience? Dietrich and I will make sure the skaven don't break out before the fire gets going. Are you with me old friend?' he said, turning to the hook-handed old soldier.

'You need to ask?' came Dietrich's curt reply. 'I helped stop these vermin from overrunning Nagenhof ten years ago and I'll stop them again!'

'How will you get out?' Yuri demanded.

'Oh, I'm sure I'll think of something,' Torben joked, trying to make light of the situation. 'I usually do.'

'Come on, lad,' Stanislav said, guiding the younger man towards the door with a ham-sized hand. 'He knows what he's doing.'

As Torben unsheathed his sword and Dietrich uttered a hasty prayer to whatever god might be listening, for the first time in a long time the doors to the church of Morr slammed shut. Then, in a squeaking frenzy, the rats were upon them.

'COME ON, YOU slovenly curs!' Oran was shouting. 'Anybody'd think you didn't want to save your stinking town!'

The small crowd of townspeople, who had found the courage to follow the mercenaries towards the church backed away from the ranting, gap-toothed weasel of a man muttering to each other in disapproval.

'You're mad!' someone shouted from the back of the crowd. 'You expect us to help you burn down the church?'

'Mad am I? Come here and say that,' Oran said, dagger in hand and fury blazing in his eyes. 'You ungrateful bastards! We should leave you to the rats!'

'I don't think this approach is working,' Stanislav said calmly, putting a strong hand on his wiry companion's shoulder. 'Yuri, do you want to try?'

The younger mercenary looked at the gentle giant uncomfortably from under his straggly fringe and took a step back, 'No, no. They wouldn't listen to me.' Yuri shuffled from one foot to the other looking at the ground. 'You try, Stanislav. You're better at that sort of thing than me. Your words will carry more weight with them than mine.'

'Very well,' said the big, bearded man and took a step towards the townspeople with his arms outstretched in a gesture of openness. 'Friends, the truth is we need your help. As we speak Dietrich and our companions are trapped inside the church holding off a dire threat to the safety of your town. How many of you share a drink and a friendly word with Dietrich at the Hand of Glory on a regular basis?' A couple of cautious hands went up among the crowd. 'And how many of you were born here and grew up here?' Several more hands went up. 'Dietrich's been here a fair few years less than you, yet he considers Nagenhof his home and he's prepared to fight to the death to protect it.'

Stanislav paused. The people were discussing the situation anew amongst themselves.

'Go on,' said a grimy-faced man wearing a blacksmith's apron.

'Well if this place means so much to a retired soldier who's only lived here for the last decade think how much it should mean to you whose grandfathers grew up here, you whose families owe their livelihoods to this town. You whose children will inherit the legacy of this night, whatever the outcome may be.'

There were nods of agreement at the truth of Stanislav's words.

'I'm sure there isn't a single one of you here who doesn't remember the events of ten years ago or who hasn't heard the stories of what happened the last time the ratmen attacked this town,' he went on. 'I'll wager there wasn't a single person here whose life wasn't affected by the events of that dark time, not one family who didn't lose a loved one to the skaven assault.'

The crowd's agreement was becoming more vocal now.

'They fought and died for their homes, so are you now going to let their sacrifice come to nought by letting the rats take Nagenhof now, when we still have the advantage?'

'No!' came the cry from a chorus of voices.

'Then help us now and save your town!' Stanislav urged and a cheer went up from the crowd. The gentle giant allowed himself a smile. Where Oran's abrasive manner had found only resistance and recalcitrance, Stanislav's encouraging words had resulted in enthusiastic compliance.

'Right, that's more like it!' Oran scowled, challenging the townsfolk once more. 'We need faggots of wood, pitch… anything that'll burn. And hurry up about it, you spineless sons of bitches!'

Stanislav looked to the retiring Yuri and raised his eyebrows in exasperation as Oran chided the people of Nagenhof into reluctant action.

PIETER STEPPED ONTO the belfry floor and looked up at the skaven bell in horrified wonder. The tolling had sounded loud enough to shake the mortar from the stones of the church, as Pieter had ascended the tower, but in the belfry the cacophonous booming made it feel as if his eardrums would burst at any moment. As the cracked, bronze bell swung slowly to and fro, with each strike of the clapper the feral runes etched around the rim pulsed with a sick green light. Without a doubt there was evil magic at work here.

Too late he realised something was wrong - there was no one pulling on the bell-rope, the bell was swinging under its own momentum. The belfry appeared to be deserted. Before he could turn his head fully to look behind him there was a blur of movement at the periphery of his vision and something hard and heavy connected with the back of his skull, knocking him unconscious instantly.

TORBEN'S HEAVY KISLEVITE sabre dropped down across the back of the leaping rat, slicing the wolfhound-sized creature cleanly in two. As the monster fell to the flagstoned floor, its guts spilling around the mercenary's feet, another beast came at him with snapping jaws. A deft twist of his wrist drove the tip of his descending blade into the rat's mouth, skewering the creature on the end.

Dietrich was only an arm's length away, batting rats aside with the flat of his sword-blade whilst jabbing at the swarm of vermin with his hook. The two of them were almost surrounded. Behind the snarling, squeaking pack the leather-armoured skaven still hung back, goading their beasts to attack the two defenders.

As Torben fought on, trying to avoid being bitten by the disease-carrying teeth of the rats, he was reminded of the night in the isolated windmill on the Ostermark Marches when Badenov's band had battled the children of the god of pestilence. He was sure that if even one of the rats managed to bite him his fate would ultimately be the same as if a nurgling sank its filthy fangs into him - a slow, agonising death from the plague - and that was no way for a warrior to die!

Desperation lending strength to his sword-arm Torben struck out at the slavering rat-pack again and again and again.

WHOOMPH! THE PITCH-SOAKED faggots piled against the doors of the church burst into flame as Oran rammed the blazing torch among the sticks. The fire spread quickly, following the path of oil poured around the base of the building, igniting the kindling and licking up the tar-drenched walls. The grim expressions of the townsfolk and the mercenaries were picked out in flickering detail by the orange flames as all watched the church of Morr begin to burn in stupefied silence. All except one.

'I hope you know what you're doing, Torben,' Oran muttered under his breath.

IT SEEMED TO Dietrich that they had been holding the rat-swarm at bay for an hour, gaining no ground whatsoever but conceding none either, although in reality it had been less than a quarter of that time. A sharp upswing with the hook strapped to his right arm resulted in the disembowelment of another of the vermin. Torben was hacking at the seething mass of rats with an expression of avenging fury on his face, doing all he could to stop the verminous horde getting past him and out of the church. And all the while the bell continued to toll, drawing yet more servants of the skaven to the church.

Dietrich became aware of a chittering voice, halfway between human speech and the squeaking of rats. It was as if the skaven were discussing alternative plans. Then he saw it.

Behind the skaven, at the back of the church, a huge shape detached itself from the shadows and moved towards Torben and himself with ungainly strides. Before the monstrous creature even moved within range of the guttering light from Torben's discarded lantern the soldier recognised the creature for what it was. The massive, distorted physique, the over-long talons, the muscles like ships' cables, the inflamed boils covering its hairy hide, the spikes protruding from the malformed vertebrae of its spine, the huge rodent head, the brands burnt into its flesh, the scar running from one shoulder down across its breastbone - the scar he had given it in return for the hand the beast had taken from him! The day he had fought the rat-ogre on the very threshold of the north gate, the day the slavering beast had bitten off his right hand and he had delivered it what he had thought had been a fatal wound. On that day the monster's warped visage had become etched upon his memory.

Despite the fact that the two fighters were only just holding their position against the verminous vanguard, the impatient ratmen had obviously decided that the humans' stand was delaying them too long inside the church, allowing the people of Nagenhof to muster a stronger defence against the invaders. So now they found themselves facing the unbridled ferocity of a rat-ogre.

Dietrich quickly assessed the situation. As long as the bell kept tolling the rats' onslaught would continue unabated. The two men would soon tire and one of the biting, clawing plague ridden vermin would find a way through their defence. Once one was through they were doomed.

'Torben!' he called out. 'We have to stop that bell ringing!'

'Pieter's dealing with it!' the mercenary captain replied, cutting down a two-headed monstrosity.

'That was a while ago now,' Dietrich pointed out, 'and I can still hear the bell!'

Torben trapped the squirming body of a giant rat under his boot and ran it through with his sword. 'You're right,' he puffed. 'Let's go.'

Kicking aside a scrabbling rodent Torben leapt over the rat swarm, heading for the stairs. Following his friend's lead Dietrich ran across the nave, crushing a number of skulls under his feet.

The skaven were squeaking furiously. At first Dietrich thought it was because they were escaping but as he reached the first landing on the staircase he saw wisps of smoke drifting under the barricaded church doors. The skaven's sensitive nostrils had picked up the smell of smoke before Dietrich was aware of it. But now he could see it billowing in thick grey clouds under the doors, obscuring his view of the skittering rats.

At a shouted command from one of the skaven the rat-ogre stomped eagerly towards the foot of the bell-tower, its massive, muscular torso visible above the rising smoke. The soldier was horrified at how quickly so large a creature could move!

'Torben! Hurry up!' Dietrich shouted. The mercenary, who was already taking the stairs two at a time, increased his stride to three.

Dietrich felt the wooden steps judder as the beast leapt onto staircase. As he raced upwards, he felt the shaking become more vigorous as the rat-ogre bounded after them. Daring a glance round Dietrich saw the club-like arm scything towards his legs and in an adrenaline-fuelled leap threw himself forwards and upwards. The rat-ogre's claws, as thick, as tough and as sharp as iron spikes, connected with the step Dietrich had just left which splintered like matchwood.

With a groaning crash part of the staircase came free of the wall. Without anything holding it up, the mid-section the rat-ogre was teetering on gave way under the monster's great weight. For a split second Dietrich thought he had escaped the fiendish creature. Then he saw the balustrade linking the last few steps he had to climb to the next landing, and safety, sag. Torben had already reached the haven of the sturdier landing but Dietrich was not so lucky. Joists came free, pinioning pegs were torn from their sockets and rotten timbers crumbled.

Dietrich felt his stomach jump into his mouth as he dropped like a stone, the stairs collapsing beneath him. He fell fifteen feet and landed heavily on the ground, amidst a cloud of dust and wood splinters. Only it wasn't the ground. Although it was hard, whatever he had landed on was pliable, warm and stank of rancid animal musk.

TORBEN FROZE HIS ascent and looked down. Dietrich lay sprawled on top of the stunned rat-ogre surrounded by the wreckage of the staircase. Through the gloom and the smoke, the mercenary could just make out the shadowy shapes of the skaven hurrying away towards the back of the church, where crimson flickering firelight illuminated their hunched rat bodies through the apse window. The rats swarmed around the base of the bell-tower in panic. The bell tolled ceaselessly.

Torben looked back down at his companion. Dietrich pushed himself up on his hooked hand, a look of bewilderment on his face. 'Dietrich! Are you all right?' the mercenary yelled down to his friend.

Dietrich looked up at him. 'Go!' he yelled. 'Finish what we came here for. There's nothing you can do here!' A rumbling growl came from the prone rat-ogre and its claws clenched. 'I'll hold off this beast here. We're old acquaintances. There will be a reckoning between us this night!'

Dietrich rolled off the mutated monster, readying his sword in his left hand as the beast suddenly sprang to its feet. Torben paused, not wanting to abandon his friend but the trained professional in him told him that he must. The tolling had to be stopped.

'Sigmar guide your sword-arm, my friend!' he called down.

'For Nagenhof!' came Dietrich's reply.

Swearing he would have his vengeance on the vile skaven, Torben resumed his rapid ascent of the stairs. He didn't look back again.

PIETER'S VISION SWAM into focus for a moment and then almost blacked out again as he felt the rough hemp strands of a rope tighten around his neck. His head ached, the noise of the bell reverberated through he skull, but the asphyxiation threatening to overwhelm him, outweighed every other concern. Realising that if he were to save himself he would have to act quickly, Pieter scrabbled at the noose.

'Try to stop me, would you?' came a slurred voice thick with saliva in his ear. 'Well you're too late! They're here!'

Pieter had no doubt who was trying to kill him - the insane hunchback, Otto the bell-ringer, who had summoned the skaven back to the town of Nagenhof. He had to be stopped and he had to be stopped now. As he struggled with the rope at his throat Pieter took in his surroundings. He had been dragged from where he had been coshed at the top of the stairs to the edge of the opening beneath the great, swinging bell.

'You're all the same,' bellowed Otto, 'and you'll all die the same way!'

The hunchback sounded as if he wasn't used to hearing his own voice clearly or his tongue was malformed. He was horribly strong and no matter what Pieter tried, he couldn't lessen the pressure on his windpipe. As his eyes rolled up into the top of his head Pieter's vision was filled with the swinging green-tinged shadow of the bell and a desperate plan formed in his mind.

Pieter pushed himself backwards, rocking onto his back. At the same time he brought his legs up, giving the skaven bell a hefty kick on the upswing. He felt the constricting rope slacken slightly as the hunchback looked up in surprise. Then all pressure was gone as the deformed mutant tried to dodge out of the way of the returning bell.

There was a loud clang followed by a groan of pain and the hunchback stumbled to the floor. Being careful to avoid the still swinging bell, Pieter stood up, rubbing his chafed raw neck with one hand and holding the bell-rope the hunchback had been trying to strangle him with in the other. He looked down at the moaning creature that was getting unsteadily to its feet. Blood ran from the hunchback's smashed mouth. The mutant was as ugly as the dream-conjured Chaos spawn of a flagellant's nightmares. He had read of such blasphemies against nature in the plague-scholar's grimoire. Such hideous deformity was all the proof Pieter needed to believe that the hunchback was a Chaos-warped mutant.

Before the stunned bell-ringer could gather his senses, Pieter covered the distance between them and looped the noose around the hunchback's thick neck. As the dizzily staggering mutant found the tables turned he began to pull at the knotted hemp. Taking a few steps back Pieter charged at his attacker's broad and twisted back. He slammed into the hunchback with his shoulder and kept pushing. Otto stumbled forwards, in his unbalanced state the momentum of the impact carrying him onwards. A clubfoot found the edge of the hole beneath the bell and slipped. As the bell swept past the hunchback tumbled through the opening with a cry - a cry that was suddenly silenced with a snap as the rope pulled taut and his neck broke.

'I knew you had the situation under control,' came a familiar voice from behind the gasping nobleman. Pieter looked around. Torben stood puffing at the top of the staircase. A loud clang resounded around the belfry, making both men wince. 'Right,' said the mercenary captain, 'let's stop that bell.'

WREATHED IN EYE-WATERING smoke, the soldier and the beast fought. Dietrich staggered backwards as he parried the rat-ogre's blow, his sword sinking into the monster's arm up to the bone. The skaven mutant roared in pain and anger, its rancid breath washing over the soldier and making him gag. Rather than being repelled by the injury the rat-ogre was spurred on by it and pushed its advantage onward. With his sword stuck fast above him, embedded in the beast's flesh, Dietrich found himself being pushed backwards, his midriff undefended. He swept up with his hook as the monster slashed at him with its other claw-like paw. He was too late.

The rat-ogre batted his arm aside. The jarring sensation that lanced up his arm told Dietrich that the beast had almost succeeding in dislocating it at the elbow. But this split second of pain was immediately drowned by a gut-wrenching flood of agony that told Dietrich he was dying.

The rat-ogre paused, blood running from the dozen wounds, steam rising from its heaving flanks. Dietrich slumped to his knees, his intestines uncoiling through the rent in his stomach.

Through the choking smoke he was dimly aware of the rat-ogre roaring in triumph and the furious squeaking of the rats milling around him. The roof too had started to burn, blazing beams crashing to the floor of the nave. But all these sounds began to fade from his awareness as another sound became louder and louder, until it was the only sound he could hear: the dub-dub of his slowing pulse pounding in his ears. Dub-dub, dub-dub. Dub. Dub…

THE KISLEVITE'S SABRE struck the rocking beam cutting through the last coils of rope securing the heavy skaven bell in place. With a final dull bong the bell dropped down the tower, smashing into the hunchback's swinging corpse as it did so and crashing through the staircase as in tilted on its axis.

As the rat-ogre advanced on the fatally wounded Dietrich the bell plummeted inexorably downwards. With a resounding metallic clang, the skaven artefact hit the looming beast, hurling it to the ground and crushing the rat-ogre's skull.

Just like old times, Dietrich thought and died.

'WHAT DO WE do now?' Pieter asked the sweating Kislevite, as the church burned beneath them. Torben thought. What could they do now? Up until this point he had been reacting instinctively to each event as it arose with no forethought. Now they had completed what they had set out to do and they were trapped. There was no way down inside the bell-tower, now that the staircase had been destroyed by the bell and the rat-ogre, and besides, the whole building was ablaze. Parts of the roof had begun to fall in, flames licking up through the holes into the night sky. Smoke was also beginning to rise through the gaps between the planks of the belfry floor as the tower acted like a natural chimney, drawing the fire upwards. There wasn't a suitable rope they could use to climb down the outside of the tower and to jump the one hundred feet would be suicide.

Torben peered over the parapet of the belfry, as if just to confirm his initial assessment. Then over the crackling of the flames he heard something: a distant shouting. Peering through the billowing smoke he saw at first a crowd of townspeople, standing in a semi-circle around the end of the church. Within that semi-circle three figures, illuminated by the conflagration were looking up at him and calling. The biggest was standing next to a full hay-cart, which had been brought as close to the burning building as the mercenaries could manage without it catching alight. 'We jump,' Torben said, and before Pieter could question him he pointed down the side of the tower, adding, 'and try to follow my orders this time!'

Without a moment's hesitation the two men climbed onto the ledge of the opening under the eaves and, flung themselves out into space…

The two of them hit the hay, the wind knocked out of them but otherwise unhurt and Torben, for one, had never been so glad to wind up with a face full of straw. Spiralling embers swirled around them, some landing in the hay. A crackling sound, accompanied by excited cursing from Oran, told Torben that the hay had caught alight.

As Stanislav untied the horse, Torben and Pieter scrambled down from the cart, joining the others at a safer distance from where Badenov's band watched as the church of Morr burned.

BY MID-AFTERNOON THE next day the fire had gone out, enabling the mercenaries to explore the burnt-out shell of the church. Picking their way through the mounds of blackened rat-corpses and the smouldering ruins of the roof, that now filled the nave with a forest of charred beams and fused tiles, it did not take them long to find what remained of Dietrich Hassner. Opposite the dead soldier lay the flattened, charred mass of the rat-ogre. Its pulped head was almost unrecognisable but of the bell that had killed it there was no sign.

'I suppose it could have melted,' Stanislav suggested, prodding the smouldering rubbish at the foot of the tower with his boot. 'That fire was hotter than a forge.'

'It's possible,' Torben considered, 'but somehow I doubt it. I think our furry friends got what they came for in the end.'

He caught Pieter's gaze but the sullen noblemen said nothing.

'Come on,' said Torben. 'We've a burial to perform - with no priest of Morr or temple to perform it in - and the life of a friend to commemorate back at the Hand of Glory.'

As they made their way out of the ruined church, bearing the soldier's body on an improvised stretcher, Torben couldn't help feeling dejected. The usually happy-go-lucky mercenary was beginning to feel that Badenov's band was rather down on its luck as of late, what with the deaths of Alexi and now Dietrich.

Death was their business, he knew, but death seemed to dog their path. It was as if Morr himself or some darker power had mapped out their destinies for them. They hadn't even made enough money to replace the horses Krakov had lost all those months ago and Krakov himself had disappeared.

'The dead and the damned,' he suddenly found himself declaring aloud.

'What?' asked the younger Yuri, walking next to him.

'The dead and the damned,' Torben repeated. 'It seems to me that's all we are. One or the other, dead or damned.'

'What's that?' Oran interjected. 'You're starting to sound like misery-guts over here,' he said indicating Pieter, who was hanging back from the others.

'Dietrich was an old friend. Of course you're upset,' Stanislav said soothingly, as they neared the inn. 'Get some ale inside you and you'll feel like your old self again.'

Torben managed a weak smile. 'So the first round's on you?' he said.

'See? Everything will be fine,' pronounced the usually cynical Oran.

But despite his show of bravado somehow Torben didn't think so.

SWORDS OF THE EMPIRE

Dan Abnett

'Two things that may be relied on - the swords of the Empire and the snows of the North.'

- Ostland proverb

I have known twenty-seven summers and twenty-six winters, and the winter that comes upon me now will be the hardest of all. With ample favour of fortune, we might weather these white months, but I have no wit to know for certain if fortune rides amongst my company in this extremity of the world. I doubt it greatly, for it has not shown us much of favour thus far along.

The provinces of the Empire wear winter like a heavy coat; they pull it around them in the latest part of the year and thuswise huddle within it, and cast it off again with a shrug at the first buds of spring. Not so here. This is the North, the high North, the wild, elder country. Here, winter comes from some profound source, and fills up the world from within, under the skin, freezing marrow to stone and slowing blood to glass. It is a foe of itself, and knows no quarter. Subarin has told me of it. He has described the cruel temper of the season, the furious storms, the aching arctic might. Men vanish, herds likewise, sometimes villages whole, lost overnight in the whiteness, marooned for months. And come the thaw, no sign remains, as if the poor, lonely places have been scraped from the hard ground by winter's sharp claws and cast into eternity.

Against such a sorry fate, I have guarded with this account. I have made it with haste, and for this reason I ask you to pardon kindly my mistakes. I am not a scribe, and my hands are not stained from the inkhorn. I am a soldier. I have rendered this in my best practice of penmanship on two tanned goat hides that in this country are employed in the part of vellum. The ink was purchased dearly at the cost of a company horse, and is the only flask of such hereabouts. It is poor stuff, weak and much more of water than of black. The wizard has ink bottles, of course, but I will not touch his belongings. When I have writ this out, I will roll the hides in a bag of pigskin, and bury it beneath a marked cairn of rocks here by the hillside trackway where, in spring, travellers may discover it. Such a discovery may be why you are reading this now. It is my hope that fortune will be with us, and that in spring, I will dig this up myself and convey it with all urgency back to the Reik. Either way, the matter of my account remains the same.

SIGMAR BLESS ME. I owned I was no scribe! I have just run my eyes back over the first part of my testament above, and damn myself at how badly I have commenced. I have run my heart ahead of my story, and scattered the facts heedless like a flock scattered by a wolf. Subarin tells me I can use the flat of a tanner's knife to scrape the hide clean and start again, but that seems a waste of such expensive ink. I will write on, and take heed of two lessons. Of the first, it is to cramp my hand smaller, for already I have occupied a whole shoulder of one hide with my words, and I fear the remainder of two goat-backs will not be adequate to contain this account. It is sobering indeed to realise that all that is important to me is to be measured out in goats.

Of the second, it is to start better. To make open the facts. First then, as I should have started, with my name. It is Jozef von Kallen. Let me make it again here, as I sign it - Jozef von Kallen - so that it vouches in my hand for the veracity of this account.

I have not goat enough to say more of myself in any length, and cannot set out the names of my family and lay down my lines of descent for fear of writing off the tail end of this hide onto the next. I will suffice with this: I am a knight of the Reiksguard, may Sigmar keep its light forever lit. It has been my signal honour to conduct, at the bidding of the Elector Counts, an expedition into the wastes that are known as Kislev, that is to say the barbarous sovereignty that is north of the Empire.

We left fair Altdorf on St Talve's Eve, he that is the patron saint of lambing. I had under my command twenty men at arms of the Reiksguard, all of horse with spears unto them, and including two handgunners. We made, as I may say, a sorry sight, for we had cast aside banners and decorations so as to pass unremarked upon in the isolate tracks beyond the Empire. This was on the advice of my masters. I myself had set aside my laurels, and my full plate, and even the barding of my steed. We wore simple half-plate, leather and cloaks, and some had hauberks of good chain. Had you come upon us in the driving rain, you would have mistaken us for brigands or a sell-sword company.

In this unseemly guise, we journeyed north, and performed our duty. To whit, this was to guard and escort a man of great worth. His name was Udo Jochrund, and he was a great wizard of the Order of the Wise, which is to say the Order of Light.

Like all mortal men, I am uncomfortable in the company of magic. It makes me to tremble, and turns my belly to acid. Sire Jochrund had the stuff around his person like a perfume. He was tall and slender, like the white aspens that grow in profusion in the lowlands of Kislev, his scalp shaved bald, with a great bounty of moustache and beard sweeping forth from his chin, cheeks and upper lip like a waterfall. This beard hair was dark, like charcoal, and seemed to clash at odds with the waxy pallor of his skin. His eyes, under bushy black brows, were brightly the colour of a harvest moon; that is like spun gold, like full-ripened corn, like a healthy gelding's urine. He wore long under-robes of earth-brown velvet, embroidered with many wondrous sigils and patterns in silver thread, and overtop he dressed in the long white caparison of his office and order. His hands were, in the most part of our adventure, gloved in glossy black leather, the rings worn glinting on the outside, and he carried the most curious carven staff, fully head-tall, worked in all intricacy to resemble a serpent coiled around a bough.

I have described him thus so you might know him by sight, but I have not described him at all. For it was in his manner that Udo Jochrund was known. Soft-voiced, let me start with that. Never a shout, never a bellow. His tone was as frail as a fallen leaf, dissolving in a trackway puddle, perfect in every detail yet insubstantial and fading like a spectre. Sometimes, from three furlongs distant, he had called to me, without any raising of his voice, and I had heard him most distinct. It was like he had quoth in my very head.

More so than his voice, his bearing. He was stiff and ungainly, gesturing in conversation with his elbows rather than his hands, as if he was afraid that more vital manners might cause his potent hands to write upon the air and manufacture magic unintended. More even than his voice, the smell of him. Like burned sugar-powder, but not rank. A sweet, sickly odour.

Sire Jochrund's mission was one of learning, as may be expected of an order whose purview is knowledge, and mine was to safeguard him. Before we set out, in the early part of spring, when I had been appointed to ride as his guard commander, he brought me to supper at his house. The food was ordinary, the atmosphere unnerving. By lamplight, in the late eve, his musty lodging was a place of jumping, darting shadows that could not be explained even by the flutter of the wicks.

I profess again, I am a soldier, nothing more or less, and have no sensibility for magic. I want no part of it, and would be glad never to have to acquaint myself with its actions. But yet, I am sanguine. Without the Colleges of Magic, and the martial magicians they have bred, our Empire would not stand today. In the van of every Imperial army stands a wizard from one or other order, bent to use his arcane might to achieve victory. Thus is the legacy of Teclis, who taught Magnus the Pious that magic was a necessary art, and one to be practised and honed, even in an honest and Sigmar-fearing country like ours.

At supper, in that haunted chamber, Sire Jochrund seemed to sense my distress, and made every effort to console my mind. He explained, in basic terms, the purposes of the Colleges of Magic, the nature of the eight orders, and the pertinence of his own, the first and most lauded order. Much of what he said I already knew, but it was the way he told it to me. He spoke, I suppose, as to a child eager to learn. I was transfixed by his voice, and by the way he kept on his glossy black gloves even when using the meat fork and tearing the soda-bread.

'I will explain the venture before us, von Kallen,' he declared, 'for I want you to understand it rightly, so that you will play your part unquestioningly. Magic is without-'

'Without what?' quoth I, in all innocence.

'Without us!' he cried with a tremendous laugh at the expense of my foolishness. 'It is all around us, it permeates the world, soaks into the fibres of the land. It is a fact of life. Deny it and you deny reality. The colleges do not create magic, they tap into it, harness it, use it, and direct it. Our skills are not those of creation, they are of comprehension.'

I nodded at that, though without much of the quality in question.

Then he bade me answer this: 'Why am I a wizard and you a soldier?'

I shook my poor head. Answers I had, in all truth, many, numbering amongst them merits of birth and demeanour, but the reply he was after was much simpler yet.

'Because you are trained in the use of horse and lance and sword, and I am trained in the use of the arcane.'

This much I had fathomed for myself. Then he said, 'Each order has unto itself its own discipline. For the Golden Order, alchemy. For the Grey Order, shadow. For the Amber Order, beastcraft... and such wise. The Light Order binds them all, for it is through us the knowing of their ways were divined. We scour and search, we find and collect, we catalogue and translate. We are the seekers of lore. We are the pathfinders of lost magics, or magics yet unknown to civilised man. And that is our endeavour now. A threat is rising in the North, von Kallen, a great and divisive threat that mayhap will tumble our proud Empire into dust.'

'May Sigmar guard us!' I said at once.

'May he indeed,' he agreed. 'But we may also guard ourselves. We have wrung the byways and remote villages of the Empire dry of lore, but in the realm of Kislev, rude magic abounds. Up in that great expanse are tiny communities and forgotten towns where shamans and wise-folk daily practise routines of lore and craft unknown to us. It may be that their very proximity to the wastes of Chaos means they are more connected to the source than us.'

At his mention of the word, I shuddered. He pulled aside his white robe and showed me an eight-pointed star sewn in silver on his tunic.

'Do you know this, von Kallen?'

I blanched and felt I should reach for my sword.

He saw me. He read me. He smiled. 'The octo-point star of Chaos. Eight fiery limbs, young man. Tell me... why are there eight Colleges of Magic?'

I stammered dumbly.

'Because,' he sighed, 'Chaos is the root of all magic. This much Teclis taught us. From their eight sorcerous winds, all magic derives. Be not afraid. Magic stems from Chaos, and is tainted by it, but it may be controlled and purified by a trained practitioner. Such is the purpose of the eight orders. And to discover such control is the purpose of the Light Order. In the scattered settlements of Kislev, in the tribal conclaves of the empty quarters, lore is waiting to be uncovered from the elders and shamans. Over the last nine years I have conducted seven missions to the North at the bidding of the elector counts. I tour the lonely stanitsas to learn new skills, new secrets, new crafts that have lain in their folk-rituals since the dawn of time.'

This, then, was our purpose. To ride north and protect Sire Jochrund as he sampled and collected, learning and borrowing and otherwise obtaining new rudiments of magic from the outlying barbarians so that the craft might be employed for the good of our Empire.

The wizard showed me the letters of permission and sealed charters from the princes that bade him do this thing. I needed no further convincing. In the Empty Quarter, this Imperial wizard might learn charms that could keep the Empire of Man standing for another thousand years, no matter what threat arose from the wild wastes.

We passed beyond the bounds of the Ostermark at the spring equinox, the rivers running hard and foamy with meltwater from the highlands. The air was brittle, like ice. Our convoy was as thus: twenty men at arms, shrouded in tan cloaks, myself, Sire Jochrund on his black gelding, besides a storewagon driven by the sire's apprentice, Sigert.

Rain beset us for the first month, then gales that rattled the moon on its hook. By the time the gales settled, we were far into Kislev itself, crossing the grasslands and the pine barrens from village to village. Time ground over and around, like a working millstone, slow, heavy and wearing. I had been in Kislev twice before, on military tours. I knew its vastness, the open flatness of its plains, the force of its winds. I felt them again on my face and wondered how many of them were driven by the eight winds of Chaos.

To a man birthed and raised in the forests and mountains of the Empire, Kislev is a formidable country. It has an expanse that I have not experienced anywhere else, nor can truly describe. The vast sky bends over it in supplication, where the sky in Imperial lands flutters above the peaks like a banner. Even in summer, sleet and hail come down from nowhere, horizontal. It stings the skin. The sun comes out, like a phantom, and chases down over distant hills. The nights seem long, breathless.

But I must confess, I like these wilds. The air is clear like crystal, the winds - whatever their origin - fresh and uplifting. Where there is flatness - the steppes, as they are called - there is total flatness, and nodding grasses nod forever to eternity. Where there are mountains, they rise suddenly, like giant's teeth, vast and snow-capped even in the heat of summer, colossal and overwhelming.

Through this, we tracked, following the wizard. I have not hide enough, nor ink enough, to remark upon all the particulars. We followed lonely drove tracks far up into the mountains. We came upon little places that had hidden themselves for ten thousand years. Stanitsas, they are called. Villages, in my tongue. Some perched on river bends, others hidden in secret, misty valleys. A few sat, proud and untamed, in the centre of vast steppe plains, like crowns discarded on the earth. One we came to was shrouded in an aspen forest. Another clung to a crag over the deepest gorge I have ever seen. Water tumbled below, as fulsome and fierce as the wizard's beard.

We spent a day at each, no more than two. The hospitality was astonishing. They lit their fires high and brought us in, and slaughtered a good many goats and hogs for spitting. We were given koumiss to drink - that is fermented mare's milk - as a welcoming gift from the ataman chiefs, and also stronger concoctions delivered with a pinch of salt. At every stop, the Kislevites knew how to drink and how to entertain.

At every village, Sire Jochrand withdrew with the esauls and the stanitsa shaman. He talked with them into the night, as moths braved the campfires in vast, dusty hosts. He learned. He collated.

On we went. The summer lengthened. A stanitsa greeted us, sparse on the plain, surrounded by eight sacred trees. Another, built on the summit of a granite crag like a tooth of the world, with steps hewn out of the living rock. Yet another, walled and discrete, surrounded at all sides by a lake of blue flowers, sprung from the dust, nodding in the breeze.

I remember telling Sire Jochrund that we should return. The summer was waning. Already, a taint of cold could be felt in the air.

He refused me, avowing that one last stop was in order. He'd learned such stuff at the last stanitsa (a walled township overlooking a gloomy vale), that he wanted to press on. Just a week more. Seven days.

That was when we came upon Kzarla. It lay beside a lake in the hills, and the lake lay in the ground like a black blade lying on grass.

But I forget myself! I must tell you of Subarin. And also of the fight. Ah, once more my story-wolf goes scattering my facts!

Fortune had been with us enough, at least, to keep fighting away. For the most part, at any rate. At Zhedevka, two of my men, whose names are - no, I will not name them. I punished them at the time. If this account is to be our last testament, I will not defame them with a slight injury. So let it be said that at Zhedevka, two of my party were embroiled in a tavern fight over some no-matter. In the elm brakes above Kacirk, where the grey Kislev sky seems to run unnaturally fast, and shushes through the swaying branches like a river torrent, we skirmished with some painted raiders who were swift discouraged by the use of handguns. Then at Vitzy, along the great shingle beaches of the river, we fought for an hour or so with robbers and bandits who came down out of the pine woods. There were above forty of them, and we traded steel with them all the way down to the stepping stone crossing where the river bends, at no loss of our own. We made account of four of them, and packed them off to their indifferent sky-god.

But that was all the bother for a long summer's riding, and grateful we were.

Until Svedora.

The wizard had made much of Svedora. It had been mentioned to him several times by the various elders and atamans he had interviewed during our trek, and he had made note of it at length in his chapbooks. It was a cattle town of some size, on the eastern slopes of the Czegniks, facing down across a wide valley girt with oak, myrtle and sandalwood towards the wide, mustard-yellow spring pastures by the reedy river.

Svedora was said to be a town steeped in magic - cattle magic, weather magic, old magic. We were told a shaman lived there still who knew much of the old ways.

I could feel Sire Jochrund's eagerness. Quite how much he had collected from the summer mission thus far I could not say. His chapbooks and scroll cases bulged, and he was forever writing. He had filled sacks with herbs and dried powders, flowers too, and had a little screw-press with which to flatten the blooms into perfect pictures of themselves. Bottles he had of tinctures given him by elders and wise men, and all other sundry totems and materials, all of which the sallow clerk Sigert catalogued and annotated.

Occasionally, most often after nightfall in our latest camp, I would observe the wizard striding out of the way to a field or spot nearby where he would perform - I believe in practise - rituals he had but recently learned. With what measure of success I cannot say. Once we heard a moaning in the dark that put the horses sore afeared; once he caused a blue flame to walk across the surface of a pool, and once he made a great dusty wind to blow up, and came back to us, his eyes reddened, cursing some nameless spirit for at least two days.

Sire Jochrund had his heart set on Svedora, even though on my map it lay a good three days further than I was happy to go. But on we went.

A great number of black starlings began to gather above us for the two days prior to our arrival at the stanitsa. A few at first, circling and twittering, then more, then more. We touched iron against ill-omen, and the wizard seemed bothered by the mob, but in the bracken fields below Svedora, with the walled town overlooking us, they departed most suddenly and flew off cheeping and piping into the western sky.

But our arrival had been noted, and a line of riders galloped out from the gatehouse and threaded a line of dust down the hill track towards us. I saw the flash of sunlight on speartips and armour.

I drew the company to a stand, and stretched them in a line abreast, alert but with weapons sheathed, with the wagon held to the rear. The riders came out of the trees and formed a matching line facing us at a distance of three furlongs.

Sigmar, but they were splendid. Thirty men in golden hauberks, and kettle-helms with nose-guards, decorated with bright jewellery, furs and expensive cloths. Upright from their backs rose the most remarkable wings of bright feathers, part of their decorative harness. Their horses were small, shaggy-maned creatures that had been painted shades of white, yellow, russet and pink. The men sported long, black moustaches and carried horse lances upright at their saddles. One held aloft a bright blue and white banner with a long swallowtail that turned and played in the wind like a water-snake.

They were not the enemy. They were a proud company of Kislevite lancers, of a type long renowned in the Empty Quarter. We however - travel-stained, dusty and displaying no flag or banner - resembled their traditional enemy, the plains bandit, all too well.

I left my spear standing tip-down in the dirt, and rode forward, gesturing to Schroder to do the same. Schroder was my first officer, and sergeant of the men-at-arms, a decent fellow from Ostland who had a useful measure of the Kislevite tongue. We covered the scrubby ground between the two facing lines, and after a moment, two riders broke from their formation and came towards us at a trot. I was encouraged to see they left their lances in the earth likeways.

Closer to, I was yet more transfixed by the ornate beauty of their armour. Gold, inlaid with turquoise and pieces of jet, and also a translucent orange gem called amber. Their horse armour was accoutred in jingling tassels and bead-ropes, and with medals or badges made of smoky silver inset with blue-glass stones. Their wings rose high above their backs, straight and true, formed of gilded wooden frames to which dyed eagle feathers had been expertly fletched. The valley wind rustled them and made the feathertips twitch, like the trim of a circling hawk. The brass nasal-guards of the riders' helms descended sharply almost to the lips, and gave them both a mean and snarling look.

Through Schroder, I greeted them, and made it as clear as I could our intentions were peaceful. They listened attentively, but made no change of expression, nor did they show any signs of comprehension. I produced the Imperial seal, and also my letters of permission, one of which was counter-sealed by the provost of the tzarina. The two men passed the items between themselves and muttered. Then one turned his painted pony smartly and raced off in the direction of their line, taking my letters and seal with him.

'Hie!' I exclaimed in consternation, and the rider who had stayed with us at once growled some caution, and drew his sabre enough that four fingers' width of blue-steel blade was visible outside its jewelled scabbard.

I raised my hands for peace and waited. The rider came clattering back, and brought with him another. This lancer was as finely amour-clad as the others, though he seemed at once to have some bearing the others did not quite possess.

'I have read your letters,' he said, using the language of the Reik perfectly.

'I would have ridden to you at once had I known. You carry no banner, and seemed to us to have the look of raiders.'

'Your pardon, sir,' I replied. 'We have sought to conduct our errand as anonymous travellers rather than as a mission of the Imperial crown.'

He nodded, and handed me back my belongings. 'These are unruly times. Welcome to Svedora, Sire von Kallen. I am named Subarin, of the rota of Svedora krug.'

A rota, as I had discovered earlier in the summer, was the Kislevite word for banner, and every town and stanitsa had its own. Around that banner, the town's band of lancers would form, their gathering known by the symbolic word ''krug'', of which is meant ''circle''. A stanitsa's rota of lancers was sworn to protect both its own town and the community in the region round it. In return, the community of town and country funded the splendid armour and weapons of the riders. Settlements took special pride in this: a rota might be small or large, but it was always splendid. At times of great war, the rotas of all the towns in a region would form together into an army or ''pulk'', supplemented by infantry and bowmen drawn from levies.

The Svedoran rota gallantly escorted my company up the trail and into the town itself. Subarin was not the ''rotamaster'' - the honour of commanding the lancers fell to a slender, older man named Buryan. But Subarin - who, when he removed his helm, was revealed to be a commanding fellow with close-set green eyes that seemed quick and clever - was a man of education who had spent time in the Empire, and his fluency with my language accorded him the duty of dealing with Imperial matters.

Svedora had a commanding position above the valley, its size well disguised by the stands of myrtle and oak that lined the slopes. To its west, above the aspen-shingled roofs of the town, and the golden onion dome of its zal, the ragged foothills of the Czegniks rose away, half-hidden in garlands of cloud. The town, and its walls, were made of clay, baked into pink blocks that reminded my eye of the sugar and gelatine fancies they sometimes serve at court. The place was old indeed. On some walls were carvings, weathered by the fingers of time. They showed winged lancers with couched spears, men riding wolves, and nymphs of the myrtle woods.

The townsfolk came out, and made loud welcome, ringing handbells, chimes and tambors. We were greeted well, and fed, and our horses were cared for. One thing above all else that may be admired of the Kislevite: he values the horse, and knows its keeping.

We were presented to the ataman, and to sundry other estimable men, but the town's shaman we did not see. At length, Sire Jochrund and his clerk were taken to meet with the wise man in some secret place. They did not return until the next morning.

That night, I spoke with Subarin. 'Do you always ride out in full gear at the first sign of riders in the valley?' I asked of him.

'There had been auguries,' he said. 'Symbols in nature that the shaman warned us of. We thought evil rode with you.'

'Just magic,' I said.

He nodded, and swallowed a glass of samogon as a vouchsafe against ill-omen.

We spoke then of other matters, mostly of horses, in which Subarin took a particular interest. He made comment favourably on the warhorses my company rode, especially my own great destrier, all markedly larger beasts than the lancers' mounts. 'That was the first clue I had that you were not bandits... the size of your steeds. Only knights of the Empire and Bretonnia put the spur to warhorses of such measure.'

Subarin, it was revealed, owed his reputation and wealth to horse trading. He was esteemed across the region for his expertise in that wise, and the business had taken him as far as Middenheim in his younger days. He told me that night of the Kurgan, the ravagers who dwelt in the North. They too rode great warsteeds, he said, but there is no trade in them for they cannot be caught, let alone broken by civilised men.

At dawn, Sire Jochrund's clerk returned to us, his narrow eyes filled with sleep from a night spent in wakefulness. He told me (quite uncivilly, for he believed the eminence of his master bestowed some rank upon him also) that Sire Jochrund would be staying at this place for another two days, for he was engaged in great discourse with the wise man, and refused to be taken from it. To his sullen face, I told him that this was not to my liking. I had already urged the wizard that we should be commencing our return journey. Sigert shrugged, as if to dismiss me, and I urged him a second time to impress upon Sire Jochrund the gathering urgency of our departure. That morning, there had been frost upon the clay walls of Svedora, and a glassy cool in the air.

An hour or so presently, Sire Jochrund himself reappeared, and took me to one side for quiet words. There was an almost unseemly excitement about him, and his golden eyes darted all about. In his soft voice, he assured me we had to stay a while, for which news he was sorry.

'If we ride away now, Jozef, we risk losing the very worth of our mission. There is lore here, young man, that the Colleges of Magic must possess.'

He had begun to call me Jozef most frequently, as if I were his son, and perhaps it should have flattered me that he thought so. But it rankled me. I was ever courteous to him, calling him most formally ''Sire'', yet he showed my office of knighthood no comparable respect.

Still, I consented to his wishes. I imagine it is hard for an ordinary mortal man, even a trained warrior of the Reik, to say no to a wizard, and to this soft-voiced, golden-eyed magician, it was impossible.

Sometimes, I fancied he had put some conjuration on me.

So, we waited for two days. The horses were glad of the rest, the men too. Some took the time to wash clothing or repair their wargear and trappings and resharpen their blades. Others shaved their cheeks and chins of beards that had grown on the journey. I did not. My hair, which usually I wore shaved up about the nape and ears, as is the custom beneath bascinet helms, had grown out, and my face was decorated with a bristle of beard. I had vowed not to cut nor trim the hair of my head until my return, as a mark of dedication to my mission, in Sigmar's name.

Subarin noticed that I was ill at ease and, in company of some of his fellow lancers, diverted my mind with hunting trips into the forest. We caught nothing but a few dapple-deer, for it was an excuse to ride free and fast, and forget troubles. The men of the rota had put off their fine armours, and dressed themselves in leathers and furs, but I noticed that Subarin still carried a fine saddle-sword, broad and straight, of the most exquisite damascened working, with all finery of lions and horsemen upon the golden scabbard. He saw me admire it, and showed it me, claiming it was many generations old, though the blade seemed new struck. A Scythian sword, he said, forged and owned by the great horse people that had once roamed these regions before the Gospodar khans led the Kislevite tribes to mastery of the land. Beside it, my Imperial blade seemed crude and dull.

In the landscape about Svedora, there were many curious places, shown to me by the worthy Subarin. A heathland upon which great stones stood in a ring, into which area no bird or animal made noise or motion. Other stones, graven with weather and lichen, had all but worn smooth, stood in glades of the woodland, and amongst the dense steppe thistles that choked the ravines of fast, falling streams.

In another place, very deep in the darkest belt of the woodland, my companions drew me to a ruinous tower that lingered amidst many tall maple trees. It was made of a black stone, finely dressed so as to be smooth, and was fully twenty horse lengths around about the base. At the height of a goodly oak, the tower was split asunder and broken, suggesting that once the tower had soared unto the sky. No fallen blocks or splinters of black stone remained around its base to attest to the disaster that had befallen it, nor did any of the fine maples grow within ten lengths of it, and further, no ivy or mosses lived upon its smooth, cyclopean walls. We rode about it thrice, widdershins as Subarin insisted, and I remarked that no door or window slit could be found in its sides. It was a mystery, he agreed, and it seemed that was why he had chosen to show it to me. None could say who had raised it, or when, or by what mischance it had come to be destroyed. When I asked him if any man had ever assayed to climb the walls and enter the tower through the broken top part, he laughed, as if such a thought was madness. I thanked him for showing me such a strange wonder, but were happy in my heart to ride away from that eerie glade.

In the early part of the morning of the third day, without reference to Sire Jochrund or his mealy-mouthed clerk, I roused the men and set the company for departure. All drawn up, we waited the length of an hour, and then, as I was about to send for the wizard, he appeared with Sigert in tow. His work in Svedora was done, he proclaimed, and for a moment, my heart was happy.

But then he gave me new instruction. From the wise man of Svedora, he had learned of a place called Kzarla, which lay up in the hills, and this place he now intended to visit also. His eagerness to reach Kzarla was even greater than it had been to come to Svedora. 'Seven days, Jozef, seven days there and back,' he told me, 'and then our work will be truly done!'

I made protest, but it was to no avail. We were to Kzarla bound, whatever I liked of it.

As we made to depart the gates of Svedora, the men of a mood quite downcast at the further travail, Subarin rode to us with two of his comrades. They were dressed in furs and cloaks for travel, but beneath wore the bright armour of their kind. Their lances and wings were wrapped in bundles across the backs of their steeds, and their golden spike-helms bounced at their waists. Subarin hailed me. At the advice of the town elders, he would ride in our company, so as to guide us directly to lonely Kzarla. This much he did to make as short as possible our journey, for he said the tracks of the hills were treacherous and befuddling to the newcomer. With his aid, we could make the ride as short as possible, and so speed the hour of our return. I thanked him for it, as did my sire the wizard.

They led us away from Svedora in the morning light, turning north and west into the ranges of the Czegniks, ascending steep tracks that wound between the stands of larches and mountain ash. The air was chill and damp, and there was no colour in the sky. Svedora's pink walls vanished below us in the mist, and above, the hills rose grey and severe, with the purple threat of greater summits beyond them.

The three Kislevites rode sure-footedly. Subarin's comrades were named Baibek and Markovo. Baibek was a small man with intense grey eyes, like a snow-owl, and his face was set always in a frown. Markovo was of larger build, with a wide jaw and half-shut eyes. He had a bright smile that he flashed like a sword blade.

Despite our guides, the going was slow, for the track was scarcely fit for our small wagon. We laboured in dim, tree-lined vales, and crawled up the black soil paths between rock crests, passing more than once marvellous cascades of water that fell in crashing, smoking streams into dark plunges below, bright as the girl's hair in the storybook.

Two days we laboured, up into the hills, passing so high above the table of the earth that we left all sign of trees behind. The hill country was heath and coarse grass, bramble and thistle, all swayed by the winds that blew down across these sloping pastures. Low cloud veiled the land, and brought rain and some little hail to us. Winter, I knew full well, was all but upon us.

Half a day from Kzarla, Subarin advised caution. Baibek had been riding ahead to scout the bleak country, and had returned with word that we were not the only riders abroad in the hills. From a distance, he had sighted a band of warriors on horseback, and counted forty shields. We paused, and made secure our armour, cinching it tight and placing helms upon our heads. We eased our swords in their sheaths, and made other preparation as necessary, then moved on again, following the track into a vale swirling with mist and vapour. Strange ringing and moaning came upon our ears, but Subarin told me this was but the echo of our traces and the song of the wind amongst the peaks.

Barely was I reassured than we were attacked.

They were, as I learned after, warriors of a brute-clan called the Kul, one of the many fraternities of Kurgan who claimed sovereignty of the North, and who knew only the worship of the feral gods and daemons in their savage minds. They thundered out upon us on their braying nags, full tilt, raising up a din of raw voices and furious howls. Each one of them was of mighty frame, dark-haired with unruly, matted locks, and they wore great pitch-black helms fixed most fearfully with horns and tusks. Beads and shells and also scalps and talismans rattled against their painted chests.

I gave sharp order and turned the company into their face, rising our pace to a counter-charge, for there was no wise of retreat or flight. I drew my sword and in we went, hooves clattering on the flinty soil, harnesses ringing. We shouted aloud the war cry of Sigmar to drown out their grim holler, and mingled with it I heard the battle call of the rota fly out from Subarin's lips. His glorious golden sword was flashing in his hand.

Such impact is made when charge meets charge. There are many distinct sounds of war - the clash of sword blades, the whistle of the axe, the thump of the arrow, the crack of gunpowder - but to my mind, there is no sound more true to the spirit of battle than the bone-shaking clash of riders crossing riders. It is the sound of knightly combat, where strength and skill are contended in equal measure. And it is not merely a sound. It is an uncommon jolt, a quake, like rocks smiting against one another, like a tree's trunk splitting, like a mountain falling down upon the flat earth.

Into their fury we raced, and that sound of impact was made. My blade was held out wide, and through it I felt the jar of collision, turning a rider back off his steed in a wild flailing that tossed broken tatters of his shield into the sky. Then another Kul went by at my left side, and down I sat so that my head might escape his swinging axe. To the right again, and a third raider, standing in his stirrups to stab at me with a pig-spear as he passed. He had not, I fancy, met a knight of the Reiksguard before, for there was a measure of surprise upon his horrid face as my sword broke his spear and clove in through his side to the breastbone, wrenching him off his horse in one action.

All around me, men were yelling and chargers snorting. The vale rang with the noise of traded blows. I heard the handgunners in my company volley their shots. Heavy crashes resounded as horses and men tumbled down. Two Kul spurred forward at me, both with swords, but I met them without falter, and did for one right swiftly, striking my blade across his neck.

The other lunged and made to cut me, and for his trouble I struck of his sword-arm at the joint, causing a goodly measure of hot blood to gout into the air. Schroder flew past me, with Konstanz, Lipfert and Brendel, all four furnished with spears they had couched point forward. Their course brought them hard into a quintet of Kul riders, and spear hafts clattered and snapped as three of the enemy were bowled over onto the ground. His spear lost, Schroder swept out his own sword, and laid about him, cutting the skull-top away from one passing Kul, so that his wretched body flopped sideways and was dragged by his frantic steed, plashing the liquor of his brain across the stones.

Near at hand, another Kul warrior, a very large creature with a ribbed hauberk of iron, was knocked from his saddle with mighty force as a javelin transfixed his torso through, front unto back. Markovo galloped past me, and I saw that it had been his sure hand that had launched the throwing spear to such fatal effect.

A further two Kul fell to my sword as I plunged into the thick of them, and a scrape I took across the left arm for my trouble. A third then, howling like a dog-fox, seemed hungry for my blade too, so I gave it him, and thank you kindly sir, and ripped out his lights with its sharpness before he could even bring his axe towards me.

I heard then a sharp cry aside me over the din of combat, and turned my head and horse in distress to see that Schroder had been cast off his steed onto the ground, with a wound upon his hip. Three of the enemy had dismounted in glee to rend him apart where he lay. I leapt from my own saddle, and ran in amongst them, killing two before they had even realised the peril at their heels. The third turned on me with his warsword, and met my blade with a loud chime of metal. Before I had yet finished him, more had run in, brandishing their filthy black swords and axes, howling for my blood and Schroder's. I put my will into my arm and my sword into their flesh, crashing them over, ripping them aside, striking them back so that, 'ere long, the ground was all of wringing wet with their heathen blood, and my vestments and armour were greatly besmirched too. Bodies piled around me, and it seemed the sight of such a number of their dead made them, in rage, strive yet more earnestly for my murder. All at once, a golden sword was cutting through their painted flesh and hairy backs, breaking spines and shattering jaws. Subarin, slight and small compared to the massive tribesmen, was yet making trophies of them, the splendid glitter of his armour seeming him to appear like a fine god amid the rude beasts.

Through force of arms, we cut our way to each other, breaking their shields and their hopes, and found, in the space of a heartbeat, the enemy had failed and fled. A dozen or so of the Kul galloped away up the valley in frantic flight, leaving a grievous number of their kin dead amongst the gorse and thistle, their horses scattering loose, bridles dragging.

I took quick account, and called the company to order, sending three men to round up my horse and the others that had gone free. Subarin, delighted by the victory, clapped his hands around my own, and all were bloody with our deeds.

Three men of my company were dead. I write their names here as memorial to their courage, for their lonely graves will like as not never be found in these remote hills. They were Mannfred Kruz of Altdorf, Lodmir Ameling, also of that town, and Sigmund Manhart of Talabec. Four more, including Schroder, had taken wounds, but none that could not be salved and bound so they might continue able.

The Kul dead, of which there were a great many, we left upon the cold earth, their split bodies steaming out their life-heat into the mountain air.

Lipfert brought my horse back to me, and as I rose into the saddle once more, I praised Subarin for his help, and also for the efforts of his comrades. He greatly surprised me by returning my praise tenfold. He had, it seemed, seen men of the Empire in battle, and these had not disgraced themselves, but he had never yet seen a knight of the Reiksguard in full fury. I believe I had impressed him greatly, and this made me feel pride in my rank and office, though I rued that he had not seen me girt in my full plate and caparison, for there is no finer sight in war than a knight of the Empire in his livery.

Thereafter, I rode to where the wagon stood. Sigert was pale of face, and was sipping wine from a flagon. Sire Jochrund dismounted and also praised me for my efforts, wishing that I communicate his gratitude to the company, and commiserating over the dead.

I felt foolish, but I questioned him. He was a great wizard, schooled in battle magic, yet he had not been able to intercede in this bloody fight. Could he not have conjured some marvelous spell that would have sent the Kul running, and spared our pains and our losses?

Sire Jochrund smiled, as if not slightly rebuked, and apologised, saying that he had been sleeping in the wagon when the attack began, and by the time he had roused, the fight was all around, with friend and foe intermingled in a terrible confusion. He had certain spells, but he feared to cast them lest their deadly enchantments smite down men of the company in error.

This seemed answer enough, though it did not please me. And he called me by the name of ''Jozef'' again. We drew to order, and made on for Kzarla.

It was a dismal place, in a long valley high amongst the hills, remote and unked. It stood upon the shores of a long lake, where the waters were so cold and black, like obsidian glass, that there was no assaying its depth. The ibzas and halls of the town were dark and timber built, and the wood thereof must have been drawn up this distance from the lowlands under the hills. Kzarla was girt about by a picket of stakes, and also by a ditch and bank in the shape of a circle. As we approached the place, I spied what seemed to be an island in the lake, close to the shore where the village stood, and joined unto the shore by a causeway of stone and timber that seemed some three horse lengths long.

The rota of Kzarla came out to meet us. Three dozen men, in silver armour bright as the sky, their mail shirts fixed with ingots of polished jet. Their horses were tinted coal-black along the backs and powder white upon the legs and bellies, and silver bells had been threaded into the hair of their tails and manes. Each rider wore a black horsehair plume upon the spike of his silver helm. One carried the banner, fluttering upon a long pole, and this was a triangle of black with a key-patterned edge, with a silver circle in the centre. They seemed surprisingly prepared for battle, but if warbands of Kul and their ilk were haunting the highlands, then it was meet that they should be ready to drive them off.

They were a fierce sight, and had already drawn forth their shashkas, that is their war swords. Their painted horses pawed the ground, as if eager for the charge.

We came to a halt. Subarin nudged his mare forward, and gestured for me to accompany him.

'I will come also,' Sire Jochrund said, already astride his black steed.

Subarin nodded his assent, and the three of us rode across the lakeside heath towards the Kzarlan rota. None came out to meet us. They kept their line and waited until we had drawn up face to face. Only then, the wings of their line moved outwards, so that Subarin, the wizard and myself were flanked within a semicircle of silver-armoured riders.

Subarin dismounted and walked to their lead horseman, a tall grey-bearded warrior with silver wings rising from the cheek-guards of his helm. Subarin then made greeting, and the two conversed at length. I did not follow the words, but Subarin made courteous gesture over his shoulder at the pair of us, and the winged leader glanced our way, as if reviewing cattle he was being invited to purchase.

Then Subarin turned and beckoned. I thought he meant me, but he did not. He brought Sire Jochrund forward, and introductions were made. I sat alone, the eyes of the silver warriors upon me, to my disquiet.

The Kzarlan rotamaster - whose name I was to learn as Pyotr Gmelin - raised a polished bone horn and blew, and the strong, pure note was answered by two horns at the stanitsa fence. He motioned us to follow as he turned his rota at a swift trot towards the gate.

Subarin turned to me. 'Bring the company, Sire von Kallen. They will admit us to the krug.'

The summer's mission had shown me that there are few more honestly welcoming places in the world than a Kislevite stanitsa. The gathering of folk, the drumming and clapping, the unbidden food and hearty toasts. All who come to the krug are welcome guests for as long as they desire, no matter what their wealth or status.

But the Kzarlan welcome was a different matter. Villagers came out to stare upon us as we came in through the gate, but their faces were unfriendly and they made no clamour. Untethered goats ran to and fro across the black mud of the trackway. Eyes stared at us from the flaps of windows and doors. No one brought out flatbread, or pickled fish, or koumiss.

In a bare mud yard before the longhouse, the rota dismounted and led their horses away. The ataman, an old, robed man with a limp who leaned upon a gnarled stick, came out with his esaul and two swordsmen, and spoke with Subarin and Pyotr Gmelin. Then he hobbled down from the timber boarding, and solemnly greeted Sire Jochrund. Thereafter, he came to me, and placed his knobbly hands upon mine, and looked at me with rheumy eyes.

'Welcome,' he said.

I had the company make good the horses, and some modest fodder was brought. I went into the longhouse with Subarin, the wizard and his clerk at the invitation of the ataman. Pyotr Gmelin and four of his rota watched over us as we sat by the fire and took at last a little food and drink.

After some lengthy discussion, most all of which I could not follow, the shaman of Kzarla came forth from some secret chamber in the back of the longhouse. He was a shrivelled thing, with a weather-beaten face as lined and dry as a saddle kit. He wore hides all sewn along the edges, and marked with the figures of men and horses embroidered into the front of it. Beads hung around his thin neck in long strings. He carried a round tambor in one hand, and struck upon it slowly with a tasselled wooden rod as he walked around Sire Jochrund in wary circles. Then - once, I presume, the shaman's spirits were placated by the rite - the wise man and the wizard sat down apart from us and fell to talking.

I grew fatigued and walked beyond the walls of the longhouse, biding my time. I wandered along the boardwalk laid out above the silt at the back of the longhouse, and looked upon the causeway that led out to the island. It was a strange place: a mound of rock rising just above the surface of the black water, upon which some structure like a tent or a steppe yurt was raised. Its canvas sides were finely decorated with sewn patterns and shell beading. I wondered what it was for.

I saw the girl at that time. She came out of the yurt on the islet and walked back down the causeway towards me carrying a pot under one arm and a sheaf of herbs under the other. I had seen women in the stanitsa as we were riding in, but none so young or fair as this girl. Her skin was pale, and her long hair as shining and dark as the jet in the rota's armour.

She walked past me, her head straight as if to ignore me, but I saw her eyes dart my way in curiosity. Such a proud face. Such blue eyes!

Subarin came to find me, noticing the girl with an appreciative smile as he passed her.

'Your wizard and the shaman are set for a long night of talking. I think the shaman wishes to test your lord's prowess in the ways of magic before he allows his guard down. The ataman has said he will provide food tonight for your company, but after that, you and your men must withdraw from the stanitsa for the night.'

'Why?' I asked.

'It is a ritual time, preparing rites to announce the coming winter. No stranger may reside within the town ditch during such a sacred period.'

'Where are we supposed to stay?' I wondered, glancing at the sky which, already cold, was sharpening with the real bite of chill darkness.

Subarin pointed. At the far end of the stanitsa, outside the gateway and beyond the ditch, men of the village were raising a large yurt on the heath-land. That was to be our accommodation.

'For all of us?' I asked.

Subarin nodded. 'Even myself and my comrades. Only your lord and his clerk are excepted, as a special case. Come, we must bring our horses out too.'

We set to it. Above, the night drew down, and the stars came out in the inky firmament. The glittering northern constellations of the gelding, the maiden, the kolter and the targette.

They fed us well, before a great fire, and entertained us with tunes upon the mandore, pibau and horse-head fiddle. Subarin brought the rotamaster Pyotr Gmelin to meet me. He had taken off his armour now, and wore wolf furs as grey as his beard. He poured fierce samogon into silver mazers for the three of us. Subarin had been commending my virtues as a warrior-knight to the noble rotamaster, and Pyotr Gmelin wanted to decide upon my merits for himself. He asked me, through Subarin's translations, various technical questions about swordsmanship, the use of horse companies in war, the couching of a spear, the functions of a shield, and thus like, and seemed suitably content by the answers I gave him.

'He contends,' Subarin said, 'that the true measure of an Empire knight is to see one in combat.'

'I trust that is not something that will be necessary,' I replied.

Then Pyotr Gmelin spoke further of the ill times that settled upon the land. In the opinion of all northern men, the dark was rising in the far wastelands. Kurgan, Kul, Norse and others of their feral kind, massing in their ghastly enclaves in numbers not seen for many lifetimes, preparing for a war upon the South. Next year, the year after perhaps, and there would be blood on the snows. Pyotr Gmelin mentioned a name - ''Archaeon'' - and said that rumours had spoken of this being as the great leader, or Most High Zar, of the Chaos tribes. It is a name the south must learn, and soon, I am sure. It is a name Kislev and the Empire must watch for and guard against with all force of heart and arm and spirit.

I asked of Pyotr Gmelin about the island in the lake, of its purpose and means. It was, I discovered, the stanitsa's temple. They called it by its old name, a word not from the Gospodar tongue, but from the more ancient tribes. This word was ''cromlech'', and it denoted an islet built not by nature but by the hand of man. In the distant past, ''before eight fathers'' Pyotr Gmelin put it, which was a Kislevite saying that meant eight generations, but was used for any great passage of time, the cromlech at Kzarla had been built in the lake, perhaps by the Scythians, perhaps by the tribes that rode before the Scythians, perhaps even by the man-horses that came before all things in the dawn time. The folk of Kzarla had inherited the site, maintained it for as long as anyone could remember, and based all their seasonal magic upon it. Of this, he was not specific. He mentioned rites for fair weather, good crops, good fishing, rituals against ice, and against blizzard. But these, Pyotr Gmelin said, were matters for the shaman.

And for Sire Jochrund too, I now supposed.

They let us take koumiss and bread back to the yurt outside the fence, and bundles of arguls, that is dried animal dung, to feed a good fire. I posted watches outside through the night, against the chance the Kul should return.

After midnight, as the constellation of the ourga was dipping towards the mountain peaks, Schroder came to wake me. The first snows had come.

In the first light of day, the land and sky were white entire, and just the long shape of the lake showed black against the snow. The fall had ceased, having laid no more than a hand's depth, but it was still and bitter cold. Today, I knew, we must leave, tomorrow at the latest, or be forced to remain in Kzarla over the winter. For the sake of the men, I would not let the wizard gainsay me now. I pulled on my cloak and rode up into the stanitsa. Sire Jochrund, so Sigert told me when I found him, was out on the islet with the shaman, and could not be disturbed. I told the clerk my message, and stressed it was not for negotiation. Then I sat by the fire in the longhouse and waited. After a time, Sire Jochrund called for me, and I went out into the snow. The sun was now fuller and watery gold, the colour of the wizard's eyes, and the world gleamed so brightly as to pain my eyes.

Sire Jochrund stood by the landward end of the causeway, and I went to him. All about, the people of Kzarla were decorating the shore and the causeway with rushlights and braziers, and also traceries of chiming tin bells suspended from fishing poles. There was some ritual afoot.

Sire Jochrund took me calmly by the arm and, calling me ''Jozef'' once again, assured me that all was well. Yes, he was aware that first snow had reached us. Yes, he knew we must make haste to go. He was all but done. Tomorrow we would ride, with no further delays. This was his promise. Tonight, the shaman was performing some winter ritual that Sire Jochrund most decidedly wished to witness. That would be the last part of the mission. Indeed, he was now in great haste to return to the bounds of the Empire.

He called Sigert up, and told him to begin packing the wagon, mentioning the items that must be left out for this last night. Sigert sniffed and nodded, rubbing his watering nose on his sleeve.

Reassured, at last, I returned to my horse, and rode back through the stanitsa to inform the company. As I passed through the streets thereof, I saw a curious thing.

It was the girl, the beautiful girl from the causeway. She had been dressed in a long blue shift of silk that seemed too slight for such a bitter day. Silver combs had been placed in her black tresses, and kohl applied around her eyes. About her shoulders, she was garlanded with strings of small white flowers, like moon drops or pfennig-worts. I wondered where such flowers had grown in the sparse cold hills.

Long ribbons of golden satin had been tied around her wrists, and by these lengths, she was being led through the town from ibza to ibza by the womenfolk of the village. The girl, I realised, was to play some role in the ritual to come, and this was part of her ceremonial preparation.

The womenfolk, old matrons mostly, were wrapped in skins and dark hooded tunics, their feet bound up in fur. They chattered and chided as they led the girl. Her feet were bare. I saw them beneath the hem of her shift as she walked unflinching through the crisp, snowy mud.

At each hut, she was greeted by the homeowner, who fed her a hunk of bread or a dry biscuit or a spoonful of meal, and also a bowl of mare's milk or koumiss. Her face was expressionless, as if she was dreaming, no smile and yet no frown. I found I was transfixed, in part by her beauty, and in part by her strangeness. As they led her on across my path, clucking to her and ringing little hand bells, she looked up at my face, and a tiny quizzical furrow made a little wrinkle between her eyebrows. There was a look - and then she had moved on. I rode to the yurt. Markovo was grilling a breakfast of fish and root pottage for the company over the fire. As we ate, we saw the Kzarla rota, in full gear, ride out from the gates, with Pyotr Gmelin at the head. They made off towards the west. The Kul warband, Baibek told us, had been sighted at dawn, in renewed force.

Night came. The rota had not returned. I stood in the doorway of the yurt, gazing out across the flatness of white that the full moons were illuminating like the finest bleached parchment. In nearby Kzarla, great fires had been banked up along the shores of the lake, burning away, it seemed to me, a whole winter's supply of arguls. Braziers and rush-lights glowed along the distant causeway, and out onto the islet, half seen to me beyond the stanitsa's fence. We could hear singing, and the beat of drums, also the clash of cymbals. The ritual had begun.

In the yurt, the company were all of readiness. Everything was packed, and they had donned their wargear, intending to sleep in it so that we could depart without delay at first light. By the firelight, they sat and waited, some drowsing, some occupied at dice or jacks. I had moved amongst them, making sure all was well, before withdrawing to the tent door.

The distant singing had turned to chanting. A sense of disquiet filled me. It seemed as if the world was skewing out of joint, like a sundial that has been turned so its gnomon reads not true the hour. There was magic upon the night air.

A screech-owl called, and made me start. Then, from the edges of my eye, I made of a motion out in the snowfield beyond where the company horses were tethered.

It was a dog-fox, its coat already white for winter, and it came padding in across the snow's blanket, tongue twitching, sniffing for scent so that steam showed at its snout.

I watched it as it scurried on towards the stanitsa, snuffling the ground as it went. Then, in a moment, it lay down flat upon its belly, and set its chin upon the ground, and there lay, looking towards the village and its fires, as if waiting. As if drawn to something as old and feral as itself.

Subarin came out to bring me a thimble cup of samogon. I swigged it against the cold, and then said: 'Do you see?'

He did not, for the fox had gone, but I told him of it and he shook his head. He could not explain it but he look toward the village as if resisting the impulse to go there.

'What is it?' I asked of him.

He was about to answer when we heard the sobbing. It was quite distinct, despite the uproar from the stanitsa, for it was closer at hand. Subarin and I exchanged glances, and then took off at once towards the gate.

Four or five of the womenfolk were crouched in the snow outside the ditch-fence, making a great show of sorrow. We came to them, and little sense could we make.

'They lament,' Subarin said, translating for me the best as he could understand their broken whimpers. 'They lament for tonight it must be really done and she will be gone from them.'

He looked at me. 'What might that mean?'

'Get the horses,' I said. 'Rouse the company and get the horses.'

He looked upon my visage for a moment, and then nodded, as if what he had seen there convinced him. He ran back across the snow towards the yurt.

Despite the prohibition on strangers, I hurried into the town. All activity was at the far end by the islet. The longhouse was a silhouette against the orange dance of the ritual fires. I ran on, along the boardwalk, and down towards the causeway.

The night was filled with flame and chanting. Sparks flew, and the foetid stench of burning dung was strong. Reflected flames fluttered out across the surface of the lake. The ruddy faces of all the villagers were about me in the smoky heat. My eyes watered. I pushed on.

I looked out towards the islet. My heart beat hard.

The tent upon the island had been taken down, revealing a stone block which looked to me like one of the heathen stones Subarin had shown to me in the forest around Svedora. This block reclined upon the platform of the cromlech, like an altar. Torches blazed around the rim of the islet, and by their light I saw the shaman capering about the stone. He was clad in a suit of bearskin, and had upon his scrawny head a crown of antlers and a mask of beaten silver. In his upraised right hand rattled a sistrum. In his upraised left glinted a silver dagger.

And on the stone, garlanded with flowers, lay the girl.

Then I saw Sire Jochrund, his long cloak billowing in the wind, walking out across the causeway towards the islet, with Sigert jumping and dancing like a court fool in his wake. The bastard clerk was stripped unto his breeks, and his puffy skin painted like a heathen. He was banging on a drum.

I refused to believe what I was seeing with my own eyes.

The crowd fell to a hush as Sire Jochrund - no, I will not write his name thuswise any more - as Jochrund reached the shaman and took from his hand the silver dagger. This was done with the exchange of many arcane speeches, accompanied by the beat of the clerk's infernal drum.

Jochrund raised the blade, and blessed it.

I had seen enough. I broke a path through the crowd and ran like a hare towards the causeway. A great cry went up from those about me, startled and alarmed. Two of the ataman's swordsmen rushed to arrest my path, but I knocked them down with my fists and laid them flat in the snow of the shore.

Then I was upon the causeway, and running still, my sword out in my hand. I bellowed the wizard's name, and cursed him in the power of holy Sigmar. He looked towards me, as if mystified to see me there. The shaman howled. Behind me, I could hear the raging tumult of the townsfolk.

I reached the islet.

'Jozef...' the wizard began. All I could see was the ritual dagger in his bare hand. Bare hand! All this time his cursed hands had been gloved and covered.

'Leave her!' I yelled.

The shaman screamed and - I'm quite certain - laid a curse on my soul that will last until the end of my days. He flew at me with a handaxe. I lashed out to meet him with my left hand, and caught him such a blow, his silver mask broke away and he went tumbling back off the platform's edge into the black water with a shriek and a flailing of limbs. He went under, and for an instance, I glimpsed his white form through the rippled water as it sank into the gloom. The shock of icy water had no doubt killed him in a second.

I cared not. I grabbed the girl up and dragged her backwards towards the causeway. She stumbled, as if sleeping, or drugged. Jochrund bellowed at me, using words I did not understand. I felt my hair stand up and my skin prickle. His clawing, bare hand gestured at me in intricate patterns, fluid and evil, and I knew that his magic was about to be unleashed upon my person. There was indeed a flash of green light, and smell like unto spoiled curds, but no great magical doom afflicted me.

Sigert, however, that base fool, had snatched up the silver dagger cast aside by his master, and came at me, cutting me deep across the meat of my right thigh with its razor edge. The pain was like a fire-burn. I yelled out, and my sword swung out instinctively, dividing Sigert's miserable head from his neck in a fountain of blood.

Holding the girl and limping, sword ready, I backed down the causeway towards the shore, as Jochrund, his face set all of manifest hatred, advanced after me. Glancing behind, I saw the shocked and frightened faces of a hundred villagers in the firelight. Shocked and frightened they might be, but still they blocked my line of escape.

'Jozef!' the wizard hissed, his hands circling and dancing once more.

'You will call me Sire von Kallen,' I corrected bluntly.

Jochrund spat and raised his hands above his head. Blue flame, like a crown of lightning, encircled them, gathering fury. I heard the thunder of hooves, the glorious sound of Sigmar's heavenly host come to carry me to my eternal slumber.

A golden javelin punched through Jochrund's left hip and threw him over onto the causeway. He screamed out an awful note of pain. The blue fire slipped off his hands like melting ice and dropped onto the lake, where it burned and spat malevolently like a marsh fire until it was spent.

I turned. The villagers were scattering in panic. The company was riding hard down the shore and along the boardwalk. At its head was Schroder, and Subarin, who was pulling a second throwing lance from his saddle boot.

'Come on! Come on, sire!' Schroder yelled. My horse's reins were pulling in his hand. I picked up the girl, as best as I could in spite my pain, and ran to my horse, throwing her up upon it and climbing up myself.

Then we rode. Down through the stanitsa of Kzarla, past the gates and the ditch, past our abandoned yurt, and into the darkness, kicking up snow and flints with our hooves.

Subarin led us to a hilltop where the remnants of a sunken mound formed a simple ditch which we might defend, and there we waited until the sun rose. Brendel bound my wound, and we lit a fire. It would be seen, I knew, but the biting night was too cold to bear. I moved the girl near the heat of it, and gave her water in her stupor, hoping she would rouse.

At length, as dawn filmed the east with a pearly glow, she woke, and began chattering with alarm and distress. Subarin came to her, for I was unable to calm her, and talked to her in soothing wise until she settled again.

He came to me then. 'She is chosen born.'

'What is meant by that?' I asked.

'Her lineage, Sire. It is born to supply the krug with offerings if the needs be.'

'You speak of it like it is human to do such a thing!'

Subarin smiled and shook his head. 'Only in these remote places do the oldest of old ways survive. This is as she has told it to me. At the coming of every winter, the folk of Kzarla krug make ceremony upon the islet. It is ritual and symbolic. A maiden is offered to the god of winter to make perforce the coming snows mild and not harsh.'

'A girl is slaughtered?'

'Not at all. A girl is offered. It is symbolic, as I said. There is a mumbled ritual involving the dagger, some flowers cast upon the water. She has done it three winters yet.'

'They do not kill her?'

'Of course not! Sire von Kallen, do you think we are barbarians out in these wilds?'

I made no answer.

'But the ceremony has its origins deep in the past, in other ages when men were not so fussy. The Scythians who raised that cromlech would indeed cut open a maiden every year-end and cast her body into the lake to fend off winter's cruelty. It is from that the Kzarla ritual derives.'

'So... what was that we saw?'

'She says, my friend, that your wizard had heard about the rite, and came to Kzarla to convince the shaman that it must be done the old way.'

'Why?'

'Because only a rite performed in the way of the old magic could enforce a true conjuration.'

I shook my poor, unknowing head. 'What?'

Subarin grinned. 'The folk of Kzarla perform the ritual symbolically every year. If it staves off winter's might, so much the good. But their Scythian forebears conducted the rite in all reality, with sacrifice, and conjured such magic as truly kept the force of winter at bay. Your lord-'

'My lord no longer!' I snarled.

'Mayhap. Your wizard persuaded the shaman, by means that cannot be known, that the rite should be performed actually this winter, as it was done in the old days. For a mild winter, he said, was the only thing that would safeguard Kislev and the Empire both.'

'He said that much? What did he mean?'

Subarin took out a skin of koumiss, and offered unto me the first draw. It warmed my bones greatly. He drank too, and then said:

'The girl says your wizard told the shaman a great threat is rising in the North. Its name is Archaeon, and beneath its fury, all of the kingdoms of the world might perish. But if the winter was mild, the armies of the Empire could advance early, prepared as they were, and lay waste to the Archaeon's hordes while they were still in their winter camps.'

'What is her name?'

'What, sire?'

'The girl. What is her name?'

'It is Mariya.'

THERE ARE NO such plans. As a knight of the Reiksguard, I would know, or at least have some inkling. Though the Empire is aware that a threat is rising in the wastes north of Kislev, it has made no plans to muster armies or draw them up to the Ostermark or the southern provinces of Kislev this year. There are no great regiments encamped upon the Linsk or the Upper Talabec in readiness for a sudden early thaw. If they move and muster, move and muster at all, it will be in the springtime, when the campaign season begins.

Jochrund was lying. A mild winter and early thaw would benefit only one side: the hosts of Chaos pouring down, early and unexpected, from the North.

This is the matter I must convey to you, and for which I have troubled to write this account. Heed it well, I beseech you. Be warned, be ready. Do not tarry. The North is coming. Archaeon is coming. Unless you prepare, the world will be set aflame. For Archaeon's talons are dug in everywhere, even into secret places, like the brittle soul of an Imperial wizard, whose villainy knows no bounds, and who would, corrupted by whatever means I know not, undermine the security of our realm, with a casting of rituals and a stab of silver.

AS DAWN CAME up upon the terraces of our ancient fort, we saw the Kul. Four score and more besides, gathering at the foot of the slopes where the snow had drifted thick. They were ominous black shapes against the blazing white, furnished for war in pitch-black armour and iron. Their tattered banners flew and snapped in the wind. Drums beat. Jochrund had called them, I was sure. Cursed Jochrund had called them to his aid.

And I knew then why he had not interceded in the fight in the valley.

These animals were his kin.

Horn blew, and echoed down the vale. The Kul clattered their shields against their spear-hafts, and began to advance up the slopes towards us. Through a spyglass, I saw Jochrund - cursed wizard! - slumped as if ailing upon his steed, commanding the warriors on.

He wanted the girl. He wanted to finish his infernal rite and pave the way for Archaeon's victory.

I hallooed up my men, and Subarin and his two comrades stood with us. We had broke most of our spears in the battle before, so now we drew out our swords. Swords of the Empire, clean-forged and true. Subarin unsheathed his golden sword, and Baibek and Markovo slid out their sabres. Even with these fine blades, I doubted it would be enough.

Our breaths furled the high air. Hawks swooped about the hilltop in the brightness of the cold daylight. As the sun reached its quarter place, they came for us.

At ten paces, I had the handgunners fire, splitting bone and helmet cases, dropping brutes onto the slope. Then it was down to swords; swords and spears against the axes and blades and shields of the Kul.

I took off a skull clean at the jawline, and then ran another warrior through, ripping out my blade to meet the next and the next again, chopping aside venturing sword-points and shattering shields about their bosses. Cloven and bleeding, the bodies of Kul rolled and slithered down the steep slope of our makeshift fort. Markovo launched his last javelin, and impaled a horned foe who went cartwheeling down the hillside. Then he raised his sabre and slashed at neck and breastbone.

Baibek cut into sundry shields and took away a Kul's throat in a patter of blood, before smiting a skull-masked fighter through the chest. His blade stuck there, arrested by the breastbone, and he was still trying to free it when the boar-spears of the invaders stuck him through.

Konstanz died with an axe between his eyes and a Kul upon his sword, writhing. Zebluck was speared through the gut, and let out a great stain of blood upon the snow.

Mottsdan cut and hacked, and set forth upon the singing of a hymn, a verse of the Empire at full throat, which many others of the company joined with, and continued long after Mottsdan himself was cut asunder.

Lieber died upon a spear. Bahr, two dead by his sword, was ripped apart by an axe that struck him above the right hip.

Erhle, bloodied by a blow to the scalp, kept fighting until his own blood blinded him and Kul swords ripped through his vitals.

Kenserhaus brought down one Kul with his last spear and then took out his sword, but a heathen axe took his sword arm away at the wrist, and he fell back, weaponless, drenching himself with his own spurting blood, and fending off blows with his left arm, which shortly was chopped and splintered into pieces. Then he was finished, with a Kul sword through the heart and into the earth beneath.

Borchers, who was always of a fine spirit and indomitable heart, buried his sword in through the chest of a Kul warlord, who cut away his head with his dying spasm.

Then Schroder fell, a spear-point into his left eye, and died most pitiously with a terrible thrashing and screaming.

I killed the Kul spearman who had killed him, and then slashed my sword outwards through the thick hip of another Kul. A third I gashed across the eyes. I ran to find Mariya.

Behind the onslaught of tribesmen, I had seen Jochrund winding his way up the hill on his black steed, leaning over in the saddle from pain.

I found her, and dragged her to her feet. Her wild blue eyes told me there was nowhere left to run. The Kul were driving in now, over the ancient rampart mounds, putting the valiant company to the sword, even though the best part of their tribe lay dead upon the flanks of the hill.

Jochrund rode into view, backlit by the winter sun, and smiled as he saw me. His hands were bare. He conjured with them.

'Jozef,' he called, mocking, 'You have done enough.'

A bone horn blew. There was a sound like thunder. Hooves.

Behind the urgent pace of Pyotr Gmelin, the rota of Kzarla tore into the Kul pack from the rear. The silverclad lancers loosed their javelins first, then came in with their lances, after which, once the lances were shattered, they took out their sabres. Silver death, from out of the winter's heart, fell upon the Kul.

Kzarla had not been prepared to accept the true ritual. In the face of it, even the women had broken down. The stern and noble rota had been sent off on a false trail to keep it out of the way for the duration of the ceremony. That had been Jochrund's doing too.

Now they had come back.

I heard Subarin cry out in glee.

The fell wizard came upon me then, his crackling hands upraised, but I had learned from our last encounter. The girl was the key. Mariya was so pure, so signified in magic, so central to the rite, she was inured against all conjuration. I swept her up between myself and Jochrund, and when his fearsome spell spat down at me, her very presence cast its power aside, unworked.

He cursed me then, and made to do upon me another enchantment. But from his left hand side came Subarin, who cut the wizard's head in twain at the cheek bone with his golden Scythian sword. How meet that was, I thought. Jochrund had been hell-bent on reviving the old ways, and now a blade preserved from that ancient time had ended his wretched life.

I have writ enough. My goat hides are all but full, and there is just tinkering of my nib in the spent flask of ink. I am done, and my story told. I will bury it under the cairn as I have said, wrapped in pigskin, and hope that someone finds it.

Or hope that I wake from winter and find it, and carry it forth. My country must know.

The winter now sets in, and contains us at Kzarla. It will be a long winter. I have guaranteed as much.

Signed and buried by my hand, that is Jozef von Kallen, Knight of the Reik.

Table of Contents

SWORDS OF THE EMPIRE

THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS

MEAT WAGON

THE CASE OF THE SCARLET CELL

REST FOR THE WICKED

THE NAGENHOF BELL

SWORDS OF THE EMPIRE