THE NAGENHOF BELL

by 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.