Archaon: Everchosen

by Rob Sanders

  The effort was back-breaking work, but through a snarl of exertion, Diederick found his way to a grim smile. He couldn’t see them but he could feel the wariness of the goblinoids beyond. Even wielded in such a fashion, Terminus could take off a spindly limb or impale a wizened ribcage. Guided by the staff-lantern mounted on Oberon’s saddle and the stallion’s snorting alarm, Diederick found his way to the steed. The wildly swinging lantern had saved the animal’s life under the sky-blanketing darkness of the forest canopy. Their fear no less of such artificial light than Mannslieb’s gleam or the blinding fury of the sun, the night goblins had been wary of the beast. Instead of the shredded mound of horseflesh Oberon should have been, the steed had only suffered belly-bites and scratches along its muscular flanks. Allowing Terminus to tumble from his shoulders and stab upright in the forest soil, the mud-splattered squire held his arms up to calm the stallion.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Diederick soothed. ‘It’s all right, boy.’

  As the horse lowered its head and approached, it revealed the butchered body of Nils. The squire’s ragged corpse was being dragged down a hole between the great roots of a twisted oak. The corpse twitched as the thing below attempted to wedge Nils through an opening too small to admit him.

  ‘No!’ Diederick yelled, skidding down beside the squire’s corpse. As he grabbed for his body, something gave and Nils slipped suddenly below. Grabbing for his trailing hands, Diederick and the underdweller fought for the squire’s body, until finally it was wrenched from the boy’s grip. ‘No!’ Diederick roared down the hole, but something shot back out at him. A sneering mask of pallid underdweller gnarlflesh, stretched over a sordid skull and crowded with teeth like broken glass. Only its eyes sported any kind of colour – a murky crimson, like the blood its clan guzzled from the fresh corpses like piglets.

  The night goblin dared not press its advantage further into the lanternlight and swiftly withdrew. Diederick kicked away from the hole and pulled Terminus from where it was speared in the ground. Slipping the muddy length of the templar sword down into the stallion’s saddle-scabbard, the squire mounted his master’s warsteed. Diederick could only imagine the hissing hordes of goblinoid hatred stalking him between the tree trunks, just out of sight. Holding the staff-lantern high, Diederick kept the monstrosities back as he guided Oberon to the sinkhole’s edge.

  Looking down into the hollow and with Mannslieb’s waning light dying about them, Diederick found that Sieur Kastner, lying smashed and insensible on the pit bottom, was almost impossible to make out. He heard the crunching of small jaws through bone and gristle, and realised that in the twilight he was being watched. Scores of beady, red eyes peered up out of the pit at the squire. Drawn out by the dwindling glare of the moon, the night goblins had ventured out from their tunnels. They were swarming the snug shadow of the forest and were now creeping out into the open night and feasting on the Knight of the Twin-Tailed Orb. It was an ignoble end for a servant of Sigmar. Even Sieur Kastner. His body would never see the funeral pyre. His spirit would never rise to meet the God-King.

  Diederick thought on the knight. His squireship was over. He thought on poor Nils and considered his daring plan. There, above the pit, Diederick came to a decision. He would not be returning to the temple. To Father Dagobert and his sermons. Diederick lifted the staff-lantern high before tossing it down into the sinkhole. The lantern smashed down on the pit bottom, splashing oil across the shallows. The flames raged, turning the pit into an inferno. Goblinoids screeched in blind agony, unable to find their way to mother-darkness. The underdwellers burned and the darkness of the surrounding forest was lit up by the blaze. The shadow creepers withdrew, spitting their simultaneous hunger and hatred of the pink flesh.

  The squire felt the heat rise from the pit. With it, he hoped that Sieur Kastner’s soul might reach for the skies – if only to atone to Sigmar himself for being such a despicable human being. Diederick turned the great Oberon about. He had never ridden the beast and the steed was huge. The squire gave the horse a little encouragement with his heels but Oberon didn’t need it. The horse was happy to weave through the thick trunks and leave the goblin-haunted site of flame and slaughter.

  Their path lay east. East of Suderberg. East of Middenland. East to the Gruber Marches – where, God-King willing – Diederick would return the sword Terminus to its ancestral home and lay false claim to a new one of his own.

  CHAPTER IV

  ‘’pon my soul, I could a mighty tale unfold,

  and upon the shoulders of our hero bestow

  times of trial, transformation and woe.’

  – Kaufmann, The Saga of Faramond (Chorus)

  Flaschgang River Road

  Hochland

  Schlachtentide, IC 2420

  It was the first warm day of the Sommerzeit and Diederick Kastner felt the sun on the metal of his plate. He rolled in the saddle to the idle rhythm of Oberon’s ambling gait. The Flaschgang buzzed with darting dragonflies and gurgled its meandering journey south, on its way to join the mighty Talabec.

  ‘And the precepts that guide us?’ Kastner put to his squire.

  Emil Eckhardt rode beside his master, the young squire’s horse in turn trailing a third pack animal. Over the beast of burden, hands and feet bound beneath the horse’s belly, was a blanket-bundled corpse.

  ‘To strengthen,’ Emil said.

  ‘And why?’

  ‘The servants of Sigmar must be as strong–’ Emil said.

  ‘–in both mind and body,’ Kastner added.

  ‘…as the bonds that bind them, one Imperial to another.’

  ‘Sigmar was unifier of the warring tribes that settled these ancient lands,’ Kastner said. ‘He gathered their strength so that they might face trials past, and those yet to come, as one. It is our sacred duty to maintain what he created. No one man can call himself an army, a nation, a people. It was Sigmar’s wish that we be part of something greater than himself. He is both a generous and modest God-King. We love him for that. Go on.’

  ‘To honour,’ Emil told his master.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Leading by the Heldenhammer’s example,’ Emil said. ‘By bringing his teachings to the people through action.’

  ‘Sigmar was no teacher,’ Kastner corrected, ‘no mentor in a conventional sense. There are no writings of his to study. No body of works left to follow. His instruction lay in his deeds. His ways in his character. He trusts us to keep his spirit alive in our aspiration to his example. Brave in battle and loving of his land. And the third of the precepts that guide our order?’

  ‘To protect.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We are the blazing omen,’ Emil said with confidence, ‘throwing fear into those who would bring fear to the Empire. We are the griffon’s talon, tearing the heart from the darkness within our own borders. We are the hammer in Sigmar’s hands, to be swung through the ages at enemies out of his reach. The innocent are our charge, the weak our burden and those who would war in the God-King’s name, we call brother. Does that satisfy you, master?’

  ‘It will serve,’ Kastner said, the merest curl of pride in his otherwise grim lips.

  Content that he had pleased his lord, Emil fell to self-satisfied silence.

  ‘Tell me, squire,’ Kastner said. ‘Why do we drag the maggot-ridden corpse of Yulian Spartak back to Flaschfurt?’

  ‘To burn him, master.’

  ‘But what does that serve?’

  ‘We burn him before the people,’ Emil said, ‘so that they may always remember it. So they know him as but a man and not as some dark legend of their past.’

  ‘You can’t kill a legend,’ Kastner said. ‘Yulian Spartak needs to be dead in the hearts of the people. Only the certainty of his end should endure on tongues and be carried far on the wings of idle gossip. They must see the monster burn, for then t
hey will not fear him. They will not fear what he has become. They will be better prepared to stand against such evil, should they encounter it again.’

  ‘Does such an act not carry dangers, master?’ Emil asked.

  ‘Explain yourself.’

  ‘Are we not simply exposing the innocent to a corruption that they would rather forget or have never seen at all?’

  Kastner frowned.

  ‘Do you not understand?’ Kastner said, his voice grave.

  ‘I have doubts…’ the squire admitted.

  ‘A spider crawls across your arm,’ the templar hypothesised.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You brush it away,’ Kastner continued. ‘Moments later, you brush your arm off again – but there was no spider there.’

  ‘Is that not a good thing?’ Emil asked.

  ‘It is your fear returned,’ Kastner told him. ‘A dread that now lives on inside you, giving function and form to your nightmares. It draws you to it and makes you part of that which you abhor. In your heart you would know that there was nothing to brush away, if the spider still sat crushed in your fist. We guard the borders of Sigmar’s empire. We patrol the roads and forests of his ancient land. We cannot, however, stand sentinel over the souls of each and every one of his people. Actions will speak in our absence.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Emil said obediently.

  ‘How many womenfolk wake to infant screams of horrors relived? How many sons of Flaschfurt would have set off after Yurian Spartak and his Ruinous band? How many would have wanted to but for the chill of cowardice in their bones? Victimhood eats its way through the victim, leaving a darkness that the Ruinous Powers of this world can exploit. Sigmar did not give rise to a nation of victims. The people must be allowed their peace. There is a reason we burn and bury our dead. We must be able to move on in good conscience. To live our lives without wonder of what was and what might have been.’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  Kastner was not convinced that the squire truly understood. He pulled gently on the reins, prompting Oberon to fall back. He leant across Emil’s trailing packhorse and, pulling at the rope that bound the body to it, Kastner liberated the blanket-bundle. The body fell to the road with a thud and a spray of rotten mulch and maggots. The filthy blanket fell open to reveal Yulian Spartak. Spartak of the Iron River. Spartak of Chernigov. Spartak of the Horde of Change. Spartak of the Flesh Capricious. The Kislevite had taken more names than forms, which would have made him difficult to track down were it not for the series of sorcery-slaughters committed by his warband in villages and homesteads along the Drakwasser. It had begun in Flaschfurt, however, and that was where Kastner was determined it would finally end. Emil stared at the hideous champion of Chaos before instinctively looking away.

  ‘Look at it,’ Kastner instructed harshly. Emil obeyed with disgust. ‘Look at this evil. Not the manflesh it has riddled its way through, but the darkness still there in its Ruinous form. Even in death it wishes to take you from your thoughts – to a place of dread and doubt, where it reigns supreme. In death it does this as it did in its disgusting half-life, putting you from your shot.’

  Emil looked down at the misshapen warrior. Its crossbow bolt still sat in the hunch of one shoulder where a second horned head had grown, yearning to be flesh-separate from the first. Hideous arachnoid limbs of some fresh transformation hung uselessly from the bear furs of its armoured back, while the warrior’s legs and feet were those of a terrible bird: scaly, taloned and powerful. Beyond that there was little to make out in the butchery and the rot. Kastner’s sword Terminus had gouged, hewn and hacked pieces off the thing with cold efficiency. With its sickle-staff cleaved in two and the crowning emblem of its Ruinous patron smashed, the Knight of the Twin-Tailed Orb had spun around. His broad templar blade was like the cyclonic fleshstorm Yulion Spartak had cast through Flaschfurt, Garssen and Ahresdorf and had attempted to visit upon the Sigmarite templar. As Terminus had chopped through the armour and chitin of the damned warrior’s back, severing the champion’s spine and almost cutting the thing in half, Spartak of the Capricious Flesh had erupted in a vomit-inducing blossom of final transformations, until finally the changes slowed and grew still like solidifying wax about a candle.

  ‘You can know your enemy,’ Kastner said as the squire stared down at the ungodly corpse, ‘without becoming him. That is the burden Sigmar left us to bear. It is a heavy one and it forces us to be strong for our own good. Do you understand?’

  ‘I do,’ Emil said, his eyes burning into the butchered corpse. He looked up at the knight and Kastner knew that he did.

  ‘Shall we see this monster back to Flaschfurt?’ Kastner asked.

  ‘And watch him burn for his atrocities,’ Emil said. The knight and the squire climbed down from their steeds and together bagged and replaced the miserable cadaver on the packhorse’s back.

  Kastner heard the scrape of sandals on the road. Meandering up the river road was Gorst. The flagellant seemed lost in his thoughts of impending doom and catastrophe to come. His head was hairless with obsession and worry – giving it the appearance of a skull – sitting inside the thick bars of an iron face-cage. His ragged robes hung off the sharp bones of his emaciated form. His lips mumbled a constant stream of madness – warnings and portents of little meaning or consequence. About his whippet-frame the flagellant had wrapped slender chains and the heavy locks that bound them to his purpose.

  Kastner had found him sitting on the steps of Sigmar’s mighty cathedral in Altdorf. Such doom-laden fanatics often gathered before the temple, watching for signs of some impending apocalypse or great war in the comings and goings of the God-King’s priests and templars. When he left the cathedral two years before, Gorst had stood and started following the knight without explanation. The two men had never spoken of Gorst’s reasons and, although seeming to understand what few instructions Kastner had given him over that time, he had never made any kind of sense in return. Kastner had come to think of the flagellant like a hound in this way. He was always following in his tracks, hanging his head for the favour of a word or scrap of food. Emil couldn’t find it in his heart to take pity on the madman – taking him for at best a parasite or beggar and at worse a potential thief or slitter of throats. Kastner often joked that the squire would go before the flagellant – having given as reason the greater number of years of service.

  ‘What was that?’ Emil asked. There was a sound that if not carried on the wind, gurgled along on the lazy Flaschgang. It wasn’t the rattle of Kastner’s plate, nor the muffled jangle of Gorst’s chains. ‘Is that a child?’

  Kastner bit at his bottom lip but held his tongue. Emil wandered from the packhorse to the river’s edge. Kastner waited. The squire’s call came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘it’s an infant – a baby – on the water.’

  Indeed, the sluggish channel carried a root-riddled sod of reeds and twigs downstream. In the nest lay a bundle of swaddling. From the swaddling came the cries of a newborn. ‘My lord?’

  ‘Go,’ Kastner told him. ‘If you think you need to.’

  Emil trudged down the weed-strangled bank, his footfalls tearing through the foliage. Down in the water, where mud and silt attempted to claim his boots, the squire reached out for the sod and pulled it to him. The baby’s cries subsided at the appearance of another face above it. With the swaddling clasped to him, Emil made the difficult ascent, careful that the infant did not fall or himself with it.

  ‘Who could do such a thing?’ Emil said as he approached his master with the rescued child. ‘In Sigmar’s name, have these people no shame, no decency?’

  Kastner gave the squire the hardness of his eyes.

  ‘Probably not,’ he agreed. Waiting.

  Emil pulled back the swaddling to inspect the child for injuries. He found none. He found something else entirely. The infant suddenly fell to the ground. The s
quire’s arms were open. He had dropped the bundle of swaddling, the monstrous infant, the horror that the babe had been. His steps took him back towards the river. The baby screamed once more from the tall grass of the roadside. Emil looked up at Kastner and then back down at the uncovered altered form.

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I suspected,’ the templar said. ‘It is not uncommon. The product of some deviant liaison. After carrying such a horror, a mother might not be able to bring herself to end her own issue. It is still her child, after all – despite bearing the hideous marks of dark favouring.’ Emil said nothing. He just stared at the misshapen infant, screaming its misfortune to the sky. ‘Perhaps she thinks her babe might find its way to someone with greater strength and stouter heart.’

  Emil looked from the child to the crossbow hanging from his saddle.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ the squire said.

  ‘The servants of the Ruinous Powers will not always present themselves as Yulian Spartak, dripping with the blood of his innocent victims. You must end this thing of darkness,’ the Sigmarite templar told his squire, ‘as your calling dictates.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Emil said miserably.

  ‘Have you not read your Rendsberger? What would Von Bildhofen’s Daemonologie say on the matter?’

  Emil shook his head. The squire heard the sigh of Terminus clearing its saddle-scabbard. His head continued to shake.

  ‘My lord, no.’

  ‘You would defend such evil from Sigmar’s steel?’

  ‘Surely this child is not our enemy,’ Emil said.

  Holding the greatsword in two gauntlets, its heavy blade dangling above the screeching infant, Kastner prepared himself.