by Jack Yeovil
'You're far from home, Baron von Mecklenberg,' announced Kleinzack, puffing a cloud of vile smoke.
'Yes. I'm searching for my brother.'
'A-ha,' mused the dwarf, sucking at his pipe, 'run away from home, has he?'
'Kidnapped by bandits.'
'I see. Bad things, bandits.' He found something funny, and laughed at it. Dirt joined in, but was silenced by a cuff around the head. 'How long have you been after these bandits?'
'A long time.'
'Long, eh? That's bad. You have my sympathy. All the troubled peoples of the world have my sympathy.'
He stroked Dirt's tangled hair, and the bent boy huddled close to him like a dog to his master.
Something fell out of Dirt's clothing, and glinted on the floor. Kleinzack's face clouded, and Johann noticed how quiet everyone else was.
With elaborate off-handedness, Kleinzack downed his pipe and picked up his goblet. He drank. 'Dirt,' he said, suavely, 'you've dropped a bauble. Pick it up and bring it to me.'
The boy froze for a moment, then scuttled to the object. His fingers wouldn't work, but he finally managed to squeeze the thing between thumb and forefinger. He laid it on the table in front of Kleinzack. It was a ring with a red stone.
'Hmmn. A nice piece. Silver, I do believe. And a ruby, carved into a skull. Very nice.'
He tossed it to Johann.
'What do you think?'
Johann could hardly bear to handle the thing. It was somehow unpleasant to the touch. Perhaps he had been seeing too many skulls lately. This one was slashed diagonally. It was a familiar scar. Cicatrice was nearby.
'Crude workmanship, but it has a certain vitality, eh? Your excellency doubtless has many finer jewels than this.'
Johann put it down on the table. Kleinzack snapped his fingers, and Anna brought the ring to him. He gazed into its jewel.
'Dirt.' The boy looked up. 'Dirt, you evidently want this trinket for your own.' The boy was doubtful. A rope of spittle dangled from his lips. 'Very well, you shall have it. Come here.'
Dirt shambled forwards on his knees and elbows, advancing like an insect. He held out his hand, and Kleinzack took it.
'Which finger, I wonder'
The dwarf jammed the ring onto Dirt's little finger, then bent it savagely back. Johann heard the snap as the bone went. Dirt looked at his hand, with its finger sticking out at an unfamiliar angle. There was blood on the ruby. He smiled.
Then the din started outside.
Johann had been in enough battles to recognise the noise. The clash of steel on steel, the cries and screams of men in the heat of combat, the unforgettable sound of rent flesh. Outside the village hall, a full-scale war was being fought. It was as if armies had appeared out of the air, and set at each other with the ferocity of wild animals. Johann heard horses neighing in agony, arrows thudding home in wood or meat, shouted commands, oaths. The hall shuddered, as heavy bodies slammed into it. A little dust was dislodged from the beams.
Kleinzack was unperturbed, and continued to drink and smoke with an elaborate pretence of casualness. Anna kept efficiently refilling the dwarf's goblet, but was white under her filth, shaking with barely suppressed terror. Dirt tried to cram himself under a chair, hands pressed over his ears, eyes screwed shut as clams. Darvi glumly stood by his bar, eyes down, peering into his pint-pot. Katinka bared her teeth, apparently giggling, but Johann couldn't hear her over the cacophony of war. Mischa was in his corner, kneeling before a composite altar to all his gods, begging at random for his own skin.
Outside, one faction charged another. Hooves thundered, cannons boomed, men went down in the mud and died. Johann's ears hurt.
He noticed that Darvi, Katinka and a few of the others had padded wads of rag into their ears. Kleinzack, however, did without; evidently, he was far gone enough to last a night of this.
They were all mad, Johann realised, maddened by this ghost of battle. Could it be like this every night?
He went to Vukotich, and found his friend awake but rigid, staring in the dark. The Iron Man took his hand and held it tight.
Eventually, incredibly, Johann slept.
* * * * *
He awoke to silence. Rather, to the absence of clamour. His head still rung with the memory of the battle sounds, but outside the hall it was quiet. He felt hung-over, and unrested by his sleep. His teeth were furred and his muscles ached from sleeping sitting up.
He was alone in the hall with Vukotich. Light streamed in through slit windows. His tutor was still in deep sleep, and Johann had to work hard to slip his hand out of the Iron Man's grip. His fingers were white, bloodless, and tingled as his circulation crept back.
Puzzled, he went to the door, and found it hanging open. He put a head round it and saw nothing threatening. Hand on sword, he went outside, and climbed up the steps cut into the earth. The air was still and smelled of death.
The village stood in the middle of a field of the dead and dying. There were fires burning, carrying on the wind the stink of scorching flesh, and weak voices cried out in unknown tongues. Their meaning was clear, though. Johann had heard the like after many a combat. The wounded, calling for succour, or for a merciful blade.
At the hitching post, he found what was left of Would-Have-Been-Tsar. An intact head still in its bridle, hanging loose from the wood. The rest of the horse was a blasted, blackened and trampled mess, frosted with icy dew. It was mixed in with the limbless remnant of something small. A dwarf or a goblin. It was hard to tell, the head being mashed to a paste in the hardened mud. From now on, Johann would walk.
Ghosts or not, the armies of night left corpses behind. He scanned the flat landscape, finding nothing but the remains of war. Where did they come from? Where did they go? All the dead bore the marks of the warpstone. He could sense no pattern to the battle, as if a multitude of individuals had fought each other for no reason, each striving to kill as many of the others as possible.
That made as much sense as many of the wars he had seen on his travels.
Dirt came from the other side of the hall, his body strapped into the semblance of straightness by leather and metal appliances. He was still a puppet with too many broken strings, but he was upright, even if his head did loll like a hanged man's, and he was walking as normally as he ever would. Johann noticed his broken finger splinted and bandaged, and wondered if he'd come by his other twisted bones in the same manner. He was carrying a double armful of swords, wrapped in bloody cloth. He smiled, revealing surprisingly white and even teeth, and dropped his burden onto the earth by the hall. The cloth came apart, and Johann saw red on the blades. He had learned about weapons×formally and by experience×and recognised a diversity of killing tools: Tilean duelling epees, Cathay dragon swords, two-handed Norse battle blades, curved scimitars of Araby. Dirt grinned again, proud of his findings, and fussed with the swords, arranging them on the ground, wiping the blood off, bringing out the shine.
Johann left him to his business and went among the dead.
The villagers were on them like carrion birds, stripping armour and weapons, throwing their booty into large wheelbarrows. He examined one catch, and found rings, a silver flask of some sweet liqueur, an unbloodied silk shirt, a bag of gold crowns, a jewel-pommelled axe, a leather breastplate of Elven manufacture, a good pair of Bretonnian boots. Anna was filling this barrow. She worked delicately with the corpses, robbing them as if she were a nurse applying a poultice. As he watched, she slipped the rings from the stiff fingers of a dandified altered, then progressed to his filigreed armour. Without pausing to appreciate the workmanship, she loosed the leather ties on his arm-plates, and pulled them free. His skin was rotten beneath, and had been even before the battle. She eased his dragon-masked helmet from his head, and a knotted rope of silky hair came loose with it. His features were powdered and rouged, but had decaying holes in them. His eyes opened, and his limbs spasmed. With a small, ladylike move, Anna passed a knife under his chin, and he slipped back, blood trickling on
to his chest. He sighed away his life, and Anna worked his body armour loose.
Sickened, he turned away, and saw Kleinzack. The dwarf was bundled up in furs and wore a ridiculous hat. In daylight, the sword through him looked more bizarre than ever.
'Good morning, excellency. I trust you slept well.'
He didn't reply.
'Ah, but it's fine to be alive on such a morning.'
Mischa appeared, laden down with more religious tokens×some still wet×and bent low to whisper in Kleinzack's ear. The mayor laughed nastily, and slapped the mad priest. Mischa scurried off yelping.
'The gods have made him mad,' said Kleinzack, 'that's why they tolerate his sacrileges.'
Johann shrugged, and the dwarf laughed again. The mirth was beginning to grate on him. He was unpleasantly reminded of Andreas' deathly laughter. Truly, he had fallen among madmen.
Darvi and another man were building corpse fires. They couldn't hope to burn all the dead, but they were managing to clear the area nearest the hall. Those too big to be carried whole to the blaze were cut up and thrown on like logs. Katinka came to Kleinzack and offered him a bracelet she had found.
'Pretty-pretty,' he cooed, holding the bracelet up so its jewels caught the light. He slipped it over his wrist and admired it. Katinka hovered, bowed down, waiting for an indulgence. Kleinzack reached up and stroked her ratty hair. She hummed to herself in idiot contentment, and he sharply tweaked her ear. She cried out and he pushed her away.
'Back to work, hag. The days are short, and the nights are long.' Then, to Johann, 'Our work is never done, you see, excellency. Each night there are more. It never ends.'
A hand fell on Johann's shoulder, and squeezed. He turned. Vukotich was up, a broken lance serving as a staff. His face had kept its greenish look, the scars standing out white and hard, and there was pain behind his eyes. But his grip was still strong. Even hobbling, he radiated strength. He was still the Iron Man who inspired terror even in Cicatrice's worst.
'This is a Battlefield of Chaos, Johann. This is what Cicatrice has been heading for all along. It's nearly over. He'll be close by here, sleeping, with his creatures about him.'
Kleinzack bowed to Vukotich, shifting his sword slightly. 'You know about the battle, then?'
'I've heard of it,' said Vukotich. 'I was near here once when I was younger. I saw the Knights coming here.'
'For over a thousand years, they've been fighting among themselves, proving themselves. All the Champions come here sooner or later to see if they've got what they say they have. And most of them haven't. Most of them end up like these poor dead fools.'
'And that's how you live, dwarf,' spat Johann. 'Robbing the dead, selling their leavings?'
Kleinzack didn't seem offended. 'Of course. Someone has to. Bodies rot, other things don't. If it weren't for us, and for our forebears, this plain would be a mountain of rusting armour by now.'
'They sleep in great underground halls nearby,' said Vukotich, 'sleep like the dead. This is an important stage in their development, in their alteration. They lie comatose by day on warpstone slabs, changing form, ridding themselves of the last traces of humanity. And by night, they fight. In small groups, in single combat, at random, they fight. For a full lunar month, they fight. And if they survive, they go back into the world to spread their evil again.'
'And Cicatrice?'
'He'll be here. Asleep now, as befits a general. We'll find him, and Wolf with him.'
Vukotich looked tired. From his eyes, Johann could tell it would be over soon, one way or another.
'You,' Vukotich addressed Kleinzack, 'carrion crow. Have you found anything bearing this symbol?' He produced a cloak-clasp with the emblem of Cicatrice's band, the stylised human face deformed by a red lightning bolt in imitation of their leader's daemon-claw scar.
The dwarf held up a hand, and rubbed his thumb against his fingers. Vukotich tossed him the clasp, and he made a great show of examining it as if appraising the workmanship.
'I can perhaps recall some similar item'
Vukotich produced a coin and cast it at Kleinzack's feet. The dwarf looked exaggeratedly insulted, and shrugged helplessly.
Johann dropped a purse of coins to join the single crown and Kleinzack smiled.
'It all comes back to me. The scar.' He passed a finger diagonally across his face, kinking a little over his nose. 'Very distinctive. Very unusual.'
'It's an unusual man we're after.'
'The man whose followers bear this design?'
'Yes. Cicatrice, the bandit.'
Kleinzack laughed again. 'I can do better than show you a man who bears the image of this scar'
The dwarf spun the clasp in the air and caught it.
'I can show you the man who bears the scar itself.'
A claw grasped Johann's heart, and squeezed.
'Cicatrice?'
The dwarf nodded, smiling, and held out his open hand. Johann gave him money. Kleinzack made a great pretence of examining his payment, biting into one gold crown, leaving shallow marks across the Emperor's face. He looked at Johann and Vukotich, savouring his momentary power over them.
'Come,' he said, at length, 'follow me.'
Vukotich was still slowed by his wounds, but managed to hobble along with the dwarf. Johann felt frustrated by their measured pace as they went their way through the heaps of the dead, out onto the bloody steppe. For ten years, he had been waiting to confront Cicatrice. That scarred face×which he had never seen, but which eternally recurred on his men's emblem×had haunted his nights. He had never exchanged a blow or a word with the bandit, but Johann knew his history as well as he knew his own, and felt that by following in Cicatrice's tracks, he had become as close to him as to a brother. A hated brother. Now, he remembered their separate battles. He measured his bested foes against Cicatrice's, wondering whether he was truly the Chaos Champion's equal in battle. He supposed he would find out soon enough.
Johann was impatient. Ten years was too long. It was well past time to get this over with.
No. He slowed himself, keeping in step with Vukotich and Kleinzack, helping his tutor over the rougher patches of ground, reining in his unruly imaginings. He would not hasten now. He had stayed alive for this day, kept himself going beyond all human endurance. He would not fumble at the last and chance Wolf's life. He found a calm in the centre of his heart, and let it seep through his being. The tightness in his chest eased. He began to see with a deadly clarity.
Almost unconsciously, he checked his weapons. His knives were in their greased sheaths, his sword hung easily from his belt. The blades could be in his hands faster than a human eye could register. After ten years on the trail, he could kill sometimes faster than he could think. It was a habit of which he looked forward to purging himself.
He remembered the initial arrow, brushing the deer's hide, proceeding with what had seemed like supernatural slowness towards his brother's shoulder. Johann hadn't used a longbow since, preferring to concentrate on hand-to-hand iron and steel.
'It's not much further,' wheezed Kleinzack. The dwarf was out of breath, and his sword shivered each time he filled his lungs. 'Just over this ridge.'
The ridge was not a geographical feature, it was an arrangement of dead horsemen and their steeds, cut down by a row of cannons. The third or fourth charge had broken through, but the casualties had been appalling. Johann tried not to think of the ranks upon ranks of flesh underfoot as he helped Vukotich up over the obstacle. Kleinzack swarmed with surprising agility over the cavalry corpses, pulling himself along using belts and saddles as hand-holds.
Darvi and a group of rangy, dead-faced men were hard at work, cutting valuables loose from the bodies with saws and shears. They were working on a pile of felled knights. One man was tugging at a plumed helmet whose owner was still feebly resisting, despite the depth and number of his mortal wounds. This one was in the latter stages of the changes, limbs barely recognisable as human, leathery batwings torn and crumpled beneath
him, torso swollen up by a breastbone that was thrusting through papery skin like a knifeblade. The tatterdemalion's head twisted this way and that with the helmet, but finally his robber got a good enough grip and with one determined tug pulled his prize away.
The altered was old, his cheeks sunken and serrated, all his teeth gone save for two yellow tusks that had worn grooves in his lips. His hair was white and sparse, knotted in rat-tails on one side where he had once been partially scalped. And a red scar ran diagonally across his face, kinking a little over the nose.
Their search was over.
But this was not the Cicatrice Johann had pictured. This was a dying misfit, altered beyond practicality, lost even to himself.
'I want to talk to him,' Johann told Kleinzack.
'That's of no mind to me, your excellency'
The dwarf wandered off, signalling Darvi and his men to follow. There were still pickings to be had. Something was screaming a few hundred yards away. Kleinzack's crew ambled towards it, their killing tools ready for use.
Johann and Vukotich stood over the man they had followed for so long. He hardly seemed aware of their presence, being absorbed in the business of dying. Cicatrice was still vaguely trying to stand up, but ankles broken and swollen to the thickness of a normal man's waist wouldn't support him. Uncomprehending eyes opened and blinked on his bare shoulders, purposeless tendrils waved languidly in the flow of blood from the rib-deep wound over his heart.
'Cicatrice,' said Johann, feeling the syllables of the name on his tongue, 'listen to me'
The old altered looked up with fast-dimming eyes, and managed a smile. Red treacle oozed from his mouth.
'Cicatrice, I am the Baron von Mecklenberg.'
Cicatrice coughed, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and turned his head to Johann. For the first time, the hunter and the hunted looked upon each other. Johann saw recognition in Cicatrice's eyes. The dying monster knew who he was. And he would know what he had come for.
