by C. L. Werner
‘You should spend more time learning about your prey,’ Brunner said. ‘Don’t place all your wager on a single informant. I have my reasons to believe Riano headed south if he had to quit Decimas.’
‘And those would be?’ Sabarra asked.
‘I prefer to keep that information to myself,’ Brunner replied. ‘That way I won’t have to watch my back.’ The Reiklander continued to dab at the blistered skin of his face, trying to soothe the raw, irritating itch that had seeped into his skin. Sabarra’s smile widened as he noted the ugly rash.
‘I’d be worried about that,’ he told Brunner. ‘Who knows what foulness was in that animal’s blood. I’d get myself to the nearest hospice of Shallya if I were you. Let the priestesses bleed the contamination out of you. Maybe let someone else finish this hunt for you, bring you your percentage later.’
Brunner threw the cloth down. ‘Either I die or I don’t,’ he told Sabarra. ‘I’ll not go crawling to anybody, not even the gods. I’m through with all of that, through playing their games.’
‘Have a care,’ Sabarra warned his rival. ‘You die and I might never find Riano. I’d hate to miss that payday because an impious fool went and caught the plague.’
Brunner’s response was spoken in a tone as menacing as the grave. ‘Then I suggest you start praying I don’t get sick.’
The disease-ridden mutant crept into the foul-smelling hovel, bent almost in half, cringing at every step as though it were a whipped cur rather than a man. The room he had entered was a shambles: furniture overturned, walls fouled with blood and mucus, the air filled with buzzing flies. Bodies littered the floor, their skin blackening as necrotic bacteria speedily consumed their diseased flesh, the final trademark of the ghastly red pox. But it was not this reminder of the hideous disease that so unnerved the once-human wretch. It was the five armoured shapes looming against the far wall.
The warriors were huge, hulking monsters, their powerful forms encased within suits of plate armour, the steel pitted with corruption. Upon their breastplates had been stamped the mark of their deity, the daemon god to whom each of the corrupt warriors had pledged his life and soul. Three circles and three arrows—the mark of Nurgle, Grandfather of pestilence and decay. The close-faced helms of the Chaos warriors did not turn to regard the mutant as he slowly crept toward them, intent instead on the miserable figure sprawled upon the filthy floor before them. It was an old man, his body disfigured by the profusion of red boils that peppered his skin. His diseased frame trembled and shook as the agonies of the plague ripped at him, yet the Chaos warriors made no motion to end his suffering. Plague was the handiwork of their god, and to the Chaos warriors, what they were witnessing was a holy sacrament, and they stood as if in the presence of their loathsome deity.
Nervously, the mutant cleared his throat, allowing a dry croak to escape his drawn, placid lips. The sound caused the warriors to turn their steel faces upon him, fixing him with their burning eyes. The mutant fought back the urge to flee, holding his ground as the centremost of the armoured warriors strode toward him. He was a brute, his steel armour fading into a mass of green corruption, leather straps hanging from spikes set into his shoulder-guards displaying a variety of festering trophies. The warriors helm was cast in the shape of some mammoth insect and there was no sign of any eyes behind the sieve-like holes that pitted the helm’s face. The mark of pestilence branded into the warrior’s breastplate glowed with a leprous light, marking the creature as favoured by his daemon master—a champion of Chaos.
‘Zhere izz reazon why you dizurb uzz,’ the droning, buzzing voice of the champion echoed from within his helm. The mutant cowered before the unnatural voice, falling to his knees before the ghastly creature. Pulstlitz gave the mutant only a moment to answer before growing impatient, his armoured hand falling to the massive sword at his side, a gigantic blade of rusted steel that drooled a murky scum from its pitted edge, the filth falling to the floor in sizzling droplets.
‘Mercy dread master!’ the mutant cried in a voice that seemed to bubble from the bottom of his stomach. ‘Your slave did not mean to disturb your devotions! I came to bring word that Folgore is not coming back.’
A seething growl rasped behind the insect-helm. Pulstlitz took another menacing step toward the mutant. ‘That vermin darezz defy my command! I will carve the name of Pulzlizz upon hizz bonezz for zhizz betrayal of Nurgle!’ The other Chaos warriors watched their master warily knowing too well that when their champion was in such a state, death hovered near. The mutant buried his face into the floor, unwilling to gaze upon the favoured of the Plague God.
‘Folgore is dead, master!’ the mutant whined. ‘Slain upon the road by a traveller who wore not the blessings of the Grandfather!’
‘You rizked attack when I commanded you here?’ Pulstlitz demanded, the droning buzz of his voice seeming to come not from one but a dozen throats. ‘When I need every mangy beazman and acolyte? When I prepare to raze the hozpizz of thrice-accurzed Zhallya? It izz at zuch time you zee fit to dizobey?’ The enraged plague champion lifted his armoured foot, bringing it smashing downward into the abased mutant. Bones cracked as Pulstlitz brought his weight down upon the mutant’s neck, then ground the creature’s skull into the floor beneath his foot. When nothing solid remained beneath his boot, Pulstlitz turned to his warriors.
‘We wait no longer!’ the Chaos champion droned. ‘Zhiz night we ride for the hozpizz! I will zee it burn!’ The warriors did not pause to question their leader’s command, but hastened to follow the monster into the night, leaving the old man to complete his communion with the Plague God in solitude and silence.
Sabarra watched as the white walls of the structure finally manifested in the distance. The bounty hunter cursed under his breath. It was about time he encountered some manner of luck. Since setting out after the price on Riano’s head, he’d been met by obstacle after obstacle. It was as if the gods themselves were hurling every misfortune they could conceive in Sabarra’s way, as though he were some mighty hero from some Luccini fable rather than a hired killer just trying to maintain a comfortably hedonistic lifestyle. The bounty hunter spat into the dust of the road. The gods! As though they were paying any manner of attention to him. They certainly were not in the mood for answering prayers.
The bounty hunter looked over his shoulder, back at the train of animals that slowly plodded along behind him. Slumped in the saddle of the rearmost horse was Sabarra’s old rival and recent partner, Brunner. The Tilean cursed again. He’d warned Brunner against mocking the gods, but the miserable Reiklander had remained unrepentant. Now he was sick, contaminated by whatever filth had lived within the loathsome blood of the pestigor he’d killed. For three days now, Brunner had been slipping in an out of consciousness as the disease wracked his body.
Sabarra shook his head, cursing his ill luck. During his lucid moments, which were becoming less and less frequent, Brunner’s mind had wandered, crawling through the muck of the bounty hunter’s bloody career. But he’d still retained enough coherency that he did not respond to Sabarra’s promptings for more information—most especially with regards to Riano and whatever hole the thief had relocated himself to. Some deep-rooted instinct of self-preservation stilled Brunner’s lips at such times. The bounty hunter’s eyes had cleared for a moment, boring into Sabarra’s own. ‘Get me to a healer,’ Brunner’s voice had rasped. ‘Then I’ll tell you what you want to hear.’
By rights he should have left Brunner behind. Sabarra had seen enough of the red pox in his time to recognise its early stages. But the image of the gold being offered for Riano’s head had been too tempting. So, Sabarra had lifted the sickly warrior into the saddle of his horse, tying Brunner’s hands about the animal’s neck, his legs beneath its belly. With Brunner secured to his animal, Sabarra had set out for the only place he could think of where a man suffering from the red pox might find sanctuary and succour. He only hoped that Brunner would last long enough to reach it.
The wh
ite walls grew steadily in size, the narrow cross-shaped windows and massive supporting buttresses breaking up the smooth alabaster facade. Sabarra could make out ragged figures huddled in the shadow of the walls, a great sprawl of wretched humanity. The bounty hunter’s spirits fell another notch. Just how widespread was this plague? It looked like half of Tilea was camped outside the walls. He risked another look over his shoulder, striving to see if Brunner had reacted at all to the sight, but the man remained as he had for more hours than Sabarra wanted to count. The Tilean looked back toward the walls, noticing this time the vast pit that had been torn from the earth some distance to the west of the structure. Dour, hooded figures were busy there, throwing naked bodies into the yawning chasm as though tossing seed across a field. It was a minute before Sabarra released the breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding. Of all the ends he could imagine, being consigned to a plague pit was probably about as bad as it got. Sabarra looked back once more at his charge and scowled.
So long as he found out what he wanted to know, Sabarra didn’t much care where Brunner wound up. All the Reiklander had to do was cling on to life long enough to become lucid one last time.
An aura of misery so intense that it seemed to clutch at Sabarra’s face greeted the bounty hunter as he drew nearer the white-walled structure. The Tilean struggled to avoid looking down, tried not to see the dejected, forlorn creatures that sprawled upon the ground all around them. Many looked dead already, only the glazed eyes that rolled within their boil-strewn faces betraying the fact that they yet drew breath. Some of these miserable creatures had managed to build crude tents of rag and fur, but the vast majority just lay upon the ground, exposed to the open air and the chill of night. Sabarra tried not to imagine how many of these lost souls would make the journey past the portal of Morr before the sun again rose. Perhaps it was even a kindness to allow them to expire from exposure rather than the suffering the red pox would wrench from their bodies before it was through with them.
Sabarra slowly moved the horses through the sprawl of diseased refugees, the animals hard-pressed to avoid stomping on the miserable wretches. The bounty hunter allowed a slight sigh of relief to escape his throat as he saw the arched doorway that led into the structure behind the white walls and the shimmering marble dove that loomed above the arch’s cornerstone. ‘Well, friend,’ Sabarra declared, glancing back once more at the still unmoving Brunner, ‘this is it. The Shrine of the Seven Mercies. The hospice of Shallya.’
As if in response to his declaration, several men suddenly appeared beneath the arch, emerging from the interior of the hospice. Three of the men wore suits of armour, narrow helmets crushed about their ears. Their eyes were red-rimmed and their faces bore a pained, tired expression. But there was nothing fatigued in the way in which they held their spears. Three other men, dressed in the simple sack-cloth of supplicants of Shallya, laboured under the weight of a scrawny, pale burden. Behind the men carrying the corpse, a pair of white-garbed priestesses followed, one bearing a torch, the other carrying a bundle of rags that Sabarra imagined had once clothed the dead man. It was a common custom in cases of the plague. The body was hastily buried, but the clothes and bedding were burned, lest they pass the contagion on to another.
The priestess bearing the torch stared up at the mounted bounty hunter, her eyes red-rimmed and brimming with fatigue. Sabarra was somewhat surprised to find that the priestess was quite comely beneath the lines of worry and overwork. It had always been his experience that the ranks of the priestesses were commonly filled by daughters deemed unfit for a profitable marriage by their fathers. The bounty hunter’s face twisted in the faintest hint of a lewd smile. Instantly the woman’s eyes narrowed with disapproval, the shadows cast by her hooded robe seeming to grow thicker about her face.
‘What do you want here, mercenary?’ the priestess asked, her voice soft, yet demanding. Sabarra noted that it was a voice used to the burden of command and guessed that the priestess must be highly ranked among the sisters of the hospice, perhaps even the Sister Superior in charge of the entire shrine. Taking that into consideration, and remembering why he had come, the smile died on the bounty hunter’s face. He was all business now.
‘I seek the solace of the shrine,’ Sabarra answered. ‘I am in need of Shallya’s mercy and blessing.’
The priestess took a step forward, the torch banishing the shadows from her face. ‘You are ill?’ she asked. Sabarra shook his head.
‘No,’ he replied, then gestured to the horses standing behind his own. ‘But my friend is in dire need of healing.’ Sabarra’s voice dropped into a chill whisper. ‘I fear it is the red pox.’
The priestess nodded her hooded head, sighing regretfully. ‘Your friend is not alone. Many have fallen victim to the pox, and many more must follow before this evil has run its course. The mercies of Shallya are in much demand these days, our hospice is filled far beyond its capacity and still we cannot provide sanctuary for all who would enter.’ She extended her arms to indicate the wretched masses clustered about the walls. ‘The red pox is swift, once it has a hold on the flesh it is difficult to exorcise. We cannot forsake those in whom the infection is little, those who might recover, to give false hope to those for whom it is already too late.’
Sabarra gritted his teeth. When he first saw the miserable camp on the hospice’s doorstep he should have expected as much. He stabbed a finger at the body being carried away. ‘It seems there is at least one bed without an owner.’ The priestess shook her head.
‘And there are twenty already waiting to fill it,’ she said sadly, turning to follow the grim procession.
‘Dammit! At least you could look at him!’ Sabarra snarled. The priestess turned again, her eyes boring into the bounty hunter’s. At length she sighed and strode toward the warhorse standing behind Sabarra’s own. The woman’s steps slowed as she neared Fiend, as her eyes fell on the man lashed to the animal’s back. It was a trembling hand that reached out toward the sick man, that lifted his head and stared at his face. The priestess recoiled as though it were a serpent she held in her hand.
‘There is no room,’ she repeated, her voice quivering. The man lashed to the saddle tilted his head and spoke in a shallow whisper.
‘Even the goddess of mercy picks and chooses her prey,’ Brunner’s fading voice managed to hiss before his head sagged back down into Fiend’s mane. The priestess glared at the sick man, then turned her head back toward Sabarra.
‘Bring him inside,’ Elisia told Sabarra. ‘Sister Marcia will show you where.’ Elisia did not wait for a response from the bounty hunter, but went after the funeral party, her steps hurried, fed by the doubt and fear that had closed icy fingers about her heart.
She had hoped never to see that face again, hoped never to hear that harsh, unforgiving voice. It had been almost a year since she had undertaken her mission of mercy for the Bertolucci family, wealthy merchants from Miragliano who had fled to a country villa in order to escape enemies in the city. But those enemies had sent an agent in pursuit of them, a hired killer to root them out from their hiding place. Brunner had ‘chanced’ upon Elisia as she was making her way to the villa, circumstance causing the grim bounty hunter to become her protector against the beastmen that prowled the countryside. Little did the priestess know that both of them had business at the villa—she to bring a new life into the world, the bounty hunter to remove an old one from it. Guilt and despair had wracked her for months afterward, that she had allowed herself to be the unwitting accomplice of the killer, that her actions had helped bring about a good man’s death.
How she had wished death upon Brunner. It was true that he had saved her on the road to the villa, but only so that he could use her. She owed the merciless killer nothing. And now, her wish was coming true, Brunner was in the grip of the red pox, its poison coursing through his body. He would die, slowly and in great agony. Why then had she admitted him into the hospice?
Because it was her sacred oath to comba
t the forces of pestilence, because Brunner had questioned her integrity, made her consider whether she would violate that sacred duty simply to indulge her own desire for vengeance. Far from a wish fulfilled, the bounty hunter’s arrival might prove the most arduous test of her faith she had ever endured.
Elisia hesitated, casting a worried look over her shoulder at the white walls of the hospice. Yes, it was a test, but was she equal to that test?
Sabarra stood aside as a pair of burly supplicants lowered Brunner onto a straw pallet in one of the hospice’s overcrowded wards. Designed to hold perhaps twenty inmates, every spare inch of space had been scavenged to provide room for nearly fifty. The men moved aside, allowing a dour priestess to inspect their latest charge. The old woman produced a small knife and began to strip away the bounty hunter’s clothes and armour, her deft hands nimbly plucking weapons from Brunner’s belt. The stricken bounty killer did not stir until the old woman’s hand tugged at the dragon-hilt of Drakesmalice. Like a shot, Brunner’s hand clutched at the weapon, fingers tightening about the blade until his knuckles turned white. The priestess tugged at the imprisoned weapon, trying to free it from the sick man’s grasp.
‘He doesn’t want you to take his sword,’ Sabarra stated. ‘I suggest you leave it with him.’ The old woman cast a sour look at the Tilean, but released her grip on Drakesmalice, hurrying to remove the rest of Brunner’s armour. When she had finished, she gathered up the bounty hunter’s gear and without a backward glance, strode from the ward. Sabarra waited until she had gone, then crouched beside Brunner’s pallet. The reaction to the priestess trying to take his sword encouraged Sabarra that his rival might have slipped back into a moment of relative coherence.
‘We’re in the hospice, Brunner,’ Sabarra told him. The stricken man turned his head weakly in Sabarra’s direction. ‘You’re in the Seven Mercies.’
