01 - Star of Erengrad

by Neil McIntosh - (ebook by Undead)

  “Wait,” Stefan said. “I’m not just here to sign you up like a hired hand. The cause—” he hesitated for a moment, wondering how much he should say.

  “The cause that brings me here is just. An important cause, very important indeed. I need good men to ride with me, men I can trust to the very core of their soul. There’s none I’d trust before you, Bruno.”

  Bruno halted, and turned back to face Stefan. His face softened momentarily.

  “Don’t think your words mean nothing to me, Stefan,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten that life, not one moment of it. A day doesn’t pass when I don’t find myself there, right there as though it were yesterday.”

  He hesitated, and the warmth faded from his features. “But this is my life now,” he said. “That other life—Stahlbergen, all of it—is over, forgotten. All things come to an end, and that’s how it is with me. Don’t try and change my mind. You’ll be wasting your time.”

  He started to walk briskly past Stefan back in the direction of the armourer’s shop. “Schaffner has a customer with him,” he said. “I’d better get back.”

  “Bruno,” Stefan called after him. Bruno paused, his head half turned towards Stefan.

  “We never really talked about what happened at Stahlbergen,” Stefan said, quietly. “You did your best for those people, and they still died. I had to leave you to deal with that on your own, and that means as much to me as it did to you. But there wasn’t anything else I could have done. I had to try and find Krenzler, Bruno. I had to.”

  “You don’t know what it meant to me,” Bruno muttered. He stopped once more, and turned about. “I’m going back now,” he said. “There’s nothing left to talk about.”

  “Tell me at least you’ll think it over,” Stefan shouted after him. “In Taal’s name, man, you at least owe me that.”

  “I owe nothing to any man,” Bruno shot back. “I owe nothing—to any living soul.”

  Bruno quickened his pace. He finally stopped, a few paces short of the yard, and looked back at Stefan for a last time.

  “Goodbye, Stefan,” he said. “It was good to see you again.” He placed a hand upon the gates and pushed them open. “But my life is here now, as you see. There’s nothing more to be said. Nothing at all.”

  By late afternoon, the Two Moons in the heart of Altdorf was nearly full. Most of the seats around the scattered tables of the ale house had been taken. A motley assortment of apprentices, potboys and dealers were making swift work of their quarts of ale, swapping tales before getting back to the business of the day. Only one table, in a corner, stood empty, occupied by a lone figure who seemed to take no interest in the proceedings around him.

  The man might have been a cleric of some kind, a novitiate of the priesthood, perhaps. Small, lightly built, he cut an unassuming figure amidst the loud, sturdily built men around him. Unlike them, he seemed in no hurry to drink or to move on. An observer might have noticed that he had nursed the same half flagon for almost an hour. Unlike his fellow drinkers, he seemed only concerned with the traffic passing outside, his gaze focused upon the green door of a house on the far side of the street. Every so often, two or three of the labourers standing drinking by the bar would approach the table, intending to avail themselves of the free space. The solitary drinker would look up, his eyes meeting the newcomers. Without a word being spoken, they would turn about, leaving him alone.

  If he had a name, it would be Varik. Over countless lifetimes he had been known by many different names, but this was the name by which he was beholden to his master. His lord had gifted him with immortality; the form he now inhabited was merely borrowed flesh, nothing more than a temporary vessel for the emissary of Kyros. For the moment, it was a vessel that suited his purpose very well.

  Through the flawed lens of the window, Varik scanned the mortal forms that passed to and fro outside the tavern. Students hurrying along with their scrolls tucked under their arms; domestic servants carrying bundles of garments; market traders bowed under the weight of baskets of reeking fish. How many of them would number amongst his master’s flock? He doubted that even he, Varik, knew the true number. Some would be willing followers, enthusiastic disciples of Chaos drawn like moths to the purging fire of transformation. Others—many more—would not even be aware of the destiny that lay hidden within their souls. They were the sleeping soldiers of Tzeentch; less willing servants, perhaps, but they would serve, nonetheless.

  For the moment, those nameless, numberless others did not interest him. He was searching for one face amongst the crowd, and one only. At length, a figure passed by the window of the tavern and crossed the busy street towards the green door. Varik looked again to confirm the figure’s identity, then stood up, carefully and without hurry. He stood, leaving his flagon of beer unfinished on the table, and turned to make his way through a gang of apprentices standing drinking by the tavern door.

  The young guildsmen eyed Varik suspiciously as he eased his way past. The emissary met their accusing gazes with the same mild, blue eyes. If I so wished, he reflected, I could snap your thick necks apart in the fingers of one hand.

  “Please,” Varik said. “Take my table. I’ve finished my business here.”

  The green door had been fastened shut by the time Varik left the tavern and crossed the street. He raised his hand and laid it flat against the grain of the wood, and closed his eyes. He felt a tremor run through the heavy oak and heard the dull click as the oiled mechanism of the lock sprang open. Varik pushed gently and the door yielded to his touch, swinging open before him.

  The emissary stepped inside, savouring the sights and smells of the building. He had never been in this place before, and yet it seemed almost as if he knew it. Varik realised he was already penetrating the waking thoughts and memories of his unwitting acolyte. This one, he knew instinctively, would not resist his will for long. Noises of movement percolated through the stillness of the house. He followed the sounds up a flight of stairs to an upper room. The door lay open. A figure stood inside, the hood of a thick cloak drawn up over its head. Whoever it was stood with their back to the emissary, staring out from the window into the street below. Perhaps, Varik thought, they realised they were being followed. If so, like so much knowledge, it had come too late.

  He allowed a sound to escape his lips; the faintest of sighs, little more than a breath exhaled. It was enough. The watcher at the window spun around as though they had been stung, and stood staring, stupefied, at the emissary.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Varik saw something glint in the light: an iron bar, perhaps a rod from the hearth, being raised. Varik smiled, and stepped forward into the full light of the room. He watched the iron lift into the air and then suddenly stop, the energy of the blow suspended. He smiled, and walked towards his acolyte. With one hand, he prised the iron from the frozen grip.

  “You wonder what I am doing in your rooms,” he said, mildly. “You wonder who I am.” He turned his head upon one side, a knowing expression settling upon his features.

  “You truly don’t know me?” he asked. “No, of course you don’t. Why should you?” Varik turned the iron bar through his hands, then tossed it upon the ground. “But I know you,” he said softly. “I have known you for almost all of your life.”

  The figure on the other side of room stood like a statue before the hearth, eyes locked upon Varik in an unblinking stare, breath suspended. Varik drew a chair away from the single window and settled himself down upon it. Now that he had his prey, he was in no hurry.

  “I shall tell you something you will never have heard before,” he said. “When you were a child, you were gravely ill. Yes, you remember that. How could you forget? Your parents may have told you that you almost died, that only the blessed mercy of the goddess Shallya spared your life.”

  He smiled, indulgently. “But that was a lie.” He waited for a moment, holding the gaze of the other. “You did die,” he said, softly. “You died, and only the int
ervention of a far, far greater power could save you.” Varik got to his feet and went to the window. Down in the street below, a verminous flood of humanity continued to push and shove against one another in their futile struggle for survival, oblivious of the greater presence now amongst them.

  “Your loving parents made a bargain with my master,” Varik continued. “My master, who holds in his hand the keys of transformation. Transformation of light into darkness. Of movement—” He paused, and circled slowly around the other. “Into absolute stillness. The gift that my master bequeathed you was life,” Varik explained. “And the price of that gift was the pledge of your soul.”

  He laid the palm of his hand upon the other’s forehead, all the time holding the gaze in those frozen eyes. “Now the time has come for that pledge to be redeemed,” he said. “Now, I am your master, and you will serve me. You will be my ears, and—” he touched his fingers against cold, immobile lids—“and you will be my eyes, on the long journey that lies ahead.”

  He ran his fingers down the contours of the face in front of him. He could feel the muscles beneath the skin convulse and then harden, as if paralysed by a serpent’s venom. Which, in a way, Varik reflected, was exactly as it was.

  “Spare yourself any futile struggle,” he advised. “Your struggle ended long long ago, at the moment your soul was offered in pledge. From now on,” Varik whispered, “you have no further cares or concerns of your own. From now on, you shall know no other will but mine.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Warriors

  A sense of anticipation had infused the air since early evening, fuelling the intoxication of the crowds flowing through the streets. There was a smell that went with it, indescribable yet unmistakable: the smell of excitement, fear and hope all mingling into one. Tonight was the night of the festival games, the crowning point of Sigmarsfest, and it seemed that all of Altdorf had turned out to celebrate it.

  Stefan reached the Imperial arena of Altdorf less than an hour before midnight. The games had been in progress for almost three hours: a procession of pageants and ritual battles re-enacting the heroic past of the Empire. The arena was all but full, close on ten thousand people packed together inside.

  Stefan followed one of the tunnelled passageways that cut through into the interior of the vast stadium. He was surely anonymous amidst the countless spectators, yet, not for the first time that day, Stefan had the uncomfortable sense of being observed. He drew the hood of his cloak up over his head and hurried inside.

  In view at the tunnel’s end lay the great open space of the arena. High, curved walls stretched skywards on all four sides of the vast square, topped by seated galleries above the tiered rows of terraces. The steep banks were a sea of blurred faces, and the air resonated with the sound of ten thousand souls in full voice. Stefan stepped out from the shadow of the tunnel into a cauldron of heat and adrenaline.

  He climbed the steps to the upper tier of the gallery and found a seat amongst a gaggle of traders swilling wine and noisily arguing the details of a wager. They had been betting on who would survive the night on the field, Stefan surmised, and who would not.

  One of the traders, much the worse for drink, turned to Stefan as he took a seat, and acknowledged him with a nod of the head. “You’ve missed the best of it, mate,” he slurred. “The Araby crusades, Vampire Counts, the lot.” He offered Stefan a drink from his flask, and belched expansively. “More dead than you could load on a barrow tonight.”

  Stefan smiled, and declined the flask politely. He wasn’t here to lose himself in drink, or to watch history being re-enacted for that matter. “Don’t worry,” he assured the man. “I think the best is yet to come.”

  The dense pall of smoke carpeting the base of the arena gradually cleared to reveal the field of combat, an expanse of bare white stone, unadorned save for iron grilles set at intervals across its face. Minutes before, the field would have been strewn with the bodies of the dead: adventurers wagering their lives or prisoners brought from the Palace of Retribution, hoping against hope to survive the night and win their freedom. The bare white stone had been cleansed of their blood, ready for the night’s final act.

  A distant clock struck twelve as the last debris from the Battle of Hel Fen was cleared from the field of combat. The noise from the crowd, which had been rising steadily, now dropped away until something approaching a total, eerie calm hung over the entire arena.

  Now the night would reach its climax. The games would close with a battle selected for its special significance. A drum roll echoed across the night. Armed soldiers of the Imperial Guard took up position all around the borders of the arena, forming a human shield between the crowd and the battleground. The drum pounded on, a doom-laden sound.

  A gate on the east wall was suddenly flung wide and an enormous figure sprang out under the lights. Dark, heavily muscled, and at least seven feet tall, the figure bore aloft a shield and broadsword that most men would struggle even to lift from the ground. Its huge head was encased inside a horned steel helmet, covering all of its face except for a single, narrow slit for the eyes.

  The warrior-figure moved fast, with little grace, but with a commanding sense of violent purpose that drew an awed response from the watching crowd. Stefan recognised the monster for what it was immediately: an orc, and a giant amongst its kind at that; a warboss at the very least. Only a madman or a hero would step inside the ring with such a creature loose.

  The soldiers guarding the rim of the arena drew their swords, bracing themselves in case the orc tried to break through the cordon. The towering beast moved its iron-clad head from one side of the field to the other, seeking out any possible point of weakness. Even with the odds at thirty to one, it was an intimidating spectacle.

  Now a corresponding gate on the west side was raised, and another figure emerged. The second warrior was tall and powerfully built, but unmistakably a man. He wore light armour of the sort designed for fast combat. It might deflect a blow, but it would not save his life. Against the bulk and weight of the heavily armed orc, it looked very, very fragile.

  The armour rendered the human warrior unrecognisable, but Stefan had no doubt of who it was. This was the moment he had been waiting for. This was the man he had come to watch. If Bruno Hausmann was the ally that he would value above all others, then this was the man he would fear most as an enemy. Only a madman or a hero, Stefan reflected again. Or a man that had something of both.

  Emblazoned upon his breastplate the warrior wore the insignia of the white eagle carrying a wolf between its talons. It was the livery of Magnus the Pious, and the battle they were about to watch would depict his fateful struggle with the forces of darkness at the gates of Kislev. It seemed to Stefan to be an ironic and fateful choice.

  The orc bellowed rage and hatred at his opponent as it prepared to avenge a long captivity. The man bearing the colours of Kislev’s champion drew his sword, and stood firm upon his ground as the orc charged. Stefan knew that the soldiers had no role to intervene in the combat itself. The warrior would face the orc alone.

  Man and beast met in the centre of the arena with a thunderous clash of steel. Fiery sparks showered the night sky as sword smashed against shield, blow following upon blow. Stefan remembered the orc chieftain he had fought and slain in the howling winds above Stahlbergen. Remembered how close he had come to losing his own life on that freezing day high in the Grey Mountains. This time the outcome would be no less uncertain.

  The crowd in the arena screamed in unison as the orc launched its first savage attack. That his human opponent was brave was already beyond doubt, but it seemed far less certain that he could withstand the sheer power of the orc attack. It was as though the green-skinned beast was channeling all its ancient hatred of the human race into the thunderous blows it now rained down upon the one, lone figure. The man staggered back, desperately trying to remain on his feet. If he fell now, it would be over.

  The man fell back, stabbing repeatedly at the o
rc’s left flank with short thrusts of his sword. Several of the blows must have found their mark, yet the orc seemed oblivious to any wound inflicted. The rage boiling inside the beast had dulled what little pain it might otherwise have felt.

  Suddenly the orc found clear space for an attack and swung its heavy steel blade in a rapid arc. The sword caught the champion beneath his breastplate. The armour sprung free, clattering to the ground. The man fell, knocked off balance, and only narrowly avoided a second crushing stroke of the sword falling upon his prostrate body.

  The orc was slower than his human opponent, but it showed no sign of tiring. The knight had regained his feet and was wielding his sword skillfully, but to little noticeable effect. Blood from the creature’s wounds ran in dark streams across the arena floor, but nothing seemed to hurt it or diminish the fury of its attack.

  The orc seemed uninterested in defending itself, almost as if it was inviting the knight to attack, to burn up what little must be remaining of his strength. They may act stupidly, Stefan reminded himself. But that’s not the same as being stupid.

  The champion stumbled, dropping down upon one knee. Exhaustion, as much as the orc’s relentless attacks, seemed to be about to overpower him. The orc threw aside its heavy shield and unfurled a length of mesh fastened at its belt. A cruel net to snare its prey, fashioned from coarse, barbed steel. The creature cast the net one-handed but with awesome power. The man rolled sideways out of its path, but the crowd cried out as one as the champion’s foot became entangled in the web. The orc bellowed a sound that was half triumph, half contempt for a defeated adversary. It started to haul the net back in, dragging its struggling foe across the floor of the arena like a captured animal.