Warhammer Anthology 12

by Death

  The Provost Marshal spared the Baron a look of quick contempt, then turned back to his wife.

  ‘You will burn for this,’ he told her, his face glowing with terrible enthusiasm. ‘When I get to hell I’ll set such daemons on you that you’ll burn for an eternity.’

  The Baron, outrage lending him some of the vitality which Adora’s attentions had so depleted, sprang to his feet.

  ‘I told you to keep silent,’ he roared, and the Provost Marshal, having exhausted his store of curses on Adora, turned to her new lover.

  ‘And you, you old fool. May Manaan strike you down for your stupidity.’

  He raised his manacled hands above his head as if to summon the very god himself.

  And maybe he did.

  As he finished his curse the Baron felt a sudden, stabbing pain in his chest. He staggered back, clutching at his heart and feeling for the arrow which he was sure had pierced him. When he found that he was unwounded he glanced around the crowd, his brow furrowed with unaccustomed confusion.

  He hit his chair with the back of his knees and sat down heavily. All at once he realised that he had lost all feeling down the right side of his body, and that he was drooling from one numbed corner of his mouth.

  ‘My lord?’ Adora whispered, clutching at his arm with the concern of somebody seeing their livelihood slipping away. She took one of his hands in time to feel it curl up into a hard claw of agony. He turned to look at her in a last moment of shock, then his eyeballs rolled back up into his forehead and he died.

  The crowd stood dumbfounded. The guards looked to each other in their confusion, and even the Provost Marshal seemed shocked by the efficacy of his murderous prayer.

  Adora reassured herself that the Baron’s pulse had beat for the last time, then looked around her with a fierce intelligence. This wouldn’t be the first time she had been forced to improvise.

  But Florin was even quicker off the mark. Ignoring the way the noose scratched the skin beneath his jaw he took a deep breath and bellowed out in a fit of religious fervour.

  ‘Praise Manaan,’ he cried and, as all eyes turned to him, he contrived to smile with sickly fire. ‘Praise Manaan for his judgement. See how he has stricken the unworthy so that the true Provost Marshal may save us from hunger.’

  An excited murmur ran through the mob, although the guards were regarding him with critical eyes.

  He regarded them back.

  ‘Praise Manaan,’ he continued, ‘for saving the city from starvation and the Emperor’s intervention.’

  The guards looked doubtful. The Emperor’s interventions were well known for their bloodthirsty enthusiasm.

  ‘Praise Manaan

  ’ Florin went on, and found that he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  The Provost Marshal, perhaps inspired by his own unguessed-at powers, took over.

  ‘My friends,’ he cried, clambering onto the stage so that he stood between the crowd and the corpse of their previous ruler. ‘In honour of the glory of the great God Manaan, I propose that we hold a feast day, and I insist that the city lets me pay for it.’

  There was a cheer, hesitant at first but growing in strength.

  ‘And praise Manaan,’ one of the merchants said, ‘for an end to rationing.’

  The Provost Marshal looked at him and nodded. As the merchants raised their voices in acclamation, the guards unchained their restored master. At his command they then unchained the rest of the prisoners.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Florin said as he rubbed some life back into his hands, ‘but I think it might be time to head for home.’

  Without another word the two of them ran to the docks.

  Adora had thought about fleeing. Then she had thought better of it. It would be difficult to talk the Provost Marshal around, she knew, but it could be done. Anything could be done. Sometimes doing so could be brutal, or cruel, or degrading. Sometimes it could be a lot worse.

  But nothing, nothing, was impossible.

  That was why she hadn’t run, and why she had allowed herself to be locked in her boudoir. Her jewels were gone, but her comb and her mirror remained. She sat in the oil light, admiring her reflection as she combed her hair. She had no plan, but as the soothing strokes of the brush whispered though the gloom, she knew that she was ready.

  When she next saw Harrald, who was once again the Provost Marshal, she would know how to handle him. She would know it instinctively. She always did.

  When she had finished a hundred brushstrokes she turned down the oil lamp and slipped into bed. Another captive might have had trouble sleeping, but not Adora. She was never more relaxed than when in the eye of a storm. Within minutes she was snoring. It was the one imperfection in the perfectly controlled, perfectly contrived image she had created.

  She awoke to the sound of screaming and the smell of smoke.

  Flipping out of bed she pulled on a loose gown and girdled it around her waist. There was no way of telling what time it was, but that hardly mattered now. The screams she heard from outside her window were rising into a hellish chorus, and she knew that something terrible was happening.

  Heading to the window, Adora could see the moon low on the horizon, but there was no need of the wan light it cast to see the sack of Vistein. The blaze of the burning fleet lit the whole town. The ships’ hulls burned like funeral pyres, and their masts jutted up like huge candlewicks. Here and there the fire had spread to land, and the houses clustered around the dock were already burning with an unnatural ferocity.

  Adora scanned the narrow streets and cramped plazas for any attempt to fight the fire, but there was none. Instead the city was alive with struggling figures, blurred by smoke and distance. Small, dark figures moved amongst the townsfolk, and as Adora peered down into the confusion she saw the glitter of firelight on the chains which bound a whole street full of people together. She saw the flicker of what might have been whips, then a cloud of billowing smoke obscured her view.

  When it had cleared, the people were gone. In their place a gang of longshoremen, recognisable by their high boots and billhooks, had taken their place. A man in the middle was shouting orders as they moved down the street in a ragged formation.

  They didn’t get far. As Adora watched there was the sound of shattering glass and clouds of green smoke rose up amongst them. The men died tearing at their own throats, eyes wide enough for her to see the whites even at this distance.

  The door banged open behind her. Adora span around and felt a flash of relief when she realised that it was Harrald. Then she saw the things that were chasing him and the relief vanished.

  Even in the firelight she recognised them for what they were. The wiry bodies. The sharp noses. The even sharper teeth. These were the things that the Bretonnians had killed in the arena.

  ‘Help me,’ Harrald cried as he rushed towards her.

  As last words went, they were hardly original, she thought as a blade buried itself between the Provost Marshal’s shoulder blades. Suitable for the fool, though.

  She dodged out of the way as his body fell forwards and looked at the two beastmen who followed him into the room. They stank. Even over the acrid odour of the burning town, they stank. She kept the grimace off her face as she met their murderous eyes. One of them raised another one of the vicious throwing stars which had felled Harrald.

  Adora dropped to her knees and, a sudden memory of the line of chained captives flashing through her memory, offered up her wrists.

  She waited for the sting of the creature’s weapon. Instead she received only the shock of its voice.

  ‘This,’ it shrieked, its voice like claws drawn down a slate. ‘Your king?’

  ‘Not now,’ Adora said. ‘Now, you king.’

  The creatures made a gurgling hiss and Adora looked up in time to see the distrustful grimace that passed between them. She began to hope.

  ‘I obey you,’ she said and offered her wrists. ‘I see you are king.’

  When
the iron clicked around her wrists it felt no heavier than any other piece of jewellery she had been given, and by the time she had been dragged out of the palace to be chained with the other captives her fear had already gone.

  She would survive. She always did.

  Her sails were fat with the full wind, and the Katerina scudded briskly over white-capped waves. It was cold on deck. Beneath the sharp sting of the sea spray the air was chill with the approach of winter, and the smell of brine was mixed with the tang of the thunderclouds that brooded on the far horizon.

  Florin, snug in a seaman’s leather tunic, sniffed the air and sighed happily. It smelled like freedom.

  The stink of Vistein’s gaol was behind them. They had been running ahead of the season’s biting winds for three days now, and the city was safely behind them. Florin thought briefly of the gold they had lost there, but only briefly. He had his freedom and his wits and his ship, and for a man with those three blessings opportunities were always beckoning.

  Author’s Note.

  Nobody ever did learn exactly what happened to the people of Vistein. There were rumours, of course, each as unlikely as the last. In time there were even legends, ridiculous children’s stories about ratmen and enslavement and long, endless journeys through long, endless passages.

  Fortunately, the Empire’s scholars are too wise to pay heed to such nonsense. Many towns are deserted after the crops fail. That’s simple economics. As to the dark maggot holes that had gnawed their subterranean way out of the cliffs and into the caverns that surrounded the town, well, what of them? Geology is a new science in the Empire, and one day they will be explored. One day.

  In the meantime, Vistein’s crumbling bones are left to the sea and the wind and the weeds, and if ghosts still dwell there, they dwell alone.

  The Last Ride of Heiner Rothstein

  Ross O’Brien

  They rode along the course of the stream: two hundred men, an honour guard. Each man kept his thoughts to himself, and his horse in line. The hunt was almost at its end; they would pass through the gates of the Ulricsberg tomorrow as triumphant men, trophies held high.

  Wolfram brought them to a halt at the rise of the hill. They were in a clearing in the Drakwald, big enough for their campfires. He gave the familiar orders and men broke from formation, dismounted, and set about their tasks. He doubled the number of sentries to twenty.

  Finally he came to the pistoliers’ former commander.

  The body of Heiner Rothstein sat on his old palomino, propped up against the standard he had captured from the marauders. He seemed to be staring at Wolfram, waiting for orders.

  Wolfram took a flask from his belt and began to drink. ‘Now we celebrate, father,’ he said.

  Around him, the men began to remember Heiner’s glories.

  Erik Herzkluge stood, pistol raised, feet apart, legs bent in the stance of a rider. He struck quite the pose in the flickering campfire light: blond-haired, bold-featured, and unblemished by the ravages of age or battle. He would not have looked out of place recounting his story in an Altdorf theatre, where bravado was tantamount to bravery. Riders of Middenheim, hardened by Ulric, had different standards. But then the listeners were young, and it was their first campaign.

  ‘From here to that tree,’ Herzkluge bragged, the pistol pointing at a birch some two hundred yards distant. He mimed the cock of the pistol and the firing of the shot, and he jerked his head back a second later, conveying the marauder falling from his horse. To some applause, Herzkluge flourished by rearing his ‘horse’ and turning away to reload and regain distance.

  ‘But the ball kept going!’ called Keefer Adler. The outrider had perched his saddle on a tree stump behind the seated pistoliers, so when they turned they had to look up at him. ‘There aren’t many men who could shoot one beast off another at that distance, but Erik Herzkluge is no ordinary man!’ The greybeard leant forward conspiratorially. Herzkluge, flattered, held an impressive pose and smiled. ‘He,’ Adler crowed, ‘shot down the moon!’

  Herzkluge’s smile vanished, his face flushed pink. Adler rocked back in his saddle, cackling. The listeners looked away, their rapture stolen. ‘Rest assured,’ said Herzkluge, cold as the grave, ‘if I had hit the moon, it would have landed on your head.’

  ‘Enough!’ called Wolfram Rothstein, stepping into the circle, between the two men. ‘Or I will shoot both moons, one for each of your heads!’ His right hand rested meaningfully near the pistol in his belt. It was a dangerous suggestion, he knew, and an invitation to stupidity; Herzkluge’s pistol was already drawn, and Adler had a lifetime’s experience of shooting.

  ‘Erik,’ Wolfram said, more softly, ‘put your pistol away, and tell your story. Keefer, go see to the horse. We ride into Middenheim tomorrow, he needs to look good.’ Another moment passed. ‘Now, gentlemen.’

  They looked contemptuously at him rather than at each other, and nodded. Wolfram turned and stepped away. Out of their sight, he could wipe his palms down his lean face and wring the sweat from them. He touched a finger to his temple, feeling his headache begin to fade.

  It was not, Wolfram decided, a moment worthy of Ulric’s halls. Adler knew better than to heckle a story told on the night after a battle, but Herzkluge made a target of himself. He hadn’t yet learned the art of telling stories in which other people could be heroes. He was a good shot, though, almost half as good as he boasted. Another year or two and the Knights of the Howling Wolf might take him, if he survived that long.

  Wolfram regretted the thought instantly, but the bitterness remained. His own commission waited for him in Middenheim, and the men knew it. He could not command the same respect that his father had, and they only respected him now because his father had fallen. Without a Rothstein in command, there was every chance they would be disbanded upon their return.

  ‘We didn’t plan for them,’ he said softly. His gaze moved once more to the banner, and the body which lay beneath it. ‘The entire korps is here, but you didn’t think about them, father. Just the family name. Just the honour. You die in battle, I become a knight. What about them?’

  His father, unsurprisingly, did not respond. The banner wafted impassively over his head.

  Wolfram averted his gaze. There was something intensely uncomfortable about it, though that was to be expected. It was a patchwork of jagged leather pieces, each daubed with obscene runes. In battle they had glowed ablaze. Now they were a dull orange, but no less disturbing. Each piece was a different texture, and Wolfram thought they had been torn from the hides of many mutated beasts. Some had probably been human.

  Instead he moved to better inspect his father’s appearance. Blankets covered the bandages where the bone staff had pierced his chest, and his scarlet cloak covered the blankets. His sabre and pistols, meticulously cleaned and polished, were at his side. He was thin, despite the good foraging and his investment in good rations.

  His face looked serene.

  That was good. For Heiner to have died silver-haired, wasted away and nauseous in bed, would have terrified him and shamed them both. But it could have been days, even weeks from now.

  As Ulric judged fates, this was a good death.

  ‘Wolfram!’

  The urgency of the voice turned Wolfram’s head. Four men were brawling in the dirt behind him. Other men had gathered around to cheer them on.

  Could they not keep their tempers for one night?

  The rightmost man was easiest to recognise. Ghislain Langmeier, his father’s old lieutenant, was a tall man resembling a walrus, bald and bearing a great white moustache, waxed in the outrider tradition. It was he who had shouted Wolfram’s name. He had grappled Steffan Drescher from behind, hooking his arms around the other’s wiry frame, and was trying to pull him out of the fight. The sweat from the exertion made his head shine.

  Not four men brawling, Wolfram realised. Two men brawling, and two men trying to end it.

  ‘Good man, Ghislain! Hold him down!’ shouted broadly built K
onrad Trauss, stepping after the two. His right arm moved back, fingers clenching into a fist. The last man, Magnus Gloeck, grabbed at the arm from behind, but Trauss smashed his elbow back into the man’s jaw. Gloeck twisted on one foot and collapsed to the ground.

  Drescher struggled to escape Langmeier’s grip. ‘Let go, Ghis! I can’t knock his lying teeth out from here!’

  ‘Come on, Wolfram!’ called Langmeier.

  Wolfram lowered his shoulder and charged into Trauss’s side. Even forewarned, Trauss was caught off balance and went down with a yell. The big man’s weight forced them both into a roll away from Drescher. Wolfram’s head thudded across the earth, dizzying him. Trauss barrelled over the immobile Gloeck, flattening the young man. The impact brought them to a halt with Wolfram’s left arm trapped under Trauss.

  ‘Some bloody gratitude,’ swore Trauss, and he threw a punch at Wolfram. It was clumsy and lacked power, but it stung his cheek. Fury swept through Wolfram and he thrust his free hand forward, grabbed Trauss’s shoulder and dragged him into a head-butt. Trauss cried out and fell back over Gloeck’s prone form.

  Wolfram pushed himself up quickly and sat on Trauss’s chest, pinning him down. He rubbed his bruised left arm. Trauss made no effort to rise, but stroked his fingers under his nose, touching blood. Langmeier sat back, holding Drescher in his resolute grip.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Wolfram asked.

  ‘I sabed his hibe from the naraubers,’ whined Trauss.

  Wolfram looked to Langmeier for explanation. Langmeier sighed. ‘Stories told around a fire, Wolfram,’ he said. ‘Konrad said he shot an axeman on horseback, bearing down on Steffan here.’

  ‘Shod him through the gneck.’

  ‘Lying scum,’ said Drescher. ‘His head fell off! Heiner cleaved through his neck with his sabre.’ Drescher’s face broke into a grin. ‘He dropped his axe, he was that surprised.’