Despite the prohibition on strangers, I hurried into the town. All activity was at the far end by the islet. The longhouse was a silhouette against the orange dance of the ritual fires. I ran on, along the boardwalk, and down towards the causeway.
The night was filled with flame and chanting. Sparks flew, and the foetid stench of burning dung was strong. Reflected flames fluttered out across the surface of the lake. The ruddy faces of all the villagers were about me in the smoky heat. My eyes watered. I pushed on.
I looked out towards the islet. My heart beat hard.
The tent upon the island had been taken down, revealing a stone block which looked to me like one of the heathen stones Subarin had shown to me in the forest around Svedora. This block reclined upon the platform of the cromlech, like an altar. Torches blazed around the rim of the islet, and by their light I saw the shaman capering about the stone. He was clad in a suit of bearskin, and had upon his scrawny head a crown of antlers and a mask of beaten silver. In his upraised right hand rattled a sistrum. In his upraised left glinted a silver dagger.
And on the stone, garlanded with flowers, lay the girl.
Then I saw Sire Jochrund, his long cloak billowing in the wind, walking out across the causeway towards the islet, with Sigert jumping and dancing like a court fool in his wake. The bastard clerk was stripped unto his breeks, and his puffy skin painted like a heathen. He was banging on a drum.
I refused to believe what I was seeing with my own eyes.
The crowd fell to a hush as Sire Jochrund - no, I will not write his name thuswise any more - as Jochrund reached the shaman and took from his hand the silver dagger. This was done with the exchange of many arcane speeches, accompanied by the beat of the clerk's infernal drum.
Jochrund raised the blade, and blessed it.
I had seen enough. I broke a path through the crowd and ran like a hare towards the causeway. A great cry went up from those about me, startled and alarmed. Two of the ataman's swordsmen rushed to arrest my path, but I knocked them down with my fists and laid them flat in the snow of the shore.
Then I was upon the causeway, and running still, my sword out in my hand. I bellowed the wizard's name, and cursed him in the power of holy Sigmar. He looked towards me, as if mystified to see me there. The shaman howled. Behind me, I could hear the raging tumult of the townsfolk.
I reached the islet.
'Jozef...' the wizard began. All I could see was the ritual dagger in his bare hand. Bare hand! All this time his cursed hands had been gloved and covered.
'Leave her!' I yelled.
The shaman screamed and - I'm quite certain - laid a curse on my soul that will last until the end of my days. He flew at me with a handaxe. I lashed out to meet him with my left hand, and caught him such a blow, his silver mask broke away and he went tumbling back off the platform's edge into the black water with a shriek and a flailing of limbs. He went under, and for an instance, I glimpsed his white form through the rippled water as it sank into the gloom. The shock of icy water had no doubt killed him in a second.
I cared not. I grabbed the girl up and dragged her backwards towards the causeway. She stumbled, as if sleeping, or drugged. Jochrund bellowed at me, using words I did not understand. I felt my hair stand up and my skin prickle. His clawing, bare hand gestured at me in intricate patterns, fluid and evil, and I knew that his magic was about to be unleashed upon my person. There was indeed a flash of green light, and smell like unto spoiled curds, but no great magical doom afflicted me.
Sigert, however, that base fool, had snatched up the silver dagger cast aside by his master, and came at me, cutting me deep across the meat of my right thigh with its razor edge. The pain was like a fire-burn. I yelled out, and my sword swung out instinctively, dividing Sigert's miserable head from his neck in a fountain of blood.
Holding the girl and limping, sword ready, I backed down the causeway towards the shore, as Jochrund, his face set all of manifest hatred, advanced after me. Glancing behind, I saw the shocked and frightened faces of a hundred villagers in the firelight. Shocked and frightened they might be, but still they blocked my line of escape.
'Jozef!' the wizard hissed, his hands circling and dancing once more.
'You will call me Sire von Kallen,' I corrected bluntly.
Jochrund spat and raised his hands above his head. Blue flame, like a crown of lightning, encircled them, gathering fury. I heard the thunder of hooves, the glorious sound of Sigmar's heavenly host come to carry me to my eternal slumber.
A golden javelin punched through Jochrund's left hip and threw him over onto the causeway. He screamed out an awful note of pain. The blue fire slipped off his hands like melting ice and dropped onto the lake, where it burned and spat malevolently like a marsh fire until it was spent.
I turned. The villagers were scattering in panic. The company was riding hard down the shore and along the boardwalk. At its head was Schroder, and Subarin, who was pulling a second throwing lance from his saddle boot.
'Come on! Come on, sire!' Schroder yelled. My horse's reins were pulling in his hand. I picked up the girl, as best as I could in spite my pain, and ran to my horse, throwing her up upon it and climbing up myself.
Then we rode. Down through the stanitsa of Kzarla, past the gates and the ditch, past our abandoned yurt, and into the darkness, kicking up snow and flints with our hooves.
Subarin led us to a hilltop where the remnants of a sunken mound formed a simple ditch which we might defend, and there we waited until the sun rose. Brendel bound my wound, and we lit a fire. It would be seen, I knew, but the biting night was too cold to bear. I moved the girl near the heat of it, and gave her water in her stupor, hoping she would rouse.
At length, as dawn filmed the east with a pearly glow, she woke, and began chattering with alarm and distress. Subarin came to her, for I was unable to calm her, and talked to her in soothing wise until she settled again.
He came to me then. 'She is chosen born.'
'What is meant by that?' I asked.
'Her lineage, Sire. It is born to supply the krug with offerings if the needs be.'
'You speak of it like it is human to do such a thing!'
Subarin smiled and shook his head. 'Only in these remote places do the oldest of old ways survive. This is as she has told it to me. At the coming of every winter, the folk of Kzarla krug make ceremony upon the islet. It is ritual and symbolic. A maiden is offered to the god of winter to make perforce the coming snows mild and not harsh.'
'A girl is slaughtered?'
'Not at all. A girl is offered. It is symbolic, as I said. There is a mumbled ritual involving the dagger, some flowers cast upon the water. She has done it three winters yet.'
'They do not kill her?'
'Of course not! Sire von Kallen, do you think we are barbarians out in these wilds?'
I made no answer.
'But the ceremony has its origins deep in the past, in other ages when men were not so fussy. The Scythians who raised that cromlech would indeed cut open a maiden every year-end and cast her body into the lake to fend off winter's cruelty. It is from that the Kzarla ritual derives.'
'So... what was that we saw?'
'She says, my friend, that your wizard had heard about the rite, and came to Kzarla to convince the shaman that it must be done the old way.'
'Why?'
'Because only a rite performed in the way of the old magic could enforce a true conjuration.'
I shook my poor, unknowing head. 'What?'
Subarin grinned. 'The folk of Kzarla perform the ritual symbolically every year. If it staves off winter's might, so much the good. But their Scythian forebears conducted the rite in all reality, with sacrifice, and conjured such magic as truly kept the force of winter at bay. Your lord-'
'My lord no longer!' I snarled.
'Mayhap. Your wizard persuaded the shaman, by means that cannot be known, that the rite should be performed actually this winter, as it was done in the old days. For
a mild winter, he said, was the only thing that would safeguard Kislev and the Empire both.'
'He said that much? What did he mean?'
Subarin took out a skin of koumiss, and offered unto me the first draw. It warmed my bones greatly. He drank too, and then said:
'The girl says your wizard told the shaman a great threat is rising in the North. Its name is Archaeon, and beneath its fury, all of the kingdoms of the world might perish. But if the winter was mild, the armies of the Empire could advance early, prepared as they were, and lay waste to the Archaeon's hordes while they were still in their winter camps.'
'What is her name?'
'What, sire?'
'The girl. What is her name?'
'It is Mariya.'
THERE ARE NO such plans. As a knight of the Reiksguard, I would know, or at least have some inkling. Though the Empire is aware that a threat is rising in the wastes north of Kislev, it has made no plans to muster armies or draw them up to the Ostermark or the southern provinces of Kislev this year. There are no great regiments encamped upon the Linsk or the Upper Talabec in readiness for a sudden early thaw. If they move and muster, move and muster at all, it will be in the springtime, when the campaign season begins.
Jochrund was lying. A mild winter and early thaw would benefit only one side: the hosts of Chaos pouring down, early and unexpected, from the North.
This is the matter I must convey to you, and for which I have troubled to write this account. Heed it well, I beseech you. Be warned, be ready. Do not tarry. The North is coming. Archaeon is coming. Unless you prepare, the world will be set aflame. For Archaeon's talons are dug in everywhere, even into secret places, like the brittle soul of an Imperial wizard, whose villainy knows no bounds, and who would, corrupted by whatever means I know not, undermine the security of our realm, with a casting of rituals and a stab of silver.
AS DAWN CAME up upon the terraces of our ancient fort, we saw the Kul. Four score and more besides, gathering at the foot of the slopes where the snow had drifted thick. They were ominous black shapes against the blazing white, furnished for war in pitch-black armour and iron. Their tattered banners flew and snapped in the wind. Drums beat. Jochrund had called them, I was sure. Cursed Jochrund had called them to his aid.
And I knew then why he had not interceded in the fight in the valley.
These animals were his kin.
Horn blew, and echoed down the vale. The Kul clattered their shields against their spear-hafts, and began to advance up the slopes towards us. Through a spyglass, I saw Jochrund - cursed wizard! - slumped as if ailing upon his steed, commanding the warriors on.
He wanted the girl. He wanted to finish his infernal rite and pave the way for Archaeon's victory.
I hallooed up my men, and Subarin and his two comrades stood with us. We had broke most of our spears in the battle before, so now we drew out our swords. Swords of the Empire, clean-forged and true. Subarin unsheathed his golden sword, and Baibek and Markovo slid out their sabres. Even with these fine blades, I doubted it would be enough.
Our breaths furled the high air. Hawks swooped about the hilltop in the brightness of the cold daylight. As the sun reached its quarter place, they came for us.
At ten paces, I had the handgunners fire, splitting bone and helmet cases, dropping brutes onto the slope. Then it was down to swords; swords and spears against the axes and blades and shields of the Kul.
I took off a skull clean at the jawline, and then ran another warrior through, ripping out my blade to meet the next and the next again, chopping aside venturing sword-points and shattering shields about their bosses. Cloven and bleeding, the bodies of Kul rolled and slithered down the steep slope of our makeshift fort. Markovo launched his last javelin, and impaled a horned foe who went cartwheeling down the hillside. Then he raised his sabre and slashed at neck and breastbone.
Baibek cut into sundry shields and took away a Kul's throat in a patter of blood, before smiting a skull-masked fighter through the chest. His blade stuck there, arrested by the breastbone, and he was still trying to free it when the boar-spears of the invaders stuck him through.
Konstanz died with an axe between his eyes and a Kul upon his sword, writhing. Zebluck was speared through the gut, and let out a great stain of blood upon the snow.
Mottsdan cut and hacked, and set forth upon the singing of a hymn, a verse of the Empire at full throat, which many others of the company joined with, and continued long after Mottsdan himself was cut asunder.
Lieber died upon a spear. Bahr, two dead by his sword, was ripped apart by an axe that struck him above the right hip.
Erhle, bloodied by a blow to the scalp, kept fighting until his own blood blinded him and Kul swords ripped through his vitals.
Kenserhaus brought down one Kul with his last spear and then took out his sword, but a heathen axe took his sword arm away at the wrist, and he fell back, weaponless, drenching himself with his own spurting blood, and fending off blows with his left arm, which shortly was chopped and splintered into pieces. Then he was finished, with a Kul sword through the heart and into the earth beneath.
Borchers, who was always of a fine spirit and indomitable heart, buried his sword in through the chest of a Kul warlord, who cut away his head with his dying spasm.
Then Schroder fell, a spear-point into his left eye, and died most pitiously with a terrible thrashing and screaming.
I killed the Kul spearman who had killed him, and then slashed my sword outwards through the thick hip of another Kul. A third I gashed across the eyes. I ran to find Mariya.
Behind the onslaught of tribesmen, I had seen Jochrund winding his way up the hill on his black steed, leaning over in the saddle from pain.
I found her, and dragged her to her feet. Her wild blue eyes told me there was nowhere left to run. The Kul were driving in now, over the ancient rampart mounds, putting the valiant company to the sword, even though the best part of their tribe lay dead upon the flanks of the hill.
Jochrund rode into view, backlit by the winter sun, and smiled as he saw me. His hands were bare. He conjured with them.
'Jozef,' he called, mocking, 'You have done enough.'
A bone horn blew. There was a sound like thunder. Hooves.
Behind the urgent pace of Pyotr Gmelin, the rota of Kzarla tore into the Kul pack from the rear. The silverclad lancers loosed their javelins first, then came in with their lances, after which, once the lances were shattered, they took out their sabres. Silver death, from out of the winter's heart, fell upon the Kul.
Kzarla had not been prepared to accept the true ritual. In the face of it, even the women had broken down. The stern and noble rota had been sent off on a false trail to keep it out of the way for the duration of the ceremony. That had been Jochrund's doing too.
Now they had come back.
I heard Subarin cry out in glee.
The fell wizard came upon me then, his crackling hands upraised, but I had learned from our last encounter. The girl was the key. Mariya was so pure, so signified in magic, so central to the rite, she was inured against all conjuration. I swept her up between myself and Jochrund, and when his fearsome spell spat down at me, her very presence cast its power aside, unworked.
He cursed me then, and made to do upon me another enchantment. But from his left hand side came Subarin, who cut the wizard's head in twain at the cheek bone with his golden Scythian sword. How meet that was, I thought. Jochrund had been hell-bent on reviving the old ways, and now a blade preserved from that ancient time had ended his wretched life.
I HAVE WRIT enough. My goat hides are all but full, and there is just tinkering of my nib in the spent flask of ink. I am done, and my story told. I will bury it under the cairn as I have said, wrapped in pigskin, and hope that someone finds it.
Or hope that I wake from winter and find it, and carry it forth. My country must know.
The winter now sets in, and contains us at Kzarla. It will be a long winter. I have guaranteed as much.
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Signed and buried by my hand, that is Jozef von Kallen, Knight of the Reik.
Swords of the Empire Page 21
