Gerhart surveyed the devastation as he teetered on the brink of a crumbling precipice. His body was shaking, pain seeming to split his body apart from the inside out and the outside in. He had not been left unscathed by the devastation around him. Blood ran from his face and hands where splinters of stone had struck his exposed skin.
As well as the structural damage suffered by the tower, the observatory had caught fire, though this was the result of the lightning rather than any spell cast by the fire wizard. The fire raged in spite of the harsh ferocity of the storm. The rain now whipping in through the shattered glass dome had yet to douse the ravenous flames.
Kozma’s body lay a few feet from Gerhart, an unrecognisable fire-consumed carcass, the twisted and melted spear of the lightning rod still transfixing it.
The fire wizard stumbled forwards as the roof of the tower shifted beneath him. He picked up his fallen staff and hurried into the relative safety of the burning observatory. He heard a number of stones skitter down the side of the tower as they came free from where he had been standing moments before.
Flames were licking around the shattered crystal dome of the astromancer’s lair, the lightning strikes having set light to the rugs and the dry dusty tomes cluttering the bookshelves against the stone wall of the chamber. This wall was Gerhart’s means of escape. An unassuming archway in the middle led to the spiral stone staircase that descended the levels of the tower to the ground.
Hot air swept around him, carrying glowing orange embers out into the still raging storm. The bright wizard drew some comfort from the presence of the conflagration but he still felt drained after the expulsion of so much magical energy. And his body was wracked with pain.
But for one educated at the renowned colleges of magic in Altdorf, the destruction of the observatory cut Gerhart to the core. To see such precious and rare books and scrolls, which had been collected by Kozma Himmlisch over many decades, being consumed by the flames, not to mention the knowledge they contained, did nothing but fuel Gerhart’s own abating anger.
A huge baroque telescope dominated the observatory. An amalgamation of lenses, mirrors, calibrated measures and gleaming polished tubes, the telescope was as big as the legendary steam tanks of the Imperial gunnery schools, and its main scope looked even more impressive than the cannon-muzzles of the incredible war engines.
The whole contraption had been carefully counter-weighted so that it could be manoeuvred on a series of cog-toothed rails. Caught in the heart of the blaze consuming the observatory dome, the delicate labour of skilled engineers and artisans was being lost to the fire. Delicate brass scopes melted and warped amidst the flames and finely ground lenses cracked under the intense heat.
There was not much Gerhart could do for the telescope. But there were other, greater prizes awaiting him amidst the papers covering the large desk that dominated the chamber. Staggering over to it, Gerhart began to rummage through the open books and unrolled scrolls littering its surface, as yet barely touched by the flames. Amidst the volumes concerning the movements of celestial bodies and star charts there were scraps of parchment that bore the scrawl of a hasty, desperate hand. They contained peculiar diagrams and images that appeared to be those of a twin-tailed shooting star, as well as hurriedly drawn maps of the Old World with sweeping arrows descending from the north.
As he searched, sparks whirled around him from the swelling, hungry fire, threatening to ignite the flammable materials covering the desk. Gerhart slapped at the embers as they tumbled towards the precious papers, quenching them with the sodden sleeves of his rain-soaked robes. The ink on the pieces of parchment began to run but the fire wizard did not seem to care.
A hasty search of the tower room uncovered a battered, leather scroll case. Gerhart snatched up as many of the handwritten notes as he could find, stuffing them hurriedly into the case, until the flames began to lick around the legs of the desk.
Then, stumbling through the flames, the fire hissing as if in frustration as it came into contact with his sodden robes, Gerhart made his flight from the observatory. He lurched down the worn steps of the spiralling stone staircase and out into the wind and rain of the unforgiving storm.
Behind the fleeing wizard the observatory resembled a beacon blazing on the desolate moors.
“And you say this was all caused by one man?” the witch hunter asked, fixing the self-appointed village headman, Gustav Rothaarig, with a steely gaze from beneath the brim of his tall black hat.
“Pretty much,” the thickset, ginger-bearded man replied. “The beast did some of the damage but it was the wizard who burnt the place.” The man spat the word “wizard” as if it were venom.
The witch hunter Gottfried Verdammen surveyed the fire-blackened ruins of the village of Keulerdorf. The gloom of the fully overcast sky only added to the gloom of the village’s inhabitants. The fire that had raged the previous week had damaged at least half the buildings. At best their walls and thatch had been scorched and blackened; at worst buildings had been razed to the ground—as had the village’s stone-built hall.
As he surveyed the destruction, the witch hunter and his party remained silent. The witch hunter was dressed in practical black travelling clothes and boots. His black hat bore a leather band around it and a gleaming silver buckle above the brim. The only piece of his garb that was not black was his padded leather jerkin, in which, between layers of quilting a series of iron plates had been stitched. It provided him with surprisingly effective armour. At his waist, and hanging from his belt, he wore a sabre and a holstered silver-metalled flintlock pistol. His heavy leather-gloved hands rested firmly on his hips in bunched fists.
The five men who made up his party were dressed in a similar manner. Gustav Rothaarig and the other villagers would have doubtless referred to them as zealots. The people of Keulerdorf put their trust in Sigmar, the Empire’s patron, but only as much as they remembered the other older gods, such as Taal, god of nature, or Ulric, the ferocious, battling god of winter. For both the natural world and the seasons had greater immediate influence over the village folk of wooded and hilly Ostland than the Heldenhammer.
The men were rough looking individuals, unshaven and wild haired, quite in contrast to the black-clad Verdammen. Between them they appeared to be armed as heavily as a unit of free company fighters with bandoliers of daggers, swords and crossbows at their disposal. Every man wore some votive symbol of Lord Sigmar, whether it was a golden warhammer amulet about his neck or the crest of a twin-tailed comet stitched upon the front of his robes. Other, less conventional, lucky charms hung from wristbands and clothes, and one man even had what looked like a shrivelled claw hanging from a pin through a half-missing ear.
A slavering, straining bullmastiff, its coat black like its master’s, was being held back by a scar-faced, heavily muscled zealot. He was attached to a chain hooked through the warhound’s spiked collar. Behind the dog and its handler, another follower, whose nose had obviously been broken more than once in his eventful life, was holding the reins of the party’s horses.
It was immediately apparent which steed belonged to Verdammen: it was the largest of the group’s mounts, a black stallion with a white star emblazoned on its head. It wore a richly padded and stitched saddle on its back.
The usually more talkative Gustav was obviously becoming uncomfortable with the silence, and the forbidding presence of the witch hunter. “The roof beams of the tithe barn were still smouldering only a few days ago and that was days since the maniac left,” he said.
“Indeed,” Verdammen answered coolly, tugging on the tails of his padded leather jerkin, realising that the man obviously expected some kind of response to his comment.
Over to the east lightning burst over the line of distant hills on the horizon. Beyond the foothills of the snow-capped Middle Mountains, in whose shadows Keulerdorf lay, a storm had broken with the violence of all-out war, judging by the echoes of thunder rolling over the darkly wooded uplands towards them.
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br /> Such dramatic and unseasonable weather had been on the increase over the months since the year turned. In fact, Verdammen recalled that it had begun when omens and portents were witnessed throughout the many lands of the Empire. Most terrifying and forbidding of all of them, however, had been the twin-tailed comet that had been seen streaking through the heavens. Rumour had spread like wildfire that all manner of horrors had occurred in its wake.
It was then that Gottfried Verdammen had been called upon by his covert masters in the Church of Sigmar to take part in a most secret and unusual mission. He was to be one of the church’s envoys to the Imperial colleges of magic, to join a clandestine kommission to investigate disturbances occurring in the north. His contact and counterpart among the wizard community was a celestial wizard whose studies had detected disturbances in what were commonly referred to, as the winds of magic. He was Kozma Himmlisch.
At the same time their kommission was to investigate the rise in random incidences of the influence of the dark forces of Chaos. Verdammen had been made aware by his superiors of many examples of Chaos mutation among the general populace. This had been accompanied by an increase in attacks by beastmen in the wilder parts of the Empire. So, for the last few months, Verdammen and Himmlisch had pursued their own, differing courses of action to see if there was a connection between these occurrences. Other unknown parties across the Empire did the same.
Verdammen was naturally suspicious of all magic. In fact he harboured an intense loathing of it, for he knew what many among the disparate population of the Empire did not. He had known ever since his father had sat him on his knee as a child and told him what a witch hunter needed to know. Verdammen’s path had been clear from an early age: he would follow in the footsteps of his father, and all the generations before him. From birth it had been ordained that he would become a Templar fighting under the banner of Sigmar Heldenhammer, bringing the God-emperor’s divine retribution upon all who dishonoured His hallowed name with unholy practices.
All magic came from Chaos and ultimately it would lead back to Chaos.
Gottfried distrusted and hated all practitioners of magic, but he was no fool, however. He understood that magic was a power that, like any other, could be used for good as well as evil, and that in the fight against Chaos, a servant of the forces of order needed to make use of every available weapon.
So it was that he was prepared to deal with wizards and their ilk. His party had been on their way to meet Verdammen’s contact, Himmlisch, once again. The latter had investigated the curious birthings that had plagued the farming hamlet of Bauerzinnt that spring. He, however, would always rely on his faith in Sigmar, and his flintlock pistol, to fight evil.
As far as Verdammen was concerned, the rise in the power of Chaos in the world was in no small part due to the practices of “rogue” wizards, unscrupulous individuals not properly regulated by the colleges of magic in Altdorf, who wandered the Empire unchecked. He had hunted down a number of spell-weavers in his time as a Templar of Sigmar: they were foul Chaos cultists and morbid, grave-robbing necromancers on the whole, so he put them to death. They were a blot upon the face of the world that had to be removed.
“You are certain that this was the work of one man?” Verdammen pressed.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” Gustav replied, soundly vexed.
“But there are still some things I am uncertain about,” the witch hunter went on. “I have a few more questions.”
After almost half an hour of questioning the talkative villager fell silent.
“Schultz,” Verdammen said at last, beckoning to the man minding the horses. “We have seen all we need to here.”
The witch hunter’s party began to mount up as Schultz led the stallion over to Verdammen, who was still incredulous at the devastation one unruly spellcaster could cause.
“You’re leaving?” Gustav asked, with barely suppressed relief.
“Who did this to your village?” the witch hunter asked as he put a foot in a stirrup and climbed into the saddle.
“I already told you!” the headman snapped. “It was a wizard. He was ten feet tall with eyes like burning coals. A devil from the depths of hell.”
Gustav hawked a gob of phlegm and spat it at the ground, muttering half under his breath, “Filthy vagabond mage. Spawn of the Dark Powers the lot of them.”
“But you have not told me his name. Do you know what it was?” Verdammen asked, his voice measured and calm as a man on the verge of losing his patience.
“No, I don’t know his name,” the headman said sourly, afraid that the unremitting questioning was about to begin again. Gustav met the witch hunter’s gaze. “It’s probably something that can only be spoken in the twisted tongue of the Dark Powers anyway.”
The witch hunter jerked his horse’s reins, turning him towards the east.
“What will you do now? Are you going to go after the wizard?” Gustav asked, his voice tired and strained.
“In time, when I am ready,” Verdammen confirmed and, kicking his heels into the stallion’s flanks, led his band of zealots out of the village.
Gottfried Verdammen would indeed hunt down the mage responsible for the razing of Keulerdorf, but first he had a prior appointment to keep. No doubt Kozma Himmlisch would be waiting for him, eager to tell him what more he had scryed from the movements of the stars and the winds of magic that swept around his lonely tower.
For the time being the pyromaniac fire mage would have to wait.
TWO
Dead and Buried
“Those who would accuse me of necromancy know not of what they speak. It is true that the Wind of Shyish is drawn to places of death, and doom follows in its wake, but I am no corpse-lover. And if any man makes such an accusation again he will learn that it does not do to trouble a wizard of the lore of death.”
—Todende Sterbefall, Grand Warlock
of the Amethyst order, before the
purging of Grabmalholz
The warrior priest looked down on the huddle of stone buildings clustered around the aged stone bridge at the foot of the valley. He could see precious few signs that there was any life in this place. There was no one outside in the streets. There were no domestic animals visible in the pens outside some of the dwellings. Thin wisps of smoke rose from a few chimney stacks. Under the uniform overcast sky of late afternoon the houses seemed the colour of tombstones.
So this was Steinbrucke, the priest thought. A small unassuming village at the heart of the principality of Ostland, several leagues from the nearest town. There had been a settlement here since the Unberogen tribe first settled these lands.
The village had grown around a fording place on the River Wasche. In time the stone bridge had been built to provide a more practical means for travellers and merchant wagons to cross the river on the road towards Wolfenburg. The people of Steinbrucke made their living from the Wasche itself, as well as the passing trade that the river crossing brought their way. There might only be one mill in the village but there was also a coaching inn, a blacksmith’s, a carter’s and a wheelwright’s.
But none of this made Steinbrucke unusual. What had drawn the priest here were the rumours. Sinister news had a habit of travelling far and wide and there was no one more likely to hear it than a martyr in search of a mission. At least that was what some would call him: Lector Wilhelm Faustus simply saw himself as a loyal servant of Sigmar doing his lord’s holy work as best he could.
When he had heard that the congregation of Steinbrucke had lost their faith in Lord Sigmar, and that as a consequence the powers of darkness had shown their hand, he knew he had to intervene.
Sitting in the saddle of his great grey steeda warhorse to rival those of the gallant knights of Bretonnia stark against the horizon at the crest of the valley, Wilhelm Faustus was an imposing presence. He wore a cowled cloak, like a monk’s, over his armoured upper body. From the waist down he wore a skirt of chain mail, heavy britches and sturdy leather
boots. His hands were gauntleted. In the left he held his heavy-headed warhammer and on his right arm rested a battered shield, bearing the device of Sigmar’s comet but with an iron skull at its core.
But the most distinctive things about him were his gleaming bald head and the book of holy litany transcribed from the Book of Sigmar that was bound to his forehead by a strap of leather. For Wilhelm believed that if the first thing in his mind was his devotion for his Lord Sigmar then nothing ill could befall him. He also carried a copy of the complete Book of Sigmar, bound in iron covered with a tracery of fine metals.
His down-turned features were also marked by a cruel scar that described a path from the top of his head, across his left eye, down his cheek and twisted across the lips of his tight-drawn mouth.
His horse was no less imposing. Hanging from its harness were several macabre trophies. The most recently taken was the still-bloody malformed, tusked head of a green-skinned orc. The other three were skulls, the flesh and hair having been boiled from them to leave nothing but gleaming off-white bone. The largest was caprine in form with curling ram’s horns. The other two appeared to be human: on the cranium of one the word “Heretic” had been etched in a pronounced gothic hand; the other bore the title “Damnatus” and appeared to have particularly elongated incisors. These were all evidence of Wilhelm’s fight against the followers of evil, and his victories.
For that was what it meant to be a warrior priest of Sigmar. To be a man of action as well as a man of words. To be adept in the martial skills of the warhammer, and other such weapons, and to be just as well versed in the holy scriptures and devotional prayers of the Sigmarite order. To practise abstinence, to keep the body strong and the spirit pure in the battle against the powers of darkness. To go out into the world to rid it of malefactors, blasphemers and Chaos-worshippers, even though the odds may at first seem insurmountable. To be firm in the belief that faith alone could conquer evil. That was what it meant to be a warrior priest.
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