Sadly, that hope proved as elusive as the road. The countryside was bleak and barren. In every direction, featureless moors stretched towards the drab and heavy sky. In the far distance he could make out odd-looking peaks of rock. The entire place had a bad air about it, as if some strange and elusive curse lay on the land. He rode past several deserted villages, standing mournfully like circles of stone on the horizon, but none of which were still inhabited. The area must always have been thinly populated, he guessed, looking at the poor soil and endless straggling scrub and dry grass. But he knew what the true reason for the emptiness was now. He no longer had any doubt that the plague was both real and of a more virulent order than he had ever encountered. The creatures he had encountered were proof alone. They sickened him to his stomach, and he had been lucky to escape with his life after their last attack. Since then he had been forced to use his staff more than he would have liked. They were fond of coming at night, and he had not slept properly for some time. The effort of fighting them off had become heavy, and Alexander found himself increasingly weary and drained as the long ride northwards continued.
Consumed with thoughts of his misfortune, he pushed the horse as quickly as its condition would allow. With some relief, he left the bleakest parts of the moorland and entered more familiar territory. Soon he was riding along a low valley with thick, dark pine forests climbing up the slopes on either side. The sun was high in the sky, but the ever-present sheen of cloud made its light weak and grey. Alexander tried to remember the last time it had been clear and sunny. Surely the Ruinous Powers couldn’t control the weather too?
It was as he speculated on the arcane possibilities of this that the first rider burst from the cover of the trees. Alexander snapped back into concentration.
‘Taal’s teeth!’ he hissed. ‘Not again!’
The rider was joined by two more companions. They had burst from the forest in formation and were riding straight for him. They were no common brigands. All wore close-fitting suits of dark armour and carried wicked-looking curved swords. Alexander took a quick look backwards. There were a couple more blocking his route from the south. They were close. It was another ambush.
‘This is getting stupid,’ said Alexander, pulling his horse up and letting the Wind of Aqshy well up within him. To be ambushed once was unlucky. Twice looked like carelessness.
As the lead rider from the south approached him, Alexander stood up in the stirrups and pointed the iron tip of his staff directly at the dark-armoured figure. Muttering words of power, he felt the point kindle and burst into flame. The rider came on heedless. Alexander sent twin bolts of power straight at him. They exploded in a shower of sparks, catapulting the horseman backwards out of the saddle. He crunched into the ground, smoking and flailing.
Alexander kicked his steed on. The other rider was almost on him. Alexander whirled the staff in front of him, using the flame tip to create a halo of fire about him. The rider fell back, but by now the three from the north had closed in. Escape was going to be difficult. He pulled his steed up, and was soon surrounded by the mysterious riders. The horsemen wore heavy-looking iron visors and were well armoured. Alexander didn’t recognise any device on their shield or livery. Who were these people?
‘By the Eight Colours!’ he snapped. ‘I’m really not in the mood for this. Declare yourself, or let me pass!’
The lead horseman remained eerily silent. Something about the spiked and twisted design of the iron helm told Alexander it had not been forged by the local village blacksmith. Instead of speaking, the rider extended a gauntleted hand and made a crushing movement with his fist.
A casting! Alexander felt the sudden chill around his heart. He began to weave a responding ward, but it was too late. With a shudder, he felt his entire body seize. Bereft of control, he felt his grip slip from the reins. He just managed to keep hold of his staff as he fell heavily, rolling painfully along the uneven ground. His faithless horse galloped madly along the river, ignored by his pursuers.
Alexander stood groggily, furious with himself. He was getting sloppy in his old age. The horsemen were all around him. With a roar, he summoned a fresh corona of flame to himself, and was soon enveloped in a protective ward of crimson. He stepped forward as threateningly as possible, doing his best to shake off the residual effects of the casting. The horsemen looked down, as silent as ever. Their leader rode calmly to the front, and inclined his dark iron visor downwards.
‘You’ve made a mistake,’ Alexander hissed, shaking with both rage and exertion. He was already tired, and the effort of maintaining the corona began to weigh on him. ‘Leave now, or I’ll burn your mask from you.’
The armoured figure looked on impassively. It was an empty threat, and the silent horseman seemed perfectly aware of it. A thin, rattling sound which may have been a hollow laugh emerged from the helmet. The rider outstretched his gauntlet once more, and Alexander felt the chill in his body return.
‘Oh no,’ the wizard said grimly, fighting the casting with fresh power. ‘You’re not doing that again.’
Alexander drew strength from his anger and fear, and began the process of summoning a flame-tipped sword from the aethyr. If they wanted him, they would have to fight.
Even as he did so, the subordinate horsemen came forward, each with their visor fixed firmly on him. As one, they extended their own fists. The power of the malign crushing spell grew.
With a gasp of effort, Alexander plucked the sword from the air as it materialised. Time was short, and he couldn’t sustain both the magical weapon and his protective corona at once. Taking a deep breath, he let the fiery ward extinguish around him and charged forward. It was like leaving a warm house and heading straight into an icy wind. He felt the cold fingers close once more around his heart, and cried out loud from the pain.
His vision beginning to shake, Alexander clumsily lunged at the nearest horseman. The sword was met by a skilful parry. The wizard’s fingers began to go numb from the cold, and he frantically fed the flames licking the blade more power. He was losing the race. With a desperate last effort, he thrust once more for the closest rider.
His blow never fell. With a sickening whirl, he felt the world beneath lurch and rush up to meet him. The sword dissipated into harmless smoke, and the cumulative power of the riders pushed him to the sodden earth. Dimly, he could sense the five of them circling around him. His senses were leaving him, and he only vaguely saw the dark visor of the leader loom blurrily above his prone form. Weakly, Alexander grasped his staff, and began to summon a fresh spell.
The words never emerged. The iron tip of a heavy boot cracked into his forehead, and he knew no more.
Jhar’zadris crested the rise on his imposing charger, and took a moment to savour the view. Before him, the land fell away steeply, and the whole panorama of the Reikland stretched away in a rumpled canvas. So this was the heart of the Empire of men, the mightiest realm of the Old World. The Chosen allowed himself to indulge in a moment of scorn. It looked much the same as all the other lands they had marched through. Bleak, dank, riddled with plague and pocked with mould-encrusted, mud-clogged villages full of disease and misery.
He let his eyes roam across the wide landscape. His vision was no longer what it was. Whereas once human eyes had served him, now his sight was gloriously coloured and full of shifting delights. The world as he had known it before was a half-forgotten place of drudgery and boredom. It was an effort to make the mental adjustment in order to gain an appreciation of how cold and pale things must seem to his mortal followers. Here and there a few thin lines of smoke rose into the air, which he guessed was grey and chill. There was precious little other sign of activity. The whole place looked drab and forlorn even through the prismatic majesty of his enhanced senses. The spirit of the land was crushed, beaten into submission by plague and mutiny. A flicker of regret passed through his mighty frame. It was no sport to engage with a foe so weakened and decrepit. Still, the ways of his Master were subtle and
mysterious. Perhaps the humans had hidden resources. He hoped so. A fight was always more diverting than a slaughter, even if the result were the same in the end.
Behind him, he could hear the clanking of the huge armoured column coming to a halt. His personal retinue of warriors was used to his frequent pauses and digressions. One of their number had once questioned his erratic route while the column was still in Norsca. The unfortunate warrior had taken two weeks to die, and the rest had not forgotten it. They obeyed without question. Most knew something of the gifts he had received from the Master of Change, and held him in the proper degree of awe. If they knew the full extent of the marvellous alterations which had taken place in his body and soul over the last hundred years or so, they would have been even more subservient. He could sense the thoughts of all of them, their petty jealousies, their bloodlust, their rivalries. Most wanted to supplant him. None were remotely near trying. They knew their own powers paled into nothingness beside his own.
Jhar’zadris looked down at his armour. He still liked to think of it as something external to himself, even though it had been fused to his original flesh for more than fifty years. The surface of the ancient metal was now fluid and shifting. Across the heavy brass plates writhed the shapes of forgotten foes and lost places. Something of them had passed into his own consciousness, which found its outlet in the endless morphing devices. It amused him at times to watch the slow mutation unfold. He would occasionally recognise a scene, a symbol, or even a face. Perhaps someone he had loved, or killed, or who had instructed him in the dark arts in his long distant, mostly-forgotten childhood. At the present time, the armour was mostly a pale sky-blue, reflecting his benign mood. He enjoyed the colour scheme. To his gifted sight, there were other subtle resonances to be appreciated. Whiffs of magic, curling around his heavy greaves like cats slinking around his ankles. They spoke of bloodletting to come, which he liked. And there was something else. Something was approaching.
What passed for lips on his heavily mutated and armour-fused face curled in a smile. There were humans walking up to meet him, limping and dragging themselves up the slope before him, holding their hands out in supplication.
Jhar’zadris held his hand up, and clenched his fist in two rapid movements. His entourage of warriors spread themselves out on either side of him, creating a wide crescent. The rest of his army, a trailing line of zealots and cultists, arranged themselves casually some distance away. They would not be called on for this engagement, but he knew they liked to watch.
‘Merciful knight!’ came the querulous voice of the lead human, a painfully thin man covered in sores. ‘Aid us in our plight! Sigmar has deserted us! Let us join you, in the name of mercy. We are dying. We will fight for you.’
Jhar’zadris looked over the pitiful band dispassionately. They were filthy, stinking and ragged. All were badly ill with the plague, but it had not yet worked its full transformation on them. Most bore some mark of mutation, but their eyes were still focussed and their voices intact. They were doomed, all of them. If he waited for the change to take place, they would no doubt serve him in some capacity. But they would be neither useful nor welcome. He despised them. Their addled bodies, grasping fingers and stinking breath were repulsive on a number of levels mortals were not even capable of recognising. He felt his good mood begin to disintegrate.
Jhar’zadris raised his hand once more and gave a flurry of quick signals. The warriors strode forward into the straggling mob and began to swing their heavy swords and cleavers. The Chosen joined them in the slaughter. Blood flew high into chill air, and soon Jhar’zadris’s armour was running with it. He enjoyed the sensation of the hot liquid against his fused flesh. From some way off he could hear the jeers of the cultists as they watched the butchery. On this occasion he found he could not share in their childish glee. This was a distraction which served little purpose. He only took a little satisfaction from the crunch and snap of bone under his iron warhammer. It was like reaping corn, a memory he still retained from so long ago. As he went, the gore began to cake his breastplate, and the shifting glyphs on the arcane surface gradually glowed red in appreciation.
He was just growing bored with the slaughter when he noticed a strange aura over one of the few remaining peasants. This one still had some flesh on his bones and seemed less mutated than the rest. The human was on the cusp of being run through by one of the warriors, but Jhar’zadris found his interest piqued.
‘No,’ he commanded in a low voice.
The Chaos warrior stepped back from his prey unquestioningly. The other troops retreated from the man, leaving a wide circle around him. Jhar’zadris hefted his huge warhammer lightly and walked confidently up to the swaying, barely-conscious peasant. Surprisingly, the plague-ridden figure managed to look him in the eye.
‘We would have served you,’ said the peasant, his face lined with disbelief.
With a twinge of amusement, Jhar’zadris saw that the man carried a warhammer of his own. A crude device, and no threat against his massive armour.
‘You are a priest of the boy-god?’ Jhar’zadris hissed, trying as best he could to make his words intelligible to the man’s ears. After a century or two communing with horrors, daemons and familiars, it was hard to recall the awkward rhythm of Reikspiel. The last time he had spoken it much was campaigns a generation ago.
The man paused and thought for a moment, looking down at his weapon with a furrowed brow. A line of drool crept from his lips, and his eyes began to glaze. The plague was entering its final stages.
‘I say you are,’ said Jhar’zadris, satisfied that his intuition was correct. The man’s aura gave him away. With an easy swing of his vast arms, Jhar’zadris brought the heavy warhammer down on the reeling man’s head. The priest folded to the ground, his skull crushed and neck broken. His own warhammer rolled uselessly into the mud.
Jhar’zadris looked down with disdain. Why these humans persisted in the worship of one of their own kind when there were real gods in the world, gods with powers beyond the dreams of mortal minds, never ceased to disturb him. Did they really not know that all magic, all strength, all hope and all power ultimately flowed from the nexus of Chaos? What did they hope to achieve by putting off the inevitable?
The Chosen shook his head, and allowed himself a brief glance at the progress of the slaughter. The peasants had all been killed, and the warriors rested soundlessly on their heavy swords, waiting for a signal from him to move on.
Jhar’zadris looked down at the awkward, broken body at his feet. The man had been gifted in life with a faint sheen of faith and power. There were ways of making use of that.
He turned to his entourage and signalled for them to stand down. Then the Chosen lowered himself slowly over the prone corpse, which was still hot and slick with blood. Placing his warhammer to one side, he roughly pulled the man’s body over so the abdomen was showing. Without a moment’s pause, he plunged his armoured fist into the naked stomach and tore the skin open. The entrails burst free, glistening and purple. To his augmented senses, they looked like jewels. He worked quickly, arranging the organs in the proper position, and uttering the words of power carefully under his breath. The art of haruspicy, the foretelling of fate from the entrails of the defeated, was neither easy nor certain.
Jhar’zadris muttered to himself as the gore-streaked lumps of flesh swam before his vision. There were few enough signs. A clot here spoke of plague, a rogue growth there of war. That was hardly news. He was about to throw the whole stinking pile to one side and resume the march when something caught his eye. A strange shape hidden in the ropey strands of intestine. It was a symbol, and one he was surely meant to find. He stared at it for some time in fascination. There was no mistaking it. The auguries had given him a message. Silently, he thanked his patron god for his beneficence. Surely, the Master of Change was the true lord of the world. Even in such inauspicious circumstances he found a way to give a message to his faithful servant.
Jhar’z
adris stood up and licked the tips of his fingers absently. The meaning was vague. An unexpected visitor, an intruder in the night. But not a human. That was intriguing. The riddle would be a pleasant mental distraction for him to lighten the tedium of the march. He felt his earlier sunny disposition return. With satisfaction, he saw the agonised face of the Sigmarite villager imprint itself on his armour.
With a light heart, he picked up his warhammer and waved it forwards.
‘On, my children!’ he urged, and the column picked itself up once more.
With a grinding inexorability, his forces began to march, leaving behind them the carnage of the hillside. They descended quickly, and made their way down into the great wooded basin of Reikland, the heart of the Empire.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The sun blazed out across the wide, sluggish river. Morgil looked at the open sky with relief. It had been either stormy or overcast for as long as they had been at sea. Now that they were piloting the ships up the last stretches of the Reik and making their way to the massive docks of the human city, the weather had at last turned.
He looked over his shoulder towards Artheris, who sat serenely in the centre of the deck. In a rare concession to diplomatic protocol, she was arrayed in the finest robes, laced with gold and silver embroidery and studded with arcane patterning and runework. No doubt the humans would expect a mage of her power to look the part. He found himself wondering if the lifting of the weather was something to do with her. Unlikely, although you never knew with someone of her power.
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