by Nathan Long
The city climbed the inside of the crater almost to the Wizard’s Way, tumble-down hovels and primitive dwellings cut into the very rock lapped up the slope like filthy debris left by a retreating flood. Below these, growing larger and more prosperous away from the wall, were houses and buildings and manor houses, and everywhere, parks and gardens and open spaces. It was the greenest city Reiner had ever seen. At the edge of his smoke-hampered vision it dwindled away entirely into forest and wild land—the Taalgrunhaar, Taal’s sacred forest, that featured so prominently in jokes about Talabecmen and their wild revels.
As the legation wound down a switch-back road that matched that on the outside of the crater, Reiner saw narrow paths leading off into the nearly vertical slum. Furtive figures haunted these alleys, ducking behind precariously perched shacks as the procession passed. The air reeked of death and rotting vegetation and stranger things, and Reiner’s ears were assaulted by wailing cries and distant crashes. The wall of the crater loomed over his shoulder menacingly. He felt hemmed in, trapped inside a madhouse.
Things only got worse as they reached level ground. The tree-lined street their escort led them down had once been handsome and well kept. Now many of its buildings were nothing but charred skeletons. Others had all their windows smashed. Furtive faces peered from them, watching the passing legation with empty eyes. A pile of naked bodies burned in a square—men, women and children—all ablaze. One body had a fang-toothed face where his stomach should have been. Corpses hung from a gibbet erected before a livery stable.
Reiner heard a choking sob beside him. Augustus was staring around, tears running into his red beard. ‘What has become of it?’ he moaned. ‘What has become of it?’
Reiner nodded. ‘Aye, terrible.’
‘What do you know of it?’ the pikeman snarled. ‘This is my home! And it’s—’ A sob cut off his words. ‘It’s murdered. Murdered!’
A man in rags broke from a house and bolted for an alley. His head was a sack of loose flesh that bobbled with each step.
Peasants armed with clubs chased him down and beat him mercilessly as he screeched and wept. The Talabheim guards marched on impassively.
Augustus turned away. ‘This cannot be. Talabheim is the fairest city in the Empire. The city of gardens. The—’ He stopped suddenly. Across the street was a gutted tavern. Only the front door and the placard above it, blackened beyond reading, still stood. ‘The Stag and Garland!’ Augustus cried. ‘And is old Hans the barman dead then?’ His fists clenched. ‘Someone must pay for this. Someone must die for this.’
Closer to the city centre the streets became more populated. Priests of Morr, their faces covered in burlap, threw bodies onto pyres. Brazen thieves carried paintings and silver out of houses. A man with tin charms in the shape of hammers cried that they were ‘blessed by the Grand Theogonist himself’, and guaranteed to protect against madness and mutation. He did a brisk business. Gaunt peasants crowded around a wild-eyed priest of Taal, who shook a wooden staff wrapped in holly leaves.
‘Are not the waking of the trees and the destruction of the Sigmarite temple signs of Taal’s displeasure?’ he cried. ‘Taal is angry with us for allowing the upstart Sigmar to be worshipped in his land. This is Taal’s land, and we have betrayed him by kissing the feet of the foreign tyrant Karl-Franz. Repent, ye faithless ones! Repent!’
Before his words faded out behind Manfred’s train, the bellowing of a priest of Sigmar haranguing another mob reached Reiner’s ears.
‘Is not the waking of the trees proof that Taal is a daemon?’ he roared. ‘What but a daemon would set its servants upon its worshippers? What but a daemon would drive men mad and twist their bodies with foul mutations? What but a daemon would raze Sigmar’s new temple? We must bring torches to the forests, brave Sigmarites, and destroy their hidden temples as they have destroyed ours!’
‘Sigmarite scum!’ growled Augustus under his breath.
‘You speak against Sigmar?’ asked Gert, moustache bristling. ‘You seek a black eye?’
‘That’s enough,’ said Reiner sharply.
‘But captain, did y’not hear-?’ said Gert.
Reiner cut him off. ‘I heard a pair of ranting fools. And you are a pair of fools if you listen to them. Now have done.’
Both Gert and Augustus opened their mouths to protest, but a sudden movement to their right distracted them. Hollow cheeked men, women and children spilled from an abandoned building, hands outstretched.
‘Food, sirs!’ bleated one.
‘A pfennig, for your pity,’ called another.
‘Help us,’ wept a woman.
The guards shoved and kicked them back, knocking them to the cobbles. The beggars lay where they fell, clutching their bloody heads and wailing. They hadn’t been beggars long. Their clothes were dirty, but still whole, but already hope was gone from their eyes.
‘Can these truly be men of Talabheim?’ asked Augustus, dismayed. ‘Talabheimers don’t beg. They don’t back down from a fight. What ails them? They should be robbing us blind. Or trying to.’
‘They’ve seen too much, I’ll warrant, and it’s broken them,’ said Gert. ‘I’ve seen it before. An entire company of Ostermark sword. They’d fought some… thing, in the defence of Hergig, and though they beat it, afterwards it was as if the thing had torn out their hearts and left the rest of them whole. Worse than death, to my mind.’
Augustus shivered, then nodded. The two men seemed to have forgotten their argument.
In the centre of a weedy park, a jeering crowd surrounded a naked girl tied to a stake. They threw cobbles and clods of dirt at her as she wailed and begged for mercy. There were bundles of tinder at her feet and a fellow in a pointed red hood danced around her with a torch. She was very beautiful, though her face and body were bruised, but her legs were furred and hoofed like a goat’s, and she had a hairless purple tail. Her high thin voice penetrated through the howls of the mob.
‘Please! I ain’t done nothing,’ she whined. “Tisn’t my fault. It just happened.’
The hooded man touched his torch to the hay and it went up in a rush. The girl began to scream. Reiner turned his head, but the sound stayed with him.
All along their route were barricaded streets manned by weary guards, some wearing the red and white of the city watch, others in the livery of this lord or that, or in no uniform at all, protecting streets or neighbourhoods from invasion. At some streets it seemed the guards and barricades were there to keep the inhabitants in. Beyond these was wholesale destruction, and slinking shapes that might once have been men.
Further on, they passed between the great grey stone edifice of the Grand Courthouse of Edicts, where the Talabheim parliament convened, and the Hollows, in the bowels of which those convicted in the courts served out their sentences. The gibbets and punishment cages in the forecourt of the courthouse were so thickly hung with corpses that it looked like a butchers window.
Rising over the low, dormered buildings of the Law district, Reiner could see the buildings of the temple quarter, known as the City of the Gods—golden Myrmidia brandishing a spear at the top of a granite column, Shallya’s slender white steeple, Taal’s upthrusting rowans, and high above them all, Sigmar’s stern stone bell-towers. It looked a calm, serene place, until Reiner noticed the pillars of smoke rising among the spires.
Soon after, the procession came to a high stone wall with a large, well-defended gate. Knights on horseback sat at parade rest before it, and trebuchets were mounted on turrets to either side. Over the wall Reiner could see the gables of fine houses and the tops of tall trees. A procession of priests of Morr was exiting the gate. They carried a handsome coffin. Reiner smirked. The rich, it seemed, were not burned like tinder in city squares.
The captain of their escort exchanged words with the gate captain, and Manfred’s train passed once again into another world. The horror and clamour of the merchant district fell away instantly, replaced by quiet calm and stately beauty. Large, elegant ma
nor houses surrounded by extravagant gardens lined the empty street. Everywhere upon the houses were swirling designs of oak leaves, vines and acorns, and ornate beam ends shaped like the heads of stags, boars, and bears. There was no one abroad in the neighborhood, and Reiner began to realise that what he had mistaken for calm was actually paralysis. The nobles hid in their homes, waiting for the storm to pass.
The procession came to a stop before another high stone wall, even more well defended than the previous one, and after more challenges and conferring, they were admitted. Inside was a grand estate, with extensive grounds, gardens, groves and out-buildings and, in the centre, a sprawling, ivy-covered old manor house, as big as any five of the noble houses they had just passed stuck together. And indeed, that was exactly what it looked like. Reiner could count at least seven distinct architectural styles in the portions he could see, representing additions made in as many centuries.
‘This is the countess’s residence?’ he asked, turning to Augustus, confused.
The pikeman nodded. ‘Aye, the Grand Manor.’
‘But, but she doesn’t live in a castle?’
“Course she does,’ said Augustus. ‘Look around you.’ He swept his hand around toward the walls of the crater, now miles away, but still visible through the trees in all directions. ‘The greatest castle in the Empire.’
‘Ah, of course,’ said Reiner.
‘Was a castle once,’ said Augustus. ‘Back in Talgris’s time, when the crater wasn’t fully tamed. You can still see the old keep there.’ He pointed toward the centre of the manor, where a fat, rough-hewn barrel keep reared its ugly, crenellated head over the civilized gables and dormers of the later additions. ‘Still use it for the dungeon and the treasure vaults, and kitchens and the like too, but nobody quarters there any more. Cold and drafty.’
Their escort led them up a tree-lined avenue past barracks buildings and fortified sentry posts, and came to a halt in a gravelled forecourt on the west side of the Grand Manor where a company of the countess’s greatswords waited for them.
Manfred stepped out of his carriage with Lord Neubalten, and Reiner took up his place three paces behind them. The courtyard grew hushed as Teclis joined them. It seemed Talabecmen were no more immune to the awe elves inspired than their Reikland cousins.
The legation crossed to tall double doors, where the greatswords waited for them, all dressed in green and buff, with brightly polished steel breastplates. Their captain, a tall man with a narrow head of close-cropped blond hair and the grim eyes of a veteran, stepped forward and saluted.
‘Lord Teclis, Count Valdenheim,’ said Neubalten, ‘May I present Heinrich von Pfaltzen, captain of Countess Elise’s personal guard.’
The captain clicked his heels and bowed, doing his best to remain unmoved by Teclis’s presence. ‘M’lords,’ he said. ‘The countess awaits you.’
The legation, escorted by the greatswords, followed von Pfaltzen through a series of broad carpeted corridors. Rich tapestries of woodland scenes were hung at regular intervals, and archways opened into richly appointed sitting rooms, libraries and galleries. It was magnificent, as befitted the seat of a countess, yet it maintained a slightly rustic ambiance, like that of some royal hunting lodge.
At a pair of tall, intricately-carved wooden doors, von Pfaltzen was challenged by two halberdiers in elaborate green and buff livery. He announced that Lord Teclis of Ulthuan and Count Manfred of Emperor Karl-Franz’s court in Altdorf and their retinue begged the countess’s permission to enter.
The halberdiers saluted, and said that the countess granted her guests leave to enter, then swung open the heavy doors.
Lord Neubalten bowed Teclis, Manfred and the party into a high, handsome throne room. A green and yellow stained-glass clerestory painted the long room with mellow golden light. Rows of wood-clad pillars carved to resemble tree trunks rose up to spreading branches that supported a patterned green ceiling so that the room looked like a sun-dappled forest glade.
The herald led the party down between the pillars to a raised dais under a green velvet canopy, while von Pfaltzen and his men took up positions to either side of it.
Upon the dais, sitting on an ornate oak throne, was Countess Elise Krieglitz-Untern, ruler of the free city of Talabheim. After all the beauty of the Grand Manor she was a bit of a disappointment. Squat and broad and dowdy, even in a green and gold dress of exquisite workmanship, with lumpy features in a round, red face, she looked more like a fish-wife than a countess.
No wonder the common folk were reputed to love her, thought Reiner. They could claim her for their own. The one evidence of her nobility was her bearing. She carried herself with enough regal hauteur for three countesses—her posture ramrod straight, her bulbous nose high and proud, her eyes hard and flashing.
Noble courtiers stood in clusters around the dais. Everyone was staring at Teclis, who seemed to glow with his own inner light in the shadowy green room. Even the countess stared.
Lord Neubalten stepped forward and began announcing the names of those who came before the countess, giving all their titles and honours. Bored, Reiner glanced around the room, doing as Manfred had ordered, trying to judge the character and importance of the lords and ladies of the countess’s court by their dress and manner. That one with the neatly trimmed beard was undoubtedly a pompous ass. And that one, with the slouching shoulders, a born rogue if ever there was. And the woman standing behind the pillar with the young lord at her side was…
Reiner’s heart stopped. The woman was Lady Magda Bandauer, the devious witch who, when he had last been in her presence, had tried to kill him with the power of the cursed banner, Valnir’s Bane. Reiner’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, but then he released it. The bitch certainly deserved to be hacked to pieces, but perhaps this was not the place. What was she doing here, he wondered? Did these poor fools know the evil they had welcomed into their court?
Magda turned, as if she felt Reiner’s eye upon her. Her gaze swept past him at first, then jerked back, and the look of fear that sprang to her face was gratifying, even if her discovery of him was unfortunate. They eyed each other silently across the throne room before the voice of the countess brought Reiner back to the business at hand.
‘Lord Teclis,’ she was saying. ‘Wisest of the fair, most benevolent counsellor of men, we welcome you to our humble court and to the free city of Talabheim, jewel of Talabecland.’
Teclis inclined his head. ‘I thank you, countess.’ His voice was soft, but carried with unnatural resonance.
‘And welcome also to you, Count Valdenheim,’ she said in a much colder tone. ‘Though we admit bafflement at your presence here with so great a force and with no prior notice of your coming.’
Manfred bowed low. ‘Thank you, countess, and I beg you to accept my apology for this unheralded visit. We come at the great Teclis’s request, and with the most peaceful of intentions. The fair one warned Karl-Franz that some great evil had befallen Talabheim, and in a spirit of brotherly concern, the Emperor has sent this humble embassy to give you what assistance we can.’
The countess’s face remained impassive, but Reiner could see that she was taking Manfred’s diplomatic hyperbole for what it was worth. ‘We are moved by the Emperor’s concern, but there was no need for him to trouble himself. While we would welcome the wisdom of Lord Teclis at any time, we have the situation well in hand. We expect to divine the cause of this disturbance shortly, and are fully capable of defending our city until that hour comes.’
‘You do not have the situation in hand,’ said Teclis, as softly as before. ‘The currents of Chaos in Talabheim daily grow stronger, your subjects die in the streets, and you haven’t the manpower to stop this, only to protect the less affected neighbourhoods and the homes of the wealthy. And if the cause is what I believe it to be, not even your greatest scholars can put it right.’
Reiner saw the countess’s eyes flare at this bald statement of fact, but there was little she could say. Tecl
is was an elf. He had no need to trade in courtesies, for his status was unaffected by political manoeuvring. He had seen many emperors come and go, and would likely see three more ascend the throne in Altdorf. ‘We welcome any aid you can give us, great one,’ she said through tight lips. ‘But if, as you say, there is nothing human efforts can do, would it not have been just as well for you to come alone?’
Manfred spoke up before Teclis could reply. ‘The Emperor would not allow so noble a guest to travel alone within his domain. Nor would he allow the niceties of courtesy to delay aid for our fair sister Talabheim if it were necessary. We came in force, but with the hope that we would not be needed. And while your soldiers may indeed have the situation well in hand, there is no reason to turn away reserves when they are here to help.’
‘To interfere, you mean,’ said the countess. ‘To take credit for Talabheim’s victory over this trouble.’
‘Countess,’ said Manfred. ‘I assure you…’
‘And I assure you that your help is not needed. You have delivered the great Teclis to us, and we thank you for that. You may now retire, certain that we will keep him safe and will bring no shame upon the Empire while he is our guest. Thank you.’
It was an unmistakable dismissal, but Manfred only bowed and drew a rolled parchment from his doublet. ‘Countess, it grieves me that I must remind you that, while Talabheim is a free city, it still resides within Talabecland, and that Talabecland is a state of the Empire, subject to its laws and to the commands of its Emperor.’ He held up the parchment. ‘Though gently worded, this document is not an offer of aid, but a command from Karl-Franz, signed by his own hand, ordering your government to allow his representatives to assist you until they have determined that the danger to Talabheim, and the Empire, has passed.’
Manfred passed the parchment to Neubalten, who took it to the countess. She passed it to a scribe that scurried forward from behind the dais. He read it quickly, then whispered in her ear while her knuckles grew white upon the arms of her throne.
