Tales of the Old World

by Marc Gascoigne

  Heidel shook his head and banished Mendelsohn from his thoughts. He recognised that such thoughts had a habit of turning him distinctly surly. He looked around at the forest. The trees seemed to be getting thicker, more twisted, the underbrush more prickly and uninviting. Sassen rode beside him in silence, tracker’s eyes now intent on finding the trail of the quarry.

  Maybe four hours after they left Bechafen, Sassen suddenly called a halt. He reined in his horse and leaped down to the road. He crept, head down along the edge of the forest. It appeared to Heidel as if the little man was actually sniffing for the trail. Then the tracker looked up suddenly and stated: “Here it is.”

  Heidel dismounted too and walked over to him. On the ground were a series of scuffled tracks leading into the forest. Without Sassen he would have ridden straight past it.

  The way into the forest was marked by several broken branches and the tracks, still distinct after two days without rain, leading into the darkness. Once into the trees it would be hard going. Branches hung low like outstretched arms barring the way; roots twisted like tentacles from the ground, threatening to trip them.

  “Do you know this area well?” Heidel asked the tracker.

  “Fairly well. It’s all pretty much like this, I’m afraid. But that means it will hamper the band as much as us. We’ll have to walk, anyway.”

  Sassen wrinkled his eyes, an annoying habit that Heidel had noticed; the little man always squinted when he spoke.

  “It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to travel at night,” Heidel said. He looked to the sky, as if night was about to fall then and there. But it was still deep and blue with clumpy white clouds rolling slowly overhead.

  “Unlikely,” Sassen agreed. “We’ll just have to make the best of the day.”

  “Fine. Then we had better begin.”

  For four days they pushed through the forest, the gnarled branches of the trees blocking them and their horses, thorns and bushes scratching against their legs, drawing blood wherever the skin was exposed. In no time Heidel’s hands were covered in a delicate latticework of dried blood. The days were dark as the sun was shut out by the canopy overhead. But if the days were dark, the nights were blacker still. Even the shadowy forms of the trees disappeared into the night.

  Every day passed the same. They awoke at first light and departed as quickly as possible. During the day they pushed on as hard as they could for, according to the baron, the bandits would have two days’ start on them. If Heidel and Sassen pressed on with this pace they could catch them within a week at most, less if the band had made more permanent camp somewhere. When they caught them, surprise would be the key. Heidel would stand no chance against a united group; he would have to pick them off one by one.

  On the morning of the fourth day since entering the forest, Sassen stopped and inspected the tracks, an action that had become increasingly regular. “They are less than a day away from us.” He peered up at Heidel and squinted.

  Ahead of them they could see twenty feet at the most. At any moment they might stumble upon the prey. That could mean death or worse. In these close confines, the hunters would become the hunted, and the black warrior’s horde would surely crush them. Often Heidel heard rustling close to them in the forest or fluttering amongst the branches above, but whatever it was remained unsighted. He assumed they were just the movements of birds and animals, but they made him jittery anyway.

  Perhaps to ease his tension Sassen kept trying to strike up a conversation, trying to get Heidel to tell of his exploits as a witch hunter.

  “How many have you put to death?” he asked one time.

  Heidel glared at him.

  “You are grim, Herr Heidel.”

  “Better to say nothing at all, than to say nothing using many words.” The witch hunter spoke plainly.

  Undeterred, Sassen continued: “I hear you burnt a man only last month. What for?”

  “He was in league with corruption.” Heidel practically spat the sentence out, the words so filled with revulsion and disdain.

  “What did he do?” Sassen inquired timidly.

  “When I arrived in this particular village many were falling ill. It was like a plague.” Heidel’s voice rose in intensity as he spoke, passion beginning to creep into his account. “At first I could not discern the cause of this illness. I studied the victims and found that they had great red swellings beneath the skin. Under the armpits, on the neck, between the legs. As a test I punctured one of the victim’s swellings, and from the wound squirmed a writhing mass of worm-like creatures, all purple and yellow and bulbous. Alas, the victim died. Later I tried to cleanse a victim by applying fire to his swellings. But the strain was too much on his body.”

  Heidel glanced at Sassen, who looked on with a mix of disgust and excitement.

  “Continue, continue,” the tracker said, pulling his thin beard with his fingers and licking his lips.

  “I realised that the only victims were men, and so turned to the origins of the illness: if I could determine the cause then perhaps I could save these poor people. It took me but a day to find the truth. I interviewed the men and found that those who fell ill first had something in common. All were suitors of a woman, a particular woman. Searching her house I found nothing. But I was undeterred. I pressed the woman for the names of all who courted her. Under duress she produced a list, and all on that list were ill… all save one, the keeper of the inn. I found in that man’s cellar a cauldron full of writhing, squirming larvae. These he would feed to the men when they were drunk, placing them in their ale. Somehow they would eat their way through the flesh and the insides. And so he was burnt at the stake that very night.”

  “But why, why did he do it?”

  “He called it an act of love. He loved her, but she did not return his feelings. As a result he hated her other lovers and decided to kill them. But as he acted out his drama he lost his mind. His hatred for these particular men turned into a hatred of all men. Soon it would have become a hatred of all the world and everything within it. That way is the path to darkness.”

  After he finished there was silence for a moment, and then Sassen burst into a high fit of uncontrollable laughter.

  “You think it funny?” Heidel’s eyes flashed and his hand moved unconsciously to his sword.

  “No, no, of course not.” Sassen suddenly looked worried and did not ask any more questions of Heidel.

  * * *

  Around noon on the fourth day, the trail they had been following suddenly met a path, wide enough for two carts, leading away to left and right. Once it must have been well used, but now was overgrown, with the trees threatening to close in once more. Sassen handed his horse’s reins to Heidel and bent down to examine the tracks.

  “They passed to the left,” he said, “but there are other tracks here, that come from the right. Someone on a horse. It looks like he dismounted, for there are new footprints. Here, see?” Sassen pointed to the new tracks. “Perhaps he met the group here and has joined them.”

  Heidel peered down. There was a small group of hoof-prints, one over the other, as if the horse was made to wait for some time. Next to them were the fresh prints of a boot.

  “They are soft-soled,” Sassen noted. “See how faint the tracks are.”

  “Well, with only one horse they can’t have gone far. If we mount here we may catch them today. How old are these tracks?” Heidel peered down at the tracks himself.

  “Perhaps half a day.” Sassen squinted in the direction that the tracks led, as if he might yet see the band travelling away from them.

  “Then we shall ride slowly—and tonight we shall come upon them in a hail of fire and light.” Heidel’s eyes flashed at Sassen. The tracker smiled grimly and looked away.

  They rode throughout the rest of that day and, as it became dark, Heidel turned to Sassen: “You must set up camp here. We do not know how far away the band is, but we must take no chances. I shall walk ahead and begin the work, using my bow. I’l
l be back before morning. Do not light a fire, for I want you here when I return. Otherwise…” Heidel had nothing more to say, so he nodded, dismounted, took his bow and quiver, and began the walk.

  Sassen left the path behind him for a clearing, the two horses in tow. “Good luck,” he called out to the witch hunter, who did not acknowledge him.

  The new path was wide and above him he could see the stars. It was a relief to feel the open air again and to feel the fresh wind. “Sigmar,” he prayed under his breath, may the forest be kind to me tonight. “And Ulric, god of battle, to you I pray also: together may we come down upon these abominations and cleanse them with blood and steel.”

  And his heart began to sing, as it always did before he went into battle. For something stirred in him before he killed. It was as if his soul was suddenly in harmony with the world, as if there was some secret melody, some logic, which things and events travelled along. Truth, that was what it was. When a foe squirmed upon his sword—that was truth. When the light in a mutant’s eyes dimmed slowly, and then faded to black.

  The road opened out into a large clearing. He found them there, camping around a small fire. Already they were drunk or intoxicated, and he smiled silently. Baron von Kleist had been right: these were evil things that needed cleansing. Darkness undermines itself, he thought.

  There were seven of them. Six things: neither men nor beasts but something in between, twisted and vile. And the warrior, dull in his black and heavy armour, his face hidden by a great helmet. Some nameless black meat was charring on a spit above the fire. Bottles of liquid lay strewn amongst the creatures, who rolled around on the ground amongst the dirt and their own filth. Only the warrior sat calmly on an overturned log, contemplative and evil.

  When three of the corrupted men-things began to make their way from the clearing down a slope away to the right of him, Heidel seized his chance and followed them. He crept as quietly as possible, a shadow in the darkness, yet cursing under his breath as he heard the twigs breaking beneath his feet. But the creatures didn’t hear him, for they were crashing down the slope carelessly. After a minute they came to a small stream flowing gently, the sound of water over rocks floating through the air. All three dipped waterskins into the water, splashing their filth into the clear stream, and turned to carry them up the hill.

  It was then that Heidel struck. His first arrow hit the leading beast-man in the neck, piercing its soft fur and sending blood gushing through its bear-mouth.

  Pandemonium broke loose. In a whirr of motion a second arrow whisked through the air, another close behind. Two hits and a thing with tentacles fell groaning. A last beastman hissed like a gigantic snake; something heavy crashed into it from behind, screaming and lashing out. Then Heidel retreated back into the darkness. An excellent initial foray; three creatures dead.

  Praise be to Sigmar. Blessings upon the name of Ulric.

  When he arrived back at the clearing where he had left the tracker, he found Sassen sitting silently between the horses. It was still dark and the chill bit at his face. Sassen was shivering despite being wrapped in a blanket.

  “A fine night, Sassen. In the darkness I struck against malevolence, and Sigmar was on our side.” Heidel spoke fast, breathlessly recounting the night’s events. “We must ride before dawn. The sun will soon rise and we must catch them again before they have a chance to move or find us unawares. The darkness will give us cover.”

  The crisp air was motionless as they rode. Before long the eastern sky began to lighten. Finally, as they came close to the quarry’s camp, the sky had turned gold and red and pink, but the sun was still hiding behind the tree-line.

  Heidel glanced at Sassen and wondered if the tracker would be of any use in the fight. The little man had a short sword at his side, but until now it had only been used to hack at bushes and branches. It had not yet tasted blood, unless the stories of sailing with Norsemen were true. Perhaps this would be the morning of its baptism.

  When Heidel judged that they were close to the camp, he hissed for them to halt, and they tied their horses to a tree.

  “Let’s hope that they have not heard us,” he whispered to Sassen. “Are you ready for this?”

  The tracker looked at the ground, then to the sky, and finally nodded briefly, pursing his lips. The fear emanated from him like a scent.

  Heidel’s mood had changed since his joyous return from his initial foray. Perhaps he could feel Sassen’s fear, and somehow he had taken it as his own: an uncomfortable, dissolute, emotion. He felt a terrible sense of foreboding. And though he prayed to Sigmar and Ulric once more, his heart refused to lighten. Instead it was weighed down, leaden. For a moment Heidel felt the inevitability of defeat. How could he face that dark warrior, that faceless, soulless thing—all darkness and metal, terrible and sublime? The warrior had seemed just another man in the night. But as the sky became light, its image in his head to grow in stature; it was as if the very light was eaten by evil, which turned the warrior into something else entirely. Now he was ten feet tall, his armour hardened, impenetrable.

  Heidel shook himself. “Fool,” he muttered under his breath. But despite his reassurances he still felt the sands of uncertainty shift beneath his feet.

  They crept along the side of the track and before long came to the camp. Heidel was almost surprised that the creatures were still there. Three corrupted mutants sat in a circle facing outwards, in their hands jagged and vicious blades. There was a chicken-man. Behind him crouched something with what Heidel first took to be a shield on his back, before he realised that it was a shell that has grown from the man’s flesh. And finally there was another, a truly foul, corrupt thing which made Heidel rage with fury and sick with revulsion when he a saw it. Where its head should have been there was merely a gaping mouth dripping ooze and slime, pink and putrescent.

  The warrior was nowhere to be seen.

  “Sassen,” he said, “the time has come to mete out justice.”

  They began.

  How beautiful, Heidel thought, as his arrows arched their way across the clearing in the still, crisp dawn air: rising ever so slightly in their flight, and then dropping subtlety, before plunging into flesh and blood. For a moment he forgot the combat, and was content simply to watch the arrows sail, their beauty as they fulfilled their purpose, to fly and to strike.

  Then the serenity of the arrows was broken and everything became violence and death. The chicken-man suddenly began hopping uncontrollably, thrusting himself into the air, surprisingly high. The manic leaping was disturbing to watch, the body pulling tight, thrusting repeatedly against the ground. The corrupt body, thrusting and twisting, twisting and thrusting, blood spraying under incredible pressure; the last actions of a doomed creature in agony. So much blood.

  Heidel’s next arrow struck the second monstrosity, piercing its shell, forcing it to thrash and grasp aimlessly at the shaft protruding from its back.

  The witch hunter charged, his sword in hand, Sassen scurrying alongside him, howling at the top of his voice. Heidel quickly lost sight of the tracker as the third creature came at him. He realised with disgust that its body was covered with gaping, slavering, teeth-filled orifices. Its arms were tough and wiry, and the witch hunter knew that if it clutched him those mouths would suck his life. There would be no escape from its clutches.

  “You are doomed, spawn!” he cried as he thrust his sword forward, driving it into the creature’s belly. It slid along his blade, up to the hilt, yet there was life in it still. It grasped at him, and held him in its wiry arms, pulling him closer, ever closer still. The strength of its arms was immense, and he felt the mouths as they bit into his flesh.

  “Sigmar!” he screamed, and tried to push himself away. But it held him fast.

  Desperately he twisted his sword and dragged it upwards, and he felt warm blood and entrails on his hands. There was a terrible bird-screech wail. The fiend’s grasp weakened. It slid to the ground.

  Heidel staggered back, swo
rd hanging loosely in his hand, sweat and blood dripping over his eyes. He was vaguely aware of Sassen fighting something on the other side of the clearing. Weakly he spun around—and something huge and black loomed before him.

  The warrior was seven feet tall, a great battle-axe in its mailed fist. Heidel felt dwarfed by it, as if he stood before something from another age, something eternal. For a moment he was motionless, paralysed by awe. He realised that this would be the moment of his death. From behind his opponent the sun had risen all red and gold. Its rays gleamed off the black armour and blinded him. The only thing he could see was the silver pendant, set with a brilliant blue gem, hanging tantalisingly around the warrior’s neck.

  Then a mailed fist struck him in the face, throwing him backwards. Heidel scrambled desperately to the side as the great battle-axe plunged into the earth. He felt the rush of air as it flew past him. Heidel swung his sword sideways and felt it clatter off armour. A deep laughter followed, a laughter so unnatural and mocking that it filled Heidel with rage. The rage became strength and he leaped to his feet and jumped backwards. The axe whirled close to his belly, threatening to gut him.

  “Laugh now! But you will die screaming!” Heidel screamed.

  But only laughter was returned.

  Side-stepping to the right, Heidel lashed out, aiming at the elbow where only the black plates separated revealing only chainmail. He connected, and felt the sword bite, before stumbling sideways and backwards away from the lethal axe whirling towards him. As he stumbled his foot clipped something—a stone, a root—and his balance shifted, his leg remained stationary, yet his body lurched forward. Desperately he tried to pull his foot forward. Finally he succeeded, in time for his knee to brace his fall.