Tales of the Old World

by Marc Gascoigne

  Viehdorf didn’t receive much in the way of passing travellers, making their way down from the main road into the wooded hollow where the village nestled. The Slaughtered Calf lay half way between the two amidst the crowding trees and looming hills. Merchants, mercenaries, peddlers and pilgrims mostly preferred to bed down in the larger Scharfen, half a league back in the direction of Middenheim, or press on along the forest road until they reached the stone-walled security of Felsmauern another half a league further along the road towards Hergig.

  The sign over the door hardly seemed appropriate for an establishment called the Slaughtered Calf, although it betrayed the reason for the lack of passing trade. The image of a beastman’s head depicted on the swaying inn-sign attested to the fact that here, on the Middenland-Hochland border, the forested hill-country was beastman territory. The deep forests hid their camps and herdstone lairs. To stray from the roads in these parts was to invite a swift demise.

  Viehdorf was one of those pockets of civilisation clinging onto survival amidst the chaos and barbarity of a land where, whatever the Emperor comfortable in his palace in distant Altdorf might claim, savage nature was mistress—and a cruel mistress she was indeed, red in tooth and claw. The village was a faint, flickering candle-flame in the all-encompassing darkness of wild lands, where the populace were prey to the uncaring seasons and the harshness of survival.

  On occasion the animals belonging to the people of Viehdorf gave birth to unnaturally twisted offspring. When this happened, mother and child were culled, their carcasses destroyed, and the matter not spoken of again, for to do so was to attract the attentions of the witch hunters. Such men were not known for their tolerance, understanding or restraint.

  If any did stray this way the people of Viehdorf knew what had to be done.

  As Grolst considered this new stranger, he gazed across the barroom and took in the other people sheltering from the unseasonable night within the inn. There were the usual regulars; local foresters and other villagers, including the blacksmith, all eyeing the stranger warily, making him feel about as welcome as the plague. There was also another stranger in their midst that night, an armoured roadwarden.

  The atmosphere in the tavern was sullen and hostile, talk was restrained to a conspiratorial murmur; there were two strangers in the bar and they were definitely not welcome here. Strangers meant trouble. The people of Viehdorf liked to keep themselves to themselves. That was what proved best and had kept them unmolested by the world beyond the forested boundaries of their village, them and their forefathers before them.

  The blacksmith was watching the red-robed stranger but he was also giving the roadwarden on the other side of the bar furtive glances. It was on this man that Grolst’s gaze came to rest. The roadwarden was dressed in a tough leather jerkin and hard-wearing trews, and wore an armoured hauberk as well. A lobster-tailed helmet sat on the table in front of him.

  He had arrived earlier that same evening and Grolst was just as wary of him as he was of the straggly-haired stranger. The roadwarden had paid for one flagon of ale and had made it last for all the time since. He was enjoying a respite from the harsh, unrelenting conditions outside, no doubt. The leather of his jerkin and his trews dried out in the smoky warmth of the inn’s interior, the air bitter with the smell of hops, pipe-weed and wood smoke. No one dared actually challenge the man but the daggers in the stares the patrons were giving him made their true desires perfectly plain.

  The Slaughtered Calf hardly ever had any visitors, so to have two turn up on one night unsettled Grolst deeply, making the sullen innkeeper feel even less charitable than usual. The inn had rooms for rent, certainly, but Grolst was hard pressed to remember when they had last been used by a passing traveller rather than by the unfaithful, carrying on their lustful affairs away from the eyes of their jealous spouses. It was too close to the sacrifice for his liking, just when the people of Viehdorf didn’t want the prying eyes of the Emperor Karl Franz’s authorities, witch hunters or any other stranger looking into their business.

  There was one last drinker, sitting alone, who was known to Grolst. The man hardly seemed aware of anything about his surroundings; he just stared mournfully into the bottom of his tankard, shoulders slumped, his face a sagging scowl of sadness. Of course, he had good reason to look so unhappy. The responsibility for the sacrifice had come to rest at his door this time.

  The roadwarden raised his tankard and drained the last of the hopsy, locally-brewed ale and, taking up his hammer once again, strode purposefully back to the bar. The soldier fixed the innkeeper with his piercing, steely gaze, making Grolst feel even more uncomfortable. The innkeeper felt his flesh crawl under the unrelenting stare and, in order to break the tension, felt obliged to speak: “You moving on then?”

  “I may be,” the roadwarden said, his voice betraying a cultured accent but also a hint of suspicion in its tone.

  Grolst immediately regretted his question but also found himself wondering what had made a man of a highborn upbringing become a wandering warrior, patrolling the Emperor’s highways and protecting those who would travel on them with lawful intentions, especially at such a time of turmoil.

  The roadwarden’s manner made Grolst feel uncomfortable enough to provoke a response. “Is there good hunting to be had on the Emperor’s roads?”

  “Good enough,” the roadwarden replied. “Your village seems to have got away remarkably unscathed, considering there are tribes of man-beasts amassing within the forests and that there is a war coming to the Empire, the likes of which have not been seen since the time of Magnus the Pious.”

  “A war, you say? I wouldn’t know about that. War doesn’t trouble us here. So what brings you to our peaceful village?”

  “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself,” the rugged soldier said offering a smile, though his gaze remained as steely and unforgiving as before. “I am Ludwig Hoffenbach. Dark times are upon the Empire and all men are called to play their part, to hold back the storm of Chaos that is threatening to break across the land. You have heard, I take it, that the once-great sentinel city of Wolfenburg fell to a Northman horde last year?

  “I myself have been called to act as part of an Imperial commission, and I was supposed to meet with my compatriot here. Has a templar of the Sigmarite church visited Viehdorf?”

  “A witch hunter, you mean?” the innkeeper said, feeling his scalp tighten.

  “By the name of Schweitz.”

  Grolst swallowed hard. The blood in his veins felt as if it had turned to ice water. He cast an anxious glance over the roadwarden’s armoured shoulder and saw further furtive glances pass around the bar. It was only then that Grolst really realised that the low murmur of conversation inside the Slaughtered Calf had ceased, the foresters, villagers and blacksmith all straining their ears to eavesdrop on what was passing between the innkeeper and the roadwarden. The only one who seemed to be paying no attention at all was the mournful man still staring into the bottom of his pint.

  “A witch hunter?” the innkeeper said, trying to keep his tone jovial and the unease out.

  Out of the corner of his eye Grolst saw that the crimson-clad stranger was watching the exchange at the bar as intently as the inn’s regulars—if anything more so—and fidgeting uncomfortably, apparently at the mention of the witch hunter. Grolst knew how he felt.

  “No, there hasn’t been anyone like that here.”

  The roadwarden lent forward slightly and Grolst couldn’t help but notice that his gauntleted hand was resting on the haft of the warhammer slung from his belt.

  “Are you sure?” There was the same hard smile on Hoffenbach’s lips, the same steel in his eyes.

  “Definitely,” Grolst said, managing to force a laugh at the same time. “I would remember a templar of the Church of Sigmar visiting my poor hovel of an inn. No, no one like that’s been in here.”

  “Very well,” Hoffenbach said, adjusting his hauberk and making sure that the innkeeper saw not only the
insignia of his Imperial commission but also the haft of his warhammer once again. “Thank you for your… help.” He turned towards the inn door. “It is time I was gone.”

  With that, the roadwarden spun on his iron-shod heel and made to leave the snug of the bar for the wilds of the night outside the walls of the enduring coaching inn. Before he did so, Hoffenbach returned the shifty look the red-robed stranger was giving him.

  Then he was gone into the cold, the wind, the dark and the rain.

  Grolst went back to occupying himself smearing a tankard with his damp rag, trying to ignore the bewilderment of anxieties and possibilities muddling his mind. They would have to act soon. Grolst would have like to have believed that Viehdorf had seen the last of the roadwarden but he sincerely doubted it.

  The grating of a chair on the floor roused Grolst from his thoughts. The innkeeper looked up reluctantly and saw the red-robe taking his turn to approach the bar. Now what? the innkeeper thought resentfully.

  “Do you have any rooms?” the wild-haired stranger said. The darker water stains around the hem of his robes were fading as the thick material began to dry out.

  As soon as the man had uttered the words, a seed of an idea took root within the innkeeper’s mind. He had not thought the red-robe would stay. He had imagined the stranger would have been on his way, like the roadwarden, once he had finished his drink, even if it was after nightfall.

  Grolst felt a smile forming on his ugly lips. As soon as he was aware of it, he re-composed the annoyed grimace that made him look like he was irritated by the fact that anyone would dare to waste his time by actually wanting to be served in his inn.

  “If you can pay for it, I have,” he said snidely.

  “I have money.” The stranger’s hand disappeared inside his robe and emerged again holding a bulging leather purse.

  Grolst’s eyes lit up involuntarily at the sight of it. “That should just about do it,” he muttered grudgingly, although the twinkling in the black pits of his pupils betrayed how he truly felt. Not that the stranger appeared to notice: he was too busy glancing, fretfully almost, at the stony faces around the bar.

  “I want to retire now,” the stranger said, once the innkeeper had taken payment.

  “Would you care for another drink before I show you to your room?” Grolst proffered, displaying uncharacteristic generosity.

  The stranger’s eyes shot Grolst a suspicious glance, his mouth tight-lipped. Briefly, the innkeeper met the man’s gaze. For a moment, he fancied he could see fires burning deep within them and the ferocity of the flames made him blink and look away.

  “All right then, why not?”

  Grolst uncorked the luska bottle again, one whiff of the fiery spirit making his eyes start to water. As he poured a measure of the alcohol into the stranger’s glass, he was aware that all eyes in the bar were on him and the unwelcome visitor. Even the mournful man was looking up at him, his red-rimmed eyes no longer gazing at the bottom of his drink. Through one grimy, lead-paned window Grolst could see the white-yellow bloated orb of a gibbous moon, rising between the grey-cast clouds behind the trees at the top of the hill, and he found his mind wandering to consider what would come to pass later that night.

  The sacrifice had to be made soon, and it would be. The people of Viehdorf might not like strangers intruding into the isolation of their village, but they did have their uses; Viehdorf had its own method of protection against the predations of beastmen and their ilk.

  “Here,” he said as he poured the stranger a double measure into a fresh glass. “You look like you need warming up on a night like this. This one’s on the house.”

  Gerhart Brennend looked around the Slaughtered Calf’s guest room. He was unimpressed. It was much as he had expected. It was cramped and sparsely decorated. There was one bed, made of rough-hewn timbers, and a chair with a broken leg. The walls were barely plastered and, in places, the bare boards of the internal walls were visible. There was one crack-paned window, which rattled loosely in the wind and rain battering the isolated inn, that looked down onto the stable yard. The tiles of the stable roof were slick with greasy rainwater that ran into leaf-clogged gutters and poured over into the yard in a relentless cascade onto the rain-darkened cobbles.

  As Gerhart sat down on the thin straw mattress of the bed a wave of tiredness swept over him. He felt restless despite the weariness that was threatening to overcome him. For a wizard of the noblest Bright Order to have come to this, he thought to himself miserably. Once he had been the holder of the keys of Azimuth, an honoured position in his order, and now he was brought low like this. In fact, he had never been more destitute. His once magnificent robe was scorched and worn shabby, but at least it wasn’t wet anymore. There was nothing a fire mage hated more than rain, other than drowning, perhaps.

  Even though he suddenly felt bone-numbingly weary, Gerhart still felt ill at ease. It had been the roadwarden’s enquiries that had done it, and the talk of witch hunters. He had met enough of their bigoted, paranoid kind before.

  Trying to dismiss such concerns from his mind, he lay back on the bed, his eyelids suddenly heavy. It was as if all his exertions of the last year had finally caught up with him. But, as he closed his eyes, the scowling faces of those whom he had met before, who hunted the practitioners of the dark arts and servants of the fell powers, came unbidden into his mind. First, there was the Castigator of Schreibe, his red face contorted by zealous rage. Next came the cruelly calm features of the tonsure-headed priest of Stilwold, Brother Bernhardt—Gerhart involuntarily recalled the marks of the cleric’s self-induced mortification that he had suffered in the name of Holy Sigmar. Religious extremism and intolerance could never really be considered positive character traits.

  Gerhart was feeling very drowsy now. Then, of course, there was Gottfried Verdammen, the flesh of his face bubbled, red-raw and blistered from the avenging fires…

  A sudden noise in the yard below his window roused Gerhart from the drowsy threshold of sleep. A stable door was banging in the persistent wind that whipped through the courtyard behind the inn. Shaking the slumber from him, he rose from the bed and peered out of the corner of the cracked window into the dark and the rain.

  Through half-closed eyes he saw a cloaked figure duck into a stable, the door banging shut on its latch behind him. The wizard blinked his eyes clear, but the figure was gone. Had he really seen anyone?

  Another wave of fatigue washed over him and he had to sit down on the bed again, as his legs practically gave way beneath him. What had he just seen? Of course, it could be nothing more than an ostler tending the animals stabled there. Gerhart’s heightened sense of mistrust would not let him believe something so innocent or simple. What clandestine activity was taking place out in that stable on a night like this?

  He could fight the tiredness no longer. Putting his overwhelming exhaustion down to his long journey and the leeching effect of the continual rain on his powers, he gave in at last, falling asleep as soon as his head hit the musty-smelling pillow.

  “You’re sure this is going to work?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve taken care of things.”

  “But the sacrifice has to be made tonight.”

  “I told you, it’s taken care of.”

  “So my Gertrude is safe? Truly?”

  “She is now. Remember, we owe everything to our protector, just as our forefathers did in years past. We must make the sacrifice. We all have our part to play. It is better that one die than the village die. The good of the many is what matters. The good of the many.”

  Grolst took in the furtive group gathered within the dark of the stable, the smell of mouldering straw and stale horse dung strong in his nostrils. There were four of them, their hunched forms outlined by the rain-washed moonlight. As well as the thickset innkeeper, there was the blacksmith and the mournful looking man from the bar, as well as a bearded, burly forester. Grolst looked around the darkened stable.

  Everyone in the village
, of adult age at least, knew the truth about Viehdorf, but there was something about their dark secret that still made them feel uncomfortable speaking of it openly.

  “What do you mean, you’ve taken care of things?” the broad-shouldered blacksmith asked, an edge of anger in his voice.

  “Have a little faith, won’t you?” the innkeeper said, his slack smile invisible in the gloom.

  “Enough of this goading, Grolst,” the forester rumbled. “Now is not the time for tomfoolery. I’ve seen the rise in beastman activity in the forests on the borders of our lands. In fact, I’ve never seen so much in all my born days. We’re all troubled by it. We need to ensure that our village remains protected. We cannot miss the sacrifice.”

  “And we won’t,” Grolst reassured them with all the guile of a serpent. “He won’t give us any trouble. I put poppy seed juice in his glass. He won’t have tasted it under the luska. He’ll sleep now until doomsday. Won’t nothing wake him before we’re done with him.”

  “Then we do this now,” the blacksmith said gruffly.

  “We do it now,” the others agreed.

  Strangers did have their uses after all, the innkeeper mused as the party crept out of the stable into the night.

  From his hiding place behind the sag-roofed barn, Roadwarden Hoffenbach looked down on the Slaughtered Calf from up amongst the scraggy trees through the sheeting rain. There appeared to be four of them shuffling self-consciously between the half-closed gates of the inn’s stabling yard. Waiting on the dirt road outside was a heavy-built saddled shire horse, huffing and snorting irritably in the rain. The men were carrying what, at first, appeared to be an awkwardly packed sack. The only light illuminating their venture came from the moon. An arm flopped loosely from amidst the folds of rough cloth, as one of the men shifted his hold on the bundle, and Hoffenbach realised that what they were in fact carrying was a body. Unless he was very much mistaken, it was the bearded, staff-bearing stranger who had been in the bar earlier that same evening.