Tales of the Old World

by Marc Gascoigne

  It was more than that; there was a malign sentience there too, gnawing at the edges of his own consciousness. Gerhart’s preternatural senses revealed flashes of visions that were something like memories to him…

  He saw blood-daubed, tattooed tribes-men offering the tree sacrifice in the form of enemies bested in battle… He sensed the powers of dark magic being drawn to the tree over the centuries as a result of the blood rites practised before it, and the sacrifices continuing, even as the tribe’s settlement become the village of Viehdorf… He shared in the memory when the tree, so imbued was it with warping power, gained some kind of self-awareness… Its influence spreading through the soil beneath the forest, just like its roots, to encompass the village, corrupting the minds of the people who dwelt there so that they continued to feed it human souls, helping to strengthen the tree all the time. In turn its malignancy kept all other threats to its dominance at bay, in an unbroken cycle of corruption, sacrifice and soul-feasting…

  Gerhart had overheard the exchange that took place between the greasy innkeeper and the roadwarden back at the inn. Now he understood why the rising storm of Chaos had left this place untouched. Chaos was already here.

  His mind awash with disturbing images, in the dark Gerhart did not see the root push itself up out of the ground and snag itself around his ankle. Then he has falling, unable to stop himself. Gerhart plunged down the slope that dropped away at the edge of the clearing, tumbling head over heels through thorny thickets; roots and stones bruised his body, brambles snagging his beard.

  He slid to a halt in a bed of nettles, cracking his head against a weatherworn stone. The jolt stunned him for a moment but also helped him shake himself free of the tree’s malevolent influence. The hanging tree was crashing towards him, splintering saplings under its weight. Bodies swung wildly from its upper branches, or were torn from it as they snagged in the crooks of elm and silver birch.

  It was almost on top of him now. A slimy jawbone fell from the skeletal canopy of the tree into Gerhart’s lap as the chaos tree’s violent lurching shook it loose from a cadaver swinging high above.

  There was no way that he could prevail here armed only with his sword, Gerhart realised. There was only one thing that could save him now. Gerhart looked with his mage-sight again and a glimmer of hope entered his heart. The hollow where he lay was saturated with swirling magical energy. There were places in the world that attracted the winds of magic more strongly than others, like iron filings were attracted to a lodestone.

  The fire wizard looked down at the stone he had hit with his head. The tracery of ancient carvings could still just be made out beneath the lichen crawling over its surface, possibly made by the tribesmen who had first offered the tree fealty in times long past. The concentration of magical power was greatest here; drawn to this spot by the ancient stone. Had the primitives who put the stone here realised what effect its positioning would have, Gerhart wondered? It was a potential stockpile of power just waiting to be tapped.

  The tree reached for Gerhart for the last time, for now there was no escape for the wizard. As it did so, he breathed out slowly and, ignoring the pain in the back of his skull, focused his mind once more.

  So saturated in eldritch force was this spot that the very essence of the winds of magic simply poured into the attuned wizard, the tongue of flame burning inside his mind exploding into a devastating firestorm. Gerhart flung his arms out towards the tree, his hands seeming to burst into flame as he did so. Sorcerous power roared from his fingertips, becoming a roiling ball of liquid fire as it raced towards the hanging tree. Yellow fires blazed within his eyes as Gerhart cast his spell, immolating the tree with his fiery magic. He had not felt power like this since Wolfenburg.

  Flames washed over the tree, taking hold immediately all over its grotesquely bulging trunk, fat with the countless souls it had consumed. The tree let out a cacophonous scream, like the splintering of wood, as if myriad voices were screaming in unison with the angry roaring of the flames. The tree writhed in tortured agony as it burned, the rotting corpses hanging from its contorted bow catching light as well. Skeletal forms crashed to the forest floor in a flurry of sparks as their ropes burnt through, the raging inferno lighting up the top of the hill and the forest around it.

  His spell cast, his power spent, Gerhart staggered clear of the dying tree. Out of range of its flailing, fiery death-throes, the wizard watched with grim satisfaction as the tree burned. As it burned, he fancied that he could see faces contorted in agony distorting the bark-skin of the tree, adding their howling voices to the tree’s death-screams.

  Satisfied that his work here was done, his staff and sword recovered, Gerhart left the clearing on the same path the horse had taken with its two riders. The wizard followed its hoof prints back towards the Slaughtered Calf and the corrupted village.

  The tree itself had shown the wizard that the people of Viehdorf were party to its evil. The land would not be free of the contagion that was the Chaos growth’s malignant influence until the corruption that had been allowed to fester there, thanks to this root of evil, had been exorcised and the wound cauterised.

  Before dawn Viehdorf would burn.

  TALES OF

  MADNESS & RUIN

  THE DOOM THAT CAME

  TO WULFHAFEN

  C.L. Werner

  “It is time,” Gastoen said, his voice deep and commanding, brooking no question. Karel rose from his bed, his head turning towards the open doorway of his room. Gastoen had already withdrawn, however, satisfied that his son would rise from his slumber and hurry to join his father outside.

  Or, perhaps, thought Karel, his father knew that he had not been asleep. His body cried out from fatigue, the weariness of long hours spent before dawn hauling lobster pots and fishing nets from the chill waters of the Sea of Claws, a labour which had only ended late in the afternoon, as the small fleet of tiny fishing boats returned to Wulfhafen, their occupants grumbling about the meagre catch. It was not yet late enough in the year for the lobsters to be numerous, and many of the pots went without an inmate, or yielded such miserable specimens that the clawed creatures were summarily tossed back into the sea. Still, the grumbling was not so very serious as it might have been amongst the fishermen of the many other coastal villages scattered across the Empire, for even if the lobster season was still months away, a far more profitable season was about to begin for the men of Wulfhafen.

  Karel quickly dressed himself, emerging from his tiny room into the much larger common room of his family’s home. He could see his mother standing calmly in the centre of the room, a clay mug gripped firmly in her tired, wrinkled hands. She smiled at her son, a warm, loving expression, yet with the thread of worry mixed in to tarnish the reassurance the old woman hoped to bestow. When Karel stepped towards her, she gave him the clay mug, its contents steaming; he gratefully accepted the cup and sipped away at its contents. He was not surprised to find that she had mixed some rum into the tea. The alcohol would keep him warm far longer than the tea. His mother was always so very practical.

  “Your father is waiting,” the old woman gently prodded as Karel lingered over his tea. The youth nodded and slugged down the remainder in a single gulp, wiping the excess from his chin with the sleeve of his jerkin. Karel handed the mug back to the care of his mother’s wrinkled hands and stooped downward to kiss her cheek. He was surprised when his mother tried to slip an object into his hands as he hugged her.

  “What is this?” Karel asked, staring at the tarnished steel kitchen knife. His mother pushed his hands and the knife they gripped against his chest.

  “You can never be too careful,” she explained. “Slip it beneath your clothes. Better to have it and not need it, than to be without.” With those last words of warning, Karel’s mother manoeuvred him to the door and into the cold night air.

  Karel found his father leaning against the side of their hut, staring down the narrow lane that made up the village of Wulfhafen. It was nothin
g much, as villages went. A scattered mass of simple huts, perhaps two score in total: a large wooden meeting hall, where the village men would spend long summer nights drinking and carousing; a mass of ramshackle boat houses closer to shore; a small warehouse where food would be stored, kept in a community trust; and a small coach house, the domain of Wulfhafen’s only wagon and four horses. Gastoen looked up as his boy joined him, smiling and gripping Karel firmly by the shoulder.

  “Tonight you officially become a man,” Gastoen said, smiling into his son’s face, his tobbaco-stained teeth broken and pitted. Gastoen stared at Karel, reading the youth’s features. He thumped his son on the back and began to walk slowly down the lane.

  “Everyone is nervous their first time,” Gastoen explained. “You will do just fine. Why, when I was your age, I was probably even more anxious than you are now.” Gastoen punctuated his remark with a short, cough-like laugh.

  Karel looked hard at his father, considering his words. He seemed older now than he had been only this morning, helping his son pull empty lobster pots back into their boat. Karel idly wondered if his father had also been unable to sleep, if he was having problems adjusting to the new nocturnal habit demanded by the long autumn nights. He would have thought that after these many years, his father would have adjusted to the yearly pattern. Perhaps it was something besides the alteration in routine that had upset his father.

  “Are you certain that what we are doing is right?” Karel muttered, almost under his breath, as he pursued this last train of thought. Gastoen stopped, turning to face his son, both men, old and young, shrouded in the shadows of the huts to either side of the lane. Gastoen opened his mouth to speak but waited until a figure that had been advancing upon them from further down the lane passed them by, the last chords of the sea shanty the man had been whistling drifting away into the night. Only when the tune could no longer be heard did Gastoen speak.

  “I myself asked that question of my father when I was your age,” Gastoen confessed. “We stood, perhaps, in this very spot. He explained to me the way this wretched world of ours works. He said that in the sea, for the shark to grow big and strong, it must devour thousands of smaller fish. For the kraken, it must consume numberless whales to survive. As it is in the sea, so it is on land. For a man to prosper, he must have prey. It is the way of things, Karel. To have joy, yourself, another must suffer.” Gastoen sighed and put a gnarled hand on his son’s head. “Believe me, we have things much better here than in other places. If what we do brings us such prosperity, can what we do be wrong?”

  The question seemed genuine to Karel, as if his father was not certain of the answer himself. The youth would have challenged his father’s reasoning further when, suddenly, the shadows in the narrow lane danced away from them, retreating away from the beach. A bright light glared from the shore, dazzling in its brilliance, far more wondrous than the pale, feeble light of the tiny sliver of Mannslieb hanging in the night sky. Karel shut his eyes and flinched away from the sudden brightness, but Gastoen had already gripped the youth by the shoulder and pulled him into sharing the accelerated trot the old man had adopted.

  “The beacon fire has been lit!” Gastoen exclaimed as the two made their way toward the shore. “Our place is on the beach.” Gastoen paused as they passed the last of the thatch-roofed huts. He removed a heavy boat hook from his belt and pressed it into Karel’s hands.

  “Keep this ready,” Gastoen ordered, his voice heavy with concern. “Stay close to me. Perhaps nothing will happen tonight, but as your grandfather always used to warn ‘expect every storm to be a hurricane’.”

  The men of Wulfhafen were gathered around a roaring, blazing fire. The mound of wood rose several feet above the rocks, promising to spend hours before burning out. Karel could make out the figure of Veytman, Wulfhafen’s chief citizen, ordering men to stack the empty kegs of oil they had used to douse the wood with into an orderly file some distance from the advancing surf. Veytman spotted Gastoen and Karel as they advanced onto the sand and broke away from the bonfire crew to meet them.

  “You are late, Gastoen,” Veytman reprimanded the older man. Thin and powerful where Gastoen was paunchy and frail, Veytman cut an imposing figure. The man’s dark hair and rakish looks marked him out as the direct descendent of Wulfhafen’s founder, the pirate Wulfaert. The narrow, elegant blade sheathed at Veytman’s side was the finest steel in all the village and had been the pirate’s when he had plied the coasts of Bretonnia in his sloop The Cockerel. “We should have been glad for your help in setting the bonfire.”

  “I am sorry,” Gastoen began, trying not to meet Veytman’s gaze.

  “I see you brought your son along,” Veytman observed, focusing his cold blue eyes on Karel for the first time. Veytman studied the boy for a moment and they looked back at Gastoen. “Are you certain that he is ready for this?”

  This time Gastoen did not avoid Veytman’s gaze. “He will do what is expected of a man of Wulfhafen,” the old man snapped, fire in his voice. Veytman nodded and clucked his tongue.

  “We shall have to see about that,” the rogue said, running a smooth finger through the slight brush of moustache upon his lip. “Just be certain that he knows the rules. No hiding anything. Everything that washes ashore must be valued and appraised before it can be distributed equally amongst the village.” Veytman let his face soften, and winked at Karel. “Then, there is always the Captain’s share to consider,” the man laughed.

  “Do you think we will catch anything tonight?” Gastoen asked Veytman. Veytman turned, casting his eyes out to the darkness of the nighttime sea. There was motion there, the ceaseless undulation of the waters. But of what might be lurking above or below that undulating mass, there was no clue.

  “No,” Veytman shook his head, “it is early in the season yet. The fog is just now starting to become thick, the wind only now beginning to sound with Ulric’s howl. I don’t think that we will catch anything tonight. But it is useful to keep everybody in practice. We must let the indolence of summer be forgotten.” Veytman turned away from Gastoen and his son and walked over to the roaring fire, warming his hands before the flames.

  “Come along, boy,” Gastoen said, gripping Karel by the shoulder. “He has the right idea. It will be a long night, and we may as well be warm.”

  “Lights on the water,” the keen-eyed villager said. Karel was immediately roused from his napping by the sudden activity all around him. He looked away towards the roaring bonfire for a moment, then turned his gaze to Veytman. The rakish hetman of Wulfhafen removed the long, slender tube of his looking glass from within the breast of his coat. Like his sword, it was an heirloom from the pirate Wulfaert, a rare and valuable device looted from an elven ship, if the legends of Wulfaert held any truth in them. Veytman placed the tube to his eye and gazed out at the black expanse of the sea.

  “Fortune smiles upon us on our first night!” Veytman laughed, replacing the looking glass within his coat. “She looks to be a merchantman, a fine prize for so early in the season!” Veytman looked over at a burly villager standing nearby.

  “Emil, encourage our friends to come ashore,” Veytman said. Emil took the long, curved horn from his belt and put it to his lips. Soon, the man’s bellows-like lungs sent a loud, mournful note echoing into the night. Gastoen and the other men of Wulfhafen stared at the distant lights from the ship expectantly, even Karel becoming caught up in the excitement. The men watched and waited. When the lonely bellow of an answering horn sounded from the ship, the men of Wulfhafen turned to one another, their wide, cruel smiles bespeaking their silent glee.

  Karel watched as the lights of the ship came closer towards the shore. The youth understood what was happening, and his excitement abated as his mind made the leap from the scene he was witnessing and that which must surely follow. Emil blasted the horn once again as the ship drew still closer, drawn through the night and the fog towards the promising light of the beacon. Like a moth to the flame.

  A capt
ain wise in the ways of the north would never have fallen for the trick. The best charts of the northern coast of the Empire, that neglected, shunned region beyond the Wasteland and the Drakwald, described a craggy stretch of shore as Wrecker’s Point. It is a place riddled with sharp fangs of rock, submerged shoals and razor-sharp coral reefs. The refuge promised by dozens of tiny harbours is like the call of the siren, luring ships to their doom and no practised captain would accept their lethal charms. An experienced mariner would take his chances with the sea’s doubtful mercy in even the most vicious storm than accept the certain destruction of a landing on the treacherous coastline of Wrecker’s Point.

  But the evils of geography are not the only dangers to menace the ships sailing the route between Erengrad and Marienburg. A wicked place will often find wicked men all too willing to put to use such a blighted site. Several villages exist amongst the craggy rocks and fangs of the shoreline, tending their small fleets of fishing boats until Ulric’s Howl, that terrible, chill wind which heralds the coming winter, brings a more profitable catch to their shores. But the best charts are expensive, and experienced captains in short supply. Far more numerous are the maps produced by cloistered scribes in the cartography shops of Altdorf and Nuln, drawn by men who have never seen the sea or heard the warnings of Wrecker’s Point.

  The ship continued, Emil and his counterpart on the vessel sounding their horns above the soft roar of the tide. It drew so close that Karel fancied that he could see the bonfire reflecting off the white canvas of the ship’s sails. His young eyes tried to pierce the veil of night to ferret out the shape of the ship from the darkness that enshrouded it. A part of him wanted to look away, but he could not. It was not the fear that his elders would think him not ready to become a man that prevented him. It was because the drama was too compelling, too awful for Karel to turn from.