The Empire Omnibus

by Chris Wraight

  ‘Meagre tribute is all we ask,’ Zanikoff said, growing serious, shifting his attention back to Yarik. ‘To bestow such gifts of mirth and merriment, we crave a simple indulgence.’

  Yarik looked back at him nonplussed.

  ‘A stage,’ said Zanikoff, a wide grin spreading across his handsome features.

  A raised wooden platform in the village square, usually used for storing sacks of grain, was cleared quickly and turned into a makeshift stage. A vast array of backdrops and pantomime furnishings dressed it. The fixtures looked old and slightly tarnished, but the bedazzled villagers of Hochenheim paid these details no heed. A great apple tree overshadowed the stage. It was the biggest in all of Hochenheim and a symbol of the village, its abundant blossoms full of the promise of spring.

  Yarik sat on a barrel, away from the thronging crowd that cooed and called, and laughed at the antics of the Carnival of Mystery. Smoking his pipe, he noticed Alderman Greims, and even Mayor Hansat, entranced by the troupe of masked players. Yarik was secretly impressed by their realistic costumes, turning them into maidens, monsters and mythic heroes.

  Other entertainments were going on around the main stage, too: a jester performed tumbling tricks and a ventriloquist with a hand puppet regaled a group of children with his talents. It appeared as if they were moving away from the main crowd. The puppet was a bedraggled looking thing, a mangy dog with one eye, but the engrossed youngsters seemed oblivious.

  There was no sign of Zanikoff. After introducing the various festivities, he had vanished. Yarik didn’t trust him and wanted to know where he was. He swept his gaze across the crowd and thought he saw something in the shadow of the village tavern, the Black Bear. The wagon Zanikoff and his troupe had arrived in was stationed there, along with the hooded steed. As Yarik got up, he didn’t relish reacquainting himself with that beast.

  Negotiating the crowd, he headed for the wagon. The noise was almost deafening, such were the raucous cheers and thunderous laughter. But Yarik kept his eyes on the tight alley next to the Black Bear and the thing in the shadows that had caught his attention. For a moment, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a lone young girl following the puppeteer further away from the stage, but he soon lost sight of her, more intent on his investigations.

  As he got closer, Yarik saw Zanikoff. He was hefting something heavy into the wagon and after a moment inside, emerged unburdened. Yarik’s suspicions grew and for a moment he thought about seeking out Falker; he hadn’t seen the young Middenlander for hours.

  Yarik pressed on, unperturbed, but by the time he reached the Black Bear, Zanikoff had gone. The wagon door was open, so, giving the horse a wide berth, he worked his way around the wagon. Darkness persisted within. He drew his dagger and took a tentative step up inside.

  The wagon’s interior was vast; it seemed far larger inside than outside. Yarik willed his eyes to adjust quicker to the dark and his beating heart not to thump so loudly. Taking another step, Yarik realised there was something at the back of the wagon, something big. He swore he could hear it breathing, and a horrible stink assailed his nostrils. Another horse? It would explain how the animal he had seen could carry such a burden if it were shared. As Yarik got closer, he discerned a misshapen silhouette, too large and grotesque to be a horse. His days as a road warden, and all the things he had seen dwelling in the deepest bowels of the Drakwald, returned to him and suddenly he knew what this thing was.

  ‘By the gods,’ he breathed, reaching slowly for his sword and backing away.

  ‘My noble lord Yarik,’ said Zanikoff from behind him.

  Yarik turned quickly to find the carnival master blocking his path, his long, sleek silhouette described by the light at the wagon door as he stood just outside.

  Yarik’s mind and body screamed at him to flee, but somehow, through sheer force of will, he compelled himself to stay. To flee now would mean death, he was certain of that.

  Behind him, there was the faint rattling of chains as the creature shifted. Yarik started to slide out his sword.

  ‘Would you like to peek?’ Zanikoff intoned playfully.

  Yarik shook his head weakly, mouthing the words he was desperate to articulate. The drone of the crowd was distant now, as if heard from underwater. ‘No?’ Zanikoff answered for him. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘do you know what curiosity did to the cat?’

  Yarik couldn’t speak, his mouth sketching words noiselessly. He couldn’t even shake his head. Hot breath lapped at his neck; the nauseating stench of decay came with it, making him retch and it took all of his resolve not to vomit. Warm piss trickled down his leg and tears filled his eyes, as all those years of hunting and fighting in the dark, all that fortitude and bravery, were stripped away.

  ‘I thought not,’ Zanikoff said, stepping back from the wagon’s entrance. ‘Let me educate you.’ The door slammed shut and Yarik was trapped.

  Outside, Zanikoff watched with some satisfaction as the wagon rocked violently back and forth, the cries of the ex-road warden quickly muted, much like his fellow soldier’s had been. Molmoth was ever ravenous, his appetite seldom sated for long.

  In the distance, a mother cried out for her child, but the roaring crowd, oblivious in adulation, smothered her desperate call.

  Zanikoff smiled, watching as the players sprang through the village, spreading their gifts. The seeds had been sown and soon, very soon, the harvest would begin.

  The beating of drums was like thunder across the open plain. Atop a craggy rise a force of knights knelt in prayer, their silver armour gleaming, framed against a blackening horizon. They surrounded a great stone temple with two doves flying above it, despite the approaching storm. A priestess stood at the centre of the penitent warriors, a sword at her side, a book in her hand. She looked down at the foot of the great rise where their enemies gathered, eager for slaughter.

  To the west, there massed a mighty horde, thousands strong, black banners fluttering. Armoured warriors, faces obscured by metal, stood side-by-side with loping daemons. Whelp masters held snarling hounds as they strained at the leash, while above the sound of drums was joined by the beating of wings. A champion of the Dark Gods waited amongst them, riding a huge and fearsome steed. His armour was the colour of night and the slits in his helm flared with flame-red malevolence.

  From the east came rotting warriors encased in husks of rusted armour, their tarnished blades held aloft in tribute. Daemons: horned, cyclopean creatures riddled with decay, capered with them. Their silent lord sat upon an emaciated steed. A ragged hood concealed his face, and pustule ravaged, bone-thin hands clutched a pitted scythe.

  At some unseen command, the armies of darkness charged, zealous fury lending them vigour. The knights rose as one to meet them. The priestess raised her sword, tears streaming down her face.

  Fury charged the air and the smell of steel filled it. The sound of the charging legions resonated throughout the hillside and then, at last, as the three armies met, a great peal of thunder roiled across the heavens and lightning tore down with all the anger of the gods.

  ‘Wake up.’

  Steel crashed.

  ‘Mikael…’

  Blood ran like rain.

  ‘Wake up.’

  Lightning flashed.

  ‘Mikael!’

  Mikael awoke, gasping for breath, as strong hands shook him. Cold pricked at his sweat soaked face. His heart beat with the sound of remembered thunder. Instinctively, he reached for his sword. He found the templar blade readily, felt the skull-shaped pommel.

  ‘Easy son,’ said a giant man clad in thick, black armour, wrought with sigils of death and mortality. They were the symbols of their god, Morr. It was Halbranc, his brother-at-arms.

  ‘You slept like the dead,’ he said, voice deep and resonant. He crouched over the young knight, a broad smile cracking his battle-scarred face.

  Mikael looke
d around, trying to get his bearings. He was surrounded by trees. A light snow, drifting in a fitful winter breeze, laid a white veneer over their camp. The others were already up it seemed; the previous night’s fire a blackened scar on the forest floor. Mikael hugged his black cloak around him. He’d stripped off his black armour. It lay cradled in a blanket. Recall rushed back.

  They’d been in the Drakwald for three days, hunting in the shadows and the dark. They’d left their horses at the Road Warden’s Rest, a fortified coaching inn several miles back, as the forest was too thick and too dangerous for steeds to venture into. They’d been searching blindly for a renegade, with no guarantee of success, a warlock of the Cult of the Burning Hand.

  Halbranc stood up. His formidable presence cast a long shadow; he was every inch the avenging knight of Morr. The hilt of his zweihander protruded from beneath his cloak and was strapped to his back. Snow fell upon his bald pate, but his chiselled features betrayed no discomfort.

  ‘Strap on your armour,’ he said, passing Mikael a breastplate with a gauntleted hand. ‘Valen has found the renegade’s trail.’

  ‘You are certain it is Kleiten?’ asked Reiner, without emotion. He stood over the young templar scout, one hand resting on the pommel of his blade.

  ‘I cannot be sure,’ Valen answered his captain, ‘but something has come this way recently and the earth is scorched, yet there are no signs of burnt kindling.’

  Reiner turned to Sigson; his cold blue eyes held a question.

  ‘The cult has been known to use the Wind of Aqshy in its magics,’ said the warrior priest, drawing his cloak tight to his body as he suppressed a shiver.

  Reiner held Sigson’s gaze, unmoving.

  ‘Kleiten is a fire wizard,’ Sigson elaborated, wiping an encrusted veneer of frost from his grey spike of beard.

  ‘Your knowledge of the arcane is… unsettling,’ said Reiner with some consideration. He turned back to Valen, who was already on his feet. His twin brother, Vaust was alongside him.

  ‘Find what’s keeping Halbranc,’ said Reiner. ‘We follow the trail.’

  Vaust nodded, hurrying back to the nearby campsite to find Reiner’s second in command. The fact they were so close only made it all the more galling that they’d missed the renegade’s trail earlier. Vaust had only just set off when Halbranc and Mikael emerged into the clearing where their comrades congregated.

  ‘Where is Köller?’ Reiner asked. He was the only knight still not present.

  ‘Here,’ a low voice answered. Köller emerged from the shadows, regarding his fellow knights with hooded eyes.

  Death was no stranger to any of those who came into the service of Morr. Every man in that clearing had a story of loss. Most kept such tragedies to themselves and Köller was no exception, but he bore a particularly terrible burden, and one that never seemed to lift.

  Reiner’s look was reproachful.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Köller said. ‘I was searching for further signs.’

  ‘This is the Drakwald,’ Reiner reminded him. ‘We stay together.’ The captain turned to Valen. ‘Lead the way,’ he ordered icily, with a final piercing look at Mikael.

  The youthful knight couldn’t hold his gaze and was glad when Reiner stalked off after the scout.

  ‘I doubt he feels it,’ Halbranc whispered to Mikael as they trudged after the others.

  ‘Feels what?’

  ‘The cold,’ Halbranc said, a broad smile splitting his craggy features.

  ‘I wonder if he “feels” at all.’

  Halbranc laughed, slapping Mikael on the back, sending shudders through his armour.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged.

  It happened quickly. One moment they were following Valen as he stalked the renegade’s trail, the next Köller had started off alone, running as if all the hellish daemons of Chaos were after him.

  Reiner had immediately signalled the rest of the knights to pursue.

  Mikael was close behind the fleeing knight, hot breath misting in the air as he exerted himself.

  ‘Köller!’ a voice echoed from the gloom. ‘Köller, where are you going?’

  It was Vaust, at Mikael’s heels.

  Köller paused to wave them on and then continued.

  ‘Köll–’ Vaust’s shout was arrested by a giant hand covering his mouth.

  ‘Quiet, you fool,’ Halbranc hissed in his ear. ‘You’ll have every denizen of the Drakwald upon us.’

  Mikael saw his captain, several feet across from him; slashes of black between the stout trunks of trees as he followed silently and stealthily after Köller. Mikael wasn’t sure whether his captain wanted to catch him to prevent mishap or to put him to the sword for his erratic behaviour. Reiner’s stony demeanour made it impossible to tell.

  They were gaining. Ahead, the forest had thickened and Köller was finding it hard going. Valen headed the chasing pack. He made good headway, despite the weight of his armour and the snow underfoot.

  Halbranc was not so adept. He slipped, barging through the clawing bracken, and was lost from sight. Sigson was nowhere to be seen.

  Mikael managed to stick close to Valen. He was an Ostermarker by birth. A childhood spent in the deep forests of that province had taught him much about traversing them. His was a childhood tainted by tragedy. Thoughts sprang unbidden into Mikael’s mind: the flash of the dagger, a cry in the dark, the creaking of the rope.

  Searing pain brought Mikael back, a sharp branch slashing open his cheek as he ran past it. None of them were wearing their helmets: they dulled awareness. To be so disadvantaged in a forest, the Drakwald of all places, was unwise. Mikael’s blood felt hot as it ran down his face. He wiped it away, instead focusing on getting to Köller. The Drakwald was no place for a mindless chase into shadows.

  Köller stopped abruptly as if whatever had been compelling him had gone.

  Valen reached him first, followed by Mikael a few moments later.

  ‘Köller, what happened?’ Valen asked.

  The rest of the company caught up, Vaust then Reiner. A battered Halbranc brought up the rear with Sigson, the old priest bent over and gasping for breath.

  Köller turned to face Valen.

  ‘A woman,’ he gasped, ‘she wanted me… to follow.’

  Mikael had seen nothing. There were no tracks in the snow and no broken branches. He noticed a dark glance pass between Reiner and Sigson. Both men knew of the unseen dangers of the Drakwald, of the phantoms of those long dead, calling others to join them in damnation, of strange magics that possessed men and enslaved them.

  ‘What is that?’ Valen asked suddenly, pointing through a gap in the trees.

  Mikael followed his gaze.

  Beyond the tree line, a light invaded the forest shadow, and a few hundred feet beyond stood a walled settlement. A simple road led up to it, emerging from another part of the Drakwald.

  ‘It’s a village,’ said Mikael.

  Two dilapidated watchtowers stood at the village’s entrance, an ironbound gate hanging limply on a rusted hinge between them. A wooden stockade wall surrounded the village and, getting closer, the knights saw that the wall was cracked, age-worn timber yielding to the ravages of time.

  Passing through the yawning gateway they saw a line of frost-caked clothes, eroded by decay, swinging in the breeze. Chimneys were dormant, emaciated animals wandered aimlessly, and a great tree stood withered and forlorn, wasted apples clinging to skeletal branches. Silence reigned; the village was empty, ghost-like.

  ‘What happened here?’ asked Mikael. It reminded him of home, back in Ostermark. He found the thought saddening.

  ‘I see no signs of a battle,’ growled Halbranc.

  ‘Let us find out,’ said Reiner. ‘Knights, draw swords,’ he ordered and they drew as one, a chorus of scraping steel.

  The captain signalled the knights to
split into groups. Reiner moved up the village square with Valen and Vaust, and Halbranc accompanied Köller who ranged right, while Mikael and Sigson went left.

  After searching several hovels without success, Mikael came to a blacksmith’s forge. Peering tentatively inside, he saw that tools were left out. A horseshoe sat upon the anvil, pinched between a pair of rusted metal tongs. A lantern swung noisily on a chain set into the roof.

  ‘It’s as if this place has been abandoned for years,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘You’re bleeding, Mikael,’ said Sigson, noticing the cut on Mikael’s cheek.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said absently, wiping away the blood and crouching down, as he noticed something in the frosty earth at his feet.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Sigson, joining him.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Mikael brushed the snow away carefully with his hand, revealing something large and flat. ‘Looks like a sign,’ he said.

  ‘Dropped by the smithy, perhaps,’ Sigson wondered. ‘What does it say?’

  Mikael swept away the grime and filth, using his dagger to chip away at the rusted metal.

  ‘Hochenheim.’

  There was a distant cry, Köller’s voice preventing further exploration. The knight and the priest got up and dashed outside.

  Halbranc was running after Köller with the other knights in tow.

  ‘I saw her,’ cried Köller, ‘the woman, she is here,’ he said, disappearing from view behind a dishevelled tavern.

  They found Köller standing before a tombstone, a mass of other graves arrayed around him in a garden of Morr.

  Mikael saw Reiner mutter a prayer to the deathgod, before entering.

  ‘She was here,’ said Köller.

  Mikael looked down at the grave which was marked by a nondescript and unadorned headstone.

  Reiner stalked away with a meaningful glance at Sigson who nodded, and went to Köller. Mikael couldn’t hear what the priest was saying, but his tone was soothing.

  ‘What is happening?’ Köller cried out. ‘I swear I saw…’ The young knight paused, looking out beyond the cemetery.