Dead Winter

by C. L. Werner

  Konreid stood at attention, feeling the winter cold clawing at his back through the canvas tent flap behind him. Except for Boeckenfoerde’s adjutant, he was alone with the Reiksmarshal, a fact that gave him confidence even if the general’s words weren’t reassuring. By rights, he should have been arrested the moment he appeared at the army’s encampment. Konreid knew that Emperor Boris had outlawed the Reiksknecht, a diktat that Boeckenfoerde couldn’t help but be aware of. It would have been well within the general’s authority to have him seized and executed on the spot. That he hadn’t, that he had agreed to this conference, was all the proof Konreid needed to give him hope.

  In his heart, the Reiksmarshal knew Boris Goldgather was a dictator and tyrant. If his conscience, if his sense of duty and honour could be overcome, if he could be made to see that his ultimate loyalty was to the Empire itself, not the man wearing the emperor’s crown, then his support would be won.

  ‘If we do not decide, Reiksmarshal,’ Konreid said, ‘then who will? Grand Master von Schomberg was every bit as loyal a man as yourself, yet he saw at the last that he had given that loyalty to a man unworthy of it.’

  The Reiksmarshal shook his head. ‘He swore an oath and he betrayed it.’

  ‘For that, he was humiliated and murdered in the most obscene spectacle,’ Konreid said, his voice becoming as cold as the wind at his back.

  Boeckenfoerde’s face became troubled. He rose from his chair, pacing across the tent’s small interior. ‘I have heard what happened,’ he said regretfully. ‘But it is not the Emperor’s doing. It is those animals around him, that peasant Kreyssig and that usurer Ratimir.’

  ‘They are the Emperor’s men,’ Konreid reminded. ‘If he was so disgusted with them, they would not be there.’

  ‘You are just a dienstmann,’ Boeckenfoerde said. ‘You don’t understand politics, how the old families can wield their influence to force their way into positions of importance. I tell you, the Emperor doesn’t believe in these sorts of things!’

  ‘What sort of influence does the family of a peasant wield?’ Konreid asked. ‘Boris keeps Kreyssig because he finds the man useful. How many of the great families have resented the power and reach of the Kaiserjaeger, and the fact that a mere commoner acts as their commander?’

  The Reiksmarshal silently returned to his chair, turmoil written across his face. ‘I have taken an oath,’ he repeated.

  ‘And your loyalty has been betrayed,’ Konreid insisted. The knight waved his hand, indicating the trembling walls of the tent, the snow drifting under the tent flap. ‘This campaign against Talabheim is nothing more than greed and an abuse of authority. This army is nothing more than a gang of excise men dispatched to fill Goldgather’s coffers!’

  Boeckenfoerde lifted his gaze, staring into Konreid’s eyes. ‘You go too far. I will not listen to any more treasonous talk.’

  Konreid kept his face impassive, but inwardly he felt a sense of exultation. The general’s growing agitation was a sign that the doubts already inside his mind were rallying to the cause.

  ‘He sends an entire army out in the dead of winter to force Talabheim to keep its markets open, to countermand the grand count’s efforts to control the spread of the plague,’ Konreid declared. His voice lowered to a contemptuous hiss, each word twisting like a knife in the Reiksmarshal’s heart. ‘Yet when he might have kept your forces in the field to preserve what was left of the Drakwald, what was his command? He demanded the army be disbanded, the soldiers sent home so that they might help bring in the harvest! More taxes to line his own pockets!’

  ‘Enough!’ the Reiksmarshal growled. His fist closed about the parchment, crushing it between his fingers. Slowly he rose once more, marching to the stove. He stared into the fire, then thrust the crumpled message into the flames.

  ‘I was schooled in the teachings of Verena and Myrmidia,’ the general sighed. He turned and smiled grimly. ‘I was taught to value reason above everything. To understand why things are what they are and how to use the mind to change them.’ He began to pace once more, the marshal’s baton slapping against his leg with each step. ‘I was also raised to hold every oath as sacred and inviolate. Reason demands I support your coup, honour dictates that I cannot.’

  Konreid felt his stomach sicken at the general’s decision. ‘That is your final word?’

  Boeckenfoerde looked from the knight to his adjutant waiting beside the doorway. For a moment, his eyes took on the faraway gaze of an augur. Finally, he turned and approached the table. Removing a quill from its inkpot, he began to scribe a letter. ‘You may take this back to those who sent you,’ a flicker of a grin crept onto the general’s face, ‘and whose names I do not wish to know. I can suspect who they are, and that is bad enough.’

  The knight stepped forwards and took the letter from the Reiksmarshal. A look of embarrassment came upon him. ‘I fear I cannot read,’ Konreid confessed.

  The Reiksmarshal stepped away, approaching a large map of the Empire stretched across the wall of the tent. ‘I have agreed to meet your conspiracy halfway,’ he said. ‘I will not take up arms against my Emperor, but if he is deposed I will stand by the new Imperial Majesty you install.’ He tapped the map with his finger. ‘Further, your fears that you will inherit a war from Emperor Boris… on that front I can be of more direct assistance. Right now, we are marching along the River Talabec. Our supplies come to us by ship. This offers the most direct route to Talabheim, but the risk of discovery is great. I shall decide that the risk is too great, and so I will reroute our march around the Great Forest and along the River Delb until we near the Howling Hills. Much of that territory has been depopulated by Khaagor Deathhoof, but the terrain is familiar to many of my officers. It is the more prudent course to follow, and some of my more cautious commanders have already advised me to take it.

  ‘Of importance to your friends, however, the careful road will mean a two-month delay in laying siege to Talabheim. Your people will have two months to unseat the Emperor before I will be in a position to strike against Talabheim.’

  Konreid bowed to the Reiksmarshal. ‘Thank you, baron. Two months will see an end to Goldgather’s tyranny. Your support will not be forgotten.’

  The Reiksmarshal sighed and resumed his pacing. ‘I rather fear it won’t,’ he said. ‘Be sure when you stage your revolt, you get Kreyssig even if you can’t get his Imperial Majesty. I’d rather not have that peasant in any condition to come looking for me.’

  Bylorhof

  Ulriczeit, 1111

  The desolation of Bylorhof struck Frederick more forcefully than ever before. Somehow, just knowing that Rutger and Aysha and Johan were out there, living their lives, had lessened the terrible reality. Now that they were gone, he appreciated fully how forlorn and devastated the town had become. Few doors failed to display the red cross scrawled across their faces. The dead lay piled against the walls, snow and ice plastering them to the street. There were only a few corpse collectors now that the town elders had stopped paying for the removal of the dead. The few who remained were little better than brigands, only bearing away those bodies grieving relations paid them to take away. Frederick saw one of these gangs load the dead children of a white-haired widow, taking several loaves of bread and a basket of vegetables as payment. The ruffians took their cargo only as far as the next corner, stopping their wagon and ditching the corpses in the snow as soon as they had pried the shoes off the dead feet.

  Bylorhof’s woes had been compounded by the town’s noble lord. Locked within his castle, Baron von Rittendahl had seen to his own protection from the plague by engaging the services of a warlock. The enchanter’s magic hadn’t been powerful enough to keep the plague from the castle and in an ironic turn, he had been one of the first to die. Now the terrified baron had cut himself off completely, still hoping to escape the plague through seclusion. To ensure that seclusion, he had appealed to his feudal lord, Count Malbork von Drak.

  Soldiers of the Nachtsheer, the mercenary troops
of the von Draks, had arrived to impose a quarantine upon Bylorhof. Establishing armed camps just beyond the perimeter of the town, the soldiers ensured that no one entered or left the town. The bodies of those who tried were left hanging on a gallows as a warning to their neighbours.

  Bylorhof was dying. Frederick could feel it decaying around him as he prowled the streets. He could almost see the ghosts of the departed hovering above their homes, beckoning to those left behind, beseeching them to forsake the suffering of life and embrace the oblivion of the grave. He could feel the preternatural chill of the tomb wafting down the lanes, roving like a hungry beast in search of prey. He could hear the mournful wails of the dead drifting away on the winter wind.

  It was an effort to blot out the macabre visions, to deafen himself to the morbid wailing. Frederick wondered if this was some terrible legacy, a curse visited upon him for presuming to invoke the black arts beneath the roof of Morr’s temple. He wondered if this was madness, reaching out with long claws to rend his mind.

  He wondered if he cared.

  The priest paused in his ramble. Ahead, at the top of the street, he could see a dark shape emerge from one of the houses, a house with a red cross painted across the door. There was no mistaking the grotesque mask of the plague doktor. Bruno Havemann, making his rounds, fleecing those desperate souls who could still afford his dubious services.

  Frederick’s hand tightened about his staff, his jaw setting in a rigid grimace of loathing. His family was dead, and this man was responsible. Havemann would answer for those deaths. Frederick would bring him to justice for his crimes, confront the people of Bylorhof with the true nature of the snake they had allowed into their midst.

  The priest’s pace quickened. Up ahead, the plague doktor noticed Frederick’s rapid approach. The fat man with the scrawny limbs turned about, knocking frantically at the door he had just closed.

  ‘Murderer!’ Frederick snarled as he neared the plague doktor. ‘Charlatan!’

  Havemann swung around, whipping the copper-headed rod at Frederick’s hooded head. The priest’s staff blocked the blow and pushed Havemann backwards. The physician stumbled, falling onto the snowy street.

  ‘I’ve done nothing to you!’ Havemann cried, his words muffled by the mask, his hands raised to protect himself from the priest’s staff.

  ‘Nothing!’ Frederick spat, his eyes shining with wrath. ‘You’ve lied and cheated people who believed in you! You’ve killed the sick and the weak and preyed upon their families! You’ve murdered those who found you out!’ The priest reached down, grabbing the front of Havemann’s waxed cloak and dragging the man to his feet. ‘You are a murderer and a fraud, Havemann, and by the gods, you’ll tell everyone before they hang you!’

  The door of the plague-stricken house swung open. A pasty, wizened man stood in the doorway, his tired eyes staring in confusion at the strange spectacle unfolding on his doorstep. Havemann turned his beaked face towards the startled peasant.

  ‘Help! The priest has gone mad!’ he cried.

  The cry was enough. The sickly man launched himself across the threshold, flinging himself at Frederick. Arms, wasted and weak, struggled to restrain the priest, to free Havemann from his grasp. Frederick strove to shrug off the infirm peasant’s pathetic efforts, but to do so would mean releasing his hold on the plague doktor.

  The peasant was howling for help, his screams carrying across the deserted streets. In his panic, the peasant did not question Havemann’s assertion, did not think that maybe it was the plague doktor, not the priest who was his enemy. There was a hideous tragedy – one of Havemann’s victims fighting to protect his own tormentor.

  From seemingly deserted houses a stream of peasants began to emerge. Withered by hunger, pallid from disease and seclusion, they were like a host of shades rising from a tomb, the merest echo of the vibrant community that had flourished here only a few months ago. Yet fear lent their wasted bodies strength, strength to race through the snow, to confront the man who persecuted the symbol of their one hope for survival.

  Once before, Frederick had been driven from the streets of Bylorhof by an angry mob. Then it had been to protect himself from the rage of the peasants. Now he retreated to protect them from his own wrath. Looking at the wasted, sickly wretches, Frederick knew he could wipe the street with the entire mob. Not one of them, not five of them acting in concert, had enough strength to oppose him.

  But that would not be justice. That would only compound the suffering Havemann had brought upon these people. They had endured enough. Frederick would not add to their misery.

  Releasing his grip on the plague doktor’s cloak, the priest turned and fled. He did not stop running until he was back within the sombre halls of the temple and within the sanctuary. He bowed before the altar, and before the image of his god, Frederick van Hal began to weep.

  He wept for Rutger and Aysha. He wept for little Johan, who might have been his son. He wept for Bylorhof and its people. He wept for himself, for the things he had done and the things he had wanted to do.

  A noise from outside stirred Frederick from his sorrow. Distractedly, like a person in a dream, the priest rose and stepped to the window. Before him stretched the headstones and monoliths of Morr’s garden.

  Frederick’s senses snapped from their somnolence. His attention was riveted upon a strange figure walking among the graves. The priest rubbed at his eyes, unable – unwilling – to believe what he was seeing.

  The trespasser was caked from head to toe in dried mud, a long rope fastened around its neck. The thing moved with a ghastly, shuffling gait, its head crooked against one shoulder, its left arm dangling brokenly at its side. By the ghoulish light of Morrslieb, Frederick could see the discolouration of the thing’s wormy flesh, the ragged tears through which leathery muscle and bleached bone shone.

  The thing moving among the graves wasn’t a living man! It was some nightmare horror, a walking dead man, one of the cursed undead!

  The thing seemed to sense it was being watched. It turned and lifted its rotten face, staring at the window with eyes that were blackened by decay. It was impossible that the thing could see with such eyes, yet as it stared at the window, its lipless mouth pulled back in a gap-toothed grin.

  For Frederick, this was the ultimate horror. The priest cried out, crossing his arms over his face to blot out the hideous vision. His body swayed as his brain recoiled.

  A moment later, Frederick lay prostrate upon the floor, shocked into unconsciousness by the abomination he had seen.

  An abomination that slowly, clumsily, made its way towards the temple.

  Skavenblight

  Ulriczeit, 1111

  Even the perfume-balls, stuffed with honey and soaked in the most aromatic of insect ichor, couldn’t blot out the stench of the Pestilent Monastery. Many of the skaven from Clan Verms had resorted to binding urine-soaked rags about their noses in an effort to block the reek of the plague monks and their perfidious stronghold.

  Puskab Foulfur observed the precautions of his allies with undisguised scorn. The Pestilent Monastery was a holy place, saturated with the diseased power of the Horned One. The air, the floors, the very walls exuded the malefic energies of another world. There was no defying the might of a god! Those who dared trespass would be tested in the flame of fever and the cauldron of contagion. The worthy would endure, becoming stronger than they had been. The unfit would sicken and die.

  The plague priest reflected upon that truism, the great truth which set Clan Pestilens above all skavendom and marked them as the only true servants of the Horned One. Where the other clans were corrupt and decadent, their leaders nothing but avaricious megalomaniacs, the plague monks prostrated themselves before the sacred judgement of their god. No pup was born to privilege, no clanlord could worm his way to authority and greatness beyond his right, no grasping warlord could selfishly retain power when his time was past.

  All those who carried the scent of Pestilens passed through the purif
ying fire of disease. The greatest were those that endured the most lethal sickness and plague. Any plague monk who felt his devotion and purity was strong enough could embrace one of the Seven Lethal Poxes, sacred diseases imprisoned within great golden cauldrons. The cauldrons were bound with spells of darkest sorcery, crafted by the obscene toad-things of Lustria. The sacred vessels had been carried by the plague monks throughout their long exodus out of the jungles, becoming the most holy of relics. Any skaven of the clan, no matter how lowly, might petition to have himself immersed in one of the contaminated cauldrons. If he survived the resultant infection, his status within Clan Pestilens would increase. Puskab had braved three of the cauldrons, more than most plague priests. Few of the plaguelords themselves had submitted to more than four of the cauldrons. No skaven had ever survived all seven.

  Puskab raised his nose, sniffing at the air, trying to catch the smell of the Scabrous Sanctuary where the cauldrons were kept. He would draw comfort from the familiar odour of his clan’s sacred relics.

  The distance was too great. Puskab had led his allies by an obfuscate and circuitous route into the inner sanctum of the monastery – a labyrinth of forgotten cloisters and disused passages. They had bypassed the moat of effluent which surrounded the stronghold. They had avoided the malarial maze where packs of half-living pus-bags roamed in fevered agony. They had crawled through the catacombs beneath the great dormitories where rabid poxbearers contemplated the forty-nine mystic symbols of the Final Pandemic. Through unused halls and forgotten corridors, Puskab led his allies, violating the secret knowledge entrusted to him as Poxmaster.

  Wormlord Blight’s suspicions that Nurglitch was moving against Puskab had given the plague priest the leverage he needed to goad Clan Verms into action. The dead ratmen found floating in the worm pools might have been traitors bought by Nurglitch for the express purpose of striking against Blight. While Puskab had been working upon a strain of plague transmissible to skaven, Nurglitch could have had other plague priests working upon the same problem. With more resources at their command, the other plague priests might have solved the problem first, using that knowledge to infect two of their spies in Clan Verms.