Dead Winter

by C. L. Werner

  A second beastman rushed at Mandred, a wiry thing with ox-horns and an almost human visage. It brandished a dismembered human leg, wielding the macabre trophy like a club. Mandred waited for the thing to come close, then put spurs to his warhorse, urging the destrier to rear up, to lash out with its front hooves. The flailing legs struck the charging beastman, hurling it back and snapping its ribs.

  A braying war cry was Mandred’s first warning that a third beastman was running towards him. It was a huge goat-headed monster, a rusted broadaxe clenched in its paws. The brute was charging towards him from the flank, at an angle where the prince wouldn’t be able to reach it with his blade. He tried to wheel his horse around to meet the monster’s rush, but even as he did so, he knew it would be too late.

  Suddenly another rider appeared, crashing through the wall of a shack. The beastman was caught beneath the warhorse’s pounding hooves, smashed to the ground and crushed underfoot. Mandred could hear its bones snap as the horse charged over it. He opened his mouth to thank his rescuer, then laughed in disbelief as he recognised the rider.

  ‘Franz!’ the prince exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here? You should be in bed tending your wounds!’

  ‘I don’t need to stand to ride a horse, your grace,’ the bodyguard answered. He rubbed his hand over his bald scalp. ‘It was wrong to leave me behind,’ the knight said.

  ‘I was afraid you might tell my father,’ Mandred said.

  Franz smiled and shook his head. ‘The Graf will learn about this foolishness soon enough.’ He looked away, peering through the nest of shacks and tents. ‘It seems they’re running, your grace. We’ll have to hurry if we want to claim a respectable contribution to the battle.’

  Mandred grinned and brought his horse around. ‘Let’s make them wish they’d stayed in the Drakwald.’

  The battle was a short but bloody affair. Fully a quarter of the shantytown was trampled by the time the beastkin broke and fled. At least a hundred of the brutes had fallen before the charge, but behind them they left scores of dead and dying refugees.

  The herd had been broken, however. Grand Master Arno didn’t think they’d be back. It would take them a long time to lick their wounds and build up their courage. By then, perhaps, the threat of the Black Plague would be diminished enough for the Graf to allow the refugees inside Middenheim.

  Jubilation at their victory was tempered by the knowledge that it was a pyrrhic victory. Everywhere in the shantytown the marks of plague were in evidence. Dead bodies swollen with buboes, living wretches with black treacle oozing from their pores. Contagion was everywhere, the stink of disease omnipresent.

  The knights knew that through their bold charge they had exposed themselves to the plague. Somewhere in the squalor of Warrenburg, the source of the disease lurked. None of the warriors could say for certain that its deathly touch had not reached out for him. None of them knew if he carried the seed of the Black Plague in his body.

  Mandred looked up the causeway, staring at the grim edifice of the bastion. That would be their home now, locked away behind those grim grey walls. There they would await the judgement of the gods, wait to see if the justice of their cause was enough to guard them against the clutch of the plague.

  A sombre silence gripped the knights as they slowly rode towards the bastion. Each of them wondered if he would ever leave the place alive.

  Mandred struggled to find some words of reassurance to bolster their flagging spirits, but nothing seemed profound enough to honour their sacrifice. It was a sacrifice he was proud to share with such men.

  The sound of a horn cause Mandred to turn his gaze away from the bastion. For a moment the fear that the beastmen had regrouped flashed through his mind. Then he recognised the notes of his father’s hunting horn. Raising his gaze to the East Gate, he was shocked to see a company of cavalry slowly trotting their way onto the causeway.

  At their head, resplendent in his blue cloak and gilded armour, rode Graf Gunthar.

  Talabecland

  Vorhexen, 1111

  Reiksmarshal Everhardt Johannes Boeckenfoerde rose from his chair as his three visitors were bowed into the general’s tent. His adjutant, Nehring, offered to take the heavy cloaks from the visitors, but they declined his overtures with a brusque shrug.

  ‘We have come from Altdorf,’ the foremost of the men announced.

  The Reiksmarshal gave Nehring a warning look. ‘It must have been a long and unpleasant ride,’ he said. ‘Perhaps not as unpleasant as moving an army under these conditions…’

  ‘You have been implicated in a plot against His Imperial Majesty Emperor Boris,’ the cloaked man continued. The three men began to fan out across the tent. ‘His Imperial Majesty offers you a choice. You can return to Altdorf, stand trial and be executed. Or you can remain here and fall on your own sword.’ A cruel smile flickered on the man’s face. ‘If you choose execution, Commander Kreyssig asks you to remember the traitor von Schomberg.’

  The cruelty in Boeckenfoerde’s smile matched that of the Kaiserjaeger officer. ‘I have heard about the Grand Master. A shameful business. Only an animal would take pride in such work.’

  The three Kaiserjaeger reached for their swords. Instantly, Nehring had his own blade unsheathed. The Reiksmarshal remained seated, motioning for his guests and his adjutant to be calm.

  ‘You came here to arrest me?’ Boeckenfoerde asked.

  The officer’s voice was filled with scorn when he answered. ‘This tent is surrounded,’ he hissed. ‘I have twenty Kaiserjaeger outside and they only wait my word to butcher you like a pig!’

  Boekenfoerde nodded, as though considering the threat posed by the Kaiserjaeger. ‘Has it occurred to you where you are?’ he asked. ‘Have you given any thought to where this tent is? I have four thousand soldiers out there and at the slightest sound of violence coming from this tent, they will take up arms and… as you put it… butcher you like a pig.’ He smiled as he watched the colour drain out of the officer’s face. ‘Nehring, take their swords. These gentlemen don’t need them any more.’

  ‘You won’t get away with this,’ the officer growled as Nehring plucked the sword from his unresisting grip. ‘That is the army of his Imperial Majesty! When I tell them you are a traitor…’

  The Reiksmarshal rose from his chair and stepped out from behind his table. He tapped his finger on the map pinned to the wall of his tent. ‘His Imperial Majesty has just sent this army marching through the worst of winter with barely enough provisions to provide for half of them and winter gear for even less. And what enemy draws us to such reckless and heroic pursuits? Some new orc invasion or marauding Norscans? No, we march to force the Grand Duke of Talabecland to open the markets in Talabheim so Boris can get a few more crowns in tax revenue.’ Boeckenfoerde’s eyes were like daggers as he glared at the men from Altdorf. ‘I don’t think you’ll find too many here with any great love for Goldgather. Loyalty to me is the only thing that has brought them this far.

  ‘If you tell those men who you are and why you came here, they won’t leave enough of you left for the crows to pick at.’ The Reiksmarshal turned away from the map, retrieving his sword from where it leaned against his cot. ‘I suggest you ride back to Altdorf before I tell them myself.’

  The Kaiserjaeger were quick to heed the warning, nearly falling over themselves as they scrambled out of the tent. Boeckenfoerde was an excellent judge of a man’s mettle, and he’d had these pegged as ambitious thugs the moment they stepped into his tent. Their kind would kill for their leaders, but they wouldn’t die for them. Faced with the choice of dying to accomplish their mission, they could only turn tail and run.

  Nehring watched the Kaiserjaeger mount their horses and ride off, then slipped back inside the general’s tent. He was surprised to find the Reiksmarshal packing his gear. He gazed quizzically at the general.

  ‘Call the officers,’ Boeckenfoerde told him. ‘They’ll have to be told about this.’

  ‘But you said the men wou
ld stand with you,’ Nehring reminded.

  The Reiksmarshal sighed. ‘Some of them might. I hope many of them will, but a lot of those men have families back in Altdorf and in the Reikland. If the conspirators have failed to depose Boris, then those families would be imperilled if these men took up arms against the Emperor.’

  ‘What about you?’ Nehring asked. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’m certainly not going back to Altdorf,’ the Reiksmarshal said. ‘I’ll take whatever men stand with me and head for someplace out of Boris’s reach. Talabheim would be a good prospect.

  ‘They might need an extra army soon.’

  Nuln

  Ulriczeit, 1111

  The blaze of a rushlight drove back the darkness. Walther blinked against the harsh glare. For days now he had existed in perpetual blackness, the only sensations he could experience limited to the chill of his cell and the skittering of rats behind the walls. His eyes, deprived of vision for so long, burned with agony. The rat-catcher pressed his bloodied palms to his face in an effort to shield himself from the rushlight.

  Fellgiebel stood in the doorway, his icy eyes studying the man sprawled on the stone floor. The cell, a little room buried beneath the Freiberg Hundertschaft’s watch station, was scarcely six feet across and only a little taller. It was without furnishing or accoutrement; the straw pallet had already been stolen by an opportunistic watchman to sell as fodder and the wooden slop bucket had met a similar fate.

  When he told the guard to wait outside and closed the door, Fellgiebel and his prisoner were utterly alone and without distraction. The captain nodded when he saw the look of horror that crossed Walther’s features. Clearly the man appreciated the situation he was in. Officially, peasants were the property of their lords and the watch wasn’t allowed to mutilate them or render them any harm which would cause permanent injury. To do so would require compensation to the lord, something a simple Dienstmann couldn’t afford. Thus, by the letter of the law, there were limits to what tortures a militia like the Hundertschaft had recourse to.

  Of course there were loopholes. An accident, for instance, would place the onus of compensation upon the peasant himself. It was frightening how many accidents there were in Nuln.

  ‘I grow weary of these discussions,’ Fellgiebel said, his gloved hands clasped together before him. The captain’s cold gaze fixed upon Walther’s bloodied face. ‘You are going to talk, you know. It is just a question of time and pain.’

  Walther struggled up from the floor, using the icy stone wall to prop up his battered body. With every motion, broken bones ground against each other, bringing moans of anguish from the rat-catcher. By an effort of will that seemed to tax his very soul, Walther forced himself to meet Fellgiebel’s gaze and address his tormentor.

  ‘What… what has… happened…’ He closed his eyes, dredging up some last speck of courage to steel his faltering voice. ‘The Black Rose, how…’

  ‘The Black Rose is under quarantine,’ Fellgiebel said, his voice like a knife. ‘No one goes in, no one comes out.’ A cruel sneer curled his lip. ‘Plague, you know. The place is alive with it. At least for now.’

  Walther sagged back against the wall, his broken body heaving as dry sobs racked his frame. ‘Zena,’ he groaned. In his mind he could picture her, alone and shunned in some corner of the tavern, her body covered in the black buboes of the plague.

  Fellgiebel stepped out from the doorway and began pacing across the small cell. ‘Ah, yes, your girl. You’ve mentioned her a few times now. She must be very close to you.’ There was a menacing gleam in the reptilian eyes as the captain stared down at Walther. ‘Perhaps I should collect her for a little discussion. Just a short one. I doubt a woman would share your stamina, Schill. Or your stubborn endurance.’

  Walther shook his head. The threat had been made so many times now that it held no further horrors for him. Fellgiebel had used that particular method of persuasion too often. If he had any intention of carrying through with it, he would have done so by now. The fact that he hadn’t convinced Walther that plague really had beset the Black Rose. Even Fellgiebel wasn’t so arrogant in his authority as to brave the Black Plague.

  ‘Do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?’ Walther said. ‘Or do you want the truth?’

  Fellgiebel stopped pacing. His cheerless smile spread. ‘The truth, Schill. That is all I have ever wanted. The truth about your friend Aldinger and the others. Where they are. What they know. What they are planning to do.’ The captain’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Aldinger was a knight, you know. A refugee from the Reiksknecht. The others are probably Reiks-knecht too. Our great and glorious Emperor has placed a bounty on all Reiksknecht. They are traitors and it is every man’s duty to turn them over to the Emperor.’ Fellgiebel tried to make his smile a bit friendlier. ‘If you tell me where they are, I’ll share the reward with you.’

  The only answer from the prisoner was a miserable cough, the closest he could manage to a laugh. Fellgiebel ignored the gesture and resumed his pacing. ‘We shall forget the Reiksknecht, then. Tell me about the rat you captured. Why were the professors so interested in it? What did they tell you about it?’

  Again, Walther tried to laugh. This line of questioning had been going on for a fortnight, always made with the same note of urgency. Even more than his denial of knowing Aldinger or the Reiksknecht, his insistence that he knew nothing special about the giant rat seemed to infuriate Fellgiebel. The captain wouldn’t believe Walther’s story that the professors hadn’t been particularly interested in the rat but more in the humiliation the existence of such a creature could deal to their reputations as scholars and their theories about the structure of life. As for any special information they had imparted to him, every one of the scholars had insisted the thing was an impossibility, later trying to justify their stance by claiming the giant Walther had caught was simply a one-time freak.

  ‘I grow tired of asking this,’ Fellgiebel said, coming to a halt and fixing Walther with his reptilian stare. ‘What do you know? What plans did you make with Aldinger? Who else is involved?’ The captain watched Walther closely, looking for any sign that his prisoner would speak. Walther just stared up at him with that mixture of fright and abhorrence with which the sane regard the mad.

  ‘Very well,’ Fellgiebel said. ‘I did warn you this would be the last time.’ The captain strode across the cell, not towards the door but to the bare wall at the end of the room. ‘I had hoped to spare you this. You do not believe it now, but I have been trying to help you.’ The coldness ebbed from the captain’s eyes, replaced by a quivering terror. His gloved hand reached out to the corner of the wall, his fingers brushing against the stone. His entire body trembling, Fellgiebel hesitated. Swiftly he wrenched his hand away from the wall and turned upon Walther.

  ‘Tell me, before it is too late!’ the captain demanded. ‘Hanging, the rack, whatever the Hundertschaft can do to you is nothing compared to what awaits if you don’t speak!’ Fellgiebel tugged away one of his gloves. Walther recoiled in loathing as he saw the captain’s hand. It was lean and hairy, covered in bony nodules, more like the paw of some hideous beast than the hand of a man. Despite the evidence of his own eyes, it took a moment for Walther to appreciate the hideous truth. The captain of the Freiberg Hundertschaft was a mutant!

  ‘They are not pretty, are they?’ Fellgiebel asked. ‘I was… contaminated helping the inquisitors of Verena cull mutants from the sewers. I couldn’t tell anyone about my… condition or I would have been burned.’ He cast a fearful look at the blank wall at the back of the cell. ‘But someone learned just the same. The price for silence was service.’ The captain’s lean face became flush with desperation. ‘Speak, Walther! Believe me when I tell you there are worse things than death in this world!’

  The rat-catcher leaned forwards, forcing his eyes to meet those of his captor. ‘Do you want the truth, or just what you want to hear?’

  Fellgiebel snarled in frustr
ation, turning away and dragging the glove back over his hand. ‘On your head be it!’ he cried, stalking back towards the wall. ‘The gods have mercy on you,’ he said as he pressed his finger against a hidden catch. The wall shuddered as it pivoted inwards, retreating into yawning blackness. A foul, noxious reek wafted into the cell, an evil animalistic smell that caused every hair on Walther’s body to stand on end. Painfully, the rat-catcher started to drag himself away from the secret passage.

  Fellgiebel walked away, turning his back to the tunnel. A mad giggle bubbled from his lips, only a supreme effort of will forcing it back down. When the captain was composed, he cast a final, pitying look at Walther. ‘Forgive me,’ he whispered.

  Walther didn’t hear Fellgiebel. His attention was riveted to the tunnel and what was transpiring in those black depths. Beady red eyes gleamed from the darkness, and with them came a furtive rustling and chittering that was monstrously familiar to the rat-catcher. His body trembled as eyes and sounds drew closer, as shadowy figures emerged from the tunnel. He screamed as the flickering light revealed rodent-shapes with clutching paws and glistening fangs. He was still screaming when hand-like paws seized him and dragged him into the tunnel.

  Fellgiebel kept his back turned, not watching as his secret masters dragged Walther away. He felt his heart sicken, his stomach roil with disgust. If there had been another way – but his masters were impatient and he had been left without a choice. No man deserved what he had done to Walther. No man deserved to become the captive of the skaven.

  The sound of the hidden door sliding shut told Fellgiebel when it was all over. Only then did he turn around, making a careful inspection of the cell to ensure that no trace of the skaven had been left behind. The disappearance of Walther Schill would barely raise an eyebrow. Many peasants who succumbed to torture vanished. Without a body, the nobles had a hard time claiming their compensations.