The gibbet tree opened w ith a sickly, wet tearing sound like muscle being ripped apart. Like a ribcage being torn open, the rotting wood of the tree parted and the Gave stepped from w ithin. His twisted staff w as held in long, spider-like hands, the roots of the staff imbedding themselves into the earth every time the Gave slammed it into the ground.
He moved w ith a gangly intensity, each movement sharp and stilted. He looked upon the tw ins of Chaos, their titanic, fifty-foot frames reclining amongst the roots of the great tree. The bones of countless meals were piled around them, and their immense chests rose and fell in unison as they slumbered.
The w argor cowered before him, an object clasped to its chest. It inclined its neck, exposing its jugular in an act of utter subservience.
The Gave tow ered a full head and a half taller than the powerfully built beastman. He gazed w ith icy blue eyes at the w argor, and there was more than a hint of madness lurking w ithin their pale, liquid veneer. They stared from within a grotesque mask of stitched together human skin. Only the Gave's mouth and chin could be seen beneath this mask of flesh. That mouth looked almost human, until the pink lips parted, exposing hundreds of tiny, razor-sharp teeth embedded in rows w ithin blood-red gums. An eight-pointed star was cut into the skin-mask of the creature's forehead, and dark blood oozed from the incisions.
Matted clumps of dark hair hung in thick ropes from the Gave's head and shoulders, and three pairs of horns rose from his skull. One pair jutted from his forehead and w as tall, straight and spiralling, rising several feet above its head; the second pair w as thick and tightly curled like those of a mountain-ram, and protruded from the Gave's temples. The third pair emerged from the centre of the curled horns and swept dow n, jutting like tusks to either side of his chin.
The Gave w as unclothed, and thick fur covered much of his body, though his chest and inner arms w ere bare. This exposed skin was smooth and translucent, as pale as the moonlight of Morrslieb, and the muscles were lean and taut. Runes of the dark gods pulsed beneath the flesh like angry welts, and veins and arteries could be seen pumping blood through the Gave's body in rhythmic surges.
Why do you disturb my sleep of ages, w help? roared the Gave, though no sound issued from its throat.
The w argor staggered beneath the mental onslaught, and blood began to seep from its ears. Reeling, it fell to its knees, and threw off the fur that covered the shield clasped to its chest. As blood dribbled from its nostrils, the beastman pushed the red and yellow shield towards the cloven hooves of the Gave.
His pale blue eyes w idened, and a hiss issued from his throat. He slammed his staff into the earth, and its roots burrow ed into the moist soil. Then he knelt down and lifted the shield. Running his hand over the design on the shield, fingers lingering on the dragon heraldry, the Gave licked at his human lips and gave a barking laugh of triumph.
The w argor began to go into convulsions at its feet. It would be devoured as soon as the giants aw oke.
The Gave placed the shield upon a tw isted, bleeding root, and lifted his piercing eyes to the tw isted branches of the great tree. Black carrion birds regarded him with hungry eyes.
Barking a savage w ord in the Dark Tongue, the birds erupted into flight, as one.
Skeletal branches unfurled from the tip of the Gave's staff, sprouting outw ards like the petals of a deathly flow er, and the black birds landed among them, filling the air w ith their harsh, piercing cries.
Amid the raucous din, the Gave extended one hand and uncurled his long, spindly fingers, holding his palm upw ards. With his other hand, he drew a long, cracked talon across the pale palm of his hand. Dark blood pumped from the w ound, and he closed his hand into a fist.
The Gave plucked the first of the black birds from the branches grown from the staff, holding it in a crushing grip.
The bird cried out and struggled, clawing and biting, but it w as held fast. Turning it on its side, the Gave lifted his wounded hand over the creature's face, and let a single drop of its dark blood fall into the raven's eye.
The effect was instantaneous. The bird's beady black eye blinked and turned blood red. A black sliver appeared in the orb, like the pupil of a serpent. The flesh around the eye began to throb and peel aw ay, and the bird thrashed and struggled in agony, w hile the other ravens looked on impassively. The bird's orb sw elled, wider and wider, w eeping pus and foulness, until fully half the bird's head w as nothing more than a pulsing bulging red daemonic eye. It blinked, and as the Gave's eyes narrowed, so too the bulging red eye narrow ed.
The bird w as thrown into the air, and it flapped its way clumsily through the tangle of branches overhead, seeking the open sky. The Gave snatched another bird from its perch.
As the first red rays of daw n rose across the land, a dozen black birds w ere flying to the w est. Once they cleared the forest they spread out in different directions, scouring the land below.
The Gave saw all that they saw, and licked his lips in anticipation.
WEARY AND GRIM, and w ith the stink of burning human flesh in his nostrils, Calard looked tow ards the dark shadow of the forest on the horizon. It crouched like a malignant beast, making ready to pounce. Chalons had become a looming spectre of dread in the Bretonnian camp: an impenetrable bosom from w hich the enemy erupted and w reaked havoc in the dark hours, before retreating as dawn surfaced.
More, the forest itself was the enemy.
Each night it encroached further into Bordeleaux, creeping forwards like a giant, leafy beast, overtaking fields and swallowing villages close to its borders.
After that first night when the beastmen had revealed themselves, the duke's camp had aw oken to find that the tree line had advanced some tw o hundred yards in the dark hours of night. Twisted briars and thorns had clawed across the earth in advance of the trees, w hich loomed dark and foreboding.
It w as almost as if the trees had uprooted themselves in the night and crept across the ground. Like the questing tendrils of some monstrous, blind beast, the trees had pushed forth in uneven spurts, reaching out and reclaiming fields that had been tilled for generations, and though they were now once again inert, riding near them w as eerie and disquieting. Ancient dry-stone walls had been engulfed by the trees, torn dow n by pow erful roots and branches, as if a hundred years of wild growth had occurred overnight.
Nor w ere the trees in their prime of health; they were twisted, as if in pain, their roots contorted. Sap ran like blood from their limbs, and their branches were malformed, locked in crooked positions, reaching up to the sky as if in silent agony.
Corpses of greenskins, slain only the day before, w ere crushed beneath the thick roots of trees that should have taken decades to grow . Broken lances and shields had been sw allowed by the grasping roots, and they stuck up betw een contorted limbs, like relics of ancient times, like tombstones marking the burial places of ancient w arriors, not the debris of battle from the day before.
Even the fields of grass that had not yet been claimed by the forest w ere covered in tiny, tw isted saplings, the smallest sticking no more than an inch from the churned up earth, but many reaching the height of a horse's shoulder. Twisted briars and thorns had claw ed their way across the open ground, and hedges, dutifully trimmed and pruned for decades, had erupted in uncontrolled life.
The armaments and bodies of knights that had fallen in the night w ere pulled from this tangle of grow th, as best they could, and prepared for return to their ancestral lands, though many w ere never recovered. Peasants strained to retrieve the bodies of their lords from beneath the strangling roots and limbs of trees that had taken root over them, but many had to content themselves with bearing merely a battered shield or helmet back to their lord's estates, the bodies of their masters forever trapped beneath the deathly grip of the trees.
No one could comprehend the sudden advance of the wild wood. On the duke's order, brush fires had been lit, and teams of loggers were brought in to force the w oodland back to its earlier
boundary. This, however, proved to be folly. The fires failed to take, and the loggers made laughably slow inroads. If anything, their shows of defiance merely seemed to encourage the forest, and at night it burst forth in w ild growth w herever an axe had felled a tree. Halting the relentless advance of the forest was quickly deemed to be a hopeless endeavour, and the efforts were abandoned.
As the sun dipped below the horizon each night, branches and leaves began to rustle and shiver, even on nights when there was no wind. It was as if the forest was waking from slumber and stretching. Wary and tense, knights were posted to stand vigil against the forest each night, and men-at-arms w hispered prayers and made signs to w ard off evil spirits. As darkness, cold and hostile, descended, the forest sprouted forth, an unholy cancerous growth that pushed ever deeper into Bordeleaux lands.
Where w ould it end? thought Calard, staring with horror at the dark shape on the horizon. Each night it advanced a hundred, two hundred yards. How long would it take to claim all of Bretonnia? A few scant years? The thought was horrifying.
He saw a lone black bird circling high overhead.
Somew here, wolves began to how l.
CHAPTER TEN
CALARD ROLLED OVER w ith an angry grunt. He pushed one ear into the stuffed, goose feather pillow, and threw an arm over the other, trying vainly to block out the sound of his brother's enthusiastic lovemaking. He didn't know who it was that Bertelis w as coupling with, nor did he care. All he knew was that he w as exhausted, and that sleep w as eluding him.
Whoever the girl was, she seemed to be enjoying herself, for her gasps and moans w ere getting louder, joining Bertelis's animal grunting and the repetitive thumping of his pallet.
Unable to stand it any longer, Calard threw off the covers and got up. Quickly and w ith angry, sharp movements he dressed, throwing his blue and red tabard on over his underclothes. Hearing the movement, Bertelis, covered in a sheen of sweat, looked up from atop the panting form of a naked, dark-haired girl.
'What?' he said, pausing his action as Calard threw him a thunderous look. The girl w as moaning like a banshee beneath Bertelis, and Calard swore under his breath, shaking his head, and stormed out of the tent.
The pair of men-at-arms stationed outside sw iftly rose to attention from their bored slouches as Calard sw ept past them. He stamped aw ay from his tent, not caring w here he was going, just w anting to be aw ay. His hands were clasped into fists at his sides, and peasants scurried out of his w ay as they saw the look on his face.
It w as perhaps three hours past daw n, and he had only returned, tired and weary, from the patrol half an hour earlier. The revolting stink of burning human flesh still clung to him, but he had gone straight to bed, exhaustion driving him. Haunting images had rushed through his weary mind whenever sleep came close, and he was jerked back aw ake. He saw circling black birds and the menacing forest. The pale face of his long-lost tw in sister emerged from the mists that encircled the trees, appearing as the child he remembered, though she would have been twenty years old by now . She spoke to him, though her lips did not move, and he could not understand her w ords. It w as if she was whispering, just too faintly for him to hear, and he aw oke, feeling frustrated and irritated. In truth he doubted that he w ould have been able to sleep even if Bertelis had not been rutting within earshot.
His brother could not understand w hy he had not taken any woman to his bed since he had begun courting Elisabet.
'You truly love her, then?' Bertelis had asked, somewhat bew ildered.
'With every fibre of my being,' he had answered.
'I still don't see w hy that changes anything. It's not as if you are already w edded to the girl. Enjoy yourself while you still can!'
'That w ould bring dishonour on her, and me!' said Calard hotly.
Bertelis had shaken his head in bew ilderment and wonder. Calard kicked at a scabby camp dog, and the creature yelped and ran from him, its crooked tail between its legs.
GUNTHAR SIGHED. HE was not as fast w ith the blade as he used to be, and he found himself exhausted when a decade ago he w ould have felt nothing. Of course, there w ere still few who could match his blade-w ork, but w ithin a few years, perhaps half a decade at most, they too w ould fade.
Without a son to carry his name, he w ould be forgotten. For a moment, he regretted having never wed, and this brought back painful memories. He was haunted by the question of w hat might have come to pass if he had met her first, but she had already been betrothed to the dashing young Lutheure, Gunthar's closest brother-in-arms.
He had never spoken a w ord of his love for Yvette of Bordeleaux to any living soul, and it w as a secret he w ould carry to his dying day. He would never have dishonoured himself, or them, by voicing his feelings. Instead, he had pushed them deep inside. It w as a source of much rumour and gossip as to w hy he had never w edded, but only Gunthar knew the true reason.
He had been distraught w hen Yvette had died, no more than fifty miles from w here Gunthar now stood.
He had w ept for her, and it was out of love for her that he had stayed w ithin the Garamont household to oversee Calard's training.
He pushed these thoughts aw ay, as he saw Calard storm from his tent and stalk off through the camp, his every movement tense and angry.
He had tried to get the boy to talk through w hat it w as that w as frustrating him so much, about the raging anger that burnt w ithin him, but it had ended badly. He realised that it w as always going to. He had cursed himself for a fool afterw ards.
Young men alw ays believed that they saw things so clearly. It w as one of the quirks of being young. They always felt that the things they experienced had never been experienced by anyone before them, that the emotions they felt w ere more intense than those any other person had ever experienced.
Why w as it, Gunthar mused, that it w as only when the body began to ache and fail you, as old age began to creep up, that one started to gain some w isdom, some understanding of the world? He chuckled to himself. You really are getting old, he thought.
The boy had lost his mother at a tender age, and w ithin the year his tw in sister, his constant companion and shadow, was taken by the Enchantress. Thinking of her, Gunthar made a sign to w ard off the fey. Gunthar loved Lutheure of Garamont like a brother, and knew that, in his heart, he was a good man, but w hen Yvette had died, something w ithin him had died as w ell. All warmth tow ards the young Calard had been sucked aw ay, and Lutheure had said barely a civil w ord to him in all the years since. Gunthar could understand it. Calard w as the spitting image of his mother, and it must have caused Lutheure pain to look upon the boy.
Gunthar loathed the new lady of Garamont w ith a silent passion, seeing her as a cold, jealous w oman. He w as honest enough with himself to know that part of his dislike stemmed from the fact that she w as, in his eyes, replacing Yvette in the household, but he believed that he w ould have disliked the woman even if circumstances had been different. She was cruel to servants and peasants to the point of maliciousness, a trait she seemed to have sadly passed on to her son Bertelis, and she had made life for Calard growing up in the castle a misery.
With a father w ho was cold and distant, and who had eyes only for his second son, and a vicious stepmother w ho derided him at every chance, it was no wonder that Calard struggled w ith issues of anger and self-doubt. He just w ished that he could help somehow .
Trumpet horns sounded, and Gunthar craned his neck to see a troop of knights riding up the hill into camp, just back from a further patrol. Beastman heads w ere impaled on lances, and there was cheering as the knights rode through the camp displaying the grisly trophies proudly. They were the knights of Sangasse, he noticed.
At least someone had been successful in their hunt, thought Gunthar.
ANGRY AND TIRED, Calard walked blindly through the camp that the knights of Bastonne w ere using as a base for their patrols. It w as a good defensive position, for the tents had been erected on a w ide, flat-topped hill na
med Adhalind's Seat, and the land w as clear for miles around. A small patch of verdant w oodland hugged the base of the hill to the w est, fed by a bubbling natural spring, and it was tow ards this patch of serenity that he now w alked.
Hearing the blare of trumpets, he turned to see the victorious knights return.
Jealousy stabbed at him.
His mood darkened as he saw Maloric riding with the group, holding a massive shaggy head aloft in one hand. Sw earing, he swung around and stormed aw ay from the victorious Sangasse knights. He knew that it was not honourable to give in to his anger, but at the moment, he just w anted to break something.
The camp w as far less grand than the duke's in the north, consisting of no more than three hundred tents, and it took only a minute to reach its perimeter. Standing at the edge of the table-topped hill, he stared down at the small copse of woodland that hid the revered grail chapel. There w ere countless numbers of these holy shrines dotted around Bretonnia, and each w as a site of pilgrimage and holy significance. This particular shrine was said to heal wounds of the heart, and hundreds of jilted and spurned lovers made the long journey to it each year to pray and make offerings.
It is said that Theudric, a questing knight from Carcassonne, was visited by a vision of the Lady here, and that it w as in this location that he supped from her chalice and became a noble grail knight. In honour of this holy visitation, he had funded the construction of the small shrine built w ithin the copse.
As he descended the hill and entered the trees, Calard felt his anger subside. The air w as cool and fresh, and he passed his hand through the soft fern fronds that blanketed the earth. The trees were sparse and thin, far from the tw isted, oppressive trees of Chalons. Breathing deeply, Calard wound his way through the ferns, the soft sunlight dappling the undergrowth.
The mausoleum that housed the body of Theudric was small and humble, made of pristine white marble that had been overgrow n with ferns. Its sides were arched and open, and creepers had begun to claim the small structure.
Warhammer - Knight Errant Page 14
