01 - Empire in Chaos Read online

  “The farrier Hellmaan and his family, and the families of his two sisters, have been brutally murdered on the road to Averheim,” Horst said, his voice bitter and filled with hatred. Those in the crowd before him held weapons clenched tightly in their hands, their faces angry. The two men holding the captive pinned to the ground tightened their grip.

  “We return with one of their murderers: a hateful, black-hearted killer of elven kind.”

  There were several gasps from the gathered villagers. Most had come to believe that elves were nothing more than stories told to children.

  “An elf?” breathed Annaliese. She stepped away from the innkeeper and inched further down the hill, to better see the captive.

  “Hang him!” called a man, and others shouted their agreement.

  “Burn him alive!” another roared, a pronouncement that was greeted with a cheer.

  “Oh, we shall do much worse than that to him,” said the stick-thin figure of Horst from the rotten hay bale. “He must be made to suffer long for the savagery that he unleashed upon those poor families.”

  His voice rose in pitch, anger and bitterness fuelling his diatribe.

  “Let us gag his mouth that he may not incant his vile sorceries or cry out to his hateful gods for aid. Let us raise him in the gallows and pelt him with stones and rocks. Let us cut out his eyes and feed them to the crows! After a week in the cage, let us drag him forth and quarter him, his entrails carried to the four corners of the village. Then he and all his hated kin shall fear us, and know the true vengeance of Averland!”

  A huge roar rose from the gathered crowd, and Annaliese was shocked and horrified to see her neighbours, good hearted and caring people, baying for blood and torture, their faces twisted into masks of hatred. She realised that it was fear and desperation that was fuelling this emotion—a need to blame someone for their horrific, hopeless predicament.

  She saw the black haired elf pulled to his feet, glimpsing his pale, arrogant profile for the first time. Almost as white as the crispest snow, his face was angular and long, his eyes large, dark and almond shaped. He was aloof and distant despite the bruises and blood upon him, and she saw how he stood against the mob with his head held high.

  Screeching metal accompanied the opening of the cage. The skeleton within was kicked free and the elf was dragged towards the vacant iron device. He struggled against his captors. Breaking the grip that one had on him, he smashed his elbow into the man’s face, crushing his nose. With inhuman swiftness he kicked another state soldier in the face, and then spun, rolling his wrist so that the arm of the one holding him was turned until the elbow was facing the sky. With a sharp downward strike the elf shattered the joint of the soldier’s overextended arm.

  A heavy mallet smashed into the back of the elf’s head, and his body went limp. Swearing, blood pumping from his nose, the first of the fallen men rose to his feet with a dagger in his hands and murder in his eyes. He stepped towards the slumped elf, but Horst stopped him with a hand on his chest.

  “We will make sure his suffering is long and drawn out,” he hissed. The man sheathed his knife with a curse, and spat upon the elf.

  The barely conscious elf, blood covering the back of his head, was dragged to the torturous man-shaped cage. He was pushed within the tight confines, and the cage door slammed shut. A rusted old padlock as large as a man’s head was clamped shut, sealing him within. He had no room to move. Half unconscious and bleeding, the elf was hauled up into the air. Rocks and rotten food pelted him.

  Not wanting to see any more, and anxious to be with her father, Annaliese pushed against the crowd around her, panicked and sickened at the hate, fear and murderous intent she saw on the faces of those around her. Tears in her eyes, she pushed free of the frenzied mob, and ran back up through the snow towards her home.

  Annaliese slammed the door behind her, breathing hard, wracking sobs rocking her body. She could still hear the muted shouts of the villagers, a dire sound of venomous hate fuelled by fear and despair.

  Moving to the small kitchen adjoining the main room, she plunged her hands into a bucket of water and washed her face. The water was icy cold, and an involuntary shiver ran through her. She brushed her long blonde hair back away from her face and took a deep breath, calming herself.

  If the elf truly did murder those families, then he deserved death, she thought—but not a long, torturous death. That was savage and barbaric.

  She took another deep breath. That’s when she heard the first screams.

  Running through the cabin, she burst through the front door to see a very different scene than that she had just left. People were running in all directions, and she saw blood splashed across the snow. There was screaming and shouting, and her first thought was that the elf had somehow escaped, or that his allies had come to rescue him. But no, she could still see his caged form hanging aloft above the bloodshed below.

  She saw a warrior dressed in the yellow and black of a state soldier in the pay of the Elector of Averland rolling in the slush, fighting with a drably dressed villager. Two other plainly clothed men dragged another to the ground, their hands around his throat. Others were knocked to the ground by the press of bodies seeking escape. What was going on? What madness was this?

  There was a solid thump that shook the floorboards, and Annaliese started. It had come from her father’s room, and a moment later there was a scrape of wood on wood, and a crash. It sounded like the chair by her father’s palette being pushed back and toppling to the floor. Tearing herself away from the insane, murderous savagery below, she stepped warily into the centre of the living area to better see into her father’s room, her heart pounding in her chest. Floorboards creaked beneath her feet.

  Dimly she perceived a low hanging mist coiling within the dark room. She saw the dark shape of a man on all fours beside the palette, and her heart skipped a beat. Her father was alive, and up out of his bed!

  “Father!” she cried as she rushed to his side. As soon as she entered the room the temperature fell markedly. The fire that had been raging when she had left the cabin earlier had died away completely, and a ribbon of smoke rose from the blackened logs.

  Annaliese dropped to her knees, putting an arm around her father’s bony shoulders. His flesh radiated an icy chill through the rough linen undershirt covering his skin. His head hung low, and his lank dark hair fell down over his face.

  “Father,” she said once again, tears welling in her eyes. Days ago she had resigned herself to his passing.

  He turned his face towards her. She had a glimpse of blue-tinged lips, and saw that her father’s eyes were closed. His skin was grey and ashen, and she could see blue veins criss-crossing within.

  Her father’s cold blue lips curled into a sickly grin that made her skin crawl, and she felt revulsion and horror run through her for a moment. Then he began to convulse, his wasted muscles tensing as his entire body went into uncontrollable spasms. He fell to his back, and sickly, yellow froth bubbled at the corners of his still grinning lips. Annaliese cried out, not knowing what to do. She grasped her father’s head tightly in her arms, holding him to her bosom in an effort to stop him smashing his head against the floorboards in his seizure.

  It was over in a moment, and he went completely limp. Breathing heavily with the shock, Annaliese carefully laid her father’s head back down against the floor. She could not hear him breathing, and she felt for a pulse on his wasted, scrawny neck. There was none.

  Closing her eyes, Annaliese allowed exhaustion and despair to wash over her. She couldn’t remember when last she had slept, and her entire body heaved with sobs from the shock of her father’s dying fit.

  She opened her eyes to see a cold pair of eyes regarding her.

  Blue flames flickered within the sunken sockets of her father’s face, and Annaliese felt the edges of her sanity begin to fray.

  She screamed involuntarily and scrambled backwards across the floor. The thing that had once been her fathe
r pushed itself onto its stomach, and began to claw its way across the floorboards towards her, fingernails digging into the floorboards. Its movements were jerky and stilted, as if it were some twisted marionette and someone was plucking at its strings.

  Its face was still locked in a hideous grinning rictus, a manic death-grimace, and eyes of blue fire blazed coldly.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Udo removed his wide-brimmed black hat, and ran a gloved hand across his shaven head. If there had been hair growing there it would have had grey in it, as there was in his moustache and the salt-and-pepper stubble that covered his thick jaw. You are getting old, he thought to himself. His legs were sore, and he cursed again the bastards who had stolen his horse.

  He had been returning to the tall, black stallion after relieving himself up against a tree when he came upon them. There had been three of them, rough men that had the look of deserters about them, and they were struggling to keep the stallion from bucking.

  So intent were they on the powerful steed that they didn’t notice the appearance of Grunwald until he calmly killed the first with a bolt through the back of the neck.

  The would-be thief was killed instantly and the reins fell from his limp hand. The powerful stallion lashed out with its hooves, slamming another of the men to the ground. Grunwald had stalked forwards then, his dark coat billowing out behind him, dropping his heavy crossbow to the ground. He hefted a heavy, flanged mace in one hand and with the other he drew an ornate, gold-worked pistol—one of the weapons of his former master. The brigand struck by the horse struggled to his feet, and the pistol boomed deafeningly. The lead shot slammed into his head, sending a mist of blood out behind him as he fell.

  The third man, a small, weasely individual, leapt into the saddle of the bucking horse, the reins held tightly in his hands.

  “It will be better for you if you get off my horse now,” said Grunwald. The outlaw spat in response, and kicked the stallion into a gallop.

  It had not been hard to follow his trail across the destitute lands of Stirland.

  The three were part of a larger group that were preying on the weakened local people. The plague had desolated much of the region, and the armies of Graf Alberich Haupt-Anderssen, the Elector Count of Stirland, were scouring the land, killing and burning the bodies of those infected by the foul contagion.

  The wretches that Grunwald was now hunting parasites, eking out an existence by taking advantage of the horrific situation that the Empire found itself in. Low-life scavengers, they were looting abandoned settlements and villages, and preying upon those fleeing with all their worldly possessions. Grunwald had learnt from his inquiries that they had been pressed into service in the armies of the Graf to fight the terrible threat that pressed from the north, but had deserted their posts, fleeing into the wilderness rather than stand and fight for the good of the Empire.

  Grunwald’s face was dark. It sickened him that while tens of thousands of loyal soldiers were fighting and dying in the north to protect the Empire, there were others such as these who were abandoning their posts and preying on innocents. He would ensure that these men were punished for their crimes.

  But none of those crimes was as heinous as the one they had committed the day before. They had come across a rural chapel devoted to Sigmar, and in an act of extreme sacrilege, they had stolen the offering pot and knocked a statue of the holy deity to the ground in their haste to leave. By such actions they had doomed themselves. The bruised and battered priest had been shamefaced as he spoke of how he had been overcome by the ruffians, and Grunwald’s brutish face was set in an angry expression as he recalled the incident.

  He hated this land, Stirland. Always poor, and living in the shadow of the cursed realm of Sylvania, it seemed to breed corruption and wretchedness. The grim landscape, with its fields of wasted crops, oppressive dark forests and bleak mountains merely seemed to feed the feeling of hopelessness that pervaded the life of the Stirlanders.

  Darkness was falling quickly, and the thick clouds overhead ensured no light from moon or star would reveal him. Twisted trees loomed like dark, malevolent presences around him, and Grunwald began to crawl forwards through the snow once more, drawing towards the bored sentry.

  Rising up behind the man, he placed one gloved hand around his mouth while the other ripped a knife across his throat. He pulled the man down into the snow without a sound, holding him tightly as he convulsed, his warm blood soaking into the pristine white snow.

  After weeks of tracking these doomed bandits, he gloried in the feeling of satisfaction as he watched the life slip from the ruffian’s eyes.

  Concealing the body beneath a fallen log, Grunwald pressed on, slipping between the thick boles of the dense trees. He cursed as he looked over the deserters’ camp. There were at least half a dozen of them lounging around a fire, but that was not what made the witch hunter swear.

  There were no horses tethered at the campsite—but there was an unmistakable equine shape roasting on a heavy spit over a fire.

  A battle trained stallion bred from the line of the finest warhorses of Averland, the horse was worth an Elector’s ransom, and these ignorant fools were roasting it.

  Grunwald pushed himself flat in the snow as he heard a voice rise in alarm. He readied himself for violence. Had they found the sentry already? That was unlikely—he had watched the camp for almost an hour before he had made his move, and he was fairly certain that there would be no one checking up on him for good few hours. He strained to hear the muffled conversation.

  “…down the path,” he made out.

  “…tracking us?” came the reply, a deeper voice than the first. Grunwald carefully elbowed himself forward.

  He saw a slight man—the one that had ridden off with his horse—talking to a more solidly built outlaw. Once he might have been well proportioned, but it looked as though his muscle had long since run to fat.

  “Don’t think so, sergeant,” said the smaller man.

  “I told you not to damn well call me that!”

  “Sorry. Lone traveller by the looks of it. A dwarf, heavily armoured. Got himself a heavy looking pack, too. Must be something in there worth takin’—gold perhaps. Everyone knows his kind hoard it, countin’ their wealth while us Stirlanders starve.”

  The bigger brigand grunted.

  “Would certainly be rude to pass up such an opportunity, ’specially when it appears on our doorstep. Right, let’s get moving then, you pack of worthless whoresons,” he said, kicking out at the dozing men.

  Grunwald swore once again. He had been planning on moving through the darkness and killing each of the sentries in turn before turning on the sleeping camp. He sighed, and began crawling backwards through the trees, away from the campsite.

  The short, broad-shouldered figure of Thorrik Lokrison hummed tunelessly to himself as he sat before a small fireplace. A solid pot of black iron was balanced on top of a small pile of rocks within the fire, and a heavy pack lay in the snow beside him, an object wrapped in oiled leather carefully positioned on top of it.

  A round metal shield leant against the log on which Thorrik sat, a stylised embossed bearded face in its centre and intricate bronze weave-work running around the rim. Besides the shield was a single-bladed axe, runes and more intricate bronze-work adorning it.

  Belching loudly, Thorrik leant over the steaming broth bubbling away within the iron pot, savouring the aroma of the heavy, stodgy food, before leaning back and resuming his humming.

  He had removed his helmet, but was otherwise covered in heavy armour from head to toe. The only exposed skin that could be seen was his forehead, bulbous nose and ruddy cheeks, the rest of his face framed by a finely wrought chainmail coif and a prodigious plaited beard. That beard was woven with bronze win and hung down over his ornately worked breastplate. The plaits were adorned with metal discs, stylised faces engraved upon them.

  With a heavy, gauntleted hand, the dwarf stirred the meaty broth with a chunky metal spoo
n.

  “Smells good, friend,” came a voice from behind him that sounded anything but friendly. Thorrik’s features darkened. He had not heard the man’s approach.

  Rising to his feet he picked up his axe and turned face this human that was interrupting his supper. Eyes as hard as stone glinted from beneath his bushy eye brows. His gaze flicked left and right, seeing that there were six men fanning out around him. Two had bows in their hands, while the others were armed with swords and axes, though they were not drawn. He settled on the overweight figure in the centre of the group the one who had spoken. A towering brute, he wore tattered clothes dyed yellow and green and a heavy fur over his shoulders. Beside him was a slight, pinch-face man that looked to Thorrik not unlike one of the stinking grobi that infest the depths beneath the mountains, though his skin was not green as were those hated enemies of his kin.

  “’Tis a cold and wintry night to be out here alone, friend,” said the overweight man, his voice dripping with threat. “Would you not like some company? I would dearly like to try that fine smelling food you are preparing.”

  “I’d say you have eaten your fair share of food for two lifetimes, manling,” growled the dwarf.

  The leader of the group laughed at that, and grobi-face gave a sycophantic chuckle. The remainder of the group made no reaction—their eyes were hard.

  “No need for hostility, friend dwarf, though I dare say you are right in your estimation,” said the man, a brutish smile upon his big-jowled face as he patted his prodigious belly. “We are merely loyal soldiers of the Empire seeking to warm ourselves at your camp. May we? I assure you, we mean you no harm.”

  Thorrik tightened his grip on his axe, frowning.

  “There is no Stirland state patrol within twenty miles and you ’aint scouts or militia,” he said gruffly. “I’d say you are deserters. Cowards. Your word is worth less than pig shit.”