Warhammer [Ignorant Armies] (2 page)

"Seen it? The bloody thing nearly ran me over." A man gasped. Felix heard the sound of a ladle being dropped. He saw the innkeeper stoop to pick it up and begin refilling the tankard.

"You are lucky then," said the fattest and most prosperous-looking pedlar. "Some say the coach is driven by daemons. I have heard it passes here on Geheimnisnacht every year. Some say it carries wee children from Altdorf who are sacrificed at the Darkstone Ring."

Gotrek looked at him interestedly. Felix did not like the way this was developing.

"Surely this is only legend," he said.

"No sir," the innkeeper shouted. "Every year we hear the thunder of its passing. Two years ago Gunter looked out and saw it, a black coach just as you describe."

At the mention of Gunter's name the old woman began to cry again. The innkeeper brought stew and two great steins of ale.

"Bring beer for my companion too," said Gotrek. The landlord went off for another stein.

"Who is Gunter?" asked Felix when he returned. There was a wail from the old woman.

"More ale," said Gotrek. The landlord looked astonished at the empty flagons.

"Take mine," said Felix. "Now, mein host, who is Gunter?"

"And why does the hag howl at the very mention of his name?" asked Gotrek, wiping his mouth on his mud-encrusted arm.

"Gunter is our son. He went out to chop wood this afternoon. He has not returned."

"Gunter is a good boy," said the old woman. "How will we survive without him?"

"Perhaps he is simply lost in the woods?"

"Impossible," said the innkeeper. "Gunter knows the woods round here like the back of my hand. He should have been home hours ago. I fear the coven has taken him, as a sacrifice."

"It's just like Lotte Hauptmann's daughter, Ingrid," said the fat pedlar. The innkeeper shot him a dirty look.

"I want no tales told of our son's betrothed," he said.

"Let the man speak," said Gotrek. The pedlar looked at him gratefully.

"The same thing happened last year, in Blutroch, just down the road. Goodwife Hauptmann looked in on her teenage daughter Ingrid just after sunset. She thought she heard banging coming from her daughter's room. The girl was gone, snatched by who knows what sorcerous power from her bed in a locked house. The next day the hue and cry went up. We found Ingrid. She was covered in bruises and in a terrible state."

He looked at them to make sure he had their attention. "You asked her what happened?" said Felix.

"Aye, sir. It seems she had been carried off by daemons, wild things of the wood, to Darkstone Ring. There the coven waited with evil creatures from the forests. They made to sacrifice her at the altar but she broke free from her captors and invoked the good name of Sigmar. While they reeled she fled. They pursued her but could not overtake her."

"That was lucky," said Felix drily.

"There is no need to mock, Herr Doktor. We made our way to the stones and we did find all sorts of tracks in the disturbed earth. Including those of humans and beasts and cloven-hooved daemons. And a yearling infant gutted like a pig upon the altar."

"Cloven-hoofed daemons?" asked Gotrek. Felix didn't like the look of interest in his eye. The pedlar nodded.

"I would not venture up to Darkstone tonight," said the pedlar. "Not for all the gold in Altdorf."

"It would be a task fit for a hero," said Gotrek looking meaningfully at Felix. Felix was shocked.

"Surely you cannot mean..."

"What better task for a Trollslayer than to face these daemons on their sacred night? It would be a mighty death."

"It would be a stupid death," muttered Felix.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

"You are coming, aren't you?" said Gotrek menacingly. He was rubbing his thumb along the blade of his axe. Felix noticed it was bleeding again. He nodded.

"An oath is an oath."

The dwarf slapped him upon the back with such force that he thought his ribs would break. "Sometimes, manling, I think you must have dwarvish blood in you. Not that any of the Elder race would stoop to such a mixed marriage, of course."

"Of course," said Felix, glaring at his back.

Felix fumbled in his pack for his mail shirt. He noticed that the innkeeper and his wife and the pedlars were looking at him. Their eyes held something that looked close to awe. Gotrek sat near the fire drinking ale and grumbling in dwarvish.

"You're not really going with him?" whispered the fat pedlar. Felix nodded.

"Why?"

"He saved my life. I owe him a debt." Felix thought it best not to mention the circumstances under which Gotrek had saved him.

"I pulled the manling out from under the hooves of the Emperor's cavalry," shouted Gotrek.

Felix cursed. The Trollslayer has the hearing of a wild beast as well as the brain of one, he thought, continuing to pull on the mail shirt.

"Aye. The manling thought it clever to put his case to the Emperor with petitions and protest marches. Old Karl-Franz chose to respond, quite sensibly, with cavalry charges."

The pedlars were starting to back away. "An insurrectionist," he heard one mutter.

Felix felt his face flush. "It was yet another cruel and unjust tax. A silver piece for every window, indeed. To make it worse all the fat merchants bricked up their windows and the Altdorf militia went around knocking holes in the side of poor folk's hovels. We were right to speak out."

"There's a reward for the capture of insurrectionists," said the pedlar. "A big reward."

Felix stared at him. "Of course the Imperial cavalry were no match for my companion's axe," he said. "Such carnage. Heads, legs, arms everywhere. He stood on a pile of bodies."

"They called for archers," said Gotrek. "We departed down a back alley. Being spitted from afar would have been an unseemly death."

The fat pedlar looked at his companions then at Gotrek, then at Felix, then back at his companions. "A sensible man keeps out of politics," he said to the man who had talked of rewards. He looked at Felix. "No offence, sir." "None taken," said Felix. "You are absolutely correct."

"Insurrectionist or no," said the old woman. "May Sigmar bless you if you bring my little Gunter back."

"He is not little, Lise," said the innkeeper. "He is a strapping young man. Still I hope you bring my son back. I am old and I need him to chop the wood and shoe the horses and lift the kegs and..."

"I am touched by your paternal concern, sir," said Felix. He pulled his leather cap down on his head.

Gotrek got up and looked at him. He hit his chest with one meaty hand. "Armour is for women and girly elves," he said.

"Perhaps I had best wear it, Gotrek. If I am to return alive with the tale of your deeds as I did, after all, swear to do."

"You have a point, manling. Remember that is not all you swore to do."

He turned to the innkeeper. "How will we find the Darkstone Ring?"

Felix felt his mouth go dry. He fought to keep his hands from shaking.

"There is a trail. It runs from the road. I will take you to its start."

"Good," said Gotrek. "This is too good an opportunity to miss. Tonight I will atone my sins and stand among the Iron Halls of my fathers. Great Grungni willing."

He made a peculiar sign over his chest with his clenched right hand. "Come, manling, let us go."

Felix picked up his pack. At the doorway the old woman stopped him and pressed something into his hand. "Please, sir," she said. "Take this. It is a charm to Sigmar. It will protect you. My little Gunter wears its twin."

And much good it's done him, Felix was about to say but the expression on her face stopped him. It held fear, concern and perhaps hope. He was touched.

"I'll do my best, Frau."

Outside, the sky was bright with the green witchlight of the moons. Felix opened his hand. In it was a small iron hammer on a fine-linked chain. He shrugged and hung it round his neck.

Gotrek and the old man were already moving down the road. He had to run to catch up.

"What do you think these are, manling?" said Gotrek, bending close to the ground. Ahead of them the road continued on towards Blutroch and Bogenhafen. Felix leaned on the league marker. This was the edge of the trail. Felix hoped the innkeeper had returned safely home.

"Tracks," he said. "Going north."

"Very good, manling. They are coach tracks and they take the trail north to the Darkstone Ring."

"The black coach?" said Felix.

"I hope so. What a glorious night! All my prayers are answered. A chance to atone and to get revenge on the swine who nearly ran me over." He cackled gleefully but Felix could sense a change in him. He seemed tense as if suspecting that his hour of destiny were arriving and he would meet it badly. He seemed unusually talkative.

"A coach? Does this coven consist of noblemen, manling? Is your Empire then so corrupt?"

Felix shook his head. "I don't know. It may have a noble leader. The members are most likely local folk. They say the taint of Chaos runs deep in these out-of-the-way places."

Gotrek shook his head and for the first time ever he looked dismayed. "I could weep for the folly of your people, manling. To be so corrupted that your rulers could sell themselves over to the powers of darkness, that is a terrible thing."

"Not all men are so," said Felix angrily. "True, some seek easy power or fleshly pleasure but they are few. Most people keep the faith. Anyway the Elder Race are not so pure. I have heard tales of armies of dwarfs dedicated to the Ruinous Powers."

Gotrek gave a low angry growl and spat on the ground. Felix gripped the hilt of his sword tighter. He wondered whether he had pushed the Trollslayer too far.

"You are correct," said Gotrek, his voice soft and cold. "We do not lightly talk about such things. We have vowed eternal war against the abominations you mention and their dark masters."

"As have my own people. We have our witch-hunts and our laws."

Gotrek shook his head. "Your people do not understand. They are soft and decadent and live far from the War. They do not understand the terrible things which gnaw at the roots of the world and seek to undermine us all. Witch-hunts, hah!" He spat on the ground. "Laws! There is only one way to meet the threat of Chaos."

He brandished his axe meaningfully.

They trudged wearily through the forest. Overhead the moons gleamed feverishly. Morrslieb had become ever brighter till its green glow stained the sky.

Fog had gathered and the terrain they moved through was bleak and wild. Rocks broke through the turf like plague spots breaking through the skin of the world.

Sometimes Felix thought he could hear great wings pass overhead, but when he looked up he could see only the glow in the sky. The fog distorted and spread so that it looked as though they walked along the bed of some infernal sea.

There was a sense of wrongness about this place, he decided. The air tasted foul and the hairs on the nape of his neck constantly prickled. Back when he had been a boy in Altdorf he had sat in his father's house and watched the sky grow black with menacing clouds. Then had come the most monstrous storm in living memory.

Now he felt the same sense of anticipation. Mighty forces were gathering close to here, he was certain. He felt like an insect crawling over the body of a giant that could at any moment awake and crush him.

Even Gotrek seemed oppressed. He had fallen silent and did not even mumble to himself as he usually did. Now and again he would stop and motion for Felix to stand quiet then he would stand and sniff the air.

Felix could see that his whole body tensed as if he strained with every nerve to catch the slightest trace of something. Then they would move on.

Felix's muscles all felt tight with tension. He wished he had not come. Surely, he told himself, my obligation to the dwarf does not mean I must face certain death. Perhaps I can slip away in the mist.

He gritted his teeth. He prided himself on being an honourable man, and the debt he owed the dwarf was real. The dwarf had risked his life to save him. Granted, at the time he had not known Gotrek was seeking death, courting it as a man courts a desirable lady. It still left him under an obligation.

He remembered the riotous drunken evening in the taverns of the Maze when they had sworn blood-brothership in that curious dwarven rite and he had agreed to help Gotrek in his quest.

Gotrek wished his name remembered and his deeds recalled. When he had found out that Felix was a poet he had asked Felix to accompany him. At the time, in the warm glow of beery camaraderie, it had seemed a splendid idea. The Trollslayer's doomed quest had struck Felix as excellent material for an epic poem, one that would make him famous.

Little did I know, he thought, that it would lead to this. Hunting for monsters on Geheimnisnacht. He smiled ironically. It was easy to sing of brave deeds in the taverns and playhalls where horror was a thing conjured by the words of skilled craftsmen. Out here though it was different. His bowels felt loose with fear and the oppressive atmosphere made him want to run screaming.

Still, he consoled himself, this is fit subject matter for a poem. If only I live to write it.

The woods became deeper and more tangled. The trees took on the aspect of twisted uncanny beings. Felix felt as if they watched him. He tried to dismiss the thought as fantasy but the mist and the ghastly moonlight only stimulated his imagination. He felt as if every pool of shadow contained a monster. Felix looked down on the dwarf. Gotrek's face held a mixture of anticipation and fear. Felix had thought him immune to terror but now he realized it was not so. A ferocious will drove him to seek his doom. Feeling that his own death might be near at hand, Felix asked a question that he had long been afraid to utter.

"Herr Trollslayer, what was it you did that you must atone for? What crime drives you to so punish yourself?"

Gotrek looked up to him, then turned his head to gaze off into the night. Felix watched the cable-like muscles of his neck ripple like serpents as he did so.

"If another man asked me that question I would slaughter him. I make allowances for your youth and ignorance and the friendship rite we have undergone. It would make me a kinslayer. That is a terrible crime. Such crimes we do not talk about."