Warhammer [Ignorant Armies] (24 page)

"Sit by me, your excellency. Eat with us."

Johann took his place, and found himself looking across the table at an incredibly ancient creature - perhaps a woman - who was enthusiastically sawing at a hunk of raw meat with a large knife.

"Katinka doesn't favour civilized cuisine," said Kleinzack. "She's a native of this region, and only eats her meat raw. At least it's helped her keep her teeth."

The crone grinned, and Johann saw teeth filed to nasty points. She raised a chunk of flesh to her mouth, and tore into it. Her cheeks were tattooed, the designs crumpled by her wrinkles.

"She's a healer," said the dwarf, "later, she will tend to your friend. She can do all manner of things with herbs and the insides of small animals."

The young woman splashed stew into Johann's bowl. He smelled spices, and saw vegetables floating in the gravy.

"This is Anna," the woman curtsied with surprising daintiness, balancing the pot of stew on her generous hip, "she was travelling with a fine gentleman of Praag when he tired of her, and left her for our village as repayment for our hospitality."

Anna's eyes shone dully. She had red hair, and would have been quite pretty cleaned up. Of course, Johann realized, he wasn't himself much used to baths and scents and etiquette. That part of his life was long gone.

"Naturally," laughed Kleinzack, "we don't expect such gratitude from all our guests."

Various diners joined in, and banged their fists on the table as they guffawed. Johann didn't find the hilarity pleasant, although the stew was excellent. The food was the best he'd tasted in some months, certainly better than smoked horse.

The meal passed without incident. No one asked Johann what his business was, and he refrained from asking anyone how this village came to be in the middle of a battlefield. The villagers were too busy eating, and Mischa the priest made the most conversation, invoking the blessings of a grab-bag of gods upon the night. Again, Johann felt uneasy about that.

Katinka took a look at Vukotich, and produced some herb balms which, when applied, soothed his wounds a little. The Iron Man was asleep again, now, and didn't seem to be suffering much.

The hall was sub-divided into sleeping chambers. Several of the villagers scuttled off to them when the eating was done, and Johann heard bolts being drawn. Kleinzack produced some foul roots, and proceeded to smoke them. Johann refused his kind offer of a pipe. Anna - who didn't speak - fussed with the dishes and cutlery, while Darvi drew ale from casks. Dirt shuffled around, keeping out of the way.

"You're a far from home, Baron von Mecklenberg," announced Kleinzack, puffing a cloud of vile smoke.

"Yes. I'm searching for my brother."

"A-ha," mused the dwarf, sucking at his pipe, "run away from home, has he?"

"Kidnapped by bandits."

"I see. Bad things, bandits." He found something funny, and laughed at it. Dirt joined in, but was silenced by a cuff around the head. "How long have you been after these bandits?"

"A long time."

"Long, eh? That's bad. You have my sympathy. All the troubled peoples of the world have my sympathy."

He stroked Dirt's tangled hair, and the bent boy huddled close to him like a dog to his master.

Something fell out of Dirt's clothing, and glinted on the floor. Kleinzack's face clouded, and Johann noticed how quiet everyone else was.

With elaborate off-handedness, Kleinzack downed his pipe and picked up his goblet. He drank. "Dirt," he said, suavely, "you've dropped a bauble. Pick it up and bring it to me."

The boy froze for a moment, then scuttled to the object. His fingers wouldn't work, but he finally managed to squeeze the thing between thumb and forefinger. He laid it on the table in front of Kleinzack. It was a ring, with a red stone.

"Hmmn. A nice piece. Silver, I do believe. And a ruby, carved into a skull. Very nice."

He tossed it to Johann.

"What do you think?"

Johann could hardly bear to handle the thing. It was somehow unpleasant to the touch. Perhaps he had been seeing too many skulls lately. This one was slashed diagonally. It was a familiar scar. Cicatrice was nearby.

"Crude workmanship, but it has a certain vitality, eh? Your excellency doubtless has many finer jewels than this."

Johann put it down on the table. Kleinzack snapped his fingers, and Anna brought the ring to him. He gazed into its jewel.

"Dirt." The boy looked up. "Dirt, you evidently want this trinket for your own." The boy was doubtful. A rope of spittle dangled from his lips. "Very well, you shall have it. Come here."

Dirt shambled forwards on his knees and elbows, advancing like an insect. He held out his hand, and Kleinzack took it.

"Which finger, I wonder..."

The dwarf jammed the ring onto Dirt's little finger, then bent it savagely back. Johann heard the snap as the bone went. Dirt looked at his hand, with its finger sticking out at an unfamiliar angle. There was blood on the ruby. He smiled.

Then the din started outside.

Johann had been in enough battles to recognize the noise. The clash of steel on steel, the cries and screams of men in the heat of combat, the unforgettable sound of rent flesh. Outside the village hall, a full-scale war was being fought. It was as if armies had appeared out of the air, and set at each other with the ferocity of wild animals. Johann heard horses neighing in agony, arrows thudding home in wood or meat, shouted commands, oaths. The hall shuddered, as heavy bodies slammed into it. A little dust was dislodged from the beams.

Kleinzack was unperturbed, and continued to drink and smoke with an elaborate pretence of casualness. Anna kept efficiently refilling the dwarfs goblet, but was white under her filth, shaking with barely suppressed terror. Dirt tried to cram himself under a chair, hands pressed over his ears, eyes screwed shut as clams. Darvi glumly stood by his bar, eyes down, peering into his pint-pot. Katinka bared her teeth, apparently giggling, but Johann couldn't hear her over the cacophony of war. Mischa was in his corner, kneeling before a composite altar to all his gods, begging at random for his own skin.

Outside, one faction charged another. Hooves thundered, cannons boomed, men went down in the mud and died. Johann's ears hurt. He noticed that Darvi, Katinka and a few of the others had padded wads of rag into their ears. Kleinzack, however, did without; evidently, he was far gone enough to last a night of this.

They were all mad, Johann realized, maddened by this ghost of battle. Could it be like this every night?

He went to Vukotich, and found his friend awake but rigid, staring in the dark. The Iron Man took his hand, and held it tight.

Eventually, incredibly, Johann slept.

He awoke to silence. Rather, to the absence of clamour. His head still rung with the memory of the battle sounds, but outside the hall it was quiet. He felt hung-over, and unrested by his sleep. His teeth were furred, and his muscles ached from sleeping sitting up.

He was alone in the hall with Vukotich. Light streamed in through slit windows. His tutor was still in deep sleep, and Johann had to work hard to slip his hand out of the Iron Man's grip. His fingers were white, bloodless, and tingled as his circulation crept back.

Puzzled, he went to the door, and found it hanging open. He put a head round it, and saw nothing threatening. Hand on sword, he went outside, and climbed up the steps cut into the earth. The air was still, and smelled of death.

The village stood in the middle of a field of the dead and dying. There were fires burning, carrying on the wind the stink of scorching flesh, and weak voices cried out in unknown tongues. Their meaning was clear, though. Johann had heard the like after many a combat. The wounded, calling for succour, or for a merciful blade.

At the hitching post, he found what was left of Would-Have-Been-Tsar. An intact head still in its bridle, hanging loose from the wood. The rest of the horse was a blasted, blackened and trampled mess, frosted with icy dew. It was mixed in with the limbless remnant of something small. A dwarf or a goblin. It was hard to tell, the head being mashed to a paste in the hardened mud. From now on, Johann would walk.

Ghosts or not, the armies of night left corpses behind. He scanned the flat landscape, finding nothing by the remains of war. Where did they come from? Where did they go? All the dead bore the marks of the warpstone. He could sense no pattern to the battle, as if a multitude of individuals had fought each other for no reason, each striving to kill as many of the others as possible.

That made as much sense as many of the wars he had seen on his travels.

Dirt came from the other side of the hall, his body strapped into the semblance of straightness by leather and metal appliances. He was still a puppet with too many broken strings, but he was upright, even if his head did loll like a hanged man's, and he was walking as normally as he ever would. Johann noticed his broken finger splinted and bandaged, and wondered if he'd come by his other twisted bones in the same manner. He was carrying a double armful of swords, wrapped in bloody cloth. He smiled, revealing surprisingly white and even teeth, and dropped his burden onto the earth by the hall. The cloth came apart, and Johann saw red on the blades. He had learned about weapons - formally and by experience - and recognized a diversity of killing tools: Tilean duelling
epees
,
Cathay dragon swords, two-handed Norse battle blades, curved scimitars of Araby. Dirt grinned again, proud of his findings, and fussed with the swords, arranging them on the ground, wiping the blood off, bringing out the shine.

Johann left him to his business, and went among the dead.

The villagers were on them like carrion birds, stripping armour and weapons, throwing their booty into large wheelbarrows. He examined one catch, and found rings, a silver flask of some sweet liqueur, an unbloodied silk shirt, a bag of Gold Crowns, a jewel-pommelled axe, a leather breastplate of Elven manufacture, a good pair of Bretonnian boots. Anna was filling this barrow. She worked delicately with the corpses, robbing them as if she were a nurse applying a poultice. As he watched, she slipped the rings from the stiff fingers of a dandified altered, then progressed to his filigreed armour. Without pausing to appreciate the workmanship, she loosed the leather ties on his arm-plates, and pulled them free. His skin was rotten beneath, and had been even before the battle. She eased his dragon-masked helmet from his head, and a knotted rope of silky hair came loose with it. His features were powdered and rouged, but had decaying holes in them. His eyes opened, and his limbs spasmed. With a small, ladylike move, Anna passed a knife under his chin, and he slipped back, blood trickling onto his chest. He sighed away his life, and Anna worked his body armour loose.

Sickened, he turned away, and saw Kleinzack. The dwarf was bundled up in furs, and wore a ridiculous hat. In daylight, the sword through him looked more bizarre than ever.

"Good morning, excellency. I trust you slept well."

He didn't reply.

"Ah, but it's fine to be alive on such a morning."

Mischa appeared, laden down with more religious tokens - some still wet - and bent low to whisper in Kleinzack's ear. The Mayor laughed nastily, and slapped the mad priest. Mischa scurried off yelping.

"The gods have made him mad," said Kleinzack, "that's why they tolerate his sacrileges."

Johann shrugged, and the dwarf laughed again. The mirth was begin to grate on him. He was unpleasantly reminded of Andreas' deathly laughter. Truly, he had fallen among madmen.

Darvi and another man were building corpse fires. They couldn't hope to burn all the dead, but they were managing to clear the area nearest the hall. Those too big to be carried whole to the blaze were cut up and thrown on like logs. Katinka came to Kleinzack and offered him a bracelet she had found.

"Pretty-pretty," he cooed, holding the bracelet up so its jewels caught the light. He slipped it over his wrist, and admired it. Katinka hovered, bowed down, waiting for an indulgence. Kleinzack reached up and stroked her ratty hair. She hummed to herself in idiot contentment, and he sharply tweaked her ear. She cried out, and he pushed her away.

"Back to work, hag. The days are short, and the nights are long." Then, to Johann, "Our work is never done, you see, excellency. Each night there are more. It never ends."

A hand fell on Johann's shoulder, and squeezed. He turned. Vukotich was up, a broken lance serving as a staff. His face had kept its greenish look, the scars standing out white and hard, and there was pain behind his eyes. But his grip was still strong. Even hobbling, he radiated strength. He was still the Iron Man who inspired terror even in Cicatrice's worst.

"This is a Battlefield of Chaos, Johann. This is what Cicatrice has been heading for all along. It's nearly over. He'll be close by here, sleeping, with his creatures about him."

Kleinzack bowed to Vukotich, shifting his sword slightly. "You know about the battle, then?"

"I've heard of it," said Vukotich. "I was near here once, when I was younger. I saw the Knights coming here."

"For over a thousand years, they've been fighting among themselves, proving themselves. All the Champions come here sooner or later, to see if they've got what they say they have. And most of them haven't. Most of them end up like these poor dead fools."

"And that's how you live, dwarf," spat Johann. "Robbing the dead, selling their leavings?"

Kleinzack didn't seem offended. "Of course. Someone has to. Bodies rot, other things don't. If it weren't for us, and for our forebears, this plain would be a mountain of rusting armour by now."

"They sleep in great underground halls nearby," said Vukotich, "sleep like the dead. This is an important stage in their development, in their alteration. They lie comatose by day on warpstone slabs, changing form, ridding themselves of the last traces of humanity. And by night, they fight. In small groups, in single combat, at random, they fight. For a full lunar month, they fight. And if they survive, they go back into the world to spread their evil again."