“Old Mourkain was a land of honey and milk
The pigs lived in houses, the peasants wore silk
The land was so rich it bore three crops a year
And there was nothing but joy from cradle to bier.
Our lords were as fair as our land was fine
As wise as our petru and as strong as our kine
Their beautiful lives were of such elegant grace
That all clambered out for the joy of their embrace.”
– From The Song of Mourkain Not a day went by without Seneschal Martmann thanking the good fortune that had brought him to this posting. He was realistic enough to admit that he had done nothing to deserve it, any more than he had done anything to deserve becoming a seneschal in the first place. Being born to one of the old baron’s maidservants had been enough. That, and the striking resemblance Martmann had born to the lecherous nobleman.
Other, more ambitious men, might not have found this small border fortress to their liking. It was little more than a fortified manor: two storeys for the men, a slate roof, and a wood-built corral for their horses.
It had been built to guard the pastures and low hills that lay to the west of the new baron’s demesne, and apart from grass and sheep, and weather, there was nothing much there: no trade routes, thick with fat merchants and bulging purses; and no local town from which to squeeze the gold and the girls. There wasn’t even any decent hunting. The shepherds and cattlemen who inhabited the area had long since killed most of the game.
No, this posting would not have been for everybody, but for a man of Martmann’s temperament, it was ideal. He was seldom one for exerting himself, and never one for facing the kind of dangers that other, more lucrative postings, offered.
Occasionally, he and his men would make a show of chasing goblins back into the forested hills beyond. Not much of a show, though, and none at all if the goblins ever stopped running. Then there had been the recent proclamation from the baron about the Strigany, just in time for Martmann and his men to seize an entire caravan. It had been the most heroic action of his military career. The caravan had been small, but wealthy, and Martmann, deciding that its presence was another sign of fortune’s favour, had stripped it like a vulture before burning it to the ground. After all, he liked to think that he was a far-sighted man, and he especially liked to think that nobody was going to be left alive to start thinking about revenge.
Yes, life was good. It was in celebration of this fact that tonight, as on every night, Martmann was drunk. He sat at the head of the table in the hall of his small fortress, as perfectly at home as a frog on a lily. The reed torches lent a warmth to the cold granite walls, and to the rough-hewn features of the rabble he commanded. There were a score of them, a motley crew of troopers who nobody else had wanted, and they had just finished feasting. Now, replete, they concentrated on their jugs of ale, leaving the old women who ran the kitchen to bustle and argue their way around the table as they cleared it.
Martmann yawned contentedly as he surveyed his domain, took another swig of ale, and then produced a knife and the piece of wood he was working on. It had once been a baton, he thought. He had found it in the burnt-out remains of the caravan that he and his men had looted a while back, and he often wiled away the hours by engraving scenes from the tale of Sigmar Heldenhammer onto it.
Meanwhile, his sergeant, whose only similarity to his seneschal was his love of ale, belched, wiped the back of his hand across his moustache, and regarded his master with the appraising eye of a peasant choosing a hen to slaughter.
“Fancy a game of stones, sire?” he asked, trying not to sound too eager. By his calculation, his superiority at the game meant that he ended up making about twice as much as his commander. He reckoned he had about three more months to go until he had won enough to buy a farm. That was, as long as he could keep Martmann interested in the game.
“Not tonight,” Martmann said. “I think I’ll just do a spot of carving then turn in.”
The sergeant hid his irritation. There were, after all, other fish to fry. None of them had the seneschal’s pay, though, or his overconfidence.
“Ah, c’mon, boss,” the sergeant said, hiding the steel trap of his greed beneath his impression of beery good nature. “The lads don’t have your skill. Anyway, I want to try to win back some of my money from you.”
Martmann, whose idleness didn’t quite extend to not counting the coins in his purse, smiled wryly.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time for that, sergeant. Anyway, I want to finish this bit. See here?” he said, thrusting the piece of carved wood under the sergeant’s nose, “that’s Sigmar’s first meeting with the dwarfs.”
“It’s good,” the sergeant said. It was, too. The figures were simple, but no less realistic for that. In the flickering torchlight, they almost seemed alive, moving with the shadows that danced around the hall. The seneschal had real skill, and, for the thousandth time, the sergeant wondered if Martmann really was the old baron’s bastard.
Well, he’s a lucky swine either way, the sergeant thought. Just as well I don’t have to rely on luck to fleece him.
What he said was, “When you’re finished carving that, what are you going to do with it seneschal? It would make a fine souvenir of our service. I’ve certainly learnt a lot from being under your command.”
Martmann shrugged.
“I’m not sure, really. I might have it blessed at the Sigmarite shrine in Stein. I might even sell it as a Strigany stick to some merchant who has to deal with the rascals. The material’s appropriate enough, isn’t it?”
Martmann winked and the sergeant forced himself to laugh, despite his disappointment. He had had the same idea himself. He was about to suggest playing stones one last time, when, from outside the hall, the horses started to scream.
It was a piercing sound, and so horribly human that everyone in the hall fell immediately silent: the servants chattering, the drunks bantering, the man who had been playing the piccolo, and the one who had been about to deliver the punch line to his story. They all stopped, frozen, so that, apart from the cries of animal terror outside, the only sound in the hall was the splutter of the reed torches that lined the walls.
All eyes turned to Martmann, who cursed inwardly. Despite the ale in his belly, the hairs on the back of his neck had risen like the scruff of a frightened dog. Having studiously avoided battle, he had never heard the horses make such noises before, and the sound of their screaming had a nightmare quality to it that he didn’t like at all. He licked his lips, and shifted. Then he turned to the sergeant.
“Sounds like there might be a wolf pack out there,” he said, trying to sound casual. He failed. “Take a couple of the lads and go and make sure that they can’t get into the corral, would you?”
“Yes sire,” the sergeant said, inwardly cursing his master. For a moment, he thought about delegating too, sending out Greis, perhaps. Then he dismissed the idea, annoyed with himself. He was the sergeant, after all. He had to be able to command the men’s respect.
“Who’s on the first night watch?” he asked as he got to his feet and checked that his sword was secure in his scabbard. “You five? Good. Grab some crossbows. We’ll see if we can’t bag a couple of wolves. Well, hurry up then!”
As the five men rushed to the far wall, upon which the company’s weapons were hung, the sergeant strode over to one of the few slit windows that looked out over the corral. He opened the shutter and peered out into the night.
There was nothing but darkness, as black and unbroken as the spaces between the stars. That, and the screaming of the horses. Although the noise was as loud as ever, the sergeant thought that fewer of the animals were crying out. He scowled and turned away from the window, suddenly furious. He told himself that he was furious at the damned wolves, although only because he didn’t want to admit the peasant superstition that bubbled beneath his thoughts like some debilitating hereditary illness.
He hadn’t fought his way out of serfdom to fall for that nonsense now.
“Come on,” he told his men as they formed up behind him. Although they were armed, none of them wore any armour. There was no time for that, the sergeant decided. The longer they waited, the more horses they would lose, and the more time he would have to think.
“Right,” he told them, “grab a torch and follow me.”
With a gesture towards his seneschal, which might have been a salute, the sergeant led his men down the stairs to the ground floor, opened the iron-bound door, and strode out into the night. The door banged shut behind him, although not before a draft of chill air rushed into the hall to set the remaining torches dancing.
Martmann watched the flames flicker and shifted uneasily on his chair. He caught somebody’s eye, and fought down a sudden feeling of irrational guilt. After all, why should he have gone and seen to the horses? Wolves were nothing for a man of his rank to waste time dealing with.
If they were wolves, of course.
From outside, he could hear the sound of the sergeant’s barked orders over the noise the horses were making.
“You,” Martmann said, gesturing to the man who had been looking at him, “go and close those shutters. No point letting mosquitoes in.”
“Yes, sire,” the man said, and, exchanging a blank look with one of his comrades, he got up and went over to the open window. He peered out into the night. Seeing nothing, he swung the shutters closed. Almost as an afterthought, he dropped the latch, locking out whatever waited in the darkness outside.
Martmann returned to whittling at his piece of bone. Gradually, the noise of screaming horses died away. For a while, a single animal carried on, and then it stopped too, as suddenly as it had started.
Martmann sighed with relief. That sergeant was a good enough fellow, even if he did cheat at stones. He looked around, and saw that the rest of his men had relaxed, too. One of them picked up his piccolo, and, as if trying to wash the memory of the horses’ screams from his comrades’ ears, he began to play. There was some chatter and a burst of relieved laughter. From the kitchen there came the smash of a dropped pot, and a chorus of voices raised in mutual recrimination.
Then, from the silence of the night beyond, a single, terrified shriek.
The assembled men looked at each other. Then, once more, all eyes turned to Martmann. He cursed inwardly. All he wanted was a quiet life. Was that really too much to ask?
“The sergeant must have had to put down one of the horses,” he said.
Nobody believed him. He could see that in their eyes, in their postures, in the way that they were resting hands on the hilts of their swords. He didn’t care. The ale he had drunk had suddenly turned sour in his stomach, and his armpits had become damp with sweat. Anyway, he was tired. It had been a long day. As soon as the sergeant came back, he would turn in.
He looked down at the piece of wood in his hands, and started carving the branch of one of the trees that overhung Sigmar’s head. The sweat on his palms made it difficult to grip, though, and, as he turned the wood, it slid through his fingers, and he cut himself with the knife.
“Damn the thing!” he swore, and banged it down onto the table. He looked around at the silent gathering and swore again. Why did they all look at him like that?
“You,” he snapped. “You with the piccolo, play something for us.”
The man played, reluctantly, badly. Martmann sucked the blood from his injured thumb, and shifted in his seat. What the hell was taking the sergeant so long?
After another fifteen minutes, some of his men were muttering the same question. Martmann watched them, but they were all studiously avoiding his eye. He chose one at random.
“You there,” he said, pointing to one of his men, who hadn’t bitten his tongue in time, “what’s that you were saying?”
The trooper, suddenly aware of where his master’s interest might be leading, swallowed and tried to look innocent. He failed. His was not an innocent face, which was one of the reasons he had ended up in this miserable posting.
“Oh, nothing really, sire,” he said, and looked at his companions for support. They drew away from him, edging along the table on each side. Feeling as though he was about to be hit by lightning, the soldier shrugged and tried to smile.
“Nothing?” Martmann asked. Having selected his volunteer, he was damned if he was going to let him wriggle out of doing his duty. “I thought you said something about the sergeant? Doesn’t do to talk about a man behind his back, you know.”
“I was just wondering how… how long the sergeant will be.”
“Good question,” Martmann said, smiling the smile of a gambler who has just forced an ace. “In fact, why don’t you pop outside and find out? Better take a torch with you, too.”
“Yes, sire,” the man said dismally. “Oh, shall I take my section with me, too? The sergeant might be able to use us.”
“Of course,” Martmann said, nodding.
The volunteer’s companions gave him a murderous look, and then all five got to their feet. Without a word, they marched over to the wall upon which their armaments hung. Unlike the first party, they took their time, strapping on plate armour, sliding into mail and fastening helmets. Martmann nodded to them as they clinked to the end of the hall, saluted, and then disappeared down the steps.
The door boomed as it opened and then closed, and they were gone.
Martmann waited. The remaining ten men waited. In the kitchen, the servants waited, too, until Martmann bellowed for them to bring in more ale. When it arrived, he and his men drank quickly, but silently, their ears straining all the while to catch any sound of what was happening outside.
They listened in vain. There were no screams, and no cries for help. There was nothing but the slow, soothing breath of the wind over the grassland, and the sputters of the torches within the keep.
After half an hour, the seneschal finished another pot of ale, and leaned over to the nearest of his men.
“You,” he said, “go and make sure the bar is drawn across the door.”
Before the man could obey, one of his comrades intervened. He was the oldest man in the company, one of the oldest men in the baron’s employ, even. His white whiskers and his rheumatism had earned him this posting, and after a lifetime of struggle, he had welcomed the peace of it as much as Martmann had. Still, the old soldier had lived long enough to know that pretending to be deaf was no way to lead a quiet life.
“Sire,” he said, turning to the seneschal, “don’t you think it strange that our comrades have disappeared?”
“They haven’t disappeared,” Martmann snapped. “They’re just… tardy.”
The old soldier, however, wasn’t about to be put off so easily.
“The sergeant went an hour ago. Why hasn’t he returned? Why haven’t the men you sent to find out what he was doing returned?”
Martmann fidgeted with his carving, and, even though he was looking down, he could feel the eyes of the entire company on him. This all really was too tiring. Why should he care if his soldiers wanted to wander around in the dark?
“I don’t know,” he admitted, and then decided to play his trump card, “but if you’re so interested, feel free to go and find out.”
“Never divide your forces,” the old soldier said, with the monotone voice of a child who has learned his lessons by rote, “that’s what the old baron said.”
“Did he?” Martmann asked, nastily. He swore and got to his feet. “All this trouble over a few lousy wolves. Well, all right. I suppose we should go and hurry them up, but it really is too bad.”
Another shriek of pain came from outside. This time there was no mistaking its humanity. In amongst the sheer, hysterical terror of the sound there were words, although Martmann couldn’t understand what they were.
“Probably an animal,” he said vaguely. Then, seeing the expressions on his men’s faces, he realised that there was nothing for it. He was going to have to face the truth.
Damn.
“Right, all right then. I suppose we should be on the safe side. Sieggi! Karl! Get down and make sure that the front door’s secure. I mean, barricade it, and don’t open it for anyone.”
“What about-”
“Just do it!” Martmann screamed. He put his fingers to his temples, and took a deep breath before continuing.
“Gerhardt, get your men armoured. Quickly! You, what’s your name? Right, go to the kitchen and tell the servants to arm themselves: kitchen knives, meat hammers, whatever. The rest of you, get to the windows and try to see what the hell is going on.”
The hall exploded into activity, and the old man followed Martmann as he went to retrieve his armour.
“Sire, I have no doubt that we are under attack,” he said. “I remember when 1 was with the old baron in Geimshein. We were surrounded, and the enemy tried to shake our nerve by torturing prisoners.”
“Did it work?” Martmann asked as he buckled his breastplate on.
“No. We decided to fight to the death rather than risk the same fate.”
“Well, that is a cheerful tale,” Martmann muttered. He selected a four-pointed mace from the wall, pushed the carving he had been holding into his belt, and strode over to peer out of the nearest window. He might as well have been looking at a black-painted wall.
“I can’t see anything,” he said, and, with the vague hope that that might settle the matter, he bolted the window, and wandered back over to the table and his pot of ale. This was ridiculous. Why should he have to worry about the foolishness of his men? They should have stayed inside, or been more careful. For Sigmar’s sake, they were supposed to be professionals.
The old trooper had been following his seneschal. He had seen better commanders than this one collapse into indecision, and he was damned if he was going to let it happen here. He was old, but he wasn’t ready to give up living yet.
“Sire,” he said, “we can either go out to offer help to our comrades, or we can secure the fortress. Which shall it be?”
“We have secured the fortress,” Martmann snapped.
“You don’t think that we should-”
“No!” This time the seneschal shouted, and all eyes turned to him. He took a deep breath, and tried to ignore the pounding in his temples. “No. Just go and stand by that window, would you? I want to think.”
The old trooper saluted again and marched off, muttering.
Let him mutter, Martmann thought, running a hand through his hair as he cast his eyes around his men. They were sullen and frightened, like cattle penned in a slaughterhouse. He supposed that he should have offered them some words of encouragement or a rousing speech. He rejected the idea. Why bother? He had given them the chance to stay safely inside instead.
Still, it would be nice to know what was out there: orcs, maybe, except that the only direction orcs could have come from would have taken them through the town of Biltong. So maybe it was bandits, but why should bandits attack the outpost? It wasn’t as though Martmann had ever been any trouble to them, quite the opposite. He’d even done a bit of quiet business with them from time to time.
The seneschal felt the unfamiliar weight of the mace in his hand, and flexed his shoulders within the restrictive harness of his armour. Then he started to pace around the hall while he tried to think.
He had completed the first circuit when the torches started to go out.
Martmann saw the first one as it died. One minute the flame was burning as bright and as steadily as the noon day sun, the next it was choking and spluttering, finally dying altogether in a puff of black smoke. The shadows that lay beneath the table and between the men grew. They seemed to be creeping towards Martmann, and he swallowed nervously.
“You,” Martmann snapped at one of the men, “get that thing lit.”
“Yes, sire,” the man said, nodding. He lifted the torch from the bracket beside him, and went to light the other one.
As he tried to light the torch another one went out on the other side of the hall, and then another. Then three blinked out in rapid succession, one after the other, casting the room into near darkness. The men shifted uneasily, their eyes growing wide and white in the gloom. Somebody dropped a cleaver and one of the serving staff screamed.
“Hold your positions,” Martmann barked, embarrassed that he too had almost screamed. His pulse was pounding and he cursed the sergeant for abandoning him. “You there, you from the kitchens, go and get some more torches from below, and you,” he said, turning to the man who was still trying to light the torch, “what’s wrong with you man? Get that thing lit for Sigmar’s sake.”
“It won’t light,” the man whined. Martmann was horrified, as much by the tone in the man’s voice as by his inability to light the torch. He knew that this villain was a veteran of both battle and gaol, but he sounded like a frightened child.
“Here, give it to me,” Martmann said, striding over to him, and grabbing the torch. As soon as his fingers touched the wood, the flame flickered and then died. Seneschal and soldier looked at each other over the smoking bundle, their eyes bright with unspoken tenors.
“There must be a draught,” Martmann said, even though he knew that he was sweating in air that was as cold and as still as that in a tomb.
“Why are all the torches going out?” one of the kitchen staff whined, and suddenly they were all talking, wailing and crying.
“Silence!” Martmann snapped, striding over to them, and waving his mace threateningly. “It’s just a draught, damn you, a draught! It’s nothing.”
Perhaps it was the terror that they saw in Martmann’s eyes, but the kitchen staff were not to be so easily consoled. Those nearest to him shrank away, but the others ignored him. Their sobbing echoed around the hall, half-lit in the dying light of the last few torches.
They didn’t stop until the knocking started. It was a steady, metronome beat, and it boomed on the door, and through the hall like some terrible pulse. Martmann felt a ridiculous urge to hide beneath the table. He dismissed it and turned to his men, but there was no inspiration to be found in their pinched and shadowed faces, only fear and confusion.
The knocking continued. Martmann swung his mace nervously. He forced himself to walk across the hall, which he had never before realised was so big, and down the steps that led to the lower hall and the door.
Four men were cowering down there, their eyes fastened to the iron-bound oak of the door. It was latched, Martmann was relieved to see, and barricaded with some of the barrels from the store room. Meanwhile, great bundles of torches fizzled and spat. The men had obviously helped themselves to the stores.
“Who is it?” Martmann asked, his voice no more than a squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again, “Is that you, sergeant?”
The knocking continued as steadily as ever, and Martmann wondered how long it would be before the wood started to splinter. Even to his terrified ear, it sounded more like a fist than a battering ram, but if the rhythm carried on, then eventually… he suddenly felt like throwing up.
“Sergeant?” he asked again, swallowing and drawing closer to the door. “Is that you?”
Despite the pleading in his voice there was no reply from outside the door, but, even if there had been, Martmann would have been unable to hear it beneath the sudden terrible cacophony that had broken out upstairs.
The screams of the women merged with the terrified calls of his men, and Martmann heard a series of garbled warnings, followed by the shattering crash of falling roof tiles, and a single, high-pitched shriek.
Frozen at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the hall, Martmann felt his bladder release, and warmth flow down his legs. He had no idea what could have broken into his fortress, but there was no doubt that something had entered. Even in the fizzling torchlight, he could see the cloud of masonry dust that came rolling down the stairs.
For the first time, he could hear the voices of his enemy, too. They were as shrill as those of the kitchen servants, and as sharp as claws dragged across slate. They were joyful, too, although with a horrible twisted joy that was the perfect counterpoint to their victims’ cries of terror and desperation.
Suddenly, two figures emerged from the darkness at the top of the stairs. He whimpered with terror, before realising that they were two of his own men. The steel of their armour was as dark with blood as the pallor of their faces, although their master was in no mood to show any mercy on that account.
“Hold your ground,” he squeaked, waving vaguely towards them with his mace.
The two men stopped, and, for a moment, the seneschal thought that it was because of his orders. Then, they disappeared upwards, impossibly upwards, flying up above the lintel of the door as though they were two hooked fish being dragged from a pond.
Even above the din of the slaughter that was already taking place, Martmann could hear the slavering, slobbering sound of the men’s doom. He watched, fascinated, as blood started to rain down onto the stairs. It pooled and ran, a single trickle of it making its way down the stone steps towards him relentlessly.
He stared at it, unable to move, until, behind him, he heard the sound of the door being unbolted.
“What are you doing?” he asked, wild-eyed with terror.
“We’re deserting,” one of the men said. “This isn’t a fortress anymore. It’s a trap, a rat trap.” Even as he worked, he began to cackle hysterically, tears running down his unshaven cheeks.
“You’ll come with us if you have any sense,” one of his comrades said as he rolled the last of the barrels away.
Martmann dithered. Already, the noises of the brief battle from above were dying down. The noises that replaced them were worse, so much worse. They were the sounds of feasting. He could hear the silky slap of tearing flesh, and a constant slurping sound, as though a dozen dogs were licking spilt milk off the stone floor.
“Hurry up then,” he said, suddenly whispering. He edged further back from the staircase, not wanting to see what might come down from above, but not daring to look away either. The glow of light from the few remaining torches was enough to send distorted shadows dancing across the piece of wall that he could see at the top of the stairs.
Whatever they were, they were not reassuring.
The door squeaked open behind him. Martmann turned, just as something loomed up at the top of the stairs. He didn’t stay to see what it was. Instead, he turned to follow the fleeing men out into the night, elbowing his way past the last of them, and haring out of the fortress that he had sworn to defend.
He blinked, and suddenly the darkness around him seemed alive with pale grey shapes. There was a cry of warning, a sudden scream, and then an explosion of pain on the back of his head.
The seneschal collapsed, almost willingly into a deep, dark oblivion. Martmann awoke with one of the worst hangovers he had had for a long time. His head throbbed in time with the beating of his heart, and his mouth felt like an orc’s toilet.
He groaned and, as he sat up, he realised that he had fallen asleep on the table. His eyes flickered open, and then flickered back shut. Even though the hall was lit only by a single shaft of daylight, it was too bright for Martmann, and he hid his face in his hands.
After some time sitting like that, he realised that his body ached almost as much as his head, his muscles cold and knotted after spending a night on the hard oak. He thought about throwing up. It seemed like a good idea in theory, although the effort, he decided, was probably too much for him.
He groaned again and took a deep, shuddering breath. He tried to remember what he had been drinking, when, through the fog of his befuddled thoughts, there loomed the terrible memory of what he had been doing the night before.
It hadn’t been drinking.
The sudden burst of panic burned through his concussion as the memories came flooding back, and, despite the painful glare, Martmann opened his eyes and peered around the gloomy interior of his hall. He realised, for the first time, that the shaft of light was not coming from the shuttered windows, but down from the very ceiling. The sunshine punched down through a hole in the roof to illuminate a ragged circle of shattered tiles, powdered with dust and stained with patches of black. The rest of the hall was as dark as night by comparison, and, apart from the flies that buzzed everywhere, it seemed to be deserted.
What in Sigmar’s name had happened, Martmann wondered, as he blinked tears from his eyes and squinted into the gloom. What was that stink? It was like nothing Martmann had ever smelled before, or ever wanted to smell again. It was as sharp as rotting fish, and as cloying as sewage. It was worse than either of those things, though, and, as Martmann thought about it, his gorge rose, and he leaned forward to vomit, his body convulsing until there was nothing left in his stomach to throw up.
“Oh Sigmar,” he whined miserably, tears rolling down his cheeks. He had just seen the shapes of the things that waited in the gloom around him.
They were pale things, like ghosts in the darkness, although there was a horrible, translucent reality to the black oil of their eyes and the slavering gleam of their fangs. Martmann whimpered as they edged towards him, slowly and half-seen. If it hadn’t been for the occasional turn of detritus beneath their feet, or the occasional hiss of breath, he would have tried to believe that they were just figments of his imagination, of delirium tremens perhaps. Unfortunately, his vision had cleared enough for him to make out their forms, their horrible, twisted forms.
Another man might have thought about trying to find a weapon amongst the ruin around him, but not Martmann. He drew his knees up to his chest like a frightened child, and told himself that, yes, of course, this must be delirium tremens. He had seen it take other men after too much drinking. Now, it had taken him. He clung to the idea as desperately as a man holding on to the edge of an abyss.
“Sergeant?” he called out, his voice a dried-out husk.
As if in answer, something moved in the darkness beyond the shaft of sunlight, something big. Rubble shifted beneath its feet as it approached, and Martmann looked up over his knees. Whatever the thing was, it had paused at the edge of the circle of light.
“Sergeant?” Martmann whispered.
Then, as if in answer, the horror stepped out of the darkness, and into the pool of daylight. Martmann started screaming, as mindlessly and involuntarily as a rabbit caught in a snare.
The thing that approached was like a figment of a lunatic’s nightmare. Although it was stooped and malformed, it was ten feet tall, perhaps even twelve. Its shoulders were as wide as the spreading horns of an Estalian bull, and the barrel of its chest looked as strong as a bull’s. Slabs of muscle and knuckles of bone bulged in odd places beneath the filthy translucent skin of its hide, so that it had the lumpen, misshapen look of a clay model, made by a child.
It wasn’t, however, the twisted power of its ruined form that had shattered the last of Martmann’s sanity, it was the razor-sharp nightmare of its splintered teeth, pink in the sunlight, and the rabid glitter in its eyes. Blood squirmed across the thing’s pupils so that, within the dark caverns of its orbs, they looked like twin suns of liquid flame.
Then, in the places where the sunlight hit it, the thing’s mottled skin started to steam, and then to burn.
The conflagration started at the tops of its shoulders, and spread along the ridges of muscle and bone that were also bathed with sunlight. Tiny tongues of silver flame erupted from the weird translucence of its hide to flicker over the its grotesque form, like marsh gas over a swamp.
Still the beast stood there, and, even as the translucence of its skin began to blossom with even more of the tiny, devouring flames, it reached its arms out, held its palms up to the sunlight so that they burned like phosphorous, and screamed.
It was a cry of such agony and such ecstasy that it seemed to suck the breath out of Martmann’s lungs. He, alone, was silent as, all around him, the things that waited in the shadows started baying with sympathy for their master.
It stood in the daylight that streamed down over it like a pillar of fire for a moment longer, bathing in the flames that writhed around its form like devouring stars. Then, when it could take it no more, it lurched back into the gloom of the ruined hall.
For a few seconds, sparks of light still danced across its form. Then, the fire that had bathed it was gone. The skin that remained had lost some of its translucence, and its stoop seemed to have gone, as though the fused vertebrae of its hunchback had somehow untangled beneath the agony of the sunlight.
Martmann realised that he wasn’t breathing. He sucked in a long, shuddering gulp of breath as the creature loomed over him, and, as he gazed into the furnaces of its eyes, a miracle happened. He found that he was no longer terrified. He was no longer even afraid. For the first time since last night, he felt at peace.
It was wonderful.
He watched, as if he were a disinterested bystander at somebody else’s execution, as a handful of gnarled talons reached out for him. It wasn’t until they closed around the carved wood in his belt and drew it out that Martmann felt the beginnings of his fear returning, the emotion vague, but as insistent as the sound of distant drumming.
“You’re one of the Striganies’ daemons,” he heard himself say, as the creature sniffed at the carving, and then turned it to study the workmanship. “I didn’t mean to hurt them. It was just that the baron said that any Strigany entering our lands were fair game.”
The creature ignored him. It was intent on the carving, the shattered angles of its malformed features twisting into something that might have been concentration.
“I never had anything against Strigany, Sigmar knows,” Martmann babbled on. “Fine folk. Brighten the place up with their caravans and funny clothing and all. It’s just that I’m a soldier, and, well, if your master tells you to do something then what can you do, except obey? I was only following orders. There has to be orders, if not, the whole thing would collapse.”
A talon as sharp as an eagle’s claw flicked out, the movement a blur, and Martmann felt his chin being lifted so that he was looking into the creature’s eyes. Beneath the gleam of stolen blood, they were as ancient and as knowing as sin.
Tell me what this is, a voice said in Martmann’s head.
“It’s a carving I made,” Martmann replied, shuddering with revulsion at this violation of his consciousness. “Just some little thing I carved to pass the time. It’s the story of Sigmar Heldenhammer. See, that’s him meeting the dwarfs.”
A work of art, the voice said again, the words deafening in the silence of his mind.
“Yes. That is, not a very good one.”
It has been so long since I commissioned such things.
Martmann squirmed, and his left eye started to twitch. Even when words weren’t forming inside his head, the alien presence of the creature’s thoughts remained there, squirming through his consciousness like a maggot in a wound. Although he didn’t know it, Martmann was weeping.
I think that it is time to commission a work of art, the voice decided. I will tell you what to carve, and you will carve it. I can promise you that it will be a nobler tale than that of some barbarian chieftain, and it will be on a fitting canvas.
The creature turned to the darkness. There was a brief scuffle, a shriek of pain, and, out of the darkness, a stream of grovelling creatures appeared. Martmann noticed that they were pale imitations of their master: weak, sickly things with blackened claws and lifeless eyes, and, as he watched, they started to pile bones onto the table: a skull, the gnaw marks still fresh on the pink of its cranium; a ribcage, picked clean; bones from arms and legs.
When the pile was complete, the last of the snivelling things approached, and, with a nervous look at its master, it placed Martmann’s carving tool on the table beside him.
Now I will tell you the story of Mourkain. The words appeared in Martmann’s head. And you will illustrate it. Start with the toes.
For a moment, Martmann didn’t understand. Then he looked again at the bones on the table, and realised that this was no random assortment of remains, but the entire skeleton of one of his comrades. It was impossible to tell who that had been, although, only hours before, the man had been feasting at the very table upon which his gnawed bones now rested.
A whimper escaped from the tightness of Martmann’s throat, and he tried not to think about that as, fingers trembling, he sorted through the bones, and laid out the remains of whoever it had been. Then, he picked up his carving tool, and, as the images started to blossom within the ruins of his mind, he started to carve them into the bone.
Day turned to night, and then to day again, as Martmann worked. He neither rested nor drank, and soon his eyes were as pink as his new master’s with dehydration and exhaustion.
It had little effect on the quality of his work, though. The fabulous cities he carved were exquisite in their detail, and perfect in the way that they conformed to the new geography of fibula, patella and femur. The fine lords who stalked hungrily amongst the palaces seemed to be almost alive, and the joy with which the fattened populace was honoured with their master’s embrace was obvious.
It wasn’t until the carving reached the skeleton’s pelvis that the glories of Mourkain began to be overshadowed by other, more troubling events. Whereas, before, the fevered genius of Martmann’s workmanship had described nothing but scenes of terrible beauty, now they began to reveal the vile forms of the orc and the goblin. They danced among scenes of wanton destruction, each of the vertebrae, the carving now climbed, a separate tableau of violence, until, on the broader canvas of the sternum, the final battle between the wyvern-mounted orc and the Great Lord of Mourkain was revealed.
Incredibly, the orc won. The horror and disbelief of the onlookers remained on their faces, as, along each of the skeleton’s ribs, scenes of massacre and of flight were revealed. The city was razed to the ground, and the people of Mourkain were driven into the wilderness.
Martmann’s fingers were bleeding freely, and his whole body had begun to shake. There was no mistake in his portrayal of Mourkain’s lords, though. As they struggled through the wilderness, they were set upon by beings almost as beautiful as they were. Soon, only a few remained to crouch and slink through the abandoned places of the world. Their forms, bent beneath the weight of their loss, and twisted by the offal they scrounged on, loped down both of the skeleton’s arms, their forms degenerating from scapula to humerus, and from humerus to wrist.
The other refugees fared better. There was no mistaking that the wagons they built were those of the Strigany They were identical to the ones that Martmann had burned only a few short weeks ago.
They travelled up the last few vertebrae from the ruins of their city, and around the back of the skeleton’s skull. It was only at the front of its cranium that the wagons stopped, giving way to three verses written in a language that Martmann had never seen, until now, as he carved the letters into the skeleton’s cranium.
Only then was he allowed to drop his bloodied chisel, and stagger away from his work. He hardly realised what a masterpiece he had created among the chippings of bone. Me hardly cared. All he cared about was the sudden, savage oblivion that was all the reward his patron could offer.
As far as the shattered thing that had been Martmann was concerned, that oblivion was reward enough. He sat in the ruins of the fortress, and stared at his pink-boned work of art. His eyes glowed with the reflection of the battles and wonders that had been etched into the skeleton, but he was also seeing other, more distant scenes.
For the first time in an aeon, he had dared to remember, and the remembering was hard: the lost glories of his court, the silks, the graces, and the sunshine, always the sunshine. How it had sparkled and glowed on his lands and on his city. How it had made the river glitter and the corn fields glow like oceans of gold.
Maybe it had been the rare taste of fresh blood that had driven him to feel the sunlight on his skin today. The pain had been excruciating, but worth it. It had done something to him, the cleansing fire washing away the most horrific of his deformities, even as it had awakened something that had for so long lain dormant within the lightless depths of his withered soul.
How fair he had once been. Even amongst the most handsome of his race, he had been the cleanest-limbed, the clearest-eyed, as strong as a god and as wise as a prophet. His name had been carved onto every heart of an entire people. Now, he couldn’t even remember it.
Tears of blood trickled down his ravaged features, tears of loss, and of frustration and rage: most of all, tears of rage. The ghouls who followed him, sensing their master’s mood, whined and bickered, and slunk away into the darkest corners of the hall. He watched them, hatred in his eyes. Once he had had legions of servants, chosen from among the ripest of humanity: artists, courtesans, musicians, poets, athletes.
Now all he had were these vermin.
The tears stopped as his rage found an outlet. He stood, straighter than he had in a thousand years, and turned to study his ruined followers, as they gibbered and clutched at each other. A sudden revulsion lent an edge to his rage, and he flexed his claws. He wouldn’t besmirch his pallet with the taste of these things’ vile blood.
As he fell upon them, some of the ghouls tried to flee. Most, though, lacked the will. They cowered, skinny arms raised uselessly, as their master slaughtered them, snuffing out their worthless lives. The hall echoed with their shrieks of bewilderment and terror as their master snapped necks, slashed out throats, and tore bodies in half.
When the final ghoul lay twitching out the last of its life on the floor, he returned to the blade of sunlight that cut down like a guillotine into the blood-soaked darkness of the hall. As he prepared to step forward, he remembered his name, and, with the joy of it twisting his face into a snarl of joy, he stepped, once more, into the light.