CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

The Grey Stoat was quickly ablaze, its dry wooden frame burning like paper, and in the glare from the vivid flames Konrad gazed up into the horribly mutilated features of Taungar.

His whole body must have been as badly devoured as his face. It seemed impossible for anyone to have survived the inferno which had engulfed Zuntermein’s mansion—and it seemed impossible for anyone as monstrously crippled as Taungar to still be alive.

His breathing was hoarse and ragged, as though his lungs were still full of smoke. His teeth were as black as charcoal, like stumps of burned down trees. His lipless mouth became even more twisted when he spoke, his words but a rasping whisper.

“Thiss iss why I wass sspared from fire,” he hissed, taking a short gasp of breath between each syllable. “To kill you, trait-or.”

“You’re the traitor, Taungar,” spat Konrad. “A traitor to everything human!”

Taungar pushed the tip of his sword into the soft flesh beneath Konrad’s chin, and a few drops of Konrad’s blood mingled with that of Dieter’s.

“You musst hurt like I hurt,” he sighed. “I sstill hurt, and you hurt forever.”

Pressing harder, the drops of blood became a trickle. A fraction harder, and the blade would have been in Konrad’s windpipe, but then Taungar withdrew his sword and gestured to the beast-men. Two of them hauled Konrad to his feet, while the third went to examine their fallen comrade. The predator was clearly dead, and the bullbeast strode over to the creature Konrad had wounded, who was sitting on the ground trying to staunch the flow of blood from its wounded side.

The other two were inside the tavern, carrying out their incendiary task. Although the pair who supported Konrad maintained a grip of iron, Taungar had limped back out of reach. He must have remembered how Konrad had burst free when he had been one of those holding him captive in Zuntermein’s unholy temple.

“Pray to your god for help,” he taunted. He must have believed that Konrad, like Krysten, was an acolyte of Khorne.

“I need no help to deal with you and your bastard god!”

Taungar issued a guttural command in the mutant tongue, and a blow to the side of Konrad’s head almost knocked him unconscious. One of the beastmen had hit him with his fist, and it felt as hard as rock. His head fell forwards, and blood oozed from the wound in his scalp and streamed down the side of his face. Then one of the creatures ripped a strip from Konrad’s tunic and wedged it into his mouth to ensure his silence.

He wondered whether the warped guards had human bodies beneath their armour, or whether the fist which hit him had felt so hard because it was a mutated hoof. They stood upright like men, but was their flesh covered in pale fur? Their inhuman heads were oversized, and there were holes in their brass helmets through which their twisted horns protruded. Their breath smelled foul, and they were as hungry for his blood as was Taungar.

Konrad was gagged; he was held as if in shackles from head to foot; he had no weapon; he was surrounded by beastmen—beastmen who seemed to be members of the Empire’s elite military battalion; and he could feel the heat from the blazing coaching inn searing his skin. The heat did not seem to bother his captors, protected by their armour and their bestial hides, and it was too late to make any difference to Taungar.

It seemed that Taungar had been the only one to escape from the ruins of Zuntermein’s heathen church. Did he plan to take his vengeance in a similar manner, by burning Konrad alive? Was that why he had ordered the tavern to be torched, so that it would be where Konrad’s living body was cremated? But Taungar had threatened a slow death, and it was only when they talked of maiming and murder that Chaos cultists were likely to be speaking truthfully.

All Konrad could do was hope that his two captors would slacken their grip for a moment. Each of them was taller and heavier than he, they were armoured and armed. When the other two returned from burning down the tavern, the odds would be insuperable. But he was held so tightly it seemed that if they should grip a fraction harder, his flesh would tear and his bones snap.

“Plann-ed what to do if ev-er found you, Konrad,” whispered Taungar. “Had sso ma-ny i-de-ass…”

Konrad could only see the lower half of Taungar, and he saw him raise his sword, once again placing it under his hostage’s chin. He used it as a lever to raise Konrad’s head, knowing that he was conscious. They stared at each other, Taungar’s one remaining eye gazing out from the ruins of his face.

“Sstart with your eyess,” added Taungar, and his swordpoint was suddenly against the lower lid of Konrad’s left eye.

Konrad jerked his head back instinctively, and he was able to move it an inch or two before it became locked rigid by the gauntlet of one of the bullmen. The tip of the sword returned towards his left eye, this time aiming straight for the pupil. There was still blood on the sword, the blade glinted in the light from the fire—and Konrad realized that this was the last thing his left eye would ever see.

He tried to lean further back or to turn his head, but it was impossible. He closed both his eyes, tensing himself for the inevitable pain as his eyeball became skewered upon Taungar’s sword.

Then suddenly his head snapped back and around, he felt the blade slice across the side of his face, cutting through the flesh, scraping his cheek bone, and he was half-falling…

Only half, because one of his captors was still restraining him—but the other had let go, crying out in agony as he released Konrad.

Konrad opened his eyes and saw Taungar looking past him, but without hesitating he spun around and drove his right fist into the bovine face of the cultist who still clung to his left arm. The other beastman was writhing on the ground, screaming—dying. Under the impact of Konrad’s blow, the second one staggered back a pace, and a moment later he also howled in mortal agony as he was attacked from behind.

Dodging aside as Taungar rushed forward, Konrad pulled the gag from his mouth, glanced back and saw the dark shape of an armoured figure behind him. The figure wore black armour, carried a black sword with which he had despatched Konrad’s captors, and his black helmet was forged into the shape of an animal’s head, the head of a…

Wolf!

“I want him!” Konrad yelled, as the black knight levelled his sword to impale Taungar.

Wolf sidestepped, and Taungar lurched past him. Konrad seized one of the dying beastmen’s swords, and Taungar turned to face him. The bull-thing who had been tending the one Konrad had earlier wounded raced at Wolf, and Wolf engaged the creature in combat.

Taungar and Konrad gazed at each other. Taungar raised his sword vertically in front of his face in a duelling salute, and Konrad did the same.

“When did you become a slave to Chaos?” he asked.

Taungar slowly shook his deformed head, and made an ugly choking noise at the back of his throat—it was the nearest sound he could make to a laugh.

“Sslave? Ne-ver! Be-came free in Praag. Thought wass dead, but made rea-lly a-live.”

“You won’t be alive for long!”

They lowered their swords, crossing them, and the two Imperial guard blades touched lightly for a moment—and then the battle to the death began.

Konrad pressed hard, wanting to finish off his opponent swiftly. The advantage should have been with him. He was fit, whereas Taungar’s body had been twisted and bent by the conflagration. But Taungar was an expert swordsman, making up in experience what he lacked in agility. It was his combat skills which had kept him alive long enough to become a veteran trooper—but it was his allegiance to Chaos which had kept him alive more recently.

Taungar was also wearing armour, and that protected him from most of Konrad’s thrusts. Konrad, however, had to spring back out of range whenever the sergeant’s blade avoided his defence. If he were hit, he would be done for. Already he was losing blood from his neck, his scalp, his cheek.

The swords rang together, and there were echoing clashes from the blades of the other two combatants several yards away. Then there came an agonized cry, an agonized bestial cry, and Wolf’s enemy was down, its ululating howl a mourning lament for its own imminent death. Wolf left his enemy bleeding and kicking and writhing, then went to finish off the beastman that Konrad had earlier wounded. The creature tried to rise, but all it could do was attempt to crawl away. It did not get far.

And still Konrad could not overcome his own opponent. Even with one eye, Taungar was able to accurately judge the strokes which were aimed at him, parrying and then counter-attacking. His senses were more than human, although he had become less than human, and it was the malignant powers within him which granted the sergeant such strength.

Each fought with only a sword, neither carried a shield. The two beastmen that Wolf first slew both had an Imperial guard blade, one of which Konrad now wielded. That meant there was another weapon lying near. He backed towards the corpses, and Taungar drove him so hard that he stumbled against the first of the bodies, almost falling. Taungar’s blade sliced through the air, and Konrad avoided decapitation by but a moment. He bent down, seized the other sword, then twisted around and came up facing Taungar once more.

He held the new blade in his left hand, keeping it behind his back, and continued to fight with the one in his right. When Taungar next lunged forward, Konrad caught the sword with his own, and the blade slid down onto his quillons. He forced his enemy’s arm away, further and further to one side.

Then he struck with the second sword, driving it straight into Taungar’s only eye, through into his brain and out from the back of his skull.

Taungar’s jaws opened, but before he could scream his mouth was full of blood, which silenced him forever. Konrad pushed his left hand forward a little more, released the sword hilt, and Taungar fell backwards.

Konrad stared around. All the other beastmen lay stretched out on the ground, their bodies illuminated by the blazing tavern. Wolf had slain them all—if it was Wolf.

It could have been someone else within the black armour. Although he was apparently an ally who had come to Konrad’s aid, that meant little. As well as being the enemy of those he had defeated, he may still have been Konrad’s foe.

The black figure stabbed his sword into the ground.

“Clean that,” he said—and it was indeed Wolf.

He pulled off his helmet, and Konrad saw the face of the man who had been his master but had become his friend. His white hair and beard were still cropped short, and there could be no changing the sharpened teeth or the black tattoos which made his face look like the animal he was named after.

“There are two more inside,” said Konrad, lowering his own sword and wiping at the blood which covered half his face. He turned towards the burning coach inn. Flames erupted from every window, from each doorway.

“I know,” said Wolf. “And they won’t be coming out.”

They would not be the only ones who did not emerge, Konrad realized, as he moved quickly back to avoid a piece of blazing timber which came crashing down near where he had been standing. The tavern had become a roaring inferno.

The thatched roof was burning fiercely and suddenly most of it collapsed. Konrad hoped that the girls had escaped through the roof; no one who had remained in the loft space beneath could possibly have survived. The whole inn had become rapidly transformed into one huge mass of burning firewood.

“Clean that,” Wolf repeated. “You owe me two days.”

“And are you going to demand another five years for saving my life this time?” asked Konrad, as he picked up the black sword.

“If I asked you for five years each time I rescued you, you’d be serving me for all eternity.” Wolf shook his head in mock bewilderment. “I can’t understand how you’ve survived all these months without me.”

When Wolf had fought and killed Otto Krieshmier and saved Konrad from being hung, Konrad had agreed to serve the mercenary as his squire for exactly five years. That time had almost expired when he left the injured Wolf in Anvila’s care and went in search of the bronze warrior. He did not mention that he had saved Wolf’s life a short time before that, freeing him from the goblin swarm that had taken him prisoner, because Wolf knew it full well.

“How did you find me?” asked Konrad.

Wolf shrugged. “Chance,” he said.

“There’s no such thing as—” Konrad began, but then he noticed that Wolf was grinning, showing his sharpened teeth.

Konrad wiped the black blade clean on the cloak of one of the beastmen, while Wolf vanished in the darkness. When he returned, he was riding a black steed and leading a packhorse.

The former must have been the replacement for Midnight, his white stallion which had been killed by the goblins who had taken him captive.

“Let’s go,” said Wolf, accepting his blade and sheathing it.

Konrad was tempted to ask Where? Instead he went in search of a mount for himself.

He had always been warned against touching enemy weapons, because they had absorbed traces of corruption from their previous owners. It was only recently that Konrad had become aware this meant the taint of Chaos—the word had been unfamiliar to him, although its insidious effects were not—but he was already one of the damned and so it was too late.

The first time he had held such a weapon was when he had returned to his village, or where his village had been, soon after the place had been annihilated. A trio of crimson and gold creatures had swooped down upon him and Wolf, and he had forced one of them to drop its sword. When he picked it up, Konrad had felt a surge of power flow through his whole body. He had touched many inhuman weapons since, but never again sensed such latent potency.

The sword with which he had fought Taungar felt like any other sword. He examined it, thinking of the beastman to whom it had belonged. Could that creature really have been a member of the Imperial guard? How many of the elite force had been similarly corrupted by the foul influence of Chaos? How many of them served Slaanesh instead of the Emperor?

And what of all the other military forces within Altdorf? Had they been similarly subverted? From the city watch, up through the Reikland army and all the other Imperial regiments, which of them could be trusted? How many owed their loyalty to the Emperor—and how many to the perverted powers of darkness?

Taungar was a member of the Imperial bodyguard, but he was a traitor, one of the damned. Konrad now realized why the sergeant had been unconcerned to hear of Gaxar’s plot to replace Karl-Franz with an impostor. Although he had thought that the threat to the Emperor must have ended with the grey seer’s death, that was not necessarily so. Skullface still lived. He had been with Gaxar, and he must have been intimately involved with the diabolic scheme.

Konrad took a scabbard and sheathed the sword. He did not bother with any of the armour—the bronze suit was too close in his memory and he did not wish to be reminded how he had been trapped. He managed to find his own dagger, then approached one of the horses which had not fled very far from the fire, took its reins and climbed into the saddle.

Wolf said nothing about Konrad’s steed or his armament. He passed him the packhorse’s leading rein, and Konrad followed the mercenary through the dark and silent village.

All the doors were locked, the windows shuttered, the inhabitants hiding away in total terror from the devastating eruption of violence which had invaded their tranquil lives.

As they rode away, Konrad glanced back at the tavern. The flames were no longer so fierce; there was not much left to burn. By dawn, all that remained would be charred embers and a few blackened bones amongst the smouldering ashes.

Wolf also looked over his shoulder at the blaze.

“Pity,” he said. “That was the only place to get a drink for miles.”

 

“I saw them on the road halfway between here and Altdorf,” said Wolf. They were next to another fire, but one which Konrad had lit to keep them warm during the last long hours of darkness. “And I decided to follow and find out what they were up to. Then I saw you.”

“What were you doing on that road?” asked Konrad.

Wolf stared at the fire, and finally he said: “I was in the capital, then I left. I could have taken any road, but that was the one I chose. Or maybe it was chosen for me.” He kept gazing into the flames, then asked: “And you, Konrad, what have you been doing since the first day of summer?”

Konrad shrugged, not knowing where to begin, not even knowing how much he wanted to tell Wolf. There was much that he would never reveal to anyone. Apart from Elyssa, Wolf had been the most important person in his life; but so much had happened to Konrad since they had gone their different ways that Wolf seemed almost a stranger.

“I saw the bronze warrior,” said Konrad. “Did Anvila tell you that?”

Wolf nodded.

“I’d last seen him five years previously, five years exactly. That was the day before my village was wiped out by a horde of beast-men. The day after I saw him in Kislev, the mine was destroyed by an army of outlanders.”

In the gloom, Wolf nodded again. “Did you find him?”

“He’d gone by the time I was down from the mountains.” That was true, but it was also true that Konrad had found the bronze warrior some time later. He did not mention that yet, and he did not know whether he would. “You once told me he was your brother, your twin brother, and you said he was worse than dead. A creature of Chaos?”

“That’s right.”

“How did it happen?”

Wolf said nothing for a while. He continued staring into the flames of the campfire, and Konrad thought that he was not going to answer, but then he began to speak.

“I was the eldest, by a few minutes. We were physically identical, although my hair was white and Jurgen’s was black; but in every other way we were complete opposites. We may have started off alike, but Jurgen became… different. His interest in sorcery and the black arts led to his corruption. He came to believe that he was only half a person, that he would not be complete until he destroyed me and absorbed all of my being. He was convinced that when he killed me, it must be by force of arms, not by magic. He created the bronze armour to wear when we fought. But… it didn’t happen like that.”

Wolf became silent once more, and Konrad wondered if he had ever admitted this to anyone else. He was still staring into the flames, but his eyes were focused far away—upon a part of his life which was long gone.

“Betrayed by the person closest to you,” Konrad said softly, remembering something Wolf had said soon after they first met, but Wolf either did not hear or pretended not to.

Konrad wondered about Wolf’s own armour, the black metal suit which he had worn for so long. The heavy black sword was the same one he had carried over half a decade ago; the black shield which bore no emblem was the same. Few weapons lasted that long, because the blood of beastmen and their foul allies acted like acid, rusting metal and causing it to weaken and decay. Wolf’s sword had caused much blood to flow, but there was still no trace of damage to the blade. Was there some connection between the bronze armour and the black? The former had contained warpstone—but the latter…?

If it had been anyone else but Wolf, Konrad would have suspected that some magical process had been used during the fabrication of the black armour. But Wolf had always hated magic and magicians, and possibly that hatred had originated with his twin brother’s treachery.

It was Jurgen von Neuwald who had constructed the bronze armour, and Litzenreich who had dismantled it. Wolf’s brother and the Middenheim magician: another strand. The more Konrad knew, the more complex the web which held him became.

The bronze armour must have devoured Jurgen, leeching his lifeforce in exactly the same way that it had begun to consume Konrad. As well as Jurgen and Konrad, the Chaos armour must have had many other wearers, all of whom had been similarly sucked dry. Jurgen was the first, Konrad the last.

Konrad waited for Wolf to continue, but the only sound was the crackle of burning firewood and the distant cry of an owl in the forest. In the silence, he touched the bandage around his neck. The blood was now dry, the wound had begun to close up, and so he loosened the strip of cotton slightly. His scalp and cheek were similarly swathed with pieces of fabric.

At one time, Konrad would have been worried that he might die from the poisoned touch of a marauder’s blade. A seemingly harmless cut could lead to an agonizing death, as if bitten by a venomous snake. But he had been wounded so frequently over the years, and always recovered, that by the time he left the frontier he was no longer concerned by such injuries. It was possible that one might die in such a painful fashion, if a minor wound grew worse instead of better, but not probable.

For a moment, Konrad thought of Taungar and what had happened to him. The sergeant had mentioned how he almost died during the Siege of Praag; instead he had become a creature of Chaos. Was that what sometimes happened to warriors who fought against the northern invaders? They became infected by the corruption all around them. Perhaps a wound might not lead to death but instead cause transformation, exactly as the bite of a vampire could kill but also create another such being. This might be one method by which the legions of damnation increased their numbers, recruiting from the very forces who strived to throw them back into the infernal regions whence they had been spawned.

In a few brief sentences, Wolf had revealed more of his early life that he had done during the five years Konrad had served him. He continued gazing into his past, although it seemed that he would say nothing else about his brother, the first warrior in bronze; but Konrad had more questions.

“When we first met,” he said, “I was carrying a quiver made from rippled black hide. Remember?”

He thought that Wolf had not heard, but after a few seconds he shook his head.

“It bore a golden crest,” Konrad continued. “A mailed fist between a pair of crossed arrows. I asked if you recognized the emblem. You denied it, but I could tell it seemed familiar to you.”

“Yes,” said Wolf, after a few more seconds, “I do remember. I had seen the coat of arms before. It was on a shield.”

A shield! The shield which now belonged to the skaven Konrad had named Silver Eye. Yet another strand in the web…

“Whose shield?” Konrad demanded.

There was more silence, until Wolf said: “An enemy, an enemy who could have slain me but instead spared my life.”

“Who?”

This must have been the person who had originally owned the bow and arrows Elyssa had given to Konrad. And this was yet another strand, he realized, which linked Wolf to Elyssa.

“An elf,” said Wolf.

“An elf?” That would explain what Konrad had been told at the College of Heraldry: the enigmatic coat of arms was not human.

“We were enemies. He could have killed me. He didn’t.”

“How long ago?”

“Twenty years.” Wolf nodded slowly, as though counting each of the passing years. “Or more.”

“Where?”

“Middenheim way.”

Could this indeed be the answer to Elyssa’s past? That her father had been an elf? That the weapons she gave to Konrad had unknowingly belonged to her true father?

“Near where we met?” asked Konrad.

“Possibly.”

“What happened to the elf, to his weapons?”

“I don’t know. I’d tried to forget all about him—until I saw you with the quiver.”

“What was the elf’s name?”

Wolf shrugged.

Konrad leaned back, staring up at the stars. It was a dark night now that Mannslieb had sunk below the horizon. The world’s greater moon was named after Manann, god of the seas. “Beloved of Manann” had been full tonight and would be so again in another twenty-five days. But Morrslieb was still high in the heavens, and its unnatural glow cast very little light upon the world below. Named after the god of death, Morr, its size was irregular and the sequence of its appearance unpredictable. Sometimes it was larger, sometimes smaller, and its shape seemed to change almost every night. One legend claimed that “Beloved of Morr” consisted entirely of warpstone. This was a common belief amongst Chaos worshippers, who held their blasphemous ceremonies whenever Morrslieb was at its greatest dimension. Kastring’s Khorne-worshipping cultists had sacrificed to the blood deity whenever the lesser moon was full. Tonight Morrslieb had been at its maximum, and Taungar’s Slaaneshi acolytes had come hunting for Konrad.

“What happened to Anvila?” asked Konrad, because the female dwarf seemed to be the one person who had no connection with anything else in his life.

“She spent days copying down all the runes in the temple we found,” said Wolf. “The goblins never came back, I’m glad to say. When I’d recovered enough to travel, we headed back down the mountain, found the horses you’d left for us, then returned to the mine. Or what was left of it. That was when we said farewell. Anvila made for the World’s Edge Mountains. She was returning to her university in Everpeak, Karaz-a-Karak as the dwarfs call it—‘The Eternal Way to the Pinnacle’. She wanted to write a book on her discoveries. I rode east, finally arriving in Altdorf. Things had changed since I was there last, and all for the worse. There was nothing for me in the capital, so I left. And here we are.”

The mercenary did not look much different from the day that he and Konrad had first encountered one another, although his face was more marked—with both the lines of age and the scars of combat.

“Was the Emperor back in Altdorf?” asked Konrad.

“He decided to winter in Talabheim, but there were stories of some romantic liaison being the real reason for him staying there. That was why he sent the Empress back to Altdorf, not because he was busy with matters of state. Some say he was having an affair with Arch Lector Aglim’s niece, some that it is Duchess Elise Kreiglitz-Untermensch herself who has claimed the Emperor’s affections, while others report that he spends every night in the temple of Sigmar—with a different priestess each time.”

Wolf laughed. “Sometimes I regret not having worn the velvet cloak. I would have made a wonderful courtier, spreading gossip and inventing rumours. But I suppose I would have missed out on so much else in life.” He reached inside his tunic, scratched himself, then drew out his hand. His index finger and thumb were pinched together. “But you get a better class of flea in the Imperial palace.”

“When he gets back to Altdorf, the Emperor will be killed and an impostor placed upon the Imperial throne.”

Wolf nodded as casually as if he had been told the time of day. He poked at the fire with a branch, then threw a few more sticks onto the blaze.

“How do you know?” he asked. “You’ve managed to avoid telling me anything about what has happened to you.”

“I left Kislev,” said Konrad, avoiding all mention of Kastring. “I went to Middenheim,” he continued, avoiding any reference to the bronze armour and Litzenreich. “I arrived in Altdorf,” he added, avoiding what he could have said about Gaxar and the skaven. “And I ended up here,” he concluded, avoiding everything else.

For the first time since they had begun speaking, Wolf looked directly at Konrad, although again it took a while before he spoke.

“You’re different,” he said. “Something has changed you. Despite everything that occurred in Praag, all the atrocities you must have witnessed, all the impossible creatures you must have fought, you weren’t like this when you returned from the siege. That can only mean something far, far worse must have happened to you since we parted. There’s a darkness to your soul, Konrad.”

Konrad had never heard Wolf use such a phrase. Although he had professed to belong to the cult of Sigmar, and claimed once to have planned joining the Order of the Anvil, Wolf had never seemed very religious. In fact, Konrad had followed Wolf’s lead in paying little attention to prayer and worship.

Soldiers on the frontier between humanity and the hellish invaders had no time for religion, they were far more concerned with their own mortal survival than with spiritual existence.

“Chaos,” said Konrad. “That was the very last thing you said to me before I left the dwarf temple. What did you mean by that? It was a warning, but…”

Wolf yawned and stretched out his arms, then said: “Tomorrow we head for the Wasteland.”

“The Wasteland?”

“You will do as I say,” Wolf told him. “For the next two days at least. And if you have any sense, you will stay with me as long as necessary. I know now that you’re the one.”

“What one?”

“The one I must take. There’s someone you must meet, someone who can answer all your questions, someone who can tell what has really happened to you over the past months.”

Konrad stared at Wolf. Someone who could answer all his questions…?

As he gazed across the flickering flames of their campfire, Konrad realized that he and Wolf had more in common than previously. It was Jurgen von Neuwald’s armour and the warp-stone used to release him from within the bronze prison which had tainted Konrad; but long before then, Wolf had already been corrupted by the seductive kiss of Chaos.