EIGHT

Shadows of the Forest

“Out in the shaden wodespan, dwelt the murdrus beaste,
Vittalling on the sack-for-homes, gorge-laden with his feaste…
And noth there was that brave the woode,
Noth amidste the sword-handy and the goode.”

—From the nursery tale
of the Empire,
“Tomas Wanderer”

At first it appeared as if the village of Walderand was just like all the others Wilhelm Faustus and his followers had come upon since reaching the lands surrounding Wolfenburg. A settlement such as this one, lying as it did on the edge of the forest, should be alive with the sounds of bustling villagers, the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep and goats, the chop of the axe on wood, the sluicing of water drawn from the stream, the rumble of grinding millstones and the ringing of the blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil at the village forge. But there wasn’t a single sound of civilisation.

All that could be heard was the mournful croaking of black-winged carrion birds roosting in the treetops of the encroaching woodland and the babbling of the village brook, which to Wilhelm sounded more like a sinister whispering. It was as if unseen spirits were watching his warband’s progress and relaying what they saw to whatever was lurking in the depths of the forest.

It was high summer. No breeze blew, the air was still. But still the musky scent of the beast was carried to the warrior priest’s senses. The village nestled amongst low wooded hills within a shallow valley. The straggly edge of the Forest of Shadows stood on the far side of the incline to the east of Walderand, beyond the boundary of outward-pointing sharpened stakes.

Lector Wilhelm Faustus and his growing entourage had reached Wolfenburg, but they were already too late, and soon realised the futility of their enterprise. The awaited fearsome enemy, the hosts of the Northland tribes, had descended on the city and laid siege to it. The numbers of the enemy forces were terrible to behold: bow-trained horsemen, marauding foot soldiers, siege weapons of ancient magnitude, gigantic champions clad in cruelly-barbed plate mail, smoky-breathed warhorses and worse things too.

They had looked down on the grey sprawl of the city, held in check within its ancient solid curtain wall, and seen the Northern tribesmen disfiguring the landscape with their mere presence. Where the barbarians had made camp, the lush green meadows had become marred, black, brown and grey by the corrupting influence that followed in their wake.

Although his entourage had been growing steadily ever since he left Steinbrucke until it numbered somewhere in the region of fifty good souls, Wilhelm did not consider them ready to face the savage, blood-crazed warriors of the North. Wilhelm’s followers were not trained fighters and many were no longer in the prime of life, either due to ill health or old age, and there were only so many visions of hell that the common man could endure before his mind fractured under the sheer horror of it all.

With every village, country estate or hamlet they visited, with every victory Wilhelm claimed in Sigmar’s name, the numbers of his followers grew. The desperate, the distressed, the dispossessed, the penitent and the pious; they were all drawn to his cause, until the wandering band of holy servants of Sigmar had become comparable in size to that of a free company. It was a small army of flagellants, zealots and fanatics.

Wilhelm caught another whiff of the musky animal scent. He thought it likely that the population of Walderand had either fled or been massacred in their homes, just as they had in a dozen or so other places he had encountered already. Clicking his tongue, the warrior priest resumed his ride towards the heart of the village.

It was then that he heard the pitiful, plaintive cries. He only had to ride a little further to discover what had befallen the people of Walderand.

The villagers had been penned inside a stockade corral of sharpened tree-posts four spans high as if they were cattle. The people looked haggard and dishevelled, as if the fight had been beaten out of them. None of them seemed in any fit state to attempt a breakout either—how long had they been kept penned up like this?

There was indeed a very good reason why none of them had attempted to break out.

Standing outside the corral were two ugly, inhuman brutes. Each was at least a head taller than the warrior priest who was considered tall amongst other men. Their bodies were covered with matted fur, and caked in mud and dung. They had broad barrel chests and their strong arms were corded with muscle. They stood on backward-jointed legs that looked like the hindquarters of stags, and their feet were cloven hooves. Their loins were covered by scraps of cloth and torn chainmail and around their necks clattered necklaces of human bones. Each creature held a brutal-looking weapon: one a broad-bladed axe and the other a great gutting pallasz. Rising from their thick bull necks were blunt-snouted goat-like heads, with curling horns above their caprine skulls.

Wilhelm Faustus knew these children of Chaos for what they were. He had dealt with their kind many times in the past. These were beastmen, and he knew how to deal with them.

On seeing the ugly, malformed brutes parading before him in bestial arrogance, reason left the lector priest for a moment.

He gave a shout of, “In Sigmar’s name!” and kicked Kreuz into a gallop, charging straight towards the foe. He held his steed’s reins tightly in his right hand, along with his battered shield and swung his warhammer into a more comfortable position in his left. The muscles of his arm bulged, but the priest wasn’t aware of the strain. He kept his body in the peak of fitness in order to serve the Heldenhammer.

Hearing Wilhelm’s shout the two beastmen immediately turned their beady, animal eyes on him. They grunted and huffed at one another, the noises like those of swine or cattle. Hefting their own weapons they stepped forward to face his charge. These were not creatures to shy away from a challenge.

As he drew closer to the beasts, Wilhelm picked out distinctive differences between the two. The one to his left had an eight-pointed star rune described by scars cut into the flesh of his torso. It stood out now, knotted and black. The second, to his right, had four rams’ horns curling from its brutish head rather than two, like its fellow.

The Chaos-rune marked beast ran forward, raising its axe as if to take Wilhelm’s warhorse down with a slashing cut from the knock-edged weapon. Kreuz whinnied wildly and reared up on his hind legs. The priest held on with his hand tight on the reins, gripping his steed’s sides tightly between his thighs. At the same time he brought his hammer round in a circle and smashed the beastman’s axe away.

The animal snarled and stumbled sideways, unbalanced by the priest’s resounding blow. It howled as Kreuz’s sharp-edged, iron-shod hooves came down on its back as it turned, trying to regain its balance. Chaos-scar stumbled further away.

Wilhelm could hear the eager shouts of his entourage as they too charged into the village, following his lead. Leaving the bolder of the beast guards to the zealots, Wilhelm charged his steed towards the second brutish savage.

Four-horns might not have been so bold as Chaos-scar but neither was it so brash. As the priest galloped towards it, the beastman deftly sidestepped, delaying its two-handed thrust with its pallasz until Wilhelm was already half past the creature’s position. Wilhelm had to suddenly defend himself with his shield, bracing himself against the blow. The heavy pallasz rang on the battered metal of the shield but Wilhelm kept his seat in the saddle.

Before four-horns could raise its weapon fully again, Wilhelm swung Kreuz round so that the beastman was now on his left-hand side. He brought the warhammer down with a mighty swing and caught the beast a glancing blow with the edge of the hammer’s head, tearing open the muscle of its calf. Four-horns gave a guttural bark and lurched sideways.

The beastman rammed into the priest’s horse with its shoulder causing Kreuz to take several faltering steps to his right. But the warhorse was strong too. Kreuz retaliated by swinging his chainmail barded head at four-horns. It was obvious that the beastman had not been expecting such a reprisal. It reeled away, bringing it within open range of Wilhelm’s hammer again.

The priest and his warhorse made a formidable team, as many a foe had found out to their cost, just before they died.

The lector struck again. He heard the crack of bones breaking as his hammer struck the beastman’s shoulder. Blood spurted and the beastman howled.

Wilhelm struck again.

This time the brute went down on one knee. The warrior priest’s blow had shattered the bones of its elongated ankle. White splinters could be seen through the ragged red of its ruptured flesh as the broken bone burst through the skin.

The avenging Sigmarite struck once more. The flat head of his warhammer slammed into the upturned snout of the creature, smashing the shattered bones of its skull back into its brain. The beastman collapsed to the ground and lay motionless, face down in an expanding pool of its own dark blood.

Certain that the beast was dead, Wilhelm looked back to where a group of his followers had fallen on Chaos-scar and were hacking the dying creature apart with spear and sword.

Pride swelled in the warrior priest at the sight. Sigmar’s work had certainly been done here today.

In the few minutes that Wilhelm fought the beast guards, the broken villagers had remained silent, too shocked and stunned to do anything else. Now that the battle was over, however, and they saw the small army following in the warrior priest’s wake, the imprisoned villagers broke out into an excited chattering, many offering up prayers of thanks to Sigmar and his wrathful prophet.

Amongst all the clamour Wilhelm caught snatches of other phrases being called out by the villagers: words that sounded suspiciously like “trap” and “ambush”.

“Release them,” Wilhelm instructed, indicating the penned people. “Find them something to eat and drink and have those skilled at healing tend any who are injured.”

With the help of Walderand’s villagers, the priest’s entourage began to dismantle the stockade. Wilhelm dismounted as the first of the prisoners was released. The stick-limbed man stumbled over to him in a state of anxiety.

“Thank Sigmar, you found us in time!” he said, grabbing the warrior priest’s gauntleted hand and shaking it vigorously in a double-handed grip.

“I thank Sigmar for that too,” the priest boomed.

Wilhelm looked over the man’s shoulder to see how the others were faring after their ordeal. Then he sharply turned back to the man still shaking his hand.

“You must get out of here!”

“What do you mean? And what did you mean by ‘in time’?”

“Before the others return. You have walked right into their trap!”

“Sigmar’s bones!” the priest cursed, leaping back into the saddle. How could he have been so foolish? “Arm yourselves!” he bellowed both to his entourage and to the villagers. “This isn’t over yet!”

And then he heard it: a clattering of metal, accompanied by a braying cry and the crash of splintering wood.

The beastman herd emerged from the straggly edge of the forest banging their weapons against crude, skin-drawn shields. Wilhelm and his entourage, hurriedly forming up into ranks, could see the beasts quite clearly, as they pawed the ground at the top of the slope.

Wilhelm reckoned there were almost as many beastmen among the tribe as there were men in his party. Every one of them, even the more human-seeming creatures with only small stumps of horns protruding from their thick, overhanging brows, would be more than a match for one of the Emperor’s trained soldiers. Many of Wilhelm’s holy entourage were not trained soldiers. He would simply have to pray that their holy zeal would take them to victory, for how could the warped and twisted parodies born of Chaos conquer an army of the warrior god Sigmar?

“Prepare for battle!” Wilhelm shouted to the army amassed behind him. “Look to the Heldenhammer for your strength and courage and we cannot fail!”

Wilhelm saw a goat-headed creature in the front line of the enemy horde put a long, curling horn to its malformed lips. The vibrating, mournful note it produced resounded across the field of battle now formed between the two sides. A roar went up from the herd and the beastmen advanced en masse.

Now Wilhelm understood why the villagers had been corralled within Walderand, and the reason for the two lone guards. His progress had been watched. The villagers had been bait, their guards a mere distraction. And Wilhelm had been duped. Animal cunning had won out over human intelligence.

The beastmen surged towards Walderand like a crimson tide; the creatures’ hides a ruddy-brown colour, their horns daubed with blood and red ochre. The one creature that stood apart was a colossal, dark-skinned monstrosity. It was fully three spans tall and its dye-stained horns rose to another span above that. This creature was obviously a champion among its kind, a wargor, marked out for greatness by the Dark Gods in whose unspeakable names it slaughtered and maimed. In its hands it held what looked like the broken axle of a chariot, with a long curving blade attached to the hub of the now broken wheel.

The champion gave a guttural bellow which could be felt as much as heard over the whooping and braying of the herd. It vibrated in Wilhelm’s belly. The beastmen broke into a canter. The herd’s vanguard reached the staked defences as Wilhelm’s own force moved forwards. Several of the more human-looking creatures hurdled the village’s defences, landing amidst the holy entourage. The battle had begun.

Wilhelm swung his hammer and broke the neck of an ape-snouted creature that lunged at him. As he continued the swing, ready for his next strike, he lashed out at another of the mutants with the edge of his shield. The creature fell back, a deep red gash opened across its ribs. The crude spear it had thrust at the priest fell to the ground, and the ungor fell beneath the trampling hooves of a larger, longer horned gor.

The beastmen fell on the weaker humans in a frenzy of savage bloodlust.

The men of the lector’s troop and some of the villagers too, fought back admirably, but it was clear who had the advantage. The beastmen had been raised to fight from birth. It was central to their existence. If they weren’t fighting the people of the Empire, or raiding from their forest lairs, they were battling other tribes for the best hunting grounds, or even fighting amongst themselves to maintain the hierarchical structure of the tribe. And whilst the humans’ weapons were, on the whole more refined and better engineered than those of the herd, the beasts didn’t need to rely on weapons alone. They used their horns, their claws, their hooves or their teeth.

A wargor sank its filthy fangs into a flail-wielding zealot’s arm. The man screamed and dropped his weapon, only seconds before the monster tore the man’s arm out of its socket in a great gout of blood, and a sharp jerk of its head.

Another beast put its head down and charged a greatsword who had joined Wilhelm’s wandering crusade outside Haargen. The soldier hacked at the gor with his blade but it simply scraped off the hard prongs of the creature’s horns. These same horns then impaled his stomach. The beast shook its strong neck and the greatsword’s midriff was torn open, the purple cords of his entrails spilling free in a torrent of blood.

Cries of anger and dismay suddenly went up from a group of flagellants as a crude rattling chariot charged across the battlefield at breakneck speed. Resembling nothing more than several large pieces of lumber nailed and strapped together, it was drawn by two hulking creatures that looked like wild boars mutated into huge horned and tusked monsters.

The tuskgors—for that was the name these warped animals were known by—ploughed through the ranks of the Sigmarite army, dragging the shaking chariot behind them. They crushed any who got in the way of their heavy hooves or the iron-banded wheels of the wheeled platform they hauled.

One man was impaled on the horns of one of the tuskgors and then tossed high into the air as it threw its head back. The unfortunate wretch landed amidst a pack of ravening, battle-frenzied ungors that proceeded to tear him limb from limb.

Smashing another beast-creature to the ground with his now flame-wreathed warhammer, Wilhelm took stock of the battle. What his men lacked in formal weapon training they made up for in sheer zealous aggression and determination.

Close by a man was whimpering, half his face was hanging off as he had been dealt a vicious blow by a cleaver-weapon. The human fighters were being cut down by axes and huge gutting knives. Arterial blood was fountaining into the air from stumps of limbs and half-severed necks. Something that might once have been either a wolf or a wild dog took down a half-armoured flagellant and tore off his head with distended, crushing jaws.

The priest knew that he had to do something or the battle would be lost. He kicked out, and planted his foot in the pug-face of one of the lesser beastmen, booting it aside. He turned Kreuz towards the beastman champion that was cutting a bloody swathe through the ranks of his army.

The shaggy-haired, goat-headed abomination wore the curve-horned skull of another of its kind on the belt about its waist. No doubt the skull had belonged to a rival this monster had bested in combat to become the wargor champion. However, the goat skull was not only a sign of the beastman’s status, it could also be used as a weapon.

As Wilhelm bore down on the beast the creature thrust itself towards an unfortunate halberdier, taking the man’s eye out and ripping off half of his face. At the same time he beheaded the man behind with the blade of his chariot axle.

“Against the children of Chaos we trust in the light of Lord Sigmar!” the warrior priest exclaimed and, with the holy power of the Heldenhammer surging through his every fibre, he struck the champion’s weapon a ringing blow. What was left of the axle shaft splintered in two and was knocked from the monster’s grip.

The wargor grunted but before it could react Wilhelm had struck again. A flash of light burst from the head of his hammer as he did so and the beast howled in pain as the searing golden glare blinded it. As the creature flailed with its filthy talons in front of its face, Wilhelm struck again and again.

Neighing wildly, Kreuz reared up on his hind legs and crashed his hooves down upon the great barrel chest of the beast. The wargor stumbled backwards and toppled over completely. There was a sickening crunch, like a pumpkin being pronged by a pitchfork, and the tips of sharpened stakes burst through the creature’s face and torso.

Wilhelm had not realised how close to the outskirts of the village his charge had taken him. The blinded beastman had been driven back onto the staked defences erected on Walderand’s outskirts.

A howl went up from the nearest beastmen that was soon taken up by the rest of the herd. Their champion was down, slaughtered like a beast in an abattoir. It was just the breakthrough Wilhelm’s entourage needed.

The herd broke apart in panic, turning from the battle and bounding back to the cover of the darkly brooding woodland. At first only the ungors fled from the battle. Then their larger cousins, seeing their numbers dwindling against the increasingly incensed attacks of the humans, also turned tail and ran. Within moments the beastmen were gone, their hoots and brays echoing back through the trees to the ears of the victorious Sigmarites.

Lector Wilhelm Faustus’ victorious rabble were not prepared to leave it there.

“The enemy are in rout,” someone yelled.

“This is not over until we have run to ground every last one of the foul beasts,” a flagellant shouted.

“Not one of the twisted spawn must be left alive!” echoed another.

Paying little heed to the dead and dying who lay on the blood-soaked meadow, those still in a condition to fight followed the dwindling cries of the beastmen into the encroaching forest, straight into the beasts’ own territory.

“Sigmar’s teeth!” Wilhelm cursed, his breath coming in great heaving gasps after his exertions.

If he was to save what remained of his zealot army, the warrior priest knew what he had to do, even though the thought of such an action went against his better judgement. Pushing Kreuz to gallop once more, Wilhelm drove his steed up the slope and into the green gloom of the forest, the domain of the beastmen.

Beneath the trees it was as dark as dusk. Wilhelm left Walderand behind as he penetrated the twisted depths of the primeval forest in pursuit of his overzealous entourage and the beastmen. He could hear the shouts of the men who had sworn to follow him into battle against the hordes of evil receding into the distance.

Just for a moment Wilhelm Faustus wondered if he had been a little too hasty to pursue his men and the routed herd. Perhaps he had allowed his religious fervour to drive him to recklessness in his determination to purge the land of the children of Chaos. He had rushed headlong into the woods on the heels of his entourage just as they had raced after the fleeing beastmen. This was the beasts’ territory after all.

This was the Forest of Shadows, a vast expanse of ancient, untamed woodland. Legends and rumours abounded about the place, about what was supposed to lie within its haunted depths. There were tales of greenskins and mythical Chaos-warped leviathans of another age, along with stories of beastmen encampments and long-forgotten barrow mounds.

It seemed that the beasts had vanished after entering the twisted tangle of trees and dense undergrowth. The lector could no longer hear the sounds of the fleeing herd that had crashed through the undergrowth, hollering and braying.

Wilhelm abruptly reined Kreuz to a halt. He heard a rustling from somewhere in the darkened canopy above him and looked up.

A beastman came crashing down on him from the branches of the tree. The full weight of the feral creature collided with the priest, knocking him out of the saddle and onto the root-knotted ground. Panicked by the sudden attack, Kreuz bolted off into the trees.

Wilhelm tried to pick himself up as the beastman rolled aside, only to find himself surrounded by more of the degenerate creatures, ungors and their larger goat-headed cousins. The warrior priest reached for his holy weapon.

“Sigmar’s hammer!” he cursed, his voice booming between the twisted trees over the jeering snarls and whoops of the beasts.

Once again it seemed that brute cunning had won out over human courage and intelligence. He was surrounded and horribly outnumbered, in the territory of the herd, cut off from all other help.

Wilhelm began to form a prayer to Sigmar to call down his patron’s divine wrath upon the foe. He raised his consecrated weapon to smite the nearest of the animals.

He heard the crack of the spear-shaft striking the back of his head before he blacked out and then he was aware of nothing more.