SIGMARZEIT
The Corpse Takers

I have always wondered why it is that the living so fear the dead. Why do people fear the soulless cadavers? What reason can there be? Unless the dead have been given back some mocking semblance of life by a necromancer’s conjurations, what can they do? What danger can they possibly pose? How can they threaten a person of living, breathing flesh and blood?

And also, why do people fear body snatchers so? If they believe that their eternal souls go on to a better place after they die, what does it matter what happens to the rotting husk that was once their body? Why should they care?

The dead should not be feared for there is much the living can learn from them. It could be argued that if it were not for the resurrection men then medical science’s understanding of the human body and its ailments could not have advanced as far as it has. But then the same could be said of the necromantic arts.

But is the truth of it that society’s fear of those who despoil graves and desecrate charnel houses is born of their doubts regarding their supposed faith? Is it because they secretly do not believe what they are taught in temples and chapels throughout the principalities and provinces of the Empire? Is their fear really born of the failing that they really believe that there is nothing beyond this existence, except a horrific eternity in the grave, and anything that would disturb that would merely make that hellish non-existence infinitely worse?

The stagecoach rattled and rumbled through the encroaching Sigmarzeit night, the lanterns swinging at the corners of its roof beside the driver’s seat seeming to leave trails of flickering flame behind them in the deepening darkness. The driver, Gustav Haltung, was hunched over the reins, his travelling cloak wrapped tight about him, his wide-brimmed hat pulled down tightly over his head. The seasons might be on the turn again, but the nights still bore spring’s chill touch.

The coach sped along the rutted road between the shadows of trees encroaching on the track. It passed a roadside milestone that, if it had been light enough to see, the driver would have read in lichen-patterned carved gothic letters that there were only two miles remaining to Bögenhafen.

Gustav lashed the panting pair of horses with the reins and a shout of, “Yah!” The animals’ hooves drummed against the compacted surface of the road, beating their own tattoo in counterpoint to the creaks and groans of the carriage itself. They were on the home stretch and Gustav didn’t want anything befalling them now that they were so close to their destination.

He was eager to reach the safety of the town as quickly as possible. It didn’t do to be out after dark, if it could be helped, even in this pocket of civilisation of the Reikland. If it hadn’t have been for the pale, intense young man’s added incentive, he would have stopped at Vagenholt for the night and finished the last leg of the journey to Bögenhafen the next morning.

Beneath the driver’s position, a glimmer of lantern light escaped the inside of the carriage from between the thick, moth-eaten velvet drapes drawn shut across its windows, barely even hinting at the discomfort the customers of the Four Seasons Company might be suffering within.

The lantern hanging from the roof of the coach’s interior swung crazily as the vehicle bounced along the road, throwing wild shadows across the faces of the passengers.

Just as the last time he had travelled to Bögenhafen, Dieter was not the only passenger on board the stagecoach, although this time it was he who had paid the driver the tip to get them back to the town as quickly as possible. He had tarried too long in Hangenholz; he would be getting behind with his studies. Hence it was that rather than stop at the staging post hamlet, they had kept on into the encroaching dark towards Bögenhafen.

Sitting opposite Dieter was a man of law clutching a scratched and scuffed leather satchel, not unlike Dieter’s own battered scrip. The lawyer was well into middle age, his beard grey and teased to a point. He had apparently been summoned from Altdorf to defend a merchant accused of unnatural and debauched acts by the Templars of Sigmar.

Sitting next to Dieter was a man in his late twenties who appeared to be a collection of contradictions. He looked like he might very well have come from aristocratic stock but he travelled with the minimum of luggage and had no servant in attendance. He appeared to be a dandy for he wore the clothes of the latest fashion—a frill-wristed shirt, tightly fitting, gold-buttoned doublet, red velvet duelling cape, linen trousers and calfskin boots—but the blade he carried at his waist was a heavy, soldier’s sword and certainly no duelling rapier. The dandy wore his hair in a ponytail tied back with a ribbon and had a close-cropped, carefully-cultivated goatee beard, but his face bore the scars of a life lived at the rough end, on the borders of civilisation or even beyond them. He looked like he would be equally at ease within the Imperial court as he would be battling trolls at the World’s Edge Mountains.

Dieter had not ventured to discover any more about his fellow passengers beyond what little he had gleaned by their appearance and what information they had volunteered themselves. When the lawyer had asked the black-robed, pale young man with unkempt, raven-dark hair and an intense look in his eyes what his business was in Bögenhafen, Dieter had replied simply, and honestly, that he was a student of the physicians’ guild there. He had offered no more.

For the most part, Dieter was lost in his own thoughts as he tried to resolve the many different conflicting thoughts and feelings raging within him. It was still only twelve days since his father had died and Dieter was still in mourning—as much for his sister’s loss as for the hole that he felt had opened up inside him.

It had been three days since he had left Hangenholz and, with the second day of Sigmarzeit coming to an end, he was almost back in Bögenhafen where he could put behind him all that had happened over the last two weeks. For back in Bögenhafen he could pretend that nothing had happened at all.

Gustav peered into the night from beneath the brim of his hat. The walls of the town rose out of the darkness, black against the velvet blue of night, their battlements limned with moonlight.

Half a mile away to his right he thought he saw the orange flicker of lantern light, but in that direction there lay only the town cemetery. Perhaps Morr’s priest was working late this night, preparing another body for burial; there would certainly be a steady stream of townsfolk requiring his attentions and blessings before they made their final journey into Morr’s twilight kingdom.

Then, the gleam of metal on the road ahead of the coach. Two figures, both on foot, were standing in the middle of road. Gustav’s heart skipped a beat. But then a calm warmth passed through his agitated body. They were flagging the stagecoach down and, as the carriage neared them, Gustav could see that they were wearing the uniforms of Imperial roadwardens: armoured hauberks and visor-helms over leather jerkin and britches. Practically level with them now, he could also see that one of them was holding a warhammer casually over his shoulder. The other had an unsheathed sword in his right hand.

Gustav reined in the sweating horses. “Evening, officers,” he said, smiling nervously. “What can I do for you on a night like this?”

The squatter and sturdier of the two patrolmen, the one with the sword, sauntered up to the stagecoach and the driver’s position, whilst his companion approached from the other side, hefting the heavy hammer in both hands.

“I don’t know if it’s so much what you can do for us,” the roadwarden said in a lazy voice, “as what your passengers can do for us.”

It was only then that Gustav noticed how poorly fitting the wardens’ uniforms were and how tarnished, and ill-cared for, their armour.

“Driver, why have we stopped?” a voice came from inside the carriage. Gustav recognised it as the man of law’s.

“Now you just get down and don’t cause us any trouble and we’ll let you live.” The highwayman raised his sword and poked it at Gustav.

The coach driver glanced to his left at the taller of the two opportunist scoundrels who was getting closer to the carriage door on the other side.

“What sort of cargo are you carrying tonight then?” the talkative highwayman asked. His tone was unpleasantly jovial and he treated Gustav to a broken, gap-toothed smile. The tip of his sword never wavered from its position at his stomach.

Gustav said nothing in reply. Deep down he had known that he should have stopped at Vagenholt. He shouldn’t have travelled at night, not without an additional guard on the coach. He would be lucky to keep his job now, that was if he even escaped from this with his life. He needed to do something about the situation and quickly.

“Why don’t we just take a little look, eh?” The more gangly of the highwaymen snickered and, adjusting his grip on the hammer, put a hand to the handle of the carriage door.

Dieter turned his head to the left as all inside the carriage heard the door open. The dandy, who was closest to that side of the carriage, put a hand to the sword sheathed at his side.

The door was opened fully and the ugly, stubble-bristled face of a roadwarden appeared in the space beyond.

“Well, well, what have we here?” the patrolman slurred.

“Look here, what’s going on?” the lawyer demanded.

Dieter wasn’t able to answer that question but there was certainly something not quite right about this roadwarden patrol, they could all sense the wrongness of it.

“Ambush!” the driver’s voice came down from the roof of the carriage above them, confirming all their suspicions.

Then several things happened very quickly, within seconds of each other.

Without saying a word the gentleman swordsman was suddenly out of his seat. He grabbed the carriage door with both hands and yanked it shut. Startled, the roadwarden himself let go and stumbled forwards, the weight of the warhammer in his other hand helping to unbalance him.

An instant later, the soldier of fortune forced the door open again, ramming it directly into their would-be robber’s face. Dieter thought he heard a crack as the man’s nose broke.

There was a shout of “Yah!” and the pistol-crack of leather reins being cracked.

The swordsman was half through the door, ready to finish the idiot highwayman, when the carriage lurched forward again, the horses neighing in distress. Wrong-footed and sent off balance himself, sword now in hand, the man fell headlong out onto the road.

The lawyer gasped and leant forward as if to help the other. Dieter, who was already half out of his seat, fell backwards, his elbow hitting the door handle behind him and pushing it down. That door then opened too and Dieter tumbled backwards out of the coach. Fortunately for him he landed on the soft verge at the edge of the road, rather than the harder, stonier surface of the highway itself.

His scrip, which he still clutched reassuringly to himself, came with him. Dieter rolled over amidst thick tufts of grass, wet with night-dew, ending up almost on his knees. The turf was soft beneath his feet and hands as he pushed himself up into a crouch.

The coach rumbled away down the road before coming to an abrupt halt again. Slowly and yet with the inevitability of a felled tree, the coach driver toppled out of his seat and crashed onto the road; doing nothing to break his fall. He lay there motionless. The sword-wielding brigand was still standing where the coach had been moments before, his blade now held at his side as if he had just made a thrust with it, looking at his victim’s body.

Dieter knew that the driver was dead. Having goaded the horses forward to get the stagecoach and its passengers away from the bogus roadwardens, the highwayman had lunged at the driver, managing to deliver a fatal blow. And then, just like that, the poor wretch was dead. The driver’s brave attempt at facilitating an escape had resulted in his own premature death.

Dieter could hear the lawyer, still inside the carriage, yelping in fear and panic. The bandit could hear him too. He jogged over to the now stationary coach and then disappeared from view as he climbed on board. Dieter heard loud protests followed by an angry muffled exchange, which finished abruptly with a chilling womanly scream. Dieter closed his eyes tight, a cold chill seeping through his body, biting his own tongue to stop himself crying out in terror as well. The killer had added another coldblooded murder to his list of crimes.

The terrified physician’s apprentice opened his eyes again. If he kept them shut for too long it could spell his own end. A ragged shroud of cloud moved away from the face of the moon Mannslieb, bathing the scene on the road in its unearthly, silvery light.

Across the road from him, Dieter could see the swordsman sprawled in the dirt. The leaner bandit wobbled over him, blood pouring in a thick dribble from his nose, still unsteady on his feet, reeling from the blow to the face he had received. The dandy swordsman appeared to be injured as well. He was having trouble moving one leg—had he twisted his knee, or sprained it?—and couldn’t get to his feet. At the same time he was trying to bring his sword to bear, to defend himself as the brigand was still managing to raise the hammer above his head, ready to strike.

Dieter froze, laying himself flat in the long wet grass at the side of the road. No matter how skilled at arms he might be with his sword or how many foes and horrors he might have bested in his life, an unhappy accident and cruel fate were going to bring about his demise. The only one who could do anything to help him now was him, and he was too terrified to do anything.

The hammer crashed down. Dieter heard the sickening crunch quite clearly.

The cry the swordsman gave out was like that of a wounded animal rather than a sound that Dieter would have thought a human being was capable of making.

Dieter felt his gorge rise in his mouth. He swallowed hard, trying to keep the contents of his stomach down. The swordsman rolled over onto his back, holding up the broken mess of his sword arm, the hand flopped backwards, the fingers twitching spasmodically. The man’s sword lay on the road out of reach, useless.

The hammer descended again. The man’s cries were cut off.

Adrenaline suddenly filled Dieter’s body. He knew that he had to do something or he would be a dead man too. Between them the brigands had already killed three times; they wouldn’t hesitate to do so again.

On his feet now, Dieter moved at a lolloping run across the grass, away from the road, keeping low as the ground dropped down to form a natural ditch, and into the shelter of the trees of the spur of woodland that edged the road as it ran parallel to Bögenhafen.

But he did not stop there. He scrambled over the bank formed of knotted root boles, catching his robe on a broken branch tip and tearing the heavily woven fabric, as panicking he pulled himself free. His pulse was almost a throbbing pain in his ears, his heart straining against his ribcage.

He could hear the men on the road behind him. They were arguing already, as was the way of thieves and murderers, but not over their ill-gotten spoils.

Dieter paused, his lungs heaving, and cautiously peered over the lip of the ditch.

“There was another one!” Dieter could hear one of the bandits shouting at his partner-in-crime.

The other’s voice was muffled and incomprehensible, the sound distorted by his broken nose.

“Where did he go?” the first bandit was saying. “Khaine’s teeth! We can’t let him get away.”

Dieter could see the thickset brigand, clearly outlined by the moonlight, peering towards the trees. He ducked down immediately. He could not understand the other’s reply.

“The watch will be sniffing around here in no time at all. We can’t let that bastard get to them.”

Then Dieter was off again, his robe flapping around his legs as he heard the brigands’ feet running along the road towards Bögenhafen. He ran as though Morr’s disaffected brother the god of murder himself were after him. For if he was caught by the murdering impostor roadwardens, it might as well be Khaine at his heels, for it would be the patron of murderers and assassins who would feast on his damned soul.

Dieter sprinted across the rough, uneven ground as fast as his legs could carry him, his breathing frantic and ragged, his feet slipping on the wet, spongy turf or tripping in unseen rabbit holes and gulleys in the darkness.

His mind raced as he ran. Following a sudden outburst of violence which couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, three lives had been taken. Three men were dead.

How dare the brigands attack so close to the town? The audacity of it! But then how dare they attack at all? How could they commit murder so coolly? How could they do such a thing if they had a conscience? Morr take their souls, the devils!

Dieter reached the edge of the garden of Morr, skidding to an abrupt stop against the dry-stone wall. But he didn’t stop there. The wall wasn’t high and it was no effort for him to scale it, even with his scrip still in his hands, and climb over into the gardens beyond.

As he recovered his breath he took stock of his situation once again. With each great lungful of chilled night air he inhaled, so his racing mind became calmer and his thinking more logical. He doubted very much that the murdering highwaymen would keep up their pursuit for very long, not with the risk of being pursued themselves by the watch an imminent concern in their own minds. Neither did he think that they would think to look for him in the gardens of Morr, for most people wouldn’t think of a graveyard, a place of the dead, as a safe place to be after dark. But then Dieter Heydrich, son of a priest of Morr, wasn’t most people.

It was only as he squatted, hunkered down on the cemetery side of the wall, straining his ears for anything more from the brigands, that Dieter became aware of the flickering lamplight, painting the tombstones behind him with a lambent orange glow. Keeping himself crouched low, Dieter turned his head and carefully surveyed the enclosed plot, feeling his pulse rate rising again.

Dieter had entered the garden close to its eastern corner. The mortuary chapel stood a good fifty yards away between the sullen yew trees and grand mausoleums of Bögenhafen’s noble merchant families. Like so many graveyards across the Empire it had been here a long time. There had probably been some sort of burial ground here since before the founding of Bögenhafen, when the first settlement at this point of the River Bögen had grown up, and parts of its two-acre plot had become neglected and fallen into disrepair.

But between him and the chapel of Morr, their work obscured by the lines of tumbled grave markers, Dieter could see two men busy in the graveyard, watched by the silent yew trees.

So engrossed were they in their work that they did not seem to have heard the confrontation on the road half a mile away, and they certainly weren’t aware of Dieter’s presence in the cemetery. One was tall and thickset, with hulking shoulders and thickly muscled arms. His associate was short and stocky, but something about the way he was putting a pickaxe to good use also suggested that there was greater strength in his stout frame.

From what Dieter could make out between the stones, and from the skittering, scraping sounds he could hear, it was clear to him that the two men were busy digging, but were they digging a new grave, or breaking open an old one?

The yews made sinister clawing shapes against the velvet backdrop of the clear night. The combination of Mannslieb’s silvery light and the flickering illumination of the lantern the men had placed on the ground close to where they were working only served to make the trees appear even more forbidding.

For a moment, Dieter almost forgot about the highwaymen’s pursuit, so intrigued was he by what was taking place in front of him in the graveyard. It could be that he was simply watching the town sexton and his assistant about their work but something else, something that resonated with him as Albrecht Heydrich’s son, felt that these men could hardly be up to any good. Why go about their business at night otherwise? And he had heard of men such as these before; grave robbers, body snatchers, resurrection men. Unearthing the bodies of the dead for other equally nefarious individuals, providing them with the raw materials to carry out their macabre and possibly heretical experiments. Corpse takers.

What was it about this night that so many felons were compelled to carry out their despicable business at this time? Dieter glanced at the heavens. Mannslieb shone silently down on all that was coming to pass beneath him but, it being only a month since the spring equinox, the ominous face of Morrslieb was barely visible in its erratic cycle.

The shorter of the two grave thieves had now got into the hole the two were excavating. Dieter thought he heard a splintering crack and then more sounds like that of mouldering wooden planks being worked apart. Pickaxe and spade were downed and then, with a lot of huffing and puffing, the shorter man heaved something up out of the hole. His burden was taken by the taller, broader man who effortlessly hefted the object out of the pit and onto the pile of earth that had been created by their exertions next to it. The tall man then helped his companion up out of the hole and they both picked up the object between them.

Dieter could hardly believe what he was seeing. At first he tried to convince himself that it was only a sack that they were carrying in an ungainly manner between them. But when the worm-eaten remains of a grey-fleshed arm flopped out of the side of the muddy, cloth bundle, Dieter’s suspicions were confirmed. The macabre felons had exhumed a corpse from its alleged final resting place. And indeed they had put it inside a sack, making some semblance of an effort to hide the evidence of the blasphemous activities.

The body snatchers laid the sackcloth bundle on a hand-drawn cart they had positioned close to the grave they were desecrating. Dieter moved forward carefully and quietly to get a better view. The two men picked up their tools again and quickly filled in the now empty grave. Once they were done, they stowed their tools on the cart as well. As the shorter of the two recovered the lantern and closed its shutters, the larger man took up his position between the traces of the cart and began pulling it over the uneven lawns of the cemetery. The body snatchers were heading towards the northern edge of the garden.

Dieter knew immediately what he should do. It was his duty, as a Morr-fearing man, to report these two ghoulish villains to the town authorities. Their kind was an abomination in Morr’s presence. And where was the resident priest of Morr whilst grave robbing was taking place in the land that it was his responsibility to tend? Perhaps Dieter’s first action should be to find Father Hulbert and alert him to the crime-taking place here, under his very nose.

But Dieter also knew that this business wasn’t finished yet. Where were the body snatchers taking the corpse? Why had they picked on this poor soul’s grave in particular? Who was the one paying them to commit this terrible crime? Was the Corpse Taker back to practising his evil ways? Dieter’s report would be of more use to the watch or the religious authorities the more he could tell them. He might even be able to implicate any others involved in this law breaking.

Skulking between the skull-carved crypts and broken tombstones, Dieter cautiously followed the two body snatchers. They continued to lead him north across the garden and thanks to the clearness of the night, he saw that they were leading him towards a gap in the cemetery wall where the dry stone wall had collapsed. The cart bumped over the rubble as the two men manhandled it through the space. Then they proceeded to follow the towering town wall, hidden in its looming, pitch-black shadow, towards the river still a good two hundred and fifty yards away, gurgling its way through the town.

Dieter stopped again at the hole in the cemetery wall. In all the time that he had been observing the grave robbers, Dieter had not heard them speak once. These were men used to working clandestinely and not drawing attention to themselves. They had given him no clue as to where they were going. If they were making their way to the river, for all he knew they might be heading for a destination downstream and not one in the town at all. He would follow them for just a little longer. He had completely forgotten about the attack on the road that had led him into this curious and slightly sinister situation.

Just a little further, Dieter thought, as he came in sight of the river and saw the flat-bottomed skiff moored there, tethered to a willow leaning out over the river. Dieter would not have considered himself a particularly brave individual but he had a duty to fulfil here; he was the only one who had witnessed the exhumation and subsequent corpse-theft.

Just a little further, Dieter thought, as he watched the two men punt the boat upstream, with the body now aboard, past the edge of the high, crenellated town wall towards Bögenhafen’s night-muffled docks.

Before he had fully thought through the implications of what he was doing; Dieter found himself up to his knees in water and river-mud, hugging his scrip to his chest with one hand as he used the other, which was also clutching his shoes, to steady himself against the river bank. He then circumnavigated the end of the town wall, creeping into Bögenhafen through the river gate. Paradoxically he felt like some kind of felon himself for doing so. And if Dieter was honest, it was not so much his sense of justice that kept him following the body snatchers but his own irrepressible curiosity.

The trail led onwards. Dieter’s quarry moored their boat to a stone post on the brick-shored edge of the docks and between them hauled the shrouded body out of the skiff. An eerie mist was rising off the river, its creeping tendrils oozing across the docks and filling the streets, obscuring buildings and smothering the sounds of the sleeping town. Once they were both on the dockside themselves, the taller man slung the body unceremoniously over his shoulder and with the shorter grave robber leading the way, they scuttled off down a darkened alleyway that passed between two boarded warehouses.

Unseen by the men, Dieter hauled himself out of the foetid stinking mud of the river’s shore, clambering up a ladder at the end of a wooden slatted jetty, and followed them into the dark mouth of the alley. The adrenaline was racing in his veins again, just as it had when he had found his life in jeopardy on the Nuln road. But where before he had felt terrified, fearing for his life, now it was almost as frighteningly down to the sheer rush of excitement.

Dieter following the corpse takers through the mist-shrouded town, taking care to keep out of sight and never get too close, ducking into concealing doorways and winding side-streets whenever he could, but at the same time making sure that he did not lose sight of them himself in the disorientating fog. And like those he was pursuing, Dieter did as little to draw attention to himself as possible.

The two body snatchers led Dieter on a twisting, circuitous tour of the town until he was totally lost, the thickening mists helping to change Bögenhafen’s previously familiar appearance. The trail eventually came to an end in a part of town that Dieter was certain that he didn’t know, where he had never been before. It was one of the poorer, more rundown parts, of that he could hardly be mistaken. Dieter watched as the grave robbers stopped outside an unremarkable town house with a plain facade. In fact, from the appearance of the outside of the building, it looked like the house had been abandoned. Its windows were shuttered but, to Dieter, it was like staring into the lifeless eye-sockets of a skull. They made it look like the building itself had died.

Dieter glanced up at the street sign opposite his position hidden at the corner of the last alley the two men had led him down. It was just visible through the grey-dark murk. It read Apothekar Allee.

Positioned as it was on the River Bögen, the land the town had been built on was predominantly flat. The ground did rise gently beyond the artisans’ quarter and in the area of the Adel Ring, where the richest of the town citizens resided. In poorer parts of the town the street level rose where houses and warehouses had been built over the ruins of previous buildings, the rooms of those remaining ruins having been absorbed, becoming cellars and secret, sealed rooms. Apothekar Allee was one such area.

Dieter continued to watch as the shorter of the two men looked about him furtively, aware that others might be observing their skulduggery. It seemed to him that the man’s eyes met his for a brief second, but then the body snatcher looked away again. Dieter ducked back out of sight, his heart pounding in his chest. Had the man seen him? Was he at this very moment coming after him like the highwaymen had done? Dieter had to know.

He peered back around the end of the alleyway, legs ready to run if he had to. He was just in time to see the men being admitted to the house, along with their macabre bundle, by a cadaverous manservant carrying a single, flickering candle. Then the dark wood door was closed behind them.

Dieter did not wait around for very much longer after that. Looking into those dark shuttered windows of the house made Dieter feel uncomfortable, as if he were looking into the soulless eyes of a dead thing.

Turning his back on the darkly shuttered windows, feeling an unnatural cold chill the blood in his veins and a knot of fear clenching his stomach, Dieter left the house in Apothekar Allee. It took him a while to find his way back to a part of the town he recognised amidst the pervasive river mists, constantly looking back over his shoulder nervously at the way he had come, and he narrowly avoided two watch patrols as he made his way to his own lodgings in Dunst Strasse.

As he put his hand on the handle to open the door, a lonely temple bell chimed twelve times. Dieter froze, feeling the chill seep deeper into his bones and a wave of nauseous fear pass through his entire body. It was midnight, when all the malevolent things in the world went about their evil work. It was the witching hour. It was the time of black magicians and necromancers.

It was the time of the corpse takers.