THE HANGING TREE

Jonathan Green

 

 

The sturdy oak door of the inn opened with a crash and for just a moment a gust of what the weather outside had to offer—nothing but foul wind and rain—entered the Slaughtered Calf. It seemed hard to believe that it was early spring. It was more like autumn or winter had a hold of these hills.

Grolst, the thickset, greasy-skinned innkeeper, looked up from wiping a grimy, damp cloth around the inside of an a dirty glass. He cast an unwelcoming grimace from beneath beetling brows at the figure standing in the shadows of the doorway, the evening sky darkening behind him. The man ducked beneath the lintel and closed the door behind him. The foul night’s wailing wind and lashing rain became a muffled memory outside the thick stone walls once more. Leaning on a tall, gnarled staff, the figure stepped into the pool of light cast by the cartwheel candelabra.

Grolst surveyed the new arrival suspiciously. The frown on his ruddy face remained. Although swathed in heavy wine-dark robes, the innkeeper could see that beneath them the man was tall and lean, like a hunting dog. His appearance was scruffy and unkempt. He appeared to be into his fifth decade, both his bedraggled black hair, what there was of it on his balding pate, and his long straggly beard greying to white. The skin on his face appeared taught, making his hawkish features even more severe and pronounced.

On closer examination, Grolst could see that in places the grey-bearded man’s robes were scorched black. There was also the glint of metal from objects hung around his neck and from his robes. Grolst thought he even saw a gleaming bird’s skull, a brass key, hanging from his belt—or maybe it was gold—and the hilt of a sword protruding from beneath a fold in his cloak. The stranger’s staff tapped against the floor as he approached the bar.

The red-robed stranger peered at the various dusty bottles and earthenware containers displayed haphazardly on the crooked shelves behind the innkeeper.

“A glass of that… luska,” the man said grumpily, placing a pair of copper coins on the bar top. “I hate the rain,” he added, addressing no one in particular as he shook water from his cloak.

Grolst uncorked a grime-coated bottle and poured a measure of the clear Ostland spirit into a small tumbler. He blinked as the potent alcoholic vapour reached his nostrils. Luska was a fiery Ostlander distillation, not unlike the vodka spirit so favoured by the Kislevites, and as it coursed down the drinker’s throat it burnt hotter than a salamander’s tongue. It took a certain taste and a fiery temperament in the drinker to even palate the spirit, let alone actually enjoy it.

Perhaps the stranger had some connection to Kislev. From the few words that he had spoken, his accent sounded as though it might come from the sheep-rearing southern provinces of the Empire, but the man wore his moustaches long and drooping, favoured here in the northern realms that bordered the harsh oblast of Kislev, the kingdom of the Tzars. The stranger was well travelled, certainly.

He picked up his drink and took a seat at a table close to the fire blazing in the hearth of the inn’s huge chimney breast. From the man’s dress Grolst thought that he was most likely a scholar of some field of academic study or other. From the way he travelled alone, without the need for a bodyguard, the innkeeper decided that he probably had some other means of defence that he could call upon in an emergency. Grolst looked at the staff again.

Viehdorf didn’t receive much in the way of passing travellers, making their way down from the main road into the wooded hollow where the village nestled. The Slaughtered Calf lay half way between the two amidst the crowding trees and looming hills. Merchants, mercenaries, peddlers and pilgrims mostly preferred to bed down in the larger Scharfen, half a league back in the direction of Middenheim, or press on along the forest road until they reached the stone-walled security of Felsmauern another half a league further along the road towards Hergig.

The sign over the door hardly seemed appropriate for an establishment called the Slaughtered Calf, although it betrayed the reason for the lack of passing trade. The image of a beastman’s head depicted on the swaying inn-sign attested to the fact that here, on the Middenland-Hochland border, the forested hill-country was beastman territory. The deep forests hid their camps and herdstone lairs. To stray from the roads in these parts was to invite a swift demise.

Viehdorf was one of those pockets of civilisation clinging onto survival amidst the chaos and barbarity of a land where, whatever the Emperor comfortable in his palace in distant Altdorf might claim, savage nature was mistress—and a cruel mistress she was indeed, red in tooth and claw. The village was a faint, flickering candle-flame in the all-encompassing darkness of wild lands, where the populace were prey to the uncaring seasons and the harshness of survival.

On occasion the animals belonging to the people of Viehdorf gave birth to unnaturally twisted offspring. When this happened, mother and child were culled, their carcasses destroyed, and the matter not spoken of again, for to do so was to attract the attentions of the witch hunters. Such men were not known for their tolerance, understanding or restraint.

If any did stray this way the people of Viehdorf knew what had to be done.

As Grolst considered this new stranger, he gazed across the barroom and took in the other people sheltering from the unseasonable night within the inn. There were the usual regulars; local foresters and other villagers, including the blacksmith, all eyeing the stranger warily, making him feel about as welcome as the plague. There was also another stranger in their midst that night, an armoured roadwarden.

The atmosphere in the tavern was sullen and hostile, talk was restrained to a conspiratorial murmur; there were two strangers in the bar and they were definitely not welcome here. Strangers meant trouble. The people of Viehdorf liked to keep themselves to themselves. That was what proved best and had kept them unmolested by the world beyond the forested boundaries of their village, them and their forefathers before them.

The blacksmith was watching the red-robed stranger but he was also giving the roadwarden on the other side of the bar furtive glances. It was on this man that Grolst’s gaze came to rest. The roadwarden was dressed in a tough leather jerkin and hard-wearing trews, and wore an armoured hauberk as well. A lobster-tailed helmet sat on the table in front of him.

He had arrived earlier that same evening and Grolst was just as wary of him as he was of the straggly-haired stranger. The roadwarden had paid for one flagon of ale and had made it last for all the time since. He was enjoying a respite from the harsh, unrelenting conditions outside, no doubt. The leather of his jerkin and his trews dried out in the smoky warmth of the inn’s interior, the air bitter with the smell of hops, pipe-weed and wood smoke. No one dared actually challenge the man but the daggers in the stares the patrons were giving him made their true desires perfectly plain.

The Slaughtered Calf hardly ever had any visitors, so to have two turn up on one night unsettled Grolst deeply, making the sullen innkeeper feel even less charitable than usual. The inn had rooms for rent, certainly, but Grolst was hard pressed to remember when they had last been used by a passing traveller rather than by the unfaithful, carrying on their lustful affairs away from the eyes of their jealous spouses. It was too close to the sacrifice for his liking, just when the people of Viehdorf didn’t want the prying eyes of the Emperor Karl Franz’s authorities, witch hunters or any other stranger looking into their business.

There was one last drinker, sitting alone, who was known to Grolst. The man hardly seemed aware of anything about his surroundings; he just stared mournfully into the bottom of his tankard, shoulders slumped, his face a sagging scowl of sadness. Of course, he had good reason to look so unhappy. The responsibility for the sacrifice had come to rest at his door this time.

The roadwarden raised his tankard and drained the last of the hopsy, locally-brewed ale and, taking up his hammer once again, strode purposefully back to the bar. The soldier fixed the innkeeper with his piercing, steely gaze, making Grolst feel even more uncomfortable. The innkeeper felt his flesh crawl under the unrelenting stare and, in order to break the tension, felt obliged to speak: “You moving on then?”

“I may be,” the roadwarden said, his voice betraying a cultured accent but also a hint of suspicion in its tone.

Grolst immediately regretted his question but also found himself wondering what had made a man of a highborn upbringing become a wandering warrior, patrolling the Emperor’s highways and protecting those who would travel on them with lawful intentions, especially at such a time of turmoil.

The roadwarden’s manner made Grolst feel uncomfortable enough to provoke a response. “Is there good hunting to be had on the Emperor’s roads?”

“Good enough,” the roadwarden replied. “Your village seems to have got away remarkably unscathed, considering there are tribes of man-beasts amassing within the forests and that there is a war coming to the Empire, the likes of which have not been seen since the time of Magnus the Pious.”

“A war, you say? I wouldn’t know about that. War doesn’t trouble us here. So what brings you to our peaceful village?”

“I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself,” the rugged soldier said offering a smile, though his gaze remained as steely and unforgiving as before. “I am Ludwig Hoffenbach. Dark times are upon the Empire and all men are called to play their part, to hold back the storm of Chaos that is threatening to break across the land. You have heard, I take it, that the once-great sentinel city of Wolfenburg fell to a Northman horde last year?

“I myself have been called to act as part of an Imperial commission, and I was supposed to meet with my compatriot here. Has a templar of the Sigmarite church visited Viehdorf?”

“A witch hunter, you mean?” the innkeeper said, feeling his scalp tighten.

“By the name of Schweitz.”

Grolst swallowed hard. The blood in his veins felt as if it had turned to ice water. He cast an anxious glance over the roadwarden’s armoured shoulder and saw further furtive glances pass around the bar. It was only then that Grolst really realised that the low murmur of conversation inside the Slaughtered Calf had ceased, the foresters, villagers and blacksmith all straining their ears to eavesdrop on what was passing between the innkeeper and the roadwarden. The only one who seemed to be paying no attention at all was the mournful man still staring into the bottom of his pint.

“A witch hunter?” the innkeeper said, trying to keep his tone jovial and the unease out.

Out of the corner of his eye Grolst saw that the crimson-clad stranger was watching the exchange at the bar as intently as the inn’s regulars—if anything more so—and fidgeting uncomfortably, apparently at the mention of the witch hunter. Grolst knew how he felt.

“No, there hasn’t been anyone like that here.”

The roadwarden lent forward slightly and Grolst couldn’t help but notice that his gauntleted hand was resting on the haft of the warhammer slung from his belt.

“Are you sure?” There was the same hard smile on Hoffenbach’s lips, the same steel in his eyes.

“Definitely,” Grolst said, managing to force a laugh at the same time. “I would remember a templar of the Church of Sigmar visiting my poor hovel of an inn. No, no one like that’s been in here.”

“Very well,” Hoffenbach said, adjusting his hauberk and making sure that the innkeeper saw not only the insignia of his Imperial commission but also the haft of his warhammer once again. “Thank you for your… help.” He turned towards the inn door. “It is time I was gone.”

With that, the roadwarden spun on his iron-shod heel and made to leave the snug of the bar for the wilds of the night outside the walls of the enduring coaching inn. Before he did so, Hoffenbach returned the shifty look the red-robed stranger was giving him.

Then he was gone into the cold, the wind, the dark and the rain.

Grolst went back to occupying himself smearing a tankard with his damp rag, trying to ignore the bewilderment of anxieties and possibilities muddling his mind. They would have to act soon. Grolst would have like to have believed that Viehdorf had seen the last of the roadwarden but he sincerely doubted it.

The grating of a chair on the floor roused Grolst from his thoughts. The innkeeper looked up reluctantly and saw the red-robe taking his turn to approach the bar. Now what? the innkeeper thought resentfully.

“Do you have any rooms?” the wild-haired stranger said. The darker water stains around the hem of his robes were fading as the thick material began to dry out.

As soon as the man had uttered the words, a seed of an idea took root within the innkeeper’s mind. He had not thought the red-robe would stay. He had imagined the stranger would have been on his way, like the roadwarden, once he had finished his drink, even if it was after nightfall.

Grolst felt a smile forming on his ugly lips. As soon as he was aware of it, he re-composed the annoyed grimace that made him look like he was irritated by the fact that anyone would dare to waste his time by actually wanting to be served in his inn.

“If you can pay for it, I have,” he said snidely.

“I have money.” The stranger’s hand disappeared inside his robe and emerged again holding a bulging leather purse.

Grolst’s eyes lit up involuntarily at the sight of it. “That should just about do it,” he muttered grudgingly, although the twinkling in the black pits of his pupils betrayed how he truly felt. Not that the stranger appeared to notice: he was too busy glancing, fretfully almost, at the stony faces around the bar.

“I want to retire now,” the stranger said, once the innkeeper had taken payment.

“Would you care for another drink before I show you to your room?” Grolst proffered, displaying uncharacteristic generosity.

The stranger’s eyes shot Grolst a suspicious glance, his mouth tight-lipped. Briefly, the innkeeper met the man’s gaze. For a moment, he fancied he could see fires burning deep within them and the ferocity of the flames made him blink and look away.

“All right then, why not?”

Grolst uncorked the luska bottle again, one whiff of the fiery spirit making his eyes start to water. As he poured a measure of the alcohol into the stranger’s glass, he was aware that all eyes in the bar were on him and the unwelcome visitor. Even the mournful man was looking up at him, his red-rimmed eyes no longer gazing at the bottom of his drink. Through one grimy, lead-paned window Grolst could see the white-yellow bloated orb of a gibbous moon, rising between the grey-cast clouds behind the trees at the top of the hill, and he found his mind wandering to consider what would come to pass later that night.

The sacrifice had to be made soon, and it would be. The people of Viehdorf might not like strangers intruding into the isolation of their village, but they did have their uses; Viehdorf had its own method of protection against the predations of beastmen and their ilk.

“Here,” he said as he poured the stranger a double measure into a fresh glass. “You look like you need warming up on a night like this. This one’s on the house.”

 

Gerhart Brennend looked around the Slaughtered Calf’s guest room. He was unimpressed. It was much as he had expected. It was cramped and sparsely decorated. There was one bed, made of rough-hewn timbers, and a chair with a broken leg. The walls were barely plastered and, in places, the bare boards of the internal walls were visible. There was one crack-paned window, which rattled loosely in the wind and rain battering the isolated inn, that looked down onto the stable yard. The tiles of the stable roof were slick with greasy rainwater that ran into leaf-clogged gutters and poured over into the yard in a relentless cascade onto the rain-darkened cobbles.

As Gerhart sat down on the thin straw mattress of the bed a wave of tiredness swept over him. He felt restless despite the weariness that was threatening to overcome him. For a wizard of the noblest Bright Order to have come to this, he thought to himself miserably. Once he had been the holder of the keys of Azimuth, an honoured position in his order, and now he was brought low like this. In fact, he had never been more destitute. His once magnificent robe was scorched and worn shabby, but at least it wasn’t wet anymore. There was nothing a fire mage hated more than rain, other than drowning, perhaps.

Even though he suddenly felt bone-numbingly weary, Gerhart still felt ill at ease. It had been the roadwarden’s enquiries that had done it, and the talk of witch hunters. He had met enough of their bigoted, paranoid kind before.

Trying to dismiss such concerns from his mind, he lay back on the bed, his eyelids suddenly heavy. It was as if all his exertions of the last year had finally caught up with him. But, as he closed his eyes, the scowling faces of those whom he had met before, who hunted the practitioners of the dark arts and servants of the fell powers, came unbidden into his mind. First, there was the Castigator of Schreibe, his red face contorted by zealous rage. Next came the cruelly calm features of the tonsure-headed priest of Stilwold, Brother Bernhardt—Gerhart involuntarily recalled the marks of the cleric’s self-induced mortification that he had suffered in the name of Holy Sigmar. Religious extremism and intolerance could never really be considered positive character traits.

Gerhart was feeling very drowsy now. Then, of course, there was Gottfried Verdammen, the flesh of his face bubbled, red-raw and blistered from the avenging fires…

A sudden noise in the yard below his window roused Gerhart from the drowsy threshold of sleep. A stable door was banging in the persistent wind that whipped through the courtyard behind the inn. Shaking the slumber from him, he rose from the bed and peered out of the corner of the cracked window into the dark and the rain.

Through half-closed eyes he saw a cloaked figure duck into a stable, the door banging shut on its latch behind him. The wizard blinked his eyes clear, but the figure was gone. Had he really seen anyone?

Another wave of fatigue washed over him and he had to sit down on the bed again, as his legs practically gave way beneath him. What had he just seen? Of course, it could be nothing more than an ostler tending the animals stabled there. Gerhart’s heightened sense of mistrust would not let him believe something so innocent or simple. What clandestine activity was taking place out in that stable on a night like this?

He could fight the tiredness no longer. Putting his overwhelming exhaustion down to his long journey and the leeching effect of the continual rain on his powers, he gave in at last, falling asleep as soon as his head hit the musty-smelling pillow.

 

“You’re sure this is going to work?”

“Don’t worry. I’ve taken care of things.”

“But the sacrifice has to be made tonight.”

“I told you, it’s taken care of.”

“So my Gertrude is safe? Truly?”

“She is now. Remember, we owe everything to our protector, just as our forefathers did in years past. We must make the sacrifice. We all have our part to play. It is better that one die than the village die. The good of the many is what matters. The good of the many.”

Grolst took in the furtive group gathered within the dark of the stable, the smell of mouldering straw and stale horse dung strong in his nostrils. There were four of them, their hunched forms outlined by the rain-washed moonlight. As well as the thickset innkeeper, there was the blacksmith and the mournful looking man from the bar, as well as a bearded, burly forester. Grolst looked around the darkened stable.

Everyone in the village, of adult age at least, knew the truth about Viehdorf, but there was something about their dark secret that still made them feel uncomfortable speaking of it openly.

“What do you mean, you’ve taken care of things?” the broad-shouldered blacksmith asked, an edge of anger in his voice.

“Have a little faith, won’t you?” the innkeeper said, his slack smile invisible in the gloom.

“Enough of this goading, Grolst,” the forester rumbled. “Now is not the time for tomfoolery. I’ve seen the rise in beastman activity in the forests on the borders of our lands. In fact, I’ve never seen so much in all my born days. We’re all troubled by it. We need to ensure that our village remains protected. We cannot miss the sacrifice.”

“And we won’t,” Grolst reassured them with all the guile of a serpent. “He won’t give us any trouble. I put poppy seed juice in his glass. He won’t have tasted it under the luska. He’ll sleep now until doomsday. Won’t nothing wake him before we’re done with him.”

“Then we do this now,” the blacksmith said gruffly.

“We do it now,” the others agreed.

Strangers did have their uses after all, the innkeeper mused as the party crept out of the stable into the night.

 

From his hiding place behind the sag-roofed barn, Roadwarden Hoffenbach looked down on the Slaughtered Calf from up amongst the scraggy trees through the sheeting rain. There appeared to be four of them shuffling self-consciously between the half-closed gates of the inn’s stabling yard. Waiting on the dirt road outside was a heavy-built saddled shire horse, huffing and snorting irritably in the rain. The men were carrying what, at first, appeared to be an awkwardly packed sack. The only light illuminating their venture came from the moon. An arm flopped loosely from amidst the folds of rough cloth, as one of the men shifted his hold on the bundle, and Hoffenbach realised that what they were in fact carrying was a body. Unless he was very much mistaken, it was the bearded, staff-bearing stranger who had been in the bar earlier that same evening.

Hoffenbach watched and waited, the rain pattering on the brim of his lobster-tail helm.

One of the party, whom the roadwarden was almost certain was the village blacksmith, took hold of the shire horse’s reins and put a calming hand on the beast’s muzzle, as the other conspirators manhandled their captive onto his back. Was the man dead or merely unconscious? Hoffenbach had no way of knowing. What did intrigue him was that the conspirators were securing the stranger’s gnarled staff to the horse’s saddle along with a scabbarded sword, which the roadwarden supposed must also belong to the comatose man.

If he acted now he could stop them, he considered, but if he did so he knew that he wouldn’t get to the bottom of what was going on here, and might also pass up an opportunity to discover what had happened to the witch hunter Scheitz. Hoffenbach knew the slovenly innkeeper had been lying when he said that he hadn’t seen the witch hunter, but just how much did he know? From his involvement in tonight’s proceedings, the roadwarden guessed it was a great deal.

No, Hoffenbach decided, feeling the reassuring weight of his warhammer as he hefted it in his hands, he would hold back and see where the Viehdorfers were taking the red-robed stranger. He had seen his type before too, working as part of an Imperial commission, as he was. Practitioners of the Arts Magicae. Spell-casters. Wizards.

 

As the men led the horse and its burden away from the Slaughtered Calf and off the road along the winding paths of the forest, the roadwarden followed, keeping his distance, unseen. Once the party entered the forest, with the eerily glowing disc of the moon broken by the rain-lashed canopy above them, moved away from the ambient light of the inn, they opened the shutters of the lantern they were carrying and the way through the woods was illuminated by a circle of yellow light.

The ground rose as they travelled south, putting several miles between themselves and the inn. The going was slow as the blacksmith carefully guided his horse over jutting stones and swollen root boles that infringed on the narrow path that they were following. The men were taking care not to slip in the quagmire that the gradually easing rain had made of the ground.

The further they travelled into the tangled forest the quieter the dark woods became, the tree trunks more twisted, the undergrowth more thorny and wild, the path less well defined. Hoffenbach felt uneasy. To him, this was the kind of place that the foul-brood beastmen would call home.

Then, at the top of a craggy hill, they broke through into a clearing. Hoffenbach ducked down behind the stump of a lightning-felled beech, and from his hiding place saw before him something that made the rest of the forest seem like a pleasant arboreal idyll.

The tree was huge, surely larger than any other tree he had seen in the forest; its thick trunk twisting upward and splitting into a mass of warped and misshapen, leafless branches. The top of the tree seemed to point an accusing finger at the cloud-shrouded night’s sky, as if in defiance of the gods themselves. Hoffenbach was not able to discern what species the tree must once have been. Its sheer size suggested an oak to him, but the nature of its rough bark, grey and granite-like in the light of the moon that was cast down into the glade between the towering trees, seemed more like that of an ash. Its warped nature was unlike any creation of nature Hoffenbach knew. Perhaps this tree was no creation of nature.

It was not just the writhing form of the tree that lent this place such an all-pervading horror. It was also the bodies, in various states of decay, hanging from its branches. Some were barely more than lichen-flecked skeletons, loosely held together by fibrous ligaments; others mere bones, dangling from moss eaten lengths of hempen rope. Others amongst the tree’s grisly trophies were fresher corpses, still clad in the clothes or armour they had worn in life, their flesh grey and greening, heads lolling, eyes plucked clean from their sockets, mouths fixed in rictus grins of death.

There were the bodies of all manner of people hanging here, the cadavers swaying in the wind that wound down through the glade to caress the hanging tree. There were still more rotten strands of rope left trailing forlornly from the higher branches, their bodies having fallen, now lying amongst the mouldering leaf litter that covered the putrid soil of this place. Hoffenbach could see a ribcage here, a shattered skull there.

It was then that he saw, half-buried in the mud and mulch, the red-patina links of the great chains. Each one was secured to the macabre trunk at one end—looped around its great girth or hooked over iron pegs that had been hammered deep into the wood—and at the other to one of a number of boulders that were half-sunken in the earth around the perimeter of the glade. Hoffenbach couldn’t begin to imagine why.

A gust of wind carried the vile scents of decomposition to him. He could taste it now on his tongue and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as his unease increased. The rain that had become a gentle patter on the leaves above his head finally ceased. The hanging tree didn’t so much seem to grow as to thrust its way out of the putrid earth. The air of the clearing was heavy with the smell of leaf-mould, wet clay and putrefaction—the smell of corruption.

It was only then that he realised that one of the hanging corpses was that of his erstwhile partner, Schweitz.

The witch hunter’s body swung slowly like a macabre pendulum, his head tilted to one side at an unnatural angle, his cape torn into tatters, his eye sockets black, bloody holes. Hoffenbach could see that the tips of several branches were buried inside the witch hunter’s dead body, as if they had been forced into the corpse for some reason. It almost looked, in fact, as if they had grown that way. What ghoulish practices were taking place here? Perhaps the villagers didn’t just hang their victims.

The only half-sane conclusion Hoffenbach could draw, from what he saw here, was that the villagers offered the tree sacrifice in the perversely misguided belief that it somehow protected Viehdorf with its malign influence—the rotting flesh of the corpses feeding the tree’s hungry roots. Indeed, on his travels throughout the Emperor’s realm, he had heard half-told tales of such barbaric practices before.

Still hidden behind the broken stump, Hoffenbach continued to watch, but still he did not rush to act. If there was anything that his career as a roadwarden on the highways of His Imperial Majesty had taught him, it was patience. He would watch and wait for his moment.

The bushy bearded forester, his axe tucked into his belt at his side, took a noosed rope from a saddlebag and threw half of its coiled length over one of the lower branches of the ghoulish tree.

Hoffenbach continued to watch as the noose was pushed roughly over the unconscious prisoner’s head.

Abruptly the man began to stir, shaking his head to clear it of sleep and clutching clumsily at the blacksmith who was trying to pull the noose tight around his neck. Then, when he began to understand the mortal danger he was in, the man started to struggle more violently, arching his back; punching and kicking at his captors to free himself from their grasp.

Now was Hoffenbach’s moment. Raising his hammer above his head, he charged into the clearing, leaf mould squelching and brittle bones cracking beneath his pounding footfalls.

 

Gerhart’s eyes bulged open as he felt a rope tighten around his neck. Reacting on instinct, he kicked out as he tried to free himself from the rough hands he could feel holding him down. He heard a man grunt in pain, felt the hands let go and then had the wind half-knocked out of him as he fell onto the wet ground, landing with a jarring smack on his right shoulder. As consciousness returned to him he became half-aware of men shouting, one as if charging into battle, others in an angry and confused clamour. The wizard managed to get both hands on the knot around his neck and strained at it to loosen the noose and free himself.

Coughing and gasping for breath, he rose onto his knees and pulled the noose free. Well, that was a first. People had tried to drown him, fry him to a crisp and shoot him, but no one had ever tried to hang him before.

A combination of wan moonlight and the orange, flickering glow of a lantern on the ground nearby showed him that he was in a forest clearing. The shadow of a huge, twisting tree loomed over him, even darker shapes hanging from its branches. He heard an angry whinny and realised that, as well as men, there was a horse here. He could smell its animal-sweat stink. There was a man lying on his back in the mud and leaves not three feet away. That must have been the man he had kicked.

How dare they? His temper blazed that these impudent peasants would try to do away with him, a battle wizard of the noble Bright Order of the Colleges of Magic!

The fire wizard scrambled to his feet. Leaves and thorny twigs clung to the hem of his muddied robes. The other man was also back-up on his feet and Gerhart saw that it was the man from the inn whom he had taken to be the village blacksmith. The blacksmith was slipping on the wet ground lunging for something the large shire horse was carrying. With a ringing of steel the blacksmith drew what Gerhart realised was his own sword from the scabbard that had been tied to the horse’s saddlebag, along with his staff.

With an angry shout, the blacksmith threw himself at the wizard. Gerhart barely managed to twist out of the way of the enraged man’s charge. The tip of his sword landed with a wet thunk where, only a moment before, Gerhart’s leg had been, slicing into the knotty tissue of an exposed root. Out of the corner of his eye, Gerhart thought that he saw the root retracted at the blow, as a wounded animal might withdraw its paw from a closing trap.

The blacksmith might be skilled with his hammer and anvil but he was no swordsman. Evading another uncoordinated swing, Gerhart stumbled over to the horse and tugged his staff free of the saddlebag. The blacksmith’s next lunge was parried by the gnarled wood.

The wizard saw that the roadwarden was already trading blows with the forester, warhammer against axe, whilst the fat, nervous innkeeper was holding back from the fight.

Then there was the last of the men in the lynch mob—the gaunt, sorrowful individual Gerhart had seen drinking by himself—running at him, nock-bladed dagger drawn, wailing like a rabid animal, as if all human reason had left him.

The fire mage swung at the desperate man with his staff but his movements were still clumsy and uncoordinated, even though adrenalin was now rushing though his veins, purging drugged sleep from his body. He clipped the man’s arm with the charcoaled end of his staff, but not hard enough to disarm him. The return blow with the other end, however, cracked the sad-eyed man across the chin and he dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his mouth.

Gerhart reeled, his head spinning, as the blacksmith came at him again, his teeth bared in an expression of angry defiance. Gerhart staggered backwards and collided with the snorting shire horse, which whinnied again and broke away, cantering towards the edge of the clearing.

The wizard’s sword, still in the blacksmith’s hands, connected with his staff, the blow sending jarring pain up Gerhart’s arms through his wrists. If the staff had not been toughened by years of fire-tempering and absorption of raw magical energy, the blow would probably have splintered it.

Gerhart knew it was unlikely he would be able to hold off the brute strength of the blacksmith, even if he was an unskilled swordsman. He would need to draw on the other resources he had at his disposal to bring about an end to this battle.

He quickly tried to put some distance between himself and the blacksmith as possible and then closed his eyes on the chaos surrounding him. A spark flared in the darkness of his mind. Gerhart opened his eyes again but looked now with his eldritch mage-sight.

The winds of magic whirled and twisted through the clearing, visible to Gerhart as tormented currents and spinning eddies, bright coruscating ribbons of power. Black shadow-trails were drawn to the tree. Emerald tongues of flame slithered across the forest floor. Slanting, aquamarine bars of sorcerous radiance danced in the sky above the forest, like the fabled Northland aurora. Then he saw what he had been seeking. Hovering in the air over a forgotten lantern, left on the ground by one of the lynch mob, a nimbus of red and orange light, flickering like a candle-flame.

He drew the burnished glow to him, inhaling deeply as he did so, letting the esoteric energies into every fibre of his being, feeling them warming him to the core, as if they were healing his injuries, replenishing his strength. Years of experience fighting upon battlefields across the length and breadth of the Empire helped him focus now. Inside his mind a flame burned, bright and intense, growing in strength as Gerhart’s anger fed its ferocity, and a spell took shape there.

At the edge of his field of vision, Gerhart saw the axe wielding forester fall as the roadwarden parried the slicing arc described by the axe blade and brought his own weapon around to connect with the side of his opponent’s head with skull-cracking force.

Then the spell was ready and the wizard could contain its power no longer.

In an instant the lurching blacksmith was alight, his whole body, clothes and hair ablaze as if the source of the fire came from inside him. The man faltered in his run, but then stumbled onward, the fire consuming him, dropping Gerhart’s sword. A piercing scream rose from the flailing human torch.

Gerhart was aware of other cries of panic.

Seeing what the wizard had done to the boldest of their companions, through the crackling flames curling from the burning blacksmith, Gerhart saw the innkeeper now mounted on the shire horse, having somehow managed to haul his bulk onto its back, kicking his heels into its ribs as the mournful man, struggled to climb on behind him. He could hear a pathetic whimpering accompanying their flight. With a whinny, the horse galloped off into the forest, its hoofs beating a tattoo—like distant thunder on the ground that was swallowed up by the trees.

The blacksmith took two more clumsy steps and then collapsed, his cries silenced. The only sound now was the wailing whine, fizz and pop of the intense fire consuming his body.

Gerhart felt drained. Exhausted, the fire mage slumped to his knees on the leaf-churned ground. He slowly became aware of the roadwarden’s cautious approach and looked up through weary eyes at the man standing over him, hammer still in hand. The black silhouette of the hanging tree rose up behind Hoffenbach, a sinister, warped perversion of nature, its branches—almost more like rough-skinned tentacles than tree limbs—clawed at the stratus-crossed sky. Blood ran from underneath the iron brim of the roadwarden’s helmet.

If it hadn’t been for the roadwarden’s intervention it was quite likely that Gerhart’s body would have joined those other crow-picked carcasses hanging like vile death-trophies from the possessive clutches of the tree. Now the warden was looking at the wizard in shocked surprise—perhaps even horror having witnessed the spontaneous combustion of the blacksmith. He had risked his own life to save Gerhart from being sacrificed to the tree. Hoffenbach’s expression mirrored how his feelings were vying with each other, as he tried to reconcile saving the sorcerer’s life with the devastating powers he had seen unleashed. Was it wise to let such a dangerous wizard live?

Gerhart Brennend had seen that expression before. The roadwarden was just as suspicious of wizards as the next superstitious peasant.

Black tentacle-shadows writhed with unnatural life in the darkness. Hoffenbach opened his mouth to speak but the only sound that came from his throat was a gargling death rattle. There was a wet ripping sound and Gerhart felt a warm, cloying wetness splash his face. His nostrils were suddenly heavy with the hot smell of iron. Blood. It was only then that the wizard saw the broken end of a tree-limb protruding from the man’s neck above the top of his hauberk.

Gerhart watched in horror, transfixed, as other branches seized the road-warden’s arms, body and legs, wrapping themselves fluidly, disgustingly around the man with a creaking like a yew bow being pulled taut. Cold realisation leeched the resolve from him to replace it with a numbing chill as he barely dared to believe what he was witnessing. Denied its sacrifice, the hanging tree itself had come to chaotic life. The tree effortlessly lifted the choking roadwarden into the air and then, in one violent eruption tore the wretched man limb from limb. Pieces of Hoffenbach dropped to the ground, offal left dangling from the writhing branches. Then the tree reached for the wizard.

Gerhart recovered himself immediately, the dire urgency of his predicament filling him with renewed resolve. His sword lay close to the still smouldering body of his foolish attacker. Reacting almost instinctively, Gerhart rolled away from the clutching grasp of the branches, stretched out his right arm and snatched up his soot-smeared blade. The pommel was still warm to the touch.

The tree lashed out at Gerhart again, only this time he was able to fend off its attack, blocking strikes from its lower branches with his sword. Where his blade struck the tree, thick dark sap oozed from its wounds like blood.

The branches recoiled from the wizard’s wounding blows, giving Gerhart the opportunity to get to his feet once more. He backed away out of its reach. It seemed to the mage that the creaking and groaning of the wood, as it contorted itself into all manner of writhing shapes, was the tree growling at him.

The hanging tree was not done with him yet. With a clanking of protesting rusted metal links, the tree uprooted itself, pulled great splayed roots, dripping earth, from the grave-soil ground of the clearing and began to drag its massive bulk towards him. The boulders secured to the taut chains also came free of the orange flecked mud as the tree heaved the great rocks attached to it across the clearing, gouging great ruts in the putrid loam.

Gerhart had faced all manner of horrors before—slithering Chaos-created spawn-things, a living daemon-cannon, creatures born of nightmares that by rights should never have existed in the waking world—but nothing so primal, so ancient and so terrifying as this hanging tree before. He could feel the malign influence of the Chaos energies fuelling the tree’s unnatural vigour all around him. He could feel it thickening the air, feel it raising the hackles on the back of his neck, chilling his spine, freezing the marrow in his bones, taste its bitter gall in his mouth. He even felt its cold, corrupting touch in the dark depths of his very soul.

It was more than that; there was a malign sentience there too, gnawing at the edges of his own consciousness. Gerhart’s preternatural senses revealed flashes of visions that were something like memories to him…

He saw blood-daubed, tattooed tribes-men offering the tree sacrifice in the form of enemies bested in battle… He sensed the powers of dark magic being drawn to the tree over the centuries as a result of the blood rites practised before it, and the sacrifices continuing, even as the tribe’s settlement become the village of Viehdorf… He shared in the memory when the tree, so imbued was it with warping power, gained some kind of self-awareness… Its influence spreading through the soil beneath the forest, just like its roots, to encompass the village, corrupting the minds of the people who dwelt there so that they continued to feed it human souls, helping to strengthen the tree all the time. In turn its malignancy kept all other threats to its dominance at bay, in an unbroken cycle of corruption, sacrifice and soul-feasting…

Gerhart had overheard the exchange that took place between the greasy innkeeper and the roadwarden back at the inn. Now he understood why the rising storm of Chaos had left this place untouched. Chaos was already here.

His mind awash with disturbing images, in the dark Gerhart did not see the root push itself up out of the ground and snag itself around his ankle. Then he has falling, unable to stop himself. Gerhart plunged down the slope that dropped away at the edge of the clearing, tumbling head over heels through thorny thickets; roots and stones bruised his body, brambles snagging his beard.

He slid to a halt in a bed of nettles, cracking his head against a weatherworn stone. The jolt stunned him for a moment but also helped him shake himself free of the tree’s malevolent influence. The hanging tree was crashing towards him, splintering saplings under its weight. Bodies swung wildly from its upper branches, or were torn from it as they snagged in the crooks of elm and silver birch.

It was almost on top of him now. A slimy jawbone fell from the skeletal canopy of the tree into Gerhart’s lap as the chaos tree’s violent lurching shook it loose from a cadaver swinging high above.

There was no way that he could prevail here armed only with his sword, Gerhart realised. There was only one thing that could save him now. Gerhart looked with his mage-sight again and a glimmer of hope entered his heart. The hollow where he lay was saturated with swirling magical energy. There were places in the world that attracted the winds of magic more strongly than others, like iron filings were attracted to a lodestone.

The fire wizard looked down at the stone he had hit with his head. The tracery of ancient carvings could still just be made out beneath the lichen crawling over its surface, possibly made by the tribesmen who had first offered the tree fealty in times long past. The concentration of magical power was greatest here; drawn to this spot by the ancient stone. Had the primitives who put the stone here realised what effect its positioning would have, Gerhart wondered? It was a potential stockpile of power just waiting to be tapped.

The tree reached for Gerhart for the last time, for now there was no escape for the wizard. As it did so, he breathed out slowly and, ignoring the pain in the back of his skull, focused his mind once more.

So saturated in eldritch force was this spot that the very essence of the winds of magic simply poured into the attuned wizard, the tongue of flame burning inside his mind exploding into a devastating firestorm. Gerhart flung his arms out towards the tree, his hands seeming to burst into flame as he did so. Sorcerous power roared from his fingertips, becoming a roiling ball of liquid fire as it raced towards the hanging tree. Yellow fires blazed within his eyes as Gerhart cast his spell, immolating the tree with his fiery magic. He had not felt power like this since Wolfenburg.

Flames washed over the tree, taking hold immediately all over its grotesquely bulging trunk, fat with the countless souls it had consumed. The tree let out a cacophonous scream, like the splintering of wood, as if myriad voices were screaming in unison with the angry roaring of the flames. The tree writhed in tortured agony as it burned, the rotting corpses hanging from its contorted bow catching light as well. Skeletal forms crashed to the forest floor in a flurry of sparks as their ropes burnt through, the raging inferno lighting up the top of the hill and the forest around it.

His spell cast, his power spent, Gerhart staggered clear of the dying tree. Out of range of its flailing, fiery death-throes, the wizard watched with grim satisfaction as the tree burned. As it burned, he fancied that he could see faces contorted in agony distorting the bark-skin of the tree, adding their howling voices to the tree’s death-screams.

Satisfied that his work here was done, his staff and sword recovered, Gerhart left the clearing on the same path the horse had taken with its two riders. The wizard followed its hoof prints back towards the Slaughtered Calf and the corrupted village.

The tree itself had shown the wizard that the people of Viehdorf were party to its evil. The land would not be free of the contagion that was the Chaos growth’s malignant influence until the corruption that had been allowed to fester there, thanks to this root of evil, had been exorcised and the wound cauterised.

Before dawn Viehdorf would burn.