Mark of Chaos
This
is a dark
age, a bloody age, an age of daemons
and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the
world's ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury
it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds
and great courage.
At the heart
of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the
largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known
for its engineers, explorers, traders and soldiers, it is
a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests
and vast cities. It is a land riven by uncertainty, as three
pretenders all vye for control of the Imperial throne.
But these are
far from civilised times. Across the
length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly
palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north,
come rumblings of war. In the towering World's Edge
Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault.
Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of
the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the
skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the
land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the
ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen
corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods.
As the time of battle draws ever nearer,
the Empire needs heroes
like never before.
BOOK ONE
The year 2302
,
two hundred years before the reign of Emperor Karl-Franz, was a time of horror; It was the Great War Against Chaos, and it was the largest attack from the forces of Chaos in the far north that the world had ever seen. The Empire was fractured and divided, with the different states battling each other in bitter civil war. It was only thanks to the efforts of the great leader Magnus the Pious that the Empire was not overrun. Magnus united the states, and led a grand coalition to the north to face the enemy in Kislev. The battle raged for several years, yet the forces of the Empire were at last victorious. The forces of Chaos, led by the Warlord Asavar Kul, were shattered. With the death of the Chaos leader, the tribes were split, and they began warring on each other once more. Many tribes were destroyed in the great battles, but others were scattered. Many retreated back to their traditional homelands in the north, to resume their constant warfare against their own,
but others entered the forests and mountains around the Empire itself.
The Empire was victorious, but it was a broken land. Decades of civil war had ensured deep-seated enmity amongst the states, and many nobles slipped back into their old, petty rivalries. Plague was rife, and the populace was on the point of starvation. The Great War had bled the coffers dry, and many of the standing armies of the elector counts had been decimated. The Chaos threat had been pushed back, but scattered tribes continued to raid the northern towns and villages, and there were not enough soldiers to defend against these attacks. It was a grim time for the people of the Empire. There was always the threat from the north - for if any of the Chaos-worshipping chieftains grew powerful enough to unite the scattered tribes, then a new era of warfare would be unleashed, resulting in a war that the Empire would be unable to endure.
CHAPTER ONE
His
eyes flicked
open, but all he could see was darkness. A foetid stench filled his nostrils and he gagged, his stomach heaving. He could taste bile on his lips. His arms felt leaden and weak, the muscles aching and sore, but he pushed up with all his might at the weight pressing down upon him, crying out with the effort. Red light reached his eyes and he blinked painfully. With the last of his energy, he surged upwards, rolling the weight from his chest. It flopped beside him, and he found himself staring into a pair of cold, dead eyes. He cried out in horror, pushed away from the staring cadaver, and found himself looking at another corpse, its face obscured by long black hair. Pushing himself away again, he scrambled back, onto the chest of another corpse. Half its head had been cleaved away. Panic filled him - he was on the top of a great pile of the dead.
Then the drumming started. An infernal sound, like the heartbeat of an evil god, it reverberated around his head, coming from everywhere and nowhere. He could feel the sound beating at him, hammering down upon him like a weight, eroding his will to live. He curled up in a ball, head in his hands, trying vainly to block out the monstrous sound. Tears ran down his face, and he felt his insides twist and knot. He thought he heard laughter, swords clashing, the roaring of daemonic hounds, and the screams and shouts of the dying and the victorious. He was dead, he thought, and this was the hellish afterlife.
His eyes were closed, yet he saw flashes of hateful, violent, maddening images. He saw the daemon with the eyes of fire staring into his soul, muscles rippling and flexing over its massive red, ritually scarred chest. The hateful creature's lips drew back, exposing fangs stained red with gore. Blood slid in thick rivulets down the massive curving horns on its head. He felt that blood drip onto his face, and felt the heat emanating from the creature as it reached for him.
With a tortured
gasp, Hensel awoke. His body was slick with sweat and his flea-ridden bed sheets were wrapped around him tightly - he felt like a corpse, freshly wrapped by the priests of Morr. Thrashing his limbs frantically, he kicked the covers away, trying to dispel the disturbing thought from his mind. The chill night air cooled his body almost instantly.
Sitting up, Hensel placed his feet on the freezing floorboards and rubbed his callused hands over his unshaven face. His heart still beat frantically in his chest, and he breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself. He had been having the nightmares for over a year. Not a single night would go by without the terrifying visions plaguing his sleep. The only time that he could get any blessed dreamless sleep was after he had drunk himself into a stupor - something that he had been doing ever more frequently in the past months.
Hensel wished that he had got drunk that night, but drink cost money, something he was particularly short of. The goodwill of the Cock-eyed Firken, the cheapest pub in Bildenhof, had also dried up. Not that he could blame them, because he'd been penniless for weeks.
Resigning himself to not getting any sleep that night, Hensel arose from his vermin-infested pallet and dressed quickly, throwing on a dirty shirt and belting his most valuable possession, his sword, at his side. Pulling on his heavy greatcoat, he yanked open the door to his room and stepped into the night.
Looking up, Hensel saw that the glow of the silver moon, Mannslieb, was high in the sky, partially obscured by wispy clouds. It was not yet midnight, and he had slept for little over an hour. Trudging through the clinging mud, he walked down the deserted main street of Bildenhof. Dark houses lined the street. A rolling low fog hugged the ground, slipping under doors and seeping through cracked windows. Its touch was cold and wet. He looked up at the dark windows, jealous of the sleep the townspeople were getting.
The buildings of Bildenhof were dirty and misshapen, their timbers cracked and warped. Not a window or doorframe was even, their angles skewed and twisted. The roofs were uneven and ramshackle, and you always had to be careful walking under their drooping eaves for there was a very real threat of falling tiles.
Like the Empire itself, thought Hensel, the town was rotten and decaying, just about on the point of collapse.
He made his way over the covered bridge that crossed the pitiful muddy stream passing through town, his footsteps echoing loudly within the enclosed space. Trudging up the small rise beyond the bridge, he neared the watch post.
It was a crude affair, having been hastily erected some months earlier. Little more than a wooden box built atop the thick, twisted trunk of an ancient oak tree, it allowed a sentry a clear view of the northern hillside leading up towards the dark tree line. The beasts of the forest had attacked three nearby villages over the last months, and, in response, the council of Bildenhof had ordered eight of these watch posts to be built along the outskirts of the town. A score of sharpened stakes had been driven into the ground around the base of the watch post, and a shaky ladder leant against it. Hensel shook his head.
He climbed the ladder stealthily, reaching the top with barely a sound. Gingerly he raised his head to look inside. There, with his back to him, he could see a motionless crouching figure, looking out to the north. A pair of crossbows leant against the wall next to him.
'Evening.' said Hensel. The sentry started visibly, a strangled yelp escaping his lips at the unexpected voice behind him. 'You should really pull this ladder up, you know. It would stop people catching you unawares.'
'Sigmar above, man! What the hell is wrong with you?' the man asked. 'Creeping up on a man like that!' 'I'm sorry, Mathias.' said Hensel, his dark-ringed eyes glinting with humour. 'It was too good an opportunity to pass by.'
'Yes, I bet it was.' said Mathias, shaking his head.
'You alone here? Who's meant to be on watch with you?' asked Hensel as he crawled over to take a seat next to the sentry.
'Konrad. He slipped off about an hour ago - to warm his body a little, if you know what I mean.'
'Ah. Who is it this time?' asked Hensel.
'Magritte.'
Hensel guffawed. 'Damn, but she's a popular one with the men of this town!'
'Aye, she is. She won't be if her father ever catches her. He'll pack her off to the temple in Wolfenburg if he ever hears about what she's up to in the darkening hours.'
'Lucky for her he's a heavy sleeper, eh?'
'Aye, indeed it is.' said Mathias. He paused for a moment, and frowned. 'How do you know he's a heavy sleeper?'
'How do you?' asked Hensel, with a grin.
Mathias laughed out loud, and slapped a meaty hand on his thigh. The pair sat in silence for a minute, staring out into the night.
'Couldn't sleep again, huh. The nightmares?' asked Mathias.
The older man nodded slowly in response. 'Ever since Kislev.' he breathed. Mathias didn't ask anything more, which Hensel appreciated. The pair fell into silence, each engrossed in his own thoughts.
A sharp noise echoed through the night, breaking the quiet - a bell was ringing frantically.
An attack
.
Lights flared to life in the houses of the town, and Hensel could hear muffled shouts as people moved onto the streets in fear.
Hensel and Mathias grabbed the crossbows, loading them hastily, and stared out into the night. Minutes passed, and Hensel began to think that it had been a false alarm, until Mathias stiffened at his side.
He looked over at the younger soldier, and saw that his eyes were wide and filled with dread. He followed the youngster's gaze to the tree line, peering into the darkness. At first he saw nothing, just a vague movement in the darkness.
Then he saw them. The dark figures were almost completely hidden in the gloom beneath the trees. There were scores of them.
It was then that the drumming started.
Deep and powerful, the rhythmic pounding of the drums rolled out over Bildenhof. Beating slowly, like the giant heart of some ancient, monstrous creature, the sound reverberated off the high hills surrounding the town, so that the thumping sound seemed to come from all around.
The infernal sound brought Hensel's nightmares to life. For over a year, this same hateful drumming had haunted his dreams, accompanied by images of slaughter and bloodletting, of corpses lying atop corpses, and of giant piles of skulls that reached up to the heavens. The sound struck at him like hammer blows. His whole body flinched with every pounding beat.