Dozens of doom-laden zealots had joined the mob: men and women who had been driven to the point of madness by the horrors they had witnessed over the last years. They screamed and ranted that the end of the world was nigh, and beat themselves with whips, chains and spiked clubs. They were terrifying to the other hangers-on, and disturbing to the soldiers. Their ranting and raving, proclamations of doom and wanton masochism was bad for morale. 'No man needs to be reminded of his own mortality quite so blatantly.' the reiksmarshal had commented, eyeing the flagellants warily when they had first started to band together behind the baggage trains of the army.
Stefan's face was grim as he and Albrecht marched through the camp, passing by the campfires of his soldiers. The men ate in relative silence, and there was no laughter or mirth. Some soldiers called out to Stefan in greeting, and he acknowledged them with a nod or a word.
Thirty greatswords picked from Stefan's elite bodyguard marched behind the pair as they moved away from camp, heading towards a bonfire that raged some way off in the distance. The greatswords carried their massive two-handed swords over their right shoulders, and wore flamboyant feathers in their hats. They wore heavy armour, and marched in perfect, disciplined unison behind Stefan and Albrecht. They were awesome warriors, fearless and skilled, and they had never faltered in the face of the enemy. Still, even they were uneasy as they marched towards the ranting madmen.
Stefan could hear the raised voices of the flagellants, and could see ragged figures capering around the rising flames. The green moon Morrslieb could be seen hanging high in the sky, much larger than its pure, pale sister moon of Mannslieb. Nights when the green moon hung so large were bad for the Empire, for strange and unnatural things tended to occur. Some said the dead walked the land on such nights, and others that it heralded evil to come. The flagellants were most certainly responding to it, working themselves up into a frenzy as the moon climbed its way across the heavens.
'Damn it, captain, they are pitiful figures, but I cannot hate them.' said Albrecht, referring to the crazed zealots.
Stefan knew what he meant. The hardships of the previous years had made these people what they were.
'Handy in a fight, though.' added Albrecht. Stefan had to admit that this was also true. Having long since confronted their own vision of the world's destruction in their mind's eye, they were fearless of death.
Only two days past, the convoy had been attacked by greenskins. Although essentially stupid creatures, Stefan recognised that they were cunning, for they had waited in ambush until the Reiklandguard and the bulk of the warriors of Ostermark had passed through a narrow valley before launching their attack. The rearguard was too far back to be able to intercept the whooping creatures as they had sprung the ambush and streamed from the rocks to attack the seemingly defenceless artillery trains, baggage wagons and ragtag hangers-on who struggled to keep pace.
The first to reach the Empire column were the vicious, smaller greenskins riding massive, slavering wolves. The demented flagellants had thrown themselves at the enemy, and proceeded to rip them apart, ignoring their own often-fatal wounds. They hurled themselves onto the spears of the foe in order to close with them and smash them to the ground with their flails and crude hammers. This assault had so stunned the ambushers that they had lost their momentum, and Stefan was able to organise a counter-attack quickly. The greenskins were slaughtered in droves by the black powder handguns of the men of Ostermark and the powerful bolts of their crossbows. Those greenskins that did manage to survive these lethal volleys, and reach the Empire convoy, were met by Stefan and his halberdiers, and were cut down with ruthless efficiency.
As they drew closer to the crazed zealots capering and screaming around the bonfire, Stefan ordered his greatswords to a halt. With just Albrecht at his side, he marched towards the flagellants.
There were about seventy of them, dressed in filth-encrusted robes and tattered clothing. Several had ripped the clothing from their bodies, despite the deepening cold of the approaching winter, and he could see great bloody wounds upon their backs from their self-flagellation. Some had carved statements of repentance and doom into their own flesh. Others had put out their own eyes, and pranced around the fire blindly, great bronze bells hanging around their necks tolling mournfully. Others wore spiked collars that cut into their necks, their bodies slick with blood. One had a battered parchment nailed into the flesh of his chest, a page ripped from a holy book of Sigmar, which Stefan frowned at. A pair of men cried out ecstatically as they flayed the skin from each other's backs.
A towering man wearing battered plate armour stood in the centre of the group, loudly extolling his vision of doom and despondency. His hair and beard were grey and unkempt, and his eyes were wild. Around his waist he wore a string of skulls. Bizarrely, a dead fish, its mouth incredibly distended, had been pulled over the cranium of one of the skulls. Carved into his forehead was the image of a twin-tailed comet, the symbol of Sigmar, and he stood upon the back of another man lying prostrate in the mud, froth dribbling from his mouth. Stefan recognised with surprise that the breastplate the figure wore was the same as those worn by the Reiklandguard, probably scavenged from the dead, he reasoned. Seeing the two men warily approaching, the madman turned towards them and raised his hands into the air.
'Join with us, my children! Give up yourselves to the end of humanity! The day draws near, the end times are upon us! Abase yourselves before great Sigmar, pledge your soul to him and beat the fear from your bodies!'
Albrecht threw the captain a dark look. Stefan folded his arms and planted his feet firmly, looking into the crazed eyes of the self-proclaimed prophet.
'I am already a devout worshipper of great Sigmar. I have no need to abase myself, nor beat myself to prove it to him.'
'Repent, my child. There is darkness within you. Let that darkness out. Be free. Burn it from your soul!'
A cheer from the flagellants greeted that proclamation, and several of them raised their burning braziers high into the air. Others scrambled over each other to lift burning brands from the fire. The air was suddenly filled with the stench of burning flesh, as one of the zealots reversed his brand and held its flaming end to his abdomen. One of the crazed followers of the doom-laden prophet stepped towards Stefan, holding a burning brazier before him.
'Burn it from your soul!' he shouted, repeating the words of the prophet, and he thrust the brazier forwards. Albrecht stepped in front of his captain and swung a meaty fist into the man's face. He dropped the brazier and fell to his knees, clutching at Albrecht's leather tabard. 'Thank you!' he screeched. Albrecht kicked him away, a look of disgust on his face.
'The end does approach.' said the prophet quietly, his voice sounding more lucid. 'We cut down the Everchosen, Asavar Kul, on the battlefield of Kislev, but it matters not. Another will rise. Even now, another is growing in power. Perhaps he will have the power to unite the scattered tribes. A new era of horror and death is upon us. We will never escape it.' He glanced at his demented followers. 'These men and women have seen that it is inevitable.'
'I do not believe that the end is inevitable,' said Stefan, 'and if it is, it would not change my resolve. Where there is evil, it must be fought. There is always hope. To give up on that is to give up completely.'
'I believed so once myself.' chuckled the preacher humourlessly, 'but there
is
no hope, for I have seen the future. Sigmar has granted me the vision. I see blood and fire and death. There is nothing more. Blood and fire and death.'
'You fought well against the greenskins.' said Stefan, changing the subject as he saw the gleam of madness returning to the preacher. 'Had you and your followers not reacted so quickly, many people would have been slain.'
'There is no future for these people.' said the prophet, indicating the flagellants. 'There is no future for me. In death, we can lend our aid to Sigmar and to the Empire.' He lowered his voice before he continued. 'Their homes have been destroyed, their families slaughtered before their eyes. They have witnessed things that would drive any man insane. They have nothing, nothing but the memories that haunt their every living minute. No, were they to travel to Wolfenburg, or even distant Nuln, they would have no life. Penniless, their minds ravaged by horror, they would die, starving to death and alone in their madness. Together, they are a family, and if we can find death while aiding our Empire, then we have done something.'
'What is your name? You rode with the Reiklandguard once, true?' said Stefan. He had no doubt, now, that this man was once a knight, and had not scavenged the breastplate from a corpse, as he had first thought.
'Aye, I rode with the reiksmarshal, it is true. A fine man. We crushed the Chaos fiends of the north,' he said, 'and I have no name. I gave it up long ago. I have no family, no home, and have no need of a name. I will burn brightly, and kill for the Empire, and I will die nameless.' 'Why do you ride with them no longer?' 'I fell in battle, ambushed. A red devil cut my horse from beneath me, and I was trapped beneath it. The devil had wanted to kill me then and there, I knew, but a vile sorcerer stopped him. I was taken alive. My legs were useless, broken at the hip. For five days and nights I was their prisoner. My head was filled with visions.
My captors changed before my eyes. They grew extra limbs, and tentacles sprang from their bodies. Their faces blurred to those of dogs and lizards, and the grass turned black beneath their footsteps. Their horses changed to giant, slavering hounds of darkness that breathed fire, their eyes glowing red and their long tongues lolling from their mouths. Madness was upon me. The red devil grew wings, and flaming horns sprang from his forehead. Then my madness was broken, for the reiksmarshal appeared, and my fellow knights. I was rescued. My body would heal, but my mind was lost. Blood and fire and death. That has been all that I see when I close my eyes.' he whispered. 'The end is near. Blood and fire and death.'
He raised his arms above his head. 'Blood and fire and death draws near, my children!' he screamed.
Stefan turned away from the man, and began to walk back towards his greatswords. 'The man's insane.' said Albrecht.
'Aye, he is, but I think his crazed brethren may be useful in the dark days that draw near. Every fighting man will be needed.'
'Maybe.' said Albrecht dubiously. 'Do you think he really was a Reiklandguard? Its hard to imagine one of those knights falling so far.'
'I believe he was. The ravages of Chaos can strike down all but the most pure,' Stefan said.
Albrecht saw the captain unconsciously grasp the symbol of Sigmar that he wore around his neck.
'Do you truly think it wise to allow those madmen to keep following us?' asked Albrecht.
'Do you truly think we could stop them?' countered von Kessel.
'No, I suppose that we couldn't,' the burly sergeant admitted.
'He wants to die helping the Empire, Albrecht. He wants to die doing something good before the madness consumes him completely. You saw them fight the other day. We could use men like that.'
Behind them, they could hear the raised voice of the prophet, screaming out his vision of destruction.
'Just keep them the hell away from our men.'
CHAPTER TEN
'We must
be
swift,
warlord.
My
time draws near.'
hissed Sudobaal. For two days the Chaos forces had moved quickly through the darkness of the forest, barely stopping to rest. It mattered not to Hroth. His warriors were Khazags, well used to such extremes. They could run for a week fully armoured and still have the strength to fight a battle. Borkhil's black armoured warriors too were strong, and they showed no signs of tiring.
'We will be at the gibbet tree before the day is out, Sudobaal.' said Hroth.
Most of the warriors were on foot, and Hroth had set a crippling pace, forcing them to run for the last two days. The black armoured knights of Borkhil were spread throughout the trees to either flank of the running warriors, picking their way through the trees carefully. Hroth's marauder horsemen, lightly armed and armoured, and riding stout, hardy horses of the Khazag plains, ranged before the others, scouting out the easiest route through the forest. The sorcerer rode his steed alongside the running Khorne champion, its midnight flanks lathered with sweat. It was an ill-tempered beast, temperamental with all but the sorcerer. It had no hooves, its legs ending in taloned claws that gripped the ground, ripping up clods of earth with every step. The sorcerer fed it hunks of flesh each evening, the creature's sharp teeth ripping the flesh from the bones.
Hroth ran with his warriors, rejoicing in the feeling of power and strength that coursed through him as the miles passed behind him. His axe hungered for blood, but he knew that much blood would soon run. Patience, he told himself. Soon there would be thousands of skulls for him to offer up to his deity. He longed for the day.
As the hours passed, Hroth felt his body changing within his skin. The itchy feeling within his thick flesh was not an unpleasant sensation. He could feel his muscles tearing and reforming, and could feel the blood coursing through veins and arteries to feed his growing power. His bones were straining within his body, and he could feel them strengthening. He could feel them hardening, and knew that soon they would be almost unbreakable.
Khorne was with him, he knew. Khorne, who could see into his heart and mind, and see the plans formulating within him, was pleased.
Fingering his axe, he looked at the hunched figure of Sudobaal crouched atop his Chaotic steed. Yes, he thought, Khorne was pleased by the actions he planned.
'Once we have arrived, I will need to prepare the ritual. It needs to happen tonight, and end precisely when the green moon is at its largest in the sky.'