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  ‘I would speak with you and give you counsel,’ she declared. Her eyes suddenly shifted away from Mandred, focusing instead on the clutch of riders who came galloping out from the column to join the graf.

  It was a mixture of Middenland nobles, Dienstleute officers and knightly commanders who had ridden up to join their leader. Among them, Mandred was surprised to see Baroness Carin and several of her retainers.

  ‘Witch! Harlot of Old Night!’ Ar-Ulric’s voice trembled in the fury of his outrage. Mandred feared the old priest would tumble from his saddle, so violently was he shaking. Beck actually rode over to him, reaching up to keep him from falling. Ar-Ulric shrugged him away, not even deigning to look at him as he continued to stare balefully at Hulda.

  Before the priest could unleash another stream of invective, Hulda made a gesture with her hand. Mandred didn’t quite catch what it was, but its effect upon Ar-Ulric was dramatic. It was as though he’d been poleaxed by an ogre. The fury that had gripped him but a moment before seemed to evaporate. He stared at the woman with an expression of confusion and wonder. Not another word did he say. He simply turned his steed’s head and rode back into the body of the column.

  Hulda watched him for a moment, and then turned her eyes upon Mandred. ‘You intend to follow the Old Forest Road?’ she asked, though from her tone, it was apparent she already knew the answer.

  ‘We are taking the army into Salzenmund,’ Mandred told her. The fortified town had become the centre of Baroness Carin’s diminished realm. Before she’d made her perilous ride to Carroburg, she’d had her vassals assemble provisions and supplies for the army she hoped to bring back with her. They’d be dearly appreciated by an army that had been marching across three provinces.

  Hulda frowned at his statement. ‘You must not go to Salzenmund,’ she said. ‘The skaven know what this woman has planned,’ she pointed a finger at Baroness Carin. ‘Their spies know about your army. They wait and watch for it to arrive.’

  ‘Impossible!’ the baroness shouted. ‘My people are loyal! They wouldn’t betray me to the ratkin!’

  Mandred gave the baroness a sympathetic look. He’d seen for himself the perfidious ways of the skaven. No place was safe from their prying ears. It didn’t need a human traitor for them to have discovered her plans.

  ‘It would be like them to turn your own stronghold into a snare for us all,’ Mandred told the baroness. He thought of the fight deep within the dwarf halls below Middenheim. ‘I have seen such trickery before.’

  Baroness Carin threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘Then what do we do? Turn back? Abandon my people to these monsters?’

  ‘If you follow the road and go to Salzenmund, the skaven will be waiting for you,’ Hulda repeated. ‘But there is another way. A way to turn their trap against them.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ the baroness exclaimed. ‘The only path an army can navigate is the Old Forest Road and it passes through Salzenmund.’

  ‘There is another way,’ Hulda said. ‘A way unknown to the ratkin. While they wait in ambush outside Salzenmund you can strike at their nests in Dietershafen.’

  Baroness Carin turned towards Mandred. ‘Your highness, this is my land. Believe me when I tell you there is no trail such as this witch has imagined.’

  There was a challenging quality about the smile Hulda turned upon the baroness. ‘There is the Laurelorn Forest,’ she said. The words were almost a whisper, yet they had an impact upon the Nordlanders as though they were the roar of a titan. Their faces grew pale, their eyes darted anxiously from one another, a few of the men even made the signs of Taal and Manaan to ward them against ill omen.

  ‘The… the Laurelorn is haunted,’ Baroness Carin explained. ‘Any who stray within it never return. Not alive. Not sane. Better the skaven than whatever horror lurks within the forest.’

  Mandred appreciated the fear in the baroness’s voice and the effect that fear was having upon his own men. Before it could grow and spread further, he quickly turned towards Hulda. ‘Can you protect us against the ghosts of the forest?’

  Hulda nodded ‘I can guide you. The path is perilous. Those who lose their way…’ She left the warning unspoken. ‘But you will be unseen by the skaven.’

  Mandred smiled at that last point. It would be richly satisfying to take the skaven by surprise for once.

  Baroness Carin waved the riding crop she held at Hulda. ‘Surely you aren’t going to listen to her? You’re not going to trust a witch to lead us?’

  Mandred’s voice was loud when he answered her, loud enough to carry far down the column. ‘She isn’t leading this army, I am,’ he said. ‘Many of these men have invested their trust in me before. They have trusted me to tell them where to fight and how to fight. They have trusted me to ride with them into battle. Now I ask you, I ask them to trust me again. If we fight the skaven at Salzenmund, even in victory we are undone. It will take time to re-gather our strength, time the ratmen infesting Dietershafen will use to make ready for us.

  ‘The Laurelorn offers a way to cheat the ratmen, to attack them where they think themselves safe!’ Mandred shook his fist in the air as though strangling a skaven throat. ‘I mean to teach them nowhere is safe while one man yet draws breath! I will teach them that lesson, even if I must ride alone through the forest!’

  The thunderous cheer that rose from his soldiers told Mandred that whatever might await him in the haunted Laurelorn, he wouldn’t face it alone.

  Stirland, 1121

  Screams tore the night air, cries of agony and horror that echoed through the darkness. It was the death rattle of Kleinbad and eighty-four of the eighty-seven who called the village home. Rugged, hardy specimens of Stirland’s peasantry, they had survived the worst onslaught of the plague, they had endured years of famine and marauding masterless Dienstleute, they had escaped the depredations of opportunistic goblins and prowling beastmen. After nearly a decade of survival, Kleinbad had begun to think of itself as protected by the gods, shielded by the sympathy of Rhya and the indulgence of Taal.

  If the gods had protected Kleinbad, then such beneficence had run its course. Nothing stayed the black riders who swooped down upon the community, swords slashing out in butchering sweeps, hooves stamping down in bludgeoning blows. Down the muddy lane between the sunken wattle-and-daub grubenhausen the invaders rode, killing anything that tried to flee. After them came dismounted attackers, spears crashing against barred doors, mailed fists dragging terrified peasants from their homes. The villagers wailed and shrieked, crying out for mercy. The headman braved the stamping hooves to reach the square at the centre of the community, to dig with his bare hands at the base of an old oak tree. Desperately he pulled the treasure the peasants had hidden, the bribe with which they hoped to buy their lives.

  One of the riders paused, eyes blazing behind the visor of his steel helm. The headman raised his hands towards the invader, showing him the fistfuls of grain. The rider’s hesitation came to an end, his sword chopping down into the peasant’s shoulder. The mortally wounded man flopped at the base of the tree, his life’s blood soaking into the grain scattered across the ground.

  No inhuman threat could have visited a more complete doom upon Kleinbad than that which was inflicted upon the village by monsters who were all too human. The Sylvanian Nachtsheer, the sell-sword army of Count Malbork von Drak, were more thorough than any beastman, more vicious than any goblin, more exacting even than the ratkin as they annihilated the little farming community.

  There was no pity on the face of Dregator Iorgu Turul as he watched his footmen herd the peasants into the square. He had served the von Draks too long to have any pretensions of conscience. To survive in the service of a cruel and ruthless master, a soldier learned to be as callous as those issuing his orders. Though he had himself been born in a village not terribly dissimilar to Kleinbad, the dregator felt no kinship with these people. He had risen above his pea
sant beginnings and he would take a certain amount of pleasure in displaying just how far he had come by carrying out the voivode’s commands to the letter.

  The wailing sobs, the pleas for mercy as the peasants were shoved and clubbed into the square only increased the dregator’s contempt for them. These were the snivelling curs who would rule over Sylvania? These cowardly Stirlanders, begging to crawl on their knees when they should be willing to die on their feet? The ancient hatred of Fennone for Asoborn burned in Iorgu’s veins, the call of barbarian ancestors hungry for blood.

  Blood they would have. Count von Drak’s orders would allow nothing less. Iorgu pointed with the gilded baton he bore, the dragon-headed symbol of his rank. A moment he let his gaze linger upon the weeping, terrified villagers. Savagely he slashed the baton through the air.

  ‘No survivors,’ he growled. The black-clad Nachtsheer were swift to execute Iorgu’s command. Horsemen came galloping back into the square, chopping down peasants with their swords. Those who tried to flee back into the streets were spitted on the spears of footmen or smashed into bloody ruin by steel maces and oaken cudgels. The massacre continued for what seemed an eternity. Each scream brought a cruel smile to the dregator’s scarred face. Justice for the oppression of Sylvania.

  When the carnage in the square reached its peak, Iorgu called out to the sergeants among his footmen. ‘Bait the trap,’ he hissed. The dregator’s eyes glittered in the blaze of burning hovels as the Nachtsheer put Kleinbad to the torch. A detachment of grim-faced soldiers, their uniforms hidden beneath the folds of long leather aprons, stalked among the dead, hacking and chopping with the massive cleavers they bore. Each group was accompanied by a mercenary with a monstrous spiked mace. Wherever the butchers encountered a victim who wasn’t quite dead, the maceman would finish the job before they started their desecration of the dead.

  Horsemen prowled about the village, reaching into saddle bags and dropping rusty trinkets and scraps of mouldering cloth on the ground. Rubbish culled from an ancient Styrigen barrow mound, it was this hoary garbage that would be the final proof to bait the Stirlanders.

  Iorgu scowled and wheeled his horse around that he might stare down at the villains who would bring the first evidence to Wurtbad and the grand count. If his regard for the slaughtered peasants had been one of contempt, it was a thousand times worse for these men. A traitor, even a useful one, was an abomination. How much worse when the traitor was moved not by ideal or emotion, but by simple greed. These three men had betrayed their community, their families and neighbours for the promise of gold. Only a fool would trust such men. Neither Count von Drak or Dregator Iorgu was a fool.

  ‘Have we not served you well, your lordship?’ the oldest of the traitors asked. They were very much alike in their appearance, dusky men with long noses and pale blue eyes. An uncle and two nephews, shepherds who had lost their livelihood when the village headman ordered their flock killed so that the peasants might survive the harsh winter of 1118. Revenge had perhaps played its part when they responded to the intimations of a wandering Sylvanian tinker, but it was von Drak’s gold that had won their cooperation in the end.

  ‘A traitor is a double-edged blade,’ Iorgu mused as he glared back at the scruffy peasant. ‘Trying to cut with it, one must be careful about getting nicked by the reverse edge.’

  The peasant was unctuous in his protestations. ‘We have taken the voivode’s coin,’ he stated, injecting a tone of injured pride to his words. ‘We know what is expected of us. We will alert Baron von Kleistern, tell him that a legion of skeletons and zombies descended upon the village and killed everyone.’

  Dregator Iorgu nodded as he heard the peasant recite the story he had been told to deliver. ‘And what, pray, would happen if Baron von Kleistern should offer you more gold to tell him what really happened here?’

  All three of the peasants looked at one another, their faces betraying the same look of disbelieving shock as that of a deer that suddenly scents a lurking hunter. One of the younger men turned to run. Before he got twenty paces, an arrow from a Nachtsheer archer brought him tumbling into the mud.

  The old shepherd threw himself to the ground, hands clenching tight about the stirrup holding Iorgu’s boot. ‘Mercy, your lordship! We are loyal!’

  The dregator kicked the man away, sending him sprawling into the muck. ‘Save your words! The voivode wants something more substantial to ensure your fealty!’ He raised his gilded baton. The little dragon sculpture glittered in the firelight as Iorgu waved it overhead. From the darkness, a cloaked figure emerged. Leaning heavily upon a gnarled oaken staff, Arch-Druid Caranica marched towards the dregator and the men cowering before him. High priest of Ahalt the Drinker, bloodthirsty god of wild places, Caranica’s features were hidden behind the hollowed out deer-skull he wore. A sickle, shapeless beneath the patina of gore coating it, was tucked beneath the sash he wore. As he approached, a stink of blood and death preceded him.

  ‘They will obey,’ the druid promised in a voice that was like the rustle of dead leaves. Removing the sickle from his belt, Caranica walked over to the writhing peasant with a Nachtsheer arrow in his breast. A moment of bloody work and the sickle was slick with the man’s lifeblood.

  A foul smile curled the wizened face visible beneath the jaw of the deer-skull. Slobbering growls rasped past the druid’s sharpened teeth, sounds more akin to those of beasts than men. As Caranica growled, a fell vapour began to gather around the bloody sickle, endowing it with an obscene light. The fresh blood upon the ceremonial blade began to steam and bubble, writhing as though possessed of some atrocious vivacity.

  The treacherous peasants retreated when the druid advanced towards them. Only the spears of the Nachtsheer kept them from fleeing. Forced to stand their ground, the men screamed as Caranica slashed their forearms with the glowing sickle. Their screams grew louder as the enchanted blood crawled off the blade and into their veins, vanishing into their bodies like a crimson maggot.

  ‘The mark of Ahalt is upon you,’ Caranica told the men. ‘Your lives belong to the Drinker now! Defy him, betray him, and the beasts of forest and field shall make sport with your bleached bones! You may escape the eyes of men, but there is no escaping the eyes of a god!’

  Caranica laughed as the terrified peasants were released. The men fled into the night, thinking only to escape the presence of the ghastly druid. Later, as they felt the Blood of Ahalt crawling inside them, they would remember what was expected of them. They would tell their liege lord what Count von Drak wanted.

  ‘How will you remove Ahalt’s curse?’ Iorgu asked. He had no liking for sorcery and even less when it masqueraded as religion. In better times, his Nachtsheer would have been hunting down animals like Caranica, not working with them.

  The druid cocked his head and stared up at Iorgu, bewilderment in his eyes. ‘Remove the mark of Ahalt?’ he asked, as though it were the stupidest question in the world. ‘It was my understanding that we only need these men for a few days, a few weeks at the most. After that time…’ He made a helpless gesture with his arms. ‘Blood will have blood and the Drinker is always thirsty.’

  Dregator Iorgu shuddered at the calm way Caranica explained what he had done. What the druid would do again, for there were other villages with other traitors that had a role to play in Count von Drak’s plan, his scheme to make Grand Count von Oberreuth believe Stirland was being invaded.

  Invaded by the undead hordes of the necromancer Vanhal.

  Chapter VII

  Laurelorn Forest, 1119

  Fear, anxiety, uneasiness, whatever name he chose to call it, not a soldier in the column was unmoved by the fearsome tales the Nordlanders related to their allies in hushed whispers: stories of ghoulish lights that could be seen dancing among the woods; accounts of ghostly shadows that stood watch just within the forest, waiting for their prey; discoveries of bloodless corpses, torn and mangled in unspeakable ways, dang
ling from the treetops. The descriptions from the Nordlanders became more grisly with each step they took towards the shunned forest.

  When the army finally came within sight of the Laurelorn, many of the soldiers laughed at the horrors the Nordlanders had conjured. In their minds they had pictured gnarled trees with skeletal branches clawing at the sky, vast swathes of bramble and thorn, stinking quagmires of slime. What they found instead was lush greenery, vibrant and fulsome. Birds sang from the branches of mighty oak and stalwart ash. Rabbits scampered beneath berry bushes, bees buzzed about patches of marigold and daisy. There was nothing untoward about the forest, no festering terror. If anything it was more pleasant and marvellous than any forest they had seen before.

  The horror of the Laurelorn, however, wasn’t a thing that could be seen. It was something that had to be felt, something that had to be experienced.

  ‘I have prayed to Lord Sigmar that you are right about this…’ Lady Mirella’s voice faded, reluctant even to whisper the word that had formed in her mind.

  Beside her, Graf Mandred felt the doubt in her voice stab at him. ‘Witch,’ he finished. ‘You’ve been talking with Arch-Lector Hartwich again.’

  Colour flushed into the noblewoman’s face. ‘He’s been too busy ministering to the needs of Princess Erna to consult me,’ she said. ‘But it is no secret that he doesn’t trust your friend. I don’t either. There are many who don’t.’ As she said the last, her gaze strayed to the Nordlanders and their leader, Baroness Carin.

  ‘She’s very beautiful,’ Mirella stated, her voice soft and tinged with melancholy.

  ‘Hulda?’ Mandred frowned. ‘There’s something compelling about her. Compelling… yet also frightening.’

  Mirella turned away from her scrutiny of the baroness, pouncing upon Mandred’s words. ‘Then you don’t trust her,’ she gasped.