Prologue

“So you’re sure there have been no other reports, corporal?”
“Definitely, sir. We’ve send messengers everywhere to check, just as you ordered, sir. We’ve send them even all the way to the garrison at Bartheim. If any of those people went that way… well, then they didn’t make it, sir.”
“So all we have is this kid here who sobs all the time and tells us that his parents have been eaten by…let’s see – large dogs with bones poking out of their chest, and groaning people that smell like auntie Gertrud after she got cold.”
“Yessir.”
“You know the farm he comes from?”
“Yessir. It’s on the way from here to Langehringen, but much closer to that village than to our garrison. With the captain’s permission…”
“What is it, corporal?”
“I’d like to take some men to Langehringen and see what happened there, sir. We’ve had no reports for two weeks now, and usually we get a cartload from them every three days. This is bloody strange, captain. It’s not like this is border country. If something happens here, then…”
“How old are you, corporal?”
“Nineteen, sir.”
“Signed in last year, right?”
“Yessir. I see your point, sir, pardon me. It means we will stay here.”
“No corporal. It means I will be the one in charge when we go there.”

One
Cropfields

Reikland uniforms are a very impressive sight on a parade regiment. They get less impressive after a day’s march, and even less impressive when the day’s march has been through recently harvested, very muddy fields.
But what captain Ludwig von Weiterstedt was currently worrying was not the state of the uniforms of his squad. If he ever had worried about that kind of problems, it was for show – to keep the regulations under the eyes of a superior officer. What was worrying him was that the field they were crossing now was not, as a matter of fact, harvested.
He stopped some yards before the end of the field and, with a single hand signal, ordered his men to kneel down. It wasn’t particularly necessary, the crops were high enough to conceal a grown-up man, but von Weiterstedt had seen to much carefully planned ambushes been spoiled by carelessly hidden weapons. The sun was getting low, shining on the horizon like a huge orange ball, flooding all of it with its warm light, and the reflections on the halberds and muskets would be easily seen from the close buildings if they were not careful.
He scanned the village meticulously. Langehringen was not, by any means, a large settlement. It was just large enough so that the buildings formed something of a town square. They were mostly the simple, straw-roofed stone houses that looked familiar to everyone in the Reikland, were people took a lot of pride in living in stone houses, even though they were damn cold in the winter. He could make out the belltower, a solid-built structure with a huge bell hanging openly in the top floor. There were some stables and a lot of storage-buildings. Given the state of the fields, those were very likely empty. Langehringen was what came out when several farmers decided it would be prudent to join the efforts, and settled down together. It was not much more.
There was, on the other hand, a tavern, which indicated a certain level of… business. At least normally. At an hour like this, the whole place should have been bustling with live, men returning from the work on the fields, children playing in the gentle glow of the fading sun. Cows should moo, hens should cluck, dogs should bark. Instead, it was disturbingly silent. Oh, there were sounds, but they were coming from behind, out of the fields, were locusts were chirping and birds singing. The fields surrounding the settlement, covered with rich, golden, overripe crop, were producing the usual sounds of nature. The settlement itself was only producing the utter silence of death.
Von Weiterstedt wasted no words on this, it was plain enough. He did not need to see the face of the men behind him to know that they had understood. Out of curiosity, however, he shot a glance at the man cowering next to him. Hartmut Kreutz was down on one knee, watching the scene seemingly without interest. Despite his heavy armour and his heavy black and red clothing, there was not a single bead of sweat on his bald head, even though the autumn sun had done its best job to exhaust the men. He had rested his worn-out two-handed hammer on his shoulder and was fixing the handle with one chain-gloved hand. Von Weiterstedt disliked the young man. He had taken the place of the garrison’s priest after old Gerhard Rosberg had went out to kill some beastmen in the woods, and hadn’t returned. Von Weiterstedt fancied himself sufficiently pious, he made his prayers two times a day and went to the temple once in a year. He didn’t oppose if people did more than that. Kreutz, however, was a different sort. Seeing in those pale, cold grey eyes, it was apparent that the man was a fanatic. He was the type of priest that would happily burn whole families at the stake because the mother had once been near a bucket of milk that turned sour. Of course he wouldn’t smile while doing it, because Kreutz never smiled. Come to think about it, von Weiterstedt had never seen an emotion in that tanned face. The man didn’t even blink.
“Alright, soldiers.” The captain turned himself half round. “Seems to be no one at home, right?”
This got a nervous laughter from the younger men, and grim silence from the older ones. Kreutz did not even stir. My god, half of them are almost children! They had grown up in this country, they knew the places. The first time there was a real threat for them, it was in a place they almost called home. But he couldn’t help it. Too many soldiers had been killed during the Chaos incursion, and now they had to fill up the ranks with people who had had their first shave just yesterday, people who could, with some effort, even be his grandchildren. Blast it.
“Let’s have a look then. You know how it works. Do your job, but be careful.”
“They have no missile weapons,” Kreutz said levelly. He hadn’t even turned his eyes away from the village.
“Even though, no need to rush in without looking for cover,” replied von Weiterstedt. “Sergeant?”
“Yessir?” Sergeant Rimscheid had gone somewhat on the portly side in the last ten years, but he’d seen him kill two beastmen while defending a fallen comrade. This man was someone he could trust in.
“We go in by threes. Get the men sorted.”

Two
Town square

Team by team, the soldiers were pouring into the village. It made von Weiterstedt’s heart rise a little to see how well even the greenest of the squad were doing their work. Rimscheid had sorted them into four teams, and had seen to it that the two teams not led by him or the captain were instead led by decently experienced fighters. Each team also contained one handgunner. When they had darted out of the field, Kreutz had still been sitting there, motionless. Von Weiterstedt really didn’t care whether he came or not, or why he was doing it. The man had had no military education, and if he wasn’t to interfere, then all the better.
The hasty steps of the soldiers were the only sound that broke the silence. In the short gaps between them, when one team had gone into position and the next one had not yet moved, the obscene silence became almost solid. Even the steps on the raw, downtrodden earth of the village seemed to be muffled, as if the silence was reluctant to go. As soon as they had left the field, even nature’s sounds had faded away far quicker than they ought. And then, in the last light of the sun, von Weiterstedt could make out something else.
It was not only that no one was in the village, that there were no people. There were no animals either, not even the occasional rat. There was actually no life here. He couldn’t spot a single plant. Leaning on a grey stonewall, he thought he could see some moss just next to him. He touched it carefully with his armoured hand. It was quite obvious that it was dead. Automatically, he looked for the tree on the townsquare. Every rural village had one in these parts, but usually they looked more alive. Even in the worst dry period, they at least looked alive at all.
The men had taken position on all four corners of the town square. The white uniforms were quite visible even in the dusk. The first step was done, now to the difficult part. They had been careful, but anybody with brains and ears who was hiding in the village couldn’t have not noticed them. No need to be subtle, then. The captain’s voice rang through the silence.
“Check for the inhabitants. Sergeant, you start with the tavern. Wenger, your team looks first in the large barn in the north. I’ll have a look in the building next to us. Schmidtbauer, you and your men remain here and keep an eye on the town square.”
There was a brief chorus of “Aye, sir” before the men went to the task.
It was Rimscheid’s team that made the first encounter. They had spent half an hour to check the two tavern’s floors, looked in every cupboard, opened every trunk. They had lit some torches in the building, because by now it was night and the full moon was illuminating the townsquare brightly, but not the interior. They had found nothing, not even some clues indicating that there had been a fight, not even blood anywhere. The one building that should have been the center of the village at this time of the day was devoid of any life, just as the village itself. Then they had proceeded with the cellar. It consisted of an oblong main room with some barrels in it and a door on one side.
“Open it, boy.”
And suddenly, there was a horrible stench in the room. Out of the door, groaning, came what a couple of weeks ago had been a human being. It definitely wasn’t any more. The skin was greenish-grey. A part of the skull’s bones was missing so that the rotting brain was visible. One eye was hanging out of the socket, from which dark blood was running down the face. The lips had been seemingly gnawed upon and revealed splintered teeth. The majority of the body was mercifully clothed in a torn shroud. Perhaps the worst about it was the obnoxious smell, the sweet, disgusting reek of corpses one will never forget in a lifetime.
Rimscheid heard the man behind him curse and saw him raise his musket, but he was faster. The lad who had opened the door was on his knees, throwing up, which was fine since he therefore wasn’t in the way. The sergeant brought his halberd down and thrusted it at the creature. Putting all of his considerable weight in the movement, shouting “For the Emperor!!”, he ran forward, impaling his foe’s chest, until the halberd stuck in the behind wall of the room the undead had come from.
Then he let go of the halberd. It had been a neat blow. The blade was almost completely buried in the chest of the creature, which was clawing with dirty fingernails at the shaft of the weapon. The unlife was clearly fading from it, but not even a strong and healthy man could have pulled the halberd out of the wall. Rimscheid wiped his sweaty forhead as he watched how the creature finally ceased to move, like a madman’s puppy hanging from a hook in the wall. Sometimes it paid to be a bit overweighted.
Then he turned round. Jürgen, the man with the musket, was staring at the zombie. Hagen was still on his knees, but had stopped to throw up. By the look of his face, this was only because there was nothing left in his stomach.
“Get up, boy!” Rimscheid said, not unfriendly. He pulled the young man up by one arm. “You are a soldier of Reikland, are you not?”
“Yessir.” Hagen swallowed. “Sorry, sarge. I just…”
“Never mind that, boy.” He turned to the handgunner. “We’re finished here. Let’s go up and tell the captain what a load of cow-droppings we’re into, shall we?”
“Yes, sarge.” The silence from above was ruptured by a musket-shot.
“Guess he knows already.” muttered Rimscheid. “Let’s move, boys!”

Three
Storage cellar

There are those that say that pain is an illusion of the body.
When Gunther woke up, his whole body was so filled with pain that he rather wished his life was an illusion, one that was going to end soon. He wanted to scream, but uttering a sound made the pain even worse. It felt like molten iron had been poured down his throat.
It came from that hellish potion, he remembered, the one they forced him to drink every morning, him and all the others they had taken alive. It made him unconscious every time, and he could see the intention behind that: the storage cellar, while being the best-built structure in Langehringen besides the belltower, was not designed to be a prison. Being the son of the village’s blacksmith, Gunther was a strong man and would have escaped easily during the day, were it not for this damned liquid.
He laid on the floor motionless, and recalled his surroundings, still dizzy from the potion. He couldn’t see a single thing in this utmost darkness, so he just had to remember. He knew the place. This was one small room out of ten in the storage cellar, usually used to store the milk and eggs and other things that were to be sent to the nearby markets and garrisons every few days. There were no windows, and the room was barely large enough for him to lie down. There was a thick oaken door, leading to the corridor from which the other rooms could be accessed. The door had no lock, it was not there to keep people in or out, but to ward of the heat in summer. It could be opened outwards, but he knew it had been blocked from the outside. Some days ago he had tried to open it, and had almost dislocated his shoulder. Some days ago…
It must have been at least twelve days that he had been in here, now. There was a mug of foul water every night, and a lump of raw meat. There was no light except an unsteady shine from the torches outside that fell in under the door, but the room was too small to miss the food. In the beginning, Gunther hadn’t touched the meat, until the hunger overruled his brain after a week or so. After a week of starvation, a man will eat practically everything.
And then the memories struck him like thunder, all at once…

He had been down in the cellar of the tavern when all this had started, together with Anna, the carpenter’s daughter. They had been meeting for some weeks, secretly, because in their youthful innocence, they thought it could be only like that. Anna was a stunningly beautiful girl with a mane of blond, curly hair and eyes as blue as violets and as deep as the ocean. She could sit for hours, looking at him, smiling, listening to the stories he had once heard from his father. Gernot Hufschmied had been in the army before he settled down, and Gunther told his love about the terrible things that lurked in the woods of the empire, and about the vile greenskins, the stout dwarfs and the mysterious elves.
Just the night before, they had shared their first kiss. The bartender, Johann, allowed them to meet in the cellar, and did so with a wise and benevolent smile on his old, fat face. Here they had been sitting the last days, and were sitting now, hand in hand, when a sound interrupted Gunther’s story of Emperor Karl Franz’ victory over Gathrok the Flayer, Lord of the Beastmen.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, reluctant to pull his gaze away from those eyes of her. Anna looked around as Gunther stood up.
“Johann?” he whispered, though the planks above them were so thick that the people in the tavern wouldn’t have heard him even if he’d shouted. He saw a movement behind one of the rows of barrels.
“Johann, can I help you? We won’t be here for long, just let us…”
His voice trailed away. The person coming from behind the barrels definitely wasn’t Johann. This man would have fitted twice into the bartender. He was clad in a plain and dirty white cloth, like a bedsheet, and was moving slowly. As if he hadn’t heard Gunther, his eyes took a while until they rested on him. Then, he advanced slowly.
“’Evening, good sir!” Gunther said, a little bit uncertain. “Is there something we can do for you?”
This got no answer. Gunther frowned and turned to Anna, who was staring at the man with a puzzled look. “Do you know him?”
“No…” she said, slowly. “He’s not from here. Perhaps a beggar? Look at his clothing.”
Gunther stared at the stranger. Now that the man was halfway through the room, he could make out in the dim light of the lanterns that his skin was of an odd colour. It looked pale, with a hint of a greyish green. Gunther swallowed. Suddenly, there seemed to be a lump in his throat.
“Plague!” he whispered. “Get away, Anna!”
The girl stood up and moved sideways to the left, pressing her back against the wall. There was terror in her beautiful eyes now.
“Please, sir, if you would be so kind to stop…”
The man groaned, but walked on.
Gunther glanced around. The man was advancing slowly between the two rows of barrels. They could easily avoid him, but that wouldn’t do for long. The stairs to the tavern were right behind him. Gunther looked to his right and saw the open door to the small room where Johann kept his brooms and buckets. One broom was leaning on the wall just next to him.
Gunther took it and retreated slowly to the open door. The stranger took no care of Anna, who had moved behind the left row of barrels and was watching anxiously. When the man was close enough, Gunther took a quick step to the left and forward, pushed the broom in the other’s backside and forced him violently into the small room. He kicked the door close. It had no lock, but it had no handle on the inside, either. Then he breathed deeply.
Somebody touched his hand, and he startled. When turned to it, he saw a far more pleasant sight then the stranger had been. There was admiration shining from Anna’s face. Strange enough, this didn’t make him as happy as it did usually.
“Well done.” She gave him a kiss. Gunther smiled faintly. “Let’s go upstairs and tell the others. I think we should send a messenger. Father had told me there was plague up in the north. If some of those people are coming to the Reikland, we should warn the other villages and the garrisons.”
Gunther nodded, absent-mindedly. “He smelled… strange.” he managed.
“Of course. He’s ill. The plague smells like death.”
“No, I don’t mean that. He smelled of… earth, I think. Fresh earth. And that piece of cloth he was wearing… And he didn’t say a single thing!” He stood and listened. The stranger was scratching at the door with his nails from the inside. It sounded horrible.
She took his chin and turned his face towards her. “Look at me. Let’s get upstairs and tell the others, right?” She flashed him a smile that made him forget everything else.
“Allright then.”

At this point, Gunther’s memories faded away. The human mind is able to defend itself quite efficiently, and Gunther had suppressed the pictures of the following events for more than two weeks, out of fear of going mad. Still, while he could suppress the pictures, he could not suppress his knowledge about what had happened.
Gunther Hufschmied started to cry.

Four
Town square

It had been Schmidtbauer who’d fired the musket. He was a good marksman, and a musket is a fearsome weapon if it works properly. There was a rotting corpse on the ground near the tree on the town square. The shot had blown away so much of its head that those parts that were left didn’t really deserve much attention.
“Where did it come from?” asked von Weiterstedt calmly, scrutinizing the corpse.
“From the gap between those houses over there, sir.” Schmidtbauer indicated the direction while he was re-loading the gun.
Rimscheid was coming out of the tavern, looking grim. One of his men was green in the face.
“Somebody had one of them locked in a cupboard, sir,” the sergeant reported.
“Then you shouldn’t try the beer here.” The captain became aware that one of the men was not looking at him directly, but over his shoulder, eyes wide open. He turned round. “What…?”
They were coming from between the buildings, or out of the doors, or even raised out of the blank earth of the town square. The silence that had hung over the village like a shroud was replaced by a chorus of groaning voices and slow, deliberate steps towards the soldiers. The bright moonlight illuminated grey faces and bodies in various states of decay, mutilated by rats and worms. Some had picked up broken planks, or even torn-off limbs, some were advancing with their bare, outstretched hands. A cloud of revolting stench engulfed the soldiers who instinctively closed together. The zombies were not moving fast, but the town square was small, and they did not have to go a long way. Von Weiterstedt thought quickly.
“You searched the tavern, sergeant?” he hissed while keeping his eyes on the undead.
“Thoroughly, sir. No-one else in there.” Rimscheid had drawn his sword and had taken the shield that he had been carrying on his back in his left hand.
“What is the floor made of?”
“Oak planks in the cellar, sir. No chance to get through that.”
The captain looked around. What separated them from the tavern were about sixty feet of ground and a dozen zombies. While speaking on, he turned the tight group of soldiers a little so he was now nearest to the tavern.
“Alright. On my command, we make a dash back to there. Handgunners in the first floor at the windows, the rest of us fortify the basement. We’ll sort out this undead scum there.”
There was a murmured “Right, sir!” from every man. Von Weiterstedt draw his own sword, four feet of forged imperial steel, and gripped his shield.
“Now!”
The group broke up. Von Weiterstedt felt the adrenalin as he darted forward, the weight of his full plate armour suddenly lightened by the sensation of combat. Most people who didn’t know him were struck when they discovered how fast he could still move despite his age. He simply overrun the first zombie that got in his way. Not missing a step, he swung his sword horizontally and cut the next one’s head neatly of. He stepped sideways to clear the way for the handgunners that had been following him and were now the first to reach the tavern. Out of instinct, he spun round, suddenly facing two arms, outstretched and reaching for him. With one backhand strike, he cut the hands of at the wrist. Blood sprayed in his face. He brought his shield up and hit the enemy with the edge on the side of the skull. There was a satisfying cracking sound, and the undead went down. He jumped back, still facing the zombies that were now advancing the tavern. He could make out that all of his men had made it, by sheer speed of movement, to the building without getting seriously wounded. He crossed the last yards to the entrance where Rimscheid was standing already, panting. It was a wide doorway, but two men could defend it nonetheless. Two steps that were leading up to it made the job a little easier.
“Get those windows barred!” he shouted over the groaning of the advancing mass. “Two of you get upstairs to protect the handgunners! Halberds away, Swords out!”
The handgunners had gone into position at the upper windows already. That close, and the enemy being a mass of limbs and torsos, it was practically impossible to miss. Two shots banged, and the two zombies nearest to the entrance went down, blood and pus oozing out of their rotten bodies.
And then he spotted Kreutz. He was moving slowly along the fassades of the buildings across the town square. When he caught the captain’s disbelieving eyes, he merely pointed to the belltower and then moved on.
“What’s the bloody fool doin’?” growled Rimscheid, bracing himself for the charge. The undead accelerated now that they were near, moving almost as fast as a man. Suddenly, it dawned the captain.
“He’s going after the necromancer.”
He shot a quick glance at the belltower. There was nothing odd about it. He hadn’t given order to check it because in his experience, necromancers disliked high places. They preferred to be on the ground, near the earth were they could see first hand what they were doing. But Kreutz, sitting in that goddamn field all the time, had somehow come to the conclusion that this was the place to look.
The priest had been spotted by two just-raised zombies on his way, which were now advancing him. He broke into a run, ducked under their arms, and when he was between them, he spun round with his hammer raised. Even before the corpses had hit the ground, their heads being smashed to unnatural shapes, he’d moved on. He barely stopped at the heavy door of the belltower, but dealt it a fiercefull blow. The solid wood shattered to pieces, and the priest disappeared into the inside of the building.
Von Weiterstedt had no more time to think about this. When the first splintered nails were scratching as his shield, when more and more blood was tainting his uniform, he just hoped that Kreutz was right, and knew how to do his job.

Five
Storage cellar

Gunther had spent to much of what little power was left in him crying. He was leaning against the wall, staring empty-eyed at the little bar of light that was shining from under the door.
The people of Langehringen had put up one hell of a fight, that much could be said. It had been night, but the moon had given enough light to the defenders. There were no actual weapons around, but when it comes to chopping heads of, you do not need a sophisticated sword. An unsophisticated meat cleaver does the job nicely. Robert “The Butcher”, as he was usually called due to his size and expression, had actually managed to cut a zombie in half, with a vertical blow. People had taken whatever sharp or heavy items were at hand to defend their village – scythes, sickles, hayforks, flails. Gernot Hufschmied had been working in the smithy and had come rushing at the undead with his largest hammer, his huge chest covered only by a leather apron. Gunther had never seen his father this way before. His kind face had been distorted with rage. One huge black wolf had taken a baby out of its cradle and was about to sink its teeth into the child when the hammer came down on his spine, practically breaking the abominable creature into two parts. Gunther, who flinched everytime when somebody killed a fly, who had never even pulled a cat’s tail, was finding himself handling two long knifes and rushing at the zombies. A lot of the villagers had went down, but the others were fighting on, all of them, men and women and children alike. He saw how one of the women thrust a hayfork into a wolf’s mouth, he saw little Karl disembowel a zombie with a sickle. But nothing could match his father, whirling around like an angry god, shouting, cursing, smashing the creatures with fierceful blows. He even killed one of the three ghouls that had come along with the mass of zombies and wolves. For a moment, it looked like they could win the fight.
Then Gunther had spotted the Thing.
It was standing there, right in the carnage, apparently doing nothing. It was not larger than a man. When it caught his eye, it distorted its face. Gunther realized that it was smiling.
Then it pointed at his father. Numb with terror, he turned to look. The smith had raised his hammer to strike again, but suddenly, he staggered. The hammer dropped. The man’s skin, usually tensed over a tremendous amount of muscles, went grey, his grey hair went white. Under Gunther’s eyes, his father was aging within a few heartbeats until he was bent down, the apron and his trousers hanging loosely around him. Then he fell to the ground.
After that, Gunther’s memory was mercifully incomplete. The undead had slaughtered almost everybody, feeding on their victims while they were still alive, but spared a few younger people. He remembered how the Thing had looked at Anna, perversely appealed by her beauty. Anna, who had never looked more beautiful than now, wielding a flail, her eyes ablaze, had felt the gaze and turned round – and had immediately fallen down unconsciously. So had some others, and so had Gunther when he tried to charge the Thing despite his terror.
They had taken them into the cellar, had forced them to swallow the disgusting liquid they poured out of a large pouch. There had been at least six with him, he didn’t know exactly. During the days, he was unconscious. During the nights, he couldn’t speak due to the pain in his throat, despite his best efforts, and the others seemed to have suffered the same fate. So they were knocking at the doors from inside, to show that they were still alive, and the muffled rappings on the wood had become an almost comforting sound every night when he woke up.
Every two nights, he would hear the steps of two persons come in, some hinges would creak, and three persons would go upstairs and leave. Every two nights, the numbers of those who remained in the cellars, unable to speak, would decrease by one. The worst about it was not the fear, but that he couldn’t do anything to help the others. His knuckles and nails had been bleeding from thumping and scratching at the door, which was always blocked from the outside and did not move a fraction. Apparently, the wardens were bringing the… food while they were all unconscious. Gunther had tried to stay awake, to not swallow the potion, but every night just before dawn, the two remaining ghouls would come in and force him to drink it.
Then he’d resorted to thinking. Anna had been taken as well, so at least she wasn’t dead. He’d seen the look in the eyes of the Thing. Whatever was done to the poor souls that left the cellar, the Thing would probably save her up until the end. That meant that as long as he was alive, so was she.
Odd enough, this thought actually comforted him. When there was only one other left who knocked at the door in the night besides himself, he was sure it was Anna. It had made him ridiculously happy to know that it was her answering, so much that he’d almost cried.
And then, last night, no-one had answered any more.
Gunther had nearly gone mad. He’d hammered at the door until the blood ran down his wrists, he kicked at it, he hit his head against it. Nothing. Finally, he had sat down, exhausted. When his brain had been taking over again, it had occurred to him that he hadn’t heard somebody being taken away. He had also remembered the look in the eyes of the Thing. Those were thick doors, and Anna was probably simply too weak to respond so that he could hear it.
Gunther, who had been lost in his memories, staring fixedly at the door, sat suddenly bolt upright.
The light was shining from all under the door.
Every other night, there had been two dark spots where the wedges had been blocking the door. They weren’t there tonight. The ghouls must have forgotten to put them under the door after they had brought the food.
For some minutes, Gunther was simply staring at the door. A strong man could perhaps have shattered the lock and, after some work, the door. That’s why they were kept unconscious during the day, because the ghouls despised the daylight. A man weakened by the potion couldn’t do so. But he could definitely push the doorhandle.
He kept staring. It was night, otherwise the torches wouldn’t be lit. That meant that the warden was perhaps upstairs. Gunther didn’t estimate himself able to defeat a ghoul in combat, even though he came after his father in built. They were far tougher than a man, and he had no experience at all in handling a weapon. He could handle a hammer, but he never had actually killed anything.
So, are you going to sit here, then? If it isn’t you today, then it’s you tomorrow. Afterwards it’s Anna. You don’t like that, do you? Besides, what do you have to loose?
Very slowly, Gunther stood up. He reached for the doorhandle gingerly, as if doubting whether it would be there. He pushed it. Creaking, the door swung outwards.
After two weeks of darkness, even the dim light provided by the two torches in the corridor made him blink. Shading his eyes with one arm, he looked around hastily. Just to his right, there were the stairs leading up. All the other doors were closed. He wondered whether the warden upstairs had heard the door, and desperately scanned the place for something that could be used as a weapon. His eyes fell on a large iron rod, four-edged and about five feet long, leaning against the wall. It had been used to hang up pig’s halves in one of the rooms, he recalled. It was cool to the touch and heavy.
It is foolish to wait down here. They will discover you, sooner or later. Go upstairs. Sneak on the warden. Smash his head. Come back once it’s done.
Gunther swallowed, which made the pain in his throat worse for some moments. He was young, and he was a peaceful type, like huge man often are since they usually don’t have to resort to violence. Besides, he had to know whether Anna was still down here. He wouldn’t be able to anything else before he didn’t know.
He glanced at the doors. None was blocked with wedges anymore, but then, the one to his room hadn’t been either. Since he couldn’t recall where Anna had been, he started with the door in front of him. It creaked as he opened it, and the room behind it was empty.
That left six rooms overall, their doors on both sides of the corridor. Gunther opened them one after another, and with each empty room the panic rose higher inside his body. He didn’t bother with creaking doors now, he jerked them open and threw them close. Nothing. Two rooms were left when something came slowly down the stairs. Gunther knew it was one of the ghouls, but he didn’t care. He opened the door to his right ferociously and slammed it shut when he saw the room empty. The ghoul had passed the steps and was standing in the corridor. It was a large creature, but bent, with long, muscular arms like an ape and a huge chest. Blood was smeared all over its ugly face, spittle was running out of its mouth. Apparently, it had been eating, because it was holding a large, bloodstained bone in his right hand which looked like a human femur and had still some flesh attached to it. It bared its sharp teeth menacingly. Gunther, mad with panic, opened the last door.
The room was empty.
NO…
The world was falling apart. Red mists were flowing into his eyes. He would have screamed, but his pained throat managed only a groan. His whole body tensed. The pain in his soul unleashed a terrible thirst for carnage, a thirst to kill, to maim, to mutilate. Gripping the rod with both hands, he rushed at the ghoul. The creature tried to avoid the blow and made a strike at his legs with the femur, but he didn’t feel anything when he brought the rod down. He didn’t care what he was aiming at. The first blow hit the shoulder, sending the ghoul to its knees. The second made it fall to the floor. One blow after the other was raining down on it, shattering skin and muscles and bones. The creature screamed with pain, screams that almost sounded human. They infuriated Gunther even more. He beat the thing on the floor until the screams turned into muffled whimpering, and then into nothing. Still he hit, again and again, until what was lying on the floor had lost any shape and life.
Then he backed away. The rod fell from his numb fingers ad thudded on the earth, bent by the fierceful blows. Gunther’s back touched a wall, and he sank down. It was pain, physical pain, that eventually ushered his mind back to relative sanity. He stared at his palms. The edges of the rod had cut deeply into them. Looking around, he could see the Femur lying on the floor, broken into pieces. Then he glanced at his left lower leg, where the creature had hit him. It was broken and bleeding, the fractured bone had ruptured the skin and protruded outwards. His whole body was covered in blood, both from him and the ghoul. Gunther stared at his leg, then at the bloody heap on the floor. His mind was empty.
And then he heard the shots from outside. He raised his head and looked at the stairs. There were more shots, muffled, but clearly audible. Slowly, very slowly, Gunther rose, picking up the rod as he did. Standing upright sent pain from his leg, so intense that he almost fainted. Using the contorted rod to steady himself, he limped over the remains of the ghoul.
He had to pause after every step and to wait for the pain to decrease, but the physical torment held no horrors for him in his current state of mind. Step after step, he started to climb the stairs.

Six
Tavern

After the first blows, rotten corpses on the ground blocked the way for those behind them. They still tried to attack, climbing the heaps of decaying flesh, stumbling over them, and their mindless puppet-motions appalled von Weiterstedt more than the disgusting stench and the horrifying looks of the zombies. They looked like monsters, but he knew that they mainly were just monstrous toys, cruel and terrible playthings for whoever was hiding in that belltower. He could see it in their wide-opened eyes, in those that were not rotten yet and had not been gnawed upon by rats. Those were eyes that never showed anything, no fear, no pain, no surprise, whatever was done to them. Fighting them one on one was not hard, you only had to avoid being buried by the stinking mass of their bodies. He dug his sword deep into the skull of one undead that had been tripping towards him, and glanced quickly at the structure that loomed over the town square. The front side was white from the moonlight, the others pitch black against the sky. The sight yielded nothing about what was going on in there.
“Is that all?” roared Rimscheid, hacking at the undead. The sergeant was sweating heavily. He was cursing in a way that probably would have made Kreutz start piling on a pyre, had he ever heard it. “Anybody got a deck of cards? I’m bored!”
There were some undead wolves crossing the town square which had apparently come from the fields outside. They moved with terrific speed, but the handgunners on the upper floor had spotted them already and shot them down before they reached the building. Von Weiterstedt, slashing and stabbing relentlessly, realized how stupid it ultimately was to attack the tavern by the front door, and wondered what their master was up to. Hopefully, Kreutz would kill him before it was complete.
Above the mindless groaning of the zombies, Rimscheid’s cursing and the musketshots, he could suddenly make out something else. It sounded like wind swooshing in trees at first, and revealed itself moments later to be the flapping of countless wings. The outside light went dim when scores of small bats were appearing out of nowhere, obscuring the moonlight and rushing at the tavern. They were pouring into the windows on the upper floor, and the captain heard shouts above as the men dropped the muskets and draw their swords to fend of the hellish creatures. “Get upstairs, help them!” he barked at the two soldiers that had remained with him and the sergeant, ready to take their place should they go down.
They had taken few steps towards the stairs when zombies burst through the wall next to them. One of the man was grabbed by countless hands, and before he could struggle free, the undead had pulled him to the ground, burying nails and teeth into the man’s flesh. Before the other one could come to help, another creature jumped through the hole in the wall, shoving the zombies aside. It dealt a fiercefull blow at the young man’s shoulder with a primitive club, and as he sagged down, it slashed at his chest with its claws.
And at this point, hearing the horrible screams from the man on the floor, seeing blood oozing from the other one’s chest, von Weiterstedt just had enough. Watching soldiers die in a battle was one thing, but he wouldn’t let his men get butchered by that reeking bunch of corpses and cannibals. Cold rage was burning inside him. He dropped his shield and darted into the inside of the tavern. The ghoul was standing over the fallen man who was bleeding heavily, his shirt already crimson, and had raised its club triumphantly to finish its victim of. He gripped his sword with two hands, and with all the strength he could muster slashed at the creature. The blow dissevered its arm just above the shoulder, sending a fountain of blood through the room. An instant later, von Weiterstedt brought the blade back and buried it deep into the chest of his enemy. He pulled the weapon free and snatched the sword from the wounded man on the floor. A sword in either hand, he flung himself at the zombies.

Belltower

The interior of the belltower was barely illuminated, and Kreutz stood with his back at the wall next to the entrance door for a few moments to let his eyes adapt. Moonlight was falling in through the wreckage of wood. He could make out a wooden floor above him, and a flight of stairs leading up. Holding his hammer ready to strike, he moved upstairs carefully.
Whoever had built the structure had apparently considered it a waste of space if it was only used as a belltower. Unlike others of its kind, the tower had been sectioned into several floors. Kreutz, when entering the first of them, recalled that there had to be three overall, given the number of windows he’d seen from outside. The ones on this floor were open and let in some pale light. The room looked lived in, there were beds and lockers. There was also the next flight of stairs.
He crossed the room slowly and watchful. From the outside, he could hear muskets shooting and men shouting. Kreutz paid no attention to the ongoing fight. The soldiers had provided a nice diversion, drawing the attention of most of the undead towards them. Von Weiterstedt had surely seen to this, though unintentionally, buy ushering the men into the village and rummaging around. He apparently wasn’t a complete fool, since he had ordered his men to search buildings that were bound to have a cellar. Kreutz, on the other hand, had simply waited until nightfall, because with the soldiers around, the necromancer was bound to act sooner or later. When he could feel how the dark magic forced its way through the world of the living, he had focused on its source and detected it to be the belltower.
That was why he preferred working with the army. Necromancers hated it, and for good reason. A necromancer could wipe out whole villages with his hordes, he could build up his own small realm of death in the countryside without anybody noticing it, but as soon as soldiers were sent, he was in trouble. This was not because they were necessarily tougher opponents, but because they acted on schedule. Somebody somewhere was bound to know where they were, and would send more of them if they didn’t return. As soon as soldiers came into play, the necromancer’s little game of peek-a-boo was over.
He entered the next floor. Down on the next flight of stairs, unsteady light was falling. Somebody in the uppermost storey had lit some torches. A deep and monotone murmuring came from above, and though the words were not perceivable, Kreutz knew what they meant. He knew his enemies, he could distinct between the schools of magic just by the sound of their incantations – the high singsong of the light wizards, the rough croaking of those who favored the lore of beasts, and the sinister whispering of the members of the grey order. In this very moment, the person above was doing the most despicable of all things. It raised the deads from their graves.
Barely breathing, Kreutz crept up the stairs just so that he could overlook the room. It was lit by a couple of tripods. The walls, including the windows, were completely covered with crude shelves that were spilling over with books. They looked like they had been erected recently. There was a large table on which the body of a girl was lying, motionless and naked. In front of a bookstand on the opposite wall, clad in a dark red cloth, the blasphemous mage was reading aloud out of a book. Kreutz didn’t need to see the shrunken, sickly coloured skin, the distorted face and the two fang-like teeth protruding from the mouth to know that he was up against something far worse than a necromancer. The creature was a vampire.
He could feel the hate inside him take over. He gripped the hammer firmly, drew some deep breaths, then he rushed upstairs and towards the abominable creature. He didn’t waste breath on a battle cry, but swung the hammer round with all the force his body could yield. The vampire had been so sunk in the incantation that it only managed to turn half-round before the hammer hit the side of its skull. The impact nearly ripped the weapon out of Kreutz’ hands. The vampire was lifted of its feet, its body smashed the bookstand and the shelf as well as some of the stones in the wall behind it. Before he could raise the hammer again, something small darted from behind the table and slashed at him. He could feel intense pain in the hollow of his right knee. Gritting his teeth, he brought his elbow back forcefully and hit the attacker square in the face.
Von Weiterstedt had been right in the assumption that Kreutz had not had a military education. Instead, he resorted to fighting by instinct. He spun round, and, barely noticing that the small creature was a homunculus, thrust his fingers into the creature’s eyes. Ignoring the painful wailing, he lifted it by its cowl and hurled it over the handrail downstairs.
He couldn’t even turn to the creature’s master again before agony was filling up his body. Choking, he went down on the wounded knee as vile magic was engulfing his body, burning his flesh with cold darkness. Kreutz heard the vampire hiss gleefully. He focused his mind desperately on the power of his faith and clutched at the small hammer-shaped amulet on his chest. It was glowing brightly and yielded a soothing warmth. One after the other, the cold flames died as Sigmars power drove them away.
Before the priest could recover, a horrible blow struck him in the face and made him stagger backwards. Blood was streaming out of his nose, and in the next moment the vampire flung itself on him and bore him to the ground next to the table the girl was lying on. He felt an intense pain under the chest and knew creature had stabbed a dagger through his breastplate. He could see the disgusting face inches away from his own. The skull was smashed on one side, which didn’t serve to make the look any better, and was oozing blood. It was almost touching the shoulder, his first blow had broken the neck. The creature was looking at him with white eyes full of hate and greed.
“Make your last prayer, holy man!” it hissed, while shoving the dagger deeper into his flesh. Kreutz felt the pain raging in his entrails.
“Watch me,” he managed.
He brought his head forward and hit the nose of the vampire. This did little to hurt a creature that could survive a blow of a two-handed hammer, but it backed away a little, which gave him the space to bring up the hammer he’d been gripping all the time. The handle hit the undead under the chin, which gave him enough room to pull himself up, his back against the shelf. He raised the hammer and pointed at the vampire.
“Lord Sigmar, smite yon enemy of thy faithful servant!” he roared. Holy flames filled the room and engulfed the undead. Screaming like no living being could scream, it tried to concentrate on banning the fire with its dark powers. That was all Kreutz needed. Ignoring the pain, he stepped forward, brandished the hammer and hit it the vampire on the chest.
The impact was even worse this time, tearing at his muscles and nearly jolting his wrists and shoulders. The mere force sent him to the floor. Breathing heavily, he got up, the hammer raised to strike again.
The blow had sent the creature flying through the room and into the smashed shelf on the opposite wall. A large piece of splintered wood had impaled its chest from behind and was protruding out of it. It was so large that it could not possibly have missed the heart. A disbelieving expression in its eyes, the vampire stared at the bloodstained plank, and then at Kreutz, who still stood there with the hammer in his hands, panting and bleeding heavily.
The creature raised its left arm slowly, but there was no power left in it. Its skin crumbled and dissolved into dust. The vampire kept glancing at the priest until the eyes shared the fate of the skin, then the exposed muscles, then the bones. All that finally remained of it was a heap of dust on the floor.

Seven
Tavern

Exhaustion overwhelmed von Weiterstedt and drowned the rage inside him. His head was swimming. He fell on his knees, heard the sword he had taken clatter on the floor, and just managed to thrust his own weapon into the planks. Leaning heavily on the hilt, he tried to focus his gaze. He could make out the hole in the wall where the zombies had come through. Severed limbs, cloven heads and torn up torsos were lying all around him. There was blood all over the floor, seeping into the wood, trickling down into the cellar. The room was looking like a slaughterhouse. He’d seen to it that none of the undead that had entered the tavern would ever scourge this land again.
He noticed that he was stared at, and looked to his right. The man that had been attacked by the ghoul was clutching at his stricken chest, breathing heavily. His wide-opened eyes were staring at him in horror. Glancing left, the captain saw the remains of the soldier that had been fed upon by the zombies. He surely wished that the man was dead.
Steps approached, and he looked up. Rimscheid had left the place at the door and was goggling at the carnage. His uniform was torn and blood-soaked, and he had three deep scratches running from his forehead to his cheek, but other than that, he seemed unharmed.
“They are falling apart!” he wheezed. “Kreutz must have made it. There are still some out there, but it’s only a matter of time!”
Three men were coming down the stairs, bleeding from countless fang marks. They stopped when they overlooked the horribly carnage, and their eyes revealed the terror in their minds when they rested on their old captain who was kneeling in the middle of all this, covered in blood all over like the incarnation of a pagan war god, distinctable from the corpses only by his blood-stained armour and his sparkling eyes. Von Weiterstedt, realizing how this had to look, stemmed his fist on the ground and stood up, pulling his sword out of the floor
“Jürgen and Reinhold are dead,” the first of them managed. “Sigurd is wounded, but he will make it. There were so many of them… we fought them, but they were all over the place…”
The captain recognized the look in the man’s eyes. He, too, had gazed like that many years ago, and he remembered the nightmares that would haunt this man and all the others that had been to this place with him. He could not help them with that, but he knew that the satisfaction of revenge would make things a little easier in the sleepless nights.
“Sergeant… You know what to do.”
Rimscheid nodded grimly and gripped his sword.
“Time for some carnage, boys!”

Belltower

Kreutz rested his back against a shelf, untightened the chain that attached the hammer to his right wrist and leaned the weapon to the wall carefully. Then he seized the dagger with both hands and slowly pulled it out.
The pain was so intense that it would have made most men faint, but Kreutz kept his consciousness by sheer willpower. The wound was bleeding less than he’d feared. He glanced at the barbed blade for some moments before tossing it aside. Then he raised himself upright, closed his eyes and concentrated. He could feel golden warmth flowing through his body as he recited the prayers of healing in his head. One after the other, he directed the energy to his wounds, healing them just to the extent that he could perform the duties at hand without obstruction.
When he’d finished, he opened his eyes and looked around. The books on the shelves were old and battered without exception, and the pure vileness and malevolence they were emanating made the air in the room hard to breathe. One in particular was standing out. He went to the shattered bookstand and picked up the tome the vampire had been reciting, and holding it with his gloved hands, he read the title.
De Manducare et Implicare Mortui ex Sepulcris
Kreutz knew the stories circulating – about priests who, after killing necromancers, had started to read their dark grimoires and had become seduced by the power hidden them. He knew better. Power was like a weapon, it was not power that did the killing, but the one wielding it. There were those who had the taint of corruption buried in their hearts without even knowing it, and there were those whose hearts were pure and resisted the malevolence. Had not the Grand Theogonist Kurt the Third, one of the most pious and holy persons mankind had ever seen, banned von Carsteins hellish legions with the Liber Mortis just as they were to conquer Alloted?
Instead of opening the book, he looked around and spotted some clothes on the floor. They appeared to have been worn by the girl on the table, and were torn and dirty. He took some of them and wrapped the book up. This was not a thing to be wasted.
He went to the table and examined the girl. Her blue eyes were wide open, and she seemed to breath slightly, but her skin felt cool to the touch. Kreutz looked at her thoughtfully, his arms folded. If he would have concerned himself with such matters, he would have acknowledged how beautiful she was. Instead, he recognized the marks on her neck, two small wounds which had been inflicted only recently. There were a lot of things the priest could be blamed for, but certainly not for having too much pity. There was no way to be sure, but he knew the attraction mortal women often provided for the undead scourge, and how much some of them yearned for an immortal companion. His mind reached the only possible conclusion. Killing an innocent was preferable to let a monster walk the earth.
He stuffed the tome under the black coat that covered his armour, then he seized his hammer. There were four tripods in the room. He took the one nearby and knocked it over. It fell into the shelf next to it, and the glowing charcoal ignited the books immediately. By the time he’d dealt with the others, the shelf had caught fire. Soon, the room was ablaze and hot with orange flames. Kreutz shot a last glance at the room, the robe and ash on the floor, the girl on the table, the inferno the walls were becoming, and went downstairs.

Town square

Most of the zombies had already fallen to the ground, like puppets whose strings had been cut, but some were still on their feet, staggering around aimlessly and groaning. They’d advance the soldiers when they saw them, but a single zombie was no match to an armed fighter, and the four men were driven by hate and the thirst for retaliation. They charged the creatures in the town square ferociously, venting their wrath by hacking the corpses to bits. After a while, the place was illuminated not only by moonlight, but also by the flames leaking out of the belltower, and the unsteady orange blaze turned the ongoing fight into a diabolical scenery.
The horror of the recent events had numbed the minds of the soldiers, and they merely acted out of instinct. Hagen, the youngest of the surviving, was running around like a madman, not the least concerned about his own safety. Schmidtbauer, who had retained a bit of his sanity, had already caught several blows with his shield that would have otherwise killed the boy. He had taken sword and shield from one of the fallen halberdiers, but had his musket hanging from his shoulder. He’d got separated from the others and was several yards away, but he was still having an eye on Hagen while fighting. When a door next to the young man opened and a figure limped out, groaning, an iron rod in its hand, it was just one movement to drop the sword and bring the gun up. It was not a good shot by his standards, as it impacted below the chest, but the figure fell down to the ground. He lowered the weapon and stared at it, but the attack of an undead took his attention, and he forgot the thought that just had occurred to him.
Gunther felt how blood was flowing out of his body, huge amounts of blood. His eyes fixed to the stars, he heard the shouting of the men and the crackling of the flames in the belltower. When all life left his body, the last that he could think of was Anna, how she was sitting in the tavern’s cellar, listening to him ardently, watching him with her beautiful eyes – and how bitterly he had failed to protect her.

Epilogue

It was by pure coincidence that, in the next morning, captain Ludwig von Weiterstedt discovered the corpse in the doorway. The autumn fog was covering the village like a blanket, but there were actually birds singing in the branches of the tree, announcing that Langehringen was again part of the living world. The men had found some carts on which their dead and wounded could be transported, and were preparing for the march back to the garrison. Of all the corpses allotted all over the village, the captain took only interest in this single one, and after looking at it thoughtfully for some time, he went into the storage building and down to the cellar. When he came out again, his face was straight, and ignoring the questioning look in Kreutz’ eyes, he gave the order to hit the road.
In all the rest of his life, the captain would keep silent about the thing he’d found down in the cellar, and what it revealed about the corpse in the doorway. Especially, he didn’t tell the man who had fired the shot. What would have been the point? Schmidtbauer was still young, and with some luck his mind would never witness things that would break it. Von Weiterstedt, on the other hand, was more than twice as old as him. He had seen things so horrible that they made the blood freeze, but he had learned to deal with them. He had lived with the nightmares that haunted him frequently for the past thirty years, and he could live with the dreams about the expression on the face of the dead man in the doorway. This face, together with what he knew about him, would trouble him at night for the next months to come, until new nightmares would displace the old ones. And as he left the village, he knew for certain that new nightmares would arise sooner or later. As long as there were creatures infesting this world that needed men like Kreutz do be dealt with, the supply of nightmares was endless.

FINIS