http://www.warhammer-empire.com/library/tales/bones1.phpA Casting of Bonespart oneThere was something wrong about her eyes. It wasn’t anything too obvious – they seemed to be perfectly healthy eyes, and a nice enough shade of brown. They weren’t too close together, a feature that old Doktor Volker had always attributed to a weakness in moral character. Neither were they too large nor too small for her face (which itself was not unappealing, though somewhat unwashed). In fact, there was nothing at all wrong with the way she looked; or at least, nothing that could be put into words. But Jan was too used to following his instincts to let a little thing like the evidence of his own eyes lead him astray. He could feel it at the back of his skull, and on the insides of his belly. There was something wrong about her eyes.
She wasn’t a charlatan after all. That had to be it. Jan could see something in her - though he did not like to recognise that talent within himself, it was hardly reasonable to think that Brandolf’s gift had come from nowhere. No, the woman was a genuine seer, probably the only one in the city. It was a dangerous profession she followed, there was no doubt of that. People were always wary of anything that seemed connected to the evil arts, even if it was just a little card-reading or crystal-gazing, but the way things were at the moment? There were greenskins breaking through the defences at the pass all the time now, dead things walking across the border from Sylvania, minions of the Unnameable gathering in the distant north. There was a lot less tolerance in Averland these days, and there were a lot more burnings.
Jan looked down at the small heap of coins in front of him. He pushed them across the table to the seer and said, “Alright then. Get on with it.” She scooped up the coins and hid them away somewhere, all in a single motion. Then she took out a small leather bag, and unfastened the tie. Raising the bag up in both hands, she closed her eyes and moved her lips in a silent prayer or invocation – and then brought the bag down so that its contents, a set of carved prophetic bones, scattered and danced across the tabletop.
For a long time the seer stared at the bones, until Jan began to think she had somehow passed out. But at last she spoke, her voice cracked and thin as though she suffered under a great stress. “You seek a man, a killer, one who understands death. You have been following him for many years, but you cannot catch him. In the City of Magnus he evaded you and left another to die in his place. He is without conscience.”
-0-
The Arch Lector himself was presiding over the execution. He stood at the centre of a square of priests and templar knights, his face the image of stern contempt. The crowd was huge and eager – it seemed that all of Nuln was anxious to witness the death of the infamous University Killer.
“Thus is Sigmar’s will,” the voice of the Arch Lector’s secretary, Father Koberger, filled the Gildenplatz, sonorous and spiteful, “Thus, his judgement. Ludovicus Necker is confirmed and condemned as a murderer, as a heretic, as a practitioner of the hated arts. Let him now be consumed by the holy fire, that his flesh may be purged and that Holy Sigmar may look favourably upon his wretched soul.”
The man at the stake, shaven-headed and dressed in a white robe, shivered in the morning chill. As Jan watched, a priest hung a small pouch of gunpowder around Necker’s throat while another intoned the Penitent’s Prayer from the Deus Sigmar. “Holy Sigmar, loving father, grant me the strength to cast away my sins. Take my soul into your hands and consume me with your undying love. Suffer me not to be separated, and let my cry come unto you.” They set their torches then among the fuel, the growing roar of the fire in competition with the angry roar of the crowd. Jan forced himself to watch as the flames rose to Necker’s feet, as they rose up his legs, as he leant forward frantically to bring the pouch of gunpowder to ignite. He watched the man die, counting the death as his responsibility. Brandolf had killed this man just as he had killed those students of the university, and once again he had escaped. Jan watched until he was sure Necker was dead, then he took out a knife and drew back his sleeve. Gritting his teeth, he cut a tally mark into the flesh of his forearm. It was by no means the first.-0-
“Yet you do not hate him. He is bound to you – like a brother.”
“Where can I find him?”
“In three days you will find him in the village of Dunkeldorf, where the dead walk. I see nothing beyond that.” Her voice died and her head slumped forward. Jan got quickly to his feet and made to touch her shoulder, but her head snapped suddenly up and he started back in alarm. “Do not touch me!”
“But I need to know more… if it is a question of money-“
“It is not.” The seer gathered up the bones and left the private room. Jan stood for a moment in a kind of stupor, and by the time he came to his senses and followed her out into the common room she had almost reached the door.
“Wait! Come back!”
“Let the lady go, friend. You’ve had your fun.” The man blocking Jan’s way was a good deal taller than him, and was backed up by several others. Drunken idiots spoiling for a fight.
“She isn’t a whore – she’s a fortune-teller. And I didn’t get all the fortune I wanted, so get out of my damn way.”
The man laughed of course, turning his head to share the joke with his friends. Jan took the opening, quickly smashing his fist into the man’s overlarge gut. He twisted to the side as the man doubled over, struggling to keep his stomach contents where they belonged, and made a dash for the door. Immediately a chair hit him across the back, sending him down onto the mouldering straw that covered the dirt floor. But he rolled with the fall and got up again, ignoring the pain as best he could, racing out onto the street.
It was already dark, but the lamps had been lit along the Eisenerzstrasse. Jan caught a glimpse of the seer turning a corner opposite the Mining Guildhouse, and ran full tilt to catch up with her. As he ran, the pain in his back asserted itself. By the time he reached the corner he was coughing and wheezing like an old man, and the seer was nowhere to be seen. Jan dropped to his knees in the snow, struggling for breath and praying to Shallya that his ribs weren’t cracked. It was quite a while before he realised that the snow in the alley was fresh, yet the woman had left no tracks.
-0-
“Look out below!”
Jan threw himself sideways as Brandolf came crashing down from the tree, laughing all the while. “Sigmar’s Cock, Dolf, are you trying to kill me?”
Brandolf reached out his hand to help his brother up, “What would father say if he heard you using language like that?”
Jan took his brother’s hand, and suddenly the scene dissolved from glorious summer to dead of winter. The leaves fell from the tree above them, rotting and vanishing into the soil. Brandolf’s hand, in his, became chill as the grave, and withered – his face too, and his body. As Jan watched, immobile, his younger brother rotted away like the leaves, until only his skeleton stood there, hand still outstretched.
But his voice still rattled up, airless, from the cage of his ribs, “What would father say if he heard you?” One hand held him and the other reached toward his neck. Dry bones can harm no one, the old stories said. But they were wrong. They were lies. Jan could feel his life escaping as he struggled for breath.
“What would father say?”-0-
Jan awoke in a panic, unable to breathe. The sheets were wrapped around him uncomfortably tight, and he had to struggle to free himself. It was only when the soles of his feet touched the icy floor that he came fully awake. The room was incredibly cold – and no wonder, Jan realised, since the window shutters had come undone and the snow was already creeping in.
His badly-bruised back complained as he stood up. His legs quivered under him as he walked to the window, and for some reason his forearm was aching as well. Merciful Shallya, gentle sister, why did he feel like such an old man? He was barely thirty.
No age at all, Elspeth had said just a few weeks ago. But when he reached the window, Jan had to rest against it with both hands on the sill.
The streets outside looked very bright – unnaturally so, even in the strong moonlight. In his disordered state it was some time before he realised that the brightness was due to the snow on the streets. A thick carpet of suffocating cold covered the city, from the derelict houses and crumbling brothels around his inn, all the way to the polished spires of the Averpalast itself. There were lights at some of the palace windows, even at this hour. Somewhere out there, on the other side of the great city of Averheim, there were people getting even less sleep than him. Jan found that comforting, in a silly sort of way.
But this weather would make for a difficult journey. Best to try to get what sleep he could before dawn. Jan was turning away from the window, about to return to his bed, when he glanced down at his forearm. The most recent cut he had made – Necker’s cut – had reopened during his nightmare, and while he had been standing at the window blood had trickled all the way down to the back of his hand. Looking closely at the dried blood, Jan thought it almost looked like a hammer. Maybe that was a good omen. Maybe it was just blood. He fastened up the shutters and went back to bed, spending the rest of the night immersed in vague and unthreatening dreams.
-0-
Downstairs next morning Jan took breakfast by the fire – but he could eat little of the greasy sausage and fried bread, and the beer set his belly churning. At length he gave up, instead asking the innkeeper for directions to Dunkeldorf. The poor man practically collapsed with shock.
“Dunkeldorf! Blessed Shallya, you can’t mean to go there!”
The innkeeper had lost all the colour from his face. Jan frowned, “I’m afraid that I must. What's the problem?”
“It’s on the border, that’s what! The border with
Sylvania! You must know what’s been happening there the last few months?”
“I’ve heard a few rumours. But I’ve been away a long time – Nuln, and elsewhere.”
The innkeeper made the sign of the hammer across his chest, “The dead walk… but not just one, or two. An army of the walking dead, like in the old histories. Excuse me sir, I think I need to sit down. There, that’s better. They say that the Count von Bösewichtschloss is a vampire, and it’s him that’s leading these horrors across the border. The Avermarshall’s got an army there now, but Sigmar alone knows if it’ll do any good. I’d leave the city if I could – but everything I have is here.”
Jan did his best to reassure the man that he wouldn’t go to Dunkeldorf, settled his bill and asked for his horse to be made ready. As it was still early in the morning, both the hour and the heavy snow on the streets meant that he passed few people on his way to the Temple of Sigmar on Stahlplatz. With his horse tied up outside, Jan went through the heavy doors to find the dawn service drawing to a close. He made an offering at the lesser altar, invoking the names of Kurt III and Martin for protection against the restless dead. Lighting a red candle, he made the entreaty to Sigmar the Implacable Warrior from the
Unberogen Codex.
Grant to me the strength of Your mighty arm, Lord Sigmar. Let my spear grow heavy with the corpses of Your enemies; let my hammer grow dark with the blood of Your enemies; let my ears grow weary with the screams of Your enemies! Jan sealed the prayer by snuffing out the candle in his hand.
He left Averheim by the east gate, on the road that led to Dunkeldorf and, ultimately, to Sylvania.
-0-
Mother was already six months dead when Jan returned home. Brandolf met him at the door, throwing his arms around his brother and weeping. But Father would not speak to him, and would not suffer him to stay in the house. Jan left the same day. Though he was a little sad to leave Brandolf behind, he was not sorry to be going. And when a year later his father died also, he didn’t return at all.-0-
Morrslieb was peering in through a gap in the tent flap, casting a thin beam of light onto Jan’s eyes as he awoke. It was a greenish light: an unwholesome, sickly one. Casting off his heavy blankets, Jan crawled out of the tent into the night outside it. There, hovering a little above the treeline, was the witch’s moon – but its brother Mannslieb was nowhere in sight. The fire had gone out. The stars hid behind a clouded sky, through which only Morrslieb was free to cast down its light. Reflected back off the snow it left a pestilent tint behind, as if everything was infused with corruption, with evil. But the fire would have to be relit, and his bladder was clamouring to be emptied.
As he was returning with an armful of firewood, Jan stopped dead. Between him and the fire a large black dog stood motionless, its yellow eyes sharp above the fixed snarl of its jaws. Very slowly, Jan reached for his pistol – but he had left it in the tent, along with his sword. Silently cursing his carelessness Jan took the largest of the firewood sticks in one hand, dropping the others and assuming a fighting stance. The dog didn’t move.
After a few moments, Jan took a half-step forward. Still the dog made no move, and he began to realise that neither was it making a sound. Acting on a sudden intuition, he threw the stick at the animal’s head – it passed right through the creature and ploughed into the snow. The dog shimmered for a moment, and was gone.
Jan gathered together the sticks and built up the fire before he returned to his tent. The dog was a portent, like the bones cast by the seer, like the blood on his arm, like the sick illumination of the witch’s moon. It seemed to Jan that he was being urged onward and warned away at the same time, and in equal measure. But he was never one to listen to advice, or even to his own sense. There could be no turning back, no matter what. Even if Morr himself appeared in a vision, even if Sigmar descended from on high. No matter what.
-0-
to be continued....
