01 - Empire in Chaos (11 page)

When she opened her eyes she saw that the boy was asleep, his heart beating
strongly against her.

Annaliese laid him back against the ground, and ripped open his
blood-drenched tunic. She rubbed her hand across the flesh of his stomach,
expecting to find a deep wound, but the skin was unbroken. Her eyes widened in
shock.

“You should leave him,” said a voice. “I saw the cursed spear strike him. It
was a cowardly blow, but not even a full grown man could have survived it.”

Annaliese looked up into the sad, grim eyes of a farmer and smiled. “He is
not even wounded,” she said breathlessly, shaking her head. The farmer stared at
her as if she were mad.

“I saw it myself, girl,” he repeated, a pitying expression coming over his
face. She shook her head, and wiped away more of the blood on the boy’s skin.

“Look—there is no wound! The boy lives!” she said, louder this time. She
was certain that the boy had been close to death, but she could now see the rise
and fall of his chest as he rested peacefully.

The farmer looked at the boy, then at her, fear in his eyes.

“Witchcraft,” he muttered.

“What?” said Annaliese. “What are you talking about? It must not have been
his blood. The spear must have missed him!”

“Don’t look at me, witch!” cried the farmer, shielding his eyes from her
gaze. More people looked over at her, fear and suspicion on their faces. They
muttered beneath their breath.

Annaliese stood up, wiping the tears from her face. “No,” she said
emphatically, shaking her head. “You are mistaken. The boy is well.”

“Where did she come from?” said a fearful voice. Several of the soldiers
tightened their grips on their halberds uneasily, stepping towards her.

“She wasn’t with us before the attack. She led them to us!” declared an
elderly woman, to the accompaniment of angry mutterings.

Lifting the boy protectively in her arms, she stepped backwards away from the
angry group, shaking her head. She felt the reassuring presence of Eldanair
behind her, his bow in hand.

“Leave her be,” snapped one of the soldiers. “She and her companion killed
several of the beasts.”

“That child was dead, I tell you. He should be journeying to the halls of
Morr, alongside his father,” said the first farmer, his voice raised. “She
brought him back to life! She’s a witch!”

“Enough,” roared the soldier. “There will be no more bloodshed this day. Go
get those wagons moving.” The farmer stared at the man darkly. “Go!” the soldier
barked. Then he marched towards Annaliese.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly. “I… I don’t understand it. I too thought
he was close to death. But… I must have been mistaken.”

The soldier was middle-aged, and his armour dented and scarred from use and
repair. His face was grim, and his eyes dead as they flicked from Annaliese to
Eldanair, who tugged his hood down lower over his face. He shrugged.

“I don’t want to see any more people hurt,” he said.

“Where are the boy’s parents?”

“His mother died in childbirth. Her father lies dead at your feet. He has no
family.”

“Someone must take him in,” Annaliese said. The soldier looked at her
blankly.

“He has no family,” he said slowly. “There is no one to take him in.”

“Surely someone amongst these people will care for him? Some relative, or friend?”

The soldier shook his head. “These people are starving,” he said, his voice
lowered. “There are not enough provisions as it is—he is just another mouth to
feed, another back to clothe. There is no one, I’m sorry.” He turned away from
her, and began marching back towards the wagons.

“But you cannot leave him here to die!” she said, going after him. The
soldier turned back to her, his face hard.

“It might have been better for him if he
had
died,” he hissed. “I saw
him struck as well—it was a mortal blow I don’t know what power it was that
you used to heal him, but I will not allow you or the boy to travel with us.
Care for him yourself.”

The anger faded from him and he seemed to slump, exhaustion overcoming him.
He sighed, running a hand across his unshaved jaw, and Annaliese realised that
this was the real reason why they would not accept the child—they feared that
she had healed him with sorcerous power, and that perhaps he had been tainted by
the power of Chaos.

“There is a temple of Shallya, some twenty leagues to the north-east. Follow
the road, and you will find it. The gentle sisters of that order will take the
boy in. I wish you well.”

With that, he turned away.

Eldanair glared at the humans from within his deep cowl, and loosened the
tension on his bowstring, though he kept an arrow nocked. He couldn’t understand
the words spoken during the exchange, but he guessed at their meaning. These
humans were barbarians, he thought, turning on each other in their ignorance and
fear.

He had hoped to escort the woman to her people, to see her safe and then he
could return to hunting the Druchii and enact his vengeance. He touched a long
finger to his cheek, following the thin black tattoo design.
Thalui
was
the name for the rune and it represented hatred and vengeance. Many of his
people, the Shadow Warriors of ruined Nagarythe, bore such symbols so that the
atrocities perpetrated by the hated Dark Elves, the Druchii, would never be
forgotten. But he saw now that she would not be safe with these people, for they
clearly could not even protect themselves.

To see the beastmen herd so far from the dense forests where they bred was
surprising. To see them emboldened enough to venture forth, and in daylight no
less, spoke of the threat that the human realm was in. With the human armies
engaged elsewhere, the beasts of the deep forbidden places where man feared to
tread had become bold, striking out against ones likes these, weakly protected
and vulnerable. He doubted that many of the humans even realised that their
world, their Empire, teetered on the brink of destruction.

Guilt wracked him. Had he been with his kin, he would surely have seen signs
of the Druchii war party. His kinsmen would not have died. If he had not gone to
the aid of the human child, then he would never have been captured. If he had
left Annaliese to her fate, then he would have covered the ground back to his
kin far swifter, and their massacre would have been averted.

The weight of their deaths was upon his shoulders. Annaliese had lived at the
expense of his kin, and for that he may have hated her. But he did not. No, if
she were to die, then the deaths of his kin were for nought, and he now swore to
himself to protect her, to see her safe until such a time as he deemed her ably
protected.

A human would have difficulty understanding his honour, he knew, but that
mattered little to him. They were a strange people, and before he met Annaliese
he had discounted them all. But she was different, he saw that, and as much as
he desired his vengeance against the Druchii, he knew that it could wait. When
the human woman was safe, then he would resume his blood-quest against them.
Only then, when all those who had slaughtered his kin had perished, would his
soul be unburdened by guilt and remorse.

He would take Annaliese to the south. War wracked the north—though, as they
had seen, no place was safe—the southern lands of the Empire would be the
least affected in the dark days to come. He sighed, for she seemed to have
adopted the human child. Though it would slow their progress further, he could
not expect her to abandon the child, as it seemed the others had done.

“Annaliese,” he said, indicating that they should get moving. He was wary of
the beasts of Chaos nearby, and he reckoned that once they had recovered their
nerve, they would attack again, probably under the cover of darkness. With
certainty, he knew that the humans with the wagons would be dead by sunrise.

He motioned again for her to come, to resume their travel, but she merely
shook her head, pointing along the road, to the east. It was the direction that
the wagons had come from. What was she thinking? He shook his head, but saw the
determined set of her mouth, and knew that she would not relent. By the gods of
the Asur, she was a headstrong woman.

“Upon the spirits of my murdered brothers of the Asur, I swear that I shall
see you safe,” he snapped in his native tongue. “But I cannot protect you from
your own innate human stubbornness, child.”

She pointed fiercely to the east, and he shook his head resolutely. She
snapped something in her crude, guttural language, and turned to watch the
wagons rolling away, shifting the weight of the sleeping child to her hip, his
head on her shoulder. They could have been mother and child, he thought, for
they both glared the same sandy blonde hair.

How old was she? Perhaps eighteen? Long past the time when most human women
would have spawned children of their own, he thought with some distaste. Rare
was it amongst his own people for a child to be born of an elf maiden less than
a hundred and fifty years old. Humanity is a race of children, no wonder they
bickered and turned on their own with such frequency. It was also no wonder that
they were so susceptible to the wiles of Chaos, he thought darkly, for with
their foreshortened, largely futile lives, the tempting lure of a shortcut to
power must be attractive.

When she turned back to him, there were tears in her eyes. She indicated to
the sleeping boy, and pointed to the east once more, though this time the
movement lacked anger. Eldanair did not move a muscle. Annaliese stepped in to
him, and raising herself up onto her tiptoes, she placed a sad kiss upon his
pale cheek. She said something else that he guessed was a parting goodbye, and
she turned away from him and began walking along the road, heading to the east.

Thunder rolled, and vast arcs of lightning could be seen flashing in the sky.
Vaul was at his anvil, as was said amongst his people of Nagarythe to describe
such weather.

He glared at the departing figure of Annaliese, and began walking to the
east, following in her wake.

Udo Grunwald swore and gritted his teeth as the gruff voice behind him
continued its slow, rhythmic, mournful song, if that dire sound could be classed
as song, he thought.

He didn’t understand the words of course, but it sounded like some relentless
requiem that droned on and on monotonously without end. When occasionally it
stopped, Grunwald closed his eyes and listened to the blessed silence. It never
lasted long.

They had covered tens of miles on foot, and he wasn’t sure if his travelling
companion had merely started the chanting song over again after these small
breaks, or if it really was some torturous drone that truly had no end. He
wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were the case.

This wasn’t the only thing that grated on Grunwald’s nerves. His companion
seemed incapable of moving without alerting every living soul within a ten-mile
radius of their position. Every heavy step of his nail-studded, metal encased
boots was accompanied by the clanking of metal and the jangling of buckles and
chainmail.

Grunwald turned around to look upon his companion, his deep baritone voice
still booming out from beneath his helmet.

Thorrik stood just over four feet tall, a decent height for his kin, and he
was almost as wide as he was tall. He probably weighed twice that of a
full-grown man, and that was before you included the heavy armour that he wore.
Gromril, Thorrik had called the metal it was forged of, and it was unlike any
metal that the witch hunter had ever seen. Stronger than steel, the dwarf
claimed, able to deflect all but the most powerful blows, it was sometimes known
as silverstone or hammernought. Within the lands of the Empire, it was called
meteoric iron, and that was a name familiar to Grunwald, though he had never
seen the fabled metal before.

Only Thorrik’s glittering eyes could be seen beneath his fully enclosed
helmet. Beneath this spilled his real beard, his pride and joy, a billowing mass
of red hair that had been drawn into a dozen plaits with thin wire twisted
through them and each decorated with a circular metal icon depicting a stylised
dwarfen face. Ancestor deities, Grunwald had learnt.

He had no idea how the dwarf moved within such an immense amount of armour,
let alone marched and fought. And it wasn’t as if the armour was the only load
that the dwarf bore—he carried a heavy looking pack across his shoulders,
along with the mysterious large chape wrapped in waterproofed leather. On one
arm he carried his solid gromril shield, and he carried his axe. Such a load
would have been a heavy burden for a mule, let alone a man, but the dwarf bore
it without complaint and he seemed easily able to march all day despite the
weight.

Seeing that Grunwald had halted, Thorrik ceased his baritone singing and
planted his feet in the snow, glaring up at the taller figure.

“What’s the problem?” he growled, his voice deep and rumbling. “Why are you
stopping?”

“What was that you were singing, anyway? You have been singing it non-stop
for days now,” said Grunwald.

“It is a traditional marching chant of Clan Barad, from Karaz-a-Karak,”
Thorrik replied. “It was the chant the armies of Clan Barad would march to war
by in the time of my great-great-grandfather. It recounts the deeds of those
slain during the siege of Karak Drazh, when Clan Barad came to the aid of our
besieged kin. Rousing, is it not?”

“That’s not the word that I was going to use,” said Grunwald. “Can you not
travel more… quietly?”

“I do not hide from my enemies. I have no need to travel silently.”

Grunwald turned away from the dwarf and began striding through the snow up
the ridge. Thorrik wasn’t singing, but still each footstep was accompanied by
the clank of metal. In the distance, the mountain range came into view.