01 - Empire in Chaos (2 page)

Within days dozens of villagers were struck down seemingly at random, and it
was not long before families who had tolled the land for dozens of generations
were packing their belongings into carts usually used to transport goods to
market, heading for the ethereal safety of far away cities: Nuln, Averheim and
Wissenburg. But gossip said that the plague was rife even on the streets of the
Empire’s capital, Altdorf, and that is when true panic had set in.

Each day more victims were dragged to the trade guildhall that overlooked the
village square. This decaying building with its sunken, uneven roof and
perilously leaning walls had long sat unused, and it had been decided that it
would be converted into a makeshift quarantined hospice. Its doors and windows
were kept locked, shuttered and barred, and warning signs were driven into the
ground around its circumference. For those who could not read the Reikspiel
lettering on these boards, which was most of the common folk of the Empire, the
intention of the signs was made very clear—skulls of dead livestock daubed
with the mark of Morr hung from them, along with the rotting bodies of dead
rats, black birds, and other grisly trophies warning of plague and pestilence.

The village burgher had fled in the dead of night, abandoning his post and
the villagers to their fate. There was no one to bake the bread, for the baker,
his wife and his apprentices had all been early victims, and they lay comatose
and wasting away within the rising filth of the guildhall. The local butcher,
who doubled as the local apothecary and was the closest thing the village had to
a healer, had succumbed to the early stages of the wasting sickness. There was
now none who dared enter the deathly building to tend to the sick and dying.
Each morning the local men of the village drew straws to determine who was to
drag the newly discovered plague victims into the building, covering their
mouths and noses with cloths as they rapidly dumped their charges inside and
relocked the doors.

As yet, it was unknown if any of the plague victims had died, but it was
believed that none had awoken from the deathly state that came some three days
after the initial symptoms were identified. Certainly there was no one trying to
get out of the horrific hospice.

Annaliese looked again at the wasted face of her father. Only a week ago he
had been in the peak of health. She had refused to take him to the hellish
quarantine guildhall—she would be damned if she would let him spend his last
hours rotting in that festering place among the dead and the dying.

The sound of angry voices carried over the cabin from the village below, and
Annaliese rose to her feet. She drew aside the heavy, dusty curtains and opened
the dirty window to see what the commotion was. Shielding her eyes against the
sudden glare that came off the snow, she could see a cluster of men, some
wearing the provincial yellow and black uniforms of Averland state soldiers,
trudging through the muddy slush. Some were brandishing weapons—halberds,
pitchforks and clubs—and their shouting was drawing more onlookers from their
homes and their misery.

With a worried glance at her father, she bit her lip in indecision. Strangers
to the village had brought nothing but trouble and sadness of late, and she
feared what this new drama would bring. Still, she was drawn by a morbid
curiosity to witness this new arrival. Her father did not seem to be any worse
than he had been for the last two days, so she made her decision. Drawing her
sheepskin coat around her tightly, she opened the door to the cabin and stepped
out into the winter. She would only be a moment away from her father’s side.

As she walked down the hill, the crisp snow crunching underfoot and making
her long dress wet where it dragged, she saw men pushing and prodding a bound
and gagged prisoner before them. She saw one soldier club the bound figure to
the ground where it was brutally kicked by three or more men before being
dragged back up to its feet.

She saw a flash of long, silken black hair before the figure disappeared into
the crowd again. Some of the men were carrying burning torches, and there were
angry, raised voices shouting for blood.

A crowd was gathering in the village square. None stood too close to the
guildhall, and many covered their mouths and noses with dirty rags and strips of
cloth. Hugging herself for warmth, she went to stand beside Johann Weiss, a
portly villager with heavy jowls.

“What’s happening?” she asked Johann quietly. He was the innkeeper of her
workplace, and she had known him since childhood.

“Three families left the village yesterday, all their possessions packed onto
a single cart,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion but his eyes tired and sad.
Annaliese nodded fearfully. She had known the daughters of the families well.

“They were murdered on the road. Not even the little ones were spared. This,”
he said with a nod of his head, “is one of those responsible.”

Grief and horror washed over Annaliese, and the innkeeper put a fatherly arm
around her shoulders.

The men dragged their murderous captive into the centre of the village
square. A solid, ancient gibbet stood there as it had done for countless
decades, a blackened metal cage hanging from its crossbar. She had always felt a
horrible loathing for the thing, and when she was young had sat aside as other
children threw rocks at the condemned.

A skeleton was slumped within the torturous, black iron device, the remnants
of a thief who had been placed there a year before as a warning to others. The
heavy chains holding the grisly remains aloft were slackened, and the metal cage
plummeted to the ground with a crash and a cheer from the crowd.

Leonard Horst, a reed-thin villager with the stilted, stiff movements of a
hunting stork climbed onto a rotting bale of hay, waving a hand for silence. He
was the village warden, and a man with a reputation for harshness. He had once
beaten a trader to death, it was said, for attempting to bypass paying his road
tax. Nevertheless, he was a respected man, for none doubted his devotion to the
village and its people.

“The farrier Hellmaan and his family, and the families of his two sisters,
have been brutally murdered on the road to Averheim,” Horst said, his voice
bitter and filled with hatred. Those in the crowd before him held weapons
clenched tightly in their hands, their faces angry. The two men holding the
captive pinned to the ground tightened their grip.

“We return with one of their murderers: a hateful, black-hearted killer of
elven kind.”

There were several gasps from the gathered villagers. Most had come to
believe that elves were nothing more than stories told to children.

“An elf?” breathed Annaliese. She stepped away from the innkeeper and inched
further down the hill, to better see the captive.

“Hang him!” called a man, and others shouted their agreement.

“Burn him alive!” another roared, a pronouncement that was greeted with a
cheer.

“Oh, we shall do much worse than that to him,” said the stick-thin figure of
Horst from the rotten hay bale. “He must be made to suffer long for the savagery
that he unleashed upon those poor families.”

His voice rose in pitch, anger and bitterness fuelling his diatribe.

“Let us gag his mouth that he may not incant his vile sorceries or cry out to
his hateful gods for aid. Let us raise him in the gallows and pelt him with
stones and rocks. Let us cut out his eyes and feed them to the crows! After a
week in the cage, let us drag him forth and quarter him, his entrails carried to
the four corners of the village. Then he and all his hated kin shall fear us,
and know the true vengeance of Averland!”

A huge roar rose from the gathered crowd, and Annaliese was shocked and
horrified to see her neighbours, good hearted and caring people, baying for
blood and torture, their faces twisted into masks of hatred. She realised that
it was fear and desperation that was fuelling this emotion—a need to blame
someone for their horrific, hopeless predicament.

She saw the black haired elf pulled to his feet, glimpsing his pale, arrogant
profile for the first time. Almost as white as the crispest snow, his face was
angular and long, his eyes large, dark and almond shaped. He was aloof and
distant despite the bruises and blood upon him, and she saw how he stood against
the mob with his head held high.

Screeching metal accompanied the opening of the cage. The skeleton within was
kicked free and the elf was dragged towards the vacant iron device. He struggled
against his captors. Breaking the grip that one had on him, he smashed his elbow
into the man’s face, crushing his nose. With inhuman swiftness he kicked another
state soldier in the face, and then spun, rolling his wrist so that the arm of
the one holding him was turned until the elbow was facing the sky. With a sharp
downward strike the elf shattered the joint of the soldier’s overextended arm.

A heavy mallet smashed into the back of the elf’s head, and his body went
limp. Swearing, blood pumping from his nose, the first of the fallen men rose to
his feet with a dagger in his hands and murder in his eyes. He stepped towards
the slumped elf, but Horst stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“We will make sure his suffering is long and drawn out,” he hissed. The man
sheathed his knife with a curse, and spat upon the elf.

The barely conscious elf, blood covering the back of his head, was dragged to
the torturous man-shaped cage. He was pushed within the tight confines, and the
cage door slammed shut. A rusted old padlock as large as a man’s head was
clamped shut, sealing him within. He had no room to move. Half unconscious and
bleeding, the elf was hauled up into the air. Rocks and rotten food pelted him.

Not wanting to see any more, and anxious to be with her father, Annaliese
pushed against the crowd around her, panicked and sickened at the hate, fear and
murderous intent she saw on the faces of those around her. Tears in her eyes,
she pushed free of the frenzied mob, and ran back up through the snow towards
her home.

Annaliese slammed the door behind her, breathing hard, wracking sobs rocking
her body. She could still hear the muted shouts of the villagers, a dire sound
of venomous hate fuelled by fear and despair.

Moving to the small kitchen adjoining the main room, she plunged her hands
into a bucket of water and washed her face. The water was icy cold, and an
involuntary shiver ran through her. She brushed her long blonde hair back away
from her face and took a deep breath, calming herself.

If the elf truly did murder those families, then he deserved death, she
thought—but not a long, torturous death. That was savage and barbaric.

She took another deep breath. That’s when she heard the first screams.

Running through the cabin, she burst through the front door to see a very
different scene than that she had just left. People were running in all
directions, and she saw blood splashed across the snow. There was screaming and
shouting, and her first thought was that the elf had somehow escaped, or that
his allies had come to rescue him. But no, she could still see his caged form
hanging aloft above the bloodshed below.

She saw a warrior dressed in the yellow and black of a state soldier in the
pay of the Elector of Averland rolling in the slush, fighting with a drably
dressed villager. Two other plainly clothed men dragged another to the ground,
their hands around his throat. Others were knocked to the ground by the press of
bodies seeking escape. What was going on? What madness was this?

There was a solid thump that shook the floorboards, and Annaliese started. It
had come from her father’s room, and a moment later there was a scrape of wood
on wood, and a crash. It sounded like the chair by her father’s palette being
pushed back and toppling to the floor. Tearing herself away from the insane,
murderous savagery below, she stepped warily into the centre of the living area
to better see into her father’s room, her heart pounding in her chest.
Floorboards creaked beneath her feet.

Dimly she perceived a low hanging mist coiling within the dark room. She saw
the dark shape of a man on all fours beside the palette, and her heart skipped a
beat. Her father was alive, and up out of his bed!

“Father!” she cried as she rushed to his side. As soon as she entered the
room the temperature fell markedly. The fire that had been raging when she had
left the cabin earlier had died away completely, and a ribbon of smoke rose from
the blackened logs.

Annaliese dropped to her knees, putting an arm around her father’s bony
shoulders. His flesh radiated an icy chill through the rough linen undershirt
covering his skin. His head hung low, and his lank dark hair fell down over his
face.

“Father,” she said once again, tears welling in her eyes. Days ago she had
resigned herself to his passing.

He turned his face towards her. She had a glimpse of blue-tinged lips, and
saw that her father’s eyes were closed. His skin was grey and ashen, and she
could see blue veins criss-crossing within.

Her father’s cold blue lips curled into a sickly grin that made her skin
crawl, and she felt revulsion and horror run through her for a moment. Then he
began to convulse, his wasted muscles tensing as his entire body went into
uncontrollable spasms. He fell to his back, and sickly, yellow froth bubbled at
the corners of his still grinning lips. Annaliese cried out, not knowing what to
do. She grasped her father’s head tightly in her arms, holding him to her bosom
in an effort to stop him smashing his head against the floorboards in his
seizure.

It was over in a moment, and he went completely limp. Breathing heavily with
the shock, Annaliese carefully laid her father’s head back down against the
floor. She could not hear him breathing, and she felt for a pulse on his wasted,
scrawny neck. There was none.