01 - Empire in Chaos (38 page)

Mouths were forced open far beyond their natural limits, and massive tusks of
bone burst from jawbones. Other men were drawn together, their flesh merging,
and eyeballs weeping blood opened up in their skin alongside fang-filled mouths
that screamed in agony.

Thunder rumbled overhead as the soldiers’ flesh mutated and altered
maddeningly, as if the fell daemonic gods of Chaos were pleased.

Screaming and bellowing in pain and anger, the monstrous spawn-creatures
created from the flesh of the Empire soldiers lashed out around them with barbed
limbs and powerful claws, snapping bones and ripping their erstwhile comrades
apart. Mouths filled with rows of teeth snapped out, locking onto arms and
necks, crushing and killing. Upon legs broken and malformed, the spawn crawled
and staggered, reaching towards the soldiers of the Ostermark with flipper-like
appendages and whipping, worm-like tentacles.

The soldiers fell back from these monstrosities that were moments before
their friends and comrades, and scores of them were killed beneath the ripping
jaws and flailing limbs of the spawn. Grunwald stepped out from the line of
soldiers he had chosen to accompany him in his hunt for the witch. He turned
around on the spot, his eyes flicking around.

At last he locked onto a dark figure standing in a crooked eyrie on top of
one of the village buildings. A strange rotating metal globe turned on top of
the building, a mechanical, clockwork contraption that showed the position of
the moons and passage of the sun. The figure of the man he had been searching
for all night was standing there, his staff raised above his head as he mouthed
an incantation.

As the attention of the entire army was directed at the enemy lined against
the sky and the monstrous, horrific creatures that were causing havoc, no one
had looked back and seen this dire figure.

Suffer not the witch to live
was one of the mantras of the witch hunters,
and Grunwald had no intention of letting this one live any longer.

With a barked order for the soldiers around him to fall in behind, he began
running towards the building, keeping his eyes on the morbid figure. He roared
as he ran, ordering the terrified crowd of citizens out of his way. They melted
back as he ran, soldiers running at his heels.

Still, the press of people was too great for a path to be cleared before him,
and he bashed people out of his way in his eagerness to close in on the enemy.
People fell screaming to the ground, only to be trampled beneath the press.

“There! Go!” shouted Grunwald, directing the soldiers towards the building,
and he hefted his crossbow to his shoulder, taking aim at the witch who was
still incanting on top of the eyrie.

The black bolt sliced through the air, thudding into the wooden banister an
inch from the magos. The figure jerked, his incantation interrupted and stared
down at Grunwald with hate-filled eyes.

Snarling, the witch thrust his staff in Grunwald’s direction, and a searing
burst of blue flame shot down towards him. The witch hunter gripped his icon of
Sigmar tightly, mouthing a prayer and bracing himself. He felt the icon heat up
in his hand as the hellfire roared towards him. Daemonic faces could be seen
within the licking flames, snarling and hissing. People screamed and ran, and
the flames burst around him like a raging inferno.

But they did not touch him. Instead they washed harmlessly around him, as if
they had struck a physical barrier. He could see the malevolent forms of daemons
as they clawed at him, and they hissed and spat as they were denied. Still the
blue flames pushed in at him, and he dropped to one knee as he felt the wave of
evil energy beating at him. The temperature rose sharply as the flames burst
around Grunwald, and steam rose from his damp clothes. His face was hot from the
raging conflagration just feet from him, and he shielded his eyes against it,
but it did not touch his skin and a second later it was gone. He stood in a
tight circle of melting snow, though all around him the ground was scorched and
blackened from the fire.

Feeling a presence behind him, Grunwald turned to see Annaliese standing
there, her hammer held high. Wrapped around her wrist was a chain from which
hung her pendant of Sigmar, and it seemed to glow with fading light. Her eyes
were locked onto the fell sorcerer, and truly she looked like the Maiden of
Sigmar that people were claiming her to be. Grunwald wondered briefly if it had
been her faith or his own that had protected him from the enemy magic, but it
mattered not—all that mattered was that the witch was alive—and he needed to
die.

Grunwald saw that the panicked masses had halted in their mindless flight,
turning to look upon Annaliese with awe-struck eyes.

“The Maiden of Sigmar!” someone shouted, and he felt the raw power of their
belief.

“Stay back here!” shouted Grunwald to the girl as he saw the dark shape of
the enemy sorcerer snarl and abandon his post. His heart burning with hot fury
and anger, the witch hunter began to run once more towards the building, pushing
through the motionless crowd who were staring at Annaliese in awe.

His soldiers were waiting for him, though they had taken up positions around
the building so that the sorcerer could not escape. The building looked like
some kind of warehouse, its upper levels converted to a rich abode. At
Grunwald’s nod, one of the soldiers, a veteran warrior built like an ox, kicked
a side door in, the wood around the frame splintering.

Before he could shout a warning, the soldier had thundered inside the
darkened warehouse, his momentum carrying him forward. A light flared, and
coruscating energy enveloped the man, crackling through the colour spectrum as
it washed over his skin. He fell to the ground, twitching and convulsing and
bulges appeared beneath his clothing as his flesh mutated.

One of Grunwald’s pistols boomed, the shot slamming into the soldier’s head
and ending his torment, but still the body shuddered and contorted with malign
magic. The soldier’s face bulged as fingers pushed impossibly from within. A
pale talon ripped a hole through his skin, and long, multi-jointed fingers
struggled to tear the flesh away. Like a suit of fine clothes being ripped open,
the man’s skin was torn from the crown of his head to his sternum, the steel of
his breastplate melting and bubbling away as if it had been subjected to an
inferno. The body of the soldier was ripped opened before the horrified eyes of
his comrades, and the mutilated, perverted corpse thrashed around on the ground
as the foul daemonic entity pulled itself from within.

The air was filled with the stink of ozone and cauterised flesh, and the
infernal being rose from the still convulsing corpse like a demented newborn,
its pinkish flesh covered in blood and mucous.

It was crouched, and its eyes blinked open as it unfolded its long, gangly
arms. It seemed to have no head, or rather its head was squashed into its chest,
and its yellow irises were filled with insanity and unholy, manic energy.
Worm-like protuberances appeared in its flesh and they waved around blindly foul
and disturbing.

A long slash of a mouth that almost bisected its torso split open, exposing
thousands of tiny, coral-like teeth, each one covered in miniscule barbs. It
exhaled, a long throaty breath, and a bluish mist of magical energy coiled from
within the foul creature, and a demented giggle from the pit of hell erupted
from the creature’s lips. Like a discarded flesh-shell, the split corpse of the
soldier that had birthed this foul daemon still twitched upon the ground at its
feet.

With a snarl, Grunwald stepped forward and slammed the sole of his boot into
the creature’s face. He connected solidly, his whole weight behind the blow, and
the creature was thrown backwards. It rolled, cackling hysterically, and
scrambled about on the floor, gangly arms shaking above it.

“Cleanse this place in the name of Sigmar!” Grunwald roared, surging inside
the warehouse, the soldiers a step behind him.

He heard a muttered incantation in the tainted dark tongue of Chaos, and
threw himself into a roll as an arc of purple light reached towards him from the
wooden staircase that climbed up to the second level and beyond. It impacted
with the wooden table beside him, and its form was instantly altered almost
beyond recognition, the curving wooden legs twisting, barbs and spines erupting
through the woodgrain. Its solid surface sagged inwards like melting wax before
bursting into green flames.

A blue fireball roared past Grunwald as he rose to his feet, hurled by the
cackling daemonic creature that had fashioned it out of the air above its head.
There was a desperate screaming behind him as the flames caught several
soldiers, but Grunwald did not turn. With pistol in one hand and his flanged
mace in the other, he leapt towards the fell being. The pistol boomed, taking
the creature in one of its wild eyes, and it stumbled backwards, blue smoke
coiling from the wound. It began to melt, its unnatural form turning to viscous
liquid as it died.

Leaping over the vanquished daemon, he surged up the staircase, taking them
three at a time. He could see the magos now, backing higher away from him, blue
fire streaming from his eyeballs. He had a smile on his face, and Grunwald
snarled as he closed in on the hated foe.

Something grabbed his leg as he leapt up the stairs, and he fell heavily,
face first into the solid wood. He felt claws bite through his thick leather
trousers, and turned around kicking at whatever held him. It was a smaller
version of the creature he had just killed, though its flesh was blue-tinged and
it wore a frowning expression rather than manic glee upon its face.

Further down the stairs a soldier was battling against another of the
blue-tinged daemons that had birthed from the dying corpse of the first infernal
being, and Grunwald saw him fall screaming to his knees as the creature clasped
its long fingers around his face. Smoke and the stink of burning flesh rose from
beneath its grasp before another purple and yellow liveried warrior clove his
sword down through the creature’s head.

Grunwald kicked again at the monstrosity clinging to him, and its claws bit
deeper, piercing his skin. Its fanged maw opened wide to close around his leg,
but then a spear tip emerged from between its eyes, and it was lifted up and
away from him by one of the soldiers. A blast of blue fire consumed the man,
melting his flesh to the bone.

Grunwald rose on one knee, his hand reaching into his boot. The magos stood
at the top of the warehouse stairs facing him.

“Feel the power of Tzeentch, pitiful mortal,” said the magos as he lowered
his staff towards Grunwald, but the witch hunter’s hand flashed out and a dagger
struck the man in his throat. He dropped his staff and clutched at the blade.
Blood bubbled between his fingers and he stumbled forwards, falling heavily down
the stairs.

As the figure rolled past, Grunwald kicked him hard, smashing the magos
through the banister to fall ten feet to the hardwood floor below.

“Grab him!” he ordered, and three men leapt upon the fallen magos. “Hold him
tight,” said the witch hunter as he stalked down the stairs, each boot fall
echoing loudly now that all was silent bar the witch’s gargled gasps.

He stepped over bubbling masses of ichor, all that remained of the daemons
summoned by the man. Unrolling a leather package he wore at his belt, Grunwald
selected an implement from amongst his myriad tools, and knelt down alongside
the magos. He held the pair of black iron pliers before the witch’s face,
enjoying the look of pain and fear there now that the blue fire had left the
orbs.

“Open his mouth,” he ordered a soldier standing nearby, whose face was pale.
The man nodded, and knelt down alongside the witch hunter, forcing the magos’
jaws open.

Grunwald grabbed the man’s tongue with his pliers and pulled it out as far as
he was able. Then he brandished a knife before him.

“You shall not speak your foul incantations as you burn,” he said, and began
to cut. He prayed to Sigmar that this was the only enemy within their midst.

Outside, the hideous sound of the daemonic voice had died, to be replaced by
the resounding beat of a thousand enemy drums.

The ground reverberated as the Raven Host advanced.

As if the magos’ first horrific incantation had been the signal to attack,
the enemy marched down from the highlands to battle. While the Empire commanders
sought to regain some order to their battle line and more of the mewling
monstrosities spawned of Chaos magic from the flesh of Empire soldiers were
slain, the enemy closed towards the village.

The chosen warriors of the Chaos host remained motionless on the ridge, but
thousands of warriors descended around them, screaming praises to their gods and
their war-drums pounding.

Dressed in furs and hefting weapons of dark steel, the marauders surged down
the slope, a sea of warriors, their huge muscles daubed with swirling, tribal
war paint. Some amongst them bore the favour of the gods, their flesh having
been blessed by change—arms altered in form, muscles and bones warped into
brutal killing appendages, or thick tusks jutting from their jaws. These
warriors were revered as mighty champions, for the touch of the gods upon them
was clear.

They screamed as they raced down from the high land into the mire at its
base, and into the range of the guns of the Empire. As they surged into the
ice-covered marsh, plunging thigh deep into the icy waters, the first cannon
shots boomed. Smoke and flame burst from the barrels of the mighty weapons of
Nuln, and cannonballs smashed into the first ranks of the marauders, ripping
limbs from bodies.

The massive balls of steel and iron skidded off the ground and bounced
through the massing warriors, tearing through legs and bodies, crushing
everything in their path. Under the watchful gaze of their lord and his elite
chosen warriors, the marauders continued on, uncaring of their losses,
scrambling through the mire over their dying companions.