01 - Empire in Chaos (5 page)

This was not her father, she reminded herself.

And if this truly was her time to pass into the halls of Morr, then she would
be damned if she didn’t take these creatures with her.

She stepped backwards to give herself some room, her mouth set into a
determined line as she lowered herself into a ready stance, the short-sword held
out before her.

“You are not Jonas, and you are not my father,” she breathed as the
puppet-like figures staggered towards her.

The unnaturally cold air was filled with the tumultuous din that spilled from
the throats of the monsters, a dozen voices whispering and hissing all around
her. The twisted, slashed face of the creature that was once her father
continued to grin at her as it advance towards her, and she backed away
frantically from its outstretched hands.

Annaliese was far from an expert swordswoman, but these creatures, with their
stilted and awkward movement, were far from skilled foes. As the zombie-like
creature that resembled Jonas reached for her, she hacked at it with her sword,
the blade severing several blackened, frostbitten fingers. The creature’s eyes
blazed ever brighter, until she plunged the point of the sword into its chest,
piercing the heart. The fire flickered and died, and the creature slumped to the
ground a marionette with its strings cut.

A hand, as cold as death itself, grabbed her by long blonde hair and wrenched
her head back, and she saw the creature’s slashed face close to her own, mouth
opened wide as it lunged for her throat. The ice chill that exuded from the
monster burnt her, and she threw herself to the side in desperation, leaving a
hair fill of hair in its grasp. Annaliese’s head crashed into the leg of the
heavy wooden table, and pain shot through her.

Voices were all around her, and when her vision cleared, she looked up into
the twisted face of the monster. It stood over her hefting a heavy chunk of wood
above its head, ready to cave her skull in.

“Father, no!” she screamed in desperation, but if it understood her it gave
no indication.

She slashed with her sword, the blow hitting the creature in the shin,
splintering the bone. Its leg collapsed beneath it and it fell to its knees.
Annaliese was on her feet in an instant, and she lashed out blindly. Her blade
hacked into its neck, cutting to the bone. It lodged fast between the vertebrae,
and the sword was wrenched from her hands as it fell to the ground.

Shaking frantically, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, she burst
through the door of the cabin and ran outside.

She fled blindly from the cabin, her home, stumbling through the snow,
registering that there was the movement of people all around. She fell to her
knees as she tripped over something—a dead body. She jumped to her feet with a
moan of horror, adrenaline pumping through her.

People ran screaming, clutching their children protectively to them, fleeing
in every direction. There was no order to the flight, for there was nothing but
panic and terror in these people, and they fought each other in their haste to
get away.

Annaliese was knocked to the ground by a middle-aged villager she knew,
though she had never seen the look of abject horror on his face before, and he
made no sign of recognition or apology as he fled blindly. Bodies were strewn
across the ground, blood splattered over the snow and mixing with the muddy
slush. There were shouts and screams of pain and fear all around and she swung
her head from side to side, trying to see the enemy, or a safe direction to run.

Some people were defending themselves with drawn weapons, and she gasped as
she saw one wildly flailing villager impaled on the shaft of a spear. He didn’t
stop fighting then, either, but dragged himself further onto the haft of the
weapon in his eagerness to get close enough to claw at the warrior.

A woman screamed as she was grabbed from behind. Her throat was ripped out by
her attacker’s teeth, blood spraying madly from the fatal wound.

She saw a wasted and thin figure crouching over fallen woman. She began to
back away, but as if feeling her gaze upon it, the emaciated creature raised its
head, Its eyes were blazing blue orbs of fire and its mouth and chin dripped
with blood. Clearly it had been feasting, but it dropped its meal and began
staggering towards her, its movements jerky and uncoordinated but with deadly
intent.

With no weapon to hand she knew she was no match for this creature, and she
turned and ran through the mayhem. She saw an elderly man screaming and fighting
frantically as he was pulled to the ground by two more plague victims, their
eyes burning with cold intensity, and she faltered momentarily, seeing the
desperate plea in the old man’s face. An instant later, his cries were silenced
as one of the creatures smashed his head into the ground with a horrible crack.

A terrified looking soldier swung towards her, the long spike on the tip of
his halberd pointing in her direction. His trousers were stained where he had
clearly lost control of his bodily functions, and raised her hands up before her
to show she meant no harm. The point of the halberd wavered dangerously before
her, and she flicked a glance over her shoulder at the creature stumbling
towards her.

“I’m not one of them,” she said as she turned back, though she may as well
have been speaking a foreign language, for the soldier merely backed away from
her, his weapon still lowered in her direction and his eyes wide with terror. He
tripped over a severed arm, and fell backwards into the snow.

She darted past him and heard a horrible yelp from the fallen soldier. She
did not look back. The only thing on her mind now was escape.

She found herself running into the village square. Disoriented amongst the
surging crowd, her blind flight had brought her here, and she groaned in fear.
The fighting was intense, and she saw that the doors of the guildhall had been
smashed down from the inside. As she stood there despairing, she saw one of the
boarded up windows blown out, and a pair of grinning, flaming eyed monsters
crawled through the rotten wreckage of splintered wood.

The black iron cage still hung from the gibbet, and the dark haired elf was
staring out across the madness below with wide eyes. As much as he shook the
door of the cage, the rusted padlock imprisoning him within held fast.

Annaliese saw her chance—there was a thin alleyway between the butchers and
the Golden Wheatsheaf, the inn where she worked. It backed onto farmland, and
beyond were the woods. Seeing no one in the narrow passageway, she ran,
sidestepping combatants that rolled in the slush and the grasping hands of
zombie-like plague victims.

A heavy set villager, a local huntsman, was fighting for his life against two
of the plague monsters, a woodsman’s axe in his grasp. He cut one of them down
with a savage blow to the neck, but the other one reached for his face. He
stumbled backwards to gain more room, swinging the axe over his shoulder.

On his backswing, the head of the axe struck the locking mechanism that held
the gibbet cage aloft, freeing the chain and sending the cage plummeting towards
the ground. The huntsman lost his grip on the axe, and the creature was upon him
in an instant, tearing at his skin and flesh with skeletal hands curled like the
talons of a bird of prey.

As he screamed in horror and pain, the black iron gibbet cage smashed into
the earth with a clatter, and fell to its side. Several plague victims swung
their heavy heads towards the sound, and broke off from their feasting to
stagger towards the cage. Annaliese saw the elf shaking the bars of the cage
frantically, but the lock held still.

She stopped short, biting her lip, glancing back towards the elf, still
struggling against his imprisonment. It seemed an unnecessarily cruel way to
die, even for one who had committed murderous, black acts.

Cursing herself, she rushed back into the fray, running lightly towards the
cage. Several creatures went close to it now, and she heard the torrent of
ungodly voices spilling from their throats raise in temporary excitement.

Stooping, she swept up the fallen axe from the human who was being eaten
alive at the base of gibbet, and hefted it over her shoulder before dashing
towards the cage. With all her force and with a scream of anger and fear, she
brought the axe crashing down onto the head of one of the plague victims trying
to claw at the elf through the bars of the cage. It cut through its skull,
splattering blood and gore over her dress and across the pristine white face of
the elf, and the figure fell to the ground.

Annaliese caught the gaze of the elf, and was struck by his alien, defiant
eyes. They were not black as she had first thought, those eyes, but had a slight
tinge of lavender to them that merely enhanced the impression of inhuman,
otherworldliness about him.

Praying she was doing the right thing, she brought the head of the axe
crashing down on the rusted lock imprisoning the elf, smashing it asunder
beneath the blow. She dropped the axe with numbed fingers, and without waiting
to see his escape she turned and ran. She had given the elf a chance—it was
now up to him to do with it what he would.

Not pausing this time, she bolted into the thin alleyway, running up its
narrow passageway towards the beckoning farmland and woods beyond.

Her foot caught on something and she fell heavily to the ground, the air
driven from her lungs. She hadn’t even had time to get her hands in front of her
to break her fall, and she gasped for air, winded, face down in the snow.

Something was holding onto her ankle, and she kicked out frantically, trying
to free herself. Still trying to regain her breath, she gasped as pain flared up
her leg. Rolling over in the icy cold slush, she saw a hand clasped around her
ankle, blackened fingernails biting through her leather leggings. The fingers of
the hand were a bruised red colour, for the blood had clotted in the veins when
the plague victim’s heart had stopped. She kicked at the hand with her free leg,
feeling finger bones break beneath her heel, but still the grip did not relent.

She saw the creature’s face then, and it filled her with mindless terror. It
was the face of a friend, Ilsa, a barmaid at the Golden Wheatsheaf, though her
plump, pretty face was contorted and foul. Her lips were swollen and bloated,
and her skin was drawn and so pale that she could see the network of blue veins
within her flesh. Sickeningly, the bones of her skull were malformed and warped,
a cluster of bony, branch-like protrusions pushing from the flesh on her right
temple. As Annaliese watched in horror, the twig-like tips of this mutation
waved in air, straining towards her as if they sensed the life in her. Ice-blue
flames flared in the girl’s eye-sockets, and she opened her mouth wide, exposing
blackened teeth. Where there should have been a tongue was a bulbous, staring
eyeball, the iris iridescent blue and flecked with gold. That eye blinked slowly
as it stared at her, and Annaliese thrashed against the grip of this foul
creature, kicking at it again and again.

It did not release its grip, and it began to pull itself up her legs, the
staring bulbous eye glaring at her from within the girl’s ever widening mouth.

Over the creature’s shoulder she saw a flash of movement, and she looked up,
absolute panic in her eyes, to see the elf running towards her, the huntsman’s
axe in his hands. He swung it back over his head, and hurled it towards her.

Annaliese screamed as the axe flew through the air, turning end over end.

The axe blade slammed into the back of the mutant girl’s head with a
sickening, wet sound. Annaliese screamed again, pushing away from the now limp
monster, kicking and scrabbling backwards.

Then the elf was at her side, pulling her to her feet with strength that
belied his inhumanly slight, tall frame. His grip around her arm was strong, and
painful, and her nostrils were filled with the scent of strange, unearthly
spices and herbs.

The horror and shock of the day won out, and Annaliese saw stars of light for
a second before she slumped to the ground unconscious, like a limp rag-doll.

Mouthing a curse in his native tongue, the elf stooped and lifted the girl up
in his arms. Her head flopped back limply, her long blonde hair hanging to the
ground.

Cursing himself for a fool, the elf, carrying the slender form of the human
woman, loped away from the mayhem of the village, heading towards the beckoning
trees in the distance.

Udo Grunwald pushed open the small, ill-fitting door, lowering his head to
avoid the low-hanging lintel and entered the seedy looking inn. It was called
the Hanging Donkey, and outside its gateway hung the rotten, snow-covered corpse
of said donkey, hanging by the noose around its neck. He wondered briefly what
crime the animal had committed, what malefaction it had concocted within its
devious criminal brain to warrant such punishment.

It had probably been the lover of the innkeeper’s wife, he thought, and
smiled to himself. That smile did nothing but make his brutish, ugly face look
even more dangerous.

The inn was dark and smoky, and silence descended as soon as he stepped
inside. His heavy boots sounded loudly on the wooden floorboards, and he glared
around him at the staring faces, daring any of them say a word.

Udo knew he was an intimidating figure, and he used to the way that people’s
eyes quickly turned away from his gaze. Here was no different, though the
hostility within the room was tangible, even if none of these farmers and
travellers dared look him in the eye.

He could understand the reaction to his presence—none were safe on the
roads these days, and the news from the north was grim. Brigands and outlaws
roamed the countryside, preying on those fleeing the trouble, and there were
whispers of far darker things within the forests that were growing restless.
Witches, secret covens, foul mutants and Chaotic beasts that walked upright like
men—these were all things to be feared by people of the Empire, and here was
no different. Outsiders were regarded with fear and distrust, particularly with
the growing rumours of the hideous plague that was spreading like wildfire
through the towns and villages.