Tales of the Old World (48 page)

Markus was shocked. The implication of the other’s words were clear. “You
seek no redemption, you truly are happy in your chains. You are a greater fool
than I realised to be held by such a weak lure. The only eternity worthwhile to
strive for is in the embrace of Sigmar, not some unholy hell forged from a mad
god’s whims!” Then another realisation dawned on Markus and he eyed Estebar with
renewed suspicion.

“Souls. You must pay a number of souls to the Ruinous Powers before they let
you cross over, isn’t that it?”

Estebar laughed loudly and for a long time. With an enthusiastic grin he
nodded. “Yes, yes! My dear Markus—but of course I know your name; how sharply
your wits are honed!” The Chaos warrior smiled benevolently. “But not any souls.
Oh no, that would be far too easy. The souls I have claimed for Chaos, for I
forswore Slaanesh as my sole patron, have been men of high standing, strong of
courage and moral fibre like yourself.”

Markus was shocked. “How can anybody willingly give themselves to Chaos? Even
you are not guilty of that stupidity!”

Then another thought occurred to him: they hadn’t gone willingly at all, they
had been used and perverted by the same subtle power that Estebar was using on
him right now. In the twilight, the Chaos lord seemed to swell. An aura played
about his body, spilling through the air like a vapour. As Estebar spoke, Markus
fancied he could feel the insubstantial tendrils of that vile aura reaching out
to wrap around him too.

“Lord Sigmar, Father of the Empire, Shield of Mankind, protect me from evil…”

Estebar seemed to grow angry, his face twisted in a sneer, eyes boring deep
into Markus’ head. “You will be my last soul! You will be mine! Guided by the
Lord Tzeentch, I have slaughtered thousands just to bring you here. My
precognition has waxed powerful over the years and I saw this day long ago. It
is the day of my ultimate triumph. I could kill you now, swifter than a blink of
your clouded eye, but only you can vouch your soul to my cause. Your soul will
be given over to my lordly masters. As you take my place and serve them in this
world, I, Estebar, the Master of Slaughter, bringer of despair to a hundred
towns, will ascend to the glories of the Otherworld. It is written in my
destiny. It will be so!”

Estebar relaxed his hands, which had been gripped in fists so tight a trickle
of blood dripped from his palms where his nails had dug deep into the flesh.
Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself.

“And yet at the last, you still have a choice. Renounce your faith in Sigmar
and I will depart to greater glories. Without me at its head, my army will
fragment and scatter and the Empire will be safe. If you defy me, I will burn,
torture and defile every man, woman and child between here and Altdorf searching
for another who will fall before my grace.” He sighed. “There is no point
resisting, I will have another soul, so make it yours and you can save thousands
of lives, end the torment and suffering and earn your own salvation. Just a
simple nod or word is all I need. What does it feel like to be the saviour of
the Empire, Markus?”

“Lord Sigmar, Father of the Empire, Shield of Mankind, protect me from evil…”
the priest groaned.

Markus’ prayers brought no solace. The fiend’s subtle words were playing
tricks with his mind. The bargain sounded so simple, and he did not doubt the
truth of Estebar’s pledge. Markus was confused, his mind travelling in circles.
How could he tell if it was truly Sigmar who had saved him from the fire in the
chapel? Could it have been the twisted Chaos Gods who had freed him so many
years ago simply so that he would be here now? No doubt the plans of the Dark
Powers were bold and only the test of time would see their fruition. Plans
within plans, wheels within wheels spun in Markus’ terrified mind. Summoning
his mental strength he spat out his defiance wrenching each word from the depths
of his soul.

“I will… not… betray… my… lord!”

Estebar spoke again, his voice at its most subtle, sliding into Markus’
consciousness and leaving its indelible mark. “Thousands will live or die by
your choice, yourself included. Whether you listen to your heart or your head,
you have no real choice. Perhaps one day you will come to join me in Dark
Paradise.”

Doubt crept into Markus’ mind like an assassin. Perhaps he could claim his
abandonment of Sigmar and thus save the Empire from the ravages of this madman,
but in his heart remain true to his faith. Maybe Sigmar had been his saviour,
for the very same reason that he alone could avert this catastrophe. Either way,
the priest’s past life took on a whole new meaning and many mysteries were now
explained to him.

But what if that was but the first chink in the armour of his faith? Could he
truly lie about what he believed? Was this the same path trodden by Estebar’s
past victims, believing themselves safe until they realised that they had lied
one time too many and they were now damned? Could faith ever be feigned and
would Estebar realise Markus’ lack of sincerity?

As Markus wracked his brains for the right answer, the agonised yowling of
some forest creature’s final moments sounded across the darkness, followed by a
series of monstrous roars. Estebar stood up and gazed towards the forest in the
distance, pulling on his gloves.

“Make your choice quickly, priest. Other creatures more fell than wolves
stalk this night. That is the cry of Khorne’s hunters, the flesh hounds. I will
make the choice simple for you. Even if you could free yourself you might not
escape the swift chase of those daemon stalkers. You must have a symbol of your
new allegiance to protect you from their ripping claws and savage jaws.”

Estebar stood and drew his sword from its scabbard once again. Startled,
Markus was transfixed by the ill-forged blade. It was of the blackest metal,
inscribed with golden runes that writhed under his gaze. For a brief moment,
though, Markus could understand them; he could decipher the dire spells of
cleaving and maiming that they embodied. The moment passed and they turned into
evil but nonsensical sigils once again. Estebar thrust the sword blade down into
the ground a foot to Markus’ right, within easy reach. He plucked his cloak off
the cold body of Markus’ horse.

“Cut yourself free, priest, and you and thousands of your countrymen will
live. Fulfil your destiny and take up the sword! Do not deny this; it has been
written in fate since the stars were formed and the cursed sun first burned. Now
I will leave you with your thoughts. Don’t take too long or the choice will be
made for you.”

With a bow of his head and one last regarding look, Estebar fastened his
cloak again and strode away into the looming darkness of the early night.

For a long time Markus did not move, but lay with his eyes closed and
listened to his own ragged breathing. There was no one else to convince but
himself and he could not lie to his own heart, even if his head could be
betrayed. Could he wield that twisted blade at all, even to cut himself free and
still remain faithful to Sigmar? There was no guarantee that the sword would let
him wield it without first swearing his allegiance to Chaos. There were tales of
holy weapons that would burn the hands of the impure if they held them. Perhaps
similar unholy weapons existed to test the faith of the impure. Markus was lost
inside his own arguments.

A howl split the silence, and Markus imagined he could feel the padding of
many huge clawed feet across the ground. The sound of bestial panting came out
of the darkness. Markus opened his eyes.

The moon of Morrslieb, harbinger of Chaos, was rising over the night-shrouded
forest. Silhouetted against that baneful orb was the grip of Estebar’s sword. In
the unearthly green glow of the Chaos moon, it looked to Markus for all the
world like a hand reaching out to take him into the darkness.

You never hear the sound which wakes you. It remains in the realm of sleep
while you enter the world of wakefulness.

Tomas sat up like a bending board and willed his eyes to open. He slept on
the smooth, black stones beside the forge; a good place to sleep, especially
when the winter chills rolled down like waves from the Grey Mountains, leaving a
coating of frosty brine come morning. One night a spark from the forge had spat
out and ignited his bed of grass and bracken while he slept but, unlike his
father, Tomas was not a heavy sleeper.

His father! Pierro was smith to the people who lived in the village of
Montreuil, under the jagged shadow of the Grey Mountains, in the north of
Bretonnia. Tomas came to the realisation, as he did every morning, that the
sound which had woken him must have been that of his father’s first hammer
stroke for the day, which was closely followed, with mechanic inevitability, by
the second.

Each blow of the hammer bid Tomas an ungentle good morning, before departing
the smithy to wake the creatures of the forest, and reminded him sternly of the
amount of brandy he and Luc had consumed the previous evening. Tomas prised open
his eyes and, through the narrow slit which he managed in his visor of sleep,
located his smock and boots.

Manoeuvering around his father, Tomas began slowly to dress. Neither
acknowledged the other. Tomas pulled his smock over his head and squeezed into
his boots while Pierro bent over the forge, puffing great blasts of air from his
lungs with every swing of his hammer: a set of human bellows. Tomas’ father
worked hard and never left the smithy, unless it was to tend to the grove of
ancient oaks which stood at the edge of the forest beyond the common pasture
land.

It had been his father’s responsibility, and so on down to the very roots of
the family tree. One day, Tomas supposed, it would be his. Tomas left the smithy
as soon as he was ready, as he did every morning.

In the doorway he met Marc, who was Pierro’s apprentice and had held the post
ever since Pietre. Tomas’ elder brother had been the most promising young smith
Montreuil had seen since the brighter days of Pierro’s youth and the old regime.
Marc was capable enough in his own steady way, and he and Tomas were friendly,
accounting for the fact that Marc held the job which might have been thought
most rightly to belong to Tomas. When his time had come, Tomas had refused to
take up the position as his father’s apprentice and it was only because of the
prayers of his mother who had lost one son already, that Tomas was permitted to
continue to live under Pierro’s roof. Tomas brought in a little money to the
family through different jobs for farmers in the district and Marc became the
smith’s apprentice. The two exchanged a polite greeting and Tomas plunged into
the bright, grey world.

Many in the forest-edge village saw fit to comment about the estranged
family, wondering whether it was Tomas who refused to meet his inherited
responsibilities or Pierro who refused to fulfil his parental ones. Whatever the
facts of the matter (and actually it was both), it was fortunate for Montreuil
that young Marc, whose father had perished in the cells of the Marquis, could
step in and fill the need.

These things wandered through Tomas’ mind as he rounded the back of the
smithy and stuffed his head and torso into the barrel of ice and water. Tomas
practiced this routine every morning almost as though it might harden him as his
father tempered a glowing blade. Tomas had need of the hardness of iron, if he
was going to rid Montreuil of Gilbert: Gilbert de la Roserie, Marquis, holder of
the King’s commission—and tyrant.

Montreuil was a political enigma, a political embarrassment. Squeezed like a
stone between the toes of a giant, the village lay in the foothills of the
northern Grey Mountains. Further north even than the great spa city of Couronne,
Montreuil had almost no value to the thriving rural heart of Bretonnia many days
to the south.

The King, however, who wielded the complicated feudal system like a
well-weighted blade, had found a use for Montreuil. He made a grant of land
there to one of his lords whose outspoken militaristic opinions had become
unfashionable in these times of detente. This commission, this putting out to
pasture, had been bestowed on Gilbert Helene, who had become the Marquis Gilbert
de la Roserie more than thirty years ago, after he had served the king
faithfully, if a little bloodily, in the wars of their youth.

Most of the villagers guessed, quite rightly, that the King had entirely
forgotten about the existence of Monueuil and the man who ruled there. Marquis
Gilbert certainly behaved as if the village was his own private kingdom and the
troop of border guards—a dozen aging career soldiers and petty officers—was
his royal army.

This was the sad situation that Tomas was determined to upset. Approaching
his twentieth year, Tomas was brimming with the rebelliousness of youth and the
sense of invincibility which comes with it. He dreamed constantly of calling the
hundred or so villagers to arms and ousting the tyrant with his twenty men.
There were practical problems of course. The soldiers, called “sergeants” by
the villagers because most of them had held at least that rank in the national
army before their ambition had got the better of them, were the only armed folk
in the village. One of the Marquis’ many laws prevented the villagers from
owning anything more warlike than a bow for hunting and a knife for cutting
meat.

What made this restriction all the more unbearable for Tomas was the fact
that his own father forged the swords and spears with which Gilbert’s men
enforced his laws. Every helmet, every breastplate had begun life in the forge
at the end of Tomas’ house, beside which he slept each night and yet not one
blade remained there.

This alone would have been enough to estrange father and son but the
situation was aggravated for Tomas by the fact that his own father, Pierro,
refused to talk about any aspect of his work with Tomas since Tomas had declined
to become his apprentice. Pierro was a talented smith and on Gilbert’s own hip
hung a rapier, hilted in fine gold set with uncut topaz, made by Tomas’ father.
Besides which, the villagers of Montreuil were an infuriatingly peaceful people
and took each new injustice as simply another trial to be borne in silence.