The Dead and the Damned Read online

  This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

  At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it isa land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forestsand vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reignsthe Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of thefounder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

  But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands ofthe Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

  WINTER

  Winters on the northern borders of the Empire are as cold and cruel as the heart of an evil man. From Kaldezeit until Nachexen, all the provinces of our mighty realm are gripped by winter’s freezing claw, but none more so than the principalities of Ostland and Ostermark. Located as these lands are on the border of the Chaos-plagued kingdom of Kislev, their common people share many of the superstitions of their more barbarous neighbours. It is said among the peasant folk who scrape an existence within this wilderness, that in the dark days of the dying of the year darker things still walk the lands of men.

  – from A Gazetteer of the Border Country by Albrecht Strauss

  THE HOUNDS OF WINTER

  The winter wind whipped through the tops of the tall pines, snowflakes dancing in whirling flurries. Moonlight cast an eerie glow over the snow-shrouded landscape, occasionally piercing through the trees and night-black shadows to the ground below.

  And there, racing through the forest, zigzagging desperately between the pillar-like trunks, half-running and half-stumbling over the uneven ground, was a figure, a man, dressed in winter-weather peasant garb, the bundle of carefully gathered firewood tumbling from his arms as he fled.

  Behind him, coursing through the maze of trees, following his scent unerringly, was something else. Something darker than the night, crueller than the arctic cold, and more menacing than the spectre of starvation in the depths of winter.

  The man ran on. His only thoughts were of the hounds baying behind him. Above the choking, tearing rasp of his own breath in his ice-seared throat, he could hear them panting and barking. Muffled by the snow and trees, their howls took on an echoing, almost ethereal quality. He dared not turn to snatch a fleeting glance of his pursuers for fear of what he might see. He did not know what they were or where they came from. And he did not care. He only knew that he could not let them catch him.

  Through the dark silhouettes of the tall pines he saw the dim light of his lantern in the window of his hovel. Then his foot snagged in an exposed tree-root hidden under the snow. A searing pain blazed in his ankle and he fell. Panicking, the man tried to scramble to his feet but as he did his torn ankle all but screamed out in protest. He gasped, taking in another great breath of ice-cold air that scorched his raw lungs. He was in agony: he wouldn’t be able to put any weight on the ankle now.

  A howl cut through the cold night, full of the promise of hot, slavering death. Pure terror chilled the peasant more deeply that the coldest midwinter. The terror helping him to ignore the pain, he somehow managed to stagger on with faltering, lurching strides. Every limping step brought him closer to shelter from the cruel winter night and the dark horrors it now held for him. Only another sixty yards and he would be safe. But with every desperate step the snarling of the hounds came closer.

  He had not realised how close, until he was suddenly tugged backwards with a fierce jerk. The first of them sank its claws into the calf of his leg. Crying out, he landed spread-eagled in the freezing snow, the breath knocked out of him. The rest of the pack was upon him before he could spit the snow from his mouth and draw another desperate, frozen breath.

  In a few moments of snarling savagery it was over.

  As quickly as they had fallen on the man, the hounds tossed the body aside and bounded off again into the night. The pack was closely followed by the masters of the hunt. Flaming hooves and iron-shod feet trampled the peasant’s corpse into the hard ground, white turning to crimson with a hiss of steam as the man’s hot blood soaked into the sullied snow.

  The Hounds of Winter were abroad once more.

  Everything about the inn spoke its age. Huge oak beams the size of whole trees formed a bracing structure, which supported the centuries-old, filth-coated rafters; around the beams, walls thick enough to withstand a besieging army had been built. Something about the huge stones gave the impression that they had been here long before mortal men had decided to build an inn here. The bar took up most of one wall and on the opposite side a fire blazed in the vast stone fireplace. Between the bar and the fireplace were tables, benches and stools, most of which were occupied by a combination of local villagers, enjoying a warmer atmosphere than they could find at home, Kislevite soldiers having completed their patrols of these dangerous lands, and hired swordsmen making the most of the money they had earned but on the look-out to make some more. A band of dwarfs was carousing by the fire while a cocky young human captain was losing an arm-wrestling match to a grinning, white-haired longbeard. Seated at a table in the centre of the bar was a party of six hard-bitten adventurers and the two serving girls who had joined them.

  ‘So you see, M… Ma… What’s your name again?’ Stanislav Hagar asked, absent-mindedly.

  ‘Magda,’ the serving wench seated on his knee replied, petulantly. Her blonde friend, seated next to the raven-haired Torben Badenov, giggled into her hand.

  ‘Yes, of course. Magda.’ Stanislav was starting to slur his words. For the shy giant of the band to be slurring his speech he must have already had a lot to drink. ‘So you see, this man here,’ he said clapping a huge hand on Torben Badenov’s shoulder, ‘saved my life and I’ve been part of Badenov’s band ever since!’ Torben sagged comically under the clout.

  ‘How did you save his life?’ Magda asked, giving the handsome dark mercenary a coquettish look with her deep brown doe eyes, and playing with a tress of her chestnut hair.

  ‘Gods, don’t get him started on that!’ Torben said, running a hand through his own hair. ‘Suffice to say it’s a long story that Stanislav would make even longer in his condition.’

  ‘What condition?’ the large man asked drunkenly.

  ‘What time did you start drinking this morning?’ the rat-like rogue Oran Scarfen asked his giant companion snidely. Normally the big Kislevite could out-drink any of the others.

  ‘You’ll be like a bear with a sore head tomorrow,’ Yuri Gorsk commented, flicking his untidy fringe of black hair out of his eyes before taking another swig from his own tankard of ale.

  ‘Then you’d better watch your step, come the morning,’ Stanislav said with a laugh, cuffing the younger man round the back of the head, making him spill most of his drink.

  ‘I think it’s your round, Stanislav,’ said the black-clad, eye-patched Krakov. He slammed his empty tankard down on the cartwheel-turned-table around which they all sat.

  ‘Yes, come on, you old fool,’ Torben jibed, ‘get the drinks in. Same again all round and, ladies?’ he asked, addressing the mercenaries’ two female companions.

  Before the two barmaids could answer the erstwhile trapper was on his feet, somewhat unsteadily, his arms outstretched as if he were ready to give a bear hug.

  ‘I’m not old and I’m not a fool, and I’ll wrestle anyone who says otherwise,’ he blustered.

  ‘Well you’re older than me,’ was Torben’s retort, ‘and you are a fool. Now get the drinks in.’

  ‘Alexi’s older than me,’ the drunken giant went on, in a hurt voice.

  ‘Yes, but I’m not as ugly as you,’ the old soldier replied, a wry smile on his lips.

  ‘I’m not ugly!’

  ‘Well why else would you grow that beard of yours so thickly if not to hide a face like an orc’s backside?’ Oran put in.

  ‘At least he can grow one,’ Magda rejoined coming to Stanislav’s defence, ‘rather than just a brush-bristle moustache like yours.’

  At that the mercenary party burst into raucous laughter; all except for the red-faced Oran. The gaunt, toothy warrior’s rodent-like features and spiky moustache almost belied any human heritage.

  ‘I like a man with a beard,’ the buxom blonde Helga added, looking at Torben’s neatly-trimmed facial hair. The mercenary was stroking it absent-mindedly.

  ‘A man could die of thirst around here!’ Oran snapped angrily, bringing everyone’s attention back to the more vital matter in hand.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Alexi, getting up from his stool and straightening his studded leather jerkin. ‘At least I won’t spill half of it on my way back from the bar.’

  Stanislav sat down heavily again with a self-satisfied smile and Magda resumed her place on his knee.

>   ‘Shouldn’t you be getting our order for us?’ Oran said to the girl who had shamed him in front of his friends.

  ‘It’s our night off, isn’t it, Helg?’ she said, throwing the other girl a conspiratorial look.

  ‘That’s right, Magda,’ her partner confirmed. ‘As of five minutes ago.’

  ‘It’s nice to spend some time with some real gentlemen,’ the sultry Magda went on, eyeing Torben while she continued playing with Stanislav’s hair.

  ‘And gentlemen with a crown or two to their names,’ Helga added bluntly.

  ‘Well, we’ve had a run of good fortune recently,’ Torben explained, flashing Magda a winning smile. ‘There’s been an increasing number of raids by goblins coming out of the foothills. Either the depths of winter have driven their foraging patrols further, to stave off hunger, or they’re testing the waters for another big push.’

  ‘Word from the south is that greenskin warbands are massing in the heartlands of the Empire,’ Krakov said, backing up his leader’s words.

  ‘Doesn’t sound much like good fortune for the people whose lands these goblins have been invading, nasty things!’

  ‘Yes, but we’re sell-swords, aren’t we?’ Oran pointed out.

  ‘Dogs of war,’ Krakov added.

  ‘Soldiers of fortune, perhaps,’ Alexi of Nuln suggested.

  ‘Mercenaries,’ said Torben. ‘Where there’s war, there’s work for us, and where there’s work there’s money for the taking. But that’s enough about us,’ Torben said smoothly, ‘we want to hear about you.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell,’ said Helga.

  ‘No, we want to know how the rest of you met,’ Magda pressed.

  Torben leant back in his seat, stretching his arms behind his head, and yawned widely.

  ‘Well, Oran, Alexi, Yuri,’ he said, pointing out each of his companions in turn, ‘and I were all in the army of the old Tzar, Radhii Bokha, back in Kislev. Then, well… let’s put it this way. One day we decided to become mercenaries. You’ve already heard how Stanislav came to join us. Then there was Krakov. We met him in jail.’

  ‘In jail?’ Helga said aghast.

  ‘Yeah, and whose fault was that?’ Oran asked, giving Krakov a dagger-filled look.

  ‘I didn’t start that tavern brawl,’ the black-clad man said, holding his hands up in defence.

  ‘Sounds like you really are men of the world,’ Magda said, directing her flirtatious gaze at Torben again.

  ‘Have you travelled far?’ Helga asked, seemingly genuinely interested. ‘I had an uncle who traded furs as far as Middenheim.’

  ‘Middenheim?’ Oran snorted. ‘So he wasn’t exactly what you would call well-travelled then?’

  ‘Well, most of us have fought in Tilea,’ Torben explained patiently, flashing another predatory smile at the brunette. ‘That was with Scarfo’s dogs of war.’ Torben suddenly laughed out loud.

  ‘Do you remember old Scarfo, Oran?’

  ‘Yes I do,’ replied the other, something like an expression of pain twisting his features for a moment.

  ‘Scarfo the Bastard, they called him.’

  ‘Yeah, and there was a reason for that.’ Oran winced again.

  ‘How horrible!’ said Helga, coyly sensitive for a girl used to serving soldiers and mercenaries in a drinking establishment on the Kislev-Empire border.

  ‘Alexi’s travelled the farthest but then he has been around the longest.’

  ‘And doesn’t it show?’ Stanislav said grinning inanely, and then letting out a loud burp.

  The older soldier put down his tankard firmly on the table, his usual calm demeanour unsettled for a moment. ‘Here, that’s enough of that sort of thing!’

  ‘What are you going to do about it, granddad?’ Krakov retorted, joining in the fun.

  ‘I was slaying beastmen before you had your head out of your suckling nurse’s cleavage and I could still teach you a thing or two,’ he rejoined. ‘You Kislevites! I don’t know. Anybody would think you invented swordplay the way you carry on sometimes.’

  ‘Do you remember that time we trounced those Bretonnians?’ Torben said quickly, as much to diffuse the situation as for the sake of nostalgia.

  The rest of Badenov’s band looked at their leader. Without a word being said all six of them burst into raucous laughter again.

  Alexi raised his tankard and shouted, ‘Badenov’s band!’

  ‘Badenov’s band!’ the others responded to the toast.

  ‘You’ve met the chivalrous knights of Bretonnia?’ Helga asked, obviously awed.

  ‘Chivalrous knights?’ Oran queried, taking the girl to task with unrestrained glee. ‘Poncey, pompous, arrogant psychopaths with delusions of grandeur, more like,’ and he hawked a gob of phlegm onto the rushes covering the floor.

  ‘Well I thought that knights were romantic, rescuing damsels from distress out of love,’ Magda said, leaping to her friend’s defence. ‘Not like you!’

  Oran cast the wench a black look but said nothing else.

  ‘Yuri here even speaks the lingo,’ Torben added.

  ‘A little,’ Yuri muttered modestly. ‘Enough to get by.’

  ‘Ooo, now that is romantic. Say something in Bretonnian,’ Magda cooed.

  ‘Um… I don’t know what to say,’ the young man said shyly, hiding behind his mop of a fringe.

  Suddenly the landlord’s gravelly voice called out gruffly across the bar: ‘Magda! Helga! Over here! You’ve still got work to do, you know?’

  Reluctantly, with flirtatious waves and lingering pecks on the cheek, the two buxom serving wenches rose and left their new gentlemen friends, swaying their hips provocatively.

  ‘Bye, girls,’ Torben called. Then under his breath, to the rest of the group, he added, ‘You don’t get many of those to the pound, do you?’

  With a crash, the inn door was flung open and a chill gust of wind drove the warmth from the room.

  ‘Shut the door!’ Oran shouted gruffly. Midwinter’s eve on the fringes of the Northern Wastes was as bitterly cold as any of the weather sages of Erengrad could predict, and outside was where the inn’s clientele wanted it kept that night. With a resounding boom, the portal was sealed again by a second gust of wind and the air inside the snug was still once more.

  ‘We haven’t a moment to lose! Barricade the doors and windows! Arm yourselves!’ the newcomer shouted above the hubbub.

  Casually, with feigned disinterest, Badenov’s band turned to see who had disturbed their quiet drink in the warm.

  Standing just inside the door was an old man, his age-lined face testimony to a life of hardship but also of great inner strength. A thick mane of white hair fell back from his forehead and his wide jaw was buried beneath a luxurious beard. Around his broad shoulders rested the hide of some unfortunate bear, its claws now pinned by a clasp about the stranger’s neck. He gripped a staff like a tree-branch in one of his great hands.

  ‘They’re coming I tell you! We must prepare for battle!’

  ‘Calm yourself, old man, calm yourself,’ Torben said, rising from the table of adventurers, his huge frame blocking the old man’s view of the fireplace. ‘Why don’t you have a drink and let us get on with ours?’

  ‘There is no time for that! Do you not know what night it is?’

  ‘Of course we do,’ Torben retorted. ‘Not all of us are suffering from dementia as yet. It’s midwinter’s eve.’

  ‘But not just any midwinter’s eve. Tonight is also the conjunction of the two moons!’

  Oran’s frown deepened. ‘What’s he ranting about now?’ he fumed, sneering at the newcomer.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Krakov replied, putting his tankard to his lips.

  ‘The conjunction of the two moons only happens once every three hundred years – when both moons come together on midwinter’s eve, dead on midnight, their full powers pull together upon this world,’ the old man explained, mistakenly assuming that the mercenaries were interested in what he had to say.

  ‘So what does that have to do with us?’ Torben asked flippantly.

  ‘It is upon us tonight! Do you not know the legend?’