The Dead and the Damned Read online

  ‘What legend?’

  ‘Oh!’ the stranger wailed, despair cracking his voice. ‘Too many have forgotten! Is it really so long?’

  Torben strolled over to the bar and leaned back against it casually ‘Do you know this character?’ he whispered through the side of his mouth to the rotund landlord, as the old man paced about the bar.

  ‘I don’t know his real name,’ the chubby, red-faced barman replied as he tried to buff up a dull pewter tankard with a filthy rag, ‘but everyone around here calls him Old Man Mountain. He’s an odd fellow. He’s been around for as long as anyone here can remember. People sometimes tell of seeing him striding through the snowdrifts up beyond the tree line but they always steer clear of him. He’s never actually come down into the village before, though – I’d be careful not to anger him if I were you.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He doesn’t frighten me. I’ve dealt with his type before.’

  In truth, Torben Badenov had indeed encountered many strange old men in his time as a mercenary, and not only in the wild borderlands of Kislev. Unbidden, a host of faces and names sprung to his mind, many reminding him of a dozen or more healed scars and various dramatic scrapes with death: the sorcerer Gustav Kometschweif and the hunt for the fabled mace Starsfall in the Troll Country; the nameless white-haired Bretonnian wizard of the Bastion Sanglier; the burns-scarred heretic Ubel Griswold; the double-crossing Tilean merchant, and skaven-lover, Eugo Vilandro.

  The obscure pronouncements of this addled mountain-dweller troubled him about as much as a goblin did a dragon. Yet despite the stranger’s obvious great age, Torben noticed that there was a certain bearing about him. He held himself tall and proud, looking every bit a man of thought as well as a man of action. Torben was sure that his great bearskin cloak hid powerfully muscled arms.

  Moving back to his table, Torben motioned to the enigmatic character with his tankard. ‘Come tell us your story, old man. Make it a good one and we might just buy you a drink for your trouble.’

  The stranger stopped pacing and turned his piercing amber eyes on the mercenary and his companions. ‘We have little time, so listen well,’ he said, coldly determined, ‘and I will tell you of the hounds of winter.’

  Oran rose from his stool and gestured to it sarcastically, but the old man refused to sit and kept pacing with nervous energy.

  ‘It was a night much like this, when people gather around their campfires to tell each other stories that make the blood run cold. It was a time when the tide of Chaos was rising in the land. It was midwinter’s eve–’

  ‘Get on with it. I thought time was short!’ Oran jeered. All but the old man laughed.

  ‘An Imperial patrol was escorting a wagon train from Talabheim to Kislev. Three days into the journey, a Chaos warband attacked!’ The old man’s earnest voice held the attention of the assembled warriors – perhaps this was to be a fine tale after all.

  ‘Outnumbered, the patrol was routed. Many brave men were killed by beastmen and Chaos warriors that night. The soldiers thought themselves all doomed.’

  The old man paused, coughed to clear his throat and beckoned for a tankard. Badenov passed over Oran’s, stopping the latter’s complaint with a wicked grin. The stranger supped a few mouthfuls before continuing. ‘Then, from out of the wilds came a being who seemed as much beast as man. He wielded deadly, sorcerous powers, and fought against the Chaos vermin. ‘Twas a wizard, come to aid the soldiers in their fight.’

  By now, Old Man Mountain had quite an audience, his story gripping even the most hard-bitten adventurers in the bar. ‘But the foul enemy was too strong, and in the end there was nothing for it but to flee and spread word of the coming of Chaos to Kislev and to the Empire beyond.’

  ‘Hurry it along, old timer,’ Oran interrupted again. ‘Cut to the chase.’

  ‘Listen!’ the old man reproached his heckler. ‘Every detail is important. You must hear it all!’

  ‘Very well, mountain man,’ Torben said, ignoring his glare. ‘Tell us everything, but get on with it!’

  ‘The Winter King, champion of Chaos, led this warband. His infamous acts of cruelty had carved him a reputation as bloody as his crimes.’ He paused a moment. ‘As the survivors of the wagon train fled from his clutches, the Winter King called on his Dark Gods for help, and from the red mist of battle his vile, Chaos-spawned powers shaped the dread forms of daemonic hounds.’ The old man sniffed the air dramatically. ‘Picking up the scent of the fleeing survivors, the abhorrent beasts bounded off into the night in pursuit of their human prey.’

  The old man shot his audience a glance to make sure he had their full attention. Satisfied that this was so, he went on.

  ‘Though it appeared that the wild man’s arrival had been a stroke of good fortune, this wizard had in fact been trailing the warband for some time. The Winter King had stolen a magical crown from an ancient burial mound. This crown was imbued with the power to command the forces of Chaos. The wizard knew that if Khorne’s champion reached the Empire, he might unite the twisted creatures of the Dark Gods dwelling within the Forest of Shadows into an unstoppable army. The warband had to be stopped before it reached the gates of the Empire!’

  ‘Where did the survivors make their stand then?’ Torben interrupted.

  ‘I was just getting to that!’ the old man snapped. He took a moment to compose himself again before resuming the story.

  ‘The wizard led the few survivors to a circle of standing stones carved with powerful, ancient runes and sigils. It was a fitting place for their last stand. The brave soldiers fought beyond their measure, but died one by one, until only the wizard remained.

  ‘Even in death, however, their energies combined with the magic of the place to imbue him with a terrible power. With the roar of a beast, the wild sorcerer shed his last vestiges of humanity and took on the aspect of a mighty bear. Raging and clawing, he drove off the servants of Chaos, though suffering terrible wounds himself.’

  The old man’s words were so vivid, and so heartfelt, that everyone was now held entranced.

  ‘Trapped and beaten, the Winter King slunk away into the darkness to die, cursing the wizard. He vowed that even though the wizard had won the battle, the war would continue in death and beyond. He would return.’

  The old man looked up, his story done. ‘That is the saga of the Winter King.’

  A heady silence hung over the bar. At last Torben spoke: ‘Well, you’ve earned your drink – that was quite some tale.’

  ‘But it’s not just a tale, it’s real, I tell you! Now is the time! The moons are in conjunction and the battle will be fought again!’

  A thunderclap shattered the night, shaking the inn and causing every lantern to flicker. Above the winter gale could be heard the savage baying of hounds.

  ‘Sigmar, save us!’ somebody wailed. Then others joined in petitioning the god of the Empire, praying to the Heldenhammer in their terror.

  ‘By Boris Ursa’s beard!’ Torben swore under his breath. ‘Seems Old Man Mountain might be right after all!’

  All eyes turned to face the stranger in disbelief.

  ‘They’re here,’ he said.

  Torben’s hand moved instinctively to the hilt of his sword. The rest of Badenov’s band eyed each other uncertainly. As they listened they could also make out the sound of harnesses jangling, the snorting of steeds and the clink of armour.

  ‘It is time, old man!’ came an icy voice from beyond the door. All inside the inn heard it quite clearly. The voice was heavy with damned resignation and full of menace. ‘Are you within?’

  ‘I am!’ the old man called back, his voice strong and unwavering.

  ‘And are you ready to die again?’

  ‘We will see.’

  ‘Then prepare to defend yourself!’

  An order was shouted – and it was as if all hell had been unleashed. A series of clattering crashes rocked the inn as something, or rather several things, hurled themselves at the shuttered windows. Men and dwarfs leapt to the windows, to ensure the shutters remained firmly closed. There were more crashes and Torben watched as the defenders, arms braced against the wooden battens, were pushed back by whatever it was that was breaking into the inn.

  Then, around the building several shutters were torn open, the iron hinges ripped free of the walls in tiny eruptions of brick-dust. Aged wood splintered as steel-grey claws, each as large as a man’s hand, tore at the battens.

  Startled, the defenders leapt back. Black, scaly muzzles, packed with savage fangs, followed the claws, snapping at the people guarding the windows. The monstrous creatures – the very hounds of hell, or so it seemed – tried to batter their way inside. Magda and Helga screamed, as did a number of other people who were huddled terrified in the bar. The fat barman disappeared behind his counter.

  ‘Now this is just too much!’ Torben exclaimed, rising to his feet, sword in hand. ‘One old lunatic I can just about stomach, but this is going too far. Are you with me, lads?’

  There was a growl of agreement from the mercenary’s companions and they jumped to their feet, weapons at the ready, ale fuelling their enthusiasm and bravado. Stanislav staggered unsteadily.

  ‘Ah, at last. The brave warriors remember their part in all this,’ the white-maned stranger said enigmatically. ‘Together we will drive the evil from this place!’

  Ignoring the old man, the mercenary captain adjusted his armoured jerkin and continued to urge his band of fighters on. ‘Come on, lads! Let’s give these deviants a taste of cold steel. That’ll soon calm their appetite for destruction!’

  By now the rest of the inn’s customers were also preparing to fight – it was plain that their only chance of survival depended on it. Kislevite soldiers, other sell-swords and the party of dwarfs gathered behind Badenov’s band.

  ‘Follow me!’ the stranger shouted above the blood-

  curdling howls of the hounds, the war cries of Chaos warriors and the braying of beastmen. Flinging open the great oak door of the inn, the old man stood silhouetted for a moment in the flickering light of the torches carried by the warband. Snow began plastering to his hair and beard. ‘Stay within the light cast by the inn!’ he advised, then leapt out into the night. The defenders followed unhesitatingly; it was as if the old man held greater sway over them than they realised.

  Outside the inn, it appeared to Torben that all hell really had broken loose. Surging towards the building was a heaving mass of brutish, horned beastmen and spike-armoured warriors, their faces hidden by huge, grotesquely visaged helmets. There was no unifying armour and the attackers displayed a terrifying range of weaponry: from great, gutting pole-arms and heavy, serrated war-blades to rusted, skull-dangling flails and massive, crushing maces.

  Torben knew a Chaos warband when he saw one, and he saw one now. He made a rough head count, and felt the blood drain from his cheeks. Torben estimated the inn’s defenders to total around sixty fighting men. The seething pack before them numbered at least three times that, not including the Chaos army’s vanguard!

  Pawing the ground in front of the ranks of Chaos were what Torben took to be hounds. But these blood-red monsters with their slavering jaws and scaly hindquarters were nothing like any creature he had encountered before. Their ruddy, hairless hides gave the impression of raw flesh. The daemonic dogs were snarling and croaking. Their reptilian screeching cries echoed through the night across the snowbound hills.

  Then the vile flesh hounds attacked.

  Torben was immediately set upon by two of the crimson-skinned abominations. Claws slashed mere inches from his chest and teeth snapped at his throat. Waves of noxious breath roiled over him, awash with the corrupted stench of septic wounds and spoiled meat.

  Torben swung the curved blade of his sabre in a figure of eight and felt it connect with the flesh of one of the monstrous creature assaulting him. There was a harsh yelp and the unnatural beast fell back.

  Then the mercenary was on the ground, the breath knocked out of him by the second of his savage animals attackers. The flesh hound held him down with iron-strong paws. Torben’s flesh burned with pain where the cruelly sharp claws sliced through his padded leather armour and into his shoulders. The numbing chill of the cold grey slush covering the ground soaked into the back of his jerkin.

  As he cried out in pain he drove his sabre in under the monster and rammed it upwards, with all the force he could muster, into the creature’s belly. Hot, steaming innards spilled from the gutting wound, drenching his hands in foul ichor. The hound howled. Its body sagged and Torben kicked himself free of its disgusting carcass.

  No sooner was he back on his feet than another attacker was on him. He barely had time to bring his weapon to bear before the beast hit him with the force of a battering ram. He heard the wet slick of the honed edge of his sword slicing through muscle and sinews, then the snick of it cutting into bone, as he was spun aside. The beast snarled in pain and faltered. In that same moment, the mercenary struck again, this time cutting through more than a clawing limb. The partially decapitated hell dog slumped to the ground.

  The attack had happened so quickly that Torben had only been able to react instinctively to the suddenly life-threatening situation. Something of the old man’s peculiar influence had helped to sober him up in an instant.

  He paused to catch his breath, and looked down at the bodies of the two brutes that had attacked him. Despite being canine in form there was something reptilian about the creatures’ heavy-jawed heads. Each was at least as large as the biggest wolf Torben had ever seen. But the fatal wounds he had dealt them reminded him of how he had felled the hobgoblin’s wolf, at only fourteen years of age. That was the act that had first set him on the path that had brought him to this moment.

  As he remembered the fang he wore on a leather thong around his neck – a memento of the raid on his village all those years ago – he also became aware of the throbbing pain of his injuries. He was not left to his thoughts for long, however, before the baying pack turned their bestial attentions towards him and the other defenders again.

  These were not some hunter’s wolfhounds, unless that hunter was one of the dark champions of the ruinous powers, these were a manifestation of the wrath of an angry god, pure hatred and bloodlust made corporeal on this plane of existence. They were hunting dog and bestial disembodied rage combined, savage instruments of death.

  Then Oran was at his side, shaking. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Torben puffed. ‘We’ve fought worse than this before.’

  ‘You know I hate dogs!’ Oran snarled back, his face pale in the gloom.

  ‘Don’t think of them so much as dogs,’ Torben suggested, ‘think of them as… daemons.’

  ‘Oh, that makes it so much better!’

  The horrifying hell-hounds were possessed of an unbridled fury and hurled themselves at the humans and dwarfs, trying to clamp limbs in their teeth, desperate to rend their victims apart. Beyond the vanguard formed by the daemonic creatures the beastmen and Chaos warriors pressed forward, keen to satisfy their own rising bloodlust.

  A hideous amalgam of man and goat forced its way through the surging hounds and came face to face with Alexi and Yuri. The older man laid practiced blows against the towering beastman, making every hack and slash count. The less experienced Yuri set about his foe as though in a frenzy, his youthful vigour compensating for his less well-judged strikes. The beastman fell, blood pouring from a score of sword-cuts that would not be staunched.

  As Torben fought on, swinging blow after powerful blow at the mass of attacking Chaos beasts and warriors about him, he could not help noticing that at the heart of the warband there were others whose faces were unmasked and of a deathly pallor. At the back of the serried lines of mutants and madmen, a shadowy, almost spectral figure appeared to be directing them all. The suffused light from the inn gleamed dully from the jagged, spike-like points of a crown.

  A spear of glowing orange flame streaked through the swirling snow, cast by the old man. The missile exploded among a mass of beastmen, the foul stench of scorched fur filling Torben’s nostrils. The braying animals were sent running in disarray.

  So the old man has some magic at his disposal too, Torben thought to himself. There was a lot more to him than had first appeared.

  Something else was happening as well. As he battled on against the Chaos pack, Torben felt as if his body was being invigorated by some renewing power that sent strength surging through his arms and legs, stimulating muscles that should have become tired from the constant exertion. It gave him the stamina to keep fighting, in spite of his wounds. From the curious expression on the faces of his fellows the same thing was plainly happening to them.

  Snow was falling thickly now, whipped up into blinding flurries by the wind. Through the blizzard, Morrslieb’s light began to dim as the time of the conjunction approached. Torben sidestepped an attack by a howling, dog-faced mutant and plunged his sabre deep into the beastman’s chest. The howl became a gargling whine as blood bubbled from its muzzle-mouth.

  Close by he saw the dwarf band surrounding a rabble of short-horned, semi-human braying creatures. A horn-helmed longbeard, righteous anger contorting his features, was laying into the Chaos creatures with his axe, bringing them down to size – his size – removing their kicking goat-legs at the knees. A dwarf wielded a miner’s pick like a battle-axe, bringing it down on top of a beastman’s skull, puncturing it with a sickening cracking pop.

  Torben had lost track of how long the battle had been raging. Although they fought with increased vigour, the ragged collection of defenders was still greatly outnumbered. Torben suddenly found himself clear of the immediate fighting, in the eye of the storm, as it were. A number of Chaos corpses lay on the ground in the ruddy slush in front of him. He darted glances around him, to see where the next attack might come from or if any of his companions needed his aid. But he did not expect to see movement from the bodies before him.