Dead Winter

Chapter III

Middenheim

Kaldezeit, 1111

Snarling wolves glowered down upon the oblivious men, stone fangs bared. The flickering fire of an enormous hearth cast weird shadows across the lupine gargoyles, the shifting play of light and dark lending the marble wolves a semblance of savage life.

Far below the stone wolves, two men sparred across a polished wooden floor. The boards creaked and groaned as heavy boots stamped down on them, as thrust and parry whirled the combatants along the empty gallery. The clash of steel against steel rang through the concourse.

One of the combatants was a middle-aged man, lean of build, his close-cropped hair in retreat, his thin moustache displaying a scattering of grey. His face was thin and hard, his eyes as sharp as the edge of a knife. He wore a simple leather tunic, his only affectation being the golden pectoral that hung about his neck. He wielded his sword with suppleness and surety, his every move bearing the cool confidence of long experience.

His opponent was much younger, little more than a boy. Thick black hair hung to his shoulders, catching in the high collar of his garment. Unlike the simple tunic of the older man, the boy’s gypon was extravagant, stripes of silver thread woven into the burgundy cloth, gold buttons crisscrossing the breast. An enormous buckle, cast into the profile of a running wolf, fastened a belt of dragonhide about his waist. The scabbard which hung from the belt was gilded across most of its length and engraved with elaborate scrollwork.

The boy’s face was handsome, stamped with all the finer qualities of noble blood and careful breeding. There was pride in his deep blue eyes and a swagger to the curve of his mouth that betokened an innate confidence that needed neither practice nor experience to engender it. The will to accomplish was enough to embolden the boy and drive him to success.

His swordsmanship displayed a less refined, more primal style than the studied motions of the older man. It was emotion rather than skill which governed his blade, but such was the fire of his passion, the quickness of his reflexes that his guard was impenetrable, his attacks avoided only by the narrowest margin.

The older swordsman smiled as he twisted his wrist and blocked a slash from his adversary’s blade. ‘That would have been an impressive feint — if you had intended it as such,’ he told the boy.

A smirk tugged at the corner of the boy’s mouth. ‘I don’t need feints to sneak past your blade, old man.’

The other swordsman smiled back, rolling his blade across the back of the boy’s sword and stabbing the point towards his breast. His foe dropped and shifted, swatting the thrust aside with the pommel of his own weapon. The older fighter nodded, impressed by the move. ‘Nice work. I’d think you’d been studying the tricks of the Estalian diestro — if I didn’t know you have no patience for books.’

The boy jabbed his sword at his foe’s left arm, then turned his entire body so that he followed through with a rolling slash at the man’s right leg. Both attacks crashed against the other swordsman’s intercepting blade.

‘Why read if there’s nothing more to learn, van Cleeve?’ the boy quipped.

The old man snorted with amusement, then brought his boot stamping down, not upon the floor, but upon his adversary’s foot. The boy danced back in surprise. For an instant, his guard was down. It was all the opening his instructor needed. The point of his sword pressed against the youth’s belly, the cork cap sinking into the cloth of his doublet.

‘If all you want to do is get killed, then there’s nothing more I can teach you, your grace,’ van Cleeve said.

Laughing, the boy brought his sword whipping around in a stunning display of speed and flourish, the edge pressing against his instructor’s neck. ‘That is a mortal wound, but not immediately fatal. We die together, old man.’ Smiling, he withdrew his blade, pausing to remove the nub of cork before returning it to its scabbard.

Van Cleeve sighed as he attended to his own weapon. ‘I think his excellency the Graf would take small comfort from knowing his only son dispatched his assassin before he died.’ The swordsman shook his head. ‘You have an impressive natural aptitude, Prince Mandred. If you would only apply yourself to the science of the sword…’

Mandred frowned. It was an argument he had heard many times and one that he didn’t appreciate, especially since it was a train of thought van Cleeve shared with his father. ‘Techniques and schools of sword would ruin me. Tame a wolf and you dull his fangs.’

‘A tame wolf lives longer,’ van Cleeve observed.

‘A wild wolf is happier,’ retorted the prince. Van Cleeve could see he would make no points sparring with his student’s wit. Clicking his heels together, the Westerlander bowed to the prince and withdrew from the gallery. Mandred waited only until the swordsman was out of sight before turning and dashing down the stairway at the far end of the gallery.

His sparring with van Cleeve had been frustrating today and the prince had been impatient to extract himself from the duel. There were more important things than sword practice going on within the halls of the Middenpalaz. Noblemen and dignitaries from across the city had been arriving all day. Something big was going on and he was determined to learn what it was.

Stealing through the brooding halls of the palace, Mandred avoided the most populous corridors. Using side passages and circling through empty chambers, he avoided encountering the small army of peasants who maintained the Graf’s household or the armed guards who saw to the royal family’s protection. The only one who noted his passing was Woten, the hoary grey wolfhound lounging in one of the banquet halls, but the dog was more interested in the warmth of a blazing hearth than Mandred’s activities. A wag of the tail was all the notice he paid the boy.

Creeping along the heavy, stone-walled corridors, Mandred reached his destination, a little waiting room adjoining the Graf’s council chamber. There was a secret to the room, one which only a few people knew. A painting set into the wall could be tilted outwards upon a hinge once a hidden catch had been unlocked. Behind the painting was a pane of cloudy glass. It corresponded with a large mirror in the council chamber, but the reflective surface was only upon the outside. From the waiting room, a person could peer through the glass and observe whatever went on in the other room. The whole thing was dwarf-work, as attested by the sharp runes carved into the edge of the glass. Mandred wondered about the trick behind the spyhole but had long ago given up on puzzling it out for himself. Dwarfcraft or witchcraft, it was enough that the trick worked.

Gazing into the council chamber, Mandred could see twenty or so of the city’s noblemen seated around the circumference of the Fauschlagstein, a great stone table carved from a single block of Ulricsberg granite. Among the city’s notables, he could see the glowering visage of Grand Master Arno Warsitz, his great red beard drooping against his chest; the stern countenance of Ar-Ulric, High Priest of the White Wolf, his wolfskin robes matching his snowy hair and the milky eye staring blindly from the right side of his face; Thane Hardin Gunarsson, chief of Middenheim’s dwarfs, his wizened face pulled into a perpetual frown. Beside such grim councillors, Graf Gunthar looked cheerful and vibrant, his dark hair swept back, his long houppelande of ribbed kersey flowing about him, the dark blue of the loose gown contrasting with the sombre blacks and russets of his council.

Any impression of cheer, however, did not reach to the Graf’s eyes. They were ringed by dark circles, their sapphire depths haunted by worry.

‘We are agreed then,’ Graf Gunthar told his councillors. ‘Middenheim will not be weakened to placate the diktats of a corrupt Emperor. We will not dismiss our soldiers and we will not empty the city treasury to pay an unjust tax.’

The statement brought nods of affirmation from the assembled nobles. Thane Hardin stroked his blond beard and scowled at the gold-grubbing effrontery of the manling Emperor. Even the worst gold-crazed dwarf wouldn’t have dreamed up such a crooked scheme as Boris’s plot to tax the human Dienstleute out of existence and leave his Empire disarmed and defenceless.

Graf Gunthar paced about the table, studying each of his advisors in turn. ‘You are all aware what defying Emperor Boris could mean. He might raise an army to seize what he feels is owed to him.’

‘Let him try,’ growled Grand Master Arno, clenching his fist. ‘The Drak-rat will never breach the Ulricsberg.’

‘He wouldn’t have to,’ cautioned Viscount von Vogelthal, the Graf’s chamberlain. ‘He could simply lay siege to the mountain and cut us off from the rest of Middenland. Whatever the quality of our warriors, Emperor Boris can field more than us.’

Graf Gunthar nodded, agreeing with the chamberlain’s observation. ‘That is why I have decided that we must lay stores against any punitive actions the Emperor might take. We must levy the farms and freeholds around the Ulricsberg, double their harvest tax. I want the storehouses full to bursting before winter sets in. We can depend upon Emperor Boris to wait until the spring before mounting a campaign in the north, but every day after the thaw he stays in the Reikland will be a boon from Ulric.’

‘The raugrafs and landgraves won’t appreciate having their obligations increased,’ objected Duke Schneidereit.

‘We face an emergency,’ Graf Gunthar snarled at the duke. ‘If we are to survive, every man must make sacrifices.’ He stopped pacing about the stone table and rested his hands against the cool granite surface. ‘To that end, I have issued orders that the Sudgarten and Konigsgarten are to be dug up. The ground is to be used as farmland. Whatever seed we can spare is to be sown at once, before the first frost.’ He sighed as he looked across the worried faces of his advisors. ‘It might not help us if Emperor Boris strikes fast, but if he delays, we may just bring in a crop before his army lays siege to the Ulricsberg.’

Many of the nobles nodded grimly at the pragmatic decision. They would grieve for the loss of the parks with their colourful shrubberies and flowers, but they would grieve even more if starvation descended upon their city.

‘There is another concern we should consider, your highness.’ All eyes turned upon the aged Ar-Ulric when the high priest spoke. He was much more than simply another of the Graf’s advisors. As the chief authority of the cult of Ulric, he was the most powerful priest in Middenheim, venerated by Ulricans across the Empire as the representative of their god upon the mortal coil.

Ar-Ulric rose from his chair, his one-eyed gaze sweeping across the chamber. ‘There is plague in the outlying provinces, in Sylvania and Stirland. If the disease spreads beyond their borders, into Talabecland and Hochland, or our own Middenland, then we must be prepared for refugees.’

‘We have already taken in three thousand Westerlanders,’ grumbled Viscount von Vogelthal. ‘And another two thousand Drakwalders. The city can’t hold any more squatters.’

‘Nor will it,’ Graf Gunthar declared. ‘We must protect Middenheim. Accepting those fleeing from enemies is one thing, but there is a point when mercy becomes irresponsible.’ He hesitated, collecting his thoughts, weighing the responsibility for his decision. ‘No, Your Eminence,’ he told Ar-Ulric, ‘Middenheim will not harbour refugees from the plague. Any trying to climb the causeways, any setting one foot upon the Ulricsberg, must be cut down like dogs. Anyone seeking entry into the city must be sequestered at the foot of the mountain.’

Ar-Ulric bowed his head. ‘If that is your decree, then do I have your leave to inform the Temple of Shallya of this decision? The priestesses will want to know and make their plans accordingly.’

‘You have my leave,’ Graf Gunthar said. ‘But you may also warn the temple that anyone who attends refugees will not be permitted back into the city. I will make no exceptions. Not even for a priestess.’

Shocked by the cruelty of his father’s decree, Mandred drew away from the spyhole, swinging the hinged painting back into place. It sickened him to think his father could be so unfeeling, to abandon the sick and the desperate, to turn his back upon those who needed help.

He had always admired his father’s wisdom, but wisdom was nothing without compassion.

When he was Graf, Mandred swore he would be both wise and compassionate. He wouldn’t be a cowardly tyrant like his father.

Altdorf

Kaldezeit, 1111

The wind blowing across the Reik into Altdorf had a cold sting to it, a reminder to all who felt it that the autumn was swiftly fading and that Ulric was already spreading his claws to claim the world. It would be a hard winter for the capital. Frightful rumours of poor harvests in Stirland and Sylvania had been given some veracity when the nobles of Pfeildorf and Wissenburg began to complain to the Emperor about the almost negligible amount of wheat and millet being exported down the river. Most of what trade had emerged from the provinces had gone no farther than Mordheim and Talabheim. Solland and Wissenland, their agriculture devoted principally to raising sheep and making wine, had become desperate to stock supplies for the winter. Food prices in Nuln had soared, diverting the harvest of many a Reikland lord southwards, away from the traditional markets in Altdorf.

The prospect of a hungry winter, however, was compounded in the last weeks of Brauzeit. It was then that the diktat of Emperor Boris against the Dienstleute bore its ugly fruit. Discharged from the service of their noble lords, unable to find work to sustain themselves, the dispossessed peasants had mobilised under the leadership of a grizzled old firebrand named Wilhelm Engel. A veteran of many campaigns, a soldier who had served as adjutant to generals and warlords, Engel organised his people with military precision and discipline. In those last weeks of Brauzeit, he led five thousand starving soldiers into the streets of Altdorf to seek redress from the Emperor in whose name they had fought.

From across the Empire, from every province, the Dienstleute continued to come. Every morning, a delegation from Engel would appear before the marble gates of the Imperial Palace with a petition, a request to treat with the Emperor and plead their cause before him. Engel’s demands were straightforward: bread to feed his men, work to sustain them.

Weeks later, Engel’s delegates were still seeking their audience with the Emperor. The ‘Bread Marchers’, as the discharged Dienstleute had come to be called, took to the fields and meadows of Altdorf, constructing shantytowns from wattle and thatch. The largest of these took shape in the wide expanse of the Altgarten, overwhelming the tranquillity of the park with a labyrinth of squalor and poverty. Altdorfers contemptuously named the place ‘Breadburg’, and cursed both it and the scruffy squatters who infested it.

The presence of so many rootless and desperate men was a cause of concern to the inhabitants of Altdorf. The little family farms which helped sustain the city were the constant target of poachers and thieves. Herdsmen took to keeping their livestock inside their homes; granaries began to resemble armed camps with companies of guards patrolling around them night and day. For days, the people of Altdorf shuddered at accounts of the von Werra stables — the stablemaster’s entire stock being rustled in the dead of night. Cook-fires shining from the squalor of Breadburg told the rest of the story.

From the towers of the Reikschloss the extent of the shantytown could be viewed in full. Patrolling the battlements of their fortress, the knights of the Reiksknecht watched as the numbers of Engel’s Bread Marchers continued to swell. As more and more of the park was razed to make room for the expanding morass of shacks and hovels, the knights felt a coldness settle about their hearts. From their vantage, they could see the terrible menace that was growing right inside the city walls.

Baron Dettleb von Schomberg felt the tension in the air as he took his morning constitutional. Three circuits of the castle walls had been his habit since taking the position as Grand Master of the Reiksknecht. He felt that the combination of exercise and fresh air was conducive to good health and a clear mind. This morning, however, he was making his fifth circuit of the wall and still his thoughts were filled with dread.

Von Schomberg’s heart went out to the Bread Marchers and their cause. He felt a great sympathy for these men who had lost the security of their homes and positions. At the same time, he could not afford to ignore the threat these desperate, starving men represented to the peace and security of Altdorf.

Lost in his thoughts, von Schomberg didn’t see Captain Erich von Kranzbeuhler until he almost walked straight into the young knight.

‘My apologies, my lord,’ Erich said, snapping to attention.

Von Schomberg gave the knight a tired smile. ‘Entirely my fault,’ he said, then uttered a dry chuckle. ‘I should thank you. If not for your intervention I might have walked right off the parapet.’

‘Scarcely the heroic death worthy of the Grand Master,’ Erich replied, falling into step beside von Schomberg as the baron marched towards the edge of the parapet. The baron gazed out across the slanted roofs of Altdorf, concentrating his eyes upon the jumbled confusion of Breadburg.

‘There are many things beneath the dignity of the Reiksknecht,’ von Schomberg sighed. ‘But I fear we will be called upon to do them just the same.’

‘The Bread Marchers?’ Erich asked, following his captain’s gaze. ‘Surely that is a problem for Schuetzenverein?’

Von Schomberg shook his head, his expression turning even more grim. ‘Perhaps at one time the city guard could have handled Engel’s people, but the problem has grown too big for the Schueters.’ He slammed his palm against the cold stone of the parapet. ‘By Verena! Why didn’t Prince Sigdan take steps to stop this! Thousands of starving men swarming into his city and he does nothing!’

‘Perhaps he didn’t have the heart to turn them away,’ Erich suggested. ‘These aren’t a rabble of vagabonds; these are Dienstleute discharged by their lords without thought or provision. Men who risked their lives trying to keep the Empire safe.’

‘I share his sentiment,’ von Schomberg said. ‘Except for the officers, every knight in the Reiksknecht is a dienstmann, a vassal of Emperor Boris. I am not unfamiliar with the travails of belonging to such station, but a leader cannot allow sentimentality to cloud his judgment. Engel’s people should have been turned away.’

‘Maybe the decision wasn’t Prince Sigdan’s to make,’ Erich suggested. ‘Increasingly, the Emperor has come to view Altdorf as his own personal suzerainty. If it was his will to have the Bread Marchers repulsed, he would have ordered them removed by now.’

Von Schomberg lifted his eyes, staring out past the Altgarten, past the Great Cathedral of Sigmar to where the Imperial Palace sat upon its hill surrounded by its megalithic dwarf-built walls. The golden pennants of Boris Hohenbach fluttered from the spires of the palace, proclaiming to all and sundry that the Emperor was in residence. Safe behind the high walls of his palace, surrounded by his cronies and sycophants, it was just possible that the Emperor really was oblivious to the unrest gathering right on his doorstep.

The baron’s face contorted into a grimace of pain. There was another possibility, one that von Schomberg found much easier to believe. The Emperor was exploiting the crisis, allowing it to escalate. He thought back to the meeting of the Imperial Council and the outrage expressed by the dignitaries over the new taxes being imposed across the Empire. Special dispensation had been granted to Drakwald and Westerland, in recognition of the unrest in those lands. Conspicuously, the Emperor hadn’t extended such dispensation upon Altdorf and the Imperial Army. The Dienstleute who composed most of the troops would be taxed just like any other peasant, the monies levied to be applied to the Imperial Treasury.

For all his abuse of power, Emperor Boris was still answerable to the electors who had given him that power. He had made it his practice to play one province against another, ensuring that every elector had an enemy he hated more than his Emperor. He further ensured that his word and his power were the only thing preventing these smouldering hatreds from blazing up into outright warfare.

Now, however, it seemed he was playing a different game. Emperor Boris was using the distress of certain provinces to create a state of dependency between them and himself. Only by the largesse of Boris Goldgather would Westerland be empowered to reclaim Marienburg, only by his consideration would Drakwald recover from the depredations of the beastkin. Another emperor, a new emperor, might not be so sympathetic to their plight and impose upon them the same obligations as the other provinces.

It was a bitter kind of loyalty Boris would gain, but it was the only sort he would trust — a loyalty built upon need and dependence rather than respect and admiration.

The Bread Marchers. Von Schomberg could understand what the Emperor wanted with them now. Each Bread Marcher was a displaced soldier, one less sword in the arsenals of the other provinces. But his scheming went still deeper. Drawing the desperate men to Altdorf, to the Imperial capital, Boris intended to exploit them still further. He was deliberately allowing the shantytowns to grow. He was encouraging the despair and lawlessness taking hold of the city.

When the time came, when Boris was certain the size and scope of the thing would be unmistakable, then he would act. He would send out his soldiers to put down the rioters. The streets of Altdorf would run red with blood, the blood of valiant men who only months before had fought for the same Empire which would cause their doom. Afterwards, the bloodshed would be enough to silence the Emperor’s critics. He would have all the justification he needed to exempt the Imperial Army, Altdorf and perhaps even the Reikland itself from the head tax on their Dientsleute.

Von Schomberg turned away from the parapet. ‘The Emperor will act,’ he assured Erich. ‘He will act when there is no other choice but violence so that none can gainsay him. He will call out his Kaiserjaeger and his Reiksknecht and send them out to ride down starving men.’

Erich’s expression sickened at the image the Grand Master conjured. ‘Surely it won’t come to that! Knights don’t ride down defenceless men!’

Von Schomberg locked the young captain’s eyes in a cold stare. ‘We have guaranteed our honour through service to the emperor. Every knight of the Reiksknecht is sworn to obey the emperor without question and Boris is our Emperor. If he calls upon us to ride down the Bread Marchers, then that is what we will do!’

‘It will mean a massacre,’ Erich stated, shaking his head in disgust.

‘Yes,’ von Schomberg said, turning away to resume his walk along the battlements.

‘It will mean a massacre.’

Bylorhof

Kaldezeit, 1111

Shouts and howls resounded through the town. Peasants thronged the streets, gathered together to watch the macabre procession creeping through Bylorhof. Twenty men, their naked bodies glistening with sweat and blood, struggled through the muddy lanes. Before them they pushed a hideous altar mounted upon the bed of a wagon. It was a ghastly, semi-human effigy, the eidolon of Bylorak. The marsh god’s statue was a monstrous thing carved from green stone, a squat, broad-shouldered man-like thing with a gaping, toadlike mouth and a single hideous eye set into its forehead. Marsh reeds formed the eidolon’s hair and swamp moss served it for a beard. In its left hand it held a fish. In its right, a human skull.

The men pushing the idol through the streets weren’t part of Bylorak’s priesthood. Most of the under-priests were dead and the chief priest had fled to a hermitage somewhere in the marsh, abandoning his temple. In his absence, fanatics of the ancient religion had taken it upon themselves to act. They had broken down the doors of the temple and stolen the image of their god, that Bylorak might witness the devotion and faith of his disciples.

Through the streets the procession crept. At every sixth step, the men pushing the idol would stop. Crying the name of their god to the heavens, they would lash themselves viciously with scourges. The whips ripped at their flesh, spattering the street with blood. After some minutes, the flagellants would stop and resume their march through the town.

Frederick van Hal watched the procession with a feeling of horror. Some of the flagellants were men he knew, pillars of the community. Terror of the plague had driven them into the madness of fanaticism. Viewing the gods of the Empire as weak and impotent, they had turned back to the old gods of the Fennones. The Black Plague had brought a second disease to Sylvania. A plague of unbelief.

The priest of Morr could almost sympathise with the desperation of the peasants. They had watched their priests and priestesses die all around them, unable to stop the plague, unable to bring the beneficence of the gods to the stricken community. If Shallya and Morr would not protect their own servants, then what hope was there for a simple commoner?

Such was the attitude of the laity, but to a clergyman, things were not so simple. Frederick understood that the gods worked through faith, that at those times when all hope was lost was when it was most important to cling to faith. The gods tested men, tested the strength of their will and determination, for only through ordeal could the true quality of man be revealed.

The priest pulled his robe tighter about his chest as a chill swept through his body. Such were the ways of benevolent gods, but there were other gods as well, gods of such malevolence as to make the cyclopean Bylorak seem beneficent and kindly. These gods were ancient and utterly malignant, daemonic things lurking just beyond the light, forever straining to cast down the world of men. Frederick had learned much of such gods when he had studied in the great librarium of the temple in Luccini, eldest of Morr’s temples in the Old World.

He had learned more when he assumed the duties of high priest at the Bylorhof temple. There was a reason he had been chosen for that duty, why the lectors decided to install an outsider to this temple. The old priest, a Sylvanian, had been removed for practising the most obscene heresies. He and all his possessions had been consigned to flame, his very name purged from the temple records. The selection of a Westerlander to replace the apostate was to be a declaration that the previous infamy had been scoured from the temple.

It hadn’t, of course. The peasants still looked upon the temple of Morr with horror and made the signs of other gods when they passed Frederick in the street. The temple of Bylorak had revived the old rites, disposing of the dead in the mire of the marsh so that none need pass beneath the gateway of Morr’s garden. Baron von Rittendahl’s wife, upon her passing, had been interred within the castle crypt without ceremony, the infamy of Frederick’s predecessor making it impossible for von Rittendahl to have a Morrite ritual — if he even wanted one.

Father Arisztid Olt had left an indelible legacy behind him… and more. When the Black Guard had come for the apostate and consigned him to the pyre, they had missed the most prized of the heretic’s possessions. Beneath the temple, in the oldest crypts, Olt had maintained a secret library — a collection of forbidden tomes and occult grimoires that eclipsed even the Luccini temple’s collection of arcane lore.

A dream had led Frederick to the hidden library. Morr was god of sleep as well as death and employed dreams to guide his servants. It was a sacrilege for a priest of Morr to ignore any dream. When Frederick’s dream showed him the old crypt and the secret door, he had taken it as a sign from his god. When he descended into the crypt, he found everything as it had been in his dream. When he followed the winding marble corridors, he followed in the steps of his dream-self. When he reached up to brush the beak of the obsidian raven carved into the face of a pillar, he could see the spectral hand of his dream-self. When the entire pillar sank into the floor, exposing a hidden doorway, Frederick knew what he would find.

It had been ten years since that discovery. It was the reason Frederick appreciated the spiritual doubts and fears of the peasants, but it also gave him an understanding of the folly to which such doubt and fear could lead. The gods could fail men, but men could also fail their gods. Evil times need not be a token of good gods, but a sending of evil ones to tempt men into the clutches of Old Night.

Frederick stirred from his recollections, staring with rising anger as he watched the flagellants lash themselves, as he noted the rapt fascination, the hopeful desperation of the spectators. Bylorak was an abomination, a relic of days when men crawled before inhuman masters. There was no salvation to be found by grovelling before the marsh god, only a path to depravity and destruction. Better to perish of the plague than live in such obscenity!

‘Stop this!’ Frederick cried out, stepping into the street. He brandished his staff, holding it before him, blocking the way. The wagon shuddered to a stop, the cyclopean visage of Bylorak glaring down at him. The flagellants came out from behind the wagon, their scourges slashing into their own backs, their voices raised in moans of outrage.

‘Defiler!’ one of the fanatics wailed, his lips flecked with foam. ‘You dare stand before his sight!’

‘Bylorak watches us all!’ shrieked another flagellant. ‘He sees us, for we are his children! He hears us, for we are his children! He helps us, for we are…’

Frederick advanced upon the shouting flagellant. ‘You are fools, bowing to a stone effigy and worshipping a monster! All men die, but while they live they must do so with decency, with honour.’

The flagellant twisted away, prostrating himself before the eidolon. ‘He helps us, for we are his children!’ Tears rolled down the fanatic’s face as he pressed his lips to the webbed feet of his god. Frederick moved to pull the man away, to restore some dignity to the naked wretch. But as soon as he reached out, his body recoiled in pain. A stone struck him in the cheek, slashing his pale skin. A second stone crashed into his side. The priest retreated as more stones came flying at him.

The barrage came not from the flagellants but from the peasants lining the street. The procession had stirred their hopes as nothing had in the past weeks and now they were aroused to violence by Frederick’s effort to save them from themselves.

‘Go back to your carrion, jackal!’ one woman cried. ‘Are you so eager to fill your garden? Is Olt’s pup trying to outdo his master?’

The jeers and the barrage of stones increased, driving Frederick into flight. Rocks pelted his body at every step, dung and offal from the gutter plastered his robes. By the time he reached the safety of a covered pigsty, the priest’s body felt like one big bruise. It took him a moment to appreciate that he owed his respite not to the security of his refuge, but to the shifting attention of the mob.

Distracted to violence against the priest, the peasants of Bylorhof were once again under the spell of the flagellants. The fanatic who had kissed the idol’s webbed foot was still crouched before the wagon, but now his naked body had turned black. From head to foot, the flagellant was covered in pitch. The priest’s eyes widened in horror as the kneeling man began to cry out to Bylorak, begging the marsh god to forgive the desecration caused by Frederick. A second flagellant approached the praying man, a flickering rushlight clenched in his fist.

The pitch-coated flagellant ignited like a torch, his prayer rising in a single scream. The stunned spectators maintained an awed silence as the surviving flagellants circled behind the wagon and pushed the grinning idol over the blazing husk of their late comrade. Even from his vantage point, Frederick could hear the crack of the man’s bones beneath the wheels.

The priest hobbled away from his ignominious refuge while the crowd was still fixated upon the macabre procession. He shook his head sadly. There was one thing the gods could not save man from. That was man’s own folly.

It was something Frederick van Hal knew only too well.