Post by Essien on Apr 4, 2009 11:19:35 GMT -5
The tundra lay before Zeyd Metternich like a haunch of meat picked to the bone. Ice clung to the hollows and lichens overspread the ground in rust-colored scabs and patches of rotten green. From the faintest rises, the wind blew rivulets of frost into the cold, dry air; its talons plucked at the letter that Zeyd held loosely between his fingertips. The rustle of parchment, the low moan of the breeze, were the only sounds to be heard in that lifeless place.
Zeyd looked back over one shoulder. There, past ditches and spikes, rose the fort that he called home: a skeleton structure composed of wooden pales and mud daubing, little more than an enclosure for tents huddled on the northern bank of the ice-choked river Lynsk. A single standard pointed skyward from the wall, frail as a fingerbone, draped with the Kislevite flag and the violet boar of Kundwald. Marching north from the Empire under those colors had been a brave thing, but now they seemed to Zeyd more nervous than , braggart's cackle in the face of the frozen North. South of the river lay fierce Kislev, and beyond that, the country of Zeyd's birth. Hearth and wife.
"I wish you would not to go war, husband," Eloisa had said. She held Zeyd's hands so firmly that her nails made marks in his palms. "What business do Kundwald's sons and daughters have away in Kislev?"
"I would be a poor soldier if I did not," he answered, and laughed his bright laugh. "And Lord Kundwald's business is my business. I suppose he has his reasons."
"Ernst von Stassel." The young nobleman's proper name soured on Eloisa's lips. "I shan't lack for his company while you're away." She paused, then forced an uneasy smile. "Do you know that he once paid court to me, before his father the Baron bid him look higher?" Eloisa unlaced her fingers from Zeyd's and busied herself adjusting the hang of his belt. "You're a poor soldier in any case," she chided fondly. "A farmer's tunic suits you better."
"You were meant to be more than a farmer's wife." Zeyd smiled, watching the gentle work of her hands. "Soldiering's the thing, I tell you. I'm grateful for Lord Kundwald's commission; he's been a benefactor to our family, as he has to all the town. You'll see, love. It's just marching up to the frontier and back, and then military honors for you and I." Zeyd stilled her fingers with his, then brought the back of her fair hand to his lips, so that she might see the warmth and humor of his expression. "They'll call you Dame Eloisa."
That had been four months ago.
Letters came at first, each importing the special attention that Ernst von Stassel paid his wife, the young Lord's earnest concern for Zeyd himself, and his hopes-- often expressed-- that the Kundwald regiment would be able to come home soon. They chronicled Eloisa's increasing unease with Lord Kundwald's visits, his attempts to lift her spirits by including her in his social round of town and country. They repeated von Stassel's gently insinuated questions about Eloisa's happiness, Zeyd's suitability as a husband for a woman of her rank. And then... nothing. No word came from the Empire for one cold month, no hint of when the Kundwaldians might take down their boar standard and leave their lonely vigil to the soldiers of Kislev.
At last, a missive had arrived from Ernst von Stassel himself. Zeyd glanced again at the parchment page, tremulously askance, as if he held a live and venomous thing.
My friend-- It pains me to write these words as much as it will pain you to read them. Zeyd, we are brothers in affliction, as we have been in so much else. Whisper a prayer to Sigmar, and steel yourself to hear that our Eloisa has taken very ill--
The ink swam on the page, slithered into gross, fantastic forms. Zeyd closed his eyes tightly and felt the tears hot on his cheeks, then snatched away by the arid sky. He let the note fall from his grasp; it danced across the ground, then caught trembling in a low tangle of foliage like a limed bird.
Zeyd Metternich shouldered his axe, his wooden shield with its beast of purple paint. He turned his broad back to the fort, to Kislev, to Kundwald and the Empire. Alone, with patient steps, he set off into the northern waste.
* * *
As Zeyd walked, he remembered.
I fear that Eloisa is touched in her understanding. My physician suspects the Rot; somehow it's gotten into her head, and no alchemical purge, no prayer in temple, can chase it from her mind.
The beast herd found him at the edge of a pine forest so dark that its verdure seemed black. The sun had set, and left behind only fingers of light beneath the clouds, a moment's brightness on the snow. By the time that Zeyd was even vaguely aware of their presence, the creatures had encircled him. They seemed to him an indistinct menagerie of hair and horns, hooves and spears and the filthy limbs of men; the air trembled with creels from once-human throats. Something snarled at his heels, something that might have been a wolf if not for the mammoth tusks that curled from its lip and dragged its head down beneath their weight. The largest of the bipeds hid its face under a patchwork cowl of red, blue and tan, stitched rudely together from what must have been human garments. Zeyd could see only its elk-like horns, protruding from rents in the fabric, and the gleam of one cold eye.
Rest assured that I have kept a close watch on her illness. In your absence, Zeyd, I've taken the liberty of having Eloisa moved to my estate; my physician and my servants will be close at hand, and I promise you that she will never lack for attention or care.
The beastman slapped his bare chest and swept a mitt over the herd he'd assembled. "Look-look," the thing gurgled, around the mass of teeth that all but choked off his capacity for human speech. "You will die here, man-child."
"I know," Zeyd answered.
They were waiting for his fear, sniffing for its scent on the chill air, but Zeyd Metternich felt none. In his gut there was only a dull resolve; his heart beat slowly and his breaths were deep and calm. He dwelt in the patience of a man whose journey's end is in sight-- around the next bend perhaps, or through a certain copse of trees, but sure to be reached by nightfall. The hound behind him cut the twilight with a nervous whine. Zeyd glanced back and saw the muscles bunching in its shoulders, beneath the grease and tangles of its fur.
In her fits, Eloisa has accused me of some things that-- but for her condition-- I could not, with honor, let stand. But I overlook these terrible slurs, out of consideration for the lady and for you, Zeyd. The townspeople understand my plight.
The warhound gathered itself to leap. Zeyd turned on one heel and brought his axe-blade down on the cur's foreleg, shattering it just below the shoulder. A cacophony of surprise went up from the herd. Their leader's pet tried to flee, but its ruined leg left it overbalanced; unable to raise its massive head, the beast drew furrows in the slush with its tusks as it lurched backwards. Zeyd followed for the few steps it took to regain his range, then swung again, cleaving the hound's neck to the bone. Blood seeped through the snow, crimson on cream.
There came a howl of rage, and elk-horns splintered the wood of Zeyd's shield, tearing the feeble thing from his grasp. Nightmares descended on Zeyd from every quarter.
You must prepare yourself for the possibility that Eloisa will not recover. The rot is far advanced in her now, and my physician daily fears for her life. When you return to us at last, your term of service ended, it may be as a widower. Reconcile yourself to Sigmar's will, my friend, and be strong. Death comes for all of us, late or soon.
Zeyd swung his axe without knowing where he struck; despair guided his blows, and wrath strengthened his arm. It seemed to him that his fingers curled up the axe-haft like vines, the he could feel its steady weight lodged in his wrist. Zeyd's pulse coursed along the weapon, and he sensed-- faintly but distinctly-- the heart of that steel beating back in cool counterpoint. And then his blade unwound into the air like thread from a spool, danced about him in a ribbon of beautiful carnage; as he moved, it snapped and spun, severing arteries, limbs. Each beastman that bled left a little of Zeyd's woe as a stain on the earth. Each whimper of suffering was a cry purged from his own heart.
In the end, Zeyd lay on his back amid a ring of corpses, staring without focus at the night sky above him. The axe dropped from his grasp, and as he curled his fingers into his palm, he was faintly surprised to find them mortal once more. In the ebb of that divinity which had touched his body, he knew again who he was, and where he was; knew his frailty, knew the wasteland around him and the wasteland that his life had become.
"Still alive," he whispered. Zeyd rolled onto his side and his shoulders shook with sobs.
* * *
The Northmen came for Zeyd a little before dawn. They dragged him from the snow that covered his body as delicately as linen cloth, then marched him through the shadows of the pine forest until they reached a small clearing. At the center of the clearing stood a single, dilapidated tent. Through the smoke of torches, Zeyd could make out the cracked and ancient leather, the way its flaps sagged away from their frame of sticks and twine like the skin of a starving man. The whole surface was painted with rusty sigils that swam under Zeyd's sight, and atop the structure-- amid a tumble of kiln-fired scales-- hung the skull of some gargantuan reptile. Without comment, his captors thrust him into the darkness of this enclosure.
Zeyd could see nothing, but there was no mistaking the presence in that pitch black. The smell of it was an affront to his senses, at once seductive and disgusting; it mocked the stale air with mixtures of rotting meat and rose petals, or lime and old blood. Its heat brushed a sheen of sweat across his brow despite the frigid air outside. Its voice was a clatter of mouse bones in a snake's den.
"What do you want, child?" it whispered.
Zeyd thought of the power that had touched him, the floodgate it had opened along his arm, that sweet outpouring of wretchedness from his heart to the blade of his axe. He thought of Eloisa's hands in his, the wordless plea that her nails had pressed into his palms. He closed his eyes tightly and his tears made tracks through the grime on his cheeks; his hair hung in clumps about his lowered face.
"Take it away," he pleaded. "Wipe it all away. Give me oblivion."
Heat raged around Zeyd's body until he felt as if he were submerged in molten metal, as if his flesh were melting from his bones. He was nothing now but the bare skeleton of a man, a frame upon which new meat might be grown, a new destiny raised. Something touched his forearm-- downy feathers, a lover's kiss, scales or thorns of all of those at once. Zeyd could be sure only that the brief contact marked him to his marrow.
"You shall have it, Zeyd." The thing spoke to him as one might soothe a stripling; each word was a caress. "Our god loves his children. Our god cares."
Zeyd Metternich sobbed his thanks to the unseen beast and its nameless patron. Darkness closed around his thoughts.
"Rest now," the daemon murmured. "Soon-- soon-- we will wipe it all away."
Zeyd looked back over one shoulder. There, past ditches and spikes, rose the fort that he called home: a skeleton structure composed of wooden pales and mud daubing, little more than an enclosure for tents huddled on the northern bank of the ice-choked river Lynsk. A single standard pointed skyward from the wall, frail as a fingerbone, draped with the Kislevite flag and the violet boar of Kundwald. Marching north from the Empire under those colors had been a brave thing, but now they seemed to Zeyd more nervous than , braggart's cackle in the face of the frozen North. South of the river lay fierce Kislev, and beyond that, the country of Zeyd's birth. Hearth and wife.
"I wish you would not to go war, husband," Eloisa had said. She held Zeyd's hands so firmly that her nails made marks in his palms. "What business do Kundwald's sons and daughters have away in Kislev?"
"I would be a poor soldier if I did not," he answered, and laughed his bright laugh. "And Lord Kundwald's business is my business. I suppose he has his reasons."
"Ernst von Stassel." The young nobleman's proper name soured on Eloisa's lips. "I shan't lack for his company while you're away." She paused, then forced an uneasy smile. "Do you know that he once paid court to me, before his father the Baron bid him look higher?" Eloisa unlaced her fingers from Zeyd's and busied herself adjusting the hang of his belt. "You're a poor soldier in any case," she chided fondly. "A farmer's tunic suits you better."
"You were meant to be more than a farmer's wife." Zeyd smiled, watching the gentle work of her hands. "Soldiering's the thing, I tell you. I'm grateful for Lord Kundwald's commission; he's been a benefactor to our family, as he has to all the town. You'll see, love. It's just marching up to the frontier and back, and then military honors for you and I." Zeyd stilled her fingers with his, then brought the back of her fair hand to his lips, so that she might see the warmth and humor of his expression. "They'll call you Dame Eloisa."
That had been four months ago.
Letters came at first, each importing the special attention that Ernst von Stassel paid his wife, the young Lord's earnest concern for Zeyd himself, and his hopes-- often expressed-- that the Kundwald regiment would be able to come home soon. They chronicled Eloisa's increasing unease with Lord Kundwald's visits, his attempts to lift her spirits by including her in his social round of town and country. They repeated von Stassel's gently insinuated questions about Eloisa's happiness, Zeyd's suitability as a husband for a woman of her rank. And then... nothing. No word came from the Empire for one cold month, no hint of when the Kundwaldians might take down their boar standard and leave their lonely vigil to the soldiers of Kislev.
At last, a missive had arrived from Ernst von Stassel himself. Zeyd glanced again at the parchment page, tremulously askance, as if he held a live and venomous thing.
My friend-- It pains me to write these words as much as it will pain you to read them. Zeyd, we are brothers in affliction, as we have been in so much else. Whisper a prayer to Sigmar, and steel yourself to hear that our Eloisa has taken very ill--
The ink swam on the page, slithered into gross, fantastic forms. Zeyd closed his eyes tightly and felt the tears hot on his cheeks, then snatched away by the arid sky. He let the note fall from his grasp; it danced across the ground, then caught trembling in a low tangle of foliage like a limed bird.
Zeyd Metternich shouldered his axe, his wooden shield with its beast of purple paint. He turned his broad back to the fort, to Kislev, to Kundwald and the Empire. Alone, with patient steps, he set off into the northern waste.
* * *
As Zeyd walked, he remembered.
I fear that Eloisa is touched in her understanding. My physician suspects the Rot; somehow it's gotten into her head, and no alchemical purge, no prayer in temple, can chase it from her mind.
The beast herd found him at the edge of a pine forest so dark that its verdure seemed black. The sun had set, and left behind only fingers of light beneath the clouds, a moment's brightness on the snow. By the time that Zeyd was even vaguely aware of their presence, the creatures had encircled him. They seemed to him an indistinct menagerie of hair and horns, hooves and spears and the filthy limbs of men; the air trembled with creels from once-human throats. Something snarled at his heels, something that might have been a wolf if not for the mammoth tusks that curled from its lip and dragged its head down beneath their weight. The largest of the bipeds hid its face under a patchwork cowl of red, blue and tan, stitched rudely together from what must have been human garments. Zeyd could see only its elk-like horns, protruding from rents in the fabric, and the gleam of one cold eye.
Rest assured that I have kept a close watch on her illness. In your absence, Zeyd, I've taken the liberty of having Eloisa moved to my estate; my physician and my servants will be close at hand, and I promise you that she will never lack for attention or care.
The beastman slapped his bare chest and swept a mitt over the herd he'd assembled. "Look-look," the thing gurgled, around the mass of teeth that all but choked off his capacity for human speech. "You will die here, man-child."
"I know," Zeyd answered.
They were waiting for his fear, sniffing for its scent on the chill air, but Zeyd Metternich felt none. In his gut there was only a dull resolve; his heart beat slowly and his breaths were deep and calm. He dwelt in the patience of a man whose journey's end is in sight-- around the next bend perhaps, or through a certain copse of trees, but sure to be reached by nightfall. The hound behind him cut the twilight with a nervous whine. Zeyd glanced back and saw the muscles bunching in its shoulders, beneath the grease and tangles of its fur.
In her fits, Eloisa has accused me of some things that-- but for her condition-- I could not, with honor, let stand. But I overlook these terrible slurs, out of consideration for the lady and for you, Zeyd. The townspeople understand my plight.
The warhound gathered itself to leap. Zeyd turned on one heel and brought his axe-blade down on the cur's foreleg, shattering it just below the shoulder. A cacophony of surprise went up from the herd. Their leader's pet tried to flee, but its ruined leg left it overbalanced; unable to raise its massive head, the beast drew furrows in the slush with its tusks as it lurched backwards. Zeyd followed for the few steps it took to regain his range, then swung again, cleaving the hound's neck to the bone. Blood seeped through the snow, crimson on cream.
There came a howl of rage, and elk-horns splintered the wood of Zeyd's shield, tearing the feeble thing from his grasp. Nightmares descended on Zeyd from every quarter.
You must prepare yourself for the possibility that Eloisa will not recover. The rot is far advanced in her now, and my physician daily fears for her life. When you return to us at last, your term of service ended, it may be as a widower. Reconcile yourself to Sigmar's will, my friend, and be strong. Death comes for all of us, late or soon.
Zeyd swung his axe without knowing where he struck; despair guided his blows, and wrath strengthened his arm. It seemed to him that his fingers curled up the axe-haft like vines, the he could feel its steady weight lodged in his wrist. Zeyd's pulse coursed along the weapon, and he sensed-- faintly but distinctly-- the heart of that steel beating back in cool counterpoint. And then his blade unwound into the air like thread from a spool, danced about him in a ribbon of beautiful carnage; as he moved, it snapped and spun, severing arteries, limbs. Each beastman that bled left a little of Zeyd's woe as a stain on the earth. Each whimper of suffering was a cry purged from his own heart.
In the end, Zeyd lay on his back amid a ring of corpses, staring without focus at the night sky above him. The axe dropped from his grasp, and as he curled his fingers into his palm, he was faintly surprised to find them mortal once more. In the ebb of that divinity which had touched his body, he knew again who he was, and where he was; knew his frailty, knew the wasteland around him and the wasteland that his life had become.
"Still alive," he whispered. Zeyd rolled onto his side and his shoulders shook with sobs.
* * *
The Northmen came for Zeyd a little before dawn. They dragged him from the snow that covered his body as delicately as linen cloth, then marched him through the shadows of the pine forest until they reached a small clearing. At the center of the clearing stood a single, dilapidated tent. Through the smoke of torches, Zeyd could make out the cracked and ancient leather, the way its flaps sagged away from their frame of sticks and twine like the skin of a starving man. The whole surface was painted with rusty sigils that swam under Zeyd's sight, and atop the structure-- amid a tumble of kiln-fired scales-- hung the skull of some gargantuan reptile. Without comment, his captors thrust him into the darkness of this enclosure.
Zeyd could see nothing, but there was no mistaking the presence in that pitch black. The smell of it was an affront to his senses, at once seductive and disgusting; it mocked the stale air with mixtures of rotting meat and rose petals, or lime and old blood. Its heat brushed a sheen of sweat across his brow despite the frigid air outside. Its voice was a clatter of mouse bones in a snake's den.
"What do you want, child?" it whispered.
Zeyd thought of the power that had touched him, the floodgate it had opened along his arm, that sweet outpouring of wretchedness from his heart to the blade of his axe. He thought of Eloisa's hands in his, the wordless plea that her nails had pressed into his palms. He closed his eyes tightly and his tears made tracks through the grime on his cheeks; his hair hung in clumps about his lowered face.
"Take it away," he pleaded. "Wipe it all away. Give me oblivion."
Heat raged around Zeyd's body until he felt as if he were submerged in molten metal, as if his flesh were melting from his bones. He was nothing now but the bare skeleton of a man, a frame upon which new meat might be grown, a new destiny raised. Something touched his forearm-- downy feathers, a lover's kiss, scales or thorns of all of those at once. Zeyd could be sure only that the brief contact marked him to his marrow.
"You shall have it, Zeyd." The thing spoke to him as one might soothe a stripling; each word was a caress. "Our god loves his children. Our god cares."
Zeyd Metternich sobbed his thanks to the unseen beast and its nameless patron. Darkness closed around his thoughts.
"Rest now," the daemon murmured. "Soon-- soon-- we will wipe it all away."