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  'Now then,' said Albrecht, as Schlecht worked. 'Now that we have you leashed, we can proceed.'

  Reiner snarled under his breath. They had leashed him indeed. They had scarred him for life. The hammer brand told all who saw it that the man who wore it was a deserter and could be killed on sight.

  'I am here to offer you something you did not have an hour ago,' said Albrecht. 'A choice. You can serve your Emperor on a mission of great importance, or you can be hanged from the gallows this very evening and go to the fate that awaits you.'

  Reiner cursed. Hanged this evening? He was to escape at midnight. Now the fiends had stolen even that from him.

  'The chances of surviving the mission are slim, I warrant you,' continued Albrecht. 'But the rewards will be great. You will receive a full pardon for your crimes and be given your weight in gold crowns.'

  'What good is all that when you also gave us this?' growled Hals, holding up the back of his ruined hand.

  'The Emperor values your service in this matter so highly that he will command a sage of the Order of Light to remove the brands when you return successful.'

  This sounded too good to be true, thought Reiner. The sort of thing he himself would say if he was trying to con a mark into some foolish course of action.

  'What's the job?' asked Pavel, sullen.

  Albrecht smirked. 'You mean to haggle? You will learn the nature of the mission once you have volunteered for it. Now, sirs, give me your answers.'

  There was much hesitation, but one by one the others voiced or nodded their assent. Reiner damned Albrecht under his breath. A choice, he called it. What choice was there? Wearing the hammer brand, Reiner could never again travel easily within the Empire. It was early spring now. He might still wear gloves for a while, but come summer he would stick out like a sheep in a wolf pack. Never would he be able to go back to his beloved Altdorf, to the card rooms and cafes, the theatres and dog pits and brothels that he thought of as home. Even if he could somehow escape the brig, he would have to leave the Empire for foreign lands and never come back. And now that Albrecht had moved his execution to this evening instead of tomorrow at dawn, and thus foiling his only plan, even that unappetising option was closed to him.

  Only by accepting the mission did he gain any chance of escape. Somewhere along the road he could perhaps slip away: west to Marienburg, or south to Tilea or the Border Princes or some other foul hole. Or perhaps the mission wouldn't be as dangerous as Albrecht made out. Perhaps he would see it through to the finish and take his reward - if Albrecht truly meant to give him one.

  All that was certain was that if he declined the mission, he would die tonight, and there would be no more perhapses.

  'Aye,' he said at last. 'Aye, my lord. I'm your man.'

  TWO

  A Task Simple In The Telling

  'VERY GOOD.' SAID Albrecht, when all the prisoners had volunteered. 'Now you shall hear your mission.' He indicated the grizzled veteran at his side. 'Under the command of Captain Veirt here, you shall escort Lady Magda Bandauer, an abbess of Shallya, to a Shallyan convent in the foothills of the Middle Mountains. A holy relic lies there in a hidden crypt. Lady Magda shall open the crypt, then you will escort her and the relic back here to me with all possible speed. Time is of the essence.' He smiled. 'It is a task simple in the telling, but I have no need to remind soldiers of the Empire, no matter how debased, that the lands 'twixt here and the mountains are not yet entirely reclaimed, and that the mountains have become the refuge of Chaos marauders - Kurgan, Norse and worse things. We have word that the convent was recently pillaged by Kurgan. They may still be in the area. You will be sorely pressed, but for those who survive, and return the relic and the abbess to me, the Empire's munificence will know no bounds.'

  Reiner heard little of Albrecht's speech. He had stopped listening after 'abbess of Shallya.' Another sister of Shallya? He had barely survived his last encounter with one such. Granted, that one had been a sorceress in disguise, but once bitten twice shy, as he always said. He wanted no more to do with that order. They weren't to be trusted.

  Erich, the blond knight, seemed to have some objections to the plan as well. 'Do you mean to tell me,' he burst out indignantly, 'that we are to be led by this... this foot soldier? I am a Knight of the Sceptre. My horse and armour cost more than he has made in his whole career.'

  'Bloody jagger,' muttered Hals. 'My spear's killed more northers than his horse and armour ever will.'

  'Captain Veirt also outranks you,' said Albrecht. 'He has thirty years of battles under his belt, while you are, what? Vexillary? Bugle? Have you even blooded your lance yet?'

  'I am a nobleman. I cannot take orders from a common peasant. My father is Frederich von Eisenberg, Baron of...'

  'I know your father, boy,' said Albrecht. 'Would you like me to tell him how many young knights you have slain and maimed in "affairs of honour?" You deprive the Empire of good men and call it sport.'

  Erich's fists clenched, but he hung his head. 'No, my lord.'

  'Very good. You will obey Captain Veirt in all things, is that clear?'

  'Yes, my lord.'

  'Good.' Albrecht surveyed the whole group. 'Horses are waiting for you at the postern gate. You leave at once. But before you go, your commanding officer has a few words. Captain?'

  Captain Veirt stepped forward and looked them all in the eye, one by one. His glance shot through Reiner like an arrow from a longbow. 'You have been chosen for a great honour tonight, and offered a clemency which none of you deserve. So if any of you attempts to abuse this kindness, by trying to escape, by betraying our company to the enemy, by killing each other or sabotaging the mission, I give you my personal guarantee that I will make the rest of your very short life a living hell the likes of which would make the depredations of the daemons of Chaos look like a country dance.' He turned toward the door and limped toward it. 'That is all.'

  Reiner shivered, then joined the rest as the guards began herding them out.

  IF NOTHING ELSE, Albrecht made sure they were well kitted out. They were led through the castle and out through the postern gate, where a narrow wooden drawbridge spanned the moat. On the far side, on a strip of cleared land flanked by a fallow field, a pack mule and ten horses were waiting for them - their breath white steam in the chill night air. The horses were saddled, bridled and loaded with regulation packs, complete with bed roll, rations, skillet, flint, canteen, and the like. Reiner's sabre was returned to him - a beautiful weapon, made to his measure, and the only gift his skinflint father had ever given him that was worth a damn. There was also a padded leather jerkin and sturdy boots to replace the ones taken from him in the brig, as well as a dagger, a boot knife, saddlebags full of powder and shot, and two pistols in saddle holsters - though not loaded or primed. Albrecht was no fool. A cloak, steel lobster-tail bassinet, and back-and-breastplate strapped over the pack completed the inventory.

  Almost everybody seemed satisfied with their gear. Only Ulf and Erich complained.

  'What's this?' asked Ulf angrily, holding up a huge iron-bound wooden maul that looked bigger than Sigmar's hammer. 'Is this a joke?'

  Veirt smirked. "Tis the only weapon we know you're competent with.'

  'Do you ask a knight to ride a pack horse?' interrupted Erich. 'This beast is barely fourteen hands.'

  'We go into the mountains, your grace,' said Veirt dryly. 'Yer charger might find the going a bit rough.'

  'Looks tall enough to me,' said Hals, eyeing his horse uneasily.

  'Aye,' said Pavel. 'Can you make 'em kneel so we can get on?'

  'Sigmar, save us!' said Erich. 'Will we have to teach these peasants to ride?'

  'Oh, they'll pick it up quick enough,' said Reiner. 'Just learn from his lordship, lads. If you ride like you've got a pike up your fundament, you're on the mark.'

  Pavel and Hals guffawed. Erich shot Reiner a venomous glance and turned toward him as if he meant to pursue the matter. Fortunately, at that moment Albrecht came th
rough the gate, leading a chestnut palfrey on which sat a woman dressed in the robes of an abbess of Shallya. Reiner's fears were somewhat allayed when he saw her, for Lady Magda was a stern, sober-looking woman of middle years - attractive enough in a cold, haughty way, but by no means the sort of dewy-eyed, waif-like temptress that had so recently been his ruin.

  This woman looked like she measured out the charity of Shallya with an assayer's scale, and healed the sick by shaming them into health. She seemed as unhappy to be travelling in their company as they were to be in Veirt's. She looked them over with barely concealed disdain.

  Only when Albrecht led her to her place beside Veirt did Reiner see her show anything like human feeling. As the baron handed her her bridle he took her hand and kissed it. She smiled down at him in return and stroked his cheek fondly. Reiner smirked. There was some fire in the cold sister after all. Still, the moment of affection gave Reiner pause. Why would Albrecht leave a woman he cared for in such disreputable company? It was curious.

  When they were all mounted, Albrecht faced them. 'Ride swiftly and return quickly. Remember that riches await you if you succeed, and that I will kill you like dogs if you betray me. Now go, and may the eye of Sigmar watch over your journey.'

  He saluted as Veirt spurred his horse and signalled them forward. Only Veirt, Erich and Reiner returned the salute.

  As they started down the rutted dirt road between tilled fields toward the dark band of forest in the distance, it began to drizzle. Reiner and the rest all reached behind them to unstrap their hooded cloaks from their packs and pull them on.

  Hals grumbled under his breath as the rain spattered his forehead. 'There's a good omen for you, and no mistake.'

  IT RAINED ALL night, turning the road to mud. Spring was coming to Ostland as it did every year, cold and wet. The party rode through the moonless night huddled in their cloaks, teeth chattering and noses running. The throbbing pain of his brand was now only the first in a long list of miseries that Reiner mentally added to with each passing mile. They could see little of the countryside. The woods were pitch black. Only when they passed open fields, where the previous week's blanket of snow was melting into grey slush, was there enough light for them to see any distance at all.

  This was wild land. Smallhof was on the Empires easternmost marches and there was much forest and few towns. It was relatively safe, however. The tide of Chaos had crested, then receded back east and north leaving the land desolate, even of the bandits and beasts that normally terrorised the local farms and towns. The few crude huts they passed were mere blackened shells.

  Just before dawn, as Reiner was nodding and swaying in the saddle, Veirt called a halt by a river. A patch of tall pines clustered near it, and into this he led them. It was black as a cave within the spinney, but the ground was almost dry.

  Veirt dismounted briskly. 'We'll rest here until dawn. No tents. And sleep in your gear.'

  'What?' said Reiner. 'But dawn's only an hour away.'

  'His lordship said time is of the essence,' said Veirt. 'You'll get a full night's sleep when we make camp tonight.'

  'Another day of riding?' moaned Hals. 'My arse won't stand it.'

  'Would you rather your arse was swinging by a rope?' asked Veirt darkly. 'Now get your heads down. Urquart, help me.'

  While the company saw to their horses and made pillows of their bedrolls, Ulf and Veirt put up a tidy little tent for Lady Magda that included a folding cot. When it was finished and Lady Magda installed within it, Veirt laid down in front of it, blocking the entrance.

  'Don't worry, captain,' said Hals under his breath. 'We don't want none.' He laughed and nudged Pavel. 'Ha! Get it? We don't want nun!'

  'Aye,' said Pavel wearily. 'I get it. Now go to sleep, y'pillock. Blood of Sigmar, I don't know which hurts worse, my hand or my arse.'

  REINER WOKE WITH a start. He had been having a vivid nightmare that Kronhof, Altdorfs most notorious moneylender, was drilling through his left hand with a carpenter's auger as punishment for unpaid debts, when someone in the dream had begun banging on an iron door. He opened his eyes and found himself in the pine spinney, but the pain in his hand and the banging continued. It took a moment to remember that he was a now a branded man, and another moment to realise that the horrible noise was Veirt, banging his skillet against a rock and shouting, 'Rise and shine, my beauties! We've a long day ahead of us.'

  'I'll make him eat that skillet in a minute,' growled Hals, clutching his head.

  Reiner climbed painfully to his feet. He wasn't sore from riding. He was a pistolier - born in the saddle. But lack of sleep made his bones feel like they were made of lead. They dragged at his flesh. The pain in his hand seemed to have spread to his head; while the rest of him was frozen, his head felt on fire. His eyes ached. His teeth ached. Even his hair seemed to ache.

  Worse than Veirt's banging and shouting was his clear-eyed alertness. To Reiner's annoyance, the man seemed utterly unaffected by lack of sleep. Lady Magda was the same. She waited calmly outside her tent, hands folded, as clean and pressed as if she had just led morning prayers. Veirt chivvied them through a rushed breakfast of bread, cheese and some ale and then onto their horses. Last to mount up were Pavel and Hals, who lowered themselves into their saddles with much hissing and groaning, like men settling bare-arsed into thorn bushes. Less than half an hour after waking, they were on the road again.

  The rain had stopped, but there was no sun. The sky was a featureless and uninterrupted grey from horizon to horizon, like a dull pewter tray hung upside down over the world. The party pulled their cloaks tight around them and leaned into a wet spring wind as they rode toward the Middle Mountains, which rose out of the seemingly endless forest like islands in a green sea.

  As the day went on and they left the scrubby wastelands of the east behind, the forest grew denser and they came across a few villages, tiny communities carved out of the wilderness and surrounded by winter fields. But while these so typically Imperial sights should have cheered men so long from home, instead the convicts' faces grew longer and longer, for the villages were empty shells - sacked and burned to the ground, with rotting skeletons strewn about like children's playthings. Some still smoked, for though the war was officially over months ago, Chaos Warlord Archaon and his hordes having at last been pushed back beyond Kislev, fighting continued, and doubtless would for some time. The endless forest of Ostland could swallow armies whole, with scattered bands of marauders, lost or left behind by their fleeing compatriots, still wandered it, looking for food and easy plunder. Other northmen had reportedly fled into the Middle Mountains and stayed, finding the frozen heights to their liking.

  Still reeling from its all-or-nothing fight, the Empire was too busy regrouping and rebuilding to send armies out to vanquish these scavengers, and so it was left to the beleaguered local lords to defend their people with the ragged remnants of their household guard. But here, in these forsaken hinterlands, no lord but Karl-Franz held sway, and the villagers must fend for themselves or die. Most often they died.

  In one village, decapitated heads rotted on spikes mounted on the palisade. Bodies decomposed where they had fallen because there was no one left alive to bury them. The stench of death rose from wells and barns and cottages.

  At noon they passed a temple of Sigmar. The old priest had been crucified before it, his ribs pried back and his deflated lungs flapping in the wind like wings. Pavel and Hals cursed under their breath and spat to avert bad luck. Erich rode straighter in the saddle, his jaw muscles twitching. Franz shivered and looked away. Reiner found himself torn between hiding his eyes and staring. He'd never had much use for priests, but no man of the Empire could see such a thing and be unaffected.

  AFTER A LUNCH eaten in the saddle, a watery sun came out and the mood lifted a little. The forest receded away from the road and for a while they rode through a marshy area of rushes and clumps of snow that dripped into meandering streams. The men began to talk amongst themselves and Reiner f
ound it interesting to see how the group sorted out. He was mildly surprised to see Pavel and Hals, a pair of Ostland farmers who had never left their homeland before being called to war, getting on well with the Tilean mercenary Giano. The typical insularity of the peasant, to whom even Altdorf was a foreign country, and who viewed all outsiders with mistrust, seemed to have been trumped by the commonality of all foot soldiers, and soon the three were laughing and exchanging tales of rotten provisions, terrible billets and worse commanders.

  Behind them, little Franz and giant Ulf talked in low tones - a confederacy of the teased, thought Reiner. While bringing up the rear were Gustaf and Oskar, riding in glum silence and staring straight ahead - a confederacy of the shunned.

  Veirt rode at the head of the party with Lady Magda. They were silent as well: Veirt constantly on the lookout for danger and Lady Magda, with her nose in a leather-bound volume, pointedly ignoring all that surrounded her. Reiner rode behind them, and much to his annoyance, so did Erich. It was inevitable, of course. Other than Lady Magda, Reiner was the only person of Erich's class in the party. He was the only prisoner Erich could acknowledge as an equal, the only one he would deign to talk to. Reiner would have been much happier swapping bawdy songs and barracks insults with Hals, Pavel and Giano, but Erich had attached himself like glue and babbled incessantly at his shoulder.

  'If you were in Altdorf you must know my cousin Viscount Norrich Oberholt. He was trying to become a Knight Panther. Damned fine rider. Spent a lot of time at the Plume and Pennant.'

  'I'm afraid I didn't mix much with the orders. I was at university.'

  Erich made a face. 'University? Gads! I had enough learning from my tutor. Were you studying to be a priest?'

  'Literature, when I studied at all. Mostly I was just there to escape Draeholt.'

  'Eh? What's wrong with Draeholt? Excellent hunting there. Bagged a boar there once.'

  'Did you?'