The Dead and the Damned (Warhammer Fantasy) by Jonathan Green

Author:Jonathan Green [Green, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2011-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

A MURDER OF CROWS

Like the raven, the crow is associated in popular folk-mythology with battle and death, and legends abound about the bird’s alleged powers and connections with the forces of darkness. One old tradition has it that if a crow is present at a murder the evil bird will steal away the victim’s soul.

– from Folk Legends of Sylvania, by Gustav Holz

Burgomeister Audric of Nagenhof knelt in the middle of the road quaking before the Beast of Bruckenbach. His gaudy clothes were torn and bloodstained and his jowls wobbled as he pleaded for his life. ‘I–I’ll g–give you anything! Anything you want! Just don’t kill me.’

‘You really don’t remember me, do you?’ growled the beast.

The outlaw was an imposing figure. Over seven feet tall and almost as broad, his legs were thick trunks of muscle. From the waist up his body swelled to a barrel chest and he had huge shoulders from which bulged massive, club-like arms. His neck was as thick as an ox’s and his shaven head seemed to bulge as a result of a distorted skull beneath. A white knot of scar tissue described an arc on his left cheek. With his knuckles barely clear of the ground like an ape, he looked more like an ogre than a man.

The beast was dressed much like the rest of his outlaw band: dark, leather boots; brown, patched trousers, belted at the waist. But where his men wore coats of chainmail or jerkins of studded leather armour, their leader wore only a sleeveless shirt, stained ochre with blood, sweat and grime. It was stretched taut over his swollen muscles and open down the front. Audric could quite clearly see the amulet that he wore on an iron chain around his neck: a polished cerulean stone that gleamed dully in its black metal setting.

Behind him was the splintered wreckage of the burgomeister’s carriage. The horses had fled as soon as they were free of their traces. The men of Audric’s entourage lay all around him, dead. The bandits looted their bodies for money, weapons or anything else of use that they might find. These criminals really were the lowest of the low. There was now no one left to protect him, not that the presence of an armed escort had made any difference when the blackguards had attacked.

Overhead circled a ragged flock of crows. Every so often one of the birds swooped down towards the road, as if to see better what transpired there.

‘R–Remember you?’ Audric stammered, perplexed.

‘Yes. Remember me.’ The beast’s voice was deep and gravelly, as if it was only one cadence away from an animalistic roar.

‘L-Look, you can have anything,’ the desperate man implored. ‘I promise you. I am a man of substance. Wh–Whatever you want, I can get it for you.’

‘The only thing I ever wanted from you,’ the beast snarled, leaning closer, ‘I could never have. You would never have allowed it. So I’ll have to settle for something else instead.’

The bandit looked up at the circling birds, no more than black smudges against the pale, late autumn sky.

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