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  Gilead's Curse - Chapter Two - Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

  The Burning - Nick Kyme

  In The Shadow of the Emperor - Chris Dows

  The Tilean's Talisman - David Guymer

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  Gilead’s Curse

  Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett

  Chapter 2

  Sleep comes at such awkward times when you’re as old as I am. It matters little, now. I am refreshed and ready to begin again, just as soon as you fill my glass with a little tepid water, and perhaps bring me a morsel or two to eat.

  It is a conceit, I suppose, to leave one’s audience on a knife-edge, but it is not my way, I promise you. Now, where was I?

  Gilead and the undead knight fought tooth and nail for long hours before dawn, and, as the sky was broken open by a new sun rising, the elf thought that, he too, would perish. He could not muster his strength. His elf abilities felt as if they were a million miles away. He sought to be shadow-fast, but the skill came in such short bursts as to be irrelevant to the passage of the battle.

  Gilead had not come across so practiced a warrior in all his days. He had fought humans and daemons, monsters and beasts. He had fought creatures with brains and creatures with brawn, and, once or twice, he had done battle with beings of strength and sentience in equal measure. He had fought the spirited and the desperate, but he had never fought an equal.

  With two blades, Gilead had not been able to bring down the knight. His undead foe had wielded no weapon in reply, but his skills in defence had proven his expertise in close-quarters warfare.

  Gilead decided that whatever this being was, it was his equal in combat, and that was all that mattered on any field of battle.

  A ray of clear, bright sunlight travelled between the branches of the trees, thrusting in at an angle to the ground, casting long shadows, and glinting dully off Gilead’s blade.

  Gilead and the knight were circling each other, at too-close quarters in the confined space between the trees, looking into each other’s eyes, searching for some weakness, some chink in the other’s armour.

  As the sun caught the blade of Gilead’s sword, the glowing light in the knight’s eyes dimmed and clouded.

  Gilead thrust and swung, and thought, in the split second it took for the knight to parry, that his opponent might be slowing down.

  Circling a little more, Gilead stepped between his opponent and the ray of sunshine, and the knight’s eyes shone once more.

  The knight stepped in with the shorter blade, thrusting hard at Gilead’s side, tearing his shirt, but missing his body by the smallest of margins. If Gilead had been built like a human, the knight would have connected with flesh, muscle, and perhaps even organs, but Gilead was half the width of a man, and had evaded another grave injury.

  In response, Gilead thrust high and tight, making the knight duck to his left, as another slender beam of light found its way into the clearing over the elf’s left shoulder. The strike cut another narrow, shallow slice in the knight’s neck, but it would take a great deal more than that to bring him down.

  As Gilead drew his sword back to the centre, the new beam of light bounced off it slightly, and the elf noticed the clouds descend in the knight’s eyes once more. He jinked to his right, so that the knight had no choice but to circle away from him, and Gilead made another strike. This time it was a feint, designed to make the knight move a little further around the circle and into the light.

  The narrow sunbeam fell first on the knight’s short dagger, and then danced from it to Gilead’s blade. The elf went through an exercise series, one that he had practised a thousand times with his twin brother Galeth in the training yard at Tor Anrok. He sliced and jabbed and made figures in the air, all designed to catch the light and throw it back into the knight’s face.

  The knight’s eyes were dull and cloudy. Nevertheless, he raised Gilead’s dagger in a defensive posture and parried, while trying to find somewhere to hide from the light.

  Gilead’s next strike hit its target. The tip of his sword found the gap between the knight’s ribs in the fourth intercostal space. It should have been enough to kill him.

  The knight staggered back a pace or two, and fell against the sloping trunk of a tree in the grey shadow of its ragged canopy. His eyes glowed hot for a moment, and his fist clenched around his weapon with renewed vigour.

  Gilead stepped back and took a long, deep breath, drawing the blade of his sword through a handful of cloth gathered up from his shirt to polish the elf-forged metal.

  Gilead heard a distant whinny and then a weak bark. He swiped the blade through the cloth once more, and waited while the knight jerked his shoulder against the tree for leverage and took a step forward.

  The knight and the elf circled each other cautiously for a moment or two as they both heard movement in the woods around them. There was the sound of the dog barking, eagerly, but weakly, the sounds of boots stomping through dry leaves and mulch, and then came the calls, howls almost, as the local men urged each other on, building up their confidence to face their foe.

  Gilead had not been the only one to track and find the knight. The locals, tired of living in fear under the threat of they knew not what, had banded together to attack their nemesis. They would kill him, or they would die trying.

  The knight, clutching the weeping wound in his chest, looked from Gilead to his mount. A dancing beam of light caught the edge of his improvised shield, and, for a moment, he was blinded again.

  The local men had mistaken Gilead for their foe once before, and the elf did not relish meeting this human force again, however much of a rabble it might be. He was exhausted from the battle, mentally and physically, and he had a number of wounds to clean and dress before he could leave these dark, cold barren woods of Ostermark for good.

  As the elf made up his mind, the knight flung Gilead’s dagger aside and threw a bundle over his horse’s back. Gilead swiftly and silently collected his weapon and left the tiny clearing before the wounded knight could notice his departure. The knight struggled to mount his war steed, and the horse stomped the ground flat as it circled once and then twice as the undead warrior gathered his wits. Moments later, they too left the clearing.

  Gilead knew that, wounded or not, the knight would best any human attack, that the local men were too weak and ill-equipped to defeat him, even in daylight. He trusted that the knight would lie low for long enough to avoid contact with the men, that he would do no more damage to the vulnerable humans than had already been done. The warrior must be as exhausted as Gilead was, and he would surely hide from the daylight and the human force, such as it was, in order to rest and recover his strength.

  It would be up to Gilead to rid the countryside of the terrible scourge of the undead warrior knight. He would hunt him down wherever he fled or hid, and he would not fail a second time.

  Gilead ducked and wove his way back to his waiting mare without disturbing a single twig or leaving so much as a footprint in the dry, grey mulch beneath his feet. It was as if he had never been there.

  The humans passing nearby did not catch his scent on the breeze nor hear his footfalls, despite passing within yards of him. They were tracking their quarry deeper into the woodland, and it was not Gilead.

  Gilead washed out rags in the shallow culvert with its sweet water, and used them to clean and wrap his wounds. His injuries were numerous, but none of them were deep; his concern was the malignant poison that must surround such an opponent, and the likelihood of succumbing to infection. Gilead sought out the cleansing herbs he would need to make a fresh and living salve for his injuries, but there were none to be found. He dug de
ep among the few remaining supplies in his pack and found dried versions of the leaves he needed. He knew that they would be less effective in this form, and spent some time rehydrating the herbs with clean water and drops of the more potent oils distilled centuries before by Fithvael at their home of Tor Anrok, the lost tower. He hoped the resulting unguents would be sufficient to his needs.

  Gilead had never feared death; for many decades after his twin Galeth’s death, he had cynically toyed with it, dared it to take him from the cruel world and the fates it offered. After many adventures that led him close to death, but closer to madness, he had learned from his last and best companion, gone these many years, not to throw his life away. Fithvael had taught him to look after his health, both physical and mental, and to reward his body for its skills in combat by treating his wounds with the very best medicines that were available to him. Today, in this woodland, in these straitened times, the best medicines were those he had carried, ancient and dried to powder, from his homelands.

  All that remained was for him to rest, and to hope that he would not fall prey to some alien fever.

  Within days, Gilead was content to continue his quest. His wounds were healing slowly, by his normal standards, but they were clean and free of infection. His horse, too, was rested and as well-fed as anyone could hope in these times of virtual famine.

  It was not difficult to pick up the knight’s scent, literally and figuratively. He was not difficult to track, being less subtle than an elf, or even a well-trained human. The knight did not seek to hide his passage through the woodland, or the places where he had stopped to maim and bleed creatures to satisfy his appetites, and to allow his steed to rest or eat. Gilead was surprised that the knight had clearly covered a good deal of ground over the intervening time. The elf had wounded the knight seriously, if not fatally, and yet the creature seemed not to be slowed down by its injuries. It never stopped for more than an hour or two at a time, seemed not to need sleep, did not cook and hardly rested. When it travelled by day, it did so more deeply in the forest, staying under the canopy where it was at its most dense, where shade from the sun was at its most complete.

  Gilead tracked through areas of woodland virtually decimated by the knight. He had taken almost a straight path, during the daylight hours, hacking through branches and saplings rather than going around them. The ground was churned up in places, as if the knight had forced his steed to move faster than the terrain ought to have allowed. There were no signs of cooking, and none of the edible plants that still remained just under the earth’s surface had been grubbed up or prepared. There were only the tattered, papery corpses of some of the more resilient local rodents, their flesh bled to a pale stringy consistency. Gilead did not care to muse on the knight’s tastes and urges. It was what it was, and Gilead would not stop until he had rid this northern winter land of its most feared predator.

  Convinced that the knight was at the centre of all the horrors that had been visited on the Empire and beyond, determined that he must be caught and killed as soon as possible, Gilead rested little and rode his mare harder than he would have liked to make up ground.

  In the northern lands, at the farthest north-east reaches of the Empire, in Ostermark, and further north on the borders of Kislev, towns and villages huddled no more than a few miles apart. In such cold climes and rugged countryside, a man might walk half a day to cover six or seven miles. If he was to visit a town or market and return home the same night, his round-trip should not be more than ten or a dozen miles at most. Homesteads and farms also congregated in the countryside in this manner, so Gilead was never very far from some form of human habitation, and yet, he saw very few people. The further he travelled in the knight’s wake, the fewer and further between were his human sightings.

  On the third day of travelling, within a hundred miles of Bechafen, when Gilead felt that he was only a matter of hours away from finding his foe, he suddenly realised that he was totally alone. It was the elf’s natural state to be a solitary individual, and he was used to going for weeks, sometimes months or even longer without seeing another sentient being. Wherever he had been in the Empire, any time during the past several centuries, he had always been within the sight, sound or smell of some beast of the field, some bird, some creature, however small or humble. Now, there was nothing.

  Gilead’s path took him out of the edge of the forest at last, on to a stony pathway that bordered cultivated land. An hour later, he stopped the mare along the narrow track that he had been following across sloping farmland that was roughly divided into a series of strips. He was keeping close to the high, dusty hedgerows so as not to be easily detectable, but there was no one to see him. The fields were fairly recently tended. New crops, planted in the hope of a more abundant harvest next season, from diminishing stocks of precious seeds, were trying to force their way into the world. Gilead could not help but notice that their growth was patchy at best, that the soil was dry and had not been irrigated, and that the plants were fighting for the poor earth’s nutrients with weeds that should not have been there. The small fields and narrow strips of land would each sustain only one family, and should be the lifeline to which the local community clung, but there was no one there. No one tilled the land or worked the tender young crops that were trying to grow there. If there were no humans, why weren’t the smaller beasts taking advantage of the young crops? Why were there not flocks of birds feeding on shoots and buds? Why were the shrews, voles and field mice not running amok? Why, if there was flora to feed the herbivorous creatures were there no predators to feed on them? What had happened to the food chain?

  Gilead wondered whether the humans had simply deserted the farms and homesteads that he saw scattered across the land, for they appeared to be intact. The humans, if they had left, must have done so recently for the crops were newly planted and not halfway to being harvested. But where would they go?

  Something unthinkable had happened. Some terrible fate had befallen all living things.

  Gilead left the path with its hedgerows for the nearest metaled road, which joined the larger villages and towns. He adjusted his grip on the mare’s reins and brought her to a steady gallop in the centre of the empty road. The air was full of menace, not from a scent that he could identify, but of the lack of something. The air was too dry and stale, and Gilead felt death descending around him. The humans were dying. He was convinced of it. He was equally convinced that the undead knight had something... everything… to do with it.

  Gilead rode into the outskirts of a market town called Omalk as the sun set, watery grey against a dull purple sky. He would normally have walked in, keeping to the meaner parts of town, to the alleyways and darker places. He did not hide now; there was no need for him to avoid detection for there was no one to see him. Many of the buildings, including the drinking holes and cook-shops where the poorer locals congregated to eat and drink were locked up with their shutters pulled down, or were simply deserted.

  Gilead dismounted and pushed open a door that had been left ajar some time before. The tables still bore the remnants of the last meals eaten there, although the food was cold and congealed on the assortment of mismatched, chipped plates. Ale had been drunk hurriedly, leaving splashes on the tables and one last swallow in the bottoms of grubby glasses.

  There was that smell again: the smell of old things, of death, and of human fear.

  The men had left this drinking establishment, all at the same time, heedless of their meals and the few belongings that littered the room: a jacket slung over the back of a chair; a hessian bag, half-full of something-or-other, left under a table; a broken rake and a hoe with a split handle leaning side-by-side against the wide table that served as a bar.

  Something had threatened these people. Something had threatened them with their very lives. Gilead could smell it, feel it on the air.

  If he could smell it, he could track it.

  Gilead could track as easily in the darkness as in the light, and m
uch of the small town was in darkness. Chinks of light showed through in one or two places, from behind closed doors or around ill-fitting shutters. One or two windows had not been covered, nor the candles in the rooms inside extinguished, but they were few and far between. A trapdoor set in the pavement, close to a large building, showed light intermittently around its seal as someone moved around below. Then the light flickered and died.

  Gilead did not need to disturb the inhabitants of the cellar to know that the place was full of women and children. He could hear the faint, shrill cries of small children and the murmurs of the women trying to soothe them. Once or twice he heard Sigmar’s name invoked in desperate prayers.

  He could almost taste the foetid smell of putrefaction on the air as he rode into the market square at the centre of the town. He expected to see death and devastation on a scale that few rarely witness, but the place was still and empty.

  The smell came stronger than ever, and Gilead dismounted his mare to follow his nose.

  He knew that the knight had been here. He could not see or hear him, but he found evidence of his mode of battle.

  Gilead looked for and found a trail of destruction. He saw leaves on the ground from the surrounding trees that could only have been sliced off by a well-sharpened blade. He saw hoof-print patterns in the blue-green verges of tough nutsedge around the town square that bore witness to a well-disciplined war steed’s wheeling and turning in response to his master’s hand on his reins. He saw barrows and stalls haphazardly backed onto curbs in avoidance of a raging battle, their meagre wares scattered across the paved streets.

  Yet he saw no humans, and he saw no undead knight.

  He could smell human blood, shed some hours before, and he found an abandoned shoe, and a button, sliced from a tunic. There was hair, too, a small clump of it with a scrap of skin attached, adhering to the bark of one of several trees that marked one end of the square. There were, however, no bodies, no wounded and no dead, despite the stench of mortality in the air.