‘Brother Wolff,’ he said, crossing the temple, ‘did you kill him? I thought I saw something earlier. I think it was a man, but it didn’t look, well…’

  The priest gave no reply and continued staring at the headstone.

  ‘Lord?’

  Wolff looked up at Ratboy with despair on his face. ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘The Reaver – did he die?’

  The priest frowned for a few seconds, then raised his eyebrows in recognition. ‘Oh, the Norscan, no, I found parts of him over there,’ he gestured to a crumpled mound near the altar, ‘but he survived the blast. Not for long though, I think. Nearly half the powder detonated. He must be burned beyond recognition.’ He looked around at the ruined building and frowned. ‘I seem to have lost my warhammer though. I think it may have been destroyed by the explosion.’

  Ratboy knew what such a loss would mean to the priest. The hammer was more than just a weapon – it was a powerful icon of his faith. Wolff would feel lost without it. He could not help smiling at the sight of his master’s familiar scowl however. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again,’ he said.

  ‘You spied on me?’ replied Wolff.

  Ratboy nodded, with a rueful smile. ‘I wondered what had dragged you from your tent so early. Even you don’t usually rise until dawn, so I crept through the moonlight to see what you were up to. I don’t know what you said to those poor engineers, but it seemed to wake them up pretty sharpish.’

  Wolff gave a short bark of laughter. ‘What a bunch of rogues. I think they’d only stopped drinking a couple of hours earlier.’ He shook his head. ‘And on the eve of such an important battle.’

  ‘Well – you seemed to sober them up pretty quickly. I saw them give you those blackpowder weapons, but I couldn’t understand why you hid them beneath your cloak. Or why you crept out of the camp like that. Why would you head off into the forest on your own, with the enemy camped so close by?’

  Wolff sighed. ‘You’ve seen the way the marauders rally at the site of their champion – the Reaver as you called him.’

  ‘Of course – and I’ve seen the way he watches your every move.’

  Wolff nodded and smiled. ‘You have your wits about you boy. Yes, you’re right – he knows me. Even in that pit of corruption he calls a brain he knows what I represent to the regiment: hope. Ever since I rallied Maximillian’s pistoliers at the Battle for Hogel Bridge, he’s had me in his sights. Even then, as I led the charge across to the west bank, I realised he was desperately trying to separate me from the others, but our firepower was too great.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Ratboy with a grimace. ‘He lashed the marauders half to death trying to get to you, but they just fell in their dozens, their bellies full of shot. The river ran red before he finally gave up.’

  ‘Yes – and so it’s been in every battle of the campaign, leaving us at this bloody impasse. And he knows this deadlock will continue until one of us dies, but so far he’s been unable to corner me.’ Wolff looked away, as though he were suddenly embarrassed. ‘So, I thought I’d give him the chance he’s been looking for. He knew as well as I did that there was a Sigmarite temple in the heart of this wood; the kind of temple a priest might be foolish enough to visit.’ He paused and took a long breath. ‘I knew I couldn’t survive an encounter with such a creature, but that fitted in with my own plans.’

  Ratboy laughed, trying to hide his shock. ‘You wanted to die?’ He noticed that Wolff was not listening, but staring at the headstone again. ‘Brother Wolff?’

  ‘What kind of a miracle,’ muttered the priest, ‘could happen here?’

  Ratboy edged closer to the headstone to get a better look. Most of the engraving was scorched beyond recognition, but the names were still just about legible: Hieronymus and Margarethe Wolff.

  ‘Wolff?’ asked Ratboy. ‘Are these your relatives?’

  The priest looked up at him. ‘My parents.’ He sat down heavily next to the stone and massaged his bloody, shaven scalp. ‘As soon as I led the Reaver into this clearing, I knew I had the right place. He was on me so fast though, I hardly had the chance to look around. I had no intention of surviving, as you guessed, but I was determined not to die alone.’ He paused, and looked up at Ratboy with a feverish look in his eye. ‘My faith has always been a means to an end. Its usefulness was always going to be finite.’

  Ratboy’s thin, beak-nosed face flushed a deep red. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’ A dull clang rang out as Wolff kicked the headstone with his ironclad boot. ‘This is a mark of my inescapable sin. A sin beyond reckoning. A sin against my own parents. My faith has never been anything more than atonement and today was to be my final penance.’ He snapped the silver hammer that hung around his neck and threw it to the floor in disgust. ‘But now I see that there is no penance. Nothing can atone for what I’ve done. I’ve failed. I can’t even die.’ He looked up at the ruined ceiling. ‘I think my willingness to die gave me an edge though. The Reaver thought me easy prey, out here in the woods, away from our guns and cavalry. His gods have bestowed many gifts on him,’ he grimaced, ‘many gifts.’ He tapped the scorch marks on his breastplate and gave a grim smile. ‘If it wasn’t for my final trick, he would’ve finished me.’

  Ratboy’s mind was cast back to the odd figure he saw crawling from the temple, and he shuddered, relieved he had seen no more of the creature. He looked back at the stone. ‘But if these are your parents then this must be–’

  ‘My home, yes. A place so banished from my thoughts I flinched when I saw it on the general’s campaign map. So great is my shame.’

  ‘Why should you be ashamed, Brother Wolff? You’re an inspiration to the entire regiment. Your faith shines out of you. How can you dismiss it so easily?’

  ‘My faith? Oh yes, my faith has always inspired, but to what end? And anyway, what’s the use?’ His voice cracked. ‘What use is a religion so powerless it can’t even erase my own crimes? How could it lift this darkness that hangs over us?’ He sighed and clenched his broad, powerful hands, until the old scars that networked them throbbed a deep red. Then he began to speak in a loud voice, as though addressing a crowd. ‘At the age of ten my parents sent me to a local priest, Aldus Braun, boasting of my piety and learning. Even at that tender age I possessed an unusual, infectious fervour. The priest taught me to read, and I quickly surpassed him. Within a year I had devoured every text in his library. At the age of eleven, I could quote the Deus Sigmar in its entirety, and with such conviction it would make you weep to hear it. It could have ended there, the happy tale of a devout childhood, but my parents wanted more.

  ‘My older brother, Fabian was a useless wastrel, as is most of our aristocracy. He did no real harm: gambling, duelling, womanising and the like; nothing unusual for a young duke, but he was an embarrassment to my parents, so they focused all their energies on me: their perfect, pious, prodigal son. Soon, I was the sneak of the village. Every suspicious look or deed reported back to Brother Braun, until there wasn’t a crone within fifteen miles who would dare pluck a herb.’

  ‘So, you were an eager apprentice. I see no shame in that. You were being trained for a lifetime of holy servitude.’

  Wolff shook his head and smiled. ‘But they trained me too well, you see. Unbridled faith is a dangerous dog to unleash, unless you know how to call it off. Brother Braun was summoned to Altdorf for a while and I returned to the old house.’ He gestured out through a broken window. ‘If you climbed that hill you could probably still see it, sitting smugly at the north end of the valley. Fabian was too busy chasing peasant girls to entertain his little brother, and as the summer passed I grew progressively more bored. Finally, with my parents away hunting, and the house empty, I found myself rummaging in the attics.’ He paused, and took a long breath. ‘With hindsight, the things I found were so pitifully innocent: just some wooden idols; nature gods, nothing more than that. Relics of a more innocent age, I suppose. But of course, my shining faith, as you so elegantly described it, drove me on.

  ‘With Braun away in Altdorf, I didn’t know where to turn. My righteous young mind was convinced their souls were in peril. I was mindless with fear, desperate to tell someone before they returned. Otto Sürman was the name of my saviour.’ He looked up at Ratboy. ‘I threw myself on his mercy, much as you did mine. They told me he was a priest of Sigmar, but witch hunter would have been a more accurate description. Or maybe rabid, mindless zealot might have done better. Utterly unhinged. The worst kind of backwater tyrant. Thriving on fear like a vampire.’ He spat bitterly on the floor. ‘I betrayed my family to a monster.’

  Wolff gripped the headstone and screwed his eyes tightly shut. ‘As my parents burned, the militia had to hold my brother back, or he would have torn me to pieces. He swore that if I ever stepped foot in the province again, he would rip out my heart with his bare hands.’ He looked at Ratboy with an awful, despairing grin. ‘I can still hear their cries. They begged for mercy as the flames took hold.’

  Ratboy lowered his head, afraid of Wolff’s terrible gaze.

  ‘So you see, you’ve chosen a very poor prophet for your inspiration. I can lead no one to salvation. For these last years my faith has been no more than a useless burden. Nothing I have done in Sigmar’s name has ever eased my guilt. My pain just grew, year on year, until eventually I merely hoped to die in the most effective way possible. I thought that to sacrifice myself here might save the regiment and maybe redeem me at the same time. As soon as I saw the name of Berlau on the map, way back at the start of the campaign, I realised what a perfect symmetry it would make, to die here. I still hoped I could repay the old debt somehow.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘What a fool. Who could repay such a thing? Do you see? There was no occultist in my parents’ house. Just a couple of old dolls; dolls my parents had probably never laid eyes on. They burned for nothing.’ He cradled his head in his hands. ‘I saw guilt where there was only love.’

  To see the priest in such despair shocked Ratboy deeply and he could think of no words of comfort. After a while he backed away, leaving Jakob to his grief. He decided to head back to the encampment and fetch help. The priest seemed utterly bereft and Ratboy feared for his sanity.

  As he passed the base of the crumbling tower, however, he spotted something glittering in the dust and stopped. A metal block of some kind was sticking out of the rubble. He stooped to investigate, only to be distracted by something even more interesting. The explosion had shifted the tower’s lower stones to reveal a small staircase, leading down into the foundations of the temple. He stepped closer and realised it must have once been some kind of priest hole, now revealed for all the world to see. Intrigued, he lit a lamp and climbed down into the darkness. It was a library of sorts. Most of the abandoned temple had obviously been looted years ago, but this tiny chamber was still intact. Ratboy placed the lamp on the table and opened a book.

  Months before, as a starving refugee, he had thrown himself on the mercy of the army as it marched through Ostland but the soldiers had caught him stealing food and punished him cruelly. They were men on the edge of defeat and their fear made animals of them. They spat on his tattered clothes, kicked his filthy, skinny body and christened him ‘Ratboy’. Finally, they chased him from the camp with a leather ‘tail’ nailed to his back. When Wolff found him snivelling and bleeding on the outskirts of the camp he was in a truly wretched state. The old man took pity on him and employed the boy as a servant. The priest was taciturn and ill-tempered, but as the army marched on, he kept his new acolyte from harm. More than this, to Ratboy’s delight, as Wolff healed the young boy, he also taught him to read. Ratboy had surprised himself with his own aptitude and, peering now at the graceful script in front of him, he felt a familiar rush of pleasure as he began to read. It was the journal of Aldus Braun, the priest who mentored Wolff all those decades ago. Ratboy poured over the text, reliving the childhood exploits of his grizzled old master. He lost himself in Braun’s tales of his young protégé, forgetting for a while the sorry state Jakob had come to.

  Dates were carefully foiled on the books’ leather spines and, before leaving, Ratboy plucked a volume from a shelf to read the priest’s last words. The final entry was written in a more hurried hand than the others. It made for interesting reading:

  I can live with this burden no longer. To think that the boy should spend his entire life with such guilt is unthinkable. The fault was never his and he must be told. I am riding tonight to confront the witch hunter, Sürman, and demand he reveal the truth. I fully expect him to comply. It will doubtless be the end of his ‘career’ but I consider that a small price to pay for correcting such a mistake. To have burned the Wolffs on the flimsy evidence of a child was a travesty of justice in the first place, but to then discover the real occultist, and attempt to hide the truth, is beyond the pale. If Sürman will not admit his mistake and reveal the true guilty party, then I will accuse him openly. I am not afraid. I have absolute faith that Sigmar himself will protect me from Sürman’s hungry pyre.

  I will ride out this very night to see him.

  As Ratboy read and re-read the words his eyes grew wide. He snatched up the book and dashed back upstairs. ‘Jakob,’ he cried, ‘look at this.’

  The priest was still crouched by the headstone, gazing into his open hands. ‘What is it?’ he muttered, taking the book. At first he flicked through the pages with a dismissive sneer on his face. ‘Braun. What a yokel he was. How little he knew of the world. Hiding out here in the comfort of his–’ As he turned to the last entry, the priest fell silent. He stood upright and held the lamp over the pages. ‘What’s this?’ he whispered, shaking his head. The colour drained from his leathery skin. ‘What’s this?’ He grabbed Ratboy by the shoulders and lifted him from his feet so that their faces were level. ‘Where did you find–’

  The movement that silenced the priest was so fast Ratboy struggled to follow it.

  Something flashed in the corner of his eye and he found himself on the far side of the temple, crushed against the altar, fresh blood in his eyes. He wiped his face and tried to draw a breath, but all the air had left his lungs. As he lay there, gasping, he saw Wolff stagger across the flagstones, wrapped in a vision of hell. It was the same creature Ratboy had seen earlier, but this time he could not take his eyes off it. From the furs and skulls, he guessed it must once have been the Reaver. He had witnessed the bloody champion many times, leading the enemy into battle, but he was now transformed beyond all recognition; every trace of humanity gone from him. What was once a man was now a heaving mass of charred skin, pulsating flesh and snarling, hissing jaws. As Ratboy struggled for breath, the already weakened priest struggled in vain to throw off the monster, cursing it bitterly as he staggered backwards towards the exit.

  He has no weapon, thought Ratboy with horror. He forced himself to his feet and began to claw desperately around in the rubble, trying to find anything the priest could use to defend himself.

  A scream came from outside. The monster had thrown the priest to the ground, thrashing him with countless limbs and attempting to attach one of its gaping maws to his face. Wolff was holding its deformed head at arm’s length, but he was already trembling with exhaustion.

  Ratboy dashed to the priest hole, thinking he might find some kind of icon or staff.

  Wolff howled in pain and Ratboy turned to see that the creature’s head was now fixed onto his neck.

  He ducked down into the priest hole, but to his dismay there was nothing: just books and a desk, not so much as a quill. He groaned with despair and leapt back up the steps, deciding to fight the creature with his bare hands. As he reached the top step, he stubbed his foot on something and stopped to curse. Only then did he realise it was the same shiny object he had noticed earlier. ‘Metal!’ he gasped, and began to clear away the stones, thinking he might have found a candleholder. ‘Sigmar,’ he muttered when he realised what a treasure he had unearthed: the priest’s warhammer.

  He struggled outside with it to see that the creature had climbed off the priest and was standing over him, taunting its victim. Its words were lisping and confused as they chorused through a dozen inhuman mouths: ‘Nownownow, littlelittlelittle, manman,’ it slurred as it writhed and danced gleefully over him. ‘Wherewherewhere isisis youryour firefirenownownow?’

  Ratboy had intended to hand the hammer over to his master, but Wolff was barely conscious. Blood was rushing from his neck and his eyes were tightly closed in pain.

  Ratboy hesitated. The monster was oblivious to him, intent on its prey as it leant closer and drew a long, sharpened bone from within its folds of flesh, all the while singing its gleeful song. ‘Wherewherewhere isisis your­your firefirenownownow?’

  Ratboy tested the weight of the warhammer in his hands, unsure whether he could even swing it. I should flee, he decided. I would barely even mark the creature. It would just kill me too. He backed quietly towards the temple.

  A memory halted him in his steps: a vision of kindness in the priest’s face as he nursed him back to health all those months earlier. Suddenly the weapon felt lighter. He lunged forward with all his strength, bringing the hammer down in a great sweeping arc towards the beast’s head.

  The hammer connected with the misshapen skull and it collapsed inwards with a muffled crunch, as easily as a piece of damp wood. The thing’s writhing ceased and it reached up in a spasm of pain, then sank silently to the floor, dropping its bone knife at Ratboy’s feet.

  Ratboy staggered backwards, shocked by his success. The warhammer suddenly regained its weight, and he let it clatter to the floor. ‘I killed it,’ he gasped, looking at his bloodied hands in disbelief. He began to giggle.