C. Werner - Dead Winter

‘Stop this!’ Frederick cried out, stepping into the street. He brandished his staff, holding it before him, blocking the way. The wagon shuddered to a stop, the cyclopean visage of Bylorak glaring down at him. The flagellants came out from behind the wagon, their scourges slashing into their own backs, their voices raised in moans of outrage.

‘Defiler!’ one of the fanatics wailed, his lips flecked with foam. ‘You dare stand before his sight!’

‘Bylorak watches us all!’ shrieked another flagellant. ‘He sees us, for we are his children! He hears us, for we are his children! He helps us, for we are…’

Frederick advanced upon the shouting flagellant. ‘You are fools, bowing to a stone effigy and worshipping a monster! All men die, but while they live they must do so with decency, with honour.’

The flagellant twisted away, prostrating himself before the eidolon. ‘He helps us, for we are his children!’ Tears rolled down the fanatic’s face as he pressed his lips to the webbed feet of his god. Frederick moved to pull the man away, to restore some dignity to the naked wretch. But as soon as he reached out, his body recoiled in pain. A stone struck him in the cheek, slashing his pale skin. A second stone crashed into his side. The priest retreated as more stones came flying at him.

The barrage came not from the flagellants but from the peasants lining the street. The procession had stirred their hopes as nothing had in the past weeks and now they were aroused to violence by Frederick’s effort to save them from themselves.

‘Go back to your carrion, jackal!’ one woman cried. ‘Are you so eager to fill your garden? Is Olt’s pup trying to outdo his master?’

The jeers and the barrage of stones increased, driving Frederick into flight. Rocks pelted his body at every step, dung and offal from the gutter plastered his robes. By the time he reached the safety of a covered pigsty, the priest’s body felt like one big bruise. It took him a moment to appreciate that he owed his respite not to the security of his refuge, but to the shifting attention of the mob.

Distracted to violence against the priest, the peasants of Bylorhof were once again under the spell of the flagellants. The fanatic who had kissed the idol’s webbed foot was still crouched before the wagon, but now his naked body had turned black. From head to foot, the flagellant was covered in pitch. The priest’s eyes widened in horror as the kneeling man began to cry out to Bylorak, begging the marsh god to forgive the desecration caused by Frederick. A second flagellant approached the praying man, a flickering rushlight clenched in his fist.

The pitch-coated flagellant ignited like a torch, his prayer rising in a single scream. The stunned spectators maintained an awed silence as the surviving flagellants circled behind the wagon and pushed the grinning idol over the blazing husk of their late comrade. Even from his vantage point, Frederick could hear the crack of the man’s bones beneath the wheels.

The priest hobbled away from his ignominious refuge while the crowd was still fixated upon the macabre procession. He shook his head sadly. There was one thing the gods could not save man from. That was man’s own folly.

It was something Frederick van Hal knew only too well.

Nuln

Kaldezeit, 1111

Despite the thick wool coat he wore, Walther Schill found himself shivering as he walked along Fox Street on his way to the Black Rose. He’d be thankful for a good warm fire and a nice pot of ale, anything to drive the cold from his bones.

Winter had descended upon Nuln with the fury of an invading army. Wissenland was infamous throughout the Empire for its unforgiving winters, but this one was announcing itself with all the savagery of the White Wolf. Frost coated every brick and stone, the streets were a slush of snow and ice, dagger-like icicles dangled from every eave and cornice. The wind swirled between the buildings like a slinking predator, withering the faces of the unprotected with blasts of frozen malignance.

How different from the sewers, Walther thought. It was easy to forget it was winter down there in the hot, humid dark. Perhaps it was that very fact which had caused the numbers of rats to swell. Perhaps it was the cold that had forced the vermin below, seeking shelter in the damp warmth of the dwarf-built tunnels. Whatever the cause, their numbers had increased to such a state that Walther had purchased three ratters and been compelled to take on an apprentice. Hugo Brecht wasn’t the most likely lad, but there was a natural boldness to him that made up for his lack of experience.

Walther stifled a sniffle as he strode past a chandler’s shop and passed a huddle of ragged beggars. He closed his ears to their piteous pleas for alms. It was something that was becoming easier to do with each passing day.

Nuln was almost like a city besieged. Rumours of plague in Stirland had proven out and all commerce with the province had been suspended. Count Artur had tried to make up the loss in trade by making new compacts with noblemen in Reikland and Talabecland, but these overtures had yet to bring food into the city. Wissenland and Solland, provinces given primarily to producing wine and wool, could offer little in the way of supplies no matter the price. It was joked grimly that when the burghers agreed to pay a lamb’s weight in gold, the Wissenlanders might agree to send mutton instead of wool.

The threat of famine was becoming real enough that the Assembly had increased the bounty on rats, offering three pennies a tail. The storehouses and granaries were too important to suffer the menace of vermin burrowing their way inside and despoiling the stores. For a population faced with the possibility of rampant sickness, starvation was a complication it could not afford to entertain.

The plague. Walther shuddered at the very thought. He’d been in the Black Rose one night when a sailor had described its effects. His ship had been docked in Mordheim when a Sylvanian merchant had been discovered with the disease. The man had looked scarcely human, his body blotched with ugly black sores that dripped filth with every breath he took. The city watch had quarantined the merchant’s house and the entire block around it. The sailor had been lucky to slip away before the cordon was closed.

The Black Plague they were calling it. Spread by evil vapours, some said, while others claimed the hex-magic of witches was responsible. Whatever the cause, one thing could be agreed upon. Wherever the disease established itself people died. Not one or two, but by the bushel. The pyres outside the walls of Wurtbad, it was said, could be seen days before a ship came within the harbour.

The first incidences of disease had appeared in Nuln over the last few weeks despite the embargo against Stirland. Entire households in Freiberg and Handelbezirk had been placed under quarantine and the priests of Morr had been commanded to report any plague deaths to the Assembly. Mobs of militiamen, often without official sanction, prowled the streets looking for anyone who might be hiding symptoms of the disease.

Commotion in the neighbouring street drew Walther’s attention away from his fears about the future. Peering down an alleyway into Tanner’s Lane, he could see many people running along the street, their passing marked by the glow of rushlights and oil lamps.

‘Something’s going on over there,’ Hugo remarked, a factual if not particularly insightful observation. He shifted the bag of dead rats slung over his shoulder and stared his mentor in the eye. ‘Should we go see what that’s about?’

Walther deliberated for a moment. Rumours and stories were easy enough to come by, but this was a chance to see for himself what was happening. A sensible man could only trust half of what he heard, and less than that if his source was a sailor. But what he saw with his own eyes — that was different. That he could trust.