Sigmar's Blood by Phil Kelly Read Free Book Online

turned on his heel and splashed off along the muddy path, shoving his pistol back into its holster and closing the hold-clip. The duellist returned to his men, his finger making circular motions next to his forehead.
    The witch hunter pulled his hat low, grimacing in pain as soon as he was around a bend in the road. He was cold, he was wet, and his hand stung like hell. As soon as he had left the altercation with Swaft he had shoved a piece of lambskin into his glove to soak up the blood, but it still hurt to flex it.
    The Talabheimer had a right to ask, truth be told. To a soldier, it made no real sense to split up their already pitifully small army. Yet judging by the thickening darkness, time was running short. They had to pick up Mannfred’s trail somehow.
    To von Korden’s mind they had dallied far too long at Helsee, burying the fools who had rushed into battle. To make matters worse, some of the Talabheimers had thought that simply boiling the lake’s black waters would make them safe to drink. Idiots all. They had deserved to die in pain, clutching their bellies and gasping like beached fish. The Silver Bullets had insisted the corpses were buried face down. They had pressed pennies for Morr into the eyes of the dead, placed wild garlic and hawthorn in the mouth; the whole damn lot.
    The witch hunter knew a quicker way to ensure against the dead coming back to life – cut their bloody heads off and throw them in the fire. Yet the suggestion had not gone down well. They had tarried so long that they had no choice but to spend the night at Uflheim, and even though they had set off early, the dim half-light of their second day on the road was already fading fast.
    As the forlorn procession crested the crags that led to Konigstein, the town’s tumbledown temple of Morr came into view by the side of the road. Von Korden felt his spirits rise a little at the familiar sight. His hand strayed to the pocket that contained his pipe.
    Around the temple’s graves the sprawling garden of black roses was turning brown, starved from lack of sunlight. Von Korden peered inside as he walked past. The font was dry and the cracked altar was dotted with fox droppings. Pale patches on the plaster showed where the temple’s holy symbol had once hung. Despite the potential value of the silver plating, no Sylvanian peasant or bandit would have been sacrilegious enough to steal it, especially not from the god of the restful dead.
    To hear the gossips tell it, the icons of every last temple across the realm had been taken over the last few years. The work of Mannfred’s Strigany agents; von Korden was sure of it. Most likely the artefacts had already been melted down or buried somewhere where living men fear to tread. Sylvania had been without priests since the days of Mannfred’s bloodfather, Vlad von Carstein, so no one had been too concerned about their holy symbols. Now the abandoned temples were the only evidence that the gods of the Empire had ever had a home in Sylvania.
    Down in the shallow valley von Korden could see the scattered buildings of Konigstein, but not a single light glimmered from their windows. Six hours since leaving Uflheim and they still had not seen a living soul. Even the hunter’s watchtower was a cold black silhouette bereft of any sign of life. The brass sentinel’s bony arms still jutted out in the same position as when the witch hunter had left it over a week ago.
    A low moan echoed across the vale, making von Korden’s hackles rise. It was a noise he had learned to hate. He listened hard for the toll of a bell, but there was only silence.
    ‘Form up on approach!’ von Korden shouted down the trail, gesturing for his small army to spread out. ‘Battle line in less than three minutes!’
    The state troops behind him fanned out over the other side of the crag, relieved to have some room to manoeuvre. As the last of the Knights of the Blazing Sun moved past with the great cannon in tow, Bennec Sootson