Free Sigmar's Blood by Phil Kelly

same from them, after all.
    The grand exorcism of Oberstyre had been mentally and spiritually draining. Those of the Tattersouls whose faith in Sigmar had not proven sufficient had died in terror, the cold claws of the fortress’s ghosts closing around their hearts. Many more had met grisly ends in the lightless maze of cellars beneath Oberstyre, fighting blind against the troglodytes that infested the underground tunnels.
    They had not given their lives in vain. Not a single evil soul had dwelt there by the break of dawn. The spirit-bound guardians of that haunted keep had been obliterated forever, burned out of the walls by the sheer golden light of the Sigmarite faith. Those stone-gheists that had proved powerful enough to linger had instead met their demise at the end of Volkmar’s blessed hammer. Mannfred’s dark work had been undone, even if the vampire’s trail had long gone cold.
    The remains of the Tattersouls continued their procession through the mud, wailing, muttering, even dancing wildly as they accompanied the war altar along the Great Western Road. Arch Lector Kaslain strode at the front of the procession, stoically ignoring the screeching and gnashing of the zealots behind him as he ploughed on through the muck towards Deihstein.
    Coming from the other direction along the wide road was another procession of sorts, looking if anything even more desolate than Volkmar’s own tattered crusaders. Malnourished oxen drew carts full of pockmarked, disfigured children along the muddy ruts, the peasantry on the riding plates hunched under threadbare blankets. Those not berthed on a cart dragged mud-sleds along the road, their meagre possessions lashed to wooded slats. Pregnant women rode sidesaddle on cows and mules whilst slow-witted adolescents picked their noses and ate the dubious treasures they had unearthed.
    It took some time for the presence of the war altar to register in the oncoming throng. When it did, whispers spread through them like wind through a blighted crop. Carts were wheeled over into ditches, young children and old crones alike spilling out with cries of protest. Goats were shoved bleating into dry brown hedgerows, and mules were led into fields of rotten crops in order to let the war altar pass. Many of the peasants went down on their knees in the mud, eyes downcast.
    ‘An omen! Sigmar is here to save us from the darkness!’ screeched a wizened old grandmother.
    ‘Bring back the sun!’ shouted a tiny girl child. ‘There’s no plants for Gurden!’
    A group of the peasants surged forwards towards the war altar, arms outstretched and eyes alight with hunger. Their advance was met by the Tattersouls, the flagellants flowing forward in a line of unwashed bodies that blocked the road. The peasants pulled up short, cowed by the madness in the eyes of the men barring their path.
    ‘The End!’ screeched Gerhardt the Worm into the face of the nearest peasant. ‘The End is here! All shall die!’
    ‘Nothing new,’ replied the lowlander, his badly cleft lip blurring his words. ‘We grew up here, mate.’
    ‘Sigmar!’ shouted the zealot. ‘Sigmar shall deliver us if we fling ourselves bodily into the next life!’
    ‘We’re flinging ourselves bodily into Ostermark,’ said the peasant, drily. ‘Nothing here for us now but graves.’
    ‘And them wot used to lie in ’em,’ muttered a tangle-haired matron by his side.
    The peasant looked up at Arch Lector Kaslain, ignoring Gerhardt as best he could. ‘Is that bald bloke s’posed to be the Lord Theogonite or something? Sigmarzeit festival’s cancelled, I reckon.’
    ‘It is the Grand Theogonist, simpleton. And you’d do well to keep your tongue civil in his presence,’ rumbled Kaslain.
    ‘Well swap me blind,’ said the peasant, making the sign of the hammer. ‘Temple’s hollow, holy symbols gone, but Shallya’s smalls, here comes the old Volcano himself. Using our road, no less. And scant hours after we see a bunch of