Warhammer [Ignorant Armies] Read Online Free PDF

that he was terrified; a cold sweat glued his shirt to his back as he thought about red-stained swords glinting in the light of the burning buildings. Reavers! If one of them should look up... could he see me? Feeling exposed, Helmut turned and pushed his way back into the treeline. Where was it...? Ah yes. The path. A run, really, perhaps the work of a wild boar some time since - there was no spoor, or else Helmut's surreptitious use had scared the animals away.
    The path led downhill, at an angle that would miss the village clearing and the highway by more than a bowshot. Helmut trotted, trying to duck and brush beneath the branches in silence. Afraid of betrayal. If anyone sees me... he reminded himself. Warning ritual, a prayer to whatever nameless god watched over him. Going to live forever. Which meant not getting caught. Another fear gripped him; sick anticipation. That he should not warn the village, that the raiders might catch all unawares and kill them. He would see his mother and father and young sisters gutted, wall-eyed, flies crawling over black-sticky blood. His family he might spare, but some of the others...
    A memory rose to haunt him: Heinrich. Heinrich was a year older than he, and had marched off to join the Baron's guard two summers past. Heinrich and two nameless youths tormenting him. Bright light of spring in a meadow back of the Inn. Face pointed to the midden as they held his hands behind him. Childish chanting: "Helmut, Helmut, weakling no-man, eating flies and telling lies, sell his soul to Nurgle's hole." Did they mean it? No more than children ever did. But they'd made his life a misery.
    The other two meant nothing; but Heinrich had persisted, had appointed himself the dark messenger from the gods, sent to torment Helmut for sins unremembered.
    Then he arrived at the far end of the path, and slowed, panting slightly, to look carefully around for intruders. No-one else would normally visit this place... but it did no harm to check. He looked around.
    No, the graveyard was deserted.
    To call it a graveyard was to call the village shrine a cathedral; overstating the facts a little. Tilted, crudely-hacked slabs of slate bore mute witness to the cost of life on the edge of the sea. Moss-grown, age-cracked stones abutted new chunks hacked from the cliff face. Wee remember Ras Bormann and hys crew, lost these ten days at see . Canted away from its neighbour by subsidence and the gulf of decades. There was a small, decrepit shrine at one end, and a low wall around it; but nobody came here except for a funeral. Nobody wanted to be reminded. Other than Helmut.
    He glanced round swiftly, furtively, then made a dash for the shrine. It was little more than a hovel, with an altar and a rough table on which to lay the coffin; such vestments as the village possessed were kept by Father Wolfgang. But beneath the altar - which now, wheezing slightly, he struggled to move - Helmut had made covert alterations. He'd been twelve when he discovered the ancient priest's hole and found it to his liking. Since then...
    Ragnar One-Eye glared more effectively than many a whole-sighted man, even with his patch in place. When he chose to remove it, the contrast - livid wound and burning eye - rooted strong warriors in their boots like grass before a scythe. He was not known as Ten-Slayer for nothing among his followers. He leaned on his axe-haft and waited, knowing where the Rage would take him; red and fast and furious, a tunnel running from his ship to the village of the fisherfolk by way of severed necks and gutted peasants and blood everywhere.
    Where Ragnar trod, his bondsmen shivered, the whites of their eyes showing beneath the shadows of their helmets. Wolf-fur cloak and an axe that had shed rivers of gore, and a tread that had made many a foemans' blood turn to water. He stood in the bows as the fast, clinker-built raider ran for the shore, and turned to face his men.
    He raised his axe. "Listen!"
    The rays of the