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mattered. After only two or three years his
training would be complete and he could return to Hangenholz and his beloved
sister Katarina.
    He saw her face now as his eyelids closed, her swan neck and
almond eyes so like their mother’s, her shining hair, the sheen of her dark
tresses like moonlight on a lake at midnight, framing her delicate, pale
features. So like their mother. So unlike their father. And then, unbidden, the
crow-black figure of his love-lacking father came into sharp focus in his mind’s
eye.
    No longer would he just be the loner son of Albrecht
Heydrich, priest of Morr, Dieter determined. He would be Dieter Heydrich, doktor
of physick, Healer of Hangenholz. Yes, he liked the sound of that. Hunched under
his rough-haired blanket on the thin straw mattress of his bed he tried the
title out in his mind, as weary sleep pulled at him.
    Yes. Dieter Heydrich—Doktor Heydrich—the doktor of
Hangenholz.
    And then as sleep took him at last, one last, haunting image
swam into his mind and his dreams. It was a face he had never seen before, one
he could never have seen before. A horrific bandaged face with one baleful
yellow eye peering through the bloodstained rags, its mouth a mess of drawn back
gums and rotting elongated teeth. But he knew who it was nonetheless, although
he knew not its import at that time.
    It was the face of the Corpse Taker.

 
 
JAHRDRUNG
Krieger
     
     
    Looking back now, it’s hard to believe that I was ever
actually impressed by that blinkered old bigot, Theodrus. His mind was as closed
to new thinking as a cast-iron strongbox. He could not bring himself to believe
that there might be another way, another avenue of knowledge more far-reaching
and powerful than his own. For he was a coward at heart, afraid of those who
dared to question the primitive, out-dated understanding of the world that he
held to be irrefutable truth, a way of thought that he would not let go of, like
a mongrel with a scavenged leg of mutton. The guild master was a craven,
opinionated sop whose position of power and influence was built on a
feeble-minded adherence to the received knowledge and practices of others.
    But looking back, however much I might despise the memory of
Theodrus, it is nothing compared to the hatred and contempt I hold even now for
that whoreson witch hunter, Ernst Krieger, Barakos take him.
    Witch hunters! A pox on them! May they rot in the
festering hells of their own creation, burning perpetually at the stake,
throttled by their own intestines, as they have sent so many untold thousands to
their deaths, innocent and guilty alike.
    They dare to call themselves templars, divinely inspired holy
warriors, knights of Sigmar. In truth they pursue their own obsessive hunts and
exorcise their own daemons on the frail flesh of others.
    They are a plague upon mankind, worse than anything the
servants of the Ruinous Powers could ever conjure up. They claim piety and to be
the true servants of Sigmar, yet they spread suspicion like a sickness. Their
unbridled paranoia and pathological mistrust of others unnerves, terrifies and
ultimately alienates the Heldenhammer’s otherwise faithful flock.
    None can match their impossible, exacting ideals and
expectations, so all—save Sigmar himself—are found wanting. And since they
are the representatives, and instruments, of Sigmar’s divine retribution on the
earthly plane, anyone they suspect of heresy is immediately considered to be
guilty. And of course anyone who dares to disagree with them is a heretic.
    They are mentally unbalanced, obsessive, irrationally
paranoid individuals. They will burn, drown or put to the sword anyone—regardless of age or gender—without clemency. They are utterly without mercy
and most of them are without reason of any sort. They encourage fanaticism and
the mortification of the flesh, knowing little of its power. They breed
discontent and spread antagonism in their wake.
    Their idea of