Chapter I: Introduction
— l Ife , a fTer d eaTh — By Dan Abnett
T he rain caught them as they were negotiating the slopes of rubble behind the cattle market, or, more precisely, behind the wasteland where the cattle market had once stood. Franz looked heavenwards as the first few spots hit his brow, and said a grace to Taal-in-the-sky that it would only be a light shower. But more spots came, heavier, and then the deluge began. There was no point running for shelter. Every one of them was skin-soaked in a moment. Besides, they couldn’t run. The rubble slopes were too precarious at the best of times, and now they were treacherously wet. Safe progress could be only one slow, carefully planted step after the next. Despite their care, two of the rag-pickers went over in the first few minutes of the downpour, as loose tiles or bricks slid out under the soles of their pathetic shoes and sent them sprawling. One landed hard on his backside. The other, a woman of advancing years, fell badly and began to slither down the slope itself, causing an avalanche of dislodged rubble. Franz and Grunor went down to help her, picking their way cautiously, the filthy rat-catcher more steady because of his low centre of gravity. “What’ye think, Falker?” Grunor asked, the heavy rain streaming off his scarred nose and the long, pitch-wound strands of his beard. “He’ll turn us back,” Franz replied. “He won’t want to, but he’ll turn us back. The streets will be a-mire already. We’ll be wasting our time unless this stops and it dries out a bit.” The Dwarf nodded, and together they helped the unfortunate woman up, half-carrying her as they made their way back up the slope. Werner Broch was standing near the summit of the slag-heap, rain dripping off him, gazing at the ruins beyond the veil of rain.
“We’re going back,” he announced at length, his bark delivered with the characteristic twang of a Middenland accent. There was a chorus of disapproval from the thirty plus rag-pickers in the procession behind him. “Ulric’s arse to you!” Broch snarled back. “I make the decisions and that’s my word on it! Falker, Grunor, get the line to come about!” If anything, the rain was getting heavier. Franz made his way carefully along the line of the hunched, shabby rag-pickers, and began to wave his arms to get them to herd the other way. Further down the line, the Dwarf did the same. “Back! We’re going back!” Franz called, clapping his hands. “Back to the camp! No picking today!” The girl caught at his sleeve as he went past. He’d noticed her three days earlier when she’d first come to the camp and been put in their troop. Imke, Imma, something like that. She was as filthy as the rest, her skin ingrained black with dirt in some places, and her clothes were torn and stiff with clay-mud, but under it all she was young, and there was an intense cast to her eyes that he thought unusual. “Really?” she asked. “Back to camp? We’ll never make a scrap at this rate.” Franz shrugged. He gestured about them. The rainstorm was so thick, it was dissolving the distance, and raising a kind of steam from the ruined city. “Nothing else for it,” Franz said. “Those gods as have not yet deserted us are shedding tears for Wolfenburg today.” Wolfenburg, great Wolfenburg, first city of Ostland and Franz Falker’s home once upon a day, had fallen to the hosts of the enemy the previous year. A vast and ravaging horde, commanded, so the stories went, by some warlord named Surtha Lenk, had risen in the
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