It was the old nightmare.

Steel and flame and coldest fear. Shouts, mad roars:

"Blood for the Blood God!"

Black-armoured men charging out of the blizzard, and things worse, things far worse. An inhuman maw, dripping gore:

"Skulls for the Skull Throne!"

My sword, iced over, stuck in its scabbard: the Norseman's axe coming down on my head. I cannot draw my sword... I cannot draw my sword!

I CANNOT DRAW MY SWORD!

I awoke with a jolt, my arm sweeping the silver decanter and goblet from my bedside table. They crashed to the floor with an awful clang, the dregs of last night's wine flooding across the alabaster tiles. Blood on snow. Gods, I thought groggily, that's a bad omen if ever there was one.

Fritz was through the door fast as a hare. "Lord Lucien! M'lord, is everything alright?!"

"Everything's fine, Fritz," I said, cupping my aching head. "Just a silly dream. Be a good fellow, will you?"

The footman set himself to cleaning the mess up, and I turned away and put a hand to my chest. My heart was pounding, fit to burst. I was too old for this. Perhaps this was what carried relics like me off in the end. By Haendryk, it had been a long time since I'd had nightmares. I'd thought they were done with me.

By the light shining through the stained glass image of Sigmar, I could tell it was just after sunrise. The patron god of the Empire stood, forever in the window, silently judging me. I couldn't help but sneer before I sat up, dizzy as a dervish and with a headache to boot. There was no way I was getting back to a decent sleep now, I decided, so when Fritz was done I told him to put the kettle to boil and to throw on the best bacon.

My name is Lucien de Valois. In the stories, they say my fame was won at a time when knights were noble warrior poets and the sword honour made steel, and how I was a paragon for all others, so virtuous and brave and so on and so forth and pass the flagon 'round. Well, I'm going to tell you a very different tale, one in which 'noble' and 'brave' are far from the best descriptors of my behaviour in those fateful years, and you may be sure the only poetry that ever interested me was the poetry of a pert rump. For you don't survive to the prodigious age of seventy-two by catering to the whims of lunatics or by marching to your doom to help fulfil the ambitions of upstarts. No, like some great Cathayan thinker recommended, I have managed to cling on for dearest life long enough to see the bodies of my enemies and rivals float down the river. But more of that anon.

By late morning, I'd pushed the old nightmare back into the deepest lockbox of my mind, and I was feeling as renewed and prepared as a septuagenarian can feel. Indeed, I thought it passing odd that now the day for my annual appearance at the Emperor's court had arrived again, my traditional compulsion to jump on the nearest horse and to flee to Tilia was absent entirely.

And so it was with a veritable spring in my heel that I came to descend the steps of my keep, to the cheers of my servants and fieldfolk, all gathered in the sunshine to see me off. Yes, Gretzelhopf is a merry little place with a good beerhall and hearty people, but there's nothing like a few weeks in the capital, with all the far more exotic entertainments it draws to tickle my fancy.

Just after noon, the palace coach from Altdorf rolled into the cobblestoned courtyard, pulled by four magnificent Reikland coursers twice the size of the local nags. I condescended to give the crowd a wave before I jumped in and sped off, bouncing away the journey with a good blanc and two courtesans someone had thoughtfully provided.

At the clogged Northern Gate, the throng parted as if for the Emperor himself, and I entered the city to great blasts of trumpetry. Altdorf; cramped, soggy, filthy, smelly, throat-cutty Altdorf. Altdorf of the famously steep roofs and half-timbered buildings, with all of them leaning tipsily toward each other, and whole neighbourhoods webbed with catwalks fit for a burglar's dream. It is the very heart of the Empire, still standing thanks to gunpowder, steel, faith and the Colleges of Magic (though I was never overly disposed toward the latter two). The capital has weathered siege, plague and the most villainous plots, but it has never been broken, and in the lightest and darkest days of Men, it has ever been a holdfast of something approaching civilisation.

While the giggling harlots and I hastily put our clothes back on, the coach rolled through the streets, now joined by mounted Imperial Heralds who roared at the tops of their voices that the great paladin hero Lucien de Valois is returned once more to instruct the Empire's knights in the ways of chivalry and honour and all the rest of it. Then, as was traditional, for two days and nights, Altdorf was abuzz with Sir Lucien-themed plays, operas, re-enactments (hah!) and even puppet shows featuring cloth dolls of me on horseback riding down dragons. On the street corners, enterprising folk told the Ten Tales de Valois without charge, while their cutpurse compatriots worked the crowds. And throughout the metropolis, those small few who were heretofore ignorant quickly learned what a splendid fellow I am, for wasn't it I who took it upon myself to endure the world's greatest tests so that ordinary mortals like them shouldn't have to?Oh, how they must see me as I studiously shamble up the steps every year to receive some trinket or other from the city fathers. A silver-bearded ancient, faltering under the weight of his scarlet armour, gods love 'im. I wonder if they truly quite believe it all. It's fanciful stuff, yes, and actually about a quarter true. But if they were ever to discover the complete truth, unvarnished by the needs of politics and my own wholesale lying: if they learned how I failed every godsdamned test that was ever thrust my unwilling way, or at least cheated, lied or backstabbed through them... Well, it's fortunate that the dead haven't managed to inform on me yet.

After a seemingly interminable parade and some more demented speechifying by the Emperor's wormlings, it was once more into the coach and on to the perfumed air and cleanly relief of the palace, where as usual I made a good show of creaking in to hear the prattling of sycophants and the phenomenal stupidity of the great high wormling himself. A different man than old Karl-Franz, this one. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely; well, it can also turn you into an absolute bore, and K-F had never been that. But more wine proved distracting enough, and I found comfort in knowing that everyone who's anyone agrees I am too old to be tasked with anything more perilous than admiring artless brats play-acting with wooden swords.

Yes, it's a grand life for an old lech like me to have his own pocket of land and to safely attend court and be treated like the Emperor's favourite uncle. And yet, on this particular occasion, it all seemed so blasted fleeting somehow. Spending my two week visit in the palace gardens by day and my nights in pissing away the Emperor's coin in all the clubs and taverns and gambling houses I could stomach, with as many wenches as I could carry on two arms, I found that something didn't sit quite right with me. The best beers and wines of Altdorf didn't cheer me like they used to, and the most experienced pillow women could raise nothing from me but a weak smile.

The old passions were simply gone. It was mighty unsettling, I can tell you.

I slowly realised that for the first time in my long twilight, I'd begun to consider my mortality. Questions were hatched, and they wouldn't fly away: Would next year's gardens be those of Morr, god of death? Would my demise really not be at the evil end of some bastard's sword, but because a silly little thing like a nightmare proved too much for my old carcass?

Awful thoughts to have with your hands around a pair of award winning tits, eh?

But of course that's how my death would be, how I had prayed it would be all through my youth. An old man warm in his bed at home, the briefest moment of pain, and then out like a candle. That's the soldier's prayer. Yet I wasn't ready, even now, not quite.

I cursed that damned nightmare again but decided then and there, as I watched the son of some nobleman have his legs swept from under him (right down on his arse, hard, the little swordsman!), that if I were ever going to commit my story, my true story, to paper, it had better be now, before it was too late. I'd never see it published, of course, and if you're reading this within a hundred years of my death, someone has broken a sacred oath. Truths as blunt as I plan to tell would shake too many pillars. Yet I thought of Sigmar, his stained-glass form looking down at me in judgement all these years. And I thought of all the guff that commoners and high born alike are fed about heroes and sacrifice and loyalty to emperors and kings unto death.

I wanted to produce a tome that would send a shiver right through the halls of power for centuries to come (once I was safely deceased, naturally). A genuine account, for once, of how the business of saving the realms of Men does not always fall to visionary leaders, incorruptible knights and majestic wizards, but also, more often than you'd think, to villains, cheats and folk whose only interest is in saving their own miserable skins, and Khorne take the hindmost.

Yes, that would do the trick. Putting a pin to the gassy balloon of it all. That would give me a great deal of satisfaction, indeed.

I suppose you could say it all started with an itch. Not in the Empire, but in the greatest, richest city of them all: the free port city of Marienburg in the Wasteland. My home.

"Will you ever stop fidgetin' with it?" Alina complained. "You've been at it all night, and it's only gonna make it worse!"

"I don't pay you for medical advice," I snapped, but it was true. It had been hours. Yet no matter how hard I rubbed and scratched, the itch in my right foot just would not abate.

I sat up to take a closer look. My heel was bleeding now, and it looked so raw and puffy that I doubted very much if I could walk on it.

Alina started to put her blouse back on. "Oh, sod this. I want you out o' here, young Master de Valois. An' you'll be payin' me for them sheets," she added rather spitefully, "Araby cotton, they is, an' your rotten bloody foot all over 'em!"

This was too much. "Oh, shut up about your blasted sheets," I spat, "and fetch me a basin of water, will you?"

She tutted but quickly brought water and towels, and I set to washing. What had I picked up in this wretched slum? There I was, seventeen, heir to a successful silk trading company, and stricken with some Suiddock pox that would no doubt render me impotent or kill me flat. One read about such things in the gazettes all the time. Oh, but it was maddening. Had I stood on something? A nail perhaps? Surely I would have noticed. I wasn't that drunk.

I did what I could but soon had to admit there was nothing for it. I had only made it worse. Not only was it bleeding fit for a slaughterhouse, but my clawing had split the skin and a large flap had come loose.

"Well, that's just disgustin', that is," Alina volunteered cheerily, taking to a chair and starting up her awful pipe. "It looks like somethin' that'd come off a snake."

The stink of dwarven tobacco quickly choked the room.

Remembering her there, puffing away by the window with the pale green glow of the moon Morrslieb on her face and bare shoulders, I'm not fully sure what I saw in her. She would have been all of thirty, with crooked teeth and greasy hair that only sometimes passed for blonde. But she was the first real woman I'd ever had, you see, and I was, in my own juvenile way, quite taken with her. It was her eyes. She had the loveliest big brown eyes, when she wasn't scowling. I'd spent forty guilders on her in the two months I'd known her, young fool that I was. My manservant Sven had located her for me, as per my described preferences, and twice weekly he would escort me to the brothel she plied her trade in. Oh, there must have been three hundred women like her along the Suiddock docks who'd have happily provided her services for half her price (she saw a wealthy young fool like me coming a mile off). But she did have those eyes.

"Why do you smoke that ghastly stuff?" I huffed, picking at my foot anew.

"Used entertain a dwarf once," she said, with the awful smog shooting from her nostrils. "Out of Karak Varr, 'e were." She looked out the window down at the quay. "A true gen'leman. 'E wouldn't go at 'is dirty feet in fron' o' me, I can tell you that for nothin'."

"A dwarf? And a gentledwarf no less?" I laughed. "By Haendryk, you Suiddock folk never fail to amaze!"

She scowled that scowl again and changed the subject. "Haendryk? 'E's that fancy god what you menchantfolk pray to, yeah?"

I ignored her wittering, finally succeeding in peeling the flap of skin off entirely. "Ah," I sighed, queerly relieved, "now that's better."

Then a funny thing happened, and my life changed forever.

Alina began to scream.

I stared at her with a stupid grin on my face, lost. "What in the-" was all I managed to say before she'd dropped her pipe and had bolted from the room.

It was extraordinary, and deeply frightening. There was a hand mirror on the locker by the bed. I lunged for it and held it out before my poor heel. "Really, Alina," I shouted after her, "you're being rather squeamish, considering what... you... do... for... a..."

My heart went crossways, and the living sweat came pouring out of me. For on the ball of my foot, just as if some madman had tattooed it there, was a symbol every quarter-sane elf, dwarf, halfling and man fears and reviles.

It was the eight-pointed sigil of the Dark Gods.

I sat on those faux Araby cotton sheets in a state of cold transfixion. It was all up with me. I was doomed, tainted forever by the Ruinous Powers, a soul chosen for eternal damnation. But not before the witch hunters slowly tortured the life out of me, naturally. Soon I would sprout tentacles from my ribs or grow horns or any number of unimaginable horrors. The copper crimsons and lower-class plays were full of stories like the one in which I had now found myself the main character. I was a monster, something to be hunted.

Alina's screaming was coming from the quay, and it presently was joined by other voices; shouts and calls for the Black Caps, Marienburg's city watch. "Mutant! There's a mutant on the loose!" some crone gleefully screeched.

Just then my manservant Sven barreled into the room, doing up his pants. "What in the name of gods, Lucien?! There's a mob out there!" he said, taking a spy out the window. "What's happened?!"

"Oh, Sven, Sven," I blubbered. "Sven, they're going to kill me. Look." I turned my heel to show him. The big Averlander reeled, putting a hand to his mouth, saying nothing. The din outside was growing louder, and I could hear the flummoxed doorman downstairs arguing with someone through the sliding peephole. No-one would publicly harbour a mutant. Any second now he was sure to let them in!

"Right," Sven said, tearing away his gaze from the awful marking. "Right. We... have t-to... get you home. We'll get you in the carriage and... we'll get you home. Put your boot on and follow me."

We hurried along the landing and down the back stairs of the place, past gawking harlots and pantsless patrons.

The shouting suddenly seemed incredibly close, and I knew the doorman must have let them through, damn him. No nice tip for that bastard.

Sven took a quick look out the back door before pulling me out into a filthy alley. "I left the carriage on the quay. Stay here," he said and ran off before I could object.

I stood sobbing miserably.

Even if I got out of there with my head intact, what would I do? How was I going to explain this to mother? Would she hide me, smuggle me out of the city? Would she turn me in?

A heavy hand came down on my shoulder, and I turned to thank Sven and promise him a fortune in gold. But it wasn't Sven. It was the chief pimp of the establishment, Elias. "Well," the fat thug slurred drunkenly, "if it isn't the lord of the manor skippin' off after disturbin' me whores!"

He didn't know. The vile twit thought I'd gotten legless and started up a game of hide-and-go-hump again, or something. Last time he'd threatened to throw me in the river.

"Yes, Elias, I'm sorry," I splurted. "Will five guilders cover it? I don't have it on me right now, of course, but I can-"

One of the harlots swung open the back door.

"Elias, come quick! Alina's sayin' that posh boy from north o' the river's a mutant... Oh! It's you..."

Elias fixed me with a look that was suddenly at least a quarter more sober. "Don't you move, m'lad!" he barked and shot out an arm to grab me. But even at that age I had a sense for these things, and I was ducking under his side and fleeing headlong out of the alley before his hand had closed on thin air.

I raced up a narrow street and on to the quay, almost right into the path of the carriage.

"Jump up, Lucien!"

I took Sven's arm and he pulled me up next to him on the coach box and was giving the horses hell just as Elias was upon us.

"Ride, Sven, ride!" I roared and took a happy opportunity to send the pimp to the ground with a good kick in the face before we jolted off at a dangerous clip.

We were barely away when the first of the mob was coming back out the front door of the brothel.

Yet we were away. I had escaped, I foolishly allowed myself to think.

I wouldn't be giving that place my business again, that was for damned sure. I laughed then, a mad, high, nervous laugh that I could tell frightened Sven just as much as the sight of that thing on my foot.

We flew along the quay, which was mercifully quiet, the carriage bouncing around on the cobblestones fit to fling us into the river. There was no sign of the Black Caps, thank the gods, but I knew it was a race to get to the High Bridge and back to civilisation before someone alerted them.

For the bumpkins reading, the High Bridge of Marienburg is truly one of the wonders of the world. The tallest of tall ships' masts can pass comfortably under it, but that really only gives you an impression of its height. It is also a hamlet all its own, with fortress-like towers looming over the shops and houses that crowd its entire span, many of which are extended dangerously beyond its sides and out over the River Reik a certain death dive below. On Hightower Isle, connected to the Suiddock by the Niederbrug Bridge, stands the southern strut of this giant structure. The Hightower is both support and access to the bridge, with carriages, riders and pedestrians traveling up and down its spiral roadway at all hours of the night and day.

And we fairly charged up it, with me looking back down at the lights of the Suiddock, certain the clang of alarm bells would sound at any moment.

But they didn't, and we were galloping across the High Bridge with no gatekeepers or guards accosting us, the moon Morrslieb painting all that is seen an eerie pale green, like in the nursery rhyme.

North of the river, north of the river, I kept repeating in my mind. There was safety there, in my neighbourhood of Goudberg, where entitled folk like me could get away with anything, right up to murder, or so I'd heard. Just so long as you had enough bribe gold, of course, and you may be certain the de Valois family had gold coming out its ears in those days. Surely there was nothing that couldn't be smoothed over with a crate of the stuff delivered to the right address? Yes, yes, everything would be as it had been. I was sure of it.

But all the gold in the world wouldn't have spared me the destiny that was just now beginning to cast its gargantuan shadow over my miniscule existence.