The smell hit Sigdir before his hand even touched the door of the hovel. An acrid stench of fear seeping from rotten wood, mingled with the more tangible odors of wet animal and spoiled herbal remedies. It was the smell of madness in hiding, of a mind gnawed by what it had seen and could not digest. Marcus, within him, recognized this scent. It reminded him of the trenches, of men who had seen too much, whose eyes had gone empty and never filled again.
He knocked, with the flat of his hand, not brutally but with a firmness that made the rotten doorframe tremble.
Silence, then a rough clearing of a throat from inside. "Go away!" growled a voice, ragged and raw with terror. "I have nothing left! Nothing to sell, nothing to steal! Let me die in peace!"
"I am not here to take," Sigdir replied, his voice deliberately low and neutral, a tone he had learned for not frightening wounded beasts. "The man from the Frozen Bear spoke. He said you saw something. A stone."
Another silence, longer this time. Then the sound of a bolt being drawn with difficulty. The door creaked open a few centimeters, just enough for a single eye, bloodshot and set in livid skin, to observe him. The eye scanned Sigdir's massive silhouette, lingering on the hammer at his belt, the sword on his back, then rose to his face with its sharp features and Nordic pallor. Confusion showed in that single eye.
"You're not a Woodsman... nor a Kislevite from the deep forests..." the voice murmured, suspicious.
"No." Sigdir offered no further explanation. He waited.
The door groaned and opened a little wider. Old Yuri was a wreck. Hunched, terrifyingly thin, he seemed to be held upright only by the fear that petrified him. His hands, afflicted by a constant tremor, were claw-like and filthy. The hut behind him was a jumble of poorly stretched pelts, jars containing dubious substances, and gnawed bones.
"The stone..." Yuri whispered, as if speaking the word burned his tongue. "It bleeds. It whispers. It calls."
"Show me where," Sigdir asked, not as a request, but as a statement of fact. A declaration of intent.
Yuri recoiled a step, shaking his head with frantic violence. "No! No, I will not go! Not for all the Tzarina's gold! The trees... the trees have eyes there. The earth breathes evil. I felt... I felt it wanted to change me. Unmake me. Make me into something else."
Sigdir plunged his hand into a pocket of his tunic and pulled out a small vial of crude metal, similar to the one holding Drifa's poison but sealed with black wax. "Rune of Warding," he said, offering it. "From the forge of Bronzebeard. It won't protect you from an axe, but it will keep... evil spirits at bay. Long enough to flee."
Yuri looked at the vial like a drowning man looks at a rope. Temptation and fear waged a violent war on his ravaged face.
"In exchange," Sigdir continued, "you tell me how to find this place."
The trapper hesitated for another long moment, then his trembling hand closed around the vial like a claw. He clutched it to his heart.
"Take the northeast path, behind the wolf cemetery," he stammered, his eyes suddenly glazed, as if seeing the nightmare again. "Follow the frozen river to the dead waterfall. There, you leave the water. You will see twisted trees, growing in spirals against the world's good sense. Their bark oozes a black sap that smells of rotten metal. Walk west. The air will grow heavy, warm even in deep winter. You will smell lightning and fresh blood. And you will hear it."
"Hear what?"
Yuri looked up at him with the eyes of a drowned man. "The heartbeat of the stone."
The information was more precise than Sigdir had hoped. He nodded, a rare gesture of gratitude from him. "Stay here. Bolt your door."
He turned to leave.
"Wait!" Yuri cried. Sigdir froze. The old man stared at him, a strange glimmer of lucidity in his mad eyes. "Why? Why go? Are you seeking death?"
Sigdir thought of the pendant hidden against his chest. He thought of Bordin's lessons on purifying taints. He thought of Marcus's weariness in the face of evil, a weariness that could only be resolved by confronting it.
"I seek to understand," he said finally. And it was the purest truth.
Without another word, he walked away from the foul-smelling hut, leaving the old man clutching his talismanic vial like a lifeline.
Yuri's description drew a clear map in his mind. The "dead waterfall" was a landmark known to the few experienced trappers. A place where the water had ceased to flow centuries ago, frozen into a spectacular cascade of black ice and stone. A sinister place.
He went first to the village blacksmith's shop and spent a good portion of the merchants' pay to have the edge of his sword sharpened and the head of his hammer re-honed. He also bought provisions: dried meat, hardtack, a waterskin of Kislevite spirits to fight the cold—and to clean wounds.
As he left the smithy, a shadow detached itself from the wall of a nearby building. It was one of the Kossars who had been drinking at the inn, a tall fellow with a scar running down his cheek.
"Word is you're asking about the old forest, stranger," he said, his tone not quite hostile, not quite friendly. It was a cautious observation.
Sigdir stopped, measuring the man with his gaze. "That is correct."
The Kossar crossed his arms. "Fools and the damned venture there. If you're looking to die, that's your business. But if what you disturb there decides to follow your path back... towards our walls... then it becomes ours."
It was a warning, not a threat. Sigdir appreciated it. "If I disturb something that deserves disturbing," he replied calmly, "I will ensure it disturbs no one ever again."
The Kossar stared at him for a long moment, then an almost imperceptible nod answered him. "Good hunting, then." He spat on the ground and returned to his post.
The message was clear: the town would not help him, but it would not hinder him either. He was alone.
At dawn the next day, as an icy wind swept the deserted streets of Volgrad, Sigdir passed through the gates of the stockade and plunged into the white silence of the taiga. He headed northeast.
Towards the dead waterfall. Towards the trees that grow upside down. Towards the heartbeat of the stone.