The tale of Jurgen and Plague

"A plague is coming! I tell you, kind folk of Altdorf, a horrible doom approaches!" The demagogue had a crazed fire in his eyes, and gestured wildly from atop his box. "The Empire stagnates, its people fatten, ripe for the harvest!"

Jurgen watched the crowd from a fruit stall on the opposite side of the busy market street. None of the passerby seemed to pay the shouting lunatic any mind, but Jurgen knew better. He expertly studied the throng of marketgoers, looking for any sign of response to the heresies the old man spouted. He knew he'd have to deal with the old man soon enough, but Jurgen intended to make examples of anyone receptive to his sermon first.

"A thousand poxes, good people of Altdorf! A tide of foulness approaches, and your lords and nobles and merchants merely grow ponderous and heavy in waiting for it! Their bulk is the progeny of gluttony and stagnation! They will birth of death, and the world will fall!" Spittle was beginning to form at the edges of the man's mouth, and his eyes began to roll.

Jurgen cursed. If the man started chanting, he'd have to end it right there, and he had not yet demonstrated Sigmar's All-Seeing Justice. He quickly scanned the crowd again, catching the slightest hint of a nod from a bowed old peasant. He tapped one of the guards at his side, a huge man clad in black gleaming plate with a shaven head, and the man set off through the crowd, which parted before him as a sea afraid of a ship's hull. The woman Jurgen had specified, the peasant, looked with wide eyes at the guard's approach, but did not move.

"Even now the evil strikes! The Emperor would rather his people die by his own hammer than by the coming filth!" The demagogue was now frothing at the mouth, and snot dripped out of his nose. Spittle flew as he raged. "This Time of Men has come to an End! The End Times are upon us!"

"Enough!" Jurgen's voice boomed across the road. With but a few swift strides, he was beside the ranting lunatic. "This heresy stops here. Sigmar Omniscient does not abide this talk of filth in his kingdom!" Jurgen looked out over the throng of people, who had given him their undivided attention, lest they also be mistaken for heretics.

The old man began to shake uncontrollably and wail in some unknown language, his voice uluating inhumantly. Thick gouts of snot poured from his flaring nostrils.

Jurgen turned away. "First, people of Sigmar, see the justice done to those who would listen to heresy, and keep it sheltered in their hearts!" He gestured at the guard, who forced the old peasant forward. The crone offered little resistance, her eyes wide, but her mouth silent. Jurgen raised his hammer. "Sigmar gives you the release of death, heretic! Let you learn in death what you forgot in life!" Jurgen brought the hammer down on the woman's head, impacting with a wet overripe crunch, and the woman slipped lifeless to the ground.

The agitator behind him began gurgling, and jurgen turned to see bile running from his mouth. The old man coughed, spitting bile and snot and spittle.

"Decay comes for us! We are doomed!" The words were a hoarse whisper, the man's face covered in tears and all manner of bodily filth. Jurgen took a step back, unsure how to proceed.

Unsteadily, Jurgen raised his voice again at the crowd, which was watching in horror at the demagogue, who began retching again. "People of Sigmar, now see the justice done to those who would spread heresy, tainting their very souls with the bile of chaos!" Jurgen again raised his hammer, but hesitated. The man looked diseased, and disease would be hard to cleanse from Jurgen's hammer and vestments.

Before Jurgen could act, the old man gurgled again, only this time a monstrous stream of filth issued from his mouth, far more than could ever be contained within him. It spattered across the crowd, and screams issued from those so touched. The sound of terror boomed in the air, and within a moment the people on the road were trampling each other to escape.

Horrified, Jurgen swung his hammer down, but the man popped before the weapon could strike, gore and bile showering Jurgen in sickly red and green. This was no ordinary agitator, no ordinary blood. The foul ichor on Jurgen burned. It clawed his face, and seared through his armor as easily as an alchemist's metalbane. Jurgen dropped his hammer and fell to his kneees. Great Sigmar, what was this madness?

Jurgen's screams joined the crowd's, and the rank smell hang heavily in the tepid air of Altdorf.