by William King
Everything went dark as the lantern went out. It was like being caught in a nightmare. He couldn’t see, he was afraid to take a breath, he was stuck in a narrow corridor underground and somewhere out there was a monster armed with deadly, incomprehensible weapons.
Felix felt the slick slime of the stone under his hands. As he fumbled he suddenly felt nothing. His hand was over the stew. He felt unbalanced and afraid to move, as if he could suddenly topple in any direction and plunge into the sewage. He closed his eyes to keep them from stinging and forced himself to move on. His heart pounded. His lungs felt as if they were about to burst. The flesh between his shoulder blades crawled.
He expected a saw-toothed blade to be plunged into his back at any moment. He could hear someone trying to scream behind him and failing. They gurgled and gasped and their breathing sounded terribly laboured as if their lungs had filled with fluid.
It was the gas, Felix realised. Gotrek had told him of the foul weapons which the skaven used, the products of a Chaos-inspired alchemy allied to a warped and inhuman imagination. He knew that to take one breath of that foul-smelling air was to die. He also knew that he could not keep from breathing indefinitely.
Think, he told himself. Find a place where the air is clear. Keep moving. Get away from the killing cloud. Don’t panic. Don’t think about the huge rat-like shape creeping ever closer in the dark with its blade bared. As long as you keep calm you’ll be safe. Slowly, inch by torturous inch, his lungs screaming for air, he forced himself to crawl towards safety.
Then the weight fell on him. Silver stars flickered before his eyes and all the air was driven from his lungs. Before he could stop himself he took in a mouthful of the foul air. He lay in the dark gasping and slowly it dawned on him that he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t choking. No knife had been driven into his back. He forced himself to try and move. He couldn’t. It was as if a great weight lay across him. Terror flashed through his mind. Maybe his back was broken. Maybe he was a cripple.
“Is that you, Felix?” he heard Rudi whisper. Felix almost laughed with relief. His burden was his huge fellow sewerjack.
“Yes… where are the others?”
“I’m all right,” he heard Hef say.
“Me too, brother.” That was Spider.
“Gotrek, where are you?” No answer. Had the gas got him? It seemed impossible. The Trollslayer couldn’t be dead. Nothing as insidious as gas could have killed him. It wouldn’t be fair.
“Where’s the sarge?”
“Anybody got some light?”
Flint sparked. A lantern flickered to life. Felix saw that something large was shuffling towards them along the shadows of the ledge. Instinctively his hand reached for his sword. It wasn’t there. He had dropped it when he fell. The others stood poised and waiting.
“It’s me,” said the Trollslayer. “Bloody human got away. His legs were longer.”
“Where’s Gant?” Felix asked.
“Look for yourself, manling.”
Felix squeezed past and went to do so. The gas had vanished as quickly as it appeared. But it had done its work on Sergeant Gant. He lay in a pool of blood. His eyes were wide and staring. Trickles of red emerged from his nostrils and mouth.
Felix checked the body. It was already cooling and there was no pulse. There was no wound on the corpse.
“How did he die, Gotrek?” Felix knew about magic but the fact that a man could be killed and have no mark left on him made his mind reel.
“He drowned, manling. He drowned in his own blood.” The Slayer’s voice was cold and furious.
Was that how he dealt with fear, Felix wondered? By turning it into anger. Only after the dwarf went over and started kicking the corpse did he notice the dead skaven. Its skull had been split by the thrown hatchet.
Wearily Felix lay on his pallet of straw and stared at the cracked ceiling, too tired even to sleep. From below came the sound of shouting as Lisabette argued with one of her seemingly interminable stream of customers.
Felix felt like banging on the floor and telling them to either shut up or get out, but he knew that it would only cause more trouble than it would solve. As he did every night, he resolved that he would begin looking for another rooming house tomorrow. He knew that tomorrow night he would be too tired to start.
Ideas chased each other like frolicking rats inside the cavern of his brain. He was at that stage where weariness made his thoughts strange even to himself. Odd conjunctions of images and maze-like chains of reasoning came from nowhere and went nowhere in his mind. He was too tired even to be angry about the fate of Sergeant Gant, killed in the line of duty and destined for a pauper’s grave on the fringes of the Gardens of Morr. A watch captain too bored to pay much attention to reports of monsters in the sewers. No family to mourn him, no friends save his fellow sewerjacks, who were even now toasting his memory in the Drunken Guardsman.
Gant was a cold corpse now. And the same thing could so easily have happened to me, Felix thought. If he had been in the wrong place when the globe exploded. If Gotrek had not told us to hold our breath. If the Slayer had not pushed him away from the gas. If. If. If. So many ifs.
What was he doing, anyway? Was this how he intended to spend the rest of his days; chasing monsters in the dark? His life seemed to have no reason to it any more. It merely moved from one violent episode to the next.
He thought of the alternatives. Where would he have been now if he had not killed Wolfgang Krassner in that duel, if he had not been expelled from university, if he had not been disinherited by his father? Would he be, like his brothers, working in the family business: married, secure, settled? Or would something else have gone wrong? Who could tell?
A small black rat scuttled across the rafters of the room. When he had first viewed this attic with its one small window, he had imagined that it would at least be free from the rats which infested all of the buildings in the New Quarter. He had deluded himself with the thought that the rodents would have heart attacks from the effort of climbing all those stairs. He had been wrong. The rats of the New Quarter were bold and adventurous and looked better fed than many of the humans. He had seen some of the larger ones chasing a cat.
Felix shuddered. Now he wished he had not started thinking about rats—it made him think of the mysterious aristocrat and the skaven in the sewers. What had been the purpose of that clandestine meeting? What profit could any man find in dealing with such alien monstrosities? And how could it be that folk could roister and whore through the teeming streets of Nuln and be unaware of the fact that evil things burrowed and crawled and nested not six yards beneath their feet? Perhaps they just didn’t want to know. Perhaps it was true, as some philosophers claimed, that the end of the world was coming and it was best to simply lose oneself in whatever pleasures one could find.
Footsteps approached on the stairs. He could hear the old rickety boards creak under the weight. He had been going to complain that the whole place was a firetrap but Frau Zorin had always seemed too pitiful and poor to bother.
The footsteps did not stop on the landing below but continued to come closer.
Felix reached beneath his pillow for his knife. He could think of no one who would be visiting him at this time of night and Frau Zorin’s was right in the roughest part of the New Quarter.
Noiselessly he rose and padded on bare feet to the door. He stifled a curse as a splinter embedded itself in the sole of his foot. There was a knock on the door.
“Who is it?” Felix asked, although he already knew the answer. He recognised the old widow woman’s wheezing breath even through the thin wood.
“It’s me,” Frau Zorin shrieked. “You have visitors, Herr Jaeger.”
Cautiously Felix opened the door. Outside stood two huge burly men. They carried clubs in their hands and looked as if they knew how to use them. It was the man they flanked that interested Felix. He was handing the landlady a gold coin, which she took with an ingratiating smile. As the man turned to look at th
e door Felix recognised him. It was his brother, Otto.
“Come in,” Felix said, holding the door open. Otto stood staring at him for a long time, as if he couldn’t quite recognise his younger brother. Then he strode into the room.
“Franz, Karl, remain outside,” he said quietly. His voice carried an authority that Felix had not heard in it before, an echo of their father’s calm, curt manner.
Felix was suddenly acutely aware of the poverty of his surroundings: the uncarpeted floor, the straw pallet, the bare walls, the hole in the sloping roof. He saw the whole scene through his brother’s eyes and wasn’t at all impressed.
“What do you want, Otto?” he asked brusquely.
“Your taste in accommodation hasn’t changed much, has it? Still slumming.”
“You haven’t come all the way from Altdorf to discuss my domestic arrangements. What do you want?”
“Do you have to hold that knife so ready? I’m not going to rob you. If I was, I would have brought Karl and Franz in.”
Felix slid the knife back into its scabbard. “Maybe I would surprise Karl and Franz.”
Otto tilted his head to one side and studied Felix’s face. “Maybe you would at that. You’ve changed, little brother.”
“So have you.” It was true. Otto was still the same height as Felix but he was far broader. He had put on weight. His chest had thickened and his hips broadened. His large soft belly strained against his broad leather belt. Felix guessed that his thick blond beard hid several chins. His cheeks were fatter and seemed padded. His hair was thinner and there were bags under his eyes. His head jutted forward aggressively. He had grown to resemble the old man. “You look more like father.”
Otto smiled wryly. “Sad but true. Too much good living, I’m afraid. You look like you could use some yourself. You’ve become very skinny.”
“How did you find me?”
“Come on, Felix. How do you think I found you? We have our agents and we wanted to find you. How many tall blond men travelling in the company of dwarf Slayers do you think there are in the Empire? When the report came into my office about two mercenaries answering the description I thought I’d better investigate.”
“Your office?”
“I run the business in Nuln now.”
“What happened to Schaffer?”
“Vanished.”
“With money?”
“Apparently not. We think he was deemed politically undesirable. The Countess has a very efficient secret police. Things happen in Nuln these days.”
“Not Schaffer! There was never a more loyal citizen in the Empire. He thought the sun shone out of the Emperor’s fundament.”
“Nuln is only just part of the Empire, brother. Countess Emmanuelle rules here.”
“But she’s the most flighty woman in the Empire, or so they say.”
“Von Halstadt, her Chief Magistrate, is very efficient. He’s the real ruler of Nuln. He hates mutants. And rumour has it that Schaffer had begun to show stigmata.”
“Never.”
“That’s what I said. But believe this, little brother: Nuln is no place to come under suspicion of being a mutant. Such people vanish.”
“But it’s the most liberal city of the Empire.”
“Not any more.” Otto looked around fearfully as if realising that he had said too much. Felix shook his head ruefully. “Don’t worry, brother. No spies here.”
“Don’t be too sure about that, Felix,” he said quietly. “In these days, in this city, walls have ears.” When he spoke again his voice was loud and held a note of false heartiness. “Anyway I came around to ask if you’d like to dine with me tomorrow. We can eat out if you’d like.”
Felix half wanted to refuse and half wanted to talk to his brother some more. There was much family news to catch up on and perhaps the possibility of returning to the fold. That thought alone frightened him as well as intrigued him.
“Yes, I’d like that.”
“Good. I’ll have my coach collect you from here.”
“After I’ve finished work.” Otto shook his head slowly. “Of course, Felix. Of course.”
They said their goodbyes. It was only after his brother had left that Felix began to wonder what could so frighten a man of Otto’s power and influence that he would worry about eavesdroppers in a place like Frau Zorin’s.
Fritz von Halstadt, head of the secret police of Nuln, sat among his files and brooded. That damned dwarf had come within an inch of catching him. He had actually tried to lay his filthy hands on him. He had come so near to undoing all his good work. One blow would have been enough. It would have brought Chaos and darkness to the city von Halstadt was sworn to protect.
Von Halstadt reached out and raised his cut glass pitcher. The water was still warm. Good, the servant had boiled it for exactly eleven minutes as he commanded. He was to be commended. Von Halstadt poured some into a glass and inspected it. He raised the glass to the light and checked it for sediment, for stuff floating in it. There was none. No contamination. Good.
Chaos could come so easily. It was everywhere. The wise knew that and used it to their advantage. Chaos could take many forms; some were worse than others. There were relatively benign forms, like the skaven—and there was the festering evil of mutation.
Von Halstadt knew that the rat-men just wanted to be left alone, to rule their underground kingdom and pursue their own form of civilisation. They were intelligent and sophisticated and they could be dealt with. If you had what they wanted, they would make and keep bargains. Certainly they had their own plans, but that made them comprehensible, controllable. They were not like mutants: vile, insidious, evil things that lurked everywhere, that hid in secret and manipulated the world.
We could all so easily be puppets on the end of the mutant’s foul strings, he thought. That is why we must be vigilant. The enemy are everywhere, and more and more are spawned all the time.
The commoners were the worst for it, spawning an endless string of slovenly, lazy, good-for-nothings. Most mutants were born among the herd. It made a sick kind of sense. There were more of them and they were notoriously immoral and lewd and licentious.
The thought made him rigid with horror. He knew that the mutants took advantage of the commoners’ stupidity. They were so clever. They used the ill-educated, lazy oafs: filled their heads with seditious nonsense, fed their envious anger of their betters, whipped them up to riot and loot and destroy. Look at how they had ruined his poor father, burned the estate to the ground in one of their brutish uprisings. And his father had been the kindest and gentlest man who had ever lived.
Well, Fritz von Halstadt would not make that mistake. He was too clever and too strong. He knew how to deal with revolutionaries and upstarts. He would stand guard and protect mankind from the menace of the mutant. He would fight them with their own weapons; terror, cunning and ruthless violence.
That was why he kept his files, even though his beloved ruler Emmanuelle laughed at them, calling them his secret pornography. Within these lovingly detailed and carefully cross-indexed records was a kind of power. Information was power. He knew who all the potential revolutionaries were. His web of spies and agents kept him informed. He knew which nobles secretly belonged to the Dark Cults and had them watched at all times. He had sources that could penetrate any meeting place, and who no one ever suspected.
That was part of his bargain with the skaven. They knew many things and could find out many more. Their little spies were everywhere, unsuspected. He used their dark wisdom and dealt with the lesser of two evils to keep the greater anarchy at bay.
He picked up the small framed portrait Emmanuelle had given him and licked his thin lips. He thought about her choice of words for his files: “pornography”. He was shocked that she had used such a word, even knew what it meant. It must be that brother of hers! Leos was a bad influence. Emmanuelle was too good, too pure, too unsullied to have learned such a word herself. Perhaps he should put his spies on her, just
to watch out for—
No, she was his ruler! He did this all for her. Though the countess could not see its worth now, one day she would. Spying on her would be crossing a line he had set for himself. Besides, sometimes he suspected that the lies which he heard about her might just conceivably contain a kernel of truth, and finding out that would be too painful.
He put the picture back down on his desk. He had been allowing himself to drift from the main problem. The dwarf and the sewer-jacks. Could they have recognised him? And what would he do about it if they had? They were simple men doing their simple job. Like him, they were struggling to keep Chaos at bay. But would they understand the necessity of what he did? If they did not, perhaps they would understand that it was necessary to ensure their silence forever.
Slowly the hungover sewerjacks lowered themselves into the depths. One by one they clambered down the ladders lowered through the access ports. Rudi, now acting sergeant, lit the lantern and illuminated the tunnel.
The stink hit Felix like a hammer even as he carefully stepped from the ladder onto the ledge. This was the trickiest part of the operation. There was only about one foot of clearance between the ladder and the edge of the walkway. A misstep had carried many a still-drunk sewerjack into the stew.
“You missed yourself last night, young Felix,” Hef said.
“We gave the sarge a fine send-off,” Spider added.
“Gotrek downed seven jacks of ale one after the other and wasn’t even sick. We took a week’s wages off the first watch.”
“I’m very pleased for you,” Felix said. Gotrek looked none the worse for his exploits. Of all the sewerjacks he was the only one who didn’t appear ill. The rest were ghastly, pale, and walked with the shuffling gait of old men.
“Ah, there’s nothing like the smell of the stew to clear your head in the morning,” Hef said, proceeding to stick his head out over the edge of the walkway and be violently sick.