Joukelm and Ustnar had halted the group within the passage, waiting while the last of the defenders caught up with them. The Middenheim troops must enter the catacombs only seconds behind, so that they would also see the skaven scavengers — if there were any…
Konrad had planned to escape from Middenheim, and that was still an option. But if the alternative to fleeing the city was to kill skaven before he disappeared, then his choice was not in doubt for an instant.
The rest of the desperate band arrived, and there were very few of them left. Three humans and one dwarf; it was not Hjornur. The footsteps of the pursuers came closer. The reflected light from their lanterns could been seen around the next twist in the tunnel, and Konrad feared that the body stealers might already have been warned away by all the sounds. But they were there!
As Konrad sprang out into the cavern of the dead, he saw several of the skaven in the distance. They were disinterring fresh bodies from the stone coffins which lay in the recesses carved from the rock. They froze, trapped in the sudden glare of lamplight.
There was no need for a command. The guards and dwarfs sprinted forward, while the skaven dropped the corpses and tried to scuttle back into the passages from which they had emerged. Konrad’s fighting instincts urged him to join them, but instead he spun around, waiting to encounter the first of the Middenheim troops. An armoured shape loomed out of the darkness of the tunnel.
“Beastmen!” Konrad yelled, guessing that the word ‘skaven’ might have no meaning. “Truce! A truce in the name of Ulric!”
Middenheim was Ulric’s city, the City of the White Wolf. That was why the troops wore wolfskins over their armour. The leading warrior slowed as he emerged from the passage, his sword raised ready to cut down Konrad.
Konrad stood his ground, his own blade lowered. An officer appeared from behind the first trooper. He stared past Konrad, and gazed at the scene of desecration where a pack of beastmen had infested the sacred ground beneath his own city.
“Forward!” ordered the captain, and his troops rushed from the passage to battle with the rat creatures, joining in combat with the other humans and the dwarfs who were already fighting the verminous breed. “Stay there,” he warned, his gaze encompassing both Litzenreich and Konrad.
He hurried to join his command. Several of his men remained, and they encircled Konrad and the wizard. Konrad could have evaded them, could have tried to escape, but there seemed nowhere to go; he could have fought, could have slain a number of the troops, but there seemed no reason to do so.
A short plump man emerged from the shaft. He was not in uniform, but wore dark garments decorated with runic symbols. He carried a carved wooden staff, its head tipped with a golden orb. Konrad suspected that he was a sorcerer, the staff his wand. He halted and looked at Litzenreich, who returned his gaze.
The skaven, meanwhile, were slaughtered. There had been relatively few of them, and they were all swiftly butchered. When the massacre was over, Litzenreich’s group surrendered their weapons to the Middenheim forces.
“The sword,” the captain said to Konrad when he returned, and he held out his hand. He was no older than Konrad, and his face bore a single neat scar on his cleanly shaven left cheek. It was a duelling wound, which he wore as proudly as a medal of valour. He had probably never met a real enemy in combat.
Even now there was no trace of skaven blood on his uniform, and his blade was untainted with rat gore.
Konrad had met his type before. Their commissions had been purchased by their families, and their arrogance and inexperience frequently led to more casualties amongst their own troops than was ever caused by enemy action. The possibility of losing the sword was of more importance to him than the loss of the soldier who had borne the blade.
“I need it,” Konrad replied, exaggerating his rural accent, but he made no move to bring up the weapon. “Those creatures are called skaven, and the tunnels below Middenheim are infested by them. Extend the truce and we can lead you to their nest and you can destroy them all. Take us captive, and instead the skaven will destroy the city.”
“That is true,” said Litzenreich, addressing the other magician.
“That is true,” repeated the wizard, speaking to the captain. He moved closer to Litzenreich, and they began conversing.
“I want to speak to your commanding general,” Konrad said, not even bothering to look at the officer. “We must act now. One or two of the skaven will have escaped and be carrying word back to the rest of their legion.”
“I know about skaven,” said the captain, biting back his anger. He gazed around the necropolis, at the distant corpses, both human and inhuman. He summoned a messenger.
“The dwarfs know the fastest way to the surface,” Konrad told him.
With evident reluctance, the officer gave his consent, and Ustnar led the ensign back through the tunnel. Two other troops accompanied them, to guard the dwarf.
“No matter what happens,” the captain said to Konrad, lowering his voice, “whenever the truce ends, you are dead. That sword belongs to my regiment.”
Konrad glanced at the blade in his hand. He had no scabbard for the weapon, it was still on the body of the first trooper he had killed.
“No,” he said, “it belongs to me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The military command of Middenheim had sent as many troops as it could spare to join the underground expedition: part of the garrison, members of the watch, a group of mercenaries, a number of Templars of the White Wolf and also a handful of Knights Panther. Even without their horses, the elite cavalry were anxious to be part of the mission to protect their native city.
Litzenreich’s men were at the head of the long column, the dwarfs leading the way. They would bear the brunt of the action and take the most casualties, shielding the Middenheim warriors during the initial assault.
Konrad had half-intended to slip away during the descent. He had done more than enough, and the city troops could take care of the skaven without him.
He was sure that Litzenreich would wish to avoid becoming involved in any military action. One of the dwarfs could escort them both safely through the twisting tunnels and out of the mountain.
But it seemed that the wizard wanted to investigate the skaven warrens, and his only possible motive could be the hope of discovering how raw warpstone was refined into grey powder.
In order to prevent any of Litzenreich’s column from deserting, there was a city soldier behind each one — and the captain was immediately behind Konrad.
Konrad was unconcerned. Had he wished, he could easily have evaded the arrogant officer and got away. As he had nowhere to go, he kept on descending the spiralling shafts. He was becoming almost used to it by now. Only the dwarfs and their guards were ahead of him; Litzenreich was immediately behind the captain.
Neither did the officer’s threat concern Konrad, although he had been glad of the warning. For the captain to reveal his intention had been stupid; equally stupid was for him to have had such an intention. Konrad had fought and killed one of the captain’s men, taking his sword. What of it? He had also slain a second Middenheim trooper and given merciful release to the one whose legs Ustnar had severed. It had all occurred during combat, yet the captain seemed to consider that murder had been committed. Why had he taken it so personally?
One of the captain’s men must have killed Hjornur. The dwarf had helped save Konrad’s life, but he had no reason to seek out Hjornur’s killer and slay him. He remembered what he had been thinking recently, of revenge. During a battle, a warrior might hunt down a comrade’s killer. But that would not happen after hostilities had ceased — probably because two opposing sides seldom become allies so immediately.
As he clambered down another steep incline, Konrad realized that he might soon have an opportunity for his own vengeance. He would never have gone out of his way to search for Gaxar, but it seemed that they might soon come into close proximity again. In that case, he would do his
best to avenge himself against the grey seer.
He recalled what Litzenreich had once told him about the difference between justice and law. Perhaps that was what he really sought, not revenge but justice. Gaxar was not only responsible for his incarceration in the dark damp grotto for an unknown number of days. Konrad had been knocked senseless by the treacherous inhuman, and when he regained consciousness he had found himself a prisoner of Kastring’s outlaw band of beastmen.
Konrad did not simply wish to kill Gaxar. He wanted to interrogate him first.
The more he considered the idea, the more he anticipated another encounter with the grey skaven. He hoped that the rodents had not all fled. They must have been aware of the strike force being sent into their domain. Would they make a fight of it, or would they turn tail and flee into the deepest tunnels of their shadowy realm?
If the rodents had gone, Konrad knew that the truce with the Middenheim soldiers would be instantly over. Only then would he have to worry about the death threat. Until that time, he had a stay of execution. The captain would not stab him in the back. He clearly regarded himself as a gentleman, and for him honour was as important as his own life. He had obviously never served on the frontier. He would not make his move until the subterranean battle was over. With luck, he would be killed by the skaven; with luck, Konrad would not be killed by the skaven.
His new sword was thrust into his belt, and he had to be careful that he did not cut or stab himself on the naked blade as he climbed down the most difficult of passages. Konrad was still clad in the same leathers and chainmail he had worn on his first underground venture; but he had neither helmet nor shield, all he had was the sword. It was quite a fancy weapon, with elaborate quillons and a wolfs head emblem etched into the guard. The blade itself was decorated with fancy runes; it was probably a motto inscribed in an ancient language. Perhaps it meant “death before dishonour”. Konrad smiled at the idea, because there was nothing else to smile about.
He began wishing for a return of his future vision. Erratic though it might have been, it was better than nothing.
In the narrow tunnel, in the darkness between two Middenheim soldiers, there was nothing to be seen with his normal sight.
It was Joukelm who led the descent, but he was not the first to die. The first screams came from further back, higher up, echoing down the narrow shafts and magnifying as they bounced from wall to wall.
The skaven knew that their regions were being invaded, and they had reacted accordingly, defending themselves with an outer ring of suicide squads. These lurked in side passages then sprang out, killing and maiming many of the humans before they were themselves slaughtered.
They had also prepared traps, but they allowed the first group of the enemy past, cutting them off, before the floor of a chamber suddenly dropped away and a dozen troops tumbled into a pit lined with barbed spikes. The next rat beasts’ victims were those crushed beneath tons of rock when the roof above them collapsed. The Middenheim brigade had their own dwarfs, who were able to bridge the gap and to unblock the tunnel within a few minutes. The forward section waited for them to catch up, and by then it was their turn to be attacked.
Joukelm was the first in line, and now it was his turn to die. He was slain as Varsung had been, with an arrow from a crossbow. Most of the others ahead of Konrad took the precaution of ducking down, and so it was the trooper immediately in front of him who died next. The bolt took him in one eye, its point penetrating the back of his skull and his helmet.
Konrad’s head had been directly behind. He leaned down as he advanced, and he picked up the shield dropped by the crossbow victim. The captain would not like that, he presumed, but it was of no use to the dead man-at-arms. The embossed crest on the shield was that of the white wolf.
In the flickering lantern light, Konrad thought he recognized where he was. All tunnels should have appeared the same, dark passages hewn from the solid granite, but this seemed to be the place where Varsung had died. If so, the huge central cavern was not much further. He strained his eyes for a glimmer of the weird illumination that had come from the warpstone furnace.
“Ustnar!”
“What?”
“We nearly there?”
“Yes.”
“Next arrow, then we sprint.”
“Right.”
The next shaft hissed past Konrad. There was a slight bend in the passage, and it splintered against the rock face, otherwise it would have finished off the captain.
“Go!” yelled Konrad, and he dashed forward, after Ustnar, after the two dwarfs whose names he did not know, after the three Middenheim troopers. Soon, it was only two troopers, as one of them became the next victim of the unseen archer.
Last time, after the first arrows, Konrad had been attacked in this tunnel by a pack of skaven, and he expected to hear the sounds of another mob rushing towards them. Instead, there was a sudden glare of light and they were out in the open — and the skaven were all waiting…
He had been wrong about the tunnel, this was a different passage. Instead of coming out on a gallery, they emerged on the floor of the massive central cavern.
By the time Konrad reached the end of the passage, the other two soldiers and one of the dwarfs were dead. Ustnar and the other dwarf were defending themselves from a furious skaven onslaught, their axes swinging. Already there were several dead rat things, Konrad noticed, as he killed another. But there were more, far too many more still alive. He thrust his sword forward again, and another skaven died, the blade deep into its heart.
Then the captain was by Konrad’s side, claiming his own first kill; perhaps he was not as inexperienced as Konrad had presumed.
Litzenreich was the next out. He had no weapon, and Ustnar was immediately in front of him, defending the wizard. One of the skaven evaded him, lunging toward the human. Litzenreich threw out his right arm as though he were armed with a sword. Without even being touched, the rat thing became absolutely still, frozen in the act of stabbing with its spear. Ustnar’s axe severed its head, and head and body both fell.
More of the invaders poured from the tunnel. Most of them made it alive, and they began to push the brown swarm back. But they were retreating too willingly, Konrad realized. The humans were deliberately being drawn forward. He hung back, gazing up, wondering where Gaxar could be and how to reach him.
The huge chamber was like a vast unholy temple, in the centre of which Gaxar’s monstrous metallic mechanism was an effigy of an evil god, belching fire and smoke; but the acolytes were missing, the undead slaves of the warpstone cult who worshipped at this huge altar. Constructed upon a stone dais, the great idol did not accept its votive offerings in quiescent silence. The huge interlocking wheels and linked levers with which it was ornamented were forever in furious motion, rotating and thrusting, around and around, up and down and in and out.
Konrad had grown used to the perpetual pounding noise while he was a prisoner here. But now the sound was much reduced, the heat no longer so fierce, the glare more bearable; the cogs and pulleys no longer spun so fast. The deity seemed to be slumbering. Knowing the attack would come, operations in hell’s foundry must have been suspended.
Then the dead attacked.
The unliving who were slaves to the skaven had become a battalion. They did not need weapons, because there were so many of them. They emerged from the tunnels opposite, fat flies buzzing around them as they slowly shambled forward, confining the invaders by sheer weight of numbers. Most of the undead were easily destroyed, but there were always more to take their place. Konrad hoped that he would not see himself amongst the dead, but there was no sign of his double in the necromantic legion.
The resurrected were not the only ones who had processed warpstone for their rodent masters. The rat things had made many of their own number into slaves, and these also joined the assault against the human invaders. These were armed with a variety of weapons, but they were also chained to one another. They were suicide squads, thei
r deaths as inevitable as the annihilation of the unliving. With iron collars and heavy rusting chains around their necks, Konrad could not but help think of his own incarceration. They were as much prisoners as he had been — but that did not stop him from slaying as many of them as he could.
The enslaved skaven died, joining the festering zombies and decayed skeletons, rotting carcasses and mummified corpses, putrefying ghouls and embalmed cadavers, which dropped to the ground and formed a rampart that held back the human warriors, trapping them.
And that was when the trap was sprung. A hail of arrows lashed down from above, and many of the humans fell victim before they could raise their shields to form a huge protective canopy.
But this was no protection from the skaven’s next appalling weapon. A sudden thunderbolt of yellow flame shot from one of the upper levels, pouring a cascade of molten lava down onto the warriors below. Shields dissolved and metal melted.
More than half of the troops were killed almost instantly, cremated within their armour coffins. Others took longer to perish, shrieking hideously as they burned alive.
The Middenheim troops had raised their shields in unison, as they were trained to do. Konrad had not added his own shield, and that was what saved his life. The fluid flames had not flowed across him, and he had avoided being caught in the conflagration.
Many of the chained skaven and the undead also fell victim to the fireball. Some burst into flames, others disintegrated in the blast of heat. A number of the dead kept on with their parody of life, advancing through the mayhem despite being ablaze, as though drawn by the nauseating scent of cooked human flesh.
They had no voices, they felt no pain, they could not scream and did not need to.
Litzenreich stared up towards the skaven with the incendiary weapon. There seemed to be two of them standing on an upper gallery. One carried a wooden barrel on its back, and the other held some kind of brass device. It was like a musical instrument, an ornate trumpet. And the skaven was aiming the thing downwards, ready for another silent solo of fiery death.
[Konrad 02] - Shadowbreed Page 18