by C. L. Werner
And Sibbechai was cunning. The necrarch knew it might become the hunted rather than the hunter, and had prepared for that possibility. Certainly, a rundown fishmonger’s hut was the last place Carandini would expect to find a dread lord of the night, sleeping away the daylight hours.
The necromancer slipped into the hut, a single-room hovel filled with debris and rubbish. He navigated his way twixt the heaps of fish bones, cracked masonry and splintered wood. When the business had failed, it seemed its neighbours had adopted the building as a dumping ground. Of course, thanks to the plague, there was no one left in the vicinity to continue the practice. At the back of the room, Carandini found the small trapdoor. In the past, he supposed, the little cellar had been used to smoke fish. Certainly the smell rising from below seemed to bear out his theory.
The vampire’s coffin filled most of the small cellar, pushed close against one of the walls. It was locked from the inside, another precaution Sibbechai had adopted of late. Carandini was more than a little irritated by the monster’s fear and distrust. That it was well founded only made the necromancer’s annoyance greater.
Sibbechai had failed to secure Das Buch die Unholden, Carandini knew. The vampire had fled the wizard’s house in haste, not triumph. If the book had been there, then the witch hunters had destroyed it. Carandini had considered confronting them, but common sense had prevailed. The necromancer had lingered outside long enough to see the witch hunters set fire to the place. He had also seen them remove a body that had all the appearance of a wizard. He wasn’t sure if it was they or Sibbechai who killed the sorcerer, nor did he much care.
Carandini unfolded a large sheet of leathery skin, setting it down upon the dank cellar floor. From a pocket he produced a bottle of ink, with more than a little dead man’s blood in its substance. He set the withered claw of the mummy Nehb-ka-Menthu upon the sheet, dipping each of its fingers in the ink. The necromancer looked at Sibbechai’s coffin. If Wolfram Kohl had told the vampire anything before he died, the sorcerer would soon know it. The spirit of the dead wizard would tell him – as he would anything else that he had neglected to disclose to the vampire.
Knowledge was power, and Carandini had every intention of regaining the upper footing in his alliance with Sibbechai.
At least until he found a safe way to dispose of the vampire.
Thulmann had been given one of the topmost rooms by the proprietor of the Seven Candles, the very best in the house. The innkeeper had not been entirely pleased by the witch hunter’s return, but, with plague abroad, his rooms were already empty. At least custom could not suffer any further.
They found Streng sprawled upon a massive canopied bed. Thulmann was not unduly surprised. It was not the first time his underling had appropriated his master’s lodgings to impress some buxom tavern wench. A few sharp words would serve to reprimand the thug, at least until the next time he became drunk enough to forget his place. Silja sensed his irritation.
‘If there is a reason you’ve commandeered my room,’ Thulmann snarled acidly, ‘then I would hear it.’ The sound of his employer’s voice caused Streng to stir. As he disturbed the sheets drawn about him, Thulmann could see the ex-soldier’s side was covered in bloodied bandages.
‘It would seem your drunken carousing has caught up with you,’ the witch hunter snapped. Streng reached for the wine bottle on the floor beside the bed. Angrily, Thulmann kicked the bottle, sending it rolling across the room. ‘You look as though you’ve had more than sufficient,’ he declared. ‘I warned you that I’d have need of you soon, and here I find you in a drunken stupor, broken up in some tavern brawl!’
‘Have a care, Mathias!’ Streng protested. ‘You know it takes longer to knock me off my feet than a few hours, even if they were serving Bugman’s best!’ With a groan, the mercenary sat up, blinking his eyes to clear his vision. He blinked again when he spotted Silja Markoff just inside the doorway. ‘Well, now I see why you’re so cross!’ he grunted. ‘And here I was thinking you were all prayers and sermons! Nice eye, Mathias,’ he added with a lewd wink, bringing colour to Silja’s face.
‘Mind your tongue, you misbegotten mongrel.’ Thulmann ordered. ‘And get that filthy carcass of yours moving, if you expect to get paid. Sibbechai is already here in Wurtbad and we’re going to find his lair.’
‘You maybe, but not me,’ Streng grinned back. ‘Doktor says I should stay off my feet for a few days – maybe even a couple of weeks.’ The mercenary coughed dramatically. ‘Much as I’d like to risk my neck fighting that gruesome blood worm again.’ Streng’s face pulled back into a proud and arrogant smile. ‘Besides, I’ve already had a run-in with some nastiness,’ he boasted, pointing to the far corner of the room. Thulmann’s brow furrowed as he saw the strange leather object lying where Streng indicated. Looking closer, he found it to be a curious, bird-like mask, the bill of its beak stuffed with a pomander that reeked of lilac. Beneath the mask was something even more interesting – a small, dark glass bottle. Thulmann picked the bottle up carefully, sensing the fell energies gathered about it. It was empty save for a crusty residue on its bottom and sides. A sickly reek, like old vomit, rose from within.
‘It wasn’t a bar brawl,’ Streng explained. ‘I saw this sinister character creeping around the back alleys. I knew there was something wrong about him so I followed to see what mischief he was up to.’ The mercenary had decided Thulmann didn’t need to know the particulars of the encounter.
‘That looks like the masks worn by the plague doktors,’ said Silja moving up to examine the garment.
‘Plague doktor?’ Thulmann asked.
‘They’re healers, or so they claim. They haunt the plague-ridden districts, offering to cure those who’ve contracted the Stir blight,’ she elaborated. ‘Charlatans mostly, preying upon the poor and the sick, taking what little they can offer in exchange for water potions and quack remedies. My father would have had them imprisoned but feels the public outcry would be too great. They may offer the sick false hope, but they are the only ones to offer them any kind of hope.’
‘Hmmph,’ grunted Streng. ‘That’s all well and good, lady, but the one that knifed me was more than some quack healer.’ He looked over at Thulmann. ‘He was a mutant. And if that bottle he was carrying don’t stink of black magic, I’m a Solkanite monk!’
Thulmann stared at the dark bottle, relieved to release it from his grip and set it back on the floor. ‘A mutant masquerading as a healer,’ he reflected. ‘Carrying a bottle of… ’ he hesitated. What had been in the bottle, leaving behind it so hideous a taint? Poison? Something worse than poison?
Streng lurched forward on the bed, pain and fatigue forgotten for the moment. ‘You’re not thinking… ’
‘We lost track of Weichs in Wurtbad,’ Thulmann said. ‘There’s no reason to believe he’s moved on. If this is really what it appears to be, it stinks to the Chaos Wastes of Herr Doktor Freiherr Weichs.’
‘Who is this Doktor Weichs?’ asked Silja. Thulmann removed his cloak, bundling the noxious black bottle within its folds.
‘I’ll explain that to you on the way.’ Thulmann pushed Silja toward the door. Behind them, Streng rolled to the side of the bed, reaching for his boots.
‘Give me a few minutes Mathias, and I’ll be with you,’ the mercenary said. He looked around the room for where he had thrown his breeches.
‘Go over to the chapter house and keep an eye on Meisser,’ Thulmann told him. ‘Don’t worry, if I learn anything I’ll send for you.’ It was a promise the witch hunter intended to keep. As much as anyone, Streng deserved to be there when Weichs was finally brought to justice.
‘Where are we going?’ Silja demanded as Thulmann ushered her back down the main stairway of the Seven Candles.
‘Where we may be able to learn more about these plague doktors of yours,’ Thulmann told her. ‘Something I’ve learned is that when you want to find out about a healer, you don’t ask the healthy, you speak with the sick.’ The witch hunter extende
d his arm for Silja to precede him. ‘I am still something of a stranger to Wurtbad, Lady Markoff. If you would please lead the way.’
‘But where am I leading you?’ Silja asked again.
‘To meet some of your plague victims. The hospice of Shallya. But if I am correct in my readings, then your city is beset by something more terrible than any plague.’
A wild-eyed, half-human thing grinned from behind the bars of its iron cage. Sometimes it would laugh, other times it called out random words in a shrill, sing-song voice. Mostly it moaned and cried. Doktor Weichs took it as a sign, perhaps, that the man’s senses had not completely deserted him when the skaven fell upon the wretch. An insane subject was of very limited value to Weichs, enabling him to study only the physical effects of his experiments. But he was as interested in the mind as in the body. The ideal subject was one whose mind was strong enough to accept what was happening to it and still manage to endure. Naturally, such men were rare.
The doktor’s laboratory was a network of caves, old warrens that the skaven no longer used. Skilk had said something about a conflict between two local warlords that resulted in a decrease in the population beneath Wurtbad. As with everything else the skaven priest said, Weichs accepted the story as a half-truth. In any event, Skilk had given the abandoned warrens to his human confederate. The grey seer had propounded it was much safer for Weichs to labour down below, where none of his fellow men might accidentally stumble onto his work. Again, it was nothing more than a half-truth. Weichs was more convinced that Skilk wanted him where the skaven could closely monitor his experiments. For all their bestial appearance, he had to keep reminding himself that the mind of a skaven was as sharp as that of a man, and more devious and conniving than the most degenerate Tilean robber-prince.
The old warren was hundreds of yards in length, but narrow, with a low ceiling that sagged in places to within six feet of the floor. Crude wooden pilings had been erected in places to support the weakened roof, while in some corners the cavern had been allowed to collapse, a jumble of broken stone and shattered earth. Dozens of small tunnels opened onto the warren.
In his exposure to them, Weichs had learned that perhaps the only sensation that ruled the skaven more than hunger was fear. The vermin were loth to linger in any place that was without at least half-a-dozen boltholes and escape routes. Many of the tunnels led into dead ends or hideously ingenious traps, others twisted and turned until the traveller found himself back where he had started. But the majority connected back to the main network that burrowed beneath Wurtbad. Weichs had navigated only a few of these, and there were only two or three he could follow without becoming hopelessly lost. It was yet another tactic by which Skilk kept him isolated and under his control.
A large number of the openings in the walls were shallow, only a few feet deep at most. These had been the individual dens where the skaven had made their nests. Now they served Weichs as cells in which to contain his subjects, each blocked by a framework of wooden bars. Flickering torches were set in sconces before each of the cells, their inmates visible at all times. Weichs doubted any of the wretched creatures would possess either the strength or drive to attempt an escape, given the mixture of debilitating herbs and meagre rations he provided them with. But he didn’t believe in taking undue chances.
The central section of the cave was dominated by a maze of wooden tables, upon which were assembled every piece of alchemical apparatus Weichs had been able to describe for his skaven assistants. The skaven had displayed fiendish cleverness, covering their thefts by setting fire to the workshops of their victims. Alchemists were forever dabbling with materials of a dangerous nature, so no one was truly surprised when their homes suddenly burst into flame in the dead of night. A quiet chill crawled down Weichs’s spine when he considered how many other ‘accidents’ were actually the fruit of mankind’s ancient rivals.
Weichs strode past the bubbling alembics, the smoking clay vessels arranged about the brick athenor that the skaven had dragged down stone-by-stone from the surface. One of his less intelligent human assistants was engaged in working the bellows that supplied heat to the brick furnace. Weichs paused to assure himself the man was not too enthusiastic in his labours. Too much heat might spoil the mixtures slowly boiling away in the clay bottles.
The plague doktor paused at intervals to inspect the glass pelicans whose narrow beaks fed into one another, refining and distilling the substances boiling within them. A grizzled skaven snout leered at him from above the heavy iron press. Small green-black stones were placed beneath the press and ground by the ratman into fine black powder.
Such a small thing, yet the warpstone dust formed the very life-blood of his experiments. It could be combined with other substances, the mixtures refined until their disparate parts became a single whole. Given the right combination and conditions, the noxious properties of the warpstone could be controlled. Negated. Reversed. Or so Weichs was convinced. The ancient alchemists and warlocks had experimented with what they had called wyrdstone, and written much about its curative abilities. But they had guarded their secrets too well, neglecting to pass on the vital knowledge of how they conquered the corrupting influence of the stones.
Weichs turned, feeling eyes upon him. A leprous visage quickly shuffled back into the darkness of its cell, a shapeless tendril that might once have been an arm covering what could only mockingly be called a face. The doktor shook his head solemnly. The combination he had used on that woman had not worked, the mutating effects of the warpstone had not been conquered. She was degenerating more each day, like a worm shrivelling under the hot summer sun. Still, even her dissolution might teach him something. There was always something to learn, if one but had the wisdom to observe.
His theory was sound, no power on earth would convince Weichs otherwise. If an Arabyan fakir could render himself immune to the poison of an asp by controlled exposure to the same poison, then why could not men be made immune to a much greater poison by similar means? The power that men called ‘Chaos’ was not some daemonic malevolence, as superstitious idiots continued to preach, but a natural force which man had not yet been able to adapt to. Were the high mountains evil because their snows caused frostbite, or the deserts evil because their sun burned the skin? Men had simply been forced to adapt, to cover their feet in fur boots or their bodies in silken robes. And men would learn to adapt to the mutating force of Chaos, to protect their bodies from its power just as they had from the frost and the sun.
Weichs drew near the ironbound table upon which his newest subject lay strapped. The old man’s pinched face twisted into a scowl of disapproval. He’d expected the conniving raconteur to be made of sterner stuff, but the wretch hadn’t even been able to withstand the shock of abduction by the skaven. After a minor application of a warpdust ointment to his skin, the baker’s wits had deserted him entirely. Weichs stared at the lustreless eyes that gazed blindly at the roof of the cavern, listened as infantile mutterings dribbled from his mouth. The plague doktor uttered a black curse and turned away.
What good would it serve if he at last unlocked the secret he sought, found a way to render men immune to mutation, if the cure left them drooling idiots. Weichs snapped his fingers. Lobo leapt up from the small wicker chair in which he had been resting. The misshapen halfling scurried forward at his master’s summons, changing direction as Weichs stabbed a finger at the cabinet that housed his equipment. Lobo hurried, swiftly removing a crystal decanter and a glass.
Weichs took the halfling’s burden silently, charging his glass from the decanter. Estalian brandy, looted from the cellars of a baronet in Ostland, was one of the few vices the doktor allowed himself. The rich liquor helped him to think, to ease his anxieties and doubts. Idly, he wondered if he might not relocate to the arid hill country of Estalia one day and thereby ensure a plentiful supply of the spirit.
A foul smell disturbed Weichs’s repose. The plague doktor looked up, noting with dismay the quivering, cringing shap
es of his skaven assistants. The ratmen were cowering behind their apparatus, rodent faces hidden behind glass tubing and lead vessels. The foul smell had come from them, an instinctive by-product of the fear that gnawed at their greasy hearts. Weichs suspected there were many things that could cause the skaven to vent their glands of noxious musk, for they were a slinking, skulking people, but he knew of only one such thing that would visit his workshop.
A trio of skaven stalked through the maze of cages, tables and alchemical machinery. Two of them, the largest skaven Weichs had yet seen, muscles rippling beneath their sleek black fur, wore crude armour about their bodies, the metal plates pitted by rust, and on their backs they wore coarse black cloaks. A saw-edged sword hung from a rope tied about each of their waists, the steel so rotten with filth that Weichs suspected any man struck by it would die from infection long before he expired from his wounds.
Between the two black-furred killers strode a third skaven. The ratman hobbled forward on a gnarled staff, the crown of which was tipped by an ugly triangular iron icon representing the loathsome god of the ratmen. The ratman’s frame was crook-backed, crushed by the weight of age. A black robe clothed its body and about its neck was a vibrant collar crafted from scraps of multi-coloured fur. Weichs knew the morbid story behind that garment – each scrap was a trophy, torn from the throat of a rival or enemy. The skaven’s fur was grey speckled with black, fading into pure black upon his paws, as though the ratman wore fur gloves.
Grey Seer Skilk lifted his face, whiskers twitching as he inhaled the pungent odours of the workshop. Weichs felt a tremor of fear stab through him, thankful he did not have any musk glands to vent. The skaven were unsettling enough, but the grey seer was even more grotesque. Great horns erupted from the sides of his head, two curling tusks that framed the sides of his skull like that of a ram. Weichs had understood the skaven to be free from the more extreme forms of mutation – a remarkable thing for creatures exposed to raw warpstone on an almost continual basis – yet the first time he had laid eyes upon Skilk he had been forced to reconsider his belief.