“Because I won’t be here for him to accuse,” Kristoff replied. He lashed out with his sword, causing Dietz to step back and shove Alaric behind him. The blow never landed—Kristoff pulled his blade back even as it darted forward, and then turned. “K’ra’tick will be exalted! The Blood God will claim this land!” he shouted. His free hand grasped the arm of the nearest chair and he heaved it at them, striking Dietz in the chest and knocking him back. He slammed into Alaric, whose feet became tangled in Fastred’s cloak on the floor, and they collapsed in a heap, the chair sliding down to partially pin Dietz’s legs. Kristoff was running from the room before Dietz’s feet had left the ground.
“Get off me!”
“I am trying,” Dietz snapped. “Stop wriggling!”
“I’m wriggling because you’re crushing me,” Alaric gasped, “and because I’m lying on a dead man.”
“Just sit still a moment,” Dietz said sharply. He groped about him with both hands, feeling fabric and wood. Finally his fingers found a corner, and he traced that to another corner with his other hand. Gripping both corners firmly, he shoved up and forward and the chair flew off him, striking the table beyond and sending crystal and wine to the floor. Dietz didn’t waste any time mourning the loss of good liquor, however. As soon as the chair’s weight was off him he levered himself to his feet and turned to give Alaric a hand up as well.
“Thanks.” Alaric brushed himself off, grimacing at the dark stains on his back and side where he had brushed against Fastred’s corpse.
“Are you all right?” Dietz asked him, retrieving his knife and, after a moment’s thought, the short sword that had been first Renke’s and then Fastred’s. When Alaric nodded he turned and glanced around the room. “Where did he go?”
“Not out the front,” Alaric replied, looking as well. “We’d have seen that.” The room had two other doors, one on either side. The one to the right stood slightly ajar. “That way.”
Dietz collected Alaric’s rapier from where he’d dropped it and handed it over. Then, sword in hand, Alaric pushed the door open and stepped beyond.
It had to be the dining room, they both realised at once. The room was smaller than the one where Fastred’s body lay, but equally sumptuous. The walls were handsomely panelled and another fireplace filled the far wall, though this one was cold and dark. A long table of polished wood dominated the room, high-backed chairs arrayed around it, and a handsomely carved sideboard occupied one wall, several decanters sitting atop its polished surface. Another door stood in the opposite wall and they skirted the table to reach it.
“Kitchen,” Dietz said when they entered, and Alaric nodded. The fireplace was larger and wider, with spits for roasting meat and hooks for heating kettles and pots. A table against the far wall held knives, forks and platters, while a wide basin beside it was for washing and preparing food. This room had only one other door, a smaller one of unpolished wood fitted more loosely together, and they could feel a cool draft from between the boards even as they hauled it open. Beyond the door was a narrow staircase leading down.
Thinking privately that, despite everything else, he envied Kristoff his house, Dietz led the way down the stairs. The basement was a single large room with crates and barrels strewn about, and sacks and small casks piled off to the sides. Salted meat hung from hooks above and various household implements hung from the walls or leaned against them. Torches sat in black iron sconces nailed to the wall in several spots, and one of them had been lit, providing a dim, guttering light. The floor was straw and earth strewn over rough stone, and the room had no other entrance. Nor was there any sign of Kristoff.
“He can’t have vanished,” Alaric protested, spinning about and squinting to see better. “Did he go the other way instead?”
Dietz shook his head. “That door was closed tight,” he pointed out, “and we’d have heard him open it. He came this way.”
“Where is he, then?” Alaric demanded, gesturing around them. “Hiding in one of these barrels? Perhaps curled up inside a flour sack? Maybe he’s hanging from the ceiling, playing at being salted pork!” When Dietz stared at him he shook his head. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” he muttered. “It’s just—I’m—” he stared at his own bloodstained hands. “Fastred is dead, Dietz. Kristoff killed him. All those weeks and months we travelled with them, they were both our friends. Now one’s dead and the other’s a heretic.”
Dietz sighed. “I know. I hate it too. I wish none of this had happened, but it did, and now we have to finish it. We cannot let Kristoff get away. We owe Fastred that, and Renke.”
Alaric rubbed his cleaner hand across his face. “You’re right. We have to find him. So where is he?”
They looked around the room again, but could barely see their own feet, let alone any signs of the missing trader. Dietz grabbed the torch from the wall, waving it around to help. It did brighten the space right around him, but it darkened the rest of the room as a result.
“Here, light this one,” Alaric suggested, grabbing a second torch from its wall sconce. “Then we can—Taal’s teeth!” That last part came out as a yelp as he leaped backward. When he had removed the second torch its wall sconce had swivelled down. A click had echoed through the basement, much like the sound Dietz had gotten from the front door, but louder. Then a stack of crates shifted towards them.
Dietz’s first thought was that Kristoff was in the crates after all and was attacking them. Then he realised the crates had stopped moving. Beside them, where they had rested a moment before, was a hole in the floor—a large, rectangular hole.
“The tunnels,” he muttered, more to himself than to Alaric. “Of course. Where else could he hide a statue that size without it being noticed?”
Alaric was glaring at the hole with distaste and even a little fear. “Does this mean we have to go down there?” he asked plaintively.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“How can you stand this?” Alaric asked. They had lowered themselves through the hole and were now walking as quickly as they dared through a narrow tunnel carved from the black rock on which the city had been built.
The tunnels; Dietz had heard stories about them all his life and had even ventured into them once or twice, usually as a dare from other kids. Middenheim had been carved atop a single spire of black granite, but some said the rock had already been riddled with holes, created by some unknown race that had dwelt there before and fled at the coming of men. Others said the city’s founders had created these passages as a way to move through the city undetected and as an escape route if the city was ever taken. No one knew for certain.
Dietz had never heard of a map of the tunnels, though he had heard men claiming to know their way through the narrow, winding passages. Most of those men had been drunk at the time and probably bragging about nothing, but a few might have had some truth to their claims. The city’s sewers ran through here, and someone had to clean them out from time to time—it was not a pleasant job, but it was a necessary one, just like being a rat catcher. Such men would know their way around, at least through their portion of these catacombs. He doubted anyone knew the entire system, however.
It had been years since he had been down here, but the tunnels had not changed. They were still narrow, still tight, and still rough, but far too smooth to be completely natural. The passage they were in now, the one they had found upon using Kristoff’s bolthole, had an almost flat floor and ceiling with almost vertical walls, all carved from the same glossy black rock of the mountain. The walls reflected his torchlight back as a dim glow, and flecks within the stone glittered like eyes. Dietz had to hunch over and keep his arms close to avoid catching on the rough walls, but it was Alaric who looked pale and kept starting at every sound.
“Stand what?” Dietz replied, holding the torch carefully before them. He wasn’t thrilled about bringing an open flame down here—too many stories about strange gases and liquids underground, and people catching fire by breathing them or stepping in them—but they h
ad little choice. Even with the torch they could barely see twenty paces, and the water sloshing around his boots was nothing but a single dark, roiling plane. It was probably better that way. One man had claimed that if you stared at the walls of the tunnels for too long you began to see faces in them, faces of people who had died long ago—faces that moved and spoke to you and called you to join them. He thought the man had been deranged, but was not interested in discovering he had been right.
“This!” Alaric gestured around them. He had sheathed his rapier and had only a dagger in his hand, which he clutched tightly. He winced when the tip scraped against a wall. “Being surrounded by so much rock. We’re beneath the city! This tunnel could collapse any second, and we’d be crushed. There’s no way to escape!”
“These tunnels have been here longer than we’ve been alive,” Dietz pointed out. “They were here when the city began. They haven’t collapsed yet.”
“But they could. They may have been getting weaker all this time!” Alaric was sounding dangerously close to panic.
Dietz shrugged. “Why worry about it?”
“I can’t help it,” the younger man admitted. “It weighs upon me—I can feel it pressing down.”
Dietz glanced back at him. “You explore ruins for a living,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but I have you to crawl through them for me.”
Dietz started to respond to that and decided against it. “What did Kristoff say before?”
“When?”
“Right before he threw the chair at us. He said something.”
“Oh, that.” Alaric thought about it. “He said, ‘K’ra’tick will be exalted! The Blood God will claim this land!’”
“Right. What does it mean?”
Alaric shrugged, though his friend wasn’t looking back and missed the gesture. “He’s a Chaos cultist, obviously. Khorne is their god—chaos and war and bloodshed. The Blood God is one of his titles, as is the Lord of Skulls.” He frowned, forgetting the walls and the tons of rock for a moment. “The other part—K’ra-tick—I don’t recognize. From what he said I’d guess it was his cult, or the creature they worship. The name must be in the foul language of the Dark Gods.”
“The followers of Chaos have their own language?” Dietz asked.
His friend nodded. “Yes, they do. Its real name is undoubtedly much longer and unbelievably complicated…” His eyes unfocussed as he pondered the problem. “K’ra-tick… Hm. ‘K’ra’ would be ‘meat’—no, that’s ‘h’n’eyir’—something like meat. The initial K means ‘aged’ I think—” his voice trailed off, but Dietz was not listening anyway. He was glad Alaric had found something to distract from his fear, but it wasn’t something that interested Dietz himself. He knew Alaric would tell him if he figured out the name’s meaning. In the meantime Dietz concentrated on the tunnel ahead of them. Already he had encountered two branchings and had simply chosen the leftmost path each time. He suspected Alaric hadn’t noticed at all. He wished he’d thought to bring along chalk to mark their route, but then he hadn’t been expecting to go exploring this evening.
They walked on for several more minutes, Dietz selecting the left path every time he had a choice, and Alaric mumbling occasionally about linguistic intricacies. The only sounds were the drip of water, the splash of their feet, the occasional scrape of Alaric’s dagger or Dietz’s elbow against the wall, and the hiss of the torch. They’d seen no sign of Kristoff, and the farther they went the less likely it became that they would find him. Dietz figured the trader knew these tunnels well enough to navigate them in the dark—he was probably miles away by now.
“I’ve got it!” Alaric said at last, his raised voice echoing around them and vanishing down both of the branches Dietz saw before them. “The K does mean ‘aged’ but in the sense of ‘aged past its prime’. In this case, it would mean rotted. ‘K’ra’ means, ‘Rotted flesh’!”
“It means ‘carrion’, actually.”
“Yes, well, carrion is rotted flesh, isn’t it?” Alaric replied testily, and then glanced up. The voice had not belonged to Dietz.
Suddenly, from tunnels off to the side that Dietz had missed in the dim light, several figures emerged. They rapidly surrounded the two travellers and Dietz noticed they had no torches, but held nasty looking short swords, axes, hammers and clubs. They looked like men, though he had a hard time seeing detail, and they all wore long robes of a red-brown cloth, the colour of dried blood. They all had hoods, but the one nearest Alaric pushed his back to reveal a young face fringed with black hair and dominated by blue eyes lit with the gleam of a fanatic.
“K’ra-tick means ‘the Hounds of Carrion’,” the black-haired youth supplied, “or ‘Carrion Beasts’.”
“I would have gotten that,” Alaric snapped, and only then seemed to notice that they were surrounded and outnumbered. “Thanks.”
“Certainly,” the cultist bowed mockingly. “One should always know one’s killers.”
“Why kill us?” Dietz asked, shifting the torch in his grip. He’d never have time to draw a knife, but he could thrust the torch at someone’s face. Perhaps their robes were flammable. As if reading his thoughts one of the cultists reached out and tugged the torch from his hand, grinning at his obvious disappointment.
“Why not?” the first cultist replied, shrugging. Then he grinned. “We’ve been ordered to, actually. Our high priest set us upon you.”
“Kristoff?” Alaric asked, and the youth nodded. “He wants us dead? Why? We’re no threat to him, not lost down here.”
“Your blood will feed the Lord of Skulls,” the cultist explained. “He will reward us for this offering when the gates are opened.”
“The gates? You mean the statues?” Alaric actually looked more relaxed now than he had upon entering the tunnels, though Dietz knew it was a pose. His friend was tense, but hid it well. His casual attitude and barrage of questions were confusing the cultists, who had no doubt expected pleas, cries, and a quick kill. He doubted Alaric had a plan beyond delaying the inevitable, but that was fine. The longer they avoided combat the longer they had to think of something… anything.
“The others are gone, you know,” Alaric was explaining to the youth, who seemed to be the cultists’ leader. “We destroyed them. Kristoff was there.”
“Destroyed? No!” One of the other cultists wailed, but the youth seemed unfazed.
“He did not mention that,” he admitted, “but he was rushed.” He shrugged. “It matters not. The four together formed a powerful ward that amplified every sacrifice, but each statue is a complete gate, and we have fed the one here, regularly.” He grinned. “Soon, very soon, the gate will open and the Blood God’s champion will emerge. Then we will be exalted above all, placed at our master’s side to rule this ravaged world!” His eyes grew even wilder as he ranted, and flecks of spittle appeared at his mouth. The grin he gave Alaric was little more than the wide, hungry look of a rabid dog. “Perhaps your deaths will be the final sacrifice,” he whispered gleefully. “Your blood will tear open the veil and allow him entrance!”
“I like my blood where it is, thank you,” Alaric replied, though he did back away slightly. The youth noticed, and his grin widened. The other cultists began closing in, weapons raised, and Dietz abandoned all thoughts of escape. His only hope was to knock out a cultist, take his weapon, and fight his way clear. Perhaps he could run for help, or at least lose himself in the tunnels, though he suspected these cultists knew the passages by heart.
His planning was interrupted by a strange sound. It came down one of the forward passages, a grunting, groaning, slobbering noise. The sound of feet splashing through muck accompanied it, and both were growing louder. It did not sound like cultists and Dietz hoped it would at least provide a necessary distraction. Perhaps it was an animal that had slipped into the sewers and survived upon the rats and other vermin that infested the underground?
Dietz’s hopes sank as the sounds grew closer and their source came into view. It sto
od as tall as him and slightly wider, and at first he thought it was a man. Then he noticed its arms, which were rubbery like an octopus’ and tapered to dull points instead of bearing hands. It wore only rags, and even in this light he could see strange sores covering its skin, which had a dull sheen. Its eyes were bright yellow, however, and almost perfectly round, with strange slit pupils.
Mutant. It was a mutant, one of the poor human-born monsters rumoured to appear in Middenheim from time to time. More had been born over the past two decades, which some said had been the first warning of Chaos’ renewed efforts. Many killed such deformed infants, but others, whether from shame or from some twisted mercy, dropped them through the sewer grates instead. Dietz had heard stories of mutants forming enclaves in the tunnels, establishing their own twisted society beneath the city that had spurned them, but he had thought them just tales to frighten children into staying clear of the sewer grates. Now he knew better, as he watched a second and then a third figure appear behind the first, and several more shuffling into sight behind them.
“Amazing!” Alaric, as usual, forgot their immediate danger and stared, fascinated, as the mutants approached. “Sub-surface dwellers! And clearly mutated! Did you know about this?” The look he shot Dietz was almost laughable, the expression of a little boy just discovering he’d been denied a treat.
“I’d heard of them,” Dietz admitted to him, trying not to panic as the mutants shambled closer. The cultists were now glancing around, clearly debating whether to run or fight, and who to target if they stayed. At least these creatures were a distraction, Dietz thought. Yet he couldn’t help but feel their own situation had worsened with the monsters’ arrival.
“Can they talk?” Alaric asked eagerly, and even the cult leader stared at him.
“I don’t know,” Dietz said softly. “I never met one before.”
The mutants were within arm’s reach of the cultists, forming an outer layer along the side, and several of the Chaos followers looked less than thrilled. Dietz almost laughed at that—here were living embodiments of Chaos! The cultists should be thrilled to encounter them. Perhaps they should be worshipping the mutants, who clearly had a closer tie to Chaos than any normal human and thus could act as an intermediary.
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