The patients were dead, all of them. Reiner wondered with a prickle of dread if he had ever seen them alive, if they had all along been corpses, animated by some foul magic.
A faint orange glow emanated from the tack room. He put a finger to his lips and they tiptoed down the aisle, trying unsuccessfully to breathe without smelling. As they reached the tack room door the death stench mixed with another scent: a sweet, cloying mildew odour over a thick fecal reek that burned the eyes. They looked in the door.
Kneeling with her eyes closed behind a brazier of coals was Anyaka, but not the sweet Anyaka Reiner and Hennig knew. She had thrown open her priestess's habit, revealing her small but sinewy body, which glistened in the heat of the coals. At first Reiner thought that the swirling designs and eldritch symbols that covered her body - and which were echoed by others painted upon the tack room's wooden walls - were tattoos, but looking again, he realised, with a heaving of nausea, that they were deep cuts sliced into her skin, black with necrosis.
Over the brazier's coals sat a frying pan in which bubbled a viscous green stew. Prehensile tendrils of steam rose from it to caress Anyaka's nakedness obscenely.
As Reiner and Hennig watched, the priestess added to the stew from the packets Reiner had purchased for her, then ran her finger inside the cuts in her breast and abdomen and flicked into the pan the pus she gathered there. Fetid steam billowed up from the soup.
Hennig choked as the noxious cloud overwhelmed them. Anyaka's eyes flashed open. 'Defilers!' she cried. 'The ritual must not be interrupted!'
'Oh, but it must, lass,' said Reiner, advancing. 'Now back away from that fire.'
Anyaka did just that, but rather quicker than Reiner expected. She leapt up, snatched a dagger from her robe, and pulled a whip from a peg on the wall.
'Charge her!' cried Reiner. He and Hennig ran around the brazier. But as they did, Anyaka leapt over it and dashed out of the door. Reiner turned and ran after her, but Hennig paused.
'Wait, Hetz.' He kicked the frying pan. It slid off the brazier and splashed to the ground. Hennig jumped to avoid the spray and joined Reiner at the door.
'Good thinking, boyo,' said Reiner. 'Now quick, before she gets too far.'
But as they ran into the stables they saw Anyaka was standing near the door, hands raised. 'Servants of Nurgle, come forth and slay these unbelievers!' she called.
Reiner and Hennig slowed, looking around uneasily, half expecting daemons to materialise out of thin air. Reiner smirked when nothing happened. 'You seem to have an exaggerated opinion of your powers, lass.'
He and Hennig advanced on her again, but faint sounds to their left and right made them pause. It was a creaking, stretching noise, like leather being pulled taut. Their eyes settled on the body in the stall nearest them. Its stomach was swelling like a bladder filling with air. Reiner glanced at the stall opposite. That body too was swelling.
'Oh gods,' he groaned.
A wet pop sounded from the darkness, and another, followed by a horrible chittering and rustling. The body on their left exploded, showering them with rotten flesh as mucus-covered nurglings spewed from its stomach. The body on the right followed like an echo.
'Sigmar save us,' quavered Hennig. 'So many.'
'Forget 'em, lad.' said Reiner, starting forward. 'Get their mistress.'
He and Hennig ran at the sorceress, while corpses exploded left and right. But before they'd closed half the distance, Hennig cried out and fell.
Reiner stopped. Hennig was clutching his boot and screaming. Reiner looked down. Hennig's boot was falling apart. Where splashings of Anyaka's brew had touched it, the leather was eaten away, and the flesh beneath it boiled with blisters that split and popped as if Hennig's foot was on fire.
Hennig's shrieks grew louder. His hands, having touched his boots, were blistering as well. 'Stop it, Reiner! Make it stop!'
'Lad, I...'
Anyaka laughed. Reiner looked up. The sorceress was stepping into the yard and closing the door behind her.
'Foul witch!' he cried, but there was no time for curses. Out of the darkness a seething carpet of nurglings was converging on them.
'Hang on, lad.' Reiner grabbed Hennig under the arms and dragged him as fast as he could toward the closed door. It wasn't fast enough. A nurgling leapt on Reiner's back. Three climbed up his legs. Another bit into his arm. They were crawling over Hennig like roaches. The boy swatted at them weakly, but they only bit his hands.
A nurgling clawed Reiner's neck. He dropped Hennig involuntarily and flung the little beast away. Hennig instantly disappeared under the wave of vermin. Reiner tried to pull him out, but nurglings swarmed around him, biting and scratching him to the bone. He roared with rage and pain and was forced to leap onto a parked draycart, stamping his feet and scraping with dagger and sabre to dislodge the beasts that clung to him. He was bleeding all over.
'Reiner!' shrieked Hennig, his voice unrecognizable in his terror. 'Reiner, save me!'
Hennig was but a thrashing mound under the madly squirming forms. An arm shot up out of the mass, clawing the air. It was stripped, only a few pink scraps hanging from wet bones. Then the arm sank again, falling apart as it dropped. The little daemons had even eaten the cartilage.
Reiner's throat constricted. His friend was gone, who had moments before been a laughing, skirt-chasing lad with a contagious smile. 'Hennig... Karl. I... Gods, what am I to tell your mother?'
A nurgling bit his foot. Reiner yelped and danced back. No time for grief. The little daemons were swarming up the cart's wheels. Reiner looked around desperately. He was too far from the door to run for it. The nurglings would bring him down before he got halfway there. He couldn't kill them all. He was no Sigmar, and nurglings were much smaller targets than orcs. If only he had wings.
The thought made him glance up, and his heart flooded with new hope. The hayloft had a small door, directly over the main door. Reiner leapt up, caught a crossbeam, and clambered up to the loft. A few nurglings came with him, clinging to his boots, and he rolled and kicked, twitching and biting back screams, until he had crushed the tenacious vermin into red paste.
The others didn't give up. Hearing a scrabbling, he looked down. The nurglings were climbing the posts, digging their needle-sharp claws into the wood. Reiner hurried to the loft door and pushed it open. In the yard below, Anyaka listened at the stable door, belting her robe. Reiner smiled. Here was an opportunity not to be missed.
He leapt down, slashing with his sabre.
It was not quite the devastating attack he envisaged. First, he misjudged his leap, and jarred his sword arm against the wall as he dropped, so that while he knocked Anyaka flat, he missed her utterly with his sword. Second, he had forgotten his wounded leg. He grunted in pain as he landed on it and fell flat on his back.
Anyaka was up instantly, advancing with dagger and whip.
Reiner raised his sabre. 'Sorry, lass. Your ceremony will remain unfinished while I live.'
She smiled, her eyes focusing behind him. 'That won't be long.'
Reiner glanced back. The stable doors were swinging out, pushed open by a mass of nurglings spilling into the yard like a river breaking through a dam.
'Your doom is upon you,' laughed Anyaka.
Reiner cursed and scrambled painfully to his feet. 'At least you won't live to rejoice in it.' He lunged at her and cut her shoulder.
She yelped and ran, trying to angle toward to the street, but Reiner blocked her way, slashing again. The nurglings swarmed toward them, their little eyes glinting in the lamp light like jewels.
Anyaka wheeled for the brothel's back door and disappeared into the kitchen. Reiner was behind her, limping madly.
The nurglings were right behind him.
ANYAKA AND REINER crashed through the narrow kitchen, frightening the Kislevite cook and the half-naked serving maids, and burst into the brothel's front room, a candle-lit salon crowded with rowdy, red-faced knights and laughing, languorous harlots.
> 'Save me!' cried Anyaka. 'Save me, gentles! He means to slay me!'
'Stop her!' bellowed Reiner. 'She's a sorceress! She's loosed a plague upon us!'
But both appeals were lost in a rising chorus of shrieks and curses as the nurglings erupted from the kitchen and fell upon the revellers. Harlots screamed and climbed the furniture, drunken knights roared and bashed at the nurglings with daggers, bottles and candlesticks, shouting for their swords. In their inebriated state, the men did as much damage to each other as to the nurglings: wild swings cut fingers, mashed toes and bloodied noses. Fights broke out among friends.
In this carnage the nurglings flourished; raking eyes, biting hands and feet, opening veins in leg, neck and arm. All over the room harlots and soldiers alike shrieked as blood pumped from shredded arteries. Others fell to the floor with severed tendons to drown in a chittering swell of teeth and claws.
Caught in this mad whirlpool, Reiner and Anyaka continued their chase. Reiner felt like he was in a dream, where no matter how swiftly he ran, he moved only inches, but at last he cornered the sorceress in a romantic nook, complete with a love seat and plaster cherubs.
'Spare me!' cried Anyaka, piteously.
'As you spared Hennig?' Reiner pulled back for the killing thrust, but strong hands pinned his arms.
'How now, sir?' said a black-bearded knight. 'Do you violence to the good lady?'
'For shame.' said another, a blond giant with cavalry braids.
'She's not a good lady.' panted Reiner. 'She's a priestess of Nurgle!'
'Protect me, noble knights!' Anyaka begged. 'It is he who is a servant of Nurgle. It is he who has summoned these foul vermin.'
'A sorcerer, hey?' said the first knight. 'He has the look.'
'Don't believe her!' said Reiner desperately. 'She wears marks of Chaos carved into her very flesh. Open her robe and look for yourself.'
The blond knight punched him in the face. 'Swine! Dare you ask us to abuse a Sister of Shallya thus?'
Reiner spat blood. 'But she's-'
He was interrupted as a pack of nurglings discovered the party and attacked. Anyaka bolted from the alcove. Roaring in pain, the knights dropped Reiner and slashed at the nurglings with wild abandon.
Reiner wormed between the two giants, chopping at clinging nurglings as he went, and ran back into the salon. He spied Anyaka through the surging crowd, making for the kitchen. He ploughed after her, and after a frantic push reached the kitchen and rushed through it. A serving maid sobbed, eyeless, in a corner. The cook lay sizzling in his cooking fire, dead from a thousand bites.
Reiner ran into the yard. Anyaka wasn't there. He limped quickly to the stable and listened. A murmur of chanting reached him.
Picking up a wooden bucket, he crept down the aisle past poor Hennig's bones to the tack room door, and listened again. The chanting continued unabated. He looked in. Anyaka had righted the frying pan and was once again filling it with poisonous ingredients, muttering over it all the while.
Reiner drew back. He hefted the bucket, took a deep breath, then spun into the door and hurled it. The bucket crashed into the brazier, overturning it, scattering hot coals and sending the frying pan flying.
Anyaka shrieked and fell back as boiling liquid splashed her. Reiner limped forward, sabre high, but the sorceress rolled away from him, around the fire. Reiner attempted to turn, but had to leap awkwardly over the spreading pool of poison and jarred his bad leg. Anyaka scrambled out of the door.
Reiner staggered after her, kicking through the fire that was spreading across the straw-covered floor. The stable aisle was empty, but he could hear the sorceress moaning from one of the stalls. He approached it cautiously. Anyaka was crooning as if enjoying the most sensuous pleasures imaginable. 'Lord Nurgle, I thank you for this glorious pain, for the poison that wracks my body so deliciously, for the gift of plague that I shall spread to all who feel my touch.'
Reiner looked into the stall. Anyaka huddled beside an exploded corpse, but as Reiner's flame-cast shadow crossed her, she looked up. He stepped back, aghast. The boiling poison had splashed her face, raising flame-red blisters from her left temple to her chin. Her lips on that side had shrivelled away from her teeth, and her left eye was a bulging white orb with no pupil, too big for its socket.
With an animal snarl the sorceress leapt at him, the corpse's curved Kislevite sword in her hand. Reiner parried, but her blow was so powerful it knocked his blade against his brow, stunning him. He fell back, Anyaka raining blows on him like twenty women. She was frighteningly strong, striking sparks with every slash. His sabre was soon so pitted it looked like a saw blade.
At last he bound her high, but she kicked him in the chest and he flew back, crashing against a stall. She advanced slowly, smiling, the fire from the tack room billowing into the aisle behind her.
'I congratulate you, my lord,' she said. 'You have stopped my plans from reaching fruition.' She raised her sword to her face and drew the honed edge down her scalded flesh, slicing open angry blisters. Thick yellow pus oozed out, coating the blade and eating into its steel. 'But there will be other camps, and other greedy fools ready to help a poor Sister of Shallya in need.'
'You won't win many hearts with that face, lass,' said Reiner, struggling to get up.
'Grandfather will heal me, as he has before. He will hide my wounds and corruption within, so that I may walk among the populace undetected and spread his blessings to all.'
Reiner grimaced. 'I begin to be glad we didn't kiss.'
She lunged with the poison blade. Reiner blocked it an inch from his face. Its foul ichor choked him. He staggered back, and she pressed her attack, forcing him toward a mound of burning hay. The fire was spreading quickly. The posts that held the hayloft were trees of flame. Hot smoke burned Reiner's eyes, but he couldn't blink, couldn't let Anyaka past his guard, for the merest scratch from her blade would mean death. His lungs ached. His strength was waning, while hers seemed only to increase. He dodged a slash and fell backward over Hennig's bones. She knocked his sabre away into a flaming stall, then stepped over him, triumphant, raising her sword for the killing blow.
Reiner scrabbled for something, anything, to throw, and grabbed Hennig's skull. He hurled it. It caught her on her blistered face. She barked in pain and stumbled back.
Reiner rolled to his feet and kicked her before she could recover. He looked frantically for a weapon. His sword was behind a wall of flame. A length of rope hung coiled on a peg. He grabbed it.
Anyaka lunged again. Reiner dodged and stepped behind her, looping the rope around her neck like a garrotte. She flailed wildly. Her sword bit into his boot. Had she cut him? He couldn't tell.
He kicked her legs out from under her. She choked and thrashed again with her sword. He needed to get away from that poisoned steel. He threw two more loops of rope around her neck and knotted it, then jumped back.
Hissing like a cat, Anyaka scrabbled at the rope, but before she could free herself, Reiner tossed the coil over a beam and hauled on it. Anyaka jerked into the air, kicking and retching. Reiner heaved again until she swung a yard off the ground. She dropped her sword and clawed at the makeshift noose.
Reiner laughed. 'Where's your grandfather now, witch?'
Anyaka turned flame-reflecting eyes on him, so filled with hate that, impossible as it was for her to reach him, Reiner still stepped back. She ceased struggling and began instead to spit out a rasping incantation while calmly moving her hands in sinuous patterns. A green glow began trailing from them. Fear gripped Reiner's heart as he felt invisible forces squeezing his windpipe, shutting off his breath like the rope shut off Anyaka's. He'd hung her, and she was still killing him.
Choking, eyes streaming from pain and smoke, Reiner darted forward and snatched Anyaka's poisoned blade from below her feet. She kicked feebly at him, still chanting.
Reiner's throat closed entirely. The world turned black and red and spun past his eyes. He swung the blade blindly and was rewarded with t
he satisfying bite of steel into flesh. Anyaka cried out. Her incantation stopped, and the pressure in Reiner's neck eased. He swung again and again, until the sorceress's screams stopped at last.
Reiner collapsed to the ground, sucking air as his throat opening fully. Hennig's skull looked at him, tilted at a jaunty angle. Reiner nodded to it. 'Thank you, lad. Well struck.'
The flames encroached from all sides. Reiner was just heaving himself up and make for the door when a group of men hurried through it.
'What's all this?' asked a familiar voice.
Reiner squinted through the smoke. It was Captain Deiter Ulstaadt and the watch.
'Hetzau,' cried Deiter. 'I might have known. What in Sigmar's name have you done?'
'Saved the Empire.' coughed Reiner, staggering up. 'Or at least this little bit of it.'
'You call murdering a Sister of Shallya saving the Empire?'
'But she wasn't. She was a priestess of Nurgle. She meant to spread disease and confusion through the camp.'
Deiter scowled sceptically. 'This little thing? I don't believe it.'
Reiner waved behind him. 'Look in the tack room. She covered it with unholy symbols. She was brewing...'
The tack room collapsed in an explosion of falling beams and roaring flames. Reiner and Deiter and his men jumped back.
'Most convenient.' drawled Deiter.
'But, but... look at her. Look under her robes. She's carved marks of Chaos in her flesh!'
Deiter wrinkled his nose. 'You ask a Knight of the Banner to look upon a woman's nakedness?'
'No, you pompous ass!' cried Reiner, losing patience, 'I ask you to use your head for once in your miserable life!'
Deiter sniffed. 'I think we have had more than enough of that.' He motioned to his men. 'Bring him.'
The guardsmen marched Reiner out, still protesting, just seconds before the roof beam cracked and the stable collapsed.
In the yard, soldiers, knights and harlots had formed a bucket brigade to try and quench the fire, while the brothel's neighbours were draping their roofs and walls with wet blankets. Others were tending to those who had been maimed and killed by the nurgling invasion.
Warhammer - [Blackhearts 00] - Hetzau's Follies Page 3