Everywhere Talorcan looked the sand-like metal scales were stained a dull crimson, blotting out both their shine and the eerie animation that set the dunes of Droost crawling across the wastes. The unblemished scales about the blighted region shivered their way over the gory spectacle, creeping around the destruction.
‘Massacre,’ Esselt declared the site as she gazed down upon it. Boxes and bundles lay scattered about the depression between two dunes, strewn as though by a petulant gargant. The tatters of tents and pavilions fluttered in the hot desert breeze. Carcasses of immense draught-lizards quivered on their backs, their sluggish nerves still tugging at the muscles of their slaughtered bodies. Smaller bodies were littered about the scene, so covered in their own gore that it was impossible to tell simple drover from wealthy caravaneer.
‘By the Hammer, we are too late,’ Talorcan growled. He tried to urge his steed down into the depression, but the demigryph balked at his commands. The creature threw back its head and crackled an anxious cry. Annoyed, he dismounted and trudged down the crawling slope to reach the grisly scene. Throwing back his hood, Talorcan kneeled beside a small body, carefully folding what was left of its hands across its breast.
Esselt followed Talorcan down, leaving her own steed with the other animals. In her hands she carried the massive greatsword she had taken from her saddle. The silver blade glistened in the afternoon light, the sacred runes etched across its length shining like golden flames. The holy sword had been forged by the armourers of the Order of Azyr and thrice-blessed by no less than High Priest Crautreic himself. She had used the weapon many times to strike down the obscene daemons and mutated monsters of Chaos, but as she looked across the massacred caravan, the desire to visit justice and judgement with the edge of her sword burned more fiercely in her heart than ever before.
‘How many?’ Talorcan shook his head and looked up at Esselt. His face was lean and hard, darkened to defy the desert sun, weathered by the horrors he had unearthed and combated for so long.
‘Three nomad camps, one village and now this caravan.’ Esselt stepped to Talorcan’s side and laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ve been with you a long time, Tal. I know whatever atrocities you’ve been confronted by have not caused you to waver. You have never failed to see Sigmar’s justice meted out. It doesn’t matter how many it has claimed.’ An edge crept into her voice, a tone of menace that promised vengeance for the fiend they sought. ‘All that matters is we keep it from taking any more.’
Talorcan closed his hand around Esselt’s, drawing comfort from her reassurance and her determination. ‘I will track this fiend to the gates of Shadowfell if needs must,’ he vowed.
‘Perhaps it is dead already,’ Esselt said. She drew Talorcan’s attention to one of the bodies lying nearby, a corpse wearing the mail hauberk of a mercenary. Clenched in his hand was a bloodied scimitar. A little further on, another armoured body gripped a spear with its head snapped off. ‘The killer didn’t find such helpless victims this time. These people fought back.’
‘No,’ Talorcan stated, releasing her hand and rising to his feet. ‘It isn’t here. If it were, we would know it. The Order of Azyr has trained us to sense the corruption of Chaos. We would sense its taint, feel it crying out for new victims. The evil is gone. It has gone to seek new prey. To lurk unsuspected until its hunger is aroused.’ He stood and began stalking about the scene. Crouched over, his face peering intently at the ground, his hand brushing across the scaly sands. He looked at the footprints scattered about the havoc, trying to pick from the marks left by victims and killer. At length he found a track that steered away from the murder site. As he pursued it towards the farther dunes, he shouted to Esselt.
‘The trail will be easy to follow,’ Talorcan declared. ‘The ground on the slope of the dune bears similar discolourations. Faint, but obvious enough if you know what you are looking for.’
Esselt stood above the small body Talorcan had first inspected. She repressed the empathy the corpse evoked, her mind processing the sight with the cold practicality demanded of all witch hunters. ‘No vultures have been around,’ she observed. ‘Not even a hint of bloat-moths sucking at the wounds.’
Talorcan managed a smile. Despite the grim circumstances, he was proud Esselt had learned so much from his teaching. ‘Bloat-moths would already have laid eggs if they were here. That means these bodies have not been here overnight. At best this happened in the morning. The killer cannot have gone far.’
Esselt’s fingers tightened on the grip of her sword. Her eyes roved across the carnage. ‘I ask few favours of you, Tal, but I ask for one now. When we find this thing, I want to be the one who brings it the doom it has earned.’
Three hours riding across the crawling dunes of Droost brought the witch hunters to yet another morbid scene. From the crest of one dune, a dark shape sprawled in the sand. Crimson-stained blemishes along the slope of the dune gave vivid evidence of where the body had initially fallen and rolled its way downwards.
Cautiously the witch hunters dismounted and approached the gore-spattered body. Talorcan threw back the folds of his cloak, drawing sword and pistol from his weapon belt. The blade he bore was smaller and slighter than the one Esselt carried, a weapon made for finesse and speed. The pistol was a silver-barrelled device fitted to a frame of sacred shimmerwood. The charge within was derived from an alchemical powder, the shot itself a ball of silver bathed in the holy unguents of Sigmar’s temple. Talorcan kept his sword held out to one side and aimed the pistol at the body’s head.
Esselt stepped closer, both hands locked on her weapon. Her strength, the brutal impact of the silver greatsword she carried, the heavy armour she wore under her cloak, drove her to investigate the grisly carcass. Talorcan’s forte was the quickness of his reflexes. Coupled with the reach of his pistol, it made sense for him to provide cover for Esselt.
The wounds that afflicted the body were almost beyond measure. Esselt could count at least five that should have been mortal blows. The caravan had fought hard, even if their efforts had not been enough to save them. Keeping a wary eye on the body, she kicked it over onto its side. For a moment she watched it, waiting for some kind of reaction. She was about to dismiss the thing as nothing but a corpse when a sanguine glow filled the empty eyes.
In a heartbeat the thing sprang onto its feet. It rushed at Esselt with outstretched hands. Long talons were emerging from them and the clawed fingers raked across her breastplate, scraping the metal surface.
The next instant there was a cracking boom as Talorcan fired his pistol into the cadaverous thing. The shot caught the fiend in its shoulder, shattering bone and shredding flesh. A spray of dark blood and gleaming ichor flashed from the wound. The creature swung around, glaring at its new attacker. Its head was distorted beyond the vicious injuries the body had suffered in life. Great black horns were tearing their way up from beneath the scalp. Long, yellow fangs pushed up from the jaws.
Talorcan readied himself for the fiend’s charge, but before it could rush him it was served a violent reminder of the foe it had left behind. In a shining arc of silver, Esselt brought her sword slicing down upon the monster’s neck, all but cleaving its head from its body. Smoke sizzled from the mutilating wound, ichor vaporising as it encountered the blessed residue left behind by the slashing blade. It swung back around, clashing its fangs together as it glared at Esselt. Then it collapsed against the scaly sands, the impact tearing its head free from the flap of skin that held it.
‘Receive Sigmar’s judgement, horror of Old Night,’ Esselt recited as she stared down at the desiccated remains. The horns and other daemonic manifestations were rapidly fading into a crusty residue, leaving behind only a mangled corpse.
‘A minor daemon of the Blood God,’ Talorcan said as he observed the dissolution. ‘I should think it took possession of this body only after the soul was gone. The flesh was seeped in the energies of Khorne, enough to act
as a temporary host. Without the life-force to sustain it, the thing could not have lingered long in Chamon.’
Esselt shook her head and pointed at the bullet wound in the corpse’s shoulder. ‘It had vitality enough to endure being shot. The one we found outside the village withered as soon as it was struck.’
‘And the host bodies we found outside the nomad camps were simply corpses,’ Talorcan expanded. ‘Time is the explanation to that riddle. We were farther back on the trail when we found the others.’
‘Then the strength of this possession means we are close,’ Esselt stated. A hard glint came into her eyes; a coldness settled upon her face.
Talorcan stepped past her and inspected the corpse. ‘It isn’t here,’ he declared. ‘Whatever damn thing was brought up from that tomb, it isn’t here.’
‘Someone else has it,’ Esselt said. ‘Like every other time, it found someone else to take it before relinquishing its previous owner.’
‘Someone else has it,’ Talorcan agreed. ‘But we can be thankful the evil is dormant now. It lacks even the power to make its new owner cover his tracks.’ He waved his empty pistol at a line of footprints that stretched out across the dunes. Already some of them had been covered by the crawling sands, but enough remained to betray a general direction.
‘It is my belief that whatever devilry is within this cursed relic,’ Talorcan said, ‘lies dormant until something serves to provoke it. The robbers outside the cairn can be assumed to have argued over their spoils. In Skra Voln it looked as though the village had started to butcher an old draught-lizard for a feast. At every site there was some sign that violence occurred before the massacre started. The relic must be empowered by the malignity of the Blood God, and once it senses bloodshed, it uses whoever carries it to create even more to sate its hunger.’
Esselt caught at Talorcan’s arm. ‘How long will it remain dormant? Can we catch the new owner before the evil is aroused?’
Talorcan placed a rough hand over hers. Wrapping his fingers around her wrist, he drew her close. ‘Sigmar knows we must,’ he said in a sombre whisper. ‘Otherwise the trail will lead us to another massacre.’
The oasis of Tora Grae was one of dozens scattered across the vast desert of Droost. Shielded from the crawling dunes by great outcroppings of copper-hued rock, Tora Grae offered succour from the blazing sun. Great stands of frond-leafed trees grew around a large pool of dark water. Tough shrubs and hardy desert grass formed an outer layer that ringed the trees, stretching to the very periphery of the rocks.
Where there was water to be found in the desert, so too would the society of man be found. Built within the outer ring of grass and shrubs, a small village had persisted for many generations. Huts woven from palm-fronds and reinforced with bartered cloth lay clustered together in a confused huddle. Beyond the huts, herds of wiry antelope nuzzled the grass within their fenced enclosures. Huge draught-lizards basked on the tops of rocks, soaking in the warmth of the day until, sated, they crawled into the shadows of their burrows. Demigryphs milled about, each animal tethered by a ring fastened to its beak and fixed to a stout wooden post. Dogs and poultry roamed freely through the village, doing their best to avoid the rambunctious children who raced around the huts. The older inhabitants of the village lounged in the shade of the trees. Early morning and early evening were their hours of labour, when they would see to their flocks and gather water from the pool. The middle of the day, with the hot sun blaring down on the world, was a time for rest and repose. Only children and fools bestirred themselves at such an hour.
Scattered about the rocky outcroppings, sentries maintained a lazy watch upon the desert around Tora Grae. Their main concern was the withering scalestorms that would reach down and rip away at the dunes, driving a blinding wall of shimmering sand across the desert to smother anything in its path. A lesser but still serious worry were the raider bands who prowled the wastes. Their usual prey were the caravans, but sometimes a gang would become large and bold enough to attack a village.
When one of the sentries spotted movement through the shimmering haze, his first inclination was to dip his fingers into the water jug resting beside him and moisten his eyes. After a few blinks, he looked again. There could be no doubt, there was someone riding through the desert in the very worst of the day. Two riders leading a third animal. The sentry hesitated only long enough to assure himself there weren’t others who had evaded his first sighting, then he scrambled down from his shaded perch and hurried into the village to alert his people.
As Talorcan and Esselt rode through a winding cut between the coppery rocks and onto the grassy expanse that surrounded Tora Grae, the witch hunters found themselves the centre of attention for hundreds of villagers. All the able-bodied inhabitants of the village were gathered together, hands locked around the hafts of axes and spears, the grips of swords and lizard-goads. Behind them, from the edge of the settlement itself, the very old and very young watched with anxious gazes as the strangers approached.
Talorcan looked across the assembled villagers, studying them with cold eyes, meeting the mute hostility of their own scrutiny. With a flourish he threw back the white cloak, displaying the weapons holstered on his belt, but more importantly revealing the heavy pectoral that hung across his chest. The surface of the metal plate was adorned in gold, displaying the image of a hammer centred above a pair of crossed lightning bolts. It was the mark of his chapter, the Witch Takers of Azyr.
Even in so remote a place as Tora Grae, the symbol of the witch hunters was recognised. An instant before and the villagers had been ready to fight these intruders. Now they shrank back, eyes wide with fright.
‘Who is headman here?’ Talorcan called out. ‘I would have words with your leader.’
The crowd was silent. Though they maintained their distance, none of them had lowered their weapons. Esselt shifted around in her saddle, slowly drawing her silver-bladed greatsword. An awed murmur rose from the villagers and they withdrew several paces back, some of them stumbling as they bumped into huts and fences.
‘We are the Hunters of Sigmar,’ Esselt declared, letting her words linger in the air. ‘We will speak with your headman,’ she added as she set her sword across the front of her saddle, its bright edge glistening in the sun. ‘Let him come forwards.’
An old man emerged from the midst of the crowd, his wrinkled brown body wrapped in a yellow burnoose bound about the waist by a heavy lizard-hide belt. The elder’s thin fingers were closed around a wooden hammer icon, and as he came towards the witch hunters, he held the holy image out to them.
‘Peace and rest be yours,’ the headman said, bowing low before the riders. ‘I am Morleo, leader of this community. Excuse the antagonism of my people. We did not recognise you for who you are.’ He drew the icon to his lips, kissing it reverently. ‘Tora Grae is dutiful in its faith. The God-King’s shrine is never neglected and I myself lead the morning devotions to Great Sigmar. We embrace and abide by the sacred teachings of his strictures–’
‘Into the halls of paradise the serpent of Chaos may slither,’ Talorcan interrupted, warningly. His gaze roved once more across the villagers. ‘We would have private conference with you. Then you will appreciate our purpose here.’ His tone dropped to a low whisper that barely reached the headman’s ears. ‘Then you will understand the danger your people are in.’
Talorcan and Esselt followed Morleo through his village. The shrine of Sigmar stood some small way from the huts, raised up on a log platform. Only a little larger than the huts themselves, the space within the shrine allowed enough room for a small altar with a stone hammer fastened to the wall behind it. A basin of water rested to one side of the altar while on the other side was an open box with a litter of coloured stones. The blues of lapis lazuli and turquoise clustered with the yellows of amber and the greens of malachite.
‘Offerings to Mighty Sigmar,’ Morleo explained when he notic
ed Esselt staring at the box. ‘My people are not wealthy, but such small treasure as they do find they bring here to render up in gratitude to the God-King.’
Esselt turned from the box. ‘Has anyone made an offering today?’
‘Not that I am aware,’ Morleo said. ‘It is possible someone may have come without my knowing. The shrine is open to all.’ An expression of almost painful regret replaced the worry that had been on his face. ‘Has something been stolen? Do you think one of my people to be a thief?’
‘Something has been taken,’ Talorcan said, slowly walking around the shrine, ‘but not from here. A foul relic from an unholy grave.’
‘Our problem is twofold,’ Esselt added. ‘We do not know who has it, nor do we know what it is.’
Morleo scratched at his chin in confusion. ‘If you do not know these things, then how do you know there is anything to look for?’
‘A string of massacres that has left red sand almost to your own threshold,’ Esselt growled, smacking her fist into her palm in frustration.
Talorcan glanced at her and frowned. Arriving too late to stop the slaughters was taking a toll on them both. He wished there was some comfort he could offer Esselt that wouldn’t seem a mere platitude.
‘Twenty days,’ Talorcan told the headman. ‘Twenty days we have been on the trail of this horror. It began with the grave of some chief of the Chaos hordes that once threatened the Khanate. Robbers took something from that tomb. Something saturated in the evil and madness of the Dark Gods.’
Morleo’s face took on a sickly hue. ‘You say that the trail has led you to Tora Grae? That a thief has brought this unclean thing here?’
‘Someone has brought it here,’ Talorcan said. ‘The relic has a way of abandoning its owners.’ His eyes were like slivers of steel as he met Morleo’s gaze. ‘It takes possession of them before the end and uses the one who carries it to further its evil.’
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