He surreptitiously reached into his jerkin to check that his throwing dagger, and the two others like it, was still there within easy grasp, even if he doubted that the odds against him here were any more favourable than they had been back in the Murder Hole. Taking his eyes off his tormentor for a moment, he risked a quick glance over at Klasst, checking to see what the crimelord's reactions would be. Klasst feigned disinterest, choosing instead to devote his attention to a code-written inventory list that had been delivered to him some minutes ago.
If Vido was looking for help from that unlikely quarter, then, unsurprisingly, it seemed that none would be immediately forthcoming. Klasst had made it clear that Konniger's person was inviolable tonight; the question now was, did the crimelord's protective blessings extend to Konniger's halfling manservant?
From the mood of tense unrest in the room, and the growing smile on Scholke's face, Vido guessed he would have his answer soon enough.
'I remember when you weren't such a bigwig, little Vido,' continued the assassin, starting to put on a show for his watching men. 'Part of Hergabo Kleinbratten's mob from down on Albrecht Strasse, weren't you? Yes, he spoke very highly of you, did old Hergabo. Well, anyway, he did, right up until someone bashed his stupid, Moot-born brains in with a boot-hook one dark and foggy night.'
Scholke's grin grew broader and nastier, and Vido remembered the bloodied mess that had been his old thief mentor when they found him lying in the street the next morning. He hadn't been a bad sort, old Hergabo, even if he had been positively dwarf-like when it came to dividing up the loot, and Vido had genuinely mourned the old rogue's death. Now he had yet another reason to hate and fear Scholke.
He continued to stare down the assassin, aware all the time that Scholke's men were on the move, two of them moving in a supposedly haphazard, casual way round the room to his left and right, outflanking him on each side. All the time, Scholke kept talking, trying to keep Vido distracted as if he was some young runtling just arrived from the Moot, wet behind the ears and with fresh cow-dung still between his toes.
"Yes, that's when you came to work for us, wasn't it? A good, hard-working thief you were. A good little earner for the organisation. But then you had that run-in with the City Watch, didn't you? We all reckoned you were a goner, off to dance the hangman's jig at the weekly hangings in the Konigplatz. And next thing we know there's some nonsense talk about an Imperial pardon signed by old Karl-Franz himself, and then, right enough, there you are giving all your old Reikerbahn mates the cold shoulder and swanking around town as manservant to his nibs, Herr High-And-Mighty Konniger.'
As he spoke, Scholke was idly spinning his dagger, cunningly flipping it from finger to finger, but Vido knew better than to allow himself to be distracted by the ploy. He kept a careful watch on Scholke's eyes - they would give the split- second warning of the assassin's intentions - and on the men still casually edging round the walls of the room, disappearing now into the dangerous areas on the periphery of his vision.
Whatever was going to happen, it was probably only a matter of seconds away now.
"Yes, when you left, we lost a nice little source of regular income there,' continued Scholke, 'but you never did ask permission to leave the organisation or offer to buy out the rest of your contract with us, did you? That means you tried to cheat us, Vido. You owe us a debt, and you know that Herr Klasst always collects in the end on any unpaid debts still owed to him.'
Forget the other two, thought Vido. One clear, easy throw, putting the blade right into his throat. For old Hergabo, if nothing else.
'If your thugs are quite finished their tomfoolery with my manservant, Vesper, then I've finished my examination and am ready to share my findings with you,'
Konniger stood in the doorway, wiping his blood-stained hands on a linen cloth and staring in challenge at the scene in the room before him.
Scholke looked, disappointed, towards his master, who brought his henchman's fun to an end with a curt and dismissive gesture. The crimelord had been watching the last few moments with vague interest, a hint of ugly enjoyment
glittering in his dark eyes. Whether he would have called his pet killer to heel before the final denouement was now a question that would never be answered.
'And what have you discovered?' asked Klasst, blunt and to the point. He was all business again, showing no appetite for the intellectual sparring with Konniger of earlier in the evening.
There are some puzzling aspects to the evidence, but I can confirm that your enemy is indeed that which you fear it to be.' Here Konniger deliberately raised his voice, no doubt momentarily enjoying the effect his chilling words had on Klasst's men. The darkest, hidden horrors of the world held far considerably greater terror in the minds of superstitious back-alley rogues than they did for gentleman sage-detectives who had made a lifetime's study of such things. You and your organisation are under attack from the forces of the undead. The killer is the very worst of that kind: a vampire, possibly of a variety I have never encountered before. There are others with it too, foul undead minions or accomplices that it has summoned to assist it in its task.'
'Then you know how to deal with such creatures?' asked Klasst, eagerly.
Konniger finished wiping his hands and threw the cloth into the doorway behind him. 'The precautions you took with the cadavers were more than adequate, but I am finished with them now, and I suggest that you have the remains cremated as soon as possible. You must do the same with the bodies of the other victims, if you have not already done so. I also strongly suggest you seek out the help of a priest of Morr for advice on the proper funerary rites.'
Konniger looked up sharply, staring Klasst straight in the eye. 'Your men may be the worst kind of villains, Vesper, but even they deserve better than to have their souls held in thrall for all eternity to the powers of darkness.'
'Zavant...' The tone in the crimelord's voice was half- threatening, half-pleading. It was the tone of a powerful man unused to asking for favours, and loathe to do so now from one who he must surely consider to be his worst enemy.
Yes, Vesper, I will help you,' relented Konniger, at last. 'Not because I care in the least about the fates of you and your army of cutthroats, but because I cannot permit such foulness
to continue to exist here in Altdorf. You and the vampire may share certain traits, Vesper, both shadow-dwelling predators feeding on the lifeblood of humanity, both ruling through fear and violence, but at least you are not yet so irredeemably damned as those foul servants of evil. I warn you, though, that once this business is concluded, there will still one day have to be a final reckoning between us. As to the business at hand now, though, I can lend aid and advice to an extent, but there are certain people I can summon here, people who have much experience in dealing with such-'
'No outsiders,' warned Klasst. 'No damned witch-hunters and boy wonder Templars or Knights Panther, Zavant. We deal with this on our own.'
Very well. As you wish.' Konniger folded his hands into the sleeves of his vestments, and calmly moved towards the passageway door leading out of the underground chamber. 'Good luck in your endeavours, Vesper. I would consider praying for you, but I do not believe you deserve Sigmar's blessings, nor do I think my prayers would in any way alter the outcome of your battle. Come, Vido, our work here is done.'
One of Klasst's men moved to block the way out the door, but before he could do anything, there was a commotion in the passageway outside. Vido heard hurried footsteps, and the sound of alarmed shouting. Blades were hurriedly drawn from scabbards, and Vido even saw one of Klasst's bodyguards ready a blunderbuss rifle and level its gaping, fully loaded barrel mouth at the doorway. To his surprise, Vido also found himself being hauled back by Konniger, the sage- detective deliberately interposing his own body between his servant and whatever was on the other side of the door.
The door burst open and a man, his face bloodied, his eyes wide with shock and disbelieving horror, came stumbling in
. 'Herr Klasst, they've struck again!' he panted, delivering his fear-garbled message to his employer. There's been another one, over at the counting house on Talabec Platz. Ranald's eye, you've never heard such screams, and it's still going on!'
Klasst looked sharply over at Konniger, who nodded in silent understanding.
'Gather what men you can, Vesper, and let us go without delay. Quickly, there isn't a moment to lose.'
Four
They moved swiftly and urgently through the secret back- ways of the city. Vido knew something of these hidden highways from his days in the thieves' guild, but he had never guessed before that they could have grown to be so extensive. With a shudder, he recalled the time he accompanied Konniger in the sage-detective's explorations of the subterranean tunnels and chambers of the so-called 'Under- Empire', but Klasst's achievement was in many ways even more impressive than that. The vile rat-things carved the routes between their lairs in the bowels of the earth, away from the sight of men, but the secret roads traversed by the Altdorf crimelord and his servants were in plain sight and yet somehow invisible and unknown to all.
They travelled through streets and wynds where all eyes were carefully averted, passed through locked and guarded gates whose watchmen looked the other way as they did so. Several times, their route took them through various hovellike dwellings amongst the Reikerbahn, the wretched inhabitants of these houses barely sparing them a second
glance and giving the impression that it was an everyday occurrence for them to see large parties of armed strangers pass through the middle of their homes. At one point, their journey took them into a dreamhouse den, the air of the place thick with the cloying, sickly reek of dreamweed smoke. The floor was lined with a carpet of supine, weed- incapacitated forms, and Klasst and his men marched brusquely through them, stepping heavily on limbs and unconscious bodies, making no attempt to conceal their contempt for those who undoubtedly contributed heavily to the crimelord's share of the profits from the always burgeoning dreamweed business. Dreamweed-dazed eyes stupidly stared at them as they passed through the dank, stinking cellars of the building. If any of these people were actually aware of them, thought Vido, they would probably be unable to distinguish the travellers from any of the other phantom figures that passed through the shifting haze of their waking weed-dreams.
Their journey through the dreamhouse den brought them out at a seemingly little-used river jetty, where they boarded rowing skips for the journey across yet another riverway. Altdorf stood on a series of islands straddling the meeting place of the waters of the Talabec and Reik rivers, and it was difficult to traverse the city from one point to another without crossing water at least once. River traffic was forbidden during the hours of night, and all travellers had to pass over the city's many wooden and stone bridges, all of which were guarded by at least one Watch patrol.
Despite the ban on night-time river traffic, there was no challenge to Klasst's convoy of rafts as they speedily cut their way across this slow-flowing portion of the river. One of Klasst's men stood at the prow of the lead raft, holding a lit lantern aloft, the light taking on a weird red sheen from the coloured glass it was filtered through. Vido guessed that the colour of the lantern light was a coded means of communication to all nearby, warning them of the identity of the raft's distinguished and much-feared passenger. Whatever the truth, there were no alarmed shouts in challenge to the men on the rafts, even through it was a rare fogless night on the river, and they were passing within clear sight of at least two Watch-guarded bridges.
They docked at the other side of the river at another small wharf that Vido had never seen before, scrambling ashore to be met by a waiting group of more of Klasst's armed thugs. More and more men had joined them on the course of their journey, appearing as if from nowhere in small bands of twos and threes to silently fall into step with Klasst and his bodyguards, and there were now over two dozen of them travelling in the crimelord's vanguard. Vido saw crossbows, handbows and more blackpowder weapons, and somewhere amongst the throng he glimpsed a figure wearing the distinctive coloured robes of one of the Colleges of Magic. Klasst, it seemed, had had the presence of mind to summon one of his pet sorcerers.
They gathered on the small jetty, an ancient, barred, rust- encrusted gate blocking the way before them. One of Klasst's men produced a large ring from which hung keys of many different sizes and sorts and unlocked the gate, which yielded with a protesting, rusted-metal groan. Vido caught one tantalizing glimpse of the heavy key ring, and the former thief in him couldn't help but wonder how many hidden treasures and dark secrets hung there.
There was an underground passageway beyond the gate, which led straight in the direction of the nearby Talabec Platz merchants' quarter, and Vido's sensitive halfling nose detected enough of a malodorous hint emanating from the open passageway to suggest that it connected at some close point with the city's sewer-ways.
Surrounded by his bodyguards, Klasst looked sharply at Konniger as the group entered the tunnel. 'Now we will soon have an end to this business, Zavant, and you will see what happens to those who try to cross Vesper Klasst.'
'I pray you are right, Vesper,' replied Konniger stiffly, 'if only because it will mean a more than welcome end to our temporary alliance.'
They moved swiftly along the tunnel, Klasst sending several of his thugs on ahead to scout the way. Many of those here were seasoned thieves and assassins, Vido knew, skilled at moving with stealth and subtlety. Still, there was only so much stealth that a large group of heavily armed men could achieve while splashing their way along a narrow, waterlogged, echo-filled underground tunnel, and Vido winced at
the amount of noise they were making. Besides the noise, there was something else that troubled him: a faint, sickly carrion scent lurking below the traditional sewer stink that now lay heavy in the air of the tunnel.
Vido glanced around him, checking to see if anyone else sensed what he could. The faces of Klasst's bodyguards were tight with tension, eyes and ears straining to pick up any hint of danger in the darkness ahead while ignoring any more subde clues that their lesser senses may have picked up. The crimelord himself delicately held a posy bag to his nose and mouth, the perfumed scent from the herbs inside masking the stench in the tunnel.
Only Konniger seemed to have picked up the odour too. He sniffed at the air suspiciously with his long, beak-like nose, and then cast Vido a troubled glance. Take care,' he whispered urgently. 'Whatever happens, stay close by me.'
Konniger reached into his robes, producing a flintbox and stubby, yellow tallow wax candle from amongst the seemingly endless number of accoutrements and items which he habitually carried with him. He quickly struck a flame from the flintbox and lit the candle's tapered wick. The stuttering, tiny light it threw off was meagre in comparison to the lanterns and firebrand torches held by several of Klasst's men, but Vido suspected that the candle's purpose was for something other than mere illumination.
As he watched, Konniger threw a pinch of a glittering dust into the fragile flame. The result was instantaneous: the flame angrily flared up and then began twisting and shifting in a way completely independent of the air currents blowing through the tunnel. Hypnotised, Vido watched as the flickering flame changed hue several times, running through a bewildering panoply of colours. The thugs around them shifted uneasily, clearly unhappy at being in the presence of anything that might be called witchcraft. Vido, who knew his master's strange ways, could have told them otherwise, but doubted that they would be able to tell the difference between mere witchcraft tricks and some of the far more arcane methods employed by Konniger.
'Master...' he breathed, only to be cut short by Konniger holding one long, tapering finger to his lips in commanding silence. The same finger then pointed slowly towards the
candle flame. Vido obediently looked, and for a moment could not believe what he saw.
The candle burned with a clear black flame, throwing off - impossibly and yet
somehow undeniably - a black light radiance that stood out brilliantly against the lesser, surrounding darkness of the tunnel.
Those around them gawped in surprise. Konniger alone seemed to know what this meant and made a soft grunt of annoyance that Vido recognised from experience as meaning that his master had just had his worst fears confirmed.
"Vesper, we're walking into an ambush! Look at the flame! The black radiance indicates that one of the greater orders of the undead - almost certainly a vampire of significant power - is close by! Look at the flame!' he insisted again, reaching out to grasp Klasst's arm. 'Call your men back. It's a trap, man! It's-'
Klasst was cut off by the sound of a scream from further up the tunnel, a sound followed seconds later by an abrupt tearing sound and then the splash of something heavy - a body, Vido realised, in sick fear - falling into the water-filled gutters of the tunnel.
Alerted by Konniger's warning, Klasst and his men had a few extra precious seconds to react before their attackers struck. Vido had to give Klasst credit for the quality and skill of his cadre of bodyguards. They were drawn not merely from the finest cut-throat scum that the back-alleys of Altdorf had to offer, but also from the pick of the best mercenary bands and warrior castes in the whole of the Old World.
Under the circumstances, then, it was greatly to their credit that any of them actually managed to survive the battle for quite as long as they did.
Having swiftly dealt with the scouts that Klasst had sent ahead up the tunnel, the ghoul things swept down the passage towards the rest of the group. Riflemen and handgunners stepped forward, and suddenly the tunnel was filled by the crashing roar of gunfire and the stinging reek of flintlock-ignited blackpowder, followed moments later by the screaming howls of pain from the ghouls as musket-fired lead balls tore into leprous, grave-rotted flesh and shattered gnarled, inhuman-shaped bones.
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