Zavant

by Black Library

  'Power of the fly lord... master grows impatient... gloria pestilens... nomine Avus Nurgle...'

  The words were mostly nonsense, some of them spoken in the archaic and rarely-used tongue called Priests' Cant, but Vido was able to recognise them clearly enough from his years in Konniger's service. They were all spoken by that same strange and disquieting voice he had heard earlier, but now he could discern something of the second voice. It was distinctly more human-sounding, and it seemed to be argu­ing with the other voice, trying to quell its companion's gibbering excitement. And then Vido recognised the second voice.

  It was Brother Rynok, the monastery's surly cellarer.

  Now Vido was truly confused. Rynok was tall and gaunt, not at all like the hunched, misshapen figure he and Konniger had caught sight of last night, and which Vido had managed to snatch a few confirming glimpses of in this pur­suit now.

  Ranald's eye, he swore to himself. Just how many servants of the Dark were there in this place, and exactly how many of them was he currently hot on the trail of?

  They were in one of the lower halls now, possibly even a subterranean level beneath the main monastery holdings. Hadn't Abbot Himerius mentioned something about crypts where they keep their dead, thought Vido, and then wished he hadn't recalled such a detail at this particular moment in time. He crept forward with even greater stealth, hugging the walls of the shadowy passage. His quarry was in sight now, paused at the end of the passage, and muttering to itself -

  arguing with itself, thought Vido. He swore he could hear two simultaneous and contradictory voices, that of Brother Rynok and the other impatient-sounding, inhuman-voiced thing - as it stood before a door at the end of the passage and fumbled with a large set of keys. Its burden lay bound at its feet. Vido saw another, slighter figure in monk's robes, and thought he heard a moan of pain or fear escape through the gag that bound the victim's mouth.

  Suddenly, there was a shrill hiss of urgent warning from the inhuman voice, and the misshapen figure spun round in alarm. Vido's reactions were up to the test. He instinctively located the closest and deepest band of alcoved shadows, losing himself amongst them. He pressed himself into the stonework of the wall, holding his daggers ready and strain­ing to hear every perceptible sound from further along the passage.

  He heard the two voices engaged in urgent, hushed whis­pers, then the rattling of keys and the sound of a heavy door being drawn open.

  And, after that, nothing.

  After an apparent eternity of waiting, he dared to peer cau­tiously out, expecting at any second to be seized and attacked by some Chaos-altered horror.

  The passage beyond was free of any immediate danger. The doorway was now open, and Vido could make out a prone, bound form lying there, apparently perched at the edge of a steep flight of steps leading down into impenetra­ble darkness. Cautiously, Vido began moving up the passage towards the bound form, constantly alert for any possible hint of threat.

  None was forthcoming, although Vido was not so foolish as to let his guard down. As he drew closer, he recognised the bound figure. It was Brother Kree, the monastery's librarian, one of the three missing monks Konniger and the Templars were now searching for. Well, he had found Kree, and he had heard Rynok. He wondered if somehow the still-missing Abbot Himerius couldn't be too far away either. Vido moved closer, bending down over the bound figure of the librarian. Kree, apparentiy now conscious, flinched at his touch and struggled in panic to turn his head to look up at him. There was blood on the monk's face from a wound to his head -

  evidence of how he had been overcome before being brought down here, surely - and the man looked up at him with eyes full of pain and fear.

  Vido lent down towards him, raising a dagger in what he hoped was a non-threatening manner, intending to cut the monk free of his bindings and then get both Kree and him­self out of this dark and dangerous place with as much speed as possible. Only when safely back in the better-lit upper lev­els, and with Kree delivered into the hands of the searchers, would he think about venturing back down here in pursuit of Rynok and his mysterious, misshapen accomplice, with Vido serving as guide to Konniger and a party of fully-armed Templars.

  Kree stared at him with wide, fear-crazed eyes, making urgent moaning sounds through the rough material of the gag tied round his mouth. Too late, just as Vido felt a pres­ence fill the passage behind him, did he realise what the terrified librarian-monk was trying to warn him of.

  Vido spun round, slashing the air with one of his daggers. He felt the point of the blade tear through rough, heavily- woven fabric - a monk's habit - and then into human flesh.

  Something slammed into him, and the next second he was flying through darkness, spinning over the precipice of the stairs down into the blackness below. He caught a fleeting glimpse of his attacker - a twisted and blurred impossible double-image of the face of the cellarer - and then instinct and the needs of his own immediate survival took over.

  Smaller, lighter and more nimble than a human, and with the training and experience of a master thief to back him up, Vido knew that he stood a better than even chance of sur­viving the fall. He allowed his body to relax, knowing that tensed muscles and limbs were the surest way to broken, shattered bones. He hit the surface of the steps below with what still felt like bone-crushing force, and then went into a roll, tucking his limbs protectively around his head and body as he bounced and rolled down the steep and rough- edged stone steps.

  And then he came to a halt, and was instantly on his feet again. His left arm was numb from the elbow down, his right ankle felt like it was fractured or worse, there was a flood of blood in his mouth - from nothing more serious

  than a smashed tooth or bitten-through tongue, he prayed - and half his body ached with the first dull reports of numer­ous cuts and contusions, but, for now, all of this could wait. He drew his still-good, right arm back to throw the dagger still gripped there, but, before he could do so, the hunched figure framed in the doorway at the top of the stairs gave a high-pitched snigger of glee and with one swift kick sent the struggling form of Kree down to join him.

  Vido dodged aside as the librarian's body hurtled past him, falling back himself as his injured ankle gave way beneath him. By the time he found his feet again, the door above was already starting to groan shut. Vido threw himself forward, putting everything he had into a last, desperate dag­ger cast. The spinning dagger flew through the narrowing gap of the closing door, drawing a shrill, inhuman scream of pain and surprise from the creature there as it plunged hilt deep into its flesh.

  It was a fine throw, but it was not enough. The door closed with a final, death-knell slam, plunging the area below into utter darkness.

  Vido did not panic. Taking a leaf from his master's book, he took pains to prepare himself for as many unpleasant eventualities as possible. A quick search of the pockets inside his cloak and jerkin produced a small, compact tinder box and two short candle stubs. Half a minute's work with the tinder box and he had light again, the precious, tiny candle flame revealing the first details of his new surroundings.

  He could see the vague form of Kree lying at the bottom of the stairs. His main thought was of the door above, and the immediate need to escape from this place and find his mas­ter again, but he had heard the tell-tale, heart-sinking sounds of metal scraping on metal from the other side of the door after it had slammed shut. Hopefully he might have dealt his assailant a grievous wound, but it had apparently not been enough to prevent the creature from locking the door behind it.

  A locked door was not necessarily an impenetrable barrier, but it would take time to deal with, so he had no excuse not to check on the status of the unfortunate Brother Kree. He had obviously been in Zavant Konniger's service too long, he ruefully told himself as he limped down the stairs towards

  the body of the monk. Who would have guessed even a few years ago that the likes of he would ever have dreamed of doing anything so altruistic and selfless as going to the aid of
another living being? His former acquaintances from the Albrecht Strasse mob of rogues and cutpurses would have hooted in derisive disbelief if they could see him now.

  The dull gleam of something reflecting the light of the can­dle caught his eye as he reached the bottom of his stairs. He shuffled cautiously over towards it, his burrow-dwelling racial instincts starting to tell him that he was standing at the entrance of what looked like a large and warren-like subter­ranean area.

  Ancient underground crypts, he reminded himself unhap­pily. Where these self-torturing, Chaos-tainted madmen hide away their dead.

  He found a sword, its gleaming metal sticky with partially- dried blood. Nearby was a body, torn and mostly consumed, the blood splattered over the stone floor beneath it still wet. He recognised the red-coloured, rearing griffon emblem of one of Gustav's Templars amongst the blood-stained ruins of its armour and clothing.

  Templar-brother Detlef Plievier, I presume,' breathed Vido to himself, realising he had just found Gustav's missing man. His service with Konniger had exposed him to various exotic kinds of violent and unpleasant death and their after­maths, and Vido didn't need his master's forensic skills to tell him that the Templar had been ripped apart and eaten. And very recently, too.

  Suddenly, the need to get that door open and escape became even more immediate.

  He heard a groan in the darkness and saw Kree stirring fee­bly. Hurrying over to the librarian, he pulled out another dagger and cut away the man's gag, holding up his head so that he could breathe more easily. Weak and frail, tied, bound and unable to move, the monk had not weathered the fall down the stairs as well as Vido. The halfling felt the cruel evidence of broken, shattered bones jutting out from underneath the monk's robes, and saw the deathly pallor already settling over the man's face.

  'He tricked us,' gasped the dying man. 'Rynok... or the thing which attacked me tonight, which only calls itself

  Rynok... it was he who convinced us with his lies and deceits that the afflictions were but another hardship sent to test us. A gift from the Holy Three to separate the worthy from the unworthy. When the changes became too terrible in those so afflicted, it was he who convinced us to keep them down here. We fed them and cared for them after a fashion, for they were still our brethren, but it wasn't until I knew what your master found in the well that I realised how badly we had been deceived.'

  The dying monk reached up, grasping Vido by the collar of his cloak and staring at him with the urgency of a man who could hear the call of Morr. 'The afflicted ones... the hungry ones... he gave them the Templar, and now he gives them us too. They have a taste for human flesh now, and he wants them loose in the halls above... anything to delay your mas­ter's discovery of what might be waiting in the west wing... of what old Radolphus, or whatever's left of him, might have become. I suspected, for so long I suspected... but I never knew, never dreamed, how far the sickness of this place had spread...'

  The man fell back exhausted, possibly only a few short minutes away from death. Vido's mind reeled with the import of what he had just heard.

  Afflicted ones?

  A taste for human flesh now?

  What might be waiting in the west wing?

  Old Radolphus, or whatever was left of him?

  From somewhere disturbingly close by in the surrounding darkness, Vido heard a heavy, shuffling sound. Footsteps. And soft, hungry grunting sounds. Coming towards him from all around.

  Suddenly, the need to get that door open and escape became very, very immediate indeed.

  Eight

  The hunter stood at the foot of the rocky escarpment, look­ing up at the monastery battlements high above. He had made his way round the forest's edge to this point, encoun­tering only three beastman scouts as he did so. They were lying somewhere in the thickets behind him, although this time he had not bothered to conceal the corpses.

  There was no point any more. Not when matters seemed to be coming to a head, and time was now at a premium. The creatures at the main gate around the other side of the escarpment were massing for another attack, one which the hunter judged would probably succeed, and he had decided that the best place for him now was inside the monastery, at the side of the man he had been ordered to protect from harm.

  The sides of the stone cliff were almost sheer, and the hunter could see why the monastery's builders had concen­trated all their defensive efforts at the other side of the structure, for surely no enemy could ever think of scaling such an obstacle.

  The hunter allowed himself a rare smile as he remembered another rocky promontory with a fortress built atop it. It was on the border marches between the Empire and Bretonnia, and had been home to a rebel Bretonnian duke who had taken to sending raiding parties into the lands of his Empire neighbours. The Imperial subjects of those lands com­plained to the Emperor Karl-Franz. He could have taken the matter up with the ambassador of his ally, King Louen of Bretonnia. Instead, the Emperor, after taking advice from his Lord Chamberlain, the Graf Otto von Bitternach, chose a different way to make his displeasure known.

  Each day, the Bretonnian duke would awake and look out from the balcony of his bed chambers at the lands beyond, casting covetous eyes on the territories and wealth of his Empire neighbours, safe in the knowledge that no enemy could assault him in his impregnable rock-pinnacle fortress. Until one day, the duke did not arise to look out from his balcony, for in the night someone had scaled the surface of that unassailable rock-face, climbed into his bed chambers and had slit his throat from ear to ear while he lay there sleeping. After that, there were no more troublesome border raids from him or any of his fellow Bretonnian rebel friends.

  Diligently, patiently, the hunter began to climb the surface of this supposedly unassailable escarpment, a trace of a smile still on his face as he did so.

  Sobbing in pain, staggering from the growing effects of blood-loss, Brother Rynok fled upwards through the interior of the monastery, heading for the central bell-tower above the main chapel. His monstrous twin gibbered and muttered behind him, urging him on in his commission of this one final task for their mutual master.

  Yes, one last task, the tortured Sigmarite monk reminded himself. One last act of betrayal, and he would be free of his monstrous burden. With the few shreds of sanity that remained to him, he could still remember when he had dis­covered the marks of mutation upon his own flesh, marks which no amount of holy prayer or rigorous self-mortification could erase. In the blessed solitude of his cell he had prayed to Lord Sigmar for salvation and there, in the dark­ness, a voice had answered him.

  It had not been the voice of Lord Sigmar.

  It had been the voice of his own, tainted flesh, or at least the voice of something which spoke to him through that flesh. From the darkness, as he lay alone in his cell at night, wracked with shame and self-loathing, it whispered forth to him, making promises and threats, demands and sugges­tions. In time, he had come to hear the voice more clearly than his own thoughts, and had come to obey it more than that other, lesser voice.

  He capitulated, doing as the voice demanded, betraying and deceiving his brethren, but his abeyance had not been enough for the voice: it had set a guardian to watch over him. A guardian that wore a foul, mocking parody of his face and which came impossibly bubbling out of his tainted flesh, claiming his body, and, even sometimes his mind for itself. His 'twin' he called it, a monstrous tumor-thing which lurked within him, manifesting itself only at night, twisting and altering the shape of his body as it grew out of him until he resembled one of those hunched, misshapen things in the crypts below.

  He could feel its presence behind him now: its giggling, simpering voice, its foul breath rasping on the back of his neck. He knew that if he turned round he would see its face staring balefully back at him, rearing up out of the hidden slit in the shoulder of his cassock. Its single, stunted vestigial limb twitching as it scratched bloody grooves in its own skin - their own skin, he reminded himself with a shudder of revulsion - with i
ts two hook-clawed fingers.

  Was it any wonder that he had been insane for these last ten years?

  But it will all end tonight, he reminded himself, fumbling with the large ring of keys which gave him egress to any door in the entire monastery. The door swung open, and with fad­ing strength he fled up the narrow stairs towards the belfry.

  One last task. And then he would at last be allowed to meet the blessed oblivion that had been withheld from him for so long. One last task.

  The sound of sword pommels angrily pounding on thick, stubbornly resistant wood quickly summoned Konniger and Gustav to the scene.

  They found two Templars banging on the sealed double doors of the sacristy chapel.

  'Locked or barred from inside, sir,' one of them saluted to his commander, 'so there's definitely someone in there.'

  Gustav drew his sword, motioning for his men to step away. They quickly did so, for the Templar captain's sword was no ordinary blade. Forged from dwarf-gifted metal and blessed by Magnus the Pious himself, it had been wielded by many brave heroes through the history of the Order of the Red Griffon, and both the sword and its holder commanded instant respect from all its members.

  One swift blow, and Gustav smashed through the brass lock. A powerful kick from a mail-armoured foot reduced the wooden beam securing the other side of the door to a splintered ruin. Then they were into the chamber, his two men fanning out with swords ready to guard their comman­der's flanks.

  Konniger swept in behind them, his keen eyes instantly seeing the prone figure of Himerius kneeling in prayer before the altar.