by C. L. Werner
‘Key,’ Ghunder growled, his deep voice vibrating through the passageway. The ogre extended his enormous hand to Thulmann. The witch hunter nodded, placing the ring of keys in the monster’s palm. Ghunder turned, hobbling across the passage towards one of the cells. Thulmann found his eyes locked on the door, the only thing still remaining between him and the thing that haunted his darkest nightmares.
The door swung open and Ghunder stepped away, exposing the inky darkness of the cell. Thulmann felt his body shudder as he found himself staring into the darkness, visualising what it contained in his mind’s eye. ‘Come along Streng,’ he said, still staring into the darkened cell.
The witch hunter’s words startled his henchman. In their past visits to the Reiksfang, Thulmann had always left his associate in the corridor while he had gone into the cell alone. Streng wondered at how uneasy Thulmann must be to require the mercenary’s company to give him the strength to face whatever was in the cell.
It was a small room, scarcely ten feet square, with a low, dripping ceiling. The walls were bare, fungus-ridden stone. Scraps of straw and muck littered the uneven floor.
An iron cage hung from a chain set into a hook in the ceiling at the centre of the room. Streng wrinkled his nose at the stink emanating from the tattered shape crushed inside the iron box, and even more at the wooden slop bucket resting on the floor beneath the cage, filled to the brim with the inmate’s filth.
The man in the cage turned his head ever so slightly, blinking milk-white eyes as the light from Thulmann’s torch intruded upon his universe of darkness. A raw pink tongue licked at scabby lips as the prisoner’s ragged breath became rapid with excitement. The man’s arms were folded awkwardly against his chest, palms turned outward so that his fingers were able to grip the bars of his cage. In his agitation, the prisoner tried to move them, succeeding only in a sickly, fluttering motion. The mercenary recognised the brutal residue of extreme torture and long years of confinement – the man’s bones had been broken before he had been imprisoned in his cage. The bones had reset, but they had healed in the crooked manner dictated by his contorted position inside the cage.
The prisoner continued to blink at the light, his empty mouth snapping open and closed as slow, dry croaks wheezed their way up his throat. It was with a start that Streng realised the croaks were actually words.
‘Nephew,’ the inmate wheezed. ‘Nephew…’ There was a hate beyond hate in the croaking voice, a limitless malice. As the word rasped across the cell, Streng took a harder look at the crushed, malformed thing inside the cage. Beneath the dirt, beneath the filth and the scabs, beneath the liver-spotted skin and the wrinkled flesh, there was the faintest suggestion of a resemblance, the echo of a face that had once, perhaps, not been very much unlike that of Mathias Thulmann.
‘I see you remember me, Erasmus,’ Thulmann said, every word coming as an effort.
The thing in the cage began to cough, choking on his sickly laughter. ‘See? See? I see nothing, nephew.’ Erasmus Kleib twitched one of his broken fingers, trying to point at his milky eyes. ‘Too many years in this tomb you made for me. Only your light, just a yellow glow, that’s all. That’s all there is, just a yellow glow.’
Thulmann handed the torch to Streng and took a step closer to the cage. ‘You had sight enough to know it was me when I came here, sorcerer.’ Erasmus Kleib’s festering laughter hissed again from his wasted frame.
‘In ten years, who else has come here? Only the ogre to feed and water me like some potted plant.’ The captive closed his blind eyes, tears crawling down his face. ‘Doesn’t bring a light with him! No, not that one! Just sniffs his way over here, like a great big cat. No light. No warmth. Never ever, only the dark and the cold. Always the dark and the cold.’
The witch hunter was without pity as his uncle’s mind fell into half-mad babble. Erasmus Kleib could not suffer enough to pay for the crimes he had committed against humanity and the Empire, the crimes he had committed against his own family. Instead, a deep satisfaction throbbed through Thulmann’s chest. Perhaps it was the same sort of sadistic pleasure creatures like the late Captain Meisser or Sforza Zerndorff took when they watched suspects being tortured, the perverse enjoyment they experienced that had nothing to do with justice or retribution. If it was, Thulmann did not care, giving himself over to it completely. He knew the feeling was as fragile as a desert flower. As he watched the monster that had destroyed his life weep, he remembered everything his uncle had done. Other faces filled his mind, faces Kleib had destroyed. The moment was gone, replaced by the deep sorrow of all that he had lost, all that Kleib had taken from him.
Thulmann’s hand closed around his sword, pulling it a hand’s-breadth from its scabbard. Kleib cocked his head at the sound of steel sliding against leather, an obscene light of hope filling his blind face. Disgust overwhelmed Thulmann’s rage and he slammed the blade back down. ‘I have questions, heretic,’ he snarled. ‘Questions you will answer.’
‘All that I hear, all that fills my endless night is the dripping water,’ Kleib’s voice wheezed from the cage. ‘Drip, drip, splash. Drip, drip, splash.’
‘Listen to me sorcerer, I will not be ignored.’
Kleib’s nearly empty mouth spread into a mocking smile. ‘Drip, splash, drip. Drip, drip, drip.’ Thulmann glared into the heretic’s sightless eyes.
‘Douse the torch, Streng, we are done here,’ Thulmann growled, turning his back on the cage. Kleib’s body shuddered as he wailed in horror.
‘No! No! For all pity’s sake don’t take the light away!’
Thulmann waved his hand stopping Streng as the mercenary moved to extinguish it against the damp stone floor. Slowly the witch hunter turned back towards his uncle. ‘You are still sane enough to know fear, Erasmus, aren’t you? Perhaps coming here wasn’t a complete waste of time after all.’
The relief in Kleib’s face faded, and even in his milk-white eyes a vindictive hate could be seen. The caged sorcerer spat into the shadows, his lips curled in a sneer. ‘It has been a long time, nephew. Tell me, is your family well?’
An inarticulate growl exploded from Thulmann’s chest and the witch hunter lunged forwards, gloved hands closing around the bars of the cage. With savage fury Thulmann shook the hanging prison. Kleib cried out in agony as his crushed body was thrown about within his cramped container.
‘I ask the questions, filth!’ Thulmann roared. ‘The only things I want to hear from that crooked tongue of yours are answers!’
‘Or what?’ Kleib challenged. ‘What more can you do to me, nephew? Kill me?’
Thulmann leaned forwards, so close that he could smell the sickly breath gasping from the sorcerer’s lungs. ‘Believe me, Erasmus, I have spent many sleepless nights thinking of things that could still be done to you. Every time I hear a child laugh, every time I see a face that reminds me of Anya, every time I feel alone and forgotten, I think of you and I think what more can be done to increase your suffering. Do you really want to discover how inventive my imagination has become?’
As much as he was able within the confines of his cage, Kleib slumped in defeat, all the defiance draining out of him. He shook his head, weakly. ‘Speak your piece, nephew.’
Thulmann stepped back from the cage, wiping his hands on his trouser leg in an effort to remove the filthy grime from his fingers. ‘I need information about your old friends, the ones who used to help you so very much. The ones you helped so very much.’
‘The underfolk will gnaw your bones yet, nephew,’ Kleib swore, ‘but this time Erasmus Kleib will not be there to stop them. Strange you should be so ungrateful to your uncle for sparing your life.’
‘I trust in Sigmar’s protection, not yours, heretic!’ Thulmann spat. ‘I have returned the “familial courtesy” you showed me beneath the streets of Marienburg. I did not burn you at the stake, Erasmus. You spared my life, I spared yours.’
‘You call this life!’ Kleib moaned.
‘I call it revenge,’ Thulm
ann retorted, his tone more venomous than an Arabyan viper’s kiss, ‘but you have not answered my question. I am looking for a particular skaven, one of the horned sorcerer-priests who command their verminous breed. The creature stole something, and I will have it back.’
Kleib’s coughing laughter returned, causing the cage to shake once more. ‘A grey seer? You are hunting a grey seer? Your bones will line the nest of skaven pups and your soul will be a chew toy for the Horned Rat!’
‘I will find this creature,’ Thulmann said, ‘and you will help me. Your dealings with the underfolk were extensive, there is no man in all the Empire who knows more about their pestilential kind.’
‘There are thousands upon thousands of the rat-kin!’ Kleib continued to laugh. ‘Their tunnels stretch from the Wastes to the jungles beyond Araby, from the hills of Estalia to the mists of Cathay! Better to ask me where to find a particular leaf in the Forest of Loren, the chance of success would be much higher!’
‘Then you cannot help me,’ Thulmann said. ‘I am sorry to have wasted your time, Erasmus. Streng, we are done here.’
Kleib could sense the yellow glow of the torch withdrawing as Streng moved to the cell door. The sorcerer cried out in panic, desperate to keep himself from being plunged back into complete oblivion. Thulmann motioned with his hand again and Streng stepped back into the cell.
‘Yes, Erasmus? You have perhaps thought of something?’
‘Maybe, maybe I can help you.’ The sorcerer’s words were rapid, fawning, and eager to please the witch hunter’s demands. ‘I have had dealings with the grey seers; they are not so numerous as the rest of their kind. Perhaps if you described the creature you are looking for, I might recognise it.’
‘The creature I am hunting is an older specimen of its kind, crook-backed by the weight of its years. Its fur is grey speckled with black, the fur of its hands completely dark. Two great ram horns grow from the sides of its head. When I saw it, the creature wore black robes and a curious patchwork fur collar.’ Thulmann studied Kleib’s face as he described the monster, watching for any sign that might betray the sorcerer’s thoughts. He saw Kleib’s eyes narrow as the witch hunter described the fur collar. Something about that detail had touched upon Kleib’s memories.
‘You know something, Erasmus,’ Thulmann stated. ‘I will hear it.’
Kleib shook his head. ‘Only if you promise me something. Promise me that you will kill me when you leave here.’
‘I will not,’ Thulmann replied. ‘I suffer for your crimes every day I draw breath. So should you. No, Erasmus, I will not kill you. It would sit ill with me to execute the heretic who spared my life.’
‘Then promise me you will leave the torch,’ Kleib pleaded. ‘Promise me you will leave me the light.’
Thulmann was silent for a moment, and then slowly nodded his head. ‘I will leave the torch for you if you can tell me something useful.’
‘The rat-kin you hunt is indeed a grey seer,’ Kleib said, ‘one that belongs to a particular sect of their kind called the Skrittar. Their talisman is that unusual collar you described. It is the custom of the Skrittar to rip the fur from the throats of vanquished rivals and stitch their trophies into a garment they wear around their necks. This grey seer you saw was one of the Skrittar.’
‘The warren the creature was operating from has been destroyed,’ Thulmann told the captive. ‘We captured the warlord of the nest and before it died it claimed the grey seer had escaped to some other lair. Where would it have escaped to?’
‘I have your promise about the torch, nephew? Then I shall speak. My dealings with the Skrittar were extensive; I came to know them quite well. They are more interested in mankind than most of their breed. They think it might be possible to domesticate us one day.’ Kleib’s coughing laughter wracked his crumpled body once more. ‘For centuries they have maintained a stronghold in the western reaches of the Reikland, a few days’ journey from the foot of the Grey Mountains. I visited that lair once, if you were to release me I am certain I could guide you to the place.’
‘The years have not rendered me an idiot, Erasmus,’ Thulmann snarled. ‘It cost many good men to put you into that cage and in that cage you will stay until Sigmar returns and cleanses the land of all its evils. If you can show me how to find this stronghold, you can tell me how to do so.’
‘You will need to travel into the south-west corner of the Reikland,’ Kleib said, his voice subdued after his desperate gamble for release had been firmly rejected. ‘Find the old Silver Road that once ran through the province into the dwarf holds of the Grey Mountains. Follow this into the west until the mountains blot out the twilight and then turn south until you find the township of Wyrmvater. The stronghold is somewhat near Wyrmvater. With diligence and care, you should find it easily enough. If the skaven don’t find you first, that is.’
The witch hunter was silent again as he considered Kleib’s directions. The Order of Sigmar maintained one of the best collections of maps outside the Imperial Cartographer’s Guild. It should be easy enough to verify the existence of Wyrmvater and its situation in Reikland. It was not much to go on, but it was a start and somehow, despite the vile nature of its source, Thulmann could not shake the conviction that by following Kleib’s directions he would indeed track down both the grey seer and Das Buch die Unholden. Perhaps even a despicable wretch like Erasmus Kleib could be made into an instrument of Sigmar’s will.
‘That will be enough, Erasmus,’ Thulmann said, turning away from the cage. ‘You have given me a place to start.’ The witch hunter walked to Streng, relieving him of the torch and then stepped back to the cage. The warm glow of the torch washed over Kleib’s face and it twisted with ecstatic pleasure.
‘Farewell then, nephew,’ Kleib said. ‘Remember me to your family, won’t you?’
Thulmann felt the sorcerer’s words plunge through him like a knife through his vitals. Pain flooded his face. The witch hunter’s voice was a low hiss as he snarled at the cage. ‘Here is your torch, Erasmus.’ The light vanished as Thulmann plunged the brand into the over flowing slop bucket beneath the sorcerer’s cage. The witch hunter turned and stalked through the darkness out of the cell. Behind him, Kleib shrieked his despair and outrage.
‘Liar! Liar!’ Kleib cried. ‘Kill me, Mathias! Kill me, you spineless cringing cur! Your wife was a harlot and your child was an idiot brat! The best thing for them was to die! Kill me, you bastard! Kill me!’
The cell door swung shut behind Thulmann, drowning out the obscene cries of the sorcerer. Streng stood beside the witch hunter, watching as he tried to force back the pain tearing through his body. At last, Thulmann seemed to regain some of his composure, enough to accept the ring of keys from the hulking Ghunder.
‘Come, Streng,’ Thulmann growled, marching off towards the stairway. ‘We have work to do.’
Streng lingered behind, watching as the witch hunter mounted the stone steps and disappeared beyond the first spiral of the stairwell. The mercenary dug into his pouch belt and removed a few coins he had yet to squander on cheap drink and tavern doxies. He turned towards the ogre, placing the coins in Ghunder’s callused grip.
‘That thing in there,’ Streng said, pointing his thumb to Kleib’s cell door, ‘has too many teeth. I’d appreciate if you’d take care of that.’
CHAPTER SIX
Thulmann stood in the centre of the courtyard and watched as the packhorses were loaded with everything from hard tack to casks of fresh water and canvas tents. He turned away, regarding the curious faces watching them from beyond the stone walls of the courtyard. The Nag and Mare was the only inn in the village of Reikwald, and as such was the centre of the community. For all that it was situated only a few hours outside the walls of Altdorf, it was still a sleepy little village where the appearance of a witch hunter and his entourage was certain to be noticed. Every villager who wasn’t at work had swarmed around the inn to watch as Thulmann’s party sorted out its supplies and prepared to leave.
/> Thulmann turned his attention away from the villagers as a hulking black-armoured shape appeared in the doorway of the inn. Captain-Justicar Ehrhardt strode across the courtyard, stable boys and mule skinners hurrying out of his way. The Black Guardsman seemed indifferent to their frightened deference, striding directly to the witch hunter’s side.
‘We leave soon, Brother Mathias?’ Ehrhardt asked. ‘I confess that I grow impatient to send more of these creatures to stand before Morr’s final judgement.’
‘Very soon now,’ Thulmann replied. ‘We wait only for Streng to get back from the city. If Krieger hasn’t seen fit to grace us with his presence by then… well, he can just catch up with us later.’ Without providing Zerndorff with too much detail, Thulmann had reported to his superior that he would be pursuing a new line of enquiry that he hoped would lead him to Das Buch die Unholden. The witch hunter general had informed Thulmann that Kristoph Krieger would be accompanying him, in the event that his wild goose chase turned out to be something more. Thulmann told Zerndorff about his intention to set out from Reikwald, and Zerndorff agreed that Krieger would meet him there so as not to draw even more attention to their departure from the city. Zerndorff seemed even more concerned about watchful eyes than Thulmann was, and especially concerned about Sister Karin and some of Lord Bethe’s more proactive supporters. He agreed with Thulmann that the hunt for Das Buch die Unholden should be conducted with as much secrecy as possible.
The crowd of villagers at the gate of the courtyard slowly began to part. Thulmann turned to see Streng riding up to the inn, another rider following close behind him. The other rider was a plump, pop-eyed little man, his swarthy hands clenched around the reins of the mule he rode, a stream of invective dripping from his tongue as he cursed his mount. Upon laying eyes on Thulmann, however, the target of his wrath shifted. With a muttered curse, the man pulled hard on the reins of his mount, and awkwardly scrambled his way free of its saddle.