by C. L. Werner
‘I see you had no trouble finding him,’ Thulmann congratulated Streng.
‘I’ll show you trouble!’ the little man snarled at Thulmann. He was dressed in a set of thin linen hose and an extravagantly sleeved tunic, its deep blue fabric accented by scrolling vines of gold thread. A frilly hat of identical hue was crushed down around his ears. ‘You send this… this maniac to drag me out of my own house… in the middle of breakfast… halfway across the province.’ He stabbed ringed fingers at Thulmann as the words sputtered past his enraged lips.
‘Would you have preferred I sent the city watch?’ Thulmann asked. ‘I don’t think the years have changed you so very much that you’d care to have them poking through your home.’
The little man pulled himself straight, holding his head high. ‘Let them look all they want. I am a respectable dealer of tinwares.’
Thulmann shook his gloved hand at the man. ‘It isn’t nice to lie to servants of Sigmar, Lajos. Some people even call it sacrilegious.’
Lajos Dozsa’s face became pale as the witch hunter made his thinly veiled threat. ‘I… I didn’t mean it like that. You know that! Just a little joke between two old friends!’
‘Since we are such good friends, Lajos, perhaps you can help me out?’ The way Thulmann said it Lajos had the feeling it wasn’t really a question. He simply sighed and removed his hat, sullenly waiting to hear what Thulmann had to say.
‘You used to peddle all across Reikland, especially in the south,’ Thulmann said. Lajos shrugged his shoulders, acknowledging that he might have done something of the sort. ‘I imagine you knew the area quite well, given your penchant for hasty departures when people’s property started vanishing.’ Again Lajos shrugged his shoulders, but this time there was an expression of guilty embarrassment on his face. ‘Excellent! I need the services of a guide familiar with that area for a few weeks.’
‘A few weeks!’ Lajos gasped, twisting his hat in his hands. ‘I can’t go gallivanting all across the province and just abandon my business. Besides, I know you, Mathias. Wherever it is you want a guide to isn’t the sort of place I want to be within a hundred leagues of! Where are we going, Castle Drachenfels?’
‘Your business will survive without you,’ Thulmann told the irritated little man. ‘It might even turn a legitimate coin for a change in your absence. As for where my final destination is, that is something that needn’t concern you. All I need you to do is lead us near enough for me to find it on my own, to a town called Wyrmvater, and perhaps smooth things with the locals. Unless of course you robbed them too badly the last time you were there.’
‘Oh I don’t think they’d still remember that,’ Lajos muttered, his face reddening when he realised he’d made the comment out loud. ‘No, no, Mathias, I simply can’t do it. I’m much too busy.’
‘Think of this as your chance to perform a noble service to Lord Sigmar,’ Streng suggested.
‘Actually, friend Lajos here is no great patron of our temple,’ Thulmann explained. ‘He prefers his heathen strigany godlings to a decent, civilised faith.’ The witch hunter’s eyes narrowed as he stared hard into the merchant’s nervous face. ‘But you will help us all the same.’
‘My wife will be worrying about me,’ Lajos whimpered in a final effort to change Thulmann’s mind.
‘Which one? Last time we met it seemed to me you had one in Nuln, one in Altdorf, two in Marienburg…’
‘Three in Marienburg,’ Lajos piped in before thinking. Thulmann cocked an eyebrow at the strigany’s comment. Streng’s harsh laughter rolled across the courtyard. ‘I was married last Mitherbst.’
‘Congratulations,’ Thulmann said. ‘But it doesn’t change things. You are coming. The pay is ten silver shillings.’
Lajos looked down at his hat, which he had twisted almost into a knot. He made an effort to smooth it out on his leg. ‘I suppose I have no choice,’ he grumbled. ‘Can I at least get a change of clothes?’
Thulmann grinned at the plump thief. ‘Of course. I am sure there are some children in Reikwald who would be willing to donate some of their cast-offs. Captain Ehrhardt, would you accompany Herr Dozsa and see that he finds something a bit more suitable for travel?’ Lajos’s eyes threatened to burst from his head as the hulking armoured knight stepped towards him. Ehrhardt closed his gauntlet around the little man’s shoulder.
‘I’ll check with the local shrine of Morr,’ the Black Guardsman said as he led Lajos away. ‘I am sure the priest will be able to dig something up for your friend.’
Thulmann was still chuckling when the templar and his charge disappeared into the village. Lajos Dozsa was far from the most dependable or trustworthy of men, but he had a yellow streak as wide as the Sea of Claws. Thulmann could be certain the strigany wouldn’t try to run, not with someone like Ehrhardt acting as his chaperone.
The witch hunter’s good humour drained away when he saw someone else emerge from the Nag and Mare. He’d tried to delay the moment as long as possible, praying that somehow the right words would come to him, that time might make what he had to do easier. The right moment should have been when they had relocated from the Blacktusk to Reikwald, but he hadn’t been able to do it then. It was ridiculous, a man who had stared unflinchingly into the eyes of vampires and daemons was afraid to look into the eyes of a mere woman and speak a few simple words.
It did not help that Silja Markoff looked so damnably appealing in the cool morning light, her blonde hair ablaze with the vibrant rays of the sun. She wore the tight-fitting riding breeches and loose blouse she had worn on their departure from Wurtbad, a slender longsword sheathed at her side. She smiled across the courtyard at him, a smile Thulmann hastily returned even as he tried to find the strength to confront her.
Thulmann felt needles of agony stabbing into his heart. He could see the desperate plea in Silja’s eyes; the terror of being left behind lost and alone as she had been when her father had died. But in his mind he saw very different things. He saw the shambles of a nursery, bloody strips of a child’s nightshirt strewn about like so much litter. He saw the misshapen thing crouching amid the ruin, jaws worrying a tiny bone. He saw Erasmus Kleib’s mocking face, supreme in his hideous triumph.
‘I have to ask again, Silja,’ the witch hunter said, his tone solemn. ‘Will you stay? It won’t be safe where I am going.’
‘Old ground, Mathias,’ the woman replied, a warning tone in her voice. ‘We’ve discussed this before.’
‘I still have to try,’ Thulmann said, but there was defeat in his voice. He knew when a battle was lost before it was begun.
Streng watched the exchange between Thulmann and Silja, trying to decide if there was something he could do to intervene. The wry amusement with which he had regarded Thulmann’s tryst was gone, killed in the black pit beneath the Reiksfang. In its place was a deep concern for Thulmann. Streng had briefly glimpsed an ugly memory from the witch hunter’s past, something that had made the ex-soldier’s own turbulent history seem as idyllic as a summer daydream. It had given him some inkling of just how much Thulmann needed Silja to overcome that past, to finally shake free the spectres of blackened memories.
The crowd at the gates of the courtyard parted and Streng saw several riders approaching the inn, the foremost draped in the black of the Order of Sigmar. It seemed that Thulmann’s hope that Krieger would fail to show had been in vain.
The arrival of Krieger and his entourage put an end to the emotional debate between Thulmann and Silja. The witch hunter saluted the new arrivals, forcing a strained smile onto his face. Silja simply glowered at the men, furious that they had interrupted just when she had sensed Thulmann giving ground before her.
‘Brother Kristoph,’ Thulmann greeted the mounted witch hunter. ‘I was beginning to worry we would be forced to leave without you,’ he added in a tone clearly devoid of anxiety.
Krieger removed his leather hat, running through his disordered hair. ‘Have no fear, Brother Mathias,’ he said, ‘we would have cros
sed paths soon enough had I missed you here.’ The witch hunter turned his attention to Streng and then to Silja Markoff. Krieger nodded his head in deference to the attractive woman. ‘It seems your retinue has expanded somewhat from what Lord Zerndorff described.’
‘I might say the same for your entourage,’ Thulmann retorted. He’d paid scant attention to Krieger, instead fixing his attention on the other riders. Two of them were rough-looking villains that might not have been out of place in one of the seedy dives Streng liked to call home. One of these was a large, bull-necked man with a scarred head who had a large, ripple-bladed sword lashed against the saddle of his mount. The swordsman’s companion was much smaller. A slender-necked firearm rested on the saddle of this man’s steed and leather ammunition pouches swung from the belts that criss-crossed the marksman’s chest.
It was the third of Krieger’s associates that truly drew Thulmann’s attention. Like Krieger, this man was dressed in the black of a witch hunter, his tricorn hat sporting a hatband displaying a silver icon of the twin-tailed comet. The cut of the man’s clothes was more severe than the more refined style of Krieger’s tunic and breeches, almost suggesting the robes of a full priest. His face was withered and drawn, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes conspiring to create a cadaverous air. Peder Haussner, for all the frailty of his frame, was infamous within the ranks of the witch hunters, having earned a reputation as a religious fanatic in an organisation where such qualities were normally regarded as virtues.
With Haussner’s foreboding presence, Thulmann was expecting the mob of tattered, unkempt men who sprinted into the courtyard a few minutes after the riders. ‘Haussner’s Wolf-hounds’ as they were often deridingly labelled were half a dozen wild-eyed, ratty-haired zealots, perhaps even madder than the witch hunter they served. The men were dressed in dull robes of coarse cloth, eschewing the comforts of footwear, their feet swollen and bloodied by their hurried sprint from Altdorf. As the men came panting to a halt, they gripped the rope belts that circled their waists, pulling free the long leather lashes tucked there, and began to lash themselves fiercely with their barbed whips. The sight of the flagellants seemed to finally satisfy the curiosity of the Reikwald crowd and the people began to slink back to their homes. Silja regarded the ugly display with obvious shock.
‘You know Brother Peder and his assistants?’ Krieger asked.
‘Only by reputation,’ Thulmann replied, his tone making it clear that Haussner’s reputation was anything but a good one. ‘The other two are your own, I assume?’
‘Anton Driest,’ Krieger said, indicating the wiry marksman, ‘one of the best shots in Hochland. The ugly fellow is Udo Gernheim, lately detached from the Carroburg militia. Given the nature of our hunt, and what we are apt to find, I thought it would be prudent to bolster our forces.’ Thulmann considered that Krieger was less concerned about their forces than he was about his. Apparently, Krieger was trying to take the upper hand in their alliance.
‘This… this female is tagging along?’ Haussner interjected, his nose raised in pious disapproval.
‘Her name is Lady Silja Markoff,’ Thulmann informed the zealot, turning towards Silja.
‘I had understood this expedition was to be conducted with some discretion,’ Haussner said.
‘Lady Markoff can be trusted to be discreet,’ Thulmann said. There was a tone in Haussner’s voice he didn’t like and he was reminded again that the man was a delusional fanatic, fully capable of almost anything.
‘The wagging tongue of a woman has ever been the swiftest messenger of corruption and heresy,’ Haussner stated. Thulmann could hear the twisted gears turning inside the fanatic’s withered head. ‘A woman has no place in temple business,’ Haussner stated. ‘I must protest this decision, Brother Mathias.’
Krieger smiled snidely at Thulmann and then shifted his attention to Haussner. ‘I think that Brother Mathias is quite right. Lady Markoff may be of some help to us.’
‘The female mind is too feeble to withstand the temptations of the ruinous powers,’ Haussner persisted. ‘Its innate iniquity is the breeding ground for doubt and confusion. Allowing this woman to accompany us is like inviting a viper into the fold.’ Haussner snapped his fingers and the mob of flagellants took a step forward. Thulmann found his hand closing around the hilt of his sword in response.
‘I have made my decision, Brother Peder,’ Krieger’s voice, loud and imperious boomed. The smouldering light behind Haussner’s eyes dimmed, something approaching reason struggled to the fore. He snapped his fingers again and the flagellants came to a halt. ‘Come along, Brother Peder, let us leave Brother Mathias to attend to the baggage train. We will ride ahead and discuss… matters.’ As the mixed entourage of Krieger and Haussner began to file back out of the courtyard, Krieger glanced back at Thulmann. There was no mistaking the meaning behind that look. Now you owe me, it said.
Thulmann let out a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding when he saw the last of Haussner’s lunatics disappear around the wall of the courtyard. He wrapped a hand around Silja’s waist, crushing her against his side. He could feel her pulse hammering through her body. He could sympathise with her, a witch hunter was a menacing figure in his own right, but someone like Haussner was a different story entirely.
‘So that’s the infamous Peder Haussner,’ Streng commented, joining them beside the gate. The mercenary’s crossbow had somehow found its way into his hands during the tense exchange. ‘Rather pleasant chap. Would have been a shame to stick a bolt between his eyes.’
Eerie green light flickered from the iron lamps fastened to the rough rock walls, casting a ghostly illumination around the room. It was little more than a cave, a cavity chiselled out of the bedrock by arcane technology and inhuman diggers. A few ramshackle tables were scattered around the place, their surfaces littered with such apparatus as Weichs had been able to salvage from his laboratory in Wurtbad. Iron baskets were heaped against one wall of the dingy cavern, each holding a snarling rat the size of a lamb, the only subjects Grey Seer Skilk had seen fit to provide the scientist with for his experiments. The skaven sorcerer-priest had lost much of his interest in Weichs’s work, concerned now only with the man’s translation of the unholy grimoire.
The scientist rubbed at his eyes, trying to force the weariness from them. He’d been scouring the pages of Das Buch die Unholden for weeks, resting only when he was too fatigued to continue. The devilish tome was taxing his scholarship to its limits, the antiquated language and curious jargon of many sections making them as impenetrable as the scratch-slash script of the skaven. Then there were the assorted ciphers and enigmatic codes the original authors had employed to further obscure their words. Under the best of conditions, with an entire library to consult and a dozen or so capable assistants, it might have taken years just to translate a small portion of the volume. But Weichs had no library to consult, his only assistant was the twisted mutant halfling Lobo, and his aid was limited to ensuring that his master did not forget to eat from time to time. As for the conditions…
For the first time, Weichs fully understood the grave mistake he had made. His alliance with Skilk and the skaven had been one born of necessity, the lure of a limitless source of wyrdstone too great to resist. But he had entered into the agreement thinking he would be an ally, a partner. He had believed Skilk’s claims that the skaven were truly interested in his experiments, that they were eager to share in the fruits of his research. Now Weichs understood his inhuman patrons better. They did not make allies, they did not share accomplishments. He was not their partner, he was their vassal, their serf, their slave. Skilk’s insane obsession with unlocking the secrets of the book had stripped away the thin veil of deception, exposing the naked truth of their relationship. Weichs lived in constant terror of the grey seer’s visits, grovelling before the impatient Skilk, begging for more time. He was under no illusion that each time he was begging for his own life.
The damnable book! It seemed to mock him, reve
aling no more than tantalising hints and clues that he might be close to unlocking its secrets. Pages would appear to move within the tome, scuttling between its skin-bound covers like crawling lice, resisting his efforts to catalogue them, to pin them down. Bookmarks would change position, dancing about like carnival acrobats. Sometimes the words themselves would change before his very eyes. But always, just when he was on the verge of giving up, some new hint would catch his gaze and he would be drawn back to his quest to unravel the tome’s dark secrets.
Finally, after many long weeks, the book gave up the black secret that Weichs had been trying so desperately to find. It had happened just after one of Skilk’s visits, when the grey seer had seemed at his most impatient, when a gruesome death seemed only hours away. Weichs tried to resist the mad idea that somehow the book had been toying with him, that it had somehow known Skilk’s patience was at an end and that it could no longer torment the scientist by keeping from him what he needed to find.
Weichs stared in a mix of horror and relief at the translation he had composed for Skilk. The original had been transposed on two pages, in such an old dialect of Estalian that it was a miracle he’d been able to make sense of it at all. Yet he was uncannily certain of the translation’s accuracy.
What he had written nauseated him. It smacked of necromancy, the most loathsome of all the black arts. Yet the spell promised what Skilk wanted most – to call up the spirit of one who had crossed the threshold to Morr’s realm, thus enabling the caster to summon the shades of the dead.
How strange, Weichs thought, that a man who had devoted himself to science, who had given his life to unlocking the secret contagion of mutation, should find his life dependent upon a scrap of centuries-old magic. The irony might have made him laugh, had not the sour scent of the guards outside his subterranean grotto suddenly impacted against his senses. He knew only too well what the fear musk of the skaven sentinels portended.