by C. L. Werner
Reinheckel greeted them at the gates of the town, and Thulmann quickly told the burgomeister about the fight in the ruins. Leaving Reinheckel to organise his men to track down Naschy, if the man was stupid enough to return, Thulmann’s weary party returned to the Splintered Shield.
The witch hunter made his way slowly up the stairs, his mind turning over everything that had happened. There was something wrong, something that worried at the edge of his mind, dancing from his grasp every time he tried to seize it and make sense of it.
Thulmann paused outside Silja’s room. The woman must be sound asleep not to have stirred at the noise of their return. He considered leaving her alone, but decided that Silja would be slow in forgiving him if he delayed in letting her know he was all right. He rapped against the portal, waited for a response and then tried again.
After receiving no reply, Thulmann tried the door. He was surprised to find it open, but even more surprised to find the room empty. Out of habit, he stepped inside, eyes scouring the room for any hint of something amiss. They soon settled on the faint ruddy stains on the bedding and floor.
‘Silja!’ Thulmann called out. He tore open the wardrobe, half expecting more plague rats to spill out and set upon him with their diseased fangs, but there was nothing inside except for Silja’s riding clothes.
‘Silja!’ he roared. He’d been a fool to let her out of his sight. He should have known Weichs would not give up. It was like Anya all over again. He could almost feel his heart wither as that long ago tragedy stabbed through him.
‘Silja!’ Thulmann cried tearing through the woman’s room and rushing into the hallway. He found Ehrhardt, his armoured breastplate still fastened around his hulking chest running towards him.
‘Brother Mathias, what is ill?’
‘Lady Markoff, have you seen her?’ Thulmann demanded, grabbing the Black Guardsman’s arm with a grip that whitened his knuckles. The witch hunter turned his head as he heard bodies rushing up the stairs. Krieger and Haussner stared at him, drawn by his cry of alarm.
‘We have bigger problems. Take a look outside,’ Krieger said. Thulmann released Ehrhardt and turned towards the window. The Black Guardsman followed his gaze.
‘It looks like the entire town is out there,’ Ehrhardt muttered, ‘and they don’t look happy.’
Mobs of townsfolk, armed with everything from farm tools to old dwarf axes and swords, were prowling through the streets, closing on the inn from all sides. As Thulmann watched, a voice called out and the mob came to a halt. Two figures emerged from the ragged masses.
‘Looks like we found Naschy faster than you expected,’ Thulmann commented, drawing a scowl from Krieger.
‘Why don’t you go out and collect him for me?’ Krieger retorted. It was obvious that Naschy was far more than a lone renegade, that the skaven had more than a single traitor among the populace of Wyrmvater.
The treacherous guide poised arrogantly, hands on his hips. There was a smirk beneath his beard. He shouted at the men inside the inn. ‘I don’t know how you escaped, but you won’t do so again.’ Naschy pointed to the angry mob of townsfolk. ‘We have you surrounded, outlanders. Surrender or be destroyed!’
The guide’s body suddenly shuddered as thunder sounded from the inn. A smoking hole erupted from his breast. Even before the echo of the shot could register, a second bullet slammed into Naschy’s face. The guide howled in agony, dropping to the cobbles as his body spasmed and life oozed from his frame.
Thulmann glanced at Krieger across the barrel of his smoking pistol. ‘Mine struck first.’
Krieger holstered his own smoking weapon. ‘Mine was a head shot.’
Outside, Naschy’s sudden and brutal death had caused townsmen armed with crossbows to stalk to the front of the mob. Krieger slammed the inn door shut an instant before several bolts slammed into it.
‘Any ideas?’ he asked Thulmann. ‘I don’t think a brace of pistols is going to keep them off for long.’
‘The first ones through that door won’t live to boast about it,’ Ehrhardt swore. The knight had recovered his sword and his helmet from the room above. He might have presented an amusing sight, his torso and head encased in steel, his limbs clothed in his quilted surcoat, but Thulmann knew there was nothing amusing about a Black Guardsman preparing for battle. A look through the inn’s window, however, dimmed some of his confidence.
‘They won’t need to,’ Thulmann warned. Outside many of the townspeople had started lighting torches. They had no intention of assaulting the inn. They would simply burn them out.
‘Let them get their fire started,’ Krieger advised. ‘Once the smoke gets going it’ll provide us some cover from their archers. At least a few of us might stand a chance of getting away.’
Thulmann nodded sombrely. It was a thin chance, but better than throwing their lives away in a reckless, headlong charge, or staying put and getting roasted. He drew his unspent pistol and recovered his sword.
The torch-bearing peasants were beginning to gather. Thulmann could hear them shouting and yelling as they tried to work up their courage for the attack. Then they fell silent. Thulmann could see a dark, spindly figure emerge from the shadows beside the town bakery. There was something repulsively familiar about that shape. The figure spoke with the torch men and then indicated a wheelbarrow being rolled out from the alleyway. The torch carriers handed their brands to others in the mob and converged on the wheelbarrow, fetching up what looked to be small pots or bottles.
Then the spindly figure turned towards the inn and Thulmann saw his face. Hate flooded the witch hunter’s body. He fired his unspent pistol, but the distance was too great, the shot striking one of the townsmen in the shoulder instead of the lean, elderly visage of his intended target. The stricken man cried out, dropping the pot he held. The vessel shattered on the stone road, spilling a thin grey vapour into the air. The mob parted to either side of the vapour. The man who had dropped the pot was unable to escape the fumes, crumpling soundlessly to the road.
‘Weichs!’ Thulmann screamed, pulling powder and shot from his belt in a frenzy to re-arm his weapons. After so many months, after all the horror and the atrocities he had witnessed this man perpetrate, he finally laid eyes on the monster once more. The plague doktor was just beyond his reach, but Thulmann wouldn’t let him slip away again. He couldn’t, not after everything he had done, not after…
Silja was dead. The possibility he had refused to even consider now seared through his soul as hideous, abominable truth. The blood traces in her room, the treachery of Wyrmvater, it all added up to the same thing. Silja was dead and Weichs was responsible.
Ehrhardt grabbed Thulmann’s arm as the witch hunter dashed towards the door. He struggled to restrain Thulmann, to keep him from the suicidal charge he was planning. The witch hunter tried to pull away, turning to strike the knight with the butt of his pistol. At the last instant he realised what he was doing and arrested the blow.
‘You can’t get him that way, Mathias,’ Ehrhardt said.
‘I have to try,’ Thulmann growled, struggling to pull away.
‘Here they come!’ Krieger shouted. Thulmann freed himself from Ehrhardt’s grip, but the knight’s words had soothed some of the red fury in his soul.
Thulmann watched as the pot carriers sprinted towards the inn. He aimed one of his hastily reloaded pistols and brought one of the runners down. As before, the pot disintegrated as it struck the ground, spilling a grey fume from its ruptured frame. One of the other runners was caught in the vapour, dropping as he inhaled the grey wisps. Two men were down, but there were many more, too many to stop.
‘I think we were better off when they just wanted to burn us alive,’ Thulmann said.
Doktor Freiherr Weichs watched as the pot carriers converged on the Splintered Shield. Pistol shots from within the inn had claimed a few of them, but they were casualties Wyrmvater could easily afford. There were more than enough left to deliver their noxious cargo. The inn would soon be
filled with the grey fumes, a concoction Weichs had spent many months perfecting. He used it to subdue unruly subjects when he needed them compliant and pliable. He’d never considered that his sleep-inducing vapour might have any sort of military application.
Weichs grinned as he watched the pot carriers hurl their weapons at the inn. As he had instructed them, each man tried for a different window, so the saturation of the fumes within the structure would be maximised. Five, then ten, then still more of the clay pots went crashing through the windows of the inn. Soon grey mist was billowing behind the windows, obscuring any hint of what might be within.
The plague doktor began to tick away the seconds, mentally, as they passed. A full grown man might take perhaps a minute to succumb, depending on how much of the fume he had inhaled. He’d give the witch hunters at least five times that long. It didn’t pay to underestimate such men. Skilk had learned that in Wurtbad.
Thinking of the grey seer soured Weichs’s sense of triumph. The skaven sorcerer-priest was growing more deranged and erratic with every passing day. As the time for its great ritual drew closer, Skilk seemed to withdraw ever further into a paranoid realm of its own imagination. And what if that great ritual failed? What if after all it had put him through, the damnable Das Buch die Unholden had deceived him after all?
Weichs looked back at the inn. There was an Arabyan proverb about making use of an enemy’s enemy. It was dangerous to contemplate, but not considering it might be more dangerous still.
The plague doktor watched in amazement as the front door of the inn crashed open. A huge figure, his chest enclosed in black armour, staggered from the Splintered Shield. In one arm he carried a massive sword, under the other he bore the insensible body of a man Weichs knew only too well. Blind panic swelled up within him. It was impossible for anyone still to be mobile after such a lengthy exposure to the fumes. Then he paid closer attention to the slow, clumsy steps of the armoured giant. Weichs bellowed an order to the crossbowmen.
‘Hold your fire!’ Weichs screeched. The bowmen cast questioning looks at him, but obeyed just the same. Weichs had taken pains to take these men alive; he didn’t want all that work undone at so late an hour. He felt the mob release a sigh of relief as the huge warrior at last stumbled and fell, admitting defeat at last.
‘Now, Mathias Thulmann,’ Weichs hissed. ‘You are mine.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Awareness slowly struggled to overcome the blackness swirling inside Thulmann’s mind. His head felt as if a goblin was inside it pounding on a drum. And why did it sound like someone kept calling his name? He found he was unable to move his arms or legs. Something was restraining him, something that felt uncomfortably like ropes drawn tight around his body. He tried to open his eyes but found them heavy. It was an effort to force them to obey.
‘Mathias?’
Thulmann finally forced his eyes open. The first thing he saw was Silja’s face. It was filthy with dirt and grime, her hair caked with dried blood, eyes bloodshot either from emotion or fatigue. She had never looked more beautiful to him. He groaned with relief as he saw her, feeling a great darkness lift from his soul. He forced a reassuring smile onto his face, trying to hide the concern that had been tormenting him.
‘Well, at least you’re in one piece,’ he said, looking Silja up and down. Her clothing was torn, her body bruised and battered. Heavy ropes bound her legs together, more ropes lashed her arms to her sides, and still more fastened her to the straight-backed chair in which she sat. Thulmann tried to move again and concluded that he was similarly restrained.
‘I told you I’d look out for her.’
Thulmann shifted his gaze, finding Lajos tied in a chair beside Silja. The strigany sported a black eye but otherwise looked none the worse for wear.
‘You’re doing a great job, Lajos,’ Thulmann said. ‘I’ll be sure to have you do it again.’ The attempt at humour brought a faint smile to Silja’s face.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘When they brought you in we thought you were dead.’
Thulmann considered the question. His lungs felt odd, as if they were coated in fuzz and there was a coppery taste in his mouth. He’d taken more than a few breaths of the plague doktor’s concoction, they all had. He tried not to think about the many examples of Weichs’s diabolic craft that he had seen during his long hunt, tried not to consider the changes the madman’s gas might be causing inside him. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Best sleep I’ve had in years. I really should thank Weichs. Right before I light his pyre.’
Thulmann glanced around him. Now that most of the drowsiness had drained from him, he took a more interested look at their surroundings. The room they were in was quite familiar; they were inside Wyrmvater’s town hall. He found that Krieger, Haussner and the flagellants were tied to chairs in a row behind him. To either side he found the still slumbering figures of Gernheim and Ehrhardt. Their captors had used chains instead of ropes on the Black Guardsman. It seemed they were taking no chances with the knight.
Thulmann turned to face Silja again. ‘Weichs got you too?’ he asked. Silja nodded her head.
‘After you left, I spotted Weichs in the crowd. We chased him but he got away. When we got back to the inn, someone locked us in the room. Lajos made short work of the lock,’ the comment caused the strigany to stare sheepishly at his feet, ‘and we noticed something strange going on at the chapel. Matthais… it wasn’t just Weichs! There were… things… monsters!’
‘Skaven?’ Thulmann’s voice was sharp, a sick feeling growing inside him. ‘Underfolk?’
Before Silja could answer, the door to the room opened. Thulmann twisted his head around to see who had entered. He saw a grinning Reinheckel, his robes of state swirling around him. Several militia men and Curate Andein, now wearing the white robes of a Sigmarite priest, milled around behind the burgomeister. The strange headpiece he wore, looking like a fur hat with ram horns fastened to its sides, was anything but a talisman of ordained Sigmar worship.
‘That would be telling, now, wouldn’t it?’ Reinheckel said. The burgomeister walked around the rows of chairs, resting his hand on Thulmann’s chair. ‘Tell me, witch-smeller, how do you find the hospitality of Wyrmvater now? Is everything satisfactory, m’lord?’ Reinheckel laughed at his own joke, provoking awkward chuckles from his men. ‘We even held onto your woman and this strigany weasel for you. Wasn’t that considerate?’ Reinheckel began to pace once more, coming up behind Silja’s chair. She shuddered as the burgomeister leaned over her shoulder, still facing Thulmann. ‘Though I must admit I’m rather tempted to keep her for myself.’ He patted her cheek, laughing as Silja jerked away from his touch. Reinheckel stepped back and sighed.
‘You realise of course that assaulting a templar is a crime against the Temple of Sigmar,’ Thulmann said. ‘That makes it heresy, punishable by several forms of death. All of them unpleasant.’
Reinheckel laughed again and this time the amusement of his soldiers wasn’t forced. Even the old priest with the sinister headdress laughed.
‘I think you will find, Herr Thulmann, that we are most religious here in Wyrmvater.’ Reinheckel walked slowly back towards the door. ‘Most religious indeed. In fact, we were about to renew our sacrament to our lord. You might find it interesting.’ He snapped his fingers, causing the militia men to fix their attention on him.
‘Take them to the temple.’
Cold, lifeless eyes stared at Streng, frozen in an expression of surprise and accusation. The knife wound running across the corpse’s belly had bled the life from the man some time ago, but all the same he had been a long time in dying. Streng had no regrets; he didn’t care a jot for what the dead bastard had thought about him during his lingering death. He only wished the scum hadn’t been able to crawl so far after Streng had gutted him. He was out past the rocks and well within sight of his friends, and their arrows.
The attack had come shortly after the onset of night. The ambushers had been quiet for several
hours, only firing if it looked like Streng might try to break from cover. Then, without warning or reason, the bowmen had set a sustained volley clattering against the rocks. Streng knew that they were trying to keep his head down for some reason. He also knew that if they had a friend creeping up to flush him out, he would hardly do so with arrows whistling around his ears. The ex-soldier took note of the direction of the bowfire and braced himself for the coming assault.
For all their murderous intentions, the men who had ambushed him were amateurs. Streng was ready for the backstabbing assassin, springing upon him before he even rounded the boulder. A bit of gory knife-work and Streng dropped back into cover before the lurking archers could recover from their surprise.
Streng listened while the man he had killed cried out in agony, begging the archers to carry word back to his wife and children. Too bad, you murderous shit, Streng thought. If things had played out your way, it’d be my blood soaking into the ground.
The archers maintained their vigil through the night. With just two of them, though, Streng guessed they wouldn’t try sneaking up on him again. Still, he wished he’d been able to strip the hunting bow from the dead one’s body just to make sure. Exactly what they would try, Streng wasn’t sure, and as the hours stretched, his anxiety began to increase. It seemed almost as if they were playing for time.
A few hours after dawn, Streng had his answer. A group of scruffy-looking men appeared on the road, heading towards Streng’s dead horse. The remaining ambushers hailed the trio, waving them over to their position in the meadow. Streng swore loudly. Even if they were amateurs, now there were enough of them to do the job properly.
Streng rubbed at his eyes, trying to fight the sleep tugging at him. The bastards in the meadow had probably slept in turns during the night. The mercenary spat into the dirt and turned his attention back to the dead man. The body was close, so damnably close. He could see the tightly strung hunting bow looped over the body’s shoulder, the quiver of arrows hanging from his back. With that weapon in his hands, he might just be able to make his enemies pay a heavy price if they thought to storm his refuge.