by Ben Counter
Zhaal was a strong man. His hands, leathered by hours at the forge, were strong. He squeezed and Elrisse’s life flickered for barely a minute before he was gone.
Zhaal dropped the Grand Magister of the Light Order to the ground. Elrisse was dead. Even an unconscious man could not adopt that leadenness of limbs. There was no Elrisse now, just a corpse.
Zhaal stumbled away from the body. His breathing was laboured. The burns on his face and hands were livid and red. He bent to pick up his fallen hammer, and headed back towards the door through which he had entered the arena floor.
A couple of Gold wizards were running towards him. The duel was over and their duties as seconds took over. One of them took the hammer from Zhaal and the other supported him as he walked.
The spectators watched in silence as the Light wizards walked towards their dead Grand Magister. Magisters Kant and Kardiggian reached him and Kant closed Elrisse’s eyes, turning the corpse’s head gentle away from the spectators. One of the Amethyst wizards joined them, kneeling beside the body and reading prayers to Morr.
No one spoke. Order by order the magisters filed out of the arena, until only the Light wizards were left.
At the top of the stands, van Horstmann had watched the entire duel play out. There was not one move he had not anticipated, not one spell he had not expected to be cast. The Lore of Gold was not a subtle way of doing magic but it was powerful, especially when wielded in anger face to face. The least surprising aspect of the whole affair had been its outcome.
CHAPTER NINE
DRUFENHAAG
‘I have seen the way!’ cried a voice. It was thin and hoarse, for it did little other than scream. ‘His eyes! His eyes look on you! He sees you!’
From the next cell came a low rhythmic moaning which, when listened to closely enough, resembled words in a cruel dark language that had not been created for the human tongue.
The inmate of the cell immediately opposite appeared to be dead. He – at least, Kant assumed it was a he, it could have just as easily been a woman – resembled a pile of rags in the centre of the cell. But the body would not be removed for a long time, until it was absolutely certain that it was indeed dead. The curators of this place had been fooled before by one of their charges playing dead, but only once.
Heiden Kant supposed there was a reason that to get to the shrine, one had to pass through this dank stone corridor lined with cells. He guessed this had once been a wine cellar, situated as it was beneath one of the finer houses in this district. Though the house was outwardly handsome it had seen no refurbishment or new furnishings for decades, because its real purpose was not to act as the seat of some rich burgher family but as a place for similarly driven people to gather.
‘One day you will wake up to blackness!’ cried the man in the first cell. The glimpse Kant had got of him suggested the kinds of sores and buboes that accompanied a concoction of diseases. He would be dead soon, like his fellow inmate across the corridor, unless he was animated by some force other than wholesome human life.
It was a strange combination of rooms that lay beyond the door at the end of the cell corridor. On the one hand it was lavish, with a deep rug taken from elsewhere in the house, wood-panelled walls and a chandelier that cast the equivalent of daylight into the windowless underground room. Fine cabinets and bookshelves stood against the walls, along with a fanciful circular map of the world hung on one wall. Its imaginary continents butted up against the known states of the Old World.
But it was also a grimly practical place. Where a feasting table or study desk might have been, there was a stone slab on four sturdy legs, its surface scored with knife marks and darkened by layers of bloodstains, still visible as dim ghosts across the pale surface in spite of diligent scrubbing. One of the glass-fronted cabinets held not curios or a set of finest tableware, but dozens of medical implements, scalpels and forceps, and other strange devices of metal with uncertain purpose. Among them was a trepanning drill with leather straps to keep it fixed to the skull of the subject. Beside the map on the wall was a medical chart, not Imperial in origin but florid and colourful with annotations in an unfamiliar language, its charting of the body’s innards as fanciful as the made-up lands on the map. Another cabinet held dozens of skulls, their craniums marked up with precise measurements as if they served as a library of criminal types and the corresponding dimensions of their heads. It was a favourite subject of doctors in the Empire, Kant knew – the way a man’s criminal or lunatic tendencies could be judged by examination of some physical characteristic.
Such beliefs would not be beyond the man who stood reading beside the dissection slab. He was a tall and broad-shouldered man whose heavy dark-brown robes did not quite conceal a layer of chainmail. A golden pendant of Sigmar’s twin-tailed comet hung around his neck. His head was shaven and his eyes bright blue, set in a face that could have been cut from a block of stone. Strips of parchment, with prayers written in a cramped and obsessive hand, were pinned to his robes, and wrapped around the haft of the hammer that hung from a loop on his belt. It was a warhammer, and though it was as brightly polished as a family heirloom, Kant knew that it had seen more use than most.
‘Witch hunter,’ said Kant with a bow of his head. ‘I am expected, I believe.’
The man held up a silencing finger, not taking his eyes off his book. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘If you were to walk back up the stairs and out through the front door of this house, and into the streets of Altdorf, what would you see?’
Kant swallowed. He had met this man before, though on a few occasions and never on his own, and he knew of the strange ways in which he conducted himself. He was as likely to bury the head of that warhammer in Kant’s chest as to break a smile at him. And he had heard how much the witch hunter liked to test people.
‘The people of the Empire,’ replied Kant, ‘whom we are sworn to protect.’
‘Sworn?’ replied the Witch Hunter. ‘I made no such oath. Oh, I have sworn many. So have you. But not one made specific mention of protecting the people of this land from… from what? From harm?’
‘From corruption.’
The witch hunter closed the book and placed it on the slab. ‘Corruption,’ he said, ‘is the answer. On any street. In any home. In the bunks of any poor house and debtor’s gaol, in the pinnacles of palaces. Corruption. That is the answer, Heiden Kant. My apologies – Magister Heiden Kant, is that not so?’
‘It is so, Lord Argenos,’ said Kant.
‘The last time we spoke you were an acolyte of the Light Order,’ said Argenos. ‘How the time passes. It marches on towards the End Times, and at every step we bleed to claw back a little of the pure from the darkness.’
‘I know,’ said Kant. ‘I have seen it. Beneath the Imperial Palace I saw it manifest. That was when I knew I had to join the Silver Hammer.’
‘No, Kant, you have not seen it. You do not see what I do. What you saw was the ultimate distillation of evil. One of the rare occasions when its symptoms wax foul enough to be seen with an ignorant eye. No, when I speak of corruption, I speak of what ignorant men call normality. Do you understand, Magister Kant? If you do not strive for purity, if you do not fight for it with every breath, then you are not an innocent or a citizen or anything else that we should be protecting. You are the enemy. Those people you think to protect are nothing more than beds of ordure in which the seeds of heresy can take root. Were you to protect them then you would be aiding the enemy and you would deserve to meet your end on this slab, just like the sorcerers who conjured the thing you saw beneath the palace. Not a comforting thought, is it, magister?’
Kant said nothing.
‘But you are on the right path.’ Witch Hunter Argenos crossed the room and laid a heavy mailed hand on Kant’s shoulder. ‘So few are. That is why we band together as the order of the Silver Hammer. And you will reach the end of that path, and see the world for what it is. And I imagine congratulations are in order for the advancement of your rank.�
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‘Not at all,’ said Kant. ‘It was some time ago now.’
‘A wizard of the Light is a valuable ally,’ said Argenos. ‘We have counted many among our ranks before. The banishment of the unrighteous and the casting of protective magic are boons that no hunter of witches would ever undervalue. I test you sternly, Heiden Kant, precisely because you may become so valuable to us. I will not let a resource such as you fall by the wayside and be lost to the corruption of the ignorant world. Sit.’
Argenos indicated a chair uncomfortably close to the cabinet with the skulls. Kant took it anyway. Argenos himself sat and let his hammer rest against the stone floor. Kant guessed the chamber had once been a servant’s quarters, repurposed along with the rest of the house. The Order of the Silver Hammer, though Kant had met very few of its members, had resources to command. This was just one of many places throughout the Empire the order owned for the use of its members, and Argenos, though a senior figure in the order, was not the highest and was but one of many. Kant understood him to be the order’s member in charge of affairs in Altdorf. Perhaps there was a shadowy circle of pure masters above him, meeting somewhere in deepest secret to plan the salvation of mankind. Perhaps one day Kant himself would join them, though he banished that conceited thought from his mind.
‘You know that Grand Magister Elrisse is dead,’ said Kant.
‘I do,’ said Argenos.
‘It bodes us ill.’
‘No doubt.’
‘Not just for the Light Order,’ continued Kant. ‘For all the Colleges of Magic. He died in a duel with Grand Master Zhaal of the Gold Order.’
‘Then the troubles between the two orders are ended?’ said Argenos.
‘We hope,’ said Kant.
‘We must have the Light. I have performed many exorcisms and witnessed many more, and the Lore of Light is one of the most powerful instruments we can bring to bear against the daemon. Shame on us all if these children’s rivalries deny us that instrument.’
‘That is why I came to see you, Lord Argenos.’ Kant leaned forward, ignoring the stares from the skulls on the shelves beside him. ‘It may not have been a rivalry as petty as it seems.’
Argenos nodded, as if this was no surprise to him. ‘You smell corruption,’ he said.
‘The hand of the enemy,’ agreed Kant. ‘What do you know of the incident at the Temple of Shallya?’
‘That the church of that noble goddess denies all suggestions of violence in her temple and that Mother Heloise is suddenly no longer the Matron of Altdorf,’ said Argenos. ‘And that blood was shed, and that magic was the means of bloodletting. And that this and the doom of Grand Magister Elrisse are not entirely unconnected.’
‘It was a summit, supposed to quell the feud between the Light and the Gold. Instead it became bloodshed. A great shame for both orders, and one in which magisters of both lost their lives.’
Argenos thought about this for a long moment. ‘The arrogance of wizards?’ he said at length. ‘Or the hand of another?’
‘That is why I am here. There was another hand stirring that pot. I have contacted through the Silver Hammer’s means the lodgings of Mother Heloise, and ascertained that she and I both agree to what we felt there, the moment before the first spells flew.’
‘What?’ said Argenos.
‘The daemon.’
Argenos breathed out a long, considered breath, and nodded his head as if he had expected to hear those words from the moment Kant walked into his sanctum. ‘What do you know of it?’
‘That before I joined the Light Order I served as an apprentice to the exorcist Helmut Vanhagel of Nuln, and that I felt the touch of the daemon as a clammy hand at the back of my mind whenever we were called to a victim who was genuinely possessed. That I felt it again under the Imperial Palace, at the exorcism of Princess Astrid. And that I felt it once more in the Temple of Shallya. Mother Heloise has also seen many cases of possession and corruption caused by contact with the agents of the enemy. She felt it, too. To her it is a stench, the stink of the otherworld. It was disguised, but it was there, in her temple.’
‘What evidence do you have that the daemonic was present?’
‘Aside from the testimony of two who have encountered it before? None, Lord Argenos. Unless you count the fact that one of the magisters present did murder against his fellow wizards, and in doing so precipitated a slaughter on holy ground.’
‘Then what would you have the Silver Hammer do, Magister Kant?’ said Argenos. ‘It is no small matter to interrogate a member of the colleges of Altdorf. It is not so mean a matter as entering the house of a private citizen and dragging him off to the cells. There will be consequences. Emperor Eckhardt is mostly ignorant of our activities but storming into the Pyramid of Light would bring us to his attention, and not for praise.’
‘Watch them,’ said Kant. ‘It may not be within the Order of Light that the corruption lies. The Gold Order, perhaps. Maybe even the Church of Shallya, though I can vouch for the purity of Mother Heloise herself. Watch them, and countenance moving against the Light Order if it is necessary.’
‘You think it will be necessary, magister?’
Kant did not answer right away. He turned to the cabinet with the skulls, and saw now the lower shelves had other bones: femurs, clavicles, pelvises. ‘You said the enemy are everywhere,’ he said.
‘Everywhere,’ said Argenos.
‘These are the bones of some of them?’
‘From the gallows of Talabheim and Nuln,’ said Argenos. ‘One of our number collected them and bequeathed them to the Silver Hammer. He wanted to understand what physical characteristics were most common to those in thrall to the daemon.’
‘What did he find?’
‘That there are none,’ said Argenos. ‘That the enemy will use the comely and symmetrical vessel just as readily as the lumpen brow and the murderer’s thumb. But he kept collecting them, to serve as instruction that the enemy will use anyone, anyone at all, who is not protected by the shield of purity and suspicion.’
‘If I were of the enemy,’ said Kant, ‘and I wished to engage in a grand conspiracy, a work to do great malice to the people of the Empire, I would seek to find a place where many brilliant and powerful people could make common cause away from outsiders’ eyes. Where knowledge and items of power could be found and acquired. Where anything at all could be hidden, any outsider could be blinded to all that happens inside, a place which was itself invisible to all but those I permitted within. And do you know what place I would choose?’
‘Enlighten me, magister,’ said Argenos.
‘I would choose one of the colleges of Altdorf. And among them, I would choose the Order of Light.’
‘And you believe,’ said Witch Hunter Argenos, ‘that such a conspiracy exists?’
‘I believe nothing yet,’ said Kant. ‘But the slaughter at the Temple was sparked by something, and within the Light Order is the most likely source for its origin. I will do what I can to watch from within, and I will seek others to help in my vigilance, but no matter what I find I cannot fight it on my own.’
‘You will not be on your own,’ said Argenos. ‘We are many. More than you realise, for our numbers must be hidden. And you can trust in our order. We will be watching.’
Kant bowed his head. ‘My thanks, Lord Argenos.’
‘No thanks is needed, Magister Kant. We are at war.’
‘And we will win.’
‘Yes, magister,’ agreed Argenos. ‘Though it take till the end of time. Though all of us will be long be dead when the final trumpet is blown. We will win.’
They were just beastmen.
They had lived in the forests and forgotten valleys of the Empire since before history. Along with the greenskins, there had always been beastmen. They roamed in packs, founded filthy warrens in the densest woods, killed and pillaged at random when they were moved to pause in battling for supremacy among themselves. Walking like men but with goatish, bestial features,
a beastman was a symbol of everything that opposed civilisation. Children were terrified by tales of how beastmen would snatch them away at night if they didn’t say their prayers. Pilgrims swapped tales of red eyes winking in the forested night, waiting for a dawdling traveller to lag behind his fellows.
Sometimes, a leader emerged among the beastmen, or a population of them was driven out of their stomping grounds. Then an army of them might march, a giant herd moving as one to raze and murder as they went. In those times the aristocrats of the Empire raised their troops and took to the field, to drive the hordes of beastmen back into whatever holes they had crawled out of.
Such it was in that season, where inhuman creatures swarmed in the darkness and left whole towns devoid of inhabitants. A host of beastmen was abroad, and it was heading for Reikland. Armies marched out to engage them but these beastmen were cunning in the extreme, not content to simply charge forwards and meet whatever enemy stood in their way, but instead to stalk and vanish, outflank and refuse battle, as if they were led by some instinct not of a savage beast but a feral survivor, something that knew the ways of men and had no intention of dying to them. They were still just beastmen, just animals, but of a strange and cunning demeanour.
It was clear what they were not. They were not rats that walked like men, as some dangerous rumours held it. The learned men and the leaders of the Empire were very stern in that respect, and quashed all such talk where they could. There were no ratmen, much less an organised and intelligent species that laired in their thousands beneath the streets of Imperial cities. That was the kind of talk that sparked panic and chaos. No, they were nothing more than beastmen.
It was among the hills of eastern Reikland that the army of the Emperor Eckhardt III finally brought the invaders to battle. In the wake of Sigmar’s conquests the area had been cleared for farmland and was dotted with villages and farmhouses. The open countryside and plentiful pillaging made it a prime invasion route for an army hoping to reach the walls of Reikland’s capital. The beastmen seemed to be playing their hand now, gathering in thousands to drive on to Reikland and win whatever victory their gods had promised. It would be the only chance to face them in the field before they struck Altdorf, and perhaps there would never be another chance to pin their army down.