Something happened to Richt Karver’s eyes, then. A minor change, to be sure, but a change nonetheless. Some fractional glimmer within his steely blue irises dimmed, hardened with new crystalline certainty, and when finally he straightened it was a minutely different man who arose.
The echoes of an ancient text rattled in his mind - a fragment of dialogue, written by some long dead bard, recited in the dry lecture halls of his youth.
I am in blood stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as to go o’er.
All trace of sentiment removed from his bearing, Karver peered about the room intently, halting his gaze upon the surface of the cabinet. Piled carefully upon a stone tile, surrounded by pestles, mortars and racks of spherical tablet moulds, lay a pyramid of finely formed powder. Well within reach of the girl, the Templar noted, bending to scrutinise the substance.
Nodding with newfound certainty, he glanced about for a container. Nothing seemed available - the room was as spartan as it was gloomy - and Karver grimly peeled off one leather glove and, careful not to touch it with his bare skin, scooped a portion of the powder inside.
THE VENERABLE HERR Ehlbeck - Graduate of the College of Magic in Altdorf; Initiate of the Jade Order; specialist in herbology; much sought after purveyor of balms and healing potions - tugged on his beard and fumed quietly to himself.
Around him graceful glass vessels bubbled and boiled, fluted beakers frothed in multicoloured agitation and thick smoke was shooed through an open window by a gaggle of fan wielding assistants. A flickering flame turned from yellow to green, coating the sorcerer’s eyeglasses in an oily frosting and causing him to sneeze explosively. He felt positively light headed - which only added to his growing sense of indignation - and murmured a quick incantation to ward off the intoxicating effects of the vapour.
The cheek of the man! Storming in without so much as a by your leave! Stomping around, knocking over equipment, making demands as if he were the Supreme Patriarch himself! And then, having delivered a justifiable refusal to cooperate with this madman, to have been threatened by him; a Practitioner of the Secret Arts, threatened like some lowborn thug in a tavern! It was too much to bear!
Ehlbeck forced down an image of that decorative pistol being thrust forcibly into his rosy swollen nose and told himself that the only reason he’d relented was to get the odious man out of his workshop.
Then he ran his gaze around the chamber quickly, dipped his hat in farewell as if to cauterise whatever wounds festered therein, and stalked out into the cold city.
Contenting himself with considering what cutting responses he could have supplied had he wanted to, Herr Ehlbeck bent down to his task with all the false bravado of a man who knows he’s been defeated but refuses to acknowledge it.
IN AN ADJOINING chamber, Richt Karver slumped on an uncomfortable bench and attempted to relax. As defender of Sigmar’s Inviolable Faith the very notion of relying upon the suspect talents of a wizard seemed questionable. He’d balked when the idea first came to him, but after a forced inspection of the facilities he was as convinced as he could be that no Taint existed here. The ease with which the frail old man had been terrorised had been most gratifying.
The various other citizens sitting patiently in Ehlbeck’s waiting room had long since dispersed, with as much nonchalance as they could muster. The presence of a witch hunter was more than enough to dissuade them from pursuing the incantations and healing potions they sought. In such small ways was the sanctity of Sigmar preserved.
Eventually Herr Ehlbeck came bustling from his workroom, green robes flowing behind him and snagging clumsily on the assorted twigs and branches festooning the room. He came to rest before Karver - who regarded him dispassionately - muttering excitedly to himself and fiddling with his eyeglasses, all former hostility forgotten.
Finally, twitching like a rodent and tapping his fingers together, he turned to Karver. ‘Where… ah where did you find this powder?’
‘I don’t think that’s really any of your concern,’ Karver responded. ‘Is it Glow?’
‘Oh-Oh yes. No doubt about that, I mean, I compared the powder with the tablet form exhaustively. Exhaustively, I say. Same results, all the way through, bam-bam-bam, just like that. Definitely the same stuff. Whatever it is.’
‘And what is it?’
‘Ha. Quite.’ The wizard scratched his nose distractedly, ‘I was rather hoping you might tell me, actually…’
‘Listen.’ Karver grunted, annoyed. ‘This… substance, whatever it is, am I correct in assuming it to be some physical form of-‘
‘Magic?’ The wizard breathed, eyes twinkling behind his glasses. ‘Oh, absolutely. Mixed with all sorts of herbs, of course, but essentially it’s… well… I’d go so far as to say that if Chaos-‘ and here Ehlbeck noted Karver’s narrowing eyes and added quickly: ‘thrice damned that it is, of course - if Chaos were distilled into material form, then this would be the result.’
Karver glared acerbically at Ehlbeck for a moment. Men had died burning in the platz for showing less of an interest in the Taint than this skinny little bundle of nerves before him, but it occurred to him that a tame wizard was perhaps a valuable resource… ‘Mm,’ he grunted eventually. ‘Chaos dust, eh?’
‘Haha - quite,’ the wizard laughed nervously. Karver treated him to a glance of unequivocal disdain.
‘Very well.’ The Templar muttered to himself, ‘I suppose I must discover where the wretched stuff comes from…’ He nodded perfunctorily at the wizard - the only thanks the venerable man would get - and turned to leave.
‘There… ah… there is one other thing…’ Ehlbeck said, polishing his glasses distractedly. ‘Whilst I was conducting the tests, I… well, that is to say… I was a touch… distracted by the tenseness of the situation and, ah, to start with I tested the wrong thing…’
Karver’s eyes narrowed. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, you see… Y-you asked me to test the powder in the glove against the Glow tablet, yes? Um, whereas, t-to start with, I tested the specks I found on the glove. I-I realised my mistake quickly and repeated the test on the stuff inside - w-which are the results I’ve been giving you - but, you see, it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway because the stuff on the outside was exactly the same, chemically speaking.’ The old man was twittering now, embarrassed at his mistake.
‘The powder on the glove?’ Karver repeated, perplexed.
‘Y-yes. Just a few green fragments. Quite pretty, in fact, haha. Um.’
‘I didn’t touch any powder. I scooped it up inside.’
The wizard shrugged wretchedly, desperate to get the terrible man away from his premises.
‘Mm,’ Karver grunted again, and then stepped through the door into the street.
As he walked, he thought. And as he thought, a revelation began to form.
A DARK PLACE. A place where no light ever penetrated, save the sputtering, tortured firebrand placed carefully in a corner. Its limited luminescence served merely to stress the depths of those dark corners it failed to penetrate.
Something moved. Someone hunkered close down to the uneven floor of the chamber, hefting energetically at something corpulent and foul, from which the last vestiges of lank fur hung in sparse clumps, purification peeling back its skin in thick gelatinous folds. The man, unconcerned by the dead fluids oozing from the vile corpse, thrust a hand deep into the folds of cloth wrapping that wrapped it. His fingers found a worn leather pouch and pushed deep inside, snatching up a handful of green jewels from within, glowing with hypnotic beauty in the gloom.
The man giggled, emptying the warpstone into his pocket. He’d lost one Glow producing slave, certainly - but there were others. Other terrified children, snatched away in the night, forced to labour in hidden workrooms, terrified into compliance. Production would continue. The money would flow. The Taint would spread.
The man walked upon a floor of rotting corpses, collecting his malevolent harvest.
The fire flickered in its alcove.
And then some subtle sense, not wholly natural, made him jerk upright. Something was comi—
The door ripped open like a thunderclap and something reared in the doorway, billowing like a storm cloud, ebony undulations coursing through its extremities. Despite himself, the man in the dark moaned in fear.
Boom.
The lead shot hit him in the chest and sent him crashing to the floor. He gasped in pain and began to shudder, uncontrollable spasms rippling across him. Gradually the pain subsided.
Blood coursing down his chin, the man smiled revoltingly.
‘How did….gkkh….you know?’
The storm cloud stepped into the room, robes settling, and the light threw Richt Karver’s features into gruesome relief. ‘The brooch,’ he growled. ‘I took it from your buttonhole, remember? It left a trace.’ The hunter held a leather glove between pinched fingers, flinging it disgustedly to the floor.
‘Hehehekkgh…’ Kubler chuckled, coughing more blood. ‘A nice touch, I thought. Hidden in plain sight, like you always say.’
‘Arrogance, Kubler.’ Karver grimaced, shaking his head, smoking gun still levelled. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am.’
‘Spare me the lecture, old man… kkh… let’s not pretend I’m one of your bloody smiling gentlemen anymore, eh? You made me drag those skaven bodies down here last year. Remember that? It would’ve been such a waste to leave them rotting without checking for… heh… valuables.’
‘It’s twisted your mind, Kubler. That stuff. It’s made you insane.’
‘Hekkh. Is it so wrong to make people feel… hnnk… happy? You should try some Glow, old man. You never know - heh - you might like it.’
Kubler coughed, more blood dribbling thickly from his lips.
‘You’re dying,’ Karver intoned, pistol unwavering. His calm exterior required an effort to control. Inside, he howled at the betrayal, raging against his own weakness for not noting the Taint seducing his disciple sooner.
‘Isn’t… nn…. isn’t everyone?’ Kubler chuckled, lugubrious breaths growing more and more strained. He pushed a quivering hand into his pocket and extracted a pillbox, clicking it open. ‘Such… hkk… such pain…. w-wouldn’t begrudge me my medicine, would you?’
‘Kubler…’ Karver warned, too late. The dying Templar, fluids draining across the Heap like a warm slick of oil, upended the box. Green spheres rattled lightly against his teeth. He swallowed heavily, gagged on air for a moment, then slowly, clumsily, sagged. His face froze, lips drawn back, blood oozing across slick teeth.
And then he moved. Fast. Twisting impossibly, rising vertically in one long, terrifying lurch. Karver’s hand blossomed with pain and the pistol skittered away into the dark, echoing.
Kubler stood back and leered. With a creak his jaw ratcheted forwards, his brow sloped back in a graceful arc and his eyes snapped open to reveal a yellow iridescence below. His neck distended noisily, the vertebrae concealed below rising like swelling bruises in a series of fluted spines. His fingers flexed then began to writhe, curling back onto themselves like a fistful of pink, fleshy maggots.
‘Sssssssssss….’ the thing hissed through a rapturous smile. Its features were slipping away to be replaced by new and deadlier forms, its skin writhed, its patterning moulded. Kubler’s body shivered and jerked, a humanoid representation of amorphous, viscous, and constant change.
It moved with the effortlessness and speed of lightning, and before his eyes registered any attack Karver was bleeding, thrown back against the embrasure of the thick doorway with a long gash across his arm.
‘U-unclean thing!’ the Templar stammered, aware of the blood oozing across his clothing. ‘Sigmar damn you!’
The creature smiled, and when it spoke it was still Kubler’s voice - soft and undemonstrative - that left its wormlike lips. ‘Oh, please, captain. I think we can dispense with that… Don’t feel too bad - it’s a poor novice that fails to excel his master.’
The sword was flung away, clattering against the wall in a flurry of sparks and shattering metal. Karver, consciousness beginning to ebb with the flow of blood from his wound, barely even saw the creature move.
And then it advanced, reptile sneer the only constant upon a face of writhing parts. Karver reached out to the wall for support, feeling blindly into the darkness of the stairwell outside the catacomb, every movement agony.
‘Mmmm…’ Kubler trilled. ‘Stagger away, old man. Where are your lessons now? Eh? Where’s your faith? It’s about time you realised, ”captain”… You’ve nothing left to teach me.’
Karver’s quivering hand fell upon a cold metal hook, cemented into the wall of the stairwell. His questing fingers - growing weaker with every heartbeat encountered a thick loop of chain, planted over the stanchion. He grinned feebly. ‘I’ve a lesson or two left in me yet, my boy.’
Then he pulled the chain, straining against its placement, off the hook.
The rat barrelled from the shadows of the stairs like a comet. Trailing its own useless guts, discarding flesh and flaccid fur in its magnificent arc, gimlet eyes glowing in anticipated victory. Kubler never knew what hit him.
Starving and insane, chained there in the shadows moments ago, it had been treated to a perfect view of the writhing figure within the chamber consuming enough of what it wanted, what it must have, to last it a lifetime.
It struck Kubler at waist height and dug.
Kubler’s amorphous form reacted admirably - seething around the invading monstrosity, spreading forth tentacles to seal up the crater into which the beast had vanished, rocking as it attempted to ascertain what damage might have been caused.
Kubler’s grin froze, and then vanished. His eyes bulged. His fingers flexed.
He sank to his knees and doubled up, a slow but enormous retch building in his throat.
Richt Karver, weak and barely conscious, opened his eyes and forced himself to watch.
Like volcanic forces long dormant reaching a critical pressure deep within the living earth, Kubler erupted.
His chest cavity detonated, mutant flesh flexing and palpitating in the air, shattered bone scything outwards, fabric and reptile skin hanging limpid in stunned clouds around the fragmenting form.
Kubler - or, rather, the thing that had once been him - gave a final disbelieving giggle and died.
The rat-creature tumbled from the organic wreckage, body hopelessly shredded, sliced and dissolved by whatever internal attacks Kubler’s doomed innards had attempted in its final moments. The fierce light of triumph burnt in its one remaining eye, and - unaware that its viscera were long gone, it gobbled hungrily upon the semi-digested Glow that Kubler had swallowed.
‘Dinner time, vermin…’ Karver whispered. Then he snatched up the firebrand and tossed it onto the Heap.
Months old bodies, mummified by the dryness of their subterranean tomb, ignited like paper. The rat screamed as it died, and Karver watched it until it stopped, too charred to draw breath any longer.
He sat on the stairs of the Heap until the others arrived in a gaggle of excitement and confusion. He sat until the fire burnt itself out, leaving nothing but soot and ash. He sat until every last trace of Kubler - his greatest novice, his greatest enemy - had been obliterated.
He was trying to decide how he felt. Somehow he understood that deep, personal grief would be the natural response to this episode. Further, he felt that - until recently - his reaction to this situation would have been just that.
But not any more. Too much had changed.
Sitting there on the step, surrounded by devastation and death, Richt Karver - Witch Hunter Captain of Talabheim City - was fighting the urge to grin in triumph.
Outside, in the bitter air, the crows ruffled their feathers against the cold and waited for spring.
THREE KNIGHTS
by Graham McNeill
DARKNESS WAS APPROACHING as the three knights neared the outskirts of the villag
e, their horses hooves thumping on the rain slick timbers of the bridge. Below them, the river foamed white, swollen by the recent rains washing down the flanks of the Grey Mountains. The roadway led within a badly constructed wooden palisade wall and lamplight from behind shuttered windows cast shafts of light in their path. The air was thick with the smell of woodsmoke.
A wooden sign nailed to an empty guard booth at the end of the bridge proclaimed the village’s name as Gugarde. An ugly name for an ugly town, thought Luc Massone as he and his two companions rode through the broken gateway into town. Luc knew that Bretonnian towns were never the most aesthetically pleasing places at the best of times, but this was a particularly offensive example. His father’s estates to the south of Couronne were much more attractive to the eye. Luc was a powerfully built figure, with a thick mane of black hair and darkly handsome face. A long, white scar trailed from his right temple to his chin, giving him a cruel, sardonic expression.
As they rode deeper into the town, he knew they were being watched. Fitful slivers of light as tattered drapes were drawn aside behind barred windows told him as much. Luc knew that three armoured knights on horseback would not pass unnoticed in a squalid little town like this.
‘This place reeks of fear,’ said Fontaine, Luc’s second brother, riding on his left. ‘They hang witchbane and daemonroot above their doors. Mayhap the stories were true.’
Luc smiled at the unmistakable edge of anticipation in Fontaine’s voice.
‘Did I not tell you so?’ answered Luc, ‘We shall find the dark ones soon, I am sure. Evil like theirs does not die easily.’
‘Then are we three enough?’ asked Belmonde, Luc’s youngest brother. ‘If the nightwalkers have truly returned should we not have come in greater numbers?’
Luc sighed in exasperation at Belmonde’s foolishness. His brother would never learn. ‘And if we brought an army and smashed down their keep stone by stone would that make you a knight? Where would the honour be? How then would you prove your manhood to father with a horde of screaming peasants at your back? No, if we are to do this, we do it alone. Only in this way can you become a knight of the realm as I am.’
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