Vaught turned in time to see the second wave closing in from their rear, and from the corner of his eye he could see more dark shapes pouring onto the road ahead to block their escape.
So many, he thought with something approaching awe, such an enemy.
“Company ready,” he cried, pointing towards the forest with his sword.
In the gloom, there were roots that threatened to break their horses’ legs, branches that jutted out as thickly as pikes, potholes and shale.
So be it, Vaught decided, if the enemy had left a weak point in their encirclement, then it would be here.
If they hadn’t, it made no difference anyway.
“For Sigmar.” The cry tore itself from his chest and, with a snarl that was almost a grin, he drove his heels into his horse’s flank and thundered into the slaughter.
Kerr had been sorry to see the witch hunters gallop away. Of course, after a lifetime spent in Altdorf’s gutters, he hated them on general principles. Too many of his acquaintances had sizzled on bonfires for him to trust Sigmar’s fanatics: too many of his acquaintances, and few enough of the fat burghers who paid the witch hunters’ wages.
Even so, he missed the grim faced men. In this vast wilderness, their brutal pragmatism didn’t seem so unreasonable, and after what Titus had done to the bandits, neither did their loathing of magic.
As the carriage creaked along the forest path, Kerr considered the practice of such magic. He considered it carefully. It was something that he had been doing ever since the wizard had made his offer. And what an offer it had been.
Kerr was deep in thought when the first sounds of battle cut through his reverie.
He brought the carriage to a halt and stood, listening to the confused rumours of galloping hoofs and pain-filled cries that came from the road ahead.
“What is it?”
Titus’ voice was loud enough to make Kerr jump.
“Don’t know, boss,” he replied, sitting back down and gesturing ahead, “something down the road. I can hear something.”
Titus pulled his head back in the window and a moment later stepped out onto the track. He stood there in silence, his head to one side as he listened.
A particularly shrill scream drifted through the forest, and the fat man scowled.
“This is most inconvenient,” he decided.
“You don’t think that the witch hunters have found the necromancer, do you?” Kerr asked.
“I doubt it,” Titus shook his head with such confidence that his jowls wobbled. “Not them. When all’s said and done, the fool Grendel is still a wizard, trained in our art. Even weakened, he’d be more than a match for that bunch of thugs.”
Kerr listened to the pride in his master’s voice. He suddenly found himself wondering what would happen if the witch hunters had found Grendel. Whose side would he find himself on?
“Perhaps we should wait here,” he suggested. “Wait until they’re finished fighting, whoever they are.”
A rumble that sounded more like the stampeding of cattle than the charge of horses vibrated through the soles of Titus’ feet. He frowned, curiosity furrowing his brows.
“Whoever or whatever,” he mused, “but no, we can’t waste any more time. If we grind to a halt at every little disturbance, we’ll never make it to Praag. We’ll go on.”
Kerr looked unhappy.
“You don’t think we should wait?”
The wizard shook his head as he climbed back into the carriage.
“Don’t worry,” he said, worryingly. “If we run into any trouble I will protect you. It is a great thing indeed to be a wizard of the Grey College.”
He gave Kerr a meaningful glance before clambering back up into the carriage. The horses, taking this as their signal, walked on.
Kerr’s thoughts turned back to Titus’ offer. Then he thought about dropping from the carriage and heading back to town.
Then he laughed bitterly.
What town was there to head back to? He wouldn’t survive the night, alone and on foot, and even if he did survive, what life would await his return? Penniless, friendless, landless: only a fool would regard returning to that as escape, and Kerr was no fool.
“So, it’s ever onwards,” Kerr told the horses. “Ever onwards, and may Sigmar smile upon us.”
His heart lifted with the decision, and he almost forgot himself enough to drive the carriage team into an unaccustomed trot.
He had decided to take Titus up on his offer after all.
Vaught’s thighs burned with the effort of keeping his horse gripped between his knees. The beast leapt through the crowding trees with the elegance of a dancer, his iron shod hooves glistening red in the darkness.
“To me!” the witch hunter bellowed, turning back to examine the carnage he had left behind him. His shoulder was still numb from the blow with which he had decapitated the first of the abominations, and blood dripped from the wounds on his arms.
Compared to the fate that had befallen so many of his comrades, though, such injuries were nothing.
“To me!” he cried again, lifting his notched and bloodied sword above his head. It gleamed as red as Morrslieb in the forest gloom.
The remains of the enemy line, scattered between here and the road, looked at him uncertainly, but there was no uncertainty amongst the surviving witch hunters. They raced to gather around their captain. Some of them, their horses slaughtered by the foe or crippled by the tangled roots, had to run.
Behind them, they left four dead men, killed before the charge had broken the encirclement. Their tender flesh was already proving too great a temptation for the cursed folk of this place. The slithering, ripping sound of raw flesh being devoured already whispered through the undergrowth. The fact that it was still warm obviously added to its savour.
“Look at what they’re doing!” Peik wailed. Despite the blood that dripped from his well-used sword, he sounded impossibly young, a child in a man’s body.
“They will pay in time,” Vaught told him. In truth, he was almost glad to see the unholy feast. The second wave of attackers had already reached the hungry ranks of their fellows, but instead of continuing the attack they had paused, eager to join the feasting.
Even as Vaught watched, a fight broke out between two of the creatures. In the resultant snarl of combat something was torn between their two sets of teeth; something that looked like an arm.
“Captain.”
Vaught tore his eyes away from the spectacle and found Fargo beside him.
“What is it?”
“We should go. We have a mission to complete.”
“What do you mean?” Peik interrupted, his voice high pitched with outrage. “Look at what they’re doing to… to Karl. We have to avenge him.”
There was a murmur of agreement.
“Well, whatever we’re going to do, we have to do it soon,” Fargo decided. “They’ll have finished with the dead soon enough, and then it will be our turn.”
“Only if Sigmar wills it,” Peik exclaimed.
Vaught cut short their discussion. He had reached his decision.
“We will ride in a loop back to the road,” he said. “The two dismounted men will ride with Bort and Gaspar, and Bort and Gaspar will lead the column. Fargo and I will form a rearguard, and be sure,” he said as the dismounted men rolled up behind their comrades, “that after we have completed our mission we will return to avenge our comrades.”
“Captain…” Peik began to complain, but the men were already trotting deeper into the forest, eager to be away from the stinking horde, which was already swarming behind them.
CHAPTER NINE
Praag sprawled out below him. Its streets were as tangled and knotted as intestines, and the buildings that glowered over them seemed grown rather than built. The only straight line was that of the wall, which was where the city ended with a geometric precision.
Things were different in Altdorf. There, the walls had merely hinted at the city limits. They c
ertainly hadn’t marked them. Shanty towns of hovels spread around those walls like rust around the edge of an abandoned shield, and farmsteads had cluttered the land beyond, mixed amongst the canal gates and the river houses.
Not so in Praag. Not a single dwelling stood outside the grim fastness of its dark stone walls. There wasn’t even an inn for those who found themselves on the wrong side of the gates when curfew was called. This far north there was only that which lay within, and that which lay without.
For the first time in his life, Grendel was familiar with this concept. In the past, his world had been a confusion of ideas and practices, his art a kaleidoscope of disciplines that had nothing to do with right or wrong.
It was only on the road to Praag that he had learnt the truth that these walls symbolised. There was no confusion, no grey area. There were sides, and a man had to choose which one he was on.
The wizard shifted on the padded silk of his divan and glanced towards the flat horizon of the north. From his quarters in this tower, he could see for miles. Sometimes, on a clear day, he even fancied that he could see the curve of the world.
It was at night that the view was most spectacular. When the tangle of streets below had been devoured by darkness, the northern skies would glow, throbbing with every colour of a high summer’s day. There was no shape to these silent skies full of colour, nor any predictability. Sometimes they would flare up every night for a week. At other times even the memory of them would fade.
The Kislevites called the northern lights the Inferno Borealis, but Grendel knew better. He had sailed on the winds of magic for long enough to know them when he saw them, and the fact that everyone could see them here tore him between terror and wonder. When magic blew so strong that even the herd could see it, then what might be possible?
He shuddered at the thought, and squirmed sensuously. There was no sense of caution at the thought of what might be, no reflexive cringe at the thought of what the arch magister might say; the iridescent light of his new master had already burnt such weakness away. A knock on the chamber door startled him from his reverie.
“Come in,” he called, turning from the window to look across the luxuriously carpeted expanse of his eyrie. The door opened and a girl stepped through.
For a split second, Grendel’s thoughts flashed back to the last time he had seen her. It had been during one of his experiments.
The wizard smiled and licked his lips.
“Greetings master,” the girl said. Her head was lowered and her hands clasped in front of her, just as neatly as any other serving wench. She was well proportioned, too, a little well fed for a servant, perhaps, but apart from that indistinguishable from any other girl in the city. To look at her, nobody would have suspected her of anything more reprehensible than stealing from the kitchen.
“I am sorry to disturb you,” she continued, eyes still downcast, “but the count requests your presence. He has asked me to bring you to another… another tryst.”
“Already?” Grendel asked. He didn’t know why he was so surprised. The harder Zhukovsky tried to satiate his desires, the stronger they grew. Even so, Grendel was impressed that the man had the energy.
Well, no matter. His new master would no doubt be grateful for the worship.
Or, if not grateful, then at least amused.
“Come, then,” he told the girl, walking past her to close the door, “let us go and see the count.”
So saying, he wrapped his new robes around him and led her over to one of the tapestries that dressed the stone walls. He pulled it back to reveal a low doorway and the descending steps of a spiralling staircase.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing for the girl to follow. She lifted her eyes to study the entrance and, for the first time, Grendel could see the expression in them. For a moment, he wondered if it was joy or madness. Then he dismissed the question. After all, what did it matter?
There was neither candle nor window to light their way, so they moved slowly, descending blindly into the world that lay beneath the palace. As the muffled voices from the rooms beyond faded, and as the stone grew warm beneath their fingers, they began to rush.
By the time they had stumbled down the worn stone steps to the chamber that lay at the bottom, they were both breathing hard.
“There you are,” Zhukovsky said. He was sprawled on a great expanse of white fur that covered the living stone of the cavern, the silk of his robes liquid in the torchlight. He rolled up onto his elbow the better to study the wizard and the girl. “How flushed you are. You weren’t thinking of starting without me, were you?”
“No, lord,” the girl assured him.
The harsh caw of the count’s laughter echoed between the rough-hewn walls.
“No, I suppose not. Bony old stick isn’t he?”
The girl giggled nervously.
With a flip that would have shamed an athlete, Zhukovsky leapt up from his position, landing on the balls of his feet. His robe slipped almost accidentally from his shoulders and he prowled towards the girl, as naked as a wolf.
“No, he is too dry for meat as tender as yours,” the count smiled, although there was no humour in his eyes: no humour at all, only hunger.
“Disrobe,” he told her, although as she started to fumble with her costume he looked past her at the wizard.
“Well then,” exasperation edged his voice. “Start the preparations.”
Grendel tore his eyes away from the perfection of the girl’s flesh and swallowed. “If you are sure,” he shrugged, “although it may perhaps be better to wait. Magic needs time to dissipate or it can become dangerous. Its effects can become permanent, and ruinous.”
Zhukovsky sneered. He stretched his arms above his head, arced his back, and turned three perfect backwards somersaults. Then he vaulted back to where the now naked girl was standing, and spun her around.
“Nothing ruined so far,” he jeered, and slapped the pear of her right buttock. She giggled again, the sound almost painfully shrill, and Grendel realised that yes, it had been madness that he had seen in her eyes before.
From somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice asked how it could have been anything else.
Pushing that dangerous thought away, he reached into the pouch he wore around his belt. He drew out a shapeless piece of candle, the tallow as yellow as butter in the lamp light, and a small pocket knife.
“Well, if you’re sure,” he told the count, opening the blade.
Instead of answering, the count merely seized the girl’s hand in his own and stretched it out towards the wizard. Grendel, studiously ignoring the strange fascination of her breasts, stepped forwards and began his work.
First, he sliced the tip of the blade across the count’s skin, and then hers. Blood, cherry red, welled up into two little jewels. Ignoring a whimper that could have come from either of them, Grendel rubbed the candle first in her blood and then in his.
Then he went back to the chair that had been placed by the door, sat down, and began to chant.
Count Zhukovsky, taking this as his cue, pushed the girl down into the fur of the rug. Their arms slipped around each other in a boa constrictor’s embrace, and their legs intertwined and locked together. So did their lips, their faces moving with such a hunger that they seemed to be devouring each other.
Grendel, his concentration already soaring above such distractions, quickened the pace of his chanting and twisted his hands into the all too familiar shape.
In the past, he had had to twist his fingers into the language of the Grey Order, moving them as quickly as a conman moves his tongue. Not anymore. Now, all he had to do was to lock them into the circle and three horns, which were Slaanesh’s symbol, and wait for the power to flow. He could feel it now, this power. It pulsed through his blood, his bones, and his thoughts. The taste of it lifted him up towards a euphoria that the two writhing forms before him would never even guess at.
A smile twisted Grendel’s mouth as he looked at them through glazed
eyes.
Seeing the expression, Zhukovsky snarled.
“Get on with it,” he snapped, pressing himself against the girl with the force of his frustration. She cried out in pain, but he seemed not to notice.
Grendel didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. He could already sense the power of their terrible god flowing into the room like methane into a mineshaft. As the air around the two entwined figures began to thicken, the wizard licked his lips, his senses delighting in the exercise of power just as much as his fellow celebrants would delight in their own act of obscenity.
There was no name for the spell, which was even now beginning to unfold. The old Grendel would have spent hours devising a title for such a creation, but now it hardly mattered. There were no longer any colleagues to impress, which was a shame, because the sight that was unfolding before him was impressive.
At first, the effects were barely noticeable. Through the shimmering of the tortured air, Zhukovsky and the girl seemed no more than lovers, their embrace like that of any other couple, but gradually the transformation became unmistakable.
The skin on their faces was the first to start flowing. It melted like candle wax and, in this liquid form, it ran to seal the gaps between the two bodies.
Lips fused. Noses smudged where they met, and then pressed together into a single knot of flesh. Eyebrows met and merged, the skin flowing around them to join their temples together.
Soon, the faces of both count and courtesan were lost. Their individual features had gone, swallowed up by the single lump of their joined heads. The rest of their bodies soon followed: the skin flowed away from where their bodies met, rippling like melting butter, and then fusing back together. Soon, both their hides had re-formed, becoming a single skin for a single beast.
From inside this bag of living leather, the flayed forms of the two celebrants writhed and squirmed together in blind ecstasy.
Their ecstatic cries were muffled and inchoate, hardly animal, let alone human. Within the pink flush of their single skin, they were lost to the world, no more aware of what was going on around them than newborn rats.
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