Warhammer Anthology 07

by Way of the Dead

  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.

&nb
sp; 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.

  HEAD HUNTING

  by Robin D. Laws

  THE SOUND OF screaming crows drew Angelika Fleischer onward and downward, deeper into the ravine. Where the birds fed, she would find her quarry. She threaded her way through mossy trees, their trunks riddled with rot. Pounding rain had given way to halfhearted drizzle; on dying branches, the water formed itself into heavy drops. Angelika, thin of limb, high of cheekbone, sharp of jaw, reached up to push a grasping branch out of her way. Her hair was a damp, dark mop. She wore black leggings under a soiled grey tunic, which was too long for her, and tied at her waist so its tails became a skirt. High boots, worn but sound, hugged her calves. An old brown jacket clung to her back, its scarred and cracking leather stretched tightly between her shoulders’ sharp blades.

  The branch she’d moved snapped back to smack the forehead of the young man struggling to follow her. Franziskus cried out in protest, wiping rainwater from his fine and noble features. He wore the sad vestiges of a junior officer’s uniform from rustic Stirland’s armies but his once-fine coat had lost much of its golden threading; several roughly-patched holes, as well as the dark remnants of well-scrubbed bloodstains, marred its green fabric. His face was handsome but still slightly round and boyish and his blondish hair, once impeccably groomed, now dangled long and lank from his large, aristocratic head. The rain had plastered a curling ringlet to the middle of his brow.

  Angelika paid no heed to the young man’s voiceless protests. She’d warned him not to come. He’d make a nuisance of himself when she got where she was going.

  He was, at least, smart enough not to complain aloud to her. She ducked under another damp branch, sending it flinging incidentally backwards. This time she heard no wet thwack of branch making impact; Franziskus was getting better at dodging.

  The cawing grew louder. Behind her, Franziskus slipped, his boot twisting and sliding along rain-slicked grass. Angelika twisted his way, raising a finger to her lips. Franziskus grabbed onto a young tree’s thin trunk and arrested his slide.

  ‘Stay here,’ she hissed, turning from him and advancing into a skiff of fog. Carrion birds, perched on logs and branches, eyed her jealously.

  No need for fear, she thought; the spoils I seek are not the same as yours. She looked down and there was a dead hand under her foot. She lifted it to survey the entire, mud-spattered body. It was human. Its face stared up, still shocked at what had befallen it. She could tell from the ragtag uniform that the man had been a mercenary. Angelika crouched down to make sure that the only movements around her were those of the crows. Satisfied, she rose to examine the other bodies. They, too, appeared to be dogs of war. This boded well; though their clothing was shabby, sell-swords such as these were the likeliest to have gold hidden in their boots or gems glinting in their teeth.

  She beckoned Franziskus to join her, though she didn’t care if he took her up on the invitation. He’d made his self-righteous aversion to her livelihood more than evident in the weeks since she’d rescued him, lying like one of these corpses, on a field of battle a little further down the throat of the Blackfire Pass. He stepped fastidiously toward her. Abruptly, a crow rose from a dark, wet rock and flapped its wings at the young man’s face.

  ‘Sigmar’s eyes!’ he cried, taking in vain the name of his Imperial deity. He defended himself from the bird with windmilling arms. Having made its territorial point, the crow circled in victory and lighted again deeper into the stand of corpses. It found an eyeball that the others had missed, plucked it from its socket, and let it roll down the length of its beak and into its gullet.

  Franziskus stood beside Angelika and shuddered. He shook his head with the theatrical sorrow of a novice priest. ‘Nothing good will come of this consort with the dead.’

  ‘I beg to differ,’ Angelika replied, squatting over the first body she’d found. She pulled on the dead man’s right boot. It held to its master’s leg with a miser’s tightness. Angelika strained. She fell into the mud, on her behind. Boot in hand, she looked up at Franziskus, to catch him mocking her. But no, he was too great a stick in the mud for that; his expression was merely pained. She scrabbled up onto her haunches and over to the foot she’d exposed. Sure enough, there was booty there: a large ring, made of incised silver, with a trio of red gems mounted in it encircled the mercenary’s big toe. There was still plenty of play between ring and toe; it must have originally been forged for some thick-fingered dwarf she decided. It slipped easily off and into the leather pouch that hung on Angelika’s bony hip. ‘We’ve found ourselves a rich haul today. You can see who these men are.’

  ‘Mercenaries. The pass crawls with them. They fight to honour neither god nor empire, but merely to line their greasy purses.’

  ‘Which, for our purposes, is a fine and splendid thing. Men who fight for money often die with money on them.’ She felt the first corpse for a purse, coming up with a muck-encrusted pouch. She withdrew from it four Imperial schillings, and a few coins from far-off Tilea. ‘We’ll dine well on the final fruits of this one’s martial labours.’

  Franziskus wrinkled his finely-sculpted nose. ‘I won’t sup on dead man’s coin.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Angelika said, ‘but I don’t notice you doing anything much to secure your next meal. Perhaps this is something you should give some thought to. Forgive me for noticing, but your purse grows steadily leaner.’

  ‘I am here not to profit from the slain, but to discharge my debt to you, by extending you my protection.’

  Scanning the ground for the next body, she laughed a breathy laugh. ‘Would I be rid of you if I told you that your protection is a hindrance, and that your debt exists only in your imaginings? If you mean to make me regret the foolish lapse that made me rescue you from those orcs, I can tell you: you’ve succeeded.’

  He stiffened to attention, as if observed by some distant field marshal. ‘I appreciate your effort to release me, but honour demands that I do my duty.’

  They heard a noise, and silenced themselves. Though it reverberated across the rocky ravine and through the darkened trees, the nature of the low thwocking sound was immediately recognizable to both of them: it was that of a heavy blade hitting flesh and cracking into bone. An axe, perhaps.

  Angelika held a hand out to Franziskus, urging quiet. She pointed ahead, showing him she meant to investigate. Franziskus opened his mouth to argue, but the chill in her expression look stopped his words. Shamefaced, he regarded his boots. A dead man’s crow-pecked face returned his gaze, eyeless and reproving. Franziskus shifted his position and looked up into the sky instead, where grey clouds mixed with white ones.

  Angelika was gone for what seemed like an age. Then Franziskus heard whistling. He knew the tune; it was a children’s skipping song. He crouched behind a boulder. The whistling grew louder until eventually a tall figure stepped through the fog. It was a man, wearing monkish robes, frayed at the hem. He swung an axe in his right hand and held the end of a large sack, slung over his shoulder, in his left. A long woo
llen scarf hung around his neck, like a stole. Crude shoes protected his feet. His head was long and narrow: its slightly pointed crown was naked, but a fringe of wiry chestnut hair ran around the back and covered his ears. Creases of veiny skin lay under beady, deep-set eyes. His upper lip protruded at the middle, driven outwards by a pair of oversized incisors. His demeanour was one of bland contentedness. Unusually for a person one might meet on the slopes of the Blackfire Pass, his face was washed clean, though his hands were spattered in muck, and dark droplets of blood speckled the lower portions of his robe. The head of his axe was bloody, too.

  Franziskus sank lower behind the rock, drawing his short blade from its scabbard. He would wait until the man approached, then leap up and, surprising him, get his dagger in past the reach of his axe. If the man was fool enough to resist, Franziskus would-He heard rushing footsteps and then Angelika’s voice: ‘Drop the axe!’ she said. Franziskus rose, to see Angelika standing behind the man, her knife at his back. The man’s eyes rolled up to the heavens, and he wobbled; for a moment, Franziskus thought the fellow might faint. He held both of his arms out to his side and dropped both the weapon and the sack. It fell heavily into the mud.

  ‘If you want to make yourself useful,’ Angelika called out to Franziskus, ‘then come here and help me keep watch on this person.’

  Franziskus moved toward them, picking his fastidious way through the corpses. As a unit, the crows retreated to the surrounding trees. They cawed their annoyance at him for disturbing their meal.

  Finally the man spoke, sputtering out his words: ‘I am not a person who requires to be kept watch upon. Rather, it seems to me that it is you who are the brigands and bandits here.’

  ‘Identify yourself,’ she said, jabbing him in the back. She used her thumb, but he jumped as if she’d stabbed him.

  ‘It is Victor Schreber, the noted doctor of philosophy, whom you impertinently manhandle.’