01 - Grey Seer

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

Rubbing his injured snout, the rebuked Kratch loped away, scurrying down the crude tunnel that connected Otto Ali’s lair to the sewer-runs of the skaven. Thanquol felt better sending the adept to bring the rest of his underlings where he needed them. If Skarpaw had any back-up assassins waiting in the sewers, there was always a chance they might mistake the apprentice for the master.

  That happy thought set Thanquol’s tail twitching. Kratch was the last possible informant for the Council of Thirteen that remained among his followers since Skarpaw had obligingly removed the last of the white stormvermin. If the traitor could be convinced to do the same to Kratch, things would be much simpler for Thanquol’s plans. The closer he came to the Wormstone, the more he wondered if he really wanted to deliver it to the Lords of Decay. Wouldn’t such a weapon be of more benefit to skavendom in the paws of one who had the will and vision to use it properly? Wouldn’t that be following the true wishes of the Horned Rat?

  Thanquol turned to inspect some of the dead addicts who had been left in the lair. He wanted to see what effect long-term abuse of Black Dust had had on them. It might help him judge better what effect the Wormstone might be expected to have on humans who had not been broken by the whips and claws of Clan Moulder.

  As he moved, Thanquol absently noticed that the thing beneath his foot was now a corpse. In his angry outburst against Kratch’s insolent stupidity, he must have put too much pressure on the Arabyan’s neck. Irritably, Thanquol kicked the lifeless thing and continued on his way to inspect more interesting carcasses.

  “…according to galen…”

  Johann held up his hand, motioning the rotund apothecary to silence. “If Galen is mentioned one more time, I will send you to consult him directly,” he warned. It had been difficult to find a physician anywhere near the Crown and Two Chairmen, the closest he had come was a drunken barber-surgeon in the Pink Rat and a bleary-eyed horse doctor cheating at cards in the Wayfarer’s Rest. The most professional prospect he had discovered was an apothecary at the Mathias II tavern who had only just started unwinding after closing up shop. Not too deep in his cups, and quite amenable to earning a few gold crowns for his medical knowledge, Sergei Kawolski agreed to postpone his bottle of Reikland hock to accompany Johann back to examine his brother.

  The results weren’t exactly what Johann had hoped for. The apothecary had puttered around, poking and prodding Hans for the better part of an hour, sometimes pausing to make dour observations or scratch his chin in befuddlement, always reciting the journals of the long-dead founder of modem medicine to lend some manner of veracity to his confusion.

  Hans, at least, was oblivious to the apothecary’s dubious expertise. The smuggler chief was sleeping, his skin more pallid and drawn than before, ugly tumour-like growths visible beneath his flesh. A little trickle of noxious-smelling slime oozed from the corners of his mouth, every bit as vile as the spittle expelled by his frequent coughing.

  Wilhelm and Mueller had abandoned the room and its stench, pushed to their limits. The two outlaws were downstairs, lingering in the barroom, ostensibly keeping an eye out for Volk or the watch. Johann wondered how long it would be before the two rogues decided to desert entirely. Only the promise of selling the wyrdstone had kept them loyal this long. Any hint that they might catch whatever was wrong with Hans and they’d be gone faster than a side of beef at an ogre wedding.

  Argula was curled in a chair, the limit of her endurance reached, sleeping even more deeply than Hans, so tired she hadn’t even the strength to replace her soiled blouse, just discarding the stained garment in a corner. Sergei had trouble keeping his eyes from straying back to the woman’s buxom undress. Johann wondered what Galen would have to say about the apothecary’s distraction.

  “So what’s wrong with him?” Johann asked.

  Sergei slid his spectacles down his broad nose and peered above the thick lenses to stare at the smuggler. “I can’t be sure. It might be Reikworms or possibly Crowpox.”

  “Crowpox only strikes ravens, falcons and hawks,” a stern voice corrected the apothecary. Both men turned to see a white-clad figure standing in the doorway of the room. Johann’s mouth dropped open in disbelief as his mind understood exactly what he was looking at. Rothfels had been on the level after all. The woman standing in the doorway was a priestess of Shallya, the goddess of healing and mercy.

  Leni Kleifoth stepped into the room, her movements self-assured. “And I should think even the lowest medical man in Altdorf would have seen Reikworms often enough to realise that brown sputum is not one of that affliction’s symptoms.” The priestess crouched beside the bed, placing her hand against Hans’ forehead, smelling his breath and listening to his breathing.

  Johann turned on the dumbfounded apothecary. “Get out.”

  “You… you aren’t falling for a bunch of religious mummery!” protested Sergei.

  “Call me strange, but I think she knows what she’s talking about, unlike some people,” Johann answered, shoving the apothecary towards the door.

  “But… but my fee!”

  Johann gave the bespectacled man a none too gentle push out of the room. “A man gets what he earns,” Johann said, his voice low and menacing. “Right now I’m tempted to throw you down those stairs.”

  Sergei needed no further encouragement. With a last lustful look at Argula, the apothecary fled down the hallway. Johann turned back to his brother and the priestess. Kliefoth had his shirt open, her ear pressed against his chest. It had been many years since Johann had given serious consideration to the gods, except of course to call upon Ranald to keep the watch away, but even he felt reassured just seeing the priestess ministering to his brother.

  “Can you tell what ails him?” Johann dared to ask.

  The priestess looked up at the smuggler, feeling a little knife of guilt stab at her as she saw the hope and faith in his face. She was tempted to tell him the truth. Instead, she told him what she had been told to tell him.

  “He has been exposed to something that has corrupted his humours,” the priestess said. “Has he come into contact with anything… unnatural?” Kliefoth studied Johann’s face intently, watching for the slight flicker of suspicion that told her the smuggler had an idea of what might be responsible. “If I am to treat this man, I must know what has brought this ailment upon him. Even better, if I should be able to examine it for myself.” Kliefoth did not press the suggestion further. She was silent as Johann made his own calculations. He was wondering about the supposed wyrdstone, wondering if it could have been the source of the disease. He was weighing the reported value of the stone against his brother’s life. At length, he reached the decision the priestess knew he would make.

  “I think I know what might have done this,” Johann said, already moving towards the door. “Stay with him, and I will bring a sample of it back to you.”

  Kliefoth nodded her agreement and Johann was gone. The priestess shook her head, asking Shallya for forgiveness for her deception of the man. At least, she reflected, her part in it was over. Ludwig Rothfels would take up Johann’s trail when he left the tavern, following him to whatever hiding spot the smugglers had secreted their find. Ludwig would be the one to make the final report to the master and bring him to his objective.

  Looking at Hans and noting his suffering, Kliefoth only hoped that the source of this terrible corruption could be found in time, could be stopped before the infection spread.

  Kempf carefully made his way through the alleyways and side-streets of Altdorf’s waterfront, a slinking shadow veiled by the thick fog rolling off the River Reik. He was careful to keep his body pressed close to the plaster and timber walls of the district’s rundown buildings, darting across muddy lanes quickly only when absolutely necessary. He felt like a fish out of water during these brief moments of exposure, imagining hostile eyes watching him with grim fixation. He saw in every stumbling drunk, in every grumbling stevedore or swaggering sailor, one of Gustav Volk’s murderous crew. He knew the thugs had been ke
eping a watch over the Orc and Axe, waiting for their chance to nab any of Dietrich’s gang.

  He had slipped past the roguish watchers before, with contemptuous ease, but Kempf’s paranoia was feeding off his desperate need. Fear that Otto Ali would sell the last of his diminished supply of black dust had become frantic imaginings that this time he would be caught by Volk’s skulking killers.

  Kempf was so worried about watchers between himself and the tavern, he was blind to any threat from behind. He was unaware that he had been followed from Otto Ali’s, followed by spotters far more capable than any of Altdorf’s criminal scum. Skrim Gnawtail and his cloaked brethren kept their distance from their quarry, never giving him the chance to discover their presence. The skaven did not need to keep their eyes on the smuggler, instead using their keen noses to follow the pungent scent Thanquol had sprayed on the man’s clothes.

  Every few blocks, Skrim would detach one of his little mob of trackers, sending a ratman scurrying for a sewer opening. The messenger would squirm down the narrow holes with a sickeningly boneless motion, wriggling his body like an eel to slip into the reeking blackness beneath the streets. The messengers would report to the grey seer and his entourage, following Skrim’s progress from the tunnels under the city. When Kempf got wherever he was going, Thanquol’s troops would be ready to act swiftly and brutally.

  Johann Dietrich opened the door to the disused cellar and began to carefully make his way down the rickety set of steps, never letting too much of his weight rest on any one foot. It had been a test of his skills at silence and caution to slip past the cordon of thugs watching the Orc and Axe. Many times Johann had been certain he would be discovered despite the grey veil of fog that assisted his efforts. Twice he had been almost under the very nose of one of the racketeers before he realised they were even there. Both times he had been spared discovery by the grace of Ranald, the lurking watchers distracted at the last instant by some sound or shift in the fog.

  Now close to his goal, Johann was even more cautious. If Volk had discovered the wyrdstone, then he would have his best men guarding the cellar, certain that the smugglers would return for their plunder. His senses keyed to even the slightest disturbance, as he descended the steps Johann became aware of a slight tapping. Muffled, only a faint murmur in the air, but persistent and hurried. It was a strange sort of sound, one Johann had a difficult time connecting with lurking guards. He slowly drew his knife, a fat-bladed scrap-monger’s knock-off of the infamous Magnin throwing dagger. Its balance was off, making it useless for anything approaching accuracy, but its broad edge and spear-like tip made it perfect for gutting unsuspecting thugs.

  Tightening his grip about the handle of his knife, Johann quietly set his foot on the cellar floor. The gloom of the dusty basement was almost as thick as that of a coal mine, but even so, Johann could pick out the faint suggestion of movement coming from one corner; the same corner the muffled tapping sounds were coming from. Johann started to creep towards the noise, then decided he still could not reconcile the sound with any waiting killer. The smuggler turned, navigating through the darkness by memory rather than sight. He found the little table and its half-used candles. Scratching a match against the splintered wood, he brought the candle sputtering into life.

  The light from even so feeble a source was like the brilliance of a small sun compared to the darkness that had preceded its advent. The tapping noise came to an abrupt halt. Johann saw a man scramble away from the barrel of vinegar, a hammer wrapped in goatskin falling from his fingers, his other hand closing tightly around an iron chisel. Propped against the rim of the barrel, its surface still dripping with vinegar, was the wyrdstone.

  “I was wondering where you’d gone to,” Johann snarled. “Taking your cut a little early, aren’t you, Kempf?”

  “Stay back!” the little man growled back, gripping the chisel like it was a Tilean stiletto.

  “You stay back,” Johann said, striding forward, contemptuous of the thief’s threat. “Hans is sick, Kleiner too.” He pointed the tip of his knife at the wyrdstone. “I think that is what made them that way.”

  Kempf’s face twisted into an ugly smile. “Don’t try to spread dragon dung over my pasture, Johann. I’m a better liar than you’ll ever be.”

  “It’s not a lie,” Johann said. He took another step forwards, forcing the cringing thief back a space. “Now back off. I need a piece of that thing for Hans. You can have the whole damn thing after that.”

  Kempf’s eyes narrowed, his expression became even more weasel-like. He uttered a short bark of laughter. “Oh, sure, you take a little sliver and leave the rest to me. Leave me to rake in all the Karls and Clanks while you just go on your merry way to fix your dear brother. What do you take me for? Stupid?”

  “Yes,” Johann growled. The blade of his knife flickered menacingly in the candlelight, catching Kempf’s nervous gaze.

  Suddenly, the thief’s face broke into a malicious smile. “You can’t kill me,” he said, his voice shrewd. Kempf pointed at the ceiling. “Volk’s men are right up there. Any noise down here and they might investigate. Then where will you be?”

  “Your head’s in the same noose,” Johann said.

  Kempf nodded in agreement, but his expression lost none of its cunning. “True, but I’m willing to gamble that you have more to lose than me.” The smuggler licked his lips hungrily, casting a covetous glance at the wyrdstone, seeing not the rock itself but what it represented to him. He scratched at his neck, stifling a cough as he considered his next move. Johann watched his every move with intense study.

  “I’ll take the wyrdstone with me,” Kempf decided at last. “Not just a little of it. All of it. In return, you don’t get killed by Volk.”

  “It’s a fool’s bargain, Kempf,” Johann said, still watching the thief scratch at his skin. There was an ugly pallor to the ferret-faced man, a sickly thinness to him that made Johann think of Hans. The priestess was right; the stone was the source of the poison. “You’ll be the fool if you take that thing. Look at yourself, Kempf. You have only to do that to know I’m telling the truth about Hans and Kleiner. The stone made them sick… the same as you.”

  A snicker of scorn passed through Kempf’s lips. “Nice try, Johann,” he said, “but I know what’s wrong with me.” Kempf looked longingly at the wyrdstone again. “And I know how to make it all better.”

  Johann braced himself, watching as Kempf circled back around towards the barrel. The thief was no fighter, there was no question that his wiry frame was no match for Johann’s brawn. But it would have to be a quick fight, one or two stabs of his knife. Any more than that and Johann knew Kempf would shout to bring Volk’s men running. He watched the thief’s movements, waiting for the opening that would allow him to bring quick death to the traitorous cur.

  Any plans that Johann made were exploded along with the back wall and part of the floor. A cloud of brick-dust washed over both smugglers as they were thrown against the far wall by the violent discharge, their heads ringing with the deafening roar. For an instant, Johann could smell some sort of explosive powder, then the scent was burned away by the rancid stench that rushed into the ruptured cellar; the stink of sewers and beasts.

  Johann heard Kempf scream, a lingering wail that threatened to break his voice. The big smuggler shook his head, trying to force some kind of focus to his eyes. The blast had extinguished the candle, but weird green fire clung to the shattered brickwork scattered throughout the cellar, casting an unreal light across his surroundings. He saw the black cavity of the basement’s broken wall. Pouring through it were things even more unreal than the light that illuminated them. Slinking, verminous shapes moving with what was at once half scurry and half sprint, their heads leering from beneath ragged hoods and rusty helmets, beady eyes gleaming as they reflected the eerie green glow. They were things from nightmare and childhood fear, half-believed myths that refused to be purged from the unconscious. The ratkin, the loathsome underfolk! Ghastly legen
d transformed into hideous, chittering flesh!

  As the swarm of ratmen poured into the cellar, Johann saw one swagger through the pack, a tall horned figure clad in mangy grey robes.

  “Take-snatch the stone!” Grey Seer Thanquol snarled to his underlings. The skaven’s beady eyes caught those of Johann and his lips pulled back in a fang-ridden smile. “Kill-slay the meat!”

  As the slinking ratmen began to converge upon their prey, a hissing peal of laughter brought them up short.

  A strange, trilling sound that came from everywhere and nowhere, the laughter seemed to be more like a chorus of serpents than anything rising from a human throat. Thanquol felt his hackles rise, instinctive terror clenching his glands. The lesser skaven around him cringed and cowered. The air grew cold, warmth draining from it like blood from a severed vein. Thanquol gripped the shoulder of Kratch, pulling the apprentice in front of him as the dark shadows clinging to the walls of the cellar seemed to swell, to take on depth and substance.

  Ratmen whined and muttered in fear as their sharp eyes detected motion within the shadows. Warriors backed away, the fur on their backs standing on end. Skrim’s sneaks slithered between the bigger ratmen, trying to squirm their way back into the sewers, warlock engineers nervously began drawing strange weapons and sinister glass spheres from beneath their tattered robes, ignorant or uncaring of how many of their own kind they should kill using such terrible devices within the closed confines of the basement.

  The air became foul with the musk of fear as the nebulous shadows assumed shape and form; great pantherish figures that prowled menacingly towards the ratkin. Rat-soldiers, unable to retreat from the shadows because of the press of bodies behind them, lashed at the dark shapes with their swords and spears, desperately trying to fend off their approach.

  Thanquol fought against his instinctive horror of the immense, catlike shadows, his lust for power warring against his compulsion towards self-preservation. The grey seer’s scheming mind rose through the fog of terror, denied the weakness of glands and flesh. The Wormstone was near, absolute power was within his grasp! He would not be cheated of his triumph by shadows and the treacherous cowardice of his underlings!