by Warhammer
'What will you-?' Dietz started to ask, but Alaric pushed him away.
'No time' he admonished, gripping his shattered rapier. 'Get ready!'
Dietz nodded and moved, walking quickly but quietly around the room to approach the far side of the statue. His lips were moving again and Alaric, catching the words 'Sigmar protect' realised his friend was praying. Well, he'd never known Dietz to be religious, but this was certainly a good time to start. Perhaps that was how he'd held onto his sanity despite the daemon's presence. Alaric whispered a quick prayer to Sigmar himself, deciding it couldn't hurt. Then he waited until Dietz was halfway across, and strode forward, ruined blade in hand.
'Here, piggy, piggy' he whispered to the cultist as he approached. This would be easier, he'd decided, if he thought of the creature before him as a pig rather than a human. Not that the cultist was able to understand what was about to happen.
Reaching the cultist, Alaric glanced up and then away again quickly. The daemon's head was starting to emerge from the portal, and even the brief glimpse he'd received had been enough to send his mind scurrying away in a panic. Think about something else, Alaric urged himself, anything else. He held his rapier desperately before him and studied its truncated length. Forged in the mountains, he told himself, by the dwarf smiths. It was my sixteenth birthday present from my father. 'You're a man now,' he'd said. 'You'll need a man's weapon.' Thinking about the blade and its history and the many times he'd used it, Alaric took another step. He was right beside the spinning cultist. Then in one swift motion he reached down, grabbed the cultist's hair near the front, and lifted. His other hand lashed out and the edge of his shortened rapier slid across the deranged man's throat, sending a spray of blood before him.
The cultist gasped, gurgling and choking on his own blood, as Alaric dropped his rapier and hauled the dying man up by the shoulders. 'Here, take him!' he shouted to the daemon, eyes tightly closed, and shoved the bleeding man forward. He felt a swoosh and knew the creature's tail or tentacle, or hand had darted forward to seize the cultist. Alaric himself stumbled back, crouching to present less of a target, eyes squinting open as he heard the same gulping sounds as before with Kristoff. The daemon had accepted the offering.
'Now,' Alaric whispered, but he needn't have bothered. Dietz had already crept forward and, with the daemon distracted, he raised his club and brought it down hard on the statue. The heavy wood struck with a loud thud and the cracks widened, sending flakes and chips of stone everywhere. Dietz struck again in the same spot and now a large rent appeared across the body, and another smaller gap above one shoulder.
The daemon had tossed aside the drained cultist and now it turned, seeking the source of the noise. Its eyes fixed upon Dietz, who refused to look up and struck the statue a third time. The daemon shrieked, realising what he intended, and struggled to pull itself the rest of the way through the portal, even as its tentacle flailed towards Dietz.
'Over here!' Alaric shouted, leaping out into the centre of the room and waving his arms. The daemon paused and then its head swivelled on its impossibly long neck, those glowing, glittering rows of eyes turned towards Alaric instead.
'That's right,' Alaric said loudly, keeping his gaze fixed on the daemon's broad chest instead and studying the pulsating red object erupting forth as if the creature's heart had burst through its skin. 'I am the one you want.' He tried to sound brave and tough, but his voice wavered. I have to keep going, he reminded himself, hearing another dull impact as Dietz struck the statue a fourth time. I have to give him enough time to break the statue and close the gate.
'I closed the other gates,' he called out. 'I shattered the other statues and stopped you from crossing.' The daemon roared, whether in rage or recognition or something else he did not know, but it was still fixated on him. He had to dance back several steps as that strange hand reached forward, the fingers snapping and biting only a foot from his face.
'I stabbed your high priest,' he continued, neglecting to point out that the daemon itself had been responsible for Kristoffs death. It did not seem to care much, however, and so he tried again. 'I defy you and your god!' he shouted, almost looking into those stacked eyes and stopping himself just in time. He knew somehow that if he met the daemon's gaze he would never look away again. It roared again, this time definitely in rage, and he forced himself to go on. 'I defy Khorne!'
That shattered the daemon's self-control and it lunged forward as best it could, a hand, a tentacle and a barbed tail all struggling to reach him. The creature's second wing was still trapped on the other side of the portal and caught as it thrashed, holding it back mere inches from its goal. Alaric, for his part, stood frozen, unable to move now that he had finally succeeded in earning the daemon's rage.
Fortunately Dietz had not been idle all this time. He had struck the statue again and again with his borrowed club, each time widening the cracks and loosing small shards. Finally, as the daemon twisted to free its second wing, he slammed the club down again and was rewarded with a deep splintering sound.
'Rrraargh!' If it was a word it was in no language Alaric had ever heard, but the rage and frustration was clear enough, and startled Alaric enough that he glanced up without thinking. His eyes locked with those of the daemon, sinking into its burning gaze, and he felt his mind being stripped away by layers. His feet moved without his control, first one stepping forward and then the other as he marched slowly but surely towards his own doom.
The daemon had little time to spare him. It whirled about, seeking Dietz and the statue, but far too late. Even as its hand whipped towards him the statue shattered at last, falling into several chunks upon the floor. Instantly the portal began to fade, its whorling darkness slowing and dimming.
The daemon screamed again, shrieking its denial. Its hand lashed out at Dietz, knocking him away from the statue, but already the damage was done. Its tentacles lashed out, not towards Dietz, but at Alaric, determined to claim at least one of the foes that had foiled it. But even as the tentacle's barbed tip flashed past his neck the daemon began to withdraw, its body sucked back into the narrowing disk.
'K'red'lach!' it wailed at Alaric and then it was gone, pulled back into its home dimension. The disk vanished, leaving a stink of burning flesh and spoiled milk. The torches, which had burned unnoticed on the wall, gave off ample light now that the dark-emanating disk had disappeared, and the flow of blood had stopped, leaving the grating to spill warm sunlight onto the floor below. The room was empty once more, save for Alaric and Dietz, and several bodies.
'Done?' Dietz asked, hauling himself back up from where the daemon had sent him sprawling and eyeing the rubble that had been the last statue.
'Done,' Alaric agreed, rubbing a weal on his neck absently. His mind still shuddered from the memory of the daemon's gaze and its final cry, but he forced it away, locking onto mundane details instead.
'We'll have to report this, of course,' he said, earning a groan from his friend. 'Someone will have to be told.'
'Who's going to believe it?' Dietz asked, dusting himself off and walking slowly over to his friend, skirting a fallen cultist along the way.
'Oh, they'll believe it,' Alaric replied, his gaze landing on something that lay off to one side. 'We'll bring them proof.' Reaching down he hefted Kristoff s head, raising it to show Dietz.
'I think they'll want to talk to him,' he said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
'That was certainly interesting,' Alaric said, plucking a stray hair from his cloak.
'Humph,' was all Dietz said in reply.
They were descending the broad steps of the palace, the same steps they had been escorted up several months before. This time, however, they were alone, and leaving not as prisoners or even suspects, but as honoured citizens and favoured guests.
It had taken several days to straighten out matters to everyone's satisfaction. Dietz was not entirely satisfied, in fact - he felt there were still a few loose ends to consider. In particular
he remembered Kristoff talking about his cult's demise during the siege. The trader had mentioned that he 'and one other' had survived and rebuilt the cult. Yet he had sneered at the other cultists in the chamber, saying they were nought but replacements. Did that mean one original member still existed and had not been present? Dietz thought so and even had his suspicions as to who it might be. Whoever it was must have some authority in
Middenheim to help arrange the statues' transportation so easily. That same person had known where they would be before setting out, allowing Kristoff to join them that first evening, and the individual would be placed highly enough so that he would still be at his post even during the attempted opening, in case anything went wrong.
After leaving the tunnels that morning Dietz and Alaric had walked resolutely towards the palace, a large leather satchel clasped in Dietz's hands. They had marched up the steps and into the entryway, where they had demanded to see their old friend Struber. When he had finally appeared the heavyset official seemed distracted.
'Yes, what?' he snapped at them as he descended an upper stair, adjusting his velvet cloak on his shoulders. 'Who are you and what do you want? I'm a very busy man.'
'This might interest you, Herr Struber,' Dietz said. He reached into the satchel and pulled out its contents.
Struber went chalk-white at the sight of Kristoffs head dangling before him. Several other courtiers and clerks were in the wide entryway and exclaimed as well. One of them fainted.
'Friend of yours?' Dietz asked innocently, shoving the head towards the official. The man's eyes widened and he started again, glaring at Dietz for an instant before regaining his composure.
'What? No, of course not - I've no idea who he is, but what is the meaning of this? What - happened to him?'
'He was part of a Chaos cult,' Alaric started to explain, pitching his voice so everyone nearby could hear. Realising that as well, Struber had quickly hustled them back upstairs, insisting that Dietz restore the head to its satchel for the time being. He had closeted them in a small meeting room and told them to wait there, and wait they had.
Dietz had worried that the official would gloss over their visit again, or, worse, find a way to make them seem the guilty parties. Either his fears were unfounded or too many people had seen the head, because after an hour or perhaps two they were escorted down another hall and to a room they had seen once before: The elector count's throne room. There, in the same seats they had occupied the last time, were the two most important men in Middenheim: Elector Count Boris Todbringer and Witch Hunter Captain Halmeinger.
Struber had not recognised Alaric the day before, but his superiors had no such difficulty - the minute they saw Alaric and Dietz they told Struber to shut the door, ordered all but a handful of guards outside, and demanded to know what had occurred. Dietz uncovered the head a second time and set it on the floor before him as Alaric explained the events of the previous night and this morning.
'Fastred Albers is dead, then?' Todbringer asked when they had finished. 'Good man, that. Damn shame.'
'No one else saw this fight but the two of you?' Halmeinger inquired, his eyes narrowed, 'and no one else survived the incident underground?'
'Some of the cultists may have survived,' Alaric corrected. They fled at the sight of the daemon.'
'Yet you stayed,' the witch hunter captain pointed out, his lips twisted into a superior smile.
'Someone had to close the gate,' Alaric replied, 'and there was no time to summon help.' He bowed to Halmeinger and Todbringer, making it clear that they would have been the first to be called upon, and Dietz once again admired his employer's skill. When Alaric wanted to he could be extremely diplomatic. Thank Ulric this was one of those times.
'We will need to examine this chamber,' Todbringer decided, stroking his chin.
'Of course,' Alaric replied, bowing again. 'We can guide your men there.' He straightened. 'Perhaps you will send Herr Struber along to coordinate? He has been so helpful already.'
Struber directed a quick, suspicious glance at Alaric, who merely smiled back. Dietz watched his employer as well. Did Alaric share his suspicions about the official? Or did he genuinely want Struber along?
Todbringer missed the exchange entirely. 'Go with them,' he ordered Struber. 'Study everything and report back to me.'
'I will send my witch hunters as well,' Halmeinger offered, receiving a grudging nod from Todbringer in response. 'You are already acquainted with Herr Kleiber, I believe?' he asked Alaric, and it was all Dietz could do not to show his relief. He had worried they would be saddled with a stranger and would have to prove their loyalties all over again.
'Certainly,' Alaric replied. 'Herr Kleiber accompanied us on our mission and proved invaluable in the destruction of the other statues.' He nodded his head politely towards Halmeinger. Thank you for assigning him to this matter.'
Todbringer was still frowning. 'We will have to tell Ar-Ulric,' he said finally.
'Why disturb his prayers,' the witch hunter captain objected, his face contorted in rage, but his voice silky smooth. 'Surely his devotions to Ulric are more important than this simple matter?'
The elector count shook his head, however, and met Halmeinger's sharp, dark gaze with his own ice-blue glare. 'This matter has gone beyond mere politics,' he stated. 'This creature is a foul abomination, a champion of Chaos, and it very nearly emerged within my city! The White Wolves are our spiritual defence against such creatures and the Ar-Ulric must be informed!'
The two men matched stares for a moment before Halmeinger looked away. 'Of course,' he said softly, conceding. 'We must include the Church in this matter. I had merely thought to spare him the complication.'
With that resolved, Todbringer launched into action. He sent Struber to fetch both Kleiber and a guard captain, and, in what may have been punishment for defying him, dispatched Halmeinger to personally request the Ar-Ulric's presence. That left Alaric and Dietz alone in the throne room with the elector count, a handful of his elite guards and a severed head.
'Now what shall we do with you?' Todbringer muttered, and Dietz was sure he was not referring to Kristoffs remains.
Fortunately Alaric was still in good form. 'You should clear us of all charges, first of all,' he replied smoothly. 'You should also pardon Rolf, the stonemason, of complicity. It will not restore his life, but at least his family will bear no shame.'
'Yes, of course,' Todbringer replied, leaning back and drumming his fingers on the arm of his throne. 'But truly, if this did occur as you say, we owe you a great debt, both of you, and I repay my debts.' He studied them for a moment. 'So, what can I do to show my gratitude?'
Alaric thought about that for a moment. 'Well,' he said at last. 'I do need a new sword...'
After Emil Valgeir, the Ar-Ulric, had arrived and been told what had happened he had ordered a squad of his own Knights of the White Wolf to accompany them as well. No mention was made of the previous statues or of the mission to destroy them, but Dietz was sure he saw a spark of recognition when the high priest had looked at them. Valgeir was no one's fool.
Together with Captain Herrer - the same guard captain who had arrested them and Rolf - and his guard detail, plus Kleiber and several lesser witch hunters, Struber and the White Wolves, Alaric and Dietz had returned to the tunnels and retraced their steps. The chamber looked much the same as it had when they had left it. Bodies were still strewn about, the statue's remains were still scattered across the floor, and one of the cultists was still thrashing on the ground, foam still emerging from his tight-clenched lips. The daemon's footprints remained as well, gouged deep into the rock floor.
'Clearly it is as you said,' Kleiber announced after walking around the room. 'The daemon came forth just there and you destroyed the statue before it could fully emerge. The Empire is in your debt, gentlemen.' Kleiber had already impressed them that morning; when he had arrived and discovered the Ar-Ulric and his White Wolves, the witch hunter had bowed low in what seemed ge
nuine respect. Halmeinger might not like the Ar-Ulric, but Kleiber seemed to admire the man's devotion and he treated the six White Wolves with them as fellow warriors. Now his willingness to acknowledge what had happened impressed them further, and Dietz was glad yet again that Halmeinger had put Kleiber in charge instead of some other member of their order.
The White Wolves had agreed with Kleiber's assessment and, an hour later, they had all returned to the surface, dragging the writhing cultist with them. The elector count's guards removed the bodies as well, and workers were sent to scrub away the blood. If anyone else realised that the witch hunters' excesses had contributed to the near disaster, no one mentioned it.
Rolf was posthumously exonerated, though Dietz suspected the money his widow received as recompense meant more to her than the nicely worded apology. Dietz and Alaric were cleared of all charges and formally thanked for their assistance to Middenheim. They were granted favoured status in the city, which meant they were essentially minor nobles here, but without any lands, monies, or titles. This meant little to Alaric, who was already a noble by birth, but it mattered a great deal to Dietz, whose family would share in his elevation. The witch hunters had formally cleared them as well and presented them with a small note of thanks for their assistance. The White Wolves had sent a similar note, though it included a suggestion that they bring any such future troubles directly to the Church, a subtle reprimand for not involving them earlier.
'From outlaws to heroes,' Alaric commented after the last of the recognition ceremonies. 'If we stay here much longer we'll be running the place.'
Dietz nodded, but felt a pang. He had known they would not stay, of course. Alaric had too much wanderlust in him, and over the past year or more Dietz had acquired it as well. This matter was closed and it was time to move on, but that meant saying good-bye to his father yet again, and to Dagmar. Still, with the elector count's gratitude he could perhaps make their lives a little easier. Something Alaric had mentioned in passing, just before they had pursued Fastred, returned to Dietz and suggested another way to aid his sister in particular.