by C. L. Werner
The scope of that retreat had confused Mandred at first. In other lands, any great victory had been followed by almost innumerable small skirmishes as contingents of his army were dispatched to force the skaven from every village and town. In Averland, despite the magnitude of the skaven infestation, virtually every settlement had been abandoned by the monsters after they lost Averheim.
The answer came by way of intelligence culled from the few ratmen taken prisoner. Under none-too-gentle interrogation from the dwarfs, the vermin revealed the identity of the white skaven Mandred had fought and whose ear Legbiter had cut away.
He was Vrrmik, and they referred to him by a variety of grandiose titles, the most prominent of which was Great Warlord. Vrrmik, it transpired, was the successor of Vecteek, the skaven overlord Mandred and his father had slain during the Battle of Middenheim. With the Great Warlord himself present in Averheim, it seemed clear to Mandred that the rapid abandonment of the rest of Averland could only have been accomplished under Vrrmik’s orders.
The question was, why? To what end would Vrrmik concede the whole province to his enemy? Try as he might, Mandred couldn’t wrap his mind around whatever treacherous strategy the skaven were trying to implement. To try to outguess the skaven would be to think like one of the monsters. No matter how vile, he could think of no man, not even the escaped murderer Beck, who was so debased as one of the skaven.
‘The major strongpoint of the ratkin in Solland is Pfeildorf.’ The speaker was Captain Aldinger of the Knights of the Black Rose. He was addressing the lords and generals gathered in the great hall. The map he pointed to was a great sprawling tapestry depicting the entire southern half of the Empire, a gift bestowed upon the von Orns by the dwarfs of Zhufbar. ‘They’ve turned the city into a distribution point for the slaves they capture when they raid into Talabecland and Wissenland.’
The explanation brought angry snarls from many in the room. Mandred was pleased to hear that anger. It meant that his forces were seeing beyond the limitations of their own people and their own lands. They were thinking in terms of the Empire as a whole, in mankind as a single…
Cries of surprise and confusion rose from the back of the hall, interrupting both Aldinger’s explanation of the situation around Pfeildorf and Mandred’s thoughts. He turned away from the extravagant map, trying to see the source of the disruption.
The cause was a dusty, bedraggled man in the livery of the von Oberreuths, the ruling house of Stirland. More than the man’s alarming appearance and dramatic entrance, it was the words he spoke that made an impact on the assembly.
‘Woerden is lost!’ the messenger cried. ‘The skaven have slaughtered everyone in the town!’
Mandred watched as Hulda made her esoteric preparations for the ritual. He wondered if it was a sign of weakness or desperation that he should turn to the witch, or if perhaps it was evidence of stubbornness and superstition that he hadn’t consulted her before. Whatever his feelings, he knew that this was certainly his last recourse. If this didn’t work, there was nothing else left to try.
The great hall in the Averburg fortress was empty now. Mandred and Hulda were the only ones inside. The great map Aldinger had referenced was laid out on the floor now, combined with a second massive tapestry depicting the northern provinces. At each corner of the map, Hulda had set a tallow candle, ringing it round with a circle of dried herbs and crushed leaves. A great wooden framework had been suspended over the map and from this a wild array of tiny stones had been tied, the loop of each cord fastened in such a way that it could slide along the wooden runners.
At the base of the map, however, was the most macabre instrument in Hulda’s conjurations, the hollowed-out skull of a ratman, inverted over an open fire. A strange concoction boiled away inside that skull, sending a strange and nauseating smoke wafting through the hall. Hulda squatted beside the skull dressed only in a thick robe of wolfskin. Beside her on the floor rested the severed tail of Poxmaster Puskab Foulfur and the severed ear of Great Warlord Vrrmik.
Oh, it had been fiendishly clever, Vrrmik’s plan. Mandred had to concede a certain monstrous brilliance to the verminous creature. He’d withdrawn his forces from Averland so that he could deploy them elsewhere. Not for conquest, but simply to destroy. Woerden had been almost razed to the ground, virtually its entire population massacred. Vrrmik could have conceived no better way to shatter the army that had driven him from Averheim. The disparate forces that made up Mandred’s army, so close to that unity of purpose he had struggled so long to invest them with, were once again becoming fractured. Every nobleman, every peasant was worried about his home now, wondering when Vrrmik’s vengeful horde would rise up to annihilate his city or town.
The skaven didn’t need to bring some mighty army to conquer Mandred in the field. Vrrmik could simply stage terror raids in the lands the humans thought safely liberated and bleed away Mandred’s forces piecemeal as each province scurried home to protect their own land.
There was only one chance, one way to outguess Vrrmik and beat the rat at his own game. If Mandred could predict where Vrrmik would strike next, if he could get his army there ahead of the skaven, then he would restore the confidence of his commanders and rekindle their faith in the vision of an entire Empire freed from the ratkin.
If he guessed wrong, however, nothing would keep Mandred’s force united. They would scatter and, eventually, the skaven would pick off each province one at a time.
Hulda motioned for Mandred to stay where he was. She’d cautioned him earlier that any movement, any sound could prove disastrous. At best, the divination would be spoiled. At worst, her magic might unleash a denizen of the aethyr, the malignant forces all men knew as daemons.
Mandred listened as Hulda invoked the name of Ulric, her voice dropping in tone and distinction until it was little more than a bestial growl. The inhuman timbre of her voice set the hairs at the back of his neck crawling, yet worse was to come. From where he stood, he could only see the back of the witch, her wild mane of hair and the heavy wolfskin cloak. It was only when she reached to the floor beside her that he saw anything more, and what he saw made him shudder. The hand that picked up the scaly skaven tail was scarcely a hand at all. It was covered in white fur, the fingers distended into long bony talons, each digit tipped by a blackened claw.
A foul sizzling noise rose from the skull as Hulda dropped the tail into the boiling liquid. It seemed to Mandred that he could see a weird mist drift away from the skull, wafting above the map and slithering among the suspended stones. There was no mistaking, however, when one of the stones began to shudder and dance, shivering at the end of its tether as though it were a thing alive. The cord slid along the framework, the stone beneath it straining at the end of its tether at an angle.
Hulda reached for Vrrmik’s ear, this time her hand little more than a lupine paw. Again, Mandred heard the sizzling sound as the ear followed the tail into the ghoulish cauldron. Once again he fancied he could see a mephitic vapour rise up and blow across the map. Another of the suspended stones shivered, its cord sliding along the wooden runners until it took up position near the first stone. Both of the tiny rocks strained at the ends of their tethers, pointing to a spot on the map below.
‘Hergig,’ Hulda’s distorted voice growled. ‘At the time of the next new moon, the skaven will attack Hergig.’
Mandred nodded. Hergig, the capital of Hochland. It made a fiendish amount of sense. Hochland was at the very centre of most of the provinces that had joined with Mandred. If Vrrmik struck there, he would exhibit in no uncertain terms that he could strike the neighbouring provinces as well.
Hergig. It would be a long, hard march from Averheim.
Altdorf, 1124
The slime-coated walls of the Catacombs glistened in the rushlight as armed soldiers stalked through the cramped dungeons far below the Courts of Justice. Inarticulate moans, the rattle of rusty chains, desperate
cries for mercy or death echoed through the dank corridor but did nothing to stir whatever dregs of sympathy still lingered in the hearts of the gaolers. Already hard and brutal men, the intrusion of Gazulgrund’s killers had made these men even more vicious. Though the Kaiserjaeger had doubled their guards and increased their defences, the gaolers couldn’t shake the feeling that death might strike at them without warning at any time. Savagery went far to make them forget their own fears.
Kreyssig stalked along the corridor behind his soldiers and the guiding gaolers. He wanted a particular cell and a particular captive: someone he had entombed in the darkest corner of the Catacombs.
The Protector cursed the desperation that made him resort to such an extreme, but there was nothing else to be done. Von Kranzbeuhler had escaped and the Kaiserjaeger had yet to turn him up. Should the knight reach Graf Mandred and disclose Kreyssig’s treachery then all of his careful plans would be for nothing.
Fortunately, the very urgency that drove him to this black pit beneath Altdorf was also working in Kreyssig’s favour. His spies reported that Mandred’s army was on the march again, driving towards Altdorf. They could be expected almost any day. Von Kranzbeuhler didn’t have much time to get to Mandred and warn him. The Kaiserjaeger had Altdorf sealed as tight as a drum, so Kreyssig was certain the outlaw was still somewhere in the city. The loss of Ghal Maraz all those years ago had been a painful, but profitable lesson.
The gaolers didn’t bother to hide their fear when they reached the cell. They hesitated before the door, none of them making a move to turn the key. Kreyssig had no patience with the trepidation of his men. Angrily he pushed past his guards and took the ring of keys from the head gaoler. Turning the key in a lock that almost seemed a solid block of rust, he pushed open the door and thrust the rushlight he carried into the cell beyond.
The light cast by the smouldering brand revealed a ragged creature chained to the slimy wall. It lifted its head as Kreyssig stepped inside. The Commander of the Kaiserjaeger struggled to keep his composure as the thing stared at him with the glistening clutch of spider-like eyes that pockmarked the left side of what was left of its face. The right side was a shapeless mush of flesh, as though it were made of wax and had been left too close to a flame. The entirety of the creature was a mismatched patchwork of mutation. The fingers of one hand were hard and calcified, resembling nothing so much as the thorns on a rose. The creature’s other arm was split into two spindly limbs at the point where its elbow had been. The thing’s back was crooked, yet at the same time its overall mass and build was that of some misshapen giant.
Gazing upon the abominable thing, Kreyssig felt the temptation to withdraw. Instead he held his ground and called it by the name it had possessed when it was still human. ‘Beck,’ he called to the creature. ‘How would you like a chance to get revenge?’
The mutant had been captured months before by one of the rural nobles. The fact that it had been carrying a charm fashioned from one of the black rocks the skaven coveted had brought the creature to the notice of the Kaiserjaeger. They in turn had brought the thing to Altdorf. Under the tortures of the Dragon’s Hole, the mutant had confessed all. It said its name was Beck, that it was a knight from Middenheim, bodyguard to Graf Mandred in fact. Beck had been devoted to his master, serving him with absolute selflessness, or at least that was what the mutant insisted. There had been a falling out between master and servant when he’d been caught murdering Mandred’s lover, the Lady Mirella. Beck’s intention had been to clear the field so that his master might pursue Baroness Carin of Nordland, a relationship that had far more to offer the graf by way of political alliance and territorial gain. Mandred hadn’t seen things that way, and Beck had been forced to flee for his life.
He’d been making his way back to Middenland when he’d been caught. The taint of mutation had started when he was in Averland, but it had accelerated dramatically after he left Mandred’s army. Beck’s belief was that the deformities that afflicted him were caused by the curse of Hulda, a witch who had ingratiated herself into the graf’s confidences. Kreyssig was less sure; he’d seen for himself the strange effect the skaven stones had on things. Beck’s belief in the witch’s curse, however, was something the Protector could use.
Chains rattled as the mutant raised its head. The spidery eyes shifted in their orbits, fixing Kreyssig with their multitudinous gaze. ‘Revenge,’ the thing hissed, the word almost unintelligible as it was pushed past the creature’s jutting fangs.
‘Graf Mandred, your old master, is coming here,’ Kreyssig informed the mutant.
Beck tried to lunge forwards, what was left of its face contorted in rage. Kreyssig noted with dismay that the iron staples set into the wall shuddered in their fastening. Just a little more force and the mutant might break free all on its own.
‘Good,’ Kreyssig laughed with more levity than he actually felt. ‘I see that we are of one mind.’ Beck settled down, sinking onto its haunches like some pensive predator. The eerie eye-cluster watched him with sinister intensity. ‘I might be persuaded to give you a chance, if you can convince me I can trust you.’ That, of course would be impossible, but if he could get the mutant to behave itself until it was no longer useful, Kreyssig would be content.
‘Mandred,’ Beck snarled, foam dripping from the mutant’s jagged teeth.
Kreyssig nodded. ‘Yes, you could kill him. But I think your, our revenge needs more than that. Mandred dreams of making himself Emperor. We can snatch that dream from him the moment he reaches out to take it. He would have to live with the knowledge of what almost was.’ He pointed at Beck. ‘You can make it happen.’
‘Kill,’ the mutant growled, savouring the word as though it were the name of a lover.
‘Kill the dream and damn the man,’ Kreyssig said. ‘What has been done to you by his witch is more horrible than any clean death. Why should you show Mandred any mercy?’
The eye-clusters lost their intense focus as Beck considered that point. The mutant lifted the bisected length of its arm, studying its abominable malformation. ‘Yes,’ it said. ‘Worse.’
It was a genuine smile Kreyssig wore now. He’d worried about how much intelligence, how much sanity, was left in Beck after his grisly transformation and the attentions of the Kaiserjaeger’s torturers. There was enough there, he decided, enough left to remember the cup of hate and want to drink its fill from that malignant chalice.
‘Listen to me, Beck, and I will tell you how you can take your revenge. I’ll tell you how you can kill Mandred’s dream.’
True to their word, it had taken the dwarfs less than ten minutes to demolish the stone wall blocking the entrance to the palace sewers. It took them even less time to find and neutralise the pitfall the Kaiserjaeger had excavated and left as a surprise for intruders. The dwarfs were careful about resetting the trap once it had been bypassed, leaving it as a surprise for any pursuers.
Walking through the dank tunnels, Erich felt himself transported back thirteen years. He was again fleeing the Imperial palace with Baron Thornig, bearing away Ghal Maraz so that the despotic reign of Boris Goldgather might be stripped of its legitimacy. He thought too of how he’d finally escaped from Kreyssig’s pursuing Kaiserjaeger through the help of the insidious ratmen.
‘We’ll need to leave the city,’ Erich said as the dwarfs marched through the muck of the sewer. ‘Maybe a boat or a barge we can hide in.’
Dharin turned to him, shaking his head. ‘There’s no getting out of Altdorf.’ He looked over at Kurgaz, waiting for the other dwarf to nod in agreement. ‘Not for you,’ he added. ‘Ever since the skaven attack, Kreyssig has kept the whole city under lock and key. Nothing gets in or out without his Kaiserjaeger knowing about it.’ He spat into the slime around his feet. ‘This city is shut tighter than Karaz-a-Karak.’
Erich glared down at the dwarf. ‘Then what do we do? Go back and surrender?’
‘We
die fighting,’ Kurgaz snapped at the knight, a fierce fire in the slayer’s eyes. ‘Better a clean death than whatever that grobi-fondler has in store for you.’
Dharin listened to the slayer’s outburst, and then barked out a condescending laugh. ‘The Smallhammers were always weak of mind,’ he said. ‘Always ready to fight, never ready to think.’ He pointed the haft of his axe at the other gold grubbers. ‘The debt between us is between us,’ Dharin stated. ‘Do you think I’d involve these lads if I didn’t have a plan?’
Erich stepped forwards, motioning Kurgaz to wait before pouncing on Dharin and trying to smash the sneer off his face. ‘What’s your plan?’ the knight demanded.
‘You can’t leave the city,’ Dharin repeated. ‘But you can hide. There’s one place that even Kreyssig can’t get at: the Great Cathedral. Your Grand Theogonist is his bitter enemy, and one who’s too powerful for Kreyssig to do anything about. Take sanctuary with him and you’ll be as safe as you can be in Altdorf.’
The knight considered that option. Grand Theogonist Thorgrad had been a weak man, easily bent to the demands of Emperor Boris, but from what he’d heard the new Grand Theogonist Gazulgrund was far different. He was a religious fanatic, a firebrand who refused to compromise his principles for anyone or anything. He was also the man who had conceived the Night of the Holy Knives. To entrust their safety to a fanatic and mass-murderer was a cheerless prospect, but it seemed the only option left to them.
‘Do these sewers run beneath the Great Cathedral?’ Erich asked.
Again, the question brought gruff laughter from Dharin and his tax collectors. ‘Any time a manling wants an important building raised, he has dwarfs build it for him. When we build, we dig tunnels to ease the movement of workers and supplies. When the work is done, the manlings have us turn the tunnels into sewers. At least until they want a new building, then we have to turn them back into tunnels.’ He wagged his axe at the dripping walls around them. ‘Yes, human, these sewers connect with the tunnels under the cathedral. All we have to do is follow this main passage and wait for it to branch off into a tunnel walled with red limestone. That’s the path that’ll lead us right under the cathedral.’