by James Wallis
He almost felt pity for her.
Almost.
“Then what do we do?” Holger demanded.
“We fight until she is dead.”
“But she’s too powerful! She’ll kill us both!”
“Only if we let her,” Karl said.
Her eyes did not blink. He felt like he was an insect, a beetle being contemplated by a bored cat. She could squash him at any moment, but she chose not to. Instead she stood and studied him. The two foes, united in the power of their mutual hatred, stared at each other.
What was she waiting for?
From her flank Holger charged in, his sword held to thrust at her breast. She twisted on the spot to face him, crossed her arms in front of him, and leaped towards him, uncrossing them in a vicious scissor motion. Twin gouges opened on either side of his ribcage and bright blood appeared through the leather of his jacket and waistcoat. The point of his sword dipped, the energy of his charge gone in a second, and she sidestepped him with ease.
Karl ran the other way, down the steps and towards the aisle and the disordered pews where Kratz’s body lay. The tall witch hunter’s sword had been on a wrist-loop and had flown with him as Karl had thrown him. Now it lay in the pool of blood and gore that surrounded his corpse. And Karl needed a weapon.
Karin swirled away from Holger and swept after him, her cloak streaming out. The unnatural speed that Karl had noticed as she moved through the shadows earlier was manifest again. It was only eight yards from the steps to Kratz’s corpse, and Karl had a head-start of three paces.
They arrived simultaneously. Karl tried to stop. Karin didn’t, slamming into him. His feet slipped in the fresh blood and he fell, landing on his broken arm. He screamed, but even as he did he knew it was a luxury. The sword was more important than acknowledging his pain.
He twisted on the ground, kicking with his legs to propel himself towards the bloody sword, reaching forward left-handed for it. The mouth on his neck thrashed, making bitter, guttural sounds. Above and beyond him, Karin smiled her awful dead smile and brought the sharp heel of her leather boot down hard on the flat of the blade by the haft. The metallic crack as the steel snapped echoed through the shadows of the temple, and was swallowed by the darkness. Karl felt a little of his hope follow it.
Karin took three paces across the aisle to where Rhinehart lay, alongside the crossbow he had been restringing when Kratz killed him. She studied his corpse for a moment, and stamped hard on the scabbard that held Rhinehart’s sword to his belt. Karl heard it break. The last spare weapon. It was a worse sound than the bones of his arm had made.
A voice said, “Broken.” Karl took a moment to realise it was him, his second mouth.
With her grotesque blood-streaked bone-blades hanging by her sides, reaching below her knees to mid-way down her calves where her black leather boots began, Karin surveyed her work.
“Come on,” Karl said. “Kill me. Blood for your lord Khorne.” Behind her he could see Holger approaching slowly, step by careful step, sword raised. The witch hunter was trying not to move his upper body so his leather armour did not creak or flex and give away his approach. The trails of blood running from the wounds on his flank were all too obvious.
“Later,” Karin said. “I will tell them how you brutally killed the three witch hunters, and how I was able to subdue you. You will be taken alive, and you will remain alive for longer than you imagine possible.” She raised her head, shook her dark hair and sniffed the air. “Your old cell has been prepared for you.”
“I don’t think so,” Karl said. He slapped his left hand down into the pool of Kratz’s blood, splashing the thick liquid, then lifted his dripping palm to the mouth on his neck, forcing the bloody fingers down into the mouth. He felt the sharp teeth rake his fingers, and he didn’t care. One drop had been enough to throw Kratz ten yards. A mouthful would give him the strength to break Karin’s bone-swords off at the wrist, wrench her head off and leave her corpse to rot.
Nothing happened. He pulled his hand from his mutation and stared at it in horror and disbelief. Part of him could not believe it had not worked; that there had been no effect. Part of him could not believe he had just done what he did.
Karin’s smile spread wide across her face, almost unnaturally wide. “Karl, Karl,” she said. “For all that you claim to be this great hunter of Chaos, you know so little of our ways. Blood from a dead man is no use to anyone.” She paused. “And we can hear everything.”
In the blink of an eye she swivelled on the heel of one boot and thrust forward with both her blades. Holger dodged but not fast enough; one caught him in the thigh and he staggered backwards, his attempted assassination lost and forgotten. She stalked after him. Karl lay in the pool of Kratz’s blood, despairing. The swords were broken. He could not gain more strength; even the dark forces of Chaos would not hear his prayers anymore. They were lost. They had lost. Everything was lost.
Bone impacted against steel as Karin swung and Holger parried desperately, retreating from each blow. The sounds rang out across the empty pews of the temple. Karl was not watching; from where he lay he searched the building with his eyes. There was nothing here he could use as a weapon. Even if Manaan had been a warrior-god, every fitting small enough to carry had already been stripped bare long ago. There wasn’t even a torch in a wall-sconce he could use as a club.
Rhinehart’s empty crossbow taunted him. He knew the man would have had more ammunition but the witch hunter had not worn or carried a quiver for the bolts. They must be somewhere in the temple, but he had no idea where. Even if he could find a bolt, the goats-foot lever had been broken; the string could not be reset for another shot. And crossbows were useless as clubs, their bow-arms making them ungainly and awkward.
Holger was now retreating a foot at a time, the only way he could stay out of range of Karin’s whirling blades. Abruptly his back heel caught on the lowest step of the flight up to the apse and he fell backwards, reaching out to break his fall, his guard completely dropped. Karin leaped forward, eight feet through the air, her cloak spreading like the wings of some nightmare butterfly, and landed with one boot either side of his head. Her blades were poised to strike.
Karl flinched for the witch hunter, sending a jolt of agony though his right arm. In the pain he suddenly remembered he had one crossbow bolt. He had carried it from Saint Botolphus’ Square, embedded in his shoulder.
He reached up with his left hand and grasped its shaft.
On the steps, Brother Karin used the point of one blade to hook the counterguard of Holger’s sword and flick it away, out of his reach. Holger gave a tiny groan.
Karl pulled on the bolt. A single jerk might break it. He pulled slowly and evenly. Every inch was agony, but it came out. The wooden shaft was soaked in his blood but the steel tip was still sharp.
In the light from the windows above the apse, Karin stood and raised the blades at the end of her arms above her head. She crossed the long bones and drew them across each other with a long rasping sound. It reminded Karl of a blade on a whetstone.
Karl leaned across the pool of blood for Rhinehart’s crossbow, and pulled it to him. It was a heavy arbalest, the upper end of what a single man could carry and use alone. The twisted cord of its string could only be reset into the firing position by a lever. Or a desperate man.
Karin scraped her bone-weapons against each other again.
He lifted the weapon, placing his feet just inside the bow, grasped the string with both hands, and pulled. It was harder than he could have imagined, and the cord cut deep into the palms of his hands.
Karin grated her two mutated arms across each other one more time, and lowered them slowly to her side. It occurred to Karl that he had probably just witnessed a Khornate ritual. Not big on complex ritual, Khorne worshippers.
He bent to the string. This was it, he told himself. Their last chance; their only chance. If he could not string the crossbow, both he and Holger were dead and Karin would emerge n
ot only alive but a hero, with more reputation, more influence and more ability to spread her foul faith. And that must not happen.
He pulled on the string with all his might. It was not enough.
On the stairs, with the shadows of the twin blades across him: “Why?” Holger asked. The question seemed to puzzle Brother Karin. She made no reply, but she made no movement either.
Karl thought of Huss and Valten and their reserves of strength, and knew he could not tap the same energies as those men; he lacked their faith. He thought of Sig-mar, and knew he lacked the god’s sense of purpose. He thought of Braubach, his old tutor, and knew that Braubach would not have been able to string this crossbow either. He thought of Anders Holger, who would die if he did not succeed, and that was not enough.
He thought of his father, and could only summon the same image that had come to him as Kratz had held him down on the apse: his father’s distraught face in the temple at Grünburg, filled with disappointment and horror at what his son had become. The image of the old man’s face had filled his waking dreams since then. He knew he would never be able to make his father proud of him; with what he had become, it lay beyond his nature.
But he could do what his father would have wanted.
“Why Priestlicheim?” Holger said.
“Enough questions,” she said, and bent to kill him.
Karl wrenched back on the string, straining every muscle in the length of his good arm, his shoulder, across his back, down his spine, straightening his hips and knees. It was agony for an eternity, and there was the tiniest of clicks as the bowstring slipped over the lock and into place.
Karin whirled at the sound, Holger forgotten.
Karl slammed the bolt into the groove along the top of the weapon.
She sprang into the air towards him, and her cloak spread out above like dark clouds of night descending, slashed by the lightning-bolts of her bone arms, poised to slam through his chest and kill him.
He raised the weapon.
“Oswald Maurer sends his regards,” he said, and fired.
It was like a dream. Karin above him, descending. The bowstring propelling the bolt forward, the shock of firing almost jerking the crossbow from his grasp. The bolt in the air, aimed for her head, the spot between her eyes. Karin’s right arm sweeping through the air. Intersecting trajectories. She was going to parry the bolt.
Nobody can parry a crossbow bolt. And yet, she was going to.
Karl heard the keening sound of the bone-blade as it spun through the air, and felt the hiss of the bolt speeding on its way. He watched as the two moved closer.
The bolt flew straight, but the blade was there first, blocking, as Karin’s leap carried her towards Karl. The bolt struck it flat on.
An organic weapon forged from a Chaotic mutation. A crossbow bolt that had been soaked in the blood of a mutant.
The bolt fragmented on impact, shattering into fragments of steel and splinters of wood.
The bone-blade exploded.
Karin’s grace vanished; the dream snapped into reality. She crashed to the stone floor, staggering as she landed. One boot-heel broke and she fell, screaming, between two pews. Flecks of bone peppered Karl, sharp edges slashing his skin, bouncing off the wooden seats and the floor like hail or shrapnel.
Karl jumped to his feet, running towards her, swinging the crossbow. It might be ungainly as a club but it could still crush her skull. On the steps, Holger had regained his footing and was coming too, a dagger drawn.
Between them, Karin stood up, her face jerking from side to side as she tried to keep them both in sight. An instant later Karl realised why. The blade had been in front of her face when it exploded, and the fragments had ripped her beauty to shreds. Her skin was torn away in places. Pieces of bone were embedded in her flesh. One eye was a ruined, blind mass, leaking vitreous fluid. Her field of vision was halved.
She shrieked, a dreadful unearthly scream. Karl dropped the crossbow and raised his hands to cover his ears, to protect his hearing and his sanity. He felt the mouth on his neck stretch wide, and realised it was screaming too, adding to the cacophony. Holger, too, had dropped his weapon. The witch hunter was on his hands and knees, curling up to protect himself. It was a sound too vile for any human to stand.
Just feet away, Karin stood, staring at him, then at Holger, then at him, then at Holger; her face a study in hatred, violence and frustration as she screamed the scream that put all her emotions and pain into sound. If he had a weapon, he could have struck her down, but he had no weapon. He could have reached out and touched her. He did not.
She had become everything he hated and feared: a thing of Chaos in human flesh, a puppet of Khorne at the heart of the Empire, and more powerful than him. He had loathed and lived in terror of his own mutations and what he was becoming; now he saw what a weak, feeble thing his contagion was compared to the true might of an agent of the Dark Powers.
He took a step towards her.
She took a step back. Her scream rose in pitch and she crouched down.
Karl bent and wrapped his good hand, his left hand, around the carving at the end of one of the pews.
Bending his knees, he raised it, hauling it up to shoulder height, high enough to pivot on the far end. Then with all his might and rage and frustration he flung it at her.
The length of dark wood tumbled towards Karin.
She bounded away. Her legs seemed to be four feet long, and she leaped away, up to the top of the steps, next to Holger, her remaining blade raised to strike.
Holger, on his hands and knees where he had crouched, saw her coming. She landed next to him. There was a dagger in his hand. He rammed it into her stomach, twisting it.
With one arm she swiped him away but the blow was mis-aimed and mis-timed; she hit him with the flat of her blade and he rolled away, bruised but not cut.
Blood was pouring down her legs to the floor.
She crouched, paused, and sprang. The movement was cat-like, the legs too. She leaped not forwards to Holger, nor down into the temple to where Karl stood, but upwards, backwards, over the altar, ten, fifteen feet in the air, towards the main window that shed faint light into the building through the leaded lattice of its dirt-encrusted panes.
She hit the main window, exploding through it. Glass shattered and fell, lead tracing twisting and falling.
For a second she stood on the bottom of the window-frame, looking back at the two men with her ruined face, her blood trickling down the white stone of the wall above the altar. Then she leaped again, away, and was gone into the city.
Karl and Holger faced each other across the open space of the temple: the toppled pews, the broken glass, the corpses, the scattered weapons, the blood. The echoes of her ghastly scream still reverberated around the rafters high above, fading.
Holger’s face was white with shock, yet he seemed strangely in control of himself. “She was the cultist, you said,” he said, “and she was certainly a warrior of the Chaos gods. But you said she was pledged to the service of Khorne. The Priestlicheim massacre was caused by Tzeentch worshippers. Purple Hand. Brother Heilemann. You told me so yourself.”
“It’s complicated,” Karl said. “I can tell you later.”
“Tell me now.”
Karl sighed. “The nunnery at Priestlicheim was a Purple Hand stronghold. It had been for months. Karin learned this and sent you, but she also sent word to members of her cult,” Karl said. “It looked like a Tzeentchian massacre of innocents. In fact it was a massacre of Tzeentch worshippers by their enemies in the cult of Khorne. Partly a blood-sacrifice, partly to shift attention away from themselves in the aftermath of last spring’s bloodbath at Castle Lossnitz, which they had also caused.”
“And Heilemann?”
“He sent a warning to his brothers in the cult, telling them to kill everyone and flee.”
“How do you know all this?” Anders asked.
“I recognised the signs,” Karl said.
�
�What signs?”
“The same signs that tell me if we stay here another minute we will be surrounded, arrested, tried and burnt at the stake before nightfall. We have to get out of here. Do you have horses?”
Anders was silent as he walked to where his sword lay, and picked it up, flexing it to see if it was damaged. Then he turned to Karl and shook his head. “You’re going nowhere, Karl Hoche. I arrest you—”
“Don’t be an idiot!” Karl shouted.
“I’m a witch hunter! I have a duty! I arrest you—”
“Duty to what? To an organisation riddled with cultists, guided by people who manipulate you and your investigations for their own ends, to keep you out of their business?”
Anders was walking out of the shadows towards Karl, through the pool of light that flooded the temple through the hole in the broken window. “A duty to a higher power!” he said. “A duty to my oaths! I am sworn to the service of Sigmar, to protect the Empire from the foul works of Chaos! Karl Hoche, I arrest you—”
“How will your death serve that higher power? Or your oaths?”
Holger stopped. “My death?”
“You think Karin will let you live now you’ve seen her for what she is? She needs you dead. She’ll be back at the chapter-house in ten minutes, telling how you and I worked together to kill Kratz and Rhinehart and almost kill her.”
“We have to get there first! To tell them the truth!”
“And who would they believe? You or her?”
Holger was silent.
“This,” Karl said, “this is my life. This is what I do: I seek out the spoor of Chaos, I track it to its lair, and I wait for the right time to strike at it. I have waited over a year for a chance to kill Brother Karin, and it almost came today. Now I go back to waiting. But I will kill her.”