“Funny, Gosta, but not the word I had in mind.”
“No?”
“No.” Skellan leaned in close, making sure the Ghost Hunter appreciated the seriousness of his enquiry. “I want to talk about Wiederauferstanden.”
“That’s a mouthful,” he said, not meeting Skellan’s eyes as he spoke.
“It is, so let’s say the Risen Dead, if you prefer?”
“I do,” the smaller man said, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. “Look, I don’t know much. It isn’t my thing, messing with the dead. I’m an honest criminal. What do you want to know? Maybe I can help, maybe I can’t.”
“I want a way in,” Skellan said, not bothering to sugar-coat his most basic need.
“Not happening,” the Ghost Hunter said, shaking his head as though to emphasise the point. “Not a prayer.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you can’t name the right names? Put me in touch with the right person? I don’t believe that for a second, Gosta.”
“Oh, I can name them all right, I can even tell you where they like to play their little games, that still won’t get you inside the organisation though. They’re the kind of group that comes looking for you; you don’t go looking for them, if you know what I mean, stranger. They play their cards mighty close to their chests. And asking too many questions is likely to get you a cosy spot in a hessian sack at the bottom of the River Stir. You will, of course, have been chopped up into little pieces to make sure you fit in that cosy sack. That the kind of help you are looking for? I’m not going to help you kill yourself, least not without a good reason.”
“We can take care of ourselves. Give us an address then, I’m specifically looking for a piece of scum named Aigner, Sebastian Aigner. I don’t know if he is part of this Risen Dead cult but from what I know of him, and the little I know about them, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“It’s your death warrant, mister. Just as long as you understand that. I don’t want no widow holding me responsible for your stupidity.”
“Just give me the address.”
The Ghost Hunter shifted uncomfortably. His eyes darted around furtively making sure no one who mattered was close enough to overhear what he was about to say.
“I ain’t heard of your Aigner fella, but if he’s mixed up with the Risen Dead, you’ll probably find him down near the end of Schreckenstrasse, there’s an old tower that used to be part of the Sigmarite temple. The temple’s long gone, but the tower’s still there. The Risen Dead use it because it still has access to the old catacombs. If you value your life you won’t go anywhere near the place, mind.”
“Thank you,” Skellan said.
“Your funeral, big guy.” The locksmith turned away, eager to distance himself from Skellan and Fischer.
“I guess that means we’re going for a walk,” Fischer said with a wry grin.
“Now’s as good a time as any,” Skellan agreed.
They picked a path through the market-goers. The place smelled of urine and cabbage where it should have been filled with the heady smells of roasting pork, boiling bratwurst and sauerkraut. Famine took its toll in less obvious ways too. A woman sat on the stoop of a dilapidated building plucking feathers from a stringy-looking game bird. Her daughter sat beside her holding two more birds by the ankles. The two birds flapped and twisted in the girl’s grip as though aware of what fate had in store for them. These three birds garnered the woman envious looks from those without the coin to buy even a few tough legs or sinewy wings. Two doors up a barber with a cutthroat razor trimmed and shaped an elderly man’s beard. A wood carver was making some sort of pull-along toy on wheels while beside him his partner fashioned more practical things, the shafts for arrows, spoons, bowls and a miscellany of odds and ends that could be sold for cash including love tokens and trinkets.
“Do you trust him?” Fischer asked, stepping around a shoeless urchin playing in the mud. The child tugged at his trouser-leg, begging for coins.
“As much as I would trust anyone in this rat-infested hole. So not much, no. That doesn’t mean his information isn’t good though, just that his primary interest is survival at whatever cost. If selling us out pays well, you can bet that is exactly what Gosta will do.”
“So we could be walking into a trap?”
Skellan nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Now there’s a comforting thought.” Instinctively, Fischer reached down to feel for the familiar reassurance of the sword belted to his hip. Cold steel had a way of calming even the jitteriest of nerves. Right in front of him a woman with a young child cradled in her arms backed up a step and looked frightened enough to bolt. She was staring at his hand poised just above the sword’s hilt. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” he said, holding up his hands to show they were empty and that he had no intention of cutting her down where she stood. It didn’t matter; the woman was already disappearing into the crowd.
He had sensed the same kind of nervousness in many of the citizens during their short stay in Leicheberg, as though they were used to the summary dispensation of brutal justice. Indeed the reputation of Sylvanian justice was one of the terrible swift sword, quick to anger, and unforgiving in its delivery. Fairness was not a word associated with Sylvanian society. For centuries the people had lived under the grip of the tyrannical van Draks, and they were familiar with the madness of their masters. Things had changed with the coming of the new line of counts, the von Carsteins, but next to the depravities of the last van Drak just about anyone would have looked like blessed Sigmar himself.
Schreckenstrasse was a long claustrophobic alleyway of close-packed houses that crowded into the street itself as the upper storeys leaned in close enough for the neighbours to touch fingertips if they reached through their open windows. Just as the Ghost Hunter had promised, the remains of the old Sigmarite temple were at the very far end of the street, on the furthest outskirts of the city. There was a tower, four storeys high, and some rubble. The tower stood alone, distanced from the rest of the buildings by the gap where the main chapel of the temple itself had once stood.
Skellan drew his sword.
Beside him Fischer did the same.
He looked at his friend and nodded. They matched each other step for step as they moved across the rubble. Skellan could sense eyes on him and knew they were being watched. It stood to reason that if the cult were using the tower for some nefarious purpose they would set lookouts—probably in the tower itself, and in one of the abandoned houses along Schreckenstrasse, an upper window with a good view of the door of the tower. He didn’t look around or hesitate, even for a heartbeat. Three quick steps took Skellan up the short flight of stairs to the door. Rocking on his heels, he span and delivered a well-placed kick parallel to the rusty old lock mechanism that sent the door bursting open on buckled hinges. A hiss of noises and smells came rushing out from the darkness within.
Skellan stepped through the doorway. Fischer followed him.
Fischer was not overly fond of the dark or cramped spaces. What waited beyond the door tested the older man to the full.
The air was stale, thick with sweat and fear and the metallic tang of blood.
Precious little daylight spilled into the room, barely enough for Fischer to see much beyond his outstretched fingers with any clarity as he fumbled forward into the darkness, his eyes adjusting to the gloom, but he could hear slobbering sounds, and gasping, other noises too, whimpering, heavy things scrabbling about. None of the sounds were comforting. His hand gripped tighter around the hilt of his sword. He had no idea what secrets the treacherous heart of the darkness held, but knew he was about to find out. The sound of his own pulse was loud in his ears. He clenched his teeth and shuffled another step forward. A few chinks of light wriggled in through cracks in the boarded-up windows. They offered few clues as to the nature of the Risen Dead’s business with the old tower. Someone groaned in the darkness. The noise raised the hackles along Fischer’s neck. The sound was one of desperati
on; whoever had made it was suffering.
“I don’t like this,” he whispered. His foot stubbed against something then. He toed it tentatively. It yielded. He kicked at it a little more forcefully. The voice groaned again. Fischer knew then what he was kicking: a body. “Give me some light, damn it,” he cursed. He couldn’t tell if the person was dying, drunk or drugged. He stepped over the body.
Skellan felt his way around the wall until he found what he was looking for, a torch. There was oil beneath the sconce. He dipped the dry reeds in the foul smelling liquid and then lit it with a spark of tinder. The air was moist but it didn’t stop the reeds from catching and burning with a blue flame. He held the torch aloft. The flame cast a sickly light across the room. Fischer straddled a woman’s body that had been bound and gagged. Dark patches showed through her clothing. Blood. There were rakes and hoes and buckets, hammers, saws and other tools from the tower’s previous life scattered about the place. A staircase spiralled up into darkness, and down into deeper darkness. Skellan followed it down into a storeroom. Fischer followed a few steps behind him. Wooden shelves and barrels lined the small storage room but Skellan found what he was looking for:
In the centre of the floor was a three-foot by three-foot moss-covered trapdoor with a large iron ring in the middle.
He passed the torch to Fischer and gripped the iron ring with both hands. The trapdoor creaked on its rusty hinges as he pulled. The musty air of the grave escaped from the hole. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the torch, the moans and sighs swelled with excitement.
“I really don’t like this,” Fischer repeated.
“It’s the entrance to the old catacombs,” Skellan said.
“I know what it is, I still don’t like it.”
“Aigner’s down there.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I can feel it. He’s down there.” Skellan took the first step, crouching to descend into the darkness.
Fischer stood frozen.
Skellan took the torch from him.
With plaintive sigh Fischer followed him into the hole.
The stairs led them down deep beneath the ground. Fischer counted more than fifty steps. The tunnel was carved out of the earth itself and braced by aging timbers. They had to stoop; the ceiling was so low it was impossible to stand up straight. The sword offered little comfort against the press of the featureless darkness. At the bottom of the staircase the tunnel forked in three directions, each one leading off into a deeper darkness.
Skellan pressed a finger to his lips to emphasise the need for silence. He could hear something, in the distance. It took Fischer a moment to work out what it was: the low resonant rumble of voices chanting.
They moved cautiously down the centre tunnel, heading straight for the heart of the catacombs.
A horrendous cry cut through the tunnels. It was human. Female. Whoever was responsible for that scream, Fischer knew, was suffering. “Come on,” he rasped at Skellan’s back, driving the fear from his mind. The woman was alive and she needed them, that thought was enough to force the older man into action. They staggered forward. Suddenly the tunnel opened out into a chamber. There were corpses and bones everywhere, stacked one on top of another. Bodies wrapped in dirty bandages were piled into holes in the earth. Bare bones jumbled haphazardly; femurs, fibulas, tibias, scapulas and skulls made a sea of bones from the dead of Leicheberg. Some were broken, their ends ragged, others were sheathed in mould. Had these people ever been given a proper burial, Fischer wondered?
On the far side of the space an arch led into a second, bigger, chamber. Torches had been lit in the second room. In their light Fischer saw deformed shadows dancing on the earthen wall. They came together in one writhing mass.
In front of him, Skellan grunted, and stepped through the arch.
Gritting his teeth, Stefan Fischer followed him.
The sight that greeted them when they stepped through the arch was like something lifted straight out of their worst nightmares.
The woman who had screamed lay in the centre of the floor. There was a row of cages behind her but Fischer only had eyes for the woman. She had been slit from throat to belly, and though still barely alive, six cadaverous wild-eyed creatures clawed over her, sucking greedily at her still-warm blood as it leaked out of her. Her blood streamed down their chins and smeared across their cheeks. Ghouls, Fischer realised sickly, watching the creatures as they sucked at their fingers and lapped at the gaping rent in her torso. It was impossible to believe that these monstrosities had ever been human; they had more in common with daemons drawn from the pit than with decent everyday people.
The woman was dead but shock and denial kept her heart pumping weakly for a few more minutes, prolonging her suffering.
Something inside Fischer broke. He felt it happen. A small part of his sanity splintered away and left him forever.
Fury swelled to fill the emptiness inside.
He charged forward, swinging his sword in a frenzy of slashing. It was a blur of steel in the flickering torchlight. The first ghoul looked up as Fischer’s blade sliced through its neck; the thing’s head lolled back exposing a second, ear-to-ear grin that had been opened by the sword. Blood bubbled in the gaping maw. The second saw the tip of Fischer’s sword plunge deep into its own eye, burying itself in the ghoul’s brain, before it slumped forward over the woman’s eviscerated corpse. The ghoul’s body was wracked by a series of shockingly violent spasms as the life leaked out of it. Fischer kicked the corpse aside, yanking his sword free of the ghoul’s head and delivering a huge sweeping arc of a blow that cleaved clean through the neck of a third ghoul. Blood gouted out of the severed wound. The ghoul’s still-grinning head bounced on the floor and rolled away. The sheer ferocity of Fischer’s attack was monumental. The weight of the blow unbalanced the older man and sent him staggering forward, barely able to control his own momentum. He lurched two more steps, plunging his bloody blade into the gut of the fourth ghoul even as the monstrosity launched itself at the witch hunter. He twisted his wrist, opening the wound wide. The ghoul’s guts spilled out of the ragged wound in its stomach. The fiend’s clawed hands closed around the blade, pulling Fischer closer by drawing his blade deeper into its gut. It breathed in his face, grin wide as it leaned in to bite off part of Fischer’s face. Its teeth had been sharpened into fangs. Its breath reeked of the sour fetid stench of the grave. Fischer recoiled instinctively, his movement jerking the ghoul off balance. It fell at his feet, dead, its guts spilling out across the floor.
Fischer was breathing hard.
Skellan said something behind him but he wasn’t listening.
Two of the fiends remained.
He stared at them.
Judged them.
The last vestiges of humanity had gone from their eyes. One gazed listlessly into the air, intoxicated from the dead woman’s blood. It had no idea that what remained of its life could be measured in a few heartbeats. The other matched his gaze with one of its own, filled with cold animalistic cunning. It was calculating the threat Fischer posed, whether it needed to fight, flee or feed. It was hard to believe the creatures had ever been human. They had descended so far from basic humanity that they wallowed in the realm of the monstrous.
They were monsters.
Fischer launched a second brutal attack. He held nothing back. He threw himself at the remaining ghouls. He slashed and cut and stabbed in a wild frenzy, hacking into the helpless creatures. He cut at their arms as they tried to protect themselves. There was no control, no finesse to his fighting. His sole purpose was to kill. Screaming, he span on his heel, bringing the sword round in a wide arc with the full spinning weight of his body behind the downward slice of the blade as it cleaved into the ghoul’s neck and buried itself deep in the beast’s chest. He couldn’t pull his sword free.
Skellan dispatched the final ghoul with clinical precision. He stepped up behind the creature, yanked its head back and cut its throat. In the space between two
heartbeats the deed was done. He rolled its corpse over with his foot. There were no marks or symbols carved into its flesh. Nothing to identify it as one of the Risen Dead, but the thing’s ghoulish nature was in no doubt.
“How could anyone fall so far?” he asked, shaking his head.
Beside the dead girl Fischer fell to his knees. The sword slipped through his fingers and clattered to the floor. He gasped for breath almost choking between huge heaving sobs. Tears streamed down his cheeks. She hadn’t just been opened up; the ghouls had feasted on most of her internal organs.
“You couldn’t have saved her,” Skellan said gently, resting a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. “She was dead before we even entered the room.”
“Always… too late…” Fischer spat bitterly. He was trembling as the adrenaline fled from his body.
“Not always,” Skellan said, finally seeing the row of cages and the emaciated shadows huddled in their darkest corners. The cultists obviously intended to serve these poor souls to the ghouls for food. “Not always.”
He stepped carefully around the corpses and opened the first of the cages. There were two women in there, barely older than children really, their faces smeared with dirt and caked with dried blood. They looked absolutely terrified. Skellan tried to calm them but they shook their heads wildly from side to side and pressed themselves further into the corner, out of Skellan’s reach. They stank of urine and stale sweat.
There were six more women in the other cages.
Still weeping silently, Fischer helped Skellan release them.
Sigmar alone knew how long the poor wretches had been trapped in the catacombs waiting to be fed to the ghouls. The confinement had done nothing for their minds. They mumbled and talked to themselves and stared straight through their rescuers as they tried to shepherd them back upstairs.
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