Another volley of impacts rang out. Clenching his jaw, the keeper got painfully to his feet and stumbled blindly over towards the cell’s ancient fireplace.
“Have a second’s patience,” he called out to his unwelcome guest as he knelt down, knees popping, in front of the fire’s charred remains. “I’m making light.”
The knocking paused for a moment. Then it started again with a renewed urgency.
“Wait,” the priest snapped, then drew in a deep breath and blew. Ash flurried up into the darkness like grey snow, revealing glowing embers beneath. “I’m coming.”
The priest, ignoring a sudden fit of dizziness, took another breath and blew again. This time a tiny flame burst into life amongst the fire’s remains. After the darkness of the unlit cell, the light was painfully bright and the priest wiped a tear from his eye as he fed the fire with tinder.
Only when the fireplace was once more crackling did he turn to the door. Suppressing an edgy sense of déjà vu, he made himself walk over to it and lifted the bar.
He closed his fingers around the latch and pulled, swinging it effortlessly open to reveal…
Without a word of warning the door was slammed backwards in a rush of movement and cold night air. Even as the tortured hinges squeaked in protest, a huge figure, shapeless and shadowed in the flaring firelight, burst into the room. The guttering flame revealed it to be a hideous confusion of feathers, and furs and wild, staring eyes.
The shrine’s keeper moved with a speed that would have amazed his parishioners. Leaping back as easily as a man half his age, he seized the scythe from its place in the corner. Hefting its bulk upon his bony hip he turned, ready to throw his weight beneath the sweep of the blade. But before he could, the apparition swept the bedraggled mass of felt and feathers off of its head and bowed stiffly, chin to chest in the northern manner.
The priest recovered his wits quickly as he studied the man who stood before him. “Come in,” he said, his voice level with a soothing calm that he’d practiced on generations of grieving relatives. “Take a seat.”
His guest watched him return the scythe to its corner. Beneath the filth encrusted mop of his hair and the singed remains of his beard, his face was deathly pale and hard with suspicion. Only when satisfied that the priest wasn’t going to attack him did he look away, his eyes flitting about the bare walls of the cell, as though he expected them to spring open in some trap.
“Here, take a seat by the fire,” the priest repeated, hastening to bar the door against the quickening wind. But when he turned around, the man was still in the centre of the room, sniffing the air suspiciously.
The priest sniffed too and immediately wished that he hadn’t. The filth that stained his guest’s rags also greased the air with a foul, sickly sweet stench. The odour had great intensity and reminded the old man of some of his riper charges.
None but a lunatic could live with such an odour, the priest decided unhappily. Then, as cautious as a man testing the heat of a stove he placed a hand on the madman’s shoulder and steered him towards a stool.
“We’ll take a drink,” he said soothingly. “Then you can tell me what brings you here.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the foul smelling stranger grunted his agreement and slung something from his back. At first the priest had taken it to be a beggar’s bedroll, but now he could see that it was a weapon.
At least he assumed that it was a weapon. What else could it be? The great polished lump of stained timber that served as a stock looked to belong to a crossbow, its smooth curves designed to rest easily against a man’s shoulder. On the top of this familiar shape, though, taking the place of the crossbows arms, there was nothing but a simple barrel of blue steel. As long and as thick as a man’s thigh it glinted dangerously in the firelight, its muzzle flared open in a toothless snarl.
It had a strange smell, too. An acrid, sulphur smell that was even sharp enough to cut through the rank stench of its owner.
“Here,” the priest said, pulling the threadbare blanket from his cot and throwing it to his guest. “Sit you down.”
“Thanks,” he muttered, his accent harsh and guttural. “And why not, hey? Why not be comfortable for the last few hours?”
“Why not, indeed?” the priest agreed, studiously ignoring the emotion in his guest’s voice. At least the man was talking.
Deciding to take the risk of turning his back on him, he went to rummage in the cell’s single cupboard, listening to the squeak of his stool beneath the stranger’s weight all the while.
“Ha! Here it is.” A smile eased the spare lines of the old man’s face as he produced a fat bottle of glazed clay and two pots. He poured out two generous measures, passed one across to his guest and took a seat.
“Drink,” he said.
Again the man grunted his thanks. He drained the cup in one deep draught, lowered it and peered into the dregs that remained. Gradually, as if in response to something he’d seen there, a glistening tear slid down a pale scar and disappeared into the bristles of his moustache.
“Give me your pot,” the priest said. He poured another measure and waited until his guest took it. “You did well to survive the trap.”
For a split second the stranger froze, his drink held halfway to his lips. Then, in an explosion of movement that sent his stool spinning away and the cup rolling across the table he was on his feet, a dagger sprouting downwards from his left fist.
“What do you know about it?” he snarled, baring strong yellow teeth as he edged forward.
The priest slowed his breathing, unclenched his fists. For a second he watched the patterns the fire made in the razor sharp steel that quivered beneath his chin. He forced himself to look away, to look instead into the crazed eyes of his tormentor.
A lunatic, a beast at bay, he thought, not without a touch of pity.
“I know only what I see,” he said, marshalling his words as carefully as a surgeon would his tools. “With those weapons and those scars you’d find it hard to pass for a civilian. Your obviously a gentleman of fortune. You’re garb’s worth more gold than I see in a year.”
“Perhaps. But…”
“And you’ve recently been set upon,” the priest hurriedly continued. “That much is obvious. A man whose bearing and profession speaks of a proud nature wandering the night dressed in those rags? No. I’ll wager that two days ago those tatters were good enough to wear in any court.”
The soldier lowered his knife uncertainly as his host pressed home his advantage.
“As for the trap, well, what bandit would run into the jaws of that weapon of yours? It must have been a trap. Anyway, there have been no battles hereabouts of late.”
“Haven’t there?” the man asked contemptuously.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the mad energy deserted him. The rage bled away from his features, leaving in its place a terrible exhaustion. Sheathing his dagger, the man recovered his stool and sat back down with a sigh.
“My apologies,” he muttered half-heartedly, and shrugged.
“Accepted,” the priest nodded. He recovered his guest’s pot and refilled it. “Why don’t you tell me your name?”
“Otto van Delft,” he said, a trace of pride straightening his back. The priest wasn’t surprised to find that he had one of Karl Franz’s subjects on his hands. That would explain his manners.
“And what brings you to the shrine?” he asked warily. “You’re healthy, strong. What do you want of Morr?”
“I’ll tell you,” Otto said.
He peered into the depths of the fire, the flames burnishing his grimy features with a dozen shades of light and darkness. For a while he was silent, listening to the crackle of wood settling in the fireplace and the muted complaints of the rising wind that now lay siege outside.
Finally he took a deep drink and began. “What do you know of the ratvolk?”
“Ratvolk?”
“Yes, the ratvolk. The skaven.” Otto turned his attention from t
he fire to the priest and saw him shiver, a reflex that had nothing to do with the draft that slunk around the stone of the old walls.
“So you do know of them.” The soldier smiled grimly. “Of course you do. Everyone does.”
The priest merely nodded and poured another measure from the jug. This time it was for himself.
“Tell me everything,” he said, and took a drink.
“I have been hunting the vermin all my life. In sewers, swamps, forests. In catacombs of brick and living stone, in lands of fire and ice and skin rotting dampness. And why? Because…”
Otto paused, his brows meeting in sudden suspicion as he studied his host. The priest’s slight nod seemed to reassure him.
“Because,” he continued heavily, “they’re part of me, part of all of us. They’re the evil that we try to hold at bay, with law and discipline. And I hate them.”
A log, settling in the fireplace, snapped open in a shower of sparks. The two men watched the sudden flare of light for a moment. Only when it had died down did Otto continue.
“I have a reputation. I am a—what did you call it?—a gentleman of fortune. Yes. And like a thousand other gentlemen of fortune, I haggle like a whore for the best price, then throw the money away on ale and women. But unlike them,” he said, leaning forward with a sudden intensity, “I do what I’m paid for. I keep the battle moving forward. Believe me, priest, that’s no easy thing.”
The older man nodded.
“Reputation,” the mercenary sneered, injecting a whole world of contempt into the word. As if in further comment he coughed, hawking up a gob of phlegm that he spat with unerring accuracy into the fire. It hissed and sizzled as he continued.
“Reputation is what you need in my business more than in any other. Wealth I have, but I needed more than one man’s gold for what I had in mind. There are rumours, you see, rumours of a city in the south, the heartland of the skaven, the womb of their race. I wanted backers. I wanted enough men to sweep down into those swamps and tear out the guts of the enemy.”
Otto, his pupils narrowing into twin pinpricks of fanaticism, spat the words out. “I needed one more war to make that happen. I came so close. Ever heard of Magdeburg?”
“Yes,” the priest said. “I knew a merchant from there. He made a contribution to the shrine.”
“He wasn’t called Gottlieb, was he?”
“No. Why?”
“Gottlieb was the man who hired me. He was the mayor of Magdeburg. Poor bastard.”
Once more Otto drained his pot, once more his host refilled it. This spirit, White Fire the donor had called it, was proving to be very effective at loosening tongues.
“Forty crowns a week,” the mercenary said, “plus another fifty for a pelt. I let the lads keep the pelt money. That’s always the best way. Krinvaller skimmed a little off the top, of course, but not too much.” The mercenary snorted. “Krinvaller! What an idiot. Still, I liked him. Everyone did. He’d made a great watch captain, lazy and kind hearted. Then Gottlieb launched the rattenkrieg and turned him from a good watch captain into a terrible colonel.”
“The rattenkrieg,” the priest ventured uncertainly, “is a war against the skaven?”
“That’s it. Gottlieb’s daughter was taken, you see. She was a pretty girl, by all accounts, apart from a strawberry birthmark on her cheek. Not that that matters. A man’s child is his child and always beautiful to him. When she began to wail late one night about things hiding inside her closet, Gottlieb just thought she was having nightmares. Then, one morning… well, there was nothing left of her, just crumpled sheets and a torn scrap of nightdress. The skaven had gnawed their way from the sewers, up between the walls and through the back of her wardrobe. Their tracks were everywhere in the room.”
Van Delft paused, looked reflectively into the fire.
“So Gottlieb went to war. He was winning it, too, even before I got there. I should have known something was wrong. A halfwit doesn’t lead a couple of dozen vagabonds down into the deeps and come back victorious. He doesn’t come back at all.”
“Oh, gods, I should have known.” Van Delft; face crumpled into a mask of pain and he smacked his palm against his forehead. “I should have known.”
The priest, his own features carefully composed, wondered if the mercenary was going to break down altogether. But after a few tense moments, he took a long, deep shuddering breath, pulled his hands reluctantly from his face and continued.
“The information we were getting was very good. Before every mission Gottlieb would call us in and give us numbers, deployment, even these maps. Look.” Van Delft reached inside the ruined cloth of his tunic and pulled out a roll of parchments. Even in the uncertain firelight, the wealth of detail remained crystal clear. As well as the mud-coloured inks, which distinguished each tangled strand from its neighbours, each of the cobwebbed lines was beaded with its own peculiar series of dots and dashes. The priest held one up to the flame to admire the workmanship.
“Why are they made of leather?” he asked, rubbing the material between his fingers.
“Because parchment tears.” The mercenary, seized by a sudden fit of shivering, wrapped the blanket tighter across his shoulders. “I’d never worked with such information before. Usually underground all you have is instinct, smell, hearing. Fear. But with these,” he waved a hand towards the maps, “we had depths, scale, everything. I should have known.”
“Known what?” the priest blurted out in spite of himself, and immediately regretted his lapse of patience.
His guest noticed the slip and smiled wearily. “This potcheen of yours seems to be loosening both of our tongues.”
“We’d better take some more then. Give me your pot.” As he poured, he watched his guest’s expression harden and guessed that his thoughts were falling back into the depths of the past.
“Ever heard of warpstone?” Otto asked.
The deepening gurgle of a filling cup faltered.
“Yes. When I was a younger man—” he broke off. “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”
“You know of its value then?” Otto asked curiously.
“I know of its value to some.”
“So do I. And beneath Magdeburg I saw enough to buy a city. Although no sane man would risk trying to get it.”
“At first,” he continued, “I thought that the stuff must have been something else, some kind of mould or fungus. I was leading a gang down to a cut-off point when I first saw it, a great twisting seam threading itself through the walls like an artery through a corpse. And that light, that sickly green light! I swear it was pulsing, beating like the heart of some living thing. That light, it made our faces look like…”
He stopped, eyes blank and unseeing, his drink forgotten in his hand.
“It made them look like daemons,” he finished and drained his pot. “Such wealth was before us. For a moment, a second, I thought that here I’d found my key to the south. Madness of course, the idea of selling the enemy power in order to raise an army against him is insane. Then another thought hit me. Stuck down there, beneath countless tons of rock, with nothing between myself and the darkness except a single flame, I realised what sort of skaven pack must own this territory and just how powerful they must have been. If I’d have had time, I’d have retreated back up and thought things through.”
“You didn’t have time?” The priest nudged his guest out of a brief reverie.
“No. That’s when the first attack came.”
Wordlessly he held his pot out and wordlessly the priest refilled it.
“It’s always the same in the beginning, especially underground. There’s always that terrible moment when you realise that you’re not imagining things anymore, that what you’re hearing is actually real. That’s when the air seems to rum to liquid, heavy and tough to breath, even before the stink hits you. The noise is always the same too; the hiss of fur against stone, the scrape of claws, the pattering of feet and the squeals of pain. Even in the seconds before battle th
ose filthy things are snapping and biting at their own kin.”
Van Delft sneered into the depths of the fireplace, his bared teeth gleaming as sharp as a terrier’s beneath his moustache. “They even hate each other.”
This time, when he paused, the priest said nothing and merely sat transfixed.
“The weakest always come first, the slaves and the vanquished. Pathetic creatures these, but crazed with a fear of what’s behind more than what is in front. I waited for them to come. I felt fear twisting into terror, felt terror twisting into madness. We waited some more. I thought of the lads behind me and tried to take strength from them. They didn’t have it to give, though. All I got was the sound of sobbing and the smell of piss. If their fear hadn’t frozen them I’ve no doubt they would have fled at the first alarm. As it was, they waited until we could see the lice crawling on the enemy. Then I fired Gudrun.”
He reached over to the weapon and ran his fingertips lovingly down from its muzzle to its breech.
“She punched a hole straight through them, stopped the charge with a single smack of blood and shrapnel.”
Van Delft smiled gently and drew the firearm to his chest like a favourite dog. The priest half expected him to pat it.
He did.
“Yes, she cut through them. That’s pretty much all I remember. In that battle Sigmar blessed me with the madness.”
The priest, who could well believe it, nodded and said nothing for a long while.
“And was the pack as strong as you feared?”
“No. No, they were nothing. Most of them were crippled with old injuries or disease. The rest were only half grown, or so old that they were toothless. There were even some females. The only one of them that was up to anything was the leader. Now he was something.” The soldier nodded approvingly. “A great beast, at least as tall as a man, his pelt was almost pure black where it wasn’t riven through with scar-tissue. And from the tip of his snout to his left ear there was nothing but shiny, pink flesh, studded with a lump of warpstone in the place of his eye. How it flared when we’d cornered him!”
Tales of the Old World Page 56